Juggling with Virgil

Recently, in the mornings before I head into the office, I’ve been going down to Battery Park to practice my juggling. It’s been a few years since I’ve done much of any juggling beyond a few party tricks. Before I moved to New York, when I lived in New Orleans, it was my profession. I went down to the French Quarter most weekends, put a minnow bucket out in front of me, and busked. When I moved and found a job, I was excited about the prospect of being able to once again juggle for fun, without an audience, without the banter—juggling for juggling’s sake. But it turned out that it can be hard to find a quiet corner of a public place in New York where someone’s parent won’t ask if you do birthday parties. It took three years before I decided to check out Battery Park in the morning, and once I did, I discovered that it was the sort of still, quiet place I’d been looking for the whole time.

So between 8 and 9, I take my props down to the same quiet, tree-lined spot with a view of the bay, and I get to work, trying to finally nail down a few things I’ve wanted to master since high school—the five-club cascade and learning how to juggle seven balls. Each of these things