2024 in review

I’m starting this review of 2024 on December 29th when there is no snow on the ground and two kids are getting ready to go back to college after taking semester-long mental health breaks. How long will it take me to complete the review? Only future Sara knows! Future Sara here: Just finished my review of Dec 2024; it’s February 7th, 2025.

january

Began the year by signing up for the marathon with Scott and feeling hopeful that I’d make it to the start line. (I did! And the finish line, too!) Also began the year trying not to worry about the election, which was 11 months away. Ran over a thin layer of snow, heard some geese, discovered the fun of watching the mud and muck and steep hills of Cycle-cross. Dropped FWA off at school, came home, then had to return with RJP to bring him his forgotten backpack — almost 6 hours in the car. Admired sizzling ice. Started gathering poems/ideas about windows. On January 9th, had a rare run that I did not enjoy — cold, slippery, sloppy. Was grateful to be outside, studying the color of the river and being surrounded by the honks and geese when it felt like -5. Tried to incorporate some core exercises into my training. Refused to run outside when it felt like -25, but did run outside when it felt like -20. Wrote my 2000th entry (as of 29 jan 2024, I’m at 2,257 entries). Ended the month running in 43 degrees without gloves of a jacket!

useful things to remember

love this from W Berry, Window 15:
lightning stroke caught in the eye as description of seeing (10 jan)
Jane Hirshfield’s form, an assay (11 jan)
a discussion of color and how it doesn’t speak to me (12 jan)
12 great core exercises (14 jan)
window as framing Nothing (19 jan), combined with Lao-tzu’s poem, 11, and the spaces in-between frames that matter (9 jan)
Magritte and vision and windows (19 jan)
the silver flash of a bird’s wing (20 jan)
Scott and I just watched (on Monday night) a beautiful story on PBS about Rita Davern and her efforts to reckon with her family’s buying of Pike Island, a sacred space for the Dakota people known as Bdote which was illegally “purchased” by Zebulon Pike in 1805 (31 jan)

fun things to try

jan 3, vocab challenge

Yesterday I used the word supine and remember my beloved high school vocab workshop book. I found it on my bookshelf and had an idea: why not randomly pick a word from each day and spend time with it (ideally, write a poem about it). Yesterday’s word (found after I asked FWA to pick a number between 1 and 162 while he waited for his doctor’s appointment): kudos

Here’s a poem inspired by the clinic waiting room:

Kudos Tuesday
you’re off to a great start
a crowded waiting room
everyone masked
deep coughs
a long wait for urgent care
a confused woman
with a respiratory infection
uncertain whether or not to wait
in this stuffy room for 2 hours —
should she stay or should she go?
her daughter arrives and says,
let’s sidebar for a moment
and I don’t care what they decide
I just want to know if
this is how lawyers talk all the time
or she’s just watched too much law and order

I need to clean up this poem a bit, but I like the moment it captures; it brings me back to that waiting room! I could see trying this with vocab, or just taking a moment out of my day and capturing it with words

jan 5, an image-a-day and/or a subtitle for the day

Something to try today, from Richard Siken: one image

The heart of lyric poetry is music and image. Music is hard to talk about but image is easy. It’s not too late to start an exercise. Write down one image every day that was striking. It’s good as a resource to pull from for writing or just for remembering. Date them. >

Record a subtitle for each day of the week for two weeks. These subtitles can be personal, historical, or even arbitrary. What is it like to capture a day with a subtitle?

jan 14, core exercises (what is poetry’s core?)

