Non-Climbing, Personal Post

Sorry folks, but I felt the need to get this off my chest. There is some mention of climbing here, but it mostly deals with my "other" life.

Still Out There
My mind is playing tricks on me today, and I can't say if my heart is helping matters. I don't know what's wrong with me right now, but I'm feeling funny. Somewhere deep inside I feel both a need to rage out against something (what that "something" is, I don't know) and a need to be coddled at the same time. I'm angry, and yet, I don't really care that much. I want to talk about it, and at the same time I really don't feel the need to (not withstanding my post here, of course). It's so funny because I'm in a place that I both feel very comfortable in and so insecure at the same time. I just can't figure it out, and, predictably, I'm not sure I want to.

This album I'm listening to may have become my new "Peter Gabriel". What does that mean, you ask? Well, Peter Gabriel got me through a lot of tough days. Nothing like listening to Biko to cheer one up. I've thought of turning back to that album (Shaking the Tree), but I don't want to go back to then. I learned who I am now from that album, and I'm not sure I want to rehash old lessons. Sure, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, but those who don't focus on the future are doomed to never learn anything new at all. This has become one of my favorite songs recently:

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds: Darker With The Day

As so with that, I thought I'd take a final walk
The tide of public opinion had started to abate
The neighbours, bless them, had turned out to be all talk
I could see their frightened faces
peering at me through the gate

I was looking for an end to this, for some kind of closure
Time moved so rapidly, I had no hope of keeping track of it
I thought of my friends who had died of exposure
And I remembered other ones who had died from the lack of it

And in my best shoes I started falling forward down the street
I stopped at a church and jostled through the crowd
And love followed just behind me, panting at my feet
As the steeple tore the stomach from a lonely little cloud

Inside I sat, seeking the presence of a God
I searched through the pictures in a leather-bound book
I found a woolly lamb dozing in an issue of blood
And a gilled Jesus shivering on a fisherman's hook

Babe
It seems so long
Since you've been gone away
And I
Just got to say
That it grows darker with the day

Back on the street I saw a great big smiling sun
It was a Good day and an Evil day and all was bright and new
And it seemed to me that most destruction was being done
By those who could not choose between the two

Amateurs, dilettantes, hacks, cowboys, clones
The streets groan with little Caesars, Napoleons and cunts
With their building blocks and their tiny plastic phones
Counting on their fingers, with crumbs down their fronts

I passed by your garden, saw you with your flowers
The Magnolias, Camellias and Azaleas so sweet
And I stood there invisible in the panicking crowds
You looked so beautiful in the rising heat
I smell smoke, see little fires bursting on the lawns
People carry on regardless, listening to their hands
Great cracks appear in the pavement, the earth yawns
Bored and disgusted, to do us down

Babe
It seems so long
Since you've been gone
And I
Just got to say
That it grows darker with the day

These streets are frozen now. I come and go
Full of a longing for something I do not know
My father sits slumped in the deepening snow
As I search, in and out, above, about, below

Babe
It seems so long
Since you went away
And I
Just got to say
That it grows darker with the day

Great song. Very personal. I don't identify it with anyone in particular, but it struck a chord the other day and I love listening to it. Somehow, I get peace from it.

Anyway, I've been climbing a lot lately, and I'm going back to the 'Dacks this weekend. Hopefully it isn't cold. Next weekend I'll be at Cathedral, then Rumney, then maybe the 'Gunks if it gets too cold to do Rumney again. I'm heading to Red Rocks in November, and I'm looking forward to that.

I need to stop and let things settle. Just stop.