oct 1/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails + extra
51 degrees

Finally, fall weather! Wore my bright orange sweatshirt today, which was too warm during the last mile. Ran above on the paved trail heading south, below on the Winchell trail heading north. Sunny, breezy, cool, dreamy. Tree shadows. My left hip was a little sore, but otherwise I felt strong and relaxed. I chanted Emily Dickinson for part of the run: life is but life/ and death but death/ bliss is but bliss/ and breath but breath then life is life/death is death/bliss is bliss/breath is breath then life life life life/death death death death/bliss bliss bliss bliss/breath breath breath breath.

Thought about the marathon and how long it’s been since I ran on the winchell trail and FWA and My Neighbor Totoro, which Scott and I watched last night. Also thought about zombies, which is my theme for October. Mostly I thought about bodies without minds and feeling like you’re trapped in a body and soul-less, indifferent, relentless bodies.

10 Things

  1. heading down to the Horace Cleveland Overlook, I was blinded by a circle of light on the river — so bright! impossible to see anything else
  2. the sharp crack of a squirrel opening an acorn
  3. kids on the playground — laughing, yelling
  4. water trickling out of the sewer pipe at 44th
  5. a few more slashes of red, a golden feeling*
  6. the surface of the winchell trail is in terrible condition — cracked, slanted, cratered
  7. bikers on a bench, taking a snack break
  8. a woman on the narrow winchell trail with a dog, off to the side and facing me, talking on a phone I couldn’t see, saying something about walking after 60
  9. someone sitting on the bench in a blue shirt near the overlook
  10. big trees on the ground, cut into sections and stacked beside the trail

*For the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing trees turning yellow everywhere, but when I mention it to Scott he says that they look perfectly green to him, not yellow at all. Since my color vision is questionable, I’ll take his word for it. I’ve decided to believe that I’m seeing the yellow that is coming, or the slightest idea — the inkling — of yellow that has arrived but only as a feeling or the whisper, yellow. This morning, as I stood at the kitchen counter, about to make my coffee, I noticed the reflection of my neighbor’s tree on the granite countertop. Yellow! Wow, I said to myself out loud, has that tree turned when I wasn’t looking? I looked out the window and checked the real tree: a golden feeling, but nothing more.

Another gold/en thing: Admiring the sun spilling through the treetops, feeling the crisper air, W.S. Merwin’s line from “To the Light of August” popped into my head: Still the high, familiar, endless summer, yet with a glint of bronze in chill mornings. I thought, not bronze, but gold.

some marathon experiments

During and after my run, I had 2 ideas for things to try while running 26.2 miles. First: pick 26 poems I’ve memorized to recite in my head as I run. One for each mile. The problem with this idea is not memorizing all the poems. I’ve already done that. The problem is remembering which poems I picked and for which mile! I imagined attempting to write a list on my arm, which seemed ridiculous and too unruly.

Second: for each mile, notice things that begin with one particular letter. Do this in alphabetical order. So, mile 1 = a, mile 2 = b, etc. I could also make a list of as many words that start with that letter as possible. This experiment might be fun, but it could also get tedious.

In addition to these experiments, I’ve been thinking that I need a mantra and/or a few lines from favorite poems to chant in difficult moments or when I want to be distracted. Yes! I’ll have to make a list today. Of course, ED’s life/death/bliss/breath is on this list!

zombies!

Today is the first day of Zombie month! I’m excited to explore this topic, which I don’t know that much about. Since the marathon is this Sunday and I’m also thinking a lot about that, I’ll ease into zombies this week.

When I think of zombies, I think: relentless, indifferent, hungry, mindless, brainless bodies. And this makes me think of Jaws as a relentless killing machine. Here’s a great poem I found on poetryfoundation:

Jaws/ Emma Hine

I don’t realize I’m starved
for the color until the blood

washes up on the beach.
I’m craving red but still

haven’t seen the creature,
just the quick whip and slither

of its tail in the wake
—and then there I am,

facing the skin side
of the animatronic shark.

The slick apertures of its eyes.
The mythic teeth.

The anvil nose beating
the deck, cracking windows.

The shark, like the moon, is
pockmarked, unstoppable,

never showing its hidden side.
Surely space is just another underwater,

the messages we send from satellites
a bleeding haze of infrared:

This is my blood type,
this is where I keep my body at night,

and I tell no one about the times
my body, taking over,

stands waist-deep in the surf,
some wild need inside me

ticking into place.

The slick apertures of its eyes. Yes — Jaws’ eyes are the worst: huge, empty, black. Is much made of zombies’ eyes? Anything distinctive, or do they just look dead and empty?

sept 30/MARATHON WEEK

The first day of marathon week. The 15th anniversary of my mom’s death. 11 years after witnessing the marathon near Lake Nokomis, feeling the magic of it, and knowing that one day I wanted to run this race. In 2013, I had been running for 2 years, not that long but long enough to believe that this distance was possible.

The horrible way my mom died in 2009 — slowly, painfully, her strong body prolonging her suffering for more than a year– forced me to confront a truth I hadn’t yet, even though I was 35: our bodies will fail us.

note, 1 oct, 2024: Instead of fail, I first wrote betray, our bodies will betray us. It seemed too strong, but fail doesn’t seem strong enough. Maybe: our bodies can betray us? Or, instead of “forced me to confront” I could say, The horrible way my mom died in 2009, transformed my understanding of my body; I began to fear it, to believe that one day it would betray me.

For me, training for and getting to the start line of this marathon, especially not being able to do so in 2017, is an acceptance of that failing and an expression of deep (and complicated) love for my body.

I love how athletes believe in the body and know it will fail them.

Love/ Alex Dimitrov

Inspired by a writing prompt, I just checked out Marianne Moore’s collection, Observations. Another color poem!

In the Days of Prismatic Color/ Marianne Moore

not in the days of Adam and Eve but when Adam
was alone; when there was no smoke and color was
fine, not with the fineness of
early civilization art but by virtue
of its originality; with nothing to modify it but the

mist that went up, obliqueness was a varia-
tion of the perpendicular, plain to see and
to account for: it is no
longer that; nor did the blue red yellow band
of incandescence that was color keep its stripe: it also is one of

those things into which much that is peculiar can be
read; complexity is not a crime but carry
it to the point of murki-
ness and nothing is plain. complexity
moreover, that has been committed to
darkness, instead of granting it-

self to be the pestilence that it is, moves all a-
bout as if to bewilder us with the dismal
fallacy that insistence
is the measure of achievement and that all
truth must be dark. Principally throat,
sophistication is as it al-

ways has been — at the antipodes from the init-
ial great truths. “Part of it was crawling, part of it
was about to crawl, the rest
was torpid in its lair.” In the short legged, fit-
ful advance, the gurgling and all the
minutiaæ — we have the classic

multitude of feet. To what purpose! Truth is no Apollo
Belvedere, no formal thing. The wave may
go over it if it likes.
Know that it will be there when it says:
“I shall be there when the wave has gone by.”

I do not understand this poem or get many of its references, but it’s about color and there’s something in her mist and murkiness and the dark that is inviting me to read it a few more times.

sept 29/RUN

10 miles
downtown and back
57 degrees

The last long run before the marathon next Sunday. Just one more week and then I’ve made it to the start line! Not easy, but not hard either. My first time running this far into downtown — past the Stone Arch Bridge — in years. Already crowded at 9 am on a Sunday morning. Sunny, warm. Lots of sweat.

Listened to an audio book, The Marlow Murder Club, so I was distracted. Can I remember 10 things I noticed?

