5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill 6 degrees 100% snow-covered
A fine mist of snow. A few patches of ice, some slight slips. Cold. Fresh air. Sun behind clouds. For the first mile I didn’t see anyone else on the trails. Then, a few runners and walkers. No bikers or skiers. Sometimes I felt strong, sometimes I felt sore, all the time I was happy to be out there by the gorge.
today’s small victories: wasn’t sure how far I’d run but made it to the bottom of the hill. Almost stopped to walk near the top for a minute, but didn’t, kept going until the bottom. Ran from the bottom to under franklin — 3/4 of the hill — instead of walking like I planned
10 Wintery Things
patches of ice on sidewalk that wasn’t shoveled
cold air on my face — not quite cold enough to give me a brain freeze or to freeze the snot in my nose
small, soft flakes or freezing rain freezing on my eyelashes
the sharp thrust, grinding noise combo of feet walking on snow
the river: a mix of white ice and dark (purple?) open water
white, heavy sky
bird song: cheese burger cheese burger
the bluff on the other side of the river: a mix of white with bare brown branches
all of the walking trails were covered in a few inches of snow, some of it untouched, some marked by tracks — feet and skis
leaned over the wall in the flats and listened — a soft, sharp tinkling of snow hitting the ice on the surface of the river
Discovered Lee Ann Roripaugh’s awesome collection #string of pearls yesterday through her poem, #meteorology on poems.com. I’m thinking of buying the collection. Here are a few bits of it — it’s all tankas — that I thought of during my winter run:
yesterday’s snow sleeps :: late this morning in quiet :: white sheets / while rickety trees comb out fog’s heavy shanks :: of tangled, unruly hair
*
as gusted leaves buzz :: and whorl over snow-sugared :: roofs / but oh! this blown fluttering’s not a swirling :: of leaves, but winter sparrows
~
ugh! snotted hoody :: pinkened tinge faint litmus stain :: (yes or no / minus or plus) watercoloring :: blown-through tissues / torn storm blooms
*
wet-dark tree beaded :: in pearled bits of wintry mix :: excited finch swoops in manic parabolas :: to sip from the leaky eaves’
icicle /
the purple hour
2:40 am — dining room
too restless to notice or think about anything . . . purple mauve lavender orchid magenta is this restlessness a light or dark purple? whatever it is, it’s thick
3:15 am — bedroom floor
shadows slats moon carpet the slats are soft, barely visible the shadow of the lamp, its long neck, and something else. the cup? tin of nuts? nope the arm of the sofa the moon — so bright! how many more days of this moon? this clear sky?
5.3 miles bottom franklin hill 16 degrees 10% snow and ice covered trail
Less wind today. Cold, but not as cold as yesterday and still. Ran north on the bike trail. My lower back was still a bit tight and sore, my neck too, at least for the first mile. Then things loosened up. Mostly I felt relaxed and strong and glad to be outside on a clear path. I tried running on the snow-covered walking trail for a minute, but it was too uneven. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker, although it took me a little too long to say Hi Dave because I didn’t quite recognize him. Has his arm swing become less pronounced, or has my vision become worse? Chanted triples, first berries, then the world around me: big old tree/big pine tree/red stop sign/motorbike/rumblin’ truck/passing car
10 Things
a strong smell of weed when I stopped at a bench above franklin
orange — or was it pink or red? — bubble lettered graffiti under the 1-94 bridge
the river was mostly covered, but the surface ice was uneven — some thick, some thin, some white, some gray — I thought I saw a few footprints on it — is that what they were?
chickadeedeedee
empty benches
the faint jangle of a dog collar somewhere below me
for a few stretches, the trail had strips of snow or ice or both — none of it slick or wet or a problem
thought about how long the hill was from the bottom of lake street to the top — is it as long as franklin? how much less steep is it?
mostly solitary male runners, one trio of women
the air was cold and crisp and felt clean as I inhaled it through my nose, exhaled it through my mouth
purple hour
Before writing about last night’s purple hour, a thought: At some point early in the run I realized I was wearing a purple jacket. Of course I know it’s purple and I’ve noted that on this log lots of times, but today it clicked that it was purple. I started imagining my time by the gorge in the winter as another purple hour. Then a George Sheehan passage echoed in my head:
I must listen and discover forgotten knowledge. Must respond to everything around me and inside me as well….The best most of us can do is to be a poet an hour a day. Take the hour when we run or tennis or golf or garden; take that hour away from being a serious adult and become serious beginners.
Running / George Sheehan, 1978
There’s something cool about how I (unintentionally) wear purple during these purple hours — a purple jacket during winter running, a purple robe during winter nights. It’s also interesting to me that I didn’t choose this color, both of them were chosen by my mother-in-law. When she died, I inherited her purple jacket; the purple robe was a christmas present from her years ago.
I like this idea of multiple meanings of the purple hour and how I can call these purple hours just because they involve me wearing purple — my purple habit (get what I did there? habit = a regular practice and clothing worn, like a nun’s habit).
Later in my run, I thought about dark purple and how closely it resembles, at least to me, dark brown tree trunks or dark water. Purple as another name for dark.
And now onto last night’s purple hours: two of the times I woke up in the middle of the night (how many times did I wake up and get out of bed?), I wrote about purple. Once on the ball in my bedroom (1:49 am), one at the dining room table (3:06).
1:49 am
Dark purple door (open closet)
Rustling dog
Droning fan layers of noise
3:08 am
midnights (tswift) lavender haze
violet purple lilac lavender
tints/shades of purple = mauve, orchid, eggplant, heather, iris
purple noise inside my ear — when the heat turns off
the house settling, unsettling
the other room, not illuminated by the light of my computer screen: deep ,dark purple
rhw (note: what is rhw? what word was trying to write?) hum, buzz from inside me stirring up the air
purple robe/comfy
Reviewing this list this morning, a thought: does anything rhyme with purple? Looked it up: hirple, to walk with a limp. I can envision purple as the color of limping. Now I’m thinking of having a hitch in your step which reminds me of un-hitching and Mary Ruefle and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
unhitching: to crudely paraphrase Lévi-Strauss, unhitching happens in brief moments when we can step outside of or beside or just beyond — below the threshold of thought, over and above society — to contemplate/experience/behold the this, the what it is, the essence of everything, Mary Oliver’s eternity. In your run above the gorge, near the river, below the trees, can you unhitch? (from log entry on 31 may 2023)
unhitching
The possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists … in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society; in the contemplating of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.
A pigeon walking dainty in the street; The morning mist where backyard fences meet; An old Victoria—and in it, proud, An old, old woman, ready for her shroud: These are the purple sights for me, Not palaces nor pageantry.
purple prose
I just learned about purple prose: excessive, overly verbose, wordy, too many metaphors, similes, adverbs, adjectives, language that calls attention to itself and lacks substance, a drama bomb. Just realized that Lumpy Space Princess, who coined “drama bomb” is lavender.Also, remembering Lumpy Space Princess inspired me to find and order a Drama Bomb t-shirt.
According to wikipedia, purple prose originates with the Roman poet Horace in his “Ars Poetica”:
Weighty openings and grand declarations often Have one or two purple patches tacked on, that gleam Far and wide, when Diana’s grove and her altar, The winding stream hastening through lovely fields, Or the river Rhine, or the rainbow’s being described. There’s no place for them here. Perhaps you know how To draw a cypress tree: so what, if you’ve been given Money to paint a sailor plunging from a shipwreck In despair?
4.4 miles minnehaha falls and back 22 degrees 50% snow-covered
It snowed last night. 1 or 2 inches. By the time I went out for a run after noon, the sidewalks and bike path were cleared. I didn’t need to wear my yaktrax, but I did, so I was able to run on the snow-covered walking path. Fun! The snow was soft and slick but not slippery.
The first mile felt tough — my lower back was a bit sore — and I wasn’t sure I could make it all the way to the falls, but I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world to admire the view, then kept moving forward until I reached the falls. There was a moment in the 44th street parking lot where I thought about turning off and descending to the Winchell Trail to walk back but at the last minute I just kept going on the double bridge towards the falls. It felt less like deciding to keep going, and more like deciding not to not keep going, or not deciding anything, just continuing to do what I was already doing. I often think about and remember the moment before/ the moment of deciding to stop or give up or turn around or not. Once it’s decided, it’s over. Sometimes I have to stop, but other times I could have pushed through and kept going. One of the my goals: push through those moments.
There were at least 2 other people walking by the falls and one park plow. Anyone else? I don’t think so. It was quiet; no water falling, or creek rushing. Were there any cars in the parking lot? I don’t remember noticing.
The river was white and so was the sky and the sun. I stopped at Godfrey to let a car cross and noticed a BIG bird soaring above me. What a wing span! An eagle, maybe?
10 more things
Kids laughing on the playground
a few stretches of deep snow where the walking and biking trail split
the smell of cigarettes as a car drove by
bare pavement then a thin strip of snow on the edge of the bike path
thin, short poles, placed on the edge of the sidewalk to alert plows and people of where the path is
the rumble of a plow approaching in the park
the green gate above the falls — closed and locked
briefly running parallel to someone with a dog on the snow-covered boulevard between the river road and edmund
the falls, frozen, almost all white with one dark spot off to the side
the sledding hill near godfrey was empty but covered in snow, ready to be used by someone — maybe after school?
Read on a message/poetry board in someone’s yard: What are you doing to protect democracy? I initially wrote this in response: A great question, and one to ask, and try to answer, every day. But now, thinking about it some more, I don’t like the use of “protection.”
What are you doing today to support democratic communities? What are you doing to help and prevent harm? Or maybe: What can you do today to resist totalitarianism? What could you do today to make space for more stories?
sleep dreams attention distraction
I haven’t figured out my monthly theme yet, but I am orbiting around some things: dreams, sleep, insomnia, restlessness, distraction, non-thought, reverie, stillness, Anne Carson, JJJJJerome Ellis and stuttering, the space between beats or fully inside the beat. Swirling, looping, circling — not coming or going in any one direction, but surrounding.
Today’s cluster is inspired by recent encounters with:
1
Distraction is a time between times, a time in which we become momentarily subject to the non-thought inside thought.
Is it, in fact, good to pay attention? Whose purposes does it serve?
*
The loudest calls to attention have been directed toward subordinates, schoolchildren, and women. “Atten-TION!” military commanders shout at their men to get them to stand straight. The arts of attention are a form of self-discipline, but they’re also ways to discipline others.
*
Successful attention capitalists don’t hold our attention with compelling material, but, instead, snatch it over and over with slot-machine gimmicks. They treat us as eyeballs rather than individuals.
*
Is the ostensible crisis of attention, at bottom, a crisis of authority? Is “people aren’t paying attention” just a dressed-up version of “people aren’t paing attention to me?“
*
Ours is an era of obsession as much as distraction, of long forms as much as short ones, of zeal as much as indifference.
The best remedy for insomnia, as with most things in life, is learning to live with it. In time, we come to understand that the psychological cost of stressing over sleeplessness is greater than the physical cost of not having slept, and so we adjust. * Insomnia is a mark of the insubordinate imagination. * To be awake is to be alive. Mind racing at 3 A.M., we are in tune with what may be the truly unique, only-once-in-the-universe gift of consciousness. That’s some comfort. We’ll sleep long enough soon enough.
Breezy. Wind coming from the north. Sunny, too. Lots of shadows. Today’s run wasn’t effortless but it wasn’t hard either. Somewhere in-between. Listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist for the last day of the month. Even with my headphones in, I could hear kids on the playground across the road, some hikers talking on the trail below.
Listening to the songs, I thought about the tenderness of remembering and the satisfaction of forgetting. Also thought about how we all remember things differently, and most of us inaccurately.
10 Things
the river was a patchwork of white and gray
only a few lumps of snow scattered on the grass and the trail
slick puddles
a sagging fence, casting a crooked and forlorn shadow
BLUE! sky
a few of the benches were occupied — at least 2
my favorite bench, above the “edge of the world” was empty, so was the one near folwell
ran on all of the walking paths — clear!
the sparkle of broken glass in a pile of leaves on the street in front of a neighbor’s house
a chain link fence below on the winchell trail, illuminated by the sun, on the edge, at the part of the trail that is slowly sliding into the gorge (the rubbled asphalt stretch just past 38th street)
before the run
These evenings of long light Must be high festival to them. It’s the time When the light seems tender in the needles Of the pine, the shimmer of the aspen leaves Seems kindly on the cliff face, gleams On the patches and gullies of snow summer Hasn’t touched yet. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
Reading this description of light in this beautiful poem, I’m reminded of Wednesday’s afternoon light. Stepping out on the deck around 4, I gasped as I noticed the light on the bare trees, glowing a soft green. An olive green, Scott thought. It seemed to be offering a glimpse of the future when winter was over. How should I describe that light? Not tender — dazzling? a show-stopper? But maybe tender, too. The light was soft on the trees — bathing them in light? — coaxing out them of their dreamed of leaves in the forms of the green glow.
