bike: 20 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.5 miles treadmill
Started watching Dickinson again while I biked. Finished the episode where they’re at the “spa,” and started the one in which her poem is published and she’s invisible. Listened to a new running playlist while I ran. Stopped to record myself running to check my gait, but it didn’t quite work. I’ll have to try again. My left thigh/hip was sore by the end.
I checked out Paige Lewis’s Space Struck from the library — on the libby app — and I marked a few to remember, including yesterday’s Saccadic Masking. Here’s another for today. I think I wanted to keep it for the question about being the sound or the stillness.
Chapel of the Green Lord/ Paige Lewis
This spring, the smog is so thick I can’t see the stars, which means there aren’t any stars left. It’s pointless to argue against this, to say, no they’re on vacation, no they’ll come back with new summer hats and an answer to my question: If this world is a plucked violin string, am I part of its sound or its stillness? Once, I woke and believed myself full of the old heaven. I wanted to trap it, make it stay. I swallowed a hive’s worth of honey, and— and still, no stars. This smog is thick enough to turn my lungs gummy. I stay inside, line my bed with spider plants and succulents, christen it Chapel of the Green Lord, and go to sleep with the sheets pulled up over my sticky mouth.
poetry people for the win!
A great thread on twitter this morning. I’m always looking for poems about exits, entrances, openings, closings: doors!
bike: 25 minutes bike stand, basement run: 2.2 miles treadmill
More cold, more basement. Watched a Spartan race while I biked, listened to a podcast while I ran. Covered the display panel and didn’t look at my watch, so I (sort of) lost track of time, which was nice. Felt pretty good until the last few minutes, when my legs were sore — my left hip + knee. Did I think about anything? I don’t remember. Oh, I do remember thinking about stopping to set up a camera and do some video of my running. I want to see if I’m raising up my left hip enough. I didn’t stop. Then I thought about physical therapy and remembered the last time I was there, when the therapists recorded some of my running on an iPad. Anything else? Nope. All the thoughts, good or bad, gone. That’s cool.
I’m continuing to work on my Haunts poem. Not sure how I will weave these in, but I want to add a few more parts that deal explicitly with my story of vision loss. Here’s what I have so far. It’s still in the 3/2 form, but turned into 5 syllable lines:
Before there was ghost, there was girl. Fiercely physical, sturdy, not certain but sure footed, the ground firm beneath her, able to shake worlds with her body, to make worlds with one glance — meadows, forests, stintless stars —- all hers instantly.
Before there was girl, there was ghost, carried deep within unknown ancestors, passed on to the girl.* Scrambled code in the back of each eye, starting a shift from sharp to soft so slow it will go unnoticed until lines dissolve, letters blur, ground unmoors, and a gorge is carved out between girl and world.
*initially, I wrote this line as:
there was ghost, carried deep within the girl, passed on from unknown ancestors: scrambled…
I can’t decide which I like better.
Since I’m thinking more about vision, and how to express it in poetry, here’s a poem about saccadic masking from Paige Lewis. Like most poems I really like, I don’t quite get it yet.
Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis from Space Struck
—a phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye
All constellations are organisms and all organisms are divine and unfixed. I am spending my night in the kitchen. There is blood in the batter—dark strands stretch like vocal cords telling me I am missing so much with these blurred visions: a syringe flick, the tremor of my wrist—raised veins silked green. I have seen the wings of a purple finch wavering around its body, stuck, burned to the grill of my car, which means I have failed to notice its flight— a lesson on infinities, a lesson I am trying to learn. I am trying. Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion?
bike: 23 minutes bike stand run: 3.25 miles treadmill
Still cold, still inside. Earlier, while I was sitting at my desk, I saw someone run past with their dog. I thought about running outside, but the feels like temp is -6, the wind speed is 15 mph, and the sidewalk is 100% snow and ice covered. Yes, I wimped out, and I’m okay with that. Watched a replay of the Men’s Triathlon at the Tokyo Olympics while I biked, listened to a playlist while I ran.
