4.15 miles
trestle+ turn around
60 degrees
wind: 35 mph gusts
Another earlier run. Cooler and windy! Luckily, I wasn’t running straight into it for that long, or if I was, it didn’t bother me. I felt strong and relaxed and like I’m slowly getting back into the groove.
Right after my run, we drove down to St. Peter to help FWA move out of his dorm. He graduated a few weeks ago. I didn’t have time to write this entry until I got back. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
- the green has taken over the gorge, no more wide open view of the river, only a splotch of bright white through the small gap in the trees
- heard, not seen: a roller skier’s clicking poles
- Good Morning! to Mr. Morning!, twice
- running past the field at Minneahaha Academy, all dug up. Scott thinks they’re putting in a new irrigation system
- little purple flowers — not sure if it was Siberian Squill, maybe some other purple flower?
- empty benches
- passed the dirt rail near the trestle and thought about taking it but didn’t
- a small blue ball under the trestle
- most of the stones stacked on the ancient boulder — there had been 6 — were blown over in yesterday’s storms, only 2 small pebbles were still stacked
- the big crack just past the trestle that they’ve patched up several springs in a row is cracking again. 2 out of the 3 sections of it have big cracks, the one closest to the trestle has a big crater
I decided to stop and take a picture of it:
Listened to the blowing wind as I ran north, my “Beaufort Scale” playlist running south.
among / between
When I read and posted Lorine Niedecker’s poem about standing among the birch last week —
For best work
you ought to put forth
some effort
to stand
in north woods
among birch.
I was struck by the word among and wondered how it was different from between. I looked it up this afternoon and, after wading through discussions about how between is used with 2 items, among with more than 2, I came across a helpful distinction in Merriam Webster:
We use between when we want to express a relation to things and have them considered as individual and usually equal entities.
Among, on the other hand is the best word to use when referring to things collectively and imprecisely.
I like among in LN’s poem, although I wonder about the effect of using between (or beside or with) instead. to stand/in north woods/between birch. Among indicates a kinship — among all of us trees, but between suggests an actual place — stand between this birch and that birch and an exchange — between us. I like both meanings. I like imaging my best work as trying to become a tree. But I also like the idea of my best work happening when I stand between birch — giving and receiving air.
I was reminded of among and between while reading this passage from Marie Howe:
That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be without any expectations really. And everything changed so that the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs AMONG the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or the lemon. And that something is in BETWEEN all that.
You can name/describe the collection of things (among), but you can’t find words to describe how their meaning has changed in that moment. Often when I think about the slight shifts in meaning between small words, like among or between, I’m reminded of an essay I read about Mary Oliver and her mousier words. I love mousy words! Meanwhiles and in-betweens and yous and wes and usses (is that the plural of us?).
Mary Oliver and the Nature-esque
…it’s tempting to be blinded by the more immediately visible parts of speech: the monolithic nouns, the dynamic verbs, the charismatic adjectives. Mousier ones—pronouns, prepositions, particles—go ignored.