Month: October 2025

oct 31/RUN

5 miles
franklin loop
43 degrees
cold drizzle

This is Halloween. This is Halloween. As I ran, I listened to Apple Music’s Halloween dance mix. A great run. I felt so fast and strong and capable of running hard for long periods of time. And I did — relatively speaking. Faster and longer without stopping than I have in the past year.

10 Things

slick leaves on the path — don’t remember hearing them squeak
running on the east side, near meeker island dam, a large group of kids laughing and playing on the other side. too far to be at a school playground. were they on the white sands beach?
puddles on the franklin bridge
a runner running far ahead of me, then walking, the stopping to sit on a bench — he wore bright blue shorts
bright headlights
the river from the franklin bridge — a view of the trestle and reflections of trees, but no rowers
the river from the lake street bridge — empty pewter river, pale brown sandbar, slight ripples
on the franklin bridge, a small red dot off in the distance, then it turned green — a stoplight
a person with a dog, turning down and entering the meeker dog park
a soft rain, difficult to notice with my hat and tights and sweat

October viewing update

Finished Theater of Blood — so good! Although the second to last death was super gross — let’s just say it involved gluttony and a funnel. And the last “death” — presumably the worst because it was the final one — was more terrible than actually dying; it involved hot knives and blinding the one remaining critic. Sigh — the idea that not being able to see is a fate worse than death, or a living death. Regardless, I really enjoyed the movie.

Also watched John Carpenter’s The Thing. I really liked it — some gross special effects, but a very good movie. Good pacing, good acting, a good premise with haunting questions about trust and how/where enemies lurk.

Current Writing

I’m on a role right now with my writing. I have so many things to work on, that I don’t want to take the time to explaing them right now!

oct 30/REST

Since I ran Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, and because my hip is a little sore, I decided to not run (as opposed not to run). Instead, I’ve been writing and submitting poems to journals. Will I have any luck? Future Sara will report! Usually on rest days, those days when I don’t even take a walk or do Yoga, I don’t post on this log. It’s a loose rule for me: no posting unless I go out by the gorge. But, I wanted to archive the list of movies Scott and I have watched for Halloween, and I didn’t want to wait until tomorrow. So, here I am, and here’s the list:

October Viewing

I love Halloween (and Halloween) and early-ish (pre Hellraiser) horror movies. Scott does too. I’m not sure if he always did, but being married to me for almost 29 years, he does now. Every year we watch Halloween on Halloween night. Some years that’s all we do, and some years we watch other horror movies throughout October. Like this year. One of the best selection of movies, I think. So that we don’t forget, here’s a running list:

The Omen (1976)
He Knows You’re Alone (1980)
House of Wax (1953)
Amityville Horror (started, but never finished) (1979)
Chopping Mall (1986)
The Monster Club (1981)
The Fog
The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Theater of Blood (1973)

So many good ones. The only dud was Amityville Horror. Too serious and slow and painful to watch. Vincent Price is amazing. He Knows You’re Alone was surprisingly feminist. I had watched it as a kid, so probably 40 years ago, and had always wanted to see it again. It held up. The biggest name in it is Tom Hanks — he’s only on screen for a minute or two, and he doesn’t even get killed. We have about 25 minutes of Theater of Blood left. So good! The 70s movies are so dark and disturbing; this one is giving off Clockwork Orange energy. And, Diana Rigg is in it! I love her — 2 favorites: Evil Under the Sun and On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Chopping Mall was delightfully campy and was in on the joke, but too many boobs. I had forgotten how boob-laden mid 1980s movies were. Sure, the 1970s was jiggle tv, but you only saw the outlines of nipples and the movement of boobs (or am I remembering wrong?), but the 80s were all about gigantic (fake?) fully exposed to the air boobs. I had never seen The Fog, but Scott had. Even so, he hadn’t realized that several of the people in Halloween were in this too, including Jamie Lee Curtis and Nancy Loomis (Annie!)

Tonight, we’ll finish Theater of Blood and then maybe watch the Foo Fighters horror comedy, Studio 666. And maybe we’ll also watch John Carpenter’s The Thing. WAIT — I have a plan for tonight. Finish Theater of Blood, then a double feature: John Carpenter’s The Thing and They Live. Excellent.

the mannequins!

In 2019, I started working on a poem about the wonderful State Fair mannequins. Here’s what I wrote in sept 2019:

I find delight (reading Ross Gay’s wonderful, The Book of Delights, I’m trying to be better about claiming my own quirky delights) in this mannequin andher continued (and improbable) presence at the State Fair in a space barely touched by progress where the amateur is celebrated and beauty is never slicked up. Every year, walking into the creative activities building and seeing these cracked, faded, weathered mannequins still adorned in handmade hats and coats and scarves and sweaters, looking creepy and odd, I am delighted–and not in an ironic, hipster way. Here, the ugly and old and outdated have a space. I think I’m almost able to articulate this delight, but not quite. I’ll keep working at it. Something about how these mannequins represent resistance to the relentless need (by capitalism) to constantly change things to make them better! and newer! and prettier! and, in doing so, erase/remove/destroy those things which don’t fit their vision of better/newer/prettier. I love things that are ugly and overlooked and unsettling.

I’ve been working on the poem, off and on, ever since. Today I decided to polish it a little more and then submit it Okay Donkey — “a literary magazine that likes to read the odd, the off-kilter, and the just plain weird. We like work that’s funny, that’s sad, and that’s both funny and sad.” I’m not sure if I’m weird enough yet, or genre-bending (definitely not), but I decided to submit it again today.

oct 29/RUN

4.5 miles
veterans home in reverse
49 degrees

Another beautiful late fall day. Sun, sparkling river, gushing falls, red and orange and yellow leaves. Parts of the run were easy, parts of it weren’t. Felt tired this late morning/early afternoon. Ran up the hill through Wabun to the veterans home, then over the bridge, past John Stevens’ house and to the falls. The bench above the edge of the world was empty but the Rachel Dow Memorial bench had two people sitting on it. ALL of the kids were outside on the Minnehaha Academy playground as I ran past it on the other side of the road. Two memorable things: 1. a teacher calling out to a student — no, no, we do not climb the fence. get down! and 2. I heard a trumpet playing Reveille. It sounded like a live trumpet and not a recording. Is that what they play to call kids in from recess?

Scott sent me this poem. I’m posting it partly for its cleverness, partly for our shared dislike of licorice, and partly because I love the word It.

It/ Gertrude Sturdle

It is never
what it seems to be
unless it is licorice.
And then
sadly
it is.

the cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells

Yesterday I mentioned using Poe’s “The Bells” as a template for my own poem about the cells: dying cone cells, strange rod cells, the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells, a narrowing of space (cell as room, place). I started working yesterday afternoon and am back at it this morning before my run. Fun!

version 1

EA Poe’s original first verse:

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

My version

Feel the leaving of the cells —
the failed cells. 
What a world of loneliness their abandonment foretells. 
How they tumble, tumble, tumble,
In the fading of the light.
 While the cones start to crumble ,
All the rods seem to rumble
in the loosening of her sight;
Then it’s grays, grays, grays,
and a veil of fuzzy haze.
With an undead half possession and the cast of haunting spells
On the cells, cells, cells, cells,
 Cells, cells, cells—
On the slumbering and the stumbling cells.

type of bell: sleigh bells
bells / foretells / wells
merriment / melody

tinkle / oversprinkle / twinkle

a line about the night air
night / delight
time time time
time/rhyme
tintinabulation / musically
bells repeated 7 times
jingling / tinkling — slant rhyme

cells: dead cone cells

cells / foretells / spells

world — loneliness / abandonment
tumble / crumble / rumble
grays grays grays
grays / haze
undead half possession

oct 28/RUN

4.25 miles
the monument and back
49 degrees

Before running I was thinking about bells (see below), so I decided to run over to the Monument and time it so I could hear the bells from St. Thomas. It worked! Just as I crested the Summit hill: bells! 3 rounds of chiming, which means it was 11:45. Ran to the port-a-potty in the parking lot (yep, a little unfinished business — oh well), then over to above Shadow Falls. Hiked down into the ravine and listened to water falling although I didn’t get close enough to see it so, who knows, maybe I was hearing shadows falling instead? Wow wow wow! That ravine! So wide and open and glowing a pale yellowy green. Amazing! After a few minutes of marveling, I hiked back up and started running again, just as the bells were chiming for noon.

All around, it was peak color. Butter yellow, marigold yellow, cherry red, crimson, orange. Leaves on the trees, leaves on the ground. Did I see any leaves flying in the air? I don’t think so. I did see some turkeys! Almost a dozen grazing in the grassy stretch at the bottom of the hill in the middle of the road. When I returned 20 or 30 minutes later, the turkeys had crossed the road and were blocking the path.

Stopped on the bridge at the overlook to check out the bright colors on the shore and the sandbar just below the water. There were small scales on the water and the reflection of the bridge railing in the water was flickering.

added the next morning: I just remembered the albino squirrel! After exiting the port-a-potty, heading back to the Monument, there it was at edge of the bushes: an albino squirrel.

before the run

During my On This Day practice, reading through my 28 october 2021 entry, I was reminded of Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Bells,” and returned to an obsession, something that haunts Girl Ghost Gorge: the bells, bells, bells. In the earliest versions of GGG, when it was called Haunts, the bells commenced and concluded the collection. The vibrations of the bells, ringing like a bell, the soft echo, the fading away, but not really fading away of the sound of bells. Had to stop for a minute to find out what Scott was listening to in the next room. I heard bells and wondered, is that coming from him, or am I hearing wind chimes outside? It was him. I exclaimed, “I am literally writing about bells right now!” and in a Owen Wilson voice, playfully mocking me, he said, “Wow.” Back to the bells — just when I thought I was done with this collection and ready to submit it to the Two Sylvia’s women poets over 50 contest, I must write about the bells. The St. Thomas bells, the bells in poetry, bell as echo, slant rhyme, the image of a stuck bell, ringing, vibrating, as similar to my constantly moving buzzing central vision.

aside: some years ago — was it before or after the pandemic? — I gathered together bell words and ideas and thoughts and made a page for my How to Be project. Not long after I finished, Scott gave me some bad news: something happened to our wordpress sites and anything posted in the last week was lost forever. No! I had written so many things in that time, including my page about the bells. Some of it I remember, some of it is lost.

