Month: March 2019

4 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
43! degrees
100% soaked socks 25% deep puddles

Decided I was done running in the basement. I needed to get outside and be by the gorge and I didn’t care that everything was saturated with snow or ice or cold water. I’m very glad I went even if my socks got soaked before I left my block. My right shoe made this really cool squishing sound every time I took a step. Too bad I didn’t get a recording of the noise. Everything everywhere was so wet. Dripping. Gushing. Trickling. Seeping. Even the air. Almost 100% humidity. And the fog–wow. Thick. The river looked so beautiful with the fog hovering above the water that I actually gasped as I ran above it. Got to say good morning to the Man in Black. Encountered only one biker, their bike light cutting through the thick air. Heard some sirens but couldn’t see the flashing lights until they were almost right beside me. It started raining around the 2 mile point. A light rain that I hardly noticed. What I remember most about the run: the haunting, hovering fog

Fog
BY CARL SANDBURG

The fog comes
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

I do also remember encountering 2 dogs with their human, walking in the rain.

The Rainwalkers
Denise Levertov

An old man whose black face
shines golden-brown as wet pebbles
under the streetlamp, is walking two mongrel dogs of dis-
proportionate size, in the rain,
in the relaxed early-evening avenue.

The small sleek one wants to stop,
docile to the imploring soul of the trashbasket,
but the young tall curly one
wants to walk on; the glistening sidewalk
entices him to arcane happenings.

Increasing rain. The old bareheaded man
smiles and grumbles to himself.
The lights change: the avenue’s
endless nave echoes notes of
liturgical red. He drifts

between his dogs’ desires.
The three of them are enveloped –
turning now to go crosstown – in their
sense of each other, of pleasure,
of weather, of corners,
of leisurely tensions between them
and private silence.

Love the last sentence: “The three of them are enveloped–turning now to go crosstown–in their sense of each other, of pleasure, of weather, of corners, or leisurely tensions between them and private silence.” Enveloped. Such a better word than surrounded or consumed or covered or layered. In what was I enveloped today above the gorge?

3.2 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
24 degrees
65% snow-covered
25% rough, ice shard covered

Oh beautiful sun! It seemed much warmer than 24 degrees. Too bad it snowed a heavy, wet snow this weekend that melted and then refroze in sharp, jagged ruts or almost refroze in glassy, slippery surfaces on the path. So treacherous! I slipped a lot, but never fell. The hardest part was navigating the sidewalks for the 4 blocks to the river. Once on the river road path, it was easier. Some bare pavement and only a few stretches of jagged ice. It is very difficult to notice anything or think about anything or sink into a deeper layer of connection with the world when you have to focus so much attention on avoiding ice shards or mini ice rinks or deceptive puddles that are deeper than you think or slicker than you think. I did hear the geese honking. Smelled some almost burnt toast. Saw that the river was open along the east shore. No Daily Walker or Man in Black. Did see the older woman who walks with ski poles and a few speedy runners. A dog and its human. A bike–can’t remember if it was a fat tire.

The Chairs That No One Sits In
BY BILLY COLLINS

You see them on porches and on lawns
down by the lakeside,
usually arranged in pairs implying a couple

who might sit there and look out
at the water or the big shade trees.
The trouble is you never see anyone

sitting in these forlorn chairs
though at one time it must have seemed   
a good place to stop and do nothing for a while.

Sometimes there is a little table
between the chairs where no one   
is resting a glass or placing a book facedown.

It might be none of my business,
but it might be a good idea one day
for everyone who placed those vacant chairs

on a veranda or a dock to sit down in them
for the sake of remembering
whatever it was they thought deserved

to be viewed from two chairs   
side by side with a table in between.
The clouds are high and massive that day.

The woman looks up from her book.
The man takes a sip of his drink.
Then there is nothing but the sound of their looking,

the lapping of lake water, and a call of one bird
then another, cries of joy or warning—
it passes the time to wonder which.

I want to place my deck chairs on my deck and look out at the tree down the alley and try to hear the sound of me looking. What does that sound like? Also, I wonder, are the chairs forlorn? Maybe they are relieved to not have the burden of some human’s butt sitting heavily on them?

3.1 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
24 degrees
75% snow-covered

Sun! Sun! Sun! Birds. Warmer air. Melting ice. Impending snowstorms. Soft, shifting, slick snow. A gaggle of gabbing geese. Good mornings exchanged with the man in black. 5 seconds of bare pavement–a jagged strip in the middle of the path. Ran without headphones. What did I hear? The geese, my ponytail gently hitting my jacket. What did I think about? How draining it was to run on the path, slipping in the snow. How much nicer it will be once the path is clear. Don’t remember smelling anything–no burnt toast drifting down from the grill on lake street.

