Tag: Alice Oswald

may 7/RUN

4 miles
trestle+ turn around
59 degrees

Today I tried the walk/run method: 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking. As usual, I followed this method approximately. Run 9:30/Walk 1:30, 8:30/1 — I can’t remember after that. It was good. It’s still difficult, but I’m pushing through more. I greeted 2 regulars! Dave, the Daily Walker and Daddy Long Legs. I noticed how green the floodplain forest was, only the narrowest sliver of river to see. And the view from the sliding bench? Green green green. If someone was walking below, would I even be able to see them? Ran on the grass and the dirt a lot. Thought about taking the short dirt trail that cuts behind a tree nearing the trestle, but didn’t. Next time? Admired someone’s raspberry red running shoes. I used to have shoes that color. Now they’re boring dark gray/almost black.

Ran through gnats. Most of them went in my eye, one in my throat. Also ran through cottonwood, or some white flowery thing that I thought of as cottonwood fuzz. Usually the cottonwood arrives at the beginning of June, so maybe it was something else?

No rowers, no roller skiers, no turkeys or geese or bird shadows. One fat tire. One little kid. Several runners and walkers and cars.

I don’t remember what I heard for the first half of the run, but for the second half, I listened to my windy playlist (it was windy out there!).

edges / middles / context

I started the morning thinking about surfaces and the places where things meet and textures and skin and feet. And then I remembered Emily Dickinson’s love of the circumference and the wonderful site, out of Dartmouth, all about ED in 1862. It has a blog post on ED and circumference.

I was excited to read this bit:

Laura Gribbin argues that Dickinson’s conception of Circumference rejects Emersonian expansion, revises the patriarchal conceptions of the (male) poet’s encompassing consciousness, and resists being taken over by an outside power. It does so by calling attention to “the circle’s necessary boundary or perimeter without which it has neither shape nor meaning.” In Gribbin’s reading,

“Circumference marks the borderline of symbolic and linguistic order.
This border is a highly charged point of convergence where oppositions are collapsed, boundaries are explored, and meaning originates. Circumference is also the space within a circle where life is lived, pain is felt, and death is observed.”

In what amounts to a powerful critique of Romanticism, Dickinson stands not at the center but on the periphery, at the outer limits of knowledge and language, replacing, as Gribbin notes,

“the Romantic impulse toward transcendence with an alternative concept of knowledge gained within the limits of experience.”

Instead of the Emersonian emphasis on sight and specularity, Dickinson emphasizes touch and what can be felt. Because

“Circumference delineates that region where the imagination comes into play, [it] is thus the source of poetry itself.”

White Heat: Emily Dickinson in 1862, a Weekly Blog

While reading my “on this day” posts yesterday, I encountered a discussion of middles from 6 may 2023. It’s in the middle of my summarizing of Mary Ruefle’s essay “On Beginnings”:

It’s about beginnings and how there are more beginnings in poetry than endings. The first note I jotted down in my Plague Notebook, Vol 16 was about the semicolon, which is a punctuation mark that I particularly like. Ruefle has just introduced an idea from Ezra Pound that each of us speaks only one sentence that begins when we’re born and ends when we die. When Ruefle tells this idea to another poet he responds, “That’s a lot of semicolons!” Ruefle agrees and then writes this:

the next time you use a semicolon (which, by the way, is the least-used mark of punctuation in all of poetry) you should stop and be thankful that there exists this little thing, invented by a human being–an Italian as a matter of fact–that allows us to go on and keep on connecting speech that for all apparent purposes unrelated.

then adds: a poem is a semicolon, a living semicolon, and this:

Between the first and last lines there exists–a poem–and if it were not for the poem that intervenes, the first and last lines of a poem would not speak to each other.

At some point as I read, I suddenly thought of middles. The in-betweens, after the beginning, before the end. How much attention do these get, especially if we jump right in and start with them. It reminds me of a writing prompt/experiment I came up with for my running log: Write a poem about something that happened during the middle of your run–not at the beginning or the end, but the middle (see 27 nov 2019). 

the MIDDLE

mid-motion
mid-walk, mid-run
Activity: notice and record what you notice in the midst of motion. Pull out your smart phone and speak your thoughts into it.

Not how you got there or where you’re headed, but here now in-between

the middle: Lucille Clifton’s unfenced is, Alice Oswald’s purpled sea

I like the idea of being dropped in the middle — no need to endure a beginning or an ending, but what’s lost when we’re floating in the middle? Something that grounds or frames the experience: context.

aside: writing that last bit, I recalled a few lines from Jorie Graham’s “Still Life with Window and Fish”:

The whole world outside….
I know it’s better, whole, outside, the world—whole
trees, whole groves–but I
love it in here where it blurs, and nothing starts or
ends, but all is
waving, and colorless,
and voiceless….

This morning, I came across a learning prompt on Poetry Foundation: Context.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines context as “the parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meaning.” The word itself comes from the Latin contexere, which means “to weave or join together,” which I interpret as “to make sense of” what we’re reading, particularly when we’re not familiar with the author’s background and/or work. Knowing a poem’s context can give us a sense of place, culture, politics, gender dynamics, etc., and situate us in a specific time and place using concrete references. . . .

