bike: 25 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 2.2 miles
treadmill
More cold, more basement. Watched a Spartan race while I biked, listened to a podcast while I ran. Covered the display panel and didn’t look at my watch, so I (sort of) lost track of time, which was nice. Felt pretty good until the last few minutes, when my legs were sore — my left hip + knee. Did I think about anything? I don’t remember. Oh, I do remember thinking about stopping to set up a camera and do some video of my running. I want to see if I’m raising up my left hip enough. I didn’t stop. Then I thought about physical therapy and remembered the last time I was there, when the therapists recorded some of my running on an iPad. Anything else? Nope. All the thoughts, good or bad, gone. That’s cool.
I’m continuing to work on my Haunts poem. Not sure how I will weave these in, but I want to add a few more parts that deal explicitly with my story of vision loss. Here’s what I have so far. It’s still in the 3/2 form, but turned into 5 syllable lines:
Before there was ghost,
there was girl. Fiercely
physical, sturdy,
not certain but sure
footed, the ground firm
beneath her, able
to shake worlds with her
body, to make worlds
with one glance — meadows,
forests, stintless stars —-
all hers instantly.
Before there was girl,
there was ghost, carried
deep within unknown
ancestors, passed on
to the girl.* Scrambled
code in the back of
each eye, starting a
shift from sharp to soft
so slow it will go
unnoticed until
lines dissolve, letters
blur, ground unmoors, and
a gorge is carved out
between girl and world.
*initially, I wrote this line as:
there was ghost, carried
deep within the girl,
passed on from unknown
ancestors: scrambled…
I can’t decide which I like better.
Since I’m thinking more about vision, and how to express it in poetry, here’s a poem about saccadic masking from Paige Lewis. Like most poems I really like, I don’t quite get it yet.
Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis from Space Struck
—a phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye
All constellations are organisms
and all organisms are divine
and unfixed. I am spending
my night in the kitchen. There
is blood in the batter—dark
strands stretch like vocal
cords telling me I am missing
so much with these blurred
visions: a syringe flick, the tremor
of my wrist—raised veins silked
green. I have seen the wings
of a purple finch wavering
around its body, stuck, burned
to the grill of my car, which means
I have failed to notice its flight—
a lesson on infinities, a lesson I
am trying to learn. I am trying.
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze
when everything I want is motion?