2 miles
dogwood run
50 degrees
Spring! Ran with Scott this morning. Heard lots of different birds — woodpeckers, crows, bluejays, cardinals. Forgot to look down at the river. Talked about being colorblind and an article he sent me the other day, Designing for Colorblindness. Ran on more of the walking path. Greeted Mr. Morning! Anything else? I’m writing this at the end of the day (after driving to St. Peter to bring FWA back to school), so I can’t remember.
A. R. Ammons’ garbage
Yesterday afternoon, I kept reading and got through a few more sections (4 – most of 7). With Schuyler’s Hymn to Life, I focused on each section at a time. For Ammons, I think I’ll be jumping around more. Here’s something from section 3 I’d like to think about on my run:
note: after writing this sentence above, I asked Scott if he wanted to run together. He said yes and I forgot about Ammons as we ran and talked.
scientific and materialistic notion of the
spindle of energy: when energy is gross,
rocklike, it resembles the gross, and when
fine it mists away into mystical refinements,
sometimes passes right out of material
recognizability and becomes, what?, motion,
spirit, all forms translate into energy, as at
the bottom of Dante’s hell all motion is
translated into form: so, in value systems,
physical systems, artistic systems, always this
same disposition from the heavy to the light,
and then the returns form the light downward
to the staid gross: stone to wind, wind to
stone, there is no need for “outside,” hegemonic
derivations of value: nothing need be invented
or imposed: the aesthetic, scentific, moral
are organized like a muff along this spindle,
might as well relax: thus, the job done, the
mind having found its way through and marked
out the course, the intellect can be put by:
one can turn to tongue, crotch, boob, navel,
armpit, rock, slit, roseate rearend
I’m thinking about the relationship between mind, body, and spirit here, and then where I see motion fitting in. The idea of motion as spirit is interesting to me. Because I rely on peripheral vision, I’ve been thinking a lot about motion (which is detected in your peripheral). In terms of motion, I’m also thinking about my restlessness and my inability to sit still for too long, especially at night. Waking up every few hours to move around before going back to sleep. And I’m thinking about motion is relation to color, especially with my study of the ancient greeks and their ideas about color and the idea of “the glitter effect” (See The Sea Was Never Blue).