Page 13 Winter 1987-88
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Shell
gaming compounds the "dexterous manipulation" of ball
juggling with the bluff and deception of poker. Guardians of public
morals have long regarded the shell game juggler with suspicion,
classed this activity as a particularly sordid form of gambling, and
condemned practitioners to haunt the back alleys of carnivals and
fairs.
Even
today, at the Clignancourt flea market in
Akin
in spirit to the shell-shifter is the dishonest accountant: a kind
of juggler who used financial sleight-of-hand not just to fool, but
to cheat. "To juggle the books" implies the ability to
keep one set of numbers on hand (that is, in view of the auditor)
and another set - the real ones - "in the air" (that is,
passing invisibly through the columns of figures so that the books
appear 'balanced".
Here we confront one of the basic moral dilemmas posed by the act of juggling: the ethics of playing for keeps. Once money becomes a major consideration, a new question of balance presents itself: the equilibrium between the love of an activity for its own sake and the desire to earn a living by its public performance.
Conjurers,
tricksters, dexterous manipulators - what sort of person does this
describe? A person like Doctor Faustus. Legend and history blur
together when we read of this Renaissance archmage. Here was a man
who would be master of the world: the objects in it and the
principles that govern it.
According
to the old tales, Faust graduated from and
juggled to amuse kings and peasants, advanced to the practice of
more perilous sorcery, and ended by selling his soul to Lucifer for
power-knowledge.
Childlike
and accomplished, searching and selfish, the Faust-figure stands as
the symbol of Western humanity's drive for power achieved by the
"dexterous manipulation" of the forces of the world.
In all serious jugglers there is a bit of the child, a bit of the con-man, a bit of the demonic conjurer. Juggling can be pure fun, a solo game with no winners or losers.
The professional ball and club juggler knows what it means to pass from the simpIe joy of the sport to the necessities of pleasing a crowd. New arts of human interaction must be added to the accomplishments of manual dexterity. The first childish urge of the public juggler "Hey, look at me!" - must be transmuted into the more mature desire to please others.
But
there always exists another urge: the desire to win money by beating other
people. The shell gamer uses the art not to entertain, but to dupe.
The shell gamer is therefore doomed to exist in the shadows of a
society that does not wish to be reminded of its own weaknesses.
A
good ball juggler wins the applause of the audience because he or she
temporarily overcomes "the
hard condition of the world," a world where things fall down and
apart, but the shell gamer reminds victims that they are not so smart
as they thought. The losers condemn the deception as trickery, and
banishes the juggler from respectable society.
Taken
seriously, the act of juggling raises basic issues of human existence:
Where is the true balance point between casual enjoyment and serious
mastery? Between "Look at me!" and "Watch
this!"? Between sincere commitment and foolish obsession?
Faust
is the ultimate juggler, the very archetype of the
juggler/con-man/mage distrusted by the sober community of shops and
securities. As he conjures and juggles, Faust dreams of putting
himself in harmony with gravity, the fundamental entropic force of the
universe. He sees the whole of the Milky Way as only one ring qf an
infinity of rings kept spinning by the Master Juggler balancing on the
Firmament of Time.
Here we return to the central morality inherent in juggling on the highest plane. Objects fly through the air, stars wheel through the universe. All fall eventually. If the juggler becomes obsessed with definitively mastering the decline, the juggler is lost. If the juggler achieves peace within the intervals of rising and falling, the juggler finds grace. |