What types of attention/writing/creating experiments can I do with my core exercises? Maybe something connected to the core as center, sturdy, sound, robust, stable, solid, durable.

jan 25, waterlogged, a chapbook

A hybrid chapbook idea: combining some of my water poems with the moments in my log where they started. I want to call it Waterlogged. Initially I thought I would just use poems about swimming in Lake Nokomis, but as I ran, I thought about all the different water-related things I’ve written, about the fog (yes, this idea was inspired by today’s weather), the crunching snow, the gorge and erosion, sweat/humidity/dew point. Maybe even a 10 Things list about water?

february

It started with a warm, snow-less runs — 35, 38, 45, 44, 47 degrees! On the 8th, rain and mud! On the 12th, it felt like spring, not in a hopeful way like, spring is coming!, but in a disturbing way like, why does it already feel this warm?. It finally snowed on feb 15: 4 inches. On the 22nd, I woke up from a calf cramp that haunted me for the rest of the month and well into March. Warmer air returned near the end of the month: 45 degrees (feb 25), 47 (feb 26), 46 (feb 27).

useful things to remember

Robert Fripp and quiet moments (2 feb)
Peripheral texts/writing (3 feb)
Interstices (4 feb)
Reverie and distractions (5 feb)
What might a poetics and spiritual gymnastics — that involves the body too — look like? (6 feb)
Alt-text and ekphrasis resources (8 feb)
my vision, not fuzz but fizz (17 feb)
description of illusion of disembodied legs (19 feb)
theories on/feelings about pain (22 feb)
the calf is referred to as the peripheral heart (24 feb)
memory palace (25 feb)
doors (29 feb)

fun things to try

feb 13, describing how I see

What if I used the poem, Medical History/ Nicole Sealey, as an inspiration — listing mundane details, then ending with a stinger: The only colors I can see in this image are gray and glitter?

march

The month began with wind gusts of 31 mph and anxiety about my calf muscle’s strange behavior. On the 8th, I left my watch off and practiced data silence. Lamented the lack of snow this winter, wondered why it had hardly happened. Wore shorts in the middle of the month. Learned more about perimenopause. Returned to layers as the cold and wind returned. Then, on march 22nd, 3 inches of snow, and on the 27th, the day of RJP’s and FWA’s trip to Chicago, 4 or 5 minches. Did a 10k race with Scott. By the end of the month, my calf pain had both lessened and become mundane, and most of the snow had melted.

useful things to remember

distinctions between bodies, brains, minds, souls, and sense breaking through (1 march)
pain and stories we tell ourselves and cracking the code (2 march)
calf pain, compression socks, anxiety, feeding two birds with one scone (3 march)
my mom and raging against death (5 march)
time, clocks, interruptions, regular vs. eternal time, form fitters, pace (6 march)
silence (7 march) and “imagining the ancient swing of my arms, like a pair of scissors cutting the air — I listened for the sharp swish of blades and almost heard it” (7 march)
more on clocks and time (8 march)
bells (10 march)
James Schuyler and color, Charles Simic (11 march)
Lorine Niedecker and water and stone (13 march)
reading Niedecker, Oswald, and Tichy together (14 march)
Lorine Niedecker and her magic condensing (16 march)
obsession = bee in your bonnet, but also the soul trying to escape, ED and opening the top of my head to release the bee, Homer Simpson clip (19 march)
how I don’t notice when things aren’t in color, the Dark, shadows (20 march)
the secret lives of plants, Alice Oswald and Sidelong Glances (22 march)
Schuyler and natural phenomenon as art (24 march)
fixed and open mindsets, anxiety, and stories we tell ourselves (25 march)
looking people in the eyes (26 march)
accustomed, acquainted, familiar (27 march)

fun things to try

march 18, a 3 word turn

try to recalibrate a poem by adding in a short — 3 word or so — turn near the end like in Tim Raphael’s “Prayer of a non-believer”.

march 20, another color poem

Write a poem about how I don’t notice when things aren’t in color, or use it as a line in a poem about noticing/not noticing

april

April began with snow that turned into rain. The next day, wind! Then, feeling like spring! Then cold, then wind, then rain, then shorts and sun and 67 degrees in the afternoon by mid-month. On April 17th, my anxiety about what classes FWA would pick for the fall semester of his senior year of college was relieved when he picked some cool ones. (But — spoiler alert — in september things fell apart and he ended up never going to any of those classes and took medical leave for the fall.) The cold returned in the third week before ending in the 50s. The last day of April brought sun and shorts and rowers and roller skiers and territorial turkeys. Spring!