A sense of place, a connection, an anchor, a way to ground ourselves and our understandings.

a few hours later: I just remembered Kamala Harris’ coconut tree comment, which RJP loved to quote during the campaign:

context

added the next day: As I read through this entry again the next morning, I suddenly remembered something I posted earlier this spring about how not knowing or acknowledging a person/community’s history is to de-humanize them, to turn them into an object and not a subject. I can’t find where I wrote about it or what I was referencing. After a lot of searching, I found it! It’s in an interview with Jenny Odell about her new book on time, Another Kind of Time. Instead of posting the lengthy quotation here, I’m putting it in my entry for 8 may.

ground contact time

The Apple watch has all sorts of data points, most of which don’t matter to me or are meaningless because I don’t know what to compare them too. One such data point is “ground contact time.” Mine is almost always between 235 and 240 ms. It’s cool to think about how little time my foot is on the ground — and how much time I’m flying! — but what does this number mean? I suppose the fact that it is consistent is good, but should I be spending more time or less on the ground? I found a helpful primer on GCT (ground contact time) that has a chart — and plenty of caveats about that chart — to use for evaluating your ground contact time:

  • < 210 ms: Great
  • 210 – 240 ms: Good
  • 241 – 270 ms: Room for improvement
  • 271 – 300 ms: Needs improvement
  • > 300 ms: Lots to work on

The bottom line: less time on the ground is better. It makes you a more efficient, less injury-prone, faster runner.

So, mine is good, but barely. Ways to improve it include: picking up the cadence, being lighter on your feet, dynamic hip exercises — plyometrics or hill repeats, more deliberate arm swing. Maybe I’ll try some of it; I’d like to fly more! I think I’ll start with hill repeats. I’ve been wanting to do those for some time.

All of this talk about surfaces and edges where things meet — seams — and middles and shortened time on ground is making me want to reread Wendell Berry’s “A Native Hill.” I finally have a physical copy of it. I think I’ll read it and mark it up this afternoon!

april 30/YOGAWALK

yoga: 20 minutes
hip opening

Last week, RJP sent me a yoga video that’s been very helpful with tight hips/glutes/sciatica. I did it this morning and it was great. Was it why I felt so calm and relaxed on my walk?

walk: 50 minutes
winchell trail south to folwell
58 degrees

Deep into spring — red tulips everywhere, light green leaves, grass. Birds, shadows, bikers.

Overheard —
biker 1: I just love biking!
biker 2: me too

Walked to the winchell trail, then to the back of the oak savanna, on the other side of the mesa, then to the paved part of the path. Warm and peaceful. Some wind.

10 Things

  1. a biker listening to music — it probably wasn’t, but it reminded me of the Macarena
  2. water dripping steadily and with an echo over the limestone ledge in the ravine
  3. more green in the savanna
  4. the chain link fence beyond the mesa was almost buried in the bluff — steep and slowly eroding — how many years before this fence is buried or falls in?
  5. silver sparkles on the blue waves
  6. a trail runner passing by — hello / hi! — I liked watching their heels lift and drop, lift and drop
  7. the graffiti I noticed last week on the 38th street steps is still there
  8. tree trunks and thick roots emerging from the hill, many intertwined, some gnarled and knobby and knotted
  9. 2 distinct and soft horizontal lines dividing bluff and tree line from sky
  10. the soft shadows of trees stretching across the greenish grass on the boulevard

What a wonderful walk! What a beautiful day! No back or hip or leg pain. No anxiety. Lots of deep breaths and flashes of past spring hikes on the edges of suburban developments in the little bit of woods still left. Briefly, I thought about orange (which I had been thinking about before my walk). I pulled out my phone and made a note about Alice Oswald’s Dart and Nobody and how she sees orange underwater.

Here’s the AO reference, which I posted about on 28 july 2024.

excerpt from Dart/ Alice Oswald

He dives, he shuts himself in a deep, soft-bottomed
silence,
which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts
the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky
jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. 
Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts 

nacreous = iridescent/iridescence = “a lustrous rainbowlike play of color caused by differential refraction of light waves (as from an oil slick, soap bubble, or fish scales) that tends to change as the angle of view changes (Merriam-Webster Dictionary). 

Last week, the water had streaks of red — or maybe tangerine? — in it. Today, blue-green. Not iridescent below, maybe above?

A different take on the far off orange glow: a buoy, or the idea of a buoy, or the certainty that a buoy, orange and glowing, is there.

Orange

It’s the last day of April. My theme was supposed to be steps but ended up being color. It seems fitting to end it with orange, the color that matters the most to me and that I can’t always see. I posted this poem a few days ago. This morning, I’m returning to it to explore its various references.

Orange/ Noel Quiñones

If I have a gender, let it be a history learned from orange
Freak            Sun Sucker           Queer            Orange Boy

Rumor of 6th grade sunrise, dressed in you I was a child
of unspeakable obsession. Archaic language, Giolureade

rumor: not sure what this (if anything) a reference to, but it reminded me of the opening of Carl Phillips’ poem, “Night Comes and Passes Over Me”: There’s a rumor of light that/any dark starts off as.
obsession: because I can’t see it, but seemingly, in order to swim across the lake, I need to, I have become obsessed with orange.
giolureade: portmanteau, yellow-red

Until Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots. Her lips unlocked
your sarcenet line, my fingers knew taste before the orange

Margaret Tudor: The earliest known use of orange as a color name in English was in 1502, in a description of an item of Margaret Tudor’s clothing. 
sarcenet line: thin, soft lining often in bright colors and used in elaborate dresses

Dared on Norwood apartments, Dutch colonies
hunted man straight into your family crests of orange

Dutch colonies: William and the House of Orange

Scraped from dust to crown our bruises, warriors we
stared directly into the sun, Tainos dyed in orange

dust/bruises: arnica?
Tainos: original inhabitants of Puerto Rico

As if we always knew we were history. Amber hardened into gold
tricking mortals, mortals tricking gods asking Was it the fruit or the color?

amber tricking mortals: alchemy?

