24 july/RUNBIKESWIM

run: 4 miles
the monument and back
73 degrees
dew point: 69

Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.

Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.

I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.

Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.

Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:

clouds reflected on river
river clouds

note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.

visual fields, landscapes, meadows

1

At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.

2

Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”

It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”

the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance

3

as
though there
swung at the end
of a tunnel,
a passage dotted
with endless
points of
arrival, as
though our gaze
started just outside
our faces and
corkscrewed its way
toward the horizon,
processual,
as if looking
took time to happen
and weren’t
instantaneous,
offered whole in
one gesture
before we
ask, before our
will, as if the far
Sonoma mountains
weren’t equally ready
to be beheld as
the dead
fly on the sill)
(Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)

What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood.
(Naomi Cohn)

4

A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.

5

“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”

“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.

As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees / 79 degrees

Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.

I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark

There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!

images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon
(Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)

july 23/RUN

2.55 miles
2 trails
77 degrees
dew point: 73

So warm already at 8 am! Decided to do a quick run anyway. Felt better than I thought especially on no coffee or food, but it was still hard. Listened to the new Lorde (recommended by RJP) while I ran south to the entrance of the Winchell Trail. Listened to turkeys and trucks and coxswains while I ran north.

10 Things

  1. a coxswain below giving instructions through a bullhorn — take a drink before class begins . . . today we’ll start with some stroke work: 22/22/22/24
  2. the distant gobble of turkeys
  3. the rumble of a truck
  4. a roller skier
  5. a biker in a bright yellow shirt working on their aero position, back bent low and straight over the bike
  6. the tree that fell and blocked 3/4 of the trail is still there, its leaves now brittle and brown
  7. empty benches
  8. voices above me, approaching steadily — bikers or runners?
  9. another coxswain — difficult to hear over my music
  10. cracked pavement below — some small and shallow, others deeper and slanted, all waiting to twist ankles

a few hours later: a steady rain

Returning to this log entry to wander with a question I posted yesterday:

What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? 

Darby Nelson is referring to lakes and how little can be seen below the surface. Landscape is a strange word choice here. Landscape refers to a view/tract of land that’s inland. What’s the word for a water view? Waterscape? Beyond that, the OED definition of landscape is about a view, a portrait, a picture. What is the experience/perception of a space — land or water — called that doesn’t prioritize or exclusively rely on vision?

I’m also thinking about how a landscape is scenery, an object to gaze at, the background. What if we made the lake the subject? How would we understand and name our relationship to it? Ecosystems popped into my head — maybe not the right word, but another way to think about what the water we’re observing, especially when we’re in it, is. And, what if we (you, me) are not individuals separate from the lake as observers but ecosystems too?

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as a biological individual. All organisms are intricately nested collectives: networks of relationships between cells and microbes that make it impossible to say where one “individual” starts and stops. Humans are no exception: We carry around more microbial cells than we do our own.

Entangled Flourishing

In the same entry I posted the above quotation (8 april 2022), I also posted and discussed Arthur Sze’s poem “Entanglements.” I especially like these lines:

your field
of vision tears, and an underlying landscape
reveals a radiating moment in time.

“(during my run) I reflected on the underlying landscape as layers that can’t be seen with your eyes, only smelled or felt or imagined. And I delighted in the idea of so much happening, so much present beneath me that I couldn’t see, that I didn’t need to see, for it to exist or to affect me or to be connected to me.”

Field of vision? Suddenly I thought about my interest in writing a poem/s about taking the visual field test (see 1 july 2025). And I’m thinking about landscapes and fields and meadows (see 2 may 2025). A line popped into my head: a meadow of moments — no, a moment meadows.

What does the visual field test have to do with the lake or my experiences swimming in it? A lot, I think. Somehow I want to bring together the visual field test with my swimming and sighting buoys. How? Not sure yet.

july 22/SWIM

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
89 degrees
choppy

A great swim, but choppy! Lots of breathing on one side to avoid waves. Sighting buoys (and other swimmers) was harder, everything lost in the waves. The first loop was the toughest. Got into a groove after it and managed to do 2 more loops before pausing to tread water at a white buoy and then beginning the final loop. It was crowded in the water — kids wading at the beach, adults taking advantage of the free night at open swim. Because of the crowds and the choppy water, it was difficult to give attention to the water or the bubbles or anything else. Did I manage to notice 10 things?

10 Things

  1. sparkle friends — particles floating, churning in the water
  2. so many vines reaching up from the bottom, wrapping around my wrist or ankles — it didn’t bother me, but I could imagine that freaking out some other swimmer
  3. a plane flying low, parallel to the water
  4. hot pink safety buoys tethered to torsos
  5. the pale foot of a breaststroker under the water
  6. the silhouette of an upright lifeguard on a kayak, marking the edge of the course
  7. someone swimming at the edge of my vision — far off to the left
  8. 3 swimmers with yellow safety buoys clustered together, treading water and talking
  9. mostly blue sky, a few clouds
  10. paused at the buoy, witnessing a strange sight: the way a swimmer was breathing and sighting in the choppy water, jerking their head high up and out of the water — at first I thought they were doing a double-take when they noticed me, but nope, that’s just the way they swim

before the swim

Each summer of swimming builds on the last. I get stronger, able to swim for longer without stopping. It’s not a deliberate choice or part of a training plan — I have no training plan for swimming; I just swim until I am too tired or I have to go to the bathroom or I’ve run out of time. I have loose goals: 100 miles for the summer or a 5k or 6 loops or the full 2 hours in one session. This year: swimming cumulatively for a day, or 24 hours, in August. It’s a goal inspired by the title of a Mary Oliver poem: Swimming, One Day in August. It’s possible, but it will take some planning and pushing myself to achieve.

In July, I’m finding myself thinking about how much time I’m spending above the surface versus below it. This year, I’m below much more than above. In past summers, I’ve done less loops and more stops at shore in-between. This year, I might occasionally pause mid-lake for 5-10 seconds, or take a 30 second break at the beach between the 3rd and 4th loop, but mostly I’m swimming freestyle without stopping. 60-90 minutes of 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. That’s a lot of time submerged and becoming acquainted with the underwater world!

Below, my thoughts are the bubbles that surround me. Above, they become words that hover above the water or travel across the lake — maybe they get lost beyond the horizon, or maybe they linger, later taking the form of words on a page. Last night, swimming the stretch from hidden beach back to point beach, I imagined each breath as one word bursting into the air: 1 2 3 4 5 BLUE 1 2 3 4 5 GRAY. I didn’t get very far with my words before I was distracted by something — another person? a scratchy vine? trying to sight an invisible buoy? I’d like to play around with this some more while I’m swimming tonight. Does each breath have to be only one word?

My ideas about thoughts below and above the water are partly inspired by the lines from Alice Oswald that I’ve memorized and have been reciting in my head:

dived again and surfaced
and smelt all the longings of grass-flower smells
and bird-flower sounds and vaporous poems
that hang in the chills above rivers
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

the vaporous poems as my thoughts bursting into the air and hanging above the surface?

and thoughts escaping to the surface to move beyond the self

I wish I was there or there he thinks and his mind
immediately

as if passing its beam through cables
flashes through all that water and lands
less than a second later on the horizon
and someone with a telescope can see his tiny thought-forms
floating on the sea surface wondering what next

*

like spirits of sight whose work is on the water
where the massless mind undulates the intervening air
shading it blue and thinking

I wish I was there

or there

All the time in the water, the front half of me submerged except for my quick breathe every 5 strokes, has me wondering about which world is real, which a dream. On 3 July, I posted a quotation from Anne Carson that ended with, Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them. Which way is up, which down?

I’m thinking of May Swenson’s “Water Picture” and her vivid description of a water world as the world above water in reverse:

Treetops deploy a haze of cherry bloom for roots, where birds coast belly-up in the glass bowl of a hill

The first line of her poem — In the pond in the park
all things are doubled — reminds me of something Alice Oswald said in her “Interview with Water” lecture: when you look at water, it allows you to exist twice but more darkly (see full quote from 20 june 2024)

And that line reminds me of part of Oswald’s Nobody:

I lost track of
the underneath of things everything became my mirror
once I stood up to look over the side
I sat down again terrified it was myself I saw
thronged and pitch-green
spilling over the top of the earth
the same soft dust-sheets over my hands as the clouds
the same thick curtain across the horizon

Above and below the surface is not just reversal, the same backwards, symmetry, but something else. In her lecture, the lines before the bit about twice darkly, Oswald says:

but the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction. Water is never the same as itself. Rivers can only exist as similarities, lakes reflect more than their own volume

The surface offers the illusion of reversal, one way up, the other down. Below the surface, beyond its mirror, another world waits to be witnessed. And not with eyes — the visibility in lake nokomis is currently 6.6 feet. In the middle of the lake, all I see below me are particles, stray vines, an occasional flash, and murky green-blue-yellow. Not so much dark, as Nothing.

I’m fascinated by surfaces, or what Oswald calls the waterlid. What does the surface look like from below looking up? I should make note of it today. Also, from above, looking down?

Looked up some notes, and found this great quotation from Darby Nelson in his book, For the Love of Lakes:

Human understandings rely heavily on the endless flood of messages from our eyes. But with a lake, the laws of optics work against us. Its reflective surface and the water’s rapid absorption of light with increasing depth conspire to keep much of a lake hidden from view. At a lake, open your eyes and you don’t see half of it. Nearly all the visual input from a lake comes as surface reflections, mere superficialities. Thoreau reveled in reflections. He felt because they were constantly changing they could present previously known truths from new points of view. But those truths don’t penetrate into the world of the lake below, a truth with which he seems unconcerned. What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? How can we fully perceive what we cannot see?

For the Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson

during the swim

I wanted to think about these things and recite some lines as I swam, but I was distracted by the effort of choppy, crowded water, always looking out for waves crashing over me and making it hard to breathe, or random slow or stopped swimmers. Near the end of the swim, I decided to dip lower in the water so that I could see the surface from below — a wavy, slightly distorted version of the sky and clouds. Cool!

july 21/RUNSWIM

run: 1.75 miles
from minnehaha falls to home
73 degrees / dew point: 64

A quick run with Scott from the falls back home before the rain started. We made it! Checked the weather on my watch after we finished — 95% chance of rain in 8 minutes. Ran at 1 pm, which might be my least favorite time to run. It felt hard. Still, I’m glad we did it. (It never rained.)

We stopped to walk where the trail dips below the road so I could point out the new trail they’ve created that winds down to the river. I can’t wait until they’re finished. It looks cool. Speaking of cool, I was trying to convey to Scott how I felt about the air and what the impending storm was doing to the sky and the air and green of the gorge. First I said “cool,” but it’s not cool (temperature), so I started to clarify, I mean the atmosphere, but realized that atmosphere could be related to temp so I said, I mean the vibe is cool. Cool is such a strange word — both full of meaning and history and empty too. For 35 years, I’ve been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond it, but it never works. How many times a day do I use this word?

I know that there is a rich history of the term within African American culture and jazz and that it’s been appropriated by white culture, but I don’t know the history that well. In poetry, my immediate thought about cool is Gwendlyn Brooks amazing, “We Real Cool.” I also think about Beatnik poetry and the Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene in Hairspray:

“your hair is really uncool”

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
79 degrees
rain

Overcast, gray. Calm water, warm-enough air. A great night for a swim. As I swam, I monitored the sky, noticing it getting darker and thicker. Wondered if it would start raining. During loop 4, it did. It’s always difficult to tell if it’s raining when I’m swimming. Today I felt a drop on my check and then paused to lift my head out of the water — a steady rain. I think I heard it underwater, but I couldn’t see it, and barely felt it. No thunder, so open swim kept going. Hooray!

10 Things

  1. a graying sky
  2. a big canoe moving fast across the swim course
  3. even as I tried to stay on the edge of the course, the current pushed me toward the center
  4. pale green, opaque water
  5. bubbles encasing my hands
  6. attacks from floating vines
  7. a party with a campfire and barking dogs at hidden beach
  8. buoyant, feeling held by the water
  9. after: itchy skin
  10. standing up in the sand after the last loop — a final look at the buoys and the water

Remembered the first line from the A Oswald poem fragment that I forgot several times last week: this disintegrating certainty

Thought about the bubbles and imagined that they were holding me up, like some sort of raft or inner tube.

My legs felt like rudders, my torso rocked rhythmically, my shoulders rose and fell.

july 20/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
67 degrees

Wow! What a morning for a swim. Sunny and not too windy. I couldn’t see the green buoys heading towards the little beach, but I didn’t care. I’m used to my eyes not seeing the buoys and trusting that some part of me has seen them and is leading me the right way, and I use other things to keep on course — sparkles on the water, which mean other swimmers are around, the lifeguard kayaks on the edge of the course, buildings.

