Tag: biking

24 july/RUNBIKESWIM

run: 4 miles
the monument and back
73 degrees
dew point: 69

Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.

Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.

I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.

Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.

Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:

clouds reflected on river
river clouds

note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.

visual fields, landscapes, meadows

1

At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.

2

Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”

It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”

the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance

3

as
though there
swung at the end
of a tunnel,
a passage dotted
with endless
points of
arrival, as
though our gaze
started just outside
our faces and
corkscrewed its way
toward the horizon,
processual,
as if looking
took time to happen
and weren’t
instantaneous,
offered whole in
one gesture
before we
ask, before our
will, as if the far
Sonoma mountains
weren’t equally ready
to be beheld as
the dead
fly on the sill)
(Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)

What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood.
(Naomi Cohn)

4

A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.

5

“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”

“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.

As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees / 79 degrees

Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.

I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark

There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!

images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon
(Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)

july 18/BIKESWIM

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
61 degrees (there) / 68 (back)

It’s great to bike! Independence! Not having to rely on someone else to get me to the lake. And, being on a bike is much more fun than being in a car.

Overcast and cool. Some wind as I biked south and west. I might have glimpsed the river through the trees, looking almost white, but I don’t remember. Heard the rush of the light rail going past on the other side of the barricade. Also heard the rush of the creek, moving past the spot where all the kids like to swim. Heard the rhythmic thwack of the pickle ball hitting the racket. The pickle ball courts by the lake nokomis rec center are always full. And, as I neared the big beach, I heard a shrill sound on repeat. Scott and I had heard it last night and thought it was a person whistling. Nope. Was it a bird? What else could it have been?

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
64 degrees

A little tired today after last night’s swim. Otherwise, I felt good, buoyant, high up on the surface of the water. My sparkle friends were coming right at me as I swam across to the little beach. The sky was covered in clouds. The positioning of the buoys was closer today than last nigh, so a much shorter course. Two things: the green buoy closest to the little beach was farther away this morning than last night and the middle green buoys were closer together — a tighter angle. According to my watch, I swam a mile and 1000 less strokes today.

I had trouble keeping my nose plug on; it was leaking air which made a funny nose underwater. I wondered if other swimmers could hear it. Have I heard the noises of other swimmer’s underwater before? Not in lake, but I’ve heard clicking elbows in the pool.

Mostly my stroke pattern was: 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
Occasionally: 1 2 3 4 5 6
or 1 2 3 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left

I recited Alice Oswald, mostly the one about microscopic insects that catch pigment on their shivering hair-like receptors. I wanted to recite the new lines I tried to memorize last night, but I got stuck on the first line. I couldn’t remember disintegrating certainty.

Yesterday I watched a little of the 5k open water swim world championships from Singapore. The competitors were swimming in a shipping lane with an over-sized lane line on one side. This lane line was enormous, much bigger proportionately than a pool lane line. It looked strange and unreal.

10 Colors

  1. orange buoy
  2. red lifeguard kayak
  3. white swan
  4. an occasional dot of robin’s egg blue — the green buoy getting closer
  5. lime green buoy
  6. yellow safety buoy
  7. pink cap
  8. green vine, floating
  9. pale greenish-brown vine from milfoil reaching up from the bottom
  10. a smear of green so dark it almost looked black near the ford bridge: a dark dirt trail that winds through the woods

EXAQUA

Last week, I returned to a poem I posted on this log a few years back: EXAQUA / Jan-Henry Gray. So many good lines about water. I decided to request it from the library — it’s in Gray’s collection, Documents. Yesterday RJP and I went and picked it up. Exaqua is several pages long, with multiple sections. Today I’ll start reading it more closely.

