2.1 miles neighborhood 33 degrees wind: 13 mph with gusts, 21 mph
Quick run in the wind and the cold after returning home. A visit with 2 fully vaccinated grandparents! Hopefully soon, we will be too. First time away from Minneapolis since October. Not too far into my run, I heard a pileated woodpecker. Not drumming, but singing. Also heard a black-capped chickadee and their fee-bee song. Can’t remember any other bird calls. Guess the wind was singing louder. Speaking of the wind, heard lots of wind chimes, especially at the house at the corner of 43rd and 32nd. Such a cacophony! Ran down towards the river but stayed on edmund. When I crested the hill, I glanced down but couldn’t see any sparkling river through the trees.
note for me to remember: On the 29th, I memorized ED’s “I felt a cleaving in my Mind–.” That night, I got a headache that came in waves, not feeling like my brain had split but like I wished it would, so I could take the top of it off to relieve the pain and pressure. Ugh! I am a wimp with headaches because I rarely get them. And because I rarely get them, they make me worry more: I never get headaches? Why now? What’s the cause? Is this the start of something worse? I’ve had a few more since then, not quite as bad. I think (am hoping) that they’re caffeine headaches. The grandparents make much weaker coffee (1 scoop of coffee for 6 cups of water), while I make really strong coffee (I scoop of coffee for 1 cup of water).
Here are the final 2 poems in my March with Emily Dickinson. They’re connected to “I felt a cleaving in my Mind–” with the ball and the seam, which speak to ED’s interest in circumference.
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind– As if my Brain had split– I tried to match it–Seam for Seam– But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to bind Unto the thought before– But Sequence ravelled out of Sound– Like Balls upon a floor.
I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched — I felt the Columns close — The Earth reversed her Hemispheres — I touched the Universe —
And back it slid — and I alone — A Speck upon a Ball — Went out upon Circumference — Beyond the Dip of Bell —
As I just discovered, the Balls in “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind–” could be balls of yarn. The ball in this poem is the Earth. Another connection: instead of seams, we have stitches. ED likes the word and idea of Circumference. Lots of entries in the Emily Dickinson lexicon, which is a super handy resource: periphery, circuit, edge, skull, perspective, view, vista.
I might have a lot of fun with this idea of circumference, especially in relation to a new vision project I’d like to start: on peripheral vision. Very cool.
I found another version of this poem on the amazing blog project, White Heat. It’s in their week of posts about Circumference. It follows ED’s original manuscript and its line breaks.
I saw no Way – The Heavens were stitched – I felt the Columns close – The Earth reversed her Hemispheres – I touched the Universe –
And back it slid — And I alone — A Speck opon a Ball Went out opon Cirum — ference — Beyond the Dip of Bell.
Without this — there is nought — All other Riches be As is the Twitter of a Bird — Heard opposite the Sea —
I could not care — to gain A lesser than the Whole — For did not this include themself — As Seams — include the Ball?
I wished a way might be My Heart to subdivide — ‘Twould magnify — the Gratitude — And not reduce — the Gold —
Here’s something interesting PB has to say about this poem and curcumference and seams and balls:
The second stanza advances our understanding a little, for we learn that the poet wants the “Whole” rather than some lesser quantity or quality that would be subsumed by the whole. Dickinson uses a ball as an example. Made by stitching leather or fabric together, the ball might be considered interior to the seams encompassing it. I am reminded of Dickinson’s poetic project of circumference. She announces this project in a letter to her chosen “Preceptor”, T.W.Higginson:
“Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that – My Business is Circumference –…” (L268, July 1862).
In a later poem she calls “Circumference” the “Bride of Awe.” At least part of Dickinson’s poetic quest is to trace the seams, to see the whole.
In Austin (mn) for the kids’ birthday—RJP is 15, FWA is 18! Ran with Scott through the neighborhood. So windy and warm. For the first mile, my legs felt like inflexible stumps. They didn’t hurt, just seemed stiff. Scott agreed. I wonder, is the pavement harder here in Austin? Do they use a different material than in Minneapolis? We talked as we ran but I can’t remember the conversation. Maybe something about the start of the Chauvin trial? I can’t wait until it’s over; I hope it ends with justice.
Nearing the end of my Emily Dickinson month. I am deeply grateful that I decided, almost on a whim, to spend a month with her words and her life. Today’s poem comes from “the Essential Emily Dickinson,” selected and with an introduction by Joyce Carol Oates:
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind—/ Emily Dickinson
I felt a Cleaving in my Mind— As if my Brain had Split— I tried to match it—Seam by Seam— But could not make them fit.
The thought behind I strove to bind Unto the thought before— But Sequence ravelled out of Reach Like Balls—upon a Floor.
Wow, this poem. Her descriptions of coming undone, physically and mentally, are incredibly powerful. I want to memorize this one.
note from march 31st: I found a brief analysis of this poem and they suggested that the balls in the last line are balls of yarn. Very helpful. Why didn’t I think of that? Not sure, but it totally works with the ravelled of the previous line. Ravelled can mean frayed or unraveled or pulled apart/undone.
A short run to test out the knees and the back. Not too bad. Inspired by a video of my niece singing “Dr. Horrible” this morning, I listened to it while I ran. It made me smile. I find listening to music often makes it easier to get a first or second layer runner’s high (as opposed to Jaime Quatro’s third layer of running as prayer). Listening to music, I didn’t hear anything else. No birds or conversations or beeping trucks or clicking bike wheels. No shshshushing of my feet on the sandy grit. No in and out of my breath.
The morns are meeker than they were— The nuts are getting brown— The berry’s cheek is plumper— The Rose is out of town.
The Maple wears a gayer scarf— The field a scarlet gown— Lest I should be old fashioned I’ll put a trinket on.
I think I’ll add this poem to my collection of fall poems to recite as I walk and run by the gorge in October. I love the line, “The Rose is out of town.” And I enjoy PB’s analysis of the poem:
…it’s a wonderfully female world. I like that for while Spring is usually linked to feminine procreation and blossoming, I tend to think of Autumn as male. It is a brooding time; harvest always leaves behind empty vines. It is “mankind” who harvests Mother Nature’s bounty, and this provides a rather masculine stance. But Dickinson goes all in for Autumn femaleness here. The only male presence are the brown nuts , and they are neatly paired with the plumping berries. Who knows – the Rose might have retired herself more out of propriety than dislike of the cold. Since she is gone the rest of the girls can have some fun. Maple and Field are getting dressed up and now so is the poet.
I wake up & it breaks my heart. I draw the blinds & the thrill of rain breaks my heart. I go outside. I ride the train, walk among the buildings, men in Monday suits. The flight of doves, the city of tents beneath the underpass, the huddled mass, old women hawking roses, & children all of them, break my heart. There’s a dream I have in which I love the world. I run from end to end like fingers through her hair. There are no borders, only wind. Like you, I was born. Like you, I was raised in the institution of dreaming. Hand on my heart. Hand on my stupid heart.
Love this. Thinking about this idea of “break my heart” like Mary Oliver’s use of it in her poem, Lead:
I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.
And, one more poem, or part of a poem. When I looked up “Meditations in an Emergency,” Frank O’Hara’s poem came up first. Here’s a part I especially liked:
However, I have never clogged myself with the praises of pastoral life, nor with nostalgia for an innocent past of perverted acts in pastures. No. One need never leave the confines of New York to get all the greenery one wishes—I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy, or a record store or some other sign that people do not totally regret life. It is more important to affirm the least sincere; the clouds get enough attention as it is and even they continue to pass. Do they know what they’re missing? Uh huh.
I wanted to run this morning, but my body and I decided that we should take another day off from it. For the last year, I’ve been running more frequently, almost every day. Mostly my body feels okay, but my back is a little sore and so are my knees. Instead of the run, I took Delia on a walk. For the first time this year, we left the paved path and descended the set of worn wooden steps that I wrote about in one of my haibuns:
6. Above the Ravine
Even now with the green glut gone, the bare bones of forest exposed, the ravine is hidden. Leave the paved path near the road and descend a set of worn wooden steps. Follow the remnants of a chainlink fence deeper to a grated walkway not quite above a seep of water slicking the metal slats. Stand still, listen up. Hear the water dribble out of the sewer pipe, over the limestone ledge, down to the river. Imagine that the painted keys, fastened with wire rings to the wrought iron fence in the summer of 2017, are still there, offering a way in.
Sometimes when you want to enter, all that’s needed is a key that fits.
Very cool. The steps were even more worn but the dirt was dry and so were the metal slats. I could hear the water trickling down to the forest floor. It was overcast, so no blue, only brown everywhere. As we ascended on the other side, I could hear the clickity-clacking of a roller skier! My first sighting this year. These skiers don’t waste any time switching from wood to wheels. I wonder, which they miss most: sliding on the snow when it’s summer, or rolling on the asphalt when it’s winter? I would imagine the snow, but who knows?
Emily Dickinson: Yellow
For as long as I can remember, green has been my favorite color and yellow my least. But lately–as in the last 3 or 4 years–I’ve grown to appreciate yellow. I keep intending to buy some yellow shoes or a yellow shirt or a yellow something. Maybe this spring I finally will? What does that have to do with Emily Dickinson and yellow? My poem for yesterday was “A lane of Yellow and the eye” and, after reading it and thinking about my new fondness for yellow, I decided to search for yellow poems over at the Prowling Bee. Here are 3 (“A lane…” and 2 more I found) that interested me:
A lane of Yellow led the eye Unto a Purple Wood Whose soft inhabitants to be Surpasses solitude If Bird the silence contradict Or flower presume to show In that low summer of the West Impossible to know –
I love this first line and how she describes the early evening (would you call this the gloaming or twilight?)–the purple woods, the quiet, the soft inhabitants, the sun setting as “the low summer of the West.” The “soft inhabitants” makes me think of how in dimmer light everything looks softer, fuzzier. I enjoy this in the winter, walking outside right before the sun sets, noticing how soft the tree branches look. Of course, because of my cone dystrophy, I have this dim view much more frequently than a normally sighted person. Often, all I see are soft inhabitants. Mostly, I don’t mind. I like this phrase–soft inhabitants. I think I’ll try to use it in my writing sometime instead of fuzzy forms.
I also like this image of someone at the edge of a wood (either standing at the edge, or peering into the wood from a window which is what I imagine ED might be doing) and wondering what’s in it, but not being able to tell. Here, the “impossible to know” is not a lament of someone on the outside, unable to enter, but an invitation to imagine what might be in there, a sense of delight in the mystery and possibility of it. I like running on the edge of the gorge, looking down into the thick trees, seeing a winding path, and wondering what/who could be in there that I can’t see. So many delightful, scary, interesting things!
ED writes frequently about circumference in her letters and poems. Is this an example of it?
Two: Yellow as excess (too bright, too cheerful, too much)
I dreaded that first Robin, so, But He is mastered, now, I’m accustomed to Him grown, He hurts a little, though—
I thought If I could only live Till that first Shout got by— Not all Pianos in the Woods Had power to mangle me—
I dared not meet the Daffodils— For fear their Yellow Gown Would pierce me with a fashion So foreign to my own—
I wished the Grass would hurry— So when ’twas time to see— He’d be too tall, the tallest one Could stretch to look at me—
I could not bear the Bees should come, I wished they’d stay away In those dim countries where they go, What word had they, for me?
They’re here, though; not a creature failed— No Blossom stayed away In gentle deference to me— The Queen of Calvary—
Each one salutes me, as he goes, And I, my childish Plumes, Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment Of their unthinking Drums –
In her discussion of it, the Prowling Bee understands the coming of spring as a metaphor for the passing of time and that ED is depressed by the inevitability of death, creeping closer with each new singing robin or bright daffodil or buzzing bee. This makes sense, especially with the last verse–the childish Plumes, bereaved acknowledgment, their unthinking Drums. What if we also thought of it literally? Maybe ED can’t bear the robin because their Shout hurts her head or the Yellow of the Daffodil is too bright for her eyes or the droning of the Bees is too relentless for her ears? Maybe she’s having a migraine or is overwhelmed by the too-muchness of spring? In the comments, someone wrote: “I think of this poem whenever my springtime allergies kick in. :)” Yes, I love how ED captures the feeling of being physically overwhelmed by the senses. As I work to find better words to describe my physical feelings, I appreciate ED’s ability to do it so well.
To interrupt His Yellow Plan The Sun does not allow Caprices of the Atmosphere — And even when the Snow
Heaves Balls of Specks, like Vicious Boy Directly in His Eye — Does not so much as turn His Head Busy with Majesty —
‘Tis His to stimulate the Earth — And magnetize the Sea — And bind Astronomy, in place, Yet Any passing by
Would deem Ourselves — the busier As the minutest Bee That rides — emits a Thunder — A Bomb — to justify —
I really appreciate PB’s (prowling bee) analysis here (and the comments by others too. Click on the poem to read all of it). Very helpful. I especially like her last bit about the Bee and her suggestion that ED is poking fun at Isaac Watt’s “Little Busy Bee”:
Now, as to Watts’ poem about the “Little Busy Bee”. The first two stanzas praise the bee who is industrious, skilful, and neat. Such attributes “Improve each shining hour”. The last two stanzas find the poet wanting to emulate the bee for two reasons: to lead a good life and to stay busy so that the Devil can’t make use of his ‘idle hands’. I imagine Dickinson reading this poem and finding it deeply ironic. Most of her countrymen were exposed to this poem. Many of them spent their childhoods “In books, or work, or healthful play” and later strove to be busy in ‘works of labor or of skill’. And yet rather than a society like the humming hive, they found no way out of their deep divisions except by busily building and employing the engines of war.
How doth the little busy bee Improve each shining hour, And gather honey all the day From every opening flower!
How skilfully she builds her cell! How neat she spreads the wax! And labors hard to store it well With the sweet food she makes.
In works of labor or of skill, I would be busy too; For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.
In books, or work, or healthful play, Let my first years be passed, That I may give for every day Some good account at last. Isaac Watts, 1715
Yes! Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the bullshit of busy work, which seems to be a lot of what work is these days. While Watts champions the busy work of bees, constantly contributing to the health of the hive, I wonder about the value of work now (which has made busy-ness and distraction an end in itself and that often doesn’t contribute to the greater health of the community)? What, in the 21st century in the midst of a global climate crisis and a pandemic that necessitates we do less, is work for? What is our work doing–to the world? to us? And, what work are we valuing most? Least?
Thinking about work in relation to religion and as a counter to Watt’s “idle hands do the devil’s work,” I’m reminded of David Naimon’s “Between the Covers” interview with Ross Gay:
DN: “What parts of my day, in relationship to the Earth, aren’t extractive on a species level versus relational and giving back?” It feels 99 to 1….I wonder about spiritual technologies that we used to use, like in its best form, the Sabbath where you’re not supposed to do anything that moves you forward in the world, you don’t exchange money, you don’t get in a car, you spend time with people you love, you attend to the moment with no sense of the future. It’s supposed to be this recreation of the Garden of Eden once a week but also, along with that, in the Bible, you were supposed to let the land rest every seven years….
Do we offer any meaningful space for rest now? (I don’t think so.) Why not?
Not sure if that totally makes sense, but I’m thinking about the limits and dangers of our understandings of work–who benefits from it, who is exploited by it, what does it produce/cause/contribute/harm? And, as we (in the US) live through this terrible time–ecological devastation, over half a million deaths from COVID-19, a divided nation, an unchecked/barely checked white supremacist capitalist patriarchy (see bell hooks for definition), suffering, extreme poverty, no safety net or support for the most vulnerable citizens–what has all our work achieved? I think this might come across as a little preachier and darker than I am intending. I am not trying to preach. Instead, I am struggling to make sense of my relationship to work and to contend with my extreme disappointment over how much we have been taught/encouraged/required to believe work = success and achievement, and how little that has prepared us to respond to our current crises in ways that are meaningful, caring, and reparative.
2.7 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/river road trail, south/edmund, north 41 degrees light rain
Sometimes dripping, sometimes drizzly, always windy. The rain wasn’t supposed to stop until 3 or 4, but when it looked like it was letting up a little, I decided to go for a run. A few other walkers, one runner with 2 dogs. Spent a lot of time dodging puddles on the sidewalk. Success. No wet socks. Ran through the tunnel of trees and, unlike yesterday when I felt as if I was buried in brown, today I noticed a slender slash of blue river. Why didn’t I see it yesterday? Must have been the light and the color of the river. Both yesterday and today I ran through the Welcoming Oaks; yesterday I remembered to greet them, today I forgot. I stopped at the split rail fence above the ravine and listened to the water rushing down the limestone and concrete ledges. I glanced down at the oak savanna as I ran above it, noticing the muddy trail at the bottom. Was planning to pay attention to one of my favorite spots, where the mesa slopes down to meet the Winchell trail and the river is revealed, but I was distracted by an approaching pedestrian. Stopped at the bench near Folwell–the one on the rutted dirt path that links two parts of the Winchell trail and that I wrote about in a haibun that didn’t make it into my Mississippi Gorge haibuns–and stared at the river, framed by a few bare branches. Crossed over the river road and the grassy boulevard and headed home, north on Edmund, running straight into the wind. As I neared the parking lot by the oak savanna, I saw some lights that looked like they were coming from somewhere on the bluff. I recalled how the road curves here, around a ravine, and that those lights were the headlights of cars on the river road. A strange, delightful sight.
I chanted a bit from the Emily Dickinson poem I’m reading today, ‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy!:
Life is but Life! And Death, but Death! Bliss is, but Bliss, and Breath but Breath!
‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy! If I should fail, what poverty! And yet, as poor as I, Have ventured all upon a throw! Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so – This side the Victory!
Life is but Life! And Death, but Death! Bliss is, but Bliss, and Breath but Breath! And if indeed I fail, At least, to know the worst, is sweet! Defeat means nothing but Defeat, No drearier, can befall!
And if I gain! Oh Gun at Sea! Oh Bells, that in the steeples be! At first, repeat it slow! For Heaven is a different thing, Conjectured, and waked sudden in – And might extinguish me!
I like the Prowling Bee’s introduction to her analysis of this poem:
Something big has happened and the reader is not given much of a clue as to the nature of the big thing. The poet has gambled everything – “ventured all upon a throw!” – and is in a state of ecstatic waiting. There are sixteen exclamation marks in eighteen lines and that is a lot of excitement.
Yes, that is a lot of excitement. For the rest of her analysis, the Prowling Bee (PB) speculates on what ED has done to cause such excitement. PB decides it has to do with love and cites the 3 mysterious letters ED wrote to “Master.” These letters come up in the book I’m listening to right now, Lives like Loaded Guns, and more obliquely in the show, Dickinson (I’m not sure because I haven’t watched these episodes yet, but I think that the show is suggesting that the newspaper editor Samuel Bowles is “Master”–will these letters be cited in any of the episodes? I’ll have to keep watching to find out.). Googling it, I found this great article from The Rumpus:
There is no evidence that the letters—written between 1858 and 1862 and discovered shortly after Dickinson’s death in 1886—were ever sent, although they may have been drafts of versions that were posted. No one knows to whom they were intended. Perhaps the Reverend Charles Wadsworth (they had a correspondence, none of which survives), or Samuel Bowles, the editor of a newspaper in Springfield and a family friend, or a professor named William Smith Clarke. Or perhaps they are not to a person at all, but to God. Or the Devil. For nearly twenty years I’ve taught Dickinson and the Master Letters in my early American literature course, always hoping to come closer to the source of the mystery. Instead, just the opposite has happened. The mystery has deepened. The more I study them, the more we hash them out in class, the longer the shadows grow and deepen over their meaning.
I like that scholars, even after decades of scrutiny, can’t quite figure ED out. Nice work ED! While I can appreciate being curious about this “dark mystery,” right now I don’t really care what she’s talking about here. I like the little chant about life and death, bliss and breath, and I might try to lean on it when I’m struggling during a run, or attempting to block out worrisome thoughts so I can fall asleep, or feeling panic over yet another sinus infection.
