Tag: headphones

jan 17/RUN

5.4 miles
bottom franklin hill and back
37 degrees
20% snow-covered

37 degrees and a mostly clear path! A great run. I felt relaxed and strong and able to shift gears and keep going. I greeted almost every walker, runner, or biker I encountered by raising my right hand. At the bottom of the hill I stopped to check out the water — open, moving thickly, a few flat and wide sheets of ice floating by. Smelled weed. Heard birds — laughing and chirping. Slipped (only a little) on a few bits of ice. Stopped at the sliding bench to admire the view — so bare and quiet and alone. Put in my headphones at the top of the hill and listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Some of today’s lyrics made me think about regret and longing for the past, some of them about the joy of forgetting, and some of them commanded, remember! or don’t you forget it!

added a few hours later: I almost forgot to post the picture I took. It’s of the pile of rocks under the franklin bridge that I keep thinking is a person sitting up against the wall. I know these are rocks, but I always first think: person

limestone mistaken for a man

Inspired by my triple berry chant exercise (see below), I chanted in triples. Can I remember 10 of them?

10 Triple Berry Chants

  1. empty bench
  2. grayish sky
  3. ritual
  4. down the hill
  5. ice and snow
  6. soaring bird
  7. sloppy trail
  8. lake street bridge
  9. noisy wheel
  10. 3 stacked stones

confession: I did chant a few of these, but the rest I created as I wrote this list. I just can’t remember what I chanted.

early morning coffee

1 — strange sleeping habits

A morning ritual: coffee, Facebook, poets.org, poetryfoundation.org, poems.com, “on this day.” While scrolling through Facebook I found an interesting article about sleep: The forgotten medieval habit of two sleeps. The concept isn’t new to me; I read the book that it’s based on, At Day’s Close, more than a decade ago. One new thing, or thing that I had read in the book but forgot, was about the author’s initial research and how he looked to court transcripts for information about daily life:

he had found court depositions particularly illuminating. “They’re a wonderful source for social historians,” says Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, US. “They comment upon activity that’s oftentimes unrelated to the crime itself.”

I started thinking more about sleep. Last night was not very good: restless legs, sore hip, getting up 3 or 4 times, walking up earlier than I’d like because of my restlessness. At one point, the author, Roger Ekirch, mentioned how recognizing the long history of getting up in the middle of the night as normal and natural could relieve some anxiety for those of us who can’t sleep straight through the night. I suddenly thought, and not for the first time: I need to accept my crazy sleep instead of fighting or worrying about it, and I should turn it into something creative. Track it, or write into it, or . . . . I wonder if there are “insomnia writing experiments?

a list-writing experiment

The first thing that came up in my google search was a scientific study about writing and falling asleep faster. Perhaps if I had searched, “insomnia writing exercises” or “insomnia poetry prompts” I would have gotten different results.

Bedtime worry, including worrying about incomplete future tasks, is a significant contributor to difficulty falling asleep. Previous research showed that writing about one’s worries can help individuals fall asleep. We investigated whether the temporal focus of bedtime writing—writing a to-do list versus journaling about completed activities—affected sleep onset latency. Fifty-seven healthy young adults (18–30) completed a writing assignment for five minutes prior to overnight polysomnography recording in a controlled sleep laboratory. They were randomly assigned to write about tasks that they needed to remember to complete the next few days (to-do list) or about tasks they had completed the previous few days (completed list). Participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep significantly faster than those in the completed-list condition. The more specifically participants wrote their to-do list, the faster they subsequently fell asleep, whereas the opposite trend was observed when participants wrote about completed activities. Therefore, to facilitate falling asleep, individuals may derive benefit from writing a very specific to-do list for five minutes at bedtime rather than journaling about completed activities.

The Effects of Bedtime Writing on Difficulty Falling Asleep

Lists? I love lists! I think I’ll try this, or my own version of it. Maybe I’ll start with a to-do list, another night a completed list, then a things I love list, or a things that bother me list, my favorite poets list, things I notice in the dark, reasons I can’t sleep list, and on and on. Eventually, maybe I can turn this into a series of list poems?

