Commissioned Essay: Airstream Juggling

“What are you drawing on my window?” The taxi driver asked, breaking the silence.

Awaken from my entangled thoughts, I replied, “Oh, a floating ball, sir.”

“What for?”

“It’s my physics research problem. A ball can float on a slanted airstream.”

             I was thinking about one of the forces that capture the ball inside the airstream. On the wet taxi window, I drew a circle and some curves and arrows.  

“Wow, it’s amazing.”

“Yup, it’s like magic. A juggling magic.”

I was surprised by myself saying this. Truly the floating ball was similar with juggling. You juggle three balls with two hands. The airstream juggles one ball with no hand. As juggling is a continuous cycle of the balls, the floating ball exhibits a cycle of oscillating motion.

I soon became lost in memories, in a Christmas day 5 years ago. I received professional juggling balls for Christmas gift. Excited, I juggled all day so hard. I stared at the juggling lecture videos and scrutinized how the video guy showed a stable command of various skills. I tried to mimic him, dropped the balls, and tried and dropped, again and again. Whenever I was stuck I took a video of myself to see why I had kept failing. At the end of the day I could juggle under my leg, behind my back, and with my hands flipped. Still, there were so many skills left to do with three balls.  

Whoosh, 4 years after, Christmas day again, in a physics research camp. I was given a research problem for a physics debate competition. Thrilled, I conducted rigorous experiments all day. I stared at the phenomenon videos I had taken, searching for the conditions of stable levitation. Various forces acted upon the ball, and various factors influenced the motion. I put the ball on the airstream, dropped, and put and dropped, again and again. Whenever I found myself in a theoretical dilemma I asked myself fundamentally why the phenomenon happens. At the end of the camp I could explain some part of the phenomenon, but still there were so many veiled effects.

Whoosh, to the juggling days, in the National Park, and in a service center. I performed juggling with my team. I juggled two balls and an apple, which I bit in each cycle. Then my teammate stole them away, maintaining the cycle of juggling. I pretended to be angry, and took them back again and ran away, juggling and biting the apple voraciously. To perfect a single performance I had eaten hundreds of apples and had thrown the balls thousand times. Each cycle of balls, a fruit of devoted practice, delighted the crowd in the National Park and the grannies in the service center.

Whoosh, now I was in the final round of the physics debate competition. I made a presentation about my research of the floating ball. With elaborate equations and vivid imagery descriptions, I explained the forces that make the ball oscillate inside the airstream. Only for this presentation I had been awake and struggling till dawn for an entire month. Each explanation of the oscillation, a product of dedicated investigation, elated other student physicists and professors.  

Zoom, back in the taxi. I wondered how come I had been driven back to juggling after 4 years. Then I realized, I had been juggling with life all the time. Life has itself been an incessant cycle. A cycle that requires numerous trials and lessons to unmask some of its extremely various elements, but still the whole never reveals itself. A pure, fundamental inquiry about ‘why’ usually eases the process of knowing its mystery. Most importantly, life rewards only those who are the most passionate.

I looked up the window. The ball and the airstream glittered as the water droplets reflected the sunlight. My juggling cycle had not ended. In fact, it will never end.

646 words