Years ago I used to have a long and successful route of reenactments where I entertained every weekend from labor day till thanksgiving. It extended over several states and locales, and I met and was seen by thousands and thousands of people. I even regularly traveled into Ontario. I even had stalkers!

In all my days I could never imagine such a thing ever happening to me. At home in Indiana, I couldn’t draw the attention of anyone. All my associates had some sort of substance abuse issue, even the best and kindest ones. None of them successful even on their own terms. To get a date from any one I knew or was likely to meet was an extremely low order of probability, and the pool from which I had to choose was murky at best.

Yet out on the road, I was a minor star of sideshow! Of daring do, courageous and desirable. There were women who would endanger their marriages and kid’s future for a chance to commit sins of the flesh with me! It was quite a boost to my fractured and fragile male ego.

To tell you the truth it didn’t make sense… it was too incongruent. Which was the aberrant reality? Of course it was me! The fans in other states admired my character on the bally stage. No one at home ever saw that.

Home. I would go home to Indiana after two and a half months of highly profitable roaming. Home to a family broken with age and alcoholism, busted dreams and seething viciousness. A home which I could not and never fit in with.

I would stay there from thanksgiving until after Christmas when I would travel to south Florida for my winter shows, and patent snow birding in the Airstream to avoid winter. All Alone.

Those six weeks at home waiting, booking shows, packing for a three or four month hop to south Florida, were done all holding my breath. Steeped in claustrophobic repressed republican paranoia and despotic drunkenness, while I planned and effected my escape from winter, and assholes. All done with no help aid, nor love. Some empty sex was added to the mix of my existence, as spicy and toxic as MSG. And with all the side effects one might expect.

Each year I would get through it. Somehow… I would watch the light change, the days shorten, and the temperature drop. My migratory instinct tug and tug damn hard.

Then I would get on the road and travel south, and savor the trip as long as I could. I would travel old US 41 from Indiana to Fort Myers, and reflect while being a complete Airstream Hobo on my way to my first winter show.

And yet in Florida, my loneliness was utter and complete. The sunshine state’s promises of fun and excess, provided neither. I never found love in Florida. I never found riches, was able to live to anything like excess, or descend into any sort of carnal or licentious indulgences despite the hype of the place.

All I really enjoyed was the weather and the sunlight. Mild spring light times of weather and real sunshine! All tossing my circadian rhythms towards romance and love, all cheated and frustrated. Florida would break my heart each year, and yet I knew it was the best I could do.

But out there on the other side the of the Alleghenies I did find my true love and now we are setting Florida aside for this season. The golden light of the South which beckons me to migrate comes with the most amazing partner. And I need not seek a place to find answers, or love or even excess. I have found them already with the Most Dangerous Beauty Alive™

And so it is that while on this first leg of our full timing life that the starter on our 9-year-old GMC Yukon (220K miles!) finally completed its slow death. It died on a street in Madison, WI. And I made the repairs myself, on a windy day with temps hovering around 37˚F.

Changing a starter begins with really knowing the problem is with the starter. And empirically I knew that my fate was to dive underneath the truck, reach in the dark and, while laying on my back, unbolt and unwire the wretch, drop it down and replace it with a new one. I had no trouble light, no creeper to lie on — just my cursed knowledge and experience.

I had changed starters before; heavy, black, oily, greasy, schmutz-laden pendulous hunks, murderous to hold in place while impossibly hidden bolts were miserably sought out — while my arms tired and went numb, while rust and crap fell into my eyes.

I had bought a replacement starter a few days before as insurance. When you buy a starter you have the choice of “new” or “rebuilt”. In the universe of starters usually the only real difference is the price. Yet “rebuilt” at $234 was a shock. And then there is the Core Charge. It seems your dead starter can be brought in for a deposit like an old pop bottle. Since mine had not died yet, I paid the additional $30 core charge up front with a promise for a refund when the deceased was brought in.

The starter finally did completely croak two days later. No amount of coaxing, threats, prayers, entreaties or bargains with the Mad Gods, would resurrect it. My fate to face my curse, layered with guilt, cloaked in obligation and fear of failure, was sealed. My time had come.

Now the difference of full timing was washing over me, showing how profoundly one’s perspective changes. Not so long ago another layer of anxiety would be present. Shame of not considering to simply call someone to tow the beast away and fix it all for me, pay for it with a plastic card, and be on my way. I could certainly do it. Yet it seemed out of the question. I knew it wasn’t going to be that hard. I needed to do it myself for myself. A test of skill? of stamina? I deny it all — I’d detest revealing myself as engaging in anything so cliché. No! I am simply so cheap! This flaw I can face and wrap around and warm myself with, like a scratchy horse blanket.

And so it went well. The new starter has a rich clean high-pitched winding sound as sweet as an underage girl’s first kiss. The core charge is retrieved, my paranoia ameliorated, while secure with a truck that starts. It’s time to go to get on the road once more.

Also I must note that I am full-timing with the Most Dangerous Beauty Alive™ which is a delight and a wonder. The difference between full-timing with one’s lover, and full-timing with one’s loneliness cannot be appreciated until experienced, and I don’t suggest the latter. We have been traveling together now for 5 years on short jaunts of a week or two, and up to a few months at a time. We know how to do this thing and are better rehearsed than many new full timers.

The initial paranoia phase has passed, as it is now with surety that all our crap is stowed and we are not over weight according to the Flying J scales and my calculations. What a relief.

