Author Archives: Jaggerton

Culture Clash Crash Course Ticking Time-Bomb Boom 

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It’s much different down here, in Rhode Island, denser for damn sure, with more the New Yorker brash discontent, makes sense since it’s about halfway there, equidistant from my longterm New Hampshire home. Much more likely you’ll get hit with a car while biking, and I did, slamming into the ground with exceptional force, in the critical split-second deciding to take the brunt of the fall on my chest. I bounced back up, then insisted to the friendly driver behind me, shocked as he immediately got out to help, that it was my fault, though it was probably more the other driver’s than mine.

That was a first, getting hit by a car, and I managed to hobble and wince my way home in 20-degree weather, recent snowfall rendering busy roads raw clustered peril. Again, I got the goods, legality increasingly shifting state-to-state hence instinctive reluctance and distrust regarding the law and seeking its help. But still, the hefty injurious price. I lie iced up with possible broken ribs or damage to the heart muscle underneath, which can be fatal, plus further exacerbating a previously broken hand. In short, it hurts, is threatening, and something seems dreadfully amiss, whether in people or the laws themselves.

Probably I’ll recover. The writing dilemma remains, continuing out to the loneliest insolvency fringes, as does the traveling dilemma, bike or bus or train or rent a car or whatever the hell else, and too the self-medication dilemma, the raw expense to treat longstanding issues as professional medicine is even more expensive and convoluted, and has, to some degree, failed on all counts. Well, how can you behave like a fat-ass avarice tycoon when you aren’t? 

I still seek to make a point beyond all that, a car may be helpful but you don’t really need it, friends, companions, and a family similarly, and see if anyone gets the picture, stops for a moment to question a whole lot. Otherwise it’ll continue to be a dangerous game, but what fun is safety and security anyway? 

Sooner or later people ought see past the mundane goto reward and at what really truly matters, but until then, yes, the risky battle continues, whether here, New Hampshire, or anywhere, future uncertain but recent changes at least bringing new results. It hurts, is perhaps debatable in its value, but makes a statement and I stand by it.

I’ve had a hard life, was in a lot of ways robbed of my childhood, which could explain stereotypical ‘juvenile’ habits persisting well into adulthood, drugs, biking, climbing, ‘you can’t tell me what to do’. Well, walk a day in my shoes, you’d probably do the very same things and develop the very same attitude, derision, dissent, downright disgust and compulsion to disobey, violate generally accepted rules and regulations if only to get people scratching their heads, rethinking, reevaluating.

I don’t expect it’s going to get remarkably easier anytime soon. That would require some sort of great sea change in people overall, along the lines of my last post, and given the experiences of the last few days, let’s just say I’m not holding my breath. This morning I awoke amidst soaring dread, ah here we go again, fast track to all sorts abysmal fate but no, get up, make breakfast, aha so I do still enjoy a scattered few things, and writing is one of them. 

It’s one of the hardest things in the world to write and make a living off it, but I suppose that’s not the primary goal here, instead to make a legit impact, improve and shuttle ahead, be different, inspire. I don’t know if it’ll ever succeed on a large scale, and sometimes I get so aggravated, by others, society as a whole, mindlessness, stereotypes, unwillingness to defy, stand out, and so on, that I’m about ready to throw myself into a fast-moving car on purpose. But I can’t lose sight of the writing, nor the books, all the potential there where countless other pursuits ran their course, dwindled, grandly and utterly expired. Despite all aggravations, I remain resolute, this must be done, rules must be broken, and great strides can and will still be made.

The Black and Green

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After yet another bold and risky expedition in the bitter cold, in an area I don’t know well hence fraught with errors and extemporaneous adaptation, and done without the warmth and security of an automobile, I’m forced to ask, why? I did need an item from a store the next state over, but could’ve easily waited another day and gotten a taxi instead, so is there something that renders it especially enjoyable? The very same question could be asked of the recent punishing Adirondack trip, and the preceding one up to Mount Washington in New Hampshire.
 
The answer is complex, but throughout those dark and unknown streets I realized, so much is money, wanting to get it done on my terms and with as little extraneous expenditure as possible. I suppose I just don’t love the stuff all that much, the sway it casts, the way people live and die off it, and these trips are an effort to show something beyond it, the raw potency of adventuring and exploration, enjoyment that doesn’t so hinge upon the almighty dollar, so hallowed, rarely sacred.
 
