Another weekend run with Scott. Usually we run on Saturdays, but yesterday we were in St. Peter, so we ran today instead. Colder, windier, sunny. Sharp shadows. My favorite shadow: running under the ford bridge, a big shadow crossed over my head. A bird? No, a bike up on the bridge.
We talked about ones and zeroes and the differences between null, zero, and false in coding. I mentioned how when it gets to the brain, seeing is about signals firing and not firing. Then we talked about a recent controversy with Margaret Livingstone’s research on animals, which led us to a discussion about scientific experiments as material practices, the ethical dilemma of using knowledge gained from unethical experiments, and then a mention of Newton’s experiments on himself — shoving something in his eye to learn about color. Some fun discussions!
I forgot to notice the falls or look down the river, I recall seeing someone in yellow running on the Winchell Trail. I smelled the smoke near the house that always smells like smoke. I heard a dog’s collar clanging behind us. Felt the cold wind almost taking my breath away.
before the run
Started rewatching Margaret Livingstone’s lecture about artists and vision. Also found her book, Vision and Art — the “read sample” is helpful here.
Near the beginning of the video, Livingstone emphasizes this idea: “Visual information processing is not image transmission.” She adds: you don’t transmit information up to your brain because there’s nobody up there to look. In her book, she elaborates on this idea, giving it a name: the homunculas fallacy — homunculas means “little man.” The fallacy: some little man is up in your brain “looking” at the image. I love this name and the idea of a little man; I’d like to put it in a poem!
Ran with Scott on the ford loop. Today I talked about the US Olympic Marathon Trials, which I watched this morning. A runner from Minnesota, Dakotah Lindwurm, got third. Scott talked about the music project he worked on before the run — a little jam with his new keyboard and bass. We also mentioned slippery mud, tight shins (Scott), cramped toes (me), running up the Summit hill during the marathon, and mistaking a fire hydrant (Scott) and a black fence (me) for people. I was surprised that there weren’t more people out running — it’s not that cold and the paths are clear. Maybe it was the time of day — 12:30?
10 Things
an empty bench on the bluff
a wide (r than I remembered) expanse of grass between the path and the edge
the crack trail
some strange decorations on the fence in front of the church — yarn? paper chains?
a car blasting music at an overlook parking lot — the only lyric I remember was senorita
a wide open view of the river and the other side
a double lamp post on the ford bridge — one light was on, the other was not
the dead-leafed branch that’s been pushed up agains the other side of the double bridge for months — still there with all of its dead leaves
no poem on the poetry window — have they stopped doing it? was it just for the pandemic?
ice on river, near the east shore, one chunk almost the shape of a right triangle
Searching “peripheral” on the Poetry Foundation site, I found this interesting blurb:
Poet Tan Lin edited issue 6 of EOAGH, for which he invited contributors to submit a piece of “peripheral” writing – that is, a text that doesn’t directly supply the material or inspiration for the authors’ work, but is in some tangential, peripheral, or ambient way, related.
I would like to play around with this idea of the peripheral text in my own writing. What are the peripheral texts, ideas, practices that contribute to my poems, especially my Haunts poems?
4.15 miles franklin loop 34 degrees / humidity: 82%
Another run with Scott. As we ran north we talked about jazz band and soloing and COVID and how some people are still isolating and how it’s never going away but we’re learning to be out in the world again. Then I talked about muddy trails and no snow and Scott imagined possibilities for his new projects, including an arrangement of Porkpie Hat.
10 Things
slippery mud — almost fell!
crossing the franklin bridge, the water looked like dark glass
the shore was glowing white
the edges of the water were gray and icy and looked cold
crossing the lake street bridge, the water was dark gray with small waves
also on the lake street bridge: a sandbar that stretched out from the bridge footing
most of the lamps on the bridge were lit, only a few had been stripped of their wires
no eagle on the dead tree limb near the bridge
the sky was gray and gloomy, the tree line was a soft, pleasing brown
spotted: a small white strip of something on the trail. Was it a ruler? I couldn’t quite tell
2.1 miles river road, north/dorman/loons coffee 37 degrees / humidity: 90%
Ran with Scott up the river road and over to a coffee place. The air was so thick with moisture, which made it harder to breathe. Otherwise a good run. We talked about The Muppet Movie, which we watched last night, and how it didn’t dumb down (or try to purify) the characters or their relationships. Then I rambled on for a few minutes about what a rich, messy character Miss Piggy was and how there was such a variety of representations of love within the movie.
