5.1 miles bottom franklin hill and back 28 degrees / feels like 11 wind: 31 mph gusts
Windy and colder today. For mental strength required when I was running up the hill and into the wind. Did my reciting a poem per mile experiment: We grow accustomed; A Murmur; A lane of yellow led the eye; Tell all the truth; and It’s all I have to bring today. I struggled with the last one and the line, Be sure you count –should I forget/Some one the sum could tell. Not as easy today. I think it was the wind that made it hard.
10 Things
Hi Dave!
birds flying out of the trees, almost like leaves being scattered by the wind
a leaf swirling near the ground, looking like a darting bird
loud rustling on the edge of the trail — a squirrel? a bird? the wind?
beep beep beep the alarm on the trestle going off — not a train but some other moving thing — people walking or biking?
the stacked limestones under the franklin bridge are looking even more like a person — I bet someone has stacked them to look this way
2 e-bikes zooming past me, I watched the red lights on their saddles flashing as they disappeared
a panel of the fence is missing on the double bridge near 33rd. I’ve seen it before but only today did I wonder what happened. Did a car hit it? On the other side of the fence there’s only air and river far below
the river is just barely iced over and looking cold
overheard: I don’t know Gene’s kid
Like a lot of people, I’m trying to avoid much of the news about executive orders and project 2025. It’s a delicate balance: stay informed enough but not too much. Today the balanced was tipped to too much when I read an article about stripping women of their rights in the name of “personhood” someone shared on Facebook. It might be time to eliminate Facebook from my morning practice.
It’s a new month and time for a new challenge. After revisiting an article this morning — In Search of Distraction — I’m thinking that might be it, distraction. Or wandering or dreaming or reverie.
Here’s a line from the essay, to get me started:
Distraction is a time between times, a time in which we become momentarily subject to the non-thought inside thought. And this is the time — or one of the times — of poetry. Attention can be helpful later on as part of the process of revision, but for vision itself poets stand in need of distraction.
Breezy. Wind coming from the north. Sunny, too. Lots of shadows. Today’s run wasn’t effortless but it wasn’t hard either. Somewhere in-between. Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist for the last day of the month. Even with my headphones in, I could hear kids on the playground across the road, some hikers talking on the trail below.
Listening to the songs, I thought about the tenderness of remembering and the satisfaction of forgetting. Also thought about how we all remember things differently, and most of us inaccurately.
10 Things
the river was a patchwork of white and gray
only a few lumps of snow scattered on the grass and the trail
slick puddles
a sagging fence, casting a crooked and forlorn shadow
BLUE! sky
a few of the benches were occupied — at least 2
my favorite bench, above the “edge of the world” was empty, so was the one near folwell
ran on all of the walking paths — clear!
the sparkle of broken glass in a pile of leaves on the street in front of a neighbor’s house
a chain link fence below on the winchell trail, illuminated by the sun, on the edge, at the part of the trail that is slowly sliding into the gorge (the rubbled asphalt stretch just past 38th street)
before the run
These evenings of long light Must be high festival to them. It’s the time When the light seems tender in the needles Of the pine, the shimmer of the aspen leaves Seems kindly on the cliff face, gleams On the patches and gullies of snow summer Hasn’t touched yet. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
Reading this description of light in this beautiful poem, I’m reminded of Wednesday’s afternoon light. Stepping out on the deck around 4, I gasped as I noticed the light on the bare trees, glowing a soft green. An olive green, Scott thought. It seemed to be offering a glimpse of the future when winter was over. How should I describe that light? Not tender — dazzling? a show-stopper? But maybe tender, too. The light was soft on the trees — bathing them in light? — coaxing out them of their dreamed of leaves in the forms of the green glow.
And the creek is flush With life, streams of snow melt cascading down The glacial spills of granite in a turbulence The ouzel, picking off insects in the spray, Seems thrilled by, water on water funneling, Foam on foam, existence pouring out Its one meaning, which is flow. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
The glacial spills of granite? Water on water funneling? Existence’s one meaning: flow? Wow! I love this description of water.
