I want what is called good process: record-tying stair-running performance in the Bunker Hill Monument, how people are in 2026, publishing, and decisions

Monday 5/25/26

No stairs on Friday. Put my head down figuratively speaking on Thursday to do the 10,000 stairs in the heat at City Hall and then followed it up with a big zero. Saturday's mark the start of new weeks for me, though, even if their stair total--if they're Monument stairs--counts towards the week that began Wednesday when the Monument opened after being closed Monday and Tuesday. You want to be able to say to yourself, "This weekend I ran such and such an amount of stairs, worked on this, finished that, etc." When you have nothing to live for as I do.

Saturday was also the first day of summer hours, meaning the Monument opens at 10 AM rather than 1 PM. This is a big deal for me. I made sure to remain firm in my commitment and not backslide this past season with the 1 o'clock start time, but considering how my days start anywhere from midnight to three in the morning, and sometimes even ten or eleven the night before, it can be a long day by the time the Monument opened with the later start time, which is most of the year.

I was there about ten minutes before the doors opened but wasn't first in line. A bunch of people had already gathered and I hung back. Contrary to what one may think, often I'm not trying to be first in line, especially if my plan going in is to be at it for a while. If I want to do five circuits as fast as possible, then it's a bit different. Otherwise, I can treat the first circuit almost like a warm-up. For whatever reason, the first circuit tends to be my bumpiest. I don't know why. I settle in after that.

I had a goal in mind and a minimum amount as well. Get to the minimum and then assess where I'm at if need be. As I was about to be let in by one of the rangers I've known for a long time and with whom I talk often, this same fellow motioned to me to lean closer and he said "You're good, don't worry, but I think we have a solution to your problem."

This, of course, was a reference to being pulled aside recently not once, but twice, by two different rangers on back-to-back days regarding complaints about me, the first instance of which I talked about earlier and the second which I've been meaning to.

This is very frustrating because I do nothing to anyone, I am exceedingly courteous, but this is how the world is in 2026. I'll give another example in a separate entry shortly of one of these people who "tattled," as it were, when nothing whatsoever was done to them, which also sheds some light on how most people in the publishing industry are.

These are the same rangers who see me being the politest person to them, and who have my op-ed from the New York Daily News about running stairs in the Monument--which included a very touching note on the back to them--hanging in their ranger room.

It's maddening to have to explain the basics of human behavior to people like these basics are lost on them. It's hell. Not only is the world what it is, but people can't even connect dots that are within centimeters of each other. And then it becomes my problem and I'm the bad guy.

He said he'd talk to me after, but it was fine, I was good, and something about I could have the place to myself. No idea what this could mean. I can come in the middle of the night? An hour before the doors officially open?

First of all, there's no problem, or I'm not the problem. I don't really care about other people being in there. It doesn't change much for me and I behave towards everyone in such a manner that if there was a camera on me, and you watched the tape, you'd never think I did anything wrong. Often you'd think I was charming and friendly, sometimes quite a bit more than that, like when I carried that woman's suitcase to the top for her and then offered to take it down on a subsequent pass after she had some time to enjoy the view.

When people ask me if it's worth it, yes, I ignore them. I act like they don't exist. They are not worth my time. They are what's wrong with the world. That attitude is loathsome. Walk to the top, you lazy git. Is my answer going to influence you one way or the other? You're that much of an incurious lump?

You're here, aren't you? You came here. Are you turning around based on my "No"? Then why bother to be alive? Are you continuing on because of my "Yes"? Then, again, why bother to be alive? And if my answer doesn't matter, why are you asking?

I know what people want to say: it's just being friendly, you dope!

Is it? And if it is, we can't be friendly intelligently? A lot of people just want to hear themselves talk and in that Monument you're like a de facto captive audience. I'm not interested in wasting words for the sake of wasting them. What does "worth it" mean in this context? Is another breath worth it? Is looking at a painting worth it? Is throwing a ball for a dog who wanders over to you in a park and drops it at your feet worth it? Is returning a child's smile worth it?

