Passway

Monday 7/5/21

Yesterday--which marked 1834 days, or 262 days without a drink--I walked nine miles. Today I walked nine more, ran ten hill sprints in Charlestown, and ran the Government Center stairs thirty times without stopping. So, 3000 stairs. Doing these kinds of stairs sans stopping is misleading--they're not high enough for me to lose my wind, and you hit the top, and recover on the way down. As I said, all stairs are different.

I wrote three stories, all for Longer on the Inside: "After Over Starts," "Breakfast Goals," "Early Kiss." The last story grew out of another, called "You've Arrived," which I revisited and was not happy with. Didn't have enough direction. What will happen with anything I write is that it can exist on the back of the strength of the writing. But that's not what I want. I want direction, too, and maximum purpose. The earlier story had some very nice lines, but I everything was too scattered, and they didn't go anywhere with intention and purpose. I did important head work on "Up the Sea," which was begun in March, and will be a major work. It's earmarked for There Is No Doubt.

I came back from exercising today and wrote a letter to the eleven-year-old daughter of a friend, or what I suppose is the closest I have to a friend. The child has to wear this back brace twenty hours a day for her scoliosis, which an idiot Yale doctor misdiagnosed because she couldn't read an X-ray, and the girl doesn't want to go anywhere. She's had some struggles, especially with her grandmother's death, and some other things. She's sensitive, whereas her sister is more blithe. This friend of mine had been out of state, because their father--they have two fathers, actually--had internal bleeding and was being operating on. They got back to where they lived, and the hospital kept calling, and everything was going on with his kid, and he said that he wasn't handling anything well, so I offered to try and help.

The hot water is on, but the water in the shower only gets so (mildly) warm now, though it gets as hot as it should get in the taps.

I need to get money coming in. And I need to move some books. And if something good doesn't happen soon, I honestly don't know how much longer I can keep going.