Tag: a moment of sound

jan 27/RUN

3.2 miles
neighborhood in reverse*
10 degrees/ feels like 0
25% snow and ice covered sidewalks and roads

*Normally I run north on 43rd ave, then right on 32nd st to the river, then south on edmund until I turn around at 42nd st, then north on edmund until I reach 35th. Today, I reversed it and added a stretch, running north on the river road trail between 42nd and 38th.

Another wonderful winter run! Felt colder today; was it the humidity? I could feel (and see) water turning to ice on my eyelashes. Not too much wind. There was a point, when I was running south on edmund that I thought, “I’m not feeling any wind. Uh oh. Does that mean it will be in my face when I turn around?” Yes, it does and it was, but never blustery, just persistently cold. Encountered a few more people out there today. Some walkers, some runners, a few dogs. Fairly certain I kept my 6+ feet distance the whole time. It was wonderful to run right above the river, all iced over, a grayish white. Still, stuck, silent. Except for the birds. Heard some black capped chickadees and some others chirping–finches, maybe? This year, I need to learn to identify a few of these birds which currently I only hear as chirps or trills.

Speaking of birds, as I was walking out of my house, I heard a black capped chickadee! Of course I had to make it my moment of sound. I knew it was a good omen for my run.

jan 27, 2021

Discovered this wonderful poem, and wonderful poet, the other day on Instagram:

Status Update/ Rebecca Lindenbery

Rebecca Lindenberg is drinking whisky. Feels guilty. Is caught in one of those feedback loops. Is a blankety-blank. Is a trollop, a floozy, a brazen hussy. Would like to add you as a friend. Would like to add you as an informant. Would like to add you as her dark marauder, as her Lord and Savior. Has trouble with boundaries. Rebecca Lindenberg is keeping lonesomeness at bay with frequent status updates designed to elicit a thumbs-up icon from you. Rebecca Lindenberg likes this, dismisses this with a backhanded wave. Rebecca Lindenberg wraps her legs around this. Has a ball of string you can follow out of her labyrinth. Has this labyrinth. Rebecca Lindenberg has high hopes. Has high blood sugars. Rebecca Lindenberg doesn’t want to upset you. Wants to say what you want to hear. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks of poetry as the practice of overhearing yourself. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks about love. About ribbons unspooling. Rebecca Lindenberg would like to add you as a profound influence. Would like to add you as a loyal assassin. Would like to add you as her date to the reckoning. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers a statue of a faceless girls with shapely feet. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers the Italian for “chicken breasts” is petti di pollo and the world for kilogram is kilo and that a kilo is way too much chicken breast for a family of three. Steals sage from strangers’ gardens. Runs for it. Misses Rome. Misses her family of three. Is lost in her own poem. Rebecca Lindenberg has dreams in which you come back. Rebecca Lindenberg lets it go. Rebecca Lindenberg crescendos and decrescendos. Rebecca Lindenberg is: Hey, you, c’mere. Rebecca Lindenberg is: You are not the boss of me. Rebecca Lindenberg is not the boss of you. Rebecca Lindenberg goes to movies. Needs a bigger boat. Gave you her heart and you gave her a pen. Can’t handle the truth. Rebecca Lindenberg loves the truth. Loves the smell of dirt gathered in water and the sleep-smell of your morning body. Loves her rumpled cat, her jimmied window. Loves long letters. Will write soon.

What a poem! I like the energy and her approach to describing herself. I’d like to put it beside my poem, A Bridge of Saras, which was a homage to Wayne Holloway-Smith’s Some Waynes.

jan 26/RUN

3 miles
43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/dowling, west/47th ave, nw/loop around Howe Elementary
11 degrees/feels like 0
sidewalks and main roads: clear
side streets: 100% snow-covered, 1/2 plowed

I love running outside in the winter! There was wind running north, but it didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t too cold. No frozen fingers or toes. I wore my yak trax, which was a bad idea. Most of the sidewalks were clear and dry. I ran in the street as much as I could so I wouldn’t damage the coils of my trax, but it would have been much safer on the sidewalk. Oh well.

