3.5 miles
2 trails
39 degrees / wind: 27 mph gusts
Windy and cold. Cold enough to bust out my black vest, but not cold enough for the purple jacket. Lots of swirling and floating leaves. Did I hear any birds? Not that I remember, but I did hear voices — kids on the playground and a squeal near longfellow flats that I think was an excited little kid but could have also been a hurt animal. Saw one roller skier twice, or 2 different roller skiers once.
My back was stiff this morning, but didn’t hurt at all while I was running. The run was relaxed — I stopped several times to look for rusty things – and felt good. The wind didn’t bother me while I was running, but now, sitting at my desk, my ears are burning.
Also, sitting at my desk, looking out my window, a runner that often see is running by. This is the first time I’ve seen her at home, the other times have been near the ravine at 36th. I suppose I should include her as one of the regulars. The distinctive thing about her, the thing that makes it possible for me notice and remember her even with my bad vision, is her strange gait. She runs with a hitch in her step. I marvel at it: how can she keep running with that hitch? how does she not get injured? does she feel the hitch, or is she unaware of it? Tentatively, I’ll call her, Miss Hirple Hip because I learned last month, while looking for a word that rhymes with purple, that hirple means limp and because her limp starts in her hip.
Before the run I wrote about my chosen challenge for the month: steps (see below). I made a list of things I want to explore. After that, I briefly wrote about 2 poems that I re-memorized this morning, which brought me to color and rust. I thought about the process (the steps) of rusting — oxidation — and decided to search for rusty things while I ran. Has my plan for the month already derailed? Instead of steps, will I fixate on rust? Future Sara will find out!
10 Rusty Things
- the bolts on a bench at 42nd street
- the metal plates at the entrance to the sidewalk on the next block
- almost every chain link fence
- the sound of the st. thomas bells ringing from across the river
- wind chimes in a yard
- the bottom of a lamp post on the edge of the trail
- just above the wheel well of a car
- a metal pole that used to hold a sign but no longer does
- a cover for the wires stretching up from the ground to a power line pole
- the sound of the dead leaves as they rustle in the wind
Some general thoughts I had about rust as I ran: rust is an edge dweller / while there are lots of edges around here, there isn’t that much rust, at least where I was looking
Steps
Last month, I came up with my challenge for this month. Steps. Will I stick with it? I can’t ever be sure, but it is a very promising theme. So many things I can do with it. Here are just a few:
- identify and list all of the steps on the franklin/ford loop
- take them, describe them, count them
- explore the history of these steps
- explore the public staircases of St. Paul
- incorporate stair climbing into marathon/strength training
- explore the history of step as a concept — a measurement
- how are steps designed — what regulations exist around steps, best practices, etc.
- steps and low vision, steps and accessibility
- step-by-step instructions + how to manuals
- activities that require a certain sequence, activities that do not
- ladders
- memorable steps in literature and poetry
- step counters and 10,000 steps
- feet — it begin here: feet first, following
Refreshing My Memory
It’s been almost a year (I think?) since I checked that I can still recite the poems in my 100 list, so during April — for National Poetry Month! — I’m revisiting my poems and refreshing my memory. I’m working in reverse order:
Crumbling is not an instant’s Act — / Emily Dickinson — I decided to memorize this poem because of its description of erosion — all of it, but specifically the line, An Elemental Rust. Erosion — as evidenced by the gorge and in my dying cone cells, is a key theme for me right now. Also: rust as a process, a color. I want to add to my collection of color poems with one about rust.
Tattoo/ Wallace Stevens — I first read this poem in a dissertation about Lorine Niedecker and her nystagmus. Immediately I thought of Alice Oswald and Dante and insects that travel from your eye to the world and back again to deliver data so you can see. I love this idea and have been playing around with it in terms of color vision while I’m swimming — I imagine light as the fish in me escaping to determine the color of the water/waves, and then reporting back to me. Another mention of color — I think I should return to my color poems!