Year: 2024

sept 3/YARDWORK

45 minutes
gathering twigs, mowing the lawn
75 degrees

Listened to a podcast (Nobody Asked Us) while I “mowed” the front yard with our reel mower, which does more pushing down grass than cutting it. Then gathered and broke down twigs on the side of the house. It’s the first day of public school today and the first year since 2008 that I don’t have a kid in public school. One is a senior in college, the other will start their first year in the spring. Mostly I’m glad to be out of this stage, but it’s still seems strange for it to be over.

Here’s something I’d like to remember from the wonderfully whimsical poet, Heather Christle. She’s responding to this line from an essay criticizing ChatGP

The point of writing an essay is to strengthen students’ critical thinking skills; in the same way that lifting weights is useful no matter what sport an athlete plays, writing essays develops skills necessary for whatever job a college student will eventually get.

First, she suggests alternatives to “whatever job a college student will eventually get”:

  1. delighting in the diction and syntax of your beloveds and strangers
  2. recognizing the nature of lies uttered by those who wish to wield power over you
  3. composing nonsensical songs while puttering about one’s day…

Yes! These are all things important for an education in how to live a life!

Second, she responds to the strength/lifting weights analogy:

“Rather than relying on an analogy focused on strength, what if we chose to think of freedom, flexibility, and foolishness?”

freedom, flexibility, and foolishness

I love these ideas, where all three encourage possibility and openness and generosity, which are fundamental skills needed in order to navigate the divisions and anxieties and crises of the 21st century.

And, here’s a poem I read yesterday that I love — that last line!

Fullness/ Edward Salem

Behind eternity isn’t
more eternity. Nothing
lies in wait. Maybe you

think of it as a vacuum,
a void at the center of
the universe, a dot

that went all ways
at once, an asterisk,
footnote to everything.

Nothing is the Godhead
that gobbles the world
in one fell swoop,

but has no anus.

sept 2/RUN

16 miles
lake nokomis — 2 loops / minnehaha park / ford bridge
60 degrees

16 miles! My longest run ever, I was slow, it was difficult, I walked a lot, but I did it. Ran over to Lake Nokomis and around it twice, then took minnehaha creek path to the falls park all the way to the fort snelling trail. Turned around, ran over to the Veterans home, through Waibun, over the ford bridge, up to the overlook, then back over ford.

For the first hour, I listened to the gorge, the creek, the lake, and people I encountered. For the rest of it, I listened to an audiobook — Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death. One of the characters in it is named Andrew Pennington and it took me several miles to pay enough attention to process that and realize that it was a reference to “Uncle Andrew” — Andrew Pennington in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

16 Things

  1. at one spot, the creek was bubbling, burbling, gurgling
  2. at another spot, it was rushing and gushing
  3. and at a third spot, it was glittering in the sunlight
  4. a small yippy dog across the creek — heard, not seen, so I guess it could have been big but it sounded small (and annoying) — losing its shit for a minute — yip yip yip yip yip
  5. a fishy smell at the lake that was surprisingly pleasant — smelled like summer or vacation
  6. the lake water was blue and flat and empty
  7. encountering another runner with her dog on the creek path — she called it, What are you training for? me: the marathon her: good luck!
  8. the pickle ball court was full — thwack! thwack! thwack!
  9. from the cedar bridge the water was smooth with just one bright spot from the sun
  10. one kayak gliding across
  11. a group with fishing poles, kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the path
  12. crossing the parkway under the mustache bridge, avoiding where the asphalt had erupted — huge, ankle-twisting craters
  13. the flowers at Longfellow Gardens! Orange, pink, yellow, red, soft green! Wow
  14. Waibun park was full of Labor Day visitors — at picnic tables, the splash pad, on the playground
  15. heading down the short hill between ford and the locks and dam no. 1 — the few patches of light were glowing . . . pink — 14 miles into my run, was I hallucinating? No — the light must have been filtering through some reddening leaves
  16. 2 women with dogs, stopping and kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the narrow duck bridge

It was crowded on the trails, but I only remember how kind people were. Waiting for me to pass, not hogging the path, calling out encouragement.

