4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 22 degrees / light snow 100% snow-covered
Today I ran outside. I decided that even though it is true I can’t always effectively assess the situation because of my vision, it is also true that it is unlikely I will encounter any incidents beside the river. And it was true, and I was fine. That doesn’t mean ICE isn’t around. Just before I went out running, a black SUV drove down the cross street with 7 or 8 cars following and HONKING their horns.
I also went out because I’m finally, after a week of a low-grade cold, starting to feel better. Hooray! The river was so beautiful — open and covered in snow — and it felt so good to be moving outside. It’s much easier to be running outside by the river, than downstairs in a dark basement.
There were a few people on the trail, mostly walkers, a biker, at least one other runner.
10 Things Heard
kids playing on the Dowling Elementary and Minnehaha Academy playgrounds — screaming, laughing, having fun
the falls barely falling over the ledge because the creek was frozen
sirens
the train bells as the light rail train passed through the station
hammering and pounding coming from the construction site at a house on Lena Smith Boulevard
honking geese
from my favorite viewing spot at the falls: voices below or across the gap
more voices below, somewhere on the winchell trail — some adults and kids
the soft sizzle of snow flakes hitting my jacket
an electric singing as it slowly travelled past on the road
Not too long after I got back from my run, Scott and I went to Costco to stock up on stuff before Friday’s strike of no work / no shop / no school. It was surprisingly normal in the store. Later, on the freeway, driving home, we passed by the Whipple Building and thought about all the people suffering in there right now. From the outside, just a tall building with lots of windows, a place that I have never noticed before, only seeing it as another generic office building. And inside, it’s filled with terror and hate and injustice and a bunch of under-trained goons.
Get Out Ice
This morning, hours before my run, I gathered together statements from local businesses, announcing their intent to be closed on Friday in solidarity with the no work / no shop / no class strike. I pulled out some words and phrases which are starting to take shape. Then I went running and talked with RJP and had to go shopping. so I haven’t returned to them yet.
While I continue to work on this poem, here’s a bit from one of the restaurants, Nicos Tacos:
On this day we are choosing to stand with our community, to stand for dignity and for humanity. No one should live in fear for simply seeking a better life. Strong communities are built when immigrants feel safe, seen, and supported. Let Nico’s be a home to all, and a reminder that we all belong here.
4.2 miles lena smith – river road, north / river road – lena smith, south 42 degrees / wind: 15 mph 75% puddles, sloppy ice
Yuck! Not as fun running today, dodging puddles and slick strips of snow/ice on the trail. Warmer, but windier too. Parts of the run were great — I felt strong and efficient and sturdy. Other parts of it were not as great — a few times the path was covered either in a deep puddle or uneven, slippery ice. I am glad I went, and grateful to get to see the river — which was completely open, not frozen at all — but all of it was covered in a thin fog of fear. I heard sirens a few times and wondered if someone was being taken. Just before I went out for my run, Scott told me that someone had been taken just around the corner from us sometime in the last week.
10 Things
city workers trimming trees, blocking the street
a thick sheet of dirty ice covering almost half of a street — from curb, to the middle
black chickadees singing, cheese burger cheese burger
one biker, mostly biking in the road but on the path for a brief stretch
the sound of sirens across the road, lasting less than a minute
the wind, howling in my ears
a dog barking off in the distance
the sound of water splashing up as cars drove through puddles
a gray sky with no sun, then blue with sun, then gray again
city workers gone, a big pile of freshly trimmed branches — narrow ones — near the curb, 3 slender orange cones near the sidewalk
Ice Get Out
There are too many terrible headlines today about what’s happening with ICE in Minnesota, and it’s one of those days when I feel too tired to talk about them. I’m tired because of the headlines, because of the gray, sloppy weather, and because I tried (unsuccessfully, for now) to use a big ice breaker to break up the slippery ice on our small driveway. I chipped away at it for 30 or 40 minutes and had some success with a small patch, but I didn’t want to injure myself (because: 51 year-old bones and joints), so I stopped. I’m sure there’s a better (as in, more effective, less hard on my body) way to deal with this ice. — there’s a metaphor in there, I think. Anyway, I can’t force myself to post details from Trump and his cronies’ terribleness today, so instead, here are two videos that I’d like to watch repeatedly of the mississippi where the ice has mostly broken up and is floating, along with foam, downstream: here, the ice is getting out.
foam and ice, getting out / 5 jan 2024ice on the mississippi / 5 jan 2024
Fear less / Tracy K. Smith
Thank goodness for the poets! Last week, I checked out the e-book version of Tracy K. Smith’s memoir and reflection on the value of poetry, Fear less, and just now I read some of the first chapter. Hopefully tomorrow I will post some quotations and respond to her powerful words, but for now, I’ll just mention that I’m reading it.
