march 27, 2018 / 4 miles / 35 degrees
I remember getting this nose bleed —
About 5 minutes into my run, I noticed my nose was bleeding. I always bring a kleenex but, of course, I didn’t have one today. Thought about turning around and going back home but I didn’t. I wanted to keep running. So I pulled over, looked at the river, hoped my nose would stop and then started running again.
Reading aoubt pulling over and looking at the river, I think I remember where I was: near the old stone steps. I also remember wondering if my face was bloody if people were concerned by or for me. Sometimes, even now, 6 years later, when my nose is running, I’ll wipe my nose on my sleeve and check to make sure it’s not blood — maybe it should, but this sort of thing does not gross me out or make me think I’m gross.
march 27, 2022 / 4 miles / 16 degrees, feels like 6
a word to remember . . .
petrichor (pe TRI cor): a pleasant smell that frequently accompanies the first rain after a long period of warm, dry weather. Found on a twitter thread about favorite words rarely heard.
a poem to revisit . . .
More of this, Please / Emily Sernaker
some words about water to remember from Sunbeams . . .
For many of us, water simply flows from a faucet, and we think little about it beyond this immediate point of contact. We have lost a sense of respect for the wild river, for the complex workings of a wetland, for the intricate web of life that water supports.
Sandra Postel
Whoever owned this place, these cities, whoever owned those glittering glassy office buildings in midtown filled with the purr of money turning over, those refineries over the river in Jersey with their flames licking the air, they gave nothing back. They took and took and left their garbage choking the air, the river, the sea itself.
Marge Piercy
I love [water’s] flash and gleam, its music, its pliancy and grace, its slap against my body; but I fear its strength. I fear it as my ancestors must have feared the natural forces that they worshipped. . . . We make it all so easy, any child in school can understand it — water rises in the hills, it flows and finds its own level, and man can’t live without it. But I don’t understand it. I cannot fathom its power.
Nan Shepherd
From the beginning of creation there has been this feud between land and water: the dry earth slowly and silently adding to its domain and spreading a broader and broader lap for its children; the ocean receding step by step, heaving and sobbing and beating its breast in despair.
Rabindranath Tagore
In all the years when I did not know what to believe in and therefore preferred to leave all beliefs alone, whenever I came to a place where living water welled up, blessedly cold and sweet and pure, from the earth’s dark bosom, I felt that after all it must be wrong not to believe in anything.
Sigrid Undset
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.
W.H. Auden, “First Things First”
How could the drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Wisdom of the Sands
march 27, 2023 / 5 miles / 32 degrees
I want to remember this poem — [from this bench I like to call my bench]/ Diane Seuss — and exclamation points and Emily Dickinson.