june 20/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls loop
61 degrees
humidity: 77%

The sun and the humid air made it feel warmer than 61. If only it could feel like this tomorrow during open swim — warm, that is. A quiet, calm morning. Not too crowded on the trails or the roads. Lots of dappled light, flickering leaves. The only time I remember looking at the water was when I had just started crossing the ford bridge. I could see the dark reflections of the fir trees on the water.

I wore my bright yellow shoes. Today, they didn’t feel so bad. Before I went out for my run, I studied the bottom of my shoes. The Brooks Ghosts are already starting to wear down near the big toe, but the Saucony Cohesions and Rides are not. So, do the Ghosts change where I strike my foot, or are they just thinner at that spot? One day I’ll get my stride evaluated by someone at Mill City Running or another local running store.

I did some variations on the Galloway method (90 sec run/30 sec walk). I started with 15 minutes of running, then 90/30 for some time, then 3 min/1 min. Next time I need to commit to just running 90/30 the entire time and see what happens.

Right as I began running, I looked far ahead at the small circle of light at the end of a tunnel of sidewalk and trees. I thought about Alice and her view as she first falls down the hole:

down
and down

Watching this again, I remembered the light from above being brighter. Oh well, I still like it as inspiration for my hole series. Does it work for blur (see below)?

A few times, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson as I ran. Not sure I ever made it all the way through; I was distracted by the sound of a skateboard or the flash of a leaf or the feeling of sweat dripping down my face.

As I ran by the empty benches near the Ford/Power Plant overlook, I imagined biking here on some other day and sitting and reading a book, or writing or poem, or taking in the world around me.

10 Things

  1. loud music — dance? techno? — booming from a bike speaker
  2. a sprinkling, tinkling sound — was it falling water or rustling leaves?
  3. a few puddles from yesterday’s rain
  4. soft, wet dirt on the trail between the river road and lena smith boulevard
  5. the flickering shadow of one leaf being moved by the wind
  6. 2 older men talking, sitting at a picnic table near the skate park in Highland Park
  7. a woman running with a stroller, crossing near hidden falls — did she or the kid she was pushing make any noise? I don’t think so
  8. hot sun, then refreshing shade, at Highland Bridge
  9. passing a woman talking on a phone: then, what is it?
  10. 2 women walking — one, to the other: I haven’t perfected my pizza yet

holes and Alice

As I (finally) worked on my summary for April’s monthly challenge, I was inspired to return to the holes project. I want to keep experimenting with the Alice in Wonderland angle and the rabbit hole. What inspiration can I get from some of the scenes in Alice in Wonderland (1951)? So far, I have 3 scenes in particular: Alice falling down the hole1, Alice talking with the Caterpillar, and Alice and the Cheshire Cat.

Just now, I re-watched the Cheshire Cat scene and I’m thinking of pairing it with parts of hole 3: “land in a logic of blur and almost” and “read sentences sliced in half, glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined.” At the beginning of the scene, the cat is only a voice singing nonsense words, then a mouth, then eyes. Later, he is only footprints and stripes. How to represent that on the page? And, is that more almost than blur? Should the line be, “land in a logic of almost’?

Another part of this new approach is to simplify the image so that it is easier to understand as form/silhouette. I’m thinking of putting it on a single page — the page in which the word “hole” appears in the NYer essay — instead of the 4 panels. I’m hoping that will translate more effectively online (and on smaller screens).

Back to hole 3: what if I made the blur and almost as two different scenes/pages — one is blur, one almost. “Almost” would be the cat, and “Blur” would be –? I’ll keep thinking about that one. Blur = soft and fuzzy forms, before we grow accustomed to the Dark, right after the light has gone out, or grown too dim? Maybe, the image of a small hole of light, with everything else growing darker?

is water alive?

I was looking for something else (search on poets.com = “blur”) and found a wonderful essay about a poem, “on the water” and its dis/connection to ecopoetics. The author of the essay and the poem, Moheb Soliman, says this about water:

It’s a sacred hook—an existentially common denominator—the basis of everything, to build on together. You understand, but you’re deeply ambivalent about the abstraction of water. Water like a banner quivering in place, placeless. You fear placelessness. It’s why you are addicted to Google Maps. Isn’t everybody? Totalizing specificity, proper naming, sublime order, knowable space.

Yet, like many, you try and reject colonial hegemony. You can’t help but revere Indigeneity. But water flows one way at divides—you’re either duped by western science water as inanimate substance, or you’re co-opting animist beliefs about water. You don’t think of water as alive, nor of it as just a resource. Is there no other way?

