Tag: headphones

jan 12/BIKERUN

bike: 10 minute warm-up
basement
run: 3.5 miles
river road, south/north
9 degrees / feels like -5
wind: 13 mph/ 24 mph gusts

Sometimes running when it’s this cold isn’t that difficult, especially when there’s sun and no wind. Today there was no sun* and plenty of wind and it was hard. Not all of the time, but often.

But who cares when the river looks like it does today?! Half covered in ice, mostly gray and brown, open and vast.

And who wouldn’t want to be out here when the geese are flying overhead, their honks swirling around all of us below, sounding mournful and harsh and wild?

And who isn’t grateful to have an almost empty trail — no thoughts or distractions, only a few other people, and most of them below on the lower path?

*I guess there was some sun, but it was hidden behind the clouds. The only time I noticed it was when I was running north up a hill straight into the wind — I saw the faintest trace of my shadow. Hello friend! If I wasn’t paying attention or if I hadn’t trusted what I saw, I might not have noticed her.

Listened to the cold as I ran south — what does the cold sound like? jagged breaths, sharp sounds suspended, silence. Listened to my Window playlist running back north.

Windows can certainly change lives in all sorts of ways. “Faith goes out through the window when beauty comes in at the door,” quips the English philosopher George Edward Moore. “Well,” says Julie Andrews, not yet breaking into song, but you never know, as she gazes out onto those hills alive with something, “when one door closes, another window opens.” She’s opened us onto the window of film, so how best to set the scene? “An actor entering through the door, you’ve got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you’ve got a situation.” says Billy Wilder.

Pleasure and Pane: songs about windows

This article offered a lot of great suggestions for window songs to add to my playlist, which is now over an hour.

window playlist

  1. Window/Fiona Apple
  2. Window/Genesis
  3. Smokin’ Out the Window/Silk Sonic
  4. Keep Passing the Open Window/Queen
  5. Lookin’ Through the Windows/Jackson 5
  6. I Threw a Brick Through a Window/U2
  7. When I’m Cleaning Windows/George Formby
  8. Skyscraper/Demi Lovato
  9. At My Window Say and Lonely/Billy Bragg & Wilco
  10. My Own Worst Enemy/Lit
  11. Junk/Paul McCartney
  12. In a Glass House/Gentle Giant
  13. Belly Button Window/Jimmy Hendrix
  14. Look Through Any Window/The Hollies
  15. The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)/Missy Elliott
  16. One Way Out/Sonny Boy Williams
  17. Silhouettes/The Rays
  18. The Glass/Foo Fighters
  19. Tip Toe Thru’ the Tulips/Annette Hanshaw
  20. Waving Through a Window/Dear Evan Hanson
  21. Open a New Window/Mame
  22. Open Your Window/Ella Fitzgerald
  23. Fly Through My Window/Pete Seeger

Today I put the playlist on shuffle and heard: 3, 5, 10, 16, 2, 9

an hour later: Not for the first time, I’m starting to read an article about Emily Dickinson’s windows. It’s really good, but dense, so I’ve always put it off. Will I get through it today? Maybe. Anyway, I started reading it, and encountered a map of Amherst with a note: The Dickinson house is circled in red.

an old black and white image (lithograph?) of Amherst, with Emily Dickinson's house circled in red. The only way I'm able to see the circle is if I put the computer screen up to my face and look at it through my peripheral vision.
Amherst, 1886

Can you easily see the red circle? I can’t. The only way I am able to see it is if I put my face up right against the screen and look at it through the side of my eye. Only then do I see a trace of red — the idea of red. Once I see (or feel?) the red, I can see a faint circle and I can tell that it’s red, but it’s not RED! but red?

The other day, Scott, FWA, and I were discussing the scenes in Better Call Saul that are set in the present day and are in black and white. Scott and FWA both agreed that those were harder to watch — they had to pay more careful attention — because they lacked color, which is harder because visual stories often rely heavily on color to communicate ideas/details. I said I didn’t realize that they were in black and white; they didn’t look any different to me than the other scenes, which are in vivid color (at least that’s what they tell me). I realized something: it’s not that I don’t see color, it just doesn’t communicate anything to me, or if it communicates it’s so quiet that I don’t notice what it’s saying.

