the timboucher experience

Learning to ride a unicycle has been the hardest thing I’ve done in recent memory. Much harder than juggling, much harder than the balance board I built out of plywood and PVC pipe earlier this summer. I mean, maybe I struggled more with things as a kid, but I’ve mostly blotted such traumas out of my awareness. I guess I’m still only halfway there after weeks of sweaty experimentation on the porch of the old inn where we’re staying. I’m trying not to hold onto the handrails, but its so hard. Finding your center of balance, trusting yourself, some unseen point in your body that makes it so you don’t fall over and smash your face open. People like to come by to watch you and laugh as you fall, make comments about how they don’t get it, how they never got it, how you’re going to hurt yourself.

“You know, Workman’s Comp isn’t going to cover this if you hurt yourself,” the producer laughed one day good-naturedly.

“Yeah, I figured,” I responded, undeterred, though I kept falling.

Actually, maybe juggling blindfolded is harder than riding a unicycle. But I’ve made even less progress with that than I have with the unicycle… so I’ll have to come back to that.

The story of how I got my unicycle is worth relating. Every day all summer, we drive four miles back and fourth from West Falmouth where the inn is to Falmouth proper where the theatre is so we can work three shifts building and painting set pieces and running shows. Along our route, Route 28, is a hospital auxiliary thrift store. Having lived in other places with such facilities, I take this to mean probably that these are the belongings of people who’ve died at the hospital. Outside, there is a daily rotation of such items for sale at 50% off. One morning I spotted a small unicycle resting along the roadside by the For Sale sign. On my way to work in the company’s white van, I figured we could stop by after lunch and I could check it out. But when we came back hours later, it had vanished. I went inside and asked the old ladies working there about it, but it was too late. So about two weeks later, we drove by again one morning on our day off, headed to do laundry and spotted another bigger unicycle. Without thinking, I opened the car door (it was a good thing we were stopped in traffic), ran out and grabbed it.

Inside on the checkout line, a middle-aged woman looked me up and down and said, “You look like you’d be good at that.”

I didn’t respond, as I didn’t know quite what she meant by it.

“Maybe it’s the hat,” she said.

“Oh, you’re the one who’s buying that?” the old lady at the counter said. I also picked up a Muddy Waters CD from near the register. For sixteen dollars and eighty cents, both were mine. The old lady made me promise that when I learned how to ride it, I would come back and show here. I’ve not yet been able to keep my promise. But I’m getting there.

You have to lean farther forward than you think. But you have to lean with like your hips or something. Some lower part of your torso that I’m not accustomed to isolating or operating in this way. But you’ve got to keep your back up straight – and most importantly, keep even speed and pressure on the pedals. Or else you’ll wobble. You’ll also wobble if your seat isn’t at the right height. Raise it if you have to. I still don’t know how to do it though, I can only go through about three or four rotations of the wheel before I either lose my balance or fall or realize, “Oh my god, I’m actually doing it!” and then get excited and fall. But I’ve never really fallen and eaten shit on it (yet), though I’ve had the seat go in an unexpected direction and crush my balls a couple times. You also end up with bruises high on your inner thighs from where you’re squeezing the seat to stay up on the damn thing. I guess I don’t understand it fully either, but its this thing of mastery of self, of the ability to harmonize oneself with a tool, a machine, an extension of the body, of the mind and an expansion of what one thinks is even possible in the first place. The brief moments I’ve been able to stay up on it and roll across the deck have been these absolute moments of freedom though, of this flowing perfect state where my mind is empty of all conceptions, ideas or judgments and I’m just there, in it. This is what I’m really trying to learn, and its something you can experiment with – I’ve found – in almost any area. It has to do with unity of focus, concentration of effort, harmonizing of will and action. The secret of all arts. Plus you look ridiculous doing it, people give you that, “What the fuck?” face and that cracks me up. Maybe I just like being esoteric…

• Monkey Greyhound Racing
• Riding a tiger
• Revisiting Fabio’s Run-In With a Bird
• The Village & Little Red Riding Hood
• Your Tap-Dancing Ancestors…