8 miles ford + hidden falls loop 68 degrees / humidity: 87%
That was hard! I had wanted to run 10 miles, but the route I took was a lot shorter, my legs were tired, and the sun was hot, so I only did 8. Good enough for me today. I ran the first mile without stopping, then 2 min run / 45 seconds walk for most of the rest. After listening for Shadow Falls, 15 minutes in, I put in my headphones and listened to an audiobook I recently checked out, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It’s a great book to listen to while running: a good distraction.
10 Things
running up the hill above the ravine, hearing the water falling at shadow falls
another running passing me, then the sour smell of someone working hard
a peloton on the road — a dozen riders
a big group of shirtless runners: 20 or so? a college cross country team?
encountering many runners (most) approaching me, running the other direction
a sour, sharp smell near the overlook at hidden falls — from the creek water?
so much sweat — my shoulders were soaked
baby turkeys! near the 44th street parking lot, grazing in the grass
a boisterous group of runners — 5 or 6 women laughing
Patches of mud and some felled trees — because of yesterday’s rain and occasional strong wind?
No roller skiers, no geese, no bugs, no acorns underfoot — usually the acorns begin falling at the end of July. When will they fall this year? (update, a few hours later: Scott and I took Delia the dog on a short walk and, at the end of the block, acorns on the sidewalk!)
Before starting my run, the line from Mary Oliver’s “Swimming One Day in August” popped into my head — it is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit. I imagined this deepening and quieting as an inner stillness. I hoped to think about that as I ran, but I was too distracted my the heat, my legs, and the effort.
So far, I’ve heard 2 hours (out of almost 12) of the audio book, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It’s about two friends, Sadie and Max, who love playing and making video games. I’ve haven’t read the summary and don’t know that much about the book, but I’m assuming they make some big video game together. Do they fall in love, too? The first video game Sadie makes in her seminar at MIT is called EmilyBlaster and it involves pen-as-gun that shoots out the words of Emily Dickinson poems. Nice. I looked it up, and the game actually exists online, EmilyBlaster. I tried playing it. Admittedly, with my bad vision and limited gaming skills, I sucked, but it was pretty cool. The first poem was “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” which I memorized a few years back. It felt strange to try and shoot these words as I recited them in my head. I can’t believe I’ve never heard about this video game before.
EmilyBlasterĀ is one of Sadie Greenās earliest games, and one of the first games I invented forĀ Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowĀ as well. Itās the simplest game in the book, and I needed it to be convincingly something a clever college student might be able to make on limited resources and time in the 1990s. The game was inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and by edutainment games of the 1980s, likeĀ Math Blaster!Ā I liked the slight subversiveness of making a game where the object was to shoot poetry, and I thought that Emily Dickinsonās compact verse style and memorable phrasings would make for perfect targets.Ā
More on echolocation and bells and bioregionalism. I recalled something I’d heard about earlier in the year. Here’s what I wrote at the end of my entry for 9 jan 2026:
Working on a tiny (24 word) poem tentatively titled bio-regionalism, and I was thinking about something I recalled hearing from Stanley Tucci in his series on regions in Italy and their food: he said that a region/neighborhood was/is defined by anyone who was in earshot of that neighborhoodās church bells. I looked it up and found this helpful definition and video from Rick Steves. The term is campanilismo:
During Tuscanyās medieval and Renaissance prime, this region was a collection of feuding city-states dominated by rich families. To this day, Tuscans remain fiercely loyal to their home community, and are keenly aware of subtle differences between people from different cities, towns, and villages. (Italians have a wonderful word for this:Ā campanilismo, meaning that a community consists of the people within earshot of its bell tower āĀ campanile.)
I love this idea of defining a community, your home-place, by its bells. My bells are the bells of St. Thomas, just across the river.
And here’s the poem:
Defining a Neighborhood
It begins from the ground up with feet following, and ends when ears listening can no longer hear the bells.Ā
It needs some work! I’d like to include it in Echolocation — should it be a separate poem, or should I add in some lines in my opening poem, Listen, where I first introduce the bells?
bike: 4.5 miles the falls and back 82 degrees AQI: 66
Two slow, short bike rides to the falls and back. Only 12 minutes, even with a delayed start after turning my workout on, from the falls to my garage. So close! I didn’t have any problems biking. I thought about the echolocation video I watched a few days ago and Molly’s (the blind YouTuber) words about wishing she could bike,
I had to stop riding bikes when I was eight, because I rode into a pole. And ever since then Iāve had to use a tandem bike.And that was frustrating for me, and thatās always one of the things, when people ask me what I miss about being sighted, I always say the things that I miss the most are the things give you freedom.
Freedom. Yes! I like walking places, but biking is so much faster, and you can go farther.
hike: 40 minutes from the falls to the river 85 degrees
Took the steps down to the dirt trail that winds beside the creek until it reaches the river. Stopped at a shaded bench for a few minutes to listen and be lulled by the water as it rushed over small rocks. A gentle, constant sound, occasionally interrupted by people passing by. I thought about sound and echoes and how the senses are entangled — particularly, how sound is textured and how it works (or seems to work, I don’t know that much about it yet) with touch when tapping a white cane.
When I met with my vision occupational therapist last month, she encouraged me to get white cane training sooner rather than later: it’s easier when you still have some sight left to learn it. Makes sense to me, so maybe at my next appointment, I’ll ask her how to sign up for it. I’m not scared of the white cane, but curious about how it works and how I’ll feel becoming so visibly disabled when I use it.
My cane tip tells me whether a dark line is thin shadow or a garden hose. I can test whether the groundās dry, wet, or icy. Dry sounds like a scrape of plastic against pavement. Ice is a slippy hiss. Puddles gurgle.
*
My cane and I build a map of sounds and feelings. With each step, each tap or slide, I gain another data point. A sound, a vibration, a resistance or its absence. I think of Seurat building a picture of the world with repeated movement, the painter adding tiny dabs of paint to a canvas.
After 15 minutes, I got up and took the metal slat walkway until it turned into dirt again. Dirt that was packed, then wet, then loose. I stopped beside the limestone wall where decades of passersby have scratched into the soft stone, including RJP and FWA over 10 years ago.
10 Things
the bridge linking the 2 sides of the creek at the mouth of the river has several warper slats — I walked over it carefully
across the river, on the east bank, a lone figure, walking on the beach
the sound of a collar clanging — a dog and their human approaching on the trail
someone from behind — footsteps getting louder, a cough — morning! a guy passed me then turned and climbed up and under the bridge
constant noise of the creek going over the rocks
a disembodied voice: a kid, whining
such deep, dark, lush green, looking even more magical when the sun went the clouds covered the sun
2 women talking — one to the other, he didn’t even make it to the 3rd inning!
rustling in the leaves — a bird? a mouse? a squirrel?
taking the 100+ steps 2 at a time, hearing a guy say to his friend, will you drag me back up?
Oh that green! Usually this deep into summer, so much green is accompanied by lots of bugs. Yes, I heard the buzz of cicadas, but there weren’t any mosquitoes or gnats. Where are all the bugs? Returning to the green, these different plastics roughly represent the green, either as I saw it, or as I remember feeling it:
seltzer bottle / olive oil bottle / bread bag
swim: 2 loops (4 minis) cedar lake open swim air: 90 / water: 87 AQI: 75
The water was warm and opaque — low visibility. Yellowish green. A few bubbles, some scratchy vines, but no sparkle friends. The water was heavy and smooth on the way to hidden beach and choppy on the way back. Lots of swimmers were having difficulty navigating and ended up swimming on the wrong side. I almost ran into a pair of swimmers going the wrong way. I didn’t care.
On the back half of the final loop, I started racing another swimmer. We were going the same speed for much of the time, until I turbo-charged it by breathing every 6 strokes and pulled away. When I reached shore, they approached me — I think I was racing you; it was fun! thanks! It was fun.
Today’s water color:
yellowish green cedar lake
Is this too yellow? Possibly, but at the beginning of the swim, before I settled in, I remember the lake looking this yellow to me.
A little cooler this morning. The AQI wasn’t that high, but there must have been some smoke in the air because the spots of light on the path looked pinkish-orange. A steady run. Felt strong, sweat a lot.
10 Things
rowers’ voices, down below
click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles hitting the sidewalk
running parallel with another runner — I was on the paved path, they were on the dirt trail near folwell
2 women sitting on the curb at the top of the locks and dam hill — taking a break after doing a hill workout? waiting for someone? just sitting and talking?
running under the east river road at hidden falls, listening to the creek water rushing down then over hidden falls — what creek is this again? looked it up: Hidden Falls Creek — but, actually, it’s not a creek but a stream of storm water*
minneapolis park workers, mowing the grass beside the trail, stopping and waiting for me to pass
the smell of freshly cut grass
the river, below me on the ford bridge: flat and still and empty
spots of sunlight on the trail, stained orangish-pink
dust or smoke, stirred up by work they were doing at the old power plant near the locks and dam
*When I looked up the name of the creek at Hidden Falls, I found a Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan from 2004 and this description:
Today, Hidden Falls Regional Park encompasses 130 acres andn1.6 miles of shoreline and is an important natural area within the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. It is an oasis of floodplain forest along the Mississippi River visited by local residents and visitors using the parkās trails throughout the year. Visitors utilizethe park for hiking, fishing, running, bicycling, dog walking, birdwatching, wildflower watching, picnics, and boating. The park is a significant stopover place for migrating songbirds and waterfowl traversing the Mississippi Flyway. The park also serves as an outflow for storm water from adjacent neighborhoods north and west of the park via storm sewers that end in the bluffs along the parkās eastern edge.
And here’s a description of where I ran as I followed the creek to an overlook of the falls:
For decades, Hidden Falls has been a nearly inaccessible trickle dripping out of a culvert behind the Ford Plant in St. Paulās Highland Park neighborhood. Bounded by a tight curve in the Mississippi River Boulevard (MRB), the falls offered visitors two options: a steep climb down crumbling limestone stairs or a rocky hike up from the Hidden Falls Park picnic pavilion.
This month, with the opening of a new tunnel and walkway under MRB, a new viewing platform and the partial daylighting of Hidden Falls Creek, the falls are ready to be discovered by many more visitors.
Originally, Hidden Falls Creek was fed by a natural spring located near Cleveland Avenue and Ford Parkway. The creek above the falls was buried into a culvert sometime in the past century during the development of Highland Park. Now, the falls are connected to a whole new source of water via the Highland Bridge developmentās massive stormwater management system, creating a consistent flow of water over the falls.
A creek, daylighted! Reading a little further in the article, I found a video from Dr. Greg Brick (I’ve read and enjoyed his great book, Subterranean Twin Cities) at the site as they were working on it a few years ago:
the video ends with a useful note: the only parts of the site that originated with the WPA are the fire pits. The steps came later.
It was cool to watch this video and think about it the history of where I ran this morning. It’s easy to not notice or reflect on the spaces you’re moving through. Now, five years later, the evidence of the planning and the labor done to create the path under the road, the overlook on the edge, and the daylighted creek are hidden to those not giving attention.
echoes
Thinking about the daylighted creek and the work done to restore/open up the area around Hidden Falls, I’m wondering about echoes beyond the definition of sound bouncing off an object and returning to a listener. Echo as trace, vestige, evidence of what came before. My collection of poems is filled with traces/evidence of what was/is there before me: countless other living things, human and non-human. I am not alone.
Echolocation is a practical tool for navigation; using echoes/changes in sound to gain a sense of the terrain — hearing where a tree or a car or a drop-off is. I use sound in this way to supplement (enhance?) my weak central vision. But echolocation, as in, locating the echoes-as-traces-as-evidence-as-proof that others are there or have been there, is also important to me.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 87 degrees AQI: 70
3 loops! No pain in my shoulder! No panicking in the middle of the lake! Only a near foot cramp at the end of loop 3 and misjudging where buoy 4 was on the first loop. A good swim. I felt strong and steady and mostly breathed every 5. There were a few patches of cold water but also patches of very warm, almost hot, water. It was 100 degrees yesterday, so that must have hotted up the lake. It was crowded — on the course, all around the beach, at Painted Turtle. I saw my sparkle friends, noticed that the water was a pale green, felt something touch my toe (a fish, I think). Heard sloshing water and other swimmers chatting near the final buoy; I was treading water to assess my cramped foot.
Overheard: one swimmer to another near the 5th buoy — I feel like I was all over that course!
Overhear: one swimmer to another, on the beach — what do you do if you can’t quite do another loop? I wish there was a half loop option!
The sky was a pale blue with a few clouds. There were kayaks and paddle boarders and a few menacing swans on the edge. No sail boat — probably because there was hardly any wind.
Swimming one day in August is coming and I think I’m ready for it!
bike: 8.7 miles lake nokomis and back 84/88 degrees
As the European grand tour cycling announcers say, it’s hotting up out there. Scott said that the dew point was 81 at the airport this morning. The record (for all recorded weather here) is 82. Yikes. Instead of running, I decided to bike to the lake and swim. I haven’t biked over to the lake when it wasn’t an open swim this summer for several reasons: 1. the milfoil around the buoys made it too annoying (and dangerous) to swim; 2. I was swimming a lot already at open swims; 3. and because I was already swimming too much, I injured my shoulder. But, the milfoil has been removed, or at least thinned out (hooray!): I can’t do open swim at cedar tonight; and my shoulder is feeling better. Another reason to come over here on my bike besides the facts that it’s too hot to run and I haven’t driven a car in 5 years: my Apple watch activity challenge for July is 5 bike rides of 5 minutes or more. Even though that’s not a challenging challenge, I haven’t achieved it yet this month because it’s been too hot, too smoky, and I’ve been too sick.
The bike ride was easy. I didn’t have to try and pass anyone and I could see well enough to navigate. The paths were not crowded. No big groups of kids or silver riders. No packs of runners. Part of the trail was closed, but I could see and follow the detour signs.
10 Bike Things
the parking lot at the falls was almost empty, one 1 or 2 cars
a bird near the lake — cheer up cheer up — a robin
thwack thwack — the pickleballers are at it again, playing on the court at the rec center, no shade anywhere
a handful of single runners sprinkled throughout my ride
the creek under the echo bridge was low and bright and still
an adult with a kid in a seat sped past on an e-bike
orange paint around the cracks on the trail near my favorite part of the path
just past that: trail closed for road (or sewer?) work on nokomis
biking over some bumps on the part of the path sandwiched between the light rail and the creek, my chain was jammed — I slowed down, preparing to stop and fix it, but it unjammed itself
minneapolis park workers out doing some work — mowing? cutting down limbs? I’m no sure
swim: 1.5 loops lake nokomis, main beach 86 degrees AQI: 57
A wonderful swim! The water was calm and not too warm. Only one other person was swimming loops, and they were doing it much closer in. No boats or paddle boards to watch out for. Hardly any milfoil, or the usual (from past years) and manageable amount of ghost vines reaching up from the bottom. A few more vines floating free near the surface. I swam at a relaxed pace, stopping to notice the quiet lake at the end of every loop. I listened to a dad talking his little kid — kid: am I going to grow taller? Dad: yes, you just need to keep eating your growing up food. I exchanged something (not words, but a feeling, mutual acknowledgment/recognition?) with a seagull that was perched on the far white buoy for the entire time I swam. Hello friend — are you waiting to catch a fish? A brief thought: how many fish are beneath me right now?
As I stroked beside the white buoys, I thought about how swimming in this deep-ish water off the big beach is a different experience than swimming across the lake. Here, with the shorter loop and the buoys beside me, I hardly have to sight. I can just swim until I reach a far buoy, then loop around it, and swim until I reach the other far buoy. Here, I barely need vision. For that reason, and because I’m not swimming far out into the middle of the lake, you might think that swimming here would be less scary. But, I’m always a little more on edge during these swims than the ones from shore to shore. Will I get too tangled in the vines? Are there fish lurking under the buoys?
At the end of my loops, I swam in between the faded red buoys and floated, my head resting on my yellow buoy. Then I sunk under the water and swam with my face just above the lake floor, studying the brown, sandy bottom. Ah! What a way to start the day!
Today’s color palette: white cylindrical buoys, faded pinkish-reddish spherical buoys, pale green water, bright blue sky, the clear bubbles and underside of water’s surface, a light brown sandy bottom.
(l to r) blue sky, brown sand, white buoys, faded pink buoys, clear bubbles, green water
a return to echolocation
Even as I’m trying to think about water and swimming, I’ve also returned to my manuscript from last year, which has gone through a number of names: Haunts, then Girl Ghost Gorge then Echolocate || Echolocated and now Echolocation. I was compelled to return to this project 2 months early (usually I work on it in the fall) because I noticed a call for manuscripts at one of my favorite presses. And I’m writing about it here because I realized, as I searched for past thoughts and words about this project, that even as I remember thinking about some poem or essay or fact that I’ve come across, I can’t find it on this log1. Did I write about it in a pages document or in Plague Notebook entry? If I don’t post it here, it’s more likely to get lost. So, more posting here.
As I fine-tune my manuscript, I want to weave in more direct references to echolocation and what I mean by making it the title of my collection. It’s literal and figurative. I’m writing about the location of echoes (the gorge and the trail above it), where echoes = the bouncing back of sound in wide open spaces and traces of the past/ghosts. I’m also writing about the act of echolocation, which is used by blind and low vision people to navigate the world. I’ve read about passive echolocation (hearing sounds/echoes that already exist to navigate) and active (creating sound with tongue or cane clicks or footsteps to bounce off of objects. I’m also interested in a third version of this, which is both (or neither?) active and passive: being the object or the solid thing in the world that can be located by others’ sounds. Does that make sense? Here’s a video that I just found that I’d like to archive and use to think more about echolocation:
3 loops! lake nokomis open swim 81 degrees AQI: 69
3 loops! Finally, I’m feeling better — less anxiety and crud on my chest and no shoulder pain. I was planning to only do 2 loops today, but when I felt good at the end of loop 2, I decided to do one more. Who knows when the smoke might come back and make it impossible to swim?
The water was wonderful. A little cooler, more buoyant. Talking with a woman after swimming, we agreed that the water was much nicer than on Friday, when it was choppy.
I felt very relaxed and powerful. Strong shoulders and back. Sometimes I breathed every 5 strokes, more often every 3 or 4 or 3 then 4. I had no problem staying on course, a combination of seeing the buoys more frequently, and straight, even strokes.
note: I’m trying to write this as I watch the final stage of the tour, which is not easy because Pogachar is going for it. As one of the announcers remarked, “He’s racing like it’s the end of days out there!”
11 Things
as I started, near shore, the water was a dark green, almost the color of my olive oil bottle shards
clear bubbles bursting from my hands as I pierced the water
my sparkle friends! sediment being illuminated by the light, coming towards me
bright pink buoys bobbing in the water, tethered to torsos
200 strokes from buoy 4 to buoy 5
a few planes high in the air above me
a glitter path and sparkles on the water’s surface
some floating vine fragments getting tangled in my fingers as I stroked through the water
the view below me: a deep green nothingness
the view above me, from underwater: the surface, green then clear then bubbles
a church service was happening near Painted Turtle; as I paused in the middle of the lake to enjoy
Wow! What a finish to the Tour. The most exciting one I think I’ve ever seen — a showdown between Matthew van der Poel and Pogachar. Then van der Poel hung on to win, as the sprinters were closing in.
5 miles bottom of franklin hill and back 77 degrees / dew point: 72 AQI: 52
Went out for my run at 10 so I could watch the queen stage of the Tour de France. It was hot, but worth it to watch all the drama of the final climb. Sepp Kuss crashing twice and barely saving himself from falling over the edge of the mountain. Yikes. Carapaz won the stage. Pogachar acted as a domestique for del Toro.
It was warm, but there was a cool breeze and no sun, which helped. I was able to greet Dave the Daily Walker at the beginning – Good morning Sara! / Hi Dave! I heard the rowers down below, encountered lots of runners, most of them running by themselves, like me. Was passed by many bikers and roller skiers. I ran down the franklin hill then stopped at the river to study its surface — a thin film of something was on it in streaks. Down in the flats, by the low retaining wall, I noticed a single shell and the white coxswain’s boat taking a break in the middle of the river.
Even though my chest has some crud, I feel much better today. My resting heart rate is lower and I’m less anxious. The effects on inhaling wildfire smoky air = 4 days of feeling like I had a bad cold.
10 Things
white sky
thick, moist air
deep greens
no bugs — where are the bugs?
overheard: one guy walking down the franklin hill, meeting up with someone halfway down and turning around to walk with him, I‘m glad I don’t have to walk up the entire hill!
the big crack north of the trestle is growing deeper and is still barricade off — is too deep and dangerous to patch?
stopped at the sliding bench — a deep, dark green view below
a woman crossing over the road ot the trail, carrying a coffee, not wearing any shoes
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a horn blasting from somewhere — a train horn? deep and loud
today’s colors in plastic
At different times, depending on the how bright the light behind the clouds was, the sky looked either 1, 2, or 3:
the “white” sky
Standing behind the sliding bench, looking down at the green gorge, I saw these 2 greens:
Still not feeling the greatest from too much wildfire smoke last weekend, but I am feeling better than I was on Tuesday night, so I decided to swim a loop before going to Scott’s concert (the big band he’s in) at the falls. RJP drove me. It was great to spend time with her. I think we both made each other feel better.
The water was warm and choppy, which I didn’t mind. The buoys were set up in such way that made the course .25 miles shorter, which I also didn’t mind. My shoulder ached a little, but it was mostly okay. My back and legs and torso felt strong, my lungs a little weaker. It was difficult to breathe every 5 strokes; I switched between every 3 and every 4. For the last stretch of the loop, I think I heard myself wheezing. It was all the crud stuck in my throat. I’m glad I only swam one loop. Two loops would have been too much.
