Checking out the On This Day widget again today, on April 19, 2022. So many ideas that I continue to think about are in the log entries from 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2021.
2024: Returning to this page, I‘m adding some thoughts from 2022.
april 19, 2017 / rest
This entry is a summary of what and where and how I’ve run in the 4 months I had been working on this running project so far. Weather, routes, surfaces, races, running venues, bridges, hills, things I’ve heard, things I’ve felt, what I focused on, and who I ran with. It was inspired by Roger Hart’s “Runners,” which I found in the anthology, Runners on Running.
april 19, 2018 / 4 miles / 45 degrees
In this entry, I recalled Jamie Quatro’s excellent piece for the NY Times, Running as Prayer, and tried to think about the inner and outer:
I wanted to think about what happens to the inner and the outer as we run. What is the relationship between the inner (soul? mind? thoughts? imagination?) and the outer (other people, landscapes, the air, the path, trees, the river, the gorge, etc)?
I read the op-ed with the intention of thinking about inner/outer while I ran. In the first mile, I did. I kept thinking about how porous my skin is and how I inhale and exhale the outside air and how my feet strike down on the path and how the inner and outer work with and against each other. And I wondered about what it means to be a self moving through a landscape–when are you just admiring the view, looking down at the river while perched on the edge of the gorge, and when are you a part of that landscape? Am I part of the Mississippi river road path more than the person driving their car next to it because I am moving through the outside air, feeling the path, smelling the melting snow? I want to shout Yes! but why is it the case? Looking down on the river today, I felt connected and removed from it, like I was admiring the scenery. Does my self dissolve in these moments of moving, becoming a part of the path, not feeling anything, just moving and being?
So many good questions here that I’m still considering, and probably will perpetually be considering.
All of these thoughts came to me about 5 minutes in. I tried to hold onto some of them–and maybe I did, fleetingly–but other thoughts about how fast I was running or whether or not my left thigh was working as well as my right one or if I should try to catch up to and pass the runner ahead of me or how to slow down my breathing kept creeping in and taking over. On most of my runs, which last around 36 minutes, I would guess I spend 10% on deep thoughts, 25% on smells/sounds/textures/interesting images and the rest (65%) on mundane running things: form, breathing, pace, possible injuries, how sore my legs are, how to avoid people or debris or other animals on the path. Is that accurate?
I’m interested in this breakdown of what I think about when I’m running. Is is still (or was it ever): 10% deep thoughts + 25% smells/sounds/textures/interesting images + 65% on mundane running things? How can I go about calculating this? Difficult. And, how much of the running time am I not thinking at all?
At the end of the entry, I wrote: Just discovered this amazing short film. — Checked today in 2024 and this film is no longer available for viewing. Bummer.
april 19, 2019 / 5.25 miles / 52 degrees
Some counting to remember to try again: 1 2 3 45 1 2 345 then 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
And, a habit to try forming: stopping, staring, recording thoughts about the river
Above all else, tried to stay focused on the river. Glad I could still see it–the leaves haven’t returned yet. At first it seemed still, not moving. But by the Franklin bridge I noticed its slow descent to the falls. I stopped on the lake street bridge to watch it more closely. Decided to talk into my smart phone. Maybe I can shape some of this into a poem? I’d like to try recording more of these moments this spring. A good way to force myself to slow down my runs.
transcript from recording:
standing here
on the lake street bridge
watching the river water
as it slowly moves
at certain spots it’s shimmering
at other spots
it almost looks like a pale ghost
ghostly ice just under the surface
or muddy swirls near the bottom
the dirt just being loosened
and brought up to the surface
the river is mostly brown and then blue
and everything’s brown
and the water just slowly moves
earlier it seemed
almost dead lifeless so still
and now I can see it’s just slowly
moving closer to the falls
april 19, 2021 / 3.6 miles / 35 degrees
Poems about bobolinks and meditations on cancer — partly because I encountered a poem by someone enduring breast cancer, and partly because a loved one’s cancer had returned. (And, again in 2022, it’s back. Today a biopsy will determine her treatment).
april 19, 2022 / 4.75 miles / 33 degrees
In 2022, I wrote a lot more about the inner and outer. I was focused on dirt that month, so I connected the inner and outer with being rooted.
- Thought about being rooted in a place, then being on the inside or the outside and how being rooted means being both in and out, or neither, at the same time. Just there, part of what’s happening.
- Then, I wondered, Does rooted always mean we’re tethered or stuck in one place, immobile? What would it mean to be rooted in a place while you were moving?
- Then: how are the roots formed? Instead of one solid, thick, sturdy root that’s difficult to cut down, what if we were a network of roots spread throughout the ground, connected and tangled with other? Roots can be networks — shallow and easy to pull out, like weeds, but multiplying and growing when you do that (rhizomes and nodes).
- Getting at the root, radical feminism and the root of oppression, the origin/cause of the problem I often think about the origins of my running story — there is no one root or cause or start, but a series (a network) of reasons.
- Chanted: root root root root/root root root root/ roo ting roo ting/root root root root/root root root root/roo ted root less I like these simple repetitions. I’d like to try chanting these for several minutes, then seeing what other words/ideas/chants might appear.