Category: Running Log

june 9/HIKEBIKESWIM!

8:43 am — The first open swim of the year isn’t until the late afternoon, but I’m already excited. Currently I am sitting at my desk. Outside of my window, workers are cutting down the maple tree in our front yard. Someone is up in a bucket with a chainsaw sawing the thick branches then securing them with rope, someone else is on the ground to catch them. It’s a slow, noisy process — and strangely quiet, too. No loud THUMPS! from a branch hitting the ground. Noises: chainsaw, rumble of their big trucks, whine of a leaf blower, thud of the truck bed bottom as the cut limbs are discarded / Noises not heard: no heavy thumps, no shouting from workers to each other, no beeps or alarms. It is now 9:02. I wonder how long it will take for them to cut it all down.

It’s sad to lose such an old tree — the only (or one of the only?) maples on the block. Everything else is linden/basswood or locust.

It’s also not sad. Mostly this tree has been a nuisance — leaf debris and whirly gigs clogging our gutters, thick tangles of roots taking over our sewer pipe. Every year Ron the Sewer Rat has had to chop those roots up so that our sewer wouldn’t back up.

In front of my window: the bucket is being raised again; it’s herky jerky yet smooth motion almost like a strange dance.

And it’s a relief. Ever since a huge branch fell from this tree last fall, I’ve been worried that another would fall and hurt someone of something. I’m glad we’re finally doing something about it.

currently: branches are gently falling in front of me, a few of them reflecting on the glass of a desktop boom! boom! — as they are tossed in the back of a truck / now it’s raining little twigs and bigger twigs and branches

10 Things About this Maple Tree

  1. Unsuccessfully attempting to weed-whack around it, giving up and hand-pulling the tall, flowering grass
  2. it is a wonderful example of a tree looking like a person, buried upside down, their head and shoulders in the dirt, while their torso and legs stick up in the air — two meaty thighs, slightly parted (eww — that sounds gross)
  3. this winter/early spring, I could hear a woodpecker drumming on its dead wood — brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
  4. one summer a few years ago, FWA helped me to try to get rid of some ants “naturally” by pouring boiling water in their ant hill — not sure if it killed the ants, but it destroyed the grass around the base of the tree
  5. last summer, or the summer before, I noticed a new branch growing near the bedroom window and thought, we should really cut that while we can still can, then watching it grow bigger and bigger until it was too late
  6. recently noticed: a big eye in the middle of the trunk where a sizable branch used to be
  7. the leaves on this trees, which turn a golden yellow, are the last to fall in November
  8. all i can see of this tree from the two windows in front of my desk is the edge of its trunk
  9. a sudden thought: I hope we’re not disrupting too many critters’ homes — I don’t recall hearing or seeing any nests in the winter
  10. I won’t miss having to sweep up whirly gigs on the front sidewalk and pulling them out of the table on the deck or the planter in the backyard

I’m sure the loss of this tree will have effects (negative and positive) that I can’t even imagine.

hike: 40 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
78 degrees

FWA and I cut our walk short today because we had to go to the bathroom. We only hiked to the BIG felled tree. The parking lot was more than half full, but it didn’t feel crowded. Everyone was evenly spaced out and doing their own thing, not clustered at the entrance or on the trail. For the first half of the hike, it was cool and calm, with a gentle breeze. No encounters with aggressive dogs or jerky humans. No dog names overheard. Several very FAST! dogs. So fast that they couldn’t be bothered to stop and play with Delia. One German Shepherd zoomed by so fast that I gasped — wow, that dog is fast!

FWA schooled me on a video game term: de/buffing. Used in sentenced: Walking through that second patch of sun, I was debuffed and never recovered.

de/buffed: (from Reddit because I can’t remember FWA’s exact definition) “Debuff is a game term that means something was hit with an attack that causes negative affects. In this case it “de-buffs” your agility. In games, buff means you strengthen; to improve.”

