3.8 miles river road, north/south 76 degrees humidity: 70% / dew point: 67 7:45 am
Hot and steamy this morning. As I left the house and walked down my block, I could hear lots of birds. At some point, not sure if it was because they stopped singing, or I stopped listening, I couldn’t hear them anymore.
10 Thing I Noticed
the light reflecting off of the river, blinding and bright
a male coxswain’s voice drifting up from below
at least 2, maybe 3, big groups of runners
a water station set-up for some event — a marathon training run?
a runner ahead of me in a bright yellow shirt
bikers, but no roller skiers
a little white dog with its human, stopping to poop
a few bugs on my shoulders, but no bites
white flowers under the trestle
something approaching from behind, sounding like a saw. I thought it was an eplitigo, but it was a fat tire, blasting music — was it the music that made it sound like a saw? I couldn’t tell.
This sounds like a fun experiment to try:
One way you might achieve a similar effect in your own poetry is through the cut-up method I’ve described. If you have a few less-than-wonderful drafts, try splicing them together. In a way, it’s like braiding hair: You pull a line from here and a line from there, weaving them together until you have created a more complex structure than what you had to begin with. If your original two drafts are on the same subject, they may fit organically together to form a new poem. But it’s especially interesting if the original poems are very different from each other. You’ll likely have to weave in new thoughts too. For those of you who keep a file of evocative fragments, as I recommended in my first craft capsule, that file would be a good source to consult for a project like this.
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 75 degrees 9:30 am
FWA did it! Today, he swam across the lake and back again. 1200 yards. It was fun to stop at the little beach and talk with other swimmers, while we took a break. We met an older woman, who loves to swim around the lake, even when it’s not open swim. She said her kids told her she better stop because the fine is big if you are caught. (I think it might be $2500!) One of her responses, Technically I’m not swimming across the lake, but around it. I like her.
The water was great for the swim: smooth, and not choppy at all. Much easier than when it’s windy. It has been fun training with FWA. I’m hoping he’ll swim some in August. What a gift to spend this time with my wonderful son!
run: 3 miles marshall loop, shortened 80 degrees 11 am
A little while later, I ran with Scott. It was hot. We walked a lot, which was fine with me. A memorable sighting: an eagle circling around, high above us, riding a thermal. It took a while for me to be able to see it in my central vision, but finally I could. What a wing span!
The other day, searching for something else, I found this beautiful interview with Marie Howe from 2013 for Tricycle. She’s talking about losing her beloved brother Johnny and the space she had for grieving. These words fit with other words of her that I’ve read and loved and just used in my class. Putting them in the context of her grief makes them glow even brighter for me:
MH: That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be without any expectations really. And everything changed so that the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs among the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or the lemon. And that something is in between all that.
KPE: It’s like the Japanese esthetic word of ma. It’s so wonderful. The space between….
MH: This is the space I love more than anything. And this became very important, but there’s no way to describe that, except to describe “you and me.” And there’s the space. I make my students write 10 observations a week—really simple. Like, this morning I saw. . . , this morning I saw. . . , this morning I saw. . . —and they hate it. They always say, “This morning I saw ten lucky people.” And I say, “No. You didn’t see ten lucky people. What did you see?” And then they try to find something spectacular to see. And I say, “No.” It’s just, “What did you see?” “I saw the white towel crumpled on the blue tiles of the bathroom.” That’s all. No big deal. And then, finally, they begin to do it. It takes weeks. And then the white towels pour in and the blue tiles on the bathroom, and it’s so thrilling. It’s like, “Ding-a-ling, da-ding!” And some people never really take to it. But I insist on it. What you saw. What you heard. Just the facts, ma’am. The world begins to clank in the room, drop and fall, and clutter it up, and it’s so thrilling.
KPE: Because it clanks and falls?
MH: Yes! It does. It’s like, “Did you see it? Did you see it?” Everybody goes “Whoa!”
It is thrilling to notice the world! To hear it clank and drop, watch it create clutter. This reminds me of 2 other things I have recently encountered, one for the first time, one again, after a few years.
First, this poem was posted on twitter the other day:
Do Not Ask Your Children To Strive for Extraordinary Things/ William Martin
Do not ask your children to strive for extraordinary lives. Such striving may seem admirable, but it is the way of foolishness. Help them instead to find the wonder and the marvel of an ordinary life. Show them the joy of tasting tomatoes, apples and pears. Show them how to cry when pets and people die. Show them the infinite pleasure in the touch of a hand. And make the ordinary come alive for them. The extraordinary will take care of itself.
The space between us, reminds me of Juliana Spahr’s amazing post 9-11 poem: This Connection of Everyone With Lungs
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.
3.3 miles douglas trail / rochester, mn 67 / humidity: 81% 7:45 am
Ran with Scott this morning on the Douglas trail, right next to his parent’s new apartment in Rochester. A great path! Mostly shaded, off road, smooth. Heard some birds I didn’t recognize; they were very bird-y, meaning their chirps and trills seemed to embody the classic form of a bird. It had rained earlier, and there were puddles on the road and moisture in the air.
10 Things I Encountered
a short pedestrian bridge, crossing over a road, at the start of our run
a long pedestrian bridge, arching over a highway
a helmet-less biker, one hand carrying a small cooler
a fast walker
a speedy runner with long, loping limbs
an adult biker, whose on your left from behind sounded like a little kid’s
only one small, empty road to cross
a runner approaching, listening to music — it was either loud music coming out of headphones, or soft music coming from a speaker
2 guys, dressed in business casual, walking on the other side of the trail
the parking lot at the trailhead, which included: a big sign with a map of the trail, 2 bathrooms, a picnic trail tucked behind a tree, lots of lush grass
breaklight/ lucille clifton
light keeps on breaking. i keep knowing the language of other nations. i keep hearing tree talk water words and i keep knowing what they mean. and light just keeps on breaking. last night the fears of my mother came knocking and when i opened the door they tried to explain themselves and i understood everything they said.
I don’t remember much from my run because I’m writing this entry a day late.
7 Things I Remember More than a Day After my Run
it was hot and sticky, and I sweat a lot
the trail was crowded with bikers and walkers and a few runners
I could hear the rowers, faintly, below
I chanted a lot of my triple berries: strawberry/blueberry/blackberry
oh — just remembered! — a jackhammer and some other construction sounds. At the beginning, one of them sounded like the noise a roller coaster makes at the start of the ride, when it’s slowly climbing up the first hill
instead of running through the oak savanna, I climbed up the 38th street steps to the paved path. Before starting again, I turned on a playlist
as I ran with music, I picked up the pace, to match my feet to the beat
Seven was all I could remember today. That’s cool. I’m happy that I remembered the roller coaster sound. When I hear that sound, I don’t have one strong memory of a roller coaster ride — I used to ride roller coasters as a kid, but I was never really into them — just a swirl of fragments and feelings: that scary and exciting anticipation of the speed to come, the painfully slow climb of the car, the clicking/groaning/turning of the belt louder than anything else.
Another beautiful day! After all the biking yesterday, feeling tired today. The run felt good, but now I lack motivation to write or remember my run. Still, I’ll try. This week in my class, we’re shifting gears to talk about rhythm, breathing, and translating wonder into words. I decided I’d try to think in triples as I ran: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry/blackberry. Now I’ll try to summarize my run in triples:
singing birds serenade neighborhood daycare kids playground yells lake street bridge up the hill one lane closed passing cars feeling tired sweating lots stop to walk cross the road avoid bikes yellow vest trimming trees shadow falls up the steps down a hill music on Taylor Swift Paper Rings lifting knees quick fast feet ending strong check my stones wipe my face breathe in deep
That was fun! Writing out, “singing birds,” reminded me of the birds I first heard as I walked out my door and up the block. Their 2 note song (not the black-capped chickadee “feebee”) sounded like they kept telling me to Wake up! Wake up! No rowers on the river, which was a pretty shade of blue. Admired how the trees along the shore cast a gentle shadow on the water.
Last night, or was it very early this morning?, I woke up and went downstairs to get some water. Something bright was behind the curtain. The moon? The moon! So big, so bright, so perfect hanging half way up the sky over my backyard. I went out on the deck and marveled at it for a moment. The moon, never not astonishing! Here’s an acrostic poem (I love acrostic poems!) about the moon.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 85 degrees 5:30 pm
Writing this the morning after. Arrived at the beach: so windy! The water was choppy, but not too bad. Tried to think about rhythms and breathing as I swam. I remember thinking about how chanting words can help in many different ways: connect you with your breathing, keep you focused and on pace, open you up and make words strange which could lead to new (and better?) words, and is a way to hold onto/remember ideas that come to you while you’re moving (try to remember the idea through a few words or a phrase). I thought about that for just a few minutes. The rest of the time, I was preoccupied with breathing, staying on course, avoiding other swimmers, and worrying that my calf and feet might be tightening up. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things I Noticed
a silver flash below me — this has to be fish, right?
one dark plane hovering in the air, hanging in the sky for a long time
nearing an orange buoy, it shifted in the wind and the waves. Hard to get around it.
the green buoy was closer than it often is to the big beach, so was the first orange buoy
clouds, no sun
far off to my right: steady, speedy swimmers, approaching the buoy at a sharp angle
a lifeguard kayaking in just before the beginning of open swim, apologizing for the wait (even though it was just 5:30). My response, “no worries,” and I meant it. The lifeguards really have their shit together this year
wiped out after the 3rd loop, I thought I tucked my cap under the strap of my suit. Nope, it must have fallen in the water. Bummer
lots of muck and sand and a few little bits of vegetation under my suit when I got home and took a shower
feeling both so much love for the lake, the lifeguards, and the other swimmers AND also feeling irritated by and competitive with any swimmers near me.
No ducks, or seagulls, or dragonflies, or swans (pedal boats)…not too many people at the beach — are they on vacation this week?
run: 3.1 miles dogwood coffee run 66 degrees 6:45 am
An early run with Scott to beat the heat. We ran north on the river road trail, then over to Brackett Park, then to Dogwood Coffee. We stopped to admire my stacked stones at the ancient boulder. Heard some bluejays. Noticed the sun sparkling on the water, and cutting through the thick, humid air. Heard the loud whooshing? thrashing? of an eliptigo as it sped past us on the bike trail. Scott said he thought it sounded like two lumberjacks were sawing down a tree, with one of those big saws that you hold on either end and push back and forth. I remember thinking Scott’s acting out of this saw was entertaining.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees 5:30 pm
Another great swim, even though it was very choppy on the way back from the little beach. Managed to stay on course with barely any sighting of the orange buoys. I write about this so much, but it’s always strange and amazing to be able to swim straight and keep going when I can’t really see where I am.
Half the sky was blue and clear, the other half looked like a storm was moving in. Later, after we left the lake, it poured. I wondered how much it would have to be raining for them to cancel open swim. Usually they only cancel it when there’s thunder or lightening.
Saw more silver flashes below me. Also, a dark shadow as I swam around one of the buoys. At some point, I heard a squeak. Someone else’s wetsuit? I got to punch the water a few times, when I swam straight into it. Fun! Breathed every 5, then when it got choppier, every 4, or 3 then 4 then 3 again. I don’t remember seeing any swan boats or sail boats or paddle boarders. No music or yelling, laughing kids.
Back in April, I collected poems about dirt — soil, humus, fungi, and dust. Here’s another poem to add to the dust pile. It’s by Ted Kooser. He is such a wonderful poet!
“There’s never an end to dust and dusting,” my aunt would say as her rag, like a thunderhead, scudded across the yellow oak of her little house. There she lived seventy years with a ball of compulsion closed in her fist, and an elbow that creaked and popped like a branch in a storm. Now dust is her hands and dust her heart. There’s never an end to it.
I love his line breaks and his beautiful first sentences. I should check out his collected works and study him more.
3.25 miles 2 trails (long)* 78 degrees dew point: 67 10:30 am
Another hot morning. Couldn’t go out for my run until after 10. Would it have mattered if I went earlier? Already at 7, it felt uncomfortably humid and warm. For much of the run, I was thinking about the lecture I’m working on for next week and trying to work through a problem. A little over a mile and a half in, part of a solution came to me. I stopped and recorded my thoughts.
10 Things I Noticed
overheard: a neighbor saying to someone else as she watched me run by, “I’m sweating just watching her run.”
a bike behind me, very slowly approaching. First, a bell, the sound of bike wheels, a little kid talking. Then, a woman with a young kid in a bike trailer, and another little kid on a bike behind her passed by
at least 2 women chatting far behind me — were they on bikes? on foot? how soon would they reach me? Never saw or heard them again
the steady buzzing/thumping of a jack hammer
the coxswain speaking through a bullhorn to her rowers
the rush of wind through the trees sounding like water falling or rushing or being forced out of a hose
the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe near 42nd street
even through all of the clouds, the sun cast shadows of the trees on the sidewalk…a strange, slightly muted, image
looked for my usual view of light and water piercing through the leaves near the tunnel of trees. It’s not there this year — why not? more vegetation? the angle from which I looking?
the little stones I stacked on the ancient boulder yesterday were gone. Did the wind blow them off? Did someone/something knock them over? Were they there and I just didn’t see them?
3.25 miles 2 trails, the mostly dirt version* 76 degrees humidity: 81% / dew point: 70 9:15 am
*I ran south on the dirt trail between Edmund and the river road. Crossed over at 42nd to the river road trail, then down to the Winchell Trail. Through the oak savanna, up the gravel by the ravine, down through the tunnel of trees, over to the dirt trail at 33rd and Edmund.
A dew point of 70? That’s pretty miserable. It didn’t bother me today. I was thinking about attention and listening to all of the sounds: birds, trucks, lawn mowers, cicadas, cars, roller skiers, singing bikers.
one thing I remembered, one I forgot
remembered: As I ran by the ancient boulder, I remembered to check if there were any stacked stones. Yes! 4 tiny stacked stones, hidden in the curve of the boulder. I saw these stones yesterday too, but forgot to write about them. Seeing these small stones, I wonder how many times I’ve glanced at the boulder and thought there were no stacked stones on it, when there were these tiny ones, hidden.
forgot: I forgot to look at the river even once. I even ran closer to it, down on the Winchell Trail, then forgot to turn right and look. Was it blue? brown?
Near the end of my run, I stopped for a few minutes to record my thoughts:
thought after run / july 7
letting attention flow through you, not holding onto it, letting it go things remembered: the steady soundtrack of my striking feet and my labored lungs because of the humidity people talking loudly in the background trading off of lines between birds and cicadas, no constant soundtrack, in and out cars zooming by, a loud truck, bikers singing what were the bikers singing? ridiculously delightful overheard: a biker listening to talk radio more cars whooshing by all the things I’m curious about: surfaces and how they’re made — who made them and through what process birds chirping, the steady striking of my feet on the dirt
As I listen back to the recording, I’m struck by all the background sounds, some of which I notice and remark on, others which I don’t. It’s funny how much of our surroundings we tune out — like the cars or the birds or the people.
Here’s a poem I found on twitter this morning. Love Carl Phillips!
Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering, and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still, like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or try to…
But to look up from the leaves, remember,
is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it all, the promiscuity, the seeing-how-nothing-now-will- save-you, up to the wind-stripped branches shadow- signing the ground before you the way, lately, all the branches seem to, or you like to say they do, which is at least half of the way, isn’t it, toward belief — whatever, in the end, belief is… You can look up, or you can close the eyes entirely, making some of the world, for a moment, go away, but only some of it, not the part about hurting others as the one good answer to being hurt, and not the part that can at first seem, understandably, a life in ruins, even if — refusing ruin, because you can refuse — you look again, down the steep corridor of what’s just another late winter afternoon, dark as night already, dark the leaves and, darker still, the door that, each night, you keep meaning to find again, having lost it, you had only to touch it, just once, and it bloomed wide open…
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees 5:30 pm
A great night for a swim! Calm water, overcast, not too crowded. I swam without stopping for 45 minutes, and I swam straight to each buoy, even though I hardly saw them. As usual, just the smallest flash that something was there. Sometimes I could tell it was orange or green, but usually it was just the idea of a hulking shape way ahead of me, or the smallest smudge of something. So strange.
10 Things I Noticed
no fish below me
the orange buoys were in a straight line, the one closest to the little beach wasn’t that close
most of the buoys tethered to torsos were yellow
a flash of green, then a swimmer directly ahead of me, way off course — I had to swing wide to avoid them
another swimmer, pushing me off to the side. I had to stop and swim behind, then around them (this happened at least twice)
the far green buoy was in line with at least two white sailboats, which made it hard to sight
a plane overhead, no blue sky, only clouds
breathed every 5 strokes: 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
encountered a family of ducks out in the middle of the lake
the water was slightly clearer than on Tuesday, but not as clear as at Cedar Lake. I could watch my hand stretch out in front of me, but only saw dark green below
5 miles bottom of franklin hill 69 degrees humidity: 79% / dew point: 64 8:30 am
Even though the dew point was high, it was a good run. I tried my new experiment for the franklin hill route (which I first tried on june 22): run 2.5 miles to the bottom of the hill, turn around and walk back up it while paying attention.
recording:
thoughts while walking up the franklin hill
transcript:
july 6, 2022. 8:54 am. Just ran about 2 and a half miles to the bottom of the franklin hill, and now I’m walking up it, and it’s so LOUD. Everything is loud: the rumbling of the rushing cars and trucks above me on the bridge, the cars whooshing by, the bikes, the air is buzzing. It was doing this last night too when I was at the lake swimming. So much energy in the air, made it seem more intense.
The noise of the traffic is almost drowning out all the birdsong. Occasionally it pierces through the heavy curtain of sound.
When I was running earlier, I started chanting in triple berries as a way to get in the mindset [of being open to noticing]. I did strawberry/blueberry/raspberry, then wondering/wondering/wandering, wondering/wandering/mystery, and then, wonder where/wonder why/wonder when/wonder what. I wonder how that would work if I kept chanting it as a way to get into this trance? If I did, wonder what/wonder what/wonder what until I found something that I wondered about.
Heading under the Franklin bridge, I hear some roller skiers behind me. I love the sound of the click [of their poles]. *the sound of roller skiers’ poles hitting the pavement.* click? maybe a click clack? click? yeah. click click.I can’t quite tell. *me, humming*
note: I find it fascinating to listen back to my transcripts — how I don’t finish my thoughts; speak using run-on sentences with and…and…and; and hum without realizing it!
