3.36 miles
2 trails+
49 degrees / feels like 37
wind: 15 mph / gusts: 32 mph
Windy today. Had to make sure my hat was secure. Ran south to the start of the Winchell Trail. Stopped to admire the river — a clearer view, with far fewer leaves. Stopped again, a few minutes later, to study a felled tree. Yesterday, we (me, Scott, FWA) had seen park workers with chainsaws and a truck with a ladder around here as we drove by. This must be one of the trees they cut down. I felt a little safer running through this section in the strong winds, knowing that the tree workers had just been here yesterday removing sprawling branches and leaning trees.
added a few hours later: this came up on my instagram feed. I love these stories and learning more about what park workers do!
The trail was covered in leaves, so I couldn’t see if there were any potholes or big cracks. Of course, I often can’t see them even if the path is clear. So I run lightly and carefully. The worst part of the trail was the graveled bit in the ravine. Ouch! A few times my feet landed on the sharp end of a stone.
10 Things
- above the floodplain forest, looking out, no leaves, small branches all around created a veil of mesh, making everything look fuzzy
- the wind rushing through the leaves on the bluff, or was it water seeping out of the limestone?
- the voices of laughing kids at the playground
- swirling leaves
- leaves, floating gently
- voices above me
- a biker with their headlight, their wheel crossing over and onto the walking path
- a short, all-white animal on the trail — a dog? no a little kid in a white snowsuit
- the limestone ledge in the ravine looking dark and cavernous
- something clanging down below near the old stone steps — a dog collar?
cells
1 — juliana spahr
the opening lines of poemwrittenafterseptember11/2001 / juliana spahr
There are these things:
cells, the movement of cells and the division of cells
and then the general beating of circulation
and hands, and body, and feet
and skin that surrounds hands, body, feet.
This is a shape,
a shape of blood beating and cells dividing.
But outside of this shape is space.
—
cells
the movement of cells
the division of cells
2 — how much of us is not us?
57%. 43% of a human body is made up of human cells, the rest is: “bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (organisms originally misclassified as bacteria)” (More than half of your body is not human).
the importance of microbiomes
3 — L Niedecker and dwelling with place
our bodies as place or space (see J Spahr up above)
It all comes down
to the family‘We have a lovely
finite parentage–
mineralvegetable
animal’ 3
Instead of fretting over how such a finite parentage might threaten our “humaniqueness,” Niedecker welcomes our bond with nonhuman life and seeks instead to endow us, as she writes in “Paean to Place,” with a deeper appreciation for the “sea water running / in [our] veins.”
She also insists upon the necessity of our learning to dwell with other biotic elements who share our land-community, including what she calls in one poem “our relative the air” and “our rich friend / silt.”
—
Niedecker’s portrayal of living with beings and things in our environment is not merely a poetic metaphor; it also finds support in the field of biology. We now understand that even our bodies, the things we think of as most us, are in fact shared organisms, with trillions of microbacteria colonizing our guts in such numbers that they may potentially outnumber our own cells.
Dwelling with Place: Lorine Niedecker’s Ecopoetics
some rambling: And now I’m thinking about all of this and wondering if it fits with Girl Ghost Gorge or is part of a new (series of) poems? It does, I think, in terms of the relationship between the girl and the ghost and the gorge and how the speaker/writer/Sara imagines herself as all three yet also wants to assert a Sara-self (Girl). I like the idea of composing this poem, and assertion of self, with lines from others — a cento! Poets and scientists and geologists and historians.
Questions of what makes us us? and what part of us remains throughout our lifetime? and what is the essence of Sara or, who is Sara, on the cellular level? I do think that these are questions that haunt these poems, as the other side of a deep desire for connection. In light of so many connections and how much of me is made up of stuff outside of or before me, what is sturdy and solid and singular about Girl/Sara/me?
I came up with a draft of a poem responding to these questions that I quite like. I’m calling out “43% Girl”
Happy 4th Anniversary
During today’s On This Day practice, I discovered this, from 2021:
Yesterday, I started working on a poem (or a series of poems?) based on my October focus on ghosts and haunting. I’ve decided to use my rhythmic breathing pattern as the form: couplets with 1 three syllable line and 1 two syllable line (3/2)
from log entry dated 6 nov 2021
4 years. That seems like a long time to be working on one collection of poems, and also not that long at all. It started as Haunts, then became Girl Ghost Gorge. Poems all about haunting a place and being haunted by it. Up until recently, the haunting involved a lot of feeling disconnected and isolated. Perhaps because of all of the attention I’ve given the gorge and those feelings, I feel more connected and more girl, less ghost. I should finish this collection and be done with it before I start editing it too much and lose some of its original story.