4.4 miles minnehaha falls and back 26 degrees / feels like 6 wind: 32 mph gusts
Windy today. As I sit at my desk writing this, I can hear the wind howling through the gaps in our screen/glass door. Ran south again to the falls. Felt tired and sluggish. Stopped a few times to walk. Listened to the wind, rustling leaves, scattered voices, cars as I headed south, my “It’s Windy” playlist on the way back north.
10 Things
a brittle brown leaf swirling and rushing ahead of me on the sidewalk
the trail was stained a grayish white with salt
a fat bike, its rider wearing a BRIGHT yellow jacket
a non-fat bike, its rider bent low against the wind
a section of the wooden fence is missing a slat and is leaning back toward the oak savanna
the lone black glove that was on the path yesterday has been moved off to the side, on top of the piled snow
3 or 4 people by the green gate blocking the steps down to the falls, one of them already on the other side (the inside) of it, the others poised to do the same
the sharp bark of a dog down near the falls
a person standing in front of the railing by the creek, posing, another person behind a camera on a tripod
a few thin splotches of ice on the concrete railing above the creek, mostly looking dull until the sun hit it, then shiny
I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran or noticing the river or hearing any birds. Not the easiest run, but I’m glad I got out there.
Yesterday afternoon, I discovered that Anne Carson gave a lecture titled, “On Hesitation.”
4.5 miles minnehaha falls 20 degrees / feels like 8
Above 0, but still felt cold. It was the wind, swirling softly in all directions, that did it. Ran south to the falls. Wasn’t sure if I’d make it all the way there — it felt difficult — but I did! The creek and the falls were almost all frozen, only a small stream buried under the ice. Looking at the falls from my favorite spot, across the way, it looked like a giant column of ice, which it was.
10 Things
a strong smell of cigarette smoke near the parking lot
thin patches of ice on the cobblestone at the park
kids’ laughter coming from across the road, at the school playground
my favorite bench, above the edge of the world, was not empty today
near the bench, the snow where someone had written “DAVIDSON” had melted
the mottled walking trail at the park — mostly white snow, with grayish asphalt splotching through
a lone black glove, dropped on the trail
a dark gray chunk of snow, upright, looking like a squirrel waiting to cross the road
a few runners, a few walkers, no bikers
glanced down at the big sledding hill at the park — not much snow and no one sledding down it
I had wanted to thinking about stillness (inspired by an entry from 21 aug 2024) or to chant triple berries but mostly I forgot. I put in a mood playlist: energy at the halfway point and focused on the music, including Britney Spears’ “Work Bitch.” Wow.
before the run
This month, I’ve been reviewing all my entries from 2024 and giving attention to remembering and forgetting and then getting in too deep with thinking and theorizing and organizing ideas around themes. Past Sara — Dr. Sara who is too enamored with theories and ideas and being clever — wants to return. Present Sara needs to figure out some ways to prevent that from happening! Yesterday I decided to take out my scrabble tiles and make anagrams out “remember forget” and “I remember to forget.”
remember forget bee or germ fret [m] more bereft germ beet form merger forge meter [brm] frog meter berm beef rot merger [m]
I Remember to Forget Got more meter fiber Orbit form tree gem bee form griot meter
What anti-theorizing thing can I do today?
A line remembered during my “on this day” practice:
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze when everything I want is motion? (Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis)
Everything I see is motion or in motion or never not in motion.
Last night we watched a Voyager’s episode in which the crew was experiencing strange symptoms — Captain Janeway had terrible headaches and couldn’t sleep; Chakotay was aging way too fast; Nelix was transforming into another species; and another red shirt went into shock then died. After 7 of 9 shifts into a different phase, she is able to witness what is happening: there are tons of people (human looking) on the ship hovering around the crew members and injecting them with needles. They are experimenting on them in the name of “medical research.” Yikes. Janeway’s headaches are not due to working too hard and not getting enough sleep or exercise, but because they are injecting her with dopamine. They keep increasing the dose to see how much she can take. I said to Scott, can you imagine if our headaches were caused by imaginary creatures messing with us? Then I started to imagine that this was the case. I also started to think about all the things we can’t see that live with us, like mites and bacteria and more. Surprisingly this didn’t freak me out.
Here is a poem I discovered yesterday. I love that first line and what it does as it follows from the title! I found it before I watched the Star Trek Voyager episode, but it is interesting to put them together to think about who/what we live with that we don’t see, or refuse to see:
Forgiveness was sitting in your kitchen when you got home, and now rests elbows on the table to watch you reach for a knife. You scrape the papery skin from a ginger root and slice it into thin coins. You think too hard about which mugs to pull from your cupboard: you might reveal too much; should you offer the one with the uncomfortable handle? Water boils. You divide the ginger evenly into both cups and pour. Spoonful of honey. You stir slowly, eyes down as though you might be able to forget. You stir too long. Forgiveness coughs politely, so you turn, place both mugs on the table, sit. Forgiveness leans forward. You lean back. You have forgotten what it is like to live with someone who eats all your cut watermelon, picks clean the skeletal vine of red grapes, shakes water spots onto your bathroom mirror without wiping them away. What thresholds of welcome have you crossed and recrossed? Most mornings, you listen for the body to move through your house and out the door before leaving your bedroom. Most nights, you ghost around each other without speaking. But now, as the rain drizzles into gloaming, you settle into your chairs, inevitable, a cupful of hesitation finally beginning to loosen your tongues.
