Month: January 2025

jan 31/RUN

3.2 miles
locks and dam no. 1 loop
34 degrees

Breezy. Wind coming from the north. Sunny, too. Lots of shadows. Today’s run wasn’t effortless but it wasn’t hard either. Somewhere in-between. Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist for the last day of the month. Even with my headphones in, I could hear kids on the playground across the road, some hikers talking on the trail below.

Listening to the songs, I thought about the tenderness of remembering and the satisfaction of forgetting. Also thought about how we all remember things differently, and most of us inaccurately.

10 Things

  1. the river was a patchwork of white and gray
  2. only a few lumps of snow scattered on the grass and the trail
  3. slick puddles
  4. a sagging fence, casting a crooked and forlorn shadow
  5. BLUE! sky
  6. a few of the benches were occupied — at least 2
  7. my favorite bench, above the “edge of the world” was empty, so was the one near folwell
  8. ran on all of the walking paths — clear!
  9. the sparkle of broken glass in a pile of leaves on the street in front of a neighbor’s house
  10. a chain link fence below on the winchell trail, illuminated by the sun, on the edge, at the part of the trail that is slowly sliding into the gorge (the rubbled asphalt stretch just past 38th street)

before the run

These evenings of long light
Must be high festival to them. It’s the time
When the light seems tender in the needles
Of the pine, the shimmer of the aspen leaves
Seems kindly on the cliff face, gleams
On the patches and gullies of snow summer
Hasn’t touched yet. 
(from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)

Reading this description of light in this beautiful poem, I’m reminded of Wednesday’s afternoon light. Stepping out on the deck around 4, I gasped as I noticed the light on the bare trees, glowing a soft green. An olive green, Scott thought. It seemed to be offering a glimpse of the future when winter was over. How should I describe that light? Not tender — dazzling? a show-stopper? But maybe tender, too. The light was soft on the trees — bathing them in light? — coaxing out them of their dreamed of leaves in the forms of the green glow.

And the creek is flush
With life, streams of snow melt cascading down
The glacial spills of granite in a turbulence
The ouzel, picking off insects in the spray,
Seems thrilled by, water on water funneling,
Foam on foam, existence pouring out
Its one meaning, which is flow. 
(from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)

The glacial spills of granite? Water on water funneling? Existence’s one meaning: flow? Wow! I love this description of water.

Read, We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar, this morning and it got me thinking that I need to do some more strange, fun, playful experiments on here. Return to the erasures? Sentence scrambling? Pick something off of Meyer’s Please Add to this List list?

Encountered, Lullaby of Jazz Land: A Found Poem Composed of Titles from the American Songbook, and am thinking of doing something with the titles or lyrics from my Remember to Forget playlist.

Turned randomly to a page in The Braille Encyclopedia and read “Body”.

The rest of the body works to compensate for what the eye can no longer do.

The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn

Cohn discusses a sore neck and back, muscle spasms, headaches. Do I feel any of these things? The occasional headache. Starting these sentences, I had forgotten about the dizziness, then I remembered when I felt it — the world suddenly swimming for a moment as I tried to read and write in this entry.

Then she mentions feeling very tired —

A kind of tired that feels like most of my trillions of mitochondria have decided they’ve cooked their last energy-meal, turned off the stove, hung up their aprons, kicked off their pinching shoes, and gone to lie down somewhere. For a very long time.

The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn

I feel tired often — maybe not as tired as Cohn. I take naps, or fall asleep mid-sentence. I have the luxury of measuring my efforts, (and lowering my expectations), not doing things that are too draining too often. Shopping is draining, especially grocery shopping. A few weeks ago, I had to stop at the end of the aisle, hang onto the cart, and close my eyes for a minute. Too many things I couldn’t quite see, lights that were too bright. Deep breaths. This used to make me anxious, but now, with the help of lexapro and the understanding that this dizziness is caused by an uncertain and overworked brain, I don’t worry as much.

after the run

After discovering James Longenbach’s poem, “In the Village,” earlier this month, I requested his collection Seafarer from the library. Here’s part 4:

from In the Village/ James Longenbach

Of ghosts pursued, forgotten, sought new—
Everywhere I go
The trees are full of them.

