2.6 miles river road, south/north 8 degrees / feels like -1 25% snow-covered
I didn’t feel exceptionally cold, but it felt hard, my legs thick. I stopped at the bench above the “edge of the world” and looked out at the covered river. Someone wrote the name “Davidson” in the snow earlier this week and it’s still there. As I ran, I started chanting in triples:
the river was white and closed except for a few spots that were dark and open
a (non-fat tire) bike
a runner’s raspy, hello
running into the wind, being exhausted by it, wondering how the runners at Boston 2017, when it was cold and windy and raining, managed to run the whole marathon
bright, blinding sun heading south
some of the ice on the path was smooth, more of it was jagged and rough
A little while spring will claim its own, In all the land around for mile on mile Tender grass will hide the rugged stone. My still heart will sing a little while.
And men will never think this wilderness Was barren once when grass is over all, Hearing laughter they may never guess My heart has known its winter and carried gall.
gall? I looked this word up and dismissed the definition I knew — gall as bold, impudent, he had the gall (read: nerve) to — because it didn’t make sense to me. Instead, I decided the poet meant
abnormal growths that occur on leaves, twigs, roots, or flowers of many plants. Most galls are caused by irritation and/or stimulation of plant cells due to feeding or egg-laying by insects such as aphids, midges, wasps, or mites. Some galls are the result of infections by bacteria, fungi, or nematodes and are difficult to tell apart from insect-caused gall
I wasn’t satisfied with Merriam-Webster’s online definitions, so I logged into my library and accessed the OED (very cool that I can do this!) for more definitions. This one sort of works:
Something galling or exasperating; a state of mental soreness or irritation.
this one, too:
A place rubbed bare; an unsound spot, fault or flaw; in early use also a breach. Now only technical.
and this:
A bare spot in a field or coppice (see gallv.1 3). In the southern U.S. a spot where the soil has been washed away or exhausted.
Erosion, exhaustion.
I love the way the word gall with its plant/ field meanings and its human meanings reinforces the association being made between human’s exposed than covered grief and the ground’s exposed winter stone covered in spring’s grass.
I wanted to remember this poem because of the grass and the stone and the forgetting of winter when spring arrives. I don’t totally agree with its use of winter as metaphor for misery.
I like winter. I like breathing in the cold, the sound of snow falling, smelling the air. The silence and the sharp sounds. The view of the river — vast and bare. The subdued colors — pale blues and grays and dark browns. The less crowded trails. The bare-branched silhouettes. Movement slowed, stilled, suspended. Layers. The bright, cold sun.
5.4 miles bottom franklin hill and back 37 degrees 20% snow-covered
37 degrees and a mostly clear path! A great run. I felt relaxed and strong and able to shift gears and keep going. I greeted almost every walker, runner, or biker I encountered by raising my right hand. At the bottom of the hill I stopped to check out the water — open, moving thickly, a few flat and wide sheets of ice floating by. Smelled weed. Heard birds — laughing and chirping. Slipped (only a little) on a few bits of ice. Stopped at the sliding bench to admire the view — so bare and quiet and alone. Put in my headphones at the top of the hill and listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Some of today’s lyrics made me think about regret and longing for the past, some of them about the joy of forgetting, and some of them commanded, remember! or don’t you forget it!
added a few hours later: I almost forgot to post the picture I took. It’s of the pile of rocks under the franklin bridge that I keep thinking is a person sitting up against the wall. I know these are rocks, but I always first think: person
limestone mistaken for a man
Inspired by my triple berry chant exercise (see below), I chanted in triples. Can I remember 10 of them?
