4.25 miles
river road trail, north/south
50 degrees
In the 40s this morning. I had to turn the heat on. Boo. Still, it was nice weather for a run. Not too much wind, not too warm, sunny. I tried to remember to look at the river, and did at least once. I could barely see it through all of the green. Saw Mr. Morning! Today he waved at me. I think he could tell I was too busy navigating through all of the people to speak. Listend to the world running north, a playlist running south.
10 Things I Noticed
- No rowers
- a big group (10+) of roller skiers, with a coach on a bike in the back
- a biker calling out to his friend: “I love that show!” what show?
- a sliver of blue river through the leaves
- no stacked stones on the ancient rock
- the path felt like it was floating in the trees at the spot where it’s so thick with green above and below that you can tell where the ground or sky are
- passed Mr. Holiday and he said, “well, at least there’s sun”
- clouds in the sky, sometimes covering the sun
- a blue plastic tarp folded up on the ground under the lake street bridge, near the porta potty
- no squirrels or chipmunks or black-capped chickadees or woodpeckers or sewer smells or burnt toast smells or purple flowers but one irritating mosquito bite on the back of my leg
Naming the Heartbeats/ Aimee Nezhukumatathil
I’ve become the person who says Darling, who says Sugarpie,
Honeybunch, Snugglebear—and that’s just for my children.
What I call my husband is unprintable. You’re welcome. I am
his sweetheart, and finally, finally—I answer to his call and his
alone. Animals are named for people, places, or perhaps a little
Latin. Plants invite names for colors or plant-parts. When you
get a group of heartbeats together you get names that call out
into the evening’s first radiance of planets: a quiver of cobras,
a maelstrom of salamanders, an audience of squid, or an ostentation
of peacocks. But what is it called when creatures on this earth curl
and sleep, when shadows of moons we don’t yet know brush across
our faces? And what is the name for the movement we make when
we wake, swiping hand or claw or wing across our face, like trying
to remember a path or a river we’ve only visited in our dreams.