useful things to remember

not looking away without the looking (2 april)
the difference between a sunset and a sun set/ting, de-centering and the peripheral (3 april)
Alice Oswald and writing about the wind as writing about something else (5 april)
believing in the unseen: air (15 april)
Eula Biss’ Pain Scale (18 – 19 april)
gutted street lamps, stripped for their copper wire (20 – 21 april)
the bees are back! (21 april)
ecopoetry (26 april)
Bethany and other people at the 10k race (27 april)
Beaufort scale in verse (29 april)
from dandelions to dandy lines (30 april)
poems as the opposite of habits — explosions (30 april)

fun things to try

5 april, beaufort scale

Play around with the beaufort scale — make a poem or a playlist of songs or poems lines out of it

23 april, St. Paul Sidewalk Poetry Project

Plan your running route based on sidewalk poems from this project.

may

57 degrees and smells from Sea Salt! May begins with a certainty: summer is coming. Encountered the territorial turkey again. This time he was in the middle of the street just hanging out. Wondered if he could be my shadow-self. Ran to St. Cate’s University, which is only 4 miles from our house, to check out where RJP would be going next year. (spoiler: she wasn’t quite ready in the fall, so she decided to defer until the winter of 2025.) Renewed my driver’s license without having to take the vision test! (I’m not planning to drive again, but it’s still nice to have the license). Noticed rowers, roller skiers, someone on an eliptigo. Felt too warm on May 12th, when it was 67 degrees. Lost my view of the river for another year to the leaves. Felt even warmer on the 20th of May. Switched my allegiance from Saucony to Brooks with a new pair of Ghosts. Got caught in the rain and ran in soaked shorts and a shirt stuck to me like a second skin — yuck! Had a do-I-need-to-go-to-the-hospital panic attack. My first one (I think). No fun. Ended the month with 65 degrees, wind, and the ritual of greeting Dave, the Daily Walker and asking him how he’s doing.

useful things to remember

chiaroscuro (7 may)
silhouettes and limited visual data and basic forms (8 may)
Kemi Alabi Vs. Divinity (11 may)
the brain as an artist (14 may)
letters and stamps and dead metaphors (16 may)
a poet speaks to me (Sara) from across the page (16 may)
street lamps and bad vision as beautiful (17 may)
Kara Walker and more on silhouettes — “a radical condensation of faith in shadows” (17 may)
cave painting (18 may)
What is the relationship between an object and its shadow? (19 may)
the Shades and CD Wright’s Casting Deep Shade (20 may)
throwing shade (22 may)
fun with acrostics — Bring Ya Ass (22 may)
the shadow of death (23 may)
James Bond opening credits and silhouettes (28 may)
the importance of titles in poetry (29 may)
greeting Dave as ritual (30 may)
Diane Khoi Nguyen (30 may)

fun things to try

9 may, silhouette theory

Use silhouette theory to write something: “take your lead character (or characters) and reduce them down to a silhouette — plain old black and white — and see how distinctive they look.”

16 may, still life

Play around with different meanings of still. Write a poem about drinking bourbon; call it “still life”.

16 may, study oral forms of poetry

17 may, silhouette sightings

As you move by the gorge, make note of the shadows and the silhouettes they create

24 may, runner’s high

Study the runner’s high again. Write about it

29 may, running rhythms

Inspired by Victoria Chang do more with my breathing and striking rhythms: 3/2, 2/1, 3/3/3, and 3/3/3/4. Also, her use of Merwin titles makes me want to use titles/lines-as-titles from Emily Dickinson and other “vision” poets

