3.25 miles neighborhood in reverse 20 degrees/ feels like 8 15-25% snow and ice covered roads and sidewalks
Not too bad outside, although I had the wind in my face for most of it. A bright, gloomy white this morning. Humid, too–75%. The main road was mostly clear and not crowded. The occasional walker, one biker, a few dogs. The highlight: a cross country skier skiing in the big open stretch between the river road and edmund! I rarely see cross country skiers, so when I do, I’m delighted. Heard several crows cawing, a woodpecker drumming, a saw buzzing. Crossed the river road at 33rd and trudged a few steps through the snow to the split rail fence right above the river. The river! Almost all ice, with a few slashes of open water. The open water wasn’t black like it has been in past winters, but a pale, grayish blue. Tried recording a moment of sound, but the rushing wind and the whooshing cars were all I could hear when I listened back to it. Tried again, after I crossed the road:
Jan 29, 2021
I can hear a black-capped chickadee doing the feebee call and my feet crunching on the crusty snow and cars whizzing by and another bird that makes a two note call that I can’t identify–I looked it up, but I couldn’t find it. I’ll have to keep working on my bird calls.
Thought about running outside again this morning but decided that I should run inside where it felt warmer than 0 and so I could listen to my audio book which is due in 8 days. (As usual, all of my books became available from the library at the same time.) Watched a few random races while I biked, then listened to the audio book, The Guest List, while I ran. I’m not quite sure why I keep reading/listening to books in this Ruth Ware/Paula Hawkins type genre: British, murder, troubled past, terribly toxic friends, forced gatherings. Do I even enjoy them? I guess I do a little because I always finish them, but I hate most of the characters: lost, selfish, never having their shit together. Listening to it this morning did help the 32 minutes on the treadmill go by much faster. The first few minutes were difficult as I thought, how can I stay on here for another 28 minutes? But it got easier. It is still easier (and much more fun) to run outside. I think one of my goals for this winter will be to work on my aerobic base (the long, slow miles at a lower heart rate) so that when it gets warmer and the paths are clearer I will be fit enough to run for an hour. Yes! I miss running for longer distances, traveling farther away from my house beside the river. So much more to write about.
how we see: eyes and brain
For the past few days, I’ve been reviewing how vision works, from when light enters the eye and hits the retina and then travels through the optic nerve to the visual cortex and the occipital lobe. So much jargon–names for parts of the cells and the neurons and the areas of the brain, ways of discussing direction (dorsal, medial, ventral). How much do I need (or want) to know about this process? When does it become too much, a distraction? What I find fascinating, from my limited research, is how, even as scientists use their fancy language to name/classify the parts of the brain and what they do, there is so much they can’t name or understand. I am not dismissing the important work that is/has been done on how we see, but I’m drawn to the limits of that language and knowledge. The mysterious parts. It seems like there is a lot that scientists don’t know about how the brain processes images and visual information. I’m basing this last conclusion mainly off of the lack of recent articles (in the last 10 years) on how we see and the conclusion to this article (it’s from 1993 so it’s old, yet I haven’t found many more recent articles):
Let me try to give you a sense of where we are, says Margaret Livingstone, in an effort to assess the status of visual research today. Take form perception. Human beings are very good at it. We recognize contours, faces, words, a lot of really complicated things. What we understand is that in the retinas, the lateral geniculate bodies, and the first layer of the visual cortex, we code for changes in brightness or color. In the next stage, cells become selective for the orientation of the change–that is, they code for contours, or edges. In some places cells select for the length of the contour. Then, if you go up very high, you find cells selective for certain faces. Livingstone pauses. We know remarkably little about what happens in between. It’s frightening how big a gap there is.
Instead of understanding these gaps as failures to KNOW, I like to think of them as reminders that seeing/vision is so much more than we can or ever will understand. It is complex and can’t be reduced to the simple, naive idea that our eyes see what’s in the world and then our brain correctly communicates that exact image to us. I am not sure this makes sense, but I have been interrupted several times in writing this entry and I think I lost my train of thought. I’ll keep it in and work on it later.
a moment of sound
Listen to those birds! Right outside my front door. It’s 18 degrees, but sounds like spring.
