Category: Running Log

nov 10/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
64 degrees

Warm, sticky, damp. Thunderstorms coming in a few hours. Blizzards possible up north. A gray morning. Right before I left for my run the sun came out, then left again. Hazy, gloomy. I like this weather, although I’d prefer it to be colder, less humid. The gray sky looked smudged and made the bare branches seem extra wispy and fragile. I felt good running, relaxed. Ran north with no headphones, south with a Lizzo playlist.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. A runner passing me wearing an orange shirt that lost its glow in the gloom of the gorge
  2. A walker wearing bright yellow (like me)
  3. A roller skier climbing the Franklin hill. I don’t remember hearing any poles clicking or clacking or scraping
  4. Unlike yesterday, the cars on the river road had their headlights on
  5. Passing under the bridge at the bottom of the hill, I noticed a big blue circle on the ground with the numbers “94” on it. Interstate 94. Maybe now I will always remember that this bridge is 94, and the bridge near downtown is 35?
  6. Running north above the gorge, from the left (closer to the road) the wind was blasting very warm air, from the right (near the gorge) the wind was blasting cold air. Overdressed in long sleeves, I preferred the cold
  7. A bird flying up above me. Every time I tried to see it straight on, it disappeared. I could only see it off to the side
  8. I don’t think I looked at the river once, even when I was right by it below Franklin
  9. The pavement is wet, the dirt trails soft and muddy
  10. a big truck with a chain track like a tank instead of wheels on the road near the Danish Center — why was it there?

I don’t have one big theme for gray today, just a few smaller thoughts:

  • gray as a mix of white and black and gray as the mix of 2 opposites — like the hot and cold air I experienced as I ran above the gorge
  • what the gray of the sky did to the bare branches of the trees, making the small branches at the tips look wispy or like they were fading or dissolving or just soft and fuzzy

Googled “poem the color gray” and found this wonderful lyric essay: Ode to Gray

the color of cubicles and winter camouflage, of sullage, of inscrutable complexity, of compromise. It is the perfect intermediate, an emissary for both black and white. 

It is the color of soldiers and battleships, despite its dullness. It is the color of the death of trees. The death of all life when consumed by fire. The color of industry and uniformity. It is both artless and unsettling, heralding both blandness and doom. It brings bad weather, augurs bleakness. It is the color other colors fade to once drained of themselves. It is the color of old age.

I’m drawn to gray, as to a dream, but not to any old gray. Not storm-cloud gray or corporate monolith. I prefer tranquil gray: the undyed wool of sheep in rain, the mood inside a Gerhard Richter painting, the mottle of an ancient cairn. I don’t mean any one gray either but the entire underrainbow of the world, the faded rose and sage and caesious. Liard, lovat, perse. The human eye perceives five hundred—not a mere fifty—shades of gray. Paul Klee called it the richest color, “the one that makes all the others speak.” 

Gray is the endless and. It can be cooled or warmed, made magic or mundane. It’s almost always tinged with color, but nothing quite so bold as to commit.

In the realism of the black-and-white, gray is every color—without the tartness. The understudies take the stage, and not one seems to miss the headliners. We see the world without distraction. Andre Gide called gray the color of the truth.

Gray in the wild opens and spills. Put two grays together and you’ll see the color each one hides within, the “endless variations” noted by Van Gogh. I think of the handful of river pebbles I once snuck into my pockets on a day trip to a waterfall: they were dusty gray when I got home, but underwater, each concealed a secret separate life as green or red or blue. So many things that seem gray on the surface have a treasure to unlock—myself, I hope, included. [note: this idea of seeming gray on the surface reminds me of something I read about gray matter yesterday. The brain tissue only looks gray when it’s outside of the body being observed, inside the brain it’s more pink — I wish I could find the source for that now]

It is the perfect neutral, balanced and dignified—and yet it is so effortlessly swayed; it is the pool that takes in other colors as they bleed. It complements; it brightens light and lightens dark. It isn’t flat. It’s deep, endlessly deep. Gray is the dark end of the light. The light end of the dark. Unsettling, perhaps, but full of possibility. Just think how beautiful we all look in the gloaming. It’s liminal, the color of our own potential to become.

