bike: 16 minutes bike stand run: 3.25 miles treadmill 0 / feels like -8
Cold. Reviewing the temp now, maybe I could have run outside. Hopefully, tomorrow. Watched more of the Dickinson episode that I started yesterday while I biked. On the same day that her poem is published in the paper, Emily wakes up invisible and is confronted with the limits of fame, and the freedom that not being noticed can bring. Fame is a common theme in ED’s work. From what I’ve read, scholars/lovers of ED don’t always agree (surprise surprise) on how much fame did or didn’t matter to her. Did she crave fame? Did she keep her poems private because she was happy to be anonymous? Was she shunned? I need to revisit my notes, to remember more of the thoughts. In the beginning of this episode, fame is presented as empty and fickle. According to the “Nobody” ghost that haunts her in this episode (it’s been too long since I watched this show, but I know this dude appeared in earlier episode. I’ll have to check if I mentioned him before), being invisible is better, while being noticed is overrated. I agree. More on this soon, I think.
Listened to a new playlist while I ran, with some good songs for my pace: Wannabe/ Spice Girls, Work It/ Missy Elliot, Poker Face/ Lady Gaga. One song that didn’t work as well, but that I really like anyway: Get Ur Freak On/ Missy Elliot. A little too fast. Didn’t think about much while I ran. One thought: it’s harder to run longer in the basement. Very little to distract you, or maybe engage/delight you. More time to think about how many miles/minutes are left.
In between biking and running, I listened to a draft of my 3 new haunt poems: 1. Before there was girl, there was ghost; 2. Before there was ghost, there was girl; and 3. Before there was ghost or girl, there was gorge. I’m happy with them. I can’t decide whether to put them altogether, as one poem — they’re about 13 5 syllable lines each — or, to sprinkle them between my other haunts poems. Which will work better?
Here’s the poem-a-day from poets.org for Jan 26th:
We’d stare at horses at Will Rogers Park, then hike the Loop Trail to Inspiration Point, & I’d lag back to be a kid. Alone. & under that aloofness—hid vengeance. A rusty burr or two in my left sneaker. & under that—anxiety. The salt dripping through chaparral brows, into my brown lashes. & under that—rage. A perfectly purple shell some kid favored & lost. & under that—hope. The pounded ground. & under that—a vast clearing on the cosmos, also called Inspiration Point. A gorgeous, inner hilltop
with a curious figure taking in the Pacific view. Breathing chicory & chamise. Naming every wind-boarder near Catalina Island. That high-noon, far-sighted figure—seemed a bit burnt, but warm. A bit divine. But—sometimes—I didn’t find that figure wow-ing at a thing no one had ever seen—at a new bird better than a phoenix. (There’s something better than a phoenix!) Sometimes, my hand stretched towards some nether new creation & I was the figure who named it.
I like the repetition of, & under, and how the poets uses it to peel back layers of her emotions as a kid. I also like the description of rage as a perfectly purple shell. I don’t remember experiencing rage as a kid. Is it because my memory’s bad? or, maybe because my intense emotions would usually manifest themselves in overflowing exuberance (or obnoxiousness)? From what I do remember, I always had trouble hanging onto anger; by the time, I would yell, the anger was gone.
more awesome poetry people
Here’s a thread about meter in poetry that I’d like to spend more time with. I struggle with meter; it’s hard for me to hear. But, I know it’s important, and I’d like to become more familiar with it (in a way that sticks).
bike: 20 minutes bike stand, basement run: 1.5 miles treadmill
Started watching Dickinson again while I biked. Finished the episode where they’re at the “spa,” and started the one in which her poem is published and she’s invisible. Listened to a new running playlist while I ran. Stopped to record myself running to check my gait, but it didn’t quite work. I’ll have to try again. My left thigh/hip was sore by the end.
I checked out Paige Lewis’s Space Struck from the library — on the libby app — and I marked a few to remember, including yesterday’s Saccadic Masking. Here’s another for today. I think I wanted to keep it for the question about being the sound or the stillness.
Chapel of the Green Lord/ Paige Lewis
This spring, the smog is so thick I can’t see the stars, which means there aren’t any stars left. It’s pointless to argue against this, to say, no they’re on vacation, no they’ll come back with new summer hats and an answer to my question: If this world is a plucked violin string, am I part of its sound or its stillness? Once, I woke and believed myself full of the old heaven. I wanted to trap it, make it stay. I swallowed a hive’s worth of honey, and— and still, no stars. This smog is thick enough to turn my lungs gummy. I stay inside, line my bed with spider plants and succulents, christen it Chapel of the Green Lord, and go to sleep with the sheets pulled up over my sticky mouth.
poetry people for the win!