2 — idea/poem starters, an inspiration

The visual poem on poems.com for today, Good Riddance, reminded me of something I started thinking about in march 2024. The poem is a grid with a fragment of thought in each box. There are arrows directing you across or down, or across then down then across again. However your eyes choose to read the boxes creates a slightly different poem. Anyway, I started thinking about the different boxes and mixing and matching the phrases and I remembered this idea from my “to do list for 2022, 23, and 24”:

a 3/2 idea: create fragments of 2-4 lines with a “complete” thought that can be the start of a new poem, or be put together in new ways to create new poems — almost like prompts:

a shadow

crosses

And now I’m remembering an even earlier experiment from 3 may 2019 with triple (3 beat) chants:

Speaking of chanting, I have a new exercise I want to try. First, I want to think up a bunch of 3 syllable phrases (down the hill, walk to work, eat down town, out the door, sunday best, monday worst, turnip greens, climate change, just say please, in and out…). Then I’ll write these on small slips of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bag. I’ll randomly pick out 8-10 and turn them into a poem (either in the order I select them or in an order of my choosing). Maybe the phrases should be a mixture of things from the run and popular or whimsical expressions? So much fun!

added an hour later: While reviewing old entries from June of 2024, I came across a delightful typo. Instead of writing “the tunnel of trees” I wrote, “the tunnel of threes.” I love it! Maybe the title of a poem that uses triple berry chants?

jan 10/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
21 degrees
100% snow-covered

Today the winter I want: big flurries, everything covered in a thin layer of snow, not too much wind, warmer, not slick — especially with my with Yaktrax on. Nothing was quite easy, but everything wasn’t as hard as my last run on Wednesday.

10 Things

  1. a white sky
  2. the contrast between shoveled and un-shoveled sidewalks — both still white, but the shovelled ones had a tint of gray or brown peeking through
  3. the clacking jawbone of a bird’s beak — a blue jay?
  4. the river was all white — if you didn’t know better, you could believe it was a field or a meadow
  5. approaching from above, hearing the falls rushing over the limestone
  6. kids yelling and laughing at the playground, one loud, high-pitched sound — was it a kid screaming or a whistle?
  7. amongst the kid voices, a deeper, more knowing laugh — was that from a teacher?
  8. the contrast on the creek surface: white snow with blackish-gray water
  9. every so often, a flash of orange — not always sure what it was, just a voice whispering, orange — a snow fence? a construction cone? a sign?
  10. bright headlights cutting through the sky, which was both bright — everything white! — and heavy

Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist on the way back. The first song up, Do You Remember Walter? by The Kinks. Two different bits stuck with me:

one: Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago.
two: Yes, people often change./ But memories of people can remain.

This second bit got me thinking about how I can’t always (can I ever?) see faces clearly. When the face is too dark and shadowed, I just ignore it altogether. But when there’s some light and I can sort of see them, I often re-construct the features I can’t see with memories of their face from before I lost most of my cone cells. I’m not remembering their face, but creating it. After thinking that the idea of remembering as re-memembering — putting a body back together — popped into my head. Yes! I take my image of face, only as fragments — the curve of a nose or a chin, a bit of eye — and turn it into something whole.

As I kept running, I thought more about remembering and memories and my vision and how I rely on past experience and habits to navigate. And now as I write this, I’m thinking about how everyone’s vision — not just mine — relies on a building up of past experiences (memories?) with things to be able to see them. Here I’m remembering something that I read in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss:

the sensation of sudden visual awareness is produced in part by the formation of a “search image” in the brain. In a complex visual landscape, the brain initially registers all the incoming data, without critical evaluation. Five orange arms in a starlike pattern, smooth black rock, light and shadow. All this is input, but the brain does not immediately interpret the data and convey their meaning to the conscious mind. Not until the pattern is repeated, with feedback from the conscious mind, do we know what we are seeing.

Learning to See in Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I’m continuing to read JJJJJerome Ellis’ Aster of Ceremonies. Wow!

Prayer to My Stutter #2/ JJJJJerome Ellis

You restore
a living
shoreline
between word
and silence

This beautiful prayer moves right into the next offering, Octagon of Water, Movement 3, which was titled by its first line when it was published in Poetry:

excerpts from The name of that Silence is These Grasses in the Wind/ JJJJJerome Ellis

1

The name of that silence is these grasses in this wind, and the name of these grasses in this wind is that other place on the other side of this instant. This instant is divided by curtains of water and the sound of shuddering time. A sunflower reeling with sun, six hands stretched in offering. This unsearchable, uncancellable instant wraps the shoulders of the grasses like a shawl stilled by the stoppage. 

