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Fletcher
Trad climber
The rock doesn't care what I think
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Topic Author's Original Post - Dec 12, 2012 - 02:35pm PT
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Found this thoughtful piece on R&I that JL wrote a while back. Damn, that guy knows how to touch the heart... (and a bunch of other things!):
What I've Learned
As a writer he is equally if not more inspiring to me as a climber.
Eric
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10b4me
Boulder climber
Somewhere on 395
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Dec 12, 2012 - 02:49pm PT
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But what I most took away from climbing was not velocity, but the capacity to decelerate into my skin and into my life.
excellent find Eric
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dirt claud
Social climber
san diego,ca
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Dec 12, 2012 - 03:04pm PT
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Cool, I always wondered where he got the nickname "Largo". Awesome read, TFPU
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Dec 12, 2012 - 03:14pm PT
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For years I used all of these devices, and it took no commitment at all. But to ever embody the resonance of “Taps,” or Miles Davis’ Porgy and Bess, you have to present with that stripped-down ensemble. You have to step up to the mic naked and let rip a riff, played plainly, sans bellowing and do-dads and self-absorption.--JL
I have a good friend, Joel Nixon, a bass player and singer, who once told me that the hardest thing to do in music is to play slowly, "lente." To write without embellishment is what the legendary Bierce told an aspiring writer: Never use adverbs. Avoid them like bad women. Words to that effect. The end result is more powerful and easier to remember, too.
My all-time choice for distintive style would be James Ellroy.
edit: from pg. 2--So if I didn’t care about existing before I was born, why fret the afterwards?
A wide thumb up!
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Michelle
Trad climber
Toshi's Station, picking up power converters.
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Dec 12, 2012 - 03:14pm PT
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Very nice.
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nutjob
Gym climber
Berkeley, CA
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Dec 12, 2012 - 03:15pm PT
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Nice stuff. Entertaining, insightful, thought provoking.
John, your perspective on aggression is beautifully boiled down, formulated in a slightly different way than I've seen before. I'll keep that coin, make good use of it, and remember.
Thank you for being all in.
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Dec 12, 2012 - 03:42pm PT
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It's a great opportunity to get to read Largo's articles if you got time. I only wish the Devil's Wardrobe was available online. Haven't found it yet.
This accident of recent vintage should provide some decent fodder for Marianne's fodder. Hope so. Wouldn't want to let it go to waste.
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Bruce Morris
Social climber
Belmont, California
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Dec 12, 2012 - 04:00pm PT
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I seem to remember that during the summer of 1975 everyone in the Stone Masters group began giving themselves Italian versions of their names. For example, the late Bob Locke was called Bobo and Dale Bard adopted the name Bardini; and hence, Mike Graham became Gramicci. It was at about this time that Largo became Largo. I think that Bob Locke initiated the process of transforming Anglo-Saxon names into Italian-like ones. That was the summer before Bob was killed on the S. Face of Watkins. Everyone still seemed young and immortal forever. A frozen moment in time. Bob came up with the story that all the members of the Rescue Team in Tuolumne Meadows were like the warriors in Homer's Iliad and were living that same kind of heroic life transposed into the anti-heroic modern age. The Italian names also seemed to suggest the Renaissance and the polymaths of the Quattrocento. All very subjective because it is all based on conversations I overheard in passing. In fact, I think that's when the sobriquet 'Yabo' was first coined too.
