Reality is a thing

Monday 11/3/25

Walking across a bridge from Allston to Cambridge over the Charles on Saturday--the same bridge that Quentin Compson jumped from to his death in Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury--I was struck by how autumnal the scene looked, particularly the trees near the banks.

The leaves had all changed color, but most had yet to fall, while others that already had blew about near my feet. Similarly, when I took the train back later, the sun hit the water in the expanse of river beneath the Longfellow Bridge such that three quarters or so of it--all save the portions near the edges--looked like some glowing, moving jewel. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed this, too, but they were all staring at their phones.

With how we're negatively affecting the planet, because we suck at everything now, and we just make everything worse, I feel like November is the new October. It's what October used to be.

On Saturday, as I was cutting through Government Center up near where the steaming tea kettle is, three women in their late sixties halted me by asking if I was from around here. I answered as I normally do to these queries by saying, "What do you need?" One of them then proceeded to ask me where they could get a six-pack of beer in the voice of one who is exasperated on behalf of a group of searchers that has been thwarted like they've come to some bizarre spot where things don't work as they ought to.

Do I really look someone to ask about this? I feel like I don't. It was 12:20 in the afternoon, but apparently they thought they were back in Southie in 1973 and all of the packies had gone missing. Government Center is less dead than, say, the financial district on the weekend, but it's not where you'd ever go to buy alcohol. It's not a residential area.

I was reading William Sloane's The Edge of Running Water by the harbor the other day, when this overweight white guy showed up and sat at this table twenty feet behind me, where he proceeded to start stuffing his face with some concoction that looked like a log of food while playing his idiotic sports talk program, podcast, whatever it was, on his cell phone at a loud volume without earbuds or headphones.

People don't even know how to behave anymore. They're not fit to be in public. I turned around and watched this idiot and his eyes never left that screen as his jaw worked relentlessly, like it was powered by a motor. He was probably thirty, and he was a rude, ignorant load. And you just know that nothing good can ever come from such a person. That it's just all bad. Just making the shit that is this world right now even shittier. What's he going to do? Learn something? Teach someone? Add to anything in a positive way? Help people?

Then, a couple of Black people came and sat down on the bench beside me, and proceeded to say the n-word dozens and dozens of times, very loudly. You see why I have to mention the colors here? Because if I just said people, then it could be white people, and you have this whole other thing. And because I knew I was going to mention these other two people in addition to the rude load at the table, I had to say that the latter was white. So between the rude load and the people saying the n-word again and again, I had to leave. Driven away by trash. Straight-up human trash. Sub-human trash.

Another time over the weekend I was sitting on my regular bench at this field near the harbor, reading William Sloane again. You're kind of nestled there in the shade of this pine tree. I sit on this bench a lot. Almost every day. As I sat there reading, I had to be mindful of my feet when I moved them, because there were birds and rabbits at various times inches away and I could have struck them, which obviously I'd never want to do. These creatures are smarter and better than most humans. I like when I'm reading and a rabbit is happily munching on some grass not a foot away from my foot. We just do our respective things in peace, but also kind of together.

I got my hair cut on Thursday shorter than I've ever had it before. The razor setting was the half on the sides and back and the number one on top. You see a lot of skin. I practically look bald. It's quite comfortable and it grows back fast enough. I think it looks fine. Clean.

And what does it matter? It's not like there is someone to say, "I like it when it's a bit longer." I talk to no one, I go nowhere with anyone. I think I look pretty much the same so long as I am fit. That's the salient thing for me. Then you just have different looks I guess you could call it. This is the opposite look, I'd say, from how I grew my hair out for a couple of years after Molly and then from time to time afterwards, I think as recently as COVID. But if one is to get one's hair this short it is better, I think, not to have a rounder face, which I had back in 2012-13 when I was bloated from the drink.

Lately I've been waiting behind people in lines as they order hot chocolate. This is my second autumn since I gave it up, along with pasta, bread, red meat, and pizza all on the same March winter day in 2023. It would be nice to have a hot chocolate as I'm walking on a brisk autumn afternoon, but my health is more important, because nothing is more important than my work, and I must make sure I'm able to endure what is worse than hell so that I can keep going, creating, trying, fighting. Every single thing I do is for my work. Which is itself for something bigger.

I sent my nephew Booth Tarkington's Penrod for his birthday this week. At the end of that novel, Penrod turns twelve, and my nephew is turning twelve, too. One of the only truly funny works of fiction, along with Tarkington's Seventeen, in which the protagonist is...that's right, you guessed it. F. Scott Fitzgerald loved Seventeen. Orson Welles was a huge admirer of Penrod. More things my professors in college had never heard of. These days they'd be busy shoveling Roxane Gay and Tommy Orange and Percival Everett and George Saunders shit at you.

