SIGNUM * Bindlestiff Family Cirkus * MARROW

Then Philomena Bindlestiff, the high-booted, high-hatted sequined ringmistress, struts forward with her arms raised to embrace everyone, cajoling everyone to their feet and exhorting them in revival tent style. "Look around you, at your neighbors. This is your community, writers and artists, drag queens and poets, dancers and sex workers, playwrights and strippers, musicians and actors. Thank you for coming out tonight to support live entertainment, instead of staying home online in some chat room, or watching television or some blockbuster shlock movie. Instead, you came here, and in the 21st century I tell you that this is truly a miracle. So let me hear you say HALLELUJAH! Get up on your feet and shout HALLELUJAH! And with this fleshy communion comes a promise, a promise to continue to support live entertainment, and a continued vow to support venues like this one. And for that I want to hear you say AMEN!"

The circus is a potlatch where you bring what you hope to find. For some lucky few, they find what they had hoped to bring. It is a spontaneous information transfer, where not merely data, but possibility, is exchanged.

THE SIDESHOW OF LITERARY CURIOSITIES

There is another dimension to the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus which, while being a departure from the more traditional circus formula, is entirely in keeping with this particular Cirkus's roots: the Autonomadic Bookmobile Roadshow. The Bookmobile started out as a table of off-beat radical literature which would be set up in the lobby of whatever venue the Cirkus was performing in. The books are the brainchild of Jim Flemming, editor of Autonomedia books. Autonomedia has been publishing subversive history, fiction, and theory since the early 1980s, and part of the mission of the Cirkus is to make small press literature accessible to a wider audience. Some of this information is hard to come by since book store chains generally won't deal with small independent publishers of literature that is critical of the dominant social and economic state. This year, an idea which has been rattling around in the hearts and minds of everyone involved with both Autonomedia and the Cirkus, finally came to fruition, and that is the expansion of the booktable into its own truck, tricked out in grand circus style with sideshow banners outside and fully stocked bookshelves inside. The Bookmobile is operated by Dr. Henceforth Flummox, who ran the booktable (alternating with Dr. Lascivious Sloat) for two years while obtaining her masters in philosophy, and Okra p. Dingle, who abandoned his career as a high stakes gambler to become the Cirkus's full-time fool.

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