peripheral – Page 3

august 18/RUNSWIM

run: 3.15 miles
2 trails
78 degrees / dew point 67
sunny

Started and ended with Queen (Another One Bites the Dust) and a running playlist, in the middle, sounds from the gorge — laughing kids at a playground, scurrying animals in the dry brush, crunching gravel, trickling sewer pipes.

Now, sitting at my desk, I’m hearing the electric buzz of the cicadas. …and now, one or two minutes later, they’ve stopped. Now I hear birds–pretty sure it’s cardinals–and a kid repeatedly saying, “Uh oh uh oh uh oh!” An adult in a cooing voice: “Do you need help?” and “You’re not a baby, you’re a BIG girl!”

When I was running on the Winchell Trail, at the steepest part without a railing, I tried looking quickly at the river. Blue. Decided it was better to absorb it through my peripheral. Safer. I thought about how I like these bodily experiments (tracking my thoughts, what I notice) I’m doing as I run and swim. How they enable me to apply theories I’ve been playing around with for decades about epistemology and ontology and ethics.

I’ve been listening to an interview with Kaveh Akbar on Between the Covers, and I was struck by his definition of work in terms of revolutionary poetics:

One thing that I think about a lot is that a revolution comes in two parts; there’s the overthrow and the rebuild. Without either of those parts, it’s not a revolution. There has to be something being turned over and then there has to be something being set up in its place. It’s very easy to inhabit the carapace of revolutionary rhetoric without advancing something new. That, in and of itself by definition, isn’t revolutionary because there’s no rebuild. There’s no gesture towards a rebuild. I’ve talked to my students and my friends and the people with whom I’ve had this conversation in these discussions. I think a lot about the physics definition of work which is the force applied to an object in order to move it. If there’s force applied to an object and nothing moves, that’s not work. Similarly, if an object moves but you haven’t applied force to it, then you haven’t done work. If I say to a room full of people who agree with me, “F*ck Trump,” and I say that in a room full of poetry people, probably the majority of them will be like, “Yeah, f*ck Trump.” I haven’t really caused anything to move. I’ve inhabited the form of revolutionary rhetoric but I haven’t actually moved anything. By the physics definition of work, probably that’s not doing much or any work.
Kaveh Akbar Interview

I think I’ll add this definition to my work page on undisciplined.

swim: 2 miles / 2 loops
cedar lake open swim
88 degrees / windy

Another windy day, another wave-filled lake. I’d like to be able to compare this to the sea or ocean. I know cedar lake waves are gentle swells, but how much more gentle, how much less choppy than a normal swim in the sea? Tonight, I did a better job of staying on my side of the lake as I swam towards the far beach. For the first few minutes of the swim, I felt weightless, light, but it didn’t take long for the water to drag my body down into the water. I didn’t want to, but I felt like I was having a fight with the water. Every stroke felt slightly off, not smooth, not easy.

Even struggling, it was a great swim. What a wonderful thing to be able to swim so much this summer! Already this week, 4 days in a row. I enjoyed glancing up at the sky sometimes when I breathed. It was mostly sunny, with some hulking clouds. One big cloud hovered behind me as I swam across. It loomed, almost menacingly, but I didn’t mind. I noticed the soft forms of the tree tops to my left and imagined fall coming (too?) soon. To my right, as I headed back, I could see something, not quite shining–I determined it was a small gap in the trees with the sun barely peeking through. Because of the bright sun and my vision, the orange buoy was completely invisible–was it to everyone else? Probably a little, but not as much as it was to me. I knew it was there, so I kept swimming, but I couldn’t see it until I was almost to it. This not-seeing is happening more this summer. It barely bothers me. It’s tiring, but I know I’m swimming the right way–using other landmarks and my established map of the route–so I don’t worry.

I do not like breaststroke. I recognize its value, especially in choppy water, and how it makes some swimmers feel more comfortable in the water, but I dislike being around breaststrokers. The irritating bobbing, which is hardly ever smooth, but jerky. The wide, strong kick. And the way that as I approach someone swimming breaststroke, it always seems very hard to pass them. They seem to be racing me for a bit, then they disappear. I know this is just how I see them–and perhaps it’s distorted by bad vision–and I know that it is ridiculous to dislike breaststroke for these reasons, but I do.

how could I forget this moment?

Had to revisit this log entry to add something that I almost forgot: after I finished swimming, as I was drying off, there was a young kid–less than 5, I think?–who kept repeating, “nanana boo boo.” At least 50 times. In the best (as in most effectively embodying) version of a bratty voice I’ve ever heard. Wow. STA walked by the kid and said he looked and sounded like a cartoon character of a bratty kid. He was not saying this to us, but to another kid, or to himself. Over and over and over again. It was both annoying and delightful. I’m glad I witnessed it and I’m glad it’s over.

The Swimmer/ Mary Oliver

All winter the water
has crashed over
the cold the cold sand. Now
it breaks over the thin

branch of your body.
You plunge down, you swim
two or three strokes, you dream
of lingering

in the luminous undertow
but can’t; you splash
through the bursting
white blossoms,

the silk sheets—gasping,
you rise and struggle
lightward, finding your way
through the blue ribs back

to the sun, and emerge
as though for the first time.
Poor fish,
poor flesh

you can never forget.
Once every wall was water,
the soft strings filled
with a perfect nourishment,

pumping your body full
of appetite, elaborating
your stubby bones, tucking in,
like stars,

the seeds of restlessness
that made you, finally,
swim toward the world,
kicking and shouting

but trailing a mossy darkness—
a dream that would never breathe air
and was hinged to your wildest joy
like a shadow.

Not sure how I feel about this water-as-womb idea. I like the idea of imaging a time before I/we were so separated from everything else, but not sure about the womb imagery. I like the line, “Poor fish,/ poor flesh./ You can never forget.”

august 4/SWIM

2.25 miles/ 6 loops
cedar lake open swim
80 degrees

It’s hard to believe that I didn’t like cedar lake a month ago. What a great place to swim! Relaxed, easier to sight–and also easier to stay on course when you can’t sight, less crowded, shorter loops for faster, continuous swimming. It was windy tonight, and choppy in the water. My feet felt a little weird the first few loops, but they didn’t cramp up.

2 memorable things about the swim:

The sky: noticed several planes above me, moving in and out of clouds. At Nokomis, the planes look like sharks circling in the sky, here they look like birds. Stopped mid-swim to determine if what I was seeing above me was a plane or a bird then watched it (a bird) soaring high.
The vegetation: So many vines being stirred up by the wind and the choppy water. Sharp and scratchy, hitting my face, wrapping around my arm. At least one or two traveled down my back, which was very unpleasant. Several years ago, I remember getting part of a vine in my mouth. Gross.

Because the loops are shorter and I have a clear landmark to sight heading back from east (hidden) to point beach, I don’t have to be thinking constantly about where I was going. I could let my mind wander. I know it did, but I can’t remember what I thought about. Possibly about the optometrist appointment I had earlier in the day. Confirmation, yet again, that my vision is deteriorating. Difficult news every time I hear it, yet reassuring too. I’m not making this up, I really can’t see well. The doctor said almost all of my cone cells were gone. Just two tiny islands, one in each eye, protected by the rod cells I have in the very center. He said he was surprised that I could see as well as I could. So strange how vision works. I hardly have any cone cells left, but the few that remain are working so hard that the vision in my right eye is still 20/20 and 20/40 in my left. What? A new worry: possible deterioration of some of my periphery. It’s called paving stone deterioration. It is not that big of a deal, just something to monitor. Still, it’s unsettling to imagine losing some or all of my peripheral too.

I don’t have a poem about love to add here, but I’m thinking about care and my hard working cone cells and protecting rods and what they’re doing for me and the amount of love they show me everyday. This love is not the primary goal, but is still a part of what our bodies do for us everyday until, one day, they don’t: in spite of the odds and the difficulties, they find a way to keep working, even if that “working” barely works, or works in different ways. Does that make sense?

july 29/RUNBIKESWIMBIKE

run: 3.25 miles
2 trails
77 degrees

Hot. Sweaty. Too many bikes biking in pairs beside each other, taking over the path. Still, a good run. Just before starting, I listened to a recording of myself reciting 2 poems I’m working on. Thoughts about them came and went as I ran above the river. On the Winchell Trail, right before running up the short, steep hill near Folwell, I thought about how I don’t always notice the river when I’m running next to it. Sometimes I’m distracted by other thoughts or an approaching person. Sometimes the river is hidden behind a veil of green. And sometimes I’m too lost in the dream world. Then David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech with the refrain, “This is water” popped into my head. I decided to stop at the top of the hill and record my thoughts:

thoughts while running/ 29 july

Okay, I’m running and I had an idea. Thinking about how when I’m running on the Winchell Trail above the river, sometimes I don’t remember to look at the river, to acknowledge the river, behold it, recognize that it’s there. And I started thinking about David Foster Wallace and “this is water” and how sometimes it’s important to notice and behold and say, “this is water.” To say, “this is water,” is to stand outside of it, to have some sort of distance, to be beside it. Sometimes we want to be immersed in the water. We want to be immersed in a dream world or a now that is not outside, not as distant, not beside. That means we don’t notice that this is water because we’re in it, and that’s a good thing too.

I reread the transcript of Wallace’s speech. I like many of his ideas about the value of a liberal arts education for giving us the tools to think critically, to be aware, to notice a wider range of realities beyond our limited, selfish one, to move past our unconscious “default” settings. Much of it is based on choice and will and our ability, which we must cultivate through education/practice/habits, to be open to understanding situations in new, potentially more generous, ways.

I like these lines:

If you’re automatically sure that you know what reality is, and you are operating on your default setting, then you, like me, probably won’t consider possibilities that aren’t annoying and miserable. But if you really learn how to pay attention, then you will know there are other options. It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell type situation as not only meaningful, but sacred, on fire with the same force that made the stars: love, fellowship, the mystical oneness of all things deep down.

In his speech, Wallace’s primary default setting is that we are selfish–everything is centered on us–and that we passively and consistently frame the world in this way. His solution: actively and deliberately think about the world in other ways. Seriously consider others’ perspectives, their struggles. Be actively critical, not passively uncritical. But, as I’m learning through poetry and various other things I’m reading about attention, sometimes letting go, being vulnerable and not in control, not trying to see things more generously but just being out in the world, moving and breathing and attending to it, sharing space in it with others (and not claiming it as yours) enables us to transform our experiences of it. I feel like I’m not quite making sense here, but I’m trying to get to the point that there are different forms of caring and giving attention, and some of them don’t involve deliberate, controlled focus on something. I’m thinking of soft fascination and being beside/entangled and the periphery.

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees
wildfire smoke from Canada

No problem biking to the lake even though it was very smoky. They finished the sewer work they were doing by the mustache bridge so the bike trail was finally open again. Hooray! So much easier and safer not having to bike on the road and cross back and forth so many times. Very happy to feel mostly comfortable on my bike, able to see most things and not feel scared all the time.

swim: 2 miles / 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim

Dark tonight. Strange, unsettling. Eerie on the lake with the sun covered with smoke. My googles fogged up again, even though I treated them, making it harder to see. I think Johnson’s Baby Shampoo doesn’t work, only Johnson’s baby wash does. Heard lots of sloshing and splashing. Enjoyed the swim, but felt less buoyant. At one point, it almost seemed like my foot was about to cramp up so I briefly stopped to stretch it. I’m getting better at stopping, taking my time. Another military plane flew low above me, roaring in the sky. That, with the waves and the smoke, make it feel almost apocalyptic. Noticed a bird flying in the sky too, near the plane. From my perspective in the lake, looking up from the side as I breathed, they looked the same size and shape. Funny how being the lake makes everything seem the same. Because of the smoke, I tried to take it easier, so I only swam 2 loops.

