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Home Again, Home Again...

For reasons unplanned and unknown, my narrative has kept me in China while my body continues to roam the planet. Perhaps I had to water-down the lofty performance aspirations tilled into my head by the Far East, before proclaiming another harvest in cyber-space. My updates have always tailed a bit behind my real-time journey, but this account will bound across the Atlantic and the U.S., arriving at the present day. Grab a hold of the time-traveling, magic carpet tassels and don’t stop reading until the update has come to a complete and grammatically punctuated stop.

During my final days in China I was scheduled to speak and perform at the Hong Kong Juvenile Diabetes Association’s largest annual fundraiser for their 216 juvenile members and respective families. I had been able to meet with the Board of Directors and discuss many issues because of the absence of a language barrier on the islands, which marred diabetic inquiries on the mainland of China. Although the fundraiser got postponed, I was grateful for the discussions with the committee which were refreshing, shocking, and slightly alarming. Even with Hong Kong’s wealthy trading industry, I took it for granted that only 10 people in the entire high-tech nation possessed an insulin pump. I even gave some board members their first tutorial about technological innovations such as the pump and continuous glucose monitoring systems.

The time had come in my Chinese performing career that I no longer feared the law, as I had so little time left to get my jollies. During the week-long, national labor holiday, I performed in the street of the small-yet-poppin’ town of Yangshuo, for throngs of camera-toting tourists of all nations. I had mastered enough basic Mandarin Chinese to strike a pose at the end of my act and spout out a clever, rhyming limerick to reel the currency into my soon-buried cigar box. Through bouts of blinding sun and rain, I couldn’t even seek cover because of the thick and inexhaustible wall of audience members. Of the thousands of people who flocked to the little town for the weeklong festival, I was the only street performer and an easy target for police. The law performed their role in the act by looking intimidating and constipated to draw out the monotonous “boo’s” from hundreds of tourists who looked them in the eye while donating to my box. I probably should have worked the police in on a cut considering the significant increases in tips resulting from their interventions.

After my days in the street I received private Tai Chi lessons from the owner of the cultural house I was shacked-up at. Upon seeing a contact juggling demonstration, Wei glowed and palmed my red acrylic ball proclaiming, “This is Tai Chi!”

The rolling ball contained all the concepts of balance and Yin-Yang as I passed it over the energy lines on my body and isolated it on a single point in space. To give me extra energy to continue training, Wei insisted that I needed to eat from the only plate on the dinner table that obviously appeared foreign to a Western diet. I vetoed my vegetarian diet to try the black dog meat which I was sure was just as plant-like as the herb and snake alcohol I sipped that day to alleviate wrist pain. When in Rome…

Returning to Shenzhen, I acquiesced to the stringent fire codes for my final show in the swank In-Club. As long as I had my own gas and music, no permit or audition was necessary to convince the corner-cutting club promoter that flammable gas in close proximity to inebriated patrons made for good entertainment. Convincing an audience of hundreds that I was aware of my costume’s zipper malfunction immediately prior to my first act, was an entirely different and more difficult task.

My goodbyes to all the friends who helped me grow were difficult as always. For all the slandering of Shenzhen, I also came to know the best parts that few have the opportunity to be exposed to. My best friends weren’t just a few fellow foreigners, but the artists and individuals who didn’t succumb to the pervasive consumer lifestyle. I filmed my crews of bottle-juggling bartenders and circus students on the last day of my half-year in China. My final session of kung fu training with Brandon Rhea impressed no one until his opening battle scene with Jet Li the recent U.S. release of kung-fu-flick-phenomenon, “Fearless.” Bird flu, mobsters, kung fu killers, dog meat, circus freaks and an octopus attack (see picture): I wouldn’t change a thing.

...Jiggety Jig

When I arrived in San Francisco I was appalled at the price attached to merely changing my currency. The fuss I put up was nothing compared to when I walked outside and discovered the price to commute to my uncle’s house. Like every traveler, it was time to make money in my trade and put my training to the test. In two weeks of returning to the states, I had road-tripped and trained with internationally acclaimed performers in all three West coast states and British Columbia, reunited with my brother/performing partner to do shows in Washington and Oregon, and moved to Boulder, Colorado for a show on the evening we arrived. The performing season was upon us.

My brother Zan had returned to South and Central America while I gallivanted in China. Banded with a crew of international circus performers in Columbia, he traveled in a self-contained bus doing free circus shows and workshops in the most war-torn areas of the country. Trading skills with the troupe, his performance style developed in a completely different way than mine, before picking me up late in Seattle’s airport.

With our powers combined we descended from the sky at the beginning of June on the hapless energy vortex of Boulder, Colorado. “What,” you ask, “could Boulder possibly have to offer besides stunning mountains, blazing sun and obnoxiously beautiful, healthy citizens?” Four blocks of bricked promenade devoid of automobiles…obviously.