Read, We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar, this morning and it got me thinking that I need to do some more strange, fun, playful experiments on here. Return to the erasures? Sentence scrambling? Pick something off of Meyer’s Please Add to this List list?
Turned randomly to a page in The Braille Encyclopedia and read “Body”.
The rest of the body works to compensate for what the eye can no longer do.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
Cohn discusses a sore neck and back, muscle spasms, headaches. Do I feel any of these things? The occasional headache. Starting these sentences, I had forgotten about the dizziness, then I remembered when I felt it — the world suddenly swimming for a moment as I tried to read and write in this entry.
Then she mentions feeling very tired —
A kind of tired that feels like most of my trillions of mitochondria have decided they’ve cooked their last energy-meal, turned off the stove, hung up their aprons, kicked off their pinching shoes, and gone to lie down somewhere. For a very long time.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
I feel tired often — maybe not as tired as Cohn. I take naps, or fall asleep mid-sentence. I have the luxury of measuring my efforts, (and lowering my expectations), not doing things that are too draining too often. Shopping is draining, especially grocery shopping. A few weeks ago, I had to stop at the end of the aisle, hang onto the cart, and close my eyes for a minute. Too many things I couldn’t quite see, lights that were too bright. Deep breaths. This used to make me anxious, but now, with the help of lexapro and the understanding that this dizziness is caused by an uncertain and overworked brain, I don’t worry as much.
after the run
After discovering James Longenbach’s poem, “In the Village,” earlier this month, I requested his collection Seafarer from the library. Here’s part 4:
from In the Village/ James Longenbach
Of ghosts pursued, forgotten, sought new— Everywhere I go The trees are full of them.
From trees come books, that, when they open, Lead you to expect a person On the other side:
38 degrees! Sun and hardly any wind and less layers. The snow is almost all melted and all the paths were clear. I repeated yesterday’s experiment: run a mile; stop to walk, pull out my phone, and recite an ED poem into it; start running again (repeat, 5 times total). Today I recited: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark; A Murmur in the Trees — to note; I Felt a Funeral in my Brain; I heard a Fly buzz when I died; and A lane of yellow led the Eye. Like yesterday, it helped me to stay steady with my pace. The lines that stuck with me the most are at the end of A Murmur in the Trees — to note:
But then I promised n’ere to tell How could I break my word So go your way and I’ll go mine No fear you’ll miss the road
I thought about this road in relation to the road in We Grow Accustomed:
A Moment — We uncertain step For newness of the Night Then fit our vision to the Dark And meet the road erect
You adjust and get back on the road, where life steps almost straight (the ending line of “We Grow”), and I’ll stay here in the Dark with the little men in their little houses and the robins in their trundle bed and this whimsical, strange world (images from A Murmur).
10 Things
my shadow, far below in the ravine near Shadow Falls
the view from the top of the hill after climbing from under the lake/marshall bridge — wide, open, iced surface
the bells of St. Thomas ringing
running on the east side, across the river from one of the schools, I could hear the kids on the playground all the way over here
my shadow, on the railing of the ford bridge — I kept looking down to the iced river, searching for more of my shadow on the shadow of the bridge’s railing
the river, near the ford bridge was all white, but further north, it was gray with white splotches
the port a potty at the Monument was covered in black graffiti and the door didn’t look like it could fully shut
close to where I heard the kids across the gorge, I noticed how steep the slope was — don’t get too close to this edge!
a man below on the Winchell trail talking to little kid (or a dog?) — momma’s coming — as a woman approached them
a kid on the playground: it’s soooo warm!
memory
Memory can edit reality in some such way and then the edited version is too good to let go. Memory makes what it needs to make.
A Lecture on Corners/ Anne Carson
I picked up Naomi Cohn’s The Braille Encyclopedia at Moon Palace last night!
Now, in my sixties, the Velcro of memory has lost its grip, glutted with lint. This makes learning braille–all its letters, punctuation, symbols, contractions, and their rules for use–puzzling. The mind’s memory fail. What takes over? Muscle memory, body memory, skin memory. My fingertip remembers more braille than my hippocampus.
