4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 31 degrees 5% ice-covered
Felt off this morning — sore, unsettled. Wasn’t sure I should go for a run, but did it anyway. I’m glad. It felt like spring again: less layers, birds, sun, bare grass in a few spots, gushing water at the falls. My mood has improved. My back felt a little sore, my knees too, but most of the run felt good. The other day, I saw an instagram post on running form and arm swing. From the video I saw (with no audio) it looked like you should swing your arms further forward and higher than you’d expect. I tried it by focusing on swinging forward — not quite, but almost, like punching the air in front of you — instead of what I’ve usually done, focusing on extending my arms back more. It seemed to help, making my run feel more smooth, effortless, locked in.
moment of the run
Running north, approaching the double bridge, I heard a strange howling noise. It repeated several times. What was it? A coyote? Dog? Human? I couldn’t tell. I also couldn’t tell if it was right below on the west side, or over on the east side. I also started hearing sirens, and a bunch of dogs yipping. Crossing over from the river road to Edmund to run past my favorite poetry window, I suddenly remembered a bit of a poem I encountered this morning on twitter:
Weary of all who come with words, words but no language I make my way to the snow-covered island. The untamed has no words. The unwritten pages spread out on every side! I come upon the tracks of deer in the snow. Language but no words.
Was this the cry of language but no words? Or, just some kids trying to imitate a howl?
Here are 2 earlier (as in, before Almost an Elegy) Pastan poems that I found today:
Emily Dickinson/ Linda Pastan (1971)
We think of hidden in a white dress among the folded linens and sachets of well-kept cupboards, or just out of sight sending jellies and notes with no address to all the wondering Amherst neighbors. Eccentric as New England weather the stiff wind of her mind, stinging or gentle, blew two half imagined lovers off. Yet legend won’t explain the sheer sanity of vision, the serious mischief of language, the economy of pain.
The economy of pain, I like that.
Wind Chill/ Linda Pastan (1999)
The door of winter is frozen shut,
and like the bodies of long extinct animals, cars
lie abandoned wherever the cold road has taken them.
How ceremonious snow is, with what quiet severity
it turns even death to a formal arrangement.
Alone at my window, I listen to the wind,
to the small leaves clicking in their coffins of ice.
I like the last stanza with its small leaves clicking in their coffins of ice.
5.5 miles bottom of franklin hill turn around 15 degrees / feels like 5 5% ice-covered
Colder today, but almost a completely clear path! Sunny, bright. Greeted Dave the Daily Walker early on. He was bundled up today. Wrapped in so many layers, I felt disconnected. I barely remember running on the stretch between the Welcoming Oaks and the lake street bridge. Only one flash of memory: looking down from the bike path, I noticed the walking path was hidden by a hard pack of snow, hardly looking like a path.
Listend to the gorge running north, a playlist returning south.
layers
my (recently) dead mother-in-law’s purple Columbia jacket
pink jacket with hood
green shirt
2 pairs of black running tights
2 pairs of gloves (black, pin and white striped)
gray buff
black fleece-lined cap
1 pair of socks
10 Things I Noticed
my shadow, running ahead of me
the shadow of the lamp post beside the trail — the tip of the top of the lamp post looked extra sharp
the river was open and brown, with a few streaks of white
the path was clear but on the edges there were thick slabs of opaque ice where the puddles had refroze
birds!, 1: the tin-whistle song of a blue jay
birds!, 2: the laugh of the pileated woodpecker
birds!, 3: the drumming of some woodpecker. Was it a pileated woodpecker, or a downy woodpecker, or a yellow-bellied woodpecker?
birds!, 3: so many chirps and trills and twitters on the way up the franklin hill — a rehearsal for spring
an impatient car illegally passing another car on the river road
very little ice on the trail — where there was ice, Minneapolis Parks had put some drit down to make it less slippery (finally!)
Today, I have 2 Pastan poems. I am including both of them because they work together to speak to one set of struggles I have with losing my vision: I can no longer drive because of my deteriorating central vision AND this inability to no longer drive makes me feel much older than I am. Pastan is writing about surrendering her key when she’s in her late 80s. I stopped being able to drive at 45.
