Unnerving Rockport conversation, record-tying day of stairs in the Monument, and stair-based metaphor c/o Captain Clear Cheeks for publishing types like NER's Carolyn Kuebler of Middlebury, Vermont

Saturday 6/13/26

Last Saturday, I had an eventful time of it at the Bunker Hill Monument in Charlestown. I went over there looking to do quite a few circuits. Sometimes I'll have a big number in mind. Others factors may mitigate against reaching that goal--like the humidity--but I know when it's time to try and challenge myself. Maybe I've not been doing so great on the stair score in the days leading up to that day, or perhaps I need to try and exhaust myself, just blast as much poison as I can from my life and situation out of my body, at least, if not my mind and heart, for the space of a morning or afternoon.

On the Thursday before, I had done 200 push-ups, ran five circuits in the Monument, and walked ten miles. The five circuits didn't feel like enough and they hadn't gone as efficiently as I would have liked, so I nursed the idea of going back and doing more, but ultimately didn't, which had me feeling like I hadn't tried as hard as I ought to have.

Then on Friday I ran no stairs anywhere, so one can see--even if one doesn't understand--why I would have wanted to really push it on Saturday, which, as a reader of this journal would well know by now, is when a new week starts for me.

I arrived at the Monument about twenty minutes before it opened. There was a ranger standing by what is sometimes the entrance to the lodge and sometimes the exit. In the winter, it tends to be the former; during the spring and summer, the latter. Normally this is where I'd do some stretches, but I didn't on this morning.

This is the spot where rangers have been waiting for me to reprimand me about what people have said about me inside the Monument when I have done no wrong to anyone and am in truth the victim. I'm flat out done with these carpet-summonings/colloquies and will inform the next person of as much if and when they try and have another with me. Flat out done. They're not happening anymore.

On this morning, I wanted nothing to do with any kind of exchange as to how horrific people behave in the Monument and what they allege about me in this horrific age or how I wouldn't be entertaining any such conversations moving ahead. I didn't wish to speak to anyone, frankly, about anything. Why would one ever, if one isn't like other people? Instead, I kept my distance and sat on the lawn some fifteen yards away and began to stretch.

After I'd done so for a while, a man, maybe in his early thirties, approached me. This is when things got unnerving and hard for me. This was a very nice man and I rather liked him, so it wasn't that. I should mention at this point that I was wearing a Boston Symphony Orchestra T-shirt and my Celtics headband.

There was a group of people already assembled and waiting for the doors to open so that they could go to the top of the Monument. Some of them were sitting on the benches that were near where that ranger was standing or in the space between them or sitting on the steps to the main entrance of the lodge.

These people were all close enough--and either just sitting there or scrolling on their phones, because people hardly speak to each other anymore--to hear every word of the conversation that followed between me and the man who approached me.

The first thing the man said to me was, "How many laps are you doing today?" This took me aback. I probably looked surprised, because he continued, "The last time I saw you and asked what number you were on, you said six."

I stated that normally when people mention having seen me before, it's either out on the street and away from the Monument itself or it's years later and they're back again and remark that I was here the last time they were here. That is, there aren't many recent repeat Monument visitors.

Now this is when I had to tighten my grip on the rope. Obviously, I think about Rockport often. I am trying with everything I have, which is more than any other person has ever had, to get back there. Some days, that may be all that keeps me alive until the next day, though I don't believe this will ever happen for me. I think there's only going to be more pain, suffering, unfairness, discrimination, hardship, until I'm dead.

The way things are going, those things will probably continue on after I'm dead, like I'm meant to pass through all the levels of existence and transmuted existence as a form of energy that is always tortured and made to hurt the maximum amount possible. The better I become, the more I try, the worse it has gotten.

The man says to me, out of nowhere, "Do you know if the Monument is made of Rockport granite?"

I mentioned above what shirt I was wearing. I hadn't worn a Rockport-related shirt in some time. Along the same lines of why I haven't been there for a visit in too long. The pain is overwhelming. More so, of course, when I'm there, and see this place I love so much where I cannot stay. It's like hot metal against my skin. Parts of me blister on the inside. But sometimes I won't even wish to see the name of the town on a shirt.