10 Triple Berry Chants
empty bench
grayish sky
ritual
down the hill
ice and snow
soaring bird
sloppy trail
lake street bridge
noisy wheel
3 stacked stones
confession: I did chant a few of these, but the rest I created as I wrote this list. I just can’t remember what I chanted.
early morning coffee
1 — strange sleeping habits
A morning ritual: coffee, Facebook, poets.org, poetryfoundation.org, poems.com, “on this day.” While scrolling through Facebook I found an interesting article about sleep: The forgotten medieval habit of two sleeps. The concept isn’t new to me; I read the book that it’s based on, At Day’s Close, more than a decade ago. One new thing, or thing that I had read in the book but forgot, was about the author’s initial research and how he looked to court transcripts for information about daily life:
he had found court depositions particularly illuminating. “They’re a wonderful source for social historians,” says Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, US. “They comment upon activity that’s oftentimes unrelated to the crime itself.”
I started thinking more about sleep. Last night was not very good: restless legs, sore hip, getting up 3 or 4 times, walking up earlier than I’d like because of my restlessness. At one point, the author, Roger Ekirch, mentioned how recognizing the long history of getting up in the middle of the night as normal and natural could relieve some anxiety for those of us who can’t sleep straight through the night. I suddenly thought, and not for the first time: I need to accept my crazy sleep instead of fighting or worrying about it, and I should turn it into something creative. Track it, or write into it, or . . . . I wonder if there are “insomnia writing experiments?
a list-writing experiment
The first thing that came up in my google search was a scientific study about writing and falling asleep faster. Perhaps if I had searched, “insomnia writing exercises” or “insomnia poetry prompts” I would have gotten different results.
Bedtime worry, including worrying about incomplete future tasks, is a significant contributor to difficulty falling asleep. Previous research showed that writing about one’s worries can help individuals fall asleep. We investigated whether the temporal focus of bedtime writing—writing a to-do list versus journaling about completed activities—affected sleep onset latency. Fifty-seven healthy young adults (18–30) completed a writing assignment for five minutes prior to overnight polysomnography recording in a controlled sleep laboratory. They were randomly assigned to write about tasks that they needed to remember to complete the next few days (to-do list) or about tasks they had completed the previous few days (completed list). Participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep significantly faster than those in the completed-list condition. The more specifically participants wrote their to-do list, the faster they subsequently fell asleep, whereas the opposite trend was observed when participants wrote about completed activities. Therefore, to facilitate falling asleep, individuals may derive benefit from writing a very specific to-do list for five minutes at bedtime rather than journaling about completed activities.
Lists? I love lists! I think I’ll try this, or my own version of it. Maybe I’ll start with a to-do list, another night a completed list, then a things I love list, or a things that bother me list, my favorite poets list, things I notice in the dark, reasons I can’t sleep list, and on and on. Eventually, maybe I can turn this into a series of list poems?
2 — idea/poem starters, an inspiration
The visual poem on poems.com for today, Good Riddance, reminded me of something I started thinking about in march 2024. The poem is a grid with a fragment of thought in each box. There are arrows directing you across or down, or across then down then across again. However your eyes choose to read the boxes creates a slightly different poem. Anyway, I started thinking about the different boxes and mixing and matching the phrases and I remembered this idea from my “to do list for 2022, 23, and 24”:
a 3/2 idea: create fragments of 2-4 lines with a “complete” thought that can be the start of a new poem, or be put together in new ways to create new poems — almost like prompts:
a shadow crosses
And now I’m remembering an even earlier experiment from 3 may 2019 with triple (3 beat) chants:
Speaking of chanting, I have a new exercise I want to try. First, I want to think up a bunch of 3 syllable phrases (down the hill, walk to work, eat down town, out the door, sunday best, monday worst, turnip greens, climate change, just say please, in and out…). Then I’ll write these on small slips of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bag. I’ll randomly pick out 8-10 and turn them into a poem (either in the order I select them or in an order of my choosing). Maybe the phrases should be a mixture of things from the run and popular or whimsical expressions? So much fun!
added an hour later: While reviewing old entries from June of 2024, I came across a delightful typo. Instead of writing “the tunnel of trees” I wrote, “the tunnel of threes.” I love it! Maybe the title of a poem that uses triple berry chants?
walk: 30 minutes with Delia neighborhood 35 degrees! morning
Sun! Above freezing! Shadows!