From trees come books, that, when they open,
Lead you to expect a person
On the other side:

One hand having pulled

The doorknob
Toward him, the other

Held out, open,
Beckoning
You forward

jan 30/RUN

5.25 miles
ford loop
38 degrees

38 degrees! Sun and hardly any wind and less layers. The snow is almost all melted and all the paths were clear. I repeated yesterday’s experiment: run a mile; stop to walk, pull out my phone, and recite an ED poem into it; start running again (repeat, 5 times total). Today I recited: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark; A Murmur in the Trees — to note; I Felt a Funeral in my Brain; I heard a Fly buzz when I died; and A lane of yellow led the Eye. Like yesterday, it helped me to stay steady with my pace. The lines that stuck with me the most are at the end of A Murmur in the Trees — to note:

But then I promised n’ere to tell
How could I break my word
So go your way and I’ll go mine
No fear you’ll miss the road

I thought about this road in relation to the road in We Grow Accustomed:

A Moment — We uncertain step
For newness of the Night
Then fit our vision to the Dark
And meet the road erect

You adjust and get back on the road, where life steps almost straight (the ending line of “We Grow”), and I’ll stay here in the Dark with the little men in their little houses and the robins in their trundle bed and this whimsical, strange world (images from A Murmur).

10 Things

  1. my shadow, far below in the ravine near Shadow Falls
  2. the view from the top of the hill after climbing from under the lake/marshall bridge — wide, open, iced surface
  3. the bells of St. Thomas ringing
  4. running on the east side, across the river from one of the schools, I could hear the kids on the playground all the way over here
  5. my shadow, on the railing of the ford bridge — I kept looking down to the iced river, searching for more of my shadow on the shadow of the bridge’s railing
  6. the river, near the ford bridge was all white, but further north, it was gray with white splotches
  7. the port a potty at the Monument was covered in black graffiti and the door didn’t look like it could fully shut
  8. close to where I heard the kids across the gorge, I noticed how steep the slope was — don’t get too close to this edge!
  9. a man below on the Winchell trail talking to little kid (or a dog?) — momma’s coming — as a woman approached them
  10. a kid on the playground: it’s soooo warm!

memory

Memory can edit reality in some such way and then the edited version is too good to let go. Memory makes what it needs to make.

A Lecture on Corners/ Anne Carson

I picked up Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia at Moon Palace last night!

Now, in my sixties, the Velcro of memory has lost its grip, glutted with lint. This makes learning braille–all its letters, punctuation, symbols, contractions, and their rules for use–puzzling. The mind’s memory fail. What takes over? Muscle memory, body memory, skin memory. My fingertip remembers more braille than my hippocampus.

The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn

So many different types of memory to think about!

An alternative to vision.

The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn

I rely on memory a lot to help me see.

jan 29/RUN

5.3 miles
bottom franklin hill and back
33 degrees

Sun! Above freezing! Clear walking paths! Shadows! A nice, relaxed run.

a new experiment

I tried something new today. I picked 5 Emily Dickinson poems that I have memorized, then stopped after each mile to recite one of them into my phone. Mile 1, “Before I got my eye put out”; Mile 2, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”; Mile 3, “A Murmur in the Trees”; Mile 4, “A Felt a Funeral in my Brain”; and Mile 5, “A Heard a Fly Buzz when I died.” I didn’t have to stop right at the end of the mile, but just sometime before the next mile. It was fun and made the run go by faster. Sometimes I thought about what I had just recited as I ran, sometimes I didn’t. After “Murmur” I thought about ways to mash its lines up with “We Grow Accustomed” — maybe I’ll work on that more today?

assessment: This experiment was fun and helpfully distracting. I’ll definitely try it again!

