Thick bricks

Friday 7/11/25

It was in the sixties yesterday and raining when I left for Charlestown. The rain made it so you were just on the border of being cold. It wasn't very pleasant out. That temperature is often ideal for stair running, but the humidity changes everything. Got the Monument and gutted my way through ten circuits. Didn't take my phone with me because I knew my shorts would be soaked through.

There were a couple groups of children going to the top, twenty kids or so at a time. After I was done a ranger theorized to me that the kids probably make it harder, but usually they don't. The kids tend to be in better shape than the adults, so you're less likely to be stuck behind them and needing to find a way to pass. Also, kids are less likely to be confrontational assholes in the Monument or offended when you politely say, "Excuse me" or "Can I squeeze by?"

Coming back it was pouring. That was uncomfortable. You're drenched in sweat, going across that bridge, pelted with rain. People aren't out, for the most part. It's you, doing this thing for these reasons having to do with bigger things.

It gives me a kind of anxiety--I can feel my heart going faster as I'm looking through things--that I never see anyone post anything intelligent. The terror that I am in a world where basically no one is capable of so much as a single intelligent remark, or, perhaps I should say, a non-stupid one.

Trailing 3-1 in the seventh, the Red Sox came back with three runs in the bottom of that inning to beat the Rays last night. Walker Buehler was the starter, so you knew this would be a tough win to get. He gave them what is technically a quality start--six innings and three earned runs. That's an ERA of 4.50, which is a funny ERA to achieve something with the word "quality" in it, but I'd say that last night he did his job. The Rays are struggling right now so it's a good time to put it to them.

I have continued with the sports Substack--put something up on there this AM. Zero followers. As I said: If you don't constantly whore yourself and beg people to follow you, if you're not perpetually buttonholing people and thrusting yourself into their faces, and you have the best content that there is, you will have no followers. People who have many followers whore themselves and have nothing of value to share.

That is how it works right now. And yet, we're so stupid, that we think more followers means that the content in question is better, more worth our time, our interest, and that the person whose content that is is better, too, and that they're more commercially viable. When they're just stupider and they have worse shit. And usually no morals, and no problem spending their lives whoring, cajoling, importuning, begging, others to pretend to be interested in what they're doing and have to say. And people who make other people think that they're no less stupid, shallow, boring, and basic than that person whose content it is.

Would it really be that awful to try harder? Would it really be that awful to try and learn something? Things? Would it really be that awful to talk like less of a moron? Would it really be that awful to try and use your own words? Would it really make you that much more tired? Or whatever you think it's going to do? And then wouldn't that be better for everyone?

Every day the Monument gets me down with how dense people are. So dense that you think it's not possible that a species can have members who are this way, let alone the majority of its members. Humans aren't that far above the animals that you see. Just a little bit. But in what's still this very crude way. I human could outsmart a possum, but not by some drastically different amount than what one animal species might have it over another species. It's still in that animal ballpark, so to speak, which is different than this "highest form of life by far" thing that you live your life with as this inviolable truth. But when you think about it, that truth isn't really there. Not as you thought it was, anyway.

For instance: There are all of these signs as you go into the Monument telling you that there are 294 stairs. They don't hide this fact. They want you to know it.

People are so stupid, and so bad at reading, that they can't comprehend these signs. Like no one will know that there are 294 stairs. That's where our reading comprehension level is at.

Yesterday a group of five people were going up together. I often hear people before I see them. Sound is amplified a lot in the Monument. If you say something to someone in your normal conversational voice, your words will be perfectly clear to someone else 125 stairs above or below you, like you were talking to them.

So you can imagine how much it sucks with loud, unfunny idiots. It's like being sonically hounded by their stupidity. This guy yesterday asks the people he's with how many stairs there are. Now, there is basically no chance that anyone will have the right answer to this question, because people aren't able to read a sign and comprehend what it says--and this includes Starbucks bathrooms when it's just "occupied" or "vacant" on the outside of the door (a goodly chunk of Americans don't even know what those words mean and no, I'm not exaggerating)--so someone says 180. In other words, not even close.

This guy is going to repeat how many stairs there are a bunch of times. As in, "Remind me why we decided to go up these X number of stairs again..." which has me thinking, "Just die then, guy. Just expire and be gone, you lazy, dumb fuck."

I haven't even seen him at this point, but I know how that will go. I could meet with one of those police sketch artists and without seeing this guy and merely by describing what I expect this guy to look like, I could help that police sketch artist create a pretty reasonable likeness such that someone else could pick this guy out based off of it.

Isn't that amazing how often that's the case?

You see it with publishing, of course. You know how the person will look. Which is also symptomatic of how the people in the system want you to look and also why the people of the system are the people of the system, to some degree. Why they call themselves writers, or editors, or agents. How they got here. Which is never about writing, a love of writing, a love of art, a need to create work that matters, to share work that matters, to make work that matters available, to introduce people to work that matters, to enrich society and culture with work that matters, etc.

And each time this guy does one of his "jokes," he gets the number wrong, because he's too stupid to remember 1. What the other idiot said to him in the first place and 2. What his own idiotic self said last time.