Both of my knees were feeling strange yesterday, not quite like the kneecap was slipping out but unstable and sore, so I didn’t run. I biked and watched another episode of Dickinson instead. Today, even though it was drizzling when I started, I ran. I started in the neighborhood but when I reached Edmund, about a mile in, I decided to cross over to the river. I was able to run on my favorite part, through the tunnel of trees, just above the floodplain forest. Wow! It was all a rich brown: bare branches and bare earth, hardly any sky, no river. In a few months, this same spot will be nothing but green. Both ways, it’s disorienting: now, with the brown, it almost feels like you’re buried in the earth; later, in the green, like you’re underwater in a green sea. I think I heard some birds, mostly cardinals. What I remember hearing most was the light rain hitting the brim of my baseball cap. For the last mile, I listened to my playlist.
Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice – I, just wear my Wings – And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I’m going, all along.
I appreciate ED’s connection between the sacred and nature here. My first chapbook was all about the sacred rituals of being upright and outside by the Mississippi River Gorge. (I’m not alone; many runners refer to their long runs on Sundays as the “church of the long run”). My exploration of this theme was as a non-church going ex-religion major with a master’s in theological ethics who finds tremendous value in the sacred, but not in organized religion and church services.
Right now, I just finished listening to a section in the ED biography, Lives as Loaded Guns, about the religious revival in Amherst in the mid 1800s and the pressure ED experienced to publicly declare her faith in Christ and become a full member of her church. She refused, even as all of her family and friends professed their faith. According to the author, Lyndall Gordon, ED’s friends, including Jane Humphrey (who plays a prominent, if slightly different, role inthe show Dickinson), are enlisted as spies to “report back” on what ED was thinking and doing and to try to persuade her to change her mind. I thought of this religious revival in the town and what an impact it had on Amherst as I watched an episode of Dickinson today and noticed that there were a surprisingly large number of ministers at the party/salon everyone (or, anyone who is anyone) was attending at Sue and Austin’s house. Several of these clergy were the dates/suitors of the popular girls. I’m fascinated and delighted by how the show brings in details like this without explicitly addressing them.
ED’s faith and her expressions/practices of and struggles with it are more complicated than this charming poem might suggest. I think I should read one of the classic biographies on ED, Roger Lundin’s Emily Dickinson and the Art of Belief.
Speaking of ED’s complicated relationship to religion and God and the church, I’ve been thinking about her poetic form and how she often used hymn form. Here’s some information from Common Questions on Emily Dickinson:
What kind of meter did Dickinson write in, and why did she use it?
Common Meter or Hymn Meter
Definition: A closed poetic quatrain, rhyming A B A B, in which iambic tetrameter alternate with iambic trimeter. Common meter is distinguished from ballad meter by its rhyme scheme: the rhyme scheme of ballad meter is X A X A.
Derivation: This meter derives from English hymnology and uses predominantly iambic or trochaic feet (sometimes dactylic).
Types
Common meter: alternately 8 and 6 syllables to the line: 8/6/8/6
Long meter: 8 syllables to the line 8/8/8/8 (this tends to get monotonous)
Short meter: two lines of 6 syllables, followed by one of 8, then one of 6: 6/6/8/6
Sevens and sixes: 7/6/7/6
Common particular meter: 8/8/6/8/8/6
Short particular meter: 6/6/8/6/6/8
Source: Isaac Watts’s Christian Psalmody, or, The Psalms. Watts always names the meter, and introductions set forth what effects may be achieved by each type.
Dickinson’s Use of Hymns
According to Martha England, her hymns differed from Watts’s in these ways:
greater use of enjambment
greater metrical freedom
use of more images with no scriptural source
Dickinson used the bee, a favorite symbol of Watts’s, as a defiant counter-emblem to his hymns. Her bees are irresponsible (138, 1343), enjoy la dolce vita (1627), and are pictured as seducers, traitors, buccaneers (81, 128, 134, 206, etc.).
Every poem composed before 1861 is fashioned in one of the hymn meters above.
Largest proportion in common meter.
Second largest proportion in common particular meter.
Note: If I’m counting and reciting correctly, this poem doesn’t fit the hymn form. Is that because it’s from 1861 and not before? I always need help hearing the meter in poetry. Here’s another source I might want to check out: Listening to Dickinson
bobolinks and surplices
Bobolinks are small songbirds with large, somewhat flat heads, short necks, and short tails. They are related to blackbirds and orioles, and they have a similar shaped, sharply pointed bill.
All About Birds
They are present in Minnesota but have been in serious decline for some time now. Why? Loss of habitat, pesticides on food supply suppressing appetite and causing them to not eat enough, and too many people and buildings to run into. After listening to the call and the song, I’m not sure if I heard one before. I’d probably remember because they kind of sound like R2D2. They like hanging out in grasslands, meadows, and prairies, and traveling in big flocks.
A surplice is “a loose white linen vestment varying from hip-length to calf-length, worn over a cassock by clergy, acolytes, and choristers at Christian church services.” As a Lutheran pastor, did my dad wear this? Not quite, I think. Maybe I’m just confused by how he would always wear a stole too? I’ve seen lots of these surplices on the British murder mystery shows I watch.
Here’s another, non-ED poem that I discovered yesterday. I love Maggie Smith and I love this poem, especially how she plays with and challenges the importance of naming and classifying things.
Goldenrod/ Maggie Smith
I’m no botanist. If you’re the color of sulfur and growing at the roadside, you’re goldenrod.
You don’t care what I call you, whatever you were born as. You don’t know your own name.
But driving near Peoria, the sky pink-orange, the sun bobbing at the horizon, I see everything
is what it is, exactly, in spite of the words I use: black cows, barns falling in on themselves, you.
Dear flowers born with a highway view, forgive me if I’ve mistaken you. Goldenrod,
whatever your name is, you are with your own kind. Look–the meadow is a mirror, full of you,
your reflection repeating. Whatever you are, I see you, wild yellow, and I would let you name me.
Scott and I ran the franklin loop this morning. First, we talked about The Dukes of Hazard and how Uncle Jessie was related to Beau and Luke, if at all, and how Daisy fit into it (Scott brought it up). Then we talked about realism and truth and postmodernism and academic street fights and the scientific method (my topic). A lot of fun. Not sure how much I remember about the run. Sometimes it’s nice to be completely distracted. I remember noticing the big lion sculptures on the front stoop of a big house by the river. A few trees leaning towards the road. The boat dock over at the rowing club. The row of gloves and one hat perched on the fence posts at the Town and Country club. Running through a lot of sandy grit and potholes on the edge of the river road. Smelling cigarette smoke. Feeling warm and overdressed. Hearing the bells at St. Thomas.
There is no Frigate like a Book (1286)/ EMILY DICKINSON
There is no Frigate like a Book To take us Lands away Nor any Coursers like a Page Of prancing Poetry – This Traverse may the poorest take Without oppress of Toll – How frugal is the Chariot That bears the Human Soul –
I think this would be a fun poem to memorize and always have at the ready when thinking about why I love reading. I remember when I first encountered the word frigate. It was from one of my son’s friends. I think they were both 11 or 12 at the time. They mentioned how fascinated they were by old warships, including frigates. Then they gave me a lecture on the different types of frigates. Strange.
So, reading this, I knew frigate, but I was unfamiliar with courser. According to the OED, it’s a swift horse. Something interesting: a frigate is “a light and swift vessel, originally built for rowing, afterwards for sailing,” which is what I think ED intends here, but it is also a war vessel, which is what FWA’s friend meant. A courser is a swift racing horse, but it is also “a powerful horse, ridden in battle.” Was ED thinking at all about the frigate or courser as images of war? That wouldn’t seem to fit with the overall meaning of the poem, but I just found it interesting that both of these figures have that double meaning. Oh–and the chariot too–that’s a “vehicle used in ancient warfare.”
I agree with ED’s sentiment here: reading is wonderful in its ability to transport us to other worlds, to learn about other places and people, to be moved by others’ stories. Reading does has its limits too, however. Yesterday morning I read a twitter thread about the problems with suggesting that white supremacy can be solved by just reading more widely about non-white experiences, that is, through reading, we can gain empathy and understanding, or reading = empathy = no more racism. As Lisa Ko (the thread starter) suggests, empathy is not enough to counter or correct state violence. I’m not bringing this up to challenge ED’s championing of reading and books; I just wanted to place another idea about reading beside it.
Speaking of reading, I just started Braiding Sweetgrass. Wow! Love it. Only a few pages in, and I already found this great bit about the Original Instructions:
These are not “instructions” like commandments, though, or rules; rather, they are like a compass: they provide an orientation but not a map. The work of living is creating that map for yourself.
Feeling more and more like spring. All the snow is gone, the sun is warm, the birds are singing even louder and longer. What I remember most about my run are the black-capped chickadees and their “fee-bee” song. Running on Edmund, between 32nd and 34th, I heard at least 2 of them calling out, not in a call and response, with one singing 2 ascending notes, the other 2 descending ones, but with both of them ascending, calling out to some other bird that wasn’t responding. Sometimes they were in sync, but sometimes they weren’t–a strange cacophony of fees and bees. About a mile later, I heard another chickadee calling out. No response.
When I reached 42nd st, I turned on my spotify playlist–“Ain’t Nobody,” “I feel for you,” and “Leave the Door Open”–and ran on the grass. It was tricky avoiding holes and not sinking into the soft, mushy grass. I love Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak’s “Leave the Door Open”–how it sounds, their voices, the playful lyrics, the message of consent and hope, the invitation to be open. Wonderful.
Oh–I can’t believe I almost forgot–the river! Just past the top of the hill on Edmund between 33rd and 34th, you can glimpse the river through the trees. Today it was on fire, glowing with a bright white light. Wow. Definitely dazzling. Seeing this bright light, I thought about the Emily Dickinson poem I’m studying and that I memorized before running: “We grow accustomed to the Dark.” The poem is about how we adjust to the dark when “light is put away,” both literally and metaphorically. For many, I’m sure, this poem suggests that the loss of light and the coming of the darkness is always unwelcome and tragic. But not necessarily for ED, and not for me. I had to stop at the top of the hill and record a thought into my phone: “sometimes the problem with light is not its loss, but its abundance.” Too much light is too dazzling, making it too difficult to see or understand what you’re seeing. I have difficulty when there’s a lack of light, but often just as much when there’s too much light. So, sometimes a lack of light is welcome, wanted, offering some rest for tired and overwhelmed eyes.
We grow accustomed to the Dark
After spending so much time yesterday reading other people’s words about ED’s “We grow accustomed to the dark,” I decided I wanted to spend some time today with her words. I started by memorizing the poem. Memorizing a poem always helps me to listen better to the words. Now (I started this section before I ran and am continuing it after I’m done), I’m typing up each stanza (from memory) and typing up my thoughts, most of which don’t offer insight but a way for me to work through my efforts to understand her words. I’m noticing how this effort sometimes involves forcing myself to move past what I think the words should mean or how they should sound and listen to what she is actually writing and doing with her words.
We grow accustomed to the Dark – When light is put away – As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp – To witness her Goodbye.
I like the word accustomed. From the OED:
Verb: “To make (a person or thing) familiar with or used to something; to familiarize, habituate.” Adjective: “In the habit of doing something; used to something.”
Yes! This reminds me of one of my preferred understandings of knowing–to become acquainted with. Not to Know or even to fully understand, but to adjust to, get used to. I like the connecting of this with habit and habitual practice.
I also like how she describes this: “When Light is put away.” Who is putting the light away? I don’t think she means God here. I like thinking about something/someone putting it away–a much different feel than if she had written: “when light has gone away.”
added later: Could she mean that she, ED, puts the light away? The Prowling Bee thinks so. Analyzing the stanza about the larger Darkness, she writes:
That unknown mental and spiritual domain is a “larger – Darkness.” That is where our great poets and philosophical explorers venture while the rest of us pursue our hobbies or just relax. Dickinson spends time in this darkness and most of her most evocative, ambiguous, and challenging poetry comes from there.
I keep wanting to make the final line, “To witness our Goodbye” instead of her goodbye, but I finally get that the Lamp is witnessing her goodbye to us, as we leave.
I love the idea of the Lamp/Light witnessing the Goodbye. A great image. And interesting to think about how in the second line the light is leaving us, but in the 4th line, we are leaving the light. Is that intended as an echo of the final stanza of the poem–either the darkness alters or something in the sight adjusts itself to midnight? Who is acting and who is acted upon? Yes (returning to this analysis later, after publishing this post), the idea of both the light leaving us and us leaving the light fits with my mention of the prowling bee and the idea of ED choosing to leave light and enter the darkness in order to explore deeper, more troubling, difficult and unknown ideas and themes.
A Moment – We uncertain step For newness of the night – Then – fit our Vision to the Dark – And meet to Road – erect –
The idea of a moment is great–a moment of panic and uncertainty before we’re able to see. As my central vision declines, I have a lot more of these moments: when I enter an unfamiliar building (or sometimes even a familiar one) and not much makes sense. I can’t read the signs or tell where to go. Or when I’m looking at an object but I can’t tell what it is–is it a dead squirrel or a clump of leaves or furry mittens? Most of the time, my brain eventually adjusts and I can see what I’m trying to look at and continue on with more certainty. I’m trying to work on not fearing that uncertain step, letting the moment just be a moment that I will move past, knowing that I will adjust or figure it out (or ask someone for help). And it’s working. I am getting better.
I find “We uncertain step” to be awkward, but I like how its awkwardness seems to effectively create uncertainty and discomfort in the reader–at least this reader, me.
Love the alliteration of newness of night and her descriptions of adjusting as fitting our Vision to the Dark and becoming more certain as meeting the road erect.
As I work through this poem, I’m realizing something (or, being reminded of something I know, but keep forgetting or straying from): It is very interesting to learn about ED’s life and the historical context of her work, and it’s helpful to see patterns and themes across the poems. Yet, what matters most to me are the actual poems and how effectively her words describe vision loss and resonate with my own experiences of it. Her words are opening a door, offering a way into understanding (and expressing that understanding) how vision loss and living with less vision feels.
And so of larger – Darkness – Those Evenings of the Brain – When not a Moon disclose a sign – Or Star – come out – within –
I like how she shifts to a metaphorical understanding of Darkness and then describes it as “those Evenings of the Brain.” I’m imagining she could mean depression (possibly hers, some suggest there’s evidence she was mildly bipolar or her mother’s) or hopelessness or sadness or turmoil or illness or uncertain/lack of understanding. She might even mean those times when she could not write, which fits well with the next lines about no signs being disclosed or stars coming out. And returning to the comments I’m just adding, this also means those darker, deeper, uncomfortable, troubling ideas/thoughts/themes that writers are willing to explore.
one more thing to add: I’m thinking about how most of my academic work and a big part of my current ethical project involves bewilderment and trouble and uncertainty and the value of dwelling in these uncomfortable spaces for us and learning how to be/to flourish. Because I’ve spent so much time thinking about these things, maybe it’s helped me to navigate my vision loss more effectively?
When I was reciting this poem from memory, I kept forgetting disclose. All I could think of was “display.” I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t remember disclose. Is it because “not a Moon disclose a sign” sounds awkward–“not a Moon disclosed a sign” sounds better to my ear, even if that changes the tense. Anyway, disclose is a much stronger, more precise, verb than display, so I’m hoping I can remember it now.
The bravest – grope a little – And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead – But as they learn to see –
I like grope even as I don’t. It fits well with the idea of struggling to find meaning in the dark, but it also conjures up creepy guys and their grabby hands.
Sometimes, when I’m running, I hit a tree. Not directly in my forehead, but with my elbow or hip. I like the funny image of people literally running into trees, especially hitting them directly in the Forehead, and I also like the metaphorical meaning of being stunned as they struggle to make sense of/adjust to (overcome?) the darkness.
I don’t like poems that try too hard to rhyme (which this doesn’t), and I like when lines rhyme or echo (which this does). Tree and see work well; it’s pleasing to the ear and helps keep the large idea/image of adjusting to darkness moving forward.
Either the Darkness alters – Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight – And Life steps almost straight.
It often feels, when you can finally make out shapes in a dark room, that the darkness has changed, become less dim, but it’s really your vision adjusting, with the help of your rod photoreceptor cells, your pupils widening to take in more light, and your brain, to that darkness.
Love this ending line about life stepping almost straight, especially the almost part.
Whew. I’m ready for a break now. What a joy to spend so much time with ED’s words! Yesterday, I felt frustrated, reading so much about the poem (when it was written, what it was in response to, how it fit into a larger understanding of ED as a poet) without actually reading the poem or thinking about the meaning of the poem.
a moment of sound
Sat on the deck with my daughter and Delia the dog, soaking in the warm sun. Very quiet. I can hear my daughter briefly sniffing like a dog and some kid at the end of the street calling out and a crow. Of course, after I turned off the recording, a cardinal started trilling–at least 10 times–repeatedly.
Almost all of the snow is gone. A few small mounds scattered across the grass, none on the sidewalk or the street. Spring snows are never that bad; you always know it will melt quickly. Overdressed today. I stopped near turkey hollow and awkwardly took off my pink jacket and tried to figure out the best way to wrap it around my waist–under or outside of my vest? Tried both. Inside was best. As always, heard lots of birds. Also, a few conversations–not the words, but the sound of people talking. The best part of the run was the river glittering in the sun. Big and bold flashes of light, blindingly bright, almost throbbing or pulsing, not the short sparkles that dance and flicker. Was this pulsing the result of more intense light or the wind? Probably the wind, even though I didn’t notice it that much, but felt the hot sun all the time. Normally this intense light would be too much for my eyes, but today I enjoyed it. As I headed back north during my last mile, I ran on the grassy boulevard. A little muddy, soft, rutted. Harder to move. My legs felt heavy and stuck.
Getting close to 3 weeks into my Emily Dickinson March project and I’m enjoying all that I’m learning about her and her work. At first, I only spent a few minutes reading and rereading the poem for the day, but slowly I’ve been spending more time with her words and words about her work. I want to make sure that most of my time is with her words, but it’s helpful to learn how other people understand her. I seem to struggle with understanding and interpreting imagery and metaphors and I can use the help. Will it ever get easier? Maybe. Today’s poem got me thinking about a lot of things:
We grow accustomed to the Dark – When light is put away – As when the Neighbor holds the Lamp To witness her Goodbye –
A Moment – We uncertain step For newness of the night – Then – fit our Vision to the Dark – And meet the Road – erect –
And so of larger – Darkness – Those Evenings of the Brain – When not a Moon disclose a sign – Or Star – come out – within –
The Bravest – grope a little – And sometimes hit a Tree Directly in the Forehead – But as they learn to see –
Either the Darkness alters – Or something in the sight Adjusts itself to Midnight – And Life steps almost straight.
I can’t help but read this in poem in relation to ED’s vision loss, and my own. The idea of growing accustomed to a loss of light, or a loss of sight, and then figuring out how to see/live again but differently, where “Life steps almost straight,” but not quite–slant for ED, sideways for me.
note: I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this poem today, and I’m a bit stuck. Too much to say. In the process of struggling to find words and formulate ideas, I found this excellent site and post about ED’s temporary vision loss in 1862. Very cool:
Barker argues that since light was a masculine tradition, ithad come to represent male power, energy, sexuality–not only to Dickinson but to other women writing during the era. To these writers the inversion of the light/darkness metaphor became a countertradition used as a means to express their energies in a society that was hostile to their intelligence. Dickinson, who read avidly, could not have been insensitive to this usage of light as a masculine symbol of her Calvinist God, of her father, of all that was male?and of darkness as a feminine symbol….
Emily Dickinson thought in a richly symbolic manner. Her most frequently used metaphor is one of light in contrast to darkness, employing single-word references to light more than one thousand times in her 1,775 poems.
Sitting on my deck, enjoying the warm sun, I heard the bells chiming from across the river in St. Paul at St. Thomas University. I looked at my watch and it was only 10:59. They were a minute early.
