Where are you at with those stairs?

Monday 7/20/26

Want to know something somewhat dark?

I have a very nice mug from my desk with the Bunker Hill Monument on it. It's sat there for years. I've never drank out of it, because I feel like I haven't done well enough in the Monument running my stairs to deserve it.

That's how I am. And if that's how I am with the likes of this, one can imagine how I am with my work, regarding which I'm exponentially more demanding. The work, when seen, speaks for itself for what it is, which means no one else is going to say anything about it because it is so far beyond anything else, and not just writing. But for me to say it's this given thing, with my standards, and my demands upon myself...

There are many thing of late I've intended to get to in these pages. There is also a list of items in the thousands. There's a list longer than a thousand items for publishing alone. The amount of things that need doing each day is overwhelming to me, and I am already overwhelmed by hopelessness, which makes it harder to put in the next twenty hour shift, which is how it needs to be. Twenty hours, rest, twenty hours, rest, twenty hours, rest. "Rest" being sleep. For years, decades.

That's what I'd need to be doing if I had a chance and my work was getting to the world which is the whole point of my work--to impact this world. But as of now it goes no further than me, so that twenty hour shift...it's so hard giving this much, needing to give so much more, when you think and believe and have all the evidence that there's no point to even put in another further five minutes.

I have to go to the dentist this morning to have some chips filled in. Three, I believe. I try and take as good of care as possible of my teeth because despite what I just said above, and despite me having to fight as hard as I often do to survive a given day and not just end things, some part of me thinks, "If this ever worked, you'd want to live past 100, creating, impacting, and also having the life you finally got, and that would be much better with a good set of teeth." The great Dr. Raffy--who drove me to the root canal fellow last summer--is throwing in the third filling free of charge.

I've been intending to account for recent business on the stair front but keep letting that lapse, so I'm getting it out of the way now. I've learned some new things. One of them is that June and July are just going to be June and July and you need to accept that. Well, to some degree. Maybe be aware is how I should put it. This has been a particularly bad summer here, I feel, for heat and humidity. Once the summer air becomes a certain way, the summer air stays that way--again, to some degree--until the first hints of autumn arrive on the scene and clear it out. Summer heat is like a squatter. It's residual.

I have struggled in the Bunker Hill Monument more than I can recall me struggling in a long time, unless we're counting those times when I was getting back up to speed, like when the Monument finally reopened after COVID or even last November once the government shutdown lifted. But in those cases, I know the deal going in. My expectations are lowered. It's like stair spring training. But now, in this summer, I have high expectations for myself without imposed restrictions. I should be able to do what I aim to do.

And that's probably not a stance I should be rigid about. Heat and humidity are such big factors and there's only so much you can do about them. The way I'm looking at it now, with what I've learned, is that during the summer, or a summer like this, you're in abeyance mode. That is, you try and be out there every day, and do five circuits consistently. Hold the line until it cools down, then soar again.

Because it is a bitch running those stairs when it's eighty degrees plus and that dew point is sixty, seventy degrees. I've been gassed doing five circuits. My times have gotten longer. Breathing is worse, legs are more strained in the muscles at the top of the knees. A lot of my pushing through with stairs this summer has been will power. Because of my work. Because of what I'm trying to do. Because of the evil and discrimination I'm made to endure in the meanwhile and probably always. Which, again, makes no sense. Why would a man who could end his life any day fight so hard to live for as long as he could? I admit it doesn't make sense. But that's what I think about in there. What has been done to me, what is done to me, how the world is, what I am able to do and create. And what I want. Rockport. All that.

This brings me to the second thing I've learned in recent days. I've looked into the sweat situation, as the amount of sweat I produce, and how quickly I produce it, has, as I've intimated, come to concern me. The other day, a father--he was nice--was warning his children to "look out for the sweat," in references to the puddles I'd left on the stairs, like some biohazard trail.

I then sought out testimonies from other people who technically do what are classified as extreme endurance workouts, and I saw that this isn't uncommon. They also described their clothes being completely saturated as if they'd jumped into a lake, and their shoes squishing. Turns out there's science behind this. The fitter you are, the more you're likely to sweat, and the sooner, if you're fit and work out a lot. That's because your body knows the drill and gets going earlier on trying to cool you down, which is the point of sweat.

The problem being, that when it's humid, your sweat doesn't cool you down, because it doesn't evaporate; there's too much moisture in the air for it to have anywhere to go. As a result, it heats you up instead. I had mentioned feeling like I became a kiln; this is why. The situation is exacerbated by still air, which is what you get in the Monument. There are seven ventilation slits in the Monument and you can get a bit of air at them if you stop and linger and it's breezy outside and the window is going in the right direction, but for the most part, the air isn't in motion in the Monument.

I'll be orderly about this and do a quick numerical wrap-up of the last two weeks' worth of stairs in one place. Last week I ran thirty circuits in the Bunker Hill Monument, with ten on Wednesday, followed by five each day Thursday through Sunday. I also did 100 push-ups and walked three miles each of those days, though sometimes it was six miles.

This past week, the Monument was closed on Wednesday because of the heat. On Thursday I ran ten circuits and walked six miles. On Friday I ran another ten circuits and walked three miles. These were ugly performances. Took quite a bit longer than it should. I mean like fifteen, twenty minutes more. Doing the ten each of these days felt more like doing twenty but without the payoff/knowledge of, "Well, you did twenty, that's pretty good."

The weather cooled some on Saturday, and I did five circuits and walked three miles. Then it cooled a bit more yesterday, and I did five more circuits and walked six miles. The difference was very noticeable. For one thing, even though I sweated through my shirt, as is to be expected, I wasn't a human pond, which was reassuring after how things have been lately. To simply produce what felt like a more human appropriate amount of sweat was a relief of sorts.

Because honestly I have wondered what the hell is happening. Like, do I have malaria? Is something wrong with me? There have been many times when I walk the mile-and-a-half back home where it's still pouring out of me and I can't even shower until it stops, because otherwise you'll get out of the shower still sweating, even if you turned the water down cold, and so it was nice not to deal with that for a couple days.

That got me to a second week in a row of thirty circuits. I'm now up to 460 since March 11. I also did 100 push-ups on all those other days. Nothing flashy or notable. Workmanlike. Maybe that's what summer stairs have to be. You don't put up the big numbers but perhaps you're advancing your fitness (and character) cause all the more without having statistical proof. Yesterday also marked 3654 days, or 522 weeks, without a drink.