4.15 miles minnehaha falls and back 37 degrees wind: 30 mph gusts
Windy and colder. I wore my full winter uniform: black running tights, long-sleeved green shirt, purple jacket, black fleece-lined cap, black gloves, buff. I overdressed — or did I? I can’t decide. It snowed yesterday, but by the time I went out for my run (noon), it had all melted. All that was left were a few puddles.
10 Things
at first I thought the river was blue, but then I decided it was pewter
gushing falls
(almost?) empty park
dark rocks sticking out of the creek — why don’t I remember seeing them before?
the hollow sounding recording of bells from the light rail train across the road
all of the walkers were bundled up like it was winter, which it almost is — winter coats, hats, scarves
a red car in the parking lot, loud talking — a phone call? — coming out of the rolled up windows
a faint smell of smoke from a fire in the gorge
the sound of kids playing on the school playground — a soft din of laughing, talking, shrieking
the stretch of brown wooden fence between folwell and 38th is in rough shape. Today I noticed one section with a broken slat and leaning out into the open air
This afternoon, I decided to do my first indoor bike ride of the season. Not because it’s too cold or because it’s snowing, but because I’ve run 3 days in a row and I wanted to bike instead. Cross-training in the winter isn’t nearly as fun as it is in the summer. Maybe this year, I’ll actually try some winter-specific activities, like snow-shoeing or ice-skating. I re-watched part of the women’s triathlon from the 2016 Rio Olympics. Love that race. I’ve already written about it back in 2017.
Another reason I didn’t run this morning was because, Scott and I took RJP to the post office to renew her passport. Between the lack of music, the surly workers, the flickering light, and the clueless customers, it was a vibe. (am I using that right?) At first, I thought the woman behind the counter was just rude, but when she was nice to us because we had our shit together, I realized that it was more that she didn’t suffer fools — like the woman who didn’t make an appointment, or the woman who could have but didn’t fill out her paperwork ahead of time and didn’t have her old passport or remember the number for it.
Another random thing for future Sara to remember: Pointing at some stamps, I thought Scott said, I like these Leonard Nimoy ones, but what he actually said was, I like these Lunar New Year ones.
Today, I’ve been trying to work on the “and’ section of my Haunts poem, but I’ve been a little stuck. This section is about open space and possibility and the place between beats and breaths and foot strikes. It’s about the gorge as a container holding everything and holding Nothing (air, the void, mystery). It’s about thresholds and room to move/breathe/be and the space created from absence (of land, words, functional cone cells, mothers). Wow, just typing up this summary has given me some ideas!
4 miles minnehaha falls 49 degrees wind gusts: 25 mph
Wet. Windy. Slick leaves. Squeaks. A light gray sky. Singing pines. The usual puddles. White foam falls. Gushing sewer pipes. Brisk air. Mud.
Greeted Santa Claus (the regular runner whose long white beard reminds me of Santa Claus). Passed a man walking with one leg up in a boot on a scooter. Gave directions to 2 walkers — which way to the falls? follow the path, it’s over there.
The creek was a steel blue and rushing to reach the limestone ledge. A kid at the main overlook was jumping in a puddle. The green gate at the top of the steps leading down to the falls was still open.
Wore shorts and a pink hooded jacket. My legs were only cold for a few minutes. Too warm for mid-November. Today is the last day of warmer air. Tomorrow, below freezing.
I started working on the section of Haunts poem that I’m titling, And. Came up with a few lines while running north. Recited them in my head until I stopped near the Folwell bench and spoke them into my phone:
Before a Victor- ian’s great love for ventilation, there was water wanting to be something and somewhere else.
The ventilation bit is taken from an article about the origins of the Grand Rounds, and the Victorian is Horace W.S. Cleveland:
The concept of The Grand Rounds was born from Cleveland’s “preference of an extended system of boulevards, or ornamental avenues, rather than a series of detached open areas or public squares.” This was not only an aesthetic consideration: Cleveland had lost many possessions in the 1871 Chicago fire, and saw parkways as an effective firebreak in built-up urban areas. In addition, Cleveland stressed the sanitary benefits derived from parkways. Cholera, typhus, and other diseases plagued cities in the late nineteenth century. Parkways could save land from unhealthy uses and, reflecting the Victorians’ great love for ventilation, carry “winds . . . to the heart of the city, purified by their passage over a long stretch of living water, and through the foliage of miles of forest.”
