Category: Running Log

feb 17/RUN

5.5 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
15 degrees / feels like 5
5% ice-covered

Colder today, but almost a completely clear path! Sunny, bright. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker early on. He was bundled up today. Wrapped in so many layers, I felt disconnected. I barely remember running on the stretch between the Welcoming Oaks and the lake street bridge. Only one flash of memory: looking down from the bike path, I noticed the walking path was hidden by a hard pack of snow, hardly looking like a path.

Listend to the gorge running north, a playlist returning south.

layers

  • my (recently) dead mother-in-law’s purple Columbia jacket
  • pink jacket with hood
  • green shirt
  • 2 pairs of black running tights
  • 2 pairs of gloves (black, pin and white striped)
  • gray buff
  • black fleece-lined cap
  • 1 pair of socks

10 Things I Noticed

  1. my shadow, running ahead of me
  2. the shadow of the lamp post beside the trail — the tip of the top of the lamp post looked extra sharp
  3. the river was open and brown, with a few streaks of white
  4. the path was clear but on the edges there were thick slabs of opaque ice where the puddles had refroze
  5. birds!, 1: the tin-whistle song of a blue jay
  6. birds!, 2: the laugh of the pileated woodpecker
  7. birds!, 3: the drumming of some woodpecker. Was it a pileated woodpecker, or a downy woodpecker, or a yellow-bellied woodpecker?
  8. birds!, 3: so many chirps and trills and twitters on the way up the franklin hill — a rehearsal for spring
  9. an impatient car illegally passing another car on the river road
  10. very little ice on the trail — where there was ice, Minneapolis Parks had put some drit down to make it less slippery (finally!)

Today, I have 2 Pastan poems. I am including both of them because they work together to speak to one set of struggles I have with losing my vision: I can no longer drive because of my deteriorating central vision AND this inability to no longer drive makes me feel much older than I am. Pastan is writing about surrendering her key when she’s in her late 80s. I stopped being able to drive at 45.

Ode to My Car Key/ Linda Pastan

Silver bullet
shape of a treble clef
I slip you
in the ignition—
an arrow
seeking its target—
where you fit
like a thread
in the eye
of a needle
like a man and
a woman.
A click and
the engine roars,

the road unscrolls
on its way
to anywhere.
At night you sleep
in the darkness
of a drawer,
On a pillow
of tarnsied coins.
Oh faithful key:
last week I gave
you up
for good—
Excalibar back
in its stone—
as I climbed into
the waiting vehicle
of old age.

Reading “Ode to My Car Key”

Cataracts/ Linda Pastan

Like frosted glass,
you blur the hard edges
of the cruel world.

Like summer fog, you obscure
the worse even an ocean can do.
But watch out.

They are coming for you
with their sterile instruments,
their sharpened knives,

saying I will be made new—
as if I were a rich man
wanting a younger wife.

Soon the world will be all glare.
Grass will turn a lethal green,
flower petals a chaos

of blood reds, shocking pink.
What will I see? I am afraid
of so much clarity, so much light.

This second poem offers an interesting contrast to the first one, which is a lament over the loss of the ability to drive, presumably (mostly?) because of her vision. In “Cataracts,” Pastan is worried about regaining her vision and how it will change the gentle ways she sees. “I am afraid/of so much clarity, so much light” immediately reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s “Tell it Slant”: “too bright for our infirm Delight” and “Before I got my eye put out”: “So safer — guess — with just my soul/ Opon the window pane/ Where other creatures put their eyes/ Incautious — of the Sun– “

I like how putting these poems together offers space for both lamenting the loss of vision, and for appreciating the new ways it allows you to see. Is this what Pastan is doing? I’m not sure, but it speaks to how I feel about my vision loss.

feb 16/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool

A swim! The last time I swam was 10 days ago. How has it been that long? The water was the cloudiest I ever remember it being. Was it that cloudy, or was it my vision or my loose googles? Swam alone for 30 minutes, then my daughter joined me.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the water was so cloudy I couldn’t see to the other end
  2. starting out, swimming just above the bottom, I heard some kicking noises and worried that I had picked a lane that someone was already swimming in (I hadn’t)
  3. something brown, looking suspiciously like a band-aide, was stuck to the floor as it sloped down to the deep bottom. It stared back at me every time I swam above it
  4. in the next lane, someone was swimming an exaggerated breast stroke, kicking their legs way out, taking up most of the lane, possibly stretching over into my lane. I was a little irritated, but more enchanted by the wide swing of their legs and their froggy look
  5. I could see a small circle of light in the far corner
  6. trying to look more closely at the band-aide, I noticed some other white things stuck to the sloped floor too. What were they?
  7. as I flipped at the wall and looked up at the ceiling from below the water, I noticed that at the wall closer to the windows the light was yellow, and at the wall that was farther, the light was a pinkish-orange
  8. my nose plug squeaked once — a high-pitched squeak
  9. in the next lane a swimmer waited at the wall. Right as I flipped then pushed off, he started swimming. Was he trying to race me? Probably not
  10. I don’t think I saw anything floating in the pool today

Another good swim. For reasons I can’t quite pinpoint, I was agitated before my swim. It took some time, but the swimming helped calm me down.

Today’s Linda Pastan poem reminds me of something I was just writing about for my week five lecture for my class: gnarled branches.

In the Orchard/ Linda Pastan

Why are these old, gnarled trees
so beautiful, while I am merely
old and gnarled?

If I had leaves, perhaps, or apples . . .
if I had bark instead
of this lined skin,

maybe the wind would wind itself
around my limbs
in its old sinuous dance.

I shall bite into an apple
and swallow the seeds.
I shall come back as a tree.

This idea of coming back as a tree also reminds me of a poem I found the other day on twitter by Czesław Miłosz:

Longing/ Czesław Miłosz

Not that I want to be a god or a hero.
Just to change into a tree, grow for ages, not hurt anyone.

feb 15/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.5 miles
basement
outside: 23 degrees / icy

Maybe it wasn’t as icy on the sidewalks or the trail as it was on my driveway and the alley, but I decided not to risk it and bike and run inside. During my bike, I watched Linda Pastan read “Elegy” and a few running races. During my run, I finished up the latest episode of Nobody Asked Us with Des and Kara. I’m really enjoying their discussions. Today they talked about being introverts (me too) and struggling to promote themselves and being motivated by something other than fame. As I listened, I also paid attention to my body, noticing how it felt different depending on how I did my arm swing. At one point, I locked into a rhythm between my arms and legs that felt effortless and machine-like. I remember writing about the body as a machine (and not a machine) on this log in the beginning. Maybe I should return to some of those discussions?

Maggie Smith has started doing a newsletter about craft. Yay! Today’s was about stanzas and the idea that a stanza is a room in the poem or its paragraph. She discusses couplets in particular:

I have a soft spot for unrhymed couplets. I like the padding of white space around them, so each stanza is like a piece of art hung on a gallery wall. White space is literal “breathing room” on the page, and it slows a poem down. Shorter stanzas in a poem = more white space between stanzas on the page = more time for the reader to savor each line.

To slow a poem down, build in more white space by shortening the stanza length. You can also shorten the line length to slow the reader down.

To pick up the pace in a poem, do the opposite: lengthen the stanzas by removing white space. You can also speed up the reader’s momentum by lengthening the lines.

As I draft a poem, I often decide on the line length and the grouping of lines I prefer for the opening stanza, and then I use that line and stanza length as a template for the rest of the poem. If I prefer the opening to be a quatrain, for example, I’ll naturally try quatrains for the whole poem and see if that might work. Sometimes it does, but not always. Other times I might find that irregular stanzas work best, or I might end up collapsing the whole poem into a single stanza to speed it along.

Craft Tip from Maggie Smith

Today’s Pastan Poem:

Elegy/ Linda Pastan (1986)*

Last night the moon lifted itself
on one wing
over the fields,

and struggling to rise
this morning
like a hooked fish

through watery
layers
of sleep.

I know
with what difficulty
flowers

must pull themselves
all the way up
their stems.

How much easier
the free fall of snow
or leaves in their season.

All week, watching
the hospital gown
rising

and falling
with your raggedy breath,
I dreamed

not of resurrections
but of the slow, sensual
slide each night

into sleep, of dust
of newly shoveled earth
settling.

*Pastan wrote more than one poem with the title “Elegy.”

I’m struggling with her use of “struggling” in the second stanza. The full sentence doesn’t make sense to me. It’s quite possible I’m just not reading it right, but shouldn’t it be “struggled”?

feb 14/RUN

4.15 miles
river road, south/ ford bridge/ river road, north/ 33rd, west/ edmund, south
40 degrees / rain
5% ice-covered

There’s another runner in the neighborhood who I’ve seen running past my house several times in the early morning this winter. Usually I notice them when the weather is bad and I’m wondering whether or not to go out in it. I see them and think, if she can go out in this cold/heavy snow/rain, I can too. Not as a competitive thing, but as a sign of encouragment. That’s what happened this morning, so I went out for a run in the rain.

I want to name her and add her to my list of regulars, but I can’t think of anything catchy or pithy or whimsical right now. Maybe it will come to me after I eat lunch? Okay, I’m back. Scott suggested “Canary” for canary in the coal mine, which didn’t seem quite right. I’ve decided tentatively to call her Miss Wake-up Call because I see her not long after waking up and because she reminds me to get out there (and after it). I’m still not satisfied, but I’ll leave it for now.

layers: 1 pair of black running tights, 1 pair of socks, 1 long-sleeved green shirt, 1 bright purple jacket that I inherited from my beloved mother-in-law who died this past September, 1 pink and purple nylon running cap (also inherited), black gloves

About a mile into the run, my left thumb was cold. Why? Suddenly I noticed a big hole in the seam. I said out loud, oh, that’s no good, just as I encountered a walker. Did they hear me?

Was able to greet Dave the Daily Walker. Of course he was out in this rain; he can walk in anything!

Everything was wet and dripping, even the bill of my cap. Drip drip drip every few seconds. I didn’t feel it, just saw movement. Lots of splooshing from car wheels. I don’t remember hearing the water gushing through the sewer pipes. Why not? Big puddles near 42nd and on the path leading to under the Ford Bridge. No lakes.

Heard some strange clanking or clunking then honking over on the other side of the river. 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.

Heading north, I noticed that the view near Winchell (Winchell to the left, the memorial bench to the right), was especially open and revealing. Earlier, heading south, I had noticed that my former favorite winter view spot just past the oak savanna was unsatifying. Too many small trees blocking my view. Are those trees new?

Encountered several walkers, some alone, others in pairs; a runner or two; at least two bikers.

As I write this entry, I am listening to the gentle ringing of the rain through the gutters. A steady ping ping ping vibration.

added later today: Returning to my desk hours later, I heard and then saw 3 or 4 geese honking and speeding through sky. This reminded me of something else I remember from my run. Twice I heard some honking geese, once on the east and once on the west. Both times I stopped running, leaned my head back, and stared into the sky to watch them. One wedge of geese was flying low, the other much higher. It’s always a good day when you can stop and admire the geese!

I found a rain poem from Linda Pastan for today:

November Rain/ Linda Pastan

How separate we are
under our black umbrellas—dark
planets in our own small orbits,

hiding from this wet assault
of weather as if water
would violate the skin,

as if these raised silk canopies
could protect us
from whatever is coming next—

December with its white
enamel surfaces; the numbing
silences of winter.

From above we must look
like a family of bats—
ribbed wings spread

against the rain,
swooping towards any
makeshift shelter.

Love the image of the bats. 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.

feb 13/RUN

5.8 miles
franklin loop
39 degrees
25% puddles

More spring-like weather. Above freezing. Sun. The sound of snow melting everywhere, especially under the lake street bridge. I checked and the last time I ran the franklin loop was on December 13th. It’s nice to get this view of the river again.

Felt relaxed. My knees ached a little — not an injury, just grumbling over the month of uneven, icy paths. Speaking of paths, the trail on the east side of the river was rough — ice, deep puddles — between Franklin and the trestle. I had to stop and walk a few times.

10+ Things I Noticed

  1. a V of geese above me. When I first noticed them through my peripheral vision, I thought they were a plane
  2. a white form up in the air. A cloud? No, a plane. It took me a minute to finally see it in my central vision
  3. crossing the Franklin bridge, the river was covered in a steel blue ice
  4. the bridge trail was mostly clear. The part shaded by the railing was not
  5. everywhere the moisture on the path shone so bright that I couldn’t tell if it was only water or slippery ice. (it was mostly water)
  6. crossing under the railroad trestle on the west side, I heard the beep beep beep of the alarm. I wondered if a train was coming. (I never saw or heard one)
  7. heard some bike wheels behind me, then voices calling out Ice! I moved over and stopped to let them pass, then watched as they slowly navigated the ice on their thin wheels
  8. lots of whooshing wheels and noises that sounded like sploosh! as cars drove through the puddles collecting on the edge of the road
  9. a favorite late fall spot: right before the meeker dam, there’s an opening in the trees and a clear, broad view of the river and the other side
  10. the river down below the trestle on the east side looked like an otherwordly wasteland. Brown, riddled with broken up ice
  11. crossing back over the lake street bridge from east to west, the river looked like an ice rink that had been skated on for too long and needed a Zamboni
  12. running down the hill from the bridge to the path, a woman crossing the river road called out, Oh! As I neared her, I stopped and she said, It’s slippery!

When I stopped running to walk up the lake street bridge steps, I could hear and see the water gushing down through the pipe under the bridge. I had to stop and record it.

feb 13, 2023 / gushing water

Here’s my Pastan poem for the day. I found it before I went out for my run. My goal was to try and listen for voices out there by the gorge, and I did, somewhat. The woman who cried out when she almost slipped. 2 women walking on the bridge above, when I was below. The biker calling out Ice! A tree, its dead leaves rustling in the breeze. The soft not quite gushing of the limestone seeping melting snow. The drip drip drip of water off the bridge.

For Miriam, Who Hears Voices/ Linda Pastan

If the voices are there
you can’t ignore them,
whether they come up through the floorboard
on a conduit of music
or in a rattle of words that make sounds
but no sense.

They can be messages from the sky
in the form of rain at the window, or in the cold
silent statements of snow.
Sometimes it’s the dead talking,
and there is comfort in that

like listening to your parents in the next room,
and perhaps it’s the same parents still talking
years after they’ve gone.

If you’re lucky, the vowels
you hear are shaped like sleep–
simple cries from the thicket
of your dreams. You lie in bed.
If the voices are there, you listen.

I am always looking for poems about love (not necessarily “love” poems). This one popped up on my twitter feed this morning. As a bonus, it’s about winter and fits with my theme of layers for next week AND it has wild turkeys in it!

How to Love/ January Gil O’Neil

After stepping into the world again,
there is that question of how to love, 
how to bundle yourself against the frosted morning—
the crunch of icy grass underfoot, the scrape 
of cold wipers along the windshield—
and convert time into distance. 

What song to sing down an empty road
as you begin your morning commute?
And is there enough in you to see, really see, 
the three wild turkeys crossing the street 
with their featherless heads and stilt-like legs
in search of a morning meal? Nothing to do 
but hunker down, wait for them to safely cross. 

As they amble away, you wonder if they want 
to be startled back into this world. Maybe you do, too, 
waiting for all this to give way to love itself, 
to look into the eyes of another and feel something— 
the pleasure of a new lover in the unbroken night, 
your wings folded around him, on the other side 
of this ragged January, as if a long sleep has ended.

As a bonus, this poem also has another thing I’m always trying to find: a reference to the idea of looking into someone’s eyes and really seeing them as (one of) the key metaphors for being fully human. I’m collecting these examples because they bother me. With my failing central vision, I can’t really look into a person’s eyes and see them. Does this mean I can’t be fully human?

feb 11/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
35 degrees
5% snow-covered / 40% puddles

Above freezing with a mostly clear path. Lots of puddles. Lots of sun. Several shadows. Right before I started my run the shadow of a big bird passed over me. Later, running on the trail, I saw my shadow running in front of me. The view of the river and the gorge was bright and open and brown. Smelled breakfast at the Longfellow Grill, some pot from one passing car, cigar smoke from another. Felt the grit under my feet. Noticed the curve of a pine tree, with branches only on one side. I thought: a curved spine, the branches vertebrae.

Here’s my Pastan poem for today:

Squint/ Linda Pastan

and that low line
of blue cloud
hovering
over the treetops

could be an ocean–the roar
of the highway
the clamorous waves
breaking.

And that dark shape menacing
your every footstep
could be no more
than your own obedient shadow.

See whatever you want
to see. Even
at the moment of death
forget the door

opening on darkness.
See instead the familiar faces
you thought were lost.

See whatever you want/to see. This makes me think of the video interview I watched with Kelli Russell Agodon yesterday, when she discusses being oriented towards beauty, only seeing the beauty, ignoring the ugliness. The title Squint makes me think of a lecture I saw online about how painters often squint to see how to paint the depth and texture of objects.

It’s interesting to juxtapose this poem and its turn away from the darkness of death with some of the passages below from Pastan’s interviews in which she talks about how she’s always looking for the danger beneath the surface.

some words from Linda Pastan

You open “The Poets” with the line “They are farmers, really.”

That was partly tongue in cheek, partly serious. For me, there are two distinct phases in the writing of a poem—first the inspiration phase, when language and metaphor come mysteriously into my head, then the planting, sowing, farming phase, otherwise known as revision. The first is a kind of gift, as in “gifted”—it can’t be taught. The second is a matter of learning and practicing one’s craft. But it’s also true that I couldn’t resist having poems planted in manure-filled rows and having poets eyeing each other over bushel baskets in the marketplace.

The last two lines of my poem “Vermilion” are “As if revision were / the purest form of love.” And I believe that for a poet it is. Many of my poems go through at least a hundred revisions—I can spend a whole morning putting in a comma and then taking it out and putting it back in. And I think that perhaps I am at my happiest sitting at my desk polishing a poem, trying to make every word the perfect word.

—

I am indeed interested, you might say obsessed, not with ordinary life per se but with the dangers lurking just beneath its seemingly placid surface, one of those dangers being loss itself. Death, of course, is the ultimate danger, the ultimate loss, and as I move closer to it, I write about it more frequently and perhaps more feelingly. Though I recently came upon some poems I wrote when I was twelve, and they, too, are about death.

