Tag: windows

feb 9/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
34 degrees
50% jagged ice / 25% slick ice / 25% clear path

I probably should have waited a few more hours to run. Now that the sun has finally come out and it’s another degree warmer, all the ice everywhere might melt. Oh well. This was a tough run. I still enjoyed most of it, but I had to stop and walk several times in order to avoid falling on ice. Now my upper back and knees are sore from the effort of staying upright.

Kids, 3 versions

  1. Running on Edmund, nearing Dowling Elementary, I wondered why it was so quiet. Where were all the kids on the playground? Then, suddenly, I heard them. Laughing and yelling. I decided the moisture in the air must be absorbing the sound, not allowing it to travel too far
  2. At the falls, I heard a few more kids. Standing above, at my favorite spot, I could hear voices below. Were they climbing on the trail that leads to below the falls? I imagined that path was as icy as mine, and I hoped not.
  3. Returning on Edmund, running past Dowling, more kids. This time in the big field by the community garden — at least I think that’s where they were; I only heard them, didn’t see them. So loud and raucous! Frantic, worked-up (or wound up?) screams. Excitement? Too much sugar? Something else? I encountered another runner — a man pushing a jogging stroller — and imagined after I passed him that I had asked, What’s going on over there?!

Here’s the Linda Pastan poem of the day. I’m pairing it with a wonderful Tony Hoaglund poem I found tat involves swimming laps and screaming underwater.

Almost An Elegy: For Tony Hoagland

Your poems make me want
to write my poems,

which is a kind of plagiarism
of the spirit.

But when your death reminds me
that mine is on its way,

I close the book. clinging
to this tenuous world the way the leaves

outside cling to their tree
just before they turn color and fall.

I need time to read all the poems
you left behind, which pierce

the darkness here at my window
but did nothing to save you.

Don’t Tell Anyone/ Tony Hoaglund

We had been married for six or seven years
when my wife, standing in the kitchen one afternoon, told me
that she screams underwater when she swims—

that, in fact, she has been screaming for years
into the blue chlorinated water of the community pool
where she does laps every other day.

Buttering her toast, not as if she had been
concealing anything,
not as if I should consider myself

personally the cause of her screaming,
nor as if we should perform an act of therapy
right that minute on the kitchen table,

—casually, she told me,
and I could see her turn her square face up
to take a gulp of oxygen,

then down again into the cold wet mask of the unconscious.
For all I know, maybe everyone is screaming
as they go through life, silently,

politely keeping the big secret
that it is not all fun
to be ripped by the crooked beak

of something called psychology,
to be dipped down
again and again into time;

that the truest, most intimate
pleasure you can sometimes find
is the wet kiss

of your own pain.
There goes Kath, at one pm, to swim her twenty-two laps
back and forth in the community pool;

—what discipline she has!
Twenty-two laps like twenty-two pages,
that will never be read by anyone.

Reading these poems again, I’m struck by their last lines, both about Hoaglund’s poems: 1. the ones Pastan read that could pierce the darkness but not save Hoaglund and 2. the unread ones that aren’t for anyone else, but offer some sort of private pleasure in the face of suffering.

Poetry is not meant to save us from dying, but that doesn’t mean it can’t save our lives.

feb 8/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
40 degrees
75% bare, wet, puddled pavement

A late afternoon run on a sunny, warm (warm for February in Minnesota) day! The path was wet, with lots of puddles, some slick spots, and lots of sloppy snow. Twice I had big slips. My one leg flew off to the side and I waved my arms involuntarily, but I didn’t seem to lose momentum and my body never felt the fear of falling — that fear deep in the pit of my stomach that quickly spreads to the top of my head and makes my whole body tense up.

