3.9 miles river road, north/south 22 degrees / feels like 12 75% snow and ice-covered
Another good run. Not too cold, sunny. Near the beginning, I ran with my shadow. The road was slick in spots — that invisible ice that you can’t see, only feel. Greeted Mr. Morning! and a few runners. Noticed the river at the trestle. It was open in a few places just below. The open water wasn’t dark, but gray. Heard the drumming of a woodpecker, the screech of a blue jay, 2 quick caws on repeat from a crow, and countless chirp chirp chirps from some other birds. The path was slightly better, but still mostly uneven ice and snow. Maybe this week, as it climbs to the 30s, the rest of it will melt?
After I finished running, when I was walking home, I remembered that I had memorized the first sentence of Linda Pastan’s “Vertical.” I had intended to recite it in my head as I ran. I was too distracted by the path and forgot. Walking home, I whispered it into the cold air:
Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards.
Last night I went to Moon Palace books and bought Linda Pastan’s last collection, Almost an Elegy. The rest of February will be dedicated to her and her words — reading them, memorizing them, being with them.
4.3 miles lake nokomis — one way 19 degrees / feels like 10 50% snow and ice-covered
Hooray for moving outside! Hooray for warmer air! Hooray for getting to run to Lake Nokomis! It felt good to be outside breathing in fresh air. My legs and lungs felt strong. At one point, I remember breathing in deeply through my nose, then out through my mouth and watching the frozen breath as it hovered in front of me.
layers:
2 pairs black running tights
1 bright yellow TC 10 mile racing shirt (2018)
1 pink jacket with hood
1 black winter vest
1 pair of black gloves, 1 pair of pink and white striped gloves
1 fleece lined cap with brim
a gray buff
1 pair of socks
Only a few layers short of my most layered look. Maybe someday I’ll invest in an expensive running jacket and be able to wear less layers, but maybe not.
10 Things I Noticed
the call, but not the drumming, of a pileated woodpecker
the path on the biking side of the pedestrian bridge had packed down snow that was uneven, but not too slick. It had little flecks of light brown — sand? grit? dirt that Minneapolis Parks put down to make it less slippery?
a fat tire! I could hear the crunching of their wheels as they approached from behind. After they slowly passed me, they stopped just past the locks and dam #1. Why? To rest? To figure out where they were? To take a picture?
a few days ago I mentioned hearing construction noises near the falls. Heard them again today. Pounding hammers at another new apartment building going up on the other side of Dairy Queen
heard a high-pitched whine near all of the apartments; it was coming from a gas vent by the roundabout
minnehaha creek was mostly frozen, with a few stretches of open water
heard, but didn’t see, kids’ voices — yelling, laughing — somewhere on the creek
more voices down by the dock, near the shore, at lake hiawatha
noticed the creek water leading into the lake was not completely iced over
there were stretches where the path was an inch of solid brown ice, but most of it was a combination of bare pavement, stained with salt, patches of packed snow and smooth ice
I don’t remember noticing anything particular delightful. I devoted a lot of attention to my effort, staying relaxed, and avoiding slippery spots.
I follow the Mary Oliver Bot on twitter and they posted a line from this beautiful poem:
The Moths/ Mary Oliver
There’s a kind of white moth, I don’t know what kind, that glimmers by mid-May in the forest, just as the pink mocassin flowers are rising.
If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.
And anyway I was so full of energy. I was always running around, looking at this and that.
If I stopped the pain was unbearable.
If I stopped and thought, maybe the world can’t be saved, the pain was unbearable.
Finally, I noticed enough. All around me in the forest the white moths floated.
How long do they live, fluttering in and out of the shadows?
You aren’t much, I said one day to my reflection in a green pond, and grinned.
The wings of the moths catch the sunlight and burn so brightly.