I tried something new today. I picked 5 Emily Dickinson poems that I have memorized, then stopped after each mile to recite one of them into my phone. Mile 1, “Before I got my eye put out”; Mile 2, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”; Mile 3, “A Murmur in the Trees”; Mile 4, “A Felt a Funeral in my Brain”; and Mile 5, “A Heard a Fly Buzz when I died.” I didn’t have to stop right at the end of the mile, but just sometime before the next mile. It was fun and made the run go by faster. Sometimes I thought about what I had just recited as I ran, sometimes I didn’t. After “Murmur” I thought about ways to mash its lines up with “We Grow Accustomed” — maybe I’ll work on that more today?
assessment: This experiment was fun and helpfully distracting. I’ll definitely try it again!
10 Things
Hi Dave!
not much snow left on the walking path or the grass — in some places, a lumpy line of snow in the middle of the walking path from where the plow pushed the snow off of the biking trail
a few slippery spots where water was barely ice
the river was mostly frozen with a few spots of dark water
a bird singing, cheeseburger or tea kettle — I guess that’s a chickadee?
the thump of my zipper pull against by neck or chest
a fat bike laboring by — slow and steady
at least one bench was occupied — a person and two dogs
my shadow beside me — sharp and erect
another lone black glove — small
For part of the run, I focused on my rhythmic breathing: 1 2 3 in / 1 2 out. I began chanting: mystery is solved, then history is fact?, then history is wrong, then whose history is that? (which doesn’t quite fit the 3/2), whose story is told, and at whose expense?
5.25 miles bottom of franklin hill 22 degrees / feels like 12 wind gusts: 29 mph
Sunny but windy. Shadows and shaking leaves. Like most of my runs lately, it felt hard. I briefly thought about stopping at the trestle, but then I kept going instead. As I ran down the franklin hill I remembered that I’d get to check out the frozen river. It did not disappoint! The coolest thing about the surface ice was the noises it made as cars drove by on the river road — that strange, echoey boom, almost like whales communicating, that happens when ice is disturbed — I have a link to this sound somewhere on the blog, but I couldn’t find it quickly. I’ll keep searching for it.
Listened to the wind, voices, and geese as I ran north. Put in mood: energy on the way back — “Baba O’Reily”; “My Sharona”; “Renegade”; “It’s Tricky”; “Cult of Personality”; “New Attitude”. Favorite line was from “Cult of Personality” — When a mirror speaks/the reflection lies. Also thought about “New Attitude” and the line, I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes — why not, good from my hat to my shoes?
10 Things
bright blue, cloudless sky
my shadow, sharp, running in front of me
2 geese honking high in the sky — I stopped running and craned my neck to watch them fly by
empty benches
ice on the path — a dirty brown, then almost amber when the light hit it just right
voices from somewhere below, cheering somebody
the river, covered in thick ice
a person with a fancy camera stopped by the railing, taking pictures
someone walking by in the flats, having an animated conversation with someone else over the phone
a strong smell of weed — did it come from the car that just drove by or the walker with 2 dogs?
G.C. Waldrep
During my “on this day” practice, I came across a line from the poet G.C. Waldrep:
I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.”
The Earliest Witnesses
I had posted it on 26 jan 2021 because I had just encountered it on twitter and in the context of a discussion of the soul. Today I read it and wanted to know more about what Waldrep meant. I searched “G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses” and found a post on the poet (and father of Jenny Slate) Ron Slate’s site, On the Seawall: On The Earliest Witnesses.
In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs one of his most perplexing miracles. The narrator tells us that, after a blind man is “brought” to him, Jesus “put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him.” But the miracle doesn’t seem to take. For after Jesus asks the man whether he can see, the man replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” In response, Jesus lays his hands on the blind man’s eyes once more—a kind of second go at it—after which, we are told, “his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”
This story comes to mind, unbidden, in the reading of G.C. Waldrep’s The Earliest Witnesses — the poet’s seventh collection — not only because the book speaks candidly about the deterioration of sight (among other bodily maladies) but also because Waldrep’s poetry mirrors the slow and partial revelation of sight that we find in this miracle. These poems both obscure and disclose: in some lines they show us “everything clearly” — in others, “trees, walking.”
