Tag: Emily Dickinson

jan 29/RUN

5.3 miles
bottom franklin hill and back
33 degrees

Sun! Above freezing! Clear walking paths! Shadows! A nice, relaxed run.

a new experiment

I tried something new today. I picked 5 Emily Dickinson poems that I have memorized, then stopped after each mile to recite one of them into my phone. Mile 1, “Before I got my eye put out”; Mile 2, “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark”; Mile 3, “A Murmur in the Trees”; Mile 4, “A Felt a Funeral in my Brain”; and Mile 5, “A Heard a Fly Buzz when I died.” I didn’t have to stop right at the end of the mile, but just sometime before the next mile. It was fun and made the run go by faster. Sometimes I thought about what I had just recited as I ran, sometimes I didn’t. After “Murmur” I thought about ways to mash its lines up with “We Grow Accustomed” — maybe I’ll work on that more today?

assessment: This experiment was fun and helpfully distracting. I’ll definitely try it again!

10 Things

  1. Hi Dave!
  2. not much snow left on the walking path or the grass — in some places, a lumpy line of snow in the middle of the walking path from where the plow pushed the snow off of the biking trail
  3. a few slippery spots where water was barely ice
  4. the river was mostly frozen with a few spots of dark water
  5. a bird singing, cheeseburger or tea kettle — I guess that’s a chickadee?
  6. the thump of my zipper pull against by neck or chest
  7. a fat bike laboring by — slow and steady
  8. at least one bench was occupied — a person and two dogs
  9. my shadow beside me — sharp and erect
  10. another lone black glove — small

For part of the run, I focused on my rhythmic breathing: 1 2 3 in / 1 2 out. I began chanting: mystery is solved, then history is fact?, then history is wrong, then whose history is that? (which doesn’t quite fit the 3/2), whose story is told, and at whose expense?

jan 13/BIKERUN

bike: 30 minutes
run: 1 mile
basement
outside: 3 degrees / feels like -3

Cold and icy and windy outside, so inside in the basement for me. Watched an old track race while I biked, listened to my remember to forget playlist as I ran. Happy to move my legs and work up a sweat. What did I notice? I don’t remember.

remember — inheritance

gestures, ways of speaking, expressions, eye diseases, anxiety disorders, curiosity, persistence, restlessness, strong legs, a love of water, a need for being outside, the impulse to run away, an edge dweller, conflict avoider, a storyteller

for more on inheritance, see 4 nov 2021

Mary Ruefle and I Remember

I remember a lecture I read by Mary Ruefle in Madness, Rack, and Honey.

Thinking about “I Remember” and remembering, origins and when things began. I thought about how there is a sort of origin point to all of this (my writing poetry) and it’s my eye doctor diagnosing me with a rare eye disease then saying, you should write about it which prompted me to want to work on my writing so I could better explain what I was experiencing. But, I had already been writing and already had those desires, so it was really more of a slight shift, a stutter step or a quick stumble off the path, just briefly, which changed the trajectory, slightly, incrementally. Difficult to pinpoint what all changes your path.

9 may 2023

remember my name

The first song that came up on my playlist was Fame. As I listened to the lyrics — Fame! I’m gonna live forever / Baby remember my name — I started thinking about being remembered forever and fame and names and immortality and Emily Dickinson and JJJJJerome Ellis and their “Liturgy of the Name” in Asters of Ceremonies.

from Liturgy of the Name/ JJJJJerome Ellis

My name, in the time when I cannot utter it, maps the space within me. In an instant the Stutter shuttles me from the present–the barber just asked me my name, my voice fluttering in my throat, struggling not to tremble as the razor presses on my temples–to an ancient place of breath, name, silence, time, creation.

. . .

When the door of my vocal cords closes, another opens. And through that open door I escape into a region I do not know what to call but which is vaster than the space of my body. You could say: my name is the door to my being, and in that interval when I’m stuttering, the door is left wide open and my being rushes out. What rushes in?

jan 6/RUN

5.5 miles
bottom of franklin hill
11 degrees / feels like 5

Another sunny, snowless day. A little wind, some cold air. Wasn’t planning to run 5 miles, but I wanted to get to the bottom of the hill so I could see the surface up close. Iced over — not smooth, but with seams and cracks.