We talked about how Delia loves to plop down in the soft sand then imagined a t-shirt with the many versions of Delia chilling:

  • ploppin’
  • DOD (dead on deck) when Delia lays down on the deck , with her head plopping last, looking like she’s passed out or dead on the deck
  • DOR — a DOD variation: dead on rug
  • wedged between two of Scott’s pillows on our bed
  • wedged between the edge of her bed and the removable cushion
  • sprawled out quietly on the rug, under the dining room table
  • resting misery face: in her bed, her head hanging over the edge, looking miserable

11:01 am Louder thumps as leafless chunks of branches fall / the front yard is strewn with little branch trees / the bucket, suspended halfway up the tree / a big claw reaching up to grab branches, lift them, then toss them in the back of a truck

11:04 am one worker in an orange vest threw up the rope to the guy in the bucket, now the rope is being tied to a branch — when and how will it fall? gently or roughly? with a loud Boom! or a soft thud? / a spray of saw dust is coming down / it gently floated down, attached to the rope — I saw it dangling in front of the window! — then boom boom — two quick, deep booms / So much debris in our front yard — very grateful I don’t have to pick it up!

11:10 am

view from my window / 11:10 am

11:14 am

The sound of a big branch falling, then its cylindrical reflection in the glass top on my desk. A very dead, tall and thin branch falling, reflected in the glass / a worker with a chainsaw, cutting a big branch off a bigger branch — grrrrrrrrrrr

1:07 pm

Sawing the trunk: sawdust sparks / dangling from a rope / the ground nears

swimming with Lauren Groff

Sure, I have many ideas and projects and plans for what I’d like to write/make/create this summer, but I also have a strong desire (need? ache?) to just be with the water and the swimming and the words (or lack of words). I want to return to Anne Carson and Alice Oswald and Lauren Groff and Tony Hoaglund and Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin and re-memorize their poetry. I also want to revisit past Sara’s thoughts about water and swimming and first days of open swim.

Speaking of Lauren Groff (which I did, above), I’m currently reading her short story collection, Brawler. Here’s a short video in which she talks about it and how swimming made her a writer:

In addition to finding this video, I also found this short blog entry about Groff’s love of swimming:

I was expecting to enjoy Lauren Groff’s collection of short stories Delicate Edible Birds, but I had no idea that here was another work of swim-lit. Like Groff’s first novel, the marvelous The Monsters of Templeton, these stories take place around bodies of water, and they’re also much concerned with swimming and swimmers. (I’ve not finished the book yet, but I’ve just started reading one story about a deep-sea diver). I realized that I’d read the story L. Debard and Aliette before, in the 2006 Atlantic Fiction Issue, and remember it quite vividly these years later– turned out I liked Lauren Groff before I even knew Lauren Groff. It’s an amazing story of poolside sensuality. The stories linked by these swimming references in a way that intrigues me, and certainly satisfies by latest literary fixation. How positively timely.

More Swim-lit

2:30 pm — workers are done, tree is one, only a 4 ft stump that we have to figure out what to do with — hopefully a gnome home!

blue-green algae advisory

Open Swim is not cancelled, but there is a blue-green algae bloom in the water and a water advisory. The “official” Open Swim Club Facebook page has an announcement with the required warning, but the tone definitely seems to be: we have to warn you, but we think if you use caution, you’ll be fine. We’d like to say it’s fine and you should swim, but we can’t. I’m still going, but maybe I’ll only do one loop. And maybe I’ll try to swim a little slower and to look out for it. Can I see it? Not easily.

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
85 degrees

Biking to the lake for open swim was great. Warm, but not too crowded and I was able to pass someone without any stress. We didn’t bike fast, but it didn’t feel slow and it was safer. The bike ride back was harder, with too much wind and clueless walkers walking in the middle of the bike path. Scott rang his “passive agressive bell” (his name for it) half a dozen times and the woman didn’t even notice.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis
87 degrees

A great first swim. I couldn’t see much, and I didn’t care, my shoulders and brain still swam me straight to the buoys. There were some clueless swans and too many vines — it’s crazy how thick they are near the start of the swim! — but they didn’t bother me. I was happy to be swimming and felt strong.

It’s too late and I need to eat, so no more writing about the lake tonight. Tomorrow if I can remember anything, I’ll add some more.

june 8/RUN

3.15 miles
locks and dam turn around
70 degrees
humidity: 88% / dew point: 67

Sticky. Moist. Steamy. Wet. Not raining, but water water everywhere. It felt cool on my fingers and face when I brushed against a bush or when the wind shook the leaves.

Sometimes I felt great, sometimes I didn’t. I was wearing my old black Sauconys because it was so wet and they made my toe hurt for the last mile. My heart rate was higher too. I’ve determined (decided?) that my heat tolerance has decreased because of perimenopause. I’m having some hot flashes and struggling to run/move/stand/be in the heat. I’m thinking of asking for Hormone Replacement Therapy.

As I ran, I recited Wallace Steven’s poem, “Tattoo.” The light is like a spider./ It crawls over the water./It crawls over the edges of the snow./ It crawls under your eyelids/And spreads its webs there. I love this idea of the light like a spider spinning its webs under your eyelids. I also like that the first thing Stevens’ spider-light does is crawl over the water — a good connection to my water season, which starts tomorrow! Open swim!

10 Things

  1. a biker blasting music from speakers — country music (I think) — before I could hear much of it, it was distorted by the Doppler effect
  2. the brown sign that reads, caution, coyote den, is still there — are the coyotes?
  3. bright headlights piercing through the dark green and gray
  4. the sewer pipe near 42nd was gushing
  5. a long line of cars on the road
  6. a string of bikers on the path
  7. a few puddles
  8. the wind picked up, the trees shifted, making me wonder if it started raining agin
  9. a group of kids laughing somewhere in the distance, approaching
  10. 2 lime scooter parked on the edge of trail — both times I neared them, I thought they were people

lines / strings / webs / spiders

a spider moment: As I was about to take a shower, I noticed spider traveling down the tiles. I didn’t want to kill it, or douse it with water, so I turned on the water with the spray pointed away from the tiles and asked the spider to leave. They did — not because of the words, but because of the pressure/feeling of the water.

how long do spiders live? Although most spiders live for at most two years, tarantulas and other mygalomorph spiders can live for over 20 years. (source)

how long have modern spiders existed? The main groups of modern spiders, Mygalomorphae and Araneomorphae, first appear in the Triassic well before 200 million years ago. (source)

orb orb (spiral) webs, orb as eye, orbiting, encircling/enclosing, a spherical body

Alice Oswald, a spider reference in Nobody

A goddess or fog-shape in full wedding dress
sulks in that loneliness what a winter creature
whose lover loathes the everlasting clouds of her
and sits in tears staring at the pleasure-crinkled sea
but she as if a dash of hope
discoloured her sights stands waiting
the way a spider when it wishes to travel
simply lets out a silken

aerial

electrostatically alert through every hair
to the least shift of the atmosphere
at last it lifts on tiptoe and lovely to behold
like a bare twig it begins to blow
wherever the wind will take it but the wind
is the most distracted messenger I know
After citing this, Kit Fan writes:

The new lines at the end of the page carry a rhyme scheme (aabcbc) rare in Nobody and connect the goddess (the owl-eyed Athena who is Odysseus’s protector in The Odyssey?) with the precise, calculated work of a spider, breathing a different kind of life into the “discoloured” world without the watercolors. The two versions of Nobody create a counter-parallel universe for Oswald’s reimagination of The Odyssey, revisualizing the epic as a collage made out of imagist fragments or glimpses of “water-stories,” as the jacket to the UK version calls them. The two texts speak to each other like twins staring at themselves in the mirror, registering uncanny similarities and differences.

Water Stories

The precise calculated work of a spider. Tomorrow, I want to write a little more about the making of a web and the use of spun silk to travel. I also want to return to Alice Oswald and reread The Odyssey again. I love the Wilson translation! I just looked it up and the movie coming out next month is based on this translation. Excellent!

june 6/RUN

8 miles
lake nokomis and back
68 degrees
humidity: 83% / dew point: 60

So hot! I had planned to bring my water but at the last minute, I didn’t. I should have. At the halfway point, my heart rate was high for such an easy pace. Had to take several walk breaks. I really struggle to run in the heat.

Some things to remember for future runs: run earlier, bring water, drink water the night before, come prepared with poetry distractions (e.g.: recite poems in head).

Scott and I realized that doing our long runs together is not a good idea. We have different strategies and different weaknesses that need to be addressed. So instead, we’ll plan to run our middle distance weekly run together.

What did we talk about? Not much; we were too hot and uncomfortable running. Just remembered something as I wrote “many” in number 5 of my10 things. We discussed the range of descriptive words: a pair, a few, some, several, lots, many, most, all. I talked about how I use lots too often and that it sounds clunky. We also talked about bringing the kids to the playground at Lake Nokomis, especially to the big dinosaur, and losing touch with some old friends.

