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Born: April 29, 1974 Height: 5'6" at last measure Weight: 120 lbs. Hair: Brown Eyes: Brown Freckles: lots Profession: Juggler Since: 1988 Academic Training: 1996 Graduate of the University of California at Santa Cruz with Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Environmental Studies and Biology Odds of Using These Degrees in a Sensible Fashion: Slim to None Other Training: Working with Rotator Bicycles, Sven honed his skills fabricating with metal and various top-secret technologies. Hobbies:
Like an arrow singing from the bow, I have always known my singular purpose in life. As I hurtle along my trajectory, all of my thoughts, energy, and actions are focused on reaching my seemingly impossible target. Heal Earth. To know from the youngest age what you need to do with your life, and to know that it is a fundamentally impossible task, is a rather strange experience. One must choose to give up entirely, or to release the concept of impossibility. Growing up on California's remote north coast between Fort Bragg and Mendocino, my connection to the environment was fostered by a childhood spent wandering the redwood ravines, pygmy forests, and coastal bluffs. I observed and was amazed by the wonders of the natural world. Watching spiders paragliding on silken canopies of their own manufacture, monitoring the daily metamorphosis of a tadpole shifting into the shape of a miniature frog, how could I believe anything to be truly impossible? Watching barn swallows teach their young to fly, how could I become anything but a complete optimist? Something else caught my attention as a child; juggling. Whenever the Pickle Family Circus visited my diminutive town, I was absolutely enchanted by the dance of clubs, rings and balls adroitly guided through the air. When by some random chance a movie called "The Juggler of Notre Dame" aired the television, I became certain that I must one day learn to juggle. Finally, in 1988, I picked up three golf balls and immediately realized that I would ultimately use juggling as a tool to address environmental issues. My interest in the stranger-than-fiction stories of the natural world found me attending the University of California at Santa Cruz and majoring in both Biology and Environmental Studies (along with an unofficial, self-directed major in juggling). The University taught me about the science of chemistry, biology, ecology, mammalogy, ornithology, and herpetology, about the functioning of plants and fungi, and about the sociology behind the environmental issues of our times. However, the most important things that I have learned came neither in the classroom, nor the lab. My greatest lessons and insights into the mysteries of life have found me while running down rocky trails, traversing high mountain passes, or casting seven balls towards the heavens. My passion and exuberance for the beauty of life, my confidence in the ability of humans to do absolutely anything, my knowledge that we are greater than our fears, these are the things that I wish to share. What better artistic medium than juggling? Juggling has taught me the patience to solve exceedingly complicated problems. Juggling has taught me that what is impossible today, will become a fluid skill tomorrow. Juggling has taught me that the only failure is in not trying at all. Juggling has taught me that humans working together can effortlessly do that which pushes a struggling individual to his limit. These are exactly the lessons that will enable humans to overcome the extraordinarily complicated and seemingly insurmountable environmental problems of the day. performing is the most direct and powerful manner for me to share these lessons. Above all, juggling allows me to share with others the inspirational power of unadulterated joy.
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