4.95 miles(
where river meets the creek*
59 degrees
*ran to the south edge of the falls, down the sledding hill to the stone bridge over the creek, then on the crushed limestone trail beside the creed, under the tall bridge over to the veterans home, and to the river.
Ran in the afternoon because we went to Costco in the morning. Afternoon runs, especially when it’s warm and sunny are hard. My legs felt heavy or sore of something strange for at least the first mile. Since this might be one of the last warm days with a bare (no snow or ice) trail, I decided to run on the dirt/limestone trail below the falls. Beautiful! Lots of people near the bridges over the creek, a few on the trail. I didn’t mind; I don’t like running alone on this trail. It’s not that isolated, but it is far from the park and the main paths.
10 Things
- a man (Dad? Grandfather?) with two lkids, one of them was very excited about the big rock they had found
- a man in a bright orange shirt climbed up on the bridge railing to sit and study the creek
- my view on the other side of the bridge, looking towards the falls: an ideal image of creek falling over ledges, swirling, winding through rock walls and leaning trees
- 2 people sitting on the wide stretch of grass at the bottom of the sledding hill
- a kid’s voice: whining at the top of the path that descends to Horace Cleveland Overlook — guess I won’t be going that way!
- kids on the school playground across the road, laughing and yelling
- the path at the edge of the world looking very edgy and exposed this afternoon
- the trail above the 42nd street ravine: very cracked — a series of small cracks, row after row, splitting the pavement and making it rough and uneven
- many filled benches, one empty: Rachel Dow Memorial Bench
- most of the trees bare, one or two still have yellow (some pale, some gold, some yellowed) leaves
As I stopped to walk over the rows of cracks, I got an idea for another Vision Lost poem: cracks. I’ve written about the one big Crack, but the eroding of my vision has happened gradually, with a series of cracks — a slow darkening of different areas of my visual field. Small cracks — not a split, but a rubbling, crumbling. Crumbling — that makes me think of ED’s poem, “Crumbling is not an instant’s Act.” I’ve memorized it and have been reciting it a lot this past month.
Found this poem on poem-of-the-day for poets.org:
From “The Next Sky“/ Sherwin Bitsui
This way of seeing
senses cave,
where darkness, backlit,
hisses sparks over
ash-hued crow
wings peaking
sickle sharp,
from river glyphs
on lightning-cracked
sandstone slabs.
This way of seeing/ senses cave,/ where darkness, backlit/ hisses sparks . . . . Could this be the start of another poem?
disfiguring faces in Crystal Lake
Recently, Scott and I started watching Netflix’s “Crystal Lake.” It’s a prequel to Friday the 13th staring Linda Cardellini as Jason’s mom. Wow, it’s good. I wasn’t sure at the end of the first episode, but by episode 2, I was hooked. After finishing episode 3 last night, Scott had a helpful insight: the only graphic violence we see — and, it’s graphic, not gratuitous, but graphic — involves brutally disfiguring faces by Jason’s mom. I started wondering about why it only the face in these first three episodes. It’s probably a reference to Jason lore, which I don’t really know because it has been decades since I’ve seen any Friday the 13th other than the first one. I started thinking about how disfiguring faces is relevant for me. Most often, I can’t see faces; they’re in heavy shadows, or look like blurry blobs, the features smudged out. One of the reasons not seeing faces is difficult for me is because there is so much cultural/learned association with faces, especially eyes. as where our humanity is located. (an example just popped in my head: we see faces in things as a way to identify with them). Could the disfiguring of faces in the show be a way of dehumanizing the victims (who, btw, totally deserve what they get because they’re all depicted as big assholes).