Saturday 5/18/24
Listened to a lot of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar episodes. The five-parters.
Came up with the title for my Grateful Dead book.
Wrote a story called "Get Mad Why Don't You" which will be for Become Your Own Superhero: Intrepid Exceptions to Modern Fiction. It's about getting angry. Every paragraph in the story is a line of conversation, comprised usually of a single sentence but sometimes two. Some comments on the story to a friend:
"The story is not two people talking. That should be clear. The pronouns switch up at times. A person can't be both he and a she. The story is us, as in all of us, but it also has these possible instances where the lines seem connected, like they're responses to each other and they may well be, but it doesn't have to be that way either. I'd call it a work of integrated independence. A lot of the story isn't so much that white space per the blog on that particular subject, as what's not there at all. (You can write without words.) Someone's presumed reaction, for instance. It's about what causes anger. We suppose, initially, that the "hearer," if you will, the person to whom the line is said, is to be faulted (then again, we get part of their voice and side--maybe--from what that other person is saying about them/to them, and we may get their voice directly if it is indeed them speaking in the next paragraph, but we never know for sure with those times when it may be possible), but then we also see, or surmise, motivations and how the speaker may really be the angry (or angrier) person, hence their passive aggressiveness or whatever they're up to. The rhythm is important and there's a choral aspect. Even in a din, some voices can be pitched higher than others. The opening and closing lines play off of each other, like they could be said by the same person, but they also don't have to be. It's a story of positioning and what may or may not be coincidences (insofar as juxtapositions), and not so much patterns as these societal and emotional fractals realized in a unique work of fiction."
Had five nightmares Wednesday evening.
Was walking down Newbury Street yesterday in the light rain on Thursday when my sister sent me a video of my nephew Charlie hitting a bases loaded triple in his baseball game the day before. A line drive rocket to left!
Also had a thought about my new dietary approach. No pizza, no bread, no red meat, no chips, no pork, no pasta, no candy, no alcohol. Some of those things are older, some of those are newer. But that's pretty good, I think. I would wager that there are few people abstaining completely from all of those things.
I ran 1000 stairs Wednesday. But I didn't feel well and had made myself worse yesterday by running stairs, and then I went back out there because it's been so many days in a row. Also walked three miles and did 100 push-ups. Chest still raw and coughing but was back out there again Thursday at the Connecticut gate in Charlestown, where I ran fifty circuits of stairs. Also walked three miles and did 100 push-ups. Then with the mucus rattling around my chest I took to the Connecticut gate stairs yesterday for fifty circuits and also did 100 push-ups and walked three miles.
Photo of docked Swan Boats from the Public Garden bridge in the rain on Thursday.
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