The nature of progress

Friday 11/14/25

I know someone who is a serial liar. They've lied to me tens of thousands of times in the time I've known them, and that isn't an exaggeration. This person has gone on about how I can trust them, but there is no one I trust less (and I am someone all alone) or who, given context, what they know about me and what I'm up against and what my life is, has hurt me more. They've said, all passionately, "I'd help you bury the body," as to how far they'd go for me, which is kind of an odd remark, but one gets their meaning; when the truth is, there is nothing they'd do for me, including so much as lifting a finger. They would literally put their back to me if I was starving, dying.

An example: I have reached out to this person saying, in effect, I am really fighting to make it through today, I don't know if I can. There is no one stronger than I. I am not flowery, I am not weak. I do not do hyperbole. Anyone who knows me at all, in whatever capacity, knows these things to be true. If I say something, there is a real reason for me doing so, and what I say is always grounded in truth. They said, in effect, I'll call you in a bit. And not only didn't they, they wouldn't even send a text saying "Sorry, this came up." When I brought this up weeks later, saying how much that had hurt me, they didn't so much as respond to that. Because that's who this person is. They will say that it's not their fault. As if they didn't have three seconds to send that text. I say they would leave me to die, and I am not taking poetic license.

This I know about this person. They don't communicate--and I don't mean just with me--and they're broken now. Barely just there. I see them get worse every year, less of a living entity, and they refuse to take any--or very little--personal responsibility for whatever they might do and whomever they are. Ultimately, it's always you. It's on you. No matter what. You are responsible for who you are, and there is no excuse or factor that takes you off that hook--certainly not long term. You have a bad month, you slacken in your standards, do some things you're not proud of, fine. But a bad month is different than your life. You as constituted. Who you are. You.

This individual is incapable of taking responsibility for anything. They are a perfect example of someone who just doesn't get it in the weightiest sense of that phrase. Virtually any time I speak with them, the first thing out of their mouth will be something about how hard their life is, which is actually a very easy life by its base configurations, and a far more preferable life compared to what most people have. They also know me and my situation as well as anyone. We go back many years--nay, decades. They do everything wrong and backwards. Can't get out of their own way. But refuse to try anything different.

For all of their carping, whining, excuse making, if I was to ask, "What are you doing about it?" they'd have no answer. I always have an answer to that, even as I have no hope. I am trying. I try everything I can think of. The problem, for me, is that I have so little control. Again, see the analogy of the plumber and his pipes. I can only go as far as the hate, the bigotry, the envy of a number of people will allow me to go, and the laziness, the lack of intelligence, the stuporous simplicity of other people will allow me to go, people who are all threatened by me in how wholly unlike them I am.

Average people make average people feel better about themselves. Thoreau understood--the public demands an average person, not a person of greatness, and certainly not--this qualification is his--absolute greatness. Mediocrity is what people like, because it's more comforting to them--now more than ever--regarding their fragile sense of self. I would need to somehow find a way to get where I am trying to go despite those things being true. I haven't found that way yet. Clearly. I have no reason to think one exists. I have no reason to have faith that one does, beyond my knowledge that I am something, and do something, that no one else has ever been or will be, or could ever do or will.

But I still try everything I can think of. I still create. I still come here and address an idea like the one of which I just spoke, and whatever I can think to address that might make a difference, in get more truth into a kind of official record of truth open to all. All of my choices in my life are made in order to 1. Keep creating 2. Keep growing, every day, as a person and artist and 3. Control what I can control so if things were to ever change, I'd be here to make the most of that, for myself, yes, but more more importantly, for this world, for people. And maybe, someday, at some point...

I don't know. I try to keep going. I try to extend the game. I keep creating knowing I am making the best art there has ever been and that there's nothing I can do with it right now save to have it sit here with me as I make still more. Do you understand how hard that is?

And yet, I help this person who only hurts me. I have never hurt them. I am always there for them, no matter what is going on here. I barely make it to tomorrow many days. Could you live like this? No one could live like this. It's not possible unless you are me, and I swear, I barely make it out of some days alive, and i don't know how much longer I can keep going. What I am makes being here worse than being in hell. I have nothing to live for. There is nothing I can do about that. Greatness is my death sentence in life. In this world.

Anyway, I helped them again yesterday. With counsel. And though they turned around and lied to me yet again--any interaction with this person results in lies from them--they did send me a text about having lied to me, which is more than usual. And in this text they spoke of the progress they had made on account of what I said to them, which is typical of this person. It's typical thinking of people who never make any progress and are increasingly incapable of ever making progress.

This is what I sent back to them: "Progress is made by having something consciously in the forefront of one's mind every day and being committed to improving every day. This is what you do. It's why 'change' lasts less than two days with you." People don't want to hear that. In order to grow or do anything worthwhile, you have to consciously work at it daily. Whether that's being more honest, running stairs, writing stories, eating better, being a better parent, a better teacher.

This is not a truth that can be gotten around. No truths can be gotten around, ultimately, if you want to do anything better than you have been doing it. This person also never accepts anything. That makes them very dangerous to me, with the situation I am in. Because instead of ever facing anything with me, they've just told me it will be wonderful eventually, while leaving me to it, lying to me, never being there for me, hurting me, betraying me. You might say, "Why do you know them?" Because you can't not know anyone. I have no one. There aren't people for me. How could there be?

Got my mother a birthday card, which I'll mail today. I will send her "Dot" as well--these are the things that I have to give--which will make her cry I suspect, but also make her happy, I believe.

I walked to Charlestown yesterday now that the government shutdown is over, but the Monument wasn't open. Why this was the case I don't know. It opens at 1 now with the winter hours, so it's not like they had to get going first thing in the morning. I expect it'll be open today.

I took a "break" at midday on Wednesday--though I wrote in my head on this break and established a number of things--and walked to Copp's Hill Burying Ground. I was the only one there. It was cold--upper thirties. The ground strewn with leaves. I went down to the lower part of the grounds, where no one tends to go even when there are other people there.

This hawk came out of nowhere--this soundless bird of death--and nearly picked off a pigeon on the ground beneath a tree. The pigeon sort of sidestepped the hawk, and I must say, having so narrowly averted death, the pigeon didn't seem all that amped up. Like this was but a part of its day. Part of its everyday existence. The hawk didn't get me again, maybe someday he will, maybe he'll try once more in the next quarter hour. Oh well, now to do some pigeon stuff..."

I've never seen a hawk at Copp's Hill before, but as this hawk flew back up to a perch in the trees above, it was joined in flight with a second hawk, as though they were exchanging words, or information. Perhaps criticism was expressed, or a tip for the next time.