The swirly blue-and-yellow tents of the Cirque du Soleil (Varekai) have gone up in the Staples Center parking lot; performances start soon. Those tents look more high-tech than circus tents of yore, what with the zigzag reinforced metal girders as poles sticking up out of the tent pinnacles, guy wires taut in all directions. The tents themselves are shiny in their bright colors, either plastic or some sort of coated canvas. No apparent rippling in the wind, either, though it's not been windy when I've gone by.

But a circus they are; regardless of the skyscrapers in whose shadows they sit, the tents announce that the thousands-of-years-old spectacle of acrobatic shows continue, throughout changes of time and place and culture. I'll have to photograph those tents, before they move on.

copyright 2003 carrie lynn king.