4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
81 minutes
79 degrees
Wow, 79 degrees felt cool — at least, the air, when we got there. The water was fine — not too warm or too cold. The lifeguards claimed the triangle was shorter because of staffing issues, but it seemed about the same size to me. I counted strokes from buoys 4 to 5: 250. My goggles kept fogging up and the milfoil was thick, but the rest of the swim was great. Steady strokes, buoys sighted, collisions with other swimmers narrowly avoided. The water was the same pale green it has been all summer. I don’t remember any of sparkle friends — probably because there was no sun, which was covered in a thick blanket of white. Today the sky is heavy. Me to Scott: This sky is unsettling, like something is about to happen but isn’t, or like it’s later in the day than it is.
10 Things
- Arriving at the lake, I heard a few ducks furiously quacking
- After the swim, I noticed two different ducks rooting around in different clusters of towels that had been temporarily abandoned by their swimming owners
- even without the sun, the orange buoy left an orange reflection on the flat and mostly still water
- lots of stray vines, floating through the water, 1: making my skin itch briefly
- lots of stray vines, floating through the water, 2: one long strand got stuck on my head — as I stroked, I flung it off
- a sailboat, moving on the edge of the course
- overheard one swimmer to another: I know the milfoil is there and it still makes me panic every time I swim into it
- swimming over the top of a thick thatch of miloil, swinging my arms wide, trying to keep them as close to the surface as possible so they wouldn’t get wrapped around a vine
- finishing the swim, hearing some kids playing Marco / Polo / Marco / Polo
- stopping in the middle of the lake, overhearing 2 swimmers chatting — were they treading water? using kickboards? I couldn’t see
before the swim
At the end of yesterday’s entry, I wondered what “Swimming, One Day in August” would be if Mary Oliver had centered place instead of time. That question was inspired by listening to the New Yorker Poetry podcast with Richard Siken as he discusses Jorie Graham’s poem, “I Catch Sight of the Now” with the host, Kevin Young. Here’s what Siken says:
Some poets build out of space, and some poets build out of time. And this (I Catch Sight of the Now/ Jorie Graham) definitely built out of time. It moves through considerations of always and never and now and then. And these choices are able to point to the inevitable and the timeless while still while still pulling in to be absolutely timed locked….She’s playing with temporality rather than geography.
New Yorker Poetry Podcast, Richard Siken reads Jorie Graham
Here’s some of that beautiful poem. Click on the title to listen to Graham read the poem. Wow!
excerpt from I Catch Sight of the Now/ Jorie Graham
unforgettable though then hardly noticed green
tiled ledge
just up to my right in the glistening shower stall, slightly above my open
eyes, square window in it, & slender citrine
lip onto which I place, gently, this first handful of hair—always I see it—the window-
pane up there letting anything in and out that
wishes to pass
thru—so freely—drops from the steam of the shower
on it, the slipping of forever & for-
ever all down the
pane, where, beyond the still-wet clump, all seems to shine and
murmur it’s just day, just this day, another day, filled with the only
of this minute, this split minute, in which if I
reach now I can feel
the years, the fissure in them,
these fractions here inside the
instant—
Her mention of the window reminds me of a favorite poems of hers that I’ve memorized, Still Life with Window and Fish. In her introduction to that poem, she mentions being stuck inside with an extended illness.
it’s just day, just this day, another day, filled with the only
of this now I can feel
Back to my earlier question, how does MO’s poem — both the written one and my echoing/embodying/re-writing of it with my August swimming practice — change when I center place instead of time? Swimming, One Lake in Minneapolis? Or, two lakes — Nokomis and Cedar? What words/images are used in a poem about geography and not temporality? For someone else, perhaps this is an easy question, but for me, it requires more pondering. Is that because I am so much more rooted in time words/imagery than in place ones? hmm. . .
during the swim
As I looped the buoys, I thought about place and swimming in one place in August — this lake, here. Then: here and here and here. This is the place here where we sink and settle . . . . No — I don’t want to sink to or settle at the bottom of the lake; I want to be just above and under its surface — that between, threshold space. I didn’t come up with any other words to describe what a quieting of the spirit might look like in terms of locating/grounding yourself in a place? Submerging? On land, it’s rooting; what is it in water? Fixing your position? The coordinates. I thought about how locating/orienting myself in a place seems much more important than fixing myself in time. Then I thought about the geometry of water and angles and points/coordinates.