When I started my run, I wasn’t sure where I was headed, except north. At some point, I decided to cross the bridge and run the marshall loop. Not much sun, lots of gray and brown. The river was a dull blue with small waves from the wind. Don’t remember many birds, except for a few crows. I felt cold when I started, in tights, shorts, a long-sleeved shirt, a sweatshirt, and warm when I was done.
before the run
Thought about expressions and songs with the word dirt in them. Here’s an incomplete list:
dirt bag + Teenage Dirt Bag
dirt nap
dirt bath
dirt ball
as old as dirt
dish out the dirt
dig up some dirt
hit pay dirt
as poor as dirt
eat dirt
Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Dirty Laundry
opp.: clean up my act
dust: Another One Bites the Dust
dirty and low down
dirt = dirty = bad = undesirable, unwanted = death = uncivilized = impure = contaminated So much to say about how being clean (and not dirty) is partly about establishing/protecting status and power over others and the earth, and about establishing boundaries and hierarchies. Also clean = pure = discrete = uncluttered, not messy = neat = separate
during the run
Thought about the hierarchies that the vilifying of dirt creates, then thought about the binaries too, when things are divided into pairs, with one member of the pair being better/having more power and status: clean/dirty, white/black, rich/poor, men/women, culture/nature, mind/body. Then I thought (again) about how much these unjust distributions of power are connected and decided entangled was a better word. Connected almost seems too neat, like they’re linked in some row or continuous chain. The webs of power overlap and aren’t neat or linear. This lead me to remember Ross Gay’s criticism of buoyancy and the idea that we are free, able to float above, untethered. We are entangled — down in the dirt with everything and everyone else.
Later running on the bridge, I stopped briefly to read one of the many yellow tags attached to the railings. It said, “this is not the end of your story” and had a hashtag. I didn’t stop long enough to read the # carefully, but it was something like #youarenotalone Was this about suicide prevention? Nearing the bridge from the St. Paul side, I saw a sign: Citywide Clean-up Campaign. The phrase, “clean up your mess” came into my head and it bothered me to think about a clean-up campaign beside the message about your story not ending — one wants you get rid of something, the other to not. I thought about the violence of cleaning as eliminating, erasing, removing, expunging, rendering non-existent or having never existed.
after the run
Here, in the second half of a poem by Aracelis Girmay, is another way of saying, “taking a dirt nap”:
one day, not today, not now, we will be gone from this earth where we know the gladiolas. My brother, this noise, some love [you] I loved with all my brain, & breath, will be gone; I’ve been told, today, to consider this as I ride the long tracks out & dream so good
I see a plant in the window of the house my brother shares with his love, their shoes. & there he is, asleep in bed with this same woman whose long skin covers all of her bones, in a city called Oakland, & their dreams hang above them a little like a chandelier, & their teeth flash in the night, oh, body.
Oh, body, be held now by whom you love. Whole years will be spent, underneath these impossible stars, when dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you & touch you with its mouth.
“when dirt’s the only animal who will sleep with you”
Girmay’s mentioning of bones and dreams and plants, reminds me of something else I looked up before my run but decided to save for later: the kids’ song Garden Song, or what I refer to as “the inch by inch song”– “inch by inch, row by row/gonna make this garden grow.” Here’s the verse I’m reminded of:
Pullin’ weeds and pickin’ stones Man is made of dreams and bones Feel the need to grow my own ‘Cause the time is close at hand
So much about dirt is the mixing of life and death, growth and decay. Dirt is where we come from, where we’re going.
4.75 miles Veterans’ Home loop 39 degrees wind: 12 mph, 21 mph gusts
Sunny and windy and cold. I’m ready to put away my running vest and tights. Headed south to the falls. Noticed how the river was sparkling in the distance as I ran above the gorge. Heard kids yelling at the Minnehaha Academy playground. I thought I heard someone yell, “Girl! Girl!” in an accusing way. Kept listening. The underlying hum of all the noise seemed menacing, not like kids having fun on the playground, but kids being mean to each other. Was I hearing that right? Watched the creek as it rumbled over the falls. Later, going down the hill above Locks and Dam No. 1, I noticed a small eddy in the water. I almost stopped to stare, but didn’t. Thought about how many benches were occupied with a person sitting, admiring the view. Descended to the Winchell Trail and appreciated the bare branches and the empty space they offered. Heard the sewer pipe at 42nd gushing water.
before the run
Today’s dirt topic is: fungi, decomposition, entanglement, mycelium. Here are some words/ideas I want to gather:
1 — decomposition of the self
RG: One of my favorite metaphors when I talk about joy is a mycelial metaphor. It’s like the story or the fact that in healthy forests, there’s constant communication happening in the soil. It’s a shuttling of nutrients that is trying to make this system work or this system live. Anna Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World does a lot of this in thinking about ruins, capitalism, and stuff. But I consider it a childish notion of joy, I’m just saying it’s not joy, I’m saying it’s something else and something that I’m not aspiring too actually, it does probably like the feeling of being a really free discreet individual, not beholden. That is a kind of joy or happiness. I like the word buoyant, you can lift above everything as opposed to what we know biologically, etc. is the case, that doesn’t happen, [laughs] it just doesn’t happen nor is that my aspiration. If it is my aspiration, despite my best intentions, I don’t want it to be. My practice is toward entanglement, toward recognizing.
DN: Is it toward a decomposition of the self? Like when I think of the way these mushrooms are the result of death but they’re also the processors of death
RG: Yeah. One of the things that’s so great about a garden is that you’re studying a kind of mutuality. A healthy garden has a lot of the life that comes from decomposition and it seems like hanging around that alerts us to decomposition but it also alerts us to what emerges, what happens in a garden, what happens from decomposition which is food and flowers, then which is related to all these critters, like gazillion critters that are making this happen.
2 — mutuality and symbiosis, underneath and on the edges
A mycelium is a network of fungal threads or hyphae. Mycelia often grow underground but can also thrive in other places such as rotting tree trunks. A single spore can develop into a mycelium. The fruiting bodies of fungi, such as mushrooms, can sprout from a mycelium.
Mycelia are of vital importance to the soil. They break down organic material, making its raw materials available again for use in the ecosystem. On top of this, 92% of plant families interact with fungi. This kind of symbiosis is termed mycorrhiza. Hyphae are also an important source of food for insects and other invertebrates.
The term “mycorrhiza” is assembled from Greek words for “fungus” and “root”; fungi and plant roots become intimately entangled in mycorrhizal relations. Neither the fungus nor the plant can flourish without the activity of the other (see pages 137-139 for a more detailed discussion).
The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins/ Anna Tsing
Ross Gay: And it’s basically sort of talking about how mycelium … the more and more we know, is that like, you know, healthy forests are really connected. And there’s all this shuttling of nutrients and all of this other information. Like this knowledge beyond anything that we can ever comprehend. But finally, we’re starting to like, tap it a little bit, or become aware of it a little bit. But she’s sort of talking about how mushrooms themselves and that whole sort of world, they resist things of like scale, the way the plantation, the logics of the plantation have a certain kind of relationship to scale, you know. Like, if we could make like, 10 of these, how do we figure out how to make a hundred of these. How do we figure—
Ross Gay: You know, mushrooms resist capitalist logics. They just resist it.
Ross Gay: They’re kind of funny that way, you know.
Franny Choi: Wait, how do mushroom’s resist that, like, plantation scale?
Ross Gay: Because you can’t plant mushrooms like that.
Ross Gay: You know, you can’t—you know, to some extent, you can. But certain mushrooms, like she’s studying this mushroom called matsutake mushroom. And it comes when it comes, you know.
Ross Gay: And people who know—and a lot of the people who know who are foragers are sort of marginal people. So, in the margins, there’s this different relationship. And folks are selling them and all this stuff. So they’re in a kind of market. But the market is this other kind of market.
To live with precarity requires more than railing at those who put us here (although that seems useful too, and I’m not against it). We might look around to notice this strange new world, and we stretch our imagination to grasp its contours. This is where mushrooms help. Matsutake’s willingness to emerge in blasted landscapes allows us to explore the ruins that has become our collective home.
Matsutake are wild mushrooms that live in human-disturbed forests. Like rats, raccoons, and cockroaches, they are willing to put up with some of the environmental messes humans have made….
…the history of the human concentration of wealth through making both humans and nonhumans into resources for investment. This history has inspired investors to imbue both people and things with alienation, that is, the ability to stand alone, as if the entanglements of living did not matter. Through alienation, people and things become mobile assets; they can be removed from their life worlds in distance-defying transport to be exchanged with other assets from other life worlds, elsewhere….Alienation obviates living-space entanglements. The dream of alienation inspires landscape modification in which only one stand-alone asset matters; everything else becomes weeds or waste.
The Mushroom at the End of the World
4 — the fungus among us
The Puotinen family farm, sold in 2005, is located 12 miles from Crystal Falls, Michigan in the Upper Peninsula. It’s where my dad, in the late 50s, went to high school, and where my Grandma Ines, in the 70s (I think?) worked as a secretary at a gas company. As a kid, living in North Carolina or Virginia or Iowa, I would visit it in the summer. I never went to the Humoungus Fungus Festival, but I remember hearing about it.
It was three decades ago when the Armillaria gallica was discovered near Crystal Falls.
The city since has celebrated the world’s largest continuous mushroom by playing host to the Humongous Fungus Festival. The living organism spreads over more than 37 subterranean acres, weighs an estimated 100 tons and is about 1,500 years old.
And here’s the trailer for a new documentary about the fungus. Nice!
5 — mushroom valley
Wondering about what kinds of mushrooms exist here at the Mississippi River Gorge, I searched and found out about the caves of Mushroom Valley in St. Paul.
According to the boast, it was the mushroom capital of the Midwest. “Mushroom Valley” was the informal name for several miles of the Mississippi River gorge in St. Paul, including what are now Plato, Water, and Joy Streets. The mushrooms were grown in the more than 50 caves dug out of the soft St. Peter Sandstone bluffs. Although called caves, they were man-made, often beginning as silica (sand) mines and later used for various purposes. One cave operated by the Becker Sand & Mushroom Company was the largest of all with 35-foot ceilings and nearly a mile of passages. Its wonderful hybrid name epitomized the valley and the multiple uses of the caves found there. Other uses included the aging of blue cheese, lagering, storage, and even nightclubs.
According to the article, these caves began in the 1880s. The last was cleared out in the 1980s with the creation of Harriet Island-Lilydale Regional Park. Wow. Reading a little further, the more known name for these caves is the Wabasha Street Caves. You can take a tour and hear stories about their speakeasy past. The caves housed an underground nightclub, Castle Royal, in the 20s. They were used again for growing mushrooms (and cheese and beer) in the 30s and up until the 80s.
6 — call for poems on entanglement
Do I want to try and submit something for this call for poems?
EcoTheo Review invites poems that explore the relationship between ecology and theology, our senses of nature and place as well as our senses of spirituality and divinity. For our Summer print issue we will be particularly interested in work that addresses themes of entanglement. How do the root systems of plants and the architecture of mycelia, lichens, etc. reflect and contrast human forms of entanglement? In what ways do images of wrestling with spiritual beings inspire and trouble us? Where do you find hope and where do you long for healing in our entangled bodies?
Before sunrise, you listen for deer beyond the gate: no signs of turkeys roosting on branches, no black bear overturning garbage bins along the street. The day glimmers like waves undulating with the tide: you toss another yellow cedar log into the wood stove on the float house; a great blue heron flaps its wings, settles on the railing outside the window; a thin low cloud of smoke hangs over the bay. When you least expect it, your field of vision* tears, and an underlying landscape reveals a radiating moment in time. Today you put aside the newspaper, soak strawberry plants in a garden bed; yet, standing on land, you feel the rise and fall of a float house, how the earth under your feet is not fixed but moves with the tide.
*I put a post-it note on the cover of Sze’s collection of poems: “so many references to failing vision in later poems.” For example, in another section of this poem, Sze refers to floaters — “floaters in my eyes wherever I go.” Floaters can indicate a retinal tear.
AS: I do. I want to personalize it and say that again, this came very slowly over time. Years ago, my son picked up a mushroom on a lawn and I was like, “Don’t eat that.” I didn’t know anything about mushrooms, I was just like the alarm father saying, “Wait a minute, you don’t know what you have there, you could die from it.” Then a few months later, my son and I saw that at Santa Fe Community College, a local mycologist, Bill Isaacs, was teaching a mushroom identification class and I thought, “This would be great bonding for father and son. We’ll go out and hunt mushrooms. This will be fun and we could learn something.” My son loved the idea. He was really into it, so we signed up and every Saturday for eight weeks in the summer, we joined this group and we would go out into the mountains of Northern New Mexico, and hunt for an hour. We’d bring back everything we found and we’d lay them out on park benches, and tables and Bill would say, “Oh, you’re going to die from this one.” He was the head of the New Mexico Poison Control, so it wasn’t just learning the choice edibles, it was learning this whole arena of new knowledge. Then it fascinated me to see the early, middle, and late stages of the mushroom. It also fascinated me that I couldn’t identify any of them by looking in a field guide. I didn’t know what to look for. In the rocky mountains, there are different varieties, there are all these special nuances and Bill would say, “Well, why didn’t you dig out the bottom below the surface because we need that information?” I was like, “Well, I didn’t know how to do that. I just cut it off at the ground.” He’s like, “You missed crucial stuff.” It was like this whole learning of a new ecology, a new field that I loved going out into nature every Saturday and Sunday. We did it for like six summers. Again, it wasn’t like, “Oh, I’m going to learn mushrooms and that’s going to be like this metaphor for language.” It was just a wonderful thing to do with my son. I got really excited by it. Of course, the edible ones are delicious. It was a lot of fun and it was also a challenge. I began to really like going into an environment and knowing, for instance, if I go to the Santa Fe Ski Basin, and I’m at ten thousand feet where ponderosa pine is too low, I’m not even going to find any of the boletes and chanterelles, the really choice edibles. I’ve got to get higher up into the spruce and fir. I loved learning breeding a landscape, like even before looking at a mushroom, I had to look at the vegetation and what wildflowers were blooming. It was a way for me to really experience nature in a kind of detail I had never done before, then to be hunting the mushrooms, collecting them, and also scattering them in these baskets. It just became a whole new field of learning. Then ultimately, I began to think I love this idea that the mycelium is below the surface. It’s like the subconscious, then when the mushroom fruits pops up above ground, maybe that’s like this spontaneous outpouring of a poem or whatever. You can be too logical or whatever.
I didn’t really think about mushrooms while I ran, but I did think about decomposition as deconstructing and undoing as I ran over the asphalt that is reverting to dirt in the first stretch of the Winchell Trail. I thought, when things break down through decomposition, they aren’t being destroyed, with nothing to replace them. Instead, something new is created. I thought, in vague, broad terms, about the different ways humans and industry and birds and water and soil and rock are entangled. I wonder what was the difference between the terms “symbiosis” and “entanglement.” Finally, and for more time than anything else, I thought about Arthur Sze’s poem and his lines:
your field of vision tears, and an underlying landscape reveals a radiating moment in time.
I reflected on the underlying landscape as layers that can’t be seen with your eyes, only smelled or felt or imagined. And I delighted in the idea of so much happening, so much present beneath me that I couldn’t see, that I didn’t need to see, for it to exist or to affect me or to be connected to me.
after the run
I want to know, What is the distinction between symbiosis and entanglement? Found the article, Entangled Flourishings: Ideas in Conversation with Resisting Reductions, with the following description: “Dominant paradigms of ecology reduce life into ‘parts,’ failing to articulate the symbiosis of such communities, or of organisms as intricately nested collectives. To understand organisms, we must use the language of symbiotic ecology.” Here’s an awesome phrase that should be the title of a poem, or a line in a poem:
organisms are ecosystems
Skimming through the article, I found a part which reminded me of what I had already read in Tsing before leaving for my run. Symbiotic relationships are mutually advantageous. But to be entangled doesn’t necessarily guarantee that the interactions will be beneficial. In the article, the authors argue that this means the relationship is one of ongoing negotiations, where “the relationship is dynamic. It is constantly negotiated. At any one time, plants or fungi may be giving more than they receive, or vice versa.” If I’m reading Tsing correctly, the affiliations/connections aren’t a one-to-one relationship or set of negotiations, but part of a much broader network of entanglements with a wide range of organisms having an impact on each other in a broad range of unanticipated ways:
But many ectomycorrhizas are not limited to one collaboration: the fungus forms a network across plants. In a forest, fungi connect not just trees of the same species, but often many species. If you cover a tree in the forest, depriving its leaves of light and thus food, its mycorrhizal associates may feed it from teh carbohydrates of other trees in the network. Some commentators compare mycorrhizal networks to the Internet, writing of the “woodwide web.” Mycorrhizas form an infrastructure of interspecies interconnection, carrying information across the forest.
The Mushroom at the End of the World
I’m ending this packed post with a couple paragraphs from an essay for Guernica, “Mycelium“:
Everyone is excited about mushrooms this year. A friend says it’s because they thrive amidst decay and death, making new life under the rot. I’d never noticed before this summer that the forest is half rot, half life. All the fallen trees, twisting slowly into the ground, all the mushrooms growing on the downed trees, and speckling the trunks with their Turkey Tails and Chicken of the Woods and Shelf Mushrooms. I used to think of the woods as a slowly changing place, turned by seasons, but it’s constantly in motion. If I could get closer, closer, maybe I could hear the leaves sprouting and disintegrating, the fungus spreading underground, and bark cells multiplying.
Out at Echo Lake, I notice all the birches that take root in the rotting stumps, making their homes from decay. How strong those curved roots are, how cunning to find purchase here, in what might look useless. I notice trees perched on cliffs, clinging with curled roots to the dirt, and impossibly arched trunks that reach out over rivers or other trees. My favorite is the pine tree that tilts further and further toward the lake each year but is somehow still alive.
5.5 miles franklin loop 56 degrees humdity: 88%/ dew point 55
Much cooler this morning. Overcast, excessively green, quiet. The sky was a light gray, almost white. The river, grayish blue–not quite livid, which I discovered is the name for a blueish-gray color. I could tell the dew point was close to the temperature because I was sweating a lot and felt hot. I ran north on the river road, past the railroad trestle and the steps leading to the Winchell Trail that were just redone earlier this year. Ran over the Franklin Bridge, looking for rowers on the river. None. Noticed the big ancient boulder, wedged between the walking and biking trails on the east side of the river. After running up the hill just past the Meeker Dam Dog Park, I tried to slow my heart rate down by chanting, “I/need to go/slower/so/that my pulse/will lower.” Not sure if it lowered my pulse, but it helped me to lock into a steady rhythm and recover from the hill. I should start doing chants again; I haven’t done them for a while. Also haven’t done triple berry chants. What have I been doing instead? Not sure.
It does no good to trick and weave and lose the other ghosts, to shove the buried deeper into the sandy loam, the riverine silt, still you come, my faithful one, the sound of a body so persistent in water I cannot tell if it is a wave or you moving through waves. A month before you died you wrote a letter to old friends saying you swam with a pod of dolphins in open water, saying goodbye, but what you told me most about was the eye. That enormous reckoning eye of an unknown fish that passed you during that last-ditch defiant swim. On the shore, you described the fish as nothing you’d seen before, a blue-gray behemoth moving slowly and enduringly through its deep fathomless North Pacific waters. That night, I heard more about that fish and that eye than anything else. I don’t know why it has come to me this morning. Warm rain and landlocked, I don’t deserve the image. But I keep thinking how something saw you, something was bearing witness to you out there in the ocean where you were no one’s mother, and no one’s wife, but you in your original skin, right before you died, you were beheld, and today in my kitchen with you now ten years gone, I was so happy for you.
Oh, that fish’s eye! “something saw you, something/was bearing witness to you out there in the ocean”…”you were beheld”. Wow. Makes me think about all of the recent talk of beholding/beholden (my introduction: the wonderful work of Ross Gay). It also makes me think of Jaws 2, a movie I watched repeatedly on cable when I was kid. Chief Brody looking at a photograph of something dark and sinister in the water. It could be nothing, or it could be another great white shark. That eye haunted/haunts me. Someone mentioned on twitter–where I found this poem–that it reminded them of Elizabeth Bishop’s The Fish. Rereading The Fish, I see the connection, but the witnessing (in Limón’s poem, by the big fish of the mother/ in Bishop’s, by the narrator (I) of the fish) seems different in terms of who is the subject/who is the object, and how their subjectivity is represented. I really like both of these poems, but I think I like the subjectivity of the fish in Limón’s poem better.
swim: 1.7 miles/4 loops cedar lake open swim 69 degrees
Much cooler today. Brr, on the shore. Wore my wetsuit for the first time. I prefer swimming without a wetsuit, but it was nice to keep warmer and more buoyant. I’m sure I went faster too. Yesterday I asked the Open Swim page on facebook for clarification on which way we should be swimming and they answered: keep the buoy on your right shoulder. It helps me to know. Everybody seemed to know now too; almost all of us were going the same way. Tonight I was attacked by the lake. At least, by the vegetation in the lake. Vines wrapping around my wrist and shoulder, scratching my face. I didn’t care. It was a great swim!
2.4 miles 43rd ave, north/31st st, east/river road trail, south/edmund, north 55 degrees
Decided to run a little less distance today to make sure my knee was doing okay. It is. Cooler and windy this morning. Crowded with cars, but not people. Sunny. What do I remember from my run? Not much. Avoiding the uneven, cracked up sidewalk on 31st, looking carefully for cars as I crossed the street, noticing there were no stones stacked on the boulder, hearing voices at the overlook. I forgot to glance down at the river when I had a chance. I don’t remember hearing any woodpeckers or black-capped chickadees or red-breasted nuthatches. I’m sure I heard many cardinals and robins. No geese or ducks or hawks circling the sky. No rowers on the river. Maybe I didn’t notice much because I was worrying about my knee and listening to the rushing wind?
bike: 4 miles to the falls and back 62 degrees
Biked with RJP in the afternoon. Wasn’t too worried about my vision, more about my left knee, which started to hurt a few minutes into the ride. When I was done, my quad–or the IT band?–felt strange and tight. Should I keep up my goal of biking every day, or take a break from it too? It’s supposed to rain tomorrow, so the weather will probably decide for me. Aside from the knee pain, I’m liking the biking. It’s a little scary, but not anything I can’t handle. Yes! I hope I can bike a lot this summer.
Before I went out for my run, I started thinking about birds in songs. It started with Nelly Furtado’s “I’m Like a Bird,” which I remember liking back in the day (2001). Wow, 2001. I was living in Atlanta, working on my Ph.D.
I’m Like a Bird/ Nelly Furtado
I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away I don’t know where my soul is (Soul is) I don’t know where my home is And baby, all I need for you to know is I’m like a bird, I’ll only fly away
Looking up the song, I also watched the video. I’m impressed that the clothes don’t seem too dated; I’d love to have those jeans and orange shirt! Anyway, I’m not digging her simile of a bird here. The part about flying away makes sense, but “I’m like a bird…because I don’t have a soul…because I don’t know where my home is?” When I think of birds, one of the fundamental characteristics of most (all?) birds is their amazing navigation skills, their ability to find home as they migrate. I started to wonder about birds who are bad navigators–do they exist?–and then found this source about 7 Birds Who Will Never Leave You and 1 That Really Ought To (tl;dr: mallards, ravens, black-capped chickadees, northern cardinals, turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, great horned owl are the 7; european starling is the 1). When I told Scott about my search for bad navigating birds and birds who don’t migrate, he said something about flightless birds which got me wondering what characteristics define a bird, and also about what a major bummer it would be to be a bird that couldn’t fly. Then we started talking about how costly (energy zapping) it is for bird’s to fly and I thought about how many poets go on and on about birds and the freedom of flight and wanting to be as free as a bird without mentioning the immense cost of that freedom. In the process of thinking about this and searching more online, I found the article, Big Birds Don’t Fly:
Many will cite a bird’s ability to fly, sing and use its feathered wings to take flight. So it may seem a bit strange that included in the more than 10,000 species of birds in the world today is a group that literally cannot fly or sing, and whose wings are more fluff than feather.
These are the ratites: the ostrich, emu, rhea, kiwi and cassowary.
I wonder what are the defining characteristics for birds that poets use? Is it: feathers, flight, birdsong. Anything else? Eating worms? Getting up early? Migration? I think I could follow this rabbit hole a lot deeper if I didn’t stop myself. I loved to read about the physics of flight, and search for references to birds in poems that didn’t involve flying or plumage or song, and keep trying to find out about birds that get lost, but I need to stop myself.
But of course, stopping is hard, and so I didn’t and found an article–Why do birds get lost?–that mentions new research that suggests birds use quantum mechanics to navigate–something about how cryptochromes (blue light sensitive proteins found in the retina of birds and some other animals) respond to magnetic field to create an inner compass. Wow. Is it just me or does using quantum in a phrase instantly make it seem smarter and fancier and less intelligible. Also in that article: birds are good navigators and when they get lost, it’s because something has malfunctioned–their ability to make a compass, bad weather. And: scientists discovered that some birds have magnetic particles in their ear hairs(!) so they believed that they used those particles to navigate. But, those particles are in non-sensory cells so they can’t function as compasses. Woah.
And, just one more article…In this one–Why don’t birds get lost?–I found this very exciting passage, which made me call out, “Oh my god!”:
It’s thought that light-sensitive proteins called cryptochromes — which have been found in the retinas of birds, butterflies, fruit flies, frogs and humans, among others — are at the center of the mystery. When light strikes the proteins, it creates radical pairs that begin to spin in synchrony; they’re entangled.
Ever since I listened to a podcast with Ross Gay (VS) and heard him discussing entanglement, I’ve been fascinated by that word and concept. What does it mean in the context of cryptochromes, birds, and navigation? I will stop myself from looking now.
Whew. As I mentioned before falling down this rabbit hole, I was thinking about birds in songs before my run, earlier in the morning. I had already typed up a few notes:
Don’t Worry/ Bob Marley
Three little birds Pitch by my doorstep Singin’ sweet songs Of melodies pure and true, Sayin’, (“This is my message to you-ou-ou: “)
What kind of bird are these 3 little birds? Googling it, I found a source that suggests 2 answers: 1. the 3 canaries that Marley would see every morning and 2. his 3 back-up singers
Edge of Seventeen/ Stevie Nicks
Just like the white winged dove Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing Ooh, ooh, ooh Just like the white winged dove Sings a song, sounds like she’s singing Ooh, baby, ooh, said ooh
Here’s some more information about the white-winged dove, which resides in the southwest in desert thickets. It does make an “ooh ooh” call. This song is about the death of Nick’s uncle and the white-winged dove represents his soul leaving the body. The idea of the bird being the soul reminds me of ED and her poem, “‘Hope’ is a thing with feathers.” It also makes me think about Furtados line about being like a bird who doesn’t know where her soul is.
In another lyric from this song, Nicks sings about the night bird telling her to “come away.” I thought the night bird might be a blackbird, which made me think of The Beatles song “Blackbird.” Bird is slang for girl in England and Paul McCartney wrote the song after reading an article about Little Rock, Ruby Bridges, and desegregation. Ruby Bridges is the black bird he’s singing about. Speaking of McCartney, he’s big into birds. He has another great bird song: “Bluebird” with his band, Wings. And he wrote a poetry collection, released in 2001, called Blackbird.
may 25/BIKE! to the falls and back 77 degrees
Today I rode my bike outside on the trail for the first time since September 28, 2019. A few days shy of 20 months. The absence of outdoor biking is because of the pandemic–mostly because I didn’t want to get too close to others who might have covid, but also because more people were biking last summer and it was too difficult for me, with my bad vision, to feel safe navigating the trails.
Since my last bike ride, I have learned more about my vision and how my brain, specifically my visual cortex, adjusts to the quantity and quality of data it receives from my cone cells. As I understand it, the brain is constantly adjusting and adapting to incomplete, insufficient data. For me, this adjustment is not immediate; it requires practice and repetition. My brain slowly and gradually learns how to see something even when the data is fuzzy or blurry or too bright or barely registering a fast-moving form approaching. It’s not perfect or precise, and I definitely need to travel at a slower pace and use my brakes, but I can see enough to bike. As I write this, I’m realizing that just as my visual cortex learns to do more with less data, other parts of my brain learn to live with more discomfort and uncertainty. I stop being so afraid of my unfocused view and start using my other senses to help me navigate.
The bottom line: if I keep practicing–pushing through the panic, traveling on the trails, being careful and trusting in my ability to notice and navigate and not bike into anything–it will become easier, less scary, enjoyable, manageable. And I should get better at it–unless I go through another burst of rapid deterioration of cone cells (I wanted a phrase that means the opposite of a growth spurt, but I couldn’t find it, so I went with “burst of rapid deterioration” but I’ll keep looking because I don’t quite like this phrase).
Today was my first day of trying to do this. It went well. I was scared, especially before I started, but also as other bikers approached and I tried to make sure I wasn’t missing a walker or a runner. Today’s ride involved a lot of faith and hope and willingness to trust my abilities. It didn’t involve trusting other people to see me or make room for me. I am trying to work on this lack of trust because I am sure there are many people who pay attention and share the trail and don’t expect/demand that everyone else look out for them, but they hardly ever seem to be on the trail when I am. It helps tremendously that I have memorized this trail. I know all the curves, and when it narrows or joins the walking trail or dips down or veers toward the road. And I know most of the bumps and cracks and fissures and splits.
One thing I was reminded of that I really need to remember: When a person is walking a dog I rarely can see the leash or the dog, especially when they’re small and/or not right next to their human. I have never run into a leash or a dog, but it could happen if I don’t give a wide berth to anyone I’m passing–which can be difficult when the path is crowded. Of course, if walkers kept their dogs on a tighter leash, this also wouldn’t be a problem.
Other than feeling scared about what I could and could not see, the bike ride was good. No-shift-Sara is back (I wrote about her 2 summers ago); I need to practice shifting my gears more, I think. When I got to the falls, I stopped by the Longfellow fountain–an elaborate fountain that no longer holds water but plants and that has “The Song of Hiawatha” etched on a small retaining wall that creates a rectangular perimeter around the fountain. I walked my bike to the overlook. There was someone playing the accordion and some people sitting on benches while others peered over the retaining wall admiring the view. Very nice. As I headed back, I passed a small flock of black birs, some on the grass, some in the sky, and I wondered if they were crows or ravens or rooks or what.
Googled, “birds bike poem” and found this one:
Going Down Hill on a Bicycle/ Henry Charles Beeching
A Boy’s Song
With lifted feet, hands still, I am poised, and down the hill Dart, with heedful mind; The air goes by in a wind.
Swifter and yet more swift, Till the heart with a mighty lift Makes the lungs laugh, the throat cry:— “O bird, see; see, bird, I fly.
“Is this, is this your joy? O bird, then I, though a boy, For a golden moment share Your feathery life in air!”
Say, heart, is there aught like this In a world that is full of bliss? ‘Tis more than skating, bound Steel-shod to the level ground.
Speed slackens now, I float Awhile in my airy boat; Till, when the wheels scarce crawl, My feet to the treadles fall.
Alas, that the longest hill Must end in a vale; but still, Who climbs with toil, wheresoe’er, Shall find wings waiting there.
