5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 9 degrees
Outside! Very bright today. A mix of moments of feeling great and feeling not so great — more feeling great. Foot prints in the snow, lamp post shadows, patches of brown ice. Black capped chickadees! A white river, a barren beach, a fat tire e-bike buzzing past me. A BLUE! sky — wow! Fogged up sunglasses. A delayed greeting: Hi Dave!
Thought about a blueberry looking more purple than blue, then the shade of purple: sucker. I like the word sucker — a candy, a fool, someone who sucks on something, a person on a straw, or something that sucks on something, a plunger on a toilet, an octopus on an arm.
Listened to the birds, the cars, and the gurgling sewer on the way north. Listened to an energy playlist — Don’t Stop Me Now, Work it, Sabotage — on the way back south.
the purple hour
12:45 am / dining room
restless, difficult to be still enough to type/think
(remembering, 7:05 am) looking out the kitchen window, seeing 2 dark forms in the white snow — bare patches or something more? Staring for a few mnutes — am I imagining that slight shift? No, 2 animals, standing still for minutes. What are they doing? Quick movement, then bounding figures. Rabbit-like. But these animals look so dark — is it a trick of the dim light — bunny fir darkened in the lilac light? [there is no indigo in a backyard illuminated by neighbor’s security lights.] Or, could these creatures be raccoons?
update, 20 feb 2026: A definite answer: bunnies! All late fall and winter, 2 or more bunnies have been hanging out under our crab apple tree — at night, in the afternoon, at sunrise and sunset. They’re very bold, these bunnies, not running off when I walk by. When this happens, I’ve started saying, these bunnies are as bold as brass! Why? Not sure. And, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: I like bunnies or rabbits about as much as I like squirrels, which is not at all.
2:44 am
a word appears in my head: amethyst — February stone, quartz, ancient Greeks believed it would prevent intoxication
Release one leaf at break of day; At noon release another leaf; One from our trees, one far away. Retard the sun with gentle mist; Enchant the land with amethyst. Slow, slow! For the grapes’ sake, if they were all, Whose leaves already are burnt with frost, Whose clustered fruit must else be lost— For the grapes’ sake along the wall.
A myth created in the 1500s about a nymph and Bacchus:
In his poem “L’Amethyste, ou les Amours de Bacchus et d’Amethyste” (Amethyst or the loves of Bacchus and Amethyste), the French poet Rémy Belleau (1528–1577) invented a myth in which Bacchus, the god of intoxication, of wine, and grapes was pursuing a maiden named Amethyste, who refused his affections. Amethyste prayed to the gods to remain chaste, a prayer which the chaste goddess Dianaanswered, transforming her into a white stone. Humbled by Amethyste’s desire to remain chaste, Bacchus poured wine over the stone as an offering, dyeing the crystals purple.
You are for me as you cannot be For yourself, chaos without demand To speak, the amethyst nothing Hidden inside the trinket shop’s stone, Dark eyes dark asterisks where light Footnotes a margin left blank. You Don’t look up to look up at the sky. Your ears parenthesize nothing That occurs, that I keep from occurring, In the poem, on the page, as you are For me, not a shadow, but a shade Whose darkness drops from no object But is itself yourself, a form of time Spanning nothing, never is your name.
9:46 am / kitchen
Telling Scott about how the word amethyst popped into my head and that it was the birthstone for February, he said that he knew that because his grandmother was born in February and she often wore amethyst jewelry.
12:31 pm / front room — chair
Thinking more about Dan Beachy-Quick’s lines:
not a shadow, but a shade Whose darkness drops from no object
Thinking about shade as a hue with black added to make it darker (as opposed to tint, where white is added to make something lighter). Also thinking about shade as relief on a hot day, a welcomed darkness.
added hours later: Rereading the poem, “Anniversary,” I looked it up: amethyst is given for the 6th wedding anniversay.
bike: 30 minutes run: 3 miles outside temp: feels like -13
Thought briefly about going outside for a run then remembered if I stayed inside I could bike and watch more of The Gorge, which I did. I have 30 minutes left. Lots of action and jump scares and secret military operations and old film reels that reveal science experiments gone wrong and evil private corporations forming unbeatable mutant armies and chemical leaks and spiders with human skulls and more spent ammo than seems possible and . . . . I’m not sure how I feel about it all yet. One thing: earlier, when they first entered the gorge, the poet-sniper-main character (Levi) quoted T.S. Eliot and “This is how the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.” This sure sounds like a bang. Two possibilities: 1. he nods to the line and has some witty quip about it, like if we’re going to end, let’s do it with a bang, not a whimper (ugh!) or 2. a much quieter conclusion, where they are not destroyed and the gorge is not destroyed evil is only slightly contained and will continue to slowly simmer and spread. Will Levi finally read Drassa his poem about her? Will he quote some other poetry? Will the movie end in poetry instead of war?
While I ran, I listened to an amazing podcast with a poet I just happened to write about yesterday: Rebecca Lindenberg. Wow! What an amazing conversation.
about how acceptance and resistance co-existfor her as she lives with chronic illness (type 1 diabetes)
I mean, what I feel is not acceptance. I did use that word earlier, but I don’t think that that is what I feel. I think what I feel is persistence more than anything.
And I feel ongoingness and I feel hope. . . . I don’t experience hope as a passive feeling, like hope is a thing with feathers that perches in the soul, I’m like, maybe, but you have to feed it and change the food in its cage and take it out and let it fly. . . . I understand hope as a series of acts of meaningful devotion. And I feel that because so much of the maintenace of a diabetic body is routines that you do every single day, if I think of them as small rituals instead of routines, then it doesn’t feel like I’m obeying my disease.
Persistence, ongoingness, the practice of hope, a series of (small) acts of meaningful devotion. I feel these things in me as I navigate diminished vision and potential blindness.
the purple hour
4:05 am / dining room
Tried to sit down and think about Monica Ong’s “Lavender Insomnia” but was too restless, agitated — not from thoughts, but a buzzing left leg.
11:10 am / front room
the violet hour (twilight)
T.S. Eliot’s violet hour in Waste Land: At the violet hour, the evening hour that strives Homeward, and brings the sailor home from sea, The typist home at teatime, clears her breakfast, lights Her stove, and lays out food in tins.
Civil twilight = dim but artificial light is not needed, bright stars are visible = violet
Nautical twilight = dimmer, sailors can use stars to navigate horizon, you need artificial light to do things = plum?
Astronomical twilight = almost full darkness, dark enough to see galaxies, nebulas = eggplant
I’m still thinking about T.S. Eliot and “The Hollow Men.” Hollow is such a great word. I didn’t realize T.S. Eliot lived until 1865 (edited on 19 feb 2026 — that’s quite a typo! not 1865 but 1965), and long enough for there to be a recording of him reading it. Those last lines!
added 19 feb 2026: Listened to this poem again. Wow! I can’t believe I didn’t tag this with shadows. So much shadow!
bike: 30 minutes run: 3.05 miles outside temp: -1 degree / feels like -18
Public schools were canceled today because of the cold. I don’t have a kid in public school anymore (hooray!) but I do rehearse at a high school on Tuesday nights for community band. When schools are closed band is canceled. Bummer.
I have run when it felt like 20 below, but 18 below was too cold for me today. Also, I figured out something I wanted to watch while I was biking: The Gorge. There is very little talking in it; it’s almost all visual. Luckily, I had the audio description on. I think I would have missed most of the movie without it. What a relief, for my eyes and brain, to hear the descriptions. About 20 or 30 minutes in, the movie was dragging and I wondered if I could keep watching it. Then bam, a suprise! I was done with my bike so I stopped, but I’m looking forward to watching more of it now. The lead actor is a poet and writes every day. Will he ever mention one of his favorite poets, or quote a line from them? In one of the last scenes I watched before I stopped, he told the other main character that he was writing a poem about her. He would only give her the tentative title: She collapsed the night (I think it was collapsed, but it could have been collapses?). added, 20 feb 2025: Finished the movie and Levi’s poem is mentioned, but Eliot’s line is not — an unsatisfying ending.
I started the run with a podcast, but moved to my energy playlist again. Listened to a few rock songs with electric guitar and thought: electric purple. Then, purple sparking on the surface or on the underside of the surface shimmering shaking distorting and dis or mis or strangely coloring my perception of the world. Purple as energetic electric chemical reactions with ganglion cells. Then I heard another song — why can’t I remember which song? — with a great beat that I was able to get inside of: feet, the beat of the song, the speed of the treadmill, a chorus in tight unison. Could this be the purple part of the beat?
During my morning poem-a-day practice, I read this:
The title is from [Immanuel] Kant’s description of reason, and I want to pry what’s moving and plaintive about it apart from what’s world-ending. Not because I care about Kant but because, from the standpoint of reason, genocide can be justified.
This explanation brings me back to my first year of grad school — fall 1996, Claremont, CA — in a class on Horkheimer and Adorno and critical theory. I remember learning about the limits of reason and the violence of modernity and the hypocrisy of claims for freedom and democracy by those in power.
plum = part of the rose family, prunes when dried, something sweet — a plum job, a plum deal, plummy (adj)
plumb = pipes/plumbing, plumbum (Latin/lead), lead weight attached to line — used to indicate vertical direction, vertically (adj), absolutely — plumb wrong / exactly — plumb in the middle (adv), plumb the depths (v)
plump = having a full rounded form (adj), dropping placing or sinking suddenly and heavily — they plumped down (v), making or becoming plump — plumping a pillow (v)
a plum assignment plumb out of luck plump up an ego
the stain of love is upon the world! Yellow, yellow, yellow it eats into the leaves, smears with saffron the horned branches that lean heavily against a smooth purple sky! There is no light only a honey-thick stain that drips from leaf to leaf and limb to limb spoiling the colors of the whole world—
you far off there under the wine-red selvage of the west!
Yellow and purple. Reminds me, again, of Robin Wall Kimmerer and asters and goldenrods!
If a fountain could jet bouquets of chrome yellow in dazzling arches of chrysanthemum fireworks, that would be Canada Goldenrod. Each three-foot stem is a geyser of tiny gold daisies, ladylike in miniature, exuberant en masse. Where the soil is damp enough, they stand side by side with their perfect counterpart, New England Asters. Not the pale domesticates of the perennial border, the weak sauce of lavender or sky blue, but full-on royal purple that would make a violet shrink. The daisylike fringe of purple petals surrounds a disc as bright as the sun at high noon, a golden-orange pool, just a tantalizing shade darker than the surrounding goldenrod. Alone, each is a botanical superlative. Together, the visual effect is stunning.
Why do they sand beside each other when they could grow alone? Why this particular pair?
Color perception in humans relies on banks of specialized receptor cells, the rods and cones in the retina. The job of the cone cells is to absorb light of different wave lengths and pass it on to the brain’s visual cortex, where it can be interpreted. The visible light spectrum, the rainbow of colors, is broad, so the most effective means of discerning color is not one generalized jack-of-all-trades cone cell, but rather an array of specialists, each perfectly tuned to absorb certain wavelengths. The human eye has three kinds. One type excels at detecting red and associated wavelengths. One is tuned to blue. The other optimally perceives light of two colors: purple and yellow.
The human eye is superbly equipped to detect these colors and send a signal pulsing to the brain. This doesn’t explain why I perceive them as beautiful, but it does explain why that combination gets my undivided attention. I asked my artist buddies about the power of purple and gold, and they sent me right to the color wheel: these two are complementary colors, as different in nature as could be. In composing a palette, putting them together makes each more vivid: In an 1890 treatise on color perception, Goethe, who was both a scientist and a poet, wrote that “the colors diametrically opposed to each other . . . are those which reciprocally evoke each other in the eye.” Purple and yellow are a reciprocal pair. Our eyes are so sensitive to these wavelengths that the cones can get oversaturated and the stimulus pours over onto the other cells.
Goldenrod and asters appear very similarly to bee eyes and human eyes. We both think they’re beautiful. Their striking contrast when they grow together makes them the most attractive target in the whol emeadow, a beacon for bee.s Growing together, both receive more pollinator visits than they would if they were growing alone.
Braiding Sweetgrass / Robin Wall Kimmerer
3:06 / dining room / 18 feb
the rattle of the vent as the warm air is forced through it
my dark reflection on the stainless steel dishwasher door, caused by the dim string of lights in the front room cast on me as I stood on the rug in the dining room — silvery purple
a creaking house, settling after the heat stopped
a hiss in my head
what are the origins of magenta? why were the vikings purple and gold?
purplish blue = indigo
reddish purple = magenta, purplish red = fuchsia
the crab apple trees and their fuchsia funnels (Ada Limón)
Magenta is named after a town in Italy (Magenta) and a bloody battle for independence in 1859
10:00 am / front room
Searching for magenta on poetryfoundation.org, I found some very cool looking exercises from Rebecca Lindenberg about perception, including one using Ezra Pound’s ideogram. Lindenberg offers this example:
CHERRY FLAMINGO ROSE IRON RUST
Say the students choose, for example, yellow. It is likely they will start by suggesting, again, the usual concrete items we associate with that color—lemons, bananas, the sun, corn on the cob, sunflowers. After they’ve exhausted those, it’s important to keep asking—what else is yellow? Taxis, rubber duckies, corn tortillas, rain slickers, caution tape, butter. Then, onion skins, sticky notes, school buses, yield signs, egg yolks, urine, grapefruit rinds, fog—and now we’re getting somewhere. Now we’re not talking so much about what we think of as yellow, we’re talking about what we actually see as yellow.
Once the board or screen is full of things we see as yellow, it’s worth pausing to remind students that we aren’t just making a picture of yellow. What the class chooses will suggest something about yellow—but it doesn’t have to be everything there is to say about yellow. It doesn’t have to be comprehensive, just visceral, evoking “yellow-ness” (or “teal-ness” or “tan-ness”). Then, another vote. Or rather, a few rounds, in which each student gets two votes, until you narrow it down to the final four. And ka-pow! You’ve made an ideogram.
Lindenberg suggests a homework assignment: pick a color, brainstorm at least 25 things related to the color, narrow it down to four, write a paragraph of explanation. I think I’ll try this with purple — just one, or a series of purple moods?!
note: I’m resisting the inclination to dig deep into articles/essays/posts about Pound and imagism. I might (will) get lost in theories and concepts and schools and jargon and devote all my time to understanding and knowing instead of making and feeling. That’s Dr. Sara’s style, not mine!
updated a few hours later: Watched about 20 more minutes of The Gorge. In one scene they’re walking through a yellow fog and into a purple wood. I used my phone to take a picture. Don’t think it quite captures the intense colors.
yellow into purple
In this scene, yellow and purple are used to evoke a hellscape. The half-dead skeletons with trees growing out of them are referred to as hollow men, which is a reference to T.S. Eliot’s poem. The poem keeps coming up; I think I should read it. Wow — just read it. Here’s a bit from the middle and the last lines, which Levi, one of the main characters, recites as they walk in purple (violet) air.
Shape without form, shade without colour. Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom Remember us—if at all—not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams In death’s dream kingdom These do not appear: There, the eyes are Sunlight on a broken column There, is a tree swinging And voices are In the wind’s singing More distant and more solemn Than a fading star.
—
This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends This is the way the world ends Not with a bang but a whimper.
note: I’m starting this post at 9:50 am. The temp is 4 degrees / fees like -11. The wind is 11 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. At this point, I’m thinking I will run inside on the treadmill. Will I, or will some part of me convince the rest to run outside?
3.5 miles ford bridge and back 7 degrees / feels like -10 50% snow-covered
We did it. Good job legs and lungs and heart, you convinced brain that we really needed to be outside this late morning! Almost all of the layers were on: 2 pairs of black running tights; dark gray tank top; green long-sleeved shirt; orange pullover; dark purplish/blueish/grayish pullover with hood; purple jacket; orange striped buff; black fleece cap with ear flaps; black gloves; pink striped gloves; 2 pairs of socks — gray (long) / black (short). At times, I was too warm.
It was wonderful and sometimes hard, especially when I was running into the wind on the way back. It was also bright — glad I had my sunglasses. Encountered someone in orange with their hand up to shield their eyes as they walked south. Saw the round shadow of a street lamp and the jagged shadow of a small tree. Passed a group of four walkers, laughing and yelling and having fun on the double bridge.
Did I think about purple at all? I can’t remember now. The only color I recall noticing was orange.
the purple hour(15th and 16th of feb)
3:38 am / dining room / 15 feb
the heat turnning on, the house shifting settling, my legs restless purple mountains — in Japan, looking out at the mountains, different shades of purple — fall, 1994 Emily Dickinson purple — sunsets and sunrises someone shoveling at 4 am
[discussion below added at 10:30 am on 16 feb]
Where Ships of Purple—gently toss — / Emily Dickinson
Where Ships of Purple—gently toss — On Seas of Daffodil— Fantastic Sailors—mingle— And then—the Wharf is still! F296 (1862) 265
No one does sunsets better than Dickinson. I wonder if Amherst sunsets are still so colorful. Where I’ve lived sunsets are primarily red, pink, and gold, but the ones she describes often have purple. This one does, too. Here she sees great ships, large purple clouds, gently tossing in their moorings. The sea beneath them is tinted golden, “Daffodil,” from the setting sun. The mingling and fantastic sailors are no doubt smaller clouds that move among the larger ship-like ones, their shapes constantly changing. When the sun sets the sky turns dark and “the Wharf is still!”
The prowling bee has been such a wonderful resource for me. Reading the comments for this poem, there was speculation about why the Amherst sunsets were so brilliant and purple:
Romantic era sunsets WERE particularly vivid, due to volcanic ash from several cataclysmic eruptions worldwide. The Hudson River School artists and their sunsets might not have been hyperbole, after all, nor were ED purple sunsets.
Volcanoes can cause some of the world’s most spectacular sunsets. An eruption spews small particles of gas, dust and ash, called aerosols, high into the atmosphere where they can spread around the world. The particles can’t be seen during the day, but about 15 minutes after sunset, when conditions are right, these aerosols can light up the sky in brilliant “afterglows” of pink, purple, red or orange.
The impact of climate/climate disruptions on how we see color? Fascinating. Earlier this morning, while doing my “on this day” practice, I reread my entry from 16 feb 2024. In it, I described a photo I took above the gorge.
The most important thing about this image is how the branches create a net which mimics how my vision often works — I can almost see what’s there, but not quite. Secondary, but connected, is the feeling of being disoriented, off, almost but not quite, untethered, which comes from swirling forms and the climate crisis — there’s almost always snow on tthe ground here in February. Where are my Minnesota winters?
This last bit about climate crisis and lack of snow returns me to the ash in the sky and its effect on how 19th century artists saw and depicted the world. Many places to go with this, for now I’m thinking about how my vision loss (or the making strange of my vision) has enabled me to be more open (than many people with “normal” vision) to understanding vision as complex and not as simple or straightforward as “what you see is what you get.” Does that make sense?
1:50 am / dining room / 16 feb
doorways/thresholds are definitely purple — a deep, dark purple the air above the gorge: different versions (tints/shades) of purple purple hums, a soft lavender static in my ears lachrymose purple originally wrote violet static, but looked up the color again and thought it was too dark for the static I was hearing in my head
9:46 am / front room / 16 feb
Thought more about violet. Decided to search, “Alice Oswald violet.” Found this beautiful poem:
Violet/ Alice Oswald
Recently fallen, still with wings out,
she spoke her name to summon us to her darkness.
