Chinlone and Ping Pong and Beyond

A while ago, I wrote the following about a game called Chinlone:

This is the kind of stuff that gives me chills, that makes me just about want to pray to the spirit of play, if you know what I mean, if there is such a thing. Double Dutch, from 4 corners, while balancing a ball on one foot. And, o, wait. Isn't the girl in the middle also jumping her own rope while she's jumping the two crossed ropes while keeping a ball balanced on her foot? How utterly accomplished is that? How fun, how lovely, how spiritual, how miraculous how the spirit of play has moved these girls to such profound and practiced depth!

Today, I thought I'd put that together with something else I wrote, more than 30 years ago, in a book called The Well-Played Game about a game of, yes, ping pong:

Whenever there’s a moment of excellence, whenever one of us has to stretch beyond in order to keep the game going, we can both tell it happens.  And each time it happens, that particular experience of excellence,  it seems to happen a little more obviously. We seem to be getting better at playing well together. We can feel it now. We know what it is. It’s no longer an idea,  it’s what we’re actually doing with each other. And because we know what it is so intimately, we seem to be able to stay there longer. 

I was hoping this would make a connection for us - to something even more connected.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith