Peak fall this morning. Orange! Yellow! Red! Made even more vibrant by the gray sky. Wow! I felt strong and relaxed and dreamy. No sharp lines, everything soft and fuzzy and dissolving into the gray. It was dark enough for street lamps and headlights. Heard the rowers and the clicking and clacking of a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt, a squirrel cracking a nut. Smelled the sewer. Felt a few raindrops at the very end. Crossing the ford bridge, the tree line was oranges, yellows, reds on the st. paul side, but still a lot of green on the minneapolis side.
These days I move from room to room looking for a thing to haunt. The filaments inside my teeth glow in the dark, thirty-two beacons no one will see, except the mirror I return to again and again, hoping for it to swallow me, to find anything there but my face. Mirror is another word for hunger. Hunger is another word for dead. Anyone would be tired of hearing from me, the kind of woman — this repulsive word — who’ll never have a garden or greenhouse, only a fridge crisper full of broccoli and kale and lettuce, all rotting to sludge, bananas on the counter blackening like frostbitten skin. I used to quarter an apple with such perfection I could have been autopsying my own heart. The thing is there’s no way out of this house. Memory circles like flies. Even the dead need to eat. Even the dead dream. I left a note in the memory: You deserve so much more than desire.
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 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.”
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.
A 10k run yesterday on a recovering calf means no running today. Decided to bike in the basement just so I could move a little. I should have watched Dickinson, but I watched an old Ironman instead.
All day, I’ve been reading my old Haunts notes, trying to pick one thing to write about. Am I getting somewhere? Maybe. Maybe not.
Here’s a beautiful poem I just discovered from Terrain. Wow!
Cathartes aura—purifying breeze— is one name for a turkey vulture, and what if prayer is like that— praise song for a scavenger? What if prayer is like this walk, the same one every day, a mantra of footsteps on mesa rock, raptors in the wind? What if it begins as a hint on the piñon stippled hills, unfurls like a scent the dogs sense with raised snouts? I suspect there’s prayer in the primrose come into flower, flake-white blossoms blanketing the path, in the rhythm of my quickened pulse on the climb. And if prayer takes its time on ridgelines, in scant shade, if it lingers by a petroglyph picked into basalt—two figures with hands on hips as if ready to dance— then perhaps I am learning to pray. Today, another friend’s diagnosis, and who am I to scoff at believers? I too like the idea of prayer as a stand-in for clumsy words like hope, wonder and love—for this green green valley slaked on spring runoff, for the whorl of dihedral wings and the uneven heat of rising air.
that turn — another friend’s diagnosis — wow, those 3 words recalibrating the poem! I’d like to do something like that with my poems about the gorge!
2.2 miles neighborhood 39 degrees / feels like 30 wind: 16 mph / 30 mph gusts
Windy! Colder. Winter layers: black running tights, black shorts, black shirt, purple jacket, pink ear band, black gloves, hat. Thought about running more but remembered that Scott and I are doing a 10k tomorrow. So I ran 2 miles through the neighborhood. My restraint was partly due to the wind, which I ran almost straight into heading north.
10 Things
some dull wind chimes — it wasn’t the clunk clank of wood chimes, but also not the tinkle-tingle-shimmer of metal ones — an unpleasant cacophony
right before starting: a crying kid on the next block — by the time I reached then and their entourage (mom, dog, stroller) — they were laughing — oh to be a kid and to shake anger or disappointment or whatever bad feelings they were having off that quickly — my 8 year old self used to be that way
the trail on edmund between 32nd and 33rd started muddy then turned into hard, packed dirt
heavy gray sky — the type of light that makes it hard for me to see anything completely
the sky was dark enough that a house had on their garage light — I felt a flash of light! as I ran by
harder to see the dirt trail and the roots
voices across the road and below, on the trail — next to me, then ahead of me, then gone
smoke from a chimney on edmund — reminder that winter is still here
a loud rush of noise — an approaching car? No, the wind moving through a pine tree
the swishswishswish of my ponytail hitting the collar of my jacket
Thinking about the wind, I reread ED’s poem, “The Wind.” Here are some ways she describes the wind:
High up a plane droned, drone of the cold, and behind us the flag In front of the Bank of Hope’s branch trailer snapped and popped in the wind. It sounded like a boy whipping a wet towel against a thigh
Or like the stiff beating of a swan’s wings as it takes off From the lake, a flat drumming sound, the sound of something Being pounded until it softens, and then—as the wind lowered
And the flag ran out wide—there was a second sound, the sound of running fire. And there was the scraping, too, the sad knife-against-skin scraping Of the acres of field corn strung out in straggling rows
Around the branch trailer that had been, the winter before, our town’s claim to fame When, in the space of two weeks, it was successfully robbed twice. The same man did it both times, in the same manner.
This whole poem is amazing, but too long to post here. What a storyteller BPK is! I should read her collection, Song.
more Lorine Niedecker and “Lake Superior”
On Thursday and Friday I read more of “Lake Superior.” I came to these lines and stopped:
Ruby of corundum lapis lazuli from changing limestone glow-apricot red-brown carnelian sard
Greek named Exodus-antique kicked up in America’s Northwest you have been in my mind between my toes agate
Huh? I am not an agate expert, so I had to look up everything but the last three lines. Without explaining it all (if I even could), I noticed how fascinated she is with language and culture and the history of the agate as it traveled across cultures.
Of course I might have understood more of the references if I had read her journal first, LN opens her travel journal with this:
The agate was first found on the shores of a river in Sicily and named by the Greeks. In the Bible (Exodus) this semi-precious stone was seen on the priest’s breastplate.
A rock is made of minerals constantly on the move and changing from heat, cold, and pressure.
On the next page, she writes: So—here we go. Maybe as rocks and I pass each other I could say how-do-you-do to an agate.
Then, a few pages later:
The North is one vast, massive, glorious corruption of rock and language—granite is underlaid with limestone or sandstone, gneiss is made-over granite, shales, or sandstone and so forth and so on and Thompsonite (or Thomasonite_ is often mistaken for agate and agate is shipped in from Mexico and Uruguay and can even be artifically dyed in the bargain. And look what’s been done to language!–People of all nationalities and color have changed the language like weather and pressure have changed the rocks.
And then:
I didn’t miss the Agate Shop sign. Woman there knew rocks. whole store of all kinds of samples, labelled. Sold them cheaply too, i.e. agates mounted on adjustable rings cost $1.75. I bought one of these, not the most beautiful but a Lake Superior one, I was told. Also bought . . . a brilliant carnelian from Uruguay. There were corundum samples—also from Canada, the stone that is next to diamonds in hardness. (Deep red rubies, which are corundum minerals, are valued more than diamonds.)
and:
The pebble has traveled. Long ago it might have been a drop of magma, molten rock that oured out from deep inside the earth. Perhaps when the magma coooled it formed part of a mountain that was later worn down and carried away by a rushing stream. Of the pebble may have been carried thousands of miles by a slowly moving glacier that finally melted and left it to be washed up for someone to pick up.
I love how LN took all of her notes and ideas about rock and language and culture and commerce and turned them into this small chunk of the poem. So much said, with so little words! And then to end it with: you have been in my mind/between my toes/agate Wow!
The trails above and beside the gorge have not been between my toes but under my feet and in my mind — maybe I could add a variation of this line to the first section of my poem?
Another 50 degree day! The right number of layers: black shorts, blue t-shirt, orange sweatshirt. Some wind, but not too much. Noticed (probably not for the first time) that they removed the porta potty by the 35th street parking lot. Why? There aren’t any porta potties — for runners or bikers or anyone who needs one — on the Minneapolis side between ford and franklin. Did they remove the one near Annie Young Meadow too? I’ll have to check next time I run down into the flats.
A good run. More soft shadows, other runners, one walker in a bright orange sweatshirt — just like me.
Near the beginning thought about the ringing of a bell as the signal of a ceremony starting. Then ED’s lines popped into my head: As all the Heavens were a Bell/And being, but an Ear — In the earlier versions of my Haunts poem, I begin with a bell. I could return to that, or maybe that is the start of another poem?
I ran north without headphones. I can’t remember what I heard. Running south I put in my Windows playlist.
After I finished my run, I listened to a podcast about perimenopause as I walked home. On this log over the past seven years, I’ve mentioned moments of increased anxiety and ongoing constipation. Present Sara (me) really appreciates that past Sara documented these. It’s helping me to understand my body better as I move into perimenopause. Last week, I discovered a great podcast about perimenopause, menopause, and beyond for active women (runners, ultra runners, cyclists, etc) called: Hit Play Not Pause. So far, I’m on my second episode — the first one was about anxiety, this one is about symptoms of perimenopause other than loss of a regular period. So helpful, especially since it seems there’s so little known about perimenopause!
Lorine Niedecker and Lake Superior
I’ve decided I’d like to do a line-by-line read through of Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior.” Such a good poem, one that I appreciate more as I give more attention to poetry and the gorge.
Iron the common element of earth in rocks and freighters
Sault Sainte Marie—big boats coal-black and iron-ore-red topped with what white castlework
The waters working together internationally Gulls playing both sides
This is the second verse? section? fragment? of the poem, with some blank space and an asterisk dividing each short section. I’ll get back to the first section a little later.
coal-black and iron-ore-red — I’d like to put some more color, my versions of color, into my lines — topped with what white castlework — I think I’m being dense, but what does she mean here? Like, (oh) what white castlework!
the waters working together — between Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Huron — internationally — Canada and the US
Gulls playing both sides — I love how she phrases this with such brevity, the idea of gulls not being subject to the lines/border humans have created. Reading through her notes for this poem, she writes about having to wait in Sault Ste. Marie, Canada until the banks opened in order to exchange money. Was she envious of the gulls who could freely travel between Canada and the US?
opening lines: Yesterday I posted the opening line of “Lake Superior.” Here’s the whole first section:
In every part of every living thing is stuff that once was rock
In blood the minerals of the rock
Two other sources of inspiration for my place-based poem are Alice Oswald’s Dart and Susan Tichy’s North | Rock| Edge. Here are their opening lines:
Dart/ Alice Oswald
Who’s this moving alive over the moor?
An old man seeking and finding a difficulty.
North | Rock | Edge/ Susan Tichy
If you can, haul-to within
the terms of anguish :
this rough coast a gate
not map, no compass rose
sketched in a notebook
with certain positions
of uncertain objects
marked—
Reviewing the three sets of lines, I’m noticing how they move differently. LN offers brief, ordered chunks — little rocks? — that you travel between, while AO’s words wander and run into each other. Sometimes she has sentences, sometimes fragments — it flows like a river? ST shares similarities with AO, in terms of wandering and not stopping, but each word almost seems to have equal weight — is that the right way to put it?
In terms of distance, LN is far away, abstract; MO is closer, as we observe a man near the Dart; and with ST, we are right there, on the edge of the rock, moving beside the sea.
Is this helpful to me? To read these three poems closely and together? I’m not sure. Perhaps I should return to LN first. For today, just one more “chunk”:
Radisson: “a laborinth of pleasure” this world of the Lake
Long hair, long gun
Fingernails pulled out by Mohawks
I like how LN weaves in some of the “facts” that she discovered in her research — almost like notes, but carefully selected for effect. I think the contrast between Radisson’s pleasure comment and his fingernails being pulled out says a lot. How can I weave in facts? Do I want to?
The poem “Lake Superior” is in two books that I own: Lorine Niedecker Collected Works and Lake Superior. Lake Superior includes a journal with LN’s notes and some critical essays by others. It’s fascinating to read how she transformed her journal notes into these brief lines.
A repeat of yesterday, except I wore another layer — black running tights. I thought it was supposed to be colder. I was wrong. Too warm! Other than overheated, I felt good. It wasn’t easy and I had to push myself to keep going near the end. My legs felt heavy. But I did it, and my calf feels okay.
Listened to birds and kids and water rushing as I ran south. Put in my Winter 2024 playlist as I ran back north.
10 Things
the gentle yells of kids on the playground
overheard, one kid: I had NO idea!
uneven, halting rhythm of one or two people pounding nails on the roof of a house
a loud knocking — bird or machine? I couldn’t tell. Then I guessed: a big bird. No — some construction on the other side of the river. I heard it later as I was running back
lots of birdsong everywhere
soft shadows
smell: spring flowers somewhere — real or perfume?
a dozen people together at the falls. I thought I heard one say the word, birding
minnehaha creek, just before falling over the ledge: brown, low, studded with rocks
dirt trail near edmund: lots of roots, some mud
notes from my plague notebook, vol 19
Read the first lines from Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior”:
In every part of every living thing is stuff that once was rock
Thought about how LN begins her poem by describing the essence of Lake Superior: rock. I started wondering about what I imagine the essence of the Mississippi River Gorge to be — or, at least, the essence (key element) for my Haunts poem.
restless water satisfied stone erosion movement
not 1 or 2 but 3 things: water and stone and their interactions erosion, making something new — gorge
Then: Water as a poet / stubborn Stone yields, refuses, resists water = poet / stone = words/language erosion = absence, silence, making Nothing me = eroding eyes / stone being shaped / a form of water shaping stone
I wear down the stone with my regular loops
Add a variation of this line, originally in my mood ring, Relentless, somewhere:
I am both limestone and water. As I dissolve my slow steady flow carves out a new geography.
An afternoon run with Scott. We talked about a cool rpf (request for proposal) that Scott just completed and whether or not the wires sticking out of the street lamps on the bridge were live and how the clocktower at Disney Land was telling the wrong time for years without them realizing. For most of it, I felt fine. My calf was a little sore after we picked up the pace so we wouldn’t miss the light at Cleveland. A few minutes later, it felt okay again.
10+ Things
the clear, straight, sturdy shadow of the bridge railing
from the top of the summit hill near shadow falls: the river burning white through the trees — I got distracted looking at it and almost fell of the edge of the sidewalk
from the lake street bridge heading west: a bright path of light on the surface of the river, spanning from the bridge to the west bank
the pale brown of a sandbar just below the surface of the river
the underside of the steps leading up to the lake street bridge: peeling paint
a “Tacos” sign where the BBQ sign used to be at Marshall and Cretin
a big, beautiful wrap around porch with white spindles near Summit
overheard: Katie didn’t know
wind chimes!
a tabby cat running across the street, headed straight for us — it seemed to be saying, Keep moving! This is my block!
added 11 march 2024: overheard — one woman to another: After the costume change, I’ll shine and fly
haunted by haunts
In the fall of 2021 I worked on a long poem based on my 3/2 breathing rhythms and centered on the gorge and my repeated runs around it. I revisited the poem this past fall in 2023 and wrote around it, leaving only a few traces of the original — a palimpsest? I stopped at the beginning of 2024 with a message to future Sara: good luck. Well, here I am and I can’t remember what prompted me to open my haunts documents again, but I did and I’m back. Reading through an older version titled, “Haunts late fall 2023.” It’s a mixture of the old poem and my new additions, and I’m wondering why I got rid of so many of the old lines. It might be because I submitted parts of the poem to about a dozen journals with no luck. All rejections. It made me doubt what I was writing. But maybe I should try to keep submitting it instead of losing all of it? Maybe submit different versions, too?
Reading through the poem, I wrote a list of themes in my Plague Notebook, Vol 19!:
girl
ghost
gorge
trails
loops
echoes
bells
traces
remains
stories
bodies
habits repetitions
Bells. In the newer version of my poem, from late 2023, I got rid of almost all of the mentions of bells. But, I keep coming back to them, like in ED’s “I felt a Funeral in my Brain”: As all the Heavens were a Bell, / And being, but an Ear
bells
starting a ritual
the keeping of time — YES! bells as time/clock*
tolling = death, the dead
signalling the final lap in a race
“fake” simulated recorded bells
light rail bells elementary and middle school bells college bells
the gorge world echoing of past bells
echo = repeating, but not exactly the same, reverberation, ripple, eroding of the original sound from the strike
Annie Dillard and each of us walking around as as bells not yet struck
vibrations movement sound
A curious, “fun” fact that I’d learn in my research about the St. Thomas bells and that supported in my own observations: the St. Thomas bells are not always accurate in their time-keeping; they can be off by a few seconds. Someone has to re-sync them periodically.
A bell poem in the latest issue of Poetry (March 2024):
*To be performed with bells on. All “writing” is performance, some performance is “writing.”
I am a product of my time. Time is a body that resembles a sound without a scale. Forever foreclosed fortitude. In heaven, the dinner bell rings as elegy. The porch-light stars turn on their mothering moths. Betrayal takes at least two, and wherever two or more are gathered, I am there in their pulsating timbre. To hear is to hunger for the gendered race of sound. In my midst, loneliness listens. In confidence, I am secreted away. I was today years old when I learned the truth, a browbeat bell is an idiophone. The strike made by an internal clapper or an external hammer, a uvula— that small flesh, conical body projecting downward from the soft palate’s middle. Vocal, vibrating vulva. I am less a writer who reads than a reader who writes. Therein lies the trouble, the treble clef of conviction. Come now to the feast of hearing, where Hortense J. Spillers gives a sermon: We address here the requirements of literacy as the ear takes on the functions of “reading.” Call me bad news bear. Bestial. Becoming. In “Venus in Two Acts,” Saidiya Hartman asks, Must the future of abolition be first performed on the page? Must I write a run-on of runaways? Must you make out my handwriting? Evidence that loss has limbs. The clawed syntax. The muzzled grammar. Don’t be afraid. Kill me with your language. Learn how to mark my words.*
During today’s run, the only bells we heard were not bells but chimes, wind chimes. Strange how close we were to St. Thomas without hearing the bells.
5.15 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 38 degrees / 93% humidity
Misty with drizzle this morning before the run, misty and damp during it. Everything fuzzy and dreamy, muffled by the wet air. Wonderful weather for a run (rereading this bit an hour later, I realize that it might sound sarcastic. It’s not. I love running in the rain and the mist. There was no wind and it wasn’t too cold.) I felt strong and relaxed and glad to be outside moving.
2 Regulars to greet: Daddy Long Legs and Dave, the Daily Walker. Actually, it might have been 3. I’m not positive but I think I exchanged waves with the women I talked to one day who tried to fix me up with another runner — I called her Mrs. Fixer-Upper, or something like that. Anyway, I exchanged good mornings with DDL for the first time. And then Dave wished me a Merry Christmas — you too! Merry Christmas!
Listened to the dripping and the hum of far off traffic as I ran north. Put in an old playlist for the last mile.
a ridiculous performance
Haven’t made note of one of these for some time — just checked and the last time was last December (14th) and I wrote almost the exact same first sentence! Before getting to the performance, here’s something I wrote on 23 june 2020 explaining my use of the phrase:
This idea of a “rather ridiculous performance” is a line from Mary Oliver’s “Invitation”: “I beg of you/do not walk by/without pausing/to attend to/this rather ridiculous performance.” Maybe I’ll try to make a list of the rather ridiculous performances I encounter/witness?
Today’s ridiculous performance was a guy running up the franklin hill backwards. He was part shuffling part skipping part running up it with a hood on. As I ran down, I could see him ahead of me, but I assumed he was running down the hill. I almost ran into him before I realized he didn’t know I was there. Wow — that would feel strange, I think, shuffling backwards up a hill, unable to see anything you were approaching. I’ve heard of people running backwards for training or coming back from an injury. Was that what this person was doing?
10 Things
a thin mist/fog hovering in the air
new graffiti all over one of the franklin bridge support posts
a walker and their dog crossing the river road then taking the steps down to the muddy Winchell Trail
no chain at the top of the old stone steps, blocking the way down to the river — I bet it’s slippery today!
ice on the edges of the river, below, near longfellow flats
no stones stacked on the boulder
all of the benches were empty
halfway down the hill, I noticed some stairs on the other side of the road I’ve never noticed before. Were they leading to the franklin terrace dog park?
June’s white ghost bike was hanging from the trestle
bright car headlights cutting through the foggy mist
seeps
Before the run, I was reading about seeps and springs. Decided to think about them and why I might want to be one as I was running. In particular I was interested in how being a seep is different than becoming a boulder, which I’ve already written about. I recorded my thoughts after running up the franklin hill.
As I ran down the hill, I thought about how gravity pulls water down. A line: no need to navigate. Spilling over, onto, into. Always exceeding. Relentless. Opening up, making room, creating space. Never encased, contained, fully controlled. Slow, steady, drip drip drip. Saturates, permeates, soaks.
The author of article from 1997 I was reading — Along the Great Wall: Mapping the Springs of the Twin Cities — didn’t think too highly of seeps: little, inconsequential, too abundant for mapping. He focused on springs. I like the small, quiet, unassuming nature of seeps. More to think about and push at with that idea.
From a few poems I found after searching for seeps — things that seep: blood, sun, gas, chill, a seeping back in sleep to glorious childhood memories of baseball, water, light, an hour….and this, which made me stop my search so I could post this poem:
The wooden scent of wagons, the sweat of animals—these places keep everything—breath of the cotton gin, black damp floors of the icehouse.
Shadows the color of a mirror’s back break across faces. The luck is always bad. This light is brittle, old pale hair kept in a letter. The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates seeps from new mortar.
Wind from an axe that struck wood a hundred years ago lifts the thin flags of the town.
I like this idea of the past seeping from/into the present — like the wheezy echo of an old porch swing seeping from a new building.
Ran to Lake Nokomis and back — a December goal achieved! A few weeks ago, I told Scott that I wanted to do that at least once before the end of 2023. Today was a great day to do it. Overcast, mild, hardly any wind. Everything brown and orange and calm. I felt relaxed and strong and only a little sore in my left hip.
Ran above the river, past the falls, over the mustache and duck bridges, by Minnehaha creek and Lake Hiawatha, then to the big beach at Lake Nokomis. I ran down the sidewalk that leads to the lifeguard stand and the water — the sidewalk I often take in the summer just before starting open swim. I thought about summer and swimming, then took this video:
Lake Nokomis / 15 dec 2023 / above the frame, a bird was flying
Ran on Minnehaha Parkway on the way back.
10 Things
several spots in the split rail fence where the railing was bent or leaning or broken
headlights cutting through the pale gray sky
people walking below me on the Winchell Trail
kids laughing on a playground*
the parking lot at the falls had a few more cars in it then earlier in the week
the creek was half frozen — thin sheets of ice everywhere
a woman called out to a dog — liam or sam, I think? — or was she calling out to me, ma’am?
a young girl testing out the thin ice on the edge of the lake — her name was Aubrey — I know this because a woman kept calling out Aubrey! Aubrey! No, don’t! and then, Let’s go Aubrey. I need to eat!
the sidewalk was wet — in some spots, slick
running north on the river road trail, in the groove, an older man on a bike called out, You’re a running machine! I was so surprised I snorted in response
*as I listened to the kids, I thought about how this sound doesn’t really change. Over the years, it comes from different kids, but the sound is the same. Season after season, year after year.
before the run
I’m trying to stop working on my poem about haunting the gorge, but I keep returning to it and just as I believe I have found the way in, another door opens, leading me in a different direction. When do you follow those doors and when do you stop? I worry that I’ll just keep wandering and never settle on/into anything. As I write this, I’m realizing that the question of when to keep moving and when to stop are a central theme of the poem. Here’s a bit of the poem that I wrote the other day that sums it up:
Stone is satisfied water wants to be somewhere else. Sometimes I am water when I want to be stone sometimes I am stone when I need to be water.
What to do with all of this? Maybe a run will help…
during the run
I kept returning to these questions of staying and leaving, moving and standing still. At one point, I started thinking about how nothing really stands still, the movement just happens at different speeds/paces/directions, in different scales of time. I’m interested in slow time, directionless time, time that seems to repeat, drip.
Then I thought about the value of solid (or stable or slow moving) forms in which to put my words. These forms aren’t forever fixed, but are solid enough to hold those words, to shape them into something meaningful.
after the run
Not sure what to do with all of this, but forms I’m thinking about: running form — the running body, breaths, feet; boulders; dripping, seeping, sloping water
Water! Now I thinking about Bruce Lee’s poem, be water my friend:
Empty your mind. Be formless shapeless like water now you put water into a cup it becomes the cup you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle you put it into a tea pot it becomes the tea pot now water can flow or it can craaaaasshh be water my friend
And all the different types of water I encountered on my run: river, dripping ravine, falls, creek, weir, lake, puddle, ice. Different forms with different properties — some flow, some stay
And also Marie Howe’s lines about learning from the lake in “From Nowhere”:
think the sea is a useless teacher, pitching and falling no matter the weather, when our lives are rather lakes
unlocking in a constant and bewildering spring.
And now I’m remembering some lines from a draft of my poem, “Afterglow”:
No longer wanting to be water — formless fluid — but the land that contains it. Solid defined giving shape to the flow.
And finally, it’s time to post a poem I read from Gary Snyder in his collection, Riprap:
Thin Ice/ Gary Snyder
Walking in February A warm day after a long freeze On an old logging road Below Sumas Mountain Cut a walking stick of alder, Looked down through clouds On wet fields of the Nooksack— And stepped on the ice Of a frozen pool across the road. It creaked The white air under Sprang away, long cracks Shot out in the black, My cleated mountain boots Slipped on the hard slick —like thin ice—the sudden Feel of an old phrase made real— Instant of frozen leaf, Icewater, and staff in hand. “Like walking on thin ice—” I yelled back to a friend, It broke and I dropped Eight inches in
note: I just checked and I might have missed something, but I think the last time I ran over 7 miles was on September 21, 2021. I ran 7.2 miles to the bohemian flats. And here’s something interesting: I posted a draft, just finished, of “Afterglow,” with the lines mentioned above included for the first time. Strange how that works.
Sunny and warmer! Shadows! Clear, dry paths! A great afternoon run, even if my left IT band started hurting…again. I was able to run on all of the walking paths, even when they split off from the bike path.
Listened to kids, cars, chainsaws, and some guy with a DEEP voice as I ran to the Steven’s house and The Wiz on the way back.
10 Things
the light was lower — it felt later than 2:30*
a walker with a big white dog
the falls seemed to be rushing more than on Monday
a sour sewer smell near the John Steven’s house
kids yelling and laughing on the playground
a bird flying low in the sky, off to my side, almost looking like a fluttering leaf
the soft whoosh of the light rail nearing the station
the bells ringing as it left the station
my feet feeling strange, awkward until I warmed up
the buzz of a chainsaw echoing across the gorge
*the light reminded me of the line from ED:
There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons –
But this light wasn’t oppressive. It was warm and welcoming.
I’m continuing to plug away at my haunts poem, even though I was feeling burned out yesterday. I decided to read Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior” and the translator’s afterword for Perec’s How to Exhaust a Place. It helped and I think I had a break through this morning. Now I’m looking to Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness and 300 Arguments for inspiration. My focus: restlessness and stone and water. And, 2 mantras: 1. let it go and 2. condense! condense! condense!