10 Things

  1. the warm sun on my face — it felt like spring
  2. the late afternoon shadows — I can’t remember a specific shadow, maybe shadows of trees over the gorge?
  3. a siren behind me as I ran up from under the lake street bridge. It sounded close and like it was stopping. I think I heard the siren double beep and then stop
  4. some little yippy dogs freaking out down below at the minneapolis rowing club. So frantic! What’s going on down there? I worried for a minute, wondering if I was actually hearing someone screaming, but decided it was definitely some exuberant dogs
  5. Also heard a strange moan or whine coming from the rowing club — not a human moan, but one coming from a machine
  6. so much whooshing of car wheels through deep puddles on the edges of the road
  7. lots of bikes deciding to bike on the mostly dry road instead of the be-puddled path
  8. my shoes and socks were soaked before I reached the first mile. After the run, the white socks were now speckled in brown grit
  9. smelled pot as I ran past a parking lot
  10. heard a few random geese honks closer to the river

I didn’t look at the river or notice the ancient boulders or greet the welcoming oaks. Didn’t hear any birds — wait, I think I heard a crow at the beginning —or music coming from a car radio or a bike or someone’s phone.

This was a great afternoon run. I like running at this time, when the sun is slowly sinking. My only problem: the paths are usually much more crowded. Still, I’d like to try and add in some more of these runs so I can study the sun and the shadows.

Here’s my Linda Pastan poem for today. I don’t think there were any clouds to admire, but I’m posting it anyway!

The Clouds/ Linda Pastan

From a high window
I watch the clouds—

armada
of white sails

blown by the wind
from west to east, as if

auditioning for me,
as if they needed

nothing more
than to be in a poem.

What a delightful little poem! I think this counts as one of Mary Oliver’s little alleluias on the page.

feb 3/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 3.1 miles
basement
outdoor temp: 0 degrees / feels like -13

Inside today. Some Dickinson while I biked, a podcast (You are Good) while I ran — well, for most of my run. The last few minutes I listened to a playlist. Audio books and playlists make the time pass much faster when I’m on the treadmill.

I’m ready for the bitter cold to be done. Much less inspiration inside. Did I notice anything other than the single lightbulb reflecting in the dark window?

A poet that I like, Linda Pastan, died a few days ago. The first poem of hers that I read was “Vertical.” I found it just as I was starting to fall in love with poetry and the way it helped me to notice and be in wonder of a place. I spent a lot of time with that poem, even writing a response in which I used its first sentence to wander and wonder about trees. Since 2017, I’ve gathered and posted several of her poems, including:

And here’s one more I just found:

At My Desk/ Linda Pastan

To William Stafford

How many times
I have sat this way
with the poem’s intractable silence
between me and the world,
with the tree outside the window
refusing translation:
my leaves are more than syllables
it seems to say.

I think of you
miles west
floating on the tide of language
so easily, giving only
a scissor kick now and then,
coming to shore
some unexpected
but hospitable place.

Still we share between us
a certain stubbornness,
rising each morning
to the blank page,
climbing the ladder of light
at the window all day,
listening, both of us,
as hard as we can.

added Feb 14, 2023: Rereading this poem, I remembered something Pastan had said about Stafford in her Paris Review interview:

Often when I sit at my desk unable to write, “blocked” as they put it, I open a Stafford book and start to read. He makes it sound so easy, almost conversational, that I find I have to answer him, and so I start to write. My first four or five lines may have a Stafford ring to them, but then my own voice kicks in and I am on my way. I loved and admired William Stafford both as a man and as a poet. I hate to use adjectives like wise or humble but they seem to fit him as comfortably, as unpretentiously, as an old sweater.

feb 2/SWIM

1.2 miles
ywca pool

Met my almost 17 year-old daughter at the pool and then we swam together. She’s swimming for online gym. I love swimming with my kids. This summer I swam at the lake with my 19 year-old son, now I get to swim at the pool with my daughter. I try to stay chill and not scare them with my enthusiasm, but it’s difficult.

Tried using a pull buoy for the first time in a few years. So much easier to breath when my body is higher up on the water. I should probably find some more drills to help with keeping me higher.

A few laps in I noticed an oval of bright light on the pool floor, not near the windowed wall, but the windowless one. A strange, beautiful thing to see.

I pushed off the wall underwater for my first lap ritual and swam just above the pool bottom. Noticed a black thread or hair floating right below my nose. A strange, ugly thing to see. Lots of crud in the water this afternoon. Nothing big or too gross, but small bits of something that made the water cloudy.

Later in the swim, I noticed lines of light on the bottom close to the window. Remembered to look up above the water as I flipped at the wall. Today above the surface looked pink to me. Forgot to notice the moving shadows on the pool floor.

