Mais oui, j'adore le cirque

I did not mean to be sly in continuing to mention the circus without specifying that it was not anything so grossly plebeian as those three ring affairs with the animals. Non! This girl got to go see the new Cirque du Soleil show, Kooza. Koooooooooza! It is, I am told, a Sanskrit word meaning "box" - in the literal sense, as my friend was quick to point out, either because he is a dirty thinker himself or saw the dirty question forming in my mouth.

My friend is in the circus. Or, rather he is behind the scenes of the circus, though that does not mean he can't hold himself upside down on one hand. I had last seen him when he was going to l'Ecole Nationale de Cirque and had come to the city for a visit along with a handful of acrobatic friends. They were all gorgeous and they all spoke French, and I would turn around to see them crossing the street two-people high, standing on each other's shoulders, or dangling artistically from the handrails on the subway. At the time, though I fought it, the thrill and pride of touring the city with this magical bunch had a niggling negative undercurrent -- the feeling of being hopelessly monolingual, inflexible, un-muscular, and afraid of heights.

So when after five years I heard from my friend again, saying "if you're still in New York, I have a ticket for you," well, first I was obviously ecstatic. I couldn't wait to catch up with him, and I had never seen a Cirque du Soleil show before (a fact which, now that I've seen one, I find inexcusable. I MUST SEE THEM ALL!). But I also thought oh god, I am going to look frumpy and I am going to be tongue-tied and I am going to turn into the type of person I mock in Times Square who just can't believe they're in the big city or, in my case, the big top.

I would now like to assure you that this did not happen. Okay, I was tongue-tied for a minute, but then I just enjoyed it - seeing my friend, roving the grounds before the show and checking out the boutiques. And then, my god! The show! THE SHOW! If it is even possible to be so city-wise and cynical that you don't enjoy a show like that, I will happily remain in tourist mode forever. There were moments of almost religious grace, and there was an act that was more bad-ass than the most bad-ass punk show, and there were clowns that legitimately made me lmao.

Afterwards, brag, brag, brag, I got to go backstage and drink beers with some more circus people (acrobats: they're just like us! They drink beer!) and was shocked to find, once again, that I was just enjoying myself, my friend, and all the people around us. I did not feel overweight. It didn't bother me when they spoke to each other in other languages. I was having fun. At the risk of sounding cheesy, if I haven't crossed that line several times over already in this blog, it seems possible that in the last five years I may have gained a modicum of confidence. Though le Cirque deserves a heap of credit, I think - c'est vrais magique.

You should come!

Circus news must wait! I can delay no longer in sharing my excitement about an upcoming event that I'm lucky to be involved with: The GEMS 10th Birthday Party benefit!

GEMS is Girls Educational and Mentoring Services, which frankly sounds a bit tame when you consider what they do: "empower young women, ages 12-21, who have experienced sexual exploitation and domestic trafficking to exit the commercial sex industry and develop to their full potential." That's from their mission statement, so no, I didn't make it up. Ages 12-21. 12. And they are right here in NYC. Not Bangkok, not Mexico City, here.

It's hard to write about it without getting too worked up. Some of you know that I helped with another GEMS benefit at the beginning of the year, which was a screening of the Showtime documentary about GEMS, Very Young Girls. It was extremely difficult to watch, but extremely eye-opening, and - like a good cause should be (not to mention a good documentary) - hopeful.

Which is why I'm on board for another event, especially one that's also a celebration! 10 years of doing what GEMS does deserves a hearty party, so this one's going to have a DJ and cupcakes, as well as readings from GEMS founder Rachel Lloyd, organizer Janice Erlbaum (who in addition to being my favorite author introduced me to GEMS in the first place) and some of the girls themselves.

You should come. Really.

The peculiarities of this peculiar week

My favorite professor (Romance Literature) when I studied abroad in Ireland used "peculiar" a lot in terms of its 4th and 5th definitions according to the mighty and all-powerful dictionary.com:

4.	belonging characteristically (usually fol. by to): an expression peculiar to Canadians.

5.	belonging exclusively to some person, group, or thing: the peculiar properties of a drug.

