Yes! A near perfect morning for a run. Sunny, still, cool but not cold. Deep blue sky, sharp shadows. Relaxed hips, knees, shoulders. A moment to remember and return to when needed. So calm, happy, not anxious. Walking back after I was done, I heard a knock so I stopped and looked up to the top of a tree — a woodpecker! And I could see it! I watched for a few seconds then listened deeper: another chirping bird, leaves rustling underfoot, a leaf blower.
10 Things
good morning Dave!
the floodplain forest is bare and a beautiful, soothing brown
with everything so bare and exposed because of the lack of leaves, I thought about how it all looks bigger (wider, more open) and smaller (no mystery, all out in the open) at the same time
glancing down at white Minneapolis rowing club building, it looked like it was a shimmering mirage in the sun
almost to the trestle — I could see it through the bare trees, stretching across the water. It looked so far away, even though I was almost there
took the recently redone steps just north of the trestle down for a better view of the water — the river was such a deep, dark blue — but a dark blue that was still clearly blue and not black (which is what navy looks like to me)
on those same steps: my shadow ahead of me — hi friend!
another shadow: a runner approaching me from behind. I could hear her slowly gaining on me, then suddenly her shadow appeared, almost lurking behind me for a moment
running on the sandy, gritty dirt just off the edge of the trail
smelling breakfast — can’t remember what type of breakfast, just breakfast — wafting down from longfellow grill
As I was running on the dirt trail just next to the paved path, I had a thought about my haunts poem and the recent ones I’ve added about the trails. So far I have three — the dirt trail on the grassy boulevard, the official paved trail, and Winchell. I think I should add this one, and maybe more. I could sprinkle them throughout the poem, or just add that one in with the others, near the beginning?
I was planning to run a little longer and listen to a playlist for the second half, but a mile into my run I realized that I had forgotten my phone. That has happened maybe once or twice ever, in all of the years I’ve been running. Today, I didn’t care, but still didn’t want to run too long without it, especially since I hadn’t told Scott which way I was running.
Another windy day. I had to hold onto my cap several times so it wouldn’t fly off. Running east on the lake street bridge, I put my hood so my cap wouldn’t fall off. Running west over the ford bridge, I took the cap off and held it in my hands. The wind made it difficult, more draining. Is that why my legs feel so sore?
10 Things
ridges and white caps in the blue water, from the wind
kids at the church daycare, at the far end of the fenced-in playground. Running by I could hear their tiny, sweet voices plotting something
more filled benches than usual along the route, including one with a person sitting and a stroller behind it
in the neighborhood: knocks on the roof — not a woodpecker, but roofers … or was it a woodpecker?
running straight into the wind, wondering if would push me up against the railing (not quite)
my shadow down in the ravine near shadow falls — lucky shadow, sheltered from the wind
everywhere hazy — it might have been my vision, but I think it was dust stirred up by the wind. Yuck!
running north, at the end, feeling the wind pushing me, but not in a helpful way
the wind didn’t rush or roar, it just pushed and pulled
a walker, walking in the middle of the path, blasting talk radio
I stopped on the double bridge to take a picture of the ravine and to put in my headphones:
a warm, windy November day / 16 nov 2023
today’s view out my window
It’s snowing leaves. Mostly they are drifting down slowly, one after the other. Sometimes at a distance, occasionally almost on my window screen. My neighbor’s yard is covered with them, a dead leaf carpet. Yesterday, as Scott and I cleared out our leaves we could see that the neighbor’s tree was still full of leaves. I wondered what would happen when the wind came back. Today I found out.
3 miles under ford bridge and back 55 degrees wind: 20mph
Almost too warm and definitely too windy. The wind doesn’t bother me like it used to, but this wind was tough. I ran straight into it heading south. One nice thing: it pushed me along in the second half. I wore shorts and by the end of my run I had taken off my sweatshirt and pushed up my short sleeves. Bare legs and bare arms in the middle of November. Strange and disorienting.
10 Wind Things
leaf shards in my eyes
holding onto my hat so it wouldn’t blow away
being pushed to the edge of the trail
a roar in my ears
swirling leaves above me, below me, to the side of me
squaring my shoulders, leaning in as the wind pushed me back
a sudden gust from the side
knocking my ankles together
shaking, swaying trees
more sizzle than howl
I didn’t hear any geese or notice what the wind was doing to the river. I might have seen my shadow; I almost remember. Encountered some other runners, bikers, and a roller skier.
