Tag: headphones

april 4/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
39 degrees

Ran in the early afternoon. This morning it snowed. By the time I went out to the gorge, it had all melted. Ran south to the falls, listening to the birds. When I got there, I ran by the creek and the statue of Minnehaha and Hiawatha. The creek was high. Not rumbling over rocks, making its way to the falls, but flowing and oozing and spreading across the grass. Noticed an adult taking video of some kid near a bench. A thought flashed: watch out (the kid was fine). Then I heard the falls, roaring. Wow. I glanced at them but I don’t remember how they looked, just how they sounded. Too small of a falls to be deafening, but much more than rushing or gushing.

before the run

Day 2 on dirt. Uh oh. I can feel myself becoming overwhelmed with ideas and directions. This morning I learned about humus (and remembered reading about it in a poem recently that I can’t seem to find right now…where was it? something about a few feet or 2 feet of humus?). Thought about soil and gardening and things decomposing and recycling. Started with a re-reading of a poem I found the other day:

Ode to Dirt/ Sharon Olds

Dear dirt, I am sorry I slighted you,
I thought that you were only the background
for the leading characters—the plants
and animals and human animals.
It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space
in which to shine. Subtle, various,
sensitive, you are the skin of our terrain,
you’re our democracy. When I understood
I had never honored you as a living
equal, I was ashamed of myself,
as if I had not recognized
a character who looked so different from me,
but now I can see us all, made of the
same basic materials—
cousins of that first exploding from nothing—
in our intricate equation together. O dirt,
help us find ways to serve your life,
you who have brought us forth, and fed us,
and who at the end will take us in
and rotate with us, and wobble, and orbit.

Love this line:

It’s as if I had loved only the stars
and not the sky which gave them space
in which to shine.

And the idea of dirt as the skin of our terrain, made of the same basic materials — our democracy, taking us in at the end and rotating wobbling orbiting with us.

After reading this poem, I decided to look up “dirt” in the Emily Dickinson lexicon.

dirt, n. [ME.]

Earth; mud; soil; humus; ground; [fig.] grave.

Emily Dickinson lexicon

Remembered reading humus in some poem (will I ever remember where) and decided to dig (ugh) into it some more:

ˈhyü-məs
geology : a brown or black complex variable material resulting from partial decomposition of plant or animal matter and forming the organic (see ORGANICentry 1 sense 1a(2)) portion of soil

Merriam-Webster dictionary

Then I found an article by Lulu Miller for Guernica:

Traditionally, humus was believed to be the dark matter left behind in soil after all organic material — leaf litter, dead bugs, acorns, etc. — had finished decomposing. It was thought of as a shadow of life. A liminal layer, whose betweenness gave it great power. Its molecules were of no interest to microbes or rock eaters, and thus could remain stable for centuries. Gardeners spoke of humus with reverence. Soil rich in humus was healthy soil; it held water and air and prevented the leaching of nutrients. It was a site of transfiguration, where inhabitant became architecture, where the ground beneath your feet remained, in some defiance of Chaos, the ground beneath your feet.

How exactly does humus evade the unforgiving forces of decay? That’s when jargon tends to roll in. Scientists speak of “humification,” “humic acid,” “humin.” They reference the pH levels of humus, its negative electrical charge. Hold tight, though, through the glazing of your eyes, and you might hear a tremble in an expert’s breath. Play the jargon backward, at double speed, and you might hear the word “ALCHEMY.”The catch, as scientists Johannes Lehmann and Markus Kleber argued in a study published in Nature, is that humus doesn’t exist. The molecules that comprise it are more like, as Lehmann puts it, “a smoothie.” A blend of various microorganisms, their bodies and residues becoming so small — so like molecular dust — that even hungry microbes can’t easily find them. There is nothing so numinous about humus. Its strength comes from the diminutive, in molecules that go unnoticed.

Humus / Lulu Miller

…which led me to a podcast I’m hoping to listen to soon with one of the scientists Miller mentions in this essay: Dr. Johannes Lehman – Soil Humus | In Search of Soil #12

Another search yielded this great essay on The Fat of the Land blog about humus. When I read this passage, I instantly thought of an interview I had just read with Alice Oswald.

First, from The Fat of the Land:

Soil is slow but never still. Its myriad processes never start or finish, they renew. Like the ocean, its movement is fluid. Indeed, the same forces that influence the ocean’s tides pull at the water table, mimicking that briny ebb and flow the way a sloth mimics a monkey.

humus / The Fat of the Land

Then what Oswald says:

What is the I of a landscape? It’s always water. Everything being tidal — fields and woods. Ebb and flow/ up and down. Everything as a tide, even the seasons, watching the leaves coming onto the trees, day by day, like a tide.
The thinking part of a landscape is the way the water levels are changing

Also in The Fat of the Land post, she describes the differences between dirt and soil:

Dirt is what gets on your hands in the garden, what splashes onto the sides of the car or tracks into the house on your shoes. Soil is a dance: lifeless minerals animated by electrostatic reactions, architectural aggregates constructed by chemical and biological bonds, microorganisms and invertebrates endlessly consuming and converting plant residue into nutrient-rich organic matter, a million miles of tiny root hairs tunneling and conversing by exchange with the forum of particles that surrounds them. One fingernail-full of soil is more complex than Shakespeare’s entire canon, and its poetry is just as striking.

This distinction between dirt and soil made here reminds me of something else I stumbled across as I tunneled through rabbit hole after rabbit hole: dirty nature writing:

…a genre of fiction called “dirty nature writing,” a term coined by Huebert and fellow writer Tom Cull in the New Quartely, a Canadian literary journal. Nature writing, popularized by authors such as David Thoreau, refers to works that focus on the natural environment. This genre includes essays of solitude, natural history essays and travel/adventure writing. 

“Nature writing traditionally imagines nature as this pristine thing … that exists outside of us and outside of human impact,” says Huebert. 

Alternatively, dirty nature writing acknowledges the messiness of nature today, explains Huebert. “To think of nature as something separate from human nature isactually problematic in a lot of ways”, he says. “I try to confront nature in its contaminated state honestly and openly, [and] not believe in a false binary between nature and human existence.” 

‘Dirty Nature Writing’: Your New Favorite Genre?

Often (as much as possible) present in my thinking and writing about dirt or soil or the gorge or water or “nature,” is the awareness of the messy, complicated, entangled relationships that exist between the natural world and humans.

At some point during a search, I found a link describing the difference between compost and humus:

Humus is the end result of the decompositions process, whereas compost is a word that identifies a phase of the decomposition process where decomposing plant material provides the most benefit to the soil. 