A great thread on twitter this morning. I’m always looking for poems about exits, entrances, openings, closings: doors!
Damp. Cool, but not cold. A nice, relaxed run. Overcast, windy. Ran north through the welcoming oaks, the tunnel of trees, past the old stone steps, above the winchell trail that steeply climbs out of the gorge, up to the lake street bridge. Over the bridge, down the steps, up the hill — past one of my favorite, uncluttered views, on the st. paul side; past the bench perched above the river; above shadow falls — to the top. Then down the other side of the deep ravine. Around the World War Monument, beside the river on one side, fancy houses the other. A brief stop at the overview, around another ravine, over to the ford bridge. Through the smaller tunnel of trees above the locks and dam, north on the river road, and then, another brief tunnel of trees just before reaching the double bridge and the start of the Winchell Trail. Through the woods, up and down and up and down the undulating path, then finishing on the upper trail near the 35th st parking lot.
10 Things I Noticed
Almost all of the welcoming oaks are bare limbed, the ground covered in crunchy, crispy leaves
The river a pleasing pale blue, not smooth but slightly rippled, except for at one spot where it’s smooth
The trees along the shore have all changed color
The ravine near Shadow Falls, looking very fall-ish, so many yellow leaves
Running up the long hill, hearing the bell at St. Thomas singing the clock song: ding dong ding dong/ding dong ding dong/ ding dong ding dong — stopping short because it was 9:45, not 10
Running beside the fancy houses on east river parkway, hearing a women’s voice call out to someone else, “what a beautiful day!” Immediate thoughts: It’s windy and cool. Is it a beautiful day? (then thinking: yes, it is. I love this end of fall weather.) Also: actual people who notice and enjoy the weather, really live in this impossibly large and pretentious house?
At the overlook near the entrance to the winchell trail, noticing the river. Farther away, it looked white, almost like snow or ice. Closer, and at a different spot, it sparkled and burned bright and white
2 squirrels crossing my path, managing to not double back and trip me
So many dirt trails and breaks in the trees leading into the woods on the edge of the bluff on the st. paul side
After ascending the steps of the overlook on the st. paul side, stopping at a bench and seeing a plaque embedded in the sidewalk for Brian Bates, who died in 2008, about a year before my mom did
seen on the St. Paul side of the river, near an overlook
I was curious, so I looked him up:
Age 60 Died June 12th of Cancer Brian was born July 14, 1947 in St. Paul and was a graduate of Notre Dame University. He spent his early business career in San Francisco. After returning to St. Paul in the early 1980’s, Brian received his law degree from Hamline University. He was active on the Mac/Groveland City Council, Scenic Minnesota, Scenic St. Paul, Clean Air MN, the DFL and other political and environmental endeavors. Brian’s work on environmental issues led him to become well-known in the St. Paul area. He was instrumental in the fight against billboards calling them “litter on a stick”.
Not too long after hearing the bells of St. Thomas (as I climbed the Summit Hill), I decided to take out my phone and record myself mid-run. At the point of recording, I was probably running a 9 minute pace, with my heart rate at 170 (which seems to be my standard heart rate for running):
9:45
Running up summit hill I heard bells at st. thomas chime. Was it 10 o’clock or sometime in 9? 9:45
reciting 9:45
I’ll have to keep working on these. It’s difficult to overcome my self-consciousness over other people see me do this, and my reluctance to slow down enough to get out my phone.
One more thing I almost forgot: Running north on the west river road through the small tunnel of trees before the double bridge, I suddenly noticed the faintest trace of my shadow ahead of me. At first, I wasn’t sure. Had I really seen my shadow or just imagined it? Then, it appeared again, and I noticed the sun had come out. I glimpsed it a few more times, always faint, casting itself on the thick-littered trail. Writing this paragraph, I suddenly wonder about how many times we think we’ve seen something but then discount it with, “it was just my imagination.” More often than not, we are seeing something and it is not being imagined; we just don’t have the right words to describe it, and we don’t trust how our brains see so much more than we realize (or fully process).
Periodically throughout my run, I recited Emily Dickinson’s We grow accustomed to the Dark –, which I re-memorized and then wrote about this morning. At one point, for a few minutes, I stumbled over the 3rd verse. I had no problem with:
And so of larger – Darkness –
But, I couldn’t quite remember the next line: I knew it wasn’t, The Darkness of the Brain or The dimming of the Brain, but the word wasn’t coming to me. Suddenly, it did: evenings:
Those Evenings of the Brain –
Yes. Such a brilliant line, and so helpful and rewarding to spend time thinking about word choice — the right word, so precise and effective, matters.