My mom sent me some photos of my nieces in their Halloween costumes, which I put on Instagram, and which led to me texting this to my sister the next day:

I was sent some super Halloween photos of two of my favorite girls! Tell them I thought they looked great! I showed Amelia's to the Little Ghost Girl who clapped with delight, but, alas, her clapping made no sound. Make sure you tell her though.

She sent me a back a photo of Amelia's reaction, with her hand kind of over her eyes but also like it was against her forehead, a hybrid gesture that was part "I don't want to know about a ghost!" and also "This guy, OMG."

It was a bit cool-ish on Sunday when I was running stairs, but you'd think the people who were out had gotten dressed with an eye to exploring the Arctic later that day. Winter coats, heavy gloves--I don't mean those lightweight knit deals like the several pairs of which I picked up at 7-Eleven on Saturday, but the inclement "We got two feet of snow" type of gloves. Embrace the coolness. It's good for you.

There was this guy coming up the stairs who was so lazy that he barely lifted his feet. You ever see someone that lazy? Like it's too much for them to raise their feet above the ground any more than they have to? There's this idiot in my building who squeaks all the way from the ground floor to the fifth floor where he lives because he can't be bothered to...stride.

Anyway, this guy on the stairs had the big torso of flab on the way to adding ever more flab. I bet he was twenty-five years younger than I am, which means nothing, and you wouldn't know it. He realizes what I'm doing--you can actually see this slight dawning of awareness make itself known on people's faces, like you're watching thoughts occur to them in super slow motion--and decides that he's going to try to run some stairs, too. He doesn't make it up two before he falls on his face.

And again, I feel like I know everything one would ever need to know about this person, who will contribute nothing to the human race. Which is what everyone is supposed to do--contribute to the whole in some way. Some real way. And I know people want to say, "Everyone does, that's the beauty of it all," to whom I'd say, "Get your head out of your ass, because that's not helping either." Reality is a thing.

I think I will get a new Boston Ballet T-shirt. My old one is too big for me. I wear a smaller size now than I did when I got the shirt. Plus, it's all stretched out from wear. Then I will use this old Boston Ballet shirt as just a workout shirt.

I find that if I'm cold and don't feel like moving, I cease being cold for the rest of the day, no matter what I'm doing, once I run a certain number of stairs. It's as though it's my version of a snake sunning itself on a rock to start its day. Once my blood is flowing, I won't be cold again, no matter how cold I felt at first. I wonder if other people are this way.

I've had some fairly persistent soreness at the bottom of my right calf, somewhat off to the side, above the ankle. When I start running the stairs, I can be quite gimpy, even. And also when I'm done and so much as going up the three stairs to the front door of the building. This soreness lessens--there's a loosening up--after a bunch of times up and down the City Hall stairs, and I have the full bounce in my step after ten or twelve times, but then it can re-tighten when I'm done. I'm doing pre-workout stretches.

Yesterday while I was running stairs, I typed my symptoms into Google. One possible cause was a blood clot, but I don't think I have any of the other symptoms for it to be that. Plus, I imagine I'd already have keeled over with the amount of stairs I run if I wasn't heart-sound. That's the thinking, anyway. My methodology, as such.

I'd say it was better yesterday. I didn't have any of the soreness or stiffness after throughout the rest of the day. Some of it may have to do with the nature of the stairs. All stairs are different. People just think they're the same, but they never are. And that being the case, Monument stairs might just be better on the legs, or my legs specifically. I take these City Hall stairs two-at-a-time at this juncture. I guess over a certain amount of them, I'd revert to one-at-a-time, but I wouldn't start there now.

I'm not doing a good job keeping records straight with these workouts, but that's because it's not the same at City Hall as it is at the Bunker Hill Monument. It's looking to me like the government will remain shut down for all of November, so at this point I'm just going to start over with my goal of 1000 Monument circuits in a year when the Monument finally does open again. I was off to a great start, too, with 280 circuits in two months, but this is ridiculous. Not a serious country in a not serious world of not serious people.

I'm out there almost every day, though. It feels much more humdrum. On Friday I ran 5000 stairs and did 100 push-ups. On Saturday I ran 3000 stairs and walked five miles and did 100 push-ups. Also worked on "You're Probably Just Tired" some more. Yesterday I ran 5000 stairs, walked six miles, and did 100 push-ups. Yesterday also marked 3395 days, or 485 weeks, without a drink.