I listened to the wind until I reached the ford bridge, then I stopped and put in an old playlist: “Landslide,” “Cheap Thrills,” “Sorry,” and “Love is a Battlefield.”
I came across Wendy Xu’s “Absolute Variations” today and I wanted to make note of the first few lines. What a way to start a poem!
The first time I read a line by John Ashbery was in a little café in Massachusetts, from left to right There it was written across my friend’s collarbone It felt right to be there with someone who would show me something like that when we had never met before
I appreciate how she never explicitly names the Ashbery lines. I suppose if you know a lot of Ashbery’s poems, it’s obvious, but I don’t, so it isn’t to me. But that’s okay; it could be fun trying to find them, and it’s not necessary to know them to enjoy the poem. I think her refusal to be explicit here is an example of trusting the reader to figure it out. I like that.
What a day! Sunny and calm and beautiful. I overdressed — didn’t need the gloves or the headband, maybe should’ve worn a lighter sweatshirt? Ran south to the falls, over the creek, behind John Steven’s house, over the creek again, to the grounds of the Veterans’ home, down the hill to the locks and dam no. 1, north on the river road, past the welcoming oaks, down through the tunnel of trees, across to Edmund, then done. Ran 5 miles without stopping. I didn’t even stop while taking off my sweatshirt and wrapping it around my waist. It would have been smart to stop for that, but I wanted to keep moving, so I did, and probably looked ridiculous.
10 Things
chirp chirp chirp
my ponytail swishing and hitting my shoulder
my shadow — sharp and straight and solid
a group of people — was it kids and a teacher, or all adults? I’m not sure — standng silently on the grass between Minnehaha Academy and Becketwood
shimmering scattering glowing river water
rushing gushing falls
the fake bells from the light rail sounding like the beginning of an ABBA song (at least to me) — I thought about listening to an ABBA playlist on my run back, but I forgot
running over the bridge that leads to the Veterans’ home, hearing the creek rushing way below me
encountering a few walkers — a short woman, later a tall man — as I ran down the steep hill to locks and dam no. 1
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
As I ran down a hill into Minnehaha Park, I tried to remember the sun and the warmth and the bare ground, and thought about how this same path will be cold and snow-covered within a month.
Before my run, I thought about how before works in my Haunts poem and revisited a wonderful poem, “Transubstantiation,” that plays with befores and afters. I wanted to explore the idea ofafter while I ran — what comes before, what after? But I realized as I moved that I am most interested in playing around with the before, creating layers of befores that don’t follow a linear progression, but circle around unresolved. I held onto as many of my thought as I can, then recorded them into my phone once my run was done.
notes / 13 nov 2023
transcript: November 13, 2023. Just finished a 5 mile run and while I was running I was thinking about girl ghost and gorge and befores and how I’m not interested in doing afters, I’m interested in circling around these befores. Not in a linear way, but a circular way. I’ll do another one that is before there was gorge, there was girl. That one will be about me before I started paying attention, before I started running by the gorge, before this practice. Then there will be one that’s before there was girl, there was ghost. This one will involve more of my mom as a ghost. I’m interested in playing around with the befores and making it disorienting; there’s no real origin point. It’s circular and repeats itself, phrases repeat themselves.
repetition: chiasmus and chanting
Thinking more about the circularity of my befores and the chant-like repetition of girl ghost gorge / ghost girl gorge / gorge ghost girl. Before my run, during my morning ritual of coffee and poetry, I encountered Jane Huffman’s poem, “The Rest” and her discussion/explanation of it in, “Backwashes and Eddies: Jane Huffman on “The Rest”“. She mentions the chiasmus, which I had to look up to remember what it meant:
Repetition of any group of verse elements (including rhyme and grammatical structure) in reverse order, such as the rhyme scheme ABBA. Examples can be found in Biblical scripture (“But many that are first / Shall be last, / And many that are last / Shall be first”; Matthew 19:30). See also John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”).
Here’s how Huffman describes her use of it in “The Rest”:
Cut red / flowers hung in pink water. Cut pink flowers hung in red water. Cut red water hung in pink flowers. Cut pink water hung in red flowers.