I got the goods from the store in adjacent southern Massachusetts, which themselves cost money and will be invaluable. But the memory of the trip itself, being perhaps the only person within fifty miles attempting such a thing in nighttime and rapidly worsening conditions, temperatures dropping, winds rising, chances of success dwindling by the minute and with each quarter mile farther from home, will be what stands out. People notice, stop and stare slack-jawed at intersections while the traffic light turns green, and are then beeped back to the road.
 
I may seek out these sort of things, thrive off them, as well as the incidental justification in writing. Surely a whole mess of people aren’t going to get it, yep tack more alienation onto the ungodly mass, more round dismissals as insanity and so on, so forth. It’s still making a statement, here’s something that’s entirely possible, and can be enjoyable as long as you prepare well. Besides, people and I don’t generally get along, it’s a whole lotta politics and nuanced social graces, plus flat-out amorality in pursuit of that money which mystically compels and sustains.
 
My recent post mentioned Mars plus mountaineering, likely to be very useful when we finally get there. Also too it’ll be cold, far colder than Earth, so pain tolerance will be a plus, as would thirst for raw exploration, so once again, looking ahead to the not-so-far future, I’m encouraging the reinvigoration and development of these skills and traits so that humans are more interested in, and better equipped for, far-frontier exploration.
 
If we lose our thirst for it, we’ll be stuck on Earth indefinitely, and nearly every corner of the planet has been explored, all great mountains climbed. So I have to ask, very bluntly, what exactly is the appeal of this? What is so great about spinning the wheels when we could be rocketing to an entirely new world where humans have never before set foot, where the opportunities will be transcendent, limitless?
 
We can prepare well for both Mars and the transit to and from, make it entirely worth the vast expenditure, make it so it’s extremely unlikely it’ll fail catastrophically, though that’ll always be a risk. It still seems far better to go for it, redirect money away from the standard pits and channels, towards something truly bold and risky and staggeringly worthwhile. After all, global warming continues by the day along with the status quo goto’s, more are born, more fuels are burned, and while bike travel may set a good example in this regard, the better strategy would be starting exploring other worlds, other options.
 
Even if it does fail catastrophically, the first Mars mission, at least we’ll have went for it, brightened the eyes and outlooks of virtually everyone on Earth, reinvigorated all sorts sprawling hopes and dreams, turned attentions away from beaten-path mundane and to greater things, much more interesting things, things we haven’t already seen and done countless times, places utterly new and unexplored.
 
Of course there are still major challenges, aside from radiation exposure and the unknown psychological impact of extreme isolation. Mainly it’s funding, putting together the likely hundreds of billions of dollars, sagaciously pooled such that no one need die for it. Personally it looks like something worth dying for although I may regret saying that, or at the very least, worth a lot of sacrifices to achieve. We’ve still got problems on Earth but this could be something that helps unite people, turn attentions away from saggy nationalism, vestigial imperialism and all sorts backwards-looking ideologies and truly towards the future, all humankind, all earthlings as one.
 
It’s true we could focus on the moon instead, for its resources, as there certainly is a wealth to be mined there, but if we’re still caught up in greedy infighting, how will it get divided and spent? We already have the materials and technological potential for a Mars mission, and if we never make it there, well, that’d be plain tragic. Let’s shift away from money and personal empires and more towards the imagination-igniting progress which this blog is all about. There is my two cents.
 

Midnight Departure

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I’m back in Rhode Island now, having just departed New Hampshire where I’ve lived for eleven years. Aside from the recent hospital visit and overall surge of difficulty, a lot is, for better or worse, intuition, stern observation, deduction, extrapolation, forming a picture of what’s really going on, why precisely it’s been so threatening of late. Emotions smolder greatly, yet I was fast eroding, and all the wild and extreme endeavors of the past months, perhaps got dismissed as insanity or something else unfavorable.
 
In any case, it’s all soon to render me mute and immobile then lead me atop the nearest mountain on a frigid and windy winter night for some space and privacy and to weigh options, considering certain women I’ve grown to like and love, among other factors. There I could also survey the city from above without having to hear anything except the really big stuff, intuition arguably well-honed from countless hours spent in natural surroundings over the years, perhaps attuning to the fundamental firmament, the underlying fabric of the world. Was it good, what was going on, or was it bad? One particular piece of news would be exceedingly hurtful to hear, and it appeared to be true, and I truly didn’t need to hear it firsthand, having experienced entirely enough pain and bad news of late. Clearly I needed a vacation and that didn’t involve camping every night along the way.
 