10+ Things
encountered and greeted a woman in a bright red jacket, almost the same color as Scott’s
passed a woman in a blue jacket — she’s a Regular that I should name. I see her often. The thing I remember most is that she’s always wearing a long skirt or dress. In the winter, she also wears a ski jacket and tights, in the summer just the dress. I’m not sure what to call her — all dressed up?
near the tunnel of trees the river is still white
everyone else the river is open — a deep dark gray
heard some cardinals, at least one black-capped chickadee
the ghost bike — June’s bike — at the trestle was wreathed in dried flowers
the ravine, between the 35th and 36th street parking lots had an open view and was only half covered in snow
4 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
bright orange striped barrel blocking the way down the old stone steps
a lone black glove, looking forlorn on the biking path
a SUV honking unnecessarily and repeatedly at a pedestrian near Minnehaha Academy
Here’s a poem I don’t want to forget by Jane Hirshfield:
Many capacities have been thought to define the human— yet finches and wasps use tools; speech comes into this world in many forms. Perhaps it is you, Opinion.
Though I cannot know for certain, I doubt the singing dolphins have opinions.
This thought of course, is you.
A mosquito’s estimation of her meal, however subtle, is not an opinion. That’s my opinion, too.
To think about you is to step into your arms? a thicket? pitfall?
When you come rising strongly in me, I feel myself grow separate and more lonely. Even when others share you, this is so.
Darwin said no fact or description that fails to support an argument can serve.
Myoe wrote: Bright, bright, bright, bright, the moon.
Last night there were whole minutes when you released me. Ocean ocean ocean was the sound the sand made of the moonlit waves breaking on it.
I felt no argument with any part of my life.
Not even with you, Opinion, who drifted in salt waters with the bullwhip kelp and phosphorescent plankton, nibbling my legs and ribcage to remind me where Others end and I begin.
4.15 miles bottom of franklin hill (short) 32 degrees
Another Saturday run with Scott. Last night, we got a light dusting of snow which made everything frosty and a little slick at the start. Scott talked about the latest mash-up he’s arranging with the theme from Taxi and Green Day’s Brain Stew, Chicago’s 25 or 6 to 4. Then I talked about my latest focus on doors and windows and how it is allowing me to engage with things (poems, essays, ideas) that I’ve collected previously but were buried in a file folder or a log entry.
As we ran down the hill I mentioned something I had read in an essay by George Orwell, Why I Write. He describes how when he was an undergrad at Berkeley* he wanted to be an intellectual, but when he was supposed to be reading Hegel he would always be looking out the window, admiring the flowers instead.
*Scott didn’t hear anything after I said Orwell went to Berkeley; he was confused, believing that Orwell never left England. I checked the essay when I got home and realized that there were two versions of “Why I Write” in the document, one by Orwell, one by Joan Didion. The reference to Berkeley was from Joan Didion. Sometimes I get frustrated with Scott’s attention to details, but he’s usually right and I’m grateful that he caught this mistake (which was my fault, but not totally; the essays were placed one after the other in a document that was not well marked. His almost always being right can be irritating, but that’s more my problem than his, I guess.
Here’s the quote:
During the years when I was an undergraduate at Berkeley I tried, with a kind of hopeless late-adolescent energy, to buy some temporary visa into the world of ideas, to forge for myself a mind that could deal with the abstract.
In short I tried to think. I failed. My attention veered inexorably back to the specific, to the tangible, to what was generally considered, by everyone I knew then and for that matter have known since, the peripheral.
Why I Write/ Joan Didion
I love her mention of the peripheral. That’s where I spend all of my time too — literally and figuratively.