I wondered about the title. What does it mean? In a note, Gray writes that the title comes from the “Notanda” section of M.NourbeSe Philip’s Zong. I’ve heard of Zong! before. JJJJJermoe Ellis writes about it in Aster of Ceremonies. I had to do a little more digging to find out what it means in Zong! Found a masters thesis with an explanation:

When Morrison writes, “By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footsteps but the water too and what is down there,” she gestures toward the material remains of the enslaved who we know to have been drowned by those waters—the “Sixty Million and more” to whom Beloved (324). It is in an attempt to remember “the water and what is down there” that NourbeSe attempts to do the work of recovering, reclaiming, or exhuming those bodies from their liquid graves. The term NourbeSe uses to describe this process is exaqua: that is, to exhume the bodies of the Zong’s victims from the water. In lieu of the enslaved’s literal, material remains—their scoured bones— Zong! orients itself toward creating a textual space where their voices may sound out. When we have observed that a voice is singular, this observation has rested on the embodiedness of our voices. As sound, our voices are constituted by the materialities of our bodies that produces them, thereby carrying something of our bodies outside of ourselves and spacing it out into the material world. For NourbeSe, then, Zong! as a material object is like the surface from which the sound of the captives’ voices reemerge.

Listening/Reading for Dismembered Voices

This definition is fascinating. I want to keep thinking about it as I do a close reading of the different sections of the poem. An immediate thought: the idea of surface here is interesting — surface as where what is inside us travels outside.

immersion

The only way to know a song is to sing it.
The only way to know an ocean is to swim it.
(from Across the Pacific Ocean/ Jan-Henry Gray)

These lines are from an earlier poem in the collection, but I’ve been thinking about them and I think they can be put into conversation with EXQUA. I’d also like to put them into conversation with my own thoughts on being in the water as opposed to being near it or beside it or above it (like I am with the river).

I think about all that I know or understand or am familiar with because of the time I’ve been in lake nokomis over the last 12 years. The quality of the water, its currents, its colors, its buoyancy, its temperatures. The sediments, the ducks, seagulls, loons, dragonflies, the vegetation.

In the water, you feel the ripples, the swells, the rocking of the waves, the wind. Out of the water, you might see a textured surface or a whitecap, but you might only see flat, calm water.

july 13/SWIMBIKE

5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

5 loops on a beautiful Sunday morning! Even though we’re still under bad air quality advisory and there was smoke and haze lingering above the lake, I didn’t have any trouble breathing. The smoke-haze made it difficult to see the buoys, however. Who cares — not me! I still swam straight towards the buoys.

My 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left or 1 2 3 right 1 2 3 4 right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left was relaxed and steady. My arms and legs in constant motion, rotating and kicking.

I call my circuits around the buoys loops, but that’s not quite right. They are more triangles, not curved but a straight line with 3 buoys from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach, then a straight line with 2 buoys from the little beach to the southern end of the big beach, then a straight line parallel to beach from the last green buoy to the only orange one and the start of one circuit, the beginning of another. Swimming in the lake is less about curves and more about lines and angles. Angled elbows, a straight back — parallel, the intersecting legs-as-lines. The first segment was fairly smooth and fast, the second was choppy and sluggish, and the third was smoother and faster.

10 Things

  1. something/someone tapped my toe mid-lake — I couldn’t see anyone, was it a fish? a twig?
  2. particles suspended, glittering — my sparkle friends!
  3. my hands wrapped in bubbles
  4. a loose vine passed over my legs, got stuck in my fingers
  5. a military plane flying fast
  6. light green, a hint of yellow, water
  7. glitter on the surface of the water where other swimmers where
  8. hazy blue sky
  9. a gentle rocking from the water
  10. near the end of the final loop — a sore back

I recited my 4 A Oswald lines about microscopic insects in the eye and surfacing and diving again and giving water the weight and size of myself and lifting the lid and shutting it. Such great lines! Admired the bubbles on my hands, thought of Anne Sexton and shedding them and then believed the bubbles were little thoughts and feelings and ideas that some part of me was shedding and offering to the water and anyone in it.

Thought about my gorge poem that begins, I go to/the gorge / / to find the/soft space. Started composing one for the lake: I go to/the lake // to be held. Thought about the verb, to behold, then beheld, which reminded me of a line in a poem that I love and had pondered on 19 june: Unsee the beheld! / Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews

Unsee the beheld where to unsee is to observe/witness with a sense other than sight, or to unravel, come undone or redone, transformed. Who/what is the beheld? Me, held by the water. So, to unsee me, to let go of me/I and have an encounter/exchange with that which is not-I: the water. I haven’t written about this bit yet, but yesterday I was thinking about Anne Carson and her anthropology of water and I wrote in my Plague Notebook, encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I. In the lake, I am held by the water — rocked, enveloped, lifted — but in the process of being held I dissolve, or the small part of Sara the ecosystem that is I is saturated. Yes, this makes sense to me, but will it to anyone else, including future Sara?