Ode to My Car Key/ Linda Pastan
Silver bullet shape of a treble clef I slip you in the ignition— an arrow seeking its target— where you fit like a thread in the eye of a needle like a man and a woman. A click and the engine roars,
the road unscrolls on its way to anywhere. At night you sleep in the darkness of a drawer, On a pillow of tarnsied coins. Oh faithful key: last week I gave you up for good— Excalibar back in its stone— as I climbed into the waiting vehicle of old age.
Reading “Ode to My Car Key”
Cataracts/ Linda Pastan
Like frosted glass, you blur the hard edges of the cruel world.
Like summer fog, you obscure the worse even an ocean can do. But watch out.
They are coming for you with their sterile instruments, their sharpened knives,
saying I will be made new— as if I were a rich man wanting a younger wife.
Soon the world will be all glare. Grass will turn a lethal green, flower petals a chaos
of blood reds, shocking pink. What will I see? I am afraid of so much clarity, so much light.
This second poem offers an interesting contrast to the first one, which is a lament over the loss of the ability to drive, presumably (mostly?) because of her vision. In “Cataracts,” Pastan is worried about regaining her vision and how it will change the gentle ways she sees. “I am afraid/of so much clarity, so much light” immediately reminds me of Emily Dickinson’s “Tell it Slant”: “too bright for our infirm Delight” and “Before I got my eye put out”: “So safer — guess — with my just my soul/ Opon the window pane/ Where other creatures put their eyes/ Incautious — of the Sun– “
I like how putting these poems together offers space for both lamenting the loss of vision, and for appreciating the new ways it allows you to see. Is this what Pastan is doing? I’m not sure, but it speaks to how I feel about my vision loss.
walk: 30 minutes with Delia neighborhood 26 degrees
Sun! A bright blue sky! Birds! Fresh, cold air! Clearer sidewalks! Wind chimes! What a wonderful walk. I moved slowly, stopping every few steps for Delia to get another sniff. I inhaled deeply, feeling the cold air open up my sinuses. I mostly listened to the birds, but a few times I saw the blur of a tiny body traveling from one branch to another. I noticed the sprawling oaks, their gnarled limbs towering over the sidewalk. I stepped on the thin sheets of ice covering puddles and heard them crack and crunch and then the water squish. I remember thinking that I wasn’t interested in naming what I was noticing, just experiencing it. I felt relaxed and open to the world and happy for these moments.
Most of the sidewalks were clear. On a few corners it was still solid ice. The corner with the mailbox was especially bad. Yikes!
I almost forgot — how could I forget? A birch tree in the middle of the block, its branches blindingly white, illuminated by the sun. Sparkling. I could almost hear a chorus singing its alleluias!
bike: 22 minutes run: 2.35 miles basement outside: an ice rink
After yesterday’s slippery run, I decided I should stay inside today. Biked in the basement with some Dickinson, ran with a running podcast. As I often mention with my basement workouts, it’s difficult to find much to wonder about in such a dark, cold, unfinished space.
Before I worked out downstairs, I started planning the fifth lecture for the class I’m teaching. It’s going to be about the connections between wonder and play. I was reminded of it as I ran and listened to a professional runner turned triathlete talk about how being a beginner and having no expectations or pressure can help you to have fun in your training and in life. I started thinking about having fun and being a kid and the idea that fun and play are usually dismissed as not taking something seriously. It’s all fun and games to you. Or it’s too easy — that’s child’s play. But trying to remember your kid-self, being a beginner, opening up to fun, is something many of us have to work at — to practice — as adults. (Also, being a kid isn’t always easy.) Kelli Russell Agodon has some great things to say about play and wonder in this interview, which I plan to use in my class: Beauty and Play with Kelli Russell Agodon.
In the video interview, Agodon reads her poem, “Grace”:
Even those who are living well are tired, even the rockstar who swallowed the spotlight, even the caterpillar asleep in a unbalanced cocoon. Who knows how to be happy when a lamb is birthed just to be slaughtered at a later date? It’s so tiring how every day is also a miracle— the drunk bees in the plum blossoms, the sliver of sun through the branches and on an early morning walk we find the farmer’s granddaughter has fallen in love with the lamb, so it will be saved and named Grace. And we are spared for a moment, from a new loss and life frolics across a field of wildflowers never knowing all it has escaped.
