#23 The Immortal Hulk Hogan …

Fear has me in its grip, but I can’t help but chuckle inwardly when I realize that that fear is merely a reminder that the adventure called life could as well end here and now. A fall of twelve, thirteen meters, the few words squeezed out for Heidi, a lick from Boris across my face, a sigh, and the infinite nothingness, a reality—that last one—I can only postpone if I let my fear work for me, don’t let it paralyze me.

This climb had seemed so simple, but I underestimated the overhang right above me. In addition, my backpack is restricting my movements. I won’t be able to hold this position for long—my back against the rock face—and I have little choice but to trust that I correctly judged from the ground that I will find sufficient grip on the upper face of the overhang—now out of my sight. For a moment, my fear is overshadowed by amazement as I realize that again—somewhat hysterically perhaps—I am chuckling inwardly because I think of the managing director of Reebok Netherlands—I am Dutch—whom, with his staff, I once took to the German Eifel for a weekend of relaxed adventure.

Rock climbing had been part of the program, and because I didn’t trust the waiting and cheering staff members to press themselves against the rock face if a climbing staff member dislodged a stone and, following my instructions, yelled “Stone!”, those waiting staff members wore brightly colored hard hats like the ones worn on construction sites. It was a hot day. The managing director of Reebok, standing beside me while I belayed a staff member on her way up, complimented me on the organization of the weekend. He took off his hard hat to wipe the sweat from his forehead when, just before we heard someone yell “Stone!”, a stone bounced off his bald head. Trickle of blood, keine panik, piece of tape, small bandage, and… “Alles in orde everything okay?” Heidi—my wife, also Dutch—calls from the ground.

“Geen paniek no panic!” I call back.

My left leg is trembling. My right hand, pressed against a bulge in the overhang as I try to push myself away from the depth, is going numb. I hear myself think, “Twenty times twelve is two hundred and forty. The square root of two hundred and forty is a little over fifteen. Fifteen times sixty is nine hundred is more than fifty kilometers an hour,” hear Sophocles whisper that fate rarely favors the faint-hearted, and straighten my legs. I feel my body rotate around its longitudinal axis, see Heidi no longer below me but, for a fraction of a second, see the blue sky, and then, as my body angles like that of a diver, I see the upper face of the overhang, on which, as if in slow motion, my arms land. I see my hands glide over rough rock and see how the fingers of my left hand claw around a ledge.

My right hand grabs a cupped hold, and, my legs dangling, I pull and kick myself up until I can place a knee on the edge of the overhang. It eh… it is not prize-winning, but I feel happy, no longer being Victor Hugo’s man on a rock, and clip the carabiner I took from my climbing harness through the rusty ring on a rusty peg in the rock face just above the overhang. I clip the short sling attached to the belay loop of my climbing harness onto the carabiner and lower myself until the sling is taut and I am seated in the climbing harness, thirteen, fourteen meters high against a flank of La Peña Gorda, a lonely, forty-meter-high rock in the Spanish nature reserve of Arribes del Duero.

Heidi and I accepted the commission to make a short film, a cortometraje, about why Arribes del Duero—where Heidi and I have been living for two months now—is attractive to a foreigner. Somewhere in that cortometraje, I descend from a rock face, and to be able to film that, I first had to partially climb that rock face, which we found on La Peña Gorda.

Sport climbers—to make it easier to belay each other—fixed pegs with rings in the climbable parts of La Peña Gorda a long time ago, and I was glad that shortly after we arrived here, I spotted the peg I am now hanging from. I could have asked Heidi to belay me on my way up, but … “Can you throw me your rope?” Heidi calls. “Then I’ll know where to set up the cameras!”

“One minute!” I call back, and I wrestle my backpack from my back to between my legs and pull out the line I brought. I thread one end of the line through the ring on the peg I am hanging from and pull half of the line through. I tie the two ends of the line together, gather a few meters, call out, “Watch out!”, and throw the bundle of line I now hold over the edge of the overhang. As Boris the little terrier darts away in fright, Heidi pulls the two halves of the line toward her until both are taut. I stare over the steppe-like landscape that surrounds me.

Third week of October, 2025. Just after sunrise, I dragged a canoe into the River Duero. The mist in the gorge through which the Duero flows seemed to guarantee some wonderful shots—somewhere in our cortometraje, I am canoeing—and while Heidi, on a small beach, set up the cameras, I paddled to the middle of the Duero. After Heidi called out that the cameras were rolling, I paddled in her direction.

“One more time!” Heidi called, and I paddled back to the middle of the Duero, where I noticed that my strange sit-on-top canoe was moving too sluggishly and remembered that the man we borrowed the canoe from had warned us to stuff a plug into the thing before putting it into the water.