10 Things
one swimmer talking to another before starting, 1: the water’s a little cooler; I like that
one swimmer talking to another before starting, 2: the lifeguard is right in the way — I hate when they do that (me too)
bubbles — clear, underwater
the slimy, milfoil-y bottom of the lake near shore — felt by my foot as I adjusted my nose plug before starting
4 kids playing soccer in the sand, near the sidewalk
blue sky with streaks of clouds
the water was choppy but no waves were crashing into me as I breathed
swimming wide on the course until suddenly I saw a quick flash of a buoy –I’ve had to train myself to believe in these flashes and follow them — it’s taken years to believe because they are so fleeting
123 breathe right 123 breathe left
4 sailboats out on the water — one of the sails was red
3.35 miles wabun hill and back 68 degrees wind: 15 mph / gusts: 26mph AQI: 50
Woke up feeling bad. Sore throat, a little stuffed up, sore/achy, out of it. Both FWA and Scott have felt this way too. We could be sick — covid? — but most likely, it’s the smoke and bad air quality from the weekend. Mine could also be caused by HRT, at least the achiness. Hopefully I will fell better soon. Yes, I am whining a little because I dislike sore throats and feeling out of it, but mostly I’m writing about feeling sick for future Sara to read in a few months or years.
note: Future Sara here — one day later, that is — after a covid test, we’re pretty sure it’s just the wildfire smoke that is causing this. A rough night and a difficult morning. I write more about it in my 22 july 2026 entry.
It’s hard to feel too bad when it’s so nice outside. Cooler and fresher. A breeze, a lower AQI. I decided I couldn’t waste this weather, so I went out for a run. I also thought it might make me feel better, which it both did and didn’t. Ran south on the trail to the locks and dam, then up the wabun hill. Stopped at the top to look out at the river. All I can remember is thinking that it was higher than it had been. Ran down the hill, then back north on the trail. Listened to my “Plastic Fantastic” playlist but don’t remember much of what I heard, other than this line from Lady Gaga in “Plastic Doll,” I’m no toy for a real boy, and these from AQUA’s “Barbie Girl,” You’re my doll, rock’n’roll, feel the glamour in pink/ Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky. “Barbie Girl” is such a terrible song.
10 Things
the bright purplish lights of a bike approaching
a group of 5 or 6 bikers, chatting loudly, biking on the road and backing up cars
Regular, 1: waving to Santa Claus!
Regular, 2: passing Skirt with Sandals — she wasn’t wearing hiking sandals, but running shoes!
a group of women, walking together down the locks and dam hill
a man with a fancy camera on the walking side of the pedestrian bridge, taking pictures of the ravine
a woman, looking down at her phone, standing in the middle of the path
3 people standing on the sidewalk, talking, completely blocking the entrance
adjusting my cap so it wouldn’t blow off in the wind
peering through the green on the way up the Wabun hill: before you pass under ford bridge, some rock face, deep in the shadows, then dirt, then grass
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 78 degrees (air) / 82 (water) AQI: 77
Was feeling crappy all day, but Scott really wanted to go over to the lake and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to swim (who knows what the AQI will be tomorrow), so we went. I’m glad we did. A good swim, much better than the run. I felt strong and confident and happy to be in the water. It was choppy with little swells rolling in behind me as I neared the third buoy. And more waves in the back stretch.
overheard, swimmer 1: it’s not too bad out here. the wind has calmed down. swimmer 1: don’t say that, you’ll jinx it! *the wind picks up* swimmer 2: see what you did — you ruined it for all the swimmers! (laughter from both of them)
I was committed to only swimming one loop. Between the choppy water, me being a little out of it, and my still sore shoulder, I didn’t want to overdo it. Hopefully I can swim more at the end of the week and next week.
The water was more blue green tonight. I think I saw bubbles, but no silver flashes. now menacing swans or clueless kayaks or drifting sailboats. I don’t remember seeing any birds or planes or dragonflies. No squeaks or leaks from my new nose plug.
4.6 miles locks and dam / wabun hill / veterans home / falls 76 degrees / dew point 72 AQI: 70
Hot! So much sweat! Sun. The air was thick but not smoky. I’ll take it. Yesterday, while I was swimming, Scott ran around the lake once, which is not quite 3 miles. The AQI was almost double at 137. Last night his throat started burning, like swallowing acid, he said, and his throat closed up a little. He thinks it’s because of the high AQIand that he breathes only through his mouth when he runs. I thought about what happened while I was running and noticed how I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. It’s all of my rhythmic breathing, I think: In 2 3 / Out 2.
I listened to my Plastic Fantastic playlist. I was particularly struck by The Sugercube’s “Dear Plastic,” so I looked up the lyrics:
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon te-te-te-terylene
made of atoms by tender fingers and determined heads of inventors tickling perfection
p-p-p-plastic r-r-r-rayon
I was born aeons ago before anything human was known my friends the alchemists told me everything was natural and always will be that way and possible to make gold from dirt
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon
dear plastic be proud don’t imitate anything you’re pure, pure, pure
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon
I believed I was their dustbin for knowledge took everything and digested of course I became big, big and really really strong
today I’m old and withering away my friends the alchemists long disappeared into dust I no longer get anything fruity no longer gold made from dirt the only thing I get is spacefood on a tray
p-p-p-plastic p-p-p-plastic p-p-p-plastic…
As I was walking the last few blocks after I finished running, I thought about Elastigirl from Pixar’s The Incredibles and how her superpower is the ability to stretch and transform into (almost) any shape she wants or needs and then return to her original shape. Plastic can make new shapes without returning to the original shape. I looked up, “elasticity vs. plasticity” and found this:
Objects deform when pushed, pulled, and twisted. Elasticity is the measure of the amount that the object can return to its original shape after these external forces and pressures stop.
The opposite of elasticity is plasticity; when something is stretched, and it stays stretched, the material is said to be plastic (source).
AQI (1:00pm): 45 AQI (4:40pm):61
swim: 1 loop (2 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim 88 degrees AQI (5:30pm): 61
I would have loved to swim more loops, but it was warm and windy and my shoulder started hurting near the end of the first loop. A bummer, but at least I was able to swim for almost 30 minutes in the lake. No terrible air quality. I am grateful for any chance to swim.
The vibe was very cedar lake, with the disgusting, almost totally filled porta potty with no toilet paper, randos swimming out the buoy and getting in the way of swimmers — watch out! — and open swim club members swimming as close to or as far from the buoy as they wanted, occasionally crossing the path of swimmers going the other way.
The water was green with notes of yellow and opaque. I was able to see a few of my bubble friends, but nothing else. No fish or milfoil or sparkle friends. I don’t think I ever see sparkle friend here — not the sediment sparkles under water or the glittery sparkles on the surface.
added the next day: I wanted to replicate the color of the water with my plastics, but didn’t have time last night. I’m not sure either of these quite capture the mix of (mostly) green with some yellow:
123
1: back of cukes plastic bag held close to the window 2: back of cukes plastic bag held far from the window 3: a square of a yogurt container covered with seltzer water shards
I think 2 is too yellow. I think there’s a section of 3, on the right side, that might best capture my memory of the water. I also like the overall color of 1.
Will we have open swim in an hour and a half? They haven’t cancelled it yet. I went outside to water the tomatoes and peppers and I could feel the smoke, but it wasn’t too bad. 113 is “unhealthy for sensitive groups.”
In other health news for future Sara when she talks to her doctor at the end of the month: another night with restless legs and (almost) a calf cramp. I felt the same sort of wave of something strange pass through my lower calf as I did a few years ago. Back then, it made me very anxious, last night, not as much. Is it the wrong level of estrogen or progesterone, or my body getting used to the HRT, or something else? Whatever it was, I slept poorly: only 5 hours even though I went to bed at 10:30.
AQI (8:15am): 123
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 76 degrees AQI: 137
Open swim happened! Hooray! I was disappointed that the air quality was bad, but it wasn’t that bad and it made for a cool effect on the water. So much smoke and haze, all of it white and dreamy. Harder to see for everyone, at least I imagine it was harder for normally sighted people too. It didn’t bother me because I already can’t see that well, and don’t really need sight to navigate.
Before the swim, my entire body was bubbling with anxiety — a combination of adjusting to the hormone flux, and strong physical reactions to any strange sensations in my calves. I think I was worried that I might have a calf cramp in the middle of the lake. As I started swimming everything felt strange, surreal. Smoke, warm water, a gentle rocking. I tried to distract myself by focusing on colors, but the anxiety kept bubbling up near the edge, like boiling pasta water on the stove. Just before it boiled over, I abruptly stopped swimming and listened to the silence in the middle of the lake. I saw a lifeguard silhouetted in the smoked-out sun and the bright pink buoy of another swimmer and I was able to calm down. I started stroking again — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — as I passed the second, then third buoy.
I was able to swim about 40 minutes without stopping and with only a few more anxiety flare-ups. The water was a pale blue-ish green below me. Looking up and just beneath the surface, it started as pale green, then turned into a clear band at the edge. Above, it was the hint of a purply blue.
10 Things
a lot of the Eurasian milfoil is gone!
some non-open swimmers were blasting a speaker at the lifeguard stand where open swimmers leave their stuff, the LOUD throbbing of the beat increased my anxiety
overheard, 1 swimmer to another: I’m just going to swim to the second buoy and back
overheard, 1 swimmer to another: I have no illusions about my swimming ability!
overheard, 1 swimmer to another: Let’s put our ages on our (Women’s Tri race) caps! You don’t have to, but it’s fun to see everyone’s age when you’re running!
arriving at the lake, the smoke on the water looked so thick — everything was white
the occasional bent elbow of another swimmer, some foam, a bright pink or orange buoy tethered to a torso
a few shredded clouds hanging in the sky
a slight ache in my left shoulder by the start of loop 2
rounding the fifth buoy and sighting the first one in the distance: a small, bright orange dot
AQI (12:30pm): 156
The water offered a gentle rocking for the first half of the first loop, then turned choppier. I could see my bubble friends and hear the sloshing of water over my head.
color in layers: underwater / underside of surface / surface from above / sky
water / under surface / above surface / sky | seltzer bottle / danish container / ziploc / milk jug
Playlist: Plastic Fantastic
Created this plastic playlist yesterday. I’m looking forward to listening to it on my next run.
Plastic Hearts/ Miley Cyrus
Midnight Sky/ Miley Cyrus
PLASTIC/ sakehands (feat. Marty Valentine & Lo)
Plastic/ Moses Sumney
Fake Plastic Trees/ Radiohead
Plastic/ New Order
Plastic/ Portishead
Plastic Doll/ Lady Gaga
Barbie Girl/ Aqua
Plastic Romance/ A Toys Orchestra
Dear Plastic/ The Sugarcubes
Plastic Jesus/ Jello Biagra & MoJo Nixon
Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach/ Gorillaz (feat. Snoop Dogg and Hypnotic Brass Ensemble)
Plastic Beach/ Gorillaz (feat. Mick Jones and Paul Simonon
Synthetic World/ Swamp Dogg
Plastico/ Ruben Blades
Plastic Girl/ CAPSULE (feat. EeL)
The Bomb/ L7
Plastic Factory (Mono)/ Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 82 degrees / dew point: 72 AQI: 62
Hooray, the smoke moved out! Boo: not in time to have open swim this morning. Oh well, went for a run instead. It was hot and humid, but the air wasn’t hazardous and I had (finally) tied my shoes properly so that my feet weren’t sliding around, so I was happy to get outside and move. Mostly running, with some walking. In my approximate fashion, I followed a plan of intentional run/walk segments — 4/1 | 4/1 | 2/1 | 90/30 | 2/1 | 2/2.
10 Things
2 porta potties at the park with a temporary hand sanitation kiosk beside them — what even is happening here today? update: an art fair
a food truck — orange, yellow, and red — Cafe Cairo
the white foam of the falls
a shopping cart with a few things in it — some sort of electronics — in the middle of the narrow trail below the road
big spots of light in the midst of the shadowed trail, near the cart
a city truck blocking the path that leads down to the locks and dam — a crane in the air
the water in the water fountain was hot — yuck!
a person briskly crossing the parking lot, stopping in time to let me run by
a biker weaving over to the walking trail to avoid the bright sun on the bike path
the tangy — sweet and sour and rotting — smell left behind by the garbage truck
While I moved, I listened to the podcast about microplastics that I mentioned yesterday: Science Vs. Microplastics. I enjoyed it, even as I was a bit skeptical (thanks to another podcast, Maintenance Phase) when they started discussing a rise in/crisis of obesity without interrogating the term at all, like: how have designations for who is considered obese changed? Why is the term so morally and politically charged? But, I decided to let go of my criticisms and just listen. Here are two things I’d like to remember:
1 — we’re not consuming a credit cards worth of microplastics every week, but our endocrine system is being disrupted by chemicals in/on the plastic
The idea that we are consuming a large amount of microplastics (some people have suggested a credit cards worth a week!) doesn’t hold up, but concerns about the chemicals in/on the plastic getting into our bodies are warranted:
WZ ā¦ this idea that these chemicals on, in plastics are messing with our hormones. Take me through the science! Firstly what would these – how would they mess with our hormones? RR Theyāre tricksters! So they like bust in and they take over this important role from our actual hormones. So – hormones are all about binding to receptors on cells in order to send messages throughout the body. And theyāre involved in SO MUCH, they do a lot day to day but also they help these key developmental things happen over the course of our whole lives. So if these chemicals are messing with it – that could be pretty bad. Hereās what Pat Hunt told me – sheās our scientist from the top of the show ā¦ PH I think of it kind of as radio static. You know, your hormones control everything. Your growth, your metabolism, your sleep, your reproduction. And itās all by these finely tuned signals. And hereās this static in the system. RR So these endocrine disruptors are the static. They interfere with the hormones by binding to the receptors that hormones are supposed to bind to, and that could mess up those signals. WZ And we know these chemicals are in our environment, like, we know for sure? Theyāre in my body right now? RR Yeahhhh probably, we know that just about everybody is exposed to them
2— cut back on plastic consumption, including hair and skin products, but consider the benefits vs risks of using products that have plastic (like canned beans, which have plastic in the lining)
I don’t know, the thing is, like, the thing is with this topic that’s so frustrating, I still, even though I’ve been working on this for a couple months, and I’ve had these conversations with scientists who are like, Oh, I don’t I don’t buy canned food if I can help it. Every time I go to the grocery store, I stock up on my canned beans. I can’t quit it. And it’s like I think the problem is like without more specific information about how bad is it. What is my risk? Iām not able to weigh the risks of the plastics getting into my canned beans against the benefits of canned beans. I know the benefits: Theyāre cheap, healthy, easy. I like em. So for right now Iām kind of assuming the b
This episode has 84 footnotes — a great resource for more words and understandings about plastic. Here’s a disturbing passage:
The growth of plastics production in the past 65 years has substantially outpaced any other manufactured material. The same properties that make plastics so versatile in innumerable applicationsādurability and resistance to degradationāmake these materials difficult or impossible for nature to assimilate. Thus, without a well-designed and tailor-made management strategy for end-of-life plastics, humans are conducting a singular uncontrolled experiment on a global scale, in which billions of metric tons of material will accumulate across all major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the planet.
plasticsā largest market is packaging, an application whose growth was accelerated by a global shift from reusable to single-use containers. As a result, the share of plastics in municipal solid waste (by mass) increased from less than 1% in 1960 to more than 10% by 2005 in middle- and high-income countries
A lot to take in and think about — or try not to think about. Not as a way to be absolved or to deny accountability and responsibility, but as a way to endure. Sometimes thinking about the amount of waste that accumulates every year month week day second is too much. I imagine a door to a room where that information exists and I shut it. Don’t want to dwell in there, I might say to someone — the wind, a tree, Scott. update: I usually shut the door when I’m in a big store with too much plastic stuff, like IKEA.
do you ever feel like a plastic bag?
1 — American Beauty
1999
I don’t think I really liked this movie — Kevin Spacey was a terrible creep, but I often think of this scene where I see a plastic bag dancing in the wind.
2 — Firework/ Katy Perry
Do you ever feel/like a plastic bag/drifting through the wind/wanting to start again?
I can’t remember why I did it, but I put this song on one of my first playlists when I started running in 2011. Anytime I hear it, I think of that wonderful time when my life opened up and I became a runner.
There isnāt a word for walking out of the grocery store with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack that should have been bagged in double layers
āso that before you are even out the door you feel the weight of the jug dragging the bag down, stretching the thin
plastic handles longer and longer and you know itās only a matter of time until bottom suddenly splits.
There is no single, unimpeachable word for that vague sensation of something moving away from you
as it exceeds its elastic capacity āwhich is too bad, because that is the word I would like to use to describe standing on the street
chatting with an old friend as the awareness grows in me that he is no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,
a person with whom I never made the effortā until this moment, when as we say goodbye I think we share a feeling of relief,
a recognition that we have reached the end of a pretense, though to tell the truth
what I already am thinking about is my gratitude for languageā how it will stretch just so much and no farther;
how there are some holes it will not cover up; how it will move, if not inside, then around the circumference of almost anythingā
how, over the years, it has given me back all the hours and days, all the plodding love and faith, all the
misunderstandings and secrets I have willingly poured into it.
Ah, I love Tony Hoagland’s poetry. He often writes about swimming — I’ve memorized 2 of his water poems and recite themwhile I’m swimming around the lake, How sad it was that he died of cancer a few years ago!
4 — a plastic bag exhibit in Germany
A German exhibition documents the history of plastic bags, showcasing their evolution from a culture of convenience and design, opposed to the environmental nuisance they have become today.
The German Museum for Everyday Culture has dedicated a special exhibition to the history and design of plastic bags. āAdieu PlastiktĆ¼te!ā (Goodbye, Plastic Bag!) featuring a collection of more than 50,000 plastic bags from the last 50 years, looks back at the history and evolution of this innovation of convenience. Showcasing various designs, the exhibition illustrates how they were considered attractive advertising spaces, communicating the individuality of both brands and consumers. Though out of style these days, plastic bags were once a rocking cultural trend.
Another hot morning. Another successful run. Not fast, but steady. Mostly running with some walking. 2 Regulars sightings: Santa Claus and the walker that always wears a skirt and sandals — I feel like I named her, but I can’t remember what. I checked the log and I have mentioned the woman wearing sandals and a skirt 3 times, but have never named her. I think I’ll call her Skirt with Sandals, which is a reference to a phrase we’ve (Scott, RJP, FWA, and me) used many times over the years: socks with sandals. It’s from the show within a Disney show: So Random in “Sonny with a Chance.” I used to unironically wear socks with sandals frequently.
I heard the far off echo of workers hammering something, trickling water, the click and clacking of roller skiers’ poles above me. As the skiers passed me, I heard 2 of them discussion “Love Island.” At least one of them didn’t like the show. I’ve never watched it, but RJP was very invested in this most recent season which ended earlier this week.
In HawaiŹ»i, you often hear the term āisland time,ā referring to the slow pace that pervades the culture here. But for me, standing on land just a few hundred years old, island time is a reminder that this is a place in the process of being both made and unmade. Here in Ź»Ähihi, there are barely any treesāthe soil still thin atop the hardened rivers of basalt and scoria. Not enough time has passed to erode these sharp and porous remnants into dirt. Yet in that short stretch of centuries, between that time and this one, the island has changed irrevocably. When I began snorkeling, I was warned there was little left to see on Maui, most reefs dead and dyingāa result of rampant tourism, overfishing, commercial runoff, and warming waters.
island time — land just a few hundred years old — I’m thinking about lake time and how lake nokomis only celebrated its 100th birthday in 2014 (see: 12 july 2025). Before that it was marshy land — wider and shallower. 100 years is the approximate time it takes for a human-made lake (nokomis was a marsh, dredged, made into a lake) to act like a natural like
“I settle into my liminal position, turning my back to the earth as I know it: the solid ground under my feet replaced by weightlessness. I trespass into this unknown worldābelow me, I feel how time itself has turned the stone to sand. At last, I cross the threshold with my entire body.“
“I am held in the veil between these worlds that are each, astonishingly, part of this place that we call Earth. Within minutes, my cells acclimate to the cool buoyancy. I am carried away from everything I know. As I kick out, the mechanisms of my movement grow more and more effortless. Anything heavy or painful drains from me. In the water, I am heldāa child rocked in a motherās arms. My body moves differently here, swaddled and swept in the cadence of waves, alongside all the creatures who share this space. . . .”
“I am flying nowāa wingless bird gazing down, seeing the universe anew. Like Icarus, I feel the warmth of the sun against my back. Between realms, I face an ecosystem nothing like my own.”
seeing the universe anew — in the ocean, everything might be clear and vivid below, but in lake nokomis, and with my bad eyes, everything is murky, muddled, felt in the briefest of flashes.
“Beneath the inscrutable blue-black mirror of the waterās surface lies this universe in technicolor. “
What is the color of the lake water? As part of my plastics project, I’m gathering the colors of the water that I see when I swim. The plastics project = keeping as much of the plastic that my family uses for visual poetry projects — produce bags, seltzer water bottles, ziploc baggies, miscellaneous. packaging, T Joes’ pasta/rice bags. Here are the colors I’ve collected so far in greens and blues. (The lake is usually much moregreen than blue.)
plastic origins, from top left to bottom right: granola bag, little cukes bag, russet potato bag, Trader joe’s pasta bag, bottle of olive oil, bottle of seltzer water, squash bag
Are these all “green”? I see them that way. The bright green of the upper center is what the water looks like when a blue-green algae bloom is present. Last night’s warm and stirred up water at cedar lake resembles the brownish yellowy green in the lower left. Number 2 and 3 in the bottom row are shards from bottles, while the rest are bags, only colored on one side.
lake nokomis blue
plastic origins, from top left, top right, bottom: Trader Joes’ rice bag, shards of the locks from ziploc baggies, Trader Joes’ pasta bag. I don’t think I ever seen the lake water look like this below the surface, but above, when it’s sunny and I’m looking at it from the right angle: blue, often with purple vibes.