He liked to say things like "Mary Shelley, here, addresses a problem she felt was peculiar to her sex." Peculiar to her sex. I freaking loved that.

Anyway, this is holy week in the Greek Orthodox Church, which despite assimilating to the commonly used Gregorian calendar in order to have Christmas on the 25th of December, still insists on using that old standby, the Julian calendar, to calculate Easter services. The result is an Easter that is always 1-4 weeks later than American Easter, giving me a great source of confused pride as a child.

I am not a practicing Orthodox Greek. I am not a practicing Greek in most senses that don't have to do with food, which to its credit, does count for a lot. I am not even fully Greek. But mostly, I am not fully religious, and this is a quandary when it comes to holy week, because, growing up, it was pretty special. There are services every night and we went to all of them; it was one of the few times in the year that anyone from the congregation did readings, and my sister and I were often honored with this task, trotting up to the front of the church to use our best diction in the name of God. On Good Friday there are services all day long, and we would get out of school especially to attend, joining all the little old ladies in decorating the epitaphion with hundreds of carnations while Father Nick shushed us and jangled the censor so that tufts of sweet smoke enshrouded the almost-life-size cutout of Jesus on his cross. In the evening, we marched around the church singing a beautiful dirge, we went to sleep with heavy hearts.

And then Saturday, the somber baking of the braided bread, the deep-red dying of dozens of eggs, going to sleep in our slips and tights with our hair already done so that my mother could wake us up before the midnight service, slip our dresses and hats on and prod us sleepily to the car. Or, when we got older, if we were lucky, Mamma would do our hair late at night before we left and we'd get to catch a few clandestine sketches on Saturday Night Live. The quiet, dark drive to church, the service full of mystery and candlelight while we sang in the choir and tried (unsuccessfully for my sister one year) not to let our perfectly curled, waist-length hair catch fire. Our hunger from fasting all evening was teased by the garlicky smell of lamb from the kitchen directly below the altar for the dinner we would all eat at 1am. And after all that, exhausted sleep followed by Easter Sunday afternoons, with family and egg hunts, easter baskets and more lamb, and the game with the red eggs that bestowed upon one child good luck for the entire year.

I miss my family from this era - the grandparents and aunts who are gone. I miss the ceremony of it all, and I miss the unquestioning that allowed it such weight. It is no wonder that I feel odd this week; more lacking in purpose than usual with none of my other plans seeming to fit. Not even the one involving the circus - another oddity of this week that shall have to wait for the next posting.

Louisiana or Bust

Y'all!!!

Terrifically unable to concentrate at work today due to a raging SPRING FEVER fueled by my recent, all-too-short trip to NEW ORLEANS and BATON ROUGE, in the Great American South, an area of which I cannot get enough. Here I sit at my desk (on my lunch break, of course, as I am a tres diligent employee), having attempted valiantly all morning to focus on the nit-picky tasks at hand when all I can really think about is:

1. When will my life become a place where I can afford and have places to wear the obscenely fantastic hats and dresses at Fleur de Paris in the Quatier Francais?

2. Why did I promise the friend I was visiting that I would be peppering my language with as much French as possible and then neglect to do so, and when can I go back to correct this grievous error? Mon Dieu!

3. Should I be so obnoxious as to try to learn Cajun French slang? They surely have some brilliantly bastardized version of "Mon Dieu"

3. Could I make a hat that good? Will I ever get around to investigating the options?

4. Could I have eaten more if I tried? I think I should have tried.

5. POURQUOI oh POURQUOI didn't I stay longer?

Having said that, we did manage to go on a swamp tour (avec over 20 alligators) , see an incredible sculpture garden, drive to the bottom of Louisiana (a different part of the state than New Orleans), drink Abita beers and drive-through daiquiris, eat boiled crawfish and boiled shrimp and Oysters Rockefeller and fresh beignets and OH MY GOD BANANAS FOSTERS, and walk around the French Quarter and drive around Baton Rouge and see my beloved Mississipi in both places (plus the view from the plane over Memphis, if you count my otherwise very trying layover).

Sadly, we did not see any nutra-rats with their crazy orange teeth. The alligators had eaten them. Next time!

slightly hungover, massively happy to be eating Bananas Foster