Climb On! Long Dong (no pun intended, people)

Before I left for Taiwan, my brother gave me some advice. He's famous for dishing out little tidbits of wisdom. When I was having girl troubles he told me a lengthy anecdote about a girl he dated who worked at some kind of Disney based entertainment venue and was remembered in his mind for having worn her "squirrel suit" for my brother's entertainment. "That's the type of chick you need" he said. "A chick in a squirrel suit." It was good advice, and I remembered these words every time things got a little too serious with a particular girl. When I left for Taiwan, he offered more wisdom which I underestimated at first, but then came to appreciate. "Watch out for typhoons!" was his solemn warning.

This last weekend I went over to a climbing area on the northeastern coast of Taiwan for some oceanside climbing. I rode the train for several hours, and because of the effort required in reaching this distant destination, I brought some camping accoutrement(s), including a hammock, a sleeping bag and a thermarest. I made my way out to the steep cliffs of the Longdong "rock yard" and looked around before deciding that it was time to find a place to make camp. In exploring the cliffs I found a cam that was stuck inside a crack at waist level, far too close to the ground to be of use as pro, and it occurred to me that someone had the same idea I did. Use a nut and a cam to set up a hammock for the night. Though I noticed that everyone else was going home as dusk settled in, I found it reassuring to note that someone had tried this method before me, just as I would be happy to find a wand sticking out of the snow in a whiteout-- a familiar sign that someone had passed this way before.

As I set up my kit for sleep amongst the sandstone towers, I remembered that this hammock had been given to me by my former girlfriend as a Christmas present because she didn't want me sleeping on the ground in Costa Rica. The way that she had supported my desire to travel over Christmas rather than spend time consuming was very romantic to me at the time, and as I watched the sun set over the crashing waves to the east, I grew a little melancholy. If it's true, as Kalil Gabrain once noticed that "much of your pain is self-chosen" I bolstered my loneliness with a memory of camping at Big Sur with Anna and Henzi. We were in a tent right on the beach in the winter and the waves collided onto the beach making a sound which Matt described as "not exactly soothing" and to which Anna reacted by panicking all night long, depriving us both of sleep. The worst part was, she would not allow me to do anything about it. Do you want me to move the tent? I would ask, and she would say no, but then she would again refuse to go to sleep and she would wake me every so often to ask what we should do to stay safe. I know it should be obvious, as it is for many, but the meaning of this incident totally eluded me as I tried vainly for sleep in the hammock given to me by my former girlfriend that night. At least I'll eventually sleep tonight, I thought.

I tossed and turned and further pondered my life when I decided that I was thirsty. This would prove to be a problem as I had run out of water earlier. However, I had spotted among the flotsam, a few half empty two liter bottles of water at the base of the crag left there by some climber who probably makes the trip out every weekend and doesn't want to hump gallons of water in to the crag each time. I grabbed a headlamp and set out in search of the aforementioned bottle, hopping boulders across the rocky moonscape. I jumped from one rock to the next until one tumbled from underneath me and I fell. When I came to rest, I was atop a pile of soft material. Upon closer examination it was a pile of styrofoam washed over from China. The last boulder was nothing but a giant piece of plastic which looked like a rock in the moonlight. I eventually found the water after having discovered all sorts of peculiar odds and ends gathered by the waves in the last big storm. I made my way back to the bivy more carefully this time.

I was hydrated and worry free when the old familiar ear ringing noise commenced. It was a swarm of mosquitoes, as could have been foreseen. My mosquito repellent was no match for the fierce Taiwanese insects that appeared suddenly and in full force. For some reason insects here are about 5 times the normal size. While surfing the previous weekend, I took photos of a six inch long grasshopper and some palm sized spiders. Mosquitoes were no exception, and to make matters worse they were louder than normal. A gust of wind blew suddenly and the mosquitoes were gone as mysteriously as they had appeared.

It was then that I felt the first raindrop.

At camp we play this game where the kids simulate a thunderstorm by rubbing their palms together then snapping their fingers to imitate the sound of the first drops, then they move to the more deluge-like hand clapping and knee slapping, and finally they stomp their feet as if a real flood was upon them. This storm moved from snapping of fingers to stomping of feet in twice the normal time and I found myself soaked to the bone with no shelter and no escape. I dumped my water out, seeing as how I was now getting hydrated through osmosis, cut off the top of the bottle with my pocket knife, shoved my camera and phone in there and turned the bottle upside down so that my only valuables would be protected from the torrent. I stripped off all of my clothes and cradled myself wrapped into the folds of the hammock, and lay there shivering in my own private puddle of despair. I went to sleep when it stopped around 4 am and I woke around 6 am when the sun hit my face and felt like it would burn through my eyelids as I lay there.

I packed my stuff to leave when I ran into a guy with rock shoes clipped to his pack. He stopped and asked me the time. Time to make the best of it and do a toprope or two, we decided. I told him I had camped there in a hammock and he looked shocked and told me that he had done the same but that he lost a cam that way. There we were, the only two guys bold enough to climb rock on a rainy day.

