The idea I now have, which is to take up juggling, first occurred to me last week in movement class. We were playing with tennis balls – me abandoning my idea, to do a seated lesson so as to go with the body awareness flow. I at one point I had everyone pick up balls and hold them and in holding each one, picture a given task. The question then I posed, is which task seems heavier/more onerous and why?
I don’t know how well this went over. I didn’t have much time to think about it because all the sudden Carole Henry was juggling. She really did know the basics. And so, Ruth and Rose C. Smith started to juggle as well.
Carole later made a connection to the video, “The Wire,” a movie about Philippe Petit, a man who in 1973 tightrope walked across the distance between the Twin Towers. And I made a connection to “Man on the Wire,” which is a documentary about him. We swapped videos yesterday, and I watched “The Wire” last night. The story line differs from movie to move, and if this was all I was interested in, I might have been dissatisfied. I was instead intrigued because here was an instance of a fellow who in so many ways was making the body/mind connection.
I noticed his bearing – very proud, very upright – this complemented his attitude, which was that he was on a mission and no one was going to stop him. Even off the rope, he was always poised and balanced.
He also was a juggler. I saw this and I had an ahh haa moment that on the seismic scale was a 9.1. This week Carole showed me a bean bag that she made – it is in the form of a chicken. It is triangular and has eyes, nose, and a felt beak and comb. So next week, after class, we are going to make juggling bean bags. And I am going to learn to juggle.
More associative thinking going on. Pete used to play Hacky sack. It would be fun to do this again. Maybe we could also get out the Frisbees. AND we talked about an earlier idea I had – the human component of the Playground of Higher Learning. It will consist in part of a pole to hang on, a balance beam, and a tightrope with arm ropes. The balance beam might actually be two poles, forming an L.
Now I must find the time to look on You Tube, at juggling exercises. For now, I have to set all these ideas aside and work on If You Come to a Fork in the Road. Part 1; I feel like I’m at the 18-mile point of a marathon.
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