Humus vs. Compost: What’s the difference?

The article continues by describing the differences between organic material (dead animal/plant materials that are in an active stage of decomposition) and organic matter (final, fibrous, stable material left after organic material has completely decomposed — humus). Then it offers this image of bones/skeleton:

Organic matter has been broken down so completely that it cannot release any more nutrients into the soil, so its only function is to help maintain a spongey, porous soil structure.

Organic matter is essentially the bones of organic material. Once the meat has been completely broken down and absorbed into the soil, all that remains is a skeleton.

Humus vs. Compost: What’s the difference?

And suddenly, I remembered a poem that I posted a few years ago that I’d like put beside these discussions of decomposition as organic material breaking down. This poem fits with my discussion yesterday, adding flies and maggots to the list of beautiful creatures:

Life is Beautiful/DORIANNE LAUX                           

and remote, and useful,
if only to itself. Take the fly, angel
of the ordinary house, laying its bright
eggs on the trash, pressing each jewel out
delicately along a crust of buttered toast.
Bagged, the whole mess travels to the nearest
dump where other flies have gathered, singing
over stained newsprint and reeking
fruit. Rapt on air they execute an intricate
ballet above the clashing pirouettes
of heavy machinery. They hum with life.
While inside rumpled sacks pure white
maggots writhe and spiral from a rip,
a tear-shaped hole that drools and drips
a living froth onto the buried earth.
The warm days pass, gulls scree and pitch,
rats manage the crevices, feral cats abandon
their litters for a morsel of torn fur, stranded
dogs roam open fields, sniff the fragrant edges,
a tossed lacework of bones and shredded flesh.
And the maggots tumble at the center, ripening,
husks membrane-thin, embryos darkening
and shifting within, wings curled and wet,
the open air pungent and ready to receive them
in their fecund iridescence. And so, of our homely hosts,
a bag of jewels is born again into the world. Come, lost
children of the sun-drenched kitchen, your parents
soundly sleep along the windowsill, content,
wings at rest, nestled in against the warm glass.
Everywhere the good life oozes from the useless
waste we make when we create—our streets teem
with human young, rafts of pigeons streaming
over the squirrel-burdened trees. If there is
a purpose, maybe there are too many of us
to see it, though we can, from a distance,
hear the dull thrum of generation’s industry,
feel its fleshly wheel churn the fire inside us, pushing
the world forward toward its ragged edge, rushing
like a swollen river into multitude and rank disorder.
Such abundance. We are gorged, engorging, and gorgeous.

during the run

I have a vague feeling that I thought about soil and humus and decomposing leaves the trail, but I don’t remember any specific thoughts. When I reached the falls, I put in my headphones and listened to the podcast about humus that I mentioned earlier. I enjoyed listening to it as I ran, but I kept getting distracted, which is not unusual for me with science stuff. I’ll have to try listening to it again.

after the run

Finishing up this entry, about 6 hours after my run, I’m returning to the worms and the maggots and the flies and wanting to understood more about the “dance” (that The Fat of the Land blog mentions, cited above) and how it happens.

“Soil is a dance”:

  • lifeless minerals animated by electrostatic reactions
  • architectural aggregates constructed by chemical and biological bonds
  • microorganisms and invertebrates endlessly consuming and converting plant residue into nutrient-rich organic matter
  • a million miles of tiny root hairs tunneling and conversing by exchange with the forum of particles that surrounds them

I’m finding poetry about the invertebrates. Can I find some about the other parts?

april 3/RUN

4.05* miles
minnehaha creek path, between lake nokomis and lake harriet
40 degrees

*Scott’s watch said 4 miles, mine 4.1, so I’m splitting the difference here. Also did the .05 because my total miles was at a .45 and needed the .05 to round it out.

Ran with Scott along the Minnehaha Creek trail between lake nokomis and lake harriet. Nice. Not too cold or windy, relaxed. An easy pace with several walk breaks. I haven’t run this route in many years. Crossed over the creek several times, noticing the water: blueish gray, gently flowing, almost whispering its splashes.

before the run

At the end of my post from 2 days ago I decided on my project and, of course, I am already abandoning it, or maybe just wandering with it a little? This wandering is one joy of my undisciplined approach to writing/engaging/being in the world. The project/challenge: do a different B Mayer “Please Add to this List” experiment each day. Yesterday, I picked my first one: “Compose a list of familiar phrases, or phrases that have stayed in your mind for a long time–from songs, from poems, from conversation.”

I began a list:

  • You’ll get no commercials
  • There’s a new girl in town
  • As long as it’s gum and that’s for me
  • Life is life, and death but death, Bliss but bliss, and breath but breath
  • I am the wind and the wind is invisible
  • Think of a sheep knitting a sweater, think of your life getting better and better
  • Like sands through the hourglass, these are the days of our lives
  • Wake up in the morning, feeling sad and lonely. Gee, I got to go to school
  • What a world, what a world!
  • Heaven, I’m in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak
  • Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
  • What do you do when your kid is a brat?
  • Pious glory
  • The buzz saw snarled and rattled in the yard
  • I’m a wheel watcher
  • Remember I love you, I won’t be far away. I’ll just close my eyes and think of yesterday
  • I’ll be yours in springtime when the flowers are in bloom. We’ll wander through the meadows in all their sweet perfume
  • Of course you do
  • Eastbound and down, loaded up and trucking’
  • Hey y’all
  • trouble is inevitable, and the task, how best to make it, what best way to be in it
  • You were not there
  • All will be revealed
  • And you never will be
  • Tell all the truth but tell it slant
  • Try to remember the days of september
  • the boobie hatch
  • the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinnacle on your snout
  • Miss Suzy had a steamboat, the steamboat had a bell. Miss Suzy went to heaven, the steamboat went to…

Then I stopped. I started thinking about “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out” and remembered my sister Marji singing that to me when we were kids, then us gleefully singing it together. Something clicked. I thought about worms and dirt and death and graves and really gross things about bodies and being delighted in singing about those gross things and Diane Seuss’s commencement address and her invoking of these lines by Walt Whitman:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

I decided what I really want to do this month is study dirt. It’s fitting for April as I begin to notice dirt again as it emerges from under the snow. It also follows nicely from Oswald and her emphasis on physical labor — working in the dirt and gardening, getting your hands dirty — and minerals all the way down. And, it returns me to my extended exploration of both ghosts and haunting and earth/rock/stone/erosion. So many different ways to wander and wonder with this word!