I read mention of May Swenson’s poem “Swimmers” yesterday and I happened to have it in Nature: Poems Old and New. I’m still trying to figure out the different ways I can read the stanzas — across; down the left, then down the right, then bottom?down the left, to the bottom, and up the right? down the left only? down the right only?

Swimmers/ May Swenson

Tossed
by the muscular sea,
we are lost,
and glad to be lost
in troughs of rough

love. A bath in
laughter, our dive
into foam,
our upslide and float
on the surf of desire.

But sucked to the root
of the water-mountain —
immense —
about to tip upon us
the terror of total

delight —
we are towed,
helpless in its
swell, by hooks
of our hair;

then dangled, let go,
make to race —
as the wrestling chest
of the sea, itself
tangled, tumbles

in its own embrace.
Our limbs like eels
are water-boned,
our faces lost
to difference and

contour, as the lapping
crests.
They cease
their charge,
and rock us

in repeating hammocks
of the releasing
tide —
until supine we glide,
on cool green

smiles
of an exhaling
gladiator,
to the shore
of sleep.

However I read it, it’s good!

bike: 4 miles
the falls and back
84 degrees

Biked to the falls with Scott for a beer and a hike and some time to be in the midst of others. Sassy, strong little girls, BIG dogs, small yippy dogs, a hiker with poles, surreys, kids playing soccer, a guy that looked like Mr. Hand, 2 long-haired dachshunds in the ice cream line, a LONG ice cream line, a LONGER food line. A roaring falls, a raging creek, blocked-off steps and wooden path. A dog that plopped down and refused to move, a guy walking by, laughing and calling out to his friend, that dog is done!

july 10/RUNBIKESWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
71 degrees
dew point: 67

Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.

Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?

The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees / 78 degrees

Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
79 degrees

Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.

The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.

Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.

A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.

june 27/BIKESWIM

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
61/64 degrees

Cooler this morning. When I got up I briefly thought, I don’t need to go today; it’s too cold. Silenced that voice and went — a great bike ride! The gray made it harder to see, but I didn’t care. I don’t remember having a single scary moment. Encountered runners and walkers and other bikers, several surreys just past the park, one chill biker with a dog in the front, listening to music (I think it was jazz?) as he went. Heard the creek rushing, had to dismount when the new part of the path was covered with black sandbags, noticed a few people sitting in the grass on the stretch between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis.
My favorite part: rounding the curve, seeing the orange buoys in the water as I neared the beach. Open swim!

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
62 degrees

4 loops today! 3 in a row, a bathroom break (out of the water!), then back in for another loop. The water was warmer than the air and clear near the shore. Starting my last loop, I swam through the swimming area and was able to see the bottom the entire way — only “unnatural” thing I saw was a bright colored pair of goggles.

The first buoy was far away from the big beach. The second buoy kept moving — and not just because of wind, I watched as the lifeguard tugged it to a different spot during one loop, then dragged it to the third orange buoy during the 3rd loop — why?

Today there was a sailboat out in the water. Not menacing — it hugged the edge of the shore, staying far from the course.

Most of the bubbles looked like scooby-doo bubbles — translucent and outlined (for clip/discussion, see 2 aug 2024), but the one at the bottom end of visual field kept looking like a glob of snot — gross!

The water was a darkish green-blue. The milfoil was orange-green. The sky, pale blue.

Someone parked in the parking lot had their headlights on and before I realized that, I was using it to sight, thinking it was the far green buoy. Nope.

