Up the Down Volcano (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF

to a little cotton finger between my legs. I remove a glove and feel my own forehead, disturbed by how good it feels to have this abnormally cold part of my body comfort this abnormally hot part of my body. Tears form and I scrunch my face to fight them back. The drips of saltwater are cool by the time they get to my mouth. I lie awake, wheeze and wait.
    I start to wonder about the weight of inexperience. How much of this is ignorance and how much of this is difficulty? It feels like guessing beans in a jar. I watch the silhouette of Edgardo’s new helmet not move on the floor below. Just before midnight a dainty chorus of digital watch alarms commences. Headlamps are flicked on as, one by one, climbers yawn in Spanish and French and a few in Chinese.A normal person, and I like to include myself in this category whenever possible, might have stayed in bed at this juncture. Especially with a bit of a fever and some ilk of illness that feels akin to going on a carousel with a hangover. But staying and not staying somehow feel like the same thing.
    All options delivered in the same point size.
    As I come downstairs, I clutch a railing with one hand and an “I’m 23, still drunk and might throw up on the subway” plastic bag in the other. I see that the doctor and his expedition are already gone. As climbers gear up around me, I gather that conditions have been iffy. There’s a storm that could get worse. Some people are concerned about a bend in the terrain that’s particularly avalanche-prone. Unfortunately, I don’t have the mental palate at the moment to discern what “iffy” means. Not until we start our ascent.
    This climb is not terribly different from yesterday’s, save for the fact that it’s pitch black and there are no distracting cookie textures. Just snow below and ice ahead. At first everything is still, the mountain equivalent of a manmade lake at night. But soon the wind starts and brings with it an especially overpowering brand of sleet. In the pitch dark, the other groups move ahead and Victor and Edgardo are forced to wait for me. I move slower than a Galápagos turtle.
    “Come on, come on!” shouts Edgardo.
    “I’m honestly going to kill you!” I shout back, adding a sing-songy “fuck your mother,” for my own benefit.
    I count to five as I step, then start over. Also of assistance is upgrading myself from stupid parakeet to stupid kitten and following the spotlight of my own headlamp as it points down. I am, I believe, just above 16,000 feet. To be clear, around 17,000 feet is the height at which you’re liable to believe your companion is an orange and attempt to peel him. Still, I press on, somehow thinking that I can outsmart any delusions that come my way. You see, We the People of Sea Level have a tough time believing in induced insanity. You say you’re born with the sociopathic strain that compels you hold magnifying glasses above ants? Sure, fine, whatever. Be crazy. But if you are not this person, if you are regular, we will spend the rest of your life teaching you to believe in the power of your mind over your body. This belief is vital to our existence, encouraging our children not to waste their brains on drugs and aiding in the cure of all sorts of terrible depressions and debilitations. But sickness is the body’s retort to such hubris. Control was an illusion. You were having a lucid dream, friend. What the mind really is, is a Tupperware container full of leftover ramen noodles.

    •••

    I once sat next to a man on a plane who had climbed Everest and thus had once stood approximately 900 feet below where we sat in the air. He went with his wife, a champion mountain climber famous in Eastern Europe, as well as several professional guides. They had all the tents and oxygen tanks money could buy. Still, one never knows how one will react in an environment as inhospitable to humans as the bottom of the ocean. I imagine this is part of the thrill of mountain climbing if you