Thinking about the idea of no pressure or expectations, Agodon says this in another interview:
I am quantity over quality, but a lot of the really bad poems will never come out of my laptop. I love writing a poem a day. And I have no problems writing bad poems, just writing something thinking, oh that was just practice. That was just a writing exercise. That poem is never going to go anywhere. I don’t want to revise it. Again, it’s just to enjoy the creation. But when I do choose a poem to revise, then I highly craft it.
And here’s something else she writes about taking walks and finding images:
Rumpus: I think of your poems as being “dense,” and by dense I mean tight and even crowded at times as you fly from one image to another. The imagery is always surprising, line after line. I wonder how you do that?
Agodon: I wonder how I do that, too. Could this mean I’m a word/image hoarder? Maybe my poems are the rooms you go into where everything is stacked to the ceiling? Like those antique shops that have a fascinator balancing on a Mickey Mouse phone on a blue Fiestaware plate toppling above a purple suitcase with a sticker that reads: London. Maybe it’s that I’ve always been a very visual person who notices the small strange details, and they stick with me. Like yesterday when I went for a walk, I saw a toothpaste cap under a tulip and I kept thinking—why is that there? There was a robin there and I started thinking, “What if that toothpaste cap was actually the robin’s bandleader hat.” Kooky stuff, but maybe because while I have six sisters, they were all much older than me, so much of my life felt like being an only child so I was always looking for ways to entertain myself, and I still am.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 18 degrees / feels like 8 100% slick snow
Another dusting of snow last night. Just a slow, steady accumulation. Everything a bright, blinding white — the sky, the path, the trees, even the river, at least in one spot where the sun hit it just right and made it burn or glare or whatever word you might use to describe a blinding white light. Wow.
Layers: 2 pairs of black running tights, green shirt, pink jacket, gray jacket, buff, black fleece-lined cap with brim, 2 pairs of glovers (black, pink and white striped)
No headphones on the way to the falls; an old playlist titled “swim meet motivation” on the way back — David Bowie, Beck, Todd Rundgren, Ozzy Osbourne, Pat Benetar
10 Things I Noticed
the creek was flowing and the falls were falling, making a delightful rushing sound
when I stopped just before my favorite spot (because a couple and a kid were already at my spot), I could hear the falls as they fell. When I looked, all I could see was one white tree after the next
the trail was not too slippery, but slippery enough to make my legs work harder
I think it was between locks and dam #1 and the double bridge — as a car passed me , I smelled hot chocolate. did it come from the car, or was that just a coincidence?
on the way back, stopped to walk on side of the double bridge that doesn’t get plowed in the winter. I looked down into the white ravine as I trudged through the snow
glancing at the river through the trees, something about all the white in the trees, the light, and my vision made the river look like it was sepia-toned
nearing the ford bridge, looking ahead, I noticed something that looked like an animal. I couldn’t see an owner and wondered if it was a coyote and not a dog. As I got a little closer I realized it was a person wearing a shirt so light — pale blue? gray? white? — that it blended into the sky. The dark I had seen was their pants. This is not the first time this has happened to me
running by some steps saw the briefest flash of orange — must be a sign warning people not to enter, I guessed
one car crawling along the river road, the line of cars growing behind it
a runner in a bright orange stocking cap and bright yellow jacket
Discovered Wendell Berry’s window poems. I like collecting window poems. This morning, I was thinking about them in relation to winter and windows as frame for the world, and layer between you and the world, and a place to be delighted when it’s too cold to be outside. I think I want to add something about windows to the section in my winter wonder class about layers.
As I was writing this last sentence, I started thinking about Emily Dickinson and how she wrote so many of her poems sitting in front of her windows, so I googled, “Emily Dickinson window” and this post was one of the top results: Emily Dickinson and the Poetics of Glass. Very cool!
Aside from working in the garden and walking the grounds of the property, looking through windows was her primary mode of relating to the landscape around her. Fortunately for Dickinson, she lived in a house abundantly punctuated by windows.
