4.85 miles
minnehaha falls and back
23 degrees / feels like 16
Yes! A much better run than yesterday. My legs were sore at the beginning, but the path was clear and I had enough layers to keep warm. As I ran south, I noticed the river was gray — pewter, I think — or was it steel?
Heading towards the falls, I listened to the kids laughing on the playground, the rushing water at the falls, and the ding ding dinging of the light rail bells leaving the station. Heading home, I listened to a playlist (10K 2018). First song: Vampire Weekend’s “Step.” Memorable line: they don’t know how to dress for the weather
10 Things
- smoke coming from the house on edmund that always smells like smoke in the winter
- a woodpecker’s laugh
- pewter river
- city workers across the road near becketwood — what were they doing?
- the big dip on the edge of the biking path, almost to Godfrey, has finally been patched
- a man — not driving an official truck or wearing an official uniform — emptying the cash out of parking meter kiosk near the old Minnehaha depot
- traffic rushing by on hiawatha
- the creek was dark and open, no ice, just a little foam
- 2 humans and a small dog, walking across the grass near the falls
- a fast running speeding by me as I stood at my favorite falls spot and put in my headphones
the windows I encounter while running outside:
- familiar houses, on the route I take almost every day — does a neighbor notice me (like I notice the runners and walkers that pass by my window) and think, there goes that woman running again, or maybe they mark their day with my run: she ran past, time for another cup of coffee
- car windows — I can’t ever see in these windows — I never visualize people, just imagine what they might be thinking: I wish I was out there running or Why would anyone run in this weather?
- John Steven’s house windows — are they boarded up from the fires last year?
- Minnehaha Depot windows
- Light rail windows — could anyone on the train see me from that far away
question: Do windows have to have glass to be windows? Is an empty frame enough?
answer: Yes? one def: an opening especially in the wall of a building for admission of light and air that is usually closed by casements or sashes containing transparent material (such as glass) and capable of being opened and shut
The other day I wrote in my Plague Notebook, Vol 18: post-pandemic window poems? And here’s something great that’s not a poem. I found it on my reading list in the 21st spot.
The window as isolation, shelter, protection, connection to the outside world, hope, longing. So many wonderful things happening in this story (essay?)! Instead of just posting it, I want to comment on each window.
Second floor window, across:
A man who plays the piano at all times of the day, his keyboard by the window. I see the staccato movement of his fingers but hear no sound. His expression is thoughtful and I can’t say if the notes are right, if he’s pleased, or what he’s feeling. Sometimes he plays in his underwear and I avert my gaze. He could see me if he looks up, but never does – it’s dusk and I have the lights on. When he turns his own light off and leaves the room, I catch a reflection of myself doing the dishes in the mirror at the back of his bedroom.
details that strike me: no sound — why not? too cold (or hot) to have the window open? he has headphones on? my choice: her apartment is sealed up tight — isolation; the piano player’s expression is unreadable or empty; the narrator averts her eyes; the narrator has her lights on, is on display, but he never looks; that reflection of herself in his mirror — wow
Window next door, a wall away from the pianist:
Sometimes, a woman looking bored on her laptop. Most of the time the curtain is drawn, and in the darkness all I can see is the yellow that leaks out. This window doesn’t want to be looked at, so I leave it alone.
the yellow that leaks out; the way the narrator respects the bored looking woman’s privacy; again, no sound
Next door, downstairs:
A living room I often catch in the cool half-light of the TV screen, watching the rippled colour move like the walls of an aquarium. Submerged and elsewhere. On the half-obscured sofa to the right I glimpse a hand slowly stroking a bare calf.
submerged and elsewhere; the stroking hand/stroked calf; limited vision: the cool half-light, half-obscured sofa, disembodied hand and calf
To the left, first floor:
A guy in his twenties, probably, laughing into a video call, or he’s taking a selfie, or updating his Instagram story, I can’t be sure since he quickly lowers his arm and loses the grin. For a long time he types on his phone.
