Tag: 10 things

may 15/RUN

5 miles
veterans’ home loop + extra
56 degrees

A beautiful morning, a difficult run. Not sure why, but I feel tired, fatigued. It might be allergies or warmer temperatures or low iron? Whatever it is, I found it hard to keep running in the second half. I stopped a few times to walk. Oh well, still great to be out there (somewhat) early, absorbing the gorge.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the green is filling in, the view is disappearing
  2. heard some noises below me, in the ravine by the 44th street parking lot. Was it people camping down there now that it’s warm? I didn’t see any tents
  3. the hollow knock of a woodpecker’s beak, echoing out over the gorge
  4. the falls, gushing and roaring, spilling over the limestone ledge
  5. 2 people stopped at the stone slabs etched with Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” Were they reading the lines?
  6. crossing the small bridge just above the falls, 3 kids taking a selfie and a biker next to his bike
  7. running past the wrought-iron green benches sprinkled along the trail, I noticed the sun illuminating one half of each bench — perfect for a pair where one person wants sun, the other shade
  8. heard the fake dinging of the recorded bell on the train as it approached the station
  9. running over the high bridge that leads to the Veterans’ home, I could hear the fast moving water in the creek
  10. a runner was doing hill training at the locks and dam no. 1 — maybe I should try that?

I don’t remember noticing the river — was it sparkling in the sun? Also, didn’t see any regulars or roller skiers or big groups of bikes with their whirring wheels sounding like drones. No irritating bugs (yet) or path hoggers or big packs of runners — the most I saw was 4 who ran single-file as they encountered me. No radios blasting out of bike speakers or TED talks/MPR out of smart phones. No fragments of conversation to wonder about. No sewer smells or big fallen branches to hurdle. No surreys. Not even one good morning to anyone.

Yesterday I began listening to an old On Being interview with Braiding Sweetgrass author Robin Wall Kimmerer. Here are a few great passages so far:

1

Kimmerer: One of the difficulties of moving in the scientific world is that when we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, Well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it and put a Latin binomial on it, so it’s ours. We know what we need to know.

But that is only in looking, of course, at the morphology of the organism, at the way that it looks. It ignores all of its relationships. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously, if we just think about them as physical elements of the ecosystem.

2

…attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity. 

3

What I mean when I say that science polishes the gift of seeing — brings us to an intense kind of attention that science allows us to bring to the natural world. And that kind of attention also includes ways of seeing quite literally through other lenses — rhat we might have the hand lens, the magnifying glass in our hands that allows us to look at that moss with an acuity that the human eye doesn’t have, so we see more, the microscope that lets us see the gorgeous architecture by which it’s put together, the scientific instrumentation in the laboratory that would allow us to look at the miraculous way that water interacts with cellulose, let’s say. That’s what I mean by science polishes our ability to see — it extends our eyes into other realms. But we’re, in many cases, looking at the surface, and by the surface, I mean the material being alone.

But in Indigenous ways of knowing, we say that we know a thing when we know it not only with our physical senses, with our intellect, but also when we engage our intuitive ways of knowing — of emotional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. And that’s really what I mean by listening, by saying that traditional knowledge engages us in listening. And what is the story that that being might share with us, if we knew how to listen as well as we know how to see?

4

…science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them. 

may 9/RUN

3.3 miles
trestle turn around +
65 degrees / humidity: 70%
wind: 18 mph / gusts: 30 mph

So much wind! As I neared the river, a surprise gust swept through and ripped my visor off my head. Luckily, that was the worst thing the wind did. No knocking down thick branches onto my shoulders. No pushing me off the edge of the gorge. Just a few big gusts, and a wall to run into after I turned around at the trestle.

The wind and the humidity distracted me from noticing much else. Did I even look at the river? One thing I do remember noticing: the green in the floodplain forest is thickening. Already the view through to the river is gone in that spot. I also noticed the welcoming oaks. They’re still bare and gnarled.

Near the end of my run, when I had one hill left and wanted to be done, I chanted some of my favorite lines from Emily Dickinson again: “Life is but life/Death but death/Bliss is but bliss/Breath but breath.” It helped!

10 Things I Noticed While Running*

*4 thoughts that distracted me from noticing + 6 things I still noticed despite the distractions

  1. my left hip is a little tight
  2. it is very humid
  3. I hate my sinuses and allergies; I wish I could breathe fully through my nose
  4. I wish I had worn a tank top. I’m so glad I didn’t wear that sweatshirt I almost put on because I was cold in the house!
  5. an intense floral scent — lilac, maybe?
  6. only a few big branches down near the trail
  7. a woman walking and pushing a stroller, a dog leash in one hand, a dog stretched across the trail
  8. several walkers dressed for winter in coats and caps
  9. an inviting bench perched at the edge of the gorge, taking in the last of the clear view before the green veil conceals it
  10. the creak of some branches in the wind: another rusty door opening!

