Tag: water and stone

june 2/RUN

3 miles
2 trails + the tunnel of trees
65 degrees

Even though I ran yesterday, I decided that I had to run today too, on my 10th anniversary of running. Taking those first steps with the couch to 5k program 10 years ago changed my life, and, honestly, saved my life. Not so much my literal life, as my livable life.

Today I ran south on the river road trail, then turned down at 42nd and ran north on the Winchell Trail. I heard lots of woodpeckers and black-capped chickadees and a tinny mechanical chirp that I think might be a robin but I’m not sure. At the end of my run, right by my house, I also heard a bird calling out, “tweet tweet look at me!” What is this bird? I looked up birdsong mnemonics but couldn’t find anything close to the phrase I heard. I encountered some other walkers and runners and bikers and a maintenance truck with someone up in a bucket trimming a tree. I heard the kids laughing and yelling on the playground. I greeted the Welcoming Oaks and got lost in the green in the tunnel of trees. I counted the stacked stones (2) on the ancient boulder. I noticed the cottonwood fuzz piled up on the edges of the grass. I thought about water and stones and how different yet connected they are here near the gorge. I stopped at the fallen tree branch balanced precariously on the fence creating a bridge to cross under and measured (roughly) the distance from my head–about 2 or 3 inches. No wonder I always want to duck! I avoided the dip in the road and the big crack that is marked by white spray paint in the shape of a tube sock or Florida (at least that what it looks like to me!). I tried to breathe deeply through my noise and swing my arms so that the right swung back as much as the left. I monitored how my left quad felt and my lower back. I crossed the road twice at crosswalks, twice not, making sure to triple check before I went. I peered down at the inviting opening carving out a space between dark green near the oak savanna.

But I didn’t look down at the river, or, if I did, I can’t remember anything about it. What color was it? Were there any rowers on it? Was it smooth or rough? This seems to happen a lot–I lose the river. Is it because when I look at it, I often don’t see anything but water–blue or brown or gray–just there. A blob or a streak or a wide swath. I guess I’m too far away, and it’s too hard to notice anything in a flash–unless it’s sunny and it sparkles or reflects.

Today’s poem on the theme of water and stone is from the amazing Alice Oswald:

Evaporations/ Alice Oswald

I

What I admire is Dew
To have the strength of Dew
To pass apparitional through a place
Without trace or title
To be Snow!
To be almost actual!
Oh pristine example
Of claiming a place on the earth
Only to cancel
Rain
Rain
Smashed against stone
I love leaf and un-leaf
Of frost and un-fern
All these incisions
And indecisions of the Dawn
Yes Yes there is Ice but I notice
The Water doesn’t like it so orderly
What Water admires
Is the slapstick rush of things melting
I have taken my bedding to the fields
First it was Mist
Uncontrollably whispering
Then it was Dew
Disclosing the cold in my mind
Saying simply that it
Comes from nothing
And will return to nothing
Then it was…

II

In their lunch hour
I saw the shop-workers get into water
They put their watches on the stones and slithered
frightened
Into the tight-fitting river
And shook out cuffs of splash
And swam wide strokes towards the trees
And after a while swam back
With rigid cormorant smiles
Shocked I suppose from taking on
Something impossible to think through
Something old and obsessive like the centre of a rose
And for that reason they quickly turned
And struggled out again and retrieved their watches
Stooped on the grass-line hurrying now
They began to laugh and from their meaty backs
A million crackling things
Burst into flight which was either water
Or the hour itself ascending.

O, Alice Oswald! I read somewhere that when she does readings of her poems, she often?always? does it from memory. Very cool. I love so much about this poem: the gentle rhyming at the beginning–dew/through, place/trace. The idea of being almost actual. Frost and un-fern, the slapstick rush of things melting, the way the dew and the mist speak to her. Then, in the second part: the watches on the stones reminds me of M Oliver’s lamenting of clocks and the prison of normal time. I love the cormorant smiles and the meaty backs (which is kind of gross), and the “million crackling things” that burst into flight which could be water drops or the evaporation of the magical hour in and of the water.

june 1/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha creek trail + lake nokomis
71 degrees

Today is STA’s 10 year anniversary of running (his runnaversary); mine is tomorrow. We decided to celebrate them together by running part of the path where it all began in 2011: Minnehaha Creek Trail. What a beautiful day! Maybe a little too bright and warm, but it feels like summer, normal summer.