Not wanting to be seen, but not uncurious,
she spoke her name and let her purple deep eye-pupil
be peered into.
‘Violet,’ she said
and showed her heart under its leaf.
Then she leant a little frightened forwards
and picked a hand to pick her.
And her horrified mouseface, sniffed and lifted close,
let its gloom be taken and all the sugar licked off its strangeness
while we all stood there saying, ‘Violet! Violet!’
fingering her blue bruised skin.
Finally she mentioned
the name of her name
which was something so pin-sharp,
in such a last gasp of a previously unknown language,
it could only be spoken as a scent,
it could only be heard as our amazement.
“purple deep eye pupil”: so good!
“the name of her name” — I wrote in my notes: the flower is never one solid, consistent color — the color is an abstraction, a taking one part for the whole, a disconnection — to name a color is to reduce the experience and perception of that color to one thing — colors cannot be fully named
What is lost — in our perception, experience of the world — when we reduce what we see to a fixed color/fixed name?
This question reminds me of something I read in Turning to Stone on the importance of naming yesterday:
The names themselves are, of course, human constructs, but the act of naming requires making distinctions that sharpen the powers of observation.
*
Taxonomy is comforting because it creates a sense of control and finitude in a chaotic and open-ended world.
Turning to Stone / Marcia Bjornerud
Lists! I love lists. My lists aren’t taxonomies, but something else . . .
The proper name of God is a list.
Valentina Izmirlieva in Aster of Ceremonies
Once I get the audiobook of Aster of Ceremonies, I want to put name as taxonomy and control in conversation with JJJJJerome Ellis’ “Liturgy of the Name” and “Benediction.”
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 18 degrees / feels like 6
The bike path was clear and not crowded. The air was cold. I heard a few birds, kids on the playground, dry leaves still on the trees imitating the waterfall. My legs felt heavy, my lower back a little sore. Waved a greeting to almost everyone I encountered. Thought maybe I heard some kids on the sledding hill at minnehaha park but couldn’t see anyone.
About a mile in, I started thinking about how purple represents both very hot temperatures and very cold ones. Purple = extreme. Then I thought about Basho’s line about poetry as “a fireplace in summer, a fan in winter.”
small victories: thought about stopping to walk under the ford bridge but kept going until I reached my favorite observation spot, stopped to put in a playlist, then kept running until I reached the double bridge. also: have mostly reached my winter goal of lowering my average heart run to under 160 — today it was 157.
10 Things
cloud-covered sun
yellowed leaves on an otherwise bare tree — a compliment to the violet air
the river was covered in white and looked wider and colder than usual
at least 10 people were standing near my favorite observation spot by the falls
through the slats of the double bridge on the walking side I noticed bright blue graffiti
one car was parked in the far parking lot at the top of the sledding hill
the bright pink plastic bag I mentioned last week was further in the woods today — was it filled with snow?
the falls were frozen and not falling
stopped at the bench above the edge of the world: open, empty, a few tracks in the snow
a small part of the fence near 38th is missing a panel
the purple hour — 2 days
3:18 am(bedroom floor) / 13 jan 2025
Still life painting Heavy shadows and light
Sitting in the dark, wanting to keep the quiet and how I’ve adjusted to the dark, I’m reluctant to take out my iPad and write or to speak into my phone. Now, later (10:00 am) in the morning, I remember the moon (a full moon!) coming through the slats — not as dramatically as the past few nights — and the window-sized square of light with its soft slat shadows and the deep, solid shadow of the couch and the dark almost emptiness of the closet — almost empty because I could see the hint (inkling?) of the exercise ball with the slightest outline of light. The image of the ball just barely emerging from the shadow reminded me of a still life painting — the one that Diane Seuss writes about in Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber/ Diane Seuss (see 3 may 2024).
At night, when others are asleep and it’s more dark than light, the world stills for my restless eyes. The static stops. Finally objects freeze. Mostly I do too. A chance to look for longer, to stare and study.
I like “seeing” the darkness in the closet — its accordion doors wide open — as a deep purple. It’s not pure black; there’s color there but it’s dark and deep.
Writing this last sentence prompted me to search for Monet and purple. Why? I can’t remember now, a few minutes later. Jackpot. First, a quotation wrongly attributed to Claude Monet on the search, but actually spoken by Manet — poor Manet. How often is he overshadowed by Monet? Anyway, here’s the quotation:
I have finally discovered the true colour of the atmosphere. It’s violet. Fresh air is violet. I found it! Three years from now everyone will do violet!
found in The Secret Lives of Color, which sites Bright Earth: The Invention of Color, 208.
Bright Earth? This books looks great. Just requested it from my local library!
The impressionists were enamored with violet. Critics claimed they were afflicted with violettomania. Some theories on why:
a belief that shadows were never merely black or gray but colored — this sounds familiar!
complementary colors: bright yellow and soft purple. Robin Wall Kimmerer and Goldenrods and Asters!
Talking with my sister on the phone in the afternoon about my purple hour, she mentioned a paint color made from human remains. I think she meant this one:
Caput mortuum, Latin for “dead head,” is a dark brown paint that looks violet in some lights, maroon in others. It is earthy and intense, and like many browns, it can run in opposite chromatic directions when diluted. Some versions of caput mortuum paint tend toward the yellow end of the spectrum, while others wash into a light, yet slightly murky lavender. Despite its foreboding name and strange history, it is a rather simple, homey color. The substance reached the height of its popularity in the 18th and 19th centuries. It gets its hue from pulverized, mummified bodies (both human and feline) and its name from alchemy.
That moon! noticed a thin line of light on the kitchen floor then went over to the side (south facing) window and noticed the moon through the thick wooden slats. wow! sitting at the dining room table, the heat kicked in — creaking everywhere through the vents. I have a short, repeated passage from one of our community band pieces running through my head. looking off to the side I caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror, my face-blob glowing from the computer screen — wistful wisteria — all parts of wisteria are toxic to humans — small purple flowers
I’m not sure why the phrase “wistful wisteria” popped into my head. Where do I know wisteria from? Searched for poetry wisteria and found a poem by Lucie Brock-Broido, Extreme Wisteria
Wisteria is, first: a hardy, deciduous, capable-of-earnest-grasping shrub which bears small flowers. After that, it can be pressed (violently if you will) into an attar of its former self. In this poem, wisteria is also a state (of mind), the place one heads toward when feeling wistful.”
Wandering with purple: Part of this purple hour project, part of any of my projects really, is to find reasons to wander and wonder about new, unexpected things that I might not otherwise encounter or care about. Mission accomplished! It started last night with a random phrase that whispered to me, wistful wisteria. This led to reading about the purple-flowered vine, wisteria, then Lucie Brock-Broido’s poem, then her Q&A about the poem in which they discuss Emily Dickinson, especially her poem, “Essential Oils — are wrung –“. Then the idea of ED as a hard nut to crack. Then this line from some commentary on ED:
When I read Walt Whitman, we jauntily walk side by side down the road within his multitudinous world of wonder. When I read Dickinson, I don’t know if I am inside her mind or if she is inside mine. But I am always in a mysterious, perplexing, deeply thought-provoking, sometimes scary but always beautiful place.
I think we’re all in conversation on the page with that which came before us, or even during us. We inherit whatever canon we’re in the midst of, a great collective influenza.
*
What I mean to say is that, in my own work, often, I may have been with Dickinson, but she was not with me.
5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill 6 degrees 100% snow-covered
A fine mist of snow. A few patches of ice, some slight slips. Cold. Fresh air. Sun behind clouds. For the first mile I didn’t see anyone else on the trails. Then, a few runners and walkers. No bikers or skiers. Sometimes I felt strong, sometimes I felt sore, all the time I was happy to be out there by the gorge.
today’s small victories: wasn’t sure how far I’d run but made it to the bottom of the hill. Almost stopped to walk near the top for a minute, but didn’t, kept going until the bottom. Ran from the bottom to under franklin — 3/4 of the hill — instead of walking like I planned
10 Wintery Things
patches of ice on sidewalk that wasn’t shoveled
cold air on my face — not quite cold enough to give me a brain freeze or to freeze the snot in my nose
small, soft flakes or freezing rain freezing on my eyelashes
the sharp thrust, grinding noise combo of feet walking on snow
the river: a mix of white ice and dark (purple?) open water
white, heavy sky
bird song: cheese burger cheese burger
the bluff on the other side of the river: a mix of white with bare brown branches
all of the walking trails were covered in a few inches of snow, some of it untouched, some marked by tracks — feet and skis
leaned over the wall in the flats and listened — a soft, sharp tinkling of snow hitting the ice on the surface of the river
Discovered Lee Ann Roripaugh’s awesome collection #string of pearls yesterday through her poem, #meteorology on poems.com. I’m thinking of buying the collection. Here are a few bits of it — it’s all tankas — that I thought of during my winter run:
yesterday’s snow sleeps :: late this morning in quiet :: white sheets / while rickety trees comb out fog’s heavy shanks :: of tangled, unruly hair
*
as gusted leaves buzz :: and whorl over snow-sugared :: roofs / but oh! this blown fluttering’s not a swirling :: of leaves, but winter sparrows
~
ugh! snotted hoody :: pinkened tinge faint litmus stain :: (yes or no / minus or plus) watercoloring :: blown-through tissues / torn storm blooms
*
wet-dark tree beaded :: in pearled bits of wintry mix :: excited finch swoops in manic parabolas :: to sip from the leaky eaves’
icicle /
the purple hour
2:40 am — dining room
too restless to notice or think about anything . . . purple mauve lavender orchid magenta is this restlessness a light or dark purple? whatever it is, it’s thick
3:15 am — bedroom floor
shadows slats moon carpet the slats are soft, barely visible the shadow of the lamp, its long neck, and something else. the cup? tin of nuts? nope the arm of the sofa the moon — so bright! how many more days of this moon? this clear sky?
bike: 25 minutes run: 3 miles outside temp: 1 degree/ feels like -7
Too cold for me today. Watched some races while I biked — I need to find a good movie or show!, listened to “Energy” while I ran. I stopped at 15 minutes for a few seconds, but when a good song came on — I can’t remember what — I decided to start running again. Then I kept going until I hit 30 minutes. Nice! My small victory for the day.
During the first half of the run I couldn’t quite lock into a rhythm. My feet seemed slightly off with the belt; I was on the edge of the beat. When I made the treadmill just a little faster, I entered the beat. I could barely hear my feet striking and I couldn’t feel the belt moving. Very cool. It felt similar to when I’ve locked in with the metronome. The other thing I remember is looking up at the dark window with the reflection of the light — the one that I’ve written about several times before, describing it as looking like an inverted moon on lake superior — and thinking it didn’t look like the moon anymore. I remembered why: Scott changed the light bulb from a round one to a rectangle one. It’s brighter too. My moon is gone. Bummer.
the purple hour
3:10 am / bedroom Full moon bright, spied through the dark slats of the blinds Slanted square of window with blinds cast in the carpet
Shadow of the blinds cast on McPherson* forearm: stripes Only seen in dim light; the light of this iPad erases it
*a typo — I decided to keep it in here. I don’t remember what I was trying to write that would have been autocorrected to McPherson. Was it just a slip of my fingers as I typed my?
(written 11 feb, 9:30 am) I remember the moon early this morning. Wow! So bright through the blinds. I wanted to walk over to the window and peek through the slats but I was afraid that it would wake Delia the dog, asleep on the couch. It was so bright that even from the floor with the blinds closed all the way, I could see it if I tilted my head just right.
I turned down the brightness of the iPad as much as I could, but it still made the room too bright. Right after I put my iPad away, the shadows were gone. I wondered if clouds were covering the moon. But once my eyes adjusted, the shadows were back.
We inherited these blinds from the old owner of this house. They let light in even when fully closed. How dark would it be in this room if we had different (better?) blinds? How much longer would it take my eyes to adjust to (grow accustomed to?) the dark?
I think these blinds, with their gaps, create a dark that has some light: purple light.
purple thoughts/stories
violet: the very shortest spectral wavelength humans can see to re-create the color purple requires excess: shellfish, lichen
Reading about mauve in The Secret Lives of Colors, I was reminded of the connection between old woman and purple. (I recall thinking about the connection as I ran the other day when the Red Hat Ladies with their purple clothes popped into my head.)
Soon enough, however, mauve went into that most Victorian of things: a decline. Overconsumption, as well as the continuing loyalty of an older generation, meant that the color soon became shorthand for a particular kind o faging lady.
The Secret Lives of Colors / Kassia St. Clair (170)
Then I thought about the final stanza of a poem (this whole poem is amazing, btw). I gathered for this blog a few years ago:
It’s a small deposit, but I’m putting my faith in reincarnation. I need to believe in the sweetness of one righteous image, in Bill Parcells trapped in the body of a teacup poodle, as any despised thing, forced to yap away his next life staked to a clothesline pole or doing hard time on a rich old matron’s lap, dyed lilac to match her outfit. I want to live there someday, across that street, and listen to him. Yap, yap, yap. (I Heart Your Dog’s Heart/ Erin Belieu)
Which led to another random thought about a recent (2019?) hair trend: lavender gray. Looking at some of the pictures I wonder if I could pull this look off — I already have the gray.
The Color Purple
Inspired by my study of purple, I decided to reread Alice Walker’s The Color Purple which I read and wrote about in my masters’ coursework. I was really into Walker and Morrison and the link between women’s spirituality and sexual pleasure. I haven’t read it since then — 25 years ago. So far — 40 pages in — I’m enjoying it. Why is it called The Color Purple? I had to look it up, because I’ve forgotten. There are plenty of answers, here’s one:
I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.
Shug Avery in The Color Purple/ Alice Walker
A helpful source: Unearth the Root of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple. It describes the importance of nature and flowers to Walker’s vision of spirituality. This reminds me of Walker’s wonderful essay, “In Search of Our Mother’s Gardens.” Of course, I can’t find my copy of it right now. I’ll have to keep searching. The article also discusses the importance of horticulture for Black Americans and their African ancestors. I’m reminded of JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremony and their project of researching, naming, invoking the Plants that grew in the area where their enslaved ancestors “ran away”. A big chunk of the book is a Benediction, including the names of these plants, printed in purple. I’ve been reluctant to read it because it looked overwhelming with my bad eyes, but now I want to try. I think it will be another version of “The Purple Hour.”
update, a few minutes later: I started to read this section with my eyes, but it was difficult. I looked it up and discovered that my local library has the audio book. I requested it! A 2 week wait, but hopefully sooner. I’ll start on this whenl I can read the audiobook along with the paper book.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 7 degrees 75% snow-covered
Sun, not much wind, cold. Wore by yaktrax today. Even though there were big stretches of bare pavement I still think it was a good idea; lots of icy patches. At least once, I felt the yaktrax help me stay upright. Encountered walkers, runners, one bike, dogs. One dog was with a runner and tried to lunge at me. Luckily the runner had a tight hold on their leash.
10 Things
sharp street lamp shadows
strong smell of tobacco from a passing car
tinted snow — usually I’d say it was a bit blue, but I thought purple today
kids laughing and yelling on the playground
tracks through the snow at the park, skipping the sidewalk and taking a shortcut
tracks on the walking path — skis and human feet
minnehaha creek at the falls was slow, thick, frozen, only one dark and open spot
couldn’t see the falls falling, but heard their quiet dripping muffled behind the thick columns of ice
empty benches
empty falls — I don’t think I saw a single person by the falls today
About halfway to the falls, while thinking about purple I suddenly remembered mimeograph machines and the purple ink on the handouts we get copies of in elementary school. Later, on a walk break, I tried to think of as many purple things as I could. I had a list of at least a dozen, but all I can remember is purple Kool-aid. At the end of my run I thought about the Vikings and how purple is strongly associated with Minneapolis because of them and Prince. Prince made me think of a local radio station, the Current, and how they pull the “purple lever” for the first snow of winter: purple lever = a marathon of Prince music.
the purple hour
12:46 am — dining room to leave a mark, to be marked, bruised, purpled
silence, then a hollow knock, but not silence, buzzing or ringing in my ear, like static cold air (hear turned down at night)
purple purple purple purple violet violent violence silence silvery lilac plum plumb — the depths — plump — soft plums of cloud — plume of purpleish smoke
three white lights illuminating the outlet — not night lights plugged into the outlet, but lights embedded in the outlet — they are white and bright at the top, then fading out at the bottom, giving off gray light that reads as pale purple to me — got up to look closely at the lights and realized I was never looking directly at the light, the white and purplish gray shadow were all reflections on the wall, the lightbulbs were at the bottom of the outlet — what is the real light? where it originates, or where it casts?
3:00 am (remembered later) — bedroom closed blinds, bright moon beaming through in the form of a strange double circle on my hand in light and dark purple a thin line of light near the closet door
*
My description of the moon light made me think, purple moon, so I looked it up. A video game developer, a type of cheese, a modern furniture company, the name of a dispensary in Oklahoma, a variety of gourmet kale, the cycle when you start your period during a waning moon, the second full moon in April, a Chardonnay, a preschool, an arrangement of flowers with “lavender roses, purple carnations, and cheerful daisies”, a band, a branding company, a color evoking mystery.
Left my desk briefly to tell Scott about the purple moon and he asked, Have you mentioned “The Purple Rose of Cairo” yet? Wow, no! I haven’t seen that movie in almost 30 years. I think it was my favorite in my early 20s — this was before I knew what a creep Woody Allen was. Anyway, I want to watch it today.
This note, “to leave a mark, to be marked, bruised, purpled,” makes me think of two things:
1
This is the light of autumn, not the light of spring. The light of autumn: you will not be spared.
You will not be spared, now will what you love be spared. (from October/ Louise Glück)
2
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
Kafka on Prometheus
Not becoming one with the gorge, but striving to press deeper and deeper into it, to leave a trace/mark on it, and be marked by it (from log entry on 29 dec 2024).
Another purple thing I just remembered: on a weather map, purple represents very cold temperatures.
a screenshot from local weather forecast for this week
3. under ford bridge and back 9 degrees / feels like 0 100% snow-covered trail
Winter running! Sun, low wind, shadows, snow. I wouldn’t say it was an easy run, but it felt great to be outside and above the river. I don’t remember breathing in the cold air, but I do remember hearing the strange crunch of my foot as it struck the ground. Maybe not a crunch. Some noise that sounded like my foot was slipping or sliding on the snow. A thrust then a momentary stuck-ness before lifting off.
10 Things
the sharp shadow of the street lamp with its pointy top
my shadow crossing over and through another street light shadow
the smell of weed down below in the oak savanna
the thin, crooked shadow of a small tree cast on the snow
an equal mix of solitary and paired runners
the river was mostly covered in still white snow with a few patches of darker ice
today’s small victory: Instead of stopping at the turn around — which is what I usually do — I ran through it and back north, past locks and dam no. 1, past the part of the trail that dips below the road, and up the hill.