I would have liked to run outside. It was sunny, not too windy, and almost above freezing, but the sidewalks were way too icy. I tried to go out for a recon walk earlier today and only made it to the end of our sidewalk before realizing the surface conditions were terrible. I had to turn around and come home. Bummer. Fresh air might have relieved some of the anxiety I’m carrying in my body from what’s happening. At least I was able to go to the y and run on the track. Moving and working up a sweat helped some, I think.
Since I was looping around a track, I decided to listen to my “Wheeling Life” playlist.
10 Track Things
an orange bucket was out on the track in its yearly spot, catching drips from a pipe
a short man with white hair was walking backwards in the inner lane
the gym below was empty
not too many people on the track, all of them quiet
in the quiet, I could hear my feet striking the track surface — I think my striking feet were the loudest thing on the track — thwack thwack thwack
a woman walking fast, wearing a shirt that reminded me of scrubs — had she just gotten off a shift at a hospital?
some people follow the written rules and walk in the innermost lane, some ignore them and walk in the middle (which is for runners) or in the far left lane (which is for passing)
just remembered: just before entering the track, passed the woman in a scrubs shirt putting air pods in her ears
very few runners — while I was running, only me and Scott — after, while walking, one other runner
inside it was warm (good) and very dry (bad)
Working on a tiny (24 word) poem tentatively titled bio-regionalism, and I was thinking about something I recalled hearing from Stanley Tucci in his series on regions in Italy and their food: he said that a region/neighborhood was/is defined by anyone who was in earshot of that neighborhood’s church bells. I looked it up and found this helpful definition and video from Rick Steves. The term is campanilismo:
During Tuscany’s medieval and Renaissance prime, this region was a collection of feuding city-states dominated by rich families. To this day, Tuscans remain fiercely loyal to their home community, and are keenly aware of subtle differences between people from different cities, towns, and villages. (Italians have a wonderful word for this: campanilismo, meaning that a community consists of the people within earshot of its bell tower — campanile.)
Yuck! It’s an awful mess out there on the sidewalk, the roads. After he got back from his walk I asked FWA if it was, a. doable and b. worth it to go out and shovel. He said yes to both, so I did, but now I’m wiped out and sore and not sure if it was either of those things. Looking out my window right now at the street, I am disheartened. One big soupy, slushy mess. Will more of it melt and be cleared out before it freezes again? I hope so.
A quick note about my ankle: crisis averted! The RICEing (both resting icing compressing and elevating AND playing around with acronym) must have helped. My ankle feels fine today!
Sara from 4 jan 2026 asked me to let her know if anything big and terrible happened today. Not yet (as of 4:49 pm), but there’s a lot of talk about invading Greenland and I keep seeing the headline, The Danish PM says a US invasion of Greenland will mean the end of NATO.
In other shitty news: I noticed, while clearing trying to clear the deck that a wide stretch of snow under our crab apple tree has been turned into a port-a-potty by the two rabbits who visit every night to feast on fallen apples. Very gross! Some scat here, some scat there, scat scat everywhere. The snow is glowing brown — I’ll have to try and get a picture of it, because my words can’t quite convey the color or the grossness — a picture probably can’t either.
update: I pointed out the tree/rabbit/shit situation to Scott and we agreed it wasn’t all rabbit scat and it wasn’t glowing brown. A lot of it was discarded apple bits from birds or squirrels or the bunnies and the snow beneath the tree’s wide canopy was glowing a faint orange, not brown.
swim: 1.75 loops 123 laps / 55 minutes ywca pool
Decided to swim without stopping until Scott showed up at the end of my lane. I was hoping to go longer — distance and time. Maybe that can be next week’s goal: to get to 140 laps, which is 2 miles. I’d like to do it in 1 hour. It felt great to be swimming again.
shadows: the afternoon light coming in the window created lots of shadows on the pool floor. Today I decided that it looked less like the floor was dancing and more like it was crawling. As I swam, I suddenly thought of the line from Raiders of the Lost Ark: why does the floor move? Other memorable shadows: the lane lines on the shallow floor, then the lane lines casting a shadow at the far end, all the way up the wall, from the deep bottom to the top. Such a cool image. I liked admiring it every time I neared the far wall.
