Tag: no headphones

oct 11/RUN

3 miles
2 trails
58 degrees

Ran in the afternoon. Much warmer. Too warm. Overdressed in my long-sleeved bright yellowish green 10 mile racing shirt. Listened to Olivia Rodrigo for the first mile, then took out my headphones for the rest. I heard trickling water, laughing and screaming kids making the kind of noise that’s on the edge between angry and joyful, wind rustling the leaves.

After I finished, walking on the grassy boulevard, dotted with dry leaves, I pulled out my phone and recording the sound:

crunching leaves / 11 oct

I started by walking through the leaves, kicking into them with my feet. Then I stepped on them. To my ears, the sound went from a crash to a crunch.

I ran the version of 2 trails in which I don’t take the 38th street steps but stay on the dirt trail through the oak savana then around the ravine. I thought about stopping to take a picture here — and many other places too, including the overlook near the southern entrance of the winchell trail — but I wanted to keep running. So I took a picture of the ravine from above and across the river road:

A road with tree shadows on it. Behind it, a split rail fence and some golden trees. Beyond it, but not pictured, is a ravine with a black wrought-iron fence and a metal slat walkway that I carefully ran over a few minutes before taking the picture. In the upper right corner, there is a yellow sign indicating a sharp curve. There are also 2 cars in the distance. When I was taking this picture, I only saw general forms: shadows trunks leaves road sky.
The split rail fence above the ravine from across the river road

oct 4/RUN

4.4 miles
longfellow gardens and back
64 degrees / 78% humidity

A little cooler, but still humid. More shorts and tank top. Decided to run past the falls to Longfellow Garden to check out the flowers. Oranges, reds, pinks, purples, yellows. Did the gray sky make the colors seem even more vibrant to me?

The falls were gushing, so was the creek. The sound of dripping water from the sewer mixed with the wind. Chainsaws echoed below me in the gorge as Minneapolis Parks workers removed dead branches and leaning trees.

Running on the part of the trail that dips below the road, between locks and dam no. 1 and the 44th street parking lot, I could smell the rotting leaves — the too sweet, stale smell of last night’s beer. Yuck! Did I smell anything else? Yes! The strong scent of burnt toast or burnt coffee beans or burnt something somewhere in the neighborhood. The soft, pleasing scent of the tall, fuzzy grass that Scott says smells like cilantro.

I listened to kids being dropped off for school as I ran south. At my favorite spot at the falls, I put in an old playlist. I took my headphones out again when I reached the Winchell Trail. Then I put them back in after I was done and walking home. I listened to a chapter about the benefits of being small in Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss.

Since I’m prepping for a week about fall color for my class, I tried to notice color on my run.

10 Things I Noticed: Color

  1. there is still so much green. Everywhere, green. Not dark winter green, but light summer green
  2. a few slashes of red on the edge of the trail, the bright red hair of a walker
  3. orange cones, orange vests, orange signs, a past-its-prime orange tree, orange school bus, orange flowers sticking out above the other flowers
  4. hot pink petals, still intact
  5. flowers glowing such a light, almost white, purple that I imagined them to be ghost flowers
  6. yellow safety vests on a long line of bikers crossing at the roundabout, backing up traffic
  7. dry and dead brown leaves on the edge of the trail, covering the path
  8. the dark blueish gray of crumbling asphalt
  9. dark brown mud
  10. white foam from the raging falls

While walking around the garden, I took a few pictures:

Fall flowers at Longfellow Gardens. In person, these flowers seemed more vibrant and in reds, purples, pinks, oranges. Now looking at the photo, it is mostly various shades of green or gray or brown. If I put the screen right up to my nose or stare at the photo out of the corner of my eye, I can see some color, almost like the idea of color or a flash of color. Nothing steady or solid.
Longfellow Gardens, fall flowers in bright colors that I mostly cannot see