Back to the image with the red circle. The main point of the image is to enable you to quickly and easily see where the Dickinson home is located in the town. If I hadn’t read the text below it, I never would have known there was a circle, and the main point of the image would be lost on me. This happens a lot. Things that are obvious to most people, aren’t to me. More than that, they don’t exist. Of course it’s very frustrating and difficult, but it’s also fascinating to recognize this, and helpful to understand it.

jan 11/RUN

4 miles
almost to franklin and back
15 degrees / feels like 0

Okay winter! A good run even though my legs felt heavy and tired for the first mile. And I was cold — felt it in my lungs. Saw Dave, the Daily Walker, and when he asked, how are you doing?, I replied: I’m cold! To which he said, that’s Minnesota or something like that. The sun was out today and I think I remember admiring my shadow. Heard some strange, almost strangled, noises down in the gorge. Probably honking geese, or maybe a feral kid having fun? Encountered at least one fat tire, a few walkers, no roller skiers. The walking path was covered in slippery snow, but the bike path was almost completely clear. The sky was blue, the trees were empty, the river was? I know I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what color it was or if it had more ice on it.

layers I started in: 2 pairs of black running tights; a bright green tank top; a previously bright green base layer shirt with the sleeves over my thumbs; a purple jacket zipped up to my chin; a pink and orange buff covering my neck and ears; a black cap with fleece lining and ear flaps down; gray socks; raspberry red shoes; 2 pairs of gloves — inner ones were black, outer bright pink with white stripes.

layers I ended in: 2 pairs of black running tights; a bright green tank top; a previously bright green base layer shirt pushed up on my arms a little; a purple jacket unzipped a few inches; a pink and orange buff around my neck; a black cap with fleece lining and ear flaps up; gray socks; raspberry red shoes; 1 pair of black gloves — the bright pink ones were in my pocket.

Listened to my breathing, cars, geese as I ran north. Put in my new “Windows” playlist (see below) on the way back south.

Interruption: An Assay/ Jane Hirshfield

Sometimes you took the shape
of an unseen mosquito,
sometimes of illness.

Presumed most of the time to be passing,
yet importunate as a toddler
who demanded her own way,
as a phone that would not stop ringing long after it should.

Unignorable pavement slap of the gone-flat tire.

All afternoon the thunder was interrupted by sunshine.
All night the rain was interrupted by trees and roofs.

And still, as rusting steel is uninterrupted by dryness
and hunger uninterrupted by sleep,
interruption and non-interruption sat in the day’s container
as salt sits in milk, one whiteness disguised by another.

As a fish in a tank is interrupted by glass, and turns,
a person’s fate is to continuedespite,
until.

Death: an interruption not passing,
weighing
one hundred and fifty-eight pounds,
carried on cut plywood with yellow straps.

Birth: an interruption between
two windows,
trying to think of any joke, any tune, that is new.

Between them:

this navigation by echolocation and lidar,
the weathers of avalanche, earthquake, tsunami,
firestorm, drought;
a moment that sets down—gently, sleepily—its half-read novel
on a bedside table whose side turned toward the wall stays unpainted,
confident the story will be there again come morning.

definition of an assay

Assays began with a poem written after I’d reread Edgar Allan Poe’s stories while writing an essay on how hiddenness works in poems. Some of the qualities of essay exploration and prose step lingered in its music and mode of thinking. At the time, I was regularly seeing the journal Science. On the back would often be advertisements for half-million-dollar machines for performing assays. That word—close to essay and sharing its root in the idea of an attempt, a try—refers to discovering a thing’s nature by breaking it into its elemental parts. The poem became ‘Poe: An Assay.’ That approach to writing, of testing a subject for its discoverable parts, imaginative and factual, caught. I began writing others. ‘Judgment: An Assay.’ ‘Tears: An Assay.’ ‘And: An Assay.'”

Jane Hirshfield

assay (def): the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality

my own interruption

Sitting at my desk, in front of my window, half-listening to the latest Foo Fighter album, an interruption — lyrics: there is something between us/I see right through/waiting on the other side of the glass. A window interrupting me! It’s strange how interruptions work. I’ve written/taught/spoke about the learning to let the world interrupt you. Maybe it’s not about letting the world interrupt you — it will do that anyway — but being open to that interruption, letting it in — opening the window to it?

a few more random window references that recently interrupted me:

  • Maria in The Sound of Music: “When the Lord closes the door, somewhere he opens a window.”
  • She Came in Through the Bathroom Window/ The Beatles
  • My Own Worst Enemy/ Lit — came in through the window last night (thanks Scott)

With all three of these examples, I’m thinking about the window and how it’s not a door. And in The Beatles and Lit examples there’s something not-quite-right, not normal, unacceptable about entering through the window. Using the window instead of the door is another way of saying something about your life is fucked up.