10 Things

  1. a swirled glob of vines
  2. orange safety buoys tethered to torsos
  3. cloudless blue sky
  4. pale green water
  5. a young kid calling out to another kid — look at the little fish!
  6. a swim clinic for people doing the Y-tri — the instructor encouraging people to take breaks if they needed to — of course it’s hard! it’s okay to take a break
  7. little specks: swan boats in the distance
  8. little specks: green buoys looking like far off white dots
  9. sparkle friends
  10. a paddle boarder crossing the path, then a kayak

Recited my Alice Oswald lines: He dives. He shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence . . . Underwater, the silence was more than a lack of sound, not empty but still — the same view with no variations: the pale green water studded with particles. No shafts or light, no fish.

Recited some lines of my own, too: I go to the lake/to beholld to be/ held by the water

a return to EXAQUA

“Water is the medium, the texture, the weight, the space, the motion/emotion or your writing/thinking. Would you agree? Is that too tidy? Your work is attuned to water and being close to it (or, better, being inside it) is important to you” (EXAQUA/ Jan-Henry Gray).

What might it look like to have water be the medium, the texture, the weight space motion emotion of my writing/thinking?

medium = way in which the writing is delivered — print, digital, audio, visual
water as medium = delivered with water = the bubbles sparkles wound on the water my piercing hands leave

Giving water the weight and size of myself
in order to imagine it, water with my bones
water with my mouth and my understanding

weight and size of myself = swimming in the lake, again and again, a full immersion — without wetsuit or raft — more time below the surface than above, my full devotion and attention

july 19/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
72 degrees
humidity: 85%

Because I waited until after today’s tour stage — the last one in the Pyrenees — it was humid and hot out by the gorge! Other than the heat, the run was not too bad. I chanted in triples for about a mile and tried to keep my chest up, shoulders relaxed, arms in a controlled swing. I don’t remember hearing the rowers or seeing the river.

10 Things

  1. the entrance to a steep dirt path above the rowing club on the other side of the path that goes under the lake street bridge
  2. a runner behind me, coming fast, slapping his feet on the paved path
  3. a biker sternly telling the runner, you’re on the bike path!
  4. the runner not reacting because he was wearing headphones
  5. the fence panel that they were redoing yesterday was in place and its new, unpainted wood stood out against the other brown panels
  6. a wooden slat of the fence jutting out by the ravine because of a leaning tree — watch out!
  7. 2 older women sitting on a bench — one to the other: not bad, 2 miles in 2 hours
  8. a flash of orange in the peripheral — a hidden tree trunk marked for removal
  9. slightly more of a view at the sliding bench — I think park workers trimmed the trees
  10. the crack north of the trestle looks like it might have grown some more

july 18/BIKESWIM

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
61 degrees (there) / 68 (back)

It’s great to bike! Independence! Not having to rely on someone else to get me to the lake. And, being on a bike is much more fun than being in a car.

Overcast and cool. Some wind as I biked south and west. I might have glimpsed the river through the trees, looking almost white, but I don’t remember. Heard the rush of the light rail going past on the other side of the barricade. Also heard the rush of the creek, moving past the spot where all the kids like to swim. Heard the rhythmic thwack of the pickle ball hitting the racket. The pickle ball courts by the lake nokomis rec center are always full. And, as I neared the big beach, I heard a shrill sound on repeat. Scott and I had heard it last night and thought it was a person whistling. Nope. Was it a bird? What else could it have been?

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
64 degrees

A little tired today after last night’s swim. Otherwise, I felt good, buoyant, high up on the surface of the water. My sparkle friends were coming right at me as I swam across to the little beach. The sky was covered in clouds. The positioning of the buoys was closer today than last nigh, so a much shorter course. Two things: the green buoy closest to the little beach was farther away this morning than last night and the middle green buoys were closer together — a tighter angle. According to my watch, I swam a mile and 1000 less strokes today.

I had trouble keeping my nose plug on; it was leaking air which made a funny nose underwater. I wondered if other swimmers could hear it. Have I heard the noises of other swimmer’s underwater before? Not in lake, but I’ve heard clicking elbows in the pool.

Mostly my stroke pattern was: 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
Occasionally: 1 2 3 4 5 6
or 1 2 3 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left

I recited Alice Oswald, mostly the one about microscopic insects that catch pigment on their shivering hair-like receptors. I wanted to recite the new lines I tried to memorize last night, but I got stuck on the first line. I couldn’t remember disintegrating certainty.

