Come On Out to Hideaway

When you get swept up by phenomena that carry you away, claiming all of your attention, even when you know that there are a thousand other important things going on, urgent and troubling things, but also things that you can’t directly control, you can get a powerful feeling of living in the present, almost making time stand still.

Just before suppertime a week ago Saturday, we started getting news on our phones about a terrible happening in Western Pennsylvania. It had been another sweltering day, and most of us were hoping for some relief as evening approached, maybe anticipating some kind of evening event of our own.

The Show Goes On

In fact, Rob and I had tickets to a circus, a half hour’s drive away. A circus?

We had last gone to anything like this more than 20 years ago, during Vermont summers when our kids were young and sweet, eyes lighting up at the show. Back then, we went either to Greensboro or to Montpelier to see “Circus Smirkus.” This organization, which has a camp where kids get to learn circus arts, is still going strong, as you can see from their website: https://www.smirkus.org/

Over the past few years, I’ve been wanting to head down to Jamaica Plain to see any of the shows put on by “Commonwealth Circus,” an organization founded by a young person we know and greatly admire. Do you have friends or family members around Boston that might want to check out their diverse offerings? https://commonwealthcircus.com/

Back to last Saturday around 6 pm. Suddenly, standing in our kitchen with the bulletins coming in, I felt everything colliding: then, now, and an uncertain future; experience and innocence; tranquility and strife.

Feeling rattled but knowing that there wasn’t much chance of missing crucial facts about what was unfolding in the national spotlight, we had a quick bite to eat and kept on with our plan — just not taking the motorcycle because of the unappealing prospect of thunderstorms.

Heading up to a big field a few towns away to see a show in the open air, a show featuring only humans doing things they chose to do, with a beautiful half moon eventually hanging in the sky proved to be just the right choice.

Farm As Gracious Host

First, though, there was no mistaking just what this property’s main use was: agriculture. I had heard of https://www.brookfordfarm.com/ — knew a teenager from the family who ran it, in fact — but I’d never visited the place before. It’s a sprawling operation, with fields spread out in all directions.

We drove in along a tremendous bright white snake-like thing, plastic tubing wrapping recently harvested hay.

The trucks and tractors were quiet, parked off to the side of one enormous field, deferring at least for this weekend, to a traveling group of entertainers called Hideaway Circus. They hailed from Brooklyn and were at the beginning of a New England summer tour with a show called “Canvas Sky.” Not content to just present one kind of circus act after another, they aim to tell a story, described on their website https://www.hideawaycircus.com/ as a “relatable tale exploring the themes of self-acceptance and uplifting one another.” There’s a main character, a kind of clown dressed in regular denim, who is on a quest to find friends, develop his own abilities, reach contentment within a supportive community. He is, I suppose, meant to be a kind of Everyman (woman).

So there’s a loose-limbed narrative, but we were most transfixed by watching the members of the cast pull off a succession of remarkable physical feats. We imbibed them all as if we were drinking a wonderfully cool and delicious drink.

I used the phrase “swept up” in my opening sentence, and I’ll just show you a few examples of what we saw, so that you can imagine being captivated by these moments, too.

The Performers

There was this flying woman; “aerialist” is the proper term. (I wonder if one can be an aerialist and a realist at the same time?)

When you watch a person flying through the air right in front of you, there really isn’t any likelihood of being distracted by anything else. It’s not news, exactly; it has an entirely different kind of urgency.

And then there was the guy balancing on a board on top of different things in different shapes, piled on top of one another.

He didn’t stay up there long, but long enough to be thrilling to all of us watching who know the challenges of balancing multiple priorities in everyday life, with the ever-present risk of falling, or failing.

The woman who twirled an assortment of hoops created another kind of beauty.

I love how I caught a sweet moment between a mother and her child here, too. Maybe the little girl was saying that she has friends who have hula hoops, or that she thinks she might be able to do this one day, too.

The jugglers were also wonderful, sharing their magic as the sky was darkening.

Probably my favorite of all the acts was one featuring a wide kind of see-saw (such a splendid word) which launched two guys, in alternating jumps, high up into the air. The sense of freedom and symmetry portrayed during those few minutes was fantastic. “How can they possibly come down so reliably right on the board each time?” I half-asked, half-exclaimed to Rob. He, accustomed to my habit of not withholding responses like this in favor of just allowing rich moments to be, probably said something like, “A whole lot of practice” and then went on gazing.

Circus as Chaos? Just the Opposite

As we folded up our chairs and made our way back to our car, accepting a box of free popcorn from a farm employee en route, we knew that we were somehow better off than when we’d arrived. While what we’d seen had taken hours and hours of preparation, there was also a wonderful quality of simplicity, of purity even, to the show. The field, even the bugs, and the moon and the sky had something to do with that.

On Hideaway Circus’s website, I found a wonderful seven-minute video which describes the making of a previous summer show, with crew members talking about what they do, behind the scenes, and the rewards of pulling it all off each time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxHx-Ob_wEc One person muses about our culture: “There’s a lot less circus than there used to be.” I think he’s intending the most positive connotation of the word.

When have you last been mesmerized by something — swept up, captivated? Could you feel the lasting effects, well afterwards?