My brother once said something else which looking at the Chinese fisherman on the shore made me think about. We were out fishing somewhere near Pine Lake where we grew up. We just dangled our poles in the water silently for a very long time before Matty said "happiness is a fish that's very difficult to catch." Some people catch it I suppose, while others have to ponder it lying in fetal position in a puddle of rainwater on a small rock overlooking the South China Sea.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond

Somewhere I have never travelled, gladly beyond
When I got on the plane bound for Taiwan I was freaking out. I had less than one week before school started to attempt to understand a completely alien culture enough to land a job and find a place to live-- I was flying into the belly of the beast and I was almost certain I would fail. Aside from the logistical problems of my arrival, I was also worried about what I was leaving behind. What did I just begin? What did I just end? Will they be able to pronounce my last name there? It has both L and R. Will I guide in the Spring? Who will miss me? Who will I miss? Am I in love? Where should I park my motorcycle? Will I meet people over there? Who will show up to my 10 year high school reunion? Does I-5 go all the way to Mexico? Does God exist?
I had brought some illegal third world Valium in my pocket to help me calm down on the flight, and now seemed like a good time to take one, seeing as how I was temporarily unable to sort my questions into categories of "inconsequential" or "urgent." I'll wake up in 6 hours and then I can start reading the lonely planet guidebook for Taiwan. Not to be. I awoke almost 10 hours later as the asian flight attendant was announcing our impending arrival in Taipei. "Radies and gentuh-meen" the announcement began "anyone found to be in possession of ear-eagle drugs in Taiwan faces a mandatory sentence of capit-uh pun-eesh-meent." Probably something I should have known before I boarded this plane. It was time to swill down my remaining valium so as not to be decapitated upon my arrival. I was sure that this was going to slow down the job search.
I was told not to mention any ambitions regarding a job search as I passed through immigration. The immigration agent was polite but skeptical and treated me like some sort of drug addict, which is I'm sure exactly how I looked to him. He seemed upset that I had no round trip flight, but I told him I was planning on going to Hong Kong from here. He gave me a look that said "you better not fuck up my country with your hippie backpacker ways" and stamped my passport for 30 days. So I have 30 days to get my shit together here before I try the next country on my list which I guess is Canada.
The airport was extremely clean and modern. I sat down and worked on my computer for awhile because it said I could do that there. I would later find out that pretty much this entire country is wired. I can get free internet access in the cafes, on the street, at home, in the bar, or anywhere else. Only the American corporations like McDonalds and Starbucks which are (disappointingly) everywhere make you pay for it. Momentarily though I was in the airport for one very important reason. I didn't know what to do next.
I looked for hostels in the guidebook and the one that I picked came equipped with a friendly little asian woman who greeted me in the street with broken English, after the cab driver failed to find the exact address. It was then that I learned that phonetic spelling is kind of the norm. My hotel was on Zhongshan Rd but this was also spelled SengXien so the guy was understandably confused. Lin Tai Tai (I think the "Tai Tai" part means "wife of") as my new landlord was called, walked through the house at a pace that I was unable to follow in my valium saturated state. She walked me through some of the logistics of Taipei life, gave me keys, charged me too much and then made a call on my behalf to a sort of "teacher pimp" who would help to find me a job. I have an interview on Monday. I sat down on the couch for awhile underneath a handwritten sign that reads "he who has no doubt has no wisdom."
This done, I wandered down the street to the library taking my inspiration from Fitzgerald's character "Owl Eyes" who uses the sobriety of the library to help him break free of his inebriated state. I thought books would help me return to the world of the ambulatory, or at least help me to stop drooling on myself. It was here that I met my first friend in Taiwan. "Heyyyy wassssup" I lolled. He was energetic and friendly, tidy and well put together-- from Denver. We exchanged some salutations and then he offered to show me around the MRT-- Taipei's underground railway system. "Arrrr--ighhtt" I agreed, sounding like a drunken Pirate.
The metro was crowded and people flowed in an orderly fashion from one place to another, no one confused as to where they were going or what they were doing-- so lacking doubt in fact that I began to suspect their wisdom. We rode an escalator down, then across, then up, then down a longer one in a labyrinthine network of twists and turns that I was sure I could not replicate if I had to do so on my own. I just stood in the middle of the escalator, but homeboy pulled me to the side so that people who were in a bigger hurry could pass me on the left. It was easy for the unobservant and sedated American to violate minor customs.
Denver and I talked about how systematic and orderly things seemed to be in Taiwan. Nowhere did I see anyone who seemed destitute. Nowhere did I see any sign of anyone in need or anyone lacking direction or purpose. Never did I feel like I was in danger or threatened in any way. Never did I feel that sense of foreboding like when walking home from the bar late at night in Kathmandu or wandering down an unfamiliar alley in Delhi or when drunkenly passing out in my truck underneath the Alaska Way Viaduct. Denver said he thought it was because people remember the days of martial law, and have not forgotten those lessons. Despite the free society in which they find themselves today, the Taiwanese are sort of afraid and the solution is conformity. Right now I was recognizable from 100 yards, the slouching drugged out non conformist white guy who stood a head above all of the asians in the subway totally bewildered. My confusion was my wisdom.
In the interest of exploration I took the metro to the end of the line to Danshui and the edge of the city. I walked through a crowded market where all sorts of disgusting ocean dwelling critters were hawked at high volume in three or four different languages, none of which I understood at all. Through the miracle of modern english language signage I learned that this part of the island is thought to be a sleeping lady entombed inside a mountainside. The Leavenworthians have a similar legend. I toured a fort that was once placed there by the Portuguese and then overtaken by the dutch, eventually the British and finally the Chinese. On the wall inside the fort still hangs a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in the "officer's quarters." A stone man looks out at me through a porthole in the wall, a silent reminder of ancient abuses in the colonial jail cell. Briefly I wonder which side of the bars I am on as sweat pours down my back and I think of my new life on an intolerably hot 160 mile long island over which infestations of city lights crawl light a blight over a leaf.
I walk back down the hilltop where the fort stands toward the riverfront. It is Chinese Valentine's Day. According to the legend, and there are many variations, the cowherd and the weaver girl fell so deeply in love that they forgot their worldly duties. This angered the gods -- it probably angered everyone--and so the lovers were separated forever. Once a year though, magpies who took pity on the lovers would fly together to form a bridge that would enable the lovers to be together for one night. As I walked under a bridge across which was painted a depiction of the magpies, analogies surrounding my own life became all too clear.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