Yesterday I watched a little of the 5k open water swim world championships from Singapore. The competitors were swimming in a shipping lane with an over-sized lane line on one side. This lane line was enormous, much bigger proportionately than a pool lane line. It looked strange and unreal.

10 Colors

  1. orange buoy
  2. red lifeguard kayak
  3. white swan
  4. an occasional dot of robin’s egg blue — the green buoy getting closer
  5. lime green buoy
  6. yellow safety buoy
  7. pink cap
  8. green vine, floating
  9. pale greenish-brown vine from milfoil reaching up from the bottom
  10. a smear of green so dark it almost looked black near the ford bridge: a dark dirt trail that winds through the woods

EXAQUA

Last week, I returned to a poem I posted on this log a few years back: EXAQUA / Jan-Henry Gray. So many good lines about water. I decided to request it from the library — it’s in Gray’s collection, Documents. Yesterday RJP and I went and picked it up. Exaqua is several pages long, with multiple sections. Today I’ll start reading it more closely.

I wondered about the title. What does it mean? In a note, Gray writes that the title comes from the “Notanda” section of M.NourbeSe Philip’s Zong. I’ve heard of Zong! before. JJJJJermoe Ellis writes about it in Aster of Ceremonies. I had to do a little more digging to find out what it means in Zong! Found a masters thesis with an explanation:

When Morrison writes, “By and by all trace is gone, and what is forgotten is not only the footsteps but the water too and what is down there,” she gestures toward the material remains of the enslaved who we know to have been drowned by those waters—the “Sixty Million and more” to whom Beloved (324). It is in an attempt to remember “the water and what is down there” that NourbeSe attempts to do the work of recovering, reclaiming, or exhuming those bodies from their liquid graves. The term NourbeSe uses to describe this process is exaqua: that is, to exhume the bodies of the Zong’s victims from the water. In lieu of the enslaved’s literal, material remains—their scoured bones— Zong! orients itself toward creating a textual space where their voices may sound out. When we have observed that a voice is singular, this observation has rested on the embodiedness of our voices. As sound, our voices are constituted by the materialities of our bodies that produces them, thereby carrying something of our bodies outside of ourselves and spacing it out into the material world. For NourbeSe, then, Zong! as a material object is like the surface from which the sound of the captives’ voices reemerge.

Listening/Reading for Dismembered Voices

This definition is fascinating. I want to keep thinking about it as I do a close reading of the different sections of the poem. An immediate thought: the idea of surface here is interesting — surface as where what is inside us travels outside.

immersion

The only way to know a song is to sing it.
The only way to know an ocean is to swim it.
(from Across the Pacific Ocean/ Jan-Henry Gray)

These lines are from an earlier poem in the collection, but I’ve been thinking about them and I think they can be put into conversation with EXQUA. I’d also like to put them into conversation with my own thoughts on being in the water as opposed to being near it or beside it or above it (like I am with the river).

I think about all that I know or understand or am familiar with because of the time I’ve been in lake nokomis over the last 12 years. The quality of the water, its currents, its colors, its buoyancy, its temperatures. The sediments, the ducks, seagulls, loons, dragonflies, the vegetation.

In the water, you feel the ripples, the swells, the rocking of the waves, the wind. Out of the water, you might see a textured surface or a whitecap, but you might only see flat, calm water.

july 17/RUNSWIM

4 miles
river road, north/south
57 degrees
humidity: 80%

In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.

10 Things

  1. rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
  2. after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
  3. the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
  4. good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
  5. good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
  6. click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
  7. a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
  8. smell of cigarette smoke
  9. the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
  10. the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me

I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!

to remember and return to

water and time / log entry for 11 july 2024

lines to memorize for today’s swim?

this disintegrating certainty this water
whatever it is whatever anything is
under these veils and veils of vision
which the light cuts but it remains

unbroken
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?

I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.

I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.

Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.

Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.

july 16/RUN

Rain this early (7 am) morning. Hopefully stopping in a few hours. Watching the tour and rereading old entries from july 16ths. Discovered this excellent description of a buzzing bug:

The Locust/ Leonara Speyer

Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by:
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.

note: I first posted this poem on 16 july 2022. I posted it again last year in 2024. Maybe I should memorize it?

a few hours later: what a stage of the tour (stage 11)! Pogacar crashing; Visma waiting for him. What will happen tomorrow in the Pyrenees?

