4.15 miles minnehaha falls steps and back 45 degrees
Yes, spring! Bright sun and clear paths. Warmer air. Lots of runners and walkers and one roller skier in a bright yellow shirt. My lower back/glutes did not hurt when I was running — even though they had ached slightly (or softly?) yesterday and last night.
Did a slightly different route today: river road trail, south / godfrey / hiked down the steep trail then ran across the flat, grassy part below the falls where the creek pools and begins to bend / walked up the 100+ steps / climbed over the green gate / ran through the park / north river road, trail / boulevard grass
Running south I listened to the roller skiers poles striking the ground and happy voices, returning north, my color playlist. An orange song happened at the end, Shake it Well/ Koo Koo. Like most orange words, its about the fruit.
10 Things
a loud rustling in the dry leaves below the double bridge
a big turkey on the winchell trail, they moved off to the side to let me pass — no hissing or gobbling
white foaming water falling beside slabs of ice
the creek, moving past over the rocks, glittering in the sun
a woodpecker somewhere in the trees, laughing
the bench above the edge of the world, empty
something big and bright and shining across the river
something else big and white — at first I thought it might be the sky through a gap in the trees but later I decided it was a building
my shadow in front of me — sharp, looming, distracting
a lumpy shadow cast on the paved trail by a gnarled tree branch leaning over a crooked fence
This month, I’m slowly incorporating steps into my training, and my thinking about color, especially but not exclusively, orange. Here’s a color poem I discovered yesterday:
black fog I can’t find my way through. Black trees, black moon. I once knew the sky from the water. This course I remember, its narrowing. How I crept my way down the ladder like clutching the gluey rungs of a throat. I know you know how I’ve been. Like you, like blood sucked from a cut. A hot metal gash, a beat of alarm, too late. The water is listening. That’s my name in its mouth.
It snowed a few wet inches Tuesday night but you wouldn’t know it today. It’s all gone. The paths were clear and dry. I thought about orange things as I ran. I heard lots of dripping water, a few voices, birds. So many birds as I approached the marshall bridge! Oh — and the gobble of a turkey near the Minneapolis Rowing Club! I stopped to try and see it, but I couldn’t. Heading north, just past the trestle, I took the recently redone steps down to the winchell trail and admired the river. Calm, quiet, grayish blueish brown.
10 Orange Things
orange lichen on the east side of the ancient boulder*
an orange cone
looking over the edge of the double bridge above longfellow flats, a white barricade with orange stripes had fallen halfway down the steep bluff
orange netting on the fence
an orange stocking cap on a walker
orange bubble-letter graffiti
my orange sweatshirt, worn under a dark blue hooded pull-over
an orange road closed for race sign
orange leaves on the ground
orange rust on a metal plate
*I showed Scott the picture I had taken of the lichen and he said, that’s not lichen, that’s spray paint; it says VISA. I like seeing it as lichen better, but it is frustrating to have been so wrong with what I was seeing. I remember looking at the picture and thinking something else was there, that my idea of it as lichen wasn’t quite right, but this thought didn’t quite make it to the surface.
until Scott told me what I was actually on this rock, I thought it was lichen
I wanted to think about an orange effort as I ran, but I was distracted by my unfinished business. No port-a-potties anywhere. Thankfully I made it home without earning a poop story.
april’s monthly challenge
On April 1, I identified my monthly challenge as steps even as I wondered if it would stick. Yesterday I wasn’t so sure. I started working on a purple hour sonnet, then revising other color poems and converting them into sonnets. This morning I work up hell-bent on orange. I will study orange, steps be damned, I thought. But just now, while reading the chapter, “Orange is the New Brown,” in On Color, I encountered this sentence:
Through the late sixteenth century in England, “orange tawny” is commonly used to mark a particular shade of brown (even though chromatically brown is a low- intensity orange, though no one then would have known that).
On Color, 45
Chromatically? Even though I’ve read/heard this word in relation to color for some time, today it made me pause and wonder about why the chromatic scale (a favorite scale to play) is called a chromatic scale.
The twelve notes of the octave—all the black and white keys in one octave on the piano—form the chromatic scale. The tones of the chromatic scale (unlike those of the major or minor scale) are all the same distance apart, one half step. The word chromatic comes from the Greek chroma, color; and the traditional function of the chromatic scale is to color or embellish the tones of the major and minor scales. It does not define a key, but it gives a sense of motion and tension. It has long been used to evoke grief, loss, or sorrow. In the twentieth century it has also become independent of major and minor scales and is used as the basis for entire compositions.
Searching for a definition, I also found a reference to James Sowerby’s Chromatic Scale:
Chromatic scale of colours arranged as a chart. Sowerby’s accompanying text provides a nomenclature for 63 colours divided into primaries of yellow, blue and red: with binary colours (blends of two primaries) and ternary colours (combinations of three primaries). Sowerby considered this might be useful to artists and considered that in primary colours “Gamboge is most perfect yellow, used in water colours…Carmine, most perfect when good…Prussian, or Berlin blue, most perfect.” Plate 5 from the monograph A new elucidation of colours, original prismatic, and material; showing their coincidence in three primitives, yellow, red and blue…,
The chromatic scale as even steps up or down a musical scale. “The distance between 2 successive notes on a scale is called a scale step — half step or whole step.