I answered, saying that most of the granite came from Quincy, but some was from Rockport. You talk about on-the-nose, Hollywood-style symbolism. This man, fighting against so much, fighting for so much, both in terms of the world and himself, fighting to endure, to get through, to get to where he's been denied in going, because of what he is and those great things, tries to keep going in part, and lengthen his life, which is nothing but hurt right now, and hopelessness, and aloneness, and being hated, feared, envied, shunned, runs up and down the stairs of an obelisk in part made of the very ground of this place he's trying so hard to return to. The granite of Rockport, in this way, is often right up against my skin.

The man, who was standing as I sat, went on to say that this was his birthday and he was meeting some friends here. He liked the Monument and visited often. Later he and his friends were going to Haymarket to get some seafood and would then prepare a meal to eat together.

He said his name was Luke. We shook hands and he sat down beside me to show me some photos he'd taken. Some were of planes in various stages of landing and take-off. He knew various items of technical information and shared them with me. He had visited Rockport the weekend before and had photos which I was made to see of Halibut Point and the like.

We spoke of nature, places to go to via commuter rail, museums, architecture, and history. He was smart and knew words and was a kind man. It is little doubt, of course, that with all of this being true, that we would hit it off. This sounded like two smart fellows who liked and appreciated each other.

I mention that because, again, our conversation would have been audible to those nearby, just as I mentioned the shirt I was wearing insofar as either had anything to do with what was soon to happen. There's always a larger point to be made. And to be seen, if one knows what's what in this world.

The Monument eventually opened. Luke was still waiting for his friends, so we said our goodbyes for the time being, and I went into the Monument, behind all of those people who'd been waiting on or around the benches just outside the lodge. This meant that my initial ascent was taken at a slow pace.

As I've said, I normally don't pass people going up, unless they're barely moving. Usually, they're going to step aside anyway to rest, and I wait for that opportunity. The other climbers reached the top and do what everyone else save myself does there--looks out the windows at the views, sits on the benches and recovers.

Some were coming down before I got to the top again. There were pleasant exchanges. A prevailing friendly mood here on this late spring/early summer Saturday morning. I'll also note as I have before that you can hear everything in that Monument. Sound is amplified by the granite and it travels. People you might think are just ahead of you around the next curve could really be 125 stairs away. Whispering doesn't work in the Monument either.

People were friendly towards me and I was friendly towards them. They asked me how many times I would be going up and down, and I told them my goal for the day. Not that many people either. It was all very relaxed. A nice atmosphere.

As I was coming down that second time, there was a man moving slowly around, say, stair seventy-five or so. That is, with about seventy-five stairs left until we were back at the bottom. He didn't move athletically or as someone who moves much at all. Not an old man. I said, politely, "Excuse me," so I could pass.

Here's the thing: you need to say something going down as you're going to pass someone. You shouldn't be expected to have to wait behind them such that their slow pace is your pace. This guy was moving slowly enough that if I sat down on a stair to hang out, I could have gotten up and resumed my normal pace--which isn't some crazy, free-for-all, wild man race to the literal bottom--and I would have been right at his back in short order.

You say "excuse me" or whatever to give people notice so that you don't startle them. The stairs are designed such that two people can pass. It isn't meant as a single-file staircase. It's intended to fit two-aside. If a clueless person oblivious to the world, thinking that no one else exists save themselves, which is how many people are, especially now, and with spatial awareness at an all-time low, as you know, if you've ventured into a grocery store, for example, in the last year or two, all of a sudden catches you out of the corner of their eye, they can lose their balance, trip, hurt themselves. What I'm really doing is looking out for that person. Though I can't stand them for being as fixated on themselves as they usually are as the only person that matters.

It's also easy for feet to get tangled. Either party can go down. Anyway, the guy doesn't move. He just keeps awkwardly lumbering. I figure, okay, maybe he didn't hear me. The chances of this are nil. Chances are much better that he did hear me, he heard my exchanges with the other people in the Monument as to how many circuits I planned to do on this day, and he likely heard my conversation with Luke outside. He's seen my shirt, understood the cut of the contrasting jib, or some combo, and he has problems with me as a result.

