As of 2024, another streak of posting every year on this day.
jan 30, 2017 / 4 miles / 30 degrees
I wrote about slipping on the sidewalk while walking Delia. I still remember it, can picture where I was — in front of my neighbor/band mate Amanda’s house. And I remember that moment right before the fall, when I almost righted myself but couldn’t.
jan 30, 2018 / 2 miles / ywca track
Swam then ran on the track at the Y. Wrote about a guy with an awkward running gait and wondered how my gait looks to others.
jan 30, 2019 / biking/ -20 degrees, feels like -50 / basement
Too cold! Perhaps the coldest feels like temperature I remember ever enduring. Did I go outside in it all? I hope not!
jan 30, 2020 / 4.2 miles / 21 degrees / 100% snow-covered
Posted Vincent Huidobro’s Natural Forces and thought about how my vision can often unmake instead of make worlds.
Such power with these glances! I read a little something about Huidobro and his belief in creacionismo and man as god/godlike and “a space where the poet could assume a role as the divine”. Wow, oftentimes because of my vision I feel the opposite with my glances: I’m unmaking the world. Oh–I want to think about this some more! Here’s some info about this poet from a google doodle on his 127th birthday.
Copied the poem into my notebook and wrote: The power of the poet! The power of one who notices, who pays attention! Love this idea of paying attention as a way to imagine/create a world. Is it possible to disentangle this making of a world from hubris and pride and power over?
Yes, is this possible? Can Lugones’ loving perception do this?
jan 30, 2021 / 3.25 miles / basement
I want to return to and rewatch this Livingstone lecture:
While I biked in the basement, I watched this great video lecture by a neuroscientist from Harvard, Margaret Livingston about vision and art. Very fascinating–and something I’ll have to watch a few more times before I get it all. Near the beginning she says,
So if you take anything at all away from this talk tonight, please try to remember: Vision is information processing; it is not image transmission. Your visual system does not just transmit an image of the world up to your brain, because there’s nobody up there to look at an image. There’s nothing up there except nerve cells and all they do is either fire or not fire. So seeing is whether some neurons are firing and some neurons are not and what information those cells are extracting by the firing patterns from the pattern of light that lands on your retina.
Yes! Vision is not just using your eyes to see an image that gets transmitted to your brain. Vision is a complex series of processes involving light entering your eye through your cornea then landing on the retina, traveling through the optic nerve to the brain where it is processed not merely reproduced.
Also, good job past Sara: you named the audio book you were listening to!
During my run I continued listening to the audio book, The Guest List.
Finally, at the end of the entry I mention my next project: peripheral vision. I keep wanting to focus on this, but I get distracted and work on something else:
Working earlier today on some notes about vision, I think I figured out my new project: peripheral vision. So much to think about literally and metaphorically! I was inspired by a line I came up with:
If central vision represents the trees, peripheral vision is the forest. I will never lose the forest, even as the trees fade further away.
jan 30, 2022 / 2 miles / 22 degrees
A muscle to notice and some exercises to strengthen it:
I discovered the Quadratus Lumborum muscle, which causes lots of problems for runners, and might be why my lower back often hurts. Nice. Never heard of this muscle before. It’s located in the lower back and involves the iliac crest, the lumbar vertebrae, and the 12th rib. Here are some stretches I’m planning to try: Top 5 QL Stretches
jan 30, 2023 / 3.2 miles / basement / outside temp: feels like -15
As, and when, I think about the body and the soul, I should return to Dana Levin’s poem:
Here’s a poem I found on twitter today by Dana Levin about walking and thinking and wandering/wondering and being in and out of a body: A Walk in the Park/ Dana Levin
Also, she mentions Plato’s spindle at the beginning. I think that A.R. Ammons discusses Plato’s spindle in garbage. I should check.