Tag: remember/forget

oct 14/BIKERUN

indoor bike: 15 minutes
bike stand
treadmill run: 1 mile
outdoor run: 2 miles
34 degrees / icy drizzle

Woke up this morning before 6, opened the door to snow. What? Less than an inch, but all the trees were covered in white, the deck too. I had no idea. Oh well, I knew it would melt and that it wouldn’t be difficult to run in. A few hours later, having put on my early winter running attire — black running tights, black shorts, pink jacket with hood, black running vest, cap, headband, gloves — I opened the door to icy rain. Wtf? Again, I had no idea.

I will run in cold. I will run in snow. I will run in rain. I will not run in icy rain.

Decided to do a quick bike warm-up in the basement, then do a short run on the treadmill. Felt so good when I was done that I decided to believe that it wasn’t raining anymore. It was, but barely. Ran through the neighborhood, trying to avoid all the closed sidewalks and roads, and onto the river road trail at 32nd. Everything was dripping, but nothing was slippery. The main things I remember from the run are: puddles, the soft sounds of falling water — not sure how much of it was rain, and how much of it was just dripping trees, beeping trucks, and deep dark brown trunks.

As I write this entry, only minutes after I finished my run, the sun has come out and the sky is bright. I suppose if I had just been patient and waited a few more minutes, I could have avoided all the drips, but why would I have wanted to do that?

Something I learned this morning: I should do a 5-10 minute warm-up on the bike, or the treadmill, before I go out for a run, especially when it’s very cold outside. Why have I never thought of this before?

It’s October, so of course I’m thinking about ghosts. I also happen to be editing some poems about ghosts/haunts that I did last year. Here’s a poem I found yesterday:

Circle/Dana Knott

There are ghosts
and there are humans
in this house
ghosts who were once
humans, humans
who will become ghosts

The ghosts pace
from room to room
open cupboards 
and tap tap messages
looking, looking

Ghosts and humans 
live together apart
each a movement
a curtain, a drift
of snow, a whiteness
each his own fragment
trying to connect

to remember, to forget
lost loves, found keys 
human obits in the process
of being written
ghostly obits in the process
of being read

oct 13/BIKE

indoor bike: 30 minutes
basement, bike stand
43 degrees

Decided to give my slippy and slide-y kneecap another day to recover from yesterday’s run. It seems fine, but I’m being extra cautious. I want to reach my 1000 miles again this year. I biked and watched an old 10,000 meter race — Worlds, Beijing, 2015. Why does 2015 seem so long ago?

Next week (hopefully), we’re re-joining the YWCA so I can swim this winter and Scott can run. Hooray for less basements, more pools and pool poems, and a new batch of regulars! Don’t worry, I’m still planning to run outside. Winter running is my favorite.

Yesterday, I discovered a new journal on twitter: Tiny Wren Lit. They publish very small poems — up to 15 lines, with a max of 25 characters (including spaces) per line. On the 15th, they’re open for submissions for an issue with the theme, Self-Portrait As. I’ve started working on reshaping a few of my poems to fit this theme. Very cool. In the process of thinking about this, I have (I hope!) come up with my fall project: a series of small poems playing with the themes of water and stone. I’ve been thinking about water and stone for a long time; they are 2 of the constants in my writing/moving/life. Sometimes I feel like water, sometimes stone. I’m excited!

And, here’s a beautiful poem I found, also on twitter:

Forest of Beginnings/ Mai Der Vang

Even the sky knows not
to make promises of water,
 
and the air knows not to dream
the onset of rain.
 
Even the animal
who forgets the touch
 
of a distant liquid cold
waits without knowing.
 
Earth is picking up her bones.
 
Earth is tucking in her babies.
 
          Sleep well, little loves,
                 sleep as you’ve never slept
 
       so you may wake
                    as you’ve never woke.
 
This is the earth that chants.
 
This is the earth that grows
teeth in the storm.
 
               This is the earth voicing
  each twig and leaf,
 
every stem
and stone.
 
This is the earth that opens like a room.
 
The ground sleeps through another
season of drought.
 
