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| es pontas |
We're clearing out our office at work, in preparation for a move. It's only temporary, whilst our dingy old office is refurbished, but it's a good chance to clear out a lot of dross.
Consequently, I've spent much of the day clearing out my drawers, sorting through masses of old paperwork, and quite brutally throwing most of it away.
De-cluttering is certainly cathartic!
We have a large plastic skip in situ, to dump all the stuff we don't want in, and typically, this has been a great source of interest all day.
Ultimately, it's just a big bin, but you'd be amazed at how many people stop as they pass, then start poking through it.
They invariably pretend that they're concerned about waste, or suggest how money could be made from it...but mostly I think, they're just being nosey.
I think we humans have some sort of instinctive scavenger urge. It leads us to scour our environment looking for things of practical (or monetary) value. Of course, in our modern society where every last thing has to be "owned" by someone, we've learned to inhibit this urge, and we mostly just leave stuff alone, on the basis that it probably "belongs" to someone else.
Honestly, this possession obsession that we have, it'll be the death of us!
What does it even mean, to "own" something? Fundamentally, it's simply a right to deny others...it's my car, you can't drive it (even though I'm not using it at the moment). It's my house, you can't come in (even though there's plenty of room). It's my food, get your hands off it (even though I'm not hungry and you are).
You can see how this would be a positive survival trait, and thus would become strongly dominant in our species...the urge to gather just a bit more food than we need.
But in a society of surplus, abundance and excess, this selfish instinct can be harmful...especially when advertisers and marketers know exactly how to push this particular psychological button, and so condition us from birth to consume, to acquire, to covet...
It's the Capitalist Way!
They say that ownership is 9/10 of the law, but I'm not sure that most people understand what this means - that the law is there to defend those who possess...to keep the rich and their riches in close proximity...to protect the haves from the have-nots.
It's all about denial of access...and it's difficult to reasonably justify any other position than that this is a supremely selfish system, that amongst other things, serves to ensure that the weak and poor remain exactly that.
Ownership is also an oddly illogical concept...take land ownership, for example...
So there's a small plot of land that's been there for millions of years, on a planet that's been in existence for billions of years, in a universe billions more years older than that. What's more, this piece of land will be there for millions and possibly billions more years after you've gone.
Yet somehow you, with your insignificant, blink of an eye, split-second of trivial life, somehow claim dominion over this land, and declare yourself Lord and King thereof?
It's much like a mosquito, that lives for a week, claiming ownership of you, as you're his primary food source...it sort of makes a little sense from the mozzie's perspective, but from a wider view (e.g. that of the human), it's simply absurd.
So why is our level of thinking more akin to the mozzie, unable to see the broader perspective?!
The scary thing is, we're eminently exploitable in this area - we're no longer citizens, but consumers, encouraged to over-indulge at every turn. I'm sure you don't need me to point out how harmful the long term effects of this are, both to ourselves, to society, and to the planet...
But I digress...
This scavenger urge, when confronted with a rubbish receptacle of any kind, seems to come to the fore. Freed from the idea of "theft" - because it's now "rubbish" - we find the urge irresistible, hence all the poking about in the skip.
So there I was, poking about in the skip with Chris, when we found this large hardback book called Mallorca 360. It seems to be some sort of Tourism catalogue, one great advert for Mallorca.
Despite this, I picked it up and opened the cover, only to be confronted with the image above.
I instantly recognised it (as you do) as a rock off the South East coast of Mallorca, known as Es Pontas.
A fantastic American climber named Chris Sharma put up an amazing, super hard route (9a+, for those to whom that means something), which climbs upside down inside this beautiful arch of rock.
)
The route (and of course, the rock) was made famous in a climbing movie called King Lines, and consequently ended up on my bucket list! (check out line 34...)
Not that I plan to climb it, of course...but my little bro' has a place in Mallorca, and for my 50th he offered to take me there for a long weekend sometime this year. I agreed (natch!), on condition that we had a mission - to get a photo of me on this route!
We'll need to hire a boat, and get out there...
I'll need to get off the boat and onto the rock, and try to do a few moves before I fall off.
Jools will need to drop me off on the rock, back away and then get some snaps...before I fall off!
That's going to be quite a challenge, even without making any attempt to do the climb itself.
Just to give you some context on the grade...you remember that last week I was trying to climb 6a?
Each number grade is subdivided by 6, from Na to Nc+. So this climb, at 9a+, is 19 grades harder than I can climb!! The highest grade that's been successfully climbed (and still only by 2 climbers) is 9b+...so 9a+ is world class, by any measure.
I, on the other hand, am nothing like world class - I'm not even the best climber in my house...In fact, I'm probably fourth, behind Loz, Maisie, and Anna...
I reckon I have the measure of Jazz though, poor, lame old thing that he is!
But still, I may be able to get a picture on Es Pontas that makes me look like I could be a half decent climber!
B-)
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