Category: Running Log

7 aug/SWIM

5 loops
90 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
86 degrees

Yes! A wonderful swim, and another hour and a half to add to my goal of reaching 34 hours by the end of the month. The water was choppy, which I liked, except for when it made it hard to get a stroke in and I felt like I was sinking. The water was thick and filled with my sparkle friends. Several times it felt like the buoy kept getting farther and farther away, until I broke the spell and suddenly had reached it. I saw some menacing sailboats and 1 or 2 paddle boarders. The light during the last loop was very cool — why? I guess because it was giving very chill twilight vibes. Noticed a few planes flying low and lots of seagulls and ducks. A few flashes down below — fish?

I felt strong and can tell that I’m getting stronger as I do more longer swims. A thought — could I possibly manage 7 loops in 2 hours? That would be amazing!

A few lines from two poems discovered this morning:

There is the clarity of a shore
And shadow,   mostly,   brilliance

summer

                the billows of August
(from “From the Sustaining Air“/ Larry Eigner

The clarity of a shore and shadow. Not sure about the shore, but I like the idea of shadows bringing clarity. They do for me.

2

I am pointless. This I come to know
by pressing ear to night’s machinery.
Outside, the words rub each other
until they are dull: calibrate, resurface,
surface, invest, investigate, snowy, open,
environ, woman, wooden, system.
I look where little nodes of language cling,
lichen-like, to what will have them.
(from “Rose-crowned Night Girl”/ Emily Skillings

I read this line about being pointless and it helped me to think about pointless meaning more than useful or not worthwhile. To be pointless is to not have points, to be smooth instead of rough, nothing sharp about you. My vision is point-less but not pointless. Everything softens with my fuzzy gaze.

aug 6/RUNSWIM

2.2 miles
2 trails
68 degrees
dew point: 64

Humid. It rained last night — everything is wet — but there must been wind, too, because small branches and leaves were scattered over parts of the path. No big trees.

10 Sounds

  1. Bird
  2. the coxswains speaking through their bullhorns
  3. a faint radio with someone singing, some vibrato
  4. the steady trickle out of the sewer pipe near 42nd
  5. good morning, excuse me / morning! no, excuse me (passing a walker)
  6. morning! a greeting from Mr. Morning!
  7. good morning / good morning (greeted by an older runner)
  8. the whirr of a motor on an e-bike zooming by
  9. another runner’s music coming from her phone as she ran by — some poppy upbeat song that I can’t remember
  10. who run the world? girls! Beyoncé from my headphones and my mood: Energy playlist

Listened to the poem I wrote yesterday before I headed out for my run. This is my tentative ending:

tethers us to each
other — swimmer and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight
and to rarely see

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
60 minutes
cedar lake open swim
81 degrees

Choppy today. Sometimes hard to stay high on the water. Lots of vines. Saw some planes and birds above, no fish below. The surface looked silvery. Sometimes the sun was out, sometimes it was behind a cloud. Once a big, hulking cloud, looking like something other than a cloud from my perspective half-submerged in the water — a monster, like godzilla?

Forgot to recite Mary Oliver or think about the deepening and quieting of the spirit, but I felt it. Relaxed, happy, strong. Swimming for an hour wasn’t difficult.

Found this description of how we are both part of and separate from water saved on my reading list:

Nature—the non-built environment, creatures—is a realm of supreme “otherness” with which we are already always in strange relation. We plead for communion with this nature; it cannot answer us; so we project that onto it, that feeling of harmony and oneness at a shore or a vista. We are both a part of that natural sphere and stand distinctly apart within it, in our creaturely and industrial/technological dominance over it. You are both part of that sphere, and stand painfully apart, with your consciousness, language, cumbersome car and computer.

Moheb Soliman on “On the water”

Now I’m thinking about Anne Carson and her definition of anthropology (as in, “Anthropology of Water”). I wrote about it on 13 july:

encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I.

aug 5/SWIM

a few hours before my swim: just got word, finally, that lake nokomis is reopening after a week of being closed. not because the e-coli was that bad all week, but because they only test it once a week.

