Tag: 10 things

jan 4/WALK

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

  1. dead, brown leaves on top of a pile of crusty snow
  2. a high-pitched, quiet whine from a truck on the next block
  3. the bare, gnarled, tall branches of the oak tree on the corner
  4. 2 green dumpsters on the sidewalk outside of Turtle Bread
  5. almost stumbling as I stepped on a small rock or hard chunk of snow
  6. a neighbor on the next block having an animated conversation with the mailman
  7. bark! — Delia the dog unexpectedly barking at them from across the street
  8. bark! bark! bark! — a dog in a backyard calling out to Delia
  9. 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
  10. 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)

jan 1/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
15 degrees / feels like 3 / flurries

2025, I’m not sure how I feel about you. Not dread, but not exuberant hope either. I guess I’m trying not to think about you and what you might bring that much. Running beside the gorge helps. Very few, what ifs, many more now and now and nows. Today’s run was great. I was surprised to see that the feels like temp was 3. It didn’t feel that cold. I guess I picked the right layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, a black fleece-lined cap with ear flaps, a gray buff, a faded green long-sleeved shirt, a bright orange sweatshirt, a purple jacket, gray long socks, black short socks, black gloves, pink and white striped gloves. At the halfway point, one pair of gloves came off.

While I ran, I thought about remembering and forgetting and decided when I returned home, my 10 things list would be of things remembered and things forgotten.

10 Things Remembered or Forgotten

  1. I remembered to look down at the river
  2. I remembered what it looked like: steel blue, a few thin sheets of ice
  3. I remembered to stop at the bench above the edge of the world to take in the openness — soft, almost still except for a single leaf fluttering and several leaves sizzling, and was the water moving very slowly or was that just the staticky buzz of my glitching cone cells?
  4. I forgot about my headache
  5. I forgot about my IT band
  6. In mile 3, I remembered my IT band and thought about how it’s impossible to fully forget your body, which is good, because why would I want to do that?
  7. I forgot the election
  8. I remembered to look carefully, and more than once, before crossing from the trail to the grassy boulevard
  9. I remembered to stop at my favorite view of the falls — the water was gushing over the side
  10. I remembered what I overheard above the falls: a dad — no hiking today, a mom: we can take a walk instead!

I suppose it’s easier to remember what you remembered, than to remember what you forgot!

Reading through a past entry from 1 jan 2019, I was reminded of how I used to gather favorite lines at the end of the year and turn them into a new poem. I’d like to do that again this year!

The poems that I’ve been writing this fall about the gorge, are mostly about water and stone, but the open space of the gorge is important too. I’d like to devote some time to it as air, as openness, as possibility, as room to breathe, as Nothingness, as mystery, as inexplicable, as . . . . Here are two different fragments that may or may not turn into something:

When water cut through
rock, sandstone wore away,
limestone broke up, and
an abundance of
air arrived.

*

When water cut through
sandstone and limestone,
it made of the rock
still standing a frame
to loosely hold the
newly formed space. And
what a space! Such an
abundance of air!
Such room to breathe and
to be! Big enough
to hold more than is
seen or imagined
or witnessed with words.

dec 30/WALK

1.5 mile walk with Delia
the gorge, from 36th to 34th
32 degrees / fog

Good job, Sara. You resisted the urge to run. A walk with Delia was wonderful. So quiet and calm and relaxed! Moist, too. I loved breathing in the cool air and almost floating through the fog. All of it, a soft dream. Occasionally I encountered others — some walkers and runners — but mostly it was just us. At one point, descending through the tunnel of trees, which isn’t really a tunnel anymore because they cut it back at some point, the only thing I could hear was a hammer pounding across the road. No cars or voices or striking feet. Wow! Several times, I felt a warm buzz.

10 Things

  1. a white sky
  2. open water
  3. wet asphalt
  4. grass covered in brown leaves
  5. a dark form descending into the ravine — silent, featureless
  6. a brown view of the floodplain forest — all slender trunks and bare branches, no river or sky poking through
  7. a runner in the neighborhood emerging from an alley in a sprint, then returning to the alley, then appearing again, then disappearing around the corner
  8. thump thump thump the striking feet of a runner across the street — the same one? I’m not sure
  9. the silvery sparkle of the sign at the 35th street overlook — is this sign new?
  10. overheard: a woman running alongside a kid on a bike, talking to the kid — you had your pink backpack and your droopy dog stuffed animal — did she say droopy, or some other word?