Chromatic colors possess a hue (e.g. red, blue, green) while achromatic colors are variations of light and dark (shades of gray, black, white).
What is orange? Why, an orange, Just an orange! (from Color/ Christina Rossetti)
Revisiting my month with Mary Ruefle, I wrote this about orange and Orange Theory:
. . . a red (all out effort) breath might involve being shocked, experiencing such intense awe or surprise that you lose your breath for a minute. Orange breaths involve intense feeling that can be sustained longer, but are still uncomfortable. Orange breaths are anxious breaths.
And now I’m thinking about how Mary Ruefle’s sad color poems — orange sadness, purple sadness, etc. — could be read as happiness poems too: “if you substitute the word sadness for the word happiness, nothing changes.” What is the more positive version of anxious? Excited? Maybe call my poems excitement poems? No, not excitement, attention. Of course, attention!
Earlier today I encountered an amazing poem that fits with the theme of attention:
Yesterday afternoon we got 2 or 3 inches of snow. By the time I went out for my run in the late morning, much of it had melted, even on the grass. Excellent. It’s the warmer ground and the bright sun that did it. I was over-dressed in my purple jacket with a stocking cap. Halfway through the run, I took off the cap and held it in my hands.
As I ran south to the falls I chanted in triples. Lots of berries and sweet things (hot fudge sauce, fresh whipped cream), histories and mysteries and possibles, both muddy trail and mud on trail, and metronomes. On the way back, I put in my “doin’ time” playlist for the last day of my time month. I was planning to not stop to walk for the second half, but when a runner who was running the same speed or just a little slower than me joined the path in front of me, I decided to stop a few times to get some distance from them. One of the places I stopped was the bench above the edge of the world. I don’t remember what the river looked liked, all I remember was that looking at it made me feel calm and content and vast.
overheard while running by the falls: one person to a group of others, he should do it, his arms are the longest. Were they taking a group selfie?
10 Things
water falling, 1: a steady gush out of a gutter
water falling, 2: trickling from the sewer pipe at the ravine
water falling, 3: gushing at the falls — mostly white foam
shadow, 1: the small shadow of a bird crossing my path
shadow, 2: the sprawled, gnarled, twisted, softened shadows of oak trees on the road
shadow, 3: the sharp circle of the lamp part of the lamp post
missing: the top railing of a wood fence on the edge of the trail
several people in the falls parking lot, waiting to pay for parking
empty benches
a thin layer of snow on a leaning branch in the ravine
Found this poem the other day:
Color Keeps Time / Patrycja Humienik
or it rides us like a torrent. Blurs and fastens, flesh
to seconds. Just look at your veins. In vespertine woods, I tried to read moss by hand. There’s something laconic about green that I need.
Lover, let the morning slow time through the branches.
vespertine: relating to, occurring, or active in the evening laconic: using few words, concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious
What kind of time are different colors? What sort of time is orange, for example? If purple is twilight, orange is late afternoon or early summer evenings.
I tried to read moss/by hand. This line reminds me of Robin Wall Kimmerer and her suggestion that “Mosses, I think, are like time made visible. They create a kind of botanical forgetting. Shoot by tiny shoot, the past is obscured in green. That’s why we have stories, so we can remember” (Ancient Green/RWK).
I finally decided to start watching the Apple+ show, See. A plague has wiped out all but 2 million people. The survivors are blind. At the time of the series, centuries later, vision exists only as a myth. The first episode begins in a remote village. I wanted to watch it because I’m curious how blindness is represented in the show. I should add that I am watching the show with audio descriptions on; I don’t think I’d be able to watch without them. My first question: what do they mean by blind? They never specify. Is it pure darkness, or can they detect some light?
The blind villagers function normally; they navigate with long sticks and dogs and ropes that are strung up all around the village. Also: wind chimes and bells. Many of them have extremely good hearing.
If you’re lying, I will hear. Nothing escapes my ears. I hear doors closing in your voice.
Just as I was stopping my bike, the evil queen appeared. I’m not sure what her deal is yet — I just know that she’s evil and she wants to kill the two babies that have just been born in the village because she hates their father and has a bounty on his head.
Do I like this show? Not sure. I’ll keep watching. One thing that was difficult — the fight scene between the queen’s henchmen, the witch finders, and the village, led by Jason Momoa. It was long and very visual — so much audio description.
While I ran I listened to the mood playlist: energy. Not sure why this is the case, but running actually helps loosen up my back when it feels a little tight. I only ran a mile, but it was enough. Now I’m tired and hungry!
before the run
In his introduction of the poem-of-the-day for the slowdown poetry podcast, Major Jackson says,
Today’s marvelous poem reminds me we exist in liminal zones where the extraordinary renders the ordinary visible and uncanny, an assertion of the imagination that makes our world shimmer.