With the bright blue sky and the fresh white snow, I would have described the light as blue, but today I saw it as a faint purple. Another purple thought: purple grief is grief tinged with and/or beside joy. Dark, difficult, but more than that, too.
the purple hour
Up twice last night/this morning for the purple hour. Here are my notes:
12:04 am dining room
too many naps today? rich dinner? restless legs
uncomfortable purple
purple gas, purple ache, purple discomfort
the purple buzz of the refrigerator
the purple clicking of the coputer keys
everything chilled, a heavy stillness — not still, as in resting, calm, quiet, but still as in trapped — a purple pause
a memory from a run by the gorge: l.e.d. car headlights — not white but bright and purple, or the suggestion of purple
2:01 bedroom
Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender (Alice Walker)
The color purple — should I read it again?
The lavender menace — Betty Friedan’s homophobia
2 sets of snores: dog, Scott
purple light — the air in the room almost gray, but not, soft, dull, patches of very deep purple, and in-between shadows that are lighter than deep purple, but darker than the purple air
morning reflections: Sitting at my desk, bright from the cold sun, I look around and see blue and green and red and yellow and cream. Purple demands a different sort of light, or lack of light. I thought, suddenly, purple is peripheral. Then I remembered standing in front of a mirror this morning, looking directly into it, not seeing my face, but a purplish gray glob. So, purple is my central vision. Maybe it’s both, but in different ways?
Looked up “purple peripheral” and the first page of search results were all about cyanosis and a lack of oxygen to the extremities (hands, feet).
Somewhere in this search I remember something else about purple: it’s the color associated with pancreatic cancer. You wear a purple ribbon to support pancreatic cancer research. My mom died from pancreatic cancer. Looked it up and it’s a purple ribbon in honor of the founder’s mother whose favorite color was purple and who was diagnosed with and died from pancreatic cancer in 1996.
Woke up this morning to snow! Big flakes floating down. I watched them through the kitchen door. Beautiful. Within a few minutes, more flakes, faster, smaller. I sat in the arm chair inherited from Scott’s mom and watched the snow fall as I drank my coffee. A great way to start the day. Several hours later, when the snow had almost stopped, I layered up and went outside to shovel. Soft, fluffy snow, very easy to shovel. I listened to Season 2, Episode 3 of the Severance podcast. There was some wind, but it wasn’t too cold.
an image: shoveling in the back, I watched as a small, dark form swirled and skittered. It moved like a little bird. Was it? No, a leaf. Such a strange sight, watching a leaf that looked alive and not just animated by wind.
After sitting around all day — reading, napping, tracking the runners in the Black Canyon 100k Ultra, doing a FaceTime with FWA — I decided I needed to move. Went to the basement and biked. Then moved over to the treadmill and ran. Watched a few indoor track races during the bike, listened to the rest of the Severance podcast while I ran. That third episode of Severance — woah! The final minutes really freaked me out and triggered a memory from when I passed out last Christmas. Intense.
the purple hour
Woke up with very restless legs at 2:38 am. Too restless to sit and write anything. All I have in my notes is: more restlessness — shaking my legs
5.3 miles bottom franklin hill 16 degrees 10% snow and ice covered trail
Less wind today. Cold, but not as cold as yesterday and still. Ran north on the bike trail. My lower back was still a bit tight and sore, my neck too, at least for the first mile. Then things loosened up. Mostly I felt relaxed and strong and glad to be outside on a clear path. I tried running on the snow-covered walking trail for a minute, but it was too uneven. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker, although it took me a little too long to say Hi Dave because I didn’t quite recognize him. Has his arm swing become less pronounced, or has my vision become worse? Chanted triples, first berries, then the world around me: big old tree/big pine tree/red stop sign/motorbike/rumblin’ truck/passing car
10 Things
a strong smell of weed when I stopped at a bench above franklin
orange — or was it pink or red? — bubble lettered graffiti under the 1-94 bridge
the river was mostly covered, but the surface ice was uneven — some thick, some thin, some white, some gray — I thought I saw a few footprints on it — is that what they were?
chickadeedeedee
empty benches
the faint jangle of a dog collar somewhere below me
for a few stretches, the trail had strips of snow or ice or both — none of it slick or wet or a problem
thought about how long the hill was from the bottom of lake street to the top — is it as long as franklin? how much less steep is it?
mostly solitary male runners, one trio of women
the air was cold and crisp and felt clean as I inhaled it through my nose, exhaled it through my mouth
purple hour
Before writing about last night’s purple hour, a thought: At some point early in the run I realized I was wearing a purple jacket. Of course I know it’s purple and I’ve noted that on this log lots of times, but today it clicked that it was purple. I started imagining my time by the gorge in the winter as another purple hour. Then a George Sheehan passage echoed in my head:
I must listen and discover forgotten knowledge. Must respond to everything around me and inside me as well….The best most of us can do is to be a poet an hour a day. Take the hour when we run or tennis or golf or garden; take that hour away from being a serious adult and become serious beginners.
Running / George Sheehan, 1978
There’s something cool about how I (unintentionally) wear purple during these purple hours — a purple jacket during winter running, a purple robe during winter nights. It’s also interesting to me that I didn’t choose this color, both of them were chosen by my mother-in-law. When she died, I inherited her purple jacket; the purple robe was a christmas present from her years ago.
I like this idea of multiple meanings of the purple hour and how I can call these purple hours just because they involve me wearing purple — my purple habit (get what I did there? habit = a regular practice and clothing worn, like a nun’s habit).
Later in my run, I thought about dark purple and how closely it resembles, at least to me, dark brown tree trunks or dark water. Purple as another name for dark.
And now onto last night’s purple hours: two of the times I woke up in the middle of the night (how many times did I wake up and get out of bed?), I wrote about purple. Once on the ball in my bedroom (1:49 am), one at the dining room table (3:06).
1:49 am
Dark purple door (open closet)
Rustling dog
Droning fan layers of noise
3:08 am
midnights (tswift) lavender haze
violet purple lilac lavender
tints/shades of purple = mauve, orchid, eggplant, heather, iris
purple noise inside my ear — when the heat turns off
the house settling, unsettling
the other room, not illuminated by the light of my computer screen: deep ,dark purple
rhw (note: what is rhw? what word was trying to write?) hum, buzz from inside me stirring up the air
purple robe/comfy
Reviewing this list this morning, a thought: does anything rhyme with purple? Looked it up: hirple, to walk with a limp. I can envision purple as the color of limping. Now I’m thinking of having a hitch in your step which reminds me of un-hitching and Mary Ruefle and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
unhitching: to crudely paraphrase Lévi-Strauss, unhitching happens in brief moments when we can step outside of or beside or just beyond — below the threshold of thought, over and above society — to contemplate/experience/behold the this, the what it is, the essence of everything, Mary Oliver’s eternity. In your run above the gorge, near the river, below the trees, can you unhitch? (from log entry on 31 may 2023)
unhitching
The possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists … in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society; in the contemplating of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.
A pigeon walking dainty in the street; The morning mist where backyard fences meet; An old Victoria—and in it, proud, An old, old woman, ready for her shroud: These are the purple sights for me, Not palaces nor pageantry.
purple prose
I just learned about purple prose: excessive, overly verbose, wordy, too many metaphors, similes, adverbs, adjectives, language that calls attention to itself and lacks substance, a drama bomb. Just realized that Lumpy Space Princess, who coined “drama bomb” is lavender.Also, remembering Lumpy Space Princess inspired me to find and order a Drama Bomb t-shirt.
According to wikipedia, purple prose originates with the Roman poet Horace in his “Ars Poetica”:
Weighty openings and grand declarations often Have one or two purple patches tacked on, that gleam Far and wide, when Diana’s grove and her altar, The winding stream hastening through lovely fields, Or the river Rhine, or the rainbow’s being described. There’s no place for them here. Perhaps you know how To draw a cypress tree: so what, if you’ve been given Money to paint a sailor plunging from a shipwreck In despair?
Low vision yoga in the morning. Biking and running in the evening: 8 pm. This has to be one of the latest runs I’ve ever done. Will it help my sleep and restlessness? Make them worse? Do nothing? I’ll report back tomorrow.
While I biked I watched an old 70.3 triathlon race. While I ran, I listened to the Energy playlist: Pump Up the Jam, Ballroom Blitz, Hip to be Square. During the bike, my left knee occasionally hurt, which sometimes happens. After the run, my lower back was a bit sore. Should I do something about my back, like take a break or get it checked out?
Anything else I remember? The shadows my swinging arms made. How warm I felt after just a few minutes on the bike. A parched throat. Feeling relaxed and happy to be moving inside.
purple hour
Woke up at 2 am last night. Unlike the night before, when my legs were so restless that I had to shake them for a few minutes, I felt calm and chill and unbothered by being up. Instead of going downstairs to sit at the dining room table, I bounced gently on my exercise ball in the bedroom. Here’s what I wrote:
Bedroom in low light — a quiet still purple, light and dark
Quiet? Silent heavy and light soft and thick
A fan — not white noise but purple noise the agitation of stirring air
A steady hum to cover other noises and to counter the stiff stuck frozen nature of sleep when we slow to almost a stop unable to move in sleep
A world not lacking color but possessing an abundance of purple
purpled pulsing heart pumping purple blood
steady relaxed rocking on my feels (a type: heels, but I like feels, so I’ll keep it!)
cracking spine small purple sparks
I typed up my notes on my iPad. I love the typo: rocking on my feels.
Just now, reading through these notes I thought, is purple noise a thing? Looked it up and, yes it is! It’s used in sound engineering and sound/color therapy and for help with sleep. Here’s a helpful video highlighting sound colors:
I appreciate the descriptions and examples in this video, even if I can’t quite understand all of it. I wonder — what color of noise was I hearing in my bedroom? The sound was produced by a fan. Maybe I’ll ask Scott to analyze it — he loves sound production/engineering. I don’t think it’s purple noise; purple noise seems too high. Listening to a purple noise album on Apple Music, I’m a little agitated.
Speaking of color noise — I wonder what color the wind howling through the gaps in screen and front door is?
4.1 miles minnehaha falls and back 7 degrees / feels like 2
Lots of layers today. Too many. Under the jacket and pull-over and sweatshirt and shirt I was sweating. Like yesterday, the first mile was hard. I had several small victories as I pushed through moments of wanting to cut the run short.
10 Things
happy, wild kids on the playground — I thought I heard one kid call out, thank you thank you thank you then Sara Sara Sara
a bird singing — couldn’t quite hear the tune, just understood it was a bird
the few times I ran on snow it crunched — crisp, compact
the falls were dribbling over the ledge
2 vehicles in the parking lot, one of them was a pick-up truck
a car honking far behind me in the parking lot — were they honking at me?
a pink plastic bag in the small wood near the ford bridge — full of something
a few walkers, one woman bundled up, wearing a white mask over her mouth and nose
several fast runners, speeding by me
the river was almost all white
Chanted some triple berries, then triple birds, partly inspired by hearing Kacey Musgraves’ song, Cardinal, last night:
I have eliminated Facebook from my morning routine and I’m not missing it at all. No gnus is good gnus with Gary Gnu*. Maybe I’ll check the news once a week? So, instead of Facebook, I went straight into poets.org then Poetry Foundation then poems.com. On Poetry Foundation, I found a wonderfully titled essay, The Joy of Attention by Jasmine Dreame Wagner. The whole essay is great and I’d like to return to it. When she mentioned Carolyn Forché’s Blue Hour (which I’ve requested from my local library), an idea slowly, or not so slowly, crept into my consciousness: doing a variation of Wagner’s experiment — going to the same place at the same time every day, giving attention, then listing what you notice (without metaphor) — that involves my restlessness/insomnia at night and calling it Purple Hour. At 1 A.M. last night, sitting at the dining room table, up because of restless legs, I wrote, What color is restlessness? Then I wrote: purple / grayish purple. My answer, I’m sure, was inspired by Alice Oswald, her lecture Interview with Water and her mention of purple in Nobody. In the exercise, Wagner suggests writing in a notebook. Should I do that, or type it up in a document?
To go back to that bucket of water — to wave a blue gown above it and ask, What is that color which Homer calls porphyrion? It is not blue exactly; it gets translated as purple but purple is a settled color whereas Homer’s word is agitated. It derives from the sea verb porphyrion which means to roll without breaking, so it is already a fluid word, a heaped up word, a word with underswell, not a pigment but an emanation from the nature of water. To get a true sense of porphyrion you need to see the sea in it and for Homer the sea is unhuman full of strange creatures missed colored unplowable and this is my favorite word it is a peritone meaning unfenced. If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. Yes I’m afraid you will have to find your way to the p volume of Johnson’s unwritten dictionary. There you will discover a dark light word an adjective for edgelessness — a sea word used also of death smoke cloth mist blood between bluish purple and cobalt mauve. It appears mid-ocean when the wind perhaps makes a network of backblowing glitters that the underswell moves sideways as when a big sea swells with noiseless waves. It is used of the heart meaning his heart was a heaving not quite broken wave. It indicates a surface but suggests a depth a mutation of flatness or noiseless sheen, a sea creature, a quality of caves, any inlet or iodine or shaded stone, a type of algae or rockfish, anything excessive or out of focus or subliminal — for example: a swimmer seen from underneath, a rotting smell, a list of low sounds, an evening shadow or sea god, a whole catalogue of simmering grudges storms waves and solitudes or deep water including everyone who has drowned in it. To be purpled is to lose one’s way or name, to be nothing, to grieve without surfacing, to suffer the effects of sea light. to be either sleepless or weightless and cut off by dreams — find yourself in the silence underneath an overhanging way that or thereabouts is the color of a bluish violet ultramarine gown so the great poet sang.
Effort lay in us before religons at pond bottom all things move toward the light
Except those that freely work down to ocean’s black depths in us an impulse tests the unknown
from Nobody/ Alice Oswald
The sea she said and who could ever drain it dry has so much purple in its caves the wind at dusk incriminates the waves and certain fish conceal it in their shells at ear-pressure depth where the shimmer of headache dwells and the brain goes
dark
purple
purples to think about: heels echoing, doors creaking closed, deep pits. The gentle, queer curve of a branch towering over the trail — as I ran under it I thought, that’s very purple. Then the face of a child in the midst of bellowing frustration — I didn’t see their face, but I imagined it could be a deep purple. Purple whispers in the trees.
Record what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste during each visit.
Aim to record at least six new observations each time.
On days when you’re pressed for time, allow yourself to simply record: “ailanthus, roof moss, fireplace wood smoke, fence squirrel, birdbath.” Phrases can be just as powerful as full sentences.
Note the small observations as much as the significant ones: “eclipse.”
When you notice that something in the visual field has changed, be sure to reflect on this change.
Observe movement in addition to stasis.
Pay attention to the appearance of new items and the absences of others.
Familiarize yourself with the specifics of your environment.
Resist the urge to create metaphor or simile; instead, log what you see. Recognize the world for what it is.
After recording your observations for a few days or weeks or years, Wagner suggests reflecting on the process of this experience by writing in reverse — starting at the back of the notebook and writing until you reach the first entry. Write in the margins and any empty spaces; “write until your reflections on your process become entangled with your observations; let the notebook become a gnarled and ecstatic poem.”
While Wagner writes everything by hand in a notebook, I might try typing up and/or dictating my observations, printing them out and then writing all over the printed paper. I’m thinking my approach will be be better for my weak eyes.
Will I stick to pure observation? I’m not sure; I might experiment with different ways of understanding my restlessness, and the purple of it all.
*After double-checking how to spell Gary Gnu, I decided to look up the theme song for The Great Space Coaster. Yes! You’re welcome future Sara!
Sara, 8 jan 2026: Thank you! I really needed this today — a quick escape from the terrifying awfulness of ICE and their efforts to escalate (instead of de-escalate) one day after murdering a woman in South Minneapolis.
4.4 miles minnehaha falls and back 22 degrees 50% snow-covered
It snowed last night. 1 or 2 inches. By the time I went out for a run after noon, the sidewalks and bike path were cleared. I didn’t need to wear my yaktrax, but I did, so I was able to run on the snow-covered walking path. Fun! The snow was soft and slick but not slippery.
The first mile felt tough — my lower back was a bit sore — and I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way to the falls, but I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view, then kept moving forward until I reached the falls. There was a moment in the 44th street parking lot where I thought about turning off and descending to the Winchell Trail to walk back but at the last minute I just kept going on the double bridge towards the falls. It felt less like deciding to keep going, and more like deciding not to not keep going, or not deciding anything, just continuing to do what I was already doing. I often think about and remember the moment before/ the moment of deciding to stop or give up or turn around or not. Once it’s decided, it’s over. Sometimes I have to stop, but other times I could have pushed through and kept going. One of the my goals: push through those moments.
There were at least 2 other people walking by the falls and one park plow. Anyone else? I don’t think so. It was quiet; no water falling, or creek rushing. Were there any cars in the parking lot? I don’t remember noticing.
The river was white and so was the sky and the sun. I stopped at Godfrey to let a car cross and noticed a BIG bird soaring above me. What a wing span! An eagle, maybe?
10 more things
Kids laughing on the playground
a few stretches of deep snow where the walking and biking trail split
the smell of cigarettes as a car drove by
bare pavement then a thin strip of snow on the edge of the bike path
thin, short poles, placed on the edge of the sidewalk to alert plows and people of where the path is
the rumble of a plow approaching in the park
the green gate above the falls — closed and locked
briefly running parallel to someone with a dog on the snow-covered boulevard between the river road and edmund
the falls, frozen, almost all white with one dark spot off to the side
the sledding hill near godfrey was empty but covered in snow, ready to be used by someone — maybe after school?
Read on a message/poetry board in someone’s yard: What are you doing to protect democracy? I initially wrote this in response: A great question, and one to ask, and try to answer, every day. But now, thinking about it some more, I don’t like the use of “protection.”
What are you doing today to support democratic communities? What are you doing to help and prevent harm? Or maybe: What can you do today to resist totalitarianism? What could you do today to make space for more stories?
sleep dreams attention distraction
I haven’t figured out my monthly theme yet, but I am orbiting around some things: dreams, sleep, insomnia, restlessness, distraction, non-thought, reverie, stillness, Anne Carson, JJJJJerome Ellis and stuttering, the space between beats or fully inside the beat. Swirling, looping, circling — not coming or going in any one direction, but surrounding.
Today’s cluster is inspired by recent encounters with:
1
Distraction is a time between times, a time in which we become momentarily subject to the non-thought inside thought.
Is it, in fact, good to pay attention? Whose purposes does it serve?
*
The loudest calls to attention have been directed toward subordinates, schoolchildren, and women. “Atten-TION!” military commanders shout at their men to get them to stand straight. The arts of attention are a form of self-discipline, but they’re also ways to discipline others.
*
Successful attention capitalists don’t hold our attention with compelling material, but, instead, snatch it over and over with slot-machine gimmicks. They treat us as eyeballs rather than individuals.
*
Is the ostensible crisis of attention, at bottom, a crisis of authority? Is “people aren’t paying attention” just a dressed-up version of “people aren’t paing attention to me?“
*
Ours is an era of obsession as much as distraction, of long forms as much as short ones, of zeal as much as indifference.