10 Things

  1. a woman with a hose, watering some flowers in her front yard. as we ran by, she called out: free shower?
  2. a loud hose hissing nearby
  3. a lively game on the pickle ball court, with an enthusiastic player cheering loudly for someone
  4. everything completely still, heavy — Scott pointed out how the tops of the trees weren’t moving at all
  5. blue water with many sparkles
  6. blue-green algae advisory at the beach, 2 kids in the water
  7. running over the bridge, looking down and seeing the glowing green water — yuck!
  8. passing another runner with a dog — good morning! / morning!
  9. at the Lake Nokomis playground, running by a log with rows of evenly cut holes — what is this for? how do kids play with it?
  10. the booming voice of an announcer at the big beach: a charity event for lymphoma

Not the best run, but I’m choosing to think of it as a reminder to be more deliberate and disciplined in my training.

webs

I decided to make a spider web on a piece of cardboard. Some improvement is needed, but I’m pleased with it as my first attempt. Will I do anything with this? Unsure, but it keeps coming up, so I’m seeing where it leads.

my first attempt at a web, using light gray-blueish yarn

june 5/HIKEBIKE

50 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
71 degrees
humidity: 72%

Steamy this morning at the dog park. Crowded at the entrance too. I started out skittish, reacting every time a big dog passed by. Something in my body worried that they would slam into me. Thankfully my body chilled out by the end. It rained last night so everything looked greener and the ground was softer.

FWA talked about Adventure Time and how Princess Bubblegum was high functioning autistic and her brother Neddy (Neddie?) was low functioning. Something inspired that discussion but I can’t remember what it was.1 I talked about how great it was to have representations of neurodivergent people that didn’t call attention to them as neurodivergent, that just presented them as part of the range of characters you could have in a show. I said something in a voice that reminded me of my sister Marji and then told FWA about how she gave a talk about cyclones wearing a cyclone costume. So Marji, so awesome. I suggested that she could blow up on TikTok with something like that. Then FWA described a TikTok he recently watched in which a teacher talked about how there is a shift away from kids worrying about being too cringe or not cool enough. This led to a discussion of bullies and how they only have power when people are afraid of them and of not being cool. FWA talked about how the show, The Boys, criticizes bullies and people who use power to try to control others. As we ascended through the stifling woods near the fence, FWA described how the character Homelander, a big bully, is defeated by the other characters. Another great, meandering conversation. I love these!

dog name: Fox / Foxy — a biggish-dog whose exuberance was a little too much for Delia.

people to put on my “shit together” (aka Aristotelean excellence) list: Foxy’s humans immediately called to Foxy and asked if our dog was okay. Then they made sure that Foxy left Delia alone and rerouted them to the river. FWA and I discussed our appreciation of how they handled the situation by asking if Delia was okay instead of assuming she wasn’t because she was too small and delicate (which usually happens when people notice Delia playing with bigger dogs).

other dogs:

Two beautiful, St. Benard-esque (were they St. Bernards? — I’m not sure) running down the hill at a gentle pace. Their owner, who was wearing a BRIGHT orange shirt, called out, okay babies, let’s go. (he said babies with affection, not to tease or demean them).

A loping, awkward, enthusiastic golden retriever running ahead of us, then behind us, then ahead of us again. This dog was sweet and delightful, but also made me nervous as I waited for them to run into me

10 Things

  1. as FWA was driving us to the dog park, he pointed out a coyote running through the grass between river road and Lena Smith — I couldn’t see it
  2. plop! crash! heard, not seen — I’m assuming it was a dog in the water
  3. Delia running by us, fast, her feet thundering enough to prompt me to call her thundercat — later I amended it to Thunderdog: a new nickname!
  4. a strange, almost metallic sounding, thump thump thump — FWA guessed, a bird or a squirrel
  5. a pileated woodpecker, laughing
  6. even more beach at the tip of the trail — the river is so low!
  7. everything even more green than on Monday — branches reaching far over the fence
  8. deep, soft, damp sand — so difficult to climb that FWA calls it his least favorite part of the trail
  9. very few bugs — were they not there, or was it the bug spray we put on?
  10. the pungent smell of poop right after we crossed the road — did I step in some? no, I was passing the trashcan where someone must have thrown away a poop bag. Yuck!
  1. About 30 minutes later: I remembered what we had been discussing. FWA had remarked on how green everything was and how the plants seemed to be talking over. I mentioned Richard Powers’ Overstory and the interview I heard with them where he said, the trees have been around for much longer than us, they will survive our current climate crisis. Will we? All of this led FWA to talk about Adventure Time and how Neddie was scared of everything and was almost always suckled to a tree.He actually created Candy Kingdom ↩︎

webs, nets, threads, grids

Today, I’m accepting the invitation from the spider who crawled near my desk yesterday. I decided to google, “how to make a spider web.” Have I mentioned that I am not crafty or skilled with my hands? Because of this, I need the dumb dumb baby version of tutorials (here, dumb dumb baby = basic and without assuming any level of skill) The phrase might sound rude, but I use it with affection. I first used it with my band friend as we joked about how the second clarinet part — the part we play — is the least interesting and challenging of parts. We rarely get solos or stand out at all).

Here’s a video I found that seems useful. Am I crafy enough to create it? I’m not convinced:

Something obvious that I didn’t consider before: I could use tape for the ends of the web instead of pins. I might try that, but I also might just try creating a web on another piece of cork board not mounted on the wall. This tutorial is targeted at people making their own Halloween decorations. I could imagine putting one of these on the inside glass of our front door.

Reading up on spider webs, a (duh) realization: the silk spiders use to make their webs can come in different colors, including gold, but often they are white not black. I suppose black is the common color in crafty versions and images because of the contrast. I’d like to use white in some of my creations. It might not be as visually interesting immediately, but I think it could distort the text/words in a way that more accurately depicted how words look to me. Cool. I also think I’d like to use thread instead of yarn.

I like using this thread to make visible/trace the mechanics of sight. Here I’m returning to thinking about the light that travels over objects and into our eyes as spiders or insects or Dante’s spiriti visivi or fish. Another poem from my recently published chapbook, Inklings:

Fish 1 / Sara Lynne Puotinen

big beach

On the edge near shore
silver spirits scatter
at my feet to whisper
of what waits beyond
in deeper water.

I looked up Dante, vision, spiriti visivi and found this article: Visionary Science in Purgatorio XVII and Paradiso XXX. I’ll have to read/skim it later!

what spiders webs are for:

  • catching and trapping prey (source)
  • hearing — as extended auditory sensors (source)
  • traveling — to catch and sail on the wind to another location (source)
  • to save cute pigs (source)

random spider web reference I just heard a few days ago while moving the backyard:

itsy bitsy stripper

bike: 5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
80 degrees

A new summer tradition: late Friday afternoon (around 4:30), Scott and I bike to the falls and have a few beers while sitting outside at Sea Salt. This is our 3rd or 4th Friday in a row. 2 of the times, RJP has joined us. I love that I can still bike. I love that RJP joins us — today, I hiked with her: down the steps and at the base of the falls. So many dogs, so many interesting people!

june 4/MAKE

holes and webs and strings and grids

Finishing up this morning on my 4th hole poem, I was committed to setting this series aside for a few months. But as I made my final-ish bloom by pinning shreds of the essay, something kept crawling by me. Back and forth and back and forth, on the edge of the desk. I pushed my stool away from the table, giving this something room to move without needing to crawl on me. An ant? A tick? I watched as it suddenly dangled before me on a thread. A spider! My first thought was, go away!, but later as I told FWA about the encounter, I thought about it differently: what if this spider was communicating with me — Sara! Don’t forget about me. Where are the spider webs you were planning to weave over the words of your poems? Of course I could interpret what was happening as an indifferent spider just doing spider things (what are spider things?), but I could also interpret it like I did those rabbits back in February: an invitation to keep exploring this project in new ways.

a flash — the webs return me to thinking about spiriti visivi and Dante and Wallace Stevens’ light as spiders spreading its webs over our eyeballs and invisible strings in the water that hold us like nets, then light as an insect, then back to my visual poem with specimen boards.

The trick: to tie it in with water, which isn’t a difficult trick, I think. Something about invisible forces/grids/strings/nets that hold us, where holding = tethering, connecting, trapping, restraining and containing.

another flash: Looking at my hole 3, I’m thinking about how the lines shooting out from the center of each verse, are offering a visible trace of the movement of an eye. Cool. I want to play with this idea some more — of tracking and embodying that movement of an eye receiving (capturing?) light and reading words.

Fall through the hole eyes can’t see, land in a logic of blur and almost

other random thoughts with some connection to accepting invitations

*at least to me

1 — On Floundering / Poetry Off the Shelf episode, Don’t Make Any Noise

I think that I was very fortunate in an early career where I did well.
But I wish I believed in myself enough to have allowed myself to financially flounder for a couple of years, instead of doing well. Because I now see, oh, life is a marathon, not a sprint. I would have gotten there.