It was a great morning for a swim. What a loss it would have been if I had skipped it, what a gift to have gone!

overheard, at 11:15 (open swim ends at 11:00): one swimmer talking to another — I kept making excuses until I finally said to myself, you have to go! stop doing the dishes!

birds

On mornings when the birds singing — which is most days, but not today — I’d like to remember and chant these lines from the end of “Birdsong of Shaker Way” by Ann-Margaret Lim:

one more day, filled with birds—
brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:

precious, diamond-throated
sweet song, miracle-toting birds
the-gift-of-day-is-here birds.

Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird.
You lift me up bird.
You sing the day beautiful, bird.

finds from my On This Day practice

1

Reading my past entries from 27 june, I reunited with some favorite lines from the wonderful poet, Tomas Tranströmer in his poem, “Under Pressure.” I decided to fit them into my breathing form:

You can see
beauty

only from
the side,

hastily,
Dense grain

on the field,
colours

in a yellow
stream. Rest-

less shadows
in my head

are drawn there.
They want

to creep in
to grain

and turn gold.

2

From 27 june 2023, definitions of about:

about: reasonably close to; almost; on the verge of; on all sides; around the outside; in many different directions — here and there; near; concerning . . . out and about (oot and a boot — Minnesota style)

3

From 27 june 2024, blessing the boats/ lucille clifton

As I read this poem, I thought about how I often imagine myself as a boat in the water. Not a fish deep in the lake, but a boat, on the line between surfaced and submerged, half of me underwater, half always exposed to the air.

5

today
voice
curve
water
beach
clear
shore
think
third
green
sight

great
scary
chill
biker
front
music
heard
creek
black
grass
would

today: great — a chill felt on the curve
I heard music: a grass voice a water voice a green voice a shore voice a creek voice — all here today, singing together
here in the water, would clear sight make anything less scary?
a chill in the water

update, 28 june, 2025: This morning, reading through past entries, I remembered a few more things about the swim yesterday. First, breathing. I did my usual 1 2 3 4 5 breathe, but also 1 2 3 and 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. Then I tried 1 2 3 breathe right 1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left. I’ve been trying out how it feels to stroke less between breaths. I also was conscious of how my sighting fit into all of this — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 sight 4 5 breathe left. I never breathe when I sight; I just lift my forehead out of the water. Why does this matter? Beyond its impact on the biomechanics of my stroke and on my ability to keep straight and moving towards the buoy even when I can’t see it, stroke/sight/breath is fascinates me in terms of the spaces/moments it creates above and below the surface, in water and air, as fish and human, boat body and mind. Which of these spaces is more real, which less? If both are real, what reality do they offer?

When I’m swimming, how much time do I spend with my head and half my body submerged versus above the water? That is, how long do I get to inhabit my water world?

Second, planes. Lake Nokomis is near the airport, so there are often planes high above — circling like sharks, I like to imagine. During the swim I noticed several places that seemed to be sped up. It looked like they were moving extra fast? Where they? Or was I just seeing them strangely?

may 8/BIKE

8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
60 degrees

The first outdoor bike ride of the year. I’m always nervous, not knowing how it will go. Can I still see enough to bike? Will it be too scary? Yes, I can see! No, I wasn’t scared! I was a bit disoriented with all of the dappled light and I had to take some deep breaths a few times, but it went well. It’s a combination of: a memorized path — all of the cracks and bumps and tricky spots from years of biking; a familiarity and acceptance of not knowing or seeing everything; a few still-working cone cells and the ability to compensate with peripheral vision and other senses; and a belief that I can bike. Oh — and biking a little slower.

The lake was beautiful. I can’t wait to swim across it in a month. I signed up for open swim yesterday — signed FWA and RJP up too. Summer is almost here.

7 Grassy Things

  1. there’s a certain stretch of grass on the bike trail that separates it from the road and helps me to see where to go — I need because the gray of the trail can blend in with the gray of the road
  2. had to bike through the grass when I turned off the trail too early — I remembered biking through this grass with FWA 2 summers ago
  3. an open field between the duck and echo bridges — a beautiful green studded with bright yellow dandelions
  4. someone spread out a blanket and is sitting in that grass — how buggy is it?
  5. what a bright blue sky! a great contrast with the green trees and grass
  6. shadows of new leaves waving in the wind on the grass near lake nokomis
  7. a bright yellow trailer and half a dozen cars parked on the grassy hill between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis — they’re redoing the path and (I had to look it up) adding a pedestrian bridge: “A new pedestrian bridge over Minnehaha Creek next to Lake Hiawatha is scheduled to be installed May. The bridge will be delivered in pieces, assembled onsite and then set in place with a crane.”