A few days ago (july 26) I foolishly asked how much choppier it is in Lake Superior than it was at cedar lake while I was swimming. Here’s one answer by the poet laureate of the UP (poet laureate? very cool!):

WAVE AFTER WAVE/ M. Bartley Seigel

Dawn, a lit fuse. The radioman says
“bombogenesis,” like agates tumbling
from a jar—system as meteorite
off Whitefish Point. In other words, water

lynx, Mishipeshu, lathered up in red.
In a heartbeat, rollers mass two stories
trough to insatiate tempest, unquelled
by prayer nor cigarette, careless, mean,

a cold-blooded indifference so pure,
a strong swimmer won’t last ten wet minutes.
At the Keweenaw, surf pummels the stamp
sands with ochre fists, ore boats stack up lee

of the stone, and entire beaches stand up
to walk away. At Marquette, two lovers
walk onto Black Rocks, sacrificial lambs—
their bodies will never be recovered.

july 28/RUN

4 miles
trestle turn around + extra
73 degrees
humidity: 85% / dew point: 68

Woke up to dark skies. An hour later: thunderstorms. Around 10 it stopped, so I went out for a run. It was warm and humid but not oppressive. How is that possible? Forgot (again) to greet the welcoming oaks, but checked for stacked stones by the sprawling oak tree. Zero. Everything was dripping. Including me, after about a mile. I don’t remember seeing the river. Too much green. Noticed one of the unofficial trails leading down into the gorge just before lake street. Also noticed a tent set up under the lake street bridge, right next to the portapotty. All zipped up. I wondered how hot they were last night, when the low was in the upper 70s. I also wondered if they were in the tent because they’d been evicted (looked it up and the 15 month eviction moratorium is ending but landlords can’t evict until Sept).

delight of the day

As I approached the trestle, I began hearing a loud rumble. At first I tuned it out, but then I realized: a train! It was hard to see with all of the green blocking my view of the bridge, but slowly I saw the cars. The train was still there, rumbling along, as I passed under the trestle a minute later. Very cool. In the hundreds of times I’ve run under this trestle, I have only encountered a train on the bridge 3 or 4 times. These tracks are hardly ever used. Why was the train crossing today? I kept waiting for the beep beep of the horn but it never came. Only booms as the car lumbered over the old tracks.

After the Rain/ Jared Carter – 1939-

After the rain, it’s time to walk the field
again, near where the river bends. Each year
I come to look for what this place will yield –
lost things still rising here.

The farmer’s plow turns over, without fail,
a crop of arrowheads, but where or why
they fall is hard to say. They seem, like hail,
dropped from an empty sky,

Yet for an hour or two, after the rain
has washed away the dusty afterbirth
of their return, a few will show up plain
on the reopened earth.

Still, even these are hard to see –
at first they look like any other stone.
The trick to finding them is not to be
too sure about what’s known;

Conviction’s liable to say straight off
this one’s a leaf, or that one’s merely clay,
and miss the point: after the rain, soft
furrows show one way

Across the field, but what is hidden here
requires a different view – the glance of one
not looking straight ahead, who in the clear
light of the morning sun

Simply keeps wandering across the rows,
letting his own perspective change.
After the rain, perhaps, something will show,
glittering and strange.

Wow, I love this poem. I’m very glad I searched “after the rain poetry” and found it. The different view he discusses in the later stanzas is what I’m exploring. It’s ED’s slant truth and my sideways/peripheral. It’s also the practice of soft fascination–what we don’t notice we’re seeing when we’re focused on other things. And it’s learning new ways to see without certainty.

july 11/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees

Biked with STA over to open swim. Biking doesn’t seem overwhelming this year. I think it helps that I’m biking on very familiar trails and, that when STA and I are biking together, I go first. You would think it would be best to have the person with better sight first, but I’ve realized that when someone’s ahead of me, I can’t use my peripheral to spot upcoming obstacles/hazards–approaching bikers, potholes, etc. Biking first makes it much easier for me to use my remaining central vision.

swim: 3 miles/ 4 loops*
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees/sunny

*the course was a little shorter today, so 1 loop did not equal a mile

I just realized that this is my first Sunday swim of the season. Wow. They didn’t have enough life guards so they left out the green buoys and shortened the course. Not a problem. It was a shorter course, but almost as wide. I loved being able to swim far from the orange buoys, and far from most other people.

things I noticed in the lake

the little bubbles my hands made as they entered the water in front of me
at least one dragonfly hovering above the water’s surface
the air felt heavy and harder to inhale during this first loop, the water felt thick
I listened to water lapping over my head and the word, “sloshing” came to mind, then the question: what’s another word for sloshing? splishing or splashing or flowing over or overflowing?
at least one plane above me, taking off or coming in for a landing
as is often the case, there is no standard route between a swimmer’s start at a beach and the first buoy. Often this leads to confusion and near misses. I almost ran into a few rogue swimmers. My rule: if the course is on the left, stay as far to the left as you can when heading to the first buoy. I am bothered that this doesn’t seem to make sense or matter to some other swimmers, and I am bothered that this bothers me
Crowded–is Sunday the biggest day for open swim?
As I neared the far right white buoy at the little beach–the one I like to swim around before I head back to the big beach, I could see the muck on it just below the surface. This muck didn’t look that different than what ends up on my skin, under my suit, after a long swim. Gross
I stopped to go to the bathroom between loops 3 and 4. Many swimmers just pee in the lake as they’re swimming, especially if they have a wetsuit on (at least I think they do), but even if I wanted to–and there have been a few desperate times when I’ve really wanted to–I can’t. My body won’t do it. Is it just because I find peeing in the lake gross? Not sure. Anyway, it’s a big hassle to go to the bathroom. You have to get out of the water, walk several hundred yards to the bathrooms, possibly wait in line at the bathroom, pee, wash your hands, then walk all the way back. When I got back in the water and started to swim, everything felt strange. I was sore, but also more buoyant. Floating
The water was smooth and there were no pockets of extra cold or extra warmth
I think my safety buoy is leaking air which would explain why it feels more like I’m being weighed down then lifted up by it
As is more often the case, my apple watch died mid swim. It’s old. I’m thinking of not getting a new one and trying to exercise without a watch. Not sure if this is a good or bad idea

Fog-thick morning/ Lorine Niedecker

Fog-thick morning—
I see only
where I now walk. I carry
my clarity
with me.

This poems doesn’t quite fit with the theme of water, but it’s how I feel when I’m swimming–in a fog or dream or daze, nothing clear or easy to see. I sight using my past knowledge of the course or my shoulders and the strong, straight, sure strokes they produce. My shoulders, I think, are my clarity.

june 24/SWIM

3 miles/ 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

The third day in a row of open swim. It was overcast, which I thought would make it easier for me to see all the buoys, but the lack of light drained their color. Hardly any smudges of orange, and only when I twisted my neck so I could see the buoy through my peripheral. Strangely, I saw the green buoys more often, which was not a lot. Will it ever stop being amazing to me that I can swim across the lake without panicking when all I can see is endless water? Heading back from the little beach, where the path between buoys is wider and less direct, I had a moment of feeling like I was swimming off the edge of the earth. Alone, off course. Then I saw an elbow and knew I was fine, heading toward the big beach. As I swam, I remembered a poem I wrote for my chapbook on swimming about my feelings of love and annoyance for other swimmers as we swim in the lake. I tried to love the other swimmers more than be irritated by them as they unintentionally routed me. I really tried; sometimes it worked.

i feel
a deep love
for these other half fish half humans
who seem to love deeply what i love
all of us sharing a lake a moment
a joy for the generosity of water

and i feel
continued annoyance
at their cluelessness
on how to swim straight
and their inability to wrangle
jutting elbows and flailing frog-like legs

i try to remember my love and forget my irritation
but when the lake water sloshes over my head gently
it washes away everything

I like the idea of this poem, and many of the lines, but I think I can make it much better. I’d like to work on it, and some others from the collection, and maybe try to get them published. What if I turned by various verses about the lake and swimming into one long poem? How would that work? How does a long poem work?

Other Things I Remember

Choppy water, none of it washing over my head, but tugging at the safety buoy I have tethered to my waist. Makes swimming more difficult–the buoy around my waist, acting like Coleridge’s albatross around the Ancient Mariner’s neck
Once I mistook a fish for a wave and when I stopped suddenly my buoy bumped into me, which felt like a fish, and for a flash, I freaked out
I noticed several swimmers stopping briefly to try and find the buoy. One guy stopped several times. He was slightly faster than me, but was working much harder, churning up water with his big kicks
I didn’t think a sailboat was the buoy tonight
I was swimming faster than 2 breaststrokers ahead of me, but as I approached they sped up–on purpose or without realizing it, I’m not sure–and wouldn’t let me pass
It is harder to see through my central vision, I think, and I feel even more cut off from the world when I swim than I used to. Mostly, this does not bother me; I like the dream world that lake swimming creates
Right before starting, a woman called out, “Wow, the number on your cap is over 1000!” And I said, “Is that how many swimmers there are in open swim club?” And, she said, “Well, my cap is 13!” If there are over 1000 swimmers signed up for open swim, they are not all in the water with me tonight. Maybe 100 are here

june 15/SWIM

2 miles/ 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

The first open swim! The first open swim! A perfect evening for it. The course was slightly different this year. There were the usual 3 orange buoys in a straight diagonal line from the north end of the big beach to the little beach, but there were also 2 bright green buoys a little further south. Huh? I had to ask another swimmer who looked like she knew what she was doing–actually, I heard her tell someone else that she had swam this course last year. They’ve changed up the course a little to make it safer and longer. Instead of always having the buoys on your left like they’ve done in the past, they are always on your right. The path is a straight shot from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach using the orange buoys. But on the way back, you travel much wider, using the invisible (to me) green buoys, and aim for the southern end of the main beach.

When I started swimming, I thought this new route would be a problem for me and how I’ve learned to swim without seeing that much, but I quickly got used to it, and decided that I liked it better. I like how it’s longer and that it’s wider. I can’t see the color green at all in the water, so the return buoys, if I manage to “see” them are just big, smudged hulks (and sometimes I confuse them with the similar shaped smudge of a sail from a sailboat further south), but I can use the silvery white rooftop at the big beach to guide me back to shore. I’m grateful for such a big landmark.

I didn’t run into any other swimmers, and I didn’t get way off course. At one point, I stopped to try and sight where I was, and a person swimming to my left stopped too. I think they were following me, hoping I would guide them the right way. I did. So strange and amazing and delightful to be able to navigate with such minimal, fleeting signals. How difficult was it for other people to see? When they looked straight ahead, just barely lifting out of the water, could they see the orange buoys clearly, a beacon in the empty blue and green? Or, were they like me, who was only able to see the smear of orange when I turned my head so that I could view what was straight from the side? Most of the time, the orange dot disappeared when I looked at it directly. Only once or twice, when it hit just right, did it appear. I was reminded of how much my sighting and seeing is based on trusting my straight strokes and learning to effectively and efficiently use the scant clues I have from what I do see. Open water swimming is a great confidence boost for me, and a reminder of how much I can still function. When I lose my central vision completely (which will almost surely happen soon), will it get worse, or have I learned to see mostly through my periphery already? I don’t know. For now, I’m happy to be swimming and not panicking, feeling strong and confident and at home in the water.

Searching for poetry about buoys, I found this awesome post by a poet-in-residence at a boat yard–Underfall Yard. They’re exploring the area, reading about boats and buoys and swimming and water, leading poetry workshops for visitors, planning poetry readings. I would love to do something like this! Wow. Very cool and inspiring!

Poetry at the yard
The poetry of boats and buoys
Brightwork/ Suzannah V. Evans (poems created while in residency)

And, a poem about orange buoys!

june 10/SWIM

1 mile
lake nokomis big beach
30 minutes

Another mile swimming just off the big beach around the white buoys! Another almost perfect weather day–no wind, sun, warm, but not too warm, water! I checked online, the water temp is 75, which is plenty warm for me. Today I used my new safety buoy, not for safety, but to hold my phone and keys so I don’t have to leave them in my yellow backpack on the beach while I swim. It’s an inflatable buoy–bright yellow–with a dry pouch inside that you can store stuff in. You hook it to a belt that you wear around your waist. Pretty slick. For 7 years, when I swim, I leave my yellow backpack on the beach and it always makes me a little nervous, especially because it has my phone and my bike lock key. Now, I won’t worry. And, it’s good to have a buoy so that other people in boats can see me.

Right before my swim on Tuesday, as I put my swim cap on in the shallow water, I watched little minnows quickly swimming away from my approaching feet. Such a sweet and delightful thing to witness! What is the collective noun for minnows? A flash of minnows? A flurry of minnows? Looked it up and found some other answers: a swarm, a stream, a school of minnows. The minnows were still there this morning. I can’t remember if they stay all summer; I’ll have to check from them in July and August.

Since I had my phone with me, my distance was more accurate: today the activity app said I swam 1.08 miles, as compared to Tuesday when it said I swam .67 miles. I have decided that, for my purposes, 6 loops = 1 mile. 2 miles swam, 98 to go!

I didn’t see any flashes below me, or shafts of light, but I did encounter a few ducks right before I started, and a few bits of milfoil floating in the water. I noticed how the white buoys disappeared in my central vision, then reappeared in my periphery. I saw a paddle boarder and another swimmer–mostly I sensed another swimmer, hearing their hands occasionally slap the water, glimpsing a quick flash of foaming water in their wake.

I breathed every 5 strokes or five/six/five or three/four/five/three or every six. As I swam every six I thought about a poem I wrote a few years ago, “Submerged,” and how I like stroking more, breathing less in order to spend more time submerged, pretending I’m a fish. Sometimes I thought about my wonderful son FWA and how he graduated from high school last night. Those thoughts made my swim more relaxed. Other times I thought about something else–I can’t remember what, just that it involved worries–and my swim was harder, less free.

