Life list

I did a bunch of things this weekend that I had never done before.

In increasing order of unusual-for-me, I

• silkscreened a T-shirt,
• learned some simple aerial silks moves,
• learned how to move a hula hoop from my waist up to my neck and back again,
• breathed fire (which is much easier to do than you’d think, but much harder to do well than you’d think),
• safetied for a naked woman with dreadlocks and a flaming rope dart (being a safety consists of standing next to someone with a fireproof blanket while they do dangerous things, and if they catch fire putting them out right away),
• spun fire (cautiously and inexpertly but happily) three times,
• set myself on fire (but only once, and Kate put me out right away),
• learned a lot of new poi moves, and
• learned that really good poi work is less about the moves than about smooth and musical transitions between them.

I also made some new friends (Heather, email me immediately!) and re-met some old ones — turns out there’s some overlap between Wildfire people and Spiritfire people, which in retrospect shouldn’t have been all that surprising: to describe Wildfire as Spiritfire minus pagan spirituality plus circus sideshow would be inaccurate, but not completely so.

(A better way to explain the overlap: when you arrive at both events, they greet you by saying “welcome home.” And they’re right.)

Photos to come. Video, too. For now: work. Re-entry is always a challenge.