The van broke down
just 5 miles from O'Hare
Not sure what we were doing
Had no tickets anyway
As the sun set in the West
We walked East
Planes roaring overhead

We ran as fast as we could run
Escape our only goal
From small town suffocation
And our designated roles
BBQs on Saturdays
Cold Millers with the guys
The vanishing horizon
Matched the dulling in our eyes

Not quite a decision
That either of us made
But a moment of clarity
And what it meant to stay
It never matters
Which road we take
As long as right beside me
I have Karla with a K

We ran as fast as we could run
Escape our only goal
From small town suffocation
And our designated roles
BBQs on Saturdays
Cold Millers with the guys
The vanishing horizon
Matched the dulling in our eyes

The excitement and the newness
As we move from town to town
As we worked to settle down
Turned piece by little piece
into what we'd sworn not to become
we lived the lives we ran from

We ran as fast as we could run
Escape our only goal
From small town suffocation
And our designated roles
BBQs on Saturdays
Cold Millers with the guys
The vanishing horizon
Matched the dulling in our eyes

The Vanishing Horizon

On May 10, 1996, three officers of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Tsewang Samanla, Dorje Morup, and Tsewang Paljor, were part of a six-man expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest.  Delayed and facing a storm, the three decided to disregard orders and press on while the rest of the team turned back.  Around 18:00 the climbers radioed their expedition leader back at base camp to inform that they had reached the summit.  While credited with summiting, whether they actually reached the summit or not is to this date debated.

These two songs wouldn’t exist if not for the irony surrounding the perishment of one of the climbers, Tsewang Paljor.  The irony is that Paljor became famous not in life but in death and simply because of the fact that his lifeless, frozen body, which no person or entity cared to remove from the side of the trail for at least 19 years, ended up becoming a landmark and reference point to climbers, his humanity reduced to an almost comical nickname stemming from the mountaineering boots on his feet and their bright yellowish-green color.  A Google search today of the keywords “Tsewang” and “Paljor” brings up, as the first result, a Wikipedia article entitled not “Tsewang Paljor”, but “Green Boots”.

“Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 1: Ascenso y muerte” is my reflection on Paljor’s resolve to climb, then the climb itself, then the summiting (or the thinking they had summited), and finally the descent and the exhaustion, confusion, and acceptance of defeat that probably came with it and the probable realization of impending death that frozen night as he lay curled up on his side, donning his brightly-colored mountaineering apparel, under a crevasse at the side of the climbers’ trail at 28,000 feet.

“Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 2: Fiesta en Leh” is an imagination of a summer day that Tsewang could have enjoyed as a young adult in his hometown’s capital, Leh, with friends and perhaps one or two love interests at hand.  An experience he might have remembered about during those few final minutes of his life.  

About the song names:  That isn’t me trying to be the most righteous of the lot.  Like, “look, I even include his military rank before his name, while everyone else just calls him ‘Green Boots’.”  I’m not trying to be judgmental or pretentious.  In fact, up until the last few minutes the songs were going to be called “Helado en altura 1” and “Helado en altura 2”.  “Helado en altura” translates roughly to “Ice cream at high altitude”, and is a pun because in Spanish “Helado” can also mean a frozen person, animal or thing.  So, for the cover artwork, I literally searched for frozen corpses in snow-capped mountains.  Not necessarily with those keywords.  And happened on Green Boots.  It was like the third result.  But ultimately, I felt it would be in bad taste to be so literal and use the pic and do the pun and all that.  In a way, the song titles are an atonement for my previous intentions.  And a pair of songs to honor a man who found very little dignity in death.  Some may point out the old adage that there “is no dignity in death”.  I’d say as so much else in life, that it’s a matter of degree.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and above all listen.  I hope you “get” the songs, and above all, enjoy them.  (No pun intended with “above”.)

Note:  from the information I had access to on the World Wide Web, Paljor’s body has not been officially identified or removed to this day.  However, it was last reported seen in 2015.  Its current location and state is, to the best of my web knowledge, unknown.

Jefe de condestables Tsewang Paljor, parte 2: Fiesta en Leh

End Scene

original track : https://soundcloud.com/user-434699157/fate-of-the-warrior?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

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Produced on non-commercial basis. Any kind of commercial use of this recording is prohibited.

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