Found these two excerpts from Niedecker’s poem, “For Paul” (1950). The first one is about her failing vision: in 1949, she was diagnosed with nystagma (roving eyes). The second one is about June:

You are far away
sweet reason

Since I saw you last, Paul
my sight is weaker . . .

I still see–
it’s the facts are thick–
thru glass:

Hi, Hot-and-Humid

That June she’s a lush

She marsh wallows, frog bickering
moon pooling, green gripping

Fool
Keep cool

In my June 8th log entry, I posted Niedecker’s poem, “Paean to Place.” Love this poem. In an article about Niedecker’s ecopoetics, I found a link to a facsimile of a hand-written version of this poem that she made into a book for a friend. Nice!

Paean to Place, facsimile

Last night at FWA’s graduation, the principal gave an introduction/welcome in which he did a land acknowledgment, recognizing the land/city where the school was built is Dakota land. I wasn’t able to hear exactly what he said because a group of people two rows back wouldn’t shut up–am I the only person who actually wants to listen to (and enjoys) the speeches? Probably. Anyway, I’m not sure of his wording, or if he used the words “stolen” or is versus was Dakota land, but I was glad to hear him say something. Just hours before graduation, I was reading an article about land acknowledgment, its problems and possibilities: WHERE WE STAND: THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA AND DAKHÓTA TREATY LANDS

I’m thinking about how to incorporate a deeper recognition and acknowledgment of the history of that land I write about in my bio and through my poems.

june 8/SWIM

1 mile/6 loops
lake nokomis, big beach
84 degrees

My first real swim (30 minutes straight) since September of 2019! Very exciting. My apple watch consistently underestimates the distance, so I’m not quite sure, but based on my pace and past loop swimming, I’ve decided I swam a mile. My first mile of many this summer, I hope. It’s ambitious, but I’d love to swim 100 miles this summer. Only 99 left.

The water was about as good as it gets. Not too cold, no chop, no debris. I could see the white buoys out of my periphery. I think I saw a few big fish swimming below me and some beams or streaks of light. Swimming so close to the white buoys, I got a good look at the brown muck on the underside of the buoys at each end. Yuck. I “raced” a paddle boarder paddling in from the middle of the lake, and avoided a few other boats. I mostly breathed every 5 strokes. Sometimes 5, then 6. A few times, 3. A lot of the time I thought about how my right shoulder–the one I injured last spring scraping paint off of the deck–ached a little more than my left, and whether or not the every-so-often sharp pain in my right ear was the start of something, but occasionally I thought about how much I love swimming, and how, even more than running, it gives you a way into another world, where your senses don’t work, or work strangely. Very cool. I like this water world.

For a few hours after I had finished, my body, especially my shoulders, felt slightly and pleasantly sore–not that miserable sore where you can barely move, but the sore you feel when you have worked your muscles and they are grateful to be used in this way finally, after a long 16 months away from the water.

My theme this month is water and stone. As I read through various essays, poems, articles, I’m coming to realize that I’m understanding the theme through the work of one of my new (not new, she’s died 4 years before I was born in 1970, but new to me) favorite poets: Lorine Niedecker. Here’s the opening to a beautiful poem that might serve as an inspiration for me (note: her cool spacing didn’t work when I pasted it into wordpress. Click on the poem to read it with the cool spacing):

Paean to Place/ LORINE NIEDECKER

And the place
was water
Fish
fowl
flood
Water lily mud
My life

in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
born
in swale and swamp and sworn
to water

I was born on water, Lake Superior in Hancock, Michigan, and my mom was too, Mississippi River in West St. Paul, Minnesota. While my mom never learned to swim, or love being in the water, I did. As a digital story I created more than 5 years ago begins: “I have loved water all my life.”

june 4/RUN

3.3 miles
2 trails
72 degrees

Ran earlier this morning–at 6:30–to beat the heat. High of 99 today. We already turned the air on. 90s for the next 5 days. All this heat should warm up the lake. Less than 2 weeks until open swim begins!

I ran south on the upper trail. I tried to look at the river but it was hard. Too much green. Even at the overlook by the entrance to Winchell Trail was green. Only slashes of silver–or white heat–burning through the trees. Running north again on the Winchell Trail at the steepest spot above the river, I could feel the river through my peripheral vision. Sometimes it was a constant brightness, other times a rhythmic flash, keeping time with my striking feet as I passed one tree after another.

Yesterday I mentioned noticing the large crack in the trail that’s been marked with white spray paint and looks like Florida or a tube sock. Glancing at it today, I think it looks more like a knee-high sock or a compression sock, and not really Florida–although it still reminds me of Florida which, despite all the shit happening there these days, is not a bad thing. I have fond memories of visiting my grandparents in Deltona–the heat, the tropical humidity, the beach, Epcot, even the swampy salty tap water. I miss the ocean; I haven’t been there since FWA was a few months old, he’s 18 now.

Other things I noticed: a tall tree on the Winchell Trail leaning over a little too much–was it about to fall?; the trickle of water from the sewer pipe at 44th and the faster flow at the 42nd street pipe, the noise of water mixing in with the noise of rustling leaves; the river more light than water; my good omen: a lone roller skier; the shuffling, stomping feet of a runner behind me, becoming more distant with each step; a furry, big dog sitting calmly, perched at the top of the 38th street steps next to a bench and a human; some singing birds–robins, I think; a greeting from a runner; my new running shorts irritatingly riding up on the one side–probably due to the heat.

Reading Lorine Niedecker’s “Lake Superior.” I’m thinking about rocks and layers and these two opening lines, one from her poem, “Lake Superior,” and one from her essay, “Lake Superior Country, Vacation Trip ’66”:

from Lake Superior

In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock

In blood the minerals
of the rock

from Lake Superior Country, Vacation Trip ’66

The journey of the rock is never ended. In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil. These minerals are drawn out of the soil by plant roots and the plant used them to build leaves, stems, flowers and fruits. Plants are eaten by animals. In our blood is iron from plants that draw out of the soil. Your teeth and bones were once coral. The water you drink has been in clouds over the mountains of Asia and in waterfall of Africa. The air you breathe has swirled thru places of the earth that no one has ever seen. Every bit of you is a bit of earth and has been on many strange and wonderful journeys over countless millions of years.

may 30/RUN

5 miles
downtown loop
56 degrees

STA and I drove to the Bohemian Flats parking lot then ran to downtown Minneapolis: starting on the steep hill, past the Guthrie, under the Hennepin Avenue bridge, over the Plymouth bridge, through Boom Island Park, over the railroad bridge, over the North line tracks, on the cobblestones in St. Anthony Main, over the Stone Arch Bridge, up past the Guthrie again, and down the steep hill. My IT band was tight afterwards, but it feels okay now. I guess I need to keep taking it easy. A great run. It almost felt normal. A few things I wrote down in my plague notebook to remember: ran up the entire steep hill, noticed the calm water, heard so many birds everywhere–not cardinals or robins or chickadees, maybe finches and warblers and sparrows? Lunging dogs, porta potty stops, and the rush of the light rail crossing the Washington Avenue Bridge as I stretched in the flats parking lot.

Right as we reached the Stone Arch Bridge, I remembered Scott saying that the past tense of glow should be glued not glowed (he said this after I remarked on how someone’s bright yellow vest glowed in my peripheral vision), which made me wonder if “glued” might be an archaic past tense, which then made me think about the archaic words in “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” like swound–“The ice was here. The ice was there./The ice was all around./It cracked and growled and roared and howled/like noises of a swound.” Swound is an archaic version of swoon, but I like thinking of it in the context of the poem as a collection or gathering of swoons–noises of a swound would be all the noise you’d hear when a bunch of people fainted, like maybe in a revival tent or at a pentecostal service. A rushing and wailing and whooshing and thudding and gnashing.

Yesterday I finished memorizing the first section of “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”– all 80 lines. Last night I recited it to STA on the deck while we drank some beer. Then we listened to Iron Maiden’s epic, 13+ minute tribute to it. Very cool. It was hard to make out the words because they were sung so fast, but it was exciting when I heard “wedding guests” or “hermit” or “the albatross” or the dice. Nice! I’m going to try memorizing some (or all) of the next part today. I’m a little reluctant because I don’t want memorizing this epic poem to consume me. I’ll see how I feel after today.

In the midst of memorizing this poem, I came across Robert Frost’s “The Oven Bird,” and wondered, why the hell is it called an oven bird? Looked it up: it’s because the nest of this bird is shaped like an old-fashioned oven. It has a small round hole for an opening.

april 28/RUN

4 miles
river road trail, south/waban park/turkey hollow/edmund, north
50 degrees

Shorts! Sun! Spring! Yesterday’s cold rain really pushed me over the edge. I’m ready for more sun, more sitting on the deck, more spring-y weather. Today the river was calm and blue, peeking through the green that is already starting to spoil my view. Ran on the river road trail all the way to the turn-off to Wabun park, then ran up and turned right just before reaching the Ford Bridge.

Thought a lot about listening, partly inspired by a podcast I began this morning: Taylor Johnson vs. Listening:

Franny Choi: there’s something different between maybe like, looking versus listening, right? Like, I feel like there’s some, I don’t know, what is that thing.
Taylor Johnson: I think there’s a goal in mind. I think with searching, it’s like, I know I’m gonna come out, let’s say, onto the sidewalk or in the woods, and I’m gonna see a particular X, Y, and Z, you know what I mean? Whereas listening, it’s like, things kind of wash over you and happen with you, rather than you having something in your mind where it’s like, I need to see this particular thing, or I’m listening for this particular thing. It’s kind of a more open, open experience.

I listened as I started my run and I remember taking note of many different sounds, all mixing into each other, none seeming that distinctive. Birds, traffic, laughing kids on the playground, shuffling feet on debris, someone raking a yard, wind chimes, my breathing as I settled into my run, a song blasting from a car radio, the faint jingle of my house key in my running belt, a woman sneezing–or was it coughing?

I also thought about Mary Oliver and a few things I was reading this morning–poems and an article by Rose Lucas about MO: Drifting in the Weeds of Heaven: Mary Oliver and the Poetics of the Immeasurable. And thought about the idea of the self and their relationship to nature as observer and observed, as someone who stares/pays attention to the world and someone who participates in it. Then I had a thought—I remember having it just as I was crossing 42nd from the stretch of grass between 42nd and Becketwood (what STA and I call the gauntlet because it’s narrow and close to the road and difficult to avoid other people if they’re on it too) and the wide boulevard of grass separating Edmund and the River Road—about how Mary Oliver’s ethical poetics of noticing, being astonished, and telling others about it involves a lot of standing back and still, staring, stopping, taking notes, sitting at a desk and writing. Yes, becoming connected or immersed in what you are noticing does happen, but the emphasis is on observing/seeing/staring at the world at some sort of distance and when you have stopped moving or doing anything. You stop to notice, or notice then stop, observe or behold (this makes me want to revisit Ross Gay and the idea of beholding), then sit and write. What if you didn’t stop? What if you observed while moving (while running?) Took notes while moving? Wrote while moving? I wonder how far I can push at the limits of writing about the gorge while running at the gorge–not running and noticing then writing, but running while noticing while writing.

Notes from the run, April 28th

Before I went out for my run, I was thinking about a few poems.

Here are two different versions of the same general idea: being lifted out of the tyranny of your thoughts by the beauty of nature.

Enough/ Jeffrey Harrison

It’s a gift, this cloudless November morning
warm enough to walk without a jacket
along your favorite path. The rhythmic shushing
of your feet through fallen leaves should be
enough to quiet the mind, so it surprises you
when you catch yourself telling off your boss
for a decade of accumulated injustices,
all the things you’ve never said circling inside you.

The rising wind pulls you out of it,
and you look up to see a cloud of leaves
wheeling in sunlight, flickering against the blue
and lifting above the treetops, as if the whole day
were sighing, Let it go, let it go,
for this moment at least, let it all go.

Terns/ Mary Oliver

Don’t think just now of the trudging forward of thought,
but of the wing-drive of unquestioning affirmation.

It’s summer, you never saw such a blue sky,
and here they are, those white birds with quick wings,

sweeping over the waves,
chattering and plunging,

their thin beaks snapping, their hard eyes
happy as little nails.

The years to come — this is a promise —
will grant you ample time

to try the difficult steps in the empire of thought
where you seek for the shining proofs you think you must have.

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.

The flock thickens
over the roiling, salt brightness. Listen,

maybe such devotion, in which one holds the world
in the clasp of attention, isn’t the perfect prayer,

but it must be close, for the sorrow, whose name is doubt,
is thus subdued, and not through the weaponry of reason,

but of pure submission. Tell me, what else
could beauty be for? And now the tide

is at its very crown,
the white birds sprinkle down,

gathering up the loose silver, rising
as if weightless. It isn’t instruction, or a parable.

