On Friday, my brother Dick texted, “First day of spring!” with a laughing monkey emoji. He’s big on emojis, the sillier the better.

I replied, “First day of my last spring.”

Dick didn’t notice the pessimism in that line, and started prattling on about baseball, but “my last spring” seems like a likely assessment of the situation.

It’s not depression, I’ll never be suicidal, and I’m hoping to hang around long enough to celebrate Donald Trump’s death, but life’s offered ten thousand disappointments. Death will probably let me down, too.

I am old, and feel every year of it. Always something aches, almost always for no reason. Some days more of me aches than doesn’t.

Haven’t had a bowel movement in twenty years that wasn’t lubed along by laxatives.

Haven’t slept straight through the night since I was ten years old.

Haven’t had a fully firm erection since the 2010s.

Not often, but sometimes there’s blood in my stool and semen.

My toenails are so thick it takes a hacksaw to trim ’em, but I’m so fat that bending that far is a challenge, so the nails aren’t cut until they draw blood from neighbor toes.

Had a rash a while back, and still do. Ordinarily, rashes fade by rubbing in triple antibiotic ointment or squirting plenty of Lotrimin, but this rash has been itchy and scratchy for a month now, getting neither better nor worse.

Thirty years ago, I had a tooth yanked, and the wound became infected. Ever since, I’ve had otherwise unexplained fevers once or twice a month, and taken three aspirin three times daily until the fever subsides. Lately, the fevers are coming more and more often.

Speaking of teeth, mine are awful, and the recurring toothaches come more often than even a few months ago.

My right leg has plumped up like a Ball Park frank. A doc ten years ago told me to wear compression socks, so I do, and when the leg gets superplump, I add a second, now a third compression sock.

And my brain is receding. Words and names are more and more elusive. Writing is… what’s the word? Difficult. A few days ago I was headed south, but waited at the northbound bus stop, even got onto a northbound bus before realizing my mistake.

And obviously, my mental health is unhealthy. Jeez, look at this room — I’ve stopped making even the slightest effort at tidiness, haven’t taken out trash in a couple of months, and the debris is taller than I am (not an exaggeration). I simply don’t give a shit.

Bad dreams come so frequently, I’ve started keeping a list. In the past week I’ve dreamed nuclear war, a visit from my father’s rotting corpse, and an earthquake where the walls were shaking but the boss told everyone to stay on the job. A co-worker ran for a first-floor window and dived out, and I followed her, and after we’d landed we turned around and watched the building collapse to dust. Everyone, dead.

I dreamed I was riding a bus that tipped over rounding a corner too fast.

Not sure whether it was a school massacre or a workplace massacre, but I dreamed that someone with a gun was going around in a crowded, busy place, killing people at random. Kash Patel was in charge of the negotiating team that was trying to get him to surrender, but acquiesced to the killer’s demand for a supply of more guns and ammo.

And all that’s why it wouldn’t be a surprise if 2026 is my last go-round. Being old is the only diagnosis more fatal than being born.

3/24/2026

itsdougholland.com
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Today on Telegraph, I worked beside Hilda again, the cleavage queen from last weekend. It was an enjoyable view, absolutely, but she didn’t show me quite as much today as last Sunday.

She makes and sells small paintings, the size of snapshots. Just right for people with limited wall space, and her artwork is appealing, but it’s the cleavage that makes the sales. It’s an effective technique, and she’s a master of it.

I especially noticed her skill today when she was talking to couples, a man and a woman together. She’d make eye contact with both of them, and carry herself like she was unaware of her boobs, but whenever she was talking to the woman in any couple, the man’s eyes shifted downward. Always at least a flicker, sometimes a stare. And almost always, a sale.

♦ ♦ ♦  

Cinnamon came by, reproach in her eyes. She’s the wacky woman who’d invited me a month ago (2/16) to join her mysterious troupe of street screwballs or performance artists. Today she wanted to know why I hadn’t called.

“It’s not often I give a man my number and he doesn’t call,” she said.

“I hate telephones,” I explained, “and anyway, I didn’t understand what exactly you’d invited me for.”

“Do you need to understand?” she asked, and smiled.

When we’d talked in February, I hadn’t had much to say. Today I was somewhat surlier, and instead of being charmed, her secretive demeanor gnawed at my nerves.

She hadn’t gone into any detail about her project either then or today, so I asked again, and she said, “Sometimes we dance, sometimes we sing, sometimes we simply sit and chant.”

“And where do you do this?”

“On the campus, or in the city, or at the mall. Anywhere, really.” She flashed a hippie smile, which no doubt seals the deal with her, usually.

“Cinnamon,” I said as if that’s her name, “you never give straight answers, but I’m a guy who needs a straight answer.”

She didn’t answer, straight or otherwise, only looked at me and smiled even bigger.

“If you want me to be interested,” I ‘splained, “you’ll have to actually tell me what you’re up to.”

“I told you, Doug,” and I was both impressed and suspicious that she remembered my name. I’d remembered hers, but I’m a lot less memorable than she is. Then she proceeded to, again, not really tell me. “We perform street art for street people—”

“Well, I’m sorta street people, so when and where’s your next gig? Maybe I’ll stop by and see it.”

“Until you’re one of us,” she said, still twinkling, “I can’t tell you where we’ll be. Soon enough you’ll understand.”

