Wretched effort

Monday 5/18/26

Wretched effort on my part. No compete. No fight. Lots of giving in. Sitting and decomposing in the middle of it. Sadness. For just my relationship with myself--which is for all intents and purposes the only one I have--I need to do a 180. Feel tired, feel like I pushed as hard as I could. Also survival. Everything has taken on a quality of life or death. I feel like I'm so tenuously here as it is and when I'm like this I'm swaying in front of the cliff's face on a fraying rope and not even trying to get my hands up on the ledge.

I also fear that if I try harder and fight that will only make things worse. I finish the masterpiece. There is nothing at all I can do with it. So I should finish fifteen of them? I'm working on forty books at once. Which is stupid. I'm not finishing any of them. I just work on this one here, that one there. A drop for you, a drip for you, a drab for you. Impractical. But so is having the one book all done. Still, I can't keep going like this, with this approach. This practice.

When I'm out in the world I see a world in which I have no part. With no place and no one for me. I feel like I'm a ghost. That I am already dead.

Fitness effort has also been deplorable. Only twelve circuits of stairs in the Monument with the (stair) week that just concluded and they all came on one day, Thursday. Walked seven miles yesterday and did 150 push-ups, but that's hardly anything to speak of.

Thursday was the rare day where there was lots of friendliness in the Monument, excepting a family--husband, wife, their teenage son--who made fun of me for sweating so much. Not to me. They wouldn't stop talking about it, though. Like they'd never seen someone sweat before.

The immaturity of people is astounding. You know how when you're in a school and that immature kid is going to see this thing and have an extended reaction like they're four years younger than you and you need to wait for it to subside before you can get back to business, so to speak? Adults are like that now. People are also too stupid to realize that stone amplifies their words. You can hear pretty much everything in the Monument. I didn't say anything. Like, "How childish do you need to be?" or "Maybe grow up?" for instance.

There was this guy who went to the top pretty quickly. He had a backpack on, too. He was very friendly and on the ball. Immediately knew this was my workout and said it must be how I stay in such good shape. I don't feel like that, though. I feel like blah. I said something about him going to the top as easily as he did and with a backpack no less, and he replied that he was from Denver and was accustomed to the air there.

It isn't super rare, but I'd say maybe five percent of the people in the Monument go from the top to the bottom without stopping at a steady pace. Like a normal walking pace, except here you're walking upwards. But there was a kind of strange amount of people saying, "Good for you," when they asked how many circuits I was doing and I answered them. I don't know. I'm not in a good way in any way or place.

I mentioned that the Monument's hours change on May 23, a date I especially remembered because it is Molly's birthday, which was a date I wish I didn't remember but I don't know why. Probably the overarching idea that I remember everything, and I can think everything at once. I don't have ignorance or forgetting like other people. Everything is always here, to some regard. As I was taking out the trash at four this morning I was thinking how she's probably been married for the third or fourth time since, though the third would have done it, I'm sure. There's that time it just sticks no matter what. People make sure it does.

It's getting warm and I don't like that. These are the bad months for me. The state of the apartment makes them even worse. I will be helped by the Monument opening at ten rather than one. That will actually make a big difference. Yesterday marked 3591 days, or 513 weeks, without a drink. I need to eat better. More fruit and nuts. Celery. Didn't even go to Haymarket. Didn't even go outside Saturday. And it wasn't because I was burning it up with effort and good work at the desk and was on some ensconced roll.

Did walk through the Public Garden yesterday. Thought I'd see if there were any ducklings. I don't think so. There may have been a couple of them on the far side but I couldn't confirm they were ducklings. If they were they weren't moving just then and when ducklings are sitting on the bank their mother is usually around and there weren't any adult ducks in the vicinity. Mallards are so beautiful, aren't they? How can you not like mallards?

Watched a number of films over the weekend for various things I'll be writing or in consideration of things I may be writing. These films being The Burning (1981), Wrong Turn (2021), Trick 'r Treat (2007), Happy Birthday to Me (1981), and The Final Girls (2015).

Been planning a piece on summer horror films, which may include Wrong Turn and will definitely include The Final Girls, one of the best films I've seen in a while that I hadn't seen previously. Smart and moving.

Was considering The Burning for this piece, but I think I'll leave it out because of Harvey Weinstein. His fingerprints are all over the thing, and in the coercion and rape ways. Guys not taking no for an answer. If it was another 1980s film, you wouldn't look at it quite the same way, perhaps--more like the product of an era rather than a reflection of an individual, but it's hard to get away from those Weinstein clutches of association here.

This is for the horror film book, too, and I don't want to pollute it with him. I have summer camp horror well covered anyway, with the long piece about Sleepaway Camp (1983) and now The Final Girls and there's a reference to Friday the 13th (1980) and likely to be something on Friday the 13th Part III.

Other possibilities for the summer horror film piece: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), The Return of the Living Dead (1985), Frogs (1972), Summer of 84 (2018), Cape Fear (1962).

I'll definitely be writing about Trick 'r Treat for Halloween, and may also write about Tricks or Treat (1982), which was directed by Gary Graver, who had devoted so much of his time and life to basically serving Orson Welles--it was like serving him--as his camera man in the 1970s and who shot porn, a scene or two (there was one involving a steamy shower sequence) of which Welles may have directed. Happy Birthday to Me is under consideration for a back-to-school horror film piece which I began working on last year. I need to find my notes for that.

Downloaded the updated twelfth volume of that set of the Beatles' complete recording sessions. Also a Pink Floyd tape from Cleveland in 1972 that turned up this month. Same thing just happened with a recording of a Van Morrison show from Texas in 1974. The Floyd tape is an audience recording but supposedly it sounds great, better even than some soundboards. I haven't listened to it yet. It's a Dark Side of the Moon show, of course.

Also downloaded a Beach Boys bootleg that has a rehearsal of "God Only Knows" from 1967 with Brian Wilson singing off-mic that I'd been looking for. And Bear Family's Billy Lee Riley set--though I've been unable to locate their package of his outtakes. Also couldn't find the Charlie Parker at Birdland in 1950 set with Fats Navarro that came out a few years ago in what is supposed to be the best-ever sound. I'd written about this material in the past in a piece for The American Interest that is earmarked for my jazz book, The Root of the Chord. May have to ask Howard for his help.

Red Sox were obliterated and didn't score their lone run until the ninth. They gave up three in the first, so everyone realistically could have gone home then. And, what do you know, the Cavaliers did beat the Pistons. I was asleep. It was on Amazon Prime anyway so I can't watch. This is the year that you see the shift to these streaming services. Many of these games aren't on TV. Even a Game 7 on a Sunday night.

Greed dominates the world. People who have more money than they could ever spend in 1000 lifetimes essentially rule and dictate how culture will be. What? The "folk" are going to resist? With what? The two brain cells each of the members of the general populace have? Humans are now just animals that are shepherded into their pens. All those animals go more or less willingly. They go with the crowd. We can't even think enough to understand that that's what we are and what we're doing.

Did find a $5 Under Armour headband that'd been lost. Haven't seen my Boston Bruins one in quite a while. Likely gone. Listened to the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" from Miami on 6/23/74 for the "Dark Star" book. Need to listen to it again soon.