There he goes

Thursday 3/20/25

Got back to it a little bit fitness-wise yesterday. Walked six miles and did five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument and 300 push-ups. Many people in the Monument, most of them so stupid as evidenced by their behavior in the Monument that they shouldn't be let outside. I now just say, "Wrong side" as many times as necessary. Must have said it a solid twenty-five times yesterday. The corpulence and the cluelessness is really something, and you see it in microcosmic, accurate display on many days in that obelisk.

Saying "He isn't forcing them" is very rarely a defense of the behavior of the "he," or a lessening of the repugnancy of that behavior, though that's how people intend it being either repugnant themselves and/or without moral standards.

Checked the NHL standing. For the Bruins to make the playoffs, they'd basically need to take points in each of their last thirteen games and would need to win, say, no less than ten of them. And even then they could still be on the outside looking in. Sweeney and Neely keep their jobs? My guess is they will but they won't have them for much longer because I don't see this improving any time soon.

Yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of Molly doing what she did in the middle of the night. Gone. I try to keep moving on the day. Which is what I have to do every day, because it often feels like I have no reason to get up. Ever. I mean, why? What is there for me? I create more. For what? Create the best art there has ever been or could be. For what? But some days can still be a little different. That anniversary. Christmas. I have to move or I'll be in trouble. Christmas is a life or death thing if I just sit there alone. I am alone. Entirely alone. Completely alone. Fundamentally and totally alone. Motion and trying is sometimes all that keeps me alive.

It's spring.

There's a mourning dive who goes off every morning of late. Just the one. My mourning dove neighbor.

Hockey East tournament resumes today at the Garden. BU and UConn in the early game, Northeaster and Maine in the later contest. This could be the year UConn breaks through. That program has come a long way--sort of the like the Penn State program. Three of the four remaining Hockey East teams will make the national tournament no matter how they fare, with Northeastern, obviously, needing to win today and Saturday, which is too tall an order for them, I think. I root for that kind of thing, though. Chances are that Maine handles them emphatically tonight, but you never know.

Ryan Leonard won Hockey East player of the year, as he should have. BC starts in the national tournament on 3/28 against the sixteenth seed. Leonard is practically more on the Capitals right now than he is on the Eagles. Few weeks and he's playing with Ovechkin.

The men's NCAA basketball tournament gets into full swing today. I think the first two days--of the tournament proper--are what people like best. The wall to wall games. The upsets. The opening round of the NHL playoffs are similar. That's the best round. The buzzing of all of those teams and possibilities.

Saw this article asking where Steph Curry belongs on the Mount Rushmore of NBA players. I don't get stuff like this. It's so nonsensical. The math doesn't work, there's no logic. Mount Rushmore has four presidents, yes? So this would be four basketball players? Where does he rank among the top four basketball players of all-time? That's what the headline of this piece was essentially asking. First of all, Mount Rushmore as a concept isn't a ranking. It's a whether you are there thing, and that's the end of it. Those four presidents aren't arranged by ranking. Secondly, Curry wouldn't be one of the top four basketball players of all-time. Just measure him against active players. He's below LeBron James and Nikola Jokić. I'm talking career now. The latter is just too good to put below Curry and with James it's not close. Kevin Durant is better than Curry, but Curry has had the much better career. At best, then, he's third--among active players. Where is he all-time? He's not higher than fifteen. Somewhere in the twenty range, probably. Fifteen to twenty. That piece was at the NBA's official site. Clueless. Theme.

Folk horror is almost always a concern of the spring, summer, and fall--especially the spring and summer--and rarely is the stuff of winter. Which is to say, folk horror aligns itself with the rebirth of the land and growth. Think of the core texts of folk horror. When do they take place? It's usually spring and summer. Snow can't be on the ground, as if that snow creates a layer of separation between human and earth that negates folk horror. The horror has to be something else.

I've figured out some stuff with torrents. Made a bunch of music discoveries of late, too.

Downloaded a Joe Pass Mosaic box set, a Bing Crosby country and western package, and a Bob Dylan soundboard from 2009. There are basically all of two Dylan soundboards from this century, the other being from 2002. Grabbed the Grateful Dead's three-show Boston run from 11/30-12/2/73.

I'm back in M.R. James mode of late.

I continue with this new coffee policy. I am fortunate in that I don't really seem to have withdrawal effects when I stop doing something I had been doing a lot of. I read accounts of people who drink alcohol heavily who then stop and they have the shakes. You see it in TV shows and movies all the time. That person puts their hand out and it's vibrating.

Similarly, I saw some accounts of people who cut back their coffee intake and they had the jitters and headaches. And then there are those who have to need to employ a practice of weening. I'd struggle with that. It's best for me to do something wholly or not at all. Each day I have counted the ounces on the coffee score. Twelve yesterday.

I am working on eleven stories--I call them the eleven--directly at present. What do I mean by directly? I mean I am moving from the one to the other to the next, and it can be within minutes. This is not the same as the number of stories at work on as in stared, close to down, in some degree of undertaking, or the stories I'm working on in my head or know that I will be. These are the eleven: "Friendship Bracelet," "Dead Thomas," "Five Blocks," "The Ghost and the Flame," "Still Good," "Just Pants," "If Storm It Was," "By Water," "Comes a Day, Comes a Man," "Hero of Mine," "Finder of Views." This looks like a sentence now. But if people knew those works, or when they do, this will look like a statement that is all but impossible to believe save that it was true.

I have to write a number of Easter things. I should get moving.

Ah: Nearly six thirty now, and the mourning dove has gotten going. He sounds further away today.