When I told RJP that I swam a total of 19 hours in July, she suggested that I try to swim 24 hours, a whole day, in August. Yes! An ambitious goal, especially since open swim ends on the 22nd, but doable. After deciding on this goal I remembered a favorite poem of Mary Oliver’s that I memorized for my 50th, Swimming, One Day in August — perfect.
4 aug 2024
The plan, a total of 24 hours spent in the water, swimming, in August. I was on track to do it, but during the last week of open swim, a sewer line broke and spilled into Lake Nokomis. The lake has been closed since then, so I haven’t been able to do any more loops. Oh well. I’ll have to try again next August!
Instead of an entire day of swimming, I made it to just past 6 pm, or 18+ hours. Here are some things I noticed/thought about/obsessed over as I swam:
the stretch between the last green buoy and the first orange one
The stretch from the last green buoy to the first orange one took forever. I was experiencing that Poltergeist hallway effect where the buoy was never getting closer. Since it had worked before to break than never-ending hallway spell, I decided to count my strokes, not 1 2 3 4 5 over and over, but 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 . . . 50. At first, it wasn’t working, but slowly — too slowly — the buoy got closer. With each loop this effect lessened.
1 aug 2024
the fish in me escaping
As I entered the water, more than a dozen tiny minnows parted at my feet — the fish in me escaping!
2 aug 2024
bubbles
Swimming east towards the little beach, the bubbles my hands make were sparkling and glittering in the sun, too sparkling to be real, looking like something you’d see in a cartoon.
2 aug 2024
See 2 aug 2024 for video of Scooby Doo bubbles.
Its bubbles are words
meant for no one.
(from In the Aquarium/ Dunya Mikhail)I like imagining my underwater bubbles as words being released, not as speech intended for any one, but as something else: a letting go? an accident — leaking words all over the lake?
I’m reminded of Alice Oswald’s restless thought bubbles in Nobody released from the body and traveling across the water, there and there and there.
I’m also reminded of Anne Sexton and “The Nude Swim”:
We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sunWhat patterns do I leave on the surface with my strokes, and how long do they last? What if my bubbles could float above and witness them?
2 aug 2024
a strange stuttering stroke
On the last loop, I stopped to take in the silence and solitude. A swimmer passed me. They had the strangest kick. Every fifth kick was bigger and louder — almost like a limp. Did they realize they were doing it? Was it possible not to notice this?
4 aug 2024
treading water in the middle of the lake
Difficult to put into words the feeling, out in the lake, when I stop to tread water — such wonderful solitude and peace, maybe it’s not solitude, but a sense of nothingness or an emptying of self, a joining with the water and sky.
6 aug 2024
I stopped a few times in the middle of the lake to adjust my googles or sight the buoys or take in the solitude and silence. So quiet and empty. Heard a few sloshes but otherwise, nothing or Nothing.
16 aug 2024
in agreement with water?
if only my eyes could sink under the surface
and join those mackerel shoals in their matching suits
whose shivering inner selves all inter-mirrored
all in agreement with water
wear the sameWith all of the swells and choppy water, I was not in agreement with it today. Or was I? I didn’t mind swimming into walls of water, unable to see, stroking harder, lifting my head higher. I don’t want the water to be this rough all of the time, but sometimes it’s fun, like today.
15 aug 2024
Plague Notebook Notes for August
7 aug 2024: In the water — not an emptying or a nothing, but a feeling of I, you, we, at the same time
10 aug 2024: water-logged
OED = saturated, so as to be damaged, soiled, rendered useless / reduced buoyancy, heavier, weighed down / to fill to excess, inundate / stained
11 aug 2024: water-damaged, erosion, wearing-away, weighed down — no longer restless
13 aug 2024: water-logged = to erode, to make unofficial, to stain the official record
14 aug 2024: the staining together of mind and time (Anne Carson).
lift the lid and shut
lift the lid and shut
and the sky jumps in
and out of this world
this fish di
mension
(Alice Oswald)
15 aug 2024: the fish dimension — not a letting go, a floating above, but a deeper immersion (a deepening in it), not on it but in it, with it
look liquidly, your eyes are made mostly of movement (Alice Oswald)
restless, agitated, stirred up
there and there and there
there is a softness to this liquid looking and its erosion
little beach:
trees gone
shade gone
dock gone
sand gone
only water remains
16 aug 2024: a body of water / a body in water / a body and water
19 aug 2024: sanitary sewer back-up
20 aug 2024: pre-SCUBA device designed and tested out in Lake Nokomis by Christian Lambertsen: LARU (Lambertsen Amphibious Respiration Unity)
breathe without bubbles = no detection
21 aug 2024: a deepening and quieting of the spirit = a stillness, amongst the flux of happenings — the movement, the static, the stuttering, the fluttering
26 aug 2024: BUOYANCY
orange green pink white yellow balls triangles cylinders fixed drifting looming dots invisible disappearing guides shrinking faded shifting shifty casting deep shade an obsession haunts sitting on the surface a moon in the afternoon imaginary walls a hint an inkling an idea a trace requires faith belief an indication an intention (not a suggestion) a reason to swim a challenge geometry a line a path a course an angle optical illusion never getting closer tethered to torsos leaking deflated spilling out and making the water orange rounding hiding seeking sensing blending into the trees the sails the water the sky staring with handles for eyes glowing gleaming hulking sulking a beacon orbs anchored weathered rope chain bobbing signaling summer