One more thing: As I was running, I remembered something I’d like to add for my class today in terms of wonder as curiosity: I’m calling it, “fill in the blank.” With this activity, you listen for fragments of conversation and try to imagine what the next word would be. I often hear unfinished bits of conversation as I run near others and I wonder what they were talking about or how they finished the sentence that I only heard the first half of. It’s fun, entertaining, a good way to use your imagination, and might lead to a story or a poem.
Here are 2 things I want to archive from twitter: a poem by Wendell Berry and a quote from Mary Ruefle, and one thing I heard from Scott about creativity and dyslexia:
1
To Know the Dark/ Wendell Berry
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
2
John Ashbery, in an interview… : “I waste a lot of time. That’s part of the [creative process] ….The problem is, you can’t really use this wasted time. You have to have it wasted. Poetry disequips you for the requirements of life. You can’t use your time.” — Mary Ruefle in Madness, Rack, and Honey
note: I’m a little confused by this notation but I assume it means that Mary Ruefle is quoting John Ashbery in her quote?
3
An article to check out about how people with dyslexia might think more creatively: Dyslexia Helped Evolutionary Survival of Humans, Research suggest. As with most poplular reporting on scientific research, I want to find the original study that inspired this pop article for Newsweek. A few lines caught my eye, including:
Schools, academic institutes and workplaces are not designed to make the most of explorative learning.
But we urgently need to start nurturing this way of thinking to allow humanity to continue to adapt and solve key challenges.
Yes, we need to radically rethink what skills are taught/learned if we’re going to survive the 21st century!
swim: 1 small loop cedar lake open swim 80 degrees 6:00 pm
Swam across the lake with my 19 year old son! We’ve been practicing and building up his endurance for the last couple of weeks. Today he didn’t seem to have any problem swimming across and back. Hooray! It was fun to swim with him.
addendum: returning to this post a day later — Besides swimming with FWA, one of the best things about swimming at Cedar Lake last night was how clear the water was. It wasn’t absolutely clear, where you could see all the way to bottom 50 feet below, but it was clear enough that I could my legs and hands under the water (they were glowing white) and FWA as he did the breast-stroke. Then, as we left the beach, we both noticed the vegetation below us, growing up from some bottom that stretched endlessly and invisibly beneath us.
4.1 miles minnehaha falls and back 72 degrees humidity: 97% / dew point: 70! 11:00 am
Scott and I were supposed to run the Red, White, and Boom 4 mile race this morning, but they cancelled it because of bad weather (thunderstorms). After the storm, which wasn’t really that bad, at least here in south Minneapolis, I decided to go out and run my 4 miles. It was hot and sticky and the dew point was terrible, but I had a good run. I was inspired by Jorie Graham’s line from her poem, “All”:
After the rain stops you can hear the rained-on.
When I was running, I couldn’t quite think of the line; I didn’t remember it being specific to hearing, so I tried to notice all evidence — visual, aural, etc — of the rained-on.
10 Things: Evidence of the Rained-on
sound: a constant drip drip drip
branches of trees and flowers bent down, heavy with rain
running too close to the vines on the side of the trail, getting my shorts wet
running under some dripping trees, 1: feeling like it’s raining again
running under some dripping trees, 2: hearing a loud ping ping ping
my feet striking the grit makes a deeper, heavier sound than when the grit/dirt is dry
the slick whoosh of wet tires
the roar of the falls, the rush in the ravine
puddles on the path, and on the edge between the sidewalk and the road
sometimes the grass was beaded with drips, othertimes it squished under my feet
Around the 5k point, I stopped to record some thoughts into my phone. Here’s a transcript:
I had a thought about next week’s lecture, which is on wonder and delight. I was thinking about this idea of wonder as knowing and 2 important moments of it, as least for me.
`There’s the wonder and curiosity, where you wonder about something because you don’t know about it, and there’s this kind of magical time before you find out what it is — there’s room for all these possibilities. Of course, what you find out that it is, isn’t necessarily what it actually is, but what we’ve determined it is. This is the moment of possibility. It’s important to not shut this down, to leave room for speculating and imagining possibilities.
When you wonder about something and then go in search of answers for your questions, and instead of delivering certainty to you, it just raises more questions, and enables you to see that what you thought was magical and amazing is even moreso. In fact, learning things, becoming more familiar with them, doesn’t have to make them boring and settled. It can open up more questions and doors into wondering about them.
Was planning to swim with FWA at the lake, but when that didn’t work out, I went for a quick run. Too warm. I listened to a playlist on the upper, paved path, and the gorge on the lower, dirt trail.
a distinctive sound
When I reached the Winchell Trail, I took my headphones out and stopped to walk for a minute. I could hear the strong buzz or hum of bugs — cicadas? isn’t it too early for them? Whatever the bugs were, I imagined hundreds (thousands?) of tiny wings flapping fast, making this not very pleasing sound. I wondered how long it would last as I kept walking. In a few minutes it faded, replaced by the whooshing of car wheels from above. Hearing this sound reminds me of the poem Babel by Kimberly Johnson:
My God, it’s loud down here, so loud the air is rattled. Who with the hissing of trees, the insect chatter, can fix devotion
on holy things, the electrical bugs so loud the air is stunned, windy the leaves’ applause redoubled by the clapping wings
of magpies? Who with their whispered psalm can outvoice their huckster cackle, the trees blustered to howls while the tesla bees
whine loudly to the shocked air? O who can think of heaven in such squall, shrill wind of trees, magpie wings, and throats in fracas,
the bluebottle static, the air stupid with the shrieks of devils,— of angels,— who in such squall can think of anything
but heaven?
The bluebottle (flies) static. I don’t think I was hearing flies, but it did sound like a sort of static.
bike: 11 miles lake nokomis and back + extra 90 degrees 5:00 pm (there) / 6:15 pm (back)
Do I remember anything about my bike, other than it was hot and very windy. So windy, and right in my face, both ways! The only other thing I remember is feeling comfortable and not nervous about whether or not I could see. Either my brain has adjusted by tweaking the visual, or it has adjusted by making me feel less anxious about not totally seeing everything. It’s probably a bit of both. Oh, one more thing: the sky looked a bit ominous — some spots of dark gray. At some point, it started raining, barely.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 90 degrees 5:20 pm
It wasn’t too choppy in the water. Hooray! I didn’t have any problem sighting, or any problems keeping swimming when I couldn’t sight the buoys, which was most of the time. It’s getting harder to see color, I think. I rarely saw the orange or lime green until it was right in front of me. The final green buoy was lined up right in front of 3 white sailboats. I saw a few silver flashes below me — fish? Some wetsuit ran into me. I don’t think it was my fault, because I was keep my straight line, but who knows?
5k river road trail, north/south 69 degrees 9:00 am
A birthday run with Scott. Beautiful out by the gorge. Greeted Dave, the daily walker as we ran through the Welcoming Oaks. Too busy talking about something to remember to notice running through the tunnel of trees or past the old stone steps or even under the lake street bridge. Running with Scott was great, but it was hard to notice much. Can I remember 10 things I noticed? I’ll try:
10 Things I Noticed
a roller skier and their poles singing, click click click click
a man talking on a bluetooth phone with his arm extended across the path pointing — at what?
some blue jays whispering their screeches
a few narrow streaks of blue river through the thick thatch of green
faint voices of rowers talking below near the boathouse
a runner on the path, accompanied by a young girl on a bike
no memorial flowers at the trestle today
the sweet rot of the sewer near the ravine
the cracks in the asphalt just past the trestle bridge, remembering the peace sign spraypainted at this spot last summer
the satisfying crunch of the sandy gravel under my feet as I ran on the side of the trail up to the greenway
Whew! I did it. The last 3 took some time to remember.
4.35 miles minnehaha falls and back 60 degrees 7:30 am
A cooler morning, an earlier start, better conditions for running. Not sure how much that helped, parts of the run still felt hard, but it was nice not to be sweating as much. Ran south on the river road trail to the falls. Stopped at my favorite spot — the overlook near the former fountain with Longfellow’s poem etched on the benches surrounding it — and put in my headphones. Listened to music on the way back. Mostly ran, but stopped a few times to walk.
10 Things I Noticed
a recumbant bike
a roller skier
a tall-ish woman in black walking — I think I’ve encountered her in past summers, walking this same route
the dirt trail was tightly packed with very dry earth between Becketwood and 38th
the dirt trail was loose, sandy dust between 38th and 36th
the river was completely hidden behind a veil of green
2 hikers with backpacks and hiking poles, emerging from the short stretch of trail that dips below the road right after the double bridge
the falls were rushing over the limestone ledge, but were less visible, tucked in behind all of the green leaves
no surreys or bikes-for-rent at the falls yet. When do they put them out?
bikers on the dirt path: first, a young kid with a walking adult, next, a mountain biker
Don’t remember how I found it, but I’m very glad I did: an interview between poets Ross Gay and Tess Taylor discussing the connections between gardens and poetry. Here’s something from it I’d like to remember:
TAYLOR: It’s funny, too, because poems remind us that we live in breath, which also reminds us that we live in bodies. Poems are about breath. Poems are about sharing breaths, sharing little beautiful musical measures of breath.
GAY: That’s exactly right. Like, poems are made of breath. So poems are bodily in themselves. And when we read them to other people, they become part of other people’s bodies. Or when we read other people’s lives, the way they’ve constructed a poem, we’re breathing them.
little beautiful musical measures of breath. Nice.
swim: 2 loops (4 little loops) cedar lake 84 degrees 6:00 pm
First swim at Cedar Lake! Calm, not too cold, water. Blue skies, a few clouds. Barely any problems sighting the buoys and staying on course. A great swim!
4 miles river road trail, north/south 82 degrees / dew point: 63 9:30 am
82 degrees is not fun, and 9:30 is too late to go out in the summer. Even so, I’m glad I went out for a run. A lot of my energy was devoted to enduring the heat, so I’m not sure how much I remember about the run. I will try to make a list of 10 things:
`10 Things I Remember Even Though I Was Hot and Tired and Uncomfortable
Greeting Dave, the Daily Walker
Also greeting Mr. Morning!
the dirt on the trail was loose and sandy and a light tan — so dry!
a man was standing under the lake street bridge looking at his phone
was that his bike on the other side of the porta potty?
chirping chipmunks down in the gorge
several of the benches along the trail were occupied
2 bikers converging from different directions at the entrance to the greenway bike trail, one much faster than the other — I briefly wondered if they would run into each other
at least twice, I felt sweat dripping off of my elbow. Where was it coming from? My pony tail?
heard near a 3-way stop: funk music from a car stereo
No view of the river, roller skiers, roller bladers, fat tires, big packs of runners training for a race. No eliptigos (I saw one the other day) or rowers.
overheard on the trail
one: one walker, an older man, saying to another: “He doesn’t know about…”. What doesn’t he know about, and (why) is it a problem? This might make a good title for a poem.
two: again, 2 walkers. An older woman to a younger man: “Well, Bob and Anne had heart attacks, but they both seem to be doing okay.” Wow.
Stumbled upon this great poem by the strangley wonderful, CA Conrad.
Find something colorful outside the grocery store. I found bright blue chewing gum smeared on the parking lot.
Get close to it; study the color with a magnifying glass if you have one. Take notes for a poem.
Go in the store, look for the color on a product label. You will find it. Take your time. A perfect match for the blue chewing gum was the blue half-moon marshmallow on a box of cereal.
Take more notes for a poem. What intersections did these two objects with the same color make for you? The gum and half-moon marshmallow were the intersections of temperature and texture for me. Take more notes for a poem.
*
Each evening for a week, go for a walk. Stop 3 times to narrate what you see 360 degrees around you into a recorder on your phone or another device.
Try to list what you see, “A cat crossing a roof, a car playing Lady Gaga parked below, a blue postal box, a LOTTERY sign flashing in gas station window.”
When you see one object on your walk that holds your attention, closely examine it while narrating what it looks like. Where could it have come from?
Go home and sit on the floor inside a dark closet. Listen to your recording. When you reach the part about the object you had carefully scrutinized, do not focus on what you narrated but on why you aimed your attention at the object in the first place. Take notes for a poem.
*
Get a clear drinking glass, a pitcher of water, and a black Magic Marker.
Make a black line on the middle of the drinking glass.
Place your face near the glass on the table. Pour water while carefully listening and watching it hit the mark; do this 3 times.
Pour the water a fourth time with eyes closed, letting your ears remember the mark. You have successfully braided your eyes and ears.
Now sit back, close your eyes, and listen to the most immediate sounds in the building. Let the layers reveal themselves, shifting to what you hear further away, then further.
When you feel you have heard everything, wait. Sit there a little longer, listening for the faintest of traffic in the sky or a faraway rumble. Take notes for a poem.
A little cooler today. I opened the windows and let in some fresh air before I went out for my run. Ran north on the river road trail. Was thinking about taking the Franklin loop, but then I saw a roller skier at the top of the hill and decided to go to the bottom of the hill and back up it again. I was imagining that I’d meet the roller skier again on the hill somewhere. Halfway down I realized they weren’t coming. I was a little disappointed because I never got to hear the clicking and the clacking of their poles. Oh well, they got me to run down this hill, closer to the river, so it worked out. When I reached the bottom of the hill, I decided to turn around and walk back up it. Then I pulled out my phone and made note of something I just heard: the voice of a male coxswain! Rowers! A few miles earlier, I had heard the female coxswain instructing some rowers. 2 groups of rowers and a roller skier. So many of my favorite things to encounter!
a new experiment
Speaking into my phone at the bottom of the hill gave me an idea for an experiment that I might want to try again. Run to the bottom of the hill. Turn around and as you walk back up it, pay attention. What do you notice? How many different sounds can you hear? What do you see? Speak some of your observations into your phone. Here’s my recording for today:
june 22nd
transcript, a series of recordings:
one: June 22nd again. Walking up from the bottom of the franklin hill. First interruption was the coxswain’s voice, a female voice, giving instructions, first calmly, and then more enthusiastically, trying to pump them up for a hard effort. And then, later, running down the franklin hill, getting to the I-94 bridge, underneath it, hearing another coxswain, this time a male voice, talking to rowers. I could hear the smooth, soft entering of the oars. Nothing awkward or clunky about this one, but it might have been that I was too far away, and there were too many noises. [this is a reference to a description from a few weeks ago of the awkward sound oars breaking the surface of the water.]
two: 2 sounds mixing together. First, the soft rustling of the wind through the trees, almost a shimmering. And then a bike passing and the whirr of the wheel, sounding just like the wind.
three: Listening to the wind some more, it sounds somewhat like a waterfall or water trickling down gently, or a soft shower.
four: I can hear the grit under my shoes as I walk, especially under the Franklin Bridge where it’s amplified. Also, rustling off to the side in the bushes — a squirrel or a bird or a chipmunk or something else? [the rhythmic footsteps of a runner passing] A runner passing me. I like watching their feet rhythmically moving. It’s mesmerizing to watch, especially when it’s a good steady runner like this one. Just the bottom of their feet, their shoes are black, and to me, as they get farther away it just looks like a black ball, a circle, that’s bouncing from side to side. Maybe with my fuzzy vision I can’t even tell that there’s a shoe or a leg connected to it. It just looks like a black ball bouncing back and forth, steady, which is quite impressive because they’re running up a decent hill.
five: [the sound of chirping birds]
After I almost reached the top of the hill, I put in my headphones and listened to a shuffle of Taylor Swift’s Lover. First up: “ME!”. This song helped me lock into a fast, steady cadence. I ran faster for most of the way back — stopping for a few quick breaks. I remember waving to Mr. Morning! and passing a few runners. Oh — and I heard the female coxswain’s voice again. I pulled out a headphone and listened for a few seconds.
fill in the blank
About a mile and a half into my run, I overheard one woman walker say to another: “I mean, I wasn’t arrogant or anything, I just said ______.” I was past them before I could hear what she said. What did she say? I’ll never know, but I can imagine. This reminds me of a poem I wrote last fall:
vii.
Eavesdrop on the words scattered by wind and careless voices. Not concerned with manners, no need to be nice. Feel the disconnect between you, the path, other people. Free, off the hook, unseen, able to listen in, to overhear and not be judged, to invent dialogue, give it another ending, turn it all into a better story.
run: 2.25 miles river road trail, north/south 73 degrees humidity: 87% / dew point: 73! 7:45 am
I ran north on the river road to the top of the hill just past the lake street bridge. Stopped for a minute, then turned around and headed back. Sunny, but with lots of shade. Forgot to look at the river.
73 for the dew point? That’s bad, or “extremely uncomfortable,” according to Runner’s World. Yes, it was. Do I remember anything other than being uncomfortably warm?
10 Things I Noticed
rower’s voices from down below!
3 stones stacked on the boulder
a man fully covered in black sweatpants and a black jacket, with a white towel around his neck. Aren’t you hot, I thought as I passed him
dark in the tunnel of trees, difficult to see if other people were there
the pedestrian part of the double-bridge between 33rd and 32nd streets is overgrown with vines and bushes and leaves. Makes it harder to see if someone’s coming the other way, and narrower, making it harder to pass. Thankfully, no collisions today
the small stretch of dirt trail that I take as the path nears the lake street bridge is wet — I think there was a brief, strong storm last night, or was that a dream?
a group of 3 fast bikers riding on the road, a cautious car following behind
a darting squirrel
a flash of movement of the leaves beside the trail – was the flash from the sun hitting the leaves just right, or a critter — a bird or chipmunk or squirrel?
later in my run, encountered Mr. black sweatsuit with white towel again. He said a soft, “morning,” and I nodded my head as a reply
Wow. Finding 10 things today took some thinking and remembering and getting past my overriding feelings of heat and discomfort. Such a great exercise in noticing!
Oh — I almost completely forgot: I also chanted in triple berries. Lots of strawberry/blueberry/raspberry and gooseberry/blackberry/red berry to keep my feet striking steadily. Added in a few mystery/history/mystery, which didn’t quite work, and butterscotch/chocolate sauce/caramel, and please don’t stop. Now I wish I had done more of them. I love the triple berry chants.
At the end of my run, as I was walking back, I listened to my first lecture for the class I’m teaching. I’m asking the students to listen to it on their first walk or run outside. I’m doing this partly because I’d like to make outside be the classroom space as much as possible, and partly because I think listening while moving can help you hear/process the words differently than when you’re inside, sitting still. One thought about the lecture: will my voice put them to sleep?
Mostly I don’t use headphones, but I do like to listen to podcasts or music sometimes. It’s strange how ideas or stories I’ve heard while running get imprinted on where I was on the trail. Even now, years later, as I run below the lake street bridge, I often think of the first season of Serial. Running from downtown to the Bohemian Flats, I think about an episode of “On Being” with Eula Biss. Listening to music or podcasts while moving might seem like a distraction from giving attention to a place, and it can be. But it can also be a chance to create a map of a place, connecting ideas that matter to you with locations that you move through regularly. Does that make sense?