nov 9/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls turn around
53 degrees / humidity: 96%

A great run this morning. I felt strong and relaxed and never like I wanted or needed to stop. A gray morning. At the start, the sky was almost white with a little gray and the idea of light blue. By the end, the sky was still white, but a little more gray and thick, heavy. Returning above the gorge, there was some haze over the water.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. gushing water from the sewer pipe at 42nd st
  2. trickling water at the falls
  3. most of the leaves are off the trees, the ones that remain are burnt orange
  4. other colors: blue-gray asphalt at minnehaha park, green grass, my bright orange sweatshirt
  5. a runner in a light colored shirt passed me going fast under the ford bridge. I enjoyed watching his bobbing shoulders bounce off into the distance for the next 5 minutes
  6. almost empty parking lots at the falls, a few groups of walkers
  7. the beep beep beep of a car alarm from a car being towed through the roundabout near the falls
  8. even though it was a little dark and gloomy, few cars had on their lights
  9. the river was half light, half dark
  10. a elementary school class visiting the ravine, a line of them stretching across the sidewalk. I found a big gap and tried to quickly pass through. Some kids sprinted, trying to catch me or run into me (they didn’t)

Little Gray Cells

Today’s gray theme is: the brain, the little gray cells, gray matter. When I think of gray matter, I first think of the “little gray cells” and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, especially in one my favorite movies, Death on the Nile:

“And to rest the little gray cells.”

Gray matter is tissue found in the brain. It contains a lot of neuronal cells. Reading about it, I could feel myself shutting down. Too much science-y jargon! Here’s a description of their function to remember for later:

Grey matter serves to process information in the brain. The structures within the grey matter process signals from the sensory organs or from other areas of the grey matter. This tissue directs sensory stimuli to the neurons in the central nervous system where synapses induce a response to the stimuli.

These signals reach the grey matter through the myelinated axons that make up the bulk of the white matter. The grey matter that surrounds the cerebrum, also given the name cerebral cortex is involved in several functions such as being involved in personality, intelligence, motor function, planning, organization, language processing, and processing sensory information.

Grey Matter in the Brain

Reading this description I’m wondering how they work with vision for both motor function and processing sensory information. As I walked through my alley at the end of my run I also wondered, How does exercise affect gray matter? Looked it up and found a pop description of a recent small study from an Australian site that suggests aerobic activity increases the gray matter, especially in terms of cognition. I found the word choice in this line interesting:

Recent research from Germany shows that aerobic exercise increases local and overall gray matter volume in the brain by an average 5.3 cubic centimetres.

This is a significant increase and more than the total brain volume of some American Presidents.

Well played, Australia.

I looked up “gray matter vision poem” and this one came up. I’d like to spend more time with it and Forrest Gander’s notes about his translation.

Echo/ Pura López-Colomé

translated by Forrest Gander

It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product—
Airs no Oceans keep—
—Emily Dickinson

Afloat between your lens
and your gaze,
the last consideration to go
across my gray matter
and its salubrious
deliquescence
is
whether or not I’ll swim,
whether I’ll be able to breathe,
whether I’ll live like before.

I’m caught in the bubble
of your breath.
It locks me in.
Drives me mad.

Confined to speak alone,
I talk and listen,
ask questions and answer myself.
I hum, I think I sing,
I breathe in, breathe in and don’t explode.
I’m no one.

Behind the wall
of hydrogen and oxygen,
very clear, almost illuminated,
you allow me to think
that the Root of the Wind is Water
and the atmosphere
smells of salt and microbes and intimacy.

And in that instant comes
the low echo
of a beyond beyond,
a language archaic and soaked
in syllables and accents suited
for re-de-trans-forming,
giving light,
giving birth to
melanin
hidden within another skin:
the hollow echo of the voice
which speaks alone.