Moheb Soliman on “on the water”

The line, You don’t think of water as alive reminded me that I have Is a River Alive? on my Libby audiobook shelf. TIme to start listening/reading, I think!

Perhaps a question to pursue this summer: (how) is a lake alive?

  1. Writing this, I was thinking about the moment before she/we grows accustomed to the Dark and can only see the whites of her eyes, but now I’m also thinking about the moment before that when we see her from the perspective of her cat Dinah as she call out, with delight, Goodbye Dinah! Goodbyyyyyyyeeee! How could I imagine that on a page? ↩︎

june 19/SWIM

3 loops / 1733 strokes
lake nokomis open swim
65 degrees / drizzle
water temp: < 70 degrees

Cold water! I might need to wear my wetsuit for the next swim. I can handle feeling cold at the beginning; it’s the deep cold that I feel in my hands and feet after an hour of swimming that I don’t like. Is it that I have poor circulation? Whatever it is, my right middle finger was starting to go number halfway in. I didn’t want to stop swimming, so I kept wriggling it mid-stroke and trying to punch the water extra hard with that hand. I wonder if it would help if I ran a mile or 2 as a warm-up before the swim?

Cold water aside, it was a great swim. A little drizzle, overcast. Not too many people or boats. Only a few swan boats and one paddle boarder.

I decided to try swimming through the milfoil again at the start. It was still there, but not too bad. The trick: don’t try to swim freestyle through it; don’t try to swim at all. Just glide over it with the occasional breaststroke kick.

I saw a few silver flashes under me near the first orange buoy and one small dead fish, belly-up near the beach. No minnows, but a few bubbles and my sparkle friends — sediment particles coming at me as I swam towards the big beach.

I followed a swimmer — I think it was a woman, but why do I think that? Did I see something other than their orange buoy for a second? — for at least 2 of the loops. I wasn’t trying to follow them — I didn’t want to follow them — but we were going almost the same speed and taking the same trajectory from buoy to buoy. In addition to their orange buoy, I noticed some pink and yellow safety buoys, too. Also noticed at least two people swimming the wrong direction. You are supposed to always keep the buoys to your right, but they had them to their left.

There weren’t any waves, but sometimes the water was choppy, and sometimes it felt like it was being sucked from under me, which makes it harder to feel any power or control in your stroke. Swimming back to the big beach, I often had to breathe every 2 or 4 — always breathing to my right, because the water was high on the left side.

Right before I left for the swim, I reread one of Alice Oswald’s description of swimming in Dart. So good!

Here’s what I read:

Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head,
through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm,
giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it,
water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding
where my body was in some way a wave to swim in,
one continuous fin from head to tail
I steered through rapids like a canoe,
digging my hands in keeping just ahead of the pace of the river

—

He dives, he shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence
which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts
the lid and shuts and lifts and shuts and the sky
jumps in and out of the world he loafs in.
Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts

What I remembered (but slightly wrong) was this:

open the lid and shut, open the lid and shut

I recited it for a few minutes as I punched through the chop, lifting my head to breathe, then dropping it again to avoid a face full of water.

I heard then saw some military planes taking off. The water was blue-ish gray, the visibility low. At one point, I had a moment of panic when I was so used to the safety buoy belt around my waist that it felt like it wasn’t there. Oh no, did I lose my phone? Nope. I checked and it was still there.

It was a good swim. Again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I didn’t think they were there. I had the occasional flash of panic when I suddenly though, what if I got a cramp or felt faint here, in the middle of the lake?, but those flashes didn’t last long.

june 18/RUNSWIM

9.15 miles
lake nokomis and back
57 degrees / humidity: 87%

My longest run in more than a year. It is humbling to feel like 9 miles was the most I could do (at least today) when I ran a marathon just 2 years ago. Of course, thanks to perimenopausal anxiety, I have flashes of worrying that it’s not being out of shape but something physically wrong with me. A few days ago, Scott and I had a discussion — which is worse: peri/menopausal anxiety or peri/menopausal irritability? I guess, being irritable is a drag for everyone around you, but it seems less draining than worrying that every small ache or pain means you might have a terminal illness. I am rarely irritated, but I am often anxious.

I ran the first mile without stopping, then moved into my 90 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking. I like this method, although I was a little disappointed that my heart rate was still higher. Was it the humidity? Is that just how my heart rate works when I’m running? Is it a bigger concern — some heart problem? Or was it because I ran the first mile without stopping instead of doing the 90/30 from the beginning? I imagine it was mostly the humidity and doing a continuous first mile. At the halfway point, I experimented with the ratio: 3 min run/1 min walk and 2 min run/1 min walk.

assessment: I feel pretty good now, and I definitely had more energy at the end of the run. My feet hurt — not as much as they have in past runs, but the ball of both feet still ached at the end. Also: my ankles were a little sore, too.

