Thursday 8/17/23
The Fisherman's Feast will be outside on my street for the next four days, beginning today. That means it will be even louder than usual by quite a lot. I'll be sitting here writing and the noise will be like some intruder but I must focus and bear down.
When I drag or want to do less, I think, "House." I mean the house in Rockport, but this word has come to mean more than just one house, or just houses. It is the life I want and deserve. With everything that comes with that.
Yesterday in the Monument I received some unsolicited, presumptuous advice: "Don't run! You'll kill yourself chortle chortle."
This is common. These words are not said out of concern. They are said out of narcissism and on account of what is the dominant theme now in society: people want you to be exactly like they are. It is this upon which their entire sense of self is built: Is this person like me and am I like all of these other people?
You end up with most people being no different from each other. No individuality. Someone must be doing what you do because chances are very slim that they're not like you.
It's always the same kind of person physically who says this to me, too. Someone who never exercises. And so they want to do some, "Isn't this so hard, but we tried, didn't we!" bonding. I find it endlessly annoying. We're not doing the same thing here, chief.
It's as if people cannot conceive that anyone would do something they don't do. Or would--gulp--put forward effort. Can't have that any of that. This is in addition to how terrible they are at observing and piecing together clues.
How do you think I look when I go into the Monument? How do you think I'm dressed? What do you think the sweatband on my head might be for? My day out in Boston on the Freedom Trail?
Not everyone is this way, of course. Also yesterday, a woman asked me--low-key, like a cool person who can put things together without fanfare--how many times I'd be going up and down. I find that women understand what is going on with these stairs better than men on the whole, but they might also just be the ones more likely to say something or ask a question or how it has just so happened to work out to date. Also older people. The time before a woman asked, "Is this your daily workout?" I answer all questions in as friendly a way as possible and with a smile. The advice-people I just ignore like they're not there. What is there to say?
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