3.2 miles neighborhood in reverse* 10 degrees/ feels like 0 25% snow and ice covered sidewalks and roads
*Normally I run north on 43rd ave, then right on 32nd st to the river, then south on edmund until I turn around at 42nd st, then north on edmund until I reach 35th. Today, I reversed it and added a stretch, running north on the river road trail between 42nd and 38th.
Another wonderful winter run! Felt colder today; was it the humidity? I could feel (and see) water turning to ice on my eyelashes. Not too much wind. There was a point, when I was running south on edmund that I thought, “I’m not feeling any wind. Uh oh. Does that mean it will be in my face when I turn around?” Yes, it does and it was, but never blustery, just persistently cold. Encountered a few more people out there today. Some walkers, some runners, a few dogs. Fairly certain I kept my 6+ feet distance the whole time. It was wonderful to run right above the river, all iced over, a grayish white. Still, stuck, silent. Except for the birds. Heard some black capped chickadees and some others chirping–finches, maybe? This year, I need to learn to identify a few of these birds which currently I only hear as chirps or trills.
Speaking of birds, as I was walking out of my house, I heard a black capped chickadee! Of course I had to make it my moment of sound. I knew it was a good omen for my run.
jan 27, 2021
Discovered this wonderful poem, and wonderful poet, the other day on Instagram:
Status Update/ Rebecca Lindenbery
Rebecca Lindenberg is drinking whisky. Feels guilty. Is caught in one of those feedback loops. Is a blankety-blank. Is a trollop, a floozy, a brazen hussy. Would like to add you as a friend. Would like to add you as an informant. Would like to add you as her dark marauder, as her Lord and Savior. Has trouble with boundaries. Rebecca Lindenberg is keeping lonesomeness at bay with frequent status updates designed to elicit a thumbs-up icon from you. Rebecca Lindenberg likes this, dismisses this with a backhanded wave. Rebecca Lindenberg wraps her legs around this. Has a ball of string you can follow out of her labyrinth. Has this labyrinth. Rebecca Lindenberg has high hopes. Has high blood sugars. Rebecca Lindenberg doesn’t want to upset you. Wants to say what you want to hear. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks of poetry as the practice of overhearing yourself. Rebecca Lindenberg thinks about love. About ribbons unspooling. Rebecca Lindenberg would like to add you as a profound influence. Would like to add you as a loyal assassin. Would like to add you as her date to the reckoning. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers a statue of a faceless girls with shapely feet. Rebecca Lindenberg remembers the Italian for “chicken breasts” is petti di pollo and the world for kilogram is kilo and that a kilo is way too much chicken breast for a family of three. Steals sage from strangers’ gardens. Runs for it. Misses Rome. Misses her family of three. Is lost in her own poem. Rebecca Lindenberg has dreams in which you come back. Rebecca Lindenberg lets it go. Rebecca Lindenberg crescendos and decrescendos. Rebecca Lindenberg is: Hey, you, c’mere. Rebecca Lindenberg is: You are not the boss of me. Rebecca Lindenberg is not the boss of you. Rebecca Lindenberg goes to movies. Needs a bigger boat. Gave you her heart and you gave her a pen. Can’t handle the truth. Rebecca Lindenberg loves the truth. Loves the smell of dirt gathered in water and the sleep-smell of your morning body. Loves her rumpled cat, her jimmied window. Loves long letters. Will write soon.
What a poem! I like the energy and her approach to describing herself. I’d like to put it beside my poem, A Bridge of Saras, which was a homage to Wayne Holloway-Smith’s Some Waynes.
