jan 4/BIKE

40 minutes
basement

A nice day, not too cold and with no snow, but I ran a 10k yesterday and I’m trying to be responsible with my training and not overdo it. But, after feeling frustrated when my password wouldn’t reset and overwhelmed by my haunts obsession, I knew I needed exercise. So I biked in the basement. It felt good, and my left knee didn’t hurt like it did last year. I feel much better now. While I biked I watched an old PTO triathlon race and forgot about my frustration.

Is there a word for experiencing frustration when something won’t work online? It’s not an overall fear or hatred of technology or computers, but a temporary breakdown/panic when I can’t get it to work, or when I need to resubmit a password but can’t find it, or when I know there’s something I haven’t filled out in an online form, but I can’t see what or where it is. It’s also anger at how poorly designed online forms are or how the user experience (UX) doesn’t consider enough people’s differing abilities — especially older people or young-ish people like me, who can’t see very well — or, as Scott just mentioned to me, how UX can be designed to direct people in ways they don’t want. This last thing is called dark or deceptive patterns. An example: a site makes it confusing and almost impossible to unsubscribe or cancel online.

Maybe reading this site, Deceptive Patterns, could give me some better words.

Before — or maybe it was after? — I was derailed by passwords, I came across an interview with the writer/philosopher/nature writer/climate change activist, Kathleen Dean Moore.

Here’s how I got there:

  1. Thinking about water and stone and air I remembered something I read in a beautiful essay by Jake Skeets, My Name is Beauty. Skeets is quoting another writer, Viola Cordova and her essay, “Language as Window” — they’re both talking about moving (swimming) through the world, not walking on it
  2. I searched for that essay and found that it was in a collection by Cordova, How it Is (I was able to check it out from my public library!), which was edited by Kathleen Dean Moore
  3. A link for Moore’s site came up and I was intrigued by its name, River Walking, so I checked it out, and in the media section I found a great interview, Why I Write

I miss the days of wandering through libraries, from shelf to shelf, following footnotes and bibliographies to new ideas and friends, but I’m grateful for the internet and ebooks, especially as my central vision deteriorates.

Anyway, here’s something I just read in the interview about forms of thinking:

everybody – should have an education in three kinds of thinking:

Critical thinking. The essential art of reaching reliable conclusions on the basis of evidence; the ability to defend yourself against flawed arguments or deceptive assumptions. This is the foundation of a rational life.

Empathetic thinking. The art of putting yourself in another’s place, seeing the world through their eyes, and asking what you would believe and do in their situation; the art of asking questions about why they believe what they do and make the decisions they do. This is the foundation of justice and compassion.

Hypothetical thinking, the “if, then” art. The ability to entertain an idea; the ability to consider that things might be different from the way they are now; the art of following a chain of possibilities beyond those immediately apparent. This is the foundation of imagination.

Why I Write / Kathleen Dean Moore

jan 3/RUN

6.2 miles
minnehaha dog park and back
31 degrees

Hooray for great winter runs with clear paths and strong legs and lungs! Yesterday I spent 6 hours in the car — dropping FWA off at college, then going home, then turning around again and going back with a forgotten backpack. Today I’m happy to be outside moving. On the first trip back, as we drove beside minnehaha park I noticed how beautiful it was with the clear view across to the VA home and the open river and the gnarled bare branches, and I thought, I want to run here tomorrow. So today, I did, and it was beautiful. Oh, that river! I hovered above it on the edge of the bluff, and admired it through the bare trees.

My IT band hurt a little, so did my back, but mostly I felt good. I picked up the cadence at the end and sprinted for 20 or 30 seconds — could I call that a “stride”? Thought about how my legs and form felt better after the speed work. Maybe I should try to incorporate this into one of weekly runs?