When the massive population of students leaves the city in the summer, it is flooded with a less rowdy and better tipping population of tourists from other states and countries. There are countless reasons why these tourists have come to Boulder, but after they have arrived, the Pearl Street pedestrian mall was where we intercepted their wallets enroute to over-priced, chic trinket stores. Zan and I combined in every mathematical deviation of groupings on different days with our two fire fiend friends Dave and Michael, who had initially invited us to the area. All possessing different skill sets, styles and mental handicaps, it made for a new adventure every day.

Alas, making a living as a street performer, or “busker,” we soon found out was not just about the interception. Most tourists were willingly pulled into the back row of the spectacle, just within earshot and quick-getaway range, but they tipped just as much as the transient drunks who comprised the second largest viewer demographic in the downtown area. The final step in a successful interception was conjuring willingness in our audience to part with their hard earned money.

As summer progressed and we received insights from extremely selfless and successful performers in the area, we realized we couldn’t exclusively lean on the raw, primal attraction of fire to keep us fed and sheltered. Not only did this crutch bruise our armpit, but it offered the same minimal crowd interaction that is characterized by most fire performances. It became obvious that bright lights would attract and entrance the buzzing swarms of tourists, but after getting zapped once with an impersonal hat-passing line, they were quickly on their way to ram against the shop windows until someone let them in.

Taking more time to interact and be social not only required less physical work to support ourselves through our passion for entertaining, but more people approached us after shows to congratulate and hire us for private engagements. This success was unfortunately taken as a threat from some of the more territorial buskers on the street. Mind games were played with one of my favorite characters, thrown in jail on Mother’s Day for harassing audience members, until he lost his composure and accused me during his show of conspiring to set people and buildings on fire and terminate all the busking privileges in the area. After two minutes of his public tirade I realized I hadn’t even spoken a word. Fortunately an officer intervened on my behalf to calm the bitter, delusional scrooge who had scattered his entire audience as I stared in wide-eyed disbelief. The competition between artists was the antithesis of the street performing experiences I’d had throughout all of South America.

Mid summer brought a welcome change in performance type and reminded me why I endured jeering, cold-shouldering and rejection from those who saw my art as costumed begging. The Children With Diabetes organization's Friends For Life Conference was definitely the highlight of my meaningful performance career. I hadn’t scared enough families the previous summer, so CWD invited me back to Orlando to frighten a new batch of attendees. My five performances and cheese-ball commentary aimed to cover acts and attributes from all seven continents, to demonstrate my world traveler status and proficiency in 3rd grade geography. Slow-moving, Antarctic elegance and European fashion sense accompanied regional martial arts, circus and juggling acts. Every act was punctuated with a message that illustrated how diabetes was intertwined with the balance, seeming impossibility, exercise, failure, capacity to inspire, and focus on the present moment, required in every skill I demonstrated.

The tears in the eyes and the knowing nods from parents made me feel more like a rock star than the countless autographs I signed in kids’ programs. I had previously heard some acclaimed performers brag about not lowering themselves to children’s performances, and all I can do is chuckle in disbelief. My soul is wealthier because I am probably more inspired by my audience, than they of my performance. Looking at kids who can’t know how brave, blessed and resilient they are because of a faulty pancreas, I felt lucky to just to be present at such an empowering gathering.

Back in Colorado, the summer passed as we continued to rework our street show and perform elsewhere whenever possible. We were blessed with a few minutes of rock stardom when we performed with the Colorado-based, tribal-rock group Kan’nal on a few occasions at concerts throughout the summer. Kan’nal had integrated fire performance into their show’s structure, and thus was exalted as the messiah of the future of rock groups in my eyes. These fire performances for large festival audiences were all small potatoes compared to the mother of all spuds: Burning Man.

Whatever sketches I’d made from hearsay about the annual, week-long event in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, were quickly animated with empirical evidence upon arrival. It really is impossible to do anything but sketch with words what even a minute of life in the 40,000 person, temporary city is like. Artists, performers and crazies from all walks of life converge for not only a one-of-a-kind party, but to share their essences in a gift economy devoid of cash transactions. Thus, for me Burning Man represented the extreme on both ends of the waste and beauty dichotomy…appropriate for the year’s theme of The Future: Hope or Fear.

Surrounded by the best fire and juggling performers in the country, we played and performed day and night. The rush from performing for a crowd of hundreds was quickly dwarfed by the rush of setting my drought-dry, dusty head of hair on fire for the same size crowd. There wasn’t nearly a large enough audience the first night I pulled the stunt, so I replicated it two nights later to balance out the other side of my hairdo. To redeem myself I flipped with fire props on a trampoline in my underwear by the end of the festival. Years ago I was in awe of the names on juggling instructional videos and performances bills at festivals, that post Burning Man, were all on my telephone list…right below the numbers for the hair salon and the emergency room.

Returning to the world of cars and cash exchanges, the future didn’t dangle hope or fear in front of me. Excitement was the neutral option in this malleable reality in constant flux and balance of positive and negative. Approaching the end of September and my 24th birthday, Zan took a box of his recently released DVD’s (The Encyclo-Poi-Dia of Intermediate & Advanced Poi Technique), and headed for the Californian coast for a multiple-week workshop and promotional tour. Instead of joining him, I indoctrinated myself into the world of fire swallowing on my “Big 24” and was then shuttled to the opposite side of the country the following day.

Few things rank higher on my importance scale than fire spinning road tours with family, but CWD conferences definitely fall into this category. CWD and Lifescan sponsored my own style of workshops at the 3-day Focus On Pumping Conference in Chicago. Months in the making, the workshops represented an opus of the lessons learned from performing and traveling the world with diabetes for the last two years. The challenge was isolating and distilling the practices that had become second nature, into age-appropriate presentations.

The workshops geared toward the children and tweener age groups taught minimalism in constructing juggling toys, and promoted their inevitable benefits of increased exercise and coordination. Recycled plastic shopping bags built a foundation for basic juggling patterns by filling with air upon tossing, falling slowly, and threatening to asphyxiate the weakest links that caught them on their heads instead of hands. Fortunately all the children were extremely coordinated and helped me avoid a lawsuit. I also wrapped 70 used tennis balls in 5 pieces of hockey tape each (you do the math for the total hours of hand crafting), to create a clean palate for coloring with markers. These balls were thrown, bounced, and rolled by the eager artists with painted hands and pride of ownership. If none of these follies tickled one’s fancy, my final line of circus toy defense was to stuff two balls in each of 10 pairs of knee-high socks to make poi.

I want to credit my teaching in the unparalleled success of the fast-learning students, but I didn’t teach half of the tricks demonstrated for me. There was an uncanny creative explosion that flashed thoughts of unemployment through my head as I watched the performers-to-be. Without even suggesting anything to three young ladies juggling three balls, they faced off against a wall to stop their forward chasing of getaway balls. Having only demonstrated basic poi patterns, I was accosted by a future fire spinner inquiring about an advanced trick she had invented which had taken me weeks to learn. My juggling hero however, was a genius who asked if I had thought of doing a cartwheel catch in the middle of a juggling pattern…while simultaneously executing. The outlet for creativity captivated the large, nigh untamable groups of kids and brought about hypoglycemia from a source other than the Dance-Dance-Revolution videogame console. There is still hope in the war on the cyber-drug.

The other presentation geared for teens and parents was a slideshow about adventure traveling with diabetes. Covering every aspect of essential travel information for any diabetes management system, as well as general travel survival tactics, the lengthy presentation was my original goal when I initiated my voyage to South America. Laughs and photos passed smoothly until the last three lines of my notes. This was the crucial part of the presentation when my message was to be conveyed. I was brought back to the idealism that depressed, plagued and freed my mind as I fought to show I was out for more than the inevitable personal growth accompanying foreign travel…

Educating others about diabetes
Educating others about the United States
Educating yourselves and embracing other cultures

As I looked at the faces of the little ones in the front row and the parents who made so many selfless sacrifices from behind the scenes, my throat clamped shut. Just as when I spoke at the DESA conference upon returning from South America, my voice slowed and quivered with barely-intelligible tones while my eyes prepared to liquidate their salt stash. I struggled through the usually succinct conclusion for an eternity while my head flashed to countless repressed images of poverty, struggle, hate, privilege, bravery, blessings and triumph. I finished wiping my eyes just as I was approached by leaking ones.

I cried for the brave youth in front of me with their mortality already shoved in their faces along with all our modern media’s ridiculous ideals. I cried for all the diabetics in other countries who would never know what an insulin pump was and would never have a support system like CWD. Mostly I cried for how lucky I was to even know that complacency was no longer an option. The current global image of the U.S. is a burden on our nation’s youth that was not chosen, but something that becomes unavoidably obvious when outside of our nation’s borders.

The conference in Chicago was the best birthday present I could have asked for. Currently in Colorado, living with my travel companion of many lifetimes, I am fully aware of the blessings bestowed on my brother and me by living in this nation. The path has been clearly marked ahead and there is only one chance to walk it regardless of inevitable perils accompanying professional performance and social idealism. The time for change is NOW and the Instruments are sounding the call. The lust for world travel has been temporarily satiated by preparation for the upcoming chapter, to take place on American soil. Please watch your step as you descend from the hovering rug. More magical flights on the way...

Copyright Noah's Voyage 2004-2007. All rights reserved.