Record-tying stair-running performance in the Bunker Hill Monument and other health matters with nod to the people in charge of Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series

Friday 5/8/26

Catching up on recent efforts regarding health.

Last week I didn't run stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument on Wednesday, then ran five circuits each of the next four days for a week's total of twenty. Walked three miles on each of these days and did 100 push-ups as well.

I have not drank which has been more of a challenge--or more of a something--given where I am and in that things are even darker, even harder, which ought not to be possible given what they already were, bereft of any hope and light, but is true nonetheless. I don't want to provide the number of days/weeks this streak is at right now as we get closer to the end of another week. Let's just keep trying for right now rather than tabulate.

I did nothing physically Monday and Tuesday. I didn't even go outside. This is becoming a bad habit.

I saw someone use the term soft suicide the other day, and that resonated with me. It takes everything I have to force myself to do anything. Any task. I understand that this wouldn't make sense to anyone, given how much work I produce and also things like the stairs, but each thing requires a conscious gathering of what strength I have or can create on the spot and then a focused, forced marshaling of will.

One sees the likes of "Dead Thomas," one knows that there is no writing in history to touch it, and yet I can't do anything with it, for I am not allowed, because I am me and I am not like these people. It's the same with anything I create. It's all that good. How does one then create more of it? Finish what one has been working on? Why? For what? For it to exist as this thing and not be seen?

It feels worse, too, having created that thing, with that thing being what it is, knowing that, and knowing its fate. Living with that reality. Which is different than if the thing didn't exist, didn't exist as what it is, or I was producing just more of the MFA and AI-machined worthlessness that these people produce, or my work just wasn't that special and I had a long way to go as a writer.

It was in the sixties when the Monument reopened on Wednesday. I had resolved to force myself the best I could to, well, basically try to keep going, which means a combination of creating and hard physical effort stair-wise.

You know, stairs, the things that I'm not allowed to write a book about in Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series because of discrimination but you can get yourself fascinating volumes about cement and air conditioners by writers without talent who have done nothing in so-called careers but are the right kind of person and were hooked up to do these books--without payment, so, you know, for free--by plainly discriminatory people.

I mean, if there ever was a person of humanity to write a book on a single physical object that we encounter in our daily lives then it's this person on stairs, right?

But meanwhile, we have this guy with the epic stair book in him--stairs as so many different things; life, inspiration, metaphor, the world, art--and it's discrimination time. Definitely get that air conditioner book, though. A real corker. You'll love it. Then you'll probably be buying more copies to give to people as gifts. They wouldn't think you were crazy at all.

That's how you want a book to be, right? You want people to think someone is crazy is they buy it as gifts for someone else. That's the mark of a masterpiece. And something with commercial appeal. "Do you believe she seriously gave me a book on cement by some academic for Christmas?"

The warmer weather--it had been in the forties for several days prior--meant I could wear shorts. A lightening of the load. I wanted to do quite a few push-ups as I'd done none of those on Monday or Tuesday either, and at least twelve circuits in the Monument, but I would have preferred twenty.

And so twenty circuits it was. 12,000 stairs in total, two-and-a-half straight hours of stair running.

This is rather difficult. It's you, your legs, your hard breathing, your determination, commitment, your will to keep going when you could stop, and, for me, of course, that's all a metaphor for other, bigger things. My life.

I could just be done the same as I could say, "Okay, that's enough" and walk out of the Monument. I could end this. I have nothing to live for. I have no chance. I almost certainly never will. Not with this system, and not in this world at large, which is actually my much bigger problem than the publishing system of incestuous evil.

Because even when those evil people select other evil people without any talent to put forward, hype, celebrate, award, hook up, it only goes so far, and it never really makes it out of their little subculture. The walls of their twisted citadel.

My work isn't for that poisonous sinecure. It isn't for those non-people people. It is, in what it is, for the world. Which isn't to say it's the same as for the world as how the world presently is and the people in it presently are. It could be that the best work ever created that is for anyone who's ever been isn't for anybody now. If one thinks that through.

You sweat so much doing this. Sweat in ways that people normally don't sweat. For instance, the sweat runs down my legs. My shins. I'm completely drenched. You're reaching within yourself. This isn't just a workout. Or just the hardest workout.

This was the day I got to meet that wonderful woman I described in the letter from yesterday to the university provost, which resulted in my conversation with the ranger when I returned to the Monument yesterday. I was in there so long on Wednesday that he'd left by the time I'd gotten done. Yesterday I had a wicked migraine. My head throbbed. My left temple. And still I said, "You don't want to not run some stairs after your efforts of yesterday, come on now, let's go."

So, as I had that ridiculous conversation with an officious simpleton--can you even imagine what this conversation would have looked like, me talking as I talk, thinking as I think, calmly explaining what had happened, and, also, to a degree, how the world works, how people are, to this person trying to pretend he's smart and diligent and impressive.

What are we doing?

One should have the expectation of not having one's time wasted or energy lessened by another person each time one ventures out. Or ever. I cause no problems for anyone. No one should cause problems for me. Be smart, be competent, be professional, think of others and not just yourself, do the right thing.

It should be so simple. But it's beyond people.

I'm in something worse than hell, so I also have an intimate understanding of what hell is--I pine for hell, because it'd be a case of moving on up, and I can still be made to go further down, I know this--but I also understand why that person, whoever they were, remarked that hell is other people.

I also walked three miles and did 300 push-ups on Wednesday.

I did 100 push-ups yesterday, walked three miles, and ran another five circuits of stairs in the Monument. That brings my total since March 11 up to 215 circuits.

I had some leftover pain-killing medication from my root canal last year (I hadn't taken any for that) so I took one of those tablets for the migraine before they expire. To save money. Each tablet is the equivalent of three Advils, so it's not a big deal. My calves are a little tight this morning. I had no problems on Wednesday afterwards. No cramping or anything. Didn't have to drink any pickle juice. No Advil.

Didn't even drink any peppermint tea, which helps with aches, and which I drink anyway because it helps with blood pressure. Heart health. Because my heart has to endure so much in so many ways. I did drink about a gallon of water, though. The fluid loss, as I intimated, is considerable. Water is what I use afterwards. I don't drink anything bad for me. There's no Gatorade.

I've now done twenty circuits in a single go eight times in the ten years I've been running stairs in the Monument, which, of course, was closed for multiple years with COVID, with six of those times coming since last June. As I believe I've said in here, I'm not allowed to go over twenty circuits because then I'd just keep trying to do more being as hyper-competitive with myself as I am so I made the executive decision to cap the record, if you will. Twenty is plenty.