Worth it is often going to be about what you're worth. Not, obviously, with dreadful AI'ed fiction, but out in the world?

And these people aren't worth it to me. I prefer people who represent solutions to the problem, not the problem itself.

Same as the people who are sufficiently illiterate that they can't read or understand the signs saying how many stairs there are, who ask me who many there are, or how many they have left, despite the stairs being numbered every twenty-five. Can you not even comprehend the signage? Was it too challenging for your brain? Or is it that you can't do basic math? Both?

Some of those people, being the insane, miserable, morons that they are, then do the tattle thing afterwards. "A man was so mean to me in there." By not acknowledging them. (Practically speaking, how would I even go about servicing these people? Can you imagine me saying, hundreds of times over, "Oh yes, it's so worth it, keep going." Is that realistic?) They are inclined to hate me, too, because they then see me a few more times and they slowly clock on to what this guy's doing.

I'm not interested in them, they aren't so much as worth acknowledging to me, they aren't worth my time, or a single puff of my breath.

I don't talk to them, touch them, graze them, glare at them, likely even look at them, anything. It's the same to me as if they're not there. They realize I'm in much better shape than they are, that I'm doing this impressive thing, that I'm "better than them," or think I am--I am--and so they're going to extract revenge via a tattle.

How can you not know this is how the world is now? But, if you engage with me, you ask a question, or you need help, or encouragement, I'm your guy. Or your shoe's untied. Or you're a little kid doing it on your own without mom or dad's help (and perhaps outpacing mom and dad) and you're going for it with this look of determination on your face, you'll get a "You're like a comet!" or "Great job!" "How did you get up here so fast?" or whatever the case may be from me.

I almost never run past people going up. I only run the first 100 stairs anyway, and it's sometimes fifty if I'm in there for a long time, and this I do when I have a clear runway. If I'm behind someone, unless I'm on the clock--as in, actually timing myself because I'm trying to achieve something--I'll just wait until they stop on one of the landings because they need to catch their breath and can't keep going. Believe me, you rarely have to wait long for that to happen.

Going down, I'm super careful. Even after all these years, I have my hand on the railing the entire way if possible--that is, if someone isn't coming up the wrong side, which is dangerous and selfish, but, again, most people are too stupid to understand why the rail is on the side it's on--because it's safety-first for me.

I always take the approach that I could fall, there are like a million stairs I go down every year so that means I have a greater number of opportunities for falling than probably anyone in the country, and I'm not bombing down like a maniac.

I do go around people on the outside with out the rail coming down, but again, I'm not running, they're are very slow and shouldn't have the expectation of holding people up behind them as how it "should be," and I say something to every single one of these people. An "excuse me," followed by a "thank you."

But the looks on some of their faces, and the things they say. People are, again, so stupid, so entitled, so clueless as to how much space they consume, that you'll encounter a number of them who swear about you under their breath and who act like they were in line all day for a ride at Disneyland and you showed up and cut them while making eyes at their fourteen-year-old daughter, which would pale in comparison in their minds as a transgression to having cut them.

Their priority is almost always themselves and their pathetic little ego, a house of cards if ever there was one. All the ways that miserable, pathetic people protect the miserable, pathetic house of cards that is their sense of self.

I asked the ranger if he'd be there a while, and he said until noon. I don't hugely want to have this conversation. It's the same as with publishing. I don't want to interact more than is necessary in business matters. I want to give you the best work that's ever been written, and be treated as I deserve to be treated, for you to be professional and not discriminatory and do your job with a degree of competence.

I don't want to do drama, back-and-forth, a version of social media game of "liking." I want our process to be as compact and efficient as possible.

Why?

Because I have other masterpieces to be writing even I just finished some that morning. That's what I want to be doing and should be doing. And those masterpieces should be going through the necessary channels as efficiently as possible and getting to the world.

Insofar as I'm interested in doing anything with another writer, it's in competing with them and obliterating them in that competition. On a level playing field. I don't want to do "literary citizen community," which is to say, grab ass.

