Sun! Sun! Finally some sun! After days of gloom, sun and warmer air. Birds. Snow all gone. Greenish grass. It feels like spring. An unpopular opinion, but as much as I like this weather, I want some snow. Big fluffy flakes to run through. The silence only a blanket of snow can create. Crisp, cold air. I’m sure we’ll get some in February.
Ran to the lake for a specific reason: I wanted to see if Painted Turtle, the restaurant, has made any progress on building a structure so they can serve beer this summer. Nope — at least, now that I could see.
The lake still has a thick layer of ice, but the surface is wet and blue. Such a beautiful, intense blue. I don’t think I saw anyone out in the middle on the ice — did I just forgot to look? Or is too wet or too thin?
10 Things
Ran over the recently redone duck bridge, noticed it squeaking
a sparkling river
a truck making a racket as it went over a bump — the noisiest part were its rattling chains
no ice on the creek, no water in the swampy area in my favorite part of the path
what I thought was a teacher’s shrill whistle at the playground was a bird, calling repeatedly
still working on nokomis avenue, had to cross over to the sidewalk
lots of mud near the lake — again, no snow
walking by my favorite bench at the big beach, imagining myself sitting there this summer and my suit, waiting for open swim to begin
no poem on the window at the house that used to put up a poem on their front window
many friendly, kind people on the sidewalk moving over for me to pass
Earlier this morning, reading the Longfellow Messenger, I found an article about Edmund Avenue — the one I’ve mentioned many times here. The Edmund is after Edmund Walton who was the first developer to do a racial covenant on the properties he was selling. He did this in 1910. Some people want to change the name. I’m with them. Racial covenants are terrible; we had one on our house that we didn’t realize was there and just filed paperwork to get it removed a few weeks ago. And, it’s not in the past; our neighborhood, and all of Minneapolis, is still shaped by who could and couldn’t buy a home here. The article mentioned a site: Reclaiming Edmund
5.1 miles bottom of franklin hill 37 degrees / humidity: 91%
Fog. Mist. And is that a very light drizzle or just the over-saturated air? Felt cold in the beginning — that damp, gets-in-your-bones cold — but warmed up by the end of the first mile. Waved at Mr. Morning!, said Hi! to Dave, the Daily Walker. Smiled at many other people I encountered. The fog made everything seem muffled, relaxed.
10 Things, Water
beyond the flood plain forest, the river, glowing a silvery white, iced over
small puddles on the path
my forehead was damp for most of the run — not sweat, but drizzle or the damp
in the flats, the river, almost completely open, only a few chunks of bright white ice floating on the surface
the slick sound of water in car and bike wheels
stepped in some squishy mud where snow had melted on the dirt trail
some people down in longfellow flats, right by the river, laughing
hardly any snow anywhere, almost all melted
low visibility, enveloped in fog
my pink headband at the end of the run: soaked with sweat
Before I ran, I started thinking about a hybrid chapbook idea: combining some of my water poems with the moments in my log where they started. I want to call it Waterlogged. Initially I thought I would just use poems about swimming in Lake Nokomis, but as I ran, I thought about all the different water-related things I’ve written, about the fog (yes, this idea was inspired by today’s weather), the crunching snow, the gorge and erosion, sweat/humidity/dew point. Maybe even a 10 Things list about water?
Running north, I listened to the water and my feet crunching on the sandy debris on the trail. Running south, I listened to Dear Evan Hansen.
Stepped outside and felt the sidewalk — at first, it seemed fine, but at the end of the block I realized a lot of it was covered in an invisible sheen of ice. Oh well, too late to turn back. It was never really a problem, although it was pretty slick on the cobblestones at the falls. But I didn’t fall; barely even slipped! Waved a greeting to Santa Claus, heard the kids at the playground, noticed 2 people hiking below under the falls. I watched them step over the rope blocking off the trail.
Stopped at my favorite spot to put in a playlist. Before I started running again on the ice, I took this short footage of the falls:
the falls falling between 2 columns of ice / 23 jan 2024
10 Things Not Seen
the thin layer of ice on the sidewalk and the path
the exact temperature, but I knew it was warm because of how energetic the kids on the playground were
a runner, approaching. I thought I had seen a biker so I was looking for them, meanwhile a runner was approaching me and I had no idea. Saw him a couple seconds before I might have run into him
open water — the river is iced over
the light rail, but I heard its bell as I ran through the park
my shadow — too gloomy and gray
light rain falling — barely felt it either
no fat tires or Daily Walkers or bright blue running tights
the woodpecker knocking on dead wood in the gorge
my breath — too warm today for that!
before the run
I was just about to write that I’ve moved on from windows — my January challenge — to assays and not seing but in midst of thinking it I conjured a new version of windows that I’d like to ruminate on for a moment: a window opening. I like the slight difference that exists between an open window and a window opening. An open window is already open, but a window opening captures the moment when the air first enters and new understandings arrive.