It would have taken me a lot longer to understand (some of) what’s happening with Emily Dickinson in this poem if I hadn’t listened to Forrest Gander’s introduction, or read his translator notes. First, he says in his introduction before reading the poem:

Her poem seems to take place at a time when she’s undergoing physical trauma, which is cancer, and in this poem she is sort of slipping under a narcotic before some kind of treatment or operation, and in the last moments of consciousness what’s going through her mind is a poem of Emily Dickinson’s

And then he writes, in his translator notes:

Written at a difficult time in the poet’s life, at a time when her life was emphatically at stake, this poem includes an echo of Emily Dickinson’s #1295:

I think that the Root of the Wind is Water—
It would not sound so deep
Were it a Firmamental Product—
Airs no Oceans keep—
Mediterranean intonations—
To a Current’s Ear—
There is a maritime conviction
In the Atmosphere—

In Pura López-Colomé’s “Echo,” it seems as though the poet, going under in both the sedative and the psychological sense—”the last consideration to go”—finds her mind looping a Dickinson poem concerned with going under, for if air is water, we drown in it. (There are allusions to other Dickinson poems as well.) But Dickinson’s re-de-transformational language brings her into the living poet’s present, even as that present may be slipping away. (I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s hope that “in black ink my love may still shine bright.”) Dickinson’s addictive syllables and rhythms bring her to life—her flesh takes on color (so the melanin). And López-Colomé, who has been speaking to herself alone, finds in herself a place where another poet is speaking to herself.

Translator’s notes/ Forrest Gander

Wow, it’s funny that I randomly came across this poem because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how Emily Dickinson is shaping my experiences of understanding and coping with vision loss. I’ve wondered about how to gesture at this influence in some new poems about my current seeing status. Also, I’ve been quoting some Dickinson, especially, “Before I got my eye put out” and “We grow accustomed to the Dark” in my head as I drift off to sleep.

one thing thing, added on November 13: Last night, while out for dinner with my son after his fabulous fall band concert, I happened to mention that I did a day on gray matter. FWA, a Breaking Bad fan, said, Gray matter is the name of the company that Walter White co-founded and then was cheated (or did he say screwed?) out of. It’s why he had to become a chemistry teacher and why he started making meth. I’ve never watched the show, although FWA really wants us to check it out. Maybe I will…

update, 9 nov 2023: Not too long after writing this, Scott and I started watching Breaking Bad and loved it. It took most of the spring, but we watched (and enjoyed? appreciated?) it all. After an extended break from the Walt world, we started watching Better Call Saul last week.

nov 8/SWIM

1+ mile (1950 yards)
ywca pool

Another swim! So happy to be able to swim this late fall and winter. I did my usual: continuous 200s freestyle, broken up by 50s, breathe every 3/4/5/6 strokes. On a few flip turns, my right knee cap felt strange, but otherwise it was okay. I felt strong and buoyant, stretched flat at the surface.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. A woman in a blue and green suit with booties, then flippers, on, swimming breaststroke, backstroke, and freestyle. Older, I think, and a good, strong swimmer
  2. An older man in a speedo on the other side of me, swimming freestyle and breaststroke
  3. A man in black board shorts swimming along the bottom, then running — was he injured?
  4. the colored tiles on the bottom of the pool looked extra blue
  5. a few white tiles had some stuff on them — chipped? mildew?
  6. at the end of the lane, the wall is marked with a giant plus sign — I think of it as black, but it is probably blue to match the tiles. I had no problem seeing it
  7. I struggled to see if there were any swimmers in the water when I was picking my lane — is that an elbow, or just a trick of the light?
  8. everything I lifted my head (still practicing sighting every so often), I saw orange. Where was the orange coming from?
  9. as my arms entered the water and my body rotated slightly, I felt like a boat with my feet as rudders
  10. glanced down at the big drains on the bottom of the pool and thought about Jaws and the great opening chapter I just read a few months ago (The Swimmers)

Continuing November’s theme of gray. Today: smudge. Thinking about one of my favorite vision poems, I Look Up from My Book and Out at the World through Reading Glasses by Diane Seuss. It begins, “The world, italicized.” and ends,

It’s a paradise of vagaries.
No heartache.
Just and eraser smudge,
smoke-gray.

All forms, the man wrote, tend toward blur.

