Tag: Mary Oliver

dec 30/WALK

1.5 mile walk with Delia
the gorge, from 36th to 34th
32 degrees / fog

Good job, Sara. You resisted the urge to run. A walk with Delia was wonderful. So quiet and calm and relaxed! Moist, too. I loved breathing in the cool air and almost floating through the fog. All of it, a soft dream. Occasionally I encountered others — some walkers and runners — but mostly it was just us. At one point, descending through the tunnel of trees, which isn’t really a tunnel anymore because they cut it back at some point, the only thing I could hear was a hammer pounding across the road. No cars or voices or striking feet. Wow! Several times, I felt a warm buzz.

10 Things

  1. a white sky
  2. open water
  3. wet asphalt
  4. grass covered in brown leaves
  5. a dark form descending into the ravine — silent, featureless
  6. a brown view of the floodplain forest — all slender trunks and bare branches, no river or sky poking through
  7. a runner in the neighborhood emerging from an alley in a sprint, then returning to the alley, then appearing again, then disappearing around the corner
  8. thump thump thump the striking feet of a runner across the street — the same one? I’m not sure
  9. the silvery sparkle of the sign at the 35th street overlook — is this sign new?
  10. overheard: a woman running alongside a kid on a bike, talking to the kid — you had your pink backpack and your droopy dog stuffed animal — did she say droopy, or some other word?

I wanted to think about my Ars Poetica poem as I walked, and I did, but I’m still stuck. Something about letting things breathe and be exposed to the air to see what happens and erosion and ruins. I’ll give it until the end of the year, and if I’m still stuck, I’ll put it away for a bit.

forget what you are

While reading poet’s Cynthia Cruz’s explanation of how her poem, “Dark Register” is shaped by Hegel’s Philosophy of Spirit, I encountered these lines about habit:

“Habit,” in the third stanza refers to Hegel’s concept of habit: the act of repeating an action that, through this repetition, becomes second nature. For Hegel, habit implies forgetting: we forget what we are doing once the action becomes habit.

Cynthia Cruz on “Dark Register”

we forget what we are . . . . I immediately thought of Marie Howe’s beautiful poem, “The Meadow” and her lines about her dying brother:

I want to add my cry to those who would speak for the sound alone.

But in this world, where something is always listening, even
murmuring has meaning, as in the next room you moan

in your sleep, turning into late morning. My love, this might be
all we know of forgiveness, this small time when you can forget

what you are.

This forgetting also reminds me of Mary Rueffle’s reference to Levi-Strauss’ “unhitching, which I wrote about on may 31, 2023. First, my rough paraphrasing:

unhitching happens in brief moments when we can step outside of or beside or just beyond — below the threshold of thought, over and above society — to contemplate/experience/behold the this, the what it is, the essence of everything, Mary Oliver’s eternity.

Second, a quote from Levi-Strauss in Mary Ruefle:

The possibility, vital for life, of unhitching, which consists … in grasping, during the brief intervals in which our species can bring itself to interrupt its hive-like activity, the essence of what it was and continues to be, below the threshold of thought and over and above society; in the contemplating of a mineral more beautiful than all our creations; in the scent that can be smelt at the heart of a lily and is more imbued with learning than all our books; or in the brief glance, heavy with patience, serenity and mutual forgiveness, that, through some involuntary understanding, one can sometimes exchange with a cat.

Lévi-Strauss quoted MRH page 52

Wow, all of this is making me think of something I wrote, referencing Mary Oliver, about the gorge. Initially I added it on the end of my geologic time poem, and maybe it should stay there and be extended, or maybe it should be another poem? Here are the lines:

Every day this place
erodes the belief
that rock will stand still,
is here forever,
unmoved, unmoving. 
And yet, with its slow 
slight shifts on a scale 
almost beyond her 
comprehension, these 
rocks might be as close 
as the girl can get
to eternity.

So many more connections I could make with forgiveness and forgetting and remembering and now and now and now!

dec 24/WALK

1 mile
neighborhood
28 degrees

It seemed colder than 28 degrees as Scott and I took Delia on a walk this morning. Damp. It looks like snow, but hours later as I write this, it still hasn’t started. The sky is a heavy white. There was some ice on the sidewalk — thin, almost invisible patches. Conscious of my vision, Scott pointed them out. It’s strange how my vision works; I was able to see all of them. I think it’s because of the texture — the icy patches make the concrete just a little bit shinier.

