Friday 4/9/21
Every day here is hell, but yesterday had some extra of the devil's secret ingredient baked through it, though I also know that to many people I am the devil. That's a great feeling. So many people having so much hate for you, people you've done absolutely nothing to, people you don't even know. I'm not even going to begin to talk about the slicings and gougings of yesterday yet. I can look into my wounds right now and see the glass. I can see the glass being stirred around.
I'll just say what I've done, though it depresses me further, and I am almost certain it's all for nought. Someone yesterday told me that each of these things, every last one of them, is a part of my future and my success, but while I appreciate the words, I can no more believe them than I could allow that after a thousand years in a darkened see on a sunless planet, a day would begin and there'd be rays in the sky. I just can't believe it or even imagine it, if I'm being honest. This is how I'm going to die. But after it gets worse still. And that's just what all of this is going to be and have been.
I began that short story, "The Shape of the Shore." I wrote five short stories in full: "The Closet Game," "The Side Room," "Eyejaculator," "We're Happy Tonight," "Water Bottle." The explodes forms and the previous possibilities of narrative, but that doesn't matter, and it certainly doesn't help. I've written five op-eds that will probably never come out: one on the word "literally," another on what I call the beat of baseball and how to restore it, another on Ernest Hemingway, another on the value of keeping a journal, and one on how Netflix turns us into what I term settlers.
Walked six miles yesterday, ran ten hill sprints, walked three miles today. Had you walked through Christopher Columbus Park a while ago, you could have observed me sitting on a bench with my head in my own lap, because that is where I placed it after I began to cry uncontrollably so no one could see me. These people own my life. They have me beat. I have so many forces against me and I just can't see how I have any chance. I can't see how anyone has ever had less of a chance with anything than what I have with this.