The Mississippi river at the bottom of the franklin hill. White ice, cracks, and shadows on its surface. Beyond it, the east bank with barre branches and blue sky.
ice on mississippi river / 6 jan 2025

I’m glad I took a picture because I did not remember it looking like this! I was visually a surface that was more gray and uniform with cracks creating big and flat sheets of ice. I didn’t remember the shadows or the blue or how uneven it all looked.

As I ran, I listened to my “Remember to Forget” playlist. It started with “I Remember it Well,” from Gigi. I heard the opening lines:

We met at 9
We met at 8
I was on time
No, you were late
Ah yes
I remember it well

I thought — wait, if he thought they were meeting at 9, he wouldn’t have thought he was late if he got there after 8 — yes, these are they thoughts I have as I run. I thought about how subjective memory can be and wondered how certain we could be that she remembered correctly. Then I heard these lyrics:

Ah yes
I remember it well
You wore a gown of gold
I was all in blue

I remembered that meme 4 or 5 years ago with the dress — is it gold or blue? — and thought again about how we can remember things differently. When is it lack of memory, and when did we always just remember it wrong, or unusually, or with a focus on different details, or in a different light?

10 Things

  1. the hollow knocking of a woodpecker
  2. the thumping of wheels over something on the road on the bridge above
  3. 4 stones tightly stacked on the ancient boulder
  4. a section of the fence above a steep part of the bluff, missing, marked off with an orange barricade
  5. the icy river through the trees — blue and white and lonely
  6. daddy long legs at his favorite bench
  7. shadows, 1: mine, off to the side, in the brush next to the trail
  8. shadows, 2: a tree trunk, tall, stretched, looking like a dinosaur
  9. stopping at the edge to put in my headphones, seeing a flare of movement below: someone walking on the winchell trail
  10. the limestones still stacked under the bridge, still looking like a person sitting up and leaning against the bridge

A poem about forgetting:

Said a Blade of Grass/ Kahlil Gibran

Said a blade of grass to an autumn leaf, “You make such a noise falling!  You scatter all my winter dreams.”
 
Said the leaf indignant, “Low-born and low-dwelling!  Songless, peevish thing!  You live not in the upper air and you cannot tell the sound of singing.”
 
Then the autumn leaf lay down upon the earth and slept.  And when spring came she waked again—and she was a blade of grass.
 
And when it was autumn and her winter sleep was upon her, and above her through all the air the leaves were falling, she muttered to herself, “O these autumn leaves!  They make such noise!  They scatter all my winter dreams.”

more forget lines

1

like the moment just before you forgot what it was you were about to say, it was like that, and after that, it was still like that, only all the time.
(Part of Eve’s Discussion/Marie Howe)

2

It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue
recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn
some new constellations.

And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus,
Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.

But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too
(Dead Stars/Ada Limón)

3

See whatever you want
to see. Even
at the moment of death
forget the door

opening on darkness.
See instead the familiar faces
you thought were lost.
(Squint/Linda Pastan)

4

According to Howe, most (all?) of the critical studies of ED as a poet (up to 1985, when this book was written), read ED’s decision to stay isolated in her bedroom for the rest of her life as tragedy and a failure to celebrate herself as a poet (Whitman) or declare herself confidently as the Poet, the Sayer, the Namer (Emerson). Howe argues that she made another choice and writes the following:

She said something subtler. ‘Nature is a Haunted House–but Art–a House that tries to be haunted.’ (L459a)

Yes, gender difference does affect our use of language, and we constantly confront issues of difference, distance, and absence when we write. That doesn’t mean I can relegate women to what we ‘should’ or ‘must’ be doing. Orders suggest hierarchy and category. Categories and hierarchies suggest property. My voice formed from my life belongs to no one else. What I put into words is no longer my possession. Possibility has opened. The future will forget, erase, or recollect and deconstruct every poem. There is a mystic separation between poetic vision and ordinary living. The conditions for poetry rest outside each life at a miraculous reach indifferent to worldly chronology.

My Emily Dickinson/ Susan Howe

jan 4/WALK

20 minutes with Delia
neighborhood
7 degrees / feels like 4

Winter! Heading north, an arctic wind, but otherwise, not bad. Warm sun, no snow. I love being outside and moving. A thought: I should commit to doing one or two long-ish walks each week to somewhere. The library? A coffee place?