The ordinary as uncanny, shimmering. I love this description and Heather Christle’s work for this reason. My lack of functioning cone cells makes more of the world uncanny and shimmering. Often, things are not quite and almost. Everything seems to be vibrating and pulsing, soft and slow. And my reliance on peripheral vision means I am much more aware of movement. Before, when my central vision worked, I had an easier time blocking that movement out, but now I see all of it. While this is a problem, it is also offers the possibility of seeing the world differently, of accessing the magic and wonder of it.
How do you say ‘inopportune’ in a small forest of cell phone towers disguised as bizarrely regular trees? I am asking in case it happens, because anything can and even does. Sometimes I want to shrink and move into a miniature model village mostly because the particular green of the imaginary grass corresponds with how my body believes joy would feel if joy were to happen here on Earth, where my eyes receive light in this certain way: limited, but not without pleasure. As a child I visited one model village so extensively constructed I fell into a state of complete wonder— ‘They thought of everything!’ even the person running late for the train, and the window left slightly open to the storm— and I should like to request the arrival of this sensation in response to the world at its actual scale— just imagine! Someone has even gone to the trouble of filling the egg cartons individually with smooth brown eggs and one—such detail!— has broken, but not enough to be noticed before the carton has been paid for and brought home. Sometimes artificially I will induce this feeling in myself by going silent at a large restaurant gathering, pretending —until it is real—that each person is speaking from a highly naturalistic script, having carefully rehearsed each tiny gesture, the mid-sentence reach for the salt, and I fall immediately in love with my companions, in awe of their remarkable talent for portraying with such detailed conviction the humans I know as my friends.
I can’t quite put it into words, but this poem speaks to a conversation Scott and I were having last night. He was pointing out all of these minute details about our environment, like how the pinball machine was set up and leveled, and how that process affects game play and your enjoyment of it. There was something about the attention to the details and learning more about all the (almost) invisible things required to make a thing work properly and then describing that work as “care” work that is echoed in this poem.
Future Sara, will this make sense to you? It connects to being oriented toward care and wonder and finding delight in the small details.
Spring! High in the 70s today. Tomorrow, in the 40s. When I started, I felt very sluggish and I wondered if I would be able to do the entire loop. I suppose it got a little easier, but I think it was more that I just kept putting one foot in the front of the other. I stopped to walk when I thought I needed to and kept running when I knew I could. There was one moment when I was just about to stop and walk but then I didn’t. I want to do that more often.
“10 Things
the waves on the water from the ford bridge, looking like little scales — the wind pushing the water upstream
reaching the top of the summit hill, hearing several dogs non-stop barking in a fenced-in backyard. I looked over and saw one of them up on something, their head higher than the fence
a man exiting a port-a-potty at the Monument parking lot, ready to begin running again
the cross on top of the monument — big and made out of stone — have I ever noticed it before?
the feel of the sandy dirt on the edge of the paved path on the st. paul side: soft, fast, gentle, singing
the bells from St. Thomas ringing quietly
empty benches everywhere
the faint knocking of a woodpecker high up in a tree
no eagle perched on the dead limb of the tree near the lake/marshall bridge
something floating in the water — I couldn’t tell if it was a buoy or an ugly 80s purse
This song, which I’ve heard many times but never really listened to, came up on a mood playlist yesterday. I looked up the lyrics, and here’s the first part:
A stick, a stone It’s the end of the road It’s the rest of a stump It’s a little alone
It’s a sliver of glass It is life, it’s the sun It is night, it is death It’s a trap, it’s a gun
The oak when it blooms A fox in the brush A knot in the wood The song of a thrush
The wood of the wind A cliff, a fall A scratch, a lump It is nothing at all
It’s the wind blowing free It’s the end of the slope It’s a beam, it’s a void It’s a hunch, it’s a hope
And the river bank talks Of the waters of March It’s the end of the strain The joy in your heart
The song is originally in Portuguese and from 1972; Jobim created an English version later. I like the list of images — a list poem!
As the story goes, Jobim wrote the song in his country house, close to Rio de Janeiro. He was growing impatient with all the rain and mud that kept delaying some work he wanted done on the property and started the song as a way to distract himself from the constant downpour, creating a simple tune to go with the lyrics. His intention was to rewrite the melody later, though he soon realized that the downward spiral progression he had accidentally created fit the song—and the weather—perfectly.