3.4 miles 43rd ave, north/31st st, east/edmund, south/42nd st, east/river road trail, north 34 degrees
Woke up to several inches of snow on Tuesday. Decided to skip the running and shovel and bike instead. Woke up again this morning to another dusting but noticed the sidewalks and roads were bare so I went for a run. What a run! Not too cold, but not too warm. Not much wind. Not too bright. No one else out. Did I see any other runners or walkers? Only one or two. I wasn’t planning to run on the river road trail but I remembered that a few days ago I had wondered what the river would look like after the snow, and when I saw that no one was on the trail, I decided to check it out. When I reached the river, I stopped to record my moment of sound. I stood closer to the river and admired the grayish-blue water with the white banks.
march 17, 2021
Listen to those birds! I also like the sound of the cars as they rush by–you can hear the water on the wheels, everything damp, slick.
Before heading north for the last mile, I put in a Spotify playlist and listened to 2 songs I recently added, both by Chaka Khan: “Ain’t Nobody” and “I Feel for You” Yes! So much fun to run right above the river with no one else there to avoid, just me and Chaka Khan and Melle Mel (he raps at the beginning and end of the song–I had to look that up.) Discovered that he was part of Grandmaster Flash and had rapped on “White Lines” the year before. Very cool.
Yesterday I spent a lot of time with Emily Dickinson. First, I finished an episode of Dickinson–in this one, Emily has writer’s block and is trying to decide whether or not publishing her poems is a good idea. Then, I read my ED poem for the day: My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun. After finding a podcast discussing it, and then reading a few articles about it, I decided this poem, considered to be the most complicated and richly layered of her poems, deserved 2 days. Well, it deserves much more than 2 days, but that’s what I’m giving it for this month with Emily Dickinson. Here are my thoughts from yesterday and today:
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun (764)/ EMILY DICKINSON
My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – In Corners – till a Day The Owner passed – identified – And carried Me away –
And now We roam in Sovreign Woods – And now We hunt the Doe – And every time I speak for Him The Mountains straight reply –
And do I smile, such cordial light Opon the Valley glow – It is as a Vesuvian face Had let it’s pleasure through –
And when at Night – Our good Day done – I guard My Master’s Head – ’Tis better than the Eider Duck’s Deep Pillow – to have shared –
To foe of His – I’m deadly foe – None stir the second time – On whom I lay a Yellow Eye – Or an emphatic Thumb –
Though I than He – may longer live He longer must – than I – For I have but the power to kill, Without – the power to die –
This poem has taken me down a rabbit hole of fascinating things about Emily Dickinson. The poem itself provides a lot to wonder about but I barely made it that far. I imagine I’ll want to reread this poem many times. My rabbit hole concerns ED’s process of gathering and preserving her poems and the importance of this poem for poet/scholar/historian Susan Howe. Here’s a few things I’ve discovered.
This poem is in a fascicle.
“Fascicle” is the name that Emily Dickinson’s early editor, Mabel Loomis Todd, gave to the homemade manuscript books into which Dickinson copied hundreds of poems, probably beginning in the late 1850s and continuing through the late 1860s. Dickinson constructed the fascicles by writing poems onto sheets of standard stationery already folded in two to create two leaves (four pages). She then stacked several such sheets on top of each other, stabbed two holes in the left margin through the stack, and threaded string through the holes and tied the sheets together. Occasionally she varied this basic pattern by binding half-sheets (cut along the fold) into the stack of folded sheets. “Set” is a term first used by editor R.W. Franklin to describe groups of unbound sheets of similar paper and size that were never bound by the poet. There are 40 fascicles, and 15 sets.
Dickinson herself did not number or label the fascicles. They were taken apart by the first editors of Dickinson’s poetry, and so have had to be reconstructed by various scholars. Within this site, we use the order established by R.W. Franklin, The Poems of Emily Dickinson (Cambridge: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998). Not all Dickinson scholars agree with his reconstruction.
It’s in fascicle 34. According to Susan Howe (in this speech that I was just listening to on the upenn site), there’s some discussion/debate over how ED gathered her poems into the fascicles. Were they chronological? Grouped by theme? And, if by theme, how closely connected were they? Howe seems to think that the connection is a loose one.
Howe makes this poem a primary focus of her book, My Emily Dickinson
I checked this book out from the library 3 or 4 years ago and tried to read it but it was too difficult for me then. I hadn’t read much of Dickinson’s poetry and had not yet studied poetry. Would it make more sense now?Here’s an excerpt I found online.
a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation
Emily Dickinson took the scraps from the separate “higher” female education many bright women of her time were increasingly resenting, combined them with voracious and “unladylike” outside reading, and used the combination. She built a new poetic form from her fractured sense of being eternally on inteIlectual borders, where confident masculine voices buzzed an alluring and inaccessible discourse, backward through history into aboriginal anagogy. Pulling pieces of geometry, geology, alchemy, philosophy, politics, biography, biology, mythology, and philology from alien territory, a “sheltered” woman audaciously invented a new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation. HESITATE from the Latin, meaning to stick. Stammer. To hold back in doubt, have difficulty speaking. “He may pause but he must not hesitate”-Ruskin. Hesitation circled back and surrounded everyone in that confident age of aggressive industrial expansion and brutal Empire building. Hesitation and Separation. The Civil War had split American in two. He might pause, She hesitated. Sexual, racial, and geographical separation are at the heart of Definition.
I really like this idea of hesitation and humility and aboriginal anagogy as a sharp contrast to progress, aggression, confidence/hubris, and time as always moving forwards (teleology). I tried to find a source that could explain exactly what Howe means by aboriginal anagogy but I couldn’t. I discovered that anagogy means mystical or a deeper religious sense and so, when I connect it to aboriginal, I’m thinking that she means that ED imbues pre-Industrial times (pre Progress!, where progress means trains and machines and cities and Empires and factories and plantations and the enslavement of groups of people and the increased mechanization of time and bodies and meaning and, importantly, grammar) with the sacred. Is that right? Is it clear what I’m saying? I think I need to buy Howe’s book and attempt a close reading. Yes, it’s available as an ebook!
More to read: see Adrienne Rich’s wonderful essay Vesuvius at Home.
The Loaded Gun is not a gun but ED’s dog Carlo?!
In On ED’s 754/764, Susan Stewart discusses how difficult this poem (known in the Thomas Johnson edition of Dickin- son’s work as number 754, and in the Ralph Franklin edition as number 764) is for critics/readers to understand. She suggests that none of the readings are ever complete or fully hang together. Then she adds her own unusual interpretation: the loaded gun is a dog, ED’s dog, Carlo.
What kind of being waits in corners to be carried away to a field where, released, his/her/its power is enacted? One answer is: a domesticated hunting dog.
Now Dickinson had a dog, Carlo, named after the pointer owned by the character St. John Rivers in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Dickinson’s Carlo was also a hunting dog—an enormous Newfoundland hound.
Of course, Stewart’s argument is more involved than simply, it’s about her dog. You can read the article for a deeper discussion. I’m fascinated with this suggestion–Carlo was her walking buddy, he was a hunter, he had a yellow eye, he slept at the foot of her bed and protected her. Rereading the poem, it’s hard not to imagine a dog now.
I’ll leave my exploration of the poem at that, for now. I enjoyed wading into some deeper waters with ED scholarship, and I learned a lot that I didn’t know. I am not interested in going too deep, though. I could (and used to regularly as an academic) get lost in tracking down more articles, more interpretations, analyzing every word and it’s symbolic, political, historical significance. That is too much of a distraction, a derailment. Too connected to my discipline days. I like learning a little and letting that enhance my wonder. Having said that, I am planning to buy My Emily Dickinson and dig into Howe’s dense analysis of ED’s new grammar. The goal: to not seek answers, but more connections and questions and evidence of how poetry moves and bewilders and astonishes me.
As an aside: For some time, I have been very interested in the US in the mid to late 1800s, pre and post Civil War. No serious study, mostly through fiction, some through my investigation of my great grandparent coming to the UP from Finland in the 1880s. I like having the chance to read/learn more about this time.
yesterday’s moment of sound
Walking with Delia yesterday afternoon was wonderful. Everything melting and dripping, so many birds singing. In the middle of this recording, the bird I was trying to identifying a week or so ago called out–the one that I thought sounded like the loon call they play at twins’ games. What is this bird? Maybe if I play it for Scott, he can identify it.
3.3 miles turkey hollow 30 degrees drizzling rain/sleet/ice mix
As I left the house, I could tell it was starting to rain or sleet or something but because I was bundled up–a shirt + hooded jacket + vest–I couldn’t feel it, so I decided to go for a run anyway. A benefit of running in this weather: no one else is out there. I was able to run above the river on the trail all the way to the ford bridge. My first time in 3 or 4 months running on the narrow pedestrian bridge and the steep walking trail that dips below the road then quickly climbs up. It almost felt like normal. When I reached the ford bridge, I crossed the road and ran through the grass at turkey hollow. The ground was soft and a little squishy. No turkeys today.
I know I glanced down at the river but I don’t remember what it looked like. I remember seeing the oak savanna and the white information sign at the bottom. I remember seeing the bench perched on the gorge, providing a wide open view of the other side. I remember the part of the Winchell trail between 42nd and 44th, steeply winding down below me. But I do not remember what the river looked like. It was probably gray–or was it brown? We’re supposed to get up to 5 inches of snow today. Will the river be white tomorrow?
It was windy today. I recall hearing a chickadee chick-a-dee-dee-deeing but not much else other than the howling wind. Most of the cars had their headlights on. No bikers. Only one or two solitary walkers. Heard the kids at recess, laughing and yelling at the school playground. Also heard the shshsh as my feet struck some sandy grit. And the gentle tapping of icy pellets (graupels) on my black vest. I only rarely felt the sting of one on my face. For a small stretch, I pulled the brim of my hat as far down as I could to shield my face. The last time I ran in these conditions was in October or November. I didn’t have a brim to protect my face and the graupels felt like little knives stabbing my cheeks.
a moment of sound
march 15, 2021
Super windy today but I managed to shield the phone microphone with my hand for most of it. I recorded this at the end of my run as I walked home. I can hear my feet shuffling on the grit on the sidewalk and then some wind chimes. I decided to cross the street to get closer. I love wind chimes. These chimes are hanging close to a giant fir tree. I can hear them chiming as the wind rushes through the tree.
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – And Breaths were gathering firm For that last Onset – when the King Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away What portion of me be Assignable – and then it was There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz – Between the light – and me – And then the Windows failed – and then I could not see to see –
A few years ago, I found some articles discussing ED’s temporary vision loss in her 30s. I’m fascinated by how she references her temporary blindness in her poetry. In Emily Dickinson’s mystifying in-sight, the authors reflect on “I heard a fly buzz” and suggest that her words here, and in several other of her poems referencing the Eye and the dying Eye, provide remarkable insight into the physiological process of vision loss as one is dying.
Throughout her poetry chronicling the ophthalmic deterioration that occurs in death, Dickinson notes the changes that occur in the dying cornea and lens: glaze, dimness, fog, mists, film, cloudier. Her observations reflect what medical science currently understands as the alterations that occur within the eye during the process of death. We know that shortly after death the cornea and lens become edematous (swollen with fluid) and begin to lose their transparency.
As death approaches, gradually less oxygen-carrying blood is pumped by the failing heart, causing functional loss of the bodily organs. Seeing while dying should be possible until the retina and/or the occipital cortex of the brain, the final mediator of vision, becomes deprived of oxygen and loses its capability. The most metabolically active of all our tissues, the retina, for its operation, surpasses every other organ in relative blood flow and oxygen requirement.The loss of vision while dying should be sequential, greying occurring first as cones (the retinal mediators of color and probably more metabolically active than rods, the agents of black, white, and grey) lose function. Greys, therefore, persist through the retinal rods after loss of color perception occurs. Finally the rods, too, fail, and we are blind.
and
In the last cycle, eyesight fades to a blue, the retinal cones still working, but predominated by the buzz, uncertain, stumbling, as hearing also begins to fade. But, still, the hum is loud enough to go beyond and between her light as vision fades away faster than hearing. And then, as the retinal rods fail, sight exhausts itself and so “light” must fail to appear; we are left instead with “the Windows failed – ” as the bright sunlight at the window is eclipsed, and finally, all of seeing ends, concluding with an absolute and total black, rendered powerfully in the last line by the three “eyes”: “I…see…see.”
Vision disappears, as if one “I…see…see” is lost, then the other, and finally the last “I…see…see,” the very idea of sight is gone: “I could not see to see;” now the very understanding, the intellect of seeing on a cerebral level is gone; the cessation of blood flow to the brain has deprived it of oxygen. The brain can no longer function; it is dead, and the dying is over.
The Prowling Bee has nothing to say about ED’s vision loss or how her descriptions of dying accurately convey what happens to your vision as you die. I don’t what to reduce this poem to a discussion of vision and vision loss, but I find this idea that she is offering a medically accurate description of it to be very cool. I haven’t had much luck in finding many other articles about this, but I thought about it a lot. Last summer I memorized her “Before I got my eye put out” and spent some time reflecting on her vision as I ran.
Almost forgot to add this in: This morning I saw one of the more remarkable sunrises I’ve ever seen. The entire sky was lit up bright orange. It only lasted a minute or two. It made me wonder how many sunrises I’ve missed by getting up too late.
A quick run through the neighborhood on a windy afternoon. Ran around Cooper school and noticed the mounds of snow and wondered when they would melt away. Earlier in the week there was a chance we might get a few inches of snow tomorrow, but now it looks less likely. Good. I’m ready for spring this year and I’ve been enjoying the bare sidewalks and open grass. Listened to a playlist while I ran. First up was a song I’ve been randomly singing during this COVID year, not sure why: Freak-a-Zoid. Very nice. And long. It lasted for 3/4 of a mile at least. Anything else? Lots of people out, most of them walking dogs, a few kids biking.
a moment of sound
So windy! The neighbor’s scare rods are really spinning. I wonder how irritating they will be this summer?
I felt a Funeral, in my Brain, And Mourners to and fro Kept treading – treading – till it seemed That Sense was breaking through –
And when they all were seated, A Service, like a Drum – Kept beating – beating – till I thought My mind was going numb –
And then I heard them lift a Box And creak across my Soul With those same Boots of Lead, again, Then Space – began to toll,
As all the Heavens were a Bell, And Being, but an Ear, And I, and Silence, some strange Race, Wrecked, solitary, here –
And then a Plank in Reason, broke, And I dropped down, and down – And hit a World, at every plunge, And Finished knowing – then –
This is another one of ED’s most known poems. Some people think it’s an accurate description of a migraine, others a mental breakdown. A few people in the comments over at the prowling bee, suggested it was a transcendent, religious experience, another wondered if it had anything to do with the epilepsy that she might have had. I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it doesn’t seem pleasant but torturous. Rereading the comments, I’m fascinated by their discussion of the bell as a tool or practice within Buddhism to stop thinking and meditate on the sound of the bell. This focus enables one to pass through the planks/levels of reason and the rational Self. And, I love the lines about all the heavens as a Bell with being but an Ear. Very cool.
A wonderful morning. Sunny and mostly calm. Not too crowded. Started on the river road trail but as I encountered more people, I moved over to Edmund. I heard the black-capped chickadees singing their feebee song. Don’t remember much else. When I reached Hiawatha, I put in my headphones and listened to a spotify playlist. Experienced a slight runner’s high as I picked up the pace, the kind that makes me feel my smile all the way down to my toes. Sprinted the last block. I bet I looked strange.
Yesterday, I listened to a great podcast with the poet Paige Lewis. So much good stuff. I especially liked this:
And that’s what I kind of care about putting into poems. I want to learn things and I want to learn little snippets of facts and then I want to be able to share those facts with people. Or, if I see something, I want someone around so I can be like look at that thing that’s happening right now. It’s still happening, you have to look. Look what that fish is doing. Look what that flower is doing. I just want to be pointing. Like I just want to be, look at this thing. Look at this thing. Look at this thing. Which is why I’m really bad at writing essays because I’m just like look at what this guy is doing. And then look at this. And they’re like, why does it matter? I’m like, I don’t know, but look at it.
Just like look at these beautiful tiny things and what we can take from them is maybe sometimes just enjoyment and I don’t know that I have anything more intelligent to say about that thing and what it’s doing and what it reflects about anything about us as humans. But like just look at it.
I agree with Lewis that the enjoyment of noticing and sharing these beautiful tiny things is enough, but I also think that this practice, when repeated and turned into a habit, has an additional importance: it encourages us to care about and care for the world, to be invested in its continued flourishing and also our own. I was thinking about this earlier today as I worked on my “How to Be” project and gathered ideas for the knowledge section. What is knowing facts for? More than demonstrating how smart we are, knowing facts can connect us and astonish us and encourage us to care about more than ourselves and our individual survival.
random thought I remember: At some point during the run, I noticed the shadow of a bird on the sidewalk in front of me. I love seeing these shadows and knowing a bird is flying overhead without looking up to see it. This shadow is too vague and fuzzy to indicate what kind of bird it is; it’s just a bird. It reminded me of how sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk, which has a glass top (a top I recycled from an old IKEA coffee table), I see the reflection of a bird flying outside the window. It’s a quick flash of motion that I could miss if I wasn’t paying attention and if my peripheral vision had become heightened because of my central vision loss. Such a cool thing to see.
Have you got a Brook in your little heart, Where bashful flowers blow, And blushing birds go down to drink, And shadows tremble so—
And nobody knows, so still it flows, That any brook is there, And yet your little draught of life Is daily drunken there—
Why – look out for the little brook in March, When the rivers overflow, And the snows come hurrying from the hills, And the bridges often go—
And later, in August it may be, When the meadows parching lie, Beware, lest this little brook of life, Some burning noon go dry!
The Prowling Bee doesn’t like this poem with it’s “lazy” rhymes (flipping the sentence order to create the rhyme, ex: “so still it flows”) and the idea of such a “little” brook, as opposed to some more robust form of water like a river. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I like the quiet brook that doesn’t announce itself to the world, it’s just there doing its thing–helping the flowers and the birds and the shadows. What if it were a stream instead? Decided to google it. Favorite answer was by a naturalist, responding to the question, what’s the difference between a stream, a creek, and a river?:
So, we enter into the somewhat nebulus topic of stream classification.
Consulting a few sources, the common term for all downhill flowing ribbons of water is stream. They’re all streams. Streams are classified, not by width, depth or length, but by a system known as stream ordering. The common terms are quite subjective depending on region and local history.
First order streams: the smallest streams that have no tributaries. We could call these brooks or rivulets. Little streams that you can hop across and not get wet. (GPD example: Pebble Brook in The West Woods)
Second order streams: result from the merging of two first order streams. Often designated as creeks, these small streams require a bridge, stepping stones or wading to cross. (GPD examples: Big Creek, Swine Creek, Silver Creek)
Third order streams: larger streams formed from the merger of two second order streams or creeks if you will. Streams that would have to be bridged, waded or even swam across. Referred to as branches in the headwater regions of watersheds. (Geauga examples: East Branch and Aurora Branches of the Chagrin River, East and West Branches of the Cuyahoga River)
Fourth order: streams formed by the merging of two third order streams. These streams would qualify as rivers, requiring big bridges, boats or swimming to cross.
I find brooks interesting as a first order stream because they have no connection to other sources of water, no tributaries. They also don’t cause much of a fuss–you don’t need a bridge for them and you should be able to hop across them without getting wet. How do these first order streams come to be? Where does the water come from?
Another interesting thing about brooks: as a verb, the word means to use, tolerate, find agreeable. I don’t like the word tolerate or this understanding of a body of water disconnected from everything else, so I guess I don’t want to have a little brook in my heart. It doesn’t sound as pretty, but I think I’d prefer a creek–but not a crick!
a moment of sound
After my run, I sat on the deck and enjoyed the sun and the quiet. Here’s how that sounded:
*With a little bit of meandering. Before reaching the river road, I ran up 43rd ave then over to 31st st, then lake street, then the river road trail
Great weather for a run! Sunny, not too much wind, not too warm or too cold. I was able to run beside the river and above the rowing club. I don’t remember what the river looked like, but I remember it felt open and vast and wonderful. Heard lots of birds and a woman cheering a runner on as he made his way down the hill below the lake street bridge, the two of them laughing together. Did they know each other, or was she just friendly? Saw lots of lovely lonely benches with enticing views to the other side–I thought about stopping once, but didn’t. Noticed that the white bike hanging from the trestle, put there to remember the biker who has hit and killed at the intersection many years ago, was missing a front wheel. Has this always been the case? Heard a siren that sounded like the drumming of a woodpecker at first. Encountered a few groups of walkers, at least one group of runners, no bikers or roller skiers.
Surfaces I Ran on:
sidewalk
street
uneven grass
dead leaves
packed down dirt
gritty edges of the boulevard
As I ran, I recited my Emily Dickinson poem of the day: “Hope” is the thing with feathers” One of her most famous. Delightful and fun to recite as I ran.
“Hope” is the thing with feathers — That perches in the soul — And sings the tune without the words — And never stops — at all –
And sweetest — in the gale — is heard — And sore must be the storm — That could abash the little Bird — That kept so many warm —
I’ve heard it in the chillest land — And on the strangest sea — Yet, never in Extremity, It asked a crumb — of Me.
Favorite word today: abash. When I was first memorizing it, I thought it was strongest not strangest sea. Can’t decide which I like better. When I finished running, I recited it into my phone. I got it mostly right, but missed several small words– so instead of and, but instead of yet.
“Hope” is a thing with feathers
a moment of sound
Forgot, for the first time, to record my moment of sound yesterday. I think it was because it was windy and I didn’t want to record more wind–I have lots of that. Anyway, I recorded this moment right after I finished my 4 mile run. As the birds chatter away, you can hear a few of my heavy breaths as I try to recover.
2.8 miles river road trail, south/Winchell trail, south/edmund, north 44 degrees drizzle
Decided to go out for a quick run before the rain started. I made it out the door when it was dry but by mile 2 it was raining. Starting in the rain can be miserable, but if you’re already running, it’s difficult to feel the rain. Because of the weather, I was able to run on the trail without encountering too many people. Oh, the river, looking beautifully pale blue in the gloom. When I reached 42nd st, I took the trail down to a spot right above the ravine and recorded the water rushing down the rocks as my moment of sound.
march 10, 2021
Very cool. Instead of heading back up to the road, I decided to keep running on the Winchell trail. At this point, close to the southern start of the trail, it’s steep and uneven and right on the edge. What an unanticipated delight to be this much closer to the river–nothing but air and the bluff between us. (Sitting here, writing this entry in the front room, I just heard a long, loud boom–thunder!)
Anything else I remember from the run? I noticed a lot of headlights, bright and cutting through the gray sky. Another runner also cutting through the gloom, wearing a bright yellow shirt. Saw some people walking their dogs–one guy called out a greeting to me. I think he said “Go Twins!” because I was wearing a Twins baseball cap, but I’m not sure. Heard a young kid and an adult below me in the oak savanna. Noticed all the snow collected on the trail at the foot of the mesa. Heard some kids on the playground at the lower campus of Minnehaha Academy. For the last mile of my run, I put in my headphones and listened to a playlist.
It was great to be out by the gorge in-between rain showers, hearing the rushing water and how it sometimes drips, sometimes gushes down the bluff to the river. I spent the morning working on my “How to Sink” poem and thinking about water and what it does as it travels through the soil and layers of sediment, powered by gravity. Writing this, I suddenly thought about gravity and weight and how it forces water through cracks and then I thought about the homonym for weight, wait, and patience, and how my preferred form of sinking is a slow, gradual sliding down that takes a long time. And also how the weight of gravity forces water down through the layers, but so does the persistence of time. Cool–I’d like to add that in somehow. Here’s a new draft of my poem. Still not there, but getting closer, I hope.
Try to recall when your son young and upset turns to jelly and oozes off the sofa in
surrender he’s not giving in but giving up control a puddle of parts pooled at your feet
learn to retreat like this let your bones dissolve legs liquefy gravity win seep deep be- neath
layers of loam sandstone limestone shale drop lower and lower and lower fall
between cracks fit through fissures carve out a door take it so far in that out is another idea.*
Begin with 20 seconds from a song that is not happy birthday sing while you scour the
surface of your dread scrub off each layer watch as they drip down the drain on their way to the gorge.
*idea is one extra syllable, which is irritating to me, but so far, I can’t figure out a way around it.
Maybe I could add the weight/wait bit in after the line about falling? Also, I like having the washing your hands at the end of the poem, as the start of this need to sink/retreat/shelter inside (because of the pandemic), but I think I might need a little more transition to it. Is it too jarring, coming right after the bit about out being another idea?
Crumbling is not an instant’s Act A fundamental pause Dilapidation’s processes Are organized Decays —
‘Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul A Cuticle of Dust A Borer in the Axis An Elemental Rust —
Ruin is formal — Devil’s work Consecutive and slow — Fail in an instant, no man did Slipping — is Crashe’s law —
I really like this poem–it fits well with all of my thinking today about erosion and water dripping down. Gradual decay, a slow repeated slipping. I love the rhyme of a cuticle of Dust with an elemental Rust. A Borer in the Axis is strange to me. A mechanical (metal?) axis combined with a worm that bores into wood? I like bore as a verb–it might fit in my poem.
Today I was able to run in shorts and above the gorge and on the snow-less walking trail and all the way down to turkey hollow. Hooray! It was windy and there were people all around, but I kept my distance and believed that if I was running directly into the wind on the way there, it would help me along on the way back. It did. Lots of birds singing. I recall hearing several robins but no black capped-chickadees. No woodpeckers. I know I glanced down at the river and I remember hoping I’d see some rowers, but I don’t remember what the river looked like. Was it blue or gray or brown? The river road was filled with a steady stream of cars.
I recited the first two stanzas of the Emily Dickinson poem I’m studying for today. I’m not memorizing every poem I read, but I decided these two stanzas would be fun to chant as I ran. They were.
A Bird, came down the Walk – He did not know I saw – He bit an Angle Worm in halves And ate the fellow, raw,
And then, he drank a Dew From a convenient Grass – And then hopped sidewise to the Wall To let a Beetle pass –
He glanced with rapid eyes, That hurried all abroad – They looked like frightened Beads, I thought, He stirred his Velvet Head. –
Like one in danger, Cautious, I offered him a Crumb, And he unrolled his feathers, And rowed him softer Home –
Than Oars divide the Ocean, Too silver for a seam, Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, Leap, plashless as they swim.
A delightful poem. I enjoyed reading the prowling Bee’s analysis and thinking about the imagery, especially the bird flying through the sky as water:
The watching poet then offers him a bit of bread but this is too much. The bird flies away. Except that this isn’t the end of the poem as Dickinson sees it. In one of those reversals of sky and sea (for example, “This—is the land—the sunset washes” – F297), the bird “unrolled his feathers” as if he were changing from an earthbound thing to a heavenly creature, and then “rowed” himself more softly “Home” than the act of rowing on the ocean. The oars’ action, like the bird’s wing, are so small and “silver” in the expanse of water and sky, that they don’t even leave a “seam” behind to show they once moved through that space.
I love the idea of sky as water and imagine it often as I look up at the sky by the river or the lake. As I was chanting this poem mid-run, and enjoying being with the little bird, the worm, and the beetle, I thought about how wonderful poetry is. You can enjoy it many different levels: how it sounds, the worlds it conjures up, the meanings behind its images. You can spend time closely scrutinizing what the beetle or the worm means, how ED might be inserting herself in the poem, and what she’s suggesting about her world, but you don’t have to to find meaning and delight. Much more accessible than other forms of writing. One more thing: I discovered that plashless is a word and that it basically means without a splash or splash-less. Maybe I’ll use it on Scott and when he tries to correct me I can smugly say, “No, I mean plashless. It’s word too.”
How to Sink
Earlier this morning, I worked some more on revising my poem. I’ve decided to use a modified cinquain form. In my “how to float” poem I used Adelaide Crapsey’s 2-4-6-8-2 pattern to evoke floating and lifting. In “how to sink,” I’ll use almost the same number of total syllables for each cinquain (23 instead of 22), but switch them around to mimic falling and narrowing, sinking: 8-7-4-3-1. Here’s what I have so far:
Begin with 20 seconds from a song that is not happy birthday sing while you scour the
surface of your dread scrub off each layer watch as they drip down the drain on their way to the gorge.
Recall when your son young upset turned to jelly and oozed off the sofa in surrender a
puddle of body parts pooled at your feet learn to retreat like this feel your bones dissolve your legs
liquefy gravity win reach ground seep deep through layers of loam sandstone shale drop
lower and lower and lower fall between cracks carve out ways in follow them so far in out
is another idea
How to Float has 10 cinquains. I want to mirror that in this poem. So far, I am just starting the 7th. Lots of meaning of sink: 1. sink as a place to wash your hands and an early symbol of the pandemic, 2. as a place where water collects (puddle of body parts), 3. as drain, sewer pipe (the dread dripping down to the gorge), 4. being swallowed up, lost (seeping deep), 5. falling down. Time to look up more definitions.
a moment of sound
8 am from the deck: the persistent hum of the city and the birds chatter
3.25 miles edmund loop, starting north 47 degrees wind: 1 mph
Wow, what a morning! Sun, barely any wind, a chorus of birds, clear streets, uncrowded sidewalks. I could only identify a few of the bird calls–black-capped chickadees, cardinals, crows, robins, woodpeckers–but I didn’t care. I thought about how naming the birds didn’t matter, only being among them did. As I ran up Edmund, I heard a song that sounded like a metal whistle and I thought about stopping to record it. I didn’t and as I neared it, it stopped.
When I turned around at Edmund, I decided to run back in the grass between the river road and the boulevard. Only a few squishy spots. It was nice to run on the softer ground, closer to the gorge. I couldn’t see the river, but I admired the other side. What a view, with all the branches bare.
Yesterday it was 60 degrees. Today, at 11, it’s already 51. Spring! It definitely sounded like it in my moment of sound:
Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.
We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –
We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring – We passed the Fields of Gazing Grain – We passed the Setting Sun –
Or rather – He passed Us – The Dews drew quivering and Chill – For only Gossamer, my Gown – My Tippet – only Tulle –
We paused before a House that seemed A Swelling of the Ground – The Roof was scarcely visible – The Cornice – in the Ground –
Since then – ’tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses’ Heads Were toward Eternity –
As always, I enjoyed The Prowling Bee’s discussion of this poem. In particular, I liked her mention in the comments of ED’s 3 images of life: the children playing = life; the gazing grain = the seasons; setting sun = the day. Very powerful and inspiring. I want to keep working on finding images that conjure even a little of what ED’s do. Prowling Bee also discusses how wonderful the phrase, “the fields of gazing grains.” Yes–fun to say and to think about the different meanings it suggests. And, at the end of her analysis, she describes how some think this is a perfect poem. The version of this poem I read on Poetry Foundation (see link in title) has audio too. Very helpful for me as I try to hear the poem without making it too metered.
sink, more thoughts
I’m revisiting my poem, “How to Sink” and trying to strengthen it, especially the imagery. I want to make it a companion to “How to Float.” Just looked up sink in the online OED and found some great definitions of it as a noun:
place where waste collects
pool or pit in the ground
conduit, drain, pipe
a basin used for washing
an amount that a sink would hold–a sink full of dishes
a low-lying area where flowing water occurs
a place where things are swallowed up or lost (absorbed?)
a lead weight used in fishing
depression or hollow
loss of altitude, especially in gliding flight
phrase: the sink of the body: organs of digestion
This poem was written during the earliest stages of the pandemic and is, at least partly, about the need to shelter-in-place and retreat, to hole up, to hide and be safe. During that time, there was a lot of talk about washing hands as a primary way to stay safe–could I bring in sink in this way? I’d like to.
3.2 miles 2 school loop 39 degrees wind: 12 mph/21 mph gusts
Ran a little earlier today, starting at 8:20. Still too crowded on the river road trail: bikes, dogs, people. I stayed on Edmund with the birds. I kept hearing a bird call that reminds me a little of the loon sound they play at twins games. What is this bird? (I’ve just been searching and listening to clips for the past few minutes; no luck yet.) Also heard some drumming woodpeckers, a metallic robin song, crows, geese, various warblers. The sun was out and I think I noticed my shadow a few times–or was that on my run 2 days ago? There was still some slick spots on the sidewalk; I watched as a walker slid across the concrete at the corner. I did that same thing yesterday on my long walk with Scott and Delia. We, me yesterday and this walker today, were both okay. Didn’t get to see the river this morning, but I admired it yesterday as we walked under the railroad trestle. There was a group of rowers out on the water! That’s a sure sign of spring. Maybe someday I’ll be one of those rowers? I’ve always wanted to try.
I’m revising a poem I wrote early on in the pandemic: How to Sink. Thinking about the idea of sinking down through the layers of the gorge, carving out a new way in, retreating. Not giving up but letting go, surrendering control. Is surrender too negative of a word? I don’t see sinking as bad or unwanted, but a welcome break, an opportunity to return to the source, regroup. I need to read up more on sinking and think about the different ways it works. Sinking is not falling, but something else. Settling? Seeping. Finding shelter. I remember now that I wrote some notes about sinking in my notebook and maybe in a log entry. I’ll have to find them (here’s a few: sink)
After great pain, a formal feeling comes – The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs – The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’ And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?
The Feet, mechanical, go round – A Wooden way Of Ground, or Air, or Ought – Regardless grown, A Quartz contentment, like a stone –
This is the Hour of Lead – Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow – First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –
Wow. After reading this poem a few times, I read The Prowling Bee’s analysis of it, which was helpful. Such powerful descriptions of 3 phases of grief: the chill/shock where nerves are still; then the daze/stupor of heavy, shuffling aimless feet; and then the letting go. And great words: the Hour of Lead. Tombs. Stiff. Wooden. Quartz contentment. Stone. Freezing.
a moment of sound: dogs
march 7, 2021
When a dog walks by, through the alley, the neighborhood dogs get excited. I am not bothered by their barking, probably because it only comes in random bursts. In fact, I love frantic dog barking. I find it delightful; sometimes I even encourage it, making sure to walk with Delia by the houses with the biggest, wildest barkers. You can also hear the scare rod–the metal spinning flashing rod our neighbors have hung to scare off woodpeckers–spinning in the wind. Unlike barking dogs, this noise irritates me. I am trying to get over myself because it’s a minor irritation and it seems to be working and I don’t want woodpeckers pecking at our neighbor’s house. Also, near the end of the recording, Delia growls at someone walking through the alley and the wind howls, tossing the tall pine tree on the next block to and fro.
march 6 recap
I took my first break from running in a month yesterday, but I still did my moment of sound and my Dickinson poem.
a moment of sound
Taking a long walk parallel to the river, I heard lots of wonderful things, including these wind chimes in a yard across from the Birchwood Cafe.
march 6, 2021
I’m Nobody! Who are you? (260)/Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886
I’m Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too? Then there’s a pair of us! Don’t tell! they’d advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one’s name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!
This is the first poem of Dickinson’s that I ever remember encountering. I think it was in junior high, way back in 1986 or 1987. I didn’t get the poem, but I liked the strangeness of it all. For decades, I have found myself randomly saying in my head, “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” sometimes I add: “Are you — Nobody — too?” And then an image of frog pops into my head. I agree with this idea: “How dreary — to be — Somebody!”
A whiteish gray day. Hardly any wind. Great for running. After driving on the river road yesterday with Scott and the kids and seeing the clear trail, I decided to run on it today. I didn’t do all of it–I entered the trail at lake street so I missed the welcoming oaks and the tunnel of trees–but the parts I did run on were wonderful. I have missed this trail.
I was able to run above the rowing club. The river is clear and blueish gray. There were other people on the trail, but I kept a lot of distance from them. And, I greeted the Daily Walker! Encountered a few dogs, a stroller. No fat tires or irritating squirrels. Didn’t hear any woodpeckers–did I hear any birds? I must have, but I don’t remember any. Ran over some grit and heard my favorite shuffling scratching sounds. Smelled some smoke somewhere but no burnt toast or bacon from longfellow grill.
Before I went on my run, I recorded myself reciting my Emily Dickinson poem for today: I measure every Grief I meet (561) I chose it because today would have been my mom’s 79th birthday. I woke up and watched a few digital videos I made with old footage of her–both created 8 or 9 years ago using footage from the 1980s, 90s, and the early 2000s. I miss her terribly, but I am not feeling especially sad today. As I was running, I was thinking about how part of me is grateful that she is not living now during this terrible time of tyrants, and selfishness, and deadly viruses. It would been very hard on her. I suppose the idea of her not having to endure this, gives me a little comfort, whether or not it fits with what she would have actually felt if she were alive.
I measure every Grief I meet (561)/ Emily Dickinson – 1830-1886
I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes – I wonder if It weighs like Mine – Or has an Easier size.
I wonder if They bore it long – Or did it just begin – I could not tell the Date of Mine – It feels so old a pain –
I wonder if it hurts to live – And if They have to try – And whether – could They choose between – It would not be – to die –
I note that Some – gone patient long – At length, renew their smile – An imitation of a Light That has so little Oil –
I wonder if when Years have piled – Some Thousands – on the Harm – That hurt them early – such a lapse Could give them any Balm –
Or would they go on aching still Through Centuries of Nerve – Enlightened to a larger Pain – In Contrast with the Love –
The Grieved – are many – I am told – There is the various Cause – Death – is but one – and comes but once – And only nails the eyes –
There’s Grief of Want – and grief of Cold – A sort they call “Despair” – There’s Banishment from native Eyes – In sight of Native Air –
And though I may not guess the kind – Correctly – yet to me A piercing Comfort it affords In passing Calvary –
To note the fashions – of the Cross – And how they’re mostly worn – Still fascinated to presume That Some – are like my own –
I wanted to hear how others have recited the stanza that begins, “I wonder if when Years have piled—” because it seems very awkward in terms of cadence and rhyme and following the meaning of the sentence. I listened to 3. One delivered that stanza awkwardly, the other 2 recited a different version that omits the prior stanza and then changes the words of the stanza to make it work: “I wonder if when years have piled/thousands on the cause/of early hurt — if such a lapse/would give them any pause” (this 3rd one is fun to listen to). Even though it is less awkward, I don’t like this change. ED wants awkwardness and lines that are slant and that disrupt, so why change her words to fit the conventional standards of the day (which is what I read was the reason for this change). I checked out my favorite ED commentator, The Prowling Bee, but she doesn’t discuss the altered stanza or the other version. Even so, her discussion is great and helpful, and extends into the comments. There’s a discussion about whether ED is personifying grief–meeting the various griefs as people, or if she’s meeting grievers who experience those griefs. Fascinating. She also talks about how distant and abstract ED’s expressions of grief are: the repeated mentioning of eyes signals an analytical and distanced scrutiny.
a moment of sound
This sounds like spring to me. Kids outside, dripping eaves, calling birds. Near the end of the recording, there’s a boom. It sounded louder in person–not sure what it was.
1.65 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/35th st, west 46 degrees
A short run outside in the afternoon sun. Very wet, with a few slick spots still remaining on the sidewalk. Felt like spring again today. I don’t remember much about the run. I didn’t see the river or hear any woodpeckers or smell any smoke. Encountered a few runners and walkers. No kids walking home from school. I did run by a school bus, idling in front of Minneaha Academy. Noticed lots of cars driving on the river road, enjoying the spring-like weather.
a moment of sound
march 4, 2021
Before my run, I took Delia the dog out for a walk. Near 7 oaks, I heard a wonderful bird song that I couldn’t identify. I took out my phone to record it, but it stopped before I could start. In this recording, I mostly hear the rustling of my coat as I walk, which is annoying. I also hear my feet striking the gritty, crunchy sidewalk, which is delightful.