At the beginning of the swim, when there was only one other person in the water, I heard some splashing or sloshing underwater. Was it from me? I don’t think so.

Later, after the swim, in the hot tub with Scott, I noticed another woman sitting in the corner, miming freestyle strokes in the hot water.

Also in the hot tub: crouching down, my chin just above the surface, I watched the light catch the spray of water made by one of the jets, making the spray look like fizz from my favorite grapefruit seltzer. Below, the jet made the water look like swirling smoke.

not a cabinet of curiosities

Talked to Scott about my class and my week on wonder as curiosity, which is coming up in a few weeks. There’s a quote by Thoreau that I’m interested in challenging. Well, maybe not challenging, but imagining curiosity against?

[24] In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens, in their natural order and position.

A Winter Walk/ Thoreau

Thoreau is describing a particular type of western scientific attention: study the natural world as individual things (specimens) to be isolated, classified, and categorized. To learn about, not from. To see non-human beings only as objects, never subjects.

I want to contrast this cabinet of curiosities with Robin Wall Kimmerer and her expanded understanding of knowing:

I would describe my journey as a circle, moving out into academia but coming back to the way that I knew plants as a child. I grew up in a rural area much like where we’re sitting today, and I was interacting every day with plants in the garden, the woods, or the wetlands. I couldn’t go outside without being surprised and amazed by some small green life. I suppose it was their great diversity of form that first drew my interest: that on a small patch of ground there could be so many different ways to exist. Each plant seemed to have its own sense of self, yet they fit together as a community. And each had a home, a place where I knew I could find it. This inspired my curiosity.

From as far back as I can remember, I had this notion of plants as companions and teachers, neighbors and friends. Then, when I went to college, a shift occurred for me. As an aspiring botany major, I was pressured to adopt the scientific worldview; to conceive of these living beings as mere objects; to ask not, “Who are you?” but, “How does it work?” This was a real challenge for me. But I was madly in love with plants, so I worked hard to accommodate myself to this new approach.

Later in my career, after I’d gotten my PhD and started teaching, I was invited to sit among indigenous knowledge holders who understood plants as beings with their own songs and sensibilities. In their presence, and in the presence of the plants themselves, I woke from the sleep I’d fallen into. I was reminded of what I’d always known in my core: that my primary relationship with plants was one of apprenticeship. I’m learning from plants, as opposed to only learning about them.

I was especially moved by an elderly Diné woman who told the biographies of each plant in her valley: its gifts, its responsibilities, its history, and its relationships — both friendships and animosities. As a scientist I had learned only about plants’ physical attributes. Her stories reminded me of how I had encountered plants as a young person. That’s why I say I’m coming full circle after all these years — because I’m able to stop speaking of plants as objects.

2 Ways of Knowing/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I’m struggling to turn all of my thoughts about curiosity and wonder into a pithy, coherent statement for a lecture. So much time spent circling around these ideas. Frustrating.

jan 30/BIKERUN

bike: 15 min warm-up
run: 3.2 miles
outside temp: 2 degrees / feels like -15

Because of the cold air, the icy paths, and the 10 mph wind, I decided to move in the basement today. Finished the episode of Dickinson I had started a few days ago while I biked, listened to the latest episode of If Books Could Kill (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) while I ran. Running on the treadmill in the basement is very different from running outside. A dark, unfinished basement with windows mostly blocked by a shelf with old lamps on it. Staring straight ahead, I can see a blank tv screen and then behind that, a dark window and the old coal chute. To the side, shelves with old paint cans (left) and a long work bench (right). Not much to notice, except spiders and dust. Difficult to run for that long and to remember any of my thoughts. I don’t mind running down here on occasion, but I couldn’t do it all the time. I’m so glad that I have the gorge.

a moment of sound

On days when it’s too cold for me to move outside, I record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was on my short walk back from the alley, where I had brought out some trash. It features my favorite, crunching snow, and another irritating delight: the cold, shrill creak of our iron gate. I walked through the snow in my small backyard and stopped briefly by the crab apple tree:

jan 30 / 3:00 pm

Here’s a poem I found on twitter today by Dana Levin about walking and thinking and wandering/wondering and being in and out of a body:

A Walk in the Park/ Dana Levin

To be born again, you need
an incarnation specialist—a team
from the Bureau of Needles
to thread you through—
Your next life
turns
on an axle of light—which Plato likens
to a turning
spindle—what was that?
I mean I knew

what a spindle was
from fairytales—how it could
draw blood
from a testing finger, put a kingdom
to sleep—
but what
did it actually do, how
did a spindle look
in real life?
I didn’t know. As with
so many things:
there was fact and there was

a believed-in dream . . .