How is/isn’t the instant similar to Marie Howe’s moment? If you listen to the recording on Poetry, you can hear the stretched silence as Ellis’ voice stops before pronouncing certain words.

2

This morning come shyly or boldly into the fertile field, however you are, come, come and stay in the rearrangement, the pressure of thumb on fescue blade, a year wheeling within a day, two round moments of warm mouth, finally at peace. The psalm is a key if only we can find the door. Do not swallow your dysfluent voice. Let it erupt in its volcanic flowering. Stoppage thence passage, aporia, poppy bursting with fragrant seed. 

What a beautiful description and reclaiming of a stuttering voice on the other side of the stoppage! The erupting bursting flowering dysfluent voice.

I’m inspired by how Ellis takes his stutter and turns it into this beautiful instant between silence and word. For them, the stoppage is a/the key aspect of the stuttering. What are the most important elements of my strange vision?

jan 8/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
12 degrees

Another sunny, sharp shadow day. Ran south to the falls and listened to cars, birds, kids on the playground, and some guy coughing too loudly. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, then put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Sometimes I felt strong, and sometimes I felt tired. My legs wanted us to stop. I did a few times, including at the bench above “the edge of the world.” I took two pictures. One had a clearer view of the ice on the river, but I picked the other one, with its branches and shadows and white sun:

Most of the image is of dark, bare branches and their shadows on a snow-less ground. Through the trees is an iced river and the sun.
above the edge of the world / 8 jan 2024

10 Things

  1. chirping birds
  2. my shadow, clear and strong
  3. shadows of trees in the park, soft and fuzzy
  4. a shadow of the lamp post, sharp and menacing
  5. someone who looked like Dave the Daily Walker from behind — a tucked shirt and not jacket, tucked into dark track pants — but wasn’t
  6. the creek — bright white snowy surface mixed with fast, flowing water
  7. the falls were gushing through the ice columns
  8. a man with a bad cough near the overlook
  9. a cold wind on my ears when I put my hood down
  10. the shadow of a tree sprawled across the trail that dips below the road, looking like an actual branch that might hit me as I ran by

For a moment, I thought I had completely forgot running the stretch down to, then over, the bridge that crosses above the falls, but then I remembered it: what the creek looked like, seeing some people (one of them, the man with the cough) as I crossed, but then not seeing them, and then seeing them again near the closed gate.

before the run

Last night, I started reading JJJJJerome’s Aster of Ceremonies, which I bought in october of 2023 and hadn’t read yet. Wow! Here’s a bit I’d like to take with me on my run:

What is the wound
reopening during the stutter?
How does it relate
to Morrison’s flooding? When
the Mississippi returns
to its former contours,
does the suture
we created by straightening
it open?
(Octagon of Water, Movement 2/JJJJJerome Ellis)

Last week, I was just writing about how the natural shape of the Mississippi River in the gorge is long gone, reshaped by the city and the Army Corps. After my run, I’ll read Toni Morrison’s essay to which Ellis refers.

added a few hours later: I tracked down the quotation that Ellis puts in a footnote for this poem from Toni Morrison in The Site of Memory (1995, 99):

You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory – what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” Along with personal recollection, the matrix of the work I do is the wish to extend, fill in and complement slave autobiographical narratives. But only the matrix. What comes of all that is dictated by other concerns, not least among them the novel’s own integrity. Still, like water, I remember where I was before I was “straightened out.”

The Site of Memory/ Toni Morrison

So good! I’m excited to think about these ideas some more and figure out my relationship to flooding and being straightened out and rivers before and after Minneapolis and the Army Corps of Engineers “fixed” them.