Pale purple flowers at Longfellow Gardens. In person, these flowers were so pale and so bright, almost white, that I imagined them to be ghost flowers.
ghost flowers at Longfellow Gardens

I love this description of what poetry is/could or should be:

Ars Poetica/ José Oliverez

Migration is derived from the word “migrate,” which is a verb defined by Merriam-Webster as “to move from one country, place, or locality to another.” Plot twist: migration never ends. My parents moved from Jalisco, México to Chicago in 1987. They were dislocated from México by capitalism, and they arrived in Chicago just in time to be dislocated by capitalism. Question: is migration possible if there is no “other” land to arrive in. My work: to imagine. My family started migrating in 1987 and they never stopped. I was born mid-migration. I’ve made my home in that motion. Let me try again: I tried to become American, but America is toxic. I tried to become Mexican, but México is toxic. My work: to do more than reproduce the toxic stories I inherited and learned. In other words: just because it is art doesn’t mean it is inherently nonviolent. My work: to write poems that make my people feel safe, seen, or otherwise loved. My work: to make my enemies feel afraid, angry, or otherwise ignored. My people: my people. My enemies: capitalism. Susan Sontag: “victims are interested in the representation of their own sufferings.” Remix: survivors are interested in the representation of their own survival. My work: survival. Question: Why poems? Answer:

the work of a poet: to imagine; to do more than reproduce toxic stories; to make your people feel safe, seen, loved; survival

sept 28/RUN

4 miles
east river road and back*
65 degrees
humidity: 80% / dew point: 60

*over the lake street bridge/up the east river road, past The Monument/stopped at an unofficial overlook with a dirt trail leading closer to the edge/took a quick picture/turned around and ran back the same way

Standing on the edge of the bluff on the east side of the Mississippi, looking through some yellow red leaves to the river and its west side
my view of the river on the east bank on 28 sept, 2023

Another stretch of hot, sticky mornings. (There’s a heat advisory for the Twin Cities Marathon, which is happening on Sunday!) It felt warm enough that I wore the same thing that I do on the hottest summer day: black shorts and an orange tank top. I’m ready for this warmer weather to be over.

For the first half of the run, I listened to construction trucks, zooming cars, crunching leaves, my feet striking the asphalt, trickling water. For the second half, I put in my headphones and listened to The Wiz.

Yesterday and today I’ve been thinking about smell and trying to practice noticing smells. It’s hard! I thought I noticed more, but when I tried to dictate them into my phone, I could only remember 4.

smells: 4 noticed, 1 not

  1. a small patch of wet, muddy dirt in a neighbor’s boulevard: moist and earthy, a trace
  2. fallen, brittle leaves on the edge of the river bluff on the east side: dry, musty, sweet not tangy or sour
  3. the sewer near the ravine: rotten, subtle
  4. tar being used on a road: bitter, faint
  5. tried to smell a tree — I leaned in and inhaled deeply: nothing

My attempt at smelling the tree was inspired by this suggestion, from The Aroma of Trees:

Rest your hands on bark, feel its texture, then draw your face close. Gently rub. What aromas linger in the crevices of the tree’s surface?

It’s quite possible that I didn’t smell anything because I didn’t fully commit to this exercise. I leaned in quickly, right before heading off to run some more.

cold update: almost normal. For years now, my resting heart rate is between 50-55. Two days ago, when I felt especially crappy, it was 73. Today it’s back to 52. I’ve entered the most irritating phase: blowing my nose and trying to clear my throat all the time.

Read this about smell the other day:

When you see, hear, touch, or taste something, that sensory information first heads to the thalamus, which acts as your brain’s relay station. The thalamus then sends that information to the relevant brain areas, including the hippocampus, which is responsible for memory, and the amygdala, which does the emotional processing.

But with smells, it’s different. Scents bypass the thalamus and go straight to the brain’s smell center, known as the olfactory bulb. The olfactory bulb is directly connected to the amygdala and hippocampus, which might explain why the smell of something can so immediately trigger a detailed memory or even intense emotion.

Why Smells Trigger Such Vivid Memories

Also read this about why leaves smell and the effects of changes in temperature and climate change:

“That’s what fall is all about. Leaves are falling off the trees and the bacteria and fungi that are in the soil are actively digesting [them,]” said Theresa Crimmins, director of the USA National Phenology Network. “And in the process, various [gases] are being released, and that’s a lot of what the smells are.”

—

The heat and humidity of summer air traps all kinds of smells, she said, creating a “mishmash” for our noses. 

But as the days get cooler and crisper, there are fewer volatile organic compounds in the air, and we’re better able to distinguish the ones that are released by dying and decomposing vegetation, leaving that sweet smell front and center.

The Science Behind the Aroma of Fall

Because of drought and warmer temperatures, fall is starting later, which is damaging to the long term health of trees — and might lead to less fiery leaf shows for us. I’ve been tracking the changing leaves by the Gorge since 2018, and so far, when I compare my descriptions of the leaves in the fall between 2018 and 2023, I’m not noticing huge changes. Acorns start falling in late July or early August. The first yellow or red leaves appear in late August. Full color is in early to mid October. But, how long will this last? And how quickly will it change?

sept 27/RUN

3.05 miles
2 trails
63 degrees
humidity: 84% / dew point: 60

Feeling a little better on day 5 of my cold. Still difficult to breathe, but maybe that was more because of the humidity and not my congestion. It rained again last night so everything was wet, the dirt trail muddy, squeaky, soaked leaves. Heard some kids shrieking (with glee) near Dowling.

Listened to cars, my feet, kids yelling, water dripping as I ran south and on the Winchell Trail. Climbed the 38th street steps and put in Olivia Rodrigo. Also, took this picture at the bottom of the 38th street steps:

on the west side of the mississippi river, looking through some yellowish reddish orangish leaves to the pale blue-gray river. On the far edge of the river, you can glimpse a red tree on the east side of the river. Fall is here, winter is coming.
slowly, my view of the river is returning / 27 sept 2023

leaf trypthych

one: One of the trees that I watch out for every fall has turned a glorious orange. Wow! Not neon orange, but a warmer, pinky orange. This tree is on the edge of the 44th street parking lot, next to the bike rack, after the trail that winds down to the Winchell Trail, before the trail that crosses the double bridge. It’s a maple (I think).

two: Running on “the edge of the world” — the spot on the Winchell Trail that climbs and before it curves looks like you will fall off into empty air — everything suddenly became lighter. This was partly because the trees have less leaves here and there are less trees, but mostly because the leaves at the bottom of the hill were green, while the leaves at the top were a soft yellow.

three: After I finished my run, walking back, I passed under a tree and suddenly noticed it was snowing yellow leaves. Leaf after soft yellow leaf slowly drifting down to the ground, looking like snow if snow were a gentle, glowing yellow. I love snowing leaves. 

I’m trying to practice noticing smells this week. Not sure I can ever find 10 smells, but here’s today’s list:

Smells I Noticed

  1. wet earth — musty
  2. the trace of sewer stench — sour, unpleasant, above the river on edmund
  3. sewer stench, full blast, above the ravine near the 35th street parking lot — sour, like rotten eggs, or used diapers
  4. smoke from a fire down in the gorge

I think that’s all I remember. I need more practice.

Found this poem the other day by Kelli Russell Agodon. It was posted on Verse Daily — a great resource for poems!

The Hum of the Living/ Kelli Russell Agodon
        

Tonight, what haunts me is remembering 
the Helpful Instructions for the Dying 
pamphlet the hospice worker gave me. 

It’s subtle but it’s not, like finding 
a pocketknife in your favorite birch, 
like the last bedroom she wandered in, 
she wondered in, her last inhale. 

When the hospice worker said, Listen
to a song that gives you hope, I said 
it’s the hum of the living, the sound 

of dishes being set in the kitchen sink,
they remind me—life is here. 