In short, this is someone inclined to hate me. Same as it goes with publishing. It's not what I've done to someone. It is always what the idea of me means to them. We see it with Carolyn Kuebler of New England Review. I could cite many names of publishing people that have populated these pages whose discriminatory practices are a result of how threatened they feel by this man who can do what they cannot. Who they see as better than they are. That is my "crime." That is what they are punishing. That is why people like Rebecca Barden of the BFI are discriminating.

You don't think if I'd ever done anything to any of these people you'd know about it? You don't think they'd put that out there online? How shocked would you be if you are a reader of these pages to see me acting monstrously? Or as they do?

This record is now nearly 4000 entries long. The person I am, the manner in which I always conduct myself, is unshakably consistent over the eight years--almost to day; it could be the actual day, I suppose--that this journal has existed. There's no "let up," no exceptions. There isn't an entry, a single moment, where someone could accurately say, "Wow, that was awful of him, well, I guess everyone is permitted a bad day." Something bad would have slipped out if it was in me, and it hasn't, because that kind of something isn't there at this point.

There are publishing people who will think I'm the devil because I know and have said the irrefutable truth about them or their cronies, after having no choice but to do so, unless I wanted to essentially join in on their discrimination against me and be part of it by positioning myself, and forever remaining, as their silent victim, like I got off on the evil they felt themselves permitted to act upon and I was allowing them to inflict upon me by remaining silent and not doing a damn thing about it.

If these people had so much as a piece of lint they could use against me, they would. If you saw the hundreds of thousands of emails written over the years, you'd see that they're written in much the same way--or with the friendliness--that you've seen me write letters to my nieces and nephew, or how I've conducted and expressed myself to people I've tried to help.

I'm consistently who I am and have become. That's why they can't use those emails. They inculpate them even further. Because they prompt a response of utmost incredulity of, "That's the guy you hate? That's the guy you told other people to hate? And he had that work for you? That pitch? That book? Which is obviously better than anything you've seen? You want him dead? He's so professional and friendly and over-qualified."

There were probably about a half dozen times along the way where I said a truth without varnish. You gotta keep people honest every now and again. Ted Williams didn't take the first pitch he saw every game.

But it's telling: if you took years of abuse and discrimination and finally said, in effect, "screw you, what is wrong with you?" these are people who would see that as tantamount to having murdered generations of their family, not that they care about their families because they only care about the preservation of their egos, but you get my point.

They'd never question what they might have done, hundreds of times, over many years, to have brought things around to that juncture. These same people who would scream bloody murder if they weren't given something they didn't deserve the very second that they decided they wanted it. These people who are supposed to know something about human nature and the self.

Ironic, isn't it?

Never mind that these people are having AI write what they call their own work, they're sexually assaulting and harassing people, they're stealing, they're raping, they're mocking the disabled, they're cheering for those who mock the disabled, they're following women home and asking if they can anally fist them, they're plagiarizing.

Lorin Stein late of The Paris Review clearing his desk in order to enter someone on top of it in exchange for a publication and his wife Sadie of The New York Times Book Review, who enjoys publishing AI-written reviews, helping to grease the skids as Allison Wright of the Virginia Quarterly Review makes jokes about that's just Lorin being Lorin hardy har har.

Williard Spiegelman yelling at someone for using...his name...and then turning around and requesting naked photos from that same person he just yelled at. Like a psychopath. Look at Mark Warren. Being out of your mind and being one of them will win you a Pulitzer here. This is the way you must be right now, and perhaps until the last of this system goes down the drain it circles, if such things are to come to you. Guggenheims. System support. Carried water. Legs up. Best of lists. Or anything within these walls of the cul-de-sac of dysfunction and backwardness. Until and if it changes. Out of your tree in terms of how twisted you are. And without any ability. That's the formula. And having that blue blood. Classism.

A woman wrote me about being cyber-stalked by the web editor at one of your most famous venues, and being hacked by this web editor, who was abetted in this cause by that venue's Pulitzer Prize-winning editor in chief. The good person will always be the bad person to such people. This is also how it works. And this is above all, in its netherworld subculture, how publishing at present works. Yiyun Li cashing in on crocodile tears, a special kind of scrip as it turns out.

Then the host for the evening stands up from the table and says, "Has everyone who wants one received their Guggenheim? Smashing. Maurice, inform staff that the iced prune parfait may now be served."

This man in the Monument knew I was kind, intelligent, well-spoken, cultured, and athletic. Like I mentioned, I thought, okay, maybe he didn't hear me when I politely said, "Excuse me," but I had a strong inkling that here was trouble because of what this man was and what he knew--just from these last ten or twelve minutes--about me.

I said "excuse me" again, a bit louder, and this time he stopped in a huff. Makes this big show of shrugging his shoulder in exasperation. Shakes his head. All but stamps his feet. He also begins grumbling under his breath. I pass him, and to this grumbling he adds, "Fuck you."

I am so sick of being treated the way I am because someone thinks I'm better than they are. You know what? They can always try and be better themselves. You suck at writing? Hey, that's not my fault I'm infinitely better at it than you are. Work harder at your writing, maybe you can improve. You don't know much about anything? Try and learn something about one thing and proceed from there. You're out of shape? Go for a run.

You don't have time? I started my work day on this Saturday at 12:30 AM. What time are you getting up today to work on your writing? Going to work on it at all? When did you last? Have you ever really?

How hard do you think a J. Robert Lennon works at their prose? Look how...nothing...his writing is. Is there any effort going into it at all? And if there is...and that's the best you can do...yikes...no wonder he was going to loathe me. But I don't know. I feel like it would have been a better choice to holster that envy and resentment and not be plainly revealed as he's been here as the bigoted clown that he is. At least Bozo played it fair.

In publishing, those people are going to try to take out their shortcomings on me. Again, it's never what I do to anyone, it's what I represent to them. It's the idea of me. Not my behavior. And you know what? That I carry myself the way I do, that I treat people the way I do, that I am kind, that I am honorable, that I am a person of the utmost moral conviction--hell, even that I gave up drinking and transformed the physical part of my life--makes those people, people who are this way through and through, hate me more, seek to act out against me more, banish me more, if that's possible.

Now I'm in a bad spot, right? Because I can't let someone talk to me that way. That's not an option. Why? Because I have to live with myself. There is right. There is wrong. It's like exposing these horrible publishing people in this record. I very obviously dread doing so. That's why I put it off often.

It must be done, though. Or else, again, I'm just throwing dirt on my own grave. They've tried to murder me. They've thrown me in the hole. The dirt is raining down. And I'm trying to get out. To live. To have a life. To get to where I am trying to go. And, more importantly, to get my work to the world.

Whether that happens or not, nothing is more important. And it'll either be this most important thing that happened that put these other things in motion, or it will be a case of the thing that the world needed the most never came to fruition. But there is nothing more important than this work and what it could do.

It isn't writing like other people have writing. Whether that's people terrible at writing like Junot Diaz, etc., or people not terrible like James Joyce. This is its separate other thing, and there's never been anything like it and there never will be again. I'm not assisting in the throwing of that dirt on my hole in the earth that I'm stuffed in, and that others would have me never get out of. I'm not doing it. That means I'm going to have to do things I don't want to do, and that there's little I'd less wish to do.

So, I stop on the stairs and turn around to look up at this man. He is large-gutted. He has two chins. Working on a third. I'd say he's about fifty-five-years-old, but he looks thirty years older than I am. Were he not short and if he didn't look the way he did, he could pass for my father. Not my father as in my actual late father; I mean that's how extreme the age gap between us would appear to a third party. His cheeks were also sufficiently pitted with pock marks to be nearly translucent.

What's so strange to me about this kind of thing, too, is that this is someone I could splatter the walls with. I don't look like someone you're going to take on in anything physical and have it work out smoothly for you. I'm fit, I'm tall, I'm athletic. I look like a guy who gets after it physically.