10 Things

  1. good morning! greeted a neighbor on the next block — the one with the cat (matt) who rules the sidewalk and the very cool poetry station. I thought about asking his about it, but didn’t — next time!
  2. most of the ice was in the usual spots — the places where ice always forms because of the slope of the ground or the way a drain pipe is positioned
  3. a dog’s sudden appearance on the other side of a fence startled, then delighted me
  4. the soft tinkling of a collar, almost sounding like a bell
  5. Dave the Daily Walker in the distance
  6. the decorations in the trees of a house on the corner of 28th — over-sized ornaments in soft colors
  7. noticing the contrast colors of a house, wondering to Scott, didn’t that house used to be all one dark color? He couldn’t remember, but I do, now. I’ve written about this house before and its once purple door
  8. I’m not sure what we were talking about but I have no memory of what I saw or smelled or heard for the next couple blocks
  9. oh! one thing I remember now: the beautiful frosty pattern of icy leaves etched on the sidewalk — the leaves were gone, but had let their prints
  10. Delia’s wagging tail as we neared our garage — are we almost home? (wag wag wag)

A few hours ago, before our walk, I did my standard 30 minutes for flexibility yoga. Wow! It felt so good and made me very relaxed. As I stretched, I had a thought about my series of Haunts poems: break up the long 5 syllable sections with some short lines from other writers (mostly poets) that I fit into my 3/2 patter. I call them for fitters. I’m thinking of these kind of like Jane Hirshfield’s pebbles or Mary Oliver’s sand dabs or Victoria Chang’s tankas in Obit. I’m also thinking of them because of the poet Sparrow, who I just learned about in Lydia Davis’ essay on form. Sparrow wrote an entire series of “translated” New Yorker poems.

I thought I had written about the sand dabs and pebbles on here before, but I can’t find anything:

A Year with Mary Oliver posted all 9 of MO’s sand dabs on instagram! Here’s an explanation of the form:

(Sand Dabs 1/9) Over the next nine days, we’ll be sharing each of Mary’s nine “Sand Dabs.”

As Mary wrote in the footnote of Long Life: “The sand dab is a small, bony, not very significant but well-put-together fish.” 

The incomparable @mariapopovadescribed “Sand Dabs, One” as “just a few lines, largehearted and limber, each saturated with meaning and illustrating the principle it espouses in a clever meta-manifestation of that principle embedded in the language itself.”

The remaining eight also fit that description.

They read like many of the excerpts from Mary’s notebook (which she shared in the essay “Pen and Paper and a Breath of Air,” found in Blue Pastures)—free form noticing and thoughts, in list form. 

All nine Sand Dabs are scattered throughout four of Mary’s less frequently visited books: Blue Pastures, West Wind, Winter Hours, and Long Life. She wrote them over the span of nine years. Just adding more as she went along. 

We weren’t able to find any place where all nine lived together. It was fun to collect them from their disparate pages, put them together, and read them all in a row.

Mary Oliver’s Sand Dabs

And here’s a Pebble from Hirshfield:

Retrospective/ Jane Hirshfield

No photograph or painting can hold it—
the stillness of water 
just before it starts being ice.

The mention of ice reminded me of a wonderful description I found in the novel I just started reading, A Little Stranger/ Sarah Waters:

I recall most vividly the house itself, which struck me as an absolute mansion. I remember its lovely ageing details: the worn red brick, the cockled window glass, the weathered sandstone edgings. They make it look blurred and slightly uncertain–like an ice, I thought, just beginning to melt in the sun.

The Little Stranger/ Sarah Waters

dec 8/RUN

6.1 miles
hidden falls loop
36 degrees

Wow, what a great morning for a run! All the snow has melted so the paths were clear and I don’t remember much wind. I felt strong and relaxed and grateful to be outside when everything is bare and brown and open. And that river! Half frozen with a thin layer of ice, half open with shiny, dark water. I stopped at the overlook on the ford bridge and stared down at it, admiring the variations of gray and the feeling of air and nothingness — barren, vast, other-worldly.

