From: joelp@cs.man.ac.uk (Joel Parthemore || Pharos Project)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Climbing Every (Wrong) Mountain
Date: 19 Aug 92 22:39:16 GMT

............
jkusters@zeus.calpoly.edu, aka the Chrome Jester, talks about his mountain
climbing experience.  having climbed a few mountains myself (maybe the same
ones, maybe not), i try to offer an alternative view from the top

i hope he likes my editing (missing parts are indicated by .... on a blank
line)
............


>        It's a pity.  With all of the money spent these days on
>education, you'd think there would be at least one class on life
>and love.  Perhaps the reason for the lack of such a class can be

    <remember leo buscaglia?  taught a love-class at one of the california
     state don't remember him being explicitly gay-positive, but i sort
     of felt like he had to be....>

>attributed to a lack of qualified teachers.  Or perhaps some
>greater wisdom has decreed that there are some roads we must travel
>and some hills we must climb for ourselves, and that this is one of
>them.  Most likely the realistic reason is that there is so much to
>learn about the subject that no curriculum could be written to cover
>it all.  Can you imagine what the mid-terms would be like?

    <midterms:   reach through and touch another's soul; provide formal proof
     final exam: go away as two people (or more, if you can swing it) and come
                    back as one>

....

>        I remember one such mountain climbing expedition I once
>embarked upon.  We had been good friends for several months.  I had
>always been attracted to him, but never said anything (I always
>seem to approach my mountains expecting to be either buried by a
>landslide or plucked off the slopes by a stray gust of wind).  One

    <what about the insatiable curiosity?  it gets me into some
     tight places>

>day, he threw a party at his house.

<section on ending up, alone, in his friend's bedroom>....


>At the time, I was terribly naieve (as if anything has changed).  So,

    <hey, my naivete is one of the *best* things about me.  it's
     when i think i understand things that the world closes in on
     me and i get depressed>

>when he put some romantic music on the stereo (I still have
>problems listening to Elton John without feeling somewhat sad), and
>started talking about a former lover of his, I started getting kind
>of nervous.  After all, here was someone I was very much attracted
>to, making what I thought to be romantic overtures.  When he

    <maybe they were.  maybe at least for you they were, which
     doesn't make the feeling invalid>

>started holding my hands and talking about things that he found to
>be romantic, I thought to myself, "Oh my god, he feels for me the
>same way I feel for him!"  As we lay before the 90's equivalent of

    <you dared to believe.  is this wrong?>

>a roaring fire (the stereo system), listening to love songs, and
>holding each other, I was in bliss.

    <it sounds vaguely like an image of mine, of some future
     moment i want to pass through>

>        What I didn't realize at the time was that what I was
>interpreting as romance was actually one friend needing support
>from another friend to overcome the last steps of losing a lover.
>But where had I made the mistake?

    <<ahem!>  pardon me, *what* mistake?  (ok, so maybe you were
     pigeonholing him, which isn't cool; but the general notion of
     looking for other people to care for you as deeply as you care
     for them is a human quest, surely?)>

>                                   Where did I take the wrong fork
>and start climbing the wrong mountain?

    <where did you decide that you had taken a wrong fork?>

>                                       I obviously mistook
>friendship to be true romantic affection.

    <that sounds like an excuse for beating yourself.  and why
     is it obvious?  you know what you believe you thought of
     the situation, and you think you know what he believe he
     thought of the situation, but i'd wager that what you both
     *really* thought would be a lot more difficult to pin a
     neat label on>

>                                           I went through several
>weeks of hurt and hate, and managed to treat my friend very badly,
>even going so far as to snub him and his new lover when he
>introduced us.

    <you dared to believe!  god, the times i've hated myself for
     daring to believe!>

>               I am very fortunate to still count myself as a
>friend of his.

    <hey, maybe he's fortunate to be your friend too>

                But I'll never forget my mistake, and though I've
>left that particular mountain behind, I hope to remember the trails
>that led to it, in the hopes of not repeating my mistake.

    <do you collect your mistakes the way i've sometimes collected
     mine, with a neat catalogue to remember them by?>

....

>        So I'm left with the question.  Which mountains are the
>right ones to scale?  Which friendships, if any, can be developed

    <all the ones that feel right (so what if intuition *seems* to
     prove wrong) -- but *especially* the ones that tug at you, and
     tug at you, and challenge you 'cause they're so humongously big
     and you honestly don't know whether you can scale them or not>

>into more than friends?  Can a friendship blossom into love and not

    <for myself, there *cannot* be ``more than friends'' --
     friendship is the highest expression of love, and love the
     highest expression of friendship>

>be doomed to quakes and erosion?  As I put the pack on my back, and

    <friendship is love, which in the end refuses all guidelines,
     all limits, and changes form in every situation it encounters>

>prepare yet again to tackle the upcoming mountain, I will always
>ponder these questions.

    <i think if i ran out of questions i would die>

>JOhn.
>--
>/-John A Kusters, jr.----------------------------------------------------______
>| jkusters@ares.calpoly.edu & phule@bbs.fubarsys.com                     \    /
>Silence keeps us all in darkness, We can't change things overnight;       \  /
>But we can shed a little light, Be Political not Polite! -Romanovsky & Phillips
                                                                         __
 Joel, looking to meet you someday on a mountaintop (i, of course, will  | \
  -- be in the process of falling off a cliff at the time)               |  |
    - Joel E. Parthemore ----------------------------------------------  |_/
I know things will be better.  You and me, we got nothing to lose.   |   |
            -- Tracy Chapman, ``Fast Car''                            \_/