Ran on the trail but barely noticed the river. Distracted by walkers, and dog collars, and a noise that I think was a bird song but could have been someone whistling in the savanna. Heard a bird song that reminded me of the feebee call but was very different. Tried to find some words to match it, but couldn’t. A long note then a few shorter ones. No turkeys in turkey hollow, no red-breasted nuthatches near Becketwood. As I ran north on edmund, I thought about the poem I posted yesterday (which I actually posted this morning) about bird names. In trying to identify birds and birdsongs am I just trying to collect them? What might it mean to resist that urge to name, to know? Then I thought about the value of names, of knowing and noticing. Both–not knowing and knowing–have value. I also thought about different ways of noticing and being with birds that don’t involve staring and studying and collecting. Feeling the shadow of a bird flying overhead, sensing their graceful and frenetic motions.
Ended my run at Seven Oaks again to be with the birds. I think stopping there will be my new thing for May. So many sounds, so much movement all around–flying and rustling. Noticed a tiny bird–some sort of warbler?–just above me. I couldn’t see any distinctive colors on its head or feather and it didn’t call out. Watched a downy woodpecker slowly climbing up a tree. Moved when I was stared down by a squirrel, then returned when I heard the quiet drumming of the black and white feathered bird. Very cool. What an amazing way to end my run!
Here are two recordings I took as I walked around the rim of the Seven Oaks’ sink hole:
May 10/ birds, 1May 10/ birds, 2
I think I might hear a cardinal and a robin, but what else? And are those birds even there, or am I just hearing robins and cardinals everywhere?
For the abundant along with the rare birds at my feeder of late For all kinds of birds I’ve lived with here are turning rarer For the chestnut-backed chickadee, who carries her sunflower chip to the buckthorn to dine on between her toes For the chickadees once came to my feeder in bunches For the big round plain brown pair of California towhees who eat in parallel from the bird-crumb table For though they crumb it clean without a glance or a cheep, I believe this remote old couple is as entwined as any two polarized photons For the fearsome indigo Steller’s jays, black hooded and crested, Tapper and Sly, as I call them For Tapper taps twice on an overhanging plum branch at two clucks from my tongue so I’ll know him For Sly hangs back and shrieks me over and only shows himself after I place on the table their morning quincunx of unsalted peanuts For he knows Tapper will quack to announce them and then squawk indignantly when he slyly swoops in For the vast majority For the dark-eyed juncos, the wide-eyed titmice, the narrow-eyed redbreasted nuthatches, who feed right-side up as they see it, the other birds upside down For Audubon’s yellow-rumped, Wilson’s and Townsend’s warblers, nobody’s birds, who feed, drink and breed as they can For the song sparrow’s song and the sparrow who exults in singing it For a song—how long will that phrase mean what it means For them all I refill the feeder, even this morning, when all blown-down things crackle underfoot and the Diablo wind seems to growl diabolically and scrape from all corners at once against a sky the color of flint For the lesser goldfinches, symbolically fierce, who part their beaks at any other kind who would peck a chip in their presence For the pine siskins, their symbolic match, who used to expose their underwings back at them with its dreadful yellow stripe For two years running, no siskins at the feeder For the brown-crowned, as-yet-unkindled sparrows, wintering from Oregon or the Farallon Islands, I sing my two-note welcome, hel-low, pointless For they won’t learn it with my face masked against wild smoke migrating from the north For the species too little or big or otherwise unsuited for the feeder For Anna’s hummingbirds, who love to suck on our pineapple sage For the red-tailed hawk perched in the smoke-fogged redwood For soon it’ll be pestered by a twister of crows cawing hawkawkawkawkaw For a red-tailed hawk I mistook it—something larger, ruffled molten For the golden eagle it turned out to be—weird—hunched in the chill For another flew up out of thick air and followed it south out of eyeshot For those two—not migrants—evacuees clasping their emotional baggage For the birds, then, what have I to offer For what kind of refuge is my catalog For I can’t reckon how to make good their losses For I meant not to make a life list I meant For others to partake in my pleasure For it pleases me to look after the birds
This poem makes me think of the question I was pondering while I ran about collecting bird identifications. “For I mean not to make a life list”. Here’s an explanation of a life list:
life list
A life list is a cumulative record of the bird species an individual birder successfully identifies, and keeping a list is the easiest way to track which birds you have seen. Birders often keep life lists for other reasons as well, however, such as for motivation to see a greater number of species or to garner the prestige that comes from having higher count numbers. Life lists can also be submitted to some birding organizations for recognition or for contest purposes. For most birders, however, it is just fun to keep a life list and add up how many bird species you have seen.
The article suggests that you can create your list however you want, but if you want the “prestige” of having it officially recognized, there are rules, which you can read in the article. I am not interested in creating a life list, of cataloging the birds I’ve seen as proof that I’m a good noticer. I like how this poem offers an alternative reason for why you would compile a list–a memory of what has been lost, a celebration of delights, a catalog of unabashed gratitude (the name of a collection by Ross Gay).
The line “For a song—how long will that phrase mean what it means” reminds me of the idea of dead metaphors, like “at a glacial pace”, that no longer have meaning because of dramatic/violent shifts in ecosystems and the destruction of the environment. Does Shoptaw mean it in this way?
4 miles river road trail, south/waban park/turkey hollow/edmund, north 50 degrees
Shorts! Sun! Spring! Yesterday’s cold rain really pushed me over the edge. I’m ready for more sun, more sitting on the deck, more spring-y weather. Today the river was calm and blue, peeking through the green that is already starting to spoil my view. Ran on the river road trail all the way to the turn-off to Wabun park, then ran up and turned right just before reaching the Ford Bridge.
Franny Choi: there’s something different between maybe like, looking versus listening, right? Like, I feel like there’s some, I don’t know, what is that thing.
Taylor Johnson: I think there’s a goal in mind. I think with searching, it’s like, I know I’m gonna come out, let’s say, onto the sidewalk or in the woods, and I’m gonna see a particular X, Y, and Z, you know what I mean? Whereas listening, it’s like, things kind of wash over you and happen with you, rather than you having something in your mind where it’s like, I need to see this particular thing, or I’m listening for this particular thing. It’s kind of a more open, open experience.
I listened as I started my run and I remember taking note of many different sounds, all mixing into each other, none seeming that distinctive. Birds, traffic, laughing kids on the playground, shuffling feet on debris, someone raking a yard, wind chimes, my breathing as I settled into my run, a song blasting from a car radio, the faint jingle of my house key in my running belt, a woman sneezing–or was it coughing?
