?Interrobang! · Track 96 · middle
The Summit or the Shore
OBJECT (intimate, what Sisukiro found): mementos from a transformative vision quest. OWNER (re-linked by Sisukiro): Beach Bum Betty — glaciologist from the polar field stations; note the irony of the name. FOUND AT: an unclimbed high peak in central Tibet. THE (UN)LIKELY STORY & THE UNANSWERABLE QUESTION: How did Beach Bum Betty's mementos from a transformative vision quest come to rest in an unclimbed high peak in central Tibet? Some year Sisukiro will never name. The irony of Beach Bum Betty the glaciologist is the whole question — and there is no easy answer.
Lyrics
[Intro] 5800 meters. Air like a blade, smelling of ozone. And here, tucked beside a tattered prayer flag… something that doesn't belong. [Verse 1] A piece of sea-glass, worn cloudy and smooth. A single, perfect sand dollar, bleached by a sun this mountain has never felt. A twist of dried kelp, still smelling faintly of salt and low tide. I hold them in my glove. They are impossibly warm against the minus eighteen degrees. Little ghosts of a coastline, a thousand miles away. [Chorus] They called you Beach Bum Betty. Glaciologist at Vostok Station. Which world were you trying to reach? Which self were you leaving behind? The summit or the shore? [Verse 2] I picture you logging ice cores in the endless white. The patient, disciplined silence of the work. But at night, in the humming station, did you close your eyes and hear the waves? Did you trace the shape of this sand dollar in your pocket? A secret map back to the heat. A reminder of a vision quest taken somewhere warm, somewhere else. [Bridge] But how did they get here? This peak has no name. No record of a first ascent. Did a bird carry your offering? Or did they ride in the pack of a yak that wandered too high in the 1990s? Its faint signal still broadcasting from the ice, a ghost calling to no one. A pilgrimage to the place most opposite your heart. [Chorus] They called you Beach Bum Betty. Glaciologist on the ice. Which world were you trying to join? Which self were you trying to find? The summit or the shore? [Outro] Did you leave your dream here? Or did you come here to find it? The question hangs in the thin air.