Monday 6/22/20
I am normally not comfortable writing about the past week, because when I do so I feel fat, useless, lazy, someone focused on what they've done, not what they are doing, but as I have started this week strong and have something to show for the new week--and I also want to be thorough here--I will document last week in full.
I ended up covering sixty miles on foot, between walking and running, and ran the stairs--there are 130 of them, as it were--at BC twenty times. I taped a podcast. I talked on the radio. I composed an op-ed. I wrote five complete short stories: "House Winds," "Slung Stack," "To To To," "Id b interested," "There the Day the Island Was." With those five stories, there was not a single thought to any of them before the moment of their creation. I decided to compose each of them. That is, I opened a Word document, and I ordered myself to invent. This piece came out in JazzTimes on Jimmy Cobb. And there were quite a few blog entries--I don't know how many. I don't feel like counting. Probably ten or so.
Weeks can start on different days for me, but most commonly Saturday or Sunday. This new week started Saturday. Over the weekend, I walked thirty miles, ran the BC stairs twenty times. Today I wrote a JazzTimes piece on Ella Fitzgerald, and two full short stories, "Conch Stone" and "Gnatcatcher." I also ran three miles and taped an hour-long podcast on the Beatles for the Songs of Note. We're doing Beatles month for July, so that means I'll be on for four episodes, which will be released in successive weeks. I wrote that Father's Day blog yesterday. I think it was quite good. Yesterday marked 1477 days, or 211 weeks, without a drink.
Got heat rash in a few places on account of the weekend workouts. The twenty mile walk with the running of the stairs in the middle is brutal.
But I need my physical health and my heart to be strong to fight and beat these people. Which I will. What is happening and what is happening to me only gets worse. But I get better. My own work makes me believe here at a point and time when there would otherwise be no belief nor could there be. This work, that I have done, that I am doing, is all that could induce the possibility of belief in this situation. That that is true is how I know I am going to prevail.