Today looking at the lines, posted on poets.org, I puzzled over one: Just and eraser smudge. I’ve thought about this line before and wondered what it means. Just and? What is the just here? Suddenly I wondered if it was a typo. I checked out the ebook from the library and looked. Yes! Here’s the actual line:

Just an eraser smudge,

That makes so much more sense! I thought I just wasn’t getting it, which can happen with poetry.

I like the smoke-gray and smudge gray. It makes me think of a vision poem I started, but has stalled, about not being able to see my daughter’s face when she tells me a story:

the motions of the dipping birds/ sara lynne puotinen

My daughter sits on a couch near the window and tells me a story.
I listen to her words, watch her small hands rise and fall,
dart and flick, sweep the air. Each shift in movement
the difference between excitement anger exasperation disdain.

When I look up, the space where a face should be is not
a face but a smudge, as if someone took a dried out eraser
from the end of an old pencil and tried to remove the lines
but failed. Each attempt has darkened the page until

what remains is a mess of almosts — a space almost filled,
lines almost legible, a face almost there. My eyes move
to her shoulder to find her features in my periphery.
I look again at her center and almost see an eye, a nose, her mouth.

My gaze returns to her hands. I listen to her words
and marvel at the soft feathers of her fingers.

nov 7/RUN

6.2 miles
Hidden Falls loop*
33 degrees

*south on river road trail/under ford bridge/up to Wabun/over ford bridge/continue south on the east river road trail/above Hidden Falls/cross over to the Highland Bridge (the old ford plant site)/north on trail/cross back over to east river trail/under Ford bridge/across Ford bridge/north on west river road

A 10k without stopping. Hooray! Completing a loop I’ve wanted to try for a few weeks. Double hooray!! Today it wasn’t bright blue, or gray, but sepia-toned. Subdued, weathered. Lots of light brown and brownish-orange leaves on the trees and the ground. Colder. I wore some of my winter layers: pink-hooded jacket, winter running tights, black winter vest, gloves. I felt good. My left kneecap shifted a bit about 5 minutes into the run. Maybe not as much? After the run, it’s a little stiff, but not too bad. A great run. I love this colder weather.

Before heading out for my run, I wrote the following:

The theme for November is gray, inspired by Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem “The Crazy Woman” and the line, And sing a song of gray. I came across a reference to gray hair and getting rid of it this morning and it immediately made me think of a commercial I remember watching as a kid. In 1980, I was six.

I’m pretty sure I heard this commercial way before the original song from the musical South Pacific, “I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Out of My Hair.” Also, when looking up this commercial on YouTube, I found three versions, 1980 (above), 1983, and 1985. It’s fascinating to see the evolution to working girl/power woman.

For the record, I like my gray hair. I have a lot of it. And I don’t want to get rid of it. I don’t mind being old. Okay, not totally true. I mind the aches and pains, the witnessing of more loved ones dying, the gradual breaking down of my body. I’m not sure if I always embraced old age, but I know that a passage from Bernice Johnson Reagon’s “Coalition Politics: Turning the Century,” has had a huge impact on me. I love this essay. I devoted a whole chapter of my dissertation to her concepts of home and coalition, and I taught her words many times in my feminist theory classes. Here’s the passage that I’m thinking about in terms of old age and survival:

None of this matters at all very much is you die tomorrow—that wouldn’t even be cute. It only matters if you make a commitment to be around for another fifty more years. There are some grey haired women I see running around occasionally, and we have to talk to those folks about how come they didn’t commit suicide forty years ago. Don’t take everything they say because some of the stuff they gave up to stay around ain’t worth considering. But be sure you get on your agenda some old people and try to figure out what it will be like if you are raging radical fifty years from today.

Think about yourself that way. What would you be like if you had white hair and had not give up your principles?

“Coalition Politics: Turning the Century” / Bernice Johnson Reagon, and here’s an easier-for-me-to-read pdf of the essay.

These words above, the whole essay actually, are important to read and digest as I anticipate tomorrow’s midterm elections. They could be bad.