Side note: Suddenly while writing this, I remembered a mention of windows that is almost entirely unrelated to the last paragraph except for it involves windows and not knowing how to open them. I just finished the gothic horror novel. A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone else reading this, but near the end some monstrous creatures are attempting to open a window but they don’t know how. If they did, it would be the end for the main character and her companions. I’ve already returned the book (bummer) or I’d post the actual description here of the strong creatures flailing and not understanding the concept of a window — it’s gross and disturbing and compelling and not recommended when you’re eating lunch (which I was).
I’m about to go out for a run. I’ll try to think about opening windows or windows opening.
during the run
I imagined I might have a few moments where something I noticed felt like a window opening. I didn’t. About a mile in, I decided to do triple beat chants with the word: op en ing/ op en ing — then, op en ing/wel com ing/ won der ing. Thought about the openness of opening versus the confinement of closed, or even closing. After chanting opening for a few minutes, I remember lifting out of my hips and leading with my chest — an opening of my body.
after the run
Walking back after I finished my run, I listened to The Woman in the Window. I heard this and it got me thinking:
“And what’s going with the rest of the block?”
I realize I have no idea. The Takedas, the Millers, even the Wassermen–they haven’t so much as pinged my radar this last week. A curtain has fallen on the street; the homes across the road are veiled, vanished; all that exists are my house and the Russells’ house and the park between us.
Not seeing: being so preoccupied/obsessed with something that everything else doesn’t exist.
Then the narrator continued and I thought some more:
I wonder what’s become of Rita’s contractor. I wonder which book Mrs. Gray has selected for her reading group. I used to log their every activity, my neighbors, used to chronicle each entrance and exit. I’ve got whole chapters of their lives stored on my memory card.
Before the run I had been thinking about what it means to not see. I’d also been thinking about what it means for me to see. I might turn both “Not Seeing” and “Seeing” into poems and submit them to Couplet Poetry for their submissions window next month. Anyway, listening to the first bit from The Woman in the Window, I suddenly thought about how an obsession, being preoccupied with something, like whether a neighbor has been murdered, makes one myopic. And then listening to the second bit, I thought about the new way I see by making note of everything, slowly, habitually noticing all the small, seemingly unimportant and peripheral moments. This is how I see now: moment on moment on moment.
Here’s a poem by Jane Hirshfield. It’s in her “assay” form, which I’ve been studying for the past few days. As I understand it, an assay explores, imagines, tries out different meanings of a word or a concept. Is this an assay about “moment” or am I’m misunderstanding the poem?
(added a few hours later): I almost forgot to mention that this entry is my 2000th post. Not every single one of these entries is about a run, but most of them are. Wow. When I started this project to document marathon training in 2017, I had no idea where it might lead! So happy I’m still here writing and running and noticing!
Hooray for warm (but not too warm) mornings and clear paths and flying geese and frozen rivers and runners in electric blue running tights and frozen seeps and weeping springs and brief visits from shadows and squirrels that don’t dart and not slipping on the few spots where there was snow and chirping birds and laughing woodpeckers and clicking blue jay jaws and running down hills then walking back up them and winter playlists and legs and lungs and hearts that work!
A good run. Before the run, I had a brief wave of anxiety — not for any reason. It just came on all of a sudden — feeling strange, tingly, finding it a littler harder to breathe. Peri-menopause and messed-up hormones, I’ve decided. Running helped, partly because moving always helps and partly because I told myself that I wouldn’t be able to run at a 9:30 pace for so long if something was really wrong with me.
I wasn’t sure how far I’d run this morning, but when I got to the bottom of the franklin hill I had an idea: run until you reach a frozen seep. So I did, which made my run a little longer than usual. What a seep! And falling water from a spring. I thought about crossing the road to get closer to the seep, but there’s no curb and the road isn’t that wide and cars drive faster here then they should, so I didn’t. Instead I took some video from the edge of the trail and then I stood still and marveled at the falling and frozen water, and then the height of the bluff.
frozen seep / weeping spring / 22 jan 2024
After the seep, I ran again until I reached the bottom of the franklin hill, then walked up while I recited ideas for a new poem about the idea of not-seeing. One connection to windows: not seeing a window (or glass) and bumping into it. I’ve read several poems that feature birds who run right into the glass and are dazed. Are there any poems about people? I suppose people mostly (always?) run into glass doors not windows. I’ve done it at least once, while I was studying abroad in Japan. The worst thing about running into glass is the grease smudge your face leaves on the glass. It just stays there, staring at you, embarrassing you — not just because it’s evidence that you ran into the glass, but that your face is greasy.