And the creek is flush With life, streams of snow melt cascading down The glacial spills of granite in a turbulence The ouzel, picking off insects in the spray, Seems thrilled by, water on water funneling, Foam on foam, existence pouring out Its one meaning, which is flow. (from The Creek at Shirley Canyon/ Robert Haas)
The glacial spills of granite? Water on water funneling? Existence’s one meaning: flow? Wow! I love this description of water.
Read, We Could Just Gaga Our Grammar, this morning and it got me thinking that I need to do some more strange, fun, playful experiments on here. Return to the erasures? Sentence scrambling? Pick something off of Meyer’s Please Add to this List list?
Turned randomly to a page in The Braille Encyclopedia and read “Body”.
The rest of the body works to compensate for what the eye can no longer do.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
Cohn discusses a sore neck and back, muscle spasms, headaches. Do I feel any of these things? The occasional headache. Starting these sentences, I had forgotten about the dizziness, then I remembered when I felt it — the world suddenly swimming for a moment as I tried to read and write in this entry.
Then she mentions feeling very tired —
A kind of tired that feels like most of my trillions of mitochondria have decided they’ve cooked their last energy-meal, turned off the stove, hung up their aprons, kicked off their pinching shoes, and gone to lie down somewhere. For a very long time.
The Braille Encyclopedia/ Naomi Cohn
I feel tired often — maybe not as tired as Cohn. I take naps, or fall asleep mid-sentence. I have the luxury of measuring my efforts, (and lowering my expectations), not doing things that are too draining too often. Shopping is draining, especially grocery shopping. A few weeks ago, I had to stop at the end of the aisle, hang onto the cart, and close my eyes for a minute. Too many things I couldn’t quite see, lights that were too bright. Deep breaths. This used to make me anxious, but now, with the help of lexapro and the understanding that this dizziness is caused by an uncertain and overworked brain, I don’t worry as much.
after the run
After discovering James Longenbach’s poem, “In the Village,” earlier this month, I requested his collection Seafarer from the library. Here’s part 4:
from In the Village/ James Longenbach
Of ghosts pursued, forgotten, sought new— Everywhere I go The trees are full of them.
From trees come books, that, when they open, Lead you to expect a person On the other side:
5.25 miles bottom of franklin hill 22 degrees / feels like 12 wind gusts: 29 mph
Sunny but windy. Shadows and shaking leaves. Like most of my runs lately, it felt hard. I briefly thought about stopping at the trestle, but then I kept going instead. As I ran down the franklin hill I remembered that I’d get to check out the frozen river. It did not disappoint! The coolest thing about the surface ice was the noises it made as cars drove by on the river road — that strange, echoey boom, almost like whales communicating, that happens when ice is disturbed — I have a link to this sound somewhere on the blog, but I couldn’t find it quickly. I’ll keep searching for it.
Listened to the wind, voices, and geese as I ran north. Put in mood: energy on the way back — “Baba O’Reily”; “My Sharona”; “Renegade”; “It’s Tricky”; “Cult of Personality”; “New Attitude”. Favorite line was from “Cult of Personality” — When a mirror speaks/the reflection lies. Also thought about “New Attitude” and the line, I’m feeling good from my head to my shoes — why not, good from my hat to my shoes?
10 Things
bright blue, cloudless sky
my shadow, sharp, running in front of me
2 geese honking high in the sky — I stopped running and craned my neck to watch them fly by
empty benches
ice on the path — a dirty brown, then almost amber when the light hit it just right
voices from somewhere below, cheering somebody
the river, covered in thick ice
a person with a fancy camera stopped by the railing, taking pictures
someone walking by in the flats, having an animated conversation with someone else over the phone
a strong smell of weed — did it come from the car that just drove by or the walker with 2 dogs?
G.C. Waldrep
During my “on this day” practice, I came across a line from the poet G.C. Waldrep:
I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.”
The Earliest Witnesses
I had posted it on 26 jan 2021 because I had just encountered it on twitter and in the context of a discussion of the soul. Today I read it and wanted to know more about what Waldrep meant. I searched “G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses” and found a post on the poet (and father of Jenny Slate) Ron Slate’s site, On the Seawall: On The Earliest Witnesses.
In the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus performs one of his most perplexing miracles. The narrator tells us that, after a blind man is “brought” to him, Jesus “put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him.” But the miracle doesn’t seem to take. For after Jesus asks the man whether he can see, the man replies, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” In response, Jesus lays his hands on the blind man’s eyes once more—a kind of second go at it—after which, we are told, “his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.”
This story comes to mind, unbidden, in the reading of G.C. Waldrep’s The Earliest Witnesses — the poet’s seventh collection — not only because the book speaks candidly about the deterioration of sight (among other bodily maladies) but also because Waldrep’s poetry mirrors the slow and partial revelation of sight that we find in this miracle. These poems both obscure and disclose: in some lines they show us “everything clearly” — in others, “trees, walking.”
“I strode into the woods in a brute faith,” reads the first line of the first poem, “certain the forest / would give me what I needed.” Then, in a characteristic move of obfuscation, the speaker withdraws into occluded seclusion, as if from fear of speaking too plainly. “If there was a mathematics / I was all for it, math being hunger’s distaff cousin.” Here we find that tension between clear vision and partial sight that marks both our opening miracle story and so much of The Earliest Witnesses; however, in this instance, we begin with sight, only to have it dimmed immediately.
I was immediately struck by the line in the post, I see people but they look like trees walking. That’s not quite how it works for me, but, with my vision, I can imagine seeing people that way, like trees walking. I want to read the bible verse the author is referencing and think about that some more.
Searching some more for Waldrep, I found an interview with him and this great discussion:
A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.
Squinting! Mishearing or misreading or mis-seeing! The squinting makes me think of a poem by Linda Pastan or a line (I think, I’ll have to check later) from Arthur Sze. The mishearing reminds me of something I encountered during my annual review (22 july 2024) a few days ago:
the Ten Muses of Poetry — from the writer, Andrei Codescru, in his book, The Poetry Lesson. I’ve never heard of Codescru — he’s great. I found the chapter his Ten Muses are inand read it. Funny and strange and great. I wonder, would I enjoy taking a class from him? Probably.
The Ten Muses of Poetry
Mishearing
Misunderstanding
Mistranslating
Mismanaging
Mislaying
Misreading
Misappropriating cliches
Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
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.
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!
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 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?
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
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
several runners in bright yellow shirts
two runners in white jackets
some kids laughing and yelling near the skate park just past the ford bridge, again heard, not seen
the view of the valley between ford and hidden falls — bare tree branches, then endless air, then the other side
a blue port-a-potty with the door ajar
the sound of water rushing over concrete at the locks and dam no. 1
a lone goose honking somewhere near the oak savanna
the contrast of wispy, dark branches against the light gray sky
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.
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.
Ran in the afternoon today. It’s warmer and darker and looks like it might snow. Everything was heavy and grayish-white. I wore less layers and wasn’t overheated: 1 green long-sleeved shirt, black vest, 1 pair of black running tights, a black headband for my ears, gloves. The trail wasn’t crowded, but the road was — a steady stream of cars. Did any of them have their headlights on? I can’t remember.
I remember noticing the river, but not what it looked like. Was it completely iced over?
Stopped at my usual bench and took a picture of it and the view below it:
the new ritual: visiting this bench and inspecting its slow progress of sliding into the gorge.
I wonder, can someone who is not familiar with the gorge tell that this bench is perched at the edge of a steep slope or that the tree line in the distance is across a great river?
More great winter running! Sometimes sun and sharp shadows, sometimes clouds. When the sun was behind a cloud everything looked sepia-toned. And when some blue sky peeked through it looked like it had been added in, like a photograph touched-up with color. I felt good and relaxed, except for when my left knee suddenly started to hurt — a quick, sharp pain that went away after a minute.
10 Things
the dull thud of a tool hitting something at a construction site — I can’t decide if is was dull like dead wood or something rusted and metallic
another thud, this one more rhythmic, from across the river
the water pooling below the falls was a faint green, like aged copper — patina?
the walking path was speckled or mottled with thin splotches of snow — where bare pavement peeked through it was brown and reminded me — and probably no one else — of a cow’s hide
there was ice on the river, but not thick — it looked like a slushy without the flavor
birds! I don’t remember hearing them, but I saw them flitting around from tree to tree
ran on the bike side of the double bridge — dead leaves were piled on the edge, and next to that was a strip of bare pavement that seemed to be narrowing near the top
at least one fat tire
a patch of open water, shining like glass, on the river — I stopped to admire it through a net of slender branches
the sharp and menacing shadow of the street lamp on the paved path
Rereading an article on the development of the Grand Rounds, I came across this line:
“I would have the City itself a work of art,” Cleveland explained.
A work of art. Yes! I’ve been thinking about the park space of the gorge as a work of art, created by Minneapolis Parks and the city, for some time. I’m envisioning it as part of a series of ekphrastic poems about how I see the gorge through/with my diseased eyes. Could these poems be part of the Haunts project, or is that too much?
Perfect running weather. Cold, but not too cold, calm, overcast. Clear paths, a dreamy, detached feeling. As I ran, I thought of a goal for this winter: continue working on running with a slower heart rate. I started this during the summer/fall with marathon training, and I think it helped me avoid injuries. This winter I’m thinking I should target 155-160. I wonder what fun experiments I can do while trying to keep my heart rate low?
10 Things
as I ran, I gave attention to my arms — when my form was good, I felt like my arms were blades scissoring the air
the river was half bronze, half pewter
2 walkers who were not together were both
wearing bright RED jackets
3 stones were stacked on the boulder — the one on top was barely balanced
the yellow leaves were thick on the part of the path that descends into the tunnel of trees
a roller skier bombing down the hill
a noisy squirrel rooting through the dry brush
the slabs of stone stacked under the franklin bridge always look like a person to me — they did again today, looking like a sitting person as I passed them on my way down, just stones on my way back up — I imagined someone playing a trick on me, first sitting there, but then after I passed, putting the stones down
some regulars I haven’t named yet, but that I’ve encountered for years: 3 older white men, walking, stretched across the whole walking path — is it the same guys every time, or different ones, all of them man spreading? That’s what I could call them: the man spreaders
rotting sewer smell in the tunnel of trees, close to where the city is doing some work
More work this morning (and afternoon), on my “And” poem. So far, I’ve written about the formation of the gorge (wanting to be somewhere else) and the designing of the Mississippi River Gorge park (to protect from overdevelopment and sell the gorge as a symbol of the water city). Now I’m getting into my love of the view, which is about what I see — softened, elemental forms, like tree line or water or white sand beach — but also what I feel — open, a veil lifted, a little clarity, freer and more able to breathe and move, to the other side (which stands in for many things, including St. Paul where my mom lived until she was 18, the place where people who died dwell, the normal-sighted and real world that I feel distanced from. I think the view is also about how standing above the gorge enables me to witness how it holds all of these things together, that it doesn’t divide but connects. There is not a gap between girl and world, but a space that can hold them together, along with water and stone, mothers and daughters, hear and there, now and then. These are all references to past sections of the poem.
4 miles minnehaha falls 49 degrees wind gusts: 25 mph
Wet. Windy. Slick leaves. Squeaks. A light gray sky. Singing pines. The usual puddles. White foam falls. Gushing sewer pipes. Brisk air. Mud.
Greeted Santa Claus (the regular runner whose long white beard reminds me of Santa Claus). Passed a man walking with one leg up in a boot on a scooter. Gave directions to 2 walkers — which way to the falls? follow the path, it’s over there.
The creek was a steel blue and rushing to reach the limestone ledge. A kid at the main overlook was jumping in a puddle. The green gate at the top of the steps leading down to the falls was still open.
Wore shorts and a pink hooded jacket. My legs were only cold for a few minutes. Too warm for mid-November. Today is the last day of warmer air. Tomorrow, below freezing.
I started working on the section of Haunts poem that I’m titling, And. Came up with a few lines while running north. Recited them in my head until I stopped near the Folwell bench and spoke them into my phone:
Before a Victor- ian’s great love for ventilation, there was water wanting to be something and somewhere else.
The ventilation bit is taken from an article about the origins of the Grand Rounds, and the Victorian is Horace W.S. Cleveland:
The concept of The Grand Rounds was born from Cleveland’s “preference of an extended system of boulevards, or ornamental avenues, rather than a series of detached open areas or public squares.” This was not only an aesthetic consideration: Cleveland had lost many possessions in the 1871 Chicago fire, and saw parkways as an effective firebreak in built-up urban areas. In addition, Cleveland stressed the sanitary benefits derived from parkways. Cholera, typhus, and other diseases plagued cities in the late nineteenth century. Parkways could save land from unhealthy uses and, reflecting the Victorians’ great love for ventilation, carry “winds . . . to the heart of the city, purified by their passage over a long stretch of living water, and through the foliage of miles of forest.”
