Month: October 2026

oct 31/RUN

5.65 miles
hidden falls loop
48 degrees

Wet this morning. Rain a few hours ago. Overcast, dark. The river road was blocked off for the Halloween half marathon. Scott and I wanted to run this race, but when we tried signing up for it, it was full. Bummer. We’re doing a turkey trot in St. Paul next month instead.

Everything was dripping. I listened to the water streaming through the sewer pipes and over the bluff as I ran on the ford bridge, then above Winchell on 44th and 42nd. From high up on the ford bridge, the river surface to the south looked smooth, even as I ran into the wind.

10 Things

  1. a roller skier’s BRIGHT yellow jacket
  2. many of the trees blazing orange and red
  3. the sharp bark of a dog somewhere near hidden falls
  4. puddles in the cracks on the path
  5. soggy leaves — yellow, red — lining the edges of the path that descends from the ford bridge to the locks and dam no. 1 parking lot
  6. the sound of plastic hitting metal at the frisbee golf course in Wabun Park
  7. a kid doing a trick with his skate board at the skate park, being praised by someone — a parent?
  8. cracks everywhere: splitting a boulder in two*, buckling the asphalt, making puddles
  9. a walker wearing full winter gear: a zipped up jacket, a stocking cap — did he have gloves on, too? I can’t remember
  10. more leaves gone = a wider view

*I stopped to take several pictures of the giant boulder. It was at one of the new playgrounds in Highland Bridge.

I’ve never noticed the huge crack in this rock before! I wonder when/how it happened? Was this rock on the grounds of the Ford plant or did they move it here a few years ago? Did they find it with the crack in it, or did the crack happen when they moved it? I think it’s part of this park: Uŋčí Makhá Park

On my walk home, I passed by some favorite ornamental grass in someone’s side yard. I thought about my poem, “Vision Lost [field]” and the grass in it that has been softened by my central vision loss. Currently I describe it as feathering grasses but I’m not sure that’s quite the write words. I studied the grass — touched it, gazed at it, took a few pictures of it. When I looked at it closely, it was all fuzz and out-of-focus like I was holding blur in my hands. How to describe that? The grass looks fuzzy because it is always in motion for me. A flash: I should return to A.R. Ammons and his descriptions of motion in garbage and grass in Grassy Sound.

close-up of purple grass / 31 oct 2026

morning memorizing, a ramble x 2

1– 29 oct

I am writing this bit on Halloween, but I started this entry on the 29th, while refreshing my memory of a poem.

This fall, in the morning, I’ve been refreshing my memory of My 100 (my growing list of poems that will eventually reach 100 that I have memorized and can recite whenever I wish to myself by the gorge, but not to others because no one else wants to hear them). This morning, it’s “Before I got my eye put out.” This line stopped me:

But were it told to me, Today,
That I might have the Sky
For mine, I tell you that my Heart
Would split, for size of me–

my Heart/would split I’m thinking of Mary Oliver’s breaking heart and my poem about the cracked asphalt near the railroad trestle! In “Before”, ED’s heart splitting would be from too much joy at being able to see again. The Meadows–mine–/The Mountains–mine–/All forests, stintless stars/As much of noon as I could take–/Between my finite eyes— To be beside/outside of yourself, in a state of exuberant joy.

And now I’m thinking of more examples of ED’s splitting — the mind, not the heart. I felt a Cleaving in my Mind–/As though my Brain had split and breaking, And then a plank in Reason broke. And I’m thinking of her interest in edges and seams.

I decided to search through my Emily Dickinson entries for “seam.” 18 entries. The one I thought of immediately is, too silver for a seam, from “A bird came down the walk” The next one that came up was near the end of her poem, “Wind”:

On deserts, in the sky,
Had broken rank,
Then knit, and passed
In seamless company.

I started thinking about ED’s love of knitting and stitching and sewing and then an early poem that I had put in my Haunts series about stitches:

Loosen

threads that guide.
Worry

stitches, rip
seams, seek

space unplaced.
A break

in the trees.
Not here —

there. Close to
the rim.

On the edge,
near an

opening,
next to

an exit.
Ever

ready to
ghost it,

to flare and
flicker,

register
only

as shadow,
flashing

as what else
could be

possible.

I feel like the mood of this poem — the I telling You that haunts it — is missing in my latest version. I’d like to bring some of it back in. What if the crack is a way into somewhere else — new understandings? possibilities? ways of noticing, feeling, bearing witness?

I had no idea that the gate I would step through/ to finally enter this world/ would be the space my brother’s body made (“The Gate”/ Marie Howe).

Could I write a poem about the crack that imagined me entering/passing through it and into somewhere else? Here I’m thinking of the fairy-tale feeling in “What Would Root/ Katie Farris.

added on 31 october: I did write a draft of a poem about the crack, then was inspired to write an additional poem about it for my Vision Lost series (a thought: I could turn the vision lost poems into a chapbook — so far, I have three — could I write more? and what if they were almost like fairy-tales? or, ghost stories? — what are some classic “ghost stories”? beyond A Christmas Carol?)

2 — 31 October

Another morning of getting up too early (6:30 on a Saturday!) because my body was too sore or restless of something to get up. Now I’m sitting in the dark with a glowing computer screen, refreshing my memory of past poems memorized. Today’s poem: “Turkey Vultures” by Ted Kooser. I posted it on this log in the thick of the pandemic (April 2020). After reciting it, I started reviewing all of the other poems I’ve re-memorized. I got to W.S. Merwin’s “To the Light of September” and his series of Yous near the end and thought of what I wrote above, about the You that haunts my Haunt manuscript:

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with the blue plums
that have fallen through the night

I was reminded of some other Yous in poems on My 100 list:

I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,

you in a shiver of light,
(Dear One Absent This Long While/ Lisa Olstein)

And, from Mary Oliver’s “Invitation”:

Oh do you have time
   to linger
      for just a while…

 I beg of you,

do not walk by
   without pausing
      to attend to this
         rather ridiculous performance.

It could mean something.
   It could mean everything.
      It could be what Rilke meant, when he wrote:
         You must change your life.

A lot of MO’s poems feature a You. Another MO favorite I’ve memorized, “Wild Geese” has some yous:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Some others: Perhaps you tire of the birds (Donika Kelly) . . . I’m Nobody, who are You? (Emily Dickinson) . . . Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor You (Christina Rosetti) . . . The webs of your eyes are fastened to the flesh and bone of you (Wallace Stevens).

I’ve written about You before. I’ll have to find where on this log (after breakfast and maybe after running?).

after my run, hours later: Found it! This is from my log entry for 27 feb 2020, which is a few weeks before the world went into lockdown for covid:

Before I ran, I had a great morning. Started by listening to part of an episode with Victoria Change on Commonplace. At one point, they discuss their shifts in writing in first and third person which got me thinking about my own choice, in my latest project, to write in second person. Why am I using you? Who is you? Found some very interesting essays on second person online: Stuck on You: an ode the second person and the intimacy of writing in the second person in a bar. Then I started thinking about how Mary Oliver uses you, like in Wild Geese (You do not have to be good/you do not have to walk on your knees…). Finally I thought about who the I and the You are in my project. One answer: I = Teacher self and You = Student Self.

27 feb 2020

And, a few days earlier, I wrote this:

When I got to the Falls I stopped for a minute to take off my hood and to look at the water. Then I started again. I noticed as I was running that my shadow was right in front of me. So clear and sharp and fully present! Then I had a revelation: my shadow is who is writing my workbook. My shadow is talking to me and giving me advice on what to do. In my exercises, my shadow is the implied I and I am the you she’s talking to. Very exciting to figure this out.

20 feb 2020

oct 28/RUN

3.25 miles
persistent crack and back
58 degrees / humidity: 90%

Sticky, humid weather is back today. Oh well, at least I didn’t have to wear running tights today. Hooray!

I decided to run to the trestle to study the persistent crack that I’ve been writing about. I was inspired to study it after reviewing an entry from 11 august about Mary Oliver’s heart breaking, especially these parts:

1

Heart break/broken: Something had pestered me so much/I thought my heart would break = being bothered, worried, upset, saddened, agitated overwhelm with grief, undone by a deep pain, beside yourself, out of your mind with worry? Not an actual break, but a feeling of, an almost

heart break = running too fast, swimming too hard, causing your heart to beat too fast and to stop working properly

heart break = a line break in a poem that shifts the meaning; the volta/turn of the poem?

a heart broken . . . open: MO discusses this at the end of her poem, “Lead,” and Maggie Smith does, too, in “Heart”:

And the dead inside you, don’t you
hear them breathing? You must have a hole
they can press their gray lips to. If you open–
when you open–will we find them folded inside?
In what shape? I mean what cut shape is made
whole by opening? I mean beside the heart.

Your heart could break in two, or scattered into a thousand pieces. Could it be that every time I swim my heart breaks open (here, a broken heart is an opened, and not closed (off) heart), then bursts into the little clear bubbles that trail me all over the lake . . . or, the heart is the surface of the water that I’m breaking open with my strokes.

2

I found a few more notes about my swim that I want to add in here. As I swam, I thought about bits of my heart being released from my body, like little bubbles which made me think, leaking and unraveling. A sudden image: Olivia Rodrigo in the music video for “The Cure,” her veins emerging through her skin like red threads unraveling. In the video, this image is intended to be terrible (and maybe terrifying), but as I swam, I thought about those red threads emerging as a body opening up and connecting with the world outside the rigid, closed-off self. In my version, unraveling = loosening the knots that tie us too closely to our Self/the I.

