Chapter 15 13/Day Six: Enlightenment and Joy

Only by losing everything can we no longer be limited and free to do as we please. Quoted from Taylor in the movie <Fighting Club>①.Durden, the film is directed by Brad.starred by peter ① <Fight Club>: The original title of the book is "Fight Club", by American writer Chuck.The work of Chuck Palahniuk is a powerful work on the anxieties of human nature and the attack on material civilization at the end of the century, and has been made into a movie, directed by Edward.Norton and Brad.Starring Peter. * Peering through the dark slit of the emergency rope bag I'd made, I watched dawn take over the canyon.The fresh daylight of dawn gradually expanded its range, obliterating the darkness that had ruled last night.After one hundred and twenty hours of sleeplessness, my brain seemed to be tied in several knots, and although it was a new day, everything around me seemed to be an imaginary hallucination.I haven't closed my eyes for five days, and the five-day accumulation of small gravel on the contact lenses makes it painful to blink every time. The dirt accumulated in the eyes even blocks my vision.I was so exhausted that I didn't even have the strength to lift my head up.My whole head hangs toward the north wall of the canyon, and sometimes I move a little bit to allow my head to tilt forward so that my left forearm can support my head.I'm dying, I'm dying and I'm not dead.

Today is Thursday, May 1st.I can't believe I'm still alive. I thought my life should have been lost a few days ago.It was a miracle to survive last night's hypothermia.But in fact, I am quite depressed about surviving, because then the epitaph I carved on the rock wall yesterday does not correspond to the truth. In other words, I did not receive the favor of the Lord in April rest in peace.For a while, I thought about whether I should also record the exact date, but finally decided not to bother.Because even if the search and rescue team saw the date I carved on the rock, it wouldn't mean much to them.Even if their eyes were sharp enough to notice this detail, the coroner of the search and rescue team would use the state of decomposition of my body to determine the time of death.If I can have such a time to judge, I am already very satisfied.

When I was still able to dream about my future son, the blond boy, I seemed to have a sense of confidence in the future, but where is the confidence and certainty now?Mentally speaking, when the epitaph was engraved last night, my emotions have actually collapsed to the bottom. I can only rely on the fantasy of holding my babbling son in the future, which makes me seem to have hope for the future.But despite this light heartedness, I was still trapped in this solid boulder, and at the same time endured the bitter taste of my urine. There is a weird reserve in my kettle, my urine, and I taste it one after another, feeling the astringent taste left in my mouth and palate, as if reminding me that my death is not far away.The pungent smell of urine disintegrated bit by bit the will to survive that I managed to build up last night.Why am I drinking my own urine now if I have the chance to live on?Is this the death mark that a dying person must be labeled with?I think I've been sentenced to death.

It is now 8:30 in the morning, and the crows have not been seen yet. I imagine them flying towards me and biting my body.While I was still thinking about the crow, I saw a swarm of insects springing up near the rock, the number of which was unprecedented.I stretched out my left hand and slapped some of the flying bugs vigorously, taking the act of killing bugs as a sideshow to make myself more or less happy.I looked at my watch and it said eight forty-five.Even the crows have deserted me. Usually the birds make their daily flight around half past eight, but today there was no sign.With less crows circling, in this atmosphere, I feel more like my end is approaching.

At this time, a desire suddenly rose in my heart: I want music to accompany me to die.Even the badly sung BBC song from the movie Kingsman can drive me crazy these days.But somehow, my mind went blank, and I couldn't even hum a monotonous melody.The only thing that filled my ears was the echoing silence of the canyon, a dead silence that was driving me crazy.I need my CD player.For the past five days, the headphones have been hanging from my ears and neck, but the CD player and two CDs are in the backpack.It took me three tries to remove the pack from my back, place it on my bent left knee, and reach into the bottom of the pack to search.There was a CD player and CDs and a centimeter of sand.

