2 miles edmund south/river road, north 45 degrees / drizzle
Election day. Read an accurate description of how today feels: like we all are waiting for the results from a biopsy. I’m hopeful.
Did a quick 2 miles with Scott before the rain started. Throughout we felt drizzle but it wasn’t until we reached our alley that it began to rain. Everything gray and heavy. Most of the leaves on the trees have fallen — except for the one in front of our house — full and green. We talked about a color video that Scott had just watched. Texture and wine dark seas and having no names for blue but many for green were discussed.
My favorite view: bare trees means more open air and the other side visible! I admired the tree line on the east side of the river. It gave off the feeling of being a straight line stretching across. Of course, nothing is completely straight for me; it’s all approximation.
10 Things
a cluster of headlights — stuck behind a slow-moving street sweeper
a thick trunk pushing through the bottom of the fence above the ravine
running past Dowling, hearing faint laughter from kids somewhere
the water was a blueish-gray, the sky almost all white with gray smudges
stopping at the overlook, noticing how uneven and slanted the paving blocks have become
a house on the corner, all black or dark green or dark something, no contrasting trim, difficult for me to see anything but a hulking shape or a dark void, absent of color
running past a water fountain and wondering if it was still turned on
the welcoming oaks have lost all of their leaves
passing above the savanna, seeing something white below — was it a hiker in a white shirt or the information sign?
something remembered from yesterday: the sound of chainsaws in the savanna
Working on a section of my haunts poem tentatively titled, And. It’s inspired by a line from the first section: a gap grew/between girl and world. I realized that the and here is the gorge, and it’s more than a gap; it’s the place that be/holds girl ghost here there now then water stone. It’s also the absence around which I orbit. It’s not empty but filled with open air and possibility. Anyway, I was reminded of a Community clip from Troy and Abed:
Here I’m reading Troy’s and as making more space for the story Abed is telling. I love how Donald Glover delivers the ands.
I’m also thinking about this bit from a wonderful Maggie Smith poem:
If I list everything I love
about the world, and if the list is long and heavy enough,
I can lift it over and over— repetitions, they’re called, reps—
to keep my heart on, to keep the dirt off. Let’s begin
with bees, and the hum, and the honey singing
on my tongue, and the child sleeping at last, and, and, and—
5.75 miles franklin loop 59 degrees / mist and drizzle
Wow, wow, wow! What a cool (vibe, not temp) morning beside the gorge. Everything damp and dripping, bright orange leaves, mist. I first noticed the mist in the floodplain forest, then on the river. Looking to the north while crossing the franklin bridge, the river disappeared into it. I greeted Daddy Long Legs — good morning! Saw a rowing shell on the river, gliding. From high above I couldn’t hear their awkward oars slapping the water. Noticed the reflections of trees in the water near the east shore.
10 Things
drips of water tinkling from the trees — or was it wind moving through leaves?
leaves + puddles = muck: yuck!
the bright white boat glowing on the dark river
a broken slat on a freshly painted fence
a group of glowing orange trees near the base of the bridge
walkers with raincoats, their hoods up
no stones stacked on the big boulder
a dirt trail leading down near meeker dam, just past a wrought-iron fence
a sandbar just below the surface, under the lake street bridge overlook
white sands beach, glowing through the bare trees on the other side of the river
As I ran, I was thinking about water and stone and how I feel like both. Water, flowing and carving out new possibilities, and stone, slowly being worn down, transformed, losing layers. I also thought about air and its relationship to water and stone. Octavio Paz has a wonderful poem, Wind, Water, Stone. I also kept returning to the idea of erosion.
Reading through past entries tagged with “water and stone,” I found this bit from march 13, 2024. Some of the same thoughts I was having this morning! Such loops and repeated cycles of thoughts!
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.
In other rock-related news, FWA is planning to play the epically awesome bass clarinet Concerto for a Aria competition this spring. It’s called Prometheus and the four short-ish movements are based on Kafka’s short story about the myth:
There are four legends concerning Prometheus:
According to the first, he was clamped to a rock in the Caucasus for betraying the secrets of the gods to men, and the gods sent eagles to feed on his liver, which was perpetually renewed. According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it. According to the third, his treachery was forgotten in the course of thousands of years, the gods forgotten, the eagles, he himself forgotten. According to the fourth, every one grew weary of the meaningless affair. The gods grew weary, the eagles grew weary, the wound closed wearily. There remained the inexplicable mass of rock.—The legend tried to explain the inexplicable. As it came out of a substratum of truth it had in turn to end in the inexplicable.
