Cooler! It makes such a difference for my running when it’s cooler outside. Easier, more relaxed. I’m looking forward to more fall and winter running! Running north I listened to the wind, the birds, a strange sound — a kid crying out? a dog barking? — coming out of a neighbor’s house. Running south I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist. Windy has stormy eyes/that flash at the sound of lies.
2 strange ensembles:
a biker stopped on the edge of the path, his back turned to me. I almost didn’t see him because he blended into the trees. I think he was wearing a camo jacket and shorts. Why would you do that?
a runner approaching me in a half-zipped shirt — or was it a bike kit? — and no socks or shoes. They were running barefoot. I’ve seen that before, but rarely. I thought that trend went away 7 or 8 years ago?
Early on, I chanted in triple berries: strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Then, other triples: intellect/mystery/passing through/persistent/enduring. Persistent and enduring came as I passed by the big crack that they’ve tried to repair several times but just keeps coming back. I started thinking about my persistence and then stillness and deepening as steadiness, which led to thoughts of my core. I imagined my belly button was leading me. I thought in a triple: who needs eyes? Then I imagined seeing with my stomach or my shoulders or my feet. I focused on my center as balanced and stabilized and still as it moved through the windy bluff above the gorge. Finally, I thought about my belly button as the place that once tethered me directly to my mom. How long did these thoughts last? I’m not sure.
10 Things
roller skiers
someone wearing all black sitting at a bench
river surface, 1: rough, empty
river surface, 2: looking north it was flat, south a glitter path
a shorter runner passing me, holding a sweatshirt awkwardly
the big crack in the path, still blocked off
no more limestone slabs stacked and looking like a lounging person under the franklin bridge
a damaged fence: the top slat missing
returning south, the wind was at my back, enabling me to go faster
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder — too windy?
I thought about the wind and how I noticed it only as it encountered objects — trees, fences, rocks, me. Then I thought about what happens when it doesn’t encounter anything, which led me to wind tunnels and aerodynamic testing and then a line from Rita Dove’s poem, “Voice-over”:
because now you’re all throat, a tunnel skewered by air.
4 miles river road, north/river road, south 67 degrees / dew point: 63
Started my run at 8:30, which was too late for how warm and humid it is. Even so, I felt strong and relaxed and confident that I could stick to my 9/1 plan and I did. As the runs get longer, I’m going to need to get up earlier. Chanted in triple berries — strawberry/blueberry/raspberry — then in other favorite triples — mystery history — then in triples that describe the world around me — worn dirt trail / old oak tree / cloaked green view / rushing cars
10 Things
at least 2 roller skiers standing at the top of the franklin hill
voices below — rowers!
2 minneapolis park trucks on the path, both hauling riding lawn mowers
Mr. Morning!
a big branch loaded with green leaves on the ground near the welcoming oaks, blocking a small section of the path
2 or 3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
the sliding bench was empty
encountering Max, a big and gentle German Shepherd
a mini-peloton on the road — a dozen or so bikes
an older runner in bright orange compression socks standing in the middle of the walking path, gathering himself
I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran, other than that it was hot and that I knew I could keep going.
Yesterday, during my vision assessment, I mentioned reading about a way of training the eyes so that they could see outside of your blind spots. It was in a book by a famous author, but I couldn’t recall who. I knew they were from the 1900s and that they were male and I thought they were a philosopher, but I was drawing a blank on the name. At some point during the appointment, I was convinced it was Henry James. I was wrong. I looked it up today: Aldous Huxley and his book, The Art of Seeing. I wrote about it in this long on 13 sept 2020, including this quote from Huxley in the introduction:
Ever since ophthalmology became a science, its practitioners have been obsessively preoccupied with only one aspect of the total, complex process of seeing—the physiological. They have paid attention exclusively to eyes, not at all to the mind which makes use of the eyes to see with.
How true is this assessment in 2025? Well, the study I am hopefully participating in is a collaboration between Ophthalmology and psychology at the U of M.