In fact, long before I took out the player, I knew that my efforts were wasted.The discs were worn out to the point of being unplayable.After five days in this desolate desert, the disc was badly scratched, as if it had been polished with a polisher.Regardless, I still want to try it out.I put a CD into the player, but the player doesn't turn it. No matter how many times I press the play button, the screen still shows there is no disc.It may be that I accidentally knocked the player into a rock wall in the past five days, and the laser reading head was knocked crooked, so it couldn't read.

Luckily, my camcorder barely survived the friction and bumping of the grit in the pack.After giving up the idea of ​​listening to music, I decided to use photography to document my current situation.I find that the attitude I hold at this moment is the most optimistic I have seen in the past few days. I imagine that I will still be alive when the search and rescue team finds me.I put the bag back on my back and readjusted the straps for the fiftieth time, just to make sure they were strong enough.I temporarily put the video camera on the rock, adjusted my posture, and calmed down to think.When I first started speaking, I was a little surprised by my sharp and high-pitched voice.This seems to be another fact, reminding me that the god of death is waiting for me not far away.

I just thought it was past nine o'clock on a Thursday morning.I'm in a state of confidence and I feel that soon we'll meet and the search and rescue team will find me and I'm still alive. This is simply great news, I thought.But when I think of the rescue window I deduced, the operation period will start from any time today to this Sunday, I feel that the dawn of immediate rescue is far away from me, and the probability of rescue has dropped from ridiculously impossible to completely impossible.I choose not to dwell on these frustrating things, but in fact, my mind is already preoccupied with a deepening dizziness, so even if I want to think about this topic, I am a little bit powerless. Honestly, my patience has been completely exhausted.

My mind wandered somehow, and I thought about my sister Sanja and her wedding. She and her partner Chuck invited me to play the piano for a few minutes at their upcoming wedding this August.I also agreed at the time.But obviously, this promise will not be fulfilled, because whether I can go back alive is still a question.Thinking about it made me feel rather discouraged, but I cheered up nonetheless, and I wanted to do something about my own survival. Sangka If you still expect me to play the piano at your wedding, there is a box in the basement of my parents' house, and there is a cassette in it, with a label on it that says my piano performance or my music.Anyway, there was a cassette in there of my piano performances that I recorded for music auditions around 1993-1994.

Next, this scene immediately appeared in my mind: Sanjia found the cassette in the basement, and she and her mother listened to the recording of my piano performance.I understand that it will be their last effort, listening to the piano pieces I played seriously ten years ago, which are full of my favorite composers, Mozart, Bach, Beethoven and Chopin. At the same time, another scene flashed in my mind, but the scene was at a wedding. Although I couldn't say the exact background and location of the wedding, I imagined that the wedding was on an outdoor grassland.My piano recital was also played at the wedding banquet, and the melodious music rolled into a dark cloud from the speakers around the venue, making everyone who participated in this family reunion shed tears of sentimentality.The news of my death will cast some shadow over my sister's wedding, but I understand that everything will still go according to plan.Because there is no reason to reschedule the wedding reception.After all, you still have to go on with your life.

