Temporarily licked by an Eternal Tongue

The Persistence of Memory - Salvador Dali, 1931

I am buried beneath a heavy avalanche of numbers: I am 30 years old w/ a project of 31 (now 30) 5.12 redpoint climbs before I turn 31 on September 6th, 2012. That deadline is on a one-way fast track, barreling toward its infinite finality. It will be here in 112 total days. Which divides into 16 weeks & 16 weekends; I have just 2,688 hours left, which breaks down into 161,280 minutes or 9,676,800 seconds. In short, I have 31% of my season left to realize the short-ordered dead-line I have set for myself.

There are three possible indisputable facts that I must now consider seriously: 1) I have underestimated the difficulty & doability (for me) of this project. 2) I have grossly overestimated my abilities. 3) The deadline has now reached a critical mass of limited possibility. As of now, all three of these, I feel, must be honestly looked at, mulled over & considered. But it is the 3rd one which interests me most on this rainy depressing mourning.

I have 16 weekend days left (Saturdays & Sundays). In order for me to see the Project completed by said deadline I would have to do no less then get a 5.12 redpoint every 322,560 seconds, or one every 5,376 minutes. I would need to get an RP every 89.6 hours. Not considering personal commitments, work, sickness, rest days, not thinking of all those little things that life slips into your pockets that make you grind your teeth just a little, I would need to get a RP every 3.7 days. Considering the trouble I have been having, despite getting the rope up every climb I attempt, the fact remains that I am screwing up on all of my redpoint attempts, w/ the exception of one, which took 12 attempts in all. I believe it would be fool-hearty, disingenuous to say meeting this deadline is still a very real possibility. & now, underneath the weight of infallible numbers, consideration of a reality not much cared for, has become my reality & my consideration. Isn't this, this torturous condition, part of the project? Hasn't it been from its inception? Isn't the idea of failure made real part of the path? The voice locks into my mind, biting down. It isn't my voice, yet...it is. There is something familiar to it. It's tone. It's vernacular. But I still feel myself fighting against it. The idea of failure made real...the path...

In my short 30 years on this earth (12 of which exist in a hazy Dream of memory bathed in rivers of golden honeyed addiction – all but lost) I have learned much. One of which being we are not entirely in control of everything (altho I am a firm believer of those things we do not control still falls squarely upon the shoulders of the individual's responsibility: 'I could have trained more. Eaten better. I could have been more focused, determined, I could have given more of myself'...but for what price?) & that it is a futile practice to lament & scourge oneself over the fact that not everything is w/in the manipulation of our dexterous fingers. It is good to have this knowledge, to know it, but to accept it is something else entirely. I ask myself, what are you willing or able to accept? To which I have no utterance of an answer...

...After a rare, mid-day nap, awaking to the drum & thrum of thunder & the pour of rain – melancholy hanging in the air like strategically placed décor, the same questions hover above my person, a thick curtain of concentration & indecisiveness: Do I admit defeat & scrap the deadline? Or do I continue on my current path, knowing all the while that such as the deadline is, is an impossible at-this-point goal? As my options snake into my being, I sigh. Silence quilts around me chokingly; it is the only answer that comes.