journal features

public juggling debut

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Tokyo, 2009.03.30

Today was my public juggling debut. We went to Nakameguro to visit the small drinks stand that Emma's firm was putting on for the hanami crowd. The stand was in a laneway off of the main walk beside the river, so The Girl had a woman dressed up in an eccentric kimono stand on the main walk to drive traffic in. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to demonstrate my new skill to the world -- I could practice juggling while drawing attention to the woman and her small placard.

It seemed to work to an extent. As the only street performer (wearing a fixed grin because Mari had motioned that I should smile, which was at odds with my need to concentrate) I attracted a fair bit of attention from people with cameras and we only wound up sending a few people up the laneway.

But it was fun. And good practice. I didn't do too badly, and managed to edge up my record for consecutive catches to 122. Woohoo!

rand()m quote

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time — when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

—Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (1995)