The Looming Dark: An Interview with Linda Pastan

a popular story about her:

There’s a popular story about Linda Pastan: she won her first poetry prize as a senior at Radcliffe in the fifties, and the runner-up was one Sylvia Plath. It was an auspicious start for Pastan, even if she had never heard of Plath at the time. 

a blogger’s explanation of why she likes Pastan:

What do I like about Pastan’s work? Her clarity in brevity, the conciseness of her description that makes each word she uses necessary, her way of writing about what surrounds her with the understanding that surfaces mask tensions and the darker things below; her down-to-earth voice that makes her writing so accessible; the images that stick with you; the intimacy she has with her subjects: relationships, domestic tableau, aging, dying—the things we all struggle with, for, and against.

Poet: Linda Pastan

and Pastan’s description of the dangers always lurking below the surface:

JEFFREY BROWN:We’re sitting here on a beautiful day in a beautiful place, but you feel dangers lurking?

LINDA PASTAN:Always, yes, yes. I feel the cells starting to multiply someplace inside me. I feel when the phone rings, is somebody calling to say something terrible has happened. I’ve just always been very conscious of the fragility of life and relationships.

Linda Pastan: PBS Newshour

feb 10/WALKBIKERUN

walk: 30 minutes with Delia
neighborhood
26 degrees

Sun! A bright blue sky! Birds! Fresh, cold air! Clearer sidewalks! Wind chimes! What a wonderful walk. I moved slowly, stopping every few steps for Delia to get another sniff. I inhaled deeply, feeling the cold air open up my sinuses. I mostly listened to the birds, but a few times I saw the blur of a tiny body traveling from one branch to another. I noticed the sprawling oaks, their gnarled limbs towering over the sidewalk. I stepped on the thin sheets of ice covering puddles and heard them crack and crunch and then the water squish. I remember thinking that I wasn’t interested in naming what I was noticing, just experiencing it. I felt relaxed and open to the world and happy for these moments.

Most of the sidewalks were clear. On a few corners it was still solid ice. The corner with the mailbox was especially bad. Yikes!

I almost forgot — how could I forget? A birch tree in the middle of the block, its branches blindingly white, illuminated by the sun. Sparkling. I could almost hear a chorus singing its alleluias!

bike: 22 minutes
run: 2.35 miles
basement
outside: an ice rink

After yesterday’s slippery run, I decided I should stay inside today. Biked in the basement with some Dickinson, ran with a running podcast. As I often mention with my basement workouts, it’s difficult to find much to wonder about in such a dark, cold, unfinished space.

Before I worked out downstairs, I started planning the fifth lecture for the class I’m teaching. It’s going to be about the connections between wonder and play. I was reminded of it as I ran and listened to a professional runner turned triathlete talk about how being a beginner and having no expectations or pressure can help you to have fun in your training and in life. I started thinking about having fun and being a kid and the idea that fun and play are usually dismissed as not taking something seriously. It’s all fun and games to you. Or it’s too easy — that’s child’s play. But trying to remember your kid-self, being a beginner, opening up to fun, is something many of us have to work at — to practice — as adults. (Also, being a kid isn’t always easy.) Kelli Russell Agodon has some great things to say about play and wonder in this interview, which I plan to use in my class: Beauty and Play with Kelli Russell Agodon.

In the video interview, Agodon reads her poem, “Grace”:

Grace/ Kelli Russell Agodon

Even those who are living well
are tired, even the rockstar
who swallowed the spotlight,
even the caterpillar asleep
in a unbalanced cocoon.
Who knows how
to be happy when a lamb
is birthed just to be slaughtered
at a later date?
It’s so tiring
how every day is also a miracle—
the drunk bees in the plum
blossoms, the sliver of sun
through the branches
and on an early morning
walk we find the farmer’s
granddaughter has fallen
in love with the lamb,
so it will be saved
and named Grace.
And we are spared
for a moment, from a new
loss and life frolics
across a field of wildflowers
never knowing all it has escaped.

Thinking about the idea of no pressure or expectations, Agodon says this in another interview:

I am quantity over quality, but a lot of the really bad poems will never come out of my laptop. I love writing a poem a day. And I have no problems writing bad poems, just writing something thinking, oh that was just practice. That was just a writing exercise. That poem is never going to go anywhere. I don’t want to revise it. Again, it’s just to enjoy the creation. But when I do choose a poem to revise, then I highly craft it.

Poetry Snaps! Kelli Russell Agodon: Grace

And here’s something else she writes about taking walks and finding images:

Rumpus: I think of your poems as being “dense,” and by dense I mean tight and even crowded at times as you fly from one image to another. The imagery is always surprising, line after line. I wonder how you do that?

Agodon: I wonder how I do that, too. Could this mean I’m a word/image hoarder? Maybe my poems are the rooms you go into where everything is stacked to the ceiling? Like those antique shops that have a fascinator balancing on a Mickey Mouse phone on a blue Fiestaware plate toppling above a purple suitcase with a sticker that reads: London. Maybe it’s that I’ve always been a very visual person who notices the small strange details, and they stick with me. Like yesterday when I went for a walk, I saw a toothpaste cap under a tulip and I kept thinking—why is that there? There was a robin there and I started thinking, “What if that toothpaste cap was actually the robin’s bandleader hat.” Kooky stuff, but maybe because while I have six sisters, they were all much older than me, so much of my life felt like being an only child so I was always looking for ways to entertain myself, and I still am.

Wired for Wordplay: Kelli Russell Agodon

Reading this interview, I found out about another book Agodon write: Letters from the Emily Dickinson Room. Very cool! I ordered the ebook.

feb 9/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
34 degrees
50% jagged ice / 25% slick ice / 25% clear path

I probably should have waited a few more hours to run. Now that the sun has finally come out and it’s another degree warmer, all the ice everywhere might melt. Oh well. This was a tough run. I still enjoyed most of it, but I had to stop and walk several times in order to avoid falling on ice. Now my upper back and knees are sore from the effort of staying upright.

Kids, 3 versions

  1. Running on Edmund, nearing Dowling Elementary, I wondered why it was so quiet. Where were all the kids on the playground? Then, suddenly, I heard them. Laughing and yelling. I decided the moisture in the air must be absorbing the sound, not allowing it to travel too far
  2. At the falls, I heard a few more kids. Standing above, at my favorite spot, I could hear voices below. Were they climbing on the trail that leads to below the falls? I imagined that path was as icy as mine, and I hoped not.
  3. Returning on Edmund, running past Dowling, more kids. This time in the big field by the community garden — at least I think that’s where they were; I only heard them, didn’t see them. So loud and raucous! Frantic, worked-up (or wound up?) screams. Excitement? Too much sugar? Something else? I encountered another runner — a man pushing a jogging stroller — and imagined after I passed him that I had asked, What’s going on over there?!

Here’s the Linda Pastan poem of the day. I’m pairing it with a wonderful Tony Hoaglund poem I found tat involves swimming laps and screaming underwater.

Almost An Elegy: For Tony Hoagland

Your poems make me want
to write my poems,

which is a kind of plagiarism
of the spirit.

But when your death reminds me
that mine is on its way,

I close the book. clinging
to this tenuous world the way the leaves

outside cling to their tree
just before they turn color and fall.

I need time to read all the poems
you left behind, which pierce

the darkness here at my window
but did nothing to save you.

Don’t Tell Anyone/ Tony Hoaglund

We had been married for six or seven years
when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me
that she screams underwater when she swims—

that, in fact, she has been screaming for years
into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool
where she does laps every other day.

Buttering her toast, not as if she had been
concealing anything,
not as if I should consider myself

personally the cause of her screaming,
nor as if we should perform an act of therapy
right that minute on the kitchen table,

—casually, she told me,
and I could see her turn her square face up
to take a gulp of oxygen,

then down again into the cold wet mask of the unconscious.
For all I know, maybe everyone is screaming
as they go through life, silently,

politely keeping the big secret
that it is not all fun
to be ripped by the crooked beak

of something called psychology,
to be dipped down
again and again into time;

that the truest, most intimate
pleasure you can sometimes find
is the wet kiss

of your own pain.
There goes Kath, at one pm, to swim her twenty-two laps
back and forth in the community pool;

—what discipline she has!
Twenty-two laps like twenty-two pages,
that will never be read by anyone.

Reading these poems again, I’m struck by their last lines, both about Hoaglund’s poems: 1. the ones Pastan read that could pierce the darkness but not save Hoaglund and 2. the unread ones that aren’t for anyone else, but offer some sort of private pleasure in the face of suffering.

Poetry is not meant to save us from dying, but that doesn’t mean it can’t save our lives.

feb 8/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
40 degrees
75% bare, wet, puddled pavement

A late afternoon run on a sunny, warm (warm for February in Minnesota) day! The path was wet, with lots of puddles, some slick spots, and lots of sloppy snow. Twice I had big slips. My one leg flew off to the side and I waved my arms involuntarily, but I didn’t seem to lose momentum and my body never felt the fear of falling — that fear deep in the pit of my stomach that quickly spreads to the top of my head and makes my whole body tense up.

10 Things

  1. the warm sun on my face — it felt like spring
  2. the late afternoon shadows — I can’t remember a specific shadow, maybe shadows of trees over the gorge?
  3. a siren behind me as I ran up from under the lake street bridge. It sounded close and like it was stopping. I think I heard the siren double beep and then stop
  4. some little yippy dogs freaking out down below at the minneapolis rowing club. So frantic! What’s going on down there? I worried for a minute, wondering if I was actually hearing someone screaming, but decided it was definitely some exuberant dogs
  5. Also heard a strange moan or whine coming from the rowing club — not a human moan, but one coming from a machine
  6. so much whooshing of car wheels through deep puddles on the edges of the road
  7. lots of bikes deciding to bike on the mostly dry road instead of the be-puddled path
  8. my shoes and socks were soaked before I reached the first mile. After the run, the white socks were now speckled in brown grit
  9. smelled pot as I ran past a parking lot
  10. heard a few random geese honks closer to the river

I didn’t look at the river or notice the ancient boulders or greet the welcoming oaks. Didn’t hear any birds — wait, I think I heard a crow at the beginning —or music coming from a car radio or a bike or someone’s phone.

This was a great afternoon run. I like running at this time, when the sun is slowly sinking. My only problem: the paths are usually much more crowded. Still, I’d like to try and add in some more of these runs so I can study the sun and the shadows.

Here’s my Linda Pastan poem for today. I don’t think there were any clouds to admire, but I’m posting it anyway!

The Clouds/ Linda Pastan

From a high window
I watch the clouds—

armada
of white sails

blown by the wind
from west to east, as if

auditioning for me,
as if they needed

nothing more
than to be in a poem.

What a delightful little poem! I think this counts as one of Mary Oliver’s little alleluias on the page.

feb 7/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
31 degrees
100% slick, sloppy mess

Yuck! With warmer temperatures comes puddles, slicker ice, and soaked socks. Most of the trail was covered in little brown lakes. Oh well. The sun was warm on my face, and I felt almost too warm in my layers, so I was happy to get out there and run. Because I was trying out my new bluetooth headphones, and because the path was so challenging, I was distracted. Did I notice at least 10 things? I’ll try:

10 Things I Noticed

  1. running south into the sun, the slick path sparkled
  2. kids yellling at the playground. I think I heard one deep voice — was it a teacher?
  3. there was a very big puddle in the street at 42nd, right by the path. As cars drove through it, I could hear all the water splashing up onto the curb — glad I wasn’t running there!
  4. passed the same group of 3 walkers + 2 dogs in both directions on the narrow bridge
  5. the river was mostly open, with streaks of white ice
  6. a few people at the falls, near the bridge
  7. a man and a dog playing in the snow near the longfellow poem at the falls
  8. unable to avoid it, I ran straight through a deep puddle on my tiptoes
  9. glanced over at the house with the poetry in the window to check if there was a new poem. Too much snow to see the sign with the poem title
  10. the long dark tree branch of the mostly dead tree on the corner stretched across the path and the road. I wondered, as I ran under it, if it would fall on me

As part of my February challenge, I’m reading poems from Linda Pastan. Here’s the one for today:

Practicing/ Linda Pastan

My son is practicing the piano.
He is a man now, not the boy
whose lessons I once sat through,
whose reluctant practicing
I demanded–part of the obligation
I felt to the growth
and composition of a child.

Upstairs my grandchildren are sleeping,
though they complained earlier of the music
which rises like smoke up through the floorboards,
coloring the fabric of their dreams.
On the porch my husband watches the garden fade
into summer twilight, flower by flower;
it must be a little like listening to the fading

diminuendo notes of Mozart.
But here where the dining room table
has been pushed aside to make room
for this second- or third-hand upright,
my son is playing the kind of music
it took him all these years,
and sons of his own, to want to make.

I love the gentle way this poem unfolds, how it reminds me of my son and demanding he practice his clarinet, and its idea that practice accumulates and can take decades to lead to the things we want to do.

The practicing son in this poem reminds me of another poem I posted in the fall, Transubstantiation:

my six-year-old grandson, in the early
August rainy morning, piano-practices
“The Merry Widow Waltz.” Before
I was a widow, that song was
only a practice piece, a funny
opera

feb 6/SWIM

2 miles
ywca pool

Met RJP at the pool again after she was done with her classes. Added in about 1000 yards of swimming with the pull buoy. I tried reciting the poem I memorized yesterday — Linda Pastan’s “Vertical” — while I swam, but it was difficult. I couldn’t sync up the lines with my breathing rhythms. I don’t think I was ever able to recite the whole thing, only the first bit: “Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards.”

10 Things

  1. cloudy water, at least as much, maybe more?, crud than the last time I swam: floating hairballs, some strange stain on the wall tiles in my lane
  2. when I got in the pool, there was only one other swimmer. More people came, then left. At one point, most of the lanes were filled, but it was never too crowded
  3. I could see that a storm was moving in by how the pool floor kept getting darker then lighter as the thickening clouds moved past the sun
  4. heard a click underwater several times. Decided it was caused by the swimmer next to me — her knee of elbow clicking as she did the breaststroke
  5. watching my daughter swimming freestyle underwater — looking strong and serious. Once as I passed her, I kept my head below looking over at her until she looked back
  6. doing my starting ritual of pushing off and them swimming underwater until I reached the blue line and the end of the shallow water, I held my arms out straight in front of me, almost squeezing my ears. I felt like I could have stayed underwater until I reached the wall
  7. the muscle I felt most while I was swimming today was my calf, and especially as I kicked harder during my first lap. It wasn’t sore, and it didn’t hurt, I just felt it more
  8. following behind my daughter, trying to stay slow and never pass her, I started my flip turn then stayed at the wall, suspended underwater
  9. worked on my flip turn, trying to flip with my core, and not my arms
  10. every so often, when the sun came out from behind the clouds, I saw a circle of light on the pool floor

Yesterday I posted a poem from Linda Pastan that describes a sparrow as “brief as a haiku.” That made me think of the first poem in her final collection, Almost an Elegy:

Memory of a Bird/ Linda Pastan

Paul Klee, watercolor and pencil on paper

What is left is a beak,
a wing,
a sense of feathers,

the rest lost
in a pointillist blur of tiny
rectangles.

The bird has flown,
leaving behind
an absence.

This is the very
essence
of flight—a bird

so swift
that only memory
can capture it.

All of this quick movement and the brevity of the bird in flight, also made me think of another poem by Pastan I discovered today:

The Birds/ Linda Pastan

are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them

as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

The birds are heading south,
instinct is the oldest story.
They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Because of my interest in peripheral vision and what it means to see movement (as opposed to sharp, fixed details), I’m always trying to find poems that offer details and descriptions of movement. I love how much Pastan focuses on how the birds move — they swoop and gather, cast wing shadows, rustle like leaves. She doesn’t offer any descriptions of their color, size, or sound. She doesn’t even name them. I don’t miss those details. The description of their movement is enough.

I love all of this poem, but today, especially this:

They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Their doubles, the mute weathervanes? Tailfeathers as teachers? So good!

feb 5/RUN

3.9 miles
river road, north/south
22 degrees / feels like 12
75% snow and ice-covered

Another good run. Not too cold, sunny. Near the beginning, I ran with my shadow. The road was slick in spots — that invisible ice that you can’t see, only feel. Greeted Mr. Morning! and a few runners. Noticed the river at the trestle. It was open in a few places just below. The open water wasn’t dark, but gray. Heard the drumming of a woodpecker, the screech of a blue jay, 2 quick caws on repeat from a crow, and countless chirp chirp chirps from some other birds. The path was slightly better, but still mostly uneven ice and snow. Maybe this week, as it climbs to the 30s, the rest of it will melt?

After I finished running, when I was walking home, I remembered that I had memorized the first sentence of Linda Pastan’s “Vertical.” I had intended to recite it in my head as I ran. I was too distracted by the path and forgot. Walking home, I whispered it into the cold air:

Perhaps the purpose
of leaves is to conceal
the verticality of trees
which we notice
in December
as if for the first time:
row after row
of dark forms
yearning upwards.

Last night I went to Moon Palace books and bought Linda Pastan’s last collection, Almost an Elegy. The rest of February will be dedicated to her and her words — reading them, memorizing them, being with them.

After the Snow/ Linda Pastan (from Insomnia)

I’m inside
a Japanese woodcut,

snow defining
every surface:

shadows
of tree limbs

like pages
of inked calligraphy,

one sparrow,
high on a branch,

brief as
a haiku.

Here
in the Maryland woods, far

from Kyoto
I enter Kyoto.

feb 4/RUN

4.3 miles
lake nokomis — one way
19 degrees / feels like 10
50% snow and ice-covered

Hooray for moving outside! Hooray for warmer air! Hooray for getting to run to Lake Nokomis! It felt good to be outside breathing in fresh air. My legs and lungs felt strong. At one point, I remember breathing in deeply through my nose, then out through my mouth and watching the frozen breath as it hovered in front of me.

layers:

  • 2 pairs black running tights
  • 1 bright yellow TC 10 mile racing shirt (2018)
  • 1 pink jacket with hood
  • 1 black winter vest
  • 1 pair of black gloves, 1 pair of pink and white striped gloves
  • 1 fleece lined cap with brim
  • a gray buff
  • 1 pair of socks

Only a few layers short of my most layered look. Maybe someday I’ll invest in an expensive running jacket and be able to wear less layers, but maybe not.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the call, but not the drumming, of a pileated woodpecker
  2. the path on the biking side of the pedestrian bridge had packed down snow that was uneven, but not too slick. It had little flecks of light brown — sand? grit? dirt that Minneapolis Parks put down to make it less slippery?
  3. a fat tire! I could hear the crunching of their wheels as they approached from behind. After they slowly passed me, they stopped just past the locks and dam #1. Why? To rest? To figure out where they were? To take a picture?
  4. a few days ago I mentioned hearing construction noises near the falls. Heard them again today. Pounding hammers at another new apartment building going up on the other side of Dairy Queen
  5. heard a high-pitched whine near all of the apartments; it was coming from a gas vent by the roundabout
  6. minnehaha creek was mostly frozen, with a few stretches of open water
  7. heard, but didn’t see, kids’ voices — yelling, laughing — somewhere on the creek
  8. more voices down by the dock, near the shore, at lake hiawatha
  9. noticed the creek water leading into the lake was not completely iced over
  10. there were stretches where the path was an inch of solid brown ice, but most of it was a combination of bare pavement, stained with salt, patches of packed snow and smooth ice

I don’t remember noticing anything particular delightful. I devoted a lot of attention to my effort, staying relaxed, and avoiding slippery spots.

