Dogfish Juggling

I held my first official juggling class yesterday (Sunday) at Rubber Soul Yoga.  Sadly, our generous benefactor and fellow juggler, Cal, was under the weather and unable to attend. But in all other regards the class was quite successful.

Six students showed up representing a nice range of skills. Everyone seemed to work quite diligently, and seemed to make good progress.  The practice space at Rubber Soul was quite ideal.  Very high ceilings, good lighting, and even padded floors to ease the mental anguish of drops!

I’m excited about the class and have a few new ideas brewing:

- I definitely need to work on promotion and get some posters and flyers made up.  Business cards would also be a good asset — something I can hand out if I happen to be juggling in public.

- A juggling 101 handout of new students would be good resource. Some tight, clean prose on juggling basics and a 3-5 panel illustration to be used as a reference guide.

- A second handout with basic three-ball tricks would also be good to have. Target this at new jugglers who know only the cascade. Perhaps a second, intermediate, and even possibly a third, advanced, handout to come. It might be a good idea to brainstorm some ideas for 4, 5, 6 object handouts; clubs and rings; siteswap and other advanced-juggling-concepts handouts.

- Make props!  I need to pick a material and make at least one set of bean bags.  Something that is good quality and durable which I could sell to new jugglers at a low cost. The ideal case would be to make at least 7 bags so, in the meantime, I can start attempting to flash 7.

Throughout my time as a juggler, there have been what I consider to be great moments of personal discovery and accomplishment.  Anyone who juggles can certainly identify with this feeling.  It is the feeling that happens the first time you throw and catch three balls, and again when you realize you can continue to do this indefinitely.

It is the same sensation of limitless potential and effervescent joy I felt when I first flashed five. And again when I saw the pattern first becoming solid. It is a wonderful feeling, an up-swelling of self confidence and inspiration.

There is an undeniable commonality to these experiences, but there is also a nuance and individuality.  All are similar, yet none are the same — in much the same way each of the patterns themselves have an individual identity, and yet they all share the innate quality of juggling.

My most recent  moment of personal accomplishment — and perhaps one of my most profound personal juggling accomplishments to date — is four ball Mills Mess.  I’ve always had a deep affinity for the Mills Mess patterns and their variants.  Mills Mess feels almost like magic.  It completely transforms the pattern with such subtlety that it it feels almost like cheating.

Most patterns or tricks distinguish themselves with broad, clear strokes. Throw heights or orders are altered, changing the tempo of the juggling that is happening — creating a syncopation, stealing time for a trick or flourish.  Mills Mess isn’t like this.

Rather than the juggler altering the order or tempo of the pattern, in Mills Mess, the pattern manipulates the juggler.  A three-ball Mills Mess has the exact tempo and siteswap of a standard cascade, yet through the twining and untwining of the juggler’s arms an entirely new, almost organic pattern is created.

Mills Mess has a smoother flow than any other pattern of which I know. The balls seem to chase and follow one another alternately, pulling the juggler’s arms into place at the pattern’s insistence.  I make all of these observations based largely on my experience with three ball Mills. I feel, however, that with four these observations are, if anything, more apropos.

Three ball Mills Mess is a thing of beauty. It is a smooth and elegant pattern.

Four ball Mills is damn near poetic.

Like all even numbers, working with four is quirky.  The base pattern comprises two independent circles.  While they are in time with one another, they are fundamentally separate.  There are, of course, patterns which alter this but they can never escape this fundamental characteristic — the natural rhythmic disorder which accompanies even-numbered juggling.

Yet if any pattern could be said to come close to erasing this disharmony, Mills Mess would be it.

Those distinct circles — two sets of two each bound with certainty to a pre-determined hand — merge in Mills Mess. They dance like lovers, boundaries rendered invisible yet kept intact. Every moment each half of the pattern shifting in compensation.  Every prop seems lost in a miasmic tangle, and yet through it all each pair maintain their integrity. It’s a breakdown of dichotomy, a seemingly impossible union.  It is all bound by the arms of the juggler and yet simultaneously it binds him, commands him. It demands a sort of liquidness — a fluidity of motion.  It pulls the arms, constantly winding and unwinding those subordinate appendages to form a pattern of subtle and ever-changing complexity.

I’ve really only just broken into the pattern at this point, but I finally have a solid base to work from.  It’s only a matter of time and practice before I can begin incorporating more variations, some simple siteswaps and really begin to delve into the depths of four ball Mills Mess dynamics.

A flurry of all things jugglish has engulfed me of late, and I’m making some changes to this site as a direct result.