And here’s part of a poem I encountered this morning that seems to fit or could be interesting to put beside “The Houseguest” and the Voyager episode:
If we could pray. If we could say we have come here together, to grow into a tree, if we could see our blue hands holding up the moon, and hear how small the sound is when it slips through our fingers into water, when the meaning of words melts away and sugarcane speaks in fields more clearly than our tongues
That small sound, those blue hands, when words melt away! To give attention, to pray!
Continuing to review past august entries, past Sara wrote this for me, January 2025 Sara:
In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.
log entry 22 aug 2024
I remember the faintness of that buoy, like the moon in the afternoon visible mostly by my belief that it was there. I also remember swimming that stretch, trying to avoid other swimmers and the ghost vines growing up from the bottom of the lake, seeming extra tall this summer. I’ll remember finally reaching that buoy and rounding it for the start of another loop, unable to see the far shore of a lifeguard or the other 2 orange buoys.
I remember the way the water glowed orange from the reflection of the buoy, or the quick flash of the smallest whisper of an orange dot, or the orange appearing only as a feeling of some disruption in the shoreline scenery — not really seen with my eyes, but registered by my brain — the idea that something was looming ahead.
I don’t remember gentle rocking, but I remember the wild ride of rounding the far green buoy and being pushed around by the water, or how the water seemed so hard to stroke in sometimes.
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
empty bench
grayish sky
ritual
down the hill
ice and snow
soaring bird
sloppy trail
lake street bridge
noisy wheel
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.
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?
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
a white sky
the contrast between shoveled and un-shoveled sidewalks — both still white, but the shovelled ones had a tint of gray or brown peeking through
the clacking jawbone of a bird’s beak — a blue jay?
the river was all white — if you didn’t know better, you could believe it was a field or a meadow
approaching from above, hearing the falls rushing over the limestone
kids yelling and laughing at the playground, one loud, high-pitched sound — was it a kid screaming or a whistle?
amongst the kid voices, a deeper, more knowing laugh — was that from a teacher?
the contrast on the creek surface: white snow with blackish-gray water
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?
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:
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?
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:
above the edge of the world / 8 jan 2024
10 Things
chirping birds
my shadow, clear and strong
shadows of trees in the park, soft and fuzzy
a shadow of the lamp post, sharp and menacing
someone who looked like Dave the Daily Walker from behind — a tucked shirt and not jacket, tucked into dark track pants — but wasn’t
the creek — bright white snowy surface mixed with fast, flowing water
the falls were gushing through the ice columns
a man with a bad cough near the overlook
a cold wind on my ears when I put my hood down
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)
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.
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
the hollow knocking of a woodpecker
the thumping of wheels over something on the road on the bridge above
4 stones tightly stacked on the ancient boulder
a section of the fence above a steep part of the bluff, missing, marked off with an orange barricade
the icy river through the trees — blue and white and lonely
daddy long legs at his favorite bench
shadows, 1: mine, off to the side, in the brush next to the trail
shadows, 2: a tree trunk, tall, stretched, looking like a dinosaur
stopping at the edge to put in my headphones, seeing a flare of movement below: someone walking on the winchell trail
the limestones still stacked under the bridge, still looking like a person sitting up and leaning against the bridge
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.
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:
Remember the Time/ Michael Jackson
I Don’t Remember/ Peter Gabriel
I Keep Forgettin’/ Michael McDonald
Try to Remember/ The Fantasticks
Don’t You (Forget About Me)/ Simple Minds
I Remember/Molly Drake I
Forget to Remember to Forget/ Johnny Cash
September/ Earth, Wind, and Fire
I Forgot that you Existed/ Taylor Swift
Veronica/ Elvis Costello
I Love You and Don’t You Forget It/ Sarah Vaughn
Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio/Ramones
Do You Remember Walter?/ The Kinks
Remember/ A Little Night Music
I Remember it Well/ Gigi
Forget You/ Cee Lo Green
(Love Will) Turn Back the Hand of Time/ Grease 2
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)
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.
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
mostly bare grass — the only snow were little mounds where the walking path split off from the biking path
the creek water was fast and steel gray
heard the train bells from across the road, then the horn tapping twice — beep beep
car lights cutting through the mist/fog
an older man pushing an empty wheelchair on the path
glancing down at the Winchell trail north of 38th street, seeing two people walking on a part near the edge, high above the water
I just wrote gray sky, no sun or shadows, but then I remembered there were a few patches of blue sky
overheard: one woman walker to another — ptsd, trump, spend time with family
smiling and waving to people I encountered — one good morning to another runner
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.
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!
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.