3.5 miles trestle turn around 38 degrees / drips then drizzle then freezing rain
Happy Halloween. Snow later this morning. Wanted to get in a quick run before that happened. When I started it was only dripping but as I finished, freezing rain. Wore black running tights, a pink hooded jacket, a black winter vest, and black gloves. Running north I had the wind in my face. Running south, to my side. I enjoyed this run. Hardly anyone else out on the trail and cool temperatures. Winter running is coming!
Since I’m trying to finish an audio book that’s due in 2 days, I listened to it instead of the rain — except for in the last minutes of the run. I took out my headphones and heard water falling steadily.
10 Things
the usual puddles on neighborhood sidewalks: just past the alley, a stretch on the next block, a big one covering entire slab on 46th
bright headlights cutting through the trees on the other side of the ravine
a few stones stacked on the big boulder
under the lake street bridge: a red blanket stretched on the uneven limestone with a person under it, an empty wheelchair nearby
a small stretch of the river road between lake street and the trestle was flooded. It almost was cresting the curb
most cars slowed down for the flooding, but one didn’t — splash! — thankfully not on me
only one other runner out there
roaring wind
light gray sky
a steady, strong rhythm of striking feet
That wheelchair broke me open for the rest of the run.
Yesterday, Scott, RJP, and I voted early! Everyone at the polling place was happy and nice and excited to be voting. A great experience, even as it was difficult because of my failing vision. Before voting, we were required to fill out an absentee ballot form. Only the highlighted parts, the person who handed us the form instructed. The problem: I can’t see yellow, and that was the color of the highlighted text. RJP had to point out the sections. Scott was unsettled as he was reminded of how bad my vision is getting. At first, when I looked at the ballot, I couldn’t quite make sense of it, but after a moment, slowly, I could read the different categories and names. I thought I was filling in the entire bubble (Harris/Walz, OF COURSE!), but when I double- then triple-checked it, I had only filled in half of it. Another few times, and I finally filled it all in.
water section of haunts
Wrote this bit about the hidden cut-off wall in downtown Minneapolis that was put in place in 1876 and still holds the river back from breaking through the last bed of limestone:
A century and a half later, the concrete, hidden deep*, still stands and the river, ever restless*, has not stopped trying to move past it. Water will flow where water wants to go, under over through. Near the gorge the girl beholds its quiet refusal to be contained.
*should I cut these extra bits?
I thought about the idea of water going where it wants to go as I ran through the rain, navigating the streams and puddles.
3.1 miles locks and dam no. 1 and back 61 degrees / humidity: 80%
High today of 78. Tomorrow 72. Halloween 49. As Scott says, It’s always cold on Halloween. I felt overheated during the run. Face burning and dripping sweat. I had been planning to do a 10k — the Hidden Falls loop — but it felt too warm. Maybe on Thursday. I wore black shorts and a darkish blue short-sleeved shirt. The same thing I wore for the marathon.
I listened to an audio book, The God of the Woods, so I was distracted as I ran. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
an intense, sweet and sour and woody smell as I ran by a pile of wood chips at the edge of the trail
tall piles of wet leaves at the end of the street, waiting for the city workers to return and scoop them up in their truck
beep beep beep — a city truck backing up
3 or 4 stacked stones on the ancient boulder
a group of bikers, all wearing bright yellow long-sleeved shirts
crunch crunch crunch — my feet running through a blanket of leaves on one side of the trail
a faint shadow on the sidewalk, cast from the light of a weak, cloud-covered sun
someone sitting on a bench near the overlook, wearing dark clothing
the water fountain near 36th appears to still be on — the st. paul ones are already turned off, when do they turn off the minneapolis ones?
the clicking and clacking of a roller skier’s poles and the bright blue of their shirt — did I see this today or on my walk yesterday afternoon?
more on the water section of haunts
I’m still gathering ideas and resources for my water section. Here’s another one:
Though the river has always been dynamic, it looks very different than it did just a few centuries ago. In the past 175 years, people began making major engineering changes to the river in attempts to harness it for industry. Before we started building mills, dams and locks, the Mississippi here was a wild and free-flowing river.