I wanted to think about my Ars Poetica poem as I walked, and I did, but I’m still stuck. Something about letting things breathe and be exposed to the air to see what happens and erosion and ruins. I’ll give it until the end of the year, and if I’m still stuck, I’ll put it away for a bit.

forget what you are

While reading poet’s Cynthia Cruz’s explanation of how her poem, “Dark Register” is shaped by Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit, I encountered these lines about habit:

“Habit,” in the third stanza refers to Hegel’s concept of habit: the act of repeating an action that, through this repetition, becomes second nature. For Hegel, habit implies forgetting: we forget what we are doing once the action becomes habit.

Cynthia Cruz on “Dark Register”

we forget what we are . . . . I immediately thought of Marie Howe’s beautiful poem, “The Meadow” and her lines about her dying brother:

I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.

But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan

in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget

what you are.

This forgetting also reminds me of Mary Rueffle’s reference to Levi-Strauss’ “unhitching, which I wrote about on may 31, 2023. First, my rough paraphrasing:

unhitching happens in brief moments when we can step outside of or beside or just beyond — below the threshold of thought, over and above society — to contemplate/experience/behold the this, the what it is, the essence of everything, Mary Oliver’s eternity.

Second, a quote from Levi-Strauss in Mary Ruefle:

The possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists … in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society; in the contemplating of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.

Lévi-Strauss quoted MRH page 52

Wow, all of this is making me think of something I wrote, referencing Mary Oliver, about the gorge. Initially I added it on the end of my geologic time poem, and maybe it should stay there and be extended, or maybe it should be another poem? Here are the lines:

Every day this place
erodes the belief
that rock will stand still,
is here forever,
unmoved, unmoving. 
And yet, with its slow 
slight shifts on a scale 
almost beyond her 
comprehension, these 
rocks might be as close 
as the girl can get
to eternity.

So many more connections I could make with forgiveness and forgetting and remembering and now and now and now!

dec 29/RUN

5 miles
minnehaha park and back
34 degrees / fog / humidity: 94%

Almost all of the snow, which wasn’t much to begin with, is gone. The ice, too. Hardly any wind, but plenty of moisture — the trail, the air, my face. Ran past the falls and John Stevens’ house to the VA bridge, then turned around and ran beside the falls. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, which were gushing. Put in “Billie Eilish” playlist and ran home.

10 Things

  1. mostly bare grass — the only snow were little mounds where the walking path split off from the biking path
  2. the creek water was fast and steel gray
  3. heard the train bells from across the road, then the horn tapping twice — beep beep
  4. car lights cutting through the mist/fog
  5. an older man pushing an empty wheelchair on the path
  6. glancing down at the Winchell trail north of 38th street, seeing two people walking on a part near the edge, high above the water
  7. I just wrote gray sky, no sun or shadows, but then I remembered there were a few patches of blue sky
  8. overheard: one woman walker to another — ptsd, trump, spend time with family
  9. smiling and waving to people I encountered — one good morning to another runner
  10. a man and a woman stopped at the edge of the walkway down to the bridge over the falls looking at something on a phone — I finally got it! Its back at my apartment

For the past 3 days, Scott, FWA, RJP, and I were up in Duluth. Very mild — no snow, no wind, no waves, some drizzle. Lake Superior was beautiful, especially the first night. While we were gone, I didn’t run. Today was my first day back since Thursday. My left hip is sore after the run. I should take more of a break.

I’m returning to my “Ars Poetica” poem and wanting to use this bit from Kafka for inspiration:

According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.

Not becoming one with the gorge, but striving to press deeper and deeper into it, to leave a trace/mark on it, and be marked by it.

dec 26/RUN

4 miles
trestle+ turn around
34 degrees

Yesterday I said I wasn’t planning to run again this week, but the paths were clear, the weather was above freezing, and I couldn’t resist. I nice morning for a run! Not sure how much of it was my vision and how much was moist, gray air , but everything looked extra blurry today. I didn’t even recognize Dave the Daily Walker until he greeted me by name.