3 miles 43rd ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/dowling, west/47th ave, nw/loop around Howe Elementary 11 degrees/feels like 0 sidewalks and main roads: clear side streets: 100% snow-covered, 1/2 plowed
I love running outside in the winter! There was wind running north, but it didn’t bother me. And I wasn’t too cold. No frozen fingers or toes. I wore my yak trax, which was a bad idea. Most of the sidewalks were clear and dry. I ran in the street as much as I could so I wouldn’t damage the coils of my trax, but it would have been much safer on the sidewalk. Oh well.
a moment of sound
Running south on Edmund, when I reached 38th street, I crossed over the river road, walked down the steps to the Winchell Trail and admired the gorgeous river for a moment. Decided to record my moment of sound from that spot. It was so peaceful and icy and wonderful to watch, I had to turn the moment of sound into a video:
jan 26, 2021
Things I Remember
The uneven tracks of snow on the road jarring my foot and ankle but not twisting them
The sound of a kid laughing or talking or something to an adult on the river road
Running in the middle of the road, listening carefully and looking back every so often to make sure no cars were coming
Hearing a chain jangling near Minnehaha Academy, thinking it sounded like a dog collar then wondering why there would be a dog so close to the school entrance (I didn’t look to see what it actually was; I probably wouldn’t have been able to tell even if I had).
Walking up the steps from the Winchell Trail and hearing the shuffling steps of a runner approaching. Watching them (from a safe distance) run by, then noticing a fat tire off to my left
I don’t remember noticing if Minnehaha Academy’s parking lot was full or hearing any woodpeckers or black capped chickadees or seeing any cross country skiers or needing to avoid any irritating squirrels
One of the poetry people I follow on twitter really likes James Schuyler, which is fine with me, I really like him too. Here’s a poem they posted yesterday:
The Snow/ James Schuyler
that fell and iced the walks and streets is melted off: it’s gone. I slipped a little as I strode. It’s early winter yet though, more and much is yet to come. This gray day though is much too warm for snow. The window’s up a crack and I shiver only slightly. I think of you and then my thought slides on, like slipping on a lightly iced walk. I have no more poems for you, chum, only for the ice and snow.
I love the ending of this poem: the idea of thoughts slipping on a lightly iced walk, which makes me think of Wittgenstein and his line about the need for rough, tractional ground, and referring to the reader as chum. Chum is such a strange, old-fashioned, wonderful word. For me, it conjures, simultaneously, a feeling of nostalgic affection for a friend and the image of bloody guts and Jaws–oh, and also Bart Simpson’s response to Milhouse in an early season of The Simpsons:
“Anytime chummmmmmmmmp”
This clip is from the 4th episode of the 7th season (1995) and is called, “Bart sells his soul.” Speaking of the soul, it came up on poetry people twitter this morning:
I write about “the eye” because you will not accept “faith” or “the soul.”
G.C. Waldrep, The Earliest Witnesses
Dana Levin (@danalevinpoet)
Interestingly, just as chum seems to be an old-fashioned word, so does soul. I don’t like the idea of the eternal, needs-to-be-saved-or-you’re-going-to-hell soul, but I do like Walt Whitman’s use of it in “The Body Electric”:
if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?
O I say these are not the parts and poems of the body only, but of the soul,
O I say now these are the soul!
Returning to the ice, patches of barely formed ice on slightly warmer days is often the most dangerous type of ice. It’s harder to see and is so slippery! The only time I like ice when it’s warmer is when it forms into a thin, fragile sheet on the surface of a puddle. Such fun to walk over it, hearing it crack.
