3.7 miles
marshall loop
61 degrees / humidity: 80%
Cooler, but thicker air. Did the Marshall loop for the first time in months. Running up the Marshall hill wasn’t too bad. I don’t remember what I thought about, except briefly hearing my steady foot strikes and imagining them to be a stillness in contrast with the traffic and the wind and the noises everywhere around me.
10 Things
- running up the hill, I felt the presence of orange — pinkish orange light. Was it from a wildfire sun? an orange sign?
- zinnias! more orange and pink
- running past Black coffee, noticing a man sitting at the counter, facing the window — I think he was reading the paper
- running past a walker on the hill, breathing as hard walking as I was running
- messed up slats on blinds in the window of the garage that is up against the sidewalk — blinds in a garage?
- steady traffic on the east river road
- overheard, a runner talking to 2 other runners: and when you got injured, and you got covid, I realized, ok they’re human too
- the river, running towards the marshall bridge — slate blue, empty
- yellow leaves on one of the earliest trees to change color
- an unusual stone stacking! 3 different stacks precariously placed on the slanted part of the boulder
Running on Cretin, I saw (but didn’t stop to read it) another poem from the St. Paul poetry project. I checked the map and maybe it was this one?
Untitled/ Pat Owens (2010)
A dog on a walk,
is like a person in love – You can’t tell them
it’s the same old world.
Saw this quote from Louise Glück and wanted to remember it:
I tell my students who believe passionately in explaining the work they’re sharing, “You know, when you’re dead, you can’t go around explaining this thing–it has to be right there on the page.”
Interview with Paris Review/ Louise Glück
Continuing to think about still and its many meanings.
still (def.)
- a static photograph, movie still
- an apparatus used for the distillation of liquids
- inactive, motionless, static
- silent, soundless
- placed, quiet, unruffled, tranquil, smooth
- noneffervescent, not sparkling
- free from noticable current
- calm down, quiet, lull, tranquilize
- hush, silence, shut up
- allay, relieve, ease
- without change, interruption, or cessation
- howver, nonethelss, yet, all the same, even so, nonetheless
swim: 5 nokomis loops
cedar lake open swim
74 degrees
Since Lake Nokomis is closed due to the sewer break, the final open swim was at Cedar Lake. It was windy and felt much cooler, both in and out of the water, than mid 70s. Brrr! Even before I got in the water, I had goosebumps. The water was very choppy — lots of breathing on my right side, some breathing every 2 strokes. I’m glad I didn’t really need to sight because it was difficult to see anything in the choppy water.
10+ Things
- sailboat with a white sail — have I ever seen a sailboat at cedar?
- a tall person, upright, on a paddle board with a dog
- scratchy vine, stuck on my googles
- scratchy vine, wrapped around my shoulders
- scratching vine, feeling almost like a full body scan as I crossed over it
- vine, reaching up from the bottom, clinging to my foot
- faint feelings of red and orange in the trees
- following behind a swimmer with a pink buoy, always just ahead, sometimes getting lost in the waves
- the soft, fading light as the sun dipped lower
- pale blue sky with feathery clouds
- a seagull span soaring above the water, looking for fish?
The last open swim of the season. As I swam my final loop, tired out from the waves and cold, I tried to take the moment in. Such a wonderful season. I leveled up — swimming much longer and for more loops. I felt strong and confident and not afraid when I couldn’t see anything but water and sky and Tree. Part of me wishes open swim would never end, but the rest of me knows that 10 weeks of swimming this much, especially outside in a lake, is enough. In January and February, I’ll remember the first orange buoy looking like the moon in an afternoon sky or the glow of orange when the light hits the buoy just right or the gentle rocking of the waves or that satisfied feeling after 90 minutes in the water.