There were approximately seventy-five windows at the Dickinson Homestead.
Thinking about the literal windows in ED’s house, made me think of Berry’s Window Poem 3#:
from Windows/ Wendell Berry
The window has forty panes, forty clarities variously wrinkled, streaked with dried rain, smudged, dusted. The frame is a black grid beyond which the world flings up the wild graph of its growth, tree branches, river, slope of land, the river passing downward, the clouds blowing, usually, from the west, the opposite way. The window is a form of consciousness, pattern of formed sense through which to look into the wild that is a pattern too, but dark and flowing, bearing along the little shapes of the mind as the river bears a sash of some blinded house. This windy day on one of the panes a blown seed, caught in cobweb, beats and beats.
To add to this wandering, I remembered listening to Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine (the album that I had listened to over and over while writing my dissertation back in 2004/5) earlier this week and noticing her song about breaking the window. Had I ever thought about these lyrics in all those dissertation writing listenings?
I was staring out the window The whole time he was talking to me It was a filthy pane of glass I couldn’t get a clear view And as he went on and on It wasn’t the outside world I could see Just the filthy pane that I was looking through
So I had to break the window It just had to be Better that I break the window Than him or her or me
I was never focused on just one thing My eyes got fixed when my mind got soft It may look like I’m concentrated on A very clear view But I’m as good as asleep I bet you didn’t know It takes a lot of it away If you do
I had to break the window It just had to be Better that I break the window Than him or her or me
I had to break the window It just had to be It was in my way Better that I break the window Than forget what I had to say Or miss what I should see
Because the fact being that Whatever’s in front of me Is covering my view So I can’t see what I’m seeing in fact I only see what I’m looking through
So again I done the right thing I was never worried about that The answer’s always been in clear view But even when the window was cleaned I still can’t see for the fact That it’s so clear I can’t tell what I’m looking through
So I had to break the window It just had to be It was in my way Better that I break the window Than him or her or me
I had to break the window It just had to be Better that I break the window Than miss what I should see
I had to break the window It just had to be It was in my way Better that I break the window Than forget what I had to say Or miss what I should see Or break him her or me Especially me
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 30 degrees / steady light snow walking path: 60% snow-covered / bike path: 10% snow-covered
The first winter run in the snow of the season! Wonderful. Slushy, a few slick spots, little snow flakes occasionally pelting my face. Loved it! Not too many people on the trails. Exchanged greetings with Mr. Morning! Morning! Good morning!
I forgot to look at the river or, if I looked, I don’t remember what I saw. It was probably blue gray. There’s no way it was white yet.
We already have a few inches on the ground, so it looks like a winter wonderland. Some of the snow has painted the trees white.
The falls were falling, but not gushing.
The sky is a very light gray. Almost everything some shade of gray. Somewhere on the trail — maybe near the falls — I saw some light green leaves decorating a tree. How is that possible?
Thought about Emily Dickinson and the idea I had earlier this morning, based on my current reflections on gray and my devotion to her poem, “We grow accustomed to the Dark –“: I grow accustomed to the Gray. For me, not everything is dark, really. It’s gray. Literally — as colors drain away in light that isn’t just right, many things often look gray. I don’t usually notice it until I think about how that dark car over there isn’t dark blue or dark red, it’s just dark gray. Or that fir tree outside of my writing studio window isn’t dark green but a very dark gray. It’s also metaphorical — I’m in this in-between state, where I can sometimes see, sometimes can’t. Or I can see well enough to get by, but not very well. I’m in transition, in the process of losing, not in the state of having lost.
today’s gray: gray area
definition from google: an ill-defined situation or field not readily conforming to a category or to an existing set of rules.
