Month: February 2021

feb 12/BIKERUN

bike: 15 minutes
run: 3.25 miles
basement
outside temp: -5 degrees, feels like -21

Another cold day. I don’t mind the cold but I worry my sinuses might, so back to the basement. I don’t mind. I like watching Dickinson and I’m getting used to the treadmill. In today’s episode of Dickinson, which I’ve watched half of, Emily is pretending to be sick so that she can stay in her room and write. Her parents are extremely worried; yellow fever has been going around and many people are dying. In the last part I watched, the doctor, after examining Emily, tells her parents that she is dying. They are distraught. Emily is oblivious and just happy to jump on her bed, write at her desk, and sneak out of her room to steal more books. I do not like this storyline, or this version of Emily. Such selfish, bratty behavior. It’s difficult for me to believe that Emily, having witnessed so many of those close to her dying–friends, even–would be so flippant about illness and death. Yes, I realize that I am watching this from the perspective of an uptight parent.

One part of the episode I did like was her description, to her father’s law clerk, of poetry:

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?

Looking it up, Emily apparently does say this, but not to a law clerk and not when she was a teen. These lines are recounted by her long time friend/mentor, Thomas Higginson, to his wife in 1870 (2 sources: full quote + letter it came from).

Emily’s lines here remind me of Basho and his description of poetry:

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

But getting back to Emily and her bratty behavior as one reason I don’t like this version. Reading through an article about the historical accuracy of the show, I encountered this quote from the creator, Alena Smith: “Everyone’s free to invent their own Emily Dickinson, and this is mine. I don’t in any way say it’s the authoritative version.” Yes. It helped me to loosen up on my irritation with the show once I realized it was one person’s fantasy of her.

After I finished biking, I ran on the treadmill while I listened to a playlist. Very nice. Didn’t think about much. Used a lot of effort trying to not check the display on the treadmill; I was hoping to lose track of time. It worked.

a moment of sound

This morning I opened the door to our back deck and recorded the noisy bird conversation. Sure sounds like spring to me! Hard to believe it felt like 33 below.

feb 12, 2021

Is that a northern cardinal I am hearing? I think so. It was close, but I am rarely able to see red birds in trees because of my failing vision. Can you hear the other one calling back from far away?

feb 11/BIKERUN

bike: 30 minutes
run: 3.25 miles
basement
outside temp: -3 degrees/ feels like -11

Thought about running outside but decided that this extra cold air is probably not good for my sinus problems. Plus, I wanted to watch more Dickinson and listen to my latest playlist while I ran. Watched the 5th episode of Dickinson. Discovered that an episode is only 30 minutes–for some reason, I thought they were longer–so I stayed on the bike to finish it. The episode was about white propertied males’ control over others’ (everyone else who is not a white propertied male) bodies. 3 examples: 1. the Dickinson’s black servant Henry is afraid to go into town for fear of being mistaken for a slave and then kidnapped; 2. orphaned Sue (Emily’s bff) is being sexually abused by her boss–the father she nannies for in Boston (it never shows it, but it strongly indicates the abuse); and 3. instead of asking Emily, Emily’s admirer George negotiates with Emily’s father for her hand in marriage. These different types of control are not equated. At the end of the episode, Emily apologize to Henry for how he was being treated, saying, “I’m sorry Henry. Life shouldn’t be like this.” Henry responds: “What should it be like? You’re sitting here, eating cakes and reading Shakespeare, trying to say this isn’t what life should be like. But your life is easy Emily Dickinson. You’ll always have your father to keep you safe.” The episode ends with Emily composing one of her poems in her bedroom with a voice-over of her reading it and the words, in her distinctive cursive, flashing across the screen:

I am afraid to own a body/ Emily Dickinson

I am afraid to own a Body —
I am afraid to own a Soul —
Profound — precarious Property —
Possession, not optional —

Double Estate — entailed at pleasure
Upon an unsuspecting Heir —
Duke in a moment of Deathlessness
And God, for a Frontier.

I liked the complications and messiness of the episode even as I was irritated by Emily’s repeated displays of her naive privilege (which was finally addressed at the end with Henry’s words to her).