At night, sometimes, they slip between the pink lobes of the moccasin flowers and lie there until dawn, motionless in those dark halls of honey.
bike: 20 minutes run: 3.1 miles basement outdoor temp: 0 degrees / feels like -13
Inside today. Some Dickinson while I biked, a podcast (You are Good) while I ran — well, for most of my run. The last few minutes I listened to a playlist. Audio books and playlists make the time pass much faster when I’m on the treadmill.
I’m ready for the bitter cold to be done. Much less inspiration inside. Did I notice anything other than the single lightbulb reflecting in the dark window?
A poet that I like, Linda Pastan, died a few days ago. The first poem of hers that I read was “Vertical.” I found it just as I was starting to fall in love with poetry and the way it helped me to notice and be in wonder of a place. I spent a lot of time with that poem, even writing a response in which I used its first sentence to wander and wonder about trees. Since 2017, I’ve gathered and posted several of her poems, including:
How many times I have sat this way with the poem’s intractable silence between me and the world, with the tree outside the window refusing translation: my leaves are more than syllables it seems to say.
I think of you miles west floating on the tide of language so easily, giving only a scissor kick now and then, coming to shore some unexpected but hospitable place.
Still we share between us a certain stubbornness, rising each morning to the blank page, climbing the ladder of light at the window all day, listening, both of us, as hard as we can.
added Feb 14, 2023: Rereading this poem, I remembered something Pastan had said about Stafford in her Paris Review interview:
Often when I sit at my desk unable to write, “blocked” as they put it, I open a Stafford book and start to read. He makes it sound so easy, almost conversational, that I find I have to answer him, and so I start to write. My first four or five lines may have a Stafford ring to them, but then my own voice kicks in and I am on my way. I loved and admired William Stafford both as a man and as a poet. I hate to use adjectives like wise or humble but they seem to fit him as comfortably, as unpretentiously, as an old sweater.
Met my almost 17 year-old daughter at the pool and then we swam together. She’s swimming for online gym. I love swimming with my kids. This summer I swam at the lake with my 19 year-old son, now I get to swim at the pool with my daughter. I try to stay chill and not scare them with my enthusiasm, but it’s difficult.
Tried using a pull buoy for the first time in a few years. So much easier to breath when my body is higher up on the water. I should probably find some more drills to help with keeping me higher.
A few laps in I noticed an oval of bright light on the pool floor, not near the windowed wall, but the windowless one. A strange, beautiful thing to see.
I pushed off the wall underwater for my first lap ritual and swam just above the pool bottom. Noticed a black thread or hair floating right below my nose. A strange, ugly thing to see. Lots of crud in the water this afternoon. Nothing big or too gross, but small bits of something that made the water cloudy.
Later in the swim, I noticed lines of light on the bottom close to the window. Remembered to look up above the water as I flipped at the wall. Today above the surface looked pink to me. Forgot to notice the moving shadows on the pool floor.
At the beginning of the swim, when there was only one other person in the water, I heard some splashing or sloshing underwater. Was it from me? I don’t think so.
Later, after the swim, in the hot tub with Scott, I noticed another woman sitting in the corner, miming freestyle strokes in the hot water.
Also in the hot tub: crouching down, my chin just above the surface, I watched the light catch the spray of water made by one of the jets, making the spray look like fizz from my favorite grapefruit seltzer. Below, the jet made the water look like swirling smoke.
not a cabinet of curiosities
Talked to Scott about my class and my week on wonder as curiosity, which is coming up in a few weeks. There’s a quote by Thoreau that I’m interested in challenging. Well, maybe not challenging, but imagining curiosity against?
[24] In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens, in their natural order and position.
A Winter Walk/ Thoreau
Thoreau is describing a particular type of western scientific attention: study the natural world as individual things (specimens) to be isolated, classified, and categorized. To learn about, not from. To see non-human beings only as objects, never subjects.