Moist this morning. Wet sidewalk, wet leaves, wet air. Something was squeaking — my shoes on the leaves or the leaves on my shoes? Only one stone on the boulder, looking lonely and flat. The black stocking cap I mentioned yesterday was still there on the pole. Today I remembered that it was above the old stone steps. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker with a good morning Dave!, greeted Daddy Long Legs with a wave. He was with his walking partner again. Smiled and gave a head nod to another walker who I think I’ve mentioned before. They always wear a long skirt with tights, and most of the year, a blue puffer jacket. They have gray hair in a long braid. I looked it up, and when I wrote about them before (26 jan 2024), I described them as wearing a dress and tentatively named them, All Dressed Up.
Anything else? I’m pretty sure I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what I saw. No fat tires or roller skiers or geese — where are all the geese? — or turkeys. More YELLOW leaves, falling fast. Some sour sewer smells, puddles, empty benches.
I listened to squeaking leaves and thudding feet as I ran north, then my Color playlist returning south: “Not Easy Bein’ Green,” “Roxanne,” “Mellow Yellow,” and “Let’s Go Crazy.” Speakig of color, I discovered this excellent color poem yesterday afternoon:
There’s a rumor of light that any dark starts off as. Plato speaks here and there of colors, but only once, I think, does he break them down into black and white, red, and a fourth color. By then they’d reached for California high country where, knowing none of the names for all the things that grew there, they
began to make names up. But to have trained an animal to come just a bit closer because here, here’s blood, doesn’t mean you’ve tamed it. Trans- lations vary for what Plato calls his fourth color: what comes closest to a combination of (since they aren’t the same) radiant and bright–what shifting water does,
with light? Violence burnishes the body, sometimes, though we call it damage, not burnishing, more its opposite, a kind of darkness, as if to hide the body, so that what’s been
done to it might, too, stay hidden, the way meaning can, for years, until some pattern by which to trace it at last emerges. There’s a rumor of light.
I need to give more time to this poem; there’s so much I don’t quite get. But I love the discussion of Plato and color and what shifting water does to light.
5.45 miles franklin hill turn around 38 degrees wind: 13 mph / gusts: 27 mph
Sunny, windy, cooler. Wore one of my mild winter combinations: running tights, shorts, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, vest, gloves, headband that covers my ears. I overdressed. Had to take off the sweatshirt near the top of Franklin. A good run. I’m running 30 seconds faster per mile and feeling stronger in the cooler weather than I did when it was warmer.
Yesterday, I woke up feeling not quite right. I slept a lot during the day. Almost a sore throat. Took a covid test: negative. Still feel a little off today. Is it a cold? Should I cancel my annual check-up that’s scheduled for tomorrow?
I deactivated my twitter account and haven’t checked the news since the election. Mostly I’m not thinking about what is coming, and instead focusing on writing, trying to help my kids with their struggles, and living (temporarily?) in the world I’ve built through my practice.
10 Things
the surface of the river was burning white through the bare trees
forest branches creaking and moaning in the wind
one or two trees in the floodplain forest still green
bright pink bubble-letter graffiti under the 1-94 bridge
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
Daddy Long Legs walking with someone today — I think every other time I’ve seen him, he’s been alone
a pale blue sky with one or two puffs of cloud
a biker slowing climbing the franklin hill on the road, a car following behind impatiently then hastily passing him
an empty bench facing an open view — so much air and sun and softness
walking up the hill close to the trees on the slope, I noticed a blanket spread out, hidden in the grass — was someone sleeping in it?
For the first half of the run, I listened to the gorge and my feet and the wind. For the second half, I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist.
5.25 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 47 degrees
A great November morning. Most of the trees bare, almost everything light brown and steel blue. A few yellow leaves still on the trees. I felt relaxed and was able to run without stopping — until I needed the port-a-potty. Found a freshly cleaned one at the bottom of the hill, then ran back up it all the way without stopping. For the last 2 miles I felt strong and resilient and ready to resist.
10 Things
roller skiers — at least 3 of them, not together. All of them looked graceful and strong and ready for it to snow
the awkward slapping of oars on the water from a rowing shell far below
the bells of St. Thomas ringing briefly
more awkward slaps from oars, this time from a shell with 3 people. I heard them when I was at the bottom of the hill and watched as they angled across the river. One of them had on a bright yellow — or was it orange? — shirt
a man sitting on a bench, his back to the gorge, reading a book
faint voices getting louder — was it runners or bikers? both
the floodplain forest is open — no more leaves — I glanced down the steep slope to the forest floor
a runner on the other side of the road in black shorts and white tights
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a walker bundled up in a coat with a scarf
I had a thought about my Haunts project near the start of my run. I’m writing a lot about looping and orbiting, but I haven’t written about pacing back and forth — all of my out and back or turn around runs, when I cover the same ground twice, and stay on one side of the river. I’m thinking about the difference between restless pacing and cycles/loops/orbits.
I didn’t see any eagles or hear any geese. No regulars or fat tires or music blasting from car or bike speakers. No one singing or doing something ridiculous. Only one honking car horn. No chainsaws or sirens or leaf blowers.
Today I checked out Carl Phillips’poetry collection, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Then the War. Here’s an early favorite of mine:
The Enchanted Bluff/ Carl Phillips
You can see here, though the marks are faint, how the river must once have coincided with love’s most eastern boundary. But it’s years now since the river shifted, as if done with the same view both over and over and never twice, which is to say done at last with conundrum, when it’s just a river—here’s a river . . . Why not say so, why this need to name things based on what they remind us of—cattail and broom, skunk cabbage—or on what
we wished for: heal-all; forget-me-not. Despite her dyed-too-black hair wildly haloing her soulders, not a witch, caftanned in turquoise, gold, turning men into better men, into men with feelings—instead, just my mother, already gone crazy a bit, watching the yard fill with the feral cats that she fed each night. Who says you can’t die from regret being all you can think about? What’s it matter, now, if she learned the hard way the difference finally between freedom and merely setting a life free? As much as I can, anyway, I try to keep regret far from me,
though like any song built to last, there’s a rhythm to it that, once recognized, can be hard to shake: one of by fear, with its double flower— panic, ambition; two if by what’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?
I love these lines:
But it’s years now since the river shifted, as if done with the same view both over and over and never twice, which is to say done at last with conundrum, when it’s just a river—here’s a river . . .
I’d like to use, as if done with the same/view both over and over/and never twice.
I want to fit it into my 3/2 form and use it my Haunts section about looping and doubling back. Maybe something like this:
Occasionally the girl does not run on the rim, changes her route, as if done with the same view, both over and over and never twice.
I overdressed this morning in a long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, tights and gloves. The sun was warmer than I thought. Most of the leaves are off the trees and on the ground. The ravine near Shadow Falls was a beautiful rusty red. The thin creek running through it shimmered in spots.
It helped to get outside and be beside the gorge. It’s an exhausting time. Both of my kids are supposed to be in college this semester, neither of them are. They are each working on their mental health. It’s hard to see them suffer. On top of that, the impending election is terrifying. While I ran, I forgot about all of this.
10 Things
the bells of St. Thomas tolling twelve times as I crested the Summit hill
2 small bowls on a neighbor’s front steps, filled with full-sized reese’s peanut butter cups
a man walking a dog listening to talk radio without headphones — I couldn’t tell if it was about politics or sports
water falling softly from shadow falls
the river from lake street bridge: gray, rippled, a shimmering line of light near the east shore
a graffitied port-a-potty with the door very slightly ajar — was it open, or was the door unable to fully close?
the trees on the west side of the river near locks and dam no. 1 were bare and a fuzzy brown
the sudden start of sirens close by — a fire truck coming up the hill from the locks
the stinky mulch that had been piled on the edge of the path was gone
an opening on the bluff — what a view of the river and the other side!
3.5 miles trestle turn around 38 degrees / drips then drizzle then freezing rain
Happy Halloween. Snow later this morning. Wanted to get in a quick run before that happened. When I started it was only dripping but as I finished, freezing rain. Wore black running tights, a pink hooded jacket, a black winter vest, and black gloves. Running north I had the wind in my face. Running south, to my side. I enjoyed this run. Hardly anyone else out on the trail and cool temperatures. Winter running is coming!
Since I’m trying to finish an audio book that’s due in 2 days, I listened to it instead of the rain — except for in the last minutes of the run. I took out my headphones and heard water falling steadily.
10 Things
the usual puddles on neighborhood sidewalks: just past the alley, a stretch on the next block, a big one covering entire slab on 46th
bright headlights cutting through the trees on the other side of the ravine
a few stones stacked on the big boulder
under the lake street bridge: a red blanket stretched on the uneven limestone with a person under it, an empty wheelchair nearby
a small stretch of the river road between lake street and the trestle was flooded. It almost was cresting the curb
most cars slowed down for the flooding, but one didn’t — splash! — thankfully not on me
only one other runner out there
roaring wind
light gray sky
a steady, strong rhythm of striking feet
That wheelchair broke me open for the rest of the run.
Yesterday, Scott, RJP, and I voted early! Everyone at the polling place was happy and nice and excited to be voting. A great experience, even as it was difficult because of my failing vision. Before voting, we were required to fill out an absentee ballot form. Only the highlighted parts, the person who handed us the form instructed. The problem: I can’t see yellow, and that was the color of the highlighted text. RJP had to point out the sections. Scott was unsettled as he was reminded of how bad my vision is getting. At first, when I looked at the ballot, I couldn’t quite make sense of it, but after a moment, slowly, I could read the different categories and names. I thought I was filling in the entire bubble (Harris/Walz, OF COURSE!), but when I double- then triple-checked it, I had only filled in half of it. Another few times, and I finally filled it all in.
water section of haunts
Wrote this bit about the hidden cut-off wall in downtown Minneapolis that was put in place in 1876 and still holds the river back from breaking through the last bed of limestone:
A century and a half later, the concrete, hidden deep*, still stands and the river, ever restless*, has not stopped trying to move past it. Water will flow where water wants to go, under over through. Near the gorge the girl beholds its quiet refusal to be contained.
*should I cut these extra bits?
I thought about the idea of water going where it wants to go as I ran through the rain, navigating the streams and puddles.
3.1 miles locks and dam no. 1 and back 61 degrees / humidity: 80%
High today of 78. Tomorrow 72. Halloween 49. As Scott says, It’s always cold on Halloween. I felt overheated during the run. Face burning and dripping sweat. I had been planning to do a 10k — the Hidden Falls loop — but it felt too warm. Maybe on Thursday. I wore black shorts and a darkish blue short-sleeved shirt. The same thing I wore for the marathon.
I listened to an audio book, The God of the Woods, so I was distracted as I ran. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
an intense, sweet and sour and woody smell as I ran by a pile of wood chips at the edge of the trail
tall piles of wet leaves at the end of the street, waiting for the city workers to return and scoop them up in their truck
beep beep beep — a city truck backing up
3 or 4 stacked stones on the ancient boulder
a group of bikers, all wearing bright yellow long-sleeved shirts
crunch crunch crunch — my feet running through a blanket of leaves on one side of the trail
a faint shadow on the sidewalk, cast from the light of a weak, cloud-covered sun
someone sitting on a bench near the overlook, wearing dark clothing
the water fountain near 36th appears to still be on — the st. paul ones are already turned off, when do they turn off the minneapolis ones?
the clicking and clacking of a roller skier’s poles and the bright blue of their shirt — did I see this today or on my walk yesterday afternoon?
more on the water section of haunts
I’m still gathering ideas and resources for my water section. Here’s another one:
Though the river has always been dynamic, it looks very different than it did just a few centuries ago. In the past 175 years, people began making major engineering changes to the river in attempts to harness it for industry. Before we started building mills, dams and locks, the Mississippi here was a wild and free-flowing river.
Rather than the series of dammed reservoirs we have today, the river was a braided channel with at least a dozen islands between the falls and Bdóte, where the Minnesota River enters the Mississippi. The river had rocky rapids, gravel bars and beaches, fast and slow spots, deep and shallow spots and floodplains.
Possibly to put beside this, a line from a poem I revisited this morning:
And if the world has ceased to hear you, say to the silent earth: I flow. To the rushing water, speak: I am (from Let this darkness be a bell tower/ Rainer Maria Rilke)
I’ll take this weather every day. Sunny and cold enough to not overheat but not cold enough to feel cold. Wore shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, and a sweatshirt. Took the sweatshirt off at mile 3. Ran much faster and for longer without stopping than I have recently. Was greeted by Mr. Holiday near the beginning of the run — good morning! Heard some voices down below — rowers? hikers? My right kneecap shifted a few times as I ran. At first, I was worried and thought, usually that only happens when I walk, but then I remembered that in the fall my kneecap can move around some. Is it the colder weather?