I thought about grey hair (I like spelling it grey too, which is more common outside of the US. Why? Not sure. I also like writing European 7s) and getting older and being able to endure and survive. Suddenly I understood Brooks’ poem in a different way. I’ve always been drawn to it because I love November and gray, colder, barer days. I imagined this crazy woman as literally singing in November, which is what I like to do (and terribly too — as Brooks’ line continues in the next verse). But, Brooks is talking about an old woman who has gray hair, and her song of gray is the song of a woman who has managed to survive to old age. Duh. This interpretation seems obvious to me now, but I was hung up on the gray, early winter days of November and my love of them. Managing to still be around when you’re old is not easy. Both my mom and Scott’s mom weren’t able to do it — my mom dead at 67, Scott’s at 74. That’s too young. And to be able to sing about it? To me, that feels like a real accomplishment. To live to your 80s is a lot about luck and managing to avoid cancer or car accidents or any number of calamities. But some of it, I hope, is about how you take care of yourself and whether or not you embrace a longer view. When I think about what my goals are for running, this is a big one: I want to be running in my 70s. That’s my long view. I want to do what it takes to keep me healthy and able to run for several more decades. And, if I can’t run, at least walking along the gorge.

As I ran back across the Ford bridge, I was still thinking about old age and running and how completing a long run might serve as a metaphor for living a long life. In the past, I’ve thought about this in terms of enduring and pushing through pain and bad thoughts (I can’t do this, it’s too hard, I want to stop) by keeping moving, putting one foot in front of the other. Whatever bad thoughts/feelings I’m having almost always pass within a few minutes. Today, I thought about it in terms of a phrase I heard several times when I watched the Ironman World Championships a few weeks ago: burning a match. One woman was going out too fast and burning a match. Another woman looked like she was feeling good and had to decide if she wanted to burn a match now and probably pay for it later. And yet another woman — Daniela Ryf, maybe the GOAT of Ironman — was burning several matches to catch up to other racers. Not sure what to do with this phrase, but it popped into my head as I ran.

an aside: 2 other running phrases I often encounter: the wheels come off (when your race falls apart, when your body stops working) and go out there and rip it (run as fast as you can).

The idea of burning a match and endurance and old age makes me think of 2 poems: Dylan Thomas’ “Do Not Go Gentle Into the Dark Night” and Edna St. Vincent Millay’s “First Fig.”

Here’s the first verse from the Dylan Thomas:

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And here’s the entire Millay poem:

First Fig/ Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
    It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
    It gives a lovely light!

I don’t like the Dylan Thomas poem, and I can’t relate to the Milay’s candle burning at both ends. I should say more about what I mean, but that would take more time than I have right now. Maybe in a vague way, my dislike of both of these poems has something to do with my love of gray?

one more thing: I just realized that Dylan Thomas’ poem is in villanelle form, which I was just writing about in my reconstructed post for November 1st. I need to spend some time reviewing poetic forms!

nov 5/RUN

5 miles
prior loop
35 degrees
fine mist

Another gray day. A fine mist I barely noticed. Sprinting through one green light, having to stop at two other red ones. Some less than generous feelings toward a few path hoggers. Reciting the poem, “The Crazy Woman in November.” Wondering what “a song of gray” is, after reciting the lines, I’ll wait until November/And sing a song of gray. Decided that the theme for November will be gray.

On November 6th, my original entries for this week were accidentally erased. Now, Monday (7th) morning, I’m trying to remember a few things from them. For a lengthier explanation, see my entry for november 1st.

november 4/RUN

5 miles
bottom of Franklin Hill
39 degrees

Greeting Dave, the Daily Walker. Encountering Daddy Long Legs. A gray, dreamy day. Looking extra fuzzy and unfocused heading down into the flats. No rowers or rollerbladers. A blue river. Hardly any leaves on the trees.

On November 6th, my original entries for this week were accidentally erased. Now, Monday (7th) morning, I’m trying to remember a few things from them. For a lengthier explanation, see my entry for november 1st.

nov 2/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
60 degrees

Images recalled: the falls was barely dripping. The wind rushing through the dying leaves in the trees sounded more like water falling than the falls. 2 friends laughing while looking a sign, the third friend approaching and wondering why they’re laughing. The familiar but unidentifiable song of a bird that sounds like a laughing monkey. The blinding sun, flash flash flashing in my eyes through the gaps in the bushes.