10 Things

  1. small slivers of ice sprinkled over the path
  2. orange orange everywhere, 1: rusted orange leaves still on the trees
  3. orange orange everywhere, 2: park or city workers in orange vests doing something with a hose near 44th
  4. orange orange everywhere, 3: a compact car in Dukes of Hazzard orange — I stared at it again as it drove north to make sure that it was actually orange
  5. roaring falls, churning bright white
  6. running by the furnace for the old WPA quarry — today I noticed its door, on the other side, a little farther down the bluff
  7. open, flowing, dark gray creek water about to fall over the limestone ledge
  8. a runner running with a big fluffy white dog
  9. the light rail’s recorded bells ding ding dinging
  10. the steady, strong rhythm of my feet lifting up up up up up off the ground

Writing that last item, I remembered something I thought about: how running combines flying (or hovering or floating or flowing without resistance) and striking down hard on the ground (solid, sturdy feet make contact with the surface). As I thought this, I also thought about flying = water and feet striking = stone. Does that work?

Camisha L. Johnson’s wonderful poem, Disclosure, came up on my post for jan 3, 2020. Today I was struck by her explanation:

About this Poem

“A person bumps into me on the street and I instinctively reply, ‘I’m sorry.’ Seconds later, I regret it. I notice the same compulsion towards apology as I navigate the world as a hard of hearing person. What does it mean to feel compelled in this way, to ask forgiveness over and over for interrupting other people’s comfort? Through this poem, I am grappling with what’s happening beneath the surface of those exchanges, the cost of all those apologies, and, ultimately, the unnamed cultural demands of the hearing world.”

—Camisha L. Jones

a fun challenge

Yesterday I used the word supine and remember my beloved high school vocab workshop book. I found it on my bookshelf and had an idea: why not randomly pick a word from each day and spend time with it (ideally, write a poem about it). Yesterday’s word (found after I asked FWA to pick a number between 1 and 162 while he waited for his doctor’s appointment): kudos

Here’s a poem inspired by the clinic waiting room:

Kudos Tuesday
you’re off to a great start
a crowded waiting room
everyone masked
deep coughs
a long wait for urgent care
a confused woman
with a respiratory infection
uncertain whether or not to wait
in this stuffy room for 2 hours —
should she stay or should she go?
her daughter arrives and says,
let’s sidebar for a moment
and I don’t care what they decide
I just want to know if
this is how lawyers talk all the time
or she’s just watched too much law and order

jan 1/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
24 degrees
95% snow-covered

Today Scott and I are signing up to run the marathon on October 6, 2024. I believe that the third time will be the charm; I will finally show up to the start line.

Today’s run was a good way to start the new year. Last year had its terrible lows (Scott’s dad dying) and some wonderful highs (being nominated for a pushcart prize). What will 2024 bring? I’ve decided not to be scared or to spend too much time dreading next year’s election. This year is about running and poetry and finding new ways to connect with the world, words, people, a place.

The path was almost completely covered with a thin layer of soft, dry snow. Not slick, but a little difficult in the spots where the snow had covered the potholes. The trick was to notice where the snow was thicker, whiter: that’s where it had accumulated in the potholes.

Greeted a lot of other runners and walkers, noticed the steel blue river — open, no ice, listened to soft crunch of the snow, cars passing by, random voices, the collar of my jacket rubbing against the ear flaps of my cap.

Heard a runner say the number 27. Also heard a noise under the ford bridge that I couldn’t quite identify: brittle clacking which could have been ice or frozen leaves being moved by the wind. Heard the falls rushing over the limestone ledge and at least one kid being obnoxious.

Earlier today I was remembering words related to glitter, like glint and glisk, which is a gleam of light through a cloud. As I ran south, nearing Locks and Dam no. 1, I felt a glisk above me.

I don’t remember any bikes or birds or skiers. No squirrels or music. A few dogs.

