Half-term, what to do?
Anja is busy with the PHD; a bunch of Guys from Reading Climbing Centre went to font two weeks ago on a pre-arranged trip, during term-time; the peak looks soggy and warm.... The solution? Head over for a week-long half-term trip to the Swiss Alps, to Magicwood. Make that an early birthday present for the up coming big 3 0.
Fly to Milan Bergamo with Ryanair, bouldermat checked in as hold luggage. Train to Tirano and stay there the night before heading up the impressive UNESCO Welterbestrecke
Bernina Express. Awesome way to see the Alps in pure warmth and comfort. Arrive Thusis and two busses, via Andeer, to arrive in Magicwood. Next time I would probably fly to Zurich or Basel or even Geneva I think.
Encouraging first day
Arrived Magicwood and caught up with a couple of German lads, Bjog and Farid, who were off to add a low start to a couple of problems that they had mistakenly started too high on during a previous trip. I asked if I could join and went along for the ride. Day 1 resulted in two font 7Bs, Schrotti and Hageltrauma, one of which a flash (although with a shared start so not a real flash). Not climbed V8 this year so good first day, and looking hopeful for climbing something harder for the first time!
As I had rushed to catch the bus transfers and trains the whole way, I'd managed to arrive in Magicwood with no food or gas for the stove. Bjog and Farid offered me a meal, which I accepted, before heading over to the fire pit to join the other campers.
Soggy biscuits
After this encouraging first day, things turned soggy. People who'd been there for the weekend left, meaning the campsite became somewhat deserted. The cloud came down, the wind died down, leaving the forest very very soggy indeed. I climbed again with Bjog and Farid the following day, but after out speedy warm up on a couple of classic 6Bs, it began raining so we retreated to the Bruno boulder to try Supernova 7C, which remains dry in light rain, due to the overhanging rock. Good session but kept coming unstuck on a crux foot swap. No tick for any of the 3 of us.
The sogginess continues
The next few days stayed wet and for me turned into a mixture of: trying Supernova in the wet; going up to Edelweiss hostel to catch up with other climbers staying at the Gasthaus; going to bed around 8 or 9. In amongst this, I had an awesome, dry day climbing with Dorethea from Frankenjura and Thomasina from Canada along with her daughter Cedar. Really inspiring people, Thomasina and Cedar on an extended climbing trip, Dorethea down from Bayreuth; all climbing very strong indeed. Had a play on Kechenmonster a 7A that's going on 7B... Failed on the same move and moved on to give the girls the opportunity to go on with the day. Dorethea claimed to have been trying the problem for the last 7 years! After that, I joined them for a play in Foo Fighter and managed the first two of 3 crux moves. All good. Finally, I returned to Supernova, given the prima dry, cold conditions and managed to get all the moves. Still no tick however!
Soggy sog sog
The remainder of the trip taught me something. If it's dry and you're getting all the moves, man up and get on with the send. For the rest of the trip the cloud descended, and didn't leave. Apart from a quick pull on Foxy Lady (8A) which felt strangely do-able, nothing else occurred. No more ticks.
To Milano
So off to meet Anja (Anja's friend currently living in Milan) for a night on the tiles (quick wash in the train loo) before returning to the UK, to Reading with a lift from my Anja, who managed her first trip solo in the car, all the way round the M25 to Stansted!!!
Things to take away from the trip:
- the kindness of strangers is all good!
- if it's prima conditions, keep going, take a rest and go for the send!
- climbing hard is slowly becoming a reality
Sunday 3 November 2013
Wednesday 11 January 2012
Llamadas telefónicas por Roberto Bolaño
The book works in a similar vein being split into a number of short stories, set out like this:
1. Llamadas telefónicas
i. Sensini Follows the friendship, through a shared interest in writing competitions, of the protagonist and an older and more accomplished author.
ii. Henri Simon Leprince Centres on a writer of poetry and stories battling against French critics around the time of the first world war and describes his philosophy of helping writers through the resistance. The story is very tongue in cheek. In his heart, Leprince finally accepted his condition as a bad writer but also understood and accepted that good writers need bad writers as alone, they would be but readers or squires. He also knew that by saving (or helping) a few good writers, he had earned the right to blot paper and make mistakes. Also, he knew that he had earned the right to to be published in two or maybe three magazines.
iii. Enrique Martín Here, Arturo Bolano describes a successful poet living in Barcelona who begins to write Science Fiction opens a bookshop and becomes apparently quite paranoid.
iv. Una aventura literaria is a fantastic story about writer, named simply 'B', who is not famous, has no money, and whose poems are published in marginal magazines. 'B' writes a book in which one of the chapters pokes fun at a writer, named simply 'A'. 'A' is the same age as 'B' but is famous, has money, and is well read. This book is well received and 'A' appears in interviews, waxing lyrical about the book. The story follows 'B' and his (or her) thoughts about whether 'A' in fact knows that the book is poking fun.
v. Llamadas telefónicas is again about a character named 'B' and his break up with 'X'. 'X' is subsequently murdered and investigated by the police.