On November 6th, my original entries for this week were accidentally erased. Now, Monday (7th) morning, I’m trying to remember a few things from them. For a lengthier explanation, see my entry for november 1st.

nov 1/RUN

3.1 miles
turkey hollow
67 degrees

A memory: wild turkeys near Beckettwood. One, flapping its wings as it moved away from me.

The art of losing isn’t hard to master

On Sunday, November 6th, Scott accidentally deleted everything I had written for the past six days. I lost this entry. I don’t want to try to remember everything/anything that happened on that day, but I do want to document the basic details of the run and to have it marked on my calendar so that later, when I glance at it, I can see when I worked out that month.

I didn’t just lose this entry, I lost all the entries for this week. I lost 2 new pages I created for my big (as in, spanning decades) project, How to Be. One called, “How to be…a Bell.” The other, “How to be…Enough.” I lost the various edits I did to my writing portfolio site, announcing the publishing of 2 of my mood ring poems at The Account. I lost the poem links I added to my “poems gathered” section. I lost an “On this Day” page I created for all the entries, from 2017-2021, that I posted on November 4th. And I lost little bits — quotations, interviews, video clips — that I posted on various pages on Undisciplined. At least, that’s what I remember losing.

It happened on Sunday morning around 9. I was sitting upstairs reading something. I heard Scott sigh loudly. Uh oh. What’s wrong, I asked. I think he might have started with, I have some bad news or I’m sorry, but…. Scott is like his dad when he tells a story. He likes to give a lengthy, dramatic explanation before getting to the point. As he rambled on with details, I tried to guess what the conclusion would be. I am like my mom when I hear a story; I worry and jump to conclusions and don’t care about the details. I want the ending first, then I can listen to the excrutiating minutia of what happened. As he talked, I thought he was going to tell me that he had deleted all of the customizations I had made to my wordpress themes for my 3 main sites. When he said that he had lost anything I had written/posted in the last six days, I was relieved. At least I don’t have to redo the themes, and try to remember all the css that I‘ve forgotten because I only use it every couple of years when I redesign my sites! But slowly it hit me. How much I had written this week. A lot. More than most weeks.

I’m a little sad about the words I’ve lost, but not angry. I’ll remember them, or I won’t. Maybe I’ll even remember better versions of them.

One Art/ Elizabeth Bishop (audio version)

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother’s watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn’t a disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

I knew I knew, somewhere in the dim caverns of my mind, what form Bishop’s poem is in, but I forgot and had to look it up: a villanelle. Of course! I tried writing a few of these way back in year 2. I searched in my archive and found the entry, jan 18, 2018. Here’s what I wrote:

Yesterday, I experimented with the villanelle form and wrote a poem about running around the track. Here’s the form of a villanelle:

19 lines; 5 tercets + 1 quatrain; 1st and 3rd line of beginning tercet are alternately repeated in third line of remaining tercets, then last two lines of quatrain; rhyme scheme = aba/aba/aba/aba/aba/abaa

A RUN AROUND THE TRACK ISN’T HARD TO DO

A run around the track isn’t hard to do
with its road that never runs out
An endless loop, run until you’re through

Warm and dry with a clear avenue
no cars to avoid, no need to shout
A run around the track isn’t hard to do

A little tedious, a lack of view
but a chance to fly fast, to go all out
on this endless loop, run until you’re through

Your brain can go blank, your thoughts can be few
mechanically moving without doubt
A run around the track isn’t hard to do

It can be monotonous, that’s true
encountering the same people on this repetitive route
of endless loops, run until you’re through

So little to look at, so little to do
but keep track of the laps, not losing count
A run around the track isn’t hard to do
but it’s a boring, endless loop, run until you’re through

Wow. This is definitely a poems that’s about trying out a form. Should I try again? Maybe this month…

A poem I posted in one of the lost entries:

Wild Turkey/ Heid E. Erdrich

Not the bottle
Not the burn on the lips
lit throat glow
Not even wild     really
but a small-town bird
whose burgundy throat
shimmers like nothing ever
A huge bird    impressive
who lurches and stalks me
window to window in this
desert retreat
What does he want?
Clearly he is lonely
pecks his reflection
and speaks to it in a low gubble
(not gobble) gubbles so tenderly
Soon as I think of him     his eye hits on me
We have watched each other for days
His shifting colors fascinate me  his territorial strut
But it is his bald and blue-red head
his old man habits and gait that move me
If I even think of him        I taste whiskey
Drunk on solitude    I’d talk to anybody
I try his language on my lips
His keen response burns     like shame

october 31/RUN

5.2 miles
franklin loop
44 degrees

Whew! On the last day of the month I reached my goal. To stay on track for 1000 miles by the end of the year, I needed to run 840 miles by the end of October. I’m at 840.1. Now I have 2 months to run the remaining 160 miles. Five out of the six years of this log, my goal has been 1000 miles. I have achieved it once: year 4, 2020. Some sort of calf/hip/knee injury has forced me to cut back on my mileage the other years. I’ve never been off by that much.

Year 1 = 950 miles, couldn’t run almost all of August and September
Year 2 = 928.85 miles, IT band in November
Year 3 = 900.65 miles, can’t remember why it didn’t happen this year
Year 4 = 1003 miles
Year 5 = 850 miles, focused on a big swimming goal instead (100 miles during 10 week open swim season)

I think 1000 miles is about all that my body can take in a year. I know that bodies are built differently, and that some people have an easier time running lots of miles each week, but I am still amazed at other regular (non-pro) runners who can run 30 or 40 or more miles every week. 20 miles is an average of almost 3 miles every day of the year!

A perfect morning for a run! I thought it might feel colder so I wore one too many layers. I ran north on the river road, through the tunnel of trees, under the lake street bridge, above white sands beach. Then over the franklin bridge and south on the east river road until reaching lake street again. No rowers or roller skiers or fat tires. No geese, but at least one black capped chickadee doing the fee bee call. Never a response. Thought about the endless echo of this unanswered call.

My kneecap: mostly very good. At least one or two shifts, and a few grumbles, but that’s it.

10+ Things I Remember

  1. there was a slight haze in the air, everything dreamy and soft. I think the sun was burning off some early morning fog?
  2. a runner approaching me during the start of my run was listening to music without headphones. At first I thought it was some strange chant, but later, as I continued to hear it across the ravine, it sounded vaguely like some pop song I’ve heard before
  3. running over the franklin bridge, I marveled at the river. A shimmering arrow of light was pointing downstream on its surface. Other than the light, the river was empty. No rowers
  4. running back over the lake street bridge I could see the sun shining off some parked cars on the west river road, no longer hidden from view by leaves
  5. the Welcoming Oaks are bare
  6. all the construction is done over on the east side of the river near franklin
  7. the steady beat of approaching feet from behind, then passing me. I called out good morning and he replied, morning.
  8. encountering 2 walkers. The woman called out good morning! It always seems to be the women who add the good to their morning greetings
  9. on the edge of the gorge, near the meeker island dog park, I could hear a rushing sound. Was it wind in the trees or water dropping out of the sewer or from an underground creek? I decided it was water
  10. the green city sign near the franklin bridge that directs drivers up the hill to franklin avenue was spray painted with white words. I think it might have said Boo?
  11. My shadow joined me today, running just ahead as we headed north. No faint trace, but a dark and defined form

Throughout the run, I chanted triple berries. Lots of strawberry/blackberry/blueberry or strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Also some, chocolate or chocolate sauce/ice cream cone/whipping cream. Once, cream that’s whipped, which made me think of Devo’s “Whip it.” Wondered about working on a poem/series of poems using this triple rhythm. Also wondered about the difference between chanting these 3, versus chanting 3 then 2. How often do I actually chant 3/2 when I’m running or do I chant more in triples?

