Between worlds

Monday 6/1/26

Yesterday was a difficult Sunday. I had to fight to hang on. I feel so much like a ghost. Seeing the world as though taking in that given part of it for the final time. Like I'm leaving here. I linger visually. Not in terms of time, but in how I record what I see in my mind. Like I'm using a camera.

I toiled in the basement for two-and-half hours to try and create some room in my small storage area. Didn't make much of a difference. Nothing was supposed to go like this. I was supposed to have left this apartment long ago. It was meant to be only for a while that I was here.

I had no way to check the time while I was down there, and when I came back upstairs it was after ten so the Monument was already open. I didn't run any stairs on Saturday. It was also a hard to remain-here day. When I don't start working early and hard--even though there is no point to any of it, save to create more matchless art with which I can do nothing, and bang my head against the spike-festooned walls of the publishing system of incestuous evil, and then document that on here, meaning more work of a different kind--I'm at greater risk. I can do nothing. It's like I'm waiting to die, between worlds, falling through some kind of paralyzing, liminal state. I can't break out of it.

There was a lashing rain on Saturday. The wind directed it horizontally. You could see the sheets going sideways from out the window. The temperature got as low as forty-three degrees in the early morning. It was forty-seven degrees at 9:30. I chose to stand down, which wasn't a good choice, but I had no fight of even this kind in me. I reasoned with myself, which also may not have been in good faith, saying, "You've just done all these stairs, a day of recovery won't help, you're in this for the long time, aren't you?" (Note to self: stretch more, drink more hibiscus tea.)

On May 11, I was at 230 circuits of Bunker Hill Monument stairs since March 11. I had that eight day period post-May 11 when I ran no Monument circuits. With the ten circuits on Friday, I was up to 292 circuits. I had it in my mind to get to 300 before June 1. And then if I got to 300, I'd have a number of days left until June 10 to get up to 100 circuits for the month despite the week-and-half of no circuits.

This number/goal and the timing at least made me get myself to Charlestown in the late morning yesterday. I felt like I was in a daze, a dream world. In the world and not in the world. As a result of my emotional state, my ghost state, and this being a time when I almost never am doing this routine I so often do. A different light in the sky, different angle of the sun.

I ran ten circuits. Nothing flashy. Workmanlike. Not that fast. The business of technically getting something done. This took me to 302 circuits since March 11. I've never done eight circuits on a single occasion. Or nine. I've done one, two, three, five, six, seven, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, twenty. I also did 100 push-ups and walked three miles. I should have at least gone to the Brattle and/or a museum over the weekend but didn't. Yesterday marked 3605 days, or 515 weeks, without a drink.