She’s pretty, so I took a long moment looking at her, trying to come up with the right response. “Soon enough would have to be now.”

“Trust me,” she said, and her smile almost overflowed her face.

“People who ask for trust,” I said, “are the people I trust least.”

And at that she finally lost the Cinnamon smile. “You’ll regret it if you let me walk away,” she said, but was it a threat, or a prediction? Don’t know, didn’t care.

“Get the fuck out of here,” I said, and pointed down the street. After giving me some unbleeped expletives she walked away, yelling and flipping the bird in my direction.

When she was gone I ate my lunch of mayonnaise sandwiches, thinking, Good riddance, Cinnamon. I’m not sure what exactly I sidestepped today, but it was plain from her reaction that most men step right into it.

Pathetic Life
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itsdougholland.com
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Berkeley’s loudest anarchist is a street vendor named Jasper. He’s the anarchist who ran straight to the city authorities to report that the fish-cart didn’t have the right city permit to be considered a free speech table. (12/6), so he’s el schmucko to me.

Now that the fish-cart is street legal, bearing the same silly free-speech permit that’s on Jasper’s table, he & I are supposed to be sell only on the free-speech side of the one block of Telegraph Ave where “free speech vendors” are permitted. When it comes to that rule, though, Jasper is a scofflaw anarchist. He usually sets up his table on a different block, or on the disallowed side of the free-speech block, so I don’t see him too terribly often, which is OK.

Well, in the springtime he migrates, because today he was very much my neighbor. It was busier than it’s been since Xmas, with lots of vendors selling, and Jasper worked on one side of Brenda, with me on her other side. I like Brenda, but Jasper was Jasper all day long.

We didn’t have any confrontations, and in fact, Jasper and I said not a word to each other. That’s my preference, and probably his, too.

I chatted with Brenda all day, and had a nice day, thank you, except for being close enough to hear every loud, obnoxious comment out of Jasper’s fat ugly face. Whenever I wasn’t selling a fish or talking with Brenda and sometimes when I was, the recurring thought monopolizing my own ugly face was, That darn Jasper!

Anything anyone says to him is an opportunity for Jasper to rattle off his smash-the-state politics, which gets so very tedious. And I know, yeah, that I was rattling off my own smash-the-state politics in the day before yesterday’s entry, but it’s different, in two ways. First, my anarchist thoughts are brilliant while Jasper’s are stupid, but second, you have to drag me into that kind of conversation, but Jasper lives for it.

Ask him how much a sticker costs, and he’ll tell you that the control and enforced scarcity of money is how the capitalist pigs keep us all under their bloody thumbs and that the workers ought to control the economy democratically. Then he’ll tell you that the stickers are three dollars, “suggested donation,” but if you don’t have three dollars he’ll suggest you turn and walk away.

My (least) favorite Jasper moment today was when a guy tried to sell him a stack of bumper stickers. It was a college boy, and he’d had a bunch of stickers printed up that said “Quayl ’97.” I’m sick of Dan Quayle jokes, and thankfully he’s been out of office and mostly out of the news for four years now, but I at least get the joke — the sticker misspells his name like Quayle misspelled potatoe, and no national elections will be held in 1997. It’s not a funny joke, but obviously it’s a joke, right

Jasper doesn’t joke. He immediately started hollering at the guy, “I don’t want anything with Quayle’s name on it!” and “You think I’d sell stickers supporting that idiot for president?” and on and on.

Whenever the guy with the stickers tried to respond or explain, Jasper only yelled louder, Jasperier, until the kid walked away flipping him the finger.

♦ ♦ ♦  

I was helping a customer, as Berkeley’s crippled Christian rolled his wheelchair up to my table, looked at the fish, and maybe glared at me. It’s hard to tell, because he keeps a cross dangling over his face, so maybe the cross was what was cross, not the man.

I’ve only written about him once before (1/6) but this disabled mega-Christian rolls around Telegraph several times every month, and in a word, he is creepy. His body and wheelchair are festooned with multiple crosses and crucifixes, he has crosses tattooed on each hand, more crosses are probably embroidered on his underwear, and he carries a Bible in his lap.

He’s never yet said anything to me, but I’m certain I don’t sell the style of Jesus fish he’d want to buy. And yet this afternoon, he parked his chair adjacent to my table, and silently stared at the fish.

I finished selling an Anti-Christ magnet to another college kid, and glanced at the holy roller, thinking, You’re waiting to talk to me? It’s been a while since the Christers have given me a good yelling-at, so it’s due, and if this paraplegic wants to scold me for selling blasphemous fish, I will give him the same rage I’d give anyone. You get no slack for your disability, mister, not from me. Equal rights for equal wrongs.

So I smiled and said thanks to my customer, then turned to the very Christian in a wheelchair, and with a phony lilt to my voice said to him, “Our sacrilegious fish are all available as stickers or as magnets.”

Oh, I was itchin’ for a bitchin’ Christian, and I wanted an excuse to ask him why in Christ’s name he rolls around town sporting so many Christs on a cross, all with agonized looks on their wooden or metallic faces. But verily, before I’d finished my opening line about the stickers and magnets, he wheeled himself away.

Pathetic Life
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itsdougholland.com
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