5 loops
100 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees

A wonderful night for a swim! The water was choppy, but gentle, and never forcing me to alter the side I breathed on. 1 2 3 4 5 right 1 2 3 4 5 left. Before the swim began, I encountered an older man and we talked about how much we love open swim. We agreed: it’s our favorite thing to do. As I started my swim, I thought about this wonderful exchange and this swimmer who loved what he was doing and I was happy.

10 Things

  1. a plane parallel to the water, flying low but not too low
  2. a dragonfly just above the surface
  3. a distant swan boat
  4. my sparkle friends were moving fast and into me as I swam
  5. thick, murky water
  6. seagulls
  7. ducks — quack quack
  8. the long, low light heading back to the big beach
  9. the alert on my watch beep beep beeping underwater at the end of a loop — was it a reminder about the amber alert we got earlier today — did other people hear it under water?
  10. more ghostly vines, one wrapping around my foot

I recited Mary Oliver’s, “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my spirit. Peaceful, calm, relaxed, in my element.

This entire poem is fire, but for the sake of space I’ll just the pertinent section in today’s entry:

from Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson

There is a geometry of water, for this
Squares off the clouds’ redundancies
And sets them floating in a nether atmosphere
All angles and elongations: every tree
Appears a cypress as it stretches there
And every bush that shows the season,
A shaft of fire. It is a geometry and not
A fantasia of distorting forms, but each
Liquid variation answerable to the theme
It makes away from, plays before:
It is a consistency, the grain of the pulsating flow.

geometry: the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something / relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles


geometry and not
distorting form — angles and points and lines off due to water and unreliable vision

Thinking about geometries of water and Anne Carson’s anthropology of water and the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles. Suddenly remembered a reference to geometry that I’d like to experiment with:

“Closed because geometric mean of E. coli exceeds 126 MPN/100 mL“

It’s the message on the parks lake water quality map, explaining why the beach is closed. Will it reopen in time for tonight’s open swim? I hope so!

Geometric mean, what’s that? While Minneapolis Parks doesn’t explain, I found another site with some helpful information: E-coli Open Water Data

  • tests take 24 hours to process, that’s why I’m still waiting for the results to show up now, even though they tested yesterday (could this 24 hours be another example of swimming, one day in august?)
  • MPN = most probable number
  • this site is out of Toronto so it gives the acceptable rates for Canada. In Canada, it’s under 200 MPN, which is higher than here in Minneapolis: 126
  • e-coli stands for  Escherichia coli

I asked FWA — my science guy — what the geometric in geometric mean means and he explained it this way: they make an imaginary grid for the lake and then take samples from different sections of the grid, then they average those samples to get the MPN/ML number. So geometric = grid

The grid makes me think of my vision and the visual field test and the amsler grid and imagining the lake as a grid with different sections of it muted or extinguished or replaced with other sections of the grid that I can actually see.

And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake:

  • angles
  • trajectories
  • following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
  • lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
  • lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it)
  • the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
  • the angle of that rope line
  • how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
  • the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
  • same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
  • the sharp angles of prickly vines
  • parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
  • perpendicular lines: water and light pole
  • buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
  • buoys as cylinders
  • buoys as equilateral triangles
  • angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
  • grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
  • rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
  • coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface

More on geometry . . . searched geometry on Poetry Foundation and this was the first result:

Geometry/ Nancy Botkin

All the roofs sloped at the same angle.
The distance between the houses was the same.
There were so many feet from each front door
to the curb. My father mowed the lawn
straight up and down and then diagonally.
And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.

slopes angles

distance = feet


lines straight diagonally






screens = grid
divide line bar

We knew them only in summer when the air
passed through the screens. The neighbor girls
talked to us across the great divide: attic window
to attic window. We started with our names.
Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope,
and below was the rest of our lives.

