Looks like I may be going up for the next month and a half to work on a tech crew at a theatre company in Cape Cod, so I have a bunch of little half-topics and mental notes I want to try and clear off my plate before I leap into hyper-space again.

1. Forgot to write about this in my piece on juggling at Hon Fest: some guy with a little kid walked by while I was juggling clubs at one point and said, “Looks like we got a maestro among us.” Or something to that effect. I never really looked up the full meaning of that term before. It’s pretty interesting:
   

   Maestro (or “Maestra” for women) means “master” or “teacher” in the Italian and Spanish languages. It is used in English to designate a master in an artistic field - usually someone who has gained enough knowledge within that field to be able to teach students successfully, though the term may sometimes be conferred through sheer respect for an artist’s works.

2. That whole thing fits into a theme I’ve been tracking in the background: the confluence of I guess alchemical, gnostic and neo-platonic (don’t know if that’s even the right word) stuff with the Renaissance period, the master-apprentice system and the guild traditions, etc. I’m sure this all goes heavy into Rosicrucian and Masonic stuff, but it’s a thread I’ll continue unwinding.
3. I juggled yesterday for about a half hour out front of the old X and O Cafe in Charles Village. The building is now for lease, and there’s a wide sidewalk in front of it, so it seemed like a good place to get down for a few minutes. I find in general these are two things I look for while street performing in Baltimore: a wide sidewalk and a business that’s not open so I’m not going to be in anybody’s way. It’s just a simple strategic method to force somebody who’s going to potentially want to stop you to come up with some other tactic or reason to get you to move along.
4. Speaking of, being dominated by Johns Hopkins University, Charles Village is simply crawling with security personnel. And I wasn’t sure how my presence would be received. So far I’ve had no trouble at all with police or anybody else {knock on wood} but I thought Hopkins might be different since I regularly see cops zipping around on Segways - you have to figure that at a certain point if they’re trying to keep that high of a profile, then who knows…
5. The only semi-encounter I got into was with I don’t know if he was a full on cop, but he had the act down pretty well. It actually made me see more deeply into the street tactics cops use: he was passing on the sidewalk, talking on his shoulder radio with somebody, and I don’t know how to describe what it looks like exactly, but I guess I learned it from working with dogs and having to deal with hoodlums in my local arena - a certain kind of aggressive walk/strut thing. Its intent in this case would be to get me to react somehow and tip my hand that I was either doing something wrong or two, that I could be easily intimidated into running off, or I would just be an easy target to be fucked with. But I kept my cool and he walked on without incident. Maybe it’s in my head, but you see things from directly and intentionally interacting with people “on the streets” within a performance frame of mind. Certain things I think become completely plain.
6. On the subject of aggressive panhandling (I haven’t actually been trying to get money at all the past few times juggling), while sitting just up the street from a Starbucks (making us an easy mark) with a friend of mine on a bench, a cute little black girl walked up staring at us with a weird look on her face and standing way closer than strangers will usually stand. The whole thing had a disarming effect, and I laughed - having become more and more used to little kids staring at me while performing on a street corner only blocks away. And then the mother walks up behind with a story immediately about needing money for a bus. I gave it to her. It’s a good trick, whether or not its right or moral or that the little girl even knows she’s being used that way. It was worth 55 cents or whatever it cost me to learn about and it doesn’t matter to me where that money goes because it’s a worthless object, a few pieces of metal. Sometimes God sends a spy.
7. The other day at Hon Fest, I hit myself in the face with the bottom end of a club. I was tense and wasn’t juggling the well and the environment was bewildering. It was one of those events where there’s no way to hide you just smacked yourself in the face in front of a bunch of people, so you just kind of play on. A couple days later I developed a bit of a black eye from it. Nothing too bad though.

Anyway, last night I dreamt I was putting on a musical with a bunch of people, and then found out through someone close to me about this theatre tech opening. So I figure that means I ought to do it and that this is what I’ve been waiting and preparing for as a next step to my education as a juggler. I figure a new environment will sharpen the things I’ve become good at and challenge me to become better at new things. And that’s what this process of self-transformation is all about.

PS. Speaking of aggressive panhandling again - further donations to help me cover the cost of getting up there would be very helpful and appreciated. Once I’m up there, room and board is covered along with a lump sum stipend of a couple grand, which should help me get set up for the next phase of my plan beyond this. TBA.