First, Tibbets’ grove, millions of fruits grafted
instead of born, from two parent orange trees

Timmerts’ grove: “In 1873 Eliza Tibbets received two new grafted orange trees to grow and test, from the botanist William Saunders, the Director of the new U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.[4] He had ordered the original cuttings from Bahia, Brazil.”

The key to a philosopher’s stone: Colormen flirting
with volcanos to retrieve your arsenic orpiment

philosopher’s stone/volcano/orpiment: “From antiquity to the end of the 19th Century, a volcanic mineral found in sulphurous fumaroles (great gashes in the Earth’s crust) was a significant source for the harvesting of orange pigment. The highly toxic orpiment, rich in lethal arsenic, ripens from mellow yellow into outrageous orange when subjected to the heat of a fire. Convinced that the luminous shimmer of orpiment (its name is a contraction of Latin aurum, meaning ‘gold’, and pigmentum meaning ‘colour’) must be a key ingredient in concocting the Philosopher’s Stone, alchemists for centuries risked exposure to the noxious substance” (source).

Forever in danger of sliding into another color, I ran
after you, tracing rivers and creeks and streams of citrus

sliding into another color: “forever in danger of sliding into another color category” (The Secret Lives of Color)

The Washington Navel Orange, a second fruit protruding:
not a twin, nor translation, but a new name every season.

not a twin, nor translation, new name: “For centuries, growers noticed that orange trees would occasionally, spontaneously produce individual fruit different from the that of rest of the tree, with fewer or more seeds, a thicker or thinner skin, a sweeter or sourer taste” (source).

march 17/RUN

4.25 miles
locks and dam no.1 hill and back
50 degrees
wind: 13 mph/ 25 mph gusts

Warmer, windier. Ran straight into it heading south towards the falls. It didn’t howl or swirl the leaves but once it almost took off my hat. And it pushed against me, making it harder to run. I didn’t mind. At the start of the run, I felt a little stiff — especially my neck — but by the halfway point I had loosened up.

I noticed the river several times: Sometimes it was silver sparkle, other times tin or pewter, and it was ridged or scaled from the wind. I decided to run down the hill at the locks and dam no. 1 to get closer to the water. Inspired by AO’s Dart (see below), I wanted to hear the trails of scales and the bells just a level under listening. Did it sound like anything? If it did, the sounds were forgotten as I turned around and climbed the hill. A few steps in I stopped to take in the wide blue view of the river from this angle. It took up almost all of my sight: blue undulations

11 Things

  1. the long shadow of a slender tree cast across the part of the path that dips below the road
  2. an orange sweatshirt on a walker emerging from the winchell trail
  3. squaring my shoulders and running into a stiff wind
  4. 2 people under the ford bridge near the locks and dam no. 1, about to climb up somewhere
  5. the bright white base of the locks and dam no. 1 sign — they must use reflective paint
  6. the benches above the edge of the world and near folwell were empty
  7. the low hum of playing kids on the school playground
  8. the flat top of a recently made stump: orange
  9. a white patch in the river near the shore — was it a chunk of ice? a sandbar?
  10. a tailwind as I returned north — not feeling the wind but its absence and that everything was easier
  11. added a few hours later: a creaking above from one tree branch rubbing another in the wind

Listened to leaves shimmering in the trees as I ran south, my “Doin’ Time” playlist as I ran back north. Most memorable song, “Once in a Lifetime”:

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was
Same as it ever was, same as it ever was

Water dissolving and water removing
There is water at the bottom of the ocean
Under the water, carry the water
Remove the water from the bottom of the ocean
Water dissolving and water removing

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, into the silent water
Under the rocks and stones, there is water underground

I never realized before how much water is used in this song. Very cool! The same as it ever was is an interesting contrast to what I was reading earlier this morning: Heraclitus and his idea of never stepping into the same river twice — see 17 march 2023

possible lines to recite/chant

Rereading my 17 march 2022 entry, I encountered these wonderful lines from Dart about how the river sounds:

will you swim down and attend to this foundry for
sounds

this jabber of pidgin-river
drilling these rhythmic cells and trails of scales,
will you translate for me blunt blink glint.

the way I talk in my many-headed turbulence
among these modulations, this nimbus of words kept in
motion
sing-calling something definitely human,

will somebody sing this riffle perfectly as the invisible
river
sings it

can you hear them at all,
muted and plucked,
muttering something that can only be expressed as
hitting a series of small bells just under the level of your
listening?

The bells!

