4.4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
22 degrees
50% snow-covered
It snowed last night. 1 or 2 inches. By the time I went out for a run after noon, the sidewalks and bike path were cleared. I didn’t need to wear my yaktrax, but I did, so I was able to run on the snow-covered walking path. Fun! The snow was soft and slick but not slippery.
The first mile felt tough — my lower back was a bit sore — and I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way to the falls, but I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view, then kept moving forward until I reached the falls. There was a moment in the 44th street parking lot where I thought about turning off and descending to the Winchell Trail to walk back but at the last minute I just kept going on the double bridge towards the falls. It felt less like deciding to keep going, and more like deciding not to not keep going, or not deciding anything, just continuing to do what I was already doing. I often think about and remember the moment before/ the moment of deciding to stop or give up or turn around or not. Once it’s decided, it’s over. Sometimes I have to stop, but other times I could have pushed through and kept going. One of the my goals: push through those moments.
There were at least 2 other people walking by the falls and one park plow. Anyone else? I don’t think so. It was quiet; no water falling, or creek rushing. Were there any cars in the parking lot? I don’t remember noticing.
The river was white and so was the sky and the sun. I stopped at Godfrey to let a car cross and noticed a BIG bird soaring above me. What a wing span! An eagle, maybe?
10 more things
- Kids laughing on the playground
- a few stretches of deep snow where the walking and biking trail split
- the smell of cigarettes as a car drove by
- bare pavement then a thin strip of snow on the edge of the bike path
- thin, short poles, placed on the edge of the sidewalk to alert plows and people of where the path is
- the rumble of a plow approaching in the park
- the green gate above the falls — closed and locked
- briefly running parallel to someone with a dog on the snow-covered boulevard between the river road and edmund
- the falls, frozen, almost all white with one dark spot off to the side
- the sledding hill near godfrey was empty but covered in snow, ready to be used by someone — maybe after school?
Read on a message/poetry board in someone’s yard: What are you doing to protect democracy? I initially wrote this in response: A great question, and one to ask, and try to answer, every day. But now, thinking about it some more, I don’t like the use of “protection.”
What are you doing today to support democratic communities? What are you doing to help and prevent harm? Or maybe: What can you do today to resist totalitarianism? What could you do today to make space for more stories?
sleep dreams attention distraction
I haven’t figured out my monthly theme yet, but I am orbiting around some things: dreams, sleep, insomnia, restlessness, distraction, non-thought, reverie, stillness, Anne Carson, JJJJJerome Ellis and stuttering, the space between beats or fully inside the beat. Swirling, looping, circling — not coming or going in any one direction, but surrounding.
Today’s cluster is inspired by recent encounters with:
1
Distraction is a time between times, a time in which we become momentarily subject to the non-thought inside thought.
In Search of Distraction
2
Is it, in fact, good to pay attention? Whose purposes does it serve?
*
The loudest calls to attention have been directed toward subordinates, schoolchildren, and women. “Atten-TION!” military commanders shout at their men to get them to stand straight. The arts of attention are a form of self-discipline, but they’re also ways to discipline others.
*
Successful attention capitalists don’t hold our attention with compelling material, but, instead, snatch it over and over with slot-machine gimmicks. They treat us as eyeballs rather than individuals.
*
Is the ostensible crisis of attention, at bottom, a crisis of authority? Is “people aren’t paying attention” just a dressed-up version of “people aren’t paing attention to me?“
*
Ours is an era of obsession as much as distraction, of long forms as much as short ones, of zeal as much as indifference.
Check This Out/ Daniel Limmerwahr
3
3
The best remedy for insomnia, as with most things in life, is learning to live with it. In time, we come to understand that the psychological cost of stressing over sleeplessness is greater than the physical cost of not having slept, and so we adjust.
Chasing a Dream/ Adam Gopnik
*
Insomnia is a mark of the insubordinate imagination.
*
To be awake is to be alive. Mind racing at 3 A.M., we are in tune with what may be the truly unique, only-once-in-the-universe gift of consciousness. That’s some comfort. We’ll sleep long enough soon enough.