I follow the Mary Oliver Bot on twitter and they posted a line from this beautiful poem:

The Moths/ Mary Oliver

There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know
what kind, that glimmers
by mid-May 
in the forest, just 
as the pink mocassin flowers
are rising.

If you notice anything, 
it leads you to notice
more
and more.

And anyway
I was so full of energy.
I was always running around, looking
at this and that.

If I stopped 
the pain
was unbearable.

If I stopped and thought, maybe
the world
can’t be saved, 
the pain 
was unbearable.

Finally, I noticed enough.
All around me in the forest
the white moths floated.

How long do they live, fluttering
in and out of the shadows? 

You aren’t much, I said
one day to my reflection
in a green pond, 
and grinned.

The wings of the moths catch the sunlight
and burn
so brightly.

At night, sometimes, 
they slip between the pink lobes
of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn, 
motionless
in those dark halls of honey.

feb 3/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 3.1 miles
basement
outdoor temp: 0 degrees / feels like -13

Inside today. Some Dickinson while I biked, a podcast (You are Good) while I ran — well, for most of my run. The last few minutes I listened to a playlist. Audio books and playlists make the time pass much faster when I’m on the treadmill.

I’m ready for the bitter cold to be done. Much less inspiration inside. Did I notice anything other than the single lightbulb reflecting in the dark window?

A poet that I like, Linda Pastan, died a few days ago. The first poem of hers that I read was “Vertical.” I found it just as I was starting to fall in love with poetry and the way it helped me to notice and be in wonder of a place. I spent a lot of time with that poem, even writing a response in which I used its first sentence to wander and wonder about trees. Since 2017, I’ve gathered and posted several of her poems, including:

And here’s one more I just found:

At My Desk/ Linda Pastan

To William Stafford

How many times
I have sat this way
with the poem’s intractable silence
between me and the world,
with the tree outside the window
refusing translation:
my leaves are more than syllables
it seems to say.

I think of you
miles west
floating on the tide of language
so easily, giving only
a scissor kick now and then,
coming to shore
some unexpected
but hospitable place.

Still we share between us
a certain stubbornness,
rising each morning
to the blank page,
climbing the ladder of light
at the window all day,
listening, both of us,
as hard as we can.

added Feb 14, 2023: Rereading this poem, I remembered something Pastan had said about Stafford in her Paris Review interview:

Often when I sit at my desk unable to write, “blocked” as they put it, I open a Stafford book and start to read. He makes it sound so easy, almost conversational, that I find I have to answer him, and so I start to write. My first four or five lines may have a Stafford ring to them, but then my own voice kicks in and I am on my way. I loved and admired William Stafford both as a man and as a poet. I hate to use adjectives like wise or humble but they seem to fit him as comfortably, as unpretentiously, as an old sweater.

feb 2/SWIM

1.2 miles
ywca pool

Met my almost 17 year-old daughter at the pool and then we swam together. She’s swimming for online gym. I love swimming with my kids. This summer I swam at the lake with my 19 year-old son, now I get to swim at the pool with my daughter. I try to stay chill and not scare them with my enthusiasm, but it’s difficult.

Tried using a pull buoy for the first time in a few years. So much easier to breath when my body is higher up on the water. I should probably find some more drills to help with keeping me higher.

A few laps in I noticed an oval of bright light on the pool floor, not near the windowed wall, but the windowless one. A strange, beautiful thing to see.

I pushed off the wall underwater for my first lap ritual and swam just above the pool bottom. Noticed a black thread or hair floating right below my nose. A strange, ugly thing to see. Lots of crud in the water this afternoon. Nothing big or too gross, but small bits of something that made the water cloudy.

Later in the swim, I noticed lines of light on the bottom close to the window. Remembered to look up above the water as I flipped at the wall. Today above the surface looked pink to me. Forgot to notice the moving shadows on the pool floor.

At the beginning of the swim, when there was only one other person in the water, I heard some splashing or sloshing underwater. Was it from me? I don’t think so.

Later, after the swim, in the hot tub with Scott, I noticed another woman sitting in the corner, miming freestyle strokes in the hot water.

Also in the hot tub: crouching down, my chin just above the surface, I watched the light catch the spray of water made by one of the jets, making the spray look like fizz from my favorite grapefruit seltzer. Below, the jet made the water look like swirling smoke.

not a cabinet of curiosities

Talked to Scott about my class and my week on wonder as curiosity, which is coming up in a few weeks. There’s a quote by Thoreau that I’m interested in challenging. Well, maybe not challenging, but imagining curiosity against?

[24] In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens, in their natural order and position.

A Winter Walk/ Thoreau

Thoreau is describing a particular type of western scientific attention: study the natural world as individual things (specimens) to be isolated, classified, and categorized. To learn about, not from. To see non-human beings only as objects, never subjects.

I want to contrast this cabinet of curiosities with Robin Wall Kimmerer and her expanded understanding of knowing:

I would describe my journey as a circle, moving out into academia but coming back to the way that I knew plants as a child. I grew up in a rural area much like where we’re sitting today, and I was interacting every day with plants in the garden, the woods, or the wetlands. I couldn’t go outside without being surprised and amazed by some small green life. I suppose it was their great diversity of form that first drew my interest: that on a small patch of ground there could be so many different ways to exist. Each plant seemed to have its own sense of self, yet they fit together as a community. And each had a home, a place where I knew I could find it. This inspired my curiosity.

From as far back as I can remember, I had this notion of plants as companions and teachers, neighbors and friends. Then, when I went to college, a shift occurred for me. As an aspiring botany major, I was pressured to adopt the scientific worldview; to conceive of these living beings as mere objects; to ask not, “Who are you?” but, “How does it work?” This was a real challenge for me. But I was madly in love with plants, so I worked hard to accommodate myself to this new approach.

Later in my career, after I’d gotten my PhD and started teaching, I was invited to sit among indigenous knowledge holders who understood plants as beings with their own songs and sensibilities. In their presence, and in the presence of the plants themselves, I woke from the sleep I’d fallen into. I was reminded of what I’d always known in my core: that my primary relationship with plants was one of apprenticeship. I’m learning from plants, as opposed to only learning about them.

I was especially moved by an elderly Diné woman who told the biographies of each plant in her valley: its gifts, its responsibilities, its history, and its relationships — both friendships and animosities. As a scientist I had learned only about plants’ physical attributes. Her stories reminded me of how I had encountered plants as a young person. That’s why I say I’m coming full circle after all these years — because I’m able to stop speaking of plants as objects.

2 Ways of Knowing/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I’m struggling to turn all of my thoughts about curiosity and wonder into a pithy, coherent statement for a lecture. So much time spent circling around these ideas. Frustrating.

feb 1/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
13 degrees / feels like 6
75% snow and ice-covered

Warmer this morning. Even the feels like temperature was above 0. Sunny, not too much wind. Only slipped a few times, even though the path was an ice rink. Heard lots of birds — a few I could name, pileated woodpecker, black capped chickadee, a lot I couldn’t.

I ran south again today. A few winters ago, I ran north all the time. I wanted to avoid the double bridge near the 44th street parking lot because they never cleared it. Now I mostly run south, trying to avoid the uneven stretch between lake street and the trestle. Encountered a fat tire, some runners, and a few walkers, including a guy near the falls, blasting some loud, dissonant music that I couldn’t quite place.

Devoted a lot of time to staying aware of the icy path, looking out for hard chunks of snow or smooth, slick patches of ice. Forgot to look at the river, or forgot to remember I was looking at the river.

10 Things I Heard

  1. the loon-ish (at least to me) song of a pileated woodpecker
  2. the feebee song of a black-capped chickadee
  3. some strange high-pitched whine coming from the new apartment building across from the falls — the one they’ve been working on for way too long and that blocked the bike path in the summer so that FWA and I had to bike through the grass
  4. construction noise coming from that same apartment building — was it a nail gun? a truck backing up? loud pounding? I can’t remember anything about it but that it made me think, construction noise
  5. the loud, not quite heavy metal or hard rock but something like that, music coming from a walker near the falls
  6. the hard crunch of my feet on the month-old snow
  7. kids yelling and laughing and playing during recess at Minnehaha Academy
  8. a runner calling out some greeting after I waved at him
  9. the creaking and crunching of car wheels behind me from a truck driving over the lingering snow
  10. the faintest jingle of my house key in the pocket of my orange running shirt

Anything else about the path? The worst stretch, as in most uneven and icy, was right after 38th heading south. All slick ice. I wondered (and worried) about what will happen when it gets warmer and this ice melts. Noticing the shin-high wall of tightly packed snow lining the side of the path closest to the road, I imagined the water having nowhere to go and turning into a little lake.

Found this great passage by Roland Barthes from a poetry person on twitter. I want to collect it now, return to it later. It makes me think of passive attention, telling the truth slant, my peripheral vision, and distraction:

To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary to my work. Likewise for the test: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else. I am not necessarily captivated by the text of pleasure; it can be an act that is slight, complex, tenuous, almost scatterbrained: a sudden movement of the head like a bird who understands nothing of what we hear, who hears what we do not understand.

The Pleasure of the Text/ Roland Barthes

When I mentioned distraction above, I was partly thinking of an article about poetry and distraction that I posted here a few years ago. I found it again and discovered that this article begins with the quote from Barthes. Nice!

In Search of Distraction

jan 31/RUN

3.5 miles
under the ford bridge and back
0 degrees / feels like -9
75% ice and snow-covered

Brrr. This isn’t the coldest run I’ve done this year, but it felt like it! Well, most of me was fine, just not my feet or my forehead. Running into the frigid wind, I got a brain freeze. A mile in, I had mostly warmed up. The path was in terrible shape. All uneven with long sheets of slick ice. I never worried about falling, but I got tired of moving all around the path trying to find bare patches.

I thought about Bernadette Mayer and her list of experiments, especially this one: “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial” (Please Add to This List, 12). Extreme cold + uneven, icy paths + lots of layers = less congenial. I wondered how these conditions affected what and how I noticed the gorge.

10+ Things I Noticed

  1. crunching snow, loud and brittle
  2. the smell of smoke from the usual chimney (the one on edmund that I always smell every winter)
  3. the river, half frozen, half open, all cold-looking
  4. the path, 1: almost completely covered in snow and ice
  5. the path, 2: the ice is flat and smooth and light brown
  6. the path, 3: an occasional bare strip, sometimes what I thought was bare was actually brownish grayish ice
  7. at least 2 other runners — we held up our hands in greeting
  8. 2 or 3 walkers — all bundled up, faces covered up to the eyes
  9. the buzzing of a chainsaw, laboring in the cold — workers trimming dead branches at Minnehaha Academy
  10. looking across the ravine from the double bridge, noticing someone dressed in dark colors walking along the retaining wall at the top of the overlook
  11. haunting wind chimes
  12. the sizzling of dead leaves on a neighbor’s tree
  13. the sharp scratch of another dead leaf as the wind blew it across the sidewalk

At the end of my run, walking back home, I marveled at the chattering birds, sounding like spring. I saw them, not their details, just their movements, fluttering, swooping, soaring, flashing. Then I heard the distinctive knocking of a woodpecker on some dead wood. Before I had a chance to enjoy the sound, the beep beep beep of truck backing up silenced the bird.

layers:

  • 2 pairs of black running tights
  • 2 pairs of socks
  • a green long-sleeved shirt
  • a pink jacket with hood
  • a thicker gray jacket
  • a gray buff
  • 1 pair of black gloves
  • 1 pair of pink/red/orange mittens, wool and fleece combo
  • a fleece-lined cap with brim
  • sunglasses

Lots of layers!

Oh, I needed this run! What a difference it makes for my mental health to get outside and move.

This morning, I happened upon this beautiful prose poem:

The Year We Fell in Love with Moss/ Sally Baker

We made our bed in its mounds and all our furniture was covered in mossy baize. We swam through velvet-lined tunnels, swagged ourselves in greenness all winter. It was the green of pond algae, the painted shed at the bottom of the old garden, kale, tourmaline, the needlecord skater’s dress I wore in 1979. It was the emerald brilliance of moray eels, of tree snails; pea soup green. We were moss creatures, felted deep in woods. It was the first plant on earth, at least four hundred and fifty million years old, its rhizoids like a forest of stars, rootless, absorbing moisture and minerals from rain, surviving in the harshest of climates. We became bryophyliacs, singing hymns in the sunken moss cathedrals, while light through the leaves flickered over us in waves, like signals, as if we’d been blessed. I believed moss could live forever. You told me about the Barghest who haunted the valley, could turn you to stone with a look.

I need to add this to my growing list of green poems!

jan 30/BIKERUN

bike: 15 min warm-up
run: 3.2 miles
outside temp: 2 degrees / feels like -15

Because of the cold air, the icy paths, and the 10 mph wind, I decided to move in the basement today. Finished the episode of Dickinson I had started a few days ago while I biked, listened to the latest episode of If Books Could Kill (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) while I ran. Running on the treadmill in the basement is very different from running outside. A dark, unfinished basement with windows mostly blocked by a shelf with old lamps on it. Staring straight ahead, I can see a blank tv screen and then behind that, a dark window and the old coal chute. To the side, shelves with old paint cans (left) and a long work bench (right). Not much to notice, except spiders and dust. Difficult to run for that long and to remember any of my thoughts. I don’t mind running down here on occasion, but I couldn’t do it all the time. I’m so glad that I have the gorge.

a moment of sound

On days when it’s too cold for me to move outside, I record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was on my short walk back from the alley, where I had brought out some trash. It features my favorite, crunching snow, and another irritating delight: the cold, shrill creak of our iron gate. I walked through the snow in my small backyard and stopped briefly by the crab apple tree:

jan 30 / 3:00 pm

Here’s a poem I found on twitter today by Dana Levin about walking and thinking and wandering/wondering and being in and out of a body:

A Walk in the Park/ Dana Levin

To be born again, you need
an incarnation specialist—a team
from the Bureau of Needles
to thread you through—
Your next life
turns
on an axle of light—which Plato likens
to a turning
spindle—what was that?
I mean I knew

what a spindle was
from fairytales—how it could
draw blood
from a testing finger, put a kingdom
to sleep—
but what
did it actually do, how
did a spindle look
in real life?
I didn’t know. As with
so many things:
there was fact and there was

a believed-in dream . . .

Everyone had one back
in the ancient day,
spindles.
When we had to weave
our living-shrouds
by hand.
“A slender rounded rod
with tapered ends,” Google said. Plato’s,
so heavy with thread,
when viewed from the side,
looked like a top—
though most diagrams assumed

the hawk-lord view . . .

Moon thread, threads of the planets, earth thread.
Your thread.
Everyone else’s.
Nested one
inside the other, a roulette
machine—
If a thread could be spun from liquid light was what
I kept thinking—
imagining a sluice
of electric souls
between the earth wheel’s rims—
there “I”

was a piece of water, Necessity
wheeled it around―Necessity,
who was married to Time,
according to the Greeks—
Mother of the Fates.
Who would measure and cut your

paradise/shithole extra life . . .

Well we all have ways of thinking about
why,
metaphysically-speaking,
anyone’s born—
though the answer’s always Life’s
I AM THAT I AM
—how it hurls and breaks!
on Death’s No there
there . . .

—which sounded kind of Buddhist.

According to the teachings we were all
each other’s dream . . .

And soon able to vanish—

out of the real
without having to die, whoever’s
got the cash—to pay
the brainier ones
to perfect
a Heaven upload—to cut
the flesh-tether
and merge

with the Cloud . . .

Well we all have ways of constructing
Paradise.
To walk alone deep in thought
in a city park
was mine
for several minutes,
thinking about spindles.
Before the vigilance
of my genderdoom

kicked in—

And there it was, the fact
of my body—
all the nerves in my scalp
and the back of my neck,
alive—
How it moved through space, how close
it had strayed
toward concealing trees, my
female body—
Jewish body—inside my
White body—dreaming
it was bodiless

and free . . . 

to decide:

how and when and if to fill the body’s hungers—
how and when and if to walk in thought
through the wilderness . . .

before Death comes with its Fascist hat.

Its Park Murder Misogyny hat.

Its Year Ten in a Nursing Home stink
    hat—    

However spun
    my thread . . .

Anyway,
it’s peaceful here
in the park, at midday,
if a little deserted. I’ve moved to the path that winds
closer to the street.
Thinking again, as I always do,
about body and soul. How they
infuse each other. How they
hate each other.
How most people pledge allegiance
to one or the other.
How painful it was! To be
such a split

creature—

jan 29/SWIM

2 miles
ywca pool

Was planning to run on the track, but when we got to the y I realized I had forgotten my shoes and a running shirt. Oops. Luckily I remembered my swimming stuff and that the pool wasn’t too crowded. I’m fine sharing a lane with someone, but it’s difficult for me to circle swim. Sometimes, it’s hard to see other people when I have to pass them because of my vision.