This final thing I mentioned noticing, the door, made me want to find another door poem, so I did:

Doors opening, closing on us/ Marge Piercy

Maybe there is more of the magical
in the idea of a door than in the door
itself. It’s always a matter of going
through into something else. But

while some doors lead to cathedrals
arching up overhead like stormy skies
and some to sumptuous auditoriums
and some to caves of nuclear monsters

most just yield a bathroom or a closet.
Still, the image of a door is liminal,
passing from one place into another
one state to the other, boundaries

and promises and threats. Inside
to outside, light into dark, dark into
light, cold into warm, known into
strange, safe into terror, wind

into stillness, silence into noise
or music. We slice our life into
segments by rituals, each a door
to a presumed new phase. We see

ourselves progressing from room
to room perhaps dragging our toys
along until the last door opens
and we pass at last into was.

may 8/RUN

5k
double bridge + tunnel of trees
53 degrees / light rain

It’s raining most of the day, but I managed to get out to the gorge and run without getting too wet. For the first time in 2 months (I checked my log entries), I listened to music: Beck, Nur-d, Harry Styles, ACDC, Billie Eilish. An excellent distraction.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. someone in shorts (like me), running fast and effortlessly
  2. 2 women running slow and steady and spreading across the walking path
  3. a runner with a dog
  4. a walker with a dog
  5. an older man, half running, half walking
  6. the big cracks in the asphalt from the savanna to 44th street, have rings of white spray paint around them that have recently been redone. The crack with the ring that looks like a tube sock seems to have shifted a bit farther from the walking path, closer to the bike path
  7. 1 stone stacked on another, a 3rd stone beside them on the ancient boulder
  8. more light green leaves on the trees in the floodplain forest
  9. no headlings on the cars driving on the river road
  10. an older man, slowly jogging on edmund. As I approached him, I waved. He said something but I couldn’t hear it with my headphones on

It’s Mother’s Day, and ever since my mom died in 2009, I haven’t liked this holiday. But yesterday, Scott and I went to Gustavus to take our son out for lunch (hooray for warm weather and patios!) and to pick up some of his stuff before he moves out of his dorm and returns home in two weeks, and he was so happy and kind and smart and excited about life that I’m not sad today but grateful and hopeful. What a wonderful human he is! His energy is infectious and inspiring and makes me want to be my better, happier, hopeful self, even in the midst of so much terribleness in the world. Such a great gift for Mother’s Day!

Speaking of energy I need, I want to be the believing bird in this poem:

For the Bird Singing before Dawn/ Kim Stafford

Some people presume to be hopeful
when there is no evidence for hope,
to be happy when there is no cause.
Let me say now, I’m with them.

In deep darkness on a cold twig
in a dangerous world, one first
little fluff lets out a peep, a warble,
a song—and in a little while, behold:

the first glimmer comes, then a glow
filters through the misty trees,
then the bold sun rises, then
everyone starts bustling about.

And that first crazy optimist, can we
forgive her for thinking, dawn by dawn,
“Hey, I made that happen!
And oh, life is so fine.”

may 6/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
60! degrees

60 degrees this morning with lots of sun and birds and budding trees! As Scott laments (or jokes, or both), this is our one week of spring. Next week summer begins. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Counted 3 stones stacked on the big boulder. Noticed the green creeping in below, in the floodplain forest. Running north, the river was blue, south brown. I think I heard some rowers, but never saw them. Greeted the river at the bottom of the franklin hill. It was moving swiftly. Ran, then walked, then ran again back up the hill. Decided to try something different by heading down to the Winchell Trail. This stretch, between franklin and the white sands beach is steep and slanted. I stopped running and walked carefully, as far from the edge as I could.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. running in the neighborhood, nearing the entrance to the river road trail at 36th, I watched as a truck sped through the 3 way stop without even a pause. Glad I wasn’t a few feet closer!
  2. lots of black-capped chickadees calling out, “Fee bee/fee Bee”
  3. I think Mr. Morning! mornied me
  4. the water near the franklin bridge had streaks of foam
  5. a mix of sounds: a dog barking, my feet striking the ground, my breathing — not completely relaxed, but not labored either, a saw buzzing, car wheels whooshing, quiet thoughts in my head echoing
  6. a person on a hoverboard (is that what they’re called?) whizzed past me near the lake street bridge
  7. people sitting on the benches dotting the rim of the gorge
  8. one of the oak trees near the old stone steps was shrugging its limbs at me
  9. a bug — a bee? a fly? — bounced off of my baseball cap
  10. running above the gorge, I noticed some people below me slowly making their way up the steep slope — what did I notice? Not whole people, just a head or a hat or a flash of something that made me think, “people are down there on the steep slope”

I’m working on a blog post about this log to promote my summer class at the Loft. As I ran, I thought about how much the gorge and this habit/practice of running + noticing + writing about it has transformed my life. Almost all of my writing, and much of my joy, has been because of it. It has opened so many doors into other worls, or back into worlds I once inhabited but left, or which I was forced out of. I’ve found poetry and birds and layers of rock and water and a way back to teaching. All of these thoughts came in a quick flash, along with a deep sense of gratitude.

