In the middle of the Silicon Valley there is just about every type of entertainment that one can imagine, but going to a circus, a good old fashioned circus, is not something that springs to mind when thinking about computers and software.

From my childhood I remember the circus in Sofia ... it was a great, magical place of untold beauty and heroism, of laughter and agility, of darkness and sparkling lights. A place I only got to experience from the last row, all the way up there where the celling met the walls, and where the heat of the projectors dried the sweat off your back.  Then I saw it burn! The circus burned before my eyes and so did many of my dreams and fantasies.  But that was many ears ago and now, in San Jose, there is a Circus Vargas [http://www.circusvargas.org/ ] that came to visit ... I saw it from the highway and it looked just like the real thing that I remembered from my untarnished childhood memories.  The spirit of the circus is impossible to communicate, at least for me, so I decided to go to the circus with the family and let everyone experience it for themselves.  This time I got the best seats in the house, VIP center stage.

The show started, the lights went off and a deep voice greeted us all.  I and Kaia (my older daughter, 3.5 years) already had prepared -- we had Popcorn in a tub, cold pink drinks filled with unknown substance, a huge ballon on a stick, and a light-saber like the Jedi's ... and the dreams came back to me.  My daughter, Kaia, pulled out the light-saber and turned it on, it flashed with many different colors, and she said that she will save me with the "life saver", yep that is what she thought that was, something to save lives with and not just a mere "light-saber".  She was in owe by the circus performers and my ears began to hurt.  I couldn't tell her that my dreams were making me deaf since now she was having her own dreams.  Kaia was afraid and intrigued during the show. She laughed at (with) the clowns and hid her face in my shoulder when the acrobats were flying through the air.
Then two girls came out to dance ... they both danced on a single ring suspended 10 meters in the air without having any support and only with the flimsiest of protection on the ground.  I knew that those girls were working very hard to make it appear as effortless as possible, but this was not a "walk in park" performance and you could see it, not from the smiling faces of those two girls, but from their bodies where the muscles would tremble and the hands would adjust their grip with furious pace.  Here they were, in the air, spinning crazily almost out of control when I heard, next to me, the sound of a charging flash light -- bzzz-sss  click -- the sound the high-end cameras do.  So, next to us, in the adjacent VIP place there was a guy with a big camera getting ready to take a picture of the girls who were risking their lives above the ground.  I didn't have to think about *it*, but my hand grabbed the huge ballon on a stick and i shoved it between the camera and the girls ... right before the camera went off.  The man looked at me as if I had done something wrong and started charging the camera again .... but the ballon managed to get before his camera and the girls one more time ... he turned to me with an angry look and said "What the f* are you doing?" and I told him ".. the dreams want to stay here and be in peace! So, don't disturb!!" ... the guy looked at me as if I was from Mars.  Shortly thereafter one of the Circus workers came to the guy with the camera and reminded him that he is not allowed to take pictures during the performances.  The guy started fuming away, "I have my rights." ... "You can't tell me what I can do." he said  ... this scene continued for approximately 2 minutes .. when a sheriff showed up and took the disgruntled "thief" away.  Obviously, the guy was simply escorted out of the premises and nothing more ... but that was good enough for the rest of us to continue to enjoy the show.  I didn't feel, even for a second, that those two girls hanging on a string 10 meters above the ground were being unreasonable by asking people to not take pictures.

At the end of the show a big metal cage and two guys on bikes came on stage.  Kaia doesn't like bikes, because of the sound. But in this case she was absolutely horrified ... those guys were revving their engines 20 feet away from us.  The first one went in the metal-cage and drove in circles .. Kaia hid her head in my lap .. she was afraid.  Then the second guy went in the cage .. and Kaia started peeking over the edge of the chair, ever so slowly, but she wasn't afraid anymore.  Then the lights went out and the two guys in the cage started spinning around in the darkness ... and then Kaia pulled out her little light-saber, turned it on, and slowly pointed it to the metal cage, full of light and noise, and said "I will save you!".

I wonder what her memories are going to be from the first circus she has ever seen?!