I want to contrast this cabinet of curiosities with Robin Wall Kimmerer and her expanded understanding of knowing:
I would describe my journey as a circle, moving out into academia but coming back to the way that I knew plants as a child. I grew up in a rural area much like where we’re sitting today, and I was interacting every day with plants in the garden, the woods, or the wetlands. I couldn’t go outside without being surprised and amazed by some small green life. I suppose it was their great diversity of form that first drew my interest: that on a small patch of ground there could be so many different ways to exist. Each plant seemed to have its own sense of self, yet they fit together as a community. And each had a home, a place where I knew I could find it. This inspired my curiosity.
From as far back as I can remember, I had this notion of plants as companions and teachers, neighbors and friends. Then, when I went to college, a shift occurred for me. As an aspiring botany major, I was pressured to adopt the scientific worldview; to conceive of these living beings as mere objects; to ask not, “Who are you?” but, “How does it work?” This was a real challenge for me. But I was madly in love with plants, so I worked hard to accommodate myself to this new approach.
Later in my career, after I’d gotten my PhD and started teaching, I was invited to sit among indigenous knowledge holders who understood plants as beings with their own songs and sensibilities. In their presence, and in the presence of the plants themselves, I woke from the sleep I’d fallen into. I was reminded of what I’d always known in my core: that my primary relationship with plants was one of apprenticeship. I’m learning from plants, as opposed to only learning about them.
I was especially moved by an elderly Diné woman who told the biographies of each plant in her valley: its gifts, its responsibilities, its history, and its relationships — both friendships and animosities. As a scientist I had learned only about plants’ physical attributes. Her stories reminded me of how I had encountered plants as a young person. That’s why I say I’m coming full circle after all these years — because I’m able to stop speaking of plants as objects.
I’m struggling to turn all of my thoughts about curiosity and wonder into a pithy, coherent statement for a lecture. So much time spent circling around these ideas. Frustrating.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 13 degrees / feels like 6 75% snow and ice-covered
Warmer this morning. Even the feels like temperature was above 0. Sunny, not too much wind. Only slipped a few times, even though the path was an ice rink. Heard lots of birds — a few I could name, pileated woodpecker, black capped chickadee, a lot I couldn’t.
I ran south again today. A few winters ago, I ran north all the time. I wanted to avoid the double bridge near the 44th street parking lot because they never cleared it. Now I mostly run south, trying to avoid the uneven stretch between lake street and the trestle. Encountered a fat tire, some runners, and a few walkers, including a guy near the falls, blasting some loud, dissonant music that I couldn’t quite place.
Devoted a lot of time to staying aware of the icy path, looking out for hard chunks of snow or smooth, slick patches of ice. Forgot to look at the river, or forgot to remember I was looking at the river.
10 Things I Heard
the loon-ish (at least to me) song of a pileated woodpecker
the feebee song of a black-capped chickadee
some strange high-pitched whine coming from the new apartment building across from the falls — the one they’ve been working on for way too long and that blocked the bike path in the summer so that FWA and I had to bike through the grass
construction noise coming from that same apartment building — was it a nail gun? a truck backing up? loud pounding? I can’t remember anything about it but that it made me think, construction noise
the loud, not quite heavy metal or hard rock but something like that, music coming from a walker near the falls
the hard crunch of my feet on the month-old snow
kids yelling and laughing and playing during recess at Minnehaha Academy
a runner calling out some greeting after I waved at him
the creaking and crunching of car wheels behind me from a truck driving over the lingering snow
the faintest jingle of my house key in the pocket of my orange running shirt
Anything else about the path? The worst stretch, as in most uneven and icy, was right after 38th heading south. All slick ice. I wondered (and worried) about what will happen when it gets warmer and this ice melts. Noticing the shin-high wall of tightly packed snow lining the side of the path closest to the road, I imagined the water having nowhere to go and turning into a little lake.