Because I like making note of my vision challenges, both to share them with others and to document them for myself, I’ll offer three from today at the Y:

one: checking for an open lane. I looked as carefully as I could to see if there was an empty lane. When I saw what I thought was one, I checked it twice more to be sure. It looked empty to me. I got in, was adjusting my goggles, and suddenly a swimmer came from behind in my lane and pushed off the wall. This lane was not empty. It was no big deal, and the swimmer was happy to share a lane, but it’s frustrating to try carefully to see something and not be able to. Of course, this could happen to anyone when you’re not paying attention, but I was paying attention and this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m getting better at not letting it bother me too much or remind me of what I’m losing.

two: finding my locker. I don’t always use the same locker in the locker room, and sometimes I don’t stop to memorize where it is. Luckily the Y switched from locks, where you bring your own combination lock, to keys with a shiny safety pin and the number of the locker attached. When I’m done swimming and I head to my locker, I stop for a minute to stand still and study the key, slowly making out the number on it. Then I carefully scan the lockers until I find mine. Like the empty lane that wasn’t, my need to study my locker key isn’t that big of a deal. But, it has been an adjustment, to slow down this much, and to look to others like I don’t know what I’m doing or that I need help. I don’t mind asking for help when I need it, but I find it stressful to be offered help when I don’t.

three: feeling older than I am. At the sink before swimming, I heard a grandmother talking with a young kid (her granddaughter, I assume): can you be my eyes for me and get that? My eyes aren’t working well today. I say these words to my daughter at least several times a week, which doesn’t bother me. I’m glad to have the help, but I’m 48, which is really young to have the eyes of someone in their late 70s or 80s.

All three of these challenges aren’t big, but they’ve required lots of adjustments and accommodations and extra effort. I don’t mind doing them as long as I can swim. And what a great swim it was! I felt strong and relaxed and almost in a dream floating above the pool floor shimmering with shadows. The mysterious white thing that I’d wondered about a few days ago was gone. Now, in another lane, something else — a string? strands of hair? — were hovering a foot above the bottom. The woman I was sharing a lane with alternated between freestyle, backstroke, and an extra froggy breaststroke. Near the end of the swim, a very fast swimmer arrived in the lane next to me. So much fun to watch him fly by and shoot like a rocket off the wall after a flip turn! Once as he approached, after lapping me at least twice, I kept my head underwater longer so I could watch his fast flip turn.

a moment of sound

Sometimes when it’s this cold outside (feels like -8), it’s harder to get outside for a walk. So instead, I go outside for a minute or two — a moment — and record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was at 1:30 pm in my sunny backyard. My favorite part: the wind chimes, the chirping bird, and that crunchy snow!

jan 29, 2023 / 1 pm / backyard

jan 28/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 1.8 miles
basement
outside: 5 degrees / feels like -10

Needed to move a little, but too cold for Delia to take a walk. Started watching the first episode of Dickinson while I biked, listened to a podcast (episode 2 of “Nobody Asked Us”) while I ran. In the short bit of the podcast I listened to, Des and Kara talked about resolutions, which neither of them do, and goals. Des mentioned that goals should be big but not so big that they’re paralyzing and that the the timeline for accomplishing them might be different than we expect. I started thinking about goals for my running and writing. Some of my goals are specific, like a mileage total. Last year, it was 1000 miles. But most of them are broad or vague or more of a guide than one concrete goal, like these:

  • to keep running into my 70s (I’m 48)
  • to slow down
  • to be satisfied with the small moments
  • to find better words for connecting me to others and to a specific place
  • to be open, not closed
  • to learn to listen (and to see differently) as I lose my central vision

I decided to go back through my archives to find other posts were I’ve discussed goals (search word: goal). Here are a few:

nov 7, 2022 — on living to an old age and still running
oct 31, 2022 — on running 1000 miles in one year
sept 20, 2022 — on being open (and keeping the door open to possibility)
may 4, 2022 — on slowing down

Ok, I’ll stop there. I have 5 pages / 90 entries with the word goal. Wow. I’d like to spend more time skimming them and finding bits to add to my Undisciplined page on purpose/goals. So much to think and write about with goals.

jan 27/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
24 degrees / feels like 9
wind: 16 mph / path: 99% snow-covered

This run was both hard and easy, and I loved it. Hard because of the wind, often in my face, and the soft, slippery snow. Easy because it felt so good to be outside and moving through the wintery world.

Even with yak trax, the soft snow makes it harder for me to lift my legs. Today I felt it in my right knee — what I call the “OG” knee because it’s the one that first started giving me problems (my kneecap was slipping out of the groove) and that led to never doing the marathon. Every so often, a short sharp pang. Nothing too alarming, just enough to remind me that my body is still here, tethering me to the world. I started thinking about Thomas Gardner and something I wrote almost exactly (one day off) 6 years ago, right after I started writing in this blog:

My right calf is still a little stiff from where I strained it last week doing mile repeats in the cold. Just enough to not let me out of my body.

Poverty Creek Journal/ Thomas Gardner

I wrote: “Even as we try to transcend our bodies while running, we are constantly reminded of our limits. We are bodies. We need that reminder to ground us and to keep us from getting too lost in the dreamlike state that running creates (jan 26, 2017).

As I ran this morning, I thought about how I like that running outside in the winter tethers/connects me to my body. It’s impossible for me to get too lost in any dreamlike state, or any one thought or series of thoughts. The path, the wind, the cold always brings me back to my body. Sometimes, bringing me back to my body involves suffering and complaining, but more often it is about grounding me and helping me to stop overthinking things. Of course, these reflections only came in flashes that lasted less than a minute or two. When I’m running, I can’t hold onto thoughts for longer than that. Now, as I write this, I’m sure that I’m missing something else I was thinking while moving. It all made so much sense as flashes and feelings. Much harder to remember it and put it into words later!

10 Things I Noticed: Wind

  1. running south, the wind was in my face
  2. cold, but not brain-freeze cold
  3. strong, but not strong enough to shove me off the path
  4. I could hear it rushing through the dead leaves on the trees in the oak savanna — sizzling
  5. it stirred up an occasional dead leaf from the ground
  6. at one point, I felt the spray of water on my cheek — was that the wind blowing the snow? probably
  7. ahead of me on the trail, I could see something big-gish — was it a chunk of hard snow or ice? no, it was a branch with a few orange leaves on it. As I ran past it I was startled when the wind picked up and made it move slightly
  8. near the falls, I felt the wind from several directions — was it swirling, or was I winding, or both?
  9. no sledders enjoying the hill — is this because of the strong wind?
  10. the wind was not loud enough to roar, but it seemed to grumble non-stop for most of my run

Found this poem the other day when it showed up in my instagram feed. It’s from episode #799 for The Slowdown Show:

Fragment (Stone)/ Ann Lauterbach

                         What has a soul, or pain, to do with a stone? 
                                                                                               –Ludwig Wittgenstein

You could walk not far through the grass to the shed barefoot
restless eye landing on distance there not far you could walk
looking down at various grasses weeds clover along the way
your toes in the green the undersides of your feet the cool damp
where is significance you think as you imagine walking across
grass to the shed barefoot what counts here does anything count
on the short walk while looking down and then over then up
at the catbird in the lilac where there are now dry brown sprays
at the robin hopping in the grass over there what counts you ask
incredulous at the pace not your pace the pace of time as if
rolling downhill gathering speed wound around
itself like giant twine but invisible so not present
in the sense of seen the way you assign to the visible presence
even as what is on your mind as you walk across the grass toward
the shed is invisible names their persons hunger mistakes
the lost and the recently slaughtered because of words
believed by the hopeless lost from view tossed
into the past like a weed a rind a stone found in grass
so find solace in the particular single crow high in the dead ash
its one-note cry sky pale blue low light sliding across wires.

I was drawn to this poem because it reminded me of how I think and how I notice as I’m walking. Lots of wandering and words running together without a break. One thought into the next. From here to here to here.

jan 26/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool
outdoor temp: 14 degrees

Swim! I wouldn’t have minded running in the cold today. It’s sunny and bright. But I’m trying to swim at least once a week. Partly because I love swimming, partly because it feels good after a few hard runs on the rough paths. Today’s swim was wonderful. Only one other person in the pool. The sun was streaming in the big windows and making the whole pool floor dance with shadows.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the woman next to me was wearing a swim cap that looked like it was from open swim. I wanted to ask her, but we were never stopped at the same time
  2. she was in a black suit — I think it was a tri suit. She swam breaststroke and freestyle and also ran in the deep end, her legs pedaling under the water
  3. there was something big and white on the pool floor, right on the part that slants down — what was it? I couldn’t tell*
  4. after the woman next to me left, I was alone in the pool for most of the time
  5. shadows on the pool floor, 1: faint, from the trees outside, flickering gently
  6. shadows on the pool floor, 2: a sharp, long cylinder of darkness — the lane line
  7. shadows on the pool floor, 3: the sun brightened and more dancing shadows with a long strip of light
  8. shadows on the pool floor, 4: in the lane next to me, a small ball of light — the opposite of a shadow, glowing. In the shallow end of the pool. I could see it from the far end after finishing my flip turn
  9. colors noticed: orange (of course), blue, a little green, yellow (maybe?) near the door to the locker room
  10. not always, but sometimes, I noticed the small bubbles my hands made as they pierced the water

*the white thing on the bottom was very distracting. What is it? I kept looking down, trying to study it, but with my bad eyes, I didn’t have a chance. It was almost the size of my fist. I thought about swimming down and picking it up. Gross! I decided one of the kids on the Otter’s swim team would probably pick it up during practice this afternoon.

The only one in the pool, nearly submerged for 45 minutes, I felt alone and not alone:

Alone and Not Alone/ Carl Sandburg

There must be a place
a room and a sanctuary
set apart for silence
for shadows and roses
holding aware in walls
the sea and its secrets
gong clamor gone still
in a long deep sea-wash
aware always of gongs
vanishing before shadows
of roses repeating themes
of ferns standing still
till wind blows over them:
great hunger may bring these
into one little room
set apart for silence

I found this poem last week and have been wondering when to post it. Today was the day. I like Carl Sandburg and his space for shadows, his sea and its secrets, his one little room set apart for silence!

jan 25/RUN

5.4 miles
bottom of the franklin hill and back
30 degrees / snowing
100% soft snow-covered

What a wonderful run! Even the soft, slippery snow couldn’t bother me. So difficult to move through, nothing solid or stable. Who cares? I got to run outside by the gorge when it was snowing! A soft, steady snow. A winter wonderland. The sky was a light gray, almost white. The river was a grayish brownish blue. I liked watching the headlights from the cars as they approached. The bright lights cutting through the gray — not gloomy, but monotonous.

At the start of my run, I smelled smoke from someone’s chimney.
I heard the birds chattering.
I felt my feet slipping on the soft, uneven ground.
I saw a walker up ahead on the road, waving their arms in an awkward rhythm.
Did I taste anything — a snowflake, maybe?

No fat tires or cross country skiers. A few sets of runners — or was it the same set seen twice? No honking horns from cars. Although I did hear some geese honking under the trestle. And I also heard the steady rush of cars moving across the 1-94 bridge.

At the end of my run, I heard the irritating screech of a blue jay. I wondered (and hope) that once I passed and the danger was over, I might hear the sharp, tin-whistle sound of a blue jay’s song. Nope.

In the middle of my run, after turning around at the bottom of the franklin hill and then running until I reached the bridge, I stopped to pull out my phone and record some thoughts and sounds:

jan 25 / halfway point

It’s difficult to pick up, but in the middle, when I stop talking and stop walking, you can hear the soft tinkle-tinkle of the snow hitting my jacket. In the moment, standing there, the sound was much louder and so delightful! Hearing it, then looking down at the still river and up at quiet gray sky and the bare branches, was magical.

I found this poem on twitter this morning. I decided to add it to my collection of dirt/dust/earth poems that I started during my monthly challenge last April. I also decided to add it here:

Return to Sender/ Matthew Olzman

To the topsoil and subsoil: returned.
To hums and blistered rock: returned.

To the kingdom of the masked chafer beetle,
the nematode and the root maggot: returned.

To the darkness were a solitary star-nosed mole
arranger her possessions and pulses

through a slow hallway, and to the vastness
where twenty-thousand garden ants compose

a tangled metropolis: returned.
it was summer, and they lowered

a body into the ground. I did not say
they lowered you into the ground.

It seemed like you were elsewhere, but the preacher
insisted: And now, he returns to the One who made him.

Most likely, he meant: God. But I thought
he meant the Earth, that immensity

where everything changes, buzzes, is alive again and —
Amen.

The poetry person who tweeted about this poem especially liked the twenty-thousand garden ants and the italics from the preacher. I like the possessions and pulses, the tangled metropolis, the separation between body and You, and the idea that the maker we return to (and are reborn in) is the Earth.

jan 24/WALKRUN

walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood with Delia the dog

Went out for a brief walk through the neighborhood and listened to the birds. I love the sounds of birds, especially in the winter. Lots of chattering, making it feel warmer than it was. Then I heard the rapid knocking of the woodpecker. It echoed down the block. Passing under a tree, I heard a strange sound. Was it a bird, or a squirrel? I’m not sure. Did I see any of the birds that I heard? I don’t think so.

3 miles
ywca track

Ran at the track in the afternoon with Scott. We didn’t run together, but at the same time. I intended to listen to music, but I forgot the extra dongle I need for my headphones. Oh well, running without music was fine. In fact, I liked it. Hearing my feet striking the track, the basketball shoes down below squeaking on the gym floor, the battle ropes forcefully striking the ground. Did I think about anything? I can’t remember much. I do recall thinking about my form — keeping my shoulders relaxed — and noticing the time every few laps. Can i think of 10 other things?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a man boxing in the corner — I could hear him hit the punching back, see it swinging back and forth
  2. when I first got there a tall man in a blue shirt was running. Later, he stopped running and was walking
  3. a man in dark sweatpants and a tan shirt, or was it a dark shirt and tan sweatpants?, was running and working hard. As I passed him, I could hear his jagged breathing
  4. a blur below — a guy sprinting on the track
  5. a woman in black, walking and veering into the middle
  6. 2 different sets of walkers, talking and slowly traveling around the track
  7. someone on a spin bike in corner
  8. a man sitting on a bench by the door –were they watching me as I ran by?
  9. a runner in a white t-shirt and black running tights, looking relaxed
  10. near the end of the run, someone was pushing the heavy sled in the corner

While drinking my coffee this morning, I found this video abut Ice Swimming. I’m not interested in trying it out, although I wouldn’t mind swimming in an outdoor pool in the winter.

note: I’m adding this poem in a few days later because it fits with the video.

Cold Shock Response/Anna Swanson


Note: All words (with the exception of title) transcribed from garbage found in the Cape Broyle swimming hole, NL.


Gasp. Cautionless
mouthfuls. No skill or aim,

only appetite in gloves of slush.
Gasp, we grab at the air

before asking, Is there air?
Alight with cold, classroom 

potassium dropped in water. 
Blood, punching. Our old code

calling. We gasp, cold bells
that cannot stop ringing.

Love that line about being cold bells that can’t stop ringing! A few months ago, I put together a page on my “How to Be” project over at Undisciplined. It was “How to be…a bell.” I included several poems and songs and passages about bells. Unfortunately that page was erased and I haven’t tried to recreate it. If I do, I’ll add this poem to it.

jan 23/RUN

4.1 miles
river road path, north/south
24 degrees
90% snow and ice-covered

More of the same very poor path conditions. Hard, rutted, uneven ice and snow. So hard to move through! My legs are sore again. Sore like I worked them, not like I injured them.Two days ago, it was one of the muscles in my right quads — looked it up and I think it was the rectus femoris. Today it’s my calves. I looked at the river — open, brown, cold. Ran north with no headphones, listening to the crunching of my yak trax on the crusty snow. Listened to Beyoncé’s Renaissance on the way back. Smelled fried food wafting down from Longfellow Grill. Ran past the port-a-potty under the lake street bridge, the door was wide open. Noticed a walker hiking up the road that leads down to the rowing club. Encountered 2 different runners with their dogs. One of the runners was extra cautious, stopping and holding their dog as I ran by. Anything else? Smelled some cigarette smoke.

Almost forget: it was snowing at the beginning of my run. I remember thinking the falling flakes looked like something flashing — what? I can’t remember now. All I remember was that the sky was falling and it was beautiful.

This morning, I found an amazing poetry project by Anna Swanson called “The Garbage Poems.” It’s a series of found poems composed of words taken from the trash she found at swimming holes. She has an interactive site for the poems where you can create your own garbage poems. You can also read her poems and click on each word to find which garbage it came from. How amazing! I’m very excited to have encountered her work. Not only are these poems amazing, but she has also written many others about wild swimming!

The Garbage Poems

jan 22/WALKBIKE

walk: 25 minutes
winchell trail between 44th and 42nd
17 degrees / snow flurries

I needed some pictures for my class, so Scott, Delia, and I took a walk by the gorge. Because of the slippery conditions we drove to the parking lot, then slowly walked around. Scott took some great pictures, Delia had fun romping around in the snow, and I loved breathing in all the cold, crisp air!

Here’s one of my favorite shots:

bare trees, snow, a person in a green jacket with a small white dog in a cute sweater
Sara and Delia, the Winchell Trail

A beautiful walk. Near the end of it, we noticed it was snowing. Saw lots of walkers and runners out there this morning.

bike: 25 minutes
basement

Felt like I wanted to work my legs a little more this afternoon — thanks, restlessness — so I decided to do a short bike ride in the basement. Watched new videos from the 2 running YouTubers I follow. Didn’t bike that fast, but it felt good to move some more after sitting and reading most of the afternoon. Current book: Mornings with Rosemary, which is the American title for the British book, The Lido. I prefer the British title, especially since the book is all about the lido. American audiences can figure out what a lido is, I think. If they grew up in the late 70s and 80s like me, they should know what a lido is from The Love Boat and its lido deck!

jan 21/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
21 degrees
99% snow and ice-covered

A common refrain: if only the path hadn’t been so icy and snowy, this would have been a near-perfect run. Loved the temperature and the grayish-white sky. Loved feeling strong and capable. Loved being outside moving and not stuck in the house. The only problem was the path. Terrible. Uneven, hard, rutted, slippery. Wearing my yaktrax helped a little, but it was still difficult. About a mile in, my right thigh was sore — I think from the extra effort of picking it up off of the slippery path. Thought about turning around, but decided to keep going to the falls and back.