Rather than the series of dammed reservoirs we have today, the river was a braided channel with at least a dozen islands between the falls and Bdóte, where the Minnesota River enters the Mississippi. The river had rocky rapids, gravel bars and beaches, fast and slow spots, deep and shallow spots and floodplains.
Possibly to put beside this, a line from a poem I revisited this morning:
And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am (from Let this darkness be a bell tower/ Rainer Maria Rilke)
1 mile river road, north/32nd/edmund, south 57 degrees
Even though I ran on Saturday and Sunday, it’s beautiful this morning, so I decided to go out for a quick run. Wow! The floodplain forest was almost all golden. And it was warm enough to wear shorts! The mile was easy, relaxed — my average heart rate = 137. I recited my favorite Halloween poem in my head — A Rhyme for Halloween — and tried to think about the latest section of my haunts poem. It’s about restlessness and water and control and the idea of enough and the army corps of engineers and locks and dams and hydroelectric power and energy and constant movement and . . . . Did I have any helpful thoughts? I can’t remember. Did I look at the river? I can’t remember that either. I think my view of it was still blocked. All I saw was open air.
The air over a gorge is different than the air over a field. Why? Sometimes when I’m being driven* on the river road and I can see the air but not the river, I think about this question. If I were seeing this for the first time and didn’t know anything about it, would I still be able to tell the air I could see was over a gorge and not a big open field? What’s different?
*usually I write driving and not being driven, but I don’t drive anymore because of my vision. I haven’t driven in 3 years and only briefly. I haven’t driven regularly in at least 5 years.
I was feeling good as I walked back through the neighborhood, happy to be outside, and then it happened. No warning, out of the blue: my kneecap briefly slid out of its groove. It went back in right away, but not before reminding me that it could do it again whenever it wanted. I recovered and wasn’t too anxious, but was cautious with every step, wondering if it would happen again. Sigh. One reassurance: while these slips and slides are still disruptive, they don’t bother me nearly as much as they used to. I will be fine, my knee will be fine.
water, preliminary thoughts
I mentioned above that I’m working on a new section of my haunts poem. It’s about water and restlessness. Before my run, I was free-writing about it: relentless, obsession, wearing down, transforming, constantly moving, never still.
Then I wrote this: the falls never stopped, just put on hold, all that restless energy built up. This is a reference to the fact that the falls didn’t run out of rock and peter out, but was stopped by a concrete apron under the water, built over 100 years ago. I can’t quite remember the details, so I better review the history.
My notes continue: dammed, locks and dam, hydroelectric power, tamed, removing the dam, letting water flow freely. Then I remembered reading about efforts to restore creeks and streams that have been buried in concrete as cities built up. It’s called daylighting. Yes! I could include something about that, too!
For some time, people and organizations (like Friends of the Mississippi River) have been advocating for removing some of the locks and dams (there are 3) and restoring the river. Here’s a description that I might like to use in my poem:
The Mississippi River, one of the most iconic, important waterways in the world, is also one of the most altered. Dams drown once-vibrant rapids, levees stop the river’s meander, and dredging and river-training structures keep the Mississippi locked into a prescribed path.
I’m particularly interested in the river-training bit and the efforts to lock the river into a prescribed path. To contrast this, I might also want to include my work/thinking around seeps and springs and their ability to leak and find ways through rock and asphalt.
Whew! I’ll need to edit and whittle it down to something manageable, but it’s fun to let the ideas take me wherever I want to go — to flow freely, not be locked in a certain path!
Thinking about all of these ideas, I was reminded of how the poet Wang Ping describes restoring the dam in their poem, And the Old Man Speaks of Paradise:
Do not dam me. To move freely is to evolve is to live Lock feeds fear feeds hate feeds violence to the base of paradise
added a few minutes later: I love Tim Walz and I love this interview he did while running:
When he said, about Minnesotans, “we run in the winter,” I yelled out to the screen and the empty room, Yes!
A quick run after getting my flu and COVID shot and before taking FWA to an eye exam. Another beautiful, warm morning. Everything yellow and crunchy. The Winchell trail was crowded with hikers admiring the leaves and the view. Heard kids on the playground. Smelled the sour sewer. Felt the soft sand. The theme of the morning: leaves. Brittle leaves covering the trail, making it harder to see roots or rocks. Fluttering leaves falling from the trees. Absent leaves giving me a better view of the other side. And that sound! Before starting my run, yellow locust leaves near the curb sizzled after a car drove by. A few blocks later, a cluster of leaves — or was it a plastic bag? — crackled and crunched in the slight wind.