Yesterday I listened to another great VS. podcast episode. This one was with Shira Erlichman. Early on, she said this:

I like in my day to have those boundaries and boundlessness. Like, okay, if I just have five minutes before I go mail a letter down the block, like, what can I squeeze into that time, or if I’m about to meet with a student, and I have 15 minutes, let me go edit a poem, because I’m going to be urgent as hell, while I edit that poem in that boundary, you know?

Then, today as I waited, as I always do, for my teenager to finish getting ready, come downstairs, go out the door, and off to high school, I had the idea of applying Erlichman’s limited minutes to my situation. My minutes — these excruciating minutes, sometimes 5 or 10 or 15 or more — are terrible. Reminding my daughter of the time, threatening her with punishment, attempting to reason never work. Her ability to resist time is impressive and often feels like it’s slowly destroying me. What if I used those minutes to try and write some lines of poetry? This fits with Erlichman’s idea and also with Bernadette Mayer’s suggestion in Please Add to this List to “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial”.

And here’s a great poem by Maya C. Popa:

Love: “Never the yellow,
hula hooped in black, little engine left running late
into the darkness.”

april 27/RUN

3.85 miles
marshall loop
38 degrees

Still wearing running tights and winter vest, but it’s getting warmer and sunnier and spring feels almost here. I warmed up quickly and had a good run.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a new neighbor has repositioned a drain pipe so that water from their basement dumps out on the sidewalk I take for almost every run, soaking it. A few weeks ago, when it was colder, this water quickly turned to ice, now it’s only an irritating puddle
  2. running west over the lake street bridge, the river was broad and blue and rippling
  3. running east, the river was brown and flat
  4. no smells from Black Coffee, at the top of the marshall hill
  5. the branches of the trees reaching up from below the trail on the east side looked silver and dead or dormant or nowhere close to sprouting leaves
  6. wind rustling through some dead leaves, but no sound of water above shadow falls
  7. don’t remember hearing any birds or seeing any squirrels
  8. they are doing some sewer work near 7 oaks — I heard the beep beep beep of a truck backing up, then saw a huge concrete cylinder waiting to be buried below the street — how long will all of this take?
  9. encountered at least 3 pairs of walkers — I think I heard some of their conversations, but I can’t remember any words now
  10. my zipper pull was banging against my shirt at the beginning of my run, making a dull thud that I couldn’t not hear. Did it stop, or was I able to tune it out?

Things I Didn’t Notice, either because I forgot or they weren’t there: geese, black-capped chickadees, crows, dogs, anything green, other runners, purple flowers, roller skiers, sewer smells, planes, the sky, clouds, my own breathing

Writing this list of things I didn’t notice, I suddenly remember something I almost forgot: bird shadows! At least twice, I noticed the shadows of incredibly fast moving birds, passing below me. Very cool and very fast! I wondered, were these birds being helped by the wind, or were they just that fast?

Yesterday I checked out Merlin Sheldrake’s Entangled Life from the library. I’ve read the introduction so far and I’m really enjoying it. A few things to remember:

Our bodies (we) are ecosystems, composed of — and decomposed by — an ecology of microbes.

Biology — the study of living organisms — has been transformed into ecology — the study of relationships between living organisms.

I came across many complicated relationships between field biologists and the organisms they studied. I joked with the bat scientists that in staying up all night and sleeping all day they were learning bat habits. They asked how the fungi were imprinting themselves on me. I’m still not sure. But I continue to wonder how, in our total dependence on fungi — as regenerators, recyclers, and networkers that stitch worlds together — we might dance to their tune more often than we realize. 

Scientists are — and have always been — emotional, creative, intuitive, whole human beings, asking questions about a world that was never made to be catalogued and systematized. 

april 21/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin loop
45 degrees

Sun! Warmth! Spring! Felt much warmer than 45 degrees, at least once I warmed up. I remembering now, as I write this, that I was chilly for the first 10 minutes.