10 Things

  1. near the seep/spring in the flats, the road was all wet
  2. rowers! heard: coxswain’s voice
  3. some more red leaves higher in the trees
  4. the St. Thomas bells chiming at least 2 different times
  5. roller skiers: a pair + a few individual skiers
  6. running straight into the sun — difficult to see anything
  7. the soft sand on the dirt path near the Hennepin Bridge
  8. a single, brown leaf fluttering to the ground in front of me
  9. thin foam on the surface of the river
  10. blue, cloud-free sky

No music blasting from bikes, no Doppler effect, no sirens, no stinky trash or sewer smells, no geese, no darting squirrels, no turkeys, no Dave the Daily Walker. No chafing (my old running bra was scratchy me up — lots of small cuts and little scars, but no bleeding), no unfinished business, no bathroom or water stops. No thoughts, no lines of poetry popping into my head, no epiphanies, no problems solved. No yelling, no getting irritated, no sliding kneecaps. No goldenrod, no swarming gnats, nobody calling out encouragement. Just me and legs and lungs and hips and river.

sept 26/RUN

10k
flats and back
59 degrees

Warmer than I thought this morning. Lots of sweat. Sun. Shadows. Sparkling water. Ran past the road closed on Oct 6 (that’s for the marathon!) and smiled. Not long now. I felt fine. My big toe on my right foot stung a little. My right foot is a bit of a mess: an in-grown big toenail, a blackish-purplish second toe, another possible in-grown toenail on the fourth toe. I think it will all be fine — nothing’s infected and it doesn’t hurt that much.

10 Things

  1. a coxswain’s voice, calling out instructions
  2. a motorboat’s wake, leaving soft ripples on the surface of the river, moving upstream and contrasting with the motion of the water heading downstream
  3. ahead of me, under the 1-94 bridge, the river sparking silver
  4. water seeping out of the limestone below the U of M’s west bank, wanting to be a waterfall
  5. my shadow, running ahead of me: sharp and solid
  6. several of the benches were occupied — one person at each
  7. a few more red leaves — a bright, fiery red
  8. the rhythmic snap of a fast runner’s striking feet
  9. cracks in the asphalt just north of the trestle — they just patched these in late spring and the entire stretch was redone 2 or 3 years ago — in 10 years will you even able to run on this section, or will it have slid into the gorge?
  10. someone left the lid of the trashcan below the lake street bridge open — wow, it stinks!

Here’s a poem I read yesterday that I liked to add to my collection of shadow poems — I might also add it to my growing group of moment poems too:

On a Walk/ Heather Christle

My child is upset that they cannot jump over their shadow.
They want me to help them. They want me to teach them
how it’s done. The best I can do is an invitation

to jump over each other’s shadows instead. This satisfies them
for a moment and then the moment is gone. In sunlight
my shadow loves to give me a little dose of sorrow,

the beams having traveled so far only for the lump of me
to get between them and the ground. They came so close.
If I were the earth I would resent me too. My child

has gone into the next moment. I have to catch up. They say
they are riding a horse. They point and it drags them away.

I read this wonderful quote from Hanif Abdurraqib the other day in one of my favorite former grad student’s newsletter. It’s about the ekphrasis form and is helpful for thinking about my “How to See” project:

Many of us live in an ekphrasis mindset. We are often executing ekphrasis storytelling…creating a story based off of that witnessing. I don’t ever want to move beyond that desire to say, I saw something and I know that you were not there to see it. But I can build the world wherein you felt like you have witnessed it alongside me.

via rachael anne jolie

I want to build a world about how I see with my dead-coned eyes in my poems, partly to feel less alone and isolated and partly to invite people to think more what it means to see (and to not see).

Last night, Scott and I were watching “Escape to the Country” and one of the escapees (Carol from Hertfordshire) was registered blind. She sometimes used a white cane and had some help from her husband in navigating, but she could make eye contact and see some of what was going on. When the host (Jules) asked her to explain her vision, she said she could see about 20% of what he could, enough to get a sense of the space, but not clearly. I appreciated that Jules had asked her to explain her vision (and impressed with the positive, non-tragic way they depicted her throughout the episode), but I wanted more. I wished she (and/or the show) had had an ekphrasis mindset and offered additional details about what seeing/not seeing is for her. The host, Jules, suggests, “Fundamentally, understanding how she sees the world is going to be crucial to finding properties that will absolutely deliver.” Even a sentence or two more might have helped in that understanding.