10 Things

  1. dead, brown leaves on top of a pile of crusty snow
  2. a high-pitched, quiet whine from a truck on the next block
  3. the bare, gnarled, tall branches of the oak tree on the corner
  4. 2 green dumpsters on the sidewalk outside of Turtle Bread
  5. almost stumbling as I stepped on a small rock or hard chunk of snow
  6. a neighbor on the next block having an animated conversation with the mailman
  7. bark! — Delia the dog unexpectedly barking at them from across the street
  8. bark! bark! bark! — a dog in a backyard calling out to Delia
  9. the tree on the corner across from the Blue Door — dead, most of it trimmed away, more than a stump with a few dead branches still remaining
  10. the sun! heading south, warming my face and making it difficult to see if anyone was approaching

While tagging old entries with “remember/forget,” I came across Emily Dickinson’s poem about forget-me-nots on 2 march 2021, which helped me to remember that I was thinking about it — vaguely — as I ran yesterday!

There are spaces for living
and spaces for forgetting.
Sometimes they’re the same.
(Voiceover/ Rita Dove)

dec 12/BIKERUN

25 minute bike ride
1.5 mile run
basement
outside: 2 degrees / feels like -8
dew point: -6

No running outside for me today. Earlier this morning, when I would have gone out for a run, it felt like -21. Brrrr. I did a short bike and a run in the basement. I don’t remember noticing or thinking about much. One thought: I wonder where the mouse who lives down here is right now? This morning, Scott discovered evidence that it had made its way upstairs: 3 pebbles of poop on the cutting board. Gross!

Watched a T 100 triathlon race while I biked and Taylor Swift’s “Reputation” as I ran.

Here’s a poem I found about Emily Dickinson yesterday:

Emily Dickinson at the Poetry Slam/ Dan Vera

I will tell you why she rarely ventured from her house.
It happened like this:

One day she took the train to Boston,
made her way to the darkened room,
put her name down in cursive script
and waited her turn.

When they read her name aloud
she made her way to the stage
straightened the papers in her hands —
pages and envelopes, the backs of grocery bills,
she closed her eyes for a minute,
took a breath,
and began.

From her mouth perfect words exploded,
intact formulas of light and darkness.
She dared to rhyme with words like cochineal
and described the skies like diadem.
Obscurely worded incantations filled the room
with an alchemy that made the very molecules quake.

The solitary words she handled
in her upstairs room with keen precision
came rumbling out to make the electric lights flicker.

40 members of the audience
were treated for hypertension.
20 year old dark haired beauties found their heads
had turned a Moses White.

Her second poem erased the memory of every cellphone
in the nightclub,
and by the fourth line of the sixth verse
the grandmother in the upstairs apartment
had been cured of her rheumatism.

The papers reported the power outages.
The area hospitals taxed their emergency generators
and sirens were heard to wail through the night.

Quietly she made her way to the exit,
walked to the terminal and rode back to Amherst.

She never left her room again
and never read such syllables aloud.

oct 16/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
39 degrees

Wonderful weather for running! Not too cold, but cold enough to not overheat. The color of the day: yellow. I’m sure there were orange and red leaves, but all I remember were the bright yellow ones. Another color I remember: glitter — on the water, among the fluttering leaves. Seeing the low water in the creek on Monday, I wondered if the falls would even be falling. They were, but no gushing or roaring.

10 Things

  1. laughing kids at Dowling Elementary
  2. the oak savanna is still mostly green
  3. a sidewalk covered in dry, yellowed pine needles
  4. a person taking a selfie with their dog by my favorite overlook at the falls
  5. the man who empties the parking kiosks — I’ve seen him several times before and wondered why he comes in a regular (unmarked) car and how many coins he collects
  6. the creek was higher than in past falls when bare rock was exposed
  7. instead of a rope blocking the steps down to the falls, which is easy to climb over, Minneapolis Parks has added a green metal gate
  8. the shadow of some leaves falling to the ground, looking like the shadows of birds
  9. those same falling leaves looking like brown snow
  10. the swinging shadow of my ponytail

pines and Basho

I ran over yellow pine needles covering the sidewalk at the start of my run and thought about Basho. So I looked up “basho pine” and found this line:

Learn about the pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.
Don’t follow in the footsteps of the old poets, seek what they sought.

from Basho on Poetry

A poem I was working on yesterday (and submitted to a journal for consideration), starts this way:

It begins here: from
the ground up, feet first,
following.