10 Pool Friends
the yellow! grout between the bright blue tiles on the pool floor in the middle of each lane — I never noticed it was yellow and not white — is it, or was it just dirty?
the bright blue tiles marking a cross at the end of each lane — usually I read them as black or dark navy
some crud on a tile beneath me
a small red chunk of something that started on the pool floor a lane over, near the spot where it slopes down, then slowly shifted down each lap — tile after tile — until it made it to the bottom and then under me in my lane — I was fascinated by this red thing and enjoyed tracking it — I prefer not knowing what it is/was
a guy in black swim trunks 2 lanes over that I raced (in my head) and beat
someone in fins one lane over
the silver trail of bubbles that the swimmers’ fins made as they kicked
a lifeguard in a BRIGHT yellow jacket
a swimmer in green swimming on their back, doing some sort of reverse breaststroke
a swimmer in red doing freestyle then sidestroke then walking then kicking with a kickboard
Halfway through, I swam breathing every 5 strokes and tried to think one word each time I surfaced to breathe: 1 2 3 4 5 light 1 2 3 4 5 tile 1 2 3 4 5 window 1 2 3 4 5 door 1 2 3 4 5 tree — Nothing that interesting . . . yet . . . I’ll have to keep working at it, see if I can open myself up to more words. The bigger challenge: can I remember them? Nearing the end of the swim I was getting into a groove and thinking about how swimming for almost an hour without stopping is good practice for longer runs/marathon training. I was also thinking — okay, now the fun starts — as in, I’ve swum enough today to get into a flow state, what could happen if I kept going? What doors might open for me? What wonderfully strange ideas could I have? What delightfully tiny poems could I craft? I didn’t get to find out because Scott arrived and my swim was over, which was fine for today. I’d like to experiment with this longer swim this winter, see what I can do with it.
Little House Update
A few days ago, we made it to season 3 of Little House on the Prairie. We both knew something had shifted in the wrong direction when we heard the opening theme song: season 2’s funky 70s bass line had been replaced with a cheesy swing.
The first episode guest-starred Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash. It was enjoyable, but had lost some of the dark edge of realism that we enjoyed in seasons 1 and 2. Episode 2 was the beginning of evil Nellie, which is camp-tastically awesome, but lacks a grounding in a real time and place. It was exaggerated and over-dramatic, shifting the story away from the lives of people trying to not die in the unforgiving frontier of the 1870s, to an epic battle between the flawed and feisty goodness of Laura and the pure, irredeemable evil of Nellie Oleson. Nellie and her twisted, unhinged glare. Nellie silent and still, lurking at the window. Nellie and her old-fashioned temper tantrums, one on the bed, wailing and squealing and pounding her fists into her pillow; another pacing the room, shrieking and breaking porcelain dolls on the wall, smashing an expensive dollhouse with a hammer on the floor. I do find Nellie’s antics to be entertaining, and get some pleasure in loathing Mrs. Oleson, but I miss the quieter, darker depictions of the difficult frontier life that we witnessed in seasons 1 and 2.
After Little House we’ve been watching an episode of Love Boat from season 1. We’re enjoying it. Such a contrast to Little House. It makes me want to watch the whole line-up from a 70s evening.* I’ll have to ask Scott what that would be; as a kid he memorized the tv guide and probably remembers exactly what was on and when. That would be a fun and enlightening project, to revisit the 70s values/perspectives/preoccupations represented in prime-time tv that we were both raised on.
*perhaps the more accurate recreating of our early kid viewing experience of these shows would be to figure out the reruns that ran back-to-back on TBS.
Wow, this entry went on a ramble! Before ending it, I’ll just add that I have been shocked by how relevant the themes in Little House are right now. Yes, I have problems with the show — too much God-talk and not enough discussion of what it means to live on stolen land less than 2 decades after the civil war — but the hope and resistance and the desire for social justice of the 70s shapes these stories in ways that I had forgotten ever existed (because: Reagan). I am resisting the urge to devote an hour or more to offering specific examples of what I mean here. I don’t have time today.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls 20 degrees 100% snow-covered
Not a single bare spot on the trail or the road. Hard on the ankles, calves, and the eyes — so bright and white and endlessly nothing. Difficult to see where the snow was loose and where it wasn’t. It didn’t bother me; I’m just happy to be outside moving, connected to this place. Tried to greet everyone I saw — runners, walkers, at least one biker — with a wave or a hello.
10 Things
the smell of chimney smoke lingering near a neighbor’s house
soft ridges of sand-colored* snow covering the street — tricky to run over and through
empty benches
(almost) empty parking lots
a hybrid/electric car singing as it slowly rounded a curve near locks and dam no. 1
the sound of the falls falling over the ledge: almost gushing
scattered voices echoing around the park — at least one of them was from an excited kid
stopping to tighten my laces, a woman in a long coat nearby, standing and admiring the falls
splashes of yellow on the snow
bird song then a burst of birds briefly filling the sky
*sand-colored: using these words, I immediately thought of a favorite poem that I’ve memorized, I Remember/ Anne Sexton: the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color — no more than sand was a color
I listened to the quiet — barely any wind — for the first half of the run, then put in my “Sight Songs” playlist on the way back. Memorable songs: Sheena Easton’s nasally high notes in “For Your Eyes Only,” and the lyrics in the refrain —
The passions that collide in me The wild abandoned side of me Only for you, for your eyes only
Yikes. Also, these lines from The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”:
And if I swallow anything evil Put your finger down my throat
And if I shiver please give me a blanket Keep me warm, let me wear your coat
And these, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which I don’t recall ever hearing:
Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be. . .
