I'm a woman

I'm a woman
Photos copyright Laurence Gouault
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Friday 10 February 2012

Wow, wonder away, by Stevie Wonder Haston.

Time to get back onto the project...


This bit of writing was from over a year ago, but my Kundalini Yogi climbing partner has had her head in a too tight turban since then. ‘Alora’, if this piece is read with ‘Zen Mystery’ it might add some light, or perhaps just  more words.

So, I couldn’t do this weird move on the crux of one of my projects, felt like throwing a tantrum, or having a smoke. I don’t smoke. I do throw the odd tantrum on the other hand, so, was just about to go for some standard hair pulling and foot kicking, when I remembered I have very little hair and my toes were all bruised. I stared at the hold, that minging crimp, that disagreeable egregious edge of nothing hold that refused to be a hold, and starting laughing. Yep, I am slightly insane. But if you are reading this, you are more insane, and if you are passing judgement, pass away, in fact pass out!
There is no point in any little thing, is there? Pulling on a little hold till your eyes bleed? Pull harder till Gordian knots of hydra like tentacles curl around your throat, and asphyxiate you? Run a mountain marathon, why? We are doomed to wonder, are we not? We are here to do what exactly, to breed, to prolong the wondering by having an unceasing line of DNA similar Replicants wondering about why we are wondering, so I might as well wonder away about that little hold. Yea Man! But if you think like this you will never, ever do a hard route!



Do you like music? I ask as a distraction from the vicious circle of wondering why we are wondering. Most people say they like music, or they love this little song, or that little ditty, but what do they mean? I was hanging on that rope, wandering off into thought, spinning away along differing paths of musing, and music came into my head. Music to some people is mathematics or geometry; sometimes it’s that for me, other times it’s distracting wind-chime jingles. Music to some people is pure raw emotion; you know love, power, glory, strong stuff. And some people feel it all, the weird ones, the Ecstatics. I don’t like music much, it interferes with wondering about the unwonderable, it’s a useful, or useless distraction, you can’t eat it or, can you? You can like climbing, just like you can like music, but you must be inflamed by something to get the best out of your self!
Anyway instead of pulling on the hold with my left hand, I pulled on it with my right -wow enlightenment hit me like flying elephant bongo. Then I took a dirty loose mono on my shoulder, this I hadn’t seen because it had a been camouflaged by a stealth spider. Then; a high and improbable knee and threw my body tangentially rightwards, and presto, puzzle over. Wow, three years I have been doing it wrong! THICKIDIOTTWATORWHAT It was just a piece of music, a little guitar riff; magically resonating now in my head and the whole climb now is a song. Well not yet, I need to sing it from one end to the other, other wise its kindda mumbling, or stumbling, or just notes. 
 

Music is stuff it seems I can only tap into when I have help, or am in the mood, and climbing looks to be about as bad, or as difficult for me. Last year I climbed well about a dozen times, that’s all. So a bakers dozen of brilliant, totally in the zone, out of body experiences, when I climbed like god, like I am supposed to, like Beethoven, only 13 times. How unlucky can I be, I wonder? How sad, how frustrating to know it is there after all, but you can’t access that gold vein, that mother lode any time you want, you cant climb because of all the mental static.
Anyway I used to smoke to help me listen to music, or maybe to feel rather than listen, but for songs you need words as well as notes, and yep, that’s different too, isn’t it? There are people who hear the music, but never listen to the words and people who hear the lyrics, but never hear the tinkling of snowflakes falling. Climbers sometimes just see the holds, but not the sequence, or they see the move, but not the snake like wave of motion between the holds.
 So here is what I have been listening to, or enjoying lately;



Empire of Dirt,  the Johnny Cash version, not the Nine inch nails,
Evanesance Immortal
Mr Mootzart
Mr Beat Beethoven
Numero Uno Matze, humour
Electronic Supersonic, humour
Adagio for strings, the Trance version thingy
Lux Aeterna
Rui da silva, Touch me
Hallelujah by the three Norwegians, not the four Swedes, or the four turnips
Still, by Jupiter Jones.
Tic Tok, and Blah Blah, Kesha, my kinda girl when I was younger
Bach’s toccata- talk about geometry

And I am telling you now it’s made me climb better, or maybe it didn’t. Climbing is about movement, and it’s about emotion, it’s an Orchestral man hoovering in the dark, with heavy and awkward, toxic levels of chemicals cursing around your thumping, lumbering, cumbersome, inarticulate, badly designed body, that is captained  by an onboard computer that is mostly wondering, and not navigating. Do ya  nay ken?

So yes, get your internal music going, plug into that nifty MP3 player, or maybe all the above is just twittering, chirping nonsense, and all you have to do, is pull harder, so both your eyes pop out, just don’t let go. Tractorise through every delicate sequence, like a snowplough, driven by a Bat outta hell in a blizzard. Or maybe empty your mind, and just do it. After all, a newborn baby can hang off a branch, but can’t stand, or compose the Moonlight Sonata!

I am now wondering why I wrote all this, I think it’s because,  I like having spent all that time doing something backwards, and now, it’s so obviously wrong. Like in Empire of dirt,

I hurt myself today
Just to see
If I still feel

That’s backwards right

The Nine-inch nails version is about heroin, and Johnnies seems to be about his wife and love, but they seem backwards to me, like the way I was doing my move. Maybe Johnnie, you should have been nicer to your wife when she was alive.

And be careful of heroin, or loving someone for that matter, they are  like climbing, too good, very addictive, and can kill.

Like supposing I end up doing my projects, what am I going to do with myself then, what a scary thought. So the answer is, don’t loose weight, do all the crux’s kak-handed and write songs about failure, or being inadequate, make millions. Become rich, loose the plot, marry a blond, and in the darkest watches of the night; wonder why you didn’t take the hold with the other hand, and then it rains, and you find yourself on a roof, in a film written by Philip K Dick. And you say

All those moments will be lost
In time
Like tears in rain 

And then your candle flame is snuffed out, and it’s all too late to clip those chains.

And so very naturally we come to the end, and so we must perforce listen to Jimmy Morrison singing ‘this is the end’. And if you hear this when you are cruising at Craig Doris, know that you are at last free, for you are in Elysium, just as Maximus said. So smile your troubles are over,; you are smeared like algae on the boulders, and the fish will enjoy a free meal!