jan 15/RUN

run 1: 2.5 miles
river road, south/north
21 degrees
50% snow-covered

Such a beautiful morning for a run! Not too cold or too windy. A few flurries in the air. I’m planning to go to stadium running tonight with Scott, but I couldn’t resist getting out by the gorge this morning. It’s supposed to be ridiculously cold tomorrow morning and then lots of snow on Friday. I need to enjoy the clear path while I can. Running south today, I was able to admire the oak savanna from above. Don’t remember the trees, just the bare white stretching out. Oh–and the sound of a kid laughing and an empty stroller parked at the top of the trail that leads down into the savanna. Looked down at the river and noticed the variation in color–a pale blue then brown. Realized the blue was a thin layer of ice, the brown open water. Is that right? I’m pretty sure, but I debated it for a minute in my head. I was too far away and moving too fast to be sure. Admired the beautiful curve of the retaining wall above the ravine near the 44th street parking lot. Thought about trying out a bit of the Winchell Trail but wimped out. Too much snow. Heard groups of kids out on the playgrounds of the 2 schools I passed, out for recess.

run 2: 3.25 miles
us bank stadium

Ran at the stadium with Scott. Again, not together, but at the same time and in the same place. Encountered a wonderful human in the elevator on the way upstairs. Long white hair, a ice skating/ roller skating skirt, cool rollerblades, a mustache maybe? Scott said he’s seen them roller blading by the river a lot in green tights. Not sure if I have. They got off the elevator before us, planning to roller blade instead of run. My younger self would have loved to roller blade (or roller skate) there. In 4th grade, way back in 1984, I was the roller skating queen of Salem, VA (at least in my own head). Went to the rink as many Saturdays as I could.

They were playing much better music today–“rock and roll ain’t noise pollution” RUSH, the Police–but I still ran with my headphones. Made sure to look down at the field, which was being prepared for an upcoming monster truck rally, and out the window at downtown. Realized why I hadn’t looked out these windows on Monday. It’s at the narrowest part of the route and I was too busy paying attention to not running into carts or other runners.

Not sure what the floor of the concourse is made of–concrete?–but it’s harder on the legs. The first mile felt awkward as I tried to adjust to the increased pounding my calves were experiencing.

Yesterday, I was skimming through Theodore Roethke’s book on poetry and craft and found these:

To day there’s no time for the
mistakes of a long and slow
development: dazzle or die.

Dazzle or die.

Are there dangers? Of course.
There are dangers every time I
open my mouth, hence at
times when I keep it shut, I try
to teach by grunts, sighs,
shrugs.

jan 14/RUN

3.2 miles
trestle turn around
27 degrees
100% slushy loose snow-covered

It snowed a few inches on Sunday, a few more last night. Not enough to plow but enough to cause problems on the path. Wore my yak trax and that helped. Except for the bad stretch between the lake street bridge and the trestle. It’s always windy and the path is always covered. Nearing the trestle, my legs felt really tired from all of the sliding around I was doing. I stopped to take a break and put my headphones in. This seems to be a trend: running one way with no headphones, the other with them in. Not sure if I like this habit. It’s harder to listen to the gorge with headphones in.

the daily delight

Just after I reached the river, running on the bike path near the road, I heard a shimmering shaking sound as the wind blew roughly through some dead leaves on the trees closer to the gorge. It was my friends, the Welcoming Oaks! I imagined that they were calling out to me, “Hi friend, we miss you. When will you run on the walking path near us again?”

a strange image

With a quick glance down, the river looked like a brown wall to me. Flat and vertical instead of horizontal. So strange. Looking again, for longer, it stopped being a wall.

the daily walker

Perhaps the biggest reason I take note of and remember the Daily Walker is that he is always by the gorge walking. No matter what the weather. Usually wearing 2 long sleeved shirts and no coat. Rarely a hat. Since I started writing in this log, I’ve seen him almost every time I’ve ran. I admire his consistency and aspire to be him in a few decades. But there is another reason I take note of him: his gait. I’m not sure what happened to him–maybe he had a stroke?–but his arm swing–I think his left arm–is very exaggerated. It swings out wide. This swinging motion is how I can see that it is him. Without it, I’m not sure I would remember him. Even after passing him hundreds of times. I hardly ever remember faces anymore because I can’t see them clearly. I rely on other features–hair, clothes, how a body moves. As I near someone on the path, I always look for the tell-tale swing and I know it is him. Today he was there and we greeted each other.