. . .Every now and then I know there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you
(Almost) 9 Years!
Typically each year, I mark the anniversary of this log as the first of January, with a new year beginning on that day. But, that’s not the real anniversary of this log. It’s January 12th, 2017. Why the 12th and not the 1st? I’m not quite sure; I’ll have to look through my journal from that year. It seems fitting, with my affinity (see D. Seuss below) for the approximate, the almost, to not start on the first day of the year!
On This Day: January 3, 2022
Reading this past entry today, I re-discovered this beautiful poem by a favorite poet, Diane Seuss, Love Letter. Rereading it, so many words, phrases, ideas tapped me on the shoulder, invited me it! Here’s the second half of the poem:
I’m much too sturdy now to invest in the ephemeral. No, I do not own lace curtains. It’s clear we die a hundred times before we die. The selves that were gauzy, soft, sweet, capable of throwing themselves away on love, died young. They sacrificed themselves to the long haul. Picture girls in white nighties jumping off a cliff into the sea. I want to say don’t mistake this for cynicism but of course, it is cynicism. Cynicism is a go-to I no longer have the energy to resist. It’s like living with a vampire. Finally, just get it over with, bite me. I find it almost offensive to use the word love in relation to people I actually love. The word has jumped off so many cliffs into so many seas. What can it now signify? Shall I use the word affinity like J.D. Salinger, not a good man, put into the mouths of his child genius characters? I have an affinity for my parents. An affinity for you. I will make sure you are fed and clothed. I will listen to you endlessly. I will protect your privacy even if it means removing myself from the equation. Do those sound like wedding vows? Are they indiscriminate? Well then, I am indiscriminate. I am married to the world. I have worked it all out in front of you. Isn’t that a kind of nakedness? You have called for a love letter. This is a love letter.
sturdy! I love this word — the sound and the feeling of it: I like being sturdy. My Girl (in my Girl Ghost Gorge poem, the preferred version of me — Sara, age 8).
the “gauzy, soft, sweet selves” — these gothic girls, jumping off cliffs into the sea — a very different version/vision of a girl than mine
Linking these lines to others from Seuss, I imagine one version of her girl to be the one that died when her father did — she writes about him in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. That girl’s father became sick when she was 2 and died when she was 7.
Of course, this is only one version of her girl. How many different versions of girls do I have? Do I write about?
Affinity?! Yes, I need to put that beside my list of “love?” words, accustomed, familiar, acquainted, known. Affinity = kinship, attraction, liking/affection, causal relationship, attractive force, “a relation between biological groups involving resemblance in structural plan and indicating a common origin”
Right now, I’m reading “You” as the poem and poetry.
Indiscriminate = not marked by careful distinction — ambiguous, sloppy? a (too) rough approximation?
love letter world . . . suddenly, I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me
That was fun, giving some time to these words! I am drawn — do I have an affinity? — to Diane Seuss’s words. Is it because my introduction to her was her fabulous poem about vision that begins with the line, the world, italicized? Or her ekphrastic poems, in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl?
a return to the ekphrastic!I am reminded of my past reading and writing about still life, especially with Diane Seuss. I’m imagining my “how to see” series of ekphrastic poems with a section on still life paintings and one on pastoral poems! Also, a section on artists with vision conditions or that particularly resonate for my vision: Magritte, Monet, Vincent Van Gogh. Ideally, a series of poems. But first, taking the time to gather all of the resources together, then to stay open to what could happen! I’m also imagining a section on cut-outs/silhouettes, which I studied during my shadow month.
Colette Love Hilliard and the erasure poem
Last night I bought CLH’s a wonderful catastrophe. Wow! I love it. This one reminded me of my blind spot/mood ring visual poetry:
from A Wonderful Catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard
4.6 miles minnehaha falls and back 11 degrees 100% snow-covered
A wonderful way to start the new year: a run outside, in the snow, above the gorge! There were moments when it felt easy, but mostly it was hard because of the uneven, loose slow. I think my calves are going to be sore all day from the effort! Not injured, just tired from being used to push through and keep balance in the snow. Ever since we got the 5.8 inches of snow last weekend, it has been snowing a inch of two every night. It’s beautiful, but not fun to drive in — I’ve heard; I haven’t driven in at least 5 years because of my vision. It’s not always fun to run in (and on), either. But I’m not complaining, I loved being out there today.