The lyrics of “Águas de Março” tell of the constant rain that falls in Rio during the month of March, at the close of the summer (in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are opposite to those in the Northern). It is a common occurrence for excessive rain to cause floods and landslides. It washes away houses and streets, taking everything it clashes with in its current.
when a branch pulls at my sleeve like a child’s tug, or the fog, reticent & thick, lifts, & strands of it still hang like spun sugar between branches & twigs, or when a phoebe trills from the hackberry, I believe such luck is meant only for me. Does this happen to you? Do you believe at times that a moment chooses you to remember it entirely & tell about it — so that it may live again?
ritual / ceremony / chant / movement
Reading through past entires for this month, I came across an idea from Cole Swenson:
as you move through a
place, it moves through you
OR
move through a place and
it moves through you too
I like the second one. I can imagine chanting it as I run and thinking about what I’m moving through and what’s moving through me. What is moving through me?
Here’s one answer, in a poem — Running Sentences — from a poet I just discovered on 26 march:
a The chorus is making sentences now: look,
b A cloud of gnats through which the body like a hailstorm blew,
c Here in the pockets of the path, there a heaven I avoid,
b Runners move through gnats, whole bodies move, disrupting, (Running Sentences/ Endi Bogue Hartigan)
walk: 35 minutes edmund 67 degrees
It almost feels like summer — wow. Trees and birds and a steady stream of cars on the river road enjoying the nice weather. Bikes, kids, the smell of dead leaves baking in the sun. My favorite thing: 2 people ahead of me on the sidewalk, one of them was wearing cool, baggy pants with a tank top and I thought that I’d like to have something like that to wear. Later a car drove by, the people inside scream-singing along to “Like a Prayer.” The person in the baggy pants called out and they stopped to let them get in. Then laughing and gleeful shouting and more scream-singing. I almost wrote, oh, to be that young again, but I don’t want to that young again. Instead, I’d like to be that delighted and joyful again.
45 minutes x 2 walk 1: 50 degrees / longfellow flats walk 2: 62 degrees / edmund
Walked with Delia the dog in the late morning. The good news: it’s beautiful today, my back feels so much better, the water was supposed to be off all day (for water main work down the street), but it’s already back on at noon. The bad news: I feel overwhelmed and have the strong urge (need?) to disengage. The saga of getting a girl to go to school continues; now it’s college classes. I am tired. One of my best friends is coming into town this weekend, and I want to see her (have plans to see her), but I’m not sure I can do it. In this scenario, which is the best way to be kind to myself: to be generous and encourage myself to cancel plans and rest, or to be stern and encourage myself to push through and keep the plans?
The walk helped me to feel better, but did not help me decide what to do.
update, after walk 2: I have decided to be generous to myself and cancel my plans. There have been many good things that have happened this year (with the year starting last fall), but also many very difficult things. Two mantras I’m trying to remember: be kind to yourself and whatever gets you thru the night is alright (John Lennon).
I was planning to make a list of 10 things, but when I tried my mind went blank. Too much pressure to produce? I think I’ll write about what I remember in this paragraph instead of in a list. I remember the river burning through the trees. Just a small spot, shimmering at the edge of my vision. I remember a man taking a break from running, breathing very heavily. He was struggling — wheezing and coughing. Had he done a hard/fast set, or was he just very out of shape? I remember the woman with the dog stopped at the wooden feence above the ravine who started up again just before Delia and I got to them. They went a few feet and then the dog plopped on the ground and wouldn’t move. It was impossible to get by them, so we explored the rim of the ravine. I remember taking the old stone steps down to the forest floor and walking past a big tree that had fallen and then been moved out of the way, presumably by park workers. So many tangled roots! I remember the feel of the soft sand and the blue of the blue water. I remember how the trail through the forest opened to the river and how the tall grasses framed the water. I remember the wonderful burning feeling of my glute muscles as I powered up the stone steps. I remember the soft geometry of the fence slat shadows. I remember hearing voices that were either deeper in the gorge or on the other side. I remember hearing the St. Thomas bells ringing, but I don’t remember how many times they rang. I remember witnessing 2 sewer workers doing something with the manhole. I think they were turning the water back on — they had a long pole that was in the center of the hole and they were leaning over and moving clockwise as they tightened (or loosened?) something. An unsual sight. It looked strange and uncomfortable.
It was very cool to witness these workers. Somehow I had imagined that a machine would turn the water off and on. The sewer pipe is too delicate, Scott thought. Of course. I like learning about these things, knowing how they happen, being reminded of the physical, and usually invisible, work that is required — and by people — to do them.
Delia and I did the second walk with Scott. Here are 3 delightful things that happened:
1
Below Edmund in the part of the boulevard dotted with trees I pointed out a huge tree that had lost its head — it didn’t have a top, just a jagged trunk — but still had two thick and long branches that stretched horizontally with clusters of smaller branches. They were gnarled and twisted and seemed to be reaching across the grass. They also cast a wonderful shadow.
2
Under another tree, Scott pointed out a woodpecker. Amazingly I was able to see it — it was tiny — because it had moved and my peripheral vision had caught the sense of movement. After a minute or two, it started knocking on the wood — a soft tap tap tap tap.
