2017, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024
march 13, 2017/ 4.1 miles/ river road trail/ 26 degrees
Earlier today, I read a blog post by an academic about her running. I particularly liked her discussion about discipline, although I want to find another word for it:
I remember telling R. years ago, in those early running days, that the key aspect of discipline for me was less about the need to make myself go do something than it was about the need to keep myself from doing too much. And so I’m trying to be very disciplined about things, to build strength slowly, to keep plodding forward, to focus on the years ahead rather than the miles right now.
Discipline as not doing something. Yes! Or, doing less, spending less, wasting less, consuming less. These values aren’t just helpful, but necessary to survive the Climate Crisis.
march 13, 2019/ 2.5 miles/ basement
A typical mid-March landscape:
the conditions here suck. We have flood warnings. Rain + melting snow + clogged sewer drains = yuck. So dreary to look out of my upstairs window and see a grayish brownish sludgy soup on the street. Managed to walk the dog for one block and almost fell at least 3 times. Deep puddles hiding sneaky slick spots.
My “In 5 Years” diagnosis:
I found out from my eye doctor on Monday (march 11th) that my central vision has gotten worse. In my left eye, my central vision is 98% gone. The 2% remaining is in the very center and is almost gone too. I saw it on a scan of my retina–a pale yellow dot in a sea of darkish grayish black. My right eye is a little better. Only 70% totally gone. My doctor’s prediction: My central vision will be totally destroyed within the next 5 years. His suggestion: “Get your hearing checked. You’re going to need it.” So, I will listen. I read a tip on a low vision site for how not to spill when you’re filling up a cup: Listen. You can hear when the cup is full. I’ll have to practice that.
march 13, 2020/ 3.25 miles/ trestle turn around/ 32 degrees
A COVID memory — at the beginning, before it had been branded COVID 19:
It feels so important to be outside, breathing fresh air. I’ve been struggling with a minor cold (which is almost definitely not corona virus) and being sick during this pandemic is causing uncomfortable waves of anxiety. A throat that wants to close up, a clenched jaw, the need for deep breaths, a rush of tingling heat on the back of my head, and even more restlessness–lots of pacing around the house yesterday. Running seems to help. I feel okay when I run, relaxed.
march 13, 2021/ 3 miles/ Hiawatha and Howe loops / 44 degrees
At some point during the run, I noticed the shadow of a bird on the sidewalk in front of me. I love seeing these shadows and knowing a bird is flying overhead without looking up to see it. This shadow is too vague and fuzzy to indicate what kind of bird it is; it’s just a bird. It reminded me of how sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk, which has a glass top (a top I recycled from an old IKEA coffee table), I see the reflection of a bird flying outside the window. It’s a quick flash of motion that I could miss if I wasn’t paying attention and if my peripheral vision had become heightened because of my central vision loss. Such a cool thing to see.
As I review this entry, on March 13, 2023, I am sitting at that same IKEA desk. Today’s reflection: A white flashing streak on the glass. Huh? I looked up and out the window and noticed a steady drip from the eaves. Cool, I thought, then, uh-oh, the gutter isn’t draining properly!
march 13, 2022/ 4.45 miles/ Veterans’ Home Loop/ 32 degrees
I’m fairly new to studying poetry (only seriously since 2017), but my sense is that poetry people have lots of different feelings about meter and whether or not it’s still important. Here’s what Nate Marshall writes about it:
I’ve grown to have a great fondness for formal poetry. I still don’t understand metrical prosody very well but I understand its importance in the tradition. I was asked the question recently whether or not meter was still a useful tool in poetry. I think meter, like anything else, is at play when building the small geniuses of a poem. I think form and verse are important ways to give artistic challenges that can lead to great results. With that said, I believe that every poet and generation of poets has to define and redefine their relationship to form and the role it will play. Whether it’s the fourteen-line sonnet, the sixteen-line rap verse, the six-line stanza of a sestina, or the tercet of a blues poem each poet has to figure how to find and employ the weapons that offer each poem its truest voice.
A Code Switch Memoir
march 13, 2023 / swim: 1.25 mile / run: 5k / 29 degrees
Lots of friends in the water with me today: weird white, almost translucent, bits near the bottom, a balled up bandaid in one lane over, and perhaps the most disturbing, a fuzzy brown ball floating halfway up to the surface, slowly making it’s way to below me. Would I accidentally suck it up? Yuck! Must have gotten distracted because I lost track of it.
(13 march 2025)I miss swimming in the pool this winter, even my water friends. I’d like to write a poem about them; I think I even tried at least once. It’s harder when I’m not around them to write about them.
silver
(13 march 2025) I want to add more color poems to my collection — purple, rust, and metallics like silver (and bronze and pewter and copper patina)
The rain stops. April shines,
A Little
Gray descends.
An illuminous penetration of unbright light that seeps and coats
The ragged lawn and spells out bare spots and winter fallen branches.
Yardwork.
(from Hymn to Life/ James SchuylerWhat a wonderful description of gray light! It shines a little, an unbright light that seeps and coats and exposes (spells out) the worn spots and the ordinary work needed to be done every spring. Lately, when I think of gray, I think of the opposite — not how it makes everything look shabby, worn, tired, but that it softens everything, making it mysterious and more gentle, relaxed.
It seems like Schuyler could be writing against one classic image of luminous gray light or, it made me think of this at least: the silver lining. Wondering about the origins of the phrase, I looked it up. John Milton’s poem, Comus:
That he, the Supreme good t’ whom all all things ill
are but as slavish officers of vengeance,
Would send a glistring Guardian if need were
To keep my life and homour unassail’d.
Was I deceiv’d, or did a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night?
I did not err, there does a sable cloud
Turn forth her silver lining on the night,
And casts a gleam over this tufted Grove.Thinking about my color poems, and my interest in gray, I wonder how I could write about silver? For me, silver is the color that burns and shines when concentrated on the iced-over river, too bright for my eyes. Silver is also the color of the path when ice is present — it’s a warning sign, a whisper, Watch Out! Slippery.
rust
‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul
A Cuticle of Dust
A Borer in the Axis
An Elemental Rust —
(Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act/ Emily Dickinson)
march 13, 2024 / run: 4 miles / 55 degrees
(13 march 2025) Currently I’m (slowly) working on creating a ceremony/ritual for my 8 mile loop around the river. Inspired by JJJJJerome Ellis’ ceremony for naming and praising his Stutter, I want to make something that brings together a honoring of certain spots on the loop with a witnessing of the geology/history of the gorge and the praising of my blind spot. Key to this ceremony is the understanding of my blind spot as a form of erosion and the center as void. My notes from 2024 are helpful for this:
notes from my plague notebook, vol 19
Read the first lines from Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior”:
“In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock”Thought about how LN begins her poem by describing the essence of Lake Superior: rock. I started wondering about what I imagine the essence of the Mississippi River Gorge to be — or, at least, the essence (key element) for my Haunts poem.
restless water satisfied stone
erosion movement not 1 or 2 but 3 things: water and stone and their interactions
erosion, making something new — gorgeThen: Water as a poet / stubborn Stone yields, refuses, resists
water = poet / stone = words/language
erosion = absence, silence, making Nothing
me = eroding eyes / stone being shaped / a form of water shaping stoneI wear down the stone with my regular loops
Add a variation of this line, originally in my mood ring, Relentless, somewhere:
I am both limestone and water. As I dissolve my slow steady flow carves out a new geography.