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CIRQUE
David Cheezem
Consist The search for equilibrium is bad because it is imaginary. —Simone Weil Simone Weil, when her headaches overpowered her, “had an intense longing to make another human being suffer by hitting him in exactly the same part of his forehead.” That is not who Simone Weil was. * One time—and only one time—my father whacked me with a riding crop, a rod encased in leather. We were hunting for seashells on Sanibel Island with my mother. That is not who my father was. *
Misfit
Sheary Clough Suiter
Staid, balanced, at home in the physical world, feeling a little of what a gymnast feels, slithering into a perfect landing; what a free-climber feels, leaping from one goat-ledgehand-hold to another; what a tightrope artist feels tiptoeing 500 feet over the gasping crowd.
I can stand on one leg. For seconds at a time. *
For seconds at a time. *
Simone Weil: The material world—the world weighed down with gravity—offers two ways to deal with suffering: pass it on to others like a tethered ball, or sap others with a cry for pity. Either response is an imposition, a kind of theft. Inflicting either pity or pain on another is “base,” because it robs that person of energy. *
There’s a story about the 70th Infantry Division in which my father served. The bureaucrats issued sleeping bags to the soldiers before they departed for Europe. Those zippedup sleeping bags—those “death traps”—scared the hell out of the soldiers. As soon as they landed in France, they exchanged sleeping bags for blankets. *
In his early years, when he awoke in the shack where he was born, my father would plant both his feet on a floor of Oklahoma soil. Thought you should know. * When I was 15-years-old, I hated Sanibel Island. I don’t think my father cared for it much, either. My father, a shark who could not breathe standing still. Vacations of any kind were hard on him. *
The blankets were cumbersome to carry, so every morning, each soldier would drop their two blankets in a trailer. Every night they’d pick up another pair, never knowing who used them last night, or whether that wet spot was mud or blood or vomit. * The rental home on Sanibel was bathed in soft, warm colors. There were seashells everywhere. Clean, shiny,