I encountered runners, walkers, at least one fat tire. No cross country skiers or regulars. I heard some people sledding at the park, and the light rail leaving the station — oh, and a woman saying to someone she was walking with, I just need to get the shoes and I’ll be fine. What shoes? Fine for what?
10 Things
a bright while, almost blinding — I’m glad I had some dark tree trunks to look at
snow on the side of a tree making a pleasing pattern on the textured trunk
the falls were falling and making noise — more trickle than gush
the dark gray water of the creek was moving through shelves of ice and snow
the sounds of my yak trax in the snow: crunching and clopping and clicking
the smell of a chimney smoke hovering in the air
a small dome of snow on top of a wooden fence post
empty benches
a crunching noise behind me: crusty ice in my braid hitting the collar of my jacket
overheard: an adult to a kid playing in the backyard, are you having fun?
Running up and out of the park, I had a moment of freedom and happiness — ah, to be outside moving in this fresh air and all of this snow! I thought about my wonderful, low-key New Year’s Eve with Scott and our kids, both of whom are doing so much better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning, both excited and hopeful about the next year.
Today I’m submitting my book manuscript to another press, Yes Yes Books. Before I went out for my run, I drafted a pithy description of my collection, Echolocate | | Echolocated:
“Echolocate, echolocated: to locate using echoes instead of sight, to be located by the echoes you offer. In this collection, a girl and her ghosts visit a gorge daily to locate and be located by the rocks, a river, and the open air and all who are held by it.”
Here’s a beautiful poem I discovered the other day about (not) naming.
2.5 miles river road, south/north 20 degrees 100% snow-covered
We got another dusting of snow last night, so the path was covered in an inch or two of soft, uneven snow. Harder to run through, but not slippery with my yak trax. A few times, I could feel the spikes digging into slick spots. It was beautiful and I would have loved to run longer if the surface had not been so uneven. Halfway through, I stopped to hike down to an overlook on the winchell trail. Quiet, white, too bright. I encountered a few other runners, 2 trios of walkers. A fat tire. Walking back, I saw a small kin on disc sled sliding down a hill in his yard.
10 Things
the rumble of a blue snow plow
a line of cars driving very slowly along the river
the dark curve of a retaining wall
heavy, white sky
the strong smell of weed coming from a car parked in the 44th street parking lot
a sheet of dirty snow on the road, stirred up and flung by the wheels of a mini-van
a kid sledding down a very small hill
no ice or puddles, only powdery white snow on the path and light gray ridges of snow on the road
empty benches everywhere
the vine with orange leaves on a neighbor’s fence, some of it had snow — little white spots of ice? snow? making patterns on other parts of the fence
vine with ice, snow, orange leaves, on fence / 30 dec 2025
This image is most vivid when I look at it on iPhotos. Is it because the quality is higher? When I noticed the white spots on the fence — directly, not through a phone or computer screen — these spots were only small white dots. In the photo, they look bigger and I can see small vince steps. Very cool and strange. I might make this photo my wallpaper!
With these 2.5 miles, I reached my goal of 950 miles for the year. I took some time off in May (because of my back) and I swam a lot more this summer, so I’m happy with 950. Next year, at least 1000 and the marathon again!
2025 cento: lines I love + lines I can relate to
It’s time for another cento created out of poems I gathered this year. First, I read through all of the poems and tried to pick out (at least) one line from each. Then I pasted these lines into a document, then printed it out. I cut out the lines, which took forever (and is very taxing on my eyes!).
favorite lines in a pile
Then I arranged the lines on a table, in no particular order:
2025 poetry lines
Now, it’s time to have fun! The first experiment: quickly divide the lines into 2 categories: 1. I love and 2. Does this happen to you?
an explanation: Each cut-out included the lines and the poem’s title and author in parentheses at the bottom. I tried carefully to make sure that the lines were always grouped with the title/author. But, on 2 occasions, I noticed lines that had no citation: I love and Does this happen to you? I decided to make those the titles of 2 different sections of the poem.
5.25 miles bottom of franklin and back 38 degrees humidity: 90%
Even more wet today than yesterday. I was prepared for these conditions because I asked FWA, when he got back from walking Delia and before I went out for my run, what it was like outside and he said, like yesterday but wetter. Yep. Today I ran north instead of south. Puddles everywhere. Like yesterday, I tried to avoid them, and like yesterday, I was successful until I wasn’t and then I squished squished squished for the remainder of the run. Even though they were wet, my feet weren’t cold. In fact, I was warm — dripping sweat. Saw and greeted Daddy Long Legs twice. Hello!