As our gas stove snored under the moka pot Heidi surprised me with some weeks ago and as Heidi, stifling her laughter, lifted one side of the canoe to drain the last of the water out of it, I took off my wet clothes, shivering with cold, and put on the clothes I would wear during my rockface descent. The canoe in the back of our Berlingo, Boris hung out of Heidi’s window like Superman during our drive to La Peña Gorda. Heidi drank rooibos from her Stanley thermos. I drank the coffee from the moka pot, and … “One more minute!” Heidi calls, and I think of the translation of Machiavelli’s Il Principe I read by a campfire during that trip to the German Eifel with the staff of Reebok. According to Machiavelli, I read, it is better to be impetuous than cautious. With that, he seemed to confirm that I was doing the right thing, traveling to the Belgian village of Marche-les-Dames on the weekends I did not travel to the German Eifel with the staff of a company, where—in Marche-les-Dames—I impetuously climbed solo on the rock faces on the bank of the River Meuse.

Man, I enjoyed the fear that, despite the ease with which the rock faces in Marche-les-Dames could be climbed, had me in its grip after climbing only a few meters. What I enjoyed less was the rage my solo climbing awakened in other climbers, who, belaying each other, were climbing in pairs. It was the same rage with which people recently scream the word helmet when I am riding my bike, and I understood and understand nothing of that rage. Perhaps it is the idea that I do not have the right to end up in a hospital if it can be prevented, though it would make more sense in that case to rage in front of a McDonald’s. But, admittedly, my solo climbing back then did lead to a hospital admission.

One evening, done climbing, satisfied, and tired, I walked into a café in Marche-les-Dames. Before I could answer the bartender’s friendly “Bonsoir”, one of the climbers who had vented his rage at me that afternoon had a physical go at me. I stepped out of his path and tripped him, and when two of his friends threw themselves into the fray, I heard Machiavelli whisper that it is better to be feared than loved if it is impossible to be both. I eh… I agreed with Machiavelli but had not factored in that the ashtray with which, just before we heard the bartender yell “Arrêt!”, I hit one of those two friends on his bald head would break. Trickle of blood didn’t quite cover it, plein de panique, ambulance, hospital.

True solo climbers such as Honnold, Potter, Destivelle, Robert, Harrington, and Davis—measured by the turmoil they evoke in their audience—are artists, and now that I think of artists, I think of the recently deceased Terry Bollea. I understand nothing of show wrestling, but Bollea, the man who created the wrestling phenomenon Hulk Hogan, was one of the greatest artists of all time, something I no longer say out loud because the few times I did, I awakened more rage than when I ride my bike.

Staring over the steppe-like landscape that surrounds me, I realize how much damage we have inflicted upon ourselves by allowing ourselves to be conditioned to think that art is a technocratic affair. Experts—who, as long as they have the right qualifications, need not necessarily be experts—create and judge art. And to that we should add that our tolerance—which we have been conditioned to see as a virtue—has gone off track so far that we agree that anyone who calls her or his handicraft or free expression art is an artist too.

What is art and what is not is complex, but until recently, no one needed the help of an expert to realize that not everything that evokes turmoil in an audience is art. Unfortunately, experts fail to realize that what does not evoke turmoil in an audience is certainly not art. Mona Lisa or Hulk Hogan? Even though I understand nothing of show wrestling, the choice is easily made.

“But Da Vinci was a great artist!” a raging voice stirs in my mind. “He tried to elevate painting to the liberal arts! His Mona Lisa in particular testifies to technical perfection and psychological insight! Da Vinci went so far, mind you, as to call painting una cosa mentale!”

Da Vinci was a craftsman. What he created was beautiful, is still special, and may contain much to still discover, but his work evokes but rage—and then only when I remark that we have been conditioned to think of it as art. And what, for goodness’ sake, in the third millennium, is not conditioned? Democracy, the Western free press, its justice system, its healthcare system, and its compulsory education? Wonderful! But is it wonderful, or have we been conditioned to see it as wonderful?

Am I smart because I know the formula to calculate the speed at which I hit the ground if the peg I am hanging from breaks, and am I stupid because I am hanging from a peg that could break? I eh… I think the opposite is true, and I think that if Galileo and Newton had truly been smart, they would have kept the world ignorant of their discoveries—Da Vinci at least tried—and … “What nonsense!” that raging voice stirs again. “Without Galileo and Newton, our progress would have stood still for another few centuries!”

“Oh man,” I hear myself think, “our progress has never stood still, and what we have been conditioned to see as progress is in reality often the opposite,” and I remember how a Dutch comedian once joked, “Could atoms be split is an innocent question. The answer is flawed,” which … “The cameras are rolling!” Heidi interrupts the sudden commotion in my head.

I wrestle my backpack onto my back and thread the two halves of the line through a figure-eight device I attach to the belay loop of my climbing harness. I release the sling, unclip the carabiner from the ring on the peg in the rock face, descend, and when I hear Sophocles whisper that happiness is impossible without wisdom, I realize that wisdom, in the third millennium, begins with identifying what, in our thinking, judging, and what not, has been conditioned.

Boris jumps up at me when my feet touch the ground, and Heidi says: “We got it. And I put your moka pot on the stove.”

Half an hour later, I am cycling on a dirt road behind our Berlingo. Next to the canoe, which is sticking out of an open rear door, Heidi mounted a camera on the closed rear door. While I look into that camera and simultaneously keep an eye on the dirt road, so as not to drive into a pothole and perhaps break a collarbone or wrist, I again and again—microphone on my chest—repeat the lines I learned by heart last night. Another half hour later, I am sitting in the hall of our house in the village of Montelobado at the camping table that serves me as a desk, and when Boris nudges my thigh with a paw, I realize I have been engrossed in my work for well over two hours. Boris is sitting next to me on the floor. I look at him and ask: “Do you want to go out?”

“Woof!”

“Is Heidi coming along?”

Trot, trot …

“Do you want to go out?” I hear Heidi ask in the living room.

“Woof!”

“Ask Nikko to put on your leash.”

Trot, trot …

We have not yet managed to condition Boris in a way that makes him give me his leash, but he looks for it when we mention the word leash and goes berserk with it as if it were prey. Putting on that leash is not so easy, but even so, it doesn't take long before we are strolling along dirt roads between meadows bordered by low stone walls, the grass, awaiting the first autumn rain, yellowish brown. Huge cows and bulls left, right, and everywhere, and when, after an hour and a half or so, Montelobado comes into view again, Heidi worriedly exclaims, “Boris is gone!”

Running back, I see a cloud of dust behind a slope in a meadow, and I know I have found Boris. I climb over a stone wall and trot into the meadow until I see a flock of sheep thundering straight at me. The flock changes course and thunders through a gate in the low wall I just climbed over. The scream I let out impresses Boris, in hot pursuit, enough to make him drop into the dry grass, out of breath but proudly wagging his tail. I pick up our little ffriend and walk through the now wide-open gate to Heidi, who, standing bewildered in the settling dust, says, “Did Boris just chase two hundred sheep into the village?”

“Three hundred more likely,” I blurt out before bursting out laughing, as, in my mind’s eye, I see sheep walking in and out of houses all over Montelobado. It doesn’t take long before we both have the giggles, and taking turns bursting out laughing, we discover that not a single sheep can be found in the siesta-immersed village.

Once home, my phone rings. I find it just in time to answer, and the farmer calling me—I often help him move or feed his cows and sheep—asks whether I know why his sheep are in the barn.

“Cómo lo sé yo how would I know?” I answer, relieved.

“Only you two walk during the hottest part of the day, and your little dog tiene más peligro que una piraña en un bidé is more dangerous than a piranha in a bidet.”

The temperature is dropping when, by the end of the afternoon and after another few hours of work, I lift my bike out of the Berlingo. Just before I mount the bike, some villagers stroll past. In response to my “Buenas tardes”, three of them ask as one, “Por qué no llevas casco?”

“Now let me tell you something, brother!” I hear Hulk Hogan roar in my mind, but kindly I ask, “Why should I wear a helmet?”

“Porque te multarán because you might get fined.”

“A helmet out of fear of una multa!” I exclaim. “Ese es el espíritu that is the spirit! Viva Maquiavelo!”

Following the setting sun, I cycle out of Montelobado, and I think about how school teachers or Oprah Winfrey—depending on our age—have for quite some time now been conditioning us to believe we cannot only have and achieve everything we want, but also be everything we want. Chuckling inwardly, I wonder why being a dork is so popular. Virtually everything we are today has been conditioned, and when I ask myself how that is possible, I hear Sophocles whisper that what we do not seek goes unnoticed.

To want is important! But before we want to have, achieve, or be something—and assuming we have managed to identify what, in our thinking, judging, and what not, has been conditioned—it might be useful to examine what of what has been conditioned is nonsense and what is not. Something might be said for not eating with our elbows on the dinner table, but we are in for it when we accept that neither fear nor doubt belong to the adventure called life, that tolerance is a virtue and aggression a sin, that school teachers and Oprah Winfrey have a clue what they are talking about, and that it is okay for rage to be awakened in us when someone holds up a mirror in which we see a ridiculous reflection …

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