no sound, no clear understanding of what’s happening
In the street in front:
The pavement is partly overgrown with weeds, and in the morning I watch a father and young son diligently clear them away. Through the glass I can’t hear what they’re saying. The boy gesticulates energetically from somewhere within the depths of a coat, hat, gloves, wellies. His dad laughs, and with thick gardening gloves brushes the rough shavings of soil out of the way. The boy is serious when he nods his approval – this is no game, but real community service.
an acknowledgment of the lack of sound: through the glass I can’t hear, people outside — only one window (narrator’s) between them
Further left, in a garden:
A middle-aged man waters some flowers while a woman refills a birdfeeder with seeds. Soon they go back indoors and I can see nothing but the glaze of the white sky on their window.
women outside (one window), visible, women go back inside (two windows — the women’s the narrator’s), hidden by the reflection of sky in a window
From my living room window:
Three veterinary nurses in green uniforms walking dogs on the grass by the graveyard. They play fetch and the dogs fire off into the trees – soon they all go, and will return tomorrow, and the day after.
even if the window tightly shut, can’t you hear the dogs barking? dogs are LOUD.
From the same window, later in the afternoon:
A woman and a little girl stand in front of a fresh grave, neat and lined with wood. Some days ago I watched a man from the church shovel grass and dirt away, and another day five figures gathered while a priest read mutely from an open book. The priest and his book went away to the church (chimney smoking) and, among the guests, I stood silent at my window, part of the ceremony. Today only the woman and the girl visit the grave, holding hands.
the narrator was part of the ceremony
It is dusk again at the living room window:
A magpie stops on one of the bony branches across, later a crow, a pigeon, a robin. In the distance I see the white bobbing of rabbits running among the tombstones.
Birds! a tree branch, a bobbing rabbit (nice work, resisting the impulse to write, bobbing bunnies
Then there is me, quarantined and at my nightly window, weaving my hair into a braid:
I listen to the creaks in the kitchen and Google my building, searching for estate agent photos of the other apartments, trying to piece together a virtual whole. I imagine a flat identical to mine next door, inverted – maybe the silent neighbours I’ve never spoken to are also at their windows, looking out. Maybe the pianist can see us, our kitchens a wall apart, divided. In my living room the curtains are never drawn. At night I sit illuminated and hope, for something.
sound — a creaking kitchen, silent neighbors
And, one more window thing. I’m slowly reading through Wendell Berry’s Window poems. Here’s 15. So good!
15. / Wendell Berry
The sycamore gathers
out of the sky, white
in the glance that looks up to it
through the black crisscross
of the window. But it is not a glance
that it offers itself to.
It is no lightning stroke
caught in the eye. It stays,
an old holding in place.
And its white is not so pure
as a glance would have it,
but emerges partially,
the tree’s renewal of itself,
among the mottled browns
and olives of the old bark.
Its dazzling comes into the sun
a little at a time
as though a god in it
is slowly revealing himself.
How often the man of the window
has studied its motley trunk,
the out-starting of its branches,
its smooth crotches,
its revelations of whiteness,
hoping to see beyond his glances,
the distorting geometry
of preconception and habit,
to know it beyond words.
All he has learned of it
does not add up to it.
There is a bird who nests in it
in the summer and seems to sing of it–
the quick light among its leaves
–better than he can.
It is not by his imagining
its whiteness comes.
The world is greater than its words.
To speak of it the mind must bend.
some thoughts:
WB’s glance can’t capture what the sycamore is
love this:
lightning stroke caught in the eye as description of seeing
the tree emerges at a different pace — not fast/immediate/NOW! that we expect with our glances
emerges partially — dazzle coming into the sun a little at a time
the man of the window
beyond his glances
the distorting geometry of preconception and habit?
beyond words
more than what he has learned/seen/understands
the bird here reminds me of A.R. Ammons and his discussion of language in garbage — see april 10, 2023
mind must bend? be at a slant (Emily Dickinson)?