Amorphous standing

Friday 6/26/26

I have bad dreams most nights. I don't like being asleep. Of course, I don't like being awake either.

The dreams are often about Molly. Even at this late date. They take various forms. Sometimes we are together happy somewhere. That's a strange kind of bad dream that produces a bad wake up as well. The bad dreams involve people who hurt or betrayed me. People I counted on who told me I could trust them.

They can be bad dreams by dint of comparison, you could say. I will have a dream where that person is kind and decent and I have a life I don't have and will never have. When I say that, I'm also talking about basic things that others take for granted. People. A house. A car. A spouse. Driving around in their town on a quiet Saturday morning taking care of errands. None of that was my ultimate goal, per se. Cutting the grass.

The idea that Molly was intelligent is something that's hard for me because there is so little intelligence anywhere. Your chances of knowing someone with any intelligence are nil. Someone such that I could sit in a car with, ride around, and talk intelligently. About ideas, art, the workings of things. I wonder if I built that up in my head after the fact.

For instance, there was this person I dated in college. I thought she was intelligent and we had this connection, etc. Right from the jump. We ended up talking years later. She worked in education. And she was just so unintelligent. Not that different from many others. Basic.

I think about that, well, I wouldn't say a lot, but it passes through my mind not infrequently. So what was that back then? I've changed, yes. But I'm unsure that that's it. I was always way out there, if you will, in comparison to everyone else and my peers. And the latter is limiting. It was the adults as well. Mentally now. I was confused how I once thought what I had thought about this individual in this area. How I felt as I did.

So, I wonder if what I think in that same area with Molly, would similarly be revealed to be unfounded, were we to speak, which we won't. And I'd be like, "Why did you ever think that? Never mind for so long after the fact?" There probably is some of that going on.

I think I need to draw a distinction between someone who can listen and follow along, and someone who can think on their own, come up with their own stuff, someone who can know on their own, discern on their own, not need it said to them so that they can start a process of understanding. I very much doubt that such a person exists, though. Not in 2026 and going forward. I don't know when such a person last existed. It's been a while, I'd say. They weren't around in 2019 either.

The more you grow the worse it gets. The more alone you become. The less there is for you, the less interest you have in anyone, the less anyone could offer you. The less interest they have in you because you are increasingly less like them.

Yesterday at the Monument I took my place in front of the door at 9:59 before they opened at ten. I was standing there when I heard a voice from fifteen feet away. It was a guy standing by this metal plaque planted in the ground. It's hard to tell what age people are because how you look and what your age appears to be is largely a matter of how you take care of yourself. People usually don't take care of themselves, so they will look considerably older than they are.

I'll say that this fellow was in his sixties with these qualifiers in mind, though he could have been in his fifties, I guess. Was rocking the gut. We were the only two people up on that area of the hill. He was closer to the benches than the door. He asks, with accusation in his voice, "Are you here to climb to the top?" Like he is in line and I've cut him.

I didn't see this guy, and it would never have occurred to me that he was in line if I had, or, I should say, that he was the line. He likely saw me doing push-ups and then leg stretches against the fence. I'd like to say that the notion that I'm there doing something different than the average person ought not to be shrouded in impenetrable mystery, but people being what they now are, I can't. They opened the doors, I headed off to do my thing, and I hear this snatch of conversation over my shoulder with the ranger saying I'm here every day, go up and down, like the guy had complained that he was cut in this would-be line of his, which was just him standing amorphously at a random spot on top of a hill.

People are just...they're ridiculous. Why, if this person was actually in line, which they weren't, would you want to go in before me and then go up before me? When you're obviously out of shape and this is going to be tricky going for you? But you want me breathing on your neck? Why?

It's so important for people to feel like they getting what is theirs. We see it with their hatred of those who are smarter, more talented, and, yes, better than they are. How they have this attitude of needing to seek revenge against that person. Preemptive revenge.

If there's a Beatles discussion on Reddit, the person who knows nothing, makes no sense, says the stupidest, most general stuff, is wrong the most, says, "George Harrison is literally the GOAT" and "Sargent (sic) Pepper slaps!" will fare better with everyone than if I got in there, even anonymously, and did the super intelligent thing, the here's the guy who knows everything thing, here's the guy who writes better than all of us thing.

I wouldn't be welcomed. That insight wouldn't result in upvotes. People would detest that person. One comment would do it. A single sentence if that sentence contained insight that others don't possess and was written in a manner beyond their own linguistic capabilities.

How can you fail to see that this is how the world works? In everything? How can you not get that?

People have such a warped justice system built into their deranged minds. The derangement proceeds unchecked. Grows. Festers. Because what's to stop it? The wise words--as injunction--of others? Nah. That doesn't happen or exist. The illuminating books they read? Nope. There are basically none of those and they don't read--and can't read--anyway. Everyone lives in an echo chamber. There are nothing but echo chambers. And really, the world is one subsuming echo chamber now. There's so little variety from person to person. No different mores, methodologies, approaches, perspectives.

I went past this guy a couple times, which you'd think would have made him realize that it was better after all for him not to have gone in first with me right on his ass as he struggled, but no. There's an energy that comes off people. I'm highly attuned to it. I can feel resentment without someone needing to say something, or before they do, attesting to and in expression of that resentment. Often I'll know who is going to act out before they do. And this guy was simmering with disdain. It's so illogical.

Had to get a new razor because my old one stopped working, though it was less than two years old. I have to used the electric because I'm scared of sharp things.

When I run stairs at City Hall, it's often before anyone is out and on their way to work. Normally I've been working for five or six hours at that point myself. It'll still be dark out when I start. But sometimes I get going a bit later and I'll see the breakfast crowd. People coming down the stairs as I run up them with their breakfast haul.

You'll see someone smoking, carrying a Dunkin' Donuts large ice coffee that is the light brown color of a coffee loaded with cream, which typically also means that it's loaded with sugar as well, and a bag from Dunkin' Donuts which you know, from these other things you see, is highly unlikely to contain anything good for them. This is what the day starts with.

These are some of the people who love to say they're old. Who begin social media posts with, "You want to feel old..." Who post about being old.

Well...you're out here at seven in the morning having a cigarette and this drink that is in large part cream and sugar and you're about to tuck into a couple donuts. It's that. This is where it comes from. How you feel and look. It isn't about the calendar. It's about your choices. Then, people say they're old, which translates, for them, to, "There's nothing I can do about anything anyway," because that's the excuse that underwrites more of this behavior and cancels out having to try.

Our age has witnessed the death of effort. The death of accountability as well. Someone can say, "I don't smoke and I take my coffee black," but I can just about guarantee you that they do their version of what I just described. Not everyone. Clearly. But most. They without any of that information, though, in the online presentation of their bromides about age.

They never had a balky knee until they turned thirty-five, like this was solely a result of turning thirty-five. They're not sharing with you that they stay up late drinking and playing video games, have their food delivered from the shop in their neighborhood, only go out to meet up with people at a bar or because of the dog. You're not getting any of the real story. People don't do realness for one thing. They also don't have much self-awareness. They're also massively disinclined to hold themselves accountable.

I can certainly do much better and have a lot of room for improvement.