High Above on the Ford Bridge Looking Down at the River

O, can you hear them
at all, these riffle-
perfect rhythmic cells
and trails of scales, plucked,
muted, muttering
below — a string of
small bells just under
the level of your
listening?

on moving — Alice Oswald and Cole Swensen

More words rediscovered while reading past entries in my “On This Day” practice:

I found this great quote from Oswald in her introduction to the poetry anthology, The Thunder Mutters: 101 Poems for the Planet:

Raking, like any outdoor work, is a more mobile, more many-sided way of knowing a place than looking. When you rake leaves for a couple of hours, you can hear right into the non-human world, it’s as if you and the trees had found a meeting point in the sound of the rake. (ix)

Mobile and many-sided, more than looking from a distance.

From Cole Swensen:

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. 

Walk/ Cole Swensen

feb 21/RUN

3.2 miles
trestle turn around
20 degrees

Another bright day. And warmer. And windier. Ran with the wind at my back first. Encountered other runners, walkers. Heard kids at Howe Elementary laughing and screaming and, at least one of them, squealing. The river was white and covered in snow, so was the walking trail. Smelled weed from open car windows. Thought I saw the moon but it might have been a plane. Nothing felt purple today — too bright. The bike path was stained a faint white from salt.

Did a few strides at the end of my run (for me, strides = speeding up considerably for 15-20 seconds). Nice! I’ll have to add more of them in. Small victory: I wanted to stop and walk at a mile, but I kept going for another 1/2 to 3/4 mile.

the purple hour

3:55 am / dining room

purple pansies pray peacefully
pitiless preyers: purple panthers
lavender locks look lovely
lilac lamps leave low light
heather has heavy hands, hollow head, hazardous heart
violet views vast volumes
indigo is inching inward
mauve might murder me
our orchids outlast others
patty picks plum pudding
as amethyst arrives alice asks about alan’s art
even edger eats eggplant eagerly
iris is indifferent
mulbery maude makes many mistakes
forgive fuchsia for farting
when working wednesdays wisteria wants white wine

8:50 am — dining room

after asters, ash arrives
plaintive prayers: purple pallbearers
gooseberries grieve grandmothers
orchids outlast outrage

I asked RJP if she wanted to try. She did!

patricia pats purple potatoes (RJP)
magnificent magenta makes musical moments (RJP)
purple proclaims, Period poo! (RJP)
purple pringles produce particularly pronounced poops (RJP)
orchids open only on occasion (RJP)

2:21 pm — front room (desk)

professor plum pontificates pedantically

After waiting a little over a week, the audio version of JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies has arrived! I’d like to devote the final week of February to reading (with my ears and eyes following along) this wonderful book.

Revisiting Alice Oswald’s discussion of purple and porfurium in “Interview with Water,” I started thinking about her description of being purpled:

To be purpled is to lose one’s way or name, to be nothing, to grieve without surfacing, to suffer the effects of sea light, to be either sleepless or weightless and cut off by dreams

To lose one’s name — this will come up in Aster of Ceremonies. To be sleepless and weightless and cut off my dreams — I feel this often while running above the gorge.

The Gorge

I finished watching The Gorge last night. I (mostly) enjoyed it. I liked the actors and the movie got me thinking more about “The Hollow Men” and T.S. Eliot and it had the cool visuals of yellow and purple together. But, the writing wasn’t the greatest and there was something off about the romance — their chemistry together — and Sigourney Weaver was seriously underutilized as a villain. And they didn’t bring T.S. Eliot back at the end. Well, at least not explicitly. I discussed this last point with Scott yesterday, and as I described the ending — how they blew stuff up (including the bad guys) then ended the movie with the world seemingly unchanged and Levi and Drassa kissing — I suggested that the writer seemed to run out of steam or time or money to offer a meaningful conclusion. Then I realized that this flat ending was the world ending, not with a bang but a whimper! Was this intentional? If so, well played Zach Dean.

feb 16/RUN

note: I’m starting this post at 9:50 am. The temp is 4 degrees / fees like -11. The wind is 11 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. At this point, I’m thinking I will run inside on the treadmill. Will I, or will some part of me convince the rest to run outside?

3.5 miles
ford bridge and back
7 degrees / feels like -10
50% snow-covered

We did it. Good job legs and lungs and heart, you convinced brain that we really needed to be outside this late morning! Almost all of the layers were on: 2 pairs of black running tights; dark gray tank top; green long-sleeved shirt; orange pullover; dark purplish/blueish/grayish pullover with hood; purple jacket; orange striped buff; black fleece cap with ear flaps; black gloves; pink striped gloves; 2 pairs of socks — gray (long) / black (short). At times, I was too warm.

It was wonderful and sometimes hard, especially when I was running into the wind on the way back. It was also bright — glad I had my sunglasses. Encountered someone in orange with their hand up to shield their eyes as they walked south. Saw the round shadow of a street lamp and the jagged shadow of a small tree. Passed a group of four walkers, laughing and yelling and having fun on the double bridge.