I wondered what someone who had never thought about the process of seeing or the spectrum of no-sight to full-sight made of her description and how she (fairly) easily/”naturally” moved through the world. After my run, I decided to google the episode and see if I could find more information about the woman, like what her condition was, etc. I was disappointed to discover headlines describing her blindness as “heartbreaking” or that she told of it, “with tears in her eyes.” That’s not how I perceived it. Admittedly, I can’t see faces clearly enough to grasp slight facial expressions, but this woman did not seem heartbroken and if she had any tears in her eyes, it was because she was looking into the sun. This was not a tragic episode; she and her husband were excited to move. These headlines seem to be typical examples of writers projecting their own fears and negative understandings of blindness onto blind people (or people with low vision, or people who see differently). Blind = tragic = heartbreaking = pity.

Scott and I watched the brief, 10 second clip that this “heartbreaking” description is based on, and he agreed that she wasn’t upset or crying. Her description was neutral and matter-of-fact. Sigh.

At the beginning of my run, I thought more about the ekphrastic mindset and asked myself, what is art? I didn’t come up with an answer — a task for another run!

one more thing to add: Talking with RJP about my various projects, she introduced me to a new phrase for describing the dirt trails that walkers/runners make in the grass: desire paths. That should be a title for one of my gorge poems, for sure!

sept 24/RUN

3 miles
trestle turn around
54 degrees
13 days until the marathon!

Overcast, cool. A steady stream of cars. I was planning to greet the Welcoming Oaks, but I forgot. Encountered many runners, walkers, someone (I think) was heading to the rowing club, and at least one roller skier. I noticed a few streaks of red and yellow, but mostly everything is still green.

Since I ran 20 miles on Sunday, today I only did 3 miles. My legs were slightly sore, but not too bad. I’m pleased with my recovery. I was especially pleased that I pushed through the moments when it felt a little harder. To keep my heart rate below 170, I chanted in triple berries in mile 3: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry.

10 Things

  1. in the first mile, encountered a woman’s cross country team — a core group of 12? then pairs of slower runners trailing behind, one final runner at the very back — as I passed them I could hear their labored breathing — they were all running fast!
  2. happy, excited voices rising up from the rowing club
  3. a car pulling out right in front of another one at the top of the lake street hill — the second car honked once, but no yelling or repeated honks or crash sounds
  4. click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles
  5. in the third mile, encountered the team again — still fast, still jagged breaths
  6. no sparkle on the water, flat featureless blue
  7. running south, I could feel the faintest outline of my shadow — was I imagining it?
  8. more spray paint on the path — bright green and orange, looking sloppy
  9. the sharp crack of an acorn hitting the asphalt
  10. above the ravine, at the wooden fence — all thick green, no view, one of the fence slats had been pushed away from the others by a leaning tree

Before and after my run I listened to a recording I did this morning of myself reading 4 of my water poems. I’m proud of them.

Watched a short video with Hanif Abdurraqib while I at my breakfast (peanut butter toast). I love this definition of writing:

I think about writing as being in the pursuit of beautiful language to extract or shake out a curiosity that’s been long haunting me in a pleasurable way. And I’ll do as much as it takes and seek out as much language as it takes to get there.

Windham Campbell Prize, 2024, Haniq Abdurraqib

I want to remember an idea I encountered in an explanation of yesterday’s poem of the day on poets.org. The poem was “Villany” in LA by Gabrielle Civil. Here’s their explanation:

About this Poem

“More than just rendering something in another language, the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries remind us that translation is ‘the process of moving something from one place to another.’ What better way to signal that than a poem about public transit? In their book Villainy, Andrea Abi-Karam moves love and grief for those who died in the 2016 Ghost Ship [warehouse] fire in Oakland to me [as I’m] riding the train in Los Angeles. As with most translations, I move my reading into something else: this time, a new poem, which receives the original and carries it like a holy relic into a different city.”