10 Things

  1. the sound of a kid either laughing when his voice bounced as he went over something bumpy or crying so hard that his voice was breaking — heard, not seen
  2. several runners in bright yellow shirts
  3. two runners in white jackets
  4. some kids laughing and yelling near the skate park just past the ford bridge, again heard, not seen
  5. the view of the valley between ford and hidden falls — bare tree branches, then endless air, then the other side
  6. a blue port-a-potty with the door ajar
  7. the sound of water rushing over concrete at the locks and dam no. 1
  8. a lone goose honking somewhere near the oak savanna
  9. the contrast of wispy, dark branches against the light gray sky
  10. the river — no color, some shiny, some dulled by ice

an attempt to track my train of thought

I’m working on another section of my Haunts poem (which might need a different name as I stray away from ghosts). Before my run, I was thinking about being tender and erosion and H.W.S Cleveland (Horace William Shaler) as envisioning the grand rounds and the gorge as art. Before I headed out, I gave myself a task for during the run: to think about and look for examples of erosion and how it fits in with my idea that art is about making us feel things deeply (feeling tender). This task was inspired by this section in my poem:

his pitch for parkways
was about making space
for beauty and for
feeling things deeply —
he wanted to turn
this place into art.
Grass and benches and
trees to frame open
sky and the stone that
holds a river and
all who seek it. But
up here exposed on
the bluff, it is not
only the view that
makes the girl tender.
Wind, sun, frigid air,
the effort it takes
to keep moving, a
slow wearing down of
cone cells, smooth out her
edges, peel away
her layers, create
cracks that start small then
spread.

During my run, I stopped to record three ideas into my phone:

One: I thought about the cracks and the idea of being split open and how this splitting open was not a wound that needed to be patched but something else.

Two: I can’t quite remember how I continued to think about this idea of the wound and breaking open but I do remember suddenly thinking about eroding shorelines and bluffs and how cracks and a wearing away can be harmful. At first I wanted to make a clear distinction between the erosion I was writing about, and the tenderness it allowed for, but then I realized, just before reaching the ford bridge on my way back from hidden falls, that tenderness and feeling things deeply and art as inspiring this is both wound and that something else I can’t quite name. I spoke into my phone:

Beauty as not always pretty, sometimes ugly. Art as wonder and amazement, terror and pain.

I think I was remembering some lines from a podcast episode for Off the Shelf with Dorothy Lasky, as I mentioned terror.

I don’t think beautiful things are innocent, I guess, sadly. I mean, I don’t know what “innocent” means also, but yeah, I think beautiful things are holy, and I think that those things can be awful. I guess it’s like the sublime, and those things which we have awe about is what beauty is. And I don’t think it’s always kind, sadly. You know, I wish it were. It can be, but I don’t think that’s what is really there. It overwhelms. So, it is terrifying by its nature. Like, real beauty should make you terrified.

Good for the World

Three: By the time I had crossed the ford bridge, I had another thought about erosion and my diseased eyes:

My cone cells eroding is this slow softening, but at some point, most likely, there’s going to be a break — an abrupt break [when the few remaining cone cells in my central vision die, when I won’t be able to read or rely on my central vision at all]. And that is how the gorge works. It’s the slow softening of sandstone until limestone breaks off.

Yes! This is a helpful way for me to connect the gorge with my vision. I’m not sure that this third thing fits into this section of the poem, but I will use it somewhere!

posted an hour later: I can’t believe it, but after searching through the archive of this log, I realized that I have never posted this beautiful, tender poem by Mary Oliver:

Lead/ Mary Oliver

Here is a story
to break your heart.
Are you willing?
This winter
the loons came to our harbor
and died, one by one,
of nothing we could see.
A friend told me
of one on the shore
that lifted its head and opened
the elegant beak and cried out
in the long, sweet savoring of its life
which, if you have heard it,
you know is a sacred thing.,
and for which, if you have not heard it,
you had better hurry to where
they still sing.
And, believe me, tell no one
just where that is.
The next morning
this loon, speckled
and iridescent and with a plan
to fly home
to some hidden lake,
was dead on the shore.
I tell you this
to break your heart,
by which I mean only
that it break open and never close again
to the rest of the world.

aug 26/RUN

3.1 miles
river road, south/north
77 degrees / dew point: 75

Heat advisory. Today is one of those days that makes me glad that fall is coming, especially since I can’t swim anymore. I’m looking forward to cooler runs — please come soon. I heard a pro runner say once that humidity is a poor man’s altitude. I wonder, since my body doesn’t tolerate humidity well, would it be the same with altitude? Probably.