It would be an effort in futility were I to attempt to comprehensively  list my personal developments since my last post.  Just to bring things up to speed:  I’m making good progress on flashing six balls, have the five-ball cascade pretty solid, and have just cracked open the long illusive  four-ball Mills Mess.  I have to take a moment to say what a beautiful pattern four-ball Mills is.  It alone made me want to resume blogging here. Maybe more on that later, I want to get a few other points down while they are fresh.

Our juggling club, Neverthriving of Athens, is … well … thriving.  Take THAT archaic middle-English linguists!  The club is growing in both quantity and quality, and there is some fantastic juggling happening every week.

I’ve also been working on a short three-ball routine choreographed to a Flogging Molly song. Hopefully this will land me a spot in Mr. Blank’s Carnival of Black Hearts.

Last, but certainly not least, is what appears to be a very real chance for me to begin teaching a juggling class at a local yoga studio here in Athens, Rubber Soul Yoga (see links).

Well, as you can see, dear reader, these are exciting times.  I’ve done a lot of facebook posting of juggling accomplishments in the past few months, but maybe after re-working this site, I can shift back here.  I could certainly use the space, and this gives a much better archive to review.

Only time will tell.

I’ve been in Athens for a few weeks now, and my first impressions of the city are pretty well formed.

Put simply, I really like this city.

I’ve gotten pretty familiar with the little corner of Athens known as the “Boulevard Neighborhood” over the past few weeks. Our house is nestled at the end of a quiet street, which dead-ends at a vacant, kudzu-covered lot and is bordered on one side by a very small creek with rather steep, heavily-wooded  banks. While we don’t have much of a yard, there seems to be an abundance of open green space in the area, and Echo and I have had quite a lovely time exploring it.

We have a very nice base route for our morning, afternoon and early-evening walks. From our house, we head about five or six blocks along Hiawassee, where it once again dead ends, this time at a rail-road track. We typically head over a block, then start our trip home. Over the past few days, we’ve been taking a route which allows us to cut through the playground of a near-by elementary school. It’s been quite nice. In addition to the standard, expansive playground area, the school has a sort of out-of-doors, secret-garden-style classroom, which Echo and I have enjoyed exploring at the end of our walks. However, today I discovered an even better option.

As school will begin shortly, I knew the days of our elementary-school diversions were coming to an end, but quite happily I’ve stumbled upon an option which will seemingly serve our needs in perpetuity.  The story of the discovery is a bit serendipitous.

Emily and I had gone out to run a few errands, and when we came back to the house I realized, much to my dismay, that I’d driven off with Echo’s leash resting on the bumper of my truck. I promptly picked up a reserve leash and Echo and I set off in search of the missing equipment.

I had a notion in my mind that the loss had occurred in the near-by parking lot of the bank, which was the first of our errands.  Quite happily, my intuitions proved well grounded, and Echo and I were joyously reunited with our leash.  This happy occasion was rendered all the more exciting when I noticed a large, naturalistic green space directly behind the bank.

Echo and I spent the next 10-15 minutes exploring the area, much to our satisfaction. We eventually discovered a small footpath, which connects directly to our current walking route.

Walking Echo is a very enjoyable exercise  in our neighborhood. On every outing we meet a new dog, and the side walks teem with activity. The people are friendly, and despite Echo’s nervous disposition, I think the city is growing on her.

Dog-walking aside, though, Athens is a charming city. I’ve only been out downtown once or twice, but the experiences were quite enjoyable and the people seem interesting. The Athens-area juggling club certainly holds a big appeal for me, and I’m looking forward to meeting more jugglers.

Also, now that I have a job, I’m looking forward to settling down in the city and making some new friends.

But I suppose all of that will wait for another day.

Life has been moving along at a rather happy clip here, these past few days, and it’s kept me fairly occupied.

Perhaps the most noteworthy event in the past week is my return to the workforce. I’ve been through my first day of training at Athens Student Business Services, a local transcription service primarily devoted to transcribing case notes for financial planners. I can’t say that it is the most fascinating job I’ve ever had, but it has flexible hours and will provide a bit of income for me, so I am rather pleased with the development.

I’ve also recently returned from a trip to Jesup for my birthday, and while I am glad to be back in Athens, I enjoyed the trip. I had the opportunity to attend a group sit at the Vipassana center, and it was really nice to visit the Dhamma hall again.

It’s been a bit of a struggle for me to keep up my meditation practice. I can’t really say why, either. I’m not sure where my motivation breaks down, but I only manage about an hour a day two out of three days. I think part of it is the miasma of an entirely ungoverned schedule. Hopefully, once I start my job in earnest (Monday), establish some sort of regular schedule for myself and really settle into a more sustainable life here, I will have a bit more of a solid base for my practice.

