Methodical

Monday 4/28/25

Yesterday, unfortunately, was a hang on day. There's no reason for me to live. From a personal standpoint. I didn't sleep at all on Saturday night and then went to bed around six last night after having gotten up at quarter of four on Friday. I did nothing yesterday. Sat there. Stared at nothing. Cried. No real work. No exercise. Tried to think how I could put it to my mother that she needs to carry on if something happens to me because she has her grand kids to think of. No one can expect me to keep going. No one, really, should even advise me to.

The plan right now is to be methodical. Which is why I'm writing this. Simply to do it. Move my fingers, get some words down.

I did force myself out to the Starbucks yesterday around two in the afternoon. I didn't want to fall asleep at four and wake up at ten. And to get out. There was some coffee from the day prior but it was cinnamon coffee that I got this winter and it's been a lot of cinnamon coffee lately. I was unsure on my feet. For me. Not that anyone could tell. And then at the register I felt and sounded in my own ears like two of me. Woolly, woozy, off. I was not myself.

Listened to the Grateful Dead's 11/11/73 Winterland version of "Bertha" a number of times to calm myself. Garcia sort of harmonizes with himself in that rendition.

Some sports lightness. Yesterday's Celtics game would have been my close to a guaranteed victory pick for them as any sports game of the year so far, but I was a little surprised that they game was as close as it was. I didn't see it, like I said. I just checked the box score after waking up.

Didn't see the Blues tying their series with the Jets down 2-0 either. They're scored a lot of goals in their two victories. Perhaps Jim Montgomery is going to be the coach of a team that bumps off a Presidents' trophy winner himself.

Hoped Montreal would win last night--yes, I know, Bruins fans aren't allowed to say that--because it's cool when the Canadiens are in long series and they still could be but it will be much tougher now.

Those Oilers sure do run and gun, don't they? You'd think they were paying tribute to their teams from the first half of the 1980s. (Because the Gretzky-led Oilers actually did become pretty solid defensively--by the standards of the time--come the 1986-87 season.)

The Red Sox won their last two. I did see chunks of those games. They struck out a lot less. Say this about Walker Buehler: He's 4-1. I know that the ERA isn't great, but I still think wins matter, even if no one else does.

On Saturday I walked five miles and did 100 push-ups and five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. There were less people there this time than of late--and nothing like the other day, when I gave up on the line--so that was nice. There were quite a few days pre-COVID when I'd have the Monument nearly to myself and sometimes all to myself. That's when it's the best. You don't have to try and get around anyone, which is good, but it's more than that. A descending peace. A calmness. It's very centering then, almost holy.

There are several bright spots in the obelisk. Longer stretches of unlighted spots. Perhaps it's also like a metaphor that way.

I wish more people talked to each other. I was even more that people weren't so incurious. So fixated on themselves. Blind to anything but themselves it seems, with the compounding irony that they don't really see themselves for what they are.

I wish I had friends. No one will ever be able to give me what I need from a person. No one will have those qualities or abilities. For me. Enough for me. But I could be friends with people in a talking sense, a how are you sense, a tell me about the job you applied for sense, where there's checking in and some tab keeping. I don't really view that as true friendship. Which goes deeper. Has greater requirements. But it can make a difference.

It's not something I have. You think, "How might I have that?" and you struggle to find a viable answer. If you do approach someone, they're not going to give you a second thought, because they'll be locked in on themselves. If I write someone online, and in language that no one else would use, so you'd know right away this is a different cat, no one would even think, "Who is this person writing me who speaks this way?" because I doubt that anyone call tell anything anymore--including what's different--and no one would so much as click on that person's page or profile or whatever it may be, where they'd see the bio and the substance right off the bat, and there is this fit fellow, someone pure of heart and not up to any form of no good whatsoever.

But people wouldn't even look. They only fixate on themselves. It costs everyone. Who does it cost less? A person who is married with kids, because they're not here for the world anyway. They're bunkered in with their group. If the rest of the world was gotten rid of, that person usually wouldn't be any more impacted save that their kids wouldn't have a soccer team to be on.

I went to Haymarket and Trader Joe's on Saturday. It had been raining, as I mentioned, that morning. I waited out the storm until it was just drizzling. After having that bag come apart last year on the subway steps coming home from Trader Joe's, I'm careful about when I go, weather-wise, because those suckers will rip.

I still had my sweatshirt hood up after I got in the store. The sides extend a bit so that my peripheral vision is limited. I accidentally cut a woman off. I normally don't make mistakes like this, so I was annoyed with myself. It was a very minor thing. She barely had to pause a beat. It's not like we crashed together and stumbled to the ground and I said, I think we're alone now. Ah. See what I did there? I like that song. I need to write this feature about it. (Love the eponymous album cover, too.)

Anyway, I apologized--"I'm so sorry"--and it was sufficiently minor and maybe not even my fault such that I would wager most of the time nothing would have been said.

But the look she gave me was filled with such contempt. It wasn't just for me. It was contempt for all men. This look went back in time. I could feel it. And it extended into the future.

I'm not tending to things. I need to do more, face more, fix more, try to figure out more. Whether that's with books, issues with the website, holding people accountable in these pages.

Hence, this idea of being methodical. Stay consistently at things, and in doing so get to and move through that which has to be gotten to and moved through.

I've had the Beatles' March 1962 BBC cover of John Brown and the Bruvvers' "A Picture of You" in my head this morning.

Saw the available episodes of Your Friends and Neighbors. It's okay, I guess. This is the only streaming service I have because a trial came with the computer. The sister is a good character. I wonder how many people realize that he's watching 1945's Detour a bunch of times. I guess it could just be me.

That's a good film. A true noir. There aren't many as film historians would lead one to believe. In a true noir, there's this point--and you can identify it rather easily--where the male character makes a decision that ultimately is going to doom him. In Out of the Past, for instance, it's when Jeff decides to run away with Kathie. If a film doesn't have that moment, it's not true noir. There's the fatalistic element, but it's a nudged along fatalism. You had something to do with it. Arguably. In a manner that could blame yourself, when you just might have been fucked all along.

Yesterday marked 3206 days, or 458 weeks, without a drink.