  • unrelated to these other examples, the scene of the window in The Amityville Horror– 1979 (iykyk) — I still think about that window falling on the kid’s hand sometimes. I’m not sure I’ve seen the whole movie — maybe I watched this bit on HBO and was too freaked out to watch the rest?
window pain!

Okay, now I want to make a window playlist to listen to as I think more about windows! (after the run): I did, and I listened to the first

Window/Fiona Apple
Window/Genesis
Window/Mountain Man
Smokin Out the Window/Silk Sonic
Keep Passing the Open Windows/Queen
Lookin’ Through the Windows/Jackson 5

jan 10/RUN

4.85 miles
minnehaha falls and back
23 degrees / feels like 16

Yes! A much better run than yesterday. My legs were sore at the beginning, but the path was clear and I had enough layers to keep warm. As I ran south, I noticed the river was gray — pewter, I think — or was it steel?

Heading towards the falls, I listened to the kids laughing on the playground, the rushing water at the falls, and the ding ding dinging of the light rail bells leaving the station. Heading home, I listened to a playlist (10K 2018). First song: Vampire Weekend’s “Step.” Memorable line: they don’t know how to dress for the weather

10 Things

  1. smoke coming from the house on edmund that always smells like smoke in the winter
  2. a woodpecker’s laugh
  3. pewter river
  4. city workers across the road near becketwood — what were they doing?
  5. the big dip on the edge of the biking path, almost to Godfrey, has finally been patched
  6. a man — not driving an official truck or wearing an official uniform — emptying the cash out of parking meter kiosk near the old Minnehaha depot
  7. traffic rushing by on hiawatha
  8. the creek was dark and open, no ice, just a little foam
  9. 2 humans and a small dog, walking across the grass near the falls
  10. a fast running speeding by me as I stood at my favorite falls spot and put in my headphones

the windows I encounter while running outside:

  • familiar houses, on the route I take almost every day — does a neighbor notice me (like I notice the runners and walkers that pass by my window) and think, there goes that woman running again, or maybe they mark their day with my run: she ran past, time for another cup of coffee
  • car windows — I can’t ever see in these windows — I never visualize people, just imagine what they might be thinking: I wish I was out there running or Why would anyone run in this weather?
  • John Steven’s house windows — are they boarded up from the fires last year?
  • Minnehaha Depot windows
  • Light rail windows — could anyone on the train see me from that far away

question: Do windows have to have glass to be windows? Is an empty frame enough?
answer: Yes? one def: an opening especially in the wall of a building for admission of light and air that is usually closed by casements or sashes containing transparent material (such as glass) and capable of being opened and shut

The other day I wrote in my Plague Notebook, Vol 18: post-pandemic window poems? And here’s something great that’s not a poem. I found it on my reading list in the 21st spot.

The window as isolation, shelter, protection, connection to the outside world, hope, longing. So many wonderful things happening in this story (essay?)! Instead of just posting it, I want to comment on each window.

APRIL 2020, FROM MY WINDOWS/ Kleopatra Olympiou

Second floor window, across:
A man who plays the piano at all times of the day, his keyboard by the window. I see the staccato movement of his fingers but hear no sound. His expression is thoughtful and I can’t say if the notes are right, if he’s pleased, or what he’s feeling. Sometimes he plays in his underwear and I avert my gaze. He could see me if he looks up, but never does – it’s dusk and I have the lights on. When he turns his own light off and leaves the room, I catch a reflection of myself doing the dishes in the mirror at the back of his bedroom.

details that strike me: no sound — why not? too cold (or hot) to have the window open? he has headphones on? my choice: her apartment is sealed up tight — isolation; the piano player’s expression is unreadable or empty; the narrator averts her eyes; the narrator has her lights on, is on display, but he never looks; that reflection of herself in his mirror — wow

Window next door, a wall away from the pianist:
Sometimes, a woman looking bored on her laptop. Most of the time the curtain is drawn, and in the darkness all I can see is the yellow that leaks out. This window doesn’t want to be looked at, so I leave it alone.

the yellow that leaks out; the way the narrator respects the bored looking woman’s privacy; again, no sound

Next door, downstairs:
A living room I often catch in the cool half-light of the TV screen, watching the rippled colour move like the walls of an aquarium. Submerged and elsewhere. On the half-obscured sofa to the right I glimpse a hand slowly stroking a bare calf.