Found this great passage by Roland Barthes from a poetry person on twitter. I want to collect it now, return to it later. It makes me think of passive attention, telling the truth slant, my peripheral vision, and distraction:
To be with the one I love and to think of something else: this is how I have my best ideas, how I best invent what is necessary to my work. Likewise for the test: it produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else. I am not necessarily captivated by the text of pleasure; it can be an act that is slight, complex, tenuous, almost scatterbrained: a sudden movement of the head like a bird who understands nothing of what we hear, who hears what we do not understand.
When I mentioned distraction above, I was partly thinking of an article about poetry and distraction that I posted here a few years ago. I found it again and discovered that this article begins with the quote from Barthes. Nice!
3.5 miles under the ford bridge and back 0 degrees / feels like -9 75% ice and snow-covered
Brrr. This isn’t the coldest run I’ve done this year, but it felt like it! Well, most of me was fine, just not my feet or my forehead. Running into the frigid wind, I got a brain freeze. A mile in, I had mostly warmed up. The path was in terrible shape. All uneven with long sheets of slick ice. I never worried about falling, but I got tired of moving all around the path trying to find bare patches.
I thought about Bernadette Mayer and her list of experiments, especially this one: “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial” (Please Add to This List, 12). Extreme cold + uneven, icy paths + lots of layers = less congenial. I wondered how these conditions affected what and how I noticed the gorge.
10+ Things I Noticed
crunching snow, loud and brittle
the smell of smoke from the usual chimney (the one on edmund that I always smell every winter)
the river, half frozen, half open, all cold-looking
the path, 1: almost completely covered in snow and ice
the path, 2: the ice is flat and smooth and light brown
the path, 3: an occasional bare strip, sometimes what I thought was bare was actually brownish grayish ice
at least 2 other runners — we held up our hands in greeting
2 or 3 walkers — all bundled up, faces covered up to the eyes
the buzzing of a chainsaw, laboring in the cold — workers trimming dead branches at Minnehaha Academy
looking across the ravine from the double bridge, noticing someone dressed in dark colors walking along the retaining wall at the top of the overlook
haunting wind chimes
the sizzling of dead leaves on a neighbor’s tree
the sharp scratch of another dead leaf as the wind blew it across the sidewalk
At the end of my run, walking back home, I marveled at the chattering birds, sounding like spring. I saw them, not their details, just their movements, fluttering, swooping, soaring, flashing. Then I heard the distinctive knocking of a woodpecker on some dead wood. Before I had a chance to enjoy the sound, the beep beep beep of truck backing up silenced the bird.
layers:
2 pairs of black running tights
2 pairs of socks
a green long-sleeved shirt
a pink jacket with hood
a thicker gray jacket
a gray buff
1 pair of black gloves
1 pair of pink/red/orange mittens, wool and fleece combo
a fleece-lined cap with brim
sunglasses
Lots of layers!
Oh, I needed this run! What a difference it makes for my mental health to get outside and move.
This morning, I happened upon this beautiful prose poem:
We made our bed in its mounds and all our furniture was covered in mossy baize. We swam through velvet-lined tunnels, swagged ourselves in greenness all winter. It was the green of pond algae, the painted shed at the bottom of the old garden, kale, tourmaline, the needlecord skater’s dress I wore in 1979. It was the emerald brilliance of moray eels, of tree snails; pea soup green. We were moss creatures, felted deep in woods. It was the first plant on earth, at least four hundred and fifty million years old, its rhizoids like a forest of stars, rootless, absorbing moisture and minerals from rain, surviving in the harshest of climates. We became bryophyliacs, singing hymns in the sunken moss cathedrals, while light through the leaves flickered over us in waves, like signals, as if we’d been blessed. I believed moss could live forever. You told me about the Barghest who haunted the valley, could turn you to stone with a look.