Yeah. And what would you have done in the floundering? What is something that you’re like, oh, I might have gotten this or that out of it?
Because I think a lot of people who are young and who are currently floundering feel like it will never work out. Right? But I encourage the flounder. First of all, it’s more likely one is going to flounder right now because there are not so many defined career paths, unemployment is impossible. A college degree buys you nothing.
A grad degree buys you maybe something, maybe not. And debt is so high. I think floundering, while the young people I know are incredibly anxious and justifiably so, with my retrospect, I think it’s the best thing you can do.

Yes. I know because I think it also flies in the face of this sort of productivity “narrative, you know, like everything has to yield, like every extracurricular has to yield, you know, your degree has to yield, like, oh my god. And so I do like that you’re like in defense of floundering.
I am, I hope one day you will write a book.
In defense of floundering.”

Don’t Make Any Noise

2 — On keeping that window open / Matt Damon on Conan Needs a Friend

 Ben said this great thing, which was, “Judge me for how good my good ideas are, not how bad my bad ideas are.” And and it was it’s a very profound thing for a 20-year-old to say. um because he recognized that we needed the freedom to kind of barf out all those ideas you know and so often as you know when you’re writing it’s not you write down the bad idea because it’s iterating, you know it that can build into a good idea right and so he was basically giving both of us the permission to just keep the window as wide open as we could.

Conan needs a friend, Matt Damon

I think there was something else I wanted to add here, perhaps from Richard Powers’ archival interview for Between the Covers, but I can’t remember now.

june 3/RUN

4.5 miles
the monument and back
65 degrees

Warm and windy. So windy that I had to take my cap off as I crossed the lake street bridge. The river looked low. I think I saw a long sandbar near the east shore. My feet were still a little sore, but mostly felt okay. Chanted in triple berries for the first 2 miles. Listened to my bunnies and rabbits playlist for the last mile.

11 Things

  1. no rowing shells on the water, but the big white motor boat that follows alongside the rowers was out there, near the dock at the rowing club
  2. workers on the other side of the lake street bridge, fixing something and making a lot of noise doing it
  3. glittering waves close to the easi bank
  4. shadow falls was falling vigorously
  5. running up from the under the bridge on the st. paul side, looking below at the water, envious of my shadow in the water
  6. on the ledge of the overlook at the monument: a insulated coffee mug, white
  7. below the overlook, a person with a dog
  8. tea kettle tea kettle or cheeseburger cheeseburger — a carolina wren somewhere
  9. a person wearing something bright orange, sitting with their bike near the upper entrance to shadow falls
  10. kids being dropped off at the daycare at the church, some by car, one by bike
  11. a handmade wood sign declaring ICE OUT in a neighbor’s front yard on the next block

holes

Time to wrap up this hole project for a few months. I have 4 visual poems that I think are . . . not finished but . . . ready to be considered done. Hole 1, Hole 3, Hole 5a, and Hole 5c. I can imagine returning to them in the fall and trying new (more advanced?) techniques with thread and grids and layers — not just 2D, but 3D.

Well, I would have finished all of the hole poems if a HUGE limb hadn’t fallen right outside my window. We (Scott, FWA, and I) had to drop everything and remove the tree, which took almost 2 hours. Scott happened to be working on a YouTube video as it happened and got a recording of it falling. Yikes!

june 2/WALK

52 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
73 degrees

Another hike with Delia the dog and FWA. Today, a few bugs, at least one bite on my neck. Better remember the bug spray next time. It felt cool and green in the forest, too hot and bright and exposed by the water. We took the treacherous steps today instead of the trail beside the fence line. Delia always wants to go this way, but we don’t because of the steep steps and the crowds. I think FWA picked it because someone ahead of us had gone the way we like to go.

dog names: Ernie — FWA thought it might have been Bernie. I’m team Ernie. / Phineas — my thought: someone who loves/loved Phineas and Ferb named this dog.

We talked about bugs and how we should bring bug spray next time, which led me to mention the book by Sue Somebody (Hubbell — I had to look it up; I read the book more than 20 years ago!) about moving to the foothills of the Appalachians to tend bees. I recall her writing about the terrible bugs — chiggers, I think — that took her 3 summers to get used to. FWA mentioned how chiggers burrow into your skin and deposit larvae —

Writing this now, I looked at that up to verify and found this:

Contrary to popular belief, chiggers do not burrow into the skin or suck blood. Using large claws located near their mouths, chigger larvae quickly attach to any exposed skin that contacts infested grass or soil in vegetated areas. The larvae then cut the skin with blade-like mouthparts called chelicerae and inject an enzyme into the cut that digests the skin at the bite site. This makes the cells around the bite site harden into a “drinking straw”, which the chigger uses to suck up the liquefied tissue. Chigger larvae will feed for several hours and then drop off the host to find a sheltered place to digest the meal. The bite site stays irritated by the digestive enzymes long after the chigger finishes feeding and detaches​.

source

Gross!

Anyway, FWA’s mention of the chiggers burrowing into the skin, inspired me to talk about how we are only 43% us and 57% bacterium and other things. I wrote a poem about it last year, “Sara, an Ecosystem.”1 I asked to FWA: Most (all?) of us understand ourselves to be individuals, separate from the world. How much of this erroneous belief is hard-wired, with our brain tricking us to believe (in) this, and how much is socialization? FWA answered: it’s both. Then he started talking about mitochondria and a video game in which they all rebel against the humans that house them and everyone starts melting and shifting shapes. Very cool.

When we weren’t talking, which was a lot of the time, we were both delighting in Delia’s joy and she ran through the woods, leaping over logs and trying to play with dogs that were much bigger than her.

  1. Found the poem. I like this one. I think I’ll submit it to some more journals. I’m pretty sure I submitted it to a few places last fall. ↩︎

june 1

4 miles
ford overlook, east river
64 degrees
humidity: 84%

Ran with Scott on his 15th run-a-versary. (Mine is tomorrow.) We talked about his gig two nights ago — the jazz combo that he plays bass in, when we started running, and whether or not I got covid a few months ago, which would explain some of my strange ailments + uneven test results. We were supposed to run 8 miles today but even before the run started, we reduced that amount. I wore my new Saucony Cohesions: navy blue with lavender lining and soles. They felt better, but not amazing. I realized that I need to retrain my stride so I don’t run on my toes. Did I start running on my toes more when I switched to Brooks? Possibly.

Writing this entry several hours later, my feet feel pretty good, so I think the switch to the new shoes might help my feet recover better.

It rained off and on yesterday and most of last night; everything was damp today: the sidewalk, the overgrown limbs with their new leaves, my face. The air was still and the surface of the river was flat and motionless. We heard a strange sound near some trees. We think it was a bird, but right before we passed it later in the run, Scott read a handmade brown sign that said, Warning. Coyote den nearby, and we wondered if a coyote had made the loud alarm-like sound we had heard earlier.

rabbit hole

In February, I studies rabbits and bunnies and rabbit holes. This afternoon, I was listening to Lily Allen’s latest album, West End Girl, and I heard these lyrics at the begging of the last song, “Let You W/in”:

I’ve become invisible, stuck here in my palace
I’m so fucking miserable in my rabbit hole, yeah, I’m Alice
And I’m expected to be nice picking up the pieces
What is it you sacrifice? I’m protecting you from your secrets

Does rabbit hole work here as anything other than a way to use Alice to rhyme with palace? I’m not sure. Regardless, I really like this album. Speaking of rabbit holes, I’ve written about how Heather Cox Richardson loves to use the expression in her daily YouTube chats — that’s a rabbit hole I don’t have time for right now. Last week, she said it again and added, I should write books about all of the rabbit holes I’m mentioning. From the 1950s Disney animated Alice, rabbit hole seems to mean daydreaming or reverie or being led astray — or too deep in — by one’s curiosity. HCR seems to be referring to actual rabbit holes, with their labyrinth of twisty tunnels. Of course, she’s also using it in the way that it is popularly used now: getting lost in a topic, ending up somewhere strange and unexpected.

may 30/RUN

3.7 miles
bottom of locks and dam
71 degrees

Warm, sunny. Not too bad in the shade. Ran down to the entrance of the locks and dam no. 1, turned around, stopped to walk for a few minutes, put in my “Moment” playlist, then started running again, When I got to “Lose Yourself,” I did a few strides. Felt a few brief flashes of a runner’s high.