I want your best against my best. Everyone's best against my best. And may the best person win. And if God wants to write, I'd want his best against mine, too. You can limit me to what I wrote that morning, if you'd like.

(NB: Remember the James Joyce prose off? A Herman Melville one is coming soon.)

I'm perfectly okay with being friendly and chatting with this buddy ranger of mine as a side thing separate from the business of the day (the stairs in this case), which is mostly me listening to what he wants to say. He's a talker. I remember the things people say to me. All of them. So what I do bring up will tend to be something he said five years ago to me as it fits within the context of this latest conversation.

I talk very little about myself, and certainly nothing about the life I live or am forced to live or trying to endure, beyond that op-ed, which was my work, my art, and not some bit of mid-day casual conversation. I don't even talk about the stairs.

At this point of my life, in a life that is worse than hell, where hell would be an upgrade, I'm not one to stop and tarry, as the old gospel number goes. If I had my house in Rockport and my knees were stained with dirt from a happy gardening session and life was good, and I was in my heaven-on-earth, maybe it'd be different.

Then again, I don't know and am doubtful. There would be a great work of art I was working on, though, and that and everything that goes into that, all the side stuff that's a contributing factor, would be what I wanted to be getting back to, I think. I can't see myself being any other way.

I hadn't even been to the Monument in a week-and-a-half, so that here I was on the first day of the summer season and this was a topic of conversation--and apparently something that had been discussed--was somewhat concerning to me in the sense that I don't want fuss, conflict.

I want what is called good process. In, out. A to B. No additional stress. Look at my life. I am barely able to hang on. Here's how I described my present state of existence in a text to a friend from college over the weekend:

Each day I don't know how I'll get to the end of it. If I will. It's a struggle. It's kind of like getting across a field of land mines and barbed wire with shells raining down and machine gun fire. Then I get up the next morning and it's the same thing.

When I was running stairs in the Monument, I texted my sister the log-in password for this computer. I have meant to send her everything in a letter, but I haven't written the letter, and I'm in a place now that's a bit like Dead Thomas, which is a strange coincidence, how I became like that, where it's "nip and tuck" and I could go at any time.

Having said that, it is a kind of Monument stair runners dream--which is to say, a dream of mine--to have the Monument to yourself. It's a powerful feeling being in there alone. You feel it in your soul. You really do. Only the sound of your own breath and footfalls. Sometimes I sing when I'm alone and it's raining outside and anyone's unlikely to come in. There are occasionally days like that. They used to be more common pre-COVID.

I'll sing "And We Bid You Goodnight," with an emphasis on the "Walking in Jerusalem just like John" part. This would be John the Apostle, who walked the streets of Jerusalem having a vision of a better future when people tried harder and lived lives of kindness and helping others.

But it'd be a problem if I was expected to confine my movements to certain times. I may look very regimented, but everything is so hard right now. Someone might say, "If I could write the best thing ever written and all I had to do was sit down and do it, and that's what would come out, I'd do that lickity split, easy as you please," but it's a far, far, far different matter when that's true and you won't have anything you can do with it, and no one will even see it. I don't mean not millions. I mean no one.

That's the worst thing here. Nothing is worse than that, for as awful and unlivable as everything else is. It's hard to get myself to Charlestown. I can do these two things. With all the will it's required to muster to do them. The strength. I can't do much else. Lift a proverbial finger. I'm hanging on by something that looks like a line from a spider's web, without the tensile strength. I may be more alive than anyone has ever been, but I'm barely here. And each day gets harder.

Anyway, on Saturday I ran twenty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. I hadn't showered in two days--again, the lifting of the proverbial finger--and showered before going to Charlestown and put on newly laundered clothes. I wanted to feel fresh.

No incidents to report, but that doesn't mean people didn't tattle about something the invented. No one asked me how many stairs there were or if it was worth it. It's wild, isn't it, that someone would complain to park rangers because someone else didn't answer their question as to whether this thing they were doing was worth it.