I’m wondering now: what are the most embarrassing things to not see?
Here’s a poem I found from poem-of-the-day that I’d like to remember.
Leaves that fall. Ought to breed Fire from stone. The world counts On our fall. Our solitude interests The butterflies And the lost gold Of the afternoons.
Ochre and blue walls And the fading peaks Of volcanoes And the sunlight Plummeting beyond The hills waken Leaves to their Lost trees.
To discover You still have A world To make At sunset Sobers The stones.
Love the brevity of this poem and the double-meaning of the first line: leaves from that fall and leaves that fall down. Arequipa is the second largest city in Peru (south of Lima, slightly inland — 100km from the coast).
bike: 30 minutes basement run: 1.15 miles outside: 7 degrees / feels like -10
A short run today because I’ve run every day this week so far, and because it’s windy and snowy and cold outside. Watched the first 20 minutes of Jennifer Lawrence’s comedy, No Hard Feelings, while I biked. I like her and I’m finding this movie funny so far. I listened to Taylor Swift’s Reputation while I ran. Tried out my new bright yellow shoes for the first time. I like how they feel and how they look. Quite possibly they will be the shoes I wear when I run the marathon next October. I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran — I focused on my arm swing and staying relaxed and lifting my hips. We turned the treadmill the other way a few months ago so now I won’t see my inverted moon on the dark window anymore. What strange image will replace it? I don’t remember any today. But I’ll have to look for one the next time I run on the treadmill, which will probably be on Monday; it might be arctic hellscape cold then.
architectural prop: By my Window, The Angle of a Landscape
her envelope poems resembled a window with curtains
a magic lens — the warped quality of 19th century windows: the world let loose, nature liquefied — her practice of looking/writing — up and out the window/down at the paper — descriptions as incremental fragments (A Slash of Blue! A Sweep of Gray!)
the window grid creates a pattern — 12 panes — reflected in the formal structure of her poems (degrees, steps, notches, plunges) — each word, line, or stanza is well-defined slot/pane that spotlights an image/emotional state/quality of experience — ’Tis this – invites – appalls – endows – Flits – glimmers – proves – dissolves – Returns – suggests – convicts – enchants Then – flings in Paradise – (Fr 285)
an act of undoing in each pane — nature loosening up (a neat frame in a formless center)
each pane a diagram of rapture
looking through/touching the glass, she connected with the artisans who made it, who left evidence of their labor –warps and striations that were once the artisan’s breath (windows made through glass blowing? wow)
glass blowing and imagery of fiery furnaces, metal flames, boiling, white heat
mid 19th century — glass consciousness
ED’s poems as her own form of glass blowing — creative process of transforming words into poems = making sand into glass into windows
the window grid creates a pattern — 12 panes — reflected in the formal structure of her poems (degrees, steps, notches, plunges) — ’Tis this – invites – appalls – endows – Flits – glimmers – proves – dissolves – Returns – suggests – convicts – enchants Then – flings in Paradise – (Fr 285)
I love this idea of how the windows influenced the form of her writing. Also, the combination of the orderliness/structure of the frame and the unruliness/undoing-ness of her words. It might be fun to use my windows — 2 sets with 2 panes each, a bar in-between the windows, one set in front, one to my right side — as the structure for a few experiments. As I write this, I’m thinking about Victoria Chang’s truck moving across each window frame and Wendell Berry’s black criss-crossed frame.
Here’s a wonderful ED poem that is mentioned in the article:
bike: 10 minute warm-up basement run: 3.5 miles river road, south/north 9 degrees / feels like -5 wind: 13 mph/ 24 mph gusts
Sometimes running when it’s this cold isn’t that difficult, especially when there’s sun and no wind. Today there was no sun* and plenty of wind and it was hard. Not all of the time, but often.
But who cares when the river looks like it does today?! Half covered in ice, mostly gray and brown, open and vast.
And who wouldn’t want to be out here when the geese are flying overhead, their honks swirling around all of us below, sounding mournful and harsh and wild?
And who isn’t grateful to have an almost empty trail — no thoughts or distractions, only a few other people, and most of them below on the lower path?
*I guess there was some sun, but it was hidden behind the clouds. The only time I noticed it was when I was running north up a hill straight into the wind — I saw the faintest trace of my shadow. Hello friend! If I wasn’t paying attention or if I hadn’t trusted what I saw, I might not have noticed her.