Was able to Good Morning! Mr. Morning! Also gave some directions to the falls — up the hill. Passed a lot of runners and walkers. Can’t remember in there were any bikers — oh, I saw someone biking ahead me on the road, both of us on our way to the river.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the cry of a pileated woodpecker
  2. a fine mist — was it barely snowing?
  3. a quick glance at the oak savanna — the split rail fence is sagging in one spot. I couldn’t tell for sure but I think the top 2 railings might have split
  4. a person standing in the snow near the part of the Winchell Trail that climbs out of the gorge for a few seconds near Folwell before dropping down again
  5. a woman walking a dog near the falls in a long light gray puffer coat that almost reached her ankles
  6. voices below — I stopped to look and saw someone walking closer to the bottom of the frozen falls
  7. 2 people standing above the falls, holding a phone high in front of them, taking a selfie
  8. off to my side, a leaning tree covered in white on one side
  9. at the start of the run, hearing a nail gun off in the distance — probably roofers
  10. 2 different times I encountered a walker wearing an orange backpack — 2 different times, 2 different walkers, 2 different backpacks, both orange

Did I see those orange backpacks? I believe I did, but I’ve been seeing a lot of orange lately. It’s one of the only colors that I notice these days. Strange.

Forgot to look at the river. I bet it was still brown.

jan 20/RUN

4.35 miles
river road trail, north/south
27 degrees
99% ice and snow-covered path, slick

Very slick outside today. A lot of ice covered with an inch or two of snow. That part of it wasn’t fun, but the rest of it — the cold air, the open river, the gray sky — was wonderful. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Passed Daddy Long Legs. Noticed all of the rusty orange leaves still on the trees near the tunnel of trees. Heard goose honks under the lake street bridge. Later, also heard some runner coughing as he crossed the bridge then turned down to enter the river road. No! Every few seconds, a deep cough, full of gunk. I sped up to try and stay ahead of him and his germs. It worked. For a few minutes, I kept hearing the jagged coughs, then it stopped.

Anything else? The river was brownish-gray, the sky sunless.
No headphones for most of the run. During the last mile, I put in an old coming-back-from-injury playlist: I heard “Upside Down” and “Fantastic Voyage.”

FWA is on band tour in Spain and France right now. 29 years ago, Scott and I were on our European band tour. 29 years ago? Wow. Very excited for FWA.

Sitting at my desk, writing this, I’m also looking outside my window at the robins running around on the snow and rooting in the hydrangea bushes for twigs? seeds? Quietly, they scamper then fly low right in front of me. What are they looking for?

Encountered a beautiful poem on twitter this morning that I thought I had already posted on my log but hadn’t.

A Stranger/ Saeed Jones

I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me.
I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know  

her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word
burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead  

mother walking down the street in her bright black dress.
I wonder if he inhales the cigarette smoke  

that will eventually kill him and thinks “I wish I knew
a woman who was both the light and every shadow  

the light pierces.” I wonder if a passing glance at my dead
mother is enough to make a poet out of anyone. I wonder  

if I’m the song she hums as she waits for the light to change
or if I’m just the traffic signal holding her up.

This poem was posted as part of a thread. I want to post the next one, which is by Todd Dillard (one of my favorite poetry people). I like his introduction of the poem in a tweet:

I have so many poems also grieving my dead mother by giving her a kind of life after life.

Mom Hires a Stunt Double/ Todd Dillard

Sick of all the impossible I ask of her
in these my griefiest poems,

Mom hires a stunt double: same white hair,
same laugh, same false teeth, same dead.

Now when I write “Mom curls like rinds in a bowl”
it’s her stunt double twisting herself into pithy canoes.

When I write “At night my mother sheds
the skin of my mother revealing more mother”

it’s her stunt double that unzips her body,
stands there all shiver and muscle and tendon,

waiting for the next line. “What’s in it for you?”
I ask, and Mom’s stunt double shrugs,

lighting one of those familiar Turkish Silvers
as behind her my mother mounts a Harley

and barrels into the margins. “You’re a good kid,”
the double says. But she doesn’t touch my hair.

This close to her, her eyes are all pupil,
all ink. Her smell: paper and snow.

When she exhales smoke spills from her lips
and unfolds into horses.

Oh, I love both of these poems!

jan 19/SWIM

1.6 miles
ywca pool
outside: snowing (2+ inches)
31 degrees

Hooray for another swim. Such a good feeling to be moving through the water. Maybe it was because it was still snowing, but the pool was almost empty. Excellent. Mostly, I swam continuous 200s, breathing 3/4/5/6 by 50s. Starting the second mile, I tried something new, partly as a way to stretch my legs/bend my knees without stopping: I added in an occasional 25 of breaststroke. It seemed to work well.

dancing shadows

About 1000 yards in, I noticed the pool floor was moving slightly. I think it was the faint shadows of the snowflakes falling* on the other side of the big windows that stretch across the one side of the building. It made everything feel magical and dreamy and strange.

*Actually, when I was swimming, I thought the shadows were from the trees. It wasn’t until I was writing this entry, right now, that I realized it was probably the falling snow making the dancing shadows. Very cool. I think if I had realized that it was the snow, the whole experience of swimming would have felt even stranger and dreamier.

In addition to the moving shadows, I saw one solid shadow line stretching the length of the pool — a shadow of the lane line. Where was that shadow coming from? The bright ceiling light or the light from the snowy sky?

Seeing these shadows and continuing to pay attention to them, shifted me into a different state of being, one that was dreamier and surreal, and where I rethought what was possible or impossible. I imagined the water as air that I was swimming through. When I reached the deep end and looked down at the pool floor below me, I imagined that I was flying high above the ground through empty space. How fun and distracting. I forgot how many flip turns I had done, how many laps I still wanted to do.

Some other things I noticed:

  1. the sloshing of the water (below)
  2. the loud voices of some women talking and joking (above)
  3. the water running guy, doing running drills in the shallow end, then pushing off and vigorously kicking in the deep end, then finishing with some freestyle
  4. everything seemed blue below
  5. everything orange above
  6. the water was not completely clear, but wasn’t that cloudy either
  7. no harsh chlorine feeling
  8. I swam in lane 2, no one ever swam in lane 3, running dude was in lane 5
  9. nothing floating in the water, only random bits of something on the pool floor
  10. little bubbles in front of me as I sliced through the water and a slight spray as I lifted my elbow up into the air

Remembered reading a description of swim practice and the pool early in the morning, thick with a chlorine haze, in Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Lessons. Thought it might be nice to collect a few pool descriptions. Also thought about composing some more swimming breathing poems, where syllables match my breaths: 3/4/5/6.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe (b. Jan 19, 1809)

I randomly searched, “Edgar Allen Poe swimming” and discovered that he was a swimmer! I had no idea. I found a promising article, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast,” but it was beyond a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Then I found this bit of information on a listicle about him:

Poe was a big fan of the long walk. He took many solitary strolls over High Bridge in the Bronx in 1847, after his wife Virginia died. There, staring up at the stars, he would conceive his lengthy cosmic prose poem, Eureka. But he also liked rowing and swimming: as a young lad, he was renowned among his friends for swimming six miles upriver in the Charles River in Virginia, and when he moved to New York City (for the second time) in 1844, one of his first acts was to row a skiff up the East River, all the way up past Roosevelt Island.

sidenote: I want to write a poem titled, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast”!

jan 17/RUN

2.2 miles
ywca track

Went to the y in the early evening, before community band rehearsal. Too crowded to swim, so I ran. Not as nice as running outside, but better than the treadmill. Listened to a playlist and forgot to count laps or notice the time. The track was crowded but not too crowded and not filled with oblivious people spread across the three lanes.

People I Encountered

  1. a woman who walked in the closest lane to the railing but often drifted over
  2. a guy, dressed in black shorts, a black shirt, and black running shoes, sprinting around the track then stopping to do battle ropes
  3. a tall guy with a blue shirt with the words “event staff” printed on it, watching over 2 young boys, shirtless, shoeless, and in sweat pants. Sometimes he held one of their hands as they carefully ran around the track. Sometimes he lifted them up at the far end so they could do pull-ups. As I left the track, I heard him say to one of the kids: you just ran a mile!
  4. 2 runners — a woman and a 10? year-old boy. Moving effortlessly around the track, their feet rhythmically rising and falling
  5. a guy in brown — not tan, but not dark either — shorts, running in a way that resembled speed walking
  6. an older woman in a white sweatshirt and dark pants, walking
  7. basketball practice below, in the gym — loud, exuberant players running up and down the court
  8. a man off in the corner doing burpees — his long torso and tall arms stretched high as he jumped up at the end of each one
  9. 2 men walking — the younger one looking out for the older one, making sure he didn’t veer out in front of any runner passing by
  10. a guy in a white shirt stretching before his run, doing leg swings

Other things I remember:

There was a white bucket for collecting drips set up in the middle lane on one side of the track. Scott peered into it and noticed that the bucket was dry. Why, he wondered, was it there?

Running the short end at the top, near the double doors, I saw a double shadow — 2 of me. At first I thought someone was about to pass me, but I was alone. Must have passed in front of the light just right. Strange and cool.

It was very dry on the track. My throat burned after a few laps.

As I turned the corners, I unintentionally tilted my head to the side. Corners are irritating.

At the far end, near where the man was doing the burpees and the kids were doing pull-ups, a banner was spread above the railing, blocking my view of the corner as I neared it. I imagined running straight into a group of walkers who might be hiding there

Did I think about anything? Did I look outside at the lights? I don’t think so.

After the run, Scott and I changed and met at the hot tub. The Otters swim team was having a practice. RJP’s and FWA’s old coach was still there, joking with the kids and calling out sets.

later: That night, I had a dream that I was swimming in a pool — the Y pool? Not sure — and a swim team coach — was it Whitney, FWA/RJP’s old coach? — said, Congratulations! You’ve made the team in the 100 free!


jan 16/RUN

4.5 miles
river road trail and edmund, north/seabury and river road path, south
35 degrees / steady rain
path conditions: a cold lake

Decided that I would go out for a run even though it was raining. It didn’t seem too slippery, so why not? I don’t regret the run, it was mostly fun and felt good, but the trail was almost completely lake, with a side strip of sheer ice. My shoes and socks were soaked after a mile. At first I didn’t care, but I started worrying (because as I get older, I do that more — sigh) that my toes/feet might go numb or worse. Nothing to do but just keep sludging through it. After I was done, my left ring toe seemed a little numb, but otherwise I was okay.

What a mess out there! The build-up of snow means there’s nowhere for the water to go. Lots of flooding in the streets and on the trail. Will this freeze overnight? I hope not.

In addition to soaking my socks and shoes, the water splashed up on my running tights. A gross grit. Because it was raining, my jacket was wet too.

It might sound like I didn’t like this run. Mostly, I did. My legs felt strong, so did my back. My arm swing was even and synced up with my feet. The rain helped me to not overheat. There was hardly anyone else out there. One other runner, 2 bikes — I noticed that at least one of them was a fat tire. Were there any walkers? I can’t remember.

I noticed the river! Almost completely open. Black, with one or two ice floes.

Anything else? Lots of cars. It was gloomy enough that most of them had their headlights on. Heard some splashing as they drove by, but never felt it.

I don’t remember hearing any birds or seeing any dogs. No skiers or sirens. No big groups of people.

As I’m writing this, I suddenly remembered that as I ran north on Edmund, down a hill, I could tell where the cracks and uneven parts of the pavement were by where the puddles were. Looking at this same road when it’s dry, I don’t think I would have been able to see. The puddles were very good pointer-outers. Look! Watch out! Here’s a bump, there’s a crack!

Wanted to find a puddle poem to add here. It took a while but I found “The Puddle” by Wisława Szymborska. As a kid, I never feared being swallowed up by a puddle. I imagine if I had any fears about puddles, it would have been that Jaws or a pirhana would have leaped out of the puddle to eat me. Okay, I don’t think I was actually afraid of that, but I could have been. Having watched Jaws and Piranha too much as a kid they were always appearing in my anxieties in the strangest ways.

The Puddle/ Wisława Szymborska 

Translated from the Polish by Joanna Trzeciak

I remember well this childhood fear of mine. 
I’d step around puddles,
especially the fresh ones, just after it rained. 
For one of them might be bottomless,
even if it looked like all the rest.

One step and it would swallow me whole,
I would start ascending downward 
and even deeper down,
toward the reflected clouds 
and maybe even farther.

Then the puddle would dry, 
closing over me,
trapping me forever—but where—
and with a scream that cannot reach the surface.

Only later did I come to understand: 
not all misadventures
fit within the rules of nature 
and even if they wanted to, 
they could not happen.



jan 15/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees
clear roads / 50% snow-covered trails / puddles

Another warmer day. The sidewalks on my block and on the way to the river are still covered in ice and slick snow. Hopefully the warm temperature today will melt more of it?! A wonderful run. Ran on the road until edmund ended, then on the trail to the falls. I don’t remember hearing the falls at all. Maybe it was because I was distracted by trying to avoid people. Didn’t look at the river again today. Why do I keep forgetting? I felt good and strong and relaxed, although my right kneecap was shifting around again.

At some point, I decided that I — my brain and my feet — find it more interesting to run on a trail with a little bit of grit or snow or something more than just flat, hard asphalt.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. Near 42nd, right after I crossed over from edmund, I saw the blur of a runner moving fast down the Winchell Trail. I hope they had yaktrak on because I bet it was super slippery down there!
  2. crossing over at 42nd involved scaling a wall of slippery snow — the crosswalk on the side I choose was blocked with snow and ice
  3. Heard the scrape scrape scrape of a shovel on a driveway or a sidewalk — rough, loud. A stubborn stretch of ice?
  4. A cross-country skier skiing on the snowy boulevard between edmund and the river road
  5. Smelled smoke from a chimney, but not at the usual spot. The smoke I smelled today was farther south
  6. the falls were crowded! A big bunch (10-15) of people were spread across the sidewalk
  7. running above the giant sledding hill I heard a kid sledding down. I could tell the hill was bumpy because their yell, which they kept going the entire way, was jagged and cut in and out
  8. a runner in black tights and a white jacket stopped near the double bridge in the middle of the trail
  9. Passing a very tall runner in a blue jacket — me: good morning! them: morning
  10. my shadow beside me and ahead of me — dark, well-defined on this bright blue day

My favorite things about the run were spotting the cross-country skier and hearing the kid yell as they sped down the hill. That yell — so joyful and comical to hear it break up, bump after bump. I started thinking about how you can use your other senses to get to know a place. In this case, hearing helped me to notice that the path was bumpy and steep (the kid’s yell went on for a while). I think I’ll mention this in my class. It also reminded me of a walk I took with Scott one fall. We were walking on the Winchell Trail under a lot of trees. Without even looking we could tell when the trees still had their leaves because the air suddenly became cooler.

jan 14/RUN

4.75 miles
edmund, north/river road trail, north/seabury, south/river road trail, south
26 degrees
snow/ice-covered 75% (path) 25% (road)

For the first time since Monday, I was able to run outside. Hooray! What a difference it makes — for how the run feels, how I feel after the run — to run outside above the gorge. I ran on the road for part of it to avoid the worst stretches of the trail. Lots of loosely packed, slippery snow. I wasn’t as worried about falling as I was about having all my energy drained from the effort of running through the snow. Because of the bad conditions, I stopped to walk a few times.

Ran north to the Franklin bridge with no headphones. Turned around and put in a playlist.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. some of the roads were bare, others were still covered in soft, slippery snow
  2. a walker ahead of me on edmund was wearing a bright orange jacket
  3. running north, the wind was at my back. Returning south, in my face — cold and stubborn
  4. the river road was thick with cars, a steady stream
  5. a few bikers, more walkers, some runners
  6. a runner in a blue jacket, carefully making his way down the icy path near franklin
  7. an orange sign, a porta potty, a few barricades off to the side: there must have been a race earlier today
  8. a congress of crows cawing furiously, the sound echoing through the alley
  9. the scrape of a shovel on a sidewalk somewhere
  10. heading up from below the lake street bridge, hearing the wind shaking the dead leaves on the oak trees, sounding almost like water dripping — or was it water dripping?

Things I Forgot to Notice, or Didn’t Notice

  1. the river — don’t remember looking at it even once
  2. no regulars — no Dave the Daily Walker or Mr. Morning! or Daddy Long Legs or Mr. Holiday
  3. no geese
  4. no woodpeckers
  5. no black-capped chickadees
  6. no fat tires
  7. no kids laughing and sledding
  8. no overheard conversations
  9. no darting squirrels
  10. no music blasting from cars or smart phone speakers

Scrolling through twitter, I happened upon this poem:

Letter from the Catskills/ David Eye

Cousin–When a dozen robins blew into the yard yesterday–
I’d never seen so many–I watched them hop, cock their heads,
grab the thaw’s first worms. Such a pleasure, those yam-
colored breast feathers. Then snow las night, enough
for a fine white pelt, mostly gone by midday. (You’re better
off doing your play in the City, till it warms up for good.)
I wonder if the snow melted or–what’s that word?–
sublimed. To go from solid to gas, skipping liquid altogether.
The way I’d like to die. Grocery-shopping last night, I swear
I felt like such a loser. Not a fully set of teeth in the house,
yet I’m the freak: 45, alone at the Liberty Shop-Rite. And a snob:
can you believe it took four people to help me find capers?
So many breakups. My sister got the only keeper. God, I love
those kids. I dream of children almost every night. Awake,
I’m a eunuch. New vocal warmup, repeat before you go on
tonight: “unique New York eunuch unique New York
eunuch….” Give your boy a squeeze. The robins are back.

Lately I’ve been reading a lot about how poetry makes the familiar strange, but I think poetry can also make the strange familiar. Give us a door into the unfamiliar so we can get to know someone else and their experiences. The door in for me with this poem was all the robins. This past week, I saw so many fat robins on my crab apple tree, swaying and bobbing and getting drunk off the shriveled up apples.

a note about editing: I have a lot of typos in my writing. I didn’t used to. For years, that was a super power, being able to catch all the errors and to write a draft with hardly any mistakes. Now, I make lots of spelling errors (before I fixed it, I had spelled crab apple, CRAP apple), leave out articles and other secondary words, and for some reason, use an excessive amount of commas. I feel like I over-comma everything. Why? I think these errors and excessive commas are happening because I’m getting older, I’m writing more, the way spellcheck is set up with autocorrect is fucked up, and my declining vision. I think my declining vision is probably the biggest culprit. It’s frustrating and irritating and humbling to confront a decline like this, but I’m working on reframing it. Less of a decline, more of a shift to new practices and less worrying about stupid typos that don’t really matter. Maybe I’ll write a poem about it?


jan 13/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.4 miles
basement
outside: an ice rink

Ugh. Hopefully it will warm up enough in the next few days so that the ice on the sidewalks will finally melt. I can run in snow and in the cold, but when the sidewalks and most of the road are one sheet of bumpy, uneven, super slick ice, I have to stay inside. Before I went down to the basement, I took Delia the dog for a walk for some recon. Almost fell at least twice on the short 2 block walk. Something interesting: even though it was very slippery and I almost fell, I never had that anxious, I’m-going-to-fall-feeling. No tensing up of my legs or shoulders.

