Unexpected Spillovers

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Every girl aught to walk a tightrope. It is a fine, healthy exercise. It develops a rare set of muscles and self-confidence and teaches one how to walk properly on the street.
~Bird Millman

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While I haven’t actually seen a noticeable improvement in my skill for walking properly on streets specifically (sorry Bird Millman), my balance training has had many other positive effects. Not too surprisingly, I can balance on one foot while I tie my other shoe better than I could before. Other effects have been…unexpected, seemingly random, and even humorously odd. Since I thoroughly appreciate these less obvious benefits I’ve kept a running list for my own amusement. Today I’d like to share some notable items—the unexpected “spillovers”—that have made the list:

1. Bird Milliman, who I quoted above, was right: it really does develop a good set of muscles. For me all the swaying (and flailing) from side to side improved my waistline, and I had no idea how ripped my lower back muscles could be until I started rope walking. I got a few odd looks when I (proudly) invited friends—but only close friends and family members—to poke those rock solid low back muscles.
    
2. My skills as a photographer have improved—from my understanding of negative space, to skillful use of the time-delay features when no photographer is available.
    
3. I’ve learned to breathe. I know I don’t breathe well when I’m stressed. Rubbing shoulders with highliners, my brain finally embraced deep breathing. I could hear the rhythmic huffing of highliners from yards away. Now I catch myself doing a quiet version of that breathing when I have something stressful to do, even when it’s only mental work.
    
4. I’ve made quite a few friends. For a formerly shy and still relatively introverted person, one who generally trains solo no less, that came as a pleasant surprise. Some friends I connect with because they are fellow enthusiasts, with others…well, perhaps the joy and fulfillment I find in balancing helps me connect. I also have a catchy, unique conversation starter.
    

5. All that foot flexing, balancing, and landing has toned up my toes, strengthened my arches, and padded my soles. Standing or walking barefoot is more comfortable now. …and I have a confession: I actually think my feet are more attractive. Weird, but true.
    
6. I became a blogger. That certainly wasn’t something I expected to do when I took up slacklining to help preserve my sanity during graduate school still dreaming of being published in an academic journal. I’m still writing.
    
7. As a fairly awkward teen who dreaded PE, I never would have considered myself athletic. Fast forward to the present and I am chomping at the bit to launch myself into additional circus disciplines and cross-training sports: cyr wheel, walking globe, aerial silks, yoga, ballet, etc.
    
8. I’m a better driver. Balancing has taught me to recognize tension and loss of focus and to tap into a feeling of relaxed, concentrated control. When confronted with serious freeway traffic, I recognize when I’m tensing up, I lean back in my seat, relax my grip on the wheel and keep my eyes alert.
    
9. My protractor resurfaced from the far back of my desk for the first time since high school geometry so I could draw some basic physics diagrams as part of my personal research into the physics and biomechanics of tightwire balancing.
    

10. I’ve so warped the minds of my friends by my constant babbling about balance stuff that they recognize the names of famous tightrope walkers, know and explain the difference between slacklines and tightropes, and hardly blink when I use the words funambulist and equilibrist in casual conversation. I’m very proud of my influence. The unexpected bonus is that those friends assist my research now, for instance by passing on quotes and facts from places I wouldn’t have even known to look and forwarding videos. I think I will call them my research minions. 

There are a dozen more I could mention, but that is a decent sample. While this list is an eclectic and quirky collection, I am genuinely grateful for how rope walking has spilled over into other areas of my life.

As always there is more beyond the humorous to be learned from my list. Our passions can have an incredible impact in our lives in both expected and unexpected ways, permeating and enriching them on so many levels. That is certainly true for me with balancing.

Posture and Passions

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On the wire, the best walkers have an invisible line that extends the spine up into the sky and down into the earth. Their posture is beyond straight, almost a miracle.” ~Gwenda Bond, from Girl on a Wire 

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Writing about a favorite storybook two months ago brought my inner bibliophile—or perhaps more accurately inner bibliovore—to the surface in full strength, and I found myself checking the offerings on Amazon. Not too long ago, in my post A Hobby Hijacked, I griped about how most books with tightwire or highwire in the title aren’t about funambulism at all. Perhaps the little elves running the Amazon search machine read my blog and thoughtfully refined the search results—because much to my surprise and delight, I hit upon not one but four books I had never seen before. Then as another bonus, Amazon emailed me when a newly released novel—Girl on a Wire—was free for a limited time on Kindle. Good job, little elves.