For the first 4 miles, listened to the gorge. For the last mile, Sight Songs (originally titled “Eye Tunes” but that name was too confusing for Siri), on shuffle. The song I remember the most was “Breakfast in America” and the twisted return of the opening lyrics:
Take a look at my girlfriend
and
Don’t you look at my girlfriend
10 Things
the surface of the river, closer up, under the I-94 bridge — glossy, looking like the surface of the ice skating rink at Longfellow on a warmer day
the not-quite-frantic, unsettled? call of a bird under the franklin bridge — one note, repeated
a wall of snow on a curb, white speckled with grayish-brown, subdued cinnamon sugar
a biker speeding down the franklin hill
another biker powering up it
a small patch of bright pink graffiti on the underside of the franklin bridge
misty, foggy, thick gray air
an empty sky with an occasional bird flying through it
voices all around — talking, laughing
a vine on a neighbor’s fence with orange leaves
vine, orange leaves on fence / 27 dec 2025
on walking
Discovered and read a beautiful essay about walking this morning: On Walking / Ira Sukrungruang.
1 — connected to place
Walking barefoot as a monk was a constant reminder of how we humans are always connected to the earth, bound by gravity, ever aware of the heft we carry—some of us more than others. It made me feel the mechanics of movement: muscles and tendons stretching and contracting, propelling the leg forward. It made me aware of the ground we walked on, the dirt and tar and tufts of grass in cracks, the unevenness of the pavement, the changes in terrain. This was spiritual walking, a bringing of awareness to our breath and our steps.
I am reminded of a line from my poem, “Girl Ghost Gorge,” it begins here, from the ground up: feet first, following
2 — an awareness of a changing climate
The environmental destruction we humans have enacted on this earth is obvious, but I didn’t take it in, I didn’t feel it, until I started walking.
Yes! Since starting to run above and beside and around and with the gorge (almost 9 full years and more than 8,500 miles), I have become more aware of the outside world and its shifts from season to season: when the leaves change and the acorns fall and the snow arrives (or doesn’t) and the floodplains are flooded and the sidewalks are cracked and the sun is covered in wildfire smoke and the bluff and a bench on its edge slowly slide into the gorge.
3 —eyes forward, ears open
After two weeks I came to look forward to taking the same path, seeing the same people. I was coming to understand devotion and repetition and humility. When a monk walks, his eyes should not look too far ahead, but neither should they be at his feet. They should be ten yards in front of him. And a monk’s ears should listen to the land waking up—the creaks and groans of the earth. The land is alive. It communicates. This earth, this world, is more than shape and matter.
Listening to the land speaking, open to how it communicates. Not staring, studying, dissecting it with our gaze.
4 — looking up and waving at a gargoyle
One afternoon in Exeter, walking to pick up Bodhi from school, I noticed how hunched I had become. It had been four months since our move, which meant I’d made that walk more than three hundred times by then, but only on this day did I notice a gargoyle staring down at me from above.
I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to look up at it. Such an odd sensation to straighten and tilt my head back. It was a rare sunny day in Exeter. I shielded my eyes with my hand and felt like a flower willing itself through the ground. Then I waved at the gargoyle. I don’t know why. Cars whizzed by. People walked on both sides of the street—parents like me, getting their kids from school. The steeple of St. Leonard’s Church was in the distance, a beautiful marker of how far it was to Bodhi’s school. I headed toward it, my head high, learning a new way of being.
This ending paragraph and the looking up and waving at the gargoyle, reminds me of a favorite poem I read early on in this log (in a july 4th, 2019 entry I mention that I’ve been trying to write about this poem for years, but I can’t find an earlier entry with a mention of it, so I’m not sure when I first discovered it):
of these old trees. Raise your heads, pals, look high, you may see more than you ever thought possible, up where something might be waving back, to tell her she has seen the marvelous.
I love her use of pals — I’ve tried to (unsuccessfully) use it in my own poem. I often think of these lines whenever I stop to look up at a tree. Have I ever waved at one? I can’t remember, but probably not.
a year in poetry
Searching this my log for mentions of pals, I encountered a cento I wrote back in 2019, out of lines from all of the poems I gathered in 2019. I like it, and I want to do this again for 2025! I love centos and putting others’ words into conversation with each other!
Here’s the “finished” draft of the 2019 cento: I’m not Asking for Much — I’m hoping that I identified where the lines came from in some document because I’m not sure I could do it now! And here’s an earlier draft: Listen
While reading through my poems gathered in January of 2025, I came across an essay — We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar — and an idea for playing with words:
Find two or three random paragraphs from two sources and copy and paste the paragraphs into a word scrambler. From this jumble of found text, draft a poem. This activity is inspired by Dodie Bellamy’s Cunt Ups.