The poem operates in reversals, in mirror images, in symmetries: “Cut [pink or red] [flowers or water] hung in [pink or red] [flowers or water].”
About the water and flowers, Huffman also says this:
Indeed, “The Rest” refuses to move on. It cannot. It is obsessive, recalibrating the relationship between “flowers” and “water” until its options are exhausted. Exhaustion is a teleology of sickness. One cough anticipates the next.
“The Rest” is about her frequent bouts with bronchitis and Huffman uses repetion, especially the chiasmus, for several reasons:
the bilateral symmetry of her lungs — inhale/exhale left lung/right lung
stagnation / the stasis of the bedridden body / back and forth / refusing to move on (the backwashes and eddies)
seeks to capture the banality of the body — daily routine
imperfect — not exactly the same, repetition with variation
poetic forms that use repetition in this way: villanelle, ghazal, duplex, pantoum
Huffman argues that her repetition of the flowers and the water give the poem its emotional thrust. I’m not sure what I want to do with these ideas, but I can feel them informing my choices about how to use repetition in this poem. One idea: maybe my 3/2 form could involve inverted repetition at some points?
repetition: for meaning, memory, magic, music to only repeat is boring the best chant poems are expansive repetition is important, but so is chaos/wildness
One key: it’s okay to use some nonsense words
an hour, or so, later: I’m returning to this entry because I want to make note of how Huffman’s poem has influenced/inspired me. In particular, I was thinking about her formula and the variations she created to play with the repetition, unsettling it and giving it movement and an emotional punch:
Cut [pink or red] [flowers or water] hung in [pink or red] [flowers or water].
After a few minutes of playing around with the ideas, my own formula emerged:
Before [girl, ghost, or gorge], [girl, ghost, or gorge]: or . [2 beat word — concise and expansive].
Here’s one that I came up with the I’ll put right before the section of the poem about wanting to run with my mom:
Before girl, ghost. Cancer. Terminal. Before ghost, girl: intact.
Ooo, I like this! I hope it’s an idea that sticks.
5.25 miles fort snelling loop* 36 degrees snow flurries
*a new loop! Started at the Hidden Falls parking lot in St. Paul and ran south to some steps just before the confluence. Over a bridge to Fort Snelling. Through Fort Snelling, Coldwater Springs, the Minnehaha dog park, the Veterans’ Home. Over the ford bridge and back to the river trail.
A wonderful run with Scott! A new loop to add into the mix. From our house, this loop is about 7.5-8 miles. Not too bad. So many wonderful views of the rivers — Mississippi and Minnesota. Such variety in surfaces and landscapes! Asphalt, concrete, crushed limestone, grass, dirt — soft and hard, dead leaves. Over bridges, above ravines, beside old military barracks and frequently travelled highways, through beloved parks, around disc golf courses. Under trees, next to freaky looking bushes with no leaves but dark pinecones, through tall grass, up steep steps with special tracks for rolling bikes down.
Not too long after this run, we drove down to St. Peter to hear FWA’s fall concert. I didn’t have time to finish and post this entry. I’m finishing it on Sunday morning. Can I remember 10 things from yesterday’s run?
10 Things
the river (mississippi) stretching north — a clear, unobstructed view from above — this stretch near hidden falls in st. paul has the best views of the river
so many glowing green leaves on the trees
Scott ranting about Elon Musk and his latest attempts to destroy electric cars
the strange (and a little irritating) visual effect of running next to a tall railing as the light pulsed through the slats — a constant flash flash flash flash
running right by the barracks at Fort Snelling and feeling the misery of it — the cold quarters, especially in the winter, and this site as concentration camp, killing so many Dakota people in the winter of 1862
the pleasing slide and crunch of the crushed limestone on this stretch of the trail
a mix of surfaces: a few steps of limestone, then a flat, hard surface with a map printed on it
running through the Ft. Snelling parking lot, then over to a trail next to Highway 55 — a tall wall then the highway on one side, strange bushes with ugly and ominous-looking pinecones on the other
cutting through a narrow dirt trail near coldwater springs — running up and down as the path gently rose and fell over small hills
a row of American flags lining the road right by the Veterans’ home — it’s Veterans’ Day
I did it! I probably could have listed another 10 things. This route was memorable.