Listened to the cold as I ran south — what does the cold sound like? jagged breaths, sharp sounds suspended, silence. Listened to my Window playlist running back north.
Windows can certainly change lives in all sorts of ways. “Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door,” quips the English philosopher George Edward Moore. “Well,” says Julie Andrews, not yet breaking into song, but you never know, as she gazes out onto those hills alive with something, “when one door closes, another window opens.” She’s opened us onto the window of film, so how best to set the scene? “An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.” says Billy Wilder.
This article offered a lot of great suggestions for window songs to add to my playlist, which is now over an hour.
window playlist
Window/Fiona Apple
Window/Genesis
Smokin’ Out the Window/Silk Sonic
Keep Passing the Open Window/Queen
Lookin’ Through the Windows/Jackson 5
I Threw a Brick Through a Window/U2
When I’m Cleaning Windows/George Formby
Skyscraper/Demi Lovato
At My Window Say and Lonely/Billy Bragg & Wilco
My Own Worst Enemy/Lit
Junk/Paul McCartney
In a Glass House/Gentle Giant
Belly Button Window/Jimmy Hendrix
Look Through Any Window/The Hollies
The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)/Missy Elliott
One Way Out/Sonny Boy Williams
Silhouettes/The Rays
The Glass/Foo Fighters
Tip Toe Thru’ the Tulips/Annette Hanshaw
Waving Through a Window/Dear Evan Hanson
Open a New Window/Mame
Open Your Window/Ella Fitzgerald
Fly Through My Window/Pete Seeger
Today I put the playlist on shuffle and heard: 3, 5, 10, 16, 2, 9
an hour later: Not for the first time, I’m starting to read an article about Emily Dickinson’s windows. It’s really good, but dense, so I’ve always put it off. Will I get through it today? Maybe. Anyway, I started reading it, and encountered a map of Amherst with a note: The Dickinson house is circled in red.
Amherst, 1886
Can you easily see the red circle? I can’t. The only way I am able to see it is if I put my face up right against the screen and look at it through the side of my eye. Only then do I see a trace of red — the idea of red. Once I see (or feel?) the red, I can see a faint circle and I can tell that it’s red, but it’s not RED! but red?
The other day, Scott, FWA, and I were discussing the scenes in Better Call Saul that are set in the present day and are in black and white. Scott and FWA both agreed that those were harder to watch — they had to pay more careful attention — because they lacked color, which is harder because visual stories often rely heavily on color to communicate ideas/details. I said I didn’t realize that they were in black and white; they didn’t look any different to me than the other scenes, which are in vivid color (at least that’s what they tell me). I realized something: it’s not that I don’t see color, it just doesn’t communicate anything to me, or if it communicates it’s so quiet that I don’t notice what it’s saying.
Back to the image with the red circle. The main point of the image is to enable you to quickly and easily see where the Dickinson home is located in the town. If I hadn’t read the text below it, I never would have known there was a circle, and the main point of the image would be lost on me. This happens a lot. Things that are obvious to most people, aren’t to me. More than that, they don’t exist. Of course it’s very frustrating and difficult, but it’s also fascinating to recognize this, and helpful to understand it.
4 miles almost to franklin and back 15 degrees / feels like 0
Okay winter! A good run even though my legs felt heavy and tired for the first mile. And I was cold — felt it in my lungs. Saw Dave, the Daily Walker, and when he asked, how are you doing?, I replied: I’m cold! To which he said, that’s Minnesota or something like that. The sun was out today and I think I remember admiring my shadow. Heard some strange, almost strangled, noises down in the gorge. Probably honking geese, or maybe a feral kid having fun? Encountered at least one fat tire, a few walkers, no roller skiers. The walking path was covered in slippery snow, but the bike path was almost completely clear. The sky was blue, the trees were empty, the river was? I know I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what color it was or if it had more ice on it.
layers I started in: 2 pairs of black running tights; a bright green tank top; a previously bright green base layer shirt with the sleeves over my thumbs; a purple jacket zipped up to my chin; a pink and orange buff covering my neck and ears; a black cap with fleece lining and ear flaps down; gray socks; raspberry red shoes; 2 pairs of gloves — inner ones were black, outer bright pink with white stripes.
layers I ended in: 2 pairs of black running tights; a bright green tank top; a previously bright green base layer shirt pushed up on my arms a little; a purple jacket unzipped a few inches; a pink and orange buff around my neck; a black cap with fleece lining and ear flaps up; gray socks; raspberry red shoes; 1 pair of black gloves — the bright pink ones were in my pocket.
Listened to my breathing, cars, geese as I ran north. Put in my new “Windows” playlist (see below) on the way back south.
