Saturday, September 6, 2014

Defenseless (Salt Lake City, Utah - 2014)


I just needed to point my skis down the hill and go.

“POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN THE HILL AND GOOO!” my instructor shouted up at me.  

He didn't shout at me like a coach encouraging little leaguers.  He wasn't Burgess Meredith bellowing and berating at Rocky.  He instructed me.  Loudly.  Forcefully. Relentlessly.

We stood apart on an empty slope on “green” run in Snowbird, Utah; 20 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City.  It was mid April and the snow was good, the air cold, and the sky a pervasive gray.  The sun was nowhere to be seen though it back-light the sky leaving that “bright clouds” effect.  This was my third day of skiing. Ever.

“POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN THE HILL AND GOOO!” he instructed up at me again.  

The really shitty thing about mutherfucking skiing is that the only real way to get back down to sanity and safety is to ski down the cocksucking run.  It’s a billion times harder to hike down the hill in the vices, er boots, you wear that pitch you ever forward.  If I had wanted to quit and march down to the lodge I would have passed out and died on the way from sheer exhaustion.  And I didn't want to quit.  I wanted to ski down the hill.  I was paying a lot of money to learn how to do this.

I looked down at my feet and gathered my intention to move.

“DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FEET.  LOOK AT ME.  LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOOOOOIIIIIIINGGG.”

This guy never let up, for Christ's sake. He was a good guy. He was ruddy, rough, and humorless.  He was a big man with a raspy voice and a red face from all those days on the slopes.

On the lifts, going down the runs, in the cafe, the instructing never stopped.  If I tried to articulate my fear or get clever about my tiredness, he wouldn't allow it...or even acknowledge it.  He was the single most earnest and inexhaustible teacher I had ever met.  

So I was left bare of the sophisticated defenses I employ to diffuse intense moments.  And I had never faced fear like this before.  Paralyzing.  I stood at the top of that hill, a 43 year old man, with my beginner lessons giving me a pretty good foundation.  I should have been able to go and I couldn't.  I had never had that experience; the feeling that I don’t know how to move forward. I live my life at a breakneck pace, with boundless confidence.  There I stood with none of that.

“LOOK AT ME.  YOU’RE FEET ARE UNDERNEATH YOU.  TRUST THAT THEY WILL TAKE YOU WHERE YOU NEED TO GOOOO.  LOOK WHERE YOU’RE GOING.  THAT’S HOW YOU WILL GET THERE.”

I looked up.  Shimmied my skis straight.  I looked down the hill.  Never a more perilous drop had anyone ever seen.  I tipped the skis down the slope and moved forward.  Then I turned, shifted my weight so that one heel pressed hard and I moved horizontally across the run.  

‘THAT’S RIGHT, DAVID.  TURN.  SLOW YOURSELF DOWN.  STOP IF YOU FEEL OUT OF CONTROL.  LOOK AT YOUR DESTINATION, NOT AT YOUR FEET.

POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN.  TURN.  SLOW DOWN.  POINT YOUR SKIS DOWN.  TURN.  SLOW DOWN.”

In what felt like 20 minutes, but what was no time at all, I arrived at the flat part where my instructor stood.  I wish I had felt exhilarated but the experience was more like shock; a disbelief that I had been up there and now I was down here.  Looking up it was neither as far nor as steep as it had been when staring it down.  

I didn’t die which is insipid to say.  I never thought I would die.  I didn't even really think I would hurt myself.  At the top of that slope I just had no idea how I would move forward and get down the hill.  And now I was there.  Or at least that much further.  There were still a half dozen stretches to go and then we would just go up and ski down more.

“Good,” he said as a matter of fact and not as praise.  “You did that.  You looked where you were going, right?  When you’re walking in New York City do you look at the ground or out in front of you.  You don’t worry about your feet taking you where you want to go.  You trust that they can do that, right?”

“Well, I do look at the ground a lot.  The sidewalks in New York can be treacherous, filled with cracks and potholes.”

He interrupted me, “So you’re that guy; looking down, bumping into people!  You’re the guy I have to look out for when I’m walking in that city!”

I gave up then for good.  He was right.  Even if he was wrong about walking in New York City which requires looking up down and sideways and behind you at all times.  My arguing with him was an equivocation with myself.  His lessons were right and profound.  To really get somewhere I must look out at the destination, or at least in the direction of my intentions.  Looking at my feet gives false comfort.  Trust instead that my feet will take me where I set my intention.  If the feet fail then I would have fallen onto soft snow and then got up and went again.  If I would feel out of control then I could slow down or stop without leaving the experience or evading my emotions.  

It was an extraordinary experience that day to face paralyzing fear.  The advantage of aging is confidence.  A sureness in yourself, in your capabilities.  I knew for myself that the things that might have brought me down - like a divorce, a job loss, a housing crisis and a recession, did not break me.  I was battered and bruised but resilient.  Or so I thought.  That fortitude also somehow managed to bury my vulnerability.  But that day on the slope, the challenge and that instructor laid me bare.  And that felt…..terrifying and exposed.  I didn't overcome that fear.  I went straight through it all the way down that hill.  

Did that feel good?  No.  Satisfying.  Perhaps.  A part of myself, the part that feels sad, scared, angry, was rescued that day.  Pulled back to the surface.  Emancipated, but just a bit.

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