Juggler

2016, Jule Scherer, “Going out for the first time as a mum,” stuff.co.nz, 15 March, 2016, Since the babies were born I’ve turned into a 24/7 milking machine, a bilingual nursery-rhyme jukebox, a prolific laundress, a bum-wiping wizard, a baby juggler and two-armed synchronised cuddler.

Baraka was part trickster and part provocateur, a brilliant juggler of genres, ideas, and identities, whose career spanned nearly six decades.

Coming forward and seating himself on the ground in his white dress and tightened turban, the chief of the Indian Jugglers begins with tossing up two brass balls, which is what any of us could do, and concludes with keeping up four at the same time, which is what none of us could do to save our lives, nor if we were to take our whole lives to do it in.

The waiters, commanded by Jules, moved softly across the thick Oriental rugs, balancing their trays with the dexterity of jugglers, and receiving and executing orders with that air of profound importance of which only really first-class waiters have the secret.

Only when a juggler misses catching his ball does he appeal to me.

They ſay this tovvne is full of coſenage: / As nimble Iuglers that deceiue the eie: / Darke vvorking Sorcerers that change the minde: / Soule-killing VVitches, that deforme the bodie: […]

[…] Along with them / They brought one Pinch, a hungry lean-faced villain, / A mere anatomy, a mountebank, / A threadbare juggler and a fortune-teller, / A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, / A dead-looking man: this pernicious slave, / Forsooth, took on him as a conjurer […]

And such captious ſubtleties do indeed often puzzle and ſometimes ſilence men, but rarely ſatisfy them. Being like the tricks of Jugglers, vvhereby men doubt not but they are cheated, though oftentimes they cannot declare by vvhat ſlights they are impoſed on.