I need to add this to my growing list of green poems!
bike: 15 min warm-up run: 3.2 miles outside temp: 2 degrees / feels like -15
Because of the cold air, the icy paths, and the 10 mph wind, I decided to move in the basement today. Finished the episode of Dickinson I had started a few days ago while I biked, listened to the latest episode of If Books Could Kill (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) while I ran. Running on the treadmill in the basement is very different from running outside. A dark, unfinished basement with windows mostly blocked by a shelf with old lamps on it. Staring straight ahead, I can see a blank tv screen and then behind that, a dark window and the old coal chute. To the side, shelves with old paint cans (left) and a long work bench (right). Not much to notice, except spiders and dust. Difficult to run for that long and to remember any of my thoughts. I don’t mind running down here on occasion, but I couldn’t do it all the time. I’m so glad that I have the gorge.
a moment of sound
On days when it’s too cold for me to move outside, I record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was on my short walk back from the alley, where I had brought out some trash. It features my favorite, crunching snow, and another irritating delight: the cold, shrill creak of our iron gate. I walked through the snow in my small backyard and stopped briefly by the crab apple tree:
jan 30 / 3:00 pm
Here’s a poem I found on twitter today by Dana Levin about walking and thinking and wandering/wondering and being in and out of a body:
To be born again, you need an incarnation specialist—a team from the Bureau of Needles to thread you through— Your next life turns on an axle of light—which Plato likens to a turning spindle—what was that? I mean I knew
what a spindle was from fairytales—how it could draw blood from a testing finger, put a kingdom to sleep— but what did it actually do, how did a spindle look in real life? I didn’t know. As with so many things: there was fact and there was
a believed-in dream . . .
Everyone had one back in the ancient day, spindles. When we had to weave our living-shrouds by hand. “A slender rounded rod with tapered ends,” Google said. Plato’s, so heavy with thread, when viewed from the side, looked like a top— though most diagrams assumed
the hawk-lord view . . .
Moon thread, threads of the planets, earth thread. Your thread. Everyone else’s. Nested one inside the other, a roulette machine— If a thread could be spun from liquid light was what I kept thinking— imagining a sluice of electric souls between the earth wheel’s rims— there “I”
was a piece of water, Necessity wheeled it around―Necessity, who was married to Time, according to the Greeks— Mother of the Fates. Who would measure and cut your
paradise/shithole extra life . . .
Well we all have ways of thinking about why, metaphysically-speaking, anyone’s born— though the answer’s always Life’s I AM THAT I AM —how it hurls and breaks! on Death’s No there there . . .
—which sounded kind of Buddhist.
According to the teachings we were all each other’s dream . . .
And soon able to vanish—
out of the real without having to die, whoever’s got the cash—to pay the brainier ones to perfect a Heaven upload—to cut the flesh-tether and merge
with the Cloud . . .
Well we all have ways of constructing Paradise. To walk alone deep in thought in a city park was mine for several minutes, thinking about spindles. Before the vigilance of my genderdoom
kicked in—
And there it was, the fact of my body— all the nerves in my scalp and the back of my neck, alive— How it moved through space, how close it had strayed toward concealing trees, my female body— Jewish body—inside my White body—dreaming it was bodiless
and free . . .
to decide:
how and when and if to fill the body’s hungers— how and when and if to walk in thought through the wilderness . . .
before Death comes with its Fascist hat.
Its Park Murder Misogyny hat.
Its Year Ten in a Nursing Home stink
hat—
However spun
my thread . . .
Anyway, it’s peaceful here in the park, at midday, if a little deserted. I’ve moved to the path that winds closer to the street. Thinking again, as I always do, about body and soul. How they infuse each other. How they hate each other. How most people pledge allegiance to one or the other. How painful it was! To be such a split
Was planning to run on the track, but when we got to the y I realized I had forgotten my shoes and a running shirt. Oops. Luckily I remembered my swimming stuff and that the pool wasn’t too crowded. I’m fine sharing a lane with someone, but it’s difficult for me to circle swim. Sometimes, it’s hard to see other people when I have to pass them because of my vision.
