January 09, 2008
before the horsewheels
I was dreading this day for months: I started back into a class at the Circus Center—super-beginner-intro to Chinese acrobatics. I was expecting to be reduced to a shivering pulp by upper-body exercises, and they didn’t disappoint.

What I didn’t expect was that when it came to doing a few half-assed cartwheels, I wasn’t just bad at them (not surprising since I wasn’t very frisky as a kid; I’m pretty sure I never did a cartwheel in my life) but instead, I got totally confused and I literally couldn’t tell what I was supposed to do or what I was doing. I watched a dozen people do the damn cartwheel a dozen times. I watched the teacher do it in slow motion. It wasn’t even the mirror problem—he faced the same way as me. But it was like trying to navigate in a five-dimensional world. My right hand? My left foot? What is this thing called “left”? How come when he turned around, he ended up facing the other way? Wait, first I just move my head down and... what the hell, now my head is down, how did the floor get there? There’s a character on Heroes whose superpower is that after watching someone do any action one time, she can do it exactly the same. I have the opposite superpower.

This can only improve.

posted at 02:11 PM -

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