A few days ago, I watched the short documentary, Notes on Blindness. Wow! Discovered that it’s been turned into a longer documentary and that it’s on Netflix. Cool. I’ll need to watch that soon. At some point in the film while discussing how we can’t see or remember his wife’s or kids’ faces, Hull asks,

To what extent is the loss of the image of the face tied up with the loss of the image of the self and with the consequent feeling of being a ghost or a mere spirit?

I can still see the outline of faces and haven’t lost my memory of ones important to me, but this idea of losing a sense of the self–at least a self beside other selves–because I can’t see faces, resonates for me. When I don’t recognize family members’ and friends’ faces, I feel less human, more spectral.

jan 13/RUN

3.3 miles
U.S. Bank Stadium

Did another stadium run with Scott. We didn’t run together, but ran at the same time, in the same place. There weren’t too many people there. Mostly groups of runners. What do I remember? At the start, it felt awkward, like my legs weren’t moving quite right. Slowly it got better. There is a beautiful view of downtown Minneapolis from all of the big windows. Pretty sure I didn’t look at it even once. Also didn’t look down at the field while I was running. Didn’t really look at anything. I do remember feeling strange and dreamy, running around an almost empty stadium. And like I was running a bit too fast around mile 2. Following (20ft behind) a woman in gray who was running slightly faster than me. Passing another woman in gray multiple times who was running way slower than me.

This weekend I got some great recommendations from twitter about vision loss, including Eye Trouble by Alice Mattison. She has macular dystrophy, while I have cone dystrophy. I appreciate how she writes concretely about her specific vision quirks and her feelings around them. I’d like to do this too.

Also, randomly on twitter:

A tweet about the relationship between wonder and urgency in socially conscious art. Does it have too much wonder, no urgency, no bite? Does it have too much urgency and no wonder?

And a recommendation for a podcast about noise called Field Noise: “Field Noise is a show about the role of sound in our everyday lives. It’s a show about people who make sounds and people who listen to them. It’s a show about music and noise and silence and the politics of those categories. It’s a show about how disability, gender, race, and class are central to what we think about as “technology.” And it’s a show that is very much still finding its voice.”

I love twitter for recommendations on essays, poems, documentaries. I dislike it for almost everything else–well, I also like the random threads when people share stories about their childhood. 10 years ago, I taught students how to use twitter and wrote/taught about its ethical possibilities. Now, I mostly think it’s broken and confusing. Why is it no longer in real time? Why does responding to a thread seem so difficult? Why is it the word count gone? And, of course, why is Trump not banned yet?

jan 12/RUN

4.2 miles
to the falls and back
17 degrees/ feels like 5
25% ice and snow covered

Reached the river and turned right instead of left and headed to the falls. Today the river was blue. Grayish blue. Steel blue. Maybe Copenhagen blue? I can’t trust my color sense these days. Sometimes bright pink looks yellow or green looks gold. Regardless of what color you would call it, I’ll stick with steel blue. Beautiful. A few less ice floes down here, south of the lake street bridge. The path was stained a chalky white, the hard frozen snow brown. Sometimes it was difficult to see what was clear and what was not.

The falls were wonderful. Reaching the far end of the park, by the benches and fountain with Longfellow’s “Song of Hiawatha” etched on them, I heard the dim roar of the falls still flowing. Rounding the corner, the roar suddenly became louder. I stopped at the stone edge for a minute and marveled at the frozen columns of ice and the water falling beside them. Put it my headphones, turned around, and ran home. Felt strong and happy to be outside on a clear path.

Did Rise/ Jessica Rae Bergamino

Did tear along. 
Did carry the sour heave 
of memory. Did fold my body 
upon the pillow’s curve, 
did teach myself to pray. 
Did pray. Did sleep. Did choir 
an echo to swell through time. 
Did pocket watch, did compass. 
Did whisper a girl from the silence 
of ghost. Did travel on the folded map 
to the roaring inside. Did see myself 
smaller, at least, stranger, 
where the hinge of losing had not yet 
become loss. Did vein, did hollow 
in light, did hold my own chapped hand. 
Did hair, did makeup, did press 
the pigment on my broken lip. 
Did stutter. Did slur. Did shush 
my open mouth, the empty glove. 
Did grace, did dare, did learn the way 
forgiveness is the heaviest thing to bare. 
Did grieve. Did grief. Did check the weather, 
choose the sweater, did patch the jeans 
worn out along the seam. Did purchase, 
did pressure, did put the safety on the scissors. 
Did shuttle myself away, did haunt, did swallow 
a tongue of sweat formed on the belly 
of a day-old glass. Did ice, did block, 
did measure the doing. Did carry. 
Did return. Did slumber, did speak. 
Did wash blood from the bitten nail, 
the thumb that bruised. Did wash 
the dirt-stained face, the dirt-stained 
sheets. Did take the pills. Did not 
take the pills. Cut the knots 
from my own matted hair.