10 Things

  1. happy, shouting kids somewhere on the hill between edmund and the parkway — were they sledding? I couldn’t see them, but that’s what it sounded like
  2. open water — dark gray
  3. fee bee fee bee
  4. a runner passing me from behind wearing a bright yellowish-green shirt that looked like the same one I had on under my vest and sweatshirt — was it for the 10 mile race from 5 years ago, like mine?
  5. stopped at my new favorite bench and looked down the slope at the white sands beach far below
  6. some voices down in the gorge — sounding far enough away to be on the other side
  7. the bells of St. Thomas chiming!
  8. one loud, deep bark up ahead — heard, not seen — I wonder how bit the dog was that made that sound?
  9. the walking trail is completely covered with snow — no bare walking trail until spring?
  10. more than once, the distant knocking of a woodpecker up in a tree

dec 21/RUN

3.3 miles
trestle turn around
11 degrees
75% snow-covered

Okay winter! Enough layers to keep me warm, a path that wasn’t crowded or icy, Yak trax to help me stay upright. The run wasn’t the easiest, but it might be the slowest. I’m stopped to walk more than I used to. Partly to admire the view, but also because I’m tired after a 1000+ miles of running this year. Time for a break, I think.

10 Things

  1. fee bee fee bee — a black-capped chickadee!
  2. the tight crunch of my feet striking and lifting off of the ground
  3. in several places, big mounds of snow off to the side, pushed their by a parks’ plow
  4. open water
  5. where the path is plowed, only on the bike trail, the snow is packed down or gone. Narrow strips of almost bare pavement have appeared on the edges
  6. where the path is not plowed, on the walking trail. the snow is loose and high enough to be difficult to run through
  7. 2 city plows on the street, rumbling down edmund
  8. I stopped slightly short of the trestle because someone was there fiddling with a bike, standing just where I wanted to stop to admire the view
  9. the sky was a bright white, not from sun, but from snow
  10. stopped at my new favorite bench — the view below was all white with thin brown lines and looked cold and alone

I made some progress on my latest section of Haunts this morning! Slowly, it’s turning into something. As I ran, I wanted to think about feral forms and forms that resist complete domestication and nets as forms. Did I? I’m not sure. Now that I’m back home, I plan to read a chapter in Lydia Davis’ collection, Essays One, about the unusual forms she uses in her writing. I happened upon this chapter by accident. Taking a brief break to think through what I was writing, I looked over at my bookshelf and noticed its awesomely green cover. So I picked it up and found “Forms and Influences.” Nice!

The poem of the day at Poetry Foundation was from Jenny Xie’s Eye Level. I’m pretty sure I checked this collection out several years ago, but I don’t remember this poem. One short section from it helped open a door for me into my poem:

If there is a partition between
the outer and inner worlds,
how is it that some water in me churns
between the mountain ranges?

How is it we are absorbed so easily
by the ground—
(from Long Nights/Jenny Xie)

dec 20/RUN

3.35 miles
locks and dam no. 1
12 degrees
99.9% snow-covered

It snowed yesterday. 5.5 inches of soft, powdery stuff. Today it’s colder and the snow has compacted. With my yak-trax it wasn’t too difficult to run on. No slipping. Tiring, though. And beautiful! For the first mile, the river was open and then it was covered — one half had ice and snow, the other sparkles.

10 Things

  1. sharp, dark shadows — mine, behind me for the first half, in front for the second
  2. the only bare stretch of pavement was on the biking side of the bridge, up against the wall, where it is sheltered and covered in dead leaves
  3. encountered at least 3 runners
  4. the loud voices of some construction workers, joking with each other
  5. a deep cough by one of the workers
  6. everywhere, small ledges and wedges of snow
  7. some dirt sprinkled on the path to make it less slippery
  8. the bones of fallen trees, covered with snow in the ravine
  9. a bench on the hill above the edge of the world, at just the right angle to face the sun
  10. a screeching bluejay high in a tree

I’m working on a section of my poem about form. At some point during the run, I thought about searching for forms that can hold my words — but not too tightly — and my messy, layered thoughts and feelings. Earlier this morning, I was thinking about partial forms and illusory forms and unreliable forms — the fuzzy forms my brain creates, the unnatural form of the river. I haven’t quite figured out how to tie them all together.

As part of my focus on forms that seem natural but aren’t, I’ve been thinking about and trying to find an article about the Apostle Islands and re-wilding. This morning I finally found it again! The Riddle of the Apostle Islands

dec 15/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
36 degrees
70% ice-covered

A great temperature — mild — but not great surface conditions. Neighborhood sidewalks and the trail had a thin layer of ice with only a few clear patches. The worst stretch was at the falls. I stopped and walked in the snowy grass for a few minutes. But, I didn’t fall. If the conditions had been better, I would have gone for a few more miles. Oh well, at least I got out there. It felt good to be outside, above the gorge. Fresh, cool air, a moving body, the river.