This is a poop blog

If I were to name the worst day I have ever had at camp, my mind would reel with images of MORE THAN ONE serious girlfriend who broke up with me while we were there. Or maybe I would think about that time I had a serious, albeit temporary existential crisis and threw a temper tantrum in front of my mom and several of her campers. Perhaps I would recall the day I sat on a horse in the rear of a horse procession when all of the horses in front of me had a sudden and coordinated attack of horse flatulence. But those experiences would be limiting the "worst day of camp" memories to things that had happened TO ME, and when examining the experiences of others, I can think of worse things such as the time the camper who was deathly afraid of bees got stung nine times in the same day. Or there's that time a kid fell down the hole of the outhouse into raw sewage. There's that.

It was the tail end of an already bad day at camp at the end of an already bad week at camp. As a ninth grade English teacher I have had to explain quite often the concept of "foreshadowing" as it pertains to kids' literature. In English class, these signs and symptoms of things to come are often quite transparent and readily identifiable. When the main character in your story notices a gun in the top drawer of his dad's armoire, it's fairly obvious that the author has mentioned this detail so that the character might use that gun later in the story. To kill Piggy perhaps. When painting an animal likeness onto the side of a baseball sized rock, it is fairly easy to predict what the artist might do if he becomes frustrated, as the assortment of half completed rock animals strewn all over camp would attest. All these literary predicts notwithstanding, when we hear things like "a really good hiding spot for hide and go seek would be at the bottom of the outhouse" we rarely see this as a sign of things to come. When I hear something like that, my reaction is to assume that no one would be that stupid. But there is never a time when the expression "to ASSUME makes an ASS out of U and ME" is more true than when you are assuming that people are not stupid. If you assumed that people can be held accountable for their own self preservation, you would be sued into next century.

Earlier that day I had witnessed several near drownings which proved the precise extent to which kids cannot be trusted with responsibility for their own lives. You gotta watch what you say. I had warned them about the dangers of standing up in fast moving water due to foot entrapment. It's best to point your feet down stream and float on your back until you reach safety, I said. So when I heard thrashing and yelling later on the river I abandoned my boat and rushed to save whoever might be drowning only to find a helpless and confused 10 year old having some kind of water squirming seizure in 14 inches of river. "Stand up!" I yelled. He did, and he stopped and the disaster was averted, but as he stood there whimpering, without shame he blamed the incident entirely on me, claiming "you told me not to stand up!" There's nothing "common" about common sense.

For instance, some kids have to be told that your body wants you to take a dump more than once a week. Upon arriving at camp, one 9 year old decided that he was just going to "hold it" for 6 whole days. I can understand, as the last time I was nervous to crap was on a big wall in Yosemite. On that occasion though, I was dangling from a rope on the side of a cliff and I would have had to crap in a bag. At times like these, I was telling my friend recently when asked "how do you crap on a wall?" that I usually just "hold it." She made a gross face and formed a cup shape with her hand and said "you HOLD it?" as if mortified. "I hold it in my rectum" I had to clarify, once again learning that lesson about assuming. The constipated kid who is now the focus of my story however had similarly decided to "hold it" for 6 days, which would explain his constant look of frustration and the comparison that others often made that he "looked just like an old man." I knew the secret, and hence understood the resemblance. He was probably frightened of the deep cavernous foul smelling abyss over which he would have had to dangle his nether-regions in order to complete said bowel evacuation. Some people at camp are too scared and others are not scared enough as we would soon discover.

In the novel Kite Runner by Khaleid Husseini, we read about a character who watches a loyal friend "losing his honor" at the hands of some evil older boys of dubious sexual orientation. The character of this novel is too scared to help his friend and harbors a secret guilt for the rest of his life. But what if instead of anal raping that book had been about falling down an out-house? For some reason, there are certain archetypal patterns of human experience that extend past cultural, ethnic, religious, and geographical boundaries into experience that is common to all of mankind. For some reason equally mysterious, it would seem that the reaction of a young person to seeing a friend in trouble is to slowly back away and tell no one.
No one would admit what happened to give this kid the bright idea to dangle his legs down the toilet as a friend looked on, but the conversation after he started to fall in sounded something like this, sources say. "Help me... I'm falling down in!" (silence) "Aren't you going to help me?" (more silence) "I'll give you all the money I have!" (sobs followed by silence followed by a loud splash followed by the tiny pitter-patter of tiny feet running far away followed by the agonized wail of the newly shit covered 9 year old).

"I remember how the Jews had to hide in the toilets to avoid the Nazis in that movie Schindler's List." someone would comment later. I suppose that would be one of the few instances in which it would be logical to hide in human waste. It's been said about climbing that men play at drama because they do not believe in the drama that is happening in real life. I suppose in a Nazi free world, wherein there is no enemy at the gates from whom we must hide in piles of steaming shit it is necessary nonetheless to hide in the steaming shit of our own meaningless existence. Wait.... I'm sorry but there's really no metaphor here. There's just a stinky little kid.