Here are the original references to bells in my first and last Haunt poems from 2021:

opening

Listen to
bells on

the other
side ring

out sound that
spreads from

hard center
to soft

edge

close

Echoes.

Bells bounce off
boulders,

bridges, time,
singing

familiar
tunes from

the other
shore. We

are not those  bells but 
their excess,
reverb,

sounds after
the sound

that surround.
Buzzing

persisting
trying

to pass on
songs of

joy love grief
anger

that began
before

we were here,
before

we believed
we were

all there was,
before

we were ghosts.

Hmmm….I really like how I begin and end with the bells, as if signaling a ceremony. And, this collection, is a ceremony! Or, at least, it has a ceremony as part of it. Listening to the bells as a way to prepare yourself for the poem — the one made up of words, the one made up of the family of things at the gorge, the one shaped out of a life from the wearing down of stone and the flow of water.

after the run

Walking home after finishing my run I had a thought: using Poe’s “The Bells” as a starting point, write a chanting poem about the cells, cells, cells — cone and rod cells, the cancer cells that killed my mom. Faulty cells, drying up cells, dying cells, the narrowing of a world (cell as small, confined space), uncontrolled growth (cancer, late-stage capitalism).

What an amazing morning/noon! I felt strong and relaxed and grateful to live near this place and have strong lungs and legs and the discipline to return here again and again.

oct 27/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
59 degrees

A late afternoon run. Nice! I might try doing more of these later workouts this winter — but not outside, in the dark! I like the light at this time (around 5) — softer, longer, winding down, golden. I only stopped once — to take off my sweatshirt. I considered taking it off while I was running, but thought better of it. I felt strong and confident that I could keep running.

10 Things

bright yellow leaves
a roller skier
laughing voices below me in the ravine
bright yellow t-shirts and vest on some of the walkers
still green below the sliding bench
a long line of cars stopped on the river road whenever there was a stop sign
someone speeding by on a scooter
in the tunnel of trees the path was covered in bright red leaves
a loud honk ahead of me, on the lake street bridge
no geese or turkeys or rowers

vision study

I went in for my second vision test appointment at the U. Colin, a post-doc in the psychology of vision department tested me on a fancy machine that takes 300 pictures of my eyes a second to track what and where I’m looking.

First, a calibration. I put my chin on the chin rest, didn’t move my head, and moved my eyes to track a dot as it traveled from the upper left corner and around the lower right. When I saw it, the dot would explode in confetti. Nice!

Second, a reading test. I was given a sentence to read that kept getting smaller. I struggled to read it when the text was big, but it got easier, and I got faster as it got smaller. I could read sentences that were even too small for my tester to read. When that was finished a screen popped up: 390 trials. Colin said, oh boy. What? The screen said I needed to take 390 of the “trials” to determine if my vision/eyes would work for this study. I asked, what’s the average number of tests? Colin: 100. Of course, my weird eyes would require more testing and of course, this delighted me.

Third, the real test. I had to stare between two dots and try to identify the 3 letters that flashed. At first, the text was too big for me, and I couldn’t see any of the letters. Then Colin decided to try and make the letters a lot smaller — way smaller than anyone had ever done, or even that the program could handle. He thought it was very cool and I could tell he was excited. When I asked him why, he said that he had never seen anyone’s vision work this way. Yes! Even among people with strange sight, my sight is strange! I knew it.

It was fun to do the study and talk with someone about my vision. Will I qualify for continuing? Not sure yet. My vision might be too strange, and too much for this program. They’ll let me know sometime in the future. Whatever happens, it was fun and I got more verification that I’m unusual!

This afternoon, I submitted 5 of my Girl Ghost Gorge poems to a journal, and my chapbook, “I Empty My Mind, I Stuff it with Color” to a contest.

update, 25 jan 2026: I am assuming I didn’t qualify for the next round of the vision study because no one has ever gotten back to me. I got ghosted. Also, at some point in the months since I submitted poems to a journal, a chapbook to a contest, all of it was rejected. Oh well, writing poetry then trying to get it published involves a lot of rejection.

oct 26/HIKE

2+ hour, 4 mile hike
mississippi river gorge
62 degrees

Almost every fall, in September or October, when the weather is still nice, and not too long before the snow will start flying, Scott and I devote an afternoon to the river. Sometimes we hike, sometimes we bike. Today, we did an epic hike, taking the Winchell Trail from 35th to the southern entrance at the Horace WS Cleveland overlook, then down to the locks and dam no. 1, over the metal grate platform above the river to where the water used to rush over a concrete wall. We stopped to take in the view of a canoe passing through the locks and the Mississippi River stretching north. Then crossed back over the platform, hiked up the hill, crossed through turkey hollow, and walked back home through the neighborhood. Wow! What a wonderful afternoon. Half the city agreed and joined us on the trail. Yes, an exaggeration, but there were more people on the trail than I ever remember seeing before, and the sloped grass at the overlook was packed, too.

10+ Things

a clear and close-up view of the rock wall at the locks and dam: soft, crumbling sandstone at the bottom, hard limestone at the top
4 big turkeys looking for food in someone’s yard
noticing the silhouette of something dangling from the chest of the one of the turkey’s — Scott said it was a long feather
pointed out the green leaves on a bush that had called out to me yesterday as I ran, saying blue! Scott agreed that there did seem to be a hint of blue on this green
intensely yellow leaves — lemon yellow
light green leaves — pear-colored
almost to the bottom of the locks and dam hill, a closer view of the water’s surface: scaled
the river was low at the locks and dam — when it’s full, the water covers the bottom of a stand of trees and a sandbar. Today they were both exposed
what used to be a roar of rushing water on the concrete wall, is now one narrow stream at one end — the water looked green as it fell over the mossed covered concrete
crossing over the metal grate platform, taking in the wide view of the river, remembering taking RJP here more than 10 years ago — almost everything looks the same, only the vending machine that sold Sierra Mist is gone
the enormous and exposed roots of a tree at the base of the trunk, looking like an elephant’s foot

oct 25/RACE

10k race
Minneapolis Halloween Half
45 degrees / rain

A wonderful race! Not even close to a PR, but a huge success: Scott and I ran the whole thing together; we didn’t stop even once even though we were undercooked — I haven’t run a 10k without stopping for a year; I had a lot left at the end and was able to sprint; I had no problem running up the steep hills; I was happy and smiled as I crossed the finish line; and no unfinished business! I think it’s been more than a year since I ran more than 5 miles without the urgent feeling of needing to poop. What a mental victory! I didn’t think there was any way I could run this whole thing without stopping, especially the hills, but I pushed through and did it.

A classic Sara-moment: I recited “A Rhyme for Halloween” to Scott as we ran up the first big hill, 1.5ish miles in. Nice! Then, referencing the line, Baruch Spinoza and butcher are drunk — I talked about how Judy B (Judith Butler) likes Spinoza and his skepticism and used to read him as a kid.

At least 10 Things

Waldo — the first thing the announcer said, I found Waldo! / a runner running up the steep hill near mile 5: I’ve counted 7 Waldos so far
running costume: Olivia Newton John from Physical — headband, tight curls, bright colored tights, leg warmers, jean jacket
Maria, Luigi, Waluigi running up the hill — where’s wario, Scott wondered
the cobblestones were terrible — so rutted and puddles
bright orange tree on one side of the road, bare branches the other
a dog poopin’ in Front of Gold Medal Park
2 people with gorge tattoos on their calves!! I was so excited that I had to ask them about them and told them that I wanted to get one too. They were so appreciative of my delight, which was completely genuine, that they thanked me! I think I might have to get a gorge tattoo on my calf — and an outline of Lake Nokomis, or something related to Lake Nokomis, on my shoulder
the terrible pacer — the one who always runs too fast and that caused to me to overdo it at the beginning of a 10 mile race and then fell apart in the second half — was there, and was pacing too fast again. I overheard some other racers complaining about him
no live national anthem, instead a terrible recording
puddles and potholes and rutted cobblestones
a runner nearby, shaking out his arms and saying, this is tiring!
several women, descending the hill into the flats, realizing how much more there was to run, and how steep it was, saying oh fuck!
thanking another runner for letting me know she was passing me, her thanking me back
crossing the finish line and feeling great — joyful, relieved, in disbelief that we managed, on our limited training, to run the entire thing without stopping

oct 23/RUN

3.5 miles
locks and dam no. 1*
49 degrees

*ran south to the locks and dam no. 1, then halfway down the hill and over to another hill that climbs up beside the underbelly of the ford bridge and to the bluff and wabun park. Turned around and headed down to the bottom of the locks, then back up it again.

Ran in the late afternoon. The gorge has very different energy in the almost evening. Cars rushing to get home, kids walking home from school, the light longer, lower. Noticed some amazing golden-avocado-orange leaves on a tall tree and some small bright red leaves on a low bush. Twice I ran past a bush/mini-tree with green leaves that yelled out to me, BLUE! What? I stopped the second time to figure out how I was seeing/hearing blue, but couldn’t.

Geese! I haven’t seen as many geese this year. Today, half a dozen of them were floating in the water under the ford bridge. I don’t think I heard them, but I saw one of them spread their wings wide and then flap them furiously.

Turkeys! Running above the winchell trail between the 44th and 42nd street ravines, I saw them across the parkway. 4 or 5 big turkeys rooting through the grass. At least one car slowed way down to witness their awesomeness for a minute.

Anything else? Oh — I heard music coming from a bike speaker. Just the opening chords — I’m 90% sure it was “Just What I Needed” by The Cars. Excellent!

I felt strong and fast and bouncy. Wore the yellow shoes, which were mostly great, although they did hurt my feet a little.

For most of the day, I’ve been working on a poem that is less about form and more about the process of creating it — almost 9 full years of noticing and writing about what I noticed in this RUN! log AND sitting down today and recounting those things from memory. The poem is 2 pages wide. In the upper left corner, loosely representing a gorge wall, are the words, She goes to/the gorge/to notice, and in the bottom right corner, every/thing. The rest of the page is filled with what I have noticed, written across the page with the noticed things separated by slashes. It’s fun! I am about three quarters of the way finished with the first draft. I imagine I’ll want to tweak it a little. The last thing I added before leaving for my run: port-a-potty, clean / port-a-potty, dirty / port-a-potty, tipped / port-a-potty removed to discourage encampments below. Will I keep these? Not sure.

oct 22/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
44 degrees

Blustery, cool, full of color. Reds and oranges and yellows. Everything wet from yesterday’s rain. The winchell trail was covered in leaves, some wet, some dry, most of them rusty red. I greeted a guy I passed with a good morning, then realized it wasn’t morning, but afternoon. Oops. He said morning back. I wonder if he realized the mistake. Thanked several other walkers for moving over to let me pass. Heard some kids yelling at the playground and one guy yell out to someone else, that’s Ben. Ben is here. A woman stood at the top of the old stone steps, studying something below. Was she deciding whether or not to take them down? Wondering what was down there, or whether or not the steps were too slick?