All those years of wishing 
for quiet, for calmness, for less clutter—
protect the chaos with your life.

sept 23/RUN

2.05 miles
edmund, south/north
67 degrees
humidity: 87% / dew point: 63

a quick note before describing my run: For some reason, I felt compelled to rhyme things today. Most of it was unintentional, but a few times it was deliberate. Was I somehow inspired by a line from the song, “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy)”? I watched a video of Gwen Verdon singing this song — and dancing too — last night. Here’s the line:

Hello, lamppost, what’cha knowin’?
I’ve come to watch your flowers growin’
Ain’t’cha got no rhymes for me?

Sticky. Uncomfortable. Thick. Lots of sweating. Flushed face. Heavy legs. Dark with hazy, humid air. I had intended to cross over to the Winchell Trail, but it looked crowded near the river. So I just turned around and went back north on Edmund. A chance to check the house that posts poems in their front window. Was there a new one? Unfortunately, in this bad light and with my bad vision, I couldn’t tell. Oh well.

before the run

A few more stanzas from Forrest Gander’s “Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpas”:

Cardiac Hill’s granite boulders appear
freshly sheared Look, you say,
I can see the Farallon Islands there
to the south over those long-backed hills
one behind another a crow honks

Running above the river on the paved trail it’s difficult, even in the winter, to see the terrain below — the limestone ledges, the steep slopes. Often, it’s all leaves (on the trees or the ground) and brambles and bushes.

Do crows honk?

the moon still up over Douglas
firs on the climb to Rock Spring yellow
jackets and Painted Lady butterflies
settle on the path where some under-
ground trickle moistens the soil

It doesn’t happen that often — because of my vision, pollution, the bright light during the day — but I like being able to see the faint outline of the moon in the morning or the middle of the day.

Throughout the gorge and on the Winchell Trail, there are springs and seeps. They are especially visible in the winter when they freeze over and turn into strangely shaped columns of ice.

A plan for the run? Not much of one: to take the Winchell Trail instead of the paved path.

during the run

Nope. I didn’t take the trail so no chance to get a view of the river or the bluff or any limestone ledges. Instead I listened to Taylor Swift and tried to keep my cadence steady and quick(er). Between 170 and 180.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. kids laughter drifting over the fence of my neighbor’s yard — a birthday party for her 3 year-old
  2. a big backhoe parked on the street — no digging today, hooray!
  3. a plastic orange slide, spied through the slats of another neighbor’s fence
  4. a dusty dirt trail, so dry it was slippery and uneven
  5. yellow leaves all around
  6. lots of red on the ground
  7. a biker’s bright headlight over on the river road
  8. a mountain bike — don’t think it had fat tires — on the dirt trail, approaching me
  9. 2 people in bright yellow construction vests, walking on Edmund
  10. a biker stalking me — approaching from behind. Not really stalking, just unable to pass me before we crossed an intersection

Don’t remember any birds or swirling leaves or bugs or roller skiers or music being blasted from car radios or leaf blowers or falling acorns.

after the run

I’ll have to think about Forrest Gander’s words some other day. For now, I’ll post something else I’d like to remember because I’m always looking for poems about erosion:

Erosion/ David Hanlon

You’re eight hours of sleep & careful folding;
I’m a mouthful of ulcers & grasping at hours
lost to obligation,
lost to obsession.

You’re made of granite & marble,
made for building;
you make

sheet music of my skin,
exhume a melody in me.

I’m chalk & sandstone,
used in paint;

I’m weak
because life runs through me.

I’ll move, I’ll go
wherever it takes me—

I’ll still
hold your hand,

sing my song,
brushstroke

our existence.

sept 21/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
70 degrees / dew point: 59

Another warm morning. Sunny, too. Not much wind. Almost a mile into the run my back on the right side, just under the shoulder blade, started to hurt. Enough that I needed to stop and walk for a few steps. When I started again, and ran more upright, it felt better, and didn’t hurt for the rest of the run. I wondered what it was, then suddenly realized: yesterday Scott and I cleaned out a lot of crap in the garage, some of it heavy; I must have pulled something.

Running south, I listened to cars, construction, kids arriving for school at Dowling Elementary, screeching blue jays, trickling water out of the sewer pipe. For the last mile, I put in my headphones and listened to more Olivia Rodrigo.

before the run

Thinking about Gary Snyder and circumambulation and Forrest Gander’s poem, “Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpas.” I listened to him reading the first stanza:

from Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais/ Forrest Gander

 
maculas of light fallen weightless from
pores in the canopy our senses
part of the wheeling life around us and through
an undergrowth stoked with the unseen
go the reverberations of our steps

my notes: I was immediately drawn in with his use of maculas. I think a lot about maculas because the macula (in the center of the retina in the back of our eyes) is where all the cones reside in your central vision and my cones are almost all dead. I looked up macula and it can also mean, more generally, spot or blotch. Here I like how his use of macula and pores reminds me that the canopy is a living thing, and living in ways that are similar to humans. “the undergrowth stoked with the unseen” — I’m thinking of how thick the trees are beside the path, how much goes unseen — but always felt — above the gorge.

During my run, I want to think about and notice the maculas of light falling weightless, the pores in the canopy, wheeling life (cars? bikes?), the undergrowth, the unseen, and the reverberations of our steps. That’s a lot!

during the run

I did it! I thought about most of these things and it made the run more interesting and meaningful. At the 38th street steps, before I ascend to the river road trail, I stopped to record what I thought about and noticed:

running notes, 21 sept 2023

transcript: September 21st, 2 miles into my run, at 38th street steps. Thinking about the Forest Gander poem and first, the idea of the maculas weightless. Then I was thinking of dappling light but the light today is not weightless, but thick. It must be humid, feels warm, and it’s pouring through, which makes me think of pores and difficult breathing. My nose, hard to breathe through my nose, and my back behind the rib cage, it hurt. And then I was thinking of the wheeling life and taking that literally: the wheeling of cars, whooshing off to work. And then I saw 2 different sets of bicycles: an adult on one bicycle, a young kid on the other, biking to school at Dowling. And then I was thinking of the wheeling life and the changing of seasons and transformations and the idea of life continuing to move, not necessarily forward (although it does that too), but also just a constant motion, even when you might want it to stand still for a while. Then I was thinking of the wheeling life as the hamster wheel [I thought about the hamster because I heard the rustling of a squirrel or chipmunk in the dry brush] and repetitions and routines and continuing to do the same thing over and over again — the loops, the way it’s warm every year at this time in September: too hot, too humid, too sunny.

Wow, when I’m talking into the phone about my ideas mid-run, I have a lot of run-on sentences!

after the run

 I love Forrest Gander’s poetry. And I love how packed with meaning his words are, like “wheeling life.”

the wheeling life: 10 things

  1. car wheels, near the road — relentless, too fast, noisy
  2. car wheels, below, on the winchell trail — a gentle hum, quiet, distant
  3. bike wheels, approaching from behind very slowly — a little kid biking to school with his mom who had a carrier with another kid behind her seat
  4. bike wheels, nearby, another kid and adult on the way to school
  5. the wheel of life as a loop: a favorite route, running south, looping back north, first on edmund, then on the winchell trail
  6. the wheel of life as transformation: red leaves decorate a tree halfway to the river
  7. the wheel of life as cycles: not the end of the year, but the beginning — school time: kids at the elementary school
  8. the wheel of life as constant motion: on the trail, below the road and above the river, everything is active: birds calling, squirrels rustling, wheels traveling, river flowing, feet moving, leaves and lungs breathing
  9. the wheels of life as cycle: always in late september, hot and humid and too sunny
  10. the wheels of life as transformation: thinning leaves, falling acorns, a small view of the river
Thinning leaves, some yellow, some green. Straight and slender brown trunks. A view of the river -- blue? gray? a few ripples
a picture of my view wile recording my notes, near the 38th street steps

sept 19/RUN

3.6 miles
trestle turn around (+ extra)
65 degrees / 72% humidity

Out near the gorge, everything is busy today — wheels whooshing, hammers pounding, bobcats speeding by. All the sounds felt electric. I’ve wondered this before (and looked it up, but forgot the answer): is the moisture in the air causing everything to sound different — louder, more intense?

Having just written something about triple berry chants for my class, I decided to do them today. Strawberry / raspberry / blueberry. I think I chanted them for at least a mile. They helped keep my cadence up. Did they do anything else?

10 Things I Noticed While Chanting Triple Berries

  1. Dave the Daily Walker had on bright blue running shoes — nice!
  2. a rollerblader passed me from behind — no clicking and clacking ski poles to alert me to their approach
  3. minneapolis parks has trimmed back the bushes and wildflowers that were blocking part of the already narrow path that splits from the biking path and dips below the road
  4. a runner, only a little faster than me, entered the path in front of me at 32nd. Very gradually, he inched away, then turned off the trail again
  5. more yellow leaves, a few slashes of red, no orange
  6. human voices and the clanging of a dog collar down below on the Winchell Trail
  7. several openings in the otherwise thick trees — dirt trails descending to the Winchell Trail
  8. a noisy runner with an awkward gait — did he swing his arms awkwardly too?
  9. another runner, speeding fast. Almost a blur with feet thumping the ground
  10. at least one loud thud as an acorn fell

Running north, I listened to feet striking the ground, an acorn falling, runners joking. I stopped at the turn around put it Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS then ran south.

At the halfway point, I took this picture. The river and the gorge are behind those leaves. In a month, I’ll get to see them again!

fall leaves, mostly yellow, several straight brown trunks, no view of the river
no view of the river, near franklin

sept 18/RUN

2.5 miles
2 trails
75 degrees

Recorded the lecture for my class this morning, so I had to run in the afternoon, when it’s warmer. Hot! Sunny! Everything dry and dusty, thirsty — the dirt trail, the dead leaves, me.

Listened to a playlist until I reached the south entrance to the Winchell Trail, then to the gorge. Dripping pipes, striking feet, my breathing, falling acorns.

10 Peripheral Things — above, below, and beside

  1. dirt flying up on my ankles as I ran on the dusty trail
  2. brittle red leaves, crunching underfoot
  3. the shadow of a bird flying overhead
  4. frantic rustling in the bushes — I flinched in anticipation of a darting squirrel that never arrived
  5. a walker moving over to the edge of the path for me to pass — thank you! / you’re welcome
  6. a slash of red just below — a changing leaf
  7. flashes of orange all around — construction signs
  8. to my right and below: dribble dribble dribble — water falling down a limestone ledge in the ravine
  9. shrill squeaking under the metal grate in the ravine as I crossed over it — a chipmunk?
  10. is this peripheral? breaking through several spider webs on the winchell trail, about chest height

For the second week of my class, which starts this Wednesday!, I’m offering alliteration as one way into the words for describing/conjuring/communicating wonder (along with abecedarians and triple berry chants). This poem-of-the-day on poems.com (Poetry Daily), is a great example of what’s possible when you write only words starting with one letter — in this case, a:

Autobiography/ Michael Dumanis

Attempted avoiding abysses, assorted
abrasions and apertures, abscesses.

At adolescence, acted absurd: acid,
amphetamines. Amorously aching

after an arguably arbitrary Abigail,
authored an awful aubade.

Am always arabesquing after Abigails.
Am always afraid: an affliction?

Animals augur an avalanche. Animals
apprehend abattoirs. Am, as an animal,

anxious. Appendages always aflutter,
am an amazing accident: alive.