Even though it was humid, and I wished I had worn my tank top instead of a short-sleeved shirt, I didn’t feel too hot. Lots of shade, a cool-ish breeze. I heard at least one woodpecker, laughing; the babbling creek; a dog losing its mind — bark bark bark bark — across the creek. I greeted several walkers and runners, stopped at the park bathroom right before reaching mile 8. I ran past some guy watching a pickleball match; counted several kayaks out on the water; encountered a biggish group of runners ahead of me — would I get tangled up with them? No, thankfully they stopped at the playground to do some exercises and to pair up. As I passed them, I could hear someone calling out, okay, now find someone with about your same pace.

For 8 of the miles, I listened to the world around me. Cars streaming past on the parkway; the hum of a hoverboard on the bike path; kids calling out to each other at the creek; and the thwack of the ball on the pickle ball court. For mile 9, I put in my “windows” playlist. The song I most remember was one I’m almost skipped, Pete Seeger’s “Fly through my window” — little bird little bird fly through my window

random bummer news: The Minneapolis Park Board voted to close the dog park and one of the most decorated American female mid-distance runners, Jenny Simpson, had a medical emergency while pacing a mile race on Monday night: her heart stopped and they gave her CPR for 20 minutes before it restarted. She’s in the hospital now, recovering. She is 39 and just retired from running a few years ago.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees

Brrrrr. I’m not sure what the water temperature was, but it felt cold. Probably 70 degrees. The water was a bit choppy today and full of menacing swan boats and a few clueless kayaks. I couldn’t always tell if the kayak was a lifeguard moving across the course or some random kayaker not paying attention to the course — or maybe not realizing there was a course. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told them what was going on.

I took RJP’s advice and started at the far edge of the beach, in line with the last green buoy, to avoid the tangles of milfoil at the other end of the beach. It helped a lot. The only milfoil I encountered was a few stray vines in the middle of the lake. One wrapped around my head and I had to fling it off, mid-stroke.

10 Things

  1. clear bubbles, made by my piercing hands
  2. a strange squeaking, rubbing noise as a swan boat neared
  3. often the orange buoys look white, the green ones too
  4. again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I couldn’t see them — only them when I was about 15 feet away from them
  5. the rope tethering the last green buoy to the lake bottom was at a sharp angle
  6. entering the water, I walked past 3 guys skipping rocks at the edge of the water
  7. a few silver flashes
  8. almost ran into another swimmer — I didn’t see them until they were right there
  9. sighting a green buoy, swimming towards it, seeing a sailboat near it and wondering if I had seen the buoy at all or just a boat — always, the buoy was there
  10. my first few steps in the water: brrrrr! very cold — I warmed up but felt very cold by the end, after sitting at Painted Turtle for a half an hour, my heels were numb

june 16/RUNSWIM

3.1 miles
2 trails
69 degrees

A sunny afternoon. Warmer than I thought it would be. Not an easy run, but I did it, and I got to travel on the winchell trail, which was shaded. Mostly the trail was in complete shade, but occasionally some sun came through. In a few spots it glowed so much that I wondered if it was white paint. Nope — I double-checked, just sun. I heard some kids above, then a person sitting on the 38th street steps having a disturbing conversation about someone being shot in the head. I hope they were talking about a movie or a tv show.

5 Run and 5 Swim Things

  1. the path was thick with bikers
  2. the road was crowded with cars
  3. the two benches that I recall noticing were occupied
  4. puddles on the trail from last night’s rain
  5. 2 kids on the dirt part of the winchell trail — the younger kid to the older one: do it! the older kid’s response: that’s mean!s
  6. several military jets flying above the lake
  7. water color: a pale blue-green
  8. little spirits at my feet! (minnows near the shore)
  9. a few friends: sediment and bubbles
  10. the water was so low — near the shore, it was far from the lifeguard stands and there was a little drop-off near the water

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees

A great swim! Again, I swam straight to the buoys without seeing them. And when I couldn’t see anything but water and trees and sky, I didn’t panic at all.

A few silver flashes below. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. Sometimes, 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right. Steady strokes. Sometimes I was sore, sometimes I was worried about my heart rate1, and all of time I was deeply grateful to be swimming in this lake with my strong shoulders and back.