I’ll start today with a little more on “the worms crawl in” song. Here’s how I remember singing it when I was a kid:

Did you ever think when the hearse went by
that you would be the next to die?
They wrap you up in thick white sheets
bury you down 6 feet deep.

All goes well for about a week
then your coffin begins to leak.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
the worms play pinnacle on your snout.

Your stomach turns a slimy green.
Pus runs out like thick whipped cream.

It starts getting fuzzy at this point in the song. It would end with something like, “And that’s where you go when you die.” I can’t quite remember. I decided to look it up. Found some interesting things about it. Here’s a brief summary from Wikipedia:

“The Hearse Song” is a song about burial and human decomposition, of unknown origin. It was popular as a World War I song, and was popular in the 20th century as an American and British children’s song, continuing to the present. It has many variant titles, lyrics, and melodies, but generally features the line “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out”, and thus is also known as “The Worms Crawl In“.

And here’s a cover that adds many more lyrics than I remember and sounds like the Violent Femmes:

There are LOTS of variations of this song. Check out the comments on this post for some of them. I’m fascinated by this song as part of an oral tradition of poetry — the poem/words aren’t owned by any one poet, they travel and transform. The best (most compelling, memorable) are kept as people recite/sing it, the others discarded. What holds it all together is: “the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out.” If I’m getting it right, those lines are iambic dimeter — 2 feet of unstressed/unstressed.

This focus on the worms reminds me of Cornel West and how, in lectures and the film, The Examined Life, he liked to say:

For me, philosophy is fundamentally about our finite situation. You can define that in terms of being towards death, featherless two legged linguistically conscious creatures born between urine and faeces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms. That’s us. Beings towards death. At the same time we have desire, why we are organisms in space and time, and so desire in the face of death. 

When I was a kid, I loved singing this song, took delight in the grossness. It didn’t scare or haunt me with its reminder that I would die one day. Now, as a middle-aged adult, it doesn’t either, even as I encounter more death and reminders of death. I actually find it comforting (is that the right word?) or helpful to think about the relationship between bodies and dirt and worm food.

during the run

Because Scott and I were talking about many different things (most of which I can’t remember now), we didn’t talk about “the worms crawl in…”. Possibly we didn’t talk about it because he never sang the song as a kid and doesn’t find it fun now. Boo. I do remember remarking on all the brown and noticing the mulched leaves on the ground. Thinking about things that decompose or have decomposed.

after the run

Not much to add here, except this poem I found when searching, “worms and poetry”:

Feeding the Worms/ Danish Lameris

Ever since I found out that earth worms have taste buds
all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies,
I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine
the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples
permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley,
avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.

I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden,
almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure
so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can,
forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

april 1/RUN

5.7 miles
franklin loop
36 degrees

With the sun and hardly any wind, 36 degrees felt warm and like spring. Ran north on the river road trail, noticing how the floor of the floodplain forest was covered with snow. The river was calm, brown in the middle, pale then darker blue as it reached the shore.

Tracked a plane in the sky in my peripheral vision. When I tried to spot in my central vision it disappeared. Visible from my peripheral, then hidden in my central. It took 3 times of switching between the two before it showed up in my central. Was that because my brain adjusted, or because it had reached a part of my central vision that still has cones cells?

4 distinct smells:

  1. cigarette smoke from a passing car
  2. pot down in the gorge
  3. breakfast — sausage, I think, from Longfellow Grill
  4. fresh paint from the railing on the steps leading up to the lake street bridge, being painted as I ran by

Noticed how the snow and ice emerging from cracks and caves in the bluff made them easy to spot from across the river.

Before the Run

I wrote the following shortly before heading outside for my run:

A new month, time for a new challenge. As is often the case, I have too many ideas at the beginning of the month. It takes a few days (at least) to settle into something. I could read The Odyssey, then Oswald’s Nobody, but I think I’d like to wait until it’s warmer and I’m in the water for open swims. I’ve also thought about doing more on walking, starting with Cole Swenson’s chapbook, Walking, or reading the book on green that I bought last month. I’m unsure. Just now, I came up with another idea, after looking up a quotation from Emily Dickinson that I found on twitter the other day: Reading through some of ED’s correspondence with Higginson. Will this stick? Who knows.

Here’s the ED quotation that inspired my search, as it appeared at the end of a twitter thread by the wonderful poet Chen Chen:

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations

@chenchenwrites

And here’s the original in ED’s letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson from late 1872 (14 years before her death in 1886):

To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations though Friends are if possible an event more fair.

letter

I’m thinking about what, if any, difference it makes to add that last bit about Friends. My first reactions: adding it depicts ED as a social being, not the recluse she is popularly known as, and it tempers the pursuit of astonishment as the only one we do/should have time for. Second reaction: is it mostly (or simply) a polite (and/or affectionate) acknowledgement of Higginson and his friendship? Third, and related to my first reaction: being startled/astonished/in wonder needs to be tempered. To be in that state all the time is too much, at least for me.

Reading Chen Chen’s thread, I found this great idea: “deep delight as a compass, a map.” I really like this, and I’m thinking about how I might switch out the word delight for wonder. Now I need to revisit the terms “delight,” “wonder,” “astonishment,” “joy,” and “surprise.” That might be a great challenge for the month too: thinking/reading/working through these different terms?

Getting back to ED’s letter, I found a description of the change is season from summer to winter in it that I’d like to remember:

When I saw you last, it was Mighty Summer‹Now the Grass is Glass and the Meadow Stucco, and “Still Waters” in the Pool where the Frog drinks.

letter

Grass is Glass and the Meadow Stucco? Love it!

I just looked up “startle” in Ed’s lexicon. Here are the two definitions offered:

  1. Shake or twitch due to terror or unexpected surprise.
  2. Be filled with fright; become shocked.

It also directed me to see “start.” Here are those definitions:

start (-ed), v. [OE ‘to overthrow, overturn, empty, to pour out, to rush, to gush out’.] (webplay: quick, quickened).

  1. Spring to attention.
  2. Become active; to come into motion.
  3. Begin; to come into being.
  4. Incite; startle; suddenly bother; abruptly rouse with alarm; movement of body involuntarily due to surprise, fright, etc.
  5. Begin a trip or journey to a certain destination.

And, here’s a poem from ED with startled grass:

PRESENTIMENT is that long shadow on the lawn
Indicative that suns go down;
The notice to the startled grass
That darkness is about to pass.

note: presentiment = foreboding

Returning to the letter and connecting to something else I found in an article titled, “The Sound of Startled Grass” about how composers are inspire by ED:

But I think composers are attracted to more than just her [ED] poems’ musicality. She repeatedly presents herself as a music-maker, surrounded by music. Her experience is constantly musical.

The Sound of Startled Grass

Connected to this quotation, here’s something ED writes in the letter:

These Behaviors of the Year hurt almost like Music – shifting when it ease us most. Thank you for the “Lesson.”

letter

During the Run

I think I only thought about some of these themes very briefly as I ran. I recall running, listening to birds singing, feeling the sun shining, and then wondering about how it would feel, at this moment, to be startled by a darting squirrel or a lunging dog or a reckless bike. I wasn’t, and I soon forgot about being startled. I also remember thinking about the sound of startled grass — how would that sound? And then I thought about what startled grass might look like, how it might startle us. Then I thought about the grass on graves and Whitman’s uncut hair and ED’s “The Color of the Grave is Green”:

The Color of the Grave is Green –
The Outer Grave –  I mean – 
You would not know it from the Field –
Except it own a Stone –

To help the fond –  to find it – 
Too infinite asleep
To stop and tell them where it is – 
But just a Daisy –  deep – 

After the Run

After bookmarking it at least a week ago, I finally read Diane Seuss’s fabulous Commencement Address to the Bennington Writing Seminars posted on LitHub. I didn’t anticipate how it might fit with my before and during run thoughts, but it does, particularly the bit about grass and graves and the dead speaking to us, and us giving our attention.

A thought: Could we be the startled grass, surprised, shocked, fearful, but astonished, in wonder, alive and willing to reach down to the dead to give attention and life to their stories and to tell our own? For this to make sense, I should probably spend a little more time with Seuss’s speech…

Wow, I’m no closer to figuring out what my theme will be for this month. Here are the possibilities that I discovered in the midst of writing this entry:

  1. Read, explore ED’s correspondence with Higginson
  2. Define delight, wonder, astonishment, joy, surprise. Find poems that offer definitions
  3. Grass (dirt is also mentioned in the speech)

addendum: 5:20 pm

So, I have figured out what I want to do for my challenge this month. In honor of National Poetry month, I’d like to return to where my recent love of poetry began: with Bernadette Mayer’s list of writing prompts that I discovered in an amazing class in the spring of 2017. I’m hoping to try a different experiment every day. I want to do this so I can push myself to be stranger or more whimsical or ridiculous (in the wonderful Mary Oliver way) in my writing. Lately, it seems like I’m too serious. A goal: to craft a poem that I feel is wonderfully strange enough to submit to Okay Donkey.

march 29/RUN

3.5 miles
river road, south/winchell trail/river road, north/edmund
39 degrees / feels like 30
wind: 20 mph

Overcast, windy, cold. Not too many people out on the trails. Ran south on the paved path, then a little on the Winchell trail — dirt, then rubbled asphalt, then paved, back up on the river road trail, through the tunnel of trees, then over to Edmund. Everything bare and brown and looking like November. Very pleasing to my eyes. Soft and dull, not sharp or crisp. Down on the Winchell Trail, I was closer to the river, but forgot to look. Maybe it was because I was too focused on the wind and reciting the poem by Christine Rossetti that I memorized this morning. I was reminded of it when I found it on my entry for March 29, 2020.

Who Has Seen the Wind?/ CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Who has seen the wind?
Neither I nor you:
But when the leaves hang trembling,
The wind is passing through.

Who has seen the wind?
Neither you nor I:
But when the trees bow down their heads,
The wind is passing by.

It was really fun to recite (just in my head) as I ran. It’s iambic, mostly trimeter (I think?). I also recited the opening to Richard Siken’s “Lovesong of the Square Root of Negative One:

“I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible.”

Before I went for my run, I spent more time with Alice Oswald. Here are a few bits from an interview she did in 2016 for Falling Awake:

I frequently get told I’m a nature poet living in a rural idyll, but just like the city, the country is full of anxious, savage people. The hedges seem so much stronger than the humans that you feel slightly imperilled and exposed, as if, if you stopped moving for a minute the nettles would just move in.

I think about this idea of the vegetation taking over when humans (by the gorge, Minneapolis Parks’ workers) stop managing and maintaining it. Creeping vines, tall grass, wandering branches, crumbling asphalt. I see these things all the time and often imagine how the green things might consume us when we stop paying attention.

I’m mostly interested in life and vitality, but you can only see that by seeing its opposite. I love erosion: I like the way that the death of one thing is the beginning of something else.

Erosion, things decomposing, returning, recycling. I’m drawn to noticing these things as I loop around the gorge.

It’s good to remember how to forget. I’m interested in the oral tradition: what keeps the poems alive is a little forgetting. In Homer you get the sense that anything could happen because the poet might not remember.

I like the idea of finding a balance, where I remember some things and forget others, or I forget some things so I can remember other things.

Poetry is not about language but about what happens when language gets impossible.

I like the idea of things being impossible to ever fully achieve, where no words can ever fully capture/describe what something it. When language is impossible, it’s possible to keep imagining/dreaming up new meanings.

I’m interested in how many layers you can excavate in personality. At the top it’s all quite named. But you go down through the animal and the vegetable and then you get to the mineral. At that level of concentration you can respond to the non-human by half turning into it.

This line about getting down to the mineral, reminded me of some of Oswald’s words in Dart and Lorine Niedecker’s words in “Lake Superior”:

from Dart / Alice Oswald

where’s Ernie? Under the ground

where’s Redver’s Webb? Likewise.

Tom, John and Solomon Warne, Dick Jorey, Lewis
Evely?

Some are photos, others dust.
Heading East to West along the tin lodes,
80 foot under Hepworthy, each with a tallow candle in
his hat.

Till rain gets into the stone,
which washes them down to the valley bottoms
and iron, lead, zinc, copper calcite
and gold, a few flakes of it
getting pounded between the pebbles in the river.

from “Lake Superior” / Lorine Niedecker

In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock

And the idea of moving through layers, reminds me of Julian Spahr and their poem that moves through layers, first out, then in:

poemwrittenafterseptember 11, 2001 / Julian Spahr

as everyone with lungs breathes the space between the hands and the space around the hands and the space of the room and the space of the building that surrounds the room and the space of the neighborhoods nearby and the space of the cities and the space of the regions and the space of the nations and the space of the continents and islands and the space of the oceans and the space of the troposphere and the space of the stratosphere and the space of the mesosphere in and out.

In this everything turning and small being breathed in and out by everyone with lungs during all the moments.

Then all of it entering in and out.