On the subject of Vipassana, I’ve been meaning to get this bit of thought out of my head for awhile.

On the first day of our 10-day meditation retreat I met a few of my fellow meditators. We had about 3 or 4 hours before our vow of silence, and during that time we all pretty much asked the same questions: “How did you hear about this, why are you here?”

Most of the answers were pretty generic — a friend of a friend, a trail of on-line links — but one stood out. It came from an older member of our group. Like me, like most of us, he was a “new student,” meaning he’d never sat a Vipassana course before. He was as prototypically middle-aged as you can imagine. He was taller than me, wore glasses and was slightly balding. He had the softness of features and body that comes from decades at a desk job.

“I came here,” he explained, “because I’m over 50, I have two children who are grown — over 20 — and I can’t remember any of it. I can’t remember anything. I was so busy living in the future, I missed my whole life.”

I’m 25 today.

I suppose the occasion warrants some note, but quite honestly I’m at a bit of a loss. I feel pretty good about the overall progress of my life at this point. I don’t have any real regrets or unfulfilled desires looming over me, and all things considered I’d have to say I’m pretty happy.

I’ve just moved to a new city, I’ve got my sites set on graduate school and my five-ball juggling is progressing at a very pleasing rate.

I suppose things are still a bit unsettled from the move. Or perhaps I’m just a bit tired today.

So it goes.

Either way, there’s a dinner happening, and things to do. So perhaps I’ll be a bit more creatively predisposed later in the week.

I recently attended the International Jugglers Association (IJA) convention in Winston-Salem, NC., and the experience left me overwhelmed and overflowing.

I haven’t come up with a manageable approach to the convention as a whole, but there is one thread of thought which emerged during my time at the IJA which stands apart. On the final night of the convention, I met Erik Åberg, a member of the juggling company known as Team RdL (Renegadedesign Lab).

Team RdL put on some amazing shows during the convention, featuring some of the most innovative and impressive juggling I’ve ever seen. They preformed at both the Welcome Show at the start of the convention and the Cascade of Stars at the end.  Erik also performed during the late-night show known as Club Renegade (no relation). At Club Renegade, Erik put on a fantastic show with french juggler Florent LeStage, who also put on some fantastic performances during the IJA. Erik and Forent are both amazingly artistic performers, and they have a lot of great stuff online.

Erik and Florent’s collaboration at Club Renegade was pretty avant guard , and it was more of a show “by jugglers, for jugglers” than something geared toward the general public. Well, at least in some respects.

What intrigued me about the show, though, was Erik’s approach a combination of juggling and story telling. Shortly after taking the stage he addressed the audience and introduced the conceit of his show; to paraphrase: “What has made me a juggler?”

I won’t rehash the details of Erik’s story, but I will take a moment to ruminate on his theme.

I love this concept. Part of what interests me most about juggling is it’s universal appeal. Juggling can be a universally accessible form of artistic expression. The inherent drama of intertwining and shifting patterns–the illusion of sustaining the unsustainable –can be compelling without context and regardless of cultural differences.

And yet, at the same time, it can be intensely personal. While the balls, clubs or rings may have their own story to tell, the juggler below them is also a player in the performance. For many old-school jugglers (Enrico Rastelli, Francis Brunn, Bobby May etc.), there was a clear dynamic between these two parts. If you watch old footage of these performers, there is an immediate and  undeniable connection between prop and performer. A lot of modern-day juggling, though, seems to lack this interaction. The props have a story to tell–a path to follow–and a mechanical, uninteresting juggler stands below, a disengaged conductor.

This isn’t to say no modern manipulators are keeping the old-school prop-performer dynamic alive. Viktor Kee, for example, is an astonishingly vivid, if somewhat creepy, example of this.

But what interested me so much about Erik and Florent’s show, was that, in keeping with that compelling command from Ezra Pound–they “made it new.”  They changed the dynamic of juggling and the juggler, by putting the juggler on center stage, and relegating juggling itself to a secondary, supporting role.

There is a vast potential in this–this personalization of the universal.

It has taken me many years to develop my current attitude toward writing. 

As I look back over the landscape of my memory, there is a clear topography to my past. The early days of taking a profound and simple pleasure in the written word slope gradually upward, through the years of my education, into the plain of academia. 

Across the long plateau of scholarly study, I see my perspectives and attitudes develop, shifting from visceral enjoyment to intellectual appreciation. During my tenure in college, my study of English literature provided the bedrock for the development of an informed and critical eye and mind. 