Oh–right above the falls I noticed a person with a walker in a bright red coat. I almost called out, I love your red coat!, but I thought better of it. It’s quite possible that the coat wasn’t red but some other color. A strange side effect of my vision: the more wrong I am about something, the more likely I am to announce it to others. Why? I’m not sure.

random thing for future Sara to remember: Over the holiday, there’s been a series of cycle-cross races in Europe, which is biking on a looped course that involves mud and hopping over bumps and carrying bikes up stairs and ruts and steep hills and extremely tight turns. They keep coming up on youtube, and I keep watching them. Very fun to watch. I can’t imagine ever being able to do one of these races. So scary and technical and demanding!

one more thing: I had to return a few hours later to this log to add something I forgot. Geese! In my last mile, running on Edmund, I heard some honking so I stopped running and looked up. A few seconds later, a vee of geese high in the gray sky. A car passed as I stood there, on the edge of the road. Did they wonder what I was doing?

dec 31/BIKE

bike: 30 minutes
basement

Sometime last night, my left leg/knee started to hurt, then it snowed and left slippery sidewalks, so today I decided to be cautious and bike. Watched a replay of the Kona Ironman from 2017 while I biked. At one point, they interviewed 6 (or 5?) time Ironman winner Natasha Badmann. I remember her! She had an amazing perspective on one of the toughest parts of the course: the energy lab. She saw it as giving her energy, not taking it away — the energy of inspiration from the powerful waves off in the distance. Wow, to be that present when you’re 6 or 7 hours into a tough race is impressive. As I biked, I thought about athletes and the different ways they try to overcome the strong desire to stop, give up. I find Badmann’s approach to be a helpful lesson in letting go — not trying to control your thoughts or getting rid of your pain, but releasing them and shifting to another way of being — a way in which you’re not centered, but witnessing something beside yourself. Does that make sense?

Before biking, I had a good morning filled with ideas: 1. creating a series of short poems in which I use my favorite lines from other poets by fitting them into my running/rhythmic breathing form: 3/2 and 2. using my 3/2 form and writing poems that are one sentence long.

I also watched an amazing talk by Ed Hirsch on poetry, the poem, and the reader:

I wish there was a transcript. If there is, I can’t find it, so here are some of my highlights:

Poetry exists to inspire the reader not to inspire the writer, that the purpose of poetry is in the relationship between a poet, a poem, and a reader. And it’s in that connection between them.

Talking about his teacher at Grinnell told him:

You have the gifts to be a poet, but what you’re writing is not poetry. It’s not even close to poetry. What you’re writing down are your thoughts and your feelings but you’re not trying to craft anything, you’re not trying to make anything. You’re not writing in relationship to any other poetry. You’re not reading poetry and so you’re not really a poet right now. You are a person who writes poetry. You have to read poetry and connect your poems to what you’re reading.

He discusses reading Gerard Manley Hopkins and feeling a profound connection. It spoke deeply to him and he wanted to know/study how Hopkins could achieve this.

Holy shit, this thing’s a sonnet? You mean, he’s not just writing out his poems the way I write out mine? He’s actually making it rhyme and everything? That seems generous to me. I want to do that. I’m going to try and make something for someone in the future so that they can feel about my poem the way I feel about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem.

Then he talks about how Hopkins’ poem was so distanced from him by time, location, experience, yet it spoke to him more than anything else he had heard. He realized that poetry can communicate more deeply than social conversation.

Celan: a poem is a message in a bottle, not guaranteed to reach anyone; a poem is sent out to some future person

Poets are people who, not so much want to express themselves, but feel so encountered by other poems that they want to respond in kind. That’s why Emily Dickinson calls the poets she reads, “her kinsmen of the shelf.”

The reader plays an important role in the understanding of poetry. The message in the bottle only finds its life when it’s activated in you. When you become the secret addresse.

There are a few poems you read and you go, I feel almost like I’ve written the poem to which I’m actually only responding to.

poetry: the gift of privacy and participation: It gives you interiority and it also gives you connection.