Many people have strong opinions about whether or not you should be listening to anything while you’re moving. Although I do move much more without headphones, I like wearing them too. In my first year of doing this running project, I wrote a series of four acrostic poems exploring this no headphones/playlist debate: Playlist/No Headphones, some reflections
note: I’m typing this paragraph an hour later. When I was writing about headphones and listening, I thought there was something else I wanted to say, but it had drifted from my mind. It came back, in the midst of thinking about podcasts.
When I listen to podcasts, I always wear headphones, not broadcasting them to anyone else on the trail. For the most part, I prefer that others listen with headphones too. Yet, even as I write this, I’m reminded of how hearing someone’s irritating TEDtalk inspired a poem, and how I find some delight in hearing a song blasting from a bike speaker, especially if it’s accompanied by the Doppler effect.
Found this Anne Carson poem on twitter this morning:
If you are not the free person you want to be, you must find a place to tell the truth about that. To tell how things go for you. Candor is like a skein being produced inside the belly day after day, it has to get itself woven out somewhere. You could whisper down a well. You could write a letter and keep it in a drawer. You could inscribe a curse on a ribbon of lead and bury it in the ground to be unread for thousands of years. The point is not to find a reader, the point is the telling itself. Consider a person standing alone in a room. The house is silent. She is looking down at a piece of paper. Nothing else exists. All her veins go down into this paper. She takes her pen and writes on it some marks no one else will ever see, she bestows on it a kind of surplus, she tops it off with a gesture as private and accurate as her own name.
(added this later in the day):
bike: 8.5 miles lake nokomis and back 87 degrees 4:30 pm (there) / 6:00 (back)
Biked without any problems. 2 distinctive memories, one of the way to the lake, one on the way back.
to the lake: Coasting down the hill between the double bridge and Locks and Dam No. 1, in the hot sun, I passed someone pushing a canoe on wheels. It looked awkward and like they were struggling. I tried to imagine the scenario where you would be pushing a canoe at this spot.
from the lake: Biking under the echo bridge, I heard 2 flutes playing a duet under the bridge, on the other side. It sounded very nice. I imagined calling out, “that sounds great” or “you’re awesome” but I didn’t.
This is the first time I’ve witnessed a canoe being pushed on the paved path or 2 flutes playing a duet under a bridge.
swim: 2 loops 87 degrees windy
So much wind again. I’m getting used to it. I stayed on course. There was one point where I oriented myself in relation to another swimmer who was off course, so I got a little too close to the buoy, but otherwise, no problem. Again, I seem to swim straight towards the buoys even when I don’t see them, or think I see them. My googles leaked a little, and when I got out of the water there was a film over my eyes. Everything looked like it was fogged up, even though I wasn’t wearing glasses.
One memorable thing: Rounding the last green buoy, parallel to the big beach, I suddenly hit something hard with my hand. Huh? A green plastic bucket. As I flinched and lifted my head out of the water in surprise, I heard a woman laugh. Was she laughing at me? I doubt it. How did the bucket make it out this far?
I breathed every 5 strokes and had fun punching the water when it was extra choppy. Noticed a few planes and clouds above. An occasional flash below, and nothing else but brown, opaque water. Oh — a menancing sailboat, off to my left side. The first one this year!
addendum, june 22: I remembered 2 more memorable things that I don’t want to forget. One while I was swimming, the other while biking.
swimming: I kept seeing another swimmer out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked back again, they were gone. It was strange, because it happened more than once and felt very real, like they were there, and then they weren’t. Maybe it was the yellow buoy tethered to my waist?
biking: Biking back home on the river road trail, I passed a runner, running smoothly and quickly, snapping their fingers repeatedly. Why where they snapping? Not sure. In all the times I’ve passed a runner while biking (or while running), I don’t think I’ve ever heard them snapping!
I need to start getting up earlier for these runs. It’s too hot by 9:30. Sunny and windy. Lots of shade, which is one reason to love the green, even if it does block my view of the river. Did one of my most regular routes: the trestle turn around. Saw and greeted Mr. Morning!, then later, on my walk with Delia the dog, Dave the Daily Walker. I remember thinking about something, and wanting to remember it — 2 things actually — but now I can’t remember them. I almost stopped to record them into my phone, but I didn’t. Maybe if I keep typing, I’ll remember them?
10 Things I Noticed
above the tunnel of trees: light green, dark green, green air. Felt like I was flying above the trees
before the tunnel: 3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder. I wonder, are they same stones every time — they fall off and someone picks them up and stacks them again?
2 runners with a running stroller, a kid in it crying, one of the adults saying, “we’ll be home soon”
voices drifting up from the Winchell Trail right by the railroad trestle
the smell of pot by the ravine
a few others bits of conversation — I think I was able to hear a word or two, but I can’t remember the words now
starting out my run in the neighborhood, hearing some talking, not able to identify any words. I knew they were words, but no idea what the words were. I was reminded of these lines from a Jane Hirshfield poem I encountered a few weeks ago: “An almost readable language./ Like the radio heard while traveling in a foreign country—/You know that something important has happened, but not what.”
the whooshing of car wheels mixing with the wind
yes! I just remembered one thing I’d forgotten! a car blasting “Renegade” by Styx as I neared the double bridge just north of the old stone steps and longfellow flats
surfaces: west dirt, dry dusty dirt, concrete, asphalt, grass
Back to “Renegade.” I started singing along in my head after the car passed:
The jig is up the news is out they finally found me
A renegade who had it made in ???? county
I couldn’t remember the last line, no matter how hard I tried, I decided I would look it up when I got back from my run. Here’s what I found:
The jig is up, the news is out They’ve finally found me The renegade who had it made Retrieved for a bounty Nevermore to go astray This will be the end today of the wanted man
Wow, not sure I ever knew exactly what Dennis DeYoung sang there. Retrieved for a bounty? Nice.
Found these little poems from Charles Simic in a recent New Yorker:
A Tree of Dignified Appearance/ Charles Simic
Fed up with its noisy leaves And its chirping little birds, Plus that young woodpecker Drilling himself a new home.
For Rent/ Charles Simic
A large clean room With plenty of sunlight And one cockroach To tell your troubles to.
4 miles marshall loop 74 degrees wind: 20 mph / gusts: 26 mph 9:30 am
Sunny, warm, windy! Very windy. Luckily, I never seemed to be running straight into it. My visor stayed on, even when I crossed the bridge! I used to really dislike the wind, now it doesn’t bother me that much when I’m running. I like the sounds it makes. Today it russshhhed through the gorge, shaking the trees. I was going to write that it roared, but it had more of a shshshsh sound than an oar sound. No rowers on the river (I don’t blame them in this wind). No roller skiers or geese or blue jays.
10 Things I Noticed
river, 1: white sparkles on the surface
river, 2: more brown than blue
river, 3: empty
the crane on the east side is still there. I wondered where they were working. Later, as I reached the turnoff from cretin to the east river road I saw a “road work ahead” sign and thought that the crane might be near summit avenue
the wind was at my back as I crossed over the bridge to the east side of the river
smell: bacon, or pork of some kind, coming from the BBQ place next to Blacks
was able to run mostly in the shade, some full, some dappled
everything is green
a man sitting in the back of a truck, waiting to begin work on the road or the sidewalk or something that they have blocked off at this intersection
people over at the St. Thomas track, running laps
2.5 miles in, I stopped to walk up the steps to the lake street bridge and record a few thoughts I was having about my class and this running/writing project. The recording is not very good, too much wind and traffic, so I’ll only include the transcript of part of it:
In the middle of a windy run, and I was thinking that this project is so many things at once. It’s a compex mess of layers of things I’m trying to achieve, things I’m experimenting with, and the fundamental thing that keeps it all together is to have this little structure, this little bit of discipline: I go out and move for roughly the same amount of time and then I write about it. And in the log I have just a little bit of structure so that it gives, maybe not an anchor but, a tether to the world and to some purpose and intent.
I had a few more thoughts but I’m not including them here. When I spoke them into my phone, they sounded great, but listening back, they don’t quite make sense.
swim: 2 loops / 1.5 miles lake nokomis wind: 20 mph 5:30 pm
Windy again. Swimming from the big beach to the little beach wasn’t too bad, although a few of the swells behind me made it difficult to get in a stroke, or to breathe. From the little beach back to the big beach was harder. But, it didn’t bother me, in fact I loved it. The main thing I remember about the swim was how amazed I am in my ability to trust the flash that I see, maybe only once or twice, and that doesn’t look like anything but a smudge — to trust my belief that that flash is the buoy and that that is the right way to swim to stay on course. Even when I didn’t think I could see where the buoys were, I swam straight towards them and stayed on course. Wow. I love open swimming, and I’m so grateful that I can continue to do it. In other good news, my other nose plug stayed on while I swam, and I am not stuffed up at all. Hooray!
Ran with Scott. North on the river road to the trestle, then left and up to the greenwood trail, through Brackett Park, and over to Dogwood Coffee on lake street for an iced latte. Overcast. It was supposed to rain all day, but something shifted and it’s missing Minneapolis. Nice. Without the sun, everything was a deep, dark green. I remember noticing how green and mysterious and calm it was in the tunnel of trees. I think I heard some rowers down below, or maybe it was a few hikers? I don’t recall ever seeing the river, or much of what Scott and I talked about, other than complaining about some changes to apple pay that make it impossible to transfer money to our 16 year old. Heard some blue jays and thought, again, about how I used to think “crow” everytime I heard their screeching.
Sitting here, trying to remember things that happened, or that I thought about, on the run, I’m…not amazed or suprised…struck by how much I don’t remember, how lost I was for those minutes. I don’t mind getting lost. Sometimes I wish it would happen more.
Things I Don’t Remember
the river
if there were any stones stacked on the ancient boulder
the welcoming oaks
above the rowing club
if anyone was sitting on a bench
Writing the list above, I suddenly remembered something, which might explain why I don’t remember noticing the welcoming oaks because I think it was near them that this happened: a chipmunk darted in front of both of us and we had to jump to avoid stepping on it. Dumb chipmunk! I’m glad that neither of us injured our feet or ankles or knees trying to avoid it. Of course, the chipmunk was fine. I recounted the story to Scott of when RJP and I had been biking to Fort Snelling and a chipmunk darted across the trail and ran right into my wheel. It was stunned or dead, I’m not sure which one.
Thinking about Simone Weil for my class this morning. I like this paraphrasing of her in a lithub article:
To attend means not to seek, but to wait; not to concentrate, but instead to dilate our minds. We do not gain insights, Weil claims, by going in search of them, but instead by waiting for them.
Thinking about being open, patient, willing to wait, letting go, trying to relax.
*variation = south on paved river road trail/turn around under ford bridge/north on paved trail until I reached the parking lot at 44th and the entrance to the Winchell Trail/up the 38th st steps/north on the river road paved trail/back into the neighborhood at 36th
A run between raindrops. Rain, earlier this morning. Rain expected this afternoon. Everything was green and wet and sticky. By the end of the run, my skin felt like one of those damp pads you use for moistening stamps. Yuck! The dew point didn’t bother too much while I was running because I stopped a few times to speak my thoughts into my phone. Not too many people out on the trails. Quiet, except for the birds, a few kids, an occasional jackhammer.
a noise as a clue
I’ve been thinking a lot about my senses and my brain and how they alert me to what’s around me in the world. Today’s small example: walking up the 38th steps, unable to see what was above me because of all the vegetation. I heard the flash of a distinctive sound: the jingling of a dog collar. The jingling sound was quick, quiet, easy to ignore, but somehow I noticed, and it prepared me for not being surprised when I encountered the dog and their human at the top of the steps.
a new experiment
Still working on my class. Today is about attention, especially passive attention. Before I headed out I listened to a recording of a draft of my lecture so far, then I ran. About 10 minutes in, I started having interesting thoughts about attention and my class and noticing in unexpected and/or passive ways. I decided to stop and record my thoughts. About 4 or 5 minutes later, I stopped again to record more thoughts. Here’s the recording and a transcript:
june 13th
Wow, I had no idea I said this much!
June 13th, a little over a mile and a half into a run in humid, muggy weather. Between raindrops, I’ve stopped to walk and record this. I’m working this morning on how to describe passive attention or soft attention or being available to seeing or attending to. I was thinking about how moving helps that and that it’s really hard to hold onto a thought. Concentration and will are a difficult thing to do, so it can help train you to do better, to be more effective, in that passive absorption. Because you don’t have a choice, you can’t really pay attention to things.
The other thing I was thinking about, just ’cause this is all jumbled, associated thoughts — I was thinking about how one of the problems with attention is the idea that we have a limited amount, and that we need to use it wisely. It’s a commodity that we spend and that we pay and therefore it’s a limited resource. But, if you think about attention differently, as not paying but giving, and you think about not holding onto or hoarding attention, but growing it or having it epand or letting go or letting it pass through you, it is no longer a commodity or limited resource. It’s something that we can expand and give in more ways than we are.
So, another thing I was thinking about was the connection between passive attention and peripheral sight and how you’re looking to the edges of what you can see. If you’re looking straight ahead, you’re thinking or noticing more what’s happening below you or above you or off to the side, even while you’re looking forward. And I was thinking about how one of the first things the ophthalmologist said to me was I’d need to learn to see people by looking at their shoulders [note: to see them through my peripheral vision]. So how does that change what we see and what we can do with that sight?
I stopped recording and started running again.
Okay, I’m about 1/2 a mile, 3/4 of a mile further. I’m by the ravine where the water gushes, or does more than trickle. And that’s because..I think it’s by more houses, and also because it has rained an hour ago. Anyway, I wanted to stop so I wouldn’t forget this. So I was thinking, as I started the Winchell Trail, about how I’m talking a lot about moving and how it can help us tap into that passive attention or these different forms of giving attention, but I’m not talking about being outside, what outside does. I was thinking, if nothing else — and there’s much more — if offers more interruptions, potentially more interesting interruptions, to any focused concentration we might be having. There’s more to be distracted by, or be interrupted by, to listen to….Then I was thinking about how these interruptions and these different modes of paying attention and having all of them, also how it can be beneficial to our work to be outside moving. But it’s also good for our health, and it helps us with our lives, being able to pay attention in different ways. This is not multi-tasking in the way that it’s understood, where we’re expected to do more and more things all at once and be responsible. It’s not multi-tasking, it’s some other way, because we’re not holding onto this attention. I had a word for it when I was running and I’ve forgotten it already.
Okay, I just thought of one more thing: It’s the idea of what I’m doing right now where I’ve kind of in some ways spontaneously deciding I will run and walk then stop and talk and record these thoughts. In some ways, that’s experimenting and spontaneous, but it’s built off of all this training and showing up and building up that endurance and the ability to do that. It makes me think of how in running if you’re wanting to run longer distances, you need to have a base layer. You need to do slow, long, steady miles and build up your body so that it’s able to handle that. But that’s an important part of the process, is building up that base layer, and we can try to translate that into what’s happening with attention and these experiments.
It’s funny how some of what I was saying made much more sense when I was saying it then it does now that I’m listening and transcribing it. Regardless, recording these thoughts was helpful — and thinking about passive attention was too!
Spending time reviewing my thoughts, I’m remembering more. I remember running in a bit of a fog, partly because of the thick air, the gray sky, the deep green, and feeling present on the path, then being interrupted by a kid’s cry, or a bird’s chirp, or the rumble of a jackhammer. I’m also thinking about part of the long poem I wrote this past fall (Haunts) and my description of this space of passive attention.
5k trestle turn around 71 degrees humidity: 73% / dew point: 62 11 am
A wonderful run! Another day where it isn’t really cloudy, but CLOUD. The sky, almost white. The air, thick (or thicker than yesterday). Ran north on the river road trail past the welcoming oaks — good morning! And past the big boulder with no stones stacked. Through the tunnel of trees, above the old stone steps, under the lake street bridge, all the way to the trestle. I stopped to walk for a few seconds, turned around, and ran back. Worked on increasing my cadence while trying not to run faster and use more effort. That’s hard. I felt tired by the time I reached the trestle — and warm. The dew point is in the uncomfortable range.
10 Things I Noticed
one of the welcoming oaks is very close to the paved trail, just a few inches away
right before reaching the oaks, above the ravine, a tree that fell last week — or the week before? — is still there, leaning over the edge, split in a few places
chick-a-dee-dee-dee-dee
a honk or two
2 bikers and a roller blader, moving and chatting together on the bike path
comiing up behind me, I heard a voice saying to someone else, “there’s 5 of us coming up behind you,” then one biker with a trailer passing me, then moving over to the side while 5 bikers in bright yellow shirts biked past
another, fast biker, approaching a few seconds later. I tried to listen to hear if they said, “on your left,” I don’t think so
rowers on the river! the evidence: the coxswain’s voice gently offering guidance through a bullhorn
a walker, listening to some funk music through their phone in the tunnel of trees
all (almost all?) of the benches were empty
Nearing the end of my run, when I heard the rowers, I had a moment of clarity. I decided to cross over to the grass betwen the river road and edmund and record my thoughts. Here’s a recording of it, and a transcript, with a few additional remarks:
june 12th
june 12th, 2.5 miles run (note: I ran another 1/2 mile after I recorded this, also: I had only finished my run 20-30 seconds prior to recording this so my heartrate was still high and my breathing was more labored). Try to be open to being interrupted. Take notice of the sounds that interrupt you, that call out to you, almost insisting, “listen!,” as opposed to just trying as hard as you can to notice everything and to constantly be vigilant about the listening, trying to return to it again and again. While this can be useful sometimes, we also need the interruptions, the time to just be, to slow down and let the world speak to us.
Here, I try to remember the name of a poem that I think fits. I decided it was titled “Lost.” It is!
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.
Also, another example of this is the time I was really focused on running, not paying attention, to the point that I didn’t even notice the geese that were on the other side of the road, congregating in someone’s front yard. All of a sudden, one of them gobbled, not ferociously but loudly, almost yelling at me to listen and to notice.
Three things to note here: First, I wrote about this moment in my running log, under the heading “delight of the day” on march 2, 2022.
Secone, it was not geese who interrupted me, but turkeys (hence, the gobble reference). I think I mis-said geese because I was thinking about Mary Oliver’s poem, Wild Geese and the lines:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
Third, this recording was inspired by a moment on today’s run when I was interrupted by something. I forgot to say what that something was in the recording and I’m already struggling to remember it. I think it was the voice of the rower?
