Saturday 7/11/20
Well, the C-Dawg is slathered in hydrocortisone cream. Got a bit dinged up today. The positives: I can work out crazy amounts and I have no aches, no pain. I'm in better shape than I've been in since my early twenties, and my face seems to keep getting narrower. The less good--I just about blistered my calves today and I have a number of heat rashes. I walked twenty miles, and at midday, in ninety degree heat, I ran those Boston College stairs ten times. What happens after the stairs, after you walk the ten miles first, is that you're as wet as if you jumped into a pool with your clothes on. You almost need to bring a change of attire on this workout. Then I walked ten miles back in the wet clothes. The entire thing, by the way, takes at least five hours. I wrote a number of letters in my head that I need to send to people who are not in my life anymore.
Speaking of hours: I did a rough computation today, as I figured out what to talk about on Downtown next, and it turns out that it would take you thirty hours, give or take, to listen to all of my prior segments on the show. That's a lot of radio art. Thirty straight hours. You could have quite the marathon. And almost all of it is up in the On air section of the site. I think the last handful aren't up on there yet.
I was up until two in the morning watching an awful Hallmark Christmas movie I've seen several times before, because I will watch anything Christmas-related, except that Chevy Chase picture that people like to think is so funny and makes me despair over how low baselines are. The film was The Nine Lives of Christmas. All Hallmark Christmas films are terrible, but I'll watch them. At the end of this one, there's no romantic match, nothing is happening, so out of nowhere, with like two minutes left, they just jam the dude and the woman together, hurray, it's love. There's a cat named Ambrose. Presumably not named after Bierce. But maybe he was.
And then I awoke at what is late for me, at 5:20, and shortly thereafter I was composing. I came up with, began, and completed a 2500 masterpiece of a story called "Second Boy." I don't even know how the fuck I think of this stuff. I mean, I do. But you take a step back, even when you've done it, even when it's who you are, the ability to do it and always do it, and it's still a case of "what the fuck, how is this possible? Where does that come from?" There's never been a second I have taken this for granted, even though it's the most fundamental thing about me, because the work precludes the possibility of taking it for granted. It's just too...too. Do you know what I mean?
I got some Popsicles. I get up in the night and make them my mouth bitch. That's quite wrong. You shouldn't say you made something your mouth bitch. Still. That's how it is with Popsicles, isn't it? There was a crazy person walking down Beacon the other day, with some Mylar balloons. And he was talking about this watermelon he had eaten. Or, rather, he was screaming about it. He was quite vocal. "I devoured the motherfucker, devoured the watermelon!" He said the word "devoured" a lot. He was as into that verb "devoured" as apparently he was into watermelon--nay, perhaps more. Made me want to get some watermelon, actually, and I don't even like it that much.
He didn't write about watermelon, or fruits much at all, but I could totally see Montaigne having been a watermelon fiend, if he had an opportunity to get into watermelon. Maybe I think this because of what he said about wine and sunlight, and watermelon is kind of the fruit version of that? Hmmmm.