I mean, it's not like they were answered, "I don't know, is fucking your fat pig of a wife worth it?" Then I could see a complaint rightfully being lodged. I would never do that myself. I just would never, ever, ever, do the tattle thing, unless it was someone putting their hands on me or using a slur.

That happened once. A couple years ago, I believe. Someone shoved me. I said as much to this same ranger, and the reason I did so was because of the other people in the Monument and their safety. Had I my druthers, I would have handled this by smearing this person all over the walls of the place. But, I'm not going to jail. The ranger asked me if I wanted them to call the police. I said no, I just wanted them to know for the sake of everyone else, because this was a violent person. Then I left. That was it, having said all that I needed to say.

But this is what "adults" do. They do it with their kids in tow. Over nothing. Over literally nothing. Not so much as a look their way. What kind of behavior is this modeling for little Sally? "Hold on, sweetie, daddy needs to do some tattling about nothing that ever happened."

Twenty circuits in the Monument is two-and-a-half straight hours of stair running (Zulu), so my ranger pal was gone by the time I finished. I also walked three miles and did 150 push-ups. I could tell coming home that this was going to be one of those times where I was likely to be dealing with some cramping, so I didn't mess about and proactively drank some pickle juice before showering, and then did so intermittently until I went to sleep.

Yesterday I was right back there in Charlestown. As I was stretching outside the Monument before it opened, two woman came over and one of them asked, "Have you ever gone up?"

As you could imagine, I scarcely knew how to answer this. Where would I begin? I simply said, "Yes." They asked how long it took me, and I said it took me two-and-a-half hours yesterday. I could see how that was confusing, though, so I said I'm here every day mostly, and yesterday I went up and down twenty times. They seemed somewhat perplexed, so I broke this down a bit further in saying that five times took about a half hour, but that probably wasn't of much use to them either.

What can I do? Our boat isn't the same boat. I'm not in yours and you're not in mine. Much as people want you to be, often need you to be, and almost always presume you to be until they are disabused of that notion, at which point the vast majority of those people become resentful of you. Nowhere is this more the case than in publishing, but it's how it works out in the world now as well. And more so in 2026, than in 2025, and probably more so in 2027 than it does right now. Until and if something comes along to change that.

They opened the doors and in we all went. People were confused as to where to go line-wise--there's kind of this path you're supposed to follow that winds around the lodge-cum-museum--and were milling about, looking at some of the exhibits, so I was the first in this time.

I was on my third circuit when the women from outside were making their way down. (They came up the wrong side, unsurprisingly, in the first place, but I merely nodded and smiled and stepped around them; it was brainlessness on their parts, which I find offensive enough, but they'd been friendly anyway). They said, "We're even more impressed now," and I do what I do, which is a friendly little "aw shucks" kind of laugh.

There was this young man who later said to me, on circuit number nine, "You're really good at this." Cue the laugh again. I actually ran into him again afterwards on the bridge back to Boston. He said, "I can't get away from you." Friendly guy. I wonder what he was doing. Probably thirty at the most. On his own. You don't see many such people doing the tourist thing solo.

Those people who fit that bill who do are probably decent people. Secure, curious, determined to make the most of their time. Maybe they're in the city for the first time and don't know if they'll be back again so they're not going to miss out on seeing some stuff just because they don't have anyone with them. That's someone likelier to be my kind of person.

I felt fine and did ten more circuits (and another 100 push-ups with three more miles walked). I'm sure that's the most amount of circuits I've done in two days. I think I've done that before, but I'm unsure. I am sure, though, that the information is somewhere in this record. My legs felt fine. I was just fine. Not as quick as on other occasions, but I was just trying to hit those double digits again. I mean...I was there, right? I was doing it. Do it until you're done.

Is it worth it?

Are you?

I think this underscores the effect the heat has outside on the City Hall stairs, because the 2000 I did there on Wednesday was harder than these last two days in the Monument. I need to improve. Do better in that heat. Which I can do. I have that control if I want to work at it. Thursday was a big day, grinding it out like that. A day speaking to character. Doesn't happen without a certain kind and sufficiency of character. Makes character, too.