a moment of sound

Running south on Edmund, when I reached 38th street, I crossed over the river road, walked down the steps to the Winchell Trail and admired the gorgeous river for a moment. Decided to record my moment of sound from that spot. It was so peaceful and icy and wonderful to watch, I had to turn the moment of sound into a video:

jan 26, 2021

Things I Remember

  1. The uneven tracks of snow on the road jarring my foot and ankle but not twisting them
  2. The sound of a kid laughing or talking or something to an adult on the river road
  3. Running in the middle of the road, listening carefully and looking back every so often to make sure no cars were coming
  4. Hearing a chain jangling near Minnehaha Academy, thinking it sounded like a dog collar then wondering why there would be a dog so close to the school entrance (I didn’t look to see what it actually was; I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had).
  5. Walking up the steps from the Winchell Trail and hearing the shuffling steps of a runner approaching. Watching them (from a safe distance) run by, then noticing a fat tire off to my left
  6. I don’t remember noticing if Minnehaha Academy’s parking lot was full or hearing any woodpeckers or black capped chickadees or seeing any cross country skiers or needing to avoid any irritating squirrels

One of the poetry people I follow on twitter really likes James Schuyler, which is fine with me, I really like him too. Here’s a poem they posted yesterday:

The Snow/ James Schuyler

that fell and iced
the walks and streets
is melted off: it’s
gone. I slipped a
little as I strode.
It’s early winter
yet though, more and
much is yet to come.
This gray day though
is much too warm
for snow. The window’s
up a crack and I shiver
only slightly. I
think of you and then
my thought slides
on, like slipping
on a lightly iced
walk. I have no more
poems for you, chum,
only for the ice and snow.

I love the ending of this poem: the idea of thoughts slipping on a lightly iced walk, which makes me think of Wittgenstein and his line about the need for rough, tractional ground, and referring to the reader as chum. Chum is such a strange, old-fashioned, wonderful word. For me, it conjures, simultaneously, a feeling of nostalgic affection for a friend and the image of bloody guts and Jaws–oh, and also Bart Simpson’s response to Milhouse in an early season of The Simpsons:

“Anytime chummmmmmmmmp”

This clip is from the 4th episode of the 7th season (1995) and is called, “Bart sells his soul.” Speaking of the soul, it came up on poetry people twitter this morning:

I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.” 

G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses  

Dana Levin (@danalevinpoet)

Interestingly, just as chum seems to be an old-fashioned word, so does soul. I don’t like the idea of the eternal, needs-to-be-saved-or-you’re-going-to-hell soul, but I do like Walt Whitman’s use of it in “The Body Electric”:

if the body were not the soul, what is the soul? 

O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul, 
O I say now these are the soul!

Returning to the ice, patches of barely formed ice on slightly warmer days is often the most dangerous type of ice. It’s harder to see and is so slippery! The only time I like ice when it’s warmer is when it forms into a thin, fragile sheet on the surface of a puddle. Such fun to walk over it, hearing it crack.

What a delightfully rambling log entry!

jan 25/BIKERUN

bike: 24 minutes
run: 3.25 miles
basement

Cold this morning with snow-covered sidewalks. We got about 5 inches of snow on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I thought about running outside, but decided to stay inside to be warm and safe from slippery roads and/or crowded trails. Running inside on the treadmill is a good challenge for me, I think. It helps me to go slower and steadier and to work on pushing through the long minutes of monotony. Plus, I can work on my form and posture. I listened to my audio book (The Mesmerizing Girl) as I ran for just over 30 minutes.

moments of sound

Jan 24, 2021

For yesterday’s moment of sound, Scott and I were on a walk with Delia, right by Howe Elementary. Two sounds dominate: the buzzing/ringing of the furnace at the school (I think it’s the furnace) and the shshshshshing or crushcrushcrushing or thrashing? of my snow pants as I walk. We passed some kids playing on a mound of snow. I wish my phone would have done a better job of picking up what the one kid was saying. It was something about a sword and cutting something in half “with my MIND!” I have decided that I need some tips from Scott (the sound expert) on how to record better sound. That might be a goal for February.

Jan 25, 2021

For the majority of this recording, you get to hear the delightfully irritating crunch crack crush of ice breaking under my winter boot as I walk across the driveway. Yesterday this driveway was sheer ice, but Scott sprinkled some salt or sand on it and it melted and refroze in shards overnight. Love this sound! For the last 10 seconds or so, it’s much quieter. If you listen closely, you can hear a bird or two calling out. Today it is cold but sunny, and with the birds chirping and the sun warming my face, it feels like April not January.

Found out about this wonderful poem on twitter yesterday:

Story/ Tiana Clark

with its waterlogged wings spread open,
drying off on a rock in the middle
of a man-made lake after diving for food
and it makes me think about wonder
and it makes me want to pry and stretch
my shy arms open to the subtle summer
wind slicing through the park, sliding
over my skin like a stream of people
blowing candles out over my feathery
body and it makes me think about my
church when I was a kid, and how I
lifted my hands to Jesus, hoping
for surrender, but often felt nothing,
except for the rush of fervent people wanting
to be delivered from their aching, present
pain, and how that ache changed the smell
in the room to money and how I pinched
my face and especially my eyes tighter,
tighter and reached my hands higher—how
I, like the cormorant, stood in the middle
of the sanctuary so exposed and open
and wanted and wanted so much to grasp
the electric weather rushing through
the drama of it all like a shout
in the believer’s scratchy throat.