Other things: someone listening to a song on their phone as they walked — a new one from Lorde?; the bog near my favorite part of the path was completely dry; a sign, loose gravel — thankfully there wasn’t any; bird shadows on the path; lots of people walking around the lake

a grounding, a frame, a context

I mentioned in my entry for 7 may that I would post a quotation from Jenny Odell about context here:

I think a really interesting mental exercise to do with anything or anyone is to think about whether they have been afforded experience, the ability to experience, which means like having a past and a future. So one of the most fascinating things that I came across in researching the book, that I talk about somewhere in the middle of the book, is a study about the lesser minds bias. It’s not something you would immediately think has to do with time, but it’s a bias that other people, especially people in out-groups—so people you don’t identify with—don’t have as rich of an emotional inner life as you do. And so in this study that I referenced, the people running the study ask the participants to think about houseless people and show that the part of their mind that has to do with theory of mind, and imagining that someone has an inner life, is not lighting up when they’re thinking about these people. And then they ask them the question, what kind of vegetable do you think they would like, this person? Just imagine that and then suddenly it is lighting up, right? And my interpretation of that in the book was, well, someone who wants something and has desire must have a past and must have hopes for the future. For something to have desire, it has to exist in time. And so it’s almost like—that participant who’s thinking about them—it’s almost like this person has entered a time with them. Like this person is now also an actor. This person has wants and needs and regrets. And I think that kind of flipping is a really helpful and interesting way to think about why we do or don’t afford that to, you know, the nonhuman world, and also many groups within the human world—like out-groups, as they were talking about in the study. And it is that relegating of part of life to the realm of the timeless—like it might be cyclical, but it’s considered timeless—that is so much at the root of the logic of extracting it. It’s lifeless. But it’s the same mechanism that’s behind dehumanizing someone, because you’re seeing a person as almost like an instance. To go back to people without housing, it’s interesting that people don’t think about how someone might go in and out of housing within their life. You know, what led to that? What might be in their future? They’re just sort of seen as they’re just there. And so I think that’s an example of what happens when you take something out of time, or it doesn’t seem to inhabit time in the same way you do.

Another Kind of Time/ Jenny Odell

As I write this, I’m listening (by pure accident) to the Rolling Stones, “Time is on my side” and now I’m thinking about returning to time. Reviewing past entries for 2025, it seems like I’m all over the place. Maybe, but I’m also orbiting around a cluster of ideas related to the gorge and my larger poem, or series of poems, about haunting the gorge. At some point, something will stick and I’ll stop to write, but for now I’ll keep moving and circling ideas.

is a really helpful and interesting way to think about why we do or don’t afford that to, you know, the nonhuman world

What is desire to the grass? And, what is the grass as a subject? One blade/leaf? A lawn? A clump in a sea of dirt? I suddenly thought about the smell of freshly cut grass, a frequent scent in May. As a kid, it was one of my favorite smells, then I read or heard somewhere that it was the grass crying or bleeding, and I stopped liking it. I decided to look it up and found a PBS segment, That Fresh Cut Grass Scent is Really a Signal of Distress. But, according to PBS, the grass isn’t crying, it’s communicating, sending out a message to other plants, or other parts of themselves, to be prepared for trouble.

The idea that the grass is crying, or screaming, still abounds. Here’s the opening line from an article for Lawnstarter, a lawn care company:

Inhale deeply. That heavenly fresh-cut grass smell you savor while mowing your back 40 is actually your lawn screaming in pain from the hell of a hurtful haircut.

Fresh cut grass is your lawn’s shriek of despair, science says

Science (not scientists, or a scientific study), says? Wow. Anyway, I’m struck by how the idea that grass is communicating (the PBS clip) offers more agency to the grass than depicting them as shrieking or screaming in despair (the article). The article offers some of the science, then moves onto a discussion of why we might like the smell of freshly mown grass and then gives examples of how that love is depicted in song.

