Fist shaking

The spring sports schedule is insane. The past few weeks have been a constant scramble and there is no sign of anything letting up in the near future. Right now I am taking what can only be described as an ill-advised break from my jv baseball story to write this. 

Despite the insanity I have gotten in a bit of practice, though not nearly as much as I would like to. I do have a few interesting developments and ideas from my last few practices which I would really like to flush out here, but I just don’t have the time. Tennis games start soon and I have to get team pictures. But I am going to post part two of my juggling column, just to get something up on the site. *sigh*

(This may be an unedited version)

Out clubbing, juggler’s style. Part two. 

By Luke Eden

I wrote last week about some of my experiences with juggling. Wrote how, until quite recently I’d never met a juggler better than myself, about how I’d really never even seen anyone else juggle until I attended the Atlanta Jugglers Association Groundhog Day Jugglers Festival. 

Going into the festival, my fondest hope was to meet a juggler more talented than myself. 

The first thing I saw when I walked into the convention center for the event was a group of about six people passing more clubs than I could count. 

I can’t describe how extreme the difference between seeing something like this in person was from seeing it on a 15-inch computer screen. 

I just stood there, slack-jawed and staring blankly for about 10 minutes as the group ran through about a dozen different passing patterns, alternating their throws and positions, rotating and moving during the pattern, and doing things with clubs I’d never even heard of. 

As I eventually recovered from my initial awe, a budding excitement grew within me. 

Then I turned around to put my unicyle amidst a pile of juggling props and, quite literally, dropped my balls.  

I rubbed my eyes. He was still there. No one I knew, or whose name I even learned, but there he stood, inscrutable and casually juggling a set of five clubs behind his back. As I groped blindly on the floor for my props, my eyes locked on a juggling feat more difficult than I can imagine, I slowly began to realize the depth of talent and skill for which I was in store. 

I can’t even begin to describe everything that went on during the festival. I opted out of the gladiator competition (a “last man standing” contest where a mass of club jugglers try to bat down, steal or otherwise interrupt each other’s pattern), choosing instead to get a crash-course on five-ball juggling from an AJA member named Pam. 

I spent about an hour with a kid named Matt who couldn’t have been more than 12, as I learned the simplest of club-passing patterns. (The knot on my forehead and bone-bruises on my hands are just now fading.) 

An amazing devil-stick performer named Kai showed me some really interesting three-ball tricks, and I’ve finally begun to understand the illusive Burke’s Barrage. 

I even met the founders of Unicyle.com and learned, much to my surprise, that they are based in Marietta. I picked up a set of rings and some new balls from one of the vendors at the show and came dangerously close to buying another unicyle. 

Yet more than any prop I brought home or trick I learned, what I got from the festival was a new sense of what I could accomplish. As much as the videos I’d seen had opened my eyes, somehow they never seemed quite real. 

Seeing people all around me doing things I thought would take me years to learn made me realize how utterly possible everything was. Just seeing a seven-ball pattern or a run of five clubs opened my eyes to what I could do. 

One of the biggest stumbling blocks I’d faced in my club juggling was trying to throw what jugglers call “doubles.” As the name might suggest, this means throwing a club higher in the air with a faster spin so that, instead of turning 360-degrees in the air, the club makes a full 720-degree rotation. 

I’d never been able to do this before the festival. I could, on occasion, manage to get a double spin on one club, but I would inevitably fail, pummeling myself with hard plastic and unyielding wood as the other clubs rained down atop my head. 

I didn’t ask anyone for help with doubles at the convention, although I feel sure I could have. Instead, I watched. I watched jugglers doing back-crosses and chin balances, triple throws and pirouettes. And as I watched, I juggled, and slowly but surely I felt the space. 

I became aware of the club in my hand and could feel the exact moment when I needed to shift my focus and make a high throw. It was slow going, and as seems to always be the case with clubs, it was often painful. Bad throws have a tendency to find some new and previously unbruised part of the body to strike as they fall. 

But by now my bruises have all faded, and I am getting better at doubles every day. I will never forget what I learned from my first juggling convention. 

While I can’t say that I am the best juggler I’ve ever met any longer, I can say, with absolute certainty, I am a profoundly better juggler for the experience.