I ran the first 5k without stopping, then walked a little before starting again. I turned on the metronome at 175 and listened to it as I ran up the hill. Then I switched to a Billie Eilish playlist. I was hoping that listening to the metronome would get me inside of the beat and open me up to noticing and feeling more, but I couldn’t quite get there. I could hear that I was in time with the steady click, but I couldn’t feel that moment when we were fully in sync, when the striking of my feet was the beat happening.
10 Things
more leaves off the trees, more open air above the gorge to view — bright and looking almost hazy. Was that the air or just an effect of how bare and un-green the other side was?
the bright, silvery reflection of the sun off a bike’s mirror — the bike was not moving, but was parked by a bench and 2 people
fluttering leaves in front of me, showing me that the wind was at my back
the leaves hovered in the air, one of them long enough for me to touch it
a roller skier in all black
another roller skier in a bright yellow long-sleeved shirt
signs and port-a-potties left over from yesterday’s race
the seep in the flats was seeping enough to have left a big wet spot on the road
vision error: got too close to the edge of the trail and hit my face on a branch, then ran right over another pile of branches and almost tripped
so many leaves on the path, covering holes and cracks and bumps — rolled my ankle on a bump that I couldn’t see
Before the run, I listened to a recording of a draft of a section of the poem I’m working on and had some good ideas for revisions. Very excited about how my Haunts poem is coming together!
Wonderful weather for running! Not too cold, but cold enough to not overheat. The color of the day: yellow. I’m sure there were orange and red leaves, but all I remember were the bright yellow ones. Another color I remember: glitter — on the water, among the fluttering leaves. Seeing the low water in the creek on Monday, I wondered if the falls would even be falling. They were, but no gushing or roaring.
10 Things
laughing kids at Dowling Elementary
the oak savanna is still mostly green
a sidewalk covered in dry, yellowed pine needles
a person taking a selfie with their dog by my favorite overlook at the falls
the man who empties the parking kiosks — I’ve seen him several times before and wondered why he comes in a regular (unmarked) car and how many coins he collects
the creek was higher than in past falls when bare rock was exposed
instead of a rope blocking the steps down to the falls, which is easy to climb over, Minneapolis Parks has added a green metal gate
the shadow of some leaves falling to the ground, looking like the shadows of birds
those same falling leaves looking like brown snow
the swinging shadow of my ponytail
pines and Basho
I ran over yellow pine needles covering the sidewalk at the start of my run and thought about Basho. So I looked up “basho pine” and found this line:
Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo. Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.
A poem I was working on yesterday (and submitted to a journal for consideration), starts this way:
It begins here: from the ground up, feet first, following.
The following I am referring to is not simple repetition, even as it literally is about following trails already made by past feet, but seeking what past feet sought: connection, contact, familiarity with the ground/land and how it has been shaped.
ghosts and zombies
My plan for this month was to focus on Zombies, but between a kid crisis, the marathon, and a poem that insisted on being reworked, I haven’t given much attention to them. Maybe two other reasons: I don’t really like zombies, and I’m still thinking about ghosts.
from Circle / Dana Knott
human obits in the process of being written ghostly obits in the process of being read
Here’s what I wrote on August 1, 2024 that got me thinking about zombies:
On Ghosts V. Zombies/ Suzanne Buffam
Soul without a body or body without a soul? Like choosing between an empty lake And the same empty lake.
For the past few years, I’ve devoted a lot of attention to ghosts and haunts, but I’ve rarely thought about zombies. This poem is making me want to think about them now. So many directions to go with it — the relationship between the body and the soul or the body and the spirit or the body and the mind; how, because I can’t see people’s faces or make eye contact, they look soulless to me — I’m a ghost among zombies; Alice Oswald and the Homeric mind — our thoughts traveling outside of our bodies; Emily Dickinson and the soul that wanders; the fish in us escaping (Anne Sexton) or the bees released, returned to the hive/heaven (Eliot Weinberger).
I clicked on the ED link and read my entry from march 19, 2024. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, including a reference to Homer, but not the poet, the cartoon character, Homer Simpson. It’s the clip where his brain escapes his body to avoid listening to Ned Flanders talking about the differences between apple juice and cider (if it’s clear and yella, you got juice there fella, if it’s tangy and brown, you’re in cider town). Wow.
taking it slow
Reading the “about this poem” for poets.org’s poem of the day, Dead Reckoning, I encountered this line:
This poem began as a long sequence but arrived at this stripped-down form after fifteen years of off-and-on revision.
15 years of off-and-on revision! I’m only on year 3 of my Haunts revisions. I’m glad to know that other poets sit with some of their poems for a long time.
After finding this, I read an old entry from October 16, 2021, and found this:
“I am slow and need to think about things a long time, need to hold onto the trace on paper. Thinking is adventure. Does adventure need to be speedy? Perhaps revising is a way of refusing closure?…”
Rosemarie Waldrop
This slow time reminds me of Lorine Niedecker and what she writes in a letter to her poet-mentor, Cid Corman, while working on her poem, “Lake Superior”:
Cid, no, I won’t be writing for awhile, and I need time, like an eon of limestone or gneiss, time like I used to have, with no thought of publishing. I’m very slow anyhow . . . . I’m going into a kind of retreat so far as time (going to be geologic time from now on!) is concerned . . . .
The last long run before the marathon next Sunday. Just one more week and then I’ve made it to the start line! Not easy, but not hard either. My first time running this far into downtown — past the Stone Arch Bridge — in years. Already crowded at 9 am on a Sunday morning. Sunny, warm. Lots of sweat.
Listened to an audio book, The Marlow Murder Club, so I was distracted. Can I remember 10 things I noticed?
10 Things
near the seep/spring in the flats, the road was all wet
rowers! heard: coxswain’s voice
some more red leaves higher in the trees
the St. Thomas bells chiming at least 2 different times
roller skiers: a pair + a few individual skiers
running straight into the sun — difficult to see anything
the soft sand on the dirt path near the Hennepin Bridge
a single, brown leaf fluttering to the ground in front of me
thin foam on the surface of the river
blue, cloud-free sky
No music blasting from bikes, no Doppler effect, no sirens, no stinky trash or sewer smells, no geese, no darting squirrels, no turkeys, no Dave the Daily Walker. No chafing (my old running bra was scratchy me up — lots of small cuts and little scars, but no bleeding), no unfinished business, no bathroom or water stops. No thoughts, no lines of poetry popping into my head, no epiphanies, no problems solved. No yelling, no getting irritated, no sliding kneecaps. No goldenrod, no swarming gnats, nobody calling out encouragement. Just me and legs and lungs and hips and river.
*river road, south/minnehaha falls/minnehaha creek path — past lake hiawatha, lade nokomos, the bunny/lake harriet/william berry parkway/bde maka ska and back
20 miles! The first half of it was fine, then I had some unfinished business and no porta potty for miles. I had to wait 3, or was it 4?, miles before I reached one at lake harriet. Then I went to another one at bde maka ska. I should have returned to the lake harriet one again before heading out into the porta potty dead zone, but I didn’t. Soon, it was difficult to run, so I did more walking than running for the rest of the time. Finally at the lake nokomis pickleball courts, another porta potty! As I waited to use it, I appreciated how lively and crowded it was: packed pickleball courts and playground. It’s great to see people using the park so much. In terms of the unfinished business, why is it such a problem? It is the cliff blocks I’m taking every 3 miles?
I listened to a cozy murder mystery — The Marlow Murder Club — which seems like a pale imitation of the Thursday Murder Club, but was a good distraction. I took out my headphones between the bunny and lake harriet and listened to the creek and a wailing kid.
20 Things
sparkling river water through the trees
heard, not seen — laughing kids across the creek — joyful exuberance
minnehaha creek — first calm and flat, then bubbling, then gushing
the path by nokomis, which was closed for the summer, has reopened — no more running on sharp gravel!
early, around 8:30, the pickleball court was already filled
a few barks from a dog, then a strange, terrible whining noise that I think (hope) was a machine and not an animal
a hopping squirrel — so graceful and fast, moving across the shaded grass
2 adults, an upset kid, and a stroller under the bridge
more slashes of red, but not much color anywhere else
heard, not seen — more laughin exuberant kids playing at the creek at the spot where the tall, pedestrian bridge crosses over to the other side of the creek
lake harriet was crowded — difficult to dodge walkers with dogs coming both ways
a beach with no buoys, an empty lifeguard’s chair
a woman adjusting her hiking poles, almost whacking me with them
taking william berry parkway to reach bde make ska, running down a steep hill
a striking contrast: waving blue water with bright green grass
images of butterflies imprinted in the sidewalk
a honking noise, sounding like a big ship — what was that?
a flotilla of sailboats, all with white sails
a real bunny hopping through the grass / a bronze bunny beside the creek path trail
a single, small leaf, floating under the duck bridge as I crossed it
20 miles was difficult and uncomfortable, but not terrible. I can definitely go farther in 2 weeks. During the last mile, I kept smiling, proud of myself for what I was accomplishing and how far I’ve come since getting injured during marathon training in 2017.
5 miles bottom of franklin turn around 70 degrees / dew point: 63
So much sweat! The bill of my cap, the end of my ponytail, the tip of my nose dripping before I finished the first mile. Ran 3 without stopping, then walked until my heart rate was down to 135. Started running again to the metronome at 175 and finished with my winter playlist — time for a new playlist!
I liked running to the metronome (through my headphones, from the metronome/tuner app on my phone). I was able to match my foot strikes with the beat fairly quickly, but it took a few minutes for it to lock in. When that happened, I could feel the transformation from the edge of the beat (just before or after it) to the deep center of it. My foot strike seemed different, more solid and strong. The beat sounded different, less generic and more connected to a physical source (my foot). And I felt different, inside the beat, no longer a body but that steady clicking sound. Very cool.
It’s not quite the same, but I’m thinking of myself as Annie Dillard’s bell being struck. Also, Emily Dickinson and these lines:
As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here –
10 Things
slashes of red in the bushes
a pinkish-orangish clump of leaves
almost all green in the floodplain forest
a shimmering circle of light: the sun on the river through a gap in the trees
a steady stream of commuting cars
mostly overcast, with occasional sun, enough sun for me to see my shadow as I walked home
at the beginning of my run, a for sale sign in a front yard, by the end of my run, it was gone
running down franklin, the trees were a yellowish green
at least one roller skier — maybe 2, unless it was the same skier
the bright, generous smile of a woman walking past me
Yesterday, I came across this cool poetry project, The BardCode Project:
In the BardCode Project Gregory Betts has analysed and mapped the rhyme patterns within Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Shakespeare built his famous sonnets by a unique sound pattern of rhymes in the final syllable, the tenth column, of each line. Betts asks, and answers, the question: What was Shakespeare doing in the rest of the sonnet?
The BardCode project maps out the full sound pattern of rhymes in all ten columns across all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Colour coding these sound-codes results in a visual text rich with the sonic patterns of the poems. Suddenly, for the first time, you can see the BardCode.
18 miles river road / minnehaha creek / lake harriet / lake nokomis / minnehaha falls 56 degrees
18 miles! I’m tired now, but it wasn’t terrible and I felt good for much of it. The last 4 miles were harder, but not impossible. When I finished, I felt like that was all I could do, but I know I’ll be able to do more when I run my 20 miler in a few weeks. My average pace was 75 seconds faster per mile than last week during my 16 miler. Nice!
While I ran, I listened to Death on the Nile. Almost 3 1/2 hours of it and the main character hadn’t even died yet! Well, her body was just about to be discovered when I turned it off at the end of my run. Maybe I’ll listen to the rest of it on my 20 miler?
I think this is the first time I’ve run all the way to Lake Harriet since I was training for the marathon in 2017. As I ran, I thought about how grateful I am to be still running and to have another chance to run the marathon. It’s taken 7 years, and almost 7000 miles, to get here. Wow!