Sometimes you took the shape of an unseen mosquito, sometimes of illness.
Presumed most of the time to be passing, yet importunate as a toddler who demanded her own way, as a phone that would not stop ringing long after it should.
Unignorable pavement slap of the gone-flat tire.
All afternoon the thunder was interrupted by sunshine. All night the rain was interrupted by trees and roofs.
And still, as rusting steel is uninterrupted by dryness and hunger uninterrupted by sleep, interruption and non-interruption sat in the day’s container as salt sits in milk, one whiteness disguised by another.
As a fish in a tank is interrupted by glass, and turns, a person’s fate is to continue despite, until.
Death: an interruption not passing, weighing one hundred and fifty-eight pounds, carried on cut plywood with yellow straps.
Birth: an interruption between two windows, trying to think of any joke, any tune, that is new.
Between them:
this navigation by echolocation and lidar, the weathers of avalanche, earthquake, tsunami, firestorm, drought; a moment that sets down—gently, sleepily—its half-read novel on a bedside table whose side turned toward the wall stays unpainted, confident the story will be there again come morning.
definition of an assay
Assays began with a poem written after I’d reread Edgar Allan Poe’s stories while writing an essay on how hiddenness works in poems. Some of the qualities of essay exploration and prose step lingered in its music and mode of thinking. At the time, I was regularly seeing the journal Science. On the back would often be advertisements for half-million-dollar machines for performing assays. That word—close to essay and sharing its root in the idea of an attempt, a try—refers to discovering a thing’s nature by breaking it into its elemental parts. The poem became ‘Poe: An Assay.’ That approach to writing, of testing a subject for its discoverable parts, imaginative and factual, caught. I began writing others. ‘Judgment: An Assay.’ ‘Tears: An Assay.’ ‘And: An Assay.'”
assay (def): the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality
my own interruption
Sitting at my desk, in front of my window, half-listening to the latest Foo Fighter album, an interruption — lyrics: there is something between us/I see right through/waiting on the other side of the glass. A window interrupting me! It’s strange how interruptions work. I’ve written/taught/spoke about the learning to let the world interrupt you. Maybe it’s not about letting the world interrupt you — it will do that anyway — but being open to that interruption, letting it in — opening the window to it?
a few more random window references that recently interrupted me:
She Came in Through the Bathroom Window/ The Beatles
My Own Worst Enemy/ Lit — came in through the window last night (thanks Scott)
With all three of these examples, I’m thinking about the window and how it’s not a door. And in The Beatles and Lit examples there’s something not-quite-right, not normal, unacceptable about entering through the window. Using the window instead of the door is another way of saying something about your life is fucked up.
unrelated to these other examples, the scene of the window in The Amityville Horror– 1979 (iykyk) — I still think about that window falling on the kid’s hand sometimes. I’m not sure I’ve seen the whole movie — maybe I watched this bit on HBO and was too freaked out to watch the rest?
window pain!
Okay, now I want to make a window playlist to listen to as I think more about windows! (after the run): I did, and I listened to the first
Window/Fiona Apple Window/Genesis Window/Mountain Man Smokin Out the Window/Silk Sonic Keep Passing the Open Windows/Queen Lookin’ Through the Windows/Jackson 5
4.85 miles minnehaha falls and back 23 degrees / feels like 16
Yes! A much better run than yesterday. My legs were sore at the beginning, but the path was clear and I had enough layers to keep warm. As I ran south, I noticed the river was gray — pewter, I think — or was it steel?
Heading towards the falls, I listened to the kids laughing on the playground, the rushing water at the falls, and the ding ding dinging of the light rail bells leaving the station. Heading home, I listened to a playlist (10K 2018). First song: Vampire Weekend’s “Step.” Memorable line: they don’t know how to dress for the weather
10 Things
smoke coming from the house on edmund that always smells like smoke in the winter
a woodpecker’s laugh
pewter river
city workers across the road near becketwood — what were they doing?
the big dip on the edge of the biking path, almost to Godfrey, has finally been patched
a man — not driving an official truck or wearing an official uniform — emptying the cash out of parking meter kiosk near the old Minnehaha depot
traffic rushing by on hiawatha
the creek was dark and open, no ice, just a little foam
2 humans and a small dog, walking across the grass near the falls
a fast running speeding by me as I stood at my favorite falls spot and put in my headphones
the windows I encounter while running outside:
familiar houses, on the route I take almost every day — does a neighbor notice me (like I notice the runners and walkers that pass by my window) and think, there goes that woman running again, or maybe they mark their day with my run: she ran past, time for another cup of coffee
car windows — I can’t ever see in these windows — I never visualize people, just imagine what they might be thinking: I wish I was out there running or Why would anyone run in this weather?
John Steven’s house windows — are they boarded up from the fires last year?
Minnehaha Depot windows
Light rail windows — could anyone on the train see me from that far away
question: Do windows have to have glass to be windows? Is an empty frame enough? answer: Yes? one def: an opening especially in the wall of a building for admission of light and air that is usually closed by casements or sashes containing transparent material (such as glass) and capable of being opened and shut
The other day I wrote in my Plague Notebook, Vol 18: post-pandemic window poems? And here’s something great that’s not a poem. I found it on my reading list in the 21st spot.
The window as isolation, shelter, protection, connection to the outside world, hope, longing. So many wonderful things happening in this story (essay?)! Instead of just posting it, I want to comment on each window.
Second floor window, across: A man who plays the piano at all times of the day, his keyboard by the window. I see the staccato movement of his fingers but hear no sound. His expression is thoughtful and I can’t say if the notes are right, if he’s pleased, or what he’s feeling. Sometimes he plays in his underwear and I avert my gaze. He could see me if he looks up, but never does – it’s dusk and I have the lights on. When he turns his own light off and leaves the room, I catch a reflection of myself doing the dishes in the mirror at the back of his bedroom.
details that strike me: no sound — why not? too cold (or hot) to have the window open? he has headphones on? my choice: her apartment is sealed up tight — isolation; the piano player’s expression is unreadable or empty; the narrator averts her eyes; the narrator has her lights on, is on display, but he never looks; that reflection of herself in his mirror — wow
Window next door, a wall away from the pianist: Sometimes, a woman looking bored on her laptop. Most of the time the curtain is drawn, and in the darkness all I can see is the yellow that leaks out. This window doesn’t want to be looked at, so I leave it alone.
the yellow that leaks out; the way the narrator respects the bored looking woman’s privacy; again, no sound
Next door, downstairs: A living room I often catch in the cool half-light of the TV screen, watching the rippled colour move like the walls of an aquarium. Submerged and elsewhere. On the half-obscured sofa to the right I glimpse a hand slowly stroking a bare calf.
submerged and elsewhere; the stroking hand/stroked calf; limited vision: the cool half-light, half-obscured sofa, disembodied hand and calf
To the left, first floor: A guy in his twenties, probably, laughing into a video call, or he’s taking a selfie, or updating his Instagram story, I can’t be sure since he quickly lowers his arm and loses the grin. For a long time he types on his phone.
no sound, no clear understanding of what’s happening
In the street in front: The pavement is partly overgrown with weeds, and in the morning I watch a father and young son diligently clear them away. Through the glass I can’t hear what they’re saying. The boy gesticulates energetically from somewhere within the depths of a coat, hat, gloves, wellies. His dad laughs, and with thick gardening gloves brushes the rough shavings of soil out of the way. The boy is serious when he nods his approval – this is no game, but real community service.
an acknowledgment of the lack of sound: through the glass I can’t hear, people outside — only one window (narrator’s) between them
Further left, in a garden: A middle-aged man waters some flowers while a woman refills a birdfeeder with seeds. Soon they go back indoors and I can see nothing but the glaze of the white sky on their window.
women outside (one window), visible, women go back inside (two windows — the women’s the narrator’s), hidden by the reflection of sky in a window
From my living room window: Three veterinary nurses in green uniforms walking dogs on the grass by the graveyard. They play fetch and the dogs fire off into the trees – soon they all go, and will return tomorrow, and the day after.
even if the window tightly shut, can’t you hear the dogs barking? dogs are LOUD.
From the same window, later in the afternoon: A woman and a little girl stand in front of a fresh grave, neat and lined with wood. Some days ago I watched a man from the church shovel grass and dirt away, and another day five figures gathered while a priest read mutely from an open book. The priest and his book went away to the church (chimney smoking) and, among the guests, I stood silent at my window, part of the ceremony. Today only the woman and the girl visit the grave, holding hands.
the narrator was part of the ceremony
It is dusk again at the living room window: A magpie stops on one of the bony branches across, later a crow, a pigeon, a robin. In the distance I see the white bobbing of rabbits running among the tombstones.
Birds! a tree branch, a bobbing rabbit (nice work, resisting the impulse to write, bobbing bunnies
Then there is me, quarantined and at my nightly window, weaving my hair into a braid: I listen to the creaks in the kitchen and Google my building, searching for estate agent photos of the other apartments, trying to piece together a virtual whole. I imagine a flat identical to mine next door, inverted – maybe the silent neighbours I’ve never spoken to are also at their windows, looking out. Maybe the pianist can see us, our kitchens a wall apart, divided. In my living room the curtains are never drawn. At night I sit illuminated and hope, for something.
sound — a creaking kitchen, silent neighbors
And, one more window thing. I’m slowly reading through Wendell Berry’s Window poems. Here’s 15. So good!