10 Things

  1. Hi Dave!
  2. not much snow left on the walking path or the grass — in some places, a lumpy line of snow in the middle of the walking path from where the plow pushed the snow off of the biking trail
  3. a few slippery spots where water was barely ice
  4. the river was mostly frozen with a few spots of dark water
  5. a bird singing, cheeseburger or tea kettle — I guess that’s a chickadee?
  6. the thump of my zipper pull against by neck or chest
  7. a fat bike laboring by — slow and steady
  8. at least one bench was occupied — a person and two dogs
  9. my shadow beside me — sharp and erect
  10. another lone black glove — small

For part of the run, I focused on my rhythmic breathing: 1 2 3 in / 1 2 out. I began chanting: mystery is solved, then history is fact?, then history is wrong, then whose history is that? (which doesn’t quite fit the 3/2), whose story is told, and at whose expense?

jan 28/BIKE

25 minutes
basement
outside: wind gusts, 32 mph

I woke up with a sore right glute/lower back. Not terribly painful, but sore and a bit worrisome. Wanted to run in the warmer weather but wondered if it was a bad idea. Then I heard the howling wind and decided to believe that it was a sign: don’t run! So I went to the basement and biked instead. It helped! I should work on biking longer in the basement. It’s boring. My bike is on a basic stand — no shifting, no zwifting, just pedaling and watching something on my iPad. Today I watched some races; next time, a show or a movie.

Before my bike: I’m in the process of re-reading all of the poems I gathered this year and choosing lines to turn into my own poem. This process inspired three directions of thought:

1 — open

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
and whispers:
“I am not empty, I am open.”
(Vermeer/ Tranströmer)

When the door of my vocal cords closes, another opens. And through that open door I escape into a region I do not know what to call but which is vaster than the space of my body. You could say: my name is the door to my being, and in that interval when I’m stuttering, the door is left wide open and my being rushes out. What rushes in?
(from Liturgy of the Name/ JJJJJerome Ellis)

Open doors say, “Come in.”
(Doors/ Carl Sandburg)

This discussion of open doors reminded me of something I remembered thinking/writing about in a log entry, but not when I wrote it. It took a few minutes, but I found it!

Running north, somewhere above the white sands beach, I started thinking about something I was working on earlier today about how my changing vision is closing some doors, opening others. I’m particularly interested in thinking about how it opens doors without ignoring/denying the shut ones too. Anyway, I suddenly had a thought: it’s not just that it opens doors, but it makes it so those doors can’t shut. I waited until I reached the bottom of the hill and then spoke my idea into my phone. Here’s a transcript:

It’s not just that doors open, they won’t shut. I can’t close them to the understandings that I’m both forced to confront but also have the opportunity to explore. But the key thing is that the doors can’t be shut. my notes recorded during a run on 3 may 2023

I came to this idea after thinking about how vision is strange and tenuous and a lot of guesswork for everyone. A big difference between me and a lot of other people is that I can’t ignore or deny that fact. It’s much easier for people with “normal” vision to imagine, with their sharp vision and their ability to focus fast, that they are seeing exactly what is there. They’re not. Even if I wanted to, I can’t pretend that that is true. I’m reminded all of the time of how tenuous converting electrical impulses into images is and what the brain does for us to make those images intelligible.

log entry from 3 may 2023

2 — walls

The ears experience a buzz, perhaps it’s depth or perhaps height.
It’s the pressure from the other side of the wall,
the pressure that makes each fact float
(Vermeer/ Tramströmer)

I wandered all along the street that hugs the walls,
a needle floating
on its cloth. Once
I shut my eyes and felt my way
along the stone. Outside
is the cash crop, sunflowers, as far as one can see. Listen,
the wind rattles in them,
a loose worship
seeking an object
an interruption. Sara,
the walls are beautiful. They block the view.
And it feels rich to be
inside their grasp.
(To a Friend Going Blind/ Jorie Graham)

Here I’m thinking about inner and outer and the interior walls of a house and the limestone and sandstone and concrete walls of the falls and lock and dams and the gorge.

3 — blind

What Would You Give Up?/ Dorianne Laux    

Not the nose on my face, but the spite, the grindstone.
Not an arm or a leg, but the money.
Not the length of the arm, but the lie, the shot, the list, the twist.
Not the ear, but the lending, the boxing, the out on.
Not the eye, but the naked, the catching, in the blink of, 
the keeping it peeled, the turning a blind.
Not the elbow but the grease, the room.
Not the leg, but the pulling.
Not the back, but the shirt on, the breaking of, the scratch, the
     stab, 
the turning, the water off a duck’s.
Not the neck, but the sticking it out, the in-shit-up-to. 
Not the throat, but the jump down, the frog in.
Not the feet, but the ground, the dragging, the cold.
Not the heel, but the down at, the under.
Not the fingers, but the light, the butter.
Not the thumb, but the green, the sore, the twiddle. 
Not the tongue, but the slip.
Not the tooth, but the nail, the long in, the sweet.
Not the brain, but the drain, the picking of, the all brawn and no.
Not the breast, but the beating. 
Not the body, but the temple.
The bird in the hand, the foot in the grave.