The entering in and out of the space of the mesosphere in the entering in and out of the space of the stratosphere in the entering in and out of the space of the troposphere in the entering in and out of the space of the oceans in the entering in and out of the space of the continents and islands in the entering in and out of the space of the nations in the entering in and out of the space of the regions in the entering in and out of the space of the cities in the entering in and out of the space of the neighborhoods nearby in the entering in and out of the space of the building in the entering in and out of the space of the room in the entering in and out of the space around the hands in the entering in and out of the space between the hands.

How connected we are with everyone.

The space of everyone that has just been inside of everyone mixing inside of everyone with nitrogen and oxygen and water vapor and argon and carbon dioxide and suspended dust spores and bacteria mixing inside of everyone with sulfur and sulfuric acid and titanium and nickel and minute silicon particles from pulverized glass and concrete.

How lovely and how doomed this connection of everyone with lungs.

—

I’ve been wanting to do something with layers and the gorge. What form might it take?

march 28/RUN

5.3 miles
franklin loop
28 degrees

Sunny, calm, mostly quiet. Turned onto a street at the same time as another runner on the opposite sidewalk. Both us running almost the same speed for at least a minute. Was he trying to race me? Not sure. I was hoping one of us would be faster so I could avoid being too focused on him. Somewhere in the next few blocks, I started pulling ahead. Did he slow down or turn onto another street?

Ran with my shadow. Felt tired after running 4 miles yesterday and almost 5 the day before. Remembered to notice the river: lots of slushy dollops of foam. I watched it moving slowing downstream as it crossed under the lake street bridge. To keep myself steady, I recited my lines from Emily Dickinson, “Life is but life/and death but death/Bliss is but bliss/and breath but breath.”

Heard several woodpeckers drumming on dead wood. Thought about my mannequin poem and figured out a possible line in which I replace “the mannequins” with “the women and children.” I like it, but I’m not quite sure if it works. Does it give the wrong tone?

Still reading through Dart and thinking about Alice Oswald’s work. Here’s another poem from her that I’d like to read through many more times. I want to think more about what she means by: “to be brief/to be almost actual”

A RUSHED ACCOUNT OF THE DEW / Alice Oswald

I who can blink
to break the spell of daylight

and what a sliding screen between worlds 
is a blink

I “who can hear the last three seconds in my head 
but the present is beyond me 
                     listen

in this tiny moment of reflexion
I want to work out what it’s like to descend
out of the dawn’s mind

and find a leaf and fasten the known to the unknown 
with a liquid cufflink
                     and then unfasten

to be brief

to be almost actual

oh pristine example
of claiming a place on the earth
only to cancel


march 27/RUN

4 miles
marshall loop
16 degrees / feels like 6

Brrr. I wore almost all the layers today: 2 pairs of running tights, long-sleeved shirt, black 3/4s pullover, pink jacket, black vest, 2 pairs of gloves, winter cap, buff, 1 pair of socks. The only thing missing: hand warmers, mittens, and an extra pair of socks. Like most cold days, it looked (and sounded) warm. Bright sun and singing birds. Because of the cold, it wasn’t that crowded on the trails. I think I only saw 1 bike, some walkers. Was “morning-ed!” by Mr. Morning! and Santa Claus. Nice. Noticed several planes in the sky. With the clear blue and bright sun, they were white smudges, looking almost like the faint trace of the moon during the day. I saw them out of the corner of my eye, but they kept disappearing in my central vision.

the river!

The best thing I noticed today was the river. It was mostly open, but the banks were crusty again, and there were small chunks of ice everywhere. Slushy. Yesterday the wind was moving with the river, pulling it faster south. Today, the wind and water were at odds. The river was moving, but just barely, and away from the wind. Most of its movement was in the sparkling sun bouncing off the gentle ripples. Beautiful.

Saw my shadow off to the side, then in front. Heard my zipper pull clanging against my vest. I don’t remember smelling anything — no, that’s wrong. As I ran by Black Coffee, I smelled the fresh waffles.

a word to remember in the summer

petrichor (pe TRI cor): a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. Found on a twitter thread about favorite words rarely heard.

Love this poem, and the idea of creating a list or lists with “More Of This, Please” as the title!

MORE OF THIS, PLEASE / EMILY SERNAKER

In grad school I had a writing teacher who’d completely cream my essays.
Cross-outs and tracked changes. He took me at my word
when I said I wanted to get better. But when he liked something,
he’d point to what was working: More of this please.
Did I mention he was British? This is important because lately,
whenever something is really working, I tend to think to myself,
in a British accent: More of this, please. A lunch date turned dinner date
with a dreamboat who is slightly embarrassed his eyes water in cold weather.
Him looking like he’s tearing up at Shake Shack. More of this, please.
A toddler turning got me at the park holding her hair tie, asking me
to fix her ponytail. Her grandmother nodding to go right ahead, my hands
collecting wisps of yellow. More of this, please. Any time my family is honest
about mental health, what my grandparents were up against. This.
Cough-drop wrappers that say, Bet on Yourself. Pop-up concerts in the city.
Stevie Wonder playing Songs in the Key of Life at 10 AM on a Monday,
hundreds of people stopping mid commute in button-ups and blazers
belting out every word to “Sir Duke” and “Isn’t She Lovely,” saying, “My boss
is just going to have to understand!” The subway tiles under Carnegie Hall
with names of performers who played there: Lena Horne, September 29,
1947. The Beatles, February 12, 1964. Dance classes with live drummers.
An editor saying, I’ll pass this on,” instead of, “I’ll pass on this.”
A stranger falling asleep on my shoulder for several stops. Staring at dates
in authors’ bios: Ruth Stone, 1915-2011. Larry Levis, 1946-1996.
Recommitting to living as much as I can. Realizing the dash between the year
you’re born and the year you die is smaller than your smaller fingernail.
It’s smaller than a strand of saffron in a bottle the size of a thimble
in the spice shop across the street.

This poem is in The Sun Magazine. I found all these wonderful quotations about water there: Sunbeams

march 26/RUN

4.8 miles
Veteran’s Home Loop
22 degrees / feels like 11
wind: 14 mph / 22 mph gusts

Sunny and cold and windy. Wore lots of layers: vest, jacket, long-sleeved shirt, tights, gloves, buff, winter cap. My watched died 1 1/2 miles in so I don’t know exactly how far I ran or how fast. It doesn’t really matter. Ran to the falls, over the creek, under the arbor, behind John Stevens’ House, across the tall bridge, up to the bluff, beside the river, through the edge of turkey hollow, past Beckettwood with its bright red sign that looks newly painted (or brighter in the early spring sun). A nice run. I didn’t feel fantastic the entire time, but not miserable either. And now, being done, I feel glad to have gone outside in this blustery weather.