I wrote in my Plague Notebook, vol. 25, what is the root system for grass. Looked it up and found this helpful resource: How does Grass Grow?

Grass typically has a fibrous root system, characterized by a dense network of fine, thread-like roots that spread outward and downward.

Fibrous? I posted something a poet said about being fibrous a year or so ago. Can I find it again? No. It had something to do with someone thinking of themselves as made up of fibers, of their idea of the self as fibrous? I wish I could remember!

One last thing: Over the past weeks, I’ve encountered references to Dads and their obsessions with the lawn, how lawn maintenance is gendered male. I found this interesting site when I searched “gender lawn” from Lady Science: Liberate Your Lawn from the Legacy of Masculine Science.

In Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States, Kenneth T. Jackson shows that the American Neighbor’s attachment to his lawn, since its takeover of the suburban consciousness after the Second World War, is the result of the affluence and financial security that the lawn represents. The lawn is a simple status symbol that signals to the little-n neighbors that The Neighbor has achieved a level of economic comfort that affords him both the money to pay his exorbitant water bill and the free time to mow thrice weekly in the summer. I think, however, if we want to break the American Neighbor of the lawn — and we should, because it’s not good for the environment that 2 percent of the land in the U.S is taken up by monocultural swathes of ornamental grass — we might consider that the lure of the lawn is deeper.

Hmm. . . this crabgrass book looks interesting.

march 16/BIKE

35 minutes
basement
outside temp: 28 degrees

Decided to bike in the basement and read an e-book (The Kind Worth Killing). Wasn’t sure I’d be able to do it with my bad vision, but I managed to read for 20 minutes. Then I watched some YouTube and tried to find something on Netflix, but couldn’t. Is that why I stopped at 35 minutes? Probably. Also, I remember feeling a twinge in my left knee.

Discovered a wonderful poem by one of my favorite poets, Rita Dove. Was able to listen to her read it. Wow — she’s good. I’d like to check out one of her audio books so I can listen to her read more. Unfortunately, my local library doesn’t have one. Bummer.

Here’s the last part:

excerpt from Prose in a Small Space/ Rita Dove

Then is it poetry if it’s confined?  Trembling along its axis, a flagpole come alive in high wind, flapping its radiant sleeve for attention — Over here! It’s me! — while the white spaces (air, field, early morning silence before the school bell) shape themselves around that one bright seizure . . . and if that’s so what do we have here, a dream or three paragraphs?  We have white space too; is this music?  As for all the words left out, banging at the gates . . . we could let them in, but where would we go with our orders, our stuttering pride?

I like her “About this Poem” description. Especially this line:

What began as a continuation of our good-natured ripostes went from anti-ars poetica to lyric reverie to—surprise—a praise song to the prose poem! 

Should I try writing a praise song to the gorge or to writing while running and running while writing or to my strange vision or to poetry?

That line about the one bright seizure made me think of poetry as an explosion of the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary, or of the Stutter, or a pause, or an interruption.

march 9/WALKBIKE

walk: 15 minutes
neaighborhood
52 degrees

Wow! What a wonderful morning. Did a quick walk with Delia and Scott around 2 blocks. Heard several cardinals and their torpedoed call. Admired the bare and dry sidewalk and street. I talked about how I/we need to remember to let FWA figure out his own path. A mantra I should repeat in my head anytime I want to step in and “help”: let him be — maybe I’ll sing it to the tune of the Beatles’ song?

bike: 47 minutes
basement

A beautiful day outside, but still not time to run. I’m being cautious — too cautious? — with my back. I didn’t mind being on the bike. For the first 40 minutes I watched a wonderful documentary, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, on Netflix. So good!

This is my theory of how to enjoy your life incredibly. You don’t mind playing second fiddle. The idea of being a public figure and having applause and being in the limelight, and then all of a sudden you’re deprived of that as you get older and then not being in the limelight. I think it’s better to love something so much you do it for its own sake and also for the wonderful people that you’re playing with. You’re creating something together, which is better than something alone.