Attired as an apprentice aerialist,
addressed acrophobic audiences.

Aspiring, as an adult, after applause,
attracted an angelic acolyte.

After an affirming affair, an abortion.
After an asinine affair, Avowed Agnostic
approached, alone, an abbey’s altarpiece,

asking Alleged Almighty about afterlife.
Ambled, adagio, around an arena.
Admired an ancient aqueduct. Ate aspic.
Adored and ate assorted animals.
Ascended an alp. Affected an accent.
Acquired an accountant, an abacus, assets.
Attempted atonal arpeggios

There’s also an essay about how Dumanis wrote this poem, which I haven’t had time to read yet. Very excited to check it out! Okay, I just skimmed it. Here are some resources from the end that I might want to explore:

A few terrific examples of letter-constraint-based contemporary poems include Phillip B. Williams’s tour de force “Mush-mouf’s Maybe Crown,” where all the words begin with M (or, occasionally, “em” or “im”); Izzy Casey’s univocalic “I’m Piss Witch”; several terrific single-vowel lyrics in Cathy Park Hong’s collection Engine Empire including “Ballad in A”; Harryette Mullen’s linguistic experiments, such as “Any Lit,” in her collection Sleeping with the Dictionary, and, of course, Christian Bök’s virtuosic book-length project Eunoia, in which, among other idiosyncratic constraints, every chapter can only use a single vowel. All such projects derive at least some of their inspiration from the mid-20th century French avant-garde collective Oulipo, or Ouvroir de littérature potentielle, a “workshop of potential literature,” which encouraged systematic, sometimes arbitrary, language-based constraint in the composition of texts. For my Oulipian autobiography, it was especially important to me that every individual narrative moment made clear semantic sense despite the constraint, that the alliteration did not overly affect the speaker’s syntax or natural cadence, that taken together they told the story of a life.

sept 13/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill
55 degrees

What a wonderful morning for a run! 55 degrees! Low wind, bright sun. Wore my pink jacket until I warmed up, faded black shorts, gray t-shirt, raspberry red shoes, my mostly purple with pink splotches lightweight baseball cap that I found in my mother-in-law’s closet after she died, with the tag still on, and white socks (also found with tags on in her closet).

Running south, then back up to under the Franklin bridge, I listened to chainsaws, workers yelling about trees falling, bluejays screeching, Dave the Daily Walker saying good morning, and Daddy Long Legs calling out hello. For the last 2 miles of the run I listened to Olivia Rodrigo’s GUTS.

10 Things

  1. the deep voice of the coxswain calling out instructions
  2. the blue, empty river
  3. graffiti on a post under the lake street bridge — block letters outlined in black — was there blue too? I can’t remember
  4. an old convertible sports car parked under the bridge, white or cream
  5. a photographer with a telephoto lens on their camera, standing under the trestle, probably taking pictures of the river
  6. Daddy long legs stretched out on a bench
  7. some guy talking (to the gorge? on the phone? to some other person I couldn’t see?) halfway up a column under the bridge — was I seeing this right?
  8. a line of bikers in bright yellow and orange vests heading south when I was heading north
  9. someone running in a bright pink shirt, another in orange, and one without a shirt
  10. my shadow — sharp and dark in the sun, running alongside me

Found June Jordan’s Guidelines for Critiquing a Poem in one of my files. Right now, I’m especially interested in these bits:

2. Is it a poem? 

a. Poetry: A medium for telling the truth. 
b. Poetry: The achievement of maximum impact with minimal number of words. 
c. Poetry: Utmost precision in use of language, hence, density and intensity of expression. 