The imagination continued to creep in, and I let images of my mother and sister come to mind, trying to leave a few fragmented clues to recall later.Then it occurred to me that I hadn't accounted for the property I had left, so I started explaining how to distribute the money in my retirement fund account. Also, without a doubt, all the money in my funded retirement plan account goes to Sanja, if anything Halfway through the sentence, I stopped suddenly.My mind was in turmoil. I tried to bring back the original idea I wanted to express, but I couldn't remember it.My mind was completely lost, and then another thought popped into my head, and I hurried to express it, this time with clarity, because it had to do with my cremation and the way my ashes were handled. Well, Bosco and Blades have always been one of my favorite places to climb.So maybe Dan, Willow, Steve, John, Eric, and Patchett could grant my wish and climb the Bladed Ridge and scatter my ashes there. Clearing my throat, I pressed the video recorder button again.I hope this video will allow me to say goodbye to my loved ones and also serve as my will and proof of my survival.In it I mentioned what to do with my belongings and finances, and my real estate, as if I had a lot of property to deal with.In fact, doing so is just hoping to make my sister's life easier.Maybe my speaking structure can be improved, but it takes me a lot of energy to think clearly about what I said. If I have to polish what I just said beforehand or re-record it, don’t even think about it. .Just treat it as my last video!Then I folded the video camera screen, closed the body, and stuck the video camera in the cutout between the rock and the canyon wall. Maintaining this miserable situation, I passed another hour filled with endless emptiness.But at least I don't have to worry about hypothermia and go to great lengths to maintain my body temperature.At night, the chill of the entire atmosphere gnawed at my body, as if trying to suck all the heat out of me.During the day, I finally no longer need to be busy adjusting the rope tied to my thigh, or loosen the cloth and plastic wrap wrapped around my arm, and I don't have to be as busy and exhausted as I am at night.But without this distraction, I honestly have nothing else to do, no life to speak of.Only through actions can people advance their lives in a meaningful way. Life is not just about living.But stuck here, other tasks or stimuli are equal to zero, so I have no so-called meaning of life or existence.Right now, my life is just a waiting. Because beating stones has weakened my left hand, the only thing I can do now is wait.But what are you waiting for?Waiting for help?or death?There is not much difference between the two to me.Because both outcomes mean the same thing - relief and salvation from suffering.Unbearably, I began to develop a sense of indifference to life because of my lack of activity.At this moment, the waiting itself is the greatest torment I am stuck here.Because after a period of waiting ended, another period of endless waiting began immediately.In such a predicament, I feel as if I am touching the face of the God of endless waiting.There is not a shred of clues to reveal when this endless waiting will end. In fact, I can also try to interrupt this waiting, I can ignore the pain in my left hand, continue to break the rock with the stone in my hand, or use a knife to split the rock wall, although this is not very effective.When I reached for the stone, I realized that my left hand needed a sheath as a cushion to provide cushioning, so I put a sock on my left glove to protect my injured palm from the blow.There are bruises on the thumb, the part that is most sensitive to taps and impacts, and when I pause the tapping, I literally feel a strong desire for relief from the pain from the first to the fifth finger.The secretion of adrenaline made me feel angry, so I picked up the stone again and slammed it, this time to avenge the damage to my left hand caused by the harsh geological conditions. bang bang bang!I pounded the boulder with all my strength, and the pain in my left hand intensified.Pop!I continue to beat.bang bang bang!I was pissed off, and I was in a cloud of smoke from smashed gravel.At the same time, between the walls and the rocks, the frictional heat of each stroke I made gave my socks a burning smell.Another piece of gravel was laid.Kara!A sudden throbbing pain in my left hand aroused my anger, and I shouted: Ah! I forced myself to stop tapping, but I couldn't let my fingers loose from the stone.My fingers were completely paralyzed in the clenched state, and I couldn't move. (Alas, Alan! Your actions just now were so agitated, even a little reckless!) Gradually, my over-shocked nerves calmed down, and my fingers finally moved a little, and I could stretch out and put down the stone in my hand, and put it on the rock.Now I want to get rid of the accumulated dust on my arm, so that the dust will not stick to my wound.I took the knife and used the blunt side as a brush to clean the dirt off my trapped hand.While dusting off my thumb, I scraped myself up suddenly and violently, scraping the thin layer of rot off the injured skin, just as I would scrape