I’m thinking of a variation on this; instead of using a word scrambler, putting the paragraphs into my word quarry — grouping all the 1, 2, and 3 syllable words and then turning them into a new poem or chant or sentence based on rock (2-syllable/1-syllable words) river (3 1-syllable words) and air (1 3-syllable word) formations.
also: Looked up Cunt Ups and was reminded of William S. Burrough’s cut-ups. Found a book about it, and requested it. Now I’m thinking about cut ups and Lisa Olstein and then Henri Matisse and cut up forms and the cutting prow.
So many ideas! It is fun to let my mind wander again, after 6+ months of structured writing, first about open swim, then about haunting/being haunted at the gorge.
So good — when you cut into the present, the future leaks out. Also — the idea of the tape cut-ups and taking a phrase and scrambling the order until it means something else: I want to try that with my rock river air chants. And, the idea of taking different entries of this log — maybe entries from one day, different years — and cutting it up, or finding the same words, or picking a phrase from each entry . . .
4.45 miles minnehaha falls and back 36 degrees humidity: 90%
Moist, thick, big puddles everywhere. I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and by my last mile I could hear my one shoe squish squish squishing. Since it was warm, it didn’t bother me. Oh — just remembered — my shoe/sock got wet at the falls — the cobblestones near the falls were full of puddles. There were a few slick spots, but mostly it was just wet.
For 3 miles, I listened to the wet wheels, whooshing, crows cawing, and people calling out to each other as I ran. For the last mile: TSwift’s Life of a Showgirl
10 Things
the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
calmly letting a walker know I was approaching from behind — right behind you/thank you! I meant to say, you’re welcome, but didn’t, then lamented my failure to exchange the you until I realized I had with my right behind YOU –if I had said, the you would have been traveled 3 times: from the-walker-as-you when I said, right behind you, to me-as-you when she said, thank you, to the walker-as-you again with, you’re welcome
overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
a clump of something not moving ahead of me on the trail — dead leaves? A darting squirrel. I studied it closely to make sure it didn’t run in front of me
a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
the trail on the bike side of the double bridge was mostly wet ice with 2 narrow strips of bare pavement that narrowed even more until not even my toe could fit in their groove
crows! just before starting my run, they were gather in the trees above me. when I stopped to start my workout on my watch, they cawed furiously, as if to say, keep moving!
Just before the run, I got an email about one of the chapbook contests I entered — back in July. I didn’t win, but I got, along with 4 other poets, an honorable mention. I’ll happily take that! The chapbook I submitted included earlier versions of several of the poems that I revised for my manuscript. I think the poems are even better now.
In the last mile of my run, a sudden thought: I should submit something for tiny wren lit’s tiny zine series. It says they’ll open again in early 2026: submit a tiny zine
safari reading list, review:
1 — contentment
Found a poem about contentment while reviewing my Safari Reading List. I’m partial to the words satisfied or enough or still, but contentment works too.
Yes, I can be content anywhere, but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair, on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk, in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost, to say I wish you could come here to the present, my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet everything I’ve found.
about this poem: “Making peace with the past has been a common theme in my work, so I decided to try to write about making peace with the present.”
Blessèd art thou, No One. In thy sight would we bloom. In thy spite.
A Nothing we were, are now, and ever shall be, blooming: the Nothing-, the No-One’s-Rose.
I love this bit of Celan’s poem and the No-one’s-Rose! No One — a someone who is No One: what type of sight do they have? We were, are, shall be nothing, blooming. I want to use this — maybe as a breathing with poem — in a collection* about the gorge/gap/bling spot.
*maybe not a collection, but a series of attempts, orbiting around the idea or feeling or experience of the Nothing in the gorge and in my vision.
Speaking of orbiting: Last night, I was trying to name/remember something, but I couldn’t, quite. I kept almost getting the right name, but I was off, approximate. As I talked, I moved my hands around in a circle, as if to indicate I was circling around the name. I called out, I’m orbiting it! I do this a lot. I wish I could remember the exact example, to make this story more understandable, but I can’t.
3 — CAConrad’s Queer Bubbles
There are some great bits in this article about Conrad and their rituals in The Paris Review:
“I love being inside the ritual,” he says. “It’s like speaking in tongues. It’s not just automatic writing … Every nuance, every adjustment to the ritual, alters the language that comes out of me.”
Exercises like these are nothing new in poetry—Conrad cites Bernadette Mayer and Charles Olson as two practitioners of similar methods—but he insists that his rituals are chiefly inspired by his childhood, specifically the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where his grandmother taught him to meditate and where he took an interest in the occult, from local water diviners to the hex signs painted on barns. But as much as his work owes a debt to Boyertown, it is a deliberate rebuke to the bigotry, violence, and oppression he found there.