Today is RJP’s first day of college classes. It has worked out for her to regroup and not stay in the dorms until she’s ready because her dorm doesn’t have air conditioning. Even if she was enjoying the dorm, she probably would have come home until the heat breaks anyway.

10 Things

  1. exposed roots everywhere on the dirt trail, difficult to navigate
  2. one short stretch of the trail had loose, sandy dirt that my feet sunk into
  3. forecast predicted partly cloudy, but the sky was cloudless and burned a bright blue
  4. car after car after car on the river road — this is often the case at 8, which is when I started my run
  5. loud waves of cicada buzz
  6. noisy bullfrogs and crickets in the marshy meadow just past the ford bridge
  7. more bikes than walkers or runners
  8. the dirt path into the small wood by the ford bridge: a deep, cool green
  9. a flushed, sweaty face
  10. a woman in a big straw hat and a pink something — I can’t remember if it was her shoes or pants or a shirt; I just remember pink — sitting on a bench, her back to the gorge

today’s view from my window

On august 26, 2023, I wrote about a big spider outside of my window. She’s back. She’s huge. And she’s just hanging there in mid-air. I know there’s a web, but I can’t see it, so I like imaging she’s levitating. I was going to write that she’s not moving, but then the wind stirred her, and then I noticed a small fly caught in her web. Soon, she crawled to it and now she’s doing whatever spiders do to their prey. If it didn’t hurt my head to stare and try to see what is happening, I could watch her for hours.

I looked for a Mary Oliver poem about spiders, but instead found a blog post talking about spiders and their patience and referencing a poem by MO that I haven’t read before:

The Messenger/ Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
     equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand. 

Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
     keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work, 

which is mostly standing still and learning to be
     astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here, 

which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
     and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
     to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
     that we live forever.

aug 21/RUNSWIM

5.3 miles
bottom of franklin hill turn around
66 degrees / dew point: 61

A great run. Was scheduled to do 9 miles this morning, but since I’m also doing my final open swim tonight, thought I’d break it up over 2 days instead. Felt strong. I’m figuring out how to keep my heart rate lower and I can feel it helping. Everything’s easier (or, not quite as difficult) — breathing, lifting my knees, moving forward, staying upright for almost an hour.

10 Things

  1. stacked stones
  2. a loose slab on concrete that rocks when you step on it wrong (or right?)
  3. an abandoned bike under the franklin bridge
  4. the water under the bridge — blue then brown, something under the surface disrupting the flow, creating small waves
  5. Dave, the Daily Walker — Hi Dave!
  6. beep beep beep — the alarm under the trestle going off
  7. rowers! a coxswain’s voices giving instructions
  8. a roller skier, laboring on a flat stretch of path
  9. the hollow knock of a woodpecker
  10. the loud crunch of an acorn under my foot

Before the run, reading through the post from august 21, 2023, I rediscovered Robert Frost’s poem, Come In. As I read it, I noticed that the word, still, in the line, Though it still could sing. I clicked on the link; it was a list of different definitions of still. Nice! I don’t think I created this link, I must have copied it from somewhere else, but where? Anyway, I love the word still and have written about it many times on this log. During my run, I decided to think about what it means to be still.

I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done.

The last thing I wrote in my plague notebook before the run was from Maya Angelou: Still I rise. I thought about Michelle Obama’s speech at the DNC, which I watched while eating breakfast, and her beautiful words about her mother and the importance of honoring elders and continuing their legacy and the need for endurance and enduring. I thought about the still in Still I rise as continuing to show up in the face of suffering and injustice and also as a sureness and clarity of conviction, especially when it becomes hard.

swim: 4 nokomis loops
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees

More great swimming. I feel strong this year — no sore shoulders or neck or back — powering through the water. Buoyant, relaxed.