11 aug 2026 log entry

As I ran, I thought about how grass is growing in parts of the crack. So, not a cracked open heart shedding bubbles like in the lake, but planting/spreading seeds. Grass is a wonderful metaphor here.

When I reached the crack, I stopped to study it and take a few pictures. I was delighted to find that, in one spot, the crack had gone straight through the painted image of the person (indicating the walking path) and was literally splitting them in half!

a walker split in two by a persistent crack / 28 oct 2026

Wow — splitting open the head and the heart. After taking this picture, I walked south, closer to the trestle, and took a picture of the grass growing through the track:

a view of the crack with tall grass looking north

I want the split walker and the grass to be the primary images in my crack poem!

As I walked along the crack on the outside of the barricade, peering over to study it, a regular, Daddy Long Legs, passed by. He asked, did you lose something? I explained that I’d been tracking this crack for years and was writing about it. He mentioned how there is a pipe just on the other side of bluff that is being used to do something — what? I can remember. Shore up the hill? Catch the groundwater that spills over the edge? I’ll have to check the pipe out at some point. It was great to get to talk to this regular. We’ve greeted each other for years, but never had a conversation. I should have introduced myself.

Another thing I’d like to remember from today’s run is the knock knock knocking of a woodpecker. Such a pleasing sound, especially when it’s not on a tree or a fence in my yard!

Before I run, I refreshed my memory of Marie Howe’s “The Meadow.” I got stuck on the second line of the second couplet. No matter how many times I recited the lines around it, I couldn’t remember Imperceptibly heaving, although, after several run throughs, I did remember the rest of the line, with old impatience.

Anything else I remember? There was mud and wet leaves and haze just above the river. The sewer vents near the Minneapolis Rowing Club gave off their sour-sweet stink. Benches were empty, squirrels were otherwise occupied. No geese or wild turkeys.

oct 27/RUN

5.7 miles
ford loop
46 degrees
(almost) drizzle

Fall running — I love it! Mostly I felt great running, only my left IT band and my right glute started to ache. I ran into some wind on the lake street bridge at the end of the first mile, but I noticed it for the rest of the run. It rained all day yesterday so everything is wet, slippery, squeaky. When I checked last night, the weather app predicted showers around 10 this morning. At 9:30, around mil 4.5, I looked up at the gray sky and thought, I’ll make it home before it starts! As if to prove me wrong, the clouds opened up and started raining. I had to stop and put my jacket back on. Was it rain or just lots of water collected in the trees and loosened by the wind? I can’t be sure. Wherever it came from, it stopped in a few minutes.

As I ran, I thought about how I’d like to have a better second half in the marathon next year (we already signed up for it!). I decided that one of my big problems this year was mental. On every long run, my approach was: once I’ve made it halfway, I’ve done the hardest part. Whatever happens in the second half doesn’t matter. This approach helped to make big distances seem less intimidating, but it also led to a habit of stopping more in the second half — taking breaks, walking. During the marathon, even as I was more intentional in my running/walk plan, I still took more walk breaks in the second half. This year, I want to give more attention to the second half of runs — going faster, staying stronger, building not falling apart.

To keep myself steady for today’s run, I chanted in triple berries. Strawberry / blueberry / raspberry

10 Things

  1. more reddish pinkish leaves in the neighborhood
  2. almost every tree is orange or yellow, I only remember seeing one that still had green leaves
  3. stretches of sidewalk covered in leaves — they squeaked as I ran over them
  4. ran past the house on the next block and noticed that the guy wasn’t sitting on the steps, thought about how he hasn’t been sitting there the past few times. Even as I’m glad to not breathe in his cigarette smoke, I hoped he was okay
  5. the planters in a neighbor’s boulevard garden near lake street have some ripe tomatoes
  6. the strong smell of tar, rumbling — trucks, people paving a driveway for a fancy house on the river road
  7. wild turkeys — 4 of them, just off the path, grazing in the wet grass
  8. mud on the dirt trail — squelch!
  9. the paved trail on the east side of the river is in bad shape — slanted and cracked
  10. an open view from the ford bridge, looking north — a patch of glowing yellow on the east side, mellow oranges and reds everywhere else

fun fun fun with the IT band

When my IT aches, I like to play with IT. Usually I turn it into an acronym. Today, how many works can I think of in 5 minutes that begin with it?

  1. item
  2. italics
  3. italicized
  4. iterations
  5. Itasca
  6. itch
  7. Ithaca
  8. itinerary
  9. italien
  10. italian
  11. itemized
  12. itchiness
  13. itty-bitty

That was harder than I thought. My favorite today is italicized, as in, the world, italicized, from a favorite Diane Seuss poem, I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses. One key word I forgot: itself

And now I’m thinking (again) about it’s and it is and its. Yesterday, I refreshed my memory on Shirley Geok-lin Lim’s poem, “Writing a Poem,” and I was struck by her use of it’s and it is and its. I wondered why she chose it’s and then it is — why not it’s or it is both times? Double-checking the text just now, I noticed something cool:

It’s eating up the hours

as if they were the sweet nectar of day,
which they are. It is impossible 
to think or write. Its buzz takes away
feelings, takes over ears, is drilling a hole

It’s / It is / Its — Fun! I love stuff like this — a fun challenge for the writer, a fun discovery for the reader, a fun way to ensure that I’ll always remember the exact words the poet uses. If I hadn’t memorized this poem, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the echoing of it’s/it is/its — and that opportunity to notice more carefully is a key reason why I love memorizing poems.

added on 28 oct: I’d like to work on a series of poems about echoes and echolocation as it relates to my vision and the gorge and language. Trying something like this — the echoing of the it(i)s could fit here!

oct 26/WALK

20 minutes with Delia
neighborhood
44 degrees / rain

Rain all day, so no running and only a short walk with Delia the dog. Cooler weather has come and leaves are falling. My favorite moment on the walk was when Delia stopped in front of a maple (I think it was a maple) that was a beautiful pinkish red. A lot of the leaves were already on the ground, staining the grass pinkish-red, but the tree didn’t look bare, just a little thinner. Pinkish red might be my favorite fall leaf color.

When I got home I make my spider web for the cork board. It’s a decoration for Halloween. I need to work on making the inner most orbs tighter; they’re very messy. I need a tighter warp, I think.

halloween 2026 orb web

I’d like to do some sort of visual poem/art inspired by my love of Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Tattoo”:

Light is like a spider….

It crawls under your eyelids

And spreads its webs there—

It’s two webs.

The webs of your eyes

Are fastened

To the flesh and bones of you....

How could I turn this into a visual poem? I’d like to take my Holes 3 poem and make it more web-like. Here are the words:

Fall through the hole
your eyes can’t see
land in a logic
of blur and almost.

Read sentences sliced
in half, each one
glitching just enough
to scramble what is real
and imagined.

Swap out the dead-eyed liturgy
of doomed vision
for looks
that shimmer with strangeness.

in a scramble looks logic

eyes read blur
as what is

I’m thinking of using white thread and creating a funnel/sheet web instead of orbed one. I’ll try it out tomorrow morning.

oct 25/RUN

5 miles
Veterans bridge and back
48 degrees

This past week, it was warm. So warm that when we (me, Scott, FWA, RJP, and my sister) went out for dinner Friday night, the restaurant had all of the garage doors open. Mid-70s in late October. Yesterday afternoon, the wind picked up, rain moved in, and so did cooler air. 48 and running tights this morning. We are past peak fall now. More open views, more yellow leaves.

My IT band seems to be mostly okay, but some muscle on the inside of my hamstring just below my glute is sore. It aches at night. Looked it up: semimembranosus. Way back in 2017, I wrote a poem about hamstring muscles that included a line about how another one of the hamstring muscles, biceps femoris, should be pronounced feMoris and not FEMoris because feMoris sounded more like a spell from Harry Potter. I’ll have to dig it up. (see below)

My semimembranosus (if that is what is sore) didn’t hurt while I was running, but my right glute started to around mile 4. Other than that, it was a good run. I’ve shifted to running 4 min/ walking 1. I like how easy it is to keep track.

