Tag: shovel

march 5/SHOVEL

32 minutes
about 8 inches
26 degrees

The biggest snowfall of the season. Of course it happened on the day that FWA and his college friends were taking the train to Chicago. Last year, when FWA and RJP were flying to Chicago: a big snow storm all day.

The snow is the worst kind for shoveling — heavy, wet, deep. It will probably melt by the end of the week.

The view from my desk: a man walking his dog in the street wearing snowshoes — the man, not the dog! Will I get to see any skiers too? I hope so.

Today is my mom’s birthday. She would have been 83. She’s been dead for 15.5 years. Last night at community band rehearsal I laughed at something my friend Amanda said — I can’t remember what. And my laugh was my mother’s, at least it sounded like it to me. Sometimes I hear her in my laugh, and sometimes one of my older sisters. I can’t describe the laugh — it’s been too long since I heard it — but I felt it and her last night. That’s how my memories of her work now; they are faint and fleeting and difficult to put into words.

The president’s address to congress was last night. Neither of us talked about it until it was over, but then Scott and I admitted to each other that we had been a little worried he might do something extreme, like declaring the dissolving of congress or pronouncing himself king for life. Thankfully, no. What a world.

circumambulation

In the fall of 2023, when I first started thinking about Gary Snyder and circumambulation, I printed out the Mt. Tamalpais poem, along with a related one my Forrest Gander, and put them under the glass on my desk. They have been there, beneath my fingers, ever since. Today, I reread them and was inspired. I’m thinking about creating another National Park-like unigrid pamphlet for the Franklin-Ford loop. Like the Mt. Tamalpais poem, it would have particular spots on the loop (the poem has 10) where you stop and chant. In the poem, you chant Buddhist prayers, but in my pamphlet, I’m tentatively thinking you will chant some of my favorite poetry lines — or lines I write (inspired by JJJJJerome Ellis and their prayers to their Stutter in Aster of Ceremonies). My lines would be about my blind spot.

I’m also thinking about creating somatic rituals related to these spaces — I’m using CA Conrad as inspiration for them. Yesterday I requested their book, Ecodeviance: (soma) tics for the future wilderness from my local library.

In the introduction to Ecodeviance, also posted here, Conrad describes how their (soma) tics are designed to fight the factory approach to writing poetry they had been using by creating rituals “where being anything but present was next to impossible.” For Conrad, these rituals create an

“extreme present” where the many facets of what is around me wherever I am can come together through a sharper lens.

intro to ecodeviance / CA Conrad

While Conrad identifies the factory model as the source of their key problem of not being aware of place in the present, the model that I’m trying to fight in my writing/creating is the academic one, which shares some similarities with the factory.

Am I brave enough to try any of Conrad’s rituals? For one of them, they fully immersed themselves in the color red for the day —

When I say fully immerse myself in the colors I mean ONLY eating foods of the color of the day, as well as wearing something or keeping something of that color on or around me at all times.

The red experiment is part of a 7 poem sequence, (soma) tic MIDGE. For more on it, see: You write what you eat. This essay describes the poems and has links to audio recordings of Conrad reading them. Very cool.

In their introduction, Conrad describes purple in this way:

Purple being the natural transformative pivotal color which is born only when the starting color red (fire) and the last color blue (water) bleed together.

Introduction / CAConrad

And here is their poem inspired by a day immersed in purple: smells of summer crotch smells of new car’s purple MAjestY (2:05): MP3

More mentions of purple!

feb 23/SHOVEL

shovel: 111 minutes
18 degrees

Before I get into a description of my adventures in shoveling, I want to mention the delight I saw last night. Scott and I were sitting in the front room, listening to music, and looking out at the snow, when suddenly Scott cried out, A skier! Someone is cross-country skiing in the street! Yes! It’s not a real snowstorm until someone is skiing down the middle of your street in the middle of Minneapolis in the early evening while the snow is falling. Oh, to be that skier! A life goal, I think. Also: it’s pretty cool that Scott was the one who pointed it out to me, and with enthusiasm. My delight habits are spreading!

The epic storm wasn’t quite as epic as they’d imagined, but it was still a lot of snow, especially to shovel. It took me a little less than 2 hours to do it all. 46 minutes before lunch, 65 after. Ugh! No snow blower, all shitty plastic shovel from Target — lime green — and back, arm, and leg muscles made stronger from swimming and running.

Mostly I didn’t mind it, and I was happy to be outside, but my back is sore now, and so are my right fingers. Arthritis, I think. I listened to a good chunk of my audiobook, Moonflower Murders. That helped. It was satisfying to see my small driveway pad and the tall wall of snow at the end (thanks to the plow) gradually become clear. No — not become clear, but be cleared by me and my shovel. So much snow! Thank goodness it was powdery. I don’t think I could have shoveled all that if it had been heavy and wet.

At the start, it seemed overwhelming. Too much snow and nowhere to put it. But I just started and kept going, and slowly it felt less overwhelming to imagine clearing it. Then, possible. Then, inevitable. Then, cleared. The runner Des Linden always talks about showing up and simply putting one foot in front of the other when you’re feeling overwhelmed by a big task, like a long run. Sometimes this idea seems too simple and impossible at the same time, but it usually works. It worked today. I didn’t believe I could clear it, but I started anyway. And then I did it.

Yesterday I finished up my (almost) month with Linda Pastan. Next up: windows and/or Emily Dickinson. But, before that, a quick break with Jack Gilbert. A few days ago, I encountered a beautiful poem of his on twitter. The poetry person sharing it introduced the poem by tweeting: “I love poems because they can do this.” Yes, I agree. I’ll write how I understand the “this” after the poem.

Alone/ Jack Gilbert

I never thought Michiko would come back
after she died. But if she did, I knew
it would be as a lady in a long white dress.
It is strange that she has returned
as somebody’s dalmatian. I meet
the man walking her on a leash
almost every week. He says good morning
and I stoop down to calm her. He said
once that she was never like that with
other people. Sometimes she is tethered
on their lawn when I go by. If nobody
is around, I sit on the grass. When she
finally quiets, she puts her head in my lap
and we watch each other’s eyes as I whisper
in her soft ears. She cares nothing about
the mystery. She likes it best when
I touch her head and tell her small
things about my days and our friends.
That makes her happy the way it always did.

Okay, I said I’d explain what I mean by the “this” in I love poems because they can do this, and I’ll try. I’ll start here: Last night I was telling Scott about this poem and the tweet. I didn’t have the poem in front of me, or any of its lines memorized, so I explained it as best I could, which was not very well. I think I didn’t succeed with my summary because the meaning and magic of this poem doesn’t come in a summarized telling of it, but in the specific words used, the line breaks, the order of the words, their rhythms. This poem isn’t so much telling the story of a man and his dead beloved who has come back as a dog, but inviting you into the story to witness it, to behold his grief and tenderness. And, it’s inviting you to believe in other worlds where such gentle, tender moments are possible. Or, even if you don’t/can’t believe in them as true/real/ scientifically possible, you can give room for them to live or to breathe or to be possible for someone. Also, it’s strange. I love strange!

feb 22/SHOVELWALKBIKERUN


shovel: 4 inches
14 degrees

The aftermath of the second round of the epic snowstorm: 4 inches of mostly soft snow. Cold, but not too cold, outside. Listened to the audiobook, Moonflower Murders as I shoveled. The coldest part of my body: my fingers. Even with gloves on, they were getting numb. More snow than I expected. I think I remembered hearing some other shovels scraping, at least one snowblower droning. Already we have big piles of snow on the edges of the driveway, near the garbage/recycling/organic bins on the side of the garage, and on the front sidewalk. If we get more snow tonight, where will it all go?

walk: 15 minues
neighborhood
me, Delia, and Scott
18 degrees

Brrrr. The temperature had increased by 4 degrees but it felt colder because of the wind. About half of the sidewalks we walked on were shoveled. The un-shoveled ones didn’t seem like they had 4 inches of snow on them. Did they? The most enjoyable, warmest feeling direction to walk was east. Heading south, west, or north, we felt the cold wind in our faces. I could sense a brain freeze induced headache about to happen. Delia didn’t care. She sniffed the edges of every block, her tail wagging as she gave attention to the yellow missives from the other animals who had walked these same sidewalks.

bike: 20 minutes
run: 1.5 miles

Because of the wind and the snow, I decided to move in the basement today. Watched the first 20 minutes of the Netflix documentary, Break Point, while I biked. Listened to more of my audiobook while I ran. Wore my new running shoes: Saucony Ride 14s, color: Jackalope (white with orange accents, a red tongue, blue laces). Not my first choice, but they were in my size and $40 less than any other color. Now that I have them, I think I especially like the blue laces.

Before heading downstairs, I started memorizing a poem by Heather Christle that I especially like, “What Big Eyes You Have.” I worked on the first 2 sentences:

Only today did I notice the abyss
in abysmal, and only because my mind
was generating rhymes for dismal,
and it made of the two a pair,
to which much later it joined baptismal,
as — I think — a joke.
I decided to do nothing with
the rhymes, treating them as one does
the unfortunately frequent appearance
of the “crafts”adults require children
to fashion from pipecleaners
and plastic beads.

Wow, it is fun to memorize poems. And, it really helps me to do a deep reading of the words and ideas and rhythms and rhymes. I wish I had time to memorize all of the poems I love!

Here is a Pastan poem that seems fitting to read after encountering so many of her dark ideas about death and its inevitability and wondering why her poems were almost always so dark.

Why Are Your Poems so Dark?/ Linda Pastan

Isn’t the moon dark too,
most of the time?

And doesn’t the white page
seem unfinished

without the dark stain
of alphabets?

When God demanded light,
he didn’t banish darkness.

Instead he invented
ebony and crows

and that small mole
on your left cheekbone.

Or did you mean to ask
“Why are you sad so often?”

Ask the moon.
Ask what it has witnessed.