Scott asked me what I plan to do with these colors. I’m not sure yet, but I know it will be part of something that expresses how I see color and how color works in a city lake that resides in a lake city that prioritizes access for everyone and that is working hard to keep the lake and its people safe and healthy in the midst of a climate crisis (almost apocalypse?).
Once I gather more colors that fit, I could create some visual poem to place beside this poem, which is in by chapbook, Inklings:
Fish 3 between buoys 3 and 4
The fish in us escape. They flash and streak and leap, then return to bubble whisper the names of waterās colors.Ā
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim air: 96 degrees water: 84 degrees
Hooray! 2 (almost) pain-free loops at lake nokomis open swim! Before it started, I was able to talk with 2 other swimmers about how much we love open swim. They were a little older than me — 5 or 10? years — and just as enthusiastic about the water.
10 Things
2 girls — older high schoolers or in college? — flirting with 2 guys at Painted Turtle: loud, awkward giggles
a guy playing guitar, accompanied by a recording — I know I enjoyed 2 of his songs, even danced to one, but I can only remember the other — an instrumental “Careless Whispers”
very choppy water — not the type of waves that put up a fair fight, that you can punch, but the ones that unsettle, disorient, jostle
swallowing a wave of water, which made me more careful about when and where I breathed and stroked
1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left
a very LOUD metallic buzz beneath the surface — somewhere someone was doing something that was causing this noise — was it a boat? a machine drilling somewhere?
slosh slap
bubble friends!
being routed by lifeguards when I swam too wide of an angle
the first orange buoy was almost in the middle of the lake — maybe the farthest I’ve ever seen it
The water was opaque and the color was somewhere between these 2 colors:
4 miles river road, north/south 85 degrees / dew point: 72
Last night, I planned to do my run early in the morning, but when I woke up it was already hot so Scott and I decided to walk and get coffee instead. As we walked back on the river road trail, we realized that it didn’t feel too terrible. There was shade and a breeze and the humidity was lower. When we got home, we both changed, then went out for runs — I went at 10:15, Scott at 10:40. I was surprised at how fine I felt. I was hot, but I didn’t feel like I would faint or get heat stroke; I just felt like I was working hard. No anxiety about it — a mental victory! Was it because of my HRT patch? Possibly.
Almost all of my route was in the shade, which was by design; I wouldn’t have been able to run in this heat with direct sun. I encountered many walkers, a few bikers, 1 or 2 other runners, 2 big groups of kids — one on bikes, one on foot.
I listened to my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist. I told Scott later that I was trying to manifest shade. It worked.
10 Things
dappled light, jagged patterns of light on the trail
kids on bikes in bright yellow vests
2 bikers stopped near the trail, recovering or fixing something on their bikes after climbing the franklin hill
no bugs — no swarms of gnats encircling my face or single gnats trying to swim in my eye juice
the crack north of the trestle is still blocked off — this stretch had the most sun
passing a walker on the path in flip flops, near the rowing club — did they just finish rowing? probably
a scooter on the edge of the trail, but not far enough on the edge — if I hadn’t been paying attention, I could have tripped over it
air quality is good — no smoke from colorado fires this year!
bright blue sky
a flushed face, sweat-soaked shirt
swim: 1.5 loops (3 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 95 degrees
Wow, the water was warm! As another swimmer said to me, it’s like bath water. I tried to remember that and not swim too hard. Hot air temp + hot water temp = hot Sara, with no chance to cool down. No worries. I swam slow and steady. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. By the 3rd loop, I had increased my strokes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 breathe left
Great news: My shoulder didn’t hurt at all on the first loop, and it hardly hurt on loops 2 and 3, and now, an hour later, it doesn’t hurt at all. Hooray!
Not so great news: I sacrificed my other new nose plug to the lake. Treading water at the end of loop one, trying to adjust my nose plug and unfog my googles, the nose plug fell down into the murky depths. Oh well. These nose plugs were slightly too big: I had to adjust them almost every loop. Time to go back to the slightly more expensive ($7 instead of $2) nose plugs. I wish I could find the exact one that I’ve been wearing for more than 5 years, but they’re always changing things, making them “better,” and I don’t think they make the exact one I have now.
The water was calm on the way to Hidden beach, rough on the way back. It was also yellow and murky. I saw some of my bubble friends but no silver flashes. I got tangled up in a few floating vines, had to stop swimming as clueless paddle boarders crossed the swimming course.
images of the day: the wide arc of some swimmers on the other side of the loop, swimming back. What I saw: some splashes, a few caps, buoys, the idea of a curved line. Also, the occasional swimmer, swimming down the middle, or crossing over to swim in the wrong direction. All these swimmers — their elbows and white foam and buoys — looked so far away. Distance is distorted in and on the water.
1 loop lake nokomis open swim 85 degrees water temp: 81 degrees*
*measured on 6 july, so probably warmer today, almost a week later
Today the goal was to take it easy on my shoulder. It had been feeling better by the end of this week, but I’m thinking about my bigger goal for the summer: swimming one day (24 collective hours) in august, so I didn’t want to overdo it. Just past the first orange buoy, my shoulder began to ache a little and then ached, dully, for the rest of the loop. I think I can still swim; I just need to do less as I rehab it — strengthening exercises + RICEing it — well, mostly IIcing it: icing and Ibuprofen. It’s a bummer that my shoulder still hurts, especially since I was looking forward to July being a big month of swimming, but I’m not too upset. It could be a chance to approach my open swims differently, maybe spend more time going slow or stopping in the middle of the lake!
When Scott and I arrived at the lake, I noticed all the glittering on the surface. My first thought: wow, that looks so cool. My second thought: all that glitter means the surface is not smooth and that means the water is choppy. And it was. Also, warm — so warm! I liked the choppiness. It wasn’t rough — no big waves were crashing into me. Instead it was constant — wave after wave after wave, making me rock from side to side.
It was fitting that there were waves, because I’m working on revising/condensing a poem about waves (literal waves at open swim and waves of grief after my mom died). Hopefully today’s swim can serve as inspiration.
10 Wave Things
stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 1: difficult to see anything, like my hands or bubbles or fish
stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 2: water color was a mix between pea soup green and lentil dahl yellow
stirred-up water above the surface, making it difficult to see buoys
the surface: all glittered up
no white-caps, but lots of spray flying high in the air
an increased amount of breaststroke by other swimmers
more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my right
more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my left
the yellow safety buoy tethered to my torso was bobbing vigorously
I did not feel like I was fighting the water, but that it was holding me and reminding me it was there
Do I remember the sound of waves? No, I don’t recall the sloshing sound of the water as it rushed over my ears. I bet it was loud.
Found this poem when I searched, “waves” on poets.org. It’s a golden shovel poem, where the last word in each line comes from a different poem. The original golden shovel was Terrence Hayes creating a poem that ended each line with words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”
If I donāt taste the complicated wavesā if I only see the rolling, only hear the roiling up or smell those waves āthen I will tumble head over stance. Then I spring up, drenched in partisan sand.
I’d like to try something like this with my waves poem to suggest another meaning. I could either use words from a poem about grief or moving water. For grief, maybe Emily Dickinson, for water, Niedecker or Oswald? Maybe one of my favorites?
several hours later: 6:04 / 90 degrees, feels like 94
a reminder when experimenting with my wave poem: don’t try to force it — find some poems I like about waves or grief and see what happens
Sitting under my crab apple tree, where it is much cooler than on the deck, I reread an interview with Alice Oswald in the winter 2026 Paris Review. I’ve posted bits from it already. Today, since I’ve been thinking about spiriti visivi and insects, I wanted to post these lines:
1
. . . the contracts you make with the natural world that allow you to be in a place, the feeling of living somewhere you don’t own.
(But don’t you own the house?)
Yes, but it’s very clear that it’s really the insects who own it, and the river that comes right up to the garden. The rain comes through the ceiling. It’s interesting, the way the dead and the natural world are sort of exchangeable. That might sound theoretical, but ancient Greek lament, and lament from everywhere, has always used birds and plants as intermediaries for communicating with the dead. And I feel, when I’m here, a deference toward my uncle and my father, who once looked after the house, that’s kind of interchangeable with the deference I might feel toward a bird or an insent.
2
[after discussing the sound that flies and grasshoppers make, the interviewer asks: Is it the choral sound that you love?]
And the fact that they don’t speak with their mouths. I love the way insects speak with their wings or legs. For a
Interview with Alice Oswald
After the interview were 4 new poems from AO, including this one about the fly. 3 fly poets I immediately think of: Emily Dickinson, Aracelis Girmay, and Alice Oswald.
Fly-play/ Alice Oswald
Enter a fly no sooner nowhere than here wiping her rear-view eye and tapping the world with one foreleg
What is it you wish for Fly?
She merely glitters to me of silence tapping . . . tapping the world walks backward . . . refers me to her myth and exits . . .
The scene is summer
Enter a yellow curtain:
One servant dressed simply as the sun going in and out with a beam of dust one fly . . .
WHAT IS YOU WISH FOR FLY?
She merely rotates for me her mask as if to bring something born in one world back in another
Then round and round with her weak voice pleading that her one belonging is her life which lasts but a day . . .
But you know full well, Fly, it takes 400 insect years for me to lift my ahnd and by the time it lands I too will be mute, I too will be you
glitter / silence / tapping refers me to her myth? what is the myth of the fly?
12 miles franklin + ford + hidden falls + veterans home + falls 67 degrees humidity: 86% / dew point: 65
Ugh! That was hard. It was too hot, too sunny, too humid. My feet hurt from warts and a big blister. I almost altered the route to cut off 2 miles. And I did it. And I felt okay for the last mile, like I could have kept going. Success! I’m proud of myself for persisting today.
3 things I did right
I didn’t have any unfinished business problems! I brought my water and made sure to keep drinking from it. I didn’t give up.
3 things to work on
Bring more snacks/fuel. A bandaid around my toe doesn’t work — it created a juicy blister — find other solutions. Be more intentional with music or mantras or experiments to try for distraction/focus.
10 Things
Mr. Morning! upped his game today with his greeting. Instead of just, morning! He added: Have a Great Day!
rowers!, 1: a coxswain’s voice, giving instructions through a megaphone
rowers!, 2: the gentle slap of the oars hitting the water
the crack just north of the trestle is bigger (again) — they’ve barricaded it off with metal gates
the part of the trail near the trestle on the east side was blocked off — some sort of work with a tall crane
the bells of st. thomas chiming
a skate boarder at the skate park: doing a wide arc at the edge of the course
filling up my water bottle: at the monument, near the skate park
a group of three bikers — 2 adults, one kid — biking slowly in front of me
stopping in the grass to adjust my laces (at least 5xs), stopping at a bench to take off my shoe to inspect my toe (1)
I have to do this again next week, but for the rest of today, I’ll celebrate the accomplishment of running (with some walking) 12 miles and moving for more than 2 hours.
For the first hour, I listened to birds, fragments of conversations, cars, trickling water, and bells. For the next 45 minutes, I listened to a Ruth Ware audiobook. And for the rest of the time: my Color playlist.
I’ve just barely started reading Kohn’s How Forests Think, which I was able to get through RJP’s college library. This is one of the opening lines in chapter 2, “The Living Thought”:
This chapter develops the claim that all living beings, and not just humans, think, and explores another closely related claim, that all thoughts are alive. It is about āthe living thought.ā What does it mean to think? What does it mean to be alive? Why are these two questions related, and how does our approach to them, especially when seen in terms of the challenges of relating to other kinds of beings, change our understanding of relationality and āthe humanā?
If thoughts are alive and if that which lives thinks, then perhaps the living world is enchanted. What I mean is that the world beyond the human is not a meaningless one made meaningful by humans. Rather, mean-ingsāmeans-ends relations, strivings, purposes, telos, intentions, functions and significanceāemerge in a world of living thoughts beyond the human in ways that are not fully exhausted by our all-too-human attempts to define and control these. More precisely, the forests around Ćvila are animate. That is, these forests house other emergent loci of mean-ings, ones that do not necessarily revolve around, or originate from, humans. This is what Iām getting at when I say that forests think. It is to an examination of such thoughts that this anthropology beyond the human now turns.
How Forests Think / Eduardo Kohn
I’d like to put this chapter and the questions, What does it mean to think? and What does it mean to be alive?, beside Alice Oswald’s Homeric mind, with thoughts that don’t reside in the brain but travel outside of it, over the sea, Emily Dickinson’s bees, and the possibility that thoughts might be creatures themselves — and not just metaphorically. I’ve written about this before, and I’ll find where, either later today or tomorrow.
the next day:
1 — Alice Oswald on the Homeric mind:
Well, as you know, Iām quite fascinated, even obsessed, you might say with Homer. And one of the things that really tantalizes me in Homer is what is the Homeric mind? Because I think itās very different from a literary mind. And it seems not to be inside the skull, but to be out in the world. So, there is a particular simile in the Iliad, which actually that first bit of the poem is based on, where it talks about two goddesses coming from heaven to the earth. And theyāre very physically described. They kind of fall down from heaven to the earth. And then when they land, they take little pigeon steps, steps like doves or pigeons. So you can really picture them. But the way their flight moves from heaven to earth is as a man, you know, as the mind flutters in a man who has traveled widely, so you can turn it the other way around and say the way a man thinks is like this incredibly physical flight of two goddesses coming down to earth a bit like pigeons. And thatās always really interested me, that for Homer, the mind has the limitations of a pigeon, if you like. It is this kind of ā¦ this physical thing that moves. So, if you imagine a place over the sea, your mind actually has to get there. So, even though it may be as fast as the light, it is physical movement.
Hereās an article about the origins of the phrase. According to the article, the phrase is still being used in popular culture. I use it, usually when I notice Scott hell-bent on some task ā and usually it seems like a task, or idea, that is fool-hardy but that he needs to work through and figure out for himself.
Sometimes instead of saying, bee in your bonnet, I say that someone (or me) is hellbent. Of course, writing that immediately makes me think of Jackie from the 1979 Death on the Nile:
Jacqueline De Bellefort : One must follow oneās star wherever it leads. Hercule Poirot : Even to disaster? Jacqueline De Bellefort : Even to Hell itself.
When I envision a bee in my bonnet, I see something that is relentless, impossible to ignore, urgently needing to be dealt with. Thatās not quite how I imagine my preoccupation with haunts and ghosts and writing about the gorge. Still, I like the idea of bees in bonnets, and bees in general, so maybe Iāll spend more time with them this morning?
Reading through several ED ābeeā poems, I suddenly had a thought: could the bee in your bonnet be your soul, trying to escape the confines of the body?
This thought was inspired by a poem I wrote about in an On This Day post: Body and Soul/ Sharon Bryan. I didnāt mention it in the post, but the description of the soul in the poem, as leaving the body at night to roam around, reminded me of an ED poem I read a few weeks ago, when I was thinking about the difference between the brain and the mind:
If ever the lid gets off my head And lets the brain away The fellow will go where he belonged ā Without a hint from me,
And the world ā if the world be looking on ā Will see how far from home It is possible for sense to live The soul there ā all the time.
3 — thoughts as a swarm of bees, uncontrollable and unwanted
As I started thinking more about my discussion of thoughts as bees, I also thought about how those bees, especially if they are swarming in your head without the lid being removed, could be overwhelming, incapacitating. Then I found this in my log entry from 30 june 2024:
“During the first loop somewhere between the first and second orange buoys an alarming thought appeared: what if I fainted in the middle of the lake? In the past this thought might have caused panic which I would feel in my body ā a flushed face, harder to breathe, hot tingling on the top of my head. Not today. No physical effect. Within a few minutes the thought was gone. Is this because of the lexapro? FWA says that sometimes he feels the lexapro working ā heāll start having overwhelming thoughts but instead of spiraling, he feels himself become separated from those thoughts ā they become abstract and distant. I wondered about this as I stroked then connected it to Alice Oswaldās Homeric mind and the idea of thoughts not just living in our head but traveling outside of our bodies from there to there.”
Donāt you wish they would stop, all the thoughts swirling around in your head, bees in a hive, dancers tapping their way across the stage?
Who with their whispered psalm can outvoice their huckster cackle, the trees blustered to howls while the tesla bees
whine loudly to the shocked air?
other links: I have a page about bees in my “How to Be” project on Un || Disciplined (I had forgotten that I did this — thanks, past Sara!)
one more thing: Finding my archive of bee-related things, is putting a bee in my bonnet. I need to archive all of my resources — or, as many as I can — before my central vision is completely gone. I imagine it will be much harder to do this once that happens!
3.9 miles wabun hill and back 67 degrees / humidity: 87%
An early-ish run. Started at 7:45. If I had run earlier, the temperature would have been a few degrees cooler, but the humidity and dew point would have been higher. Which is worse, higher temp or higher dew point? Dew point, I think. I’ll have to test it out — if I can get up earlier!
For the past month or so, I’ve been struggling with my feet and ankles. I’ve tried a few different pairs of shoes to see if any of them were better. This week — on Tuesday and today — I went back to my Brooks Ghosts. They seem to be working better. Today I realized (or remembered?) to put my laces through the extra holes at the top of the shoe. I think I had tried this early on with these shoes, but it felt too tight, then. It worked!
10 Things
gobble gobble gobble a turkey calling out from a tree in turkey hollow
a bike rushing past me on the wabun hill
an older man and woman stopped at the bottom of the locks and dam hill
thwack thwack the chain from the flag hitting the flag pole
a few bits of glitter on the surface of the river under the ford bridge
the older man and woman halfway up the hill, each of them dragging a tire
almost all benches were empty
stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial bench for a quick view of the river and to retie my shoe
the wabun hill was covered in wet dirt — a little slippery when descending it
a woman standing on the edge of the trail, looking out somewhere, taking a picture of something
strong shoulders
Open swim tonight, but no Sara swimming. It’s a bummer, but I know that it’s a very bad idea to try and swim with my sore shoulder, My favorite, self-proclaimed “best PTs in the world,” Bob and Brad have some exercises for me to try in the next couple of days:
run: 4.1 miles monument and back 70 degrees humidity: 87% / dew point: 68
More uncomfortably warm conditions. Difficult, but doable. I did my run/walk plan: 5/1 (mile 1) — 1.5/.5 (miles 2-4). My feet didn’t hurt that much, and I had a lot of energy, especially in my legs, at the end of the run. I’ll take that as a victory. I listened to my striking feet and dripping water (shadow falls) and the st. thomas bells for the first half, Olivia Rodrigo for the second.
10 Things
St. Thomas bells — faint and short, 8:45, I think
rowers!, 1: on the way to st. paul, crossing the lake street bridge, 2 double rowing shells in the blueish gray water
rowers!, 2: on the way back to minneapolis, crossing the lake street bridge, 4 6-man rowing shells + the white boat with the coxswain
coxswain to rowers: okay and stop. good job!
overcast — a gray sky — is it going to rain? no: soon, sun
the dreamy reflection of clouds on the pale blue gray river
the path near shadow falls: cracked, cratered, ridged — dangerous!
at the top of the shadow falls hill, passing an adult and a kid wearing a backpack — summer school?
honk honk
near the beginning: a woman walking with a dog, holding the leash too loose, the dog licking my leg — sunday, I didn’t mind; today I did
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 81 degrees
Written the next morning. Almost perfect conditions. Smooth, warm water, not too crowded, overcast. For the first half of the loop, I felt strong and relaxed, but sometime not long after I rounded the third buoy, my right shoulder started to hurt. It was difficult to lift my arm. Ouch. When I reached the final green buoy, I stopped and rested for a few minutes in the beach area. I tried to swim again. Nope. I had to stop. A big bummer. I think I could have swum 5 loops tonight in this water.
Looked it up in the middle of the night (which might seem like a bad idea, but didn’t make me any less able to sleep) and it’s probably swimmer’s shoulder, caused by overuse. Swimmer’s shoulder is a common injury. I’m hoping that taking the rest of the week off will be enough to make it better. The silver lining: I still have more than half of the season left, so I should be able to swim again.
2 loops (4 cedar mini loops) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
Very warm. Choppy. Crowded. As always, a great swim. Before the swim started, the orange buoy was way off to the far side, which caused a delay. The lifeguards wrangled it back and we started with it in its usual place. When I returned after the first loop, the buoy was drifting far out again. Most people were not even trying to round it. I tried, then gave it up too. After the second loop, the buoy had been moved back but very close to shore. After the third it was back in its usual place. The shifting buoy and the too bright sinking sun made it difficult to sight.
