A Random Magical Moment In Bryant Park
I don’t generally pontificate in a free form fashion. Well, ok. That was funny – I agree. I am always pontificating, bloviating, and regurgitating said pontifications in free form fashion. I can’t not pontificate.
I’ll come in again.
Normally, I pontificate and opine wildly about movies. And it is fairly rare that I wax poetical about life in general. But something happened the other day that I thought I’d mention.
So yeah, if you aren’t aware – over the past week or so I’ve been on vacation. Less a vacation and more a postprandial somnolence. A frenetically blissful repose. If a blissful repose could ever be frenetic. Sort of a suprasubliminal conscious unconsciousness. (See, bloviation.) And this vacation has been a National Park lightening round of wonder and awe. Think, cliché ridden family vacation. Think Griswolds, but with St. Louis arches, Niagara Falls boat tours, downtown New York City Broadway musicals, Philadelphia historical district Segway tours, Chincoteague ponies, Long Beach Island light houses, sand castles, and the like. Yes, I said stereotypical. So stereotypical I’m thinking it might deserve a screenplay and a movie. Anyway, you get the idea.
Right, so I’ve been having an amazing time with my family even if the places we are going and the things we are doing, aren’t swimming with sharks or spelunking in a volcano. But there was one, totally unexpected moment of sheer bliss I wanted to mention. That thing might seem simple to you, so I will do my best to frame it for you… but to do so means going backwards in time to my middle school days.
When I was 13 or so, I taught myself how to juggle pretty quickly (it was about that same time frame that I not only found a book on juggling, but also about hypnotism, and learned how to hypnotize…… my sister. But that is a different story for a different day.) And I also wanted to learn how to ride a unicycle. But, I couldn’t afford the $300 necessary for a half decent unicycle, so I decided to work on learning how to juggle pins. (Don’t worry, I eventually got that unicycle (which was stolen a few years later off the bike rack at school, lock and all) and learned, but that too is another story for another day.) But, pins cost money too, so I decided to teach myself using Coke bottles.
Yeah, that went about as well as you might expect.
Shattered glass. Flying projectiles. Bleeding appendages. But it worked. I eventually learned how to juggle pins. I even got a set of pins from a friend who was giving away an old set. (Herb Reisig, thank you mate! I still have them, they are my only pair I juggle with even though I have purchased many since.) So I spent my time juggling on my own, and keeping this hobby of mine mainly to myself. Until I met a couple of new friends my freshman year in high school. These two guys hung out in the quad of our 2,500 kid school, and juggled with pretty much anyone and everyone that came along. Whether they knew how or not.
It was like this perfect picture of grace. I really can’t even describe it really. The two of them would be juggling pins and passing back and forth at a prodigious rate, and a jock would come up and just ridicule them to death. But then a few others would wander over, mid jock-rant, and ask if they could try. And next thing they knew, they were learning how to do something they thought was impossible 5 minutes ago. Juggling became such a fever actually, that it sort of invaded the entirety of our school for a year or more. Sure, the D&D geeks got in on the fun, but so did the band click and that preppy guy who only wore IZOD… you know that guy. Everyone joined in.
So the day I wandered over and said, yeah, I think I’d like to give it a try… and they handed me three pins from off the ground, I instantly fit in. I instantly was home. And over the course of about two years juggling off and on before school, after school, during lunch, I learned a ton, a ton about myself, other people… oh right, I also learned a lot about juggling.
Back to the vacation. Well, one of the legs of our vacation was hammering Broadway pretty much constantly for the better part of four or five days. During the day, we started out our mornings over at Bryant Park. Which, I had no idea had such a storied and interesting history. That though, is 100% beside the point. We’d have breakfast, then head out to the World Trade Center Memorial, or the Umpire State Building (as my son revels in calling it), or what have you, before we headed up to Broadway for the onslaught of shows we were determined to take in.
Well, one of these mornings, I walked a different way around the park, and saw a man standing there, in tie, and business attire, juggling. He was surrounded by a multitude of pins around his feet. And immediately I thought of him as a sort of a Mary Poppins sort of character. Just magical beyond belief. So much so, I sort of decided that I didn’t want to approach for fear of breaking the mirage and making the magic go away. But the closer I approached the more real the man became, and the more enticing the visage was. (I’m nearly certain that a siren, deciding to call me to my death wouldn’t come with sexual whispers of love and pleasures, but rather of circus acts and three ring pageantry. Oh dear do I digress.) Anyway, I went over and our conversation went a little something like this:
Taylor: “Hey there.”
Mary Poppins Figure: “Welcome!”
Taylor: “Can I join in?”
Mary Poppins Figure: “Sure, sure, pins, balls… join in.”
Taylor: “Do you know how to pass?” (He nodded a sly grin indicating he was extraordinarily well versed.) “Mind letting me try it again?”
Mary Poppins Figure: “Sure sure, when was the last time you passed pins?”
Taylor: “College? High school? Can’t be sure. It’s been a very long time.”
Mary Poppins Figure: “Well let’s give it a go shall we?”
Taylor: “Quick start? Slow start? Every other? Every one? How do you like to do it?”
Mary Poppins Figure: “Hear that Everyone? This guy speaks our language! How about quick, every other…”
And with that I was chucking pins over his head and out into the trees… but soon I’d gotten back into the rhythm of it, and as I looked around… this single solitary figure was actually surrounded by an entire plethora of people juggling. What is the term for a bunch of jugglers? A shrewdness? A cauldron? A gaggle? Yes. A gaggle seems right. I was surrounded by a gaggle of juggling jugglers. And instantly, I was home. I was literally, in that moment, in Bryant Park in New York City, with this Mary Poppins figure, I was home. Surrounded by children learning for the first time. And adults that had been juggling their whole lives, I was home.
When I decided I needed to get going, because I had a family waiting somewhere else in Bryant Park, I told my new soul mate I had to move along.
Mary Poppins Figure: “Already? So soon?”
Taylor: “Yes, I am afraid so. By the way, I am Taylor.”
Mary Poppins Figure: “And I am Alex. We hang out here most days during lunch time. You are always welcome.”
And because I sort of thought my eyes were lying to me – that this world I had stumbled onto was actually only accessible via wardrobe or picture frame, I decided to take a short video of what I saw so I could share it with some of you that may care, for momentarily, at least. Care about this mini-nirvana, tucked away at one end of Bryant Park…
I even did a quick Google search for my mythical Alex of Bryant Park and I learned that he, and his merry troop of troubadours are not only there regularly but they officially teach those that come through six days a week as well. Not only that! But I learned that Alex-of the Mary Poppins fame, actually has a last name. Alex Dyer! (I’m beginning to get really creepy aren’t I? Hrm.)
In an interview he gave back in 2014, Alex said that he started coming out and juggling in Bryant Park back in 2009 as a way to relax during his lunch hour. And just like that, people started to join him and juggle along with him as well. Now there are apparently over 200 members in the club! And I am seriously considering moving to New York just so I can join in.
“It makes people smile pretty much one hundred percent of the time, even if they’re not learning it perfectly well,” said Dyer. And Mr. Dyer, my hope is, that some day, the search engine gods will direct this post to your attention – and you’ll know of the goodness you brought into the world for at least one person… but obviously hundreds.
As an aside… if you are curious about my lame juggling skills (which are nothing compared to Alex’s) you can check it out here.
Edited by: CY