This poem is one of five published in the Cortland Review in the spring of 2009. As an aside, the spring of 2009 was when I started my first blog, TROUBLE, which transformed my life, and also when my mom was in the final stage of pancreatic cancer; she died in the fall of 2009.

Not the eye, but the naked, the catching, in the blink of, 
the keeping it peeled, the turning a blind.

Yes, let’s give up these expressions. I am reminded of Naomi Cohn and her listing of expressions using blind:

Entries from the Braille Encyclopedia (excerpt) / Naomi Cohn

Blind

Blind alley a dead end.
Blind pig an illegal saloon.
Blind drunk what you get there.
Blind staggers a disease of horses.
Blind story floor of a building without windows.
Blind spot where the car lurks in the next lane.

Looking for this writing, I discovered that Cohn’s book, Braille, is finally out! How did I miss that it was published this past October? Oh, I know — I was worried about the election and dealing with the mental health crises of my two kids! I immediately ordered Cohn’s book at my local awesome book store, Moon Palace! Pick up later today. Hooray!

Didn’t Georgina Kleege do a riff on “blind” in her book, Sight Unseen? Just checked, yes!

The word blind has always meant more than merely the inability to see. The Anglo-Saxon translators of the Gospels make the metaphoric leap from literal sightlessness to spiritual or cognitive incapacity. Of course they were only following an ancient lead. Throughout the history of the language and in common usage today, the word connotes a lack of understanding or discernment, a willful disregard or obliviousness, a thing meant to conceal or deceive. In fact, when you stop to listen, the word is far more commonly used in its figurative than its literal sense. And it comes up so often: blind faith, blind devotion, blind luck, blind lust, blind trust, blind chance, blind rage, blind alley, blind curve, blind-nail flooring, blind date (more dangerous than you think), duck blind, window blind, micro-mini blind (when open, they’re hard to see), blind taste test, double-blind study, flying blind, following blind, blind leading the blind, blind landing, color blind, blind submission, blind side, blind spot, blindfold, blindman’s bluff, three blind mice (have you ever seen such a sight in your life?).

Sight Unseen/ Georgian Kleege

memories

Writing about walls and the inner and outer, I started thinking about Severance and innies and outies and the relationship between them. Scott and I are listening to the Scott/Stiller podcast recapping the first season and watching all of the episodes, before screening season 2. Anyway, I remembered Helly R’s consent speech:

My name is Helly R. I’m making this video roughly two hours before it will be shown to me. I have, of my own free accord, elected to undergo the procedure colloquially known as severance. I give consent for my perceptual chronologies to be surgically split, separating my memories between my work life and my personal life. I acknowledge that, henceforth, my access to my memories will be spatially dictated. I will be unable to access outside recollections whilst on Lumon’s severed basement floor, nor retain work memories upon my ascent. I am aware that this alteration is comprehensive and irreversible. I make these statements freely.

What does the severing process do to the brain? Is it all about dividing inner and outer memories? What is the role of memory and remembering in the forming/understanding/experience of selfhood? Irving gives a little speech about how our sense of self is shaped by our memories/stories/history to Helly in episode 3:

It’s an unnatural state for a person to have. No history. History makes us someone. It gives us a context, a shape.

jan 26/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
22 degrees / feels like 12
wind gusts: 29 mph

Sunny but windy. Shadows and shaking leaves. Like most of my runs lately, it felt hard. I briefly thought about stopping at the trestle, but then I kept going instead. As I ran down the franklin hill I remembered that I’d get to check out the frozen river. It did not disappoint! The coolest thing about the surface ice was the noises it made as cars drove by on the river road — that strange, echoey boom, almost like whales communicating, that happens when ice is disturbed — I have a link to this sound somewhere on the blog, but I couldn’t find it quickly. I’ll keep searching for it.