Thinking about Ellis’ stutter in relation to my vision problems. In some ways, I have a visual stutter — there’s a long pause between looking at something and actually seeing it. I need time for things to make sense. Also, images stutter, shake, fizz, are always moving, never still or sharp or clear.

remember/forget

1 — will

the differences between what we notice and try to remember and what we ignore or try to forget (16 april 2024)

2 — memory

When I heard the line, Seems like we’re livin’ in a memory, I thought about how I mostly can’t see people’s faces clearly and that I’ve either learned to tune it out and speak/look into the void, or I just fill in the smudge with the memory of their face. I’m used to it, and often forget I’m doing it until suddenly I wonder as I stare at the blob, am I looking in the right place, into their eyes, or am I staring at their chin? I don’t care, but I imagine the other person might, so I try to find their eyes again (9 may 2024).

In jan of 2024, I’m thinking about the daily, mundane bodily functions that we forget we’re doing, or don’t notice — what’s the difference between not noticing and forgetting here? I’m also thinking about this idea of memory and its relationship to the real. When is remembering “only a memory” and when can the act of remembering keep something real? Can we understand remembering as more than thinking about things from the past? What about remembering what is present, here still, real, connected to us?

3 — pay attention, be astonished, tell about it

Thinking more about the difference between noticing and remembering, I’m thinking about the different acts involved here. Yes, it is inspired by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life! First, we notice, then we are open to feeling something about what we noticed, then we put that noticing and our feelings into words. For my practice, I don’t try to remember to notice or to be astonished, they just happen — at least, that’s the goal. Remembering comes in when I try to put my attention and astonishment into words. So, the connection between writing and remembering.

4 — writing to remember

I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.

Field Notes slogan

Many different directions I could go with this idea of remembering and writing, but I like this idea of the act of writing about something as the remembering. I rarely look back at my (Field Notes brand) Plague Notebooks when I’m finished with them; it’s the act of writing in them that helps me remember what I noticed or was thinking about. This method is approximate and doesn’t work all of the time. In my practice, I use the act of making a list on my log of 10 things I noticed as the moment of remembering what I didn’t even realize I noticed. But, unlike my plague notebooks, I do return to my log to read past entries and remember what I wrote before — in at least 3 ways: my monthly challenge pages in which I review and summarize what I did in relation to my theme each month; my “on this day” morning reviews, in which I reread past entries from that day in different years; and my annual summary, month-by-month of my log entries.

5 — forget the body

I like my body when I’m in the woods
and I forget my body. I forget that arms,
that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,

that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain.
I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower.
(Yes, That’s When/Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)

jan 6/RUN

5.5 miles
bottom of franklin hill
11 degrees / feels like 5

Another sunny, snowless day. A little wind, some cold air. Wasn’t planning to run 5 miles, but I wanted to get to the bottom of the hill so I could see the surface up close. Iced over — not smooth, but with seams and cracks.

The Mississippi river at the bottom of the franklin hill. White ice, cracks, and shadows on its surface. Beyond it, the east bank with barre branches and blue sky.
ice on mississippi river / 6 jan 2025

I’m glad I took a picture because I did not remember it looking like this! I was visually a surface that was more gray and uniform with cracks creating big and flat sheets of ice. I didn’t remember the shadows or the blue or how uneven it all looked.

As I ran, I listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. It started with “I Remember it Well,” from Gigi. I heard the opening lines:

We met at 9
We met at 8
I was on time
No, you were late
Ah yes
I remember it well

I thought — wait, if he thought they were meeting at 9, he wouldn’t have thought he was late if he got there after 8 — yes, these are they thoughts I have as I run. I thought about how subjective memory can be and wondered how certain we could be that she remembered correctly. Then I heard these lyrics:

Ah yes
I remember it well
You wore a gown of gold
I was all in blue

I remembered that meme 4 or 5 years ago with the dress — is it gold or blue? — and thought again about how we can remember things differently. When is it lack of memory, and when did we always just remember it wrong, or unusually, or with a focus on different details, or in a different light?

10 Things

  1. the hollow knocking of a woodpecker
  2. the thumping of wheels over something on the road on the bridge above
  3. 4 stones tightly stacked on the ancient boulder
  4. a section of the fence above a steep part of the bluff, missing, marked off with an orange barricade
  5. the icy river through the trees — blue and white and lonely
  6. daddy long legs at his favorite bench
  7. shadows, 1: mine, off to the side, in the brush next to the trail
  8. shadows, 2: a tree trunk, tall, stretched, looking like a dinosaur
  9. stopping at the edge to put in my headphones, seeing a flare of movement below: someone walking on the winchell trail
  10. the limestones still stacked under the bridge, still looking like a person sitting up and leaning against the bridge

A poem about forgetting:

Said a Blade of Grass/ Kahlil Gibran

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling!  You scatter all my winter dreams.”
 
