Примитивный дротикошвырятель

For the past two years I have practiced and studied everything I could about throwing darts. I have watched videos and observed the techniques of others. I have asked all questions and listened to the answers. I have attacked the sport logically and technically in an effort to improve.

This has been a good journey with many insights and improvements. I would encourage anyone interested in getting better at the sport of darts to travel its path. Yet, here I am, back at the beginning. How can this be?

“It is possible to think, rather than in verbal concepts, in images, shapes, myths, gods, in landscapes, colors, natural phenomena, in terms of action and performance. All primitive world images evolve in this way, verbal language refers to it.”

Jaspers

Here, once again at the beginning, I understand that darts is indeed a conceptual sport whose characteristics, as Jaspers points out, are only referred to by verbal language. From the beginnings of time, yes, even before words, our ancestors picked up objects and threw them at targets.

Still, there are an uncountable number of words, examples and analogies, to explain how an object, a dart, can be thrown through the air to hit a target; something I suspect our ancestors could do quite well without the inventions of aerodynamics, parabolic curves or Newton’s Laws of Motion.

Perhaps, people like myself, after watching others, asked, “How?” And then, wrote down the explanations that were offered. Or maybe someone who really knew how tried to share that knowledge with others and wrote a book. A book full of words that refer to unique actions and highly individualistic perceptions but all subject to interpretation by the reader.

So readers, like myself, listen to explanations of focus, concentration, practice, non-movement, consistency, and correct mechanics only to discover there are exceptions everywhere. Words are incapable of capturing the simple essence of throwing a dart at a target.

Moving just one step further, it becomes apparent that words actually interfere with one’s ability to throw an object at a target. Since words are not the action it self, while attempting to think and throw, our attention is split between the words we use and the action we take so that we do neither with adequate devotion. Furthermore, if were we to focus 100% on he words and glean every ounce of meaning from them, our interpretations would still be lacking. Were it possible for words to carry the meanings of actions, we could all sit to read and have the direct experiences transmitted to us, but this is not the case. Words always fall short of transmitting personal experience.

So, here I am, back at the beginning, a primitive darter with no explanations to guide me, no words to help me on the path ahead. Just pick up the dart and throw.

Karl M. Hartman