[comPiler]

SCHOOL IS OVER, BACK TO SCHOOL
3 September 2014, 1:47 pm

School is almost over. After spending most of the Summer teaching Italian again, now the time has come for me to go back to my own school. In two weeks I'll start following a course that will last until December, with lessons every Friday and Saturday, exam-simulations every other Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and a final exam at mid-December that is the first of the two final steps to finally become a Lawyer, or I should better say a Barrister with no limitations of practice and full competence: three written essays, on three different days; one Civil Law case, one Criminal Law case, and one procedural act. Then I will spend six months working and waiting for the results. Then, in another six months or so, I will face step number two, under the form of five oral exams on five different subjects: Criminal Law, Criminal Procedure Law, Constitutional Law, International Civil Law and another one that I still haven't chosen. One year. Fifteen months from now. I am terrified. When I started back one year and half ago, I had one year and half of compulsory practice in front of me, behind the protective presence of two Lawyers, with no need to step up onto the main stage. Then my turn came as well, and I found myself spending sleeplees nights before going in Court on my own. Now I face this other challenge. This exam is very hard, and I want to pass with full marks, and I will pass it with full marks. Then, in more than a year's time, with this maelstrom behind me, I will go climbing.



Source: TOTOLORE

[comPiler]

BODY AND MIND, BUT MOSTLY MIND
18 September 2014, 1:42 pm

If my body sometimes is giving me signs that it may give up (back pain, meniscus, strained finger) my mind is not. My mind is strong and therefore my body is as strong. My mind is young and sparky and indestructible, therefore my body is young and sparky and indestructable.

Body. The numbers say so: after a recent body exam, I found out that my body composition sits just shy of the one of bodybuilders, at the extreme top of that of "athletes". And I'm 42 motherfuckers. Anyway, this is not important. Well, it is, but not for you. Just for me. I have been on rock, and I had fun, despite thrashing my lower back. I need to sort it out properly, otherwise everything in terms of training and power gains is useless.Despite injuries and ridiculously few and brief training sessions, I managed to retain some ability to cling onto holds: I am currently focusing on super short system sessions, almost no board climbing except some attempts on the project circuit. I've been trying it for 13 months now... Still 4 moves to go, but now I always complete it with one resting. I get to hold number 25 with exploding forearms, fall down, wait a little bit then get to 30. This led me to think about the mysteries of endurance training: I am progressing on the circuit without training Power Endurance (or even Stamina) at all, or at least in no structured way. I have only been doing some laps on 12 moves long problems pausing 5 seconds on every hold, for a minute and half more or less of climbing; and some one foot bouldering on the same 12 moves long problems with 6 kg on. No repeated problems, no feet on campusing for Power Endurance, nothing. Could it simply be that I am reaping the fruits of the structured training I did until May? Hmmm.... it seems a long time ago to be still progressing. Who knows. As soon as temps and humidity go down, I need to test myself with the objectivity of a stop watch. I tried a variation of the foot on campusing, under the form of not campusing, not moving at all. It's very cool. Becoming able to shake out in such a position could lead to interesting things in the future.

Mind. I'm stuffing my mind with notions, preparing myself at best for the most important exam of my life.

"Who are you?"I ask this question to myself many times a day, and I always have the right answer.

Some pics. Higher, he luxurious foothold that I use for foot on power campusing and for the new excercise, with its majestic 1 cm of contact surface (As Keith once told me: "You can't come off from 1 cm thick footholds!"). At least it's incut, it's almost like cheating. Lower, the bleedin' bivy ledge is use for Power Endurance. "You are weak" written on it.

Trying what will become my hardest problem.

The books I've studied in the last months, in the spare time from work.

SAN Power edge. The big one. Those guys are selective.



Staying there, staying put, shaking out. 65 kilos locked between the foothold and the crimp like a steel beam. Breathe, feel the greatness. Who needs real climbing? Not me.



Source: TOTOLORE

[comPiler]

