Thought the rain wasn’t coming until later today so I got ready for my run — changed into my running clothes, stretched, put on my running shoes — then opened the door to drizzle. Decided to go anyway. At first, it was intermittent drizzle, but halfway through it became a steady, soft rain. Not enough to soak my shorts but enough to cool me off and to inspire a chant:
drip drip drop drop drip drip drip drop
drop drip drop drip drop drip drip drop
drip drip drip drop drop drop
drop drop drip drop drop drip drop drop drip drip
I continued my 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking plan and was successful. In the last mile, my left started to hurt a little, then my left calf, and my foot. It’s fine, but to be safe, I stopped at 5.3 miles. The run was never easy, but it also wasn’t hard to keep going, knowing that I had a walk break coming.
10 Things
a soft green everywhere
an empty river
new trees wrapped in plastic looking like wild turkeys
a dark tunnel of green with a bright circle of white at the end
on your left / thank you!
front yard tree with a giant boulder just in front of it
empty benches except for the one near folwell: 2 people not sitting, but standing behind it
the rumble of planes sounding like thunder
the sharp clang of a mailbox lid falling shut
chains from a trailer rattling and scraping on the rough road
green haze: Running on the east river road, quick glances over to the gorge — a soft green and silver view of trees and sky
I was delighted to discover halfway in that the poem-of-the-day on the Poetry Foundation is about rust! The entire poem is wonderful, but it’s long, so I’ll only post most of the rust part:
Like when a song gets so far out on a solo you almost don’t recognize it, but then you get back to the hook, you suddenly
recognize the tune and before you know it, you’re putting your hands together; you’re on your feet— because you recognize a sound, like a light, leading you back home to a color:
rust. You must remember rust—not too red, not too orange—not fire or overnight change, but a simmering-summer change in which children play till they tire
and grown folks sit till they grow edgy or neighborhood dogs bite those not from your neigborhood and someone with some sense says Down, Boy, or you hope someone has some sense
who’s outside or who owns the dog and then the sky turns rust and the streetlights buzz on and someone’s mother, must be yours, says You see those streetlights on don’t you,
and then everybody else’s mother comes out and says the same thing and the sky is rust so you know you got about ten minutes before she comes back out and embarrasses you in front of your friends;
ten minutes to get home before you eat and watch the Flip Wilson Show or Sanford and Son and it’s time for bed. And it’s rust you need to remember when the cop asks, What kind of work you do?
It’s rust you need to remember: the smell of summer rain on the sidewalk and the patina on wrought-iron railings on your front porch with rust patches on them, and the smell
of fresh mowed grass and gasoline and sweat of your childhood as he takes a step back when you tell him you’re a poet teaching English down the road at the college,
when he takes a step back— to assure you, know, that this has nothing to do with race, but the rust of a community he believes he keeps safe, and he says Have a Good One,
meaning day as he swaggers back to his car, and the color of the day and the face behind sunglasses and the hands on his hips you’ll always remember come back gunmetal gray
for the rest of this rusty afternoon.
Rust — I’ve been wanting to write a poem about rust for some time. Is this a sign that I should try today?
4 miles past the trestle turn around 62 degrees / drizzle
Drizzle. Refreshing. All around, dark green, deep brown, gray. The sky was a pale blue, and so was the river. I decided to be disciplined today: 9 minutes of walking, 1 minute of running until I reached 4 miles. I did it. Not easy, but not difficult or, was it both easy and difficult?Walking to the river, I saw something strange by a neighbor’s garage. I looked again — a turkey! Staring at the wall, making a noise, not quite a gobble.
I’m thinking about yellow today. Running north, I started chanting:
yellow is yellow is yellow is is yellow is yellow is yellow
Did I see anything yellow? The dotted, dividing lines on the bike path — if you count that as yellow. Scott calls that orange. No yellow flowers or yellow signs or bright yellow shirts. The only color I remember noticing was the bright blue of the recycling bin on the trail.