2 Detectives
El Gusano tells the story from a young boy who plays truant, and spends his days buying or stealing books and going to the cinema to watch erotic Mexican films. The boy befriends 'el Gusano' and their relationship is explored.
La nieve is an account by the protagonist, of the story told to him by Rogelio Estrada, whose 'smile seemed permanently stuck between astonishment and mischief', of his life in Moscow working for a rather dodgy Russian businessman, who has a love of Dostoevsky and Chekhov. This plot becomes quite dark, and involves love, death and books.
Otro cuento ruso again takes place during the second world war, this time on the Russian front line and is just exquisite in content and form. I'm not going to describe anything of the plot but have instead translated the short story as it isn't available in English.
William Burns is an odd story about a time in William Burns' life when he had a relationship with two women, one older, one younger and the events surrounding a holiday house in the mountains.
Detectives is a dialogue between two police detectives, driving and reminiscing. The conversation, of course, is very odd.
The third part of the book La vida de Anne Moore, has four more short stories, each centering on a group of people and their lives. One woman goes mad and tries to kill one or more of her friends, while another story focuses in an actress in adult movies. The stories vary in scope and style and seem not to be linked in any way. Friends, family come and go, they seem not to be tied particularly to any one place or time. Many of them seem to enjoy talking into the night, smoking cigarettes and have some connection to writing, though not all. What I'm beginning to recognise as a Bolaño style. This style also accounts for the fact that they all seem to live and breath and seem as flawed and lost as anyone really is.
Translation into English of 'Another Russian story' taken from Llamadas telefónicas by Roberto Bolaño
For Anselmo Sanjuan
At some point in time, after discussing with a friend about the wandering identity of art, Amalfitano told a story that he had heard in Barcelona. The story dealt with a soldier of the Spanish Blue Division who fought in the second world war, on the Russian front, more specifically as part of the Army Group North, in a zone near Novgorod.
The Soldier was a a small man from Seville, stick thin with blue eyes that, life as is (he was no Dionisio Ridruejo nor Thomas Salvador and when he had to salute the Roman salute, neither was he a real fascist or falangist), he went to stop Russia. There, without knowing who started, someone told him soldier go over there or soldier do that or the other, and the word soldier was left in his head, but in the dark part of the head, and in this place, large and desolate with the passing of time and with the daily shocks, the word transformed into a precentor. I don't know how this happened, let's suppose that an infantile mechanism activated it, some happy memory that had been waiting for the opportunity to return.
This meant that the Andalusian thought about himself in the terms and duties of a precentor, although he didn't consciously have any real understanding of the significance of this word which is given to the head of the choir in certain cathedrals. But somehow, and this is remarkable, through the power of thinking of himself as precentor, he was converted into a precentor. During the terrible winter of '41, he put himself in charge of a choir that sang carols while the Russians crushed 250 Regiment. In their memory these days were full of sound (dry, constant sounds) and of a subterranean happiness, a little out of focus. They sang, but it was as if their voices arrived afterwards or even before and the lips, the throats, the eyes of the singers slid over a fracture of silence, in a brief journey, equally foreign.
Anyway, the man from Seville behaved courageously, with resignation, even if his mood soured as time passed.
He didn't have to wait to taste his share of blood. One evening, in a lapse of concentration, he was injured and for two weeks he was interned at the Military Hospital at Riga, in the care of robust, smiling nurses of the Reich, skeptical of the colour of his eyes, and of a few ugly Spanish volunteer nurses, probably sisters or sisters in law or distant cousins of Jose Antonio.
When orders arrived, something happened that would not have grave consequences for the man from Seville: instead of receiving a ticket with the correct destination, he was sent one that took him to the quarters of an SS batallion, posted some three hundred kilometres from his own regiment. There, surrounded by Germans, Austrians, Lithuanians, Danes, Norwegians and Swedish, all much taller and stronger than him, he tried to rectify the mistake using rudimentary German, but the SS put him off and while clearing up the matter, gave him a broom to scrub the barracks and a mop and a bucket of water to mop the enormous, oblong wooden building where they held, interrogated and tortured every kind of prisoner.
Without giving up on everything, but still complying with his new task conscientiously, the man from Seville saw time pass from his new barracks, eating better than before and without exposing himself to new dangers, being as the SS batallion was stationed in the rearguard, fighting those termed 'bandits'. Then, in the dark part of his head, the word soldier returned to be readable. I am a soldier, he told himself, a raw recruit, and I must accept my destiny. The word precentor disappeared little by little, although some evenings, under an unending sky that took him back to nostalgic memories of Seville, the word still echoed, lost who knows where. Once he heard some German soldiers singing and was reminded of it, another time he heard a child singing behind some bushes and remembered once again the word, this time more precisely, but when he looked behind the bushes, the child had gone.
One day, what had to happen, happened. The SS barracks were attacked and taken, according to some, by the Russian Cavalry, according to others, a group of partisans. The fight was brief and went against the Germans. After an hour the Russians found the man from Seville hidden in the oblong building, dressed in the uniform of an SS and surrounded by not long since committed disgraces. As they say, caught red handed. He was quickly tied to one of the chairs that the SS had used during interrogations, one of those chairs with belts on the legs and arms, and everything the Russians asked, he answered in Spanish that he didn't understand and that he was only a dogsbody. He also tried to say it in German, but he hardly knew four words in the language and the Russians didn't know any. After a session of slaps and kicks, they went to find one who knew German and got to work interrogating prisoners in another of the cells in the oblong building. Before they returned, the man from Seville heard shots, he knew they were killing some of the SS and lost the hope of walking free that he had still held; however, when the shots stopped he went on clutching onto life with everything he had. The one who knew German asked him what he did there, what was his rank and his role. The man from Seville tried to explain in German, but in vain. The Russians then opened his mouth and with a pair of pliers that the Germans used for other parts of the anatomy, started to pull and squeeze his tongue. The pain that he felt made his eyes water and he said, or shouted the word 'coño'. With the pliers in his mouth, the Spanish outburst tranformed and came out in a shriek as the word kunst.
The Russian who knew German looked at him quizzically. The man from Seville shouted kunst, kunst, and cried with pain. The word kunst in German means art and the bilingual soldier understood it as such and said that the bastard was an artist or something. Those torturing the man from Seville pulled out the pliers with a little piece of tongue and waited, momentarily hypnotized by the discovery. The word art. It tamed them. And so tamed, the Russians took a breather and waited for some sort of signal while the solder bled from his mouth and swallowed and choked on his blood mixed with large doses of saliva. The word 'coño', metamorphosed into the word art had saved his life. When he left the oblong building the sun was hidden but hurt his eyes as if it was the middle of the day.
They took him with the other remaining prisoners and a little after another Russian who understood Spanish was able to listen to his story and the man from Seville was stopped up at a prison camp in Siberia while his accidental comrades in wickedness were shot. He remained in Siberia well into the next decade. In 1957 he moved to Barcelona. Sometimes he would open his mouth and happily recount war stories. Other times he would open his mouth and show whoever was willing to see, the piece of tongue that was missing. It was hardly visible. When people said this to him, the man from Seville explained that his tongue, with the years had grown. Amalfitano didn't meet him personally, but when he told the story, the man from Seville still lived in a hostel in Barcelona.
At some point in time, after discussing with a friend about the wandering identity of art, Amalfitano told a story that he had heard in Barcelona. The story dealt with a soldier of the Spanish Blue Division who fought in the second world war, on the Russian front, more specifically as part of the Army Group North, in a zone near Novgorod.
The Soldier was a a small man from Seville, stick thin with blue eyes that, life as is (he was no Dionisio Ridruejo nor Thomas Salvador and when he had to salute the Roman salute, neither was he a real fascist or falangist), he went to stop Russia. There, without knowing who started, someone told him soldier go over there or soldier do that or the other, and the word soldier was left in his head, but in the dark part of the head, and in this place, large and desolate with the passing of time and with the daily shocks, the word transformed into a precentor. I don't know how this happened, let's suppose that an infantile mechanism activated it, some happy memory that had been waiting for the opportunity to return.
This meant that the Andalusian thought about himself in the terms and duties of a precentor, although he didn't consciously have any real understanding of the significance of this word which is given to the head of the choir in certain cathedrals. But somehow, and this is remarkable, through the power of thinking of himself as precentor, he was converted into a precentor. During the terrible winter of '41, he put himself in charge of a choir that sang carols while the Russians crushed 250 Regiment. In their memory these days were full of sound (dry, constant sounds) and of a subterranean happiness, a little out of focus. They sang, but it was as if their voices arrived afterwards or even before and the lips, the throats, the eyes of the singers slid over a fracture of silence, in a brief journey, equally foreign.