10 Things

  1. the light shifted several times — sun, then overcast, then sun again
  2. the surface of the water viewed through the trees: glowing white
  3. the leaves on the trees on the bluff are thinning, offering a better view
  4. dead, yellowed leaves on the ground, covering the dirt trail
  5. kind pedestrians: on at least two occasions, walkers moved to single file to let me pass easily — thank you! / you’re welcome!
  6. a greeting from a woman walker in subdued orange puffer vest: morning
  7. a crowd admiring the falls at the main overlook
  8. the bells of the light rail ringing out a warning as they exited the 50th street station
  9. the bridge over to the veterans home is completely blocked
  10. already at 10am the Horace Cleveland Overlook parking lot was full

Before the run, I refreshed my memory of “Writing a Poem” by Shirley Geok lim Lin. The air is buzzing./ Someone is operating a giant machine… In the last mile of my run, I heard the buzz of a leaf blower. Boo — death to leaf blowers!

more fun with medical terms

I found my poem about the hamstring muscles (which I refer to as hamstrings in the poem): More Fun with Medical Terms. Here’s the part of it about bicep femoris:

semitendinosus, semimembranosus, biceps femoris
the first two terms
aren’t that hard to figure out how to pronounce
so I’ll focus on the third.
I’d like to say that the femoris in biceps femoris is pronounced: fee moor iss
like some sort of Harry Potter spell.
wave your wand: BICEPS FEEMOORISSSS!
or better yet: BICEPS FEENORMISS! (for really big biceps)
I’d like to say that
but I can’t
because it’s pronounced: femme a ris

semitendinosus, semimembranosus, biceps femoris
wait, you might ask
and I did
and then looked it up,
we have biceps in our hamstrings?
in fact
biceps is a general term for a skeletal muscle with two “heads,”
or points of origin.
when we, and by we I mean me
and anyone else who isn’t a doctor or a medical student or really into anatomy for whatever reason,
think of biceps, we’re thinking of
biceps brachii
pronounced: brackey or, my preference, bracky eye.
looking it up online,
I discovered that biceps bracky eye can actually have more heads!
up to seven “have been reported”!
is that true?
and what causes these extra heads?
do each of these heads have bracky eyes
that stare at you when you’re wearing a sleeveless shirt?

I like it — although I’m not sure how I determined my line breaks, and I think it’s too long. Could I edit/condense it? Possibly. I like the idea of turning these fun with medical term/spells into a chapbook. Fun! Could I put one together soon enough to submit to something in the next month?

oct 22/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill
56 degrees

Warmer than I expected. Thankfully I knew not to wear tights under my shorts. Beautiful, but humid — a haze in the gorge, above the water. On the way back, stopping at the sliding bench, sweat was dripping down my forehead. As I looked over the bench and down the slope, I realized that it was not quite as close as I had imagined in my poem about it. In that poem, the bench is inches away from the edge, when in reality it is feet. Do I change the poem to be more accurate, or keep it because it feels inches away when I remember it?

I’m glad I ran north and down into the flats. The view of golden tree line on the hill and reflected on the surface of the river was gorgeous. Wow!

10 Things

  1. the view in the tunnel of trees above the floodplain forest is all yellow
  2. running north, past a trashcan and a bench and a rock with a WPA plaque on it almost under the lake street bridge: a small metal table with a single leg in its center and three feet, upside between the bench and the trash can
  3. running back south, past a trashcan and a bench and a rock with a WPA plaque on it almost under the lake street bridge: someone had pulled apart the table and stuffed in the trashcan — the three feet were sticking out of the opening and over the path
  4. the port-a-potty at the 35th parking lot, the only port-a-potty that had remained between the falls and the flats is gone
  5. running above the rowing club, 1: a view, opening, as leaves falls
  6. running above the rowing club, 2: a sour sewer smell
  7. a roller skier, skiing down the franklin hill then back up it, halfway, then down it again
  8. the limestone slabs that had been stacked under the franklin bridge and that looked like someone sitting are gone
  9. the crack north of the trestle is still cracked and blocked off with barricades, part of the crack is growing tall grass, part of it is marked with orange spray paint
  10. 2 stones stacked on the ancient boulder

Last night, Scott signed us up for the marathon next year!

oct 20/RUN

5.45 miles
ford loop
51 degrees

Fall! Such a beautiful morning — sun, cool-ish air, less wind. Ran north through the neighborhood, then over the lake street bridge. Early this morning, my IT band ached, but on the run it was fine. In fact, it seemed to help to run. I ran 4 minutes, walked 1 12 times.

10 Things

  1. running through the neighborhood on the sidewalk, passing the garage of a house, suddenly hearing a robotic voice call out, you are being recorded
  2. a bright reddish orange tree near a public mailbox
  3. the river — scaled and sparkling white in the middle, smooth and pale blue near shore
  4. stopping briefly to listen to water seeping through the limestone below me, near St. Thomas
  5. a pleasant encounter with a biker — you have runner’s calves, they look good
  6. a person walking through the grass to a bench near the edge of the bluff with a clear view of brightly colored leaves on the other shore
  7. running past a break in the trees, seeing sky and the other side of the river, feeling wide openness
  8. a runner who was just slightly slower than me with a big white dog, up ahead on the trail
  9. the desire path I’m writing a poem about: a cluster of three trees, 2 dirt trails, 2 street lamps
  10. the dirt trail on the grassy boulevard used to be wider — in some spots, there’s barely room for one foot

I thought about putting on a playlist, but decided it was too fiddly, so l listened to seeping water, a whining leaf blower, and my foot strikes as I ran. Did I hear any birds? I don’t remember.

to behold / not look away / not take, but give

As part of a submission for a chapbook contest, I need to submit a statement about interests/investments/inspirations in relation to craft. I suddenly thought of a discussion between David Naiman and Ross Gay on the podcast, Between the Covers. I was sure I had posted it on this log before but I couldn’t find it. Here’s a key part from David Naiman:

DN: I’m glad we’re fully in this second meaning of behold, so behold as witness, being beholden, being indebted to. In my conversation with Natalie Diaz, she would often use the word is something extractive or is it reciprocal. Are the stories being told being taken out of the community, and told to others, not for the benefit of the people in the community? Similarly with resources, are we perpetuating systems of domination and exploitation or are we harvesting something truly based on the need? All of the questions of entanglement and extraction feel connected to this second notion that you mentioned with the Fred Moten notion of debt but beholden also to the Earth and just to other people, like we couldn’t even breathe one breath without plants. I was thinking about that when I was thinking about this conversation like, “What parts of my day, in relationship to the Earth, aren’t extractive on a species level versus relational and giving back?” It feels 99 to 1, I don’t know, I don’t want to overstate the power of poetry or the power of looking in this regard versus tangible, ecological, remediation, reciprocity, and actually placing humans back within a system where everything’s not on our terms but I think about how you say “the more you look at something, the more it grows,” I wonder if looking better and looking longer is the beginning of it all? Then not looking away when we see something during that type of looking that we might not want to see because I think we’re partially not looking because of what we might see. If beholding is what will get us beholden again, I mean I wonder about spiritual technologies that we used to use, like in its best form, the Sabbath where you’re not supposed to do anything that moves you forward in the world, you don’t exchange money, you don’t get in a car, you spend time with people you love, you attend to the moment with no sense of the future. It’s supposed to be this recreation of the Garden of Eden once a week but also, along with that, in the Bible, you were supposed to let the land rest every seven years, I don’t know if this is even a question but I guess I wanted to hear more about the beholdeness and debt that we have as  humans.

Ross Gay and David Naiman

What parts of my day, in relationship to the Earth, aren’t extractive on a species level versus relational and giving back?

funnel and sheet webs

For the past month, a sizable spider has been weaving webs on our garage. First, on the garage door, and when that didn’t work, on the side door. I’ve noticed it but not really thought about it until yesterday. I said to Scott, that’s not a classic orb web, it’s some other kind. But what kind? I looked it up and I think it’s a funnel web. Unlike orb webs which are sticky and vertical, a funnel web is a horizontal sheet of web with a funnel. It’s not sticky; the spider hides on the edge of the funnel and waits for its prey to wander in, then it swoops out and bites it. I took a few pictures, but I can’t see the web that well in them. Here’s the best (?) one:

funnel/sheet web on garage

oct 18/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls loop
48 degrees
wind: 30 mph gusts / Beaufort Scale: 3-4*

*a few days ago, Scott showed me how the weather app on our iPhones gives the average wind speed and a description of the Beaufort scale. Not today’s number on the scale; you have to figure that out yourself.

3-4 on the Beaufort scale. Between gentle and moderate breeze. Between Leaves and small twigs in constant motion; light flags extended. Large wavelets on sea and Raises dust and loose paper; small branches moved. Small waves, fairly frequent white horses. Between “Sailing” by Christopher Cross and “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. Between I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing (Carl Phillips) and The rising wind pulls you out of it,/and you look up to see a cloud of leaves/wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue/and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day/were sighing, Let it go, let it go,/for this moment at least, let it all go (Jeffrey Harrison). (see my Beaufort Scales in Song and in Lines of Poetry at the end of this page). Between pulling my hat down (to make it more secure) and taking it off (so it wouldn’t fly over the bridge railing). Between leaves that shimmer and branches that creak and groan.

I ran into the wind at the start of my run, then it ran into me on the bridge. When I turned around, it was at my back.

A good run. I did 4 minutes run, 1 minute walk, but had some difficulty keeping track of the time. The bright sun made it hard to see the numbers of my watch face.

A beautiful, cool morning. I wore running tights and my bright orange sweatshirt, which I took off around mile 3. There are still lots of colorful leaves on the trees, but that won’t last long if we keep having this much wind! I was able to run up the wabun hill, over ford bridge, and to hidden falls. The short stretch of daylighted creek on the part of the trail that passes under the road, was gushing and rushing towards the ledge of hidden falls. A pleasing sound to hear. At the start of the run, the surface of the river was bright, glowing white. On the bridge, corrugated and gray. As I neared the new trail close to the double bridge, I would hear voices — so many voices! Young adults, older adults, kids. Was it a big group? An extended family? Just a lot of random people enjoying the sun and leaves on a Sunday morning? Whichever it was, I was glad I wasn’t down there and that I was able to pass before they emerged from the woods and into the light!

oct 16/RUNWALK

5 miles
around john stevens house and back
46 degrees
wind: 28 mph gusts
AQI: 12!