I’m familiar with B Mayer’s work — a class on her list is what led me to poetry! — but I don’t know that much about Charles Olson. I should look into him more, like his archeology of morning (on a site that offers footprints not blueprints, which reminds me of my old academic slogan for my ethical/pedagogical approach: an invitation to engage, not a how-to manual) and the polis / Polis is This:
Polis is This
In his two books of (Soma)tic rituals and poems, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon and ECODEVIANCE—a third collection, While Standing in Line for Death, will be published this September—the rituals and resulting poems appear opposite one another. Because the rituals are written in the second person, at times the books read like the world’s most bizarre and inventive self-help guides, manuals for what you might call acute mindfulness. One ritual starts like this: “Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car … Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you … As soon as the car stops write 9 words as fast as you can before the train moves again … Repeat this humming and writing for 9 stops.” He credits his rituals with lifting him out of depression and grief.
The use of You — a bizarre self-help manual or how-to on mindfulness!
the blind ring project returns to haunt this log
Doing some reading about lit journals that accept visual poetry, I was introduced to the amazing erasures of Colette LH. So beautiful and wonderful. Here’s the first one I experienced:
Then I saw this one, Brain, and I started thinking about what I could do with my blind spot black-out ideas, and now I’m wondering about doing something with my peripheral. These white trails above, in (un)certainty are making me think about movement and direction and motion as it relates to my peripheral vision. Hmmm….
4.25 miles minnehaha falls and back 38 degrees 10% ice and 30% puddle-covered
Waited until the late afternoon to go out for a run; too icy this morning. This afternoon (at 3), there were lots of puddles and sun and not much ice. A good run. Even though I think I caught FWA’s cold, I had plenty of energy while I was running and felt great.
10 Things
bright sun reflecting off the windows of a house
the very strong smell of week near the 44th street parking lot
the creek was moving, but the falls was not
lots of walkers, a few runners, at least one fat tire
a walker moving over to let me pass on the cleared bike path in the park — thank you! / you betcha!
near the oak savanna, a little kid’s voice floating up from below
at least one bright yellow jacket
the river: covered with ice and snow
a line of cars waiting at the stop sign on the road coming out of wabun park and the veterans home — did a shift just end?
the clip clip clip of another runner’s ice cleats
blind spot
Yesterday I wrote about re-finding my blind spot and doing a series of erasure poems with it. Last night, I woke up with a vague idea about writing a hybrid piece (possibly to submit to a journal’s call for submission — Waxwing) that involves using and applying and reflecting on my blind spot. This morning, I’ve been spending more time thinking about it, wandering and wondering how and what to do with these ideas. Just now, a thought: even as I use a cut-out or an image of my blind spot and apply it to text, as if to demonstrate how I see, the resulting poem/prose piece/fragment can’t properly convey how it is that I do or don’t see. The difficulty with my failing/failed vision is that I can’t really see it. Well, sometimes I can see it, like when I’m talking to someone and their head is only a fuzzy, empty blur, but often I can’t. It’s more of a feeling, or sometimes it’s not anything; I don’t realize I’m seeing wrong or that I’m not seeing until it is pointed out to me. How do you convey that?
But, even if the dark outline of a blind spot doesn’t effectively represent my vision, it does do something. So I’d like to use it.
As I write this, I’m looking out my window, into the bright white and blue of the sun and snow and sky. The image is shaking or shuddering or unsettling constantly. I see pixels shifting. The entire image is not unstable — I see solid forms that aren’t moving — like a red car parked across the street, or the straight hulk of a tree trunk — but the feeling of all of it is movement and being unfinished, unsettled, or buzzing? Visual buzz?
Earlier today I was working on a movie musicals puzzle. I’m constantly amazed that I can still work on it, that I can see enough to fit pieces together, but I can. In fact, with the small bit of central vision I have left, right in the middle of the middle of my eye, I often see small details — a tiny face or eyes, a finger pointing — and can recognize where they go. Sometimes I can’t fit it in exactly, so I give it to Scott and he finds the exact spot. Vision is so strange.
several hours later: Right now, I’m starting to look through the entries I tagged, vision. I have 20 pages of them. Already with the first one, I have an idea. On jan 30, 2020 I posted the poem, Natural Forces/ Vicente Huidobro. Since then, I’ve spent a lot of time with this poem — analyzed it, memorized it, recited it while I was running. To me, it’s a great example of the myth of the power of sight. Could I fit it in an amsler grid-sized box, and apply my blind spot to it?
I tried. Made a text box the size of grid. Fit the poem in the box as many times as would fit. Printed it out. Traced my blind spot on an Amsler grid, then cut it out and placed it over the poem. Not sure I like it, but it’s a start.
blind spot experiment #1
I wonder what it would look like if I only wrote the poem once, and made it a horizontal band across the box? Maybe make the font size smaller too? What if offered a few different versions, some with larger fonts, some with smaller so a reader could see what I can/and can’t read. I’ll have to try that next time.