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI
4 November 2014, 3:41 pm

I will remember this past month forever. It's been one of the densest, most intense periods of my life. I've been studying a lot, writing appellation acts, criminal and civil cases, and attending classes in the weekends. I've been pulling on wooden edges and plastic holds. I stepped on stage again after more than 15 years, to act and sing in a musical that a friend of mine wrote for our contrada, Istrice, and that sold out two nights in the main theater in town, raising more that 5.000 Euros for charity. Finally, I've been - briefly - climbing on rock. One single day, just one day of the nearly three weeks of perfect, clear weather that we've had, but what a day. I climbed some new, easy problems, nearly climbed a project that is around 8a+, and opened a beautiful arete. Now I'm here in my bedroom writing this with my left knee wrapped in ice and swollen after I got my meniscus surgery yesterday. It seems all over now, while I roll left and right to change position and ease the pain and discomfort: the stage, the public, the pointless training, the perfect rock. The pointless training. The pointless training. The pointless training nearly made me climb 8a+ on Sunday, on the first day on rock after 6 weeks. The fifth day on rock since the beginning of Summer. Is it really pointless? It's been great and beautiful. When I was there with my headtorch, rushing another pointless - yes pointless - attempt on the project, I thought: "Right, I'm gonna come back tomorrow evening and finish this." I had forgotten I had to be in hospital... Ahaha! I thrashed my hands, that now seem bitten by a dog, and got home. I really really wanted to get this done before this layoff, but it did not happen. I did not make it happen. But I tried with all my will and skin. Next time. The path is right. Study, train, love and destroy.

A few pics and videos of this incredible Autumn so far.

                        Below, the beautiful prow I climbed last Sunday.

Below, a new PB on paused rep one armers.                                          

                                               Below, the Move.

                                                           

                                   Below, the new PB on the circuit.

                                                           

                        Below, a sore soul, a sore knee two sore hands.















Source: TOTOLORE

[comPiler]

ENVY
24 November 2014, 10:15 am



My evolution as a climber and a person, passed through envy.

For some time in the past - and I'm sure there are many traces of it in this blog - I've been envious. Envious of those who could go climbing, those who could climb the problems that I wanted to climb, those who could reap the rewards of the training they'd been doing.

It was horrible.

Let me talk about envy. Envy is a bad beast. To the contrary of what many may think, envy is a judgement. When we envy someone, we judge that person: we think that they don't deserve what they have, and that somehow in doing so they detract something from us, something that should belong to us.

So, envy is a lot more than we're used to think.

When I was envying my friends who could climb lots, my thoughts were along these lines, even though I didn't realize it and, had I realized, I would have enever admitted:

"I'm envious because they can climb the problems that I can't try. They climb them just because they have the time to stick at them. They're not as strong as I am. They're just more lucky in having more time and more opportunities. They don't deserve those climbs, I deserve them because I put in a lot more effort and dedication than they do." I could go on forever.

The sense of frustration that comes with this kind of thinking need not to be mentioned.

I don't know how things changed.

I think that I had to go through a complete chaos to finally emerge on the other side. I had to question not only my climbing, but every aspect of my life, and how every aspect of my life had been affected, for good or bad, by climbing.

It took me a lot of time to finally bury the hatchet with climbing, and this came with an added bonus: my envy had gone. I can feel it trying to raise its ugly head at times, but it's just the shadow of what it used to be.

I could say that envy became something different: it became the knowledge that my life is different from my friends' lives, and from anyone else's life.

Go figure.

Years and years to come to this conclusion. Ha!

I exchanged climbing for training, and finally found some kind of peace. Others may have time, I have not. There's nothing to be envious about, that's just how things go. Maybe I also exchanged envy for a little sadness and disappointment, but that's a victory!

I was thinking about it just yesterday evening, right before starting my warm up. Never seeing the opportunity to actually put all the training efforts to good use, makes training really really hard, mentally.

You sow, you sow, you sow, and you don't know when or whether you'll reap.

How do you deal with this?

It's very easy: you either quit sowing, or you keep sowing. Make your choice.



Source: TOTOLORE

[comPiler]

THE STORY OF TWO WORLDS
5 January 2015, 11:54 am

First things first: I did not climb "The Story of Two Worlds". I could have, but I didn't want to ruin my skin before projecting a nearby 6b+ with a better looking line. Priorities.

