4.1 miles trestle+ turn around 15 degrees / feels like 1 75% snow-covered
Hooray for getting back outside! I never felt cold. Hands and feet were fine, torso too. About halfway in, I overheated. Off with the mittens, down with the hood. The run didn’t feel easy; my legs were sore. But I bargained with myself — make it to the trestle, keep going until the sliding bench, don’t stop until after the hill! And I was able to shift gears, settling into something different with my legs (hard to explain). I lifted out of my hips, relaxed my shoulders and kept going for longer than I thought I would. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. Stopped running to witness a wedge of geese flying overhead. Heard the rattling jawbone of some bird. Noticed that the river was open and dark under the trestle. Everywhere else it was white.
10 Things
a honk cutting through the quiet then less than a dozen geese flying in a loose formation — I think I heard the swish of their wings as they passed directly above me
the smell of tobacco beside me — did it come from the open window of a passing car?
the smell of weed below me
3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder, half covered with snow
a runner approaching from behind with a dog on a leash tethered to their waist, running faster than me through the snow
the constant view beside me: slender bare brown slanted branches white river a white brown bluff on the other side of the river
a flash of BRIGHT orange to my left — someone in an orange jacket walking below near the old stone steps
a big dog — golden retriever? — squatting and pooping on the side of the path, their owner waiting with a bag
a light brown cobblestone carriage walk in front of a fancy house on edmund
the sharp crunch of one foot striking the crusty snow in my alley, the soft grind of the other foot leaving the snow
shades, shadows, memories
Before the run, I was reviewing May 2024 entries. This bit about the children’s book, The Shades, inspired some thoughts:
. . .they live in the garden. All of their food comes from the shadow’s cast by real food, their house cast from the shadow of the old summer house that “broke Emily’s heart” when it was torn down. Most of the time they do what they want, but when a human enters the garden, whichever of them best fits that human’s form must shadow them around the garden. Sometimes this shadowing is fun, other times it’s tedious, and occasionally it’s dangerous: if a human climbs over the garden wall, the shadow must follow and be lost to the outside world forever.
log entry 20 may 2024
Thinking about the shadow’s independence from the object that cast them and their attaching forms that approximately fit, I started thinking about memories and the gorge. I imagined countless memories (as shadows?) living there, made and left behind by everyone that has spent time at the gorge. Then I imagined running through/with/beside them and some of them attaching to me (in some way). The memories weren’t mine exactly; they were independent of me with their own experiences and histories and feelings. But, beside the gorge, we become entangled. Maybe I can add this to the poem I started about shadows. I’d also like to add this idea: the silhouette as “a radical condensation of faith in shadows” from 17 may 2024.
Another sunny, sharp shadow day. Ran south to the falls and listened to cars, birds, kids on the playground, and some guy coughing too loudly. Stopped at my favorite spot to admire the falls, then put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist. Sometimes I felt strong, and sometimes I felt tired. My legs wanted us to stop. I did a few times, including at the bench above “the edge of the world.” I took two pictures. One had a clearer view of the ice on the river, but I picked the other one, with its branches and shadows and white sun:
above the edge of the world / 8 jan 2024
10 Things
chirping birds
my shadow, clear and strong
shadows of trees in the park, soft and fuzzy
a shadow of the lamp post, sharp and menacing
someone who looked like Dave the Daily Walker from behind — a tucked shirt and not jacket, tucked into dark track pants — but wasn’t
the creek — bright white snowy surface mixed with fast, flowing water
the falls were gushing through the ice columns
a man with a bad cough near the overlook
a cold wind on my ears when I put my hood down
the shadow of a tree sprawled across the trail that dips below the road, looking like an actual branch that might hit me as I ran by
For a moment, I thought I had completely forgot running the stretch down to, then over, the bridge that crosses above the falls, but then I remembered it: what the creek looked like, seeing some people (one of them, the man with the cough) as I crossed, but then not seeing them, and then seeing them again near the closed gate.
before the run
Last night, I started reading JJJJJerome’s Aster of Ceremonies, which I bought in october of 2023 and hadn’t read yet. Wow! Here’s a bit I’d like to take with me on my run:
What is the wound reopening during the stutter? How does it relate to Morrison’s flooding? When the Mississippi returns to its former contours, does the suture we created by straightening it open? (Octagon of Water, Movement 2/JJJJJerome Ellis)
Last week, I was just writing about how the natural shape of the Mississippi River in the gorge is long gone, reshaped by the city and the Army Corps. After my run, I’ll read Toni Morrison’s essay to which Ellis refers.
added a few hours later: I tracked down the quotation that Ellis puts in a footnote for this poem from Toni Morrison in The Site of Memory (1995, 99):
You know, they straightened out the Mississippi River in places, to make room for houses and livable acreage. Occasionally the river floods these places. “Floods” is the word they use, but in fact it is not flooding; it is remembering. Remembering where it used to be. All water has a perfect memory and is forever trying to get back to where it was. Writers are like that: remembering where we were, what valley we ran through, what the banks were like, the light that was there and the route back to our original place. It is emotional memory – what the nerves and the skin remember as well as how it appeared. And a rush of imagination is our “flooding.” Along with personal recollection, the matrix of the work I do is the wish to extend, fill in and complement slave autobiographical narratives. But only the matrix. What comes of all that is dictated by other concerns, not least among them the novel’s own integrity. Still, like water, I remember where I was before I was “straightened out.”
The Site of Memory/ Toni Morrison
So good! I’m excited to think about these ideas some more and figure out my relationship to flooding and being straightened out and rivers before and after Minneapolis and the Army Corps of Engineers “fixed” them.
Thinking about Ellis’ stutter in relation to my vision problems. In some ways, I have a visual stutter — there’s a long pause between looking at something and actually seeing it. I need time for things to make sense. Also, images stutter, shake, fizz, are always moving, never still or sharp or clear.
remember/forget
1— will
the differences between what we notice and try to remember and what we ignore or try to forget (16 april 2024)
2— memory
When I heard the line, Seems like we’re livin’ in a memory, I thought about how I mostly can’t see people’s faces clearly and that I’ve either learned to tune it out and speak/look into the void, or I just fill in the smudge with the memory of their face. I’m used to it, and often forget I’m doing it until suddenly I wonder as I stare at the blob, am I looking in the right place, into their eyes, or am I staring at their chin? I don’t care, but I imagine the other person might, so I try to find their eyes again (9 may 2024).
In jan of 2024, I’m thinking about the daily, mundane bodily functions that we forget we’re doing, or don’t notice — what’s the difference between not noticing and forgetting here? I’m also thinking about this idea of memory and its relationship to the real. When is remembering “only a memory” and when can the act of remembering keep something real? Can we understand remembering as more than thinking about things from the past? What about remembering what is present, here still, real, connected to us?
3 — pay attention, be astonished, tell about it
Thinking more about the difference between noticing and remembering, I’m thinking about the different acts involved here. Yes, it is inspired by Mary Oliver’s instructions for living a life! First, we notice, then we are open to feeling something about what we noticed, then we put that noticing and our feelings into words. For my practice, I don’t try to remember to notice or to be astonished, they just happen — at least, that’s the goal. Remembering comes in when I try to put my attention and astonishment into words. So, the connection between writing and remembering.
4 — writing to remember
I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it down to remember it now.
Field Notes slogan
Many different directions I could go with this idea of remembering and writing, but I like this idea of the act of writing about something as the remembering. I rarely look back at my (Field Notes brand) Plague Notebooks when I’m finished with them; it’s the act of writing in them that helps me remember what I noticed or was thinking about. This method is approximate and doesn’t work all of the time. In my practice, I use the act of making a list on my log of 10 things I noticed as the moment of remembering what I didn’t even realize I noticed. But, unlike my plague notebooks, I do return to my log to read past entries and remember what I wrote before — in at least 3 ways: my monthly challenge pages in which I review and summarize what I did in relation to my theme each month; my “on this day” morning reviews, in which I reread past entries from that day in different years; and my annual summary, month-by-month of my log entries.
5 — forget the body
I like my body when I’m in the woods and I forget my body. I forget that arms, that legs, that nose. I forget that waist,
that nerve, that skin. And I aspen. I mountain. I river. I stone. I leaf. I path. I flower. (Yes, That’s When/Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer)
5 miles bottom franklin hill and back 18 degrees / feels like 10
A beautiful, sunny morning. Cold enough to make my eyes water but not my feet numb. Birds, sharp shadows, a clear path. Only a few small chunks of hard snow on the walking path. From the distance, the river looked completely open and ice-free. When I stopped at the bottom of the hill to check, I noticed a few lumps scattered around the surface. If I hadn’t stopped, I never would have seen them — there were so few of them, and they were so small!
I remembered to look at the river. I forgot the sudden and unexpected surge of anxiety I experienced before the run, while I was sitting at my desk — not panic, but a rush of something then shaking hands, chattering teeth — then remembered it, and then forgot it again. This happened throughout the run. I remembered to breathe and to stay relaxed. I forgot to check my watch. I remembered to zip up my jacket pocket so one of my black gloves wouldn’t fall out. I forgot to check and see if June’s ghost bike was still hanging on the trestle. I remembered the time I ran up the franklin hill and recorded myself describing it. I forgot to look for fat tires.
Halfway up the franklin hill, I stopped to walk and put in my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist, since the shadows were wonderful today. The fourth song to come on was Cream’s “White Room.” I thought about the second verse and these lyrics:
You said no strings could secure you at the station Platform ticket, restless diesels, goodbye windows
First, I was struck by the strings. I thought about invisible threads or tugs, then Taylor Swift’s invisible strings. Then, I was struck by nouns in the second line, especially the restless diesels and goodbye windows. I’m not sure if I thought about it while I was running, but now I’m thinking about one of RJP’s favorite books as a kid, The Hello Goodbye Window.
Before the run, and before my surge of anxiety, I edited and added to some lines about descending into the gorge that I had started last week. I was partly inspired by a discussion with FWA yesterday about his walk down the old stone steps to the beach. The lines aren’t quite finished, but here’s what I have. I’m hoping to have FWA read them to see if they capture any of his experience:
From the bottom, she looks up to behold a steep set of stone steps wedged in loam by grandfathers. At the top, the edge, and beyond, the trail, then the road, wind-bent trees, worn grass, a neighborhood. Down here feels different — wild, untouched, real, above only distant dream. The girl follows a break in the trees to a white sand beach and the river. She shuts her eyes and listens for the bells that chime four times an hour. Once or twice, instead, she’s heard a bagpipe’s mournful skirl float down from the cenotaph on the other bluff. A moment, a breath — she opens her eyes returns through the trees ascends the steps and breaks the spell.
And, speaking of remembering and forgetting, here’s another fragment I’m working on:
One day the girl sees the river and re- members what she saw. One day she sees the river and does not. And one day she for- gets to look. How strange it is to not notice what is right there, looming so large it has shaped this whole world.
Ran in the afternoon. Sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, streaks of a brilliant blue mixed with fluffy clouds. The river was mostly open with a few stretches of ice. The shore glowed white. The gorge slopes were different versions of brown. The creek was flowing fast and the falls were rushing over the edge. When I looked at them from my favorite spot all I could see was movement — the fast falling water looked like wavy vertical lines on an old tv. For the first mile, I was the only one out on the trail, then I passed a walker. Far ahead I could see lights flickering — headlights passing by trees on the other side of the ravine. Just past the double bridge, I heard a hammer hitting some wood then some other construction noises — men talking, some song coming out of the radio, a saw buzzing.
Yesterday, one version of my Girl Ghost Gorge poem was published in Last Syllable Literary Journal!
Ah, this poem, featuring windows and shadows and birds!
These windows, these panes, at the beginning of light looking where they look, eyeing the east and the rust and here they are, protected by shade and shadows: branches and birds strike them, fly into them and out. You can see nothing through them, you can only see what bounces off: back at the world and then you return, to the lemon, that is the self, squeezing drop after drop— there’s nothing left of you now, no juice! Can you go on lubricating the mind, musing on you as disaster, and the rest of you as the elements? Here, they go one by one into a flame set down, beneath all the steps, at the very bottom of it all … and God! The eyes wish you didn’t! They look away from the blank space remaining—oh these birds in the mornings are funny and the little tricks they repeat and repeat, like these sounds they make, in order: they fly off together or one by one, puffing up their small bodies, extending a peak that opens up a view, that finds space in whatever looks shut and closed—a wall has some hole, a tree trunk can manage a crack, and under the ledge, a window knows something of the hidden world.
Warmer today! And clear, ice-free paths! Not looking like December at all. I decided to run to the flats so I could see if the water seeping out of the rock wall was still frozen now that it had warmed up. It looked like it was, at least to me, but I could hear some trickling water too. What will it look like this afternoon? I heard a few geese, admired the form of a few other runners after they passed me, noticed my shadow and a few streaks of blue sky when the sun came out from behind the clouds briefly. It wasn’t the easiest run, but it wasn’t the hardest either.
Heading north, I listened to a train — or was it a light rail? — horn honking repeatedly. Not sure what was happening; too many honks, and too insistent, for business as usual. Was there an accident? Returning south, I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist, but then switched to “Slappin’ Shadows.”
Here’s a wonderful poem I discovered this morning. That last line!
What aren’t you willing to believe. A heart graffitied fuchsia on the street, a missive from another life. Remember the stem of lavender you found in a used copy of Bishop’s poems, a verse underlined: The world is a mist. And then the world is minute and vast and clear. Suddenly, across the aisle a woman with your mother’s bracelets, her left wrist all shimmer and gold, you almost winced. Coincidence is the great mystery of the human mind but so is the trans-oceanic reach of Shah Rukh Khan’s slow blink. Each of us wants a hint, a song that dares us to look inside. True, it takes whimsy and ego to believe the universe will tap your shoulder in the middle of a random afternoon. That t-shirt on a stranger’s chest, a bumper sticker on the highway upstate. Truth isn’t going anywhere. It’s your eyes passing by.
Today I’m working on a section of Haunts about forms and shadows and seeing things slant, off to the side, in order to grasp (some of) their truth. I’m thinking I will mention how the mississippi is one of the more trained/shaped/managed rivers — with locks, dams, dredging.
a lone black glove
Almost always, when I see a discarded glove on the ground on my run it is black. Okay, today, I saw a gray one draped on a branch. As I walked home after my run, I encountered a lone black glove on the ground and decided to take a picture of it.
a lone black glove
added, 17 dec 2024: As I was working on a section of Haunts about form, I remembered something else I witnessed yesterday during my run. Somewhere between the trestle and lake street bridge, I noticed a form on the ground, just through the trees. I think it was a sleeping bag with someone (possibly) in it. I’ve seen it here before, but only as a quick flash while I run by. Am I seeing it correctly, or is it like the stacked limestone under the franklin bridge that I always think is a person sitting up against one of the pilings?
5.2 miles bottom of franklin hill 21 degrees / feels like 12 75% snow-covered
What a wonderful winter morning for a run! With the sun and my effort, it felt much warmer than it was. The snow wasn’t slippery or deep and made a delightful crunching noise as I stepped down. The river was open again and dark brown. And the birds were so loud — not seen only heard. Mostly I ran on the bike path. Encountered some runners, walkers, dogs, at least 2 bikers, and at least one person smoking on a bench.
a new ritual
Like most of my rituals, this one began with little intention. I decided last week to stop at an inviting bench to check out the view for a moment and now I’m doing it every time I’m returning south from the trestle or beyond. The bench is facing the river and above the white sands beach. At one time I’m sure it was farther from the slope, but not it’s right on the edge. How long before it falls in? Today, while I was looking down at the river, I felt a blur of movement. What was it? Did I imagine it? I waited for a moment and then I saw a dog and their human through the bare trees, walking at the beach. They looked so far away and alone.
