One of the four
themes in‘Olympic Medicine’, found in Cultural
Anxiety, by Lopez Pedraza , is the consciousness of ‘fault’. I have not read this book; although I am
familiar with the gist of it The
consciousness of ‘fault’ makes me think
of “the grandfather of sports” CHUK (pronounced like a “chunk”of foam.) This quasi-sport was a spiritual practice in
disguise. It started spontaneously; but,
It was my second and third acid “trips” in late December,
in1973, with the High School “jocks”
that I laughed with,, who were my friends. I initiated the Chuk one night in the Fall,
when everyone looked burned out and lethargic,
but I wanted action. I was inspired by
some vague notion of a Native American sport, I couldn’t rightly say what it
was called. Thus keeping a piece of foam rubber in motion, without contaminating the practice
with obtuse rules, nor appointing losers. I lobbied hard and long to maintain
Chuk in its pure state, without rules. People constantly tried to modify the Chuk
with rules. In fact, the leitmotif: “Become
1 with the Chuk ”was the only rule. There were no rules, that was the first
precept. “Don’t say you’re sorry, because we aren’t
doing anything”, was the second precept.
Keep it going, don’t interrupt
the flow, was the third precept. Lastly, If ever the chuk, or somebody, appears
to do something nearly impossible, or after a particularly rewarding round of
chuking- applaud, in a gentlemanly fashion.
When you
have swooped down, spun around, swung your blind arm and caught the chuk, shooting it off the
wall, where it makes a wide arc, rolls slowly through space, connects with a
foot it, shoots across the room, you
dive across the room smack the Chuk sending it back, immediately its heading
back to the last corner, instantly you
jump like a cat, battling gravity for control of the chuk, and taking control you pass it it with a
precise smack, slowing it down. The Chuk
moves at lightning speed off the
ceiling, off the floor, off of you. The
key is to concentrate on the chuk. Eventually the “state of Chuk” is entered into.
The state of Chuk hasmany names. It’s
been called the flow, the zone, runner’s
high; it is a higher state of awareness;
but more than that, it is a higher state of being, probably closely related to
the primordial condition of human beings, the instinctual animal humanWho was
not a lout, more like a dancer.
There is a transformational state that
occurs when your concentration becomes one with the chuk. Conscious awareness supersedes the tyranny of the linguistic mode, and the
anxieties attendant upon discourse. Allowing
the motor cortex to feed on energy exchanged in the hunt for the Chuk . The state of Chuk reminds me of the movie Highlander, when the
immortals undergo a rite of passage, called “the quickening”, in which their powers
increase amidst a storm of electro-magnetic sparks , and much wailing. Chuk accelerates reflex time, and develops
the motor cortex. Very importantly, our attention
is free from the winner-loser anxiety, so
awfully common among people. Chuk was a
collective Win-all-around. The state of
Chuk was the prize. The evening of
December 31 1973, Chuk was recovered from the breast of eternity. That night myself and two others took 3 and
1/3 hits of mescaline and played Chuk in my basement long into the wee hours of
the morn. We entered an alternative
universe, very close to our own, one in which we were both particle and
wave. We leapt and hurled and twirled ourselves
after the Chuk and occassionaly when it would get stuck on the ceiling light,
or jam itself into the corner of the ceiling, we froze, and spontaneously applauded
politely. A wild man sport of uttermost integrity. We put our hearts into that round after
round. We’d smoke the calabash, and resume. While in the throes of Chuk, verbalizations erupted like bird talk, or
short grunts which raised our hilarity to a crescendo. The sense of freedom was
indescribable. The freedom from the
anxiety attendant on winner-loser gamesmanship, gave Chukits well deserved
title: “the grandfather of sports”. Chuk
is a transcendental path that we
discovered by chance. When I “became one”
with the Chuk, I re-organized the
hyperspherical dimensions of this universe that I am in, that I am. Our bodies were still three dimensional, but
the single pointed concentration was a one-dimensional paradox; one dimensional
consciousness, absolutely pristine awareness.
I can still achieve this single pointed concentration simply by
imagining the Chuk is about to be dropped into play. The mark of Chuk, you know
you are getting close when people start spontaneously laughing, even though,
theoretically we aren’t doing anything. .