10 Walking Things
the sharp clang of something metal dropping on hard concrete
low-note wind chimes, bing-bonging in the breeze
standing tall, lifting out of my lower back and hips, feeling my legs ground themselves on the sidewalk
soft snow
the contrast between bare black pavement and white sidewalks
drip drip drip
bare branches 1: the welcoming oaks, the shape of their thick, sprawling branches making silhouettes
bare branches 2: a maple’s small twigs at the bottom looking like hair
a sizzling sound in the trees: wind on dead leaves
a beautiful blue sky peeking through fluffy, fast moving clouds
run: 3.5 miles godfrey and back 33 degrees afternoon
Less layers this afternoon: running tights, shorts, tank top, long shirt, pull-over with hood, headband, gloves, sunglasses. My face was a little cool, especially the ears which weren’t quite covered by the headband. The sidewalks were sloppy and so was the trail. No ice, but some slushy snow. Encountered a few fat tires, walkers, at least one other runner. Stopped at the bench and remembered looking out at the river, but I can’t remember what I saw other than white. Oh — I saw a person climbing up and out of the winchell trail
Before the run I was listening to an interview with Jenny Odell that I first heard last May. I started thinking about different notions of time and then how memories rarely follow linear time. They don’t move forward in a row, confidently attached to years. They’re all over the place and in the wrong place and on top of each other. I tried to think about that as I was running. I imagined a mess of memories filling up the gorge, but not taking up any space. Then I imagined myself running through and beside them. These memories barely left a trace and I couldn’t feel them.
yesterday’s delights
Driving us on the river road, RJP pointed out two delightful things to me: one — a biker on a fat tire doing a wheelie for at least a minute and for dozens of feet. They were pedaling forward on one wheel, the other wheel was hanging in the air. That seems hard! added 17 jan: I looked it up and found this video. And two — turkeys! one flying!! and dozens more spread out all around turkey hollow.
4.1 miles trestle+ turn around 15 degrees / feels like 1 75% snow-covered
Hooray for getting back outside! I never felt cold. Hands and feet were fine, torso too. About halfway in, I overheated. Off with the mittens, down with the hood. The run didn’t feel easy; my legs were sore. But I bargained with myself — make it to the trestle, keep going until the sliding bench, don’t stop until after the hill! And I was able to shift gears, settling into something different with my legs (hard to explain). I lifted out of my hips, relaxed my shoulders and kept going for longer than I thought I would. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Stopped running to witness a wedge of geese flying overhead. Heard the rattling jawbone of some bird. Noticed that the river was open and dark under the trestle. Everywhere else it was white.
10 Things
a honk cutting through the quiet then less than a dozen geese flying in a loose formation — I think I heard the swish of their wings as they passed directly above me
the smell of tobacco beside me — did it come from the open window of a passing car?
the smell of weed below me
3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder, half covered with snow
a runner approaching from behind with a dog on a leash tethered to their waist, running faster than me through the snow
the constant view beside me: slender bare brown slanted branches white river a white brown bluff on the other side of the river
a flash of BRIGHT orange to my left — someone in an orange jacket walking below near the old stone steps
a big dog — golden retriever? — squatting and pooping on the side of the path, their owner waiting with a bag
a light brown cobblestone carriage walk in front of a fancy house on edmund
the sharp crunch of one foot striking the crusty snow in my alley, the soft grind of the other foot leaving the snow
shades, shadows, memories
Before the run, I was reviewing May 2024 entries. This bit about the children’s book, The Shades, inspired some thoughts:
. . .they live in the garden. All of their food comes from the shadow’s cast by real food, their house cast from the shadow of the old summer house that “broke Emily’s heart” when it was torn down. Most of the time they do what they want, but when a human enters the garden, whichever of them best fits that human’s form must shadow them around the garden. Sometimes this shadowing is fun, other times it’s tedious, and occasionally it’s dangerous: if a human climbs over the garden wall, the shadow must follow and be lost to the outside world forever.