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling!  Songless, peevish thing!  You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
 
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.  And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
 
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves!  They make such noise!  They scatter all my winter dreams.”

more forget lines

1

like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.
(Part of Eve’s Discussion/Marie Howe)

2

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too
(Dead Stars/Ada Limón)

3

See whatever you want
to see. Even
at the moment of death
forget the door

opening on darkness.
See instead the familiar faces
you thought were lost.
(Squint/Linda Pastan)

4

According to Howe, most (all?) of the critical studies of ED as a poet (up to 1985, when this book was written), read ED’s decision to stay isolated in her bedroom for the rest of her life as tragedy and a failure to celebrate herself as a poet (Whitman) or declare herself confidently as the Poet, the Sayer, the Namer (Emerson). Howe argues that she made another choice and writes the following:

She said something subtler. ‘Nature is a Haunted House–but Art–a House that tries to be haunted.’ (L459a)

Yes, gender difference does affect our use of language, and we constantly confront issues of difference, distance, and absence when we write. That doesn’t mean I can relegate women to what we ‘should’ or ‘must’ be doing. Orders suggest hierarchy and category. Categories and hierarchies suggest property. My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else. What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem. There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living. The conditions for poetry rest outside each life at a miraculous reach indifferent to worldly chronology.

My Emily Dickinson/ Susan Howe

jan 3/RUN

3.5 miles
trestle turn around
12 degrees / feels like -3

With the sun, it didn’t feel like -3 to me. No brain freeze from the wind, or numb fingers, or frozen snot in my nose. Well, as I’m write this I’m remembering that my legs felt slightly disconnected from my body, like logs or stumps, which is because of the cold.

My shadow ran in front of me as I headed north. She never wandered from the trail. I was just about to write that I forgot to look at the river, or forgot what I saw when I looked at the river, but then I remembered: sheets of white spread across, from east to west, between lake street bridge and the trestle. The ice looked like white waves and very cold. I stopped at the sliding bench for a moment and admired the river, then stopped a few minutes later to admire it again. Quiet, calm, a soft blueish-gray.

I listened to my new playlist (see below), so I don’t remember noticing much else. I was re-energized when Taylor Swift’s “I Forgot that You Existed” came on, and had some interesting ideas during “Veronica” about memories and the mind and thoughts and when and where they do and don’t travel and how and when we can’t access them anymore. Then I thought of an image for thoughts scattering and one’s mind being blown that I read on twitter several years ago: a mind being blown as not being blown up, but as being scattered like someone blowing on a dandelion — each thought or idea or memory is one of the dandelion seeds being spread. Now I’m thinking about each memory or thought as a bee swarming from a hive . . .

remember and forget

It’s looking more and more like remembering and forgetting might be my theme for january. It seems fitting for the first month of the year, when I’m trying to remember some things and forget others from 2024. I’m excited about this topic, and have thought about it before. There are so many ways I could approach it: the moment of remembering, the softness of forgetting, memorizing poems, memory loss . . .

Here’s my tentative remember to forget playlist:

  1. Remember the Time/ Michael Jackson
  2. I Don’t Remember/ Peter Gabriel
  3. I Keep Forgettin’/ Michael McDonald
  4. Try to Remember/ The Fantasticks
  5. Don’t You (Forget About Me)/ Simple Minds
  6. I Remember/Molly Drake
I
  7. Forget to Remember to Forget/ Johnny Cash
  8. September/ Earth, Wind, and Fire
  9. I Forgot that you Existed/ Taylor Swift
  10. Veronica/ Elvis Costello
  11. I Love You and Don’t You Forget It/ Sarah Vaughn
  12. Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio/Ramones
  13. Do You Remember Walter?/ The Kinks
  14. Remember/ A Little Night Music
  15. I Remember it Well/ Gigi
  16. Forget You/ Cee Lo Green
  17. (Love Will) Turn Back the Hand of Time/ Grease 2
  18. Memory/ Barbara Streisand


and here are a pair of lines from two different poems, one about forgetting, one about remembering:

the snow
has forgotten
how to stop
(Blizzard/ Linda Pastan)

