For the Self-Portrait essay we had a wide range of topics. Yet I decided to write mine relating to the poem I have on the home page. For the web/audio assignment we had to record ourselves reading our essays, in the studio, or isobooth.
Leap of Faith
Explain the assignement from the english and web audio perspective.
As a kid I had been keeping a secret from my family that I had fears of heights. My parents would put me in rock climbing classes since I was in elementary. Trying to keep my secret I went to the classes but never did any of the high climbs. I ignored my fears and never faced them directly. Yet i couldn’t hide from them all my life. Years later I was still trying to keep my secret and had been proposed to go rock climb in the french alps. Although my fear had decreased I was still not comfortable around those environments.
So there I stood, looking up, planning, debating, what route would be the easiest. We had nothing but rope, a duffle bag of equipment and our packed lunch with us. The fog hadn’t cleared the mountain yet, and the rock felt like ice. As i hooked myself on, I put both my hands on the cold coarse granite. I looked down one last time. The first section of the climb was fairly easy, and as I reached the hook point where Stuart was belaying me I hook myself onto one single camming device hooked into a crack over three hundred feet up. I carefully examined it while our last comrade was climbing up. I noticed that the rope had been used numerous times before by its black coat of dirt. I began to picture what would happen if this device would fail to keep me on this rock. As soon as these images came through my head tension started to arise in my arms and legs. We were barely a fourth of the way there.
This time Stuart had left all his quickdraws on the wall, and had assigned me to remove them as I climbed up. The sun had come up and was warming up the rock, I could see the purple color leaving my hands slowly. As I climbed the rock once again I came to a bolt took the quickdraw clipped it on my harness and repeated the process about a dozen times. I could feel my weigh increasing as I every hook clipped on to my harness. The higher I went the harder the climb was getting, and the more my hand got weaker the more I started to panic.
I decided to take the shortest hardest route. My arm were starting to shake and my feet starting to slip. At this point I reached the overhang on the rock and it was clear that jumping for it was the only way to go. As I prepared my weak hands shaking hands for the challenge of their lives. I could hear my heart thumping in my chest. The sweat was dripping from my forehead into my eyes, and gave me a burning sensation to a point where it was hard to keep them open. I took a deep breath and jumped as far as I could go. As I grab onto to the hold a hard quick pain came through my forearms. At this point I was swinging off the overhang roughly seven hundred feet up, with one hand realizing that I was not able to hold on anymore, when suddenly Stuarts’ head pops up over the ridge giving me his hand. He pulls me over and says nothing.
When we all reached the anchor point Stuart explains that there were no more bolts on the rock from here on, and that we would have to free climb the rest of the way. There was about a forty foot climb left, and thoughts and images of falling down were reappearing in my mind. This was it, we gathering all our last strengths together and started the climb.We were all lined up with our backs facing the rock trying not to look down. I started to think for the first time in my life what would happen if I would die. My fears were staring me right in the face and I realized I had no other option but to push them out of the way and move on. After our epiphanies we decided to climb up those last couple of feet.
I had realized that my hands had stopped shaking and that my heart rate had decreased. I had learned to overcome my fears of heights. And realized that whatever one would fear most in life would have to face it at some point and overcome it.