In between the bike and run, I listened to a recording of 2 new parts of my haunts poem. I’m playing around with adding in more of my story about losing my vision, and the ghosts that surround it. The two parts begin: 1. Before there/was ghost/there was girl and 2. Before there/was girl/there was ghost
before there was / 22 jan 2022
I was hoping to think about these lines as I ran, but I was mostly distracted by my effort and the beat. Then, in the last 3 minutes of my run, Salt n Pepa’s “My Mic Sounds Nice” came on and I had a flash of an idea. It happened when I heard the lines, “cuz every curve on my body has a story to tell.” I started thinking about the stories our bodies tell, then my damaged retina/macula, and then how to express that in my poem: scrambled macula, abandoned retina, sleeping retina? It’s not much of an idea…yet.
Anyway, Salt n Pepa are awesome, and their rhymes made me laugh, and remember how much I was into hip hop in high school, especially 89-92.
Here’s a poem I found the other day from Rebecca Lindenberg, who is wonderful.
I haven’t written in a while because I don’t want to talk about anything I’ve been unable to stop thinking about: the knotted thread of bad capillaries on my retinae, money, or that my morning was ruined by the unusual tightness of jeans around my thighs, like the obligations of having a body so ill-fitting, oppressively snug around an obstinate will. And while I don’t want to be distracted from this Duchamp thing I’ve been working on— I am itched out of reverie over and over again by this feeling I don’t deserve my raptures anymore. So I’m sorry. I don’t want to bring you down. It’s unfair to have to hear about needles and envelopes and flies when you might just have been enjoying an iced tea outside and when I would prefer to tell you, really, there’s a family of pheasant living in the massive cottonwood we call the Tree of Life. The male’s red, green, gold plumage makes him look like a Christmas present I would want to give you. So except “I hope you’re well,” that’s all.
bike: 24 minutes bike stand, basement run: 2.1 miles treadmill
Too cold, too windy. Another basement workout, which doesn’t bother me. I did this one in the late afternoon, too late to write my entry right after I finished, so I’m writing this 2 days later. I can’t remember much about the workout. I think I watched another Women’s Spartan race while I biked, and listened to a playlist while I ran. Felt pretty good running. Our treadmill developed some quirks last year: it won’t start moving until you get the speed up past 2, and it seems to increase exponentially, where 2 is much slower than 3, and 5 is much faster than 4. I keep it at 5 (before it got strange, I usually had it between 6 and 6.5), and that’s fast enough for me. I’ve decided that for me at least, 5 = a 9:45 pace.
bike: 20 minutes bike stand, basement run: 2.1 miles treadmill
Watched the Spartan Women’s World Championships in Abu Dhabi while I biked. I just discovered these races the other day, and I’m hooked. I don’t think I’d ever want to do one, but they’re fun to watch. This one took place in the desert, on the “world’s largest sand dune” (according to the announcer). They ran up soft sand so steep that they weren’t running, but crawling on their hands and knees. They climbed 8 ft walls, swung on monkey bars, lept over fire (right before the finish), carried heavy sandbags, and threw a spear at a target. The penalty for missing? 30 burpies. Some of the footage came from drones, and some of it came from some dude running behind or beside them, holding a small camera. Pretty sweet. Sometimes, I could see his shadow, and sometimes I could hear him breathing heavily. The women in these races are such badasses. They made it almost look easy.
Right before I started running, I listened to another haunt poem I wrote yesterday and today. I wanted to think about it while I ran. It worked; I had a few good ideas while on the treadmill, including one about pairing the poem I just wrote that begins
Before I was ghost
I was girl
with
Before I was girl
I was ghost
Poem one is about my badass, soccer-loving, fearless 8 year old self. Poem two will be about inheriting cone dystrophy from a past relative (the scramble in the DNA is the ghost).