Orin O’Brian

After the short doc was over, I listened to 3 songs on my latest playlist, Doin’ Time: Too Much Time on my Hands/Styx, No Time to Die/ Billie Eilish, Time Warp/ Rocky Horror. Thought about the meaning of no time to die — no time = too busy/not enough time on your hands and also not the right time. When Time Warp came on it sounded strange. I realized that I had put the Broadway version instead of the movie one. I’ll have to fix that. Noticed these lyrics today:

Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling

Here’s some time lines I’d like to remember:

The turning of the globe is not so real to us   
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray   
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down   
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout.
(Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler)

Cut-outs, silhouettes, shadows. That is not all the world is for me, but it is what looks the clearest and most real.

march 8/BIKEWALK

40 minutes
basement

Good job Sara! You wanted to run outside even though you should give it at least another day for your back to recover, and you didn’t. You biked instead. And you biked for 5 more minutes today, which was the plan. I felt stronger than yesterday. Could this be the spring/summer I bike more?

Watched more of Fame. Somehow I missed the screen that read, Junior Year. Did they have one? They didn’t have a great speech by the acting teacher, describing the focus of the year. Bummer.

I watched the rest of sophomore and all of junior year. Doris and Ralph get together, Irene Cara sings “Out Here On My Own,” Leroy hooks up with the waspy ballerina. The Rocky Horror Picture Show — a cool documenting of the history of it. As I listened to “Time Warp” I thought about creating a Time playlist — “Too Much Time On Hands,” “Time Warp,” “Summertime,” Hazy Shade of Winter,” “Seasons of Love,” “Time After Time.” I think this interest in time is always there, simmering beneath the surface, but today it’s here for two other reasons: 1. talking to my older sister recently and hearing about her latest work on time travel and 2. the lines/ideas I gathered about time in past entries and just reread — 6 march 2024, 8 march 2024.

Time. Moments. Minutes. Pace. Linear, circular, looping. Dragging. Flying. Seasons. Beats — foot strikes, heart rate. Inside Outside On the Edge of. Too much. Too little.

If nothing else, it’s time to gather together my discussions of time and post them on unDISCIPLINED.

more OR

Yesterday afternoon Scott and I went to Arbeiter Tap Room to write and drink beer. I picked out some favorites from my “or” list:

At Any Given Moment You Might Feel This or This or This, but Rarely at the Same Time

Ardor arbor or
forest fortitude
or sorrow’s origins or
porphyrion interiors
or befores or
no mores or
mortal organs
or distorted mirrors’
evaporating forms
or spores adored or
dictators abhorred
or terror ignored
or

walk: 40 minutes
neighborhood
45 degrees

A blue sky, empty, at the start. A blue sky, mixed with fluffy and streaky clouds, halfway through. Bright, warmer, breezy. The snow on the streets is almost all melted. Only a few streaks. The field at Cooper has a flat layer of snow but no mini-mountains this year. This is the field where the plows dump the snow. Usually by March it has transformed into the badlands, with lumps and hills and jagged craters of dirty snow. Not much snow to plow or dump in the winter of 2024-25.

added, 9 march 2025: This morning, as I read past 9 march entries, I remembered a few more things from the walk:

  • the wind passing through the brittle leaves on a tree, sounding like water falling — not like rain, but like a cataract
  • the wind passing through a giant cottonwood causes it to sing like a door creaking open — creeeaaak
  • a white plastic bag stuck high in the tree — the quick flash of white reminded me of the moon

peripheral vision

I’m reading Peter Swanson’s book The Kind Worth Killing and this reference to peripheral vision came up:

A few years earlier I’d gone out fishing with a colleague, a fellow dot-com speculator who was the best open water fisherman I’d ever known. He could stare out at the surface of the ocean and know exactly where the fish were. He told me that his trick was to unfocus his eyes, to take in everything in his visual range all at once, and by doing that he could catch flickers of movement, disturbances in the water. . . . I decided to use this same trick on my own house. I let everything sort of blur in front of my eyes, waiting for any motion to draw attention to itself, and after I’d been staring at the house for less than a minute I caught some movement through the high window. . . .