18 Things
a crowded trail, with lots of runners and 2 roller skiers, under the ford bridge and nearing the falls
creak creak creak — the sound of the wood on the duck bridge as I ran over it
several dogs barking frantically on the other side of the creek
the bronze bunny — no scarf or t-shirt or anything on it today
a rushing, high creek at one spot, a calm sparkling creek at another
passing over the creek on a tall bridge, looking down at the rushing water
hearing some kids laughing on the other side of the creek, crossing and bridge and seeing them jumping around
loud cheers at Lake Harriet — a running race — decided to turn around early to avoid it
a person sitting on the wall of the weir near lake nokomis, fishing
2 more people fishing on the shore of the lake nokomis — one in a portable chair, the other on a cement bench
a paddle boarder in the water just off the little beach
giant images of monarch butterflies on the pickleball fence for yesterday’s monarch festival
view from cedar bridge — lake nokomis in a blue shimmer
a young kid on a bike, waiting at the top of the hill near 28th. after I passed by, he called out to his friend, it’s clear now, you can go!
running over gravel near nokomis avenue, my foot striking down on a sharp rock — ouch!
encountering 2 surreys near 38th
an event — maybe sponsored by Friends of the Mississippi River? — at the welcoming oaks. there were tents and people and signs and (maybe) ice cream
after finishing my run I could hear drums playing across the road at the welcoming oaks
added an hour later: I just remembered the sound of the wind in the trees. In certain stretches, it sounded like water falling. Briefly I wondered, is that wind or water, but then I noticed that where I was there wasn’t any water that would make the noise. No falls or ravines or seeps. A beautiful, comforting, calming sound, that wind!
16 miles lake nokomis — 2 loops / minnehaha park / ford bridge 60 degrees
16 miles! My longest run ever, I was slow, it was difficult, I walked a lot, but I did it. Ran over to Lake Nokomis and around it twice, then took minnehaha creek path to the falls park all the way to the fort snelling trail. Turned around, ran over to the Veterans home, through Waibun, over the ford bridge, up to the overlook, then back over ford.
For the first hour, I listened to the gorge, the creek, the lake, and people I encountered. For the rest of it, I listened to an audiobook — Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death. One of the characters in it is named Andrew Pennington and it took me several miles to pay enough attention to process that and realize that it was a reference to “Uncle Andrew” — Andrew Pennington in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.
16 Things
at one spot, the creek was bubbling, burbling, gurgling
at another spot, it was rushing and gushing
and at a third spot, it was glittering in the sunlight
a small yippy dog across the creek — heard, not seen, so I guess it could have been big but it sounded small (and annoying) — losing its shit for a minute — yip yip yip yip yip
a fishy smell at the lake that was surprisingly pleasant — smelled like summer or vacation
the lake water was blue and flat and empty
encountering another runner with her dog on the creek path — she called it, What are you training for? me: the marathon her: good luck!
the pickle ball court was full — thwack! thwack! thwack!
from the cedar bridge the water was smooth with just one bright spot from the sun
one kayak gliding across
a group with fishing poles, kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the path
crossing the parkway under the mustache bridge, avoiding where the asphalt had erupted — huge, ankle-twisting craters
the flowers at Longfellow Gardens! Orange, pink, yellow, red, soft green! Wow
Waibun park was full of Labor Day visitors — at picnic tables, the splash pad, on the playground
heading down the short hill between ford and the locks and dam no. 1 — the few patches of light were glowing . . . pink — 14 miles into my run, was I hallucinating? No — the light must have been filtering through some reddening leaves
2 women with dogs, stopping and kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the narrow duck bridge
It was crowded on the trails, but I only remember how kind people were. Waiting for me to pass, not hogging the path, calling out encouragement.
Like I mentioned above, my pace was slow — over 12 minutes/mile, but that’s fine with me. The marathon is not about time, but pushing through and proving I can keep going when it seems too tough.
Recently read:
I feel like poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.
John Ashbery
I’d like to do something with this idea of the underground stream, especially in relation to daylighting — the process of bringing streams buried in concrete and under city infrastructure back into the light.
added, 3 sept 2024: I forgot until today something else I’d like to remember — seeing steam coming off of my face, looking like my breath, the combination of sun, humidity, a warm body, and cool air (I think)
3.1 miles river road, south/north 77 degrees / dew point: 75
Heat advisory. Today is one of those days that makes me glad that fall is coming, especially since I can’t swim anymore. I’m looking forward to cooler runs — please come soon. I heard a pro runner say once that humidity is a poor man’s altitude. I wonder, since my body doesn’t tolerate humidity well, would it be the same with altitude? Probably.
Today is RJP’s first day of college classes. It has worked out for her to regroup and not stay in the dorms until she’s ready because her dorm doesn’t have air conditioning. Even if she was enjoying the dorm, she probably would have come home until the heat breaks anyway.
10 Things
exposed roots everywhere on the dirt trail, difficult to navigate
one short stretch of the trail had loose, sandy dirt that my feet sunk into
forecast predicted partly cloudy, but the sky was cloudless and burned a bright blue
car after car after car on the river road — this is often the case at 8, which is when I started my run
loud waves of cicada buzz
noisy bullfrogs and crickets in the marshy meadow just past the ford bridge
more bikes than walkers or runners
the dirt path into the small wood by the ford bridge: a deep, cool green
a flushed, sweaty face
a woman in a big straw hat and a pink something — I can’t remember if it was her shoes or pants or a shirt; I just remember pink — sitting on a bench, her back to the gorge
today’s view from my window
On august 26, 2023, I wrote about a big spider outside of my window. She’s back. She’s huge. And she’s just hanging there in mid-air. I know there’s a web, but I can’t see it, so I like imaging she’s levitating. I was going to write that she’s not moving, but then the wind stirred her, and then I noticed a small fly caught in her web. Soon, she crawled to it and now she’s doing whatever spiders do to their prey. If it didn’t hurt my head to stare and try to see what is happening, I could watch her for hours.
I looked for a Mary Oliver poem about spiders, but instead found a blog post talking about spiders and their patience and referencing a poem by MO that I haven’t read before:
My work is loving the world. Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird— equal seekers of sweetness. Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums. Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn? Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me keep my mind on what matters, which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished. The phoebe, the delphinium. The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture. Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart and these body-clothes, a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam, telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.
12 miles franklin-ford-past hidden falls 66 degrees / showers
12 miles! It took a long time, but I did it. And, other than needing to go to the bathroom, I felt good at the end.
For the first 2 miles, I ran alongside a 1/2 marathon race. Three things I remember: 1. the loud slap of a fast runner’s feet, 2. another fast runner calling out as she passed slower runners, on your left, and 3. near the top of franklin someone from the race was playing music — Sia’s “Cheap Thrills”
Throughout the run, it rained. Not all the time, but in brief bursts. Mostly light and refreshing, but near Hidden Falls the sky unzipped and I got soaked. For the last half hour, my shorts were drenched. Yuck!
Heard the rowers near the beginning of my run, saw Dave the Daily Walker at the end. Also at the beginning I was passed by 2 runners, one was shorter and did most the talking (and mostly about running), the other was tall and agreed a lot. Saw these runners again about an hour in, and then near the end. They must have been doing a long run too!
The view of the river from the ford bridge was beautiful: blue water framed by green trees. The view of the gorge near Hidden Falls was also wonderful. I couldn’t see much, but I could feel the openness.
Between miles 6 and 7, I passed a woman who was breathing heavily as she ran. When I stopped for a minute of walking (I was doing run 9 mins, walk 1 at that point), she passed me. Then I passed her when I started running again. I was worried that this would keep happening and that I’d hear her wheezing and gasping behind me for the rest of the run, but she turned off when we reached ford. Whew!
Aside from getting drenched at mile 8, the weather was good for running. The on and off showers were refreshing. Running near Hidden Falls, the sun came out from behind the clouds for a minute, and it got hot. I worried that the rest of the run would be too warm, but then the clouds rushed in and I got soaked.
For 10 of the miles, I listened to the rain and other runners and the falls. Then I put in my winter playlist for the last 2 miles.
8 miles ford-franklin loop 70 degrees / dew point: 64
Oh that sun! Too bright and warm! Advice for future Sara: get up earlier and pick a route in the shade. The sun sapped my energy and made me sweat even more than usual. Dripping ponytail, wet shirt, damp face. Had a few brief thoughts about cutting the run short and crossing at lake street, but didn’t. I remember reaching that bridge and hearing a voice in my head whisper, there’s no turning back after this. I’m proud of myself for continuing with the run. Did it get easier? I’m not sure, but I didn’t think about stopping again or doubt that I could keep going, and the last mile felt good, like I could have run longer.
On the warm-up walk before starting my run, I walked over dozens of acorns on a neighbor’s sidewalk, under their huge tree. As I walked, I could hear more acorns falling. I wondered if one would land on my head (it didn’t). I’ve been noticing the acorns for the last couple of weeks, hearing them hit garage roofs and the alley asphalt while sitting on my back deck. Usually the acorns begin falling at the end of July, so mid-August is a little later for me to start noticing them.
All I remember about crossing the ford bridge was that I had just started and I was already overheated. So hot in the sun! Running (and walking) across the franklin bridge, I looked for rowers (none) and noticed the sandbars just beneath the surface and the current, moving fast. It reminded me of some lines I read from Gave by Cole Swensen:
from Gave/ Cole Swensen
You walk alongside the river. No; you walk always with. Not down, or along, or beside. And you can’t help but measure–is it moving faster? And does that mean each molecule of water? Or does a body of water form internal bodies, pockets that move in counterpoint, in back-beat, in eddies? And does the surface ever move? Or is it something underneath that does? Of course, yes, the molecules of water that form the surface must certainly go forward, but does that mean that the surface itself moves too? Then what is a standing wave? What stays? I watch a large branch being carried down by the river, and then a kayaker, moving faster, then turn to walk back upstream like I’m walking into the arms of some thing.
I haven’t thought much about the distinction between being with and beside. I like beside as next to, and imagine it as a possible form of being with the thing you are in proximity to — a new way of being in community with others?
Reading through a great article about Lorine Niedecker, Dwelling with Place: Lorine Niedecker’s Ecopoetics, I’m wondering if a focus on with, and not just beside, is partly about seeing the river as another community member, not a thing/landscape/scenery you walk beside, but someone you walk with. And now, reading the CS’s lines again, I’m thinking of the idea that the walking with the river is describing how the water is moving too, so you’re not just walking past something that’s next to you.
I’m also thinking about the Sheldrake quotes I posted at the end of yesterday’s entry, on stability and flux and how we (bodies) are processes, not just things. Some of CS’s questions seem to be getting at this, wondering what part of the river fluctuates, and what part of it is stable.
5.2 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 77 degrees / dew point: 72
I’m ready for this heat to break. That was a hot one! Difficult to keep my heart rate down in this humidity. But, it wasn’t miserable and I’m pleased with the run. I stuck to my plan and didn’t feel terrible at the end. Heard the rowers, smelled some tree that reminded me of the farm, greeted Dave, the daily walker.
Overheard, one biker to another: Their boss is on strike, so they don’t have anyone to lead them. I think he was referring to the park workers painting the fence on the bike path, above the tunnel of trees. Are the park workers still on strike? I thought they reached an agreement. Looked it up and yes, they did reach an agreement and are back at work.
8 miles almost to downtown and back 71 degrees humidity: 90% / dew point: 69
8 miles! I ran first half without stopping, slow and steady. The heat and humidity didn’t bother me too much. I can tell I’m getting mentally stronger. Not too long after the turn around, at the Bohemian Flats parking lot, I stopped for water and the port-a-potty. Stopped at the next port-a-potty too. So glad they were there! I know most runners have at least one terrible poop story, but I didn’t want today to be the day I made mine! Other than gastro issues, the run wasn’t too bad. I was slow, but I kept going and stuck to the heart rate plan: when it hit 168, I walked until it dropped to 135, then I started running again until it hit 168 again.
10 Things
4 or 5 stones stacked on the boulder
the blue graffiti under the lake street bridge is not letters, but shapes of some sort
a park worker on a big, lawn mower/tractor, whipping around trees, cutting the grass
hello friends! — greeting the Welcoming Oaks
a mother yelling at her kid — Carly Jane (or something close to that), put your legs down NOW!
river water moving fast — I could actually hear it flowing south
another park vehicle with bright headlights, trimming trees next to the trail
gushing seeps in the limestone below the U of M campus
a radio blasting out of a car window — didn’t recognize the song
there was a crocheted sweater — orange and lime green, I think — in the port-a-potty at the flats
Cole Swensen and rivering
opening line from Gave/ Cole Swensen
no river rivers
What is to river? I can imagine rivering as the act of being beside and with the river — walking or running — or in it — swimming, rowing — witnessing the river.
Here’s another use of river as verb from swims/ Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
The river is something that happens, like exercise or illness, to the body on any given day I am rivering.
On 16 august 2022, I posted this line from Burnett’s poem, I am rivering, and wondered, could there be such a thing as lake-ing? And how does it differ from rivering?
Rivering and lake-ing and streaming and brooking and creeking made me think of a line from Anne Carson’s “1 = 1”:
Every water has its own rules and offering.
What are rules and offerings of the Mississippi River and Lake Nokomis?
Cole Swensen is particularly interested in walking, both generally and specifically beside the Gave River. Here’s an interview I’d like to read in which she talks about her walks and walking.
Swensen has a section in Gave where she lists different bridges, and “other ways of crossing.” I’d like to archive the information about Mississippi bridges that I’ve gathered — names, interesting histories, etc.
clear water
Skimming through Gave, trying to find the section on bridges, my eyes fell on the phrase, the water is brilliantly clear, and I suddenly remembered watching surfing competition in the Olympics. It’s taking place in Tahiti and the coverage was great. They even had a cameraman in the water. At one point, we got a view underwater of the surfers’ legs sitting on boards. So clear! Such visibility! When I swim in the lake, I can barely see my hand. What would it be like to swim in water that was that clear? Amazing and frightening and a bit overwhelming at the beginning, I think.
7 miles flats and back 67 degrees / humidity: 84% ending in drizzle
7 miles! And I didn’t feel like I was about to die at the end! Big progress. Ran the first 3 miles without stopping, then tried out what Scott did yesterday in his run: zones/heart rate training. Run until my heart rate reaches 170, then walk until it reaches 135. My heart rate is usually between 170 and 175 for all of my runs, so 170 is actually on the low end. I rev high. This worked remarkably well. I felt relaxed and managed to stay around 167 for most of it. And focusing on my heart rate distracted me.
10 Things
started by running north through the neighborhood: the guy who usually sits on his stoop and smokes wasn’t there this morning
smelled breakfast — sausage, toast — as I ran by longfellow grill
between lake street and franklin it was difficult to see the river — too many leaves, only the occasional flash of blue-gray
nearing the trestle, voices — rowers below! heard, but not seen
at least twice I’ve mentioned the orange cat spray-painted on the sidewalk. It’s not a cat, but a turkey. Today I noticed all the feathers
honking geese (I think) under the franklin bridge
the river was brown and half clear, half streaked with foam
a spring below the U of M was gushing — a little waterfall spilling out over the road. Water heard 2 ways: 1. seeping out of the rocks and 2. spraying up from under car wheels
near the bottom of the franklin hill, under the 1-94 bridge, leaves stick out from a leaning branch, looking like a leg to me. Several times I’ve thought there was a person there before I realized it was a tree
cool rain drops on my hot face at the end of the run
Listened to my feet, the rowers, cars, seeping water for the first half. Put in my color playlist for the second half.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 77 degrees
Finally, I get to do another open swim! A beautiful evening with no swells and warm water. The first 2 loops were a little intense with a group of triathletes training for an upcoming race swimming in a line. But the third and fourth loops were much more peaceful, quiet. I didn’t stop at the shore between loops, and mostly swam freestyle without stopping, but once or twice I switched to breaststroke and took in the solitude and the smooth-as-glass water and the silence. Wow! Swimming freestyle without stopping, your head barely out of the water, is a much different experience than swimming breaststroke, with your head almost always out of the water. I like it; I feel less like a human and more like a fish, underwater for an hour.
Today’s swim was wonderful but didn’t involve much giving attention to anything other than sighting buoys, looking out for other swimmers, and counting strokes. Did I notice 10 things?
only one or two globs of algae
the water was olive green, or was it lentil green?
the sun was lower in the west and muted because of the clouds
no vine or twig encounters!
no sailboats, either — was that because there wasn’t any wind?
a wet-suited woman swimming a fast freestyle, then stopping to sight, then fast, then power breaststroking
feeling something up ahead disturbing the water, then seeing it, finally: a breaststroker’s powerful kick
at the beach, people with picket signs, park workers on strike and/or park worker supporters — I support the park workers!
leaving the beach overhearing 2 women who just finished swimming: women 1: I think I did more than the race distance women 2: you did double the distance! You can do this! women 1: Yes, I can do this!! I’m assuming they were both training for an upcoming triathlon
no planes or birds or shafts of light or glittering water or sparkle friends
a description of swimming
I cannot imagine a cessation to swimming, to my arms making their endless arcs, my hands gone to paddles, my body propelled forward a pull at a time, my feet feeling more like seal flippers, my shoulders rolling and rolling, and the slow whip of the turn, my head down and the push through the bubbles and blue andthe great intake of air, a breath that keeps a human able to move through water as if we were not gone from our breathable blue past (I will Always Inhabit the Water/ Lidia Yuknavitch).
All ready to swim this morning: suit on, goggles de-fogged, bag packed. It started to drizzle, then rain, then thunder. All morning. No open swim today. Bummer. Instead, I watched the final stage of the Tour de France live. Pogacar! 6 stage wins. Wow. Then, I went out for a run. Today’s progress: I didn’t stop to walk at the turn around spot — a good mental victory. Also, I’m back on track with my weekly mile total by running over 20 miles this week.
10 Things
puddles in the usual spots: one block over, stretching across the sidewalk. No dry spot. A choice: leap over it or step gingerly on the muddy grass. I lept
the big tree that fell last week and blocked the road has finally been removed
a squirrel that looked like it might dart out in front of me — it didn’t
slick, slippery asphalt on the part of the trail that dips below the road just after the double bridge
a runner ahed of me pushing a stroller
a walker walking with two medium-sized dogs on either side of them
dripping ponytail
water gushing out of the sewer at 42nd
dirt and mud covering the sidewalk a few houses down after the rain
at the end, walking back: chirping birds
Earlier this morning, I was reminded of a book I had checked out of the library a few years ago, but returned before I finished: Fen, Bog, and Swamp/ Annie Proloux. I think I checked out the e-book before; today I decided to try the audiobook — partly because I was reminded of it while reading an article about the top audiobooks of 2022.
Finishing this last sentence, RJP just called down the stairs, Mom, Biden dropped out. So many complicated feelings about this news and the election and the future.
Listening to the opening minutes of the book, I heard these lines about the need for a slower form of attention:
To observe gradual change takes years of repetitive passage through specific regions week after week, year after year, season after season. Noticing sprout, bloom, and decay. Observing the local fauna. Absorbing the rise and fall of waters. Looking carefully (Fen, Bog, and Swamp/ Annie Proloux).
Yes! I’ve been running at least 3 times a week, almost always above the gorge, noticing leaves and trees and water and stones (and more) then writing about them for over 7 1/2 years now. I haven’t collecting the detailed data that Proloux describes Thoreau doing, but I have been noticing subtle changes in the seasons.
5.8 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 69 degrees / humidity: 84%
More progress! Running a little longer before stopping to walk, then running a little longer before stopping again. Increased my distance and time on my feet too. Step by small step I’ll get there.
Almost 9 am on Saturday morning. As I warmed up with a walk, it was quiet, calm. No cars or kids or other adults around. Just birds and my footsteps on the sidewalk. Ah, I love summer mornings!
During the run: hot, humid, lots of sweat. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks. Passed a group of runners in the tunnel of trees — good morning! Noticed an orange water station set up at the top of lake street, above the rowing club. Chanted triple berries — strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Someone running up the hill turn around in front of me and descended again — hill repeats? Some bikers bombed down the franklin hill, others crawled up it. No rowers. The surface of the river seemed to have an oily skin on it. No foam or waves. Two runners passed me, one of them talking about his sister’s upcoming wedding. Waved at a regular runner, the white-bearded Mr. Santa Claus. At the bottom of the hill, two men fished in the river. Did they catch anything?
image: an older man running in BRIGHT blue shorts and matching long socks. As blue as a cloudless sky.
For the first half of the run, I listened to the quiet. Walking up the hill, I put in some music: Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” and then the movie soundtrack to “The Wiz.”
4.5 miles longfellow gardens / minnehaha falls 65 degrees
What a morning! Cooler and less humid. Ran to Longfellow Gardens to check out the flowers. In full bloom, mostly red and purple. People sitting on the benches — I couldn’t see them that well, but I imagine some of them were painting or taking photographs.
image: A portable red lawn chair in the shade under a tree. A person sit in it, facing the field with the statue of Longfellow, their back to the flowers.
Returning to the falls, I noticed a few trucks and heard voices chanting. Was it some religious thing? Or military training? A protest? RJP might know; one of her best friends works at the restaurant at the falls.
Took the steps down to the bottom of the falls, which were roaring. So was the creek. Walked then ran beside the water as it rushed by. Eventually it reaches the mississippi, but I crossed the bridge well before that happens. Admired the water that collects in a pool — sparkle and shimmer. In the afternoon, kids congregate here, wading and splashing, but not this morning. Just me, and a few diggers in the distance. What are they digging up?
Took the steps — more than 100 of them — back up to the park. Wow, what a leg burn! Glad I didn’t try running them!
It was not a question of not having the language for it— having two, in fact. The walking towards it, and then the walking away. How that felt, all the green gathering itself to the idea of green, lingering right at the edge of the dark, what we call the dark. And the languages, both of them, noticing that, envying it. From their places at the beginning & at the end.
all the green/gathering itself to the idea of green
I want to think about this green and the two languages and the dark, or what we call the dark, some more.
4 miles river road, north/south 73 degrees humidity: 86% / dew point: 60
A wonderful sunny morning. Not too hot yet, although the humidity took its toll. By the end of the run, I was dripping sweat. Another improved run. Went farther before I stopped for a quick break, then convinced myself to keep going on the way back. Believing again that I can do the marathon in October.
Decided to listen today. Thinking about how delightful it is to move through the neighborhood, passing from sound to sound.
Sounds
a chorus of BIRD — chattering, chirping, cheeping
a little toddler voice trying to repeat binoculars after his mom said it in a neighbor’s backyard
the shshshsh of my feet striking grit on the sidewalk
overheard from one biker to another — and it was so quiet you could hear the water lapping against the shore
a male coxswain below instructing rowers
my house key softly jingling in my pack
a walker’s keys jangling loudly in his pocket
whoosh after whoosh after whoosh of car wheels passing on the road
the buzz on a riding lawn mower — a park working mowing the grass beside the trail
2 sets of tap tap tap tapping from roofers — about a dozen taps each, at slightly different speeds, then a short break, then more taps
the quiet hops of a bunny moving across a neighbor’s grass
a lawn mower hitting a twig or a root — thwack!
the clicking of a roller skier’s poles
I think my favorite sound was the soft footsteps of the bunny hurrying across the lawn. A silvery whisper only possible to hear on a calm summer morning like today. I love the sound of animal feet moving — running or hopping through the grass, thundering over hard dirt, scampering in the soft snow.
Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree Near-by: It seems to burn its way through the air Like a small, pointed flame of sound Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
Speyer is describing a locust but as I wrote on the 16 july 2022, her description makes me think of a brood of cicadas. This sound is LOUD and interrupts you, demanding you notice it. The bunny’s soft footsteps were quiet and easily unnoticed. It feels like an accomplishment to have been quiet and aware enough to hear them.
So, I’m thinking about sound today. Another inspiration: Ears don’t lie.
Hearing is our fastest sense. (Who knew?!) Horowitz says that it takes our brain at least one-quarter of a second to process visual recognition. But sound? You can recognize a sound in 0.05 seconds. And our brain is so adept at hearing the differences between sounds, we can sense changes of sound that occur in “less than a millionth of a second,” according to Horowitz’s book [The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind].
This source led me to a Radiolab story that includes Horowitz: Never Quite Now. This story is not just about sound, but our nerves and neurons and how long it takes for us to process the world. Here’s a helpful description of how our body sees and then wants a pen:
JAD: Okay, so the eye takes the light that’s reflected off the pen, turns it into a little electrical signal, and then sends that deep into the middle of the brain.
CARL ZIMMER: Takes a couple hundredths of a second.
JAD: Bounces around for a bit, and then within …
CARL ZIMMER: A few more hundredths of a second …
JAD: The signal has made it …
CARL ZIMMER: All the way back to the rear end of the brain, where you start processing vision.
JAD: But this is just the beginning.
CARL ZIMMER: Right. Now you’ve gotta like figure out what you’re seeing.
JAD: So our jolt is off again, this time toward the middle of the brain and then down toward the bottom.
CARL ZIMMER: To these other regions ..
JAD: That start to decode the signal.
CARL ZIMMER: The first visual region is called V1.
JAD: Next up …
CARL ZIMMER: V2, V4, and so on. And they’re gonna sharpen the image, make out contrasts, edges.
JAD: And then electricity goes back towards the front of the brain.
CARL ZIMMER: After, let’s see, another tenth of a second or so …
JAD: We finally get to a place where we think …
CARL ZIMMER: “Oh, that’s a pen.”
ROBERT: We haven’t gotten yet to “I want it”.
CARL ZIMMER: Exactly.
JAD: For that to happen, the electricity has to jump from one part of the front of the brain to another and another before you can finally say …
CARL ZIMMER: “That’s a nice pen. I could use a pen.”
JAD: [laughs]
ROBERT: [laughs]
CARL ZIMMER: And we are still not done, you know. Then—then—then …
JAD: Little jolt heads northCARL ZIMMER: To sort of the top of your brain. So we—we’ve gone from your eyes to the back of your brain, around up to the front of your brain again. And now we’re up to the top of your head where you set up motor commands, and then you can grab the pen.