I rushed up to the out-house fearing the worst when I heard the screams which bespoke an agony far deeper than that of a bee sting. I opened the door to the outhouse and found it empty. Where was this screamer? I looked around from one corner of the outhouse to the next. Still no one. I opened the lid and seat of the toilet and there he was, arms outstretched toward the bowl down which I peered, sobbing and sobbing and wailing "get me out of herrrrreee!-uuhhhhhh." I reached my arms down in and grabbed him out. I pulled him up at the expense of my back only to find that his surplus flesh caused him to get stuck mid-way with his legs still dangling into the abyss. This childhood chunkiness didn't help him on the way down I thought, also thinking how he looked covered in that blue toxic germ killer substance they put down the outhouse to prevent the spread of pestilence--I remembered smurfette and Papa Smurf and some of the other blue people whose names ended with "y" like "fatty" and "dweeby" maybe, but was there one called "shitty?" That's what he looked like. He was blue and short and roundish like a smurf and he had a white shirt which was stained blue so he looked like a smurf for that reason too. And he was covered in turd, which detracted somewhat from what would have otherwise been a good smurf suit.

We hosed him off and laughed at him at a safe distance, and then my mother called my brother. I'm not sure why she she did this other than to say that she knew Matty would have some funny response to it. When she put me on the phone I told him how it was funny how he needed help getting out since he couldn't reach the toilet bowl to pull himself up and out. Matty said "yeah too bad for that kid that he doesn't have a 3 foot vertical jump out of shit. Maybe he can jump high normally, but out of shit? There's a reason basketball is not played on courts of shit."

This kid would console himself later by telling us "well at least the poop was all liquefied." My response to this was to inform him that liquefied shit is still shit, as much as he would have liked to believe otherwise. The constipated kid would remark that "[he] did [his] part by not going in there all week!" as if expecting some sort of congratulations or thanks. Ironically, the outhouse victim was worried that his parents would be angered saying "my parents are going to kill me!" I attempted to come up with something to console him, but all that came out was "the kids at school are going to be pretty mean too."

I suppose things like this would be good entries into the famous Darwin Awards. Somehow it's tragic and not funny though when the victim is only 9. Or so they say.
I still think it's funny. On the advice of several friends I have opted to create a business card to help me in my job search in Taiwan. On the online business card creator it asks for "name" and "company name" and "business slogan." I had to think about that last one. I think "keeping your kids shit free since July 2009" would be a good mission statement deserving consideration.
*jokes courtesy of Brant Wilkinson

Monday, June 15, 2009

A short list of reasons why I hate the i-phone

1) Because I am a romantic, I write letters. Sometimes with actual paper. Sometimes I even go to the trouble to send post-cards which I bought long ago and which have a sort of antique-ish feel. I assume these efforts are lost on those who would prefer the instant gratification of knowing immediately what exactly I was feeling and whether or not I was to ride unto Stanton Estate post haste. It's Austen I'm parodying here. Have you ever read Austen? Most of those novels are based on the idea of a woman waiting for a letter. That is the whole key to the suspense of the thing, the reader wondering what Willoughby's letter will say and whether or not it will cause some waifish heroine to catch typhus and die.

2)I have gotten a few of these lately-- "Dear John for reasons which I cannot fully disclose to you for fear I might hurt the future of our [blah blah blah, insert cryptic commentary here] I must insist that we cease our [etc.] Love, [so and do] sent from my i-phone." It's that last bit that always gets me. I picture this person (whom I may or may not care deeply about) sitting there typing this drivel into tiny little keys on a tiny little screen, all the while just hoping that the sword will work it's way appropriately into my heart and that I won't bother them anymore with these horrible letters that I write, the last of which may just arrive in the mail days after this message was "sent from my i-phone", embarrassing the writer (me) permanently. Apparently, you CAN get rid of this shameless shout-out to the apple company, a corporation whose focus is not software but sexy design of hardware and making things "easier" for the user who will no longer have any choice in what happens regarding their technology. However, people don't want to get rid of the "sent from my i-phone" because it reminds everyone that they are a member of a new proud generation that is forward thinking and will surely be the first to have i-phones implanted in their brain when apple unveils the new "i-cranium." To me, "sent from my i-phone" just means you typed this on a tiny little keyboard, and the emotions there, if there were any there to begin with, seem suddenly devoid of import with the addition of the little electronic signature. How would Bergman's letter to Bogart have been different if instead of "I cannot see you now or ever again" appeared on a tiny little handheld screen instead of tear streaked paper which showed the flowing cursive of her unforgettable character? How would he have crushed the letter in anger? Would he have thrown his iphone across the room? Probably not-- those things cost 300 $!

3) The other day I was gallivanting around San Francisco with my friend Ritik the doctor, a crime-fighting superhero who solves mysteries with his iphone, who also gives directions and can draw you a map. I have always wanted to "gallivant" and it seemed possible with our new technology. At one point Ritik got hungry and asked if I wanted to go get lunch. "I could eat" I said. He then whipped out his iphone and reported to me that "people [were] raving about the Vietnamese barbecue chicken available down the street. I pumped approximately 80 dollars in quarters into the meter and then Ritik's iphone led us to the little hole in the wall where this miraculous food was available. I told him that I was more enamored of the idea that one could "know a little place down the street" and be considered heroic and in-the-know by those who should choose to help themselves to a minimum share of the bill via flattery. He told me that he thought his way was more democratic, but I still felt something vaguely disgusting and absurd about it, and this didn't help my already developing suspicion of the i-phone. We ate; it was delicious as the i-phone predicted, and it was only a matter of minutes before the i-phone saved the day again, when two confused people without iphones asked us for directions. Ritik and the iphone asked them to pull over and the guy whipped out some kind of paper and flashed it as if readying himself for an attempt at stapling it to the door like one would an important document such as an arrest warrant, eviction notice or a treatise against established religion. It had a picture of a marijuana leaf on the front, which he did not attempt or offer to try to explain, and I thought "now I see why this guy's lost." He stared in our general direction, mouth agape while Ritik, along with his ipod, saved the day. If this guy got lost again, he could stop in another 3 blocks and ask the next guy with an ipod. Nearby, some guy's ipod was was telling him of a traffic situation ahead where someone was blocking a lane asking for directions. It wasn't the ipod I was mad at, nor was it Ritik saving the day as always, it was the assault on my established way of life. I liked that Ritik held the answer, the perpetual dispenser of wisdom, a veritable guru with his iphone and all. Ritik used to be at the top of a mountain, available only to those who wished to go to great effort to seek him, whereas now, he's available wherever i phones are sold.


4) Later we were walking around in Golden Gate Park and looking for my friend Asa. I won't dwell over the fact that Ritik's iphone was able to lead us directly to Asa's phone, because that was kind of convenient; I have to be honest. What was weird was that Ritik's phone was able to identify a song that we were hearing in the background once he told his iphone that his level of pop knowledge was getting dangerously low and he wanted the phone to tell him what song was on the radio. It may or may not have identified correctly the song "my humps" being played in the background. Every song pretty much sounds like that song to me. I asked Ritik what his phone would say if we just allowed it to listen to the hippy drum circle taking place nearby. Would it be able to tell us how stoned they were? As we looked up the answer to a question someone had posed, there was a shirtless hairy chested he-manlike character twirling a sword-like object dangerously around for his own amusement apparently, as there was no little tip jar at his feet. A nearby gawker made a shocked grimace and looked at us with an expression that asked "is this guy weird or what?" which is a question we could have used the phone to look into. The gawker said something judgemental like "that's silly" and we noticed that he had a pet chicken sitting under his bench as he said this. I'm sure that right as we remarked about the situation, somewhere there was a programmer developing an application for the iphone capable of detecting irony. "what's it gonna take before people understand each other?" I said, half expecting Ritik to look it up on the iphone.
None of this was objectionable of course because the theatre of the absurd has always been a constant source of entertainment for me. I didn't like however that it was all basically geared toward making it easier for people to consume. You like that song? You don't even need to know music or be hip or spend a lot of time reading reviews of new artists to download it on your iphone. You just tell your iphone that you like those pretty noises in the distance and it will listen to them then direct you to itunes where you can purchase the song you like. Also, no longer will co-incidence come into play when you bump into your old climbing partner Asa in Golden Gate Park. No longer will you be able to think "wow that was cool seeing him here" because your iphone knows where all of your friends are at all times. No one will ever be able to cheat on their spouse again because of the popularity of the "where you at?" function.

5) The iphone eases loneliness artificially. We're busy people. We don't have time to actually talk to other people, face to face, whenever we want. Not when it's easier to just text them. LMAO! Phone ads have relayed the idea of "circles" of people we interact with. We have the inner circle and the inner inner circle and the people who are not allowed to see our whole facebook profile which includes the photos from the drunken spring break. The iphone makes it really easy to twitter our most mundane thoughts over to those outer circle people and help us to feel connected. But people never share anything intimate about themselves over the internet, and so when you end up conversing with someone face to face the conversations adopt the tone of status update blurbs, and slowly but surely, we lose the faculty of real intimacy with those closest to us, and we will have to then pay instead, for therapy.

On my drive home from the Bay Area I stopped over at my Uncle's in Half Moon Bay. He works with technology in his job at Stanford and spends a lot of time analyzing how technology affects the way we all communicate and how technology can be applied to postmodern literature. He is a genius. His rebuttal for "sent from my iphone" is that it's an excuse for typos and shit. Does this also excuse stuff you say in anger or stuff you say without really thinking first? Does it excuse things left unsaid? "Happy belated birthday" not sent from my i-phone. Pretty soon our iphone will save everyone's birthdays and send them an ecard to their iphone or maybe a clumsy not as cool text to their inferior phone(s), which will eliminate the need to genuinely care about anyone's birthday enough to force them to get drunk ever again. We have work the next day.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Nostalgia-- remember that?

This is what I was thinking as I climbed the platform into the dunk tank at the Salinas High School Class of 2009 Graduation Bar-B-Que.

"Do you know anyone who is afflicted with nostalgia?" Corinne's email says. She has emailed me a link to a short she wrote and directed then posted on youtube. I watch it, and of course it stars a friend of hers and a former student of mine whose aloof expression brings to mind memories of sarcastic lines spoken while wandering the streets of New York City on a Yearbook related field trip in 2005, doing (in the interest of coolness) whatever was possible to conceal what seemed to me to be her great excitement on seeing New York for the first time. Although I am proud to see this movie that Corinne has directed, my mind inadvertently wanders from Corinne now and my pride on her behalf now to the scenes of Salinas near the old Spreckels sugar factory and I exclaim aloud, though no one is listening "that's the old house I used to live in!"

The camera sweeps past a "enjoy coca-cola" announcement with paint flaking from the side of a sun worn brick building the front of which, I know from having jogged past there many times along the row of trees that line Spreckels Boulevard, painted white at their base, faces west and receives the afternoon sun which streams in over the hills that surround the fields. The sun streams through the legs of a giant tableau of a farm worker who grinningly holds two heads of lettuce at waist level. To me, the 40 foot tall billboard art Mexican always seemed to be holding his cajones, or juevos if you will.

The whole thing makes me think of my former room-mate here on this occasion when I have just spent the first night in what will be my home for a month, my new room-mate a woman who shall remain nameless here as she is a very private person and has already lectured me about the things which I must not speak of with others. New roomie threw a Victoria's Secret catalogue on my bed as a nod to what she assumes is what gets me excited, and I find this infinitely entertaining as it accompanies the lecture on what not to talk about. The owner of the Spreckels house which now occupies my mind, the indomitable Cynthia Hess gave me a similar lecture when I moved in with her. Teachers are forever worrying about students and the public finding out about who they truly are, as if their careers were in politics and not education. They are forever claiming that they didn't inhale or that I did not have relations with that woman. I usually wait until a student graduates to fully disclose what I did back when there was a time and place for everything, back in college, but not always.

