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
- 2 wild turkeys near the 44th street parking lot
- a biker with an empty trailer, an orange flag at the back — I’m assuming she just dropped a kid off at school
- a car alarm beeping beeping beeping beeping then silence
- nearing the bridge over the falls, seeing a flash of blue then a person wearing a blue jacket
- the creek was almost still, with a flat, smooth surface
- heard, not seen: the falls rushing over the limestone ledge
- slashes of bright red in the otherwise green (a small red splotch in the band of monochromatic green/ Diane Seuss)
- a water bottle on top of the drinking fountain at the edge of the falls
- the light rail bells ringing as the train pulled out of (or into?) the 50th street station on the other side of the wall
- 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.