The Silk Was Not Impressed With Me

March first. There was a flyer on the community center corkboard for a beginner aerial silks workshop, one Saturday afternoon, no experience required, the kind of thing you photograph with your phone and then look at three times over a week before you do anything about it. I did exactly that. Then I registered, the way I've been registering for things lately: four minutes, tab closed before I could reconsider.

I want to be precise about what 'beginner' means in an aerial silks context, because it does not mean what I thought it meant. It means that you have not yet done this specific humbling thing before. The fabric is real, the physics are non-negotiable, and the two feet between the floor and the moment you understand that you have no grip strength for this particular task are the most educational two feet I have traveled in recent memory. My arms, which I thought were reasonably functional after months of Tuesday climbing sessions, had opinions. They expressed those opinions loudly, and mostly from the inside.

two feet off the floor and already reconsidering every decision

I sat on the mat after my second attempt and looked up at the silks and did the calculation, the one where you decide whether a thing was a failure you're folding up or a starting point you're going to be slightly annoyed by until you come back. The winter skills session was still in my body, that cold outdoor hour, the way frozen ground under your hands teaches you something different than a gym wall does. This was a different version of the same sentence. Harder than it looked. More specific than I expected. Not done with me yet, probably.

the face of someone calculating whether to come back next week

I don't know if I'll go back. That's the honest answer. But I took the photo before I'd gotten off the mat, before I'd decided, and that felt like the right order of operations, the record before the verdict. The sketchbook is still on the kitchen table. I'm not drawing this one. I'm just sitting with it for now.