I was going to write that I have avoided this article because I am adverse to writing about decline—that set off my BS meter! I wrote 60 odd books on urban and masculine decline. I get used to my levels and adjust poorly. I might take a look at a job that I did in my youth and say, “Oh, three hours and out,” and there the Brickmouse finds me, 13 hours later halfway done, having mistaken my youthful capacity, when this identity was formed, for a potential, productive actuality.
Recent physical declination has shaken my confidence in writing. With that, Alexander, prick of the ages, brat king of hallowed Antiquity is calling down through time. According to Arrian, it was a shame, that the best poet had for his subject a poorly disciplined brigade commander named Achilles, and that the best warrior, Alexander, had no such immortalizing luck. Alexander’s ego is summoning another one of those substandard poets from the prolish muck.
On December 11th, 2017, a cold Monday night, I was, limping on a cane, hounded from the streets of Baltimore—quitting my $10.25 and hour job—by two pair of men, two drug muggers in the city, two giant Nigerian babe baggers in the county. Fighters who had left town and readers who wondered how long their morning blogger would survive his home town, had long suggested I move.
This is how I lost my first job, when the News American paper boy, a burly Polish youth, scattered my Baltimore Sun papers at Loch Raven and Aberdeen and threw my red rubber bands into the street. I just told my parents I quit because I couldn’t recall the addresses by heart since I lost the address sheet. That was a lie to cover my powerlessness, the stupidity plea was easily believed as I was just emerging from special reading class. I didn’t need the sheet, because I recalled each house, not by number, but by sight. Lost wages of $3 a week in 1973/4 and $140 a week in 2017; a loser driven from his hometown streets as a boy and again as an old boy. I do recall feeling good once when a man in suit rolled up in a nice powder blue car, a long boat, and gave me two quarters for the 25 cent paper. I got 4 extra papers I could sell.
I decided stubbornly, to stay and write. With two months rent in the bank, a pot of renewing coffee and a bottle of Trade Winds cheap rum, I decided to write forever. When I got too wired from coffee, two shots of rum—then when Morpheus crept cat near, a pot of coffee sent the word thief away. This ended in disaster, after being up for just shy three days, I think, when I unwittingly opened some door and was punished for misunderstanding the message delivered by the ebony giants, who graciously—and it was an act of grace—let me go, after I foiled their abduction of a $30,000 slave girl.
How many novels could I write set in Baltimore and its nears? I would travel and write novels in those invited places. As well, the small biographies that began with The Violent Project, could be expanded to memoirs of various persons with whom I stayed. This latter effort has been only lazily pursued when I visit my scattered hosts. Fatigue has put me behind… age has its own kind of possessive mind.
I began writing in earnest with The Violence Project, which became Harm City, its own crooked brick genre, and in The Broken Dance, which became the Aryas Project. The things that connected them was fight writing, which Jeth Randolph is taking over the last of with his insightful collaboration.
Over 180 Alexander romances were written, historians tell us, along with the notion that they contained little of fact. Arrian speaks of “the popular tradition,” and notes how Alexander acted as a local liberator and accepted enemy soldiers into his ranks on their word. From the bare facts, it can be seen that the unit he used the most was a tribal unit of some 500 highlanders. Here, the working class angle, “the fighter’s view,” begs for the only attention I am worthy of giving. I have to find points of connection for a subject. In most ways, Alexander and I are polar opposites, in dozens of ways. But, I share most things with his Agrianes. This gives a handle on how they might have seen him in their hearts.
He was the best of his kind, me down near the worse of mine, the least accomplished of my family line. He went from prince to king of kings and I from middle class to tramp.
The three things where I can form a joining are in:
1.) work rate; he conquered the most, where I have done the most as a grocer, writer and stick fighter, both by far,
2.) Alexander fought hand to hand against mostly bigger men. I am a fighting man, have physical trained and competed in the arts [except for riding] that he knew
3.) Us both being slightly smaller than average and unable to beat men like Hephasteon, generates a pathos welling up this ladder to 1 to do more, by way of 2, fighting, where experience trumps everything, causing a feedback loop that must, and has, ended in disaster…
Okay, not precisely a plan. I am a worker/writer, unschooled, who had recently outlined a book on work, my boring worklife, which I have no heart to pursue. What hurts, is the good men—better men then me—younger and older, whose biographies I have adopted as a part time gig, need be left behind if this ailing old mind, with a siren in one ear, sometimes both, and an eye that sizzles like sausage on a griddle, I’m running out of writing time. I have outlived Dad now, at 63, and Mom is still going at 86. Many people have helped me with alternative and standard medical care, otherwise I would not be here. I might linger for decades yet. But, I now spend 10 to 14 hours in bed just to generate an hour or two of writing time before the eye explodes. I’ve been deep down in this pain hole often, and believe I will crawl out. I plan on going to the gym and hitting the bag enough to deaden the damaged nerve in my head. It hurts my head to land a punch, like getting staples in the skull, which is a pinching feeling. I will climb out, may be feeling right as rain by the time this posts in June.
To do the toughest subject I have taken on justice, from a history and poetic perspective. I need to focus. It’s grand opening: Jomo is laid up with his girlfriend, Earl passed out in his car from working three full-time jobs, Alan is on a crack binge downtown, and Ed is in jail… I can either face-up the canned good aisle or build the front door display. If I botch the display, the GM will find something wrong in every aisle—time to wow the old man.
Work commitments have been stripped like so:
-Aryas project, canceled short
-Plantation America, wrapped up short by December at 22 books.
-Head coaching, history, no more, will no longer schedule a clinic, this hurts my ego
-Assistant coaching, only for Sean, Paul, Alex, and other fighters I have worked with, checking videos of opponents, etc.
-Canceled the novels: Porch, King Klan, Tinman
-Wrapping up biographies this month, this just hurts, maybe use that pain in Seven Sons
-Reducing travel destinations during 2026 to permit the above work to be done
-Journalism limited
At 5:54 AM I was awakened by a loud ringing in the right ear, a stabbing pain in the right skull, temple and eye, jaw and nose numbness, tooth pain, all right side.
Got up, took a triptain [1], an aspirin and hosed out the once shattered nose with salt water. Went back to bed and rested. Woke to write at 7:30.
It is 8:34. the ear ringing is back and it feels like a fist is being ground into the ear. I can push this, write another piece. But, I know from experience, that the only reason I am not puking in pain just now is the triptan. [1] Apologies to the hard working men who will be incompletely memorialized in Work. I already spent this writing day.
Notes
-1. Triptains come in 5 brands I use. Typical dosage is maximum 9 50 mg pills per month, used for severe migraines. My private doc writes me 100s and I break them down into 18 doses. My HMO doc writes me 9 50 mg. I use Blake’s script, for 9 more 50 mg. I use Gina’s dose for 9 50 mg doses. I then get 40 10 mg and 30 50 MG doses from SaySay. I am taking roughly 10 times the maximum recommended dosage. This is carefully prescribed because it can cause racing heart, which I have begun to experience, and have been fitted with a heart monitor wrist watch by SaySay, who keyed it to my email, which is actually controlled by my editor, who will monitor the reports and further them to my private Doc. I now have two women in my email. What could go wrong? For me to take even more triptains in order to podcast, spar, fight, this all goes against what Alexander demands, and I am a performance anxiety slave.
Now I go to waste a day in hoped of rising to write something better with the dawn.