Watched a comedian my sister told me about, Rhys Niccholson, on Netflix while I biked. I laughed a lot. Listened to the book, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed, while I ran. I loved An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, so I was excited for another book, more time to spend with Maud. Thought I might run a 5k, but I felt ready to stop a bit sooner. All I remember from my run, other than listening to Maud pretend to be senile and feeble in order to not be found out as a murderer, was thinking that treadmill runs feel longer and are much less fun than outdoor runs. Oh — I also remember noticing my stride and trying to focus on the rise and fall of my feet and relaxing my shoulders as I swung my arms.

A few days ago, I bookmarked a wonderful essay by the Diné poet Jake Skeets: My Name is Beauty. I just started reading it and found so many wonderful passages, including this one:

Viola Cordova defines the concept of cultural relativity in her essay “Language as Window” as the way Western constructs constrict worldview to one single thing and dismiss differing worldviews. However, Cordova, through an analysis of the work of linguist Benjamin Whorf, states that language is the key to interpreting the world in different ways. Using an egg paradigm, Cordova asks us to imagine the Earth not as a physical rock in space but as the yolk of an egg. She asks us to imagine ourselves swimming through air rather than walking, and to consider ourselves within something, not on something.6 Seen this way, the Earth becomes a womb, a nest, an embrace.

The swimming through air reminded me of studying fungi this past April. Here’s something I wrote on April 21, 2022:

Thought about nets and this passage from The Mushroom at the End of the World:

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. Fungi are diverse and often flexible, and they live in many places, ranging from ocean currents to toenails. But many fungi live in the soil, where their thread-like filaments, called hyphae, spread into fans and tangle into cords through the dirt. If you could make the soil liquid and transparent and walk into the ground, you would find yourself surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae (137).

Thought about imagining the soil was liquid and transparent and then entering it, surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae. What if I could swim in the soil? Swim through these nets of fungal hyphae?

I must return to this essay later and work through it slowly. So many amazing ideas! In the meantime, here is one of Skeets’ poems:

Soft Thunder/ Jake Skeets

narrowmouth toads dapple pink sandstone
knee-deep in a brown bowl of brown water

before the croon of limb and wind on weeds
puddles from the pour gather for a morning song

the sun rises from a flatbed load of open palms
                : each crease a ripple a leg a half smile

the sun knows best when it rises
                : each tide and oak and uplift sung the same

each killdeer and mare and desert bighorn
each I I gorge each I I ravine each I I—

and each part of me is hung out to dry marooned

and wrung of rain, wrung of every I until no I is left
                        :      soft thunder
                                        ponds in a clearing

jan 12/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool

Another swim this week! Noticed in the locker room that a few more people were wearing masks. Should I wear one? Before my swim, a strange sound: a woman walking into the shower area fully clothed, including sneakers that were clicking and clopping like she had yaktrax on. Did she? She went into a shower stall to find the stuff she’d left behind.

A nice swim. My googles leaked a few times, so did my nose plug. Did continuous 200s with my hypoxic breathing (3/4/5/6). Near the end, I turned it into 2 400s and changed my breathing every 100 instead of 50.

Three things I noticed:

1 — looking up at the flip turns

During one flip turn at the far wall, I looked up from underwater as I turned. In a flip turn, as you head into the wall you flip on your back underwater, then twist back on your stomach as you push off the wall (at least I do). I looked up while I was on my back, just before I pushed off. I noticed a yellowish-orangish glow. The lights from above water. It looked so cool that I made sure to look up several more times as I flipped. I couldn’t see anything but bright lights, which was a nice contrast to the pale blue of being underwater.

2 — gurgle, slosh, squeak

In a few of my recent log entries about pool swimming, I’ve mentioned that I didn’t hear anything but an occasional squeak from my nose plug. For a few laps today, I decided to listen. I heard some gurgling, a lot of sloshing as the water washed over my head, and a few squeaks from my nose plug. Nothing too exciting, but sound, always there. I guess I usually tune it out.

3 — crud on the pool floor

In addition to the usual specks of junk on the tiles, there was another chunk of white something on one tile, and some fuzzy brown things floating near the bottom of the lane next to me. Sometimes when I’m swimming, I think I see a thing floating off to the side. I check: it seems like nothing. Maybe it is nothing, or the trick of the light, and maybe it is something, some small bit of visual data sent to my brain that my eyes barely saw.

This week, I’ve been working on the class I’m teaching this winter about developing a practice of noticing and wonder and turning it into better words. Yesterday and today, I’ve focused on wonder as delight and curiosity. In the midst of this, my sister sent me a link to an article about the value of being in awe. Excellent. I enjoyed the article and I’m always excited when ideas about wonder, being open, and practicing awe are spread, and yet there’s something about the discussion that bothered me, something that seemed to be missing. Instead of dissecting the article and cutting down the things I didn’t like about it, which I used to do in my past life as an academic, I’d like to offer an expansion to one of the recommendations for how to learn to be in awe:

Practice mindfulness.

Distraction, Dr. Keltner said, is an enemy of awe. It impedes focus‌, which is essential for achieving awe‌.

“We cultivate awe through interest and curiosity,” Ms. Salzberg said. “And if we’re distracted too much, we’re not really paying attention.”

Mindfulness helps us focus‌ and lessens the power of distractions. “If you work on mindfulness, awe will come.” And ‌some studies show‌ that people who are meditating and praying also experience more awe.

“Awe has a lot of the same neurophysiology of deep contemplation,” Dr. Keltner said. “Meditating, reflecting, going on a pilgrimage.”

So spending time slowing down, breathing ‌deeply and reflecting — on top of their own benefits — have the added advantage of priming us for awe.

In this section, mindfulness seems to be loosely defined as focusing attention on something, being curious about it — the key here is IT. What you’re paying attention to is the object for you (the subject) and your focused gaze. What if this idea of paying attention (and being present to the world, which is another slogan for mindfulness) was reciprocal with the world? What if the world wasn’t the object, but subject or subjects? What if the value of being in awe was not only about confronting the vastness of the world beyond each of us as individuals, but about opening us up to experience how we are connected to/entangled with the world? I am pretty sure that what I’m trying to say doesn’t make sense to anyone else but me right now. That’s fine. Instead of spending the rest of the afternoon trying to make it intelligible (which is something else I would have done in my former academic life), I’ll offer up a poem that I found by searching, “mindfulness” on the Poetry Foundation site. I think this poem speaks to an expansion of what mindfulness could/can be as a creative, imaginative, reciprocal practice — a practice of not just focusing, but looking, seeing, beholding (see Ross Gay here). It’s that eye at the end — not only expanding what noticing is, but (I think, at least) speaking to the eye in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem about the fish. See my jul 7, 2021 entry for more of a discussion of fish eyes and beholding.

Pot of Gold/ Ingrid Wendt

For Elizabeth Bishop, 1911–1979, with gratitude

We talk, you and  I, of  mindfulness, here in the world above
          water, but what’s below is watchfulness,
                     pure and simple: creatures trying not to be eaten,
          creatures relentlessly prowling or simply waiting for meals to
 
cruise on by. Except maybe parrotfish.
          Ever industrious, ever in motion, it’s hard to find one not
                     chomping on Yucatán limestone reefs. What we see as
          dead, bleached coral or crusted limestone shelves, for them

is re-embodied Fish Delight. Which means I find them by
          eavesdropping. Ah, those castanet choruses clicking, clacking,
                     a coven of  promises leading me on until there:
          below my mask and snorkel, a dozen or more upside-down

Princesses sway as one, in their pink and blue checkerboard
          gowns, their long, long dorsal crowns
                     cobalt-striped, and turquoise, and fuchsia—useless—
          no Prince to be found, not even in fish identification books,

just me and my ardor. Bewitched, each day I hang, transfixed,
          above them in a slightly different
                     place in that once-pristine, once-undiscovered Yal-Ku lagoon,
          its cradling mix of salt and fresh water

letting me hold myself, and time, and the rest of the world
          stock still. Sometimes I’m even luckier: out of the deepest
                     shadows (as out of my book) ventures
          the shy Midnight Parrot, a constellation of neon blue

mosaic scrawled on its head, its body—two feet long—
          as dark as blue can get and still
                     not be black, its parrot beak (that family
          trait) munching rocks and shitting sand. Puffs of it,

great big clouds of  it, murking the water until
          finally settling down
                     (it’s how, some scientists
          say, sandy floors of  tropical reefs are born).

But had I dared the slightest move, my Midnight
          would have, just like that, become Dawn.
                     And so it could have been, as well, with that one
          tremendous fish, secretive, off at the edge, among

the maze of  boulders piled on boulders, broken sandstone
          columns, deep channels between them, there—
                     in a shaft of  sun, the end of all my seeking
          and what I hadn’t known I’d sought—three feet long, at least

and all alone, clown-sized lips and eyelids the brightest possible aqua
          blue in an orange-gold face,
                     the way a child might rub its mother’s most dramatic
          eye shadow onto the most unlikely places:

forehead, cheeks, even the outermost edges of  every single
          emerald-green fin, even the edge of  the deep red tail, its tips
                     turned up at the corners—that tremendous fish was eating
          nothing, that fish wasn’t moving at all, except it turned its head

and one tremendous eye caught mine. And held it. Taut.
          Oh, I almost stopped
                     breathing. And the fish stopped
          everything, too, except for slowly pulsing gills—opening,

closing, opening, closing—in sync with my own
          pounding heart. Was I
                     the watcher or the watched? How long did we stay
          like that, hooked to one another, held in water’s palm,

as through my every cell, over and over, rang Rainbow, unstoppable
          Rainbow, until I had no beginning, I had no end,
                     Rainbow I was and happily would
          be still, had not a wayward cloud blundered in.

jan 11/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 1.4 miles
basement
outside: 33 degrees / an ice rink

Outside it’s an ice rink and the air quality is bad. So, even though it’s warm, I biked and ran in the basement today. I took Delia out for a walk earlier to check on the conditions: solid ice everywhere. It’s so icy that the city suspended metro transit buses for a few hours. Yikes.

Watched an old triathlon race (2012, London Olympics, Men’s) while I biked, listened to the Apple Music’s “80s fitness” playlist while I ran. Not sure why, but “It’s Raining Man” had voiceover from Arnold Schwarsenegger talking about lifting weights. Huh? I skipped to the next song before I had a chance to find out why.

I don’t remember thinking about much as I moved. Basement workouts are usually only about moving and burning energy. I should try memorizing and reciting poems again.

Found this poem a few days ago. What a beautiful description. I love the bats and the black lake, and the swan and the moon.

I Went Out to Hear/ Leila Chatti

The sound of quiet. The sky 
indigo, steeping 
deeper from the top, like tea.
In the absence
of anything else, my own
breathing became obscene.
I heard the beating
of bats’ wings before 
the air troubled above 
my head, turned to look
and saw them gone.
On the surface of the black
lake, a swan and the moon
stayed perfectly 
still. I knew this was
a perfect moment.
Which would only hurt me
to remember and never
live again. My God. How lucky to have lived
a life I would die for.

jan 10/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
28 degrees / humidity: 90% / mist
100% soft, slippery, snow-covered

Quiet, gray, dreamy. Disconnected from the world. Alone, but not lonely. Immersed in a slow, hard effort on a slippery trail. I’m ready for this soft snow to go away. I want a clear, solid path, please. My leg muscles are sore, but I don’t regret the run. How wonderful to be outside and moving beside the gorge in the winter!

No fresh, clean air. Instead, a poor air quality warning. I couldn’t feel it in my lungs, but I could see it in the sky. Everything was even fuzzier than usual.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. heard some harsh honks, then looked up in the sky. A vee of geese! I stopped to watch them flying low until they disappeared behind a tree
  2. the sky was a pleasing, soft gray
  3. running past a park kiosk, I heard some deep thumping. Could it be the knocking of a woodpecker?
  4. the falls were frozen, although as I ran by the bridge just above the falls, I noticed a dark open spot. I didn’t stop to listen for gurgling water. Would I have heard some?
  5. only one car and one person in the parking lot, standing near the machine where you pay for parking
  6. stopped to walk on the unplowed pedestrian side of the double bridge and heard nothing but a loud silence
  7. the path was covered in soft, slippery snow, with a few short stretches of packed snow
  8. the road (edmund) was slick and wet and had lots of streaks of brown, slushy, slippery snow
  9. kids’ voices drifting over from the school playground, mixing in with the geese honks
  10. felt a fine mist on my face — was it freezing rain? moisture in the air?

Found this poem on twitter the other day:

Lit/ Andrea Cohen

Everyone can’t
be a lamplighter.

Someone must
be the lamp,

and someone
must, in bereaved

rooms sit,
unfathoming what

it is to be lit.

jan 9/SWIM

1.6 miles
ywca pool

Finally able to get back to the pool! It felt good to swim, and tiring. My goggles kept leaking and I had trouble not stopping to fix them. Now my eyes are sore. Still, always grateful to be able to swim.

Tried a new set: 6 x 200s, continuous / even 200s breathe every 3/4/5/6 by 50, working on kicking out of the flip turn / odd 200s breathe every 3/4/3/4 by 50s, working on taking at least one stroke out of the flip turn before breathing. The odd 200s were difficult; I like to breathe right away after a flip turn. In the summer, there are no flip turns, which I prefer, so I don’t have to worry about when I breathe.

Split a lane with a woman I’ve swam next to before. I think she has the same green and black TYR suit I wore a few years ago. She’s a strong swimmer, but not that fast. Today she swam freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke. Sometimes she had booties on her feet. Other times she walked/marched/ran the part of the lap in the shallower end.

A man in a black shirt and black swim trunks swam on the other side of me. He was doing underwater running drills in the shallow end with a lot of running backwards. I wonder if we was coming back from an injury or just cross-training. When he got to the deep end, he swam freestyle and breaststroke. At one point I stopped to drink some water and I realized that he was having a loud, animated conversation with the aqua jogger in the next lane. I had not heard it all as I was swimming. When I started swimming again, I could see he was talking — something about how he was moving underwater, his legs, how his body was positioned — but I still couldn’t hear he was talking. Strange, but not strange.

As always, I noticed the orange of the signs on the pool deck, the orange of Scott’s swim trunks.

Noticed a few cracks or bits of crud stuck to the tiles at the bottom of the pool as I swam above them. Thought about the wonderful book, The Swimmers, and the story in it about the mysterious cracks that began appearing in the basement pool.

Did I think about anything else? This is tiring. My feet/legs feel like rudders. Is Scott standing at the end of my lane? Is this swimmer/runner next to me trying to race? How can I balance supporting my daughter when she’s anxious and needs to stop doing things, with holding her accountable and not letting her stop doing everything? Why are my goggles leaking? That’s all I remember.

Found this delightful poem by Paige Lewis this morning:

I’m not Faking My Astonishment, Honest/ Paige Lewis

Looking out over the cliff, we’re overwhelmed 
by a sky that seems to heap danger upon us. We 
end up staring at a single white fluff in the air— 
feather, fur, dandelion puff—we don’t care 
to define it. The relief of having something 
to focus our attention. At home, our patio furniture 
unscrews itself under the usual sun. On this trip— 
well, I’m not any sadder, I just have more space 
for my sadness to fill. I don’t want to give 
particulars. A woman huffing up the trail behind 
us says to her hiking partner, It wasn’t my size,
but it was only 9 dollars. And now all I want 
is to see what it is. The future refuses 
to happen, so where else should I turn?

I love the line breaks in this poem and what they do to the meaning– we don’t care/to define it and The future refuses/to happen. I love the line, I don’t want to give/particulars, and And now all I want/is to see what it is. I enjoy overhearing conversations and trying to make sense of them, although I’m not sure I’d like to know what it is; I’d rather imagine what it might be.

jan 7/RUN

4.1 miles
river road path, north/river road path, south
10 degrees / feels like 10
100% snow and ice covered

I wasn’t planning to run outside today, but when I checked the weather and saw that the feels like temp was the same as the air temp and the wind was only 1 mph, I had to get outside. It was sunny and beautiful and not too cold once I got warmed up. But, it was hard, mostly on my legs, which are sore from yesterday’s run through snow. Still, I’m very glad to have been outside by the river. The dark shadows cast on the white path. The white river. The fresh air. Encountering dogs and fat tires and people walking and running. I heard the trestle beeping and wondered if a train was coming — nope. Also heard the faint song of a black-capped chickadee. Kids laughing as they played in the snow. A great morning.

layers

  • 2 pairs of socks
  • 2 pairs of black running tights
  • 1 bright yellow shirt
  • 1 pink thin jacket with hood
  • 1 gray thicker jacket
  • a buff
  • a black fleece-lined cap
  • 2 pairs of gloves
  • yaktrax

the sun, the moon, the snow yesterday

Driving south to St. Peter, the clouds covered the sun strangely, making it look like a giant white disc. I actually gasped, Oh!, and pointed at it.

Later, driving north back to Minneapolis, I marveled at the moon. It was darker and the moon looked almost the same as the sun had, just rounder and more real. It hung in the sky like a flashlight, illuminating the dark fields.

Even later, now at home, I looked out the back window at the deck. Little sparkles everywhere! The moon was shining on the snow. Magical. I called to my daughter and she came down to look. She always comes to look and shares in my joy over glittering snow and marvelous moons.

jan 6/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
14 degrees / feels like 6
100% snow-covered

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had a big snowstorm. 14.9 inches of snow in total. Schools went online — which is what they do now instead of snow days; students still have to show up, but just to their computers. Because it kept snowing, the city of Minneapolis didn’t declare a snow emergency and begin plowing side streets until it was over on Wednesday. The result: a mess. Today, they’re on day 3 of the snow emergency (plowing the odd side of the street) and walls of snow have appeared at the ends of sidewalks and where streets cross each other. These walls made for a slow start to my run as I climbed over them on my way to the river. The river road trail was plowed, but still covered with a hard pack of snow. I wore my yaktrax, which helped. I didn’t mind running on the snow and was able to sight and avoid all of the big, hard chunks of snow on the path. I didn’t slip, but once I almost rolled my ankle on some snow as I turned a corner at the falls.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. lots of soft ruts in the street — snow almost the color and texture of sand
  2. the river was completely white and still
  3. the dark, sharp shadows of bare tree branches sprawled across the white path
  4. kids having fun at the school playground — I couldn’t see them, but heard their exuberant voices
  5. a strange clanging, clunking, banging noise coming from the school –was it kids? — or Becketwood — a furnace?
  6. the falls weren’t falling, but frozen
  7. as they neared a tight curve by locks and dam #1, several cars slowed way down
  8. a smaller parks plow cleared off the walls of snow at the entrance to the trail near the falls
  9. the snow was so white, the sun so bright, that it all looked blue — the palest shade of blue
  10. a congress of crows calling out to each other. I remember thinking that they sounded much more pleasant than bluejays

overheard: Unfortunately, even though I tried to hang onto all of the words I heard as I ran by two walkers, I’ve forgotten some of them.