june

Even though the start of this month was promising — Trump convicted on all 34 counts! A big hug from my daughter! Medication to try for anxiety! a 13th runiversary run on the winchell trail — I struggled to adjust to the heat and humidity. Had to remind myself before each run: just keep showing up. On June 7th, a bat flew out of our umbrella when Scott opened it. He backed up into the door in panic and cracked a rib. Finally on the 10th, it was a little cooler — some relief from heat! But then on the 13th, even warmer and stickier, and also the start of open swim! RJP graduated from high school on the 15th, and just like that public school was over for us — 2 kids, 16 years total. It wasn’t terrible, but I’m glad it’s over! In the second half of June, rain and a rising dew point. Moist misery. Everything overheated, even the water looked hot. Had lunch with best friends from college and swam at Cedar Lake for the first time this season. Gave special attention to noticing the blues and greens of the lake water as I moved through it. On the 25th, I swam 4 loops at Lake Nokomis for the first time this season. Swam in a light rain. Turned 50 and celebrated with a 3 mile run. Ended the month and my birthday weekend with a wonderful swim — cool air, warm sun, calm.

useful things to remember

the rhapsody of things as they are (1 june)
the dailiness of green (2 june)
bats as fully fleshed shadows (7 june)
I grew in green (9 june)
Lorine Niedecker, dwelling with place, ecopoetics (10 june)
what a sora bird sounds like (11 june)
LN — her life as saturation, not transcendence (12 june)
Important things to think about with LN about vision (12 june)
LN — saturation (17 june)
serial poem form defined (17 june)
color in/on/under water, Alice Oswald, agitation (19 june)
water surfaces and water as never the same as itself (20 june)
a new (to me) verb: japan (21 june)
AO, being stuck and existing twice but more darkly (22 june)
AO, the homeric mind, feeling confident in the water (23 june)
continuous present, dream time, now (24 june)
surfaces (24 june)
AO and LN and depths (25 june)
shafts of light, scary thoughts dissipating, minnows! (30 june)

fun things to try

20 june, under and over the water’s surface

What color is the water on the lake’s surface from below looking up, from above looking down? Describe and/or make a list.

24 june, continuous present

Swimming across the lake is both a continuous present and not a continuous present. I’m not aware of time, but I do keep track of loops. Maybe each loop is its own continuous present? It would be interesting to try and get lost in the loops, to not count them. I can set up an alarm or a distance workout on my watch that will alert me when I reached a certain amount of time or distance. (How) would the dream-state be different in this loopy state?

july

The month started with a 4 mile run, and not swimming because of wind and feeling run-down. Ran in the rain on the 4th of July. Had a wonderful 4+ loop skim at Lake Nokomis on the 5th. Struggled in the heat and humidity as I ran on july 6th. On the 7th, the water was finally warm enough that I didn’t need to thaw out in a long hot shower after my swim. A first on the 8th: a deflating buoy. By the third loop, just a pool of orange on the surface of cedar lake. On the 9th, it poured, stirring up vegetation in the lake, including blue green algae. Yuck! I swam straight through it, but didn’t get sick. Another storm, big trees felled on edmund. A course shortened by misplaced buoys. Today’s 4 loops was the same distance as yesterday’s 3. Continued to swim through and around algae scum. Finally, big storms washed out the green slime, but also the little beach. No sand there, only grass and water. On july 14, someone attempted, but failed, to assassinate Trump. New neighbors in our crab apple tree: wasps, a big nest of them! Ran past Minnehaha Park to Longfellow Gardens and admired the flowers and the people painting and taking photographs. On the 16th I swam 5 loops at Lake Nokomis. Did it again on the 19th. Watched Tadej Pogachar dominate at the Tour de France. Began increasing my distance and time running, very slowly, as I prepared for the marathon in October. On the 21st, Biden dropped out of the election after a disastrous debate. Swam briefly with RJP at the lake, hoping to acclimate her to open water swimming (not this year). Missed another open swim due to a storm. Debated whether or not to swim when the parks issued a blue-green algae advisory. Decided to go for it and was very glad I did. Ran 8 miles and felt good, even though I needed to stop at 2 port-a-potties. Ended the month with some wonderful swims, a too-warm run, and the news that the park workers, who had been on strike for most of the month, had reached an agreement with the park board.