10 Things
stretches of the trail were slick and my feet slipped a few times
the knocking of a woodpecker — the sound echoed through an empty field
the ice chunks on the river yesterday had melted and were replaced with swirls of foam
the quiet thuds of a faster runner approaching from behind
after he passed us, he kicked a big branch off to the side (we were grateful and impressed that he was able to do it while running fast down the hill)
there was a thin layer of snow on the top of the concrete wall next to the river
the suspended path on the other side — in the east river flats — looked inviting — I’d like to run it before it’s closed for the winter — maybe it already is?
passing by the ghost bike hanging from the trestle
the curved fence above the big sewer pipe was easy to see below us — no more leaves blocking our view
passing a guy walking a dog on the sidewalk, saying good morning — realizing it was not morning but afternoon — 12:30 — we went out for the run a little later than usual
At the bottom of the franklin hill, Scott used my phone to take some video of the foamy, fast-moving water. Here’s a short clip:
fast moving foam / 5 jan 2024
Here are two passages from Virginia Woolf’s Street Haunting that include windows and doors:
But when the door shuts on us, all that vanishes. The shell–like covering which our souls have excreted to house themselves, to make for themselves a shape distinct from others, is broken, and there is left of all these wrinkles and roughnesses a central oyster of perceptiveness, an enormous eye. How beautiful a street is in winter! It is at once revealed and obscured. Here vaguely one can trace symmetrical straight avenues of doors and windows; here under the lamps are floating islands of pale light through which pass quickly bright men and women, who, for all their poverty and shabbiness, wear a certain look of unreality, an air of triumph, as if they had given life the slip, so that life, deceived of her prey, blunders on without them. But, after all, we are only gliding smoothly on the surface. The eye is not a miner, not a diver, not a seeker after buried treasure. It floats us smoothly down a stream; resting, pausing, the brain sleeps perhaps as it looks.
—
That is true: to escape is the greatest of pleasures; street haunting in winter the greatest of adventures. Still as we approach our own doorstep again, it is comfortingto feel the old possessions, the old prejudices, fold us round; and the self, which has been blown about at so many street corners, which has battered like a moth at the flame of so many inaccessible lanterns, sheltered and enclosed. Here again is the usual door
3.1 miles 43rd, north/32nd, east/river road trail, south/42nd, west/edmund, north 29 degrees
My first run since last Sunday, partly due to travel, partly feeling sore. A great winter run. Cold, with layers, but not too cold. And no ice or snow or bad trail conditions. Before we went out for our run, Scott put together his marathon plan for this year — we’ve decided to try again. My goal: to make it to the start line next October, healthy. Should I come up with some sort of a plan? If I did, I imagine it would combine running, walking, and poetry.
As we ran, we talked about how the river road stops being red at certain points where the county or city or state (I can’t remember what Scott said) takes over. In those spots the road is black asphalt. Then I mentioned that we had had a very similar conversation 2 or 3 years ago. Then we talked about time looping and repeating yourself and when it’s ritual, when it’s being stuck in a rut.
10 Things
open, brown river (no ice or snow)
a scratching noise — not roller skier poles but the drum beat on a rap song that 2 white women were blasting as they ran by — wow
one or two patches of ice on the sidewalk by edmund
a runner in a bright orange sweatshirt or jacket, glowing in the gloom
a light grayish-blue sky, everything darker — not feeling like day or night, but some in-between time
a few flurries
pothole 1: what started as a small hole has gotten bigger and deeper every year. 2 years ago they tried to patch it, but it didn’t work. The orange spray paint they used to outline a few years before that has faded, near the oak savanna
pothole 2: at the spot where the bike and walking paths separate, less a pothole, more a deep gash 3 or 4 feet long. Every year they circle it with white spray paint — the shape of paint resembles a tube sock
passing a woman who swung her arm out awkwardly like Dave — wasn’t sure for a minute — could it be Dave? no
looking down at the floodplain forest, pointing out the clear view of the forest floor to Scott. He said if he looked he might faint: vertigo
The browns, the olives, and the yellows died, And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide, And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed, Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.
From off your face, into the winds of winter, The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing; But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter, When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing, And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.
I like the focus on winter colors in this poem and the idea of snow as flamed and flowing and shift from sun-brown and summer-gold into spiritual glinter and how his looks are soft-going. I might need to use that expression for how I see: soft-going.
3.1 miles edmund, south/river road trail, north/32nd, east/44th, south 52 degrees
52 degrees! Shorts and one bright yellow long-sleeved shirt! Wow. Scott and I couldn’t pass up the chance to run in shorts in December, so we went out for a 5k. It really doesn’t feel like Christmas.
We talked about the terrible meal we had last night when we went out dinner (Scott’s fish was completely raw) and the double half marathon (a 1/2 in minneapolis one day, in eue claire the next) that Twin Cities in Motion is advertising for April and the time I was running up the hill and a barefoot kid raced me for a few seconds.
Other things I remember: the river was blue and open, the sidewalk on 32nd was in bad shape, the floodplain forest didn’t have any ice, there were a few stones stacked on the big boulder, the colors — rusty green — on the wet boulder near the bench.
Here’s poem I encountered this morning. I love the brevity and the title and the magical moment of hope that it captures.
& the caramel sticks to my hands & my hands stick to my cheeks & everyone marvels at my choux pastry magic & no one asks what I am going to do with my sad, sorry life
Another Saturday run with Scott. We talked about visiting my dad and seeps and the distance from Minneapolis to Seattle versus Seattle to Alaska and Alert, the northernmost town of 2000 people in Northern Canada and different National Park designations. The sky was a heavy white. At the beginning of the run, it was misty and damp. Looking out at the river from the bridge, everything looked soft and fuzzy and barely formed. We encountered a roller skier, lots of walkers, a few runners. Heard some water gushing out of the rock or sewer pipes.
3.1 miles marshall loop (cretin) 39 degrees / 90% humidity
The saturday morning tradition: running with Scott. Damp and overcast. Everything quiet and strange. Scott’s bright red jacket looked even brighter and RED! In the distance, a soft mist hovered on the river’s surface. The sidewalk was wet and slick, with some puddles to leap over. We talked about snowboarding and half-pipes and how Ailing Gu is a full-time student (at Stanford), a full-time model, and full-time athlete. Wow.
Entering the bridge, I heard some geese flying by, then a bald eagle soaring low in the sky. At the end of our run we encountered a grumpy goose. Scott warned that they might be ready for a rumble. Not quite, but almost. The goose honked and flapped its wings, then flew up and over a fence to join the rest of the geese.
A gross thing I remember: running over some squishy, slippery mud. Didn’t see it, but felt it — told Scott it felt like stepping in poopy diarrhea. Yuck!
I loved the weather and the quiet, almost reverent, feeling of being out in the world on a gloomy, empty Saturday (late) morning.
A latch lifting, an edged den of light Opens across the yard. Out of the low door They stoop in the honeyed corridor, Then walk straight through the wall of the dark.
A puddle, cobble-stones, jambs and doorstep Are set steady in a block of brightness. Till she strides in again beyond her shadows And cancels everything behind her.
Snow flurries this morning. Everything dark and gloomy and rusty orange. No snow on the ground. Damp. Scott and I ran together to the falls. Talked about cats and Emma Stone’s charisma (I just watched La La Land last night and enjoyed it) and the quarry at Minnehaha Falls. I remember hearing at least one chickadee and a strange call that could have been a bird or a squirrel. We debated whether the river had some ice on it or the switch in color from pale icy blue to brown was a reflection of the sky (I was on team ice). Encountered a few small groups of runners. Morning! / Good morning! The falls were falling, the creek was flowing. I stopped to study the creek for a moment and wondered if I was seeing small chunks of ice or foam (again, I’m team ice).
The trail was wet but not slippery. The sky smudged white. The wind was often at our backs. We were both a little overdressed. We ended the run by a house near Dowling Elementary that always has an eclectic mix of inflatable decorations — sometimes Darth Vader mixed with snoopy and santa claus. This year they’re more traditional — a giant Rudolph, a sideways snowman, and only one skeleton zombie.