ROBERT: Christ!
JAD: So I mean, you add all this up and what are we talking about here
Later in the story, Seth Horowitz describes how hearing is the fastest sense and mentions the startle circuit:
SETH HOROWITZ: A sudden loud noise activates a very specialized circuit from your ear to your spinal neurons.
JAD: You mean it bypasses the brain?
SETH HOROWITZ: Yeah, it’s the startle circuit. If yousuddenly hear a loud noise, within 50 milliseconds, that’s 50 thousandths of a second, so you’re talking20 times faster than cognition, your body jumps, will begin the release of adrenaline. No consciousness involved. It’s five neurons, and it takes 50 milliseconds.
I’ve written about the word startle before — I especially like Emily Dickinson’s startled grass. There’s a poem in here somewhere, involving bodily recognition (or reaction?) versus brain cognition.
swim: 5 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
5 loops! What a great night for swimming in the lake! Calm, goo-free water, strong shoulders, a willing back, enough time to swim an extra loop. Amazing. Writing this a few hours later, I’m wiped out, but I felt good the whole time I was swimming. I swam for 80 minutes without stopping.
I wanted to give attention to sound as I swam, and I did. Mostly, I heard the sloshing of the water as I moved through it. Once I heard a plane roaring above me and another time I heard a lifeguard calling out. Not much else. In past years, I’ve heard squeaks or strange clanging noises, but not tonight. Just slosh slosh slosh.
The water was a pale green with the idea of pale yellow — I didn’t see yellow as much as feel that it was there. Visibility was limited, but I could see my hand in front of me, bubbles, and the underside of the water’s surface, which was very cool.
There were a few menacing swans and some kayaks.
From the shore I could see that the orange buoys were in a straight line. In the water, swimming past them, it didn’t seem as straight. At least once for each loop, I could see the orange dots of the three buoys. The green buoys were more difficult. I didn’t care; I knew where they should be and swam that way.
4.2 miles minnehaha falls and back 73 degrees / dew point: 69
Woke up early, but thunderstorms were coming so I had to wait until after 10 to go out for my run. Gloomy, dark green, thick, but a slightly better run. Ran longer before I stopped to walk. Felt stronger while I ran. Kept running farther after I walked before stopping again. Progress!
10+ Things
the usual puddles have returned, blocking the sidewalk (one block over) and the trail (near the entrance to the locks and dam no. 1)
more big branches down, or the same big branches from last week’s storm, not yet removed
dripping sewer pipes at 42nd and 44th
mud and dirt washed up onto the asphalt
exuberant kids running around the grass at minnehaha park
roaring falls
passing by 2 surreys biking up from wabun
a soaked backpack in a driveway, half open, clothes slipping out, 2 books next to it, one of them with the pages rolled over
a pile of clothes tucked under the trees next to the path between the locks and dam no. 1 and the ford bridge
2 roller skiers, their poles clicking and clacking on the pavement
a chainsaw in the distance — below in the gorge?
wildlife update: Scott talked with a company who informed him that a wasp nest can’t just be removed because the wasps will build another one; it needs to be treated. One problem: it is illegal in Minnesota to treat fruit trees and the wasp nest is in our crab apple tree. Oh well, I guess our neighbors are staying.
Yesterday afternoon, torrential rain, thunder, wind, and hail whipped through our neighborhood. It lasted only 20 minutes, but it was intense. Not scary — except to Delia-the-dog — but wild. It looked like it was snowing: Christmas in July! And the hail was so loud on the roof and the skylight. Today as I ran, I surveyed the damage by the river. Big branches on the dirt path, leaves scattered, a whole tree at the end of edmund:
big tree, felled
Of course I only took one picture, so I had to use it. Not sure if it effectively conveys the size of the tree?
Decided to take the winchell trail to check out the damage below. Some branches down, but nothing blocking the path. Dirt and mud and muck everywhere. I started chanting in my head,
silt / loam / glacial till silt and / loam and / glacial till
Listened to water gushing out of the sewer pipe and down the slope at 42nd. Also listened to the birds — not one type in particular, but a chorus of BIRD. Noticed the shade on the path and the tiny spots of light. Looked at the river, a hazy heat hovering just above and thought, hot! No relief from that view.
Before I run, I read an excerpt from the novel Elixir. I wanted to think about this quote as I ran:
We were near water. There is a river. If you couldn’t hear it or see it, its ions vibrated in the air and you inhaled water, day and night.
In the summer when the leaves block my view and I can’t see the river, I still know it’s there and it is always part of my run in some way.
the Seine, open water swimming, and water quality
I’ve been seeing lots of headlines about the problems with water quality in the Seine for open water swimming events at the Olympics. I mentioned it to RJP and she said she’d heard (on TikTok, natch) that people were pooping in the Seine in protest. Is that true? While looking it up, I found this helpful video: Can Paris fix it’s poop problem?
Okay, read some more, and the “Paris Poop Protest” is a thing. People were encourage to do it on June 23rd, when the President of France and the mayor of Paris were planning to swim in the Seine to prove it was safe. When Macron and Hidalgo postponed their swim, the poop protest was postponed too. So many interesting things to think/write about with this in terms of city infrastructures, rivers, threats to cities’ waterways, the negative and positive impacts of hosting the Olympics, and more. Swimming in public water, feeling the effects of how it’s managed in my body, has given me a deeper perspective on this issue of water quality and water management. I’m so grateful to have access to safe water here in Minneapolis.Everyone should have access to safe water.
time and water
Reading more of The Folded Clock, I was inspired to think about the relationship between time and water. Here are a few thoughts:
1 — anne carson
. . . the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.
1 = 1 / Anne Carson
2 — heidi julavits
As we stroked past I thought I saw George growing older and older. His grandchildren beside him grew older, too, taking his place before being replaced themselves by their children. It was like a trick of stop-time photography, everyone shading into everyone else. . . . Time passed. I started to doze. The cold water had slowed our pulses but everything else spun at great speed. I worried I would awake to find myself an old woman, my husband dead, my daughter grown and turned into me. But life, when I woke up, was as I’d left it.
The Folded Clock / Heidi Julavits
3 — samantha sanders
[on swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter] The exhilaration is remarkable. I feel like we’ve discovered the fountain of youth.
Swimming Through / Samantha Sanders
4 — alice oswald
it is not me but close to me a kind of cloud or smoke-ring made of nothing and yet it will outlast everything because it is deep it i sa dead field fenceless a thickness with many folds in it promiscuous and mingling which in its patience always wears away the hard thing
or is it only the hours on their rounds thinking of the tides by turns twelve white-collar workers who manage the schedules of water
nobody / alice oswald
In their lunch hour I saw the shop-workers get into water They put their watches on the stones and slithered frightened Into the tight-fitting river And shook out cuffs of splash And swam wide strokes towards the trees And after a while swam back With rigid cormorant smiles Shocked I suppose from taking on Something impossible to think through Something old and obsessive like the centre of a rose And for that reason they quickly turned And struggled out again and retrieved their watches Stooped on the grass-line hurrying now They began to laugh and from their meaty backs A million crackling things Burst into flight which was either water Or the hour itself ascending.
from Evaporations/ Alice Oswald
5 — darby nelson
I posted this quote back on 16 august 2021, but I want to post it again here:
We talk of time as the river flowing. I never questioned the implications of that metaphor until I was struck by the words of Professor Dave Edmunds, Native American, on a display in the Indian-Western Art Museum in Indianapolis. Edmunds wrote, ‘Time as a river is a more Euro-American concept of time, with each event happening and passing on like a river flows downstream. Time as a pond is a more Native American concept of time, with everything happening on the same surface, in the same area—and each even is a ripple on the surface.’
If I think of time as a river, I predispose myself to think linearly, to see events as unconnected, where a tree branch falling into the river at noon is swept away by current to remain eternally separated in time and space from the butterfly that falls in an hour later and thrashes about seeking floating refuge.
But if I think of time as a lake, I see ripples set in motions by one even touching an entire shore and then, when reflected back toward the middle, meeting ripples from other events, each changing the other in their passing. I think of connectedness, or relationships, and interacting events that matter greatly to lakes.
For Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson
When I think of time and water, I think of erosion and geologic time, and the wearing down of things by the water over years, decades, centuries. I think of generational time, and the family members, the hearty Finns on my dad’s side, who loved and excelled at swimming. I think of Sara-time and one of the key constants in my life and many selves: I love water and swimming in it. I think of losing track of time while swimming, and tracking it on my watch to look at later. I think of time measured by strokes and loops instead of minutes, measured by open swims instead of days.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 84 degrees
I swam 4 loops but the buoys were set up in such a way that the distance of 4 loops today was almost the same as 3 loops on other days. Oh well, I’m still counting it as 4. The water was very warm, too warm. Lots of stuff in it, but not as much as on Tuesday. More green slimy stuff, but now that I recognize and know it’s not toxic, it didn’t bother me as much.
I decided I wanted to listen as I swam. I didn’t hear much, just water sloshing over my head. The water was still, flat, sometimes feeling fast, sometimes slow. There was a haze in the air that made it as difficult to see as if my googles were fogged up. I felt strong and smooth and fast and happy.
Before the swim, I asked a few women if they had swum on Tuesday and if they had seen the green goo. Neither of them had. I realized later, as I swam, that I wasn’t asking because I wanted reassurance that whatever it was was not harmful. I just wanted to find someone else to acknowledge that it was strange and gross and something worth reacting to. On Tuesday, no one else seemed to care or be talking about it.
10 Things
2 women laughing and talking as they tread water between the last orange buoy and the shore
impossible to see either of the green buoys with the sun and the haze
at least 2 menacing swans
the ghost vines are multiplying in numbers and size — creepy!
cloudy sky
a few pockets of cold water throughout the lake
crowded swimming area, beach and park — everyone here on a hot day
the surface of the water above was blue and calm and shiny and smooth
the surface of the water below was greenish-brownish-yellowish
I swam high on top of the surface, feeling extra buoyant
3.25 miles trestle turn around 78 degrees / dew point: 66
For the first mile, in the shade it felt almost cool or, at least not HOT! Hardly any bugs, but tons of chirping birds, one black-capped chickadee calling out for a response which never came. A few other runners, walkers, a group of bikers. After turning around at the trestle I passed by 3 women instructing a fourth on how to use an unfamiliar bike. Somewhere I smelled tobacco — from a car? below on the winchell trail? a walker’s clothes? Admired the glowing purple flowers on the edge of the trail and the stretch of the path that was all shade, except for a few splotches of light. One splotch was big enough to see my shadow in before we both disappeared into the shade. The river was calm and pale blue. The green was thick excess. The stretches of trail in the direct sun were warm. At least twice I pushed myself to keep running when I wanted to stop. At the trestle I put in my old “Winter” playlist
immersion
This summer I’m devoting a lot of attention to water and swimming and my experiences during open swim. After reading Lauren Groff’s essay, Swimming, Anne Carson’s story 1=1, and watching Samantha Sanders’ mini doc, Swimming Through, I’m thinking about why I love open water swimming and how to describe the experience of moving in/with/through water. Here are 3 descriptions from Groff, Carson, and Sanders.
1 – Groff
there is a moment in swimming when, after a while, the body’s rhythm grows so comfortable that the swimmer loses awareness of herself. There is a marrow-deep letting go. She isn’t thinking. Her brain is off, her body is on autopilot. She is elevated; happy is not the word for it. To be and not to be, simultaneously: some people call this state ecstasy, others call it zen. They are, perhaps, different names for the same phenomenon. It is difficult to attain, and there are a thousand ways to attain it. Some meditate, others do peyote, others focus so hard on their art that the world itself falls away and they look up, days or hours later, to be staggered by what they have created in the full flare of their own white heat.
Groff’s last bit, “in the full flare of their own white heat” reminds me of Mary Oliver and one of her poems that I posted on 10 july 2022: “The Ponds”:
from The Ponds/ Mary Oliver
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
The white heat also makes me think of Emily Dickinson. But, the flare of white heat seems like the wrong sort of metaphor for what happens to you in the water. Also, even as we float in the water, we are still fully in it, not above it.
2 — Carson
. . . no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky. That first entry. Crossing the border of consciousness into, into what?
And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.
To swim, especially freestyle, with your head mostly underwater, only surfacing to breathe (as opposed to breaststroke, where you always have a frog-eye view), is to be immersed in water, not floating above it. And not burning a white heat, but —? Something I can’t quite name yet. The it you are in, is not just water, but life.
3 — Sanders
There are many wonderful, beautiful moments in this doc about resilience and community and transformation, but I especially love this moment, starting 10 minutes in, in which they describe the shift from tracking the temperature to giving attention to — witnessing — the ice. To me, this might speak to Carson’s idea of crossing the border of consciousness into something/somewhere else.