10 Things
small fish, about 1/2 foot long, bumping into my hand and my foot as I waited for open swim to begin
a lifeguard kayak escorting a swimmer back to shore
bright blue sky + fluffy clouds
racing another swimmer who kept pushing me out and away from the buoy
swimmers almost run into: 3
swimmers run into: 1
out in the middle of the deep lake, a few ghostly forms below: milfoil, I think
a paddleboarder looming beside me before passing me at a safe distance
on the back half of the loop, I mostly breathed every 4 strokes
on the front half of the loop: watching the curved line of swimmers returning to shore
the next morning: Yesterday was Scott and my 30th wedding anniversary. 30 years?! Wow. Wonderful. We went out for lunch in our old uptown neighborhood then walked around Bde Maka Ska and Lake of the Isles before heading over to Cedar for open swim.
run: 11 miles ford loop + veterans home + lake nokomis (x2) 66 degrees humidity: 92% dew point: 60+
I did it! It was humid and hot in the sun and my feet started hurting by mile 4, but I did it! I ran through the neighborhood, then over the lake street bridge, up shadow falls’ hill, past the monument and (mostly) up the east side of the river. I crossed the ford bridge, went through wabun park to the veterans’ home, crossed over another bridge, ran on the edge of the park, then beside minnehaha creek. When I reached Lake Nokomis, I had to run around it twice.
10 Things
teakettle teakettle — a carolina wren
a single rowing shell on the river
from the bridge, the water looked fuzzy, the air above it hazy
just past the monument, I heard the St. Thomas bells — I think it was 7:30
mostly dry dirt, or slightly damp earth on the desire path beside the paved trail — one spot was squishy mud and I almost twisted my ankle on it
cloudy then sunny then shade then sun and sun and sun then shade
someone on the other side of the mustache bridge, running and pushing a stroller, blasting some upbeat music that I didn’t recognize
the creek water is high! I especially noticed that as I ran over my favorite part of the trail
a woman with a dog — she wasn’t holding the leash tight enough and the dog leaned over and licked my knee as I ran by (surprisingly, I didn’t care)
running and walking over the cedar bridge, looking down at the water’s surface: a soft gray blue with reflections of clouds
For more than half of the run, I listened to the birds and my feet and the sloshing water in my handheld water bottle. Near the falls, I put in “Olivia Rodrigo Essentials.” Even though I’ve turned it off many times before, apple music was still set to fading songs, which means it took the last few measures of one song and made its beat match the beat of the next song. When this first happened, the last bit of the first song suddenly slowed, sounding so strange that I was worried I might be having heat stroke. Why does Apple do this? Boo.
3 things to celebrate / 3 things to work on
I kept the negative thoughts away (hooray)
I was able to eat a fig bar during the run and didn’t feel an urgent need to go to teh bathroom (yay)
My legs felt good in the last mile and I had some energy (woo hoo)
My feet hurt for almost half of the run (boo)
My ankles hurt some too — I need to tie my shoes tighter and/or get shoes in a smaller size (bummer)
As is often the case after a hard effort, I was cranky at the end when I met up with Scott (grr)
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
The plan: run to the lake for open swim. Scott would bring my bag with my stuff. I wanted to do at least one loop of swimming. I imagined it would be refreshing and restorative for my sore legs. And it was. Wow, that water! Almost perfect. Calm and warm enough. There was milfoil but no blue green algae. As I neared the beach, I could see clumps of the milfoil washed up on shore. Yuck!
The swimming felt easy and relaxing. Steadily, I stroked, breathing every 5 strokes. Occasionally I stopped stroking and listened to the quiet as I tread water. All I could hear was the soft slap of the water from another swimmer’s hand.
Today, I started counting strokes as I passed by the 4th buoy. 275 to get to 5th and final buoy.
A strange feeling: as I swam from buoy 3 to 4, I could see the green buoy up ahead. It seemed like I kept drifting out, almost too far to the left. Trying to correct my path felt strange and awkward. I briefly wondered if there was a current I wasn’t consciously feeling or if my run had made me less able to swim straight.
overheard: one swimmer to another: not many people here this morning! and you don’t have to rush off after we’re done, do you? and the water is wonderful! Except for the weeds!
Today I decided to start at the normal spot, instead of entering at the far end of the swimming area. The weeks were there, and I had to shorten my stroke when I reached them, but they weren’t too bad and didn’t last that long.
Speaking of weeds, I noticed a bad patch just below the cedar bridge when I was running. So thick, just below the surface. Looking brown and orange, then dark dark green.
Today would have been a perfect day to swim 5 loops. And if I hadn’t run for 2 hours before swimming, I would have done it. I wish I could have, but I’m glad I didn’t try. That would have been too much!
added at the end of the day: Even though I ran 11 miles and swam 1.5 miles today (and achieved 300% of my move goal), I don’t feel wiped out or that sore. Only my feet hurt, and that’s because of the warts (yuck!).
earlier today, I was looking through my 5 july entries from past years. I would like to remember some things from them, including:
1 — 2025
Yesterday, in a ramble about rumors and whispers, I stumbled upon a tentative theme for the month: the language of water. First step: read/skim How to Read Water.
Hereās an interesting bit Iād like to remember:
. . . ponds and lakes are far from permanent; rivers will tend to grow naturally with time as they do their own excavating, but the opposite is true for still water. Unless ponds and lakes are given some help, they will all eventually return to land, It starts with algae, then the rushes and other shallow water plants getting a foothold, and this allows sediments to gather, water turns to wet mud, and a reinforcing cycle begins that culminates in the water losing the battle against the encroaching land.Ā
How to Read Water/ Tristan Gooley
Shallow water plants getting a foothold. No!
2 — 2024
Because the buoys are positioned by lifeguards every swim ā they paddle out on kayaks where they are advised by someone on shore where to drop their anchor ā and because thereās no exact spot for each of buoys, the loop distance varies. Today it was long, which I like ā the more distance, the better! Hereās a comparison on 3 different 4 loop swims by number of strokes I took / distance (which Iām pretty sure my watch doesnāt measures accurately):
25 june 2024: 2094 strokes / 3100 yards 30 june 2024: 2124 strokes / 3600 yards 5 july 2024: 2374 strokes / 4000 yards
I like how approximate the course is. Some things about it are set, some aren’t.
3 — 2021
Why I do and don’t like Cedar Lake + differences between Nokomis and Cedar Lake (see 23 June 2021). The first time I ever swam at Cedar Lake was 14 August 2019.
What a wonderful night for a swim! The first loop was smooth and fast. I felt like a boat, powering through the water, my feet little rudders. I’m not sure what happened during the second loop, but it was much tougher. Water trying to pull me down, 2+ foot waves crashing over me. Did the wind pick up? Whatever happened had stopped by the third loop. Calm again.
note: I’m writing this list the next morning because I didn’t have time last night.
10 Things
blueish green water
clear, and bigger than usual, bubbles being made by my hands — translucent
mostly the light was not too bright, until it was — at one spot, not far after rounding buoy 3, light suddenly illuminated the water in front of me and I saw a thin strand of something — hair? — floating in front of me
a flash of silvery white just below me — a fish?!
my reoccurring optical illusion: swimming back towards the big beach, I kept thinking I was seeing the silhouette of a lifeguard on a kayak — it was there, out of the corner of my eye, but when I passed it, it was gone — was a lifeguard there, or something else that I was imagining was a lifeguard — another swimmer? the tree line? a far off boat?
before open swim began, encountering a guy who called out, doesn’t this water feel great! Then he started singing a Backstreet Boys song — I don’t think it was “I want it that way” but I can’t remember
nearing a far buoy, experiencing that strange effect of the buoy always appearing far away, and me feeling like I’m swimming in place
passing a swimmer doing breaststroke, experiencing that irritating effect of the swimmer seeming to speed up and me feeling like it’s taking forever to pass them
maybe because of the choppy water or the light making it hard for them to sight the buoys, several swimmers were doing a mix of freestyle and breaststroke — a few strokes of freestyle, then stopping to look, then a burst of breaststroke, then freestyle again
as is often the case, the water was extra turbulent and more crowded around the final buoy — a cluster of swimmers nearing it at the same time*
*I like to refer to this section of the swim as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Mostly, I find it fun.
Earlier in the afternoon I printed out and posted the draft of a poem I wrote about 5 years ago that doesn’t quite work . . .yet. The current title: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. It’s about the joy I find in fighting the “waves” and the choppy water as I swim across and around the lake. The poem is up on my big cork board and I’m planning to gather together and post all of its references: facts about the lake, lines of poetry, the significance of particular words, etc. I don’t want to overwork the poem, but I do want to give a lot of attention to making it work. As I swam through the rougher water in my second loop, I thought about the poem and the fun I have in punching the waves and battling the spray. I prefer the waves crashing into me over the waves sucking me down. The former requires strong shoulders; the latter demands frantic kicks.
The overall vibe of last night’s swim was strong and steady. Stroke after stroke after stroke with little kicks beginning with my hips. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right and 1 2 3 breathe left and 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right and 1 2 3 4 breathe left. My feet, relaxed, shifting slightly to adjust my direction.
laked words / laked forms
written earlier in the day: Yesterday, while writing about an podcast interview with Moheb Soliman, I posed these questions, How do rivering words look different from laked ones?Ā What else do lakes do, besides pooling?Ā I was reminded of that question, when I encountered what I wrote on 18 august 2025:
Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:
The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement.
Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?
—
I imagine inklings as changing form slightly (line length, syllable count) depending on the type of water. On and in the lake, my inklings are 5 lines / 5 syllables because that is my stroke/breath pattern. It is different in a pool (I switch up my strokes more), and, if I swam in the sea, I imagine it would be different, too: shorter — 2 or 3 strokes, then a breath, as I navigated the choppier water.
The inklings in my chapbook aren’t just about a type of water, but are specific to one body of water, Lake Nokomis, and one organized activity in that water, open water swim club. I would like to gather details about open swim and the lake for my further reflections on my inklings.
Another thought that I don’t want to forget that I had while reading my entry from 18 aug: For this year’s “Swimming One Day in August” challenge (24 non-consecutive hours of swimming during the month of August, partly inspired by M Oliver’s poem of the same name), I want to return to time and clocks and being inspired by Endi Bogue Hartigan and on orchid o clock.
note: As I work on this, I am overwhelmed. I have so many ideas, so many experiments to try. It feels like I should write something BIG, but there’s too much to read to write to do. I’ve been trying Annie Dillard’s bird by bird method: slowly archiving one thing then another thing then another (see my How To Be project for my ongoing efforts). I think what I’d like to do now is something (fairly) straightforward: 1. Collect all of my summer/swimming log entries in one document 2. Do a rough edit (cut out non-swim and non-water bits) 3. Do another rough edit and another.
more HOMES / Moheb Soliman
walking a beach : moheb soliman
I’ve also typed in the text without the proper spacing, which is too fiddly to do on wordpress:
Walking a beach a drive away from Oswego
Algae break water webs of puce the shoreline lipstick left by the lake on lovesick miles of napkin good-bye Fudgies snap your towels of assy sand make the kids chase down the wrappers I’ll replant their gutted hawthorn and piss off the beach fire from the driftwood it’s time we got back to work consummate vacation fuck the lake no love to salvage memories of drinking each other completely empty of their taste better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating with anything precious fenced the lifestyle we desired here the zoos of microenvironments the patios crawling out of the mudflats with the frogbit floating in impenetrable mats the glass pole dance of dusk slick stage left just hold your liquor and keep down the zebra mussel- sucking noise when the speckled black other shoe drops just look away vacate the promises
2
As I read this poem, and some others in the collection, I thought about something else Soliman said in their interview:
And as far as the writing and the editing, you know, I just am such a convoluted writer sometimes and like I feel like a really sometimes poetry from your writing is like a problem solving, you know, like, how do you just stack this house of cards up enough to sit and just back away before it falls down?
Just enough to not collapse. This idea reminds me of a game I play with myself: how much data/information do I need to “see” something? The version of this game that I play in the water is: how many times do I need to sight the orange or green buoys in order to stay on course? The answer: not many! I’d like to play this game on land, with words. How little can I write/say and still communicate how/what I’m seeing or feeling or experiencing? Beyond a game, as my vision continues to decline (the end point: no more central vision) and my ability to read decreases, I must rely on fewer words. I want my poetry to reflect that economy.
experiment: Take an existing poem that I’ve written and try to take as much out of as I can without it losing its meaning. I think I’ll start with a favorite poem that has never quite worked: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. A further thought: put the poem on my board, along with all of my thoughts, log entries, poems/lines from others about it. Gather as much information as possible, put it on the board, then condense it. Condense!
Poetās work/ LORINE NIEDECKER
Grandfather advised me: Learn a trade
I learned to sit at desk and condense
No layoff from this condensery
What a master of condensery L Niedecker was!
2 — better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating with anything precious fenced
acrid pics — looked up acrid to double-check meaning: “strong, sharp, unpleasantly biting smell” and “bitter in language/feeling” — tried to remember, did polaroids smell? Yes, a distinctive warm, chemical smell. Is his use of acrid here a deliberate conjuring of polaroids? I grew up with polaroids, and using the word acrid offers a much more visceral reader response than just pics or pictures. And acrid as bitter — some regret over what happened/didn’t happen on those summer trips, over not being on vacation anymore?
anything precious fenced — here I’m thinking of Alice Oswald’s description of the sea as unfenced in Nobody: “If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseusā gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations.Ā ” And, I’m thinking about lucille clifton’s “unfenced is” in “All Praises.”
I’m also thinking about Soliman’s own critical (as in, seemingly negative) use of the word “precious” in his interview:
I was just doing a lot of, like, site, I don’t know if the word would be site-specific writing, you know, just writing on the go, you know, like showing up and wanting to capture a place and not feeling too precious about capturing it because really being there was so, like, sublime, you know, it was just so amazing and seeing such, like, really beautiful hidden pockets of the Midwest and, you know, these, like, oceanic spaces, you know, where you wouldn’t think, you know, Michigan would offer that or something.
and
A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.
Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?
4.6 miles veterans home 74 degrees / drizzle? humidity: 89% dew point: 69
Woke up at 6 am to get in a run before it rained, then heard thunder. Bummer. Had to wait until 9. When I left, the sun was coming out but a mile in, the wind picked up. Did it start drizzling or was that just dripping trees? I think it was a little of both.
It was hot and difficult and I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do when I started — 2 miles? 3? — but then I just kept going and it kept feeling a little more doable. Just make it to southern entrance to the Winchell Trail. And, just make it to the locks and dam parking lot. And, just make it to the top of the Wabun hill. Once I got to the top and kept going through Wabun park, there was no turning back, just through the grounds of the Veterans home and over to the falls then north on the river road to home.
10 Wet Things
big puddles on the sidewalk
smaller puddles on the path
muddy ruts
dripping trees
dripping ponytail
soaked shirt
roaring falls
gushing sewer pipe
whooshing wheels
damp face
Early this morning, while making breakfast, I listened to a podcast interview with Moheb Soliman whose book, Homes, I’ve just started reading. Love it! I think I’ll buy this book as a birthday present to myself!
In the interview, the interviewer mentions another poet who I’d also like to check out: Cecily Nicholson. Cecily Nicholson: interview + book, Crowd Source
Also in the interview, Soliman reads several of his poems, including this one:
Great Lake Swamp come heavy-use wetlands: powers of Toledo origin song
Who let this wetland wet / Who cut this little inlet / Laid the hill for golden hours / Fit the logs with the salamanders / Foretold the lichen and the mosses / Who offered the wildlife crossing
Along this promenade I sing / about how the world’s made / my behorned serenade to nobody but
Who wet this aggregate / Who raised this bamboo deck / Who had these grasses mown / Who made the birches grow in groves / Who made this prairie seric1 / Carved out a space for heron
This is my behorned little dirge / I sing along this little bridge / about how this little world’s birthed by no body but
Who left this river wet / Sowed the embankment / Set the grade for the slope of the island / Spawned the minnows to feed the walleye / Who knows the ripples till flood / Who reads teh dried-out flats of mud
About how the world’s mocked up / I sing along this ply boardwalk / This is where the trombones stop
for nobody / By no body but / you local / No melody but vocals / As is / La la / La li / La las / La lis / As is
Who let this wetland wet? I love all of these question about the creating of a place. I frequently think (and ask) about how the paths I run on, the lakes I swim in, were made what they are by people, particularly the city of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Parks. For years, I’ve been studying the documents and the places to find evidence of this creating and shaping.
Before reading the poem, Soliman says this:
And this is a big part of our discourse right now that, you know, humans aren’t separate. I mean, I have a really hard time kind of following that to the end, because I do feel that there’s a profound difference in how much we are able to control and shape that world to the point where we’re not really a part of it in the same organic way that so many other parts of it are, you know, and a lot of the poems like sometimes absurdly, you know, and I mean, I could even read some of those like, but absurdly play with that idea that, you know, we created this place, you know, the hiking trail, like it is actually, it’s not just some natural path.
You know, there’s a lot that has gone into making you feel that you are here at one in a harmonious, quiet moment in the woods or on the lake. And, you know, so our hand is like so strong in those places, and it would be really, like, naive to just write a poem about being out in the woods without also being aware about, of how we came to that place, and how humans are really, uh, yeah, sort of different and yet a part of.
I was prompted to find this interview because I wanted to hear Soliman read his own poems; I hoped that might help me understand the strange spacing of the lines. He addresses this desire directly in the interview:
A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.
Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?
Yet, I still love, like, the wordplay of, like, enjambment, and, uh, so, I came to a point where I thought, well, either all of these have to be these text blocks, or they just all need to go to lineated. And I spent a lot of time, like, reworking so many of them into these text blocks. And at one point I was really terrified that, like, I’ve made the reading experience really hard for people.
I don’t know, because to me, I’m just so familiar with them. They’re really, I see them in my head and I understand how they move, like, you know, orally, you know. So, it’s part of the reason I, like, really appreciate the chance to read them, because I feel like if I can just get my voice into someone’s head about the book, it’ll just make the rest of the experience, you know, easier.
Very helpful to read this, and to hear him read his own poems. The next thing he says is also helpful, and is sparking some new thoughts on (my) forms:
A friend of mine kind of made this interesting point where they sort of, like lakes, like on the page. They just kind of pool there with some like, gaps. And I think she was kind of first saying how the poems have a real flow. And then we were talking about how poems sometimes really feel like rivers, you know, and without really meaning to, I kind of forced these to have a bit more of like a lake, like, you know, here they are, in one place, and there, there’s the pooling, you know, that’s happening.
Oh — I want to think about this some more! How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? They settle, shimmy in place . . . . This question is an excellent one to think about and to go back into my log to find some answers!
a few minutes later: they sink and sour and are stuck, still, stagnant, unstirred. Could it be that lakes, more than oceans or seas or rivers, are about what’s at the bottom, what sinks down, unmoved by currents? Stale and stymied. Layered and sedimented, cyclical – circular
plastic project
Since March, or was it April?, I’ve been collecting the plastic that we use for some unspecified future project. It started with old freezer bags, but expanded to include grapefruit, zucchini, and mini cucumber bags. Now I have sandwich and pita bread bags and the plastic bags that covered the new fan I recently bought. My favorite one: the plastic shell my new googles came in, which looks like another pair of clear goggles.
Definitely in April, I began deconstructing the freezer bags — cutting off the bright blue (zip) locking part, cutting open the clear plastic, then cutting out the white label. Last week, I decided I wanted to use the blue zip lock parts for some sort of visualizing of the lake. Maybe a big map of a lake nokomis loop? My first thought was to connect the strips together with thread or tape, but that didn’t really work. This week, another idea: shred the plastic! I tried to do it in the paper shredder, which would have shredded it almost instantly, but that wasn’t working. So, instead, I’m using my mother-in-law’s old silver scissors and snip snip snipping the strips. This snipping labor is reminding me of the satisfaction I got in the winter from drawing and shading in circle after circle on my New Yorker essays. There is something therapeutic about using my hands in this repetitive task, but also something that encouraged deep, creative thinking. These blue plastic strips are also satisfying to scoop up and sift through my fingers. Will these plastic blue shards become part of my map, or just the process that leads me to that map? Time will tell.
from the zip on a freezer bag to shards of blue lake
As I cut up these little shards, I thought about all the plastic that ends up in the lake and an ocean and my organs and tissues and bodily fluids. Yikes!
As I accumulate more and more plastic I wonder: how can I stop using so much plastic? First step: stop using ziploc bags for storing my half used produce! Make my own bread? What else?
Telling Scott about my shards last night, he suggested trying to (just barely) melt them. In one of my bouts of insomnia I looked it up and found some suggestions, but not for what I wanted. In the various sources, toxic fumes was brought up more than once. Also: homemade shrinky dinks.
They are not the same texture, but I have some great green plastic — from zucchini and cucumber bags, and from the plastic wrap on two olive oil bottles. I’d like to mix some bits of them with the blue and see how that affects the color. Could I melt these together?
swim: 3 loops (6 mini) cedar lake open swim 84 degrees
A calm and warm lake! Wonderful for swimming. I did 6 cedar loops without stopping. or only stopping mid-lake to adjust my nose plug. I noticed orange and pink buoys. Was mine the only yellow one? A few vines wrapped around my head and shoulders as I returned to the first buoy. The water was green-ish. The only fish I encountered were little minnows near shore. My bubble friends trailed below and in front of me.
overheard, one lifeguard to another — I told him he needed to head over to lake nokomis to pick up his swim cap.
A uncapped swimmer was out in the middle of the lake, some more uncapped swimmers were lurking at the far orange buoy.
Anything else? I felt strong and smooth, and often the swimming seemed effortless. Even so, I was glad to be done at the end of the 6th loop.
walk: 50 minutes to loons coffee and back 79 degrees humidity: 89%
The heat wave has hit. I had planned to get up early and run this morning, but when I checked the weather and realized that it would already be 76 degrees with almost 90% humidity at 6am, I decided to skip it. As I get older, my tolerance for heat gets worse. So, instead of running, Scott and I walked to Loons for a birthday coffee.