Every so often, I thought about a line that I haven’t quite found a home for in GGG: Each loop adds substance, tightens the tether, but never enough to stop the looping.

Began chanting: looping and/looping and/looping again

After I finished running, as I walked back, I had 2 ideas for fun experiments with the lines.

first: switch up the order of the words — mimicking of swirling water falling from a limestone ledge? or, take part of it and create an anagram?

second: do a variation on the golden shovel form by taking the tether/never/looping sentence and ending each line of a new poem with the words from it, in order, so that it spells out the sentence. Or, to mimic the rock walls of the gorge, start each line of the new poem with the first half of the sentence, then end each line with the second half. Too contrived? Future Sara will let me know.

Found a wonderfully wandering poem this morning, “Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College.” It’s long, so I’ll just an excerpt:

excerpt from Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College/ Carlie Hoffman

when my sister asked if I’d ever
kissed anyone. I was just beginning
freshman year, working to get my time
down for swim team where I’d spent summer
ditching birthdays & the ice cream
truck’s persuasive tune to practice
the butterfly & freestyle & learning to dive
less crooked, which was going as well
as expected until Andrew
sat next to me on the bus
ride home from the pool during tryouts,
his chlorine-dried hand on my shoulder
a little too long without asking when he asked
my name & he has a crush on you
said my friend Becca while faking
a gagging sound in her throat. I said yes
even though I hadn’t kissed anyone & maybe
this was my first true poem, lying
to my sister in support of love, stealing imagery
from the books I’d read in the library
to avoid the cafeteria

I love her definition of a poem: lying to someone in support of love, stealing imagery from other poets

Richard Siken!!

I love Richard Siken’s new book that I picked up from Moon Palace Books Monday night. Read this poem while Scott was rehearsing with the community jazz band:

The List/ Richard Siken

I tried to say something nice to the nurse. I introduced myself. She said we had already met. I thought she was moody until I realized she was several nurses, each working their own shift. To them I was Hamlet in a long line of Hamlets. My problems were unimpressive and not unique. I had a grief counselor, like everyone, and a suicide counselor, because I had said the wrong thing. I wrote in my notebook. I made a list, a working glossary. My handwriting was big and crooked. Meat. Blood. Floor. Thunder. I tried to understand what these things were and how I was related to them. Doorknob. Cardboard. Thermostat. Agriculture. I understood North but I struggled with left. Describing the world was easier than finding a place in it. The suicide counselor said the people who hadn’t shown up weren’t going to show up, that the ones that had stopped coming would not be coming back. She had seen it before, she saw it every day. The person they knew was gone. To them, I had broken the contract: I had left first and they were already grieving. I started a second notebook, for venom and hard feelings—things that would leak into the list if I let them. It was harsh and ugly. It was true and harsh and ugly and it made me feel sick. What do I know? What do I know for sure? I built up meaning with a double set of books. —A doorknob is a rock for the hand. It opens a hole in the wall. —A doorknob is your stupid head. You will not survive this.

I remember reading the line, Describing the world was easier than finding a place in it, as part of “About this Poem” explanation of “Real Estate.” I loved the line so much I turned it into a form fitter — my name for the lines that I shaped into my breathing rhythm of 3/2 syllables. I always thought it belonged in a poem, and here it is. Wow!

Describing
worlds is

easier
than find

ing your place
in them

Describing
worlds is

easy. Find
ing your

place in them
is hard.

oct 21/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
44 degrees / rain

Brrr. Rainy and chilly today. Time to find my gloves — my hands were going a little numb by the end. Ran north to the trestle. A few other walkers and runners joined me — we didn’t move together, just in the same place (above the gorge), at the same time (early afternoon). Tried to run relaxed and not too fast. The relaxed part happened, but not the not too fast part. The path was wet and leaf-covered and slightly slippery. The sprawling oak by the ancient boulder and at the entrance to the tunnel of trees was a metallic — frosted gold and silver. Wow! The floodplain forest below the tunnel of trees was glowing pear and butter. Double wow! I never looked at the river or heard a bird, but I did smell hot chocolate, burnt coffee, and pipe smoke.

Thought about revisions to my latest poem and the refrain I put at the end of it, created to chant while running. I played around with different rhythms. First, the words:

no after / only here / Remember / Remember / reMember /

Actually, the original, un-tested-out-by-the-gorge-version was: there is no after/there is only here / remember / remember / remember. But as soon as I tried to chant it, I could tell it wouldn’t work — too many words for my running rhythms.

no After
no After
no After
only here

only here
only here
here here here
here here here

Remember
Remember
reMember

Remember
here
reMember
here
here here here

Re Mem Ber
here here here

The lines inspiring these chants are: There is no after. There is only here and a moving away from and returning to it.

Also thinking about my What time is it? (2020) poem that involves a list of o’clocks. I’m thinking maybe I should be brave (a word RJP and I are using a lot these days), and include something about George Floyd. It’s an important part of what I wrote about in May/June of 2020 in this log. What do I mean by brave here? I’m going to think about that some more.

oct 20/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
49 degrees
wind: 30 mph gusts

Figured out how to switch the pace of my watch from rolling miles to current pace. It was a pain to do and I’m not sure it was worth it, although I did learn that I have difficulty keeping a consistent pace. Windy. I made sure my cap was on tight. I ran to the falls then took the steps down to the creek. Forgot to look at the creek because I was too focused on avoiding rocks and walkers. Walked back up the steps near “The Song of Hiawatha.”

Running back I admired the reddish-orange or orangish-red leaves and thought about how someone fell off of the bluff somewhere around 42nd. Yesterday, Scott heard the sirens and saw the fire trucks and Rosie read that someone fell. Are they okay? I hope so. I tried looking it up, but couldn’t find anything.

As I ran, I recited “A Rhyme for Halloween.” Our clock is blind, our clock is dumb/ Its hands are broken, its fingers numb/ No time for the martyr of our fair town/Who wasn‘t a witch because she could drown. The blind clock with broken hands and numb fingers. Maybe I could use this in the time section of Girl Ghost Gorge?

10 Things

someone in bright yellow standing near the roundabout — ma’am the road is blocked up ahead, you need to turn around
foamy white water at the falls
the dirt and rock-studded trail covered in fallen red leaves
a little girl greeting me, hi!
another runner greeting me, good morning!
a high-pitched whistle then STOP! someone calling to a dog down on the winchell trail?
running on the paved path, above the winchell trail, hearing the voices of walkers, seeing the flash of moving forms
occupied benches: above the edge of the world and Rachel Dow Memorial bench
chainsaws in the oak savanna — buzzzzzz buzzzzzz
the rush of wind through the trees

GGG update

Not sure how it will work, or if it will stick as part of GGG, but I think I need to write a ghost story poem. Maybe something inspired by UA Fanthorpe and her poem, Seven Types of Shadow. I should look back at what I’ve written about this poem in the past.

I’m experimenting with a poem inspired by Endi Bogue Hartigan and her o’clocks. Here’s what I have so far:

it’s covid
o’clock
twelve minnesota
deaths o’clock
 three hundred nineteen
 minnesota deaths
o’clock
four thousand minne sota deaths o’clock
a quarter of a
million half of a
million one million
u.s. deaths o’clock
keep your six feet of
distance o’clock
spit in a cup o’clock 
memorize poems
by Mary and
 Emily o’clock
read Georgina o’clock
find your blind spot o’clock

oct 19/RUN

3.75 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
47 degrees

Another wonderful run. Windier, but it didn’t bother me. Not too crowded on the trail. Didn’t encounter anyone at the bottom of the hill at the locks and dam #1. I ran until I reached the door that leads to the steps that take you over the iron grate bridge to the concrete curtain where the water falls. Saw my reflection in the glass window next to the door. Hello friend! I felt strong and was running fast/er — maybe too fast? I could run the pace for 2 miles, but then wanted a walk break. I’d like to figure out how to change my watch to show current pace instead of rolling pace.

10 Colors

yellow — not golden, but marigold or the color of butter? — lit from behind by the sun
a full head of orange-ish yellow leaves on the tree by the double bridge
streaks of red in low-lying bushes — vermillion?
BRIGHT yellow running shoes — canary yellow?
cerulean sky
blue-gray water with small scales
the gun-metal gray sound of a roller skier hitting their poles on the rough asphalt with strong strikes
shimmery silver sound of a dog collar
grayish-tan of the ford bridge arch
bright pink flowers — garden cosmos — in many neighbors’ yards

Richard Siken!

First, I love Richard Siken and his second collection, The War of the Foxes. Second, I was aware of his new book that just came out, his first in a decade, but I didn’t feel any urgency to get it. Then I read this interview, An Encyclopedia of the Self: An Interview with Richard Siken and I want to read his book, now!

Check out this response:

Mandana Chaffa

One of the things I enjoyed most about this collection—other than the delight of more of your work in the world—was considering prose poems and how they serve the writer and reader. Each page is a stanza—in the Italian sense of the word—with doors, windows and sometimes, secret hidey holes to similar themes in other pieces, in different sections. When did you start contemplating this collection, and how soon in the process did you set the architecture? Were the vignettes always poems? Or always in this form?

Richard Siken

I had a stroke. I was paralyzed on my right side, lost my short-term memory, and couldn’t make sentences. This was the experience of it. This is all I could do. There are some memorable lines in these poems but mostly they hinge and swerve in the gaps between the sentences. It’s associative. It’s broken logic. The goal was to say a complete thought. That’s what I was going to measure my recovery against: a solid, complete paragraph. The sequencing of one word after another was excruciating. In conversation, I would trail off and get lost.