log entry 20 may 2024
Thinking about the shadow’s independence from the object that cast them and their attaching forms that approximately fit, I started thinking about memories and the gorge. I imagined countless memories (as shadows?) living there, made and left behind by everyone that has spent time at the gorge. Then I imagined running through/with/beside them and some of them attaching to me (in some way). The memories weren’t mine exactly; they were independent of me with their own experiences and histories and feelings. But, beside the gorge, we become entangled. Maybe I can add this to the poem I started about shadows. I’d also like to add this idea: the silhouette as “a radical condensation of faith in shadows” from 17 may 2024.
A short run because it snowed last night and they haven’t plowed the trail yet. I wore my yaktrax but the soft, uneven snow seemed too much for already sore muscles.
Interruption: as I sit at my desk writing this, after my run, a dog zipped by my window. Ace — the dog two doors down who likes to break out his backyard and roam the neighborhood. I used to worry about him, but I know he’ll return….just after finishing that last sentence, I saw a blur of movement — Ace again, across the street.)
It was a nice, relaxed run through a wonderfully wintery world! Snow covering everything — path, trees, river. Occasionally I heard a crunch when my foot hit some icy snow, but mostly the snow was soft and silent. I descended to the Winchell trail at 42nd and ran closer to the river. The path was a mix of snow and dead leaves. I continued past the 38th street steps and down into the oak savanna. Then beside the ravine and over the icy slats — that part was slippery! No running, barely even walking, at this part.
10 Things
river hidden under snow
a pack of runners approaching — the movement of their thin, muscular legs made them look like galloping horses
a fat tire up ahead — at first, all I could see was a dark figure and I thought it might be a dog or a bear or the territorial turkey
hi! — hello! greeting an approaching walker
the heavy breathing of a fast runner passing by me
a flash of orange — was it a snow fence?
the wind heading north on the upper trail was cold and harsh
the slow trickling of water below the ravine
a tree bent over the trail so low I almost had to duck to get under it
all the benches were empty
Happy 8th Anniversary to this log! On January 12th, 2017 I posted my first entry for this RUN! project. I had no idea where it would lead. What a life it has given me! It seems fitting for my love of the approximate that I started on the 12th instead of the 1st. It also seems fitting that the post began with no fanfare or introduction to some big project and that it was about restlessness. 9 years and 7660.2 miles of running (and around 500 miles of swimming) later, I’m just as or more restless. Wanting to move, to be outside, to connect with the world. To read, to write, to experiment with new ways to be. My restlessness drives my creativity and curiosity and also my unease and discomfort (and anxiety and suffering).
They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you.
But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don’t have any kids yourself.
I first encountered this poem after . . .
Interruption. Sitting here at my desk in front of the window before my run, someone just walked by pushing a shovel. I think they decided to walk and shovel everyone’s sidewalk at the same time. That’s feeding two birds with one scone. Nice!)
. . . reading then memorizing Philip Larkin’s The Trees. I didn’t like it. That last verse — so harsh and unforgiving. But this morning my study of remembering and forgetting led me to the idea of passing down/inheriting trauma from past generations, and I came across this poem again. I continue to struggle with the conclusion, but I’m reading the rest of it differently — as a daughter who is beginning to understand the trauma she inherited from her mother and how she responded to abusive parents, and as a mother confronting the impact of her parenting choices on her kids. I had planned to write more about this now, but I don’t have time; FWA is returning to college today!
When I have time, I want to read/summarize this article: How Parents’ Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children. And I want to think about epigenetics and slavery and how inheritance works on a broader, more systemic level, within communities. Whew — that’s a lot!