Then the guy says, "These are thick bricks." The Monument is comprised of giant blocks of granite. So this idiot doesn't even know what a brick is. Think about that. How the fuck can you not know what a brick is?

Well, you know what? That's also probably most people now. You have to suspend belief if you are not stupid to understand how stupid most people are at this point. Because unless you're experienced in observing it, it doesn't seem possible. (It's not just a skill for noting what is transpiring and what is; it's remembering what you've noted and seen; and people have terrible memories; we're not equipped to be anything but stupid, pretty much, without having any clue what we are or aren't, because we're not capable of seeing anything for what it is, and if we somehow manage to do so, it's just a bit of ephemera that's with us for a few seconds, a few minutes, a few hours, maybe a day, and then it's gone.) And even then it doesn't seem possible. But it's what it is.

As for the thick brick remark, he might as well have been describing himself, but if you said that to him, he wouldn't understand what you meant.

If you write, you live this. You can write, "I ate an apple for lunch," and people won't understand that sentence. They will have no clue what it means. They won't understand that it was lunch and not dinner or breakfast, they'll think it was an orange or a Big Mac. Or that you didn't have anything to eat.

This is the world. This is who you're dealing with. This is the average person. Or better than average, probably, because at least this guy and his group/brood decided to do something somewhat culturally related, and with a historical component, too. You know, something educational, at least on the face of it. Which is more than most people, right?

He gets to stair 250 and pronounces it "two fitty," because, again, that's him being funny. Ha ha ha ha fucking ha ha. Great one, chief. A head full of porridge.

And of course I'm going past these people. This way, then that way. Up and down goes the C-Dawg as the fat idiots do their thing. And one of those times I get to the top while these people are still up there. This guy--who looked exactly like I knew he would--is facing the top stair. So he's right in front of me. We are facing each other. Nothing between us. We both have an unobstructed view of each other. I'm fit. I've gone past him twice. I have on workout clothes. Sweat is running down my forehead, my face. It's dripping off of me. I am wearing a headband. And he says, "You made it," like I'm him. Two guys in the exact same boat.

And that is imperative for people to be able to think. They have to look at whomever they look at and think "We the same." It's everything for people. It's often everything in what they want in someone else, in whatever capacity. We have seen time and again that this is the foundation of the publishing system. That this idea is more deeply rooted there than anywhere else.

So what does that mean as people do nothing but devolve? Get dumber? Simpler? Lazier? Less educated? Less everything good?

People are too stupid to put together the details--the information I just mentioned--and have any clue what might be going on, that this person isn't like them. Isn't doing what they're doing. Hasn't come to Boston for the first time from out of state to do this Freedom Trail thing. Unless they're forced to be disabused of that notion. But they are so narcissistic, and will only try to process anything in the world through the lens of their own navels and assholes, that they force a vision of themselves on to you and on to everything. And when that vision doesn't work--when it bounces off, you could say--they fear and resent whatever, and whomever, caused that fit not to happen. They take that as a rejection. Of their fundamental selves. Of their entire lives.

I'd study that paragraph if I was someone else. Because that's it, right there. That is the crux of our world now.

That is what you're dealing with in this world--this guy, and worse. Because that's basically all there is at this juncture.

What did I do? Nothing. I just looked right through him. Pure hate, I'm sure, on my face. Because I do hate you if you don't try to be smarter. If you're not even fucking trying. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think it's indicative of caring about humanity at large. Because you should hate that. It should horrify you. Offend you. It's why everything sucks and why life sucks. This guy represents however many millions of people.

At least with kids, there's a bit less of this kind of thing, though they also can't read a sign and understand anything it says. Yesterday, a couple of girls in one of those groups I mentioned--who were probably twelve or thirteen, asked me, around stair 100, how close they were to the top. I said "close." Like what the fuck am I going to say? You're thirteen fucking years old, you shouldn't even be thinking like this, what the fuck does it matter, get your ass up the fucking stairs.

I never, ever, ever, ever, would have asked a question like that if I was out doing something like this with my family or a group of my classmates. If I was an old man with a cane, maybe. But you're a kid. You're young. That type of thing shouldn't even be in your mind. Because imagine how much it will be later then? And it's not an age thing. It's a being this way thing. It's having built-in excuses. Not trying makes you more tired. Doing more, doing things better, energizes you. It age-proofs you.

I said it nicely. I'm always nice to children. And it makes me smile when one kid--and it's usually just one kid, and it's often a girl--is way ahead of the rest of their group. Like they got in that Monument and wanted to try and get to the top as fast as they could, or make it without stopping.

I'll pass that girl--with her head down, all serious and focused on this little challenge/goal she set for herself--and then her next closest classmates fifty stairs behind her, and it's a bit of hope, you know? Sometimes some fat parent will be telling her to slow down, and it's not for some safety reason. It's because the parent feels bad about how slow they are. It's not your kid's fault that you're winded after twenty-five stairs. I see a lot of parents taking out their shortcomings on their kids. They'll get cross with their kids for being able to go up stairs much more easily than they can. Get on the treadmill, mom. No one's stopping you.

When that happens, I always have this thought of, "You keep going--don't stop until you're there." I'm pulling for that kid because they represent something, too.