2.6 miles river road trail, south/winchell trail, north 64 degrees
Thought briefly about biking to the lake and swimming, but it’s drizzling off and on, and it’s not that warm, and I imagine the water isn’t that warm yet. Just checked the temp: 61 degrees. What’s the coldest water I’ve been in? Probably colder than 61 as a kid in Lake Superior, but as an adult, I’m not sure. Too cold for me today, so I did a short run.
I wanted to run to the south entrance of the Winchell trail but there was a very large — 40 or more? — kids up ahead, walking and blocking the trail, and I didn’t want to encounter them. So I turned down at 42nd. Before I turned, I enjoyed witnessing the kids from afar. They kept trying to get passing cars to honk by yelling honk! honk! honk! They were not quite in unison, and sounded almost like a vee of geese flying overhead. Nice! A few cars honked, one for several seconds — no quick tap, a long HONK! At first I thought they were part of a school group but would teachers let students yell at cars like that? Maybe it was a walk-out protest?
My weather app disagrees, but I think it was very humid. Now that funding for gathering weather data has been taken away, I don’t trust any forecasts. How could it only be 64% humidity when I ‘m sweating this much, and it is drizzling a little?
I ended my run on the dirt trail that climbs up the edge of the grassy boulevard. I had to watch carefully for roots or rocks. On either side, vivid, abundant (or excessive) green grass. In the middle, bare dirt — brownish gray, fuzzy, almost a nothingness that was difficult to see. The green, dizzying, disorienting. Inspiration for my green sonnet?
Shuffling down the path in the park, I go on whistling what was once considered a lively tune, thankful to even be a satchel of ligaments and bone still able to transact enough chemicals, one neuron to another, that I can appreciate the day lilies, star jasmine, and have some idea about what’s missing when a streak of grey engraves hosannas of moonlight, the spindrift off the rocks, anything that sounds remotely like a prayer sent into the air to a god who, in his infinite memory, must know he abandoned us here—so many self-conscious molecular assemblies— specs in a starry whirlwind of desire.
Wow — a satchel/ligament and bone still able to transact enough chemicals,/one neuron to another — what a description of a human!
spin-drift: sea spray; fine wind-borne snow or sand
Ran to the falls. Every day, my legs are feeling stronger. Will I be ready to run almost 8 miles next week? Yes! I listened to all the walkers and bikers and roller skiers and runners out by the gorge as I ran south, my “color” playlist as I ran north. I stopped a few times to record some ideas about my blue poem. Yesterday was indigo, today it’s blue.
10 Things
roots
sky
roar
flags
voices
bikers
Sawyer
horns
picnic
honks
Near the end of my run, I ran on the grassy boulevard between the river road and edmund. There were a lot of them, but I managed to not trip over any of the roots popping out of the dry dirt.
The sky was a cloudless blue, sometimes bright, sometimes pale.
At the park, I didn’t run near the falls, but I could still hear its roar as it rushed over the edge.
Memorial Day. At the Veterans home, the road was lined with flags.
Crossing over the creek on the high bridge, I could hear kids’ voices below, laughing and calling out to each other. I couldn’t hear any splashing, but I could tell by their tone that they were in the water.
The path was thick with fast moving bikers.
No — Sawyer — no! Two adults called out to their toddler when he tried to follow me as I ran by.
Running down the steep hill near locks and dam no. 1, I heard horns on the ford bridge. Was it in support of memorial day? Against a war or a dictator? (update, minutes later: Scott ran too. He saw someone walking through the park with a sign that read, Democracy dies in silence.)
At Wabun, a dozen or more people were having a picnic under one of the pavilions.
About a mile into my run, a cacophony above the trees. Geese! I followed their honks up into the sky and witnessed a wedge heading north.
blue
Today, I’m thinking about blue and trying to write a sonnet about it. As I ran, some ideas flashed in my head, so I stopped to record them:
after mile 1: inspired by the cacophony of honking geese, I thought about blue as an action, a verb, a phenomenon, not a noun or a pigment. Also: unfenced water, scattered sky.
after mile 2: Thinking about me as blue — as sparkling and shimmering and scattering and flinging waves of light all around. Blue as a happening that is not solid or tangible but imagined, a trick of the light, a “real” that we create for ourselves out of desire. Blue cannot capture the color, the feeling, the happening that blue is.
afterfinishing the run: The blue sky is not smooth or seamless. I see the scattering, the static, the pixels — the veil that hides the illusion of sight and seeing color, has been lifted.