As we walk into words that have waited for us to enter them, so
the meadow, muddy with dreams, is gathering itself together

and trying, with difficulty, to remember how to make wildflowers.
(The Meadow/Marie Howe)

jan 2/RUN

5 miles
bottom franklin hill and back
18 degrees / feels like 10

A beautiful, sunny morning. Cold enough to make my eyes water but not my feet numb. Birds, sharp shadows, a clear path. Only a few small chunks of hard snow on the walking path. From the distance, the river looked completely open and ice-free. When I stopped at the bottom of the hill to check, I noticed a few lumps scattered around the surface. If I hadn’t stopped, I never would have seen them — there were so few of them, and they were so small!

I remembered to look at the river. I forgot the sudden and unexpected surge of anxiety I experienced before the run, while I was sitting at my desk — not panic, but a rush of something then shaking hands, chattering teeth — then remembered it, and then forgot it again. This happened throughout the run. I remembered to breathe and to stay relaxed. I forgot to check my watch. I remembered to zip up my jacket pocket so one of my black gloves wouldn’t fall out. I forgot to check and see if June’s ghost bike was still hanging on the trestle. I remembered the time I ran up the franklin hill and recorded myself describing it. I forgot to look for fat tires.

Halfway up the franklin hill, I stopped to walk and put in my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist, since the shadows were wonderful today. The fourth song to come on was Cream’s “White Room.” I thought about the second verse and these lyrics:

You said no strings could secure you at the station
Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows

First, I was struck by the strings. I thought about invisible threads or tugs, then Taylor Swift’s invisible strings. Then, I was struck by nouns in the second line, especially the restless diesels and goodbye windows. I’m not sure if I thought about it while I was running, but now I’m thinking about one of RJP’s favorite books as a kid, The Hello Goodbye Window.

Before the run, and before my surge of anxiety, I edited and added to some lines about descending into the gorge that I had started last week. I was partly inspired by a discussion with FWA yesterday about his walk down the old stone steps to the beach. The lines aren’t quite finished, but here’s what I have. I’m hoping to have FWA read them to see if they capture any of his experience:

From the bottom, she
looks up to behold
a steep set of stone
steps wedged in loam by
grandfathers. At the top,
the edge, and beyond,
the trail, then the road,
wind-bent trees, worn grass,
a neighborhood. Down
here feels different — wild,
untouched, real, above
only distant dream.
The girl follows a
break in the trees to
a white sand beach and
the river. She shuts
her eyes and listens
for the bells that chime
four times an hour.
Once or twice, instead,
she’s heard a bagpipe’s
mournful skirl float
down from the cenotaph
on the other bluff.
A moment, a breath —
she opens her eyes
returns through the trees
ascends the steps and
breaks the spell.

And, speaking of remembering and forgetting, here’s another fragment I’m working on:

One day the girl sees
the river and re-
members what she saw.
One day she sees the
river and does not.
And one day she for-
gets to look. How strange
it is to not notice
what is right there,
looming so large it
has shaped this whole world.

dec 29/RUN

5 miles
minnehaha park and back
34 degrees / fog / humidity: 94%

Almost all of the snow, which wasn’t much to begin with, is gone. The ice, too. Hardly any wind, but plenty of moisture — the trail, the air, my face. Ran past the falls and John Stevens’ house to the VA bridge, then turned around and ran beside the falls. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, which were gushing. Put in “Billie Eilish” playlist and ran home.

10 Things

  1. mostly bare grass — the only snow were little mounds where the walking path split off from the biking path
  2. the creek water was fast and steel gray
  3. heard the train bells from across the road, then the horn tapping twice — beep beep
  4. car lights cutting through the mist/fog
  5. an older man pushing an empty wheelchair on the path
  6. glancing down at the Winchell trail north of 38th street, seeing two people walking on a part near the edge, high above the water
  7. I just wrote gray sky, no sun or shadows, but then I remembered there were a few patches of blue sky
  8. overheard: one woman walker to another — ptsd, trump, spend time with family
  9. smiling and waving to people I encountered — one good morning to another runner
  10. a man and a woman stopped at the edge of the walkway down to the bridge over the falls looking at something on a phone — I finally got it! Its back at my apartment

For the past 3 days, Scott, FWA, RJP, and I were up in Duluth. Very mild — no snow, no wind, no waves, some drizzle. Lake Superior was beautiful, especially the first night. While we were gone, I didn’t run. Today was my first day back since Thursday. My left hip is sore after the run. I should take more of a break.