submerged and elsewhere; the stroking hand/stroked calf; limited vision: the cool half-light, half-obscured sofa, disembodied hand and calf

To the left, first floor:
A guy in his twenties, probably, laughing into a video call, or he’s taking a selfie, or updating his Instagram story, I can’t be sure since he quickly lowers his arm and loses the grin. For a long time he types on his phone.

no sound, no clear understanding of what’s happening

In the street in front:
The pavement is partly overgrown with weeds, and in the morning I watch a father and young son diligently clear them away. Through the glass I can’t hear what they’re saying. The boy gesticulates energetically from somewhere within the depths of a coat, hat, gloves, wellies. His dad laughs, and with thick gardening gloves brushes the rough shavings of soil out of the way. The boy is serious when he nods his approval – this is no game, but real community service.

an acknowledgment of the lack of sound: through the glass I can’t hear, people outside — only one window (narrator’s) between them

Further left, in a garden:
A middle-aged man waters some flowers while a woman refills a birdfeeder with seeds. Soon they go back indoors and I can see nothing but the glaze of the white sky on their window.

women outside (one window), visible, women go back inside (two windows — the women’s the narrator’s), hidden by the reflection of sky in a window

From my living room window:
Three veterinary nurses in green uniforms walking dogs on the grass by the graveyard. They play fetch and the dogs fire off into the trees – soon they all go, and will return tomorrow, and the day after.

even if the window tightly shut, can’t you hear the dogs barking? dogs are LOUD.

From the same window, later in the afternoon:
A woman and a little girl stand in front of a fresh grave, neat and lined with wood. Some days ago I watched a man from the church shovel grass and dirt away, and another day five figures gathered while a priest read mutely from an open book. The priest and his book went away to the church (chimney smoking) and, among the guests, I stood silent at my window, part of the ceremony. Today only the woman and the girl visit the grave, holding hands.

the narrator was part of the ceremony

It is dusk again at the living room window:
A magpie stops on one of the bony branches across, later a crow, a pigeon, a robin. In the distance I see the white bobbing of rabbits running among the tombstones.

Birds! a tree branch, a bobbing rabbit (nice work, resisting the impulse to write, bobbing bunnies

Then there is me, quarantined and at my nightly window, weaving my hair into a braid:
I listen to the creaks in the kitchen and Google my building, searching for estate agent photos of the other apartments, trying to piece together a virtual whole. I imagine a flat identical to mine next door, inverted – maybe the silent neighbours I’ve never spoken to are also at their windows, looking out. Maybe the pianist can see us, our kitchens a wall apart, divided. In my living room the curtains are never drawn. At night I sit illuminated and hope, for something.

sound — a creaking kitchen, silent neighbors

And, one more window thing. I’m slowly reading through Wendell Berry’s Window poems. Here’s 15. So good!

15. / Wendell Berry

The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree’s renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it–
the quick light among its leaves
–better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.

some thoughts:

WB’s glance can’t capture what the sycamore is

love this:
lightning stroke caught in the eye as description of seeing

the tree emerges at a different pace — not fast/immediate/NOW! that we expect with our glances
emerges partially — dazzle coming into the sun a little at a time

the man of the window

beyond his glances
the distorting geometry of preconception and habit?
beyond words
more than what he has learned/seen/understands
the bird here reminds me of A.R. Ammons and his discussion of language in garbage — see april 10, 2023

mind must bend? be at a slant (Emily Dickinson)?

jan 5/RUN

5.15 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
30 degrees

Yes! A great run. A brief runner’s high around mile 4. At the beginning it felt cold, but almost early spring-like: chirping birds, soft shadows, humid air, clear paths. In certain spots the path was dotted with ice.

Passed a group of 4 or 5 runners twice. Smelled cigarette smoke. Watched a car driving over the I-94 bridge. Listened to the group of women laughing, cars passing, ice sizzling heading north. Put it Billie Eilish essentials on the way back — maybe I’m, maybe I’m, maybe I’m the problem.

Something to try today, from Richard Siken: one image

The heart of lyric poetry is music and image. Music is hard to talk about but image is easy. It’s not too late to start an exercise. Write down one image every day that was striking. It’s good as a resource to pull from for writing or just for remembering. Date them. >

Today’s image: sizzling ice on the river chunks? sheets? just starting to form, floating on the surface. I took a video:

ice on the mississippi / 5 jan 2024

Standing there, holding my phone, the ice was moving slowly downstream and sizzling. In the video, I can’t see it moving and all I can hear is the traffic from the I-94 bridge just above. I wish I just kept the phone still; it’s moving around too much. The sizzle sounded like the sizzle I heard in my head after I fainted last week. A sizzle or crackle or static-y sound. The movement of the ice was slow and gentle and persistent (or insistent?).

windows and doors

Yesterday, it came to me: windows and doors. That’s what the theme for January should be. Will it stick? Not sure, but today I begin by thinking about windows and doors as I ran. I held onto a few thoughts and recorded them into my phone right after I finished my run:

Windows as in the frame and how often I see what’s just outside of the frame because I feel it off to the far edge (mainly because of my heightened peripheral vision).

A door as being open — focus on what’s through the other door, the room on the other side, as opposed to the door as framing what you see. Whereas the window is about the frame and about this thing in between you and the is/real. The frame is language, our access to the real. The framing of something as a useful limitation, helping to focus a form. The window is a form where the energy goes, where it’s held in, so the poem still has heat.

I’ve collected door and window poems before on this log, so this isn’t a new idea, I’m just adding to it. Here’s a door and window poem for today — actually, an excerpt from an amazing poem by Victoria Chang:

excerpt from Today/ Victoria Chang

Feb.10.2022
Today the river is in crisis, no
horizon dares to go near it. Today
my father is in a small jar. At dusk,
I went into a painter’s studio,
saw his stretched canvas on the table, white,
empty. What are we without those who made
us? May his memory be your blessing,
people emailed me all week. The artist
was painting a series of doors, which were
so real that I walked through the one that was
slightly open. Inside the room was my
breath that I had held since January
13, an eyelid, a loose eyeball, the
knob the eye fell on, the girl’s hands that tried
to catch him, which were charred and still waving.

Feb.11.2022
The white truck went from one frame to the next
and I thought of the time when someone lied
about me. How day and night I cared so
much about the lie that it split into
two, one part went out the left window frame,
the other out the right. Like the blue car
that disappears at the same time as the
white one, yet I can see both at once. When
they burned my father’s body, I wondered
if the eyeballs spread so far on each side
that they could see Wyoming, these two panes,
me on a small brown chair, looking out the
windows, waiting for oblivion to
travel through with its eighteen wheels and truth.

Feb.12.2022
At the beginning of our family tree
was hope. Or maybe it was just an owl.

Feb.13.2022
The same wind was blowing here eighty years
ago, always snapping families in half.

Feb.14.2022
If I keep the window closed, I am stuck
inside with language as it buzzes back
and forth, trying to get out and start wars.

First, so much of what she writes here (and in the rest of the poem) is echoed in other things I read earlier today and yesterday by Viola Cordova and Jake Skeets. Wow.

Second, at the beginning of the poem, Chang writes: On Kawara’s “Today” Series. Looked it up and found: Paintings: Today Series / Date Paintings

On January 4, 1966, On Kawara began his Today series, or Date Paintings. He worked on the series for nearly five decades. A Date Painting is a monochromatic canvas of red, blue, or gray with the date on which it was made inscribed in white. Date Paintings range in size from 8 x 10 inches to 61 x 89 inches. The date is composed in the language and convention of the place where Kawara made the painting. When he was in a country with a non-Roman alphabet, he used Esperanto. He did not create a painting every day, but some days he made two, even three. The paintings were produced meticulously over the course of many hours according to a series of steps that never varied. If a painting was not finished by midnight, he destroyed it. The quasi-mechanical element of his routine makes the production of each painting an exercise in meditation.1 Kawara fabricated a cardboard storage box for each Date Painting. Many boxes are lined with a cutting from a local newspaper. Works were often given subtitles, many of which he drew from the daily press.

Paintings: Today Series / Date Paintings

In the article, I also found this classroom activity suggestion:

Subtitle Your Days

Many of the Date Paintings have subtitles. Some of these titles record personal anecdotes, such as “I played ‘Monopoly’ with Joseph, Christine and Hiroko this afternoon. We ate a lot of spaghetti” (January 1, 1968). Others record current events, some of them momentous, such as the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. Still other subtitles refer to the Date Paintings themselves; one reads, “I am afraid of my ‘Today’ paintings” (May 29, 1966). For this activity, challenge students to record a subtitle for each day of the week for two weeks. These subtitles can be personal, historical, or even arbitrary. What is it like to capture a day with a subtitle?

I like the idea of combining Siken’s suggestion of an image a day with Kawara’s date poems and Chang’s reading of the date as a door into somewhere else. A date as door, an image as door.

jan 1/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
24 degrees
95% snow-covered

Today Scott and I are signing up to run the marathon on October 6, 2024. I believe that the third time will be the charm; I will finally show up to the start line.