After biking, I ran to a playlist, which was great. After hearing it this morning on The Current’s coffee break, I added “Teenage Dirtbag” to my list. Really fun to run to! Midway through my run, I started thinking about my syllabi project. I decided that I’d like to add in Audre Lorde’s “The Uses of Erotic” with a unit on wonder and joy. Then I thought about using Simone Weil with a discussion of attention. I thought about some other related things that I can’t remember now–I should have pulled out my phone to make a note, but it seemed like too much of a hassle. Bummer.

a moment of sound

feb 11, 2021/ -2 and feels like -14

Noisy pants, crunching snow, plodding steps, at least one faint bird call, and wind chimes! Scott was miserably cold but I was totally fine as we walked Delia around the block in the late afternoon. I love the cold! My mask warmed my face. The only exposed part of me were my eyeballs and eyelashes. I noticed some of the falling flakes (it’s snowing a little) freezing on my lashes.

feb 10/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 1.75 miles
basement
outdoor temp: 8 degrees/ feels like -7

Finished the Dickinson episode I had been watching on feb 7. In my log for that day I asked: “I wonder if either Emily’s opinion (about marriage as bad for women) or Thoreau’s douchiness will change in the next 10 minutes, which is what I have left in the episode. And, will she be able to stop the railroad from being built in her backyard woods?” Well, Thoreau becomes even more douchey; Emily ends up calling him a dick and then storms out, leaving her copy of Walden behind. And, distraught, she falls asleep on George’s shoulder as they ride home on the train, which suggests she might be softening on him, if not on marriage. Finally, while sitting under her beloved oak tree her dad joins her and agrees to reroute the train tracks around the tree in order to save it. Emily is happy. My question: if the train is still running near the tree, will she want to visit it for solitude anymore? Will it be the same tree once it’s the tree by some noisy, air-polluting tracks? I guess Emily’s willing to compromise.

During my run, I listened to a Spotify playlist I had quickly made the other day. Excellent. It was fun to run much faster (at least a minute per mile faster) and listen to Britney Spear’s “Toxic”, Demi Lovato’s “Sorry not Sorry,” AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” and Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and the Beat.” While I ran, I don’t remember thinking about anything.

For the past few days, I’ve been thinking about creating a syllabus, or a few syllabi, out of the experiments on my running log. Right now, I’m thinking about 3 syllabi: 1 intro course, 1 intermediate course, and 1 advanced course all about movement and creativity and exploring how moving bodies influence creative expression in language (written and spoken). Mainly, I want to focus on moving = running and creative expression = poetry, but I’m also interested in walking/hiking, swimming, biking, and lyric essays. These 3 classes all fit within an interdisciplinary study of ethics/moral selfhood and the exploration of how to be an ethical, political, poetical, embodied self. What do I want to do with these syllabi? Not sure, yet. Maybe teach them. But maybe I see them more as imaginary/fictional syllabi that tell my story of running while writing/writing while running for the past 4 years.

Speaking of imaginary classes, I found this poem via twitter this morning. I love it.

What You Missed That Day You Were Absent from Fourth Grade/ Brad Aaron Modlin

Mrs. Nelson explained how to stand still and listen
to the wind, how to find meaning in pumping gas,

how peeling potatoes can be a form of prayer. She took
questions on how not to feel lost in the dark

After lunch she distributed worksheets
that covered ways to remember your grandfather’s

voice. Then the class discussed falling asleep
without feeling you had forgotten to do something else—

something important—and how to believe
the house you wake in is your home. This prompted

Mrs. Nelson to draw a chalkboard diagram detailing
how to chant the Psalms during cigarette breaks,

and how not to squirm for sound when your own thoughts
are all you hear; also, that you have enough.

The English lesson was that I am
is a complete sentence.

And just before the afternoon bell, she made the math equation
look easy. The one that proves that hundreds of questions,

and feeling cold, and all those nights spent looking
for whatever it was you lost, and one person

add up to something.

What a class! The things listed here are impossible to teach, I suppose, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if our education gave more space for them to be considered? What if we took seriously the idea that the goal/purpose of education is to flourish and to learn how to be caring, responsible people in community with others instead of about individual success and competition and being better than anyone else?

a moment of sound

feb 10, 2021/ 3 degrees, feels like -9

I started this recording at the far end of my backyard. As I made my way to the back door up on the deck, I walked through 3 different versions of crusty snow: 1. about 3 inches of deeper, crusty snow, 2. 1 inch of partly shoveled, tamped down crusty snow, and 3. a thin layer of powdery, crusty snow on the surface of the deck. Each version makes a slightly different sound.