A woman to her walking companion: “Not all bosses are like that, Sheldon. My boss doesn’t do that…”

I wondered what her boss doesn’t do. Then, I thought about her frustrated tone and wondered if it was frustration over a boss who didn’t do things they way she wished, or Sheldon for assuming all bosses did things in the same way or for appreciating how his boss did things. The question became: for her, who is the asshole, the boss or Sheldon? All I had to go on were her words and her tone, which didn’t seem like enough. I imagined (but knew I’d never do) stopping to ask her: Excuse me, I’m not trying to be nosy, but what doesn’t your boss do? I thought about how not knowing was an opportunity to reflect on how we communicate and what clues we give with our inflections.

relying on my practice

A great run one day after my colonoscopy. A few days ago, I had mentioned that I was stressed out about the procedure. It went fine. In fact, there were parts of it I actually enjoyed — maybe “enjoyed” is too strong of a word? I’m glad it’s over, but it wasn’t that bad. Mostly because I’m healthy and they didn’t find anything wrong, but partly because I used the noticing skills I’ve developed from my practice of running and writing about it on this log to distract me. Is distract the right word? Maybe keep me focused on remaining present? Or occupied with something other than worry? As I waited in the crowded (but not too tightly packed) waiting room, I took notes of what I noticed. I kept paying attention (but without the notebook) when I headed back for preop and as they wheeled me into the operating room. Maybe I could turn it into a poem?

More than 10 Things I Noticed Before My Colonoscopy

  1. lime green chairs
  2. an older man, restless, tapping on the table like he was playing a keyboard or typing on a computer
  3. a nurse calling out, Sue
  4. the steady hum of the machine that circulates the air
  5. the sound of someone watching a video on a phone — the volume was low, so all I heard was a constant buzz of voices
  6. a woman with a mask below her nose walking by
  7. nurse: Sherry with Barb
  8. the hum of a copy machine or a printer
  9. Julia
  10. Tanika
  11. Isaiah (a little kid in pajamas walked by holding a woman’s hand)
  12. Mark
  13. Brandon
  14. the soft sound of someone folding a crease into a piece of stiff paper
  15. the rustling of a winter coat or nylon pants
  16. Scott’s keyboard keys clicking
  17. a deep rumbling voice
  18. a person walking by wearing bright red sneakers. I wasn’t sure if they were red or orange, so I asked Scott
  19. a cart with a blue cover being pushed by a nurse through the waiting room
  20. someone playing music — I could tell it was music, but not what kind or any of the words that were being sung
  21. a woman wearing a bright yellow stocking cap walked by
  22. Bridget
  23. Nancy
  24. the woman with her mask down coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose then making a call and saying something about 4%
  25. someone saying the phrase, Dad Bodies
  26. Wendy
  27. Travis
  28. feet shuffling, the low hum of murmuring voices

A few other things: 2 of my nurses were also named Sara/h — one was Sara, the other Sarah. My doctor’s sister is Zara. He told me the name means “flower.” When I was wheeled into the operating room, they were talking about how amazing air fryers are. As I drifted off to sleep I heard one of them saying, It’s the best appliance I have. Better than a microwave. I use it 6 or 7 times a week!

orange!

I’m continuing to work on my colorblind plate poem about orange. One key theme: I see orange everywhere. Here’s something to add to that: as the nurse (Sarah) was putting in my iv, she told me to look at the orange leaf (which was her way of saying look away so you don’t see me poking you and freak out). I turned and noticed a photograph of gray rocks with a bright orange leaf resting on them. Orange! Later, after I left the room I wondered if I had remembered correctly. Was it orange or red. But then I thought that it didn’t matter because I still thought of it as orange. This fits with my sighting of the red (which I though might be orange) sneakers (#18).

Found this poem on twitter this morning:

Blink/ Donna Vorreyer

A blur of movement where it does not belong,
a white floater in the window’s darkening eye.

A plastic bag, I think, caught in an updraft
or a bit of the dying yucca’s autumn fluff,

but I discover it is a hawk, all muscled breast
and feathered intent, settling to perch in the tree

outside my window, to survey the yard then
fly again, gone as quickly as it came, the same way

joy arrives. Without warning. Sometimes
unrecognizable. Never promising to stay.

Here’s what Vorreyer said about the poem: “If @MFiteJohnson hadn’t sent me the picture, I might have not believed it actually happened, but I have a poem keeping company with hers in the new issue of @pshares, something I thought I would never say. It’s a small poem about being in the moment, something I want to do more.

jan 3/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.25 miles
basement
outside: winter storm/snow

Winter storm today. Heavy snow mixed with some freezing rain. No running outside or driving to the y. Glad to have the bike and treadmill in the basement. While I biked, I watched a few minutes of a documentary by Tracksmith called “The Church of the Long Run.” (interesting side note: a search for “the church of the long run tracksmith” will also take you to tracksmith’s catalog for long run gear — the marketing of a sacred ritual…I have mixed feelings about this, and no time to explore them). Also watched some of the 2012 Women’s Triathlon from the London Olympics. As I ran, I listened to a book: Disappearing Earth. Such interesting storytelling about the disappearance/presumed kidnapping of 2 young girls and its impact on a wide range of women living in remote Russia.

After I finished my workout, I quickly had my last meal before a (nearly) 2 day fast for a colonoscopy on Thursday morning. My first colonoscopy. I wonder how I’ll handle not being able to eat tonight and all day tomorrow? I’ll be very glad when it’s over.

note: I don’t want to write that much about it now, but for the sake of future Sara and because this log is, among other things, about aging and learning to love/live in and with an aging body, I’ll say that this colonoscopy is stressing me out. Difficult to put into words (maybe a poem after?), but it’s about a lot of different things: frustration and feelings of helplessness over bad insurance and medical care that prioritizes profit over patients, too many people I love dying or diagnosed with different forms of cancer lately, anxiety over what I will or won’t be able to see because of my bad vision as I check-in and deal with people at the clinic, wondering if they’ll find anything that explains my gastro problems for the past 6 months. To relieve anxiety, maybe I should turn colonoscopy into anagrams?

a few minutes later: I thought colonoscopy would be difficult, so I tried endoscopic (for endoscopic exam) and it was hard too. Here’s how I did it. I put each of the letters on a different post-it note and then moved them around on my desk. I could only think of 3. I like this post-it note approach. I’ll have to try it again! Maybe I should use some old scrabble letters?

It’s not an endoscopic exam, it’s a

No Cod Spice Exam
Ponce (as in the Atlanta road, Ponce de Leon) Disco Exam
In Cop Codes Exam

Not the greatest, but still fun to try!

Working on my winter wonder class that starts at the end of this month. Seems fitting as I look outside at the snow falling, then stopping, then falling again. The snow has been heavy, but not blizzard-heavy. Not quite as bad as in this poem by Linda Pastan that I’m planning to use in my class:

Blizzard/ Linda Pastan

the snow
has forgotten
how to stop
it falls
stuttering
at the glass
a silk windsock
of snow
blowing
under the porch light
tangling trees
which bend
like old women
snarled
in their own
knitting
snow drifts
up to the step
over the doorsill
a pointillist’s blur
the wedding
of form and motion
shaping itself
to the wish of
any object it touches
chairs become
laps of snow
the moon could be
breaking apart
and falling
over the eaves
over the roof
a white bear
shaking its paw
at the window
splitting the hive
of winter
snow stinging
the air
I pull a comforter
of snow
up to my chin
and tumble to sleep
as the whole
alphabet
of silence
falls out of the
sky

jan 2/RUN

5.25 miles
franklin hill turn around
22 degrees
35% ice

Winter storm coming this evening — ice and snow. I don’t mind the snow, but I could do without the ice. Will this be the last run I can do outside for a while?

Today the sky was a grayish-white, or mostly white with a hint of gray. Hardly any wind. The path was icy and slick and I felt my feet slide a few times, but I never worried about falling.

Greeted Mr. Morning and a walker with hiking poles. Daddy Long Legs asked me if I was doing hill repeats because he thought he had seen me climbing the hill already. Nope, I said. Oh, you must be wearing the same clothes, he said.

Heard the drumming of a woodpecker, the chirping of a bird — a robin, I’ve decided.

Smelled some breakfast at Longfellow Grill as I descended below the lake street bridge.

2 miles in, I felt my body warm up, especially my legs.

Looked over at the gorge and noticed orange — the dead leaves still lingering on the oaks. Looked down into the gorge and saw a white river, completely covered.

Ran north with no headphones. Stopped 3/4 of the way up the hill to put in a playlist, then ran south.

a summary in minisons

  • drumroll please
  • my doppelgänger
  • eggs bacon toast
  • the color orange
  • impending gloom

On twitter, I encountered an interview with a local poet that I haven’t read, Michael Kleber-Diggs. So I found his site, and read a few of his poems, including this one that does a wonderful job of capturing the messy, ugly, beautiful complexity of Minneapolis:

Here All Alone/ Michael Kleber-Diggs

Raptors ride the thermals above Dakota.
Beyond them, the sun appears closer,
colder. Everything warm escapes, returns.
One-hundred nations assemble in congress,
this time for water, where water is life.
And I know this isn’t my song to sing,

but I wonder what god saves grace for hunters.

Water cannons, fire hoses, nunc pro tunc.
this land, once yours, was flooded and dammed
the same day our Rondo was cleaved for a highway.
And I know I’ve seen those attack dogs before
with the same blue force undoing brown bodies.
Foul water in Flint, good water in Bismarck:
bullets, bulldozers, bad pipes, hollow promises –
what birds are these still circling, circling

while god denies grace for the hunted?

Warm air sent rising makes gliding
seem easy, while shale beneath us fractures,
relents. Why then must earth grow colder then
harden, and leave us to shiver here all alone,
singing sad songs of foremothers, forefathers
while above the raptors exhort us to prey?

To pray to a god who saves grace for hunters.

dec 31/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
26 degrees / feels like 20
90% snow-covered

The last run of the year. A beautiful winter morning. Not much wind, not too cold, not too crowded. In the beginning, the sun was behind some clouds. The light was eerie and subdued. Everything soft gray. Almost reverent. I felt relaxed and happy and open to the world, moving with it and through it instead of against it. I tried to keep my back strong and straight, feeling the pressure release from my hips. Deep breath in through my nose, out through my mouth.

Lots of thinking about being open that I don’t quite remember now. Something about George Sheehan and a mixture of these quotes from his essay, “Running”:

…each day I take to the roads as a beginner, a child, a poet. Seeking the innocence of the beginner, the wonder of the child and the vision of the poet. Hoping for a new appreciation of the landscape, a new perspective of my inner world, some new insights on life, a new response to existence and myself.

I must listen and discover forgotten knowledge. Must respond to everything around me and inside me as well. 

Poets do this naturally. A really good poet, wrote James Dickey, is like an engine with the governor off….

The best most of us can do is to be a poet an hour a day. Take the hour when we run 0r tennis or golf or garden; take that hour away from being a serious adult and become serious beginners.

Running / George Sheehan, 1978

I like the idea of combining the wonder of the child with the vision of a poet, but not really the innocence of a beginner. Instead of innocence, I’d say the openness of a beginner, or maybe even the ignorance? — unknowingness might be better — the enthusiasm, lack of judgment or preconceived notions? Innocence seems too connected to purity and whiteness for me, in terms of how it gets imagined. Yes, I like openness.

I wasn’t thinking about innocence as I ran, just openness and being open to everything around me and inside of me. When I lifted from my hips, my shoulders relaxed and dropped, my chest opened. I smiled a lot, greeted almost all the other runners with a morning or a wave, didn’t worry about my upcoming colonoscopy. I didn’t try to hold onto everything I was seeing or hearing or smelling or feeling, but let it move through me.

Returning to Sheehan’s quotes, his emphasis on new — new appreciations, new perspectives, new insights, new response — made me think of an essay I read just before my run:

As we enter this December, we can hunker down to endure a dark winter, or we can head out and see familiar paths with new eyes. As we taste the crisp, fresh air and float through the white quiet we may feel a spark of long-forgotten magic, and maybe even hope; hope for a different spring, one we’ll be ready to embrace with the youthful strength of a winter well lived.

The Magic of Winter Running/ Jonathan Beverly

I ran without headphones or yaktrax and in lots of layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, a green shirt, a pink jacket with a hood, a black vest, 1 pair of black gloves, a black fleece-lined cap, a gray buff.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a male runner in shorts with bare legs
  2. the sun came out by the time I reached the falls
  3. minnehaha creek just before the falls was completely covered in white
  4. a dry leaf skittering across the snow-covered path. no sound, only movement — sharp, brittle, frantic
  5. the smell of smoke in the usual spot
  6. kids’ voices, laughing and yelling as they sled down the hill between wabun and the falls
  7. my shadow running next to me
  8. a fat tire approaching the river road trail, then carefully crossing over the hard chunks of snow and ice as it entered the trail
  9. a black capped chickadee with a strange call — not the fee bee call and not chickadeedeedee. Do they have a different winter call?
  10. a pileated woodpecker calling out in response, and another bird that I can’t identify

Forgot to look at the river. Didn’t hear any geese. Decided not to stop at my favorite spot at the falls and put in a playlist.

Back to the black capped chickadee. I was running on edmund, thinking about something else, when suddenly I heard the chickadee. A welcomed interruption! I started thinking about a fun experiment to try with my students that’s about being more open to hearing sounds, like this call. It involves going outside and recording a moment of sound. Then later, listening back and giving attention to the sounds in the recording that you didn’t notice, or that you ignored (maybe always ignore). What sounds are around us that we tune out? Rumbling planes, crunching footsteps.

Speaking of sounds around us, I almost forgot to mention the constant presence of the hum of the city. Starting my run, I noticed how loud it was — not noisy traffic right around me, but buzzing off in the distance. So loud! But not unpleasant.

Tried out the minson form (14 letter sonnet). So fun! Not sure if I’m quite capturing the spirit of a sonnet — what is that exactly? does it require a volta? how do you do that in 14 letters? The following are based on my log entry above:

another gray day

more muted magic

bare leg bravery

nervous fat tire

all of it strange

emptied of geese

quiet leaf waltz

forgotten river

remembered bird

opened the doors

a kid a sled a hill

a being shadowed

the frozen falls

I like the double meaning of this last one, frozen falls. I didn’t slip on any ice, or see anyone else stumble as they moved over the occasional ice patch, but the frozen sidewalk probably did cause somebody to fall.

dec 30/SWIM

1 mile
ywca pool

Another fun swim with RJP! Today, instead of continuous 200s, I mixed it up with a few faster 50s, 3 100 IMs, and a bunch of 200s. I stopped several times to talk with RJP. At one point, we were swimming together. I kept looking at her underwater, trying to catch her eye. She never noticed.

Anything else? The water was clear. The chlorine didn’t burn my nose. My googles only leaked a little. I don’t remember hearing many sounds — no squeaks from my nose plug. As usual, it was all about orange. Every time I turned my head, I saw orange (the orange signs on the pool deck) or looked for orange (the orange of Scott’s swim trunks).

a new form: the minison

Found a new poetic form that I’d never heard of before: minison. A mini sonnet. The only “rule” is that the poem is 14 letters long. Wow. Discovered The Minison Project and went down a rabbit hole.

rabbit hole trip (14 letters):

begin here: Issue 0 of the zine
go deeper here: The Minison Zine
get your bearings here: The Minison Project
find other examples here: corkwood blossom and the fourteen ghosts
fall further here: Seymour Mayne – Hail: 14 word Sonnets

a few favorite minisons:

fourteen ghosts
between the snow
nonstop farting
about aboutness

a favorite 14 word sonnet:

DECEMBER FLIGHT/ Seymour Maynes

These
starlings
swerve
in
flocks,
turning
their
frantic
wings
towards
the
sun’s
slanting
light.

So much fun! I could see these as being great for playing around with words, experimenting, and finding better words for describing a run or a swim. What could I say about my swim today?

  • butterfly hurts
  • winter swimming
  • flip turn fiasco
  • leaking goggles
  • staring at Rosie
  • I only see orange

When I have more time, I’d like to try these out more. Maybe suggest them in my class?!

dec 29/RUN

5 miles
franklin hill turn around
34 degrees / humidity: 87%
60% snow and slush covered

A nice run, even if it was a little too slushy and slick. After I was done, walking on edmund, I took out my phone and recorded my thoughts and the sounds of this wintery Thursday morning. Very cool to listen back to the recording: the steady crunch crunch crunch of my feet, car wheels whooshing through the slushy puddles, the hum of the city, birds chirping, melted snow drip drip dripping through the metal gutter, the brief moments when my feet go silent as I cross over bare pavement.

Ran north with no headphones, south with a playlist (summer 2014).

post run winter morning sounds

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a congress of crows, cawing loudly (congress, council, and consideration are J. Drew Lanham’s collective name for crows instead of murder)
  2. greeting Dave the Daily Walker, good morning Dave!
  3. the river is white, completely covered
  4. in some spots, the trail was 1/2 slush, with a few spots of ice
  5. in other spots, bare pavement
  6. a woman in a yellow vest, running fast in the road. I marveled at the steady rhythm of her feet and before I knew it she was way over on the other side of 36th. I spotted her as a bright yellow dot in the distance
  7. the scraping of ski poles to the side of me — not quick thrusts, but the steady drag of poles down a hill
  8. some of the snow was white, some gray, some light brown
  9. several runners, many walkers, a few fat tires
  10. 2 women walking in the middle of the trail, in the barest spot, stopping every few seconds to stare at something — what?

Here are a few passages about the wonder of winter from Dallas Lore Sharp and his book Winter. I originally heard about him on The Marginalia.