More excellent November weather! A solid, relaxed, non-stop (except for walking up the bridge steps) run. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and, later, another friendly runner — Hi! Admired the blue river and the occasional flash of red in the trees. Took deep breaths of fresh, cold air. Listened, without headphones, to the traffic and a chirping bird, rustling leaves and an alarm beeping somewhere.
10 Things
a clear view of the forest floor from above
so many green leaves still on the trees on the east side — light, glowing green
somber (or reverent?) wind chimes
smell 1: stinky, sour sewer gas, faint
smell 2: either skunk or weed, probably weed
smell 3: hot chocolate
bright yellow headlights from cars, cutting through the trees
some part of a machine scraping on a sidewalk somewhere in the distance
a tree that I thought might be a person until I saw it in my periphery: a tree with one branch holding a hat at head-height
a woman walker in bright orange pants
At the end of my run, I took a picture from the top of the hill, above the tunnel of trees, across from the ancient boulder:
a view to the river near the 35th street parking lot / 10 november 2023
I love this poem by Donika Kelly, and I love what magic she can do with words!
Nothing today hasn’t happened before: I woke alone, bundled the old dog into his early winter coat, watered him, fed him, left him to his cage for the day closing just now. My eye drifts to the buff belly of a hawk wheeling, as they do, in a late fall light that melts against the turning oak and smelts its leaves bronze. Before you left, I bent to my task, fixed in my mind the slopes and planes of your face; fitted, in some essential geography, your belly’s stretch and collapse against my own, your scent familiar as a thousand evenings. Another time, I might have dismissed as hunger this cataloguing, this fitting, this fixing, but today I crest the hill, secure in the company of my longing. What binds us, stretches: a tautness I’ve missed as a sapling, supple, misses the wind.
I love all the work the title does to set up the poem, how she describes it as watering the dog (and not giving the dog water), and these verbs: cataloging/fitting/fixing. My favorite sentence, and the reason I wanted to post this poem today, is this:
My eye drifts to the buff belly of a hawk wheeling, as they do, in a late fall light that melts against the turning oak and smelts its leaves bronze.
A late fall light that melts against the tree and smelts it leaves bronze? Wow. I want tp remember that line. I’d also like to find an example of it out by the gorge on my run today (I’m writing this bit before my run), but there’s no autumn sunlight today, just gray gray gray. I wonder, what does gray to those leaves?
during the run: I hoped to think about this question of what gray does to the leaves, but I got distracted, or maybe, it didn’t do much, at least not today. Most of the leaves were gold or orangish-brown, no shimmering or sizzling, just soft and flat.
Instead of thinking about what gray does to the leaves, I was thinking about some lines I’d like to add to my Haunts poem:
A girl runs four blocks to the gorge. She’s all muscle bone and breath, foot strikes and arm swings. The river and ghosts wait.
transcript: During the run I was thinking about ghosts and girls and the gorge. And I was thinking that what I’m really trying to convey is that there’s a heaviness and a solidness and a there-ness that is both good and too heavy. So there’s a desire to lighten up. What I want to do is convey the heaviness, so maybe using the word, “heavy,” heavy foot strikes. Then I was thinking of Lizzy McAlpine and her song, “all my ghosts.” And then I was thinking about how all these ghosts aren’t primarily a bad thing, but there are a few ghosts I struggle with more than others. I think the ghost of cancer is haunting me the most right now.
the chorus from McAlpine’s “all my ghosts”:
And all my ghosts were with me I know you felt them too Watchin’ as I started to get dizzy ‘Cause I hate all of my habits But I happen to love you I hope that’s true
another version of my lines:
A girl runs. She’s all muscle bone and breath, heavy foot falls and swinging arms. At the river her ghosts wait.