Did I think about purple at all? I can’t remember now. The only color I recall noticing was orange.

the purple hour (15th and 16th of feb)

3:38 am / dining room / 15 feb

the heat turnning on, the house shifting settling, my legs restless
purple mountains — in Japan, looking out at the mountains, different shades of purple — fall, 1994
Emily Dickinson purple — sunsets and sunrises
someone shoveling at 4 am

[discussion below added at 10:30 am on 16 feb]

Where Ships of Purple—gently toss — / Emily Dickinson

Where Ships of Purple—gently toss —
On Seas of Daffodil—
Fantastic Sailors—mingle—
And then—the Wharf is still!
F296 (1862) 265

No one does sunsets better than Dickinson. I wonder if Amherst sunsets are still so colorful. Where I’ve lived sunsets are primarily red, pink, and gold, but the ones she describes often have purple. This one does, too. Here she sees great ships, large purple clouds, gently tossing in their moorings. The sea beneath them is tinted golden, “Daffodil,” from the setting sun. The mingling and fantastic sailors are no doubt smaller clouds that move among the larger ship-like ones, their shapes constantly changing. When the sun sets the sky turns dark and “the Wharf is still!”

the prowling bee

The prowling bee has been such a wonderful resource for me. Reading the comments for this poem, there was speculation about why the Amherst sunsets were so brilliant and purple:

Romantic era sunsets WERE particularly vivid, due to volcanic ash from several cataclysmic eruptions worldwide. The Hudson River School artists and their sunsets might not have been hyperbole, after all, nor were ED purple sunsets.

Another commenter doubted this suggestion, so I did a quick search and found a pop science article about a study on sunset paintings and volcanic ash: How Paintings of Sunset Immortalize Past Volcanic Eruptions

Volcanoes can cause some of the world’s most spectacular sunsets. An eruption spews small particles of gas, dust and ash, called aerosols, high into the atmosphere where they can spread around the world. The particles can’t be seen during the day, but about 15 minutes after sunset, when conditions are right, these aerosols can light up the sky in brilliant “afterglows” of pink, purple, red or orange.

The impact of climate/climate disruptions on how we see color? Fascinating. Earlier this morning, while doing my “on this day” practice, I reread my entry from 16 feb 2024. In it, I described a photo I took above the gorge.

The most important thing about this image is how the branches create a net which mimics how my vision often works — I can almost see what’s there, but not quite. Secondary, but connected, is the feeling of being disoriented, off, almost but not quite, untethered, which comes from swirling forms and the climate crisis — there’s almost always snow on tthe ground here in February. Where are my Minnesota winters?

This last bit about climate crisis and lack of snow returns me to the ash in the sky and its effect on how 19th century artists saw and depicted the world. Many places to go with this, for now I’m thinking about how my vision loss (or the making strange of my vision) has enabled me to be more open (than many people with “normal” vision) to understanding vision as complex and not as simple or straightforward as “what you see is what you get.” Does that make sense?

1:50 am / dining room / 16 feb

doorways/thresholds are definitely purple — a deep, dark purple
the air above the gorge: different versions (tints/shades) of purple
purple hums, a soft lavender static in my ears
lachrymose purple 
originally wrote violet static, but looked up the color again and thought it was too dark for the static I was hearing in my head

9:46 am / front room / 16 feb

Thought more about violet. Decided to search, “Alice Oswald violet.” Found this beautiful poem:

Violet/ Alice Oswald

Recently fallen, still with wings out,

she spoke her name to summon us to her darkness.

Not wanting to be seen, but not uncurious,

she spoke her name and let her purple deep eye-pupil

be peered into.

‘Violet,’ she said

and showed her heart under its leaf.

Then she leant a little frightened forwards

and picked a hand to pick her.

And her horrified mouseface, sniffed and lifted close,

let its gloom be taken and all the sugar licked off its strangeness

while we all stood there saying, ‘Violet! Violet!’

fingering her blue bruised skin.

Finally she mentioned

the name of her name

which was something so pin-sharp,

in such a last gasp of a previously unknown language,

it could only be spoken as a scent,

it could only be heard as our amazement.

“purple deep eye pupil”: so good!

“the name of her name” — I wrote in my notes: the flower is never one solid, consistent color — the color is an abstraction, a taking one part for the whole, a disconnection — to name a color is to reduce the experience and perception of that color to one thing — colors cannot be fully named

What is lost — in our perception, experience of the world — when we reduce what we see to a fixed color/fixed name?

This question reminds me of something I read in Turning to Stone on the importance of naming yesterday:

The names themselves are, of course, human constructs, but the act of naming requires making distinctions that sharpen the powers of observation.

*

Taxonomy is comforting because it creates a sense of control and finitude in a chaotic and open-ended world.

Turning to Stone / Marcia Bjornerud

Lists! I love lists. My lists aren’t taxonomies, but something else . . .

The proper name of God is a list.

Valentina Izmirlieva in Aster of Ceremonies

Once I get the audiobook of Aster of Ceremonies, I want to put name as taxonomy and control in conversation with JJJJJerome Ellis’ “Liturgy of the Name” and “Benediction.”

feb 4/RUN

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
7 degrees / feels like 2

Lots of layers today. Too many. Under the jacket and pull-over and sweatshirt and shirt I was sweating. Like yesterday, the first mile was hard. I had several small victories as I pushed through moments of wanting to cut the run short.

