December 22, 2019 / 4.2 miles / 33 degrees
Choices/ TESS GALLAGHER
I go to the mountain side
of the house to cut saplings,
and clear a view to snow
on the mountain. But when I look up,
saw in hand, I see a nest clutched in
the uppermost branches.
I don’t cut that one.
I don’t cut the others either.
Suddenly, in every tree,
an unseen nest
where a mountain
would be.
Looking back at this entry, I was surprised to see this poem posted here, having just seen it posted on my twitter feed this morning. Same poem, same day, 3 years apart. I should also mention that I just reread this poem a few days ago and added it to possible poems for the class I’m teaching in the winter. Is Tess Gallagher trying to tell me something?
As part of the tweet mention of it today, the poetry person posted: “Tess Gallagher on really seeing.”
December 22, 2020 / 3.15 miles / 25 degrees
Want to make note of this experiment I tried. I think I might want to try it again in the upcoming year. Reading about it reminded me that this log, and the practice of keeping it, has many purpose:
- to document my runs
- to give attention to the outside world, especially the gorge
- to develop an archive of images and experiences for my writing
- to experiment with writing and the creative process and noticing and remembering
- to work through (untangle knots) in a poem or essay I’m working on
- to give me a reason to get outside and move more (because I want to write about it/add to this log)
- to work on my craft — in many ways, including by experimenting with reciting poems while I”m moving, studying them and their word choices, rhythms, etc
- to track the seasons and the subtle changes in the world
- to explore the connections between inner and outer, self and world, body and mind
Tried a (slightly) new experiment today. Memorized a poem. Recorded myself reciting it from memory before heading out for my run. Recited it all through my run. Then, recorded it again on my walk home. I wondered what the difference would be? Would I know the poem better after my run? In the first attempt: no. I knew it better before, but I think that had more to do with being tired at the end of my run. The poem I memorized (or re-memorized) was: Babel/ Kimberly Johnson
December 22, 2022 / basement: bike/run / feels like -25
2025: Adding more to en entry I started several years ago, in 2021? Today in 2022, I wrote about Maggie Nelson and her bluets. I keep returning to this book, and the more I learn/study/experiment with my writing the more I get out of it. Maybe I should buy this book?
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
December 22, 202 / 5.15 miles / 38 degrees
2025: Seeps! I just finished my collection of poems that includes seeps. And I was just thinking about this article; I’d like to revisit it for winter — just in time to witness all the frozen seeps.
seeps
Before the run, I was reading about seeps and springs. Decided to think about them and why I might want to be one as I was running. In particular I was interested in how being a seep is different than becoming a boulder, which I’ve already written about. I recorded my thoughts after running up the franklin hill.
As I ran down the hill, I thought about how gravity pulls water down. A line: no need to navigate. Spilling over, onto, into. Always exceeding. Relentless. Opening up, making room, creating space. Never encased, contained, fully controlled. Slow, steady, drip drip drip. Saturates, permeates, soaks.
The author of article from 1997 I was reading — Along the Great Wall: Mapping the Springs of the Twin Cities — didn’t think too highly of seeps: little, inconsequential, too abundant for mapping. He focused on springs. I like the small, quiet, unassuming nature of seeps.