Cedar Vibes, 10 Things

  1. someone calling out, I think I could swim to that orange buoy and back. That’s it!
  2. 2 swimmers on the other side of the beach from the open swim course, swimming farther away from buoys and lifeguards and the course
  3. a swimmer rounding the orange buoy and then swimming perpendicular to the course
  4. a wetsuit with a yellow safety buoy swimming the wrong direction
  5. music blasting at Hidden Beach — Don’t worry/about a thing
  6. scratchy, persistent, loose vines floating in the water
  7. scratchy nets of vines, reaching up from the bottom, trying to entangle me
  8. a canoe with a person in the water hanging off of it, stopped in the middle of the course, trying to decide what to do
  9. more swimmers way off course, on the wrong side of the buoy
  10. an annoying teen repeatedly (20 times, at least) calling out, Get out of my way!, in a VERY irritating voice

Before the swim, I was thinking more about still and I remembered the expression, still waters run deep. Then I thought about depths and surfaces and my recent efforts to push myself to dig a little deeper with things I’m passionate about — that’s why I’m training for the marathon again.

aug 8/RUNSWIM

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
62 degrees

Cooler! I’m looking forward to fall running. It’s coming. Today’s mental victory: I didn’t stop at the spot I always stop at, but kept running up the hill and out of the park. Heard the falls gushing and the sewer pipes dripping, but my favorite sound was the rush of wind through the trees. It reminded me of my family’s farm and the glittering leaves of the aspen trees in the front yard. Sometimes, I really miss that farm and the late 90s – early 2000s version of my family. Everyone alive, almost all of us together for my birthday and the fourth of july.

10 Things

  1. roller skiers — at least 2, one coming up from behind, then turning towards wabun park before they reached me
  2. shimmering water spied through the trees near the overlook
  3. a kid kicking rocks in the parking lot, an adult calling out, I just have to pay for the parking. Wait there!
  4. the summery, sweet and fresh smell of a certain type of tall grass near short wall with “The Song of Hiawatha” etched on top — did it almost smell like cilantro? I used to smell this same grass in front of an apartment building running up the marshall hill
  5. a few spots of light on the double bridge
  6. the creek, just before spilling over the limestone ledge, was high
  7. the faintest spray of the falls as I ran by
  8. birds singing in stereo — by the gorge, in the neighborhood, across the street
  9. a cloud-free blue sky — bright blue, not bright blue
  10. a neighbor’s boulevard garden, filled with tall grasses and flowers and something tall and feathery that looked and smelled like dill — can dill get that tall?

Watching the Olympics — not at night, but during the day, getting to see (well, what I can see, sitting close up to the tv) the events in their entirety, nerding out on the rules and habits specific to each sport. My favorite new-to-me sports: kayak slalom cross and dinghy sailing. Wow.

A year ago, on 8 August 2023, I wrote about Mary Oliver and her swimming poem:

Recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August” in my head as I swam the last loop and realized something. She writes:

Something had pestered me so much
that I felt like my heart would break.
I mean, the mechanical part.

The mechanical part? I realized that her heart breaking is a good thing here and that her mechanical heart is the one that follows the beat of organized, tightly contained time, broken down into hours and minutes and seconds so we can be as efficient and productive as possible. Yes! Swimming in the lake can break me open and out of time’s rigid boxes.

I want to think about this breaking open and stepping or stroking? out of time while I swim.

swim: 5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
68 degrees

Brr! The water was warmer than the air temperature and wasn’t too bad for most of the swim, but that last loop! The cold creeped in. First my hands, then my feet. I was in the water — didn’t stop — for an hour and 25 minutes.

Rough water: starting the loop, swimming towards the little beach, I was almost swimming with the current. Mostly the water pushed me forward, occasionally it pushed me off to the left. Rounding the far orange buoy, I swam into the waves/swells. We (the water, me) didn’t fight, but it was difficult to see or sight, and I often had to breathe to my right. I wasn’t trying to rhyme so much in this last sentence. The final stretch between the last green and the first orange was the calmest — a reprieve before beginning another loop.