Technical Checklist: 

a. Strong, descriptive verbs. Eliminate all forms of the verb “to be.” 
b. Singularity and vividness of diction (choice of words) 
c. Specificity / resonant and representative details 
d. Avoidance of abstractions and generalities 
e. Defensible line breaks 
f. Compelling / appropriate horizontal and / or vertical rhythm and / or vertical line breaks. 
g. Alliteration / Assonance / Dissonance 
h. Rhyme 
i. Consistency of voice / distance from the reader / diction 
j. Dramatic inconsistencies 
k. Punctuation (Punctuation is not word choice. Poems fly or falter according to the words composing them. Therefore, omit punctuation and concentrate on every single word. E.g., if you think you need a question mark then you need to rewrite so that your syntax makes clear the interrogative nature of your thoughts. And as for commas and dashes and dots? Leave them out!)

sept 8/RUN

1.75 miles
neighborhood
68 degrees

A quick run just after noon. Warmer than I realized, harder to move my legs too. Ran past 7 Oaks to the dirt path next to Edmund, past Minnehaha Academy, around Cooper school then back home. Construction trucks everywhere. They’re still working on the sewers, busting up the pavement, digging deep hole. Started in late May. Can’t wait until they’re done!

Today, instead of listening to the gorge or the neighborhood birds, I put in Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, GUTS. I like it. At the end of the run, “Making the Bed” came on. I liked how the whole song was about her regrets and taking responsibility for them and that she referenced the idiom you made your bed, now you must lie in it without ever explicitly singing those words, instead only singing, Me whose been making the bed. I’d like to play around with some idioms in a poem, experimenting with how to point to them without ever using them. I’d also love to find some examples from other poets.

Even as I listened to GUTS, I couldn’t block out all of the construction noise. So many construction things forcing me to notice them!

10 Construction Things

  1. the flash of bright yellow vests and hard hats
  2. a low constant rumble a few blocks away
  3. the loud roar of the big wheels of a dump truck rushing by
  4. the only slightly quieter roar of the smaller wheels of a bobcat following behind
  5. beep beep beep a truck backing up
  6. loose gravel and sand piled up to cover the pipes spread across the street, crunching under car wheels
  7. orange construction cones
  8. temporary stop signs
  9. big, city buses taking alternative routes on too narrow streets
  10. dusty, smoky clouds low in the air, breathed in through lungs

Yesterday I mentioned my discovery of some wonderful poems by Luisa A. Igloria. Here’s another. Wow!

Hog Island/ Luisa A. Igloria

The sun dips beneath a horizon of barrier
islands, marshes filled with traces
of the winged and wild-footed.

Skimmers in spring, migrants
wheeling toward the salt of other seasons.

On one side, the water; on the other,
the land—acres that yielded corn, tobacco,
barley, cotton. And where

are the quail that loved
fields of castor bean, that thrashed

in the wake of rifle fire? This
time of year, everything in the landscape tints
to the color of bronze and rust, registry pages

inked in sepia with names and weights;
the worth of indentured bodies. Palimpsest

means the canvas we see
floats on a geology of other layers—
sedimenting until the sea works loose

what it petrifies in salts and lye, what it
preserves for an afterhistory with no guarantee.

added a few hours later: Catching up on old New Yorker issues, I read this delightfully gross and somewhat horrifying opening paragraph from a section in talk of the town titled, “In the Water A Staten Island Lap”:

A swimmer freestyling through a shipping lane is a bit like a snail crossing the freeway. The situation is just as glamorous, and there tend to be few spectators. But when Leslie Hamilton, a thirty-one-year-old accountant swam a record-breaking clockwise lap around Staten Island last month, the biggest challenge wasn’t dodging garbage barges or intractable tankers with staunch, Soviet names like Salacgriva and Yasa Madur. It was lice. And she was saved by her bikini.

Sea lice. And her skin was crawling with them the entire time. The lice, which come from thimble jellyfish, lay tiny stinging cells on swimming suits. So Hamilton switched out her one piece for a bikini bottom and swam topless through the night. Wow.

Why did she do this? Here’s one reason she gave, as paraphrased by Daniel Shailer: Being uncomfortable makes everyday comforts exceptional.