The best remedy for insomnia, as with most things in life, is learning to live with it. In time, we come to understand that the psychological cost of stressing over sleeplessness is greater than the physical cost of not having slept, and so we adjust. * Insomnia is a mark of the insubordinate imagination. * To be awake is to be alive. Mind racing at 3 A.M., we are in tune with what may be the truly unique, only-once-in-the-universe gift of consciousness. That’s some comfort. We’ll sleep long enough soon enough.
5.1 miles bottom franklin hill and back 28 degrees / feels like 11 wind: 31 mph gusts
Windy and colder today. For mental strength required when I was running up the hill and into the wind. Did my reciting a poem per mile experiment: We grow accustomed; A Murmur; A lane of yellow led the eye; Tell all the truth; and It’s all I have to bring today. I struggled with the last one and the line, Be sure you count –should I forget/Some one the sum could tell. Not as easy today. I think it was the wind that made it hard.
10 Things
Hi Dave!
birds flying out of the trees, almost like leaves being scattered by the wind
a leaf swirling near the ground, looking like a darting bird
loud rustling on the edge of the trail — a squirrel? a bird? the wind?
beep beep beep the alarm on the trestle going off — not a train but some other moving thing — people walking or biking?
the stacked limestones under the franklin bridge are looking even more like a person — I bet someone has stacked them to look this way
2 e-bikes zooming past me, I watched the red lights on their saddles flashing as they disappeared
a panel of the fence is missing on the double bridge near 33rd. I’ve seen it before but only today did I wonder what happened. Did a car hit it? On the other side of the fence there’s only air and river far below
the river is just barely iced over and looking cold
overheard: I don’t know Gene’s kid
Like a lot of people, I’m trying to avoid much of the news about executive orders and project 2025. It’s a delicate balance: stay informed enough but not too much. Today the balanced was tipped to too much when I read an article about stripping women of their rights in the name of “personhood” someone shared on Facebook. It might be time to eliminate Facebook from my morning practice.
It’s a new month and time for a new challenge. After revisiting an article this morning — In Search of Distraction — I’m thinking that might be it, distraction. Or wandering or dreaming or reverie.
Here’s a line from the essay, to get me started:
Distraction is a time between times, a time in which we become momentarily subject to the non-thought inside thought. And this is the time — or one of the times — of poetry. Attention can be helpful later on as part of the process of revision, but for vision itself poets stand in need of distraction.
Breezy. Wind coming from the north. Sunny, too. Lots of shadows. Today’s run wasn’t effortless but it wasn’t hard either. Somewhere in-between. Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist for the last day of the month. Even with my headphones in, I could hear kids on the playground across the road, some hikers talking on the trail below.
Listening to the songs, I thought about the tenderness of remembering and the satisfaction of forgetting. Also thought about how we all remember things differently, and most of us inaccurately.
10 Things
the river was a patchwork of white and gray
only a few lumps of snow scattered on the grass and the trail
slick puddles
a sagging fence, casting a crooked and forlorn shadow
BLUE! sky
a few of the benches were occupied — at least 2
my favorite bench, above the “edge of the world” was empty, so was the one near folwell
ran on all of the walking paths — clear!
the sparkle of broken glass in a pile of leaves on the street in front of a neighbor’s house
a chain link fence below on the winchell trail, illuminated by the sun, on the edge, at the part of the trail that is slowly sliding into the gorge (the rubbled asphalt stretch just past 38th street)
before the run
These evenings of long light Must be high festival to them. It’s the time When the light seems tender in the needles Of the pine, the shimmer of the aspen leaves Seems kindly on the cliff face, gleams On the patches and gullies of snow summer Hasn’t touched yet. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
Reading this description of light in this beautiful poem, I’m reminded of Wednesday’s afternoon light. Stepping out on the deck around 4, I gasped as I noticed the light on the bare trees, glowing a soft green. An olive green, Scott thought. It seemed to be offering a glimpse of the future when winter was over. How should I describe that light? Not tender — dazzling? a show-stopper? But maybe tender, too. The light was soft on the trees — bathing them in light? — coaxing out them of their dreamed of leaves in the forms of the green glow.
And the creek is flush With life, streams of snow melt cascading down The glacial spills of granite in a turbulence The ouzel, picking off insects in the spray, Seems thrilled by, water on water funneling, Foam on foam, existence pouring out Its one meaning, which is flow. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
The glacial spills of granite? Water on water funneling? Existence’s one meaning: flow? Wow! I love this description of water.
Read, We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar, this morning and it got me thinking that I need to do some more strange, fun, playful experiments on here. Return to the erasures? Sentence scrambling? Pick something off of Meyer’s Please Add to this List list?
Turned randomly to a page in The Braille Encyclopedia and read “Body”.
The rest of the body works to compensate for what the eye can no longer do.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
Cohn discusses a sore neck and back, muscle spasms, headaches. Do I feel any of these things? The occasional headache. Starting these sentences, I had forgotten about the dizziness, then I remembered when I felt it — the world suddenly swimming for a moment as I tried to read and write in this entry.
Then she mentions feeling very tired —
A kind of tired that feels like most of my trillions of mitochondria have decided they’ve cooked their last energy-meal, turned off the stove, hung up their aprons, kicked off their pinching shoes, and gone to lie down somewhere. For a very long time.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
I feel tired often — maybe not as tired as Cohn. I take naps, or fall asleep mid-sentence. I have the luxury of measuring my efforts, (and lowering my expectations), not doing things that are too draining too often. Shopping is draining, especially grocery shopping. A few weeks ago, I had to stop at the end of the aisle, hang onto the cart, and close my eyes for a minute. Too many things I couldn’t quite see, lights that were too bright. Deep breaths. This used to make me anxious, but now, with the help of lexapro and the understanding that this dizziness is caused by an uncertain and overworked brain, I don’t worry as much.
after the run
After discovering James Longenbach’s poem, “In the Village,” earlier this month, I requested his collection Seafarer from the library. Here’s part 4:
from In the Village/ James Longenbach
Of ghosts pursued, forgotten, sought new— Everywhere I go The trees are full of them.
From trees come books, that, when they open, Lead you to expect a person On the other side:
38 degrees! Sun and hardly any wind and less layers. The snow is almost all melted and all the paths were clear. I repeated yesterday’s experiment: run a mile; stop to walk, pull out my phone, and recite an ED poem into it; start running again (repeat, 5 times total). Today I recited: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark; A Murmur in the Trees — to note; I Felt a Funeral in my Brain; I heard a Fly buzz when I died; and A lane of yellow led the Eye. Like yesterday, it helped me to stay steady with my pace. The lines that stuck with me the most are at the end of A Murmur in the Trees — to note:
But then I promised n’ere to tell How could I break my word So go your way and I’ll go mine No fear you’ll miss the road
I thought about this road in relation to the road in We Grow Accustomed:
A Moment — We uncertain step For newness of the Night Then fit our vision to the Dark And meet the road erect
You adjust and get back on the road, where life steps almost straight (the ending line of “We Grow”), and I’ll stay here in the Dark with the little men in their little houses and the robins in their trundle bed and this whimsical, strange world (images from A Murmur).
10 Things
my shadow, far below in the ravine near Shadow Falls
the view from the top of the hill after climbing from under the lake/marshall bridge — wide, open, iced surface
the bells of St. Thomas ringing
running on the east side, across the river from one of the schools, I could hear the kids on the playground all the way over here
my shadow, on the railing of the ford bridge — I kept looking down to the iced river, searching for more of my shadow on the shadow of the bridge’s railing
the river, near the ford bridge was all white, but further north, it was gray with white splotches
the port a potty at the Monument was covered in black graffiti and the door didn’t look like it could fully shut
close to where I heard the kids across the gorge, I noticed how steep the slope was — don’t get too close to this edge!
a man below on the Winchell trail talking to little kid (or a dog?) — momma’s coming — as a woman approached them
a kid on the playground: it’s soooo warm!
memory
Memory can edit reality in some such way and then the edited version is too good to let go. Memory makes what it needs to make.
A Lecture on Corners/ Anne Carson
I picked up Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia at Moon Palace last night!
Now, in my sixties, the Velcro of memory has lost its grip, glutted with lint. This makes learning braille–all its letters, punctuation, symbols, contractions, and their rules for use–puzzling. The mind’s memory fail. What takes over? Muscle memory, body memory, skin memory. My fingertip remembers more braille than my hippocampus.
I tried something new today. I picked 5 Emily Dickinson poems that I have memorized, then stopped after each mile to recite one of them into my phone. Mile 1, “Before I got my eye put out”; Mile 2, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”; Mile 3, “A Murmur in the Trees”; Mile 4, “A Felt a Funeral in my Brain”; and Mile 5, “A Heard a Fly Buzz when I died.” I didn’t have to stop right at the end of the mile, but just sometime before the next mile. It was fun and made the run go by faster. Sometimes I thought about what I had just recited as I ran, sometimes I didn’t. After “Murmur” I thought about ways to mash its lines up with “We Grow Accustomed” — maybe I’ll work on that more today?
assessment: This experiment was fun and helpfully distracting. I’ll definitely try it again!
10 Things
Hi Dave!
not much snow left on the walking path or the grass — in some places, a lumpy line of snow in the middle of the walking path from where the plow pushed the snow off of the biking trail
a few slippery spots where water was barely ice
the river was mostly frozen with a few spots of dark water
a bird singing, cheeseburger or tea kettle — I guess that’s a chickadee?
the thump of my zipper pull against by neck or chest
a fat bike laboring by — slow and steady
at least one bench was occupied — a person and two dogs
my shadow beside me — sharp and erect
another lone black glove — small
For part of the run, I focused on my rhythmic breathing: 1 2 3 in / 1 2 out. I began chanting: mystery is solved, then history is fact?, then history is wrong, then whose history is that? (which doesn’t quite fit the 3/2), whose story is told, and at whose expense?
I woke up with a sore right glute/lower back. Not terribly painful, but sore and a bit worrisome. Wanted to run in the warmer weather but wondered if it was a bad idea. Then I heard the howling wind and decided to believe that it was a sign: don’t run! So I went to the basement and biked instead. It helped! I should work on biking longer in the basement. It’s boring. My bike is on a basic stand — no shifting, no zwifting, just pedaling and watching something on my iPad. Today I watched some races; next time, a show or a movie.
Before my bike: I’m in the process of re-reading all of the poems I gathered this year and choosing lines to turn into my own poem. This process inspired three directions of thought:
1 — open
The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall. It is like a prayer to what is empty. And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers: “I am not empty, I am open.” (Vermeer/ Tranströmer)
When the door of my vocal cords closes, another opens. And through that open door I escape into a region I do not know what to call but which is vaster than the space of my body. You could say: my name is the door to my being, and in that interval when I’m stuttering, the door is left wide open and my being rushes out. What rushes in? (from Liturgy of the Name/ JJJJJerome Ellis)
Open doors say, “Come in.” (Doors/ Carl Sandburg)
This discussion of open doors reminded me of something I remembered thinking/writing about in a log entry, but not when I wrote it. It took a few minutes, but I found it!
Running north, somewhere above the white sands beach, I started thinking about something I was working on earlier today about how my changing vision is closing some doors, opening others. I’m particularly interested in thinking about how it opens doors without ignoring/denying the shut ones too. Anyway, I suddenly had a thought: it’s not just that it opens doors, but it makes it so those doors can’t shut. I waited until I reached the bottom of the hill and then spoke my idea into my phone. Here’s a transcript:
It’s not just that doors open, they won’t shut. I can’t close them to the understandings that I’m both forced to confront but also have the opportunity to explore. But the key thing is that the doors can’t be shut. my notes recorded during a run on 3 may 2023
I came to this idea after thinking about how vision is strange and tenuous and a lot of guesswork for everyone. A big difference between me and a lot of other people is that I can’t ignore or deny that fact. It’s much easier for people with “normal” vision to imagine, with their sharp vision and their ability to focus fast, that they are seeing exactly what is there. They’re not. Even if I wanted to, I can’t pretend that that is true. I’m reminded all of the time of how tenuous converting electrical impulses into images is and what the brain does for us to make those images intelligible.
log entry from 3 may 2023
2 — walls
The ears experience a buzz, perhaps it’s depth or perhaps height. It’s the pressure from the other side of the wall, the pressure that makes each fact float (Vermeer/ Tramströmer)
I wandered all along the street that hugs the walls, a needle floating on its cloth. Once I shut my eyes and felt my way along the stone. Outside is the cash crop, sunflowers, as far as one can see. Listen, the wind rattles in them, a loose worship seeking an object an interruption. Sara, the walls are beautiful. They block the view. And it feels rich to be inside their grasp. (To a Friend Going Blind/ Jorie Graham)
Here I’m thinking about inner and outer and the interior walls of a house and the limestone and sandstone and concrete walls of the falls and lock and dams and the gorge.
Not the nose on my face, but the spite, the grindstone. Not an arm or a leg, but the money. Not the length of the arm, but the lie, the shot, the list, the twist. Not the ear, but the lending, the boxing, the out on. Not the eye, but the naked, the catching, in the blink of, the keeping it peeled, the turning a blind. Not the elbow but the grease, the room. Not the leg, but the pulling. Not the back, but the shirt on, the breaking of, the scratch, the stab, the turning, the water off a duck’s. Not the neck, but the sticking it out, the in-shit-up-to. Not the throat, but the jump down, the frog in. Not the feet, but the ground, the dragging, the cold. Not the heel, but the down at, the under. Not the fingers, but the light, the butter. Not the thumb, but the green, the sore, the twiddle. Not the tongue, but the slip. Not the tooth, but the nail, the long in, the sweet. Not the brain, but the drain, the picking of, the all brawn and no. Not the breast, but the beating. Not the body, but the temple. The bird in the hand, the foot in the grave.
This poem is one of five published in the Cortland Review in the spring of 2009. As an aside, the spring of 2009 was when I started my first blog, TROUBLE, which transformed my life, andalso when my mom was in the final stage of pancreatic cancer; she died in the fall of 2009.
Not the eye, but the naked, the catching, in the blink of, the keeping it peeled, the turning a blind.
Yes, let’s give up these expressions. I am reminded of Naomi Cohn and her listing of expressions using blind:
Blind alley a dead end. Blind pig an illegal saloon. Blind drunk what you get there. Blind staggers a disease of horses. Blind story floor of a building without windows. Blind spot where the car lurks in the next lane.
Looking for this writing, I discovered that Cohn’s book, Braille, is finally out! How did I miss that it was published this past October? Oh, I know — I was worried about the election and dealing with the mental health crises of my two kids! I immediately ordered Cohn’s book at my local awesome book store, Moon Palace! Pick up later today. Hooray!
Didn’t Georgina Kleege do a riff on “blind” in her book, Sight Unseen? Just checked, yes!
The word blind has always meant more than merely the inability to see. The Anglo-Saxon translators of the Gospels make the metaphoric leap from literal sightlessness to spiritual or cognitive incapacity. Of course they were only following an ancient lead. Throughout the history of the language and in common usage today, the word connotes a lack of understanding or discernment, a willful disregard or obliviousness, a thing meant to conceal or deceive. In fact, when you stop to listen, the word is far more commonly used in its figurative than its literal sense. And it comes up so often: blind faith, blind devotion, blind luck, blind lust, blind trust, blind chance, blind rage, blind alley, blind curve, blind-nail flooring, blind date (more dangerous than you think), duck blind, window blind, micro-mini blind (when open, they’re hard to see), blind taste test, double-blind study, flying blind, following blind, blind leading the blind, blind landing, color blind, blind submission, blind side, blind spot, blindfold, blindman’s bluff, three blind mice (have you ever seen such a sight in your life?).
Sight Unseen/ Georgian Kleege
memories
Writing about walls and the inner and outer, I started thinking about Severance and innies and outies and the relationship between them. Scott and I are listening to the Scott/Stiller podcast recapping the first season and watching all of the episodes, before screening season 2. Anyway, I remembered Helly R’s consent speech:
My name is Helly R. I’m making this video roughly two hours before it will be shown to me. I have, of my own free accord, elected to undergo the procedure colloquially known as severance. I give consent for my perceptual chronologies to be surgically split, separating my memories between my work life and my personal life. I acknowledge that, henceforth, my access to my memories will be spatially dictated. I will be unable to access outside recollections whilst on Lumon’s severed basement floor, nor retain work memories upon my ascent. I am aware that this alteration is comprehensive and irreversible. I make these statements freely.
What does the severing process do to the brain? Is it all about dividing inner and outer memories? What is the role of memory and remembering in the forming/understanding/experience of selfhood? Irving gives a little speech about how our sense of self is shaped by our memories/stories/history to Helly in episode 3:
It’s an unnatural state for a person to have. No history. History makes us someone. It gives us a context, a shape.
5.25 miles bottom of franklin hill 22 degrees / feels like 12 wind gusts: 29 mph
Sunny but windy. Shadows and shaking leaves. Like most of my runs lately, it felt hard. I briefly thought about stopping at the trestle, but then I kept going instead. As I ran down the franklin hill I remembered that I’d get to check out the frozen river. It did not disappoint! The coolest thing about the surface ice was the noises it made as cars drove by on the river road — that strange, echoey boom, almost like whales communicating, that happens when ice is disturbed — I have a link to this sound somewhere on the blog, but I couldn’t find it quickly. I’ll keep searching for it.
Listened to the wind, voices, and geese as I ran north. Put in mood: energy on the way back — “Baba O’Reily”; “My Sharona”; “Renegade”; “It’s Tricky”; “Cult of Personality”; “New Attitude”. Favorite line was from “Cult of Personality” — When a mirror speaks/the reflection lies. Also thought about “New Attitude” and the line, I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes — why not, good from my hat to my shoes?
10 Things
bright blue, cloudless sky
my shadow, sharp, running in front of me
2 geese honking high in the sky — I stopped running and craned my neck to watch them fly by
empty benches
ice on the path — a dirty brown, then almost amber when the light hit it just right
voices from somewhere below, cheering somebody
the river, covered in thick ice
a person with a fancy camera stopped by the railing, taking pictures
someone walking by in the flats, having an animated conversation with someone else over the phone
a strong smell of weed — did it come from the car that just drove by or the walker with 2 dogs?
G.C. Waldrep
During my “on this day” practice, I came across a line from the poet G.C. Waldrep:
I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.”
The Earliest Witnesses
I had posted it on 26 jan 2021 because I had just encountered it on twitter and in the context of a discussion of the soul. Today I read it and wanted to know more about what Waldrep meant. I searched “G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses” and found a post on the poet (and father of Jenny Slate) Ron Slate’s site, On the Seawall: On The Earliest Witnesses.
In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs one of his most perplexing miracles. The narrator tells us that, after a blind man is “brought” to him, Jesus “put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him.” But the miracle doesn’t seem to take. For after Jesus asks the man whether he can see, the man replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” In response, Jesus lays his hands on the blind man’s eyes once more—a kind of second go at it—after which, we are told, “his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”
This story comes to mind, unbidden, in the reading of G.C. Waldrep’s The Earliest Witnesses — the poet’s seventh collection — not only because the book speaks candidly about the deterioration of sight (among other bodily maladies) but also because Waldrep’s poetry mirrors the slow and partial revelation of sight that we find in this miracle. These poems both obscure and disclose: in some lines they show us “everything clearly” — in others, “trees, walking.”