The air quality is 12?! That’s why I love fall and winter: much better air to breathe! Very windy, which is mostly a bummer because it means more of the red and yellow and orange leaves will fall sooner. But, it’s partly okay; it’s a chance to recite some of my favorite wind lines: I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible and Who has seen the wind? Neither I nor You, but when the leaves hang trembling the wind is passing through.

A nice run, even if my left leg — my IT band or something else in my hip/hamstring/glute — hurts. I ran 4 minutes and walked 1 and it felt fine. It wasn’t hard or easy, it just was.

10 Things

  1. lots of dead leaves on the paved path — hiding twigs and acorns
  2. the surface of the water, glowing white through the trees
  3. voices below me, on the winchell trail
  4. a neighbor’s sidewalk covered in soft, yellowed pine needles
  5. a parks’ riding lawn mower rumbling behind me — loud and getting closer
  6. the bridge over to veterans home is still blocked off, to cars and pedestrians
  7. a line of people on the edge of the parking lot, waiting to pay for parking
  8. kids voices — loud, ebullient — at the playground
  9. mostly empty benches, but at least one person sitting on one
  10. the flash of lime green: the basket of a lime rental bike parked at the bike rack beside the 38th street steps

The wind was mostly at my back on the way south, and in my face on the way north. As I ran north, I tried to notice the milliseconds when both feet were off the ground and i was flying between beats, but I kept hearing the strong striking of my feet on the ground. I recalled my metronome experiment: listening to a metronome on my phone and syncing my steps up with the beat until I became it. I thought about running chants — my 3 beats then 2 and how they are the form for ghost/not quite tethered Sara — the Sara between beats. Then I thought about Sara the sturdy girl who wants connection and to belong and how her form could be these strong beats: Beat / Beat / Beat / Beat. All stressed, strong beats. Then I turned it into an echo:

I i i
We we we
Us us us
All all all
Here here here
Now now now

I.
Us.
We.
Here.

walk: 40 minutes with Delia
neighborhood / grassy boulevard
51 degrees
wind: 17 mph gusts

Took Delia for a walk on a brisk, yet beautiful afternoon walk. For the first mile, I thought the wind had completely gone, but when we arrived at the grassy boulevard, there it was.

3 favorite images

one: that mid-afternoon light shining through the trees — one tree with yellow leaves in a soft glow

two: movement in a purple flower, black and yellow fuzz, a bumblebee — I think I saw it’s wings opening and closing

three: a small, blob-like shadow, flickering past my feet — I think it was the shadow of a butterfly

Walking through the alley, almost home, I felt a small flare in my calf. I realized suddenly that the flare was in my soleus (that’s the lesser known of the 2 calf muscles). I rarely stretch or work my soleus. I think that that was the calf problem I was having in the marathon. I bet it would help to do some exercises for it!

oct 14/WALKRUN

walk with Delia the Dog
neighborhood / tunnel of trees / grassy boulevard
49 degrees / feels like 44

The heat has broken! 90 degrees on both Saturday and Sunday. Scott told me that, in the recorded history of Minneapolis weather (130ish years), it has only reached 90 in October 6 times. We did 1/3 of that this weekend! I wore 2 shirts and the outer layer of my winter coat and wished I would have worn gloves. Brr. I’m not complaining; I love the cooler air.

5 Walk Things

  1. a few trees are still green
  2. yellow red orange leaves
  3. some trees, including the Welcoming Oaks, are bare
  4. overcast — a bright grayish-white sky
  5. a very strong smell of cigarette smoke near one house — was one of the construction workers smoking?

run: 4.1 miles
monument and back
51 degrees

Even thought my IT band — or is it something else? — still hurts a little, I decided to go out for my first cool fall run. My reasoning: it’s too nice out here to not run, and more importantly, I think running actually helps stretch out my legs (this proved to be true; my IT band felt better on the run, my legs more relaxed). I wore a short-sleeve shirt, my BRIGHT orange sweatshirt, black running tights, and black shorts. I was only a little overheated in the second half and took my sweatshirt off.

5 Run Things

  1. the ravine/gulch above shadow falls was in full color, mostly reds and oranges
  2. the river was scaled and grayish blue and empty
  3. written across one railing on the Lake Street bridge: Free Palestine
  4. a street lamp near the monument: wires gutted, little door housing the wires missing, a date: 1989
  5. crossing over lake street bridge, nearing the Minneapolis side, hearing a woman yell or shriek below — was she okay? Looked again and couldn’t see anyone

As I walked the last few blocks, after finishing my run, I thought about the street lamp and the date. Maybe I could write a poem about this street lamp? Then I thought about how I’ve written about these gutted street lamps before on this log, which led to another idea: what about a poem for my Girl Ghost Gorge collection (tentatively) titled Prints with a series of short images collected from my log entries. Each image would be in a small form — 3/2? — and be brief.

oct 12/RUN!

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
60 degree

My first run after the marathon! It didn’t feel great — my legs were sore, it was humid — but it didn’t feel terrible, and it was beautiful above the gorge. That autumn morning light! Golden, illuminating the trees, some of which were yellow, some still green. One tree near the double bridge was a silvery, pale yellow. Saw two regulars: Santa Claus and Skirt with sandals.

10 Things

  1. 2 wild turkeys near the 44th street parking lot
  2. a biker with an empty trailer, an orange flag at the back — I’m assuming she just dropped a kid off at school
  3. a car alarm beeping beeping beeping beeping then silence
  4. nearing the bridge over the falls, seeing a flash of blue then a person wearing a blue jacket
  5. the creek was almost still, with a flat, smooth surface
  6. heard, not seen: the falls rushing over the limestone ledge
  7. slashes of bright red in the otherwise green (a small red splotch in the band of monochromatic green/ Diane Seuss)
  8. a water bottle on top of the drinking fountain at the edge of the falls
  9. the light rail bells ringing as the train pulled out of (or into?) the 50th street station on the other side of the wall
  10. the strong smell of cigarette smoke somewhere close by — I couldn’t avoid breathing it in for 20 or 30 seconds as I entered the park

the light

There was something about that light this morning. It was golden and glowing and, at times, burning. As I ran, I wondered if it felt brighter and more like it was burning because there were less leaves to soften it? Two October poems discuss October light; I think I’ll study one of them today:

from October/ Louise Glück

The light has changed;
middle C is tuned darker now.
And the songs of morning sound over-rehearsed. 

This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring.
The light of autumn: you will not be spared.

The songs have changed; the unspeakable
has entered them.

The songs sound over-rehearsed — I think this might be what I was trying to remember when I was talking with Scott the other day about how a poet described the vegetation in the fall as it became past its prime: over-rehearsed.

Does the unspeakable always have to be bad? Looked it up in Merriam-Webster. “Inexpressibly bad” is one of the definitions, but so is “incapable of being expressed in words.” Unspeakable points to the limits of language, which is something poetry is speaking to and about. And darker has other meanings than worse or more menacing. Darker is less light — I’m thinking of a steps poem and the idea of going deeper in, where there is less light.

Now I’m wondering about middle C being darker. I asked one of the resident music theory experts (we have 2 — Scott and FWA) about what is meant by dark notes and I learned a few things: 1. dark notes have nothing to do with pitch, so the idea of tuning middle C darker doesn’t quite work, 2. darker note = fuller, richer, deeper, 3. the opposite of dark notes are bright notes which are tinny and shrill — Sousa marches have a lot of bright notes.

I’m imagining dark as soft, warm, rich, full/depth of feeling, matured, sustained, slow and bright as sharp, cold, high-pitched, short and explosive, fast, punctuated.

oct 11/WALKx2

walk 1: 40 minutes with Delia the dog
neighborhood / grassy boulevard
72 degrees

Thought about running this morning, but it’s warm and I wanted to watch the Chicago Marathon and my IT band still smarts (what a strange expression) and Delia the dog needed (and desperately desired) a walk, so I walked instead. So warm, but beautiful with the reds and yellows and oranges! Quiet and mostly empty on the sidewalks. Sauntering through the grassy boulevard I noticed a steady stream of walkers and runners and bikers on the river road trail which validated my decision not to run — too crowded! As we moved, I recited some of my re-memorized poems, starting at the end of the list with “Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act” and Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act/A fundamental Pause and ending with “Still Life with Window and Fish” and If I should die/ before you do,/ you can find me anywhere/ in this floral, featureless,/ indelible/ surf. We are too restless/ to inherit/ this earth.