“I strode into the woods in a brute faith,” reads the first line of the first poem, “certain the forest / would give me what I needed.” Then, in a characteristic move of obfuscation, the speaker withdraws into occluded seclusion, as if from fear of speaking too plainly. “If there was a mathematics / I was all for it, math being hunger’s distaff cousin.” Here we find that tension between clear vision and partial sight that marks both our opening miracle story and so much of The Earliest Witnesses; however, in this instance, we begin with sight, only to have it dimmed immediately.
I was immediately struck by the line in the post, I see people but they look like trees walking. That’s not quite how it works for me, but, with my vision, I can imagine seeing people that way, like trees walking. I want to read the bible verse the author is referencing and think about that some more.
Searching some more for Waldrep, I found an interview with him and this great discussion:
A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.
Squinting! Mishearing or misreading or mis-seeing! The squinting makes me think of a poem by Linda Pastan or a line (I think, I’ll have to check later) from Arthur Sze. The mishearing reminds me of something I encountered during my annual review (22 july 2024) a few days ago:
the Ten Muses of Poetry — from the writer, Andrei Codescru, in his book, The Poetry Lesson. I’ve never heard of Codescru — he’s great. I found the chapter his Ten Muses are inand read it. Funny and strange and great. I wonder, would I enjoy taking a class from him? Probably.
The Ten Muses of Poetry
Mishearing
Misunderstanding
Mistranslating
Mismanaging
Mislaying
Misreading
Misappropriating cliches
Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
4.4 miles minnehaha falls and back 26 degrees / feels like 6 wind: 32 mph gusts
Windy today. As I sit at my desk writing this, I can hear the wind howling through the gaps in our screen/glass door. Ran south again to the falls. Felt tired and sluggish. Stopped a few times to walk. Listened to the wind, rustling leaves, scattered voices, cars as I headed south, my “It’s Windy” playlist on the way back north.
10 Things
a brittle brown leaf swirling and rushing ahead of me on the sidewalk
the trail was stained a grayish white with salt
a fat bike, its rider wearing a BRIGHT yellow jacket
a non-fat bike, its rider bent low against the wind
a section of the wooden fence is missing a slat and is leaning back toward the oak savanna
the lone black glove that was on the path yesterday has been moved off to the side, on top of the piled snow
3 or 4 people by the green gate blocking the steps down to the falls, one of them already on the other side (the inside) of it, the others poised to do the same
the sharp bark of a dog down near the falls
a person standing in front of the railing by the creek, posing, another person behind a camera on a tripod
a few thin splotches of ice on the concrete railing above the creek, mostly looking dull until the sun hit it, then shiny
I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran or noticing the river or hearing any birds. Not the easiest run, but I’m glad I got out there.
Yesterday afternoon, I discovered that Anne Carson gave a lecture titled, “On Hesitation.”
4.5 miles minnehaha falls 20 degrees / feels like 8
Above 0, but still felt cold. It was the wind, swirling softly in all directions, that did it. Ran south to the falls. Wasn’t sure if I’d make it all the way there — it felt difficult — but I did! The creek and the falls were almost all frozen, only a small stream buried under the ice. Looking at the falls from my favorite spot, across the way, it looked like a giant column of ice, which it was.
10 Things
a strong smell of cigarette smoke near the parking lot
thin patches of ice on the cobblestone at the park
kids’ laughter coming from across the road, at the school playground
my favorite bench, above the edge of the world, was not empty today
near the bench, the snow where someone had written “DAVIDSON” had melted
the mottled walking trail at the park — mostly white snow, with grayish asphalt splotching through
a lone black glove, dropped on the trail
a dark gray chunk of snow, upright, looking like a squirrel waiting to cross the road
a few runners, a few walkers, no bikers
glanced down at the big sledding hill at the park — not much snow and no one sledding down it
I had wanted to thinking about stillness (inspired by an entry from 21 aug 2024) or to chant triple berries but mostly I forgot. I put in a mood playlist: energy at the halfway point and focused on the music, including Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch.” Wow.
before the run
This month, I’ve been reviewing all my entries from 2024 and giving attention to remembering and forgetting and then getting in too deep with thinking and theorizing and organizing ideas around themes. Past Sara — Dr. Sara who is too enamored with theories and ideas and being clever — wants to return. Present Sara needs to figure out some ways to prevent that from happening! Yesterday I decided to take out my scrabble tiles and make anagrams out “remember forget” and “I remember to forget.”
remember forget bee or germ fret [m] more bereft germ beet form merger forge meter [brm] frog meter berm beef rot merger [m]
I Remember to Forget Got more meter fiber Orbit form tree gem bee form griot meter
What anti-theorizing thing can I do today?