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 21 degrees 100% snow-covered
Today the winter I want: big flurries, everything covered in a thin layer of snow, not too much wind, warmer, not slick — especially with my with Yaktrax on. Nothing was quite easy, but everything wasn’t as hard as my last run on Wednesday.
10 Things
a white sky
the contrast between shoveled and un-shoveled sidewalks — both still white, but the shovelled ones had a tint of gray or brown peeking through
the clacking jawbone of a bird’s beak — a blue jay?
the river was all white — if you didn’t know better, you could believe it was a field or a meadow
approaching from above, hearing the falls rushing over the limestone
kids yelling and laughing at the playground, one loud, high-pitched sound — was it a kid screaming or a whistle?
amongst the kid voices, a deeper, more knowing laugh — was that from a teacher?
the contrast on the creek surface: white snow with blackish-gray water
every so often, a flash of orange — not always sure what it was, just a voice whispering, orange — a snow fence? a construction cone? a sign?
bright headlights cutting through the sky, which was both bright — everything white! — and heavy
Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist on the way back. The first song up, Do You Remember Walter? by The Kinks. Two different bits stuck with me:
one: Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago. two: Yes, people often change./ But memories of people can remain.
This second bit got me thinking about how I can’t always (can I ever?) see faces clearly. When the face is too dark and shadowed, I just ignore it altogether. But when there’s some light and I can sort of see them, I often re-construct the features I can’t see with memories of their face from before I lost most of my cone cells. I’m not remembering their face, but creating it. After thinking that the idea of remembering as re-memembering — putting a body back together — popped into my head. Yes! I take my image of face, only as fragments — the curve of a nose or a chin, a bit of eye — and turn it into something whole.
As I kept running, I thought more about remembering and memories and my vision and how I rely on past experience and habits to navigate. And now as I write this, I’m thinking about how everyone’s vision — not just mine — relies on a building up of past experiences (memories?) with things to be able to see them. Here I’m remembering something that I read in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss:
the sensation of sudden visual awareness is produced in part by the formation of a “search image” in the brain. In a complex visual landscape, the brain initially registers all the incoming data, without critical evaluation. Five orange arms in a starlike pattern, smooth black rock, light and shadow. All this is input, but the brain does not immediately interpret the data and convey their meaning to the conscious mind. Not until the pattern is repeated, with feedback from the conscious mind, do we know what we are seeing.
Learning to See in Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer
I’m continuing to read JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies. Wow!
Prayer to My Stutter #2/ JJJJJerome Ellis
You restore a living shoreline between word and silence
This beautiful prayer moves right into the next offering, Octagon of Water, Movement 3, which was titled by its first line when it was published in Poetry:
The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage.
How is/isn’t the instant similar to Marie Howe’s moment? If you listen to the recording on Poetry, you can hear the stretched silence as Ellis’ voice stops before pronouncing certain words.
2
This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed.
What a beautiful description and reclaiming of a stuttering voice on the other side of the stoppage! The erupting bursting flowering dysfluent voice.
I’m inspired by how Ellis takes his stutter and turns it into this beautiful instant between silence and word. For them, the stoppage is a/the key aspect of the stuttering. What are the most important elements of my strange vision?
Another sunny, sharp shadow day. Ran south to the falls and listened to cars, birds, kids on the playground, and some guy coughing too loudly. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, then put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Sometimes I felt strong, and sometimes I felt tired. My legs wanted us to stop. I did a few times, including at the bench above “the edge of the world.” I took two pictures. One had a clearer view of the ice on the river, but I picked the other one, with its branches and shadows and white sun:
above the edge of the world / 8 jan 2024
10 Things
chirping birds
my shadow, clear and strong
shadows of trees in the park, soft and fuzzy
a shadow of the lamp post, sharp and menacing
someone who looked like Dave the Daily Walker from behind — a tucked shirt and not jacket, tucked into dark track pants — but wasn’t
the creek — bright white snowy surface mixed with fast, flowing water
the falls were gushing through the ice columns
a man with a bad cough near the overlook
a cold wind on my ears when I put my hood down
the shadow of a tree sprawled across the trail that dips below the road, looking like an actual branch that might hit me as I ran by
For a moment, I thought I had completely forgot running the stretch down to, then over, the bridge that crosses above the falls, but then I remembered it: what the creek looked like, seeing some people (one of them, the man with the cough) as I crossed, but then not seeing them, and then seeing them again near the closed gate.
