3.8 miles
marshall loop
45 degrees
drizzle?
As expected, much cooler today. It is supposed to rain until late afternoon, so I’m happy I managed to run between raindrops. I think it started drizzling towards the end of the run, but it was hard to tell because I was overheated and sweating. Yesterday I wore a tank top and shorts, today the same shorts but with tights, a long sleeved shirt and my winter vest. Tomorrow it might snow. April in Minnesota.
Listened to “swim meet motivation” playlist so I didn’t give much attention to the world. I took my headphones out for a few seconds and heard lots of birds. What else?
10 Things I Noticed
- near St. Thomas, 2 runners in red jackets on the other side of Cretin, sprinting down the sidewalk
- the river: brown, dull, flat
- later, exiting the lake street bridge, I noticed an unusual number of cars turning off from the river road. An event somewhere?
- I think a house I always pass by on this loop has a new fence, or has it always been there and I just noticed it today?
- the sky was dark and gloomy
- most of the cars had their headlights on. I could see them through the bare trees on the other side of the ravine by shadow falls
- one car didn’t have their headlights on and I could barely see them
- 2 different lime scooters parked in awkward spots, one blocking part of the sidewalk on marshall, the other up against the railing on the lake street bridge
- no eagle perched on the dead tree on the east side of the lake street bridge
- mud + leafy muck + water collecting at the sidewalk curb entrances. a few times I stepped right in it
A. R. Ammons’ garbage
Section 13 took me a few read throughs to find a way in. In section 12, Ammons had railed against words, too many words! In section 13, he describes two types of men who use too many words: the blabbermouth and the loudmouth. Then he ends with this:
whirlwind, not human, I’m the whirlwind: the
creaking hills, not human, my silence cracks and
creaks: the flow of clouds not mine, my
motions trained clear by clouds: and the
streams’ yielding bending fathers my winding:
and the semicircles’ gusts before storms make
grassclumps draw in the sand—these are the
going closures that organize mind, allowing
and limiting, my mind’s ways: the rabbit’s
leaps and halts, listenings, are prosody of
a poem floating around the mind’s brush: I
mix my motions in with the mix of motions, all
motions cousins, conveyors, purveyors, surveyors,
rising from the land, eddying coils of wash,
bristling with fine-backed black clarity as with
brookripples over stone, spreading out, evaporating
or seeping in under, soaking, salt flats, the
turkey buzzard whirling, the wind whirling,
the giant “stills” of the sea and I, and sand,
whirling, stalling, breaking out, getting on,
coming round—cousins, not silent, either,
communicative, but not with human sound,
communicative motions making sounds, much mutual
glistening in a breezy grove of spring aspen speech
prosody: I know I know this word, having encountered dozens of times, but somehow I still forget what it means. I looked it up: the patterns of rhythm and sound used on poetry
This bit reminds me of Ammons’ earlier discussion in section 7 about non-human languages — whales, horses, birds. Here it’s the language of motions. I love this last line:
much mutual
glistening in a breezy grove of spring aspen speech
Spring aspen speech? So good. Reading this part about all the motion, I’m thinking of one of my introductions to Ammons and the initial inspiration for studying him this month: “Corsons Inlet.” Once I finish garbage I’ll have to read that poem again.