Gabrielle Civil

I’d like to think more about translation and this movement and how I might play with it in my writing about running and swimming and my running/swimming-as-writing.

sept 22/RUN

20 miles
bde maka ska and back*
52 degrees

*river road, south/minnehaha falls/minnehaha creek path — past lake hiawatha, lade nokomos, the bunny/lake harriet/william berry parkway/bde maka ska and back

20 miles! The first half of it was fine, then I had some unfinished business and no porta potty for miles. I had to wait 3, or was it 4?, miles before I reached one at lake harriet. Then I went to another one at bde maka ska. I should have returned to the lake harriet one again before heading out into the porta potty dead zone, but I didn’t. Soon, it was difficult to run, so I did more walking than running for the rest of the time. Finally at the lake nokomis pickleball courts, another porta potty! As I waited to use it, I appreciated how lively and crowded it was: packed pickleball courts and playground. It’s great to see people using the park so much. In terms of the unfinished business, why is it such a problem? It is the cliff blocks I’m taking every 3 miles?

I listened to a cozy murder mystery — The Marlow Murder Club — which seems like a pale imitation of the Thursday Murder Club, but was a good distraction. I took out my headphones between the bunny and lake harriet and listened to the creek and a wailing kid.

20 Things

  1. sparkling river water through the trees
  2. heard, not seen — laughing kids across the creek — joyful exuberance
  3. minnehaha creek — first calm and flat, then bubbling, then gushing
  4. the path by nokomis, which was closed for the summer, has reopened — no more running on sharp gravel!
  5. early, around 8:30, the pickleball court was already filled
  6. a few barks from a dog, then a strange, terrible whining noise that I think (hope) was a machine and not an animal
  7. a hopping squirrel — so graceful and fast, moving across the shaded grass
  8. 2 adults, an upset kid, and a stroller under the bridge
  9. more slashes of red, but not much color anywhere else
  10. heard, not seen — more laughin exuberant kids playing at the creek at the spot where the tall, pedestrian bridge crosses over to the other side of the creek
  11. lake harriet was crowded — difficult to dodge walkers with dogs coming both ways
  12. a beach with no buoys, an empty lifeguard’s chair
  13. a woman adjusting her hiking poles, almost whacking me with them
  14. taking william berry parkway to reach bde make ska, running down a steep hill
  15. a striking contrast: waving blue water with bright green grass
  16. images of butterflies imprinted in the sidewalk
  17. a honking noise, sounding like a big ship — what was that?
  18. a flotilla of sailboats, all with white sails
  19. a real bunny hopping through the grass / a bronze bunny beside the creek path trail
  20. a single, small leaf, floating under the duck bridge as I crossed it

20 miles was difficult and uncomfortable, but not terrible. I can definitely go farther in 2 weeks. During the last mile, I kept smiling, proud of myself for what I was accomplishing and how far I’ve come since getting injured during marathon training in 2017.

sept 20/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop
65 degrees

Such a beautiful morning! I marveled at it with a woman we passed on the stairs down to the east river road. Sunny and still with sharp, satisfying shadows. The first 5 miles were, as I said to Scott, not hard but not easy either. Just one foot in front of the other, moving forward. I had some unfinished business (which is my euphemism for needing to poop) that I had tried to finish before the run started, but couldn’t. Around 5 miles, we stopped at a porta potty — the last one for several miles — but it was locked and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming out anytime soon. I’m not even sure anyone was in there. So I kept going and it got a lot harder. Some stomach cramps and muscle clenching made the run more of a struggle, mentally and physically. But I did it and I don’t feel terrible now that I’m done.