I did try to think about Mary Oliver and the mechanical part of my heart breaking. I thought about rhythm and my steady stroking and my (hardly ever) stopping. Then I thought about how I had no idea how much time had passed — 30 minutes? an hour?

I’m writing the swim part of this log entry the next morning. Can I remember 10 things from the swim?

10 Things

  1. loose vines, briefly clinging to my cap — not slimy or scratchy
  2. something in the water, out in the middle of the lake — water milfoile?
  3. seagulls!
  4. ducks!
  5. opaque water — I don’t remember the color, except for that it was not yellow
  6. puffy clouds in the sky, one off in the distance, near the parking lot, looking almost like a plume of smoke
  7. planes!
  8. movement out of the corner of my eye — usually a wave, sometimes a swimmer
  9. a sailboat on the edge of the course with a white sail
  10. finishing the swim, having a brief conversation with someone: hello. what are you doing? / I’m swimming across the lake. / why? / because I love to and there’s an open swim club. / what’s that yellow thing behind you? / it’s a safety buoy so I can be seen. I carry my phone in it. / oh, thanks for talking to me!

aug 6/RUNSWIM

9 miles
lake nokomis (cedar bridge) and back
61 degrees

9 miles! Decided to break it up into blocks of 3. Miles 1-3: easy, no stops / Miles 4-6: run 9 min, walk 1 min / Miles 7-9: heart rate zones. Well, I didn’t really follow it on the last mile; I ran the whole way. Another mile would have been water — especially without water — but by next week, I’ll be ready for it. (3 sept 2024: I’m not sure what I was trying to write here? Would have been harder?)

10 Things

  1. LOUD leaf blower
  2. lawn mower
  3. overheard audiobook line coming from a passing biker: she walked through the airport
  4. an adult yelling at a kid: it’s only 10 am, and you’re already covered in fricking dirt!
  5. sparkling water, 1: the river, through the trees
  6. rowers!
  7. sparkling water, 2: from the bridge, lake nokomis
  8. boats waiting at the dock to be checked for zebra mussels
  9. a pickleball tournament at the rec center — thwack thwack thwack thwack
  10. 2 bikers yelling to their friend — Laura! Sue! Laura and Sue turn around and bike back to them. Biker 1 explains, this is the turnoff to go over the bridge. Laura or Sue, oh, it’s been so long since I’ve biked over here

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
76 degrees

Another great night for a swim! There’s still a blue-green algae advisory, but I didn’t encounter any, only one or two vines. Wasn’t sure how I’d feel after running 9 miles in the morning, but I was fine. Tonight’s 4 loops were on the longish side. Here’s a comparison that future Sara will appreciate:

6 aug 2024: 4 loops / 2.5 miles / 2490 strokes
2 aug 2024: 4 loops / 2 miles / 2212 strokes
28 july 2024: 4 loops / 2 miles / 2276 strokes

The green buoy closest to the big beach was a lot farther south than it has been in the past week. I almost missed it during the first loop. I had to stop and look around. When I finally saw it, it was so far out that I doubted my eyes, almost thinking it might be the sail on a boat. A moment/image: treading water that was calm and flat, everything quiet, no one around, facing the sun, seeing the green buoy to my left looking enormous and far away. A double-take, then cautiously swimming towards it. Difficult to put into words the feeling, out in the lake, when I stop to tread water — such wonderful solitude and peace, maybe it’s not solitude, but a sense of nothingness or an emptying of self, a joining with the water and sky.

10 Things

  1. swimming away from the sun (heading east), seeing a strange red-orange spot in my left goggle
  2. clouds — a feathery pattern
  3. a plane, parallel to the water
  4. a seagull, then a flock of seagulls high above me — I turned my head to watch them as I breathed
  5. orange reflections on the water, near the buoy
  6. sighting the buoy, far off in the distance, emptied of its orange, looking white
  7. not too many yellow safety buoys tethered to swimmers, more orange and pink
  8. another regular swimmer saying to me before the swim, I’m glad you’re here. I thought I was the only one!
  9. a repeated squeaking noise that I couldn’t quite place — my swim cap? nose plug?
  10. 3.5 feet visibility — barely a hand or bubbles, nothing below me, swimming in pale green nothingness

My swimming one day in August project update: So far, I have 5 hours 34 minutes 44 seconds of my 24 hour goal. Can I do it? Of course I can!