Poetry as stored magic that can’t be paraphrased

Poetry exists in the relationship between the poet who wrote it, the poem which encapsulates the experience, and the reader who reads it.

His discussion here reminds me of an interview I read and posted at some point in the last few years:

We are not diminished but enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a verbal record. We need poetry to help us transform the oceanic depths of feeling into art. Poetry rises out of one solitude to meet another in recognition and connection. It companions us.

And, yes, poetry is connected to contemporary life, but it’s also always connected to other poetry. We need an archive of eloquence and response.

Interview with Edward Hirsch

dec 30/RUN

3.1 miles
43rd, north/32nd, east/river road trail, south/42nd, west/edmund, north
29 degrees

My first run since last Sunday, partly due to travel, partly feeling sore. A great winter run. Cold, with layers, but not too cold. And no ice or snow or bad trail conditions. Before we went out for our run, Scott put together his marathon plan for this year — we’ve decided to try again. My goal: to make it to the start line next October, healthy. Should I come up with some sort of a plan? If I did, I imagine it would combine running, walking, and poetry.

As we ran, we talked about how the river road stops being red at certain points where the county or city or state (I can’t remember what Scott said) takes over. In those spots the road is black asphalt. Then I mentioned that we had had a very similar conversation 2 or 3 years ago. Then we talked about time looping and repeating yourself and when it’s ritual, when it’s being stuck in a rut.

10 Things

  1. open, brown river (no ice or snow)
  2. a scratching noise — not roller skier poles but the drum beat on a rap song that 2 white women were blasting as they ran by — wow
  3. one or two patches of ice on the sidewalk by edmund
  4. a runner in a bright orange sweatshirt or jacket, glowing in the gloom
  5. a light grayish-blue sky, everything darker — not feeling like day or night, but some in-between time
  6. a few flurries
  7. pothole 1: what started as a small hole has gotten bigger and deeper every year. 2 years ago they tried to patch it, but it didn’t work. The orange spray paint they used to outline a few years before that has faded, near the oak savanna
  8. pothole 2: at the spot where the bike and walking paths separate, less a pothole, more a deep gash 3 or 4 feet long. Every year they circle it with white spray paint — the shape of paint resembles a tube sock
  9. passing a woman who swung her arm out awkwardly like Dave — wasn’t sure for a minute — could it be Dave? no
  10. looking down at the floodplain forest, pointing out the clear view of the forest floor to Scott. He said if he looked he might faint: vertigo

Winter Song/ Wilfred Owen

The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,
And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed
Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,
And when the land lay pale for them, pale-snowed,
Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.

From off your face, into the winds of winter,
The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;
But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,
When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,
And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.

I like the focus on winter colors in this poem and the idea of snow as flamed and flowing and shift from sun-brown and summer-gold into spiritual glinter and how his looks are soft-going. I might need to use that expression for how I see: soft-going.

dec 29/BIKE

bike: 30 minutes
basement

Warm enough to run outside, but we just got back from our trip and I fell and jarred my neck two night ago and I’m very sore, so I’m taking at least one more day off from running and biking in the basement instead.

Of course there’s more to the story, and because I’m pretty sure future Sara wants to remember, I’ll add a few more details: I fell because I fainted. I fainted because of low blood pressure. I had low blood pressure because of a reaction to ingesting a small dose of an edible — pineapple express. Some reasons I might have had a reaction: pineapple express is a sativa (stimulant) strain and I didn’t need to be stimulated; we had just completed the Hot Ones challenge and I was feeling very ill; I hadn’t eaten much all day and had been standing for hours; I had drank 2 beers; I was seeing family member I hadn’t seen in years and confronting loss; Scott had taken the other half of the gummy and his highly stimulated reaction was too much for me; I should have sat down, but I was walking around because pacing helps me to feel better.

