An essential truth about how the world works as seen and experienced within the walls of the Bunker Hill Monument

Saturday 5/9/26

Yesterday I was talking to a ranger about how various things tend to go when I'm inside the Bunker Hill Monument. We really do see so much of how society is now, how people are in this world, how they think, how they act, why they do what they do, who is put forward, who gets kept back, shunned, kept down, who is favored, who is despised, within the walls of this obelisk.

I was telling the ranger that my tendency isn't to pass people--as in, ask for them to let me pass--each time I go to the top. Ideally, I have a clear path, or at least an extended stretch ahead of me. What I want to do is run the first 100 stairs. Often, there won't be anyone between me and stair 100. Or, if I'm starting back at the bottom, they'll be on stair eighty, and by the time I get up there, they'll be past 100.

If I'm running many circuits, that number will come down to fifty. As a general rule. I'm also trying to improve in this area. The key thing, though, is to keep moving. Not stop. If I'm going up and I'm behind someone, I usually don't bother to ask them to let me pass. They're either going to be feeling it, see me coming up from behind, and step aside because that's easier for them, or they're going to tap out soon enough anyway, and need a break, at which point they're up against the wall, trying to get their breath, and I go past.

Other times, there are six, ten, fifteen people in front of me, and perhaps some in line, as it were, behind me as well, and then I just take my lumps, you could. I go at the pace everyone's going at, because it's not worth trying to pass that many people. I can make up the time on another circuit. Often, these people will tap out, but sometimes it's this very slow trudge to the top, and it simply takes as long as it takes. I grin and bear it.

But here's what I want to talk about and something that really says a lot about how we are now and how the world is. I think it's very easy to understand, too, in a world where very little is understandable it often seems to hardly anyone. People really seem to have little to no clue what things are how they are and how things work. To my great consternation and frustration, seeing what I do so clearly, and also be impacted as I am by such things.

Let's say I'm in the Monument and there are six people in front of me going up and three behind me. These people will be fairly merry often enough. They'll make their bad jokes and say the same things that many people do in the Monument. "Remind me why we're doing this again?" "Whose idea was this again?" "Is there a bar at the top?" "Don't worry, there's a Dunkin' Donuts up there." "At least we're getting our exercise in for the week."

Har har har.

People do look at going up these 294 stairs the one time as their workout for the week. For many of them, it's probably their workout for the year. Years.

They're very self-congratulatory, and there's this feeling of we're all the same, this is so hard, don't want to do this again, my legs are Jello. Everyone's in the same boat, Bert and Ernie style, as I said to the ranger.

They include me in this. I'm one of them in their minds. Most people aren't intelligent enough to deduce from my attire and the sweatband on my head, my athletic aspect, my visible fitness, that I'm not breathing hard or straining, that I may be in there doing something different than they are.

They're friendly towards me. Again, one for all, all for one, and I'm one of them. No one else could be doing something other than what they're doing. This is the extent of anything anyone would be or could be doing in that Monument. Trying to get to the top the one time.

We clear so far?

We all get to the top, and people are knackered. It's rest time. More jokes are made. "Never gonna do that again." The camaraderie continues. But one of us in the group touches the top step with both feet--tapping it with the second one--and immediately starts heading back down. In five minutes, he's back at the top, where these same people are still sitting. He does the same thing. Then, he returns another five minutes later, and they're still up there.

When these people finally start coming down, and they see me again, they're attitudes towards me have hardened. They're often rude. Sometimes, they're confrontational. They may complain about me so that I can hear it. They don't have complaints about my conduct towards them. They're complaining about my very existence. That I am someone who does this and is able to do this.

That last part is key. It's about what I can do and what they can't.

I'm no longer one of the group, one of them. I'm resented. It's in their looks, their body language, and very commonly in what they're saying, saying under their breath, saying to each other. Sound is boosted big-time in the Monument. You can hear everything. The walls amplify people's words. You easily hear what they think are whispers.

This is life. Extrapolate this. And obviously it's how it is in the publishing world, times a million.

The people who are allowed to pass, who are supported, backed, hyped, platformed, followed, awarded (in publishing, this means Guggenheims, Booker Prizes, MacArthur genius grants, Pulitzers), are people who don't make other people feel this way. Even when they're not a member of the group going up the Monument--as in, with them on that day, physically present as one among their number--they need to feel as though they could be a member of that group.

We talk about David Remnick. If the The New Yorker was the Bunker Hill Monument, he's not hiring that person dusting him in there, who can do what he can't, going up and down, as he's bent over, wheezing at the top.

This is how everything works now. I come back time and again to that line from Thoreau who said that the public--and remember, this is way back when, before the internet and social media and so much of the widespread rot and pettiness and myopia and narcissism and imposter syndrome and insecurity of our age--demands an average person.

A person of greatness has a real problem. And the person of absolute greatness--his qualifier--has essentially no chance in the world, to be accepted by the world, to get their just desserts. What they deserve. What their abilities and that greatness warrant.

The person who has the things, who is allowed to have the things, who is helped in having those things, will be one of those people, in this metaphor, going up the Monument as one of the group.

The sea change and the consistency of this marked shift would really take me aback, were I not so used to it. It's very obvious how people come to bristle in how they regard me in the Monument once they realize what I'm doing. It's tangible this shift. It dawns on them, they finally put it together, and their hackles go up.

I'm like an enemy to them now in their minds. A threat. To their peace of mind. Their sense of self. How they want to think about themselves. How they'd like to feel they're being perceived by others as no worse.

I've done nothing differently, been the same person as when we all were going up together. I've certainly done nothing wrong. I work hard at this. I put the time and effort in.

This is how it is. It's how it works. In the Monument, outside of the Monument.