Autumn is in Full Swing

---

Listen! the wind is rising,
and the air is wild with leaves.
We have had our summer evenings,
now for October eves.
~Humbert Wolfe

---

Where I set up my slackrope orange and yellow leaves are quivering overhead and—increasingly—fluttering to the ground. All too soon the branches will be bare. I’ve been storing up memories of these idyllic autumn practice sessions. This is how a slackrope session might go these days:

After I set up, I focus on walking for a while. I work to hold my silver strand still, so that except for the changing angles of the rope as I cross, it appears solid rather than merely a loose hung rope. I breathe deeply as I try to take big steady steps all the way to the other end. My turns are still usually unsteady, but I get myself around so I can head back to where I started. Back and forth, back and forth as an autumn breeze tickles the leaves overhead and brushes by cool on my skin.

Taking a break from my practice, I lie down on the rope. The rope runs under my ankle, against my calf, up my back, into the hollow next to one shoulder blade, and against the back of my head. While one hand grips the rope above my head, I press my fingers down into the soft grass and push off to start the rope swaying. I relax and enjoy the luxury of forgetting all about balancing for a while. Above me the branches sway, and I contemplate yet again how rarely I look straight up. I close my eyes and enjoy the patches of sunlight that skitter over my face and warm my eyelids as my rope rocks me back and forth.

Then I’m ready for a challenge: I stand in the middle of my rope facing toward one of the anchors. My arms tilt to one side, I flex a little at the waist, press through my hips, and the rope begins to swing. I work on getting the timing right—the movement of my arms, bending at the waist, shifting my weight—to ride the increasing swing of the rope. I concentrate on my anchor point, my North star in a world that is pitching. My face is a mask of focus, but my heart lifts a little, revels, each time the rope swings high, slows, then plummets back down in a smooth arc under the weight of my feet. All too soon my timing is off and I have to slip or fly off, landing with a soft thud on the grass and scattered leaves while the rope, now free of my weight, flaps and then sways to a standstill.

Can you tell that I’m in love with slackrope? It’s a wonderful combination of a mid-air walking path, hammock, and swing set. I may also be enamored with slackrope just because the basics came easy—a first for me. During my second ever slackrope session I managed walking backward, sitting, and standing. Oh, and laying. Laying on a slackrope is a joy. Unlike slackline and tightwire, laying was low effort even in the beginning and (relatively) comfortable. I know, I know you’re thinking that lying on a single ⁷⁄₁₆ inch strand of rope can’t be comfortable, but while it certainly isn’t as comfortable as a hammock, it really isn’t bad.

After that the next skills came more slowly. Falls from a slackrope are somehow more daunting than from a slackline, and sometimes I don’t trust my feet on the steep uphill at either end. I mastered my fear of turns about a month ago and now can do them reasonably well if sometimes a bit shaky. More and more often I can walk with the rope remaining almost completely still. Having the rope hold still is a huge accomplishment…but not all that cool. What I really want to master is swing walking. (See video clip here to grasp the beauty of the thing.)

First I need to master just the standing lateral swing. For more than a month I worked on swinging, wanting so badly to experience the beauty of it but seeing little results come of my efforts. In the last week, like a surprise gift granted in the grace period of an unusually long autumn, I finally made progress. I’m ridiculously proud of that progress. I still can’t maintain a standing swing for very long, but I’m starting to feel the rhythm, and my body is starting to work with the line instead of against it. I’m even ridiculously proud of the fact that when back on solid earth I sometimes feel a little bit seasick as my body adjusts to a world that is holding so unwaveringly still.

I’m still learning how to increase the swing and then ride the swing.  I focus on that…till I fall off. I have to confess: the trees will be bare soon, my slackrope season will be over…and I have yet to learn to STOP a lateral swing. Oh well, perhaps it’s appropriate given the season that I fly off my rope, cartwheeling in the air to land on my feet. I’m sure that the leaves that flutter and dance to the ground around me appreciate my graceless human imitation of their descents.

Given that slackrope and especially swinging is all about movement, a video of some of my more successful practice seemed appropriate for this post. Special thanks to MelissaH for putting this video together and also for her k-pop obsession which lead to choosing the incredibly appropriate background music for this clip.



