Tag: Emily Dickinson

may 8/RUN

4 miles
trestle+ turn around
60 degrees

Okay spring. What a glorious morning! Birds, sun, shadows, green. Ran north, past the trestle. Didn’t see the river (too much green), but said Hi! to Dave and waved to Daddy Long Legs. Encountered, twice, a trio of very fast runners, someone on an eliptigo, and a roller skier.

Thought about shadows as the world of almost — echoes and reflections too. Welcome to the world of almosts not quites nearly theres. Glad you could join me. Some day, I’ll write a poem, or a series of poems, about the almost world I inhabit, where the shadow of a fence feels more real than the fence. As my mind wandered, I also thought about one of my favorite books as a kid: The Shades. I should read it again — just requested it from the library. I would buy it, but it must be out of print: a used copy is $300!

On the way back, I put in my “I’m Shadowing You” and listened to more of my shadow songs:

  • I’m Beginning to See the Light
  • Twlight
  • The Shadow Knows (just the beginning)
  • Yesterday
  • Moon Shadow
  • Golden Years
  • Candle Mambo
  • If You Go Away
  • We Will Become Silhouttes

So many interesting thoughts about shadows, some of them already gone: used to ramble through the park/shadowboxing in the dark — twilight as a time when shades are drawn and silhouettes appear on them — there’s a shadow hanging over me —

And if I ever lose my eyes
If my colors all run dry
Yes, if I ever lose my eyes
Oh if, I won’t have to cry no more

Yes, I am bein’ followed by a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow
Leapin’ and hoppin’ on a moonshadow
Moonshadow, moonshadow

When this part of “Moonshadow” played I got excited. Yes! Losing my eyes? Color running dry? That’s me. It didn’t make me sad, but almost, strangely (I suppose), joyful in my recognition of my experience. And, yes, I will always have the moonshadow. In fact, as my vision diminishes, shadows are even more meaningful.

Run for the shadows/Run for the shadows

I wondered if the singer in “Candle Mambo” was dancing with his own shadow in the candlelight.

Listening to Neil Diamond’s version of “If You Go Away,” I was struck by the absence of shadows — when the person he loves goes away, all dark; when they’re there, all light. No in-between — either nothing matters, or it matters too much. Neil needs some shadows to temper all his drama.

Just as I reached home, “We Will Become Silhouettes” came on. Very fitting for what I was thinking about before my run:

silhouettes

    Thinking about shadows and light, I was reminded of a video I watch 10? years ago on Steven Spielberg and his use of shadow and light. I couldn’t find it, but found something else. Near the end, on a segment featuring shadows, I heard this line:

    A rule in comic books is that a character should be recognizable just by looking at their silhouette.

    Immediately I thought about forms and my interest in experimenting with how little visual information we need to recognize something — the silhouette as form. I also thought briefly about Platonic Forms. Then I thought about silhouettes, especially the ones I remember making in elementary art class. I looked up “silhouette” and found an article from the Smithsonian: Q and Art: Silhouettes. It mentions the influence of silhouettes on current artists like Kara Walker — Yes! I remember seeing an exhibit of her work at the Walker — in 2007 (I looked it up). Very cool.

    I found this video about Walker’s work that I’d like to watch after my run.

    The silhouette lends itself to an avoidance of the subject, you know, not being able to look at it directly.

    [about Stone Mountain, GA, where Walker grew up, after moving there from Stockton, CA] So that place has a little more resonance. It’s so in-your-face. There’s just no hiding the fact of what black stands for in white america and what white stands for in black america — they’re all loaded with our deepest psychological perversions and fears and longings.

    I was tracing outlines of profiles and thinking about physiognomy and racist sciences and minstrelsy and shadow and the dark side of the soul. And I thought, you know, I have black paper here, and I was making silhouette paintings, but they weren’t the same thing. It seemed like the most obvious answer, it took me forever to come to, was just to make a cut in the surface of this black thing. You know I had this black surface and if I just made a cut in it I was creating a hole. It was like the whole world was in there for me.

    Discussing her work Insurrection, she describes how overhead projects were used so that the shadows of visitor’s moving through the exhibit would be projected on the work, “so maybe they would feel implicated” in the scene, the history.

    I began to love the kind of self promotion surrounding the work of the silhouette artist. They would show up in different towns and advertise their skills, sometimes very overblown language describing their incredible skills: able to cut in less than a minute, 10 seconds, for your likeness, your accurate likenesses. I also began to question this whole idea of accurate likenesses.

    vision moment: While watching the video on my iPad, I paused it to transcribe what she was saying. When I put my finer on the iPad to scroll back a little and start again, my finger had disappeared. Georgina Kleege talks about this happening to her in Sight Unseen, but I didn’t remember experiencing it until today. It’s very localized, in one spot, and only if the contrast is bad. Am I mis-seeing this? Is it just the lack of contrast?

    a thought about the monthly challenges

    I’ve done monthly challenges about individual poets — Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson, Linda Pastan — or single books — Dart, garbage — or a single poem — Hymn to Life. I’ve studied birds, water, wind, windows, ghosts, shadows. Sometimes, these studies lead to poem, and sometimes they’re the chance to care about something new, something I’ve never noticed or bothered to think about. I love these challenges. Today I loved thinking about silhouettes and remembering art projects I did as a kid and having a chance to think again about art work that I saw years ago but didn’t quite understand.

    may 6/RUN

    7 miles
    st. kates and back
    60 degrees

    Ran with Scott on a beautiful spring morning. Sun, shadows, a welcome breeze. We ran over to St. Catherine’s University, across the river. RJP has almost decided to go there (hopefully she makes up her mind tonight) and we wanted to check it out. I’m impressed and excited to visit her next year. We talked a lot more in the first half of our run; we were both tired the last 2 miles. Scott talked about some Threads exchange involving Drake, Kanye West, and a diss track. We heard a creaking tree and I said it sounded like the squeaking gate we heard yesterday afternoon while we were walking. The mention of the gate reminded me of Marie Howe’s poem, “The Gate,” which I recited for Scott (of course I did). We talked about many other things but I just remember discussing what a wonderful campus St. Cates is and how great it will be for RJP.

    On the sidewalk just outside of campus, we encountered several sidewalk poems that are part of the Public Art Sidewalk Poetry project. Scott took a picture of one:

    November/ Marianne McNamara and Scott’s feet

    November/ Marianne McNamara (2009)

    Autumn winds drag leaves from the trees,
    clog the streets in dreary finale.
    Bare branches crisscross the heavy sky.
    Icy rain spatters, ink-blots the pavement.
    I settle at the window, stare into the black flannel, search the woolly lining of the night for winter.

    I was unable to read this on the sidewalk, so I’m glad I could find it online. How hard is it for someone with good vision to read? I like the idea of this project, but in practice, it doesn’t quite work. Scott suggested they should use black paint on the letters, to make them stand out.

    10 Things

    1. smell: lilac, intense
    2. tree shadows, more filled in than last week
    3. a loud leaf blower
    4. a safety patrol on the corner near Dowling saying I hate you, I hate you — who was he talking to?
    5. the soft trickle of water falling from the sewer pipe near the 44th street parking lot
    6. mud and ruts filled with water at a construction site on the edge of campus
    7. feeling a fine film of dust on my face near the end of the run
    8. more than a dozen signs in the grass outside a liquor store, each one said the same thing: wine sale. Scott: I guess they’re having a wine sale
    9. running down Randolph encountering 3 or 4 sidewalk poems, none of them marked on the map
    10. noticing a faint white thing flying through the air, high above us: a bird? a plane? a trick of the light or corrupted data from my eye to my brain?

    the allegory of the cave, part 1

    I want to read the cave parable and think about its shadows, but I want to read it in the context of The Republic so I’ve been searching my shelves for my copy. Which class in college did we read this for? Probably The Individual and Morality. Maybe a philosophy class? Anyway, it is very hard for me to find one book among almost a thousand. When we moved in I organized them, but over time, books have moved. Also, it’s dim in our living room and I have a lot of trouble reading book titles with my bad eyes. Yesterday I asked RJP to help, and she found it! Maybe I’ll try reading some of it out on the deck this afternoon. Reading physical books, as opposed to e-books, can be hard; there’s never enough light unless I’m reading it under my special lamp (designed for sewers and cross-stitchers and 80 year-olds with bad eyes and me). Reading outside in natural light helps.

    an hour spent outside reading and dozing off and reading again . . .

    First, two links that connect Plato and his cave with poetry:

    Reading through the allegory, I came accross these lines:

    . . . the eyes may be confused in two ways and from two causes, namely when they’ve come from the light into the darkness and when they’ve come from the darkness into the light. . . whether it has come from a brighter life and is dimmed through not having yet become accustomed to the dark or whether it has come from greater ignorance into greater light and is dazzled by the increased brilliance.

    518a, The Republic / Plato, trans. G.M.A. Grube

    Of course, I immediately thought of two of my favorite vision poems (what I’m calling them) by Emily Dickinson. And of course I have both of them memorized — but not her punctuation.

    We grow accustomed to the Dark
    When light is put away
    As when a neighbor holds the lamp
    To witness her goodbye.

    A Moment — We uncertain step —
    For newness of the Night
    (We Grow Accustomed to the Dark/ ED)

    Too bright for our infirm Delight
    The truth’s superb surprise

    . . .

    The truth must dazzle gradually
    Or every man be blind.
    (Tell all the truth but tell it Slant/ ED)

    I remember Plato’s cave and the shadows and the inability to access Truth, but I didn’t remember him discussing how both too little light and too much light blind us. The emphasis, as I recall, was always on darkness = bad, ignorance, the problem. Was I just not paying attention in philosophy class?

    Searching for “plato cave,” I came across a video about it and decided to watch it:

    The School of Life

    I’d like to write more about what I find to be missing (also what’s helpful) in this account, but I’ve run out of time. Here’s one more video for comparison that I just started watching. When I have time, I’ll reflect on both:

    After Skool

    april 29/RUN

    4.2 miles
    minnehaha falls and back
    49 degrees / drizzle
    wind: 7 mph / gusts: 14 mph

    When I left for my run, I thought the rain had stopped. I was wrong, which was fine, because I don’t mind running in a drizzle, especially when it’s not too cold. Was it a drizzle? Maybe I’d call it a mist — a steady, soft spray that soaked my orange sweatshirt and mixed with the sweat on my face. Mostly I couldn’t see it; I just felt wet or damp or . . . I’ve got it: Moist! That’s how I felt as I ran today, moist. Scott hates this word, but I don’t mind it. What words do I detest? The only one I can think of immediately is nummy. Is that even a word?

    So, everything, including me, was moist. Moist sidewalks, moist trails, moist air, moist shorts, running tights, socks. Other words for moist: soaked, damp, dank, saturated, humid

    10 Moist Things

    1. the paved path — big puddles everywhere — the biggest puddle was right after the locks and dam no. 1 parking lot heading south
    2. the strip of dirt next to the paved path — muddy ruts
    3. the oak savanna — covered in leaves, light green and dripping
    4. the thick, gray air
    5. the laughing, water-logged voices of kids on the playground
    6. the slick road
    7. my running shoes
    8. my pony tail
    9. my orange sweatshirt
    10. the grass — a sponge . . . squish squish squish

    A good run. I felt strong and springy — both because of the weather and my bouncy feet. I listened to the water gushing out of the sewer pipes and over the ledge as I ran to the falls. I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist on the way back. Most memorable song: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (11 on the Beaufort Scale for violent storm).

    before the run

    It’s almost the end of April (wow) and this morning, before my run, I finished my Beaufort Scale in Verse:

    Beaufort Scale in Verse

    0 — The Moment/Marie Howe

    The whir of I should be, I should be, I should be

    slows to silence,

    the white cotton curtains hanging still.


    1 — Long Life/Mary Oliver

    We may be touched by the most powerful of suppositions—even to a certainty—as we stand in the rose petals of the sun and hear a murmur from the wind no louder than the sound it makes as it dozes under the bee’s winds. This, too, I suggest, is weather, and worthy of report.

    2 — Nature Aria/Yi Lei

    Autumn wind chases in
    From all directions
    And a thousand chaste leaves
    Give way.

    3 — And All Visible Signs Swept Away/Carl Phillips

    I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing

    3 — When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, They You Are truly Alongside/Donika Kelly

    the dry
    sound of applause: leaves chapped/falling, an ending

    4 — Enough/Jeffrey Harrison

    The rising wind pulls you out of it,/and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
    wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
    and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day
    were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
    for this moment at least, let it all go

    5 — Love Song for the Square Root of Negative One/Richard Siken

    I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble and I am invisible

    6 — Wind/Emily Dickinson

    When winds go round and round in bands,
    And thrum upon the door,
    And birds take places overhead,
    To bear them orchestra

    7 — Who Has the Wind?/Christina Rossetti

    Who has seen the wind?
    Neither You nor I:
    But when the trees bow down their heads,
    the wind is passing by

    8 — Fall/Edward Hirsch

    Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless
    Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:
    It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies

    9 — Plea to the Wind/Alice Oswald

    Unglue the fog from the woods from the waist up
    And speak disparagingly of leaves

    10 — Plea to the Wind/Alice Oswald

    Whip the green cloth off the hills

    11 — Postscript/Seamus Heaney

    So that the ocean on one side is wild
    With foam and glitter. . .
    As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
    And catch the heart off guard and blow it open.

    12 — Wave After Wave/M. Bartley Seigel

    In a heartbeat, rollers mass two stories
    trough to insatiate tempest, unquelled
    by prayer nor cigarette, careless, mean,

    a cold-blooded indifference so pure,
    a strong swimmer won’t last ten wet minutes.
    At the Keweenaw, surf pummels the stamp
    sands with ochre fists, ore boats stack up lee

    of the stone, and entire beaches stand up
    to walk away.

    april 22/RUN

    3.8 miles
    river road, north/south
    62 degrees
    wind: 16 mph / gusts: 30 mph

    62 in bright sun with very little shade feels warm, too warm. Time to start running much earlier in the day. Other weather-related gripes? Had to hold onto my cap several times so it wouldn’t blow off.

    Everything is slowly turning green, especially the floodplain forest. The trees are coming into leaf/like something almost being said.

    Noticed some cool bird shadows, one on the road from a bird high up in the sky, another on the side of a house.

    Heard something beeping as I ran under the trestle — was a train coming soon? Not that I could tell.

    Listened to the wind running north, my “It’s Windy” playlist running south. Heard “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Wind of Change” and thought about how an answer blowing in the wind could mean two contradictory things at once: 1. the answer is coming, change is coming, a better, freer world is coming and 2. the answer is just blowing in the wind, out of reach, as futile/pointless as talking to the wind.

    back to the Beaufort Scale

    Last week I came up with a great plan to create a Beaufort scale out of poetry lines, but it stalled when I couldn’t figure one out for 1. Today I’ll try again.

    But before I do that — I think it stalled also because I got side tracked by metaphor and figurative language. The Beaufort scale mostly uses literal language, describing the effects of wind on various things, like umbrellas or people trying to walk. Occasionally metaphor creeps in with the use of white horses to describe white caps on waves. Is this the only use of metaphor in the scale? No.

    Use of metaphor in Beaufort Scale:

    0 — “sea like a mirror”
    1 — ripples like scales
    2 — crests like glass
    3 — foam like glass
    4 — white horses

    If I’m reading correctly, the for use on land section is all literal descriptions of wind’s effects: leaves rustling, trees being uprooted, roof tiles ripping off, inconvenient then difficult to walk. I like how 7 is inconvenient to walk, while 8 is difficult.

    Okay, now back to a poem scale. Instead of literal descriptions, I think I’d like figurative ones. It’s more fun!

    when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by — “Who Has Seen the Wind?”/ Christina Rossetti

    Would this be 5, “small trees in leaf start to sway”? or 6, “large branches in motion”? or 7, “whole trees in motion”?

    I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble and I am invisible — “Love Song for the Square Root of Negative One” / Richard Siken

    2? “leaves rustle”? or 8, “”twigs break from trees”?

    I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing — “And All Visible Signs Swept Away” / Carl Phillips

    Okay, think I know this one: “Leaves and small twigs in constant motion” (3).

    Autumn wind chases in/From all directions/And a thousand chaste leaves/Give way. — “Nature Aria” / Yi Lei

    I think this should be 2, “leaves rustle”

    Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless/ Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:/It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies — “Fall” / Edward Hirsch

    7, “inconvenient to walk against the wind”

    the dry/sound of applause: leaves chapped/falling, an ending. — “When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Alongside” / Donika Kelly

    3: “leaves in constant motion”

    Unglue the fog from the woods from the waist up/ And speak disparagingly of leaves — “Plea to the Wind” / Alice Oswald

    This is a tough one for me. Is ungluing the fog violent or gentle? To speak disparagingly of the leaves seems less forceful than yelling at them — I think I’ll go with 4 “wind raises dust and loose paper, small branches move” but I could also go with 9, chimney pots and slates removed

    Whip the green cloth off the hills — “Plea to the Wind” / Alice Oswald

    10: “Trees uprooted, considerable structural damage occurs”

    When winds go round and round in bands,/And thrum upon the door,/And birds take places overhead,/To bear them orchestra, — “Wind” / Emily Dickinson

    6 — whistling in telegraph wires, umbrellas used with difficulty

    So that the ocean on one side is wild/With foam and glitter. . ./As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. — “Postscript” / Seamus Heaney

    11: the sea is covered in foam, widespread damage

    So, I already found a line last week for 0. With these lines above, I’m only missing 12. Although some of the lines above are used for multiple levels. I’ll fine tune that in a future entry. This was fun!

    Here they are in order, so far:

    0 —- the white cotton curtains hanging still

    1 —

    2 — Autumn wind chases in/From all directions/And a thousand chaste leaves/Give way. — “Nature Aria” / Yi Lei

    3 — I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing — “And All Visible Signs Swept Away” / Carl Phillips AND the dry/sound of applause: leaves chapped/falling, an ending. — “When the Fact of Your Gaze Means Nothing, Then You Are Truly Alongside” / Donika Kelly

    4 —

    5 — I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble and I am invisible — “Love Song for the Square Root of Negative One” / Richard Siken

    6 — When winds go round and round in bands,/And thrum upon the door,/And birds take places overhead,/To bear them orchestra, — “Wind” / Emily Dickinson

    7 — when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by — “Who Has Seen the Wind?”/ Christina Rossetti

    8 — Suddenly feel something invisible and weightless/ Touching our shoulders, sweeping down from the air:/It is the autumn wind pressing against our bodies — “Fall” / Edward Hirsch

    9 — Unglue the fog from the woods from the waist up/ And speak disparagingly of leaves — “Plea to the Wind” / Alice Oswald

    10 — Whip the green cloth off the hills — “Plea to the Wind” / Alice Oswald

    11 — So that the ocean on one side is wild/With foam and glitter. . ./As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways/ And catch the heart off guard and blow it open. — “Postscript” / Seamus Heaney

    12 —

    march 28/RUN

    4.15 miles
    minnehaha falls and back
    28 degrees

    Back outside! There were a few patches of ice and some of the walking trails were covered in snow, but the rest was clear and dry. So bright, not just the sun but the sun reflecting off of the snow. My calf continues to make noise — mostly gentle whispers or soft, short groans. Today I didn’t wear the calf sleeves during my run. Maybe I should next time.

    Did my usual thing: ran south listening to the world, north to music — Winter 2024

    Heard lots of chirping and tweeting birds. Sharp squirrel claws on rough bark. A noise that I thought was a bird or a drill but decided was a dog that wouldn’t shut up — bark bark bark bark bark bark

    The favorite shadow I (thought I) saw: approaching a tree, I suddenly saw a shadow moving up the trunk, then realized it was actually a squirrel climbing up the tree.

    birding:

    Right after my lower calf near the ankle — or was it a tendon? — tightened a little and I was worried, I saw the shadow of a small bird flying over the snow, almost like it was saying, don’t worry; notice me instead.

    tweeting birds. I heard: TWEET tweet tweet tweet tweet — Walking back, this tweeting mixed with water dripping from a gutter, a squirrel’s nails scratching tree bark, a kid across the street squealing with delight.

    One mixed with
    many

    the drips and
    squeals and

    scratching feet
    and the

    Tweet tweet tweet
    tweet tweet

    That’s the version I spoke into my phone. I’ll work on it some more.

    before the run

    one

    Red Shoulder Hawk by Ciona Rouse was the poem of the day on poets.org. Instead of just posting the poem, as I usually do, I

    We met in the middle of the street only to discuss 
    the Buteo lineatus, but we simply said hawk 
    because we knew nothing of Latin. We knew nothing 
    of red in the shoulder, of true hawks versus buzzards, 
    or what time they started their mornings, 
    what type of snake they stooped low 
    and swift to eat. We knew nothing.

    I like how we meet in the middle sounds. The discussion of not knowing the latin name of the bird reminds me of J Drew Lanham and his interview with Krista Tippet — you don’t have to know the name, just be with the bird. It also makes me think of Robin Wall Kimmerer and how she navigates her scientific and indigenous ways of knowing, how she values the Latin names but also the names beings call themselves. And it makes me think of May Swenson and section 7 of her wonderful poem, “October,” which is part of my My 100 list of memorized poems: His shoulder patch/which should be red looks gray. I like how this first sentence unspools.

    Or, I should say, at least I knew nothing, 
    and he said nothing of what he knew that day 
    except one thing he said he thought, but now I say 
    he knew: I’m going to die soon, my neighbor said to me 
    and assured he had no diagnosis, just a thought. He said it 
    just two weeks before he died outdoors just 
    twenty steps away from where we stood that day— 
    he and I between the porch I returned to and twisted 
    the key to my door to cross the threshold into my familiar 
    like always I do and the garage he returned to 
    and twisted some wrench probably on a knob of the 
    El Camino like always he did every day when usually 
    I’d wave briefly en route from carport to door 
    sometimes saying “how’s it going,” expecting 
    only the “fine” I had time to digest.      

    I knew nothing, and he said nothing of what he knew. Is this a chiasmus, where the order of the words is reversed for dramatic effect (I wrote about this device on 13 nov 2023)? Again, the unspooling of the story is wonderful: how the neighbor’s death is revealed, the details that help us to imagine the scene. There is punctuation in these lines, but there are also a lot of lines that are written in a way that make sense without punctuation. I’m reminded of June Jordan’s rules for critiquing other people’s poems:

    Punctuation (Punctuation is not word choice. Poems fly or falter according to the words composing them. Therefore, omit punctuation and concentrate on every single word. E.g., if you think you need a question mark then you need to rewrite so that your syntax makes clear the interrogative nature of your thoughts. And as for commas and dashes and dots? Leave them out!)

    June Jordan

    I don’t know if I completely agree with her, and I know Emily Dickinson wouldn’t, but I do like the idea of trying to focus on each word and trying to have them work without punctuation.

    I think I like, to cross the threshold into my familiar like always I do. Do I? I like the use of threshold into my familiar instead of home, but is it too wordy, and awkward with the like always I do?

    Except today 
    when I stepped out of my car, he waved me over to see 
    what I now know to call the Buteo. When first I read its 
    Latin name, I pronounced it boo-TAY-oh 
    before learning it’s more like saying beauty (oh!).     
    I can’t believe I booed when it’s always carrying awe.

    Booed instead of awed? Love it.

    Like on this day, the buzzard—red-shouldered and 
    usually nesting in the white pine—cast a shadow 
    upon my lawn just as I parked, and stared back at us— 
    my mesmerized neighbor and me—perched, probably hunting, 
    in the leaning eastern hemlock in my yard. Though 
    back then I think I only called it a tree because I knew nothing 
    about distinguishing evergreens because I don’t think I ever asked 
    or wondered or searched yet. I knew nothing about how they thrive 
    in the understory. Their cones, tiny. And when they think 
    they’re dying, they make more cones than ever before. 

    A bird casting a shadow — a favorite of mine. The way time works in this poem is interesting. I didn’t know yet. How far in the future is the narrator telling their story? How long after the neighbor’s death did they begin learning trees? note: I keep wanting to refer to the narrator as he — why? I can’t distinguish evergreens and I’m constantly calling pine trees fir trees and all evergreens fir. Will I ever learn? Something in my brain resists this sort of specificity, and not just because of my bad vision. A line from Diane Seuss in “I look up from my book and look out at the world through reading glasses: All trees are just trees/ death to modifiers

    How did he 
    know? Who did he ask and what did he search to find 
    the date that he might die, and how did he know 
    to say soon to me and only me and then, right there 
    in that garage with his wrench and the some other parts 
    unknown for the El Camino and the radio loud as always 
    it was, stoop down, his pledge hand anxious against his chest,
    and never rise again?     

    I’m always fascinated by how people know certain things, like, how did Truman in The Truman Show know that something wasn’t right? What enabled him to trust that knowing and not discount it? Or, another perspective: how do our wandering brains lead us to knowing? I like tracing the strange circuits I take to arrive at ideas.

    There are many details in this poem, but also many details left out. What kind of loud music is coming out of the radio?

    And now the hemlock, which also goes 
    by     Tsuga canadensis, which is part Latin, part Japanese, 
    still leans, still looks like it might fall any day now, weighed 
    down by its ever-increasing tiny fists. And the     Buteo returns 
    each winter to reclaim the white pine before spring.

    The passing of time, vague: now, still, returns each winter

    Most hawks die by accident—collision, predation, disease. 
    But when it survives long enough to know it’s dying, it may 
    find a familiar tree and let its breath weaken in a dark cranny.

    to know it’s dying — Back to Swenson’s “October”: this old redwing has decided to/ stay, this year, not join the/ strenuous migration. Better here,/ in the familiar, to fade.

    And my neighbor’s wife and I now meet in the middle, 
    sometimes even discussing birds but never discussing 
    that day. And I brought her roses on that first anniversary 
    without him because we sometimes discuss a little more 
    than birds. And the     Buteo often soar in twos, sometimes solo. 
    So high I cannot see their shoulders, but I know their voices 
    now and can name them even when I don’t see them. No matter 
    how high they fly, they see me, though I don’t concern them. 
    They watch a cottonmouth, slender and sliding 
    silent in tall grass.     

    Birding by ear, the indifference of nature. Another line, this one from Frederic Gros: You are nothing to the trees. To me, this is a good thing.

    And the cardinals don’t sing. 
    They don’t go mute, either. They tink. 
    Close to their nests and in their favorite trees, they know 
    when the hawk looms. And their voices turn 
    metallic: tink, tink, tink.

    A metallic tink as warning call? I’ll have to listen for that. I like how the poem ends with the robins and the narrator-as-transformed-through-curiosity. The narrator has been changed by their neighbor’s death, they have learned to notice and to listen. As I write this, I realize that these last few lines are all about listening and not looking. Very cool!

    two

    I keep returning to the ekphrastic poem, or ideas close-by/near-enough to the ekphrastic. Thinking about made things and things being made and makers and the world somewhere between wild (as “untouched”?) and civilized (culture/made). Landscapes as not just there, but the living beings/systems, crafted through various “hands” — three in particular: the brain and its way of filtering and guessing and shaping visual data into something I can see; the Minneapolis Parks Department (and maybe other actors in and of the city, too: Army Corps, with its locks and dam and timber and flour industries) and how they’ve managed the land and created the paths I run on, the views I admire — and also created illusions of the “wild”; and water — the river, seeps, springs, drips down to limestone ledge, all carving out and slicing through rock, making: a gorge, rubbled asphalt, cracks, rust, waterfalls.

    With all of this I wonder, What is Art? Who is/can be an artist? What is the difference between art and the everyday? There are too many things I could read about how other artists/poets have approached this — that would be the work of past Academic-Sara. And maybe I don’t want to answer these questions, just pose them through my juxtapositions? Or, maybe I should try to stop asking these questions, and just start writing!

    march 20/RUN

    4 miles
    trestle+ turn around
    22 degrees
    wind: 21 mph gusts

    Straight into the wind running north. Not fun, but not nearly as bad as yesterday. Felt stronger, faster for parts of it. Running up the hill just south of the lake street bridge my calf tightened up a little. I stopped, walked, then started again, more cautious this time. Thought about Thomas Gardner and Poverty Creek Journal and his brief descriptions of sore calves after a tough session of hill repeats. After lots of anxiety for weeks, calf pain is now just a normal/regular part of my running. I’m glad — not for the off and on pain, but for the everydayness of it.

    Some shadows — soft, crooked, in motion: birds, gnarled tree branches, broken fence rails. Other shadows — dark, on trees, looking like someone standing there. Don’t remember seeing the river but I do remember the floodplain forest — open, bare, beautiful. No chain across the top of the old stone steps. Wondered what will happen in a few days; big snow predicted, well, possible.

    Listened to birds and cars and grit on the trail running north, my winter playlist running south.

    before the run

    Encountered these lines on twitter this morning, from Charles Wright:

    When what you write about is what you see, what do you write about when it’s dark?

    Charles Wright

    I like thinking/reading/writing about the dark. Imagining it otherwise, not as the absence of light, where light = life and happiness and safety, but as where more things are possible, outside the scrutiny of those watching and judging and classifying. The dark, soft. The dark, no need for sharp vision or eye contact. The Dark, where Emily Dickinson’s little men hurry home to their house unperceived and robins in a trundle bed try and fail to hide their wings under their nightgowns. Where Carl Phillip’s willow wants more for compassion than for company. The dark: the moon, the stars, louder silence. The dark, where reds and greens and blues and yellows are no longer necessary —

    A strange thing I’ve realized about my color vision. I can still see colors — the light green placemat my computer sits on, the purplish-reddish-blueish of my computer desktop, my bright blue hydroflask. And I can still see when things are in color. But, when something lacks color, like a movie in black and white or the middle of the night in my bedroom, I can’t tell that there isn’t any color. It looks and feels the same.

    4 moments when I noticed this:

    one and two: from a log entry on 13 nov 2022

    1 Yesterday afternoon, in the chapel at Gustavus, which was not dim but not bright either, I started to notice that looking one direction, toward the far window on the other side, the only color I could see was an occasional red square embedded in the walls (I double-checked with Scott; there were also a bunch of blue squares too). The hymnals 15-20 feet away, which I know are red, looked dark but colorless. Staring out at the crowd of people, everyone looked like they were dressed in dark or light — not quite black or white, just dark clothes or light clothes. No variation, no purples or blues or oranges or anything but dark and light. It was strange, partly because it didn’t feel strange. It wasn’t like I thought, where is all the color?

    2 It felt more like when I wake up in the dark and, after my eyes adjust, I see the room and it looks like the room, but just darker, dimmer and without color. And, usually I don’t think there’s no color — sometimes I might even think I see color because I know my robe is purple or the pillow is yellow, or I don’t see yellow, but I recognize the pillow on the couch as that yellow pillow because I already know it’s yellow.

    three: from a log entry on 12 jan 2024

    The other day, Scott, FWA, and I were discussing the scenes in Better Call Saul that are set in the present day and are in black and white. Scott and FWA both agreed that those were harder to watch — they had to pay more careful attention — because they lacked color, which is harder because visual stories often rely heavily on color to communicate ideas/details. I said I didn’t realize that they were in black and white; they didn’t look any different to me than the other scenes, which are in vivid color (at least that’s what they tell me). I realized something: it’s not that I don’t see color, it just doesn’t communicate anything to me, or if it communicates it’s so quiet that I don’t notice what it’s saying.

    four: this week

    A few days ago, we decided to finally watch Maestro. Wow! We haven’t finished it yet, but Scott and I are really enjoying it. The first scene is in color, which is intended to represent the present, at least the present as it exists in the movie. The second scene is in black and white and represents Bernstein just before his big break. After watching it for a minute or two Scott said, you see that this in black and white, right? And I said, oh, is it? I didn’t notice. I was focused on the contrast — the dark, closed-curtain window and the outline of brightness around it.

    Color exists, it just doesn’t speak to me in the same ways (as it used to, or as it does to other people). It’s not a foreign language, it is just turned down, whispering. Yes, it does make it harder to understand visual stories that rely on color to tell part of the story — a favorite: present times = color; the past = black and white — but it doesn’t bother me that much. Instead, I find it fascinating, the opportunity to notice the constructs of color and to see the world (and color) differently.

    Okay, that was a long ramble about color and black and white, but I think I’d like to write another color poem about it.

    Now back to the quote from Charles Wright on twitter. As is often the case, there was no mention of where it came from, other than it was from Charles Wright. I always find this frustrating. But, I found it easily enough: Littlefoot, 32 in The New Yorker, 2007. Such a wonderful poem!

    Back yard, my old station, the dusk invisible in the trees,
    But there in its stylish tint,
    Everything etched and precise before the acid bath
    —Hemlocks and hedgerows—
    Of just about half an hour from now,
    Night in its soak and dissolve.
    Pipistrello, and gun of motorcycles downhill,
    A flirt and a gritty punctuation to the day’s demise
    And one-starred exhalation,
    V of geese going south,
    My mind in their backwash, going north.

    my old station: love this way of describing a usual spot to sit
    the stylish tint: oh, the softness of near-night!
    everything etched and precise: I love walking at night in the winter and noticing the contrast between the sky and the bare branches, which I can see more clearly than at any other time. During the day, those branches are a fuzzy blur, but at night they are etched!
    Hemlocks and Hedgerows: sounds like a musical act or a comedy duo Scott adds: proto Prog rock/psychedelic band, Margaret’s Electric Forest or Garden, first album: Hemlocks & Hedgerows
    a pipistrello is Italian for bat, or “small mouse-like animal that flies”
    sounds of day’s demise: a flirt of a bat, the gritting punctuation of a motorcycle’s gun downhill
    one-starred exhalation: me, almost every night — o, look at the stars!
    I love hearing, then seeing, a V of geese in the evening. The choice of backwash instead of wake is interesting — and flying south/mind going north is a wonderful way to suggest being out of sync

    Wow, that is one packed first stanza! I’ll skip the next one to get to the quoted lines:

    When what you write about is what you see,
    what do you write about when it’s dark?
    Paradise, Pound said, was real to Dante because he saw it.
    Nothing invented.
    One loves a story like that, whether it’s true or not.
    Whenever I open my eyes at night, outside,
    flames edge at the edge
    Of everything, like the sides of a nineteenth-century negative.
    If time is a black dog, and it is,
    Why do I always see its breath,
    its orange, rectangular breath
    In the dark?
    It’s what I see, you might say, it’s got to be what my eyes see.

    I’ll have to think about these lines some more. Right now I wonder, when your peripheral vision is fraying, do you see strange things, like flames, at the edges? What do edges look like to me in the dark? I’ll try to remember to notice when I wake up in the middle of the night tonight, like every night. In the light, they are fuzzy and dance a soft shimmy.

    It’s real because we see it? Different ways to respond to this. I’m thinking about how so much of what our eyes see is illusion or guessing based on habits and repeated practice and context and other brain tricks. Even so, most people believe that what they are seeing is real. If they believe, and act as if what they are seeing is real, why can’t I believe and act as if what I’m seeing is real too? All those soft, generous things; those strange headless and legless torsos walking towards me; that river burning with a white heat that sets the trees on fire?

    Okay, it’s almost 11 am. I need to go out for my run before I finish this!

    during the run

    Did I think about this poem at all while I was running? I can’t remember.

    after the run

    During the run, I noticed bird shadows crossing my feet, both of us flying, the birds in the air, be just above the trail. I decided to add it into a fun poem I’m writing called “Birding.” It’s a series of small verses in my 3/2 form in which I describe how I see birds with my cone-dead eyes.

    Not sure if this works:

    vi.

    a shadow
    travels

    over feet
    running

    downhill — flight
    4 ways:

    the moving
    shadow

    the descending
    runner

    a belief
    shadows

    signal some

    thing and

    the small form
    gliding

    closer to

    the sun.

    shadows

    1

    And just like that, my plan to return to Wright’s poem will have to wait. Instead, I’m thinking about shadows, which is something I’ve wanted to do ever since I realized, earlier this month, that shadows see more real to me (as in, having more substance, easier to see as solid) than the object from which they’re cast — is that the most awkward way to say that? Here’s what I wrote on march 9, 2024:

    As I was admiring the fence railing shadows I thought about how clear and real they seemed to me. Much more there than the actual fence railing, which was staticky and vague.

    log / 9 march 2024
    2

    So, in the draft of my poem, I wrote: a belief/shadows/signal some/thing. In a different version, I wrote: a belief/shadows/have substance. Do I like that better? I can’t decide. I think it was inspired by a passage I read in Becoming Animal (which was a recommendation from my super smart niece):

    One of the marks of our obliviousness, one of the countless signs that our thinking minds have grown estranged from the intelligence of our sensing bodies, is that today a great many people seem to believe that shadows are flat. If I am strolling along a street on a cloudless afternoon and I notice a shapeshifting patch of darkness accompanying me as I walk, splayed out on the road perpendicular to my upright self, its appendages stretching and shrinking with the swinging of my limbs, I instantly identify this horizontal swath as my shadow. As thought a shadow was merely this flatness, this kinetic pancake, this creature of two dimensions whom one might peel of the street and drape over the nearest telephone wire.

    Becoming Animal / David Abram

    I haven’t finished the chapter yet, but I was able to access it through the reading sample on amazon — so I’ll return to finish later.

    3

    The line about draping the shadow over a telephone wire enabled me to remember a delight poem I read by Paige Lewis a few years ago:

    When I Tell My Husband I Miss the Sun, He Knows/ Paige Lewis

    what I really mean. He paints my name

    across the floral bed sheet and ties the bottom corners
    to my ankles. Then he paints another

    for himself. We walk into town and play the shadow game,
    saying Oh! I’m sorry for stepping on your

    shadow! and Please be careful! My shadow is caught in the wheels
    of your shopping cart.     It’s all very polite.

    Our shadows get dirty just like anyone’s, so we take
    them to the Laundromat—the one with

    the 1996 Olympics themed pinball machine—
    and watch our shadows warm

    against each other. We bring the shadow game home
    and (this is my favorite part) when we

    stretch our shadows across the bed, we get so tangled
    my husband grips his own wrist,

    certain it’s my wrist, and kisses it.


    march 19/RUN

    4.2 miles
    minnehaha falls and back
    43 degrees
    wind: 31 mph gusts

    So windy today! My legs felt heavy. I wonder if part of the problem is that I’m running so late in the morning? I didn’t start until almost 11:30. Still glad I went for a run, but I wish it would have felt a little easier and I would have worn less layers — maybe skipped the buff?

    Listened to kids on the playground, birds, random voices, falling water for the first half of the run. Put in headphones and listened to Taylor Swift for the second half.

    before the run

    Reading through an entry from March 19, 2017 about the new poetry class I was taking, I found this:

    In the editor’s note it’s mentioned that Mayer writes hypnogogic poems. I looked up the word and found the definition (a state between waking and sleeping, when drowsy) and an interview with Mayer about how, after suffering a stroke, she experimented with using a tape recorder to record her thoughts in this drowsy/dreamy state. So cool. Currently, I’m writing about running and I’d like to experiment with ways to express the dreamlike state I sometimes enter during long runs.

    Reading this bit, I got an idea, which I typed up in my “Notes for Haunts, fall 2023” pages document:

    the dream like state of running, when the mind is shut down
    haunting = possessing or being possessed — what if haunting was not just being taken over by someone/thing else (possessed) or taking over someone/thing else (possessing) but becoming untethered or loosely tetered from your body — floating on the path in-between in that strange empty space between banks between sky and ground between worlds between You and I? this could be another form of haunting — what if I started writing small-ish poems that offered different definitions of haunt? 

    A few definitions of haunt I’m thinking about right now: feeling disembodied, having an out-of-body experience and being obsessed/preoccupied/consumed by a thought or idea — having a bee in your bonnet.

    bee in your bonnet

    Here’s an article about the origins of the phrase. According to the article, the phrase is still being used in popular culture. I use it, usually when I notice Scott hell-bent on some task — and usually it seems like a task, or idea, that is fool-hardy but that he needs to work through and figure out for himself.

    Sometimes instead of saying, bee in your bonnet, I say that someone (or me) is hellbent. Of course, writing that immediately makes me think of Jackie from the 1979 Death on the Nile:

    Jacqueline De Bellefort : One must follow one’s star wherever it leads. 
    Hercule Poirot : Even to disaster?
    Jacqueline De Bellefort : Even to Hell itself.

    When I envision a bee in my bonnet, I see something that is relentless, impossible to ignore, urgently needing to be dealt with. That’s not quite how I imagine my preoccupation with haunts and ghosts and writing about the gorge. Still, I like the idea of bees in bonnets, and bees in general, so maybe I’ll spend more time with them this morning?

    Reading through several ED “bee” poems, I suddenly had a thought: could the bee in your bonnet be your soul, trying to escape the confines of the body?

    This thought was inspired by a poem I wrote about in an On This Day post: Body and Soul/ Sharon Bryan. I didn’t mention it in the post, but the description of the soul in the poem, as leaving the body at night to roam around, reminded me of an ED poem I read a few weeks ago, when I was thinking about the difference between the brain and the mind:

    If ever the lid gets off my head/ Emily Dickinson

    If ever the lid gets off my head
    And lets the brain away
    The fellow will go where he belonged —
    Without a hint from me,

    And the world — if the world be looking on —
    Will see how far from home
    It is possible for sense to live
    The soul there — all the time.

    So much to think about on my run (I’m writing this before I headed out). Will I see any bees about by the gorge? Very unlikely, I think.

    during the run

    Thought about a bee in my bonnet as an obsession that I wanted to release, so I imagined opening the top of my head like the door of a cage and letting the bee fly free. What would/could happen if I did this? Would I find some new ways to think about my experiences?

    Also, randomly remembered something about bees in a horror movie, then remembered the movie, Candyman. Looked up, “gothic horror bees” and found this 1978 movie, The Bees.

    Not too far into the run I think I forgot about the bee. I was too distracted by my heavy legs and wondering if my calf would do something strange, and the wind. No escape from my body today.

    after my run

    Now, ED’s poem about the lid of her head coming off makes me think of a favorite Homer Simpson bit:

    Homer reluctantly listens to Ned Flanders drone on about the differences between juice and cider. A voice says, You can stay, but I’m leaving, and Homer’s brain exits his head and floats away as we hear a slide whistle. A few seconds later his body collapses on the floor and we hear a thud.

    I love the image of the brain floating away. And, instead of a daydream where Homer’s brain gets to wander while his zoned-out body stays and pretends to listen, his body collapses, unable to continue without the brain. This idea brings me back to the Sharon Bryan poem I mentioned earlier:

    then they [body and soul] quarrel over which one of them 
    does the dreaming, but the truth is, 

    they can’t live without each other and 
    they both know it, anima, animosity, 

    the diaphragm pumps like a bellows 
    and the soul pulls out all the stops— 

    sings at the top of its lungs, laughs 
    at its little jokes . . .

    . . . the soul 
    says, with a smirk, I was at the end 

    of my tether, and it was, like a diver 
    on the ocean floor or an astronaut 

    admiring the view from outside 
    the mother ship, and like them 

    it would be lost without its air 
    supply and protective clothing,

    Okay — I’ve been thinking about a few things here: being weighed down/preoccupied with ideas/thoughts/subjects (obsessed); a desire to be released from the body and obsessions; images of bees in bonnets and bees in general. Maybe I’d like to explore some different images of bees, especially in Dickinson? Also, here are 2 other ways to think about obsessions as repetition and habit:

    Camille: Some of the obsessions are never going to leave you, and to me, that was part of what I loved. With each page I thought, Oh, I’ve seen this before, but how is she going to manage it differently? It reminded me of the Miles Davis quote about John Coltrane that was a guiding force for me as I was writing my first book, when I was really worried that I was doing the same thing over and over and over again. And I read the liner notes where Davis wrote about Coltrane’s first solo album. He said, “I don’t understand why people don’t get John Coltrane’s music. All he is trying to do is play the same note as many ways as he possibly can.”

    Writing a Grove: A Conversation with Poet Laureate Ada Limón

    FADY JOUDAH: There is no life without repetition, beginning at the molecular, even particle level. There is no art without life. To remain viable, art, inseparable from the circularity of the human condition, also repeats. What is a life without memory? And what is memory if not repetition. But not all repetition guarantees what we call progress, a euphemism for wisdom. Repetition with reproducible results, for example, is a foundational concept of the scientific method. Yet science can be an instrument for the destruction of life as for its preservation. This suggests to me that repetition in art is our unconscious memory at work: art mimics the repetition of the life force within us. All art is a translation of life. Take Jackson Pollock’s so-called action painting. What is it if not a rhythm of a life force in all of us? In those paintings, the pattern is recognizable yet unnamable. It’s like watching electrons bounce off each other. The canvas contains entropy. We understand this at a cellular or quantum level.

    When It Takes Root in the Heart: Conversations with Fady Joudah

    march 7/RUN

    4 miles
    minnehaha falls and back
    45 degrees

    Felt a little heavy and slow today, but happy to be outside, running.

    10 Things

    1. wild turkeys! — 2: one on a narrow strip of grass between the paved trail and the road, the other deep in the small stretch of woods near the ford bridge, both quiet and unbothered by my presence
    2. the falls falling — a gush of white, more than a shimmer, less than a roar
    3. imagining the ancient swing of my arms, like a pair of scissors cutting the air — I listened for the sharp swish of blades and almost heard it
    4. running beside a squirrel, wary, wondering if it would dart out in front of me (no)
    5. a strange looking bike propped against the bench at folwell — had to stare to make sense of it — a bike with a makeshift trailer?
    6. black-capped chickadee fee bee
    7. the scratching noise of a leaf skittering against the curb repeatedly
    8. a runner in hot pink shoes and a kelly green vest — hello 80s!
    9. my breath, underneath the silence
    10. the roar of kids having fun on the playground at Dowling

    Silence

    Before the run, discovered Paul Goodman’s Nine types of Silence via Brain Pickings today.

    Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

    9 Types of Silence (Goodman)

    1. the dumb silence of slumber or apathy
    2. the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face
    3. the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts
    4. the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, “This… this…”
    5. the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity
    6. the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear
    7. the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it
    8. baffled silence
    9. the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos.

    Paul Goodman’s name sounded familiar, so I looked through my past blogs to see if I had written about him. I had: Paul Goodman, troublemaking role model? According to this post, I watched a documentary about him that I don’t remember watching. The link in this post no longer works, but I can watch it on Kanopy through my library if I want to — do I?

    There’s the still silence of the Farm’s front 40 field; the cocooned silence of the Downtown Minneapolis Library’s parking garage; the fleeting silence of the river road, briefly emptied of cars or bikes or people.

    from 29 march 2017: 3 ruminations on silence (with one of my first poems) — silence is easily broken, deafening, impossible, uncomfortable

    a silence in which
    another voice may speak (Praying/ Mary Oliver)

    As all the Heavens were a Bell,
    And Being, but an Ear,
    And I, and Silence, some strange Race
    Wrecked, solitary, here –
    (I felt a Funeral in my Brain”/ Emily Dickinson

    Accept what comes from Silence.
    Make the best you can of it.
    Of the little words that come
    out of the silence, like prayers
    prayed back to the one who prays,
    make a poem that does not disturb
    the silence from which it came
    (How to be a Poet/ Wendell Berry)

    The world is filled with music, and in between the music, silence   
    And varying the silence all sorts of sounds, natural and man made
    (Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler)

    I thought about silence while I ran, listened for silence, stayed silent the entire time — that is, if I take Goodman’s understanding that silence = not speaking. I smiled, I breathed, my feet struck the ground — not all of me was silent. I struggled to remember Berry’s little poem that mentions silence and thought about not wanting to disturb the silence from which it came. I imagined ripples and wondered how big they’d have to be to count as disturbing the surface. Then I thought about Audre Lorde and her essay, “The Transformation of Silence into Language” and when speaking is urgent and necessary.

    question mark
    the length of silence
    after a loon’s call
    (Birds Punctuate the Days/ Joyce Clement)

    listen to the horrible keep-time of a man walking,
    rustling and jingling his keys
    at the centre of his own noise,
    clomping the silence in pieces
    (Dart/ Alice Oswald)

    You probably think I’m nuts saying the mountains 
    have no word for ocean, but if you live here 
    you begin to believe they know everything. 
    They maintain that huge silence we think of as divine, 
    a silence that grows in autumn when snow falls 
    slowly between the pines and the wind dies 
    to less than a whisper and you can barely catch 
    your breath because you’re thrilled and terrified.
    (Our Valley/ Philip Levine)

    added on 11 march 2024:

    These be
    Three silent things:
    The falling snow. . the hour
    Before the dawn. . the mouth of one
    Just dead.
    (Triad/ Adelaide Crapsey)

    one final silence (for today’s entry): data silence

    When I read through the entry that I posted about Goodman on my TROUBLE blog, I found a link to one of my favorite ed-tech troublemakers from when I was still angry about the academic industrial complex and still trying to figure out how to position myself in relation to it: Audrey Watters. I read her new about page and found out that she isn’t writing about tech-ed anymore and has instead become: a multi-sport athlete. Wow! Very cool. She also writes about “health technologies and Silicon Valley’s obsession with engineering bodies and minds” on Second Breakfast. I’m excited to read what she thinks about all of this. For more than a year, I’ve had passing thoughts about my Apple watch and whether or not I should keep wearing it. Earlier this week, after feeling uncomfortable anxiety over a resting heart rate that was a little higher than normal, and had been for several days, I wondered, why is this small change in my heart rate bothering me so much? And, should I really be tracking it this closely? No. So I decided to not wear my watch right after getting up, and not until I went out for a run. The next step is probably to ditch the watch altogether, but I’m not sure if I’m ready for that . . . yet. Anyway, I’m looking forward to reading AW’s takes on “wearables” and health-tech. Increasingly, I’m thinking I’d like to move towards data silence.

    march 6/RUN

    3.45 miles
    trestle turn around
    48 degrees

    Another run with no calf pain! Wore my compression sleeves again. My left IT band hurt a little and my legs felt heavy and tired, but no calf pain — victory!

    IT fun: I think, I theorize, I twist, I triumph, is tall, is taught, is taut, is temerous*, is tiny, itchy tetherballs, iffy tire-swings, impossible teeter-totters

    *temerous: this word appears several times in the great book I’m listening to right now: The Ten Thousand Doors of January

    Today the river was brown. Is that all I remember about the run? There were a few moments it was easy, effortless, but mostly it felt difficult.

    Heard lots of birds — lots of irregular, out-of-sync rhythms. A few drumming woodpeckers. My nose kept almost running. Thought I heard some voices down in the floodplain forest.

    Ended at 7 Oaks. Recited “I felt a Funeral in my Mind” and thought about rhythms and interruptions and sense breaking through.

    Before the run, I wrote about clocks, priming myself for noticing rhythms while I ran:

    That 12-figured Moon Skull!

    Today, I’m inspired by my march 6 entry from last year. Here’s what I wrote in that entry:

    During the run I listened to the latest “Nobody Asked Us with Des and Kara.” They were talking about recent races, super shoes, fast times, and the future of track. Reflecting on how world records keep being broken Kara asked Des: “What do you think would happen if they took away the clock? Would the race still be exciting?” Des thought it could be, while my mind started wandering. First thinking about how I’ve been trying to forget the clock/watch and not care about pace — mostly, I’ve been successful. Second thinking about Clocks and how I’ve collected some lines (from poems and essays) about the clock, or what Mary Oliver calls it: 

    The clock! That twelve-figured moon skull, that white spider belly! How serenely the hands move with their filigree pointers, and how steadily! Twelve hours, and twelve hours, and begin again! Eat, speak, sleep, cross a street, wash a dish! The clock is still ticking. All its vistas are just so broad–are regular. (Notice that word.) Every day, twelve little bins in which to order disorderly life, and even more disorderly though. The town’s clock cries out, and the face on every wrist hums or shines; the world keeps pace with itself. Another day is passing, a regular and ordinary day. (Notice that word also.)

    Upstream/ Mary Oliver

    So many places to go with the idea of the Clock. Mary Oliver’s ordinary versus extraordinary time. Routines, habits, delight in the daily, repeated events. The Moment between time and its tight ticks, or right before something has happened, or when time (and sense) are disrupted. The time of the day dream. Outside of time and its relentless march forward, towards Death, motivated by progress. Losing time, syncing up with time. What other ways to we have for measuring meaning that don’t involve time passing?

    Yes, so many ways to think about the idea of time and clocks!

    interjection: Listening to an Apple playlist, ’70s Movie Essentials, and the song, “Time Warp” just came on.

    pace definitions (from Merriam Webster)

    • rate of movement, the runner’s pace, especially : an established rate of locomotionrate of progress
    • specifically : parallel rate of growth or development, supplies kept pace with demand
    • rate of performance or delivery : TEMPO, a steady pace, on pace to set a record, especially : SPEED
    • rhythmic animation : FLUENCY
    • a manner of walking : TREAD
    • any of various units of distance based on the length of a human step
    • GAIT, especially : a fast 2-beat gait (as of the horse) in which the legs move in lateral pairs and support the animal alternately on the right and left legs
    • verb: paced; pacing — to walk with often slow or measured tread, to move along : PROCEED, to go at a pace —used especially of a horse
    • to measure by pacing —often used with off: paced off a 10-yard penalty
    • to cover at a walk — could hear him pacing the floor
    • to establish a moderate or steady pace for (oneself)
    • to keep pace with

    my new pace: rhythm

    I sink in
    to a

    rhythm: 3
    then 2

    First counting
    foot strikes

    then chanting
    small prayers.

    I beat out
    meaning

    until what’s
    left are

    syllables,
    then sounds,

    then something
    new, or

    old returned.

    My rhythm for breathing, running, and writing. . .and for possessing favorite lines:

    from “Practice”/ Ellen Bryant Voight

    original:
    at night in order to weep, to wait
    for the whisker on the face of the clock
    to twitch again, moving
    the dumb day forward—

    mine, in 3/2 rhythm:
    wait for the
    whisker

    on the clock’s
    face to

    twitch again
    to move

    the dumb day
    forward.

    original:
    if I came back as a bird
    I’d remember that—

    mine: 3/2
    You — when I
    come back

    as a bird
    will I

    remember?

    my new pace: a ghost, haunting the trails, inhabiting and possessing words and worlds

    Was talking with two of the other clarinet players in band last night about the Calgon, take me away! commercial. Neither of them had heard of it; they’re Millennials. Does a Calgon, take me away, moment disrupt or resist or challenge capitalist time or reinforce it, or both?

    Ross Gay and stopping capitalist time: from 29 march 2023

    you, too, might’ve been praying for a way to stop the march of so-called time, and poems, sometimes, might do that. Poems are made of lines, which are actually breaths, and so the poem’s rhythms, its time, is at the scale and pace and tempo of the body, the tempo of our bodies lit with our dying. And poems are communicated, ultimately, body to body, voice to ear, heart to heart.9 Even if those hearts are not next to one another, in space or time. It makes them so. All of which is to say a poem might bring time back to its bodily, its earthly proportions. Poetry might make nothing happen. Inside of which anything can happen, maybe most dangerously, our actual fealties, our actual devotions and obligations, which is to the most rambunctious, mongrel, inconceivable assemblage of each other we could imagine.

    Gay’s explicit connection to time and against capitalism resonates deeply for me. Stop those clocks, those planes, that machinery we’re using to destroy the planet, the future.

    ED’s new grammar of humility and hesitation

    Emily Dickinson took the scraps from the separate “higher” female education many bright women of her time were increasingly resenting, combined them with voracious and “unladylike” outside reading, and used the combination. She built a new poetic form from her fractured sense of being eternally on inteIlectual borders, where confident masculine voices buzzed an alluring and inaccessible discourse, backward through history into aboriginal anagogy. Pulling pieces of geometry, geology, alchemy, philosophy, politics, biography, biology, mythology, and philology from alien territory, a “sheltered” woman audaciously invented a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation. HESITATE from the Latin, meaning to stick. Stammer. To hold back in doubt, have difficulty speaking. “He may pause but he must not hesitate”-Ruskin. Hesitation circled back and surrounded everyone in that confident age of aggressive industrial expansion and brutal Empire building. Hesitation and Separation. The Civil War had split American in two. He might pause, She hesitated. Sexual, racial, and geographical separation are at the heart of Definition.My Emily Dickinson

    I really like this idea of hesitation and humility and aboriginal anagogy as a sharp contrast to progress, aggression, confidence/hubris, and time as always moving forwards (teleology). I tried to find a source that could explain exactly what Howe means by aboriginal anagogy but I couldn’t. I discovered that anagogy means mystical or a deeper religious sense and so, when I connect it to aboriginal, I’m thinking that she means that ED imbues pre-Industrial times (pre Progress!, where progress means trains and machines and cities and Empires and factories and plantations and the enslavement of groups of people and the increased mechanization of time and bodies and meaning and, importantly, grammar) with the sacred.

    Hesitant
    humble —

    Okay, now I should go out for a fun. Should I pay attention to rhythms? Chant in triple berries? Look for disruptions? Focus on my breaths?

    On my run, I listened to many different rhythms not quite in sync with my own and thought about interruptions and disruptions and how my breathing rhythm is sometimes how I breathe when I run and sometimes my imagined rhythm — real, embodied and also not real, the rhythm I’d like to have.

    Concluded the run with an idea that I spoke into my phone: “Regular” time is necessary — I want the conveniences it allows for! — but we need to safeguard that space outside of that time. Poets do that. I try to do that, to keep the door open to that time/space for others.

    I’ll end with a wonderful time poem:

    [My favorite time is in time’s other side]/ Etel Adnan

    My favorite time is in time’s other side, its other identity, the kind that collapses and sometimes reappears, and sometimes doesn’t. The one that looks like marshmallows, pomegranates, and stranger things, before returning to its kind of abstraction. I used to be fond of time as it was a matter that helped us feel intelligent. Those days have gone to where days go, in their own cemeteries. Today I see eternity everywhere. I had yesterday an empty glass of champagne on the table, and it looked both infinite and eternal, though it left me indifferent. At least, I was in good company, and a day closer to all sorts of annihilations.

    cemeteries for gone days — to see eternities everywhere — time that looks like pomegranates and marshmallows

    march 1/RUN

    3.45 miles
    2 trails + extra
    45 degrees
    wind: 15 mph / 31 mph gusts

    Everyone knows it’s windy — All week I’ve had that song in my head. Partly because it’s catchy, but mostly because it’s windy. The wind didn’t bother me too much. Ran south to the overlook and was startled by a white truck honking as it drove past — was it honking at me, someone else, the wind? Reached the entrance to the Winchell Trail and entered. The path was thick with dead leaves and some mud. I don’t remember much about the river other than that it was blue and open and there, taking up a glorious amount of space. I heard some kids above playing, also some guy on a bike say, in exasperation, fuuucckk. Felt, more than saw, some shadows. Took off my pink jacket before climbing the 38th street steps — overdressed!

    I recited ED’s “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” as I ran. Stumbled over this line a little:

    With those same Boots of Lead, again

    Not sure why the line was difficult to get right. I thought about sense breaking through, my mind going numb, space beginning to toll. Also: iron boots creaking across my soul. Last night, I asked Scott, after passing a store with the sign “guidance for the soul,” what he thought the difference between a soul and a spirit was — not what he believed — I know he doesn’t believe in either (at least I think he doesn’t) — but how they function theologically. Wait — what I actually asked was, on the scale of most rational to least, where do mind brain soul and spirit fall? I was thinking of ED’s use of mind in the poem as opposed to brain, and her reference to soul. Now I want to look at the Emily Dickinson lexicon and read how she used “brain,” “mind,” “spirit,” and “soul.”

    I also want to find another brain poem to memorize — so far I’ve memorized, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,” and . . . wait — I was just about to write, “I felt a Cleaving in my Brain,” which I’ve also memorized, but the title is actually “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind.” I think that she uses the terms, like many people do, interchangeably, but I’m fascinated by the small gap between them — the mind and brain are not the same, I think, not exactly. The difference between them gets us to the soul and the self and my thinking about the ultra marathoner Courtney Dauwalter last week — how the mind’s desire to keep going can override the body’s desire to stop. Wow — right now, I seem to be obsessing over and orbiting around ideas of the relationship between the mind and the body, the self and the brain, and surrender and the death of self. Okay, that barely makes sense to me —

    I wrote in my plague notebook: brain soul mind self sense will death transformation pain

    As I’ve been memorizing/reciting ED’s funeral poem, I’ve been thinking about this funeral in her brain not as a migraine or a mental breakdown or an epileptic seizure, which seem to be the dominant readings, but as the process of transcending the self involving feet treading and the repetitions of a beating drum and a religious ceremony (a service) and bells tolling/ringing and moving beyond reason and Knowing. I first encountered this reading in a comment on The Prowling Bee:

    from the line “Then Space — began to toll” through the end of the poem, something else entirely is happening. ED breaks through to an experience that is impersonal and liberating — a direct experience that is unfiltered, not obscured by the depression and stress of the prior stanzas. The experience is vast and lonely — if the self is transcended, what would be the experience? 

    The last stanza of the poem describes something far from a mental breakdown. Reason, the logical mind, does not operate without reference points. If the poet is operating from the reference point of self, then everything is measurable and comprehensible — graspable — based on that. With reason and logic, we are in the realm of EDs poems that use metaphors of measurement and mathematics and limits. But in the last stanza of this poem, all that is transcended. What is experienced is beyond reason — but entirely sane. It is the ineffable experience of truth — the poet finishes — knowing — then. If you ask what is known, you have not shared the transcendent experience of the poem.

    The Prowling Bee

    Reciting this poem while running, I kept thinking about how the treading and the beating, foot strike after foot strike, can lead to a dream-like state where you stop thinking and begin to feel the world (sense breaking through) instead of just observing or knowing it. There’s a lot I could say about the bell, but I’ll save that for later.

    note: I worry that I getting lost in theorizing about this, but I also think I’m trying to push at deeper understandings of self and consciousness and how bodies and brains and minds and souls are entangled — especially in my aging, almost-50, often anxious, Sara-self.