“I strode into the woods in a brute faith,” reads the first line of the first poem, “certain the forest / would give me what I needed.” Then, in a characteristic move of obfuscation, the speaker withdraws into occluded seclusion, as if from fear of speaking too plainly. “If there was a mathematics / I was all for it, math being hunger’s distaff cousin.” Here we find that tension between clear vision and partial sight that marks both our opening miracle story and so much of The Earliest Witnesses; however, in this instance, we begin with sight, only to have it dimmed immediately.
I was immediately struck by the line in the post, I see people but they look like trees walking. That’s not quite how it works for me, but, with my vision, I can imagine seeing people that way, like trees walking. I want to read the bible verse the author is referencing and think about that some more.
Searching some more for Waldrep, I found an interview with him and this great discussion:
A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.
Squinting! Mishearing or misreading or mis-seeing! The squinting makes me think of a poem by Linda Pastan or a line (I think, I’ll have to check later) from Arthur Sze. The mishearing reminds me of something I encountered during my annual review (22 july 2024) a few days ago:
the Ten Muses of Poetry — from the writer, Andrei Codescru, in his book, The Poetry Lesson. I’ve never heard of Codescru — he’s great. I found the chapter his Ten Muses are inand read it. Funny and strange and great. I wonder, would I enjoy taking a class from him? Probably.
The Ten Muses of Poetry
Mishearing
Misunderstanding
Mistranslating
Mismanaging
Mislaying
Misreading
Misappropriating cliches
Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
4.4 miles minnehaha falls and back 26 degrees / feels like 6 wind: 32 mph gusts
Windy today. As I sit at my desk writing this, I can hear the wind howling through the gaps in our screen/glass door. Ran south again to the falls. Felt tired and sluggish. Stopped a few times to walk. Listened to the wind, rustling leaves, scattered voices, cars as I headed south, my “It’s Windy” playlist on the way back north.
10 Things
a brittle brown leaf swirling and rushing ahead of me on the sidewalk
the trail was stained a grayish white with salt
a fat bike, its rider wearing a BRIGHT yellow jacket
a non-fat bike, its rider bent low against the wind
a section of the wooden fence is missing a slat and is leaning back toward the oak savanna
the lone black glove that was on the path yesterday has been moved off to the side, on top of the piled snow
3 or 4 people by the green gate blocking the steps down to the falls, one of them already on the other side (the inside) of it, the others poised to do the same
the sharp bark of a dog down near the falls
a person standing in front of the railing by the creek, posing, another person behind a camera on a tripod
a few thin splotches of ice on the concrete railing above the creek, mostly looking dull until the sun hit it, then shiny
I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran or noticing the river or hearing any birds. Not the easiest run, but I’m glad I got out there.
Yesterday afternoon, I discovered that Anne Carson gave a lecture titled, “On Hesitation.”
4.5 miles minnehaha falls 20 degrees / feels like 8
Above 0, but still felt cold. It was the wind, swirling softly in all directions, that did it. Ran south to the falls. Wasn’t sure if I’d make it all the way there — it felt difficult — but I did! The creek and the falls were almost all frozen, only a small stream buried under the ice. Looking at the falls from my favorite spot, across the way, it looked like a giant column of ice, which it was.
10 Things
a strong smell of cigarette smoke near the parking lot
thin patches of ice on the cobblestone at the park
kids’ laughter coming from across the road, at the school playground
my favorite bench, above the edge of the world, was not empty today
near the bench, the snow where someone had written “DAVIDSON” had melted
the mottled walking trail at the park — mostly white snow, with grayish asphalt splotching through
a lone black glove, dropped on the trail
a dark gray chunk of snow, upright, looking like a squirrel waiting to cross the road
a few runners, a few walkers, no bikers
glanced down at the big sledding hill at the park — not much snow and no one sledding down it
I had wanted to thinking about stillness (inspired by an entry from 21 aug 2024) or to chant triple berries but mostly I forgot. I put in a mood playlist: energy at the halfway point and focused on the music, including Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch.” Wow.
before the run
This month, I’ve been reviewing all my entries from 2024 and giving attention to remembering and forgetting and then getting in too deep with thinking and theorizing and organizing ideas around themes. Past Sara — Dr. Sara who is too enamored with theories and ideas and being clever — wants to return. Present Sara needs to figure out some ways to prevent that from happening! Yesterday I decided to take out my scrabble tiles and make anagrams out “remember forget” and “I remember to forget.”
remember forget bee or germ fret [m] more bereft germ beet form merger forge meter [brm] frog meter berm beef rot merger [m]
I Remember to Forget Got more meter fiber Orbit form tree gem bee form griot meter
What anti-theorizing thing can I do today?
A line remembered during my “on this day” practice:
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion? (Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis)
Everything I see is motion or in motion or never not in motion.
Last night we watched a Voyager’s episode in which the crew was experiencing strange symptoms — Captain Janeway had terrible headaches and couldn’t sleep; Chakotay was aging way too fast; Nelix was transforming into another species; and another red shirt went into shock then died. After 7 of 9 shifts into a different phase, she is able to witness what is happening: there are tons of people (human looking) on the ship hovering around the crew members and injecting them with needles. They are experimenting on them in the name of “medical research.” Yikes. Janeway’s headaches are not due to working too hard and not getting enough sleep or exercise, but because they are injecting her with dopamine. They keep increasing the dose to see how much she can take. I said to Scott, can you imagine if our headaches were caused by imaginary creatures messing with us? Then I started to imagine that this was the case. I also started to think about all the things we can’t see that live with us, like mites and bacteria and more. Surprisingly this didn’t freak me out.
Here is a poem I discovered yesterday. I love that first line and what it does as it follows from the title! I found it before I watched the Star Trek Voyager episode, but it is interesting to put them together to think about who/what we live with that we don’t see, or refuse to see:
Forgiveness was sitting in your kitchen when you got home, and now rests elbows on the table to watch you reach for a knife. You scrape the papery skin from a ginger root and slice it into thin coins. You think too hard about which mugs to pull from your cupboard: you might reveal too much; should you offer the one with the uncomfortable handle? Water boils. You divide the ginger evenly into both cups and pour. Spoonful of honey. You stir slowly, eyes down as though you might be able to forget. You stir too long. Forgiveness coughs politely, so you turn, place both mugs on the table, sit. Forgiveness leans forward. You lean back. You have forgotten what it is like to live with someone who eats all your cut watermelon, picks clean the skeletal vine of red grapes, shakes water spots onto your bathroom mirror without wiping them away. What thresholds of welcome have you crossed and recrossed? Most mornings, you listen for the body to move through your house and out the door before leaving your bedroom. Most nights, you ghost around each other without speaking. But now, as the rain drizzles into gloaming, you settle into your chairs, inevitable, a cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues.
And here’s part of a poem I encountered this morning that seems to fit or could be interesting to put beside “The Houseguest” and the Voyager episode:
If we could pray. If we could say we have come here together, to grow into a tree, if we could see our blue hands holding up the moon, and hear how small the sound is when it slips through our fingers into water, when the meaning of words melts away and sugarcane speaks in fields more clearly than our tongues
That small sound, those blue hands, when words melt away! To give attention, to pray!
Continuing to review past august entries, past Sara wrote this for me, January 2025 Sara:
In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.
log entry 22 aug 2024
I remember the faintness of that buoy, like the moon in the afternoon visible mostly by my belief that it was there. I also remember swimming that stretch, trying to avoid other swimmers and the ghost vines growing up from the bottom of the lake, seeming extra tall this summer. I’ll remember finally reaching that buoy and rounding it for the start of another loop, unable to see the far shore of a lifeguard or the other 2 orange buoys.
I remember the way the water glowed orange from the reflection of the buoy, or the quick flash of the smallest whisper of an orange dot, or the orange appearing only as a feeling of some disruption in the shoreline scenery — not really seen with my eyes, but registered by my brain — the idea that something was looming ahead.
I don’t remember gentle rocking, but I remember the wild ride of rounding the far green buoy and being pushed around by the water, or how the water seemed so hard to stroke in sometimes.
Warmer today! Still wore lots of layers, but it wasn’t close-school cold like yesterday. After reading my post from a year ago when I wrote about running to the frozen springs in the flats, I decided to do it again this year. On my way north, I started chanting triple berries:
bright orange coat speeding cars little dog blue trash can yellow shirt gray-white sky falling flakes empty bench
When I reached the spring, I could hear it falling from the rock, but couldn’t see it, hidden behind the thick ice. Also heard but didn’t see the water it left on the road as cars whooshed over it.
Stopped at the river to check out the surface. Very cool. I took some pictures but I’m not sure they can capture the opaque greenish ice. It was a grayish-green, drab and looked slushy and cold and thick.
Mississippi River / 22 jan 2024
And I stopped at my favorite sliding bench and looked down at the white sands beach. Quiet, empty, white with snow, not sand.
Early on in the run, I greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Hi Dave! Hi Sara! How are you doing? I’m good. How are you doing? I’m out here.
added a few hours later: I almost forgot something I was thinking about. As I listened to the song, Remember (lullaby) from Coco, I thought about people I miss and remembering them and then I thought about how sometimes it’s more than memory that helps me stay connected, like the time I opened my mom’s old book and saw her signature in the front. It was a physical trace of her reaching out to me. As I thought about this trace and the reaching out I remembered Diane Seuss commencement address and her discussion of Keats and his invisible hand reaching up from the grave. I’m glad I remembered the Keats bit because I remember having that thought then forgetting it almost immediately as I kept running.
an emptied mind — emptied of memories, emptied of everything
During my “on this day” practice, I encountered this phrase in Occasional Poem/ Jacqueline Woodson: zapped all the ideas from my head. I started thinking about this feeling of going blank or losing words or a sudden rush of nothing but space between your ears. What are some different ways that words describe being emptied of thought — the moment it happens and/or the feeling of emptiness?
the fish in us escaping, dandelion seed scattering, bees leaving the hive,
more than memory
I started a post yesterday (21 jan) and added this, intending, but failing, to finish it.
The wall is, for me and maybe me alone, a holy place. A place of pilgrimage, both full of meaning and void of meaning. I take photos, and the photos hold the memories still. The photos make the wall mean more than memory can, but with meaning, like a fact. No longer in motion, no longer something to which one can return and brush your fingers against (and feel the peeling paint).
*
Maybe a place like this pursues its meaning. Like when you say love and what you say means less than the actual word means. We love a place or a person, or we say a word, trying to stop time, hold something still. Maybe a place makes meaning how a dream might, in opposition to logic, inventing its own sense with presence.
*
Maybe we borrow meaning with a word, like how a photograph borrows a place, hoping meaning might remain recognizable if we say the word with the right angle of light, seeking something definite in a breath. How the impossible blue of a blue wall couldn’t be the blue of memory, a blue no photograph can contain.
Maybe to make a place holy, you must remember it more than real life allows, with all the truth of a squint, all the grace of peeling paint.
*
I’d like to look into one of those photographs, past the image, past what the image contains, past memory and regret and all the salt that sticks to the skin, into experience, into a love known true in one moment, undeniable, un-understandable, the kind of thing that splits everything in half. If I could find that photo of Cassie at the blue wall and step inside it and ask her to stay alive in a world where she was loved, maybe then I could finally know what a word means.
I could almost believe holiness is a process of remembering, but then I see the wall again, in all that sunlight, paint peeling, the blue not only the remembered blue, but more blue in the now of being seen, so I can barely stand to stand beside it, holy as it is with the fact of its own meaning.
Brrr. A quick bike and run in the basement in the late afternoon. Watched “Nobody Asked Us” on YouTube while I biked, listened to an apple music “energy” playlist. Didn’t think about much, just enjoyed moving and sweating a little.
Spent most of my writing day reviewing past entries from June and July. Instead of reading them with my eyes, I listened to them through my computer. It was nice to give my eyes a break. Lots of great stuff about lakes and swimming and the color of water in those entries. Nice to spend some time there when it’s so cold outside. Also a nice way to forget that Trump was inaugurated today.
bike: 25 minutes run: 1.4 miles basement outside: -5 degrees / feels like -10
I have run in colder weather than -5, but I was not interested in going out there today. Do I regret it? I don’t think so, but . . . . While I biked I watched some track races from the Paris Olympics, and while I ran I listened to the Apple Music “Feel Good” playlist. Listening to a different version of this playlist earlier in the week helped the run to go by faster, but the songs weren’t quite as motivating today. Had to skip through several of them until Rio by Duran Duran came on. Next: Rosanna/Toto, then Brandy/Looking Glass, then as I walked Afternoon Delight/Starland Vocal Band. That last one, wow. I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran. I remember imagining myself falling off of the treadmill. I wondered what song would come on next. I tried to lift out of my hips. I debated if Rosanna was a “feel good” song. And now that I think about it, Brandy as feel good? It’s sad. When Afternoon Delight came on I thought about Anchorman and Glee and wondered how anyone would not get what this song was about.
I memorized Wallace Stevens’ “Tattoo” and was planning to recite it while I biked and ran but then I forgot.
2.6 miles river road, south/north 8 degrees / feels like -1 25% snow-covered
I didn’t feel exceptionally cold, but it felt hard, my legs thick. I stopped at the bench above the “edge of the world” and looked out at the covered river. Someone wrote the name “Davidson” in the snow earlier this week and it’s still there. As I ran, I started chanting in triples:
the river was white and closed except for a few spots that were dark and open
a (non-fat tire) bike
a runner’s raspy, hello
running into the wind, being exhausted by it, wondering how the runners at Boston 2017, when it was cold and windy and raining, managed to run the whole marathon
bright, blinding sun heading south
some of the ice on the path was smooth, more of it was jagged and rough
A little while spring will claim its own, In all the land around for mile on mile Tender grass will hide the rugged stone. My still heart will sing a little while.
And men will never think this wilderness Was barren once when grass is over all, Hearing laughter they may never guess My heart has known its winter and carried gall.
gall? I looked this word up and dismissed the definition I knew — gall as bold, impudent, he had the gall (read: nerve) to — because it didn’t make sense to me. Instead, I decided the poet meant
abnormal growths that occur on leaves, twigs, roots, or flowers of many plants. Most galls are caused by irritation and/or stimulation of plant cells due to feeding or egg-laying by insects such as aphids, midges, wasps, or mites. Some galls are the result of infections by bacteria, fungi, or nematodes and are difficult to tell apart from insect-caused gall
I wasn’t satisfied with Merriam-Webster’s online definitions, so I logged into my library and accessed the OED (very cool that I can do this!) for more definitions. This one sort of works:
Something galling or exasperating; a state of mental soreness or irritation.
this one, too:
A place rubbed bare; an unsound spot, fault or flaw; in early use also a breach. Now only technical.
and this:
A bare spot in a field or coppice (see gallv.1 3). In the southern U.S. a spot where the soil has been washed away or exhausted.
Erosion, exhaustion.
I love the way the word gall with its plant/ field meanings and its human meanings reinforces the association being made between human’s exposed than covered grief and the ground’s exposed winter stone covered in spring’s grass.
I wanted to remember this poem because of the grass and the stone and the forgetting of winter when spring arrives. I don’t totally agree with its use of winter as metaphor for misery.
I like winter. I like breathing in the cold, the sound of snow falling, smelling the air. The silence and the sharp sounds. The view of the river — vast and bare. The subdued colors — pale blues and grays and dark browns. The less crowded trails. The bare-branched silhouettes. Movement slowed, stilled, suspended. Layers. The bright, cold sun.
5.4 miles bottom franklin hill and back 37 degrees 20% snow-covered
37 degrees and a mostly clear path! A great run. I felt relaxed and strong and able to shift gears and keep going. I greeted almost every walker, runner, or biker I encountered by raising my right hand. At the bottom of the hill I stopped to check out the water — open, moving thickly, a few flat and wide sheets of ice floating by. Smelled weed. Heard birds — laughing and chirping. Slipped (only a little) on a few bits of ice. Stopped at the sliding bench to admire the view — so bare and quiet and alone. Put in my headphones at the top of the hill and listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Some of today’s lyrics made me think about regret and longing for the past, some of them about the joy of forgetting, and some of them commanded, remember! or don’t you forget it!
added a few hours later: I almost forgot to post the picture I took. It’s of the pile of rocks under the franklin bridge that I keep thinking is a person sitting up against the wall. I know these are rocks, but I always first think: person
limestone mistaken for a man
Inspired by my triple berry chant exercise (see below), I chanted in triples. Can I remember 10 of them?
10 Triple Berry Chants
empty bench
grayish sky
ritual
down the hill
ice and snow
soaring bird
sloppy trail
lake street bridge
noisy wheel
3 stacked stones
confession: I did chant a few of these, but the rest I created as I wrote this list. I just can’t remember what I chanted.
early morning coffee
1 — strange sleeping habits
A morning ritual: coffee, Facebook, poets.org, poetryfoundation.org, poems.com, “on this day.” While scrolling through Facebook I found an interesting article about sleep: The forgotten medieval habit of two sleeps. The concept isn’t new to me; I read the book that it’s based on, At Day’s Close, more than a decade ago. One new thing, or thing that I had read in the book but forgot, was about the author’s initial research and how he looked to court transcripts for information about daily life:
he had found court depositions particularly illuminating. “They’re a wonderful source for social historians,” says Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, US. “They comment upon activity that’s oftentimes unrelated to the crime itself.”
I started thinking more about sleep. Last night was not very good: restless legs, sore hip, getting up 3 or 4 times, walking up earlier than I’d like because of my restlessness. At one point, the author, Roger Ekirch, mentioned how recognizing the long history of getting up in the middle of the night as normal and natural could relieve some anxiety for those of us who can’t sleep straight through the night. I suddenly thought, and not for the first time: I need to accept my crazy sleep instead of fighting or worrying about it, and I should turn it into something creative. Track it, or write into it, or . . . . I wonder if there are “insomnia writing experiments?
a list-writing experiment
The first thing that came up in my google search was a scientific study about writing and falling asleep faster. Perhaps if I had searched, “insomnia writing exercises” or “insomnia poetry prompts” I would have gotten different results.
Bedtime worry, including worrying about incomplete future tasks, is a significant contributor to difficulty falling asleep. Previous research showed that writing about one’s worries can help individuals fall asleep. We investigated whether the temporal focus of bedtime writing—writing a to-do list versus journaling about completed activities—affected sleep onset latency. Fifty-seven healthy young adults (18–30) completed a writing assignment for five minutes prior to overnight polysomnography recording in a controlled sleep laboratory. They were randomly assigned to write about tasks that they needed to remember to complete the next few days (to-do list) or about tasks they had completed the previous few days (completed list). Participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep significantly faster than those in the completed-list condition. The more specifically participants wrote their to-do list, the faster they subsequently fell asleep, whereas the opposite trend was observed when participants wrote about completed activities. Therefore, to facilitate falling asleep, individuals may derive benefit from writing a very specific to-do list for five minutes at bedtime rather than journaling about completed activities.
Lists? I love lists! I think I’ll try this, or my own version of it. Maybe I’ll start with a to-do list, another night a completed list, then a things I love list, or a things that bother me list, my favorite poets list, things I notice in the dark, reasons I can’t sleep list, and on and on. Eventually, maybe I can turn this into a series of list poems?