10 Things

  1. flat, still, blue water with dozens of single leaves sitting on the surface
  2. clear, sharp shadows on the bridge — the railing slat shadows were a series of thin parallel lines
  3. the sun reflecting off of the water and through the railing slats was very bright and trippy — so many flashes of light as the shine shot through the slats in a steady rhythm
  4. at first we couldn’t hear shadow falls, but as we neared the monument, I heard the tiniest trickle
  5. pleasing contrast — the bright blue of the sky against the green leaves of a maple tree
  6. slashes of red and orange in the bushes at knee-level
  7. running across the highway 5 bridge, the cars were loud but a speeding motorcycle was louder
  8. more leaping grasshoppers, landing on our legs and feet
  9. a group of people standing in a circle near coldwater springs
  10. a screaming bluejay

Scott and I didn’t talk as much on this run. With my unfinished business, I was trying to focus on moving and didn’t have much to say. Mostly I talked about that or the condition of the path — I rolled my ankle twice (mildly, I hope). Scott talked about where we were (distance/time) in terms of the marathon and how he needs to practice for his gig on Saturday night. I also talked about how the Minneapolis Parks have very specific guidelines for the paved paths along the river — how level they must be, how much distance is required from the road. Scott said that that doesn’t seem to be the case in St. Paul and that he prefers to run on Minneapolis trails.

liquid looking

I’ve started writing around the idea, from Alice Oswald, of liquid looking. I need to gather the different definitions in one space (a job for later today?), but for now I want to mention what I was writing yesterday. It’s about the fish in me escaping (from Anne Sexton), a school of minnows at my feet as I entered the water, and imagining those fish as the insects, the spirits of sight, that Dante describes and that Alice Oswald understands as the light that travels and returns, making it possible for us to see. Here are a few lines from AO (Nobody):

There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye
who speak greek and these invisible
ambassadors of vision never see themselves
but fly at flat surfaces and back again

In my version, the ambassadors of vision are little fish, and they speak in bubbles, not Greek, and they bubble-whisper the colors of things, like the water. I need to work on bringing in just a little bit more of the origin — Dante’s/Oswald’s idea of light spirits/insects — so that it makes sense for the reader. Here’s another passage from an interview with AO that might help:

I was just thinking an awful lot about light and vision and the way … well, light as an insect, really, which is not just Homer, it’s also Dante. I always loved this part of Dante where he talks about the spiriti visivi, I think they’re called. And this idea that when you look at things, what’s happening is these kind of, you know, these creatures are sort of moving out from your eye to the world and moving from the world back into your eye. I was trying to sort of slow down my senses while I wrote this poem and imagine even a sort of passage between myself and the world was a creature, living creature of some kind . . . .

A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

Here’s what I wrote yesterday:

I enter water

and the fish in me

escape — a school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-
to the murk beyond
the buoys. I won’t
see them again but
they are there flashing
below returning
to speak in bubble-
whisper all the names
of water’s colors
silver pewter bronze
copper’s weathered green
reddish-purple rust

Reading this again, I’m thinking about the next line from Anne Sexton’s poem, “The Nude Swim”: The real fish did not mind. I’m really interested in this distinction between the real fish and my fish escaping and what it means and I think I’d like to bring that in here. It fits with something Scott was saying about the poem last night when I read it to him — something about beyond metaphor. I can’t remember, but I think it speaks to what real might mean here.

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape — perhaps they
will join that school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-

OR

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape. The minnows
do not mind as they
dart past lunging kids
on their way to what’s
beyond the buoys.
I won’t see my fish
again but they’re there.

I could also end the poem with an altered version of AO’s, There are said to be microscopic. . . There are said to be tiny fish in the eye/who speak Bubbles . . .

sept 18/YARDWORK

30 minutes
cutting back moldy peonies
78 degrees

Every late spring, the peonies return. First shoots that look like asparagus to me, and which I try (and usually fail) to wrangle into wire hoops before they get too unruly. Then big bulbs. Then ants crawling on the big bulbs. Then red, pink, and white blooms that last only a few days — and less when it rains. Then ugly brown clumps that I eventually prune. Then white-ish, gray-ish mold on the leaves. When they get to the mold stage, I usually cut them down; the mold could be the reason Delia-the-dog itches in the summer. A few days ago I noticed mold, so this late morning I cut down the last of the peonies. Winter is coming.