Some dog updates

First, on Saturday, Delia the dog started limping and not putting any weight on her back left leg. On Monday the vet delivered the bad news: a torn ACL. Major bummer! Delia is in good spirits. In fact, she’s managed to figure out how to hop on that leg pretty effectively. It’s hard having to stop her. Currently we’re trying to decide between surgery or not. If she were a bigger dog, there would be no question: surgery. But, with smaller dogs, taking it easy and rehabbing might be enough. Surgery is expensive and traumatic, but so is not being able to run and jump and do much of anything for many months.

Second, it is seeming more likely that the off leash dog park will be closing by the end of 2026. It is on sacred Dakota land, I support the returning of this land (see this article for more info). At first, I was sad about losing it, but then Delia tore her ACL and we think it might have been at least partly due to an aggressive and unsupervised dog at the park. Many dog owners are great with their dogs at the park, but some use it as daycare, ignoring the rules of keeping your dog within sight. Even if the dog park stayed open, I don’t think we would taking Delia back there.

  1. last night at cedar lake, my average heart rate for the swim was 160, which was alarming. Usually it’s under 130. Combine that with my anxiety over any anomaly in my watch data, and I was a little worried. Checked my heart rate after I was done: 126. Phew. Back to normal. ↩︎

june 15/SWIM

2.76 degre5 loops (5 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees

The first open swim at cedar lake. It was great. I swam for (almost) an hour. The water was cold, but not too choppy or fishy or full of vegetation. Only 2 or 3 big vines wrapped around my head or shoulder. My hands were cold by the fourth loop and my neck was sore.

10 Things

  1. big white clouds up above as I swam
  2. dark purple-ish clouds hovering as we drove away
  3. the vine that wrapped around my shoulders was scratchy and sharp, the one that wrapped around my head was not
  4. a new lifeguard — he was very enthusiastic and earnest about giving people information about open swim
  5. a small bird or a dragonfly zoomed in front of me once as I lifted my head
  6. successful sighting heading towards hidden beach — after a few years of trying, I think I’ve cracked the code!
  7. bright pink and yellow buoys
  8. bright green caps
  9. bubbles — made as my hand pierced the water
  10. clear enough to see my hand and my watch and the bottom right near shore but not much else

spider web

I’m stepping back from devoting all of my attention to the holes and lines and spiders and webs (at least I think I am), but I wanted to try out a web over one of my four panel found poems. So far, I’ve created a basic web over the unmarked text. Next, I might figure out how to mark the text and/or create a distorted (NASA drugged-out) web. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m slow in figuring out how to make things, but eventually I get there. Today I learned that for strength purposes, I should create the outer rings of the web first. Also learned that passing the thread over then under when looping makes it tighter. I think I’d like to study how the spider makes the orb web some more for ideas.

spider web / 15 june / hole 6

june 13/RUN

4 miles
up to wabun, down to lock and dam
60 degrees
wind: 14 mph

I was supposed to do open swim this morning, but it was 57 degrees and very windy and I decided that was too much for me this early in the season. Lots of wind = choppier water = more sighting = sore neck, So instead I watched Paul (steak sause not sexass) Seixas abandon and Del Toro win, then went out for a windy run.

It was a tough decision not to swim; I really don’t like missing open swims. But, as I walked through our alley before I started the run and felt the cool and windy air, I was glad I hadn’t gone. The run was good. The first 5 minutes always feel strange now. Is it that my shoes aren’t quite right, or that I’m getting older, or something else I’m not imagining? I think it’s more a redesign of the shoes than anything else.

I don’t remember what I thought about, and not much of what I noticed. I ran on the narrow and root-y strip of dirt in the grassy boulevard until I reached the 44th street parking lot. I don’t remember hearing any distinctive birds or avoiding any squirrels.

10 Things

  1. a trio of roller skiers on the double bridge
  2. 2 bikers crossing in front of me to bike down to the overlook at the south entrance of the winchell trail
  3. a bike zooming by me
  4. a man sitting on a bench near the locks and dam, fishing
  5. a squeaking noise as something on a light pole was jarred loose in the wind
  6. choppy water under the ford bridge
  7. the dirt path that winds through the grass was narrower in past years — are people using it less?
  8. someone slowly jogging up the locks and dam hill, then stopping at the top
  9. 3 people spread across the bottom of the wabun hill, one of them pusing a bike and holding a (too) loose leash with a small dog
  10. an older couple, the man pushing a walker, on the edge of the trail near the coyote den nearby sign, looking at something — the river? the coyote den? something across, on the east bank?

For most of the run I don’t remember much of what I heard. For the last mile, I listened to my “It’s Windy” playlist. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze.”