10 Things
elementary school kids yelling and laughing out on the school field — such energy unleashed — wow
small prints in the snow
a truck speeding by, revving its engine on a bend in the road
2 or 3 stones stacked on the boulder, covered in snow
a thin ribbon of bare pavement on the edge of the trail
the feel of my feet sliding slightly as I ran down the snow-covered hill
my faint shadow, just ahead of me, only visible occasionally
the slabs of stone still stacked up under the franklin bridge, looking like a person
all the steps down into the gorge are blocked off with chains
a clump of dead leaves at the top of a tree looking like a monster nest
Another beautiful, late fall morning! Sun, blue skies, hardly a breeze. Running north, my shadow leading me, occasionally drifting to the side and off into the woods. Running south, hiding behind me. I saw her only once when I turned around to check. Everything calm, quiet. Everyone enjoying being alone together. An open view of air and the bare-branched tree line on the other side. Blue river. An inviting bench perched on the edge of the bluff. I saw it as I ran toward the trestle. When I turned around, I stopped at it. Right on the edge, a steep brown slope down to the white sands beach and the river. How many more seasons before this bench, already on the edge, tumbles down? The sour-sweet smell of the sewer — a hint of sharp spice. Pounding hammers–not in a fast, steady rhythm, but in bursts and trading off. A great run.
As I ran, I couldn’t imagine how it could rain this afternoon. So much sun and blue skies! But already, less than an hour later, clouds. Rain is coming.
I’m still working on a section of my poem about progress and time and conservation. The ending turns to a vague reference to conversation of matter, where nothing is lost or gained, just transformed. Somewhere after the tunnel of trees, I suddenly thought, exchanged, and imagined oxygen being traded between lungs and leaves.
Made-up Walking Tours
Here’s an article that I found the other day about the poet, Mathias Svalina’s, surreal waking tours in Richmond: Surrealistic Zillow. Here’s how the tours work:
You show up at the appropriate time and place and look for a man with a bullhorn. “Because I’m a man who owns a bullhorn now,” Svalina says. “[Then] I’ll point to buildings and lie about them for 90 minutes.”
and part of its purpose:
“I’m particularly interested in civic history because of the ways that cities use, rewrite, and often weaponize their histories as promotional agents, or as ways of ignoring populations,” he explains. “So, I like the idea of inventing histories that could not have ever existed.”
Sun! Sharp shadows. Blue sky. The river burning white — wow! Rushing falls. A leaf-littered slope down to the river. A clear view across. Crowded trails, mostly walkers. At least one roller skier. People emerging from the oak savanna near the big rock shaped like an armchair. A little kid on a bike in the parking lot. The usual smell of smoke coming from some house on edmund or from the gorge; every fall/winter I can’t quite tell. My ponytail forcefully swinging in the wind. I don’t remember hearing any birds or dodging any squirrels. Where are the geese?
I also don’t remember what I thought about. I wanted to work through a part of my poem about progress and conservation of matter and the entanglement of decay/rusting/softening of the gorge and my shifting eyesight. But, if I did, I can’t remember.
This Kay Ryan poem was the poem of the day on Poetry Foundation:
Surfaces serve their own purposes, strive to remain constant (all lives want that). There is a skin, not just on peaches but on oceans (note the telltale slough of foam on beaches). Sometimes it’s loose, as in the case of cats: you feel how a second life slides under it. Sometimes it fits. Take glass. Sometimes it outlasts its underside. Take reefs.
The private lives of surfaces are innocent, not devious. Take the one-dimensional belief of enamel in itself, the furious autonomy of luster (crush a pearl— it’s powder), the whole curious seamlessness of how we’re each surrounded and what it doesn’t teach.
10.2 miles downtown loop* 61 degrees / humidity: 70%
*river road trail, north — past the trestle, down franklin hill, in the flats, up the I-94 hill, past the Guthrie and Stone Arch, under Hennepin, over Plymouth, through Boom Island, up to the 3rd avenue Bridge, winding down to river road, heading south.
Warm this morning. Sun, sweat. Wore shorts and short-sleeved shirt. Ran with Scott; we’re running the Halloween Half next Saturday. My legs and lungs were fine, my gut not so much. Unfinished business at mile 6, then again at mile 9. Hopefully I can figure out a way to fix it soon. I remember that Scott talked a lot more than I did, but about what? Music — he subbed for a community jazz band and he’s hoping they ask him to join. I talked about shadows and afternoon moons and my admiration for fit runners and good form — so graceful and pleasing to watch!
We greeted Mr. Holiday — good morning! — and encountered a few roller skiers. We also encountered Vikings Fans between Stone Arch and Hennepin. Enjoying the nice weather before the game, I guess. I heard train bells and some biker calling out to the other bikers he was with: we’re going to whip down this hill. I sang to Scott, whip it good! The steps up from St. Anthony Main to the 3rd Avenue bridge were tough, but the view of downtown was amazing. I mentioned Spirit Island to Scott, which is the sacred Dakota Island that was quarried by white settler colonists, then removed by the Army Corps of Engineers, and we wondered where it had been exactly (south of the Locks and Dam).
Looking up where Spirit Island was in relation to Stone Arch and the 3rd avenue bridge, I found a brief article that mentioned how the island had bald eagles and spruce trees, In my poem, I say the trees are oaks — did I remember it wrong, or were there spruce and oaks? To be safe, I’ll change it in the poem:
Among eagled spruce, rock by sacred rock hauled off in horse-drawn carts, few records of where. Not gone, scattered, displaced, their origin as island erased.
11 Things
the shadows of the railing on the Plymouth bridge — straight, sharp
the bright, sparkling water at the edge of Boom Island
the railing shadows at another spot on the bridge — the shadows they cast on the sidewalk made me think the sidewalk was broken
the pattern of the shadows of a chain-link fence — sharp but soft, geometric
2 shirtless runners passing us, running past and fluidly, their feet bouncing up down up down, spending more time in the air than on the ground
rowers, 1: the voice of a coxswain giving instructions
rowers, 2: an 8-person shell on the river
slashes of deep red leaves from the bushes beside the path
the quick suggestion of an afternoon moon: a flash of white in the bright blue sky. Was it the moon or a cloud? I checked with Scott: the moon!
a sour smell rising from below: sewer gas
falling leaves! reds and yellows, fluttering in the wind — sharp, brittle, hitting my cap hard
Earlier this week, RJP and I took an overnight trip to Red Wing and stayed at the old/haunted hotel, the St. James. It was wonderful — the hotel more than the town. As part of it, we hiked up the bluff — He Mni Can-Barn Bluff. A great view of Red Wing and the river, and a good workout! 90 minutes of ascending and descending. We saw a Vikings cruise, 5 stories tall, docked at the river. RJP looked it up: an 18-day cruise from St. Paul to New Orleans, $12,000 per person. Wow. The next day, at a bakery getting doughnuts and coffee, we overheard a woman ask for a Trump cookie. Yes, they were selling cookies that spelled out Trump with icing. They also had Harris cookies. RJP said that there were more Harris cookies left. We were both disturbed by the idea that someone would want to buy a Trump cookie and that a bakery would be selling them.
Warmer than I thought this morning. Lots of sweat. Sun. Shadows. Sparkling water. Ran past the road closed on Oct 6 (that’s for the marathon!) and smiled. Not long now. I felt fine. My big toe on my right foot stung a little. My right foot is a bit of a mess: an in-grown big toenail, a blackish-purplish second toe, another possible in-grown toenail on the fourth toe. I think it will all be fine — nothing’s infected and it doesn’t hurt that much.
10 Things
a coxswain’s voice, calling out instructions
a motorboat’s wake, leaving soft ripples on the surface of the river, moving upstream and contrasting with the motion of the water heading downstream
ahead of me, under the 1-94 bridge, the river sparking silver
water seeping out of the limestone below the U of M’s west bank, wanting to be a waterfall
my shadow, running ahead of me: sharp and solid
several of the benches were occupied — one person at each
a few more red leaves — a bright, fiery red
the rhythmic snap of a fast runner’s striking feet
cracks in the asphalt just north of the trestle — they just patched these in late spring and the entire stretch was redone 2 or 3 years ago — in 10 years will you even able to run on this section, or will it have slid into the gorge?
someone left the lid of the trashcan below the lake street bridge open — wow, it stinks!
Here’s a poem I read yesterday that I liked to add to my collection of shadow poems — I might also add it to my growing group of moment poems too:
My child is upset that they cannot jump over their shadow. They want me to help them. They want me to teach them how it’s done. The best I can do is an invitation
to jump over each other’s shadows instead. This satisfies them for a moment and then the moment is gone. In sunlight my shadow loves to give me a little dose of sorrow,
the beams having traveled so far only for the lump of me to get between them and the ground. They came so close. If I were the earth I would resent me too. My child
has gone into the next moment. I have to catch up. They say they are riding a horse. They point and it drags them away.
I read this wonderful quote from Hanif Abdurraqib the other day in one of my favorite former grad student’s newsletter. It’s about the ekphrasis form and is helpful for thinking about my “How to See” project:
Many of us live in an ekphrasis mindset. We are often executing ekphrasis storytelling…creating a story based off of that witnessing. I don’t ever want to move beyond that desire to say, I saw something and I know that you were not there to see it. But I can build the world wherein you felt like you have witnessed it alongside me.
I want to build a world about how I see with my dead-coned eyes in my poems, partly to feel less alone and isolated and partly to invite people to think more what it means to see (and to not see).
Last night, Scott and I were watching “Escape to the Country” and one of the escapees (Carol from Hertfordshire) was registered blind. She sometimes used a white cane and had some help from her husband in navigating, but she could make eye contact and see some of what was going on. When the host (Jules) asked her to explain her vision, she said she could see about 20% of what he could, enough to get a sense of the space, but not clearly. I appreciated that Jules had asked her to explain her vision (and impressed with the positive, non-tragic way they depicted her throughout the episode), but I wanted more. I wished she (and/or the show) had had an ekphrasis mindset and offered additional details about what seeing/not seeing is for her. The host, Jules, suggests, “Fundamentally, understanding how she sees the world is going to be crucial to finding properties that will absolutely deliver.” Even a sentence or two more might have helped in that understanding.
I wondered what someone who had never thought about the process of seeing or the spectrum of no-sight to full-sight made of her description and how she (fairly) easily/”naturally” moved through the world. After my run, I decided to google the episode and see if I could find more information about the woman, like what her condition was, etc. I was disappointed to discover headlines describing her blindness as “heartbreaking” or that she told of it, “with tears in her eyes.” That’s not how I perceived it. Admittedly, I can’t see faces clearly enough to grasp slight facial expressions, but this woman did not seem heartbroken and if she had any tears in her eyes, it was because she was looking into the sun. This was not a tragic episode; she and her husband were excited to move. These headlines seem to be typical examples of writers projecting their own fears and negative understandings of blindness onto blind people (or people with low vision, or people who see differently). Blind = tragic = heartbreaking = pity.
Scott and I watched the brief, 10 second clip that this “heartbreaking” description is based on, and he agreed that she wasn’t upset or crying. Her description was neutral and matter-of-fact. Sigh.
At the beginning of my run, I thought more about the ekphrastic mindset and asked myself, what is art? I didn’t come up with an answer — a task for another run!
one more thing to add: Talking with RJP about my various projects, she introduced me to a new phrase for describing the dirt trails that walkers/runners make in the grass: desire paths. That should be a title for one of my gorge poems, for sure!
