yoga, 30 minutes
walk, 20 minutes
neighborhood
18 degrees
The same 30 minute yoga for flexibility routine I’ve been doing for 5 years. I like it, but I should try something else this month. Later, a short walk outside with Delia the dog. Brisk.
10 Things
- faint shadows, mine, tall, beside Delia’s, short
- the metallic buzz of a table saw
- a ridge of snow, refusing to melt on a neighbor’s narrow boulevard
- the fast flash of Delia’s tail when she’s excited or relieved or happy to be heading back
- cold air seeping through my hood and hat, into my ears
- bare grass
- the 6 inch gap under the gate of a yard a block away
- the smooth asphalt of a nearby driveway
- the sculpture of a turtle — bigger than an ancient tortoise — in a front yard — it looks heavy, is it made out of bronze?
- the buzz of workers all around the neighborhood — brrr!
forgetting/remembering
1 — the body
On jan 7, 2019, I wrote this about forgetting and remembering my body as I ran:
I found myself worrying constantly about my back or my IT band or my knee. At one point I wondered, what would it feel like to not notice my body? To simply run? Of course, this did happen many times during the run, but I remember more the times when I was too aware of my body.
running log, 7 jan 2019
2 — never forget
Scrolling through facebook this morning, I encountered several “never forget” posts about the pro-Trump terrorist attack on congress on Jan 6, 2021. Then I read my On this Day post from jan 7, 2021 which begins with a brief description of the attack. I thought about how I use this log and my “on this day” practice to not forget things (typing this, I started wondering about the differences between not forgetting and remembering). Not forgetting is an important act of resistance.
I also read my jan 7, 2020 entry about the dogs in our neighborhood. Most of those dogs are gone now. Or, if they’re not gone, I don’t ever see them anymore. But, I remember them often as we walk past their houses. Delia does too. Not forgetting is an important ritual of staying connected to a place.
Simply looking. A car goes over a rise and there are birches snow
Twisted into cabalistic shapes: The Devil’s Notch; or Smuggler’s
Gap. At the time you could not have imagined the time when you
Would forget the name, as apparent and there as your own.
(from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler)
As I travel around my neighborhood, by foot or car, I speak about things that are no longer there — the tree with teeth, the big branch that sprawled above the road, the mustache on the mustache bridge, Bridgemans restaurant — and reflect on how easy it is to forget things that are no longer there. Without memories, it’s as if it was always like it is now, like the gone things never existed. Speaking of the mustache bridge, FWA mentioned it the other day. He referred to it (the bridge that crosses Hiawatha on the parkway) as the mustache bridge even though it only had a spray-painted mustache on it for a few months 10 years ago. I thought it was fascinating that this name has stuck. Will there be a time when we forget why we call it that?
3 — losing
I watch other bodies slip through the blue,
how fast the young are
& how old they become, floating, floating,
forgetting the weight of years
(Romance/Susan Browne)
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
(One Art/Elizabeth Bishop)