The Corner Table Hour
September seventh. There is a specific kind of tired that only Tuesday evenings produce, and it is not the yoga tired or the walking tired or even the bouldering tired. It is the…
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17 entries tagged #climbinglife.
When the Word Gets a Date
January ninth. At the end of Tuesday's session Simone retied her shoe and said Portland again. Not the word by itself this time, she said a month. Spring, maybe April. Not a quest…
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The City She Said Once
December seventh. Simone said Portland while she was re-tying her shoe. That was it. That was the whole delivery. She had finished the route, she sat down, she pulled the knot loo…
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When the Noun Just Arrives
December twelfth. The gym closes for the holidays in three days, which means Tuesday was the last session until January, which means there was a specific low-key weight to putting…
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What My Arms Remember
October twenty-ninth. There is chalk under my fingernails that I will not fully excavate until tomorrow, and I am fine with that. Three years ago I walked into the gym two neighbo…
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We Sent It
July twenty-second. Eight weeks ago we both looked at the same section of wall and made the same face, the one that means 'that is not for me yet.' Today we topped it. I should cl…
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The Pen Was Already Out
February seventh. There was a sign-up sheet on the counter. Hand-lettered, slightly crooked, the kind that gets made on a Tuesday when someone has good intentions and a marker. I…
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What Seeing Gives Back
January twenty-seventh. The bag fell open when Simone set it down. That's all. The outer pocket, the strap catching wrong, and there it was, something knotted, something finished,…
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The Pipe, the Passes, and the Two Hours We Stayed Anyway
July twentieth. The thing about the climbing gym is that it's already a little unhinged to be there on a Saturday afternoon in the middle of July when it's ninety degrees outside…
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The First One to Say It
July ninth. For years, the direction of knowing in this friendship has run one way. Simone names the frame, I receive it. She says the thing that's already true before I've found…
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From the Other Direction
January twenty-fifth. We were unlacing shoes on the bench after the Tuesday session, the usual wind-down, the part where neither of us is ready to go back out into the cold, and S…
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The Sentence at the End
May eighth. It started as one sentence. I had written it at the bottom of a post about something else entirely, the way Simone mentioned, just mentioned, that she had been looking…
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Just Your Hands
May tenth. The question Simone asked at the end of last Saturday was a practical one: do we do this again? And I told her I didn't know yet, which was honest, and she nodded the w…
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What Your Hands Already Know
April twenty-ninth. I keep thinking about my hands. Not in a dramatic way, more in the way you think about something that surprised you by being honest. Last Saturday Simone and I…
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Eight Feet Felt Like Something
April eighteenth. The notice said Saturday morning, low wall, all levels welcome. I had been looking at it for three weeks, or rather, Simone had pointed at it three weeks ago at…
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We Signed Up for Level Two
January tenth. The registration email said 'intermediate session' and I sent it to Simone anyway with no message, just the link, and she replied four minutes later with 'ok.' That…
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The Shoe Was Already Dead When We Got There
November sixteenth. Simone's sneaker gave up the moment we sat down to stretch. Not during the climb, not on the walk over, during the stretch. The sole peeled back from the toe l…
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