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When I rest I feel utterly lifeless except that my throat burns when I draw breath.... I can scarcely go on. No despair, no happiness, no anxiety. I have not lost the mastery of my feelings, there are actually no more feelings. I consist only of will. After each few metres this too fizzles out in unending tiredness. Then I think nothing. I let myself fall, just lie there. For an indefinite time I remain completely irresolute. Then I make a ..
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Jon Krakauer |
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e83083b
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There were more than fifty people camped on the Col that night, huddled in shelters pitched side by side, yet an odd feeling of isolation hung in the air. The roar of the wind made it impossible to communicate from one tent to the next. In this godforsaken place, I felt disconnected from the climbers around me--emotionally, spiritually, physically--to a degree I hadn't experienced on any previous expedition. We were a team in name only, I'd..
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Jon Krakauer |
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32e3d2d
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I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace.
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Jon Krakauer |
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McCandless conveniently overlooked the fact that London himself had spent just a single winter in the North and that he'd died by his own hand on his California estate at the age of forty, a fatuous drunk, obese and pathetic, maintaining a sedentary existence that bore scant resemblance to the ideals he espoused in print.
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Jon Krakauer |
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So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there..
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Jon Krakauer |
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Every minute you remain at this altitude and above," he cautioned, "your minds and bodies are deteriorating." Brain cells were dying. Our blood was growing dangerously thick and sludgelike."
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Jon Krakauer |
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narcissistic personality disorder, or NPD. According to DSM-IV, NPD is distinguished by a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy . . . , indicated by five (or more) of the following: 1. An exaggerated sense of self-importance . . . 2. Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love 3. Believes that he or she is "special" and can only be ..
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Jon Krakauer |
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ebca93e
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Most of us were simply wrapped too tightly in the grip of summit fever to engage in thoughtful reflection about the death of someone in our midst.
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Jon Krakauer |
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Solitude was a rare commodity on Everest, and I was grateful to be granted a bit of it on this day, in such a remarkable setting.
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Jon Krakauer |
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When narcissists are confronted by people who disparage the legitimacy of their extravagant claims, they tend to react badly. They may plunge into depression--or become infuriated. As Gardner explained to the court, when narcissists are belittled or denigrated "they feel horrible. . . . They have this sense they're either grandiose, perfect, and beautiful people, or absolutely worthless. So if you challenge their grandiosity--these are the ..
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Jon Krakauer |
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f5c47e9
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He did a lot of socializing. Sometimes I think it was like he was storing up company for the times he knew nobody would be around
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sadness
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Jon Krakauer |
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78dc235
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I'm a bear technician, so I know what bear damage looks like.
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Jon Krakauer |
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acc756f
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The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence--the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes--all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness
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Jon Krakauer |
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We were too tired to help. Above 8,000 meters is not a place where people can afford morality.
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Jon Krakauer |
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ac2f17e
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My father was a volatile, extremely complicated person, possessed of a brash demeanor that masked deep insecurities.
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Jon Krakauer |
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74c3b68
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Not only during the ascent but also during the descent my will-power is dulled. The longer I climb the less important the goal seems to me, the more indifferent I become to myself. My attention has diminished, my memory is weakened. My mental fatigue is now greater than the bodily. It is so pleasant to sit doing nothing--and therefore so dangerous. Death through exhaustion is--like death through freezing--a pleasant one. Reinhold Messner Th..
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Jon Krakauer |
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8ab34a3
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Nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future.
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Jon Krakauer |
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72e5b21
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He lived on the streets with bums, tramps, and winos for several weeks. Vegas would not be the end of the story, however. On May 10, itchy feet returned and Alex left his job in Vegas, retrieved his backpack, and hit the road again, though he found that if you are stupid enough to bury a camera underground you won't be taking many pictures with it afterwards. Thus the story has no picture book for the period May 10, 1991-January 7, 1992. Bu..
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Jon Krakauer |
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prudent
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Jon Krakauer |
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I looked down. Descent was totally unappetizing.... Too much labor, too many sleepless nights, and too many dreams had been invested to bring us this far. We couldn't come back for another try next weekend. To go down now, even if we could have, would be descending to a future marked by one huge question: what might have been? Thomas F. Hornbein Everest: The West Ridge A
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Jon Krakauer |
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081aeb2
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Unfortunately, the sort of individual who is programmed to ignore personal distress and keep pushing for the top is frequently programmed to disregard signs of grave and imminent danger as well. This forms the nub of a dilemma that every Everest climber eventually comes up against: in order to succeed you must be exceedingly driven, but if you're too driven you're likely to die. Above 26,000 feet, moreover, the line between appropriate zeal..
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Jon Krakauer |
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aee7105
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Climbing along the blade of the summit ridge, sucking gas into my ragged lungs, I enjoyed a strange, unwarranted sense of calm. The world beyond the rubber mask was stupendously vivid but seemed not quite real, as if a movie were being projected in slow motion across the front of my goggles. I felt drugged, disengaged, thoroughly insulated from external stimuli. I had to remind myself over and over that there was 7,000 feet of sky on either..
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Jon Krakauer |
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incognito.
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Jon Krakauer |
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ignorance.
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Jon Krakauer |
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utterly
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Jon Krakauer |
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ba672ca
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Nadie deberia negar [...] que el nomadismo siempre nos ha estimulado y llenado de jubilo. En nuestro pensamiento, la condicion de nomada esta asociada a escapar de la historia, la opresion, la ley y las obligaciones agobiantes, a un sentimiento de libertad absoluta, y el camino del nomada siempre conduce hacia el oeste. Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space Carthage,
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Jon Krakauer |
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1f1e9b0
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There are many shades in the danger of adventures and gales, and it is only now and then that there appears on the face of facts a sinister violence of intention--that indefinable something which forces it upon the mind and the heart of a man, that this complication of accidents or these elemental furies are coming at him with a purpose of malice, with a strength beyond control, with an unbridled cruelty that means to tear out of him his ho..
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Jon Krakauer |
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751505d
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Above the comforts of Base Camp, the expedition in fact became an almost Calvinistic undertaking. The ratio of misery to pleasure was greater by an order of magnitude than any other mountain I'd been on; I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after week of toil, tedium, and suffering, it struck me that most of us were probably seeking, above all else, somethi..
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Jon Krakauer |
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d165ad1
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la naturaleza es un lugar despiadado, al que le traen sin cuidado las esperanzas y anhelos de los viajeros. <
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Jon Krakauer |
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553f14f
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Por fin se habia liberado de las ataduras, emancipado del mundo opresivo formado por sus padres y los que eran iguales que ellos, un mundo hecho de abstracciones, seguridad y bienestar material, un mundo en el que sentia como una dolorosa amputacion la ausencia del latir puro y salvaje de la existencia. Al
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Jon Krakauer |
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guys who may have 'made mistakes' nearly always get the benefit of the doubt. Drunk girls, however, do not.
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Jon Krakauer |
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It seems more than a little patronizing for Westerners to lament the loss of the good old days when life in the Khumbu was so much simpler and more picturesque. Most of the people who live in this rugged country seem to have no desire to be severed from the modern world or the untidy flow of human progress. The last thing Sherpas want is to be preserved as specimens in an anthropological museum.
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Jon Krakauer |
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bf0067a
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Podia intentar explicar que se regia por un codigo de orden superior; argumentar que, como moderno seguidor de las ideas de Henry David Thoreau, habia adoptado como evangelio el ensayo titulado Sobre el deber de la desobediencia civil y consideraba que no someterse a unas leyes opresivas e injustas era una obligacion moral.
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Jon Krakauer |
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fddefae
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bought my respect.
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Jon Krakauer |
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The more improbable the situation and the greater the demands made on [the climber], the more sweetly the blood flows later in release from all that tension. The possibility of danger serves merely to sharpen his awareness and control. And perhaps this is the rationale of all risky sports: You deliberately raise the ante of effort and concentration in order, as it were, to clear your mind of trivialities. It's a small scale model for living..
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Jon Krakauer |
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63ec366
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We tell ourselves stories in order to live.... We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience. Joan Di..
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Jon Krakauer |
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Tornare indietro quando era cosi vicino alla vetta...>>, osservo Hall scuotendo la testa il 6 maggio, mentre Kropp superava il Campo Due diretto verso la base della montagna. <> Nel corso dei mesi precedenti, Rob ci aveva fatto molte prediche sull'importanza di cal..
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Jon Krakauer |
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All religious belief is a function of nonrational faith. And faith, by its very definition, tends to be impervious to intellectual argument or academic criticism.
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Jon Krakauer |
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a3d923c
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In quella primavera del 1996, sulle pendici dell'Everest, non mancavano i sognatori: le credenziali di molti aspiranti scalatori della montagna erano esili quanto le mie, se non di piu. Quando per ciascuno di noi veniva il momento di valutare le proprie possibilita e di soppesarle contro la sfida formidabile rappresentata dalla montagna piu alta del mondo, a volte si aveva l'impressione che meta della popolazione del campo base soffrisse di..
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Jon Krakauer |
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In fact, most women who are sexually assaulted do not resist. The fear is overwhelming. They often feel helpless. Sometimes they make a conscious choice not to resist because they are afraid if they resist, they will be hurt even worse.
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Jon Krakauer |
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70a06d7
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According to many peer-reviewed studies, a large percentage of the victims of non-stranger rapes "actually feared they were going to be killed," even when "there was no weapon and no overt violence." Thompson"
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Jon Krakauer |
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drunk guys who may have 'made mistakes' nearly always get the benefit of the doubt. Drunk girls, however, do not." Compounding"
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Jon Krakauer |
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But men have been committing heinous acts in the name of God ever since mankind began believing in deities, and extremists exist within all religions.
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Jon Krakauer |
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94cda8a
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You hear that rape victims avoid sex afterwards. But it's actually just as common for some victims to become promiscuous in self-destructive ways.
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Jon Krakauer |