We became very obsessive about how cold the water was getting. You know, it’s 50, then it’s 40, then it’s 40.2, then it’s 39. I had two thermometers that both busted this year in the cold water, I didn’t get another one. We just figure that it’s cold. So then it’s about I can’t wait to swim in the snow. Then it was like, I can’t wait to swim when there’s ice.
And then we had no idea what did ice mean? You know, this winter it meant so many different kinds of ice because you know, there’s the first ice that was like a very thin, thin layer of ice. Almost like snowflakes on the water. Break them as I stroked and then turn around and they would have reformed behind me. Ice that was so sharp that you actually were getting cut and you needed to be careful.
The feeling of swimming is the feeling of noticing the world, not existing above it, but fully in it, immersed, aware, witnessing the slight changes in temperature, or where waves usually start, or how the weather affects the opacity of the water.
A few minutes before this ice part, one of the women says this about the experience of swimming in very cold water: I feel metallic! I love that — maybe that should be the title of a poem, “To feel metallic”?!
added a few hours later: I almost forgot to include some sources that I’d like to gather then read then archive:
“The Anthropology of Water” / Anne Carson in Plainwater — go to the U library for this one
*several years ago — maybe 10? — I put The Folded Clock on my wishlist and got it for Christmas of that year. Apparently this was before I got into the habit of writing the date on the first page, so I can’t remember exactly what year that was. I also can’t specifically remember why — maybe because I was into memoirs? Anyway, I know I read some of it before but I didn’t realize that she wrote about swimming in lakes!
Julavits is swimming in a Berlin lake, filled with algae. This is the last paragraph:
The best thing about my first Berlin swim was this. When I took off my bathing suit, the crotch was bright green from the algae that had collected there. It was like getting my period for the first time and seeing the shock of color where normally there is only white.
The Folded Clock
When I took my suit off after my green algae filled swim, the muck that usually collects beneath my suit on my stomach and under my breasts included some bright green bits? chunks? traces? I’m glad that it collected there and not in my crotch!
3.35 miles ford bridge and back 68 degrees / dew point: 62
Ran an hour earlier today, but it was still hot and muggy. Quiet, calm, not too many walkers or bikers or runners on the trail. With the thick green, I don’t recall seeing the river once. Chanted triple berries. Heard the faint trickling down in the ravine, then from the sewer pipe. Some rustling in the brush. Construction sounds — big planks of wood being dropped? There were birds, I’m sure, but I don’t remember hearing them. No roller skiers or rowers or shadows. Lots of water in the form of humidity and sweat and post-rain run-off.
Repetition, Routine, and Quotes Taken Out of Context
After my run, scrolling around (reading old RUN! posts from today and poetry people tweets), I came across 2 ideas about repetition/routine. The first was a quote from Karlheinz Stockhausen about repetition and walking and breathing:
Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing.
I always want to find the context for these context-less quotes spread online, so I looked it up. Sometimes it can be tedious, finding the source, but today, quick satisfaction! I didn’t know who Karlheinz Stockhausen was, but now I (kind of) do: a big deal — an experimental composer, very influential in 20th century music, including hip-hop and techno (is that the right umbrella term?), according to this cool documentary, Modulations. I also found the unpublished interview from which this quote comes. Here’s some context for the quote:
Q: One of your comments is that a lot of times it’s too repetitive?
A. Yes. I think it’s more interesting to create music which transforms, shapes figures, so that one can follow a process. Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing. This has been the tradition for thousands of years of basic musical songs, tunes. But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm. And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition. I think it’s simply more interesting than repetitive technique.
When I read the out-of-context quote (which is shared a lot), I thought it was about the value of repetition and its connection to breathing, but in context, the quote is criticizing repetition as something to move beyond. Context matters (imho)!
This discussion of repetition and disruption of that repetition reminded me of a poem from Carl Phillips (posted on 8 july 2023), Western Edge, that I had just re-read
I need you the way astonishment, which is really just
the disruption of routine, requires routine.
I like need repetition and routine and establishing habits that my brain can visually interpret, but I also need love disruption, interruption, moments of astonishment. My ongoing question — how to balance the routine with the astonishing?
swim: 3 nokomis loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 78 degrees
A beautiful night for a swim! Calm water, warm air. Too many vines floating in the water. They kept passing over me, trailing, lingering. I said to Scott that it felt almost like a violation, the way they slowly moved from my shoulder, down my torso, then my leg. Yuck! He joked, it was a vine-olation. The vines were also a problem near shore, growing up from the bottom in a thick tangle. It’s not difficult to imagine someone getting stuck in them and drowning.
The buoy across the lake was fine for the first loop, then partly deflated for the second loop, then completely flat for the rest of the loops. Just an orange blob on the water. I’ve never seen that before! Of course it happened at Cedar lake.
Another Cedar lake moment: A woman to the lifeguard: Excuse me, my son doesn’t have a cap, and he’s not 18 (the minimum required age for open swim), but could he swim across? Lifeguard: As long as he’s a good swimmer, it should be okay.
Maybe I would have been critical of these things in the past, but I’m not now. Deflated buoys and underage swimmers are just part of the cedar lake vibe.
10 Things
blue sky with a few puffy white clouds
something flying through the air — a plane? a big bird? I turned on my back for a minute to check: plane — I could hear the roar of the engines
the orange blob from a distance, not whispering orange, more like a random very quick blip — orng
scratchy vines poking my arm
murky water, difficult to see my hand, yellowish brown
log rolling — a giant red fake log
before the swim, standing by the lifeguard stand — creeaakk — the lifeguard opened a big trunk, looking for something. I wonder how often they open it? Judging my how much it creaked, not too often!
the deflated buoy was far away from hidden beach — no chance to see or hear how many people were swimming there
the water was warm, but near the shore where it was still deep, there were pockets of very cold water
on the last loop, I could feel the muck under my suit, against my skin, scratching me. I almost stopped to pull it out, but when do I ever stop?
The struggle continues. Another difficult run, another beautiful morning. Birds! Flowers! Blue sky! Sweat. Sore legs. Weak will. Chanted triple berries for a few minutes, which helped me keep going longer than I thought I could. Had fun running to “Virtual Insanity” — it helped me pick up my cadence for a few minutes
10 Things
running on the dirt path between edmund and the river road, a sharp pain on the shin — not a muscle but a bug stinging me
flowers: purple orange red yellow pink
walking past the house with a dog named Merry, 2 cars with canoes on top, excited voices — returning from a trip or leaving for one?
one of the people: Shit! I’m already sweating
the meadow just beyond the ford bridge was silent — no buzzing cicadas or croaking frogs today
above on the ford bridge, voices somewhere — no intelligible words just 2 women making noise
traces of mud on the trail — not gloppy, just wet
the trail, busy with zooming bikes
thud thud thud a power walker approaching from behind during my cool-down walk
a big boulder on the side of the trail, a small, hollowed out part of top, filled with water — water and stone
Seeing this stone, I was reminded of Octavio Paz’s poem “Water, Wind, Stone”:
Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone, stone’s a cup of water, water escapes and is wind. Stone, wind, water.
Before the run, I gave myself the task of trying to think about water and stone as I ran. The only thing I remember is this rock with the small pool of water in it.
4 miles monument and back* 65 degrees / dew point: 62 drizzle**
*a new route? Through the neighborhood, over the lake street bridge, up the summit hill, over to the Civil War Monument and back **or as I’ve been known to say, spittin’ (does that come from the UP? the south? the midwest?)
Even though the dew point was high, the drizzle helped it feel cooler. Everything dark and quiet, calm, green. Passed the guy who is always sitting on his front stoop smoking. Also passed kids arriving at the church daycare. Pushed myself to keep running up the summit hill even though I wanted to stop. Made it!
Chanted triple berries for a mile or two. It helped distract me. raspberry / blueberry / strawberry
10 Things
shadow falls was gushing through the trees
the street lamps were glowing on the st. paul side
rowers on the river! an 8-person shell. The coxswain was advising them on where to place the paddles in the high water (we have a river flood warning)
morning! from a passing runner — good morning!
the river was a beautiful gray blue, the trees a rich green
so windy on the bridge heading east that I had to take my cap off and hold it
the whining of a power saw in the distance
alone at the monument overlook
sometimes it was a drizzle, sometimes just a mist — difficult to tell which while running and sweating
enveloped in dark green in the tunnel of trees — the only light was green light and a small circle of white at the top of the hill
As I looked down at the river from high above on the gorge, I thought about the rowers and their paddles and how different their experience of the water was to mine. Down there in the water, I bet it’s choppy and bumpy, with wind and spray. Up here, it’s almost flat and gray blue. No feeling of motion — no waves or the unsettling sense of being higher on water that’s on the edge of spilling over somewhere.
Yesterday I started thinking again about different bodies of water and how poets write about them: Mary Oliver (ponds), Lorine Niedecker (lakes), Alice Oswald (rivers, the sea). I also remembered Cole Swenson and their writing about the river Gave de Pau in Gave. I think I need to buy this book! Anyway, I looked up a few more of their poems and read one titled, “To Circumferate.” These lines stuck with me:
With a careful adjustment of eye there are no buildings. A city of trees and hedges
As I ran back from the monument, looking left to the ravine and the trees, I thought about that line and imagined the stretches of grass, the trees, the green ravine as a city — the only city — no buildings or houses or roads or cars, only trees and tall grasses and bushes leading down to the river.
All of this thinking about different bodies of water reminded me of something I started to read but had to return to the library before I got very far, Visitation/ Jenny Erpenbeck. Here are the first two pages and an amazing description of water:
Approximately twenty-four thousand years ago, a glacier advanced until it reached a large outcropping of rock that now is nothing more than a gentle hill above where the house stands. The enormous pressure exerted by teh ice snapped and crushed the frozen trunks of the oaks, alders and pines that grew there, sections of rock broke away, splintered and were ground to bits, and lions, cheetahs and saber0toothed cats fled to more southerly climes. But the ice did not advance beyond this rocky crag. Gradually silence set it, and the ice began its labor, a labor of sleep. While over a period of millennia it stretched out or shifted its enormous cold body only a centimeter at a time, it gradually was polishing the rocky surface beneath until it was round and smooth. during warmer years, decades and centuries, the water on the surface of the block of ice melted a little, and it places where the sand beneath the ice was easy to wash away, the water slipped beneath the huge, heavy ice body. And so at the every spot where this rocky elevation had hindered the ice’s forward motion, the ice slid beneath itself in the form of water and thus began to retreat, flowing downhill. In colder years the ice was simply there, it lay where it was, a heavy weight. And where in warmer years it had carved channels in the ground as it melted, during the colder years, decades and centuries it pressed its ice into these channels with all is force to seal them up again.
*
When approximately eighteen thousand years ago the glacier’s tongues began to melt—soon followed, as the earth continued to grow warmer, bu all its southernmost limbs—it left only a few deposits behind in the depths of their channels, islands of ice, orphaned ice; later they were called dead ice.
Cut off from the body it had once belonged to and trapped in these channels, this ice melted only much later. Approximately thirteen thousand years before the start of the Common Era, it turned back into water, seeped into the earth, evaporated in the air and then rained back down again, circulating in the form of water between heaven and earth. When it could not penetrate any deeper because the ground was already saturated, it collected on top of the blue clay and rose up, its surface cutting through the dark earth, and now it became visible again within its channel as a clear lake. The sand that the water itself had ground from teh rock when it was still ice now slid into this lake and sank to the bottom, and so at several points underwater mountains were formed, while in other spots the water remained as deep as the channel itself had originally been. For a time this lake would hold up its mirror to the sky amid the Brandenburg hills, it would lie smooth between the oaks, alders, and pines that were growing once more, and much later, after human beings appeared, it was given a name by them: Mårkisches Meer, the Sea of the Mark Brandenburg but one day it would vanish again, since, like every lake, it too was only temporary—like every hollow shape, this channel existed only to be filled in completely some day. Even in the Sahara there was water once. Only in modern times did something come about there that is described in the language as desertification.
Visitation/ Jenny Erpenbeck
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 75 degrees / drizzle
A great swim! Now I’m cold and tired and hungry!
10 Things
more ghost vines glowing below
one menacing white swan
the water below was a deep green with some blue
the water near the shore was still clear enough to see the sandy bottom
the sky was pale — no sun, except for a few times when it almost broke through
it’s the free night for open swim so more bobbing buoys — yellow was the most popular color
breathed mostly every five
tangled in a few vines, one leaf didn’t want to go away
stopped once or twice in the middle of the lake — calm, quiet — I should stop more
some little speck got in my eye at the beginning of the swim — I should have stopped to fix my goggles, but I just kept swimming, now it’s still stuck in there