All of this geometry talk has inspired me to craft a sonnet about grids and seeing and the grid in my eye tethered to the grid in the water. I have a first draft that needs a little work. The poem is about how I’ve been using sighting buoys during open swim to learn how to see in new ways, or to function without needing to see things clearly or often. Or, is it about the parallel paths that learning to sight and learning to rarely or unreliably see have taken and how that’s shaped my experiences with vision loss? or, are both of those conclusions too heavy-handed? Should it be stranger?

1

tethers us to each
other — swimming and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight
but rarely see

2

tethers us to each
other — swimming and
vision, buoy and
body, to use sight
to learn how to see

Typing up both of these endings, I like the first one better. I’ll keep thinking about it.

aug 4/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
66 degrees
dew point: 61
AQI: 81 (moderate)

Better air! Well, less smoky air. Also, humid air. Heavy air. I checked the weather for rain. Nope. Leaving the house, I was greeted (or threatened or warned) by my next door neighbor, the bluejay. Screech! Screech! I admired the beautiful flowers — dark and light purple, orange, yellow — of the neighbor who lives with Matt the Cat. On the paved path, I glanced down at the oak savanna — dark green — and over at the leaning, almost twisted, fence. Heard the coxswain giving rowers their workout, something about 75ers, and wishing she had a micro-stop on her watch (at least, I think that’s what she said). Also heard rustling in the leaves, sounding bigger than a squirrel. A dog? A turkey? Heading down the hill at the Cleveland overlook, the river looked green and still through the trees. Someone was sitting on the bench in the grass near the stone wall. It was dark enough that the cars and bikes had their headlights on.

Because it’s cooler than the air is better, I have the windows open. Several squirrels are rooting around in the bushes. The sound is irritating me as I write this entry.

Listened to the cars and the rowers and the birds running south and on the Winchell Trail, then a few songs by Lawrence for the last stretch from the 38th street steps to home.

Swimming One Day in August

Because the big beach at Lake Nokomis has been closed due to high levels of e-coli, I haven’t had a chance to swim yet in August. Finally today, at Cedar Lake, I will start working towards my goal of swimming a total of 24 hours (= 1 day) in August. As part of that project, I’m devoting time out of the water to swimming in Minneapolis lakes, too by reading, researching, reflecting, and writing on water. Today, I’m reviewing the history of Cedar Lake, thanks to a masters thesis I found a few years ago.

Already today, I’ve been reading about the dredging of the lakes. 2.5 million cubic yards of peat and sand and wetland were dredged out of nokomis; it took 4 non-stop years. The sand went to the beach, the peat and wetland to making the park bigger and building a neighborhood. Why dredge? Not just because it would make a lake I could swim in a century and a half later. Original Park Board Superintendent Theodore Wirth was thinking about economic growth and the future of a city:

Wirth is outspoken in his belief in the utility of taming nature to increase land value and develop the city’s natural resources. By dredging and creating more shoreline, the park board could improve the parkland, thereby making the property surrounding the parkland a more desirable place to live. The increased value of the private property could provide a greater tax base for the city and for the Park Board, which could use the revenue to continue to acquire and improve park space.

Cedar Lake History/ Neil Trembley

swim: 4 loops
75 minutes
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees

Wonderful night for a swim! Calm water, not too warm or too cold. Not too crowded. And even with fogged up goggles (I haven’t treated them in a few weeks), I didn’t get too far off course.

The water felt a little sluggish — not buoyant. There were tons of sharp and scratchy vines, some individual strands, others in clumps. The water was opaque — no fish sightings tonight.

The sky was white; no clouds to notice. I think I remember seeing one bird. Oh — every so often the sky would break open and there was sun. It didn’t last that long.