2 — idea/poem starters, an inspiration
The visual poem on poems.com for today, Good Riddance, reminded me of something I started thinking about in march 2024. The poem is a grid with a fragment of thought in each box. There are arrows directing you across or down, or across then down then across again. However your eyes choose to read the boxes creates a slightly different poem. Anyway, I started thinking about the different boxes and mixing and matching the phrases and I remembered this idea from my “to do list for 2022, 23, and 24”:
a 3/2 idea: create fragments of 2-4 lines with a “complete” thought that can be the start of a new poem, or be put together in new ways to create new poems — almost like prompts:
a shadow crosses
And now I’m remembering an even earlier experiment from 3 may 2019 with triple (3 beat) chants:
Speaking of chanting, I have a new exercise I want to try. First, I want to think up a bunch of 3 syllable phrases (down the hill, walk to work, eat down town, out the door, sunday best, monday worst, turnip greens, climate change, just say please, in and out…). Then I’ll write these on small slips of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bag. I’ll randomly pick out 8-10 and turn them into a poem (either in the order I select them or in an order of my choosing). Maybe the phrases should be a mixture of things from the run and popular or whimsical expressions? So much fun!
added an hour later: While reviewing old entries from June of 2024, I came across a delightful typo. Instead of writing “the tunnel of trees” I wrote, “the tunnel of threes.” I love it! Maybe the title of a poem that uses triple berry chants?
walk: 30 minutes with Delia neighborhood 35 degrees! morning
Sun! Above freezing! Shadows!
10 Walking Things
the sharp clang of something metal dropping on hard concrete
low-note wind chimes, bing-bonging in the breeze
standing tall, lifting out of my lower back and hips, feeling my legs ground themselves on the sidewalk
soft snow
the contrast between bare black pavement and white sidewalks
drip drip drip
bare branches 1: the welcoming oaks, the shape of their thick, sprawling branches making silhouettes
bare branches 2: a maple’s small twigs at the bottom looking like hair
a sizzling sound in the trees: wind on dead leaves
a beautiful blue sky peeking through fluffy, fast moving clouds
run: 3.5 miles godfrey and back 33 degrees afternoon
Less layers this afternoon: running tights, shorts, tank top, long shirt, pull-over with hood, headband, gloves, sunglasses. My face was a little cool, especially the ears which weren’t quite covered by the headband. The sidewalks were sloppy and so was the trail. No ice, but some slushy snow. Encountered a few fat tires, walkers, at least one other runner. Stopped at the bench and remembered looking out at the river, but I can’t remember what I saw other than white. Oh — I saw a person climbing up and out of the winchell trail
Before the run I was listening to an interview with Jenny Odell that I first heard last May. I started thinking about different notions of time and then how memories rarely follow linear time. They don’t move forward in a row, confidently attached to years. They’re all over the place and in the wrong place and on top of each other. I tried to think about that as I was running. I imagined a mess of memories filling up the gorge, but not taking up any space. Then I imagined myself running through and beside them. These memories barely left a trace and I couldn’t feel them.
yesterday’s delights
Driving us on the river road, RJP pointed out two delightful things to me: one — a biker on a fat tire doing a wheelie for at least a minute and for dozens of feet. They were pedaling forward on one wheel, the other wheel was hanging in the air. That seems hard! added 17 jan: I looked it up and found this video. And two — turkeys! one flying!! and dozens more spread out all around turkey hollow.
4.1 miles trestle+ turn around 15 degrees / feels like 1 75% snow-covered
Hooray for getting back outside! I never felt cold. Hands and feet were fine, torso too. About halfway in, I overheated. Off with the mittens, down with the hood. The run didn’t feel easy; my legs were sore. But I bargained with myself — make it to the trestle, keep going until the sliding bench, don’t stop until after the hill! And I was able to shift gears, settling into something different with my legs (hard to explain). I lifted out of my hips, relaxed my shoulders and kept going for longer than I thought I would. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Stopped running to witness a wedge of geese flying overhead. Heard the rattling jawbone of some bird. Noticed that the river was open and dark under the trestle. Everywhere else it was white.
10 Things
a honk cutting through the quiet then less than a dozen geese flying in a loose formation — I think I heard the swish of their wings as they passed directly above me
the smell of tobacco beside me — did it come from the open window of a passing car?
the smell of weed below me
3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder, half covered with snow
a runner approaching from behind with a dog on a leash tethered to their waist, running faster than me through the snow
the constant view beside me: slender bare brown slanted branches white river a white brown bluff on the other side of the river
a flash of BRIGHT orange to my left — someone in an orange jacket walking below near the old stone steps
a big dog — golden retriever? — squatting and pooping on the side of the path, their owner waiting with a bag
a light brown cobblestone carriage walk in front of a fancy house on edmund
the sharp crunch of one foot striking the crusty snow in my alley, the soft grind of the other foot leaving the snow
shades, shadows, memories
Before the run, I was reviewing May 2024 entries. This bit about the children’s book, The Shades, inspired some thoughts:
. . .they live in the garden. All of their food comes from the shadow’s cast by real food, their house cast from the shadow of the old summer house that “broke Emily’s heart” when it was torn down. Most of the time they do what they want, but when a human enters the garden, whichever of them best fits that human’s form must shadow them around the garden. Sometimes this shadowing is fun, other times it’s tedious, and occasionally it’s dangerous: if a human climbs over the garden wall, the shadow must follow and be lost to the outside world forever.
log entry 20 may 2024
Thinking about the shadow’s independence from the object that cast them and their attaching forms that approximately fit, I started thinking about memories and the gorge. I imagined countless memories (as shadows?) living there, made and left behind by everyone that has spent time at the gorge. Then I imagined running through/with/beside them and some of them attaching to me (in some way). The memories weren’t mine exactly; they were independent of me with their own experiences and histories and feelings. But, beside the gorge, we become entangled. Maybe I can add this to the poem I started about shadows. I’d also like to add this idea: the silhouette as “a radical condensation of faith in shadows” from 17 may 2024.
bike: 30 minutes run: 2.7 miles basement outside: 7 degrees / feels like -9
Tomorrow it’s supposed to be slightly warmer, so I decided to wait until then to run outside. While I biked, I watched the 2017 5000m men’s world championships with Mo Farrah. While I ran, I turned on an Apple Music made “Energy” playlist. It was great. I don’t really remember the environment — oh, except for that I was cold at first, in our unfinished basement, but then warmed up fast — but I remember my body during the bike. I was working on keeping my back straight and long over the handlebars. During the run, I remember the music and the stretches when I only noticed my legs when they were off the ground. Listening to the music and getting lost in my thoughts about vision and faces and names, I forgot chunks of time.
before the run — remember/forget: names and faces
Last night, I drifted off to sleep thinking about names and nobodies and how I wanted to gather past accounts about them today in this entry. During my “on this day” practice, while revisiting 14 jan 2020, I came across the documentary,Notes on Blindness, and John Hull’s description of losing all of his sight and the ability to remember faces. Hull asks,
To what extent is the loss of the image of the face tied up with the loss of the image of the self and with the consequent feeling of being a ghost or a mere spirit?
So now I’m expanding my thinking to names and faces.
First, a question, prompted by a bit of the Hull that I listened to/watched just now: What senses produce the strongest memories? answer: smell
a short from the longer documentary
I watched the part after Hull’s quote about the face and the self, and it helped clarify the quote more. First, his wife says:
I can’t look into his eyes and be seen. There’s no beholding in that sense of being held in somebody’s look.
To be seen is to exist. This is what lies behind the thought my older daughter has expressed, Oh Daddy, I wish you could see me!
It is not the person who cannot see the face that is the ghost, but the person who cannot be seen. Even as I often feel like a ghost moving through the world, I also feel like everyone else is a ghost or a specter, that I’m the only real and living thing. It’s complicated because I feel both: haunting and haunted.
Of course, sometimes I can see faces, or at least parts of faces, and I can still see gestures and bodies, so my feeling of loss and disconnection is much different from Hull.
And there’s more messiness about my understanding of all of this. To be sure, there has been a tremendous feeling of loss over not being able to see faces clearly, or to hold someone with a look; to behold and witness others seems to be part of what makes us feel human. But (or and?), some of this is illusion and cultural construct. Sight and seeing someone is not the only way we connect with them, or see them as a self. In fact, it’s not the most reliable. For me, there is something exciting (is that the right word?) about gaining a new perspective on vision and its limits, and about being motivated to care about the process of seeing, which I used to ignore.
Wow — how far am I wandering from remembering and forgetting here?
Now I’m thinking about names and faces and phrases like, put a name to the face. For a little less than a year, Scott and I have been regularly going to a pub near our house, The Blue Door. Much of the time, we’ve had the same waitress. I always recognize her — less by her face than her gestures — but I haven’t known her name. A few days ago, Scott finally realized he could check the bill for her name so now we know it. I wonder, what difference does it make? (How) do I feel more connected to her now that I know her name?
after the run: music
All of the songs I heard were good for energy and distraction, but a few of them felt especially connected to what I had been thinking about prior to my workout.
Reputation/ Joan Jett and the Blackhearts An’ I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation Never said I wanted to improve my station An’ I’m only doin’ good when I’m havin’ fun An’ I don’t have to please no one I don’t give a damn ’bout my reputation I’ve never been afraid of any deviation An’ I don’t really care if you think I’m strange I ain’t gonna change
I think it was around the time she sang about not wanting to improve her station, I started thinking about names and “being somebody” and notoreity/notoriousness and when wanting to be known is desirable and when it’s not. Usually it’s not for me. I like to be left alone to do what I want to do. I also thought Alice Oswa
Poker Face/ Lady Gaga Can’t read my, can’t read my No, he can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody) Can’t read my, can’t read my No, he can’t read my poker face (She’s got me like nobody)
Wow, these lyrics! Yikes. Anyway, I’m interested in the idea of an unreadable, stone face. That’s how most faces are to me all of the time. I can’t see small gestures or tells that help you to make sense of what’s being said. Now I’m wondering about non-facial poker tells. Here are two that I found: how they handle the chips/cards and table talk.
Rhythm Nation/ Janet Jackson With music by our side to break the color lines Let’s work together to improve our way of life Join voices in protest to social injustice A generation full of courage, come forth with me
As I heard these words, I thought about my discussion below about seeing, looking, beholding each other as the primary way to recognize each other’s humanity/selfhood. What about hearing and listening and playing music?
Bonus: It’s Raining Men/ The Weather Girls
Not directly related to faces and names, but hearing this song reminded me of one of my favorite sections in the blindness documentary. It is nine and a half minutes in and it’s about rain and how its different sounds on a tree or a roof or a garbage can help us to “see” a place with our ears.
Cold and icy and windy outside, so inside in the basement for me. Watched an old track race while I biked, listened to my remember to forget playlist as I ran. Happy to move my legs and work up a sweat. What did I notice? I don’t remember.
remember — inheritance
gestures, ways of speaking, expressions, eye diseases, anxiety disorders, curiosity, persistence, restlessness, strong legs, a love of water, a need for being outside, the impulse to run away, an edge dweller, conflict avoider, a storyteller
I remember a lecture I read by Mary Ruefle in Madness, Rack, and Honey.
Thinking about “I Remember” and remembering, origins and when things began. I thought about how there is a sort of origin point to all of this (my writing poetry) and it’s my eye doctor diagnosing me with a rare eye disease then saying, you should write about it which prompted me to want to work on my writing so I could better explain what I was experiencing. But, I had already been writing and already had those desires, so it was really more of a slight shift, a stutter step or a quick stumble off the path, just briefly, which changed the trajectory, slightly, incrementally. Difficult to pinpoint what all changes your path.
The first song that came up on my playlist was Fame. As I listened to the lyrics — Fame! I’m gonna live forever / Baby remember my name — I started thinking about being remembered forever and fame and names and immortality and Emily Dickinson and JJJJJerome Ellis and their “Liturgy of the Name” in Asters of Ceremonies.
from Liturgy of the Name/ JJJJJerome Ellis
My name, in the time when I cannot utter it, maps the space within me. In an instant the Stutter shuttles me from the present–the barber just asked me my name, my voice fluttering in my throat, struggling not to tremble as the razor presses on my temples–to an ancient place of breath, name, silence, time, creation.
. . .
When the door of my vocal cords closes, another opens. And through that open door I escape into a region I do not know what to call but which is vaster than the space of my body. You could say: my name is the door to my being, and in that interval when I’m stuttering, the door is left wide open and my being rushes out. What rushes in?
A short run because it snowed last night and they haven’t plowed the trail yet. I wore my yaktrax but the soft, uneven snow seemed too much for already sore muscles.
Interruption: as I sit at my desk writing this, after my run, a dog zipped by my window. Ace — the dog two doors down who likes to break out his backyard and roam the neighborhood. I used to worry about him, but I know he’ll return….just after finishing that last sentence, I saw a blur of movement — Ace again, across the street.)
It was a nice, relaxed run through a wonderfully wintery world! Snow covering everything — path, trees, river. Occasionally I heard a crunch when my foot hit some icy snow, but mostly the snow was soft and silent. I descended to the Winchell trail at 42nd and ran closer to the river. The path was a mix of snow and dead leaves. I continued past the 38th street steps and down into the oak savanna. Then beside the ravine and over the icy slats — that part was slippery! No running, barely even walking, at this part.
10 Things
river hidden under snow
a pack of runners approaching — the movement of their thin, muscular legs made them look like galloping horses
a fat tire up ahead — at first, all I could see was a dark figure and I thought it might be a dog or a bear or the territorial turkey
hi! — hello! greeting an approaching walker
the heavy breathing of a fast runner passing by me
a flash of orange — was it a snow fence?
the wind heading north on the upper trail was cold and harsh
the slow trickling of water below the ravine
a tree bent over the trail so low I almost had to duck to get under it
all the benches were empty
Happy 8th Anniversary to this log! On January 12th, 2017 I posted my first entry for this RUN! project. I had no idea where it would lead. What a life it has given me! It seems fitting for my love of the approximate that I started on the 12th instead of the 1st. It also seems fitting that the post began with no fanfare or introduction to some big project and that it was about restlessness. 9 years and 7660.2 miles of running (and around 500 miles of swimming) later, I’m just as or more restless. Wanting to move, to be outside, to connect with the world. To read, to write, to experiment with new ways to be. My restlessness drives my creativity and curiosity and also my unease and discomfort (and anxiety and suffering).
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
I first encountered this poem after . . .
Interruption. Sitting here at my desk in front of the window before my run, someone just walked by pushing a shovel. I think they decided to walk and shovel everyone’s sidewalk at the same time. That’s feeding two birds with one scone. Nice!)
. . . reading then memorizing Philip Larkin’s The Trees. I didn’t like it. That last verse — so harsh and unforgiving. But this morning my study of remembering and forgetting led me to the idea of passing down/inheriting trauma from past generations, and I came across this poem again. I continue to struggle with the conclusion, but I’m reading the rest of it differently — as a daughter who is beginning to understand the trauma she inherited from her mother and how she responded to abusive parents, and as a mother confronting the impact of her parenting choices on her kids. I had planned to write more about this now, but I don’t have time; FWA is returning to college today!
When I have time, I want to read/summarize this article: How Parents’ Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children. And I want to think about epigenetics and slavery and how inheritance works on a broader, more systemic level, within communities. Whew — that’s a lot!
Winter white. White sky, white grass, white sidewalks — at least some of the sidewalks are still white. Warmer. Still, quiet, calm. Deep breaths — ahhh! cold air! A happy dog. Walked past 7 Oaks and thought about how it’s a sinkhole. then wondered how long it’s been this way. “Thousands of years” was as specific as I could get. While looking for its age, I also found a Sinkhole Study from a few years ago. I’ll have to look through it when I have more time.
yoga – 30 minutes
Two days ago, I promised to try out a low vision yoga video. Loved it!
The slow and careful way that the instructor described the movements was very helpful. Similar to audio descriptions on shows and movies, I didn’t realize how much I needed a description of the moves until I had one and could feel the difference — easier, less stressful.
grass
This morning, during my “On This Day” practice, I re-encountered these lines from Victoria Chang in her poem, “Left Behind”:
We are carriers of grass yet to be grown. We aren’t made of cells, but of fields.
Then, while reading JJJJJerome Ellis’ “Benediction” in Asters of Ceremony, I encountered these beautiful lines,
The more I live with my stutter, with the Stutter that I steward in my body, the more I feel and know, or unknow, that this stutter is no less a part of the earth than the rest of my body. This stutter has come from the land and the water. It knows the Plant Elders, and there is much I can learn, and have learned, about my stutter by spending time with these Elders. Names run through the Grasses, and when I stutter on my name, I am brought into the field.
Benediction from Asters of Ceremony/ JJJJJerome Ellis
Both Chang and Ellis, but especially Chang, reminded me of Mary Oliver’s mention of grass in The Leaf and the Cloud:
Listen, I don’t think we’re going to rise in gauze and halos. Maybe as grass, and slowly, Maybe as the long-leaved, beautiful grass.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 21 degrees 100% snow-covered
Today the winter I want: big flurries, everything covered in a thin layer of snow, not too much wind, warmer, not slick — especially with my with Yaktrax on. Nothing was quite easy, but everything wasn’t as hard as my last run on Wednesday.
10 Things
a white sky
the contrast between shoveled and un-shoveled sidewalks — both still white, but the shovelled ones had a tint of gray or brown peeking through
the clacking jawbone of a bird’s beak — a blue jay?
the river was all white — if you didn’t know better, you could believe it was a field or a meadow
approaching from above, hearing the falls rushing over the limestone
kids yelling and laughing at the playground, one loud, high-pitched sound — was it a kid screaming or a whistle?
amongst the kid voices, a deeper, more knowing laugh — was that from a teacher?
the contrast on the creek surface: white snow with blackish-gray water
every so often, a flash of orange — not always sure what it was, just a voice whispering, orange — a snow fence? a construction cone? a sign?
bright headlights cutting through the sky, which was both bright — everything white! — and heavy
Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist on the way back. The first song up, Do You Remember Walter? by The Kinks. Two different bits stuck with me:
one: Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. two: Yes, people often change./ But memories of people can remain.
This second bit got me thinking about how I can’t always (can I ever?) see faces clearly. When the face is too dark and shadowed, I just ignore it altogether. But when there’s some light and I can sort of see them, I often re-construct the features I can’t see with memories of their face from before I lost most of my cone cells. I’m not remembering their face, but creating it. After thinking that the idea of remembering as re-memembering — putting a body back together — popped into my head. Yes! I take my image of face, only as fragments — the curve of a nose or a chin, a bit of eye — and turn it into something whole.
As I kept running, I thought more about remembering and memories and my vision and how I rely on past experience and habits to navigate. And now as I write this, I’m thinking about how everyone’s vision — not just mine — relies on a building up of past experiences (memories?) with things to be able to see them. Here I’m remembering something that I read in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss:
the sensation of sudden visual awareness is produced in part by the formation of a “search image” in the brain. In a complex visual landscape, the brain initially registers all the incoming data, without critical evaluation. Five orange arms in a starlike pattern, smooth black rock, light and shadow. All this is input, but the brain does not immediately interpret the data and convey their meaning to the conscious mind. Not until the pattern is repeated, with feedback from the conscious mind, do we know what we are seeing.
