Korea's Juggling Store

Korea has a juggling store in Sadang. I was heading out that way for a job interview, so I managed to stop by for a visit. It's easy to find coming out of the subway station. All you need to do is come out of exit #7 and walk straight until you see a dummy riding a unicyle on the side of the building.

I went inside and the guy who I spoke to didn't understand my English, so when I was asking him about juggling clubs in the area, he wanted to sell be some Dube Euros. Fortunately, the owner speaks English and I was given his business card. As soon as I get to a permanent location to teach, I'll be getting in touch with him about where the jugglers meet in the various towns and cities here. If there are none, maybe I'll start a club in my new home town.

Quote of the Day

A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent (which I cannot deny myself to be without being impious) will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place.... ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

1000 days of juggling

Today is my 1,000th day of being a juggler. I was able to juggle with my buddy James in Korea today. We filmed ourselves passing clubs in the middle of a rice field. We decided we were going to create a video of ourselves juggling all around Korea. There's lots to see here and there's lots of great locations to film juggling.

I discovered that James and I have similar ambitions with juggling. We are both seriously planning on saving a lot of our money from teaching English this year and going on a world juggling tour afterwards.

I dreamed of doing this a while back when I was trying to think of what I would want to do, besides spending time with family, if I found out I only had 6 months of healthy living before I would drop dead. I came to the decision that I would travel around the world doing juggling performances and call my show the "Do What You Love World Juggling Tour" so that I could share my passion with as many people as possible. The message is obvious... do what you love because there's only so much time we get to live our lives.

So when James told me he was planning on doing something similar, I realized that I might have found a partner for the tour. James has the skills and the personality to be a great performer, and I think he'd make a great travelling partner.

We'll see what happens as time goes by.

Quote of the Day

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. ~Mark Twain

Juggling in Bucheon

So I've been in Korea for two days now. I was able to go to Bucheon with my host juggler, James. We walked from the bus stop to a local market for breakfast and to look around. After that, we walked a couple blocks to a college so we could find space to juggle.

The kids in the picture below were watching us with a lot of passerbys. They became a little annoying when they started going into our bags to get our props out. Typical kids.

Some teenagers came up to us and asked us to play basketball with them. We accepted and they won the match 10-7. Then they asked us to teach them how to juggle. That was a lot of fun. We taught them how to do contact juggling and 3 ball cascade. I took a picture with all of us in it afterwards.

It was a lot of fun. James is a great club passer too, so we had fun passing together. We did this interesting 5 club pattern in multiple variations which I am looking forward to videotaping.

Quote of the Day

If you come to a fork in the road, take it. ~Yogi Berra

Off to South Korea I go...

My plane is scheduled to leave Dallas, TX at 10:52am on Thursday September 21. I am scheduled to land in Seoul, South Korea at 9:30pm on Friday September 22. It's like a 3 hour flight to Minneapolis, then a 12 hour flight to Tokyo, and another 3 hour flight to Seoul. I'll be sleeping in the airport on Friday night while I wait for an American juggler who lives there to pick me up on Saturday morning.

I'm definitely a little nervous about the trip since I've only just learned to speak a few words of Korean yesterday from an online study guide. I'm also in a position to redefine my life for more than just one year which has caused some existential anxiety. I am going to sign a contract to teach English for one year, however, I could turn one into two or three and there are opportunities around the world to teach English. The most lucritive being South Korea and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I'd like to go to the Kingdom. I have some friends from Katif.

The hard part about all of this is leaving behind my life in Corvallis, Oregon. I have seriously never missed anything as much as I miss Corvallis. I've only been away for one month.

So on one end I have Corvallis, the place I fell in love with almost immediately after arriving three years ago, and on the other end, the rest of the world, where I can see things I've never seen before or experienced. Clearly, I'm going to South Korea for one year. If it turns out to be bad, I can always go back to Corvallis, go to graduate school, and resume my lovely life there. If it turns out great, who knows what will happen. Maybe I get a chance to become that guy who goes to juggling festivals around the world. Maybe I organize the first Seoul Juggling Festival. Maybe... who knows.

Ultimately, my parting with Corvallis represents to me the first time I've ever moved away from a place and was in the middle of success. Quite literally, I've moved away from the best thing that's happened in my life. Previously, I've only just run away from my problems and crudy lifestyle. Corvallis, and all of my accomplishments, friendships, partnerships, community service, and work experience there, serve as a trophy for me. I can finally look at a period of time in my life that I actually did something, a lot of things, that were positive for myself and the community.

Quote of the Day

Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ~Andre Gide

contactjuggling.org

I've added a link to contactjuggling.org in my sidebar. It's got a forum set up which is always useful when you need information and it has a lot of videos of moves that you don't have to download to view.

Quote of the Day

Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment, and especially on their children, than the unlived life of their parents. ~Carl Jung

Follow Your Bliss

Do you remember the TV show "The Greatest American Hero"? The song goes "believe it or not, I'm walking on air, never thought I could fly so high, high, high!" or something like that. Well, believe it or not I'm planning a juggling convention.

We are calling it the Pacific Northwest Juggling Convention and it is going to be held on March 23-25, 2007 at Oregon State University. Thinking about what needs to be done and attending to the details has consumed much of my spare time. It's work, but it's work that feels good to me. I like to think that I contribute to the community and this is one way for me to do that.

Most of the people I have dealt with so far have been at least supportive, and some have gone out of their way to help contribute their resources and time. I've had some really funny luck with projects that I've started in the juggling world. It seems that the right people appear to help at the right time in the right way. It's almost like lots of stuff gets done effortlessly. Reminds me of a quote by Joseph Campbell.

Taken from the Joseph Campbell Foundation webpage:

BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of... being helped by hidden hands?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time - namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
* * *
My general formula for my students is "Follow your bliss." Find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it. --Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, pp. 120, 149

I have a feeling I'm on track right now.

Baylor & Around The World

I posted on rec.juggling that I was visiting Waco, Texas and was looking to juggle with the locals. A day later someone responded and now I am going to be juggling with the newly formed Baylor Juggling Club for the next three weeks on Tuesday nights.

The fact that two people responded to that post got me thinking about travelling and staying at jugglers' homes. I found out there is a list of people on www.juggle.org around the world who are willing to host jugglers for a couple nights. I can honestly say this is something that has just made it on to my things-to-do-before-I-die list. I want to travel around the world and stay with jugglers the whole time.

Quote of the Day

The earth does not belong to man, man belongs to the earth. ~Chief Seattle