Everyone had one back
in the ancient day,
spindles.
When we had to weave
our living-shrouds
by hand.
“A slender rounded rod
with tapered ends,” Google said. Plato’s,
so heavy with thread,
when viewed from the side,
looked like a top—
though most diagrams assumed

the hawk-lord view . . .

Moon thread, threads of the planets, earth thread.
Your thread.
Everyone else’s.
Nested one
inside the other, a roulette
machine—
If a thread could be spun from liquid light was what
I kept thinking—
imagining a sluice
of electric souls
between the earth wheel’s rims—
there “I”

was a piece of water, Necessity
wheeled it around―Necessity,
who was married to Time,
according to the Greeks—
Mother of the Fates.
Who would measure and cut your

paradise/shithole extra life . . .

Well we all have ways of thinking about
why,
metaphysically-speaking,
anyone’s born—
though the answer’s always Life’s
I AM THAT I AM
—how it hurls and breaks!
on Death’s No there
there . . .

—which sounded kind of Buddhist.

According to the teachings we were all
each other’s dream . . .

And soon able to vanish—

out of the real
without having to die, whoever’s
got the cash—to pay
the brainier ones
to perfect
a Heaven upload—to cut
the flesh-tether
and merge

with the Cloud . . .

Well we all have ways of constructing
Paradise.
To walk alone deep in thought
in a city park
was mine
for several minutes,
thinking about spindles.
Before the vigilance
of my genderdoom

kicked in—

And there it was, the fact
of my body—
all the nerves in my scalp
and the back of my neck,
alive—
How it moved through space, how close
it had strayed
toward concealing trees, my
female body—
Jewish body—inside my
White body—dreaming
it was bodiless

and free . . . 

to decide:

how and when and if to fill the body’s hungers—
how and when and if to walk in thought
through the wilderness . . .

before Death comes with its Fascist hat.

Its Park Murder Misogyny hat.

Its Year Ten in a Nursing Home stink
    hat—    

However spun
    my thread . . .

Anyway,
it’s peaceful here
in the park, at midday,
if a little deserted. I’ve moved to the path that winds
closer to the street.
Thinking again, as I always do,
about body and soul. How they
infuse each other. How they
hate each other.
How most people pledge allegiance
to one or the other.
How painful it was! To be
such a split

creature—

jan 26/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool
outdoor temp: 14 degrees

Swim! I wouldn’t have minded running in the cold today. It’s sunny and bright. But I’m trying to swim at least once a week. Partly because I love swimming, partly because it feels good after a few hard runs on the rough paths. Today’s swim was wonderful. Only one other person in the pool. The sun was streaming in the big windows and making the whole pool floor dance with shadows.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the woman next to me was wearing a swim cap that looked like it was from open swim. I wanted to ask her, but we were never stopped at the same time
  2. she was in a black suit — I think it was a tri suit. She swam breaststroke and freestyle and also ran in the deep end, her legs pedaling under the water
  3. there was something big and white on the pool floor, right on the part that slants down — what was it? I couldn’t tell*
  4. after the woman next to me left, I was alone in the pool for most of the time
  5. shadows on the pool floor, 1: faint, from the trees outside, flickering gently
  6. shadows on the pool floor, 2: a sharp, long cylinder of darkness — the lane line
  7. shadows on the pool floor, 3: the sun brightened and more dancing shadows with a long strip of light
  8. shadows on the pool floor, 4: in the lane next to me, a small ball of light — the opposite of a shadow, glowing. In the shallow end of the pool. I could see it from the far end after finishing my flip turn
  9. colors noticed: orange (of course), blue, a little green, yellow (maybe?) near the door to the locker room
  10. not always, but sometimes, I noticed the small bubbles my hands made as they pierced the water

*the white thing on the bottom was very distracting. What is it? I kept looking down, trying to study it, but with my bad eyes, I didn’t have a chance. It was almost the size of my fist. I thought about swimming down and picking it up. Gross! I decided one of the kids on the Otter’s swim team would probably pick it up during practice this afternoon.

The only one in the pool, nearly submerged for 45 minutes, I felt alone and not alone:

Alone and Not Alone/ Carl Sandburg

There must be a place
a room and a sanctuary
set apart for silence
for shadows and roses
holding aware in walls
the sea and its secrets
gong clamor gone still
in a long deep sea-wash
aware always of gongs
vanishing before shadows
of roses repeating themes
of ferns standing still
till wind blows over them:
great hunger may bring these
into one little room
set apart for silence

I found this poem last week and have been wondering when to post it. Today was the day. I like Carl Sandburg and his space for shadows, his sea and its secrets, his one little room set apart for silence!

jan 20/RUN

4.35 miles
river road trail, north/south
27 degrees
99% ice and snow-covered path, slick

Very slick outside today. A lot of ice covered with an inch or two of snow. That part of it wasn’t fun, but the rest of it — the cold air, the open river, the gray sky — was wonderful. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker. Passed Daddy Long Legs. Noticed all of the rusty orange leaves still on the trees near the tunnel of trees. Heard goose honks under the lake street bridge. Later, also heard some runner coughing as he crossed the bridge then turned down to enter the river road. No! Every few seconds, a deep cough, full of gunk. I sped up to try and stay ahead of him and his germs. It worked. For a few minutes, I kept hearing the jagged coughs, then it stopped.

Anything else? The river was brownish-gray, the sky sunless.
No headphones for most of the run. During the last mile, I put in an old coming-back-from-injury playlist: I heard “Upside Down” and “Fantastic Voyage.”

FWA is on band tour in Spain and France right now. 29 years ago, Scott and I were on our European band tour. 29 years ago? Wow. Very excited for FWA.

Sitting at my desk, writing this, I’m also looking outside my window at the robins running around on the snow and rooting in the hydrangea bushes for twigs? seeds? Quietly, they scamper then fly low right in front of me. What are they looking for?

Encountered a beautiful poem on twitter this morning that I thought I had already posted on my log but hadn’t.

A Stranger/ Saeed Jones

I wonder if my dead mother still thinks of me.
I know I don’t know her new name. I don’t know  

her, not now. I don’t know if “her” is the word
burning in a stranger’s mind when he sees my dead  

mother walking down the street in her bright black dress.
I wonder if he inhales the cigarette smoke  

that will eventually kill him and thinks “I wish I knew
a woman who was both the light and every shadow  

the light pierces.” I wonder if a passing glance at my dead
mother is enough to make a poet out of anyone. I wonder  

if I’m the song she hums as she waits for the light to change
or if I’m just the traffic signal holding her up.

This poem was posted as part of a thread. I want to post the next one, which is by Todd Dillard (one of my favorite poetry people). I like his introduction of the poem in a tweet:

I have so many poems also grieving my dead mother by giving her a kind of life after life.

Mom Hires a Stunt Double/ Todd Dillard

Sick of all the impossible I ask of her
in these my griefiest poems,

Mom hires a stunt double: same white hair,
same laugh, same false teeth, same dead.

Now when I write “Mom curls like rinds in a bowl”
it’s her stunt double twisting herself into pithy canoes.

When I write “At night my mother sheds
the skin of my mother revealing more mother”

it’s her stunt double that unzips her body,
stands there all shiver and muscle and tendon,

waiting for the next line. “What’s in it for you?”
I ask, and Mom’s stunt double shrugs,

lighting one of those familiar Turkish Silvers
as behind her my mother mounts a Harley

and barrels into the margins. “You’re a good kid,”
the double says. But she doesn’t touch my hair.

This close to her, her eyes are all pupil,
all ink. Her smell: paper and snow.

When she exhales smoke spills from her lips
and unfolds into horses.