Today’s run was a good way to start the new year. Last year had its terrible lows (Scott’s dad dying) and some wonderful highs (being nominated for a pushcart prize). What will 2024 bring? I’ve decided not to be scared or to spend too much time dreading next year’s election. This year is about running and poetry and finding new ways to connect with the world, words, people, a place.

The path was almost completely covered with a thin layer of soft, dry snow. Not slick, but a little difficult in the spots where the snow had covered the potholes. The trick was to notice where the snow was thicker, whiter: that’s where it had accumulated in the potholes.

Greeted a lot of other runners and walkers, noticed the steel blue river — open, no ice, listened to soft crunch of the snow, cars passing by, random voices, the collar of my jacket rubbing against the ear flaps of my cap.

Heard a runner say the number 27. Also heard a noise under the ford bridge that I couldn’t quite identify: brittle clacking which could have been ice or frozen leaves being moved by the wind. Heard the falls rushing over the limestone ledge and at least one kid being obnoxious.

Earlier today I was remembering words related to glitter, like glint and glisk, which is a gleam of light through a cloud. As I ran south, nearing Locks and Dam no. 1, I felt a glisk above me.

I don’t remember any bikes or birds or skiers. No squirrels or music. A few dogs.

Oh–right above the falls I noticed a person with a walker in a bright red coat. I almost called out, I love your red coat!, but I thought better of it. It’s quite possible that the coat wasn’t red but some other color. A strange side effect of my vision: the more wrong I am about something, the more likely I am to announce it to others. Why? I’m not sure.

random thing for future Sara to remember: Over the holiday, there’s been a series of cycle-cross races in Europe, which is biking on a looped course that involves mud and hopping over bumps and carrying bikes up stairs and ruts and steep hills and extremely tight turns. They keep coming up on youtube, and I keep watching them. Very fun to watch. I can’t imagine ever being able to do one of these races. So scary and technical and demanding!

one more thing: I had to return a few hours later to this log to add something I forgot. Geese! In my last mile, running on Edmund, I heard some honking so I stopped running and looked up. A few seconds later, a vee of geese high in the gray sky. A car passed as I stood there, on the edge of the road. Did they wonder what I was doing?

dec 30/RUN

3.1 miles
43rd, north/32nd, east/river road trail, south/42nd, west/edmund, north
29 degrees

My first run since last Sunday, partly due to travel, partly feeling sore. A great winter run. Cold, with layers, but not too cold. And no ice or snow or bad trail conditions. Before we went out for our run, Scott put together his marathon plan for this year — we’ve decided to try again. My goal: to make it to the start line next October, healthy. Should I come up with some sort of a plan? If I did, I imagine it would combine running, walking, and poetry.

As we ran, we talked about how the river road stops being red at certain points where the county or city or state (I can’t remember what Scott said) takes over. In those spots the road is black asphalt. Then I mentioned that we had had a very similar conversation 2 or 3 years ago. Then we talked about time looping and repeating yourself and when it’s ritual, when it’s being stuck in a rut.

10 Things

  1. open, brown river (no ice or snow)
  2. a scratching noise — not roller skier poles but the drum beat on a rap song that 2 white women were blasting as they ran by — wow
  3. one or two patches of ice on the sidewalk by edmund
  4. a runner in a bright orange sweatshirt or jacket, glowing in the gloom
  5. a light grayish-blue sky, everything darker — not feeling like day or night, but some in-between time
  6. a few flurries
  7. pothole 1: what started as a small hole has gotten bigger and deeper every year. 2 years ago they tried to patch it, but it didn’t work. The orange spray paint they used to outline a few years before that has faded, near the oak savanna
  8. pothole 2: at the spot where the bike and walking paths separate, less a pothole, more a deep gash 3 or 4 feet long. Every year they circle it with white spray paint — the shape of paint resembles a tube sock
  9. passing a woman who swung her arm out awkwardly like Dave — wasn’t sure for a minute — could it be Dave? no
  10. looking down at the floodplain forest, pointing out the clear view of the forest floor to Scott. He said if he looked he might faint: vertigo

Winter Song/ Wilfred Owen

The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

I like the focus on winter colors in this poem and the idea of snow as flamed and flowing and shift from sun-brown and summer-gold into spiritual glinter and how his looks are soft-going. I might need to use that expression for how I see: soft-going.

dec 24/RUN

3.1 miles
edmund, south/river road trail, north/32nd, east/44th, south
52 degrees

52 degrees! Shorts and one bright yellow long-sleeved shirt! Wow. Scott and I couldn’t pass up the chance to run in shorts in December, so we went out for a 5k. It really doesn’t feel like Christmas.