And so I’m here, after a wickedly strenuous trek nevertheless, appreciating the relative calm while also haggled by fears and doubts, was it wise, should instinct and intuition be trusted to such a degree, what if I’m wrong, what if it was conversely good news instead, what if I’ve burned all bridges to greener pastures beyond and locked myself into eternal solitude inescapable, or what if it’s all been up in my head, emotions irrational absurdity alongside?
 
Well it’s been done, there’s no going back now, oh yes I can return, but it will be complicated because, once again, and like a lot of my fellow bus and train travelers, I don’t earn much money (whether this factored into the sudden pariah distancing, even tougher to answer than the previous questions). I can only hope it was the right decision, and make the best of it. It’s temporary, I will be back, and hope for better things when I get there, things that don’t so hound, haunt, consume, overwhelm, hit upside the head in a time of need.
 
I may be able to move here longterm, but to instantly abandon a place I’ve called home for so long, especially when mere instinct and intuition are so heavily involved, is folly and anyone knows it. As for the climbing endeavor, sufficiently justified I hope, tough finding a lot here in the Ocean State, where the highest point is lower than two mountains within ten miles of where I live. And venturing back into the indoor climbing realm, well it’s kinda absurd to do alone, plus instinct says give the place a bit of time, it’ll be better when I get back. Yes that’s the intuition and hope, but as for the realest truth in it, the nitty gritty great and pretty or conversely grotesque and gruesome underbelly, or perhaps something really good for once, time will tell and we will see.
 

Practicality

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With mountaineering it’s often difficult to justify one’s actions, for instance the straightforward task of climbing all the way to the summit, there’s nothing up there, no cache of gold and jewels awaiting, just some rock, ice, or snow. As Mallory answered with regards to climbing Everest, why do it, quite simply “because it’s there.” Well, there’s something to be said for first ascents, in fact he was willing to die for it along with his climbing partner, and did, and countless other people have died on countless other mountains, everyone knows, it’s dangerous, fundamentally irrational and prone to fatal obsession.

However, we are, despite the relative slowdown, on the verge of sending humans to Mars. Everyone knows this too, but perhaps they don’t know just how mountainous and icy the terrain is, cliffs and canyons so massive in scope that they put anything on Earth to shame. In other words, mountaineering becomes a vital skill to possess, as the planet is gradually explored, valuable resources sought and discovered, pure invaluable knowledge gained, terrain that can’t, absolutely can’t, be traversed by a vehicle of any kind.

So there it is, a reason to put climbing back on humanity’s radar, the full gamut of rock, ice, snow, and pure dusty ground which, as I understand it, is everywhere on the red planet. It’s unlikely I’ll ever get to Mars, but just for the record, the extreme off-chance, I’d be willing to, as a fairly good writer with similarly good and versatile climbing skills. Otherwise I simply enjoy it, and sure don’t enjoy a lot of things so that’s saying a lot, and hope it doesn’t get seen as pointless, unforgivably dangerous, or flat-out insane worthy of mass ostracism (kinda used to it by now, but hope it doesn’t continue forever).

These days I’ve been taking nighttime trips in exceptionally cold January weather, plainly to do some ice climbing, crampons, ice axes, all that, and look forward to more upcoming. For simplicity, and because I’m poor, it’s usually accomplished with a bike, which, let me tell you, if you haven’t ever tried it, is wickedly cold and often very painful. But once I reach the spot, perhaps a frozen waterfall or plain wall of ice and start climbing, I feel better, and it’s well worth the pain and difficulties getting to and from. So it’ll continue, heck what other physical activity would even be fun at all for me in winter, given all I’ve done in the past. I hope you can see the overarching rationale and respect it, and perhaps give it a go yourself, recognizing the inherent danger, yes of course you’re responsible for your own safety, but I personally like the risk aspect, for better or worse, so all in all it looks like something I’ll be doing for a very long time. And if people still think it’s pointless, insane, or stupidly dangerous, well, so be it.

A Much Needed Break

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I appear to be suffering from exhaustion and need time to recover, but will very likely return. This included a whirlwind ER visit which I was near-certain would land me in a hospital longterm, yet that lasted a mere one intensive night, surge of gratitude for that. Blog entries got pulled to reduce complications, but I will leave up my previous book, still password protected by my favorite SNL character, all lowercase and no spaces. Wish me well as I wish you well, and I hope to be back soon.