Thinking about this line I reread this morning before my run:

your eyes are made mostly of movement

Dart / Alice Oswald (45)

I deduced to make this my task for noticing the world on my run today: What is moving on my run (besides me)?

10 Things I Noticed: Movement

  1. swirling leaves (seen)
  2. a woodpecker’s bill rapidly pecking on hollow wood (heard)
  3. the rush of fast-moving air on my arm (felt)
  4. Minnehaha Creek bouncing off of the limestone ledge then falling over the falls (seen)
  5. the river moving swiftly downstream under the Ford Bridge, encouraged by the wind (seen)
  6. dead leaves in a tree, shaking (heard)
  7. a shadow barely creeping over the creek under the tall bridge (seen)
  8. a black truck crossing the bridge then turning right (seen)
  9. many runners, including one moving slightly slower than me over by the gorge, as I ran on Edmund (seen)
  10. a flag at half mast (for Madeline Albright) waving gently (I expected it to be flapping in this wind, but it wasn’t) (seen)

No flashes. And the shadows I did see, tree trunks, lamp posts, stop signs, were all still. No darting squirrels, or dancing water, or soaring birds.

One other imagine I’d like to remember: the big rock that stands next to the lonely and inviting bench — the one I always wanted to stop at but never did during my early pandemic runs — looked like it had inched closer to the path. This rock is BIG so this is very unlikely. A closer look: its shadow was creeping onto the trail.

Back to movement. Here are two poems that fit with the theme of movement and eyes. One of them I read today, the other I posted a few months ago:

The Rock that Is Not a Rabbit/ Corey Marks

The rock that is not a rabbit suns itself
in the field, its brown coat that isn’t fur
furred with light. The rock that isn’t a rabbit
would be warm to a palm but wouldn’t
quicken or strain from touch. It doesn’t ache
with hunger or pine with rabbit-lust,
doesn’t breathe the world in, translating
scent into some rabbit understanding.
The world is beyond its understanding.
And yet the rock that is not a rabbit will
outlast the hawk banking above, the fox
sloughing free of its den, the wheel nicking
off the road to disturb the gravel berm,
the mower coughing up the neighbor’s yard.
Even so, its ears fold back against its body
as if to make itself small, a secret,
though when a breeze disorders the grass,
the rock’s stillness appears like wild motion.

Had to look up berm:

noun

a flat strip of land, raised bank, or terrace bordering a river or canal.

a path or grass strip beside a road.

an artificial ridge or embankment, e.g., as a defense against tanks.”berms of shoveled earth”

Saccadic Masking/ Paige Lewis from Space Struck

—a phenomenon where the brain blocks out blurred images created by movement of the eye

All constellations are organisms
and all organisms are divine
and unfixed. I am spending 
my night in the kitchen. There
is blood in the batter—dark
strands stretch like vocal 
cords telling me I am missing
so much with these blurred
visions: a syringe flick, the tremor
of my wrist—raised veins silked
green. I have seen the wings
of a purple finch wavering
around its body, stuck, burned
to the grill of my car, which means
I have failed to notice its flight—
a lesson on infinities, a lesson I 
am trying to learn. I am trying.
Tell me, how do I steady my gaze
when everything I want is motion?

march 22/RUN

3.5 miles
3.5 mile loop*
40 degrees
light rain

*Couldn’t think of a more clever name right now for this 3.5 mile loop: head to the river, turn right, run past the oak savanna, the 38th street steps, the lonely bench, the curved retaining wall, to the 44th street parking lot. Loop around the lot, then head north on the river road. Keep going past the ravine and the welcoming oaks. Run down into the tunnel of trees, above the floodplain forest, beside the old stone steps. Just before double bridge north, turn right and head over to edmund boulevard. Run south to 34th st, head east, then south on 45th st.

Ran a little earlier this morning to get ahead of the rain. Made it about 20 minutes before it began. Light rain I could barely distinguish from my sweat at first. Then a little heavier. I could hear the light thumps of the rain drops hitting the hard, barely thawed, earth. I could see the rain making a fine mist or a thin veil of fog. The sky was gray, everything else brown and dull yellow. Extra dreamy and surreal.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the drumming of a woodpecker: not rapid and insistent, but sporadic and dull. Does that mean the wood was more hollow or less?
  2. the oak savanna was all yellow and brown, no snow in sight
  3. all the walking trails were clear of ice and open!
  4. ahead of me I thought I noticed a man walking with a dog. As I got closer, they were gone. Had I imagined it? No, I saw a flash of them below me on the steep, dirt trail down to the savanna
  5. again, ahead of me I thought I saw two people walking near the 38th steps who then disappeared. Had I just mistaken the trashcans for people (which I do frequently)? No, as I passed the steps, there they were, entering the paved part of the Winchell Trail
  6. several walkers on the Winchell Trail
  7. bright car headlights cutting through the gloom, passing through the bare branches on the other side of the ravine
  8. a man in bright blue shorts and matching shirt with sunglasses (?), running with a dog, or was it 2? We passed each other twice
  9. Mr. Morning! greeted me. I’m pretty sure I responded with my own “morning” instead of “good morning!” (which is my usual response)
  10. the ravine was partly clear, partly covered in snow. I tried to listen for the water flowing down to the river, but I could only hear the rain and the car wheels and the clanging of my zipper pull

Woke up this morning to an acceptance for one of my poems for the What You See is What You Get Issue in Hearth & Coffin Literary Journal! They didn’t accept my mannequin one, but another favorite about swimming in lake nokomis and seeing more than I wanted. That poem, “there is a limit,” began on this log, in an entry on june 1, 2018:

After finishing the run, I decided to swim. The water was warm which is amazing considering the lake still had ice at the end of April! Guess all those 90+ degree days really warmed it up fast. The water was also clear. Freak-me-out clear. I could see the bottom and the algae plants growing up from the bottom and the fish swimming below me. I have decided that it is better to swim without being able to see what I’m swimming with. If I can’t see it, I can pretend it’s not there, which is probably what it would like too. The coolest part of the clear water was seeing all the shafts of light piercing through the lake. 3, 4, maybe more. I also liked being able to look at the bottom in the beach area–I think I counted 5 or 6 hair bands, lost to their owners forever. I might have swam longer but there were a few school groups at the beach and I was concerned that some of the kids would mess with my stuff. I couldn’t tell if they were in elementary or middle school, but they sure knew how to yell out “fuck” at the top of their lungs. A kid that will brazenly yell out “fuck this” or “fuck you” or preface many words with “fucking” on a school trip might find it amusing to throw my towel in the water or take my sweatshirt. But getting back to how clear the water was, part of me wishes I had spent more time exploring underwater and studying the bottom–how deep it gets, what’s really down there. But, another part of me–perhaps a bigger part–likes the idea of keeping it a mystery. Knowing more might make me more anxious or disappointed in how un-mysterious it is.

