Saturday 3/4/23
Those remarkable Bruins won again today. Victory number ten in a row, over the Rangers this time. What I'd suggest for anyone who is a Bruins backer to do is savor what's happening, because chances are quite low anything like it will happen again in your lifetime with the local team. The Bruins might not win the Cup this year. They'll be good for a few years yet--they're set up for it. Maybe they'll win it a different year with a much worse record (you could have a much worse record and still have an excellent record). But what is happening right now has very little historical precedent. It's one of those things in (sports) life that you talk about later as having seen, especially if they do win the whole thing.
I finally got off my rear and ran stairs for the first time since Sunday. 5000 of them. No break. In the wind and the sleet. I also did 100 push-ups.
I went to Haymarket and got strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Right now I'm listening to William Byrd (The Golden Renaissance) and drinking green tea. It is more important than ever that I take care of my health. I've realized lately that I have far more to do than at any other time to date in my life, even after these last ten years of a level of production I'm not going to try to quantify with a label. Far more I have to do--I mean about three times more than I've done at any time in the past--if I'm going to have any chance. I have to be around for a long time for this quest of mine and I have to be healthy. I can't be dying now, or at sixty-one, or eighty-one. What I am doing, in its enormity, is the work of many lifetimes. Each of my days must be a year. And if they were each a year previously, then they must each be three years now. Also, if and when this turns, I don't want five years of living the life of what that will mean. I want many decades. The health must be tended to.
Things are changing a lot now and every day. This has been a week plus of crisis. There are things I've had to face. I also know, apart from those things, that relief isn't going to come from anyone. There isn't anyone who is going to stop trying to stop me. It's up to me to find a way to overcome them and stamp them out. In the meanwhile, I have to move forwards in new ways, while also moving backwards and taking care of things that need taking care of. And there is a lot of it. There is a lot of it in both directions.
If someone who has known me for a long time was to learn that drastic changes were underway, I think they'd think, "What the hell can that possibly mean?" while also not being surprised in the least.
I watched Buster Keaton's 1921 film, The Haunted House. As I wrote in the Scrooge book, haunted house and ghost story films of the 1920s--with a few exceptions, such as Nosferatu--were a form of cod-horror. The Haunted House is no exception. You can enjoy the ghosts as ghosts--as when Keaton plays traffic cop in the hallway to what he believes are the spirits of the dead--but playing along yourself. I do this, for instance, with Tod Browning's Mark of the Vampire. Each time I watch it, I make myself forget the ending, essentially, so that I can play along. Keaton is one of our foremost athletes, despite being an actor. And that face. So much of human experience comes to be written upon it.
I worked on the book of my film writings. That involved taking a piece from 2017 and changing it a fair amount. What I'd consider a fair amount.
I'm doing my Civil War reading.
A kind man at Mosaic Records has a brother who is a fan of A Christmas Carol (mostly the 1938 film, I believe) so he sent me a copy of my own Scrooge so that I could write something in it and he could give it to his brother either as a birthday or Christmas present.
I have also listened a couple of times to Handel's "Worthy is the Lamb" as a pick-me-up and reminder. To keep going. To be strong. To get stronger yet. To be everything I must be.
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood,
to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing.
Blessing and honour, glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, for ever and ever.
