Ok, here's an brief exercise

Ok, here's an brief exercise for you: Take four acrylic contact juggling balls, each 75mm in diameter and stack them in your hand in a pyramid formation. Next attempt to rotate the base of the pyramid in a smooth 360 degree circle by wiggling your fingers. At this point in the exercise I fully expect the number of balls in your hand to total zero, and the number of balls scattered on the ground around you to total four.

Basically, it's really rather difficult. And note my clever use of understatement when I write that,

Only last week I was sitting in front of someone performing a pyramid with such silken grace that I swore enviously that I must have been watching an optical illusion of some kind, since after my many failed attempts I was quite convinced that it was impossible. Maybe my fingers were too short or the balls too large. All I knew was that it wasn't happening.

Until tonight. Tonight, after many moons of attempting use the power of mind to bind those balls in tight formation as they circled around my hand, it finally clicked. Slowly, but surely the balls edged around my palm. The movement was halting at best, but no ball left my hand, and that magical fourth ball remained perched up on the stack. Things fell apart after that glorious first successful spin, but I managed to replicate it again, and soon managed several sequential circles.

As is the way of these things, it's now almost difficult to remember how I could ever have found it so difficult to begin with. Of course, I could remind myself immediately by attempting the same thing with my other hand, but for the moment I'm going to sit back and bask in my glorious success.

I rock!