Learning to See in Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer
I’m continuing to read JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies. Wow!
Prayer to My Stutter #2/ JJJJJerome Ellis
You restore a living shoreline between word and silence
This beautiful prayer moves right into the next offering, Octagon of Water, Movement 3, which was titled by its first line when it was published in Poetry:
The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage.
How is/isn’t the instant similar to Marie Howe’s moment? If you listen to the recording on Poetry, you can hear the stretched silence as Ellis’ voice stops before pronouncing certain words.
2
This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed.
What a beautiful description and reclaiming of a stuttering voice on the other side of the stoppage! The erupting bursting flowering dysfluent voice.
I’m inspired by how Ellis takes his stutter and turns it into this beautiful instant between silence and word. For them, the stoppage is a/the key aspect of the stuttering. What are the most important elements of my strange vision?
I tried out a new yoga routine this morning for hips and lower back release. I liked it (mostly), but it was difficult to follow; I couldn’t see the movements she was making very easily. I’m sure some of it was because I wasn’t familiar with the movements, but I also think it was her (visually) busy set-up. Of, maybe it’s the dark floor? Yes, there’s not enough contrast with the floor and I couldn’t see what her body is doing.
yoga / difficult to see
The yoga routine I usually do has a light/white floor so I can the yoga instructor’s arms and legs more easily — at least where her arms and back are bare:
yoga / easier to see
It’s possible that I could see the second yoga instructor more easily because I’ve watched this video hundred of times and I started watching ir when my vision was better than it is now.
I decided to look up “low vision accessible yoga” on YouTube. I found, Yoga For People with Low Vision, which I think I’ll try tomorrow. There’s not enough contrast (for me) between the instructor and the mat, but I imagine the emphasis on describing the movements might help. Thinking more about why it was more difficult for me to follow in the first video, I’m remembering how chatty the instructor was about random stuff. Some moments she offered great descriptions of the movements, but other moments she went too fast or spent more time talking about something else. In my favorite yoga video, there’s no chatting. Just a clear, straight-forward, rehearsed voice-over.
I found a video with advice on how to instruct blind or low vision yoga students, and I found this part about intentionality particularly important:
Yes! Intentionality, mind-body connections, listening — and not just for the students with low vision.
walk with Delia – 20 minutes neighborhood 20 degrees
Scott and I took Delia on a walk around 2 blocks. Brrr!! It felt colder than 20 degrees. Was it sunny? Now I can’t remember. Wait, it was, I wore my sunglasses. The thing I remember most about the walk were the talkative birds in a neighbor’s bush. I think they were sparrows? I didn’t see them, but I sure heard them! Another thing I remembered were the bare branches of the trees — gnarled and sprawled and looking straight out of a dark fairy tale.
Another sunny, sharp shadow day. Ran south to the falls and listened to cars, birds, kids on the playground, and some guy coughing too loudly. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, then put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Sometimes I felt strong, and sometimes I felt tired. My legs wanted us to stop. I did a few times, including at the bench above “the edge of the world.” I took two pictures. One had a clearer view of the ice on the river, but I picked the other one, with its branches and shadows and white sun:
above the edge of the world / 8 jan 2024
10 Things
chirping birds
my shadow, clear and strong
shadows of trees in the park, soft and fuzzy
a shadow of the lamp post, sharp and menacing
someone who looked like Dave the Daily Walker from behind — a tucked shirt and not jacket, tucked into dark track pants — but wasn’t
the creek — bright white snowy surface mixed with fast, flowing water
the falls were gushing through the ice columns
a man with a bad cough near the overlook
a cold wind on my ears when I put my hood down
the shadow of a tree sprawled across the trail that dips below the road, looking like an actual branch that might hit me as I ran by
For a moment, I thought I had completely forgot running the stretch down to, then over, the bridge that crosses above the falls, but then I remembered it: what the creek looked like, seeing some people (one of them, the man with the cough) as I crossed, but then not seeing them, and then seeing them again near the closed gate.
before the run
Last night, I started reading JJJJJerome’s Aster of Ceremonies, which I bought in october of 2023 and hadn’t read yet. Wow! Here’s a bit I’d like to take with me on my run:
What is the wound reopening during the stutter? How does it relate to Morrison’s flooding? When the Mississippi returns to its former contours, does the suture we created by straightening it open? (Octagon of Water, Movement 2/JJJJJerome Ellis)
Last week, I was just writing about how the natural shape of the Mississippi River in the gorge is long gone, reshaped by the city and the Army Corps. After my run, I’ll read Toni Morrison’s essay to which Ellis refers.
added a few hours later: I tracked down the quotation that Ellis puts in a footnote for this poem from Toni Morrison in The Site of Memory (1995, 99):
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory – what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” Along with personal recollection, the matrix of the work I do is the wish to extend, fill in and complement slave autobiographical narratives. But only the matrix. What comes of all that is dictated by other concerns, not least among them the novel’s own integrity. Still, like water, I remember where I was before I was “straightened out.”
The Site of Memory/ Toni Morrison
So good! I’m excited to think about these ideas some more and figure out my relationship to flooding and being straightened out and rivers before and after Minneapolis and the Army Corps of Engineers “fixed” them.
Thinking about Ellis’ stutter in relation to my vision problems. In some ways, I have a visual stutter — there’s a long pause between looking at something and actually seeing it. I need time for things to make sense. Also, images stutter, shake, fizz, are always moving, never still or sharp or clear.
remember/forget
1— will
the differences between what we notice and try to remember and what we ignore or try to forget (16 april 2024)
2— memory
When I heard the line, Seems like we’re livin’ in a memory, I thought about how I mostly can’t see people’s faces clearly and that I’ve either learned to tune it out and speak/look into the void, or I just fill in the smudge with the memory of their face. I’m used to it, and often forget I’m doing it until suddenly I wonder as I stare at the blob, am I looking in the right place, into their eyes, or am I staring at their chin? I don’t care, but I imagine the other person might, so I try to find their eyes again (9 may 2024).
In jan of 2024, I’m thinking about the daily, mundane bodily functions that we forget we’re doing, or don’t notice — what’s the difference between not noticing and forgetting here? I’m also thinking about this idea of memory and its relationship to the real. When is remembering “only a memory” and when can the act of remembering keep something real? Can we understand remembering as more than thinking about things from the past? What about remembering what is present, here still, real, connected to us?
3 — pay attention, be astonished, tell about it
Thinking more about the difference between noticing and remembering, I’m thinking about the different acts involved here. Yes, it is inspired by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life! First, we notice, then we are open to feeling something about what we noticed, then we put that noticing and our feelings into words. For my practice, I don’t try to remember to notice or to be astonished, they just happen — at least, that’s the goal. Remembering comes in when I try to put my attention and astonishment into words. So, the connection between writing and remembering.
4 — writing to remember
I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.
Field Notes slogan
Many different directions I could go with this idea of remembering and writing, but I like this idea of the act of writing about something as the remembering. I rarely look back at my (Field Notes brand) Plague Notebooks when I’m finished with them; it’s the act of writing in them that helps me remember what I noticed or was thinking about. This method is approximate and doesn’t work all of the time. In my practice, I use the act of making a list on my log of 10 things I noticed as the moment of remembering what I didn’t even realize I noticed. But, unlike my plague notebooks, I do return to my log to read past entries and remember what I wrote before — in at least 3 ways: my monthly challenge pages in which I review and summarize what I did in relation to my theme each month; my “on this day” morning reviews, in which I reread past entries from that day in different years; and my annual summary, month-by-month of my log entries.
5 — forget the body
I like my body when I’m in the woods and I forget my body. I forget that arms, that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain. I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower. (Yes, That’s When/Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
The same 30 minute yoga for flexibility routine I’ve been doing for 5 years. I like it, but I should try something else this month. Later, a short walk outside with Delia the dog. Brisk.
10 Things
faint shadows, mine, tall, beside Delia’s, short
the metallic buzz of a table saw
a ridge of snow, refusing to melt on a neighbor’s narrow boulevard
the fast flash of Delia’s tail when she’s excited or relieved or happy to be heading back
cold air seeping through my hood and hat, into my ears
bare grass
the 6 inch gap under the gate of a yard a block away
the smooth asphalt of a nearby driveway
the sculpture of a turtle — bigger than an ancient tortoise — in a front yard — it looks heavy, is it made out of bronze?
the buzz of workers all around the neighborhood — brrr!
forgetting/remembering
1 — the body
On jan 7, 2019, I wrote this about forgetting and remembering my body as I ran:
I found myself worrying constantly about my back or my IT band or my knee. At one point I wondered, what would it feel like to not notice my body? To simply run? Of course, this did happen many times during the run, but I remember more the times when I was too aware of my body.
Scrolling through facebook this morning, I encountered several “never forget” posts about the pro-Trump terrorist attack on congress on Jan 6, 2021. Then I read my On this Day post from jan 7, 2021 which begins with a brief description of the attack. I thought about how I use this log and my “on this day” practice to not forget things (typing this, I started wondering about the differences between not forgetting and remembering). Not forgetting is an important act of resistance.
I also read my jan 7, 2020 entry about the dogs in our neighborhood. Most of those dogs are gone now. Or, if they’re not gone, I don’t ever see them anymore. But, I remember them often as we walk past their houses. Delia does too. Not forgetting is an important ritual of staying connected to a place.
Simply looking. A car goes over a rise and there are birches snow Twisted into cabalistic shapes: The Devil’s Notch; or Smuggler’s Gap. At the time you could not have imagined the time when you Would forget the name, as apparent and there as your own. (from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler)
As I travel around my neighborhood, by foot or car, I speak about things that are no longer there — the tree with teeth, the big branch that sprawled above the road, the mustache on the mustache bridge, Bridgemans restaurant — and reflect on how easy it is to forget things that are no longer there. Without memories, it’s as if it was always like it is now, like the gone things never existed. Speaking of the mustache bridge, FWA mentioned it the other day. He referred to it (the bridge that crosses Hiawatha on the parkway) as the mustache bridge even though it only had a spray-painted mustache on it for a few months 10 years ago. I thought it was fascinating that this name has stuck. Will there be a time when we forget why we call it that?
3 — losing
I watch other bodies slip through the blue, how fast the young are & how old they become, floating, floating, forgetting the weight of years (Romance/Susan Browne)
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. (One Art/Elizabeth Bishop)
5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill 11 degrees / feels like 5
Another sunny, snowless day. A little wind, some cold air. Wasn’t planning to run 5 miles, but I wanted to get to the bottom of the hill so I could see the surface up close. Iced over — not smooth, but with seams and cracks.
ice on mississippi river / 6 jan 2025
I’m glad I took a picture because I did not remember it looking like this! I was visually a surface that was more gray and uniform with cracks creating big and flat sheets of ice. I didn’t remember the shadows or the blue or how uneven it all looked.
As I ran, I listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. It started with “I Remember it Well,” from Gigi. I heard the opening lines:
We met at 9 We met at 8 I was on time No, you were late Ah yes I remember it well
I thought — wait, if he thought they were meeting at 9, he wouldn’t have thought he was late if he got there after 8 — yes, these are they thoughts I have as I run. I thought about how subjective memory can be and wondered how certain we could be that she remembered correctly. Then I heard these lyrics:
Ah yes I remember it well You wore a gown of gold I was all in blue
I remembered that meme 4 or 5 years ago with the dress — is it gold or blue? — and thought again about how we can remember things differently. When is it lack of memory, and when did we always just remember it wrong, or unusually, or with a focus on different details, or in a different light?
10 Things
the hollow knocking of a woodpecker
the thumping of wheels over something on the road on the bridge above
4 stones tightly stacked on the ancient boulder
a section of the fence above a steep part of the bluff, missing, marked off with an orange barricade
the icy river through the trees — blue and white and lonely
daddy long legs at his favorite bench
shadows, 1: mine, off to the side, in the brush next to the trail
shadows, 2: a tree trunk, tall, stretched, looking like a dinosaur
stopping at the edge to put in my headphones, seeing a flare of movement below: someone walking on the winchell trail
the limestones still stacked under the bridge, still looking like a person sitting up and leaning against the bridge
Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”
more forget lines
1
like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time. (Part of Eve’s Discussion/Marie Howe)
2
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too (Dead Stars/Ada Limón)
3
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. (Squint/Linda Pastan)
4
According to Howe, most (all?) of the critical studies of ED as a poet (up to 1985, when this book was written), read ED’s decision to stay isolated in her bedroom for the rest of her life as tragedy and a failure to celebrate herself as a poet (Whitman) or declare herself confidently as the Poet, the Sayer, the Namer (Emerson). Howe argues that she made another choice and writes the following:
She said something subtler. ‘Nature is a Haunted House–but Art–a House that tries to be haunted.’ (L459a)
Yes, gender difference does affect our use of language, and we constantly confront issues of difference, distance, and absence when we write. That doesn’t mean I can relegate women to what we ‘should’ or ‘must’ be doing. Orders suggest hierarchy and category. Categories and hierarchies suggest property. My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else. What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem. There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living. The conditions for poetry rest outside each life at a miraculous reach indifferent to worldly chronology.
5.3 miles va bridge and back 9 degrees / feels like -3
A little colder today, so more layers: 2 pairs of running tights; one long-sleeved shirt, two sweatshirts, one with a hood; a jacket; gloves; mittens; buff; 2 pairs of socks; sunglasses; cap.
My IT band was sore again. Time to play around with i and t! — in too deep; into gorge; intonation; in today’s economy?; intoxicating; intolerable; in top form; into the woods
10 Things
bright blue sky
sharp, solid shadows, 1: mine, running right in front of me
shadows, 2: slender, twisted branches on the asphalt
birds!, 1: rooting around in the dry brush, making a loud noise
birds!, 2: fluttering, flickering, flashing in and out of the bare branches on the edge of the trail
the falls!, 1: nearing them from above I could hear that they were more frozen as water fell over ice columns and made a sharp, tinkling sound
the falls!, 2: from my favorite spot, thick ice columns with water gushing through
the river! — everywhere I looked, swaths of white placed over the surface — not everything was white, but what was looked extra white, almost like frosting
the faint and fleeting scent of smoke
the view from the bench above the edge of the world was enormous and open and bright desolation
After turning around at the entrance of the VA bridge, I thought about the veterans across the bridge and I wondered who lived there and for long and whether or not they get the resources they needed. With all of the other layers of life — past and present — here, I don’t often think of them, and I don’t know much about the history of this place. Not too far down the river is Fort Snelling and the big cemetery. My Uncle Tim who died in Vietnam before I was born is buried there, and my grandfather’s ashes, too. My mother was devastated by her brother’s death, and she rarely ever talked about him to me. Too painful for her to remember? Strange to think about how close I am in proximity to my family on my mom’s side and how little I know about them.
1
As I continue to tag past entries with “remember/forget,” I came across these lovely lines from Carl Phillips:
just the rings that form then disappear around where some latest desire — lost, or abandoned — dropped once, and disturbed the water. To forget — then remember . . . What if, between this one and the one we hoped for, there’s a third life, taking its own slow, dreamlike hold, even now — blooming in spite of us? (Sky Coming Forward/Carl Phillips)
2
And if my father says haunt
he doesn’t mean the way rooms forget him once he’s gone; he’s saying his leather chair now in his coworker’s office, his locker in the back room newly purged of its clutter, or his usual table in the break room where he sits at 10:30 each night eating the same steak club and chips (Haunt/Maya Phillips)
3
Crossing between gain and loss: learning new words for the world and the things in it. Forgetting old words for the heart and the things in it. And collecting words in a different language for those three primary colors: staying, leaving, and returning. (Big Clock/Li-Young Lee)
4
And here’s a quotation from Alice Oswald in an interview for Falling Awake:
It’s good to remember how to forget. I’m interested in the oral tradition: what keeps the poems alive is a little forgetting. In Homer you get the sense that anything could happen because the poet might not remember.
Re-reading this idea, I’m reminded of AO’s discussion of her method for her book-length poem, Dart:
I decided to take along a tape-recorder. At the moment, my method is to tape a conversation with someone who works on the Dart, then go home and write it down from memory. I then work with these two kinds of record – one precise, one distorted by the mind – to generate the poem’s language. It’s experimental and very against my grain, this mixture of journalism and imagination, but the results are exciting. Above all, it preserves the idea of the poem’s voice being everyone’s, not just the poet’s.source
I’d like to try doing this with the documenting of my runs: experimenting with combining recordings with my memory/imagination of what happened (from log entry 14 march 2022).
I’m not interested, at least at this point, in interviewing people by the river, but I wonder if I could play around with recordings and memory — how what I remember strays from what actually happened? Maybe not with words but images? Or, I could play around with recordings of sounds, using this Steve Healey poem which I reread this morning during my “on this day” practice:
The other day, as I mentioned the “edge of the world” in a post, I thought about how I’d like to add a map to this log. This map would include all of my landmarks, with the names I use for them in my entries: the old stone steps, the double bridge, the edge of the world, the tunnel of trees, the ancient boulder with the stacked stones, the sliding bench. Ideally, this map would be hand-drawn, but I don’t think that’s possible with my bad vision. Maybe Scott could help me and we could get it printed and framed for the wall?
20 minutes with Delia neighborhood 7 degrees / feels like 4
Winter! Heading north, an arctic wind, but otherwise, not bad. Warm sun, no snow. I love being outside and moving. A thought: I should commit to doing one or two long-ish walks each week to somewhere. The library? A coffee place?
10 Things
dead, brown leaves on top of a pile of crusty snow
a high-pitched, quiet whine from a truck on the next block
the bare, gnarled, tall branches of the oak tree on the corner
2 green dumpsters on the sidewalk outside of Turtle Bread
almost stumbling as I stepped on a small rock or hard chunk of snow
a neighbor on the next block having an animated conversation with the mailman
bark! — Delia the dog unexpectedly barking at them from across the street
bark! bark! bark! — a dog in a backyard calling out to Delia
the tree on the corner across from the Blue Door — dead, most of it trimmed away, more than a stump with a few dead branches still remaining
the sun! heading south, warming my face and making it difficult to see if anyone was approaching
While tagging old entries with “remember/forget,” I came across Emily Dickinson’s poem about forget-me-nots on 2 march 2021, which helped me to remember that I was thinking about it — vaguely — as I ran yesterday!
There are spaces for living and spaces for forgetting. Sometimes they’re the same. (Voiceover/ Rita Dove)
3.5 miles trestle turn around 12 degrees / feels like -3
With the sun, it didn’t feel like -3 to me. No brain freeze from the wind, or numb fingers, or frozen snot in my nose. Well, as I’m write this I’m remembering that my legs felt slightly disconnected from my body, like logs or stumps, which is because of the cold.
My shadow ran in front of me as I headed north. She never wandered from the trail. I was just about to write that I forgot to look at the river, or forgot what I saw when I looked at the river, but then I remembered: sheets of white spread across, from east to west, between lake street bridge and the trestle. The ice looked like white waves and very cold. I stopped at the sliding bench for a moment and admired the river, then stopped a few minutes later to admire it again. Quiet, calm, a soft blueish-gray.
I listened to my new playlist (see below), so I don’t remember noticing much else. I was re-energized when Taylor Swift’s “I Forgot that You Existed” came on, and had some interesting ideas during “Veronica” about memories and the mind and thoughts and when and where they do and don’t travel and how and when we can’t access them anymore. Then I thought of an image for thoughts scattering and one’s mind being blown that I read on twitter several years ago: a mind being blown as not being blown up, but as being scattered like someone blowing on a dandelion — each thought or idea or memory is one of the dandelion seeds being spread. Now I’m thinking about each memory or thought as a bee swarming from a hive . . .
remember and forget
It’s looking more and more like remembering and forgetting might be my theme for january. It seems fitting for the first month of the year, when I’m trying to remember some things and forget others from 2024. I’m excited about this topic, and have thought about it before. There are so many ways I could approach it: the moment of remembering, the softness of forgetting, memorizing poems, memory loss . . .
Here’s my tentative remember to forget playlist:
Remember the Time/ Michael Jackson
I Don’t Remember/ Peter Gabriel
I Keep Forgettin’/ Michael McDonald
Try to Remember/ The Fantasticks
Don’t You (Forget About Me)/ Simple Minds
I Remember/Molly Drake I
Forget to Remember to Forget/ Johnny Cash
September/ Earth, Wind, and Fire
I Forgot that you Existed/ Taylor Swift
Veronica/ Elvis Costello
I Love You and Don’t You Forget It/ Sarah Vaughn
Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio/Ramones
Do You Remember Walter?/ The Kinks
Remember/ A Little Night Music
I Remember it Well/ Gigi
Forget You/ Cee Lo Green
(Love Will) Turn Back the Hand of Time/ Grease 2
Memory/ Barbara Streisand
and here are a pair of lines from two different poems, one about forgetting, one about remembering:
the snow has forgotten how to stop (Blizzard/ Linda Pastan)
As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together
and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers. (The Meadow/Marie Howe)
5 miles bottom franklin hill and back 18 degrees / feels like 10
A beautiful, sunny morning. Cold enough to make my eyes water but not my feet numb. Birds, sharp shadows, a clear path. Only a few small chunks of hard snow on the walking path. From the distance, the river looked completely open and ice-free. When I stopped at the bottom of the hill to check, I noticed a few lumps scattered around the surface. If I hadn’t stopped, I never would have seen them — there were so few of them, and they were so small!
I remembered to look at the river. I forgot the sudden and unexpected surge of anxiety I experienced before the run, while I was sitting at my desk — not panic, but a rush of something then shaking hands, chattering teeth — then remembered it, and then forgot it again. This happened throughout the run. I remembered to breathe and to stay relaxed. I forgot to check my watch. I remembered to zip up my jacket pocket so one of my black gloves wouldn’t fall out. I forgot to check and see if June’s ghost bike was still hanging on the trestle. I remembered the time I ran up the franklin hill and recorded myself describing it. I forgot to look for fat tires.
Halfway up the franklin hill, I stopped to walk and put in my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist, since the shadows were wonderful today. The fourth song to come on was Cream’s “White Room.” I thought about the second verse and these lyrics:
You said no strings could secure you at the station Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
First, I was struck by the strings. I thought about invisible threads or tugs, then Taylor Swift’s invisible strings. Then, I was struck by nouns in the second line, especially the restless diesels and goodbye windows. I’m not sure if I thought about it while I was running, but now I’m thinking about one of RJP’s favorite books as a kid, The Hello Goodbye Window.
Before the run, and before my surge of anxiety, I edited and added to some lines about descending into the gorge that I had started last week. I was partly inspired by a discussion with FWA yesterday about his walk down the old stone steps to the beach. The lines aren’t quite finished, but here’s what I have. I’m hoping to have FWA read them to see if they capture any of his experience:
From the bottom, she looks up to behold a steep set of stone steps wedged in loam by grandfathers. At the top, the edge, and beyond, the trail, then the road, wind-bent trees, worn grass, a neighborhood. Down here feels different — wild, untouched, real, above only distant dream. The girl follows a break in the trees to a white sand beach and the river. She shuts her eyes and listens for the bells that chime four times an hour. Once or twice, instead, she’s heard a bagpipe’s mournful skirl float down from the cenotaph on the other bluff. A moment, a breath — she opens her eyes returns through the trees ascends the steps and breaks the spell.
And, speaking of remembering and forgetting, here’s another fragment I’m working on:
One day the girl sees the river and re- members what she saw. One day she sees the river and does not. And one day she for- gets to look. How strange it is to not notice what is right there, looming so large it has shaped this whole world.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 15 degrees / feels like 3 / flurries
2025, I’m not sure how I feel about you. Not dread, but not exuberant hope either. I guess I’m trying not to think about you and what you might bring that much. Running beside the gorge helps. Very few, what ifs, many more now and now and nows. Today’s run was great. I was surprised to see that the feels like temp was 3. It didn’t feel that cold. I guess I picked the right layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, a black fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, a gray buff, a faded green long-sleeved shirt, a bright orange sweatshirt, a purple jacket, gray long socks, black short socks, black gloves, pink and white striped gloves. At the halfway point, one pair of gloves came off.
While I ran, I thought about remembering and forgetting and decided when I returned home, my 10 things list would be of things remembered and things forgotten.
10 Things Remembered or Forgotten
I remembered to look down at the river
I remembered what it looked like: steel blue, a few thin sheets of ice
I remembered to stop at the bench above the edge of the world to take in the openness — soft, almost still except for a single leaf fluttering and several leaves sizzling, and was the water moving very slowly or was that just the staticky buzz of my glitching cone cells?
I forgot about my headache
I forgot about my IT band
In mile 3, I remembered my IT band and thought about how it’s impossible to fully forget your body, which is good, because why would I want to do that?
I forgot the election
I remembered to look carefully, and more than once, before crossing from the trail to the grassy boulevard
I remembered to stop at my favorite view of the falls — the water was gushing over the side
I remembered what I overheard above the falls: a dad — no hiking today, a mom: we can take a walk instead!
I suppose it’s easier to remember what you remembered, than to remember what you forgot!
Reading through a past entry from 1 jan 2019, I was reminded of how I used to gather favorite lines at the end of the year and turn them into a new poem. I’d like to do that again this year!
The poems that I’ve been writing this fall about the gorge, are mostly about water and stone, but the open space of the gorge is important too. I’d like to devote some time to it as air, as openness, as possibility, as room to breathe, as Nothingness, as mystery, as inexplicable, as . . . . Here are two different fragments that may or may not turn into something:
When water cut through rock, sandstone wore away, limestone broke up, and an abundance of air arrived.
*
When water cut through sandstone and limestone, it made of the rock still standing a frame to loosely hold the newly formed space. And what a space! Such an abundance of air! Such room to breathe and to be! Big enough to hold more than is seen or imagined or witnessed with words.
1.5 mile walk with Delia the gorge, from 36th to 34th 32 degrees / fog
Good job, Sara. You resisted the urge to run. A walk with Delia was wonderful. So quiet and calm and relaxed! Moist, too. I loved breathing in the cool air and almost floating through the fog. All of it, a soft dream. Occasionally I encountered others — some walkers and runners — but mostly it was just us. At one point, descending through the tunnel of trees, which isn’t really a tunnel anymore because they cut it back at some point, the only thing I could hear was a hammer pounding across the road. No cars or voices or striking feet. Wow! Several times, I felt a warm buzz.
10 Things
a white sky
open water
wet asphalt
grass covered in brown leaves
a dark form descending into the ravine — silent, featureless
a brown view of the floodplain forest — all slender trunks and bare branches, no river or sky poking through
a runner in the neighborhood emerging from an alley in a sprint, then returning to the alley, then appearing again, then disappearing around the corner
thump thump thump the striking feet of a runner across the street — the same one? I’m not sure
the silvery sparkle of the sign at the 35th street overlook — is this sign new?
overheard: a woman running alongside a kid on a bike, talking to the kid — you had your pink backpack and your droopy dog stuffed animal — did she say droopy, or some other word?
I wanted to think about my Ars Poetica poem as I walked, and I did, but I’m still stuck. Something about letting things breathe and be exposed to the air to see what happens and erosion and ruins. I’ll give it until the end of the year, and if I’m still stuck, I’ll put it away for a bit.
forget what you are
While reading poet’s Cynthia Cruz’s explanation of how her poem, “Dark Register” is shaped by Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit, I encountered these lines about habit:
“Habit,” in the third stanza refers to Hegel’s concept of habit: the act of repeating an action that, through this repetition, becomes second nature. For Hegel, habit implies forgetting: we forget what we are doing once the action becomes habit.
we forget what we are . . . . I immediately thought of Marie Howe’s beautiful poem, “The Meadow” and her lines about her dying brother:
I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.
But in this world, where something is always listening, even murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan
in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget
what you are.
This forgetting also reminds me of Mary Rueffle’s reference to Levi-Strauss’ “unhitching, which I wrote about on may 31, 2023. First, my rough paraphrasing:
unhitching happens in brief moments when we can step outside of or beside or just beyond — below the threshold of thought, over and above society — to contemplate/experience/behold the this, the what it is, the essence of everything, Mary Oliver’s eternity.
Second, a quote from Levi-Strauss in Mary Ruefle:
The possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists … in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society; in the contemplating of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.
Lévi-Strauss quoted MRH page 52
Wow, all of this is making me think of something I wrote, referencing Mary Oliver, about the gorge. Initially I added it on the end of my geologic time poem, and maybe it should stay there and be extended, or maybe it should be another poem? Here are the lines:
Every day this place erodes the belief that rock will stand still, is here forever, unmoved, unmoving. And yet, with its slow slight shifts on a scale almost beyond her comprehension, these rocks might be as close as the girl can get to eternity.
So many more connections I could make with forgiveness and forgetting and remembering and now and now and now!
5 miles minnehaha park and back 34 degrees / fog / humidity: 94%
Almost all of the snow, which wasn’t much to begin with, is gone. The ice, too. Hardly any wind, but plenty of moisture — the trail, the air, my face. Ran past the falls and John Stevens’ house to the VA bridge, then turned around and ran beside the falls. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, which were gushing. Put in “Billie Eilish” playlist and ran home.
10 Things
mostly bare grass — the only snow were little mounds where the walking path split off from the biking path
the creek water was fast and steel gray
heard the train bells from across the road, then the horn tapping twice — beep beep
car lights cutting through the mist/fog
an older man pushing an empty wheelchair on the path
glancing down at the Winchell trail north of 38th street, seeing two people walking on a part near the edge, high above the water
I just wrote gray sky, no sun or shadows, but then I remembered there were a few patches of blue sky
overheard: one woman walker to another — ptsd, trump, spend time with family
smiling and waving to people I encountered — one good morning to another runner
a man and a woman stopped at the edge of the walkway down to the bridge over the falls looking at something on a phone — I finally got it! Its back at my apartment
For the past 3 days, Scott, FWA, RJP, and I were up in Duluth. Very mild — no snow, no wind, no waves, some drizzle. Lake Superior was beautiful, especially the first night. While we were gone, I didn’t run. Today was my first day back since Thursday. My left hip is sore after the run. I should take more of a break.
I’m returning to my “Ars Poetica” poem and wanting to use this bit from Kafka for inspiration:
According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.
Not becoming one with the gorge, but striving to press deeper and deeper into it, to leave a trace/mark on it, and be marked by it.
Yesterday I said I wasn’t planning to run again this week, but the paths were clear, the weather was above freezing, and I couldn’t resist. I nice morning for a run! Not sure how much of it was my vision and how much was moist, gray air , but everything looked extra blurry today. I didn’t even recognize Dave the Daily Walker until he greeted me by name.
10 Things
happy, shouting kids somewhere on the hill between edmund and the parkway — were they sledding? I couldn’t see them, but that’s what it sounded like
open water — dark gray
fee bee fee bee
a runner passing me from behind wearing a bright yellowish-green shirt that looked like the same one I had on under my vest and sweatshirt — was it for the 10 mile race from 5 years ago, like mine?
stopped at my new favorite bench and looked down the slope at the white sands beach far below
some voices down in the gorge — sounding far enough away to be on the other side
the bells of St. Thomas chiming!
one loud, deep bark up ahead — heard, not seen — I wonder how bit the dog was that made that sound?
the walking trail is completely covered with snow — no bare walking trail until spring?
more than once, the distant knocking of a woodpecker up in a tree
2 miles river road trail, south/42nd west/edmund, north 33 degrees
Okay, I didn’t make it a week without running, but I did take off 3 days, and I only ran 2 miles and only because I wanted to run on Christmas with Scott. I’ll go back to taking a break again for the rest of the week. It was mild out there, with only a little bit of ice on the edges of the road and the trail. Heading south, the wind was cold, but north you didn’t even notice it. We encountered some people running or walking and waved at them. The sky was gray and heavy and made it feel like there was a thin veil of moist air over everything. How much of that was my vision, how much the illusion created by the heavy grayness of everything?
This year, we’re having a “no expectations” Christmas. A few nice meals/desserts, some small presents, a 3 day trip to Duluth. I don’t mind it. I used to love Christmas and all of its rituals, but with so many people gone or far away, it’s not much fun these days. I’m sure I’ll enjoy it again in a few years. Right now, I’m grateful that RJP and FWA took some time this semester to figure some things out, and that they’re both doing better.
It seemed colder than 28 degrees as Scott and I took Delia on a walk this morning. Damp. It looks like snow, but hours later as I write this, it still hasn’t started. The sky is a heavy white. There was some ice on the sidewalk — thin, almost invisible patches. Conscious of my vision, Scott pointed them out. It’s strange how my vision works; I was able to see all of them. I think it’s because of the texture — the icy patches make the concrete just a little bit shinier.
10 Things
good morning! greeted a neighbor on the next block — the one with the cat (matt) who rules the sidewalk and the very cool poetry station. I thought about asking his about it, but didn’t — next time!
most of the ice was in the usual spots — the places where ice always forms because of the slope of the ground or the way a drain pipe is positioned
a dog’s sudden appearance on the other side of a fence startled, then delighted me
the soft tinkling of a collar, almost sounding like a bell
Dave the Daily Walker in the distance
the decorations in the trees of a house on the corner of 28th — over-sized ornaments in soft colors
noticing the contrast colors of a house, wondering to Scott, didn’t that house used to be all one dark color? He couldn’t remember, but I do, now. I’ve written about this house before and its once purple door
I’m not sure what we were talking about but I have no memory of what I saw or smelled or heard for the next couple blocks
oh! one thing I remember now: the beautiful frosty pattern of icy leaves etched on the sidewalk — the leaves were gone, but had let their prints
Delia’s wagging tail as we neared our garage — are we almost home? (wag wag wag)
A few hours ago, before our walk, I did my standard 30 minutes for flexibility yoga. Wow! It felt so good and made me very relaxed. As I stretched, I had a thought about my series of Haunts poems: break up the long 5 syllable sections with some short lines from other writers (mostly poets) that I fit into my 3/2 patter. I call them for fitters. I’m thinking of these kind of like Jane Hirshfield’s pebbles or Mary Oliver’s sand dabs or Victoria Chang’s tankas in Obit. I’m also thinking of them because of the poet Sparrow, who I just learned about in Lydia Davis’ essay on form. Sparrow wrote an entire series of “translated” New Yorker poems.
I thought I had written about the sand dabs and pebbles on here before, but I can’t find anything:
A Year with Mary Oliver posted all 9 of MO’s sand dabs on instagram! Here’s an explanation of the form:
(Sand Dabs 1/9) Over the next nine days, we’ll be sharing each of Mary’s nine “Sand Dabs.”
As Mary wrote in the footnote of Long Life: “The sand dab is a small, bony, not very significant but well-put-together fish.”
The incomparable @mariapopovadescribed “Sand Dabs, One” as “just a few lines, largehearted and limber, each saturated with meaning and illustrating the principle it espouses in a clever meta-manifestation of that principle embedded in the language itself.”
The remaining eight also fit that description.
They read like many of the excerpts from Mary’s notebook (which she shared in the essay “Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air,” found in Blue Pastures)—free form noticing and thoughts, in list form.
All nine Sand Dabs are scattered throughout four of Mary’s less frequently visited books: Blue Pastures, West Wind, Winter Hours, and Long Life. She wrote them over the span of nine years. Just adding more as she went along.
We weren’t able to find any place where all nine lived together. It was fun to collect them from their disparate pages, put them together, and read them all in a row.
No photograph or painting can hold it— the stillness of water just before it starts being ice.
The mention of ice reminded me of a wonderful description I found in the novel I just started reading, A Little Stranger/ Sarah Waters:
I recall most vividly the house itself, which struck me as an absolute mansion. I remember its lovely ageing details: the worn red brick, the cockled window glass, the weathered sandstone edgings. They make it look blurred and slightly uncertain–like an ice, I thought, just beginning to melt in the sun.
1 mile, with Delia the dog neighborhood 32 degrees
Another day off from running, another walk with Delia the dog. This time, Scott joined us. Very bright from the white snow and sky. No sun or shadows. Damp, chilled air. We made our way over to edmund and walked above the parkway. I don’t remember hearing any birds or dripping gutters or crunching snow. No smelling smoke or burnt coffee. I do remember feeling the cold air get under my hat and into my ears.
Later, around 7pm, RJP and I were coming back from Christmas shopping. She was driving us along the river road. I saw at least 3 different groups of runners on the path and in the dark. At least one of the runners in each group had a head lamp on. It was strange and delightful to see these lights bobbing in the air, higher than it seemed they should. It was only as we got closer that I could see the runner attached to the light.
30 minutes, with Delia the dog neighborhood 30 degrees
I’m surprised at how good I feel after running the most I ever have in a year, and running a marathon and not taking more than a few days break after it. But, even so, I think I should take a little break from running. At the end of my run yesterday, my left leg and hip felt sore and tight, and I don’t want it to get worse. Also, I think it would be nice to walk a little more for the end of the year. So, I’m hoping to take at least a week without running. Can I do it? I’m not sure.
Today’s walk was great. Warm sun! Half-dry sidewalks. Blue sky. Happy dog. Cold, refreshing air. Walking slowly outside in the cold makes me feel calm and a little euphoric, especially when I breathe in deeply through my nose, out through my mouth.
overheard, 3 things, at different times/places:
(not seen, only heard) a man to someone else — that was an excellent church service
(seen and heard) a man parking and getting out of the car in front of a house, someone from the house calling out jokingly — wrong house!
(seen and third) a man running, wheezing or vigorously coughing, then stopping to walk then sounding like he might be heaving
I though briefly about the section of my poem I’m working on. I’ve tentatively titled it, “Ars Poetica,” which is a type of poem about writing poetry. Right now I’m thinking about entanglements and things growing in the aftermath of ruins and erosion and . . . just as I was typing this up, I had more thoughts — mushrooms as the fruit of fungi bursting through asphalt and cracks and as the words that erupt from my practice, but are only part of the making/writing/living of poetry. Below ground, nets/networks, not as firm as roots but creating deep connections just the same to a place. I’ve already written a little about this — I need to find it . . . Found it! 25 april 2022.
Maybe like mushrooms, we rise. A brief burst from below, a flare, then a return to swim in the dirt
Am I getting too lost with these ideas? I follow them a little further.
