3.1 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
15 degrees
100% snow-covered
feels like: a path for snowshoes not running shoes, it’s much warmer than it is, spring is in the next room
Decided to wear my yaktrax because the path is still covered with snow and ice and I thought they might help. They did but my feet aren’t used to wearing them so I think I got some blisters. Blinding sun. Bright blue sky. Hard, crusty path. Saw my shadow running ahead of me for a while. Felt strong and sore and ready for the path to be clear again.
layers: green shirt, orange shirt, gray jacket, 2 pairs of running tights, 1 pair of socks, 1 pair of gloves, a buff and my mom’s teal hat with the hassles–the one she wore when she skied. After turning around and heading south, the gloves came off. So did the buff and the sunglasses, which had fogged up. How do people run with sunglasses on without having their sunglasses fog up?
My interest in inside and outside has me thinking about locating myself–what does it mean to be inside? outside? Inside of what? Outside of what? What does it mean when I’m running above the gorge? What does it mean when I can’t see the faces of the people I’m trying to talk with? Can “I” be outside, while I’m inside? So many ways to approach these fundamental questions–I’ve been posing and exploring them for 25 years, first as a student, then a teacher, now a writer/poet.
Speculations about “I”/Toi Derricotte
A certain doubleness, by which I can stand as remote from myself as from another.
— Henry David Thoreau
i
I didn’t choose the word —
it came pouring out of my throat
like the water inside a drowned man.
I didn’t even push on my stomach.
I just lay there, dead (like he told me)
& “I” came out.
(I’m sorry, Father.
“I” wasn’t my fault.)
ii
(How did “I” feel?)
Felt almost alive
when I’d get in, like the Trojan horse.
I’d sit on the bench
(I didn’t look out of the eyeholes
so I wouldn’t see the carnage).
iii
(Is “I” speaking another language?)
I said, “I” is dangerous.
But at the time I couldn’t tell
which one of us was speaking.
iv
(Why “I”?)
“I” was the closest I could get to the
one I loved (who I believe was
smothered in her playpen).
Perhaps she gave birth
to “I” before she died.
v
I deny “I,”
& the closer
I get, the more
“I” keeps receding.
vi
I found “I”
in the bulrushes
raised by a dirtiness
beyond imagination.
I loved “I” like a stinky bed.
While I hid in a sentence
with a bunch of other words.
vii
(What is “I”?)
A transmission through space?
A dismemberment of the spirit?
More like opening the chest &
throwing the heart out with the gizzards.
viii
(Translation)
Years later “I” came back
wanting to be known.
Like the unspeakable
name of God, I tried
my 2 letters, leaving
the “O” for breath,
like in the Bible,
missing.
ix
I am not the “I”
in my poems. “I”
is the net I try to pull me in with.
x
I try to talk
with “I,” but “I” doesn’t trust
me. “I” says I am
slippery by nature.
xi
I made “I” do
what I wasn’t supposed to do,
what I didn’t want to do —
defend me,
stand as an example,
stand in for what I was hiding.
I treated “I” as if
“I” wasn’t human.
xii
They say that what I write
belongs to me, that it is my true
experience. They think it validates
my endurance.
But why pretend?
“I” is a kind of terminal survival.
xiii
I didn’t promise
“I” anything & in that way
“I” is the one I was most
true to.