I can do better

Saturday 7/12/25

Under the weather.

Mouth has been bothering me. Soreness in area with the temporary crown. Gums sore in space between that tooth and the tooth behind it.

Sore throat. Seem to have come down with something. Took vitamin C, drank drank tea.

Worried I have diabetes. Amount of sweating is what has me concerned. I feel like I sweat more than I used to--and maybe a lot more--when I do my stair workouts. Yesterday was another relatively cool day when I left for Charlestown in the morning--couldn't have been more than seventy degrees. I ran five circuits in the Monument. The sweat saturates my clothes. In addition to my T-shirt being as wet as if you submerged it in a pool, my shorts are soaked through to nearly the same degree. The sweat is dripping off of me after one circuit.

I was not going that hard. I've done better in some areas than I've ever done with my stair running this summer, as well as I've ever done in others, but I have not done as well "running for distance," by which I mean the initial running portion of each ascent. I'm not having an easy time running the first 100 stairs, whereas in the past, I'd sometimes run the first 150 stairs the first time up just to get through more of the proceedings faster. Further, this running is slower now.

Why is this? It could be because I'm more zealous in the Monument now than in times past, especially with this goal of doing 400 circuits in three months (I'm at 315 now, with a deadline of August 15). I'd go when I went in the past. Maybe I wouldn't go for three days then I'd go for a couple. In this regard, I could have struck a better balance between not too much and not too little, as far as my legs go. I hope this is the case, and that I'm not backsliding in this area. The goal is never to backslide. But I can't be backsliding now, which would be far too early and portend inauspiciously as to the future. I don't stretch, which is obviously bad, so I took some time to stretch yesterday afternoon and am going to try to be better about this and become more pliable. My legs aren't tight and I don't have leg pain, but that doesn't mean I won't if I don't do what I should be doing.

I had a grandfather who was diabetic. We don't know much. I know that excessive sweating--and excessive sweating during intense physical exertion--is a symptom of diabetes. I think I am pretty normal the rest of the time, and I am going up and down a 294-stair obelisk, so perhaps things are fine. I can also eat more nuts, oranges, and berries. I already eat a lot of peppers and kale (and a decent amount of nuts as it is).

I had dreams about my ex-wife last night. I don't shake these. I feel like they have gotten worse as life has gotten worse and the hope I had once had to some degree about my life has become...well, it could be entirely gone. If hope was something that had been poured in this container you took round with you, then for me now the most there would be is some trace aspect that's technically present in the material of the container itself, which could only be revealed/brought out in a laboratory setting with the right equipment. It's not good for me when a part of my mind is romanticizing parts of this person or questions of "what if."

Even if there is no hope, even if I'm cursed, doomed, if things can only get worse, and I will never have anything I want or deserve or that would make life less than this thing that is worse than hell for me...I can still do better. I can work harder. I can write more. I can write the things I haven't gotten to or finished or back to or written yet.

I'm doing too much dabbling. Work a little on this, work a little on that. I should either pick one thing--or as close to it as possible--and see that book through, for example, or, if I'm going to do much at once, then I need to be in a constant rhythm. No downtime. In the wave, be the wave. Do what only I can do the only way I can do it. Tap into that thing that is more me than myself, and go where it goes. Ride it. Become one with it.

I should be pushing myself to exhaustion. To where I can't hardly do any more. Thoreau said to be tired, hungry, and cold. That wasn't about privation or trying to make yourself hurt more. It's about it's some late hour of the day and you've been hard at it and you've lived and tried and that feeling is better than the feeling of not having done so like that.

I encountered one of the rangers from the Monument on the bridge over the harbor yesterday as I made my way to Charlestown. We stopped and exchanged a few words. He said he thought I lived in the neighborhood. My walk to and from my workout is more physical activity than most people get each day. Ninety-five percent of Americans, according to a statistic I saw this morning. I don't walk fast enough. I need to start walking faster. I'm not pushing a pace right now.

Spoke to another ranger when I was done yesterday, then came outside where a different ranger said to me, "Ten times today?" and I said, no, just five. I feel like I'm letting people down now when that's the answer. Not that a lot of people ask. Rangers. My mother will ask me. It's rare for me to talk to anyone else. I don't have anyone, of course. And people don't have themselves to be anyone with anyone else than the people they have to be anyone with, if you follow me. You probably do, either because you are that way or you have your own experience--which is apt to be total or near-total--in this regard, or maybe both.