15 Things I Noticed:

  1. there were 3 stones stacked on top of each other on the big boulder heading down into the tunnel of trees
  2. water was dripping or streaming out of the limestone on the st. paul side — I didn’t see it, but heard it
  3. my feet were shshshshshshing as I ran over grit on the edge of the path on the franklin bridge
  4. one laminated notecard was still attached to the railing on the lake street bridge. It was the one I stopped to read last week: “your story doesn’t have to end.” What happened to the others? Why was this the only kept?
  5. at least one runner was wearing shorts
  6. the wind was in my face as I headed north on the west side, at my back heading south on the east side
  7. there were no rowers on the river and no roller skiers on the path
  8. the edge of the paved path was white. I decided it was stained from salt, not covered in lingering ice or snow — too warm
  9. the walking path under the lake street bridge on the east side is still closed off — I think Scott said the path had crumbled there. Can they (will they) fix it?
  10. there was a tree trunk down on the winchell trail that looked like a sitting person, at least to me
  11. the shadow of a bird crossed over me. I looked up but couldn’t see it in the sky
  12. lots of honking geese, sometimes the sound of their honks became indistinguishable from a yelling kid or a moving car
  13. a peloton of 6 or 7 bikes passed me. Their spinning wheels were so loud! Spinning, whirring, rumbling. My sudden thought: how loud the 200+ bikes I see at the bike races I watch must be!
  14. a deep voice off the side, carrying clearly across the road, cutting through everything, almost rattling my skull
  15. the top of a split rail fence at a steep part of the path is missing — how did that happen?

I was planning to do a list of 10, but I kept remembering more things that I noticed. I like this exercise as a way to remember things from my run.

before the run

For every other “before the run” I’ve done, I write it in a saved post before I go out for my run. Today, I was busy reading Anna Tsing’s The Mushroom at the End of the World, and didn’t have time. It takes some time to read and post all of the stuff I’m thinking about before the run. Maybe too much time? Now, after the run, I don’t have much time either, so I’ll keep this brief. Just listing a few things that I read/did before the run:

Finished re-memorizing Katie Farris’s “What Would Root”

Re-visited Farris’s beautiful poem:

In the Event of My Death/ Katie Farris

What used to be
a rope descending
my vertebrae to the basement
of my spine
grows thin.

In solidarity with my chemotherapy,
our cat leaves her whiskers on
the hardwood floor,
and I gather them, each pure white parenthesis
and plant them
in the throat of the earth.

In quarantine,
I learned to trim your barbarian
hair. Now it stands always on end:
a salute to my superior barbary skills. In the event
of my death, promise you will find my heavy braid
and bury it–

I will need a rope
to let me down into the earth.
I’ve hidden others
strategically around the globe, a net
to catch my body
in the wearing.

Thought about nets and this passage from The Mushroom at the End of the World:

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. Fungi are diverse and often flexible, and they live in many places, ranging from ocean currents to toenails. But many fungi live in the soil, where their thread-like filaments, called hyphae, spread into fans and tangle into cords through the dirt. If you could make the soil liquid and transparent and walk into the ground, you would find yourself surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae (137).

Thought about imagining the soil was liquid and transparent and then entering it, surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae. What if I could swim in the soil? Swim through these nets of fungal hyphae?

Wondered about networks and the comparisons Tsing describes between fungi networks and the internet (the wood wide web) and the infrastructure of highway systems. What are some key differences between how the internet and highways work?

during the run

Thought about nets and what they do, what they’re for, as I ran. Nets can trap and confine things, like fish, but they can also hold things — carry, hold together, be a container for, not sealed or airtight but open with many holes, ways to breathe. I thought about these nets as loosely holding organisms/selves together without sealing them into a self-contained, separate Subject.

after the run

There’s a lot to ruminate over with entanglement and fungi and mutuality as a starting point instead of competition. I need to sit with all some more, and maybe do some writing around/with a few lines from the book. I’m hoping to turn my thoughts into a poem for an call for work on entanglement.

In my notes in Plague Notebook, Vol 11 I made a list of words related to nets:

  • weave
  • cover
  • crossing, cross over
  • holds things, gathers things
  • tangled
  • knotted
  • a web, a weaving
  • safety net

march 26/RUN

4.8 miles
Veteran’s Home Loop
22 degrees / feels like 11
wind: 14 mph / 22 mph gusts

Sunny and cold and windy. Wore lots of layers: vest, jacket, long-sleeved shirt, tights, gloves, buff, winter cap. My watched died 1 1/2 miles in so I don’t know exactly how far I ran or how fast. It doesn’t really matter. Ran to the falls, over the creek, under the arbor, behind John Stevens’ House, across the tall bridge, up to the bluff, beside the river, through the edge of turkey hollow, past Beckettwood with its bright red sign that looks newly painted (or brighter in the early spring sun). A nice run. I didn’t feel fantastic the entire time, but not miserable either. And now, being done, I feel glad to have gone outside in this blustery weather.

