Tag: walk

march 28/RUNWALK

5.3 miles
ford loop
53 degrees

Spring! High in the 70s today. Tomorrow, in the 40s. When I started, I felt very sluggish and I wondered if I would be able to do the entire loop. I suppose it got a little easier, but I think it was more that I just kept putting one foot in the front of the other. I stopped to walk when I thought I needed to and kept running when I knew I could. There was one moment when I was just about to stop and walk but then I didn’t. I want to do that more often.

“10 Things

  1. the waves on the water from the ford bridge, looking like little scales — the wind pushing the water upstream
  2. reaching the top of the summit hill, hearing several dogs non-stop barking in a fenced-in backyard. I looked over and saw one of them up on something, their head higher than the fence
  3. a man exiting a port-a-potty at the Monument parking lot, ready to begin running again
  4. the cross on top of the monument — big and made out of stone — have I ever noticed it before?
  5. the feel of the sandy dirt on the edge of the paved path on the st. paul side: soft, fast, gentle, singing
  6. the bells from St. Thomas ringing quietly
  7. empty benches everywhere
  8. the faint knocking of a woodpecker high up in a tree
  9. no eagle perched on the dead limb of the tree near the lake/marshall bridge
  10. something floating in the water — I couldn’t tell if it was a buoy or an ugly 80s purse

Waters of March (Águas de Março) / Antonio Carlos Jobim

This song, which I’ve heard many times but never really listened to, came up on a mood playlist yesterday. I looked up the lyrics, and here’s the first part:

A stick, a stone
It’s the end of the road
It’s the rest of a stump
It’s a little alone

It’s a sliver of glass
It is life, it’s the sun
It is night, it is death
It’s a trap, it’s a gun

The oak when it blooms
A fox in the brush
A knot in the wood
The song of a thrush

The wood of the wind
A cliff, a fall
A scratch, a lump
It is nothing at all

It’s the wind blowing free
It’s the end of the slope
It’s a beam, it’s a void
It’s a hunch, it’s a hope

And the river bank talks
Of the waters of March
It’s the end of the strain
The joy in your heart

The song is originally in Portuguese and from 1972; Jobim created an English version later. I like the list of images — a list poem!

As the story goes, Jobim wrote the song in his country house, close to Rio de Janeiro. He was growing impatient with all the rain and mud that kept delaying some work he wanted done on the property and started the song as a way to distract himself from the constant downpour, creating a simple tune to go with the lyrics. His intention was to rewrite the melody later, though he soon realized that the downward spiral progression he had accidentally created fit the song—and the weather—perfectly.

The lyrics of “Águas de Março” tell of the constant rain that falls in Rio during the month of March, at the close of the summer (in the Southern Hemisphere, the seasons are opposite to those in the Northern). It is a common occurrence for excessive rain to cause floods and landslides. It washes away houses and streets, taking everything it clashes with in its current.

The Waters of March

And here’s a delightful poem I discovered on Instagram last night:

Lately,/ Laure-Anne Bosselaar

when a branch pulls at my sleeve
like a child’s tug, or the fog, reticent & thick,
lifts, & strands of it still hang like spun sugar
between branches & twigs, or when a phoebe
trills from the hackberry,
I believe such luck
is meant only for me. Does this happen to you?
Do you believe at times that a moment chooses
you to remember it entirely & tell about it —
so that it may live again?

ritual / ceremony / chant / movement

Reading through past entires for this month, I came across an idea from Cole Swenson:

as you move
through a

place, it moves
through you

OR

move through a
place and

it moves through
you too

I like the second one. I can imagine chanting it as I run and thinking about what I’m moving through and what’s moving through me. What is moving through me?

Here’s one answer, in a poem — Running Sentences — from a poet I just discovered on 26 march:

a The chorus is making sentences now: look,

b A cloud of gnats through which the body like a hailstorm blew,

c Here in the pockets of the path, there a heaven I avoid,

b Runners move through gnats, whole bodies move, disrupting,
(Running Sentences/ Endi Bogue Hartigan)

walk: 35 minutes
edmund
67 degrees

It almost feels like summer — wow. Trees and birds and a steady stream of cars on the river road enjoying the nice weather. Bikes, kids, the smell of dead leaves baking in the sun. My favorite thing: 2 people ahead of me on the sidewalk, one of them was wearing cool, baggy pants with a tank top and I thought that I’d like to have something like that to wear. Later a car drove by, the people inside scream-singing along to “Like a Prayer.” The person in the baggy pants called out and they stopped to let them get in. Then laughing and gleeful shouting and more scream-singing. I almost wrote, oh, to be that young again, but I don’t want to that young again. Instead, I’d like to be that delighted and joyful again.

march 27/WALK

45 minutes x 2
walk 1: 50 degrees / longfellow flats
walk 2: 62 degrees / edmund

Walked with Delia the dog in the late morning. The good news: it’s beautiful today, my back feels so much better, the water was supposed to be off all day (for water main work down the street), but it’s already back on at noon. The bad news: I feel overwhelmed and have the strong urge (need?) to disengage. The saga of getting a girl to go to school continues; now it’s college classes. I am tired. One of my best friends is coming into town this weekend, and I want to see her (have plans to see her), but I’m not sure I can do it. In this scenario, which is the best way to be kind to myself: to be generous and encourage myself to cancel plans and rest, or to be stern and encourage myself to push through and keep the plans?