The following I am referring to is not simple repetition, even as it literally is about following trails already made by past feet, but seeking what past feet sought: connection, contact, familiarity with the ground/land and how it has been shaped.

ghosts and zombies

My plan for this month was to focus on Zombies, but between a kid crisis, the marathon, and a poem that insisted on being reworked, I haven’t given much attention to them. Maybe two other reasons: I don’t really like zombies, and I’m still thinking about ghosts.

from Circle / Dana Knott 

human obits in the process
of being written
ghostly obits in the process
of being read

Here’s what I wrote on August 1, 2024 that got me thinking about zombies:

On Ghosts V. Zombies/ Suzanne Buffam

Soul without a body or body without a soul?
Like choosing between an empty lake
And the same empty lake. 

For the past few years, I’ve devoted a lot of attention to ghosts and haunts, but I’ve rarely thought about zombies. This poem is making me want to think about them now. So many directions to go with it — the relationship between the body and the soul or the body and the spirit or the body and the mind; how, because I can’t see people’s faces or make eye contact, they look soulless to me — I’m a ghost among zombies; Alice Oswald and the Homeric mind — our thoughts traveling outside of our bodies; Emily Dickinson and the soul that wanders; the fish in us escaping (Anne Sexton) or the bees released, returned to the hive/heaven (Eliot Weinberger). 

I clicked on the ED link and read my entry from march 19, 2024. There’s a lot of good stuff in it, including a reference to Homer, but not the poet, the cartoon character, Homer Simpson. It’s the clip where his brain escapes his body to avoid listening to Ned Flanders talking about the differences between apple juice and cider (if it’s clear and yella, you got juice there fella, if it’s tangy and brown, you’re in cider town). Wow.

taking it slow

Reading the “about this poem” for poets.org’s poem of the day, Dead Reckoning, I encountered this line:

This poem began as a long sequence but arrived at this stripped-down form after fifteen years of off-and-on revision.

Hyejung Kook

15 years of off-and-on revision! I’m only on year 3 of my Haunts revisions. I’m glad to know that other poets sit with some of their poems for a long time.

After finding this, I read an old entry from October 16, 2021, and found this:

“I am slow and need to think about things a long time, need to hold onto the trace on paper. Thinking is adventure. Does adventure need to be speedy? Perhaps revising is a way of refusing closure?…” 

Rosemarie Waldrop

This slow time reminds me of Lorine Niedecker and what she writes in a letter to her poet-mentor, Cid Corman, while working on her poem, “Lake Superior”:

Cid, no, I won’t be writing for awhile, and I need time, like an eon of limestone or gneiss, time like I used to have, with no thought of publishing. I’m very slow anyhow . . . . I’m going into a kind of retreat so far as time (going to be geologic time from now on!) is concerned . . . .

Lorine Niedecker

oct 1/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails + extra
51 degrees

Finally, fall weather! Wore my bright orange sweatshirt today, which was too warm during the last mile. Ran above on the paved trail heading south, below on the Winchell trail heading north. Sunny, breezy, cool, dreamy. Tree shadows. My left hip was a little sore, but otherwise I felt strong and relaxed. I chanted Emily Dickinson for part of the run: life is but life/ and death but death/ bliss is but bliss/ and breath but breath then life is life/death is death/bliss is bliss/breath is breath then life life life life/death death death death/bliss bliss bliss bliss/breath breath breath breath.

Thought about the marathon and how long it’s been since I ran on the winchell trail and FWA and My Neighbor Totoro, which Scott and I watched last night. Also thought about zombies, which is my theme for October. Mostly I thought about bodies without minds and feeling like you’re trapped in a body and soul-less, indifferent, relentless bodies.

10 Things

  1. heading down to the Horace Cleveland Overlook, I was blinded by a circle of light on the river — so bright! impossible to see anything else
  2. the sharp crack of a squirrel opening an acorn
  3. kids on the playground — laughing, yelling
  4. water trickling out of the sewer pipe at 44th
  5. a few more slashes of red, a golden feeling*
  6. the surface of the winchell trail is in terrible condition — cracked, slanted, cratered
  7. bikers on a bench, taking a snack break
  8. a woman on the narrow winchell trail with a dog, off to the side and facing me, talking on a phone I couldn’t see, saying something about walking after 60
  9. someone sitting on the bench in a blue shirt near the overlook
  10. big trees on the ground, cut into sections and stacked beside the trail

*For the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing trees turning yellow everywhere, but when I mention it to Scott he says that they look perfectly green to him, not yellow at all. Since my color vision is questionable, I’ll take his word for it. I’ve decided to believe that I’m seeing the yellow that is coming, or the slightest idea — the inkling — of yellow that has arrived but only as a feeling or the whisper, yellow. This morning, as I stood at the kitchen counter, about to make my coffee, I noticed the reflection of my neighbor’s tree on the granite countertop. Yellow! Wow, I said to myself out loud, has that tree turned when I wasn’t looking? I looked out the window and checked the real tree: a golden feeling, but nothing more.

Another gold/en thing: Admiring the sun spilling through the treetops, feeling the crisper air, W.S. Merwin’s line from “To the Light of August” popped into my head: Still the high, familiar, endless summer, yet with a glint of bronze in chill mornings. I thought, not bronze, but gold.

some marathon experiments

During and after my run, I had 2 ideas for things to try while running 26.2 miles. First: pick 26 poems I’ve memorized to recite in my head as I run. One for each mile. The problem with this idea is not memorizing all the poems. I’ve already done that. The problem is remembering which poems I picked and for which mile! I imagined attempting to write a list on my arm, which seemed ridiculous and too unruly.

Second: for each mile, notice things that begin with one particular letter. Do this in alphabetical order. So, mile 1 = a, mile 2 = b, etc. I could also make a list of as many words that start with that letter as possible. This experiment might be fun, but it could also get tedious.

In addition to these experiments, I’ve been thinking that I need a mantra and/or a few lines from favorite poems to chant in difficult moments or when I want to be distracted. Yes! I’ll have to make a list today. Of course, ED’s life/death/bliss/breath is on this list!

zombies!

Today is the first day of Zombie month! I’m excited to explore this topic, which I don’t know that much about. Since the marathon is this Sunday and I’m also thinking a lot about that, I’ll ease into zombies this week.

When I think of zombies, I think: relentless, indifferent, hungry, mindless, brainless bodies. And this makes me think of Jaws as a relentless killing machine. Here’s a great poem I found on poetryfoundation:

Jaws/ Emma Hine

I don’t realize I’m starved
for the color until the blood

washes up on the beach.
I’m craving red but still

haven’t seen the creature,
just the quick whip and slither

of its tail in the wake
—and then there I am,

facing the skin side
of the animatronic shark.

The slick apertures of its eyes.
The mythic teeth.

The anvil nose beating
the deck, cracking windows.

The shark, like the moon, is
pockmarked, unstoppable,

never showing its hidden side.
Surely space is just another underwater,

the messages we send from satellites
a bleeding haze of infrared:

This is my blood type,
this is where I keep my body at night,

and I tell no one about the times
my body, taking over,

stands waist-deep in the surf,
some wild need inside me

ticking into place.

The slick apertures of its eyes. Yes — Jaws’ eyes are the worst: huge, empty, black. Is much made of zombies’ eyes? Anything distinctive, or do they just look dead and empty?

sept 17/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin turn around
70 degrees / dew point: 63

So much sweat! The bill of my cap, the end of my ponytail, the tip of my nose dripping before I finished the first mile. Ran 3 without stopping, then walked until my heart rate was down to 135. Started running again to the metronome at 175 and finished with my winter playlist — time for a new playlist!

I liked running to the metronome (through my headphones, from the metronome/tuner app on my phone). I was able to match my foot strikes with the beat fairly quickly, but it took a few minutes for it to lock in. When that happened, I could feel the transformation from the edge of the beat (just before or after it) to the deep center of it. My foot strike seemed different, more solid and strong. The beat sounded different, less generic and more connected to a physical source (my foot). And I felt different, inside the beat, no longer a body but that steady clicking sound. Very cool.

It’s not quite the same, but I’m thinking of myself as Annie Dillard’s bell being struck. Also, Emily Dickinson and these lines:

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

10 Things

  1. slashes of red in the bushes
  2. a pinkish-orangish clump of leaves
  3. almost all green in the floodplain forest
  4. a shimmering circle of light: the sun on the river through a gap in the trees
  5. a steady stream of commuting cars
  6. mostly overcast, with occasional sun, enough sun for me to see my shadow as I walked home
  7. at the beginning of my run, a for sale sign in a front yard, by the end of my run, it was gone
  8. running down franklin, the trees were a yellowish green
  9. at least one roller skier — maybe 2, unless it was the same skier
  10. the bright, generous smile of a woman walking past me

Yesterday, I came across this cool poetry project, The BardCode Project:

In the BardCode Project Gregory Betts has analysed and mapped the rhyme patterns within Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Shakespeare built his famous sonnets by a unique sound pattern of rhymes in the final syllable, the tenth column, of each line. Betts asks, and answers, the question: What was Shakespeare doing in the rest of the sonnet?

The BardCode project maps out the full sound pattern of rhymes in all ten columns across all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Colour coding these sound-codes results in a visual text rich with the sonic patterns of the poems. Suddenly, for the first time, you can see the BardCode.

BardCode Projects

sept 5/WALK

35 minutes
neighborhood, with Delia the dog
68 degrees

Today, I convinced an anxiety-ridden dog to go for a walk. What a beautiful, late summer/early fall morning! Wow. Our pace was slow, with Delia stopping to “read the news” at every tree, but I didn’t mind. I tried to stand straight and felt the calm in my core — a stillness so sweet it almost buzzed or hummed. Speaking of buzz, Delia stopped to smell some pink zinias and right next to her nose a bumble bee hovered. Only for a moment, then it flew off to the next blossom.

10 Things

  1. a city pick-up truck with a yellow arrow flashing on the bumper as it drove by
  2. a thick and long root sticking out of some boulevard dirt where the grass had been removed
  3. an shaded balcony on the second floor of a house across from 7 Oaks
  4. a chattering squirrel
  5. the steady, relaxed rhythm of a shirtless runner with a baseball cap on backwards
  6. big, bright pinkish-red blooms, emerging from a bush
  7. soft shadows cast across a big boulder
  8. a shaggy, scruffy tree, needing a shave, leaves covering the trunk and whole branches
  9. a steel planter on a boulevard filled with carrot greens, looking to my untrained eye like they were ready to be picked
  10. a neighbor across the alley dumping some cans in his recycling bin — hello! / hi!

Found this poem the other day, Painblank/ Daniel Borzutsky. So good! Instead of posting the entire poem, here’s the author’s helpful description:

About this Poem

I have said Emily Dickinson’s line ‘Pain has an element of blank’ in my head thousands of times…. I don’t know how many times I have tried to make sense of something only to conclude that the best poetic solution available is to say that it’s blank—the blank in the blank of my blank, the blankest of times, the blankness into which we all digress. Perhaps the thing about Dickinson’s poem is the way in which pain is enveloped so completely by, well, pain itself. But also, the problem of pain’s untranslatability, its blankness, resides in the sounds and symmetry of the words. What I’m suggesting in this translation of Dickinson’s Pain-Blank relationship is a reading and writing practice that believes in two things: that repetition is never repetition and that poetry, like pain and blankness, resides in the body. Perhaps poetry has the ability—definitely for the writer and perhaps for the reader—to assimilate into the body, to become inseparable from it, to become a language that is ingested through sonic relationships that have an effect beyond time, logic, and comprehension.

Daniel Borzutzky

And here’s the Emily Dickinson poem that inspired Borzutsky:

Pain–has an Element of Blank–/Emily Dickinson

Pain—has an Element of Blank— 
It cannot recollect 
When it begun—or if there were 
A time when it was not— 

It has no Future—but itself— 
Its Infinite Contain 
Its Past—enlightened to perceive 
New Periods—of Pain.

aug 1/BIKESWIM

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
77 degrees

What an evening for a bike ride! Since it had just rained, there weren’t that many people on the paths. I didn’t have to pass anyone and I didn’t experience any scary, I-can’t-see moments. The bike ride on the way back was the best — evening light, cooler air, getting closer to dusk. So much better to be on a bike, outside, than in a car. Heard the rushing creek and some kids playing in the water. Felt satisfied after 80 minutes in the water.

5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
77 degrees

The first loop was surprisingly difficult. Sometimes it felt like I was swimming through syrup — heavy, slow — and sometimes like I was against a current — never going anywhere, or being pushed off course. How strong can the current be in lake nokomis? I thought about the Seine and the Olympic triathletes and how hard it must have been to swim in that current. I’m not sure I’m tough enough for that. How will the open water swimmers do it, swimming a 10k in that current?

Gradually the loops got easier. Sighting the green buoys was almost impossible. I couldn’t really see the buoys until I was about 20 strokes from them; I relied on my knowledge of the lake and the general outline of the course to guide me and believed that I was going the right way. I think my brain was receiving some data from my eyes that I wasn’t consciously aware of — isn’t that strange? Whatever was happening, I was always swimming straight for the buoys, even when I didn’t know that I was.

The stretch from the last green buoy to the first orange one took forever. I was experiencing that Poltergeist hallway effect where the buoy was never getting closer. Since it had worked before to break than never-ending hallway spell, I decided to count my strokes, not 1 2 3 4 5 over and over, but 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 . . . 50. At first, it wasn’t working, but slowly — too slowly — the buoy got closer. With each loop this effect lessened. By the fifth loop, I was in the groove. I almost swam a 6th loop, but I thought it might be hard to bike after that and get up tomorrow morning and swim again. 5 was plenty.

I saw planes and dragonflies and sailboats. Felt a few vines. Heard some sloshing. Admired my bubbles. Experienced this weird visual effect — not an optical illusion or a hallucination, or was it?: I kept seeing the tree line, far off in the distance, as a lifeguard on a kayak. Again and again. It was irritating, because I kept adjusting my direction so I wouldn’t run into the phantom lifeguard.

Paused a few times in the middle of the lake — alone in a blue quiet.

Felt happy and strong and pleased with all the work — 10 years of showing up at this lake and gradually increasing my distance — I’ve put in to be able to swim for 120 minutes without stopping or cramping or feeling exhausted. Thanks past Saras, and good job Sara, age 50!

in the morning, while it softly rained

Oh, for Christ’s sake, one doesn’t study poets! You read them, and think, That’s marvelous, how is it done, could I do it? and that’s how you learn.

Interview with Paris Review / Philip Larkin

I love this about poetry.

On Ghosts V. Zombies/ Suzanne Buffam

Soul without a body or body without a soul?
Like choosing between an empty lake
And the same empty lake.

For the past few years, I’ve devoted a lot of attention to ghosts and haunts, but I’ve rarely thought about zombies. Is it partly because Scott hates zombies so much? I’m not sure why. This poem is making me want to think about them now. So many directions to go with it — the relationship between the body and the soul or the body and the spirit or the body and the mind; how, because I can’t see people’s faces or make eye contact, they look soulless to me — I’m a ghost among zombies; Alice Oswald and the Homeric mind — our thoughts traveling outside of our bodies; Emily Dickinson and the soul that wanders; the fish in us escaping (Anne Sexton) or the bees released, returned to the hive/heaven (Eliot Weinberger). Zombies can be my fall project! Maybe I can even convince Scott to give zombies a chance?! Now I’m excited for fall!

I want to wait for fall to begin studying zombies partly because fall is spooky season and partly because right now I’m still immersed in water. For August, I want to write a poem every day about water. It doesn’t have to be good, I just need to put some words on the page.

in the afternoon, after the rain, before a swim

I’m reviewing my entries from July for a monthly assignment summary. It’s giving me ideas for what to notice/think about during my swim tonight:

  1. water and light, above and below the surface; types of light; sparkles and shimmers and glimmers and glints
  2. what are lake nokomis’ rules and offerings?
  3. different perspectives of the water: from the sidewalk, above the beach; on the beach; in the shallow water; mid-lake; before/during/after a swim

I didn’t think much about the rules or the different perspectives, but I do recall noticing the light. Swimming into the light, from the little beach to the big beach, the light was too bright, blinding. Impossible to see the green buoys clearly — as green, as buoys. After a few loops, I realized that at certain angles the sun sparkled off the green buoy — just a quick flash, once. Enough to keep me believing I was swimming towards it; I was. No shafts of light underwater, but enough light to see my sparkle friends — the sediment in the water. No reflections off of the buoys, or under the water. Nothing glinting, no swimmer’s shimmering splash.