Friday 11/8/24
Something cool happened Monday after I was done running stairs. It made me feel good and was a useful reminder to myself about how notable my level of commitment is when it comes to where I'm trying to get and what I'm trying to do.
I had mentioned a while back that people had been making some interesting remarks to me about my stair running. I've sprinkled in a few of them as I go along here. One that I left out which I figured I'd save for a stair-related round-up had to do with a couple in the Bunker Hill Monument. I had on my Spiritualized shirt that day. Normally, Americans think this is a God thing--as in, hello, I'm filled with the spirit of the Lord.
These were Americans, but they knew better, because the man said to me, "Great band." Then his girlfriend or wife or whatever she was, asked me if I was Special Forces. I said no, of course, and she replied, "Well, you should be."
Special forces!
I'm alone. I'm always alone. I haven't even been on a date in ten years. I work, I write, I run stairs. People are scared of me or in awe of me. The more I go along, the better I get in every way, the stronger I become, and this becomes more and more of a problem. Especially in a world where people want and require others to be like them. I'm leaving humanity behind in many regards. Even as all of the work I do is to serve humanity. To help it.
And I guess I've just thought these stairs are what I do as a part of winning this war I'm in. Because if I wasn't physically strong, if my heart wasn't in the shape it needs to be in, I'd die. This would be too much. Trying to remain alive when this is your life each morning that you open your eyes. I wouldn't be able to create the works that I create. The art I work on every day.
It's not just enough to write 5000 words before most people are awake. I wouldn't be writing those words if I wasn't doing the stairs. I'd be dead.
Think about that level of commitment. With everything. Then think about the backroom deals that define who gets a Guggenheim. Think of the hypocrisy of the Guggenheim committee.
It's upsetting, isn't it? Just slapping those grants out to people who are connected who suck at writing and have no dedication at all. People so easily throttled in the prose offs of these pages. Meanwhile, you have this guy doing what he does.
I wasn't really aware of how my appearance was changing. I don't have people in my life, for the most part, saying anything. I had gotten myself in a bad way back when I used to drink a lot. When I recently saw that before and now photo--with the latter being from twelve years ago--it started to hit home with me that I looked considerably different. I found that earlier photo jarring. Sobering. Disturbing. I had mentioned that my college roommate saw those two photos and asked if I was Benjamin Button, so that was a bit of input.
But again, it's pretty much just me. I'm alone. And I will be until I'm out of this situation, and then a lot of people I'm sure will have ulterior motives for wishing to know me. Just as people who won't say anything now will be doing all kinds of talking then. I would have a very hard time dealing with all of that and hiding my disgust.
Anyway--there have been many comments in the Monument. A lot of casual things that aren't even necessarily meant to be heard by me about how much younger I am or how much better shape I'm in. These comments are often in regard to letting me pass. This happens regularly with couples. The one person will give the other a reason for stepping aside so I can go by.
Then I thought, well, this must be pretty noticeable that you look okay at this point, that look fit. My dentist weighed in at my last cleaning.
I've been doing these stairs for quite a while. At least since 2017. I may have been doing them in 2016. I'm not sure. I stopped drinking in late spring 2016. That resulted in a big physical change quickly. Then I had that day back this past winter, when I gave up eating anything bad that I ate.
I gave up red meat, processed meat, pork, pizza, bread, chips. Not a lick of candy for Halloween. Gave up my skim hot chocolates. Just gave it all up. On the same day. And it was the day before that that I last missed a single day of stairs. Not as though I ever missed many days once I started. But like 200 something days in a row and counting?
The Special Forces inquiry really made me go, "Huh." Those are the guys who take out like Bin Laden. It was a serious question. I know it's silly and a misinformed question. But it did speak to some association that someone had, and they wouldn't have if you weren't doing okay, fitness-wise.
People who don't know me often address me like they're talking to a kid. Like the way you would someone in their twenties.
I don't really believe in calendrical age for myself, save that I'm on the clock in terms of how much time I have to do what I'm going to do in the world. My work isn't on that clock--it'll live when I don't. And really, I am my work, so death is a different thing for me.