10 Things

  1. a woman, walking in the street, stopped to ask, does it feel humid? I thought so, and said yes, but when I checked, it was only 55% which is not humid for Minneapolis
  2. the barking heads of two dogs peering over the top of a fence — one of this barks is whiny, the other deep
  3. a biker passing me, muttering to himself, I almost went the wrong way — jeez!
  4. walking through a patch of bright sun — achoo! achoo!
  5. a yellow and black smart car parked in a driveway — so tiny!
  6. a neighbor’s boulevard, thick with fallen leaves
  7. the halloween decorations at a house close to 7 Oaks: the girl from the Ring, a demonic moose, a ghost shrouded in black leaning over the sidewalk on the top of the fence, a cauldron with a boiling baby, spiders — some black, some grayish white — the pale ones seemed creepier than the dark ones
  8. two women walking on the river road trail, their voices carrying across the road, not loud enough to hear what they were saying
  9. someone talking with a New Zealand accent
  10. the dragons in a neighbor on the next block that were not inflated the other day, were inflated today: 3 of them — the soft flap of mechanical wings mixed with the high-pitched drone of the motor making them move

kona

Yesterday, I watched (sometimes actively, sometimes with it on in the background) most of the 8 hour ironman race. I recognize that many people wouldn’t enjoy watching such a long race, but I do. Why? — that’s for another entry. I am a big fan of Lucy Charles Barclay (who was in the lead for all of the swim and some of the bike), and I am an even bigger fan of Taylor Knibb. Last year, both of them DNF’d (did not finish) because they experienced heat stroke. Well, that’s an understatement. They started walking and weaving and wobbling, then became a bit delirious. LCB dropped out first. Five miles later Knibb sat down on the road and couldn’t get back up. This year, it happened to Lucy Charles Barclay again, but not Taylor Knibb. With a 10k to go she was passed by the woman in 3rd place (Solveig Lovseth) who was full of run (as the commentators like to say), until she wasn’t. For a few minutes, her arms were swinging wildly, then she was weaving and wobbling, then she sat down. She got up a few times, but kept sitting down on the pavement. It was very dramatic. Taylor Knibb passed her and won. I’d like to write more about my thoughts on this finish, but not today.

ED and that interposing fly

Yesterday, I wrote a little about ED’s interposing fly in the IT/fun with medical terms experiment. I’ll return to it now. Back when I was studying Emily Dickinson for a month, I wrote this on the 15th of March (2021):

A few years ago, I found some articles discussing ED’s temporary vision loss in her 30s. I’m fascinated by how she references her temporary blindness in her poetry. In Emily Dickinson’s mystifying in-sight, the authors reflect on “I heard a fly buzz” and suggest that her words here, and in several of her poems referencing the Eye and the dying Eye, provide remarkable insight into the physiological process of vision loss as one is dying. 

Throughout her poetry chronicling the ophthalmic deterioration that occurs in death, Dickinson notes the changes that occur in the dying cornea and lens: glaze, dimness, fog, mists, film, cloudier. Her observations reflect what medical science currently understands as the alterations that occur within the eye during the process of death.

…

As death approaches, gradually less oxygen-carrying blood is pumped by the failing heart, causing functional loss of the bodily organs.  Seeing while dying should be possible until the retina and/or the occipital cortex of the brain, the final mediator of vision, becomes deprived of oxygen and loses its capability.  The most metabolically active of all our tissues, the retina, for its operation, surpasses every other organ in relative blood flow and oxygen requirement. The loss of vision while dying should be sequential, greying occurring first as cones (the retinal mediators of color and probably more metabolically active than rods, the agents of black, white, and grey) lose function. Greys, therefore, persist through the retinal rods after loss of color perception occurs. Finally the rods, too, fail, and we are blind. 

and

In the last cycle, eyesight fades to a blue, the retinal cones still working, but predominated by the buzz, uncertain, stumbling, as hearing also begins to fade.  But, still, the hum is loud enough to go beyond and between her light as vision fades away faster than hearing. And then, as the retinal rods fail, sight exhausts itself and so “light” must fail to appear; we are left instead with “the Windows failed – ” as the bright sunlight at the window is eclipsed, and finally, all of seeing ends, concluding with an absolute and total black, rendered powerfully in the last line by the three “eyes”:  “I…see…see.”

I’m particularly interested in the reference to interpose: “In the last cycle, eyesight fades to a blue, the retinal cones still working, but predominated by the buzz, uncertain, stumbling, as hearing also begins to fade.  But, still, the hum is loud enough to go beyond and between her light as vision fades away faster than hearing.” On my second walk, I kept thinking about this description and how good ED is at describing vision loss. It resonates so much for me!

walk 2: 70 minutes
east lake library and back
73 degrees

When I got an alert that I had two books available, I decided to walk to the library to pick them up. It was so warm that I wore a tank top and shorts. I’m ready for this warm weather to be gone!

10 Things

  1. the bakery around the corner was busy — I could hear the steady din of voices as I walked past it, on the other side of the street
  2. an arts collective has popped up across from the bakery — today was their monthly open house + arts market
  3. a cactus garden in a neighbor’s front yard
  4. a group of people sitting outside of a some business that I couldn’t identify — is it another cafe?
  5. a row of fake tombstones along the side of a house, one reading, “Seymore Butts”
  6. a bright blue house with a clashing faded purple fence and a BRIGHT green door
  7. an older man walking with a walker, nearing some steps
  8. an adult and a kid exiting the library, the adult saying, good for you! you locked up your bike!
  9. a church service ending at a lutheran church, a few people walking to their cars
  10. a kid laughing in a way that could have been genuine delight or forced mirth — I couldn’t decide which

oct 9/WALKx2

walk 1: 45 minutes with Delia
neighborhood / 38th street steps / oak savanna
59 degrees

Five days after the marathon, I’m feeling mostly fine; it’s just my IT band that continues to be sore. I thought about running, but decided to take one more day off from it. Instead, I’m hoping to do double walks. This morning, I went with Delia.

More fabulous fall weather, a bit windier than yesterday. We walked through the neighborhood, past the school, past two favorite garden boulevards — one with vibrant mums and zinnias, the other with soft, purple grass which I had to feel on my fingers, past the house with skeletons climbing to the second floor windows. I noticed, with some sadness, that I could barely see the skeletons. In past years, I might have been able to count a few of the bones, today they were only the suggestion of the form. I don’t think I would have even known what they were if I didn’t already know what they were. That happens a lot: I rely on habit and past experiences and assume that what was there before is what is there now.

We crossed the river road at 38th — so many cars traveling this road this morning! — and took the steps down to the Winchell Trail. I noticed how sloped the path that connects the two sets of steps is. The steps are level (or are they? maybe I need to study them some more), but the short stretch of paved trail between them slopes enough that you feel almost like you’re falling down it — or, if not falling down, being led down the trail. I remember witnessing this feeling in another walker a few days ago. I was climbing the steps, she was descending them. Her gait was awkward and cautious. I wondered why; now I know.

At the bottom of the steps, we took a left and passed beyond the edge of wrought iron and paved trail to chainlink and dirt. I thought about my steps poem and decided I’d like to add a line about turning left and following this fence. On the way, Delia stopped to sniff everything. We passed by yellow and red and orange leaves and the tree growing through the chainlink posts and the section of fence half buried, half ripped open to allow walkers and dogs through to a steep dirt trail down to the river. We might have taken it, but I got distracted when I heard voices behind us. Instead, we walked along the abandoned chainlink fence below the mesa on the side closest to the river. I listened to the wind rushing through the leaves. I noticed a small sign warning, this area was treated with chemicals (when did they start doing that?). I felt the different textures beneath my feet: soft, sinking dirt, hard dirt, rock, brittle leaves. I heard voices ahead — two women hiking down a hill and chatting about the trail.

Somewhere, deep in this trail wedged in the bluff, between leaning chainlink and steep slope (and beyond it, trees and the mesa), I felt both calm and anxious. Calmed by the beauty and solitude, made anxious by my fading vision. It wasn’t dark, in fact, all of it was bright, almost too bright, and waving and flickering and spinning. A swirl of glittering leaves, fuzzy trees, hulking and half-formed shapes that could be tree trunks or boulders or a person approaching. Difficult to discern. I thought about a description from a blind writer, Naomi Cohn, in her essay about using a white cane:

Also after rain, walking a shaded bike path, I often see a man dressed in black lurking in undergrowth at the bottom of the trail. But after years of experience, I know his name is not Creepy-Man-with-Knife. No, his name is Wet-Trunk-of-Maple-Tree. My eyes have become novelists, making drama out of rain and bark.

In Light of a White Cane/ Naomi Cohn

As I kept walking, I shifted my attention back to my steps poem and thought about going deeper as not always going down to the river, but going further and further into a place, far from an exit or the entrance, so deep inside that outside is another idea (The Cave/ Paul Tran). I’d like to read Tran’s poem closely to get some inspiration.

10 Things

  1. chick a dee dee dee
  2. now and then, leaves slowly and without sound drifting to the ground
  3. a chainlink fence barely above the dirt, buried deep in shifting earth
  4. a chainlink fence leaning out, widening the trail, offering more room to pass through
  5. two deep ruts, a packed mound of dirt humped between them, on a steep slope below the mesa
  6. a dark form behind me — a quick look — a tree trunk or a person, approaching? I think it was another walker
  7. on the top of a hill, at an overlook with graffitied stones: the remains of a fire with charred wood and ash, a chunk of white stone in the ground, looking like a tombstone, clumps of cut branches
  8. hiking up a steep slope, feeling a satisfying stretch in my quads
  9. the rush of the wind, making it hard to hear anything else, especially dripping water near the ravine
  10. emerging from the trail after taking the split wood steps into sun that seemed too bright, a field too open

This last thing reminds me of a passage from Mary Oliver. When I looked it up on this log, I found it and another complimentary one:

Once, years ago, I emerged from the woods and in the early morning at the end of a walk and—it was the most casual of moments—as I stepped from under the trees into the mild, pouring-down sunlight I experienced a sudden impact, a seizure of happiness. It was not the growing sort of happiness, rather the floating sort. I made no struggle towards it; it was given. Time seemed to vanish. Urgency vanished. Any important difference between myself and all other things vanished. I knew that I belonged to the world, and felt comfortably my own containment in the totality. I did not feel that I understood any mystery, not at all; rather that I could be happy and feel blessed within the perplexity—the summer morning, its gentleness, the sense of the great work being done though the grass where I stood scarcely trembled. As I say, it was the most casual of moments, not mystical as the word is usually meant, for there was no vision, or anything extraordinary at all, but only a sudden awareness of the citizenry of all things within one world: leaves, dust, thrushes and finches, men and women (34).

