My second and possibly last posting (because really, who gives a shit about what I have to say except me?) is an excerpt from one of my favorite books Kiss or Kill, Confessions of a Serial Climber by Mark Twight. Mark Twight is an extreme alpinist with high standards for himself and everyone around him. His battle against camping out at the top of the bell curve is laid out in no uncertain terms. A review from The Vancouver Sun states: “If you’ve delved into the growing body of mountaineering literature by reading books like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air...be forewarned: They’re like Billy Joel; Kiss or Kill is like the Dead Kennedys.” Nice. The following excerpt is admittedly over the top, but is a mantra that all self-proclaimed hard men should embrace whenever they feel weakness and a lack of discipline and motivation creeping into their souls. I hope you enjoy:

What’s your problem? I think I know. You see it in the mirror every morning. Temptation and doubt hip to hip inside your head. You know it’s not supposed to be like this but you drank the Kool-Aid and dressed yourself up in someone else’s life.

You’re haunted because you remember having something more. With each drag of the razor you ask yourself why you piss your blood into another man’s cup. Working at the job he offered, your future is between his thumb and forefinger. And the necessary accessories, the proclamations of success you thought gave you stability provide your boss security. Your debt encourages acquiescence; the heavy mortgage makes you polite.

Aren’t you sick of being tempted by an alternative lifestyle, but bound by chains of your own choosing?
Do you have the courage to live with the integrity that stabs deep?

Use the mirror to cut to the heart of things and uncover your true self. Use the razor to cut away what you don’t need. The life you want to live has no recipe. Following the recipe got you here in the first place:

But there is a way out. Live the lifestyle instead of paying lip service to the lifestyle. Live with commitment. With emotional content. Live whatever life you choose honestly. Give up this renaissance man, dilettante bullshit of doing a lot of different things (and none of them very well by real standards). Get to the guts of one thing; accept, without casuistry, the responsibility of making a choice. When you live honestly, you can not separate your mind from your body, or your thoughts from your actions.

Tell the truth. First, to yourself. Say it until it hurts. Learn the reality of your own selfishness. Quit living for other people at the expense of your own self, you’re not really alive. You live in the land of denial-and they say the view is pretty as long as you remain asleep.

Well it’s time to WAKE THE FUCK UP!

So do it. Wake up. When you drink the coffee tomorrow, take it black and notice it. Feel the caffeine surge through you. Don’t take it for granted. Use it for something. Burn the Grisham books. Sell the bad CD’s. Mariah Carey, Dave Matthews, and ‘N Sync aren’t part of the soundtrack where you’re going.

Cut your hair. Don’t worry about the gray. If you’re good at what you do, no one cares what you look like. Go to the weight room. Learn the difference between working out and what you’ve been doing. Live for the Iron and the fresh air. Punish your body to perfect your soul.

Quit posturing at the weekly parties. Your high pulse rate, your 5.12’s and quick time on the Slickrock Trail don’t mean shit to anybody else. These numbers are the measuring sticks of your own progress; show, don’t tell. Don’t react to the itch with a scratch. Instead, learn it. Honor the necessity of both the itch and the scratch.

But a haircut and a new soundtrack do not a modern man make. As long as you have a safety net you act without commitment. You’ll go back to your own habits once you meet a little resistance. You need the samurai’s desperateness and his insanity.
You ask about security? What you need is uncertainty. What you need is confusion. Something which forces you to reinvent yourself, a whip to drive you harder.

In Dune, Frank Herbert called it “the attitude of the knife”, cut off what’s incomplete and say “now it has finished, for it has ended there.”

-Mark Twight
Twitching With Twight