Just discovered Brigit Pegeen Kelly this morning while reading through twitter. In a twitter thread about poets who create their own fables, the poet BPK was mentioned. I wondered who that was, and decided to look it up. Awesome. Here’s one of her poems:
Listen: there was a goat’s head hanging by ropes in a tree. All night it hung there and sang. And those who heard it Felt a hurt in their hearts and thought they were hearing The song of a night bird. They sat up in their beds, and then They lay back down again. In the night wind, the goat’s head Swayed back and forth, and from far off it shone faintly The way the moonlight shone on the train track miles away Beside which the goat’s headless body lay. Some boys Had hacked its head off. It was harder work than they had imagined. The goat cried like a man and struggled hard. But they Finished the job. They hung the bleeding head by the school And then ran off into the darkness that seems to hide everything. The head hung in the tree. The body lay by the tracks. The head called to the body. The body to the head. They missed each other. The missing grew large between them, Until it pulled the heart right out of the body, until The drawn heart flew toward the head, flew as a bird flies Back to its cage and the familiar perch from which it trills. Then the heart sang in the head, softly at first and then louder, Sang long and low until the morning light came up over The school and over the tree, and then the singing stopped…. The goat had belonged to a small girl. She named The goat Broken Thorn Sweet Blackberry, named it after The night’s bush of stars, because the goat’s silky hair Was dark as well water, because it had eyes like wild fruit. The girl lived near a high railroad track. At night She heard the trains passing, the sweet sound of the train’s horn Pouring softly over her bed, and each morning she woke To give the bleating goat his pail of warm milk. She sang Him songs about girls with ropes and cooks in boats. She brushed him with a stiff brush. She dreamed daily That he grew bigger, and he did. She thought her dreaming Made it so. But one night the girl didn’t hear the train’s horn, And the next morning she woke to an empty yard. The goat Was gone. Everything looked strange. It was as if a storm Had passed through while she slept, wind and stones, rain Stripping the branches of fruit. She knew that someone Had stolen the goat and that he had come to harm. She called To him. All morning and into the afternoon, she called And called. She walked and walked. In her chest a bad feeling Like the feeling of the stones gouging the soft undersides Of her bare feet. Then somebody found the goat’s body By the high tracks, the flies already filling their soft bottles At the goat’s torn neck. Then somebody found the head Hanging in a tree by the school. They hurried to take These things away so that the girl would not see them. They hurried to raise money to buy the girl another goat. They hurried to find the boys who had done this, to hear Them say it was a joke, a joke, it was nothing but a joke…. But listen: here is the point. The boys thought to have Their fun and be done with it. It was harder work than they Had imagined, this silly sacrifice, but they finished the job, Whistling as they washed their large hands in the dark. What they didn’t know was that the goat’s head was already Singing behind them in the tree. What they didn’t know Was that the goat’s head would go on singing, just for them, Long after the ropes were down, and that they would learn to listen, Pail after pail, stroke after patient stroke. They would Wake in the night thinking they heard the wind in the trees Or a night bird, but their hearts beating harder. There Would be a whistle, a hum, a high murmur, and, at last, a song, The low song a lost boy sings remembering his mother’s call. Not a cruel song, no, no, not cruel at all. This song Is sweet. It is sweet. The heart dies of this sweetness.
bike: 15 minutes bike stand, basement run: 2.4 miles treadmill 2 degrees / feels like -11
For most of the day, the feels like temp was hovering around -20. I have decided that that is too cold for me. So, I stayed inside. Watched a race while I biked, listened to a playlist and part of the Aack Cast by Jamie Loftus while I ran. It’s about the comic strip Cathy and it’s really good.
Some Things I Noticed*
my shadow, flashing, off to my left side, as I ran
in addition to my shadow, some sort of silvery something flashing or streaking or appearing in my left peripheral
the loud whir of the treadmill when I stepped off it to change my playlist (maybe it’s because of my vision, but I cannot pick new music on spotify when I’m in motion). The whirr almost sounded like a plane revving its engine before take off
my fine hair, falling out of my ponytail, felt like a spider web
before I warmed up, it was very cold in the basement
the soft space between beats felt continuous
sometimes my foot strikes were quiet, sometimes they were loud
*It’s difficult to notice things in a boring, dark, unfinished basement, especially when I’m listening to music. Maybe I should try to use my treadmill time for remembering thoughts or ideas?