Another beautiful, late fall morning! Sun, blue skies, hardly a breeze. Running north, my shadow leading me, occasionally drifting to the side and off into the woods. Running south, hiding behind me. I saw her only once when I turned around to check. Everything calm, quiet. Everyone enjoying being alone together. An open view of air and the bare-branched tree line on the other side. Blue river. An inviting bench perched on the edge of the bluff. I saw it as I ran toward the trestle. When I turned around, I stopped at it. Right on the edge, a steep brown slope down to the white sands beach and the river. How many more seasons before this bench, already on the edge, tumbles down? The sour-sweet smell of the sewer — a hint of sharp spice. Pounding hammers–not in a fast, steady rhythm, but in bursts and trading off. A great run.
As I ran, I couldn’t imagine how it could rain this afternoon. So much sun and blue skies! But already, less than an hour later, clouds. Rain is coming.
I’m still working on a section of my poem about progress and time and conservation. The ending turns to a vague reference to conversation of matter, where nothing is lost or gained, just transformed. Somewhere after the tunnel of trees, I suddenly thought, exchanged, and imagined oxygen being traded between lungs and leaves.
Made-up Walking Tours
Here’s an article that I found the other day about the poet, Mathias Svalina’s, surreal waking tours in Richmond: Surrealistic Zillow. Here’s how the tours work:
You show up at the appropriate time and place and look for a man with a bullhorn. “Because I’m a man who owns a bullhorn now,” Svalina says. “[Then] I’ll point to buildings and lie about them for 90 minutes.”
and part of its purpose:
“I’m particularly interested in civic history because of the ways that cities use, rewrite, and often weaponize their histories as promotional agents, or as ways of ignoring populations,” he explains. “So, I like the idea of inventing histories that could not have ever existed.”
Sun! Sharp shadows. Blue sky. The river burning white — wow! Rushing falls. A leaf-littered slope down to the river. A clear view across. Crowded trails, mostly walkers. At least one roller skier. People emerging from the oak savanna near the big rock shaped like an armchair. A little kid on a bike in the parking lot. The usual smell of smoke coming from some house on edmund or from the gorge; every fall/winter I can’t quite tell. My ponytail forcefully swinging in the wind. I don’t remember hearing any birds or dodging any squirrels. Where are the geese?
I also don’t remember what I thought about. I wanted to work through a part of my poem about progress and conservation of matter and the entanglement of decay/rusting/softening of the gorge and my shifting eyesight. But, if I did, I can’t remember.
This Kay Ryan poem was the poem of the day on Poetry Foundation:
Surfaces serve their own purposes, strive to remain constant (all lives want that). There is a skin, not just on peaches but on oceans (note the telltale slough of foam on beaches). Sometimes it’s loose, as in the case of cats: you feel how a second life slides under it. Sometimes it fits. Take glass. Sometimes it outlasts its underside. Take reefs.
The private lives of surfaces are innocent, not devious. Take the one-dimensional belief of enamel in itself, the furious autonomy of luster (crush a pearl— it’s powder), the whole curious seamlessness of how we’re each surrounded and what it doesn’t teach.
3.1 miles trestle turn around 52 degrees wind gusts: 36 mph
Ran with Scott in the afternoon. Windy but warm. Wore shorts and a sweatshirt that I took off a mile in. Sunny. We talked about progressive things: insurance (Scott), glasses and degenerative diseases like progressive cone dystrophy (me).
a twin mattress with a ripped cover next to a trash can
another runner in dark tights (purple?) with a green shirt
in the tunnel of trees the path was covered with leaves
adjusting my cap, worried the wind would knock it off
a navy blue glove propped on a branch
the water-logged black stocking cap still on the post above the steps
I’m working on a section of my Haunts poem that plays with the idea of progress and challenges the belief that progress is always better and that our lives move in strictly linear ways. I’ve written about progress before, on 7 feb 2022.
Moist this morning. Wet sidewalk, wet leaves, wet air. Something was squeaking — my shoes on the leaves or the leaves on my shoes? Only one stone on the boulder, looking lonely and flat. The black stocking cap I mentioned yesterday was still there on the pole. Today I remembered that it was above the old stone steps. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker with a good morning Dave!, greeted Daddy Long Legs with a wave. He was with his walking partner again. Smiled and gave a head nod to another walker who I think I’ve mentioned before. They always wear a long skirt with tights, and most of the year, a blue puffer jacket. They have gray hair in a long braid. I looked it up, and when I wrote about them before (26 jan 2024), I described them as wearing a dress and tentatively named them, All Dressed Up.
Anything else? I’m pretty sure I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what I saw. No fat tires or roller skiers or geese — where are all the geese? — or turkeys. More YELLOW leaves, falling fast. Some sour sewer smells, puddles, empty benches.
I listened to squeaking leaves and thudding feet as I ran north, then my Color playlist returning south: “Not Easy Bein’ Green,” “Roxanne,” “Mellow Yellow,” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” Speakig of color, I discovered this excellent color poem yesterday afternoon:
There’s a rumor of light that any dark starts off as. Plato speaks here and there of colors, but only once, I think, does he break them down into black and white, red, and a fourth color. By then they’d reached for California high country where, knowing none of the names for all the things that grew there, they
began to make names up. But to have trained an animal to come just a bit closer because here, here’s blood, doesn’t mean you’ve tamed it. Trans- lations vary for what Plato calls his fourth color: what comes closest to a combination of (since they aren’t the same) radiant and bright–what shifting water does,
with light? Violence burnishes the body, sometimes, though we call it damage, not burnishing, more its opposite, a kind of darkness, as if to hide the body, so that what’s been
done to it might, too, stay hidden, the way meaning can, for years, until some pattern by which to trace it at last emerges. There’s a rumor of light.
I need to give more time to this poem; there’s so much I don’t quite get. But I love the discussion of Plato and color and what shifting water does to light.
November! A day for singing a song of gray. A pale, sunless sky, some wind, lots of bare branches. The tree outside my window and a few others by the gorge were YELLOW! Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker — hey Dave! Almost tripped on a few rocks on the dirt path next to the trail on the east side. Admired the waves from the bridges: from ford, little scales and from lake, a slight current down the center — from a sandbar? Heard a chickadee — chick a dee dee dee dee — and the constant grumbling of the city beneath everything.
Thought about different time scales and how time works for me while I’m running — encountering memories of past Saras, echoing their movements. Imagining the gorge before Cleveland created the Grand Rounds, before Longfellow was a neighborhood, before the gorge was a gorge. Having no idea how much time had passed — never hearing the bells of St. Thomas or looking at my watch. Having no memory of small stretches of the trail — being lost in a thought or the motion or my effort.
10 Things
the fast slapping of a runner’s feet passing me from behind
the clear open view from a bluff on the east side of the river, looking over to the west side
3 stacked stones on the boulder
a black stocking cap placed on the top of a pole beside the trail
the frantic bark of a dog, bothered by a nearby leaf blower
the barricades blocking the sidewalk in front of Governor Walz’ house
the ravine near Shadow Falls, mostly yellow from leaves on trees and the ground
voices from below, near Longfellow flats beach
a sour sewer smell near the Monument
a man call out a command — drop it! — to his dog near the south entrance of the winchell trail
While looking for something else, I came across this beautiful poem by Minnesota’s first indigenous poet laureate, Dr. Gwen Westerman:
5.45 miles franklin hill turn around 38 degrees wind: 13 mph / gusts: 27 mph
Sunny, windy, cooler. Wore one of my mild winter combinations: running tights, shorts, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, vest, gloves, headband that covers my ears. I overdressed. Had to take off the sweatshirt near the top of Franklin. A good run. I’m running 30 seconds faster per mile and feeling stronger in the cooler weather than I did when it was warmer.
Yesterday, I woke up feeling not quite right. I slept a lot during the day. Almost a sore throat. Took a covid test: negative. Still feel a little off today. Is it a cold? Should I cancel my annual check-up that’s scheduled for tomorrow?
I deactivated my twitter account and haven’t checked the news since the election. Mostly I’m not thinking about what is coming, and instead focusing on writing, trying to help my kids with their struggles, and living (temporarily?) in the world I’ve built through my practice.
10 Things
the surface of the river was burning white through the bare trees
forest branches creaking and moaning in the wind
one or two trees in the floodplain forest still green
bright pink bubble-letter graffiti under the 1-94 bridge
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
Daddy Long Legs walking with someone today — I think every other time I’ve seen him, he’s been alone
a pale blue sky with one or two puffs of cloud
a biker slowing climbing the franklin hill on the road, a car following behind impatiently then hastily passing him
an empty bench facing an open view — so much air and sun and softness
walking up the hill close to the trees on the slope, I noticed a blanket spread out, hidden in the grass — was someone sleeping in it?
For the first half of the run, I listened to the gorge and my feet and the wind. For the second half, I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist.
5.25 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 47 degrees
A great November morning. Most of the trees bare, almost everything light brown and steel blue. A few yellow leaves still on the trees. I felt relaxed and was able to run without stopping — until I needed the port-a-potty. Found a freshly cleaned one at the bottom of the hill, then ran back up it all the way without stopping. For the last 2 miles I felt strong and resilient and ready to resist.
10 Things
roller skiers — at least 3 of them, not together. All of them looked graceful and strong and ready for it to snow
the awkward slapping of oars on the water from a rowing shell far below
the bells of St. Thomas ringing briefly
more awkward slaps from oars, this time from a shell with 3 people. I heard them when I was at the bottom of the hill and watched as they angled across the river. One of them had on a bright yellow — or was it orange? — shirt
a man sitting on a bench, his back to the gorge, reading a book
faint voices getting louder — was it runners or bikers? both
the floodplain forest is open — no more leaves — I glanced down the steep slope to the forest floor
a runner on the other side of the road in black shorts and white tights
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a walker bundled up in a coat with a scarf
I had a thought about my Haunts project near the start of my run. I’m writing a lot about looping and orbiting, but I haven’t written about pacing back and forth — all of my out and back or turn around runs, when I cover the same ground twice, and stay on one side of the river. I’m thinking about the difference between restless pacing and cycles/loops/orbits.
I didn’t see any eagles or hear any geese. No regulars or fat tires or music blasting from car or bike speakers. No one singing or doing something ridiculous. Only one honking car horn. No chainsaws or sirens or leaf blowers.
Today I checked out Carl Phillips’poetry collection, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Then the War. Here’s an early favorite of mine:
The Enchanted Bluff/ Carl Phillips
You can see here, though the marks are faint, how the river must once have coincided with love’s most eastern boundary. But it’s years now since the river shifted, as if done with the same view both over and over and never twice, which is to say done at last with conundrum, when it’s just a river—here’s a river . . . Why not say so, why this need to name things based on what they remind us of—cattail and broom, skunk cabbage—or on what
we wished for: heal-all; forget-me-not. Despite her dyed-too-black hair wildly haloing her soulders, not a witch, caftanned in turquoise, gold, turning men into better men, into men with feelings—instead, just my mother, already gone crazy a bit, watching the yard fill with the feral cats that she fed each night. Who says you can’t die from regret being all you can think about? What’s it matter, now, if she learned the hard way the difference finally between freedom and merely setting a life free? As much as I can, anyway, I try to keep regret far from me,
though like any song built to last, there’s a rhythm to it that, once recognized, can be hard to shake: one of by fear, with its double flower— panic, ambition; two if by what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
I love these lines:
But it’s years now since the river shifted, as if done with the same view both over and over and never twice, which is to say done at last with conundrum, when it’s just a river—here’s a river . . .
I’d like to use, as if done with the same/view both over and over/and never twice.
I want to fit it into my 3/2 form and use it my Haunts section about looping and doubling back. Maybe something like this:
Occasionally the girl does not run on the rim, changes her route, as if done with the same view, both over and over and never twice.