Thinking about this line I reread this morning before my run:

your eyes are made mostly of movement

Dart / Alice Oswald (45)

I deduced to make this my task for noticing the world on my run today: What is moving on my run (besides me)?

10 Things I Noticed: Movement

  1. swirling leaves (seen)
  2. a woodpecker’s bill rapidly pecking on hollow wood (heard)
  3. the rush of fast-moving air on my arm (felt)
  4. Minnehaha Creek bouncing off of the limestone ledge then falling over the falls (seen)
  5. the river moving swiftly downstream under the Ford Bridge, encouraged by the wind (seen)
  6. dead leaves in a tree, shaking (heard)
  7. a shadow barely creeping over the creek under the tall bridge (seen)
  8. a black truck crossing the bridge then turning right (seen)
  9. many runners, including one moving slightly slower than me over by the gorge, as I ran on Edmund (seen)
  10. a flag at half mast (for Madeline Albright) waving gently (I expected it to be flapping in this wind, but it wasn’t) (seen)

No flashes. And the shadows I did see, tree trunks, lamp posts, stop signs, were all still. No darting squirrels, or dancing water, or soaring birds.

One other imagine I’d like to remember: the big rock that stands next to the lonely and inviting bench — the one I always wanted to stop at but never did during my early pandemic runs — looked like it had inched closer to the path. This rock is BIG so this is very unlikely. A closer look: its shadow was creeping onto the trail.

Back to movement. Here are two poems that fit with the theme of movement and eyes. One of them I read today, the other I posted a few months ago:

The Rock that Is Not a Rabbit/ Corey Marks

The rock that is not a rabbit suns itself
in the field, its brown coat that isn’t fur
furred with light. The rock that isn’t a rabbit
would be warm to a palm but wouldn’t
quicken or strain from touch. It doesn’t ache
with hunger or pine with rabbit-lust,
doesn’t breathe the world in, translating
scent into some rabbit understanding.
The world is beyond its understanding.
And yet the rock that is not a rabbit will
outlast the hawk banking above, the fox
sloughing free of its den, the wheel nicking
off the road to disturb the gravel berm,
the mower coughing up the neighbor’s yard.
Even so, its ears fold back against its body
as if to make itself small, a secret,
though when a breeze disorders the grass,
the rock’s stillness appears like wild motion.

Had to look up berm:

noun

a flat strip of land, raised bank, or terrace bordering a river or canal.

a path or grass strip beside a road.

an artificial ridge or embankment, e.g., as a defense against tanks.”berms of shoveled earth”

Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis from Space Struck

—a phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye

All constellations are organisms
and all organisms are divine
and unfixed. I am spending 
my night in the kitchen. There
is blood in the batter—dark
strands stretch like vocal 
cords telling me I am missing
so much with these blurred
visions: a syringe flick, the tremor
of my wrist—raised veins silked
green. I have seen the wings
of a purple finch wavering
around its body, stuck, burned
to the grill of my car, which means
I have failed to notice its flight—
a lesson on infinities, a lesson I 
am trying to learn. I am trying.
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze
when everything I want is motion?

march 22/RUN

3.5 miles
3.5 mile loop*
40 degrees
light rain

*Couldn’t think of a more clever name right now for this 3.5 mile loop: head to the river, turn right, run past the oak savanna, the 38th street steps, the lonely bench, the curved retaining wall, to the 44th street parking lot. Loop around the lot, then head north on the river road. Keep going past the ravine and the welcoming oaks. Run down into the tunnel of trees, above the floodplain forest, beside the old stone steps. Just before double bridge north, turn right and head over to edmund boulevard. Run south to 34th st, head east, then south on 45th st.

Ran a little earlier this morning to get ahead of the rain. Made it about 20 minutes before it began. Light rain I could barely distinguish from my sweat at first. Then a little heavier. I could hear the light thumps of the rain drops hitting the hard, barely thawed, earth. I could see the rain making a fine mist or a thin veil of fog. The sky was gray, everything else brown and dull yellow. Extra dreamy and surreal.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the drumming of a woodpecker: not rapid and insistent, but sporadic and dull. Does that mean the wood was more hollow or less?
  2. the oak savanna was all yellow and brown, no snow in sight
  3. all the walking trails were clear of ice and open!
  4. ahead of me I thought I noticed a man walking with a dog. As I got closer, they were gone. Had I imagined it? No, I saw a flash of them below me on the steep, dirt trail down to the savanna
  5. again, ahead of me I thought I saw two people walking near the 38th steps who then disappeared. Had I just mistaken the trashcans for people (which I do frequently)? No, as I passed the steps, there they were, entering the paved part of the Winchell Trail
  6. several walkers on the Winchell Trail
  7. bright car headlights cutting through the gloom, passing through the bare branches on the other side of the ravine
  8. a man in bright blue shorts and matching shirt with sunglasses (?), running with a dog, or was it 2? We passed each other twice
  9. Mr. Morning! greeted me. I’m pretty sure I responded with my own “morning” instead of “good morning!” (which is my usual response)
  10. the ravine was partly clear, partly covered in snow. I tried to listen for the water flowing down to the river, but I could only hear the rain and the car wheels and the clanging of my zipper pull

