Monday 9/16/24
I don't like people who start any kind of bio with "I'm well-educated." You aren't. A person who is actually educated--as in, a person who has acquired knowledge and keeps doing so-- would never say this. It's so arrogant and simple-minded. "It was paid for me to sit in all of these rooms and then collect pieces of paper saying I sat in those rooms and this means I'm smarter and better than other people who didn't."
Note how I said that above--"keeps doing so." The people who tell others that they're well-educated think of that educating as this thing of the past. One gets educated between certain years, and that's education. The term "well-educated" also suggests that someone else did something that made you that way because you had the financial means to pay for their service.
It sounds a lot like classism, doesn't it? Because classism is ingrained in a person of this nature. Can you imagine me saying to someone, "I'm well-educated"? Practically inconceivable.
Yesterday I wrapped up my fifth day in a row of doing five circuits of stairs in the Bunker Hill Monument. I also walked five miles, did 100 push-ups and three planks. No planks for a few days before Saturday, but three miles walked and 100 push-ups on each of the five days. From August 15 to September 15, I completed 135 circuits in the Monument, which is 81,000 stairs. Yesterday also marked 2989 days, or 427 weeks, without a drink.
The Monument, of course, is closed Mondays and Tuesdays unless there's some kind of America-centric holiday on a Monday. The nozzle rig outside of the Monument that sprays mist was in operation on Saturday. I like to stand under it after. It's very refreshing. I'm making progress in my fitness but I still have a long ways to go to be where I want to be. I'm feeling pretty strong in the Monument. It takes work and time. I'm very aware of that.
Those stairs are great teachers. I would say that they educate me, but I don't think they would educate anyone else on their own, necessarily. You'd need to be both open to what they can teach you and able to pick up on that. I have certainly learned more from those stairs than I ever did inside of a college classroom. I'm learning from them all the time. Right now I am thinking about a future scenario in which I haven't run the stairs in a while and I'm struggling. I tell myself not to take it for granted where I'm at right now. That I go up, I go down, I go up, and so forth, and I'm back outside in a half hour. Strong.
The stairs do not change but I can change. The reason I'm thinking about this is because if that ever came to pass--if I was not in there for a while and backslid--I want to be able to realize that I can still get back to where I am now--and be better still--if I put in the time and do the work. The stairs are the constant. I am what is in flux.
I'm not planning on slipping or anything. But let's say the Monument closes again for the winter or repairs shut it down for a year. I have my other stairs and those help, but Monument stairs, as I've said, are their own thing. I was joking to someone the other day that the Monument is my Temple of Zulu, but it really kind of is.
I wrote the other day that it takes so many people helping a person out in order for them to get anywhere. I gave the example of Beethoven. Takes a village. More than a village. Look at all of these shitty books in publishing. Someone like Tommy Orange is just awful at writing. But you have thousands of people in an industry who decide to make something happen for someone like that--and that's all it is ever. It's all manufactured. Forced. Controlled. Decided upon. Put into effect. Everyone takes up their part.
Google suggests an article for me about the National Book Award finalists in nonfiction. Do you know how much Salman Rushdie sucks at writing? I knew that his book about being stabbed--which is so trite and self-serving, an exercise in tongue-bathing that gets someone like David Remnick a quarter-erect--was going to be there automatically. I don't even need to see these articles to know what they'll contain. Publishing types have always made it happen for him.
People are bad at writing. They're more or less equally bad. Nothing separates anyone in terms of ability. Look at all of this garbage. Then other people within the publishing world decide who will be the "stars." Star of the season, star of the year, star emeritus like a Rushdie. He could shit on the page. Doesn't matter. He's going to be a finalist for that award. Automatic. It's just how it's done. What a con artist fraud that guy is. I still need to get to that entry on here about Rushdie in which we can see how deeply Remnick has his tongue up his ass so that you get overlapping, double-tongue action in the mouth because Remnick's tongue has pushed all the way through to the top. I haven't forgotten. Nothing is forgotten.
There isn't a single person who is going to try to make things happen for me unless that's what everyone else is doing or they feel like they have to. There's the paradox. How do you get everyone to do something so that one person will? Most people are going to attempt to suppress me--behind the scenes, because they're too scared to take me on out in the open--and stand in my way.
My village is my ability. My strength. My will. My range. And it's things like the stairs of the Bunker Hill Monument. These are the people of my village at present, if you will.