It isn’t for any vanity or ambition
except for the one allowed, to stay alive.

It’s only a nimble frolic
over the waves. And you find, for hours,

you cannot even remember the questions
that weigh so in your mind.

For most of my life, up until last year when, during the pandemic, I felt compelled to finally notice them, I haven’t payed attention to birds. So I wasn’t familiar with terns–that might also be because, sadly, I’ve never lived by the sea. Anyway, terns is not a term I’ve known. In fact, my first encounter with it happened just last month, while reading a New Yorker article about the marvelous methods animals have for navigating and not getting lost. Buried deep in the article is this interesting bit of trivia:

Or consider the Arctic tern, which has a taste for the poles that would put even Shackleton to shame; it lays its eggs in the Far North but winters on the Antarctic coast, yielding annual travels that can exceed fifty thousand miles. That makes the four-thousand-mile migration of the rufous hummingbird seem unimpressive by comparison, until you realize that this particular commuter weighs only around a tenth of an ounce. The astonishment isn’t just that a bird that size can complete such a voyage, trade winds and thunderstorms be damned; it’s that so minuscule a physiology can contain a sufficiently powerful G.P.S. to keep it on course.
Why Animals Don’t Get Lost/ Kathryn Schulz

Very cool. MO’s line about gathering up the loose silver reminds me of a ED poem that I read in March:

A Bird came down the Walk—/ Emily Dickinson

A Bird came down the Walk—
He did not know I saw—
He bit an Angleworm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass—
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass—

He glanced with rapid eyes
That hurried all around—
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head—

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb
And he unrolled his feathers
And rowed him softer Home—

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam—
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon
Leap, plashless as they swim.

I have many thoughts about these three poems that I can’t quite express. About the narrator and their involvement in the scene they’re describing, about the “You”—who they are, what they’re for, about being didactic, about circling, about silver and seams and when the observed becomes the observer. And, about this line from MO:

But nothing you ever understand will be sweeter, or more binding,
than this deep affinity between your eyes and the world.

So I’m thinking about this in relation to my quote about the difference between looking and listening at the beginning of this post, and in terms of my own desire to feel with senses other than sight, or with sight not as Sight (as an objective, unfiltered way of being in and with the world). This idea of sight not as Sight, comes out of my thinking about how I see through my damaged eyes. I can see, but not with sharp focus or precision or mastery–I don’t look and See, as in, capture/own what I see with my eyes. My seeing is softer and involves more fluid waves and forms being felt. Returning to MO’s poem, I could definitely be delighted by the terns as I watched them moving—sweeping and plunging and thickening–because you detect motion in your peripheral vision and my peripheral vision is great. But I probably couldn’t see how many terns there are or how their thin beaks snapped. And I wouldn’t be able to see their hard eyes happy as little nails. But, seriously, can anyone see bird eyes in this way, other than MO?

Thinking about how MO uses seeing as a way to pay attention reminds me of another poem of hers with one of my favorite titles:

The Real Prayers Are Not the Words, But the Attention That Comes First

The little hawk leaned sideways and, tilted,
rode the wind. Its eye at this distance looked
like green glass; its feet were the color
of butter. Speed, obviously, was joy. But
then, so was the sudden, slow circle it carved
into the slightly silvery air, and the
squaring of its shoulders, and the pulling into
itself the sharp-edged wings, and the
falling into the grass where it tussled a moment,
like a bundle of brown leaves, and then, again,
lifted itself into the air, that butter-color
clenched in order to hold a small, still
body, and it flew off as my mind sang out oh
all that loose, blue rink of sky, where does
it go to, and why?

I remember reading this a few years ago and thinking how little I might have been able to see of the hawk she describes. I could see the tilting, the riding of the wind, the circling and carving, but not the color of its feet or its green eyes or that it was holding something in its claws. It’s interesting to read these poems and think about them in relation to my vision and the limits of my seeing. I especially like thinking about the ways I can still see and how they might be reflected/communicated in a poem about attention. This idea of describing how I see differently is as important to me as learning how to feel with senses other than sight.

Wow, lots of not quite focused thoughts in this post. Not sure if it makes sense but the act of writing it has been helpful for me in thinking about MO, and attention, and my project of writing while running and running while writing.

april 12/BIKERUN

Another young black man killed by the police today in a twin cities suburb. Apparently, the cop meant to reach for their taser, but pulled their gun instead and then shot Daunte Wright. Fucked up. This is not simply an unfortunate, “heart breaking” accident. This is not a matter of bad apples or a few incompetent or overly anxious cops. This is a fucked up system that doesn’t value human life, that almost always prioritizes certain (white) lives over others, and that is murdering black people. Abolish the police.

bike: 35 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement
outside: rain, wind

Biked in the basement because of the wind and rain. Watched another episode of Emily Dickinson. This one focused on ED’s conflicted feelings about having her poem published and whether or not she wants fame and to be known and seen by others. It features the poem, Split the Lark:

Split the Lark/ Emily Dickinson

Split the Lark – and You’ll find the Music –
Bulb after Bulb, in Silver rolled –
Scantily dealt to the Summer Morning
Saved for your Ear, when Lutes be old –

Loose the Flood – you shall find it patent –
Gush after Gush, reserved for you –
Scarlet Experiment! Skeptic Thomas!
Now, do you doubt that your Bird was true?

It was helpful to read the words after watching the show; I didn’t get the meaning of them when I heard them sung by Sue:

Wow. That is some intense, violent imagery. “Gush after gush” and “Scarlet experiment.” It makes me think of the article I read about ED and “I’m Nobody! Who are You?” earlier this month, when the author writes about doing Emily Dickinson Madlibs and asking students to fill in the blank for “Grief is a ___”.

Students go ahead and put in the blanks what is expected: Grief is a pain, Grief is a bitch. The ones who want to take imaginative leaps deliver up: Grief is a thunderstorm, Grief is a tidal wave. But I can pretty much guarantee that no matter how many budding poets you have in a class, nobody who hasn’t already read Dickinson’s poem would ever write the phrase the way she wrote it.

The answer: “Grief is a mouse”
This poem about splitting the lark also seems very original and imaginative and very ED.

A turkey interruption!

Just as I was writing the above paragraph, I looked out the window and saw…a big turkey walking in my front yard. Nice. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. That’s definitely the delight of the day. When I first saw it, I yelled out to STA, “Come here, quick. There’s a turkey in the front yard” and he posted about it on instagram.

After I biked, I ran on the treadmill for about 14 minutes. Our treadmill works, but strangely, these days. The speed is off, always too fast. Listened to my playlist.

Right after I got up this morning, I wrote about Mary Oliver and her collection, Evidence:

Yellow from Evidence/ Mary Oliver

There is the heaven we enter
through institutional grace
and there are the yellow finches bathing and singing
in the lowly puddle.

I’d like to put this one beside Emily Dickinson’s Some Keep the Sabbath going to Church (236):

Some keep the Sabbath going to Church —
I keep it, staying at Home —
With a Bobolink for a Chorister —
And an Orchard for a Dome —

Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church,
Our little Sexton – sings.

God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.

In my March 26th log entry, I wrote a bit about yellow and how I’ve grown to like the color. It’s funny that I like yellow now because I can’t see it very well, especially on the page and especially when it’s used to highlight text. Sometimes I use my yellow colored pencil in my Plague Notebook, like today, for the title to MO’s poem.

When viewed straight on, through my central vision, the yellow disappears. When seen from the side or with my eyes lowered, looking down, the yellow is bright–of course, viewed this way, through my peripheral vision, the words are a blur. Isn’t it strange how that works? Other colors aren’t as bad, like green or blue (although in other situations, those colors disappear too). But, how does this work? I know the retina has 3 types of cone cells: blue/short (B/S), green/medium (G/M), red/long (R/L) and that we have a lot more red (64%) than green (32%) or blue (2%). And that “the color yellow is perceived when the L cones are stimulated slightly more than the M cones (cone cells/wikipedia). But what does that mean about my vision and cone cell loss? How many red versus green versus blue do I have left? Is there a way to test that? And, is it worth testing? I might ask my eye doctor when I’m fully vaccinated and finally have a check-up in the next few months.

I’m looking through MO’s collection, Evidence today, which I was able to immediately check-out from my libby app (very awesome). Something I’ve noticed: the structure/form (I’ve forgotten the difference between these two) is often, first a very detailed and lush description of something or someone (an animal, stone, tree, flower, etc), then a question or a moment of wonder about it/them, then a revelation.

Like, in Swans from Evidence: A long and beautiful description of swans flying overhead and hurrying on to “wherever it is/that swans go.” A moments of curiosity/praise/wonder and a question: “How could I help but wish/that one of them might drop/a white feather/that I should have/soemthing in my hand/to tell me/that they were real?” Finally, a revelation (or a reminder of something always already known but forgotten): “What we love, shapely and pure,/is not to be held,/but to be believed in.” Love that last line. It’s a nice little prayer and seems to work without the details and the moment of praise, but I wonder what happens to its power when it loses those details? Does it become just a easily spreadable soundbite? I’m not sure, and I guess my doubt about this practice of picking out favorite lines, won’t stop me from doing it now:

from Thinking of Swirler

In a week he would be dead,
arrowed down by a young man I like,
though with some difficulty.

I was planning to pick one part of this poem, but I love the whole thing and I think I might need to memorize some or all of it:

Then Bluebird Sang

Bluebird
slipped a little tremble
out of the triangle
of his mouth
and it hung in the air
until it reached my ear
like a froth or a frill
that Schumann
might have written in a dream.
Dear morning
you come
with so many angels of mercy
so wondrously disguised
in feathers, in leaves,
in the tongues of stones,
in the restless waters,
in the creep and the click
and the rustle
that greet me wherever I go
with their joyful cry: I’m still here, alive!

I could also see part of this poem serving as a writing prompt, or an opportunity to create your own moment of wonder/prayer: “Dear morning/you come/with so many angels of mercy/that greet me wherever I go/with their joyful cry: I’m still here, alive!” Prompt: what greets you in the morning? Make a list, then pick one and describe it as much detail as you can. Moment of Wonder: When you’re outside, running beside the gorge, create a chant or greeting to offer back to the welcoming oaks or the floodplain forest or the old stone steps or whatever else you want, letting them know you’re still here too, alive.

Okay, just one more for today:

The Poet Always Carries a Notebook

What is he scribbling on the page?
Is there snow in it, or fire?
Is it the beginning of a poem?
Is it a love note?

This poem makes me think about MO’s discussions of carrying a notebook around with her while she’s walking in the woods, which also makes me think about the different methods writers/thinkers use to remember words when they’re outside, away from their desk: Jonathan Edwards would pin notes to his clothes we traveled on horseback, the writer Jaime Quatro would scratch them into her arm with a stick when, out on a run, she had nothing else to use, I speak a note in my voice memo app or, turn the thought/idea into a chant and repeat it until I return from my run.

april 4/RUN

4.6 miles
franklin loop
64 degrees

Mostly ran, with a little bit of walking, the franklin loop with STA. Sunny and over-dressed in shorts and a long-sleeved shirt. Who cares when it feels this wonderful outside! Usually I lament the leaving of winter, but not this year. I’m ready for summer and vaccines and less time inside. We talked for almost the entire time, but I can’t remember what we discussed. Noticed the river, looking calm and blue, glittering in a few spots. No rowers today. Easter, I guess. Heard some pileated woodpeckers, black-capped chickadees, cardinals. Still no geese. Also heard one runner’s deep, booming voice cutting through everything else. So loud, creeping up behind us. We slowed way down, almost to a walk, so he could pass faster, but it still took forever. Someday I’ll be able to block out these irritations–or, will I?

Sitting on the deck an hour after the run, I thought about some differences between Mary Oliver and Emily Dickinson. Here’s one: MO focuses on the moment when we are able to find meaning or understanding or joy or delight or something worthwhile, despite the mess of the world. Yesterday I described it this way: “MO is interested in that moment, albeit fleeting, of clarity that opens you up, or opens to you, inviting you in.” So, MO wants to find a way in. Maybe Emily Dickinson does too, but, with her emphasis on Circumference–the edges, seams, periphery, the perimeter, she also urgently wants to find a way out, an exit.

Mary Oliver is a big fan of Walt Whitman (she has a brief essay in Upstream titled, “My Friend Walt Whitman”). Could this be point where her differences with ED are visible? Here’s what Joyce Carol Oates says about the differences between ED and WW in her introduction to Essential Emily Dickinson:

Between them, our great visionary poets of the American nineteenth centry, Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, have come to represent the extreme, idiosyncratic poles of the American psyche: the intensely inward, private, elliptical and “mystical (Dickinson); and the robustly outward-looking, public, rhapsodic and “mystical” (Whitman). One declared: “I’m Nobody! Who are you?” The other declared: “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos…”

Here, ED’s understanding of in is being outside the world, and WW’s out is being fully inside it (at the center?). I think this in/out, private/public, introvert/extrovert is too reductive. Still, it is helpful as a way to start thinking about the differences. In her essay on her friend, Whitman, MO writes this about why she values him:

Whitman’s poems stood before me like a model of delivery when I began to write poems myself: I mean the oceanic power and rumble that travels through a Whitman poem–the incantatory syntax, the boldness affirmation. In those years, truth was elusive–as way my own faith that I could recognize and contain it. Whitman kept me from the swamps of a worse uncertainty, and I lived many hours within the lit circle of his certainty, and his bravado. “Unscrew the locks from the doors! Unscrew the doors themselves from their jambs!” And their was the passion which he invested in the poems. The metaphysical curiosity! The oracular tenderness with which he viewed the world–its roughness, its differences, the stars, the spider–nothing was outside the range of his interest. I reveled in the specificity of his words. And his faith–that kept my spirit buoyant surely, though his faith was without a name that I ever heard of. “Do you guess I have some intricate purpose? Well I have…for the April rain has, and the mica on the side of a rock has.”
Upstream/ Mary Oliver

Such bold, confident, excessive declarations! I wonder if Susan Howe has anything to say about this in My Emily Dickinson when she writes about ED’s new grammar grounded in humility and hesitation? Lots to digest here. Now I want to read more about ED’s faith and her understanding of Circumference and how it’s positioned in relation to inside and outside.

Here are 2 MO poems, originally from Swan, that I found in Devotions:

I Worried/ Mary Oliver

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.

Don’t Hesitate/ Mary Oliver

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

april 1/RUN

3.25 miles
turkey hollow
31 degrees

Much less wind today–5 mph instead of 12-15. So bright, cool, not too crowded. Encountered a few people on the trail but was able to keep at least 6 ft of distance. Is 6 ft still the recommended distance? I know it is probably very low risk to run past another person, only being close to them for a second, but I’m still uneasy when I encounter someone. During the run, I think it was near Becketwood, I imagined how relieved I’ll be when I finally get the vaccine. I will run on the trails with much less anxiety, still keeping a distance (I’ve always done that, even in the before times), but not worrying that every person I met is a loaded gun (loaded with a deadly virus). That day may be coming soon–vaccines are open to everyone as of March 30th. After I write the entry, I’m putting us on all the waiting lists.

Heard lots of birds as I ran, especially cardinals and black-capped chickadees. After reaching turkey hollow and heading up the hill on 47th, I was welcomed with a symphony of bird sounds. Not sure what all the chirps and trills and tweets were, but I loved having their motivating and distracting soundtrack as I climbed. Other things I remember hearing: the sharp, brittle crack of a branch as I ran on it, the shuffling of my feet on the gritty sand, and dog collars clanging below me on the Winchell trail and off to the right, in the grass between the river road and edmund.

I ran on the trail, above the oak savanna, the Winchell trail, and the river. It was sunny so the river was sparkling. Today I remember it looking brown. Is that right? Shouldn’t it be blue? Pretty sure I remember it as brown with a shimmer of light. Also noticed several of the benches, perched on the edge of the bluff, staring out through the bare branches to the other side. And, I took note of shadows, not mine, but the shadows of birds flying over my head. Quick flashes of dark moving past me. I can’t remember if they were big shadows or small shadows; they were just bird shadows.

I’m thinking of spending another month with Emily Dickinson, or at least partially with ED. I want to focus on the peripheral–peripheral vision, ED’s circumference, other ideas about slant/sideways/beside as they are used and expressed in poetry (and maybe lyric essays too?).

Here’s a poem not directly related to that topic, but that I found in The New Yorker and wanted to remember:

Privacy/ Ada Limón

On the black wet branches of the linden,
still clinging to umber leaves of late fall,
two crows land. They say, “Stop,” and still I want
to make them into something they are not.
Odin’s ravens, the bruja’s eyes. What news
are they bringing of our world to the world
of the gods? It can’t be good. More suffering
all around, more stinging nettles and toxic
blades shoved into the scarred parts of us,
the minor ones underneath the trees. Rain
comes while I’m still standing, a trickle of water
from whatever we believe is beyond the sky.
The crows seem enormous but only because
I am watching them too closely. They do not
care to be seen as symbols. A shake of a wing,
and both of them are gone. There was no message
given, no message I was asked to give, only
their great absence and my sad privacy
returning like the bracing, empty wind
on the black wet branches of the linden.

This reminds me of Ada Limón’s intereview on VS. podcast, where she talks about trying to let birds be birds, and that birds aren’t going to save her (or us) or serve as metaphors she thinks she needs. I love her use of the words still and stand/ing in proximity to each other. It reminds me of my favorite October poem (October/ May Swenson) when she writes: “Stand still, stare hard.” When Limón writes, “I’m still standing,” of course I first thought of Elton John’s song (ha ha), but then I read those words, maybe for the first time, not as “I’m continuing to stand” but as “I’m a still-stander or someone who is engaged in the practice of standing without moving, standing still.” Very cool. I like the idea of being a still-stander. Speaking of the word still, I like how she uses it three times. I imagine it as a hidden message: be still, as in calm, quiet, not expecting or worrying about anything, just being where you are, not moving or doing.

march 31/RUN

2.1 miles
neighborhood
33 degrees
wind: 13 mph with gusts, 21 mph

Quick run in the wind and the cold after returning home. A visit with 2 fully vaccinated grandparents! Hopefully soon, we will be too. First time away from Minneapolis since October. Not too far into my run, I heard a pileated woodpecker. Not drumming, but singing. Also heard a black-capped chickadee and their fee-bee song. Can’t remember any other bird calls. Guess the wind was singing louder. Speaking of the wind, heard lots of wind chimes, especially at the house at the corner of 43rd and 32nd. Such a cacophony! Ran down towards the river but stayed on edmund. When I crested the hill, I glanced down but couldn’t see any sparkling river through the trees.

note for me to remember: On the 29th, I memorized ED’s “I felt a cleaving in my Mind–.” That night, I got a headache that came in waves, not feeling like my brain had split but like I wished it would, so I could take the top of it off to relieve the pain and pressure. Ugh! I am a wimp with headaches because I rarely get them. And because I rarely get them, they make me worry more: I never get headaches? Why now? What’s the cause? Is this the start of something worse? I’ve had a few more since then, not quite as bad. I think (am hoping) that they’re caffeine headaches. The grandparents make much weaker coffee (1 scoop of coffee for 6 cups of water), while I make really strong coffee (I scoop of coffee for 1 cup of water).

Here are the final 2 poems in my March with Emily Dickinson. They’re connected to “I felt a cleaving in my Mind–” with the ball and the seam, which speak to ED’s interest in circumference.

I felt a Cleaving in my Mind–
As if my Brain had split–
I tried to match it–Seam for Seam–
But could not make them fit.

The thought behind I strove to bind
Unto the thought before–
But Sequence ravelled out of Sound–
Like Balls upon a floor.

Emily Dickinson Poems: March 30th and 31st

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched — (1863)

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched —
I felt the Columns close —
The Earth reversed her Hemispheres —
I touched the Universe —

And back it slid — and I alone —
A Speck upon a Ball —
Went out upon Circumference —
Beyond the Dip of Bell —

As I just discovered, the Balls in “I felt a Cleaving in my Mind–” could be balls of yarn. The ball in this poem is the Earth. Another connection: instead of seams, we have stitches. ED likes the word and idea of Circumference. Lots of entries in the Emily Dickinson lexicon, which is a super handy resource: periphery, circuit, edge, skull, perspective, view, vista.

I might have a lot of fun with this idea of circumference, especially in relation to a new vision project I’d like to start: on peripheral vision. Very cool.

I found another version of this poem on the amazing blog project, White Heat. It’s in their week of posts about Circumference. It follows ED’s original manuscript and its line breaks.

I saw no Way – The
Heavens were stitched –
I felt the Columns close –
The Earth reversed her
Hemispheres –
I touched the Universe –

And back it slid —
And I alone —
A Speck opon a Ball
Went out opon Cirum —
ference —
Beyond the Dip of Bell.

Without this — there is nought — (1862)

Without this — there is nought —
All other Riches be
As is the Twitter of a Bird —
Heard opposite the Sea —

I could not care — to gain
A lesser than the Whole —
For did not this include themself —
As Seams — include the Ball?

I wished a way might be
My Heart to subdivide —
‘Twould magnify — the Gratitude —
And not reduce — the Gold —

Here’s something interesting PB has to say about this poem and curcumference and seams and balls:

The second stanza advances our understanding a little, for we learn that the poet wants the “Whole” rather than some lesser quantity or quality that would be subsumed by the whole. Dickinson uses a ball as an example. Made by stitching leather or fabric together, the ball might be considered interior to the seams encompassing it. I am reminded of Dickinson’s poetic project of circumference. She announces this project in a letter to her chosen “Preceptor”, T.W.Higginson:
“Perhaps you smile at me. I could not stop for that – My Business is Circumference –…” (L268, July 1862).
In a later poem she calls “Circumference” the “Bride of Awe.” At least part of Dickinson’s poetic quest is to trace the seams, to see the whole.
the Prowling Bee

Here’s a source I’d like to track down and read about ED and circumference in “I Saw no way — The Heavens were Stitched–“:

Gribbin, Laura. “Emily Dickinson’s Circumference: Figuring a Blind Spot in the Romantic Tradition.” The Emily Dickinson Journal 2. 1 (Spring 1993): 1-21; 3-4.

march 13/RUN

3 miles
Hiawatha and Howe loops
44 degrees

A wonderful morning. Sunny and mostly calm. Not too crowded. Started on the river road trail but as I encountered more people, I moved over to Edmund. I heard the black-capped chickadees singing their feebee song. Don’t remember much else. When I reached Hiawatha, I put in my headphones and listened to a spotify playlist. Experienced a slight runner’s high as I picked up the pace, the kind that makes me feel my smile all the way down to my toes. Sprinted the last block. I bet I looked strange.

Yesterday, I listened to a great podcast with the poet Paige Lewis. So much good stuff. I especially liked this:

And that’s what I kind of care about putting into poems. I want to learn things and I want to learn little snippets of facts and then I want to be able to share those facts with people. Or, if I see something, I want someone around so I can be like look at that thing that’s happening right now. It’s still happening, you have to look. Look what that fish is doing. Look what that flower is doing. I just want to be pointing. Like I just want to be, look at this thing. Look at this thing. Look at this thing. Which is why I’m really bad at writing essays because I’m just like look at what this guy is doing. And then look at this. And they’re like, why does it matter? I’m like, I don’t know, but look at it.
Just like look at these beautiful tiny things and what we can take from them is maybe sometimes just enjoyment and I don’t know that I have anything more intelligent to say about that thing and what it’s doing and what it reflects about anything about us as humans. But like just look at it.
Paige Lewis in Paige Lewis Vs. Tiny Things

I agree with Lewis that the enjoyment of noticing and sharing these beautiful tiny things is enough, but I also think that this practice, when repeated and turned into a habit, has an additional importance: it encourages us to care about and care for the world, to be invested in its continued flourishing and also our own. I was thinking about this earlier today as I worked on my “How to Be” project and gathered ideas for the knowledge section. What is knowing facts for? More than demonstrating how smart we are, knowing facts can connect us and astonish us and encourage us to care about more than ourselves and our individual survival.

random thought I remember: At some point during the run, I noticed the shadow of a bird on the sidewalk in front of me. I love seeing these shadows and knowing a bird is flying overhead without looking up to see it. This shadow is too vague and fuzzy to indicate what kind of bird it is; it’s just a bird. It reminded me of how sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk, which has a glass top (a top I recycled from an old IKEA coffee table), I see the reflection of a bird flying outside the window. It’s a quick flash of motion that I could miss if I wasn’t paying attention and if my peripheral vision had become heightened because of my central vision loss. Such a cool thing to see.

Have you got a Brook in your little heart/Emily Dickinson

Have you got a Brook in your little heart,
Where bashful flowers blow,
And blushing birds go down to drink,
And shadows tremble so—

And nobody knows, so still it flows,
That any brook is there,
And yet your little draught of life
Is daily drunken there—

Why – look out for the little brook in March,
When the rivers overflow,
And the snows come hurrying from the hills,
And the bridges often go—

And later, in August it may be,
When the meadows parching lie,
Beware, lest this little brook of life,
Some burning noon go dry!

The Prowling Bee doesn’t like this poem with it’s “lazy” rhymes (flipping the sentence order to create the rhyme, ex: “so still it flows”) and the idea of such a “little” brook, as opposed to some more robust form of water like a river. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think I like the quiet brook that doesn’t announce itself to the world, it’s just there doing its thing–helping the flowers and the birds and the shadows. What if it were a stream instead? Decided to google it. Favorite answer was by a naturalist, responding to the question, what’s the difference between a stream, a creek, and a river?:

So, we enter into the somewhat nebulus topic of stream classification.
Consulting a few sources, the common term for all downhill flowing ribbons of water is stream. They’re all streams. Streams are classified, not by width, depth or length, but by a system known as stream ordering. The common terms are quite subjective depending on region and local history.
First order streams: the smallest streams that have no tributaries. We could call these brooks or rivulets. Little streams that you can hop across and not get wet. (GPD example: Pebble Brook in The West Woods)
Second order streams: result from the merging of two first order streams. Often designated as creeks, these small streams require a bridge, stepping stones or wading to cross. (GPD examples: Big Creek, Swine Creek, Silver Creek)
Third order streams: larger streams formed from the merger of two second order streams or creeks if you will. Streams that would have to be bridged, waded or even swam across. Referred to as branches in the headwater regions of watersheds. (Geauga examples: East Branch and Aurora Branches of the Chagrin River, East and West Branches of the Cuyahoga River)
Fourth order: streams formed by the merging of two third order streams. These streams would qualify as rivers, requiring big bridges, boats or swimming to cross.
Geauga Park District in Ohio, also see River, Streams, and Creeks

I find brooks interesting as a first order stream because they have no connection to other sources of water, no tributaries. They also don’t cause much of a fuss–you don’t need a bridge for them and you should be able to hop across them without getting wet. How do these first order streams come to be? Where does the water come from?

Another interesting thing about brooks: as a verb, the word means to use, tolerate, find agreeable. I don’t like the word tolerate or this understanding of a body of water disconnected from everything else, so I guess I don’t want to have a little brook in my heart. It doesn’t sound as pretty, but I think I’d prefer a creek–but not a crick!

a moment of sound

After my run, I sat on the deck and enjoyed the sun and the quiet. Here’s how that sounded:

march 13, 2021

feb 27/BIKERUN

bike: 15 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
treadmill
outside: 43 degrees

What a beautiful, feels-like-spring day! Scott and I took Delia the dog on a long walk by the river and around the neighborhood this morning in the bright sun. It felt much warmer than 40 degrees. Lots of runners and walkers and bikers on the river road trail, enjoying the warmth. Heard lots of birds, including the cardinal’s “pew pew pew” song. Some woodpeckers, crows, a few black-capped chickadees, and many others that I can’t identify by song. Maybe there were a charm of finches? (I found a great site for group names for birds) At some point during the walk, we heard some honking geese! Returning for the spring?

When we got back I decided to sit on the back deck, in the bright sun. I am looking forward to late spring and summer when I can do this every day. Sitting there quietly, listening to all of the birds, and not thinking about much of anything, a bright red cardinal flew just past me and landed in a tree at the edge of our deck. Usually I can’t see cardinals, but I noticed this one first as it moved across my peripheral, which helped my brain see it when it landed in my central vision. Very cool–and very strange how the brain helps me to see things.

Because it was getting late, and it was very wet and crowded outside today, I decided to bike and run in the basement. Watched a race while I biked, listened to a playlist while I ran. Didn’t think about much–what did I think about? I can’t remember, which isn’t always a bad thing. Sometimes I like forgetting. This morning I memorized a Sara Teasdale poem that I have been intending to memorize for many months: Let It Be Forgotten. I’m hoping to use it as a spell or a charm or a mantra to chant when I want to stop thinking about something:

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire, that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten, for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten,
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.

a moment of sound

Wow, the water rushing through the drain, and off the eaves, sounds very loud in this recording. You can barely hear the many birds, I recorded this moment while sitting on my deck is the glorious sun.

feb 27, 2021

feb 19/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.25 miles
basement
outside: 15 degrees

I started my bike by listening to Dr. Michael Osterholm’s podcast on COVID-19–he’s the infectious diseases expert/director at the University of Minnesota. He often gives worst case scenarios but his latest assessment tracks with another expert I check in with on twitter: Bob Wachter, the chair of the department of medicine at UCSF, who is a little more optimistic generally. Today’s episode of his podcast is titled Hurricane Warning and it’s about the likely category five hurricane of covid destruction that the B.1.1.7 variant (also known as the UK variant) could bring in the next month if we open up and let down our guard. While I don’t like hearing this news, I appreciate the reminder that my concerns about things opening up, including schools, are not unfounded. I’ve heard Osterholm say this several times: “Americans like to pump the brakes after the car is wrapped around the tree.” Meaning, we’re reckless and then try to be cautious after it’s too late. Looks like that’s what’s happening now. Numbers are down, people are tired of sheltering, so it’s time to open back up. This attitude makes me sad and concerned about our (U.S., the world) ability to make hard choices for our survival–not just with COVID but with the climate crisis. Most of the time I am an optimist, able to see past the bad to the good (in people, in situations), but the selfish, short-sighted way that many (at least those with the most power) have responded to crisis is chipping away at that optimism. Slowly, I’m letting the pessimistic “people suck” attitude creep in. I need to focus more on delight and people who are delighted and delightful.

Speaking of which, after biking I listened to a podcast with Ross “Book of Delights” Gay and his new book-length poem, Be Holding. Well, first I tried listening to my audio book Wintering but it was an extra dark chapter about insomnia that was bumming me out too much so I turned it off. Ross Gay is wonderful and his ideas about beholding as attending and looking with love, which reminded me of Maria Lugones’ idea of loving (as opposed to arrogant) perception, are very inspiring and help me restore my optimism. I look forward to when the transcript of the interview comes out–hopefully soon. In the part I listened to today, they were talking about looking and vision. The phrase “eyes of poetry” was used. It made me think about my relationship to vision and what I’m trying to do with my work (and my practices, and my strategies for coping with vision loss). Two things I’m doing:

First, a critical intervention in the privileging of vision/sight—an exploration of other ways of attending and other language for that attention. Not just seeing but listening and feeling. What might be some aural-centric words to counter vision, insight, focus? Thinking about this reminded me of a poem I memorized this summer: And Swept All Visible Signs Swept Away/ Carl Phillips

Easy enough, to say it’s dark now.
But what is the willow doing in the darkness?
I say it wants less for company than for compassion,
which can come from afar and faceless. What’s a face, to a willow?
If a willow had a face, it would be a song. I think.
I am stirred, I’m stir-able, I’m a wind-stirred thing.

Here, I’m thinking about listening and the expression of self through song, as opposed to through face and vision. The “visible signs” have been swept away by the wind, yet compassion and recognition (to beholden) are still possible.

Second, an expansion of what vision/seeing is—how do we see, what does it mean to see? what are others ways of seeing are possible? what are the different ways I do/can use my vision (e.g. peripheral instead of central)? This second project is inspired by Georgina Kleege’s book Sight Unseen and the descriptions of her own ways of seeing–even though she is legally blind, she likes to go to movies and art museums. She can still watch the movies and see the paintings, just in different ways.

So, the other thing I’m doing today (besides worrying about variant strains and high schools opening too soon, or loving looks and Ross Gay) is collecting definitions, expressions, descriptions of cure/curing as a method for preserving food. In my mood ring poem, I want to introduce this language subtly throughout the poem in order to create more impact with the final lines–which I’m thinking might be part of the inner blind ring. So much fun!

canned
jarred
jammed, jam-packed
pickled
expired, expiration date
spoiled
shelf-life, stored
shelved, put on the shelf
decay
needed in times of scarcity
embalm
preserve body for medical experiments
dried out, old
hardened, tough exterior, leathered, weathered
drawing moisture out
airtight, removing oxygen, sealing out air
inside, packed, put away

2 Habits formed, one bad, one good

Currently I am very aware of the forming of two habits through repeated practices. The first habit, which I see as good, is my daily moment of sound. I have recorded enough of them that it is a routine practice for me to step outside, no matter how cold, and listen for a moment. The second habit, which I see as mostly bad, is my need to pee every time I am done with biking inside and before I start running. I can feel the practice become entrenched, something I have to do every time. I know I could have tried harder to stop it, but instead I’ve been observing how it has been happening. Is it too late now to stop? I hope not, but I’m not too concerned. It’s fascinating to witness it forming. I just remembered how I had this same habit in high school during swim practice–I always had to pee after warm-up and before the main set.

a moment of sound

Today’s moment of sound happened right after I took the recycling out–around 7:30 in the morning. Birds!

feb 19, 2021

jan 31/BIKERUN

bike: 22 minutes
run: 1.8 miles
basement

Scott and I took Delia for a longer walk this morning, which was wonderful. Not too cold, hardly any wind, a few fluffy flakes falling from the sky. Lots of other people out too. So I decided to head to the basement again for my workout. While I biked, I continued watching Margaret Livingstone’s fascinating lecture about vision and art. Then, after I finished biking, I listened to a playlist and tried to run faster, which I did but not necessarily because of the playlist. It’s time to make a new one, I think.

I’m enjoying Livingstone’s lecture. I’m not necessarily learning anything new, but it’s reinforcing thoughts I already had or ideas that I had encountered elsewhere. Maybe it’s the academic in me, but I like to have my ideas confirmed by others, especially by those who have devoted themselves to studying vision and the brain. After discussing how “your visual system has higher acuity in the center of gaze” (acuity = sharper, finer detail), she says:

But your peripheral vision isn’t bad, it’s just different. Your peripheral vision is designed to see big blurry things; your central vision is designed to see small detailed things and actually cannot see big blurry things as well as your peripheral vision. So there’s a trade-off.

It’s the forest from the trees again!

a moment of sound

jan 31, 2021

I stuck with it and recorded a moment of sound every day this month–31 moments. Nice. This final one is short and is from my walk with Scott and Delia. I can hear the chapel bells chiming from across the river at St. Thomas University in St. Paul; at least two birds–including a coo or trill or something at 15 seconds in; Delia huffing (at 22 seconds); traffic on the road; Scott and I discussing, mostly in whispers, what kind of bird we heard; snow crunching underfoot; Delia’s collar jangling; and the wind.

Slowly but surely, I am falling in love with birds. A few years ago I wrote a poem in response to Mary Oliver’s goldfinch poem “Invitation, in which I asked, “Anyway, who cares about the birds?” I do, now. I’m hoping to learn more of their calls in the upcoming months.

Speaking of birds, I found this video on Brain Pickings:

jan 30/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
run: 3.25 miles
basement

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.

During my run I continued listening to the audio book, The Guest List. Wow, the men in this book are terrible; I was actually getting angry and sad about what assholes they are. Despite this, finally, three-quarters of the way through I am invested in listening to the entire thing and finding out how it ends. Whenever I make it to this point in a book where I’m finally hooked even though I had thought about giving up on it several times, I feel a sense of accomplishment.

a moment of sound

On the deck again. Listening to a crow and my neighbors’ scare rods spinning in the wind, sounding like the scratching noise that Voldemort’s soul makes in one of his horacruxes in the last movie. For the first 20 seconds or so, Delia joined me. You can hear her collar clanging, then the door open as she goes back inside. Too cold or boring for her, I guess.

Jan 30, 2021

Note: 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.

nov 5/RUN

2 miles
cooper school loop
60 degrees

Still waiting for the results of the election. Stressful. Feeling the panic simmering just beneath the surface. Slight tightness in chest, deeper breaths needed. Feeling hopeful and scared and impatient.

A beautiful day for a run. Maybe a little warmer than I’d like but sunny and calm. I wore shorts. I don’t remember looking at my shadow as I ran–was she there?–north on Edmund up to 32nd. Lots of people out walking and running. Did a loop around Cooper School. Heard some kids playing on the playground.

geese!

I don’t remember any geese on my run today but I do remember first hearing then seeing 2 different groups of geese flying fast through the sky. So fast! And pretty low in the sky too. I wonder if they were offering a warning about next week’s colder weather?

look at that bird high in the sky!

Walking home after finishing my run I noticed a speck out of the corner of my eye. Something moving high in the sky. At first I couldn’t see it because it was in my central blind spot. I kept trying to spot it my periphery. Suddenly it appeared. I could even see the wings moving. How was I able to see it? Did my brain finally guess correctly or did the bird move into an undamaged part of my central vision? Vision is so strange and fascinating.

Mood Ring: Bewilderment

I’m working on another mood ring poem. After trying to find the best word to describe it I have decided on bewilderment. Here’s a line that I want to use somehow from Mary Ruefle:

The difference between myself and my student is that I am better at not knowing what I am doing.