7 Things

  1. some bug has been feasting on the hosta leaves, so many ragged holes!
  2. our crab apple tree seems to be dying — withered leaves, bare branches too soon — is it the ants?
  3. stepping around the yard, trying to find Delia’s poop, the ground was riddled with craters and divots and soft spots — is it the ants?
  4. often they hydrangea leaves are dropping and sprawled and tangled — this year at least two stalks are standing up straight and nearing the top of the fence — are they trying to avoid the ants?
  5. no matter how hard I try, I can’t ever see wasps flying in or out of the giant, papery nest they’ve built at the top of the crab apple tree — Scott does and it always stresses him out
  6. a greeting from a neighbor — hello! hi!
  7. there is a daycare next door and almost every day this spring and summer, 2 little kids have had recess, which involves shouting and non-stop running back and forth across the neighbor’s front yard and our side yard. It is strange and a bit haunting to see these short figures dart across my vision — sometimes I feel almost, but not quite, like I’m watching a horror movie

I was listening to a podcast (Nobody Asked Us), so 7 things was all I could remember.

Still Water/ Patricia Fargnoli

“What times are these when a poem about trees is almost a crime because it contains silence against so many outrages.” – Brecht

And why not silence?
Ahead of me, Goose Pond parts pale water
and my canoe slides through into June sun, cathedral quiet,

      soft plums of cloud.

A thin gauze of rain stalls over Mt. Monadnock.

This is the way I drift

from each skirmish with the world
to the diplomacy of light
as it flares off the water,

  flickers among the flute-notes

of birds hidden in the leaning birches.

Would you condemn me?

I’ve already held the old bodies of grief
long past morning; leave them
to the ministrations

  of the dirt-borers

who work what is finished back into the earth.

Some atrocities are beyond redemption–

you know them already–
the world will be the world no matter.
I want the blinding silver of this small pond

      to stun my eyes,

the palaver of leaves to stop my ears.

sept 17/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin turn around
70 degrees / dew point: 63

So much sweat! The bill of my cap, the end of my ponytail, the tip of my nose dripping before I finished the first mile. Ran 3 without stopping, then walked until my heart rate was down to 135. Started running again to the metronome at 175 and finished with my winter playlist — time for a new playlist!

I liked running to the metronome (through my headphones, from the metronome/tuner app on my phone). I was able to match my foot strikes with the beat fairly quickly, but it took a few minutes for it to lock in. When that happened, I could feel the transformation from the edge of the beat (just before or after it) to the deep center of it. My foot strike seemed different, more solid and strong. The beat sounded different, less generic and more connected to a physical source (my foot). And I felt different, inside the beat, no longer a body but that steady clicking sound. Very cool.

It’s not quite the same, but I’m thinking of myself as Annie Dillard’s bell being struck. Also, Emily Dickinson and these lines:

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

10 Things

  1. slashes of red in the bushes
  2. a pinkish-orangish clump of leaves
  3. almost all green in the floodplain forest
  4. a shimmering circle of light: the sun on the river through a gap in the trees
  5. a steady stream of commuting cars
  6. mostly overcast, with occasional sun, enough sun for me to see my shadow as I walked home
  7. at the beginning of my run, a for sale sign in a front yard, by the end of my run, it was gone
  8. running down franklin, the trees were a yellowish green
  9. at least one roller skier — maybe 2, unless it was the same skier
  10. the bright, generous smile of a woman walking past me

Yesterday, I came across this cool poetry project, The BardCode Project:

In the BardCode Project Gregory Betts has analysed and mapped the rhyme patterns within Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Shakespeare built his famous sonnets by a unique sound pattern of rhymes in the final syllable, the tenth column, of each line. Betts asks, and answers, the question: What was Shakespeare doing in the rest of the sonnet?