I almost forgot about the shadows! Actually, I did forget about the shadow for several hours until suddenly they popped into my head. At the locks and dam, running by a fence, I saw some sharp shadows and stopped to take a picture:

shadows / locks and dam no 1 / 14 june 2026

Fence and shadow, shadow and fence. Which is more real?

june 13/RUN

5 miles
marshall loop (to fairview)
64 degrees

Ran up Marshall past Cretin, Cleveland, and Prior. Turned on Fairview and over to Summit, then on the edge of the St. Thomas campus. We missed the bells by 6 minutes. Bummer. It was a good run. As we walked home, I told Scott that I was successful for a few reasons: 1. I didn’t look at my watch or check my heart rate; 2. I had a shift in perspective because of the success of my last long run; 3. our run together was only 5 miles instead of 9; and 4. it was slightly cooler outside.


2 images from the run

one — running down the last bit of Summit to the Monument, passing two runners heading up Summit. One runner to the other: it sounded like a gravel-y screech. Then he fully committed to imitating it. It was funny and shocking to hear such strange sounds. Scott and guessed that he was trying to tell the other runner about a bird sound he had heard at some other time.

two — a bike passing us as we ran down the Summit hill near Shadow Falls blasting Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces.”

It was a beautiful morning. Sunny, but with lots of shade. Near St. Thomas I greeted my shadow. Later, I switched places with Scott as we ran so I could be closer to the railing and the edge. I told him that I wanted to let my shadow run closer to the river. I noticed her just above the tops of the trees below us.

The river was low. We could see a sandbar just below the surface. The paths weren’t too crowded.

An unusual encounter: a line of 20 or so kids and adults, dressed up for a hike with big backpacks. Were they going on a camping trip. Scott said, it’s funny how all of the kids moved over to let us run by; it was the adults who were clueless. Yep, that sounds right.

Scott talked about the movie clips he’s using in his latest YouTube video. I recounted several instances — one good, one bad, one neutral — of people drafting off me during runs. We ended by discussing the different Indiana Jones’ movie openings, especially the moment in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when Harrison Ford hides in the fridge and gets flung up in the air when the bomb goes off. I had a suggestion for a future run topic: rank the top 10 best comic moments in Bond films with Roger Moore.

added at 6:45 pm: For reason I can’t remember, I decided to read my entries from June of 2025. Because the log posts them from last day to first, I’m reading them that way. Already on 30 June, so many wonderful ideas. A random thought as I read it: Richard Siken’s latest book — I Know Some Things. I started reading it and posting about it this past winter (the last time was on 3 dec 2025). I need to return to it. There are a lot of books I purchased in the last year that I haven’t finished. Maybe the rest of June could be about reading Siken and the other books I haven’t had time to read yet? Or, at least this next week could be about reading all of Siken’s book. I could take it to the lake or the falls or on bike rides somewhere else.

june 12/SWIM

1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
69 degrees
wind: 16 mph / gusts: 32 mph

The first Friday morning open swim! Windy. Again, the water temperature was warmer than the air. In the water: ah! Out of the water: brrrrr!! The new way to start the swim: swimming through a patch of thick vegetation. Oh well. I’ll get used to it during open swim. A question: will it be possible to swim around the white buoys on days I don’t have open swim, or will the weeds be too thick? Maybe I can find out by going for a morning swim on Monday?

RJP came with me to the lake. She wasn’t ready to swim across the lake, and said she might try going in for a swim in the beach area. When I returned from my first loop, there she was! We swam together for a few minutes, then I convinced her to swim out to the white buoy. She did, but it freaked her out, especially when she saw the little big of milfoil there. I told her that the milfoil was much, much worse on the other side. We agreed that she might not be ready to swim across the lake this summer. She might try to swim at a pool instead.

It was almost impossible for me to see the buoys heading toward the little beach. Because it was morning, the sun was in my eyes. I kept swimming and didn’t panic when nothing but waves and trees and blue sky were in front of me. Eventually, the flash of the buoy far off to my right. I adjusted it, then swam straight to the third buoy. On the way back, it was easier to see the buoys, but harder to stroke through the water. So much chop! Mostly, I didn’t mind the water being choppy, although it did tire me out.