Not knowing what I’m doing or seeing is a constant experience for me. Learning how to deal with that disorientation, discomfort, uncertainty is a big goal. It used to be central to my pedagogy in the classroom, now it’s central to my daily life.

oct 9/RUN

2 miles
45th ave, north/32nd st, east/tunnel of trees, south/edmund, south/37th st, west
69 degrees

Warm this morning! We might hit 83 today. No thanks. Still, it was beautiful running through the neighborhood and by the river. Glanced at the water a few times and it was glowing in the sun. The tunnel of trees was glowing too: marigold. I love that color. I didn’t encounter a single runner on the narrow trail winding up to the ancient boulder. No stones stacked on top of it. I forgot to greet the welcoming oaks or check if they were a goldengrove unleaving.

Today’s October Surprise

This surprise comes from our long walk last night, all the way to turkey hollow and back. Walking round the neighborhood, Scott and I encountered bright, beautiful wildflowers still blooming. Light purples, dark purples, oranges, yellows, hot pinks. And halfway up a cedar fence, a trail of flaming red leaves. I noticed them first in my peripheral, the feeling of a bright color. Then, looking at them straight, I could see the red. Scott took a picture, after I asked him to, of some funky purple flowers:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CGGqzLqnozU/

sept 18/RUN

3.15 miles
neighborhood/lake street bridge/river road trail
46 degrees

Wonderful fall weather! Sun, crisp air, changing leaves, uncrowded sidewalks/roads/paths! I ran over the lake street bridge again. A bit windy; I could feel one chunk of my hair coming out of my pony tail and flopping around just above my visor. How funny did it look to the drivers passing me? The river was a beautiful blue. No rowers on the water. No canoes or motor boats either. I don’t remember seeing any leaves changing on the tree-line along the river’s edge. Still all green. Soon, red, orange, yellow. Then my view comes back. Coming off the lake street bridge and heading south on the trail, I overheard some bikers talking about today’s stage of the Tour de France. Nice! Heard some geese honking overhead–high in the clean blue air.

https://twitter.com/danalevinpoet/status/1304885340654702593?s=20

I love this idea of yielding to a poem or an idea…or the gorge. I think of it in relation to being open and generous and willing to listen (and to hear and to notice).

mood: wonder

Another day of working on my writing project on vision loss and mood. This morning, while watching the Tour de France, I noticed a sign with an exclamation mark on it quickly flash across the screen and pointed it out to Scott who hadn’t noticed it. I wondered, how is it that I could see this sign (and while Scott couldn’t) but miss so much else when I’m watching tv? How does my vision work and not work?

I bring this up in the current draft of my wonder poem in 2 ways.

To witness the spot of my unseeing usually concealed behind the smoke and mirrors of softened forms and filled-in gaps is astonishing. What impossible magic enables me to see anything with this ring obscuring my view? I like staring at it until my eyes ache, my head hurts. Observing how it moves slightly when I shift my gaze. How it grows bigger when I cover my left eye, smaller when I cover my right. How it begins to pulse, then fade, then flare, a fiery black hoop burning through my thinning retina. What a strange feeling to watch this show and suddenly know it is more real than the illusions my brain offers as sight.

1. impossible magic

How can I still see as well as I can with so many of my cone cells gone? How does my brain make sense of the limited information it’s receiving from the few remaining cells? Most of the time when I am curious about this, it is with awe and astonishment. What an amazing organ the brain is! It’s fascinating to learn about how the brain/mind compensates for lack of information, how it guesses, how it fills in the gaps.

Last week, I learned about Charles Bonnet Syndrome which is a phenomenon that can happen to around 15% of people with macular degeneration. It’s named after the man who first described it, having noticed it in his aging grandfather. When the brain doesn’t receive visual data from the eyes it provides its own images, either making them up or recalling stored ones. This causes visual hallucinations. People with CBS usually experience these hallucinations when they wake up and they don’t last long. The favorite hallucinations I read about in this article were

people dressed in costume from an earlier time
imaginary creatures, like dragons

What? Somewhere else I read about how the hallucinations are smaller, so you see tiny people dressed up in costumes. Nice! Thankfully, when you experience this, you know it’s a hallucination. I don’t have this syndrome. Instead, my brain likes to fill in the gap with a background that matches the area surrounding the missing image. So, while someone with CBS has hallucinations and sees something that isn’t there, I have a different problem: what is there is hidden behind a background (like a blank, blue sky or more green trees or endless waving water–all 3 of these have happened to me) with no indication of its presence or my inability to see it. Is there an antonym for hallucination? It is not that I see things that aren’t there; it is that I don’t see things that are there and I have no idea that I’m not seeing them–until suddenly, without warning, I do, like a bike that wasn’t there appearing beside me in my peripheral vision. I think this happened to me a lot more right after my vision declined in 2016. Has my brain figured out how to compensate for it?

2. optical illusions

Much of the time, even for me with my increasingly bad vision, the brain’s tricks for filling in gaps and working with incomplete visual data are hidden. I might see things a little fuzzier but I still see them. Unless I concentrate, I can’t see the ring scotoma in my central vision. There is no dark black ring on the page when I’m reading. But it’s there and when I found it by staring intently at a blank wall, I was astonished and fascinated. I was also relieved. Here, with this ring, was evidence that my vision is declining, that I’m not making this bad vision thing up. Because my brain is so good at compensating and performing magic tricks, it can be easy for me to think my eyes are better than they are, that I’m seeing more than I am.

sept 13/RUN

2.5 miles
river road, south/42nd st, west/around Hiawatha Elementary/43rd ave, north
56 degrees

Another good morning for running. I don’t remember much. Too busy looking out for other people. Started on the trail but it was too crowded so I moved over to Edmund and then ran up 42nd. Didn’t see the river or hear any memorable birds. No dropping acorns or honking geese. No clickity-clacking roller skiers or bikes blasting Jimmy Buffet songs. Saw a runner I’ve seen at least once before on the trail who annoyingly takes over the entire path and doesn’t move over. He has a strange, bouncy stride. Heard some yipping, spazzy dogs at the Hiawatha playground. Smelled some cigarette smoke and wondered if it was coming from the walker ahead of me. Ran by the door that my kids used to come out when they were done with school. All the students would bunch around the teacher trying to point out their parents so they could leave. I remember waiting forever because my kids (like me) weren’t aggressive enough to get the teacher’s attention. I was very happy when they got older and I didn’t have to wait for them near that door anymore.

Blind (r) ing

I haven’t been memorizing poems for a few weeks now. I’ve moved into working on my mood ring project. Yesterday I did some more research and found out a few things I’d like to play around with:

A blind spot in the central vision is also called a scotoma. Here’s a longer definition from Enhanced Vision:

A central scotoma is a blind spot that occurs in the center of one’s vision. It can appear in several different ways. It may look like a black or gray spot for some and for others it may be a blurred smudge or a distorted view in one’s straight ahead vision. Scotomas may start out as a small nuisance and then get larger or there may be several blind spots or scotomas that block one’s field of vision.

Right now, I think my scotoma is somewhere between a blurred smudge and a distorted view. At the end of the brief article, they offer a few tips, including:

Find and use your preferred retinal locus. A person looks slightly to the side so that the blind spot or scotoma is not in their central field of vision. One author describes it as “not looking at what you want to see.”

Not looking at what you want to see.

So much I want to do with this idea of not looking at what you want to see. Thinking about Dickinson and “tell all the truth but tell it slant” and the periphery and soft attention. I’m also thinking about how sometimes when I’m talking to Scott and I can’t see his face, I will look just a little to the side, over his shoulder. Then I can see his features. He says this looks strange. I bet.

Another useful term/idea is filling in: The manner in which the brain deals with inexplicable gaps in the retinal image. When an object enters your blind spot and disappears, instead of seeing a shadow or dark spot, the absence is filled in with the background color. So you can’t see that you’re not seeing. Because my blind spot is larger and in my central vision, I experience this a lot more than “normally” sighted people. Sometimes I wonder how often I’m not seeing without knowing.

At the end of an article about filling in and the various experiments you can do to see it, the authors conclude:

These experiments show how little information the brain actually takes in while you inspect the world and how much is supplied by your brain. The richness of our individual experience is largely illusory; we actually “see” very little and rely on educated guesswork to do the rest.

I love this idea of how limited everyone’s vision is and the incorrect assumptions many have when thinking about what it means to “see.” I’m not sure I would have spent much time thinking about any of this if I hadn’t lost my central vision. The last line about educated guesswork reminds me of Aldous Huxley’s book The Art of Seeing and his writing about Dr. W.H. Bates’ visual education method.

In the preface, Aldous writes:

Ever since ophthalmology became a science, its practitioners have been obsessively preoccupied with only one aspect of the total, complex process of seeing—the physiological. They have paid attention exclusively to eyes, not at all to the mind which makes use of the eyes to see with.

Bates’ method pays attention to the “mental side of seeing.”

And here’s another great definition of filling in from this helpful article:

What is filling-in? It is the phenomenon in which an empty region of visual space appears to be filled with the color, brightness or texture of its surround. The brain is capable of filling-in the blind spot, borders, surfaces and objects.

Okay, I’ll stop here for now.

july 14/RUN

3 miles
river road, south/north
73 degrees/ light rain
humidity: 89%/ dew point: 70

Woke up to darkness. Rain coming and staying all day. Decided to take Delia the dog out for a quick walk before it started. Not soon enough; by 1 block it was drizzling and by 2 blocks raining. We ran back. Delia did a great job–except for the time when she ran right in front of me and almost tripped me. Maybe I should try training her to run?

Running felt good so I decided if there was a break in the rain, I would go out for a run. There was and I did. Hardly anyone out by the gorge. I was able to run on the trail right above the river for most of the time. Hooray! I saw the river, heard some birds, ran by my favorite benches, heard the roar of the water gushing out of the sewer pipes down to the river near both ravines — at 36th and 42nd. And then, at the end, I ran through the Welcoming Oaks and greeted each one, “good morning!” “good morning!” “good morning!” Haven’t been able to do that in a while.

color

There’s something about cloudy, gray light that makes my vision even stranger than usual, especially when it comes to seeing colors. I am amazed that I can still see any color with almost all of my cones damaged. Here are some colors I saw this morning, some stranger than others:

From about 2 blocks away from the river road, I could see an orange sign for a pedestrian detour. So bright and so prominent, a glowing smudge in the midst of fuzzy dark green and gray.
Twice I encountered, from a distance of about 15-20 feet, a woman in blue running tights. As I approached her, seeing her through my central vision, the tights looked dark, almost navy blue. But when I saw her from the side, through my peripheral vision, the rights were a bright, electric blue. Blue is a strange color with my vision. Last winter, I used to walk by a house with lights in the shape of a peace sign. The circle was red, the inner sign blue. Looking at the sign straight on all I could see was a red circle. It wasn’t until I looked at it from the side that I could just barely see the blue lines.
A walker in a pink–or was it coral?–jacket.
The river was a pale blue, almost white in the gray light.

on the dream, forgiveness, and forgetting

Still thinking about Marie Howe and “The Meadow,” especially these lines, “My love, this might be all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget who you are” and “Bedeviled, human, your plight, in waking, is to chose from the words even now asleep on your tongue, and to know that tangled among them and terribly new is the sentence that could change your life.” In yesterday’s entry in my plague notebook, I wrote: “We forget what we are because what we are are creatures attempting to find the right words to feel better — less alone, less suffering, less closer to death.”

I want to think more about the value of forgetting. Here’s a poem I’d like memorize to get me started:

Let It Be Forgotten/ SARA TEASDALE

Let it be forgotten, as a flower is forgotten,
Forgotten as a fire that once was singing gold,
Let it be forgotten for ever and ever,
Time is a kind friend, he will make us old.

If anyone asks, say it was forgotten
Long and long ago,
As a flower, as a fire, as a hushed footfall
In a long forgotten snow.

may 21/RUN

3.25 miles
1.5 mile loop*
61 degrees

This summer, I’m planning to do more loops. Today I decided to do an easy run: 2 loops, starting at 36th, heading south on the river road, turning right on 42nd, then heading back north on edmund. One loop = 1.5 miles + .25 mile run to the river.

green as mood, feeling

Overcast this morning and warm. Everything was green. Thought about the idea of green as something you feel instead of see. What does it mean to feel green? Today’s green, in the absence of bright sun, felt calm and floating. Not solid or sharp or singular but part of everything else–pavement, grass, dirt, trees, sky, birds, the little kid speeding away from his dad on his bike.

I quickly googled green mood and found an article about it: What Does Green Make You Feel. Popular answers: calm, excited, stimulated, compassionate, optimistic, natural, fertile. Some that weren’t mentioned, but that I think about: energized/over-stimulated, mystery, envy, greed, naiveté, queasiness, growth/abundance/excess.

reciting while running: What Would Root

Recited What Would Root again as I ran. The entire poem took about a mile to speak in my head–with a few stops and starts with the words. I thought a little bit about the refrain “I could see everything; it was all green.” Then I thought about how I, with my damaged cones, sees green. Am I actually seeing green–and, how much? Is some of this seeing the memory of green or the logic of green—my brain knows that in spring and summer, trees are green, so it “tells” my eyes to see green? I don’t know. I feel like I’m actually seeing green but how many functional cones do I have left? Could I be seeing green through my peripheral? Lots of questions.