10 Things
some screeching bluejays
the feebee of a black-capped chickadee
a willow in a yard bent over the sidewalk in a arch, creating cool, green shade
a cacophony: 2 bus ticket machines beeping and calling out warnings beside each other, a woman yelling — this is annoying the shit out of me! — at her companion who had pushed the buttons too many times
acquiring a sheen of sweat before reaching the coffee shop
the sharp, truncated bark of a dog somewhere far off
walking by a pick-up truck, hearing a man inside the cab call out, it’s siesta time! — later learning from Scott about the things I didn’t see: 2 construction workers sprawled out on scaffolding in the back of the truck, looking at their phones
the loud buzz of a chainsaw, orange cones blocking off a street: someone getting a tree trimmed or removed
the cottonwood three: 3 gigantic, towering cottonwood trees in the front yard of a 1950s rambler on the triple (or more) sized lot
a bit banner draped across a neighbor’s fence: I’m not mad at you (Renee Good’s last words)
a response from minneapolis aquatics!
Since open swim began, I’ve been frustrated with the amount of milfoil at the beginning of the swim course. Frustrated, and a little anxious. I thought about complaining to open swim. I also wondered if it was even worth saying anything. Then I decided to contact Aquatics and ask about when and if they would be harvesting the milfoil this summer. I ended my email with, I deeply appreciate all that you do to make it possible for us to swim across the lake, and I meant it. I love Minneapolis Parks and I love open swim. I wasn’t sure if anyone would respond, but they did this morning. A long email outlining the different steps they’re taking to alleviate the problem, including another round of harvesting with SCUBA divers and possibly enlisting lifeguards to help. Can the milfoil be controlled? I’m not sure, but it helps to know that they recognize the problem and are trying to do something about it.
swim: 1.5 loops cedar lake open swim 92 degrees / wind: 17 mph
Very choppy water, which I don’t mind, but I also don’t want to pull a muscle by working too hard to stroke through it, so I only did 3 cedar loops tonight. The water was warmer; I didn’t feel cold at all when I was done. Hooray! I mostly breathed every 4, with the occasional 5 or 3 or 2. Almost always on the right. The beach was very crowded and the vibes were very Cedar. Wading in the water, I could smell weed somewhere nearby.
10 Things the Wind Did
open swim was delayed by at least 5 minutes because they couldn’t get the buoy to stop drifting away
it was also delayed because the lifeguard was struggling to swim back with it in the heavy chop
runners coming in at an angle, 1: the first half of the loop, they were at my back, which sometimes made it easier to swim and sometimes didn’t
runners coming in at an angle, 2: the second half of the loop, I mostly swam straight into them, which made it harder to breathe and to stroke and to see anything
with barely any visibility, I got very close to swimming straight into 3 women — I felt the current their kicking legs made in time and was able to shift my angle
big splashes and sprays from flailing arms
returning to point beach at the end of the second loop, trying to round the buoy, noticing it moving away from me: it had come untethered from the anchor — I gave up and didn’t try to loop around it
returning to point beach at the end of the third loop, I saw that orange buoy way out and off course
leaking goggles, dislodged through the force of waves battering my head
only 3 loops today: too tiring to do more
A great birthday swim! I like swimming in choppy water, especially at the end of my June when I’ve built up my shoulders from 20+ miles of swimming already.
Another beautiful morning. Quiet, calm, low-ish humidity. Ran on as much soft dirt as I could find, which helps my feet. Ran for 12 minutes straight, then 90/30 for the rest — with an occasional 2 or 3 minutes of running thrown in. My legs felt strong and bouncy. My feet started hurting around mile 4. I need to figure this one out. I think it’s mostly warts — yuck! — a few on the ball of my feet, one or two on or under a toe.
10 Things
a coxswain’s voice, down in the gorge
the dirt trail on the grass between lena smith and the river road was narrow and overgrown
nearing locks and dam no. 1, voices somewhere in the trees — on the upper trail leading to the ford bridge
ding ding ding ding ding the recorded bell from the light trail train passing through a intersection
the soft roar of the creek far below me as I crossed the tall bridge that connects the veterans home to the park
a glimpse of the trail Scott, RJP, and I hiked yesterday evening through the trees, below
mostly empty benches
a few e-bikes on the trail, going way too fast
glanced over at the statue of Big Feet/Gunner* when I turned to run through the archway near the falls
*I looked up Gunner on this log because I knew I had written about him. A fun coincidence: I wrote about him on June 27th, 2021! “Ran south on the river road trail past the falls and stopped at the big statue just past the pergola garden. When I would walk or bike the kids over here, about 10 years ago, we (or was it mostly me?) called this statue ābig feetā because all the kids could see was his big feet. There was also a little feet (John Stevens)āa much smaller statue not too far way. Today I wanted to find out who Big Feet actually was. I assumed he might be someone connected to Fort SnellingāZebulon Pike or Snelling or Franklin. Nope. Gunner Wennenberg, a Swedish composer, poet, and politician. This statue was erected on June 24th, 1914.”
Found this bit about names on Poetry Daily (poems.com):
A name is a word but not a word. Some words are names and some names are words. When youāre alive your name meansĀ you; sometimes it means theĀ youĀ you mean to yourself; more often theĀ youĀ you are to each person who knows you well enough to use it. If itās a word, it also means what it means as a word in the mouths of people who donāt know you, and also sometimes in the mouths of people who do know you. When youāre dead your name meansĀ youĀ until the people who used it are all gone and then it means pure sound (if your name was not a word), or it goes back to meaning what the word means (if your name was also a word).
Wow! A beautiful morning for a swim. Mostly smooth water, a little warmer, sun. I felt strong and relaxed. I avoided the milfoil again by swimming out from the middle of the swimming area, closer to the last green swim buoy. I had to pass over some ghostly vines, but they weren’t tall enough to bother me. I couldn’t see the 2nd orange buoy until it was almost right in front of me (as usual). I thought about how many years — and loops and strokes and kicks — it has taken me to get used to trusting myself and my shoulders and not worrying when I can only see water and sky and generic trees. Occasionally I encountered other swimmers and the lifeguards. I don’t remember seeing any birds or dragonflies or military planes.
What did I think about? 10 Things
1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
through black then cold red then cold brown then warm, giving water the full size and weight of myself in order to imagine it (A Oswald, Dart)
why is that orange buoy (tethered to a swimmer) swimming so far away from the next green buoy? are they off course, or is it my strange sense of the path in the water?
when you can’t see the buoys, use the direction that your sparkle friends are floating as a guide (which is really the angle of the sun — I think — as it illuminates the particles and makes them sparkle
he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in (A Oswald, Dart)
I should recite more water poems next time — but not, M Oliver’s “Swimming One Day in August” — that’s reserved for August
out here, in the middle of the lake, I am not alone, but I feel alone, both singular and not — not human, but water or fish
should I get out and go the bathroom? (yes, and I did, after loop 2)
is that another swimmer or a wave? (a wave)
(as I approached the last green buoy) I thought about being trapped under it by other swimmers as I rounded it — not in this lake, today, because they’re weren’t many swimmers, but if I were in a open swim race with serious swimmers
I saw my sparkle friends and some swan boats and sail bots on the edge of the lake. I felt the cold water on my fingers, a slimy vine on my shoulders. On the sand, near the lifeguard stand, the air smelled like a farm pasture — the faint scent of manure. And I heard a tinny chime several times on the back stretch of loop 2. I wondered if it was my watch — no, my watch doesn’t chime like that. Was it someone else’s watch? A far away boat? Water does strange things to sound.
I love morning swims at Lake Nokomis! Everything is a little quieter, calmer. Today, Scott came with me and ran his 10 miles. I finished before he did and was able to sit on the sand and take in the lake and the beach and beauty of late June afternoon.
encounters with others
As I exited the water to walk over the bathroom, a guy asked me about the quality of the water and how deep it was. It’s great / probably about 12-15 feet where we’re swimming.
Walking out of the bathroom, heading back toward the water, a man asked, excuse me, I signed up for open swim club. Where do I pick up cap?
Exiting the water after loop 4, a little kid called out to me, Isn’t this great? I love playing in the water!!
Bark bark — officially there are no dogs allowed on the beach, but there was one today, barking a greeting to swimmers as they exited the water — hello friend!
Here’s a photo Scott took of the final green buoy as we sat at Painted Turtle after my swim:
this field guide began with a series of interviews with random plantsāincluding artifical flowersāthat I encountered on my daily movementsāin my garden, on the street, in parks, at work, on the Amazon digital store. I read these interviews as an exploration into the breach of an alien consciousness. look, vegetal life may exceed our capacity to comprehend but these life forms still demand that we listen. perhaps their particular modes of communication travel at scales too slow for our species to register. but those unnamed flowers in your gardenāperhaps the little ones, blue and purple in their faces that nudge into dirtāhave demonstrated a special kind of intelligence to do so. if you sat down to interview these strange kin on your lawn, what would you say to them? what would they say in return? this is not a metaphor. go on. sit. listen. you have to watch them for a very long time.
I’d like to try this with the Eurasian Milfoil at the edge of swimming area. My questions would be spoken in my head, not out into the water. Maybe I’ll bike over early one morning? What do I want to ask this milfoil? What might it want to tell me? An initial thought: Eurasian milfoil is an invasive species, brought to North American sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s on the hull of some boat (I’ll double-check that — just checked. I had recalled reading somewhere that it was brought by a boat, but this helpful resource, There’s more to milfoil, offers another, equally vague explanation: “Eurasian watermilfoil was brought to the U.S. as an ornamental plant decades ago. The state first became aware of it as an invasive plant in the 1970s.”
Orchid Tierney’s entire essay is awesome, offering many ideas to ponder. They begin with this line, what if, as Maureen M. McLane suggests, we are already preplant?
Preplant?! I tried to find the source of this question, but couldn’t. I did find McLane’s collection, This Blue, and requested it from my local library. Maybe the question is in there? Regardless of where they ask it, I like this question. It makes me think of Lorine Niedecker’s and Alice Oswald’s discussions of us as being distilled to our animal -vegetable – mineral selves — or something like that; I’ll have to search for the lines later.
a mapping
I cleared off my bulletin board for the summer, wanting to come up with swim and water things to cover it. An idea: what if I create a map of the open swim circuit on it? I could include the orange and green buoys, the patches of milfoil, specific locations of inklings + other things I experience in that water. Yes! This sounds fun!
to remember and add to my How to Be project
Found this useful discussion of naming thing in an interview with Maureen McLane about This Blue. I wanted to archive it here, and find where I write about naming on my “How to Be” project.
HM: This Blue seems very interested in how language changes the way we inhabit a landscape. Its first poem contains those lines, āTake it up Old Adamā/every day the world exists/to be named,ā and in later poems there are trees that are said to go unnamed, or wildflowers that have forgotten their names.
MM: I think it’s very interestingāwhat it means, say, to come across the name for a plant in French. Part of this question of naming and place aligns with my interest in English as a big and actually multilingual instrument. I guess I really do subscribe to the notion of language in general, and names in particular, as having a kind of spell-like or incantational or incarnational potentiality. Thatās a pretty archaic and powerful trope. I was not a person who grew up knowing the names of almost anything. I often encountered things first verbally and only then in the world.
Actually, Jamaica Kincaid talks about this, in another key, in her book Lucy, where the heroine talks about having Wordsworth shoved down her throatāhis poem about daffodils. Our heroine is from the West Indies and sheās in New York as a nanny, and her employer wants to take her to Central Park and show her all the daffodils. This is the first time Lucyās seen actual daffodils, and Lucyās incredibly annoyed with this bourgeois white woman whoās trying to have her say, āIsnāt that beautiful?ā So I think that, (a) Kincaid is amazing, but (b), another way to think about it is that words are as palpable as things. A lot of my poems might be working through that: how we can feel that way, and how naming both honors things and lets them blossom, but how names may not be the only, or very efficient, way for talking about energy in the world.
Learning the name of a fungus could really anchor you in a region; certain words for trees could conjure something about the American Northeast. But somebody like Wordsworth, for all his yammering on about nature, apparently couldn’t tell one bird from another. So I sort of feel like my interest here both is and is not about being an actual naturalist. There are a lot of ways to anchor oneself in the world. For me, it tends to be a linguistic anchoring.
10 miles ford loop + hidden falls + veterans home + falls + locks and dam 60 degrees humidity: 80%
10 miles. It’s been a few years since I ran 10 miles. I just looked it up and, according to my records, it’s been since Sept 29, 2024. That’s a week before the marathon. Wow. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t fast. My feet really hurt in the last mile. And I did it. And I feel good about it. More than good, great. These long runs are really helpful for me as I try to work on my mental strength and endurance.
Yesterday I was listening to Kara Goucher giving advice on her podcast. What I remember her saying is this: find something positive to focus on for each stretch. Don’t allow yourself to think about what’s going wrong; think about what you are doing right. For many of the running stretches I felt strong and bouncy and in a dreamy state. Not sure I’d call it a flow state, but a state of non-thinking. Of being.
When I was thinking, I thought about my running. In the last three miles, I thought: I need to be particularly intentional in these last miles of my long run to not let it fall apart. I need to work at keeping to my schedule of walk runs. Keeping to this schedule should be something I work on in future long runs.
my route
My route took me many different places: through the neighborhood, past the daycare at the church, over the lake street bridge, beside shadow falls and the monument, on the edge of the new Highland bridge development, just above Hidden Falls, next to a skate park, over the ford bridge, past Wabun and the splash pad, through the veterans’ home grounds, behind the John Stevens’ house; above the falls, back up to wabun, down to the locks and dam no. 1, then north on the west river parkway. There was lots of shade and only a few stretches of direct sun. It was cool and overcast for the first half, a little warmer and sunny for the second half.
10 Things
one rowing shell out on the river — I noticed in my peripheral as I crossed the lake street bridge — kept trying to see it in my central vision, but never could
a woman’s voice at the construction site for home being renovated — she said something like, they’ll be here to hook up the garbage disposal — is that what she said? I can’t quite remember
the soft shushing of my feet as they stuck the soft dirt then slid backward
music blasting from a bike
the soft rushing of water down the channel under the bridge that leads to a hidden falls overlook
a ladder at an angle, leaning against a house, reaching a window on the second story
the hum of skateboard wheels, a flash of a skater behind me, the sound of the board flipping as the skater went up a ramp
a woman sitting on a bench near the veterans home, reading something
2 people, close together, on the little bridge overlooking the falls, taking a selfie
the thwack of the flag rope hitting the pole in the wind
For the first mile, I listened to the traffic, then I put in Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. I listened to it 3 times as I ran. They lyrics I remember most come from the song “Expectations”: past mistakes are just new information
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 74 degrees
I entered and exited the swim course at the other end of the beach and avoided the worst patches of milfoil. Only a few ghostly vines not quite reaching my toes. Nice. I like starting there, much closer to the last green buoy. It’s less crowded and it shifts where and when a new loop begins. At least, this is what I thought as I swam the second loop and reached the second orange buoy, which was now the third buoy I swim by in a loop and not the second.
The water was a little warmer, or I was. Whatever the reason, the result: no freezing feet or fingers. I witnessed lots of bubbles, some menacing swims, lifeguards that were too close to the buoys, forcing me to take sharper angles around them. No fish seen below, one bird, flying low with its wings spread wide, above, a duck near the shore as I swam into the beach. Two little girls, chasing after it.
Overheard: one of the girls to the other — then he picked it up with his bare hands and threw it!
Overheard: one kid to another, on the beach — how old are you? Eight, you’re eight?!
A big exercise day today. Almost 1500 active calories. 10 miles of running, a mile and half of swimming. It felt good.
3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Summer! A beautiful night for a swim. Hardly any wind, warm sun. There were lots of swimmers with yellow and pink buoys. Someone was playing dance music over at Hidden Beach. As I rounded the far buoy during loops 5 and 6, I did several breaststrokes so I could listen. A few very long milfoil vines stretched up from the bottom, which is much deeper than lake nokomis.
I recited some of my favorite lines about swimming from Alice Oswald’s Dart. He dives, he shuts himself inthe deep soft-bottom silence — I forgot to recite the next line, which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous — and jumped ahead to, he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shutsand the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. I couldn’t quite remember how the next line started, but now I do: Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts. Love those lines!
10 Things
a swimmer wades in the shallow water near the buoy waitint — to warm up? to get the courage to swim across? to take in the beauty of an early evening?
bubble friends! more of them, below me
a tapping on my toe as I rounded the far buoy — was it another swimmer? a fish? something else? who knows
music, laughter, lots of chatter at hidden beach
all I could sight on the way out was the red kayak of the lifeguard
all I could sight on the way back was the break in the trees
a few spots of glimmering surface
the orange buoy at hidden beach was rarely there and when it was, it was only an orange dot, or the idea of an orange dot
the orange buoy at point beach was muted and covered in shadow — I never saw it from far away, only when I was pretty close to it
strange undercurrents in the water — something disturbing the water — sometimes it was another swimmer, sometimes it wasn’t
A great swim. I did one more loop than I did last time and never really stopped — other than the brief seconds when I readjusted my nose plug. In the later loops, my feet felt a little strange. Were they about to cramp? I paused and treaded water as I assessed them.
Found this in my entry from 2025 on 22 june — the return of my “On This Day” practice!:
Saturday 6:30 a.m. Swimming.
Red water plants waver up from the bottom in an attitude of plumes. How slow is the slow trance of wisdom, which the swimmer swims into.
“An Essay on Swimming” / Anne Carson
Thinking about the Eurasian Watermilfoil (milfoil) at Lake Nokomis, It does not waver in an attitude of plumes. It is a thick thatch, choking out the light, wrapping itself around arms, legs, shoulders.
Thinking more about the Eurasian milfoil, I recalled looking it up and posting some information about it a few years ago. I searched, and found it: 5 july 2024
aquatic plant management
“A few days ago, I looked up information about the vegetation/vines that I swim above in lake nokomis. I looked them up a few years ago, and recall learning that they were milfoil, but this summer I started doubting that I was remembering the name right. I was! There are two types of watermilfoil:
Eurasian watermilfoil : invasive, choking out native plants Northern watermilfoil: native, food for the fish
On the Minneapolis Parksā site, they describe aquatic plant management, which was fascinating. The most effective way to control Eurasian watermilfoil is to harvest it, either with a mechanical harvester or by scuba divers (!). The mechanical harvester, which from what my bad eyes can see is a boat with a big spinning blade
removes plants that are in the top four to six feet of water. The harvested plant material is removed from the water and stored until the end of summer when it is brought to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to be used as organic fill for their operations.
The scuba divers, who only do this on Wirth Lake and Lake Nokomis, hand-pull the watermilfoil in areas that are inaccessible for the mechanical harvester. I wonder what areas are inaccessible and if Iāve ever witnessed the scuba pulling and not realized it. Very cool!”
Looking through the page today (2026), I noticed that they have a harvesting map for 2026. I also read on the aquatics plant management site that harvesting happens (roughly) from memorial day – aug 31st. I decided to send Minneapolis Parks a message and ask if and when they were planning to harvest the milfoil this summer. Hopefully they will answer, and hopefully it’s soon!
In the meantime: I will avoid that area! And maybe, I’ll try thinking about entanglements and knots and being tethered in ways that restrict, bind, limit. Or, I’ll think about weeds and invasive species and lake vegetation and how and why it overtakes lakes.
a note from Sara-this-second and Sara-since-Saturday and Summer Sara for Sara-sooner-or-later Listen lady, we are taking a break from reading and holes and Alice in Wonderland. We want to be immersed in water — waterlogged and water-logging! Come back in the fall!1
Decided to run a loop around lake nokomis before open swim in order to be warmed up when I entered the cold water. The run was hard. It felt warm and my gait felt awkward. My favorite part about the run was nearing the big beach and hearing, then seeing, swimmers rounding the far green buoy. I thought: that will be me in a few minutes! And it was.
Overheard: a group of 7 or 8 runners, one of them calling out to the others: They didn’t give us any room. I guess they thought it was their path. Yep, I’ve thought, and probably said, that same thing to Scott on some run around this lake.
I was just reminded of this when I heard the bells of St. Thomas as I write this at my dining room table: When we arrived at the lake, I heard some bells chiming in the distance. I’m assuming a church service was starting somewhere — maybe at the church on Cedar, near Fat Lorenzos?
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 67 degrees
It felt warmer today, maybe because it was sunny. I noticed pink and yellow and orange safety buoys tethered to torsos, bent elbows, glittering water, a few splashes. Some swimmers wore wet suits, some wore training suits. I don’t think I noticed any swan boats or non-lifeguard kayaks.
I’m not sure I felt strong, but I felt stronger in the lake than last week. I decided as I stroked 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left that June is always a more challenging month for open swim: the water’s colder and I’m using muscles that I haven’t used for 9 months.
The milfoil in the swimming area and near the start of the loop was terrible. Thick stretches of it, with individuals vines wrapping around my wrists and feet. I managed to avoid the worst of it on the way out, but when I returned I got stuck in a wide patch of it that I struggled to swim out of. As I have said to more than one person, I am a very strong, experienced swimmer and, even so, I had a few flashes of panic as I wondered how to get out and around these vines. I am seriously concerned that someone will drown in them. They are in the swimming area.
I wonder, is there anything Minneapolis Parks can do about this? Also, if enough people complain, will they have to close down the beach? I don’t want that, but I also don’t want someone to drown in this water or these vines to not be addressed. Sigh.