10 Things

  1. slimy lake floor — covered with milfoil leaves
  2. sparkles on the water surface
  3. ghost vines, 1: reaching up, far enough down in some spot near shore that I could only see the ghostly tips
  4. ghost vines, 2: clustered just below the surface, making it impossible to swim a full freestyle stroke
  5. shaft of light reaching down to the bottom at an angle
  6. 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right
  7. 1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
  8. 2-3 foot waves, rolling at an angle
  9. finishing the swim, standing up, feeling the very cold air
  10. standing in the shallower water (almost up to my shoulders), a small black bird — small enough that I thought it might be a butterfly — flew right past my face

things not noticed or forgotten: sparkle friends, bubbles, silver flashes, the water surface glowing orange because of a reflection from the orange buoy, sailboats, menacing swans, kayakers

SWIMMING 1935/ Peter Davison

SIX SENTENCES FOR ROBERT PENN WARREN

He thrashed his way across the yellow lake,
high in the water streaming past his shoulders
one arm akimbo, then the other, feet
churning like a paddlewheel behind,
and never faltering to whistle, whoop,
spout like a whale, but simply, ceaselessly
trudgening forward to attack the water
the lake had clamped between its bulldozed knees.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

For more than forty years I’ve watched this swimmer
in elements no less unknown than water
tell secrets of the ways we make a poem,
the way of Lilburne Lewis with an ax,
the way of entrance to a woman’s body,
the way a deer can bleed to death in snow.

The swimmer’s ears are sealed from careless words
that picnickers are shouting from the shore:
his eyes squeeze shut, to open only when
he takes a sight upon that destination
to which ambition, force, despair have pointed.

How can he, in the cavern of the lake,
let up his churning enterprise to listen,
since, for the sake of breathing, he must swim
as though the shore ahead did not recede,
as though he did not know we never arrive?

His body keeps the pulse of water music
that swimmers cradle as they force a passage,
forever pressing the receding shore,
crazed one-eyed gods who gape into the sun.

Oh, I like this! The description of the poet as swimmer resonates for me.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

Celebrating the instincts of the body. Yes!

The “for Robert Penn Warren” in the epitaph was in another swimming poem I found earlier in the search (Swimming After Thoughts/ Jay Parini). Did RPWarren swim a lot? Yes, and it was deeply connected to his writing/creating process:

The rhythm of Robert Penn Warren’s life now is settled but not sedate. He rises early, fixes his own breakfast, exercises with a set of barbells kept on the living room floor then dons trunks and a plastic cap and makes the short walk to a bower-hidden swimming hole behind his summer home. He swims nearly a mile in the chilly water, sculling along at a steady, rigorous pace. The clay-bottomed pool is surrounded by ferns and high trees, and in the morning—as thin, miasmic bars of sunlight filter down, dappling the water in tones of emerald and gold—it is Edenic. Here, his body aching slightly from the exertion and his mind free from worries, Warren slips into a creative trance. This is the the hour when the images bloom. The swims are never draining, are in fact less taxing than distance running, the exercise he used to stimulate himself when he was younger. As Warren strokes back and forth through the glittering pond, a poem usually flowers. 

Robert Penn Warren Finds His Place to Come To

Continuing to read, I found this cool connection to a writer and their memoir about vision loss that I checked out and read (some of, at least) 6 or more years ago:

Three years ago, Eleanor Clark was partially blinded by the disease macular degeneration. At first, the condition seemed hopeless and was emotionally devastating. Clark had written several books, and in 1965 had won the National Book Award for her non-fiction account of the men and women who work in the French oyster industry, The Oysters of Locmariaquer. Her vision stabilized about six months after she was stricken, allowing her to perceive dim, impressionistic glimpses of the world and return to her writing. Composing sentences by drawing giant Magic Marker letters on blank sheets of newsprint then transcribing these jottings with a large-type typewriter while peering through a lighted magnifying glass, she wrote a book about the fight to regain control of her life: Eye, etc.


RPWarren’s wife is Eleanor Clark, the author of Eye, etc! I recognized the book from the description of her writing process with big black markers. I should return to this book! (I just requested it from my local library!)

june 11/RUNHIKE

8.1 miles
ford loop + hidden falls
64 degrees
dew point: 59

Technically, if I follow Scott’s plan, I’m supposed to run 9 miles today. But I’m going hiking at the dog park later this morning and swimming at the lake this evening, so I kept it to 8. I wasn’t fast, but I’m pleased with this run. I didn’t feel great at the beginning; it was very sticky and breathing wasn’t that easy. My heart rate shot up pretty fast, too. I wondered how I could keep running when it was already so hot and I felt so bad. Then I decided to not worry about how much I walked and to just keep going. For the ford loop (the first 4 miles), I ran until my heart rate reached 169, then I walked until it got down to 125. At Hidden Falls, I tried something new: run 90 seconds, walk 30 seconds. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having to look at my watch so much and stopping every 1.5 minutes, but I didn’t mind it, and breaking the time up into small increments made it go by faster — or made me think less about it as some big, overwhelming amount. This is the Galloway method of training. I think I’ll try it on my next long run for the entire run.