10 Things

  1. a laughing kid somewhere across the road — not seen, only heard
  2. the river, some of it open water, some ice, all of it gray
  3. a runner in BRIGHT yellow shoes
  4. a lot of the snow that fell last week is gone, now there’s grass and brown leaves all over the ground
  5. a slick path near the falls parking lot — I didn’t feel nervous that I’d fall, but my feet weren’t getting any traction
  6. near the overlook by the falls, dirt or grit of something had been used to make it less slippery
  7. the falls were gushing
  8. the dirt trail in the small wood near the ford bridge was visible and inviting and cleared of snow
  9. stopped at a bench above “the edge of the world” — admired the clear, colorless view of the river
  10. can’t remember where, but I encountered a faint smell — tangy, sour — of the sewer

Finished another section of my poem yesterday. It’s very exciting to have found a way to put all these words together. How many more section do I have in me before january? Yesterday’s section is titled, Geologic time, and it’s about experiencing time at the gorge on a longer, deeper, slower scale.

Here’s discussion of ekphrasis that I’d like to remember and return to when I finally get to my ekphrasis, how I see, project:

Some of the “paintings” and “photographs” are purely ekphrastic, in the sense that the images, associations, and overall tone were conceived in the moment of looking at a certain artwork hung in a museum or in my memory. Others are more of a collapsing between that moment of looking and earlier or later situationally unrelated impressions; some poems contain a dueling ekphrasis in which impressions of multiple artworks blend. So, yes, most refer to a specific artwork(s), but then the question becomes: What is ekphrasis in the pure sense? And what does pure even mean—another something that Heti can weigh in on. Doesn’t all ekphrasis—the act of looking, and reading, and possibly “interpreting” a text—include a necessary degree of subjectivity and, therefore, can’t it help but become saturated with personal associations and allusions? 

Lindsay Turner and Stella Corso

random note for future Sara: Scott and I are rewatching all of The Brady Bunch. It’s been 10 years and I still think Mike and Carol are the worst parents in the world. Also, my least favorite character is Bobby, and my favorite is Alice. I was going to write that Jan was my favorite but then I remember the season 2 episode when she plays practical jokes on everyone. She’s obnoxious.

how I don’t see yellow

Yesterday on Instagram, I looked at a block of text and couldn’t see that part of it was circled in bright yellow until I shifted my eyes to the left or right. Straight on, no circle. Look slightly to the left, yellow circle. I took a screen shot of it so I could post it here as an example of how I don’t see yellow.

dec 11/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
11 degrees / feels like -7
100% snow-covered

The coldest run of the year so far. It didn’t feel like 7 below to me with all of my layers: 2 pairs of running tights, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, my warmest winter jacket, a buff, a hat, a pair of gloves, my thickest pair of mittens. The thing I’d like to remember most about the run was the river, burning white in one spot. Wow! As I ran south, I could see it sparkling through the trees.

10 Other Things to Remember

  1. the banks on the east side of the river were glowing white with snow
  2. crunch! creak! my foot stepping down in the snow — the crunch for the foot striking, the creak for it lifting off
  3. other peoples’ foot prints in the snow, all over the trail
  4. running on stretches of the falls path where no one else had been, looking down at the untouched white, like a blank page ready to be written on
  5. my shadow when the sun was out: sharp, in front of me
  6. my shadow when the sun was behind clouds: soft, faint, only the hint of contrast
  7. the falls were rushing over the limestone edge — all water, no ice today
  8. the sound of a plow on the path somewhere across the park. later, its aftermath: a cleared path
  9. an empty parking lot at the falls
  10. a big tree, felled in the ravine below the double bridge — was it my favorite fall tree — the one that turns a bright orange? no — whew!

Yesterday I finished a draft of another haunts section and I was wondering if I was done (for now) with writing about girls and ghosts and the gorge. Then this morning, re-reading my post from dec 11, 2023, I came across this line:

At one point on my run back, I suddenly felt a beautiful ache of emotion and thought: tender. Yes, I need to include a few lines in my haunts poem about feeling tender as I run — maybe in contrast with tough and the callouses I mentioned last week (6 dec 2023)?

The poem I finished yesterday was about being tender and, although callouses are not in the poem, they inspired it. I started thinking about how time works on this blog, how it took a whole year to take up that suggestion, and how that is often the case here. Things move slower, and not always forward but looping back and returning again and again to ideas. Then I thought about gorge time and Lorine Niedecker’s geologic time. A new section of my poem to write — on my practice and time and looping back to ideas and experiences!

dec 9/RUN

2.4 miles
2 trails
39 degrees

A quick run with Scott. It felt colder than 39 because of the wind. Scott talked about an annoying problem with moving a client to a different server and I talked about my current poem and where to go with it. Then Scott mentioned a small monitor he wants to get and how, of the four options, 3 cost $`100 with $25 shipping and one cost $110 with $15 shipping. I wondered which option people respond to more, and this thinking about how people chose reminded me of the latest If Books Could Kill podcast about the book, What’s the Matter with Kansas?, and why people vote the way the do. Of course this led to a discussion about the current state of politics and how we’re both doing (surprisingly okay and trying to protect our mental health).