Speaking of swimming, Alice Oswald is a river swimmer! Very cool. She’s written poems about swimming, and discussed it in several of the interviews I’ve read. I’d post more about that now, but I want to discuss what I thought about as I ran: the poet in the poem. In yesterday’s log entry, I posed these questions:

I wonder, is there room in Oswald’s democratic stories for her own efforts at smashing nostalgia and noticing from different perspectives? How would that alter the poem to include the voice of the observer-participant or participant-observer? How might it look if the author’s voice wasn’t absent, but made only one among many, all having value?

log entry / 21 march 2022

Just before heading out the door, I read this quotation from Oswald in an interview about her collection, Woods, etc.:

I almost feel that I am not part of it. I believe the poet shouldn’t be in the poem at all except as a lens or as ears.

I also read a bit of the transcript from David Nieman’s interview with Oswald. He suggests: “It feels like all through the discussions you’ve had on your own writing, it seems like there’s a way you’re trying to break out and away from you, break out and away from the self….” Her response:

AO: I suppose I was very excited right from the start to feel that Homer doesn’t necessarily come from one’s self. For me, when I’m thinking about the difference between Epic and Lyric, you can define them in many ways and Aristotle had his particular definition, but for me, what is interesting is that it’s not necessarily owned oneself. That means it escapes from the solipsism that creeps into lyric poetry that you can become stifled by one mood, one point of view. For me, that extends to thinking itself. That’s why I have an anxiety about thinking because it feels as if it’s hitting one person’s skull, whereas Homer’s poems, because they have simply been eroded into their way of being by being passed from one person to another, they somehow embody a multiple mind and they move out of the clouding and confinement of one person’s point of view. That’s, I presume, why the things are allowed to be themselves. They’re not themselves as perceived. They are themselves in their radiance.

Between the Covers with Alice Oswald

I thought about these passages as I ran, and the tension I feel between 1. wanting to use words to connect and better understand and describe my experiences, and 2. wanting to dissolve my self into the world and the words. Mostly, I want to dissolve, to have what I’m doing be about the words and the stories, passing them onto others. But, there’s a part of me that wants to push myself to be less hidden, less private, less guarded. Removing myself from the words (and the world) sometimes seems like an easy way not to engage in the messiness, to try and float free above it, which is not really possible or desirable. Of course, thinking about this when I’m running means that no thoughts are that long or clear or remembered. They flash and dissolve.

At some point, I recall thinking about Sarah Manguso and her book, Ongoingness. Here’s what she writes about why she’s kept a diary for 25 years:

I didn’t want to lose anything. That was my main problem. I couldn’t face the end of a day without a record of everything that had every happened.

I wrote about myself so I wouldn’t become paralyzed by rumination–so I could stop thinking about what had happened and be done with it.

More than that, I wrote so I could say I was truly paying attention. Experience in itself wasn’t enough. The dairy was my defense against waking up at the end of my life and realizing I’d missed it.

Ongoingness / Sarah Manguso

I realize, as I recall these running thoughts, that I’m mixing up different types of writing: personal diary entries with polished poems or crafted stories. I also recall trying to ignore the voice that kept reminding me of how this issue of the self in writing has been discussed exhaustively by others. I want to consider others’ perspectives and learn from their insight, but I don’t want to devote all of my time to reading and summarizing their arguments, which is what academic Sara used to do.

I found this poem in a special issue on Alice Oswald. It seems to fit somehow with my discussion. Today, reading it, I especially love the last line:

EXPERIENCE, A LOVE STORY/ Katie Peterson

We were having an argument about where we should live.

Our argument was city versus country, pretty standard. There’s a way the city makes you feel, like you were meant to be there, like if you were there, something would happen to you. You’d go to the movies.

You were telling the story about the first time you found the donkeys. You told it slowly. Because you hadn’t gone for the purpose of seeing them at all. You’d gone to that place to make a fire.

You never wanted to get anywhere. The landscape passes through you – you don’t pass through it. At heart you’re just a scavenger, making due with very little. So, having an experience has something to do with there not being a lot of something, light, or money.

What you were saying had something to do with time. If time runs out, you said, you have to just stand there. You can panic, ok, but it’s like a panic in the house.

You can’t think your way into your body. You can’t think your way into time. You can’t have an experience by trying to have an experience, I said to you, and you said, why not?

I’m not sure why I’m telling you this. I’m telling you because maybe an experience is something that happens on the way.

What else am I supposed to do?

I am always on the side of the country. I don’t have had anything to say about the people in the country. I don’t know any. I think the point of the country is that people are secondary to it.

returning later in the day to this entry: Listening (and reading) more of the Between the Covers podcast with Oswald, which is focused primarily on her latest work, Nobody, I’m thinking that I should definitely read it and do a lot more thinking about water and its many forms, and water as a type of subjectivity, or subjectless subjectivity? Maybe I should with trying to trace, more carefully, how the River Dart is a subjectless subject, or a multitude of subjects?

march 21/RUN

6 miles
franklin loop
52 degrees

A very spring day today. Tomorrow, colder again. Rain and 40s. I overdressed — I didn’t need to the running tights. It was mostly overcast, but every so often I saw my shadow. Faint, but leading me. Ran the Franklin loop. My watch crashed less than 3 miles in. Either I get a new watch soon, or stop wearing a watch. I’m leaning towards not wearing a watch.

I got a “morning!” from Mr. Morning! and Dave the Daily Walker. An excellent start to my run. Encountered a few other runners, some walkers. Any bikes? I can’t remember. No roller skiers yet. The birds were LOUD! Heard some honking geese, then saw them flying low in a line. Heard at least one woodpecker, drumming.

note: re-reading the entry and the part about the LOUD birds, I’m struck by how quiet everything is now, at 1 pm. Where is all the birdsong that was here just minutes ago? Strange.

workers of the day

Nearing the marshall/lake street bridge from the northeast, I started to smell tar. Then I heard some deep voices on the hill at St. Thomas: “Go go go go!” then “woah” or “wow” or “alright” but not “stop” or “that’s enough.” I imagined someone was pouring the tar and someone else was telling them when to stop. Was that what was happening? It was too far away and hidden behind trees for me to see. What was the tar for? What exactly were they doing? Tarring a roof? Repaving a road? Were the workers wearing masks to protect them from the fumes?