10 Things

  1. happy, wild kids on the playground — I thought I heard one kid call out, thank you thank you thank you then Sara Sara Sara
  2. a bird singing — couldn’t quite hear the tune, just understood it was a bird
  3. the few times I ran on snow it crunched — crisp, compact
  4. the falls were dribbling over the ledge
  5. 2 vehicles in the parking lot, one of them was a pick-up truck
  6. a car honking far behind me in the parking lot — were they honking at me?
  7. a pink plastic bag in the small wood near the ford bridge — full of something
  8. a few walkers, one woman bundled up, wearing a white mask over her mouth and nose
  9. several fast runners, speeding by me
  10. the river was almost all white

Chanted some tripe berries, then triple birds, partly inspired by hearing Kacey Musgraves’ song, Cardinal, last night:

cardinal
chickadee
woodpecker
woodpecker
cardinal
attention
ATTENtion
aTTENtion
attenTION

the purple hour

I have eliminated Facebook from my morning routine and I’m not missing it at all. No gnus is good gnus with Gary Gnu*. Maybe I’ll check the news once a week? So, instead of Facebook, I went straight into poets.org then Poetry Foundation then poems.com. On Poetry Foundation, I found a wonderfully titled essay, The Joy of Attention by Jasmine Dreame Wagner. The whole essay is great and I’d like to return to it. When she mentioned Carolyn Forché’s Blue Hour (which I’ve requested from my local library), an idea slowly, or not so slowly, crept into my consciousness: doing a variation of Wagner’s experiment — going to the same place at the same time every day, giving attention, then listing what you notice (without metaphor) — that involves my restlessness/insomnia at night and calling it Purple Hour. At 1 A.M. last night, sitting at the dining room table, up because of restless legs, I wrote, What color is restlessness? Then I wrote: purple / grayish purple. My answer, I’m sure, was inspired by Alice Oswald, her lecture Interview with Water and her mention of purple in Nobody. In the exercise, Wagner suggests writing in a notebook. Should I do that, or type it up in a document?

To go back to that bucket of water — to wave a blue gown above it and ask, What is that color which Homer calls porphyrion? It is not blue exactly; it gets translated as purple but purple is a settled color whereas Homer’s word is agitated. It derives from the sea verb porphyrion which means to roll without breaking, so it is already a fluid word, a heaped up word, a word with underswell, not a pigment but an emanation from the nature of water. To get a true sense of porphyrion you need to see the sea in it and for Homer the sea is unhuman full of strange creatures missed colored unplowable and this is my favorite word it is a peritone meaning unfenced. If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. Yes I’m afraid you will have to find your way to the p volume of Johnson’s unwritten dictionary. There you will discover a dark light word an adjective for edgelessness — a sea word used also of death smoke cloth mist blood between bluish purple and cobalt mauve. It appears mid-ocean when the wind perhaps makes a network of backblowing glitters that the underswell moves sideways as when a big sea swells with noiseless waves. It is used of the heart meaning his heart was a heaving not quite broken wave. It indicates a surface but suggests a depth a mutation of flatness or noiseless sheen, a sea creature, a quality of caves, any inlet or iodine or shaded stone, a type of algae or rockfish, anything excessive or out of focus or subliminal — for example: a swimmer seen from underneath, a rotting smell, a list of low sounds, an evening shadow or sea god, a whole catalogue of simmering grudges storms waves and solitudes or deep water including everyone who has drowned in it. To be purpled is to lose one’s way or name, to be nothing, to grieve without surfacing, to suffer the effects of sea light. to be either sleepless or weightless and cut off by dreams — find yourself in the silence underneath an overhanging way that or thereabouts is the color of a bluish violet ultramarine gown so the great poet sang.

Interview with Water

from Paean to Place/Lorine Niedecker

How much less am I
in the dark than they?

Effort lay in us
before religons
at pond bottom
all things move toward
the light

Except those
that freely work down
to ocean’s black depths
in us an impulse tests
the unknown

from Nobody/ Alice Oswald

The sea she said and who could ever drain it dry
has so much purple in its caves the wind at dusk
incriminates the waves
and certain fish conceal it in their shells
at ear-pressure depth
where the shimmer of headache dwells
and the brain goes

dark

purple

purples to think about: heels echoing, doors creaking closed, deep pits. The gentle, queer curve of a branch towering over the trail — as I ran under it I thought, that’s very purple. Then the face of a child in the midst of bellowing frustration — I didn’t see their face, but I imagined it could be a deep purple. Purple whispers in the trees.

Mary Ruefle’s Purple Sadness

some guidelines on the experiment

[from Wagner, things to observe]

  • Record what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste during each visit.
  • Aim to record at least six new observations each time.
  • On days when you’re pressed for time, allow yourself to simply record: “ailanthus, roof moss, fireplace wood smoke, fence squirrel, birdbath.” Phrases can be just as powerful as full sentences.
  • Note the small observations as much as the significant ones: “eclipse.”
  • When you notice that something in the visual field has changed, be sure to reflect on this change.
  • Observe movement in addition to stasis.
  • Pay attention to the appearance of new items and the absences of others.
  • Familiarize yourself with the specifics of your environment.
  • Resist the urge to create metaphor or simile; instead, log what you see. Recognize the world for what it is.

After recording your observations for a few days or weeks or years, Wagner suggests reflecting on the process of this experience by writing in reverse — starting at the back of the notebook and writing until you reach the first entry. Write in the margins and any empty spaces; “write until your reflections on your process become entangled with your observations; let the notebook become a gnarled and ecstatic poem.”

While Wagner writes everything by hand in a notebook, I might try typing up and/or dictating my observations, printing them out and then writing all over the printed paper. I’m thinking my approach will be be better for my weak eyes.

Will I stick to pure observation? I’m not sure; I might experiment with different ways of understanding my restlessness, and the purple of it all.

*After double-checking how to spell Gary Gnu, I decided to look up the theme song for The Great Space Coaster. Yes! You’re welcome future Sara!

It’s the great space coaster, get on board

sept 20/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop
65 degrees

Such a beautiful morning! I marveled at it with a woman we passed on the stairs down to the east river road. Sunny and still with sharp, satisfying shadows. The first 5 miles were, as I said to Scott, not hard but not easy either. Just one foot in front of the other, moving forward. I had some unfinished business (which is my euphemism for needing to poop) that I had tried to finish before the run started, but couldn’t. Around 5 miles, we stopped at a porta potty — the last one for several miles — but it was locked and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming out anytime soon. I’m not even sure anyone was in there. So I kept going and it got a lot harder. Some stomach cramps and muscle clenching made the run more of a struggle, mentally and physically. But I did it and I don’t feel terrible now that I’m done.

10 Things

  1. flat, still, blue water with dozens of single leaves sitting on the surface
  2. clear, sharp shadows on the bridge — the railing slat shadows were a series of thin parallel lines
  3. the sun reflecting off of the water and through the railing slats was very bright and trippy — so many flashes of light as the shine shot through the slats in a steady rhythm
  4. at first we couldn’t hear shadow falls, but as we neared the monument, I heard the tiniest trickle
  5. pleasing contrast — the bright blue of the sky against the green leaves of a maple tree
  6. slashes of red and orange in the bushes at knee-level
  7. running across the highway 5 bridge, the cars were loud but a speeding motorcycle was louder
  8. more leaping grasshoppers, landing on our legs and feet
  9. a group of people standing in a circle near coldwater springs
  10. a screaming bluejay

Scott and I didn’t talk as much on this run. With my unfinished business, I was trying to focus on moving and didn’t have much to say. Mostly I talked about that or the condition of the path — I rolled my ankle twice (mildly, I hope). Scott talked about where we were (distance/time) in terms of the marathon and how he needs to practice for his gig on Saturday night. I also talked about how the Minneapolis Parks have very specific guidelines for the paved paths along the river — how level they must be, how much distance is required from the road. Scott said that that doesn’t seem to be the case in St. Paul and that he prefers to run on Minneapolis trails.

liquid looking

I’ve started writing around the idea, from Alice Oswald, of liquid looking. I need to gather the different definitions in one space (a job for later today?), but for now I want to mention what I was writing yesterday. It’s about the fish in me escaping (from Anne Sexton), a school of minnows at my feet as I entered the water, and imagining those fish as the insects, the spirits of sight, that Dante describes and that Alice Oswald understands as the light that travels and returns, making it possible for us to see. Here are a few lines from AO (Nobody):

There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye
who speak greek and these invisible
ambassadors of vision never see themselves
but fly at flat surfaces and back again

In my version, the ambassadors of vision are little fish, and they speak in bubbles, not Greek, and they bubble-whisper the colors of things, like the water. I need to work on bringing in just a little bit more of the origin — Dante’s/Oswald’s idea of light spirits/insects — so that it makes sense for the reader. Here’s another passage from an interview with AO that might help:

I was just thinking an awful lot about light and vision and the way … well, light as an insect, really, which is not just Homer, it’s also Dante. I always loved this part of Dante where he talks about the spiriti visivi, I think they’re called. And this idea that when you look at things, what’s happening is these kind of, you know, these creatures are sort of moving out from your eye to the world and moving from the world back into your eye. I was trying to sort of slow down my senses while I wrote this poem and imagine even a sort of passage between myself and the world was a creature, living creature of some kind . . . .

A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

Here’s what I wrote yesterday:

I enter water

and the fish in me

escape — a school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-
to the murk beyond
the buoys. I won’t
see them again but
they are there flashing
below returning
to speak in bubble-
whisper all the names
of water’s colors
silver pewter bronze
copper’s weathered green
reddish-purple rust

Reading this again, I’m thinking about the next line from Anne Sexton’s poem, “The Nude Swim”: The real fish did not mind. I’m really interested in this distinction between the real fish and my fish escaping and what it means and I think I’d like to bring that in here. It fits with something Scott was saying about the poem last night when I read it to him — something about beyond metaphor. I can’t remember, but I think it speaks to what real might mean here.

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape — perhaps they
will join that school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-

OR

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape. The minnows
do not mind as they
dart past lunging kids
on their way to what’s
beyond the buoys.
I won’t see my fish
again but they’re there.

I could also end the poem with an altered version of AO’s, There are said to be microscopic. . . There are said to be tiny fish in the eye/who speak Bubbles . . .

aug 31/RUN

4 miles
marshall-loon loop*
70 degrees

*north through the neighborhood, over to lake street, up the marshall hill, turn right at prior, then right at Summit, down to the river, back over the bridge, stop at Loons for coffee

Ran with Scott this late morning. We talked mostly about our son and how to help him as he tries to figure out what he can do with his music major after he graduates next year. Scott pointed out the signs on the huge and fancy houses on Summit opposing the new hockey arena at St. Thomas. I pointed out the one streetlamp that is still lit on the St. Paul side.

