Odd Job Uncle Sam

One of my recent "odd" jobs is pictured here. I dress as Uncle Sam, and juggle on a street corner next to a sign that says something along the lines of: go over there to get your taxes done. It's not so bad. I work whenever I feel like it, quit whenever I feel like it, and take breaks whenever I feel like it. After putting in 15 hours of it this week though, my hands are hurting, my neck is a little tense and I barely got paid more than my 2 hours as the Spearhead show, but I've been blessed with sunny weather and the passersby seem to enjoy it. Honks abound, usually followed by applause and thumbs-up, but my favorite is the honk from the car behind the guy who hasn't noticed the recently greened light because he's still watching Uncle Sam.

I'm in a part of town that most folks I know don't frequent, but I saw my friend Jesse the other day, riding his bike home from the Community College.
He tells the story differently.

Jesse (to friends): So I was on my bike the other day, waiting for the light to change, when I saw this homeless-looking guy, crouched down, off to the side of the road like he was smoking something, and wearing what looked to be an Uncle Sam costume so, obviously, I was like, this guy is totally crazy! I got a little closer and was like: he kind of looks like Zack. Oh my god, it is Zack!

Ah, context.

People must think all kinds of things when they see me. Sometimes the clever ones say things, like: Don't drop them! or Try chainsaws! One time some guy asked: Hablas Espanol? which, I'm still trying to figure out, but he seemed to mean it as an insult. If I wasn't always wearing my headphones, I might hear more things people say, but I'm mostly content to rock out in my own little world, getting paid to practice

But I don't just do it for me and I don't just do it for Liberty Tax Services. I do it for you and yours, America! God Bless Ya! The whole crappin' lot of ya!

A "Professional"

Juggling isn't paying the bills by any stretch of the imagination, but I was lucky enough to supplement my lifestyle with my very first "professional" juggling job. I was hired as ambiance for a Michael Franti/Spearhead show up in Vancouver for NYE. Myself, my partner and a couple of our aerialist friends drove up from the 'ham and worked along side a great group of performance artists native to Vancouver and it was incredible. The pay was decent for only two hours of actual work, especially considering that that work consisted of juggling in a crowd of of happy people and clowning with them. There was a funny moment with the money when it finally dawned on us that we were really making a little bit less because they were paying us in Canadian dollars, but still... there was free beer and fancy snacks in the green room, fun and talented new people to meet, and a great show that (were I more financially secure) probably would have paid to see. All in all, a great time.
This photo was taken by an incredibly talented, Vancouver based artist named Basil whose work can be seen at undertheweather and at Inkspoon .
And the other artists we worked with in the show are involved with a group called The Dusty Flowerpot Cabaret. They have a show coming up in February I'm hoping I'll get to see and you should be too.

Consensus

The Guild holds weekly meetings for all members and all of our decisions are made by consensus. We have no board of directors or other forms of hierarchy. Each meeting has a moderator who facilitates who gets to speak and when; manages the topics of discussion including duration and ensuring we remain on topic; and summarizes what has been said and where we are at if the topic is a long one.
This process is a long one and sometimes it seems tedious, but we're getting better at it. We're getting better at forming committees to handle the minutiae and the detailed projects. We're getting better at keeping on point and listening to each others needs so we can arrive at decisions that leave everyone feeling good. There are times when I've felt like having a specific leader in charge of the group would make things so much simpler; someone who could just make a decision and delegate so that it gets done. I have been involved in dozens of companies and organizations in my life and they have always been that way, I understand that way. But they almost always made me feel small and secretly subversive and almost never like I was truly part of something of which I could be proud. This new method is still a work in progress for our group, yet I have already seen it work in extraordinary ways. It allows for great compromise without feeling compromised. It allows the creation of new ideas and new ways of doing things that everyone can feel good about and that could have only come to light with a coalition of minds working together to achieve a common goal; ideas that could have never come from the perspective of any one individual but only of several perspectives working in congress, genuinely interested in meeting the needs of the entire group not solely the needs of a few. These are new times with new problems and my guess is they require new methods for solving. I'm excited and wonderfully optimistic about this one.
ps
the photo is not what meetings look like so much as what after meetings looks like

Please remove your shoes before stepping on the mats

Here's the "Lab" on the inside. Not much to look at in this shot. Its a couple of days after our monthly Vaudeville show (Vaudevillingham) and things are still in a state of upheaval. Pictured to the right is my darling friend Melissa, a sparkler of a lady from Nashville Tennessee who has a more tenacious practice regiment than I do. Her dedication to learning what she wants is incredibly admirable and her ability to get there quickly is astounding. She likes to juggle while hula-hooping. I don't hula-hoop.

Bellingham Circus Guild

I've been spending my time in Bellingham, writing, juggling, and working odd jobs here and there. I'm also working a lot with a group of folks that have banded together to rent a rehearsal space, put up shows and teach classes in the circus arts. We're trying to get ourselves all respectable like and non-profitized, but we're still a little ways off. We're incorporated. We have a bank account. We have a mountain of paperwork to climb and then we wait for our government's answer. Our group is called the Bellingham Circus Guild and our space, the Cirque Lab.