the milky skin off of hot milk.It happened so quickly, and before I knew it, I had already scraped the skin off.The wounds on the hands had already begun to rot, coupled with poor blood circulation, the muscles and tissues on the hands were already in a state of gradual necrosis.Since Saturday afternoon, I have absolutely no idea of ​​the speed at which the tissue necrosis in the hand has taken place.Now I finally understand why the number of insects around me has increased, because they have already smelled the source of the next meal, found their meal, and the new home of the larvae. Out of curiosity, I poked my injured right thumb with the blade twice in a row. The second time, the blade pierced the skin, as if it had penetrated a piece of cream at room temperature, releasing a puff of gas , with a hissing sound.Going out of gas is usually not a good sign, it means the rate of spoilage is faster than I originally expected.Despite my poor sense of smell, the faint putrid smell was rather unpleasant, like the smell of rotting corpses wafting from a distance. After smelling this smell, I realized that the necrosis of a wound on my hand would gradually spread to my forearm, and the bacteria from the wound were already corrupting my body.I shook my head in a panic, trying to straighten my right forearm out of the rock, I didn't want my body to have anything to do with the rot. (I don't want my body to be corrupted and necrotic. It's not part of my body. It's rubbish. Drop it, Alan.drive it away. ) I twisted my body excitedly, rocking up and down, side to side, and a complete rage swept over me. I screamed loudly, and threw myself back and forth violently against the rock wall. I have worked hard to maintain since the accident. His composure completely collapsed at this moment.As I looked at my arm, pressed against the rock to an unnatural bend, a thought suddenly stopped my whole madness: (If I could twist my arm far enough, I might be able to break the forearm bone. Like breaking a plank, I could bend my arm until it snapped in half! My goodness!Allen, yes!That's it.God damn that's the way to do it! ) I scrambled to clear objects off the rocks, feeling like I was on autopilot, unable to control what I was going to do next.I adjusted my body under the boulder into a crouching position, but even that wasn't low enough, because the pull of the rope around my waist prevented me from fully flexing my forearms.I untied the sling chain and tried to use the weight of my body to let gravity throw me down as far as possible. This time I could almost sit on the big rock on the canyon flat.I lowered my arm under the boulder and pushed as hard as I could, putting force on my radius bone. Just when I was about to bend my arm down and to the left, snap!A sound echoed, as if a muffled toy pistol was firing up and down the canyon.I didn't say a word, but I stretched to feel the presence of the forearm, clearly feeling the gap between the two broken hand bones. Without the slightest hesitation, I arched my body over the rock again, kicking hard against the wall, kicking hard while grabbing the back of the rock with my left hand, using all the gravity I could apply, and pushing as hard as I could! Snapped!The second toy gun sounded, and the complete ulna was broken in two. I was sweating profusely, and I was in a very happy mood. I touched the five centimeters below the wrist of my right arm again, and pulled my right shoulder away from the big stone.Both bones broke in the same place, the ulna was about a centimeter closer to my elbow than the radius.Like a rotating shaft inside a machine, now I can rotate freely. The exhilarating sensation of being freed from confinement caused me to hastily pick up the shorter, sharper blade, skipping the rehearsed step of stopping the bleeding, and place the knife directly between the two veins.I pushed the knife hard toward my wrist and watched my skin sink in until the incision sliced ​​through the skin and sank into the handle.The pain burns like a fire, but I know the work has only just begun.I glanced at my watch and it was ten thirty-two.I encouraged myself: Yes!Allen!Just do it!Let's get this done together! At the beginning of the accident, I thought that cutting off the arm was equivalent to a kind of slow suicide, but now I can feel a kind of high emotion in my heart even further.I'm waiting to die anyway, and I choose to face my death in a positive way.It was surreal to watch my arm disappear into the rock, but I was actually deeply honored to know how to perform my own amputation. My first step was to cut, using a downward movement that tested the limits of how far the superficial muscles of my inner forearm could stretch without breaking the noodle-like veins near the surface of the skin.When I made a big enough incision about ten centimeters below the wrist, I temporarily put away the knife, then poked my left index finger and thumb into the opening on the arm, exploring inside the wound.My fingers touched these weird and unfamiliar tissues for the first time, while I mentally created images of the subcutaneous inner features of the forearm.I felt a chain of muscle fibers, and beneath these I found two pairs of bones visibly