For most of the run, I listened to my book, Ariadne. For the last mile, I listened to my bunnies playlist.

5 Running and 5 Hiking Things

  1. the overcast sky made the green in the tunnel of trees seem deeper and darker
  2. a slash of orange on the ancient boulder
  3. a big log floating in the river near the east side of the ford bridge — was it a log? a boat? a person?
  4. a coxswain calling out instructions over his bullhorn to some rowers — heard, not seen
  5. roots buckling the sidewalk, looking like slithering snakes
  6. the entrance to the dog park was dark and green and inviting in an almost sinister way
  7. evidence all around of the big storm 2 nights ago: giant felled trees, trunks tipped over and reaching for the river, a thick branch that must have been blocking the trail before someone cut it
  8. drops of rain hitting the surface of the river, creating slight ripples that distorted the water near the shore
  9. bark bark bark bark bark bark — an enthusiastic dog
  10. kerplunk! splash! a dog swimming more than halfway across the river, moving fast

hike: 40 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
63 degrees
drizzle off and on

dog name: the swimming dog’s name was Millie — okay Millie, come here — a human calling to the dog

According to FWA, it’s supposed to rain off and on all day. We managed to mostly miss it, only a few drips on the river surface. We talked about terrible chemistry professors and doing hip thrusts with weights on your lap. FWA performed an imaginary conversation between Delia and another dog. In this conversation, they talked about how great the dog park is. Delia bragged about getting to come twice a week and the other dog said they only went once but that the yard surrounding their mansion was bigger than the dog park.

Possibly for the swim this afternoon: a prompt from Manny Loley

Now I invite you to find the water. In Diné thought, change happens in fours, manifestation happens in fours. There are four sacred mountains, four worlds that we emerge from into our current world. I invite you to create a poem in four steps.

First: find a body of water to sit with and listen. A river, a lake, an ocean—let it connect with the water inside of you. And let the sound that it makes work on your body and your mind and your heart.

Second: build your relationship with the water. Listen for what the water has awakened inside of you. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body? What stories are brought to the surface?

Third: follow the reverberations. Write down some of your thoughts, your feelings, your memories. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, or about making things sound writerly or whether they make sense or not.

Fourth: make an offering to the water. Share what the water gave life to in the form of your poem. Touch the water and give thanks.

waterlogged: heavy with water, dense, difficult to manage, not dry, less buoyant, damaged/distorted/warped by excess water, soggy, characterized by the presence of a lot of water

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
64 degrees (air)
71 degrees (water)

After finishing my run and the hike, it started raining. Off and on, all day. By the time I went to open swim the temperature had dropped enough that the water was much warmer than the air. There was wind, too, which made the water choppy. I didn’t care. It was fun to swim into and through the waves. I swam straight to many of the buoys even when I barely realized I was seeing them. I think I did less sighting and more swimming without looking. It’s strange how much more comfortable I feel now when I see so much less.

a regular: As I exited the water an older man heading in asked me how it was. I said, it’s choppy, but I like it that way. He agreed and then we talked about the crazy amount of milfoil in the water. I have decided that I have said enough about it — it’s out of control and dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of someone drowning in it. And, like blue green algae blooms, I just need to get used to it and find ways to avoid and/or endure it. Just before he left, the man introduced himself and shook my hand. I’m Joe. / I’m Sara./ Nice to meet you.

Other things I remember: a few patches of blue sky; opaque water with a few silver flashes; a woman swimming, her arms entering the water without her elbows bending; the roar of rushing wind; swimming just barely over the top of the milfoil; the ridgeline of the wave as it rippled over the water; a swimmer exerting a lot of extra energy kicking, white foam everywhere; the hard bump of my safety buoy hitting me in the waves; the silcence and solitude when I stopped in the middle of the lake; looking to my right and seeing a dark line of clouds, hovering

june 10/NOSWIM

I was planning to do the first Cedar Lake open swim of the season. Scott and I drove all the way over there (the other side of town, 30 minutes in traffic), but when I got out of the car: thunder. Then more thunder, then rain, then some small hail. I waited 15 more minutes: thunder. I know the rules. When lifeguards hear thunder or see lightening they must close the lake and they can’t reopen it for 30 minutes. We decided to not wait. As we drove away it cleared up. Sun. Open swim probably started after 6. Bummer. I’m still glad we didn’t stay. Waiting another 30 minutes in the car for the lake to reopen would have seemed like a long time.

from earlier in the day

1

In yesterday’s entry — the part of it that I wrote this morning — I described my bubble friends as orbs. I like this connection to my recent study of spiders and one type of web they weave. A reoccurring theme for summer swimming: looping, orbiting, water orbs?