And, that’s…to get to that point..ooo! And then I think about how Mary Oliver has that poem where she talks about how some people can just get there right away. They just open up and stuff pours in. Others of us need a lot more practice. It’s a constant struggle…This would be..the exercise is kind of passive insofar as you’re not doing anything to make it happen, you’re just letting it happen and be around and aware when it does.
Mary Oliver doesn’t exactly write, “stuff pours in,”she writes:
from “The Book of Time” in The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver
For some souls it’s easy; they lie down on the sand and are soon asleep. For others, the mind shivers in its glacial palace, and won’t come. Yes, the mind takes a long time, is otherwise occupied than by hapiness, and deep breathing. Now, in the distance, some bird is singing. And now I have gathered six or seven deep red, half-opened cups of petals betwen my hands, and now I have put my face against them and now I am moving my face back and forth, slowly, against them. The body is not much more than two feet and a tongue. Come to me, says the blue sky, and say the word. And finally even the mind comes running, like a wild thing, and lies down on the sand. Eternity is not later, or in any unfindable place. Roses, roses, roses.
Having this moment of clarity was so great. Before heading out for my run, I was struggling to describe the different forms of attention that we’ll be working on in my class. I have too many ideas, too many sources, too many things that I want to share. I was feeling overwhelmed. On the run, I wasn’t thinking about how to work through this problem, but this idea of interruptions and being open to them found me. This “finding” is an excellent example of what I’m trying to teach about the value of moving outside! It’s not all that we can do while moving, and it doesn’t always happen, but it’s part of why I show up almost every day beside the gorge, moving and breathing and trying to be present.
As I thought about attention before I went out for a run, and the types of attention I want to describe in my lecture recording (I’m doing it like a podcast), I thought about Mary Oliver’s poem “Luke” as a good example of being open to attention. After typing up those bits from MO’s The Leaf and the Cloud above, I see some strong connections between it and “Luke.”
Luke/ Mary Oliver
I had a dog who loved flowers. Briskly she went through the fields,
yet paused for the honeysuckle or the rose, her dark head
and her wet nose touching the face of every one
with its petals of silk, with its fragrance rising
into the air where the bees, their bodies heavy with pollen,
hovered— and easily she adored every blossom,
not in the serious, careful way that we choose this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise— the way we love or don’t love— but the way
we long to be— that happy in the heaven of earth— that wild, that loving.
Thank you running and the gorge and my feet for making it possible for me to move so that I could untangle this knot in my thinking and be with the birds and the rowers and the river!
bike: about 12 miles* around lake nokomis and back
*my very outdated, over-the-hill apple watch crashed again while we were biking, so I don’t know the exact distance. Somewhere between 11.5 and 12 miles. I finally decided that I need a new watch. It’s coming on Tuesday: an early birthday present!
Biked with FWA over to the lake to pick up our swim caps! Tuesday is the first open swim! Hooray!! Several memorable things happened, which I want to remember for me and for FWA:
At Sandcastle, they had entertainment: a singer with a guitar. He sang John Denver’s “Country Roads,” but changed some of the words to fit Minneapolis. Instead of Almost heaven, West Virginia he sang, Almost heaven, South Minneapolis, which was awkward. He kept in Shenandoah River in Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River when, as FWA suggested, he could have sang, Mississippi River
Picking up our caps, a lifeguard asked FWA if he goes to Gustavus (he was wearing a Gustavus t-shirt). When he said yes, she added: “My friend and I just transferred from there to St. Olaf.” Anyone who goes/went to either Gustavus or St. Olaf and knows about their rivalry and might find this remark funny
Biking to lake nokomis on the minnehaha creek path, rounding a hidden corner, we heard a bell ringing repeatedly. It came from a double-recumbant bike, just letting us know they were there. Tne franctic ringing and the sight of a recumbant bike with 2 people on it seemed surreal and strange and funny
9:45 am* 2 miles river road trail, south/42nd st/edmund, north 66 degrees / humidity: 85%
*I’m trying out adding the time to my basic details for these entries. I always tag them with “morning” or “afternoon” or “evening,” but I thought it would be interesting to see if it helps to get more specific. The tag is great for getting a general sense of when I run, but is that enough?
That’s a lot of mornings! I’m actually surprised that I’ve run as many as 16 times in the evening. I don’t like running in the evening. Should I try to change that?
A quick run on a humid Saturday morning, after some light rain that fell just before I woke up. Decided at the last minute to listen to some faster songs so I could work on increasing the speed of my cadence. Not because I want to go faster, but because I’m wondering if it might help my runs feel easier and improve my form. My go-to song for this: Misery Business/ Parmore. Elton John’s I’m Still Standing came on next, and that was a good speed too. It felt easy for the first mile, harder for the second. I think I should try doing this once a week. Maybe run with a quicker cadence (175) for a song, then a little more relaxed for a song, then repeat?
I’m sitting on my deck as I write this and the chickadees are going crazy: “chick-a-dee dee dee dee” — or, is it a chickadee? Now, I’m not sure. All I know is that it’s loud and steady and a bit frantic.
Encountered a running group. Not rightly packed, but strung out on the trail, a pair of runners here, a pair of runners there, for 1/4 of a mile. What are the training for? I didn’t look at the river or the oak savanna. Didn’t smell anything strange or hear any alarming sounds. No deep thoughts that I can remember. No felled trees to wonder about, or roller skiers to delight in (seeing a roller skier on the trail, is a good omen for me).
an image I remember: On my block, just before starting my run, I heard a woman softly speaking a few words (I couldn’t tell what the words were), then a collar jangling. I looked across the street and saw a woman running with a dog. The dog was medium-sized and on a leash, tethered to the runner’s waist. They looked like a puppy that might soon become a much bigger dog. They were running ahead of the runner. Something about their (the runner and the dog) movements seemed awkward, or not-quite-right. Was it that they were going too fast? Was it just not what I expected? I don’t know. I also don’t know why this image seems more vivid to me than anything else that happened on my run.
a new podcast to check out
I stumbled upon a poetry podcast that I’d like to try out: Words by Winter
Words by Winter: Conversations, reflections, and poems about the passages of life. Because it’s rough out there, and we have to help each other through. Each brief episode includes a story or conversation, along with a poem.
The creator/author of this podcast is based in Minneapolis, which is pretty cool.
In this class, we’ll explore how cultivating the habit of being outside and moving regularly can make us more attentive and open to finding wonder in the world. And we’ll experiment with different methods for transforming that wonder into words, including creating and maintaining a movement log. We’ll read how writers use moving outdoors to help their creative process; investigate different forms of attention and how being in motion influences them; practice wonder, both as delight and curiosity, on our walks or runs; spend time with poems while moving to see what happens to them and to us; study how moving through land transforms how we know and describe it; notice our breathing as we move at different speeds, then compose poems that match its rhythms; and develop ways to remember ideas that occur as we move outdoors.
Each week will consist of discussion, writing prompts, sharing strategies for your own outdoor-in-motion habits, and a few experiments to try during the week. Optional meet-ups by the Mississippi River Gorge are possible for those interested. Readings will be from Ross Gay, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, J. Drew Lanham, Aracelis Girmay, Mary Oliver, Georgina Kleege, Ada Limón, Emily Dickinson, Thomas Gardner, and others.
The class starts in 11 days and it’s all online, so I’m working on creating the content for it right now. It’s about the value of developing the habit of being outside and in motion for your writing/creative process/life. I’m especially interested in experimenting with how paying attention while moving (instead of while stopped, standing still) might open us up, and open up certain forms of attention that many of us don’t often use: soft attention or passive attention or attention that’s not about focusing closely on one thing, but on getting a bigger picture (the forest, no the trees). Not staring at or scrutinizing something in order to KNOW it, but becoming aware of something, feeling it, beholding it. How does that type of attention work, and how can we translate it into words? That’s what we’ll be playing around with in the class.
I mentioned chickadees earlier in this entry — the ones chattering noisily near my backyard — so I looked up “chickadee” on the poetry foundation site. Here’s the last section of a poem by Juan Delgado:
Outside my window, the sky is suddenly draped by a hum, a hummingbird’s hunger. Her wings wrinkle the sky. Unlike a chickadee too busy and full of seed chatter, the hummingbird puffs up the air, feeding like a storm, a redness, a sideway rocket past the world’s ear.
That spark reminds me of you.
Thin-rooted, lingering too long, absorbed in window reveries, I’ll be released. Here, the soil is moist, sponge-like, storing. Worms surface, digesting their way up. I, too, am ready for the driving winds of another season.
71 degrees at 9:30 in the morning. I need to start my runs earlier. Today is my daughter’s last day of school so I can. Hooray for not having to wake her up, help her find something to eat, get stressed out when school has already started and she hasn’t even come downstairs! Another good run. Hardly any wind, not too much sun. Dry. Too dry. I could feel it in my tight skin and the inside lining of my nose.
10 Things I Noticed
the river, nearing the lake street bridge on the west side: such a pale blue it was almost white, a nice contrast with the vibrant green
the river, heading east over the lake street bridge: still, quiet, no waves, no sparkling. Something about its flatness, combined with the unruly green made it look hot — not like the water was hot, but that being near it was
the river, heading west back over the lake street bridge: the water was split with one half blue, the other half brownish-green — a reflection of the trees along the shore
the river, standing at the overlook at the middle of the bridge: more cloudy currents below. What causes this? Is it sand bars, or something else?
on the bridge, I noticed a big crane over on the St. Paul side. I wondered if I encounter it while running through the neighborhood (I didn’t).
below the bridge, I noticed the walking trail was open again — they must have fixed the bit that caved in
a runner ahead of me on the bridge and then running up the marshall hill. They kept going on marshall; I turned on cretin
at the top of the hill, Blacks coffee looked mostly empty, at least the low of empty stools I saw in the front window
today, I remembered running through the tunnel of trees. This time I was heading south instead of north. What I remembered: a blur of green off to the side, a paved path stretching far in front of me, no one else around
no stones stacked on the boulder
Did I hear any birds out by the gorge? I can’t remember.
For days now a red-breasted bird has been trying to break in. She tests a low branch, violet blossoms swaying beside her, leaps into the air and flies straight at my window, beak and breast held back, claws raking the pane. Maybe she longs for the tree she sees reflected in the glass, but I’m only guessing. I watch until she gives up and swoops off. I wait for her return, the familiar click, swoosh, thump of her. I sip cold coffee and scan the room, trying to see it new, through the eyes of a bird. Nothing has changed. Books piled in a corner, coats hooked over chair backs, paper plates, a cup half-filled with sour milk. The children are in school. The man is at work. I’m alone with dead roses in a jam jar. What do I have that she could want enough to risk such failure, again and again?
*the longer version = paved river road trail, south/take the paved trail down to the overlook in the 44th street parking lot/Winchell Trail, north — past the 38th street steps, through the oak savanna, down the dirt hill studded with rocks in the ravine, up the gravel/ return to the paved river road trail, north, through the tunnel of trees, past the old stone steps/cross the river road to edmund at 33rd, go south on edmund
Is summer finally here? Warm and sunny this morning. Most of the time, I ran in the shade. I may not like how the leaves conceal my view of the other side of the gorge, but I appreciate how they make it cooler and shield me from the sun. A good run, no big revelations or moments of delight. Thought about the class I’m prepping and how grateful I am for the practice I developed of getting outside, moving, then writing about it. I started it partly as a way to survive the new administration in 2016, then relied on it a lot during the early years of the pandemic. Now, it’s central to my work on care and wonder. These thoughts, while I ran, came in flashes or bursts or flares — which word do I like best?
10 Things I Noticed
the river! It was a beautiful blue. I didn’t stare straight at it, but noticed it off to the side, looking extra blue because of the sun and the green that framed it. No details to add, like sparkling waves or fast moving currents or big branches floating downstream. Just blue. As I ran, I felt the constant, pleasant presence of blue.
running in the 36th street parking lot, past the entrance to the Winchell Trail, I heard a strange horn-like sound. It was LOUD — what was it? Then I saw a very little kid on a bike, no adult that I could see (which doesn’t mean they weren’t there; I often don’t see people who are there). They called out, “daddy?” a few times. I wondered if I should stop to see if they were okay, but their “daddy” didn’t sound urgen or scared so I kept going
4 people gathered on the walking trail, sort of, but not quite, off to the side
a few kids crossing the river road just past the gathered group
encountering several bikes, staying in their same, still seeming too close
a squirrel standing still, which I initially mistook for a cardinal (because, yes, my vision is that bad)
a person, or 2 people?, stretched out on one of the many benches resting right above the river — not the bench by the big old rock or near folwell, but near the old stone steps
water trickling out of the sewer pipes
update on #1: passing through the oak savanna at the end of my run, I encountered “daddy,” the kid, and the source of the loud horn: an extra loud bike horn. The dad blasted it for his kid’s amusement right before I reached them. He was on a fat tire, the kid on one of those training bikes without pedals — what are those called?
the smell of chemicals for a lawn, or water from a hose
No clicks or clacks from a roller skier’s poles, no doppler effect from a radio, no chirping robins or screeching blue jays, no rowers, and, again, no memory of what happened while I ran through the tunnel of trees. Forgetting this stretch of 3 or 4 minutes has happened twice now. Interesting….
Green moves through the tops of trees and grows lighter greens as it recedes, each of which includes a grey, and among the greys, or beyond them, waning finely into white, there is one white spot, absolute; it could be an egret or perhaps a crane at the edge of the water where it meets a strip of sand.
Two
There is a single, almost dazzling white spot of a white house out loud against the fields, and the forest in lines receding, rises, and then planes. Color,
in pieces or entire; its presence veneers over want; in all its moving parts, it could be something else
half-hidden by trees. Conservatory, gloriette, gazebo, or bandshell, a door ajar on the top floor.
Three The trees are half air. They fissure the sky; you could count the leaves, pare time defined as that which, no matter how barely, exceeds what the eye could grasp in a glance; intricate woods opening out before a body of water edged with a swatch of meadow where someone has hung a bright white sheet out in the sun to dry.
Four
A white bird in a green forest is a danger to itself. Stands out. Shines. Builds up inside. Like it’s dangerous to cry while driving or to talk to strangers or to stare at the sun and a thousand other things we’ve always heard people who wear white see better at night, though they gradually lose this trait as they age.
note, added 9 june 2025: Reading this poem this morning, I realized that it is a helpful model for my alt-text/ekphrastic “how I see” project. So I’m tagging it with alt-text/ekphrasis and I might try coming back to it this month.
The rain that looked like it was coming never did, so I went out for a run. It’s overcast. Not cloudy, but CLOUD — one big cloud covering everything, making the sky gray and the greens more green. It seemed humid to me and I sweat a lot, so I thought the humidity would be high. Nope, only 47%. The run felt good, relaxed.
On the surface, all I remember is trying to lift my knees and my left hip and looking out for other walkers or runners or bikers. Can I remember more if I try? Yes!
10 Things I Noticed
lots of bikers, mostly single bikers or groups of 2, one large, spread out group, several of them wearing bright yellow jackets
no blue jays or chickadees, but lots of little chirping birds — I wondered if they were warblers
the faint voices of kids playing on the Dowling Elementary playground
exchanging deep head nods with a man using a walker
Minneapolis parks is mowing today — saw and heard a big lawn mower speeding by on the path. More evidence of the lawn mowing: the smell of freshly cut grass
encountering another runner down below on the winchell trail, near its southern start, where all the asphalt has reverted to dirt. They were wearing sweatpants and maybe (I can’t quite remember) a sweatshirt too?
voices below, in the gorge — rowers?
mud on the trail from yesterday’s rain, but not enough to slip in or on or through
trickling water in several different spots in the ravine, just north of the oak savanna
the dirt trail below the mesa that the parks dept cleared out last year is showing signs of being reclaimed: weeds popping up in the middle of the path
Today I got lost in the run, in some sort of reverie or just my mind shutting down for a while. I can’t remember what the river looked like, though I know I looked at it. I can’t remember anything about running through the tunnel of trees, not even a hint of a memory of the dark green or the sound of cars above, or whether I encountered someone as I ran past the old stone steps. Strange and wonderful. I like getting lost.
Found a beautiful poem through this tweet:
Back when I wrote this, the question was real — I couldn’t answer it. Now I can: Yes, it’s okay… https://t.co/NOn1Xn6810
What do we do with the body, do we burn it, do we set it in dirt or in stone, do we wrap it in balm, honey, oil, and then gauze and tip it onto and trust it to a raft and to water?
What will happen to the memory of his body, if one of us doesn’t hurry now and write it down fast? Will it be salt or late light that it melts like? Floss, rubber gloves, and a chewed cap
to a pen elsewhere —how are we to regard his effects, do we throw them or use them away, do we say they are relics and so treat them like relics? Does his soiled linen count? If so,
would we be wrong then, to wash it? There are no instructions whether it should go to where are those with no linen, or whether by night we should memorially wear it ourselves, by day
reflect upon it folded, shelved, empty. Here, on the floor behind his bed is a bent photo—why? Were the two of them lovers? Does it mean, where we found it, that he forgot it or lost it
or intended a safekeeping? Should we attempt to make contact? What if this other man too is dead? Or alive, but doesn’t want to remember, is human? Is it okay to be human, and fall away
from oblation and memory, if we forget, and can’t sometimes help it and sometimes it is all that we want? How long, in dawns or new cocks, does that take? What if it is rest and nothing else that
we want? Is it a findable thing, small? In what hole is it hidden? Is it, maybe, a country? Will a guide be required who will say to us how? Do we fly? Do we swim? What will I do now, with my hands?
For reasons I can’t totally express, this poem seems fitting to post this late morning, after spending time working on an introductory lecture for a class I’m teaching on noticing the world, then documenting that noticing in a log, and after writing in this log entry that I got lost in the run.
Also, it’s always a good time to post a Carl Phillips poem. His work is wonderful.
Everything green. Not dark green, like yesterday, but glowing green. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks as I ran past them. Noticed again — and I’m remembering this time, finally, to mention it — the non-oak (what kind is it?) tree that looks like a tuning fork. A few months ago, looking at it, I thought, “time to tune my body to the gorge.” I think this came to my mind because I had just listened to John Denver’s version of “The Garden Song” and the lines, “Tune my body and my brain/ To the music from the land.”
Things that Flew in my Face, a list
a small, but not too small, bird flying out of the leaves towards me, then veering quickly, making me stutter step and raise my hands to my eyes
a gnat, into the liquid protein in my right eye — it might still be in there…yuck!
cottonwood fuzz
another bird, not as close this time
the leafy branch of a tree on the side of the trail
wind
Speaking of wind, there was a point early on in the run when I noticed the wind in several different versions, all at once: the sound of rushing air past my ears; a sound that was not roaring or howling but talking loudly in the trees; the dancing shadows of the leaves on the trail.