Not sure if this really fits, but the in-betweeness and ambiguity of a gray area, makes me think of optical illusions like the duck and the rabbit, or the old lady and the young woman, or the white and gold or blue and black dress, which makes me think of this passage from Georgina Kleege:
I surmise that my general visual experience is something like your experience of optical illusions. Open any college psychology textbook to the chapter on perception and look at the optical illusions there. You stare at the image and see it change before your eyes. In one image, you many see first a vase and then two faces in profile. In another, you see first a rabbit then a duck. These images deceive you because they give your brain inadequate or contradictory information. In the first case, your brain tries to determine which part of the image represents the background. In the second case, your brain tries to to group the lines of hte sketch together into a meaningful picture. In both cases there are two equally possible solutions to the visual riddle, so your brain switches from one to the other, and you have the uncanny sensation of “seeing” the image change. When there’s not much to go — no design on the vase, no features on the faces, no feathers, no fur — the brain makes an educated guess.
When I stare at an object I can almost feel my brain making such guesses.
Sight Unseen / Georgina Kleege
Sometimes, but not always, I can feel my brain making guesses. I usually notice this when it guesses wrong and then I realize what the thing I’m looking at actually is. Or, maybe it is more like this: I see something that seems strange to me, like a dead or sleeping squirrel on a big rock. That’s what it looks like, what the visual data is telling me (Sara’s brain) it is, but I can’t quite believe it. It seems off. I look closer. Finally, after staring for too long, I realize it is a stocking cap with a furry brim.
Ambiguous. It could mean this or that or this and that.
bike: 22 minutes bike stand, basement run: 2 miles river road, north/32nd, west/edmund, south 28 degrees
Didn’t want to run as much today, just to be careful with my knees, so I tried something new: bike in the basement, then do a shorter run outside. I liked it. The bike was a nice warm up for going outsider in the cold, or colder than it has been. I don’t remember much from the run. There were several stones stacked on the ancient boulder, the sky was gray, no roller skiers or bikers, a few walkers, the roots on the dirt trails seemed extra treacherous and ready to trip me. I don’t remember if there were any runners out there or what color the river was. No smoke or sewer smells. No sweet scent from decomposing leaves.
Today’s gray theme: silver (yes, I know silver is not the same as gray, but in my close enough/approximate world, it works).
I haven’t worn jewelry for years, but when I did, I always preferred silver to gold.
One of my favorite video memories from my kids when they were young is a digital story I created called, “Silver and Gold…and Poop.” Every so often I still sing, Yeah, let’s doooo it.
Years ago, RJP sang this beautiful, sweet version of “Land of the Silver Birch” for her grandmother, who cherished it:
Land of the silver birch home of the beaver Where the mighty moose, wanders at will Blue lake and rocky shore, I will return once more Boom de de boom boom, boom de de boom boom Boom de de boom boom, boom.
Reading up about one of my favorite poets, Rita Dove, I found this quote from her:
Poetry became my passion after I fell in love with Walter de la Mare’s “Silver” in Mrs. Edna Pickett’s sophomore English class circa 1962.
Silver/ Walter de la Mare
Slowly, silently, now the moon Walks the night in her silver shoon; This way, and that, she peers, and sees Silver fruit upon silver trees; One by one the casements catch Her beams beneath the silvery thatch; Couched in his kennel, like a log, With paws of silver sleeps the dog; From their shadowy cote the white breasts peep Of doves in a silver-feathered sleep; A harvest mouse goes scampering by, With silver claws and a silver eye; And moveless fish in the water gleam, By silver reeds in a silver stream.
And, one more favorite mention of silver in a poem by a favorite poet:
4.3 miles minnehaha falls turn around 53 degrees / humidity: 96%
A great run this morning. I felt strong and relaxed and never like I wanted or needed to stop. A gray morning. At the start, the sky was almost white with a little gray and the idea of light blue. By the end, the sky was still white, but a little more gray and thick, heavy. Returning above the gorge, there was some haze over the water.
10 Things I Noticed
gushing water from the sewer pipe at 42nd st
trickling water at the falls
most of the leaves are off the trees, the ones that remain are burnt orange
other colors: blue-gray asphalt at minnehaha park, green grass, my bright orange sweatshirt
a runner in a light colored shirt passed me going fast under the ford bridge. I enjoyed watching his bobbing shoulders bounce off into the distance for the next 5 minutes
almost empty parking lots at the falls, a few groups of walkers
the beep beep beep of a car alarm from a car being towed through the roundabout near the falls
even though it was a little dark and gloomy, few cars had on their lights
the river was half light, half dark
a elementary school class visiting the ravine, a line of them stretching across the sidewalk. I found a big gap and tried to quickly pass through. Some kids sprinted, trying to catch me or run into me (they didn’t)
Little Gray Cells
Today’s gray theme is: the brain, the little gray cells, gray matter. When I think of gray matter, I first think of the “little gray cells” and Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot, especially in one my favorite movies, Death on the Nile:
“And to rest the little gray cells.”
Gray matter is tissue found in the brain. It contains a lot of neuronal cells. Reading about it, I could feel myself shutting down. Too much science-y jargon! Here’s a description of their function to remember for later:
Grey matter serves to process information in the brain. The structures within the grey matter process signals from the sensory organs or from other areas of the grey matter. This tissue directs sensory stimuli to the neurons in the central nervous system where synapses induce a response to the stimuli.
These signals reach the grey matter through the myelinated axons that make up the bulk of the white matter. The grey matter that surrounds the cerebrum, also given the name cerebral cortex is involved in several functions such as being involved in personality, intelligence, motor function, planning, organization, language processing, and processing sensory information.
Reading this description I’m wondering how they work with vision for both motor function and processing sensory information. As I walked through my alley at the end of my run I also wondered, How does exercise affect gray matter? Looked it up and found a pop description of a recent small study from an Australian site that suggests aerobic activity increases the gray matter, especially in terms of cognition. I found the word choice in this line interesting:
Recent research from Germany shows that aerobic exercise increases local and overall gray matter volume in the brain by an average 5.3 cubic centimetres.
This is a significant increase and more than the total brain volume of some American Presidents.
Well played, Australia.
I looked up “gray matter vision poem” and this one came up. I’d like to spend more time with it and Forrest Gander’s notes about his translation.
It would not sound so deep Were it a Firmamental Product— Airs no Oceans keep— —Emily Dickinson
Afloat between your lens and your gaze, the last consideration to go across my gray matter and its salubrious deliquescence is whether or not I’ll swim, whether I’ll be able to breathe, whether I’ll live like before.
I’m caught in the bubble of your breath. It locks me in. Drives me mad.
Confined to speak alone, I talk and listen, ask questions and answer myself. I hum, I think I sing, I breathe in, breathe in and don’t explode. I’m no one.
Behind the wall of hydrogen and oxygen, very clear, almost illuminated, you allow me to think that the Root of the Wind is Water and the atmosphere smells of salt and microbes and intimacy.
And in that instant comes the low echo of a beyond beyond, a language archaic and soaked in syllables and accents suited for re-de-trans-forming, giving light, giving birth to melanin hidden within another skin: the hollow echo of the voice which speaks alone.
It would have taken me a lot longer to understand (some of) what’s happening with Emily Dickinson in this poem if I hadn’t listened to Forrest Gander’s introduction, or read his translator notes. First, he says in his introduction before reading the poem:
Her poem seems to take place at a time when she’s undergoing physical trauma, which is cancer, and in this poem she is sort of slipping under a narcotic before some kind of treatment or operation, and in the last moments of consciousness what’s going through her mind is a poem of Emily Dickinson’s
And then he writes, in his translator notes:
Written at a difficult time in the poet’s life, at a time when her life was emphatically at stake, this poem includes an echo of Emily Dickinson’s #1295:
I think that the Root of the Wind is Water— It would not sound so deep Were it a Firmamental Product— Airs no Oceans keep— Mediterranean intonations— To a Current’s Ear— There is a maritime conviction In the Atmosphere—
In Pura López-Colomé’s “Echo,” it seems as though the poet, going under in both the sedative and the psychological sense—”the last consideration to go”—finds her mind looping a Dickinson poem concerned with going under, for if air is water, we drown in it. (There are allusions to other Dickinson poems as well.) But Dickinson’s re-de-transformational language brings her into the living poet’s present, even as that present may be slipping away. (I’m reminded of Shakespeare’s hope that “in black ink my love may still shine bright.”) Dickinson’s addictive syllables and rhythms bring her to life—her flesh takes on color (so the melanin). And López-Colomé, who has been speaking to herself alone, finds in herself a place where another poet is speaking to herself.