Love the repetition of this poem and the relentless “did” only stopped on the second to last line. Love the telling of a story and the expressing of feelings through the mundane listing of what she did.

jan 11/ RUN

4 miles
trestle turn around + extra
10 degrees/ feels like 0
40% ice-covered

Brr. Colder today than it has been for a while. I was fine with lots of layers. For most of the run, there were big strips of bare pavement. They were stained white from the salt or sand of whatever it was that they put down a few days ago and I kept thinking it was snow or ice instead of bare pavement. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker and a few other runners. Noticed the river and loved how arctic it looked. Bigger ice floes and thick water that seemed stuck.

The thing I remember most about the run was near the end, heading south, when the wind was not quite gently rushing through the trees and I heard a shimmering sound as the wind rustled the dead leaves. This felt strange and out of season, more like a noise I would hear in the summer or fall, and I imagined that it was much warmer outside. Almost tricked myself.

HIPPOPOTOMONSTROSESQUIPPEDALIOPHOBIA/ Aimee Nezhukumatathil

—The fear of long words

On the first day of classes, I secretly beg

my students Don’t be afraid of me. I know

my last name on your semester schedule

is chopped off or probably misspelled—

or both. I can’t help it. I know the panic

of too many consonants rubbed up

against each other, no room for vowels

to fan some air into the room of a box

marked Instructor. You want something

to startle you? Try tapping the ball

of roots of a potted tomato plant

into your cupped hand one spring, only

to find a small black toad who kicks

and blinks his cold eye at you,

the sun, a gnat. Be afraid of the x-rays

for your teeth or lung. Pray for no

dark spots. You may have

pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis:

coal lung. Be afraid of money spiders tiptoeing

across your face while you sleep on a sweet, fat couch.

But don’t be afraid of me, my last name, what language

I speak or what accent dulls itself on my molars.

I will tell jokes, help you see the gleam

of the beak of a mohawked cockatiel. I will

lecture on luminescent sweeps of ocean, full of tiny

dinoflagellates oozing green light when disturbed.

I promise dark gatherings of toadfish and comical shrimp

just when you think you are alone, hoping to stay somehow afloat.

I love Aimee Nezhukumatathil. She is one of my favorite poets. And I love this poem and how it enabled me to learn a new word: hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia. Very useful. But how cruel to make the term for a fear of big words such a monstrous, imposing word!

jan 10/ BIKERUNBIKE

bike: 30 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 1.25 miles
treadmill, basement

The weather isn’t too cold (at least for me) this morning or too blustery, but I decided to stay inside and do more biking, less running to rest my sore legs. Now as I write this I feel a little regret. Winter runs in the cold are the best. Why didn’t I run outside?

While biking, I watched part of the first episode of the netflix doc series: Cheer. It’s fascinating and freaking me out. They take so many risks with their bodies. I wonder what the long term effects of these risks and the injuries they get are? Will the series address this at some point?

When I was younger, I never thought about my body. But after I had 2 kids, my mom died too young, and I started running and open water swimming, I became more aware of its fragility and developed a need to protect it and be careful with it.

Living in the Body/ Joyce Sutphen

Body is something you need in order to stay
on this planet and you only get one.
And no matter which one you get, it will not
be satisfactory. It will not be beautiful
enough, it will not be fast enough, it will
not keep on for days at a time, but will
pull you down into a sleepy swamp and
demand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.

Body is a thing you have to carry
from one day into the next. Always the
same eyebrows over the same eyes in the same
skin when you look in the mirror, and the
same creaky knee when you get up from the
floor and the same wrist under the watchband.
The changes you can make are small and
costly—better to leave it as it is.

Body is a thing that you have to leave
eventually. You know that because you have
seen others do it, others who were once like you,
living inside their pile of bones and
flesh, smiling at you, loving you,
leaning in the doorway, talking to you
for hours and then one day they
are gone. No forwarding address.