2

To consider before a swim: what does it mean to be thought through by water?

Alice Oswald: It was probably when I took up gardening that I discovered that being was better than thinking–that actually you don’t have to think things through, you can garden all day and your mind will have been moved by the gardening. And it’s the same when you’re in water. You’re thought through by the water rather than having to think. 

from 3 feb 2026 log entry

3

Reading past entries tagged “Alice Oswald,” I found this:

I’m more and more wary of the kind of willed and conscious act of writing. More and more I leave my mind to do it by itself. So I will, you know, go out and be kind of shocked by all the colours and pictures and smells and then purposefully not think of them linguistically. I think that the underneath mind will then do the work and that’s the mind I’m interested in. So the skill for me is then learning how to raid that underneath mind and then, when you do pick up a pen, you’re listening just hard enough so that you don’t use your surface mind. You get down to the mind that has taken everything in.The whole art of everything is about forgetting yourself

Instead of the underneath mind, the underwater mind, or the just beneath the surface mind? The water-logged mind?

Yes! The water-logged mind. For years now, I’ve wanted to create something that combines log entries and poems and lists (and more) and brief descriptions of using swimming to teach myself to see differently. The tentative title and theme: water logged, which is not to be confused with the wonderful travel/wild swimming/nature book by Roger Deakin, Waterlog. Perhaps the way to approach this book is not to see it as something that I could submit and get published, but as a useful archive and a fun experiment in making — a glossary of words, terms, ideas + a place for gathering a range of ideas about swimming and water. A way to do something more with what I’ve already gathered.

4

autonomic = acting or occurring involuntarily / refers to autonomic nervous system: “a component of the peripheral nervous system, regulates involuntary physiologic processes, including heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, digestion, and sexual arousal. The ANS consists of 3 anatomically distinct divisions: sympathetic, parasympathetic, and enteric.”

from Anne Carson’s “1=1”:

And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it. Not at all like meditation—an analogy often thoughtlessly adduced—but, rather, almost forensic, as an application of attention, while at the same time, to some degree, autonomic.

1=1 / Anne Carson

5

Remembering the rope I wrote about in my 10 Things yesterday — the one that tethers the buoy to the lake bottom that I can see as I swim over it. An anchor of some sort is attached to it, then dropped by a lifeguard in a kayak. This line, this anchor, only a temporary tether, removed at the end of open swim. There are fixed buoys at the lake, too: cylindrical, white ones (4 at the big beach, 3 at the little beach) and reddish orangish pinkish ones, faded from years of sun and water (how many of these? I’ve never counted; perhaps I should sometime soon?). I’ve never really studied them underwater, but I imagine there are ropes that extend down to permanent anchors in the lake floor. The white and red/orange/pink buoys are in the same place every year and stay there from sometime in May to sometime in September — there doesn’t seem to be a fixed date when they are reinstalled or deinstalled each year.

Was it last year that I wrote/thought about the geometry of the lake? Yes — 5 august 2025.

from Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson

There is a geometry of water, for this
Squares off the clouds’ redundancies
And sets them floating in a nether atmosphere
All angles and elongations: every tree
Appears a cypress as it stretches there
And every bush that shows the season,
A shaft of fire. It is a geometry and not
A fantasia of distorting forms, but each
Liquid variation answerable to the theme
It makes away from, plays before:
It is a consistency, the grain of the pulsating flow.

geometry: the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something / relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles


geometry and not
distorting form — angles and points and lines off due to water and unreliable vision

And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake: 

  • angles
  • trajectories
  • following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
  • lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
  • lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it) 
  • the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
  • the angle of that rope line
  • how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
  • the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
  • same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
  • the sharp angles of prickly vines
  • parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
  • perpendicular lines: water and light pole
  • buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
  • buoys as cylinders
  • buoys as equilateral triangles
  • angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
  • grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
  • rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
  • coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface

I’d like to think more about the relationship between points — plotted through sparkle and hands piercing water / as different entities (object/subject) on a plane (surface of the water). Anne Carson discusses the anthropology of water (need to revisit this), what is the geometry of water (to me)?

Another thought: coordinates. I recall a line I “found” in a New Yorker essay about when the forms are too fuzzy, I escape into coordinates (see 26 may 2026).