The story is about the two worlds that I've seen in the last times. The first one, is a world made of work, papers, books to be studied and the most important exam of my life. I simply could not pass a single day without studying or writing papers for the exam, I felt such a need to get there as perfectly prepared as I humanly could. It's been very very strange because it's been the first time in my life in which I felt such a need for perfect knowlegde. After just working as a teacher for a few years, I was feeling that my brain was struggling a little bit to grasp all the familiar concepts and principles of civil and criminal law, when I needed to use them. Now, I feel that I master those concepts and principles, and I see my brain as a laser sharp razor that would make Occam's one pale in comparison. I don't know if I've done enough to pass - not true. I know that I've done more than enough, I don't know how I will be judged. In Italy they are two very different things: how you've done and how you're judged - but I do know that I gave my best, and when on the third day of the written essays everyone, myself included, was almost panicking before a case that was seemingly impossible to solve, after three hours of head-scratching, searching for a norm that could suit this situation, I finally repeated to myself tha mantra that I had prepared for the exam, I went to the restrooms ignoring all the comments that everyone was making about how and what to write, washed my face, got back to my desk and wrote head down for the following three hours. Then I copied everything in good calligraphy and gave everything to the examinators. The agony was over. Three days of toil and torture, alone in another town, spending days at the exams and nights in a hotel room studying for the next day, without talking to anyone. I got out of the hall - where 1.700 of us were having the exam - took a deep breath and broke down in tears when noone could see me. The last written essay had drained every energy from my mind and body, and I felt betrayed. I knew that these exams could be unpredictable at least, passing from easy ones one year, to absurd ones the year after. Well, I had picked the year after. After two essays that I think I did well, the third one was the one for which I felt more prepared, and it's been the one in which I've struggled the most, in which I could make the littlest display of my legal knowledge. I got out sure that I'm going to fail the exam because of this third essay. I felt betrayed and hated Italy for how it's run and organized. Now I only have to wait six months to have the results, than we'll see. Be sure that passed these holidays, I'm going back to studying no matter what. A sharp mind is a sharp body. The climbing, as you can imagine, took a very little back seat. Luckily for me, I don't need climbing anymore to have fun, I only need training. So, I kept doing frequent, short, intense system sessions on my board, focusing on body tension and crimp strength; and some fingerboarding not to lose the love. I had good results and found out that somehow I retained some of my ridiculous endurance for the project circuit. On the board, when I tried some of my projects or old problems, though, I could barely do the moves in isolation... During these months of this first world, I also got my knee surgery. It's been far worse than expected. When they got in to cut the broken part of my meniscus, they found out that I also had a badly torn cruciatus ligament, and my knee was full of scar tissue and debris, making it impossible to even see the meniscus. So, they had to clean and grate and scratch lots of stuff out before even starting what they had to do, and this resulted in a much heavier operation than planned. This was followed by weeks of sleep deprived nights due to the pain. I also lost 4 kilos, for fucks sake. Two months later, I still have to regain proper muscle mass and sports functionality. Not pleased.

Then, after that day spent doing the last written essay, I got home and was barely able to speak with humans. My mind was elsewhere, and I could not stop thinking about what I'd been doing in those days. I could not sleep for a few nights, waking up three or four times with obsessive thoughts about what I could have or should have written. I was exhausted and only wanted to cry and pity myself.

It took me a good ten days and many dinners, gin tonics and lie-ins, to finally see the dawn of the second world. A world in which the desie to climb on rock made its presence strongly felt. I went climbing two days in the same week, and opened two new lines in an area that I've been climbing at for ages... Seeing with new eyes, isn't it?

Then, I booked an hotel and went to Ticino. Sun, freezing temps, perfect friction. Only my lack of climbing ability (and my terror for knee injuried) hindered me from climbing 8b+ as I was normally expecting with my usual laid back attitude.

It's been great. I also climbed something, with an achievement that, had it happened a few years ago, would have seen me bragging about it for the whole year, and now is passing almost unnoticed and almost already forgotten. Am I finally free from climbing? Am I finally free from myself? Am I finally free from my ego?

This second world is about to leave room to the routine of work and study, but I've planned to keep climbing a little bit. The spark is still there and my project as well.

It's been good to finally let go of some tension, and I fear the first world.

But as some climbers put themselves in hard and dangerous situations, and then have to deal with it, I put myself in this hard and dangerous (for my ego) situation of becoming a fully certified lawyer, and nw I have to deal with it.

I cannot wait to meet in Court that asshole of a lawyer that was doing surveillance at the exam: that useless presumptuous bastard, always arrogant and lookind down on us; I'll kick his fat ass like he's never been kicked before.

Motherfucker.



Source: TOTOLORE

[Nibile]

http://www.totolore.blogspot.it/2015/01/the-story-of-two-worlds.html
This is the link to the edited post, hopefully without spelling errors and some pics.

[comPiler]

BLACK INK
28 March 2015, 1:14 pm

As you all know, it's not uncommon for me to write personal things on this blog, that are not specifically related to climbing. Because, as you may not remember, this blog was born as a climbing blog... Anyway, a few weeks ago I got a new tattoo. This one:

I have a few tattoos, and while I tend to keep their meaning and their reasons private, this time it's different. I made this last tattoo because I wanted people to see it, to read it and to know its meaning, because it's very important. Some time ago I read the story of Eric Garner, the innocent man who was killed by some bastards who happened to be Police officers. No. They were just mentally ill dirty motherfuckers, not worth the uniform they were wearing. There was a video and I made the error of watching it: it's terrifying. It caused in me profound sadness, rage and disgust. That poor man kept saying "I can't breathe!", and still those bastards chocked him to death. To fucking death. Young kids and innocent people killed by "policemen" is an issue. All over what we call the civilized world. We've had our share in Italy as well: Stefano Cucchi, Federico Aldrovandi, Riccardo Magherini, only to name a few. You can find everything about them on the Net. Riccardo, while two or three "policemen" were standing on his torso, while he was laying on the ground of a street in Florence, handcuffed, kept yelling "Don't kill me, I have a little son!" and yet they killed him. He could not breathe either. Well, as you all know, after Garner's killing, many sport stars and celebrities wore t-shirts with Garner's last words printed on them, to show their support to his family, to show that that they knew. Well, that's why I got this tattoo. Because I know. I know that there are some bastards out there, that are criminal dressed as policemen. I don't buy the stories you all sell, motherfuckers. The late Italian actor Antonio DeCurtis, a.k.a. Totò, was a man of incredible class and culture. He once publically challenged to duel a man, who had behaved rudely with a woman in a restaurant. The man was later to become President of the Italian Republic. Another motherfucker. Totò once said that the only way to know the real nature of a man, is to give him a uniform and some power. The way he'll behave when wearing a uniform and having some power over someone else, will show his true nature. These bastards that kill helpless people are a shame to the uniforms they wear. Uniforms that have been worn by real heroes, like Salvo D'Acquisto, a Carabiniere who gave his life to save civilians from a Nazi firing squad. So, this is the story behind my tattoo, and this is why I want everyone to know it. Because I hate those motherfuckers, I hate everyone who uses a uniform to hurt, kill and break the law.



Source: TOTOLORE

[kelvin]

Totò once said that the only way to know the real nature of a man, is to give him a uniform and some power. The way he'll behave when wearing a uniform and having some power over someone else, will show his true nature.

My father often said something similar when I was growing up and as life has gone along, I've come to agree with him.

[shark]

So, this is the story behind my tattoo, and this is why I want everyone to know it. Because I hate those motherfuckers, I hate everyone who uses a uniform to hurt, kill and break the law.

I assume you know about the Stanford Prison Experiment - it is in our nature

[TheTwig]

Great choice of tattoo. Couldn't agree more about some of the savages that masquerade as law enforcement in the USA (and in the UK too, sadly).

Cool blog, first time looking at it.

P.s you are one scary looking guy! 

[Nibile]

P.s you are one scary looking guy! 

Ahahahahahahah! 
I'm glad you like the blog!

[Nibile]

http://totolore.blogspot.it/2015/05/two-days.html
There you, just in case you can't live without Totolore. First time I had something to say in ages, also.
Warning: contains real climbing.

[ghisino]

Lore, do you know that you, zidane and me may share a similar fate?

Not as athletes, unfortunately.

[Nibile]

Lore, do you know that you, zidane and me may share a similar fate?

Not as athletes, unfortunately.

Getting very bald?

[Richie Crouch]

Head butting Italian defenders in the chest?

[Jaspersharpe]

Having a crafty tab while you think no one's looking?

[ghisino]

Lore, do you know that you, zidane and me may share a similar fate?

Not as athletes, unfortunately.

Getting very moderately bald?

Yup, even though i was referring to the location of the thinning hair (chierica) rather than the amount/speed!


It is not totally unlikely that i could head-butt someone after falling off something, but that's another story...

[Nibile]

 
I haven't ever noticed that you're getting a bit bald, are you sure that it's not just a common men's fear?
In my case, I'm reminded of it by every climbing pic or video, unless I'm climbing face to the camera which is very unlikely, I'm not Rouhling on Akira...

[ghisino]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmRL2COWfM8&feature=youtu.be

32 secs in...

[Fiend]

That reminds me, gotta shave my head today.

[Nibile]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmRL2COWfM8&feature=youtu.be

32 secs in...

Luckily for you, my friend, you've still got a long way to go...

[Duma]

Saw this and thought of you Lore:

[Nibile]

Ahahahah that's brilliant!
Unfortunately it won't be easy to put a board rack on either of my two bikes, but luckily a friend of mine has a minivan, and he wants to try surfing. I don't own a car anymore, so I want to go to the sea with him and leave both my two longboards (yes I have two bikes and two longboards... ) at my parents' house there. Then it will be easier to go surfing without having to drive 100 km with my boards strapped to my girlfriend' Fiat 500 roof... And getting arrested for that.
I need to surf now.

[a dense loner]

Did you defend yourself nibs? 

[Nibile]

Hmmm... Not really, why? Should I have?