We do less, we are less, we accept being less. We call it these other things, blame these other reasons, explain it away as we prefer to. But the truth is, the problem is us. We could be more if we tried to be. If we decided to be. We do have so much time, though just about everyone will say differently. But if the angels had some service that audited your life, they'd turn up more time that you don't use than time you do. They'd say, "Our results tell us that you could do this, be this, do this, have these relationships, these friendships, try these activities, learn these things, partake of this good stuff," and so forth, but that wouldn't be what people want to hear.

I'm not alone. Well, I am alone. You follow me. It's just that I will say the truth, whereas many other people are too scared to. Or ashamed. Like they have to safeguard this shameful truth that they're not worthy or less worthy. They might be. That's life. If you make less of yourself than what you could be, then maybe you don't offer much. Or anything. But you have some control there. The way it works is people pair off. Then they live on a private island. They're married, they have kids, they don't have friends. Not a single friend. They're not capable of being friends. I would say that someone who isn't capable of being a friend isn't capable of being a good spouse or a good parent. Friendship is the foundation of every good relationship that we can have. And, really, part of the foundation of everything good, period.

But people aren't invested in being better than they are. That's almost what you have to do now--pair up, and leave. Get to your private island. Then you have others who haven't done so or who never will, because how do you after a given point? Logistically? Especially if you're alone? Money. What if there's no money? What if you're in a bad spot? And that eats up so much of...everything.

This other group will fake a lot of stuff. But the people of the first group are faking, too, because they're not happy usually, and just as miserable. Members of both groups will cosplay something happier on social media. Then there's a third group that seems to play a lot of pickle ball. Three, four times a week. They have their pickle ball group. They're not friends with the other group members usually, but they're out and about, they get texts for meet-ups/matches, and they're not just looking at a phone that never rings or receives messages. And they try and make do with this.

Went to Haymarket. Got strawberries, blackberries, peppers, lemons.

My mom babysat Charlie and Amelia last night. Lilah is on a trip to Wyoming with her other grandmother. Amelia, as I mentioned, was sick earlier this week. I asked my sister how she was yesterday, and she said that Amelia was back to her normal sassy self. I know what this means. I told my mother to say hi to her for me and the Little Ghost Girl, who added that it was a ghost girl summer and she hoped that Amelia was having a good one. The kids said they wanted my mom to bring McDonald's, and when my mom asked Amelia what she wanted her to get, Amelia responded by saying "My usual," which made me smile. I just printed something out to send all three kids today, actually.

The Red Sox had what might be their best win of the season last night, coming from behind--again--to beat the Rays at Fenway. Sox trailed by 1 in the ninth, and got a walk-off, two-run homer from Rafaela. I thought the Rays had done the Sox a real favor the game before by lifting their starter when they did, because he was cruising--the Rays are awful at knowing when to take pitchers out, because they're so analytically driven--but that's two comeback wins in a row. What's more, the Sox lost their starter in the second inning with what looked like an ankle injury on a play at first base, so they had to piece things together.

I'm seeing Sox fans complain that Rafaela was snubbed for the All-Star Game. He's hitting .271 now, with 13 homers and 46 RBI. You're looking at a 20 homer, 73 RBI type of season. That's not outfielder All-Star caliber. We talked the other day about how Kirk Gibson--an outfielder--never made an All-Star team. He won an MVP and may have been the best player on the 1984 Tigers, one of the all-time great teams. You need some big--or big-ish--numbers usually to make the All-Star team as an outfielder.

These are things anyone could know if they wanted to, or knew that you could know things. I say that because it's like people think they're not allowed to, or that knowledge is never this thing on the table. How can you be this big baseball fan and just...never look anything up? Or look deeper? But, most of these people think "home run" is one word. I'd say that people can't be more ignorant if they tried, except that it's like they are actually trying not to know, never to know. The Sox only struck out four times. The Yankees are hot right now, too. Garrett Crochet won't pitch in the All-Star game, which I think is the right decision. If he goes down, I think you're done. He's basically been a starter for one year, and it wasn't a full year. You need this pitcher to keep being what he's been.

I keep hearing these references to how the Sox traded their best player, meaning Devers. That never made sense to me--saying your best player is a DH. It's almost like an oxymoron. Even Ortiz didn't have that title. He was the Sox' best hitter, or their most important player, or their leader or whatever, but you never heard him described as "the Red Sox' best player." For that to make sense, you have to play the field. Any self-respecting baseball fan should know this, but people are just so ignorant now. There is next to nothing they know, or "get," no matter how simple and basic. It's all obscured now. All meaning is lost in our inept, loose, vague, inaccurate, lazy language. And who can ever find that meaning again?

Dodgers have lost seven in a row. What's happening there?

I've had Handel's Amen chorus in my head this morning. Those voices going round and round. The violin cadenza. The voices coming back in. Louder, more powerful.