feb 9/RUN

3.15 miles
edmund loop, starting south
5 degrees/ feels like -9
90% snow-covered

Decided to go for it this morning and run outside. Yes! It didn’t feel like it was 9 below to me. My hands were slightly cold for a few minutes, but no frozen toes or legs that feel like concrete or brain freezes from cold air. I know I looked ridiculous with all of my layers. I asked Scott and his answer was not no but “who cares?” which means yes. I wore 2 pairs of running tights, 1 pair of socks, a green shirt, a thicker orange shirt, a lightweight pullover with a hood, a running jacket, a buff, a hat that almost looks like a swim cap, sunglasses, and yak trax on my shoes. The layers were good; I didn’t feel too warm or too cold.

Because it was so cold, I guessed that the river road trail would be empty. It was. Well, almost. I encountered 1 walker and a dog. Nice! I was able to run right above the gorge and check out how frozen the river was (very frozen). The only other thing I remember noticing was a few walkers (not together) walking below on the Winchell Trail. One of them was wearing a bright red jacket–or it might have been pink or orange. I wondered how deep the snow was down there. I crossed over to Edmund on the way back and heard lots of birds. When I heard a woodpecker drumming on a tree, I knew I needed to stop and record it for my moment of sound:

feb 9, 2021/ feels like -9

Love this sound! A few minutes later I heard at least one black-capped chickadee but I decided not to stop again. With the birds and the sun, it felt almost like spring, even in the cold. Maybe it felt more like the idea of spring. Actual spring hardly ever feels as great as the idea of it does. Here in Minnesota, spring is often wet and sloppy from melting snow–and smelly as the earth unthaws. Speaking of smelly, I smelled some fires at the same spot I usually do on Edmund. I’m still not sure but I think the smoke is coming from the gorge, not a house.

feb 8/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 2.3 miles
basement
outside temp: -2 degrees/ feels like -14

Took Delia the dog for her first walk in a few days. It’s cold, but there’s no wind. Briefly thought about running outside, then decided it was still cold and slippery. Another day in the basement. No Dickinson today; the episode wouldn’t load. Watched a few races instead. Listened to my audio book again while I ran. Running while listening to a book and at a slower pace really helps.

Forgot to mention yesterday: I ran with my shadow. I could see her dark shape on the towel I put on the treadmill to cover the display. We waved to each other. Saw her again today. There’s a lightbulb on the ceiling just above and behind me as I run which casts a shadow, sometimes on the towel, other times on a far wall. I like watching the shadow flicker n front of me, slightly off to my left side.

Found a useful quotation about paying attention and the attention economy via twitter this morning:

Attention is a limited resource, so pay attention to where you pay attention.

Howard Rheingold, read in Attention Shoppers

a moment of sound

When I took Delia out for a walk around noon, there were lots of birds chirping and calling:

Feb 8, 2021

feb 7/BIKERUN

bike: 20 minutes
run: 3.4 miles
basement
outside temp: -6 degrees/ feels like -19

Inside again today. I miss the gorge, but I’m not minding the basement. Hoping to build up endurance for longer runs/time outside in the spring. Not sure if my watch is completely accurate, but it said my average heart rate for the 33 minutes/ a little less than 10 min mile pace was 144 bpm! For someone who usually averages 170 bpm (but often gets up into the 180s), 144 is great–probably one of my lowest averages ever. Lower heart rate = more aerobic activity = less injuries (hopefully). I think it helped that I was listening to a good audio book (8 Perfect Murders) and that I covered the treadmill display with a towel so I couldn’t see the time. I only checked the time twice: first, when I got to the end of a chapter (almost 17 mins in) and then when I thought I might almost be done (33 mins in). Very nice to get lost in a book, and to listen to it instead of looking at it. Today is a bad eye day; it is more difficult to see as my eyes struggle to focus on letters. I think it’s hard because of how bright it is outside–so much blinding white!–and because I’ve been looking at a screen too much.