I have now ran twenty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument nine times in my ten-year stair-running career. Seven of those times have come since last June, with five of them coming since my birthday on September 17. That's deliberate. And because I want statistical confirmation that I'm not weakening in the least. It also helps make things livelier. The zest of challenges.

A hockey drill involves two players lining up at a given spot, then the coach putting a puck in the corner and having them each take off as soon as it hits the boards and battling it out to score. I want to do that against others with my work and I do it against myself, too, in everything I do.

Doing twenty circuits more times doesn't speak to improving, though. It speaks to your willingness to do that because you have made sure that you are able to. There were years when I could have run twenty circuits and didn't. What matters more is being able to do it. And you're able to do it because of your effort and dedication and will and strength. You're able to do it through doing it.

Also, the goal of 1000 circuits in a year wasn't previously a thing for me in the past. These big chunks are useful now. Especially in this case as I hadn't gone to Charlestown, as I said, since having done twelve circuits a couple Thursdays back. This was only my third time running stairs at the Monument going back to 5/11. I'm now at 272 circuits since March 11. I need to be more consistent.

Yesterday also marked 3598 days, or 514 weeks, without a drink. The truth is, I stopped drinking in May 2016. By miscounting in these tallies that I recorded over the years, I've created a timeline in which the anniversary is now the end of June. That was my fault so I haven't made an attempt to correct the above number. When it's my fault, I should suffer the consequences, no matter for what that thing is.

It was in August of that year that I had pneumonia and my temperature rose to 107 degrees and I went to the emergency room twice. Kyle Bush died the other day in his early forties as a result of complications from pneumonia, which gave me reason to think about the timing of my cessation of drinking.

Had I not stopped when I did, this would all be over. I wouldn't be suffering like this. That's how my life is. The more good I do, the harder it's gotten. Creating the best work there's ever been made it harder. Knowing more than anyone knows made it harder. Being the person I became has made it harder.

There is no doubt in my mind that I would have died that August had I still been drinking or, quite likely, if I hadn't stopped in May. I am so strong even physically. It takes a huge amount to knock me down. This record is practically barren of references to even normal illnesses. The normal physical complaints of being alive.

I don't feel things the same way that others do. I recover faster. I progress through things faster. My pain threshold is different. What would have someone else in bed doesn't rate here. It doesn't draw comment. I am unlikely to even acknowledge it to myself save as that which needs to be shaken off or not allowed to keep me from creating or the stairs.

I got much healthier very quickly after I stopped drinking. I have struggled with the not drinking more of late than in times past. Someone did the worst thing that's ever been done to me. Someone I knew for almost thirty years. Something I couldn't have afforded having happened to me after everything else that has. From a final straw standpoint, if there is to be one, that is, it's been very hard to not just accept that this was it. And if that's it, then it's over.

That my health improved as quickly as it did--it took like a week--when I stopped drinking made it easier to continue not to drink. (The weight loss was immediate. I could breathe better walking up stairs--just going up stairs normally--and my existing heart issues began to abate.) I am competitive. Clearly. Whether that's with writing, or the stairs with myself, and this was the same. I like to do things well and then try and do them better and better and better and better and better. Always be getting better. That's the challenge.

By the time August came and I got sick, I was able to survive what I'm sure I wouldn't have been able to if drinking was still a part of my life.

And you know what? I regret that. Because this would have been over. There's no hope here for me. It's just the worst kind of suffering. When I'm finished typing these words, I'll get back to a work that's amazing, that no one else could do, and which I won't be able to do anything with, let alone the things which are the reasons why it was done. The point of it. What's commensurate with what it itself is as a work of art, as a life force. An agent of the purest and greatest good.

I made the decision I did, though, same as I made the decision to run thirty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument this past weekend, same as I am making the decision to work again on my story now.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/a9a8e8_d1131821b38a439fa18ba8590c05d0df/1080p/mp4/file.mp4