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zBrown
Ice climber
chingadero de chula vista
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Dec 12, 2012 - 04:26pm PT
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say hey mouse, Dr. Hartouni can cure what ails ya
Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA Jul 21, 2012 - 10:55am PT
The Devil's Wardrobe by John Long
Mountain 75
My seventeenth birthday marked the start of my demise. As a sheltered youth, I excelled in scholarship, taking prizes in Latin, European History and Astronomy. Yet my life seemed a hollow ennui, devoid of vigour and elan; my studies had dulled the strident edge of youth, leaving me a passive know-it-all, smart but soft. I realized this, as did my folks who, for my seventeenth birthday, enrolled me in a beginners free climbing seminar. "We've gotto get some life in this kid," said dad, "else his boyhood will pass untested!" Unfortunately, I took to climbing like an ant to a hole, ignorant of the shortcomings of fanatical involvement. I dropped all studies with ease, feeling no yen to resume them. The library felt my touch only on its pueblo brick walls. Teachers often nabbed me pouring over Alpine memos and rock periodicals, cozily tucked inside my texts. My grades dived, my parents grieved, I quit.
Yet I was bright, or had been, and justified my mania with the belief that education is a deterrent to vibrant life. The insidious grasp of climbing had already set its talons. My folks were dumbstruck and mom pined over, "my total lack of respect and responsibility." By then, I had completed too many grade IVs to heed comformity; I was my own person, or thought so.
Soon, my car was sold, my bags packed, and a bus ticket to Yosemite purchased. The morning I left is still vivid in my mind. Mom had packed several ham sandwiches and two dozentoll house cookies; Dad nervously paced the kitchen and finally said "At least he's finding his own way . . . his brothers just did what was expected."
Too many changes had transpired over the past months and Dad neared breaking point. Mom was cruhed but employed her usual restraint which only compounded my guill Dad's hand trembled when I shook it and Mom shed a solo tear as I left. They were still my folks, but I was their son no longer: I had doublecrossed their dreams.
When I finally got outside, I could hardly breathe. I felt hollow, but the succorous April breeze revived me. The cloak of adolescence lay behind and for the first time I actually examined the world The bus would leave in fifteen minutes. I walked to the station feeling naked and quite small.
Yosemite verified my decision. The challenges at hand made my past seem a trifling facade. I dived heartfirst into my new life, gaining new identity with each lieback. Initially, the locals disdained me and mocked my cockiness, called my endless pull-ups a fraud. But I was persistent and, seeing they couldn't derail my drive, they eventually accepted me. They differed in profile; some were ex-teachers, some were exconstruction workers, and some, like myself, were too young to be ex-anything; I had no past to draw from, save yesterday. The common bond was that one and all were fanatics.
My apprenticeship began, belaying for a resident master. I marvelled at his prowess and enjoyed the impunity of the top-rope. My naivete allowed him to overstep ethics, and many of our new routes left others buffaloed: they didn't know I held him on tension here, that he edged on a peg there. Eventually I freed a section, which my mentor had aided, and he quickly dropped these tactics.
Soon I was leading 5.10's and hackirg up easy walls. No Yosemite climber is true without ample wall exposure: walls are the crux of the biscuit! After several seasons, I had completed a handful of grade Vs, making sure they were low angled and well ledged. I didn't take to them at all. The tremendous exposure terrified me, as did jumaring and RURP's. But I would be no cameo climber, casually bagging 100ft testpieces. On walls my nights passed trembling in fear, macabre images prancing round my head. Twice I wet my Elephants foot. To rampart these eerie bivouacs, I would take drugs, hoping to curb the fright. Half the time they worked, but sometimes they effected a boundless terror, reeling my enfeebled mind. Yet I persisted, determined to become a Yosemite ace.
Half Dome came next then El Capitan. With my honed technique, the actual climbing seemed trivial, but the long, lonely nights continued to pass in horror. I didn't belong there, but even less in the normal world. Occasionally, I climbed with domestic partners who would bop into Yosemite, dash up a wall, then return to normal life: I remained amazed how they could live in both worlds at once, reaping the best from both.
Seasons passed, friends passed, and I climbed every wall around. Yet, I never grew accustomed to the mean void below and had decayed into a veritable bag of nerves. I lost control over my own mind. The walls and I were dead opposites, yet through willpower alone, I had merged with the black abyss, and now suffered the consequences. No longer could I deal with normal life. I began hearing ghoulish voices, and couldn't rid my mind of morbid ponderings. My derangement grew each day; I held a grip on nothing but terror. My appearance remained composed, but my brain writhed. Suicide seemed a proper poultice, but I was too scared to try it. My feeble mental balance had been yanked to the fore, dashing me on the shore of helplessness. Sophocles was right: the keenest woes are self induced! I was insane, and knew it My climbing gear was sold and I left Yosemite for good.
* * * *
I kicked around Berkeley for a while, eventually taking employment as a janitor at a Lutheran church; the atmosphere of charity soothed my mourning. I actually began attending services, finding them consoling. Yet the scars of terror subsisted, and sometimes I slipped into a frenzy of mental anguish, swirling with the tides of uncontrollable despair. One thing became clear; supernatural powers were the sole vehicle that could rieht my pathos.
I often loafed in the park, feeding pigeons and rapping with old timers. One gentleman pointed to a Gothic structure, exclaiming that the devil incarnate roamed its rooms. Having passed the ornate building many times, I had noticed the offbeat brand of folk who marched in and out From curiosity, I meandered over for a peek.
The massive oak door was embossed with bizarre, arcane figures, and it squeaked as I entered. Unattended, I stole up a musty flight of stairs and eased through a silk drape hanging from the door jamb. Before me, and seated in a wicker chair was an ancient man of Mid-eastern extract. He brandished a jewelled staff, at once bold and delicate. He wore a multi-coloured velvet robe, and his sharp gaze seemed to pierce my very soul. "I've been waiting for you", he said in a droning voice. "Sit down." I sat on the floor, as there were no chairs. I could say nothing, only listen to his drift which ran as follows:
"I know the transgressions of your soul, how negativity taints your being, how utter terror governs your path. I know the plight ofyour past, to the minutest detail. I know you wet your Elephant's foot! I know of every RURP you've hammered, every tear you've shed, every vain prayer you've offered - every ghastly cerebration of your demented self. I know the torpor of your hapless ego, a mere eddy in a tumultuous river of wrath. I alone can liberate you from yourself. You have no other options.
You will go to the Redwood Room at the Magnolia Annex, and you will spend five and forty nights there; you will regain complete commond of your lost self. The technique of therapy is self-explanatory; a small ring is located in the left pocket of each coat. But you will never don a walnut jacket - verboten!"
The sage's narrative startled and confused me. I knew the whereabouts of the Magnolia Annex, just some old buildings behind the University. But this bit about coats and rings caught me off guard.
"Can you tell me more about the?' I started.
"It's self-explanatory," he shot cutting me off.
"And how must I reimburse you?' I asked, knowing there must be a catch.
"You must arrive at this by your own means," said he in a monotone voice. With this I left. The sage had spelled my foibles to the tee, and though his appeals seemed inane, the force, the authority of his words rang a positive cord in my psyche, brought me confidence. I would venture to the Redwood Room tonight providing one existed.
* * * *
I scampered up the creaking stairs with a fresh optimism, soon to wane upongaining my room - that gloomy dump. The oppressive air hung I grabbed my parka, shook the plaster off it and headed for the Magnolia Annex.
Once there, I wandered the grounds, hoping for Nirvana, but expecting nothing. After twenty minutes, my hopes were fading: the structures were cement or metal, except a tool shed behind the warehouse. The tool shed, of course! I retraced my steps on the jog. The shed was wood all right - redwood? I couldn't tell, it looked so dilapidated. A nail secured the door, which I thumbed back, then stepped inside swatting cobwebs until I found the light. Three huge closets lined the walls and hundreds of coats hung from the clothes rack. One closet was walnut and with spooky recognition, I recalled the words, "But never don a walnut jacket - verboten!" Self-explanatory so far - as if I would "don" one anyway; they all looked so ancient moth-eaten. The other jackets, two closets full, looked spanking new. I removed a classy French tweed from its hanger, checking the left pocket - a thin broad gold ring! Returning the ring to the pocket, I slipped into the tweed coat and immediately found myself amidst a rollicking bourgeois fling on the Normandy coast. Reaching for an hors d'oeuvre, I found I had no corporeal existence - nay, just a cognizant phantom. Then the therapy began.
