We wrote this article for Secret Art Journal.

From Nelson and Davey's adaptation of James Joyce's The Dead.

"With its stars of ink the book is a universe in motion which our eyes fix." —Edmond Jabès, "Counter Test" (via Gary Barwin).

You don't get to the fruit until Book II of Cherry Ripe! (1878).

This is what we think when critics attempt to mar our workmanship.  "Could it be dissemination of some wicked defamation of our blameless reputation by some imp of hell's creation?"  From the Ole Miss yearbook of 1898.

Have you ever encountered an old list, in your own handwriting, that you have absolutely no memory of?  Our most dedicated reader shared this one.  The items read:

• Hiccup cures
• Lessons to be learned from rest[aurant] servers
• How to spot a threatening cloud
• Deeper meaning of bad dreams
• Building materials that can fit in your pocket
• Books that offer a good explanation of things
• Haikus

From our 21st cousin, Emily Dickinson, quoted in Mansfield's 1969 yearbook.

"You want to go into the desert and learn higher magic, nebbich, when you … cannot distinguish a Hall of Riddles from the real world and do not even suspect that the books of life contain something other than what is written on the spine?" —Gustav Meyrink, The Green Face

Studying by moonlight.  The book, Cemetery Maps, was a gift from our friend Gordon.

Alive to those suggestions of a mysterious sphere of being that come to the man who of a night has watched the pearly grey of the weather-gleam.  From The Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, Vol. 2, 1887.

"Remember the week-day to keep it holy."  From Pasteboard Proclivities by Elbert Hubbard, 1909.

"Some must take the good and some the evil / Dropped from either wing of this strange angel."  From "Al Hassan's Secret," in The Bird and the Bell by Christopher Pearse Cranch, 1890

Endangered Entertainment Is Going to Be Unpredictable

by Craig Conley

Kirk Marsh, the unpainted clown in the Venardos Circus, says that in comedic performances, the lack of a fourth wall enables direct audience engagement.  What Marsh hints at but doesn't reveal outright is that a circus (root meaning "ring") does away with the other three walls as well.  As in the ancient puzzle of geometry, one cannot square a circle.  Without walls, traditional definitions of entertainment become hazy.  Preconceived boundaries become dotted, like a string of lanterns.  In light of such nebulous freedom, an audience is plunged into a rather profound sense of wonderment, but so are the performers, night after night.  In fact, a cloud of doubt looms over a circus tent, no matter where it is pegged.  "If you're striving to be excellent," ringmaster and producer Kevin Vendaros notes, "you never get to that place where it's all locked and ready to go.  There's a vulnerability.  The cast opens its hearts to the audience."  Just as the audience can't guess what will happen next, the performers are viscerally kept on their toes, moment to moment.  Unlike Hollywood or Vegas-style entertainment, in which illusion is par for the course, and unlike Broadway shows, which are necessarily rote, a traveling circus is about reality and unpredictability — not the reality of everyday life, granted, but not trickery, either.  The stunts and demonstrations are real and dangerous, celebrations of skill and not deception.

Traditionally associated in the public mind with exotic animals, today traveling circuses mostly feature human performers.  Ironically, it is the circuses themselves — analog entertainment in a digital age — that are now endangered.  Minister of Parliament Peter Luff summarized the situation this way: "When the world is so troubled with natural disasters, international terrorism, threats of flu pandemics, the impact of climate change and with scandalous poverty, malnutrition and disease, the circus may seem a rather trivial matter.  …  But I believe performing arts have a vital contribution to make to the welfare of our nation and that circus is perhaps the most overlooked, undervalued and misunderstood performing art of them all.  Today's touring circus is not just misunderstood — its very existence is under threat."  Luff went on to note that circuses visit some of a nation's smallest communities, and "For many thousands of young people, a touring circus is their very first introduction to live performing art.  The circus is a profoundly democratic art form, and its very nature is multicultural.  The innocent pleasure circuses bring, though, as highly talented professionals even risk their lives on a twice daily basis, is threatened." 

Undaunted by the iffy prospects, Venardos created his circus in 2014, having previously been the youngest ringmaster for Ringling Bros. Barnum and Bailey Circus (at 22 years old), with additional experience at Big Apple Circus and Circus Vargas.  He set off on his own, desiring to be in control of his career and aspirations. But does Venardos' enterprise perpetuate the age-old dream of running away to join the circus?  "I am absolutely counting on it!" he says.

"Along the banks of the River Bug would be a good place for the establishment of a lot of mental misfit palaces of hallucination for future residences of all emperors, kings, and knaves."  From The Thinkograph, 1916.