useful things to remember

spiriti visivi (1 july)
poets and different bodies of water (2 july)
the different sensations for me above, rowers below (2 july)
the origins of the lake described in Visitation (2 july)
the difficult, invisible labor of Minneapolis Park Workers (4 july)
the prowling bee and Emily Dickinson’s poetic eye (4 july)
aquatic plant management (5 july)
water and stone (6 july)
Scott’s big band concert (7 july)
the need for disruption and repetition — an ongoing goal, how to balance them (8 july)
lake nokomis as one model for repetition and disruption (9 july)
immersion in water — 3 examples of swimming in/through/with water (10 july)
the Seine, open water swimming, and water quality (11 july)
time and water (11 july)
algae scum (12 july)
jaws (13 july)
sounds, especially the soft footsteps of a bunny on early morning grass (16 july)
ears don’t lie, radiolab, and hearing (16 july)
green and two languages, one for the beginning, one the end (18 july)
a moment of peace or calm or satisfaction to remember and return to (19 july)
Annie Proloux, repetition and the habit of noticing (21 july)
another definition of swimming (23 july)
blue, algae, filamentous (25 july)
a clip of the Poltergeist hallway scene (26 july)
a description of the waves/currents and their position on the course (28 july)
the fish dimension (28 july)
rivering (29 july)
Cole Swenson and Gave (29 july)
the inkling of a fish (30 july)

fun things to try

27 july, Alice Oswald’s eye-quiet in Dart

Is there a way to translate this eye-quiet, slow attention while running? Is it possible — both in language and as a practice of attention?

28 july, orange buoy as faint moon

I love the almost/half/barely-view of the first orange buoy after rounding the green buoy. I think I’ve written this before, but it reminds me of the faintest trace of the moon in the afternoon sky. Sometimes a faint orange, sometimes only the silhouette of something that makes the Sara in the back of my head whisper, moon.

This might be the image of the summer. Maybe I could put it in a poem with the image of the moon on water that I used to see in the dark basement window, made by a lightbulb, as I ran on the treadmill?

29 july, rivering vs. lake-ing?

Could there be such a thing as lake-ing? And how does it differ from rivering? What are rules and offerings of the Mississippi River and Lake Nokomis?

august

Started the month with an excellent bike ride and 5 loop swim. Saw my sparkle friends (the sediment in the water that sparkles in the light). The next day, an almost perfect swim. I noticed my bubbles and the minnows. Then some hot runs. At the suggestion of RJP, decided to try a swim a total of 24 hours in August, cumulatively a whole day — Mary Oliver’s “Swimming One Day in August”! Ran 9 miles as part of my training block for the marathon. Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate and we — me, Scott, FWA, RJP — felt hope and joy for the future. Watched the summer olympics. For my morning open swim on the 9th, the air temp was 60 degrees. Brr. On the 10th, a slow and steady 10 mile run to lake nokomis and back. Enjoyed swimming in a soft rain. Anticipated the next month when we (thought we) would be empty nesters, both kids away at college. Managed to run 12 miles, then 14 on a route I’ve wanted to do for years: past Hidden Falls to the Confluence. On the 19th, received bad news: a sewage leak at lake nokomis, the lake closed indefinitely. My swims at nokomis ended abruptly, no chance to say goodbye to the lake. On the 22nd, swim season officially ended at Cedar Lake. What a season; I leveled up this year. The heat at the end of the month made me ready for fall. Dropped Rosie off at college. Ended the month with a 4 mile run with Scott and feelings of deep concern for FWA and his fall semester.