I also thought about Mary Oliver and a few things I was reading this morning–poems and an article by Rose Lucas about MO: Drifting in the Weeds of Heaven: Mary Oliver and the Poetics of the Immeasurable. And thought about the idea of the self and their relationship to nature as observer and observed, as someone who stares/pays attention to the world and someone who participates in it. Then I had a thought—I remember having it just as I was crossing 42nd from the stretch of grass between 42nd and Becketwood (what STA and I call the gauntlet because it’s narrow and close to the road and difficult to avoid other people if they’re on it too) and the wide boulevard of grass separating Edmund and the River Road—about how Mary Oliver’s ethical poetics of noticing, being astonished, and telling others about it involves a lot of standing back and still, staring, stopping, taking notes, sitting at a desk and writing. Yes, becoming connected or immersed in what you are noticing does happen, but the emphasis is on observing/seeing/staring at the world at some sort of distance and when you have stopped moving or doing anything. You stop to notice, or notice then stop, observe or behold (this makes me want to revisit Ross Gay and the idea of beholding), then sit and write. What if you didn’t stop? What if you observed while moving (while running?) Took notes while moving? Wrote while moving? I wonder how far I can push at the limits of writing about the gorge while running at the gorge–not running and noticing then writing, but running while noticing while writing.
Notes from the run, April 28th
Before I went out for my run, I was thinking about a few poems.
Here are two different versions of the same general idea: being lifted out of the tyranny of your thoughts by the beauty of nature.
It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning warm enough to walk without a jacket along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing of your feet through fallen leaves should be enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you when you catch yourself telling off your boss for a decade of accumulated injustices, all the things you’ve never said circling inside you.
The rising wind pulls you out of it, and you look up to see a cloud of leaves wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day were sighing, Let it go, let it go, for this moment at least, let it all go.
Terns/ Mary Oliver
Don’t think just now of the trudging forward of thought, but of the wing-drive of unquestioning affirmation.
It’s summer, you never saw such a blue sky, and here they are, those white birds with quick wings,
sweeping over the waves, chattering and plunging,
their thin beaks snapping, their hard eyes happy as little nails.
The years to come — this is a promise — will grant you ample time
to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.
But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding, than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
The flock thickens over the roiling, salt brightness. Listen,
maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,
but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt, is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,
but of pure submission. Tell me, what else could beauty be for? And now the tide
is at its very crown, the white birds sprinkle down,
gathering up the loose silver, rising as if weightless. It isn’t instruction, or a parable.
It isn’t for any vanity or ambition except for the one allowed, to stay alive.
It’s only a nimble frolic over the waves. And you find, for hours,
you cannot even remember the questions that weigh so in your mind.
For most of my life, up until last year when, during the pandemic, I felt compelled to finally notice them, I haven’t payed attention to birds. So I wasn’t familiar with terns–that might also be because, sadly, I’ve never lived by the sea. Anyway, terns is not a term I’ve known. In fact, my first encounter with it happened just last month, while reading a New Yorker article about the marvelous methods animals have for navigating and not getting lost. Buried deep in the article is this interesting bit of trivia:
Or consider the Arctic tern, which has a taste for the poles that would put even Shackleton to shame; it lays its eggs in the Far North but winters on the Antarctic coast, yielding annual travels that can exceed fifty thousand miles. That makes the four-thousand-mile migration of the rufous hummingbird seem unimpressive by comparison, until you realize that this particular commuter weighs only around a tenth of an ounce. The astonishment isn’t just that a bird that size can complete such a voyage, trade winds and thunderstorms be damned; it’s that so minuscule a physiology can contain a sufficiently powerful G.P.S. to keep it on course.
Very cool. MO’s line about gathering up the loose silver reminds me of a ED poem that I read in March:
A Bird came down the Walk—/ Emily Dickinson
A Bird came down the Walk— He did not know I saw— He bit an Angleworm 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 around— 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.
I have many thoughts about these three poems that I can’t quite express. About the narrator and their involvement in the scene they’re describing, about the “You”—who they are, what they’re for, about being didactic, about circling, about silver and seams and when the observed becomes the observer. And, about this line from MO:
But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding, than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.
So I’m thinking about this in relation to my quote about the difference between looking and listening at the beginning of this post, and in terms of my own desire to feel with senses other than sight, or with sight not as Sight (as an objective, unfiltered way of being in and with the world). This idea of sight not as Sight, comes out of my thinking about how I see through my damaged eyes. I can see, but not with sharp focus or precision or mastery–I don’t look and See, as in, capture/own what I see with my eyes. My seeing is softer and involves more fluid waves and forms being felt. Returning to MO’s poem, I could definitely be delighted by the terns as I watched them moving—sweeping and plunging and thickening–because you detect motion in your peripheral vision and my peripheral vision is great. But I probably couldn’t see how many terns there are or how their thin beaks snapped. And I wouldn’t be able to see their hard eyes happy as little nails. But, seriously, can anyone see bird eyes in this way, other than MO?
Thinking about how MO uses seeing as a way to pay attention reminds me of another poem of hers with one of my favorite titles:
The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted, rode the wind. Its eye at this distance looked like green glass; its feet were the color of butter. Speed, obviously, was joy. But then, so was the sudden, slow circle it carved into the slightly silvery air, and the squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into itself the sharp-edged wings, and the falling into the grass where it tussled a moment, like a bundle of brown leaves, and then, again, lifted itself into the air, that butter-color clenched in order to hold a small, still body, and it flew off as my mind sang out oh all that loose, blue rink of sky, where does it go to, and why?
I remember reading this a few years ago and thinking how little I might have been able to see of the hawk she describes. I could see the tilting, the riding of the wind, the circling and carving, but not the color of its feet or its green eyes or that it was holding something in its claws. It’s interesting to read these poems and think about them in relation to my vision and the limits of my seeing. I especially like thinking about the ways I can still see and how they might be reflected/communicated in a poem about attention. This idea of describing how I see differently is as important to me as learning how to feel with senses other than sight.
Wow, lots of not quite focused thoughts in this post. Not sure if it makes sense but the act of writing it has been helpful for me in thinking about MO, and attention, and my project of writing while running and running while writing.
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.
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”
bike: 20 minutes run: 3.25 miles basement outside: 38 degrees
Warm enough outside, but wet, and I ran outside Sunday and Monday. And I needed to take a break and bike some today. Watched the next episode of Dickinson, which featured one of my favorite poems:
Before I got my eye put out– I liked as well to see As other creatures, that have eyes– And know no other way–
And it deals with her temporary vision loss when she was in her mid 30s in 1863 and 1864. I wonder how they’ll end this episode? I’ll find out next time. In this season, she’s becoming much more of a recluse, barely leaving her room.