Wow, it’s funny that I randomly came across this poem because lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how Emily Dickinson is shaping my experiences of understanding and coping with vision loss. I’ve wondered about how to gesture at this influence in some new poems about my current seeing status. Also, I’ve been quoting some Dickinson, especially, “Before I got my eye put out” and “We grow accustomed to the Dark” in my head as I drift off to sleep.
one thing thing, added on November 13: Last night, while out for dinner with my son after his fabulous fall band concert, I happened to mention that I did a day on gray matter. FWA, a Breaking Bad fan, said, Gray matter is the name of the company that Walter White co-founded and then was cheated (or did he say screwed?) out of. It’s why he had to become a chemistry teacher and why he started making meth. I’ve never watched the show, although FWA really wants us to check it out. Maybe I will…
update, 9 nov 2023: Not too long after writing this, Scott and I started watching Breaking Bad and loved it. It took most of the spring, but we watched (and enjoyed? appreciated?) it all. After an extended break from the Walt world, we started watching Better Call Saul last week.
Black shorts, glowing yellow long-sleeved shirt, bright orange sweat shirt. An afternoon run with wind, some sun, lots of golden and orange leaves. First half of run = no headphones / second half = an old playlist (9 to 5, Misery Business, I’m Still Standing, Can’t Touch This).
Some slipping and sliding of my right kneecap. No lingering problems, but still worrisome. Ugh! Late fall and winter are my favorite times to run. Please behave, knee!
Currently, I’m thinking about my vision and trying to find a way into some poems about adjusting/becoming accustomed to my strange vision. I have some ideas, but nothing has quite stuck yet. I’ll keep working at it, at least for a while longer. Maybe I’m not ready to write about this stage yet? No. I think I just haven’t found the right form yet. Should I try more snellen charts or mood rings (with a different size of the ring?) The latest shift in my vision, involves a lot of difficulty in seeing colors properly. What to do with that? I’m also interested in the moment before a scene makes sense. Earlier in October, when I first started with Glück, I brought up the “moment” a few times. I’m also very interested in the idea of almost, not quite, approximate — Emily Dickinson’s ending line to “We grow accustomed to the Dark –“: Life steps almost straight. Almost.
almost
As I was walking with Delia the dog earlier today, I was trying to pay attention to how I was seeing everything. I kept thinking, almost. Almost real. I can see trees, cars, people, houses, the sidewalk, squirrels darting. But the license plates on the cars are blurry and I can’t see house numbers or people’s faces. The sidewalk moves — only slightly, but it seems not quite stable. The sky has some static. There is just enough strangeness in the scene to make me feel like I’m not quite there within this world. At some point I wondered, is this lack of realness the result of my attachment to sharp vision? Can I learn to feel connected through softer vision, or sounds and textures?
Here’s a poem I found on twitter the other day. I’m struck by the moments that the befores and afters in this poem create:
Before rain hits the ground, it’s water. It has no smell. After it hits the ground, it’s memories: my mother, on crutches, moving toward me, in rain, that last dry summer with her, or a man, who later became my husband, in a tent with me, in the petrichor air, our bodies becoming changelings, becoming a new house- hold, becoming new gods, with their own new myths. I was taught that before the priest raises the host and wine and says, “This is my body; this is my blood,” and before the altar girl rings the bells, the host is bread, the wine is wine. After the words, the host is God’s body the wine is God’s blood. Transubstantiation: me after him, a baby sucking my nipple, rain ribboning windows. Now my six-year-old grandson, in the early August rainy morning, piano-practices “The Merry Widow Waltz.” Before I was a widow, that song was only a practice piece, a funny opera. The rocks along my lake are always most beautiful in rain. In rain, their colors deepen and shine. The smell after rain hits the ground has a name: petrichor, from the Greek words petra, meaning stone, and ichor, which is the fluid like blood in the veins of gods.
I looked Susan Firer up and she seems very cool. I’ll have to dig deeper into her work. Here’s part of documentary about her I found on her site: