The Assassin's Path

[@mu]

Thanks all for your kind words. I'm still in shock. My brain can't help running some kind of bad movie of her – their, all of them – last minutes. I hoped fast decompression made them go unconscious very quickly but given the height of the plane, I don't think it happened... The speed of impact was such that it probably made it painless but still.

And the absurdity of it all is just insane...

 

On Wednesday evening I went to the interdisciplinary Circus class, to change my mind. At the beginning of class, I got a massive cutaneous reaction, the same sort of allergy rashes that I got a few times since our return. So I think this may not actually be food-related but more stress-induced?

We were supposed to have a creative session but instead we had acrobatics and I don't know what I did but I started getting huge cramps in my calves. And they have been sore since then to the point I couldn't walk properly (but biking was fine). It's just starting to feel a bit better now.

Positive stuff: I did a lot of drop backs and up, and it felt good. And I also work on HS to bridge and coming back up on my own (from a block about knee height).

 

I also went to the aerial class on Thursday despite the calves situation and it was fine actually. It's just walking that is painful oddly enough. Class was ok. I worked on beats, a drop (slack type) and a bit of belay.

 

And I have read a lot in Persian this week...

[KB Girl]

Stress-induced sounds like a likely diagnosis. But way to self-care with movement!

 

The absurdity of it all is insane.. hope you can talk about it with others. I hope that when people know they are about to die that they can at least know that the people they're leaving behind know you love them and vice versa.. sounds lame? but that's what I think about anytime I get on a plane- will everyone be alright without me.. 

[@mu]

On 1/13/2020 at 9:35 PM, KB Girl said:

Stress-induced sounds like a likely diagnosis. But way to self-care with movement!

 

The absurdity of it all is insane.. hope you can talk about it with others. I hope that when people know they are about to die that they can at least know that the people they're leaving behind know you love them and vice versa.. sounds lame? but that's what I think about anytime I get on a plane- will everyone be alright without me.. 

 

Spoiler

I have another friend who was was bound for the same uni in Canada. She left Tehran on Sunday evening and safely arrived on Monday. She's brave, I'd be peeing myself. Although I know fracking statistically she was likely to be alright but pfff. On Tuesday, friends planted a tree for Ghanim, I wish we could have been there. Today at work I got absorbed by two seagulls flying by the window. They were flying so lightly and with so much ease. I wanted to cry but I couldn't really.

 

It's not lame. I'm scared in airplanes so I don't need a lot of turbulences to feel like going through all the Kübler-Ross stages in a couple of minutes. Just taking off and landing get me right there... Oddly enough perhaps, I'm pretty sure everybody will be more or less alright without me (maybe because I'm not a parent, I don't know). I'm very egoistically trying to make peace with my own death.

 

And now I'm starting to ponder about weird dilemmas, like would I rather die without noticing (in my sleep for instance) or see death face to face? I think the latter - and then maybe an air crash is actually less excruciating than more common ills such as cancer and the likes...

 

Sorry, I don't have super joyful threads of thoughts just now.

 

Monday

 

PU-related warm-up done

Flexibility (hips, shoulder)

HS (entries and reps, head position, routine in full, seven, split stags, parallettes walk)

 

Tuesday

 

PU-related warm-up done, PU are starting to feel better again

Cirque Physio / HS prep

Entries and reps (straddle, tuck)

Head position work

Negatives, a good one to L-sit, some improvement to stalder but still using feet support at the last second

Press to HS: did not manage a single one from ground 0, I managed a few @3cm

Consistency on blocks: 10/20

 

[Mad Hatter]

I don't know what to say, it's all so absurd and tragic. Sending virtual hugs instead.

[KB Girl]

Awful threads of thought have a place here too! A gym members 19 year old brother just passed away after 4 years of battling cancer, so there are some of those lines of thought going on around here too. Personally it seems preferable to not see it coming for very long, but I do imagine the absolute sudden shock of a plane crash is very hard to deal with for those left behind. It was absurd when she -the sister- walked into the gym yesterday, what do you even say? but you could tell she had already had a chance to come to terms with it. 

I can imagine it would have been nice for you to be there for the tree planting.. maybe you can do something small and similar? 

 

[@mu]

Thank you guys. I'm pasting some updates quickly. We re having some trouble with E. visa renewal, still no appointment. I may have to take the public service to court ... I have starting steps towards that because he has to be legally protected if his visa expires before we get an appointment. Will see how things evolves this week. Hopefully I'll get a bit more time at "some" point to reply and catch up with threads.

 

Wednesday

Circus interdisciplinary class: mime work, collective and duo improvisations (very interesting!)

 

Thursday

Aerial class: mostly review work

 

Friday-Saturday

REST

 

Sunday

HS workshop:

head stand prep;

on hands: work on entries, I'm starting to progress on my hands, it's fun!

Pbars: leg shapes, HS to L-sit and exercise for press from L-sit. Butt is still not going up though. The teacher also said I fixed the little hip turn I have sometimes, at least today was good.

Blocks: I worked on full up and downs back to wall. And I'm starting to manage a climb down free standing, that's exciting! The walk exercises have helped. It's still hard to keep balance after the climb down from the second block but getting there.

And we did a few more exercises, like HS on a height and falling over in one block (I pike most of the time). I also managed a few standard bails (to the side rather than into a bridge).

 

Monday

 

Flexibility (hips, shoulders, a bit of back with cobra, bridges, elbow stand scorpion and shoulder pushes) mixed with HS work: entries, head position (starting to lookup towards my feet now), HS to bridge on hands, stags, and free standing parallettes walk. That last one is not very controlled yet, maybe just the first step is. And I'm currently only moving backward.

 

[Mad Hatter]

1 hour ago, @mu said:

I may have to take the public service to court

Wow that’s ridiculous. So many hoops!

 

1 hour ago, @mu said:

Circus interdisciplinary class: mime work, collective and duo improvisations (very interesting!)

Please write more when you have the time, very curious.  

 

Very nice handstand progress! Sounds like the variety is making you improve overall.  

[KB Girl]

On 1/20/2020 at 7:52 AM, @mu said:

The teacher also said I fixed the little hip turn I have sometimes, at least today was good.

That's nice feedback to get! 

 

Hope it works out with the visa.. 

[raptron]

I am so, so, so sorry about your friend. All the digital hugs. What a horrible, senseless thing. 

 

Wishing you and E the best with the visa issues. Hope neither of you wake up and discover you have become bugs. 🦗

[@mu]

Thanks you for your kind words ❤️ very much appreciate it.

 

On 1/20/2020 at 9:35 AM, Mad Hatter said:

Please write more when you have the time, very curious.  

 

Yes the 2 big exercises were those:

 

Group improv: one student goes out of the room and the others prepare a scene for them to guess (for instance a beauty parlour scene, a Christmas dinner..). At first we are all entirely frozen in our expressions. If the student cannot guess immediately, we start acting the scene.

 

Duo improv: 1 partner is an alien who does not speak any human language but expresses itself via movement and sounds. The other partner is their translator. You have to improv an entrance, the translator introduces the alien, takes question from the audience, and then both exit.

 

I was paired with a sort of frog who made weird sounds and was very interested in getting humans on board of her vessel, although because of my low ability as translator, I couldn't quite tell if that was out of culinary or sexual interest.

A group came up with a very good performance, with a very funny language, producing sounds by hitting themselves The alien was a hippy sort of being, and the translator was super blasée, and not into hippy stuff at all. And the passive-aggressive feature really came out in the way she was hitting herself. It came out much more funny that I can describe it.

 

 

Here is again a cut & paste update, and I have to run:

 

Monday note: I also did my bent arm warm up series, with 1 rep increase on 2 sets of PUs

 

Tuesday

 

Warm-up with Cirque Physio and ball stuff + bent arm series

 

HS entries (straddle, tuck), progressing on reps once up: 6 in straddle, 7 in tuck (usually I find tuck harder to rep for)

 

Head position: side to side, neutral

 

Negatives: to L-sit (okayish) and stalder (feet support) – a bit so so, not controlling that much today

 

Press: worked mostly at 3cm and I understood today that keeping my head in can help a lot, it helps compression of course and it makes me protract to activate the right push muscles at the bottom I think

 

Block consistency: 13/20 yo! My previous level-up is back (not a new level up, just one I lost and is coming back lolz #handstand_games)

 

Block walk down: I did not manage to reproduce a good one, I kept losing balance once my 2 hands were on the floor, but I have hope and I'm really enjoying it

 

Parallettes walk: still going backward, this is super fun and I just wanted to do more and more but I had to run for a shower and to work.

 

Wednesday morning

 

I don't usually train on Wed because I have a class in the evening but I had an urge to walk on parallettes... To do that, I have to warm-up first, warm-up my HS etc... so my urge led to a 1h workout.

 

Entries (straddle, tuck) with reps to straight once up => this is nice for endurance as well, because 6-7 reps gets me into a 30s HS. I don't manage it all the time but it's still good work. Today straddle > tuck, which is my more usual trend.

 

Head position: I'm getting good at side to side (LR x5), and I'm now trying to move from neutral to looking at my feet but not making it so far (just piking out of it).

 

Seven: a few sets, now I'm moving my head in and it's helping my hamstrings. I'm feeling the shoulders the most now. I'm also trying to get a clean entry and a clean exit, going back to straight first which is a lot of work too.

 

Walks!!! It's laborious. I manage to balance the first hand move, the second hand move sometimes, and usually I lose it from there. It's a lot of fun though. Unfortunately very tiring. After a few sets, I'm dead. Baby steps. But urge was fulfilled.

 

Wednesday evening: creative class again with a first hour more focused on handstand (on hands). I have to squeeze my butt more apparently - although personally I think my shoulders placement is a bit different on hands and I'm still trying to find the right place, hence the wobble  - I don't have to think about my butt on parallettes and I'm holding fine?

I did hold somewhat more often that usual (on my hands I mean).

 

And then we all worked on a small piece in groups.

 

I was in a triple and we worked on HS and acro pretty much. We had a small mat that we moved around like a nomadic home. And then we got stuck into it, it became a sort of prison (overall idea was about frontiers). We managed to throw one of us out and she made it, but she rolled over so much that she crashed into another mat and died there.

And the two of us left sat down in despair on our little mat.

That's what we came up with, lol.

 

I don't feel it relates to my own mood right now or anything. It just happened that way and my own individual process tend to go towards dark humour / cynical / weird material anyway.

Others came up with things like discovery, role reversal, and some absurd encounter that was a non-encounter

 

It's hard to come up with something very satisfying in less than an hour but I think that's the whole point of it. Try stuff, be ok with the incomplete, things that work, things that don't, and let the impromptu come out of it. Very enjoyable class!

 

Thursday

 

We went in person to try to get a visa appointment but without success (after close to a 2h queue). They did acknowledge that the service is at fault, and it's not normal... (actually it's illegal) but they can't do anything (as employees I mean). So what's left to us is to keep trying on the website and in the meantime pursue the legal procedure I started on Monday...

 

Evening: aerial class. To be honest, I was not in the mood to go at all (tired, stress). I still went and I feel better for it.

Class was good. These days it's pretty decent. Not to the level of interestingness of my classes back in Scotland, but better than at the beginning of the year.

We worked with a blindfold on a climb and a figure.

Then I worked on the loop of death, my one arm strength one rope/silks is not what it used to be though, booh. Then a combo butterfly drop that I had done before. And belay, for some reason, all the variations I learned into it escaped me again... brainzzz? And the teacher didn't know any. Eventually I could get into the knot but it wasn't pretty.

 

And this evening we are going to theatre with M. (the Iranian student we met a while ago). She was also in Iran on holiday. She left the day before the plane's crash. And she also knew somebody on board   I can't believe how many people in our circle have been affected. We are going to see an Iranian piece and I believe it will in Persian with projected subtitles. I'm looking forward to it.

[@mu]

Video logs uploaded:

 

side to side head position + seven

 

 

my baby walk on parallettes

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

I love hearing about your creative exercises. For me it'd be waaaay out of my comfort zone. Kinda glad I don't have to do stuff like that, though maybe it's one of those things that once you get over the initial hurdle it becomes fun.

 

I don't really get the squeeze your but cue tbh, what does that even mean? Keep tight? Or push into hip extension? Surely what you squeeze depends on the position. If you're doing Mexicans or contortion handstands then it will be very important, but if you're doing a pike then it doesn't even make sense. And if you're perfectly balanced then squeezing your butt isometrically will do absolutely nothing.

 

Hope you'll enjoy the play, despite the heavy mood..

[@mu]

18 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I love hearing about your creative exercises. For me it'd be waaaay out of my comfort zone

 

Out of curiosity, what is the bit(s) that makes you uncomfortable? I mean I can see an element of vulnerability, definitely Maybe it depends on the class / teacher. Our group is good, we have been falling on our collective asses on a regular basis since September and it feels safe to fail in whatever way. I think that's the important bit. The teacher is also very encouraging.

 

18 hours ago, Mad Hatter said:

I don't really get the squeeze your but cue tbh, what does that even mean? Keep tight?

 

I don't really either. He meant tight and squeezed (in a straight handstand), but even if it's of any use, that's way too much effort in my opinion to do hand balancing for time.

I also recall that I had this moving about of the pelvis in my earlier parallettes HS (still do sometimes) and you hinted that might come from the shoulders, and I'm pretty sure IT DOES indeed. Maybe the butt is a cue that works well for some, it's falling a bit flat for me.

 

Theatre was good. Topic was about a very young pupil (< 9) falling in love with a male art teacher who happened to provide a weekly art workshop in an all-girl school. The other actors were the teacher's wife who was sort of the head teacher of the school, and the mother of the girl.

There were some elements of political absurdity about school budgets and laws. And a whole palimpsest metaphor about the school's wall being re-painted many times (starting from graffiti dating back from the revolution / war with Iraq). Letting us know that history is regularly re-written so to speak.

As well as social stuff obviously with everything surrounding suspicion of child abuse versus the girl being "sick" and making a story up versus the girl story being a projection of her mother's feelings. Her mother who happened to have been married and born her child very very young (legally)...

And the end could be understood accordingly in many ways, and with one understanding that was pretty disturbing. Actually that's the first one that came to my mind. E. and M. first saw the lighter version of it. It started a bit slow and borderline boring, but by the end of it I was really holding onto my sit.

 

[Mad Hatter]

11 hours ago, @mu said:

Out of curiosity, what is the bit(s) that makes you uncomfortable?

Umm all of it?  I don’t know, having all eyes on me when I’m fumbling around not knowing what I’m doing? Having to come up with something creative on the spot? Anything that involves voice or acting? Having to act larger than life?

 

The play sounds rather intense, that’s quite a hefty set of topics to deal with!

[raptron]

Yeah, that play does sound intense!
 

We talk about butt squeezing ALL OF THE TIME in handstands and skills for gymnastics, haha. It usually helps people get rid of excessive lower back arching or other general instability, so it's just kind of a general cue but probably less useful for hand balancing handstands -- and particularly less useful if you already know your instability is coming from your shoulders.

[Mad Hatter]

2 hours ago, raptron said:

It usually helps people get rid of excessive lower back arching or other general instability, so it's just kind of a general cue but probably less useful for hand balancing handstands

I feel like it's a very lazy cue tbh. For me it has the opposite effect and I'll in fact arch my back MORE. (Because separating hip extension from arching is haaard and I'll do both) Often followed by me falling over since I'll move my entire pelvis in the process. I much prefer the cue of having a balloon tied to your feet (Garage gym girl I believe?) or getting as tall as possible or something like that. But gymnastics is a bit different in that it's much more high tension. There's a huge difference to hold a handstand in vertical alignment and while flipping through the air!

[KB Girl]

I think a cue is really only a reminder, referencing back to a longer explanation.. so it doesn't really matter which words you use as long as the explanation was good. I think everyone in gymnastics probably had a good explanation linked to that cue at some point. One of the cues I use in my kettlebell class is "yellow dot!" which won't make sense if anyone decided to copy that, but it does have the desired effect in my classes.

 

On 1/25/2020 at 9:48 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Umm all of it?  I don’t know, having all eyes on me when I’m fumbling around not knowing what I’m doing? Having to come up with something creative on the spot? Anything that involves voice or acting? Having to act larger than life?

Yes. 

Love the descriptions though! 

[@mu]

On 1/27/2020 at 4:30 PM, raptron said:

 

We talk about butt squeezing ALL OF THE TIME in handstands and skills for gymnastics, haha. It usually helps people get rid of excessive lower back arching or other general instability, so it's just kind of a general cue but probably less useful for hand balancing handstands -- and particularly less useful if you already know your instability is coming from your shoulders.

 

This teacher also teaches acrobatics, it makes sense then.

 

13 hours ago, KB Girl said:

I think a cue is really only a reminder, referencing back to a longer explanation.. so it doesn't really matter which words you use as long as the explanation was good. I think everyone in gymnastics probably had a good explanation linked to that cue at some point. One of the cues I use in my kettlebell class is "yellow dot!" which won't make sense if anyone decided to copy that, but it does have the desired effect in my classes.

 

Yellow dot?  

 

Ah yes, oddly enough the best HS cues I have had so far were from Kirsty, who is really so far away from me, and also from NF, you guys basically. Shared experience probably leads to better cueing (Kirsty teaching adult beginners, while all the teachers I have had here teach teenagers / young adults – and I don't have them on a regular basis, so they don't really know my little quirks maybe).

 

On 1/27/2020 at 7:22 PM, Mad Hatter said:

Because separating hip extension from arching is haaard and I'll do both

 

ha ha yeah, although the other day I discovered that if I work on half extension, like HS stag left versus right, I have a good side where I don't arch as much. It's funny to experience the difference between sides. I think on my left leg extension, I don't arch as much while on the right, lazy leg will leg will leave it all to the lower back and I'll go banana.

 

Sunday

 

Press to HS – not the best of days.

Bent arm series /done

The usual prep, on press, I had to stay at 3cm and it was a struggle to press (only got very froggy ones) and block consistency was 8/20. Meh.

 

Monday

 

Flexibility / HS, bent arm series also done

The usual (hips, shoulders, some back) and I worked on shoulder extensions in scorpion and HS. Very small at the moment but I guess you have to start somewhere.

I also did some parallettes walk and I managed a full step backward, left, right, balancing and stopping there. Baby step.

 

Tuesday

 

Press to HS. Cirque physio / ball stuff and bent arm series done

I did the usual, for negatives I worked on coming down to ankle taps and holding there, I can't quite hold beyond a second or two. I need to improve on that really.

On press, I worked @8cm because I feel that my form has been deteriorating somehow (unlocking arms, having a little side foot help). Press is pretty "average minus" these days. Meh.

Block consistency was good though: 14/20, that's a PR! Thanks for HS variety, I don't get too moody about stalling on press.

Then some parallettes walk, where I managed a good left-right-left before falling on the next hand move. It's not really like floor walk because hands can only grip along one line and I have to balance around that no matter what. Not that my HS walk on the floor is very good either. But anyway, it's fun work in progress.

 

 

Wednesday

 

Interdisciplinary class => aerial, yo. With a different teacher from our usual aerial class and it was very technical and physical prep oriented. She was good at dispatching different material for different levels. And I worked on personal stuff too, I finally got that belay entry I had been after for a while (this teacher wasn't familiar with it either but she showed a related figure that clicked in my head), salto, windmill and bicycle climb on rope, on silks: I revisited old material from classes in Scotland to refresh my memories a bit, I don't know the names, they are bits of sequences starting from hip lock and s-wrap.

 

Ah and I booked an aerial workshop at another nearby circus, a full day of aerial + dancing/creation. I sure hope that it will be in the air and not 100% on the floor like with our current Thursday teacher. At least the teacher asked for previous xp and expectations by e-mail. And I really spelt it out

 

Actually let me translate that wish list for logging purposes:

• get back to a more natural / organic connection with the apparatus (I always have a tendency to fight / bull my way through)

• work on a routine that is not just clean and pretty but that tells a story or share a feeling

• how to transform technical requirements (like having to wrap a leg for a drop) into artistic intentions

• work on movement quality

• work on improvs

• can I bring my ball

 

That will be for the end of February.

 

In the meantime, we finally managed to get a visa appointment for somewhere in March! So we have a letter that somewhat justifies E. status. I just hope they don't say that we booked the wrong type of appointment (there is a different type for people in irregular situations and you have to pay extra “regularisation” fees). Technically when I booked, his visa was valid, and ffs we have been trying since September. If they dare ask for regularisation fees, I'm going to jump them.

 

Ah I have to run to work....

 

[@mu]

Thursday

 

Aerial class, also pretty intensive, heavy biceps pumps by the end of it.

A variety of climbs on both sides, including straddle climbs. And 2 drop sequences that I knew already. One that I don't particularly like, it's a star drop with added knee drops. It's a pain to get into, as you near the rigging point, everything is super tight (dropping is otherwise as safe as it can get).

 

On rope I worked on yet another dynamic twist from back balance down to front balance but I did not manage. The past few weeks, the teacher has been showing me different dynamic rope stuff but everything is just too hard. I don't trust my 1-arm grip for this yet. I used to have a decent one-arm so I'll have to go and dig my notes to look for easier progressions (because he is not offering any). My static 1-arm on a bar is ok but it doesn't translate that well into a rope grip for figures.

 

Friday & Saturday – off

 

Sunday

 

Press to HS ❤️

Cirque Physio, ball exercises, bent arm series

Entries and head position (improving on the neutral to feet one albeit still piking a lot).

Negs => some good holds near ankles

Press => 1 on bench, 7 @8cm - I got all of them. But form was so so at first (frog pulls cf video), so I kept at that height until I got something decent.

Blocks => 10/20, not my best but shoulder fatigue was real (still feeling the 2 aerial classes) so I'm ok with it.

 

I took a screenshot of my pancake for a before/after:

2018

 

2020 – chest is starting to touch the floor!

I'm still rounding my back and improvement feels rather slow for a 2-year span but hey I will take it

 

And a video log: head position work x2, press neg hold x1, and form work on press x3.

 

[Mad Hatter]

On 1/29/2020 at 8:02 PM, KB Girl said:

I think a cue is really only a reminder, referencing back to a longer explanation.. so it doesn't really matter which words you use as long as the explanation was good. I think everyone in gymnastics probably had a good explanation linked to that cue at some point. One of the cues I use in my kettlebell class is "yellow dot!" which won't make sense if anyone decided to copy that, but it does have the desired effect in my classes.

For this particular cue I just never got a good explanation but instead several "counter" arguments... It's great for the people that the cues work for, but it doesn't strike me as a fundamental or important cue. 

 

I'm also really curious about the yellow dot cue!  

 

On 1/30/2020 at 9:09 AM, @mu said:

I did the usual, for negatives I worked on coming down to ankle taps and holding there, I can't quite hold beyond a second or two. I need to improve on that really.

I find even that very impressive.  My feet are sooo far away even with a spot, it seems rather impossible at this point.

 

I hope you get your wishes for the workshop! It's a really good idea to spell it out in those very clear terms.

 

[KB Girl]

On 1/30/2020 at 8:09 AM, @mu said:

I finally got that belay entry I had been after for a while

nice!  it's part of the fun isn't it, figuring it out with just hints and similar movements? 

 

Good to have such a clear wish list! I always wonder how you could possibly do a whole day of something that intense.. I've had KB clinics that lasted all day and then after 3 hours my brain just goes 'nope, goodbye'. Circus is maybe a bit different? 

 

On 2/3/2020 at 10:03 AM, Mad Hatter said:

For this particular cue I just never got a good explanation but instead several "counter" arguments... It's great for the people that the cues work for, but it doesn't strike me as a fundamental or important cue. 

 

I'm also really curious about the yellow dot cue!  

Nah, no cue is fundamental. 

 

The yellow dot.. well when you're doing cleans or snatches you swing the bell between your legs and then up, it's natural to look down when it goes between your legs, but some people will keep looking down, which prevents them from getting the upper body in the desired position and .. well I could write a while about how horrible it is when people do that x) 

anyway, someone suggested hanging a nice painting on the wall so they could remember to look at that- but that won't work because then they'll put their neck in horrible angles to keep looking at it.. so instead someone suggested a moving dot that you could follow with your eyes, like a projection x) a yellow dot. So when I say "Name - yellow dot!" they know they're being stupid with their heads and should focus on following the imaginary yellow dot for a while. No idea why it's yellow  and now yellow sounds REALLY awkward in my head. 

[@mu]

On 2/4/2020 at 11:52 AM, KB Girl said:

I've had KB clinics that lasted all day and then after 3 hours my brain just goes 'nope, goodbye'. Circus is maybe a bit different? 

 

If it's anything like the creative courses I have been to, it's usually not a full day in the air but short exercises including on the floor, individual stuff and collective stuff, with feedback / reflection time. And perhaps something a little bit longer by the end of it. But it's not a technical class.

You are supposed to come in class with a bunch of figures you could do blind-folded basically, that way you can focus on the creative rather than struggling to keep your butt up.

In Scotland, I have been to “circus fest” that are 2 days long with class after class, mostly technical ones and on day 2, everybody is pretty beaten up. The trickiest are probably the beginner classes where you try new activities actually, those are really the ones that hit you hard. The following years you start developing a class-picking strategy because it's not sustainable to do everything really and it would be too silly to get an injury. But it's hard, there are always so many cool stuff to try 😛  Outside of those crazy week-ends (usually once a year in our area), technical workshops were more in the 3 hours range and I think it's about right, be it aerial or handstands as I'm experiencing it now.

 

This week has been tough.

 

Spoiler

E. has been struggling with a slight depression the last few months and it's getting worse. I took 2 work days in remote last week because he could not be left alone safely.

We went to his GP, and he has been prescribed anxiolytics until we get to see a specialist tomorrow morning. Because of his epilepsy, he can't be prescribed antidepressants just like that, we will have to synch the whole thing with the neurologist too. And I hope the specialist also has psychotherapy-related skills because that would help him most, between moving and past issues, he needs to process a lot of stuff. In the meantime, I'm trying to make sure he eats on a regular basis (he has lost a lot weight in the past few months), goes a bit out to get some fresh air without being too pushy I hope. I took him to theatre, and that has changed his mood a little bit but it's still very fragile. He knows it and it kinds of reinforce this negative loop where he feels useless / worthless despite trying.

He hasn't been to his French programme at uni for a week and I'm trying to arrange that bit so that he can try again. He has difficulties with some remarks his current teacher makes every so often, remarks that are not personal to him and not majorly offensive to someone who is not depressed, but adds more water to a bowl that is pretty full at the moment. So maybe he can swap and get into another group with another teacher. Maybe that will not change anything at all, and so be it (I'm not pressuring him). But maybe it will help a little and let him keep some kind of weekly routine. So let's see.

 

I have done my usual parallettes training at home but I did not go to circus classes because the situation was not good on those 2 particular evenings. And then it's school holidays so circus will be off for a couple of weeks. So nothing new really, still training the same patterns: entries + reps (straddle / tucks), head position, some routine / transition work, press and block consistency, some walks. Press is pretty annoying these days but hey

I'm getting some time out this afternoon when E. usually has a good sleep to go to a free discovery mime workshop to the theatre next door

 

 

[Mad Hatter]

I’m so sorry to hear that E’s struggling. I’m glad you’re there for him.

 

Miming workshop eh? Awesome. I love how you’re embracing the theatre/performing side now that you’re back in a real life circus community.

[@mu]

On 2/9/2020 at 5:17 PM, Mad Hatter said:

I’m so sorry to hear that E’s struggling. I’m glad you’re there for him.

 

Miming workshop eh? Awesome. I love how you’re embracing the theatre/performing side now that you’re back in a real life circus community.

 

Thanks

 

Yeah it was fun! Here is a somewhat detailed log of it, keeping the xp somewhere. I need a proper notebook for things like that.

There is a longer,  2-day workshop in Mars and I'd very much like to go. The topic will be about resistance and gravity, ha ha.

 

Here is the log.

 

Mime workshop was great, it was following on Etienne Decroux's school (corporeal mime), so not pantomine. If I understand correctly the difference, it was about using more body (than say face or gestures) and not necessarily expressing ideas in a literal way (e.g. eating a ice-cream => not mimicking the actual eating gesture but what it feels like).

 

We started with a little warm-up, then some solo exercises about seeing something, catching it, putting it in our heart. And a variation: catching it and discarding it. We did that a lot so we had time to get a story in our head with associated feelings (eg discarding = anger or disgust). Edit: we also worked on tempo on that one (how quick you see the thing, catch it, discard it or keep it).

 

We then did a 2-people exercise as a marionette-manipulator duo. Once with small movements, once with amplified movements. Then we worked on resistance, pulling a human weight behind us, and then doing the same without an actual weight.

 

And then we had to pick 3 words that represent us somehow (without overthinking it too much, I guess the idea was to pick words that are meaningful to us). And we had to come up with a movement to represent each word. I picked stone, spring (the object not the season) and horse. That's the moment where we could watch others as well and it was very interesting. Some people picked hard stuff like “colour”, “movement”. I have done similar things before so I was a bit shrewd in my word picking if I may say so. Although I did not gallop as a horse, obviously it was not the goal. I tried to make out a young mare, a bit anxious about her environment and moving back slowly with her long elegant legs (which I don't have so that was the hard bit of the job ). I tried to go for a sort of sophisticated timidity you encounter sometimes among humans too. I do not identify with that but it's the sort of "horse" that came to mind at that point. I liked the time restriction because it prevents too much overthinking. It's good for me (although I will still overthink AFTERWARDS 😜 )

 

We did those same movements in a group, with one person being a trigger and the group reacting in a sort of natural wave.

At the end we had to stare in a partner's eyes for 5 minutes (we were all a bit psyched by the end of it and you could tell it was rather uncomfortable by the amount of weird laughs it generated), and then we repeated again our physical words like a sort of dialogue with variations coming in naturally after a while.

 

After a break, we had an improvisation session with a theme and mimes taken randomly out of a hat. There was an actual audience at that point because it was also marking the end of the mime festival (I kinda hopped on the band wagon).

 

In the first half, we had professional mimes playing the game and man, it was really fab to watch. A Japanese mime (actually one of the group we saw on stage with E.) came up with a solo improv on spring (the season) that was amazingly fresh (considering how cliché “spring” can get). And then in the second part, amateurs were taken randomly with one professional mime.

 

I was in a group with 2 other women and a little girl and the theme was: “far from the eyes, far from the heart” (Seldom seen, soon forgotten, with the overall theme being love).

When we started I saw the little girl a bit frozen. She had been running around the whole afternoon like a wild rabbit and all a sudden she looked like she was having stage fright (or maybe not, it all happened in my brain in a quarter of a second). Background note: she had told me she was going to class at the same circus school as me, so I dared and I took her in a sort of porté, to the side on my hip and then upside down. She reacted very well by being calm and letting it happen. And we all ended up in a pack of body parts on the floor.

Then we moved on, and I decided to lift a second person, to create a pattern you know  at that point the audience laughed, so I think it was recognised as such – whether the perception that I was a little crazy / obsessed with lifting people came with it or not, that's all right by me

 

The woman I lifted was a pro mime so she also let that happen nicely (in circus, we are somewhat used to intimate encounters and odd manipulations, but it's not an expectation you can have from random people right), so another porté and another mess on the floor and we separated again like we we did not exist for each other. I have no idea what it looked like especially with respect to the theme but that's how it happened, and it was fun to do.

 

[KB Girl]

That sounds awesome! 

 

On 2/10/2020 at 10:27 PM, @mu said:

whether the perception that I was a little crazy / obsessed with lifting people came with it or not, that's all right by me

 

I hope the specialist was able to do something for you and E.