I wanted to think about Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting” but there was none of that tonight. I was swimming hard — not all out, but not stopping either.

aug 3/RUN

2.25 miles
2 trails
70 degrees
AQI: 151

Another short run today. The air quality is still bad, but it didn’t bother me — or, I’m so used to it bothering me that I didn’t notice. Wore my bright yellow shoes again and felt bouncy. Listened to my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist running south, the gorge running north: trickling water, laughing kids, someone talking about walking on a boardwalk, a beeping/ringing noise on repeat somewhere below. Noticed a haze above the river, everything washed out, pale. The tree that fell a few weeks ago is still there, unmoved. The benches were empty, the trails were thick with bikes. No more mud. Acorn shells on the sidewalk.

Walking back after the run, I thought about my inkling poems and how I like to/have to try and guess what something is based on very little data. Some lines came to me —

It’s a game, really —
Name that Tune but for
forms. I can name that
form in 2 curves . . .

Searching for “inkling” on poets.org, I found these great lines:

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.
(from Prophecy/ Dana Gioia)

And now I’m thinking about inklings as creatures, and not just hunches or ideas or guesses or a call/prophecy to listen to. An inkling is the tiny creature that speaks to us — not a little man, but a spirit or an insect or Dante’s spiriti visivi.

aug 1/RUN

4 miles
the monument and back
68 degrees
AQI: 163

The wild fire smoke is still here. Mostly it didn’t bother me, but it did make running a little harder. The worst smoke moment was when I came off the lake street bridge and turned onto the river road — not hard to breathe so much as hazy. There weren’t too many runners out there, some walkers, a few bikers, a family of hikers and shadow falls.

10 Things

  1. graffiti on the lake street bridge steps: STOP HATE
  2. a fancy water fountain, bubbling, in the grand yard of the U of M President’s house that Gov. Walz rented while his mansion was being renovated
  3. someone asleep on a hard stone bench by the Monument — in the hot sun, wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a stocking cap
  4. the bells of St. Thomas — ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / — the time, 10:45
  5. an orange flash on the sidewalk — the smoky light or spray paint?
  6. a boat speeding up the river, leaving streaks on the water’s surface
  7. no kids outside at the church preschool — were they staying inside because of the smoke, or was it not recess?
  8. the graceful curve of the bridge’s arch — I checked if anyone was climbing on it (nope) — my daughter told me about how kids do that (her included, but only once and only halfway across)
  9. the soft trickle of water near Shadow Falls
  10. a stone wall above the ravine, leaning — it had a sign on it that I couldn’t read, so I took a picture of it to study later
Furnished to the city of St. Paul by the Kettle River Co.

I could mostly read it when I looked at the photograph, but I had to doublecheck with Scott.

I wish the lake was open so I could have gone to open swim for the first day of my “Swimming One Day in August” project, but at least I was able to run. I am almost didn’t go out because of the smoke. Glad I decided to!

The smoke doesn’t seem that bad so, for the first time in weeks, we have the windows open! I like the relief that air conditioning brings, but I hate how it makes me feel trapped in the house. As I sit at my desk writing this, I just heard the feebee call of the black-capped chickadee through the open window!

Today I’m working on more swimming sonnets and Inklings. Some subjects: water quality, blue-green algae, milfoil, water as the medium, loops at lake nokomis are actually triangles, the color of the water, Alice Oswald seeing self in water, again and more darkly, Mary Oliver and the deepening and quieting of the spirit

a little later: I almost forgot about the mushrooms! Walking north before my run, I saw some HUGE mushrooms in a neighbor’s yard. The first one I noticed had lost its cap and I thought it was a newly cut tree trunk. I think there were a cluster of 4 or 5 mushrooms. I started reciting Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms in my head. I thought about mushrooms as the fruit of fungi and little explosions and expressions of the self (like through poetry) as emerging like mushrooms. For the rest of the run I checked the grass for more mushrooms, but don’t recall seeing any more.

a lot later: RJP checked out a book for me, Mary Oliver’s Blue Pastures, so I could read some of Oliver’s sand dabs and the chapter, “Pen and Paper and Breath of Air.” I’m on the second page and I already needed to stop and archive some of her ideas:

First, in describing her practice of keeping a notebook, she writes that she doesn’t write in it from front to back, but just opens a page and writes anywhere and everywhere. She uses “private shorthand” to record phrases and feelings.

