12 miles franklin + ford + hidden falls + veterans home + falls 67 degrees humidity: 86% / dew point: 65
Ugh! That was hard. It was too hot, too sunny, too humid. My feet hurt from warts and a big blister. I almost altered the route to cut off 2 miles. And I did it. And I felt okay for the last mile, like I could have kept going. Success! I’m proud of myself for persisting today.
3 things I did right
I didn’t have any unfinished business problems! I brought my water and made sure to keep drinking from it. I didn’t give up.
3 things to work on
Bring more snacks/fuel. A bandaid around my toe doesn’t work — it created a juicy blister — find other solutions. Be more intentional with music or mantras or experiments to try for distraction/focus.
10 Things
Mr. Morning! upped his game today with his greeting. Instead of just, morning! He added: Have a Great Day!
rowers!, 1: a coxswain’s voice, giving instructions through a megaphone
rowers!, 2: the gentle slap of the oars hitting the water
the crack just north of the trestle is bigger (again) — they’ve barricaded it off with metal gates
the part of the trail near the trestle on the east side was blocked off — some sort of work with a tall crane
the bells of st. thomas chiming
a skate boarder at the skate park: doing a wide arc at the edge of the course
filling up my water bottle: at the monument, near the skate park
a group of three bikers — 2 adults, one kid — biking slowly in front of me
stopping in the grass to adjust my laces (at least 5xs), stopping at a bench to take off my shoe to inspect my toe (1)
I have to do this again next week, but for the rest of today, I’ll celebrate the accomplishment of running (with some walking) 12 miles and moving for more than 2 hours.
For the first hour, I listened to birds, fragments of conversations, cars, trickling water, and bells. For the next 45 minutes, I listened to a Ruth Ware audiobook. And for the rest of the time: my Color playlist.
I’ve just barely started reading Kohn’s How Forests Think, which I was able to get through RJP’s college library. This is one of the opening lines in chapter 2, “The Living Thought”:
This chapter develops the claim that all living beings, and not just humans, think, and explores another closely related claim, that all thoughts are alive. It is about “the living thought.” What does it mean to think? What does it mean to be alive? Why are these two questions related, and how does our approach to them, especially when seen in terms of the challenges of relating to other kinds of beings, change our understanding of relationality and “the human”?
If thoughts are alive and if that which lives thinks, then perhaps the living world is enchanted. What I mean is that the world beyond the human is not a meaningless one made meaningful by humans. Rather, mean-ings—means-ends relations, strivings, purposes, telos, intentions, functions and significance—emerge in a world of living thoughts beyond the human in ways that are not fully exhausted by our all-too-human attempts to define and control these. More precisely, the forests around Ávila are animate. That is, these forests house other emergent loci of mean-ings, ones that do not necessarily revolve around, or originate from, humans. This is what I’m getting at when I say that forests think. It is to an examination of such thoughts that this anthropology beyond the human now turns.
How Forests Think / Eduardo Kohn
I’d like to put this chapter and the questions, What does it mean to think? and What does it mean to be alive?, beside Alice Oswald’s Homeric mind, with thoughts that don’t reside in the brain but travel outside of it, over the sea, Emily Dickinson’s bees, and the possibility that thoughts might be creatures themselves — and not just metaphorically. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll find where, either later today or tomorrow.
3.9 miles wabun hill and back 67 degrees / humidity: 87%
An early-ish run. Started at 7:45. If I had run earlier, the temperature would have been a few degrees cooler, but the humidity and dew point would have been higher. Which is worse, higher temp or higher dew point? Dew point, I think. I’ll have to test it out — if I can get up earlier!
For the past month or so, I’ve been struggling with my feet and ankles. I’ve tried a few different pairs of shoes to see if any of them were better. This week — on Tuesday and today — I went back to my Brooks Ghosts. They seem to be working better. Today I realized (or remembered?) to put my laces through the extra holes at the top of the shoe. I think I had tried this early on with these shoes, but it felt too tight, then. It worked!
10 Things
gobble gobble gobble a turkey calling out from a tree in turkey hollow
a bike rushing past me on the wabun hill
an older man and woman stopped at the bottom of the locks and dam hill
thwack thwack the chain from the flag hitting the flag pole
a few bits of glitter on the surface of the river under the ford bridge
the older man and woman halfway up the hill, each of them dragging a tire
almost all benches were empty
stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial bench for a quick view of the river and to retie my shoe
the wabun hill was covered in wet dirt — a little slippery when descending it
a woman standing on the edge of the trail, looking out somewhere, taking a picture of something
strong shoulders
Open swim tonight, but no Sara swimming. It’s a bummer, but I know that it’s a very bad idea to try and swim with my sore shoulder, My favorite, self-proclaimed “best PTs in the world,” Bob and Brad have some exercises for me to try in the next couple of days:
run: 4.1 miles monument and back 70 degrees humidity: 87% / dew point: 68
More uncomfortably warm conditions. Difficult, but doable. I did my run/walk plan: 5/1 (mile 1) — 1.5/.5 (miles 2-4). My feet didn’t hurt that much, and I had a lot of energy, especially in my legs, at the end of the run. I’ll take that as a victory. I listened to my striking feet and dripping water (shadow falls) and the st. thomas bells for the first half, Olivia Rodrigo for the second.
10 Things
St. Thomas bells — faint and short, 8:45, I think
rowers!, 1: on the way to st. paul, crossing the lake street bridge, 2 double rowing shells in the blueish gray water
rowers!, 2: on the way back to minneapolis, crossing the lake street bridge, 4 6-man rowing shells + the white boat with the coxswain
coxswain to rowers: okay and stop. good job!
overcast — a gray sky — is it going to rain? no: soon, sun
the dreamy reflection of clouds on the pale blue gray river
the path near shadow falls: cracked, cratered, ridged — dangerous!
at the top of the shadow falls hill, passing an adult and a kid wearing a backpack — summer school?
honk honk
near the beginning: a woman walking with a dog, holding the leash too loose, the dog licking my leg — sunday, I didn’t mind; today I did
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 81 degrees
Written the next morning. Almost perfect conditions. Smooth, warm water, not too crowded, overcast. For the first half of the loop, I felt strong and relaxed, but sometime not long after I rounded the third buoy, my right shoulder started to hurt. It was difficult to lift my arm. Ouch. When I reached the final green buoy, I stopped and rested for a few minutes in the beach area. I tried to swim again. Nope. I had to stop. A big bummer. I think I could have swum 5 loops tonight in this water.
Looked it up in the middle of the night (which might seem like a bad idea, but didn’t make me any less able to sleep) and it’s probably swimmer’s shoulder, caused by overuse. Swimmer’s shoulder is a common injury. I’m hoping that taking the rest of the week off will be enough to make it better. The silver lining: I still have more than half of the season left, so I should be able to swim again.
2 loops (4 cedar mini loops) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
Very warm. Choppy. Crowded. As always, a great swim. Before the swim started, the orange buoy was way off to the far side, which caused a delay. The lifeguards wrangled it back and we started with it in its usual place. When I returned after the first loop, the buoy was drifting far out again. Most people were not even trying to round it. I tried, then gave it up too. After the second loop, the buoy had been moved back but very close to shore. After the third it was back in its usual place. The shifting buoy and the too bright sinking sun made it difficult to sight.
10 Things
small fish, about 1/2 foot long, bumping into my hand and my foot as I waited for open swim to begin
a lifeguard kayak escorting a swimmer back to shore
bright blue sky + fluffy clouds
racing another swimmer who kept pushing me out and away from the buoy
swimmers almost run into: 3
swimmers run into: 1
out in the middle of the deep lake, a few ghostly forms below: milfoil, I think
a paddleboarder looming beside me before passing me at a safe distance
on the back half of the loop, I mostly breathed every 4 strokes
on the front half of the loop: watching the curved line of swimmers returning to shore
the next morning: Yesterday was Scott and my 30th wedding anniversary. 30 years?! Wow. Wonderful. We went out for lunch in our old uptown neighborhood then walked around Bde Maka Ska and Lake of the Isles before heading over to Cedar for open swim.
run: 11 miles ford loop + veterans home + lake nokomis (x2) 66 degrees humidity: 92% dew point: 60+
I did it! It was humid and hot in the sun and my feet started hurting by mile 4, but I did it! I ran through the neighborhood, then over the lake street bridge, up shadow falls’ hill, past the monument and (mostly) up the east side of the river. I crossed the ford bridge, went through wabun park to the veterans’ home, crossed over another bridge, ran on the edge of the park, then beside minnehaha creek. When I reached Lake Nokomis, I had to run around it twice.
10 Things
teakettle teakettle — a carolina wren
a single rowing shell on the river
from the bridge, the water looked fuzzy, the air above it hazy
just past the monument, I heard the St. Thomas bells — I think it was 7:30
mostly dry dirt, or slightly damp earth on the desire path beside the paved trail — one spot was squishy mud and I almost twisted my ankle on it
cloudy then sunny then shade then sun and sun and sun then shade
someone on the other side of the mustache bridge, running and pushing a stroller, blasting some upbeat music that I didn’t recognize
the creek water is high! I especially noticed that as I ran over my favorite part of the trail
a woman with a dog — she wasn’t holding the leash tight enough and the dog leaned over and licked my knee as I ran by (surprisingly, I didn’t care)
running and walking over the cedar bridge, looking down at the water’s surface: a soft gray blue with reflections of clouds
For more than half of the run, I listened to the birds and my feet and the sloshing water in my handheld water bottle. Near the falls, I put in “Olivia Rodrigo Essentials.” Even though I’ve turned it off many times before, apple music was still set to fading songs, which means it took the last few measures of one song and made its beat match the beat of the next song. When this first happened, the last bit of the first song suddenly slowed, sounding so strange that I was worried I might be having heat stroke. Why does Apple do this? Boo.
3 things to celebrate / 3 things to work on
I kept the negative thoughts away (hooray)
I was able to eat a fig bar during the run and didn’t feel an urgent need to go to teh bathroom (yay)
My legs felt good in the last mile and I had some energy (woo hoo)
My feet hurt for almost half of the run (boo)
My ankles hurt some too — I need to tie my shoes tighter and/or get shoes in a smaller size (bummer)
As is often the case after a hard effort, I was cranky at the end when I met up with Scott (grr)
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
The plan: run to the lake for open swim. Scott would bring my bag with my stuff. I wanted to do at least one loop of swimming. I imagined it would be refreshing and restorative for my sore legs. And it was. Wow, that water! Almost perfect. Calm and warm enough. There was milfoil but no blue green algae. As I neared the beach, I could see clumps of the milfoil washed up on shore. Yuck!
The swimming felt easy and relaxing. Steadily, I stroked, breathing every 5 strokes. Occasionally I stopped stroking and listened to the quiet as I tread water. All I could hear was the soft slap of the water from another swimmer’s hand.
Today, I started counting strokes as I passed by the 4th buoy. 275 to get to 5th and final buoy.
A strange feeling: as I swam from buoy 3 to 4, I could see the green buoy up ahead. It seemed like I kept drifting out, almost too far to the left. Trying to correct my path felt strange and awkward. I briefly wondered if there was a current I wasn’t consciously feeling or if my run had made me less able to swim straight.
overheard: one swimmer to another: not many people here this morning! and you don’t have to rush off after we’re done, do you? and the water is wonderful! Except for the weeds!
Today I decided to start at the normal spot, instead of entering at the far end of the swimming area. The weeks were there, and I had to shorten my stroke when I reached them, but they weren’t too bad and didn’t last that long.
Speaking of weeds, I noticed a bad patch just below the cedar bridge when I was running. So thick, just below the surface. Looking brown and orange, then dark dark green.
Today would have been a perfect day to swim 5 loops. And if I hadn’t run for 2 hours before swimming, I would have done it. I wish I could have, but I’m glad I didn’t try. That would have been too much!
added at the end of the day: Even though I ran 11 miles and swam 1.5 miles today (and achieved 300% of my move goal), I don’t feel wiped out or that sore. Only my feet hurt, and that’s because of the warts (yuck!).
earlier today, I was looking through my 5 july entries from past years. I would like to remember some things from them, including:
1 — 2025
Yesterday, in a ramble about rumors and whispers, I stumbled upon a tentative theme for the month: the language of water. First step: read/skim How to Read Water.
Here’s an interesting bit I’d like to remember:
. . . ponds and lakes are far from permanent; rivers will tend to grow naturally with time as they do their own excavating, but the opposite is true for still water. Unless ponds and lakes are given some help, they will all eventually return to land, It starts with algae, then the rushes and other shallow water plants getting a foothold, and this allows sediments to gather, water turns to wet mud, and a reinforcing cycle begins that culminates in the water losing the battle against the encroaching land.
How to Read Water/ Tristan Gooley
Shallow water plants getting a foothold. No!
2 — 2024
Because the buoys are positioned by lifeguards every swim — they paddle out on kayaks where they are advised by someone on shore where to drop their anchor — and because there’s no exact spot for each of buoys, the loop distance varies. Today it was long, which I like — the more distance, the better! Here’s a comparison on 3 different 4 loop swims by number of strokes I took / distance (which I’m pretty sure my watch doesn’t measures accurately):
25 june 2024: 2094 strokes / 3100 yards 30 june 2024: 2124 strokes / 3600 yards 5 july 2024: 2374 strokes / 4000 yards
I like how approximate the course is. Some things about it are set, some aren’t.
3 — 2021
Why I do and don’t like Cedar Lake + differences between Nokomis and Cedar Lake (see 23 June 2021). The first time I ever swam at Cedar Lake was 14 August 2019.
Another great swim. The water was smooth and calm and not cold. It was overcast, which I thought would help me to see the buoys better — no sun in my eyes — but ended up making it harder. Not enough light for my cone-starved eyes. It didn’t matter; I kept swimming and trusted that my shoulders and hips and feet knew where they were going. They did!
Leaving the shore, and entering the lake, I made the mistake of swimming through a terrible patch of milfoil. So thick and tangled! I had to glide over it in order to not get entangled by the thin vines. Future Sara remember: do not swim close to the two white buoys nearest the swan boats!
I swam 2 loops, then got out for a bathroom break, then 2 more loops. After I was done, as I waited for Scott to finish his long run, I took some notes in my Plague Notebook, vol. 28 about the swim. Without intending to, I started jotting down words grouped by their first letter:
Broken Bells (blasting from a bike in the park), barely there buoys, bridge
marbled legs, monstrous milfoil, mistakes made
in navigation, nose plugs
leaking, lost, looping,
(metal) detector discoveries (a rare nickel)
As I returned to land and gravity, I lost my nose plug: it fell off my finger. I think that’s the second or third nose plug I’ve donated to the lake over the years.
On the last loop, I looked up after passing my the 4th buoy and sighted the final buoy. It looked so far away. I decided to count my strokes to it: 225.
Last night, I was telling Scott about how I always see lifeguards on kayaks that aren’t there. Today, I think I saw why: something about the Cedar bridge and the tree line and the land, far off and to my left, looks almost like the shape of a figure on a kayak. Well, at least to me.
Before leaving for open swim, I re-memorized Tony Hoagland’s awesome poem, “Summer Studies.” For some of the loops, I recited it in my head. I can’t ever recite it, or any other poem, straight through, from beginning to end. I always get distracted or repeat myself. I think I got to the end of the poem just once.
What a wonderful night for a swim! The first loop was smooth and fast. I felt like a boat, powering through the water, my feet little rudders. I’m not sure what happened during the second loop, but it was much tougher. Water trying to pull me down, 2+ foot waves crashing over me. Did the wind pick up? Whatever happened had stopped by the third loop. Calm again.
note: I’m writing this list the next morning because I didn’t have time last night.
10 Things
blueish green water
clear, and bigger than usual, bubbles being made by my hands — translucent
mostly the light was not too bright, until it was — at one spot, not far after rounding buoy 3, light suddenly illuminated the water in front of me and I saw a thin strand of something — hair? — floating in front of me
a flash of silvery white just below me — a fish?!
my reoccurring optical illusion: swimming back towards the big beach, I kept thinking I was seeing the silhouette of a lifeguard on a kayak — it was there, out of the corner of my eye, but when I passed it, it was gone — was a lifeguard there, or something else that I was imagining was a lifeguard — another swimmer? the tree line? a far off boat?
before open swim began, encountering a guy who called out, doesn’t this water feel great! Then he started singing a Backstreet Boys song — I don’t think it was “I want it that way” but I can’t remember
nearing a far buoy, experiencing that strange effect of the buoy always appearing far away, and me feeling like I’m swimming in place
passing a swimmer doing breaststroke, experiencing that irritating effect of the swimmer seeming to speed up and me feeling like it’s taking forever to pass them
maybe because of the choppy water or the light making it hard for them to sight the buoys, several swimmers were doing a mix of freestyle and breaststroke — a few strokes of freestyle, then stopping to look, then a burst of breaststroke, then freestyle again
as is often the case, the water was extra turbulent and more crowded around the final buoy — a cluster of swimmers nearing it at the same time*
*I like to refer to this section of the swim as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Mostly, I find it fun.
Earlier in the afternoon I printed out and posted the draft of a poem I wrote about 5 years ago that doesn’t quite work . . .yet. The current title: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. It’s about the joy I find in fighting the “waves” and the choppy water as I swim across and around the lake. The poem is up on my big cork board and I’m planning to gather together and post all of its references: facts about the lake, lines of poetry, the significance of particular words, etc. I don’t want to overwork the poem, but I do want to give a lot of attention to making it work. As I swam through the rougher water in my second loop, I thought about the poem and the fun I have in punching the waves and battling the spray. I prefer the waves crashing into me over the waves sucking me down. The former requires strong shoulders; the latter demands frantic kicks.
The overall vibe of last night’s swim was strong and steady. Stroke after stroke after stroke with little kicks beginning with my hips. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right and 1 2 3 breathe left and 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right and 1 2 3 4 breathe left. My feet, relaxed, shifting slightly to adjust my direction.
laked words / laked forms
written earlier in the day: Yesterday, while writing about an podcast interview with Moheb Soliman, I posed these questions, How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? I was reminded of that question, when I encountered what I wrote on 18 august 2025:
Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:
The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement.
Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?
—
I imagine inklings as changing form slightly (line length, syllable count) depending on the type of water. On and in the lake, my inklings are 5 lines / 5 syllables because that is my stroke/breath pattern. It is different in a pool (I switch up my strokes more), and, if I swam in the sea, I imagine it would be different, too: shorter — 2 or 3 strokes, then a breath, as I navigated the choppier water.
The inklings in my chapbook aren’t just about a type of water, but are specific to one body of water, Lake Nokomis, and one organized activity in that water, open water swim club. I would like to gather details about open swim and the lake for my further reflections on my inklings.