broken and jagged.I twisted the forearm, trying to turn the trapped palm down, and found that the bones closer to the inside of the body could rotate freely around the bones still on the fixed end.It's a pain-filled move that I haven't been able to do since last Saturday, and I feel a little joy at this breakthrough, maybe I'll be able to get rid of the crushed, dead muscle in my hand sooner rather than later It's just a problem. Through a process of poking and pinching, I came to know how to tell the difference between hard tendons and ligaments, and soft, plastic-like, highly malleable arteries.I decided to save the arterial severing step for last if I still have the ability to handle it. I grab a chunk of muscle with my thumb, and run the blade like a paring knife, running it across the pink, finger-sized filaments of muscle.With determination and stillness, I cut through pinch after pinch, repeating the motion about a dozen times. Like a cutter, I went back and forth and cut off the outside of the hose piece by piece.Every time I grab a pinch of muscle to slice, I'm always careful to make sure I'm not grabbing a pencil-thick artery by mistake.When I caught a mistake, I picked out the artery to avoid cutting it.One-third of the way through the hose trimming and slicing of the entire forearm, I actually cut into a vein.Without a tourniquet on, I seemed to be full of strong anticipation to open the Christmas present. Now that I have torn off the wrapping paper, I will complete the process of opening the present in one go!A strong desire to completely cut myself off and liberate myself from the confinement has made me unable to think rationally. I convinced myself that I did not lose too much blood, but only a few drops of blood, because my broken hand had already It's like a closed valve, blocking the blood circulation in the body. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, or what seemed like twenty minutes later, I can't remember because I was totally absorbed in the challenge of getting the job done as quickly as possible.The entire operation did not go smoothly when the tendon in the middle of the forearm was sliced. The yellow tendon about one centimeter thick increased the difficulty of slicing. I stopped and tried to tie a temporary hemostasis.By this time, I had severed my second artery, and blood was trickling down the canyon wall below my arm.Perhaps it was because I had severed most of the connective tissue in the middle of the forearm first, opening up the entire blood vessel, so I lost a lot of blood in just a few minutes.The progress of the operation was slowed down because of this, and now I have to go back to deal with the stubborn and strong tendon.I don't want to be trapped and lose blood for no reason at all, because every drop of blood is precious, and it depends on them to have the strength to walk back to my car and drive back to Hanksville or Green river. I'm still thinking about where I can get medical attention the fastest.Hanksville is the only place with a phone in the neighborhood, and it's about an hour's drive west, depending on how quickly I can hold the steering wheel and shift gears with my left hand.But I don't remember at all if there is a clinic nearby, only gas stations and fast food restaurants.Green River is in the north, it takes about two hours by car, but the advantage is that there is a clinic here.I'm hoping to find someone near the trailhead who will help me with the drive.My mind jumps back to Saturday when I was at the trailhead and there were only two cars in the roughly one square kilometer parking lot.It was the weekend and now it is a weekday, and the risk I have to consider is that when I get back to the trailhead, there is no one to assist. I had to re-pace myself, and I needed to be able to last six to seven hours before actually getting medical attention. I put the knife on the rock and grab the Neoprine tube for the water bag, which has been sitting on the upper left side of the rock for the past two days and has not been used.I wrapped the black tube twice around my arm, about eight centimeters below the elbow.Twice the over-the-shoulder knot, then hold one end between my teeth and tuck the other end in with my left hand.Then I quickly took out the climbing hook and loop to clamp the stop tube, and tightened it as much as six times, just like the first time I experienced the stop bleeding experience a long time ago, that seems to be Tuesday?Or what happened on Monday? Why didn't I think of breaking my own bones at that time?I was wondering.Why should I waste my time on such torture?God!I'm probably the stupidest person in the world, to let a big rock trap my hand in vain.It took me six full days before it finally occurred to me that I could just snap my arm off.Self-loathing choked in my throat until I finally came back to myself. (Ellen, those are just distracting thoughts. Let go of them! Focus on your task!) I clamped the shackle on the bicep holding the hemostat and made two more turns to keep the neoprine above from loosening.Then I reached for the blood-stained scalpel again and proceeded to clean the last of the muscle around the tendon and cut the third artery as well.So far, I have