Heard the rowers; encountered some roller skiers; greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and Mr. Morning!; looked up at the fluffy white clouds; wondered if the big bird soaring high above me was an eagle or a hawk or a turkey vulture; noticed all the empty benches; tried to, but couldn’t, identify the song coming out of a biker’s speakers as they passed me; thought about how fast the river was going and whether or not that was faster than I was running up the hill; appreciated my shadow ahead of me; smelled too much lilac; successfully avoided lots of groups of walkers; ran way too fast down a hill.
Inspired by an interview I encountered this morning, here’s the first poem from Ada Limón’s latest collection, The Hurting Kind:
I thought it was the neighbor’s cat back to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house but what came was much stranger, a liquidity moving all muscle and bristle. A groundhog slippery and waddle thieving my tomatoes still green in the morning’s shade. I watched her munch and stand on her haunches taking such pleasure in the watery bites. Why am I not allowed delight? A stranger writes to request my thoughts on suffering. Barbed wire pulled out of the mouth, as if demanding that I kneel to the trap of coiled spikes used in warfare and fencing. Instead, I watch the groundhog closer and a sound escapes me, a small spasm of joy I did not imagine when I woke. She is a funny creature and earnest, and she is doing what she can to survive.
Here’s the final question, and her answer, in the interview:
Question: What is the poet’s role in finding meaning in the world, and what is our duty in deciding to reject meaning? Talk to me about the work of meaning making. Talk to me about the work of surrender and release?
Answer: That’s the nature of life, isn’t it? To desire to make meaning and then surrender to the mystery and the repeat and repeat and repeat. Toni Morrison once said, during her Nobel Prize speech in 1993, “We die. That may be the meaning of life. But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.” And to me that quote is all about surrendering to our mortality, accepting our end, and yet recognizing the ways in which we honor our time here. How we point out the beauty, the pain, the full spectrum of all of our experience, so that we can live wholly, completely, and not miss the living we’ve been granted. Sometimes the message is only, “Look, I am alive.” And it does not have to transcend that. Why would it? What could be bigger than that?
As I write this, about an hour after my run, there’s bright sun, but when I ran it was gray and ominous. The thick green looked especially dark and the sky felt heavy. The rain isn’t supposed to arrive until around 6, but it has already seemed like it’s about to rain twice. I ran through the neighborhood to avoid crowded trails and because I felt like trying something different.
Neighborhood Haunts
Running by cooper school, I thought about the man I saw a few years ago working out by flipping a heavy sand bag across the field. Does he still do that, or has he moved onto some other strange (at least to me) way of keeping fit?
Running down the hill toward (is it toward or towards?) edmund, I looked for the house with the fruit vines closest to the sidewalk. 2 or 3 years ago, the owners had posted a sign that encouraged anyone to take the fruit. The sign also said what kind of fruit it was, but I can’t remember.
Also ran by the big, super cool 60s ranch house on the corner with the three gigantic cottonwood trees. The lawn was almost white with cottonwood fuzz. How difficult is that to rake up? Do you rake it up, or leave it — and, does it ever leave?
The run was helpful; it improved my mood, at least a little. And writing this entry while sitting out on my back deck listening to different birds, makes me feel even better.
I lie on the ground. I open my mouth. I suck on a spoon. I embrace a stone. A beetle crawls by. I empty my mind I stuff it with grass I’m green, I repeat.
The sun is a drink the yellowest squash I can’t get enough I can’t get enough I can’t get enough I can’t get enough I can’t get enough I can’t get enough
I love the idea of repeating, I’m green! I’m green! Also, it was fun to type I can’t get enough over and over again, even line after even line, the feel of the fingers on the keys and the look of the letters lined up so neatly.
Saturday, mid-morning. I was worried that the path would be very crowded, but it wasn’t too bad. Maybe that was because I avoided some of the trail right above the river, through the tunnel of trees? Ever since I realized that I’m often hearing bluejays when I think I’m hearing crows, I hear bluejays all the time. Should I try to build some affection for them, or wallow in my annoyance? Mostly a good run. My left hip felt tight towards the end. Thought about trying to let the wonder win and being more open and generous to everything and everyone I encounter. It’s difficult. I suppose today’s run (and most of my runs) helped. So many other people out by the gorge, sharing in its awesomeness (can I find a better word? I wanted to say amazing-ness but, is that an actual word? I’m tired of “beauty” and it doesn’t quite capture what the gorge is, or what it does (to me). I’m using “wonder” too much. Fabulous? I’ll keep searching).
10 Things I Noticed
heading east, over the lake street bridge, the water was blue and had lots of white, ghostly streaks near the surface. Not swirls but something else — what causes these cloudy currents? A few years ago, I wrote about these, referring to them as cataracts, or the clouds that come when eyes develop cataracts
heading west, over the lake street bridge, the water was brown and the ghostly streaks less visible, even more ghostly
lots of traffic everywhere — on the bridge, up the marshall hill. Running on the sidewalk, a safe distance from the road, I was able to pass some cars as they waited to merge or at the light
running up the hill, I smelled some flowering bush. Not lilacs, but something else that I should remember but can’t right now. Too much!
running at the top of the hill, I smelled waffles from Blacks coffee
a kind pedestrian moved out of the way to let me pass on the sidewalk. When I thanked them, they replied, “Oh, no problem!” or something friendly like that
some sort of sporting event happening at st. thomas. I could hear the cheers and an announcer saying something over the loudspeaker
3 bikers biked passed me on the bridge. I was pressed as close to the railing as I could. One of them whizzed by so closely that I almost felt their breeze. I whispered under my breath, “people suck.”
music coming out of (I don’t think it was loud enough to be described as blasting) the speakers of a passing bike. No doppler effect
emerging from the tunnel of trees, I heard (but didn’t see) the click click clack of the ski poles of a roller skier!
Listening/watching again Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s book launch for World of Wonders, I finally found the source of one of my new mantras: let the wonder win. In the Q & A at the end, AN says:
It’s there. A grief is there. Sadness and rage is always there. And then the wonder wins. I make sure the wonder wins. And definitely there are harder days than others, but that’s where the practice is. I try with all my might to make the wonder win by the end of the day.
Yes, that is where the practice is for me: struggling, finding ways, working dilligently on letting the wonder win out over everything else. Hanging onto the love and the joy and the generosity and the belief that there are good, delightful, beautiful, amazing things in the world that always make it worth it. Letting the wonder win is an expression/performance? of hope.
Found this poem by Jane Hirshfield on twitter this morning:
So far the house still is standing. So far the hairline cracks wandering the plaster still debate, in Socratic unhurry, what constitutes a good life. An almost readable language. Like the radio heard while traveling in a foreign country— You know that something important has happened, but not what.
What is an assay? Searched online and found this: “the term, she says, is used as it is ‘in the mining industry, where a substance is disassembled and analysed to determine the strengths and quality of its various parts; only in this case the examination is done with the imaginative mind rather than the chemical one.’
Ah, such lovely weather this morning! Ran north on the river road, through the tunnel of trees, under the lake street bridge, above the rowing club and the white sands beach, under the trestle, down the franklin hill, then everything again, in reverse. A nice run. I sped up too much in the second mile, and paid for it at the bottom of the hill. Decided to walk a bit of it. Then put in a playlist and ran back.
10 Things I Noticed
cigarette smoke from somewhere — a car driving by? a person below, in the gorge?
a screeching blue jay (or is it bluejay?)
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder
rowers on the river! I didn’t see them, but heard the coxswain calling out instructions through her bullhorn
a roller skier slowly approaching from behind, not moving much faster than me. At first, the striking of the their poles was a loud sharp “clack!” in a steady rhythm. Clack! Clack! Clack! Clack! Then, heading up a hill, it shortend and softened: “clack clack clack” It took them almost half a mile to pass me
saw at least 3 people with fishing poles — 2 walking on the trail, one by the edge of the river, ready to cast their line — what fish can you get in the river near franklin avenue?
wind and a few creaks from the trees
a large group of bikers spread out on the franklin hill, traveling up it at various speeds. Some were charging up it, others steadily plodding, one biker was weaving back and forth, another barely crawling. The bikers at the very back were walking their bikes
all the benches were empty — were they lonely or relieved to have some solitude?
ended in the tunnel of trees and marveled at the dappled/dappling light
Standing in the tunnel of trees was wonderful. Quiet, sheltered, calm. And, no bugs! Pretty soon that won’t be possible. I did a recording of the wind in the trees but listening back to it, I mostly hear static and car wheels whooshing from up above. I have decided that I’d like to give some more attention to the creaking trees and the sound of the wind moving through the branches. I have such happy memories of listening to the wind in the aspens up at my grandparent’s farm. It used to be my favorite sound.
I wonder about the trees. Why do we wish to bear Forever the noise of these More than another noise So close to our dwelling place? We suffer them by the day Till we lose all measure of pace, And fixity in our joys, And acquire a listening air. They are that that talks of going But never gets away; And that talks no less for knowing, As it grows wiser and older, That now it means to stay. My feet tug at the floor And my head sways to my shoulder Sometimes when I watch trees sway, From the window or the door. I shall set forth for somewhere, I shall make the reckless choice Some day when they are in voice And tossing so as to scare The white clouds over them on. I shall have less to say, But I shall be gone.
Wow! A beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool, not too crowded. Called out a “Hi!” to Dave the Daily walker, waved at Daddy Long Legs. Smelled some lilac, heard a distant weed whacker or leaf blower, felt my running belt flapping on my back. Saw some roller skiers, bikers, walkers, runners, and someone on an eliptigo (which, until I looked it up just now, I thought was called an “elitigogo”). Felt my left toe — the one that keeps getting pinched by the new design for Saucony grid cohesions. Wondered if a squirrel was going to dart out in front of me (it didn’t), or if the port-a-potty door would fly open in my face as I ran by it (nope). Overheard a conversation that I wanted to remember, but can’t now that the run is over and I’m home. Sprinted up part of the final hill that ends by the sprawling oak and the ancient boulder (that didn’t have any stones stacked on top of it today). No woodpeckers or crows or eagles or turkeys. I might have heard some music from a car or a bike somewhere, but I might be thinking of another day. No rowers or a school group of kids biking in bright yellow vests. Oh—almost forgot: the cottonwood is flying. A few wisps almost flew in my mouth.
Remembered posting a poem about Cottonwood a few years ago in this log. Found it, with a few sentences I wrote (from may 17, 2018):
Early on in the run, I remembered a poem I read this morning. It was about cottonwood trees. I wondered, when will the cottonwood trees start snowing cotton? Probably in June.
The cottonwood pollen is flying again, Adrift like snow or ash. It lines The curbs, it sticks to my lips Like down to a fox’s muzzle. I made a poem about it years ago. We were new then. We’d set fire To our old lives and made love day And night, mouths full of each other. Back then, we were a match For June: arrogant, promising, feverish. For as long as we live, summer returns To us. And snow, ash, they, too, return.
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 68 degrees wind: 16 mph / gusts: 25 mph
Windy today. Ran south to the falls without headphones, stopped in the park and put in headphones, then took them back out when I reached the Winchell Trail.
10 Things I Noticed: Sounds
my breathing — often jagged
the wind howling past my ears
a few kids at the playground — not too loud or too exuberant. Were they subdued by the wind? — either their spirits or voices?
a faint bagpipe from somewhere over on the other side, in St. Paul — a Monday after Memorial Day ceremony?
the falls rushing and gushing
the sewer pipe trickling
my left foot striking the ground a littler harder than my right
“Eye of the Tiger” (when I briefly put my headphones in)
“I Knew You Were Trouble”
cars whizzing by
I thought it would, but the wind didn’t bother me that much. Everything was green and fuzzy in the grayish light. Lots of squishy mud on the Winchell Trail and leaning trees. Evidence from last night’s thunderstorm. The river was such a pale blue that it almost looked white. No rowers. No roller skiers. No groups of runners. Lots of people at the falls. As I passed by a woman with a young kid, I wondered how they were enjoying the falls, with all of the big wind gusts. No turkeys or black-capped chickadees. I do remember (now that I wrote that last sentence about birds) encountering a bird on the Winchell Trail. They were on the path just in front of me, not wanting to have to move. Half-heartedly they hopped from the sidewalk to the fence and back. Finally, they decided I was too close and flew on the other side of the fence and down the bluff a bit. I remember seeing the blur of their body as it flashed across my peripheral. I’m not sure what kind of bird it was, but I think it was a robin. I always think it’s a robin or a cardinal.
The other day, I discovered that Harryette Mullen wrote a collection of tanka poems as part of her daily practice of walking and writing poetry. Very cool! It’s called Urban Tumbleweed, and I’m planning to use it in the class I’m teaching at the end of this month.
Here’s some of her introduction:
Merging my wish to write poetry every day with a willingess to step outdoors, my hope was that each exercise would support the other.
She wrote a tanka a day, inspired by a walk, for roughly a year.
This is a record of meditatios and migrations across the diverse terrain of southern California’s urban, suburban, and rural communities, its mountains, deserts, ocean, and beaches.
I just began reading through them. So wonderful!
The morning news landed in the driveway, folded, rolled, and rubber-banded, wrapped in plastic for protection from the morning dews.
When I first read this tanka, I thought the last bit was “for protection from the morning news” — meaning the walker was protected from the harm of the morning news. This misreading seems to fit with another of her tankas:
Instead of scanning newspaper headlines, I spend the morning reading names offlowers and trees in the botanical garden.
Here are 2 others that struck me:
Chain-link fence, locked gate protect this urban garden. Fugitive fragrance of honeysuckle escapes to tempt the passing stranger.
Why should I care about my neighbor’s riotous dandelions? Does he concern himself with my slovenly jacaranda?
2.5 miles river road trail, south/north 68 degrees drizzle
Got up at 6 am again. Why won’t my body ever let me sleep in? Did my morning ritual of coffee, poems-of-the-day, and slowly waking up. Decided to head out for a run before the thunderstorms arrived at 7:30. It was dark-ish — dark enough for the street lamps to be on — and thick and heavy with humidity, green, and birdsong. I liked it. I encountered a few people on the trail, including a runner who “mornied” me. Heard some trickling from the sewer pipe, wind moving through the trees. It wasn’t drizzling all the time, although it was difficult to tell what was rain and what was sweat.
Running back north on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road I heard some more screeching blue jays. I thought about how I’ve been identifying them as crows for years. Why? I guess when I hear an annoying bird cry I think, crow. Sorry crows. The cry of a blue jay is way more annoying.
No river, but I managed to look down at the oak savanna: dark and mysterious. No roller skiers, a few bikers, no laughing kids or chattering walkers. Not too many cars this early on a Sunday morning. No rowers on the river.
as i’m always telling my students—why start from scratch? look at some paintings. look at photography. take a long walk. smell some basil. flip through an old notebook. tweak a favorite song lyric. follow what you already love into its forest. deepen that love. step into it more
and @hechizante777’s reply:
I worry that so many of my students (potentially pressured into nursing or other healthcare majors) simply haven’t had opportunities to figure out what they love… how to make space for that in an era of violence and scarcity?
Making space for figuring out what we love and then loving it in an era of violence and scarcity. So difficult. This discussion reminds me of Teju Cole and his interview with David Naimon for Between the Covers, especially this part:
This frenzied capitalism that we live in—what I’ve been calling market totalitarianism—produces loneliness, existential isolation that deprives people of the tools with which to navigate their place in the universe. This might be genuinely new in the history of the world, cultures have always provided people with those tools, and now we’re all just screaming into the void. Because we’ve been robbed of many, many of the tools that help anchor human experience in the world. I remember what Sun Ra said, he said “Everything comes from outer space.” Everything, it’s all meteors, it’s all from the sun. “The only thing Earth produces is the dead bodies of humans,” he said. I feel in a very vital way that the only thing market totalitarianism really produces is human alienation, depriving us of the tools with which enfold ourselves in the fabric of time. So when I encounter a quintet by Brahms, or traditional Papuan flute music, these are things that give me a chance to re-enfold myself in those sustaining human networks; to the mystery of being alive.
I don’t know what to do with all of the world’s burning anymore. Sometimes we start the fire directly, other times we’re unwitting accomplices to it, and then there are times when the smoke rises and dances above our own doorsteps, and we’re just too tired to keep the flames under control. I turn on the TV and people of color are still dying. I read the news and people in Trans communities remain dismissed, remain punchlines until they are dead, and people are still laughing at the bad joke. I talk to the women in my life and hear how they’re treated as a different class of person entirely. I don’t have the luxury to not dismantle the systems that allow for those things, and more. I am impacted by it, in some ways, I’m complicit in it, and it’s hard to sit idle while knowing those things. While being afforded a platform, artistic and otherwise.
When we talk about “the work”, as writers, so many of us mean the actual work of writing. The work on the page, of course. After a year of wrestling with the fragility of my own life, and the life of my closest human love, I realized that “the work” is also the work of living. It is the work of loving others when we can, taking care of ourselves when we can, and knowing not to let the former overwhelm us into forgetting the latter. Those two different types of work are two rivers flowing into the same body of water, for me. I don’t know how to write healthy and productive poems if I’m only doing one side of the work.
The only promise here is that I will wake up tomorrow and be as exhausted by the world as I was today. Sure, I may find a brief reprieve in a panda video (or, in the case of the particular tomorrow at the time of this writing, the new Terrance Hayes book!), but I will still find myself going outside to throw water on whatever flames I can, my arms weakening. I know that they will be there, every day. But even through all of it, something happened at around the end of last year. I started writing poems about being married. About my father, still healthy and living. About the friends I love and miss dearly. About my dog. I realized this urgency to archive the things that are not promised. I need the joy in my life to live outside of my body. I need to see it, to touch it. I need that outside of my body even more than I need the rage, confusion, and sadness on the outside. I know the sadness will always replenish itself. There is no certainty in almost anything else. I don’t know how long I’ll get to hear my wife sing along to pop songs in the car during road trips. I don’t know how much longer I’ll get to talk to my father with him remembering who I am. I don’t know when my dog will be too old to rush towards me with a wagging tail whenever I come back from an especially long trip. I need those things to live in other places. I need to have them outside of me so that I can run into them on the days where I will need to. Surely, each small joy has an expiration date. I have touched the edges of them. I don’t know how to fight against this reality except for to write into these moments with urgency. With fearlessness and hunger.
A later start on a Saturday. Decided to avoid the crowds by running on edmund to turkey hollow instead. Everything is drying out from the morning rain. Nothing is that wet, but there’s mud and moisture. The run felt hard when I started — hot — but it got easier the longer I went. It felt good to push through when I wanted to stop and walk about 20 minutes in.
10 Things I Noticed
a turkey! — not in turkey hollow, but near beckettwood, not too far from the spot where Scott and I saw the eagle a few weeks ago
running parallel to another runner — I was on the dirt trail in the grassy boulevard, they were across the river road on the trail. Not totally consciously, I sped up to distance myself from the distraction of their constant presence in my peripheral vision
wore my older running shoes because of the mud. When I started, it felt like my feel were striking the pavement directly: no cushion
screeching blue jays, whirring (?) cardinals
rushing wind through the trees
my jagged breathing and flushed face
squishy mud near minnehaha academy
some kids playing in a front yard, screaming (in delight?) as I ran by
a motorized scooter passing me, then turning around in the Dowling Elementary parking lot — did they go the wrong way? were they confused by the construction on 38th?
almost forgot the honking geese, but remembered when I added “Above, the Geese” to this entry. Not sure how many there were or how high in the sky, but their honking made me curious: are they heading north now?
I never got close enough to see the river or hear if there were any rowers. No bikes or roller skiers or overheard conversations. I prefer to run earlier, when it’s cooler and less crowded, but it was okay today.
The heat is on in the house again this morning. Tomorrow it warms up, then next Monday, 90. I wonder how cold the lake water is right now? I might try to swim in it next week. Today’s run was good. With yesterday’s rain and today’s gloom everything was a rich, dark green. Very cool.
10 Things I Noticed
the stones stacked on the ancient boulder were small and leaning
workers #1: the walking part of the double bridge near 33rd seemed clearer today — did they come through and trim some bushes and trees?
the steady click click click clack of ski poles hitting the ground as a roller skier powered up the small hill just south of lake street
workers #2: the dirt trails leading down into the gorge between 33rd and lake street were a dark, deep brown. I wondered if workers had brought in some mulch, but then decided the trails were just wet
the dirt trail right next to the paved one near a park sign, was mushy and soft and difficult to run over
heading east on the lake street bridge, the water was blue and empty — no logs or rowers
peering through the windows at Black coffee at the top of the Marshall hill, I noticed several tables were empty (also: no smells of delicious waffles today)
workers #3: the distinctive smell of fresh tar, then bright orange cones, a few trucks, and some workers filling in potholes and cracks in the road
the water from shadow falls, which only comes after it rains, sounded like it was spraying out of a shower on a soft setting
nearing the lake street bridge, I thought I heard leaves rustling in the wind, but I think it was another hidden waterfall — is it possible to hike hear this one, or see it from the other side?
I had never listened to Japanese Breakfast until Scott and I heard them?her? perform on SNL this past Saturday. I wasn’t sure if I liked it or not, but since then I’ve listened to the album Jubilee a few times and earlier today I looked up the lyrics to the first song — and the one I saw them perform on SNL: Paprika. Wow, some deep, interesting lyrics!
Paprika/ Michelle Zauner
Lucidity came slowly I awoke from dreams of untying a great knot It unraveled like a braid Into what seemed were Thousands of separate strands of fishing line Attached to coarse behavior it flowed A calm it urged, what else is here?
How’s it feel to be at the center of magic To linger in tones and words? I opened the floodgates And found no water, no current, no river, no rush How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers To captivate every heart? Projecting your visions to strangers who feel it Who listen, who linger on every word Oh, it’s a rush Oh, it’s a rush
But alone it feels like dying All alone I feel so much
I want my offering to woo, to calm, to clear, to solve But the only offering that comes It calls, it screams, there’s nothing here
How’s it feel to be at the center of magic To linger in tones and words? I opened the floodgates And found no water, no current, no river, no rush How’s it feel to stand at the height of your powers To captivate every heart? Projecting your visions to strangers who feel it Who listen, who linger on every word Oh, it’s a rush Oh, it’s a rush
Another beautiful morning by the gorge! Sunny, calm, not too warm, clear, low humidity. I felt mostly good, although my IT band — the left one — was sore off and on.
10 Things I Noticed
a cardinal on the path, near the edge. The light and my bad color vision made the red glow in strange ways. It almost looked purple. I wondered if it might be a scarlet tanager, which is found in the gorge, but they have deep black wings, and the one I saw did not
an off, so sweet it was sour smell near the ravine — the sewer
a blue river with some white foam
black capped chickadees singing their fee bee song
no tarp under the lake street bridge on the minneapolis side, but some sort of tarp hanging off a piling on the st. paul side
a empty bench on the east side, its back to the river, facing the road
another empty bench on the east side facing the river with a clear view to the other side
shshshshsh of my feet stepping down on the winter grit that’s settled at the edges of the path on the franklin bridge
closed: Meeker Island Dam dog park (flooding); the road down to the east river flats (flooding); the walking path under the lake street bridge on the east side (erosion — the asphalt has caved in or fallen off into the river)
a runner in shorts and a tank top who I first noticed as walker, walking up the lake street hill. She was talking with someone on the phone — speaker phone? or bluetooth headset? — and running slowly on the dirt trail next to the paved path
more fun with the IT band
Every so often, when my IT band starts to hurt, I like to play with the acronym IT, which stands for Iliotibial, by re-imagining what it/IT stands for. In November of 2018, I re-imagined IT Band, as a rock band, then composed a list of free band names. I’m pretty sure I played with IT again in this log, but I can’t seem to find it. Found it! In addition to re-imagining illiotibial, I also have turned it, as it is used in the common= phrase, “Let it Be,” into an acronym. I made a list of things IT stands for, then turned that into a poem.
Today, I’d like to play with another “it” that I’m encountering a lot as I think about my fall course proposal. It’s from Mary Oliver’s poem, “Invitation”:
It could mean something. It would mean everything. It could be what Rilke mean, when he wrote: You must change your life.
In a poem I wrote in 2018, I speculated on what Mary Oliver might be referring to with her use of it. Today I’d like to expand that speculation beyond her poem.
I.T. could mean something.
iced trees
important turns
invisible tethers
irksome temptations
indigo territory
invalid treaties
inevitable treachery
imploding tasks
injured teeth
italic tymphanies
iridescent trestles
impending trash
invalid tramping
ignorant tests
immediately trampled
itchy traps
Not sure if anything will come out of that, but I love playing with words, and it made me forget about my IT band. I do think there’s something interesting about the invalid treaties.
Here’s a poem that I discovered today via twitter. Paul Tran’s poems are wonderful, especially when they read them (click on the poem link to check out their recording of it)!
Sunny and calm. A beautiful spring day that feels like early April not late May. Tried to look at the river, but had trouble through so much green. Heard some cardinals the call of the pileated woodpecker, a crow. I think I looked at my shadow off the side at least once. Did I? Noticed the bench next to the big boulder: empty. Lots of people visiting the falls. Lots of “right behind yous” followed by “that’s okays.” I wasn’t bothered by the crowds. Ran up the short set of steps right before and after the falls.
The run felt good, but I was ready to be done. The last mile was difficult.
Someone posted an excerpt from Adrienne Rich’s essay Someone is Writing a Poem. Wow! Here are a few bits I’d like to remember:
The reading of a poem, a poetry reading, is not a spectacle, nor can it be passively received. It’s an exchange of electrical currents through language—that daily, mundane, abused, and ill-prized medium, that instrument of deception and revelation, that material thing, that knife, rag, boat, spoon/reed become pipe/tree trunk become drum/mud become clay flute/conch shell become summons to freedom/old trousers and petticoats become iconography in appliqué/rubber bands stretched around a box become lyre.
Take that old, material utensil, language, found all about you, blank with familiarity, smeared with daily use, and make it into something that means more than it says. What poetry is made of is so old, so familiar, that it’s easy to forget that it’s not just the words, but polyrhythmic sounds, speech in its first endeavors (every poem breaks a silence that had to be overcome), prismatic meanings lit by each others’ light, stained by each others’ shadows. In the wash of poetry the old, beaten, worn stones of language take on colors that disappear when you sieve them up out of the streambed and try to sort them out.
And all this has to travel from the nervous system of the poet, preverbal, to the nervous system of the one who listens, who reads, the active participant without whom the poem is never finished.
We go to poetry because we believe it has something to do with us. We also go to poetry to receive the experience of the not me, enter a field of vision we could not otherwise apprehend.
But most often someone writing a poem believes in, depends on, a delicate, vibrating range of difference, that an “I” can become a “we” without extinguishing others, that a partly common language exists to which strangers can bring their own heartbeat, memories, images. A language that itself has learned from the heartbeat, memories, images of strangers.
Someone is writing a poem. Words are being set down in a force field. It’s as if the words themselves have magnetic charges; they veer together or in polarity, they swerve against each other. Part of the force field, the charge, is the working history of the words themselves, how someone has known them, used them, doubted and relied on them in a life. Part of the movement among the words belongs to sound—the guttural, the liquid, the choppy, the drawn-out, the breathy, the visceral, the downlight. The theater of any poem is a collection of decisions about space and time—how are these words to lie on the page, with what pauses, what headlong motion, what phrasing, how can they meet the breath of the someone who comes along to read them? And in part the field is charged by the way images swim into the brain through written language: swan, kettle, icicle, ashes, scab, tamarack, tractor, veil, slime, teeth, freckle.
4.25 miles river road trail, north/south 50 degrees
In the 40s this morning. I had to turn the heat on. Boo. Still, it was nice weather for a run. Not too much wind, not too warm, sunny. I tried to remember to look at the river, and did at least once. I could barely see it through all of the green. Saw Mr. Morning! Today he waved at me. I think he could tell I was too busy navigating through all of the people to speak. Listend to the world running north, a playlist running south.
10 Things I Noticed
No rowers
a big group (10+) of roller skiers, with a coach on a bike in the back
a biker calling out to his friend: “I love that show!” what show?
a sliver of blue river through the leaves
no stacked stones on the ancient rock
the path felt like it was floating in the trees at the spot where it’s so thick with green above and below that you can tell where the ground or sky are
passed Mr. Holiday and he said, “well, at least there’s sun”
clouds in the sky, sometimes covering the sun
a blue plastic tarp folded up on the ground under the lake street bridge, near the porta potty
no squirrels or chipmunks or black-capped chickadees or woodpeckers or sewer smells or burnt toast smells or purple flowers but one irritating mosquito bite on the back of my leg
I’ve become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie, Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children. What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras, a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams.
Hailed this morning for a few minutes. Small pellets today. Yesterday afternoon, golf ball sized ones flinging themselves against the windows. A thunderous noise. Strange weather.
Ran to the falls. Didn’t realize it until much later, but my watch died 30 seconds in. I need to get a new watch, or stop wearing a watch. I’m thinking about the latter. Earlier on, wearing a watch and tracking my miles, pace, minutes exercised, calories burned seemed important as motivation. Now I don’t really need it…or want it. Maybe I’ll try not having it this summer and see how that works (or doesn’t work).
Ran to the falls without headphones, listening to the kids playing at the Dowling Elementary School playground. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the kids at the Minnehaha Academy playground and how their yells seemed menancing and mean. Today’s kids were not mean but out of control with exuberance. Not completely joyful, but not unjoyful either. As I listened to the “woo woo woos” and the “aaaaaaaahhhhhhs” I thought about being unhinged or out of control and how it can be connected to a sense of freedom or letting go.
I also thought about soft attention and noticing through the peripheral, not focusing on the edges, but making note of what’s happening there — what’s off to the side or below you. Looking ahead at the trail, I noticed a walker across the road and off to the side of me. I think they were waving their arms. Was it at me as a greeting. Not sure.
There was lots of debris on the sidewalks and the trail from the violent rain/hail last night. Not any big branches, just lots of leaves and twigs and muck. Yuck! Did I see any worms? I don’t think so. Did I look at the river? I think so, but I can’t remember what color it was or if it had any foam on it.
I ran by Minnehaha Creek right before it spilled over the falls. It was high and rushing. I didn’t look at the falls, but I could hear them gushing — or, I felt they were gushing? A school group was there somewhere, but I didn’t run into any of the kids. 2 long rows of porta potties lined the path, ready for the “Women Run the Cities” race tomorrow. I ran it a few pre-pandemic years ago.
When I entered Minnehaha Regional Park, I looped around the falls, then stopped to take off my sweatshirt and put in my headphones. The first song I listened to was Paramore’s “Misery Business.” It’s 173 bpm and helps me lock into a quick, steady rhythm. After that, Foo Fighter’s “The Pretender” helped me keep that rhythm. No more thinking about anything, just steadily moving.
10 Things I Noticed
a frantic squirrel almost jumped out in front of me, but quickly turned and ran up the tree next to me
I just remembered that the school group I mentioned above was below me, at the spot where the creek collects and kids wade in the summer
a few big puddles on the path — I avoided all of them
the sewer pipes were all dripping or gushing
I waved to at least 2 other runners
a biker whizzed by me from behind — it felt close!
I encountered a tall runner in shorts and a t-shirt — I think they were both gray — twice, once heading south and once heading north
no kids at the Minnehaha Falls playground
someone was stopped at the water fountain in the 36th street parking lot, filling up a water bottle
At the start and end of my run, as I neared the river, a street crew was blowing smoke through the manhole, checking for sewer cracks and leaks. Smoke billowed up and spreading out across the street
That list of 10 things was hard to create, probably because I had already described so many things I noticed. I can’t believe I almost forgot about the sewer smoke. It was a very memorable sight.
After last night’s rain the woods smell sensual—a mixture of leaves and musk. The morels have disappeared, and soon I’ll come across those yellow chanterelles, the kind they sell in town at the farmers’ market. Once I saw the Swedish woman who raises her own food foraging for them, two blond boys quarreling near the pickup, and the next morning they were selling them from their stand beside the road.
Out here, among last year’s dead leaves with the new shoots of spruces poking through them, I’ve come to the place where light brightens a glade of ferns and the log someone else placed here—carved “B.W.”—where I sometimes sit to listen to the birds. Today the sun is breaking through the wet branches, revealing a clean sky, brilliant, cerulean. Then, suddenly, a raft of scudding clouds
promising more rain. If it comes, I’ll read all afternoon— Henry James, or maybe Eudora Welty’s Delta Wedding, where so many characters vie for attention I can never keep them straight. Here, there’s no one else, no one to worry over or argue with or love. Maybe the earth was meant only for this: small comings and goings on the forest floor, the understory astir with its own secret life. If I sit still enough among the damp trees, sometimes I see the world without myself in it, and—it always surprises me— nothing at all is lost.
I love how this poem describes the clearing so clearly, and the last few lines about seeing the world without myself in it.
*slight variation: began by running north through the neighborhood instead of on the river road trail
Sun! Low humidity! Birds! Clear paths! What a wonderful morning for a run! Even the struggle of getting a girl to go to school (which I’ve been steadily doing for 6 years now…almost every weekday morning) couldn’t dull the shine of this day.
10 Things I Noticed
someone revving up an old lawnmower — a rattle then roar, a hot, smoky smell
voices on the other side of lake street, sitting outside at Dunn Bros or Longfellow Grill
looking downstream at the river, the water was almost foamy in spots and looked cold — an ice cold blue
a biker biking up the hill alongside me — me on the trail, them in the bike lane — wearing a bright yellow shirt and moving so slowly that I almost caught up to them
Shadow Falls sputtering, the creek feeding it flowing fast
the dirt trail next to the paved on the east river trail was sometimes packed and hard, sometimes sandy and soft
a plaque on a random rock I didn’t stop to read — what does it say? who is it honoring?
a lone goose flying very low, just above my head, as I ran over the ford bridge, uttering random low, slow honks
looking upstream at the river, it was a deeper shade of blue and was clear and calm and foamless
the 44th street sewer pipe on the Winchell Trail had water that gurgled, the 42nd street, water that gushed
where I ran, what I ran on: gritty, graveling dirt; soft sand; packed dirt; asphalt; tree roots; concrete; a paved trail; a dirt trail next to the paved one; a dirt trail that used to be paved; the street; a big bridge; a bigger bridge; the ruts in the road; between orange cones and the curb at a spot where they were working on the road or the sewer or something that rerouted the trail; 2 sets of steps going down; a shaded trail; a sunny trail; grass; mud; flower petals
I’m working on a proposal for a fall class at the Loft Literary Center. The process of writing a syllabus is time-consuming and very inefficient. I spend a lot of time circling around ideas until I find just the right way into them. As I continue to struggle, I was hoping Mary Oliver and her poem, “Invitation,” could help. So I recited it in my head as I ran — I memorized it a few years ago. Did it? I think so, but I can’t really remember the thoughts it prompted. I recall thinking about the goldfinches and wondering about how much work they were doing in this poem. The focus of the poem is the musical battle that the goldfinches are engaged in. This battle is “not for your sake/and not for mine/and not for the sake of winning/but for sheer delight and gratitude.” Yet, with it, the birds say “believe us/it is a serious thing/just to be alive/on this fresh morning/in this broken world.” And their “rather ridiculous performance,” if we pause to attend to it, could change our life. This makes me want to return to Ada Limón’s VS. podcast episode (vs. Epiphany). Would the birds really want to talk to me/you/us when they’re having so much in their battle?
This poem is aptly titled; it was one of my early invitations into poetry. Those birds and their ridiculous performance and the call to change my life got me thinking and imagining. It also made me frustrated. What does it mean to change your life? How do we do it? For my class, I’m thinking about an introduction to poetry as a way in, a door, an invitation, the gesture of a stranger saying, “Look!” to you as they point out an eagle in a tree. Mary Oliver’s invitation is one way this could work — maybe we could look at different versions of the invitation, from other writers?
An invitation to what? — here’s another way that Mary Oliver fits in. I’m thinking of the invitation in terms of her instructions for living a life: 1. Pay Attention, 2. Be Astonished, 3. Tell About It. The invitation is to notice, to be in wonderment, to share it with others. I want to tie this together with the idea of giving attention as more than an individual act, but a collective shared one that can lead to caring for and about, to empathy, to repair, and to social transformation. Now I just need to express that in 200 words!
Here is a definition of poetry from Ilya Kaminsky that I discovered this morning that might help:
For me poetry is a moment of awe — that silence that travels from one human body to another by means of words. Gilgamesh was written 4,000 ago and it transforms us still. This is what poetry is: not a kind of public posturing but a private language of music and imagery that is strange and compelling enough that it can speak privately to thousands of people at the same time.
Oh, I almost forgot that at the end of my run I stopped and recorded some thoughts into my phone. Here is some of what I said:
As part of my course proposal, I need to offer a sample activity. I think I’ll do a variation on my “The Is, the Ought, the Why and Why Not” exercise. In this exercise, students choose a handful of poems (5-10? — more? less?) and read them several times. Then they’ll pick out some of their favorite lines and classify them according to whether the lines are describing the world (the Is), offering advice on how to be in the world or how the world should be (the Ought), being curious/asking questions about the world (the Why), or imagining new ways to be (the Why Not?). As I write this description, I’m realizing I need to fine-tune my distinctions between the categories here.
This class is an introduction to poetry from the perspective of the poem as a door, an invitation, with a specific focus on how that invitation leads to attention and care and repair and connection and transformation. We will look at what attention is; what care is, focusing a lot on how poets write and learning from their words. There will be opportunities to practice with your own poems, but much of it will be about learning about the invitation and how to take it up, as a reader and writer. I want to bring in Alice Oswald’s thoughts from an essay for The Guardian:
Go and leaf through the poetry section of your local library. Take out a book of Border Ballads, look at John Clare’s sonnets, soak yourself in Gerard Manley Hopkins. If you like the ballads, go on reading them until everything you think comes out in four lines with the second and fourth rhyming (but be careful in public places). If you like the sonnets, read them until you start to speak in five-beat lines with alternating soft and loud syllables; and then write a series of poems that all last fourteen lines.
Although it’s fine to imitate a poem, I want to leave you with this one strong claim: that you should never learn to write one, you should never write a poem till you can feel it in your bones. Because poetry is your whole body’s response to the whole world, not just your head’s response to a thought or a glimpse.
Reading through this last bit again, I wonder if I agree. Should you never try to write a poem unless your whole body is in it? Maybe having it be a whole body experience is the goal, the aim, and maybe you can strive for it as you’re attempting to write poems?
*the longer version = south on the river road/enter Winchell Trail at southern start/north on Winchell, past 38th street steps, through oak savanna, up the gravel by the ravine to rejoin the paved path/tunnel of trees/over to edmund at 33rd/west on 32nd/south on 43rd. Eventually I might try the longest trail, which would involve returning to the Winchell Trail past the lake street bridge and taking it until it ends near Franklin.
Decided to listen to music for most of my run this morning. Before I headed out, I thought about how I’d miss hearing the birds, but then I thought about how I’ve been struggling on my runs lately. Time for distraction, I think. I put Taylor Swift’s Lover on shuffle. Years ago I was critical of her but I’ve come to enjoy her lyrics, especially her ability to tell a story. I think it was Evermore that did it for me.
Initially I was planning to write more about the songs I listened to by Swift, starting with “ME!,” and how my perspective on her has changed, but I think that would take up too much time right now, and I’d rather use her music as a needed distraction instead of an opportunity for critically reflecting on excess, parody, and what it means for a privileged white girl to (ironically or not) claim so much space. (psst: after writing this aside, and then working on the entry, it turns out that a critique of Taylor Swift’s ME! haunts this entry. Funny how that happens.
So, back to the run. I made sure to look at the river, which was difficult. Even lower down on the Winchell Trail the green is taking over. It was mostly sunny with a breeze, but I couldn’t see any sparkle on the water. Was it because of the trees? No rowers either.
Can I think of 10 things I noticed? It might be difficult, but I’ll try.
10 Things I Noticed
at the start of my run, passed under the thick, horizontal branch of a sprawling oak tree and imagined it falling on my head…crack!
a blue river
many of the benches were filled, one person per bench, not sure if I saw any with two or more people
running down to the start of the Winchell Trail, I passed somone sitting in the grass, facing the river, right next to the paved trail
took my headphones out as I entered the lower trail and heard the kids on the playground above me and on the other side of the river road
heard some bikers above me as I crested the hill after the ravine with the sewer pipe that gushes (as opposed to the one that drips) — I tried to make out their words, but couldn’t
a mix of sounds near folwell: a leaf blower, the rushing wind, a bird*, cars
parts of the winchell trail were muddy, but the part that is usually the worst — the stretch between 38th and the savanna — was mostly fine
the dirt trail below the mesa, in the oak savanna, was mostly soft sand (limestone?) instead of packed dirt. Is that the consistency of this soil, or did they bring in more soil here to create this trail?
at least 4 (was it more? I couldn’t tell) stones stacked on the ancient boulder
*hearing all these sounds together, I suddenly had a question which led to a wonder (or wander): when a bird hears a leaf blower, what are they hearing? That is, how do they process that sound? Do they connect it with humans? Is it a threat? A singing partner? Do they ignore it? I’m sure the answers to these questions are different depending on how close the leaf blower is, this one was far away. As I posed these questions in my head I started thinking outside, or beside, myself about how others hear and listen to sounds and what it might mean to listen without immediately making it all about me and how the sound affects me or, as Taylor Swift sung to me this morning, “ME!”
After climbing the short, steep hill, near folwell avenue, this thinking about ME! turned to Alice Oswald and how she works hard to try to look beyond the beauty and herself to see the world from the perspective of a weed or, in this case, a bird:
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.
At some point after folwell and before the steps up to 38th street, I thought about care and a class proposal I’m trying to put together for the fall about poetry and social transformation. Audre Lorde’s suggestion of “selfcare as warfare” and Sara Ahmed’s 2014 blog essay about it popped into my head. It would be interesting to put this into conversation with Taylor Swift’s ME! claim.
Post-run, I’m thinking about nature poetry and birds. I randomly came across this amazing poem on Ours Poetica. Wow!
Where Every Bird is a Drone/ Tarik DobbsWhere Every Bird is a Drone/ Tarik Dobbs
I also just started reading Tommy Pico’s Nature Poem. He writes:
I can’t write a nature poem bc it’s fodder for the noble savage narrative. I wd slap a tree across the face, I say to my audience.
—
Let’s say I literally hate all men bc literally men are animals— This is a kind of nature I would write a poem about.
4.1 miles top of franklin hill turn around 65 degrees
Wow! What a morning! In less than a week everything has turned green and fragrant and summery — not spring because spring in Minnesota is cold and snowy/rainy/muddy. This run felt much better than yesterday’s. Was it the oatmeal I ate today but didn’t yesterday? Before runs, I used to eat cheerios with a banana and walnuts. I even wrote about it on here. But now I eat oatmeal with walnuts, 1 cup of wild blueberries, raisins, and vanilla yogurt. I eat it partly because it tastes good to me, but I also because my almost 48 year old body needs it. It’s so fiddly getting old. Such a need for deliberate, careful attention to the body so it continues to work.
Right after returning home I remembered: I forgot to look at the river. Or, I forgot to remember what the river looked like when I looked at it. This distinction between not looking versus looking but not remembering or putting into words (or images or feelings) what I looked at is something I’ve been thinking about this morning. These two things, 1. looking and 2. remembering/taking note of the looking are things we (can) consciously do. Add to that, something we aren’t aware of: the way the brain filters out visual data and decides what we register as seeing. I’ll stop there, but I have more to write about the brain and vision and attention. Of course, it is also possible that I didn’t even see the river because it was blocked by all of the green!
Speaking of green, I recited Philip Larkin’s wonderful poem The Trees. A great poem to recite while running. I thought briefly about green as grief. For some reason, I struggled to remember the first line for a few minute — “The trees are coming into leaf” — and when I did remember it, I remembered it wrong — “The trees are turning into leaf”. I thought about this transformation in spring, from a rough, gnarled, bare Tree to a soft, filled out, collection of leaves.
Before my run, Scott and I were talking about how some new cars seem to shut off when they’re stopped, and then start up when they begin moving again. I’ve been telling Scott about this phenomenon for at least a year now. I always hear it when I am approaching a stop sign at the beginning of my runs. He would never hear it. We joked that I was doing something to cars that made them stall. I have a reputation for making some things not work — like watches or phones. This morning, while driving RJP to school, they both heard it happen several times. He looked it up and discovered that some new cars are designed to do this now. It saves gas, I guess. I said to him that I heard it because I notice things; I’ve been training for years to give attention to the world, and to notice (and register and wonder about) the things I notice. During my run, I thought about our conversation, and a thought occurred to me: attention is magic. It enables us to witness impossible things — or things that seem impossible to us. I feel like I might be forgetting part of this thought; there was more to this idea of attention and magic that I’m forgetting right now.
10 Things I Noticed (and remembered I noticed)
Mr. Morning! mornied me
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder
some green on the welcoming oaks
an empty over-turned clear plastic cup in front of the porta-potty under the lake street bridge
a strong floral scent
received at least 2 or 3 waves from other runners
several walkers with dogs
at least 2 strollers
the tunnel of trees is completely filled in with green leaves
running straight into the wind, up a hill, 2 bikers were biking so slow behind me that it took forever for them to pass
During the run, I was thinking about spring and winter and stories we tell about how the seasons came to be. I thought about greek myths and Persephone and how many of these explanations involve violence towards women and I wondered about myths from other traditions, like Skywoman as told by Robin Wall Kimmerer in Braiding Sweetgrass.
The other day, I discovered Louise Glück’s Averno and this poem about Persephone:
In the first version, Persephone is taken from her mother and the goddess of the earth punishes the earth—this is consistent with what we know of human behavior,
that human beings take profound satisfaction in doing harm, particularly unconscious harm:
we may call this negative creation.
Persephone’s initial sojourn in hell continues to be pawed over by scholars who dispute the sensations of the virgin:
did she cooperate in her rape, or was she drugged, violated against her will, as happens so often now to modern girls.
As is well known, the return of the beloved does not correct the loss of the beloved: Persephone
returns home stained with red juice like a character in Hawthorne—
I am not certain I will keep this word: is earth “home” to Persephone? Is she at home, conceivably, in the bed of the god? Is she at home nowhere? Is she a born wanderer, in other words an existential replica of her own mother, less hamstrung by ideas of causality?
You are allowed to like no one, you know. The characters are not people. They are aspects of a dilemma or conflict.
Three parts: just as the soul is divided, ego, superego, id. Likewise
the three levels of the known world, a kind of diagram that separates heaven from earth from hell.
You must ask yourself: where is it snowing?
White of forgetfulness, of desecration—
It is snowing on earth; the cold wind says
Persephone is having sex in hell. Unlike the rest of us, she doesn’t know what winter is, only that she is what causes it.
She is lying in the bed of Hades. What is in her mind? Is she afraid? Has something blotted out the idea of mind?
She does know the earth is run by mothers, this much is certain. She also knows she is not what is called a girl any longer. Regarding incarceration, she believes
she has been a prisoner since she has been a daughter.
The terrible reunions in store for her will take up the rest of her life. When the passion for expiation is chronic, fierce, you do not choose the way you live. You do not live; you are not allowed to die.
You drift between earth and death which seem, finally, strangely alike. Scholars tell us
that there is no point in knowing what you want when the forces contending over you could kill you.
White of forgetfulness, white of safety—
They say there is a rift in the human soul which was not constructed to belong entirely to life. Earth
asks us to deny this rift, a threat disguised as suggestion— as we have seen in the tale of Persephone which should be read
as an argument between the mother and the lover— the daughter is just meat.
When death confronts her, she has never seen the meadow without the daisies. Suddenly she is no longer singing her maidenly songs about her mother’s beauty and fecundity. Where the rift is, the break is.
Song of the earth, song of the mythic vision of eternal life—
My soul shattered with the strain of trying to belong to earth—
What will you do, when it is your turn in the field with the god?
A beautiful morning, a difficult run. Not sure why, but I feel tired, fatigued. It might be allergies or warmer temperatures or low iron? Whatever it is, I found it hard to keep running in the second half. I stopped a few times to walk. Oh well, still great to be out there (somewhat) early, absorbing the gorge.
10 Things I Noticed
the green is filling in, the view is disappearing
heard some noises below me, in the ravine by the 44th street parking lot. Was it people camping down there now that it’s warm? I didn’t see any tents
the hollow knock of a woodpecker’s beak, echoing out over the gorge
the falls, gushing and roaring, spilling over the limestone ledge
2 people stopped at the stone slabs etched with Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha.” Were they reading the lines?
crossing the small bridge just above the falls, 3 kids taking a selfie and a biker next to his bike
running past the wrought-iron green benches sprinkled along the trail, I noticed the sun illuminating one half of each bench — perfect for a pair where one person wants sun, the other shade
heard the fake dinging of the recorded bell on the train as it approached the station
running over the high bridge that leads to the Veterans’ home, I could hear the fast moving water in the creek
a runner was doing hill training at the locks and dam no. 1 — maybe I should try that?
I don’t remember noticing the river — was it sparkling in the sun? Also, didn’t see any regulars or roller skiers or big groups of bikes with their whirring wheels sounding like drones. No irritating bugs (yet) or path hoggers or big packs of runners — the most I saw was 4 who ran single-file as they encountered me. No radios blasting out of bike speakers or TED talks/MPR out of smart phones. No fragments of conversation to wonder about. No sewer smells or big fallen branches to hurdle. No surreys. Not even one good morning to anyone.
Kimmerer: One of the difficulties of moving in the scientific world is that when we name something, often with a scientific name, this name becomes almost an end to inquiry. We sort of say, Well, we know it now. We’re able to systematize it and put a Latin binomial on it, so it’s ours. We know what we need to know.
But that is only in looking, of course, at the morphology of the organism, at the way that it looks. It ignores all of its relationships. It’s such a mechanical, wooden representation of what a plant really is. And we reduce them tremendously, if we just think about them as physical elements of the ecosystem.
2
…attention is that doorway to gratitude, the doorway to wonder, the doorway to reciprocity.
3
What I mean when I say that science polishes the gift of seeing — brings us to an intense kind of attention that science allows us to bring to the natural world. And that kind of attention also includes ways of seeing quite literally through other lenses — rhat we might have the hand lens, the magnifying glass in our hands that allows us to look at that moss with an acuity that the human eye doesn’t have, so we see more, the microscope that lets us see the gorgeous architecture by which it’s put together, the scientific instrumentation in the laboratory that would allow us to look at the miraculous way that water interacts with cellulose, let’s say. That’s what I mean by science polishes our ability to see — it extends our eyes into other realms. But we’re, in many cases, looking at the surface, and by the surface, I mean the material being alone.
But in Indigenous ways of knowing, we say that we know a thing when we know it not only with our physical senses, with our intellect, but also when we engage our intuitive ways of knowing — of emotional knowledge and spiritual knowledge. And that’s really what I mean by listening, by saying that traditional knowledge engages us in listening. And what is the story that that being might share with us, if we knew how to listen as well as we know how to see?
4
…science asks us to learn about organisms, traditional knowledge asks us to learn from them.
Last run in Austin before Scott’s parents move. I will miss running through the town, past the SPAM museum, then getting coffee from Kyle at the Coffee Place. Scott was feeling nostalgic and told me stories about many of the places we passed as we walked back home after the run. A good and necessary move for aging parents with health problems. A little sadness, but mostly relief.
4.5 miles Veterans’ Home loop 65 degrees humidity: 90%
It felt much warmer than 65 degrees. The humidity, my nemesis! I felt drained and decided to walk a few times after reaching the falls. Speaking of the falls, they were gushing. We had a intense storm last night, with tornado warnings and severe weather sirens going off at least twice. Everywhere I looked this morning, I witnessed the aftermath. Nothing too bad, just small branches on the ground, water gurgling out of the sewer pipes, dirt and mud washed up on the sidewalk, leaves piled up on the path.
Someone posted an excerpt from a Louise Glück poem on twitter the other day that made me stop scrolling. I liked it, but wanted to find where it came from: her poem, “October,” in Averno. I particularly wanted to know what happened to Beauty. Here’s the excerpt from twitter:
What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty
And here’s the larger (more complete) excerpt from “October“:
3. Snow had fallen. I remember music from an open window. Come to me, said the world. This is not to say it spoke in exact sentences but that I perceived beauty in this manner. Sunrise. A film of moisture on each living thing. Pools of cold light formed in the gutters. I stood at the doorway, ridiculous as it now seems. What others found in art, I found in nature. What others found in human love, I found in nature. Very simple. But there was no voice there. Winter was over. In the thawed dirt, bits of green were showing. Come to me, said the world. I was standing in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal— I can finally say long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty the healer, the teacher— death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life.
I posted a different section from this poem 2 or 3 years ago. It’s a beautiful poem, so I decided to request the collection from the library.
Ugh. Beautiful weather, but a more difficult run. Not sure if it was the pollen or the sun or my sore legs, but I struggled in the last 2 miles. Even so, it was wonderful to be out beside the river. I was able to greet Dave the Daily Walker and Mr. Morning!. I have decided that like me, Mr. Morning! has (at least) 2 versions: Winter Mr. Morning! and Summer Mr. Morning (mine are Winter Sara and Summer Sara). Winter Mr. Morning! heads south on the river road trail and wears a parka and a stocking cap. Summer Mr. Morning! heads north on the river road trail and wears shorts and a button up short-sleeved shirt. Both versions are enthusiastic in their greetings and wear transition lenses, or maybe just sunglasses. I often wonder, is Mr. Morning! that enthusiastic with everyone, or just people like me that he encounters a lot, all of us regulars?
Speaking of regulars, I have a new one: an older male runner with white hair who shuffle-runs — or does a combination of walk-running or run-walking — and is very friendly. I recall seeing him probably half a dozen times over the last 5+ years. The thing I remember most about him, other than his great spirit, is his greeting. One time it was, “Happy Fourth of July!” and today it was, “Happy Spring!”. I think I’ll call him Mr. Holiday.
Other things that happened: I greeted all of the welcoming oaks (in my head); noticed there were no stones stacked on the boulder; marveled at how quickly the leaves have filled in below me in the floodplain forest; looked for, but didn’t find, any rowers on the river; noticed how the river was blue as I ran west, and brown as I ran east; watched a plane slip through the clouds above me; didn’t see an eagle perched on the dead limb of the tree near the lake street bridge; and wondered how flooded Meeker Island Dam dog park was as I ran by a sign that read, “closed due to flooding.”
3.3 miles trestle turn around + 65 degrees / humidity: 70% wind: 18 mph / gusts: 30 mph
So much wind! As I neared the river, a surprise gust swept through and ripped my visor off my head. Luckily, that was the worst thing the wind did. No knocking down thick branches onto my shoulders. No pushing me off the edge of the gorge. Just a few big gusts, and a wall to run into after I turned around at the trestle.
The wind and the humidity distracted me from noticing much else. Did I even look at the river? One thing I do remember noticing: the green in the floodplain forest is thickening. Already the view through to the river is gone in that spot. I also noticed the welcoming oaks. They’re still bare and gnarled.
