Sunday 10/17/21
Walked eight miles today. Ran 3000 stairs. Today marks 1932 days, or 276 weeks, without a drink. I wrote an op-ed this morning for Christmas about how Donna Reed's Mary Bailey character is the real hero of It's a Wonderful Life. Excellent piece. I feel stronger than ever. In mind, body, purpose, soul. I know what I have to do. And I will not stop until it is done. It's funny to me that some/many of these people have no clue that I know what I know. But know it I do. Even just today's new information--the confirmation of so much--is eye-popping. The corruption is endless. The motives. The explanations for why what is happening is happening and has been for so long. One of the pieces of information today confirmed something I knew was occurring at The New Yorker, but's also more; much more. I am ready to move on who and what I need to move. Again, I say the same thing: fix it. Do the right thing. Which requires so little. Because this can get endlessly hairy, and that is not going to reflect on me. And to keep moving. And to keep moving some more. And then move past every last one of them in the end. Because I am getting to the world. I will crawl through every last inch of this hell, as I said. I already am. You don't start crawling through hell not to get out the other side.
What else? Got some flowers. Hallway Hermey, as is his way when it comes to flowers--especially when they are the autumnal--and then winter--variety, is ecstatic. When he's in his cups he slides off the pumpkin, but today he was more or less sober.
Sat in the Public Garden listening to the Grateful Dead in Frankfurt in 1972, breathing in the autumn air, thinking. Regathering my strength.
I'm not sure I've ever heard a better live album than this one. It may be the finest music I've ever heard, in terms of people playing together. Just straight up playing together.
Listened to Otis Redding's second set from his full Whisky A Go Go residency in 1966. Thinking of including it later in the book on extended residencies that changed American musical history. So that would be Jelly Roll Morton, Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Miles Davis, Otis Redding, Elvis, the Grateful Dead.
Watched James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) for the first time in a long while. Whale was so clever, and in this film he moves the camera an awful lot. Which makes a certain thematic sense. The special effects still hold up. I can only imagine what people must have thought nearly ninety years ago.
The Restoration poet John Wilmot was hanging out with King Charles II. The dog guy. And Wilmot says, "You know, King, I can't abide still life." The king tries to be agreeable, and he's like, "Oh, yeah, that painting style is not for me either." And Wilmot says, "No, not the painting style. Still life."
I've found that how readily you get that says much about who you are in this world.
Lay on.