Winter away from borderwalking is a strain. It must be my age but sleep is not a constant companion or even a regular visitor much anymore. When I'm walled and roofed in I twitch and crackle on the bed. It's not quite as bad if I'm in a tent or trailer. Ambien helps but it stops all dreaming or promotes the horrors. That little white pill is my bedtime snack most nights. Then I'll read until I fall unconscious.Where do you suppose that phrase came from? I'm not aware that humankind has historically been in the habit of standing to sleep and would therefore fall unconscious. Or drop off to sleep. Drop off the tree? We American English speakers have strange constructions that describe implausible literal actions and we say them with serious intent and expect them to be understood and not ridiculed.
That aspect of our conversation was one reason I started writing dialogue poems 30 years ago. They may be poems or just doggerel, I'm not sure. I am fairly certain it is impossible to say which from inside them. This one, for instance:
Those Who Have Ears
"I see what you mean."
"You see what I mean?"
"Sure. I see what you mean."
"How can you do that?"
"Do what?"
"See what I mean."
"It's just a figure of speech."
"What does that mean?"
"A figure of speech."
"Come on!"
"No, have you ever thought about it?"
"Thought about what?"
"That we use precisely that word: figure of speech."
"So what?"
"So, you have to see a figure."
"You mean a figure is something you have to see."
"Yes."
"So you have to see a figure of speech."
"Yes!"
"I see what you mean."
I have a friend, Alex, who has taken up rock climbing. Rock climbing deserves an essay all to itself and much more but it is not what you would call virgin ground. Rock, I guess, in this case. Many folks have already written about it. And I'll eventually get around to writing some too. But today, as a climber myself, although some retired, I wanted to tell you to your eyes that the more you do it, the more you see what it means. The picture here is me in a very difficult (at least for me) 5.10b jam crack on the granite of Gate Buttress in Little Cottonwood Canyon down from Alta and Snowbird ski areas. Of course it was summer and I could easily have just said the canyons east of Salt Lake City. But Salt Lake City is a nervous name for me. Someday I'll go into that, too.
The climb pictured here with with that 'natural athlete' photo of me apparently imitating someone with a wooden leg, is a narrow vertical jamb crack just under a single 150 foot pitch. You progress upward by jamming your toes and fingers into the crack and twisting to achieve the frictional torque necessary to hold your toes and fingers in place. It is awkward and painful to a degree. The width of the crack varies making the necessary depth and twist also vary. Progress upward can make you look like a praying mantis.
A trick of the canyon wind also mutes your rope-mates' voice. Rock climbers on long, exposed vertical pitches like this talk back and forth a lot. The climber above needs to keep just the right amount of tension on the rope. Too much affects your balance. Too little and the rope can get in the way at a critical time. People who haven't done it think rock climbers use the rope to climb with. They don't. They use it to fall with - 'coming off,' it's called. A climber fell to his death here the day after this picture was taken, so you can see having a rope to fall with is not always a successful strategy. The technical explanation of all this is complicated.
I spent a very long time in a position about three feet above the one shown in the photo. Briefly, I could not remove the piece of protection, called a hex nut, and the slings and carabiners attached to it from the back of the crack. I could not pass it and go on without untying from the rope and retying in, nor could I descend. My right ankle was turned at 90 degrees with all of my weight on it - like pogo-ing on a sprained ankle. The cliff face was slightly overhung and kept pushing me out of the crack.
When I finally joined my partner, Gordon Douglas, he said one thing. "You look like you been popping out your eyes with a cold spoon."
So I replied, "I see what you mean."