On this field trip to New York, the only extended field trip I have ever involved myself in, I was invited by one student to attend a jazz concert at the Blue Note, a prestigious New York jazz club where the legendary Miles Davis, among others, once performed. This student's father is a radio dj in Monterey and had arranged through means only available to jazz insiders for free tickets for his son and I. I couldn't refuse, not because of my passion for jazz, but mostly because of my need to escape the adult situation I had found myself in. I was experiencing a sensation, heretofore unknown to me, that I will call "responsibilititis" or the nagging idea that one's life has become boring and predictable in the throes of work and other adult experiences which could qualify as insufferable. This led me to believe that reckless behavior would be a good idea as it could lead to being fired, which would abdicate me of further responsibility of said "adult" nature. To my younger self the connotations of the world "adult" formerly included "pornography" and "limousine" and not of course, "cancer" and "America's got talent reruns." I didn't like the way my life was leading. Recklessness to the rescue!

We walked into the jazz club and sat down as the band was doing warm-up type exercises which, to one unfamiliar with jazz, might be confused with the actual "music." I pictured my adult self alongside other adults talking about the meaning of the music over a glass of overpriced wine, paying too much for the tickets and then leaving at 9 pm so as to be in bed for the mandatory 8 hours of sleep required to act responsible and adult-like the next day at work, talking about synergy with my monotone voiced employer, concealing the details of the previous night in which I drove home with 2 glasses of wine in me, perhaps above the legal limit. I pictured this and then my student ordered a round of drinks and looked at me with a knowing expression that said "do it Miller! Bury the stress of trying to figure out which subway line to ride and how to control hormonal teenagers, preventing them from doing what they will never again have a chance to do, stifling their youth and vitality, while all the while killing the same within yourself." I think he expected some sort of argument, readying his persuasive guns, no doubt preparing to practice all of those aristotelian rhetorical forms that I taught him in Sophomore English. As it happened, I took one look at those drinks and said "bottoms up" and I got drunk with a 15 year old kid.

Corinne's movie had Catherine dressed in a blue dress which was anachronistic in a recently made movie, but would have been at home in one of those sepia toned polaroids from the 1970's. It reminded me of the way Corinne looked that night when I walked out of the jazz club, irresponsibly buzzed, with my young friend who miraculously ordered drinks somehow (I'm still mystified as to how this happened-- he was 15 at the time). He had been bragging to the other students of his exploits and I was in trouble now were it not for plausible deniability. Corinne came to me later and asked if it were true what Kennedy had told her about having drinks with me. I denied it, and she believed me, her faith in me temporarily restored. Corinne used to look at me with this expression n of confidence a look like what F. Scott Fitzgerald described as a "look that assured you that he had precisely the impression that, at your best you wished to convey and believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself etc..." I don't have anyone in my life that looks at me that way anymore, and I'm nostalgic for that, if nothing else.

From these reveries, I was awakened by the voice of my principal and former boss, Michael Romero, giving a graduation speech. "18 years ago" he began, "you emerged from the comfort and warmness of your mother's womb" and then proceeded to help the kids to hobble down the memory lane of their local hood which was "most well known for gang violence, John Steinbeck and agriculture" as one later student speaker observed. The sign over the entrance to the football stadium reads "once a Cowboy, always a Cowboy" which is my official excuse for being here among the teachers who actually worked this year. Next to this sign is another which reads "no loitering."

As the ceremony ends, I am surprised by the voice of the aforementioned student from the jazz club New York field trip. I tell him I'm writing a story about what went down those years ago, and I promise not to name his name. He replied that he really wanted me to mention his name specifically, believing that there would be no such thing for him as bad publicity. I tried to convey then the quite abstract idea that we never realize which decisions would affect us the most in the light of memory years later. I of course tried to warn him not to be so cavalier about his reputation, as I had been those years ago, but it fell upon deaf ears I'm sure, because as Method Man once observed "shorty runnin round smoking sess and drinkin beer-- he ain't tryna hear what I'm kickin in his ear." You should always be glad and young....

Climbing Mt Rainier with Lindsay last week made me think again about the process of decision making. I tried to explain to her in Nepal that decisions made in the mountains would be more and more likely to affect future decisions as time passed. If one turns back from the route before making the summit, taking the prudent approach, saving their climbing partner from frostbite, sometimes the payoff is evident to those who look on the bright side of things and one might be more willing to make a similar decision in the future. If one chooses to push it and go for the top and it pays off with no ill effects, no frostbite and nobody dies, one might be more willing to push it in the future. If, like me, you are prone to frustration in human relationships, choosing to abandon them and move on, staying detached so as to avoid the pain of these things, don't be surprised when you feel like moving on and on and on. One must be careful what decisions one makes, for the patterns will continue to echo through our history, as we continue, creatures of habit, to do what is most familiar.

Lindsay and I weaved our way across the Nisqually Glacier, navigating the complex matrix of crevasses in the late afternoon. We are climbing the Fuhrer Finger route on the south side in a single push with maybe a few hours nap to give us strength enough to go to the summit. Even though I was with a new climbing partner on a mountain that I hadn't been on in years, my mind floated back in time to the first time I was on Rainier with Dave Ohlson and Yoav Bar-ness.