Because I like making note of my vision challenges, both to share them with others and to document them for myself, I’ll offer three from today at the Y:
one: checking for an open lane. I looked as carefully as I could to see if there was an empty lane. When I saw what I thought was one, I checked it twice more to be sure. It looked empty to me. I got in, was adjusting my goggles, and suddenly a swimmer came from behind in my lane and pushed off the wall. This lane was not empty. It was no big deal, and the swimmer was happy to share a lane, but it’s frustrating to try carefully to see something and not be able to. Of course, this could happen to anyone when you’re not paying attention, but I was paying attention and this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m getting better at not letting it bother me too much or remind me of what I’m losing.
two: finding my locker. I don’t always use the same locker in the locker room, and sometimes I don’t stop to memorize where it is. Luckily the Y switched from locks, where you bring your own combination lock, to keys with a shiny safety pin and the number of the locker attached. When I’m done swimming and I head to my locker, I stop for a minute to stand still and study the key, slowly making out the number on it. Then I carefully scan the lockers until I find mine. Like the empty lane that wasn’t, my need to study my locker key isn’t that big of a deal. But, it has been an adjustment, to slow down this much, and to look to others like I don’t know what I’m doing or that I need help. I don’t mind asking for help when I need it, but I find it stressful to be offered help when I don’t.
three: feeling older than I am. At the sink before swimming, I heard a grandmother talking with a young kid (her granddaughter, I assume): can you be my eyes for me and get that? My eyes aren’t working well today. I say these words to my daughter at least several times a week, which doesn’t bother me. I’m glad to have the help, but I’m 48, which is really young to have the eyes of someone in their late 70s or 80s.
All three of these challenges aren’t big, but they’ve required lots of adjustments and accommodations and extra effort. I don’t mind doing them as long as I can swim. And what a great swim it was! I felt strong and relaxed and almost in a dream floating above the pool floor shimmering with shadows. The mysterious white thing that I’d wondered about a few days ago was gone. Now, in another lane, something else — a string? strands of hair? — were hovering a foot above the bottom. The woman I was sharing a lane with alternated between freestyle, backstroke, and an extra froggy breaststroke. Near the end of the swim, a very fast swimmer arrived in the lane next to me. So much fun to watch him fly by and shoot like a rocket off the wall after a flip turn! Once as he approached, after lapping me at least twice, I kept my head underwater longer so I could watch his fast flip turn.
a moment of sound
Sometimes when it’s this cold outside (feels like -8), it’s harder to get outside for a walk. So instead, I go outside for a minute or two — a moment — and record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was at 1:30 pm in my sunny backyard. My favorite part: the wind chimes, the chirping bird, and that crunchy snow!
bike: 25 minutes run: 1.8 miles basement outside: 5 degrees / feels like -10
Needed to move a little, but too cold for Delia to take a walk. Started watching the first episode of Dickinson while I biked, listened to a podcast (episode 2 of “Nobody Asked Us”) while I ran. In the short bit of the podcast I listened to, Des and Kara talked about resolutions, which neither of them do, and goals. Des mentioned that goals should be big but not so big that they’re paralyzing and that the the timeline for accomplishing them might be different than we expect. I started thinking about goals for my running and writing. Some of my goals are specific, like a mileage total. Last year, it was 1000 miles. But most of them are broad or vague or more of a guide than one concrete goal, like these:
to keep running into my 70s (I’m 48)
to slow down
to be satisfied with the small moments
to find better words for connecting me to others and to a specific place
to be open, not closed
to learn to listen (and to see differently) as I lose my central vision
I decided to go back through my archives to find other posts were I’ve discussed goals (search word: goal). Here are a few:
nov 7, 2022 — on living to an old age and still running oct 31, 2022 — on running 1000 miles in one year sept 20, 2022 — on being open (and keeping the door open to possibility) may 4, 2022 — on slowing down
Ok, I’ll stop there. I have 5 pages / 90 entries with the word goal. Wow. I’d like to spend more time skimming them and finding bits to add to my Undisciplined page on purpose/goals. So much to think and write about with goals.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 24 degrees / feels like 9 wind: 16 mph / path: 99% snow-covered
This run was both hard and easy, and I loved it. Hard because of the wind, often in my face, and the soft, slippery snow. Easy because it felt so good to be outside and moving through the wintery world.
