4 miles
river road, north/south
50 degrees
wind: 14 mph / gusts: 29 mph
Ooo. Felt that wind, running north. A few times, I had to square my shoulders and sink down to face it, like I was a linebacker getting ready to tackle the air. Bright sun, lots of shadows — of tree branches, and fence posts, and flying birds, and swirling leaves. I don’t remember looking at the river as much as I remember admiring the air above it. Such openness! I felt strong until I didn’t. Stopped to walk a few times. Took some wooden steps down on a very steep part of the winchell trail. No wall or fence to stop you from falling far enough down to break something. Stopped at the sliding bench to see how much green was left and to admire the birds flitting from branch to branch.
Also stopped after mile 1, to record myself fitting some of Lorine Niedecker’s words into my running/breathing rhythm:
In every
part of
every thing
stuff that
once was rock.
Except, I forgot the stuff part, so I ended up with this:
In every
part of
every thing
there once was
living rock.
Does this second one make sense? Not sure.
before the run
Riprap. Thinking about riprap and rock and creating some sort of ceremony related to the gorge and running on and above the absence of rock. Reading Mary Oliver’s section in The Leaf and the Cloud, titled Riprap, fitting it into my breathing/running pattern —
tell me dear
Rock — will
secrets fly
out when
I break open?
Raking leaves and hearing the man next door scream at his grown daughter again through walls that aren’t thin, listening as she screams back, wondering what the daycare kids will remember from this moment.
Watching the late poet, Andrea Gibson, perform their beautiful poem, MAGA HAT in the Chemo Room:
before we are all wiped off of this planet that desperately wants us to live of natural causes, like kindness, like caring
Remembering something else I read earlier about a troubled woman who encountered a stranger that offered her kindness instead of judgment:
“The only question she asked me was, ‘Where do you want to go?'” Stacia said. “No judgment, no expectations. Just acceptance.”
Stacia immediately felt relieved.
She didn’t want to talk about her troubles; she just wanted to go home. She got in the car and they talked about things that gave her a sense of calm: nature, music and art.
After about 40 minutes, the woman dropped Stacia off at her house. Stacia didn’t learn the stranger’s name and she never saw her again. But she has never forgotten the woman’s question or how it made her feel.
“What I experienced that day — a single generous act of compassion — has stayed with me ever since and it shaped the life I went on to live.”
NPR Unsung Heroes
a few minutes later: Watching the daycare kids playing in the leaves in the front yard, screaming in delight. Remembering how one of them greeted my daughter last week as she parked in front of our house, distraught and overwhelmed, with: you’re beautiful, and how that kindness offered made such a difference.
Reading Gary Snyder’s poem, “Riprap,” fitting his words into my breathing pattern:
Lay down these
words be-
fore your mind
like rocks
placed solid
by hands
in choice of
place, set
before the
body
of the mind
in time
and in space.
Riprap: being broken up, made tender, feelings/fears exposed and scattered, gathering them into words and building a new foundation.