indoor bike: 30 minutes
basement, bike stand
43 degrees
Decided to give my slippy and slide-y kneecap another day to recover from yesterday’s run. It seems fine, but I’m being extra cautious. I want to reach my 1000 miles again this year. I biked and watched an old 10,000 meter race — Worlds, Beijing, 2015. Why does 2015 seem so long ago?
Next week (hopefully), we’re re-joining the YWCA so I can swim this winter and Scott can run. Hooray for less basements, more pools and pool poems, and a new batch of regulars! Don’t worry, I’m still planning to run outside. Winter running is my favorite.
Yesterday, I discovered a new journal on twitter: Tiny Wren Lit. They publish very small poems — up to 15 lines, with a max of 25 characters (including spaces) per line. On the 15th, they’re open for submissions for an issue with the theme, Self-Portrait As. I’ve started working on reshaping a few of my poems to fit this theme. Very cool. In the process of thinking about this, I have (I hope!) come up with my fall project: a series of small poems playing with the themes of water and stone. I’ve been thinking about water and stone for a long time; they are 2 of the constants in my writing/moving/life. Sometimes I feel like water, sometimes stone. I’m excited!
And, here’s a beautiful poem I found, also on twitter:
Forest of Beginnings/ Mai Der Vang
Even the sky knows not to make promises of water, and the air knows not to dream the onset of rain. Even the animal who forgets the touch of a distant liquid cold waits without knowing. Earth is picking up her bones. Earth is tucking in her babies. Sleep well, little loves, sleep as you’ve never slept so you may wake as you’ve never woke. This is the earth that chants. This is the earth that grows teeth in the storm. This is the earth voicing each twig and leaf, every stem and stone. This is the earth that opens like a room. The ground sleeps through another season of drought. The land burrows further into exile, sinking upward, heaven to the ground, where bodies of hemlock and pine, cedar and fir, no longer cast old roots but tiptoe their arms around shrubs and metal stakes. Still, the land gives, the field grows, and the harvest enters when it is called. Flora of these hills and meadows are all but springing their desires under the rising moon. Leaves tended by hands that tended leaves from another mountain on another shore in another war. War made by hands of another for ownership of the mountain before leaving to new shores. I did not know when I birthed you that flight had been etched on our tongues. I did not know the jungle would take us far from our home, bring us to California with visions of new dirt and the brightest green in our blood.