Long Life/ Mary Oliver

I walked, all one spring day, upstream, sometimes in the midst of the ripples, sometimes along the shore. My company were violets, Dutchman’s-breeches, spring beauties, trilliums, bloodroot, ferns rising so curled one could feel the upward push of the delicate hairs upon their bodies. My parents were downstream, not far away, then farther away because I was walking the wrong way, upstream instead of downstream. Finally I was advertised on the hotline of help, and yet there I was, slopping along happily in the stream’s coolness. So maybe it was the right way after all. If this was lost, let us all be lost always. The beech leaves were just slipping their copper coats: pale green and quivering they arrived into the year. My heart opened and opened again. The water pushed against my effort, then its glassy permission to step ahead touched my ankles. The sense of going toward the source. …May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect.

Upstream/ Mary Oliver

One is about being lost, the other found. How do these two things fit in with steps and going deeper?

two more related things

Steps that don’t take you down or up or back or forward, but in and in and in — into layers, sediment, all time mixed together.

Currently, I’m deep into thinking about a poem for my collection tentatively titled, Steps. Steps as several meanings: the sets of stairs installed by park workers throughout the gorge that enable you to get closer to the river and further into the gorge; foot steps — yours, others heard or seen; a set of instructions on how to do something.

IT Band Spells — more fun with medical terms!

Often when I write about my IT band bothering me, I like to play around with the acronym, making it mean something other than iliotibial. In today’s version, a new idea: review the poems I’ve memorized and make a list of all of the words that being with I and T. Turn it into a poem.

I and T words in My 100 Poems:

  • is
  • instant’s
  • ’tis
  • in
  • the
  • it
  • two
  • to
  • that
  • tells
  • though
  • their
  • they
  • them
  • through
  • this
  • thing
  • interruptions
  • twigs
  • into
  • I
  • tenant
  • if
  • indelible
  • treading
  • til
  • thought
  • then
  • those
  • toll
  • there
  • interposed
  • tree
  • trembling
  • tonight
  • town
  • torches
  • tail
  • trunk
  • think
  • twice
  • time
  • thumping
  • tangle
  • thicket
  • imagine
  • inherit
  • travel
  • thickening
  • that
  • touching
  • toward
  • took
  • turned
  • invading
  • insert
  • incohesion
  • too
  • impairment
  • improves
  • taste
  • touch
  • inside
  • tank
  • inhabitants
  • impossible
  • toes
  • insist
  • tables
  • try
  • I’ll

After gathering these words, I wrote each of them on a scrap piece of paper, put them in emptied (and cleaned) m&ms container, shook it up, then took out five words:

two / ’tis / toes / try / tangle

It takes more than two to tangle.
Try to walk without your toes; ’tis impossible.
Two toes try, end up in a tangle. ‘Tis a shame.

I / tonight / I’ll / table / they

Tonight, I’ll tell them at the table.
They won’t be happy about it.
I won’t care.

Hmmm….not sure if this works. One more try in this entry:

interposed / instant / twigs / tail / inside

Inside the Mind of a Curious Subject

At any instant, questions interpose themselves between her study of a tree and her being with it. Does a twig have a tail, what is it called, how long can it grow, how far can it reach?, has anyone ever described a twig as the tail of a tree?

Curious subject is the name of one of the songs on Chaka Khan’s new album, Chakzilla. In writing this, I started with the tail and twig part and then thought a lot about interpose/d. The only instance of it I recall is in Emily Dickinson’s poem that I re-memorized, “I heard a Fly buzz when I died”: There interposed a Fly/With Blue -uncertain – stumbling Buzz/Between the light – and me -. I looked up the definition on Merriam-Webster: to intrude, intervene, to place between, to interrupt. I want to give some more time to interpose and ED’s poem, but I’ll leave that for another day.

walk 2: winchell trail with Scott
90 minutes
72 degrees

note: I’m writing this the next morning because I didn’t have time to finish it after the walk. We went to the new tap room, Double Barrel, that moved into Lake Monster (one of our favorite taprooms + the sponsor of the open swim race I won (for my age group) many years ago) 

For the second walk, which was in the late afternoon, we walked south along the Winchell Trail until it ended, then kept going until we reached a series of three switchbacks, just past the double bridge, that winds down to the river. My goal: to count the number of foot steps it takes from the top, near the road, to the bottom at the river: 445. I thought it would be tedious and difficult to keep counting, but I found it surprisingly easy, once I got into a rhythm. I wanted to count these steps for my steps poem. I’m thinking that this version of steps will the last one. On the way to this trail, I stopped to count another set of steps: the limestone ones, marked with a WPA sign, in the 42nd street parking lot: 23 steps.

I’m writing this the day after, can I remember 10 things I noticed?

10+ Things

  1. wind, moving through the leaves, making a favorite sound that reminds me of the trees on our farm
  2. a crowded trail, encountering many walkers, a few dogs
  3. dead wildflowers, their brown crowns at eye level
  4. looking over the wrought iron fence at a blob of white on the other shore: a wide door into sewer pipes in the gorge
  5. never seen, only heard: rowers — an encouraging coxswain
  6. a group of male, shirtless runners, strung out across the paved trail near 36th — running by in groups of 2 or 3
  7. a hiker portaging a canoe — or was it a kayak?
  8. a group of young men — high schoolers? college students? — descending the trail, discussing acappella groups
  9. a small tree — thin trunk, knee high — growing in front of bench halfway down the trail
  10. right down by the river, its surface, blue, flat, stretching south
  11. a rock face, half hidden by trees: vertical striations
  12. at the bottom, in the woods, before reaching the shore: voices drifting down, a circle of bright light where the trees break, a leaf and loam covered slope
  13. climbing back to the top, hearing the rowers below: oh no! I had wanted to see them while down at the shore, but I just missed them!


oct 8/WALK

30 minutes with Delia
winchell / abandoned spur* / neighborhood
57 degrees

*I’m writing part of a poem about this part of the trail that I’m describing as an abandoned spur. I think it used to be part of the Winchell Trail, when the trail was marked with a chainlink fence.

I think this might be it: peak fall. Beautiful colors, bright sun, cooler air, leaves drifting down like snow. Finally, Delia can take walks; it’s been four months since she tore a tendon. I’m not running today because my IT band continues to be sore. I’m not worried it’s serious, but it needs more rest, at least, that’s what it whisper-screamed at me around 2 am.

I was planning to take Delia down to the oak savanna, but I heard too many kids’ voices — a school group? — and decided to go the other way. Past the leaning tree with its muffin top bark hanging over the broken fence slat, past the Welcoming Oaks and the gravel trail down in the ravine, past the guy in shorts sitting on a bench at the overlook who greeted me with a soft, hello, and to the stone steps that lead to the spur of the winchell trail that is no longer maintained (or barely maintained?). Counted the steps for my poem: 12. We took the trail then climbed back out near the ancient boulder, then crossed the road to the grassy boulevard between the river road and Lena Smith Boulevard. I kicked my feet through the leaves, listening to the delightful crunch they made. Fall!

As we returned to the neighborhood, I recited the poem I re-memorized this morning: “Halos” by Ed Bok Lee. That visual impairment improves hearing/taste smell touch is mostly myth./ With it, however, I can detect fuzzy spirits exiting the building/halos around bike helmets/each streetlamp a pink-orange dawn . . . Such a great poem!

earlier this morning: Some little kids (I think they’re in elementary school) have decided it would be a fun challenge to try and climb the 6 foot stump of our tree that we’re planning to turn into a gnome home next year. I wasn’t able to catch them yesterday, but I did today — hey, please get away from the tree NOW! I suppose the please was unnecessary, but I’m proud of myself for not yelling, hey, little shits, get off the tree!, which is what I wanted to yell. AITA?

About an hour later, some welcome visitors: wild turkeys! 11 of them, chilling in my front yard, visible from my window. Thanks for the show, ladies and gentleman!

Sometime between the turkeys and my walk, I worked on my steps poem. Here’s some lines from Wendell Berry that I referenced in yesterday’s post and that I think fit:

I have entered the downflow of the land. The way I am going is the way the water goes. There is something comfortable and fit-feeling in this, something free in this uielding to gravitiy and taking the shorter way down.

A Native Hill (615)/ Wendell Berry

I’m thinking of calling the poem “Gravity” instead of steps. And, I’m thinking of these lines from L Niedecker in “Paean to Place”:

How much less am I
in the dark than they?