Yet like the geography of our world, my literary landscape has continued its tectonic shift  with each layer and component of my understanding interacting in a sort of clumsy, gradual ballet. And just as time–the unrelenting drudgery of each passing day–erodes and reveals new facets of the earth, sparks orogeny, and thrusts new peaks into being, so too has that inescapable force wrought great and sweeping changes in my thinking. 

Like the steady drum of rain or the constant shifting of the substrata, the daily practice of writing has rendered a profound effect on my conceptualization of the written word. There is perhaps no adage more trite than “practice makes perfect,” but my personal realization of this truth has had a momentous impact on my life. 

A strange convalescence of forces led to this revelation–led me to realize that, through practice and focus, the scope of our understanding and the depth of our ability are expanded. 

When I began working for The Press-Sentinel, I began writing more voluminously and more fastidiously than ever before. The constant demands of deadlines and assignments drew a constant stream of composition through me. Stack after stack of copy grew before my eyes as I wrote day in, day out for this publication. 

At essentially the same time, I became more fully engrossed than ever before in a seemingly unrelated personal endeavor: to juggle five objects. 

Looking back, I can’t say which task seemed more overwhelming at the time. 

Writing a half-dozen stories fit to be printed seemed as impossible as cleanly releasing five balls in less than two seconds. And at first, I handled both tasks with the same sort of panicked disorganization. Yet as time progressed, I began to see infinitesimal improvements. 

At the paper, certain stories began to flow smoothly from my fingertips. Leads became clearer and cleaner in my mind. As I juggled at home, the breakdowns in my pattern came later and later. The path of each ball seemed sharp and almost tangible in my mind’s eye. 

And the more progress I made, the more strangely related writing and juggling seemed to become. 

At the pinnacle of my progress, I came to a sudden and shocking realization. Nearly everything I’d thought about both writing and juggling was fundamentally askew. 

It was as if I’d stepped off a cliff and plummeted into a new and astonishing reality. 

In all of my previous thought I’d considered the task of writing to be a sort of piecemeal process. Each research paper, feature story or foray into fiction could be broken down into component parts, the details polished to perfection and assembled. To some extent, I feel there is still some validity to this thinking, for, in good writing, every detail must be perfect and polished–every word exact and deliberate. 

And yet, this line of thinking so fundamentally misses the heart of writing it seems shocking that I could have seen what success I have had under its influence. 

It was juggling which led to my disillusionment. For in juggling, like writing, every detail must be perfect; every throw and every catch must be executed with absolute precision and forethought. With the slightest miscalculation, the slightest divergence, the entire pattern devolves into chaos. 

For months I fought the forces of physics, straining against gravity and momentum to send each element into place. For months I failed. 

Suddenly, I had a flash of realization. For any juggler to see some modicum of success with higher numbers, the details of throws and catches must be second nature. They must be absolutely subordinate to the purity and perfection of the pattern. 

In that moment I realized my limitations. What my writing needed was not more well-polished parts. It needed a stronger, more immediate sense of narrative truth–an absolute image of perfection alive and vibrant in my mind. 

To manifest that shimmering and ephemeral image, to make real the fleeting threads of thought within one’s mind, is what every juggler and every writer strives to accomplish. To do this, they must practice. 

They must practice diligence, focus and humility. They must look, without ego, for weakness, for self-indulgence, for divergence. They must practice with a full knowledge of past successes and triumphs and without concern for them. They must practice daily and never stop. 

I stand now, as both juggler and writer, on a new and uncertain terrain. I see the past with the analytical clarity of a cartographer. I see the present and future, looming and inscrutable. 

And yet, I know with absolute certainty that one step, one toss, one catch, one word at a time, it will be revealed. 

I recently took a few months off from blogging to try and finish up my grad-school applications (not yet accomplished) and to learn the five-ball cascade (accomplished!). 

I’ve got quite a bit rattling around the old skull box in regard to my newfound ability to juggle five of things, and I do plan to write some of that stuff down. None of my thoughts are very polished yet (they need more time in the polisher) so I don’t want to really attempt an in-depth post on five. 

Suffice it to say–five is freaking awesome. It took hours and hours of practice for months and months and it was absolutely worth it. It makes me feel like a robot. 

It is still slow going to some extent. I’ve been able to keep a qualifying cascade or better going for a few months now, and I have had a lot of really nice runs. I am, however, at work right now and can’t go into any more detail than that. Full report to follow. 

On a side note, though, I’ve been considering whether to add a “Not Juggling” category and expand my blog to other facets of my life (crazy, I know). More on that as it develops.