Oh, I love both of these poems!

jan 19/SWIM

1.6 miles
ywca pool
outside: snowing (2+ inches)
31 degrees

Hooray for another swim. Such a good feeling to be moving through the water. Maybe it was because it was still snowing, but the pool was almost empty. Excellent. Mostly, I swam continuous 200s, breathing 3/4/5/6 by 50s. Starting the second mile, I tried something new, partly as a way to stretch my legs/bend my knees without stopping: I added in an occasional 25 of breaststroke. It seemed to work well.

dancing shadows

About 1000 yards in, I noticed the pool floor was moving slightly. I think it was the faint shadows of the snowflakes falling* on the other side of the big windows that stretch across the one side of the building. It made everything feel magical and dreamy and strange.

*Actually, when I was swimming, I thought the shadows were from the trees. It wasn’t until I was writing this entry, right now, that I realized it was probably the falling snow making the dancing shadows. Very cool. I think if I had realized that it was the snow, the whole experience of swimming would have felt even stranger and dreamier.

In addition to the moving shadows, I saw one solid shadow line stretching the length of the pool — a shadow of the lane line. Where was that shadow coming from? The bright ceiling light or the light from the snowy sky?

Seeing these shadows and continuing to pay attention to them, shifted me into a different state of being, one that was dreamier and surreal, and where I rethought what was possible or impossible. I imagined the water as air that I was swimming through. When I reached the deep end and looked down at the pool floor below me, I imagined that I was flying high above the ground through empty space. How fun and distracting. I forgot how many flip turns I had done, how many laps I still wanted to do.

Some other things I noticed:

  1. the sloshing of the water (below)
  2. the loud voices of some women talking and joking (above)
  3. the water running guy, doing running drills in the shallow end, then pushing off and vigorously kicking in the deep end, then finishing with some freestyle
  4. everything seemed blue below
  5. everything orange above
  6. the water was not completely clear, but wasn’t that cloudy either
  7. no harsh chlorine feeling
  8. I swam in lane 2, no one ever swam in lane 3, running dude was in lane 5
  9. nothing floating in the water, only random bits of something on the pool floor
  10. little bubbles in front of me as I sliced through the water and a slight spray as I lifted my elbow up into the air

Remembered reading a description of swim practice and the pool early in the morning, thick with a chlorine haze, in Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Lessons. Thought it might be nice to collect a few pool descriptions. Also thought about composing some more swimming breathing poems, where syllables match my breaths: 3/4/5/6.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe (b. Jan 19, 1809)

I randomly searched, “Edgar Allen Poe swimming” and discovered that he was a swimmer! I had no idea. I found a promising article, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast,” but it was beyond a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Then I found this bit of information on a listicle about him:

Poe was a big fan of the long walk. He took many solitary strolls over High Bridge in the Bronx in 1847, after his wife Virginia died. There, staring up at the stars, he would conceive his lengthy cosmic prose poem, Eureka. But he also liked rowing and swimming: as a young lad, he was renowned among his friends for swimming six miles upriver in the Charles River in Virginia, and when he moved to New York City (for the second time) in 1844, one of his first acts was to row a skiff up the East River, all the way up past Roosevelt Island.

sidenote: I want to write a poem titled, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast”!

jan 13/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.4 miles
basement
outside: an ice rink

Ugh. Hopefully it will warm up enough in the next few days so that the ice on the sidewalks will finally melt. I can run in snow and in the cold, but when the sidewalks and most of the road are one sheet of bumpy, uneven, super slick ice, I have to stay inside. Before I went down to the basement, I took Delia the dog for a walk for some recon. Almost fell at least twice on the short 2 block walk. Something interesting: even though it was very slippery and I almost fell, I never had that anxious, I’m-going-to-fall-feeling. No tensing up of my legs or shoulders.

Watched a comedian my sister told me about, Rhys Niccholson, on Netflix while I biked. I laughed a lot. Listened to the book, An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed, while I ran. I loved An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good, so I was excited for another book, more time to spend with Maud. Thought I might run a 5k, but I felt ready to stop a bit sooner. All I remember from my run, other than listening to Maud pretend to be senile and feeble in order to not be found out as a murderer, was thinking that treadmill runs feel longer and are much less fun than outdoor runs. Oh — I also remember noticing my stride and trying to focus on the rise and fall of my feet and relaxing my shoulders as I swung my arms.

A few days ago, I bookmarked a wonderful essay by the Diné poet Jake Skeets: My Name is Beauty. I just started reading it and found so many wonderful passages, including this one:

Viola Cordova defines the concept of cultural relativity in her essay “Language as Window” as the way Western constructs constrict worldview to one single thing and dismiss differing worldviews. However, Cordova, through an analysis of the work of linguist Benjamin Whorf, states that language is the key to interpreting the world in different ways. Using an egg paradigm, Cordova asks us to imagine the Earth not as a physical rock in space but as the yolk of an egg. She asks us to imagine ourselves swimming through air rather than walking, and to consider ourselves within something, not on something.6 Seen this way, the Earth becomes a womb, a nest, an embrace.

The swimming through air reminded me of studying fungi this past April. Here’s something I wrote on April 21, 2022:

Thought about nets and this passage from The Mushroom at the End of the World:

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies of fungi. Fungi are diverse and often flexible, and they live in many places, ranging from ocean currents to toenails. But many fungi live in the soil, where their thread-like filaments, called hyphae, spread into fans and tangle into cords through the dirt. If you could make the soil liquid and transparent and walk into the ground, you would find yourself surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae (137).

Thought about imagining the soil was liquid and transparent and then entering it, surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae. What if I could swim in the soil? Swim through these nets of fungal hyphae?

I must return to this essay later and work through it slowly. So many amazing ideas! In the meantime, here is one of Skeets’ poems:

Soft Thunder/ Jake Skeets

narrowmouth toads dapple pink sandstone
knee-deep in a brown bowl of brown water

before the croon of limb and wind on weeds
puddles from the pour gather for a morning song

the sun rises from a flatbed load of open palms
                : each crease a ripple a leg a half smile

the sun knows best when it rises
                : each tide and oak and uplift sung the same

each killdeer and mare and desert bighorn
each I I gorge each I I ravine each I I—

and each part of me is hung out to dry marooned

and wrung of rain, wrung of every I until no I is left
                        :      soft thunder
                                        ponds in a clearing

jan 6/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
14 degrees / feels like 6
100% snow-covered

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we had a big snowstorm. 14.9 inches of snow in total. Schools went online — which is what they do now instead of snow days; students still have to show up, but just to their computers. Because it kept snowing, the city of Minneapolis didn’t declare a snow emergency and begin plowing side streets until it was over on Wednesday. The result: a mess. Today, they’re on day 3 of the snow emergency (plowing the odd side of the street) and walls of snow have appeared at the ends of sidewalks and where streets cross each other. These walls made for a slow start to my run as I climbed over them on my way to the river. The river road trail was plowed, but still covered with a hard pack of snow. I wore my yaktrax, which helped. I didn’t mind running on the snow and was able to sight and avoid all of the big, hard chunks of snow on the path. I didn’t slip, but once I almost rolled my ankle on some snow as I turned a corner at the falls.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. lots of soft ruts in the street — snow almost the color and texture of sand
  2. the river was completely white and still
  3. the dark, sharp shadows of bare tree branches sprawled across the white path
  4. kids having fun at the school playground — I couldn’t see them, but heard their exuberant voices
  5. a strange clanging, clunking, banging noise coming from the school –was it kids? — or Becketwood — a furnace?
  6. the falls weren’t falling, but frozen
  7. as they neared a tight curve by locks and dam #1, several cars slowed way down
  8. a smaller parks plow cleared off the walls of snow at the entrance to the trail near the falls
  9. the snow was so white, the sun so bright, that it all looked blue — the palest shade of blue
  10. a congress of crows calling out to each other. I remember thinking that they sounded much more pleasant than bluejays

overheard: Unfortunately, even though I tried to hang onto all of the words I heard as I ran by two walkers, I’ve forgotten some of them.