Ah, November! Ran through the neighborhood, past the kids playing outside at the church daycare, past the house that has a giant Packer’s flag hanging from their fence, past the window of the business where I watch myself run and wonder if the people inside are watching me watch myself, over the lake street bridge to the east side of the river. On the bridge, I passed a couple holding hands. A mile later, I passed another hand-holding couple. An unusual sighting, and twice. Ran up the long hill to the Monument, then beside the river until I reached the ford bridge. Stopped to take a picture on the bridge, then ran the rest of the way back with Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo.
taken from the ford bridge / 8 november 2023taken, with some trepidation, over the railing of the ford bridge / 8 november 2023
10 Things
kids playing at the church daycare, several of them huddled at the fence, one of them (accidentally?) threw a ball over the side
blue water, some waves, a few streaks or trails from something
running above shadow falls, not sure if I was hearing it dripping or the wind through the trees
running up the summit hill, a stretch of lit street lamps lining the path, the amber lights glowing softly
noticing the gloom and the absence of my shadow as I ran around the ravine
wondering if I would get to hear the St. Thomas bells as I ran close to campus (nope)
chickadee dee dee
turkeys! I’m not quite sure, but I think they were hanging out in the grass, just past the ford bridge, before you head down the hill to the locks and dam
an unnaturally vibrant green on some of the leaves on the east side of the river — is this spring or late fall?
an intense smell of cinnamon shortly before reaching the ford bridge — where was it coming from? someone’s gum? a bush?
before the run
Last night during Scott’s South High Community Jazz Band rehearsal, when I sit and listen and work on poetry, I returned to Susan Tichy’s North | Rock | Edge. Wow! This morning, before my run, I’m thinking about the lines I read and an interview Tichy did for Terrain.
There’s also a sensory excitement in a sea-rock-light-wind-bird-flower-seal-seep-peat-rain-salt—oh look, there’s a whale!—environment that subsumes attention to any one thing into the press of the whole.
I love how she describes the environment and her idea of attention to the whole, not just to any one thing.
Rock blurs the categories of time and space by making time visible and place temporal. A poem uses both rest and motion to create a form, which can be seen and must be heard—as the Susan Howe epigraph says, fleeting and fixed. These poems, like many in Avalanche Path, have a surface texture of fragmentation, abrupt change, and brokenness metamorphized into a new whole, voiced in present time, human time. Nothing is still; nothing is uniform.
And here’s a wonderful bit from the first part of Tichy’s poem, 60 North|Arriving, Stand Still:
& here wind
elevates to a theory
of time : to not miss a single
wave’s decay, a verse
of coast becoming dearth
of certainty, to undefine
the edge as noun, dissolving
in the not unyielding mouth
of cliff : verse/reverse
from the root of turn :
wind-wave & swell
compounded to a single
force, broken
by the thing it breaks—
In the next section she offers this line, what place is not. The gorge as what place is not, or where place one was?
during the run
I think Tichy’s poem influenced my thoughts indirectly as I ran. I was thinking about a part of my Haunts poem I’m working on, particularly about how I am sometimes a girl, sometimes a ghost, and sometimes a gorge. Am I the gorge, I wondered as I started running. And as I ran over the lake street bridge I came up with an answer: yes. Later, when I reached to ford bridge, I stopped running to record some thoughts:
I am the gorge because the gorge is the remains, what is left behind, what continues to exist even as ground erodes, self erodes, vision erodes. The gorge, constantly shifting, but always there. The gorge is the eroded. Is the ghost the verb, the eroding? … I am also the gorge because I’m constantly leaving part of myself here and becoming this place and not just moving through the place, becoming the place.
3.5 miles river road, south/hill to Wabun/river road, north 41 degrees
Gray with a cold wind. I ran south, hoping to see the turkeys that Scott and I had encountered driving on the river road an hour before. No turkeys. Do I remember hearing or seeing any birds? I don’t think so. I do remember having to stutter step to avoid a squirrel darting out in front of me.
I ran past the double bridge to Locks and Dam no. 1, then up the hill to Wabun. What a view! It was steep, but it didn’t bother me. Ran past 2 people playing disc golf in the park.
Heard something or somebody rustling in the dry leaves below the double bridge — is that a white shirt I’m seeing? Possibly. Saw the flashing lights of the street sweepers, sweeping up leaves on the edge of the road. Also heard a teacher’s sharp whistle over at the school playground.
Today’s color palette: green, red, gold, blue, brown, and gray
overheard from one biker to another: So I just started rewatching Ted Lasso.
A nice run. Nothing felt sore or stiff — well, I guess there was one spot below my right shoulder blade that was a little sore, maybe from yesterday’s yoga? I could breathe and wasn’t anxious. Near the end I began chanting triple berries. I don’t remember having any deep thoughts or strange thoughts or curious thoughts — any thoughts? Thanked a pedestrian for moving over to the side of the trail. Tried to keep my cadence high, my footfalls quiet. Had to wipe my nose a few times on the sleeve of my sweatshirt.