My eyes are always mostly out of focus and I often see flashes of movement. In fact, it can be very distracting and irritating how my eyes, without wanting to, are drawn to the movement. One particularly form of movement I can’t not see: someone’s twitching legs, especially out of the corner of my eye at a band concert.

march 7/BIKEWALK

bike: 35 minutes
basement
outside temp: 34 degrees

It would be wonderful to be outside running, but my lower back is still a bit sore and I’m trying to be careful. Ugh — it’s hard to be disciplined, to not do something you want to because you know you shouldn’t. Oh well, the bike felt good. And I was able to watch more of Fame. And my back doesn’t hurt. And my legs feel good.

Anything in particular I remember from Fame? Mrs. Sherwood was being terrible to Leroy again — very old school in her efforts to be tough. Lisa, the dancer who never tries, was finally kicked out and almost jumped in front of a train in despair. At the last minute she stopped herself and said, Fuck it. If I can’t dance, I’ll change to the drama department. Another character’s response (Irene Cara): I tell you, you’re a fucking good actress. Bruno’s dad parked his cab and blasted Bruno’s music — the theme song. All the students poured out of the school and danced in the street, on the sidewalk, on the top of a cab. Bruno’s dad yelled out, This is my son’s music! Bruno Martelli!

A theme for their sophomore year: time to grow up and be honest with yourself and others. Dig deep, turn inward, expose your truths to others:

Last year we worked on simple observation. This year we’re going to turn that observation inward — work on recreating emotional states: fear, joy, sorrow, anger. And it will be more difficult, because you have to expose more of you, what’s on the inside of you.

Fame, sophomore year acting class (1980)

Yesterday I described the teacher’s description of freshman year acting class: to study your own mechanicalness. Then I thought about it in relation to running:

I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.

While scrolling through instagram a few minutes ago, I found some running advice that fits with this. Focus on the elbow and think up up up as you run.

OR

Also yesterday I wrote about the poem “And” and an exercise inspired by it — pick another conjunction and turn it into a poem. I picked OR. Yesterday I wrote a list of words that had “or” in them. So much fun! This morning, I began picking out particular ones and trying to put them together. This is fun! I like it as an opportunity to open up more and become untethered from a particular outcome and idea of what I think my OR poem should be about. I wrote the list in my plague notebook. Note how I repeated some words. Also, if you look closely, you can see instances of words too crowded together or crossed out. Those are vision errors, when I didn’t see the words already written — they were in my blind spot.

from my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24

Here are some word combinations/fragments I’ve come up with so far:

  • author arbor ardor
  • orchard porphyrion interiors
  • enforce forest fortitude
  • orphan sorrow’s origins
  • distort mirrors
  • orchestrate forms for dishonored categories
  • forgive mortal organs
  • support porch organizing
  • reorganize ordinary colors
  • mentor porous discord
  • savor tomorrow’s flora encore
  • scorch rigor
  • torch dictators
  • foreswear ordinary pinafores
  • favor befores. adore no mores
  • record evaporated forms
  • flavor labor for transformation
  • endorse Morris choreography
  • reforest former ford factories
  • sponsor spores
  • border shores
  • orbit remorse
  • forge lorikeet collaborations
  • forgive french horns, former neighbors, candy corn for horrible flavor
  • forget hornet porn
  • humor minor opportunities

Almost all of these (or, is it all?) begin with a verb and seem to issue a command. Where are my nouns?

  • neighborhood semaphore
  • oracle oration
  • orange dictators
  • scored arrows
  • ornamental meteorology
  • adorable albacore
  • torrential labor
  • stork storms
  • born bored
  • enormous unicorn orchestra
  • pork-belly pallor
  • factory folklore

So much fun!

walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood
41 degrees

An afternoon walk with Delia-the-dog. Everything melting in the warm sun. Drip drip drip! Gushing gutters, sloppy sewers. Bare pavement except where the plow or shovel missed. I’ll take it!

popped into my head: fORtune favORs fORgetful sailORs

Fortune favors affordable tailors
Fortune savors forceful flavors

I read these to RJP and she wanted to join in the fun:

Dolores ordered hors d’oeuvres
Fortuna major