I’m still working my way slowly through the non-fiction acquisitions. The novel though I devoured in two days—I absolutely loved Girl on a Wire. How could I not when the main character’s hero is Bird Millman? I loved the book, but since I posted so recently about a book and I don’t want to get in too deep of a literary rut, I’ll compromise: I highly recommend the Girl on a Wire, it’s worth purchasing or borrowing in my opinion. For this post however I’ll focus on the quote and concept from the book I began this post with:

“On the wire, the best walkers have an invisible line that extends the spine up into the sky and down into the earth. Their posture is beyond straight, almost a miracle.” 

I began discovering that line myself when I first started slacklining. My local climbing gym had a slackline off in one corner, and I kept going back to it even though I wasn’t very good—at all. One of my very first “aha” moments came when I started envisioning my weight pressing straight down into the soles of my feet and onto the line. I was still atrocious, but for nanoseconds at least I could feel my body balancing instead of flailing.

It wasn’t until quite a bit later, when I stumbled across the Tight Wire and Slack Rope Training Manual produced by the European Federation of Professional Circus Schools, that I learned the appropriate straight back posture. There I was taught to tighten my core and reduce the curve of my lower back. I learned to match my posture to the line of my weigh that I had imagined earlier.

Source: Mackay Entertainment:
January Performer Spotlight - Jade Kindar Martin - Sky Walker

Duncan Wall, in his book An Ordinary Acrobat, (though technically describing handstand position specifically) describes the carefully straight posture of an acrobat and the reason for it:

“It looks like a tower of muscles, or as another instructor of mine said, ‘a human bar.’… By bolting your body over a single point, you eliminate all the ‘searching’ for balance, all the tips and sways.”

Finding and maintaining that bar in myself is a large part of my focus in training. In workouts I focus on strengthening my core in every direction. In balancing I try to use my arms and my legs rather than breaking form by bending and twisting at the waist. I actually felt pleased rather than dismayed when a chiropractor told me that my back was a little too straight.

For all my training and awareness of the importance of posture, that straight line I envisioned didn’t extend a millimeter beyond myself. It started at the tip of my head and ended where my feet pressed into the line. Perhaps it sounds silly, but there was something marvelously, mind-blowingly enlightening reading Girl on Wire and projecting that line far beyond my own physical limits.

With the magnificent image provided in the book, I began thinking about the reasons behind an acrobat’s posture. When I find that straight line posture, that pillar of strength, gravity’s relentless tug only pulls me securely into the safety of my narrow wire. Security and stability come from aligning myself with the unseen force of earth’s gravity.

It’s a strong force, that thread of gravity that reaches up from the core of the earth to grasp and pull us down. Maybe you wish you could fly away, break the chain. That is understandable, but there is security in being rooted, and it provides a foundation that enables greater things. We climb mountains by planting each foot firmly onto the earth; men cross chasms by harnessing gravity to keep them firmly on their slender strands of wire.

When I thought about that invisible line and what it represents for me in my life, what came to mind was a scene from the movie Rise of the Guardians where North talks to Jack about finding his “center.” For North it was wonder, for Jack it was fun. What things seemed to be at the core of who you are? What tugs at your heart? For me, as you all know, it’s balance. Remember, the highwire artist’s straight posture—that precise and almost miraculous alignment—keeps his center (of gravity) steady so that gravity pulls him securely down onto the wire allowing him to progress along his precarious and exacting path. When we align our lives with our centers, our passions, the forces of life will pull us to security and even enable us to reach our goals rather than toppling us over.

What we can create with our lives aligned with our our centers—the truest passions of our hearts—extends beyond our physical limitations. The lines of our lives point up into the vastness of amazing possibilities.

Reflections and Resolutions for the Longest Night

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Freeze, freeze in the winter, if you really want to appreciate the summer!
Walk, walk at the edge of the precipices, if you rightly want to learn the meaning of safety!
Switch the light off, if you want to see the amazing beauty of the light!
~Mehmet Murat Ildan

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My countdown to the winter solstice began nearly two months ago, much to the amusement and bemusement of friends and colleagues. I can’t blame them, it’s not a date on the calendar that I’ve paid much attention to in the past. This year though I have anticipated the solstice perhaps even more than Christmas and definitely more than the calendar New Year. While I certainly don't want to wish away the present, I am excited about the changing seasons and the approach of longer days.