before the run
Last night, I started reading JJJJJerome’s Aster of Ceremonies, which I bought in october of 2023 and hadn’t read yet. Wow! Here’s a bit I’d like to take with me on my run:
What is the wound reopening during the stutter? How does it relate to Morrison’s flooding? When the Mississippi returns to its former contours, does the suture we created by straightening it open? (Octagon of Water, Movement 2/JJJJJerome Ellis)
Last week, I was just writing about how the natural shape of the Mississippi River in the gorge is long gone, reshaped by the city and the Army Corps. After my run, I’ll read Toni Morrison’s essay to which Ellis refers.
added a few hours later: I tracked down the quotation that Ellis puts in a footnote for this poem from Toni Morrison in The Site of Memory (1995, 99):
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory – what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” Along with personal recollection, the matrix of the work I do is the wish to extend, fill in and complement slave autobiographical narratives. But only the matrix. What comes of all that is dictated by other concerns, not least among them the novel’s own integrity. Still, like water, I remember where I was before I was “straightened out.”
The Site of Memory/ Toni Morrison
So good! I’m excited to think about these ideas some more and figure out my relationship to flooding and being straightened out and rivers before and after Minneapolis and the Army Corps of Engineers “fixed” them.
Thinking about Ellis’ stutter in relation to my vision problems. In some ways, I have a visual stutter — there’s a long pause between looking at something and actually seeing it. I need time for things to make sense. Also, images stutter, shake, fizz, are always moving, never still or sharp or clear.
remember/forget
1— will
the differences between what we notice and try to remember and what we ignore or try to forget (16 april 2024)
2— memory
When I heard the line, Seems like we’re livin’ in a memory, I thought about how I mostly can’t see people’s faces clearly and that I’ve either learned to tune it out and speak/look into the void, or I just fill in the smudge with the memory of their face. I’m used to it, and often forget I’m doing it until suddenly I wonder as I stare at the blob, am I looking in the right place, into their eyes, or am I staring at their chin? I don’t care, but I imagine the other person might, so I try to find their eyes again (9 may 2024).
In jan of 2024, I’m thinking about the daily, mundane bodily functions that we forget we’re doing, or don’t notice — what’s the difference between not noticing and forgetting here? I’m also thinking about this idea of memory and its relationship to the real. When is remembering “only a memory” and when can the act of remembering keep something real? Can we understand remembering as more than thinking about things from the past? What about remembering what is present, here still, real, connected to us?
3 — pay attention, be astonished, tell about it
Thinking more about the difference between noticing and remembering, I’m thinking about the different acts involved here. Yes, it is inspired by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life! First, we notice, then we are open to feeling something about what we noticed, then we put that noticing and our feelings into words. For my practice, I don’t try to remember to notice or to be astonished, they just happen — at least, that’s the goal. Remembering comes in when I try to put my attention and astonishment into words. So, the connection between writing and remembering.
4 — writing to remember
I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.
Field Notes slogan
Many different directions I could go with this idea of remembering and writing, but I like this idea of the act of writing about something as the remembering. I rarely look back at my (Field Notes brand) Plague Notebooks when I’m finished with them; it’s the act of writing in them that helps me remember what I noticed or was thinking about. This method is approximate and doesn’t work all of the time. In my practice, I use the act of making a list on my log of 10 things I noticed as the moment of remembering what I didn’t even realize I noticed. But, unlike my plague notebooks, I do return to my log to read past entries and remember what I wrote before — in at least 3 ways: my monthly challenge pages in which I review and summarize what I did in relation to my theme each month; my “on this day” morning reviews, in which I reread past entries from that day in different years; and my annual summary, month-by-month of my log entries.