Searching through my archive for thoughts about blue, I came across this fact, which inspired my thinking about scattering:
Like all other blue birds, Indigo Buntings lack blue pigment. Their jewel-like color comes instead from microscopic structures in the feathers that refract and reflect blue light, much like the airborne particles that cause the sky to look blue.
Felt good today. Ran a little faster, felt a little freer. Even though the weather is great, it’s Sunday, and it’s almost noon, the paths weren’t that crowded. Was it because it’s memorial day weekend? Whatever the reason, I appreciate not having to dodge bikers or groups of walkers.
10 Things
sea
stacked
stink
staring
shadows
craters
purple
soft
sitting
saw
Running through the tunnel of trees above the floodplain forest, a sea of green. No sky or river or solid ground.
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder.
Above the rowing club, a slight stink from the sewers — sweet and sour.
Running up the hill, past the old stone steps, 2 walkers and a dog about to descend the old stone steps. I couldn’t see their faces, but I felt like they were staring at me.
At the start of my run, bird shadows: a big one swooping, several smaller ones shooting across the street like bullets.
The craters in the patched crack near the trestle seem to be growing deeper.
Running past a tree, a flash of purple in the otherwise green leaves. Was that a trick of the light?
The soft sound of water falling or wind gently rustling the leaves near the ravine.
I was planning to stop at the sliding bench, but 2 people were already sitting there.
Before I began running, I heard a woman’s voice — you did it! Then the sound of a saw buzzing, then good job! Her tone sounded like she was praising a little kid. I wondered if that were true and how old the kid was that she was teaching to use a power saw — not in judgment, in wonder.
indigo
I have returned to my color poems. Before I ran, I was thinking about indigo again. During the run, an idea popped in my head, so just past the trestle I stopped to record it:
Thinking about indigo and idea of wanting this time, at night, that is dark without stars. Which is referencing how, when I lose all of my cone cells, there may never be true dark. And then thinking also about how true dark is not possible (in the city) because of light pollution. The idea that indigo is something both wished for and feared.
another grass line
It will soon be cold here, and dark here; the grass will lie flat to search for its spring head. (Love in the Weather’s Bells/ Jay Wright)
Ah, another wonderful morning. Sunny and just the right amount of warm. Ran with Scott. He talked about the book he’s reading — a murder mystery set in Austin, MN and Minneapolis. I talked about turning my color poems in to a chapbook. Also discussed: a YouTube video about taking a train from D.C. to Seattle (me), UAE cycling team doing altitude training (Scott), favorite and least favorite running shirts (me), possibly ordering a new bass (Scott), and voltas and vueltas and a tour as turn as hero’s quest (both of us). We also discussed an annoying woman last summer who wouldn’t let us use one of the drinking fountains because she was using the other to slowly fill up her big water bottle (both of us).
I don’t recall looking down at the river even once. Would I have been able to see it? A rare sight: a rollerblader, not a roller skier. Shirtless runners. The white foam of the falls. A stick flying up from under Scott’s foot. The cool green just before reaching the ford bridge.
bank
The other day I overheard one runner say to another something about banking time. I thought about the word bank and embankment popped into my head. Then I wondered about bank’s origins. Reading the poem-of-the-day this morning on Poetry Foundation, I encountered another bank line:
I’ve decided to turn my color poems into a chapbook for a contest. Time to study color some more. I need to write a sonnet about green, indigo, and blue. Maybe yellow, too? Here’s a wonderful yellow poem to inspire me:
If I stay, I might notice things—the color of buttercups, their bright faces en masse floating in green-grass-clouds, the lolling fields.
Butter—browned in a pan for the sauce to dress an expensive dead fish.
Yellow yolks make cake, custards, or the exact shade for stasis.
Or shame. I always think of yellow so.
A primary color, it arrives in packages, crushed natural iron oxide from a quarry in France.
Combine yellow with red, make orange. Shades shift by proportion.
The painter tells me about the color wheel, not the grey fear-sphere spinning in my head, or anything I know something about.
The beehive above, swaying. Yellow bits move in and out.
How yellow the yellow finches’ bodies, how they lift so easily into the air.
The in-between color—traffic lights say, stop. Then, go.
The striking of a single ray of sunlight can cause cancerous cells to grow, mutate.
Paint the kitchen walls a shade—warms and comforts.
Color of the piss puddle I left on the hardwood floor. Little ballerina shoes tiptoed around the mess. I did raise my hand, I did ask to go, I did try to do the right thing.
Tutus and twirls. Mrs. Stein said, Wait. Hold it! Her black leotard plastered to the curvature of her small breasts rose with her commands.
If you prefer gold fillings, and can afford them, the dentist will place them inside decayed teeth. Gold is a soft metal.
Combine yellow with blue, make green.
Are we back in the field, yet? Why do I ever leave it? The forest needs no grammar. Water splits rock. Hawk shreds yellow birds’ feathers. The mind, an unending sieve.
Dandelion wine is made from the tufts of heads, collected and boiled. Alcohol is for adults. Some bitterroot.
Never dress Asian babies in yellow, my mother tells me. Clashes with their skin. I learned from you, she says.
And, there is a fox running the median line on the bumpy road. I am not there, but I’m driving fast, headlights off, because there is a full-bodied moon, and I want to move in the dark like I know exactly, no precisely, without any hesitation, where I am going.
Barreling ahead.
Each hour the light changes, each minute angles shift.
Skylights are key in the studio. Naked. Put on my skin in layers—how many? What can the painter see?
I prefer to sleep through sunrise. I trust the heliocentric turning of things that are difficult to understand.
About yellowface I cannot say—enough. What is enough?
The channeling knife is the tool to make a lemon twist. I use it. Hovering over the glass, making the cut infuses the air in the space above the liquid with the essence of the fruit.
Once, I plucked an entire bucket of lemons and lavender. Made lemonade.
I don’t believe in that phrase…because my mother took to the tug of the bottle. More often than not, vomit is yellow.
In another dream, I am the lone sunflower swaying, shaken by the anticipation from the smell of the oncoming distant rain.
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
a biker listening to music — it probably wasn’t, but it reminded me of the Macarena
water dripping steadily and with an echo over the limestone ledge in the ravine
more green in the savanna
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?
silver sparkles on the blue waves
a trail runner passing by — hello / hi! — I liked watching their heels lift and drop, lift and drop
the graffiti I noticed last week on the 38th street steps is still there
tree trunks and thick roots emerging from the hill, many intertwined, some gnarled and knobby and knotted
2 distinct and soft horizontal lines dividing bluff and tree line from sky
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.
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).
50 minutes neighborhood / edmund / river road trail 64 degrees
Took a walk in the late morning with Scott and Delia. A few hours ago it rained, so everything is wet and green and gray. Puddles, mud, dripping leaves. Scott talked about irritating AI generated images on facebook and how he hardly ever notices the trees. I talked about orange and my back and pointed out interesting looking oaks. When I pointed out a gnarled, leafless one, Scott said, now that tree is a hot mess! I also mentioned D.H. Lawrence’s poem, “The Enkindled Spring,” and the idea of green spreading like a fire all over the forest. We saw tulips and explosions of green and several trees growing closely beside each other — expressions of intimacy (Scott described them as intimate). Intimacy is a key topic in the conversation between Forrest Gander and Anne Pringle that I mention below.
We heard a woodpecker laughing in the gorge and some robins encouraging us to cheer up! cheer up! in the neighborhood. On the river road trail, Scott suggested that it smelled very porky. A fire perhaps? I sang, or tried to sing, the Woody Woodpecker Show and Friendship from Anything Goes, which irritated Scott. Don’t get those dumb songs in my head!
My back didn’t hurt, but it felt tight. I need to relax.
before the walk/bike
Orange! The poem of the day at poets.org is a fabulous poem about orange!
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
Until Margaret Tudor, Queen of Scots. Her lips unlocked your sarcenet line, my fingers knew taste before the orange The earliest known use of orange as a colour name in English was in 1502, in a description of an item of Margaret Tudor’s clothing. By the 17th Century, the fruit and its colour were familiar enough for ‘orange-coloured’ become ‘orange’ as an adjective. 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 the color, Dutch Orange
Scraped from dust to crown our bruises, warriors we stared directly into the sun, Tainos dyed in orange
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?
First, Tibbets’ grove, millions of fruits grafted instead of born, from two parent orange trees
The key to a philosopher’s stone: Colormen flirting with volcanos to retrieve your arsenic orpiment
Forever in danger of sliding into another color, I ran after you, tracing rivers and creeks and streams of citrus
The Washington Navel Orange, a second fruit protruding: not a twin, nor translation, but a new name every season.
Wow, this poem! I love how the poet weaves in interesting facts about orange. I started looking some of them up, but I don’t have time to finish right now.
The risk of severe weather in the late afternoon and early evening — tornadoes, strong thunderstorms, high winds. Hopefully nothing will happen.
Yesterday afternoon while leaning down to take off my compression sock, something suddenly hurt — OUCH! Was it a pop or a slide or a snap? I’m not sure. All I know is that after it happened, my leg/back hurt and it was difficult to find a position that wasn’t uncomfortable. I think the pain started in/near my piriformis. Within an hour, it was slightly better. I was worried that I would have trouble sleeping, but it was fine. Now today, everything is back to how it has been for the past 2 months — manageable and occasional pain and stiffness. I checked this log and the first time I mentioned back pain was on 25 feb. About 2 months. If it is my piriformis, which I think it is, it looks like (according to several sources online) that I can run as long as it isn’t painful. Thought about running today, but I think I should stick with my original plan to not run again until May.
motion/movement
Reading my 28 april post from 2021, I came across this:
Mary Oliver’s ethical poetics of noticing, being astonished, and telling others about it involves a lot of standing back and still, staring, stopping, taking notes, sitting at a desk and writing. Yes, becoming connected or immersed in what you are noticing does happen, but the emphasis is on observing/seeing/staring at the world at some sort of distance and when you have stopped moving or doing anything. You stop to notice, or notice then stop, observe or behold (this makes me want to revisit Ross Gay and the idea of beholding), then sit and write. What if you didn’t stop? What if you observed while moving (while running?) Took notes while moving? Wrote while moving? I wonder how far I can push at the limits of writing about the gorge while running at the gorge–not running and noticing then writing, but running while noticing while writing.
A sudden thought: for May as I read more of CA Conrad, I want to create rituals that involve writing while moving/moving while writing. I’d also like to play around with the word/idea/feeling of still — yet, motionless, still life paintings. And I want to explore different ways motion/movement matter: movement in poetry — associations, rhythms, movement in diagnosing injuries, motion = energy, restlessness, the color of motion — not green (like Carl Phillips suggests in a poem) but silver.
Speaking of silver, 2 lines came up in the 28 april 2021 entry: ED’s too silver for a seam and MO’s gathering up the loose silver.
Getting back to MO’s practice/ethics of noticing:
But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding, than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
So I’m thinking about this in relation to my quote about the difference between looking and listening at the beginning of this post, and in terms of my own desire to feel with senses other than sight, or with sight not as Sight (as an objective, unfiltered way of being in and with the world). This idea of sight not as Sight, comes out of my thinking about how I see through my damaged eyes. I can see, but not with sharp focus or precision or mastery–I don’t look and See, as in, capture/own what I see with my eyes. My seeing is softer and involves more fluid waves and forms being felt. Returning to MO’s poem, I could definitely be delighted by the terns as I watched them moving—sweeping and plunging and thickening–because you detect motion in your peripheral vision and my peripheral vision is great. But I probably couldn’t see how many terns there are or how their thin beaks snapped. And I wouldn’t be able to see their hard eyes happy as little nails. But, seriously, can anyone see bird eyes in this way, other than MO?
28 april 2021
This discussion of sensing beyond vision, reminds me of something I heard yesterday while listening to an interview with the poet Forrest Gander and the mycologist Anne Pringle:
At 18:30, Pringle says:
I think a lot about humans being visual creatures. We study with our eyes almost as much as — almost more in a way — than with any other sense. But fungi, for example mushrooms, don’t see each other. I know that will be a shock and a revelation to your audience. So I’m constantly thinking about interpreting Visual Evidence and what it means to use your eyes to study something that doesn’t see.
What does it mean to use your eyes to study something that doesn’t see?
In my 28 april 2023 entry, I read about A.R. Ammons and his book garbage. And now I want to read it again and think about it in relation to motion. Here’s a recap I wrote using Ammons’ own words:
Energy and motion. The spindle of energy, motion as spirit, all forms translated into energy: value systems, physical systems, artistic systems, from the heavy (stone) to the light (wind) and back again. Loops, returns, the constant recycling of stone to wind to stone, waste into something new then returning to waste, using words to find a moment of the eternal, losing it again, the words becoming waste to break down and rebuild. Always motion, flow, decomposing, returning. Always behind it all, the relief of indifferent stars: twinkle, twinkle: just a wonder. And old people dying, bodies falling apart, individual existence ending. All of it happening, whether we believe in or not. All of us motion: a whirlwind becoming gross body, all navel and nipple and knee, then vaporized, refined, distilled into a place not meaning yet or never to mean.
Began watching a documentary about an upcoming 250 mile ultra running race. The doc = The Chase, the race = Cocodona in Arizona. Wow, that’s a lot of miles, and a lot of hallucinations!
The biking didn’t bother my legs or back.
I’m not watching The Residence while I bike anymore because Scott and I are watching it together. It’s helpful to watch it with Scott because he picks up on things I can’t see and/or the person doing the audio description doesn’t mention, like that Jane Curtain is playing the alcoholic mother-in-law (I couldn’t recognize her) and Bronson Pinchot is the pastry chef.
Spring! Hello black capped chickadees! Hello drumming woodpeckers! Hello bikers and runners and walkers with dogs! Hello green shoots and damp earth and soft air! Water gently lapping the shore, echoing voices, ringing bells! Hips (hopefully) healing and backs growing stronger! A wonderful morning for a walk through the neighborhood and to the river.
I wasn’t willing to stop and stare, so I could be mistaken, but it looked like a woman was taking her dog on an easter egg hunt — with the dog searching for the eggs while the woman encouraged them. If that wasn’t what I saw, I will still believe it was. Is that a thing, people arranging egg hunts for their dogs? I hope so!
I’m continuing to work on crown of color sonnets. I’m on the final one, no. 7, blue. I want to link this sonnet back up with the first one, so I’m ending with green. I’m thinking of returning to the green poem I drew from a lot, Oread by H.D.. Something about the sky not being pure blue but a mix of blue and green, or sometimes just green — especially in the spring and summer when green takes over the gorge. I’m leaving these last few sentences in, but as I worked on it more, I decided to go in a different direction. I’m taking lines from a beautiful essay about a blue wall in Leadvilleand writing about my efforts to make blue meaningful even though I can’t always see it.
Walked with Delia through the neighborhood. Since I’m writing this a few days later, I don’t remember much, only the broad swatch of Siberian Squill in a front yard at the northwest corner of 46th avenue and 34th street. Bunches of little flowers peeking out from a big boulder, covering a small swell of grass, hiding behind a fir tree. When I glanced at one flower, it looked light purple, but when I took them all in at once, they were blue. A strange sight to see the color switch from purple to blue, purple to blue, as I shifted my gaze.