Looking back on existence

I was sitting on a bench at school today talking to a friend, who I will leave anonymous here, about how she was slowly demoting one of her friends on her top 8, to get a message across when all the sudden (dunh dunh duuuuuuuh) this thought raced across my mind:

One thing I've always noticed my teachers and professors say is that the students continue to get lazier and lazier. I was thinking about it today and instead of thinking that they all were just bitter old people who thought their generation was superior, I thought that maybe we are in fact "lazier" as they put it. I think they misread what is really playing out though. When looking back on the pattern by which human existence has gone from "primitive man" to "technological man" I see, at least for my part, that we have slowly outsourced our faculties to some less tangible means. One of the very first examples of this was when man went from using visual movements to using verbal (invisible) language as a means of communication from one man to the other. Another primordial example is warfare. We have gone from using swords just a few feet, to using intercontinental missiles thousands of miles apart, to settle our disputes. In trigonometry instead of using long tables for sine, cosine and tangent we use sin, cos and tan buttons on our calculators to aid us in calculating the angles of a triangle. Instead of asking someone how they are doing, just check their status on facebook. And to see where you stand amongst your friends, you needn’t look any further than their “top 8” on their myspace profile! I'm not here trying to condescend with the examples I use, just catering to you my reader, I leave those judgments to you to decide on. So it is not that we are lazier, we are just using means to express ourselves that are intangible to the older, condescending generations, and this disdain towards our supposed "lack of academic rigor" is just a representation of their inability to asses the youth's answers to their academic inquisition!


p.s. Sarah, I'm sure this is rife with grammatical errors, but I really could care less hahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Chapelle bitch!

Another one of my mountaineering pipe dreams

Me looking at Half Dome from Glacier Point click it for the full effect!

Alright, I have decided that I will climb the northwest face of Half Dome in Yosemite. The Route I want to take goes strait up the most vertical side of it. It is a little over 8800ft and the actual dome by itself is 2000 vertical feet. This translates into a 2 day climb with 24 pitches (sections). When I went there the summer before last, I saw this gigantic, granite monolith as more of a scene out of an IMAX film, and not something I would ever see myself doing, but ever since I've started climbing again, I've begun to realize that this is something I can see myself doing in a very real since! Dream it, Think it Do it!

-Mark

This is the last 2000ft of the route

One of my hero's and something I've learned from him

“I only know that under-realization of the bodily and emotional resources promotes a cancer of the soul, an unlived life.”

-Reinhold Messner
The Big Walls. p90

So when you're sitting in your cubicle farm (or whatever you are doing) 10yrs from now, it better be pushing your personal abilities to their fullest extent. It's like holding your breath in, if you don't exhale, then how can you inhale, and continue to live? If you can't do your best because you are not in an environment that can foster your abilities to their fullest extent, then you're missing the opportunity that life gives you everyday, and therefore it is like an unlived life, as Messner would say.

ah winter dreams

nostalgia, regret, despair

the waves were extremely fun today, I had a great time at the Crypteria show last night and class was depressing, but I've had some good ideas lately and some new inspiration.

I've always lived in a state of transition in my mind, when I should have lived in the hear and now, just for the day at hand. i should have embraced who and where I was instead of living for a stage of life existing forever in the future. I just finished a book called Vagabonding: an uncommon guide to the art of long term travel, a few minutes ago, and NO it was not one of the souless self-help peace of shit books. Getting to the point, it made me realize something so simple and so fundamental that I'll put in to words by saying: When you are where you are, be where you are, physically and spiritually. So take that for whatever it means for you



A Song of The Rolling Earth

Whoever you are! motion and reflection are especially for you,
The divine ship sails the divine sea for you.

Whoever you are! you are he or she for whom the earth is solid and
liquid,
You are he or she for whom the sun and moon hang in the sky,
For none more than you are the present and the past,
For none more than you is immortality.

Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman

Lady Kati

Dearest Kati Brown,

Thank you for your prolific feedback. You are my favorite commentator on this blog, and so I dedicate this entry to you.

Sincerely,
Mark A. Walters Esq.

yes, I unicycle and walk on water

A little frustration, a little catharsis

what part of "unless the house is burning down, DO NOT bother me!!!" do you not undertand?!?!

It has now come to the point in the Walters' household that in order to get a decent hours rest with only one or two knocks on the door, one must place an 8"x11" sign reading "BUZZ OFF!" on the outside of one's door. Every time I hear someone come up the stairs, my mind starts racing with anxiety knowing that there is an 85-90% chance that my mom or dad(especially) will knock on my bedroom door wanting my attention for some bullshit reason. In my mind I think "WTF dad? I'm a grown ass man. stop following me around the house, dammit!" I mentioned for the first time tonight that I wanted to go to FSU or UCF next year, to which they were not pleased. The first thing out of my mom's mouth was "but you can only get better at home." I thought "haha..hahaha." I just didn't have the heart to tell her that they both were a good portion of the problem. uuuuuuhhhhh I'm loosing it, I'm loosing it