The host approached with a bottle of champagne, filling chalices as he passed them. He was me - but not me. Or rather, the host looked and moved, even sounded as I do. But he displayed a forthright, confident stature. . . in contrast to myself. Trailing the host I grew enthralled by his poise: he possessed the very attributes I lacked. Observation alone could cajole me into dropping my black past, and I relished watching myself operate with such assurance and clout. My double sported a bellowing, honest laugh, which cast a euphoric heat on my soul. I scrutinized the host for hours, hoping that by osmosis, part of his bearing would remain with me. Eventually fatigue consumed me and, peeling off the tweed coat, I intuitively knew I would instantly be standing on the cracked cement floor of the Redwood Room: the coat had vanished with my rapture. I recalled the sage's words, 'You will go there five and forty nights." Great something to live for other than terror. Feeling tired and purged, I left for home.
My next ten raptures were proximates to the first save geographic locale and circumstances. I travelled to Rome, Zurich, Amsterdam, Madrid, Stockholm, Moscow, and Tijuana. My double performed manifold jobs in many unique fields, always with positive control. I had seen myself an executive, an attomey, a dentist, a labourer, a locksmith, a machinist and by astute observation had come to realize my latent esteem, heretofore so shrouded in despondency. I feared my shadow no longer, and my dreams became coherent; no more tapestries of twilight.
My eleventh night brought new discovery and the second phase of therapy. I slipped into a double-breasted wool herringbone: I was sitting on a wrought iron fence in the garden of a German mansion. Night had fallen and the house shone light but no life. A couple advanced on the brick walkway, stopping at my side in romantic refrain. The female looked ravishing with erudite features and Renoir figure; the male, my double, played the casual Casanova and seemed impervious to her bold advances. I grew anxious, fidgety, and fumbled through my pockets . . . a ring! I had entirely forgotten about the rings. Out of nervousness, I threaded the ring onto my second finger and found myself in the arms of the buxom fraulein in real flesh and bones. It is fortunate that before, the ring's function remained unknown. My prior raptures usually featured my double in ranks unfit for me to fein: the present was different. Having an eye for cleavage, I escorted my belle to the mansion, she nearly dragged me up the stairs. She disrobed gracefully, throwing lascivious glances with the rending of each garment. My Casanova calm vanished, and I ripped my wool trousers in hasty removal. She chuckled and embraced me with her warm, naked body. Crazed with lust I shed the double-breasted herringbone jacket groped for the tig and got a handful of ragged turtleneck: ofcourse, I now stood in the Redwood Room. I cursed the fortune of my double and laughed at myself 'till tears streaked mycheeks. Good God, I was normal and knew it!
Yet my double wasn't normal, run of the mill; he was a leader of men, the voice above the mob. My next pursuit would involve aping my double's form until I possessed the selfsame demeanor. This even seemed feasible. I left the Redwood Room feeling fifty feet tall, laughing at my grief stricken past it now seemed a tifling facade.
My next dozen raptures found me subbing for my double. Clad in black tuxedo, I directed the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra. Faking sulficed for the bridge, but changed in time - signature, fugues, codas, dynamics, e!c., prompted me to shed the ring to eschew a fiasco. As a light heavyweight champion, I let my double hammer out the victory and jammed the ring on once the gloves were off. The reporters were astonished with my equanimity, particularly after being decked twice in the thirteenth round. As a tennis pro, stockbroker, and chef, I allowed my double to perform the technical chores, while I did all the talking. I learned to be confident even when in doubt.
Following a stint as a professor of social science, I realized I possessed all my double's qualities but his occupational skills; and sometimes I could bluff through these. As a social scientist I succeeded on bullshit alone!