Thinking again about layers. After a winter of double shirts and double running tights, I’m ready to have less of them. What freedom! But what layers can we never lose?

5.3 miles
franklin hill turn around
95% snow-covered
16 degrees/feels like 5

More sun. Blue sky. Birds chirping. But no snow melting. No bare pavement. No running on the walking path, dipping below the road, above the floodplain forest. Only running on the bike path right by the road. Wasn’t able to greet the Daily Walker because we were both running the same direction. Did get to say “good morning” to the man in black. Wow, he’s tall and lean and friendly. Heard the geese by the railroad trestle. Saw a nervous squirrel dart across the road and the path. Listened to my vest rustling as I moved. Sounded like a soft brush on a snare drum. Wore my yaktrax again. The path was slick and slushy, making it harder to fly, especially as I ran up the franklin hill. The river was mostly covered with snow but as I neared the franklin bridge, it opened up and I could see gaping black holes. Encountered 2 fat tires and a walker–a woman bundled up with a mask over her mouth. No dogs. No snow blowers or trucks backing up. No cars revving their engines or disembodied voices traveling up from the gorge. I don’t remember thinking about anything as I ran–did I?

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, black vest, hood, buff, gloves–which came off around mile 2.

Almost forgot–at some point, it started snowing big fluffy flakes. In my face as I ran south. Running under the interstate bridge I looked up and thought I saw them swirling like static–was it too much sun in my eyes or did they actually look like that? Watched a truck barrel across the interstate and wondered: do they see this staticky snow too? I liked the snow–looking at it, but not when it landed on my eyelashes. By the time I was done running, I think the sun was out again. Can you believe we might get another foot of snow this weekend?

I recently discovered Linda Hogan. She is amazing. Here are two poems from her collection, Rounding the Human Corners:

from Eucalyptus

Some of the religious say the five senses are thieves
so let’s say I am stolen
and like the tree I can lose myself
layer after layer
all the way down to infinity
and that’s when the world has eyes and sees.
The whole world
loves this unlayered human.

The Way In

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding,
and beauty.
To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.
To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.

3.35 miles
mississippi river road path, north/south
10 degrees/feels like -3
100% snow-covered

Cold. Windy. Wonderful! It was tough running straight into the wind on the way out, but it felt great being outside above the gorge. The river is frozen over. The path is still completely covered. Wore my yaktrax today. Imagined that I was tall, strong. Wanted to think about how the cold felt but it was difficult because I had so many layers on.

layers: green shirt, orange shirt, black jacket, gray jacket, 2 pairs of running tights, 2 pairs of socks, buff, hood, visor, mittens, gloves

Didn’t feel the cold. Not even in my fingertips. Just warm. And encumbered by layers. Too many sleeves. Bulky, heavy gloves. A jacket zipped up too high. What will it feel like without the layers? Bare legs? Hopefully in a month or two I’ll get to remember.

Before heading outside, I read the article, Counting Feet: On Running and Poetic Meter. Love the ending line:

both running and poetry are ways of feeling, inside ourselves, that steady beat of being human—the marker that, yes, we are alive, and living, and carrying ourselves forward on ever-moving feet.

I can’t stop thinking about inside/outside and their complicated relationship.

Last night, I read a new poem that I don’t quite understand yet but with which I am enchanted. It’s about salt–which, by the way, is something I can feel right now on my face, caked post run. I am a salty sweater.

Salt
BY HUANG FAN
TRANSLATED BY HUANG FAN AND MARGARET ROSS

Grain by grain, salt’s frozen tears
Help me count history’s disasters
I can’t blame salt for telling food
You’re full of wounds

Salt misses the freedom of the ocean
Remembering waves, salt jumps into a soup
But it finds there only my reflected face
It hides by making itself too soft to chew

Sometimes, salt follows a cold sweat
Waking me from a nightmare
Dreamed blood tastes like salt
As if in human failure lay the silence of God

Having swum in the ocean
Salt considers soup a shallow pond
For salt, every meal is a jail

One day, an extra salty flavor
Makes me cough and cough
It feels like cold fish bones scraping my throat
Maybe it’s salt telling me
I’m going to prison in your body
Don’t ever forget who I am!

Translated from the Chinese

I almost forgot to mention that it was my mom’s birthday. If she were alive, she’d be 77. I imagine she wouldn’t have wanted to run today in this cold and wind, but she might have gone cross country skiing. Oh to be out in the wintery world with her, talking and laughing and admiring the snow decorating the trees!