There’s a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons – That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes –
Heavenly Hurt, it gives us – We can find no scar, But internal difference, Where the Meanings, are –
None may teach it – Any – ‘Tis the Seal Despair – An imperial affliction Sent us of the Air –
When it comes, the Landscape listens – Shadows – hold their breath – When it goes, ’tis like the Distance On the look of Death –
Winter’s slanted light is quickly leaving; during today’s run the sun was bright and overhead and warmed my face and back. Listened to 2 versions of this poem on youtube and both of them replaced heft with weight and Any with anything. Heft is much better, I think. My favorite line: the Landscape listens. I love the idea of a landscape listening.
Today it feels like spring is here even though there’s still some snow on the ground and ice on the sidewalk. So much sun and blue sky and birds! So little layers: one pair of running tights, a green long-sleeved shirt, a black vest. There were lots of people over on the river road trail. It seemed like a party–people calling out, laughing, joking. I would have liked to be on it, studying the ice breaking up on the river, but I was happy to be way over on Edmund, far from the crowd. I heard some black-capped chickadees and cardinals, some kids laughing on the playground at Dowling Elementary. For most of the run I succeeded in avoiding the deepest puddles, but near the end, I gave up. Now my shoes are drying in the sun on the back deck. I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran, except that the run felt difficult–I’ve been doing too much easy treadmill running, I guess. Anything else? Oh–on the road, in a spot that was dry, I was able to run over some grit. I love the sibilant scratching sounds–sh sh sh sh–and the feel of my foot striking the sliding, but not slipping, ground. A much better sound and feeling than sinking deep into a icy cold puddle!
I tie my Hat — I crease my Shawl — Life’s little duties do — precisely — As the very least Were infinite — to me —
I put new Blossoms in the Glass — And throw the old — away — I push a petal from my Gown That anchored there — I weigh The time ’twill be till six o’clock So much I have to do — And yet — existence — some way back — Stopped — struck — my ticking — through —
We cannot put Ourself away As a completed Man Or Woman — When the errand’s done We came to Flesh — upon — There may be — Miles on Miles of Nought — Of Action — sicker far — To simulate — is stinging work — To cover what we are From Science — and from Surgery — Too Telescopic eyes To bear on us unshaded — For their — sake — Not for Ours —
Therefore — we do life’s labor — Though life’s Reward — be done — With scrupulous exactness — To hold our Senses — on — F522 (1863) J443
I picked this poem, which I have never read before, because I’ve been thinking about daily life and the role of small habits and practices (and rituals). While I’m focusing on the positive value these daily habits and practices can bring, this poem highlights their stifling and meaningless drudgery. Dickinson focuses a lot on the “duties,” those daily efforts we are forced to perform in order to fill our proper roles. It reminds me of J Butler and her ideas about gender performativity and the daily, repeated practices we must do to properly perform our gender and be considered a “real” woman (tying the hat properly, wearing an unwrinkled dress). The lines, “To simulate — is stinging work—/To cover what we are/From Science—and from Surgery—Too Telescopic eyes/To bear on us unshaded—For their—sake—Not for Ours—” So many connections with feminist and queer theory: the difficulty of performing/repeating proper roles to fit in + the violent/invasive gaze of Science (that dissects and classifies) and medical understandings of the body (that reduce sex to male = penis = subject and woman = no penis = non-subject) + the medical gaze on the female body. What a powerful, pithy way to put it: “too telescopic eyes” and “bear on us unshaded.” Wow. I’m also struck by, “with scrupulous exactness.” It makes me think of my study (through Butler and Luce Irigary) of parody and mimicry and the idea of miming the practices but repeating them back slightly wrong or with too much excess in order to disrupt them.
I hadn’t intended to invoke Butler here, but I think it’s telling: much of my interest in daily practices as repeated habits is inspired by my dedicated study (and teaching of) Butler when I was a grad student and a professor. I’m not drawing upon her work in the same ways that I did a decade ago, but it is surely influencing how I think about daily practices, making and breaking habits, and being disciplined and undisciplined.
There’s so much more in this poem to think and write about, but I’m stopping now (The prowling bee has some great thoughts). Dickinson says so much so beautifully with so few words. I will want to spend more time with it.
a moment of sound
Sitting on the deck, in bright sun, no wind, post run, with Delia the dog. The irritating noises are me stretching and breathing and a loud plane flying overhead.
3.15 miles edmund loop, hearing north 39 degrees/ 26 mph gusts
Started the morning off with a COVID test and several firsts: first time in a public building (other than a rest area) since early March of 2020; first time spitting into a cup to fill it up to a black line; first time having a COVID test. It is highly unlikely that any of us have it, but because RJP had a slight fever and it was worrying her a lot, we decided to drive out to the airport to the testing site. It wasn’t difficult (well, maybe not for normal sighted people; I panicked a little when I couldn’t see signs or read the questions on my phone fast enough) and it felt safe. We might be back there in a month, if FWA decides he wants to go to in-person school for the end of his senior year.
It’s warmer and I wanted to run outside anyway, but I didn’t have a choice. The treadmill isn’t working. Scott thinks it might be the motor. Bummer. Very windy out there today, which made it hard. I also ran much faster than I do on the treadmill. Most of my run was spent feeling tired and wondering when I would be running with the wind at my back–not sure that ever happened. Heard at least one woodpecker. Dodged a bunch of puddles. Encountered runners and walkers. Didn’t see the river or any fat tires. Didn’t hear any geese or kids playing on the school playground. Didn’t smell any smoke. Felt overheated. Even so, I was happy to be out there and happy to be done with the test and happy to have RJP feeling better.
For the first 2 miles, I listened to the neighborhood, for the last mile, a playlist.
March is a month for Emily Dickinson
As I started typing this entry, I had a sudden thought: why not spend time with a different Emily Dickinson poem every day this month? Technically it’s the second so I’m starting this a day late, but I did spend some time with a Dickinson poem yesterday:
Dear March – Come in – How glad I am – I hoped for you before – Put down your Hat – You must have walked – How out of Breath you are – Dear March, how are you, and the Rest – Did you leave Nature well – Oh March, Come right upstairs with me – I have so much to tell –
I got your Letter, and the Birds – The Maples never knew that you were coming – I declare – how Red their Faces grew – But March, forgive me – And all those Hills you left for me to Hue – There was no Purple suitable – You took it all with you –
Who knocks? That April – Lock the Door – I will not be pursued – He stayed away a Year to call When I am occupied – But trifles look so trivial As soon as you have come
That blame is just as dear as Praise And Praise as mere as Blame –
I posted this poem a few years ago. I like imagining March as a friend coming to call after having been gone a long time. I also like the second verse and the rhyming of knew, grew, hue, you and then the return of the rhyme in the next verse with pursued.
If recollecting were forgetting, Then I remember not. And if forgetting, recollecting, How near I had forgot. And if to miss, were merry, And to mourn, were gay, How very blithe the fingers That gathered this, Today!
I’m not sure I would have thought of this, but someone in the comments on the site where this was posted mentioned that the flowers that were gathered in the last line of the poem must be forget-me-nots. I picked this poem because I’ve been thinking about the slipperiness between forgetting and remembering and how, as you get older, you do a lot of both. I wonder: is this poem just a clever way of expressing that it’s opposite day?
a moment of sound
march 2, 2021
Hard to hear over the rushing wind and the low drone of the city, but birds are singing and, near the end, wind chimes chiming.
Warmish but windy. I think I’ll stay inside. Trying to unclench my jaw this morning; too much stress over the abrupt total re-opening of the high school with very little plan or convincing argument for how this is safe and good for most of the teachers and students. It took about 20 minutes on the bike to relax. Watching a Dickinson episode helped. In this one, “Fame is a fickle food,” Emily is not a recluse, like she was in the last episode. (And, her vision is completely fine now. No more discussion of that traumatic event, I guess). She wants to win (and does) the baking contest at the county fair and has no problem leaving her room to attend the crowded fair, or to walk through town with a newspaper editor the next day. I especially enjoyed the goofy moments when Emily and her siblings got excited about going to the county fair.
After I finished biking, I started listening to another podcast with Ross Gay about his work. This one is with Parker Palmer (I recall reading one of his books for my pedagogy class) and Carrie Newcomer. I chose it because I thought they might talk more about Gay’s work in relation to religion/spirituality, something which was completely absent in other interviews I heard with him. So far, they haven’t, but I’m enjoying their discussion about the importance of practice. Gay mentions how he partly wrote The Book of Delights because he deeply needed practice in studying delight, and attending to what he loved. Yes! This made me think (and not for the first or second time) about how much of what I’ve been doing is practicing/developing practices around attending to what I love (and need). A few minutes later Parker Palmer mentioned how important being able to experience delight is for resisting those things (systems, structures, leaders) that strip away our delight in order to weaken/demoralize/depress us. This made me think of Aimee Nezhukumatathil and her suggestion, “Always let the wonder win,” which has become a constant goal for me–to strive for remembering and noticing the wonder, even in the midst of anxiety and anger and sadness and uncertainty over all of the terrible shit happening in the U.S.
My morning routine lately has been to get up, feed the dog, make some coffee, check Facebook, and then poets.org for the poem of the day. Today’s poem was especially wonderful.
The internal organs were growling According to them They did all of the work while Skin got all of the attention He’s an organ just like us They groused Even the heart, which, a Century ago, was the Queen Of metaphors, but now Was reduced to the greetings Cards section of CVS, Chimed in
They decided to call skin On the carpet. Skin arrived from Cannes Where he’d been the subject Of much fuss as actresses Fed him luxurious skin Food prepared by Max Factor Estée Lauder, L’Oreal, And Chanel They Caressed him daily Sometimes for hours before They made the red carpet Shine
He was petted And preened
Others Pleaded with him To erase wrinkles to Make them look younger To tighten their chins
Skin tried to appease the Critics, greeting them with His familiar “give me some skin” But his gesture went unheeded
Brain did all the talking Brain said, “Here’s the skinny Why do you get All of the press Your color Your texture discussed Endlessly Nicole Kidman never
Did an ad about us
Cole Porter never Wrote a song about us Nor were we mentioned In a Thornton Wilder novel You’ve given us no Skin in the game”
“What about the nasty Things they say about Me,” skin replied “What about skin deep For superficiality Or Skin trade To denote something Unsavory
How would you Like acne rashes Eczema
Boils Pellagra Leprosy And Conditions That astonish Even dermatologists
I wear my blemishes In public while you guys Hide yours”
“Without me and heart You’d be nothing,” the brain said “That’s not true,” protested The liver, “without me he’d Be nothing” “No,” the kidney said “It’s me who keeps the Body functioning” The bladder and The kidney began To quarrel with Gallbladder The lung twins spoke Up “Without us He couldn’t breathe” Even the esophagus And the thyroid And the pancreas Joined the outbreak “What about us?”
The eyes said “Without eyes you Can’t see”
Their squabble distracted Them When they looked Up from their dust up Skin’s Helicopter was up He was scheduled to Address a convention of Plastic surgeons at The Beverly Hills Hotel Escaping by the skin Of his teeth His opponents gave Chase But above the roar Of the chopper They heard him say “Don’t worry fellas I got you covered”
2.65 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, north/1 loop around Howe 27 degrees 50% sloppy snow-covered
Even though I was concerned that there might be too many people outside, I decided to go for a run. The first mile wasn’t too bad but when I got to Edmund there were more people. Distracted, I forgot to look for the river when I reached the top of the Edmund hill. Noticed a family sledding and several dogs with their humans. When I reached 37th, I stopped to record my moment of sound.
a moment of sound
Listen to those birds! Sounds like spring to me. So glad I went outside.
feb 21, 2021
After that, I turned on a playlist and tried not to slip on the mushy, uneven snow. Yuck! Then I ran around Howe school. Student (3rd-5th graders) are returning tomorrow.
The other day, I found this print, which would be really cool to get for under the glass on my desk, but I’m not sure I want to spend $30 on it.
To open a door, you must want to leave. A here, a there. You must want. Stuff pink hyacinths in the dictionary between “lie” and “lightning,” the wet stem of spring curling the pages until it is not a flower but just the word for it. We all die but the hope is to die of living. Slam it hard enough to make the sidewalk hum the way your blood hummed the first time you walked into the sea. A door is just a question you have to ask even when you are scared of the answer. In San Sebastián they pour the txakoli from high up until it foams in the glass. Sea, grapes, the word for longing. Use both hands and don’t look back.
Love the lines: “To open a door, you must want to leave./ A here, a there, You must want.” and “A door is just a question you have to ask/ even when you are scared of the answer.”
3 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, north/2 loops around Howe 12 degrees/ feels like 12 100% snow-covered
Now this weather is more like it! I don’t mind 12 degrees at all. No part of me felt cold. No frozen fingers; by the 1/2 mile mark, they were warm and I had to take off my second pair of gloves (the hot pink ones with white stripes). Heard lots of birds. Chickadees, robins, cardinals, crows. I think I heard at least one woodpecker.
The road and the sidewalks were covered with about an inch of snow. Where people had shoveled, the path was firm and easy. Where they had not, it was loose and uneven and slippery–not making me slip, but making my legs work harder to lift my feet off of the ground. I probably should have worn my yaktrax but if I had, I wouldn’t have been able to hear the delightful 2 part creak of my feet striking the snow then lifting off of it. I love those sounds. Still, those sounds could only do so much to counter the difficulty of trudging through uneven snow that slips and shifts, providing no purchase. Was planning to run all the way to 42nd but Edmund had too many slippery, slushy ruts. So I turned early and headed for Howe Elementary. Around the school, the sidewalk was shoveled and nice to run on. So nice, I ran around the school twice.
Heard some adults–teachers? staff?–talking outside of the main entrance to Howe. 3rd-5th graders head back on Monday. Governor Walz announced yesterday that middle and high schools will be opening soon too–probably (hopefully not until) after spring break in mid-April. So sudden. Is it safe? I doubt it; I think people are just too tired of it all and can’t isolate anymore. I worry about the next few months–with so many variants, are we opening too soon? Yes, I think.
a moment of sound
When I came downstairs this morning with Delia the dog for our daily routine–she wakes me up, I feed her, then she goes outside to poop, I heard a black-capped chickadee calling out. Then a faint answer. I decided to make this my moment of sound. At the end, you can hear Delia rush in, then make her favorite sound (the one that almost always unsettles me): a vigorous shaking of her head.
feb 18, 2021
Yesterday, when I told Scott that the Dickinson episode I watched was about the total eclipse, he asked, “Was there an eclipse they could see in Amherst in the 1800s?” After explaining to him that some of what happens in the show is imagined, but most of it is based on some evidence, even if they play fast and loose with when things happened, I looked it up. No eclipse at the time in which the show is set–the 1850s, but Brain Pickings, with the help of data from NASA(!), determined one total eclipse did happen while Emily was alive, on September 29, 1875. Emily would have been a few months shy of 45. This viewing may have prompted this eclipse poem, which she included in a letter to her mentor, Thomas Wentworth Higginson:
It sounded as if the streets were running — And then — the streets stood still — Eclipse was all we could see at the Window And Awe — was all we could feel.
By and by — the boldest stole out of his Covert To see if Time was there — Nature was in her Opal Apron — Mixing fresher Air.
Another interesting thing this quick research unearthed: Emily Dickinson’s first posthumous editor, the one that removed all of Emily’s dashes–wrote a book about eclipses, The Total Eclipse of the Sun. And this book was published the same year as she published the first volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. And, she was the long-time lover of Emily’s older brother Austin. added, 18 feb 2025: And from what I read a few years ago in Lives Like Loaded Guns, Mabel Loomis Todd was terrible. Team Sue, all the way!
bike: 30 minutes run: 3.25 miles basement outside temp: -3 degrees/ feels like -11
Thought about running outside but decided that this extra cold air is probably not good for my sinus problems. Plus, I wanted to watch more Dickinson and listen to my latest playlist while I ran. Watched the 5th episode of Dickinson. Discovered that an episode is only 30 minutes–for some reason, I thought they were longer–so I stayed on the bike to finish it. The episode was about white propertied males’ control over others’ (everyone else who is not a white propertied male) bodies. 3 examples: 1. the Dickinson’s black servant Henry is afraid to go into town for fear of being mistaken for a slave and then kidnapped; 2. orphaned Sue (Emily’s bff) is being sexually abused by her boss–the father she nannies for in Boston (it never shows it, but it strongly indicates the abuse); and 3. instead of asking Emily, Emily’s admirer George negotiates with Emily’s father for her hand in marriage. These different types of control are not equated. At the end of the episode, Emily apologizes to Henry for how he was being treated, saying, “I’m sorry Henry. Life shouldn’t be like this.” Henry responds: “What should it be like? You’re sitting here, eating cakes and reading Shakespeare, trying to say this isn’t what life should be like. But your life is easy Emily Dickinson. You’ll always have your father to keep you safe.” The episode ends with Emily composing one of her poems in her bedroom with a voice-over of her reading it and the words, in her distinctive cursive, flashing across the screen:
I am afraid to own a body/ Emily Dickinson
I am afraid to own a Body — I am afraid to own a Soul — Profound — precarious Property — Possession, not optional —
Double Estate — entailed at pleasure Upon an unsuspecting Heir — Duke in a moment of Deathlessness And God, for a Frontier.
I liked the complications and messiness of the episode even as I was irritated by Emily’s repeated displays of her naive privilege (which was finally addressed at the end with Henry’s words to her).
After biking, I ran to a playlist, which was great. After hearing it this morning on The Current’s coffee break, I added “Teenage Dirtbag” to my list. Really fun to run to! Midway through my run, I started thinking about my syllabi project. I decided that I’d like to add in Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Erotic” with a unit on wonder and joy. Then I thought about using Simone Weil with a discussion of attention. I thought about some other related things that I can’t remember now–I should have pulled out my phone to make a note, but it seemed like too much of a hassle. Bummer.
a moment of sound
feb 11, 2021/ -2 and feels like -14
Noisy pants, crunching snow, plodding steps, at least one faint bird call, and wind chimes! Scott was miserably cold but I was totally fine as we walked Delia around the block in the late afternoon. I love the cold! My mask warmed my face. The only exposed part of me were my eyeballs and eyelashes. I noticed some of the falling flakes (it’s snowing a little) freezing on my lashes.
bike: 20 minutes run: 1.75 miles basement outdoor temp: 8 degrees/ feels like -7
Finished the Dickinson episode I had been watching on feb 7. In my log for that day I asked: “I wonder if either Emily’s opinion (about marriage as bad for women) or Thoreau’s douchiness will change in the next 10 minutes, which is what I have left in the episode. And, will she be able to stop the railroad from being built in her backyard woods?” Well, Thoreau becomes even more douchey; Emily ends up calling him a dick and then storms out, leaving her copy of Walden behind. And, distraught, she falls asleep on George’s shoulder as they ride home on the train, which suggests she might be softening on him, if not on marriage. Finally, while sitting under her beloved oak tree her dad joins her and agrees to reroute the train tracks around the tree in order to save it. Emily is happy. My question: if the train is still running near the tree, will she want to visit it for solitude anymore? Will it be the same tree once it’s the tree by some noisy, air-polluting tracks? I guess Emily’s willing to compromise.
During my run, I listened to a Spotify playlist I had quickly made the other day. Excellent. It was fun to run much faster (at least a minute per mile faster) and listen to Britney Spear’s “Toxic”, Demi Lovato’s “Sorry not Sorry,” AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” and Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and the Beat.” While I ran, I don’t remember thinking about anything.
For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about creating a syllabus, or a few syllabi, out of the experiments on my running log. Right now, I’m thinking about 3 syllabi: 1 intro course, 1 intermediate course, and 1 advanced course all about movement and creativity and exploring how moving bodies influence creative expression in language (written and spoken). Mainly, I want to focus on moving = running and creative expression = poetry, but I’m also interested in walking/hiking, swimming, biking, and lyric essays. These 3 classes all fit within an interdisciplinary study of ethics/moral selfhood and the exploration of how to be an ethical, political, poetical, embodied self. What do I want to do with these syllabi? Not sure, yet. Maybe teach them. But maybe I see them more as imaginary/fictional syllabi that tell my story of running while writing/writing while running for the past 4 years.
Speaking of imaginary classes, I found this poem via twitter this morning. I love it.
Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,
how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took questions on how not to feel lost in the dark
After lunch she distributed worksheets that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s
voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—
something important—and how to believe the house you wake in is your home. This prompted
Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,
and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts are all you hear; also, that you have enough.
The English lesson was that I am is a complete sentence.
And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,
and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking for whatever it was you lost, and one person
add up to something.
What a class! The things listed here are impossible to teach, I suppose, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if our education gave more space for them to be considered? What if we took seriously the idea that the goal/purpose of education is to flourish and to learn how to be caring, responsible people in community with others instead of about individual success and competition and being better than anyone else?
a moment of sound
feb 10, 2021/ 3 degrees, feels like -9
I started this recording at the far end of my backyard. As I made my way to the back door up on the deck, I walked through 3 different versions of crusty snow: 1. about 3 inches of deeper, crusty snow, 2. 1 inch of partly shoveled, tamped down crusty snow, and 3. a thin layer of powdery, crusty snow on the surface of the deck. Each version makes a slightly different sound.
bike: 20 minutes run: 3.4 miles basement outside temp: -6 degrees/ feels like -19
Inside again today. I miss the gorge, but I’m not minding the basement. Hoping to build up endurance for longer runs/time outside in the spring. Not sure if my watch is completely accurate, but it said my average heart rate for the 33 minutes/ a little less than 10 min mile pace was 144 bpm! For someone who usually averages 170 bpm (but often gets up into the 180s), 144 is great–probably one of my lowest averages ever. Lower heart rate = more aerobic activity = less injuries (hopefully). I think it helped that I was listening to a good audio book (8 Perfect Murders) and that I covered the treadmill display with a towel so I couldn’t see the time. I only checked the time twice: first, when I got to the end of a chapter (almost 17 mins in) and then when I thought I might almost be done (33 mins in). Very nice to get lost in a book, and to listen to it instead of looking at it. Today is a bad eye day; it is more difficult to see as my eyes struggle to focus on letters. I think it’s hard because of how bright it is outside–so much blinding white!–and because I’ve been looking at a screen too much.
Before I ran, I biked. Watched most of the 4th episode of Dickinson. This one is about Emily and her efforts to protect her beloved oak tree from being cut down to make way for progress/a railroad. She travels with George (the student editor of the Amherst College paper who is in love with her) to Concord to enlist Thoreau’s help. She was in Thoreau’s cabin–having been escorted there by his mother who was collecting his laundry to wash–asking him for help when I finished my bike workout. This show’s take on Thoreau: he’s a douchey, over-privileged poser who is pampered by the women in his life: his mother does his laundry, his sister is always baking him his favorite cookies. Earlier in the episode, as Emily and George travel to Concord by train, they discuss marriage. Emily’s take: marriage sucks for women but is great for men. Their wives do all the work–taking care of the house, the kids, while they get to do “whatever their heart’s desire.” I wonder if either Emily’s opinion or Thoreau’s douchiness will change in the next 10 minutes, which is what I have left in the episode. And, will she be able to stop the railroad from being built in her backyard woods? I’ll see tomorrow.
At the beginning of the episode, Emily recites one of my favorite poems of hers:
In the name of the Bee – And of the Butterfly – And of the Breeze – Amen!
Then she reads Walden by Thoreau. I’ve read bits of it, but maybe I should read the entire book?
a moment of sound
This is what -4 degrees/ feels like -14 at 6:05 PM on my back deck sounds like:
feb 7, 2021
Aside from my coat rustling a few times, all I hear is cold. I’m glad I didn’t have to be out here too long, but for the 5 minutes I was–taking out the trash, then standing on the deck, recording–I enjoyed breathing in the cold, fresh air. So quiet and glowing blue in the twilight.
5k edmund loop, starting north* 26 degrees 5% snow and ice covered
* I’ve been calling this route different things, but I’ll try to stick with this one: edmund loop. Heading north is: 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/turn around at 42nd st/edmund, north. For the past few runs, I did the reverse; I’ll call that edmund loop, starting south
note from 1 feb 2026: Last October (2025), they renamed Edmund Boulevard to Lena Smith Boulevard. Edmund (I can’t remember his last name now and I don’t want to look it up) was a real estate developer who created red-lining in Minneapolis. People who lived along this boulevard worked to get it renamed. You could vote (Scott and I did) and Lena Smith, an African American woman lawyer who represent a black family challenging red-lining, won.
Only a few patches of ice on the sidewalks and roads. Not too cold, not too windy. A great morning for a run. Turning right onto 32nd st, I heard some wonderful wind chimes. I thought about stopping to record the sound, but I didn’t want to stop running and I thought the people who lived in the wind chime house might find it strange to see me holding my phone up and recording something right outside their house. My concern about what other people think too often seems to deter me from recording–whether it be a moment of sound or myself reciting a poem from memory. I’m working on getting over that.
Noticed several cars turning into Minnehaha Academy as I ran by it. Open for business, I guess. Next week, Minneapolis elementary school kids (preK-2nd) will be going back full time. 2 weeks after that: 3rd-5th. As I understand it, the teachers’ union is strongly opposed to this; the order comes from the governor (which is being pressured by the asshole Republicans in charge) and it completely upends the careful 5 phase plan Minneapolis Public Schools put in place this year. Many of the teachers have yet to receive a first dose of the vaccine. Ugh! How difficult for the teachers, especially now with new, more contagious variants! I thought more about elementary schools going back as I ran by Dowling Elementary on Edmund. How crowded will this road be next week? Also: how will they work out bussing for all of these kids?
At 42nd st, I crossed over to the river, trudged through some snow, and recorded a moment of sound. It’s a new month and I’m thinking about variations on the basic assignment of recording a moment outside. Should I only record moments during my outside runs for February? Maybe. I also thought about this: record a moment in the same spot every day. I’m not sure yet. Anyway, here’s the moment:
feb 1, 2021
I can hear my feet breaking through the crusty snow; cars rushing by on the river road; some wind; a cluster of dead leaves on a tree, rustling. It was windy at this spot, but I managed to shield the phone speaker with my hand for most of it.
The river was all whiteish gray and frozen. Cold. Desolate. Beautiful. I’m glad I stopped to look at it.
Running back on edmund, I put in my headphones and listened to an old playlist. I ran faster, which felt good. Nearing a t-intersection, I noticed a walker rapidly approaching, about to cross. I wondered if they would stop for me and I was irritated when it looked like they wouldn’t. I sped up. Right as I ran past them, but too late to say anything, I realized it was the Daily Walker! Bummer. I didn’t see that it was him. I’m still not totally sure it was him; I can’t recognize people’s faces, but I’m pretty sure I saw the tell-tale swing of his arm. I have a feeling that after so many years of encountering him, he might realize that I have vision problems and won’t think I was being rude.
Poetry twitter did not disappoint this morning! So many great sources and ideas and poems! Here’s one by Heather Christle that I especially like. Writing this, I was thinking about her last name, Christle, which my computer likes to auto-correct to Christie, and wondering if it’s pronounced like gristle. Right after that unfortunate thought, I looked at her twitter profile and saw this: “pronounced ‘Crystal'”. Much better. Anyway, I really like her writing.
I remember walking through the morning after a night of heavy snow and drink with headphones on and they played me the most perfect song: no one was awake and I was hungover young as clean as a piano I thought and at any moment someone might fall in love with me I was that woven into the electric cold bright air and for weeks after I went through the album in search of the song but could not find it and later much later I saw that what I had taken to be the song was in fact the joyous concordance of a moment that would not come again
favorite line today: I was/ that woven into the electric/ cold bright air
3.2 miles neighborhood in reverse* 10 degrees/ feels like 0 25% snow and ice covered sidewalks and roads
*Normally I run north on 43rd ave, then right on 32nd st to the river, then south on edmund until I turn around at 42nd st, then north on edmund until I reach 35th. Today, I reversed it and added a stretch, running north on the river road trail between 42nd and 38th.
Another wonderful winter run! Felt colder today; was it the humidity? I could feel (and see) water turning to ice on my eyelashes. Not too much wind. There was a point, when I was running south on edmund that I thought, “I’m not feeling any wind. Uh oh. Does that mean it will be in my face when I turn around?” Yes, it does and it was, but never blustery, just persistently cold. Encountered a few more people out there today. Some walkers, some runners, a few dogs. Fairly certain I kept my 6+ feet distance the whole time. It was wonderful to run right above the river, all iced over, a grayish white. Still, stuck, silent. Except for the birds. Heard some black capped chickadees and some others chirping–finches, maybe? This year, I need to learn to identify a few of these birds which currently I only hear as chirps or trills.
Speaking of birds, as I was walking out of my house, I heard a black capped chickadee! Of course I had to make it my moment of sound. I knew it was a good omen for my run.
jan 27, 2021
Discovered this wonderful poem, and wonderful poet, the other day on Instagram:
Status Update/ Rebecca Lindenbery
Rebecca Lindenberg is drinking whisky. Feels guilty. Is caught in one of those feedback loops. Is a blankety-blank. Is a trollop, a floozy, a brazen hussy. Would like to add you as a friend. Would like to add you as an informant. Would like to add you as her dark marauder, as her Lord and Savior. Has trouble with boundaries. Rebecca Lindenberg is keeping lonesomeness at bay with frequent status updates designed to elicit a thumbs-up icon from you. Rebecca Lindenberg likes this, dismisses this with a backhanded wave. Rebecca Lindenberg wraps her legs around this. Has a ball of string you can follow out of her labyrinth. Has this labyrinth. Rebecca Lindenberg has high hopes. Has high blood sugars. Rebecca Lindenberg doesn’t want to upset you. Wants to say what you want to hear. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks of poetry as the practice of overhearing yourself. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks about love. About ribbons unspooling. Rebecca Lindenberg would like to add you as a profound influence. Would like to add you as a loyal assassin. Would like to add you as her date to the reckoning. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers a statue of a faceless girls with shapely feet. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers the Italian for “chicken breasts” is petti di pollo and the world for kilogram is kilo and that a kilo is way too much chicken breast for a family of three. Steals sage from strangers’ gardens. Runs for it. Misses Rome. Misses her family of three. Is lost in her own poem. Rebecca Lindenberg has dreams in which you come back. Rebecca Lindenberg lets it go. Rebecca Lindenberg crescendos and decrescendos. Rebecca Lindenberg is: Hey, you, c’mere. Rebecca Lindenberg is: You are not the boss of me. Rebecca Lindenberg is not the boss of you. Rebecca Lindenberg goes to movies. Needs a bigger boat. Gave you her heart and you gave her a pen. Can’t handle the truth. Rebecca Lindenberg loves the truth. Loves the smell of dirt gathered in water and the sleep-smell of your morning body. Loves her rumpled cat, her jimmied window. Loves long letters. Will write soon.
What a poem! I like the energy and her approach to describing herself. I’d like to put it beside my poem, A Bridge of Saras, which was a homage to Wayne Holloway-Smith’s Some Waynes.
3 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/dowling, west/47th ave, nw/loop around Howe Elementary 11 degrees/feels like 0 sidewalks and main roads: clear side streets: 100% snow-covered, 1/2 plowed
I love running outside in the winter! There was wind running north, but it didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t too cold. No frozen fingers or toes. I wore my yak trax, which was a bad idea. Most of the sidewalks were clear and dry. I ran in the street as much as I could so I wouldn’t damage the coils of my trax, but it would have been much safer on the sidewalk. Oh well.
a moment of sound
Running south on Edmund, when I reached 38th street, I crossed over the river road, walked down the steps to the Winchell Trail and admired the gorgeous river for a moment. Decided to record my moment of sound from that spot. It was so peaceful and icy and wonderful to watch, I had to turn the moment of sound into a video:
jan 26, 2021
Things I Remember
The uneven tracks of snow on the road jarring my foot and ankle but not twisting them
The sound of a kid laughing or talking or something to an adult on the river road
Running in the middle of the road, listening carefully and looking back every so often to make sure no cars were coming
Hearing a chain jangling near Minnehaha Academy, thinking it sounded like a dog collar then wondering why there would be a dog so close to the school entrance (I didn’t look to see what it actually was; I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had).
Walking up the steps from the Winchell Trail and hearing the shuffling steps of a runner approaching. Watching them (from a safe distance) run by, then noticing a fat tire off to my left
I don’t remember noticing if Minnehaha Academy’s parking lot was full or hearing any woodpeckers or black capped chickadees or seeing any cross country skiers or needing to avoid any irritating squirrels
One of the poetry people I follow on twitter really likes James Schuyler, which is fine with me, I really like him too. Here’s a poem they posted yesterday:
The Snow/ James Schuyler
that fell and iced the walks and streets is melted off: it’s gone. I slipped a little as I strode. It’s early winter yet though, more and much is yet to come. This gray day though is much too warm for snow. The window’s up a crack and I shiver only slightly. I think of you and then my thought slides on, like slipping on a lightly iced walk. I have no more poems for you, chum, only for the ice and snow.
I love the ending of this poem: the idea of thoughts slipping on a lightly iced walk, which makes me think of Wittgenstein and his line about the need for rough, tractional ground, and referring to the reader as chum. Chum is such a strange, old-fashioned, wonderful word. For me, it conjures, simultaneously, a feeling of nostalgic affection for a friend and the image of bloody guts and Jaws–oh, and also Bart Simpson’s response to Milhouse in an early season of The Simpsons:
“Anytime chummmmmmmmmp”
This clip is from the 4th episode of the 7th season (1995) and is called, “Bart sells his soul.” Speaking of the soul, it came up on poetry people twitter this morning:
I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.”
G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses
Dana Levin (@danalevinpoet)
Interestingly, just as chum seems to be an old-fashioned word, so does soul. I don’t like the idea of the eternal, needs-to-be-saved-or-you’re-going-to-hell soul, but I do like Walt Whitman’s use of it in “The Body Electric”:
if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
Returning to the ice, patches of barely formed ice on slightly warmer days is often the most dangerous type of ice. It’s harder to see and is so slippery! The only time I like ice when it’s warmer is when it forms into a thin, fragile sheet on the surface of a puddle. Such fun to walk over it, hearing it crack.
Cold this morning with snow-covered sidewalks. We got about 5 inches of snow on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I thought about running outside, but decided to stay inside to be warm and safe from slippery roads and/or crowded trails. Running inside on the treadmill is a good challenge for me, I think. It helps me to go slower and steadier and to work on pushing through the long minutes of monotony. Plus, I can work on my form and posture. I listened to my audio book (The Mesmerizing Girl) as I ran for just over 30 minutes.
moments of sound
Jan 24, 2021
For yesterday’s moment of sound, Scott and I were on a walk with Delia, right by Howe Elementary. Two sounds dominate: the buzzing/ringing of the furnace at the school (I think it’s the furnace) and the shshshshshing or crushcrushcrushing or thrashing? of my snow pants as I walk. We passed some kids playing on a mound of snow. I wish my phone would have done a better job of picking up what the one kid was saying. It was something about a sword and cutting something in half “with my MIND!” I have decided that I need some tips from Scott (the sound expert) on how to record better sound. That might be a goal for February.
Jan 25, 2021
For the majority of this recording, you get to hear the delightfully irritating crunch crack crush of ice breaking under my winter boot as I walk across the driveway. Yesterday this driveway was sheer ice, but Scott sprinkled some salt or sand on it and it melted and refroze in shards overnight. Love this sound! For the last 10 seconds or so, it’s much quieter. If you listen closely, you can hear a bird or two calling out. Today it is cold but sunny, and with the birds chirping and the sun warming my face, it feels like April not January.
Found out about this wonderful poem on twitter yesterday:
with its waterlogged wings spread open, drying off on a rock in the middle of a man-made lake after diving for food and it makes me think about wonder and it makes me want to pry and stretch my shy arms open to the subtle summer wind slicing through the park, sliding over my skin like a stream of people blowing candles out over my feathery body and it makes me think about my church when I was a kid, and how I lifted my hands to Jesus, hoping for surrender, but often felt nothing, except for the rush of fervent people wanting to be delivered from their aching, present pain, and how that ache changed the smell in the room to money and how I pinched my face and especially my eyes tighter, tighter and reached my hands higher—how I, like the cormorant, stood in the middle of the sanctuary so exposed and open and wanted and wanted so much to grasp the electric weather rushing through the drama of it all like a shout in the believer’s scratchy throat.
I don’t go to church anymore, but today I woke up early and meditated. I closed my eyes and focused on a fake seed in my hand and put my hands over my heart to shove the intention inside my chest to blossom—I’m still stumbling through this life hoping for anyone or something to save me. I’m still thinking about the cormorant who disappeared when I was writing this poem. I was just looking down and finishing a line and then I looked back up—gone.
5K 45th ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/edmund, north/36th st, west 7 degrees/ feels like -3
Last week I said I would much rather it be colder with clear sidewalks, than warmer with icy sidewalks. That was proven today. As I was saying to Scott, you can always add layers to be warm, but you can’t do much to make uneven icy paths safer–yak trax work, sort of, but not when the ice is jagged and filled with ruts. Hooray for sun and not too much wind and mostly empty streets and a soundtrack of birds and clear, cold air and new Presidents getting shit done!
Encountered only a few walkers, no runners (I think) and one biker. Heard lots of birds. Smelled some smoke as I ran on Edmund. Noticed a foot wide stripe of faded white on the edge of the street–what’s left of the salt used to treat the road. The stripe stretched for a quarter mile or more. Once I realized it was only salt stains and not a thin sheet of ice, I ran on it. Heard some park workers and their chainsaws, trimming trees above the gorge. Yes, a better view! I should remember to stop during my run and go check out the river. I miss it! If I can’t run right beside the river for long stretches, at least I can admire it for a moment.
a moment of sound
Earlier this morning, sitting at my desk in the front room, I heard a black capped chickadee calling outside. Quickly, I got my phone to record it. It wasn’t until after it stopped that I realized I had forgotten to push the record button. Bummer. Still, I recorded some other birds and a bird or a squirrel or something knocking on wood or an acorn. You can hear the tap tap tapping. Towards the end, you can also hear my 17 year old son, yelling out from his room (behind a closed door) to his friends online as they prepared to raid a base or something like that on whatever online game they were all playing. He was yelling the whole time I was recording, but this was the only bit of it that I can hear on the recording.
Jan 22, 2021
I am almost positive I have posted this poem before, but I would like to memorize it, so I posting it again.
All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.
I guess I’m turning into a wimp this winter because the sidewalks looked uneven and icy and the wind was howling, so I decided to stay inside and work out in the basement. Actually, I think it has less to do with being a wimp, and more to do with it being harder to run in the road and the sidewalks than on the river road trail and harder to avoid people and harder to stay motivated to run outside when I can’t see the river or the gorge. That’s okay. I don’t mind running inside a bit more this month–hopefully just this month.
Watched some races while I biked, and listened to an audiobook, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, for the first half of my run. For the second half, I listened to a playlist and recorded video of my running. With my right knee prone to subluxations and my left hip and lower back often sore, it’s helpful to study my form. I think I need to do a better job of setting up the camera–either that or I really hunch over with my shoulders. Maybe I should try checking my form from the side too? It’s fascinating to me how, over almost my 10 years of running, I’m slowly learning how to accept and take care of my aging body. Oftentimes it sucks to have to worry about all of these aches and pains, but it is also very helpful and satisfying to learn how to work with my body instead of being afraid of its failures.
a moment of sound
I recorded today’s moment of sound on my driveway, back near the alley, in a spot sheltered from the wind. It was very windy. The loud whooshing sounds are not traffic but the wind rushing through the trees. If you listen carefully, you can hear wind chimes (my favorite) and water dripping off of the eaves on my garage (not my favorite). At one point, there’s a pop or a creak or a crack–some siding or wood fence contracting.
Balance checkbook. Rid lawn of onion grass. “this patented device” “this herbicide” “Sir, We find none of these killers truly satisfactory. Hand weed for onion grass.” Give old clothes away, “such as you yourself would willingly wear.” Impasse. Walk three miles a day beginning tomorrow. Alphabetize. Purchase nose-hair shears. Answer letters. Elicit others. Write Maxine. Move to Maine. Give up NoCal. See more movies. Practice long-distance dialing. Ditto gymnastics: The Beast with Two Backs And, The Fan. Complain to laundry any laundry. Ask for borrowed books back. Return junk mail to sender marked, Return to Sender. Condole. Congratulate. ” . . . this sudden shock . . . “ ” . . . this swift surprise . . . “ Send. Keep. Give. Destroy. Brush rub polish burn mend scratch foil evert emulate surpass. Remember “to write three-act play” and lead “a full and active life.”
Finally, it’s over! Already, Biden and Harris are working to undo some of the damage. What an awful, exhausting, traumatic 4 years. Yet, some good too, in spite of it all: a renewed faith in democracy, the chance for an actual reckoning with slavery and racism, and, most personally, a rediscovery of poetry and a new direction for my work on a feminist ethics of care. I started this running log in January of 2017, right as Trump was becoming president. There were many reasons I started writing here, but the urgent need to find a new way to be in the Trump era was surely one of them. In ways that I can’t yet articulate, this blog and my project of paying attention and of finding the small moments of delight–always letting the wonder win, as Aimee Nezhukumatathil says–was a form of resistance, a refusal to lose my faith in the world and my hope for the future. I must admit, it got much harder to resist these last few months, but the habits I built up from my miles and my words (and the beautiful words of many others), have helped me to persist and I know they will help me as I work hard to rid myself of all of the Trump-era toxins I’ve had to absorb. Does this sound too dramatic? Maybe, but today feels like a day for being dramatic!
Sara, 2026: Duh duh duh. Enjoy this moment, past Sara. It’s going to get real (pronounced “ruhl”) bad. Close-to-the-darkest-timeline bad. Hope still exists — we (all the Saras) are bursting with deep love for the people of Minnesota — but it is surrounded by terribleness and terror.
I didn’t think about any of these things as I biked or ran. I just enjoyed moving and feeling free, even if it was in my dark unfinished basement.
Hooray for new administrations! Hooray for hope and possibility and room to breathe and grieve and imagine better worlds! Hooray for a renewed desire to do the work! And hooray for this beautiful poem by Amanda Gorman:
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry. A sea we must wade. We braved the belly of the beast. We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect. We are striving to forge our union with purpose. To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of man. And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us. We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside. We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another. We seek harm to none and harmony for all. Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew. That even as we hurt, we hoped. That even as we tired, we tried. That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division. Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid. If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made. That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare. It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit. It’s the past we step into and how we repair it. We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it. Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. And this effort very nearly succeeded. But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. This is the era of just redemption. We feared at its inception. We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour. But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves. So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us? We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free. We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future. Our blunders become their burdens. But one thing is certain. If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright. So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left. Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one. We will rise from the golden hills of the West. We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution. We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states. We will rise from the sun-baked South. We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover. And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful. When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid. The new dawn balloons as we free it. For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.
a moment of sound
After the inauguration, Scott and I took Delia out for a walk. It wasn’t too cold, but it was windy and blustery and slippery–and difficult to get a moment of sound. In this recording, you can hear the wind and Delia’s collar clanging and our feet walking over the crusty ice and snow.
Watched a race while I biked. Ran with a playlist, then remembered a runner mentioning listening to “thunderstruck” while they ran and liking it, so I switched to that for my final minutes. Nice. AC/DC is fun to run to. Didn’t think about anything except that I breathe better when I’m working out. I also breathe better outside and in the winter, which I noticed (again) earlier today when Scott and I were walking Delia the dog. So bright with the white snow.
A nice relaxing day. Managed to stop myself from obsessively checking the news every few minutes. Sat on the couch and read Agatha Christie’s “The Secret Adversary” with the sleuthing duo, Tommy and Tuppence. Scott and I discovered their 1982 (or 83?) BBC show a week or so ago and we’ve been watching it almost every night. I like their dynamic and saying “Tuppence” as much as I can–maybe Tuppence and Bunty from Father Brown should team up for a show. Such strange names.
Went out on the deck for my moment of sound this afternoon. Managed to convince my 14 year old daughter to join me. Today’s sound is mostly the scampering of Delia the dog–her collar clanging as she shakes, her claws scratching the deck, her scampering paws. Delia loves leaping through the snow like a bunny.
jan 9, 2021
I’m already liking these moments of sound. The quality isn’t that great and maybe what I’m capturing isn’t that interesting, but the act of capturing a moment of sound outside and then listening back to it and writing about it is helping me develop (or reinforce) great habits–making sure I get outside and that I stop and stand still and listen are important/helpful things to do right now. Plus, it helped me to get my daughter outside to play in the snow for a few minutes–something she hardly ever does.
Discovered this afternoon that there’s an animation for an awesome poem by Marie Howe:
And here’s a poem I found the other day that I like:
During roll call a black beetle wanders to the sink, near my toothbrush, and I say, “Poor thing, I better let you go.”
My father says, “You better smash that thing before it multiplies.” I think he says the same about me.
I lie awake at night and think about crunchy leaves crushed in the autumn.
My mother sees six red ants running around the loaf of bread anticipating their breakfast. She says to me, “Get those things off the table.”
My sister panics at the sight of a spider. She runs to the kitchen and screams bloody murder. I remind her, “We don’t find scary things scary anymore.”
My mother flicks the grasshopper off her book. She asks how I am doing. I lie to her and say, “I’m doing quite all right, I smashed a bug with my shoe. We all do what we don’t want to do.”
I see a cockroach on the ground. “Gregor,” I whisper, “you better run fast.” He says to me, “I only need to run faster than you.”
Still lots of snow on the road and the sidewalk even though it’s been above freezing most afternoons this week. The uneven, sometimes sloppy, trail makes my legs more sore, but I don’t mind it too much. I slipped today on a patch of ice as I ran up from the road to the sidewalk. I didn’t fall–or even feel like I might–just felt that brief loss of control. I couldn’t get that close to the river but I was able to catch a very brief glimpse of it through the trees as I ran on the highest part of Edmund. It looked white and covered–is it, or are there still open spots? No sun to make it sparkle or dance. It looked flat and still. Listened to a black-capped chickadee–it was difficult to hear over the roar of the city. It has been so loud these last few days–is it the air quality? What does humidity (80%) do to sound? I looked it up, and yes, humid air makes sound travel farther. I think I heard some helicopters–does it have to do with any protests? Anything else? Noticed someone over on the river road trail wearing a bright orange shirt–or was it shorts? I can’t remember now. Heard someone (thankfully 20 or 30 feet away) vigorously coughing. Saw a few dogs–identified them more from the clanging of their collars than actually seeing them. Felt strong and fast and happy as I headed back north on Edmund.
a moment of sound
I like the idea of doing a moment of sound everyday, but I don’t always want to run everyday and I only want to post on days when I run (mostly for the calendar so I can quickly glance at it and see which days I ran in a month, and which days I didn’t). So I’m trying to figure out how to post the moments. For now, I’ll post the non-run day moments of sound on the next running day (how boring was that explanation, future Sara?):
For yesterday’s moment of sound, I was sitting on the deck, with only a sweatshirt on, feeling the warm sun on my face, listening to the snow melting off the eaves. Such a nice moment!
jan 5, 2021
For today’s moment of sound, I stopped right after I finished running (listen for my heavy breathing). For the first half, I stood on the sidewalk, holding my phone out, listening to the birds and the roar of a plane. For the second half, I started walking and sniffing and making the delightful sound of crunching snow. If you listen carefully, you can hear the crunch sound change a little as I move from mostly snow to a stretch of ice.
jan 6, 2021
Yesterday, while cleaning out my safari reading list, I found this great poem from last year–or the year before?
Even you are responsible to more than you. My daughter likes visiting the pet store. It’s like a zoo she says. She wants a calico she can walk with a string. On the way home she says do we sing poems before we light candles. ‘Not to see by but to look at.’ On one level, the mind doesn’t impose order. The mind doesn’t impose order. Order presumes priority. Good credit score. A forwarding address. My bills accumulate in empty spaces. My subject position won’t stand still. On one level, we are not casual acquaintances. Imagine we are pressed upon one another. For a while we lived on the second story above The Leader Store just down the street from The Woolworth, which still had a griddle and a soda fountain and smelled of melted butter. I am not nostalgic. No need. I can still remember the photographs. I am a frame. Sometimes a window enclosing and disclosing. We take the subway to the museum exchanging yous through the tunnel and into the terminal. Imagine we are pressed against each other. ‘Mingled breath and smell so close’ The silver doors. A cell membrane. You are a witness only to what you admit. Some words emit so many possibilities they threaten to burst. What is light. What is rain. Now a metaphor. Take two and answer in the morning. We look and do more than look. My daughter says you talk with your eyes off. Why should everything we see interact with light. I am counting clouds destined for Florida. I moved the store here. This is inescapably common. Where is here. Will you pray with me. Pray with your feet on the pavement. When she was born we didn’t know if she would ever walk. Now my daughter says my whole body is a winter storm as she leaps across the couch cushions. No digging out. The self is a reintegration of exponential apologies—a crowd of people in multi-colored coats holding handmade signs and choosing to sit or stand in the same world. After you. No, I insist. After you.
Some favorite lines for today:
I am not nostalgic. No need. I can still remember the photographs. I am a frame. Sometimes a window enclosing and disclosing.
My daughter says you talk with your eyes off. Why should everything we see interact with light. I am counting clouds destined for Florida.
Favorite parts of words: the ts in tunnel and terminal, the pleasing rhyme in admit and emit,
5K 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/edmund, north 28 degrees 75% slushy, soft, uneven snow/ 25% bare pavement
More wonderful winter running! Warmer today. The path wasn’t clear–sidewalks, roads, the trail–but I didn’t care. Had to run closer than 6 feet to 2 walkers while I was running on the trail, which bothered me, but I ran by so fast and it was outside so I didn’t care. It’s difficult in the winter because it’s hard to move off of the trail with all the snow piled up on the side. Guess I won’t get too many river views this winter–or at least until it gets colder and keeps more people inside.
Things I Remember
Two people by Dowling Elementary, shoveling snow and breaking up the thick slabs of ice on the road, right in front of the school. I wondered, were they volunteers? Were they preparing for kids to come back to school? Are Minneapolis elementary school kids going to return for in-person school soon?
Turning around at 42nd, I noticed a few snowflakes. I hadn’t expected it to snow so I thought I was imagining it or there was stuff coming off of a branch above me. Soon, it started to snow a lot, covering the ground with a thin, mushy blanket of wet sludge. Falling, the flakes were hard and small, like little bullets or missiles aimed at my mouth. I choked slightly at least twice when I swallowed them. A few years ago I did some research on snow so I used to know the different types of flakes. I’ll have to find my notes. As I type this entry now, it is sunny and clear and there is no more snow.
Several times I heard some interesting sounds and I thought about stopping to record my moment of sound, but I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to keep running, so I waited until I was done and recorded the moment by my garage. 2 of the places: 1. on edmund, in a sheltered spot, in front of some fancy houses, near my favorite little stand of trees, the cottonwood three, I wanted to stop and record the chirping birds. 2. Again on edmund, close to 42nd, running past a van with its radio on, hearing some rock song mixing with a few power tools, a plane overhead, and the snow hitting the pavement.
Caught a glimpse of the river through the trees before turning off the trail to avoid a pack of walkers. I think I saw more big chunks of ice on the surface.
a moment of sound
I recorded this moment of sound after I finished my run. I thought that it might be quieter and more shielded from the city noise and wind back by my garage, behind the house, in the alley. Not sure if it was. The hum of the city is so loud! My main focus for this sound was the little pellets of snow falling on my vest–that’s what the soft crunching noise is–but I also captured some kid losing her shit down the block and some awesomely wet footsteps in the snow at the end.
Jan 4, 2021
In honor of the surprise snow shower this morning, I’d like to memorize some snow poems for the next few days. Here are a few I might consider:
update, a few hours later: I looked back in my notes from February 2018 (also, my log posts from February 2018) and figured out what the little hard pellets are called: graupels.
Winter running is the best! I’m not sure how to express the joy I feel during and after I finish a run when it’s cold–but not arctic hellscape cold–and snowy–but not too snowy or icy–and I get to be outside breathing in fresh air and moving with warm fingers and toes. I love running over the snow, hearing it crunch, feeling it propel me forward–a bit of slide but not a slip. I love the sense of accomplishment I feel for just getting out the door–there’s no pressure to be fast or run for a long time because it’s enough to be there, resisting the urge to stay inside and be warm and protected (from the elements, from too many people, from hidden ice that might make me slip).
Things I Remember
As I was tying my laces, just about to go outside, I heard a black capped chickadee calling. I like imagining them singing to me: “Sara. Join us. Be brave, find joy.”
Several cawing crows–not a murder of crows because they weren’t flocked together.
Smelled smoke at the usual spot, on Edmund Boulevard. Still don’t know, does it come from a house or the gorge?
Saw my shadow and felt the warm sun on my face.
Running north on 43rd, I smelled the too flowery, too fake scent of dryer sheets. Must be laundry day on this block!
Never got close enough to see the river or hear it.
Heard a crow and a train having a conversation–first a caw, quickly followed by a “beep beep”–and I think an airplane joined in, roaring from high above.
Ran under the bushy fir tree with the limb that arches over the sidewalk on 43rd and thought about how it was covered with snow way back in November.
a moment of sound
While running around Hiawatha School, I got trapped: another pedestrian approaching, a knee-high wall of snow on the curb preventing my quick escape onto the street. I decided to try running in the deeper snow in the baseball field. When that didn’t work, I stopped for a minute to record my moment of sound. The sun was too bright for me to tell when the recording had reached a minute, but that’ okay because this is moment of sound, which is less precise than a minute.
Jan 3, 2021
Listening back to this recording, I’m struck by how loud the planes are. I didn’t even notice that there were planes when I was standing in the field. The next thing: if you listen close and you know what you’re listening for, you can hear the sprinkling of water. That’s someone watering the ice rink at the park. Every year the field, that can fit at least one soccer field and 3 baseball fields, is turned into a huge ice rink, with a large open section from just skating and a closed-in section for hockey. I love this about Minnesota. When I was a kid, I adored ice skating, but living in the South, I rarely skated–only when we went to the big mall in Charlotte with the indoor ice rink. My 8 year old self wouldn’t have imagined that now, at age 46, I live within a mile of 2 big outdoor rinks and 1 indoor one. Last year, I didn’t skate even once. Will I this year?
Was reminded of a poetic form that I tried 4 years ago (yikes, here it is), when I first rediscovered poetry: the triolet. It’s 8 lines with line 1 being repeated as line 4 and line 7, and line 2 being repeated as line 8. Here’s the rhyme scheme (with the capitals representing the repeated lines): ABaAabAB
Here’s the poem that made me think of the form again:
Why should the Devil get all the good tunes, The booze and the neon and Saturday night, The swaying in darkness, the lovers like spoons? Why should the Devil get all the good tunes? Does he hum them to while away sad afternoons And the long, lonesome Sundays? Or sing them for spite? Why should the Devil get all the good tunes, The booze and the neon and Saturday night?
I love this poem. Right now I especially love it because of its rhythm and how successful it is in inhabiting this form without making it cheesy or awkward or obvious–that is hard to do.
Happy New Year! Of course I had to get outside and run on the first day of the year. 14 degrees didn’t seem too cold to me with all of my layers: green shirt, blue hooded shirt, orange sweatshirt, black vest, 2 pairs of running tights, headband covering my ears, baseball cap, hood, 2 pairs of gloves, 1 pair of socks, yak trax. Not too much wind. Ran south on the river road trail. Encountered a few others runners or walkers but we stayed close to our opposite sides, which I think was about 6 or 7 feet apart. Yelled at the one biker I encountered who was biking in the middle of the trail–at least I thought he was. My depth perception is not the greatest. Saw 2 or 3 cross country skiers! One was crossing the river road, their skis scraping on the bare pavement.
birds!
No turkeys in turkey hollow, but as I ran on the river road trail, above the oak savanna, I heard the drumming of a woodpecker on a tree. The noise was deep and metallic. Was the tree dead inside? I read a poem or an essay that described how a tree can be dead and you can’t tell until you cut it down; it could be dying inside for years. Where did I read that? I almost stopped running for a minute to try and locate the woodpecker but I didn’t–I doubt I would have been able to see it anyway. I also heard some male black-capped chickadees and their feebee call. A three note call this time with a 2 note response. Nice! Such a good omen for the year, hearing my favorite bird, running close to the river!
the river!
Running south on the trail above the oak savanna, at first all I could see were trees, a hill, snow. Suddenly, the gorge sloped down near 38th and the river appeared. Wow! Shining in the soft spots that weren’t yet sharpened by cold . I love the visual effect of sparkling, glittering water–sometime soon I want to read this article about glittering patterns. Talking with Scott, I thought I remembered that the effect was called glint, but looking it up again, it’s glitter. Glint is a flash of light, not to be confused with glisk which is a gleam of light through a cloud. As I described the image to Scott, we also discussed whether the river had sheets of ice or, as I delightfully suggested, floes. Scott thought floes were only in the ocean. Looking it up, Wikipedia says that a floe is defined by it’s size–big!
“An ice floe is a large pack of floating ice often defined as a flat piece at least 20 m across at its widest point, and up to more than 10 km across.[1]Drift ice is a floating field of sea ice composed of several ice floes.”
Maybe I like using the term because it’s big and grand and makes the river–which is fairly big, but nothing compared to an ocean or a sea, at least where I see it–seem bigger and grander and my images more magical or fantastical or epic?
Another word encountered: brash ice. “Brash ice is an accumulation of floating ice made up of fragments not more than 2m across. It is the wreckage of other forms of ice.” Cool.
After I finished my run, I could hear so many birds. I decided to stop and record a minute of it–I might try to do this every day this month or this year.
jan 1, 2021
In addition to the feebee call, I hear the “chickadeedeedee” and some other chirping I can’t identify. Some dudes laughing, me still breathing hard after my run (and then adding in a gross sniff), and the delightfully irritating crunching snow! I love hearing the biomechanics of my feet walking–listen to the different types of crunches as one foot lifts off and the other sinks down.
Winter Poem/ Donika Kelly
We climb the stalk of early winter into the sky. Below: the car, the road, the gray branch. The sun, a mirage, multiplies in the earth. The light beetles, makes of our bodies a mirror. We are fallow as the land beneath us. We climb, though our arms tire and our legs burn, a gesture of absolution–we forget, are forgotten. We are fire or the image of fire, the day, or the breaking of it. We disappear, chaff of myth, what held the story of a season’s end.
This poem! It’s from her collection, Bestiary. How did I miss it when I read that book this summer? I love beetles as a verb–the light beetles. Does she mean “to scurry” (like a beetle) or “project/jut”?
So many great words in this entry! brash, beetle, glint, glitter, glisk. I want to use some of them in a poem.
bike: 25 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.5 miles treadmill, basement
Biked and ran again today. Thought about running outside on the snow-covered paths, but I wimped out. Not because it was cold or icy, but because I was worried if I fell and hurt myself–which has never happened in my 5 years of serious winter running–I wouldn’t want to go to a doctor or the emergency room. Too many covid cases, too much scary talk about new, more infectious, strains. Am I being too cautious? Perhaps, but I can still run in the basement and when it’s not the day after 3 or 4 new inches of snow. And I’ll still make sure I get outside for at least 20 minutes a day (already did today, when I shoveled the snow!).