We talked about the terrible meal we had last night when we went out dinner (Scott’s fish was completely raw) and the double half marathon (a 1/2 in minneapolis one day, in eue claire the next) that Twin Cities in Motion is advertising for April and the time I was running up the hill and a barefoot kid raced me for a few seconds.

Other things I remember: the river was blue and open, the sidewalk on 32nd was in bad shape, the floodplain forest didn’t have any ice, there were a few stones stacked on the big boulder, the colors — rusty green — on the wet boulder near the bench.

Here’s poem I encountered this morning. I love the brevity and the title and the magical moment of hope that it captures.

IN MY DREAMS I BAKE A CROQUEMBOUCHE FOR CHRISTMAS / Megan Williams

& the caramel sticks to my hands & my hands stick to my cheeks & everyone marvels at my choux pastry magic & no one asks what I am going to do with my sad, sorry life

dec 23/RUN

4.3 miles
franklin loop
43 degrees / 95% humidity

Another Saturday run with Scott. We talked about visiting my dad and seeps and the distance from Minneapolis to Seattle versus Seattle to Alaska and Alert, the northernmost town of 2000 people in Northern Canada and different National Park designations. The sky was a heavy white. At the beginning of the run, it was misty and damp. Looking out at the river from the bridge, everything looked soft and fuzzy and barely formed. We encountered a roller skier, lots of walkers, a few runners. Heard some water gushing out of the rock or sewer pipes.

2 happy people with hats on the franklin bridge with the misty and foggy water of the mississippi river in the background
during the run / 23 dec 2023

dec 22/RUN

5.15 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
38 degrees / 93% humidity

Misty with drizzle this morning before the run, misty and damp during it. Everything fuzzy and dreamy, muffled by the wet air. Wonderful weather for a run (rereading this bit an hour later, I realize that it might sound sarcastic. It’s not. I love running in the rain and the mist. There was no wind and it wasn’t too cold.) I felt strong and relaxed and glad to be outside moving.

2 Regulars to greet: Daddy Long Legs and Dave, the Daily Walker. Actually, it might have been 3. I’m not positive but I think I exchanged waves with the women I talked to one day who tried to fix me up with another runner — I called her Mrs. Fixer-Upper, or something like that. Anyway, I exchanged good mornings with DDL for the first time. And then Dave wished me a Merry Christmas — you too! Merry Christmas!

Listened to the dripping and the hum of far off traffic as I ran north. Put in an old playlist for the last mile.

a ridiculous performance

Haven’t made note of one of these for some time — just checked and the last time was last December (14th) and I wrote almost the exact same first sentence! Before getting to the performance, here’s something I wrote on 23 june 2020 explaining my use of the phrase:

This idea of a “rather ridiculous performance” is a line from Mary Oliver’s “Invitation”: “I beg of you/do not walk by/without pausing/to attend to/this rather ridiculous performance.” Maybe I’ll try to make a list of the rather ridiculous performances I encounter/witness?

Today’s ridiculous performance was a guy running up the franklin hill backwards. He was part shuffling part skipping part running up it with a hood on. As I ran down, I could see him ahead of me, but I assumed he was running down the hill. I almost ran into him before I realized he didn’t know I was there. Wow — that would feel strange, I think, shuffling backwards up a hill, unable to see anything you were approaching. I’ve heard of people running backwards for training or coming back from an injury. Was that what this person was doing?

10 Things

  1. a thin mist/fog hovering in the air
  2. new graffiti all over one of the franklin bridge support posts
  3. a walker and their dog crossing the river road then taking the steps down to the muddy Winchell Trail
  4. no chain at the top of the old stone steps, blocking the way down to the river — I bet it’s slippery today!
  5. ice on the edges of the river, below, near longfellow flats
  6. no stones stacked on the boulder
  7. all of the benches were empty
  8. halfway down the hill, I noticed some stairs on the other side of the road I’ve never noticed before. Were they leading to the franklin terrace dog park?
  9. June’s white ghost bike was hanging from the trestle
  10. bright car headlights cutting through the foggy mist

seeps

Before the run, I was reading about seeps and springs. Decided to think about them and why I might want to be one as I was running. In particular I was interested in how being a seep is different than becoming a boulder, which I’ve already written about. I recorded my thoughts after running up the franklin hill.