useful things to remember

an illusion: the tree line looking like a lifeguard (1 aug)
zombies! and soulless bodies, or souls traveling outside of bodies (1 aug)
Scooby-doo bubbles (2 aug)
daylighting (3 aug)
the limping kick of a swimmer (4 aug)
Bridal Veil Falls (5 aug)
a new word, kame (5 aug)
Mary Oliver’s mechanical heart breaking = rigid time loosening (8 aug)
not dissolving, but . . . (9 aug)
there is no such thing as “shark-infested waters” (12 aug)
fields of stability, stable whirlpools, a balance between habit and flux (13 aug)
Cole Swensen, walking with — not beside — the river, and bodies as processes (14 aug)
bodies, bubbles, bugs (18 aug)
stillness and the deepening and quieting of the spirit (21-22 aug)
Anne Carson and parkinson’s and constant, conscious attention (29 aug)
3 descriptions of water by fiction writers (30 aug)

fun things to try

1 aug, things to notice

What to notice/think about during my swim: 1. water and light, above and below the surface; types of light; sparkles and shimmers and glimmers and glints; 2. what are lake nokomis’ rules and offerings?; 3. different perspectives of the water: from the sidewalk, above the beach; on the beach; in the shallow water; mid-lake; before/during/after a swim

2 aug, bubbles

Think about these questions as you swim: What patterns do I leave on the surface with my strokes, and how long do they last? What if my bubbles could float above and witness them?

15 aug, question

A question to consider as I swim: do I want to be in agreement with water?

29 august, become a metronome

a suggestion for keeping a steady rhythm on a long run: listen to a metronome. I decided to try it, at 175 bpm. Pretty cool. My phone app metronome was set for even beats not a time signature (like a heavier downbeat) so I heard steady, unstressed clicks. It was strange and fun when I lined up my feet with the beats so it sounded like my foot was making the noise as it struck the ground. It reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the librarian is stamping the books at the same time Jones is stamping the floor with a heavy post. As his ink stamp hits the page, a loud thud happens, and he wonders (while staring strangely at the stamp) how he could be making such a noise.

I wonder what might happen if I did set the metronome for different rhythms, like 4/4 or 3/4 or 6/8?!

september

Started the month with my longest run ever in preparation for the marathon: 16 miles! I was slow, it was hard, but I did it and felt a sense of accomplishment not defeat when I realized how long it had taken me (3 hours, 24 minutes). Ran a new loop, the Confluence loop, that I’ve been wanting to try for almost a year with Scott on a 10 mile run. Then ran 17 miles. Then 18. In a shorter, mid-week run, I put in my headphones, turned on my metronome, and stepped fully inside the beat. Took a quick trip to Duluth and ran by Lake Superior. Ran another new route with Scott: all of Randolph to Shepherd Road to the confluence to the river road — 14 miles. On sept 22nd, I ran 20 miles. The toughest part about it was my need for port a potties. Ended the month at the start of marathon week. Unlike in 2017, this time I was going to make it to that start line!

useful things to remember

Heather Christle and freedom, flexibility, and foolishness (3 sept)
Nothing is the Godhead/that gobbles the world/in one fell swoop,/but has no anus (3 sept)
pain and blankness (5 sept)
anagrams! (6 sept)
re-wilding eyes (10 sept)
Lauren Groff’s The Vaster Wild, openness, and hearing grass grow (10 sept)
being the beat, being fully inside the metronome (17 sept)
Bard Code Project (17 sept)
a new word: palaver — idle talk; misleading or beguiling speech (18 sept)
Alice Oswald and liquid looking and spirit visivi (20 sept)
“writing as being in the pursuit of beautiful language to extract or shake out a curiosity that’s been long haunting me in a pleasurable way” / Hanif Abduraqib (24 sept)
ekphrastic mindset (26 sept)
Escape to the Country and a more nuanced representation of blindness (26 sept)
desire paths (26 sept)

fun things to try

2 sept: underground stream

I feel like poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream (John Ashbery).