It is 10:30 and a light rain. Won’t stop until 12:30. Do I wait, or go now? It’s probably refreshing and it might be fun to run in the rain . . .

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
66 degrees
light rain

I did it, and it was a great run! Back to the 9/1 (9 minutes running / 1 minute walking) and feeling strong and relaxed. The light rain helped to cool me down, and I liked how my feet glided on the wet trail. Glided sounds strange. How about glode or glid or glod? Started the run by chanting in triple berries then turning everything I noticed into triples — river road, dripping trees, running feet, rushing cars. Listened to everything dripping for the first 30 minutes, then put in the “Energy” playlist for the last stretch.

10 Things

  1. gloom with the occasional bright flash from headlights
  2. one flash looked lower — I think it was a reflection in a big puddle!
  3. the ravine by 42nd was gushing like the falls
  4. the falls were giving off a fine, gauzy spray
  5. a stranded surrey near the longfellow house — were they getting wet in the rain?
  6. someone walking up the hill at the edge of the park, carrying an umbrella
  7. above the creek, the grass next to the sidewalk was soaked with a line of big puddles
  8. the sprawling reflection of a tree in a wide puddle on a sidewalk
  9. the silhouette of a bird on a wire, looking very Bird
  10. the bells of St. Thomas — faint, distant

an hour later: I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake tonight but I just got an email: “canceled due to inclement weather.” Bummer.

a few random Alice Oswald bits

1

On her process of translating what she notices into a poem, and on poetry as framing the silence:

She and her husband, playwright Peter Oswald, divide their day in two – walking their sons to and from school through fields. But she doesn’t take a notebook with her. She believes in the subconscious, in what is brewing on a ‘non-verbal level’. She thinks ‘a flavour or feeling builds up, almost a sculptural shape that could be a living creature, or a dance or a painting’. Only later comes the ‘plastic art of finding the words’.

There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. ‘One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.’ 

into the woods

2

Wood Not Yet Out/ Alice Oswald

closed and containing everything, the land
leaning all round to block it from the wind,
a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees
sections of distance tilted through the trees
and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking
does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking
bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun
vanishes up, instantly come and gone.
once in, you hardly notice as you move,
the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love
to stand among the last trees listening down
to the releasing branches where I’ve been –
the rain, thinking I’ve gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren’t yet there

Oh, that ending! Now I’m imagining what the rain does when it thinks I’m not around! Today the rain didn’t crackle the air but . . . dotted it? feathered it? poked or punctured it?

3

The other day I came across Alice Oswald’s description of a project she’ll be working on next year as a fellow at Columbia University. She’s calling it Interviews with Anon:

At the Institute, Oswald will write a procession of passersby, not all of whom are human and many of whom are imperfectly seen: “My inspiration is the wandering, bartering, folktale style of Herodotus, who included 940 characters in his Histories. I shan’t be writing history. Perhaps it will be more like a headcount or even a carnival.”

Interviews with Anon

Very cool! I can’t wait to read/hear this in a few years.

july 15/RUN

1.75 miles
neighborhood
80 degrees
dew point: 70

Wanted to do a longer run today, but it was too hot! At first I wasn’t going to run at all, but I decided to do a short one to, as I sang to Scott, kick start my heart. Of course I sang the melody of this song completely wrong and of course we had to listen to the original. Ugh! And of course I had to remind Scott that one of the many soccer teams I was on as a kid was named Motley Crüe. Another team: Jabberwockies.

When I was in the shade it wasn’t too bad, but in the direct sun — HOT! I had wanted to run to the overlook on the bridge but I noticed, at the last minute — a few feet from the sign — that the sidewalk was closed. So, I turned down and ran south on the river road trail. Ah, shade!

