GPS: 39.33804817683493, -76.63883060216904
Many afternoons and evenings I have come to this place to juggle. It’s a good place to practice, wide open grassy spaces, trees for shade, close to my house, some interesting foot, bicycle and car traffic. It is, after all, a neighborhood round-about. At its center stands an enormous white flagpole. A park on its eastern spur towards Falls Road contains a monolithic memorial to servicemen and women from this very neighborhood who gave their lives in the defense of this country.
Responses to juggling here are varied. Small kids will typically squeal in delight and scream out some variation on the word “juggler” or “juggling.” Sometimes I hear people gasp audibly from open windows of passing cars. Not infrequently someone in a passing car will yell out a command as they drive by: “Throw it real high!” or “Next time with torches and fire!” These have been, for the most part, overwhelmingly positive. One day recently while drilling lefty straight doubles, I was approached by a neighborhood resident and invited to apply to become a part of the local Mayor’s Christmas Parade - something I might do if it fits in with my schedule.
People ask things like how I got into it or how hard it is to juggle. I always say it just takes lots of practice. I don’t have a gimmick or a routine worked out here though. I’m not trying to “achieve” something. I’m just working on my skills. Its just so happens that its more convenient to do that in public, and it also acclimatizes you to interacting with passersby. Parks are good practice for street performers. You can work on your craft, see what people in the area respond to as far as tricks or are interested in conversationally. An observant juggler can pick up a great deal of information quickly. Juggling is all about patterns. You juggle in one place many times, you start to see how the neighborhood juggles, how its inhabitants play with and against patterns inherent in that time and place.
This place is a circle. Sometimes people drive round and round it several times in a row. I don’t know if they are gawking (I don’t really check) or if they are lost. Maybe both. Maybe neither. The flagpole is kind of an axis mundi of the neighborhood.
[...] a ubiquitous symbol that crosses human cultures. The image expresses a point of connection between sky and earth where the four compass directions meet. At this point travel and correspondence is made between higher and lower realms. Communication from lower realms may ascend to higher ones and blessings from higher realms may descend to lower ones and be disseminated to all.
Though that may be kind of a high-falutin thing to say about an overwhelmingly blue-collar neighborhood, it still applies. Every region has its sacred sites and places, somewhere you go to sit and think, somewhere you pass through on your way somewhere else. This is one of mine.
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