As
I near retirement, I've been thinking a lot about my place in
society. Like a lot of people, I am frustrated and angered by the
increasing complexity and relentless commercialization of absolutely
everything. Technology is spiraling out of control and is being
weaponized by the corporate profit monster as means of selling us
yet more subscriptions and crap we don't need. Our very attention has
been commodified. We are caught in an elaborate shell game in which
we are ultimately the rubes. Knowing this and escaping it, however,
are two very different propositions.
The
feeling isn't exactly new. I've always felt a little out-of-step with
society. As I slowly succumbed to the wage-slave rat-race, there has
always been an internal itch that knew there was a better way to
live. This feeling isn't unique. Many wrestle with it. And it is this
complex dilemma that is explored in depth in the the new novel, Crux,
by Gabriel Tallent. Crux is a story about two teenage aspiring
rock climbers coming to grips with their dreams and their families
and their obligations and reality. Dan is a gifted genius-level
scholar while Tamma is a brash, irrepressible force of nature. They
are bonded through their linked and dysfunctional families and the
transformative art of rock climbing. They dream of something better.
Bigger. Purer.
Dan
when explaining to his high school counselor why he's considering not
going to college, says:
“It
means opting out of the valorized status economy. Live in a vehicle.
Sleep in the wilderness. Work, but only save up enough money to keep
climbing. Own little, buy less, and see wild, beautiful places while
there are wild beautiful places left. I love climbing. It's the only
thing that's kept me alive these last few years. That and this
friendship that I have. My mom is not a stable person and sometimes I
think that I may not be stable, either. All my life people have
called me gifted and sometimes I wonder if really what I have is
anxiety and depression, if my giftedness isn't really a
terror, which I carry around, all the time, and which spurs me to
perform at a high level. Terror that the world is fundamentally
insecure. That the bottom could drop out of it, at any time. That if
I am not brilliant and high performing, my parents will stop loving
me. But, also, terror at myself, at who I may become. So maybe my
giftedness is not going to translate to a great life... Maybe
the ordinary thing, the college and a career thing, it's not gonna
work for me. So maybe I need to turn back and face it. The terror, I
mean. When I look around, it's everybody living these purposeless
lives they don't understand, lives they don't enjoy, forced from one
thing to the next, working jobs they hate for a life in which they
find no meaning, and it looks like there's nothing else, no hope or
beauty anywhere, in anyone's lives, no one knows where to find it, no
one knows where it went, or why its gone, everywhere you turn there's
no hope, no chance, no way forward, no one I ever met sees any point
in it, no one thinks anything is possible, and at the same time, they
can't stop grinding for money, and I don't want that for myself, I
don't want to go to school and have people tell me what things mean
so I will be content and effective working whatever job comes after.
I am suspicious of the well-accepted answers. I want to go out there
in the desert and see for myself. I want to stay up nights in the
back of the truck reading... And when I look at who's going to
college, I mostly see kids that want to get a degree and be
credentialed to get jobs and have things and security. I don't want
that; I want to go out onto the White Rim with my friend and climb
sandstone towers at the peril of our lives, swim in the Colorado
River, wander slot canyons, and search out Anasazi ruins hidden in
hanging valleys. It is one of the last places, maybe the very last
place, where you can still dirtbag in America the way the old-school
climbers did. You can sleep in canyons and washes at night with other
climbers, all with campfire, beer and weed, frying up tacos beneath
cottonwood trees while people play guitar and read poetry. There are
risk-takers, misfits, and weirdos out there. People searching for
meaning, measuring their lives not by how insulated they are from the
vicissitudes of fortune, but by their incandescent proximity to the
real. And my buddy and I, we would do something great, something
extraordinary, we could forge a life glorious and risky, honorable
even: Full of beauty, every moment, no matter how scary, how painful,
how difficult, full, at least, of the gorgeousness of real places and
real people, totally unlike the skid mark I see stretched out before
me—if we get this chance I think we could go to the very ends of
the earth and stare off the side and come back with a story to tell.
My buddy, she believes that such a story might change this nation for
the better, at least a little bit, and I'm not at all sure that she's
wrong.”
Wow.
If only I'd been that self-aware and literate at that age. Still,
even he cannot break the bounds of expectation. In the end he does
what everybody wants him to do:
“I
wanted to go with you,” Dan said, “but I couldn't face it it.
There's something wrong with me. I'm scared all the time and I'm
scared of all the good things.”
His
story touched home for me. I wasn't a teenager, but I was very young
when I was hanging out with Mark and Joel, spending hours climbing
around on little bouldering problems and debating the meaning of
life, what our future should look like and just enjoying the outdoors
and friendship. At the time, I was working full time in the grocery
store, but I was also playing in a band, writing novels and had just
secured a literary agent. The future looked limitless.
Alas,
the bonds of gravity and society are strong. I never did
breakthrough. We never climbed anything of note and I never sold a
novel. Slowly, ever so slowly, that menial job, that at one time was
going to be just a colorful footnote in my biography, became my life.
Mostly I hated it. The long physical hours, the erratic schedules, ,
the soul-crushing weekends and holidays, the emotional demands of
dealing with the public on a daily basis. I know it wasn't the ideal
life. But, you know what? The truth is there a damn few “good”
jobs in a rural area (and living in a city was nonnegotiable). And
the easy path isn't easy. I worked my ass off. And I paid my bills.
For someone like me there was no safety net, so there was no
alternative. I made a home, I raised a family. I had fun when I
could. I had many mini adventures. Though I have a few regrets,
mostly I feel I did the best I could.
Now
as I near retirement, I feel like that kid at the base of the
boulder. The future, though possibly short, is wide open. I will soon
be free and, this time, I'm hoping I will make the most of it.