Before I worked out, I spent the morning with my favorite poetry lines, trying to shape them into a poem or something resembling a poem. Last year, I printed out all the lines, cut them out, spread them on a table, and then experimented with different groupings. This year, I decided to type up the lines and then keep narrowing them down, reading through them repeatedly and picking out the ones that I liked, until I had a manageable amount. Then I printed and cut those out and played around with how to categorize them. After a few ideas, I came up with: The Is, The Ought, The Why Not. The Is includes lines that describe. The Ought includes lines that prescribe. And the Why Not includes lines that wonder and imagine and dream up new ways to be. Is this a poem? Not quite. I might try messing with it more at some point. Still, I’m posting it as my final poem for my monthly poem challenge: December Decisions
Overdressed this morning in my green shirt + pink jacket + black vest. Windy and gray. No snow. Listened to a playlist and didn’t think about much. Too far from the river to see it. Briefly ran on Lake Street. Lots of cars, but only one a few people walking. What else do I remember? The gutters were cluttered with dead leaves. The pavement was wet–was it from street sweepers? Favorite song to run to: Harry Styles’ “Treat People with Kindness.”
ABECEDARIAN FOR THE DANGEROUS ANIMALS/ Catherine Peirce
All frantic and drunk with new warmth, the bees buzz and blur the holly bush. Come see. Don’t be afraid. Or do, but everything worth admiring can sting or somber. Fix your gaze upward and give bats their due, holy with quickness and echolocation: in summer’s bleakest hum, the air judders and mosquitoes blink out, knifed into small quick mouths. Yes, lurking in some unlucky bloodstreams might be rabies or histoplasmosis, but almost no one dies and you owe the bats for your backyard serenity. Praise the cassowary, its ultraviolet head, its quills and purposeful claws. Only one recorded human death, and if a boy swung at you, wouldn’t you rage back? Or P. terribilis, golden dart frog maligned by Latin, underlauded and unsung, enough poison to vex two elephants into death but ardent with eggs and froglets, their protection a neon xyston. And of course, yes, humans. Remarkable how our zeal for safety manifests: poison, rifle, vanishment.
I love this abecedarian. What a great ending! And the descriptions throughout: so good. I think I ‘d like to compose an abecedarian using facts from my vision research this fall.
Gray, damp, chilly but not cold. Some wind, but not too much. Ran the first (almost) 2 miles with no headphones, listening to the gorge and reciting “The Meadow” by Marie Howe in my head. Listened to a playlist for the last three quarters of a mile. Was able to run above the gorge. Heard a kid below me on the Winchell Trail in the Oak Savanna. Hardly anyone else on the trail–I think I passed 2 people. Heard a few voices down on the lower trail, saw someone’s bright blue jacket. Admired the river–a pale blue with a few chunks of ice. I don’t remember hearing any woodpeckers or chickadees or crows or busy squirrels. Noticed a few flurries. Anything else? Felt good, even thought I am tired and ready to take a break. Only 20 miles left until I hit my goal, 1000 miles!
Wondered about some of the words in the poem I was reciting. Is the line, “it knows for certain that two horses walk upon it, weary for hay” or “weary of hay.” [I checked: it’s of hay, which makes more sense] Got distracted somewhere around the line, “Two crows, rising from the hill, fight and caw-cry in mid-flight, then light and fall on the meadow grass” and never returned. Maybe I was thinking about how my son is going to college next year and he just received his financial aid package and he is very smart and I’m so proud of him and he won several big scholarships and it will still be difficult (but not impossible) for us to pay for it because college costs way too much. Or maybe I was just not thinking, letting my body stretch and move and fly and strike the ground in an even rhythm?
Here’s a poem I discovered the other day on twitter:
How It Happens/ W.S. Merwin
The sky said I am watching to see what you can make out of nothing I was looking up and I said I thought you were supposed to be doing that the sky said Many are clinging to that I am giving you a chance I was looking up and I said I am the only chance I have then the sky did not answer and here we are with our names for the days the vast days that do not listen to us
Colder today. As I said to Scott, “I was the only fool out there.” Strange, though, because it’s really not that cold for Minneapolis. On this day last year, I ran outside when it felt like -3.
It was a good run. I started without headphones, reciting Diane Seuss’ “I Look Up From My Book At the World Through Reading Glasses.” Favorite first line, which I used in one of my mood ring poems, “the world, italicized.” Also love the next line, which really resonates for me and my seeing objects as forms, like Tree or Rock or Person. “Douglas fir blurs into archetype.”
When I got to the Minnehaha Academy parking lot, I decided to put on a playlist and listen to headphones as I ran south. Favorite songs today: Screwed/ Janelle Monae and Midnight Sky/ Miley Cyrus. Ran into the wind; glad to have a hood on. I didn’t get close enough to the river to admire it, or the ravine, or the oak savanna. I do remember hearing, and then seeing, a wedge of honking geese in the sky. Oh– and I heard the “chick-a-dee-dee-dee” as I ran by someone’s garage. Anything else? The sidewalks were stained white from salt, or was it from the dusting of snow we got 2 days ago? No slippery spots. And, a new over-the-top decoration at the already excessive house with Olaf, a minion, Charlie Brown, and Darth Vader: a giant reindeer. I ran past it to fast to notice, but I bet it’s Rudolph from the old holiday special.
sleep
Ever since I had my first kid, way back in 2003, I’ve struggled to sleep through the night more than a few times a month. I usually wake up for a few minutes every couple of hours. For the past few days, my sleep has been extra *fun*: go to sleep around 10:30, wake up at 11:45, then just before 1, then again at 1:30 before finally sleeping for 4 or 5 hours straight. My usual counting by sevens–which I started doing a few years ago–isn’t cutting it, so I’ve started listening to Taylor Swift’s new album, evermore, until I fall asleep again. I love this album. So many good songs with great words to enjoy. “Marjorie” is one of my favorites–such a beautiful song about grief and losing someone you love! Always makes me think of my mom.
Marjorie/ Taylor Swift
Never be so kind, you forget to be clever Never be so clever, you forget to be kind
And if I didn’t know better I’d think you were talking to me now If I didn’t know better I’d think you were still around What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, you’re alive in my head What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, so alive
Never be so polite, you forget your power Never wield such power, you forget to be polite
And if I didn’t know better I’d think you were listening to me now If I didn’t know better I’d think you were still around What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, you’re alive in my head What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, so alive
The autumn chill that wakes me up You loved the amber skies so much Long limbs and frozen swims You’d always go past where our feet could touch And I complained the whole way there The car ride back and up the stairs I should’ve asked you questions I should’ve asked you how to be Asked you to write it down for me Should’ve kept every grocery store receipt ‘Cause every scrap of you would be taken from me Watched as you signed your name Marjorie All your closets of backlogged dreams And how you left them all to me
What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, you’re alive in my head What died didn’t stay dead What died didn’t stay dead You’re alive, so alive And if I didn’t know better I’d think you were singing to me now If I didn’t know better I’d think you were still around I know better But I still feel you all around I know better But you’re still around
bike: 25 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.9 miles treadmill, basement
Not too cold or too covered in snow outside today, but I decided to stay inside to cross train and try out my new shoes on the treadmill. Can’t remember what I watched while I biked–some running race, I think. After about 20 minutes on the bike, when my heart rate was at 120 bpm, I recorded myself reciting the two poems I reviewed this morning: Emily Dickinson’s “Before I Got My Eye Put Out” and Vincente Huidobro’s “Natural Forces.”
Dickinson and Huidobro/ 11 December
I love fun challenges like this–trying to remember and recite a poem while working out. I did a good job. I like the juxtaposition of these two poems, with Dickinson cautioning against the hubris of “owning” objects–Mountains, Meadows, Dipping Birds, Amber Roads– by seeing them, and Huidobro celebrating the power of his glances to hold back a landscape or relight the stars or hold down a plummeting train. I memorized both of these poems as part of my Loving Eye/Arrogant Eye theme this summer. I like thinking about it in relation to Kelly’s scouring eye “that scrubs clean the sky and blossomed tree” in “Perhaps You Tire of Birds.” What if vision’s power was not in its penetrating gaze, but something else? I used this question as the start of my “Awed” mood ring poem:
Behold the power of sight! Not found in one destructive glance but in the accumulation of looks. Against the odds and in spite of damaged cones misfiring signals and incomplete data these looks produce something resembling vision — an image feeling fuzzy form.
It’s cool to think about how the poems I memorized and recited this summer helped to inspire my work this fall.
After I finished reciting the poems, I hopped off the bike and ran almost 2 miles on the treadmill. Listened to my Bday 2018 playlist while I tried out my new shoes. Very nice! I wonder if I will run faster outside in these? Felt good to move and sweat and not think about much.
This morning I made it outside for a walk with Delia the dog. Cooler and windy, but clear, uncrowded, and seeming like October and not December. No snow or ice, just lots of brown leaves, bare branches, and yellowing grass. Passing a house on the corner of a street a few blocks away, I noticed the curtain slightly open and the face of an eager dog–a small poodle or Bichon?–watching us walk by. I had noticed the open curtain the day before and thought there might be a dog or cat in the window, but couldn’t look long enough to see. It takes a lot more time (than it used to, and than “normally” sighted people) to be able to determine what I’m looking at. Often I don’t bother; I dislike stopping and staring. It seems rude. One day I will get over this and take as much time as I want stopping to look at things until they make sense. I’m working on it!
This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
Feeling sore–not hurt, just sore–in my legs and lower back so I wasn’t sure I would run today but when Scott said it seemed like a great day to run outside, I had to do it. Sunny, mild, clear. A bit windy, but not too bad. A few more people since it is warmish and closer to noon, but I managed to keep distance from all of them. Listened to a playlist again so I didn’t hear any birds or leaves or far away traffic. I’m very close to my goal of 1000 miles for the year! I should take 3 or 4 days off from running once I reach that goal. My body needs it. 1000 miles has demanded a lot–I’ve run almost every day this year. Almost all of those runs have been short–4 or 5k–but frequent. Will I ever be able to run more than 1000 miles in a year? Would that be good for my body? I’m not sure.
Anything I remember from my run? My mind has gone blank. No views of the river, no remarkable trees, no roller skiers or fat tires or Daily Walker. I do remember running on the dirt trail between the river road and edmund. Uneven and windy (as in lots of meandering, not a stiff breeze). I remember wanting to stop at the top of the edmund hill to change my music but deciding to keep going. I remember seeing lots of cars on the river road and running in the grass at Howe field to avoid pedestrians. I remember stepping off the sidewalk and running in the street several times to avoid some more people, doing a loop around Cooper and Howe, smelling something overwhelmingly fruity coming from a van and guessing that someone inside of it was vaping. I remember feeling especially strong and smooth as I ran down the hill on 32nd and especially nostalgic as I ran by the main entrance at my kids’ old kindergarten. I don’t remember taking note of my breathing or making up any chants or noticing any connections between my striking feet and my inhales and exhales.
Richard Siken is the Best
I think it was last year that poets.org began including an “About this poem” author’s note with the poem-of-the-day. I find them helpful and interesting and always look at them after my initial reading of the poem. Richard Aiken’s “About this poem” note for today’s “Real Estate” is the best, most delightful one I’ve ever read. It offers an explanation that helped me to (start to) understand the poem, which is great, but it also offers itself up as another poem to place beside the first one. How cool to turn the note into a poem! I want to experiment with doing this, especially since I am so resistant to offering explanations for what I’m doing (even as I feel I should and/or long to).
My mother married a man who divorced her for money. Phyllis, he would say, If you don’t stop buying jewelry, I will have to divorce you to keep us out of the poorhouse. When he said this, she would stub out a cigarette, mutter something under her breath. Eventually, he was forced to divorce her. Then, he died. Then she did. The man was not my father. My father was buried down the road, in a box his other son selected, the ashes of his third wife in a brass urn that he will hold in the crook of his arm forever. At the reception, after his funeral, I got mean on four cups of Lime Sherbet Punch. When the man who was not my father divorced my mother, I stopped being related to him. These things are complicated, says the Talmud. When he died, I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t get a death certificate. These things are complicated, says the Health Department. Their names remain on the deed to the house. It isn’t haunted, it’s owned by ghosts. When I die, I will come in fast and low. I will stick the landing. There will be no confusion. The dead will make room for me.
About this poem
“I had a stroke and forgot almost everything. My handwriting was big and crooked and I couldn’t walk. I slept a lot. I made lists, a working glossary. Meat. Blood. Floor. Thunder. I tried to understand what these things were and how I was related to them. Thermostat. Agriculture. Cherries Jubilee. Metamodernism. I understand North, but I struggle with left. Describing the world is easier than finding a place in it. Doorknob. Flashlight. Landmark. Yardstick.” —Richard Siken
I want to experiment with adding these notes to my mood ring poems–and maybe my earlier Snellen chart ones too. Is that too much?
2.7 miles river road path, south/edmund, north 30 degrees
Another great morning for a run. Not windy or crowded. Lots of sun. Clear paths and sidewalks. Listened to Taylor Swift on Spotify. Felt strong and happy to be outside above the river which was glowing brightly again through the bare trees, looking almost like a heat mirage in the summer. The air, wavy. Noticed at least one person below on the Winchell Trail wearing a bright blue jacket. Anything else? No fat tires or roller skiers or groups of runners or turkeys or squirrels.
Critter Sighting!
A fox! At least, I’m pretty sure it was a fox hauling ass across the street straight into someone’s back yard, probably heading to 7 Oaks and its massive sinkhole. Looked too big and too fast to be a cat, too furry and feline-like to be a dog. Glad they kept running and left me alone! I am a wimp when it comes to wildlife. Sure, I’m very excited to spot a coyote or a fox or a muskrat, but only from a safe distance.
Discovered this awesome poem about a woodpecker this morning:
That bone-clinking clatter, maracas or knucklebones or dance of gravel
on a drumskin, the string of the air twanged on the hollow body of itself …
It’s the tree that gives voice, the fifty-foot windpipe, and the bird
is its voice box, the shuddering membrane that troubles the space
inside, which otherwise would be all whispers, scratch-and-scrabblings,
the low dry flute-mouth of wind at its just-right or just-wrong angle,
the cough-clearing of moss or newly ripened rot falling in.
But the woodpecker picks the whole wood up and shakes it, plays it
as his gamelan, with every sounding pinged from every branch his instrument.
Or rather, it’s the one dead trunk, the tree, that sings its dying, and this
is the quick of it; red-black-white, the bird in uniform, alert, upstanding to attention
is its attention, our attention, how the forest, in this moment, looks up, knows itself.
I want to study this poem. So many amazing descriptions! I think I’ll print it out and add it to the poems I have displayed under the glass on my desk.
Gamelan (gam elan): an Indonesian orchestra primarily made up of percussion instruments such as gongs, xylophones, drums.
And that last line! “upstanding to attention/is its attention, our attention, how the forest, /in this moment, looks up, knows itself.”
45 minutes neighborhood + gorge with Delia the Dog 33 degrees
This year, I’ve only been posting here after a run, but I wanted to rest from running but not from writing, so I decided to break my rule and write about my wonderful walk with Delia the Dog. What a gorgeous late fall morning! What wonderful light! And the birds! I heard a few “chick-a-dee-dee-dees” and plenty of caws, at least two drum rolls from pecking woodpeckers. I stood still and stared high up into the trees, but I couldn’t see either of the woodpeckers. How small were they? The view to the other side was calming and pretty–not breathtaking but breath giving. Everywhere was filled with sounds–rustling leaves, clanging collars, chirping birds, whooshing car wheels–yet it was quiet and empty. I let Delia sniff as much as she wanted down in the leaf-covered grass beside the river road and below Edmund. At some point during the walk, moving slowly and breathing in deeply, I felt a slight comforting buzz through my entire body. Such a great feeling.
Here’s a great poem I discovered this morning on twitter:
In drear nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne’er remember Their green felicity— The north cannot undo them With a sleety whistle through them Nor frozen thawings glue them From budding at the prime.
In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy brook, Thy bubblings ne’er remember Apollo’s summer look; But with a sweet forgetting, They stay their crystal fretting, Never, never petting About the frozen time.
Ah! would ’twere so with many A gentle girl and boy— But were there ever any Writh’d not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.
3.05 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, west/river road trail, south/42nd st, west/edmund, north 18 degrees/feels like 10
Colder today than yesterday, which was already pretty cold for most–and too cold for Scott. Love it! Less people, fresher air, a feeling of accomplishment from just getting out the door and braving the cold. Beautiful sun. Not warm, but giving the illusion of warmth and making the frost on the field at Cooper School look enchanted, almost like fairy dust or the aftermath of a glitter bomb.
Running down 32nd towards the river, I noticed a lone black glove on the sidewalk. Saw some people across the street and almost called out to them, “excuse me! did you drop a glove?” I didn’t. Why is the lone glove I see on the sidewalk always black? Do I just notice the black ones, or are most gloves that color? Have I ever seen any other color of glove left behind? I don’t think so. When (and if) I do, I will make a ridiculously big deal about it on this log, which makes me happy that I have been able to find delight and joy in such small things. Finding a blue (or red or pink) glove when I usually find a black one is enough for me.
Delight of the Day, or Today’s Reason for Joy
One: the river, again. Glowing, shimmering, flashing. The light didn’t bother me, but I could feel it reflecting off of my face.
Two: A male black-capped chickadee! I heard the feebee call this morning as I ran south. It was almost drowned out by all the crows, but I’m sure I heard it. Normally, I only notice these in the spring. Ever since I read that they sing all winter, I’ve been listening harder for them and today it paid off!
Anything else? Was able to keep plenty of distance between me and the few people out on the trail. Encountered only 1 bike. Again, no roller skiers.
layers
green shirt, pink jacket, gray jacket, 2 pairs of black running tights, 2 pairs of socks, pink headband, black baseball cap, hood, buff, 2 pairs of gloves
layers lost: buff started on my ears and mouth, ended around my neck, hood down, took off one pair of gloves during mile 2
Much colder today, which is fine with me. I’m ready for some proper winter running.
layers I started with: hood, black cap, ear bands (a headband to cover my ears), pink jacket, black vest, green shirt, 2 pairs of running tights, 2 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves, a buff
layers I shed: hood, 1 pair of gloves
I encountered a few runners and walkers but we were all able to keep our distance. No fat tires or roller skiers. Heard the kids on the playground at Minnehaha Academy. Minnesota kids learn early how to handle the cold. Didn’t see any turkeys in turkey hollow. Don’t remember hearing any leaf blowers or chainsaws.
Listened to a playlist, mainly because I was trying to get a Christmas song out of my head that I heard when I turned on the radio this morning–the really dark new year’s eve one about when a famous singer returns to his home town encounters his first love at a grocery store and pity drinks a 6 pack with her in the car. Of course, now I have the song in my head again.
Delight of the Day
The river! Running south on the river road, suddenly I noticed it through the tall, slender tree trunks: bright, sparkling white. Or was it glowing or shimmering or flickering like the flame from a fire? Not just one spot, but the whole river. Wow. The brightness of it all didn’t bother me, even though light sensitivity is one of the symptoms of cone dystrophy. I’m not sure it completely fits, but the light on the river this morning reminded me of Danez Smith’s description of a frozen Minnesota lake in “I’m Going back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense”:
Have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California? The sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror
all demanding to be the sun too, everything around you is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you
& it’s so sad, you know? You’re the only warm thing for miles & the only thing that can’t shine.
Would I call the sun this morning a mirror? I’m not sure but I love their description of the lake and everything but us being light and able to shine.
Other words for sparkle: gleam, glow, glint, glitter, glisten
Scrolling through my Safari reading list, looking for something else, I found this poem and cold mornings:
Through an accidental crack in the curtain I can see the eight o’clock light change from charcoal to a faint gassy blue, inventing things
in the morning that has a thick skin of ice on it as the water tank has, so nothing flows, all is bone, telling its tale of how hard the night had to be
for any heart caught out in it, just flesh and blood no match for the mindless chill that’s settled in, a great stone bird, its wings stretched stiff
from the tip of Letter Hill to the cobbled bay, its gaze glacial, its hook-and-scrabble claws fast clamped on every window, its petrifying breath a cage
in which all the warmth we were is shivering.
Love the description of the morning light as gassy blue and the metaphor of the mindless chill as a great stone bird with the glacial gaze and breath that cages our warmth and leaves us shivering.
