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.
3.3 miles trestle turn around 11 degrees 75% snow-covered
Okay winter! Enough layers to keep me warm, a path that wasn’t crowded or icy, Yak trax to help me stay upright. The run wasn’t the easiest, but it might be the slowest. I’m stopped to walk more than I used to. Partly to admire the view, but also because I’m tired after a 1000+ miles of running this year. Time for a break, I think.
10 Things
fee bee fee bee — a black-capped chickadee!
the tight crunch of my feet striking and lifting off of the ground
in several places, big mounds of snow off to the side, pushed their by a parks’ plow
open water
where the path is plowed, only on the bike trail, the snow is packed down or gone. Narrow strips of almost bare pavement have appeared on the edges
where the path is not plowed, on the walking trail. the snow is loose and high enough to be difficult to run through
2 city plows on the street, rumbling down edmund
I stopped slightly short of the trestle because someone was there fiddling with a bike, standing just where I wanted to stop to admire the view
the sky was a bright white, not from sun, but from snow
stopped at my new favorite bench — the view below was all white with thin brown lines and looked cold and alone
I made some progress on my latest section of Haunts this morning! Slowly, it’s turning into something. As I ran, I wanted to think about feral forms and forms that resist complete domestication and nets as forms. Did I? I’m not sure. Now that I’m back home, I plan to read a chapter in Lydia Davis’ collection, Essays One, about the unusual forms she uses in her writing. I happened upon this chapter by accident. Taking a brief break to think through what I was writing, I looked over at my bookshelf and noticed its awesomely green cover. So I picked it up and found “Forms and Influences.” Nice!
The poem of the day at Poetry Foundation was from Jenny Xie’s Eye Level. I’m pretty sure I checked this collection out several years ago, but I don’t remember this poem. One short section from it helped open a door for me into my poem:
If there is a partition between the outer and inner worlds, how is it that some water in me churns between the mountain ranges?
How is it we are absorbed so easily by the ground— (from Long Nights/Jenny Xie)
3.35 miles locks and dam no. 1 12 degrees 99.9% snow-covered
It snowed yesterday. 5.5 inches of soft, powdery stuff. Today it’s colder and the snow has compacted. With my yak-trax it wasn’t too difficult to run on. No slipping. Tiring, though. And beautiful! For the first mile, the river was open and then it was covered — one half had ice and snow, the other sparkles.
10 Things
sharp, dark shadows — mine, behind me for the first half, in front for the second
the only bare stretch of pavement was on the biking side of the bridge, up against the wall, where it is sheltered and covered in dead leaves
encountered at least 3 runners
the loud voices of some construction workers, joking with each other
a deep cough by one of the workers
everywhere, small ledges and wedges of snow
some dirt sprinkled on the path to make it less slippery
the bones of fallen trees, covered with snow in the ravine
a bench on the hill above the edge of the world, at just the right angle to face the sun
a screeching bluejay high in a tree
I’m working on a section of my poem about form. At some point during the run, I thought about searching for forms that can hold my words — but not too tightly — and my messy, layered thoughts and feelings. Earlier this morning, I was thinking about partial forms and illusory forms and unreliable forms — the fuzzy forms my brain creates, the unnatural form of the river. I haven’t quite figured out how to tie them all together.
As part of my focus on forms that seem natural but aren’t, I’ve been thinking about and trying to find an article about the Apostle Islands and re-wilding. This morning I finally found it again! The Riddle of the Apostle Islands
Ran in the afternoon. Sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, streaks of a brilliant blue mixed with fluffy clouds. The river was mostly open with a few stretches of ice. The shore glowed white. The gorge slopes were different versions of brown. The creek was flowing fast and the falls were rushing over the edge. When I looked at them from my favorite spot all I could see was movement — the fast falling water looked like wavy vertical lines on an old tv. For the first mile, I was the only one out on the trail, then I passed a walker. Far ahead I could see lights flickering — headlights passing by trees on the other side of the ravine. Just past the double bridge, I heard a hammer hitting some wood then some other construction noises — men talking, some song coming out of the radio, a saw buzzing.
Yesterday, one version of my Girl Ghost Gorge poem was published in Last Syllable Literary Journal!
Ah, this poem, featuring windows and shadows and birds!
These windows, these panes, at the beginning of light looking where they look, eyeing the east and the rust and here they are, protected by shade and shadows: branches and birds strike them, fly into them and out. You can see nothing through them, you can only see what bounces off: back at the world and then you return, to the lemon, that is the self, squeezing drop after drop— there’s nothing left of you now, no juice! Can you go on lubricating the mind, musing on you as disaster, and the rest of you as the elements? Here, they go one by one into a flame set down, beneath all the steps, at the very bottom of it all … and God! The eyes wish you didn’t! They look away from the blank space remaining—oh these birds in the mornings are funny and the little tricks they repeat and repeat, like these sounds they make, in order: they fly off together or one by one, puffing up their small bodies, extending a peak that opens up a view, that finds space in whatever looks shut and closed—a wall has some hole, a tree trunk can manage a crack, and under the ledge, a window knows something of the hidden world.
