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 this part:
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!
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:
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.