15. / Wendell Berry
The sycamore gathers out of the sky, white in the glance that looks up to it through the black crisscross of the window. But it is not a glance that it offers itself to. It is no lightning stroke caught in the eye. It stays, an old holding in place. And its white is not so pure as a glance would have it, but emerges partially, the tree’s renewal of itself, among the mottled browns and olives of the old bark. Its dazzling comes into the sun a little at a time as though a god in it is slowly revealing himself. How often the man of the window has studied its motley trunk, the out-starting of its branches, its smooth crotches, its revelations of whiteness, hoping to see beyond his glances, the distorting geometry of preconception and habit, to know it beyond words. All he has learned of it does not add up to it. There is a bird who nests in it in the summer and seems to sing of it– the quick light among its leaves –better than he can. It is not by his imagining its whiteness comes. The world is greater than its words. To speak of it the mind must bend.
some thoughts:
WB’s glance can’t capture what the sycamore is
love this: lightning stroke caught in the eye as description of seeing
the tree emerges at a different pace — not fast/immediate/NOW! that we expect with our glances emerges partially — dazzle coming into the sun a little at a time
the man of the window
beyond his glances the distorting geometry of preconception and habit? beyond words more than what he has learned/seen/understands the bird here reminds me of A.R. Ammons and his discussion of language in garbage — see april 10, 2023
5.15 miles bottom of franklin hill turn around 30 degrees
Yes! A great run. A brief runner’s high around mile 4. At the beginning it felt cold, but almost early spring-like: chirping birds, soft shadows, humid air, clear paths. In certain spots the path was dotted with ice.
Passed a group of 4 or 5 runners twice. Smelled cigarette smoke. Watched a car driving over the I-94 bridge. Listened to the group of women laughing, cars passing, ice sizzling heading north. Put it Billie Eilish essentials on the way back — maybe I’m, maybe I’m, maybe I’m the problem.
Something to try today, from Richard Siken: one image
The heart of lyric poetry is music and image. Music is hard to talk about but image is easy. It’s not too late to start an exercise. Write down one image every day that was striking. It’s good as a resource to pull from for writing or just for remembering. Date them. >
Today’s image: sizzling ice on the river chunks? sheets? just starting to form, floating on the surface. I took a video:
ice on the mississippi / 5 jan 2024
Standing there, holding my phone, the ice was moving slowly downstream and sizzling. In the video, I can’t see it moving and all I can hear is the traffic from the I-94 bridge just above. I wish I just kept the phone still; it’s moving around too much. The sizzle sounded like the sizzle I heard in my head after I fainted last week. A sizzle or crackle or static-y sound. The movement of the ice was slow and gentle and persistent (or insistent?).
windows and doors
Yesterday, it came to me: windows and doors. That’s what the theme for January should be. Will it stick? Not sure, but today I begin by thinking about windows and doors as I ran. I held onto a few thoughts and recorded them into my phone right after I finished my run:
Windows as in the frame and how often I see what’s just outside of the frame because I feel it off to the far edge (mainly because of my heightened peripheral vision).
A door as being open — focus on what’s through the other door, the room on the other side, as opposed to the door as framing what you see. Whereas the window is about the frame and about this thing in between you and the is/real. The frame is language, our access to the real. The framing of something as a useful limitation, helping to focus a form. The window is a form where the energy goes, where it’s held in, so the poem still has heat.
I’ve collected door and window poems before on this log, so this isn’t a new idea, I’m just adding to it. Here’s a door and window poem for today — actually, an excerpt from an amazing poem by Victoria Chang:
Feb.10.2022 Today the river is in crisis, no horizon dares to go near it. Today my father is in a small jar. At dusk, I went into a painter’s studio, saw his stretched canvas on the table, white, empty. What are we without those who made us? May his memory be your blessing, people emailed me all week. The artist was painting a series of doors, which were so real that I walked through the one that was slightly open. Inside the room was my breath that I had held since January 13, an eyelid, a loose eyeball, the knob the eye fell on, the girl’s hands that tried to catch him, which were charred and still waving.
Feb.11.2022 The white truck went from one frame to the next and I thought of the time when someone lied about me. How day and night I cared so much about the lie that it split into two, one part went out the left window frame, the other out the right. Like the blue car that disappears at the same time as the white one, yet I can see both at once. When they burned my father’s body, I wondered if the eyeballs spread so far on each side that they could see Wyoming, these two panes, me on a small brown chair, looking out the windows, waiting for oblivion to travel through with its eighteen wheels and truth.