A fundamental power of poetry is the friction between the unit of the line and the unit of the sentence. When you break a sentence into lines, you create simultaneous units of meaning. Meaning becomes a chord, not a single note. But I couldn’t break the line anymore. Everything was so broken, I didn’t want to break an additional thing. So, I had a form—the paragraph—and everything would have to be poured into identical molds. I set the margins to try to contain the thoughts. I made boxes, rooms, and sat in them and moved the furniture around.

I’m excited to see how the form of his poems is shaped by his limitations. I’ve been thinking about that a lot with my own poetry and how my inability to read a lot of words, or for long, influences my forms.

And this:

Mandana Chaffa

I appreciate how you wield language, as meaning to be sure, but also as a gesture. How in “Pain Scale,” there’s the friction between the linguistic structures we’re often forced to operate under, in this case, the almost ludicrous expectation that pain can be numerical rather than adjectival, and equally, how often people hear, but still don’t listen. What use is language, if those we speak to can’t understand?

Richard Siken

I fell down. I was taken to a hospital. I said, “I’m having a stroke.” They said, “No, you’re having a panic attack” and they sent me home. I kept thinking, “Something is terribly wrong. I do know some things.” That’s where the title for the collection came from. I went to a second hospital the next day and they admitted me. I was hard to understand and not many people tried. My premises didn’t add up, so my conclusions didn’t make sense. There were fish moving under the ice; I was running fast at a plate-glass door. They didn’t get it. I didn’t know how else to say it. Speaking in figurative language with the doctors didn’t work. They didn’t try to understand. They ignored some very important things I was saying. I just wasn’t able to say everything literally. But when you write, there’s an understanding that there will be a reader. The audience inside the poem might be impatient or dismissive but the reader is leaning in, listening very closely, trying to understand.

oct 18/RUNHIKW

3.25 miles
marshall loop
52 degrees

It’s leaf peeping time. Up at the North Shore it was mostly gold, but down here, more reds and oranges. Bright sun this morning and quiet. After hearing Scott talk about how the Marshall hill was helping him get into shape, I decided to try it. I did it! I ran up the entire hill without stopping to walk — a mental victory. The thing I remember most about the run was rowers on the river. Running east, I could see a single shell out of the corner of my eye. Only a dark form moving in the water. Running back west, I stopped at the overlook for a longer view. Another single shell. The person was rowing with one paddle, the other moving on its own.

45 minute hike
minnehaha off-leash dog park
58 degrees

The weekly dog park hike with Delia and FWA. What a morning for a hike by the river! Cool, sunny, some leaves the color of pears, others apples and oranges. Inspired by my mention of the pear, FWA started recounting Annoying Orange stories and the grumpy pear.

10 Things

a hovering helicopter, the loud choppy buzz of its propellers
what were they doing? searching for someone who fell in the river? Nope. Fixing power lines! one dude was hanging off the end of a rope with a ladder
the incessant bark of a far off dog
the flash of white and black — the fur of a fast dog
wore hiking sandals — fine, soft sand right by the river seeped through the gaps in my sandals and gathered under my big toe
a woman picking up a toddler and smelling them, then saying, nope, you must have stepped in dog poop
the river, burning a bright white
Delia stomping through the water, lifting each paw all the way out
a woman in bright red pants, and a bright red jacket
an almost medium-sized dog in a cute/stylish sweater, their owner wearing burgundy tennis shoes and an orange jacket

oct 16/RUN

2.5 miles
canal park, duluth
53 degrees

Took a quick trip to Duluth with FWA and Scott. Ran with Scott beside Lake Superior this morning. Wow! Mild weather. Some wind, a few sprinkles, but a nice run. I was born beside this beautiful lake, I love returning to it.

I’m writing this entry on the 18th, after we returned home. Here’s what I wrote in my plague notebook about it:

windy, wet, pewter water
seagulls — quiet, still, stuck in the sky
sky — void — white
running fast than 2 bikers — a kid and an adult
empty water: no ships, no horns
lighthouse — green light
no lift bridge lifting
puddled path

We had a great trip. What a difference a year makes! The last time we were up here, FWA and RJP were both struggling so much. Now, they are both starting — slowly, gradually — to do/be/feel better.

I love this picture. I love this lake. I love this human.

oct 15/RUN

2.35 miles
2 trails
49 degrees / humidity: 94%
occasional drizzle

A quick run this morning before FWA and I drive to Duluth to meet up with Scott after his gig in Bemidji. His band is being interviewed and playing a concert for the public tv station up there. Very cool.

Felt strong and faster (not fast, just faster than I have been for the last year). Wore shorts and my bright orange sweatshirt. I wasn’t cold. In fact, I was sweating by the end.

Everything was wet. Heard the water falling out of the 44th street pipe and gushing out of the 42nd street pipe. Entering the Winchell trail, I mistook a wet and dark tree stump for a critter twice.

The best part of the run were the colors of the leaves. Reds, oranges, yellows all around. Two favorites:

1: Running down on the Winchell trail, I passed a small tree with pink! leaves — the pink of florescent crayons from the 80s. Wow! I had to stop running and marvel at it for a moment. I might have taken a picture of it if I had my phone, but I didn’t have my phone, and I don’t imagine a camera could capture that color.

2: Stopping at the bottom of the 38th street steps, looking across to the east bank of the river, everything looked orange. Were the trees on the other side all orange, or was the orange coming from the tree on this side that was partly obscuring my view? I tried looking across from different angles, but I still couldn’t tell. The uncertainty of this fascinated me.

I was greeted by Mr. Morning! I didn’t recognize him in his jeans and jacket. I had become used to his summer habit: shorts and a short-sleeved t-shirt. I don’t remember what the river looks like, but I do remember glancing down at the thinning trees on the steep slope.

Anything else? A strange thumping sound somewhere down in the ravine. No geese or chickadees or albino squirrels. No roller skiers or fat bikes or kids laughing on teh playground. No umbrellas or packs of runners. Lots of empty benches and bright headlights and wet leaves. Once, the sploosh! of a car driving over a puddle.

oct 14/RUN

5.4 miles
franklin loop
48 degrees
drizzle, on and off

Feeling stronger and faster with every run. A overcast, rainy morning. Not gloomy, at least not to me: full of reds and yellow and oranges. Encountered Santa Claus in a bright orange, or was it yellow?, jacket. Heard lots of water everywhere, falling off the trees, gushing in the ravines, seeping out of cracks in the limestone, dripping down the steps on the bridge. I heard a lot of water just before reaching the trestle. I wondered if it was the inaccessible spring that I’ve read about.

When I started my run, the roads and sidewalks felt slippery, but I didn’t have any problems on the trail. I thought about the water section in my GGG collection — what does water do? Today, it: dripped, puddled, pooled, slid, (over)flowed, sprinkled, gushed. And, it exposed things that are difficult to see: cracks, fissures, slightly uneven ground. Water — as puddles or ice or snow — reveals what is normally hidden.

10 Things

the river from the lake street bridge, 1: flat, smooth, pewter
the river from the lake street bridge, 2: leaning over the railing, see the faint brown sandbar beneath the surface
the shorter rock next to the ancient boulder almost looked like a little bear to me as I ran by — the rain had darkened the rock making it look like black fur
still green down in the tunnel of trees
the bright reddish-purple leaves on some trees lower to the ground
empty benches
on the east side, birds were chirping as I ran under the trees
on and off, rain — mostly, I was sheltered from it by the still leafed trees, so it was difficult to tell what was rain and what was drips
some kids laughing and yelling up on the hill
puddles on the franklin bridge

Before sitting down to write my list, I remembered something to add to it, but by the time I started I had forgotten it. What was it? a few minutes later: this isn’t it, but I remembered something from the other day. There was a Palestinian flag made out of yarn on part of a fence somewhere on my run a few days ago. It might have been down near the tunnel of trees. I wonder if it is still there?

GGG update

During my “on this day” practice, I found some inspiration:

1 — 14 oct 2019

Looked up vista and found something interesting: “Vista is generally used today for broad sweeping views of the kind you might see from a mountaintop. But the word originally meant an avenue-like view, narrowed by a line of trees on either side. And vista has also long been used (like view and outlook) to mean a mental scan of the future—as if you were riding down a long grand avenue and what you could see a mile or so ahead of you was where you’d be in the very near future.”

My view is the opposite of these older meanings of vista in two ways: First, the narrow and tree-lined view makes me think of tunnel vision, when you only see what is straight ahead of you in your central vision. I see mostly with my peripheral. Second, my desire for a view is not in the hopes of seeing a specific future. Instead, I want to return to the past, or not the past, but to see a broader and longer view of the now, where everything exists together at the same time — maybe Mary Oliver’s eternal time?

also: there is an avenue (one article about the grand rounds and the gorge called them ornamental avenues) beside the river, but that is only the formal path to take. There’s the walking trail which meanders and (roughly) follows the terrain and is designed, not to get somewhere faster, but to engage with the gorge. And then there are dirt trails, alongside the paved trail, and deeper in the gorge, that don’t offer a clear or direct future. Not sure if this will make sense to a future Sara. I’m also thinking about Wendell Berry and the distinction he makes in “Native Hill” between roads and trails — I’ll have to find it.

Maybe I should do a You Are Here about a view, or I could call it an Overlook? Yes.

2 — 14 oct 2021

Earlier today I was thinking about pace — and only slightly in relation to running pace, more about pacing and restlessness and ghosts that haunt the path. Pace and pacing, like watches or clocks, impose limits and boundaries: a running pace uses seconds and minutes per mile (or km) and pacing involves walking back and forth in a small or confined space, retracing your steps again and again until you rub the grass away and reach dirt, or wear the carpet bare. What to do with that information? I’m not quite sure…yet.

to remember: Scott just told me that the musician, D’Angelo died today from pancreatic cancer. He was 51, my age. Scary and sad. My mom died of pancreatic cancer; it sucks.

oct 13/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
55 degrees

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;/lengthen night and shorten day; (Emily Brontë). Ran at noon because I got my hair cut this morning. A great time for a run, at least today. Sunny, calm, cool. I wore my bright yellow shoes and felt strong. Chanted in triple berries, then one of my Your Are Here poems:

Held up by the openness,
Not hemmed in by the trees.

Admired the golden leaves, but forgot to look at the river. Did I notice it even once? If I did, I can’t remember. I did notice the rushing creek and the gushing water fall. Saw a school bus, then heard some kids laughing at the playground by the falls. At my favorite spot, I stopped to look at the falls. Then I walked up the hill and put in Taylor Swift’s new album.