Found this poem yesterday. Paige Lewis is wonderful, especially how they find delight in small things, and do such strange things with words!
a seagull—wings swallowing wings—I learned that a miracle is anything that God forgot to forbid. So when you tell me that saints
are splintered into bone bits smaller than the freckles on your wrist and that each speck is sold to the rich, I know to marvel at this
and not the fact that these same saints are still wholly intact and fresh-faced in their Plexiglas tomb displays. We holy our own fragments
when we can—trepanation patients wear their skull spirals as amulets, mothers frame the dried foreskin of their firstborn, and I’ve seen you
swirl my name on your tongue like a thirst pebble. Still, I try to hold on to nothing for fear of being crushed by what can be taken because sometimes
not even our mouths belong to us. Listen, in the early 1920s, women were paid to paint radium onto watch dials so that men wouldn’t have to ask
the time in dark alleys. They were told it was safe, told to lick their brushes into sharp points. These women painted their nails, their faces, and judged
whose skin shined brightest. They coated their teeth so their boyfriends could see their bites with the lights turned down. The miracle here
is not that these women swallowed light. It’s that, when their skin dissolved and their jaws fell off, the Radium Corporation claimed they all died
from syphilis. It’s that you’re telling me about the dull slivers of dead saints, while these women are glowing beneath our feet.
bike: 16 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.6 miles -5 degrees / feels like -20
Brr. Earlier in the week, I ran when it felt like 20 below, but today that felt too cold, and I’ve run everyday this week, so I decided to run less, and downstairs in the basement. Watched a replay of some Olympic track races while I biked, listened to Taylor Swift’s Reputation while I ran. I wore my new running shoes, the ones that have been redesigned with a much tighter toe box and that made my toe sore earlier this fall. I’m trying to break them in/stretch them out slowly this winter.
In this first week of January, I’m rereading all of my entries from 2021 and putting together a summary. It’s fun (mostly, but a little tedious too) to review them and remember the year. Today I did August and read about swimming and swells and droughts and wildfires and sweating and running on the Winchell Trail.
Hardly any mention of COVID — there was definitely a lull with the pandemic this summer and fall. But…that’s not quite true in Minnesota. Delta hit hard, and even before Omicron hospitals were almost at capacity. In November or early December, the hospitals put out an ad pleading with people to be careful, and that hospitals/ staff were reaching the breaking point. Now, Omicron has hit. I don’t think our numbers are as bad as other places, but here are some thing I’d like future Sara to know about this time:
It looks like Omicron is less severe, which is great, but hospitals are still filling up and mild cases range from almost nothing to being knocked out and miserable for a week.
the mild designation has to do with your oxygen levels. As long as you can breathe and your oxygen rating is in in the upper 90s, and you don’t have to be admitted to the hospital, it’s a mild case. From what I’ve read anecdotally, mild cases can be awful: headaches, fatigue, chills. And then, there’s long covid
full hospitals mean there are no beds/care for people with other emergencies. Just skimmed an article that mentioned wait times at metro area emergency rooms are anywhere from 8 to 24 hours
schools are in-person and one of the main ways they’re trying to manage keeping kids safe is for them to get tested regularly. The problems: rapid at-home test are all sold out everywhere — stores and online; testing sites are booked up for weeks; even if you are able to get tested, results can take more than 72 hours. It is impossible to contain the spread of omicron this way (note: just found out you can pick rapid tests up at school so RJP will get some for us)
schools are running out of staff + substitutes because teachers are getting infected and have to quarantine whether they experience symptoms or not
I am not nearly as stressed out about this wave as I have been for the last (almost) 2 years. My jaw is not tightening, and neither is my chest. Still, this is a drag and I worry about RJP, who wants to go to school and see her friends
reciting while running
After running for about 10 minutes, I decided to record myself reciting my haunt poem again.
bike: 15 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.35 miles treadmill, basement 10 degrees outside / feels like -6
Biked and ran inside, partly because it felt like 6 below, partly because it’s snowing and there was already a few inches of loosely packed snow on the road, but mostly because I ran outside yesterday and Sunday. Watched a year wrap-up video for the awesome triathlete, Lucy Charles-Barclay while I biked. My left knee did the weird thing it sometimes did this summer after a few minutes of biking: it hurt–a somewhat sharp, hot pain, making it harder to do a fully rotation of the pedal. Stiff, out of place, not displaced, but feeling like it was rubbing or doing something not quite right. I stopped, and when I started again, it was better. Strange. I thought biking was supposed to help, not hurt.
Listened to the first three songs on Taylor Swift’s Reputation. The third song, “I Did Something Bad,” had a good beat for my cadence. After running a little more than a mile and getting my heart rate up to 160, I took out my phone and recorded myself reciting a poem I just wrote for my haunts sequence. I was curious how the 3/2 syllable count would sound.
I go to the gorge / 160 bpm
Yesterday, I recorded myself reciting my haunts poems. Scott’s going to use my recording to make a video of the poems. In discussing how this might look, I mentioned the trails by the gorge, and the trails I’m making with my words, somewhat resemble a palimpsest. I wondered if there was any way to visually represent that in the video. We’re still trying to figure it out. Inspired by this, I decided to make palimpsests the theme for this month. Here’s a poem that fits with this theme:
The walk that led out through the apple trees – the narrow, crumbling path of brick embossed among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves –
has vanished now. Each spring the peonies come back, to drape their heavy bolls across the walk that led out through the apple trees,
as if to show the way – until the breeze dismantles them, and petals drift and toss among the clumps of grass. The scattered leaves
half fill a plaited basket left to freeze and thaw, and gradually darken into moss. The walk that led out through the apple trees
has disappeared – unless, down on your knees, searching beneath the vines that twist and cross among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves,
you scrape, and find – simplest of mysteries, forgotten all this time, but not quite lost – the walk that led out through the apple trees among the clumps of grass, the scattered leaves.
Here’s a definition of a palimpsest:
A palimpsest is “a parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another; a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing.” In other words, a palimpsest is a “multi-layered record.”
I first encountered the word, palimpsest, back in October, when I read an essay by Wendell Berry:
comings and goings of people, the erasure of time already in process even as the marks of passage are put down. There are the ritual marks of neighborhood — roads, paths between houses. There are the domestic paths from house to barns and outbuildings and gardens, farm roads threading the pasture gates. There are the wanderings of hunters and searchers after lost stock, and the speculative or meditative or inquisitive ‘walking around’ of farmers on wet days and Sundays. There is the sprawling geometry of the rounds of implements in fields, and the passing and returning scratches of plows across croplands. Often these have filled an interval, an opening, between the retreat of the forest from the virgin ground and the forest’s return to ground that has been worn out and give up. In the woods here one often finds cairns of stones picked up out of furrows, gullies left by bad framing, forgotten roads, stone chimneys of houses long rotted away or burned.
3, feels like -10? No thanks. Before I could bike, I had to pump up my tire. Spent at least 5 minutes, which felt like an hour, trying to remember how to attach the pump to my annoying tires. I appreciate how people love bikes and maintaining them, but I don’t. Could I learn? More importantly, should I try?
run: 2.75 miles treadmill
Listened to an old (2015?) “January” playlist while I ran. I don’t remember thinking about much, or noticing much in my dark, unfinished basement. Still, I enjoyed having the chance to move without having to go outside to run on the ice, in the cold wind, with the too bright sun. If I hadn’t run 5 miles outside yesterday, I might have liked being out there today. I bet it’s snot-freezing weather.
Last year I ran 1000 miles. This year I decided to take it easier, and focus more on swimming. My less ambitious running goal for the next few days is to reach 850 miles. With today’s run, I’m at 845.8. 2 more days, 4.2 miles. I should be able to do it.
Yesterday, I listened to an On Being episode with Jane Hirshfield. Excellent. Then I found this brief interview with her in which she answers a question about poets and civic responsibility. Here’s her answer:
I love in this question the word responsibility for its fundamental meaning of, “to respond”. When you’re asking what the role of a poet is in a society, in a culture, in a country, in a community, it is to respond in the way that only poetry can…. Poetry summoning is to transcend easy language, platitudinous language, slogans that make people stupid and that separate them from one another. And so part of the role of poetry and poets is, I think, to force ourselves past the common ways of looking at things by being more responsive and finding the uncommon, original, sidelong, nuanced, subtle, and not strive for the certainty which seems such a bane of our current discourse.
Slogans that make us stupid and separate us. Yes. I think many people focus more on the stupid part of the problem, often feeling superior for believing they are smart, critical thinkers who don’t fall for the slogans. Thinking (and not being stupid) matters, but it needs to be considered alongside the questions: what can connect us, bring us together, open up space for seeing and being with each other in meaningful ways that relieve suffering, offer more resources, make the world less violent? Poetry can do things with words that enable us to think deeply and connect with each other (and recognize the ways in which we are always already connected/entangled).
