4.5 miles
veterans home
59 degrees
poor air quality
The smoke from Canadian wild fires didn’t bother me much, although the inside of my nose was coated with something which made breathing a little more difficult. Other than that, it was a nice morning for a run. More shade than sun, low wind. Another 9/1 success. I’m continuing to build up the mental strength — a belief that I can keep going. Chanting in triple berries helped: strawberry raspberry blueberry.
Yesterday I mentioned possibly focusing on benches as a monthly theme — or a 1 or 2 week theme? As I ran south, I made note of a few of the benches.
9 Benches
- near the worn wooden steps leading to the winchell trail — wooden slats — empty
- at the top of a mulched trail descending into the oak savanna — a worn boulder that looks and acts as a bench — someone was standing there today, writing something on a piece of paper
- above the 38th street steps — wooden slats — empty
- beside a boulder in a part of the walking path that splits from the bike path — wooden slats — empty
- in a patch of grass above the “edge of the world” — wooden slats — empty
- on the edge of the 44th street parking lot — wooden slats — occupied by a bike/biker
- near John Stevens house and a cluster of picnic tables — wooden slats — empty
- at the bus stop across from the veterans home — green metal back/wooden slat seat — empty
- above the locks and dam no. 1 — green metal back/wooden slat seat — empty
Other things noticed: 4 or 5 turkeys in the grassy boulevard, a group of 8-10 roller skiers, the roar of the falls through the trees, a human with 2 dogs trotting to the creek bank, the light rail horn blasting a warning, the sweet/sour smell of earth on the hill descending below the ford bridge, headlights from a bobcat below me in the woods — I think they’re building a new walking path that goes deeper into the gorge!
For the first 3 miles, I listened to voices and wheels and the echo of a dog’s bark. For the last 1.5 miles, my color playlist.
still life
In the middle of the night, during one of several bouts of restlessness, I started reading a book I got from the library: Still Life/ Jay Hopler. Why did I request this book? It must have been because of the title and my interest in the word, still, and still life paintings. Reading more about it, I discovered this:
When Jay Hopler was diagnosed with metastatic prostate cancer and told he only had two years left to live, he chose to spend his time writing this book: a rare gift to our world in all its ways. The book seems to be both a representation of all the moving parts of the dying, as well as an antithesis to how we usually converse about death, namely a dying person.
Still Life review
still life w/ wet gems/ Jay Hopler
lightnings bang their jaggeds on the cloud-glower
the cloud-glower is a broken necklace spilling its wet gems
its wet gems w/ facets cut uncountable
uncountable the reflections of the world in those gems
uncountable the version of the world into its dry self crashing
the shards of those worlds like shrapnel blasting skyward
slicing skyward or sidewise through the dune grass
the dune grass flattened by that splatter even as i write
the words
To My Wife on Our Anniversary/ Jay Hopler
In Castiglione del Lago, the pines are iron-spined. When the wind
blows, they stand still & the earth sways. If only God had forged me thus!
Forced into a stooped form & told to straighten up, that’s as far as His
blessings ever extended in my direction. You know what keeps me from
falling apart? Luck & duct tape. Even so, those trees have nothing on me.
Blessed as they are, all they get to hold today is a sick man’s attention &,
maybe, a few birds.
After reading still life w/ wet gems last night, I thought about my “how I see” project and the idea of writing around landscape and still life paintings — maybe portraits, too?
swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
81 degrees
water temp: 68 degrees
Open swim! Open swim! Open swim! There aren’t enough exclamation points to convey my joy over another summer of swimming across the lake. I swam 2 loops without stopping at the beach in-between. It felt good and then it didn’t and then it did again. Sore arms, the strange feeling of muscles not worked for a year waking up again. Now, a warm buzz. With no access to a pool, I haven’t swum since last august, so I’m impressed that I did as much as I did. I didn’t worry about not seeing the buoys, even when I couldn’t. Just kept swimming and reached them. Hooray for swimming without seeing (much)! Hooray for Minneapolis Parks for keeping open swim the same! Hooray for my muscles and tendons and lungs enabling me to do this thing I love!
The water was a deep green-blue. I could see the milfoil reaching up from the bottom, looking ghostly. Also saw pale legs kicking in front of me. No fish, no dragonflies, no menacing swans.