Monday 6/6/22
People overestimate the docility of their dogs. This is far more telling of people than it is of dogs. They think that because the dog is sweet around them, that it is always this way. That's how narcissistic and simple people are. They can never think outside of their little worlds and allow for nature, reality, human nature. I see these people outside with their dogs, approaching another person with their dog. And someone always says, "It's okay, he's very friendly." The dogs get up close to each other, and not ten seconds later one dog is trying to kill the other dog. No, they're not playing. They're snapping and biting. I hear and see this all the time. Also, "they're just playing" is like the leading dog-owner fallacy. I'll watch a couple extra beats, and then someone realizes, "Oh, shit, this is for real." Also: Just because you like your dog, does not mean your dog is not a dick.
This is new: when I cup my hand over my right ear, I hear sounds, like gases escaping from some cave. Is this because of the pressure in my head from whatever illness this is? I blow my nose, and whistles start going off.
I wrote a story yesterday called "Parentheses First." I did it after forcing myself to work out because sick or no, it had been too long. Ran 3000 stairs, did eighty push-ups, walked ten miles. Yesterday also marked 2163 days, or 309 weeks, without a drink of alcohol. I was listening the other night to one of the half hour episodes of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, with Bob Bailey, and Dollar says that only alcoholics drink whiskey straight. An odd remark. A whiskey connoisseur would drink it straight. It would be a waste to me to add water to a dram of Ardbeg, Laphroaig, or Lagavulin. You'd cut into the essence of the experience. In these older radio shows and movies, people just love whiskey and soda, which sounds disgusting to me.
Sent "Your Eyes, Before Them" to someone, and "Fitty" to someone else.
A friend remarked that these women whose profiles I share with him on this dreadful dating site all look like they can be my aunt. They are my age. I had told him a little while back that Molly had turned forty-eight, and he said that she now probably looks like my aunt, too. I have no idea. I have not so much as looked her up in years. I won't. It's just my policy. That will all be dealt with in one of the memoirs, precisely, the one called Many Moments More: A Story About the Art of Endurance. Ah, would you look at that--it's not just the name of this journal. There is method to all of the madness here that is not madness. When I had last seen her, she looked old and not healthy. Sickly thin. I believe if you do that to someone, you know you've done it, what you've done, and what that other person is, there's no way you can be healthy in any way, really. I don't think you can live with that and be well. That's just what I believe. That level of wrongdoing, the evil, the cowardice, the betrayal, and the knowledge of it, and the guilt, eats of your heart, your soul, and your body. She may be married yet again, she may have kids, I have no idea. But I know I'm right about this. As for these other women, honestly, I feel like I'm looking at bog witches often enough. Can we try? Can we try for some fitness? Some spirit in our lives? Can we put forth some effort into living, have some vigor? Because when one does these things, one is less likely to look like a witch of the bog at forty-something. There is no way, pretty much, I would be open to anyone in their forties. It just couldn't work. Twenty-five to thirty-four is my wheelhouse, if there even is one. People love to quit, and people love not to try, and to stop trying as early as possible. That also hastens the process of looking like a witch of the bog. The inner spirit manifests itself in outward, physical expression. The person who is truly alive, and seeks to become more so every day, will have this reflected on the outside, too. This is not a physical thing so much as it's about a correlation between being a vim-suffused person and how that shows. Mindset and inner life and constantly craving life, new passions, deepening passions, and art is everything and it changes how you look, too. People are such sloths. Get off your ass in every way possible. Physically, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually. You'll also look better. No bog witches!