The BardCode project maps out the full sound pattern of rhymes in all ten columns across all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Colour coding these sound-codes results in a visual text rich with the sonic patterns of the poems. Suddenly, for the first time, you can see the BardCode.

BardCode Projects

sept 15/RUN

14 miles
randolph to the river / crosby farms / confluence
75 degrees / dew point: 68

And now it seems you are still summer. Still the high, familiar, endless summer. . . A warm September day. We started later than we should (9:30), but Scott and I both wanted to sleep in. Sun, some shade, an occasional breeze.

We took a new route: south on the west river road, over the ford bridge, north on the east river road, west on randolph — past st. kate’s, a walgreens, trader joes, a cool coffee place, a-side public house — to shepherd road and the river. Through crosby farms and past 2 lakes — crosby lake and ? lake, up a STEEP hill to the confluence, above hidden falls, over ford bridge again, and finishing north on the west river road. Wow, such different terrain. Randolph is a very cool avenue. Near 7th street, there are some great restaurants and quirky houses, their yards stuffed with flowers and sculptures and other whimsical thing.

It was hot! An hour in, we were both soaked. So much sweat! Tough conditions.

Mostly we were quiet, conserving eneergy, but we talked about the hills and the heat. Scott sang the song from his favorite childhood movie, Midnight Madness. Then he mentioned how he wanted to study its composition and explore what chords make a song a disco song. I recited W.S. Merwin’s “To the Light of September” at one point. I also talked about wanting to check out Phillip’s Aquatic Center with RJP this fall.

update, 17 sept: Reading a past entry (from 17 sept, 2023), I remembered that Scott talked about an article he read about how they (St. Paul? Minneapolis?) has been handling the ongoing problem of people stealing wires out of street lamps for copper. They’ve replaced the copper with aluminum and put signs on the posts that say something like, these wires contain aluminum and have no value. Scott added that aluminum isn’t as efficient as copper, but it’s helping with the theft problem. Typing this up, I also remember a random thought I had about street lamps vs. street lights. I was suggesting to Scott that we should start running again at the streetlight ahead of us in the parking lot. I thought, why did I call this a street light and not a street lamp? Is it because it’s much taller? A boring thought, I know, but I could imagine using it in a poem.

update, 21 sept 2024: I also forgot about the surrey! Finishing up the last miles of our run, entering the pedestrian side of the double bridge, we witnessed a surrey biking through the narrow bike part of the path. I have always wondered what happens when surreys (which aren’t supposed to travel this far from the park) reached the double bridge. How could they make it through? It was tight, but they did it. Not nearly as dramatic as I had imagined.

14 Things

  1. some poop smeared on the sidewalk — someone must have stepped in it and then dragged it for several feet
  2. passing by, but not stopping to read, several st. paul sidewalk poems near st. kate’s
  3. the patio at carbone’s pizza place, looking very inviting with its chair in the shades and its planters creating some space from the road (mentioned this to Scott and he said there was also a sign that read, caution pizza crossing)
  4. the loud beeping of a crosswalk sign (scott said it sounded more like the rapid fire of a machine gun, and I agree)
  5. up and down and up and down — so many hills on randolph!
  6. a few small leaves fluttering in front of me as we ran on the trail next to shepherd road
  7. a woman on the ground, stretching, her bike nearby. as we ran by, she called out, way to go runners! you can do it!
  8. the cool shade of the cracked trail in crosby farms
  9. overheard: a walker to another walker — tomorrow we’re going to tum rup thai. they moved locations into a bigger space. I said to scott, where did they move? I want to go! just looked it up, and I can’t find the new location anywhere
  10. the delightful knocking of a woodpecker on dead wood, echoing in the quiet forest
  11. a group of high school cross country runners taking over the trail by the confluence. one kid was swinging his leg out onto the path
  12. lots of bikers calling out, on your left
  13. crossing the ford bridge again, looking down at the water, noticing the bumpy texture created by small waves
  14. a guy (a dad?) on a bike blasting some music, two little kids sitting behind him in a safety seat