After the bike, I ran and listened to my playlist. I don’t remember what I thought about, except: 1. how many songs do I need to listen to before I check the time?, 2. raising my head, working on my posture, 3. lifting my right hip, 4. is all this running good for me, or will it give me arthritis and weaken me so much when I’m almost 80 that I sometimes struggle to move (which is what is happening to my dad right now)?, 4. who is that walking upstairs, making such loud thumping noises? That’s all I remember–oh, and looking at the lightbulb, reflected in the far window, which is dark because it’s under the deck, and no longer thinking it looked like a moon with clouds above Lake Superior (which is what I thought it looked like last February).
Between biking and running, I managed to not go upstairs to pee. One step closer to breaking that habit (or at least making sure it doesn’t fully form). It’s pretty mundane, but since my work is on ethics and ways of breaking and re-making habits (undisciplining), I’m always interested in our daily practices and how they become solidified into necessary and automatic actions. Often, we don’t notice them forming until it becomes very difficult to change them.
I really appreciate what Limón says about what poetry does for us–and who it does it for:
I do feel like there’s a lot of “the arts will save us.” You know, there’s a part of me that really believes that, right? I mean, I believe that poetry can heal us and help us. But, I mean, if I’m very honest, I think they can only do that for the poet. (LAUGHS) And then they may, if we’re lucky, help someone else or move someone else or inspire someone else or get them out of a rut. But I think it begins with like, I write my own poems to save myself. You know, then if, in, you know, some series, lucky series of events, a poem becomes larger than me and reaches someone else, that’s, that’s beautiful. But I don’t always know that that’s gonna happen, right? I have to start by how is this poem recommitting me to the world?
bike: 25 minutes run: 2.25 miles basement outside: 15 degrees
I started my bike by listening to Dr. Michael Osterholm’s podcast on COVID-19–he’s the infectious diseases expert/director at the University of Minnesota. He often gives worst case scenarios but his latest assessment tracks with another expert I check in with on twitter: Bob Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF, who is a little more optimistic generally. Today’s episode of his podcast is titled Hurricane Warning and it’s about the likely category five hurricane of covid destruction that the B.1.1.7 variant (also known as the UK variant) could bring in the next month if we open up and let down our guard. While I don’t like hearing this news, I appreciate the reminder that my concerns about things opening up, including schools, are not unfounded. I’ve heard Osterholm say this several times: “Americans like to pump the brakes after the car is wrapped around the tree.” Meaning, we’re reckless and then try to be cautious after it’s too late. Looks like that’s what’s happening now. Numbers are down, people are tired of sheltering, so it’s time to open back up. This attitude makes me sad and concerned about our (U.S., the world) ability to make hard choices for our survival–not just with COVID but with the climate crisis. Most of the time I am an optimist, able to see past the bad to the good (in people, in situations), but the selfish, short-sighted way that many (at least those with the most power) have responded to crisis is chipping away at that optimism. Slowly, I’m letting the pessimistic “people suck” attitude creep in. I need to focus more on delight and people who are delighted and delightful.
Speaking of which, after biking I listened to a podcast with Ross “Book of Delights” Gay and his new book-length poem, Be Holding. Well, first I tried listening to my audio book Wintering but it was an extra dark chapter about insomnia that was bumming me out too much so I turned it off. Ross Gay is wonderful and his ideas about beholding as attending and looking with love, which reminded me of Maria Lugones’ idea of loving (as opposed to arrogant) perception, are very inspiring and help me restore my optimism. I look forward to when the transcript of the interview comes out–hopefully soon. In the part I listened to today, they were talking about looking and vision. The phrase “eyes of poetry” was used. It made me think about my relationship to vision and what I’m trying to do with my work (and my practices, and my strategies for coping with vision loss). Two things I’m doing:
First, a critical intervention in the privileging of vision/sight—an exploration of other ways of attending and other language for that attention. Not just seeing but listening and feeling. What might be some aural-centric words to counter vision, insight, focus? Thinking about this reminded me of a poem I memorized this summer: And Swept All Visible Signs Swept Away/ Carl Phillips
Easy enough, to say it’s dark now. But what is the willow doing in the darkness? I say it wants less for company than for compassion,
which can come from afar and faceless. What’s a face, to a willow? If a willow had a face, it would be a song. I think. I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing.
Here, I’m thinking about listening and the expression of self through song, as opposed to through face and vision. The “visible signs” have been swept away by the wind, yet compassion and recognition (to beholden) are still possible.
Second, an expansion of what vision/seeing is—how do we see, what does it mean to see? what are others ways of seeing are possible? what are the different ways I do/can use my vision (e.g. peripheral instead of central)? This second project is inspired by Georgina Kleege’s book Sight Unseen and the descriptions of her own ways of seeing–even though she is legally blind, she likes to go to movies and art museums. She can still watch the movies and see the paintings, just in different ways.
So, the other thing I’m doing today (besides worrying about variant strains and high schools opening too soon, or loving looks and Ross Gay) is collecting definitions, expressions, descriptions of cure/curing as a method for preserving food. In my mood ring poem, I want to introduce this language subtly throughout the poem in order to create more impact with the final lines–which I’m thinking might be part of the inner blind ring. So much fun!
canned
jarred
jammed, jam-packed
pickled
expired, expiration date
spoiled
shelf-life, stored
shelved, put on the shelf
decay
needed in times of scarcity
embalm
preserve body for medical experiments
dried out, old
hardened, tough exterior, leathered, weathered
drawing moisture out
airtight, removing oxygen, sealing out air
inside, packed, put away
2 Habits formed, one bad, one good
Currently I am very aware of the forming of two habits through repeated practices. The first habit, which I see as good, is my daily moment of sound. I have recorded enough of them that it is a routine practice for me to step outside, no matter how cold, and listen for a moment. The second habit, which I see as mostly bad, is my need to pee every time I am done with biking inside and before I start running. I can feel the practice become entrenched, something I have to do every time. I know I could have tried harder to stop it, but instead I’ve been observing how it has been happening. Is it too late now to stop? I hope not, but I’m not too concerned. It’s fascinating to witness it forming. I just remembered how I had this same habit in high school during swim practice–I always had to pee after warm-up and before the main set.
a moment of sound
Today’s moment of sound happened right after I took the recycling out–around 7:30 in the morning. Birds!