Saturday 3/20/22
Woke up with a fierce feeling of fight inside of me. I have become stronger again.
Will be best to have a day soon where I work on at least ten separate works. Of all the stripes. Books, stories, essays, features. A day of just the desk and works.
Began coming up with a blurb for someone who requested one. I know what I will say, gist-wise.
I may have four pieces published this week, I may have none. I don't know. We will have to see.
***
It's later now. Coming on six. I ran 10,000 stairs today. That's good. This thing on my back won't heal or go away. I am hoping it's not the skin cancer. It's rough and scaly and maybe the size of a dime, or smaller. Also hoping it's just from my disgusting workout clothes. I read up on skin cancer today. Normally it's because of sun exposure, a mark like this. But it doesn't have to be. I'm pretty anti-sun, and I certainly don't lay out on a beach. This mark--it's like a welt or a sore, but it's dry--turned up so far as I know a bunch of weeks ago. No one sees my back, and I happened to feel it in the shower. I took the best look I could at it today in the mirror for the first time. It doesn't seem that bad. There two pimples above, from the sweat-soaked shirt. You run 10,000 stairs, and you are losing serious fluids. I'm going to have to live past 100 to do what I want to do, once I get past these people, both in terms of all I have to create and living a rich, happy life filled with my passions. The C-Dawg cannot be succumbing. I put some Neosporin on it. Also hope my blood pressure is okay. I haven't taken it in forever. I sort of just go with the theory that if I don't drink--and today marks 2086 days, or 298 weeks, without a drink of alcohol--and I do my stairs, I will be okay and where I need to be. I rarely miss a day on those stairs. I'm a fixture in Boston. If you're out and about, there's a great chance you'll see the stair man. In all weather. In snow. Such that I've been chased away, as we've seen on here.
I am never all in when I run the stairs. I don't have to catch my breath. I can have a phone conversation while running 1000 of them, as I did a couple weeks ago. I've never been lightheaded. I've never had a problem. I am a hypochondriac, to an extreme, which will sound ironic, given that I never had a concern about COVID, and didn't ever believe in masks, or think them necessary. I think fresh air and exercise is necessary. But I am all in my head with health stuff. It's why I don't go to doctors. Which is one reason I live so healthily. For instance, not drinking a mouthful of alcohol gives me a peace of mind I can't put a value on. The stairs also do. I need to get better about doctors. I haven't been back to my cardiologist in years. It's weird that I have a cardiologist when I haven't been to the regular doctor in decades, and I have to move things around so that my insurance will allow me to go back to my cardiologist who understood my great fears of doctors and the unprecedented amounts of stress in my life. But it's weird: I live like I do in part because I'm scared of doctors. I think it has made me much healthier than I would have been. An ironic cycle that works for me. If I had some official clean bill of health, I would be inclined, in theory, to be less preventive. (Though I am also a Zulu warrior, and it's hard to figure I'd go against my Zulu code; nay, impossible.) I might not run the stairs for an hour in fifteen degree weather on a given day if I wasn't always trying to make sure I was healthy. It's all about my art. Being strong enough to keep going. To get past these people. Beat them. Expose and eliminate them. Impact the world. And have beautiful days in Rockport and on Cape Cod--with or without someone; it almost doesn't matter to me at this point; I can be happy if it's just me if I get where I am going--in beautiful homes listening to Mozart piano sonatas and creating work that I know won't have to go through any of the crap it and I go through now, that will go straight to the world. Or just spending a day--post workout, of course--in a dressing robe, watching Orson Welles films, with all of my concert and movie posters on the walls, ordering a Goudey card to complete a 1930s set, giving an interview about the latest book, working the garden, walking the beach at dusk, reading Dorothy Sayers until bed. I think about this. Often. Daily.
***
It's later now. Someone called about my back thing, and told me that they have the same thing often. Their description aligned with mine. They said they get these things more when they're working out, or in summer when sweating at their job. Said they are fungal-related. Told me what they put on them and they can last for four or five months. Went out to CVS and got some anti-fungal cream. Will monitor it. That makes sense, though. There is no non-professional athlete in Boston who sweats more than I do. What's more, I'm especially disgusting in that I never wash my workout shirt or clothes--for months--and I will sit in the sweat for hours. Like, I'll come back here, write for hours, the soaked shirt drying, then go back out and run more stairs, or before showering. One less thing to stress out about just now. I'll wash the workout clothes tomorrow.
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