Here’s what happened: Right after we finished the last hot sauce for Hot Ones — which was spicy, but didn’t bother me nearly as much as my stomach — I started feeling strange and off and like I might throw up. I started walking around the apartment, which is what I often do when I feel sick. I felt a heaviness in my body, like a wave of something dropping down from my head and settling in my feet. The last thing I remember is hearing voices talking (probably everyone in the other room) and then a loud smack. Suddenly Scott was calling my name and I was on the floor opening my eyes. Everyone was standing in front of me, staring. I saw FWA first and was struck by how much he and everyone else looked like a still from a film, posed for a dramatic moment. My hand and wrist hurt; so did my butt. I felt overwhelmed and angry that they were all staring at me. Scott’s perspective: He heard a loud smack. When he got to me I was passed out on the floor, twitching. He thought I has having a seizure. He shook me gently a few times before I woke up. Scott walked me to a bed and after some convincing I sat down. He left and I could hear his agitated voice in the next room (he was feeling the effects of the gummy too). He yelled-whispered, I’m really worried about her; I don’t think she’s okay. I responded by yelling from the bed, He’s tripping! Don’t listen to him. I’m fine. And, mostly I was.

“He’s tripping,” might become the new line that RJP and FWA will affectionately (and mockingly) utter for the next year. Last year it was “the fries make it worse!” when Scott tried eating a fry to help temper the heat from that year’s hot sauce challenge.

what I think happened when I fell: Either I instinctively braced my fall, or my hands were already up by my head because when I feel especially sick/anxious/bad, I gather my hair and tug at the roots. This saved me from really knocking my head hard on the floor. I still hit my head, but it was after I fell. I think I might have mild whiplash, judging by the soreness of my neck. This is the first time I have ever fainted in my life — at least that I can remember. Strange and fascinating and unsettling.

Anyway, that is why my neck has jarred and why I’m taking another day off from running.

While I biked I watched (not for the first or even second time), a replay of the women’s triathlon at the Rio Olympics. Go Gwen! I felt strange a few times and thought about what would happen if I fainted while on the bike. But I was fine and kept going and will work hard to not add fainting and falling to my list of anxieties.

Here’s a book I discovered this morning that I’d like to read: Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most

dec 24/RUN

3.1 miles
edmund, south/river road trail, north/32nd, east/44th, south
52 degrees

52 degrees! Shorts and one bright yellow long-sleeved shirt! Wow. Scott and I couldn’t pass up the chance to run in shorts in December, so we went out for a 5k. It really doesn’t feel like Christmas.

We talked about the terrible meal we had last night when we went out dinner (Scott’s fish was completely raw) and the double half marathon (a 1/2 in minneapolis one day, in eue claire the next) that Twin Cities in Motion is advertising for April and the time I was running up the hill and a barefoot kid raced me for a few seconds.

Other things I remember: the river was blue and open, the sidewalk on 32nd was in bad shape, the floodplain forest didn’t have any ice, there were a few stones stacked on the big boulder, the colors — rusty green — on the wet boulder near the bench.

Here’s poem I encountered this morning. I love the brevity and the title and the magical moment of hope that it captures.

IN MY DREAMS I BAKE A CROQUEMBOUCHE FOR CHRISTMAS / Megan Williams

& the caramel sticks to my hands & my hands stick to my cheeks & everyone marvels at my choux pastry magic & no one asks what I am going to do with my sad, sorry life

dec 23/RUN

4.3 miles
franklin loop
43 degrees / 95% humidity

Another Saturday run with Scott. We talked about visiting my dad and seeps and the distance from Minneapolis to Seattle versus Seattle to Alaska and Alert, the northernmost town of 2000 people in Northern Canada and different National Park designations. The sky was a heavy white. At the beginning of the run, it was misty and damp. Looking out at the river from the bridge, everything looked soft and fuzzy and barely formed. We encountered a roller skier, lots of walkers, a few runners. Heard some water gushing out of the rock or sewer pipes.

2 happy people with hats on the franklin bridge with the misty and foggy water of the mississippi river in the background
during the run / 23 dec 2023