My balance training is--by necessity but also by preference--primarily conducted out of doors. While I'm enjoying the starry winter skies, especially seeing the constellation Orion, the fact that only twilight is left to me after the work day ends is highly inconvenient, hence my looking forward to the increasing daylight that comes with the passing of the solstice. Tonight, the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, is a turning point in the solar cycle: “Starting [tomorrow] at sunrise, the sun climbs just a little higher and stays a little longer in the sky each day.”

I firmly believe that turning points deserve both looking forward and looking back. Since the Gregorian calendar currently has little bearing on my training, and the solar cycle has a large one, this year I’ve chosen today for my reflections and resolutions.

The dark and cold of winter quite naturally tend to send me inward, warming my soul in the glow of good memories. Looking back at the last year, a lot has happened especially for balance: I practiced on a real tightwire for the second and third time (and my very first tightwire experience was just a little over a year ago); I conquered a waterline, scooted out on a highline, I took up slackrope, watched a sky walk live…and of course I started this blog.

One last success for the year was a high-walk challenge. On the way back from a party, a friend jokingly challenged me to walk the handrail of a low pedestrian bridge. I'd resisted the urge in the past, but the nudge of a challenge had me mounting the wide, flat rail without a second thought--much to the consternation of my poor friend who will definitely think twice before daring me to give in to temptation.

The width and stability of the rail put the focus of the walk on the mental challenge of having a large drop off on one side rather than on a physical or skill challenge. I was solid in my balance and calm in my focus; and I am quite pleased that I wasn't phased by 14 feet of empty space lurking on my right hand side. I don't think it's a stunt I'll need to repeat (not that particular handrail anyway); I'm focused on skill building not adrenaline rushes. Still it was a good mental challenge, and that mini success definitely left me a giddy.

So that's my recap of this year's balance recollections.The solstice is also a time for looking forward. As Gary Zukav put it, "The winter solstice has always been special to me as a barren darkness that gives birth to a verdant future beyond imagination."

Looking toward the coming months, I have to confess to feeling a bit rudderless. The big goals and dreams are in place--the 'verdant future' I'm imagining and working toward; the tenacity to practice and focus on micro-goals I also have; the gap is there in the middle. While I feel positive that the new year will bring new adventures and opportunities, I'm struggling to know what medium term goals would be most important (and which I am prepared publicly to commit to). I'm going to be feeling my way along, but I'll set down what I have so far.

• Invest time daily.  It takes time to develop fine-tuned balance skill, time spent actually balancing. I'm committing to at least five minutes of balancing daily six days a week. That might sound small, and I imagine that most days I will put in significantly more time than that, but for the hectic and tired days, 5 minutes is certainly better than none. 
• Learn how to rig and purchase equipment for a basic tightwire. Slackline and pipe are great for learning balance, but I need a tightwire to learn tightwire.
• Connect moves into sequences. Even though the focus of my dreams isn't artistic choreographed performance, I would like to transition from focusing on simple practice of individual skills, to the challenge of series of moves/skills in predefined patterns/orders.
• Master turns. I set this goal once already back in June, but turns are still my nemesis, so it goes back on the list.  This will mean half and full turns on pipe and tightwire and spin walk on slackline.
• Try yoga for cross-training.  Ballet was my summer cross-training experiment. Yoga is next on the list.  Yoga is supposed to be great for flexibility, balance, and core strength, so it's worth giving a try.

Well, that's my goal setting for now. Happy solstice everyone!

Fence Walkers

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"Now, to 'walk' board fences requires more skill and steadiness of head and heel than one might suppose who has never tried it."

~L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

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In addition to my collection of tightwire autobiographies, news articles and manuals, I have a small but growing collection of children’s books. I mentioned Mirette on the High Wire in my very first post—it was this book that first sparked my passion for rope walking. The book The Man who Walked Between the Towers about Philippe Petit’s walk between the Twin Towers of New York City is another high quality high wire classic.

A more recent addition to my collection is Tightrope Poppy, Circus Pig by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. With rhyme and rhythm, the book tells the adorably preposterous tale of a piglet who wants to become a tightwire star. Preposterous because, “A circus dog, / now that is fine. / But have you heard / of circus swine?”