I’m returning to my “Ars Poetica” poem and wanting to use this bit from Kafka for inspiration:

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.

Not becoming one with the gorge, but striving to press deeper and deeper into it, to leave a trace/mark on it, and be marked by it.

dec 18/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
26 degrees

Ran in the afternoon. Sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, streaks of a brilliant blue mixed with fluffy clouds. The river was mostly open with a few stretches of ice. The shore glowed white. The gorge slopes were different versions of brown. The creek was flowing fast and the falls were rushing over the edge. When I looked at them from my favorite spot all I could see was movement — the fast falling water looked like wavy vertical lines on an old tv. For the first mile, I was the only one out on the trail, then I passed a walker. Far ahead I could see lights flickering — headlights passing by trees on the other side of the ravine. Just past the double bridge, I heard a hammer hitting some wood then some other construction noises — men talking, some song coming out of the radio, a saw buzzing.

Yesterday, one version of my Girl Ghost Gorge poem was published in Last Syllable Literary Journal!

Ah, this poem, featuring windows and shadows and birds!

Some Things Last/ Ahmad Almallah

These windows, these panes, at the beginning of light
looking where they look, eyeing the east and the rust
and here they are, protected by shade and shadows:
branches and birds strike them, fly into them and out.
You can see nothing through them, you can only see what
bounces off: back at the world and then you return,
to the lemon, that is the self, squeezing drop after drop—
there’s nothing left of you now, no juice! Can you go on
lubricating the mind, musing on you as disaster,
and the rest of you as the elements?
Here, they go one by one
into a flame set down, beneath all the steps, at the very
bottom of it all … and God! The eyes wish you didn’t!
They look away from the blank space remaining—oh these
birds in the mornings are funny and the little tricks they
repeat and repeat, like these sounds they make, in order:
they fly off together or one by one, puffing up their small
bodies, extending a peak that opens up a view, that finds
space in whatever looks shut and closed—a wall has
some hole, a tree trunk can manage a crack, and under
the ledge, a window knows something
of the hidden world.

dec 16/RUN

6 miles
bohemian flats and back
37 degrees

Warmer today! And clear, ice-free paths! Not looking like December at all. I decided to run to the flats so I could see if the water seeping out of the rock wall was still frozen now that it had warmed up. It looked like it was, at least to me, but I could hear some trickling water too. What will it look like this afternoon? I heard a few geese, admired the form of a few other runners after they passed me, noticed my shadow and a few streaks of blue sky when the sun came out from behind the clouds briefly. It wasn’t the easiest run, but it wasn’t the hardest either.

Heading north, I listened to a train — or was it a light rail? — horn honking repeatedly. Not sure what was happening; too many honks, and too insistent, for business as usual. Was there an accident? Returning south, I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist, but then switched to “Slappin’ Shadows.”

Here’s a wonderful poem I discovered this morning. That last line!

Sign/ Sahar Romani

After Rumi, After Terrance Hayes

What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart  
graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life.  
Remember the stem of lavender you found 
in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined:  
The world is a mist. And then the world is
minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle  
a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist  
all shimmer and gold, you almost winced.  
Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind 
but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s  
slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song 
that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy  
and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder  
in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt  
on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate.  
Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.

Today I’m working on a section of Haunts about forms and shadows and seeing things slant, off to the side, in order to grasp (some of) their truth. I’m thinking I will mention how the mississippi is one of the more trained/shaped/managed rivers — with locks, dams, dredging.

a lone black glove

Almost always, when I see a discarded glove on the ground on my run it is black. Okay, today, I saw a gray one draped on a branch. As I walked home after my run, I encountered a lone black glove on the ground and decided to take a picture of it.