As I ran down the hill, I thought about how gravity pulls water down. A line: no need to navigate. Spilling over, onto, into. Always exceeding. Relentless. Opening up, making room, creating space. Never encased, contained, fully controlled. Slow, steady, drip drip drip. Saturates, permeates, soaks.

The author of article from 1997 I was reading — Along the Great Wall: Mapping the Springs of the Twin Cities — didn’t think too highly of seeps: little, inconsequential, too abundant for mapping. He focused on springs. I like the small, quiet, unassuming nature of seeps. More to think about and push at with that idea.

From a few poems I found after searching for seeps — things that seep: blood, sun, gas, chill, a seeping back in sleep to glorious childhood memories of baseball, water, light, an hour….and this, which made me stop my search so I could post this poem:

Louisiana Line/ Betty Adcock

The wooden scent of wagons,
the sweat of animals—these places
keep everything—breath of the cotton gin,
black damp floors of the icehouse.

Shadows the color of a mirror’s back
break across faces. The luck
is always bad. This light is brittle,
old pale hair kept in a letter.
The wheeze of porch swings and lopped gates
seeps from new mortar.

Wind from an axe that struck wood
a hundred years ago
lifts the thin flags of the town.

I like this idea of the past seeping from/into the present — like the wheezy echo of an old porch swing seeping from a new building.

dec 20/RUN

5.25 miles
ford loop
34 degrees

Yes! Loved my run today — the light! the shadows! It started when I saw some strange patches of white on the sidewalk — what were they? Suddenly I realized: light, coming through the cracks in a fence and landing on the dark, shadowed sidewalk. Very cool.

10 Things: 4 Lights and 6 Shadows

  1. the light coming through the fence
  2. the shadowed sidewalk it landed on
  3. my shadow down in the ravine, running beside the water leading to shadow falls
  4. on the lake street bridge: the sun on the river — sparkling, stretching down river towards the ford bridge
  5. on the ford bridge: the sun illuminating a buoy below me
  6. the shadows of trees on the river
  7. the pointed shadows of the lamps — fuzzy
  8. my shadow running in front of me –sharp
  9. standing on the grass between edmund and the river road, looking across to the east bank, noticing a very white house shining in the sun
  10. the pattern of the railing shadows on the lake street bridge — criss-crossed, sprawled

I felt strong and happy and steady. For the first few miles, I chanted strawberry/raspberry/blueberry over and over. Occasionally I mixed in mystery or history or intellect. At one point, I chanted: a question/is asked and mystery/is solved

I noticed the empty benches, the darting squirrels. Smelled some burnt toast and weed (wow! must have been from a passing car). Heard some voices in the ravine. Didn’t see any Regulars or hear the bells at St. Thomas. Don’t remember birds or bikes. No roller skiers. No overheard conversations.

added over a day later: I forgot that I took some pictures when I stopped briefly on the ford bridge to put in my headphones:

My view from the ford bridge, looking north and down at the Mississippi river. On the right (almost) half of the image is the brownish-greenish shore. On the left, the blue river with dark shadows from the bridge covering it's surface. The shadows are of the columns and are both thick and thin. If I squint hard I can almost see my shadow at the top taking the picture. Is it there, is it just in my imagination?
ford bridge shadows / 20 dec 2023

For the first four miles I listened to kids playing at the church playground, cars driving by, my feet striking the ground. Then I put in Merrily We Roll Along for the last mile.

Letter to Walt Whitman,
Who Painted Butterflies/ Kelli Agodon Russell

In 1942, Whitman’s handmade cardboard butterfly disappeared from the Library of Congress.
It was found in a New York attic in 1995.

Perhaps, you made them as a child—
cardboard butterflies lining your shelves,
hiding in the pockets of the wool pants
you wore only to church.
Maybe you would wake early
to cut cardboard into small waves
forming wings, and antennae appearing
like exclamation points.
Words fluttered from your pen,
cardboard wings dipped in red paint,
holding patterns of words,
the quiet swirl of wind.
Maybe there are thousands
of your butterflies still lingering in attics,
your secret world of paper insects
still hanging by threads.

I wanted to post this poem because I like how it’s set up, with the brief description, then the wondering/imagining about it. A fun exercise to try: when I find an interesting fact (here I’m thinking about the monarch butterflies that avoid a mountain in lake superior that’s been gone for more than a century), write a poem that speculates/imagines/creates a story around it.