I knew I had to own the book, as soon as Amazon showed me a preview of this page:

I had to own the book…because I was that child.

The compulsion to balance, to train my balance, has been with me for as long as I can remember. Certain vivid memories have taken on new significance: When I was three and four going to the local library, I absolutely had to hop up and walk all the way around the stone edge of the circular raised flowerbed in front before I would consent to go in the front door. When I was nine or ten, I wasn’t content to walk on the two-by-four support board near the top of the fence, but rather attempted to walk on the half-inch top of the upright wooden slats. In high school when a friend was having boy problems and I had no decent advice or comfort to offer, I got her up on a log fence—one very similar to the fence in the picture above—to walk it off. Much to my delight, she told me that it had indeed helped: the focus had a calming effect. My parents still to this day ask me if I’m feeling unwell if I don’t hop up on a fallen log when we are out hiking.

Yes, my heart has a strong affinity for a fellow fence walker, even if it is a fictitious piglet. My connection to this little piglet's story goes beyond affection for a fellow fence-walker. First, let me tell you her story—I love children’s literature, so I can't resist telling you (in abbreviated form) the rest of this bedtime story:

So, back in the farmyard, veteran fence-walker and aspiring highwire artist, Poppy Pig sees an advertisement for a circus in need of tightrope walkers. Of course she's thrilled and promptly squeals, “I’ll be a star in no time!” and rushes off to join the show.  Certain she knows her craft and ignoring the cautions of the ringmaster, she climbs straight up the highwire and, with the hubris of a porcine Icarus, saunters out onto the wire.  She falls promptly, dramatically, and painfully, though her hubris actually takes more of a battering than her hams and hooves. Quite discouraged, she contemplates quitting, but Poppy listens to the encouraging (emailed) words of a wise mother pig; she goes back to the ring this time ready not to do a starlet-strut but to learn. Many falls and a few ego bruisings later, the learning and practice pay off and Poppy Pig does in deed conquer the highwire.

For me, the first time I ever stepped on a tightwire was just over a year ago at Seattle’s School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA). While I did not have any dramatic tumbles off the 18 inch high wire, I was dismayed to discover that my training on slacklines wasn’t as good of preparation as I’d hoped. I definitely had a good foundation for my first official attempt at tightwire, but the bounding of the wire and the discomfort of the much smaller diameter base on my stocking feet weren’t things I was prepared for. (I also discovered that tightwires are by far the least comfortable to sit on. The bruises made the drive back home across hundreds of miles and several states none too comfortable.) Still, it was a significant milestone. I discovered I too had a lot of learning still to do.

Though I aspire higher than fences, they were and still are good training ground and playground. Passing up a beautiful stretch of fence still seems like a travesty to me. Through my research and networking, I’m discovering that I’m in good company—plenty of tightrope walkers have felt drawn to the challenge of fences and rails: Bird Millman, Philippe Petit, Matthew Whitmer, and Bello Nock to name a few.

Bello Nock, London

Each time I discover or meet a fellow fence or rail-walker, my heart just glows.

Though I was drawn to Tightrope Poppy for that single picture of fence walking, the purchase was a good one for the moral of the story as well: “You can’t lose heart / on one bad start / some dreams take lots of trying.” I love children’s literature, so I’m not ashamed to admit that to achieve my balance ambitions, I’m taking as my role model an utterly fictional, but incredibly plucky pig. 

Watching Nik Wallenda Conquer the Windy City Skyscape

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Reporter: Chicago really embraced you. Could you hear all that noise from the crowd below? 

Nik Wallenda: Oh my goodness, it was amazing! I was born in an entertainment family and started in front of a live audience at two. The 75,000 to 100,000 underneath cheering me on – there is no way to describe that. When I first stepped out at the top of the show and they saw me up there with the orange jacket, I felt like I was floating it was so loud. 

~Interview from Forbes magazine, November 5, 2014

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I was one of the thousands down on the ground cheering, adding my voice to the swell in hopes that the sound would carry up to that tiny orange-jacket speck in the sky. I was in Chicago watching when Nik Wallenda set two highwire records. This was my first time seeing a skywalk in person and it did not disappoint.