A line remembered during my “on this day” practice:
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion? (Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis)
Everything I see is motion or in motion or never not in motion.
Last night we watched a Voyager’s episode in which the crew was experiencing strange symptoms — Captain Janeway had terrible headaches and couldn’t sleep; Chakotay was aging way too fast; Nelix was transforming into another species; and another red shirt went into shock then died. After 7 of 9 shifts into a different phase, she is able to witness what is happening: there are tons of people (human looking) on the ship hovering around the crew members and injecting them with needles. They are experimenting on them in the name of “medical research.” Yikes. Janeway’s headaches are not due to working too hard and not getting enough sleep or exercise, but because they are injecting her with dopamine. They keep increasing the dose to see how much she can take. I said to Scott, can you imagine if our headaches were caused by imaginary creatures messing with us? Then I started to imagine that this was the case. I also started to think about all the things we can’t see that live with us, like mites and bacteria and more. Surprisingly this didn’t freak me out.
Here is a poem I discovered yesterday. I love that first line and what it does as it follows from the title! I found it before I watched the Star Trek Voyager episode, but it is interesting to put them together to think about who/what we live with that we don’t see, or refuse to see:
Forgiveness was sitting in your kitchen when you got home, and now rests elbows on the table to watch you reach for a knife. You scrape the papery skin from a ginger root and slice it into thin coins. You think too hard about which mugs to pull from your cupboard: you might reveal too much; should you offer the one with the uncomfortable handle? Water boils. You divide the ginger evenly into both cups and pour. Spoonful of honey. You stir slowly, eyes down as though you might be able to forget. You stir too long. Forgiveness coughs politely, so you turn, place both mugs on the table, sit. Forgiveness leans forward. You lean back. You have forgotten what it is like to live with someone who eats all your cut watermelon, picks clean the skeletal vine of red grapes, shakes water spots onto your bathroom mirror without wiping them away. What thresholds of welcome have you crossed and recrossed? Most mornings, you listen for the body to move through your house and out the door before leaving your bedroom. Most nights, you ghost around each other without speaking. But now, as the rain drizzles into gloaming, you settle into your chairs, inevitable, a cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues.
And here’s part of a poem I encountered this morning that seems to fit or could be interesting to put beside “The Houseguest” and the Voyager episode:
If we could pray. If we could say we have come here together, to grow into a tree, if we could see our blue hands holding up the moon, and hear how small the sound is when it slips through our fingers into water, when the meaning of words melts away and sugarcane speaks in fields more clearly than our tongues
That small sound, those blue hands, when words melt away! To give attention, to pray!
Continuing to review past august entries, past Sara wrote this for me, January 2025 Sara:
In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.
log entry 22 aug 2024
I remember the faintness of that buoy, like the moon in the afternoon visible mostly by my belief that it was there. I also remember swimming that stretch, trying to avoid other swimmers and the ghost vines growing up from the bottom of the lake, seeming extra tall this summer. I’ll remember finally reaching that buoy and rounding it for the start of another loop, unable to see the far shore of a lifeguard or the other 2 orange buoys.
I remember the way the water glowed orange from the reflection of the buoy, or the quick flash of the smallest whisper of an orange dot, or the orange appearing only as a feeling of some disruption in the shoreline scenery — not really seen with my eyes, but registered by my brain — the idea that something was looming ahead.
I don’t remember gentle rocking, but I remember the wild ride of rounding the far green buoy and being pushed around by the water, or how the water seemed so hard to stroke in sometimes.
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.