Another thought that I don’t want to forget that I had while reading my entry from 18 aug: For this year’s “Swimming One Day in August” challenge (24 non-consecutive hours of swimming during the month of August, partly inspired by M Oliver’s poem of the same name), I want to return to time and clocks and being inspired by Endi Bogue Hartigan and on orchid o clock.
note: As I work on this, I am overwhelmed. I have so many ideas, so many experiments to try. It feels like I should write something BIG, but there’s too much to read to write to do. I’ve been trying Annie Dillard’s bird by bird method: slowly archiving one thing then another thing then another (see my How To Be project for my ongoing efforts). I think what I’d like to do now is something (fairly) straightforward: 1. Collect all of my summer/swimming log entries in one document 2. Do a rough edit (cut out non-swim and non-water bits) 3. Do another rough edit and another.
more HOMES / Moheb Soliman
walking a beach : moheb soliman
I’ve also typed in the text without the proper spacing, which is too fiddly to do on wordpress:
Walking a beach a drive away from Oswego
Algae break water webs of puce the shoreline lipstick left by the lake on lovesick miles of napkin good-bye Fudgies snap your towels of assy sand make the kids chase down the wrappers I’ll replant their gutted hawthorn and piss off the beach fire from the driftwood it’s time we got back to work consummate vacation fuck the lake no love to salvage memories of drinking each other completely empty of their taste better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating with anything precious fenced the lifestyle we desired here the zoos of microenvironments the patios crawling out of the mudflats with the frogbit floating in impenetrable mats the glass pole dance of dusk slick stage left just hold your liquor and keep down the zebra mussel- sucking noise when the speckled black other shoe drops just look away vacate the promises
2
As I read this poem, and some others in the collection, I thought about something else Soliman said in their interview:
And as far as the writing and the editing, you know, I just am such a convoluted writer sometimes and like I feel like a really sometimes poetry from your writing is like a problem solving, you know, like, how do you just stack this house of cards up enough to sit and just back away before it falls down?
Just enough to not collapse. This idea reminds me of a game I play with myself: how much data/information do I need to “see” something? The version of this game that I play in the water is: how many times do I need to sight the orange or green buoys in order to stay on course? The answer: not many! I’d like to play this game on land, with words. How little can I write/say and still communicate how/what I’m seeing or feeling or experiencing? Beyond a game, as my vision continues to decline (the end point: no more central vision) and my ability to read decreases, I must rely on fewer words. I want my poetry to reflect that economy.
experiment: Take an existing poem that I’ve written and try to take as much out of as I can without it losing its meaning. I think I’ll start with a favorite poem that has never quite worked: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. A further thought: put the poem on my board, along with all of my thoughts, log entries, poems/lines from others about it. Gather as much information as possible, put it on the board, then condense it. Condense!
Poet’s work/ LORINE NIEDECKER
Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade
I learned to sit at desk and condense
No layoff from this condensery
What a master of condensery L Niedecker was!
2 — better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating with anything precious fenced
acrid pics — looked up acrid to double-check meaning: “strong, sharp, unpleasantly biting smell” and “bitter in language/feeling” — tried to remember, did polaroids smell? Yes, a distinctive warm, chemical smell. Is his use of acrid here a deliberate conjuring of polaroids? I grew up with polaroids, and using the word acrid offers a much more visceral reader response than just pics or pictures. And acrid as bitter — some regret over what happened/didn’t happen on those summer trips, over not being on vacation anymore?
anything precious fenced — here I’m thinking of Alice Oswald’s description of the sea as unfenced in Nobody: “If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. ” And, I’m thinking about lucille clifton’s “unfenced is” in “All Praises.”
I’m also thinking about Soliman’s own critical (as in, seemingly negative) use of the word “precious” in his interview:
I was just doing a lot of, like, site, I don’t know if the word would be site-specific writing, you know, just writing on the go, you know, like showing up and wanting to capture a place and not feeling too precious about capturing it because really being there was so, like, sublime, you know, it was just so amazing and seeing such, like, really beautiful hidden pockets of the Midwest and, you know, these, like, oceanic spaces, you know, where you wouldn’t think, you know, Michigan would offer that or something.
and
A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.
Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?
4.6 miles veterans home 74 degrees / drizzle? humidity: 89% dew point: 69
Woke up at 6 am to get in a run before it rained, then heard thunder. Bummer. Had to wait until 9. When I left, the sun was coming out but a mile in, the wind picked up. Did it start drizzling or was that just dripping trees? I think it was a little of both.
It was hot and difficult and I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do when I started — 2 miles? 3? — but then I just kept going and it kept feeling a little more doable. Just make it to southern entrance to the Winchell Trail. And, just make it to the locks and dam parking lot. And, just make it to the top of the Wabun hill. Once I got to the top and kept going through Wabun park, there was no turning back, just through the grounds of the Veterans home and over to the falls then north on the river road to home.
10 Wet Things
big puddles on the sidewalk
smaller puddles on the path
muddy ruts
dripping trees
dripping ponytail
soaked shirt
roaring falls
gushing sewer pipe
whooshing wheels
damp face
Early this morning, while making breakfast, I listened to a podcast interview with Moheb Soliman whose book, Homes, I’ve just started reading. Love it! I think I’ll buy this book as a birthday present to myself!
In the interview, the interviewer mentions another poet who I’d also like to check out: Cecily Nicholson. Cecily Nicholson: interview + book, Crowd Source
Also in the interview, Soliman reads several of his poems, including this one:
Great Lake Swamp come heavy-use wetlands: powers of Toledo origin song
Who let this wetland wet / Who cut this little inlet / Laid the hill for golden hours / Fit the logs with the salamanders / Foretold the lichen and the mosses / Who offered the wildlife crossing
Along this promenade I sing / about how the world’s made / my behorned serenade to nobody but
Who wet this aggregate / Who raised this bamboo deck / Who had these grasses mown / Who made the birches grow in groves / Who made this prairie seric1 / Carved out a space for heron
This is my behorned little dirge / I sing along this little bridge / about how this little world’s birthed by no body but
Who left this river wet / Sowed the embankment / Set the grade for the slope of the island / Spawned the minnows to feed the walleye / Who knows the ripples till flood / Who reads teh dried-out flats of mud
About how the world’s mocked up / I sing along this ply boardwalk / This is where the trombones stop
for nobody / By no body but / you local / No melody but vocals / As is / La la / La li / La las / La lis / As is
Who let this wetland wet? I love all of these question about the creating of a place. I frequently think (and ask) about how the paths I run on, the lakes I swim in, were made what they are by people, particularly the city of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Parks. For years, I’ve been studying the documents and the places to find evidence of this creating and shaping.
Before reading the poem, Soliman says this:
And this is a big part of our discourse right now that, you know, humans aren’t separate. I mean, I have a really hard time kind of following that to the end, because I do feel that there’s a profound difference in how much we are able to control and shape that world to the point where we’re not really a part of it in the same organic way that so many other parts of it are, you know, and a lot of the poems like sometimes absurdly, you know, and I mean, I could even read some of those like, but absurdly play with that idea that, you know, we created this place, you know, the hiking trail, like it is actually, it’s not just some natural path.
You know, there’s a lot that has gone into making you feel that you are here at one in a harmonious, quiet moment in the woods or on the lake. And, you know, so our hand is like so strong in those places, and it would be really, like, naive to just write a poem about being out in the woods without also being aware about, of how we came to that place, and how humans are really, uh, yeah, sort of different and yet a part of.
I was prompted to find this interview because I wanted to hear Soliman read his own poems; I hoped that might help me understand the strange spacing of the lines. He addresses this desire directly in the interview:
A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.
Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?
Yet, I still love, like, the wordplay of, like, enjambment, and, uh, so, I came to a point where I thought, well, either all of these have to be these text blocks, or they just all need to go to lineated. And I spent a lot of time, like, reworking so many of them into these text blocks. And at one point I was really terrified that, like, I’ve made the reading experience really hard for people.
I don’t know, because to me, I’m just so familiar with them. They’re really, I see them in my head and I understand how they move, like, you know, orally, you know. So, it’s part of the reason I, like, really appreciate the chance to read them, because I feel like if I can just get my voice into someone’s head about the book, it’ll just make the rest of the experience, you know, easier.
Very helpful to read this, and to hear him read his own poems. The next thing he says is also helpful, and is sparking some new thoughts on (my) forms:
A friend of mine kind of made this interesting point where they sort of, like lakes, like on the page. They just kind of pool there with some like, gaps. And I think she was kind of first saying how the poems have a real flow. And then we were talking about how poems sometimes really feel like rivers, you know, and without really meaning to, I kind of forced these to have a bit more of like a lake, like, you know, here they are, in one place, and there, there’s the pooling, you know, that’s happening.
Oh — I want to think about this some more! How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? They settle, shimmy in place . . . . This question is an excellent one to think about and to go back into my log to find some answers!
a few minutes later: they sink and sour and are stuck, still, stagnant, unstirred. Could it be that lakes, more than oceans or seas or rivers, are about what’s at the bottom, what sinks down, unmoved by currents? Stale and stymied. Layered and sedimented, cyclical – circular
plastic project
Since March, or was it April?, I’ve been collecting the plastic that we use for some unspecified future project. It started with old freezer bags, but expanded to include grapefruit, zucchini, and mini cucumber bags. Now I have sandwich and pita bread bags and the plastic bags that covered the new fan I recently bought. My favorite one: the plastic shell my new googles came in, which looks like another pair of clear goggles.
Definitely in April, I began deconstructing the freezer bags — cutting off the bright blue (zip) locking part, cutting open the clear plastic, then cutting out the white label. Last week, I decided I wanted to use the blue zip lock parts for some sort of visualizing of the lake. Maybe a big map of a lake nokomis loop? My first thought was to connect the strips together with thread or tape, but that didn’t really work. This week, another idea: shred the plastic! I tried to do it in the paper shredder, which would have shredded it almost instantly, but that wasn’t working. So, instead, I’m using my mother-in-law’s old silver scissors and snip snip snipping the strips. This snipping labor is reminding me of the satisfaction I got in the winter from drawing and shading in circle after circle on my New Yorker essays. There is something therapeutic about using my hands in this repetitive task, but also something that encouraged deep, creative thinking. These blue plastic strips are also satisfying to scoop up and sift through my fingers. Will these plastic blue shards become part of my map, or just the process that leads me to that map? Time will tell.
from the zip on a freezer bag to shards of blue lake
As I cut up these little shards, I thought about all the plastic that ends up in the lake and an ocean and my organs and tissues and bodily fluids. Yikes!
As I accumulate more and more plastic I wonder: how can I stop using so much plastic? First step: stop using ziploc bags for storing my half used produce! Make my own bread? What else?
Telling Scott about my shards last night, he suggested trying to (just barely) melt them. In one of my bouts of insomnia I looked it up and found some suggestions, but not for what I wanted. In the various sources, toxic fumes was brought up more than once. Also: homemade shrinky dinks.
They are not the same texture, but I have some great green plastic — from zucchini and cucumber bags, and from the plastic wrap on two olive oil bottles. I’d like to mix some bits of them with the blue and see how that affects the color. Could I melt these together?
swim: 3 loops (6 mini) cedar lake open swim 84 degrees
A calm and warm lake! Wonderful for swimming. I did 6 cedar loops without stopping. or only stopping mid-lake to adjust my nose plug. I noticed orange and pink buoys. Was mine the only yellow one? A few vines wrapped around my head and shoulders as I returned to the first buoy. The water was green-ish. The only fish I encountered were little minnows near shore. My bubble friends trailed below and in front of me.
overheard, one lifeguard to another — I told him he needed to head over to lake nokomis to pick up his swim cap.
A uncapped swimmer was out in the middle of the lake, some more uncapped swimmers were lurking at the far orange buoy.
Anything else? I felt strong and smooth, and often the swimming seemed effortless. Even so, I was glad to be done at the end of the 6th loop.
