3.
under ford bridge and back
9 degrees / feels like 0
100% snow-covered trail
Winter running! Sun, low wind, shadows, snow. I wouldn’t say it was an easy run, but it felt great to be outside and above the river. I don’t remember breathing in the cold air, but I do remember hearing the strange crunch of my foot as it struck the ground. Maybe not a crunch. Some noise that sounded like my foot was slipping or sliding on the snow. A thrust then a momentary stuck-ness before lifting off.
10 Things
- the sharp shadow of the street lamp with its pointy top
- my shadow crossing over and through another street light shadow
- the smell of weed down below in the oak savanna
- the thin, crooked shadow of a small tree cast on the snow
- an equal mix of solitary and paired runners
- the river was mostly covered in still white snow with a few patches of darker ice
- a few walkers below on the winchell trail
- a bird, singing
- a bird, laughing
- the sky, a very bright blue
I chanted triple berries — strawberry/raspberry/blueberry — then: purple grape/grieving loss.
today’s small victory: Instead of stopping at the turn around — which is what I usually do — I ran through it and back north, past locks and dam no. 1, past the part of the trail that dips below the road, and up the hill.
With the bright blue sky and the fresh white snow, I would have described the light as blue, but today I saw it as a faint purple. Another purple thought: purple grief is grief tinged with and/or beside joy. Dark, difficult, but more than that, too.
the purple hour
Up twice last night/this morning for the purple hour. Here are my notes:
12:04 am dining room
- too many naps today? rich dinner? restless legs
- uncomfortable purple
- purple gas, purple ache, purple discomfort
- the purple buzz of the refrigerator
- the purple clicking of the coputer keys
- everything chilled, a heavy stillness — not still, as in resting, calm, quiet, but still as in trapped — a purple pause
- a memory from a run by the gorge: l.e.d. car headlights — not white but bright and purple, or the suggestion of purple
2:01 bedroom
- Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender (Alice Walker)
- The color purple — should I read it again?
- The lavender menace — Betty Friedan’s homophobia
- 2 sets of snores: dog, Scott
- purple light — the air in the room almost gray, but not, soft, dull, patches of very deep purple, and in-between shadows that are lighter than deep purple, but darker than the purple air
morning reflections: Sitting at my desk, bright from the cold sun, I look around and see blue and green and red and yellow and cream. Purple demands a different sort of light, or lack of light. I thought, suddenly, purple is peripheral. Then I remembered standing in front of a mirror this morning, looking directly into it, not seeing my face, but a purplish gray glob. So, purple is my central vision. Maybe it’s both, but in different ways?
Looked up “purple peripheral” and the first page of search results were all about cyanosis and a lack of oxygen to the extremities (hands, feet).
Somewhere in this search I remember something else about purple: it’s the color associated with pancreatic cancer. You wear a purple ribbon to support pancreatic cancer research. My mom died from pancreatic cancer. Looked it up and it’s a purple ribbon in honor of the founder’s mother whose favorite color was purple and who was diagnosed with and died from pancreatic cancer in 1996.