For no reason I can fathom I have, for the last week, woken up remembering the name of an individual I knew in grade school or high school. It’s been a different individual each day, almost always a person I had zero contact with or very close to zero contact. One dude, who will remain nameless, was dubbed an “OAF” by someone whose identity I do not recall. Somehow the word stayed in my lexicon, though I rarely use it. It’s one of those words that sounds like what it means. ASl I remember of this individual whose name appeared in my head today is that he was considered an oaf, a likeble affable oaf, but a clumsy soul all around. He once rose to anger over learning that he had been excluded from some event or party that everyone else in the vicinity would be attending.
That is all I remember. So I did what we do in these hyperneuroconnected times. I looked him up, and find that he died last year. No cause is given. He was a couple of years younger than I, which reminds me hither that he was not in my graduating class. I further find that, to my chagrin, he had lived right here in New York City from 1993 to 2014. I know of a few people from my time at that school who landed in New York but it’s never been sensible to connect with any of them. High school is, for me, not much of a basis for keeping connected to someone I barely knew.
That is the second person I know of from high school who died. Another guy, who I came to respect despite never exchanging a single word, had a heart attack what must have been 15+ years ago. I feel their losses but decline to make thier losses mine when the connections are so thin.
Today is Saturday, July 5, 2025. Wednesday and Thursday were epic. Thursday I rambled through parts of Flushing I’d never seen before, clocking over 20,000 steps and 10+ miles. Wednesday was similar. I had to walk. I have matters that need a good walking off, a good walking to. Really it might be there is something I am walking from, if not running.
Scary experience with a new drug, a new pill for the potion. I took this pill before and experienced different side effects from this time. MetFORMIN. 500mg extended release. I took it Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday with no troubles. Come back to work Friday and it’s a very different experience. Dizziness, shakes, sweaty, confusion. Something has to give because until yesterday this new pill, new to the ever-increasing fistful of charmapheuticals I ingest every day, had me feeling surprisingly serene. These new side-effects had to be on account of the booze. The symptoms I experienced were textbook related to metformin interacting with booze and lowering blood sugar to dangerously low levels. But I’d consumed precisely the same amount in previous days and woke up feeling placid and focused. It is obviously related, I’m not in denial. I skipped booze last night and metformin today. The only way out of yesterday’s metformin-addled conditions was to pop a full 2MG of Lorazapam, this after a morning does of 1MG. All I can say is that shit works. It brought me back to coherence, even if it felt like I had burn marks across my flesh, hair, and brain matter.
I am left asking, was I also reacting like this the previous days, not at the office but during double-digit mileage walks. Was the senseless exertion of these strambles a symptom of the fact that nothing inside my head was making any sense, and that my mind was telling my body to run, run, run from yourself.
If I ever put the videos together they will be something. Wedesnday I only did audio, narrating a walk out to Old Calvary Cemetery. I feel fine today and hope you do, too.