3
I was able to point out the rock wedged in the tree with = > ÷ painted on it that I wrote about yesterday. I asked Scott if he would have seen it while just walking by. Just as he was saying, no, only if I decided to stop and look at the tree, while looking at another tree, he noticed 2 more of the rocks wedged in the trunk! Later, another one in yet another tree. Wow! I love noticing new things, discovering something that you probably had walked by dozen of times without noticing. Moments of unexpected joy, hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to notice them and be delighted!
Reading a recent issue of The New Yorker, I found a beautiful poem. If you click on the link, you can listen to the poet read it — I love how they read: so natural and not affected or sing-song-y at all.
The silence, the thoughts that come with it, the sinking suspicion that something more is wrong with me than anyone knows, including myself, including the doctor who hooked me up to the EKG machine and said that though my heartbeat was irregular, the irregularity was normal. It was nothing to worry about. The doctor told me there are two kinds of people: unhealthy people who refuse to get help, and healthy people who always think they’re dying. Nobody’s in between. But I’ve met so many kinds of people: people who stretch before they get out of bed, people who walk through life unstretched, people who think their body is a house and people who don’t think of their body at all. People who peel their carrots, people who don’t. People who stand on the roof and let the wind make them cry. People who are afraid to cry. People who step on all the leaves on the sidewalk, people who look straight ahead. There are people who aren’t like me, they don’t know the names of all the different apples. Once when I was cashiering a woman said to me, “Wow, you really know your kale.” And once, at the butcher shop, a man said to his dog, “That’s the nice lady who smells like meat.” I’m afraid I don’t know what kind of person I am. I thought I would get a chance to do my life over in all the ways anyone could think of: dying would be like changing the channel. I hate that you can’t hold on to anything. I was washing an apple and then I was coring it and then it was cut— and that was weeks ago now. It was a Honeycrisp, and it lived up to its name.
Of course a doctor, trained in dualism and either/ors and this or thats, would think this:
The doctor told me there are two kinds of people: unhealthy people who refuse to get help, and healthy people who always think they’re dying.
I’ve been thinking about lists and list poems and reviewing a chapter from a craft book about them. I like the poet’s list of types of people.
More excellent running weather. Sunny and calm and warm(er). Birds singing and swooping and perching on tree branches right in front of me. I felt relaxed and strong and my back only hurt once, when I stood up after re-tying my shoe. I ran without stopping to walk to the bottom of the hill and right next to the river. It was swirling foam on the edges. Ran back up to under the franklin bridge then stopped to walk the rest of the hill. I noticed a sign — Trail closed starting March 31st — uh oh. Just looked it up; it’s only for 2 weeks:
Bike and walk trails along West River Parkway will close between the I-94 Bridge and Franklin Avenue for up to two weeks beginning Monday, March 31, 2025.
The closure is necessary for contractors hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation to install a safe span system that will protect trail users during repairs to the bridge this year.
Trail users will be detoured to the upper West River Parkway roadway between the I-94 Bridge and Franklin Avenue. This same closure will be repeated in August so that workers can remove the safe span system after repairs are complete.
Listened to a mood playlist: energy for the rest of the run. The best (or worst?) song on the playlist was “Hocus Pocus” by Focus. I love the song, but it was too fast to try and run to!I had to increase my cadence to 200 bpm to match it! The song also does not have a steady rhythm; it just keeps getting faster and faster, probably because they were on cocaine while they recorded it.
10 Things
the water was a brownish greenish blue
in the flats I leaned over the ledge and watched the swirling foam slowly travel down stream
workers on the road above the tunnel of trees, doing something to sewer which released a sour smell
the workers were wearing bright yellow vests
passed a walker who refused to move over — they were walking right next to the line. I suddenly wondered, are they neuro-divergent? then, maybe I should chill out about people needing to follow the accepted rules about where and how to walk on the trail
stopped at the sliding bench, 1: heard a cardinal — it was somewhere nearby — looked up and saw that it was on a branch close to me. Was it red? I couldn’t tell, but I did noticed how its tail quivered slightly all the time — I’m assuming it was keeping its balance. Do birds have to constantly adjust while perched?
stopped by the sliding bench, 2: looking down at the white sands beach, hoping for movement. Yes, there, deep in — a walker moving through the trees
the small shadow of a bird crossing my path, flying fast!
my sharp shadow in front of me, crossing over the softer shadows of tree branches
the shadow of a tree with dead leaves on it — looking almost like a messed-up pom pom
At the end of the run, as I was walking home, I had a thought about CA Conrad’s and their idea of the “extreme present,” which I wrote about on here earlier this month on march 5th:
“extreme present” where the many facets of what is around me wherever I am can come together through a sharper lens.
Conrad creates their soma(tic) rituals to make being anything but present is nearly impossible. Running by the gorge can put/force me into the extreme present. This sense of the extreme present doesn’t happen for the entire run, but I can achieve it in moments. In their lengthy, day-long rituals — wear a red wig, eat only red food — is Conrad able to achieve this extreme present for longer?
birdsong!
This morning Scott heard the cardinals outside his window and because he wanted to use some birdsong in his latest music project, he placed his phone on a chair on the deck and recorded some. I liked how he described it: I left the phone out on the deck then returned inside and went quietly about my business. When he told me about how similar each wave of sound looked, I asked if he could screen shot it and send me the sound file so I could post it here:
cardinal song, an image of sound wavescardinal song / 26 march 2025
Wow! So uniform.
Happy 151st Birthday Robert Frost!
When the poem of the day on poetry foundation was a Robert Frost one, I figured it must be his birthday. Yep — 26 march 1874.
Always wrong to the light, so never seeing Deeper down in the well than where the water Gives me back in a shining surface picture Me myself in the summer heaven godlike Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs. Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb, I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture, Through the picture, a something white, uncertain, Something more of the depths—and then I lost it. Water came to rebuke the too clear water. One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom, Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness? Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.
A beautiful sonnet — 14 lines, 11 beats per line, almost iambic pentameter. Is that right? I always struggle to hear meter properly.
Love the description of a reflection: Me myself in the summer heaven godlike/Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs
And that something white, uncertain, seen briefly then lost to a ripple. Yesterday I posted some lyrics from “The Windmills of Your Mind” about the ripples from a pebble. Ripple is a great word.
Seeing this sonnet is making me think I should try that form for my color poems. I could study a few different ways of doing the sonnet — Diane Seuss, Terence Hayes, William Shakespeare. Any others?
oh orchid o’clock
A good morning on the poetry sites. Not only did I find Robert Frost’s poem, but I found a cool collection that fits in with my study of time: Oh Orchid O’Clock by Endi Bogue Hartigan. (note: I just emailed Moon Palace Books about ordering it! update: I ordered it!)
/it is the president’s turned up o’clock it is America’s deadliness and dailiness
o’clock / it is glued to the headline o’clock
it is lunchhour-beeline o’clock / it is it’s only Tuesday o’clock another
curbside memorial o’clock another caterpillar miracle o’clock another
people emptying from their lives o’clock or into
their lives o’clock the Nile floods the Nile floods every hotspell in this week
I discovered this book through poems.com, which had one of its poems posted today:
I fall asleep with the rain sound app of my cellphone, the app includes distant thunderclap sounds and there are people who recorded or simulated these sounds, and it is time to disagree and thank the dawn. I disagree with this rain, I feel absurd for thesimulation of it and yet my brain waves have come to depend on it, depend onsimulated porous points between the raindrops. Always the porous dream, always theneural authority, the reaction meme, always the authority of always, the puncture ofalways, time spent saying always, the spider legs of always, the sleep command, thewake spindles, the spider leg threatening to break from the spider.
So cool! Encountering Hartigan’s work, I was inspired to think about time in relation to my blind spot and the practice of running beside the gorge that has happened beside (and because of?) my vision loss. I wrote the following in my Plague Notebook:
my blind spot breaks open seconds pries apart the hard edges of a beat invites me to dwell inside
I am suspended between beats as time slows but never stops with moves so slight it takes a practiced eye to see their soft shimmering embrace what is not seen but felt — wind the rotation of the earth a bench sliding into the gorge rock crumbling cone cells collapsing a blind spot expanding
What a great afternoon walk with Delia the dog! No coat. No mud. Walked to the Winchell Trail then down beside the chain link fence. Drip Drip Drip — the sewer pipe in the ravine. Everything washed out — light brown, tan, yellowed. Up on the mesa in the savanna, a great view of the river. Was able to walk on the dirt path between the savanna and the 38th street stairs. They’ve put down some mulch, so it’s not as muddy. As I neared the entrance to the Winchell Trail, I passed the spot where I fell in the mud, straight on my tailbone. No mud now, only memories and a still-sore back.
On the way to the river, I noticed something interesting hidden on the tree trunk while Delia sniffed around. I took a picture of it:
= > ÷
When I was looking at it in person, I thought someone had carved the message in the tree, but studying it now, it looks like it’s a rock wedged in a crack. I probably should have taken another picture that wasn’t quite as close-up for scale. That is one tiny rock.
I had to look up how to type the division sign on a mac. Hold down option and /
A slow walk with Delia the dog. Stopping and sniffing and pooping and peeing and listening nervously to rumbling trucks and roofers. On the Winchell Trail, a black capped chickadee just overhead feebeed and chickadeedeedeed at us. Only a few remnants of the snow remain. A mix of dry path with puddles and mud.
Near the end of the walk I decided that what I really needed to do with my back was loosen it up by walking faster. Maybe I’m tensing up too much? Also decided that I’d try a short run.
run: 2 miles just north of lake street 59 degrees
Ran past the ancient boulder and down through the tunnel of trees. The floodplain forest looks barren — no snow or leaves on the trees, only brittle and brown on the ground. Felt pretty relaxed and a little awkward — not quite a hitch in my step, but not smooth either. That got better as I warmed up. Listened to the breeze passing through the trees, and voices running north. I put in my “Doin’ Time” playlist for my run south. Heard: Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is; A Summer Wasting; Suspended in Time. All three offering visions of life outside the clock/capitalist time.