Right before I started my run, I typed this here: A few lines from the poem to remember as I run:

have you forgotten the force that orders the world’s
fields
and sets all cities in their sites, this nomad
pulling the sun and moon, placeless in all places,
born with her stones, with her circular bird-voice,
carrying everywhere her quarters?

I decided to try and keep remembering (and noticing and studying) the river as I ran. Often, even as I know it’s there, I forget to notice it. Today, it was pale blue and mostly calm. I saw a reflection of the lake street bridge as I ran on the east side, but it wasn’t completely smooth — not the perfect, inverted bridge from another world I sometimes see. The banks were mostly brown, although there were a few white spots. Just past Meeker Island Dam, I heard a small waterfall. No boats or rowers. No ducks. Running above the river, I never got close enough to hear it. All I could hear were the cars driving by — on the river road, a bridge, the distant freeway. To me, it seemed as if they were trying to sound like a rushing river. I thought about how important the river is to Minneapolis and St. Paul, how roads, buildings, neighborhoods, industry are arranged around it and because of it (ordering the world, setting cities in its sites). I love how Oswald offered this wonderful description of the organizing/ordering force of the river, wedged between these two passages from the dairy worker.

Before:

I’m in a rationalised set-up, a Superplant. Everything’s stainless
and risk can be spun off by centrifugal motion: blood, excre-
ment, faecal matter from the farms

and after:

I’m in milk, 600,000,000 gallons a week.

On March 17th, I wrote a little about Oswald and work/working. I posted two passages by her that discuss the value of labor as a way to know the land: raking and gardening. She writes: “Instead of looking at landscape in a baffled, longing way, it was a release when I worked outside to feel that I was using it, part of it. I became critical of any account that was not a working account.”

This idea of not looking at the landscape in a baffled, longing way fits with some more of her words, in an interview: Landscape and Literature Podcast: Alice Oswald on the Dart River. In this podcast she discusses her resistance to the romanticizing of landscapes:

I’m just continually smashing down the nostalgia in my head. And trying to inquire of the landscape itself what it feels about itself. Rather than bringing my advertising skills — getting rid of words like picturesque…there’s a whole range of words that people like to use about landscape, like pastoral, idyll. I quite like taking the names away from things and seeing what they are behind their names. I exert incredible amounts of energy trying to see things from their own points of view rather than the human point of view.

…more interested in the democratic stories…the hardship of laboring, looking for food…the struggle of a tree trying to grow out of stone…always looking for that struggle. I’m allergic to peace. I like this restless landscape. I like that it won’t let you sit back and say, “what a beautiful place I’ve arrived to.” You’ve never arrived. It’s moving past you all the time.

It’s a day long effort to get your mind into the right position to live and speak well.

Landscape and Literature Podcast: Alice Oswald on the Dart River

I’m thinking about this effort as a form of labor, done in tandem with other forms of labor, like using the land, walking through the land, working on the land. Oswald doesn’t foreground this type of work — the smashing of nostalgia and trying to find better, less romantic, words — in Dart. Is that because that’s her work, as a poet, and she’s trying to keep herself out of the poem? In contrast to Oswald, Mary Oliver frequently discusses her labor of noticing and telling about it. I appreciate Oliver’s emphasis on that difficult labor, but as I read Oswald, I also like the idea of trying to move outside of, or beside, ourselves to imagine things from the point of view of the flower and its struggles, instead of from our point of view as we admire/praise that flower. She gives the example of the flower in this interview, ending with, “It’s a fascinating, hard world for a weed.”

I wonder, is there room in Oswald’s democratic stories for her own efforts at smashing nostalgia and noticing from different perspectives? How would that alter the poem to include the voice of the observer-participant or participant-observer? How might it look if the author’s voice wasn’t absent, but made only one among many, all having value?

my whole style’s a stone wall

In a section on the stonewaller, Oswald offers this great line:

…which is how everything goes
with me, because you see I’m a gatherer, an amateur, a
scavenger, a comber, my whole style’s a stone wall, just
wedging together what happens to be lying about at the time.

page 33

There are so many great lines in this poem!

march 20/RUN

3.85 miles
marshall loop
36 degrees

This year, the first day of spring feels like spring, which doesn’t always happen. What a wonderful morning. Felt much warmer than 36 degrees. I was overdressed. Sunny, low wind, calm. Clear paths — not crowded, and no snow (except for some slick spots on the sidewalk climbing up Marshall). I was able to run on all of the walking trails. I know I looked at the river, I remember doing it, but I can’t remember what it looked like. Was it brown or blue? No clue.

“staring at routine things”

Before my run, I read a short section from Dart. This one was in the voice of the dairy worker (page 29):

to the milk factory, staring at routine things

Dart / Alice Oswald

In the poem, these routine things include

bottles on belts going round bends.
Watching out for breakages, working nights. Building up
prestige. Me with my hands under the tap, with my brain
coated in a thin film of milk. In the fridge, in the warehouse,
wearing ear-protectors.

Dart / Alice Oswald

I decided to start my run with this prompt: focus on/stare at the routine things on my run. Here are some of my thoughts:

  • the route: Marshall Loop. Not as routine as other routes, but one I do often. North on 43rd ave; right on 31st st; left on 46th ave; right on lake street, then over the bridge until it turns into marshall; up the marshall hill; right on Cretin ave; right on east river road; down past shadow falls; up the lake street bridge steps and over the bridge; down the hill then over to west river road heading south
  • ran past the lutheran church on 32nd and 43rd. Heard the congregation singing inside for the sunday church service
  • encountered another pedestrian, stayed on the right side as we passed
  • wore my usual outfit for an early spring run: black running tights, black shorts, green long-sleeved shirt, orange sweatshirt, hat, headband, gloves
  • like it always does after a rain, or when the snow melts, shadow falls was gushing
  • reaching the top of the marshall hill, I watched the crosswalk timer countdown and the light turn from green to yellow to red

At some point in the run, I started thinking about all the different forms of work happening out by the gorge — like squirrels thumping nuts, birds calling to other birds, a woodpecker drumming on a hollow tree. Maybe I will try to notice forms of work on some run this week?

Then I wondered about how stare might mean more than looking closely (and for a long time) at something. Maybe it also is a general way of describing giving careful, focused attention to something. I think I’ve said it before on this log: I don’t like staring at things, especially people. It feels rude (which is maybe a problem I should try to get over?). Also, it doesn’t always help me, with my bad vision, see something any better. I have more luck with having an awareness of something and absorbing details instead of forcibly collecting them.