I love these November runs — the colder temps with a dry path, a clear view to the other side, soft colors, less people on the trails.
At noon in the middle of a snowy field, the dry seedhead of a plant bends down and describes a perfect arc in the snow. It traces twin channels where two points of contact brush ice crystals back and forth in a wavering breeze. In that moment, it’s easy to see where the first geometers found their tools, how Newton articulated his first law of motion, and even how different human minds throughout history contributed to the development of the metronome (one of these belonging to an Arab poet-scholar from the ninth century whose name was given to a crater on the dark side of the moon). It’s a lot to take in on a quick walk with my husband and the dog before lunch, and there is simply no adequate way to mark its significance. A photo or even a quick video feel utterly lacking in the reverence that such a moment deserves. Instead we walk on and try to memorize nature’s urgent tattoo: look here, look at what I have to show you.
I often think about how limited language is in trying to capture what I observe/experience in a single moment while running by the gorge. I like how Forrest attempts to describe her quick walk before lunch with her husband and her dog, how she connects it with so much of the world beyond that moment and the place.
5 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 50 degrees / wind: 14 mph
Warmer this morning, so I wore shorts without tights, a short-sleeved gray t-shirt, and my orange sweatshirt. At the bottom of the hill when I turned around, I took off the sweatshirt and ran the second half with bare arms and legs. The only part of me that was cold was my ears, from the wind. A good run. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker:
me: Hi Dave! Dave: Hi Sara! How are you doing today? me: I’m good. How are you? Dave: I’m very good. Thanks for asking.
Today I thought about how both of us almost always say the same thing, but they aren’t empty words. We both are always good when we’re outside, moving; we are our best selves: happy, free, able to forget and to admire everything around us.
10 Things
honking geese, heard not seen, hidden in some brambles
wind chimes, softly ringing at the start of my run
mostly gray and overcast, once sun and my shadow — hello friend!
approaching the Welcoming Oaks, all bare now, a deep red tree — have I ever noticed before that they are a few maples mixed in with the oaks
several of the Welcoming Oaks had broken branches — the branch that remained looked jagged and gnarled
an open view down to the floodplain forest! only a few patches of green
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder
more chickadee dee dees
Daddy Long Legs crossing the street
a slight haze everywhere, covering everything
what the wind can do
A block into my run, the wind picked up and gathered the leaves, pushing them forward. They looked almost like kids running — frantic and fast — towards something fun or away from something boring. This image reminded me of the other day when Scott and I were waiting in the drive-up line at the pharmacy. The wind was pushing an open wrapper. Instead of swirling around, the silver wrapper looked like it was dancing or marching. It didn’t look like a wrapper, but like a bug or some creature that was alive. One more wind/leaves image: Running south, the wind was at my back. A few times it pushed the leaves and we (me and the leaves) raced. I won, of course.
loops, repetitions, projects, time, and echoes
I’m still orbiting around ideas, trying to figure out what to do next. I’m getting closer. I know that it involves my not-yet-finished haunts poems and repetitions and restlessness and the untethering of project from progress, looping and leaving and returning, and time. Time keeps coming up. I’ve thought/written/theorized about time for decades. I even wrote about it in a doctoral exam. On this log, I frequently discuss it — how it drips or disappears when I’m running, my need to slow down the time it takes me to run (pace), rethinking time outside of clocks and the tight boxes of seconds, minutes, hours, trying to imagine time in much larger and longer scales across generations and centuries, Mary Oliver’s eternal vs. ordinary time, Marie Howe’s moments, past present and future Saras, cycles and seasons.
The other day I came across an amazing new endeavor (note: I’m resisting using project here), by Graywolf Press: a series of labs in which several artists come together to discuss, share, collaborate, imagine new possibilities for a theme. The first lab’s theme is time and, as I read through it (I read the transcript first, I’ll listen to their podcast next), I was inspired. Too many ideas to try and write down in this entry. I was particularly struck by Lisa Chen (LC) and her novel (I’m starting it after I finish this entry!), Activities of Daily Living. Here’s how she describes the book:
it’s about this durational artist Tehching Hsieh who was active in downtown New York in the seventies, eighties, nineties. And the, the novel is about a woman named Alice, who’s, has a day job but is trying to make something artistic. And she decides she’s gonna do a project about this artist just because he’s on her mind at the same time that her father is declining from dementia.