I’m glad that I ran and that I was able to swim 2 loops in slightly warmer water. Unfortunately, it didn’t help my mood. A few days ago, I wondered what was worse: perimenopausal anxiety or perimenopausal irritability. I thought anxiety was worse, but today, I am irritated and upset and I think it’s just as bad as anxiety. Oh well, like a wave, it will pass over.
Speaking of passing over, I noticed the dark shadow of a plane, blocking out the sun for a few seconds. Even though I know what it is, it is strange and settling (and kind of cool) when it happens.
10 Things
bubbles — surrounding my hands as they entered the water
clouds
breathing to one side: blue sky
breathing to the other side: clouds
stopping in the middle of the lake: silence, solitude
the bright orange first buoy, sometimes looking orange, sometimes white, once or twice green, a few times not there
swimmers: 3 across, a good space between us, all heading towards the far green buoy at the different angles
overheard before beginning: Theo, get your shoes! It’s time to go!
exiting the water, watching as a toddler in a polka dot bathing suit ran across the sand and towards the swings
6 miles hidden falls loop 61 degrees humidity: 77%
The sun and the humid air made it feel warmer than 61. If only it could feel like this tomorrow during open swim — warm, that is. A quiet, calm morning. Not too crowded on the trails or the roads. Lots of dappled light, flickering leaves. The only time I remember looking at the water was when I had just started crossing the ford bridge. I could see the dark reflections of the fir trees on the water.
I wore my bright yellow shoes. Today, they didn’t feel so bad. Before I went out for my run, I studied the bottom of my shoes. The Brooks Ghosts are already starting to wear down near the big toe, but the Saucony Cohesions and Rides are not. So, do the Ghosts change where I strike my foot, or are they just thinner at that spot? One day I’ll get my stride evaluated by someone at Mill City Running or another local running store.
I did some variations on the Galloway method (90 sec run/30 sec walk). I started with 15 minutes of running, then 90/30 for some time, then 3 min/1 min. Next time I need to commit to just running 90/30 the entire time and see what happens.
Right as I began running, I looked far ahead at the small circle of light at the end of a tunnel of sidewalk and trees. I thought about Alice and her view as she first falls down the hole:
downand down
Watching this again, I remembered the light from above being brighter. Oh well, I still like it as inspiration for my hole series. Does it work for blur (see below)?
A few times, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson as I ran. Not sure I ever made it all the way through; I was distracted by the sound of a skateboard or the flash of a leaf or the feeling of sweat dripping down my face.
As I ran by the empty benches near the Ford/Power Plant overlook, I imagined biking here on some other day and sitting and reading a book, or writing or poem, or taking in the world around me.
10 Things
loud music — dance? techno? — booming from a bike speaker
a sprinkling, tinkling sound — was it falling water or rustling leaves?
a few puddles from yesterday’s rain
soft, wet dirt on the trail between the river road and lena smith boulevard
the flickering shadow of one leaf being moved by the wind
2 older men talking, sitting at a picnic table near the skate park in Highland Park
a woman running with a stroller, crossing near hidden falls — did she or the kid she was pushing make any noise? I don’t think so
hot sun, then refreshing shade, at Highland Bridge
passing a woman talking on a phone: then, what is it?
2 women walking — one, to the other: I haven’t perfected my pizza yet
holes and Alice
As I (finally) worked on my summary for April’s monthly challenge, I was inspired to return to the holes project. I want to keep experimenting with the Alice in Wonderland angle and the rabbit hole. What inspiration can I get from some of the scenes in Alice in Wonderland (1951)? So far, I have 3 scenes in particular: Alice falling down the hole1, Alice talking with the Caterpillar, and Alice and the Cheshire Cat.
Just now, I re-watched the Cheshire Cat scene and I’m thinking of pairing it with parts of hole 3: “land in a logic of blur and almost” and “read sentences sliced in half, glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined.” At the beginning of the scene, the cat is only a voice singing nonsense words, then a mouth, then eyes. Later, he is only footprints and stripes. How to represent that on the page? And, is that more almost than blur? Should the line be, “land in a logic of almost’?
Another part of this new approach is to simplify the image so that it is easier to understand as form/silhouette. I’m thinking of putting it on a single page — the page in which the word “hole” appears in the NYer essay — instead of the 4 panels. I’m hoping that will translate more effectively online (and on smaller screens).
Back to hole 3: what if I made the blur and almost as two different scenes/pages — one is blur, one almost. “Almost” would be the cat, and “Blur” would be –? I’ll keep thinking about that one. Blur = soft and fuzzy forms, before we grow accustomed to the Dark, right after the light has gone out, or grown too dim? Maybe, the image of a small hole of light, with everything else growing darker?
is water alive?
I was looking for something else (search on poets.com = “blur”) and found a wonderful essay about a poem, “on the water” and its dis/connection to ecopoetics. The author of the essay and the poem, Moheb Soliman, says this about water:
Itās a sacred hookāan existentially common denominatorāthe basis of everything, to build on together. You understand, but youāre deeply ambivalent about the abstraction of water. Water like a banner quivering in place, placeless. You fear placelessness. Itās why you are addicted to Google Maps. Isnāt everybody? Totalizing specificity, proper naming, sublime order, knowable space.
Yet, like many, you try and reject colonial hegemony. You canāt help but revere Indigeneity. But water flows one way at dividesāyouāre either duped by western science water as inanimate substance, or youāre co-opting animist beliefs about water. You donāt think of water as alive, nor of it as just a resource. Is there no other way?
The line, You don’t think of water as alive reminded me that I have Is a River Alive?on my Libby audiobook shelf. TIme to start listening/reading, I think!
Perhaps a question to pursue this summer: (how) is a lake alive?
9.15 miles lake nokomis and back 57 degrees / humidity: 87%
My longest run in more than a year. It is humbling to feel like 9 miles was the most I could do (at least today) when I ran a marathon just 2 years ago. Of course, thanks to perimenopausal anxiety, I have flashes of worrying that it’s not being out of shape but something physically wrong with me. A few days ago, Scott and I had a discussion — which is worse: peri/menopausal anxiety or peri/menopausal irritability? I guess, being irritable is a drag for everyone around you, but it seems less draining than worrying that every small ache or pain means you might have a terminal illness. I am rarely irritated, but I am often anxious.
I ran the first mile without stopping, then moved into my 90 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking. I like this method, although I was a little disappointed that my heart rate was still higher. Was it the humidity? Is that just how my heart rate works when I’m running? Is it a bigger concern — some heart problem? Or was it because I ran the first mile without stopping instead of doing the 90/30 from the beginning? I imagine it was mostly the humidity and doing a continuous first mile. At the halfway point, I experimented with the ratio: 3 min run/1 min walk and 2 min run/1 min walk.
assessment: I feel pretty good now, and I definitely had more energy at the end of the run. My feet hurt — not as much as they have in past runs, but the ball of both feet still ached at the end. Also: my ankles were a little sore, too.
Even though it was humid, and I wished I had worn my tank top instead of a short-sleeved shirt, I didn’t feel too hot. Lots of shade, a cool-ish breeze. I heard at least one woodpecker, laughing; the babbling creek; a dog losing its mind — bark bark bark bark — across the creek. I greeted several walkers and runners, stopped at the park bathroom right before reaching mile 8. I ran past some guy watching a pickleball match; counted several kayaks out on the water; encountered a biggish group of runners ahead of me — would I get tangled up with them? No, thankfully they stopped at the playground to do some exercises and to pair up. As I passed them, I could hear someone calling out, okay, now find someone with about your same pace.
For 8 of the miles, I listened to the world around me. Cars streaming past on the parkway; the hum of a hoverboard on the bike path; kids calling out to each other at the creek; and the thwack of the ball on the pickle ball court. For mile 9, I put in my “windows” playlist. The song I most remember was one I’m almost skipped, Pete Seeger’s “Fly through my window” — little bird little bird fly through my window
random bummer news: The Minneapolis Park Board voted to close the dog park and one of the most decorated American female mid-distance runners, Jenny Simpson, had a medical emergency while pacing a mile race on Monday night: her heart stopped and they gave her CPR for 20 minutes before it restarted. She’s in the hospital now, recovering. She is 39 and just retired from running a few years ago.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 70 degrees
Brrrrr. I’m not sure what the water temperature was, but it felt cold. Probably 70 degrees. The water was a bit choppy today and full of menacing swan boats and a few clueless kayaks. I couldn’t always tell if the kayak was a lifeguard moving across the course or some random kayaker not paying attention to the course — or maybe not realizing there was a course. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told them what was going on.
I took RJP’s advice and started at the far edge of the beach, in line with the last green buoy, to avoid the tangles of milfoil at the other end of the beach. It helped a lot. The only milfoil I encountered was a few stray vines in the middle of the lake. One wrapped around my head and I had to fling it off, mid-stroke.
10 Things
clear bubbles, made by my piercing hands
a strange squeaking, rubbing noise as a swan boat neared
often the orange buoys look white, the green ones too
again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I couldn’t see them — only them when I was about 15 feet away from them
the rope tethering the last green buoy to the lake bottom was at a sharp angle
entering the water, I walked past 3 guys skipping rocks at the edge of the water
a few silver flashes
almost ran into another swimmer — I didn’t see them until they were right there
sighting a green buoy, swimming towards it, seeing a sailboat near it and wondering if I had seen the buoy at all or just a boat — always, the buoy was there
my first few steps in the water: brrrrr! very cold — I warmed up but felt very cold by the end, after sitting at Painted Turtle for a half an hour, my heels were numb
A sunny afternoon. Warmer than I thought it would be. Not an easy run, but I did it, and I got to travel on the winchell trail, which was shaded. Mostly the trail was in complete shade, but occasionally some sun came through. In a few spots it glowed so much that I wondered if it was white paint. Nope — I double-checked, just sun. I heard some kids above, then a person sitting on the 38th street steps having a disturbing conversation about someone being shot in the head. I hope they were talking about a movie or a tv show.
5 Run and 5 Swim Things
the path was thick with bikers
the road was crowded with cars
the two benches that I recall noticing were occupied
puddles on the trail from last night’s rain
2 kids on the dirt part of the winchell trail — the younger kid to the older one: do it! the older kid’s response: that’s mean!s
several military jets flying above the lake
water color: a pale blue-green
little spirits at my feet! (minnows near the shore)
a few friends: sediment and bubbles
the water was so low — near the shore, it was far from the lifeguard stands and there was a little drop-off near the water
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 70 degrees
A great swim! Again, I swam straight to the buoys without seeing them. And when I couldn’t see anything but water and trees and sky, I didn’t panic at all.
A few silver flashes below. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. Sometimes, 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right. Steady strokes. Sometimes I was sore, sometimes I was worried about my heart rate1, and all of time I was deeply grateful to be swimming in this lake with my strong shoulders and back.
Some dog updates
First, on Saturday, Delia the dog started limping and not putting any weight on her back left leg. On Monday the vet delivered the bad news: a torn ACL. Major bummer! Delia is in good spirits. In fact, she’s managed to figure out how to hop on that leg pretty effectively. It’s hard having to stop her. Currently we’re trying to decide between surgery or not. If she were a bigger dog, there would be no question: surgery. But, with smaller dogs, taking it easy and rehabbing might be enough. Surgery is expensive and traumatic, but so is not being able to run and jump and do much of anything for many months.
Second, it is seeming more likely that the off leash dog park will be closing by the end of 2026. It is on sacred Dakota land, I support the returning of this land (see this article for more info). At first, I was sad about losing it, but then Delia tore her ACL and we think it might have been at least partly due to an aggressive and unsupervised dog at the park. Many dog owners are great with their dogs at the park, but some use it as daycare, ignoring the rules of keeping your dog within sight. Even if the dog park stayed open, I don’t think we would taking Delia back there.
2.76 degre5 loops (5 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 76 degrees
The first open swim at cedar lake. It was great. I swam for (almost) an hour. The water was cold, but not too choppy or fishy or full of vegetation. Only 2 or 3 big vines wrapped around my head or shoulder. My hands were cold by the fourth loop and my neck was sore.
10 Things
big white clouds up above as I swam
dark purple-ish clouds hovering as we drove away
the vine that wrapped around my shoulders was scratchy and sharp, the one that wrapped around my head was not
a new lifeguard — he was very enthusiastic and earnest about giving people information about open swim
a small bird or a dragonfly zoomed in front of me once as I lifted my head
successful sighting heading towards hidden beach — after a few years of trying, I think I’ve cracked the code!
bright pink and yellow buoys
bright green caps
bubbles — made as my hand pierced the water
clear enough to see my hand and my watch and the bottom right near shore but not much else
spider web
I’m stepping back from devoting all of my attention to the holes and lines and spiders and webs (at least I think I am), but I wanted to try out a web over one of my four panel found poems. So far, I’ve created a basic web over the unmarked text. Next, I might figure out how to mark the text and/or create a distorted (NASA drugged-out) web. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m slow in figuring out how to make things, but eventually I get there. Today I learned that for strength purposes, I should create the outer rings of the web first. Also learned that passing the thread over then under when looping makes it tighter. I think I’d like to study how the spider makes the orb web some more for ideas.
4 miles up to wabun, down to lock and dam 60 degrees wind: 14 mph
I was supposed to do open swim this morning, but it was 57 degrees and very windy and I decided that was too much for me this early in the season. Lots of wind = choppier water = more sighting = sore neck, So instead I watched Paul (steak sause not sexass) Seixas abandon and Del Toro win, then went out for a windy run.
It was a tough decision not to swim; I really don’t like missing open swims. But, as I walked through our alley before I started the run and felt the cool and windy air, I was glad I hadn’t gone. The run was good. The first 5 minutes always feel strange now. Is it that my shoes aren’t quite right, or that I’m getting older, or something else I’m not imagining? I think it’s more a redesign of the shoes than anything else.
I don’t remember what I thought about, and not much of what I noticed. I ran on the narrow and root-y strip of dirt in the grassy boulevard until I reached the 44th street parking lot. I don’t remember hearing any distinctive birds or avoiding any squirrels.
10 Things
a trio of roller skiers on the double bridge
2 bikers crossing in front of me to bike down to the overlook at the south entrance of the winchell trail
a bike zooming by me
a man sitting on a bench near the locks and dam, fishing
a squeaking noise as something on a light pole was jarred loose in the wind
choppy water under the ford bridge
the dirt path that winds through the grass was narrower in past years — are people using it less?
someone slowly jogging up the locks and dam hill, then stopping at the top
3 people spread across the bottom of the wabun hill, one of them pusing a bike and holding a (too) loose leash with a small dog
an older couple, the man pushing a walker, on the edge of the trail near the coyote den nearby sign, looking at something — the river? the coyote den? something across, on the east bank?
For most of the run I don’t remember much of what I heard. For the last mile, I listened to my “It’s Windy” playlist. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze.”
I almost forgot about the shadows! Actually, I did forget about the shadow for several hours until suddenly they popped into my head. At the locks and dam, running by a fence, I saw some sharp shadows and stopped to take a picture:
shadows / locks and dam no 1 / 14 june 2026
Fence and shadow, shadow and fence. Which is more real?
1 loop lake nokomis open swim 69 degrees wind: 16 mph / gusts: 32 mph
The first Friday morning open swim! Windy. Again, the water temperature was warmer than the air. In the water: ah! Out of the water: brrrrr!! The new way to start the swim: swimming through a patch of thick vegetation. Oh well. I’ll get used to it during open swim. A question: will it be possible to swim around the white buoys on days I don’t have open swim, or will the weeds be too thick? Maybe I can find out by going for a morning swim on Monday?
RJP came with me to the lake. She wasn’t ready to swim across the lake, and said she might try going in for a swim in the beach area. When I returned from my first loop, there she was! We swam together for a few minutes, then I convinced her to swim out to the white buoy. She did, but it freaked her out, especially when she saw the little big of milfoil there. I told her that the milfoil was much, much worse on the other side. We agreed that she might not be ready to swim across the lake this summer. She might try to swim at a pool instead.
It was almost impossible for me to see the buoys heading toward the little beach. Because it was morning, the sun was in my eyes. I kept swimming and didn’t panic when nothing but waves and trees and blue sky were in front of me. Eventually, the flash of the buoy far off to my right. I adjusted it, then swam straight to the third buoy. On the way back, it was easier to see the buoys, but harder to stroke through the water. So much chop! Mostly, I didn’t mind the water being choppy, although it did tire me out.
10 Things
slimy lake floor — covered with milfoil leaves
sparkles on the water surface
ghost vines, 1: reaching up, far enough down in some spot near shore that I could only see the ghostly tips
ghost vines, 2: clustered just below the surface, making it impossible to swim a full freestyle stroke
shaft of light reaching down to the bottom at an angle
1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right
1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
2-3 foot waves, rolling at an angle
finishing the swim, standing up, feeling the very cold air
standing in the shallower water (almost up to my shoulders), a small black bird — small enough that I thought it might be a butterfly — flew right past my face
things not noticed or forgotten: sparkle friends, bubbles, silver flashes, the water surface glowing orange because of a reflection from the orange buoy, sailboats, menacing swans, kayakers
He thrashed his way across the yellow lake, high in the water streaming past his shoulders one arm akimbo, then the other, feet churning like a paddlewheel behind, and never faltering to whistle, whoop, spout like a whale, but simply, ceaselessly trudgening forward to attack the water the lake had clamped between its bulldozed knees.
That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder, that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs, that deafness, purposefulness, isolation he kept despite the hurl of rushing waterā these were the obsessions of a poet who celebrates the instincts of his body religiously as one who greets the sunrise crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.
For more than forty years I’ve watched this swimmer in elements no less unknown than water tell secrets of the ways we make a poem, the way of Lilburne Lewis with an ax, the way of entrance to a woman’s body, the way a deer can bleed to death in snow.
The swimmer’s ears are sealed from careless words that picnickers are shouting from the shore: his eyes squeeze shut, to open only when he takes a sight upon that destination to which ambition, force, despair have pointed.
How can he, in the cavern of the lake, let up his churning enterprise to listen, since, for the sake of breathing, he must swim as though the shore ahead did not recede, as though he did not know we never arrive?
His body keeps the pulse of water music that swimmers cradle as they force a passage, forever pressing the receding shore, crazed one-eyed gods who gape into the sun.
Oh, I like this! The description of the poet as swimmer resonates for me.
That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder, that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs, that deafness, purposefulness, isolation he kept despite the hurl of rushing waterā these were the obsessions of a poet who celebrates the instincts of his body religiously as one who greets the sunrise crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.
Celebrating the instincts of the body. Yes!
The “for Robert Penn Warren” in the epitaph was in another swimming poem I found earlier in the search (Swimming After Thoughts/ Jay Parini). Did RPWarren swim a lot? Yes, and it was deeply connected to his writing/creating process:
The rhythm of Robert Penn Warrenās life now is settled but not sedate. He rises early, fixes his own breakfast, exercises with a set of barbells kept on the living room floor then dons trunks and a plastic cap and makes the short walk to a bower-hidden swimming hole behind his summer home. He swims nearly a mile in the chilly water, sculling along at a steady, rigorous pace. The clay-bottomed pool is surrounded by ferns and high trees, and in the morningāas thin, miasmic bars of sunlight filter down, dappling the water in tones of emerald and goldāit is Edenic. Here, his body aching slightly from the exertion and his mind free from worries, Warren slips into a creative trance. This is the the hour when the images bloom. The swims are never draining, are in fact less taxing than distance running, the exercise he used to stimulate himself when he was younger. As Warren strokes back and forth through the glittering pond, a poem usually flowers.Ā
Continuing to read, I found this cool connection to a writer and their memoir about vision loss that I checked out and read (some of, at least) 6 or more years ago:
Three years ago, Eleanor Clark was partially blinded by the disease macular degeneration. At first, the condition seemed hopeless and was emotionally devastating. Clark had written several books, and in 1965 had won the National Book Award for her non-fiction account of the men and women who work in the French oyster industry,Ā The Oysters of Locmariaquer. Her vision stabilized about six months after she was stricken, allowing her to perceive dim, impressionistic glimpses of the world and return to her writing. Composing sentences by drawing giant Magic Marker letters on blank sheets of newsprint then transcribing these jottings with a large-type typewriter while peering through a lighted magnifying glass, she wrote a book about the fight to regain control of her life: Eye, etc.
RPWarren’s wife is Eleanor Clark, the author of Eye, etc! I recognized the book from the description of her writing process with big black markers. I should return to this book! (I just requested it from my local library!)
8.1 miles ford loop + hidden falls 64 degrees dew point: 59
Technically, if I follow Scott’s plan, I’m supposed to run 9 miles today. But I’m going hiking at the dog park later this morning and swimming at the lake this evening, so I kept it to 8. I wasn’t fast, but I’m pleased with this run. I didn’t feel great at the beginning; it was very sticky and breathing wasn’t that easy. My heart rate shot up pretty fast, too. I wondered how I could keep running when it was already so hot and I felt so bad. Then I decided to not worry about how much I walked and to just keep going. For the ford loop (the first 4 miles), I ran until my heart rate reached 169, then I walked until it got down to 125. At Hidden Falls, I tried something new: run 90 seconds, walk 30 seconds. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having to look at my watch so much and stopping every 1.5 minutes, but I didn’t mind it, and breaking the time up into small increments made it go by faster — or made me think less about it as some big, overwhelming amount. This is the Galloway method of training. I think I’ll try it on my next long run for the entire run.
For most of the run, I listened to my book, Ariadne. For the last mile, I listened to my bunnies playlist.