5 — forget the body
I like my body when I’m in the woods and I forget my body. I forget that arms, that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain. I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower. (Yes, That’s When/Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
The same 30 minute yoga for flexibility routine I’ve been doing for 5 years. I like it, but I should try something else this month. Later, a short walk outside with Delia the dog. Brisk.
10 Things
faint shadows, mine, tall, beside Delia’s, short
the metallic buzz of a table saw
a ridge of snow, refusing to melt on a neighbor’s narrow boulevard
the fast flash of Delia’s tail when she’s excited or relieved or happy to be heading back
cold air seeping through my hood and hat, into my ears
bare grass
the 6 inch gap under the gate of a yard a block away
the smooth asphalt of a nearby driveway
the sculpture of a turtle — bigger than an ancient tortoise — in a front yard — it looks heavy, is it made out of bronze?
the buzz of workers all around the neighborhood — brrr!
forgetting/remembering
1 — the body
On jan 7, 2019, I wrote this about forgetting and remembering my body as I ran:
I found myself worrying constantly about my back or my IT band or my knee. At one point I wondered, what would it feel like to not notice my body? To simply run? Of course, this did happen many times during the run, but I remember more the times when I was too aware of my body.
Scrolling through facebook this morning, I encountered several “never forget” posts about the pro-Trump terrorist attack on congress on Jan 6, 2021. Then I read my On this Day post from jan 7, 2021 which begins with a brief description of the attack. I thought about how I use this log and my “on this day” practice to not forget things (typing this, I started wondering about the differences between not forgetting and remembering). Not forgetting is an important act of resistance.
I also read my jan 7, 2020 entry about the dogs in our neighborhood. Most of those dogs are gone now. Or, if they’re not gone, I don’t ever see them anymore. But, I remember them often as we walk past their houses. Delia does too. Not forgetting is an important ritual of staying connected to a place.
Simply looking. A car goes over a rise and there are birches snow Twisted into cabalistic shapes: The Devil’s Notch; or Smuggler’s Gap. At the time you could not have imagined the time when you Would forget the name, as apparent and there as your own. (from Hymn to Life/James Schuyler)
As I travel around my neighborhood, by foot or car, I speak about things that are no longer there — the tree with teeth, the big branch that sprawled above the road, the mustache on the mustache bridge, Bridgemans restaurant — and reflect on how easy it is to forget things that are no longer there. Without memories, it’s as if it was always like it is now, like the gone things never existed. Speaking of the mustache bridge, FWA mentioned it the other day. He referred to it (the bridge that crosses Hiawatha on the parkway) as the mustache bridge even though it only had a spray-painted mustache on it for a few months 10 years ago. I thought it was fascinating that this name has stuck. Will there be a time when we forget why we call it that?
3 — losing
I watch other bodies slip through the blue, how fast the young are & how old they become, floating, floating, forgetting the weight of years (Romance/Susan Browne)
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster: places, and names, and where it was you meant to travel. None of these will bring disaster. (One Art/Elizabeth Bishop)
5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill 11 degrees / feels like 5
Another sunny, snowless day. A little wind, some cold air. Wasn’t planning to run 5 miles, but I wanted to get to the bottom of the hill so I could see the surface up close. Iced over — not smooth, but with seams and cracks.
ice on mississippi river / 6 jan 2025
I’m glad I took a picture because I did not remember it looking like this! I was visually a surface that was more gray and uniform with cracks creating big and flat sheets of ice. I didn’t remember the shadows or the blue or how uneven it all looked.
