3.2 miles
trestle turn around
26 degrees
100% clear!
Windy today. Not too crowded. Sunny. My legs felt weird for a mile or so–like they weren’t quite working. Heavy, plodding. Listened to a New Yorker poetry podcast with a poet I just discovered (Craig Morgan Teicher) and felt like I was in a dream. Barely on the path, floating, cocooned in layers, unable to hear birds or trickling water or striking feet. The river was open. Stopped and admired it by the trestle. Then turned on my new playlist. No Daily Walker but a few others walkers, at least one biker. Felt fast in the second half as I flew down the hill by the lake street bridge. Sprinted up the final hill. Don’t remember much from the run. What a wonderful thing it is to lose myself for 30 minutes!
Before I ran, I had a great morning. Started by listening to part of an episode with Victoria Change on Commonplace. At one point, they discuss their shifts in writing in first and third person which got me thinking about my own choice, in my latest project, to write in second person. Why am I using you? Who is you? Found some very interesting essays on second person online: Stuck on You: an ode the second person and the intimacy of writing in the second person in a bar. Then I started thinking about how Mary Oliver uses you, like in Wild Geese (You do not have to be good/you do not have to walk on your knees…). Finally I thought about who the I and the You are in my project. One answer: I = Teacher self and You = Student Self.
After all of that excellent thinking, I checked out twitter and found these lines from the poem Tomorrow and Tomorrow Again/Craig Morgan Teicher:
One cannot lock eyes with a bird,
its eyes vacant as ball bearings, but
mustn’t there be some recognition
in everything?
eyes vacant as black ball bearings? What a great line that reminds me of my own about not being able to see people’s pupils: “soul less black balls”. I looked Teicher up and found his poem, “Eye Contact”. I wondered, does he have macular degeneration or some other vision problem? Couldn’t find anything, but he sure does like referencing blindness. His poetry collection from 2012 is titled, To Keep Love Blurry and check out the titles he gave his NPR end of the year poetry reviews: “Keeping the Dark at Bay” and “In the Dark, The Eye Begins to See.” Hmm…I need to study his writing more. At this point, early on, I can’t decide what he’s doing with these references to blindness–is it signaling his own experiences/preoccupations with blindness or is it serving as metaphor, where blind = dark = bad = shame = grief = loss = death?
Tomorrow and Tomorrow Again/ Craig Morgan Teicher
Of course I don’t know what
happens to us: if we survive in the
hands of love; if Cal, if Simone
and all the trembling answers
those questions entail; whether
by time or by disease or by
an atom bomb right in the eye. Is it
possible death could be thrilling
and fun? And after could there be
something somewhere and what
will we do if we see each other
there? Will the same songs stay stuck
in our heads? Will medicine
succeed in making life so long
we will beg for medicine to end it?
One cannot lock eyes with a bird,
its eyes vacant as ball bearings, but
mustn’t there be some recognition
in everything? Some fury, some
questioning? If one phrase could echo
throughout eternity, would the ear
on the other side return
a word? But what am I asking?
Will I ever see a whale, and will his size
compared to mine be a true
form of knowledge? Loneliness
has depths writing fails to fathom.
I could be clearer, say more, but
it wouldn’t mean as much. Mother
will I ever find you again? Is fear
of spiders fair? Is a power
above minding the scales, be it
science or gods or the weather,
and can they be tipped toward
balance from here? Is beauty more
than another form of pleasure?
What, which, when, how is better?
Eye Contact/ Craig Morgan Teicher
As if bees are known for their pride.
But what’s so great about horses? They’re stuck
on the earth except when they jump,
but even then they’re not bees.
But is there anything we value so highly
as streetlights, which, unlike bees,
watch over us with their swan-like
necks and open their eyes at the right time
every night? The answer is lonely
and whoever among us is brave enough
to find it will come home to a family
that won’t even look us in the eyes.
2
But what’s so great about eye contact?
As if a horse knows a newspaper
when he sees it. Streetlights don’t live
in hives; they’re not more afraid
of us than we are, fortified by stingers and swarms.
Bees don’t brighten the alleyways
in which we commit our most heinous crimes
to keep things moving and fill
the papers with news. Why don’t we have
a holiday to recognize the alleyways?
The answer is lonely and whoever
among us is brave will have nowhere to jump.
3
Why don’t we sing a song that makes
the bees proud? What’s so great
about desolate meadows? The answer
is lonely. Why don’t we come home
and look at our family? Why don’t we
designate an hour to brag about news?
What’s so great about the way the papers
blow through alleyways in the evening
like deflated rats? As if pride could
brighten the meadows at night. Whoever
among us is brave enough to forgive
a family gets to make eyes with a lonely horse.
4
As if the answer is flowers. As if
we could gather streetlights
in a bouquet from the alleyways
and brighten family after
beekeeping family. But what’s so
great about seeing the truth?
Beneath every meadow is the earth’s
molten core, red and hot as an evil eye.
Why don’t we blow through the streets
at night? The answer is lonely, even
if a horse knows the way home.
What’s so great about being brave?
freeze-thaw, a different perspective
added in a few hours after I first posted this entry: Scrolling through my twitter feed, I encountered this very helpful, perspective-shifting idea from Paul Huttner on MPR Weather:
Temperatures over the next week look perfect for gradually reducing snowpack across the Upper Midwest. Days above the thawing point will melt snow. Nights below freezing mean that snowmelt will gradually be released into area rivers.
This gradual release helps mitigate the early-spring threat of flooding. Wow! All this time, I’ve been cranking about how much I hate these freeze-thaw cycles. I’m glad to read that they’re helpful. I still might not like how dangerous they make the path, but now I can get over myself and think about how they help the river. What a nice opportunity to shift my perspective. And, as a bonus: it will be warmer during the day next week!