Kamala Harris has picked Mn gov Tim Walz as her running mate. He’s a wonderful choice. Joy, hope, possibility.

aug 4/SWIM

5 loops (96 minutes)
lake nokomis open swim
72 degrees

Whew! This might be one of the longest swims I’ve done: 1 hr and 36 minutes without stopping! It felt good, relaxed. When I told RJP that I swam a total of 19 hours in July, she suggested that I try to swim 24 hours, a whole day, in August. Yes! An ambitious goal, especially since open swim ends on the 22nd, but doable. After deciding on this goal I remembered a favorite poem of Mary Oliver’s that I memorized for my 50th, Swimming One Day in August — perfect.

There’s another blue-green algae advisory. The lake seemed clear, although my suit was full of muck that was more green than usual. The sky was mostly clouds, with a whisper of blue. I don’t remember seeing dragonflies or planes or seagulls. The bubbles from my hands were sparkling again.

On the last loop, I stopped to take in the silence and solitude. A swimmer passed me. They had the strangest kick. Every fifth kick was bigger and louder — almost like a limp. Did they realize they were doing it? Was it possible not to notice this?

july 14/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees

The big storms yesterday pushed out all of the algae scum. Hooray! The lake was clear and beautiful. My friends, the sparkling particles, were back. I think I’ll call them the water spirits. I swam 3 1/2 loops without stopping, then did a few breaststroke strokes in the middle of the lake before finishing up. I felt strong and relaxed during it, tired after. A great swim. Soon I’d like to add at least one more loop. Maybe this week?

The water was higher than usual. I noticed that the base of the light pole where swimmers sometimes put their stuff was underwater today. Scott told me that the little beach was gone — no sand, just water all the way to the grass.

10+ Things

  1. blue sky, some white clouds
  2. people on paddle boards, canoes in the middle of the lake
  3. no encounters with scum or vines
  4. the water was calm during the first loop, choppier during loops 2-4
  5. burped underwater which I thought would make a loud, echoing sound — nope
  6. the far green buoy looked white and blended in with the sailboats
  7. ending the loop, sighting the first orange buoy, it looked like a faint moon to me — almost like when you can see just barely see the moon during the day
  8. minnows near shore
  9. 2 lifeguards flirting through their walkie talkies with a third who was out on the course dropping a buoy — it’s not perfect, but we don’t need perfect / but I want perfect / giggle giggle
  10. the color of the water was a golden greenish-blue — shafts of light reached down from above and up from below — green, but a green that made you think blue, too, not clear but clean and fresh
  11. I don’t remember the water temperature so I think it was in that balanced state — not cold or hot

Unsettled by last night’s assassination attempt. Between that and the aftermath of the debate, what a shit-show this election is. As we drove to the lake, I recited Mary Oliver — It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit amongst the flux of happenings. Yesterday something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part. The swim helped me to quiet my unsettled feelings.

july 10/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
78 degrees / dew point: 66

For the first mile, in the shade it felt almost cool or, at least not HOT! Hardly any bugs, but tons of chirping birds, one black-capped chickadee calling out for a response which never came. A few other runners, walkers, a group of bikers. After turning around at the trestle I passed by 3 women instructing a fourth on how to use an unfamiliar bike. Somewhere I smelled tobacco — from a car? below on the winchell trail? a walker’s clothes? Admired the glowing purple flowers on the edge of the trail and the stretch of the path that was all shade, except for a few splotches of light. One splotch was big enough to see my shadow in before we both disappeared into the shade. The river was calm and pale blue. The green was thick excess. The stretches of trail in the direct sun were warm. At least twice I pushed myself to keep running when I wanted to stop. At the trestle I put in my old “Winter” playlist

immersion

This summer I’m devoting a lot of attention to water and swimming and my experiences during open swim. After reading Lauren Groff’s essay, Swimming, Anne Carson’s story 1=1, and watching Samantha Sanders’ mini doc, Swimming Through, I’m thinking about why I love open water swimming and how to describe the experience of moving in/with/through water. Here are 3 descriptions from Groff, Carson, and Sanders.

