feb 6/RUN

3.45 miles
river road, south/north
21 degrees / feels like 13
100% snow-covered

White and gray and a little gloomy this morning. Warmer. Not too cold. I was able to wear less layers: 1 pair of gloves instead of 2, one less shirt, no hood only my winter cap. Sometime last night, it snowed — a dusting. Enough to cover the trail, but not enough to make it more difficult to run. Looked down at the river: all white. Looked up at the sky: all white, too. It might have been snowing a little, but it was hard to tell. Mr. Morning! greeted me with an extra enthusiastic “morning!” and a wave. Like I often do, I imagined stopping to say hi and telling him that I call him Mr. Morning! because he always greets me with such delightful enthusiasm. I didn’t. The color of the day: bright, glowing orange. I was wearing it, and several other runners I encountered were too. Saw at least 2 fat tires, one with their bike light on. Overheard 2 walkers talking. One said: “Oh no, I don’t walk to Franklin. I used to run it, but it’s too far to walk. It’s 8 miles.” I wondered why she stopped running, and if she misses it. For 3/4 of the run, I listened to the gorge and my own breathing. For the very last bit, I put in a playlist — “Love is a Battlefield” and “Pressure” — and powered up the hill.

A great run. Always happy and grateful to spend time outside, moving my body by the river.

I’m thinking a lot about “what you see is what you get” and I’m starting to have too many ideas. Getting overwhelmed by possibilities. Maybe I should just watch the Olympics today? Yes, but before that, here are some meanings for whizz from the online OED (for the whizzy in whizzywig/WYSIWYG):

  1. An act, or the action, of whizzing; a sibilant sound somewhat less shrill than a hiss, and having a trace of musical tone like a buzz; a swift movement producing such a sound.
  2. The practice of picking pockets (chiefly in  on the whizz); a pickpocket. slang
  3. intransitive. To make a sound as of a body rushing through the air (see whizz n.1); (of trees) to rustle; (of a burning or hot object) to hiss, sizzle.
  4. To move swiftly with or as with such a sound.
  5.   intransitive. To urinate. slang. (as in, the whizz palace)

Looked up “whizz” in poets.org and found this poem with whizzing hummingbirds:

A Nearly Perfect Morning/ Jessica Greenbaum

It was a nearly perfect morning—bucolic, pastoral—
so I found myself cataloguing my past humiliations.
Really, there was no reason for it! I might as well have
looked for an ant hill to lie down on in a meadow
of goldenrod. I can’t explain it but perhaps I thought
that with the rising sun as my witness, with the catbirds
crows, and whizzing hummingbirds my soundtrack
that I could ameliorate them, neutralize their charges
against me by holding them up to the woods now in wait
for the light to balance on their individual leaves, on
the absorbing vastness of my fortune. The concentric rings
of the spider web have the wiry shine of guitar strings
there’s been so little wind it seems the trees have not
yet shook themselves awake, but we are moving around
this light at such a pace that by now the sun is nested
in the crook of two thin branches that could not hold
anything else. I was barely up to the third count
against my integrity when the whole lake turned white
but I decided it was not aghast, just trying to erase.

Looked up “whizz” on poetryfoundation.org and found this delightfully excessive poem about how water falls at Lodore. To save some space, I’m only including an excerpt:

from The Cataract of Lodore/ Robert Southey

Collecting, projecting,
 Receding and speeding,
 And shocking and rocking,
 And darting and parting,
 And threading and spreading,
 And whizzing and hissing,
 And dripping and skipping,
 And hitting and splitting,
 And shining and twining,
 And rattling and battling,
 And shaking and quaking,
 And pouring and roaring,
 And waving and raving,
 And tossing and crossing,
 And flowing and going,
 And running and stunning,
 And foaming and roaming,
 And dinning and spinning,
 And dropping and hopping,
 And working and jerking,
 And guggling and struggling,
 And heaving and cleaving,
 And moaning and groaning;

And so never ending, but always descending,
 Sounds and motions for ever and ever are blending
 All at once and all o’er, with a mighty uproar, –
 And this way the water comes down at Lodore.

I really like that cataract is another word for waterfall. So many poetic possibilities! Okay, I’m stopping now. Really.