10 Things

  1. the river is more open today but still different versions of gray
  2. the wrought iron fence is bent in the middle and at the top — what happened? we noticed a thick tree branch on the other side of the fence
  3. a somewhat subdued din of laughing and yelling at the playground
  4. a man on a bike unwilling to move over and give us runners and walkers the chance to pass each other
  5. a steady line of cars at the 3-way stop suddenly eased up as we approached — clear sailing across!
  6. a dog with their human turning down the steep-ish dirt path on the far end of the 35th street parking lot
  7. at the end of the run, walking home: the sound of woodpecker high in a tree (heard, never seen, although we both tried to find the bird)
  8. knowing that the wind was at our backs when I saw leaves flying towards us
  9. running by the green water fountain in the parking lot and wondering if there was any way that it was still on — not because I wanted any water, but just because I was curious
  10. sometimes the sun was out, and sometimes it was behind the clouds — what did the clouds look like? Did I even check?

where to take my poem

Where it ends now:

Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, soften her
hard shell and cause cracks
that start small then spread
then split her open and
able to feel more
of everything and
everyone here, now
and before.

Talking to Scott while we ran, I wondered if I wanted to end here or write about a section of the trail just north of the trestle that was repaved a few years ago, but cracked open again in less than a year, and then was patched/resealed earlier this year but is now cracked again. I keep thinking about this section. Why? Maybe it’s something about the endless cycle of crack and reseal and the belief that eventually no seal will stop the slope from sliding down into the gorge. Here, at this spot, is evidence of eroding ground and the opportunity to witness time passing on a different scale. Or, maybe it’s a particularly interesting (at least to me) example of how a cracked surface looks and acts. Is there any connection to my small cracks that spread and split? I don’t know.

As I continued talking with Scott, I mentioned Wittgenstein and his need to get off of smooth ice, where it’s difficult to walk, and back on rough ground where friction helps us move. Then I talked about how I don’t like running over cracks and appreciate when they’re repaired, but I don’t often notice smooth pavement. I orient myself on the path by the cracks. The cracks are where the stories are.

And now I’m thinking about how you can’t leave a trace on smooth, sealed asphalt — as opposed to footprints in mud or tamped grass or rutted dirt. Also cracks are where the ground/earth/flowers can poke through. And, I’m reminded of daylighting and how some people/groups are advocating for freeing water from being buried under cement:

the exhumation of streams from underground and reintroduction of them to the surface. There is ample research-based evidence for what seems intuitively true: natural waterways—meaning, those that flow through the topography of a landscape and not through a sewer—support healthier ecosystems than those encased in concrete darkness. Daylighting brings benefits to water quality that include nutrient retention, prevention of algal blooms, and overall more supportive environments for a diversity of species. It also keeps clean water out of the sewer system, where, currently, huge volumes of it unnecessarily go through the sewage treatment process, a waste of resources that can also cause sewers to overflow.

Reaching the Light of Day/ Corinne Segal

Now I’m thinking about management and maintaining and conservation and how this cracked path and its perpetual repair is where many different elements are entangled: park workers trying to maintain safe paths, a shifting and eroding ground — due to the “natural” instability of the area and chemicals from local lawns in the groundwater and seeping into the soil, overuse or misuse by visitors, the impact of heavy traffic on the parkway from commuters.

Where to go with all of this? Unsure, I returned to the part of my poem that’s inspiring this wander and I was struck by this bit:

able to feel more
of everything and
everyone here, now
and before.

A reminder: the cracked path doesn’t have to be an exact metaphor for my cracking open. It doesn’t have to be a metaphor at all. It can be another layer to this idea of this land as a work of art, as crafted/made/shaped into something beautiful (which does not = pretty) that enable us to feel things deeply. I’d like to bring in 2 things I mentioned in my rambling: 1. smooth asphalt doesn’t leave a trace, doesn’t tell a story but cracked asphalt can/does and 2. the process of cracking and sealing and cracking again enables us to witness time passing on a different scale; it makes visible what was invisible — too slow and slight to notice.

Now, time to try and fit these ideas into a few 5 syllable lines!