A woman to her walking companion: “Not all bosses are like that, Sheldon. My boss doesn’t do that…”

I wondered what her boss doesn’t do. Then, I thought about her frustrated tone and wondered if it was frustration over a boss who didn’t do things they way she wished, or Sheldon for assuming all bosses did things in the same way or for appreciating how his boss did things. The question became: for her, who is the asshole, the boss or Sheldon? All I had to go on were her words and her tone, which didn’t seem like enough. I imagined (but knew I’d never do) stopping to ask her: Excuse me, I’m not trying to be nosy, but what doesn’t your boss do? I thought about how not knowing was an opportunity to reflect on how we communicate and what clues we give with our inflections.

relying on my practice

A great run one day after my colonoscopy. A few days ago, I had mentioned that I was stressed out about the procedure. It went fine. In fact, there were parts of it I actually enjoyed — maybe “enjoyed” is too strong of a word? I’m glad it’s over, but it wasn’t that bad. Mostly because I’m healthy and they didn’t find anything wrong, but partly because I used the noticing skills I’ve developed from my practice of running and writing about it on this log to distract me. Is distract the right word? Maybe keep me focused on remaining present? Or occupied with something other than worry? As I waited in the crowded (but not too tightly packed) waiting room, I took notes of what I noticed. I kept paying attention (but without the notebook) when I headed back for preop and as they wheeled me into the operating room. Maybe I could turn it into a poem?

More than 10 Things I Noticed Before My Colonoscopy

  1. lime green chairs
  2. an older man, restless, tapping on the table like he was playing a keyboard or typing on a computer
  3. a nurse calling out, Sue
  4. the steady hum of the machine that circulates the air
  5. the sound of someone watching a video on a phone — the volume was low, so all I heard was a constant buzz of voices
  6. a woman with a mask below her nose walking by
  7. nurse: Sherry with Barb
  8. the hum of a copy machine or a printer
  9. Julia
  10. Tanika
  11. Isaiah (a little kid in pajamas walked by holding a woman’s hand)
  12. Mark
  13. Brandon
  14. the soft sound of someone folding a crease into a piece of stiff paper
  15. the rustling of a winter coat or nylon pants
  16. Scott’s keyboard keys clicking
  17. a deep rumbling voice
  18. a person walking by wearing bright red sneakers. I wasn’t sure if they were red or orange, so I asked Scott
  19. a cart with a blue cover being pushed by a nurse through the waiting room
  20. someone playing music — I could tell it was music, but not what kind or any of the words that were being sung
  21. a woman wearing a bright yellow stocking cap walked by
  22. Bridget
  23. Nancy
  24. the woman with her mask down coughing and sneezing and blowing her nose then making a call and saying something about 4%
  25. someone saying the phrase, Dad Bodies
  26. Wendy
  27. Travis
  28. feet shuffling, the low hum of murmuring voices

A few other things: 2 of my nurses were also named Sara/h — one was Sara, the other Sarah. My doctor’s sister is Zara. He told me the name means “flower.” When I was wheeled into the operating room, they were talking about how amazing air fryers are. As I drifted off to sleep I heard one of them saying, It’s the best appliance I have. Better than a microwave. I use it 6 or 7 times a week!

orange!

I’m continuing to work on my colorblind plate poem about orange. One key theme: I see orange everywhere. Here’s something to add to that: as the nurse (Sarah) was putting in my iv, she told me to look at the orange leaf (which was her way of saying look away so you don’t see me poking you and freak out). I turned and noticed a photograph of gray rocks with a bright orange leaf resting on them. Orange! Later, after I left the room I wondered if I had remembered correctly. Was it orange or red. But then I thought that it didn’t matter because I still thought of it as orange. This fits with my sighting of the red (which I though might be orange) sneakers (#18).

Found this poem on twitter this morning:

Blink/ Donna Vorreyer

A blur of movement where it does not belong,
a white floater in the window’s darkening eye.

A plastic bag, I think, caught in an updraft
or a bit of the dying yucca’s autumn fluff,

but I discover it is a hawk, all muscled breast
and feathered intent, settling to perch in the tree

outside my window, to survey the yard then
fly again, gone as quickly as it came, the same way

joy arrives. Without warning. Sometimes
unrecognizable. Never promising to stay.

Here’s what Vorreyer said about the poem: “If @MFiteJohnson hadn’t sent me the picture, I might have not believed it actually happened, but I have a poem keeping company with hers in the new issue of @pshares, something I thought I would never say. It’s a small poem about being in the moment, something I want to do more.