5 Running and 5 Hiking Things
the overcast sky made the green in the tunnel of trees seem deeper and darker
a slash of orange on the ancient boulder
a big log floating in the river near the east side of the ford bridge — was it a log? a boat? a person?
a coxswain calling out instructions over his bullhorn to some rowers — heard, not seen
roots buckling the sidewalk, looking like slithering snakes
the entrance to the dog park was dark and green and inviting in an almost sinister way
evidence all around of the big storm 2 nights ago: giant felled trees, trunks tipped over and reaching for the river, a thick branch that must have been blocking the trail before someone cut it
drops of rain hitting the surface of the river, creating slight ripples that distorted the water near the shore
bark bark bark bark bark bark — an enthusiastic dog
kerplunk! splash! a dog swimming more than halfway across the river, moving fast
hike: 40 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 63 degrees drizzle off and on
dog name:the swimming dog’s name was Millie — okay Millie, come here — a human calling to the dog
According to FWA, it’s supposed to rain off and on all day. We managed to mostly miss it, only a few drips on the river surface. We talked about terrible chemistry professors and doing hip thrusts with weights on your lap. FWA performed an imaginary conversation between Delia and another dog. In this conversation, they talked about how great the dog park is. Delia bragged about getting to come twice a week and the other dog said they only went once but that the yard surrounding their mansion was bigger than the dog park.
First: find a body of water to sit with and listen.Ā A river, a lake, an oceanālet it connect with the water inside of you. And let the sound that it makes work on your body and your mind and your heart.
Second: build your relationship with the water. Listen for what the water has awakened inside of you. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body? What stories are brought to the surface?
Third: follow the reverberations. Write down some of your thoughts, your feelings, your memories. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, or about making things sound writerly or whether they make sense or not.
Fourth: make an offering to the water. Share what the water gave life to in the form of your poem. Touch the water and give thanks.
waterlogged: heavy with water, dense, difficult to manage, not dry, less buoyant, damaged/distorted/warped by excess water, soggy, characterized by the presence of a lot of water
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 64 degrees (air) 71 degrees (water)
After finishing my run and the hike, it started raining. Off and on, all day. By the time I went to open swim the temperature had dropped enough that the water was much warmer than the air. There was wind, too, which made the water choppy. I didn’t care. It was fun to swim into and through the waves. I swam straight to many of the buoys even when I barely realized I was seeing them. I think I did less sighting and more swimming without looking. It’s strange how much more comfortable I feel now when I see so much less.
a regular:As I exited the water an older man heading in asked me how it was. I said, it’s choppy, but I like it that way. He agreed and then we talked about the crazy amount of milfoil in the water. I have decided that I have said enough about it — it’s out of control and dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of someone drowning in it. And, like blue green algae blooms, I just need to get used to it and find ways to avoid and/or endure it. Just before he left, the man introduced himself and shook my hand. I’m Joe. / I’m Sara./ Nice to meet you.
Other things I remember: a few patches of blue sky; opaque water with a few silver flashes; a woman swimming, her arms entering the water without her elbows bending; the roar of rushing wind; swimming just barely over the top of the milfoil; the ridgeline of the wave as it rippled over the water; a swimmer exerting a lot of extra energy kicking, white foam everywhere; the hard bump of my safety buoy hitting me in the waves; the silcence and solitude when I stopped in the middle of the lake; looking to my right and seeing a dark line of clouds, hovering
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 other1, 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 or 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
Unsuccessfully attempting to weed-whack around it, giving up and hand-pulling the tall, flowering grass
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
this winter/early spring, I could hear a woodpecker drumming on its dead wood — brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
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
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
recently noticed: a big eye in the middle of the trunk where a sizable branch used to be
the leaves on this trees, which turn a golden yellow, are the last to fall in November
all i can see of this tree from the two windows in front of my desk is the edge of its trunk
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
I won’t miss having to sweep up whirly gigs on the front sidewalk or pull 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 he 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 term2: de/buffing. Used in sentence: 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 landing 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 / the branch 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!
11:10am
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 Groffās collection of short stories Delicate Edible Birds, but I had no idea that here was another work of swim-lit. Like Groffās first novel, the marvelous The Monsters of Templeton, these stories take place around bodies of water, and theyāre also much concerned with swimming and swimmers. (Iāve not finished the book yet, but Iāve just started reading one story about a deep-sea diver). I realized that Iād read the story L. Debard and Aliette before, in the 2006 Atlantic Fiction Issue, and remember it quite vividly these years laterā turned out I liked Lauren Groff before I even knew Lauren Groff. Itās 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.
2:30 pm — workers are done, tree is gone, only a 4 ft stump that we have to figure out what to do with remains — 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’s always safer to bike slow when you can’t focus fast. 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 one 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 swan boats 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.
10 Water Things (the morning after)
murky water, but enough clarity for me to be able to see my hand and watch and . . .
bubbles! my bubble friends are back — clear little orbs stirred up as my hands entered the water
a scratchy-squeaky noise as I neared another swimmer — was it their wetsuit? a cracking of a joint or a bone or?
vines 1: started out by swimming straight into a knot of milfoil — when I tried to do a full stroke green strings wrapped around my wrist — join us down below, they seemed to be whispering
vines 2: at the end of the second loop, near the white buoys, ghostly vines emerging from below, not yet close enough to touch
vines 3: rounding the far white buoy, getting stuck in another tangle of milfoil — as I said to another swimmer a few minutes later, I’m a very strong swimmer and those vines made me nervous!
finding one distinctive break in the green in an otherwise generic tree line to use to sight the far green buoy
this year, there are 2 orange buoys and 3 green ones
noticing the pale rope that tethers the buoy to the lake floor as I swam over it
suddenly noticing something in front of me, stopping and hearing a person in a kayak call out, kayak — I think it was a lifeguard, but it could have just been a clueless kayaker crossing the swim course
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
a biker blasting music from speakers — country music (I think) — before I could hear much of it, it was distorted by the Doppler effect
the brown sign that reads, caution, coyote den, is still there — are the coyotes?
bright headlights piercing through the dark green and gray
the sewer pipe near 42nd was gushing
a long line of cars on the road
a string of bikers on the path
a few puddles
the wind picked up, the trees shifted, making me wonder if it started raining agin
a group of kids laughing somewhere in the distance, approaching
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 referencein 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 sight 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 Odysseusās protector in The Odyssey?) with the precise, calculated work of a spider, breathing a different kind of life into the ādiscolouredā world without the watercolors. The two versions of Nobody create a counter-parallel universe for Oswaldās reimagination of The Odyssey, revisualizing the epic as a collage made out of imagist fragments or glimpses of āwater-stories,ā 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.
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!
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
a woman with a hose, watering some flowers in her front yard. as we ran by, she called out: free shower?
a loud hose hissing nearby
a lively game on the pickle ball court, with an enthusiastic player cheering loudly for someone
everything completely still, heavy — Scott pointed out how the tops of the trees weren’t moving at all
blue water with many sparkles
blue-green algae advisory at the beach, 2 kids in the water
running over the bridge, looking down and seeing the glowing green water — yuck!
passing another runner with a dog — good morning! / morning!
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?
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
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
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
workers on the other side of the lake street bridge, fixing something and making a lot of noise doing it
glittering waves close to the easi bank
shadow falls was falling vigorously
running up from the under the bridge on the st. paul side, looking below at the water, envious of my shadow in the water
on the ledge of the overlook at the monument: a insulated coffee mug, white
below the overlook, a person with a dog
tea kettle tea kettle or cheeseburger cheeseburger — a carolina wren somewhere
a person wearing something bright orange, sitting with their bike near the upper entrance to shadow falls
kids being dropped off at the daycare at the church, some by car, one by bike
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!
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
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
no cars on the way down to the locks and dam, only one car parked at the bottom
some voices above me, on the trail going up to Wabun or on the ford bridge
an orange water cooler with a sing, “Mill City Running” near the bench above the edge of the world
empty benches — maybe one or two occupied
a biker passing, blasting techno music — even if there had been a doppler effect on the music how would you be able to tell?
swallowed a bug — forgot about it until an hour later when I had a few coughing bouts — Bug! I called out, to no one
the rush of leaves through the trees sounding like falling water
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
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 ā 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 ā swimmer and vision, buoy and body, to sight and to rarely see.
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
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
that sand! — so soft and deep and slippery — the coolness of it as it poured into my sandal
kerplunk! crash! a very large something thrashing through the water — a big dog, I thought — no, 2 or 3 big dogs
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!
two big dogs running beside then past me — any closer and they would have taken me out
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
a strange and loud knocking or clanking sound up above us, in the tree
dog after dog after big dog, flashing past, some barking, some silent — somehow the silent ones felt even more unnerving
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
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!
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
Cooler this morning, earlier too. My goal was to run at 7. My watch says I started the run at 7:07, which means I left the house around 7. Nice. Wore my old (2021, I think) Sauconys that I stopped wearing because they made by big left toe hurt. At mile 4, my toe started hurting again. Bummer. Back to Brooks again or buying a new pair of cheaper Sauconys.
Ran to the falls without headphones, listening to the cars and the geese returning north. Ran back listening to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and The Jazz Crusader’s “Young Rabbits” helped me to pick up the pace. I need to create a playlist for pace — maybe mix it in with my beat/metronome experiment: 1 mile with no music or beat / 1 mile with metronome at 172-180 / 1 mile with music.
10 Things
honk honk honk honk geese returning
sparkling water
soft shadows
a runner behind, breathing heavily, closing in, then disappearing — where did they go?
white foam (the falls)
a roller skier — or was it a roller blader?
tufts of symmetrically place ornamental grass mixed with purple blooms near “The Song of Hiawatha”
a woman in a bright yellow windbreaker passing me on a bike, calling out morning!
Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
ending at the big rock that looks like a chair, stepping on it to look down at the oak savanna: green green green
a return
This winter, I replaced many of my regular habits with new ones: (almost) no alcohol; waiting an hour to drink coffee in the morning; more protein, fiber, and iron; instead of sitting at the dining room table for 1+ hours when I woke up reading poems-of-the-day, I watched a brief video then started work on my Holes project; a consistent bedtime routine — ready at 10, asleep by 10:30. I also transformed my workspace. I added a huge cork board to one wall. It’s been fun to mix it up and try new things. I’d like to continue with many of these new things, and I also want to return to a few I’ve shifted away from, especially reading / studying / memorizing other people’s poetry.
In writing this log entry, I decided to visit my favorite poetry sites — poets.org; poetryfoundation, poets.com. On Poetry Foundation I discovered a wonderful podcast series, Wake, Butterfly:
Matsuo BashÅ wrote:
Wake, butterflyā it’s late, we’ve miles to go together.
Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating.
The final installment, which is the first I’ve encountered and will listen to, is with Marie Howe, one of my favorite poets! I think I’ll listen to it on the deck.
an hour or so later: I listened to it as I mowed the back yard. Usually I listen to the Bob’s Burgers Soundtrack (and I did today, too, after the 15 minute podcast ended). I’ve also listened to podcasts with Joy Harjo and Vs. with Danez Smith and Franny Choi, and several Agatha Christie books.
I love Marie Howe’s voice. Two times I recall hearing it before: when she was interviewed for On Being 6 or 7 years ago (at least) and in her brief discussion and recitation of her poem-in-progress, “Singularity.” In this podcast, she describes living with a big Irish Catholic family and the stories they would tell. She talks about war (WWII and Vietnam) and how she found poetry. Then she offers this:
I think the poem uses our stuff, you know, like it uses the details of my life, but the details are not important. The details are the cup ā¦ That hold something you can’t quite see, but you can feel, I hope. Because when it works, I feel something I can’t see. When I was writing a book calledĀ What the Living Do, it wasn’t done yet and I didn’t know how it wasn’t done. It had enough pages, it had an arc, I guess. But I was thinking about when I was in high school and. I was living up in the attic of our house with my brother. My brother lived in one room and I lived in another, and my dad would come up there when he was drunk and, um, pester me for hoursāthe way a drunk person does, wanting attention, wanting something, and it was very difficult. That’s one of the stories in my heart about my younger life, and I thought, āOK, what else is also true about that story?ā And I remember actually standing up from my desk in New York here, and turning around, turning my body around 180 degrees and saying, āWhat else is true?ā And I saw my brother Tom, who would come into the room and try to get my dad out, or would come into the room after my dad had left, and I wanted to praise him. So I want to offer you this invitation. Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that storyāquite physicallyāaround the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.
Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that storyāquite physicallyāaround the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.
I love this idea of taking a fixed story and finding something else in that story to praise. I think I need to sit with this one for a few hours.
Before then, this:
The Maples/ Marie Howe
I ask the stand of maples behind the house,
How should I live my life?
They said, shh shh shh . . .
How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.
A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,
And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.
A squirrel scrambled up a trunk
then along the length of a branch.
Stand still, I thought,
See how long you can bear that.
Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,
drinking light breathing.
—
This standing still — seeing how long I can bear it — seems like a great thing to do everyday. As part of this: explore different ways to be still. What is it to be still?
The beginning of this poem reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem that I’ve posted on this log several years ago (2 july 2020):
I Go Down To The Shore/ Mary Oliver
I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shallā what should I do? And the seas says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
My first bike of the season. Every spring since I learned I was losing my central vision, I’m uncertain about my biking. Will I still be able to see? Will it be too scary? Has my vision declined too much (what is too much?)? Today, it was fine. I think that’s mostly because I’ve memorized the path and learned to navigate with less sight. Plus, I don’t try to go too fast (or fast at all, really). What a gift to have another summer to bike to the lake or to downtown or the library or wherever I want!
I brought my goggles and swim cap and a nose plug, but when my goggles leaked and the water was a bit scummy and I forgot to put on my nose plug, I decided not to swim any loops. Instead, I just waded out to water past my shoulders and enjoyed how the water cooled me down. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too cold. Maybe I’ll go swimming tomorrow?
10 Water Things
sparkle friends! close-up, they looked like silvery glitter, with a broader view like some sort of green-ish scum
a very bright blue, cloudless sky
someone swimming freestyle just past the edge of the buoys
little minnows near my feet
just outside of the pink buoys the lake floor was slimy and soft — some sort of vegetation
3 teen girls, locking their bikes up, then complimenting each other on their nails
2 young boys, locking their bikes up, one lamenting to the other, I should have brought my wallet for ice cream!
sitting on a bench facing the water, behind me, 2 bikers talking to each other as they biked — biker one: I didn’t mind walking in the rain, but I was cold. biker two: you were old? biker one: no, I was COLD! biker two: I thought you said old! biker one: Yes, I’m 80 years old!
rustling on the edge of water, under a tree, hidden — a duck? a person? something/someone else?
drifting sounds: a baby crying, a bike chain rattling, a dog collar clanging softly, giggles, 2 adults and a kid talking about ice cream
It was wonderful, and wonderfully cool, to sit on the bench facing the water in the shade. Every year I tell myself that I should spend more time at the lake, and I do spend a lot of time there, swimming loops at open swim, but I could spend even more time. I want this year to be the year that spend the most time that I ever have! Future Sara, let me know how it works out!
hole 6
I printed out the four panels from essay 6, What to Make of the Mother Who Made You, taped it up, and cut a hole in the center. Then I mapped my words with pins on my cork board. First I wound string around the pins, next: embroidery thread.
hole 6
I like bits of it, but it doesn’t work. Not yet. I’m thinking this one might need to wait until the fall. I think it’s time to finish the 3 or 4 of these that I’m satisfied with and temporarily wrap this project up. It’s time for swimming and water and (possibly) starting a YouTube channel to promote my first chapbook, Inklings.
3.1 miles trestle turn around 69 degrees humidity: 74%
The earliest run I’ve done in some time — 7:30, which is not that early. I liked running earlier. Next time, I’d like to run by 7. Greeted Mr. Morning! for the first time in months. All year, I’ve been running later in the morning or early in the afternoon, so I’ve missed seeing all of the regulars.
The other day I remembered that I had a pair of Saucony Cohesions that I’ve only wore a handful of times because they made one of my toes hurt. I wondered if they would work better (that is, hurt less) than my Brooks’ Ghosts. Yes! Ever since I wore an old pair of Saucony’s to mow the lawn, I’ve been thinking about returning to Saucony’s for my marathon training. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair; they’re less than half the price of the Brooks shoes, and they’re navy with light pink soles.
10 Things
the Welcoming Oaks — tall, green
boom boom — construction noise from across the river
clank clank clank — something banging/being banged below the trestle
the crack just north of the trestle is shifting and growing — what once was a crack became a trench, and now a ledge — orange cones all around it as warning
someone was sitting at the sliding bench
a walker in a bright yellow jacket — were they a rower heading down to the rowing club?
the parkway was buzzing with cars commuting to work
bright headlights from an approaching bike
a lone honk from a goose somewhere below
a man and a dog crossing the path then entering a steep trail down to the river through small hole in the wall of green
later in the day: Watching a video about her life as a pro runner, Lauren Gregory said this: “Consistency isn’t just about showing up when things are going well; it’s about building a life that allows you to keep showing up.” For Gregory, this means routine.
I really like combining Gregory’s idea of life-building practices routines with Des Linden’s famous call to keep showing up:
hike: 50 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 77 degrees
A warm, but not as warm as I thought it would be, hike. It started with irritation: a guy standing with his dog right in front of the entrance, blocking the way in, barely moving enough to let us by. Why? We both wondered what he was doing and why, out of all of the places he could be waiting, he was standing right in front of the gate.
Most of the rest of the hike was good. FWA reported on all of the theories about Subnautica 2, and discussed how thoughtful the creators of the game are in their early release — hardly any bugs and a well-developed story. When he mentioned that the area where a huge tree lived was called Xanadu, I asked him if the creators of the game named it that as a more general reference to the pop culture idea of Xanadu, or the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Kahn. He thought it was possible they were referencing the poem. All I could remember from it was most of the first 2 lines: In Xanadu, did Kubla Kahn —- decree.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As eāer beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresherās flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And āmid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ātwould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
dog name: I didn’t hear any dog names directly, but I think I heard a woman, who sounded exasperated, calling to her dog down by the water, Scarlet! Scarlet! Come here!
my 2 favorite sounds: First, the bullfrogs. As we neared the end of the trail, at the beach, I could hear the loud buzz of the frogs. The noise was coming from the other side of the water, where the river turns into a creek that winds through a section of the floodplain forest. Second, Delia’s thundering feet. As Delia ran past me, I could hear her little paws pounding the ground — on sand, then grass, then firmer dirt. I love that sound!
holes / strings
I’m continuing to work on my found poems project, but I’d like to wrap it up so I can spend the summer with water. What I need to do now is document my process so that I can remember what I was doing when I pick it back up in the fall. Will I be able to stop, or will I keep working on it regardless of my intentions? We’ll see.
Before I stop, I’d like to get some orange thread — regular + embroidery — and experiment with incorporating it into my otherwise black and white (and gray) visual poems.
I’d also like to figure out the words for my poem using a NYer essay reviewing memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. In my version, mother = word, and it’s about my fraught relationship with seeing/reading/making sense of the written word.
a few hours later: As I worked on finding words in the essay, phrases and fragments kept popping up, then an idea came to me: Pick out a few of these phrases, which offer a way to describe my experiences reading, particularly in terms of how words connect me to the world. Pair a phrase with one of the spiders-on-drugs webs that has been inspiring me. Map the words on a panel, create the spider web over it. I love the idea; can I actually make it?
Some of the webs are easier than others; all of them seem too much to try without some sort of help. One of Chuck Close’s grids?! I definitely want to do the caffeine web, but I think I should start with something easier, like marijuana:
drug-induced webs
I also want to do “sleeping pills” — especially since I often fall asleep while I’m reading!
spider on sleeping pills makes web
I think I’ll do 3 or 4. Here are the phrases I want to refine/condense:
1
When the forms are too fuzzy I escape into coordinates
note: I like the idea of this and the linking of coordinates to the grid and mapping and my desire to find concrete ways to locate my vision loss, but I’m not sure it makes enough sense as is. I’ll keep thinking about it.
2
the ordinariness of language lost
3
gaze — an act of creation and of demolition — made hole again
4
nothing, subdued, entangled
5
shadows and absences born certainty died (or ruptured?)
6
kinship between eye, world, word confounded threads twisted, knotted, cut
8 miles top of I-94 bridge (near downtown) 61 degrees
Could summer finally be here? I hope so. Scott and I ran north on the river road, down the franklin hill, through the flats, up the I-94 hill, then everything, in reverse. The first 6 or so miles of it felt fine; that last bit, not as much. My feet hurt, and I think it’s because of my shoes. They felt better this week than last week, but I’m still wondering if I should look into some other shoes.
Scott and I talked about amateur runners doping (me), our complicated feelings about bikers (Scott), the virtue of reasonableness (me), labor arbitrage in relation to the production of electric basses (Scott), and how a Lutheran church in south Minneapolis is giving land to an American Indian organization as reparations (me). The first half of the run went by quickly as we talked. During the second half, my feet started hurting, the sun felt warmer, and we were both thirsty, so I noticed the time and the miles more.
11 Things
someone on an elipti-go machine
Hi Dave! / Hi Sara! Hi Scott! — greeting Dave the Daily Walker — it’s been some time since I’ve seen him
click clack click clack — a roller skiers poles
a group of 1/2 dozen bikers, at least 3 of them young kids
a line-up of 4 cars, following behind a slower biker chatting on the phone
a thin, oily-looking skin on the river’s surface in the flats
a lone rower on the river! I listened to their oars gently slapping the water
mostly filled benches
the smell of honeysuckle drifting out of the gorge
rows of black garbage bags filled with vegetation — I think it was Friends of the Mississippi River volunteers removing garlic mustard
the spring that emerges from the rock face below the west bank of the U of M was gushing water
A good run. It helps to run with Scott. Today’s victories: running up the entire (long and steep) I-94 hill; running up 3/4 of the franklin hill; keeping steady for most of the run; finishing a minute faster than last week on a tougher route.