The walk helped me to feel better, but did not help me decide what to do.

update, after walk 2: I have decided to be generous to myself and cancel my plans. There have been many good things that have happened this year (with the year starting last fall), but also many very difficult things. Two mantras I’m trying to remember: be kind to yourself and whatever gets you thru the night is alright (John Lennon).

I was planning to make a list of 10 things, but when I tried my mind went blank. Too much pressure to produce? I think I’ll write about what I remember in this paragraph instead of in a list. I remember the river burning through the trees. Just a small spot, shimmering at the edge of my vision. I remember a man taking a break from running, breathing very heavily. He was struggling — wheezing and coughing. Had he done a hard/fast set, or was he just very out of shape? I remember the woman with the dog stopped at the wooden feence above the ravine who started up again just before Delia and I got to them. They went a few feet and then the dog plopped on the ground and wouldn’t move. It was impossible to get by them, so we explored the rim of the ravine. I remember taking the old stone steps down to the forest floor and walking past a big tree that had fallen and then been moved out of the way, presumably by park workers. So many tangled roots! I remember the feel of the soft sand and the blue of the blue water. I remember how the trail through the forest opened to the river and how the tall grasses framed the water. I remember the wonderful burning feeling of my glute muscles as I powered up the stone steps. I remember the soft geometry of the fence slat shadows. I remember hearing voices that were either deeper in the gorge or on the other side. I remember hearing the St. Thomas bells ringing, but I don’t remember how many times they rang. I remember witnessing 2 sewer workers doing something with the manhole. I think they were turning the water back on — they had a long pole that was in the center of the hole and they were leaning over and moving clockwise as they tightened (or loosened?) something. An unsual sight. It looked strange and uncomfortable.

It was very cool to witness these workers. Somehow I had imagined that a machine would turn the water off and on. The sewer pipe is too delicate, Scott thought. Of course. I like learning about these things, knowing how they happen, being reminded of the physical, and usually invisible, work that is required — and by people — to do them.

Delia and I did the second walk with Scott. Here are 3 delightful things that happened:

1

Below Edmund in the part of the boulevard dotted with trees I pointed out a huge tree that had lost its head — it didn’t have a top, just a jagged trunk — but still had two thick and long branches that stretched horizontally with clusters of smaller branches. They were gnarled and twisted and seemed to be reaching across the grass. They also cast a wonderful shadow.

2

Under another tree, Scott pointed out a woodpecker. Amazingly I was able to see it — it was tiny — because it had moved and my peripheral vision had caught the sense of movement. After a minute or two, it started knocking on the wood — a soft tap tap tap tap.

3

I was able to point out the rock wedged in the tree with = > ÷ painted on it that I wrote about yesterday. I asked Scott if he would have seen it while just walking by. Just as he was saying, no, only if I decided to stop and look at the tree, while looking at another tree, he noticed 2 more of the rocks wedged in the trunk! Later, another one in yet another tree. Wow! I love noticing new things, discovering something that you probably had walked by dozen of times without noticing. Moments of unexpected joy, hidden in plain sight, waiting for you to notice them and be delighted!

Reading a recent issue of The New Yorker, I found a beautiful poem. If you click on the link, you can listen to the poet read it — I love how they read: so natural and not affected or sing-song-y at all.

What Am I Afraid Of?/ Sasha Debevec-McKenney

The silence, the thoughts
that come with it, the sinking
suspicion that something more
is wrong with me than anyone
knows, including myself, including
the doctor who hooked me up
to the EKG machine and said
that though my heartbeat was irregular,
the irregularity was normal.
It was nothing to worry about.
The doctor told me there are two kinds
of people: unhealthy people who refuse
to get help, and healthy people
who always think they’re dying.
Nobody’s in between. But I’ve met
so many kinds of people:
people who stretch before
they get out of bed, people
who walk through life unstretched,
people who think their body
is a house and people who don’t
think of their body at all.
People who peel their carrots,
people who don’t. People who
stand on the roof and let the wind
make them cry. People who are afraid
to cry. People who step on all the leaves
on the sidewalk, people who look
straight ahead. There are people
who aren’t like me, they
don’t know the names
of all the different apples.
Once when I was cashiering
a woman said to me, “Wow,
you really know your kale.”
And once, at the butcher shop,
a man said to his dog, “That’s
the nice lady who smells like meat.”
I’m afraid I don’t know
what kind of person I am.
I thought I would get a chance
to do my life over in all the ways
anyone could think of: dying
would be like changing the channel.
I hate that you can’t hold on
to anything. I was washing an apple
and then I was coring it
and then it was cut—
and that was weeks ago now.
It was a Honeycrisp, and it lived up
to its name.

Of course a doctor, trained in dualism and either/ors and this or thats, would think this:

The doctor told me there are two kinds
of people: unhealthy people who refuse
to get help, and healthy people
who always think they’re dying.

I’ve been thinking about lists and list poems and reviewing a chapter from a craft book about them. I like the poet’s list of types of people.

march 26/RUNWALK

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin and back
46 degrees

More excellent running weather. Sunny and calm and warm(er). Birds singing and swooping and perching on tree branches right in front of me. I felt relaxed and strong and my back only hurt once, when I stood up after re-tying my shoe. I ran without stopping to walk to the bottom of the hill and right next to the river. It was swirling foam on the edges. Ran back up to under the franklin bridge then stopped to walk the rest of the hill. I noticed a sign — Trail closed starting March 31st — uh oh. Just looked it up; it’s only for 2 weeks:

Bike and walk trails along West River Parkway will close between the I-94 Bridge and Franklin Avenue for up to two weeks beginning Monday, March 31, 2025.

The closure is necessary for contractors hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation to install a safe span system that will protect trail users during repairs to the bridge this year.

Trail users will be detoured to the upper West River Parkway roadway between the I-94 Bridge and Franklin Avenue. This same closure will be repeated in August so that workers can remove the safe span system after repairs are complete.

Listened to a mood playlist: energy for the rest of the run. The best (or worst?) song on the playlist was “Hocus Pocus” by Focus. I love the song, but it was too fast to try and run to!I had to increase my cadence to 200 bpm to match it! The song also does not have a steady rhythm; it just keeps getting faster and faster, probably because they were on cocaine while they recorded it.

10 Things

  1. the water was a brownish greenish blue
  2. in the flats I leaned over the ledge and watched the swirling foam slowly travel down stream
  3. workers on the road above the tunnel of trees, doing something to sewer which released a sour smell
  4. the workers were wearing bright yellow vests
  5. passed a walker who refused to move over — they were walking right next to the line. I suddenly wondered, are they neuro-divergent? then, maybe I should chill out about people needing to follow the accepted rules about where and how to walk on the trail
  6. stopped at the sliding bench, 1: heard a cardinal — it was somewhere nearby — looked up and saw that it was on a branch close to me. Was it red? I couldn’t tell, but I did noticed how its tail quivered slightly all the time — I’m assuming it was keeping its balance. Do birds have to constantly adjust while perched?
  7. stopped by the sliding bench, 2: looking down at the white sands beach, hoping for movement. Yes, there, deep in — a walker moving through the trees
  8. the small shadow of a bird crossing my path, flying fast!
  9. my sharp shadow in front of me, crossing over the softer shadows of tree branches
  10. the shadow of a tree with dead leaves on it — looking almost like a messed-up pom pom

At the end of the run, as I was walking home, I had a thought about CA Conrad’s and their idea of the “extreme present,” which I wrote about on here earlier this month on march 5th:

“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

Conrad creates their soma(tic) rituals to make being anything but present is nearly impossible. Running by the gorge can put/force me into the extreme present. This sense of the extreme present doesn’t happen for the entire run, but I can achieve it in moments. In their lengthy, day-long rituals — wear a red wig, eat only red food — is Conrad able to achieve this extreme present for longer?

birdsong!

This morning Scott heard the cardinals outside his window and because he wanted to use some birdsong in his latest music project, he placed his phone on a chair on the deck and recorded some. I liked how he described it: I left the phone out on the deck then returned inside and went quietly about my business. When he told me about how similar each wave of sound looked, I asked if he could screen shot it and send me the sound file so I could post it here:

cardinal song, an image of sound waves
cardinal song / 26 march 2025

Wow! So uniform.

Happy 151st Birthday Robert Frost!

When the poem of the day on poetry foundation was a Robert Frost one, I figured it must be his birthday. Yep — 26 march 1874.

For Once, Then Something/ Robert Frost

Always wrong to the light, so never seeing
Deeper down in the well than where the water
Gives me back in a shining surface picture
Me myself in the summer heaven godlike
Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs.
Once, when trying with chin against a well-curb,
I discerned, as I thought, beyond the picture,
Through the picture, a something white, uncertain,
Something more of the depths—and then I lost it.
Water came to rebuke the too clear water.
One drop fell from a fern, and lo, a ripple
Shook whatever it was lay there at bottom,
Blurred it, blotted it out. What was that whiteness?
Truth? A pebble of quartz? For once, then, something.

A beautiful sonnet — 14 lines, 11 beats per line, almost iambic pentameter. Is that right? I always struggle to hear meter properly.

Love the description of a reflection: Me myself in the summer heaven godlike/Looking out of a wreath of fern and cloud puffs

And that something white, uncertain, seen briefly then lost to a ripple. Yesterday I posted some lyrics from “The Windmills of Your Mind” about the ripples from a pebble. Ripple is a great word.

Seeing this sonnet is making me think I should try that form for my color poems. I could study a few different ways of doing the sonnet — Diane Seuss, Terence Hayes, William Shakespeare. Any others?

oh orchid o’clock

A good morning on the poetry sites. Not only did I find Robert Frost’s poem, but I found a cool collection that fits in with my study of time: Oh Orchid O’Clock by Endi Bogue Hartigan. (note: I just emailed Moon Palace Books about ordering it! update: I ordered it!)

/it is the president’s turned up o’clock it is America’s deadliness and dailiness

o’clock / it is glued to the headline o’clock

it is lunchhour-beeline o’clock / it is it’s only Tuesday o’clock another

curbside memorial o’clock another caterpillar miracle o’clock another

people emptying from their lives o’clock or into

their lives o’clock the Nile floods the Nile floods every hotspell in this week

I discovered this book through poems.com, which had one of its poems posted today:

hour entry: I fall asleep with a rain sound/ Endi Bogue Hartigan

I fall asleep with the rain sound app of my cellphone, the app includes distant thunderclap sounds and there are people who recorded or simulated these sounds, and it istime to disagree and thank the dawn. I disagree with this rain, I feel absurd for thesimulation of it and yet my brain waves have come to depend on it, depend onsimulated porous points between the raindrops. Always the porous dream, always theneural authority, the reaction meme, always the authority of always, the puncture ofalways, time spent saying always, the spider legs of always, the sleep command, thewake spindles, the spider leg threatening to break from the spider.

So cool! Encountering Hartigan’s work, I was inspired to think about time in relation to my blind spot and the practice of running beside the gorge that has happened beside (and because of?) my vision loss. I wrote the following in my Plague Notebook:

my blind spot
breaks open seconds
pries apart the hard edges of
a beat invites me
to dwell inside

I am suspended between
beats as time slows
but never stops
with moves so slight it takes
a practiced eye to see
their soft shimmering
embrace what is not seen but felt —
wind
the rotation of the earth
a bench sliding into the gorge
rock crumbling
cone cells collapsing
a blind spot expanding

walk: 40 minutes
neighborhood / winchell trail / oak savanna
54 degrees

What a great afternoon walk with Delia the dog! No coat. No mud. Walked to the Winchell Trail then down beside the chain link fence. Drip Drip Drip — the sewer pipe in the ravine. Everything washed out — light brown, tan, yellowed. Up on the mesa in the savanna, a great view of the river. Was able to walk on the dirt path between the savanna and the 38th street stairs. They’ve put down some mulch, so it’s not as muddy. As I neared the entrance to the Winchell Trail, I passed the spot where I fell in the mud, straight on my tailbone. No mud now, only memories and a still-sore back.

On the way to the river, I noticed something interesting hidden on the tree trunk while Delia sniffed around. I took a picture of it:

= > ÷

When I was looking at it in person, I thought someone had carved the message in the tree, but studying it now, it looks like it’s a rock wedged in a crack. I probably should have taken another picture that wasn’t quite as close-up for scale. That is one tiny rock.

I had to look up how to type the division sign on a mac. Hold down option and /

march 18/WALK

45 minutes
longfellow flats
50 degrees / feels like 39
wind: 20 mph gusts

Sore hips this morning! Is it a running injury or just a terrible mattress? We flipped the mattress yesterday, and sleeping last night was worse than ever, so I’m thinking it’s the mattress. Ascending from the river, I powered up all 112 stone steps and my legs felt great. Would I be able to do that with an injured hip? I don’t think so. I’m definitely incorporating some step work this spring!

10 Things

  1. a woodpecker knocking a few blocks away
  2. the wind was coming from the north and the east
  3. two iron (or wire?) cranes in a backyard — I spied them through a fence — I want a giant iron bird in my backyard!
  4. low notes from a wind chime in the backyard of the house where a family from New Zealand lives — not only do they fly a New Zealand flag, but I heard one of them speaking with a New Zealand accent
  5. on the pedestrian part of the double bridge north of the stone steps — open and blue and brown below
  6. also on the double bridge: a temporary section of fence — looking over the edge of the (it’s high up here), I could see part of another temporary fence halfway down the steep slope — what happened?
  7. the floodplain forest between the steps and the river was littered with felled trees and tangled branches and dirt and dead leaves
  8. creeeaak — branches rubbing against each other in the wind
  9. from below, looking up at the bluff — a brown slope, a wooden fence, voices
  10. a roller skier slowly approaching the ancient boulder

Jenny Odell and Another Kind of Time

Yesterday I started listening to a podcast with Jenny Odell about her most recent book on time and I decided that when the book was ready (I requested it from the library), I would finally dedicate some time to clocks and time and other forms of time that don’t involve clocks.

15 jan 2024

It has taken me until today to return to this podcast. Why? I’m studying time and I got a notification that it was the featured podcast on Emergence. When I got the book, in February, I had already moved onto other projects — an ekphrastic project, then wind. So now, 15 months later, I’m taking up the task I assigned myself. Ha! That’s Sara/gorge time. I briefly returned to it this January, but dropped it again, which is another example of Sara/gorge time — scattered returns and departures, loops, taking it up again and again.

Today, I look several pages of notes in my Plague Notebook. Here are some highlights:

reframing language outside of the rigid belief that time is money and time as stuff that can be measured, counted, and should be hoarded

when did time become a commodity?

And then something happened, and it seems to have to do both with technology and sort of cultural needs: like on the one hand the escapement, which is like a part of a clock that can sort of keep the mechanism going as opposed to like a guy ringing a bell at a certain time, right?

Another Kind of Time

This reminds me of my poem and the idea of person inside that bell tower tugging on the rope to make the bell ring!

That happened. And then also towns that were becoming very commercial started needing to be able to count up and measure labor hours that they were buying from people. And so some confluence of those things led to this notion of an hour: like an hour that can just exist, you know, in the imagination. And that an hour is an hour, and a labor hour is a labor hour, and it sort of doesn’t matter what season it’s happening in, what time of day. And for me, that is a really crucial separating point. That is when this idea of time as stuff started to peel away from all the things that it had been embedded in previously.

As planet-bound animals, we live inside shortening and lengthening days; inside the weather, where certain flowers and scents come back, at least for now, to visit a year-older self. Sometimes time is not money but these things instead.

Telling time through weather and seasons, and the leaving and returning of leaves, and the certain slant of light, and the sound of the water, and the feel of the path, and the amount of view, and the ease or difficulty in breathing.

chronos (ordinary, standardized time) and kairos (the interruption of things/ordinary time, extraordinary time)

horizontal (work + leisure used to restore energy for work = work + weekend)
vertical (awe, wonder, interruption, not work, “true” leisure)

migratory time, animal time

what is time to a flower? water, temperature, sun

the 72 micro-seasons in Japanese almanac

how do I tell time when I’m by the gorge?

weather – exposing myself to the elements, running in them, noticing and feeling the effects of wind, air quality, rain, snow, ice, the cold or heat — a relationship to/conversation with the world

witnessing the nearly invisible labor — tree trimming, repaving, managing and maintaining trails, erosion, nest-building

alienation and learning to listen to the world

. . . there’s a part of Braiding Sweetgrass, where Robin Wall Kimmerer is describing—I think she’s talking about like what it would feel like to not know the names of the things that are living around you. And then she says, I imagine it must feel like showing up in a city and you can’t read any of the signs, right? Like, that’s a deeply frightening and lonely experience to have. 

When I heard this bit, I raised my hand and said, “that’s me.” I can’t read signs on or inside building that often — even in Minneapolis, where I’ve lived for over 20 years. It is frightening and lonely and frustrating.

march 13/WALK

35 minutes
neighborhood
55 degrees

Another spring-like day! Sun and so many birds. Cardinals and black capped chickadees and an irritating sparrow sounding almost like a squirrel just above us on a branch. Only the smallest lumps of snow from last week’s storm remain. Will I get more this month? Most likely. For now: bare grass and clear sidewalks!

Scott pointed out an orange cat across the street, strutting on the sidewalk, which led to a discussion of a difference between cats and dogs in terms of how they interact with you — dogs need you, cats don’t (or pretend they don’t). I’m a dog person, but I understand the appeal of the cat, especially when they strut down the sidewalk like they own it. I like that cats are fine leaving you alone and being left alone. Here was Scott’s summary of the difference: a dog is like your kid, a cat is like your roommate.

10 Non-Cat Things

  1. bright, blue sky
  2. a breeze only felt when walking in one direction — which? I think east
  3. the trash can at Minnehaha Academy which had been almost covered in snow was clear today
  4. nearing edmund and the river, I admired the soft golden tree line of the east bank
  5. that irritating squirrel-like sparrow: a light — white? or light gray — body with a dark head. Scott said he could see its throat swelling as it sang (I couldn’t)
  6. the saddest bark from a dog: a whine into a holler
  7. accidentally snapping a twig with my foot and having a sharp part of it scratch my ankle — ouch!
  8. a garland with lights wrapped around steps leading up to a fancy house on edmund
  9. other christmas decorations — 2 fake fir trees with lights — on another house — this is the house that also has a round head stuck on a lamp post. During Halloween it’s a pumpkin, then at Christmas a snowman, after that Mickey Mouse
  10. a colorful door — seeing it on other walks, I’m pretty sure it’s bright YELLOW!, but in the light and with my cone cells, it only looked, yellow?

notes from my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24

a blind spot = a gap/gash/silence in my vision = the Nothingness of the gorge

Crumbling is not an Instant’s Act/ ED

slow steady abrupt sudden
the strangeness of deterioration

shifting slipping spreading closing in narrowing

(thinking about Ellis and the Stutter as vessel) what does this openness/gorge hold?

a gap, gash, crack, weathering

rod cells on either side (rock) holding in the nothingness

void absent center

generous/big enough to hold all

unseen unstable shifting

circle cycle loop orbit around circumference (ED)
repeats, soft edges, curves, round

A song on my “Doin’ Time” playlist: Circle Game/ Joni Mitchell:

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on the carousel of time
We can’t return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

orbiting

Right now, I thinking/writing about a lot of different reoccurring themes: color, time, vision, erosion, the gorge, rituals and ceremonies. It can be overwhelming and feel like I’m doing nothing even as I do too much. Instead of worrying about this, I’ve decided to understand it as orbiting around something that I can’t quite reach. Somewhere in all of my wandering and reflecting and writing is the way into a poem-as-ceremony-as-poem that celebrates (or praises or embraces) my vision. Can I find it? I’ll try!

march 9/WALKBIKE

walk: 15 minutes
neaighborhood
52 degrees

Wow! What a wonderful morning. Did a quick walk with Delia and Scott around 2 blocks. Heard several cardinals and their torpedoed call. Admired the bare and dry sidewalk and street. I talked about how I/we need to remember to let FWA figure out his own path. A mantra I should repeat in my head anytime I want to step in and “help”: let him be — maybe I’ll sing it to the tune of the Beatles’ song?

bike: 47 minutes
basement

A beautiful day outside, but still not time to run. I’m being cautious — too cautious? — with my back. I didn’t mind being on the bike. For the first 40 minutes I watched a wonderful documentary, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, on Netflix. So good!

This is my theory of how to enjoy your life incredibly. You don’t mind playing second fiddle. The idea of being a public figure and having applause and being in the limelight, and then all of a sudden you’re deprived of that as you get older and then not being in the limelight. I think it’s better to love something so much you do it for its own sake and also for the wonderful people that you’re playing with. You’re creating something together, which is better than something alone.

Orin O’Brian

After the short doc was over, I listened to 3 songs on my latest playlist, Doin’ Time: Too Much Time on my Hands/Styx, No Time to Die/ Billie Eilish, Time Warp/ Rocky Horror. Thought about the meaning of no time to die — no time = too busy/not enough time on your hands and also not the right time. When Time Warp came on it sounded strange. I realized that I had put the Broadway version instead of the movie one. I’ll have to fix that. Noticed these lyrics today:

Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me
And the void would be calling

Here’s some time lines I’d like to remember:

The turning of the globe is not so real to us   
As the seasons turning and the days that rise out of early gray   
—The world is all cut-outs then—and slip or step steadily down   
The slopes of our lives where the emotions and needs sprout.
(Hymn to Life/ James Schuyler)

Cut-outs, silhouettes, shadows. That is not all the world is for me, but it is what looks the clearest and most real.

march 8/BIKEWALK

40 minutes
basement

Good job Sara! You wanted to run outside even though you should give it at least another day for your back to recover, and you didn’t. You biked instead. And you biked for 5 more minutes today, which was the plan. I felt stronger than yesterday. Could this be the spring/summer I bike more?

Watched more of Fame. Somehow I missed the screen that read, Junior Year. Did they have one? They didn’t have a great speech by the acting teacher, describing the focus of the year. Bummer.

I watched the rest of sophomore and all of junior year. Doris and Ralph get together, Irene Cara sings “Out Here On My Own,” Leroy hooks up with the waspy ballerina. The Rocky Horror Picture Show — a cool documenting of the history of it. As I listened to “Time Warp” I thought about creating a Time playlist — “Too Much Time On Hands,” “Time Warp,” “Summertime,” Hazy Shade of Winter,” “Seasons of Love,” “Time After Time.” I think this interest in time is always there, simmering beneath the surface, but today it’s here for two other reasons: 1. talking to my older sister recently and hearing about her latest work on time travel and 2. the lines/ideas I gathered about time in past entries and just reread — 6 march 2024, 8 march 2024.

Time. Moments. Minutes. Pace. Linear, circular, looping. Dragging. Flying. Seasons. Beats — foot strikes, heart rate. Inside Outside On the Edge of. Too much. Too little.

If nothing else, it’s time to gather together my discussions of time and post them on unDISCIPLINED.

more OR

Yesterday afternoon Scott and I went to Arbeiter Tap Room to write and drink beer. I picked out some favorites from my “or” list:

At Any Given Moment You Might Feel This or This or This, but Rarely at the Same Time

Ardor arbor or
forest fortitude
or sorrow’s origins or
porphyrion interiors
or befores or
no mores or
mortal organs
or distorted mirrors’
evaporating forms
or spores adored or
dictators abhorred
or terror ignored
or

walk: 40 minutes
neighborhood
45 degrees

A blue sky, empty, at the start. A blue sky, mixed with fluffy and streaky clouds, halfway through. Bright, warmer, breezy. The snow on the streets is almost all melted. Only a few streaks. The field at Cooper has a flat layer of snow but no mini-mountains this year. This is the field where the plows dump the snow. Usually by March it has transformed into the badlands, with lumps and hills and jagged craters of dirty snow. Not much snow to plow or dump in the winter of 2024-25.

added, 9 march 2025: This morning, as I read past 9 march entries, I remembered a few more things from the walk:

  • the wind passing through the brittle leaves on a tree, sounding like water falling — not like rain, but like a cataract
  • the wind passing through a giant cottonwood causes it to sing like a door creaking open — creeeaaak
  • a white plastic bag stuck high in the tree — the quick flash of white reminded me of the moon

peripheral vision

I’m reading Peter Swanson’s book The Kind Worth Killing and this reference to peripheral vision came up:

A few years earlier I’d gone out fishing with a colleague, a fellow dot-com speculator who was the best open water fisherman I’d ever known. He could stare out at the surface of the ocean and know exactly where the fish were. He told me that his trick was to unfocus his eyes, to take in everything in his visual range all at once, and by doing that he could catch flickers of movement, disturbances in the water. . . . I decided to use this same trick on my own house. I let everything sort of blur in front of my eyes, waiting for any motion to draw attention to itself, and after I’d been staring at the house for less than a minute I caught some movement through the high window. . . .

My eyes are always mostly out of focus and I often see flashes of movement. In fact, it can be very distracting and irritating how my eyes, without wanting to, are drawn to the movement. One particularly form of movement I can’t not see: someone’s twitching legs, especially out of the corner of my eye at a band concert.

march 7/BIKEWALK

bike: 35 minutes
basement
outside temp: 34 degrees

It would be wonderful to be outside running, but my lower back is still a bit sore and I’m trying to be careful. Ugh — it’s hard to be disciplined, to not do something you want to because you know you shouldn’t. Oh well, the bike felt good. And I was able to watch more of Fame. And my back doesn’t hurt. And my legs feel good.

Anything in particular I remember from Fame? Mrs. Sherwood was being terrible to Leroy again — very old school in her efforts to be tough. Lisa, the dancer who never tries, was finally kicked out and almost jumped in front of a train in despair. At the last minute she stopped herself and said, Fuck it. If I can’t dance, I’ll change to the drama department. Another character’s response (Irene Cara): I tell you, you’re a fucking good actress. Bruno’s dad parked his cab and blasted Bruno’s music — the theme song. All the students poured out of the school and danced in the street, on the sidewalk, on the top of a cab. Bruno’s dad yelled out, This is my son’s music! Bruno Martelli!

A theme for their sophomore year: time to grow up and be honest with yourself and others. Dig deep, turn inward, expose your truths to others:

Last year we worked on simple observation. This year we’re going to turn that observation inward — work on recreating emotional states: fear, joy, sorrow, anger. And it will be more difficult, because you have to expose more of you, what’s on the inside of you.

Fame, sophomore year acting class (1980)

Yesterday I described the teacher’s description of freshman year acting class: to study your own mechanicalness. Then I thought about it in relation to running:

I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.

While scrolling through instagram a few minutes ago, I found some running advice that fits with this. Focus on the elbow and think up up up as you run.

OR

Also yesterday I wrote about the poem “And” and an exercise inspired by it — pick another conjunction and turn it into a poem. I picked OR. Yesterday I wrote a list of words that had “or” in them. So much fun! This morning, I began picking out particular ones and trying to put them together. This is fun! I like it as an opportunity to open up more and become untethered from a particular outcome and idea of what I think my OR poem should be about. I wrote the list in my plague notebook. Note how I repeated some words. Also, if you look closely, you can see instances of words too crowded together or crossed out. Those are vision errors, when I didn’t see the words already written — they were in my blind spot.

from my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24

Here are some word combinations/fragments I’ve come up with so far:

  • author arbor ardor
  • orchard porphyrion interiors
  • enforce forest fortitude
  • orphan sorrow’s origins
  • distort mirrors
  • orchestrate forms for dishonored categories
  • forgive mortal organs
  • support porch organizing
  • reorganize ordinary colors
  • mentor porous discord
  • savor tomorrow’s flora encore
  • scorch rigor
  • torch dictators
  • foreswear ordinary pinafores
  • favor befores. adore no mores
  • record evaporated forms
  • flavor labor for transformation
  • endorse Morris choreography
  • reforest former ford factories
  • sponsor spores
  • border shores
  • orbit remorse
  • forge lorikeet collaborations
  • forgive french horns, former neighbors, candy corn for horrible flavor
  • forget hornet porn
  • humor minor opportunities

Almost all of these (or, is it all?) begin with a verb and seem to issue a command. Where are my nouns?

  • neighborhood semaphore
  • oracle oration
  • orange dictators
  • scored arrows
  • ornamental meteorology
  • adorable albacore
  • torrential labor
  • stork storms
  • born bored
  • enormous unicorn orchestra
  • pork-belly pallor
  • factory folklore

So much fun!

walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood
41 degrees

An afternoon walk with Delia-the-dog. Everything melting in the warm sun. Drip drip drip! Gushing gutters, sloppy sewers. Bare pavement except where the plow or shovel missed. I’ll take it!

popped into my head: fORtune favORs fORgetful sailORs

Fortune favors affordable tailors
Fortune savors forceful flavors

I read these to RJP and she wanted to join in the fun:

Dolores ordered hors d’oeuvres
Fortuna major

march 6/WALKBIKE

walk: 25 minutes
neighborhood
27 degrees / patches of slippery ice

Where people shoveled yesterday, the path is mostly bare with a few streaks of slippery ice, but where they didn’t it is not. Slabs of thick, untouched snow. The slick spots were the most unwelcome, especially with my tight lower back. Aside from the ice, it was wonderful to be outside. Bright blue sky, chirping birds, warm sun. So warm that I took off my hat.

At one point Scott mentioned how the strip of grass between the sidewalk and road is not called a boulevard everywhere. It’s a regional thing. He couldn’t remember what else it was called and where he heard about it, but I did — at least where he heard about it; I couldn’t remember what else it was called. He heard about it from me, during one of our runs together. I couldn’t remember much else, so I had to look it up. Yep — here it is:

I described a New Yorker article I was reading before we left about forensic linguistics. My description included misplaced apostrophes, devil strips, and Sha Na Na. 

log entry on 8 april 2024

A linguist solved a crime in which someone left ransom notes that read, “Put it [the money] in the green trash kan on the devil strip at the corner 18th and Carlson.” Here’s the important part in the article:

And he knew from his research that the patch of grass between the sidewalk and the street—sometimes known as the “tree belt,” “tree lawn,” or “sidewalk buffer”—is called the “devil’s strip” only in Akron, Ohio.

Wow, I’ve amassed a lot of information on this blog. Some of it I always remember, and some of it comes back when my memory is triggered, like today.

bike: 30 minutes
basement

I wanted to move my legs and get my heart rate up today so I biked. Watched part of Fame — the end of freshman year and the beginning of sophmore year. Two scenes I especially recall: 1. when Mrs. Sherwood shames Leroy for not being able to read in class — terrible and 2. when the acting teacher instructs the students to pay attention to the details — chewing, talking — of their life:

I want you to observe yourself doing ordinary everyday things. You’ll be asked to duplicate those here in class. An actor must develop an acute sense memory so concentrate on how you deal with things in your world. How you wash your face or hold your fork or lift your cup or comb your hair. Observe and study your own mechanicalness. See if you can catch yourself in the very act of doing something or saying something. See if your actions and reactions fall into patterns and what those patterns are. And in particular, pay close attention to the physical world. Isolate and concentrate on the details.

from Fame –first year (1980)

I’ve been doing this with my vision for several years now, partly because I’m curious and partly because I think it’s necessary for me to function. To isolate and understand and work around the strange and unexpected ways my eyes work (or don’t work).

I could also imagine using this exercise while running or walking as a way to achieve “extreme presence” (from CAConrad). Focusing on breathing or the lifting of the foot or the swinging of the arms, etc.

It felt good to bike. My back didn’t hurt at all. Only my left knee, a little, which is normal. Maybe I’ll do a week of biking. Could I work my way up to an hour on the bike?

conjunction junction, what’s your function?

In late fall or early winter, I wrote a haunts poem about all that the gorge could hold. I named it And. This morning, I found another poem with that title:

And/ Nicole Sealey (click link for audio)

Withstand pandemonium

and scandalous

nightstands

commanding candlelight

         and

         quicksand

and zinfandel

clandestine landmines

candy handfuls

and contraband

         and

         handmade

commandments

and merchandise

secondhand husbands

philandering

         and

         landless

and vandal

bandwagons slandered

and branded

handwritten reprimands

         and

         meander

on an island

landscaped with chandeliers

abandon handcuffs

standstills

         and

         backhands

notwithstanding

thousands of oleanders

and dandelions

handpicked

         and

         sandalwood

and mandrake

and random demands

the bystander

wanders

         in

         wonderland.

Along with the poem, there was a link to a writing exercise inspired it: Conjunctions/Connections, After Nicole Sealey by Maggie Queeney

  1. Read the poem “And” and listen to it several times. Jot down some notes.
  2. Pick a conjunction other than and — or, but, for, nor, yet, so. Make a list of words that contain your chosen conjunction.
  3. Turn your list of words into a poem. “Keep the sound of the word in the air as long as possible through rhyme and repetition.”

I think I’ll choose “or.” When I was writing my and poem in November, I told Scott about it on one of our runs. He mentioned how “and” and “or” work in his coding of web databases:

A mile later, Scott described how you code and in css (where and means both this and that must exist to make a statement true) and how you code or(where or means either this or that can exist to make a statement true). I was fascinated by how and was restrictive and narrowing in the code while orwas expansive. In my poem, I’m understanding and as generous and open and allowing for more possibilities not less. I told Scott that I might need to write an or poem now. And is accumulation, more layers while or is a stripping down. 

And = all these things can be true, and moreOr = at any give time, any one of these things could be true

log entry on 24 nov 2024

There’s also a great “or” poem in this entry.

feb 28/WALKBIKERUN

am walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood
wind: 20 mph / 42 mph gusts

Sitting at my desk in the front room before heading out for a walk, I could hear the wind howling. I wrote in my Plague Notebook, Vol. 24, the wind purpled the sky. Later, walking with Scott and Delia, feeling and hearing and seeing the wind, I said it again and explained it to Scott: the blustery wind, like someone mad and full of bluster, their face turning purple with outrage. I had been planning to try running outside today, but after being pushed around by the wind, I decided I’d prefer to be in the basement.

My favorite things about the wind: the way it swirled the leaves on the sidewalk; turning the corner and feeling the wind on my back, seeing the leaves flying ahead of me.

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement

Watched part of S2: episode 1 of Sprint on Netflix while I biked. I’m so glad I put on the audio descriptions! I could never read the big block text they used for identifying people and locations. It’s pretty good, even though they’re using a worn storyline: rival sprinters, one is flashy and talks a lot, the other is quiet and avoids the spotlight.

Listened to a running podcast for the first 10 minutes, then an energy playlist for the rest. I didn’t want to do much in case my back or hips flared up. They both seem fine — not completely pain free, but not painful either. It felt good to get my heart rate up for the first time since Saturday.

Writing this part of the entry at 11:45 am, it’s even windier with 47 mph gusts! Very glad I didn’t go outside to run!

the purple hour

The final purple hour. I’ve enjoyed devoting time to this color. Today’s goal: to write some lines inspired by my exploration.*

2:06 am / dining room

  • thick, heavy stillness
  • the clicking keys echoing in the silence
  • a soft, high ringing in my ears
  • bouncing my legs vigorously
  • “lavender gray: a widow’s shroud” from The Nomenclature of Color/ Richard Jones
  • lavender is the new gray

rituals/ceremonies for each of my main colors? see CA Conrad on red

2 shadows, cast on the closed curtain, light source: a neighbor’s security light
shadow 1 = a thick smear of bird poop on the glass turned into a small form on the curtain
shadow 2 = the thin branches of the serviceberry bush, shimmering in the wind, thin shadows vibrate on the curtain

The wild/ing in this girl is purple, I think, A deep and dark purple.

Wilding/ Shara McCallum

Machetazo!, Bony Ramírez & Blonde Dreams, Alison Saar

you can take the girl out of the wilderness
you can strand her bewilder her for a time
you can even hang her upside down
in your rickety attempt to shake loose
the source of her power but you won’t ever
disentangle the wilding from her
the force of a thousand suns unfurling
and hurling her toward the ground
you won’t be able to erase the traces
of salt lacing her ravenous dreams
oh you can try unwebbing her feet
but the lizard in her will keep sunning
itself as the day is long and at nightfall
will crawl up your walls lurking
at the corners of your vision
goading you on while she thwarts
your every endeavor abandoning
her tail anything required of her
to keep eluding your capture

*Here’s a first draft of something about purple:

Purple Things

a wind-stirred sky / the space between your eye and the object you’re looking at / agitation / the light from a full moon filtered through the blinds / the square shadow it casts on the carpet / deep inside the beat a thought a dream / darkened doorways / a bruise / mold / mist / a sunset after a volcano / a fashion craze / a widow’s shroud / fibs / a house, settling / the beginning / the end / interiors / oxygen-starved extremities / ornamental grass / asters / tantrums / restlessness / the buzz beneath / impending thunderstorms / ink / iodine / inheritance: a mother’s jacket, a daughter’s despair / fake fruit flavor / static / the only color I see when I wake up in the middle of the night