Listened to the wind, voices, and geese as I ran north. Put in mood: energy on the way back — “Baba O’Reily”; “My Sharona”; “Renegade”; “It’s Tricky”; “Cult of Personality”; “New Attitude”. Favorite line was from “Cult of Personality” — When a mirror speaks/the reflection lies. Also thought about “New Attitude” and the line, I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes — why not, good from my hat to my shoes?

10 Things

  1. bright blue, cloudless sky
  2. my shadow, sharp, running in front of me
  3. 2 geese honking high in the sky — I stopped running and craned my neck to watch them fly by
  4. empty benches
  5. ice on the path — a dirty brown, then almost amber when the light hit it just right
  6. voices from somewhere below, cheering somebody
  7. the river, covered in thick ice
  8. a person with a fancy camera stopped by the railing, taking pictures
  9. someone walking by in the flats, having an animated conversation with someone else over the phone
  10. a strong smell of weed — did it come from the car that just drove by or the walker with 2 dogs?

G.C. Waldrep

During my “on this day” practice, I came across a line from the poet G.C. Waldrep:

I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.” 

The Earliest Witnesses

I had posted it on 26 jan 2021 because I had just encountered it on twitter and in the context of a discussion of the soul. Today I read it and wanted to know more about what Waldrep meant. I searched “G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses” and found a post on the poet (and father of Jenny Slate) Ron Slate’s site, On the Seawall: On The Earliest Witnesses.

In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs one of his most perplexing miracles. The narrator tells us that, after a blind man is “brought” to him, Jesus “put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him.” But the miracle doesn’t seem to take. For after Jesus asks the man whether he can see, the man replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” In response, Jesus lays his hands on the blind man’s eyes once more—a kind of second go at it—after which, we are told, “his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”

This story comes to mind, unbidden, in the reading of G.C. Waldrep’s The Earliest Witnesses — the poet’s seventh collection — not only because the book speaks candidly about the deterioration of sight (among other bodily maladies) but also because Waldrep’s poetry mirrors the slow and partial revelation of sight that we find in this miracle. These poems both obscure and disclose: in some lines they show us “everything clearly” — in others, “trees, walking.”

“I strode into the woods in a brute faith,” reads the first line of the first poem, “certain the forest / would give me what I needed.” Then, in a characteristic move of obfuscation, the speaker withdraws into occluded seclusion, as if from fear of speaking too plainly. “If there was a mathematics / I was all for it, math being hunger’s distaff cousin.” Here we find that tension between clear vision and partial sight that marks both our opening miracle story and so much of The Earliest Witnesses; however, in this instance, we begin with sight, only to have it dimmed immediately.

On The Earliest Witnesses

I want to read this collection!

I was immediately struck by the line in the post, I see people but they look like trees walking. That’s not quite how it works for me, but, with my vision, I can imagine seeing people that way, like trees walking. I want to read the bible verse the author is referencing and think about that some more.

Searching some more for Waldrep, I found an interview with him and this great discussion:

A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.

An Inheritance Reassembled

Squinting! Mishearing or misreading or mis-seeing! The squinting makes me think of a poem by Linda Pastan or a line (I think, I’ll have to check later) from Arthur Sze. The mishearing reminds me of something I encountered during my annual review (22 july 2024) a few days ago:

the Ten Muses of Poetry — from the writer, Andrei Codescru, in his book, The Poetry Lesson. I’ve never heard of Codescru — he’s great. I found the chapter his Ten Muses are inand read it. Funny and strange and great. I wonder, would I enjoy taking a class from him? Probably.

The Ten Muses of Poetry

  1. Mishearing
  2. Misunderstanding
  3. Mistranslating
  4. Mismanaging
  5. Mislaying
  6. Misreading
  7. Misappropriating cliches
  8. Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
  9. Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
  10. Mississippi (the river) 

jan 25/RUN

4.4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
26 degrees / feels like 6
wind: 32 mph gusts

Windy today. As I sit at my desk writing this, I can hear the wind howling through the gaps in our screen/glass door. Ran south again to the falls. Felt tired and sluggish. Stopped a few times to walk. Listened to the wind, rustling leaves, scattered voices, cars as I headed south, my “It’s Windy” playlist on the way back north.