When I finished my run, I recited the poem into my phone as I walked home. I got it almost totally right–I forgot the line, “I sat down, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck, understanding for the first time that they were not hairs, but roots.” It is fascinating to have the poem in front of me and then listen to my recitation, seeing what I get right, what I don’t, which articles/words I add or omit.

what would root, may 21

march 16/RUN

4.25 miles
top of the franklin hill and back
35 degrees
snow, big fluffy flakes

Feeling a bit better today. Wonderful and strange to be outside, trying to avoid encounters with others while breathing in the beautiful fresh air. Dark and gloomy. It started snowing just after I got outside. At first, very light. Then, big fluffy flakes flying right into my face–I should have worn my baseball cap or visor to block them out. Oh well. The snow didn’t bother me too much although I wondered if it was the best idea to be outside with a cold or sinus infection in this weather. I think it’s fine. It feels important to get out by the gorge as much as I can.

Was able to do all the walking trails, including the one through the tunnel of trees which is not a tunnel right now but a bunch of bare branches and trunks. The floodplain forest was a beautiful, fuzzy brown. I know I glanced at the river but I don’t remember what color it was or how it looked. I think that’s because of all the snow flying in my face. The gorge was a misty, blurry white. Encountered a few walkers, one or two runners, and Dave the Daily Walker, back in uniform! I’m glad he’s feeling better.

I remember admiring the railroad trestle as I ran by it, noticing the river below. Also, glancing at the Winchell Trail, close to Franklin. The trail looked like a muddy mess.

Memorized a new poem for today’s run:

Tell all the truth but tell it slant/ Emily Dickinson

Tell all the truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lie
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth’s superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—

It was fun to recite this over and over again as I ran. I really love Emily Dickinson’s poetry–her phrasing, the rhymes, the rhythm, the ideas. I think (I don’t know that much about Emily Dickinson right now–maybe I should learn?) this is one of her more famous poems, especially the idea of telling the truth slant. I like it because of how it fits with my vision. I read that Dickinson became blind temporarily for a few years and that she wrote about it in her poetry. With my cone dystrophy, I rely much more on my peripheral (sideways, slantways?) vision to see. And, while I need bright light to see and read things, if the light is too bright it makes it almost impossible to see. Also, my unfocused, fuzzy vision is softer and less harsh, which sometimes results in kinder, more gentle visions–things that might look ugly in sharp edges and lines, appear beautiful in the soft, fuzzy, absence of detail (one example: gnarled, bare branches in the winter).

feb 26/BIKERUN

bike: 25 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 1.5 miles
treadmill, basement

Decided to bike and run in the basement today even though it wasn’t too cold (20 degrees) and the path was clear. Always trying to make sure I’m not running too much. Watched The Ring while I was biking. I think this movie, which is about 17 years old, holds up. Creepy. Extra creepy when you watch it on an iPad with headphones in a dark unfinished basement. Listened to my new (Sara 2020) playlist while I ran: Nur-d, Beck, Prince. Nice combination! At one point, felt like I was in a trance, my feet barely touching the moving floor.

Right now I’m reading Georgina Kleege’s Sight Unseen about macular degeneration and being blind and the over privileging of vision. She has 3 chapters on the phenomenology of blindness, which she describes as “attempts to capture in words the visual experience of someone with severely impaired sight.” So helpful! I don’t have the exact same thing that she does (and not as severe…yet), but it is very similar: damaged macula, loss of central vision, still intact peripheral vision. In the chapter, “the mind’s eye,” she writes about the blind spot her damaged macula creates in the center of her visual field. She describes how she can, with effort, see it when she stares at a blank wall.

I decided to try finding my blind spot. I stood about a foot away from a bare white door and stared into the center of it. After a few minutes, a darkish (dark gray?) circle–or was it an oval?–appeared in front of me. In its center was another circle which was white. This inner circle was a little less than a quarter the size of the darker circle. This darker circle is my blind spot; the much smaller inner circle is what is left of my combined (left and right eyes) central vision. Pretty wild.

Found this great PBS video with Kleege.

feb 24/RUN

5.5 miles
franklin hill turn around
39 degrees
5% slick ice covered

Waited a little longer to go out running this morning. Needed to let the thin sheets of ice covering the puddles melt. A nice day for a run! Not too much wind, not too many people. Sun. Clear paths. I got my layers right today: 1 shirt, 1 vest, 1 pair of running tights, 1 headband, 1 pair of gloves, 1 pair of socks. It was warm enough today to smell the earth thawing–why does it smell like dog poop? I think I like the smell of death in the fall–the musty, mulching leaves–over the smell of life in the almost spring.

David Lee Roth is in town with KISS for a concert tonight. Scott read somewhere that he always brings his bike to Minneapolis and loves biking along the river. Today, I kept looking for him, hoping he’d bike by. No luck. Bummer.

Glanced down at the river a few times. Enjoyed hearing the sibilant sounds of my striking feet on the grit covered path. Ran hard up the hill, then stopped to a walk for a few minutes when I reached the bridge. Thought about the body that was found just north of this bridge early yesterday morning. Managed to mostly avoid the secret slippery spots where the water on the path was still frozen. Also managed to avoid getting soaked by cars rushing through big puddles on the road.

With less than a mile left, I had an idea about my current project and decided, even though I was running well, enjoying going faster, to stop and record my thoughts.

Uh oh.

Just tried to find and transcribe my voice memo, but it wasn’t there. I must have hit the wrong button when I was trying to record it. Here’s what I remember. For a few minutes before stopping, I was chanting. How to be/periphery, How to be/periphery. Then I realized: I need a (big) project to focus on, a project that involves structure and daily practice. A concrete project. This is the project I think I’m working on–and in many ways, it is what I’m working on–but, I’m also working on something else, off to the side, at the periphery, which is the real work I need/want to do. What a bummer. I feel like I can’t remember a key to my thought that helped it make sense. It connects with the article I read about how to be a procrastinator a few years ago, and with the idea of not approaching projects/thoughts/goals head on, but slant or sideways or sneakily (tricking your brain). Argh! I wish I hadn’t screwed up the recording.

My Weather/ Jane Hirshfield

Wakeful, sleepy, hungry, anxious,
restless, stunned, relieved.

Does a tree also?
A mountain?

A cup holds
sugar, flour, three large rabbit-breaths of air.

I hold these.

What do I hold? Ever since I encountered the phrase, “inner and outer weather” (from a Frost poem about a tree at the window, via Edward Hirsch), I have been thinking about weather as metaphor for one’s mood/emotions/feelings. Love this poem and how it plays with this idea. And I love imagining how much air is 3 large rabbit-breaths worth. How big is this rabbit? And, in general, how big are rabbit breaths?

run: 3.15 miles2 trails78 degrees / dew point 67sunny

swim: 2 miles / 2 loopscedar lake open swim88 degrees / windy

how could I forget this moment?

The Swimmer/ Mary Oliver

2.25 miles/ 6 loopscedar lake open swim80 degrees

2 memorable things about the swim:

run: 3.25 miles2 trails 77 degrees

bike: 8.6 mileslake nokomis and back80 degreeswildfire smoke from Canada

swim: 2 miles / 2 loopslake nokomis open swim

WAVE AFTER WAVE/ M. Bartley Seigel

4 milestrestle turn around + extra73 degreeshumidity: 85% / dew point: 68

delight of the day

After the Rain/ Jared Carter – 1939-

bike: 8.6 mileslake nokomis and back75 degrees

swim: 3 miles/ 4 loops*lake nokomis open swim75 degrees/sunny

things I noticed in the lake

Fog-thick morning/ Lorine Niedecker

3 miles/ 3 loopslake nokomis open swim83 degrees

Other Things I Remember

2 miles/ 2 loopslake nokomis open swim82 degrees

1 milelake nokomis big beach30 minutes

1 mile/6 loopslake nokomis, big beach84 degrees

Paean to Place/ LORINE NIEDECKER

3.3 miles2 trails72 degrees

from Lake Superior

from Lake Superior Country, Vacation Trip ’66

5 milesdowntown loop56 degrees

4 milesriver road trail, south/waban park/turkey hollow/edmund, north50 degrees

Enough/ Jeffrey Harrison

Terns/ Mary Oliver

A Bird came down the Walk—/ Emily Dickinson

bike: 35 minutesrun: 1.5 milesbasementoutside: rain, wind

Split the Lark/ Emily Dickinson

A turkey interruption!

Yellow from Evidence/ Mary Oliver

from Thinking of Swirler

Then Bluebird Sang

The Poet Always Carries a Notebook

4.6 milesfranklin loop64 degrees

I Worried/ Mary Oliver

Don’t Hesitate/ Mary Oliver

3.25 milesturkey hollow31 degrees

Privacy/ Ada Limón

2.1 milesneighborhood33 degreeswind: 13 mph with gusts, 21 mph

Emily Dickinson Poems: March 30th and 31st

I saw no Way — The Heavens were stitched — (1863)

Without this — there is nought — (1862)

3 milesHiawatha and Howe loops44 degrees

Have you got a Brook in your little heart/Emily Dickinson

a moment of sound

bike: 15 minutesrun: 1.5 milestreadmilloutside: 43 degrees

a moment of sound

bike: 25 minutesrun: 2.25 milesbasementoutside: 15 degrees

2 Habits formed, one bad, one good

a moment of sound

bike: 22 minutesrun: 1.8 milesbasement

a moment of sound

bike: 25 minutesrun: 3.25 milesbasement

a moment of sound

2 milescooper school loop60 degrees

geese!

look at that bird high in the sky!

Mood Ring: Bewilderment

2 miles45th ave, north/32nd st, east/tunnel of trees, south/edmund, south/37th st, west69 degrees

Today’s October Surprise

3.15 milesneighborhood/lake street bridge/river road trail46 degrees

mood: wonder

1. impossible magic

2. optical illusions

2.5 milesriver road, south/42nd st, west/around Hiawatha Elementary/43rd ave, north56 degrees

Blind (r) ing

3 milesriver road, south/north73 degrees/ light rainhumidity: 89%/ dew point: 70

color

on the dream, forgiveness, and forgetting

Let It Be Forgotten/ SARA TEASDALE

3.25 miles1.5 mile loop*61 degrees

green as mood, feeling

reciting while running: What Would Root

4.25 milestop of the franklin hill and back35 degreessnow, big fluffy flakes

Tell all the truth but tell it slant/ Emily Dickinson

run: 3.15 miles
2 trails
78 degrees / dew point 67
sunny

swim: 2 miles / 2 loops
cedar lake open swim
88 degrees / windy

2.25 miles/ 6 loops
cedar lake open swim
80 degrees

run: 3.25 miles
2 trails
77 degrees

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees
wildfire smoke from Canada

swim: 2 miles / 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim

4 miles
trestle turn around + extra
73 degrees
humidity: 85% / dew point: 68

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees

swim: 3 miles/ 4 loops*
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees/sunny

3 miles/ 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

2 miles/ 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

1 mile
lake nokomis big beach
30 minutes

1 mile/6 loops
lake nokomis, big beach
84 degrees

3.3 miles
2 trails
72 degrees

5 miles
downtown loop
56 degrees

4 miles
river road trail, south/waban park/turkey hollow/edmund, north
50 degrees

bike: 35 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
basement
outside: rain, wind

4.6 miles
franklin loop
64 degrees

3.25 miles
turkey hollow
31 degrees

2.1 miles
neighborhood
33 degrees
wind: 13 mph with gusts, 21 mph

3 miles
Hiawatha and Howe loops
44 degrees

bike: 15 minutes
run: 1.5 miles
treadmill
outside: 43 degrees

bike: 25 minutes
run: 2.25 miles
basement
outside: 15 degrees

bike: 22 minutes
run: 1.8 miles
basement

bike: 25 minutes
run: 3.25 miles
basement

2 miles
cooper school loop
60 degrees

2 miles
45th ave, north/32nd st, east/tunnel of trees, south/edmund, south/37th st, west
69 degrees

3.15 miles
neighborhood/lake street bridge/river road trail
46 degrees

2.5 miles
river road, south/42nd st, west/around Hiawatha Elementary/43rd ave, north
56 degrees

3 miles
river road, south/north
73 degrees/ light rain
humidity: 89%/ dew point: 70

3.25 miles
1.5 mile loop*
61 degrees

4.25 miles
top of the franklin hill and back
35 degrees
snow, big fluffy flakes

bike: 25 minutes
bike stand, basement
run: 1.5 miles
treadmill, basement

5.5 miles
franklin hill turn around
39 degrees
5% slick ice covered