The land burrows further into exile,
sinking upward,
                        heaven to the ground,
 
where bodies of hemlock and pine,
cedar and fir,
 
no longer cast old roots but
tiptoe their arms
 
around shrubs and metal stakes.
 
Still, the land gives, the field grows,
and the harvest enters
          when it is called.
 
Flora of these hills and meadows
 
are all but springing their desires
under the rising moon.
 
               Leaves tended
by hands that tended leaves
from another mountain
 
on another shore
                        in another war.
 
War made by hands of another
for ownership of
 
                     the mountain before
leaving to new shores.
 
I did not know when I birthed you
that flight had been etched
on our tongues.
 
I did not know the jungle would
take us
far from our home,
 
                           bring us to California with
visions of new dirt and
 
the brightest green in our blood.

oct 10/RUN

6.05 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
51 degrees

A beautiful morning, a good run. Now, minutes after it, I’m wiped out. Ran down the franklin hill, past annie young meadows, to the top of the south fourth st overlook. Stopped to admire the river: blue, with 2 rowers, one in a bright orange top (shirt? vest? jacket?). Started running again, walked up the franklin hill, then ran again, this time with a Taylor Swift playlist.

For the first few miles, I recited lines from May Swenson’s “October”:

Now and then, a red leaf riding
the slow flow of gray water.
From the bridge, see far into
the woods, now that limbs are bare,
ground thick-littered. See,
along the scarcely gliding stream,
the blanched, diminished, ragged
swamp and woods the sun still
spills into. Stand still, stare
hard into bramble and tangle,
past leaning, broken trunks,
sprawled roots exposed.

As I recited it, I wondered about the repetition of now (now and then; now that limbs are bare) and into (see far into; the sun still spills into). Why does she repeat these words?

10 People I Encountered

  1. Was mornied! by Mr. Morning! I had run past him — only seeing him from behind and not noticing it was him — and he called out. I turned back and called out good morning!
  2. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker.
  3. Ran past Daddy Long Legs.
  4. a woman walking briskly, wearing a turquoise fleece, talking with
  5. another woman, together they approached me from behind as I walked up the franklin hill. Their voices hovered, growing louder as they neared
  6. a runner dressed in black — first far behind me, then closer, then past me, then far ahead
  7. a person sitting on a bench perched on the rim of the bluff
  8. an older man and woman walking — I think I regularly encounter them? Can’t remember what the woman looks like, but the man is tall, thin, and white with white hair
  9. a roller skier, roller skiing in the flats
  10. a biker blasting music — I couldn’t hear it because I had my headphones in

word of the day: bombinate

I follow Merriam-Webster on twitter. Had to make note of today’s word of the day. “To bombinate is to make a sustained, murmuring sound similar to a buzz or drone.” I strongly dislike anything that bombinates. That low-lying, ever-present rumble that unsettles. I do like saying the word, though.

Taylor Swift’s “Red” came on near the end of my fifth mile. As I listened to the lyrics, I was struck by the chorus:

Losing him was blue, like I’d never known
Missing him was dark gray, all alone
Forgetting him was like trying to know
Somebody you never met
But loving him was red
Oh, red
Burning red

Perhaps this isn’t fair, but I kept thinking about how predictable and unimaginative her color descriptions are. And then I started thinking about synesthesia, which I don’t have, and wondering if people with it see emotions as colors, and what colors they might see. And now, after quickly researching the link between blue and gray and depression, I’m thinking about color psychology and feeling skeptical.

august 18/SWIM

3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
5:30 pm

Hooray for thunderstorms holding off until I was done! At the end of my third loop, I reached the beach, stood up, then heard thunder and the lifeguard telling everyone to exit the water. Great timing!

I had been tracking the storm all day. I knew it was coming after 6. I figured I would be able to do one loop, maybe two.

At the start of the swim, the sky was blue and I thought, there’s no way it’s raining during open swim. But within a few minutes, I started to notice the sky was darkening to my left. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right, clear blue sky. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left, dark blue. Then darker blue.

I swam faster, trying to outrun the storm. You could tell it was coming because the swells were getting bigger. No whitecaps, but biggish waves crashing into me. I was working hard — and getting to punch the water a lot, which I enjoy.

At the end of two loops, I stood in the shallow water and thought about stopping. Then I heard someone say, I’m going to do one more loop and I thought, yes, another loop sounds good. And it was, but also very hard. My legs were ready to be done way out in the middle of the lake. I’m very glad I made it back without any cramps.

I stayed on course the whole time, swimming right to the buoys even when I didn’t think I was seeing them. My legs, like rudders, correcting for when the wind blew me off course.

Saw at least one military plane, flying lower in the sky. Lots of seagulls swooping down. Some silver flashes of fish below. One prickly vine that grazed my leg, making it briefly sting.

Found this great essay about one of my favorite poem forms, the Abecedarius (which I’ve been calling the Abecedarian): Don Dada on the Down Low Getting Godly in His Game: Between and Beyond Play and Prayer in the Abecedarius (This article was mentioned in an excerpt of an interview with Matthew Harvey that I read).

I love playing with words, sometimes in the hopes of opening doors to new poems, and sometimes for distraction and escape. Yesterday, I was stuck in the waiting room of a medical clinic, which was both a “regular” doctors’ office and urgent care. I forgot my phone — what a bad time to forget my phone! — and couldn’t block out the sounds — the menancing coughs, the grunts and sighs, one angry man demanding a COVID test. I tried to read The Odyssey, but I was too distracted. So I got out my Plague Notebook, and decided to rethink the acronym, ER (I was not in an ER, but Urgent Care…close enough). Instead of Emergency Room, ER might mean:

  • End Racism
  • Endure Rain
  • Eat Radishes
  • Emit Radon
  • Erase Rust
  • Engulf Red
  • Enough Ruffage!
  • Early Run
  • Easter Roast
  • Ether Residue
  • Eggplant Ratatouille
  • Exam Review
  • Everything Ruined
  • Escape Room
  • Edible Road
  • Elephant Rug
  • Evergreen Rhyme
  • Escalating Risk
  • Expanding Rip
  • Elevator Rot
  • Empty Repair
  • Evasive Rock
  • Engineered Roof
  • Ecological Rap
  • Envelope Ripped
  • Epileptic Rooster
  • Enormous Racoon
  • Eleven Rainbows
  • Enchilada Recon
  • Elegant Rhinos
  • Electric Rump
  • Emerging Rest
  • Energy Rental
  • Eek! a Rat!

My favorites: Enchilada Recon, Electric Rump, Elevator Rot, Ecological Rap
Will any poems/lyric essays emerge from this? Probably not, but it sure helped me endure an uncomfortable hour in a crowded, coughing waiting room!

july 28/RUNBIKESWIMBIKE

3.35 miles
trestle turn around
62 degrees / humidity: 71%
8:00 am

Another beautiful, cool morning! All in the shade with only a few dancing dots of sun. I looked for the tree that resembles a tuning fork amongst the Welcoming Oaks but couldn’t find it today. Wondered if I’d feel out of tune during this run. Nope. It was great. Maybe it’s because of the new shoes? From the beginning, I’ve worn Saucony Grid Cohesions. But the latest re-design (I think I’ve been through 10 re-designs) does not work for my wide feet, so I upgraded to the Rides. Excellent, especially since I got them for 1/2 price!

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a roller skier, their poles clicking once, then sliding across the asphalt, or skittering across — no, maybe scraping
  2. the shimmering water peeking through a gap in the leaves
  3. a biker listening to something on the radio — a bike race? but not the Tour; that’s over
  4. a newspaper, rolled up and in the bag, on the stones just under the lake street bridge. What was it doing there?
  5. rowers, down below
  6. the wind — shimmering or simmering or sizzling
  7. someone pushing a stroller slowly, someone else pushing a stroller quickly
  8. a tall man with carrying a bag of newspapers on the path, a few blocks from the lake street bridge. Did he deliver the newspaper to the bridge? Why? (see #4)
  9. in the tunnel of trees: a bright orange construction sign, sometimes tipped over, sometimes upright. Placed there about a month ago when they were doing road work above and needed to re-route bikers below. Did they forget about it, or are they leaving it for later, when they’ll need it again?
  10. a biker with their front bike light on, approaching

As I listened to the wind in the trees, I wondered about one of my favorite sounds: the creaking of branches rubbing together, sounding like a door opening. I wondered: does this only happen when the trees are bare, or less covered with leaves? Do I ever hear this creaking in the summer? I can’t remember; I’ll have to start listening more deliberately for it.

Found on twitter this morning:

I think that in the process of writing, all kinds of unexpected things happen that shift the poet away from his plan and that these accidents are really what we mean when we talk about poetry.

John Ashbery

I really like this idea of the accidents. Often it feels like poetry is what happens when you’re trying to do something else. The something else = off to the side, on the side, not in the center but the periphery, not a matter of strong will but of surrender. A goal: get yourself in a space where you’re open to the accidents.

Also, this bit from a poem by Diane Seuss

What can memory be in these terrible times?
Only instruction. Not a dwelling.

Weeds/ Diane Seuss

Here are some cool facts about crickets that I just discovered from the mnstateparksandtrails instagram account:

Crickets are cold-blooded — their body temp changes along with the air temp. As the temp rises, their metabolism increases and they can contract their chirp-creating muscles faster. Heatwaves? More chirps! Temp dipping? Fewer chirps.

You need to be listening to a single cricket – this doesn’t work very well if you’re hearing a whole orchestra. (Officially a group of crickets is called a “crackle.”) Count the number of chirps for 14 seconds and add 40 to get the temp in Fahrenheit. It’s surprisingly accurate.

“Better grab a sweater for the campfire, it’s only 22 crickets out tonight. Brr!”

I want to measure the temperature in cricket chirps! Ok, in theory I want to. I’m not sure I could actually count the chirps. Also in this delightful description:

a group of crickets is called a crackle!

bike: 8.5 miles
swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
73 degrees / 5:30 pm

A little windy, but still a nice night for a bike and a swim.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a black plane
  2. a white plane
  3. a few menacing white sailboats, looking too close to the swimming area
  4. a flash of yellow ahead of me: someone’s safety buoy
  5. hardly any people at the beach — too cold? the green blue algae advisory?
  6. clear goggles, a noseplug that didn’t want to stay on (had to stop twice in the middle of the lake to adjust it)
  7. a little choppy on the way back from the little beach to the big beach
  8. spray as my arms entered the water. I noticed it as I turned to breathe
  9. clang clang clang a loud banging over by the menancing swan peddle boats — what were they doing?
  10. breathed every 5, except for when I breathed every 3 or 4

july 15/RUN

2.6 miles
2 trails
80 degrees / dew point: 69
noon

Decided to take a break from swimming this morning; went for a run instead. Trying to think about the topic for next week for my class: breathing, rhythm, and pace. Did some triple berry chants, then some rhythmic breathing chants.

triples:

mystery
magical
serenade
history
remember
remember
remember
forget this
forget that
remember

rhythmic breathing: 3/2

everything’s/open
listen up/closely
everyone’s/looking
Can’t you be/quiet?

I know I did more, but I can’t remember them. I heard a black-capped chickadee doing their 2 note call. I tried to match up my feet and my words to the bird’s 2 syllables. I thought about the idea of trying to match my breathing and foot strikes to the rhythms of the gorge. Then I heard the electric buzz of cicadas, and I imagined the buzz as a shimmering shower of rapid beats. I don’t think it’s easily achievable, but the idea of listening to the gorge and then trying to breathe in time with it, is pretty cool — or trying to sync up breathing and foot strikes and heartbeats.

Here’s a great quote that I found (the quote on twitter, the original source from an interview of poets.org):

There is something very important and vital in poetic expression. The way that language is used to just connect us to parts of our experience, that can’t be captured in the linear, prosaic sense, and the instructional register, the command register. Poetry doesn’t do that. Poetry invites us to question, to discover, to delight, to be odd, to be frightened—all of these wonderful emotions that actually open doors inside us and to the world. 

One more thing: Scott sent me a very interesting article about new research on woodpeckers and how they’re able to withstand the force of their constant drumming. A couple years ago, when I was researching woodpeckers and writing poems about their drumming, I mentioned learning (I can’t seem to find the entry right now) about how woodpeckers’s heads offer good shock absorption. According to this article about a recent study, that’s not true. Their heads act like hammers and the reason they’re able to endure so much pecking is because their brains are so small. Fascinating.

june 7/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails + extra
66 degrees

The rain that looked like it was coming never did, so I went out for a run. It’s overcast. Not cloudy, but CLOUD — one big cloud covering everything, making the sky gray and the greens more green. It seemed humid to me and I sweat a lot, so I thought the humidity would be high. Nope, only 47%. The run felt good, relaxed.

On the surface, all I remember is trying to lift my knees and my left hip and looking out for other walkers or runners or bikers. Can I remember more if I try? Yes!

10 Things I Noticed

  1. lots of bikers, mostly single bikers or groups of 2, one large, spread out group, several of them wearing bright yellow jackets
  2. no blue jays or chickadees, but lots of little chirping birds — I wondered if they were warblers
  3. the faint voices of kids playing on the Dowling Elementary playground
  4. exchanging deep head nods with a man using a walker
  5. Minneapolis parks is mowing today — saw and heard a big lawn mower speeding by on the path. More evidence of the lawn mowing: the smell of freshly cut grass
  6. encountering another runner down below on the winchell trail, near its southern start, where all the asphalt has reverted to dirt. They were wearing sweatpants and maybe (I can’t quite remember) a sweatshirt too?
  7. voices below, in the gorge — rowers?
  8. mud on the trail from yesterday’s rain, but not enough to slip in or on or through
  9. trickling water in several different spots in the ravine, just north of the oak savanna
  10. the dirt trail below the mesa that the parks dept cleared out last year is showing signs of being reclaimed: weeds popping up in the middle of the path

Today I got lost in the run, in some sort of reverie or just my mind shutting down for a while. I can’t remember what the river looked like, though I know I looked at it. I can’t remember anything about running through the tunnel of trees, not even a hint of a memory of the dark green or the sound of cars above, or whether I encountered someone as I ran past the old stone steps. Strange and wonderful. I like getting lost.

Found a beautiful poem through this tweet:

As from a Quiver of Arrows/ CARL PHILLIPS

What do we do with the body, do we
burn it, do we set it in dirt or in
stone, do we wrap it in balm, honey,
oil, and then gauze and tip it onto
and trust it to a raft and to water?

What will happen to the memory of his
body, if one of us doesn’t hurry now
and write it down fast? Will it be
salt or late light that it melts like?
Floss, rubber gloves, and a chewed cap

to a pen elsewhere —how are we to
regard his effects, do we throw them
or use them away, do we say they are
relics and so treat them like relics?
Does his soiled linen count? If so,

would we be wrong then, to wash it?
There are no instructions whether it
should go to where are those with no
linen, or whether by night we should
memorially wear it ourselves, by day

reflect upon it folded, shelved, empty.
Here, on the floor behind his bed is
a bent photo—why? Were the two of
them lovers? Does it mean, where we
found it, that he forgot it or lost it

or intended a safekeeping? Should we
attempt to make contact? What if this
other man too is dead? Or alive, but
doesn’t want to remember, is human?
Is it okay to be human, and fall away

from oblation and memory, if we forget,
and can’t sometimes help it and sometimes
it is all that we want? How long, in
dawns or new cocks, does that take?
What if it is rest and nothing else that

we want? Is it a findable thing, small?
In what hole is it hidden? Is it, maybe,
a country? Will a guide be required who
will say to us how? Do we fly? Do we
swim? What will I do now, with my hands?

For reasons I can’t totally express, this poem seems fitting to post this late morning, after spending time working on an introductory lecture for a class I’m teaching on noticing the world, then documenting that noticing in a log, and after writing in this log entry that I got lost in the run.

Also, it’s always a good time to post a Carl Phillips poem. His work is wonderful.

may 29/RUN

2.5 miles
river road trail, south/north
68 degrees
drizzle

Got up at 6 am again. Why won’t my body ever let me sleep in? Did my morning ritual of coffee, poems-of-the-day, and slowly waking up. Decided to head out for a run before the thunderstorms arrived at 7:30. It was dark-ish — dark enough for the street lamps to be on — and thick and heavy with humidity, green, and birdsong. I liked it. I encountered a few people on the trail, including a runner who “mornied” me. Heard some trickling from the sewer pipe, wind moving through the trees. It wasn’t drizzling all the time, although it was difficult to tell what was rain and what was sweat.

Running back north on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road I heard some more screeching blue jays. I thought about how I’ve been identifying them as crows for years. Why? I guess when I hear an annoying bird cry I think, crow. Sorry crows. The cry of a blue jay is way more annoying.

No river, but I managed to look down at the oak savanna: dark and mysterious. No roller skiers, a few bikers, no laughing kids or chattering walkers. Not too many cars this early on a Sunday morning. No rowers on the river.

Here’s some wisdom from @chenchenwrites that I found on twitter the other day:

as i’m always telling my students—why start from scratch? look at some paintings. look at photography. take a long walk. smell some basil. flip through an old notebook. tweak a favorite song lyric. follow what you already love into its forest. deepen that love. step into it more

and @hechizante777’s reply:

I worry that so many of my students (potentially pressured into nursing or other healthcare majors) simply haven’t had opportunities to figure out what they love… how to make space for that in an era of violence and scarcity?

Making space for figuring out what we love and then loving it in an era of violence and scarcity. So difficult. This discussion reminds me of Teju Cole and his interview with David Naimon for Between the Covers, especially this part:

This frenzied capitalism that we live in—what I’ve been calling market totalitarianism—produces loneliness, existential isolation that deprives people of the tools with which to navigate their place in the universe. This might be genuinely new in the history of the world, cultures have always provided people with those tools, and now we’re all just screaming into the void. Because we’ve been robbed of many, many of the tools that help anchor human experience in the world. I remember what Sun Ra said, he said “Everything comes from outer space.” Everything, it’s all meteors, it’s all from the sun. “The only thing Earth produces is the dead bodies of humans,” he said. I feel in a very vital way that the only thing market totalitarianism really produces is human alienation, depriving us of the tools with which enfold ourselves in the fabric of time. So when I encounter a quintet by Brahms, or traditional Papuan flute music, these are things that give me a chance to re-enfold myself in those sustaining human networks; to the mystery of being alive.

Teju Cole interview

And I’m also thinking of Haniq Abdurraqib’s “On Joy” (which I found very early this morning via twitter):

I don’t know what to do with all of the world’s burning anymore. Sometimes we start the fire directly, other times we’re unwitting accomplices to it, and then there are times when the smoke rises and dances above our own doorsteps, and we’re just too tired to keep the flames under control. I turn on the TV and people of color are still dying. I read the news and people in Trans communities remain dismissed, remain punchlines until they are dead, and people are still laughing at the bad joke. I talk to the women in my life and hear how they’re treated as a different class of person entirely. I don’t have the luxury to not dismantle the systems that allow for those things, and more. I am impacted by it, in some ways, I’m complicit in it, and it’s hard to sit idle while knowing those things. While being afforded a platform, artistic and otherwise.

When we talk about “the work”, as writers, so many of us mean the actual work of writing. The work on the page, of course. After a year of wrestling with the fragility of my own life, and the life of my closest human love, I realized that “the work” is also the work of living. It is the work of loving others when we can, taking care of ourselves when we can, and knowing not to let the former overwhelm us into forgetting the latter. Those two different types of work are two rivers flowing into the same body of water, for me. I don’t know how to write healthy and productive poems if I’m only doing one side of the work.

The only promise here is that I will wake up tomorrow and be as exhausted by the world as I was today. Sure, I may find a brief reprieve in a panda video (or, in the case of the particular tomorrow at the time of this writing, the new Terrance Hayes book!), but I will still find myself going outside to throw water on whatever flames I can, my arms weakening. I know that they will be there, every day. But even through all of it, something happened at around the end of last year. I started writing poems about being married. About my father, still healthy and living. About the friends I love and miss dearly. About my dog. I realized this urgency to archive the things that are not promised. I need the joy in my life to live outside of my body. I need to see it, to touch it. I need that outside of my body even more than I need the rage, confusion, and sadness on the outside. I know the sadness will always replenish itself. There is no certainty in almost anything else. I don’t know how long I’ll get to hear my wife sing along to pop songs in the car during road trips. I don’t know how much longer I’ll get to talk to my father with him remembering who I am. I don’t know when my dog will be too old to rush towards me with a wagging tail whenever I come back from an especially long trip. I need those things to live in other places. I need to have them outside of me so that I can run into them on the days where I will need to. Surely, each small joy has an expiration date. I have touched the edges of them. I don’t know how to fight against this reality except for to write into these moments with urgency. With fearlessness and hunger.

may 24/RUN

5.45 miles
franklin loop
60 degrees

Another beautiful morning by the gorge! Sunny, calm, not too warm, clear, low humidity. I felt mostly good, although my IT band — the left one — was sore off and on.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a cardinal on the path, near the edge. The light and my bad color vision made the red glow in strange ways. It almost looked purple. I wondered if it might be a scarlet tanager, which is found in the gorge, but they have deep black wings, and the one I saw did not
  2. an off, so sweet it was sour smell near the ravine — the sewer
  3. a blue river with some white foam
  4. black capped chickadees singing their fee bee song
  5. no tarp under the lake street bridge on the minneapolis side, but some sort of tarp hanging off a piling on the st. paul side
  6. a empty bench on the east side, its back to the river, facing the road
  7. another empty bench on the east side facing the river with a clear view to the other side
  8. shshshshsh of my feet stepping down on the winter grit that’s settled at the edges of the path on the franklin bridge
  9. closed: Meeker Island Dam dog park (flooding); the road down to the east river flats (flooding); the walking path under the lake street bridge on the east side (erosion — the asphalt has caved in or fallen off into the river)
  10. a runner in shorts and a tank top who I first noticed as walker, walking up the lake street hill. She was talking with someone on the phone — speaker phone? or bluetooth headset? — and running slowly on the dirt trail next to the paved path

more fun with the IT band

Every so often, when my IT band starts to hurt, I like to play with the acronym IT, which stands for Iliotibial, by re-imagining what it/IT stands for. In November of 2018, I re-imagined IT Band, as a rock band, then composed a list of free band names. I’m pretty sure I played with IT again in this log, but I can’t seem to find it. Found it! In addition to re-imagining illiotibial, I also have turned it, as it is used in the common= phrase, “Let it Be,” into an acronym. I made a list of things IT stands for, then turned that into a poem.

Today, I’d like to play with another “it” that I’m encountering a lot as I think about my fall course proposal. It’s from Mary Oliver’s poem, “Invitation”:

It could mean something.
It would mean everything.
It could be what Rilke mean, when he wrote:
You must change your life.

In a poem I wrote in 2018, I speculated on what Mary Oliver might be referring to with her use of it. Today I’d like to expand that speculation beyond her poem.

I.T. could mean something.

  • iced trees
  • important turns
  • invisible tethers
  • irksome temptations
  • indigo territory
  • invalid treaties
  • inevitable treachery
  • imploding tasks
  • injured teeth
  • italic tymphanies
  • iridescent trestles
  • impending trash
  • invalid tramping
  • ignorant tests
  • immediately trampled
  • itchy traps

Not sure if anything will come out of that, but I love playing with words, and it made me forget about my IT band. I do think there’s something interesting about the invalid treaties.

Here’s a poem that I discovered today via twitter. Paul Tran’s poems are wonderful, especially when they read them (click on the poem link to check out their recording of it)!

Hypothesis / Paul Tran

Whether it’s true 
that the moth mistakes the candle’s flame  
for the moon or the bioluminescent  
pheromones of another moth, 

I can’t say. 
I was the candle.  
I was the flame 

conceived in and by reason of  
darkness, nibbling on a darkening wick.  
When moth after moth after moth  
swarmed me with their powdery wings, 

I asked why.  
I asked how.  
I asked if 

I could survive knowing 
that not everything has a reason,  
that not everything is capable 
of or interested in reason. 

Nothing answered.  
Nothing spoke 
my language of smoke.

april 19/RUN

4.75 miles
veterans’ home loop
33 degrees

Sun. Slightly warmer. Less wind. Hooray! Still wore my running tights, winter vest, and gloves, but felt like spring is almost here. Ran around the falls. They were gushing, but the creek was barely moving. Ran past the “big feet” statue. I can’t remember his name — Gunther something, I think — but I do remember that he was a poet, a hymn writer, and a politician from Sweden. Ran the Winchell Trail too. At the start of it, I slipped, but didn’t fall, in the mud. Said a lot of “excuse mes” as I encountered people from behind. Not irritated at all. A good run on a beautiful morning.

before the run

Thinking about roots and how things become rooted in the ground today. This topic is inspired by a favorite poem that I memorized in May of 2020: What Would Root/ Katie Farris. Here’s what I wrote in an entry from may 20, 2020:

I like the idea of this long, wild story, being rooted at the rock from the beginning of the poem. And I love this idea of rooting, being rooted and how the story unfolds around it. I want to spend some more time thinking about what it means to root, be rooted, take root. I’d also like to write a poem like this–with a story at the gorge–about sinking.

I used to have this poem memorized, and I think I can again, with a little practice. For now, I’m going to record myself reading it, then listen to that recording a few times while I run today.

during the run

Started by listening to the recording of myself reading the poem. It was very cool — dreamy, almost disembodied — to listen the words as I ran through the neighborhood and toward the river. Then, when the recording was done, I put my headphones away and thought about roots as I ran south above the gorge. I remember imagining my skin as more porous and open to the world and grass growing through my pores (instead of Farris’ roots).

Halfway through the run, in Wabun park, I stopped to record my thoughts. Here’s a summary:

  1. Thought about being rooted in a place, then being on the inside or the outside and how being rooted means being both in and out, or neither, at the same time. Just there, part of what’s happening.
  2. Then, I wondered, Does rooted always mean we’re tethered or stuck in one place, immobile? What would it mean to be rooted in a place while you were moving?
  3. Then: how are the roots formed? Instead of one solid, thick, sturdy root that’s difficult to cut down, what if we were a network of roots spread throughout the ground, connected and tangled with other? Roots can be networks — shallow and easy to pull out, like weeds, but multiplying and growing when you do that (rhizomes and nodes).
  4. Getting at the root, radical feminism and the root of oppression, the origin/cause of the problem I often think about the origins of my running story — there is no one root or cause or start, but a series (a network) of reasons.
  5. Chanted: root root root root/root root root root/ roo ting roo ting/root root root root/root root root root/roo ted root less I like these simple repetitions. I’d like to try chanting these for several minutes, then seeing what other words/ideas/chants might appear.

after the run

Here’s a sad, scary headline: Report lists Mississippi as one of ‘most endangered’ U.S. rivers

And here’s a hopeful story about activists making a difference and changing the future of the river: The untold story of our national park’s founding

Thinking about being inside or outside of yourself and being rooted and what of self/Self that suggests, I’m reminded of a poem I put on my reading list the other day:

Full of yourself/ Rumi

Translated from the Farsi by Haleh Liza Gafori

Full of yourself—
a friend’s touch is sharp as a thorn.
A buzzing fly drives you mad.

Forget yourself
and what friend can hurt you?
You mingle with wild elephants
and enjoy the ride.

Caged in self,
you drown in anguish.
Storm clouds swallow the sun.
Your lover flees the scene.

Outside yourself,
the night is moonlit.
Lovers drink Love’s wine.
It flows through you.

Self-conscious,
you’re dry as autumn leaves.
You bite like frost.

Melt yourself,
and winter’s frozen meadows
will become spring’s fragrant fields.

(How) can we travel outside of ourselves? What does this untether/uproot us from? I posted this quotation from Jamie Quatro in a log entry from April 19, 2018 about running as prayer:

a state of prayerlike consciousness. Past the feel-good vibes, past the delusions, my attention moves outward: I’m intensely aware of the cadence of a bird’s song, cherry blossoms weighted-down after a rain. Things light up and I experience an interior stillness that somehow syncs me more profoundly with the exterior world. It’s a paradox: only when I’m fully present in my body do I begin to experience the absence of myself.

 Running as prayer

Does fully present in a body = rooted? I’m also thinking about entanglement and Ross Gay’s critique of buoyancy and floating free (see april 12, 2022). Can we be a self, rooted in a body and a place, and still be other than ourSelf? How do I fit Rumi’s idea of forgetting the self with entanglement?