I finished reading "The Mountain of Marks" by Kaoru Takamura.

As expected -- it was tough.

In addition to the style it seems to fold in at the last minute, my wife said, as she did when she finished watching "Lady Joker" on Amazon Prime,

"There's no help for it anywhere"

It was a work that followed the high road of Takamura literature.

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When I climb a mountain, the mundane thoughts of everyday life fade away in an interesting way, and instead I am stripped of the shroud of work, life, and words to reveal only my life.

As it was condensed, rolled, extracted, and scraped away, it usually took on a bizarre appearance that surprised even me, but the experience was, in a word, out-of-this-world awakening and paralysis.

(The Mountain of Marks, bottom volume)

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I am a dropout who gave up mountaineering after only one attempt, the so-called "Yari-Hotaka traverse" (Yari, Karasawa, Kita-Hotaka, Kamikochi route).

However, with the pain of climbing a mountain, I achieved about three walls deep beyond what seemed to be my limit, and I was horrified by my own, when all the social masks were removed and I became "myself"-- I still remember that feeling very well.

I remembered that moment when I realized, "So this is what I am when I lose all of my interfaces: reason, intelligence, sociability, civility, courtesy, and everything else."

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The only time I can face my 100% blank self right now is "that fleeting moment when I jump into the cliff called the expert course at the ski slope."

"a moment of zero thought"

I've never experienced it, but I'm wondering if that's what Zen is all about.

So, as a rule, I ski alone.

(To be continued)