7,000 Feet Up

I took a friend to Purgatory Chasm up in Massachusetts today because she’s never seen it. I have a few times and it’s a little glacial gouge/rip/sore in the Earth up there. It’s pretty interesting as you have giant boulders and escarpments that rise up to seventy feet above your head. I once rock climbed it over a decade ago without falling and smashing my legs.

It’s an near effortless scramble to climb over the debris that’s in that tiny gorge. 

The hardest “climbing” I’ve ever done was at Mt St Helen’s in 1993/96. No, I’m not making this up as I can point you to a friend who I was staying with way back then in Oregon.

You can pretty much drive up to the foot of Mt St Helens but then you have to park the car, get out and start humping your way up. When I went, the entire area was devoid of any life, any plants. I can report to you that the whole area, to the horizon, looked like the Moon.

I’m not a mountain climber by a longshot. What I have done is called "scrambling."  But I have hiked in some weird/odd/sort-of-inaccessible places in my life. Mt St Helen’s is a hike/climb that’ll beat your ass if you’re not used to being up around 7,000 feet. Oxygen isn’t as plentiful as it is here at sea level. I was panting as I was climbing into the blast crater and every step was a bitch because all that’s supporting you is sand and volcanic dust.

Why do I do it? I want to see bizarre places and things others usually don’t.

*****

Here’s a goofy story. My return to Portland a second time included, with what I thought, would be climb up Mt Hood. Mt Hood is 11,000 feet up. A week prior to flying out there I called the Timberline Lodge that’s situated about half way up the mountain. It’s a ski resort/base camp for the area. If you’ve seen Jack Nicholson’s movie The Shining, the “Overlook Hotel” in the movie, is actually Timberline Lodge.

Anyways, I called the girl at the desk there and asked what the snow pack was in late July. She told me about 18 feet still. She asked if I was going to do a climb and said that I’d have to register with the Lodge first and check in my equipment. I then said, “I won’t be checking in any equipment.” There was a pause on her end of the line when she asked:

“Sir? Are you a technical climber?”

I answered, “What’s a technical climber?”

She then told me I was to be restricted from climbing that mountain no matter what I said.

A technical climber is one of those guys you see carrying tons of rope, petons, grappling hooks, solar powered GPS devices and wearing -50 degree parkas and boots covered in aluminum spikes.

My friend M.K., later on , was a bit incredulous at my naïve belief that I would just waltz up that mountain. “Don’t you know how many real climbers die on that mountain every year?”

Nope, I didn’t. And being the fool I was, I tried going up. Thanks to the staff at Timberline for stopping my silly ass.

Mr Winthrop! Hard To Port! Aye! Aye Sir!

Cathy, I'm lost, I said, though I knew she was sleeping.
I'm empty and I'm aching and I don't know why.
Countin' the cars on the New Jersey turnpike
They've all come to look for America, all come to look for America

 

America

 

Paul Simon.

America. Supposedly at one time it was where you could flee to escape the serfdom of Europe. Or at least, from whatever your background. You had chance to shrug off your old life and “make it here.” There was no guarantee that you would, but the chance was there. Now the only freedom offered is to become rich enough where the day to day realities of surviving don’t bother you. You purchase it today.

If you’re a boomer or at least a child of the 70’s, you’re probably into self actualization. If you aren’t, you are; because it surrounds everyone of this country. Big business has turned a rather singular, personal quest for improvement into a cash cow.

Losing weight, exercising, tweaking your mind, mental issues, marriage/relationship problems, self help books, PBS tv shows with the newest Depak Chopra offering the a DVD that’ll show you how to improve your life. It’s all out there. Everywhere.

I was born this self help era into without even knowing it. I think my realization hit me when I saw a book on my mother’s table called, Your Erroneous Zones by Wayne Dwyer. I read it and barely understood it at twelve. But there it was, a guide on how to “get what you want out of life.” I thought my mom had everything she wanted, what would she be lacking? Well, chalk that up to an immature kid who hadn’t really lived life yet.

There have been, for lack of a better phrase, episodes in my life where I wanted to change course. The impetus for that was an acknowledgment, that came late of course, that what I was doing, who I was with; was headed no where.

One such episode I call the “Horton’s Lot” part of my life. I grew up with an odd mix of middle/blue collar class kids who were proto-criminals. Sprouting punks if you will. Defiant little pricks who acted out just to be free, or more likely, to expend a reservoir of anger that was created by god knows what in their pasts.

Horton’s lot was a parking lot next to a sprawling chemical complex called Teknor Apex that made just about anything out of poly vinyl chloride. We’d all gather there on most nights, more so nearer the weekend to hang out. The weekends it was a party spot where we all could drink and have fun. For some reason, the Pawtucket Police never bothered us. Till one night.

The lot of us just engaged in typical adolescent misdemeanor behavior. Drinking, smoking pot and driving drunk when it wasn’t the crime that it was today. But a select few of us, seemed to be gunning for something more exciting and dangerous.