I don’t go to church anymore, but today
I woke up early and meditated. I closed
my eyes and focused on a fake seed
in my hand and put my hands over
my heart to shove the intention inside
my chest to blossom—I’m still stumbling
through this life hoping for anyone or
something to save me. I’m still thinking
about the cormorant who disappeared
when I was writing this poem. I was just
looking down and finishing a line
and then I looked back up—gone.

What a wonderful poem! I’d like to read this next to Mary Oliver’s “The Real Prayers Are Not the Words, But the Attention that Comes First“

Reading this poem, I was not familiar with the cormorant, so I looked it up. Here’s a great site: Cool Cormorants, and Little known facts about one of nature’s feathery fisherman

  • They’re big, the size of a goose, with turquoise eyes.
  • They have matte black feathers and yellow-orange facial skin.
  • They eat a lot of fish–about 1 lb a day.
  • Their feathers are not waterproof, so their wings become water-logged.
  • They’re excellent swimmers and divers, but don’t look like it. Their water-logged wings make them look awkward.
  • They don’t fly as well as they swim (because: short wings), expending the most energy of any flying bird.
  • They regurgitate pellets–like owls–made up of undigested fish bones and animal parts.

jan 23/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 5K
basement

Unless I get out the door early, I don’t like running outside on the weekends. Too crowded on paths already narrowed by snow and ice. So I biked and ran in the basement. Watched the HOKA 100k challenge live online as Jim Walmsley tries to break the world record for 100K (currently held by Japan’s Nao Kazami 6:09:14/ 5:56.5 mile pace for 62.2 miles). Good god. Almost 5 hours in, he’s still holding on, running with blood on his shoulder–he clipped his shoulder on the edge of a fence early into the race. Hard core. Then I listened to my audio book as I ran. I decided to do a relaxed 5k. It’s getting easier to run longer on the treadmill. It will never be as fun or inspiring or invigorating as being outside, but it’s still the chance to move and not feel trapped in my restless body.

Before I starting working out, I memorized Emily Dickinson’s “Snow flakes,” partly because it’s supposed to snow later today. Such a fun little poem! I learned that this poem is only 1 of 3 (out of 1780) poems that Dickinson titled. Cool.

Snow flakes/ Emily Dickinson

I counted til they danced so
their slippers leaped the town —
and then I took a pencil
to note the rebels down —
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig —
And ten of my most stately toes
are marshalled for a jig!

I love the energy and the surrender to the delight of falling snow and her word choices: jolly, resign the prig, stately toes, marshalled a jig.

a moment of sound

Playing with Delia in the backyard, walking up the deck steps, then opening the door to let her in the house. I hear a few birds as the snow begins to fly on this cold (20 degrees/feels like 10) afternoon.

jan 23, 2021

jan 22/RUN

5K
45th ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/edmund, north/36th st, west
7 degrees/ feels like -3

Last week I said I would much rather it be colder with clear sidewalks, than warmer with icy sidewalks. That was proven today. As I was saying to Scott, you can always add layers to be warm, but you can’t do much to make uneven icy paths safer–yak trax work, sort of, but not when the ice is jagged and filled with ruts. Hooray for sun and not too much wind and mostly empty streets and a soundtrack of birds and clear, cold air and new Presidents getting shit done!

Encountered only a few walkers, no runners (I think) and one biker. Heard lots of birds. Smelled some smoke as I ran on Edmund. Noticed a foot wide stripe of faded white on the edge of the street–what’s left of the salt used to treat the road. The stripe stretched for a quarter mile or more. Once I realized it was only salt stains and not a thin sheet of ice, I ran on it. Heard some park workers and their chainsaws, trimming trees above the gorge. Yes, a better view! I should remember to stop during my run and go check out the river. I miss it! If I can’t run right beside the river for long stretches, at least I can admire it for a moment.

a moment of sound

Earlier this morning, sitting at my desk in the front room, I heard a black capped chickadee calling outside. Quickly, I got my phone to record it. It wasn’t until after it stopped that I realized I had forgotten to push the record button. Bummer. Still, I recorded some other birds and a bird or a squirrel or something knocking on wood or an acorn. You can hear the tap tap tapping. Towards the end, you can also hear my 17 year old son, yelling out from his room (behind a closed door) to his friends online as they prepared to raid a base or something like that on whatever online game they were all playing. He was yelling the whole time I was recording, but this was the only bit of it that I can hear on the recording.