I said, "What did you say?"

He says, "Nothing."

I said, "Didn't sound like nothing. What did you say?"

He responds, "I said, 'go around. Just go around.'"

I said, "That isn't what you said. What's your problem, man?"

You ready for his response? This is verbatim. This is actually how someone chose to behave because of what I represented to them. And because of who they are and how that compares.

He said, "You're ugly."

One sees the situation I've been thrust into here with all the problems I've had because of people like this monstrosity, this human-sized embodiment of a ripe strip of fecal bacteria. And because this is a miserable, unintelligent, anti-intellectual, out-of-shape piece of embittered garbage, I have no reason to think he isn't going to walk up to the rangers at the bottom and report me. Because this is how it works.

Then, I, the innocent party, am called out on the carpet and reprimanded by people whose job isn't much harder than running a child's lemonade stand, who rarely set foot in this obelisk to do something like clean out the litter that accumulates in there. Which I wouldn't be saying, if I wasn't being accused by them of things that not only do I not do, but which stand in marked contrast with how I've always treated them over the course of many years.

I say to the guy, "Okay, let's get it reported, then," because I'm not taking any chances. That's the situation that has been created by false accusations made by miserable toadstool-like post-humans of the trash world that is ours in the year 2026, and the rangers who then put me in the position of having to defend myself. Up until now, I would have just gone about my day.

I see the ranger I've known the longest amount of time--the one who mentioned that "solution" to my problems back on May 23--and I call him over. I tell him exactly what happened while waiting for Captain Clear Cheeks to finish his protracted descent. And this ranger actually starts admonishing me. He tells me, "You have to be aware in there..."

Nah, brother. We're not doing that. We are not doing the blame the victim thing. The guy comes out, I say exactly what happened, and the ranger mumbles into the tops of his shoes. Saying, "We have to be careful here," meaning, I suppose, he and I, because of...official policy? Cameras being on us? Like I'm Malone and he's Smith and we're guys in a film noir who can't afford to get busted again or we'll never be let back out. When I said that this guy said, "Fuck you," the guy himself said, no, I called you a fuck.

Oh. My bad then. Thank you.

(Worth adding: It's quite unusual to see someone at the Monument by themselves. People usually go with a significant other, their family, a large group like a tour group or kids on a field trip or a bunch of boy scouts, or friends. To have interactions with two people there by themselves is even unlikelier. Captain Clear Cheeks really didn't fit the profile of someone who would do this activity by themselves. Those who do are usually curious about the world around them, want to learn something, have an appreciation for history, are in Boston for work and want to try and make the most of it and see some sites...this guy wasn't like that. If you were like that, of course, you'd also be less likely to behave the way this person did. I really don't know why he'd come to this place. Didn't seem like his kind of thing to voluntarily do.)

The ranger said hardly a word to him. I like this guy. I have no ill will towards him. But come on. That's weak. And it's not right. And you're still kind of scapegoating me? This guy here...it wasn't subtle that he was a piece of garbage.

Very similar to publishing. It's amazing how bang on these Monument-based metaphors are for what happens with the likes of a Carolyn Kuebler, a Wendy Lesser, a Christopher Beha.

And you know what? This example from last Saturday hasn't got anything on this doozy--I want to say it's unbelievable, but, again, that's something you have to say, though you're painfully, paradoxically aware of how believable it actually is, same as the real workings and the real reasons why of the incestuously evil publishing system--I've yet to document in these pages, in which a man went so far as to weaponize his child.

But we will come to that. And it'll make for a different, but equally telling, metaphor.

All I did to Captain Clear Cheeks is be what I am, those things being good things. Keep in mind, too, his exposure to me was over a duration of mere minutes, and he was able to crank up that much resentment.

Think about if you're a Carolyn Kuebler. That exposure extends over years. Watching this guy do what he does that you can't. Knowing how much better he is at writing. How much more he knows. How much more he publishes. Can write on.