10 Things

bright blue, cloudless sky
the faint outline of the moon above a still green tree
folwell bench: one person sitting there
bench above the edge of the world: empty
benches at the falls: all empty
a runner behind me — were they catching up? for a few minutes I could hear their shuffling feet, then nothing — did they turn off somewhere, or was I just going faster?
something on the bottom of my shoe was making as shshshsh sound as I ran. Stopped at a rock to rub it off
the sweet smell of tall grass near “The Song of Hiawatha”
a leashed dog spinning around and jumping up, then sitting calmly beside a human
puddles on the part of path near the ford bridge — a result of last night’s rain

GGG — before the run

I think I’m getting closer to being done with this collection? One of the poems I still have to write is called “Everything.” It is two pages wide. In the upper left corner of one page is: I go to/the gorge/to witness. In the lower right corner of the second page is: everything. These lines are the rock walls framing the open space of the gorge above the water/ground. In the open space, I’m planning to fill it with things I’ve witnessed at the gorge, culled from the 10 Things I noticed lists I’ve been making for at least 5 years. Just now, a thought: what if I organize the things to reflect the seasons, so the upper right quarter = spring, lower right = summer, lower right = fall, upper left = winter. In theory it sounds good, but what will it look like?

oct 12/RUN

1.75 miles
neighborhood to old stone steps to winchell
69 degrees
wind: 33 mph gusts

Overcast, windy, a few drops of rain. A fall afternoon. Everything slowly turning golden. Wow! I needed to run less than a mile today to reach my 20 miles per week goal. I decided to mix it up and add in a few detours. Ran through the neighborhood over to 32nd then down to the river road trail. Stopped to walk down the old stone steps and stand on the shore at longfellow flats. The forest was all green and thick. The flats were not flat but a steep ridge. Guess it’s time for the parks department to do some more dredging and dumping here. I stared at a yellowed maple leaf bobbing on the surface of the water. Encountered 2 people on the steps. I said, it’s a beautiful day, because I thought it was, but I wonder if they thought I was strange describing wind gusts and lack of sun and intermittent drizzle as beautiful. When I got to the top of the steps, I started running again and kept going past the welcoming oaks and the ravine to the entrance to the Winchell Trail. I went down the worn wooden steps and hiked in the ravine, above the two ledges. I studied the rip rap at the bottom of one. Some of the stone are wedged vertically, but more of them are horizontal. Should my riprap poems mimic this shape and spread out across the page?

Yesterday’s Ironman Championships was crazy. 80% humidity, a feels like temp of 96. Dangerous conditions. Both of my favorites — Lucy Charles Barclay and Taylor Knibb had to drop out during the run. Taylor Knibb was in first and had less than 2 miles (out of 26.2, 15 minutes out of 8 1/2 hour race) left to run, but she was completely empty. She wobbled and wandered then sat down in the middle of the road on asphalt that had to be more than 100 degrees. It’s scary and a little inspiring (but more scary), to see how deep these athletes can dig. I haven’t heard any interview with her, but I imagine she’ll be a bit disappointed, but also satisfied with her effort; she tried as hard as she possibly could and left everything out there on the melting road.

GGG

I’m working on a looping poem and trying to write some lines that echo these:

Each loop adds substance,
tightens the tether,
but never enough
to stop the looping.

Here’s what I’ve come up with, inspired by the riprap and how they shore up a slope:

Each chant offers a
memory, a way
back to the other
shore, but never more
than a trace of
something witnessed and
found familiar.

Or, should it be made familiar? I like how found sounds, but I like the idea of making it familiar through the looping.

oct 11/RUN

2.8 miles
sliding bench and back
49 degrees

A shorter run before Kona Ironman begins. I have loved watching this race since I was a kid when they showed the hour long recap of it on NBC. Now, I can watch the entire thing — all 8+ hours of it — online. I don’t want to race one, too much time on the bike, but I love watching them.

My run was good. Wore my bright yellow shoes and felt strong and fast — or faster than I have been for the last couple of years. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker twice. The second time, he wished me happy birthday again! Dave is the best.

10 Things

hello friend! good morning! — greeted the Welcoming Oaks, slower turning golden
3 or 4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a few people walking on the trail in bright yellow vests — were they volunteers or rowers?
some red, some orange, still mostly green
click clack click clack a roller skier
empty benches — the one just north of the old stone steps, above the rowing club, the one sliding into the gorge
a biker handing a water bottle to a runner — what marathon are they training for? New York?
stopping at the sliding bench: on the bluff, the trees were yellow, but down in the gorge, near White Sands beach, still green and thick
tunnel of trees: still green
passing a runner on the other side of the street before starting my run — their breathing was labored, heavy

I don’t remember what the river looked like — did I even see it? Don’t remember squirrels or birds or dogs. Oh — I recall hearing a collar clanging. Did I, or was that only my key in my zipped pocket? One small pack of runners. No coxswain’s voice or sewer smells or overheard conversations. No sirens or honks or geese. Where are the geese? I have heard a few this fall, but not that often. No chants or drums or protests on the lake street bridge, no burnt coffee smells, no Daddy Long Legs or Mr. Morning! or Mr. Holiday or All Dressed Up. Were these things not there, or was I just not noticing them?

oct 10/HIKE

60 minutes
Minnehaha Off-leash dog park
63 degrees

Wow, wow, wow! A beautiful fall hike with FWA and Delia-the-dog at the dog park. Sun, shade, a cool breeze, yellow and red leaves, sparkling water, soft sand, cute dogs, great conversations — less abstract and theoretical and more personal this time. About anxieties and social norms and traumas and friends that don’t get you.

10 Things

soft sand
a motor boat, floating slowly
small stones just under the surface of the water, near the shore
a small stretch of beach, populated by soft sand, frolicking dogs, the bones of an old tree
a loud cry — was that human? FWA thought a kid, I wondered about a fox
someone far off whistling badly
the surface of the water sizzling white
sitting on the smoothest section of a log — how many other people, and for how many years, have sat in this very spot?
top of the limestone steps — jagged, steep
comparing Delia’s short, quick, little steps to a much bigger dog’s loping, floating strides

GGG (girl ghost gorge), today’s update

before my hike: Reading through the last section of this collection — Air — I had some ideas about time and Endi Bogue Hartigan’s o’clock poems, specifically these lines from oh orchid o’clock:

it is morning
birds plus
socket sound of
car closing /
21st
century
pastoral
o’clock

A 21st century pastoral! Yes, I’d like to write some triple chants and offer a twist on the pastoral. The twist = critical of the romanticizing of land, of understanding land as object and background, etc. Fun!

Also, I want to write another poem — possibly a chant? — in this o’clock form that mixes my timeline with that of the gorge.

Other things yet to write: more on air in terms of lungs and breath; a looping poem using the last section of my poem, “Conservation”

anti-pastoral

I decided to start by searching for “pastoral” in my old log entries.

1 — 13 april 2021

I posted and wrote about Forrest Gander’s poem, “Pastoral.” He’s critical of the idea that we observe landscapes/land from a distance, as if seeing were a process, and not an instant act. I appreciate his challenge to the idea of distance, but don’t agree with his suggestion that seeing is instantaneous. Looking does take time to happen, for everyone.

dispossessed (not owned or occupied)
a process
encounter — a process / between two / actors / the beheld / beholder
no study, absorption
immediate, gradual

2 — 28 dec 2021

In the poem, “The Grand Scheme of Things,” Maggie Smith links the eye to the pastoral, too.

We say the naked eye
as if the eye could be clothed, as if it isn’t the world

that refuses to undress unless we turn our backs.
It shows us what it chooses, nothing more,

and it’s not waxing pastoral.

Yes! The pastoral is all about a certain understanding of sight and vision and how/what we see, how we look.

how we see / a soft sight
filtering
what is “real”?
no access / to the Truth / through our eyes
surely you/can’t imagine/the trees look/like they look/when we are/not looking (MO)

(side note: I’m realizing that the pastoral — paintings/poems — are all about how we look and see. I need to turn to this in my ekphrastic/how I see project. )

after the hike

3 — 6 feb 2022

Pastoral turns up in A Nearly Perfect Morning/ Jessica Greenbaum:

It was a nearly perfect morning—bucolic, pastoral—

bucolic: related countryside, farm fields, pastures, rural, rustic, countrified

bucolic
countrified
a plowed field
managed land
rusticate

4 — 21 march 2022

From an interview with Alice Oswald:

there’s a whole range of words that people like to use about landscape, like pastoral, idyll. I quite like taking the names away from things and seeing what they are behind their names. I exert incredible amounts of energy trying to see things from their own points of view rather than the human point of view.

…more interested in the democratic stories…the hardship of laboring, looking for food…the struggle of a tree trying to grow out of stone…always looking for that struggle. I’m allergic to peace. I like this restless landscape. I like that it won’t let you sit back and say, “what a beautiful place I’ve arrived to.” You’ve never arrived. It’s moving past you all the time.
Landscape and Literature Podcast: Alice Oswald on the Dart River

idyll = “an extremely happy, peaceful, or picturesque episode or scene, typically an idealized or unsustainable one.”

non-human / perspective

AO rejects the beautiful, as in, what a beautiful place, let me just sit and admire it! I’m thinking of 8 dec 2024, and my discussion of beauty as awe inspiring and awful, beauty as not perfect and relaxed, but pain and grief and struggle

struggling
suffering
laboring
a tree’s struggle / to make a home/ out of a stone
a river’s/fight to be free
restlessness / not relaxed
never here / always there
difficult / not easy (see 14 april 2021 and MO)
lacking peace

5 — 2 may 2022

she discusses William Blake’s poem, “The Ecchoing Green” and how the green in it is not the pastoral but the communal/village green, “where people mix with one another, young and old, playing and slowly fading, ecchoing. Green, as it echoes on the green, is the color of human community” (6)
Green Green Green

communal
village green / public space / gathering
not alone / solitude / together
echoing
mixing/ together
mingling
young and old/ animal, / mineral, / plant

6 — 21 may 2023

anti-pastoral poets

As for the pastoral poetry tradition, two poets and influences come to mind: Vievee Francis and the “anti-pastoral” poems in Forest Primeval, and Jennifer Chang’s Bread Loaf Lecture, “Other Pastorals: Writing Race and Place” (June 2019, available here.)
interview with the poet, Sarah Audsley

this is not / nostalgia. / this place has / a context, / histories / visible / and erased.

Many contemporary pastorals investigate power dynamics, status differences, and the hierarchies of classification.
Pastoral in the Back Yard (essay)

7 — 2 feb 2024

Pastorale, mentioned by Robert Fripp in a blog post about his “Quiet Moments” playlists. Ambient music, Brian Eno, music creating a space to dwell in, not a narrative. Not tightly structured, directing the eye one way, but an open field allowing the ear/the eye/the whole self to wander.

open field
opening
wandering
dwelling in / dwelling with / dwell among
solitude

8 — 24 july 2025

OED: landscape — “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”

“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”

“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.

As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.

as the trees
within my
macula
disappear
my forest
fields and
meadows

cultivate
management
removal
forest fire
open field / empty field / unused field
no longer / occupied

—

So many great ideas from this wander through my archive!

oct 9/RUN

3.6 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees

Another cool morning! Today, I glowed: a bright orange sweatshirt, bright blue running shorts with lighter blue swirls, bright yellow running shoes, a purple-pink-blue running hat. Did it make me run faster? Maybe. I felt much better on the run this morning. Was it because I didn’t have any unfinished business, or because I was going only about half the distance? Or a little bit of both? I ran south and recited part of my new You Are Here poem about the grassy boulevard. I like it.

10 Things

red leaves
the occasional thump of an acorn hitting the ground
the loud rumble of a school bus approaching Dowling
scales on the river near the locks and dam — no clear reflection of the bridge today, instead more of an impressionist painting of it
the bridge in the 44th street parking lot was empty, so was the one near folwell
a dog’s bark, deep and loud, in the trees near Becketwood
more golden light through the trees
heading north, descending on the path that dips below the road, seeing a big but not the trail — hidden behind leaves
the bench at the edge of the world: empty
a buoy (not orange) bobbing in the river under the ford bridge

Listened to cars and dogs as I ran south. Put in “Taylor Swift” essentials retuning north.

Since I wrote about the grassy boulevard this morning, and being alone, and freedom, here’s a fitting poem:

Grass, 1967/ Victoria Chang

When I open the door, I smile and wave to people who only
have eyes and who are infinitely joyful. I see my children,
but only the backs of their heads. When they turn around, I
don’t recognize them. They once had mouths but now only
have eyes. I want to leave the room but when I do, I am
outside, and everyone else is inside. So next time, I open the
door and stay inside. But then everyone is outside. Agnes
said that solitude and freedom are the same. My solitude is
like the grass. I become so aware of its presence that it too
begins to feel like an audience. Sometimes my solitude grabs
my phone and takes a selfie, posts it somewhere for others
to see and like. Sometimes people comment on how
beautiful my solitude is and sometimes my solitude replies
with a heart. It begins to follow the accounts of solitudes
that are half its age. What if my solitude is depressed? What
if even my solitude doesn’t want to be alone?

Chang’s version of solitude involves being watched, stared at, judged and assessed, evaluated. And it involves a distance created with eyes and staring and being on display. My solitude, or maybe my loneliness, involves a lack of seeing — not of being seen, but of not seeing when I’m being seen.

oct 8/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls and back
48 degrees

48 degrees! Wore shorts again with my compression socks. Wasn’t cold at all. In fact, felt warm and sweat a lot by the end. Not as easy of a run as it was yesterday. Unfinished business, tired legs. Even so, a few mental victories. Made it to Hidden Falls for the first time this year! (I checked and my last run to Hidden Falls was on 8 dec 2024).

A beautiful run along the river road, on the edge of Wabun Park, over the ford bridge, by the river again, above Hidden Falls. I stopped at the overlook there and marveled at the view. Such a view of the river valley on the way to St. Paul. I thought about the openness of this view: wide, far and also uncluttered, not much to look at, just open space. Nothing to try to see and not be able to. A chance to focus on other senses or not focus at all, but just to be.

There were a few things I saw that delighted me. My view was of the tops of trees. In the distance, some leaves silvered and shimmered in the sun light and wind. Glittering trees — I’ve written about that before. Then, a plane high overhead. At first, dull and dark, but as it hit the light, it sparkled and flashed, a shiny dot in the otherwise blue.

I listened to hammers pounding nails, kids yelling, and cars driving by until I reached Hidden Falls. Then I put in Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” on the way back.

today’s study of Air, before the run:

I’m thinking about how/why something becomes/is open: the planning by rich men of spaces, both as inviting — for experiencing wonder and stillness, and as buffers –protecting from the unwanted; the process of succession (see 4 may 2025) and meadow becoming thicket becoming forest becoming open/barren field; how Minneapolis Parks, National Parks, and the Longfellow Neighborhood Association work to keep spaces within the park; how the city of Minneapolis clears out encampments in the gorge. I’m thinking about my own experience with my blind spot: an opening that won’t close, that stays open to how vision really works and it limits, that opens me up and softens me, offering room to dwell in a place without judgment and enabling me to experience the world differently and outside of, or on the edge, of late capitalism and Progress! and excessive growth.

And then, a pivot. I started thinking about Canadian wildfire smoke and air quality and smells — sewer smells. I wondered, why does it sometimes smell so bad, and how do they handle those smells? Looked it up:

Sewage pipes from much of the West Metro converge at this site. Here, they drop their contents into deeper pipes that then carry the sewage under the river and on to the Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant east of downtown St. Paul. When the sewage drops, sewer gasses are forced out. For years, smells were managed through use of a biofilter (a.k.a. woodchips), but results were mixed and local residents and park users requested improvements.

The new odor-control structure will house four carbon filters that should prove far more effective. Scheduled to come online in early 2017, the small building will soon be fitted with a charcoal gray metal roof along with frosted windows in the north and south roof peaks. Next spring, it will be painted more natural colors and the lot will be revegetated with grass.
source

after the run

I think I’ll leave smells and sewers for another day. Back to space-as-buffer-zone. Way back in 2017 or 18, when I first read the Gorge Management Plan from 2002, I encountered a description of the Boulevard that I’ve wanted to write about:

West River Parkway marks the transition between the natural communities of the River Gorge and the residences of the Longfellow neighborhood.

To function as an effective transitional zone, the boulevard should retain the natural character of the Gorge but also be visually acceptable to local residents and those using the boulevard and its pedestrian trails.
Gorge Management Plan, 2002

A transition zone, a threshold space between private (neighborhood) and public (park) land. Back in 2017, I imagined this transition as a way for me to prepare myself for the sacred practice of my run. A place to pass through — to leave behind the mundane world and enter the sacred. A place for getting ready to notice and slow down and let go. I think there is room to imagine that as an intent of Cleveland and early park planners. But, when I discovered the terrible history of Edmund Boulevard, named after Edmund Walton who brought red-lining and racial covenants to Minnesota, I read this buffer-zone differently. A buffer as “protection,” exclusion, denying access, keeping out, creating distance and division. And, Edmund’s white supremacist work is not in the past. These racial covenants and red-lining continue to shape the racial mapping of Minneapolis and who has access to home ownership, especially homes in places with open spaces and good air.

How do I want to reference this context in a poem? I’m not sure, but I’m thinking it will be in a poem titled, You Are There: Lena Smith Boulevard.

oct 7/RUN

3 miles
trestle turn around
51 degrees

Fall, finally! Wore my bright orange sweatshirt and black shorts with gray compression socks. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Hi Dave! It’s a beautiful morning! Not too long after that I spotted an albino squirrel by the edge of the bluff. I didn’t stop, but I slowed down and took an extra glance to check that I was seeing what I thought I was. I think so, but how would I know? I saw some rowers emerging from the hill that leads down to the rowing club, but didn’t hear any of them on the river. Since I went north, I didn’t hear any kids on a school playground. Noticed lots of trash bags beside the already full trash cans. Marathon clean-up or a clearing out of camps in the gorge? Also noticed some flowers at the trestle in a makeshift vase — an open cylinder where a railing used to be attached. Orange cones were still next to the crack, warning runners and walkers — stay away. The crack looks like it hasn’t gotten any bigger or longer.

In mile 2, I started chanting a part of my poem, You Are Here: Tunnel of Trees:

Oh, where is the sky?
And where is the ground?
Neither can be seen.

Moving feet strike
only air,
and eyes see
only green.

To fly, to float,
to pass through with ease.

held up
by openness,
not hemmed in
by trees.

The last lines didn’t quite work with my movement, so I changed them slightly:

held Up by
the openness,
not hemmed In
by the trees.

Then I began repeating certain verses instead of reciting them straight through. To float, to fly/to pass through with ease//to float, to fly/to pass through with ease//to float, to fly/to pass through with ease and Held up by/the openness/not hemmed in/by the trees//Held up by/the openness/not hemmed in/by the trees.

I noticed a difference in how it felt as I switched up the lines. To float, to fly had a lot more open space around it. This is how my foot strikes matched up with the words: (x = foot strike without word)

To float x
To fly x
To pass through with ease

The silent extra beat created space and felt slower, maybe a little more labored? In contrast, the last verse was faster and easier for me to sync up my feet with lungs and brain and heart and the gorge.

Held up by
the openness
Not hemmed in
by the trees

No silent foot strikes, just one word per strike.

This experiment was fun and made the run easier, and, as a bonus, it helped me with my poem!

Air

I am little late with picking a theme for this month. I’ve been too haunted by my Girl Ghost Gorge project. Editing and adding new poems every day. Finally, a week in, it has come to me: AIR. Air is the section I am working on right now. It’s the third (love those 3s!) element of the collection: rock, river, Air.

Air as: air quality, good air, bad air, lungs, breathing, syncing up lungs with my feet and the feet and the lungs of others (human and non-human), open space, Nothingness/void, emptiness, a clear view, secrets revealed, thresholds, late October to mid-November before the snow flies, when the veil lifts or thins, boulevards and parkways, ventilation and purification, things not seen but sensed, a stillness within the flux of happenings, fleeting/ephemeral/weightless, smells, plagues, rust, erosion, fire, uncluttered and calm

Walked over to the split rail fence above the ravine and the sewer pipe that freezes in the winter and creates an icy tunnel, then drips blueish greenish water as it melts. The Winchell Trail winds around this ravine, over a steel grate and beside a wrought iron fence that once displayed dozen of keys with social justice-y messages until they were ripped out–by who and why? I wish I could remember the messages. A few: Be nice. We are One. Resist Fear. From up above, at the end of my run, I cannot see the ravine or the sewer or the keys. Sometimes I smell the sewer or hear someone talking below me, but I can’t see anything but green until the leaves fall in late October, early November. This is my favorite time at the gorge. I love being able to see deep into the gorge when its bare bones are exposed, its secrets revealed. I love the color palate of rich browns, pale blues, dull grays, rusted reds. I love the smell of mulching leaves, the sharp, crisp air, the paths that aren’t yet covered with snow but with crunching, crackling leaves.
log entry 7 oct 2019

flame and rust, flame and rust — another October poem (along with Louise Glück’s and May Swenson’s Octobers): Leaves

Today, while I ran, I thought about how chanting in the lines, held up by/the openness/not hemmed in/by the trees, made me feel how I was floating through the air. I noticed the space between foot strikes, that small instant when both of my feet are off of the ground, instead of when they’re striking it. My Apple watch measures my ground contact time while running, the time each foot is on the ground per stride (in ms), but it doesn’t measure the time you’re not on the ground. I guess I could figure it out, but couldn’t the watch do it for me? What percentage of my running is in the air versus touching ground?

With some help from Scott and AI, I determined that my stride time (60/170 — cadence) is 353 ms. Then subtracting my ground contact time from my stride time: 353 – 230 = 123 ms. To find the percentage, it’s ground contact time / total time. For me, I’m on the ground roughly 65% of the stride, and in the air 35% of the stride. It might be fun to work on increasing my cadence (time for the metronome!) and see if that makes any difference in my floating/flying time. Sounds fun!

oct 6/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
50 degrees

The heat broke! Hooray. My run felt so much better, and dreamier, everything fuzzy and soft. My right knee felt a little strange at the very beginning of the run, but better the longer I ran. The air was crisp, the sun was bright, and the leaves were orange and red and yellow. Today I noticed a stretch of yellow just north of 42nd.

Listened to kids biking to school, water rushing over the limestone ledge and the falls, and at least one song out of a bike radio as I ran south. Put in Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”

10 Things

Nearing a walker, about to pass them from behind, they suddenly spit. It missed me, but I was grossed out and stuck out my tongue without thinking. Morning! Oh no — it was Mr. Morning!
a row of buses lined up in front of Dowling Elementary — another school week begins
remnants of the marathon — not trash, but barricades, waiting to be picked up
more red and orange leaves — not full trees, but slashes in the bushes
the surface of the river was burning white again
a white truck with an arm and bucket parked in a falls paking lot — was it there to clean up after the marathon?
a rushing creek with foam that looked silvery purpley, oxidized green, blue, then pewter
water trickling out of the sewer pipes
empty benches
the sweet smell of the tall grass — a thought today: is this a smell from my childhood in North Carolina?

some things for future Sara

Yesterday, Scott and I walked over to the river and watched the first wave of marathon runners reach mile 17. We saw the wheelers — I love seeing the motion of the silver handlebars turning turning and turning. We saw the men’s lead pack, their heels bouncing rhythmically like balls. We saw the lead woman and second place — a runner I’ve been following for 5 or 6 years now on Instagram. And we saw the GOAT of Ultra running, Courtney Dauwalter. I wish I had remembered to where (added the next day: where instead of wear? wow. a mistake, or is it? In that moment, I was, in fact, lamenting, oh, where are my glasses!) my glasses — in addition to losing my cone cells, I’m near-sighted. If I’m standing still, glasses can help see some far off things, like “exit” signs or moving bodies. Scott and I were inspired and have decided that we want to give the marathon another go, hopefully next year.

Finished the novel, Victorian Psycho yesterday. The final section was an epic bloodbath. The violence didn’t seen gratuitous, but fit, and it was so beautifully written. Descriptions of scarlet ribbons streaming from throats. After I finished, I suddenly realized that this final section must be a reference/homage to the Odyssey and Odysseus’s slaughtering of the suitors, which was also a bloodbath.

When Scott and I walked into Costco, we discovered that they were offering free, no appointment necessary, flu and COVID shots. Nice! We needed them so we waited about 5 minutes and then got jabbed. So convenient! Past Sara, who drove up to Duluth to get her first vaccine in 2021, would be shocked.

Lena Smith Boulevard

Last year — 29 jan 2024 — I wrote about an effort to rename Edmund Boulevard because of its namesake, Edmund Walton, who was responsible for racial covenants in this area and across Minneapolis. The efforts of community members and a community organization worked! The boulevard is being renamed after Minnesota’s first black woman lawyer, Lena Smith. The renaming was approved on sept 11, 2025. When will we see new street signs?

I’m thinking of this renaming today because I’m working on poems related to Air. Ever since I read a few lines in Gorge Management Plan from Minneapolis parks about this boulevard as a threshold space, I’ve wanted to write something about it. Now I want to add in some lines about the renaming, and the ongoing history of this place, and who is and isn’t given access to these open spaces.

Speaking of AIR, I’ve also wanted to write about lungs and breath and idea of room to breathe out by the gorge. A thought just popped into my head: the Canadian wild fires! I’ve been writing about the Air Quality Index and the thick smoke that travels south from Canadian wild fires for a few years on this blog. Maybe that could be part of my AIR section, too?

oct 4/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails + ravine
72 degrees
dew point: 62

8:30 in the morning and 72? Ugh. I’m glad it’s cooling down on Monday. My IT band felt strange for the first few minutes, but after that I forgot about it.

10 Things

noticed the difference in drips at the 2 ledges — one concrete, one limestone — in the ravine between the 35th and 36th street parking lots — the concrete ledge, which was higher up, dripped less and slower
a greeting from Mr. Morning!
a peloton — 2 dozen bikers? — on the bike path
not much yellow, but lots of red and orange
the Winchell Trail was muddy parts — when did it rain?
almost running into a walker, thinking that I was coming up behind them instead of them coming towards me — sometimes I can’t tell when someone is facing me or turned away
the trail through the oak savanna: only a swirl of leaves and mulch
a little more of a view at the edge of the world and the folwell bench
a thick haze, trapped in the oaks in the savanna
the surface of the river burning white

the surface of the river burning through the trees / Rachel Dow Memorial Bench

I decided to take a video of the river instead of a photo; I wanted to capture the movement of the light on the surface.

for future Sara: Ran past a house all gussied up for Halloween on 34th near Seven Oaks. A figure in black leaning over the fence, graves and skeletons in the front yard. I need to walk by here at night.

Listened to water trickling and voices below for the 2.5 miles of the run. Put in Taylor Swift’s new album for the last bit.

excerpt from Karma Affirmation Cistern Don’t Be Afraid Keep Going Toward the Horror / Gabrielle Calvocoressi

it’s okay. To know you’re part craven smuggler.
Part thief. Maybe if you know your animal.
I mean really know your animal.
You won’t become a builder of factories
or slave ships. Maybe instead of building
a ship somewhere in your body
you just let yourself feel the pain and
humiliation. No need to make it beautiful
for some future reader. Just say how much
you wanted to hurt someone like you got hurt.
And then just watch that for a while. It’s okay
to feel horribly ashamed. Best not to look away.
The gate to joy is past the factory and past
the reader and maybe it’s past your last breath
on this planet. There’s nothing you can do about it.
You come from the cistern of brutality
and hunger. You are the resonator. Just breathe.

Best not to look away. Wow! On the Poetry Foundation site, the poet reads this poem and they do a great job.

oct 3/HIKE

60 minutes
with Delia and FWA
Minnehaha Off-leash Dog Park
80 degrees

A new ritual: hiking at the dog park with Delia-the-dog and my son, FWA. Every Thursday or Friday, more often Friday. What a park. On the edge of Minnehaha Falls Regional Park, next to Coldwater Springs, heading towards Fort Snelling, down in the floodplain, across from Hidden Falls in St. Paul. Such a great space for Delia to run and play with other dogs, and for FWA and I to hike and talk about roots and fungal nets and Mars and abundance and scarcity and Robin Wall Kimmerer, and the sand mafia and Fall Out 76 and poetry and anxiety and . . . . In past years, parts of this park have been flooded. Hiking through, the evidence is everywhere: soft sand, the bones of giant trees, ridges and cracks and wide open spaces with tall canopies, dirt studded with rocks and pebbles and stones.

Earlier this morning, Scott sent me this link: Minneapolis witch coven takes to their paddleboards for spooky lake gathering. I wish I could have seen that!

After reading the witch article, I returned to Girl Ghost Gorge and my air section. A thought: Instead of Girl Ghost Gorge, should I call this collection, River Rock Air? I don’t think so, but I’ll keep it open as a possibility. Today’s focus started out as time and the re-reading of Chloe Garcia Robert’s “Temporal Saturation,” and I’m still thinking about that, but it shifted slightly when I reached this line:

Temporal saturation . . . is used to explain both the canyons that can appear inside moments of great rending, joyous or horrific, entombing an incarnation of the self which will never again exist; as well as the median intervals of floating passivity that resist recollection and whose ending is marked by a feeling of awakening: a drowsy startle or a gradual reconsciousness.
Temporal Saturation/ Chloe Garcia Roberts

canyons. The gorge! The gash, gap, open space where more is possible, between beats, where Nothing happens and where there is (good) Air to breathe. Does it entomb an incarnation of the self which will never again exist? Ooo–I have thought about the idea of different Saras intermingling above/beside/in the gorge. It’s not that they don’t ever exist again, but that they only exist (together) here in this space. It’s the gorge as holding everything — not trapping or entombing, but holding — beholding, witnessing.

inside moments of great rending: rending = tearing — splitting and cracking open, ripping, breaking, eroding

floating passivity — resist recollection, or thinking, those spaces on the trail that are lost, when you let go, stop thinking, soft attention?

amplifies the moment, in joy or terror, both feeling like falling, joy, a falling into, terror a falling through

When I first encountered this book last spring, it wasn’t too long after I had read JJJJJerome Ellis’s amazing book, Aster of Ceremonies, which inspired me to think about my blind spot as (almost) a gorge, similar to how Ellis imagines their stutter as clearing. So now I’m reviewing my old Plague Notebook from that time, vol. 24. Here are some notes:

We all have a blind spot, mine is just bigger than yours (sight unseen/ G. Kleege). Not a lack, not nothing, Nothing. A gap, a gorge, an opening, both solid and unstable / limestone and sandstone / a break, a rupture

And then a Plank in Reason, broke/ and I dropped down and down/and hit a World at every plunge/and finished knowing then (ED — from memory so punctuation is a bit off)

a going under — not a drowning/disorientation/underwater/submersion/immersion/more porous, less divisions

cracks/erosion/waring away

from Octagon of Water, 3/ JJJJJerome Ellis

The name of that silence is these Grasses in the wind, and the name of these Grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time.

time stopping, pause

erosion = pressure + time

ED’s elemental rust: ‘Tis first a cobweb in the soul/ A cuticle of dust/ A borer in the Axis / An elemental rust

big enough to hold all — expansion/room/possibility/generosity/holds multitudes — WWhitman — contradictions, ambiguities

entangled connected not needing to be resolved

a silence — And me and Silence some strange race wrecked solitary here (ED)
unseen unstable

weather — a different language of time (See Jenny Odell, Another Kind of Time)

extraction, dehumanizing, people outside of time, with no history

“Like a clearing in a forest, the stutter, for Ellis, can open a space of gathering for Ellis and the People he is communicating with” (Angel Bat Dawid and JJJJJerome Ellis).

erosion can lead to reclaiming, re-wilding as less abundance, a clearing away

a blind spot — no critical judgment, usually read as uncritical, but what if we read it as free of judgment, a generosity? See 19 march 2025 for more on this!