Chicago has been on my list of cities to visit for a while, and I’d talked with a friend about doing a girls' getaway sometime this fall. When Nik Wallenda announced his Chicago skywalk I jumped at the chance and quickly convinced my friend that the first weekend in November would be a great time to do our trip.

It wasn’t until after I’d purchased non-refundable plane tickets and reserved hotels that the possibility of his falling crossed my mind. That gave me pause: the “live” televised broadcasts are actually streamed with a 10-second delay, so they can cut out in case of an accident. In person there would be no such system in place to protect me from the trauma of witnessing his falling to his death—except for covering my eyes myself of course. I want Nik to have a long and healthy life for the sake of himself and his family…and, selfishly, him dying, especially in front of my eyes, would put a serious damper on my dreams.

The qualms passed quickly—I have a lot of faith in Nik’s abilities. What he attempts would be a certain death sentence for 99.99% of us, so it’s hard to gauge how big of a risk it is for Nik Wallenda. Yes highwire is dangerous, but for Nik it’s a calculated risk, and he makes sure that the math stacks up in his favor: 30 years of experience, tens of thousands of hours of practice, extensive rigging experience, and a world class training, rigging, and safety support crew.

Think of it this way: taking a 5-year old’s training wheels off a little street bike and giving him a nudge down an aggressive mountain biking trail wouldn’t end well either. Bikers build up to those kind of things, they gain skill over time through practice and training. Because most of us learned how to ride a bike as children, we can relate better to mountain bikers. Many of us certainly couldn’t tackle an extreme mountain bike trail, but we understand in theory what it takes to get there. The more I experience and learn about highwire, the better I understand what kind of training, skill, and support it takes for highwire and the less scary it seems.

The skywalk took place in the heart of Chicago where the river cuts through downtown.  I’d wondered why Nik chose to walk it at night, but approaching the walk site, the artist in me fully appreciated the setting: with a pitch black backdrop of the sky, there was nothing to detract from the glowing silver strand of wire and the tiny speck that was the daring man, Nik Wallenda.

Just wending my way through the crowd did my heart good. It was a fantastic feeling to be in this huge crowd of people, surrounded by people interested enough in tightwire to brave the November breezes in the windy city. Some of them came just because it was a cool event and just because they happened to be in Chicago. A few though came, like I did, for this. As I passed people in the crowd I was delighted to overhear a woman recounting Nik's career and family history for a less knowledgeable spectator. She sounded like me!

My friend and I ended up finding space to watch close to a set of guy wires¹ attached to a cement barricade. It was incredible to me how far those slender wires stretched to reach up to the main wire to hold it steady.

It took a long time for the walks to start. For those of us without access to the televised broadcast (my phone battery unexpectedly hit empty just as I tried to take my first picture of the wire) the first hour and a half was an exercise in patience. We'd been told the event would start at 6pm. It wasn't until well after 6 that Nik Wallenda looked over the edge of the building. We all cheered thinking the walk was about to happen.  Fifteen minutes or so later he looked over again...and again we cheered. He got up on the wire and stood backwards, balanced, squatted...and then he disappeared again. We weren’t sure what was going on, if something had gone wrong, if the walk would actually happen. After an hour and a half of waiting and wondering I was a little cold, but still happily admiring the silver strand of wire in the air above me.

The actual walks went quickly. The first walk, the one across the river at an uphill angle of 19°—setting a record for highest inclined walk—took over six minutes to complete. The second, shorter walk between the twin Marina City Towers was done blindfolded and took one minute sixteen seconds. This walk also was record setting for the height at which it was conducted. From where I was he was just a steadily moving speck, an orange jacket and a long balance pole.

He didn’t waver, stumble, or pause, which wasn’t very…dramatic or heart-stopping—no eye-covering necessary. I don’t wish he’d faked a trip or fallen for real for the thrill of it. The fact that he made it look easy, look doable, was exactly what I wanted to see. For me the lure of tightwire—and highwire—is not about craving near-death experiences but is all about the skill to do something so well that I could be confident enough to conquer fear.

No one should be surprised that I got in the spirit of and celebrated the skywalk by balancing on a Chicago handrail.

I'm not quite ready for a skywalk, but I'm definitely working on it.

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¹ Tensioned cable designed to add stability to a free-standing structure. (Wikipedia)

Autumn is in Full Swing

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

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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

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

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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?

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