Woke up this morning to an acceptance for one of my poems for the What You See is What You Get Issue in Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal! They didn’t accept my mannequin one, but another favorite about swimming in lake nokomis and seeing more than I wanted. That poem, “there is a limit,” began on this log, in an entry on june 1, 2018:

After finishing the run, I decided to swim. The water was warm which is amazing considering the lake still had ice at the end of April! Guess all those 90+ degree days really warmed it up fast. The water was also clear. Freak-me-out clear. I could see the bottom and the algae plants growing up from the bottom and the fish swimming below me. I have decided that it is better to swim without being able to see what I’m swimming with. If I can’t see it, I can pretend it’s not there, which is probably what it would like too. The coolest part of the clear water was seeing all the shafts of light piercing through the lake. 3, 4, maybe more. I also liked being able to look at the bottom in the beach area–I think I counted 5 or 6 hair bands, lost to their owners forever. I might have swam longer but there were a few school groups at the beach and I was concerned that some of the kids would mess with my stuff. I couldn’t tell if they were in elementary or middle school, but they sure knew how to yell out “fuck” at the top of their lungs. A kid that will brazenly yell out “fuck this” or “fuck you” or preface many words with “fucking” on a school trip might find it amusing to throw my towel in the water or take my sweatshirt. But getting back to how clear the water was, part of me wishes I had spent more time exploring underwater and studying the bottom–how deep it gets, what’s really down there. But, another part of me–perhaps a bigger part–likes the idea of keeping it a mystery. Knowing more might make me more anxious or disappointed in how un-mysterious it is.

Speaking of swimming, Alice Oswald is a river swimmer! Very cool. She’s written poems about swimming, and discussed it in several of the interviews I’ve read. I’d post more about that now, but I want to discuss what I thought about as I ran: the poet in the poem. In yesterday’s log entry, I posed these questions:

I wonder, is there room in Oswald’s democratic stories for her own efforts at smashing nostalgia and noticing from different perspectives? How would that alter the poem to include the voice of the observer-participant or participant-observer? How might it look if the author’s voice wasn’t absent, but made only one among many, all having value?

log entry / 21 march 2022

Just before heading out the door, I read this quotation from Oswald in an interview about her collection, Woods, etc.:

I almost feel that I am not part of it. I believe the poet shouldn’t be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.

I also read a bit of the transcript from David Nieman’s interview with Oswald. He suggests: “It feels like all through the discussions you’ve had on your own writing, it seems like there’s a way you’re trying to break out and away from you, break out and away from the self….” Her response:

AO: I suppose I was very excited right from the start to feel that Homer doesn’t necessarily come from one’s self. For me, when I’m thinking about the difference between Epic and Lyric, you can define them in many ways and Aristotle had his particular definition, but for me, what is interesting is that it’s not necessarily owned oneself. That means it escapes from the solipsism that creeps into lyric poetry that you can become stifled by one mood, one point of view. For me, that extends to thinking itself. That’s why I have an anxiety about thinking because it feels as if it’s hitting one person’s skull, whereas Homer’s poems, because they have simply been eroded into their way of being by being passed from one person to another, they somehow embody a multiple mind and they move out of the clouding and confinement of one person’s point of view. That’s, I presume, why the things are allowed to be themselves. They’re not themselves as perceived. They are themselves in their radiance.

Between the Covers with Alice Oswald

I thought about these passages as I ran, and the tension I feel between 1. wanting to use words to connect and better understand and describe my experiences, and 2. wanting to dissolve my self into the world and the words. Mostly, I want to dissolve, to have what I’m doing be about the words and the stories, passing them onto others. But, there’s a part of me that wants to push myself to be less hidden, less private, less guarded. Removing myself from the words (and the world) sometimes seems like an easy way not to engage in the messiness, to try and float free above it, which is not really possible or desirable. Of course, thinking about this when I’m running means that no thoughts are that long or clear or remembered. They flash and dissolve.