not let out a cry of pain.I don't want to cry out my pain because pain is as unimportant in this ordeal as the color of a tourniquet. The opening is now larger, making it easier to find where the tendon is.Holding the knife, I tried my best to saw, but the situation was the same as before, still unable to carve any dents in this hard tendon.I poked it with my finger, and it turned out to be like double layers of fiber reinforced packing tape, nearly a centimeter thick.I couldn't cut through it and decided to give up and use a vise instead.Pulling out the blood-stained, sticky and slippery blade, I pushed the back of the blade against my stomach to put the blade back into the scabbard, and then took out the vise.First grasp the edge of the tendon with a vise, clamp and rotate firmly, and tear off a part of the tendon.Great, right with the vise, it worked fine.I am undergoing the most brutal and barbaric surgical procedure. My situation should be written into a book and shared with friends, I thought so.They'll probably never believe that I cut off my own arm.whatever!Even I couldn't believe it, I watched myself cut off my own arm. Things were progressing, and after I cut open the tendon, I finally completely cut through the intertwining muscle tissue, and then I decided to switch back to the knife, so I took out the blade between my teeth.The time is now eleven sixteen in the morning.As of now, I have had almost forty minutes of cutting surgery.With my fingers I grasped the last remaining uncut parts: two small pinches of muscle, an artery, and the skin closest to the wall, a quarter of its circumference.Additionally, there is a whitish plexus the size of angel spaghetti.I can imagine the excruciating pain of having those parts cut off.My focus, keeping my fingers off major nerves, and remaining in a detached, half-understanding state seemed like the best thing to happen. The small, elastic nerve branches are so sensitive that if I accidentally touched them, my entire shoulder would feel like an electric shock, causing me to temporarily lose consciousness in pain.The rest of these parts have to be cut off too.I put the blade under the nerve and flicked it like a guitar, pulling the string up, pulling it so tight that the whole string snapped, releasing a pang of pain.Its intensity has updated my perception of pain like slamming my arm into a cauldron of lava. After a few minutes, I finally recovered from the excruciating pain and continued my cutting operation, the last step is to tighten the skin outside the wrist and cut down the wall at the bottom.As I get closer to the final moment of liberation, I feel more excited. I feel that what flows in my arteries is not blood, but infinite future possibilities. It is 11:30 am on May 1, 2003 Twelve points.This is the second birth in my life.In the pink womb of this canyon, I was reborn at this moment after a painful gestation.This time I was born not as a baby, but as an adult.I understand the significance and power of this birth, which is beyond the ability of any newborn.The great value of family, friends, and passion to me ignited a huge energy, accumulated to a high point, multiplied by several times the intensity, and was about to explode.Tightening the muscle tissue that hadn't been cut off at the end of the arm, I gently swung the knife and cut down, finally cutting the last pinch of muscle. It's like a special effects scene in a sci-fi movie. My world is completely different.The chains that had bound me for the past few days were finally broken, and I was freed.The sudden release sent me bouncing back, my left arm dropped, and I fell forward onto the north wall of the canyon.My thoughts were immersed in a kind of extreme pleasure.I stared at the rock face ahead, nearly twelve hours ago, I carved the words on it: RIP OCT 75ARON APR 03, at this moment, I cheered loudly in my head: (I am free!) This is the most emotional and surging moment in my life.I even began to fear that I would explode due to excessive excitement. This emotional shock even made my body lose consciousness for a while, and made me paralyzed on the rock wall for a long time without recovering.After being imprisoned for nearly a week, my body was finally no longer trapped here, and a sense of happiness like taking hallucinogens rose up, and the feeling of freedom made me jump for joy. My head fell over my right shoulder, sliding toward my chest in front of me, and I straightened my neck to keep myself against the wall, stabilizing my body.The rock I just stepped on with my left foot was unsteady. Fortunately, I squatted down slightly in time to prevent the whole body from hitting the wall on the south side of the canyon. But to be honest, it feels really good to be able to fall. I looked at the bloodstains on the rocks and the walls.Fluid splattered on the rock hid the black filth of my severed wrist, but the severed white bones of the ulna and radius stood out clearly in the bloodstained mess.My inadvertent glance turned to a focused stare, dizzy but still in a state of wonder, as I gazed at the cross section on my right forearm. (Okay, that's enough! There are more important things to do now. Time is ticking. Ellen! Time to get out of here.)