Felt strange when I started my run and wasn’t sure how much I would be able to do. Ended up doing the ford loop. What a morning! Still too warm, but lots of color and sparkles and golden light. My left knee continues to feel strange before I start and during the first mile, like a rubber band is crossing over the kneecap. Is that a tendon or a ligament? No, looked it up: IT Band. It doesn’t hurt at all.
IT Band? Guess it’s time for some more fun with medical terms!
IT, the Halloween version: Stephen King’s IT
Stephen King’s Inconsistent Talent
Stephen King’s Iffy Takes
Stephen King’s Incandescent Tadpoles
Stephen King’s Insatiable Teacup
Stephen King’s Indigo Trash
Stephen King’s Iconic Terror
Stephen King’s Inedible Treats
Stephen King’s Irritated Throat
Stephen King’s Itemized Tally
My IT Band is already feeling better!
Running past the Horace Cleveland Overlook, stopping to fix my headphones, I noticed the river through the trees. Wow — a shimmering, sizzling white. Smelled something sour just south of the Monument. Heard a roller skier. Saw 5 or 6 single rowing shells on the water, encircling the coxswain’s boat below the Lake Street bridge. Greeted several people — runners and walkers. Stepped on dead leaves on the ground. Heard the St. Thomas bells and water tinkling at Shadow Falls.
Another great poem on poets.org this morning. Here are a few lines:
It would be wonderful to be outside running, but my lower back is still a bit sore and I’m trying to be careful. Ugh — it’s hard to be disciplined, to not do something you want to because you know you shouldn’t. Oh well, the bike felt good. And I was able to watch more of Fame. And my back doesn’t hurt. And my legs feel good.
Anything in particular I remember from Fame? Mrs. Sherwood was being terrible to Leroy again — very old school in her efforts to be tough. Lisa, the dancer who never tries, was finally kicked out and almost jumped in front of a train in despair. At the last minute she stopped herself and said, Fuck it. If I can’t dance, I’ll change to the drama department. Another character’s response (Irene Cara): I tell you, you’re a fucking good actress. Bruno’s dad parked his cab and blasted Bruno’s music — the theme song. All the students poured out of the school and danced in the street, on the sidewalk, on the top of a cab. Bruno’s dad yelled out, This is my son’s music! Bruno Martelli!
A theme for their sophomore year: time to grow up and be honest with yourself and others. Dig deep, turn inward, expose your truths to others:
Last year we worked on simple observation. This year we’re going to turn that observation inward — work on recreating emotional states: fear, joy, sorrow, anger. And it will be more difficult, because you have to expose more of you, what’s on the inside of you.
Fame, sophomore year acting class (1980)
Yesterday I described the teacher’s description of freshman year acting class: to study your own mechanicalness. Then I thought about it in relation to running:
I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.
While scrolling through instagram a few minutes ago, I found some running advice that fits with this. Focus on the elbow and think up up up as you run.
OR
Also yesterday I wrote about the poem “And” and an exercise inspired by it — pick another conjunction and turn it into a poem. I picked OR. Yesterday I wrote a list of words that had “or” in them. So much fun! This morning, I began picking out particular ones and trying to put them together. This is fun! I like it as an opportunity to open up more and become untethered from a particular outcome and idea of what I think my OR poem should be about. I wrote the list in my plague notebook. Note how I repeated some words. Also, if you look closely, you can see instances of words too crowded together or crossed out. Those are vision errors, when I didn’t see the words already written — they were in my blind spot.
from my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24
Here are some word combinations/fragments I’ve come up with so far:
author arbor ardor
orchard porphyrion interiors
enforce forest fortitude
orphan sorrow’s origins
distort mirrors
orchestrate forms for dishonored categories
forgive mortal organs
support porch organizing
reorganize ordinary colors
mentor porous discord
savor tomorrow’s flora encore
scorch rigor
torch dictators
foreswear ordinary pinafores
favor befores. adore no mores
record evaporated forms
flavor labor for transformation
endorse Morris choreography
reforest former ford factories
sponsor spores
border shores
orbit remorse
forge lorikeet collaborations
forgive french horns, former neighbors, candy corn for horrible flavor
forget hornet porn
humor minor opportunities
Almost all of these (or, is it all?) begin with a verb and seem to issue a command. Where are my nouns?
neighborhood semaphore
oracle oration
orange dictators
scored arrows
ornamental meteorology
adorable albacore
torrential labor
stork storms
born bored
enormous unicorn orchestra
pork-belly pallor
factory folklore
So much fun!
walk: 20 minutes neighborhood 41 degrees
An afternoon walk with Delia-the-dog. Everything melting in the warm sun. Drip drip drip! Gushing gutters, sloppy sewers. Bare pavement except where the plow or shovel missed. I’ll take it!
popped into my head: fORtune favORs fORgetful sailORs
Started re-memorizing “Babel” by Kimberly Johnson and was reminded of the first sentence, My God, it’s loud down here, so loud the air/is rattled, as I ran. So loud! The air buzzing, my footsteps amplified. Ran north through the neighborhood, across the lake street bridge, up Marshall hill. I enjoyed passing all the cars waiting for the light to change, wondering if they wished they were me, out in the air, not stuck in a car. Lots of sun, some shade, no shadow. My left hip is a little tight — I think it’s my IT band, which is irritating but not a cause for alarm.
My God, it’s loud: 10 Gorge Things
the electric hiss of cicadas
my footsteps on the asphalt — not a soft strike or a hard thud but something in-between, something loud, almost echoing
deeper breaths
a black-capped chickadee — fee bee fee bee, a blue jay trying to answer back screech screech
water rushing or gushing or just falling at shadow falls
dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong dong (the bells at St. Thomas)
crunch thwak — an acorn popping then flying out from under a car’s wheel
walk walk walk walk — the crosswalk sign at summit and cretin letting me know that I could walk
we’re almost to the bike trail! — a woman biker to the passenger in her bike trailer
He’s the Wiz and he lives in Oz — the refrain from the first song I listened to when my put my headphones in on the bridge
Since I mentioned my IT band, it’s time for another round of fun with injury terms:
I T stands for iliotibial band, but why couldn’t it stand for…
ink tents
impish tattlers
iffy tables
incomplete tarantulas
illuminated truths
ill turtles
Icarus trend
implied tantrum
itemized tally
Italian treat
implacable tree
idiotic toadstool
3 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
A somewhat chaotic swim. Choppy water with swells. On the way to the little beach, it felt like the water was both pulling me down and washing over me, making it hard to stroke and to breathe. On the way back to the big beach, the swells were bigger — more punching walls of water — and with the sun, it was almost impossible to see any of my landmarks. Also, several kayaks and one swan boat got pretty close to me. And the first green buoy was placed so far to the right that it wasn’t until the third loop that I figured out the right trajectory for swimming past it without needing to correct my course. Even with all that, I enjoyed the swim. It’s always great to be out in the middle of the lake!
My God, it’s loud: 9 lake things
a woman near the lifeguard stand where swimmers leave their bags, talking VERY loudly about her kid and what they were doing at the playground
3 loops and an hour later, that same women still talking VERY loudly near the lifeguard stand
a flock of seagulls, calling out as they flew above the water
a flock of teenage boys, yelling as they played some game at the edge of the swimming area that involved touching something gross at the bottom of the lake
kids playing in the water near the little beach
water sloshing over my head as a wave hit me
water spraying as my hand entered the water and I hit the wave
the lifeguard to the flock of boys: please do not play on the rope!
a general din on the beach from people talking, eating, playing music, laughing
4 miles trestle turn around 33° 85% clear 15% ice covered
Note: Today, I’m trying something new. Usually I type up these log entries directly into wordpress. Today I tried dictating the entry into my notes app, then editing it slightly. It was difficult to speak my thoughts, partly because I felt self-conscious with other people in the house and partly because I find it easier to write my thoughts. But I need to learn how to do this because looking at a computer screen is getting more difficult and more tiring on my eyes. Maybe I’ll always be able to use the computer and see the letters, but I’d like to experiment with different ways to speak and write and think that don’t rely on vision. I was thinking of trying this dictation method for a month–maybe even trying to dictate the notes directly after my run, at the gorge.
This entry was slightly edited, with extra words and redundant phrases taken out.
The wind was coming from the south which meant that as I was running north it was at my back. Much easier running towards the trestle. I knew that it would be hard on the way back and it was. It was slightly sunny but not super sunny and at one point I saw my shadow. Not clear like it usually was; it looked more like a ghost, faint. I heard some kids down in the gorge. Probably by the ravine, maybe hiking around the exposed sewer pipe or the ice cave that is created in the winter by the seeps and the dripping water. Felt fast running north. I didn’t feel the wind at my back but knew that it was easier. Encountered a few runners, some walkers. One walker, an older white man, wore a fluorescent yellow vest. I saw him twice. I heard the grit under my feet. I don’t think I heard any geese but I did hear some crows cawing as I started. The river was partly frozen over but mostly open and it looked beautiful and still and desolate. The run back was difficult, the wind right in my face. I sprinted up the final hill and felt very tired and hot and sweaty. Overdressed. I chanted triplets. I started with Sycamore Cottonwood one lone Oak but that didn’t do it for me so then I chanted Gooseberry Mulberry raspberry raspberry mulberry goose berry raspberry blueberry blackberry raspberry blueberry blackberry and that helped me keep a steady pace.
lateral malleolus = all a sell out realm
On Saturday, I slightly rolled my ankle as I was moving down from the walking to the biking path. It is a little sore, but not painful. I am pretty sure it will be fine but I’ve been reading up on the ankle and foot to prepare myself. New fact/word: the bony knob on the outside of your ankle is called the medial malleolus. The knob on the inside is called the lateral malleolus. Tried turning lateral malleolus into an anagram. The first phrase that I could come up with that sort of made sense: All a sell out realm