10 Things

  1. a brittle brown leaf swirling and rushing ahead of me on the sidewalk
  2. the trail was stained a grayish white with salt
  3. a fat bike, its rider wearing a BRIGHT yellow jacket
  4. a non-fat bike, its rider bent low against the wind
  5. a section of the wooden fence is missing a slat and is leaning back toward the oak savanna
  6. the lone black glove that was on the path yesterday has been moved off to the side, on top of the piled snow
  7. 3 or 4 people by the green gate blocking the steps down to the falls, one of them already on the other side (the inside) of it, the others poised to do the same
  8. the sharp bark of a dog down near the falls
  9. a person standing in front of the railing by the creek, posing, another person behind a camera on a tripod
  10. a few thin splotches of ice on the concrete railing above the creek, mostly looking dull until the sun hit it, then shiny

I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran or noticing the river or hearing any birds. Not the easiest run, but I’m glad I got out there.

Yesterday afternoon, I discovered that Anne Carson gave a lecture titled, “On Hesitation.”

jan 24/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls
20 degrees / feels like 8

Above 0, but still felt cold. It was the wind, swirling softly in all directions, that did it. Ran south to the falls. Wasn’t sure if I’d make it all the way there — it felt difficult — but I did! The creek and the falls were almost all frozen, only a small stream buried under the ice. Looking at the falls from my favorite spot, across the way, it looked like a giant column of ice, which it was.

10 Things

  1. a strong smell of cigarette smoke near the parking lot
  2. thin patches of ice on the cobblestone at the park
  3. kids’ laughter coming from across the road, at the school playground
  4. my favorite bench, above the edge of the world, was not empty today
  5. near the bench, the snow where someone had written “DAVIDSON” had melted
  6. the mottled walking trail at the park — mostly white snow, with grayish asphalt splotching through
  7. a lone black glove, dropped on the trail
  8. a dark gray chunk of snow, upright, looking like a squirrel waiting to cross the road
  9. a few runners, a few walkers, no bikers
  10. glanced down at the big sledding hill at the park — not much snow and no one sledding down it

I had wanted to thinking about stillness (inspired by an entry from 21 aug 2024) or to chant triple berries but mostly I forgot. I put in a mood playlist: energy at the halfway point and focused on the music, including Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch.” Wow.

before the run

This month, I’ve been reviewing all my entries from 2024 and giving attention to remembering and forgetting and then getting in too deep with thinking and theorizing and organizing ideas around themes. Past Sara — Dr. Sara who is too enamored with theories and ideas and being clever — wants to return. Present Sara needs to figure out some ways to prevent that from happening! Yesterday I decided to take out my scrabble tiles and make anagrams out “remember forget” and “I remember to forget.”

remember forget
bee or germ fret [m]
more bereft germ
beet form merger
forge meter [brm]
frog meter berm
beef rot merger [m]

I Remember to Forget
Got more meter fiber
Orbit form tree gem
bee form griot meter

What anti-theorizing thing can I do today?

A line remembered during my “on this day” practice:

Tell me, how do I steady my gaze
when everything I want is motion?
(Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis)

Everything I see is motion or in motion or never not in motion.

Last night we watched a Voyager’s episode in which the crew was experiencing strange symptoms — Captain Janeway had terrible headaches and couldn’t sleep; Chakotay was aging way too fast; Nelix was transforming into another species; and another red shirt went into shock then died. After 7 of 9 shifts into a different phase, she is able to witness what is happening: there are tons of people (human looking) on the ship hovering around the crew members and injecting them with needles. They are experimenting on them in the name of “medical research.” Yikes. Janeway’s headaches are not due to working too hard and not getting enough sleep or exercise, but because they are injecting her with dopamine. They keep increasing the dose to see how much she can take. I said to Scott, can you imagine if our headaches were caused by imaginary creatures messing with us? Then I started to imagine that this was the case. I also started to think about all the things we can’t see that live with us, like mites and bacteria and more. Surprisingly this didn’t freak me out.

Here is a poem I discovered yesterday. I love that first line and what it does as it follows from the title! I found it before I watched the Star Trek Voyager episode, but it is interesting to put them together to think about who/what we live with that we don’t see, or refuse to see:

The Houseguest / Marci Calabretta Cancio-Bello

Forgiveness was sitting in your kitchen when you got home, and now rests elbows on the table to watch you reach for a knife. You scrape the papery skin from a ginger root and slice it into thin coins. You think too hard about which mugs to pull from your cupboard: you might reveal too much; should you offer the one with the uncomfortable handle? Water boils. You divide the ginger evenly into both cups and pour. Spoonful of honey. You stir slowly, eyes down as though you might be able to forget. You stir too long. Forgiveness coughs politely, so you turn, place both mugs on the table, sit. Forgiveness leans forward. You lean back. You have forgotten what it is like to live with someone who eats all your cut watermelon, picks clean the skeletal vine of red grapes, shakes water spots onto your bathroom mirror without wiping them away. What thresholds of welcome have you crossed and recrossed? Most mornings, you listen for the body to move through your house and out the door before leaving your bedroom. Most nights, you ghost around each other without speaking. But now, as the rain drizzles into gloaming, you settle into your chairs, inevitable, a cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues.

And here’s part of a poem I encountered this morning that seems to fit or could be interesting to put beside “The Houseguest” and the Voyager episode:

If/ Imtiaz Dharker

If we could pray. If
we could say we have come here
together, to grow into a tree,
if we could see our blue hands
holding up the moon, and hear
how small the sound is
when it slips through
our fingers into water,
when the meaning of words melts
away and sugarcane speaks
in fields more clearly
than our tongues

That small sound, those blue hands, when words melt away! To give attention, to pray!

Continuing to review past august entries, past Sara wrote this for me, January 2025 Sara:

In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.

log entry 22 aug 2024

I remember the faintness of that buoy, like the moon in the afternoon visible mostly by my belief that it was there. I also remember swimming that stretch, trying to avoid other swimmers and the ghost vines growing up from the bottom of the lake, seeming extra tall this summer. I’ll remember finally reaching that buoy and rounding it for the start of another loop, unable to see the far shore of a lifeguard or the other 2 orange buoys.

I remember the way the water glowed orange from the reflection of the buoy, or the quick flash of the smallest whisper of an orange dot, or the orange appearing only as a feeling of some disruption in the shoreline scenery — not really seen with my eyes, but registered by my brain — the idea that something was looming ahead.

I don’t remember gentle rocking, but I remember the wild ride of rounding the far green buoy and being pushed around by the water, or how the water seemed so hard to stroke in sometimes.

jan 22/RUN

6.1 miles
flats and back
24 degrees / flurries

Warmer today! Still wore lots of layers, but it wasn’t close-school cold like yesterday. After reading my post from a year ago when I wrote about running to the frozen springs in the flats, I decided to do it again this year. On my way north, I started chanting triple berries:

strawberry/blueberry/raspberry

then: mystery/history/magical . . .illusion/confusion/contusion

Then I was inspired by what I noticed:

bright orange coat
speeding cars
little dog
blue trash can
yellow shirt
gray-white sky
falling flakes
empty bench

When I reached the spring, I could hear it falling from the rock, but couldn’t see it, hidden behind the thick ice. Also heard but didn’t see the water it left on the road as cars whooshed over it.

Stopped at the river to check out the surface. Very cool. I took some pictures but I’m not sure they can capture the opaque greenish ice. It was a grayish-green, drab and looked slushy and cold and thick.

Mississippi River / 22 jan 2024

And I stopped at my favorite sliding bench and looked down at the white sands beach. Quiet, empty, white with snow, not sand.

Early on in the run, I greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Hi Dave! Hi Sara! How are you doing? I’m good. How are you doing? I’m out here.

added a few hours later: I almost forgot something I was thinking about. As I listened to the song, Remember (lullaby) from Coco, I thought about people I miss and remembering them and then I thought about how sometimes it’s more than memory that helps me stay connected, like the time I opened my mom’s old book and saw her signature in the front. It was a physical trace of her reaching out to me. As I thought about this trace and the reaching out I remembered Diane Seuss commencement address and her discussion of Keats and his invisible hand reaching up from the grave. I’m glad I remembered the Keats bit because I remember having that thought then forgetting it almost immediately as I kept running.

an emptied mind — emptied of memories, emptied of everything

During my “on this day” practice, I encountered this phrase in Occasional Poem/ Jacqueline Woodson: zapped all the ideas from my head. I started thinking about this feeling of going blank or losing words or a sudden rush of nothing but space between your ears. What are some different ways that words describe being emptied of thought — the moment it happens and/or the feeling of emptiness?

the fish in us escaping, dandelion seed scattering, bees leaving the hive,

more than memory

I started a post yesterday (21 jan) and added this, intending, but failing, to finish it.

The wall is, for me and maybe me alone, a holy place. A place of pilgrimage, both full of meaning and void of meaning. I take photos, and the photos hold the memories still. The photos make the wall mean more than memory can, but with meaning, like a fact. No longer in motion, no longer something to which one can return and brush your fingers against (and feel the peeling paint).

*

Maybe a place like this pursues its meaning. Like when you say love and what you say means less than the actual word means. We love a place or a person, or we say a word, trying to stop time, hold something still. Maybe a place makes meaning how a dream might, in opposition to logic, inventing its own sense with presence.

*

Maybe we borrow meaning with a word, like how a photograph borrows a place, hoping meaning might remain recognizable if we say the word with the right angle of light, seeking something definite in a breath. How the impossible blue of a blue wall couldn’t be the blue of memory, a blue no photograph can contain.

Maybe to make a place holy, you must remember it more than real life allows, with all the truth of a squint, all the grace of peeling paint.

*

I’d like to look into one of those photographs, past the image, past what the image contains, past memory and regret and all the salt that sticks to the skin, into experience, into a love known true in one moment, undeniable, un-understandable, the kind of thing that splits everything in half. If I could find that photo of Cassie at the blue wall and step inside it and ask her to stay alive in a world where she was loved, maybe then I could finally know what a word means.

I could almost believe holiness is a process of remembering, but then I see the wall again, in all that sunlight, paint peeling, the blue not only the remembered blue, but more blue in the now of being seen, so I can barely stand to stand beside it, holy as it is with the fact of its own meaning.

This is the Place: A Blue wall in Leadville / Mathias Svalina

Words I’ve been studying: dream, memories, photograph, motion, still, light, breath, remember, squint, blue, real, love, now

jan 20/BIKERUN

bike: 15 minutes
run: 1 mile
basement
outside: -11 / feels like -18

Brrr. A quick bike and run in the basement in the late afternoon. Watched “Nobody Asked Us” on YouTube while I biked, listened to an apple music “energy” playlist. Didn’t think about much, just enjoyed moving and sweating a little.

Spent most of my writing day reviewing past entries from June and July. Instead of reading them with my eyes, I listened to them through my computer. It was nice to give my eyes a break. Lots of great stuff about lakes and swimming and the color of water in those entries. Nice to spend some time there when it’s so cold outside. Also a nice way to forget that Trump was inaugurated today.

from Mantled/ Kevin Young

The dead do
     what they want
which is nothing—

sit there, mantled,
     or made real
by photographs 

in silver frames,
     or less real
by our many ministrations.

Dusting. Bleach. The world
     swept, ordered,
seemingly unending.

Love Young’s entire poem, but especially this first half.

jan 19/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 1.4 miles
basement
outside: -5 degrees / feels like -10

I have run in colder weather than -5, but I was not interested in going out there today. Do I regret it? I don’t think so, but . . . . While I biked I watched some track races from the Paris Olympics, and while I ran I listened to the Apple Music “Feel Good” playlist. Listening to a different version of this playlist earlier in the week helped the run to go by faster, but the songs weren’t quite as motivating today. Had to skip through several of them until Rio by Duran Duran came on. Next: Rosanna/Toto, then Brandy/Looking Glass, then as I walked Afternoon Delight/Starland Vocal Band. That last one, wow. I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran. I remember imagining myself falling off of the treadmill. I wondered what song would come on next. I tried to lift out of my hips. I debated if Rosanna was a “feel good” song. And now that I think about it, Brandy as feel good? It’s sad. When Afternoon Delight came on I thought about Anchorman and Glee and wondered how anyone would not get what this song was about.

I memorized Wallace Stevens’ “Tattoo” and was planning to recite it while I biked and ran but then I forgot.

One-line poems, and/or poem starters:

Edgar Allen Poe,
exercise enthusiast.

Sara doing Sara things.

A shadow
crosses.

The tree outside
my window.