One night, the police and a few detectives were spying on our group without our awareness. Then, like you see on cop shows, a bunch of police appeared out of nowhere and swarmed through our crowd. They blew past most of us and gunned for John Z. and threw him up against a car and slapped the cuffs on him.

After that commotion, I had to ask why they wanted him as I was clueless. Stacey said he had been involved in a armed robbery of a liquor store earlier that week. He was the ripe age of 17. Dumb shit he was. Up until that point, I had thought of John Z as an overactive, wanna-be tough guy looking for a lot of attention.

After that, I reevaluated why I was hanging around that crowd. I immediately stopped going there, to the consternation of everyone. Where is he? Why doesn’t he come down here? Have you seen him? To quote another criminal, Charley Manson, I had X’ed them out of my life.

Since then, I have X’ed others, jobs, attitudes and behaviors out of my life.

You can make course correction after course correction to what you think is better, and most of the time you’re right, at least 60% so. But it never satiates you does it? There is always a push for something “better.” Something else is lacking or there is something else you want.

Now that I think of it, Self Actualization isn’t just a phenomenon of the 70’s, it’s always been here. I’m sure there was some poor hard scrabble farmer a thousand years ago who wished his ears of corn could be fatter and tried something to make them so.

HA! All we did to the “I want MORE out of life” was to codify it from a movement to a quasi religion and finally a business venture.

Will I stop wanting more out of life? Hell no, I’m human.  We're all "looking for America" still.

I Have Many Stories...and I Can't TELL THEM!

I had a great idea to talk about. However, if I did, I’ll be crucified by the few who would know exactly what I’m talking about. The idea was “lushes.”

Hemingway wrote in A Moveable Feast that they used to call Parisian women drunks “poivrottes.” Poivrottes are loose, female rummies . He was referring to the class of people who frequented low life bars like the Cafe des Amateurs just prior to the outbreak of World War II. He specifically said of the bar and crowd that frequented it as “the cesspool of the Rue Mouffetard.” Ernest avoided it like the Plague.

　

And I’m going to stop right here.

*****

In other news, I’m on vacation. It’s probably the first “real” one I’ve had in years. Well, it’s probably the first typical one I’ve had that everyone else in the workaday world gets. What have I done with it so far? The first thing I did was to turn my brain off.

Summer time can afford you the freedom of turning your brain off. Go to the beach for 17 hours with your toes in the sand while sipping a drink and a shift will occur within you. Well, if you’re lucky enough it will. You relax. By the way, it’s not the alcohol that does it either.

Whimsical, carefree and breezy. That’s my idea of a true vacation. It‘s one where you can invoke a certain state of mind.  I was buying a ton of new clothing at the Emerald Square mall today and I was walking and purchasing in an easy lighthearted manner. Even competing with the rest of humanity driving on Route 1 in Attleboro, I was still buoyant. Now compare that with a vacation in Ibiza or the Caymans. A sunny attitude can be had anywhere and it’s probably the only thing that does matter, no matter where you are, doesn’t it?

My sprightliness has returned. I haven’t seen that in a long while. I’m going to make an effort to incorporate that…and a few other changes.

Narcissim and Christ on the Cross (sort of...)

I love taking psychological tests. I love reading about myself. Why not? In today’s age the entire country is about narcissism and it’s high time I jumped on board. Sing it with me, loud and proud…”ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME!”

The pop tests you can find on the internet don’t really measure anything. The better ones have reliability and validity tests done on them to make sure they actually work. Those particular tests actually do measure what’s inside of you.

One personality quirk about me is that I can throw myself into helping other people. Well, I’m not surprised by that since I started my career out of college in the social work world. But as you age, you learn why you are the way you are. And personalities beyond the age of 20 are pretty much set in concrete.

I had a conversation with a co-worker about this. I told her there are two types of people in the world. The nurses and the nursed.

There are those of us, who w/o thinking, help. It’s a knee jerk reaction. We help anyone who’s down. But, the problem with that is…are those who fail to walk upright on their own. Those people, who are quite capable of leading their own lives, give them over to someone else to lead. WE carry them. We nurse them. And like any fool, we learn too late when to drop their sorry asses into the dirt and realize that they’ll never learn to stand on their own. They were in no need of any “nursing” at all. They never wanted to lead their own lives.

We “nurses” need a triage system where we can correctly diagnose the wounded. We can list them as: Truly injured, Slightly injured, Needing a shoulder to cry on, needing someone to talk to. And…Faking it so bad because they just want out of working/being responsible/dishonest/unreliable…ok..you get the picture.

I”ve become better at this…and some I know have as well too.

I probably will never lose this aspect of my personality…and I don’t want to. It’s what makes me who I am to the very core. Though it’s tempered with some practical realties that there are those who will never learn to “grow up.” I will spend my precious efforts on those who need it.