Before I ran, I biked. Watched most of the 4th episode of Dickinson. This one is about Emily and her efforts to protect her beloved oak tree from being cut down to make way for progress/a railroad. She travels with George (the student editor of the Amherst College paper who is in love with her) to Concord to enlist Thoreau’s help. She was in Thoreau’s cabin–having been escorted there by his mother who was collecting his laundry to wash–asking him for help when I finished my bike workout. This show’s take on Thoreau: he’s a douchey, over-privileged poser who is pampered by the women in his life: his mother does his laundry, his sister is always baking him his favorite cookies. Earlier in the episode, as Emily and George travel to Concord by train, they discuss marriage. Emily’s take: marriage sucks for women but is great for men. Their wives do all the work–taking care of the house, the kids, while they get to do “whatever their heart’s desire.” I wonder if either Emily’s opinion or Thoreau’s douchiness will change in the next 10 minutes, which is what I have left in the episode. And, will she be able to stop the railroad from being built in her backyard woods? I’ll see tomorrow.

At the beginning of the episode, Emily recites one of my favorite poems of hers:

In the name of the Bee –
And of the Butterfly –
And of the Breeze – Amen!

Then she reads Walden by Thoreau. I’ve read bits of it, but maybe I should read the entire book?

a moment of sound

This is what -4 degrees/ feels like -14 at 6:05 PM on my back deck sounds like:

feb 7, 2021

Aside from my coat rustling a few times, all I hear is cold. I’m glad I didn’t have to be out here too long, but for the 5 minutes I was–taking out the trash, then standing on the deck, recording–I enjoyed breathing in the cold, fresh air. So quiet and glowing blue in the twilight.

feb 6/BIKERUN

bike: 13 minutes
run: 3.25
basement
outside temp: 0 degrees/ feels like -18

A windy arctic hellscape out there. You don’t even have to feel the air to know it’s cold, you can just look at how bright it is. In Minnesota in the winter: super bright = super cold. It is supposed to be this cold for the next 10 days. Maybe if/when it’s not so bright or windy, I will venture out there.

I did go outside briefly to record my moment of sound:

Feb 6, 2021

This is how crunching, cracking, creaking snow sounds when it -1, feels like -19.

Did a short bike ride while I finished the 3rd, “house party” episode of Dickinson. Slowly, I am appreciating it more and understanding my reactions to it. Here’s a scene that I like and don’t like at the same time:

After their parents leave for an overnight trip to Boston, Emily tells her younger sister Lavinia and older brother Austin: “We need to throw one of our classic Dickinson house parties!”

Austin: This is going to be a disaster.
Emily: Parties are supposed to be disasters Austin. Parties are like shipwrecks. You should emerge from them soaking wet. Out of breath. And helplessly disoriented.

This scene made me laugh. After that, my reaction: no thanks to shipwrecks and getting soaked. I don’t mind the disorientation, but not when it’s the result of such tumult and destruction. Part of me worries I’m too much of a square (while another part of me doesn’t care if I am a square), but more of me is tired of this narrow definition of exuberant passion as reckless, destructive abandon–destructive to self and others. I want to see other ways of being exuberant that aren’t tragic. Not sure that makes sense, but it’s enough for now.

After the bike, I ran while listening to my latest audio book: 8 Perfect Murders by Peter Swanson. It’s good. At one point, the narrator (who may or may not be a murderer) reflects on his love for making lists, asking, “Why does everything need to be a list? What compels us to do that?” His answer: lists fill a void, give us meaning. This answer makes me think of Umberto Eco’s interview: We Like Lists Because We Don’t Want to Die. It’s funny that this list discussion came up in the book because right before heading downstairs to work out, I was thinking about lists and why I like them–why do I like them? Here are 3 reasons I quickly wrote in my plague notebook:

Why I Like Lists

  • Easier for me to see (with my fading central vision)
  • Open-ended, always room for another addition to the list
  • They led me back to poetry: I took my first ever poetry class in 2017, even though I was scared of poetry and didn’t think I was really into it, because the title of the class was: Please Add to this List. I loved the class and discovered I loved and needed poetry.

Today (and yesterday) have been fun, creative days. I’m starting to think about connections in my work and how to possibly return to a project I put away right as trimp (which is what I call him now) was beginning his efforts to destroy everything. I have some more ideas about the Undisciplined Dossier and my haunting question: Am I Still a Teacher. More thoughts soon…

feb 5
bike: 32 minutes

Since I didn’t run yesterday, I didn’t do a log entry. Still, I biked and watched Dickinson–the end of episode 2, beginning of episode 3. I also did my hip strengthning exercises, which I’m hoping will help with my weaker left hip. And I recorded my moment of sound.

feb 5, 2021

This is how it sounds when it feels like it is -6. Brr.

feb 4/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement

2 or 3 inches of snow + wind + 3 5k runs in a row + wanting to watch more of Dickinson while I biked = basement workout. Finished the first episode of Dickinson then started the second one while I biked. It’s growing on me, but I am still not sold on it. I don’t really like this version of Dickinson as quirky, eccentrically cool, selfish, and bratty. I keep intending to write more about what I don’t like, but get stuck. Maybe I can figure it out by the end of the 3rd episode? Or maybe by then I’ll be fine with not having to figure it out. Then I ran while listening to a spotify playlist: Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and the Beat”, Harry Style’s “Canyon Moon”, and Justin Timberlake’s “What Goes Around.” Nice.

