Rock climbers refer to a particular climb as a problem. Larger problems can be divided into pitches and each is dealt with as an individual problem. At climbing tournaments, a wall is set and most often, climbers don't have time to speculate ahead of time - the clock starts, they get a look at the problem and go - getting to the top on a first try, without falling or having to reassess is called flashing a problem.
The Dawn Wall is a documentary about the side of El Capitan that faces the sunrise. El Cap is a famous mountain for elite climbers, especially. The Dawn Wall was presumed impossible to climb by any measure. Period. Two climbers found their way to climb it.
They lived on the Dawn Wall together. for many weeks. pitch by pitch. Of all its intricacies and difficulties, one of the climbers met his sticking point at pitch 15. A good portion of the film revolves around the impact of pitch 15. In lieu of ropes, a good partner or belays, the metaphors in this film became my tools - along with The Alpinist - another beautiful climbing film about Mark Andre - a young man who used movement to meet his own heart and be free of image making in a thumbs up, like button culture.
My Dawn Wall - a chaotic surge of pitch 15s. The most important answer to the most painful problem was graced to me (after much struggle) in a montage of images ... but to put them into verse or share them clearly in any way, has been a sheer faced escarpment .
Slippery, ragged rag tag rattle collage of pitches that seemed to hold a seamless aversion to being spoken. Dostoevsky's Underground Man renunciated the notion that 2+2 must equal 4. I admire his adamance and don't disagree. It set him free. Picasso upended the 3rd dimension, transcending the cube and the ism - somehow - on a flat page. I proceed in their honor -
But I get ahead of myself. And one ought not do that on a wall face alone without ropes.
My impossible problem went like this:
Shadow taking form among pitch dark,
waiting for first light through a lattice window, the loaded game board presents itself-
the first mark there already
right in the center
- sometimes x sometimes o - doesn't matter
you know the rules for tic tac toe:. whoever starts first wins, whoever wins starts first.
#and we are merely players.
fairly easy to keep score
I tried forfeiting ...
but then, the game board took to haunting me from
tile floor to ceiling,
"please enter the pound sign when you are finished (#)"
haven't you noticed? multiplying and appearing
# every where.
2 lines tandem, intersect 2 lines at perpendicular to equal 9 boxes .... and so on. exponentially .
the Underground Man doesn't like this any better than I do and he doesn't have an answer either. We both know, after all. you gotta
#leave your mark in this world. 
But. Then what?
-on the angels, named and un-, i call, and to the phantoms of beings and things unremembered, of which, i will soon be one, i call to, as
i fall through the back of my own heart to
a listening that happens in the tone itself. a vision ignoring form or imagery
and she was there all ready,
attendant ...
waiting
warm and frozen, chain link dove, her
throat slope i followed
to its complicated anchor, a loaded stillness in her shoulder's architecture.
both of us, rapt in silent grace 'til
taken by what whim or need (?) her flight ignites our point in space. with
a sudden
arc of texture.
Gone.
and with her, gone the waking nightmare- she tips the hashtag at hump dumpty angle - sidelong disabled nomenclature tangled meaning less than a curtainless curtain call for a naked emperor on a winning streak. perhaps some problems can't be solved. But in an awestruck hush ...
let d i s
s o
l v
e.