Running on the trail brought back memories of the kids when they were kids. We lived over by this trail, and not as close to the river, for 10 years. I walked and biked it with FWA and RJP countless times, probably mostly in the summer–to camps, to and to the lake. It was strange to be on this path—for the first time in almost a year–and notice all the differences, like how the trail travels under 28th avenue now instead of steeply climbing up to a crosswalk. As we ran on it, STA remarked on how you would never be able to tell there had been a different trail here unless you remembered it. Yes, the importance of remembering. I’m good at that. It’s strange to be visiting these known, yet unfamiliar, places in the same city in which I still live. Growing up, I never lived in a town for more than 5 years: 4 years in UP Michigan; 5 years in Hickory, North Carolina; 1 year in Salem, Virginia; 4 years in a northern Virginia suburb of D.C; 4 years West/Des Moines, Iowa–well, when I was in college in Minnesota, I still lived in West Des Moines for the summer, so I guess you could count that as 8 years. Anyway, after a few years in the LA area, and a few years in Atlanta, we moved to Minneapolis for good. We’ve lived here since the late fall of 2003, when FWA was 6 months old. He’s 18 now. Wow. I love this place, and I love it even more since I started running around it. Tomorrow is my official 10 running anniversary, so I think I’ll write about what running means to me tomorrow.

Remembering Today’s Run

  • Such a warm, bright sun. Annoyingly (to STA, I’m sure), I had to recite a few lines from the “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”–the part after the Mariner has killed the albatross and the whole ship is paying the price: no breeze, “all in a hot and copper sky/the bloody sun at noon/right up above the mast it stands/no bigger than a moon.” The part I recited was: “Day after day, day after day/we stuck, no breath, no motion/as idle as a painted ship/upon a painted ocean.” We were moving but the air was not. When in the direct sun, I remember feeling hot and stuck
  • Checking out the menu for Sandcastle and thinking about how we could get some beers and fries after some of my swims this summer
  • Feeling sad about the big willow tree just past the echo bridge–a tree that I’ve featured in at least 2 poems–was recently cut down. Bummer
  • Stopping a lot so STA could take pictures (he posted them on instagram). At one spot, we noticed how still the water was and how clear the reflection of the boat was on its surface. I remember mentioning the myth of Adonis and how he looked at his reflection–but, I should have known better; checking my log entries I found the entry where I first mentioned this story and it was Narcissus. Here’s my entry from just over a year ago:

a mirror reflecting the fluffy clouds. I imagined that the water was another world, doubled and reversed, like in May Swenson’s great poem, “Water Picture“: “In the pond in the park/ all things are doubled:/ Long buildings hang and/ wriggle gently. Chimneys/ are bent legs bouncing/ on clouds below.” Love how “In the pond in the park” bounces on my tongue. I kept glancing over at the water and admiring its smooth beauty and how it looked like a mirror. I started thinking about the Greek myth (which I couldn’t really remember) about the hunter who looked at his reflection. I looked it up just now–of course it was Narcissus. Here’s an interesting article I found that discusses him and the idea of mirrors in water–it even has a picture of Salvadore Dali looking into the water.

april 27, 2020

A new month, a new theme. Last month was birds; this month is water and stone. Today’s poem is one I posted on this log a few years ago (I think), but it’s time to revisit it:

Wind, Water, Stone/ OCTAVIO PAZ

TRANSLATED BY ELIOT WEINBERGER

for Roger Caillois

Water hollows stone,
wind scatters water,
stone stops the wind.
Water, wind, stone.

Wind carves stone,
stone’s a cup of water,
water escapes and is wind.
Stone, wind, water.

Wind sings in its whirling,
water murmurs going by,
unmoving stone keeps still.
Wind, water, stone.

Each is another and no other:
crossing and vanishing
through their empty names:
water, stone, wind.

Stone: stops/blocks, holds things, is still
Water: carves out stone, escapes and transforms, sings