10 Things

  1. pink and orange zinnias in a yard
  2. a shrieking (or hissing?) squirrel in a tree
  3. a blue river, emptied of boats
  4. a bright yellow chair outside of a salon
  5. a dead black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk
  6. a biker slowing then calling out, on your right, before passing us on our left
  7. people sitting outside, laughing and enjoying their coffee at Loons
  8. a friendly barista*
  9. the bathroom for the building, which has always been open now has a keypad on it**
  10. not seen, but described by Scott — being blinded by the sun reflecting off of the flat, metal surface of a stupid cybertruck***

*I’m realizing as I write this that I couldn’t see this barista very clearly and I’m wondering if my vision has gotten worse and I’m so used to it that I hardly notice.

**Customers at Loons and Longfellow Grill now have to punch in a code to use the bathroom. I think the bathrooms should be open. I was wondering if they were having too many people coming up from the river just to use the bathroom. Up until last fall, there has always been a porta potty under the lake street bridge for runners, walkers, rowers, and people living in the gorge. They should bring it back — everyone should have access to a bathroom!

***I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these abominations, but Scott HATES them. They sound terrible.

Mountains/ Alice Oswald

Something is in the line and air along edges,
Which is in woods when the leaf changes
And in the leaf-pattern’s gives and gauges,
The water’s tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
Which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between paces.
An outlet fills the space between two horses.
 
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
Accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
 
And certain evenings, something in the balance
Falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
And then inslides itself between moments
And spills the heart from its circumference;
And this is when the moon matchlessly opens
And you can feel by instinct in the distance
The bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
Like intentions among suggestions.

I think this poem fits in with my study of the in-between moments. So many great lines in the last stanza: falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense; spills the heart from its circumference — I like this idea of a leaky heart that breaks open/out of its borders; intentions among suggestions.

aug 15/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees

There was a chance of scattered thunderstorms tonight so I wondered if open swim would happen, but the weather shifted and I was able to swim 4 choppy loops, some of it even with sun.

10 Things

  1. cold. water
  2. fluffy clouds
  3. translucent bubbles
  4. a duck crossing my path near the big beach
  5. the orange buoy looking like a moon, faint and far off
  6. choppy water — breathing only to my right for long stretches
  7. lake water with a soft green glow
  8. a few vines floating by
  9. swans and sailboats
  10. the most popular color for safety buoys tethered to torsos today: bright pink

I can’t remember if I posted this bit from Nobody before, but I’m posting it again as something to think about while I swim:

if only my eyes could sink under the surface
and join those mackerel shoals in their matching suits
whose shivering inner selves all inter-mirrored
all in agreement with water
wear the same

wings

I’m thinking about how opaque the lake water is, how I’ve only seen a few fish, and never a group of them shivering or shimmering, how my eyes are hardly involved in lake swimming. Okay, they’re involved, but to a much lesser extent than one would expect.

question: do I want to be in agreement with water?

With all of the swells and choppy water, I was not in agreement with it today. Or was I? I didn’t mind swimming into walls of water, unable to see, stroking harder, lifting my head higher. I don’t want the water to be this rough all of the time, but sometimes it’s fun, like today.

aug 2/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees

An almost perfect morning for a swim: sunny, warm, barely a ripple in the water. Amazing. I couldn’t see the orange buoys, but it didn’t matter. Steady and straight, right to them. On the first loop, something hard bumped into me — a twig? — and, for a moment, I was startled out of my stroking and breathing trance. I thought about what was down below me, imagining some fish swimming up and bumping into me. Then I forgot about it and almost everything else.

As I entered the water, more than a dozen tiny minnows parted at my feet — the fish in me escaping!

10 Things

  1. cloudless blue sky — bright, but not quite cerulean
  2. a dragonfly near the surface — at least I think it was dragonfly, it looked big, but too small for a bird — size is often distorted when looking in the lake
  3. swimming south towards the bridge, shafts of light were rising up from the bottom of the lake
  4. a few planes in the air
  5. both green buoys were easy to sight — bright, white dots in the distance
  6. hardly any other swimmers in the water — in the best way possible, I felt alone
  7. water surface: blue, flat, smooth
  8. stopping briefly in the middle of the lake, hearing the sloshing and rhythmic splashing of someone else’s strokes
  9. after the swim, walking near the bike rack: the solar panels on top of the picnic structure were casting pale orange shapes on the sidewalk
  10. swimming east towards the little beach, the bubbles my hands make were sparkling and glittering in the sun, too sparkling to be real, looking like something you’d see in a cartoon*

*Days after writing this, I happened to be watching classic Scooby-Doo and saw the bubbles I was thinking of:

unreal, sparkly, bubbles-as-outlines

Speaking of bubbles, I searched for them on Poetry Foundation and found these lines:

Its bubbles are words
meant for no one.
(from In the Aquarium/ Dunya Mikhail)

I like imagining my underwater bubbles as words being released, not as speech intended for any one, but as something else: a letting go? an accident — leaking words all over the lake?

I’m reminded of Alice Oswald’s restless thought bubbles in Nobody released from the body and traveling across the water, there and there and there.

I’m also reminded of Anne Sexton and “The Nude Swim”:

We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sun

What patterns do I leave on the surface with my strokes, and how long do they last? What if my bubbles could float above and witness them?