At some point, I recall thinking about Sarah Manguso and her book, Ongoingness. Here’s what she writes about why she’s kept a diary for 25 years:

I didn’t want to lose anything. That was my main problem. I couldn’t face the end of a day without a record of everything that had every happened.

I wrote about myself so I wouldn’t become paralyzed by rumination–so I could stop thinking about what had happened and be done with it.

More than that, I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn’t enough. The dairy was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.

Ongoingness / Sarah Manguso

I realize, as I recall these running thoughts, that I’m mixing up different types of writing: personal diary entries with polished poems or crafted stories. I also recall trying to ignore the voice that kept reminding me of how this issue of the self in writing has been discussed exhaustively by others. I want to consider others’ perspectives and learn from their insight, but I don’t want to devote all of my time to reading and summarizing their arguments, which is what academic Sara used to do.

I found this poem in a special issue on Alice Oswald. It seems to fit somehow with my discussion. Today, reading it, I especially love the last line:

EXPERIENCE, A LOVE STORY/ Katie Peterson

We were having an argument about where we should live.

Our argument was city versus country, pretty standard. There’s a way the city makes you feel, like you were meant to be there, like if you were there, something would happen to you. You’d go to the movies.

You were telling the story about the first time you found the donkeys. You told it slowly. Because you hadn’t gone for the purpose of seeing them at all. You’d gone to that place to make a fire.

You never wanted to get anywhere. The landscape passes through you – you don’t pass through it. At heart you’re just a scavenger, making due with very little. So, having an experience has something to do with there not being a lot of something, light, or money.

What you were saying had something to do with time. If time runs out, you said, you have to just stand there. You can panic, ok, but it’s like a panic in the house.

You can’t think your way into your body. You can’t think your way into time. You can’t have an experience by trying to have an experience, I said to you, and you said, why not?

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you because maybe an experience is something that happens on the way.

What else am I supposed to do?

I am always on the side of the country. I don’t have had anything to say about the people in the country. I don’t know any. I think the point of the country is that people are secondary to it.

returning later in the day to this entry: Listening (and reading) more of the Between the Covers podcast with Oswald, which is focused primarily on her latest work, Nobody, I’m thinking that I should definitely read it and do a lot more thinking about water and its many forms, and water as a type of subjectivity, or subjectless subjectivity? Maybe I should with trying to trace, more carefully, how the River Dart is a subjectless subject, or a multitude of subjects?

march 15/RUN

5.75 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
35 degrees
almost invisible streaks of ice

Almost spring! Birds, sun, the smell of fresh earth! The beginning of the run was not as fun; too many invisible slick spots from the barely melted puddles. By the end of the run, the ice was gone. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker twice. Ran down the Franklin hill then back up it, stopping for a few minutes when I encountered some ice. Settled into an easy pace that felt almost effortless. It didn’t feel a little harder until I had to climb up the Franklin hill.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the drumming of woodpeckers on different types of wood — trees, a utility pole
  2. geese, part 1: one goose, with a painful (extra mournful?) honk, flying with at least one other goose, pretty low in the sky
  3. geese, part 2: 3 geese on the path in the flats. Even though I was looking carefully, and noticed the orange cones that they were standing beside, I didn’t see the geese until I was almost next to them
  4. geese, part 3: running past these 3 geese again, I kept my distance, crossing to other end of the trail. Two of the geese were too busy rooting through the snow to notice, but the third one faced me, as if to say, “back off!”
  5. geese, part 4: as I neared lake street, there was a cacophony of honks trapped below the bridge
  6. in the flats: the fee bee call of a black-capped chickadee, both parts: the call, and the response!
  7. Daddy Long Legs sitting on his favorite bench, above the Winchell Trail, on the stretch after the White Sands Beach and before the Franklin Bridge
  8. the wind of many car wheels, then a whoosh when one passed over a puddle
  9. open water
  10. watching the traffic moving fast over the 1-35 bridge near Franklin as I ran under

Before my run, I spent the morning with Alice Oswald, gathering materials, skimming interviews, reading a few more pages of Dart. So cool to make the time to learn more about Oswald’s work and to read and think about poetry and how it might speak as/with the river. I found a wonderful article in a special issue on Alice Oswald in Interim, When Poetry “Rivers”: Reflections on Cole Swensen’s Gave and Alice Oswald’s Dart / Mary Newell. Newell says this about Oswald’s Dart:

Marginal glosses introduce workers for whom the river is a resource, interspersed with local tales, as of Jan Coo, a swimmer who drowned and “haunts the Dart,” local sayings (“Dart Dart / Every year thou / Claimest a heart”), and ancient legends from times when the local oaks participated in sacred rituals. While each voice is distinct, Oswald writes that the marginal glosses “do not refer to real people or even fixed fictions. All voices should be read as the river’s mutterings.”