Bird Millman once said that she could "could walk a wire if they strung it between a couple of stars." I'm with Bing Crosby though: my dream (at least this week) is to swing on the stars:

Would you like to swing on a star
Carry moonbeams home in a jar
And be better off than you are
…
So you see it's all up to you
You can be better than you are
You could be swingin' on a star
~Bing Crosby, "Swinging on a Star"

I hope this post gave you a glimpse into the beauty of slackrope and that you’ve had a taste of the joy I experienced this autumn swinging on slackrope. I hope you're enjoying your autumn as well.

Learning Grit: Juggling

---

“Over time, grit is what separates fruitful lives from aimlessness.” 
~John Ortberg

---

A while back a good friend of mine told me about how she’d been teaching her daughter about “grit”— persisting even when the task is difficult. Like my little friend, I am learning about grit: for more than a year now, I have been learning how to juggle.

My dream of tightwire has spilled over into a fascination with all thing circus, and what is the circus without juggling? I have generally avoided sports that involve kicking, throwing, and catching—basically anything that involves quick reflexes, coordination, and airborne projectiles. It’s just not my thing, and that’s ok. Sadly though my high avoidance for any and all even remotely similar skills means that I don’t have a great foundation for this juggling endeavor.

Juggling is probably the most accessible of the circus disciplines, so at least getting started was easy. First I found inexpensive juggling balls—juggling beanbags actually: they don’t roll so far when dropped; which is good because I drop them constantly. Next I got a book that promised simple step-by-step instruction for the basic cascade juggling pattern. Then began the grueling repetitive practice of teaching my hands to do something utterly foreign.

Lesson #1: Just throw one ball from hand to hand so the ball arcs in a sort of figure-8 pattern. My book suggests spending at least half an hour on this skill…I spent three weeks.

Lesson #2 was tossing two balls, one from each hand, so one is tossed just as the other crests. I spent at least another two weeks just on that.

Lesson #3 was to throw all three balls in succession, holding two in one hand and one in the other. This came more easily, so I only kept myself on it for a week or so before moving forward.

When I could do three tosses reasonably well, I thought I’d soon be able to juggle. I could see what the pattern was supposed to be, it was just a matter of adding tosses. “Just adding tosses,” should be easy enough right? Nope. The balls were flying out of control by toss three or four…or two. Somewhat discouraged, but still determined, I backed up…I practiced one toss, two, three. Eventually it became three tosses and sometimes four, four and sometimes five… progress seemed unmeasurably slow and backing up frequent.


Learning to juggle is taking a lot of time and patience. With all the other things in my life I’m metaphorically juggling, it’s hard to fit one more thing in. Luckily I found a time that doesn’t take away from everything else: I juggle my way to and from work, a ten minute walk—which became a fifteen minute walk once I added in the constant stops to retrieve rogue balls. I juggled my way to and from work all through last summer and autumn, and started up again this spring once it was warm enough.

Juggling has also been an exercise in grit because my painstaking practice hasn’t been conducted in private. My walk to and from work isn’t through a high traffic area luckily, or my erratic tosses would make me a public menace, but there are enough passersby. Somehow I’m most likely to fumble the very first toss or fumble all three balls at once just as someone is approaching. I’ve learned to shrug it off, to focus on what I’m learning rather than how I’m performing.

The weather is getting cool again now, so during my morning walk I juggle till my hands are numb, let them thaw, then go again. It’s worth it though, especially because just in the last few weeks I’ve finally reached the point where I’m really “juggling”—no longer confined to halting tosses, painstakingly counted. My “runs” are pretty short—I can’t keep control of the pattern indefinitely, and all too often I drop a ball after only a few tosses, but I’ve finally had a chance to experience that “satisfying circularity”¹ that comes with control and automaticity.

I’ve been thinking about juggling not just because my juggling “season” is coming to a close, but also because it’s about time to retire my first set of juggling beanbag balls. They’ve served me well through two seasons of commutes to work now, and they’re pretty disreputable looking from being dropped on pavement, in the dirt, the grass, the dew, being stepped on, squashed in my bag, and fiddled with in my pockets.

Now that I have the basic beginner’s “cascade” pattern down nearly well enough, it’ll be time soon to add something new—maybe juggling two balls in one hand to work my way up to a four ball pattern or maybe the next easiest 3-ball tricks, “Juggler’s Tennis” or "Columns."  Learning something new will mean going back to the beginning and back to basics all over again. Toss, fumble, retrieve, and try again.

If grit can get me there; if some sensible instruction, a little technique, and endless repetition are what it takes, eventually I'll be able to juggle at least a little.

I got grit. How ‘bout you?

---

¹ Duncan Wall. 2012. The Ordinary Acrobat, page 85.