I’d like to do something with this idea of the underground stream, especially in relation to daylighting — the process of bringing streams buried in concrete and under city infrastructure back into the light.

october

The first few days, I tapered for the marathon. Shorter runs, relaxed vibes. The day before the marathon I anticipated how I might be pushed mentally and physically during the run, hoped that it might break me open and allow for more vulnerability. The marathon was a success, and not a success. I finished it and had moments where I felt strong and open and tender. But I also took much longer and didn’t break open like I wanted to. I stayed cautious, reserved. Almost immediately I wanted to run it again next year, to try to run a little faster and freer. Took a small running break, then ran 5 miles on the 10th. No problem! One marathon goal accomplished: don’t push so hard that you get injured and miss getting to run with the fall leaves! On the 12th, they were at their peak — reds, yellows, oranges. Signed up to do a 1/2 marathon at the end of the month and trained for it with Scott. Took a short trip to Red Wing, MN with RJP — enjoyed the haunted hotel but not the bakery a few blocks away where they were selling Trump cookies. (This was the moment when I somehow knew Trump would win the election). Decided not to run the 1/2 marathon. Ended the month with a 10k and happy thoughts about my Haunts poems.

useful things to remember

zombies and Jaws’ eye in Jaws 2 (1 october)
more of me and the metronome (3 oct)
Marathon things, a-z (7-8 oct)
yellowed pine needles and Basho (16 oct)
taking it slow and geologic time (16 oct)

november

Began the month with too many layers — of clothes and worry over kids and impending elections — and too few: all the leaves, gone. Election day: I waited with hope. The day after the election: decided as I ran by the gorge that I needed to spend more time in the world I had created with attention and words. And I needed to live in geologic time. Deactivated my twitter account and stopped looking at the news. Added more layers as the temperatures dropped to the 30s. Wore less when it was in the 40s, which was often this month. More rain, less snow. Near the end of the month, it got much colder — 22 degrees, double tights weather. The month ended with snow flurries, a feels like temp of 9, and the completion of a goal : 1000 miles run.

useful things to remember

slight waves on the water, making the river’s surface look like fish scales (2 nov)
water and stone, Kafka and Prometheus and the inexplicable rock (4 nov)
and (5 nov)
geologic time (6 nov)
difference between restless pacing and cycles/loops/orbits (9 nov)
different time scales (13 nov)
revising the concept of progress (16 nov)
surfaces (17 nov)
Mathias Svalina’s surreal walking tours (18 nov)
a Victorian love for ventilation (19 nov)
to live by the syllable (27 nov)
and, or in css code (23 nov)
even the air is a door (29 nov)

fun things to try

9 nov: use Carl Phillips’ words

I love these lines:

But it’s years now
since the river shifted, as if done with the same
view both over and over
and never twice, which
is to say done at last with conundrum, when it’s
just a river—here’s a river . . .

I’d like to use, as if done with the same/view both over and over/and never twice.

I want to fit it into my 3/2 form and use it my Haunts section about looping and doubling back

december

On the first of the month, a cold run through snow flurries to an almost frozen falls. Winter! Ran to a bench on the edge of the bluff and slowly inching closer. Stopped and admired the view of bare branches, icy water, an empty white sands beach. Then did it again and again, then every time I ran north. A new ritual. Ran on paths 100% covered in snow when it felt like -7 degrees. Wore my yaktrax a few times and was able to experience several almost ideal winter mornings by the gorge: clear, not too cold, uncrowded, snow-covered gorge. Took a quick family trip to Duluth. Ended the month and the year by not pushing it and running again, but walking above the gorge with Delia the dog.

useful things to remember

beauty as also ugly and terrifying (8 dec)
the erosion of my eyes mirrors the gorge’s erosion — soft wearing down (sandstone), weakening of the foundation, then a break (limestone) (8 dec)
ekphrasis description and an example of how I can’t see yellow (16 dec)
rewilding and The Riddle of the Apostle Islands (20 dec)
image: runners in the dark, only visible by their head lamps floating above the gorge (23 dec)
sand dabs and pebbles (24 dec)
forget what you are (30 dec)

fun things to try

5 dec, ekphrastic experiment

Rereading an article on the development of the Grand Rounds, I came across this line:

“I would have the City itself a work of art,” Cleveland explained.

A work of art. Yes! I’ve been thinking about the park space of the gorge as a work of art, created by Minneapolis Parks and the city, for some time. I’m envisioning it as part of a series of ekphrastic poems about how I see the gorge through/with my diseased eyes.