I’m mostly okay with my body. Together we’ve done some great things. I guess sometimes I wish my kneecaps would stay in their grooves and not temporarily displace or my central vision wasn’t almost completely destroyed or my legs didn’t get unbearably restless when I wake up in the middle of the night, which happens a lot. But I think I feel less like Joyce Sutphen and her body as (treasured) burden, and more like Linda Hogan in Rapture: “Oh for the pleasure of living in a body.”

jan 9/RUN

5 miles
franklin hill turn around
29 degrees/ feels like 20
50% ice and snow-covered

Love these outdoor runs when the path is not completely ice-covered and I get to run for almost an hour! Just past the welcoming oaks stopped for a minute to let the parks mini-truck drive by on the path. Noticed later that they had put some dirt down on the path. Hooray! Hopefully that will make it easier to run on. For much of the run north, felt like I was in a dream, floating along on the path.

What I remember about today? The River

Wasn’t sure how long I would run but decided to go all the way to the bottom of the Franklin hill to get a closer look at the river and all the ice on it. So desolate and other-worldly looking! Studded with chunks of ice and thick water that wasn’t moving or barely moving. Moving at a glacial pace? Thought about this phrase and how (sadly, disturbingly) it’s losing its potency as a metaphor now that glaciers are melting (and melting so much faster than expected).

Did a quick google search and found this article: Slang is changing at a glacial pace

The thick water reminded me of simple syrup–clear but thick and barely flowing. Or maybe like a partly melted slushie? Still very cold and a little frozen but more liquid than ice. I’ll have to keep looking closer at the river to see when/if it completely freezes over.

After turning around at the bottom of the Franklin hill, I ran back up the hill, stopping at 3 miles for a minute to turn on a playlist. Encountered several dogs and their humans, some walking, some running. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker. After I finished running, stopped at the split rail fence above the ravine to stretch. With the temperature almost at freezing, the water dripping out of the sewer pipe smelled rotten.

dead metaphors

Yesterday I posted something about metaphors, their (sometimes) entrenched political meanings, and how they can limit instead of expand our imagination. Today, I’m thinking about metaphors again as I read the “Slang is Changing” article I mentioned above.

During the Little Ice Age, which stretched from the 14th to the 19th century, the median Northern Hemisphere winter was significantly colder than it is today. Glaciers more often advanced than retreated, sometimes wiping out communities as they moved. Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem ‘Mont Blanc’ (1817) captures the menacing aura that adhered to those frozen rivers of ice:

… The glaciers creep
Like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains,
Slow rolling on …
in scorn of mortal power

Shelley saw glaciers as predatory, immortal forces, eternal beings, before whose might mere humans quaked. But global warming has flipped that perception. We are now more likely to view glaciers as casualties of humanity’s outsize, planet-altering powers.

In “Politics and the English Language” (1946), Orwell laid out six rules for writers, the first of which declares: “Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.” An inert metaphor such as “hotbed of radicalism” conveys very little: We can no longer feel the blazing temperature between the bed sheets, just as—prior to public awareness of global warming—we’d stopped noticing the icy fossil poetry in “glacial pace.”

We speak routinely of carbon footprints, of wiping species off the face of the Earth, and of greenhouse gases, but we no longer see the feet, the hands, and the backyard sheds. As consciousness of climate change has grown, a new class of dead metaphors has entered the English language. We speak routinely of carbon footprints, of wiping species off the face of the Earth, and of greenhouse gases, but we no longer see the feet, the hands, the faces and the backyard sheds that were once vivid when those phrases were newly coined.

jan 8/ RUN

3.75 miles
us bank stadium

Ran with Scott downtown at the stadium. Listened to my playlist because the music they play there is annoying. What do I remember from the run? It felt effortless, like I was flying for the first few laps. Got a little harder towards the end. Lots of runners and walkers. Some person working there who kept adjusting the posts they had up to separate the lanes. Dim lights, difficult to see. Successfully did not run into anyone. No interesting thoughts or encounters.

Really appreciate this discussion of metaphors and the political from Heather Christle’s discussion of her writing/revising process on Guernica’s Back Draft.

on metaphors and the political

Heather Christle: It’s dangerous. It can be fantastic to see the illumination of one thing in another, but it can be misleading as well. There are times when the metaphors that I’m thinking about aren’t coming from a strangeness but are coming from systems that take strict limits to the imagination. They might present themselves as acts of imagination, but they’re strict and limited. I’m trying to learn to see them for what they are. Writing this crying book has taught me, again, the joy of the connection between things, but also the danger of always seeing one thing in terms of another.

Guernica: It sounds like your answer is gesturing toward the political.

Heather Christle: Well, I think that metaphor and politics are deeply intertwined, and I think that the most dangerous metaphors are the ones that are invisible for us—the ones that people do constant political work to make visible. And I think that part of the work that I’ve been trying to do recently is to see where the imaginative life and the political life intersect, and how they might provide a way for us to live other than as we are.