Another day with a move streak: I’ve posted a log on this day every year I’ve written in this log.
feb 14, 2017 / biking / front room
In this entry, I recount the emotional experience of watching Gwen Jorgensen win the gold medal for triathlon in Rio. Another thing to note: in 2017, my bike was in the front room. When did I move it down to the basement? I can’t remember.
feb 14, 2018/ 2.2 miles / 25 degrees
A year later, and I’m still biking in the front room. Also, in this entry, I‘m writing about crunching snow. I think some of these thoughts made it into a contrapuntal poem I wrote later that year, like this one:
There are lots of birds, but underneath them is a constant hum of the city–I think it’s the freeway or a highway a few miles away.
feb 14, 2019/ 3.3 miles / 23 degrees / 99% snow-covered
Wrote about Linda Barry, Edward Hirsch, Robert Frost and insides and outsides — a reoccurring theme. So far in 2024, the latest iteration of this theme has been January’s windows. Hopefully someday I’ll turn it into something.
Ever since encountering Edward Hirsch’s great line about inner and outer weather–“Wandering, reading, writing–these three adventures are for me intimately linked. They are all ways of observing both the inner and outer weather, of being carried away, of getting lost and returning.”–I’ve been thinking about weather and the relationship between things like wind or humidity and my thoughts, feelings, writing. I’ve been thinking about making it the focus of another chapbook. The phrase, “inner and outer weather” was originally in a Robert Frost poem.
feb 14, 2020/ 1.25 miles / basement / feels like -26
Biked in the basement, then ran. Too cold outside! Posted someone else’s abcededarian and wrote this (with a helpful link at the end):
Abecedarians are fun to write. My only problem: the dreaded x. There are only so many x words to use. Maybe I should make a list or find a list. Just searched, “good x words for abecedarian poems” and this was the first entry: What About X? Writing the Abecedarian.
feb 14, 2021/ 2.25 miles / basement / feels like -21
Watched Dickinson. I really appreciate how past Sara took the time to briefly summarize the episodes! Also, love this moment of sound:
This is what feels like 35 below sounds like. Took this recording on my back deck at 9am. Lots of birds, the rumble of the garbage disposal inside, the scraping of a shovel on the icy deck, feet pressing down on crusty snow.
feb 14, 2022/ 3.5 miles / 13, feels like 3, degrees / 100% snow-covered
I’m sure I feel this way every February:
Today, even with the below freezing temperatures and all of the snow, it feels almost like spring. As I drank my coffee this morning, I heard a cardinal. While I ran, it was a black-capped chickadee. The sky was clear and blue, the sun was bright. February is almost half over.
feb 14, 2023/ 4.15 miles / 40 degrees / rain
A new regular! Miss Wake Up Call
I was just recounting this magical dome to Scott last week:
Heard the kids playing on the playground, then a teacher’s whistle as I ran south. Later, running back north, heard more kids. It was raining harder. How wet will they be for the rest of the day? I imagined them in snow suits, or because the playground was at posh Minnehaha Academy, under some fancy, magical dome.
Bats! Mostly in honor of how they “see” using echolocation, I’d like to write something about bats. Hopefully the ideas will come some day:
Over the years, I’ve found several wonderful bat poems. In theory, bats are beautiful, fun-to-imagine creatures who eat mosquitoes and see with sound in ways I’d like to learn. But my one close encounter with bats, when they were flying through my house one year and established a colony in the attic, freaked me out. I like thinking I see or hear them at twilight, flying high above. I don’t like seeing the evidence of them in my closet.