After I was done, I took my shoes off and when I stood up I could feel my right kneecap slip out of the groove. No big deal; I pushed it back in place. It’s fine and I am used to it (mostly), but it is still unsettling and almost always unexpected. No warning. No particular movement that causes it. To be safe, I iced my knee for 15 minutes after I was done. Oh, the body. I have put in a lot of physical and mental work these last five years learning to adjust to a body very slowly falling apart. Some of this adjustment involves resignation, but more of it involves admiration as my body continues to work, despite its limits. After writing this last paragraph, I paused to recite (still from memory) Rita Dove’s wonderful poem, Ode to My Right Knee: O, obstreperous one!

Earlier today as I did the dishes, I listened to the latest On Being: an interview with ornithologist Drew Lanham. So wonderful! I was particularly struck by this part of the conversation:

“The birds know who they are. They don’t need you to tell them…“ Yes!

[Orinthologist Drew Lanham responding to Krista Tippet’s confession that she doesn’t know the names of birds and is ashamed of not knowing] 

Well, it’s not a problem. There’s no shame in not knowing the name of a bird. If it’s a redbird to you, it’s a redbird to you. At some point, as a scientist, it’s important for me to be able to identify birds by accepted common names and Latin names and those things. But then I revert frequently to what my grandmother taught me, because, I say, the birds know who they are. They don’t need you to tell them that.

But over time, when we relax into a thing and maybe just being with a bird, then your brain kind of relaxes, it loosens, and things soak in. And I think that’s the key with a lot of learning. But not getting the name right immediately does not in any way diminish their ability to appreciate “the pretty,” as Aldo Leopold talks about. And so seeing that bird and saying, “Oh my God, what is that? Look at it,” and you’re looking at it, and you can see all of these hues, and you can watch its behavior, and you may hear it sing — well, in that moment, it’s a beautiful thing, no matter what its name is.

Sometimes, what I try to get people to do is to disconnect for a moment from that absolute need to list and name, and just see the bird. Just see that bird. And you begin to absorb it, in a way, in a part of your brain that I don’t know the name of, but I think it’s a part of your brain that’s also got some heart in it. And then, guess what? The name, when you do learn it, it sticks in a different way.

take a moment to not know and just see the bird, be with the bird. I love this idea and I think I’d like to turn it into an assignment. I agree with Lanham about a lot here. Right now, I’m thinking about the idea of relaxing and not trying to immediately know the bird but slowly let it sink in through a new form of knowing that involves a “a part of your brain that’s also got some heart in it.” To me, this shifts away from the drive to know (to conquer, to possess) and towards a desire to feel and connect. Knowing is not about mastering, but becoming acquainted with, getting to know.

Continuing this discussion, Lanham discusses the power and violence of naming and classifying:

…thinking about who gets to tell the story and the names — and so I’m intensely interested in language and what different people call things, and these names and what names mean. So that Indigenous and First Nations people, who have all of these languages, and who a raven is to one nation versus who the raven is to another nation or people within that nation. So all of that is important, I think, for us to pay attention to, and all of those are different ornithologies.

In Western science, we boil down to Latin binomial and to genotype and phenotype; and all of that is critical, and it’s important in what we do as scientists. But I think, again, broadening the scope of vision so that we see the big picture — we need to understand who birds are to others, what land is to others; that if my ancestors were forced into nature and hung from trees, I might not have the same interest in going out into the forest and naming the trees.

Wow. Such an important discussion and reminder when thinking about what harm knowing and naming can do. Speaking of naming, here is a map of Minneapolis-St. Paul in Dakota and Ojibwe

a moment of sound

On the back deck, as the wind picks up and the cold moves in. Some people talking in the alley, the scare rods spinning, a few cars rushing by.

feb 4, 2021