Fragment #1
The last time I went to class, the fear had already crept in. I was practicing a flag tombé straddle, a relatively simple trick in which the aerialist grasps the lyra with both hands, one at six and one at twelve, and hangs from it, pushing the hoop away from her body towards the sky. As though, I suppose, one were hoisting a flag.
Tombé is French for “fall,” and, in this move, there are several ways to do so. The one I was attempting involves squaring your torso to the hoop, then beating three times with your legs spread apart in a V—forward, backward, forward—zipping the scapula together at the spine and tucking the chin to the chest. On the last beat, as your legs hit the top of their swing, you catch a moment of air and just let go with the high hand and fall … and then grab on again at the bottom, so both hands are together at six. As you’re falling you invert and the V of your legs should swish into a straddle under the hoop.
The first time I tried this I yelped with glee, caught off guard by its surprising ease, as my ass lifted over my head and my heels sliced past my ears.
In the seven-something years I've been studying I've come to cherish dynamic tricks like this that harness gravity, speed, or propulsion. There are a lot of grinding moves out there whose smooth execution depends on some brute equation of strength multiplied by pain tolerance, with an x-factor of how well you able to keep a smile on your face throughout, or at least keep from screaming. But beats, spins, and tombés—there are several) —are kinetic energy in action: trust, let go, and let physics move your body where it’s supposed to go.
Obviously this doesn’t happen overnight. The timing can be quirky: it’s hard to swing your legs in one plane while your apparatus is sending you spinning on its axis. But with practice you etch the pathway into your musculature and, in time, the body learns to navigate from vertical to upside-down on its own.
I’ve been practicing a lot the past few months, and in early March really nailed this flag tombé straddle maneuver. Boom. Boom. Over and over. I was so pleased. I could even do it on the music.
But on March 15 I showed up to class rattled. I wasn’t sure I should even be there. Two of my classmates were videochatting in already, both with too-long commutes on now-terrifying public transit. The rest of us stretched and chatted, the undercurrent of anxiety thrumming at increasingly audible frequency. The studio was half empty. The mats and gear reeked of bleach. I got up on the hoop to run through a sequence: pedal spin to straddle up to single knee hang to catapult; birdie, beat up to knee hang, to Whitney split, a skin the cat down to a lion in the tree, and, at last, flag tombé straddle.
I couldn’t do it. My legs did not know where to go. I whacked my ankle on the metal hoop, got up, tried again, and smacked right back into it with my calf. I forgot to tuck my chin and my head snapped back on the fall.
My neck hurt, my legs throbbed. I was unnerved. On the third try, I couldn’t bring myself to let go.
A few hours later the gym closed indefinitely, as did Illinois restaurants and bars, and then everything else.
I’m sad that this was my last chance to feel that kind of freedom to move (for a while, I say, when I’m feeling optimistic; forever when I’m not). The last chance to let my body fly through space unchecked. I wish I hadn’t choked; that I had been able to summon the confidence to trust in the training I had given it, in the immutable truth of E=MC^2.
I’m continuing to practice, to try and build strength and flexibility even if dynamic movement is constrained by the close walls and low ceiling of my attic office, where I roll out a yoga mat and join my classmates online three times a week. And I’m thinking about the functions of practice: for families, for friends, for lovers; for hospitals and disaster managers; for writers and for teachers and for speakers. Repetition, training, toolkits: this is where my brain is right now.
If we keep up the practice, if we trust in the science and develop the right skills, when we get the chance to fly again—and when we have to fall—we won’t choke. I like to think so, at least.
***
At the end of 2019 I put this newsletter on ice; I was going to be so busy this year, and, honestly, who needs another newsletter, right? Well.
Since March 15 I have been busy; busier than ever in fact. I’m working with South Side Weekly to respond to this crisis and figure out how we can best serve our community. In addition to online publishing we put out an actual print newspaper this week, and are working with community organizations to get it into the hands of readers. If you are a South Sider with information to add to our community resource guide, please get in touch.
I’m working with Belt to keep all our ongoing projects on track and to support our brilliant authors, four of whom have books coming out this spring. If you can, please buy books (and ebooks!) from independent presses like Belt, and from independent bookstores, through their own websites or through the newly launched Bookshop. Many of us will not survive this, but every book you buy helps ensure that some will.
To see what Soup & Bread’s been up to, go here.
And I’m spending the rest of this weekend figuring out how to move the class I’ve teaching online. I have fif
teen students, some of them graduating college this spring, and I cannot even wrap my head around what they are up against. Wish them luck, and courage.
I’m grateful to have this work. It keeps me going. But it’s been hard to find time to sit and think—or perhaps I’m staying busy to avoid doing just that. But I want to try and stretch this muscle as well, so, hey: return of the TinyLetter, more erratic and fragmentary than ever.
A toe hang, as noted early last year, is an impossible feat that hurts, requires discipline, and is scary. I still can’t do one, and right now I can’t even practice. But here we are instead together, all practicing the impossible, marshalling discipline, muscling through pain, and managing our fear.
We’ve all been practicing for this moment in one way or another. Now we just have to help each other not choke.
***
What I'm reading: Arundhati Roy's blaring, ferocious "The Pandemic Is a Portal;""Dancing In the Streets: A History of Collective Joy," by Barbara Ehrenreich, because if not now, when? What I'm watching: Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker's daily briefing, and giving daily thanks that I live in state with (for once) calm, competent leadership. What I'm buying: masks from Chicago Made Masks, groceries from Urban Canopy.