Like I mentioned above, my pace was slow — over 12 minutes/mile, but that’s fine with me. The marathon is not about time, but pushing through and proving I can keep going when it seems too tough.

Recently read:

I feel like poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.

John Ashbery

I’d like to do something with this idea of the underground stream, especially in relation to daylighting — the process of bringing streams buried in concrete and under city infrastructure back into the light.

added, 3 sept 2024: I forgot until today something else I’d like to remember — seeing steam coming off of my face, looking like my breath, the combination of sun, humidity, a warm body, and cool air (I think)

aug 31/RUN

4 miles
marshall-loon loop*
70 degrees

*north through the neighborhood, over to lake street, up the marshall hill, turn right at prior, then right at Summit, down to the river, back over the bridge, stop at Loons for coffee

Ran with Scott this late morning. We talked mostly about our son and how to help him as he tries to figure out what he can do with his music major after he graduates next year. Scott pointed out the signs on the huge and fancy houses on Summit opposing the new hockey arena at St. Thomas. I pointed out the one streetlamp that is still lit on the St. Paul side.

10 Things

  1. pink and orange zinnias in a yard
  2. a shrieking (or hissing?) squirrel in a tree
  3. a blue river, emptied of boats
  4. a bright yellow chair outside of a salon
  5. a dead black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk
  6. a biker slowing then calling out, on your right, before passing us on our left
  7. people sitting outside, laughing and enjoying their coffee at Loons
  8. a friendly barista*
  9. the bathroom for the building, which has always been open now has a keypad on it**
  10. not seen, but described by Scott — being blinded by the sun reflecting off of the flat, metal surface of a stupid cybertruck***

*I’m realizing as I write this that I couldn’t see this barista very clearly and I’m wondering if my vision has gotten worse and I’m so used to it that I hardly notice.

**Customers at Loons and Longfellow Grill now have to punch in a code to use the bathroom. I think the bathrooms should be open. I was wondering if they were having too many people coming up from the river just to use the bathroom. Up until last fall, there has always been a porta potty under the lake street bridge for runners, walkers, rowers, and people living in the gorge. They should bring it back — everyone should have access to a bathroom!

***I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these abominations, but Scott HATES them. They sound terrible.

Mountains/ Alice Oswald

Something is in the line and air along edges,
Which is in woods when the leaf changes
And in the leaf-pattern’s gives and gauges,
The water’s tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
Which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between paces.
An outlet fills the space between two horses.
 
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
Accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
 
And certain evenings, something in the balance
Falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
And then inslides itself between moments
And spills the heart from its circumference;
And this is when the moon matchlessly opens
And you can feel by instinct in the distance
The bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
Like intentions among suggestions.

I think this poem fits in with my study of the in-between moments. So many great lines in the last stanza: falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense; spills the heart from its circumference — I like this idea of a leaky heart that breaks open/out of its borders; intentions among suggestions.

aug 30/ YARDWORK

A perfect morning for running. Too bad I just ran 9 miles yesterday. Oh well. The only physical activity I’ve done today is picking up and bagging fallen branches in our front yard.

In terms of being outside, I’ve sat on the back deck for hours. Earlier, I watched a fox pause on my neighbor’s driveway to scratch an itch for almost 5 minutes. Then it slinked (slunk? slank) away. When I told Scott about it, his guess was fleas. This is not the first or second time I’ve seen this fox — slight, sleek, wild.

Even though I’m not running, I’ve decided to post some water things for future Sara:

tributaries / from Diane Setterfield

When I encountered this wonderful description near the beginning of Setterfield’s Once Upon a River many years ago, I knew I wanted to archive it. Finally, here it is:

A river on a map is a simple thing. Our river starts at Trewsbury Mead, and follows a course of some two hundred and thirty-six miles to reach the sea at Shoeburyness. But anyone who takes the trouble to follow its route, whether by boat or on foot, cannot help being aware that, furlong by furlong, singleness of direction is not its most obvious feature. En route the river does not seem particularly intent on reaching its destination. Instead it winds its way in time-wasting loops and diversions. Its changes of direction are frequently teasing: on its journey it heads at different times north, south, and west, as though it has forgotten its easterly destination--or put it aside for the while. At Ashton Keynes it splits into so many rivulets that every house in the village must have a bridge to its own front door; later, around Oxford, it takes a great unhurried detour around the city. It has other capricious tricks up its sleeve; in places it slows to drift lazily in wide pools before recovering its urgency and speeding on again.
If this is hard to understand from a map, the rest is harder. For one thing, the river that flows ever onwards is also seeping sideways, irrigating the fields and land to one side and the other. It finds its way into wells and is drawn up to launder petticoats and be boiled for tea. It is sucked into root membranes, travels up cell by cell to the surface, is held in the leaves of watercress that find themselves in the soup bowls and on the cheeseboards of the country's diners. From teapot or soup dish, it passes into mouths, irrigates complex internal biological networks that are worlds in themselves, before returning eventually to the earth via a chamber pot. Elsewhere the river water clings to the leaves of the willows that droop to touch its surface and then, when the sun comes up, a droplet appears to vanish into the air, where it travels invisibly and might join a cloud, a vast floating lake, until it falls again as rain. This is the unmappable journey of the Thames. And there is more: what we see on a map is only the half of it. A river no more begins at its source than a story begins with the first page. Take Trewsbury Mead, for instance. That photograph, do you remember? The one they were so quick to dismiss, because it wasn't picturesque? An ordinary ash in an ordinary field, they said, and so it appears, but look more closely. See this indentation in the ground, at the foot of the tree? See how it is the begining of a furrow, shallow, narrow, and unremarkable, that runs away from the tree and out of the picture altogether? See here, in the dip, where something catches the light and shows as a few ragged patches of silver in the grey shades of muddy soil? Those bright marks are water, seeing sunlight for the first time in what might be a very long time. It comes from underground, where, in all the spaces beneath our feet, in the fractures and voids in the rock, in caverns and fissures and channels, there are waterways as numerous, as meandering, as circuitous, as anything aboveground. The beginning of the Thames is not the beginning--or, rather, it is only to us that it seems like a beginnng. In fact Trewsbury Mead might not be the beginning in any case. There are those who say it's the wrong place. The not-even-the-beginning is not here but elsewhere, at a place called Seven Springs, which is the source of the Churn, a river that joins the Thames at Cricklade. And who is to say? The Thames that goes north, south, east, and west to
finally go east, that seeps to one side and the other as it moves forwards, that goes slow as it goes fast, that evaporates into the sky while meandering to the sea, is more about motion than about beginnings. If it has a beginning, it is located in a dark, inaccessible place. Better study where it goes than where it came from. Ah, tributaries! That's what I was meaning to come to. The Churn, the Key, the Ray, the Coln, the Leach, and the Cole in these upper reaches of the Tha,es, these are the streams and rivulets that come from elsewhere to add their own volume and momentum to that of the Thames. And tributaries are about to join this story. We might, in the quiet hour before dawn, leave this river and this long night and trace the tributaries back, to see not their beginnings--mysterious unknowable things--but, more simply, what they were doing yesterday.

from Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson

I never finished reading Housekeeping (I should), but the descriptions of lake water in the opening pages has stuck with me for decades:

Sometimes in the spring the old lake will return. One will open a cellar door to wading boots floating tallowy soles up and planks and buckets bumping at the threshold, the stairway gone from sight after the second step. The earth will brin, the soil will become mud and then silty water, and the grass will stand in chill water to its tips. Our house was at the edge of town on a little hill, so we rarely had more than a black pool in our cellar, with a few skeletal insects skidding around on it. A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen brances, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.

Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson

It is true that one is always aware of the lake in Fingerbone, or the deeps of the lake, the lightless, airless waters below. When the ground is plowed in the spring, cut and laid open, what exhales from the furrows but that same, sharp, watery smell. The wind is watery, and all the pumps and creeks and ditches smell of water unalloyed by any other element. At the foundation is the old lake, which is smothered and nameless and altogether black. Then there is Fingerbone, the lake of charts and photographs, which is permeated by sunlight and sustains green life and innumerable fish, and in which one can look down in the shadow of a dock and see stony, earthy bottom, more or less as one sees dry ground. And above that, the lake that rises in the spring and turns the grass dark and coarse as reeds. And above that the water suspended in sunlight, sharp as the breath of an animal, which brims inside this circle of mountains.

Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson

Alice Blanchard and the bottom of the lake

In this essay about mysteries involving murderous lakes, Blanchard describes her childhood experience of living beside a lake and the September the dam broke and the lake emptied:

The next day, my sisters and I hurried down the hill to see what was left of the lake.  We couldn’t believe it—the whole thing was gone.  Our little dock extended out into nothing.  The drop was deep into water-speckled mud.  The dock’s legs were covered in slime, and small fish splashed around the remaining puddles.

It was sunny out—a beautiful September day.  We climbed down the wooden ladder onto the lake bottom, where the mudflats bore our weight like sandbars at the beach.  Everywhere you looked, trash mucked the lake bottom—tar-colored fishing poles, plastic buckets, half-buried flip-flops, boards with rusty nails sticking out.  Dead fish floated belly-up, while a few still-living fish twitched their fins and snapped their gills, trying to wriggle away into the deeper pools.  Everything smelled rotten in the strong sun.

My sisters and I explored for hours.  We found a wine bottle filled with mud, a weed-covered diving fin, a capsized rowboat, a crooked golf club, and more than a few rotten oars.  I looked around for Rita’s body.  My feverish imagination had convinced me that she would be there, half-buried in the mud, her long silky hair turned to seaweed, her waitress uniform the color of algae, her skeletal waist tied to a cement block by a length of water-logged rope.  Needless to say, we didn’t find any dead bodies that day.

At the Cold, Still Bottom of the Lake / Alice Blanchard

Her description makes me think of “drown town” in the series I just read about Indian Lake. Earlier in the essay, Blanchard writes about being frightened by her inability to know what was below her as she swam. This unknowingness doesn’t bother me too much — often I even welcome it — but I have, especially this summer, thought about might be below me in lake nokomis. In the shallowest parts, near the beaches, men with metal detectors have claimed anything of value, but how many people know what (or who) dwells at the bottom in the middle of the lake?

aug 29/RUN

9 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees / dew point: 72

I thought it was supposed to be cooling down this week. I was wrong. This run was tough and I was slow. Still, I pushed through and did it. 72 is a high dew point — in the miserable and “adjust your expectations” range. I tried to remember that as I ran and then stopped to walk. Mostly I did and was kind to myself.

While the run overall was difficult, it wasn’t all struggle. Running up the hill between Lake Hiawatha and Lake Nokomis, a walker called out, looking good! There were wild turkeys along the side of the road. The buoys are still up at the main beach. There was more shade than sun. The shadows were dancing in the wind. The river water was sparkling, the creek water was gently moving, the lake water was softly lapping the shore.

Recently, I heard a suggestion for keeping a steady rhythm on a long run: listen to a metronome. I decided to try it, at 175 bpm. Pretty cool. My phone app metronome was set for even beats not a time signature (like a heavier downbeat) so I heard steady, unstressed clicks. It was strange and fun when I lined up my feet with the beats so it sounded like my foot was making the noise as it struck the ground. It reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the librarian is stamping the books at the same time Jones is stamping the floor with a heavy post. As his ink stamp hits the page, a loud thud happens, and he wonders (while staring strangely at the stamp) how he could be making such a noise.

I wonder what might happen if I did set the metronome for different rhythms, like 4/4 or 3/4 or 6/8?!

anne carson

The other day I discovered an essay by Anne Carson about her experiences with Parkinson’s, especially with trying to navigate tremors and tame uncontrolled movement. My experiences with vision loss are very different, yet I recognize similarities in terms of focused attention as a way to combat constant motion.

Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull: the books tell me to pay conscious, continual attention to actions like walking, writing, brushing my teeth, if I want to inhibit or delay the failure of neurons in the brain. It is hard to live within constant striving.

Gloves on!/ Anne Carson

Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull . . . When I swim across Lake Nokomis, I trust straight, steady strokes to get me across the lake. I’ve lined up the buoys, set a course, then let my good form (shoulders, head position, breathing on both sides with even strokes) lead me to a buoy that I usually can’t see. I also have help from the lack of current in such a small lake. When I swim across Cedar Lake, those same straight strokes don’t help as much. I have to adjust constantly, fight against a current I can’t quite feel. When I don’t, I drift into the middle of the course, then too far over to the other side where swimmers are heading the other way. Even as I try, I can’t read or properly predict this current — is it a current, or something else? Often I drift. On my best loops, it feels awkward, forced, too conscious — more lifting my head to sight, a constant swimming against water that wants me somewhere else.

Since being diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, I’m giving conscious, but maybe not constant, attention to how I see, to the complicated process of seeing. Some of this attention is out of curiosity and astonishment. And some of it is about helping neurons to fire in new ways and learning how to see differently.

The uncontrolled motion I experience is not tremors, but images that constantly shift and shimmer and buzz, usually in ways too subtle to see clearly. I feel them — soft notes of disorientation, dizziness, restlessness. Maybe you could call them tremors? The ground never ceasing to unsettle.

Recently, I’ve been writing about the different definitions of still. Is the constant motion I see never still? I’m not sure. I think I’m striving for new ways of defining that word and of accessing the feeling of being still, enough, calm.

aug 26/RUN

3.1 miles
river road, south/north
77 degrees / dew point: 75

Heat advisory. Today is one of those days that makes me glad that fall is coming, especially since I can’t swim anymore. I’m looking forward to cooler runs — please come soon. I heard a pro runner say once that humidity is a poor man’s altitude. I wonder, since my body doesn’t tolerate humidity well, would it be the same with altitude? Probably.

Today is RJP’s first day of college classes. It has worked out for her to regroup and not stay in the dorms until she’s ready because her dorm doesn’t have air conditioning. Even if she was enjoying the dorm, she probably would have come home until the heat breaks anyway.

10 Things

  1. exposed roots everywhere on the dirt trail, difficult to navigate
  2. one short stretch of the trail had loose, sandy dirt that my feet sunk into
  3. forecast predicted partly cloudy, but the sky was cloudless and burned a bright blue
  4. car after car after car on the river road — this is often the case at 8, which is when I started my run
  5. loud waves of cicada buzz
  6. noisy bullfrogs and crickets in the marshy meadow just past the ford bridge
  7. more bikes than walkers or runners
  8. the dirt path into the small wood by the ford bridge: a deep, cool green
  9. a flushed, sweaty face
  10. a woman in a big straw hat and a pink something — I can’t remember if it was her shoes or pants or a shirt; I just remember pink — sitting on a bench, her back to the gorge

today’s view from my window

On august 26, 2023, I wrote about a big spider outside of my window. She’s back. She’s huge. And she’s just hanging there in mid-air. I know there’s a web, but I can’t see it, so I like imaging she’s levitating. I was going to write that she’s not moving, but then the wind stirred her, and then I noticed a small fly caught in her web. Soon, she crawled to it and now she’s doing whatever spiders do to their prey. If it didn’t hurt my head to stare and try to see what is happening, I could watch her for hours.

I looked for a Mary Oliver poem about spiders, but instead found a blog post talking about spiders and their patience and referencing a poem by MO that I haven’t read before:

The Messenger/ Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
     equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
     keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
     astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
     and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
     to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
     that we live forever.

aug 24/RUN

14 miles
franklin – ford- hidden falls – confluence
66 degrees / humidity: 82%

Whew, that was hard, and I was slow, but I did it! Those last couple miles, I had to dig deep. During mile 13, my calf kept almost cramping up when I ran for more than a minute or too, so I mostly walked. But by the last mile, I could mostly run. Sitting on my deck to write this, the cicadas are so LOUD! I wonder what the decibel level of their vibrating thoraxes is? I’m proud of my run — that I kept going, that I don’t care how slow I am, that I could be outside and moving for almost 3 hours.

14 Things

  1. cool, green shade on the west side of the river
  2. a male coxswain to his rowers, 1 minute and 26
  3. music blasting from a bike speaker: “Mr. Blue Sky”
  4. a group of runners joking around — male runner 1: so what’s next for you? male runner 2: umm. . . mr1: Are you doing the city of lakes? mr2: oh, of course — you don’t want to know about my personal life, just my running
  5. a lean, fast runner, running barefoot (I saw him last week too, but forget to write about it)
  6. passing a woman in pink shoes, she called out, good work. I called back, you too!
  7. Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
  8. the interior of a porta potty — so much colorful (and well-done) graffiti — very cool
  9. east river view, on the way to the confluence — beautiful blue water, open, gently curving way below me
  10. too many leaves to get a view of the mississippi and the minnesota at the confluence
  11. music blasting from another bike speaker: Katy Perry’s “Firework”
  12. view from the ford bridge: a white boat, alongside a rowing shell
  13. someone running with a dog, her shirt tucked into the straps on the back of her running bra
  14. 2 runners ahead of me, both in trail running vests, one wearing bright orange shorts

For years, I’ve wanted to run the stretch of trail between Hidden Falls and the Confluence. Today I did, and it was longer and hillier than I expected. Also, beautiful.

water fountains where I refilled my bottle: 3
porta potties stopped at: 1
bridges crossed: 3
cliff blocks consumed: 6
shirtless runners encountered: at least 4
coxswain’s overheard: 2
roller skiers passed: 1

I almost forgot: near the monument, I was thinking of stopping at the porta potty in the parking lot, but just as I reached it, I heard a shirtless runner call out to his group of runners — hey, I gotta poop. He stopped and heading towards the bright blue porta potty. Guess I won’t be stopping — bummer.

Yesterday Scott and I move RJP into her college dorm. She was overwhelmed — too overwhelmed. It’s exhausting and heartbreaking, but I think we’ve come up with a plan for her that will keep her on track (I hope). She will start her classes and gradually get used to stuff, and then start living at the dorm in a week or so.

aug 22/RUNSWIM

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

  1. running up the hill, I felt the presence of orange — pinkish orange light. Was it from a wildfire sun? an orange sign?
  2. zinnias! more orange and pink
  3. running past Black coffee, noticing a man sitting at the counter, facing the window — I think he was reading the paper
  4. running past a walker on the hill, breathing as hard walking as I was running
  5. messed up slats on blinds in the window of the garage that is up against the sidewalk — blinds in a garage?
  6. steady traffic on the east river road
  7. overheard, a runner talking to 2 other runners: and when you got injured, and you got covid, I realized, ok they’re human too
  8. the river, running towards the marshall bridge — slate blue, empty
  9. yellow leaves on one of the earliest trees to change color
  10. 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.)

  1. a static photograph, movie still
  2. an apparatus used for the distillation of liquids
  3. inactive, motionless, static
  4. silent, soundless
  5. placed, quiet, unruffled, tranquil, smooth
  6. noneffervescent, not sparkling
  7. free from noticable current
  8. calm down, quiet, lull, tranquilize
  9. hush, silence, shut up
  10. allay, relieve, ease
  11. without change, interruption, or cessation
  12. 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

  1. sailboat with a white sail — have I ever seen a sailboat at cedar?
  2. a tall person, upright, on a paddle board with a dog
  3. scratchy vine, stuck on my googles
  4. scratchy vine, wrapped around my shoulders
  5. scratching vine, feeling almost like a full body scan as I crossed over it
  6. vine, reaching up from the bottom, clinging to my foot
  7. faint feelings of red and orange in the trees
  8. following behind a swimmer with a pink buoy, always just ahead, sometimes getting lost in the waves
  9. the soft, fading light as the sun dipped lower
  10. pale blue sky with feathery clouds
  11. 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.

aug 21/RUNSWIM

5.3 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
66 degrees / dew point: 61

A great run. Was scheduled to do 9 miles this morning, but since I’m also doing my final open swim tonight, thought I’d break it up over 2 days instead. Felt strong. I’m figuring out how to keep my heart rate lower and I can feel it helping. Everything’s easier (or, not quite as difficult) — breathing, lifting my knees, moving forward, staying upright for almost an hour.

10 Things

  1. stacked stones
  2. a loose slab on concrete that rocks when you step on it wrong (or right?)
  3. an abandoned bike under the franklin bridge
  4. the water under the bridge — blue then brown, something under the surface disrupting the flow, creating small waves
  5. Dave, the Daily Walker — Hi Dave!
  6. beep beep beep — the alarm under the trestle going off
  7. rowers! a coxswain’s voices giving instructions
  8. a roller skier, laboring on a flat stretch of path
  9. the hollow knock of a woodpecker
  10. the loud crunch of an acorn under my foot

Before the run, reading through the post from august 21, 2023, I rediscovered Robert Frost’s poem, Come In. As I read it, I noticed that the word, still, in the line, Though it still could sing. I clicked on the link; it was a list of different definitions of still. Nice! I don’t think I created this link, I must have copied it from somewhere else, but where? Anyway, I love the word still and have written about it many times on this log. During my run, I decided to think about what it means to be still.

I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done.

The last thing I wrote in my plague notebook before the run was from Maya Angelou: Still I rise. I thought about Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC, which I watched while eating breakfast, and her beautiful words about her mother and the importance of honoring elders and continuing their legacy and the need for endurance and enduring. I thought about the still in Still I rise as continuing to show up in the face of suffering and injustice and also as a sureness and clarity of conviction, especially when it becomes hard.

swim: 4 nokomis loops
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees

More great swimming. I feel strong this year — no sore shoulders or neck or back — powering through the water. Buoyant, relaxed.

Cedar Vibes, 10 Things

  1. someone calling out, I think I could swim to that orange buoy and back. That’s it!
  2. 2 swimmers on the other side of the beach from the open swim course, swimming farther away from buoys and lifeguards and the course
  3. a swimmer rounding the orange buoy and then swimming perpendicular to the course
  4. a wetsuit with a yellow safety buoy swimming the wrong direction
  5. music blasting at Hidden Beach — Don’t worry/about a thing
  6. scratchy, persistent, loose vines floating in the water
  7. scratchy nets of vines, reaching up from the bottom, trying to entangle me
  8. a canoe with a person in the water hanging off of it, stopped in the middle of the course, trying to decide what to do
  9. more swimmers way off course, on the wrong side of the buoy
  10. an annoying teen repeatedly (20 times, at least) calling out, Get out of my way!, in a VERY irritating voice

Before the swim, I was thinking more about still and I remembered the expression, still waters run deep. Then I thought about depths and surfaces and my recent efforts to push myself to dig a little deeper with things I’m passionate about — that’s why I’m training for the marathon again.

aug 19/RUNSWIM

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
68 degrees

A late start (9:45 am). Warm, but lots of shade. Ran all 4 miles without stopping. Progress! I think I’ve figured out, after 8 years of trying, how to run slower. On my warm-up walk before I started a woman with a dog called out to me, I love your hat! It’s so bright and cheery! A wonderful start to the run. I was wearing a pinky-purply-swirly cap that I found in Scott’s mom’s drawer — with the tag still on — after she died. As I walked, I thought about color and how I see it and caring, kind gestures, and then a really BRIGHT hat that I’ve considered wearing before: a twins baseball cap, girls (because my had is that small!), with neon pink and orange and yellow that we bought for RJP and that she never wore. Maybe that will be my next hat when this one is worn out?!

10 Things

  1. acorn shells covering a neighbor’s driveway
  2. 2 runners ahead of me, one dressed just like me with black shorts and a teal tank top, illuminated by the light, glowing like ghosts
  3. a dirt trail near the ford bridge leading into a cool, mysterious wood
  4. a sidewalk above the creek half-covered in dirt, washed up from so many rains this summer
  5. no bike surreys lined up by the kiosk today
  6. the sweet smell of tall grass — a hint of cilantro
  7. trickling sewer pipe
  8. a slash of blue water through the trees — not sparkling or inviting but hot and harsh
  9. an animated conversation between 2 women walkers with laughter and hand gestures
  10. a for sale sign on a house near edmund — the house that had new owners a few years ago who moved a drain pipe so that it spills onto the sidewalk, creating puddles in the summer, ice in the winter. Will new owners move the drain?!

Before the run, reading old posts from 19 august, I re-discovered a wonderful poem about the wild girl the narrator used to be, Girl in the Woods / Alice Wright. I tried to think about the last lines as I ran:

Whever I think I’ve got hold of her, 
she kicks my shin and wriggles from my grasp, 
runs for the trees, calls back, Try and catch me —

I wanted to imagine that my wild girl, Sara age 8, was my shadow ahead of me, but it was difficult because I didn’t see my shadow that often. Maybe she was there, but hiding from me, daring me to try and find her?

uh oh

Just received an email from Open Swim:

Due to a sanitary sewer backup near Lake Nokomis this morning, August 19, all beaches at the lake are closed until further notice. The overflow has been stopped and cleanup has occurred. The MPRB will sample lake water at the beach locations and provide further updates when they are available.

We have to cancel Tuesday August 20th’s swim at Lake Nokomis. Thursday’s swim is TBD. Communication will be sent as soon as updated test results are known.

Cedar Lake is still happening on Monday and Wednesday, but open swim at Lake Nokomis might be over. It’s sad, but I’m okay. I have had a great season, swimming more loops than I ever have before! I should be able to get in some solo swims around the white buoys before the beach is completely closed.

Sanitary sewer backup? Yuck!

Sadly, many people are afraid of Minneapolis lakes and think they’re dirty and dangerous. While the lakes can have elevated E-coli levels and occasional sewer back-up issues, mostly they are fine to swim in. I’ve been swimming in Lake Nokomis for over 10 years, 3-4 times a week, and I’ve never gotten sick. Anecdotal, I know, but there’s also data to support my experience and management plans and daily/weekly work to ensure the water is safe to be in. Here’s a great resource I just found that I’d like to dig into — to learn more and get some poetry inspiration. It’s a white paper from 2019 called Lake Nokomis Area Groundwater and Surface Water Evaluation.
Another resource: Minneapolis Parks Lake Resources

swim: 4 nokomis loops
open swim cedar lake
80 degrees

Wonderful conditions! Buoyant, calm water. Hardly any wind. Strong legs and shoulders and lungs.

10 Things

  1. the light on the trees, giving off a hint of red, almost as if the leaves were whispering, fall is coming
  2. the light, lower in the sky, making everyone/everything give off a soft glow
  3. the surface of the water — smooth, sometimes blue, something army green, sometimes reflecting the fading light
  4. a paddle boarder moving through the course, standing straight on his board, looking very tall and upright — I think it was a lifeguard
  5. 2 swimmers treading water in the middle of the lake, chatting and catching each other up on their lives
  6. scratchy, insistent vines, wrapping around me each time I rounded the far buoy near hidden beach
  7. bubbles! barely seen in the opaque water
  8. mostly warm water with brief pockets of COLD
  9. talking with another swimmer after finishing, lamenting the nokomis closure and the end of another season — I said, we didn’t even get to say good-bye
  10. the lifeguards on kayaks were way out on the sides of the course, making the course much wider. I kept trying to go out farther to reach them but the lake kept wanting me to swim closer in — is it a current?