As I ran, I listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. It started with “I Remember it Well,” from Gigi. I heard the opening lines:
We met at 9 We met at 8 I was on time No, you were late Ah yes I remember it well
I thought — wait, if he thought they were meeting at 9, he wouldn’t have thought he was late if he got there after 8 — yes, these are they thoughts I have as I run. I thought about how subjective memory can be and wondered how certain we could be that she remembered correctly. Then I heard these lyrics:
Ah yes I remember it well You wore a gown of gold I was all in blue
I remembered that meme 4 or 5 years ago with the dress — is it gold or blue? — and thought again about how we can remember things differently. When is it lack of memory, and when did we always just remember it wrong, or unusually, or with a focus on different details, or in a different light?
10 Things
the hollow knocking of a woodpecker
the thumping of wheels over something on the road on the bridge above
4 stones tightly stacked on the ancient boulder
a section of the fence above a steep part of the bluff, missing, marked off with an orange barricade
the icy river through the trees — blue and white and lonely
daddy long legs at his favorite bench
shadows, 1: mine, off to the side, in the brush next to the trail
shadows, 2: a tree trunk, tall, stretched, looking like a dinosaur
stopping at the edge to put in my headphones, seeing a flare of movement below: someone walking on the winchell trail
the limestones still stacked under the bridge, still looking like a person sitting up and leaning against the bridge
Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling! You scatter all my winter dreams.”
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling! Songless, peevish thing! You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept. And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves! They make such noise! They scatter all my winter dreams.”
more forget lines
1
like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time. (Part of Eve’s Discussion/Marie Howe)
2
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too (Dead Stars/Ada Limón)
3
See whatever you want to see. Even at the moment of death forget the door
opening on darkness. See instead the familiar faces you thought were lost. (Squint/Linda Pastan)
4
According to Howe, most (all?) of the critical studies of ED as a poet (up to 1985, when this book was written), read ED’s decision to stay isolated in her bedroom for the rest of her life as tragedy and a failure to celebrate herself as a poet (Whitman) or declare herself confidently as the Poet, the Sayer, the Namer (Emerson). Howe argues that she made another choice and writes the following:
She said something subtler. ‘Nature is a Haunted House–but Art–a House that tries to be haunted.’ (L459a)
Yes, gender difference does affect our use of language, and we constantly confront issues of difference, distance, and absence when we write. That doesn’t mean I can relegate women to what we ‘should’ or ‘must’ be doing. Orders suggest hierarchy and category. Categories and hierarchies suggest property. My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else. What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem. There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living. The conditions for poetry rest outside each life at a miraculous reach indifferent to worldly chronology.
20 minutes with Delia neighborhood 7 degrees / feels like 4
Winter! Heading north, an arctic wind, but otherwise, not bad. Warm sun, no snow. I love being outside and moving. A thought: I should commit to doing one or two long-ish walks each week to somewhere. The library? A coffee place?
10 Things
dead, brown leaves on top of a pile of crusty snow
a high-pitched, quiet whine from a truck on the next block
the bare, gnarled, tall branches of the oak tree on the corner
2 green dumpsters on the sidewalk outside of Turtle Bread
almost stumbling as I stepped on a small rock or hard chunk of snow
a neighbor on the next block having an animated conversation with the mailman
bark! — Delia the dog unexpectedly barking at them from across the street
bark! bark! bark! — a dog in a backyard calling out to Delia
the tree on the corner across from the Blue Door — dead, most of it trimmed away, more than a stump with a few dead branches still remaining
the sun! heading south, warming my face and making it difficult to see if anyone was approaching
While tagging old entries with “remember/forget,” I came across Emily Dickinson’s poem about forget-me-nots on 2 march 2021, which helped me to remember that I was thinking about it — vaguely — as I ran yesterday!
There are spaces for living and spaces for forgetting. Sometimes they’re the same. (Voiceover/ Rita Dove)
