Oh Chuck what garbage -- and here I thought you were being ironic -- seriously I did -- I thought no one so obviously intelligent could believe that idiocy and so on... but there you go... just when I think I can't get more cynical I discover that I am in fact naive.
Catherine ---------------
Unfortunately, that was mistakenly posted on list, in response to an off-list post. My apologies to John Thorton.
But it's out and done. I meant it and now I have to explain it. `You own it, Chuck', as my lawyer once said to me.
I was in a weird mood when I responded to Doug and Yoshie over Oscar Wilde. Doug was thanking god, whom of course he couldn't care less about in terms of approval, and Yoshie was yukking it up about how Doug reminded her of Wilde. This exchange was funny. I thought, shit, guys, lets talk about work. Real work.
On the other hand. I was writing from a position that was ironic and not ironic in the same voice. I have worked and played at levels of physical demand that are pretty unbelievable--and have found great joy in it.
If you go to Yosemite some time, stand in the middle of the Yosemite lodge courtyard with the stores, snack bar, restaurant and grill. Look slightly north-east and you can see Yosemite falls. A few hundred yards to the left of the falls, is a buttress that looks a little like a giant ship prow--Yosemite Point Buttress. For climbers this an old obscure and little done route. It is about eighteen hundred feet of climbing, 5.9 grade iv, about fourteen to sixteen pitches. At the top the last few pitches are easy class four, but I was so exhausted I literally crawled up them on all fours (laughing at the idea, this is what they mean by 4th class).
At the top, which we managed to gain just as the sun went down, there is the falls trail descent which took about two hours hiking down. We started out ascending to the base of the climb around seven in the morning and got back to the parking lot at the lodge about ten at night or about fifteen hours worth. All eating places were closed, so we ate cold snacks in the parking lot and crashed.
Another time we did Middle Cathedral (Direct, 5.10a grade v) which is another old, classic route that is very long, about eighteen pitches. It ends on a ledge that leads around the corner to another series of thin exposed ledges and slabs called the Kat Walk. The descent is complex and you have to find the correct exit ledges and gully that lead down into talus.
We got near the right exit and then got lost as it got dark. After fumbling around, we decided we had to rappel in the dark. This is really scary (and stupid). You hang free in the darkness and lower, touching the rock in front of you now and then looking for old pins and bolts. I was so exhausted and it was so dark, that even though I had my eyes open, I couldn't see anything but this kind of dark gray field, slightly lighter than complete dark. I was essentially blind since it made no difference if I had my eyes open or closed.
Everything was silent and I could hear small noises as echos in this cavernous gloom. I found a couple of old pins to use as rappel anchors by feel (and backed them up) and clipped in. The sounds of small rocks clattered down into the inky night and echoed off the surrounding walls. This is just about as creepy and scary as I've been. The problem is that we couldn't stay on top, and once committed to this descent, we couldn't get out of it. There was nothing to do, but do it, very, very carefully---all the while we were completely exhausted from climbing all day. This is how most climbers die. They make a dumb mistake on a rappel or descent. It was only two blind rappels and we got to the real descent gully. Once down at the apex of this gully, we clammered down into the large talus field that goes on forever, and then into forest which was pitch dark. A couple of hours or so later when we finally set foot on the road, it was like the release from some kind of death grip. I think it was around midnight and most of the tourist car traffic had died down.
Okay that wasn't work, but the physical demand is really way off the scale. On the other hand, the last concrete slab I broke up and loaded into a truck with a wheel barrow, looked like the pyramids to me. Here you go Chuck, we need old Cheops outta here by dark. Fuck me!
I had signed on with a construction laborer subcontractor. He called me about six in the morning and said he was sick and couldn't get it together that day--but there was a job and he would meet me there with the truck--a large flat bed with a hydraulic bed lift, plywood sides, an old monster GMC from the fifties. We got to the job site and it was a basement slab that had to be taken out. It should have had two or three guys and a jack hammer. But all there was, was me, with a couple of sledges, shovels, picks, wrecking bar, and wheel barrow.
I started at seven-thirty and had one apprentice carpenter for the morning to help. He was a good worker, but he burned out after lunch and left. I kept at it until about six or seven at night. Around four-thirty the last of the carpenters left. They waved good-bye and looked at me like I was going to die on them. By then I was staggering up the planks to the truck bed to dump off another load of broken concrete. I was fifty-five and about ten years older then the oldest of them. I must have looked like somebody who had just escaped out of the gulag. But the truth was, I had just finished writing a NSF/DOE grant that had been turned down and needed the money.
So, why not celebrate impossible labor? There is something about it that is awe inspiring. It changes you and opens your mind to a whole other dimension of existence--and history. Work. Sure everybody's job is work--that's why they pay you to do it. But there is work in the ordinary dimension, tiring, boring, sometimes rewarding, sometimes something to be proud of. But then there is that other kind of Work. Work that is at the very limit of the possible, something that no amount of money can possibly pay for. That's the kind of work I was writing about. That damned basement slab pushed me to the limit of what I had formerly considered possible. Eric was amazed I had finished it. It became something like trying to extract myself from an impossible climb.
Now, in a completely other direction there is the intellectually impossible. I think number theory is right up there with breaking concrete and doing rappels in the dark. But that is for another time.
So, Catherine, what's impossible for you? What would leave you staggering at the thought, and yet, once you started on it, it might just be possible to accomplish---maybe. (this is not an ironic question).
Chuck Grimes