5 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
76 degrees
humidity: 80% / dew point: 71
Brutal out there this morning. Beautiful, too. Ran 2 miles without stopping then started relying on my heart rate to determine if I ran or walked. Above 168 = walk / Below 136 = run. Tried to stay slow and relaxed and unbothered by other people passing me. It worked!
10+ Things
- a large stack of stones on the boulder — 5 or more?
- rowers, down below — a coxswain’s voice
- bright blue bubble-letter graffiti under the lake street bridge
- smell: hot chocolate — in this heat? deep, rich, feeling like winter
- overheard: 1 runner to another — and of course, she made all those passive-aggressive comments
- a big group of shirtless runners (10 of them?), a smaller group of runners with shirts (5 or 6)
- a runner, in all black, including black pants (in this heat!?), steadily running up the franklin hill ahead of me
- sparkling water through the gap in the trees
- a very tall runner — young, long and gangly legs
- roller skiers — 2 or 3 — clicking and clacking with their poles
- a big bird, soaring above, a huge wingspan
Thinking about the Mississippi and what it means to me and my practice. Finished a first read-through of Cole Swensen’s Gave — lots of inspiration. And just now, out on the hot deck, I was rereading Alice Oswald’s Dart. I want to remember this passage from the perspective of the naturalist looking for eels:
from Dart/ Alice Oswald
the elver movement of the running sunlight
three foot under the road-judder you hold
and breathe contracted to an eye-quiet world
while an old dandelion unpicks her shawl
and one by one the small spent oak flowers fall
then gently lift a branch brown tag and fur
on every stone and straw and drafting burr
when like a streamer from your own eye’s iris
a kingfisher spurts through the bridge whose axis
is endlessly in motion as each wave
photos its flowing to the bridge’s curve
if you can keep your foothold, snooping down
then suddenly two eels let go get thrown
tumbling away downstream looping and linking
another time we scooped a net through sinking
silt and gold and caught one strong as bike-chain
stared for a while then let it back again
I never pass that place and not make time
to see it thre’s an eel come up the stream
I let time go as slow as moss, I stand
and try to get the dragonflies to land
their gypsy-coloured engines on my my hand
I love her descriptions throughout this section and the gentle rhymes. 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? Something I’d like to think about . . . .