(no subject)
Juggling and math are the same insofar as they're really tough until they're done, at which point they're trivial.
To be a little less aphoristic: both follow precise and invariant laws. Once the mind comprehends those laws (in one case through abstraction, in the other through muscle memory) there's nothing to it.
They're the opposite of stories, Umberto Eco's novel-as-a-lazy-machine, in which all the precision goes in at the front and a bunch of quanta of uncertainty stream out, to be lent precision by the observation of the reader. The clockwork goes in and the bird chimes out.
Which leads me to think that maybe people enjoy watching juggling because secretly they imagine themselves as the juggler, with all the uncertainty and humanity in the throwing and the catching, not the looking. While people write books because they first love to read.
To be a little less aphoristic: both follow precise and invariant laws. Once the mind comprehends those laws (in one case through abstraction, in the other through muscle memory) there's nothing to it.
They're the opposite of stories, Umberto Eco's novel-as-a-lazy-machine, in which all the precision goes in at the front and a bunch of quanta of uncertainty stream out, to be lent precision by the observation of the reader. The clockwork goes in and the bird chimes out.
Which leads me to think that maybe people enjoy watching juggling because secretly they imagine themselves as the juggler, with all the uncertainty and humanity in the throwing and the catching, not the looking. While people write books because they first love to read.