The words do not take me to the reason I made teh entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. this is important. I can, then, think forward again to teh idea—that is, teh significance of the event—rather than back upon it. I ti s the instant I try to catch in the notebooks, not the comment, not the thought. And, of course, this is so often waht I am aiming to do in the finished poems themselves.

“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver

And here’s one of the phrases she put in a notebook:

A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.

“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver

july 31/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
59 degrees
AQI*: 157

*Air Quality Index

Cooler! Smoky, again. Ran on the dirt trail on the other side of the river road heading south. Noticed how the trail didn’t seem quite as wide as it did a few years ago during the pandemic when more people were using it. Wondered how many feet have to tread over the same spot to make a trail, and how long it takes for a forgotten trail to revert to grass. Crossed over to the paved path by Becketwood and stayed on it to the falls, then past the falls, then over the Veterans bridge then down the steep hill to the very bottom of the ford bridge then north thenhome.

Listened to cars and birds and voices as I ran south. Put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist returning north. Tried to forget that I was hot and wanted to stop as I listened to Peter Gabriel and Michael McDonald singing about forgetting.

10 Things

  1. orange light dotting the path
  2. turkeys! 4 female turkeys (hens) bobbing their necks and moving slowly, 1 male (a tom) following behind — the hens ignored me as I stopped to look, but the tom turned and stare
  3. the rush of minnehaha creek below me as I ran over the veterans bridge
  4. standing on the bridge above the falls, watching it tumble down to the creek below
  5. a man and a little kid sitting at the bench near the boulder
  6. the path blocked off near Godfrey by 2 trucks and some cones — not sure what they were working on
  7. the path blocked off near folwell by cones: park workers repainting the biking and walk signs
  8. a new person painted on the paved path — glowing white, I checked to see if anyone had drawn in a face yet (nope)
  9. my shadow — I could see my pony tail bobbing as I moved
  10. fake bells x 2: the ding-ding-ding of the light rail pulling out of the station and the chiming of the st. thomas bells at 7:45

excerpt from 38. Shedding the Old/ Samantha Thornhill

Such as the lobster 
cracking loose 
from its exoskeleton 
after moons of moulting,  
or the viper that squeezes 
out of the skin 
of its remembrance, 
this oracle invites you
to rewild yourself,
to unbox, detox, and de-
clutter your blood. 

Rewild yourself!

july 30/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
71 degrees

Hazy and smoky this morning. Canadian wild fires again. A present from the wind. It looked bad, but didn’t bother my breathing too much. Inspired by the wind, I listened to my “Beaufort Scale” playlist until I reached the old stone steps near the south entrance of the Winchell Trail. Then I listened to the water falling out of the sewer pipe and splashing on the rocks down to the river.

a stone wall with a plaque that reads, WPA 1938
WPA 1938

I took this picture of a stone wall built by the WPA, and possibly by grandfather, on the stone steps at the edge of the 44th street parking lot. 1938 was four years before my mom was born. Was my grandfather working for the WPA then?