10 Things

  1. my bright yellow running shoes
  2. the neighbor who is always sitting on his front steps smoking was there but wasn’t smoking
  3. the excited chirping of little kids on the playground at the daycare
  4. from a biker: that was so sweet — the tone of sweet made me think kind, thoughtful, not awesome
  5. a long line of cars on lake street
  6. my shadow, straight and strong
  7. 2 runners crossing the street, standing in the bike path, a biker approaching, heads up! / oh, sorry!
  8. the rush of wind through the trees
  9. a steady stream of cars on the river road making it difficult to cross
  10. the dark brown dirt, the gentle curve of the green grass, the sharp edge between of a front yard on 46th

This Be the Place: a Pond

Today is the first rest day of the tour so no cycling to watch all morning. Instead I returned to my morning reading practice of visiting poetry sites and rereading past log entries. A lot of great stuff, including: This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart

The “several-acre” space is a pond, which struck me as strange. I think of ponds as small bodies of water and several-acres sound big. But is it (big, that is)? Maybe several acres is small. What distinguishes a pond from a lake? I recall looking up brooks and streams and creeks and rivers when I was reading Emily Dickinson’s poem, Have you got a Brook in your little heart (see 13 march 2021), but not ponds. So I looked it up. Fascinating!

pond or lake: the distinction is arbitrary

The term “lake” or “pond” as part of a waterbody name is arbitrary and not based on any specific naming convention. In general, lakes tend to be larger and/or deeper than ponds, but numerous examples exist of “ponds” that are larger and deeper than “lakes.” . . .Names for lakes and ponds generally originated from the early settlers living near them, and the use of the terms “lake” and “pond” was completely arbitrary. Many have changed names through the years, often changing from a pond to a lake with no change in size or depth. Often these changes in name were to make the area sound more attractive to perspective home buyers.

Lake or Pond: What’s the Difference?

from lake to pond to wetland

Learned that the study of inland waters is limnology. And the terms, lotic and lentic, too:

surface waters are divided into lotic (waters that flow in a continuous and definite direction) and lentic (waters that do not flow in a continuous and definite direction) environments. Waters within the lentic category gradually fill in over geologic time and the evolution is from lake to pond to wetland. This evolution is slow and gradual, and there is no precise definition of the transition from one to the next.

Lake or Pond: What’s the Difference?

From lake to pond to wetland reminds of my discussion of ecological succession and Robin Wall Kimmerer at the begining of May. A meadow becomes a thicket, a thicket becomes a forest.

Was Lake Nokomis ever a (bigger) lake that became a pond, then a wetland, then a lake again? Yes!

The landscape around Lake Nokomis was formed by natural forces, to be a place that absorbed and stored water. Over 11,000 years ago, glaciers carved through the land, and then retreated and melted. As the ice blocks that were left behind melted, they formed an expansive system of interconnected wetlands and lakes. Under these saturated conditions organic material from dead plants was unable to completely decompose, forming extensive peat deposits — a wetland soil. Because peat readily absorbs moisture and can hold up to 10 times its weight in water, it can act as a barrier and prevent rainfall from draining into deeper layers of the soil. This can cause water to accumulate, or perch, above the peat. Once abundant wetlands in South Minneapolis were filled or development.

In 1853, the U.S. Surveyor General’s Office conducted the first government land survey of the landscape around Lake Nokomis, then called Lake Amelia. The area contained over 1,500 acres olakes and wetlands. At that time, the natural lakes were larger and shallower than today. Since then, nearly 60% of the area’s wetlands have been filled. In their place is today’s built landscape.

Lake Nokomis Area Groundwater and Surface Water Evaluation

if we opened people up, we’d find landscapes

Linda Gregg might call my pond a “resonant source,” a term she uses for places that are “present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts.” These are the Ur-images of our creative psyches, that live with us and inform our writing. “If we opened people up,” remarked the filmmaker Agnès Varda, “we’d find landscapes.” Along with a Virginia creek and cornfields and the wood with its mayapples, this pond is inside me: as summer, as stillness, as childhood—as peace.

This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart

You can not realize you are in despair, looking at a pond’s surface.

I love the surface of Lake Nokomis. How when I lift my head out of the green water to sight, I see blue. How its ripples sparkle and its small waves sometimes look like other swimmers. How dragonflies hover above, bubbles hang just below it. How it often hides its moods from those at a distance; what looks calm and still from afar, feels rough and active from within.

ponds and writers: Maxine Kumin and Henry David Thoreau

Two writers that popped into my head as I think and read about ponds; Maxine Kumin and her homemade pond, Pobiz Pond, on her farm and Thoreau and Walden Pond. I just requested Kumin’s memoir in which she writes about how she and her husband, along with help from friends, dug out a pond on their farm property.

Other poetry people who love ponds? Mary Oliver, of course!

note: I was planning to swim, but open swim was canceled because of thunderstorms forecasted for 6:30.