As performers we carry props and costumes for several different versions of our shows. In addition to fire and swords, we carry props for Fortune Telling: Tea Leaf Reading, Tarot, Crystal Gazing. My rare library of Phrenological literature from the 18th and 19th Century is on board along with radio and video production gear and three computers. We have made good money with all of this stuff.

Of course there’s all the regular full timing stuff. To Wit: lawn chairs, a carpet for under the awning, hoses and water filters, extension cords, truck and trailer care items, a spare tire, bottles, jacks and three heavy tool boxes loaded to fix anything.

It all fit and fit rather well. There is even room for Brundlefly the cat.

We are now Executive Hobos. Let our mood reflect the freedom we have sought out. Let us not carry along with us the biliousness of our urban dysphoria. Let it remain in the rear view mirror, and fade away along with abandoned zip codes, and time zones.

Well HELLO! It’s been WAY too long since we’ve given an update here at the Swordswallowers corner of the Internet.

We are alive and well and happily working at the Greater Saint Louis Renaissance Faire, one of a tiny handful of Renaissance events we do on a regular basis. It is a wonderful event run by a 501c3 boasting one of the most dedicated volunteer staffs a fair could ever want. Crowds have been playful and large and our stage is once more shared by the fabulous Musical Blades and a new friend, Molotov the Gypsy. We were only able to commit to the middle two weekends of the event this year as we are making preparations to be more readily able to travel at a moment’s notice. We hope to add some more shows to our route in 2010 and are deciding who we will approach with which of our specific shows.

The tanager has not returned. The less said about that, the better, so I’ll end that thought here.

Last year saw us flooded out on Memorial Day with the Faire being forced to close. We were fortunate to have come through it unscathed but many on site didn’t fare as well, with one vendor of lovely delicate glass items suffering a total loss. This year, while slightly rainy, gave us nothing close to the epic amounts of rainfall that we saw in 2008. In general, 209 has been a much better year for us and for most of the performers and folks we know. Again, the less said about 2008, the better!

It is positively wonderful to be back on the road and planning for more road time with greater consistency. This is a life we respond to very very well and the simplicity of it makes it that much more desirable to pursue. We are among friends and fellow travelers and look forward to spending some social time out with a number of them before we all return to work on Saturday.

It is good to be home. Wherever that happens to be.

It was 12 years ago when I first saw a dark circus. My photography business was drying up with the ease of online Stock Photography searches and buying. Like all things what was different wasn’t the technology of making pictures, but they way they were bought and sold. Photography had become de-professionalized and was now a folk art.

To ease my pain of the loss of my business and art, I ran off to the dark circus– metaphorically at least. I became a Human Ostrich, then working with my knowledge of human anatomy, discovered my abilities as a sword swallower.

The 25 of May marks my 12th year of performing repulsive feats before the paying public. Almost the entire time of the Neo-sideshow era.

A lot has happened since those halcyon days. Sideshow seems to have become the province of bar entertainment. There it is and there it will die again. It is badly interpreted by the compromised audience, demystified by lazy performers, undervalued by cheapskate bar owners and sexualized by vapid beer and cigarette sponsors.

It has become an American entertainment, thoroughly.

The romance is completely evaporated. In its best form it was experienced by slack jawed yokels who seldom saw anything other than the back end of a horse or their one or two neighbors. The banality of of the yeoman farmer or industrial age worker is to a 21st century mind incomprehensible. A bright shiny circus with a sideshow or thought-provoking medicine show featuring skill acts has been deeply foiled by the age. No wonder it was romanced, loved, and completely captivated it’s audience. It was a very segregated experience from daily drudgery. Yet it is as hard to escape from today as refined sugar (which was once a scarce commodity as well in this country).

We have suckled at the teat of mass media so long now that our taste and teeth as consumers are long rotted away, and we idly gum our entertainment with few expectations, the latest of which is that it should be free and online and that the high speed connection should also be free. With no ads.

What babies we are.

Vintage entertainments, when visited by modern audiences, are as obtuse as Shakespeare, curiosities whose jokes are not understood and take too long to get to the point, meaning someone’s untimely demise. Indeed, the only way to enjoy Old-time radio is to excise television from your life and cease gaming. Then the pictures of radio come flying in. Your mind becomes yours again, and your headaches go away.

To enjoy and deeply feel the best of human civilization today requires conversion into something akin to a sociopath. You MUST disconnect. You MUST simplify. Stop watching the blinking lights on screens, billboards, iPods, telephones, etc. etc. They are NOT connecting you. They are IN THE WAY of connecting. Then you must rinse your mind with only the stimulus that comes from within and become an intellect instead of a statistic; A brain instead of a maw, awake instead of numb.

Only then will we realize we have traded amazing entertainment for hog slops, enlightenment for orgasms, the experience of human connection for a list of virtual friends we will never ever meet.

I have known the glory of leaning on a bannerline on a hot summer afternoon on the midway in a small agrarian fair, in costume whistling at the townie girls, offering free passes for a smile.

I have stood upon a bally stage watching these groups of giggle boxes show a grin full of braces, wondering which amongst them was brave enough to approach me for the passes– then giggling insipidly some more, running away as a group, the brave one with the passes looking back over her shoulder at me — with a look of trying to figure something out.

And watching them scurry away I knew that if they found the courage to come back to the midway that evening, they would be amazed so purely that they would remember that night long after the fair, long after I was gone, for the longest day they ever knew. For they knew the glory of Crossing Over behind the Bannerline, being visitors to another world and running safely home again with a head full of wonder.