I also love this idea of linking uncommon with sidelong and uncertainty (or not certainty), and looking for subtle, nuanced words/meanings.
A great day for a bike ride. I haven’t rode my bike since August 3rd (wow), and it took a few minutes for my brain to get used to it again. Much harder to see at the beginning. No panic. Pretty soon, it was a little easier. I’m hoping to bike more during September and October before it gets too cold and I have to bring the bike inside to the basement. I never know if this will be the last season I can see well enough to bike.
swim: 2 miles / 10 loops main beach 73 degrees
Windier and choppier today. Still a wonderful swim. Sunny, sparkling water, some sailboats, blue sky, fuzzy green trees. The first loop was harder than the rest. Difficult to get into a rhythm. Once I did, I was able to stop thinking about sighting or stroking and let my mind wander.
An idea occurred to me: when I think about how much I love swimming in the lake, it’s rarely (if ever) about being fully and completely immersed, deep under the water. It’s about being just below the surface, or at the surface but under the water, with an occasional raising of my eyes to see the air or a boat or the world beyond the water. I was thinking about this partly because I’ve become increasingly interested in surfaces and depths (sinking and floating), but mostly because I’m editing a poem I wrote a few years ago titled, “submerged.” Here’s my latest version of it:
submerged
Every 5 strokes a breath twist left lift up mouth opens twist right lift up air enters quick intake above then 5 full beats below this exhale a chance to dream a little longer a way to forget one thing remember something else a thought: could above be the dream below what’s real? Are hard surfaces the Illusion fluid edges the truth? Is belief in a separate self false? Yes. My body is not mine but ours together — fish water swimmers — all lake all longing to stay submerged 5 strokes at a time I am not I but we joined freed from gravity’s pull hungry lungs’ demands. Home.
After I finished my swim and was sitting on the sand, I recorded a voice memo with some thoughts:
after swim sept 1
According to the dictionary, submerged means under water–not necessarily deep under water or at the bottom, just fully under water. I want to think more about this word and if it is the right title for my poem. Do I want to be submerged, or something else?
Today is the first day of September. Time for a new theme. Approximate. I wrote about it on August 20:
not quite knowing or roughly/approximately knowing. Not exactly but mostly, almost but never completely. Part of the picture, but never the whole thing. I’ve been writing a lot about bewilderment and unknowingness. This not quite knowing is not bewilderment but something else. Not wild, not lost, but not found either.
The things that I habitually say are obvious. Why repeat them? Besides, they are never what I meant to say. The things that I want to say are like the book next to the book that you took from the library shelf. Now you’re disappointed, aren’t you. Now you’re dozing with that book sunk into your chest like a gravemarker, and from now on, that book keeps your place in death, wherever it is. But that has nothing to do with what I want say in this poem. And even if you had picked the right book, what I would like to say would be beneath your thumb as you turn the page, (In the margin, actually, and would that make me a marginal type? marginally human?) What I want to say is always peripheral. What I really have to say limps. What I want to say causes people to dial our number by mistake. Your abruptness with them gags me. The man across the street is idly swinging a golf club. What I would really like to say is disintegrating from wind divots. What I’d like to say loses traction along my larynx and comes out “uh.”
However, clearing my throat accordions what I intend to say into an unintelligible grunt. An important oration that I had in mind was sky written in sparrow farts. I suppose you missed it. I have a sore throat. It is the pass over of intended statements. My dentist says that I eat too much sugar. I say that my cavities are the terrorist bombings of a frustrated authority. Consequently, important clues to what I have always wanted to say are buried under my fillings. Much of what I’d still like to say gets in the way of breathing. I had to quit smoking. What I meant to say was escaping under a smoke screen. What I would like to say is every word that you have ever regretted saying. So the next time you think you’re about to make a fool of yourself, don’t stop. Say it. You can always defend yourself by saying that you didn’t mean to say that. You can even blame it on me. And I will know what I had in mind and everybody will be satisfied. That is to say. . .