Things to work on: try lock laces; bring water — or stop for water
hike: 55 minutes minnehaha off-leash dog park 60 degrees
note: I’m writing this the next morning. I was so busy working on pasting words for Hole 3 that I forgot to work on it.
Cool, overcast, humid. Some birds, but not as many as on Monday. An unfortunate encounter with a dog and their human who was not giving any attention to the dog and how they were being too aggressive with Delia the dog. At one point, FWA and I had to surround Delia and I called out to the dog, in my don’t-fuck-with-me-mom-voice: good-bye! go away! Finally the human noticed, (sort of) apologized and called to their dog, who ran off. But, as soon as we started moving again, the dog was back. FWA called out, would you please control your dog? And, finally, she did.
Wow, that made us mad. I’m glad that the human didn’t try to engage with us anymore because it might have escalated. A few minutes later, as we kept walking, I thought about the incident with the woman who had felt threatened by a guy she had confronted a few weeks ago in a new way.
FWA and I stewed about the encounter for a few more minutes until we encountered a sweet and HUGE black dog and their human. What breed is your dog? / A Great Russian Terrier. / What’s their name? / George. George! As George approached me, his head at my hip (he is that tall), she warned, George has a wet face. What a sweet face and disposition! FWA agreed, adding that George had the energy of an old soul. Walking away, I wondered about the origins of the Great Russian Terrier, imagining them in Peter the Great’s entourage.
a few minutes later: I was wrong. They were bred by the Soviet Army and served as guard dogs at the Siberian Steppes. Yikes!
Watching this video, I was reminded of George. What a sweet dog, and a sweet human who has cared for him so well!
water level watch: for the past month or so, I’ve been taking note of the rising and falling water level at the beach at the tip of the park. One time, the water had consumed most of the beach, another time it was so low that we could walk far enough to reach a biggish log. Today that log was underwater by about 40 feet (in distance, not depth).
run: 4.5 miles reverse veterans home 64 degrees
Since my blue running shoes seem to be bothering me, I decided to try out my bright yellow shoes again. It felt so strange to run in them for the first 5 minutes, like everything was discombobulated. Awkward, wrong. Slowly I got used to them, but they didn’t feel okay until mile 4. And they never felt great. Sigh. Am I going to need to invest in different shoes?
10 Things
so many cars on the road, zooming past, fast!
the falls were gushing white foam
a line of surreys waiting to take over the paths and annoy Scott
2 people sitting on a bench, another next to them in a wheelchair, all of them laughing about something, having fun
passing a couple, overhearing the guy saying something cliched — I wish I could remember the expression — I think he was being ironic
2 dozen middle-schoolers (I think?) running along the trail — spread out, some fast, some much slower — a track team?
stopping at the huge boulder that looks like a chair, a person emerged out of the oak savanna
a biker’s bright headlight cutting through the trees
big groups of people all around the falls
the faint chiming of the light rail’s recorded bells
A good run — not the best, but definitely not the worst. Other than my feet burning near the end of mile 3 (thanks, warts), I felt strong and fit. For the entire run, I listened to an audiobook that is due in 3 days: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter / Stephen Graham Jones. Such a great book, and difficult/painful to read as it forces me to confront the violence against indigenous peoples that is the inheritance of all settler colonists. The violence in the book (it is a horror book about a vampire) is not gratuitous but reflective of the horrific violence done to American Indians in order to take their land.
holes 3
Today I cut out the words of the poem and pasted them on the essay. Realized after I did it that I should have numbered them — one of my main ways of guiding the reader in what direction to go when reading the words. Oh well, this is only a preliminary version. I played around with how to thread it — from the upper right hand corner to mimic my blooms poem, or in the center and all around. I like the center better. I told RJP that I liked to try using a bigger needle for the center — the eye — and have the thread go through that. RJP told me I need a tapestry needle. Time to go shopping again!
threads over essay
Next up: play around with light to create shadows. As I worked on this thread technique, I wondered if it might not work better for another of my poems about the strings unravelling? Instead of thread for this one, maybe I should focus on playing around with shadows a lot more? Fun!
3.75 miles top of wabun hill, bottom of locks and dam 55 degrees
Goodbye gloom, hello sun! Shadows, the promise of summer returning! I was a little nervous about running this morning because my feet have been hurting ever since my 8 mile run on Monday. But, I was fine. I felt strong and happy to be outside in the sun before bugs and heat join us in a few weeks.
10 Things
green everywhere — nothing more specific, just green and green and green
a voice on a speaker at Dowling Elementary telling kids to stay in the classroom until they were told they were free to move around — was this a safety drill? an active shooter? field day?
cracks and ruts and holes on the paved trail everywhere — more now than in the fall
voices below — rowers? no, walkers on the winchell trail — deep in conversation
4 or 5 cars parked on the way down to the locks and dam — at least 2 were running with radios on
a bright silver flash — sun reflecting off a car hood
empty benches
the water under the ford bridge was mostly a calm blue with a few waves and a faint reflection of the bridge’s arch
nearing the top of the wabun hill, hearing a chainlink fence rattling: someone playing on the frisbee golf course
my face, slick with sweat and the new sunscreen I just bought at Costco yesterday
I listened to feet striking the ground as I ran south, my “slappin’ shaddow” playlist on the way north. Song I remember the most: White Room / Cream
Low Vision
Yesterday I had my first low vision therapy appointment. It was an assessment. She asked me what I’d like help with — she worded it differently, but I can’t remember how. First I said that I’d like help with interacting with people when I can’t see their faces, and then something more useful: I’d like some strategies for dealing with that uncomfortable moment when I enter an unfamiliar place and can’t make sense of my surrounding. She recommended 2 apps to try (more on that later) and the basic technique of grounding myself by standing with my back against a wall and taking a minute to get my bearings. I like the idea of stopping and standing against a wall. Two of my big problems are feeling pressured by others, or having them try to help me when I want to figure it out myself. Standing back should help with those problems.
back to hole 3
Woke up yesterday to a realization: I really like the idea of my specimen board, but the execution of it feels forced and not very interesting. Time to set that one aside for now (or forever?). I decided to finally begin my summary of April’s monthly challenge, partly because I don’t want to get too far behind on my summaries, and partly to shift my attention back to grids and holes and lines. I only needed to read a few days into April to find some (re)direction. Here’s what I wrote on 6 April:
Iām thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me….how reading is so important to that locating and how being located is to be held, to be connected, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you).
6 april
This morning, before my run, I decided to rework hole 3. A new plan:
my standard 4 panels — 3 panels of page 1 of the book review of Helen Oyeyemi’s new book, A New New Me, 1 panel of page 2
4 short verses — the first 3 mostly “found” on one of the 3 page 1s, the 4th made out of the words from verses “1-3 that are “found” on page 2
a grid + hole in the top right corner with many strands of thread emerging from it to cover the words of the poem
The words of the poem:
verse 1: swap out the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision for (with?) looks of shadowed magic
verse 2: Fall through the hole your eyes don’t see, land in a logic of blur and almost
verse 3: read sentences sliced in half, each one glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined
verse 4: in a scramble looks logic, eyes read blur as what is
one tiny cheat: even though I don’t use as in the first 3 verses, I added it to verse 4 because I needed to — can I keep playing around with this to make it fully work?
I would like to have this on my cork board before the sun begins streaming in the front windows. How will the shadows fall on the panels? What might the thread-shadows say? If this looks cool, I’d like that to be part of the poem.
I have the panels up on the cork board. I didn’t have time to do anything but mark where the found words go, but I was able to create some thread lines. Now I wait. And wait. And wait. It wasn’t until 7pm that the shadows began to appear. The ones from the threads weren’t as interesting as I wanted, so I started experimenting with other ways to make shadows. A flash of a thought: tape my blind spot on the window where the light is streaming in so it can cast a shadow on the paper. Yes! I had three templates, so I taped them all up. I want to play with this some more tomorrow — hopefully it will be sunny again!
3 holes taped on window, casting shadow on essay, close-up3 holes taped on window, long view
Whew. Went out early — before coffee or any food — because it was already 68 degrees. The warm temps and unfinished business made the run harder than it should have been. Still, it was a beautiful morning, especially when I was walking and feeling the breeze. A lot of attention was given to making sure I didn’t finally have the poop story that most runner’s seem to have, so was I able to notice 10 things? Yes!
10 Things
the welcoming oaks — green and tall, difficult to see anything other than the trunk
the tree that looks like a tuning fork
light shining on top of ancient boulder, which was empty of rocks
a parks truck under the lake street bridge, workers up in a bucket doing something to the bridge, listening to music — a familiar classic rock song — was it Hotel California?
the river, the air were still, quiet
a flash of a sound below — was that a coxswain?
a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt
the mitten tulips are still up, near the trestle
two older white women, dressed all in black, discussing nutrition
the sliding bench seems to have slid a bit more, the green beneath has grown thicker and greener
holes
Last night I had a thought: create a visual poem that uses the image of bugs pinned to a specimen board as a way to critically express the idea of words trapped in fixed meanings. But, which NYer essay, which found poem? This morning, another thought: use the essay about the New York cemetery (Hole 4 / Still Green) and part of the poem that I had previously cut. Yes!
draft, previously cut text:
you can’t exhume the bodies but you can make room for life in this place where the dead are interred
crack open a grave with a new way of seeing (or reading?)
inspirations: a specimen board + Alice in Wonderland, caterpillar scene
boards at Manitoba Museumspecimen drawersthe collection before processing/pinning
I could imagine this as part of an installation, with the words/phrases cut out individually and positioned in a heap with a label identifying them. The second image has the specimen’s in a drawer. I’d like ot experiment with that too — O have a jewelry box that might work for that, and drawers from an old optometrist desk. Fun!
I mentioned Alice in Wonderland as an inspiration because of how prominent making language strange is in this scene. Also, the bug connection, and the butterfly at the end!
Alice, the Caterpillar, and the strangeness of words
I came up with this idea because pins seem to be playing a prominent role in my visual poetry. They started as the temporary way to achieve the effect I wanted, but at some point I realized that they were another character in my visual story.
The question now: do I work on this now, or keep working on my blooms? Sara-this-second’s answer is: blooms first!
Woke up this morning and couldn’t believe how warm it felt. Is spring over, and summer here? I’d like the lake water to warm up, but I don’t want it to be this warm yet. Wore my summer (lack of) layers: shorts, tank top, baseball cap. Encountered lots of bikes whizzing by, at least 2 pelotons, too.
best biking moment: a biker passing another biker hauling a trailer with at least one kid who I heard laughing and yelling out in delight as they approached from behind. kid in trailer calling out, Fun! as the biker passed. passing biker: on your left then FUN!
I felt relaxed and unhitched from the world, floating. It was partly from the effort of moving this much under the warm sun, partly from my vision, and partly from the dreamy, surreal way the shadows of leaves-in-wind danced on the asphalt.
10 Things
bright yellow vests on many of the bikers, a few walkers
kids laughing on the school playground
the white foam of the falls falling
more bursting/blooming shadows
the parking lots at the falls were blocked off — were they planning to repaint the lines, or trim trees, or what?
a rushing creek
the siren from an ambulance near the falls, uttering a half-scream every few seconds — warning cars to get out of the way?
the smell of fertilizer on the ornamental grass near the wall with “Song of hiawatha”
a dozen bikers stopped near the hill up to the ford bridge — as I passed them, I heard one say, is everyone ready?
empty benches
I listened to the wind as I ran south, my “It’s Windy” playlist heading north. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze” / Seals & Crofts
holes — blooms
Woke up thinking about flowers and blooms and decided to watch the singing flower scene from Alice in Wonderland for inspiration. Less than a minute in, I found this flower, which I love. It’s orange and messy and more about texture than any fine detail. Can I replicate it on a page? Will it work? Can I put the text of the found poem in the center of it?
an orange flower singing to Alice
And here’s that flower flanked by two others, just starting to sing. Instead of the mouths, the word of the poem?
pink / orange / pink flowers singing
Okay, and here’s a different flower with the same general form (or is it the same flower?)
2 orange flowers / dandelion and tiger lily
note: it was only when looking at the similar thumbnail image that I was able to see the lion. I was struck by this image because of the spiky petals and the messy, but easily identifiable shape. I might be able to replicate this.
nonsense blooming
a few hours later: The bloom has gone through a number of iterations today. Where I’ve landed now is this:
Noticed that an old notepad I have — from way back when I was teaching at the U, around 2010 — is bright orange and decided to use it in my blooms, so I cut out a circle of it to use as the base
took a page of the essay and colored it in with orange colored pencil
used my template for my blind spot and drew, then cut out, petals from it
glued the petals on, then the word from the poem
big picturecloser-up
The problem: it doesn’t look good. Also the problem: Gluing and arranging the petals in/on the orange circle requires good working central vision, which I don’t have. The orange circle is the location of my blind spot, so everything that enters it disappears. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Maybe I should ditch the petals in the shape of my working central vision and try something else. But what? No petals? Petals made from words? Petals made from shedded paper with the words of the essay (colored orange) on it?
an hour later: I took a page of the essay and shredded it, then shredded a few small pages of bright ORANGE paper. Then, after some trial and error, decided on a new approach. I pushed individual shreds of the essay and the orange paper through a pin to create a “3-D” flower. Tomorrow I’m thinking of switching out the words of the poem in circles for the words enlarged and cut-out like I did for Hole 1: in the shape of a rectangle and glued in the space where they exist in the essay. Here’s the first, quick version of my flower:
word flower, made from shredded text and orange paper
I like this and, more importantly, I can execute it with my terrible central vision. I’d like to try making one that has even more shredded paper to see how that works.
Wow, this took a LONG time. How fun to waste so much time in such a glorious way! Whatever the finished product looks like to others, the process of experimenting and not listening to the Censor who tries to shut me down (saying, you’re not an artist! or you don’t make things! or people who can’t see don’t do visual art!), is such an important thing to do, particularly for me as I try to reclaim my agency in the wake of vision loss. Plus, I feel connected to my mom when I’m doing these things. She was an amazing artist. I wish she was still alive; she would have some great ideas for me!
50 minutes minnehaha off-leash dog park 53 degrees
Spring! Another beautiful dog park morning. Today it was calm and quiet, with a soft breeze. So many birds that I couldn’t identify. Soft sand, still water, no bugs. I talked about how great it would be to spend the entire day hiking then camping somewhere. No time or energy for worrying thoughts. FWA said that that was how band tour had always been for hime.
10 Things
the soft knocking of a woodpecker
a map of the dog park near a chain-link fence
a dog named Rosie whose grandmother was named Rosie
a HUGE tree trunk, stripped bare
green crawling up trunks — new leaves
big dogs suddenly appearing, running silenting through the trees at full speed
a litte dog, also quiet, chasing Delia then running off, then chasing her again
a field full of dandelions
the very strong smell of poop suddenly — FWA and I both checked our shoes to make sure we hadn’t stepped in something
feet sinking into soft sand, almost tripping on little rocks
hole 5a
My found text in the NYer essay, “Mystery Man” — a what is this? feeling grows as text blooms into nonsense — is the inspiration for my visual approach to Hole 5a. Each found word is the white center to a flower bloom made from petals cut out of the essay in the shape of my small, still functioning central vision. Yesterday, I cut out the petals (more practice with scissors! I’m getting better!) and the words. Today I need to figure out how to make the blooms. Here, making = creating an easy process for forming the bloom, gluing it together, arranging it on the pages, and affixing it to those pages. A key consideration: develop a process that is forgiving so that if I screw one bloom up I’m not screwing up the entire, 4 panel, poem.
With my vision, these blooms are much harder to create than I had anticipated. I can only see approximately how the should/could line up. Scott had a great idea: color them. Yes! I’ve decided to color the petals orange, using a colored pencil. Coloring them helps me to see them a little better, but I still need more practice on making them look good enough to use.
2 attempts at orange blooms
top: I had already glued the flower together when Scott suggested coloring them, so I had to color them as one.
bottom: I colored the petals separately, then glued them on a white sheet of paper, then glued on the word and cut the whole thing out.
More practice tomorrow. At first, I was discouraged at how hard it was to do this, and how bad my flowers looked, gut then I remembered I could practice and keep trying and they probably will look better.
I tried looking up “making paper flowers” online, but only YouTube videos came up, and those are almost impossible for me to follow with my bad vision. I’ll have to be more precise with my search. I decided to look up images of paper flowers — it was mostly screen shots from YouTube videos — and then I looked up images of flowers. A thought: My flower should be an easy, approximate shape — what about a circular shape with lots of small petals — this would be less about lining up petals abd more about texture.
Another thought: get inspired by looking up flowers. Find a shape that is visually interesting and that I can do! Yesterday, RJP got me flowers for mother’s day. Do any of these work?
mother’s day flowers
I don’t really think so. I’m excited to be curious about flowers tomorrow morning and find one that works for this project — and my vision!
a quick note: I just remembered how much I love globe thistles because they’re cool looking and because my mom liked them. I liked to try doing something with it! I just remembered that my mother-in-law bought me a wonderful book about garden flowers for mother’s day years ago. The globe thistle is in it, with a great picture!
run: 7 miles walk: 2 miles around lake nokomis and back 52 degrees
A long run with Scott. The plan: run to lake nokomis and around it, stop at falls coffee, walk home the rest of the way. Falls coffee was too crowded, so we tried Aria instead. Very good. Most of the run felt good. We did 9/1, then at the lake run 1 mile, walk 1/10th of a mile. The last 1/4 of mile was the hardest. My feet hurt and my legs were sore. The walk back was hard — too long + not enough stretching. Now I’m icing my right knee, which is very stiff.
It was fun to run to the lake. It is the first time this year. Last night we walked to Minnehaha Falls, today we ran to Lake Nokomis. It’s officially summer, Scott said. Hooray! Less than a month until open swim. I couldn’t believe it, but the buoys are already up! Wow, that water must be cold!
Scott told me about a YouTube video he had recently watched: a biker discussing one way the people are stealing bikes, and how we almost fell for it. They lock their bike to your bike, then wait until it’s dark, then they cut your lock. How to avoid this: carry extra locks to buy some time, or try to find a police officer and get them to cut the lock off. Also: lock your bike in a public, clearly visible place, and don’t lock to a pole that someone might be able to lift or unbolt. I talked about my holes project, memories of past runs, and how June 1st (Scott) and June 2nd) will be our 15th running anniversary. I also returned us to a discussion from a few days ago about what it might have looked like when passenger pigeons covered the sky in the late 1800s. When I had described it a few days ago as “blotting out the sun,” Scott had said that that poetic imagery wasn’t accurate. Today I talked about how, when I’m swimming in the lake and a cloud covers the sun, it does feel dramatic and like the sun if being blotted out. We agreed that it wasn’t as complete as a solar eclipse, but that it probably made the sky darker. Like day for night, I said.
quick research after the run: Here’s a quote I found that describes this blotting out:
In the early 1800s, ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a single flock, which he estimated at 2.3 billion passenger pigeons, that blacked out the sky and took three days to pass overhead.
2 of the pickleball courts were empty — is pickleball falling out of favor, or is there some other explanation?
the lake water was blue and choppy
halfway around the lake, a loud splash — was it a fish jumping out of the water, a duck diving down?
running past Howe, noticing a plane ascending at (what seemed to me to be) a very steep pitch
nokomis road at the spot that crosses the bike path was closed again — why? — last summer it was closed, too
the little beach barely seems like a beach these days — the big tree, which offered so much shade, is gone, and the water has claimed half of the sand
the condition of the path was terrible — big cracks marked with orange spray paint everywhere
crossing the cedar bridge, near a light post, hearing this squeaking noise, we both wondered if the noise was made by a bird or the tall post
no flowers yet at longfellow garden
walking home, a memory flashed — the last time I remember walking home this way — after a run, with coffee in my hand, was on my birthday in 2021. I didn’t know it, but I had covid
note: we ran beside the creek for more than a mile, but I can’t remember noticing it at all. Was it high? Low? Babbling or gushing? I have no recollection.
holes
Today, I hope to finish drawing the numbers on Hole 5c (the hole process). I’m also working on Hole 5a (my hole perspective): life on the way to wonder land / a what is this? feeling grows / as text blooms into nonsense This version of the hole is referencing Alice in Wonderland and going down the rabbit hole. Do the images of the falling down a hole and blooms work together? Could I combine a page made dark with lines and thread with blooms of text? For the blooms, I’m thinking of making petals out of cut out words from the essay. I like this idea of texture; the blooms would stick out of the flat essay pages. Blooms/bursts/flares of light with the center of the flower being the word of the poem?
during the run: As I mentioned my ideas to Scott, I had another thought — what if the blooming was like my favorite spring shadows, the shadows of the little leaf explosions on the tips of branches. Instead of making those shadows dark, they would be bursts of white/light against the dark text?
As a place to start, I’m trying out slanted lines for darkening the text. Is this enough? I think I’ll try drawing in some more lines. An additional question: how will it look when all the panels are put together?
My hole perspective, lines 1
The white dot is where some wirds from the poem are on the page and the center of a future bloom.
I found a tutorial for making paper roses. It’s more than I imagine I’ll do, but a starting point for thinking how to create a bloom on the page.
ideas for blooming paper
I won’t use cardstock for my petals, but another print out of the essay. Will it work? Sunday (or Monday) Sara will find out!
I almost forgot. I signed RJP and I up for open swim!! It starts in a month.