Effort lay in us
before religons
at pond bottom
all things move toward
the light

Except those
that freely work down
to ocean’s black depths
in us an impulse tests
the unknown

It’s possible I’m straying too far from the poem, but I’m interested in ideas of darkness or darkening and going deeper in, beneath the surface, below the road, down in the depths. All of this, of course, connects to my darkening vision and my turn toward both reimagining sight (with less light, darker) and moving beyond sight to other ways of feeling and noticing and witnessing the world. And, all of this, connects to ghosts and the dead and those that have gone underground.

oct 7/WALKx2

walk 1: 30 minutes, with Delia the dog
neighborhood to grassy boulevard
59 degrees

What a fall morning! Today’s color: deep yellow/gold. Nature’s first green is gold/her hardest hue to hold. Three days after the marathon, I’m feeling a little sore in my right foot and my left IT band, but mostly okay. I was thinking of running a mile or two, but I might wait another day. If I were running, the temperature might seem a little too warm, but walking, it is wonderful. Fall!

10 Things

  1. one block north: yellow leaves from the locust trees, some still on the branches, others covering the sidewalk
  2. one block north: not yet inflated Halloween decorations — a giant dragon with flapping wings and a glowing belly
  3. an adult on a bike hauling a trailer with a kid, not quite slamming on their brakes at the intersection, but braking hard in order to stop for an oncoming car
  4. the sharp click of the heels of a walker’s shoes as he passed, then walked ahead
  5. unnaturally green grass on a manicured lawn — the blades looked soft and short, almost like moss or astroturf
  6. the hum of cars moving steadily on the river road below lena smith boulevard
  7. a tree trunk, stained with green lichen (or moss?)
  8. a man, sitting in a car, talking to someone, sounding frustrated, rattling off a series of expletives
  9. the metallic whine of an idling car, needing service
  10. BRIGHT pink and orange zinnias in a neighbors side garden

life update for future Sara: Took RJP to urgent care yesterday morning after she couldn’t stop puking: norovirus. After resting and getting some anti-nausea medication, she’s “on the mend” (her words in a text from this morning). Successfully avoided urgent care but scheduled an appointment this Friday for FWA and his bruised and swollen foot. He tripped on the stairs last week and slammed his toes down hard on the floor. He’s been on crutches all this week.

walk 2: 50 minutes
winchell / oak savanna / 38th street steps
68 degrees

Such a beautiful day that I had to go out for another walk. This time, without Delia. Did some fact checking for a poem I’m working on about steps. Started by counting steps:

  1. split wooden steps, 17 (down into Winchell)
  2. dirt with wood planked caps, 20 (up into the savanna)
  3. concrete and limestone, 2 sets: 13 then 12 (going up), or 12 then 13 (going down)

Then I took some notes: falling leaves mixed with dripping water, voices, footsteps. cars / a series of stones half buried in dirt, offering traction when the dirt turns to mud / chainlink turns into wrought iron / a graffitied wall / leaves drifting down, echoed in their walled shadows / a busy intersection at the top of the 38th street steps / this poem is mostly about descending, going deep in, sinking, settling, being like water (see Wendell Berry quotation) / mostly not all the way down (to the river) but wedged in, between sky and water, midway down a slope

I’m getting some inspiration for my steps poem from May Swenson and the 7th section of her poem, “October.” As I walked, I thought about how, in Swenson’s poem, it is all about looking from a distance: From the bridge, see far into . . . . See, along the scarcely gliding stream . . . Stand still, stare hard into bramble and tangle, past leaning broken trunks / Will something move? Some vision come into outline? Yes, there — deep in. I’m not interested in looking, especially outside and from a distance, but of being deep in, descending into the often unnoticed world of the gorge. From above, near the road, either in a car or on the paved trail, it’s easy to ignore/hard to give attention to what’s happening below you — it’s hidden by leaves or a slope. The different sets of steps offer an entrance into the gorge / an exit from the road and from the (over) privileging of eyes and vision as the way to notice/be present in the world.

And now, I’m thinking about another big inspiration, Wendell Berry in “A Native Hill”:

Looking out over the country, one gets a sense of the whole of it: the ridges and hollows, the clustered buildings of the farms, the open fields, the woods, the stock ponds set like coins into the slopes. But this is a surface sense, an exterior sense, such as you get from looking down on the roof of a house. The height is a threshold from which to step down into the wooded folds of the land, the interior, under the trees and along the branching streams.

A Native Hill (page 615)/ Wendell Berry

a surface sense, an exterior sense, a threshold from which to step down into the wooded folds of the land — In my collection (and in my practice), I’m not interested in always descending deep into the gorge, closer to the river. I like the view, the freedom of movement above, the ability to glimpse the bigger picture, but I am interested in it for this poem.

And here’s another important quote from WB:

The slopes along the hollow steepens still more and I go in under the trees. I pass beneath the surface. I am enclosed, and my sense, my interior sense, of the country becomes intricate. There is no longer the possibility of seeing very far. The distances are closed off by the trees and the steepening walls of the hollow. One cannot grow familiar here by sitting and looking as one can up in the open air on the ridge. Here the eyes become dependent on the feet. To see the woods from the inside one must look and move and look again.

Native Hill (page 616)/ Wendell Berry

A thought: in my poems about the girl, ghosts, and the gorge, I mostly write about being above, on the rim of the gorge. Occasonally, I write about going below. For all of the poems, I write in third person, often as a girl or the girl or girl. What if I shifted to first person (I or we) when I enter the interior?

A series of associated thoughts: thinking about some lines from Plath in “The Mushrooms”, our hammers, our rams/earless and eyeless/perfectly VOICELESS, then lines from Jorie Graham’s “Still Life with Window and Fish”, but I love it here where it blurs and nothing starts or ends and all is moving and colorless and VOICELESS. I thought about these two uses of voiceless as I heard disembodied voices above me, near the road. Here, in the gorge, everything speaks, all the time. It is not voiceless, but bodiless. Then I began rethinking what could be meant by body — not one voice attached to a singular body, but many voices attached to a body that is not singular, but plural, like a body of water. a body as mycelium? When I descend deeper into the gorge, my singular body dissolves, borders blur, I become part of the gorge and the gorge part of me. Does this make sense? And how might it fit in with a poem about steps?

oct 4/MARATHON

26.5 miles*
minneapolis to st. paul
49-63ish degrees

*officially, it was 26.2, but according to my watch, it was 26.5

I’m writing this the morning after because I was too wiped to write it yesterday. I woke up feeling stiff and sore — my quads are sore, my right knee is stiff, the side of my right foot hurts a little. Nothing that terrible. Once I get moving; it gets easier. Going down stairs is one of the most difficult things to do. As I walked down the basement steps to get frozen blueberries out of the freezer, I had to tell my legs what to do: down down down.

Yesterday’s race was a success. I achieved all of my goals, which were modest:

  1. figure out the unfinished business situation so I don’t have to use the port-a-potty 4 times, like in the last marathon. Number of port-a-potties used in this race = 0!
  2. hydrate and fuel better: in 2024, I didn’t drink enough water and was very dehydrated by the end. This year, I carried a bigger water flask and stopped at every water station (well, almost every water station after Scott and I split up). I also started drinking the electrolytes they offered before the water and 6, or was it 7?, Cliff blocks. And, when they offered half bananas around mile 22, I took that too
  3. be more intentional with run/walk breaks when things get harder. Things got hard early on: about 9 miles in. As I ran around Lake Nokomis, I did 90 sec run/ 30 sec walk. For the second half of the race, I did, 1 min run / 1 min walk
  4. finish happy: 2 years ago, as I finished and met up with Scott, I was irritated and hostile. This time, I was chill and happy, even though I was tired and suffered several calf spasms (almost, but not quite, cramps) as I neared the finish line
  5. go faster. I ran 15 minutes faster this time — from 5 hours and 37 minutes in 2024, to 5 hours and 22 minutes in 2026

So, I’m happy with what I did yesterday. I am also not satisfied, which means that sometime in the future, I will run this marathon again. No one and done, or two and through for me!

I wouldn’t say I enjoyed the race, but I’m very glad I did it. From the beginning, it felt difficult. And, it never got any easier. I just kept going for more than 5 hours. Often, runners will talk about having a “bad patch” in a race, and then getting out of it. If you keep going, it will get better. I suppose that happened a little for me; I wasn’t suffering every second of the race. But, I never really felt better. It was always hard. Some part of me always hurt. I was always hoping I could get to the finish line sooner. And, in that state of suffering and exhaustion, I couldn’t spin the experience into anything other than hard. I had to confront something difficult that couldn’t be sugar coated or re-imagined as not hard.

I’m good at finding ways to make things seem not hard. Often, it serves me well. But, there are times when things are just hard and you have to endure them as hard. As I write about enduring, I’m thinking about Marie Howe and Ross Gay and their discussions of not looking away, of being present and aware and witnessing suffering. They are both talking about the suffering of others, but I think it applies to your own suffering too. In this marathon, I couldn’t look away from the difficulty of it, and I didn’t, and I finished. I’m proud of that.