At the bottom of the steps is the Winchell Trail and the 44th street sewer pipe/ravine. Also, the curved wall that I like to admire from above as I run by and the spot in the trail that transitions from crumbled asphalt to cracked. Yesterday I wrote about the sound of the water falling. I decided to stop and record it today:

water falling at the 44th street ravine

10 Things

  1. a section of the fence on the edge, missing a slat
  2. something on the asphalt ahead — a big puddle? no spots of light shining through a gap in the trees — a pool of light!
  3. smoke on the water (waTER — Deep Purple/Pat Boone reference) — my view from the Winchell trail through the trees, light blue looking fuzzy and faded through the smoke
  4. the faint voices of kids on playground
  5. the blending of car wheels above with wind in the trees and water falling down the ravine
  6. an older couple walking fast and with purpose, especially the woman who was leading the charge, seen twice
  7. a small bird flittering by, a flash of yellow — was it yellow, or was it a trick of the light, or was it my unreliable vision?
  8. the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored — well, at least, a few steps are — the yellow and orange and purple ones
  9. glancing across the road and doing a double-take: is that a turkey or a young tree with its trunk covered in black plastic?
  10. empty benches

swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees

Very glad Cedar Lake is okay so that open swim could happen. It was windy and choppy and smoky. At first I thought my goggles were fogged up, but then I realized it was the smoke in the air. Air quality was bad: 168, which is unhealthy. With the choppy water, it took a few loops to get into a rhythm. Lots of breathing on one side, or breathing every 2 or 3 strokes.

I’ve been working on a new poem form today. I’m calling it inkling. It’s inspired by an Alice Oswald line from Dart: the inkling of a fish. Inkling as vague, the idea of, a whisper, unproven, a rumor. My little poems — 3-5 lines, I think — are about describing or evoking the feeling or idea of something that you can’t quite see, or that you feel more than anything else. My first one will be about fish.

july 29/RUNRUN

2.5 miles
2 trails
73 degrees
dew point: 70

Another hot and hazy morning. I remembered to notice the river and it looked . . . thirsty? Trying to think of the best word that conveys the opposite of refreshing and cool. Uninviting? Thick? Stuck? Inert? By the Cleveland Overlook it was green and dull and thick. Below the Winchell Trail near the south entrance it was a pale blue with a soft haze hovering above it. Farther north on the trail it was bright blue with a few spots of sparkle through the trees.

Because of the intense thunder storm last night, there was water everywhere — puddles, gushing sewers, squishy mud. The puddles were small but filled with the reflections of trees and flat, still. The mud was slick and slippery. Two distinctive sewer sounds/movements: 1. below 44th street, the water was pulsing, coming in waves — a moment of steady flow, then nothing, then water flowing again. I stopped to lean over the railing and watch it. 2. below 42nd street, the water was rushing out of the pipe, making a small waterfall on the rocks below — a continuous dropping of water.

With all the wind and rain last night, I expected there to be more trees or branches down than there were. Was there any new debris? I don’t think so.

The weather is strange this week: very hot and humid and sunny during the day — we’ve had several heat advisories, then violent storms move in quickly at night. Last night, it started with the wind. I opened the front door and watched the trees bending, twisting, waving. Very unsettling to watch. Then the sky unzipped and rain came down in sheets. Will it happen again tonight? I hope not.

For future Sara: Scott and I discovered a new sport to watch during the Aquatic World Championships — men’s 27 meter (that’s 9 stories!) and women’s 20 meter diving. Why can’t the men and women dive from the same height? Anyway, I’d never heard of this before. An extremely HIGH platform is created outside with a small circular pool at the bottom — don’t worry, the water is deep. Divers jump — they enter feet first — from high up, doing flips and twists and somersaults as they plummet. It’s so dangerous that they have 4 first-responders in the pool waiting to rescue them if they need it. And the first thing they do after surfacing is alert the responders with a thumbs up. What? Wow. Like other diving competitions, a lot of the score is determined by how much splash they make entering the water. I can’t see the splash, because of my bad vision, but I still enjoy watching it. After the dive, they show several slow-motion replays, including one from below. You watch as the diver nears the water; Scott says it reminds him of seeing someone falling to their death.

Discovered this beautiful poem yesterday:

Someone Is the Water/ Austin Araujo

I am alone but for this vein
splitting the earth open
and we are silent, the stream and I

far away from our mouths. The stream
folds over itself, my hand
speculating under the surface.