Near Folwell, after climbing the short, steep hill, I stopped to record a few lines for the next section of my poem. The section is called Nobody and it’s about bells and mom-ghosts and dead cone cells.
In the gray morning the few cone cells that remain are starved for light, everything lacks form — no edges, no bodies, just blurs
Here’s a beautiful poem I encountered this morning. I’m adding it to my collection of dirt/dust poems.
We mourn the broken things, chair legs wrenched from their seats, chipped plates, the threadbare clothes. We work the magic of glue, drive the nails, mend the holes. We save what we can, melt small pieces of soap, gather fallen pecans, keep neck bones for soup. Beating rugs against the house, we watch dust, lit like stars, spreading across the yard. Late afternoon, we draw the blinds to cool the rooms, drive the bugs out. My mother irons, singing, lost in reverie. I mark the pages of a mail-order catalog, listen for passing cars. All day we watch for the mail, some news from a distant place.
It’s 14 lines. Is it a sonnet? Is there a volta? Is it the dust, lit like stars?
10.2 miles downtown loop* 61 degrees / humidity: 70%
*river road trail, north — past the trestle, down franklin hill, in the flats, up the I-94 hill, past the Guthrie and Stone Arch, under Hennepin, over Plymouth, through Boom Island, up to the 3rd avenue Bridge, winding down to river road, heading south.
Warm this morning. Sun, sweat. Wore shorts and short-sleeved shirt. Ran with Scott; we’re running the Halloween Half next Saturday. My legs and lungs were fine, my gut not so much. Unfinished business at mile 6, then again at mile 9. Hopefully I can figure out a way to fix it soon. I remember that Scott talked a lot more than I did, but about what? Music — he subbed for a community jazz band and he’s hoping they ask him to join. I talked about shadows and afternoon moons and my admiration for fit runners and good form — so graceful and pleasing to watch!
We greeted Mr. Holiday — good morning! — and encountered a few roller skiers. We also encountered Vikings Fans between Stone Arch and Hennepin. Enjoying the nice weather before the game, I guess. I heard train bells and some biker calling out to the other bikers he was with: we’re going to whip down this hill. I sang to Scott, whip it good! The steps up from St. Anthony Main to the 3rd Avenue bridge were tough, but the view of downtown was amazing. I mentioned Spirit Island to Scott, which is the sacred Dakota Island that was quarried by white settler colonists, then removed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and we wondered where it had been exactly (south of the Locks and Dam).
Looking up where Spirit Island was in relation to Stone Arch and the 3rd avenue bridge, I found a brief article that mentioned how the island had bald eagles and spruce trees, In my poem, I say the trees are oaks — did I remember it wrong, or were there spruce and oaks? To be safe, I’ll change it in the poem:
Among eagled spruce, rock by sacred rock hauled off in horse-drawn carts, few records of where. Not gone, scattered, displaced, their origin as island erased.
11 Things
the shadows of the railing on the Plymouth bridge — straight, sharp
the bright, sparkling water at the edge of Boom Island
the railing shadows at another spot on the bridge — the shadows they cast on the sidewalk made me think the sidewalk was broken
the pattern of the shadows of a chain-link fence — sharp but soft, geometric
2 shirtless runners passing us, running past and fluidly, their feet bouncing up down up down, spending more time in the air than on the ground
rowers, 1: the voice of a coxswain giving instructions
rowers, 2: an 8-person shell on the river
slashes of deep red leaves from the bushes beside the path
the quick suggestion of an afternoon moon: a flash of white in the bright blue sky. Was it the moon or a cloud? I checked with Scott: the moon!
a sour smell rising from below: sewer gas
falling leaves! reds and yellows, fluttering in the wind — sharp, brittle, hitting my cap hard
Earlier this week, RJP and I took an overnight trip to Red Wing and stayed at the old/haunted hotel, the St. James. It was wonderful — the hotel more than the town. As part of it, we hiked up the bluff — He Mni Can-Barn Bluff. A great view of Red Wing and the river, and a good workout! 90 minutes of ascending and descending. We saw a Vikings cruise, 5 stories tall, docked at the river. RJP looked it up: an 18-day cruise from St. Paul to New Orleans, $12,000 per person. Wow. The next day, at a bakery getting doughnuts and coffee, we overheard a woman ask for a Trump cookie. Yes, they were selling cookies that spelled out Trump with icing. They also had Harris cookies. RJP said that there were more Harris cookies left. We were both disturbed by the idea that someone would want to buy a Trump cookie and that a bakery would be selling them.
Wonderful weather for running! Not too cold, but cold enough to not overheat. The color of the day: yellow. I’m sure there were orange and red leaves, but all I remember were the bright yellow ones. Another color I remember: glitter — on the water, among the fluttering leaves. Seeing the low water in the creek on Monday, I wondered if the falls would even be falling. They were, but no gushing or roaring.
10 Things
laughing kids at Dowling Elementary
the oak savanna is still mostly green
a sidewalk covered in dry, yellowed pine needles
a person taking a selfie with their dog by my favorite overlook at the falls
the man who empties the parking kiosks — I’ve seen him several times before and wondered why he comes in a regular (unmarked) car and how many coins he collects
the creek was higher than in past falls when bare rock was exposed
instead of a rope blocking the steps down to the falls, which is easy to climb over, Minneapolis Parks has added a green metal gate
the shadow of some leaves falling to the ground, looking like the shadows of birds
those same falling leaves looking like brown snow
the swinging shadow of my ponytail
pines and Basho
I ran over yellow pine needles covering the sidewalk at the start of my run and thought about Basho. So I looked up “basho pine” and found this line:
Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo. Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.
A poem I was working on yesterday (and submitted to a journal for consideration), starts this way:
It begins here: from the ground up, feet first, following.
The following I am referring to is not simple repetition, even as it literally is about following trails already made by past feet, but seeking what past feet sought: connection, contact, familiarity with the ground/land and how it has been shaped.
ghosts and zombies
My plan for this month was to focus on Zombies, but between a kid crisis, the marathon, and a poem that insisted on being reworked, I haven’t given much attention to them. Maybe two other reasons: I don’t really like zombies, and I’m still thinking about ghosts.
from Circle / Dana Knott
human obits in the process of being written ghostly obits in the process of being read
Here’s what I wrote on August 1, 2024 that got me thinking about zombies:
On Ghosts V. Zombies/ Suzanne Buffam
Soul without a body or body without a soul? Like choosing between an empty lake And the same empty lake.
For the past few years, I’ve devoted a lot of attention to ghosts and haunts, but I’ve rarely thought about zombies. This poem is making me want to think about them now. So many directions to go with it — the relationship between the body and the soul or the body and the spirit or the body and the mind; how, because I can’t see people’s faces or make eye contact, they look soulless to me — I’m a ghost among zombies; Alice Oswald and the Homeric mind — our thoughts traveling outside of our bodies; Emily Dickinson and the soul that wanders; the fish in us escaping (Anne Sexton) or the bees released, returned to the hive/heaven (Eliot Weinberger).
I clicked on the ED link and read my entry from march 19, 2024. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, including a reference to Homer, but not the poet, the cartoon character, Homer Simpson. It’s the clip where his brain escapes his body to avoid listening to Ned Flanders talking about the differences between apple juice and cider (if it’s clear and yella, you got juice there fella, if it’s tangy and brown, you’re in cider town). Wow.
taking it slow
Reading the “about this poem” for poets.org’s poem of the day, Dead Reckoning, I encountered this line:
This poem began as a long sequence but arrived at this stripped-down form after fifteen years of off-and-on revision.
15 years of off-and-on revision! I’m only on year 3 of my Haunts revisions. I’m glad to know that other poets sit with some of their poems for a long time.
After finding this, I read an old entry from October 16, 2021, and found this:
“I am slow and need to think about things a long time, need to hold onto the trace on paper. Thinking is adventure. Does adventure need to be speedy? Perhaps revising is a way of refusing closure?…”
Rosemarie Waldrop
This slow time reminds me of Lorine Niedecker and what she writes in a letter to her poet-mentor, Cid Corman, while working on her poem, “Lake Superior”:
Cid, no, I won’t be writing for awhile, and I need time, like an eon of limestone or gneiss, time like I used to have, with no thought of publishing. I’m very slow anyhow . . . . I’m going into a kind of retreat so far as time (going to be geologic time from now on!) is concerned . . . .
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.