Sunday, August 1, 2010

On ‘Being Lost’ in a Good Way:

I’ve been too pensive to write. Not in a morose way. But Happy.

Very happy in deed!

Silly happy, like a child. No time for work or things that are suppose to be being done. (Though I did do some of those things.)

Mountain Man took up standard juggling again, as I told you the other day.

I do not juggle, well not in the traditional sort of way. Once the objects leave my hands they are doomed. I have no depths perception to speak of. No, standard juggling is not for me.

I do, and have always, love orbs. I have a collection of them. Marble, plastic, glass, stone, wood.

I have now been very busy with contact juggling. Some call it Fushigi like in, I believe, Japan. (Don’t get caught in the ‘Fushigi’ product scam. But more on that another day.)

These balls rarely leave the body and if so only for the moments they float from place to place, hand to hand.

Do not believe the commercials you have seen on TV. Contact juggling is hard work and long practice to pull off the illusion. But since the movie ‘Labyrinth’ with Michael Moschen’s hand as David Bowe’s orb spinning villain. No, even before that. I have wanted to learn the art.

But I couldn’t afford the crystal balls. If I could, I wouldn’t have taken the chance of hurting one to use it in practice. But now there are a wealth of fairly inexpensive acrylic balls on the market. (In comparison to the crystal.)

Small balls start at about $10 and the larger hit $40, and we are only talking 2 to 4 inches across here. I don’t have any of these beauties yet, I‘m still practicing with silicone filled.

There are two kinds of contact juggling, multiball manipulation starts its practice with smaller balls and body rolling starts its practice with larger. A good contact juggler can do both with medium size ball/s and make it seamless.

I am now lost in a world of illusion and orb magic. And I love it here. I’m a kid again play with balls.

2 comments:

Mouse said...

I've been in love with contact juggling since I saw it in Labyrinth but I'm entirely too clumsy to pull off any of those moves!

Unknown said...

Yay! Welcome to the world of contact juggling.
I recommend joining the forums at www.contactjuggling.org. Make an introduction post and ask a few questions; everybody is happy to help.

About Fushigi; it is simply a Marketing company called "ZoomTV Products" that 'invented' the word fushigi and are trying to sell their special kind of contact juggling ball. The ball is more expensive and more fragile than most contact juggling balls, so it isn't really worth it.