The stippled faces of orioles
sail by slowly, their dark wings working
hard as tired men pulling oars

in a landscape painting, their lantern
chests dotting a modest pattern
across the sky, over this brook

a mile from your house—from you
who are alone but for your sons
and your sons’ refusal to recognize

you cloaked under a sadness,
the color of whose cloth is muted
as these late-afternoon birds.

The stream sluices crawdads
and stones, carefully takes its bend
like a tongue spackled with canker sores.
I still expect it to speak. I’ve come
to listen to this slow
unfurling, hoping I’ll fall

asleep as it turns like a lullaby
a child promises he will strain
to hear, to memorize. I make sense

of smudged pastoral visions.
Gone, the birds long gone.
Palms, I cup water with bent palms.

run: 3 miles
trestle turn around
86 degrees

I was supposed to go to open swim, but the beach has been closed for a week because of e-coli. Not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s because of the storm. What a bummer! I’m supposed to start my “swimming one day in august” project on 1 august. It will be more difficult to do it now that I’m missing august 1 and 3. Thankfully Cedar Lake is open so at least I can swim there tomorrow.

Since I couldn’t swim, I decided to do another run. It was hot, but the humidity was lower so it seemed less terrible than this morning’s run.

10 Things

  1. I think I heard the rowers; I know I saw a few of them heading down the hill to the dock
  2. traffic was backed up — so many cars trying to turn onto lake street
  3. a mini peloton — a dozen bikers — whirred by me on the river road
  4. someone in a strange t-shirt with lots of words or logos or symbols that I couldn’t make sense of was sitting on the ledge under the trestle listening to heavy metal on their phone
  5. a walker, dressed in brown shorts and a brown shirt, passing me twice, their head titled to the side
  6. the sliding bench was a cool, dark green
  7. the spray paint on the ancient boulder looked extra orange today — did someone touch it up recently?
  8. a lime scooter parked in the middle of the walking path under the bridge
  9. the big crack north of the trestle looks about the same as it did last week — not bigger — but the path is blocked off with caution tape, orange cones, and a warning spray-painted on the asphalt
  10. as I neared them, someone was emerging from the old stone steps

july 28/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
70 degrees
dew point: 65

Cooler than last week, but still too warm for me. Felt drained and my feet were sore from my shoes — the Saucony Rides strike again. Even so, happy to be out beside the gorge with my friends — the boulders, benches, trees, shadows, walkers, runners, river. But not the bikers — too many of them, and too many close calls.

Last night, we had some intense wind and thunderstorms. Eveidence of it is everywhere: leaves, twigs, branches, whole trees scattered near the trail, gushing sewer pipes, muddy paths. The water from the 44th street pipe gushed out in spurts, almost like a bucket filling up then dumping over. The water from the 42nd street sewer pipe rushed with a steady flow of water, like a waterfall.

I ran closer to the river and I remember looking at it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. Was it smooth? scaled? blue? gray? brown? I don’t recall. I do remember not hearing any rowers.

I didn’t have any deep thoughts about water or swimming or life or, if I did, they didn’t stick around. Instead, I thought about how my feet were sore and my legs felt sluggish, how I wanted to stop, and how I had some unfinished business and needed to get to a bathroom soon.

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
88 degrees

The water was warm but calm and more greenish than usual. Lots of scratchy vines and swimmers swimming in the middle. Also, a giant rubber ducky inner tube floating beside the course. The safety buoy of the day was a clunky, lumpy orange one. Lots of other yellow and pink buoys too. The sky had a few clouds but was mostly blue. Made sure to notice the bubbles around my hands. At the end of the swim, near shore, I went a little deeper in the water — it was cool, which felt nice.

As Scott and I left the beach I noticed an older woman waving at someone, than a little kid yelling excitedly, Grandma!

No bathroom stop in the one port-a-potty today. Someone puked on the floor right next to the toilet. Yuck!