{"id":935,"date":"2013-11-18T13:01:06","date_gmt":"2013-11-18T13:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=935"},"modified":"2013-12-02T03:50:54","modified_gmt":"2013-12-02T03:50:54","slug":"935","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=935","title":{"rendered":"Why is anyone a carny?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"IMG_4493\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IMG_4781\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cThe life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.\u201d<\/em>
\nBertand Russell<\/strong><\/p>\n

I do share a brotherhood of weariness this morning after an all night “sick slough.”<\/p>\n

I suffered the flu during this tear-down (slough) at the Okefenokee Fair and now keep falling asleep at the McDonald’s as I try to describe the feelings of a person sleep deprived and ailing.<\/p>\n

I can say, yet another carny last night said, “You are a true carny” as I jumped on top of the carousel with more stamina than most. He obviously was complimenting me, while all I thought was, “True carny? Truly, who cares.”<\/p>\n

It’s not a moniker of pride when talking to cops or a pretty girl. Landlords and employers aren’t going to light up when they hear me described as a true carny.<\/p>\n

Nobody is a carny for the glory.<\/p>\n

Add to that the poor housing, poor pay and poor working conditions, at times like these one wonders why anyone is a carny.<\/p>\n

Still, I’m not the only one who will walk the empty fairgrounds this morning and see an empty field where a carnival stood for five days and feel some pride. Pride that I built it, worked it, tore it down and now it is blowing away with every truck leaving the lot.<\/p>\n

I feel the futile cycle that I’m in, of poverty and set-ups and tear-downs. <\/p>\n

I feel anticipation too, because it’s the end of the season and time to go home but to what.<\/p>\n

The Japanese poet Basho lived a life with few material comforts in the 1600s, traveling town to town. Around the age of 50 (around my age that is) he wrote about home.<\/p>\n

“And yet we all in the end live, do we not, in a phantom dwelling? But enough of that-I’m off to bed.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.\u201d Bertand Russell I do share a brotherhood of weariness this morning after an all night “sick slough.” I suffered the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4qqmC-935","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=935"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":938,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/935\/revisions\/938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}