Nervous Ticks (sic)

[JAR]

Plato tells of a student of Socrates who overheard a friend of his complaining after losing his notes; to this the philosopher responded: "You should have inscribed them in your psyche (mind) and not on paper." And while Plato presents this as a matter of personal improvement and discipline, I think the principle has application within our own little academe of rock philosophers.

See, in the last week I've been on three different beautiful crack climbs, and every one of them was poxed from nuts to nose with long, pasty, lesions of chalk. Sentry Box, Claim Jumper, and the Left Side: sure they're difficult and technically demanding (they're at my limit) but that's no excuse for turning them into al fresco gym climbs. The beauty of crack climbing is the way it comes in at the eye as an analog signal, a continuous feature, and how you then use your experience, cunning, and grit to convert it into a digital sequence that works for you. I don't want to see your sequence, I want to see mine.

We all dust a foothold from time to time, limn it briefly as something for the eye to grab in extremis. But in most cases your foot is going to erase the trace as you pass, with little harm done to your successor's good fun. The fingerpainting style, on the other hand, is a get-sends-quick scheme, resource extraction behaviour, a prop for a flaccid memory. Cast off your crutches, open your eyes, get subtle like Arno says, and do what humans do best: adapt. Learn sequences and let the chalk fall where it may. Your head will be stronger for it. If you still want to learn to draw, buy some crayons and a tamiknight book.

Lastly, if reading this has offended your sense of freedom, make sure to print it out and post it somewhere prominent, as you are likely the kind of person who forgets anything that isn't staring them in the face. We wouldn't want you to be walking around mad and not know the reason.

Seriously though, enough with the ticking.

[Fre]

Superb bit of writing! "Limn"?!!! I had to look that one up, not being a native speaker. Love the word, will do my best to use it in a sentence when I see someone ticking

[scrubber]

Love the word, will do my best to use it in a sentence when I see someone ticking

sh*t, I thought it was a typo. Now I'm going to have to go look it up too...

The mad ticker has been hard at work on the Challenger too. It's screwing up my attempted memorization of that finger eater. Can't you just put your fingers in the chalky spots? Do you really need that four inch long line telling you to stick them in the chalky pin-scar? Maybe I'm just grumpy because it's shut me down for so many years.

K

[Dru]

Is in any coincidence that people are complaining about giant tick marks right at the same time when the summer Colorado/Cali posse travellers have shown up in town?
Betcha come September the tick marks will magically vanish. Only to return next August

[jstod]

Someone else started a discussion about this awhile back (far less poetically though!) as well:

http://squamishclimbing.com/squamish_cl ... f=1&t=3882

Last night Crime of the Century had 2" long horizontal tics for its whole length, as well as a large ugly chalk smear running down the right side…

Almost made me wish for rain…. (sigh).

Julian

[Dan]

sh*t, I thought it was a typo. Now I'm going to have to go look it up too...

lol, same...that is awesome. I know ill never forget that word now. Excellent OP!