Diary - Thursday, March 8th, 2001

Tension

I'm tense today.

Not frightened, but bowstring-ready. I know why, and I deliberate over whether this tension is good or bad. It has a slight element of worry, and a much greater weight of that feeling I get when I am coiling up in order to dyno a move on a climb.

To dyno is to perform a dynamic move. All four limbs - and climbers are so very conscious of having four - leave the rock as they leap upwards, springing with the feet and stretching with the hands to catch an otherwise out of reach hold. Dynoing is physically and mentally difficult, and it is not common to watch climbers bounce and bounce again on the balls of their feet, eyeing the wanted hold, building up the courage. It is a very exposed move, exposure generating that feeling of nervousness that you get when atop a ladder.

A dyno is not done from the ground. It is performed while hanging, feet arched up to either side.

If you miss it, you hit the wall. A fast and lucky climber gets their feet and hands up fast when they miss, slapping themselves back off the rock as swiftly as possible. Most merely drag down it, grazing any exposed skin. A failed dynamic move implies you have at least partially lost control, and it can hurt.

Only for a little while. Climbers get quickly used to scrapes and bruises. But the slight fear of pain keeps that tension there, the fear and the knowledge that the move requires total commitment.

I dynoed three times during a competition once. I fell twice, both times injuring my arms as instinct and the desire to win flicked my hands up to grab holds as I fell past them. Foolishness, any climber should have known better! The first I caught with both hands after a two meter fall, the second hold with one after three meters had passed, and because adrenaline had me in its grip I did not feel the dislocation of my elbow. The crowd whistled and roared as I snapped onto the holds, climbers laughing at my stupidity, because they knew the damage I had just done my muscles.

I moved back up the wall, stared at the hold above. Each of the previous times I had leapt while nervous of failing and so fallen. I closed my eyes. Opened them. I jumped. My hand caught the hold and I swung up.

I won my section in the competition. It helped that my opponent was so horrified by my fall and recovery that she had frozen on the wall, unwilling to risk the same move. But when I was lowered off and on the ground my arms hurt severely.

The next day I could not move them at all. Not even to hold a pen. I had to roll in my bed using my hips.

I still have problems in the elbow I dislocated, and always will. I popped tendons off one finger, which was strapped for months to heal. My shoulders were bruised, enough to show.

But I won the competition. I wear the silver prize as a charm in my ear.

I think about these things. I am glad I was foolish. My body has healed, and I learned that for some things the coiled spring must be trusted totally. I do not regret my lessons.

I feel that tension now. In two days my inking starts, and it will be as permanent as my injury. But the power and confidence that the competition gave me is also a certain thing, and the feeling of triumph stays with me. I know that the phoenix is a symbol of this too, and if my body is already marked by old injuries (my elbow dislocates still sometimes, my hip is stiff and sore from its fracture that I never had treated), then why not mark it with something beautiful?

My tension can give me more than scars.