I crunch steps into the hard snow, confidently marching my way across the glacier. I look up to my left and recognize the steep slope that Dave led Yoav and I up back in 1999 when the three of us climbed the mountain for the first time. He would pause in this methodical way of his and probe his ice-axe into the snow ahead of him in an attempt to locate the crevasse. All of these years have enabled me to recognize Dave, or any other climbing partner by their posture or by the way they walk-- so much time spent together, watching these people and their movements. I am thinking this with Lindsay as I walk along years later in a similar spot on a similar day, somehow unable to experience it all anew because of all the memories, when I plunge into a crevasse. The roap stretches taut and I pull on it to get out. Lindsay gives me shit for failing to yell before or during the fall, but I guess I was just in another place. It occurs to me that this is not what Dave would have done, but Dave's not here man. He's on K2.

At the party I see a former student of mine, one of the few who didn't know it wasn't cool to join the journalism club at Salinas High. She was one of those kids who made the whole teaching thing completely worthwhile, if only for a few minutes at a time. I stand next to her with two black eyes sustained in a surfing accident a few days earlier, looking like I just crawled out of a dumpster, which is what I assume THEY are thinking right about now. In talking with Henzi, he expressed his surprise at the fact that no one had thought to adapt the old joke-- "what do you say to Miller with two black eyes? Nothing-- he obviously didn't listen the first time."

And that's exactly it. We have a tendency to repeat the patterns in our lives, relive the past, and we refuse to learn the lesson-- if ever there is one. We promise ourselves never again, and then there it is.

Climbing with Steve on Mont Blanc years ago, I took a 40 foot screamer into a crevasse. Now, years later, I step over the glacier, scared of something like that happening again, yet powerless to prevent it.

And I climbed the steps into the dunk tank thinking of Camus (the master of "fuck-it" himself) who wrote "I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate, so then I would feel less alone." For me, the more kids who still hated me because of that grade I gave them years ago, the better. This would make me remember the time when my life was like theirs, an unfloding series of hopeful opportunities and senior pictures taken in the sun without a bruised-up face or coffee stained teeth, helping me to dwell in the past where it's safe.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Who Thwarted? The Kyazu Ri attempt (title stolen from Lindsay)

Goethe once said “he who has not attained fame by his 28^th year, must give up all dreams of glory.” This begs the question—one which I’m sure some student would ask were I still in the classroom—who the fuck is Goethe, Mr. Miller?

On May 15^th I had one more day to achieve fame in my 28^th year or give up all dreams of glory. I was consoled by the fact that Goethe also said "the deed is everything, the glory is naught." For me, the deed was to guide two beginner climbers to the summit of a 6200 meter mountain in the Everest Region of the Himalaya, no small task given the fact that the first rule of guiding is that the client is going to try to kill himself-- and you, since you're roped to him.

I awoke on the day before my birthday to the sound of my boss, Matt Fioretti, telling me that he was abandoning the climb because of a hurt knee. He was leaving me with these two clients, a lot of responsibility, a lot of equipment and logistics to handle, some smoked salmon, and one big opportunity. One last shot at fame. He limped off into the morning storm cloud hastily, and I wondered if he knew where he was going exactly.

In a later email, Matt confessed:

"I have to tell you about the epic I had after I left you guys. Basically dropped way below the first notch with the prayer flags, spent 2 hours on 5th class walls with juniper getting back. Thought I would die there and know one would know what happened. I was navigating by viewing the ridge on the Namche side across valley. I realized I made a big mistake when I finally found the pass and crossed into the next valley. My mistake was obvious then. I had forgotten that you can view the same ridge from that valley thus putting me 1000 feet below the first notch. I was just going to come back to BC and give it another go. Crazy. By the time I got to Lukla my knee was toast and the next day Lhakpa and Dee helped me around. "

The only thing worse than dying is know one knowing what happened.

Over the previous weeks, I had been getting used to this new responsibility Matt had bestowed upon me. My first task, two weeks earlier, had been to FIND basecamp. I employed the novel strategy of hiring some locals (an old man and his yak) to take us up there, but mid-way through the journey, they turned back citing the yak's difficulty in overcoming a crux rock move. It had been snowing.

Iwas left with a true leadership crux, and I decided to lead by example and charge on into the brewing storm, hoping the others would follow. They did, and we found basecamp eventually, just as the weather cleared, revealing a mile long hanging valley, invisible from any other vantage point, surrounded by 5000 meter unclimbed peaks. From here, Kyazu Ri was still a distant mirage, enshrouded in clouds, miles away. Having found the basecamp for our assault on the mountain though, we set up a tent, left some climbing gear inside, and set out on an acclimatization hike.

Weeks later, we returned to find our camp covered in a foot of dense spring snow, the tent crushed, our hopes dashed. Matt leaving the group was another portent of what seemed to everyone as an oncoming disaster.

One signature of my overall personality though is a certain confidence coupled by immense inner turmoil and self doubt. When I say "oh yeah, that slope won't be avalanche prone" to the clients, what I'm thinking is (i hope we don't have a wind event-it faces east-let's see the prevailing winds... two days of sun--i wonder? Should i dig a pit? No that would take too long. What other red flags? the icy layer might not bond well with the new snow) etc. Ultimately though, I allowed us to proceed and I acted like I knew exactly what I was doing at all times.

Finding advanced basecamp was another instance of the I/i phenomenon. On my birthday, when we got the green light to move camp to within summit attempt range of Kyazu Ri, it was overcast and threatening to continue snowing. The visibility was limited to about 100 feet, and it would clear for the occasional glimpse up-valley to the rocky headwall at the head of the hanging valley, beyond which lay our advanced basecamp somewhere. There were two approaches to surmounting the rock wall, I could see from this vantage point, and I had to pick the one I felt to be the most logical choice, knowing full well that it could turn out to be wrong.