Warmer today! And clear, ice-free paths! Not looking like December at all. I decided to run to the flats so I could see if the water seeping out of the rock wall was still frozen now that it had warmed up. It looked like it was, at least to me, but I could hear some trickling water too. What will it look like this afternoon? I heard a few geese, admired the form of a few other runners after they passed me, noticed my shadow and a few streaks of blue sky when the sun came out from behind the clouds briefly. It wasn’t the easiest run, but it wasn’t the hardest either.
Heading north, I listened to a train — or was it a light rail? — horn honking repeatedly. Not sure what was happening; too many honks, and too insistent, for business as usual. Was there an accident? Returning south, I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist, but then switched to “Slappin’ Shadows.”
Here’s a wonderful poem I discovered this morning. That last line!
What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life. Remember the stem of lavender you found in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined: The world is a mist. And then the world is minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist all shimmer and gold, you almost winced. Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate. Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.
Today I’m working on a section of Haunts about forms and shadows and seeing things slant, off to the side, in order to grasp (some of) their truth. I’m thinking I will mention how the mississippi is one of the more trained/shaped/managed rivers — with locks, dams, dredging.
a lone black glove
Almost always, when I see a discarded glove on the ground on my run it is black. Okay, today, I saw a gray one draped on a branch. As I walked home after my run, I encountered a lone black glove on the ground and decided to take a picture of it.
a lone black glove
added, 17 dec 2024: As I was working on a section of Haunts about form, I remembered something else I witnessed yesterday during my run. Somewhere between the trestle and lake street bridge, I noticed a form on the ground, just through the trees. I think it was a sleeping bag with someone (possibly) in it. I’ve seen it here before, but only as a quick flash while I run by. Am I seeing it correctly, or is it like the stacked limestone under the franklin bridge that I always think is a person sitting up against one of the pilings?
4.3 miles minnehaha falls and back 36 degrees 70% ice-covered
A great temperature — mild — but not great surface conditions. Neighborhood sidewalks and the trail had a thin layer of ice with only a few clear patches. The worst stretch was at the falls. I stopped and walked in the snowy grass for a few minutes. But, I didn’t fall. If the conditions had been better, I would have gone for a few more miles. Oh well, at least I got out there. It felt good to be outside, above the gorge. Fresh, cool air, a moving body, the river.
10 Things
a laughing kid somewhere across the road — not seen, only heard
the river, some of it open water, some ice, all of it gray
a runner in BRIGHT yellow shoes
a lot of the snow that fell last week is gone, now there’s grass and brown leaves all over the ground
a slick path near the falls parking lot — I didn’t feel nervous that I’d fall, but my feet weren’t getting any traction
near the overlook by the falls, dirt or grit of something had been used to make it less slippery
the falls were gushing
the dirt trail in the small wood near the ford bridge was visible and inviting and cleared of snow
stopped at a bench above “the edge of the world” — admired the clear, colorless view of the river
can’t remember where, but I encountered a faint smell — tangy, sour — of the sewer
Finished another section of my poem yesterday. It’s very exciting to have found a way to put all these words together. How many more section do I have in me before january? Yesterday’s section is titled, Geologic time, and it’s about experiencing time at the gorge on a longer, deeper, slower scale.
Here’s discussion of ekphrasis that I’d like to remember and return to when I finally get to my ekphrasis, how I see, project:
Some of the “paintings” and “photographs” are purely ekphrastic, in the sense that the images, associations, and overall tone were conceived in the moment of looking at a certain artwork hung in a museum or in my memory. Others are more of a collapsing between that moment of looking and earlier or later situationally unrelated impressions; some poems contain a dueling ekphrasis in which impressions of multiple artworks blend. So, yes, most refer to a specific artwork(s), but then the question becomes: What is ekphrasis in the pure sense? And what does pure even mean—another something that Heti can weigh in on. Doesn’t all ekphrasis—the act of looking, and reading, and possibly “interpreting” a text—include a necessary degree of subjectivity and, therefore, can’t it help but become saturated with personal associations and allusions?
random note for future Sara: Scott and I are rewatching all of The Brady Bunch. It’s been 10 years and I still think Mike and Carol are the worst parents in the world. Also, my least favorite character is Bobby, and my favorite is Alice. I was going to write that Jan was my favorite but then I remember the season 2 episode when she plays practical jokes on everyone. She’s obnoxious.
how I don’t see yellow
Yesterday on Instagram, I looked at a block of text and couldn’t see that part of it was circled in bright yellow until I shifted my eyes to the left or right. Straight on, no circle. Look slightly to the left, yellow circle. I took a screen shot of it so I could post it here as an example of how I don’t see yellow.