Knowing that he does it against great resistance, while also knowing that anything you've ever had printed, that scant amount, never had anything to do with anyone thinking it was any good, but rather other things. A relationship, quid pro quo. Knowing you'd never had a real achievement in your writing life. And that you'd never written anything of any intrinsic value.

And to you I'd come with another great and unique work. Knuckling the forehead. Hanging in there for years. As you hooked up your friends. Put things in sight unseen because of who they came from, or what you in turn wanted to get from someone. Writing that anyone who looks at it, as we've looked at it in prose offs, knows is terrible. But it's worse than terrible, isn't it? It's risibly bad. So bad you laugh at it. But hey, Pushcart Prize, right? Have a Pulitzer!

What else can we get you? Let's tout you! Hype you! Who cares that you suck at this--you are one of us, and you will represent our ilk. You know what you need? You need a Genius Grant. Anyone ever tell you that? Let's make that happen...just gotta get a blood sample first, mere formality...right blood and all...

Look, if you don't know that none of this is real yet, I seriously doubt your ability to tell if water is wet.

This guy went from zero to sixty in terms of his animus for me in no time flat. So imagine a bitter, miserable, envious, untalented, imposter-syndrome riddled publishing type, with all that time for their hate to grow. All those examples of great work. The constant production when you're a person who finds it so hard to write so much as a half a page of anything, however bad it is. And for that you need to steal, or use your own life and change some names because you just don't have an imagination, and lo and behold, it's another story about a professor or trust fund Brooklyn dilettante lit life wankery or Yale.

I wasn't being knocked off my stride, though. I went back into the Monument and proceeded to run twenty circuits of stairs in total. This is now the tenth time in my ten-year stair-running career that I've run twenty circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. Eight of those times have come since last June. Six of them have come since my birthday in mid-September, and four have happened in 2026.

It was quite hot and humid--though not as much as it'd soon become--and the twenty circuits were rather challenging. I then returned the next day to the Monument and did five more circuits. On each day I also walked three miles and did 100 push-ups. Incidentally, I saw a chart last night saying how many push-ups a fit person should be able to do at such and such an age. The amount of push-ups I do per rep is the target number for an athletic twenty-year-old. And if it wasn't, you can, again, bet your life I was going to make sure I got to that level.

On Tuesday, I returned to City Hall and ran a tidy 5000 stairs, taking them two-at-a-time, without stopping. Again did the 100 push-ups. I ran five circuits of stairs inside the Monument on both Wednesday and Thursday, walked three miles each day, and did 100 push-ups each day.

I've come to a realization regarding some of these days where I'm struggling more. For instance, the heat and humidity made it very difficult to get through five circuits on Thursday. I went into the Monument with this big number in mind, and it took most of what I had to get to five. The truth is--and I shouldn't have been so hard on myself that day at City Hall when I only ran 2000 stairs--that a day running five circuits of stairs in the humidity or 3000 stairs outside can be akin to a one of those high-volume stair days.

If you measure by sweat, for instance, I was as wet on Thursday after five circuits as I would have been on a day when it was sixty degrees after thirteen circuits.

Nonetheless, I wanted to do better (because of course), so I returned yesterday to the Monument, determined to do ten circuits. By the time I got there, just from walking there, my shirt was soaked most of the way through. The dew point was 71. I was stretching outside the Monument, when a ranger told me they were closed.

This fellow is now short with me. He's the guy I spoke to twice on that day I was reprimanded for the second day in a row. I suspect the shortness has something to do with this record. I only say the truth and what happened. But, as we know, people very seldomly like that. Even if they know it to be true.

This journal has one abiding policy: what is said will be true. If it's true, it is permissible. That's what I'm going with. I may have no chance. I'm sure I have no chance. But even if I had a chance, I would have hitched my wagon to truth. It's what I believe in. As what there actually has to be.

Without truth, nothing can improve. A life without truth is a life that isn't worth living that isn't really lived. It's hard for me to imagine any of this mattering anyway. Now, sometimes that truth is a long time in coming out, and often it doesn't until I feel I have no choice, or I'm backed into a corner, or I'm asked, essentially, to be complicit in something that is wrong and morally wrong. Or something that would compromise my integrity or the person I try to be. A person someone like my father would expect me to be.