Decided to run the ford loop this morning and stop at some of the overlooks. Is today one of the last beautiful fall days? Possibly. So much yellow and red everywhere. Leaves drifting down like fat, fluffy flakes. Sun lighting up the surface of the river. Amazing. Writing this, an hour later, the sky is dark. Rain coming. I’m glad I got outside this morning.
10 Things I Noticed
Running above the river, over the lake street bridge: the water looks a deep, dark blue
From the edge of the bluff, on the east side at one of my favorite spots, the river looks lighter, richer, still blue
Heading north, a strong-ish wind in my face
Running beside Shadow Falls, wondering if what I was hearing was water from the falls or the wind in the trees or both
Passing a group of pedestrians, walking 2 by 2 on the edge of the trail
A barking, lunging dog, barely held back by a human also pushing a stroller
The view, 1: from just below an overlook on the St. Paul side, standing on a rock, close to the edge. The bank on the west side of the river is mostly yellow and red, with a few bits of green still holding on. Looking left or right, all I could see were water, shore, trees, rock
The view, 2: from the ford bridge. Mostly brown tree trunks and green/red/yellow leaves. Then, a break. A gleaming white — is this the limestone cave where the trail ends? The spot where STA and I watched the rowers a few weeks ago?
The view, 3: from the overlook at the southern start of the Winchell Trail. The glittering, white heat of water lit by the sun. One way, the ford bridge. The other, trees
Running on the Winchell Trail, right before 42nd, the trails curves close to the edge. As you climb, it looks like you might just keep going, out into the sky, above the river
Before I ran, I studied a passage from U A Fanthorpe’s “Seven Types of Shadow,” especially the lines:
Ghosts of past, present, future. But the ones the living would like to meet are the echoes Of moments of small dead joys still quick in the streets
In particular, I was thinking a lot about echoes and reverberations. Halfway up the Summit Hill, I started thinking about bells and the reverberations of sound they emit after being struck. These thoughts were partly inspired by a passage I read from Annie Dillard in “Seeing” from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:
Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells unflamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck.
Seeing/ Annie Dillard
I didn’t want to forget my thoughts, so I pulled out my phone, mid-run, and recorded myself. It was challenge, speaking while running and trying not to feel self-conscious as I passed other people:
Recording While Running / 20 Oct
Here’s a transcript of what I said. I turned it into a poem, using my breaths to break the lines. I’d like to try doing this some more — experiment with recording my thoughts mid-run, then using my breaths to shape the poem.
I’m thinking about how I’m a bell and how we’re all bells and when we are struck — is it at birth or is it like Annie Dillard: there’s a moment of awareness and clarity that makes our bell ring reverberate continue to echo?
added a few hours later: I forgot about how, just before I started recording my thoughts, I heard the bells of St. Thomas. Was it 10 am? or 9:45? Not sure, but it seemed fitting to hear these bells, which I often hear at my house too, as I was thinking about bells.
I thought about a lot of things on today’s wonderful run. Decided I’d like to make a list of the traces, trails, reverberations I encounter on my runs. Also decided to look up and listen to the Radiolab episode about echolocation. And I decided to think/research more about the presence of the WPA at the gorge. As I thought about this I wondered about my grandfather who lived in St. Paul and worked for the WPA. Was he a part of the gorge work — making benches, walls, steps? Shoring up ravines, minnehaha and hidden falls? He’s been dead for almost 30 years now, so I can’t ask him. A further set of questions I pondered as I ran past the steps leading down from the 44th street parking lot: Do I need to know the exact truth about his involvement with the WPA? Or, is it enough to know he was a part of it, and okay to imagine he might have helped build the old stone walls I run by, the benches I want to stop at but never do?
In between admiring the view and thinking about echoes, I recited the first part of the 7th section of May Swenson’s “October” in my head. Such a great part of a poem! I’m a big fan of May Swenson’s work.
Looked it up and found the echolocation episode. It’s from Invisibilia and not Radiolab: How to Become Batman
Hear the sledges with the bells— Silver bells! What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air of night! While the stars that oversprinkle All the heavens, seem to twinkle With a crystalline delight; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the tintinabulation that so musically wells From the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
II.
Hear the mellow wedding bells, Golden bells! What a world of happiness their harmony foretells! Through the balmy air of night How they ring out their delight! From the molten-golden notes, And all in tune, What a liquid ditty floats To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats On the moon! Oh, from out the sounding cells, What a gush of euphony voluminously wells! How it swells! How it dwells On the Future! how it tells Of the rapture that impels To the swinging and the ringing Of the bells, bells, bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!
III.
Hear the loud alarum bells— Brazen bells! What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells! In the startled ear of night How they scream out their affright! Too much horrified to speak, They can only shriek, shriek, Out of tune, In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire, In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire, Leaping higher, higher, higher, With a desperate desire, And a resolute endeavor Now—now to sit or never, By the side of the pale-faced moon. Oh, the bells, bells, bells! What a tale their terror tells Of Despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar! What a horror they outpour On the bosom of the palpitating air! Yet the ear it fully knows, By the twanging, And the clanging, How the danger ebbs and flows; Yet the ear distinctly tells, In the jangling, And the wrangling. How the danger sinks and swells, By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells— Of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells, bells, Bells, bells, bells— In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!
IV.
Hear the tolling of the bells— Iron bells! What a world of solemn thought their monody compels! In the silence of the night, How we shiver with affright At the melancholy menace of their tone! For every sound that floats From the rust within their throats Is a groan. And the people—ah, the people— They that dwell up in the steeple, All alone, And who tolling, tolling, tolling, In that muffled monotone, Feel a glory in so rolling On the human heart a stone— They are neither man nor woman— They are neither brute nor human— They are Ghouls: And their king it is who tolls; And he rolls, rolls, rolls, Rolls A pæan from the bells! And his merry bosom swells With the pæan of the bells! And he dances, and he yells; Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the pæan of the bells— Of the bells: Keeping time, time, time, In a sort of Runic rhyme, To the throbbing of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells— To the sobbing of the bells; Keeping time, time, time, As he knells, knells, knells, In a happy Runic rhyme, To the rolling of the bells— Of the bells, bells, bells— To the tolling of the bells, Of the bells, bells, bells, bells— Bells, bells, bells— To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.
Warm again this morning. More fall colors — mostly golds with a few hints of red. Recited “Spring and Fall” a few times, but didn’t think about it much. I might memorize a few fall poems for October.
10 Things I Noticed
The river glowing through the trees
A kid’s cry coming from somewhere
Several loud rustling sounds in the dry underbrush
Two or three wild turkeys near the start of the Winchell Trail, on the other side of the chain link fence. I’ve never encountered them here before!
The curve of a log, serving as a bench at the frisbee golf course in Wabun Park
A loud chirping sound that might have been a bird or a squirrel
The flailing arms of an approaching runner
High in the sky, the moon, faintly glowing
The new (is it new?) fence surrounding one side of the bottom of the ford bridge near Locks and Dam #1
A few regulars: the older man (mid 60s, white hair) runner whose fast and friendly and the walker with shoulder length blonde hair
A solid run that improved my mood.
Here’s my approximate/almost/not quite poem of the day:
Fall weather please come back. I want my crisp, cool air. The run wasn’t too bad, but now that I’ve finished, I’m sweating a lot. Rain is coming in a few hours and everything will cool down. It’s already dark, ominous. Running above the river on the dirt trail just past the 38th street steps, everything was a slight blur. Dreamy. Unreal. The lack of light makes my already diminished central vision even more dim. Thought about how I couldn’t really see the path but didn’t worry about tripping because I know most of the dips and holes and rocks on this stretch and because even when my eyes don’t see the trail, my feet seem to. I glanced at the river but I don’t remember anything about it.
10 Things I Noticed
A walker with a white (or was it yellow?) sweatshirt wrapped around her waist pushing a stroller moving fast. It took me a few minutes to reach and then pass her. As I approached, I stared at her sweatshirt, one of the only bright things on this dark day
Another bright thing: a runner in a bright yellow shirt
Someone paused on the path, getting ready to start walking or running on the Winchell Trail?
The small section of the river trail at 42nd that was blocked off for sewer work last week is open again and so is the road
A tree leaning over the trail, not yet fallen, but looking like it might soon
Flashing lights from a construction/city truck and a man in a yellow vest standing next to it near the sidewalk
The damp dirt down in the oak savanna, not quite mucky or muddy yet
2 steep spots on the Winchell Trail: running down from the upper trail, right by 42nd street and a giant boulder and running up the short stretch near Folwell
An approaching walker who turned down on an even lower dirt trail before I reached them
The voice of a kid up above me as I ran down towards the mesa
Thinking about my growing number of swimming poems, some re-edited version of old poems, some new. My tentative title for the collection: Every Five (as in breathing every five strokes). All poems will play around with 5 as part of the structure — 5 beats or 5 lines or ?. Scott suggested I do something with iambic pentameter (5 feet of one short one long beat). A sonnet? Maybe a love poem to my swimming body/muscles/shoulders? Hmm…not sure if I’m feeling that.
Here’s a poem for the month’s theme of the approximate. This one is taking up the idea of almost, not quite or not exactly. It’s a poem that features an object — a cucumber — but it is not about the cucumber, but something else.
The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard and still coming down hard: it hasn’t let up all morning. We’re in the kitchen. On the table, on the oilcloth, spring — on the table there’s a very tender youn cucumber, pebbly and fresh as a daisy. We’re sitting around the table staring at it. It softly lights up our faces, and the very air smells fresh. We’re sitting around the table staring at it, amazed thoughtful optimistic. We’re as if in a dream. On the table, on the oilcloth, hope — on the table, beautiful days, a cloud seeded with a green sun, an emerald crowd impaties and on its way, loves blooming openly — on the the table, there on the oilcloth, a very tender young
cucumber, pebbly and fresh as a daisy. The snow is knee-deep in the courtyard and coming down hard. It hasn’t let up all morning.
This poem and the idea of not exactly, reminds me of listening to the radio in the car yesterday with Scott and RJP. First, the sappy song, “Make it with You” by BREAD came on, then “Hot-blooded” by Foreigner. Both of them sung by someone who is trying to seduce the listener. Scott pointed out how the first song is much more indirect/oblique in its suggestions, while the second is very blunt. I started thinking about how the indirect song is a form of the approximate, the almost, or Emily Dickinson’s idea of the slant. It implies and circles (or what the poet Kaveh Akbar might call orbits and I might say in thinking about my swimming this summer, loops) around the actual meaning, never quite saying it. For Akbar, I think, orbiting is often because we can’t ever fully get at the meaning, while for BREAD it’s an unwillingness to reveal exactly what they mean in order to get what they want. One of the swimming poems I want to revise is about loops and looping around the lake. Maybe I can play around with loop as orbiting or circling, never quite getting there, always near but not quite.
This reminded me of another approximate phrase: close but no cigar. Looked up the origins and several sources gave this explanation:
It comes from traveling fairs and carnivals from the 1800s. The prizes back then were not giant-sized stuffed teddy bears, they were usually cigars or bottles of whiskey. If you missed the prize at a carnival game, the carnie folk would shout, “Close! But no cigar!”
3.75 miles / 3 full loops + 1 slightly shorter loop* lake nokomis open swim 65 degrees
*About halfway through this swim, I hit 100 Sara miles, which was my goal for the summer. 100 Sara miles is probably a little short of 100 actual miles, but it’s still a big number and was an ambitious goal that encouraged me to swim longer and more frequently than I normally do, so I’m proud of myself for reaching this goal.
Final Sunday open swim of the season. A wonderful morning, a wonderful swim! Sunny, not too windy–at least not until the last loop. I swam 4 loops without stopping. For the final loop, I didn’t swim all the way to the white buoy near the little beach, but just rounded the third orange buoy so it was a little shorter. I felt strong and relaxed and very happy to be swimming. I will miss these swims when they end next week.
Many different thoughts/ideas came to me today:
Circling and looping and swimming in the lake from big beach to little beach, my route never forming a perfect circle but triangles and trapezoids and elongated ovals. Always swimming on the edge, not inside or near the center of the marked off swim area. Thought about my interest in edges and Emily Dickinson’s Circumference and Oliver’s and Emerson’s circles
As the wind picked up, I wondered about future summers of swimming and how the warming of the oceans/earth and increasingly erratic weather patterns will affect lake nokomis. Will it be windier more often? More thunderstorms? More vegetation? A lower quality of water? Will there be a time when the water is not safe to swim in? I hope not
A reminder: I feel so confident in the water. Sure of my self, sure of my abilities. I don’t doubt or question or worry–well, except for my fears of getting another calf cramp or a neck cramp or a knee subluxation–when I’m in the lake. I know it’s not possible to become a fish–and I don’t really want to anyway, but I wish I could bring my lake confidence into the rest of my life. The phrase, “fish out of water” popped into my head as I had these thoughts
In the lake, I am never really lost, and if I feel disorientation or bewilderment, I soon figure out a way to re-orient myself, to find some landmark or signal that reassures me that I’m swimming the right way. These indications are small and only come in flashes, but I’m learning how to get by with less information, less certainty. This is not living in bewilderment but living with it–and finding ways to mitigate the confusion and discomfort it provides. So, I’m not living in it all the time, but I’m also not ignoring or avoiding the moments when it happens. I think this makes sense to me…
Here’s a poem from one of my favorite poets, Rita Dove. It’s in her new collection, Playlist for the Apocalypse. I think it fits in with love, if we connect love with kindness and mercy:
Green Koan/ Rita Dove
That the mind can go wherever it wishes we’ve come to rely on; that it returns unbidden to the soul it could not banish and learns to thrive there is life’s stubborn mercy–given to soften or harden us, as we choose.
No big problems biking on the trail. Ran into a white bike cone checked to make sure that cars were stopping for me at the stop sign like they’re supposed to. No big deal–I was going slow, the cone was plastic. Was that my vision? Maybe, but that spot is tricky–a temporary stop sign for cars while they do sewer work at the creek. They’re almost done, after over a year. Looking forward to the trail going back to normal here again.
swim: 2.75 miles/ 3 loops (orange buoys only) lake nokomois open swim 83 degrees
Not quite as choppy as yesterday, but still a lot of rocking and fighting with the water. Today I wore my safety buoy. It’s leaking a little air, not sure why, which makes it harder to stay high on the water. My neck hurt from breathing on one side so much and having to lift my head higher to breathe and see. By the end of the 3rd loop, I was tired. Even so, I enjoyed the challenge of choppy water. They didn’t have enough lifeguards to do a full course, so we just swam around the orange buoys today.
moment I remember:
Swimming back, between the first and second buoys from the little beach, I saw the flash of waving arms and a bright cap. A swimmer, heading towards me. I’m not sure, but I think they were waving their arms to let me know they were there so I wouldn’t run into them? I was surprised because I had deliberately moved way over to avoid getting close to other swimmers. They were off course. Even as I knew this to be the case, I still stewed over it for a few minutes, wondering if the other swimmer thought I was off course. Were they angry with me? Why does this bother me and why do I spend any time thinking about it? Is it that I always want others to think/know I’m doing the right thing? I hope not. Luckily, after a few more waves, I had forgotten about it.
I had a few other encounters with swimmers. At least 2 swimmers drifting further out, routing me. When this happens, I stop and swim around them from behind. Do they notice, and do they wonder where I’ve gone?
I stopped a few times mid-lake to recover from a big wave or see where I was or enjoy the view from the middle. During one stop, I noticed a dragonfly hovering just above the water. Often when I see a dragonfly I think about my dead mom. She loved dragonflies. I like to imagine that this dragonfly is my mom coming to say hi. But lately I’ve been noticing how much dragonflies look like helicopters. So I googled it: “are helicopters modeled after dragonflies?” I discovered that at least one type is/was, designed by Sikorsky in the late 40s. Also found this interesting bit of info about dragonflies and flight:
The mechanics of dragonfly flight are unique: dragonflies can manoeuvre in all directions, glidwithout having to beat their wings and hover in the air. Their ability to move their two pairs of wings independently enables them to slow down and turn abruptly, to accelerate swiftly and even to fly backwards.
Also learned that dragonflies have very good vision. I found this bit of info particularly interesting:
The quality and nature of vision in animals is related to the diversity of opsin proteins that they have in their eyes. We humans like to think that our eyesight is pretty good, and thanks to our large brains it is, but we rely on just three opsin genes, which means that we have three photoreceptors (cones), sensitive to blue, green and red light. So we can see across a colour spectrum from red to violet, but not ultraviolet (UV). If I now mention that dragonflies have between fifteen and 33 opsin genes, that gives some idea of just how good their vision may be! Some of these opsins may be non-visual proteins, but they still have large numbers of visual opsins, including ones for for short-wavelength (SW), long wavelength (LW) and UV light.
Dragonflies were as common as sunlight hovering in their own days backward forward and sideways as though they were memory now there are grown-ups hurrying who never saw one and do not know what they are not seeing the veins in a dragonfly’s wings were made of light the veins in the leaves knew them and the flowing rivers the dragonflies came out of the color of water knowing their own way when we appeared in their eyes we were strangers they took their light with them when they went there will be no one to remember us
and here’s a poem about water and waves:
BY THE SEA/ EMILY DICKINSON
I started early, took my dog, And visited the sea; The mermaids in the basement Came out to look at me.
And frigates in the upper floor Extended hempen hands, Presuming me to be a mouse Aground, upon the sands.
But no man moved me till the tide Went past my simple shoe, And past my apron and my belt, And past my bodice too,
And made as he would eat me up As wholly as a dew Upon a dandelion’s sleeve – And then I started too.
And he – he followed close behind; I felt his silver heel Upon my ankle, – then my shoes Would overflow with pearl.
Until we met the solid town, No man he seemed to know; And bowing with a mighty look At me, the sea withdrew.
Biked with STA to the lake for open swim. Not too difficult. Again, it helped that I didn’t need to pass anyone and it wasn’t that crowded. After the swim, leaving the lake, it was a little crazier. Lots of walkers on the bike path, feral kids zig-zagging on the path, a stalled surrey stuck in the middle of the trail.
swim: 3 miles/ 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 85 degrees partly sunny/slightly choppy
Wow, this was the most difficult open swim yet. I didn’t mind the swells near the big beach, but the placement of the green buoys so far from the beach, the bright sun draining them of color and shape, and the sneaky sailboats impersonating them, it was very hard to sight anything. When I stopped a few times to get my bearings, I still couldn’t see anything. Luckily, I never got off course too much and I kept swimming for 3 loops. After the swim, I met up with STA for a beer at Sandcastle. Very nice. It really felt like covid had never happened, which was mostly good. Saw lots of cute dogs and sailing boats. A beautiful night to be out in the world instead of holed up in the house.
july’s theme
It’s the first day of July, which means a new theme. Last month was water and stone. Up until a few hours ago, I was convinced that this month’s theme would be water, especially as it relates to my swimming. But I started thinking about open swim and then wrote in my almost finished Plague Notebook, Vol 8:
not wild or natural…not a wild swim, but an open swim…not pure adventure in unchartered territory but not really urban or tightly planned either…just off the beaten path…how do I describe where and what this is—this = being = running or walking or swimming or breathing outside?
And then, after walking Delia the dog:
Thinking about the “wild” and my neighborhood. Not wild, but messy, unkempt, order still there (or the trace of order) but yards/flowers left alone to roam or wander. Not rigid, tight control or the sharpness of a trimmed, edged lawn, approximate, not tidy but not chaos, a bit disheveled, off-track but cared for, attended to, intentional
I started thinking about centers and edges, which led me back to Emily Dickinson and her circumference, but also to Mary Oliver, and her devotion to things having a place in the world, in the family of things. And now I am wondering what to do with all of these ideas, what to spend time with this month? I think all of this wandering and wondering has to do with making sense of the place I’m recognizing (and creating) for myself, swimming in a swamp that was made into a lake 100 years ago and is carefully managed by a park system. Swimming across a lake in designated areas, with hundreds of others, watched over by lifeguards. It’s not the ocean or a remote lake or a secret swimming hole, but it’s also not a safe, chlorinated, regimented pool. There are bacteria and big fish and weeds that want to drag you to the bottom.
I’m listening to the latest Between the Covers podcast with Arthur Sze. Wow, he’s amazing. He read this poem midway through the episode.
Is it in the anthracite face of a coal miner, crystallized in the veins and lungs of a steel worker, pulverized in the grimy hands of a railroad engineer? Is it in a child naming a star, coconuts washing ashore, dormant in a volcano along the Rio Grande?
You can travel the four thousand miles of the Nile to its source and never find it. You can climb the five highest peaks of the Himalayas and never recognize it. You can gaze though the largest telescope and never see it.
But it’s in the capillaries of your lungs. It’s in the space as you slice open a lemon. It’s in a corpse burning on the Ganges, in rain splashing on banana leaves.
Perhaps you have to know you are about to die to hunger for it. Perhaps you have to go alone in the jungle armed with a spear to truly see it. Perhaps you have to have pneumonia to sense its crush.
But it’s also in the scissor hands of a clock. It’s in the precessing motion of a top when a torque makes the axis of rotation describe a cone: and the cone spinning on a point gathers past, present, future.
2
In a crude theory of perception, the apple you see is supposed to be a copy of the actual apple, but who can step out of his body to compare the two? Who can step out of his life and feel the Milky Way flow out of his hands?
An unpicked apple dies on a branch: that is all we know of it. It turns black and hard, a corpse on the Ganges. Then go ahead and map out three thousand mile of the Yantze; walk each inch, feel its surge and flow as you feel the surge and flow in your own body.
And the spinning cone of a precessing top is a form of existence that gathers and spins death and life into one. It is in the duration of words, but beyond words— river river river, river river. The coal miner may not know he has it. The steel worker may not know he has it. The railroad engineer may not know he has it. But it is there. It is in the smell of an avocado blossom, and in the true passion of a kiss.