But if something happened to me, that work has a lot less of a chance and I don't think anyone would do anything on its behalf so it gets seen. I hope I'm wrong. More than that, I hope it never matters one way or the other because I'm here and what has to happen happens.
No, I am this work's best chance, and this work, I believe, is more important than anything has ever been. To this world. To humans and humanness. That's not just what I believe. It's what I know. Whether or not this works out, that's a different story. People have to see it. And they have to come to it at least somewhat openly. They need to be with it. But if those three things happen, then something unique in history will occur.
On Saturday, I was out in Boston. So, not in Charlestown, where the Bunker Hill Monument is. This man came up to me on the street, and he said, "Aren't you the Monument guy?"
I didn't know what to say. So I said, yes, I am. He thought this was so cool. Then he asked me how many times that day. I told him five, and he said that was just awesome. Really nice fellow.
Of course, how do you think these things make me feel about Bloomsbury and that Object Lesson series, and everything I know that is happening there, and everything I'm going to have to do on here? You see me putting it off, because I hate having to do this, but I hate being discriminated against even more, and I hate what I know about these people and the information I have and why they did other things and with the people they did them with and what they're up to with me.
But a book from me about stairs? I mean, come on.
The Monument is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays, so those are my City Hall stair days. Lately, because I've done so many stairs in the Monument over the previous five days, I've been treating Monday and Tuesday as abeyance days, if you will. That is, I'm out there, but I'm not running that many of them. Sort of like rest days off that aren't rest days.
The Monument had shut down during and after COVID. Didn't open for a long time. When that was is noted, doubtless, in these pages. Was it last year? The year before? When the Monument was closed, I found other stairs.
I had a bunch. Stairs at BC, stairs out in Brighton, and City Hall. For however many Christmases in a row--another day on which I'm alone--I run stairs before dawn at City Hall, then I come home and write. I write to get out of this death trap of an apartment. To get a better life. To get the life I deserve. And, more than anything, to get to the world with what I have. And with what I can do. With all of the future things I'll have that I just haven't made yet because I was making thousands of other things first.
City Hall is about as central as you get in Boston. This is true now, here in 2024, and it would have been true in 1770. I'm using City Hall as a geographical term in this context. For reference, Faneuil Hall is across the street. If you know anything about history, that will tell you much.
Many people have seen me there and, I'm sure, have come to know what I'm doing. Not many say things to me at City Hall, though. There was this man on a Sunday morning--he was in recovery, and coming from a meeting--who told me how it important it was for him to see me out there once a week on those days. I was taken aback when he said that. And when he shared the rest of what he did.
You're not just going up and down stairs if you understand stairs. Understanding stairs is important to understanding life. "Fitty," for instance, is a story of stairs. It's not about stairs, but stairs are a massive part of its design. I'm not going to write something better than "Fitty." No one has written anything as good as it.
I wouldn't have been able to write it had I not learned what I've learned from stairs. When you read that story--and you will, though I wish I could say when--you're going to think, "God damn...Fleming said a lot about that story over the years, and it's so much more than he ever let on." I can't prepare someone for how good it is. I'm not sure a person can handle how good it is.
Back to Monday morning. I ran 3000 stairs at City Hall, which is more than on just an abeyance day. It was actually a touch more, because rather than return to the North End on the final trip down, I ran back up an extra time because I wanted to walk a few miles and go through the Common and the Public Garden and think. It was only because of this variation that I walked past a woman near the top of the stairs who was smoking. She beckoned me over and then said, "I've been watching you out here for years. Your transformation is remarkable. I've seen you so many times."
I thanked her, obviously. Then she asked me if I did anything else. Workout-wise, presumably. I told her about the Monument, and that I was only at City Hall now a couple days a week. Then she said, "It's all stairs?" I didn't go into anything else. I made a little joke. I said, "I'm loyal to stairs." Then I added a line that I realized wasn't a joke as I said it. "I'm a stair guy." She said additional words about my transformation, I thanked her once more, and I was on my way.
Really hit me. Energized me. She only wold have been seeing me going back to 2020. I was deep into the non-drinking and stair-running life by then, but I'm improving still, and that's important, because nothing is more important than what I'm trying to do, and this plays a role.
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