I have to answer to who I am. Maybe no one else does, but I do. And you know what? We all have to decide the person we want to be. Maybe you think it just happens. You are who you are. But that's not how it goes.

Do you want to be a good person who cares about the truth, and who is oriented to truth, and who does the right thing, and lives up to their word, and helps people and looks out for them, or do you want to be something else? And if you don't stop to think about that, to ascertain what you are, you're essentially making a choice all the same. It's like an absentee parent. They chose not to be there. Out of mind and out of sight involved a decision somewhere along the way, whether one sees it now or can't recall it having happened.

The funny thing about truth is that the people who hate it so much because of what it may reveal about them are free to do something about it. You can change what you're doing or how you were thinking. Make. A. Change. Does the truth string? Okay, I guess. But what does the past matter when you've become a better person? That's you right then, and then there's you going forward. You can stop.

It's amazing that we have this freedom to get better. To be better. But what is arguably even more amazing is that we will keep on going as we were, but perhaps with newfound resentment towards someone else, and animus to harbor for them, with a desire to now treat them badly, or worse, or punish them, get "revenge" against them, simply because we can't do a "my bad," like that causes us too much shame or grief or stings too much. Why?

I will take a story that others would think a masterpiece and say, "This isn't nearly good enough, you can make this much better," and I will work at doing so, for as long as it takes. I'm not hurt. I'm not resentful. I don't need this other thing to be true. That the work couldn't have been improved upon. I don't have to try and cling to a falsehood for my...what? Ego? Pride?

No. I'd rather make the work the best work it could ever be, and have that be the reality going forward instead.

But people who are in the wrong, or who have done wrong, can't do this in their lives? That's...pathetic. That's so weak. You're not stronger than that? That's too much for you? So you need to cling to this falsehood and have ire for the person who exposed what we can both see as what it plainly is?

Here's a truth: the person you become, just like what the work of fiction becomes, essentially renders moot the shortcomings of the past. If we're talking people, sure, there can be other people we need to make amends to.

Most people, if you try to make the amends that you should make with them, are gracious about that. They will usually be willing to start again with you. They're not going to spit your efforts of ownership as to what you have or haven't done back in your face. And if they do, well, you move on, which you're doing in your own personage, the person you are becoming, anyway. Not everything will go perfectly.

I spent many more years drinking than I have years having given up drinking. If that makes sense. This is a little different, but what do you think I think of myself as? What do you think of me as? A drinker or a non-drinker?

A steadfast non-drinker, yes? What you become, which is up to you, is what becomes the reality. The take-away reality. If you're a publishing person who behaves badly and pettily, stop doing so. You'll feel better about yourself. You'll be able to sit in a room in quiet with your own thoughts and know some peace. And I bet it's been a long, long, long time since that was the case.

Nothing good in this life can happen without acceptance. That doesn't mean acquiescence. And acceptance can't happen with defensiveness. The latter is the enemy of your growth. Your absence of growth is the root of your nullity. A big, empty root. Tap it and hear how hollow it is.

With this ranger's curt relaying of information, I took myself on over to the Connecticut Gate in the shadow of the Monument and proceeded to run 3000 stairs there. This was very hard. I didn't enjoy this. Afterwards, you would have seen me literally on my hands and knees on the nearby grass. Now that's pushing yourself!

Again, only 3000 stairs, but multiple that times a bunch in terms of degree of difficulty. I guess I don't like to think of the heat and humidity exerting as much influence on me as it can at present--like I said yesterday, I'm committed to reducing this influence by becoming stronger and fitter--but I'm also learning that a day like that, or the one with the 2000 stairs at City Hall, aren't indicative of me slipping or anything. Yesterday was hard. That was a yeoman's job of a workout.

As I was heading home, multiple people commented on how much I had sweat, so you know you have to be pretty wet for that to be the case.

The total of Monument circuits since March 11 stands at 342. There are likely to be more closures in the next little bit.