Cold this morning with snow-covered sidewalks. We got about 5 inches of snow on Saturday night and Sunday morning. I thought about running outside, but decided to stay inside to be warm and safe from slippery roads and/or crowded trails. Running inside on the treadmill is a good challenge for me, I think. It helps me to go slower and steadier and to work on pushing through the long minutes of monotony. Plus, I can work on my form and posture. I listened to my audio book (The Mesmerizing Girl) as I ran for just over 30 minutes.
moments of sound
Jan 24, 2021
For yesterday’s moment of sound, Scott and I were on a walk with Delia, right by Howe Elementary. Two sounds dominate: the buzzing/ringing of the furnace at the school (I think it’s the furnace) and the shshshshshing or crushcrushcrushing or thrashing? of my snow pants as I walk. We passed some kids playing on a mound of snow. I wish my phone would have done a better job of picking up what the one kid was saying. It was something about a sword and cutting something in half “with my MIND!” I have decided that I need some tips from Scott (the sound expert) on how to record better sound. That might be a goal for February.
Jan 25, 2021
For the majority of this recording, you get to hear the delightfully irritating crunch crack crush of ice breaking under my winter boot as I walk across the driveway. Yesterday this driveway was sheer ice, but Scott sprinkled some salt or sand on it and it melted and refroze in shards overnight. Love this sound! For the last 10 seconds or so, it’s much quieter. If you listen closely, you can hear a bird or two calling out. Today it is cold but sunny, and with the birds chirping and the sun warming my face, it feels like April not January.
Found out about this wonderful poem on twitter yesterday:
with its waterlogged wings spread open, drying off on a rock in the middle of a man-made lake after diving for food and it makes me think about wonder and it makes me want to pry and stretch my shy arms open to the subtle summer wind slicing through the park, sliding over my skin like a stream of people blowing candles out over my feathery body and it makes me think about my church when I was a kid, and how I lifted my hands to Jesus, hoping for surrender, but often felt nothing, except for the rush of fervent people wanting to be delivered from their aching, present pain, and how that ache changed the smell in the room to money and how I pinched my face and especially my eyes tighter, tighter and reached my hands higher—how I, like the cormorant, stood in the middle of the sanctuary so exposed and open and wanted and wanted so much to grasp the electric weather rushing through the drama of it all like a shout in the believer’s scratchy throat.
I don’t go to church anymore, but today I woke up early and meditated. I closed my eyes and focused on a fake seed in my hand and put my hands over my heart to shove the intention inside my chest to blossom—I’m still stumbling through this life hoping for anyone or something to save me. I’m still thinking about the cormorant who disappeared when I was writing this poem. I was just looking down and finishing a line and then I looked back up—gone.
Unless I get out the door early, I don’t like running outside on the weekends. Too crowded on paths already narrowed by snow and ice. So I biked and ran in the basement. Watched the HOKA 100k challenge live online as Jim Walmsley tries to break the world record for 100K (currently held by Japan’s Nao Kazami 6:09:14/ 5:56.5 mile pace for 62.2 miles). Good god. Almost 5 hours in, he’s still holding on, running with blood on his shoulder–he clipped his shoulder on the edge of a fence early into the race. Hard core. Then I listened to my audio book as I ran. I decided to do a relaxed 5k. It’s getting easier to run longer on the treadmill. It will never be as fun or inspiring or invigorating as being outside, but it’s still the chance to move and not feel trapped in my restless body.
Before I starting working out, I memorized Emily Dickinson’s “Snow flakes,” partly because it’s supposed to snow later today. Such a fun little poem! I learned that this poem is only 1 of 3 (out of 1780) poems that Dickinson titled. Cool.
I counted til they danced so their slippers leaped the town — and then I took a pencil to note the rebels down — And then they grew so jolly I did resign the prig — And ten of my most stately toes are marshalled for a jig!
I love the energy and the surrender to the delight of falling snow and her word choices: jolly, resign the prig, stately toes, marshalled a jig.
a moment of sound
Playing with Delia in the backyard, walking up the deck steps, then opening the door to let her in the house. I hear a few birds as the snow begins to fly on this cold (20 degrees/feels like 10) afternoon.