a black glove in the center of dirt and brown grass
a lone black glove

added, 17 dec 2024: As I was working on a section of Haunts about form, I remembered something else I witnessed yesterday during my run. Somewhere between the trestle and lake street bridge, I noticed a form on the ground, just through the trees. I think it was a sleeping bag with someone (possibly) in it. I’ve seen it here before, but only as a quick flash while I run by. Am I seeing it correctly, or is it like the stacked limestone under the franklin bridge that I always think is a person sitting up against one of the pilings?

dec 8/RUN

6.1 miles
hidden falls loop
36 degrees

Wow, what a great morning for a run! All the snow has melted so the paths were clear and I don’t remember much wind. I felt strong and relaxed and grateful to be outside when everything is bare and brown and open. And that river! Half frozen with a thin layer of ice, half open with shiny, dark water. I stopped at the overlook on the ford bridge and stared down at it, admiring the variations of gray and the feeling of air and nothingness — barren, vast, other-worldly.

10 Things

  1. the sound of a kid either laughing when his voice bounced as he went over something bumpy or crying so hard that his voice was breaking — heard, not seen
  2. several runners in bright yellow shirts
  3. two runners in white jackets
  4. some kids laughing and yelling near the skate park just past the ford bridge, again heard, not seen
  5. the view of the valley between ford and hidden falls — bare tree branches, then endless air, then the other side
  6. a blue port-a-potty with the door ajar
  7. the sound of water rushing over concrete at the locks and dam no. 1
  8. a lone goose honking somewhere near the oak savanna
  9. the contrast of wispy, dark branches against the light gray sky
  10. the river — no color, some shiny, some dulled by ice

an attempt to track my train of thought

I’m working on another section of my Haunts poem (which might need a different name as I stray away from ghosts). Before my run, I was thinking about being tender and erosion and H.W.S Cleveland (Horace William Shaler) as envisioning the grand rounds and the gorge as art. Before I headed out, I gave myself a task for during the run: to think about and look for examples of erosion and how it fits in with my idea that art is about making us feel things deeply (feeling tender). This task was inspired by this section in my poem:

his pitch for parkways
was about making space
for beauty and for
feeling things deeply —
he wanted to turn
this place into art.
Grass and benches and
trees to frame open
sky and the stone that
holds a river and
all who seek it. But
up here exposed on
the bluff, it is not
only the view that
makes the girl tender.
Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, smooth out her
edges, peel away
her layers, create
cracks that start small then
spread.

During my run, I stopped to record three ideas into my phone:

One: I thought about the cracks and the idea of being split open and how this splitting open was not a wound that needed to be patched but something else.

Two: I can’t quite remember how I continued to think about this idea of the wound and breaking open but I do remember suddenly thinking about eroding shorelines and bluffs and how cracks and a wearing away can be harmful. At first I wanted to make a clear distinction between the erosion I was writing about, and the tenderness it allowed for, but then I realized, just before reaching the ford bridge on my way back from hidden falls, that tenderness and feeling things deeply and art as inspiring this is both wound and that something else I can’t quite name. I spoke into my phone:

Beauty as not always pretty, sometimes ugly. Art as wonder and amazement, terror and pain.

I think I was remembering some lines from a podcast episode for Off the Shelf with Dorothy Lasky, as I mentioned terror.

I don’t think beautiful things are innocent, I guess, sadly. I mean, I don’t know what “innocent” means also, but yeah, I think beautiful things are holy, and I think that those things can be awful. I guess it’s like the sublime, and those things which we have awe about is what beauty is. And I don’t think it’s always kind, sadly. You know, I wish it were. It can be, but I don’t think that’s what is really there. It overwhelms. So, it is terrifying by its nature. Like, real beauty should make you terrified.

Good for the World

Three: By the time I had crossed the ford bridge, I had another thought about erosion and my diseased eyes:

My cone cells eroding is this slow softening, but at some point, most likely, there’s going to be a break — an abrupt break [when the few remaining cone cells in my central vision die, when I won’t be able to read or rely on my central vision at all]. And that is how the gorge works. It’s the slow softening of sandstone until limestone breaks off.

Yes! This is a helpful way for me to connect the gorge with my vision. I’m not sure that this third thing fits into this section of the poem, but I will use it somewhere!

posted an hour later: I can’t believe it, but after searching through the archive of this log, I realized that I have never posted this beautiful, tender poem by Mary Oliver:

Lead/ Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.