I had never heard of Cole Swenson before this article. In the bibliography at the end of the essay, I discovered that she’s written a chapbook about walking and poetry! Very exciting. Here’s something she says in the introduction about walking and place:

Then sitting still, we occupy a place; when moving through it, we displace place, putting it into motion and creating a symbiotic kinetic event in which place moves through us as well.

I’m excited to read the rest of this chapbook. As I was reflecting on the value of walking, my mind wandered, and I started to think about why I prefer running to walking in my practicing of attention. Walking opens me up, enabling me to notice new connections, access new doors, but because it involves wandering, and is fairly slow, it doesn’t offer any limits to that wondering. I get too many ideas, wander too much. With running, the effort it requires forces me to rein in some of my wanderings. I can’t think in long, meandering sentences; I need pithy statements, condensed into a few words I can remember. These limits help keep me from becoming overwhelmed with ideas. Does this make sense? I’ll think about it more when I have a chance to read Swenson’s chapbook and some of her other work.

Back to Oswald. I’m planning to read Dart several times through. This first time I don’t want to stop and think through every word or rhythm or image. Instead, I’m reading through it and noting any passage that I want to remember — that I like or surprise me or make me wonder, etc.

if you can keep your foothold, snooping down
then suddenly two eels let go get thrown
tumbling away downstream looping and linking
another time we scooped a net through sinking
silt and gold and caught one strong as bike-chain

I never pass that place and not make time
to see if there’s an eel come up the stream
I let time go as slow as moss, I stand
and try to get the dragonflies to land
their gypsy-coloured engines on my hand)

Dartmeet — a mob of waters
where East Dart smashes into West Dart

two wills gnarling and recoiling
and finally knuckling into balance

in that brawl of mudwaves
the East Dart speaks Whiteslade and Babeny

the West Dart speaks a wonderful dark fall
from Cut Hill through Whystman’s Wood

put your ear to it, you can hear water

march 8/RUN

5 miles
Veterans’ Home Loop
34 degrees

A bright beautiful morning for a run. Ran south to Minnehaha regional park, past John Steven’s House, over to the Veteran’s Home, through Wabun, then back north on the river road trail.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the river was open, the water brown, the banks glowed with white snow
  2. there were big puddles on the sidewalk, but the trail was almost completely clear
  3. one huge puddle covered almost the entire trail between 42nd and 44th
  4. bird sounds heard: the song and drumming of a pileated woodpecker; a cardinal’s trill; the fee bee song from a black-capped chickadee; a goose’s honk
  5. kids were playing at minnehaha academy; I could hear their laughter. Also heard the teacher’s whistle for the end of recess
  6. some of the sidewalks around minnehaha regional park were covered in sharp, crusty snow that had frozen again overnight
  7. at Wabun Park, I had to stop and walk in the snow because the trail was covered in a thick, slick sheet of barely frozen ice. A fat tire slowed way down to bike over it. I liked the crunching sound of the fat tires as they crushed the ice
  8. a traffic jam at the 3 way stop near the entrance to wabun: 4 cars went by before I could cross
  9. just north of the 44th street parking lot, something orange near the WPA stone steps down to the Winchell Trail caught my eye as I ran by. A jacket? Graffiti on the stones? Not sure, but I think it was the sign on a chain stretched across the railings to block the entrance. I couldn’t see anything clearer, partly because of my vision and partly because I was in motion. It was almost as if my brain called out to me, “Orange!”, and that was it
  10. a wide open, brilliant view over to the other side

vision check

At least twice in the past week, when I’ve been running south on the river road trail, this has happened: I see a runner approaching from a distance. As I get closer, I check to see where they are, but they’ve disappeared. I can’t see them at all. I look again and they’re back. I must be losing more cone cells.

an experiment

It didn’t last for a long, but I tried chanting in triple berries (strawberry/blueberry/raspberry), then counted my rhythms: 123/45 and 12/345. I tried matching a few words to the rhythms, but now I can’t remember the words. I tried experimenting with these 123/45s and 12/345s a few years ago. I’d like to try again.

Found this wonderful poem on Two Sylvia’s Press in the chapbook, Shade of Blue Trees:

FIG TREE AT BIG SUR/ Kelly Cressio-Moeller

Each day leaning
into morning,
five-fingered leaves
wave in unison,
beckon jays
for branch-play.
 
The youngest leaves
arch green faces upward,
devour sun off the Pacific.
The golden elders
bow closer to earth–
the perfect shape
for water to run
 
as rain, as fog
down to the root line.
When afternoon rays
light them just right,
 
they become a ring
of open palms
giving the last
of what they have.