I love the winter…its bare fields, empty woods, flattened meadows, its ranging landscapes, its stirless silences, its tumult of storms, its crystal nights with stars new cut in the glittering sky, its challenge, defiance, and mighty wrath. I love its wild life–its birds and animals; the shifts they make to conquer death. And then, out of this winter watching, I love the gentleness that comes, the sympathy, the understanding!

you must see how close you had passed to and for all summer to the vireo’s nest, hanging from the fork on a branch of some low bush or tree, so near to the path that it almost brushed your hat. Yet you never daw it! Go on and make a study of the empty nests….Study how the different birds build — materials, shapes, finish, supports; for winter is the better season in which to make such study, the summer being so crowded with interests of its own.

When the snow hardens, especially after a strong wind, go out to see what you can find in the wind furrows of the snow–in the holes, hollows, pockets, and in footprints in the snow. Nothing? Look again, closely — that dust — wind-sweepings — seeds!

winter, when the leaves are off, the ground bare, the birds and flowers gone, and all is reduced to singleness and simplicity — winter is the time to observe the shapes, colors, varieties, and growth of the lichens.

What a world of gray days, waste lands, bare woods, and frozen waters there is to see! And you should see them — gray and bare and waste and frozen. But what is a frozen pond for if not to be skated on? and waste white lands, but to go sleighing over? and cold gray days, but so many opportunities to stay indoors with your good books?

You will see the fishermen on the ponds catching pickerel through the ice — life swimming there under the frozen surface! You will see the bare empty woodland fresh budded to the tip of each tiny twig — life all over the trees thrust forward to catch the touch of spring! You will see the wide flinty fields thick sown with seeds — life, more life than the sun and the soil can feed, sleeping there under “the tender, sculturesque, immaculate, warming, fertilizing snow”!

The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle underfoot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust…These were not the voices, colors, odors, and forms of summer. The very face of things had changed; all had been reduced, made plain, simple, single, pure! There was less for the senses, but how much keener now their joy! The wide landscape the frosty air, the tinkle of tiny icicles, and, out of the quiet of the falling twilight, the voice of the quail!

dec 28/SWIM

1 mile
ywca pool

Just RJP and me today. We swam for about 1/2 hour. Crowded. We still managed to find a lane to split. At some point, I noticed a line of kids walking the pool deck. Otters swim team. RJP and FWA were on the team for 4 or 5 years. I wonder if it was strange for RJP to see all of them out of the corner of her eye as she kept swimming? I forgot to ask.

update (later that day): I asked RJP and she said that the kids weren’t Otters. They were just learning to swim and had on swimming vests. I asked, were the vests orange? Yes, she said. Of course, orange. Every time I swim at the y, I see orange, always orange. Will that make it into my orange poem? Possibly.

There were 2 women swimming next to us. One of them pushed off the wall for her first lap in a sprint. At least it looked like a sprint. The other woman was a little slower, more measured. 3 lanes across, a guy was swimming fast, doing a hard set. Another woman was walking underwater and stretching her legs.

There was a low buzz from the leisure pool as kids burned off holiday energy.

A good swim. I’d like to figure out how to swim for longer. It’s hard because RJP and Scott don’t want to stay quite as long as me, and they’re the ones who can drive. I’ll figure something out. For now, I’m just happy to be swimming in the winter!

Later, in the car, RJP told me about some older women she overheard in the locker room. They seemed like old friends, she said, and were happily chatting away. I love this about locker rooms. So many people are happy, having just worked out. I’m glad RJP noticed it too.

Here’s a color poem I discovered yesterday. I want to study it to see how it can help me with my color poems.

Against Pink / Dara Yen Elerath

Pink is an unhappy hue, not soothing like cerulean, nor calming like lavender or gray. It is the color of fingernails shorn away, blood dripping from the waxen quick. It is the color of a sunburned arm. The color of harm that lingers on cut shins for days. Pink is not the shade of buttercups or daisies. It is the color of poisonous brugmansia blooms, of poppies that bring on sleep. Pink saturates the face in anger. It is the cast left on a cutting board by a hunk of uncooked meat. Pink, too, is the bittersweet shade of passion subdued, passion that has slipped from burgundy to rose. It is only a tincture of desire and so carries the least conviction. It is the tint that drifts away unnoticed in the night. Be frightened of pink. Do not think it the innocent color of dresses or barrettes, the blush of areolas, strawberry snow cones, or grenadine martinis. Try, for once, to see it rightly. It is frightening. It is the hue of a person’s insides, the color of a womb. That room where life arises. That room where babies are made. Where arms, legs, and heads are created. Eyes, blood, and tiny teeth.

dec 27/RUN

3.3 miles
under ford bridge and back
18 degrees / feels like 8
95% snow-covered, a few slick spots

And, goal achieved! In the middle of my run, I reached 1000 miles. Probably as I ran over the double bridge on my way back, maybe as I encountered another person who was stopped on the bridge. We did that annoying thing where we both went the same way, then shifted and went the same way again, then finally went in opposite ways.

A good run. It felt hard at the beginning. Difficult to breathe through a stuffed-up nose. I’m not sick, it’s just living inside in the dry air for too much of the day. As I warmed up, it got a little easier. The sidewalks were covered in packed, uneven snow, slick in spots.

I think I saw my shadow. I can’t remember if I saw them today, but a few days ago, driving on the river road, I admired the long, dark, twisted shadows the trees were casting on the completely white, completely snow-covered river road.

I heard some chirping birds, sounding like spring. As I started the run on my block, I heard a howl or a bellow. A dog? A coyote? A dog. Whining at the back door of a neighbor’s house. And I heard my feet striking the packed snow on the path. No pleasing crunch, or delightfully annoying grind. Only muffled thuds. Thought I heard some wind chimes coming from a neighbor’s deck. No headphones heading south, my “swim meet motivation” playlist heading back north.

Smelled the fire at the house on edmund that always seems to have a fire in the winter.

Felt my feet slip a little as I ran over slick spots. Enjoyed feeling the dry pavement — solid, secure — on the very rare and brief spots where the path was dry. Felt my burning, flushed face — was I overdressed? Felt a strong, sharp wind blowing in my face.

At some point in the run, I was interrupted by the sound of the wind rushing through some dead, orange leaves on an oak tree. What was I interrupted from? Maybe thinking too much about my effort or whether or not I would encounter another person or concentrating on the words to the song I was listening to. This interruption reminded me that one key way I use moving outside to pay attention is through passive noticing, answering when the world calls to me. Making myself open and available to the world. Yes! Before I went out for a run, I was working on the schedule for the class I’m teaching in the winter. I was trying to figure out how to tighten it up, rein it in a little, so I didn’t have too much (too many ideas, activities, readings) that might overwhelm students. I think this idea of passive attention and letting the world in, being open, is key to that. Cool.

Speaking of my class, here are some passages from an essay (Thinking Like a Sidewalk) on sidewalks and running in the winter that I might want to use in my class:

gradations of gray

My hometown of Carbondale, Colorado is buried in enough snow each winter to force most of us to become connoisseurs of concrete. Having spent the spring inviting peaking greens, all summer squinting across a singed expanse, and the fall celebrating the leafy explosion, each winter I relearn how to appreciate the gradations between smoke, cool ash, slate, pewter and pearl.

treadmill window

I realized what made me feel part of the wild was not physical proximity, but emotional. The intimate connections I formed with my wintery tableau from the treadmill felt as real and important as any experience on the trail. I became more familiar with that patch of snowy creekbed than many people ever would, and even worried when my nuthatch friend failed to report for pine-branch duty (If you’re reading this, please reach out). 

The treadmill window allowed me to become what Ralph Waldo Emerson called the “transparent eyeball” in his essay, “Nature.”

I am nothing, I see all. 

a practice

Similar to a new strength routine, or a pre-race visualization, cultivating the habit of noticing the confident posture of a rook on its telephone pole perch takes focus, intent and repetition.

This demands turning attention toward the rustle of grass that says you aren’t running solo or the shallow pawprint that shows you aren’t the only critter perfecting their strides. Each run offers an opportunity to broaden our understanding of what wildness is, and connect with it in and around ourselves. 

Perhaps the sidewalk doldrums are due less to the monochrome concrete as the decline in our ability to appreciate the wilderness that exists between the cracks, and that exists in us.  It’s one thing to value a majestic vista worthy of posting on Instagram, something more subtle to celebrate the subtlety of snowy sidewalk. 

Thinking Like a Sidewalk

Wow! I’m definitely going to use bits of this essay for my class. Love it. note: the title, Thinking Like a Sidewalk, is a reference to Aldo Leopold and his essay, Thinking Like a Mountain.

Other things I want to read that are mentioned in the essay:

dec 26/RUNSWIM

run: 2.5 miles
ywca track

Went to the Y with Scott and RJP this morning, so I ran there. First time running on the track in 4 or 5 years. Wasn’t too bad — not that crowded. Very quiet. I forgot to count laps so my distance is approximate — my watch never seems to be accurate indoors. Listened to “swim meet motivation” playlist and observed people as I passed them.

10 People I Noticed on the track

  1. a man, sometimes running (slowly), sometimes walking, wearing black gloves — not boxing gloves but also not winter gloves
  2. another guy, pulling a sled at the far corner
  3. a woman running, the key to her locker jangling in her pocket with every step
  4. an older white woman with white hair — was she wearing a pink sweatshirt, or was it blue? I can’t remember now. She walked pretty fast on the track, but was slow on the stairs when I was behind her earlier
  5. RJP, walking — I waved at her every time I passed by. Was it annoying?
  6. someone using rattle ropes, off to the side, furiously lifting them up and down
  7. a woman on an eliptical machine in front of one of the windows
  8. an older white guy with white hair in jeans and a maroon shirt walking around the track
  9. Scott, running
  10. another older white man wearing gray shorts, walking

I don’t remember thinking about much, or noticing anything that interesting, or overhearing some strange conversation.

swim: .25 miles
ywca pool

Only needed a quarter of mile to reach my year goal of 120 miles. Not a very ambitious goal for an entire year of swimming; this goal was mostly for the open swim season. I’m thinking this year, since I’m swimming in the pool, I need to make it a lot bigger. 200 or 300? Not sure. Split a lane with RJP. Crowded today because of the break. All I remember was swimming next to a bunch of swim team kids, feeling sluggish in my first lap underwater, and noticing how the water was clearer than it had been last week.

Found this hybrid journal online, Cutbow Quarterly review (2025: clicked on the link and it no longer exists). A call for submissions from jan 1-2. I want to submit something — either a mood ring or a colorblind plate, but which? One note: some of the site is almost unreadable for my bad vision. Not nearly enough contrast! Thankfully the journal pdf is easier to read.

I love lists, so I was excited to see this poem in the first issue:

List of Things to Make a List of/ Beth Mulcahy

Make a list of
things that sound like thunder but are not conversations to have
hard conversations to have
what makes conversations hard what makes conversations easy
things to do to get through a hard day
songs that helps with getting through a hard day
people to tell about it what to tell them
people not to tell
ways to prevent it
how to describe it
how to tell people the truth when to tell people the truth things you have said
things you should not have said things you should have said things you should say
to someone specific to anyone
to no one
how to let go of retroactive anxieties
things you used to care about that you don’t anymore things you wish you cared more about
things that used to be different
examples of passive aggressive statements examples of things that are too direct (harsh)
ways of beating around the bush
ways of cutting to the chase
how to calm yourself down
apologies you owe
things you can’t forgive
things you can’t forget
things you should forget
things that are your fault
things that are not your fault
the hardest things you’ve had to do
how to make things easier
for self
for others things you can explain
things that you cannot explain things you can’t describe things to write through
things that are private
people who love you
people who love you and also like you
things you have to offer
things to say to people you love things to say about the weather people you talk to every single day people you don’t know anymore people you loved who are dead ways to let things go
how to keep from having to let go ways to pay attention
things to pay attention to
things to ignore
places to fly away to
ways to be where you are

dec 23/BIKERUN

bike: 10 minute warm-up
run: 3.35 miles
basement
outside temp: -7 / feels like -25

Scott, RJP, and I braved the cold and drove over to the Y. Empty parking lot. Closed early for the holidays because of the extreme cold and wind. Oh well. Drove back home and did another treadmill workout. Covered the display panel, turned on a running podcast, and ran with hardly any idea of how long I was moving. I wanted to check my watch a few times, but I decided to wait until there was a pause in the podcast for the sponsor. Almost 33 minutes. Wow, I had no idea I had been running for that long. Mostly listened to the Olympic 1500 runner Heather MacLean discuss being an introvert, talking to the trees in a Flagstaff forest, and struggling with the pressure of running at the Olympics. I tried to think about color and the idea of orange and buoys.

This morning I had thought about orange in relation to navigation and reorienting myself in terms of open water swimming and life and wanting to become a bird (using quantum mechanics and blue light for navigation) or one of the monarch butterflies that fly across lake superior on a route designed to avoid a mountain that hasn’t existed for centuries. Orange, literally and figuratively, is about navigation and orientation for me. It’s the first color I couldn’t see that started my awareness that something was wrong with my vision. It’s the color of the buoys that I’ve used every summer since I was diagnosed for practicing “how to be when I cannot see” — learning how to negotiate/navigate without the certainty of sight. It’s the color that I’ve noticed the most when I tracking how my peripheral vision works and is helping me use the remaining bits of central vision.

2 past entries to review:

On bird navigation and quantum mechanics
On monarch butterflies and missing mountains

Found this poem the other day on Poets.org:

Owl/ Anne Haven McDonnell

In winter, we find her invisible 
against the furrows 
of cottonwood bark. Her swivel 
and lean follow us until 
we sit on the old polished log 
we call creature. She blinks, 
swells her feathers out, shakes and settles. 

It’s a good day when I see an owl. 
We watch until she drops—a fall 
opening to swoop and glide. What is it 
with lesbians and owls? Someone 
asked. I’ll leave the question 
there. There’s a world 

the old trees make of water 
and air. I like to feel the day 
undress its cool oblivion, currents 
moving the one mind of leaves, 
shadows deeper with the breath 
of owls. Just the chance she might 
be there watching makes me 
love—no—makes me loved.

So much I love about this poem: the short lines, economy of words, how the narrator has named the log creature, that it’s a good day when she sees an owl (not because it’s an owl, although that’s cool, but because she thinks that if she sees a certain something, she’ll have a good day. Mine is roller skiers or turkeys), the cool oblivion, the breath of owls, shadows as both (?) a noun and a verb, the ending line.

dec 22/BIKERUN

bike: 12 minute warm-up
run: 3.25 miles
basement
outside temp: -6 / feels like -25

Dangerously cold today, or as the winter storm warning described it, life-threatening. Yikes. In order to chip away at those last miles I need to reach my goal of 1000 miles, I ran on the treadmill.

current total (after this run): 991.95

Warmed up (because it was cold in the basement!) on the bike first, while watching Erin Azar (Mrs. Space Cadet) and her latest “uncomfy” challenge. A self-proclaimed struggle runner and content creator, Azar is completing (and filming) a bunch of things that make her feel uncomfortable. This one was working out with a college lacrosse team. I like her and I enjoyed this video, partly for her perspective, partly for the positive energy of the college athletes, and partly for the speed drills. Some useful stuff in there, I think.

After the bike warm-up, I ran for 31 minutes. Decided to try listening to my latest audiobook, a story collection about an elderly woman in Sweden who likes to solve her problems with murder: An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good. I really like stories with smart, capable, thriving (not always physically, but in terms of their perspective that when you get old you’re not just waiting for death to come) older women. I also like that it’s a story collection — as opposed to a ridiculously long novel — and that it’s translated from Swedish. I covered the display panel on the treadmill with a towel, didn’t look at my watch, and ran while listening to Maud (the old lady) murder a terrible gold digger and a selfish, needy sister. Wow. I lost track of time and was surprised when I gave in and looked at my watch and saw that 26 minutes had gone by. I struggle to run for a long time on a too steady treadmill in a boring basement. Listening to this book helped.

Earlier today, I continued reading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets. Here’s #51:

51. You might as well act as if objects had the colors, the Encyclopedia says.—Well, it is as you please. But what would it look like to act otherwise?

Bluets/ Maggie Nelson

I wrote this in reaction (as opposed to a thought out response) to the idea of acting otherwise: What would this look like for me? I am not acting as if they had no colors, nor do I need to. I can still see colors. My world is not black and white or even gray. The colors just work differently, unreliably. Colors speak in a language that is sometimes silent for me. Color-coded, color as signal, sign. Color to get your attention to communicate something more quickly than a word could do. Color as a practical language. I’ve lost, am losing the ability to USE color as an efficient/effective/persuasive form of communication. Or — to be used by it. Some of this is good, but some of it prevents me from receiving important messages: mold on food, danger in the road, stay away, stop.

Back to Nelson and Bluets. I’m struck by how she cites and uses other writers/thinkers/poets in this book. The first book I read by Nelson was a more recent one, The Argonauts, way back in 2015. The citation is different in this book, but it’s worth mentioning:

Perhaps the biggest thing that has struck me so far is Nelson’s way of citing her sources. When she’s using someone else’s theory or idea, she puts that theorist’s name in the margin, beside her own text. Sometimes she directly quotes the theorist, sometimes she merely invokes them.

story log entry / 6 dec 2015

Here are 2 examples from Bluets:

12. And please don’t talk to me about “things as they are” being changed upon any “blue guitar.” What can be changed upon a blue guitar is not of interest here. 

I wasn’t what she meant here, but when I googled “blue guitar things as they are” I easily found the reference: Wallace Stevens, “The Man with the Blue Guitar”

107. Many people do not think the writing of Gertrude Stein “means” anything. Perhaps it does not. But when my students complain that they want to throw Tender Buttons across the room, I try to explain to them that in it Stein is dealing with a matter of pressing concern. Stein is worried about hurt colors, I tell them. “A spectacle and nothing strange a single hurt color and an arrangement in a system to pointing,” I read aloud, scanning the room for a face that also shows signs of being worried about hurt colors.

This reference, which involves the invoking of a line, a direct quotation, and a story about her students. It led me to Stein’s poem: A Carafe, that is a Blind Glass and a helpful explanation: The Difference is Spreading: On Gertrude Stein

What to make of this, or why am I mentioning it? I’d like to play more with how I cite my references in my color poems. I also like the idea of the various bits of information/passages/lines of poetry I’ve acquired being much of the substance of my poem.