5K 45th ave, north/32nd st, east/edmund, south/edmund, north/36th st, west 7 degrees/ feels like -3
Last week I said I would much rather it be colder with clear sidewalks, than warmer with icy sidewalks. That was proven today. As I was saying to Scott, you can always add layers to be warm, but you can’t do much to make uneven icy paths safer–yak trax work, sort of, but not when the ice is jagged and filled with ruts. Hooray for sun and not too much wind and mostly empty streets and a soundtrack of birds and clear, cold air and new Presidents getting shit done!
Encountered only a few walkers, no runners (I think) and one biker. Heard lots of birds. Smelled some smoke as I ran on Edmund. Noticed a foot wide stripe of faded white on the edge of the street–what’s left of the salt used to treat the road. The stripe stretched for a quarter mile or more. Once I realized it was only salt stains and not a thin sheet of ice, I ran on it. Heard some park workers and their chainsaws, trimming trees above the gorge. Yes, a better view! I should remember to stop during my run and go check out the river. I miss it! If I can’t run right beside the river for long stretches, at least I can admire it for a moment.
a moment of sound
Earlier this morning, sitting at my desk in the front room, I heard a black capped chickadee calling outside. Quickly, I got my phone to record it. It wasn’t until after it stopped that I realized I had forgotten to push the record button. Bummer. Still, I recorded some other birds and a bird or a squirrel or something knocking on wood or an acorn. You can hear the tap tap tapping. Towards the end, you can also hear my 17 year old son, yelling out from his room (behind a closed door) to his friends online as they prepared to raid a base or something like that on whatever online game they were all playing. He was yelling the whole time I was recording, but this was the only bit of it that I can hear on the recording.
Jan 22, 2021
I am almost positive I have posted this poem before, but I would like to memorize it, so I posting it again.
All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed! A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches. Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.
I guess I’m turning into a wimp this winter because the sidewalks looked uneven and icy and the wind was howling, so I decided to stay inside and work out in the basement. Actually, I think it has less to do with being a wimp, and more to do with it being harder to run in the road and the sidewalks than on the river road trail and harder to avoid people and harder to stay motivated to run outside when I can’t see the river or the gorge. That’s okay. I don’t mind running inside a bit more this month–hopefully just this month.
Watched some races while I biked, and listened to an audiobook, The Sinister Mystery of the Mesmerizing Girl, for the first half of my run. For the second half, I listened to a playlist and recorded video of my running. With my right knee prone to subluxations and my left hip and lower back often sore, it’s helpful to study my form. I think I need to do a better job of setting up the camera–either that or I really hunch over with my shoulders. Maybe I should try checking my form from the side too? It’s fascinating to me how, over almost my 10 years of running, I’m slowly learning how to accept and take care of my aging body. Oftentimes it sucks to have to worry about all of these aches and pains, but it is also very helpful and satisfying to learn how to work with my body instead of being afraid of its failures.
a moment of sound
I recorded today’s moment of sound on my driveway, back near the alley, in a spot sheltered from the wind. It was very windy. The loud whooshing sounds are not traffic but the wind rushing through the trees. If you listen carefully, you can hear wind chimes (my favorite) and water dripping off of the eaves on my garage (not my favorite). At one point, there’s a pop or a creak or a crack–some siding or wood fence contracting.
Balance checkbook. Rid lawn of onion grass. “this patented device” “this herbicide” “Sir, We find none of these killers truly satisfactory. Hand weed for onion grass.” Give old clothes away, “such as you yourself would willingly wear.” Impasse. Walk three miles a day beginning tomorrow. Alphabetize. Purchase nose-hair shears. Answer letters. Elicit others. Write Maxine. Move to Maine. Give up NoCal. See more movies. Practice long-distance dialing. Ditto gymnastics: The Beast with Two Backs And, The Fan. Complain to laundry any laundry. Ask for borrowed books back. Return junk mail to sender marked, Return to Sender. Condole. Congratulate. ” . . . this sudden shock . . . “ ” . . . this swift surprise . . . “ Send. Keep. Give. Destroy. Brush rub polish burn mend scratch foil evert emulate surpass. Remember “to write three-act play” and lead “a full and active life.”