• About me

Café culture addict

~ Drinking tea and writing stories in cafés

Café culture addict

Tag Archives: climbing

To the top and back

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by Floreva in Creating, This world we live in

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

#pencildrawing, climbing, George Mallory, Life

This drawing is both a reflection and an achievement. By the time I finished it, I realised the face of the climber looks like my younger (and beloved) father’s. But that’s another story.

Climbing to the top of the mountain, figuratively speaking or not, physically climbing to the summit, our personal pyramid of goals or simply the objective to become the best person we know we can be, all this can be synthesize in the picture of a mountaineer, contemplating his feat, sitting atop of the peak he’s just ascended.

George Mallory once compared climbing to being an art, thus in his statement linking the climber to being an artist. In his writings about climbing, it describes it as a symphony. Surely, in his days of discoveries and challenges, with gear retrospectively dubbed as “inadequate” by modern mountaineers ( a statement which I am not sure to  agreeing with), climbing “unconquered” mountains set in unchartered territories  was a much more dangerous adventure than it is now

Now, who said mountains have to be conquered?

They were there before us and will be long after we’re gone. It’s just another belliquose term to describe a feat of courage, effort, motivation and pushing one’s limits. And it does not reflect properly the tremendous journey it can be. The very word implies a warlike confrontation of some sort, with a winner and a loser, or someone asserting their power over something.

Mountains are not conquered.

But we are,  by the intoxicating adrenaline rush, the empowerment of achieving an arduous task, the supreme boost of esteem attached to victory over difficuty and over ourselves. Afterwards comes the joy of being rewarded by an impressive view and a deep sense of completion.

On the other hand, fear can be conquered ; shyness, jealousy, envy, greediness, suffering have to be conquered too. Because those emotions or feelings never vanish entirely, do they? They lurk in a dark corner of the soul, muzzled for a time, feeding on one’s insecurities. We can conquer them, and yet have to remain watchful of their taking over our heart and sensibility. It’s a never ending task.

So, let’s just climb mountains, and conquer our fragile selves.

Alpiniste FV

Sommet 1963- copyright Florence Vitel 2017

Share this:

  • Pinterest
  • Print
  • Twitter
  • Email
  • Tumblr
  • P

Like this:

Like Loading...

Harvest timeline

January 2021
M T W T F S S
 123
45678910
11121314151617
18192021222324
25262728293031
« Dec    

Recentely brewed

  • Hello
  • Goodbye
  • Daily dose…
  • Spell – Daily Dose
  • Mister C. says Hello, world

Flavours

#inkdrawing #Inktober #Inktober2018 #Inktoberday1 #inktoberday14 #Inktoberprompt #pencildrawing #ww1 Absolutely Fabulous Andrew Irvine Banana Republic Bette Davis book book signing Café Central characters Chocolate Cinema climate change Coffee Coronavirus creating Cumberbatch David Burland Poetry Prize Deep waters Demel Don Draper drawing entertainment Eve Fashion George Mallory George Sanders Gossip Girl Grace Kelly Happy Birthday hero Hofburg Hoffmann ink inkdrawing John Malkovich Johnny Cash Klimt Kolo Moser Life London Mad Men Marilyn Monroe Mount Everest movies music Our world Paris Poetry publishing pulmonary infection Raul Ruiz renegades Route 66 screenwriting Script Secession movement self-empowerment Sherlock short stories Sissi spell Steven Moffat submarine Tea Theatre Vienna Winter wonderland writing.

All rights reserved (photos and text) -cafecultureaddict, unless otherwise stated

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: