4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
67 degrees
Wow! What a morning for a swim. Sunny and not too windy. I couldn’t see the green buoys heading towards the little beach, but I didn’t care. I’m used to my eyes not seeing the buoys and trusting that some part of me has seen them and is leading me the right way, and I use other things to keep on course — sparkles on the water, which mean other swimmers are around, the lifeguard kayaks on the edge of the course, buildings.
10 Things
- a swirled glob of vines
- orange safety buoys tethered to torsos
- cloudless blue sky
- pale green water
- a young kid calling out to another kid — look at the little fish!
- a swim clinic for people doing the Y-tri — the instructor encouraging people to take breaks if they needed to — of course it’s hard! it’s okay to take a break
- little specks: swan boats in the distance
- little specks: green buoys looking like far off white dots
- sparkle friends
- a paddle boarder crossing the path, then a kayak
Recited my Alice Oswald lines: He dives. He shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence . . . Underwater, the silence was more than a lack of sound, not empty but still — the same view with no variations: the pale green water studded with particles. No shafts or light, no fish.
Recited some lines of my own, too: I go to the lake/to beholld to be/ held by the water
a return to EXAQUA
“Water is the medium, the texture, the weight, the space, the motion/emotion or your writing/thinking. Would you agree? Is that too tidy? Your work is attuned to water and being close to it (or, better, being inside it) is important to you” (EXAQUA/ Jan-Henry Gray).
What might it look like to have water be the medium, the texture, the weight space motion emotion of my writing/thinking?
medium = way in which the writing is delivered — print, digital, audio, visual
water as medium = delivered with water = the bubbles sparkles wound on the water my piercing hands leave
Giving water the weight and size of myself
in order to imagine it, water with my bones
water with my mouth and my understanding
weight and size of myself = swimming in the lake, again and again, a full immersion — without wetsuit or raft — more time below the surface than above, my full devotion and attention