Shower Automatic Writing

 When my shower decided, early this morning, to finally make up its mind on what temperature water it wishes to bestow, I was was dismaid to find out it had chosen "scalding". As I stood there, naked, for many minutes, the room grew hot and humid, and I found myself more and more flustered and uncomfortable. My breaths became heavy, and I was sweating. My feet hurt from the scalding water swishing its way along the floor, and I felt tired. I realised how similar these sensations were, at least in category, to what I have been spending the past week trying to simulate: the experience of climbing a mountain. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself climbing a mountain, and to allow my mind to passively translate these sensations and experiences into those of a mountain-climber.

Here is my roughly 60 second automatic writing that I did, on my iPad, while very much still in this physical and mental space.

SIC:

 I. Sticky, I’m scared and each breath feels Like dragging a furry blanket along a tho (thick) carpet. My feel (feet, but my feels hurt a little too) hurt and I’m worried. There is a lingering anxiety always there in the backs of my mind. What if I die. What if I become one of those bodies lying at the side of the path, covered in ice, icicles hanging from where my tears would’ve been. No it’s fine I’ve got to press on, I’ve got a lot to do. I’ve got a long day ahead of me. Breathing is fine if you do it enough. Although then it’s hard to know if it’s the altitude or the anxiety. If only just one thing weren’t true then all of this w outdoor (would?) be so much easier, but alll of this at once it just so much. I’m sticky, I’m scared, each breath feels like dragging a furry blanket along a thick carpe, my feel hurt, and I’m worried. I don’t want to be just another body.

I realised, through this impromptu simulation, that the most overwhelming part of mountaineering might well be the format of the experience - that it is not a linear series of problems, but you, as a person, living a plethora of wholly uncomfortable sensations and physical and mental experiences, while attempting a linear series of problems, the experience of which is completely inseperable from the sensations and experiences attached to your self. The cold, the pain, the fatigue, the heavy weight pulling you down, the dead bodies, the anxiety that is impossible to dismiss because, for once, it is completely sensible and only doing its job... All of these do not simply "colour" the experiences of the tasks at hand, but they are the infertile, frozen ground, in which these tasks must be sown. They are the miserable, painful, and complete unstable foundation, from which you must precariously attempt to build your days, hours, minutes, and seconds of gruelling work, with perhaps a scatterring of moments of relief, pepperred throughout, to propel you on your journey to what you can only hope will be as awe-inspiring a moment as you have hyped it up to be: the peak.

And even then, you still have to get back down.