Near the end of my run, when I had one hill left and wanted to be done, I chanted some of my favorite lines from Emily Dickinson again: “Life is but life/Death but death/Bliss is but bliss/Breath but breath.” It helped!
10 Things I Noticed While Running*
*4 thoughts that distracted me from noticing + 6 things I still noticed despite the distractions
my left hip is a little tight
it is very humid
I hate my sinuses and allergies; I wish I could breathe fully through my nose
I wish I had worn a tank top. I’m so glad I didn’t wear that sweatshirt I almost put on because I was cold in the house!
an intense floral scent — lilac, maybe?
only a few big branches down near the trail
a woman walking and pushing a stroller, a dog leash in one hand, a dog stretched across the trail
several walkers dressed for winter in coats and caps
an inviting bench perched at the edge of the gorge, taking in the last of the clear view before the green veil conceals it
the creak of some branches in the wind: another rusty door opening!
This final thing I mentioned noticing, the door, made me want to find another door poem, so I did:
5k double bridge + tunnel of trees 53 degrees / light rain
It’s raining most of the day, but I managed to get out to the gorge and run without getting too wet. For the first time in 2 months (I checked my log entries), I listened to music: Beck, Nur-d, Harry Styles, ACDC, Billie Eilish. An excellent distraction.
10 Things I Noticed
someone in shorts (like me), running fast and effortlessly
2 women running slow and steady and spreading across the walking path
a runner with a dog
a walker with a dog
an older man, half running, half walking
the big cracks in the asphalt from the savanna to 44th street, have rings of white spray paint around them that have recently been redone. The crack with the ring that looks like a tube sock seems to have shifted a bit farther from the walking path, closer to the bike path
1 stone stacked on another, a 3rd stone beside them on the ancient boulder
more light green leaves on the trees in the floodplain forest
no headlings on the cars driving on the river road
an older man, slowly jogging on edmund. As I approached him, I waved. He said something but I couldn’t hear it with my headphones on
It’s Mother’s Day, and ever since my mom died in 2009, I haven’t liked this holiday. But yesterday, Scott and I went to Gustavus to take our son out for lunch (hooray for warm weather and patios!) and to pick up some of his stuff before he moves out of his dorm and returns home in two weeks, and he was so happy and kind and smart and excited about life that I’m not sad today but grateful and hopeful. What a wonderful human he is! His energy is infectious and inspiring and makes me want to be my better, happier, hopeful self, even in the midst of so much terribleness in the world. Such a great gift for Mother’s Day!
Speaking of energy I need, I want to be the believing bird in this poem:
5.2 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 60! degrees
60 degrees this morning with lots of sun and birds and budding trees! As Scott laments (or jokes, or both), this is our one week of spring. Next week summer begins. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Counted 3 stones stacked on the big boulder. Noticed the green creeping in below, in the floodplain forest. Running north, the river was blue, south brown. I think I heard some rowers, but never saw them. Greeted the river at the bottom of the franklin hill. It was moving swiftly. Ran, then walked, then ran again back up the hill. Decided to try something different by heading down to the Winchell Trail. This stretch, between franklin and the white sands beach is steep and slanted. I stopped running and walked carefully, as far from the edge as I could.
10 Things I Noticed
running in the neighborhood, nearing the entrance to the river road trail at 36th, I watched as a truck sped through the 3 way stop without even a pause. Glad I wasn’t a few feet closer!
lots of black-capped chickadees calling out, “Fee bee/fee Bee”
I think Mr. Morning! mornied me
the water near the franklin bridge had streaks of foam
a mix of sounds: a dog barking, my feet striking the ground, my breathing — not completely relaxed, but not labored either, a saw buzzing, car wheels whooshing, quiet thoughts in my head echoing
a person on a hoverboard (is that what they’re called?) whizzed past me near the lake street bridge
people sitting on the benches dotting the rim of the gorge
one of the oak trees near the old stone steps was shrugging its limbs at me
a bug — a bee? a fly? — bounced off of my baseball cap
running above the gorge, I noticed some people below me slowly making their way up the steep slope — what did I notice? Not whole people, just a head or a hat or a flash of something that made me think, “people are down there on the steep slope”
I’m working on a blog post about this log to promote my summer class at the Loft. As I ran, I thought about how much the gorge and this habit/practice of running + noticing + writing about it has transformed my life. Almost all of my writing, and much of my joy, has been because of it. It has opened so many doors into other worls, or back into worlds I once inhabited but left, or which I was forced out of. I’ve found poetry and birds and layers of rock and water and a way back to teaching. All of these thoughts came in a quick flash, along with a deep sense of gratitude.
I like in my day to have those boundaries and boundlessness. Like, okay, if I just have five minutes before I go mail a letter down the block, like, what can I squeeze into that time, or if I’m about to meet with a student, and I have 15 minutes, let me go edit a poem, because I’m going to be urgent as hell, while I edit that poem in that boundary, you know?
Then, today as I waited, as I always do, for my teenager to finish getting ready, come downstairs, go out the door, and off to high school, I had the idea of applying Erlichman’s limited minutes to my situation. My minutes — these excruciating minutes, sometimes 5 or 10 or 15 or more — are terrible. Reminding my daughter of the time, threatening her with punishment, attempting to reason never work. Her ability to resist time is impressive and often feels like it’s slowly destroying me. What if I used those minutes to try and write some lines of poetry? This fits with Erlichman’s idea and also with Bernadette Mayer’s suggestion in Please Add to this List to “attempt writing in a state of mind that seems less congenial”.
And here’s a great poem by Maya C. Popa:
Love: “Never the yellow, hula hooped in black, little engine left running late into the darkness.”
6.2 miles hidden falls scenic overlook loop 42 degrees
It looks like spring is finally coming (for good?) this week. Not yet, but by Wednesday. I was in Austin, MN for the weekend, and it felt like 34 degrees yesterday morning. 34? Boo. Anyway, today’s run was nice. It felt a little difficult, but I kept going and enjoyed it.
Another Monday, another run to above hidden falls. Maybe this is a new tradition? Today I ran past the overlook to some steps that lead down to the falls. They’ve repaired the road and the bridge. As I ran back, I thought that they should rename the falls the “No Longer Hidden Falls” or the “Falls Formerly Known as Hidden” or something like that because they used to be hidden, but now they’re not at all.
Heard some geese freaking out, a few crows, a black capped chickadee or two. Also, some chainsaws and leaf blowers and kids yelling and laughing at the Minnhaha Academy playground. Water trickling, then flowing down the gorge on the st. paul side. Some wet, crudded-up bike wheels slowly approaching from behind. The thud of my feet striking the ground. A woman talking to someone through her phone as she ran.
Noticed the river as I crossed the ford bridge. Blue, framed with brown branches. A few streaks of foam. A white buoy. A construction worker in a bright yellow vest with a shovel near the bridge above hidden falls. The very steep and open rim of the gorge just before hidden falls, a dirt trail leading off of it into nowhere.
Before I went out for my run, I re-visited “The Trees” by Philip Larkin. I recited it in my head throughout the run: “The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said.” This is a great poem to recite while running. Only one line tripped me up rhythmically: “Yet still the unresting castles thresh”
I don’t remember my thoughts as I ran, other than: how am I going to run for 6 miles?, Am I almost done?, This feels amazing!, Wow, that bluff is steep!
their greenness is a kind of grief
The 4th line of Larkin’s poem is: “Their greenness is a kind of grief.” Before my run, I started reading a book I bought earlier in the year and that I’ve been waiting to read until spring: Green Green Green. It’s not green here in Minneapolis yet, but I’m hoping that if I think hard enough about green — and say green green green over and over– it will appear faster. I started the first chapter, “The Eccho in Green.” She describes how green represents both life, newness, hope, health, vitality almost too an intoxicating level AND death, where to look green is to be pale or ill, out of sorts, nearer to death. Then she discusses William Blake’s poem, “The Ecchoing Green” and how the green in it is not the pastoral but the communal/village green, “where people mix with one another, young and old, playing and slowly fading, ecchoing . Green, as it echoes on the green, is the color of human community” (6).
This idea of the public, in-community land, made me think of a passage I encountered this morning that I’d like to return to many times:
These days, it seems like the highest praise a poem can get is someone tweeting in all caps, “This destroyed me!” I have often wondered why someone would want to be destroyed. Rather than immolating the reader, Keene’s poems keep opening up, rippling dynamically outward, playing back and forth between self and other, scene and setting, softly encouraging you in each line to be more generous with your intimacy. What is most startling about reading Punks is that, perceiving the world through Keene’s eyes, you begin imperceptibly relaxing your own spiritual narrowness and start to notice yourself doing the unthinkable. You start loving others beyond the usual perimeter of your affection.
The author of this paragraph is writing about a new poetry collection by John Keene, Punks. I like this idea of being openned up and how it enables connections — and expressions of love with/for others. Not sure if this makes sense yet, but I wanted to make note of it so I can reflect on these ideas of green space and openness and expansion instead of narrowing.
Here’s the poem by Blake — and recording of someone reciting it:
The sun does arise, And make happy the skies. The merry bells ring To welcome the Spring. The sky-lark and thrush, The birds of the bush, Sing louder around, To the bells’ cheerful sound. While our sports shall be seen On the Ecchoing Green.
Old John, with white hair Does laugh away care, Sitting under the oak, Among the old folk, They laugh at our play, And soon they all say. ‘Such, such were the joys. When we all girls & boys, In our youth-time were seen, On the Ecchoing Green.’
Till the little ones weary No more can be merry The sun does descend, And our sports have an end: Round the laps of their mothers, Many sisters and brothers, Like birds in their nest, Are ready for rest; And sport no more seen, On the darkening Green.
3.5 miles 2 trails + extra 53 degrees wind: 13 mph with 23 mph gusts
Windy. Sometimes sunny, sometimes not. Ran south up above, north below. Just after turning down onto the Winchell Trail, spotted a runner heading even deeper into the gorge. Wow, I’ve hiked that bit, right down by the water, with Scott. There’s not much of a trail and it’s steep and rocky. As I ran above, I looked for them again. Nothing. Had I imagined it? I don’t think so.
Ran over some mud; it rained last night. Past the 38th street steps, nearing the oak savanna, I noticed even more mud and spots where it looked like the trail was eroding. I wondered, how soon before this bit of the trail is impassable?
Almost finished, running on Edmund above the trail, I heard a man on a bike call out, “good job guys!” At first I thought he was a coach, calling out to his athletes, but then I realized he was talking to some young kids (his kids?) biking with him. I also heard him say something like, “you need to push down harder on the pedals to go fast!”
As I passed by the short hill near 42nd, I heard some black capped chickadees singing to each other. Usually it’s a fee bee song, with the first bird singing 2 ascending descending notes of equal length, and the second bird singing 2 descending notes back*. Today I heard one bird follow the formula of “fee bee.” The other responded with one flat note. Was this second bird a different type of bird? Do they ever respond with one note? Was it a juvenile just learning how to sing? Not sure, but it was strange and delightful to hear this new song.
*sometime in April of 2024, I finally realized that the first set of fee bees were not ascending but descending from a higher note than the second set. Now, whenever I’m reading through an old entry that describes them incorrectly, I’m fixing it.
before the run
One final before/during/after for the month. Yesterday I took a break from running, but not from thinking about entanglement and mycelium and hyphae and dirt. Here are some of the things I thought about:
1 — fungi at the mississippi gorge
Earlier in the month I wrote about the mushroom caves in St. Paul, but I was curious what other fungi is around here so I googled it and found an amazing picture of “Dead Man’s Fingers,” or Xylaria polymorpha (“Xylaria” means it grows on wood, “poly-” means “many,” and “morpha” means “shapes”).
Dead man’s fingers is found in deciduous forests throughout North America and Europe where it grows at the base of rotting tree stumps. The FMR conservation team found this spooky looking fungus deep in the oak forest ravines at Pine Bend Bluffs Scientific and Natural Area in Inver Grove Heights. Maple trees seem to be their preferred host in our area, but they also favor oak, locust, elm and apple.
While most fungi either consume the cellulose of wood or the lignins, dead man’s fingers is somewhat unusual in that it digests the glucans or “glues” that bind the cells together. As they feed, they literally help break down dead or dying trees in the forest.
9/13/2012: Harriet Island/Lilydale Regional Park Hike (St. Paul)
Join the hiking group for a hike along the south bank of the Mississippi River west from St. Paul’s historic Harriet Island through the former Lilydale town site. The hike passes a three-kilometer reach of the Mississippi River gorge that is known locally as “Mushroom Valley” because of the abundance of man-made mushroom caves carved into the sandstone bluffs. Mushroom growing lasted a century, from its introduction by Parisian immigrants in the 1880’s until the last cave ceased production in the 1980’s, during the creation of the Lilydale Regional Park. Some of the approximately 50 caves originated as sand mines, but other common uses were the aging of cheese (Land O’ Lakes,) the lagering of beer (Yoerg’s Brewery,) and storage (Villaume Box & Lumber.) The Lilydale Regional Park area was settled early in Minnesota’s history, but because of repeated flooding, the original town was moved up on top of the bluff. In the Lilydale Regional Park, a mesic prairie has been recreated along the Mississippi River floodplain. Shale beds in the Lilydale Regional Park also are a good place to find fossils.
Directions: From I-94 on the east side of downtown St. Paul, take the Highway 52/Lafayette freeway exit south and cross the Mississippi River on the Lafayette bridge to the Plato Boulevard exit. Go west on Plato Boulevard about 2/3rds mile to Wabasha Street and turn north (right). Proceed a short distance to Water Street and turn east (right) and then turn left onto Levee Road. Proceed on Levee Road under the Wabasha Street bridge. The parking lot is on the left.
This is another place I need to hike around this summer! Here’s one more link from Greg Brick, the Subterranean Twin Cities guy, with information: Lilydale Caves / Mushroom Valley
2 — mushrooms are strong!
They can burst through asphalt!
The rapid growth of mushrooms is well known, how they can come up overnight, but how they exert such force is not so obvious. The hollow stalk of the mushroom is made up of vertically arranged hyphae that grow at their tips, much like those balloon used to make balloon animals. The wall of a hypha is composed of fibres of chitin that are arranged helically and limits the ability of the hypha to expand in width. All the pressure of growth is through elongation and growth at the tip (Isaac 1999). It is this concerted pressure applied by each expanding hypha that can create the pressure to lift the pavement.
In Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake discusses polyphony (Anna Tsing does too). He mention this recording:
and discusses how each woman sings a different melody, each voice tells a different musical story. Many melodies intertwine without ceasing to be many. Voices flow around other voices, twisting into and beside one another. There is no central planning, nevertheless a form emerges….attention becomes less focused, more distributed — mycelium is polyphony in bodily form, when streams of embodiment come together and commingle.
I wrote this in my notes:
I’m thinking about this in relation to peripheral vision and movement and distribution, less focused and singular, involving a bigger picture, encompassing many voices, images, organisms, happenings (?) — the idea of learning how to hold these different voices together into a form — what would it look like to try and grasp/notice/attend to a world this way? How does that change what we notice, and how we notice it? How we experience delight? wonder? awe? how we understand the relationships between a self and other selves/communities? Less interested in the details, the focus on one person, more interested in the form we create together — the bigger picture…
I imagine this as part of my larger project on shifting away from central vision (which barely works for me anymore) and toward peripheral vision. How does peripheral vision enable me to see things in a new, potentially highly beneficial, way?
4 — more whimsy, please!
I found this poem that other day that delighted me, and reminded me that I’d like to write more stuff that taps into my strange and wonderful whimsy. Often, the things I write are too serious (I think). I’d like to write something about fungi and mushrooms that tapped into my delight of how strange and alien and gross they are.)
The small blue Nissan ahead of Me at the stoplight has a plastic License plate holder that says I’D RATHER BE AT A RICK SPRINGFIELD CONCERT, and buddy, wouldn’t we All rather be catching a tan In the summertime lawn seats at Some amphitheater off the
Highway, wearing sunglasses to Protect our eyes form the sun and The gleam of Rick’s professional Teeth, watching his wavy dyed brown
Septuagenarian goatee Frame his mouth as it sings “Jessie’s Girl” with his mind on autopilot, Wondering what he’ll have for dinner
Later as he croons Where can I Find a woman like that? for the 100,000th time as we Dream of this life we’re in for the
100,000th time instead Of cubicles and gray, teh beige Hallways we walk for decades before Demise? We dream, relaxed in the
Warm air we ignore for another Decade as some gulls try to steal Fries from a couple who are busy Groping their fifty something bodies,
Their bodies here still, soft & alive, Sagging in the lawn but fifteen Again and lost in their friend’s basement Again making out on the bean bag
In the corner, frantic in hazy Afterschool limbo before The friend’s parents get home from work. They know over what’s left of a
Margarita in a can. It Trickles green through the grass as Rick’s Band cuts straight to the opening Riff for “Love Somebody.” The drummer
Pounds the toms, the thuds summoning 1984 as the guitar Chimes and harmonies swoop in and Swallow the heating air. You better
Love somebody / it’s late, the frogs Evaporating in the wetlands By the offramp.
during the run
I thought about melodies and voices and sounds I was hearing simultaneously, sometimes difficult to distinguish, blending into each other. At the beginning of the run: birds, a car, my breathing, my feet striking the ground, the wind through the trees. I’m not sure if that was all of the sounds. Now I wish I had stopped and recorded some of my thoughts.
I also thought about dirt and what, under my feet and deeper in the ground, I might be disturbing/disrupting/destroying as I ran.
I probably thought about more, but I’ve forgotten it now. It scattered in the wind, I guess.
after the run
Now, after the run and after writing this log up to this point, I’m thinking about lichen and Forrest Gander and telling everyone in the house about how lichen can be killed, but if it has what it needs, it might never die (which I heard him say on a podcast I listened to this morning while doing the dishes). I wouldn’t want to live forever, but I like imagining a world in which inevitable death didn’t overshadow almost everything else. I’m not consumed by it, but it’s in all of our stories, our understandings, our philosophies, how we frame and experience joy and delight. How would we orient ourselves without that endpoint, without that guaranteed conclusion?
I’m also thinking about something I read about the biggest fungi in the world — at least the biggest that has been found and documented by scientists, the “Oregon Humongous Fungus.” Everything else I’ve heard about this fungus, and the one in Crystal Falls, MI, involves awe and fascination and wonder. In contrast, this report describes the fungus “as the baddest fungus on the block.” It’s killing tons of trees in the forest and, even after diligently trying for 40 years, they can’t get rid of it. The perspective here seems to be from timber companies who are losing all their trees/assets/profit. Interesting…