I almost forgot: I wore shorts today!
10 Things from my Walk and Run
park workers in orange vests getting ready to do some work — trim trees? clear out brush? (walk)
after weeks, they’re finally doing something about the gushing water on the corner of 46th! the barricades were gone, and so was the sound of water gone wild (run)
chick a dee dee dee — a black capped chickadee in a tree just above my head — what I saw: a small dark flurry of movement on a branch (walk)
the soft, energetic din of kids on the playground at Dowling Elementary (walk)
a line of snow — a lump, not big enough to be a wall — stretched across the walking path (run)
the river: open, shimmering, blue (walk)
the tree line on the other side, a golden glow (run)
a slight slip in mud on the boulevard between edmund and the river road (walk)
the soft shadows of gnarled oak tree branches on the grass (run)
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder (run)
circumambulation
Returning to circumambulation and the ceremony/ritual of looping around the gorge. A thought: when I swim at the lake I do multiple loops, but beside the gorge, I only do one loop. What’s the difference (mentally, spiritually, physically) between a loop vs. multiple loops. Also, where do my there and back runs — trestle turn around or the franklin hill and back or the falls and back — fit in? What sort of ritual are they?
Loosely, the structure of Gary Snyder’s “The Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais” is:
a brief description of place
a sacred chant/mantra
a further description — more details, directions, feelings/reflections/encounters
I’ll try this structure.I think I want to do the 8 loop that combines the ford and franklin loops. But, I’m taking it easy with the running right now, so maybe I should wait to do this until next month?
but now we really hear chanting we can’t decode–Don’t be so rational–a congregate speech from the redtrembling sprigs, a vascular language prior to our
breathed language, corporeal, chemical, drawing our sound into its harmonic, tuning us to what we’ve yet seen, the surround calling us, theory-less, toward an inference of horizontal connections there at
ground level (Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpais/Forrest Gander)
Some chants I might include:
I am the wind and the wind is invisible, all the leaves tremble but I am invisible
All trees are just trees
In every part of every living thing/is stuff that once was rock
Listen, I don’t think we’re going to rise/in gauze and halos./Maybe as grass, and slowly. Maybe as the long-leaved, beautiful grass (added the next day: these lines don’t fit with the others, not enough rhythm?)
Life is but Life, and Death is but Death. Joy is but Joy, and Breath is but Breath.
In the name of the Bee-– And of the Butterfly-– And of the Breeze–Amen!
Where people shoveled yesterday, the path is mostly bare with a few streaks of slippery ice, but where they didn’t it is not. Slabs of thick, untouched snow. The slick spots were the most unwelcome, especially with my tight lower back. Aside from the ice, it was wonderful to be outside. Bright blue sky, chirping birds, warm sun. So warm that I took off my hat.
At one point Scott mentioned how the strip of grass between the sidewalk and road is not called a boulevard everywhere. It’s a regional thing. He couldn’t remember what else it was called and where he heard about it, but I did — at least where he heard about it; I couldn’t remember what else it was called. He heard about it from me, during one of our runs together. I couldn’t remember much else, so I had to look it up. Yep — here it is:
I described a New Yorker article I was reading before we left about forensic linguistics. My description included misplaced apostrophes, devil strips, and Sha Na Na.
A linguist solved a crime in which someone left ransom notes that read, “Put it [the money] in the green trash kan on the devil strip at the corner 18th and Carlson.” Here’s the important part in the article:
And he knew from his research that the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street—sometimes known as the “tree belt,” “tree lawn,” or “sidewalk buffer”—is called the “devil’s strip” only in Akron, Ohio.
Wow, I’ve amassed a lot of information on this blog. Some of it I always remember, and some of it comes back when my memory is triggered, like today.
bike: 30 minutes basement
I wanted to move my legs and get my heart rate up today so I biked. Watched part of Fame — the end of freshman year and the beginning of sophmore year. Two scenes I especially recall: 1. when Mrs. Sherwood shames Leroy for not being able to read in class — terrible and 2. when the acting teacher instructs the students to pay attention to the details — chewing, talking — of their life:
I want you to observe yourself doing ordinary everyday things. You’ll be asked to duplicate those here in class. An actor must develop an acute sense memory so concentrate on how you deal with things in your world. How you wash your face or hold your fork or lift your cup or comb your hair. Observe and study your own mechanicalness. See if you can catch yourself in the very act of doing something or saying something. See if your actions and reactions fall into patterns and what those patterns are. And in particular, pay close attention to the physical world. Isolate and concentrate on the details.
from Fame –first year (1980)
I’ve been doing this with my vision for several years now, partly because I’m curious and partly because I think it’s necessary for me to function. To isolate and understand and work around the strange and unexpected ways my eyes work (or don’t work).
I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.