Here’s something I’ve been intending to mention for a few days, but keep forgetting: Last week, Scott and I were watching a Halloween episode of Murder, She Wrote. In it, a jerky/mysterious guy living in an old mansion at the edge of town, usually only going outside at night, and wearing sunglasses when he does have to be out in the sun, is accused of being a vampire, then killed with a stake through his heart. I asked Scott how many people with photophobia (light sensitivity) were accused of being vampires. A lot, he thought. At the end of the episode, Jessica revealed that this guy was not a vampire, but had photophobia! I had been thinking of photophobia after encountering the site of a young woman with cone dystrophy. One of the main symptoms for her: photophobia and being completely blinded in the daylight. I do not have this problem. I can look directly at the light without any problems. A few years ago, it bothered me a little, but not anymore. Anyway, I mention this story because I would never have considered the connection between photophobia and being accused of being a vampire if I hadn’t started researching vision after my vision diagnosis. I didn’t even know what photophobia was before my diagnosis. I remembered during my run that I wanted to mention photophobia in my log — while I was running across a bridge — which made me think about how losing my central vision has opened doors into new worlds and helped me to wonder in new ways. This is not to say that my vision loss is a good thing, or some bullshit like it’s part of a larger plan, but it’s also not all a totally bad thing either.

One more thing I just remembered: Most of my triple chants were berries or desserts, but every so often I chanted other things too: history, mystery, intellect then I am girl/I am ghost/I am gorge.

Here’s a poem I discovered today that makes me want to write more about the relationship between the eye and the brain:

A Woman’s Glass Eye/ Richard Weaver (page 66 in journal)

troubled her one day, suddenly filtering light
into colors, depth, and shape. She was
unprepared for such visions from an eye
absent since birth, and interchangeable.
Still, it was, exciting. Enticing even.
She wondered if peripherality was next.
And then is was, with a literal flash.
So astonished was Brain that it considered
hibernation. Or a sleep-induced protective coma.
But Brain too was intrigued. Enchanted.
Beguiled. Hungry for a more powerful
field in which to shape and reshape the world. A
nd so the co-conspiracy began between Eye
and Brain. Never to end. Even in dark dream.
Or total eclipse. Dark become light. Ever after.

october 29/RUN

5.25 miles
fairview loop*
44 degrees

*another Marshall loop variation/expansion. This is my fall 2022 weekend routine. Today I added some more distance by staying on Marshall until I reached the next main street after Prior Avenue at Fairview. A few more blocks, a little more distance, some more of St. Paul to see.

A good run, even if my kneecap was not quite in place for the first mile. Mostly it’s okay, though I worry about it rubbing and creating another bone spur. The weather was close to perfect: mid 40s, sun, not much wind. I felt strong and relaxed and not wanting to stop for any lights. I like this loop, even if it feels longer than it actually is. The hill up Marshall is not bad, especially after Cretin, and the hill down Summit makes it feel easier. I wonder how much I can keep adding onto this loop?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. running across lake street bridge, looking over the railing, I saw an 8-person shell heading south. I stopped briefly to admire it
  2. the river was smooth and dark blue and beautiful
  3. graffiti below the bridge on the st paul side
  4. running by the former Izzy’s ice cream, where FWA and RJP shared a birthday party, I noticed a wooden shelf jutting out of a window — was this the takeout window?
  5. a big apartment building with huge windows near the door stretching multiple floors—I think I remember seeing a big gold chandelier
  6. a big fancy house on Summit with stone pineapples at the end of the driveway
  7. the hill on marshall: steepest at the beginning, then much more gradual until it kicks up a little between prior and fairview
  8. the bells at st. thomas were ringing
  9. reaching the river, running up the hill near Summit, hearing voices behind me — runners, I think. One of them encouraging another to go! go! go! Were they going faster than me? No. Either they turned off or were slower
  10. more shells on the river. I could hear a male coxswain instructing the rowers. Also heard people cheering for the 1/2 marathon races on the west side

This poem makes me think of the various poems I studied last October about bells. Maybe it’s time to revisit the bell for the end of October?

Let this darkness be a bell tower/ Rainer Maria Rilke

Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.

In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am