In the process of searching for the Huxley reference, I came across an article about low vision and reading. The specific ways that reading is difficult for me are different than this author, but the strange, and sometimes frustrating, sometimes delightful ways it (doesn’t) work resonate:
I try to figure out how apples connect to the topic, and how a noun just there might fit into the sentence, then give up and go back, to see the “i” that I missed when I first read “applies.” All those mistakes don’t happen at once. When my splotchy vision is not making me fail to grasp the point of an essay or fail to see the word “salt” in a recipe, it keeps me amused, keeps me aware of language itself. Who knew that “apples” is only one letter different from “applies”? Who could regret noticing that?
Reading more of the article, I find that her perspective on audiobooks resonates less:
Listening to an audiobook, I wouldn’t hear punctuation. True, an actor could produce the pauses, hesitations, and buildup that punctuation merely signals. But I like punctuation. I wouldn’t know whether the author had chosen a period or a semi-colon for the end of that main clause, wouldn’t know about em dashes, colons, parentheses, ellipses. Audiobooks are mediated. Another person would be present as I read. Worse, that person would have interpretive power, power over speed. Audiobooks happen in time, not space, like music or dance. Performance is indispensable but it isn’t the same as reading.
My first reaction was to disagree with this assessment, but it has me thinking more about the idea of an audiobook as performance. I like listening to a good audiobook actor. And I love listening to an author who can read their own book well, like Zadie Smith. So what? Does that mean I’m not reading, and do we need to gatekeep what reading is? Now I’m wondering: what is reading?
Some thoughts about punctuation:
As I memorize poetry, I often struggle to write it down again later; I often mess up the punctuation. I memorize words, but rarely semi-colons or em dashes.
In Lucille Clifton’s rules for writing poetry, she suggests that a poet should write their lines in such a way that punctuation is never necessary — not sure where I stand on this
Isn’t the writer’s choice of punctuation a sort of mediation between reader and word?
bike: 8.7 miles lake nokomis and back 78 degrees
Hooray for no problems on the bike! I could see well enough and I didn’t have to do any awkward passing. My left knee was a little stiff at the end, like it was 2 summers ago, but otherwise it was good. I liked biking to the lake before my swim, and biking back home after. Some things I remember: a line-up of traffic near the falls; kids playing in the creek; the pleasing curve of the new bike trail at lake hiawatha; the rush of water gushing out of the sewer pipe and into the ravine at 42nd; a surrey slightly off course; the bouncy stride of a runner.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
Open swim! A wonderful night for a swim. Not much wind, hardly any waves. I would have liked to do more than 2 loops but I didn’t want to push it and have a sore shoulder again. No problems going off course even though I could barely see the buoys. So little data, so much trust and belief in my ability to swim straight!
10 Things
put my bag down under the lifeguard stand, next to some kid’s swim trunks that were swarming with gnats (gross!)
milfoil reaching up from the bottom, thick and pale orange until it faded into the dark blue-green water
cold water with pockets of warmer water
baby bros (15 or 16? year-olds) playing football in the shallow water, cheering every time someone caught a pass or missed a pass
the legs of another swimmer doing breaststroke, looking pale underwater
bubbles! the translucent, almost white ones, that remind me of the bubbles in scooby doo
my sparkle friends! the small glittering particles floating in the water
open swim was set up a full 15 minutes early! the lifeguards have their shit together again this year
the familiar form of the beach house dome, viewed mid-lake
calling out to another swimmer — have fun! / you too!
A great swim. No deep thoughts or reciting water poems or noticing sounds or clouds or planes. As I get more fit, and spend more time in the water, these things will happen.
Thought the rain wasn’t coming until later today so I got ready for my run — changed into my running clothes, stretched, put on my running shoes — then opened the door to drizzle. Decided to go anyway. At first, it was intermittent drizzle, but halfway through it became a steady, soft rain. Not enough to soak my shorts but enough to cool me off and to inspire a chant:
drip drip drop drop drip drip drip drop
drop drip drop drip drop drip drip drop
drip drip drip drop drop drop
drop drop drip drop drop drip drop drop drip drip
I continued my 9 minutes of running, 1 minute of walking plan and was successful. In the last mile, my left started to hurt a little, then my left calf, and my foot. It’s fine, but to be safe, I stopped at 5.3 miles. The run was never easy, but it also wasn’t hard to keep going, knowing that I had a walk break coming.
10 Things
a soft green everywhere
an empty river
new trees wrapped in plastic looking like wild turkeys
a dark tunnel of green with a bright circle of white at the end
on your left / thank you!
front yard tree with a giant boulder just in front of it
empty benches except for the one near folwell: 2 people not sitting, but standing behind it
the rumble of planes sounding like thunder
the sharp clang of a mailbox lid falling shut
chains from a trailer rattling and scraping on the rough road
green haze: Running on the east river road, quick glances over to the gorge — a soft green and silver view of trees and sky
I was delighted to discover halfway in that the poem-of-the-day on the Poetry Foundation is about rust! The entire poem is wonderful, but it’s long, so I’ll only post most of the rust part:
Like when a song gets so far out on a solo you almost don’t recognize it, but then you get back to the hook, you suddenly
recognize the tune and before you know it, you’re putting your hands together; you’re on your feet— because you recognize a sound, like a light, leading you back home to a color:
rust. You must remember rust—not too red, not too orange—not fire or overnight change, but a simmering-summer change in which children play till they tire
and grown folks sit till they grow edgy or neighborhood dogs bite those not from your neigborhood and someone with some sense says Down, Boy, or you hope someone has some sense
who’s outside or who owns the dog and then the sky turns rust and the streetlights buzz on and someone’s mother, must be yours, says You see those streetlights on don’t you,
and then everybody else’s mother comes out and says the same thing and the sky is rust so you know you got about ten minutes before she comes back out and embarrasses you in front of your friends;
ten minutes to get home before you eat and watch the Flip Wilson Show or Sanford and Son and it’s time for bed. And it’s rust you need to remember when the cop asks, What kind of work you do?
It’s rust you need to remember: the smell of summer rain on the sidewalk and the patina on wrought-iron railings on your front porch with rust patches on them, and the smell
of fresh mowed grass and gasoline and sweat of your childhood as he takes a step back when you tell him you’re a poet teaching English down the road at the college,
when he takes a step back— to assure you, know, that this has nothing to do with race, but the rust of a community he believes he keeps safe, and he says Have a Good One,
meaning day as he swaggers back to his car, and the color of the day and the face behind sunglasses and the hands on his hips you’ll always remember come back gunmetal gray
for the rest of this rusty afternoon.
Rust — I’ve been wanting to write a poem about rust for some time. Is this a sign that I should try today?
Wasn’t planning to run the ford loop, but I started it and then just kept going. It felt good, relaxed, not hard to keep my heart rate a little lower. My pace was slow, but it didn’t feel slow, or fast, or any speed really.
10 Things
mist
dripping
spray
mirrors
puddles
graffiti
traffic
bridge
debris
slick
It rained all day yesterday, and some early in the morning. Started again during my run. Everything dripping wet, including me, although I didn’t really feel it, or couldn’t distinguish it from my sweat. Before I started running, as I walked through the neighborhood, I looked into the puddles on the sidewalk and admired how they had become mirrors, reflecting the sky and the trees. Running over the river, I looked down at the east bank and saw colorful graffiti all over the rocks at the base of the lake street bridge. In spots, the trail was slick with mud or covered in debris — fallen leaves, broken branches, grit. Crossing the ford bridge, I looked north and was delighted by the mist, making everything seem fuzzy and unformed. The traffic on the bridge was thick — I couldn’t see or feel any spray coming off of their wheels, but I could hear it.
overheard: one runner to another — you can bank the time. Another use of time as a commodity.
Listened to the water, in its various forms, for the first half of my run. Put in my “moment” playlist for the second half. The most memorable song today: One Moment in Time/ Whitney Houston
A line that stood out to me:
And in that one moment of time I will feel I will feel eternity
I thought about Mary Oliver’s definition of eternity and how Whitney Houston’s doesn’t fit with it. MO understands eternity as creative time that’s outside of the ordinary and beyond the self. Houston’s eternity seems more like eternal glory.
As I listened to all of the lyrics, I thought about Whitney Houston’s tragic life and terrible death — an overdose. I also thought about the idea of one moment and what happens after that moment is over. And this made me think about post-Olympic blues, or post-marathon blues, or post-publishing a poem blues.
To keep myself distracted and steady, I chanted in triple berries —– strawberry blueberry raspberry. Then I chanted my poem — I go to the gorge/to find the soft space/between beats.
more on the moment as between
Read a very brief interview with Marie Howe the other day. She mentioned a poem that inspired her and that she wished everyone would read: The Season of Phantasmal Peace/ Derek Walcott. Beautiful! Here’s a line to remember that describes the moment:
and this season lasted one moment, like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace
Before my run, I began listening to a talk by Jennifer Chang, “Other Pastorals: Writing Race and Place“. She mentions one between in the presentation of her thesis statement: how poets of color use pastoral to grapple with the complex composition of place as a tension between lived and learned experience. She recites another between from Rick Barot’s “On Gardens”: somewhere between/what the eye sees and what the mind thinks/is the world, landscapes mangled/into sentences, one color read into rage.
Chang also mentions context: If you look at the word “garden” deep enough you see it blossoming in an enclosure meant to keep out history and disorder.
Chang’s lecture is part of the Bread Loaf conference in 2019. This page has many great links for future Sara to explore.
And here is helpful essay with some ideas for thinking about the pastoral, and links to poems, like Rita Dove’s Reverie in Open Air, which I’ve already posted on this log. The second half of Dove’s poems fits with early May’s theme of grass:
But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green. Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids? My feet are the primitives here. As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.
And a few more grass lines from Jennifer Chang:
Stalk of wither. Grass- noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt and chant. Something in the field. (Pastoral/ Jennifer Chang)
What sound does grass make? Wind through the grass, crunching over dry, brittle grass, feet on grass — bunny’s feet:
I think my favorite sound was the soft footsteps of the bunny hurrying across the lawn. A silvery whisper only possible to hear on a calm summer morning like today. I love the sound of animal feet moving — running or hopping through the grass
Yesterday afternoon we got 2 or 3 inches of snow. By the time I went out for my run in the late morning, much of it had melted, even on the grass. Excellent. It’s the warmer ground and the bright sun that did it. I was over-dressed in my purple jacket with a stocking cap. Halfway through the run, I took off the cap and held it in my hands.
As I ran south to the falls I chanted in triples. Lots of berries and sweet things (hot fudge sauce, fresh whipped cream), histories and mysteries and possibles, both muddy trail and mud on trail, and metronomes. On the way back, I put in my “doin’ time” playlist for the last day of my time month. I was planning to not stop to walk for the second half, but when a runner who was running the same speed or just a little slower than me joined the path in front of me, I decided to stop a few times to get some distance from them. One of the places I stopped was the bench above the edge of the world. I don’t remember what the river looked liked, all I remember was that looking at it made me feel calm and content and vast.
overheard while running by the falls: one person to a group of others, he should do it, his arms are the longest. Were they taking a group selfie?
10 Things
water falling, 1: a steady gush out of a gutter
water falling, 2: trickling from the sewer pipe at the ravine
water falling, 3: gushing at the falls — mostly white foam
shadow, 1: the small shadow of a bird crossing my path
shadow, 2: the sprawled, gnarled, twisted, softened shadows of oak trees on the road
shadow, 3: the sharp circle of the lamp part of the lamp post
missing: the top railing of a wood fence on the edge of the trail
several people in the falls parking lot, waiting to pay for parking
empty benches
a thin layer of snow on a leaning branch in the ravine
Found this poem the other day:
Color Keeps Time / Patrycja Humienik
or it rides us like a torrent. Blurs and fastens, flesh
to seconds. Just look at your veins. In vespertine woods, I tried to read moss by hand. There’s something laconic about green that I need.
Lover, let the morning slow time through the branches.
vespertine: relating to, occurring, or active in the evening laconic: using few words, concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious
What kind of time are different colors? What sort of time is orange, for example? If purple is twilight, orange is late afternoon or early summer evenings.
I tried to read moss/by hand. This line reminds me of Robin Wall Kimmerer and her suggestion that “Mosses, I think, are like time made visible. They create a kind of botanical forgetting. Shoot by tiny shoot, the past is obscured in green. That’s why we have stories, so we can remember” (Ancient Green/RWK).
A beautiful morning for a run! Wind in my face as I ran north, at my back heading south. Bright sun, sharp shadows, deep blue almost purple river. Raced a wind whirled leaf and won. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Heard voices down in the gorge. Noticed ice on the edges of white sands beach. Thanked a man for stopping to let me run past and he kindly replied, you’re welcome miss. He was listening to music without headphones and carrying a bag of something — groceries? More than one of the benches was occupied. Encountered runners and walkers, a biker and a roller skier. In the last mile, I zoomed past someone running down the hill and under the lake street bridge.
I did my beats experiment again today.
mile 1: triples — open door / open door/ go inside / go inside / go outside / go outside / hello friend / hello friend / old oak tree / strawberry / opening / up the hill / on my toes / forest floor
mile 2: started with the metronome set to 180 bpm, but that was too fast. Locked in with 175. By the end of the mile I barely felt my feet strike the ground, only heard the beat — I had made it inside of the beat!
mile 3-4: doin’ time playlist. The first song was “Time Stand Still“/ Rush. The first line: “I turn my back to the wind” I heard this as I was running with the wind at my back.
Freeze this moment A little bit longer Make each sensation A little bit stronger
I thought about freezing the moment and the difference between stopping time and suspending (or being suspend in) it.
a few hours later: I’m reading the book, American Spy, and I just came across this bit about looking people in the eyes:
At Quantico they’d taught us the so-called classic signals that some one was lying: if they glanced up to the right before they speak, or if they won’t look you in the eye.
My immediate reaction: that’s how I look at a person’s face. I try to find the approximate location of their eyes by looking off to the side, near their shoulder — this is me looking at them through my good, peripheral vision. Then I stare into the spot, which is usually fuzzy nothingness to me. Does that mean I’m always lying? Of course not.
I was pleased that this discussion continued:
None of what I’d learned worked as well as listening to my instincts. I’ve always been good at ferreting out decption. I’m not entirely sure what my ability to detect a liar is based on–subtle cues maybe, suconscious awarenss, an intuitive talent for reading microexpressions. I don’t know and I’ve found that the more I try to understand it the less effective I am.
Right. As Georgina Kleege suggests in Sight Unseen, looking someone in the eye doesn’t have this magic power that many (most?) people seem to think it does.
Wow, what a morning! Birds! Sun! Calm air! Everything quiet, relaxed. I felt fast and free. less tightness in my neck and hip. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks and Dave, the Daily Walker.
10 Things
a runner with BRIGHT orange shoes
a shining white form in the distance, through the trees: the river
the strong smell of weed somewhere below me
stopping at the sliding bench — movement below, in the trees just before white sands beach: a runner on the winchell trail — should I try that?
the soft knocking of a woodpecker in a nearby tree
stepping off onto the dirt trail for a brief stretch: soft and springy
someone sitting on a bench near the trestle
the river: open and blue
a big branch sticking out of the trashcan — a discarded walking stick?
3? stones stacked on the ancient boulder
I decided to try an experiment with beats.
First mile: chanting in triples Second mile: metronome at 170 bpm Third mile: “Doin’ Time” playlist
mile 1: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry — (to the welcoming oaks) Hello friend! Hello friend! Hello friend!/ old oak tree / stacking stones / stack the stones / intellect / mystery / (noticing a crack in the asphalt) breaking up / cracking up / bright yellow / woodpecker
I found that bright yellow was especially good for locking into a rhythm — BRIGHT yellow
mile 2: 170 was hard. I think it was too slow. I probably should have tried 175 or 180. I think I’ve done 175 before. I only locked into this beat a few times. Was my inability to lock in also because I started with triples?
mile 3: I put in my playlist. The first song was “About Damn Time” by Lizzo. It was great for getting into a groove. Next up, “9 to 5.” As I started to listen to it, I realized the metronome was still on and the beats of the song and it didn’t match up. I decided to leave it going and see what happens when I’m dealing with competing rhythms. I can’t quite remember, but I feel like I didn’t lock into either rhythm; I just created my own, and it didn’t bother/unsettle me.
Later I thought about how the “9 to 5” rhythm represents the relentless drudgery of working within capitalism. Resisting that rhythm, and what it does to you, is important. The final song I heard was “Too Much Time on My Hands” by Styx. I listened to the lyrics and was reminded that it was about a guy who wants a job, a way to feel useful, something to do, but he can’t get one. While he doesn’t mention in the lyrics why he can’t get a job, I thought of the larger context and the conditions (economic, political, social/cultural) that make it difficult for people/communities to find work.
Reading the lyrics — without hearing the music or singing — I was struck by this line:
And I don’t know what to do with myself
So dark. Heard with the music it just seems like a light lyric from a pop song.
This was a fun experiment that yielded some surprising results. I liked the accident of the competing rhythms and the juxtaposition of 9 to 5 with Too Much Time on My Hands. For future attempts, I’ll increase the metronome speed and mix up the order. Maybe I should try to write something, too, at the end of each segment? Speak a poem into my phone?
Warmer today! Still wore lots of layers, but it wasn’t close-school cold like yesterday. After reading my post from a year ago when I wrote about running to the frozen springs in the flats, I decided to do it again this year. On my way north, I started chanting triple berries:
bright orange coat speeding cars little dog blue trash can yellow shirt gray-white sky falling flakes empty bench
When I reached the spring, I could hear it falling from the rock, but couldn’t see it, hidden behind the thick ice. Also heard but didn’t see the water it left on the road as cars whooshed over it.
Stopped at the river to check out the surface. Very cool. I took some pictures but I’m not sure they can capture the opaque greenish ice. It was a grayish-green, drab and looked slushy and cold and thick.
Mississippi River / 22 jan 2024
And I stopped at my favorite sliding bench and looked down at the white sands beach. Quiet, empty, white with snow, not sand.
Early on in the run, I greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Hi Dave! Hi Sara! How are you doing? I’m good. How are you doing? I’m out here.
added a few hours later: I almost forgot something I was thinking about. As I listened to the song, Remember (lullaby) from Coco, I thought about people I miss and remembering them and then I thought about how sometimes it’s more than memory that helps me stay connected, like the time I opened my mom’s old book and saw her signature in the front. It was a physical trace of her reaching out to me. As I thought about this trace and the reaching out I remembered Diane Seuss commencement address and her discussion of Keats and his invisible hand reaching up from the grave. I’m glad I remembered the Keats bit because I remember having that thought then forgetting it almost immediately as I kept running.
an emptied mind — emptied of memories, emptied of everything
During my “on this day” practice, I encountered this phrase in Occasional Poem/ Jacqueline Woodson: zapped all the ideas from my head. I started thinking about this feeling of going blank or losing words or a sudden rush of nothing but space between your ears. What are some different ways that words describe being emptied of thought — the moment it happens and/or the feeling of emptiness?
the fish in us escaping, dandelion seed scattering, bees leaving the hive,
more than memory
I started a post yesterday (21 jan) and added this, intending, but failing, to finish it.
The wall is, for me and maybe me alone, a holy place. A place of pilgrimage, both full of meaning and void of meaning. I take photos, and the photos hold the memories still. The photos make the wall mean more than memory can, but with meaning, like a fact. No longer in motion, no longer something to which one can return and brush your fingers against (and feel the peeling paint).
*
Maybe a place like this pursues its meaning. Like when you say love and what you say means less than the actual word means. We love a place or a person, or we say a word, trying to stop time, hold something still. Maybe a place makes meaning how a dream might, in opposition to logic, inventing its own sense with presence.
*
Maybe we borrow meaning with a word, like how a photograph borrows a place, hoping meaning might remain recognizable if we say the word with the right angle of light, seeking something definite in a breath. How the impossible blue of a blue wall couldn’t be the blue of memory, a blue no photograph can contain.
Maybe to make a place holy, you must remember it more than real life allows, with all the truth of a squint, all the grace of peeling paint.
*
I’d like to look into one of those photographs, past the image, past what the image contains, past memory and regret and all the salt that sticks to the skin, into experience, into a love known true in one moment, undeniable, un-understandable, the kind of thing that splits everything in half. If I could find that photo of Cassie at the blue wall and step inside it and ask her to stay alive in a world where she was loved, maybe then I could finally know what a word means.
I could almost believe holiness is a process of remembering, but then I see the wall again, in all that sunlight, paint peeling, the blue not only the remembered blue, but more blue in the now of being seen, so I can barely stand to stand beside it, holy as it is with the fact of its own meaning.
2.6 miles river road, south/north 8 degrees / feels like -1 25% snow-covered
I didn’t feel exceptionally cold, but it felt hard, my legs thick. I stopped at the bench above the “edge of the world” and looked out at the covered river. Someone wrote the name “Davidson” in the snow earlier this week and it’s still there. As I ran, I started chanting in triples:
the river was white and closed except for a few spots that were dark and open
a (non-fat tire) bike
a runner’s raspy, hello
running into the wind, being exhausted by it, wondering how the runners at Boston 2017, when it was cold and windy and raining, managed to run the whole marathon
bright, blinding sun heading south
some of the ice on the path was smooth, more of it was jagged and rough
A little while spring will claim its own, In all the land around for mile on mile Tender grass will hide the rugged stone. My still heart will sing a little while.
And men will never think this wilderness Was barren once when grass is over all, Hearing laughter they may never guess My heart has known its winter and carried gall.
gall? I looked this word up and dismissed the definition I knew — gall as bold, impudent, he had the gall (read: nerve) to — because it didn’t make sense to me. Instead, I decided the poet meant
abnormal growths that occur on leaves, twigs, roots, or flowers of many plants. Most galls are caused by irritation and/or stimulation of plant cells due to feeding or egg-laying by insects such as aphids, midges, wasps, or mites. Some galls are the result of infections by bacteria, fungi, or nematodes and are difficult to tell apart from insect-caused gall
I wasn’t satisfied with Merriam-Webster’s online definitions, so I logged into my library and accessed the OED (very cool that I can do this!) for more definitions. This one sort of works:
Something galling or exasperating; a state of mental soreness or irritation.
this one, too:
A place rubbed bare; an unsound spot, fault or flaw; in early use also a breach. Now only technical.
and this:
A bare spot in a field or coppice (see gallv.1 3). In the southern U.S. a spot where the soil has been washed away or exhausted.
Erosion, exhaustion.
I love the way the word gall with its plant/ field meanings and its human meanings reinforces the association being made between human’s exposed than covered grief and the ground’s exposed winter stone covered in spring’s grass.
I wanted to remember this poem because of the grass and the stone and the forgetting of winter when spring arrives. I don’t totally agree with its use of winter as metaphor for misery.
I like winter. I like breathing in the cold, the sound of snow falling, smelling the air. The silence and the sharp sounds. The view of the river — vast and bare. The subdued colors — pale blues and grays and dark browns. The less crowded trails. The bare-branched silhouettes. Movement slowed, stilled, suspended. Layers. The bright, cold sun.
5.4 miles bottom franklin hill and back 37 degrees 20% snow-covered
37 degrees and a mostly clear path! A great run. I felt relaxed and strong and able to shift gears and keep going. I greeted almost every walker, runner, or biker I encountered by raising my right hand. At the bottom of the hill I stopped to check out the water — open, moving thickly, a few flat and wide sheets of ice floating by. Smelled weed. Heard birds — laughing and chirping. Slipped (only a little) on a few bits of ice. Stopped at the sliding bench to admire the view — so bare and quiet and alone. Put in my headphones at the top of the hill and listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Some of today’s lyrics made me think about regret and longing for the past, some of them about the joy of forgetting, and some of them commanded, remember! or don’t you forget it!
added a few hours later: I almost forgot to post the picture I took. It’s of the pile of rocks under the franklin bridge that I keep thinking is a person sitting up against the wall. I know these are rocks, but I always first think: person
limestone mistaken for a man
Inspired by my triple berry chant exercise (see below), I chanted in triples. Can I remember 10 of them?