It felt good to bike. My back didn’t hurt at all. Only my left knee, a little, which is normal. Maybe I’ll do a week of biking. Could I work my way up to an hour on the bike?
conjunction junction, what’s your function?
In late fall or early winter, I wrote a haunts poem about all that the gorge could hold. I named it And. This morning, I found another poem with that title:
Read the poem “And” and listen to it several times. Jot down some notes.
Pick a conjunction other than and — or, but, for, nor, yet, so. Make a list of words that contain your chosen conjunction.
Turn your list of words into a poem. “Keep the sound of the word in the air as long as possible through rhyme and repetition.”
I think I’ll choose “or.” When I was writing my and poem in November, I told Scott about it on one of our runs. He mentioned how “and” and “or” work in his coding of web databases:
A mile later, Scott described how you code and in css (where and means both this and that must exist to make a statement true) and how you code or(where or means either this or that can exist to make a statement true). I was fascinated by how and was restrictive and narrowing in the code while orwas expansive. In my poem, I’m understanding and as generous and open and allowing for more possibilities not less. I told Scott that I might need to write an or poem now. And is accumulation, more layers while or is a stripping down.
And = all these things can be true, and moreOr = at any give time, any one of these things could be true
Hooray for being outside and on the walking trail! Hooray for not much wind! Hooray for running up the Franklin hill! My back was a little tight, but not too bad. My legs felt fine.
The river was open; the only ice was on the edges. The sky was a mix of clouds and bright sun. Before the run I heard some geese — did I hear any during? I don’t think so. Also heard before the run: some kids having fun inside a house — laughing and yelling through the closed windows.
At some point, I had an idea for my monthly challenge: the run as ceremony. Inspired by Ellis’s Aster of Ceremonies, I want to return to Gary Snyder, Mount Tamalpais, and circumambulation. What sort of ceremonies can I make out of my run that brings together my blind spot and the gorge?
10 Things
bright pink graffiti on a foot of the 1-94 bridge
the top of one section of the wooden fence on the edge above Longfellow Flats is missing
the chain across the old stone steps has been removed
the path was almost completely clear — the only bit of snow I recall seeing was under the lake street bridge: a low and narrow ridge — just remembered one other bit of snow: just past the franklin bridge
a full-length mirror left by the trashcan
disembodied voices — coming from inside houses, below in the gorge, far behind me on the trail
sh sh sh — my feet striking the grit on the asphalt
my shadow briefly appeared – not sharp but soft, faint
at least 2 trios of runners, some pairs, several runners on their own
my friend, the limestone slabs propped up and looking like a person sitting against the underside of Franklin, is still there. I’d like to name them and add them to my list of regulars: Lenny the limestone?
lower back pain
My lower back has been sore lately. Sore enough that I took 5 days off of running. Not sure why I’ve waiting this long, but i decided today to look up lower back stretches for runners. I found this video and its 4 helpful stretches — the video claims to have 5 stretches, but they are only 4. I wonder what the missing one was?
The stretches: pretzel, thread the needle, plank to lunge, hip sweep
I’ll see how it feels in a few hours, but right now, having just stretched, it feels good!
a purple spill from march 1
I wrote this yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to post it.
It’s March and the purple hour is over, but in true purple fashion, the color can’t be contained to one month. Always it oversteps its boundaries. Reading the poem of the day, “Fog” by Emma Lazarus, purple appeared:
Swift, snowy-breasted sandbirds twittering glance Through crystal air. On the horizon’s marge, Like a huge purple wraith, The dusky fog retreats.
wraith
1 a: the exact likeness of a living person seen usually just before death as an apparition
f you see your own double, you’re in trouble, at least if you believe old superstitions. The belief that a ghostly twin’s appearance portends death is one common to many cultures. In German folklore, such an apparition is called a Doppelgänger (literally, “double goer”); in Scottish lore, they are wraiths. The exact origin of the word wraith is misty, however, and etymologists can only trace it back to the early 16th century—in particular to a 1513 translation of Virgil’sAeneid by Gavin Douglas (the Scotsman used wraith to name apparitions of both the dead and the living). In current English, wraith has taken on additional, less spooky, meanings; it now often suggests a shadowy—but not necessarily scary—lack of substance.
Wraith — I like that word and what it conjures. And to make it purple? Good job, Emma! I’m not sure about the middle section where she imagines the “orient town,” but I like “Fog,” especially this:
for on the rim of the globed world I seem to stand and stare at nothingness. But songs of unseen birds And tranquil roll of waves
Bring sweet assurance of continuous life Beyond this silvery cloud. Fantastic dreams, Of tissue subtler still Than the wreathed fog, arise,
And cheat my brain with airy vanishings And mystic glories of the world beyond.
Returning to the purple — I like how she imagines the lifting fog as purple. Back in November of 2022 (how has it been that long?!) when I studied gray, I devoted a day to fog and mist: 23 nov 2022. Last month, purple — especially lavender and lilac or eggplant and dark purple — replaced gray. Where I used to see gray everywhere, now I see purple, or imagine purple.