Jan 22, 2021

I am almost positive I have posted this poem before, but I would like to memorize it, so I posting it again.

Winter Trees/WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS

All the complicated details 
of the attiring and 
the disattiring are completed! 
A liquid moon 
moves gently among 
the long branches. 
Thus having prepared their buds 
against a sure winter 
the wise trees 
stand sleeping in the cold. 

jan 21/BIKERUN

bike: 24 minutes
run: 2.1 miles
basement

I guess I’m turning into a wimp this winter because the sidewalks looked uneven and icy and the wind was howling, so I decided to stay inside and work out in the basement. Actually, I think it has less to do with being a wimp, and more to do with it being harder to run in the road and the sidewalks than on the river road trail and harder to avoid people and harder to stay motivated to run outside when I can’t see the river or the gorge. That’s okay. I don’t mind running inside a bit more this month–hopefully just this month.

Watched some races while I biked, and listened to an audiobook, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, for the first half of my run. For the second half, I listened to a playlist and recorded video of my running. With my right knee prone to subluxations and my left hip and lower back often sore, it’s helpful to study my form. I think I need to do a better job of setting up the camera–either that or I really hunch over with my shoulders. Maybe I should try checking my form from the side too? It’s fascinating to me how, over almost my 10 years of running, I’m slowly learning how to accept and take care of my aging body. Oftentimes it sucks to have to worry about all of these aches and pains, but it is also very helpful and satisfying to learn how to work with my body instead of being afraid of its failures.

a moment of sound

I recorded today’s moment of sound on my driveway, back near the alley, in a spot sheltered from the wind. It was very windy. The loud whooshing sounds are not traffic but the wind rushing through the trees. If you listen carefully, you can hear wind chimes (my favorite) and water dripping off of the eaves on my garage (not my favorite). At one point, there’s a pop or a creak or a crack–some siding or wood fence contracting.

Jan 21, 2021

THINGS TO DO/ James Schuyler

Balance checkbook.
Rid lawn of onion grass.
“this patented device”
“this herbicide”
“Sir, We find none of these
killers truly satisfactory.  Hand weed
for onion grass.”  Give
old clothes away, “such as you
yourself would willingly wear.”
Impasse.  Walk three miles
a day beginning tomorrow.
Alphabetize.
Purchase nose-hair shears.
Answer letters.
Elicit others.
Write Maxine.
Move to Maine.
Give up NoCal.
See more movies.
Practice long-distance dialing.
Ditto gymnastics:
The Beast with Two Backs
And, The Fan.
Complain to laundry
any laundry.  Ask for borrowed books back.
Return
junk mail to sender
marked, Return to Sender.
Condole.  Congratulate.
” . . . this sudden shock . . . “
” . . . this swift surprise . . . “
Send. Keep.  Give.  Destroy.
Brush rub polish burn
mend scratch foil evert
emulate surpass.  Remember
“to write three-act play”
and lead “a full and active life.”

-from Collected Poems

I love lists. Making them, reading them, turning them into poetry. I think I’d like to write another series of lists.

jan 20/BIKERUN

bike: 24 minutes
run: 1.3 miles
basement

Finally, it’s over! Already, Biden and Harris are working to undo some of the damage. What an awful, exhausting, traumatic 4 years. Yet, some good too, in spite of it all: a renewed faith in democracy, the chance for an actual reckoning with slavery and racism, and, most personally, a rediscovery of poetry and a new direction for my work on a feminist ethics of care. I started this running log in January of 2017, right as Trump was becoming president. There were many reasons I started writing here, but the urgent need to find a new way to be in the Trump era was surely one of them. In ways that I can’t yet articulate, this blog and my project of paying attention and of finding the small moments of delight–always letting the wonder win, as Aimee Nezhukumatathil says–was a form of resistance, a refusal to lose my faith in the world and my hope for the future. I must admit, it got much harder to resist these last few months, but the habits I built up from my miles and my words (and the beautiful words of many others), have helped me to persist and I know they will help me as I work hard to rid myself of all of the Trump-era toxins I’ve had to absorb. Does this sound too dramatic? Maybe, but today feels like a day for being dramatic!

I didn’t think about any of these things as I biked or ran. I just enjoyed moving and feeling free, even if it was in my dark unfinished basement.