My thirty-fifth rapture was a landmark. I wrestled into an odoriferous warmup jacket: a ringside seat on the Shield of El Capitan. On perhaps the world's most exposed wall, I marvelled at my composure, laughing at my double floundering in the triple cracks. He vainly tried skipping RURP placements by welding copperheads, eventually taking a 30ft whistler. I spun on the ring, then tapped out the lead on knifeblade trios; A2! I howled. I admired the rockscape for a while, then stripped off the pungent pullover. Climbing was cake but superfluous to me now. Having ventured to the Redwood Room for thirty eight consecutive nights, I decided upon a short break at the beach for introspection.
Surveying my past I decided I never really was a lunatic, just real spaced out - sort of like a lunatic, but not really. Clearly, at the outset of my raptures, the split between reality and illusion, sanity and lunacy was unknown. Nor did it seem peculiar to don a French tweed coat and find myself in Normandy; it did now and I pondered the powers of the sage, wondering if his manipulation of reality was in cosmic violation. Who and what was he, this alien I knew nothing about? The devil incarnate as the geezer in the park had claimed? I was greatly indebted to him, devil or not!
My life had spanned such odd tangents! Indeed, "the path of fate runs through a fogg maze," everything changes, nothing changes. My psyche had weathered the most radical dranges - from sanity to insanity, then back again. Yet the vicissitudes had been predictable; always shirking my past only to drift into new terror. My present path involved dumping my past but I surely would not wind back into darkness. I laughed at such an asinine proposition, quelled my reverie. and gazed at the green waves rolling in, raking my fingers through the sand.
Raptures thirty-six through forty-four saw the advent ofmy final strategy. I would slip the ring on first and rely on improvisational powers alone. Barring several false starts (first as a ballet dancer, then as a helicopter pilot in Anarctica), things flowed smoothly and through on-the-spot necessity, I learned to direct traffic, perform appendectomies, and race motorcycles.
On the forty-fourth night, I attempted something far above my ken. A conservative pin stripe coat placed me under watchful eyes of a dozen feverish jewellers. I held a miniature platinum chisel in my left hand, and tinystriker in my right. The gem tipped chisel was entered on a gleaming diamond of astronomical size. With a blow far too swift I watched the clear stone explode into a hundred carats: a shriek lunged from my viewers and I barely stripped the coat in time!
I didn't recognize my overdrawn cockiness and blindly reckoned my double would assume responsibility for my blunders. I now pursued my raptures as I had formerly done with walls: any misgivings could be dealt with later, be they mental or physical. My final demise was evident had I just thought, but I felt fortuitous and invincible. My raptures were no longer anodyne for grief, but a vehicle for recreation. I walked to my room, laughing at my double's misfortune.
I passed the night by mulling over strategies for my forty fifth and final rapture. I felt bold and recklessly schemed, as I had done in high school, always plotting the walls to come. As to my past raptures, it seemed all possibilities were exhausted, but one. I would chance the final option: I would don a walnut jacket.
The next day dragged on, and I neglected most of my janitorial duties, engrossed in wonderment over the night's store. But ultimately I faced the walnut closet, assiduously inspecting the tattered coats. Out of impatience, I removed a dusty black one, noting a hoary, almost petrified carnation pinned to the lapel. I found a tarnished silver ring in the left pocket and shoved it onto my finger. Then I gingerly slipped into the frayed jacket.
My attention was immediately alarmed as all tactile sensations were arrested - no touch, no smell, no feel, no light. I grew increasingly paranoid and my mind raced to determine my whereabouts. With mounting horror, I soon realized that my soul now inhabited the corpse of a man long dead - six feet under and coffin bound. The waves of agony grew, reinstating my previous insanity. My bondage was irreversible; my body was dead and useless. I had reimbursed the sage with my soul and I recalled his words, "You will arrive at this (reimbursement) by your own means." Then I plunged down the bottomless well of eternal anguish.