10 Things

  1. bawk bawk cockadoodle doo! heard from far away, slowly approaching — what is that? A bike with an open bike trailer passed by, 2 kids in the back pretending to be a chicken and a rooster
  2. no cars on the way down to the locks and dam, only one car parked at the bottom
  3. some voices above me, on the trail going up to Wabun or on the ford bridge
  4. an orange water cooler with a sing, “Mill City Running” near the bench above the edge of the world
  5. empty benches — maybe one or two occupied
  6. a biker passing, blasting techno music — even if there had been a doppler effect on the music how would you be able to tell?
  7. swallowed a bug — forgot about it until an hour later when I had a few coughing bouts — Bug! I called out, to no one
  8. the rush of leaves through the trees sounding like falling water
  9. stopping at a water fountain near the end of my run, waiting for another runner to finish, soaking my hat — I have no memory of what it felt like to put the wet hat on. Did it drip down my face? Did it feel cool? I have no idea
  10. Walking back, noticing a grid on the lattice of a neighbor’s fence — at first I thought, squares, then lines

I started thinking about grids and lines and my interest in them, which led to thinking about how open swim involves some lines, or maybe not lines but trajectories — from buoy to buoy to buoy, and it also has an imaginary grid and points on that grid. But, open swim also has no lane lines. You are tethered/connected to the world and others in a different logic. I’ve already written about this in a few different ways, including in this poem, from my recently published chapbook, Inklings:

My geometry

of open swimming:
an eye, lake water.
Both of us now grids
with one dot in our
centers — a cone cell
that works, a buoy
that beacons. A line
drawn between passes
through vacant lots and
murky seas as it
tethers us to each
other — swimmer and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight and
to rarely see.

may 29/WALK

35 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
75 degrees

A shorter walk because of the heat and the aggressive energy from other dogs. Lots of very fast running and circling and barking. Two dogs ran by me so close, I could feel their wind on my legs. As we walked, we could hear a chorus of LOUD barks up ahead — one so loud that it was echoing.

dog name: Chief / a big German Shepherd / on a leash, tightly controlled by his owner. Of course Delia teased the dog before we had a chance to stop her. The owner held on tight and managed to keep the dog under control — no chief, no! I wondered to FWA if they had recently adopted an abused dog who needed a lot of help getting socialized to other dogs.

The sand in the floodplain was deep and soft. I could feel it seeping into my sandals. It was cool, which was nice until it got stuck and collected under my covered toes. These are not the shoes to wear here! I declared to FWA. Why did I buy hiking sandals with a closed toe? I remember: they were half off.

Before Chief shifted the energy, FWA was giving a wonderful description of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid 4 animated movie. He’s so skilled at telling stories and conveying the energy of the characters. My favorite part: when he acted out the voice of one of the characters who broke their compass. That’s it. We’re lost.

Even though she was tired and hot, having plopped down in the sand at least once, when Delia saw some bigger dogs up ahead running in circles around a tree and through some grass, she tried to join in. She wasn’t fast enough. When she tried harder, they ignored her. Oh Delia, you’re out of your league. Finally, she gave up.

moment of joy: a tall Dad holding the hand of a very little girl (2 or 3?) as she looked up at him smiling or giggling and hiked down the hill gracefully.

11 Unhinged Energy Things

  1. the moment Chief’s owners noticed us up ahead and prepared themselves for the encounter — the woman took a deep breath and said, it will be okay or get ready or we can do this
  2. that sand! — so soft and deep and slippery — the coolness of it as it poured into my sandal
  3. kerplunk! crash! a very large something thrashing through the water — a big dog, I thought — no, 2 or 3 big dogs
  4. an owner calling to a dog (I can’t remember the dogs name) and the dog running as fast as I’ve ever seen a dog run. Wow!
  5. two big dogs running beside then past me — any closer and they would have taken me out
  6. BARK! BARK! yip yip bark bark ruff ruff — the cacophony of dogs up ahead, playing or fighting or who knows what at the beach at the end of the trail
  7. a strange and loud knocking or clanking sound up above us, in the tree
  8. dog after dog after big dog, flashing past, some barking, some silent — somehow the silent ones felt even more unnerving
  9. dumping sand out of my sandals near the car, feeling something strange and sticky on the bottom of my foot that wouldn’t come off — a bug?! — a slight panic and a frantic waving of my foot– realizing minutes later that I had put a bandaid on last night
  10. FWA driving us back on the river road — a car that was going 12 mph in a 20 mph zone that hardly anyone ever obeys — average speed for most cars here = 30 mph — a growing back-up of cars behind it — FWA turning off of the road at the first available chance with a flourish and declaring, someone needs their license taken away!
  11. encountering a truck on a narrow city street, noticing a low-to-the-ground recumbent bike drafting off it then trying to pass it while the truck was still moving — FWA was so distracted that he pulled out in front of another truck