After two days of running in a row, a break. Decided to bike in the basement and check out a show FWA recommended, The Residence. The detective is a birder, which is cool on its own, but she’s also black, which is even cooler because it raises the visibility of black birding (see J. Drew Lanham and “Birding While Black”). Thank goodness for the audio description — I like how it’s voiced by a black actor — because I would have missed so much of the show without it! I like the detective, Cordelia Cup. Her m.o. is attention and focus, filtering out distractions, but not shutting down possible evidence or suspects. Much of that attention is visible, but she also relies on hearing and touch and smell. I’m about 1/2 done with the episode. I like it, so I’ll keep watching.
walk: 45 minutes longfellow flats 44 degrees
A beautiful afternoon! Warm sun, low wind. Delia and I took the 15 worn wooden steps down to the winchell trail and walked along the chainlink fence. I noticed a few small slabs of asphalt and wondered how long ago this was paved. 10 years? Less, more? A flash of color in my peripheral: electric blue spray paint. Admired the soft oak tree shadows stretched across the paved trail. Heard, but couldn’t see, a woodpecker high in a tree. Passed 2 guys in bright orange shirts. Took the old stone steps down to the river. Looking across to the other side, I noticed a door carved into the bluff, only accessible by boat. On this side, I noticed the gentle lapping of the water over some big rocks.
The color of the day: brown. Everything, brown: dirt, tree trunks, branches, dead leaves, bluff, steps. I suppose I might consider some of it, especially the things lit my sunlight, as orange — deep orange.
Took Delia for a walk this morning. With the sun and the birds and the dry ground, it felt warmer than 34. Spring! What a wonderful morning! Walked down the wood steps to the winchell trail just above the ravine. Heard the steady, soothing drip of water falling out of the sewer pipe and onto the scattered rocks — riprap — then over the limestone ledge to the exposed pipe on the forest floor. No more ice or slick spots. The soft light made all the brown and rusted orange glow. I studied the husk of a tree on the edge of the gravel trail — still upright, but not much of a trunk left, and no leaves, one or two rotted branches. Climbed out and over to the Drs. Dorothy and Irving Bernstein Scenic Rest Area Overlook to check out the view. Then went down the steps to the abandoned dirt and leaf-littered trail that hugs the edge. Part of this trail only has the posts for a chainlink fence, part of it has the whole fence half-buried. Walked through the tunnel of trees, then down the old stone steps to Longfellow Flats. Walked past a huge tree on the ground, moved off to the side of the trail by park workers. The trunk was stripped clean and bare at the top, and thick with bark at the bottom — a very noticeable contrast in girth and texture. The river was beautiful and blue up close, all silvery sparkle from a distance. Powered back up the steps, which felt good on my glutes and calves, crossed the river road and made our way past 7 oaks to home.
Steps Taken
worn wooden steps at the edge of the 36th street parking lot
the makeshift steps closer to the ravine made from slabs of rock sticking out of the dirt
limestone steps at the Drs. Bernstein Overlook
the old stone steps to longfellow flats — 112 steps
10 Things
silvery river burning through a break in the trees
drip drip drip — water falling into the ravine
bright blue graffiti on a wall only seen when you’re deep in the ravine
the abandoned posts of a chainlink fence above the gorge
the way the thinned-out trees, the soft sand, and the small curve of the path frames the water and the air — wide open, vast, yet contained enough to take in all at once
at least 2 woodpeckers softly knocking on rotting wood, later one of the woodpeckers laughing
the st. thomas bells
voices behind, then two walkers passing past us
on the forest floor, looking up at the top of the bluff, watching as runners glided by, looking so high and small
in the floodplain forest, not too far from where the trees open to the river, a tree covered with bright green moss
tree with moss and shadow
orange
During the walk, I thought about orange, especially in terms of the history of the color that I had just read yesterday. The fruit came before the name of the color. It wasn’t that the color didn’t exist until it was given a name, it’s just that people didn’t recognize it as orange. It was yellow-red or brown. I also thought about what I had read about Van Gogh and his still life painting with oranges, how his focus was not the fruit, but the color. The color as its own thing. I pulled out my phone, and spoke this idea into it:
Orange existed before it was attached to a word, before it was attached to an object.
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
the waves on the water from the ford bridge, looking like little scales — the wind pushing the water upstream
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
a man exiting a port-a-potty at the Monument parking lot, ready to begin running again
the cross on top of the monument — big and made out of stone — have I ever noticed it before?
the feel of the sandy dirt on the edge of the paved path on the st. paul side: soft, fast, gentle, singing
the bells from St. Thomas ringing quietly
empty benches everywhere
the faint knocking of a woodpecker high up in a tree
no eagle perched on the dead limb of the tree near the lake/marshall bridge
something floating in the water — I couldn’t tell if it was a buoy or an ugly 80s purse
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
the water was a brownish greenish blue
in the flats I leaned over the ledge and watched the swirling foam slowly travel down stream
workers on the road above the tunnel of trees, doing something to sewer which released a sour smell
the workers were wearing bright yellow vests
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
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?
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
the small shadow of a bird crossing my path, flying fast!
my sharp shadow in front of me, crossing over the softer shadows of tree branches
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.
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 wavescardinal 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.
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:
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 is time 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
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 /
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
a woodpecker knocking a few blocks away
the wind was coming from the north and the east
two iron (or wire?) cranes in a backyard — I spied them through a fence — I want a giant iron bird in my backyard!
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
on the pedestrian part of the double bridge north of the stone steps — open and blue and brown below
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?
the floodplain forest between the steps and the river was littered with felled trees and tangled branches and dirt and dead leaves
creeeaak — branches rubbing against each other in the wind
from below, looking up at the bluff — a brown slope, a wooden fence, voices
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.
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?
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.
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
bright, blue sky
a breeze only felt when walking in one direction — which? I think east
the trash can at Minnehaha Academy which had been almost covered in snow was clear today
nearing edmund and the river, I admired the soft golden tree line of the east bank
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)
the saddest bark from a dog: a whine into a holler
accidentally snapping a twig with my foot and having a sharp part of it scratch my ankle — ouch!
a garland with lights wrapped around steps leading up to a fancy house on edmund
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
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!
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.
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.
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