Feb.12.2022 At the beginning of our family tree was hope. Or maybe it was just an owl.
Feb.13.2022 The same wind was blowing here eighty years ago, always snapping families in half.
Feb.14.2022 If I keep the window closed, I am stuck inside with language as it buzzes back and forth, trying to get out and start wars.
First, so much of what she writes here (and in the rest of the poem) is echoed in other things I read earlier today and yesterday by Viola Cordova and Jake Skeets. Wow.
On January 4, 1966, On Kawara began his Today series, or Date Paintings. He worked on the series for nearly five decades. A Date Painting is a monochromatic canvas of red, blue, or gray with the date on which it was made inscribed in white. Date Paintings range in size from 8 x 10 inches to 61 x 89 inches. The date is composed in the language and convention of the place where Kawara made the painting. When he was in a country with a non-Roman alphabet, he used Esperanto. He did not create a painting every day, but some days he made two, even three. The paintings were produced meticulously over the course of many hours according to a series of steps that never varied. If a painting was not finished by midnight, he destroyed it. The quasi-mechanical element of his routine makes the production of each painting an exercise in meditation.1 Kawara fabricated a cardboard storage box for each Date Painting. Many boxes are lined with a cutting from a local newspaper. Works were often given subtitles, many of which he drew from the daily press.
In the article, I also found this classroom activity suggestion:
Subtitle Your Days
Many of the Date Paintings have subtitles. Some of these titles record personal anecdotes, such as “I played ‘Monopoly’ with Joseph, Christine and Hiroko this afternoon. We ate a lot of spaghetti” (January 1, 1968). Others record current events, some of them momentous, such as the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Still other subtitles refer to the Date Paintings themselves; one reads, “I am afraid of my ‘Today’ paintings” (May 29, 1966). For this activity, challenge students to record a subtitle for each day of the week for two weeks. These subtitles can be personal, historical, or even arbitrary. What is it like to capture a day with a subtitle?
I like the idea of combining Siken’s suggestion of an image a day with Kawara’s date poems and Chang’s reading of the date as a door into somewhere else. A date as door, an image as door.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 24 degrees 95% snow-covered
Today Scott and I are signing up to run the marathon on October 6, 2024. I believe that the third time will be the charm; I will finally show up to the start line.
Today’s run was a good way to start the new year. Last year had its terrible lows (Scott’s dad dying) and some wonderful highs (being nominated for a pushcart prize). What will 2024 bring? I’ve decided not to be scared or to spend too much time dreading next year’s election. This year is about running and poetry and finding new ways to connect with the world, words, people, a place.
The path was almost completely covered with a thin layer of soft, dry snow. Not slick, but a little difficult in the spots where the snow had covered the potholes. The trick was to notice where the snow was thicker, whiter: that’s where it had accumulated in the potholes.
Greeted a lot of other runners and walkers, noticed the steel blue river — open, no ice, listened to soft crunch of the snow, cars passing by, random voices, the collar of my jacket rubbing against the ear flaps of my cap.
Heard a runner say the number 27. Also heard a noise under the ford bridge that I couldn’t quite identify: brittle clacking which could have been ice or frozen leaves being moved by the wind. Heard the falls rushing over the limestone ledge and at least one kid being obnoxious.
Earlier today I was remembering words related to glitter, like glint and glisk, which is a gleam of light through a cloud. As I ran south, nearing Locks and Dam no. 1, I felt a glisk above me.
I don’t remember any bikes or birds or skiers. No squirrels or music. A few dogs.
Oh–right above the falls I noticed a person with a walker in a bright red coat. I almost called out, I love your red coat!, but I thought better of it. It’s quite possible that the coat wasn’t red but some other color. A strange side effect of my vision: the more wrong I am about something, the more likely I am to announce it to others. Why? I’m not sure.
random thing for future Sara to remember: Over the holiday, there’s been a series of cycle-cross races in Europe, which is biking on a looped course that involves mud and hopping over bumps and carrying bikes up stairs and ruts and steep hills and extremely tight turns. They keep coming up on youtube, and I keep watching them. Very fun to watch. I can’t imagine ever being able to do one of these races. So scary and technical and demanding!
one more thing: I had to return a few hours later to this log to add something I forgot. Geese! In my last mile, running on Edmund, I heard some honking so I stopped running and looked up. A few seconds later, a vee of geese high in the gray sky. A car passed as I stood there, on the edge of the road. Did they wonder what I was doing?
