Writing About Writing

In the interest of keeping my brain functioning for more than a few weeks past graduation, recently I've been looking back at some of my writing from the past four years.  As most of you know, I was an English major, and in my senior year decided to express my desire to write by declaring a Creative Writing Concentration.  What does that mean exactly?  Not much.  I'd already taken more writing classes than are needed (4) for this classification, and it was as simple as filling in about 3 lines on a form in the Registrar's office.  In trying to further this effort, though, I took a class called Advanced Prose in the spring of my senior year.  This was a small workshop style class--only nine members and one meeting each week.  Our projects could be whatever we desired.  Most people wrote fiction (short stories and two attempts at a novel), there were a couple of deeply personal memoirs, and one collection of travel writing stories.  Those were mine if you couldn't guess.  

Reentering the Earth's Blogosphere: or How a Cartoon Has Kept Me From Writing

I'm heating up, flying down through the blogosphere, cruising past space dust and satellites broadcasting the Bruins game and sharing my personal information with anyone who wants it.  Damn cloud computing.  Much has happened in the time since last posting, and covering all of it would be exhausting and an exercise in banality.  So, in brief, since late April I have: written several papers, crammed for an Art History exam, passed my classes, graduated, moved down to the coast, watched a couple games of Ultimate Frisbee, climbed some damp rock, gotten approximately 12,594 blackfly bites, spread some mulch, planted a garden, walked on the beach, gone swimming in the frigid waves, eaten mussels, hosed out moldy trash cans, walked Lucy, and read most of a book called Anthill (it's not good).  I did some other stuff too, but that's the gist of it.  It's been an interesting month and a half.  In the all the hubbub, though, there's been an activity that has grounded me and reminded me fondly of my youth.  Most days I indulge in it, and it is the focus of the rest of this post.  So read on if you like cartoons...

CurrentTunes: or What I've Been Listening To Lately

I don't know about everyone else, but I was quite taken with the recent "Live Love" post.  The idea of sharing a playlist with several people at once like that had never occurred to me.  So here I present the first installment of "CurrentTunes."  I'm not going to say this will be weekly (or even monthly), but it's definitely a very intriguing idea.  I don't want to make this a really long post, raving about every song and why I like them.  But I'll say this much: these are several (mostly) mellow tracks that I've been enjoying over the last couple weeks.  Why these?  Various reasons--I downloaded some Traveling Wilburys after watching a particularly awesome episode of Community and remembering my love for this classic song; the Dusty Brown track is featured on King Lines (or was it Progression?) and is just really cool; Milkman's Union is my friend's band from Portland that I saw at One Longfellow Square last Saturday (stay tuned for some new songs from them).  And as for the XX and the Gil Scott-Heron remix, well, I just really love the guitar licks that the XX lays down.  So, check these out (you've surely heard some before), and if anything is new and exciting for you, comment and let me know, and send some cool tracks back my way.  Enjoy.

Rumney Classics or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moderates

There are a lot of reasons to climb at Rumney.  Having spent innumerable days there in the fall of my senior year at Holderness, I tend to have a sort of protective, loving feeling toward this schist paradise.  During those crisp fall days, my small group often found solitude at the popular cliffs that feature short approaches and lots of 5.7-5.10 routes.  We frequented Meadows, Parking Lot Wall, and 5.8 Crag.  When we had more time, we ventured to Darth Vader, Jimmy Cliff and Triple Corners.  Those cliffs are special to me, and house several Rumney classics.

Stuff to Read and Look At

As I mentioned, I spend lots of time (probably way too much) reading articles about multi-pitch climbing, and while I haven’t lately, I used to sit around playing with a lenght of rope or cord and practicing knots and hitches.  A few times this fall I went to Devil’s Chair, fixed a rope, and used my grigri and some cord to ascend and descend.  It was sort of fun, sort of muddy.  But I learned some stuff (namely that when ascending, the grigri has to be below whatever else you are using (i.e. prussik, tibloc, etc.).  So, in the interest of expanding our collective knowledge base, as well making things safer for ourselves, here’s some stuff I’ve read in the last few months/years:

Psyched?

In some ways, there’s the risk of this turning into a climbing blog. I guess that’s not truly a risk, though, since all of us would dig it. So in furthering that possibility, consider this: a) my ode to climbing in all its forms, b) a to do list, and c) something to maybe to get the psyche up.