26 Things

  1. very crowded in the beginning, difficult to run a full stride, lots of cracks and holes in the downtown streets. After just a block or two, a woman fell and was able to get up and continue
  2. a line at the port-a-potties, about a mile in, near the Walker Art Center
  3. more cracks as we ran toward lake of the isles — it had rained recently, and water had collected in the cracks, making them easier to spot
  4. another runner, (perhaps too) enthusiastically, jumping up and down and side to side as they ran
  5. song, heard at least twice: Rihanna’s “Umbrella”
  6. song, heard once: Whitney Houston’s “I wanna dance with Somebody”
  7. the song that started the race: Doobie Brothers “Taking it to the Streets”
  8. no bells today ringing out from the basilica this year — they’re being repaired
  9. Justice Page playing his tuba somewhere near Lake of the Isles
  10. overhearing another runner saying, I’m not even paying attention to the lakes! I wasn’t either
  11. a spectator to a runner: I love your vest! I have no idea why they loved it, or what it said, but the runner called out, I am NEVER doing this again!
  12. a man on a microphone: remember any finishing time is finishing! we were at Lake Nokomis, just past the halfway point. It was not inspirational to me, instead, it seemed to be reminding us that we were all running slow
  13. people handing out pickle juice a few minutes later — it’s good for muscle cramps
  14. seeing RJP just before mile 15, giving her a sweaty hug, first saying to her, this is hard! then telling her about what the guy said
  15. a daughter in her 20s with her dad who seemed to have an injury and needed to take it slow — he was very enthusiastic: he called after me as I powered up a hill (which was a mistake) that’s how you do it! then later, hearing some taiko drums, raising his hand and yelling, taiko drums! yes!
  16. running by the house near the trestle with the bleachers that blasts music every year: last year it was “the impossible dream,” this year some old country song about “fresh cool water”
  17. this year, my name was on my bib — it was so encouraging to hear dozens of people call out, Go Sara! You can do this Sara!
  18. before the race started, waiting in the port-a-potty line beside a tall, 20-something guy in a bright pink breast cancer awareness shirt — we were in corral 3 (slowest), he was in corral (1) — he was so kind and soft-spoken — I wonder how fast he went. I heard him say to the guys ahead of us, this is my first and my last marathon!
  19. near the Walker, a guy spoke into his watch, hey siri, call bill
  20. peeling 1/2 of a banana, dropping it on the ground, picking it up and eating it anyway, feeling some grit on my teeth
  21. hearing, and not believing: this is the last bit of the hill — it’s all downhill after that! dear reader, it was not the last bit of the hill and it was not all downhill after it!
  22. nearing the finish line, cramping up, noticing what I think was a spray of puke off to the side
  23. some stretch between franklin and summit — a series of dark shadows on the concrete — birds flying overhead, then a bigger shadow softening the sun — a plane!
  24. song: Lean on Me, at least I think that was the song?, thinking about my mom, then almost crying until I felt a calf spasm — I think this was the first spasm — mile 20
  25. a woman pulling out her phone, telling someone, go the truck and get the cold beer and bring it to the finish line!
  26. as I walked and struggled near the end, a woman touched my back gently and said, you can do this! And I decided I could — I ran faster down the hill, feeling great, until my calf started to knot up and I didn’t — I tried to run it off, but had to step 25 feet from the finish line and walk it in
  27. (26.1) a dog barking near the course, sounding like the perfect form of a dog bark, I said to Scott, that’s classic dog or something like that
  28. (26.2) many intense, unpleasant smells from bodies working too hard: too sour, too sweet, musky / other, better smells: doughnuts, the faint hint of bubble-gummy perfume, which I normally strongly dislike, but not today

I don’t remember noticing the river or any wild turkeys. No fun Halloween decorations, barely a view of the lake. Many of the familiar paths/roads seemed strange.

The organizers did a wonderful job with everything (but, the number of port-a-potties, according to Scott. Thankfully, I wouldn’t know about that!). The entertainment on the course — a brass band, a community band, taiko drums, xylophones — was great. The water/electrolyte stops were abundant, and the volunteers handing out fluids were incredibly supportive — you’ve got this Sara! Unlike two years ago, there were lots of people out on the course cheering us slower runners on. And, the food hadn’t been packed up before I finished. Once I was done (Scott finished 25 minutes ahead of me), we sat on the grass for almost an hour — that hour felt like 5 minutes. Running for more than 5 hours, makes time and place strange.

It’s now the afternoon, and I’ve finally had a chance to finish this entry. My thighs and knee feel less sore; only my right foot is still sore. I might have more to write about the marathon, but I’ll save it for another day.

oct 2/WALK

30 minutes
winchell trail
49 degrees

note: listening to Chaka Khan’s new album, Chakzilla, which is great and makes me think of my sister, Marji, who liked Chaka Khan 45 years ago, when we were kids. I’m listening to it because one of the daycare kids next door is shrieking repeatedly, which has been happening a lot lately. The shrieking annoys me, and makes me feel tender for that kid, struggling to endure daycare. I HATED daycare and its rules, especially the rules about resting or keeping quiet or not moving. It was torture for me.

A 30 minute walk with Delia the dog! An unusual event, partly because FWA usually does these walks, but he can’t because he hurt his foot (tripping over the box we had up on the stairs to keep Delia from climbing them with her injured leg), and partly because this is first time Delia has taken such a long walk. Finally, after 4 months of limping and prehab and surgery and rehab, she’s almost better.

A gorgeous fall morning. I hope the weather is like this on Sunday for the marathon. Cool, sunny. Bright leaves, crisper air, soft shadows. We walked through the neighborhood and over and down to the Winchell Trail. Everything below in the savanna is overgrown, thick. I guess when the Minneapolis Parks workers were down there yesterday with chainsaws (I heard them buzzing while I ran), they didn’t clear out the trail I’m on today.

As I walked by the worn wooden steps (or worn wood steps?) that I’ve written about before, I made sure to count them: 15 steps.

10 Things

  1. the voices of two women talking as they walked past the parking lot — I think I could hear what they were saying, but now I don’t remember the words
  2. mushroom caps sprinkled throughout the savanna — I just started re-memorizing Plath’s “Mushrooms” and thought the opening lines as I walked by the mushrooms: Overnight, very/Whitely, Discretely/Very quietly//our toes, our noses/take hold on the loam,/acquire the air
  3. the soft and steady drips of water falling from the limestone ledge and into the ravine
  4. dead stalks of wildflowers lining the trail — withered, brown petals at eye level
  5. pale green pods, looking like string beans, hanging from a catalpa tree in the grassy boulevard — these pods haven’t yet reached the grotesque (imho), darkly shriveled stage
  6. the pleasant stretch of my hamstring muscles as I climbed two steps at a time — the steps were made out of terraced dirt capped with planks of wood
  7. a low limestone wall on the way down to the bridge at the edge of the ravine — first blocked by chainlink fence, then half buried in the slope
  8. the tall trunk of a tree in the grass between the river road and lena smith: the southern half of it looked dark blueish brown, the northern half was tinged with pale green — I wish I would have taken a picture of it
  9. deep in the savanna — cheeseburger cheeseburger (carolina wren)
  10. a late morning moon! looking up at the blue sky, noticing a white blob — a cloud? nope, half the moon — always worthy of celebration when I can actually see the moon with my bad vision!

in marathon news

Woke up this morning to the not-fun news that I got my period. I’m using a hormone replacement therapy patch, but it has actually made me have more spotting/periods. Oh well, I’m not excited about having my period during the marathon (what new chafing adventures will I have?), but I’m glad it came today and not Sunday morning, and I’m relieved to know that getting my period is probably why I was so achy and sore yesterday. This morning, I immediately researched “period underwear marathon” and found a pair that I can have delivered today. It is amazing how many options there are now — so much better than pads. Will this pair work (where work = not chafe, not leak, be comfortable)? Future Sara: let us know!

oct 1/RUN

4 miles
over ford bridge and back
57 degrees
wind: 9 mph / gusts: 19 mph

This might be my last run before the marathon on Sunday, although I might run a mile or two on Saturday. My feet and form felt very strange for the first mile. It might be all the foam in my shoes; I wish stacked shoes and more foam weren’t the trend in running shoes. I prefer feeling the ground. Since I’m complaining, another problem with my shoes for the past few years: the laces always loosen and my feet slide around. I had to stop less than 2 minutes into the run to tighten the laces. Something positive: I have done enough running for 3 minutes, walking for 1, that it feels like a habit now, something I’ll be able to do during the race, almost automatically, when things get harder.

Today’s beautiful color: more bright red leaves on several of the trees closes to the edge of the trail. Also: the feeling of changing leaves as I ran across the ford bridge. I write feeling, because I’m not sure I was actually seeing anything more than the slightest hint of reds and oranges and golds in the trees, but it felt like change was about the happen or, already happening but very slowly.

10 Things

  1. after the double bridge: brown and red leaves covering the paved path
  2. the sound of a frisbee hitting the chain as a man threw it in at the frisbee golf course in Wabun
  3. some sort of wake on the water: a thin trail, not too far from shore
  4. overheard, one biker to another: everyone has their subjective experience
  5. passing by a walker in a BRIGHT yellow jacket — I was heading up the hill to wabun, they were heading down
  6. the buzz of chainsaws in the oak savanna
  7. passing by a parks maintenance vehicle, parked on the path with their BRIGHT lights and very LOUD engine
  8. my shadow, faint, ghostly, off to the side of me
  9. empty benches
  10. the orange spray paint marking off the part of the path with a big crack looked even more orange-y today — I wonder when they’re planning to fix it?

Recited the poem I re-memorized this morning, “Rhyme for Halloween,” as I walked back to my house. I thought about its dark whimsy and wondered if I’ve managed to achieve any of that in my Haunt poems. I’d like to.

On my walk, I also noticed tons of wild mushrooms in yards and decided the next poem to re-memorize is Sylvia Plath’s “The Mushrooms.” Decided, too, that I should memorize Emily Dickinson’s mushroom poem: The Mushroom is the Elf of Plants — (1350)/ Emily Dickinson