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1883824&msg=1884022#msg1884022
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10b4me
Boulder climber
Somewhere on 395
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Dec 12, 2012 - 04:44pm PT
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^^^ that's pretty deep
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pc
climber
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Dec 12, 2012 - 06:03pm PT
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Thanks for posting that R&I link.
Powerful writing, played straight.
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LilaBiene
Trad climber
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Dec 12, 2012 - 08:12pm PT
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Fletcher, thanks so much for sharing the link. Enjoyed reading his experiences being adopted and had a good chuckle. ") I know the feelings!
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The rock doesn't care what I think
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 12, 2012 - 08:53pm PT
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Thanks Lilabiene. I have realized of late that I there is some kind of connection I have with adopted folks. I will have to explore that some more.
I may have known JL was adopted, but if so, had forgotten until I just read this piece.
The first true relative I ever saw was my older daughter, Marianne del Valle, 10 minutes after she was born in the Clínica Maternidad Santa Rosa in Maracay, Venezuela. From the moment Marianne squinted out at me, life was never the same. Finally, I belonged. I had sought and found kinship in the climbing community, but blood is different, preverbal and radically robust.
That paragraph really struck me. The realization that "Finally, I belonged" is a very, very primal one that my experiences with adopted folk has made me realize that those who are not can often take for granted.
Eric
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drljefe
climber
El Presidio San Augustin del Tucson
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Dec 12, 2012 - 08:56pm PT
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That is awesome right there.
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Lynne Leichtfuss
Sport climber
moving thru
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Dec 12, 2012 - 11:40pm PT
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"Finally I belonged" resonates.
Each of us have our own formula for what that takes.
For me it took 4 kids and a husband. We became a family and I felt no matter where we went on the planet or what happened it was OK cause......we be family.
The love, the joy, the challenge to enjoy no matter what we were experiencing was all there.
It worked. Then and now. :D
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Dec 13, 2012 - 12:35am PT
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WOW!!!!! Honestly ive only read his "How to Books"
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i learned alot from that link!
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"I’d synch up with my life and for the moment experience freedom while being literally tied to a stake."
This is one of THE most Poetic things i,ve ever seen..
Posite from my experiences
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dee ee
Mountain climber
citizen of planet Earth
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Dec 13, 2012 - 02:14pm PT
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Yes, John is an interesting fellow.
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Dec 13, 2012 - 02:21pm PT
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And here's our hero styling the first, exploratory freeclimbing outing on The Hangover, Tahquitz, 1977:
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Fletcher
Trad climber
The rock doesn't care what I think
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Topic Author's Reply - Dec 13, 2012 - 02:36pm PT
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If you've not read any of JL's non-"How To" books, I'd highly recommend them. He truly a is compelling and funny storyteller. And also moving and thoughtful (as the short piece I posted above demonstrates).
I'd suggest starting with Wall Rats, Rock Jocks, and Hang Dogs. I read it a bazillion years ago when I was a newer climber and it really helped me understand the context and history of climbing in the Valley from the 60's to the 80's (a lot of sh#t happened and evolved in that period). It's a somewhat autobiographical book and certainly worth a read. I've been meaning to reread it for a while now. I can use a refresher history lesson and I'm sure I'll see new things in it this time around (a hallmark of great writing).
And for a really great short read, find his story about Tobin Sorenson and the Green Arch. You'll experience side-splitting laughter and deep compassion all within the space of a few pages. Storytelling at its best.
It's really best to write in your own voice, but sometimes I've had lots of fun trying to write in JL's style.
Eric
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bvb
Social climber
flagstaff arizona
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Dec 13, 2012 - 02:41pm PT
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Dittos on Wall Rats, Rock Jocks and Hangdogs. I re-read it last October and it's pretty f*#king brilliant. Spot-on stuff, particularly his description of Hatton, and the quirky big-wall soloist.
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