Biked to Lake Nokomis for some swimming off of the big beach. There’s an open swim at Cedar Lake tonight, but it’s too far to go twice in one week, so I’ll go there on Wednesday, which is the other day there’s an open swim at Cedar. Biking wasn’t too bad. Not too crowded, which makes it easier. My biggest problem: unanticipated ruts or potholes. I can’t see them at all, or until I’m right on top of them. My poor tires. Lots of loud thuds and cracks and pops. But no crashes or falls off of my bike. The other big thing I remember: as I was powering up the hill between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis, I suddenly hear a loud pop and then crackling. Fireworks. At 10 am on a Monday. In the bright sun. Near a random green space between lakes. Why? Luckily I don’t startle easily, because something like that might have made me fall of my bike. So loud and unexpected. I hate fireworks.
The bike ride back, after my swim, was fine too. I encountered a biker who was biking with both of his hands by his sides, and not on the handlebars. How do people do this? I suppose, part of me is envious of someone that carefree, but most of me is incredulous. So dangerous on this cracked, curved, crowded trail.
swim: 1.55 miles/ 9 loops* big beach, lake nokomis 75 degrees/ sunny no chop
*since I’m not entirely sure of the distance, and my watch doesn’t seem to be accurate, I’m creating my own standard here, my Sara miles (similar to “jerry miles” from the bowerman track club). 30 minutes = 1 mile, or 6 loops = 1 mile. I added the extra .05 to the distance today, because I did swim a little more and to make my total distance a whole number.
Yes! I want to bike to the beach during the day and do a swim at least once every week. The water was a great tempature and calm. And no one else was swimming around the buoys. For the first half of the swim, I counted my strokes–1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left–and tried to stop thinking. Mostly it worked, although I do remember thinking about the water, how it felt as I glided through it, or as my arms pushed it past my body. Every so often, my buoy tugged at my waist–remember me, it seemed to say, I’m here too. The water was opaque; the only thing I remember seeing was bubbles below me from the water I pushed down at the end of each stroke. A kayak and a paddle board passed by me at some point. I briefly imagined what would happen if a fish bumped into me–not bit, just bumped me.
Earlier this morning, I was reading and ruminating over Bruno LaTour’s ideas about the two shores of a river as nature and culture or truth and the dream or what is real and what is described. A classic problem in philosophy is to find a way to bridge these distant shores, to see how they connect, to link the actual world with our perceptions of it. I’ve barely skimmed it so far, but LaTour is arguing that, instead of finding/creating a bridge, we should get in the river and learn how to navigate the water between these two shores. As I swam, I thought about what kind of reality swimming is–is it real? a dream? a distortion? Then I started thinking about classic philosophical approaches to this problem, and wondered, what if the idea that there is a distinct, sharp reality–a truth–was the illusion? What if the clear divisions we believe to exist between entities–fish, water, me– are our attempt to impose order where it doesn’t exist? Not sure if this is making sense, but it’s starting to sound a lot like a poem I wrote 2 or 3 years ago, Submerged. I think I’ll try to revisit/edit it.
what is poetry?
Found this collection of definitions of poetry in a sticky note that I created on sept 8, 2017–that was about 8 months after I started this log, about 6 months after I discovered I loved poetry, about a month and a half after I injured my knee, and 2 weeks before I could run again. I wish past Sara would have noted which awesome poetry person tweeted these definitions or where to find the essay they wrote, but she didn’t. Oh well.
Well, here is a list of how several poets have defined what a poem is (lifted from an essay I once wrote): What a poem is: “The spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” (Wordsworth). “A small (or large) machine of words” (Williams). “Language that sounds better and means more” (C.D. Wright). “A verbal contraption” (Auden). “A form cut in time” (Pound). “At bottom, a criticism of life” (Matthew Arnold). “The journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air” (Carl Sandburg). “If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off” (Emily Dickinson). “An empty basket; you put your life into it” (Mary Oliver). “Somebody standing up… and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment” (Galway Kinnell). “A holy thing” (Roethke). “A momentary stay against confusion” (Frost).
What the sea does–coming, going–is mole beneath the seeming solid earth and keep eating at it until it gives over at last its stony hold on things and another chunk comes tumbling. What’s strange is, after thirty years, I’ve never seen this happen, never been there at the pivotal single moment when these two conditions, these major states of being (solidity and flux, the rooted and the foldaway ruthless rootless heart of the matter) meet and mate for an instant in which sea-roar and land-groan are one gigantic sound and then that jawing withdrawal, that collapse, that racing after–so foam, stones, churn of sand, swirl of search become a wrecked mouth bulging with one loud clamourtongue, which the rock you stood on plunges into, dumbing it.
O, I love this poem and the single moment when sea roar and land groan meet and mate!