10 Triple Berry Chants
empty bench
grayish sky
ritual
down the hill
ice and snow
soaring bird
sloppy trail
lake street bridge
noisy wheel
3 stacked stones
confession: I did chant a few of these, but the rest I created as I wrote this list. I just can’t remember what I chanted.
early morning coffee
1 — strange sleeping habits
A morning ritual: coffee, Facebook, poets.org, poetryfoundation.org, poems.com, “on this day.” While scrolling through Facebook I found an interesting article about sleep: The forgotten medieval habit of two sleeps. The concept isn’t new to me; I read the book that it’s based on, At Day’s Close, more than a decade ago. One new thing, or thing that I had read in the book but forgot, was about the author’s initial research and how he looked to court transcripts for information about daily life:
he had found court depositions particularly illuminating. “They’re a wonderful source for social historians,” says Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, US. “They comment upon activity that’s oftentimes unrelated to the crime itself.”
I started thinking more about sleep. Last night was not very good: restless legs, sore hip, getting up 3 or 4 times, walking up earlier than I’d like because of my restlessness. At one point, the author, Roger Ekirch, mentioned how recognizing the long history of getting up in the middle of the night as normal and natural could relieve some anxiety for those of us who can’t sleep straight through the night. I suddenly thought, and not for the first time: I need to accept my crazy sleep instead of fighting or worrying about it, and I should turn it into something creative. Track it, or write into it, or . . . . I wonder if there are “insomnia writing experiments?
a list-writing experiment
The first thing that came up in my google search was a scientific study about writing and falling asleep faster. Perhaps if I had searched, “insomnia writing exercises” or “insomnia poetry prompts” I would have gotten different results.
Bedtime worry, including worrying about incomplete future tasks, is a significant contributor to difficulty falling asleep. Previous research showed that writing about one’s worries can help individuals fall asleep. We investigated whether the temporal focus of bedtime writing—writing a to-do list versus journaling about completed activities—affected sleep onset latency. Fifty-seven healthy young adults (18–30) completed a writing assignment for five minutes prior to overnight polysomnography recording in a controlled sleep laboratory. They were randomly assigned to write about tasks that they needed to remember to complete the next few days (to-do list) or about tasks they had completed the previous few days (completed list). Participants in the to-do list condition fell asleep significantly faster than those in the completed-list condition. The more specifically participants wrote their to-do list, the faster they subsequently fell asleep, whereas the opposite trend was observed when participants wrote about completed activities. Therefore, to facilitate falling asleep, individuals may derive benefit from writing a very specific to-do list for five minutes at bedtime rather than journaling about completed activities.
Lists? I love lists! I think I’ll try this, or my own version of it. Maybe I’ll start with a to-do list, another night a completed list, then a things I love list, or a things that bother me list, my favorite poets list, things I notice in the dark, reasons I can’t sleep list, and on and on. Eventually, maybe I can turn this into a series of list poems?
2 — idea/poem starters, an inspiration
The visual poem on poems.com for today, Good Riddance, reminded me of something I started thinking about in march 2024. The poem is a grid with a fragment of thought in each box. There are arrows directing you across or down, or across then down then across again. However your eyes choose to read the boxes creates a slightly different poem. Anyway, I started thinking about the different boxes and mixing and matching the phrases and I remembered this idea from my “to do list for 2022, 23, and 24”:
a 3/2 idea: create fragments of 2-4 lines with a “complete” thought that can be the start of a new poem, or be put together in new ways to create new poems — almost like prompts:
a shadow crosses
And now I’m remembering an even earlier experiment from 3 may 2019 with triple (3 beat) chants:
Speaking of chanting, I have a new exercise I want to try. First, I want to think up a bunch of 3 syllable phrases (down the hill, walk to work, eat down town, out the door, sunday best, monday worst, turnip greens, climate change, just say please, in and out…). Then I’ll write these on small slips of paper and put them in a hat or a bowl or a bag. I’ll randomly pick out 8-10 and turn them into a poem (either in the order I select them or in an order of my choosing). Maybe the phrases should be a mixture of things from the run and popular or whimsical expressions? So much fun!
added an hour later: While reviewing old entries from June of 2024, I came across a delightful typo. Instead of writing “the tunnel of trees” I wrote, “the tunnel of threes.” I love it! Maybe the title of a poem that uses triple berry chants?
