run: 2 miles
2 trails
81 degrees
dew point: 73
Before biking over for a swim, I decided to run a few miles in the heat. 7 am and already 81. Ugh. Even with the heat, it was nice to get out by the gorge. Was able to greet Mr. Morning. I know I looked at the river, but I don’t remember what I saw. Was it blue? Probably. Was it shimmering? Possibly. Didn’t hear any rowers or roller skiers. A few bikes on the trail, 4 bikes on the road, out for a serious ride, hugging the curb to let cars go by. I heard sprinklers and dripping water and scattered voices.
image: walking up the 38th street steps from the winchell trail to the river road trail, the undersides of the steps had a faint colorful glow — one step was purple, another pink, orange, green, red, yellow. Was it the light? No someone had used chalk to color the steps. For Pride month, I’m assuming. Very cool.
The Alchemist/ Louise Bogan
I burned my life, that I might find
A passion wholly of the mind,
Thought divorced from eye and bone,
Ecstasy come to breath alone.
I broke my life, to seek relief
From the flawed light of love and grief.
With mounting beat the utter fire
Charred existence and desire.
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.
mind/body split described as thought divorced from the eye and bone, and breath alone
unmysterious flesh — not pure mind but something passionate beyond mind and will
I like the rhyme here; it doesn’t feel forced
bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
84 degrees (there) / 88 (back)
So windy and hot! Difficult, especially on the way there. I seemed to be always biking straight into the wind and out of the shade. Other than the heat and the wind and the bright sun, it was great. I’m feeling comfortable on my bike this year.
5 Bike Things / 5 Swim Things
- bike: a big bird — eagle? turkey vulture? — soaring above the falls parking lot
- bike: another biker far ahead, looking small and just in the center of my vision, reminding me of the far off barn in the vision test
- bike: so many e-bikes on the trail, which I think is good and not good — it’s complicated
- bike: more kids splashing and swimming and yelling in the creek — didn’t see them, but heard them and saw an inner tube on the side of the trail
- bike: the stand of trees to the right of the bike trail in the stretch between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis looked deep green and cool and inviting
- swim: minnows and small 6 inch fish near the shore
- swim: the underwater plants looked orange or greenish brown and they didn’t look like plumes or feathers, but like christmas tree branches. did they have an attitude of a plume? what would that be — ornamental? showy? preening? Nope, these plants had an attitude of a fungus or rash or disease — spreading, taking over, menacing
- the light underwater: I can see them as bars, a series of them, slanted and spread out from one central point
- sparkling water above, sparkle friends below
- so choppy from the wind, rocking me — not gentle but not rough either
swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
86 degrees
It was so windy and choppy that they couldn’t put the green buoys in. Just 3 orange buoys today and out and back. I thought maybe I would only do 2 loops, but I felt good enough to do a third. Nice work! The choppy water was difficult — especially breathing — but I liked it. I thought about a poem I wrote that has yet to find a home about stroking straight into waves. Not fighting the lake but taking up its challenge.
The water is still fairly clear and I enjoyed looking at the vegetation and the lake floor as I approached the shore. Much easier to tell when it’s shallow enough to stand up!
During one loop, noticing the sparkle on the water, I suddenly felt happy and grateful and content. What a life! I love swimming in this water.
Just remembered something else: stroking roughly through the water, being buffeted by waves, I felt like a boat moving across choppy water, half-submerged. Yesterday, I was talking to FWA about how I imagine myself less of a fish, more of a boat.
more from Anne Carson and “An Essay on Swimming”:
Saturday 6:30 a.m. Swimming.
the motion of the strange white hands. Gold rungs slide past beneath. 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.
Are my hands white when I swim, or is it just the legs and feet of other swimmers?
Not shafts of light but gold rungs?
The water plants are orange or green, but never red, right? (I’ll check tomorrow).
Plumes is a better description than feathers.
The slow trance of wisdom. Swimming for over an hour in lake nokomis puts me in a trance, for sure.
Friday 8 a.m. Swimming.
On the surface the water is navy blue and
corrugated by wind. Spots of white foam crowd hectically up
and down the waves. there is an urgency to it as if a telephone
were ringing in the house. But there is no telephone in the house.
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen the lake surface navy blue, but I have seen it corrugated. I like that word as a description for a rough surface.
urgency like a telephone ringing in a house, but there is no house. Is there a name for experiencing the same feeling but in a different context. I don’t think this is just metaphor, or is it?
Wednesday 8:30 a.m. Swimming.
the swimmer inserts himself into the dark green glass.
Wednesday 5:45 p.m. Swimming.
The lake is cool and rippled by an inattentive wind. The swimmer moves heavily through an oblique greenish gloom of underwater sunset
from an earlier essay in The Anthropology of Water: “The Wishing Jewel: Introduction to Water Margins:
My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. This line reminds me of a poem I re-encountered yesterday during my “on this day” reading practice:
from Conversation with a Pebble/Alyson Hallett
I kiss the pebble,
Watch the moisture from my lips sink in.
That’s what I’m hiding,
It says. Water. The tiniest Rivers, lakes, seas.
Ideas of what water
Can be. Yes, pebble says,
I am hiding all the world’s memory.
5
I’ve probably missed some, but here are the five letter words (minus plurals) that I found in this entry:
gorge
greet
river
trail
heard
water
voice
street
trail
faint
green
light
chalk
color
pride
month
split
alone
rhyme
windy
shade
great
eagle
above
ahead
small
think
creek
inner
stand
right
brownplume
point
below
rough
today
maybe
third
still
clear
floor
shore
happy
being
about
white
slide
waver
trance
other
never
check
rough windy rhyme
stand still today
below color trance
waver above water
faint floor shore
above gorge being
think inner creek
never point alone
happy water slide
great white check
This is fun!