Even with yak trax, the soft snow makes it harder for me to lift my legs. Today I felt it in my right knee — what I call the “OG” knee because it’s the one that first started giving me problems (my kneecap was slipping out of the groove) and that led to never doing the marathon. Every so often, a short sharp pang. Nothing too alarming, just enough to remind me that my body is still here, tethering me to the world. I started thinking about Thomas Gardner and something I wrote almost exactly (one day off) 6 years ago, right after I started writing in this blog:
My right calf is still a little stiff from where I strained it last week doing mile repeats in the cold. Just enough to not let me out of my body.
Poverty Creek Journal/ Thomas Gardner
I wrote: “Even as we try to transcend our bodies while running, we are constantly reminded of our limits. We are bodies. We need that reminder to ground us and to keep us from getting too lost in the dreamlike state that running creates (jan 26, 2017).
As I ran this morning, I thought about how I like that running outside in the winter tethers/connects me to my body. It’s impossible for me to get too lost in any dreamlike state, or any one thought or series of thoughts. The path, the wind, the cold always brings me back to my body. Sometimes, bringing me back to my body involves suffering and complaining, but more often it is about grounding me and helping me to stop overthinking things. Of course, these reflections only came in flashes that lasted less than a minute or two. When I’m running, I can’t hold onto thoughts for longer than that. Now, as I write this, I’m sure that I’m missing something else I was thinking while moving. It all made so much sense as flashes and feelings. Much harder to remember it and put it into words later!
10 Things I Noticed: Wind
running south, the wind was in my face
cold, but not brain-freeze cold
strong, but not strong enough to shove me off the path
I could hear it rushing through the dead leaves on the trees in the oak savanna — sizzling
it stirred up an occasional dead leaf from the ground
at one point, I felt the spray of water on my cheek — was that the wind blowing the snow? probably
ahead of me on the trail, I could see something big-gish — was it a chunk of hard snow or ice? no, it was a branch with a few orange leaves on it. As I ran past it I was startled when the wind picked up and made it move slightly
near the falls, I felt the wind from several directions — was it swirling, or was I winding, or both?
no sledders enjoying the hill — is this because of the strong wind?
the wind was not loud enough to roar, but it seemed to grumble non-stop for most of my run
Found this poem the other day when it showed up in my instagram feed. It’s from episode #799 for The Slowdown Show:
What has a soul, or pain, to do with a stone?
–Ludwig Wittgenstein
You could walk not far through the grass to the shed barefoot restless eye landing on distance there not far you could walk looking down at various grasses weeds clover along the way your toes in the green the undersides of your feet the cool damp where is significance you think as you imagine walking across grass to the shed barefoot what counts here does anything count on the short walk while looking down and then over then up at the catbird in the lilac where there are now dry brown sprays at the robin hopping in the grass over there what counts you ask incredulous at the pace not your pace the pace of time as if rolling downhill gathering speed wound around itself like giant twine but invisible so not present in the sense of seen the way you assign to the visible presence even as what is on your mind as you walk across the grass toward the shed is invisible names their persons hunger mistakes the lost and the recently slaughtered because of words believed by the hopeless lost from view tossed into the past like a weed a rind a stone found in grass so find solace in the particular single crow high in the dead ash its one-note cry sky pale blue low light sliding across wires.
I was drawn to this poem because it reminded me of how I think and how I notice as I’m walking. Lots of wandering and words running together without a break. One thought into the next. From here to here to here.