AOswald on erosion: worn down to abstract form, anonymity of weathered sculptures — “I love erosion: I like the way that the death of one thing is the beginning of something else.”

erosion, a softening, a vulnerability, a tenderness

Find the ceremony in every instant. — Ellis

At this point in the notebook, I moved on to color and my chapbook, I Empty My Mind.

Reading through Plague Notebook, Vol 25, I stopped on a mention of familiar with intimate. Yes! I’ve been thinking about worn in as a form of familiarity. Habit, accustomed to, familiar, family, and now, intimate/intimacy.

Okay, it’s Friday almost evening, and I need to stop!

recap for next time: exposure to air = rust = erosion — write more about the process / I’ve written about the open space of the gorge in time (Between Beats), now I need to write about in space, with an engagement with the blind spot! / the familiar/family/intimacy among us edge-dwellers at the gorge / keep revisiting Roberts’ temporal saturation / and, more on Air

oct 2/RUN

5.3 miles
ford loop
64 degrees

Felt strange when I started my run and wasn’t sure how much I would be able to do. Ended up doing the ford loop. What a morning! Still too warm, but lots of color and sparkles and golden light. My left knee continues to feel strange before I start and during the first mile, like a rubber band is crossing over the kneecap. Is that a tendon or a ligament? No, looked it up: IT Band. It doesn’t hurt at all.

IT Band? Guess it’s time for some more fun with medical terms!

IT, the Halloween version: Stephen King’s IT

Stephen King’s Inconsistent Talent
Stephen King’s Iffy Takes
Stephen King’s Incandescent Tadpoles
Stephen King’s Insatiable Teacup
Stephen King’s Indigo Trash
Stephen King’s Iconic Terror
Stephen King’s Inedible Treats
Stephen King’s Irritated Throat
Stephen King’s Itemized Tally

My IT Band is already feeling better!

Running past the Horace Cleveland Overlook, stopping to fix my headphones, I noticed the river through the trees. Wow — a shimmering, sizzling white. Smelled something sour just south of the Monument. Heard a roller skier. Saw 5 or 6 single rowing shells on the water, encircling the coxswain’s boat below the Lake Street bridge. Greeted several people — runners and walkers. Stepped on dead leaves on the ground. Heard the St. Thomas bells and water tinkling at Shadow Falls.

Another great poem on poets.org this morning. Here are a few lines:

excerpt from This Is Not a Horse/ Blas Falconer

A hoof implies the presence of
the whole horse. A saddle implies

a horse and a rider.

How much information do we need to recognize/identify a form? Only a hoof? The curve of a back? A giant eye?

Earlier this morning, working on Girl Ghost Gorge and the idea of restlessness, I wrote:

worn out / exhausted / made still
worn down / eroded / exposed
worn in / familiar / used

worn in = an accumulation of experiences, having a context, a history, a substance/substantial presence, lasting through time, enduring

oct 1/RUN

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
67 degrees

A good run! I felt strong and relaxed and able to run farther without needing to stop for a walk break. More color on the trees today, lots of orange and red, not as much yellow.

10 Things

workers in bright yellow vests at the Cleveland Overlook next to a big white truck with a long arm and a bucket — trimming trees?
slashes of orange everywhere, not big stretches of it, only a dot here, a dot there
a fine, cool spray coming off of the falls
the smell of fried something at the falls — Sea Salt?
chickadeedeedeedee
kids laughing and yelling on a playground hidden behind trees
a woman walking over to a man near the ledge etched with “The Song of Hiawatha,” saying, I like it here
that tall grass smell that reminds me of cilantro, almost — the common thread: the smell of freshness? and green?
the dirt trail that winds through the small wood near the ford bridge looked muddy
a roller skier on the trail — I don’t remember the click clack sound of his poles, just the fast swinging of his arms as he propelled himself forward

As I ran, I thought about water and erosion and how that might translate into a new form and/or way to play around with my already existing poems. I had a few ideas:

water as causing cracks, fissures, splitting words open. New breaks in the lines, in individual words? Making new words out of the already existing ones?
water as swirling and falling. A mixing and swirling and wheeling of words?
water as wearing down, peeling away layers, condensing forms to their essence

Read (and heard) an amazing poem this morning:

A Bookshelf/ Hua Xi

My father read a mountain aloud.

Opened to a page
where a green bird lands on a thunderclap.

Named for the billowing hands of
brittle blue flowers.

As if the unfinished poetry of the paraffin

is pulled aside like scenery,
so that I may write by the only light I know.

My father read only his one life and recited
the last line over and over.

The book is written in giant letters of fog
that wander like goats across the alpine pastures.

The moon is dog-eared as if the treetops looking up
have studied the idea of love too much.

On a page with some scattered pine needles,
a voice goes on calling out to me.

My father learned to read
in a one-room schoolhouse,

and never read a poem.

A little herd of lightning
gets spoken out loud in the dark.

Change
is scenic and sudden.

One year, I came home
and all the leaves fell off my father.

After that,
he was winter.

I’m thinking about a poem as a life and those last lines about her father and how he became winter. Wow.

5 milesfranklin loop43 degreescold drizzle

10 Things

October viewing update

Current Writing

October Viewing

the mannequins!

4.5 milesveterans home in reverse49 degrees

It/ Gertrude Sturdle

the cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells

4.25 milesthe monument and back49 degrees

before the run

after the run

3.25 milestrestle turn around59 degrees

10 Things

vision study

2+ hour, 4 mile hikemississippi river gorge62 degrees

10+ Things

10k raceMinneapolis Halloween Half45 degrees / rain

At least 10 Things

3.5 mileslocks and dam no. 1*49 degrees

3.1 miles2 trails44 degrees

excerpt from Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College/ Carlie Hoffman

Richard Siken!!

The List/ Richard Siken

3.1 milestrestle turn around44 degrees / rain

4.3 milesminnehaha falls and back49 degreeswind: 30 mph gusts

10 Things

GGG update

3.75 milesbottom of locks and dam no. 147 degrees

10 Colors

Richard Siken!

3.25 milesmarshall loop52 degrees

45 minute hikeminnehaha off-leash dog park58 degrees

10 Things

2.5 milescanal park, duluth53 degrees

2.35 miles2 trails49 degrees / humidity: 94%occasional drizzle

5.4 milesfranklin loop48 degreesdrizzle, on and off

10 Things

GGG update

4 milesminnehaha falls and back55 degrees

10 Things

GGG — before the run

1.75 milesneighborhood to old stone steps to winchell69 degreeswind: 33 mph gusts

GGG

2.8 milessliding bench and back49 degrees

10 Things

60 minutesMinnehaha Off-leash dog park63 degrees

10 Things

GGG (girl ghost gorge), today’s update

anti-pastoral

3.6 milesbottom of locks and dam no. 148 degrees

10 Things

Grass, 1967/ Victoria Chang

6 mileshidden falls and back48 degrees

today’s study of Air, before the run:

after the run

3 milestrestle turn around51 degrees

Air

4.3 milesminnehaha falls and back50 degrees

10 Things

some things for future Sara

Lena Smith Boulevard

3.25 miles2 trails + ravine72 degreesdew point: 62

10 Things

excerpt from Karma Affirmation Cistern Don’t Be Afraid Keep Going Toward the Horror / Gabrielle Calvocoressi

60 minuteswith Delia and FWAMinnehaha Off-leash Dog Park80 degrees

Find the ceremony in every instant. — Ellis

5.3 milesford loop64 degrees

IT, the Halloween version: Stephen King’s IT

excerpt from This Is Not a Horse/ Blas Falconer

4.2 milesminnehaha falls and back67 degrees

10 Things

A Bookshelf/ Hua Xi

5 miles
franklin loop
43 degrees
cold drizzle

4.5 miles
veterans home in reverse
49 degrees

4.25 miles
the monument and back
49 degrees

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
59 degrees

2+ hour, 4 mile hike
mississippi river gorge
62 degrees

10k race
Minneapolis Halloween Half
45 degrees / rain

3.5 miles
locks and dam no. 1*
49 degrees

3.1 miles
2 trails
44 degrees

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
44 degrees / rain

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
49 degrees
wind: 30 mph gusts

3.75 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
47 degrees

3.25 miles
marshall loop
52 degrees

45 minute hike
minnehaha off-leash dog park
58 degrees

2.5 miles
canal park, duluth
53 degrees

2.35 miles
2 trails
49 degrees / humidity: 94%
occasional drizzle

5.4 miles
franklin loop
48 degrees
drizzle, on and off

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
55 degrees

1.75 miles
neighborhood to old stone steps to winchell
69 degrees
wind: 33 mph gusts

2.8 miles
sliding bench and back
49 degrees

60 minutes
Minnehaha Off-leash dog park
63 degrees

3.6 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees

6 miles
hidden falls and back
48 degrees

3 miles
trestle turn around
51 degrees

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
50 degrees

3.25 miles
2 trails + ravine
72 degrees
dew point: 62

60 minutes
with Delia and FWA
Minnehaha Off-leash Dog Park
80 degrees

5.3 miles
ford loop
64 degrees

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
67 degrees