And the book is partly organized by going through these six seminal projects that the artist is known for before he stopped making work. And right, so, so the “Time Clock Piece,” he punched a time clock on the hour, every hour for like a year. And he missed, he missed a few. So again, Alice is trying to make a project out of this work so part of it is she’s digging into each of these durational projects and trying to think about what it stimulates or what she can make of it.
In the conversation, LC distinguishes between artist-time and life-time and projects we work on outside of capitalist/work-time. This makes me think of the many discussions I’ve had about being useless and un-productive and engaging in work outside of/in resistance to “the clock.” For me, this sort of time conversation is about what it means to work as an artist — I should return to Mary Oliver and the ways she struggles with this in The Leaf and the Cloud! Haunting questions: what’s the point? but, what does it do?
In the midst of all my thinking about time and progress and projects, I’ve been reflecting on repetitions and echoes in my own work. After rereading an entry from nov 5, 2019, I wrote this in my notes:
Reading through entries from past years on this day and feeling like I could have written/experienced the same thing on a run today — the same river, the same gray sky, the same dying vision, the same words feelings thoughts. This sameness points to a larger time scale and a resistance to progress! and improvement! but I also wonder if it suggests that I’m stuck in the same loop — be outside, move, notice, write. Where is it all going? Does it have to go anywhere? I feel these doubts in these moments when I’m in-between projects, when I have too many doors to enter and I don’t know which one to choose. This tension of restlessness and looping and resisting and in-between and the life of a writer should all be part of this collection. It should be haunted by these themes.
my notes
I also wrote about this theme in an “On This Day” entry this morning:
I’m thinking about my echo discussion for nov 4, 2020 and how an echo repeats but slightly differently each time — fainter or softer or distorted. So much of what I write (and experience) as I move is almost the same from year to year. The view, or lack of view, of the river. The wonderful cold air. How much I love running in the cold. Often I start with, A wonderful run or a beautiful run or another great run. What distinguishes these entries are the small and brief moments and the images they create, like the snow and the bridge. That moment only lasted a few seconds, but it creates the echo here. (if that makes sense.)
Sara, age 49, on November 4, 2023, is thinking a lot of repetition and looping and wondering about the differences between being stuck in a rut of repetition and using the grooves to sing a beautiful song. (not sure if that metaphor works). Put another way: I’ve been doing this practice of moving outside, noticing, writing about it for almost 7 years. So many of the entries contain the same descriptions, or almost the same descriptions. Am I just repeating myself, stuck on the same path, or is each entry an echo, a variation, with (sometimes) slight differences, difficult to discern?
Wow, this is a lot. Right before my run, as I was thinking about all of these things in a kind of jumbled mess, this idea flashed in my head: find the echoes. Start with the moments, over the 7 years of writing in this log, in which I repeat myself (sometimes word for word) and put them together into some sort of chant or small poem or something. Sprinkle them throughout “Haunts.” Mix them in with other examples of echoes — in the geography, the history, the setting? How many echoes can I find?
Loved the weather this morning! Hardly any wind, not too bright, not too cold. Scott and I drove over to a parking lot near Highland Bridge and ran beside the Mississippi River past Hidden Falls to the confluence where the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers meet. Wow! Such soft, sweeping views! Heard lots of chickadees (chick a dee dee dee) and ran up and down lots of little hills.
10+ Things
a cracked rutted cratered trail
steps leading down to a bridge across the river — something to try next time!
empty benches on the edge
a recently re-painted parking lot below the confluence with jaunty arrows on the pavements — I said they looked like they were italicized
the tops of the bare branches looked fuzzy and soft and gray
2 rivers curving around an island
more white sand than usual — the river is low
running through Highland bridge, I could hear a dog relentlessly barking at the dog park
hidden falls was steadily flowing down limestone and concrete ledges
a few slick, icy spots on the bridge
geese! A gaggle of geese on the edge of the trail, only the final one acknowledged our presence with a sharp honk — no hiss, thankfully