Anyway, the man from Seville behaved courageously, with resignation, even if his mood soured as time passed.
He didn't have to wait to taste his share of blood. One evening, in a lapse of concentration, he was injured and for two weeks he was interned at the Military Hospital at Riga, in the care of robust, smiling nurses of the Reich, skeptical of the colour of his eyes, and of a few ugly Spanish volunteer nurses, probably sisters or sisters in law or distant cousins of Jose Antonio.
When orders arrived, something happened that would not have grave consequences for the man from Seville: instead of receiving a ticket with the correct destination, he was sent one that took him to the quarters of an SS batallion, posted some three hundred kilometres from his own regiment. There, surrounded by Germans, Austrians, Lithuanians, Danes, Norwegians and Swedish, all much taller and stronger than him, he tried to rectify the mistake using rudimentary German, but the SS put him off and while clearing up the matter, gave him a broom to scrub the barracks and a mop and a bucket of water to mop the enormous, oblong wooden building where they held, interrogated and tortured every kind of prisoner.
Without giving up on everything, but still complying with his new task conscientiously, the man from Seville saw time pass from his new barracks, eating better than before and without exposing himself to new dangers, being as the SS batallion was stationed in the rearguard, fighting those termed 'bandits'. Then, in the dark part of his head, the word soldier returned to be readable. I am a soldier, he told himself, a raw recruit, and I must accept my destiny. The word precentor disappeared little by little, although some evenings, under an unending sky that took him back to nostalgic memories of Seville, the word still echoed, lost who knows where. Once he heard some German soldiers singing and was reminded of it, another time he heard a child singing behind some bushes and remembered once again the word, this time more precisely, but when he looked behind the bushes, the child had gone.
One day, what had to happen, happened. The SS barracks were attacked and taken, according to some, by the Russian Cavalry, according to others, a group of partisans. The fight was brief and went against the Germans. After an hour the Russians found the man from Seville hidden in the oblong building, dressed in the uniform of an SS and surrounded by not long since committed disgraces. As they say, caught red handed. He was quickly tied to one of the chairs that the SS had used during interrogations, one of those chairs with belts on the legs and arms, and everything the Russians asked, he answered in Spanish that he didn't understand and that he was only a dogsbody. He also tried to say it in German, but he hardly knew four words in the language and the Russians didn't know any. After a session of slaps and kicks, they went to find one who knew German and got to work interrogating prisoners in another of the cells in the oblong building. Before they returned, the man from Seville heard shots, he knew they were killing some of the SS and lost the hope of walking free that he had still held; however, when the shots stopped he went on clutching onto life with everything he had. The one who knew German asked him what he did there, what was his rank and his role. The man from Seville tried to explain in German, but in vain. The Russians then opened his mouth and with a pair of pliers that the Germans used for other parts of the anatomy, started to pull and squeeze his tongue. The pain that he felt made his eyes water and he said, or shouted the word 'coño'. With the pliers in his mouth, the Spanish outburst tranformed and came out in a shriek as the word kunst.
The Russian who knew German looked at him quizzically. The man from Seville shouted kunst, kunst, and cried with pain. The word kunst in German means art and the bilingual soldier understood it as such and said that the bastard was an artist or something. Those torturing the man from Seville pulled out the pliers with a little piece of tongue and waited, momentarily hypnotized by the discovery. The word art. It tamed them. And so tamed, the Russians took a breather and waited for some sort of signal while the solder bled from his mouth and swallowed and choked on his blood mixed with large doses of saliva. The word 'coño', metamorphosed into the word art had saved his life. When he left the oblong building the sun was hidden but hurt his eyes as if it was the middle of the day.
They took him with the other remaining prisoners and a little after another Russian who understood Spanish was able to listen to his story and the man from Seville was stopped up at a prison camp in Siberia while his accidental comrades in wickedness were shot. He remained in Siberia well into the next decade. In 1957 he moved to Barcelona. Sometimes he would open his mouth and happily recount war stories. Other times he would open his mouth and show whoever was willing to see, the piece of tongue that was missing. It was hardly visible. When people said this to him, the man from Seville explained that his tongue, with the years had grown. Amalfitano didn't meet him personally, but when he told the story, the man from Seville still lived in a hostel in Barcelona.
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