Hooray for new administrations! Hooray for hope and possibility and room to breathe and grieve and imagine better worlds! Hooray for a renewed desire to do the work! And hooray for this beautiful poem by Amanda Gorman:

The Hill We Climb/ Amanda Gorman

When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.

a moment of sound

After the inauguration, Scott and I took Delia out for a walk. It wasn’t too cold, but it was windy and blustery and slippery–and difficult to get a moment of sound. In this recording, you can hear the wind and Delia’s collar clanging and our feet walking over the crusty ice and snow.

jan 20, 2021

jan 19/BIKERUN

bike: 24 minutes
run: 1.4 miles
basement

A little more snow, a little more cold, even more slick and uneven surfaces. Decided to workout in the basement. Watched some swimming races while I biked, then listened to the latest “Maintenance Phase” podcast while I ran. This one was about “The Biggest Loser” and it was disturbing. What a terrible show. I must admit, that I watched at least one season of it, and while I thought it was very problematic, sadly I still watched and enjoyed it. Such incredibly damaging ideas about bodies and fitness and health and fatness that reinforce dangerous and awful understandings of how we might live in and with our bodies!

After I finished I came upstairs and recorded a moment of sound on the back deck. Nothing too interesting today: it’s cold (15 degrees) and windy and the last 20 seconds were unusable because I was moving in some strange way that generated an irritating scratching noise. If you listen closely, you can hear the crunching, creaking sound of some car wheels. It’s my neighbor driving through the alley, slowly trying to navigate the icy ruts. The whooshing sound you hear is not a plane or traffic, but the wind rushing through the tall trees (pine? spruce?) across the alley. I don’t think I hear any birds or spazzy kids or barking dogs.

jan 19, 2021

jan 18/RUN

5K
2 school loop
20 degrees/feels like 11
sidewalks: 80% slippery, uneven ice
road: 1 thin strip of pavement

Yes! I ran outside today. It was cold. It was too crowded. It was icy. But I managed to stay warm in my layers, almost always keep a safe distance, and not fall. A great run. Fresh air! Trees and birds to admire! The ability to alter my pace without worrying about falling off the treadmill!

Lots of birds out today. I wanted to stop and record a moment of sound under a tree with a calling (crying?) bird, but it was too crowded. I don’t remember seeing many runners, only lots of walkers. The two women who annoyingly take over the entire road, spread out in a way that it is impossible to not get too close to them, were at it again. Sigh. I know I’m lucky that I can still run outside and almost always avoid other people.

Anything else? Noticed a few people skating at the rink at Hiawatha–the same rink that someone was just making a few weeks ago and that I featured in my moment of sound earlier this month. I didn’t see the river, or the Daily Walker, or any turkeys. But I heard the wind rushing through some dead leaves on a tree, a delivery guy grumbling as he left a house, and my labored breathing as I ran directly into the wind.

Most of the time, when the sidewalk was too treacherous (or tretch, as I like to say), I could find a strip of clear pavement on the road–usually near the edge, but sometimes in the middle. A few times, there was no escape from the very slick, very rutted ice. I’d stutter step and try to slow myself down gradually before carefully walking until it was clear. I bet I looked funny or ridiculous or foolish to someone watching. I don’t care. I didn’t fall and I got to be outside without a coat, moving and breathing and occasionally flying for 30 minutes!

Today I am doing okay. The trick is to avoid thinking about insurrections or more violence to come. And to believe that the inauguration will be a success and we will be able to celebrate it and cry tears of joy and not terror. And to forget that the pandemic is getting much worse. The trick is to remember the river and vaccines and Major and Champ and fresh air and exciting creative projects and how great lemon water tastes and sun (which is shining right now) and the black-capped chickadee that greets me almost every day.

a moment of sound

Today’s sound is from the backyard. Right now, we have 2 or 3 inches of crusty, icy, packed snow, which makes for a delightful crunching sound as you walk through it. This is one of my favorite winter sounds.

jan 18, 2021

jan 17/BIKERUN

bike: 24 minutes
run: 1.3 miles
basement

Another day of icy sidewalks, so more working out in the basement. Will I be able to run outside tomorrow? I think so. If nothing else, I can do loops around Howe Elementary. When Scott and I took Delia the dog out for a walk this morning, I noticed that it was mostly clear there. It’s not as exciting as other routes, but still outside. Didn’t think about much while I was biking or running. Tried out a few spotify playlists, but didn’t really like any of them. Someday, I’ll put together my own playlist. Even though it wasn’t that exciting, it still felt good to move.

After I finished my run, I stood out on the deck and recorded my moment of sound. Very still and gray. The bare tree branches looked delightfully fuzzy and soft, almost like a smudge of gray. There’s at least one dog barking in the distance–one block over. Too bad the trio of spazzy dogs on that same block didn’t join in. What a cacophony of yelps and yips and ruffs they make! Sometimes I like walking Delia right by their house just to get them going.

jan 17, 2021