"Do you think we go to the gully at left or up that valley to the right?" queried Abe.

"There's only one obvious way to go." I snapped back at him, less out of an interest in silencing his dissenting and questioning my judgment and more in the interest of silencing the i which said in hushed tones growing louder (what if he's right? you can't see the top of the gully! how do you know? you can't even see it! It looks harder that way! What's at the top? you have no way of knowing!). This one route-finding mistake might turn out to be the end of our climb as we had only 3 more days until Matt had asked the porters to come to basecamp to carry our loads home.

We labored over the route which was steep up an unknown gully. Abe and Philip, burdened by heavy loads struggled all day to climb the snow covered boulder field; I could hear them curse behind me every time they post-holed through the snow, battling the inanimate. The nagging voice of self doubt came back and i dropped my pack to scurry to the top of the gully and kick steps in the snow for my partners to follow. That was the excuse I told them, but in reality i wanted to know what was at the top of the gully before we got there.

It was like I thought (I was wrong to doubt myself) and we reached camp, tent platforms kicked into the snow on the side of a moraine. We spent the next day in a whiteout, in suspense, hoping we were as close to the mountain as I had told everyone we were. I would occasionally shift in the tent and point confidently, in view of the others, and exclaim "the mountain is right over there." Later, when I went for a piss, I would peer into the whiteout and wonder whether my pronouncement had been true. I even went so far as to draw an arrow in the snow (with my pee) in the direction of Kyazu Ri. This would help me later when I would have to guide them to the summit in a whiteout, I thought. And then, suddenly, there it was-- materializing out of the mist like an abstract painting, it's twisted contortions unclear through the fog, the climbing route indefinite in the convoluted features of what looked to be a very large objective. It was right there. In the confusion, we had bypassed the camp used by other parties, climbing higher and closer to within spitting distance of the glacier at the peak's base.

The next day dawned clear and propitious for a summit attempt. I took Abe and Philip down to the nearby glacier and taught the rudiments of crevasse rescue, knowing full well that they would not remember or be able to perform in the event of my fall into a crevasse--but it was a necessary formality nonetheless. We spent the afternoon top-roping a glacier cliff in preparation for the ice climbing sections of the route.

We crossed the glacier back to camp, went to sleep prepared to wake to the multitude of stars in the middle of the freezing Himalayan night and try for the top, our one and only chance at the summit of a mountain it had taken us a month of uncertainty to ready for.

12 hours later, I led the first mixed pitch as fast as I could, climbing through a rockband and over snowy slabs into a short chimney where pitons --pitons which neither Abe nor Philip knew how to remove--were the only pro. It was early morning by now, and I was worried at the slow pace of the two at the end of my double ropes. Philip, at the start of the difficulties had compared his legs to a certain dessert food endorsed by Bill Cosby, one which there is always room for, and I was worried about his ability to go to the summit. Abe was climbing well, but he had refused to wear his gaiters, even after I had suggested he do what I say and wear them, and his boots must have been soaked by now. "Fuck it" I thought, some people need to learn the hard way.

By the top of the third pitch it was clear that we were not going to make the summit moving as slow as we were. It was taking Abe and Philip twice as long to second each pitch as it was for me to lead, which didn't seem right to me. What were they doing wrong? Each of them was swinging their tools HARD into the brittle alpine bullet ice, and wasting time with solid placements which were not necessary on the less than vertical terrain. How could I explain to them how to move faster? How could I instill the years of experience necessary to climb a peak like this in faster than the time it would take to download a map of the approach route from the internet (also something I found impossible before the trip).

Philip then volunteered to stay at the third belay so that Abe and I could continue to the top, unimpeded by what he judged to be his slower climbing pace. With only one second, conceivably a faster one, I thought we might have a chance at the top, so I promised Philip a return time of 4:30 and Abe and I went up. We used a running belay for the next three pitches, crossing a bergschrund, and climbing seemingly endless 75 degree ice to a vantage point where the top was clearly visible, two pitches away.

I climbed fast without swinging my tools as the snow began to swirl around me, the afternoon clouds having closed in an hour earlier. I used just the points of my tools for balance, relying on my crampons to inch my body upward as I stared with desire at the belay above me. I wanted it, and I wanted it more badly than the capacity of my body to move. I wanted it so much I didn't swing-- I just desperately lurched upward, out of breath, every fiber of my being straining for 12 more feet of distance. As I set up the anchor and caught my breath, I started to ponder the inevitable downward journey. How many rappels would it take? Would i be able to find anchors at the end of each rope? Would we have to down-climb? It was late, and it was starting to snow.

If I turned Abe back this close to the summit, the experience would haunt him. To me it would mean nothing, but I know from experience that missing the top of Kyazu Ri by such a narrow margin would haunt him. Myself, I would vive myself into the real world, alienated as usual, having returned from a place that most people never glimpse. The trivial desires of most of the people in my life would still seem to me silly, most conversation would seem to me inane, most people I would be unable to relate to. Regardless of the summit, I would still retain the sensation of detached superiority which always accompanied my return from climbing trips. Having glimpsed the shadow of death and grappled with what it means to be alive, I would have been to a place that I could not explain to most other people, and fumbling with words or stumbling toward the top could never change that fact. So the summit didn't matter to me, and as a stiff wind blew across my face, I decided that the summit didn't matter for Abe either, and we turned back, his disappointment palpable in the silence between us. We descended, and what happened in those moments as we reached with our eyes toward the nearby summit is something that neither of us would be able to ever describe to another person. We had been some place where no one could follow, and no one would know what it was like there.

The worst part is that know one would know.

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