1 – Groff

there is a moment in swimming when, after a while, the body’s rhythm grows so comfortable that the swimmer loses awareness of herself. There is a marrow-deep letting go. She isn’t thinking. Her brain is off, her body is on autopilot. She is elevated; happy is not the word for it. To be and not to be, simultaneously: some people call this state ecstasy, others call it zen. They are, perhaps, different names for the same phenomenon. It is difficult to attain, and there are a thousand ways to attain it. Some meditate, others do peyote, others focus so hard on their art that the world itself falls away and they look up, days or hours later, to be staggered by what they have created in the full flare of their own white heat.

Swimming/ Lauren Groff

Groff’s last bit, “in the full flare of their own white heat” reminds me of Mary Oliver and one of her poems that I posted on 10 july 2022: “The Ponds”:

from The Ponds/ Mary Oliver

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.

The white heat also makes me think of Emily Dickinson. But, the flare of white heat seems like the wrong sort of metaphor for what happens to you in the water. Also, even as we float in the water, we are still fully in it, not above it.

2 — Carson

. . . no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky. That first entry. Crossing the border of consciousness into, into what?

And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.

1=1/ Anne Carson

To swim, especially freestyle, with your head mostly underwater, only surfacing to breathe (as opposed to breaststroke, where you always have a frog-eye view), is to be immersed in water, not floating above it. And not burning a white heat, but —? Something I can’t quite name yet. The it you are in, is not just water, but life.

3 — Sanders

 

There are many wonderful, beautiful moments in this doc about resilience and community and transformation, but I especially love this moment, starting 10 minutes in, in which they describe the shift from tracking the temperature to giving attention to — witnessing — the ice. To me, this might speak to Carson’s idea of crossing the border of consciousness into something/somewhere else.

 We became very obsessive about how cold the water was getting. You know, it’s 50, then it’s 40, then it’s 40.2, then it’s 39. I had two thermometers that both busted this year in the cold water, I didn’t get another one. We just figure that it’s cold. So then it’s about I can’t wait to swim in the snow. Then it was like, I can’t wait to swim when there’s ice.

And then we had no idea what did ice mean? You know, this winter it meant so many different kinds of ice because you know, there’s the first ice that was like a very thin, thin layer of ice. Almost like snowflakes on the water. Break them as I stroked and then turn around and they would have reformed behind me. Ice that was so sharp that you actually were getting cut and you needed to be careful.

And then, you know, we got real ice.

Swimming Through/ Samantha Sanders

The feeling of swimming is the feeling of noticing the world, not existing above it, but fully in it, immersed, aware, witnessing the slight changes in temperature, or where waves usually start, or how the weather affects the opacity of the water.

A few minutes before this ice part, one of the women says this about the experience of swimming in very cold water: I feel metallic! I love that — maybe that should be the title of a poem, “To feel metallic”?!

added a few hours later: I almost forgot to include some sources that I’d like to gather then read then archive:

  • “The Anthropology of Water” / Anne Carson in Plainwater — go to the U library for this one
  • In Summer, We’re Reborn/ Nina MacLaughlin
  • Excerpt from The Folded Clock* / Heidi Julavits

*several years ago — maybe 10? — I put The Folded Clock on my wishlist and got it for Christmas of that year. Apparently this was before I got into the habit of writing the date on the first page, so I can’t remember exactly what year that was. I also can’t specifically remember why — maybe because I was into memoirs? Anyway, I know I read some of it before but I didn’t realize that she wrote about swimming in lakes!

Julavits is swimming in a Berlin lake, filled with algae. This is the last paragraph:

The best thing about my first Berlin swim was this. When I took off my bathing suit, the crotch was bright green from the algae that had collected there. It was like getting my period for the first time and seeing the shock of color where normally there is only white.

The Folded Clock

When I took my suit off after my green algae filled swim, the muck that usually collects beneath my suit on my stomach and under my breasts included some bright green bits? chunks? traces? I’m glad that it collected there and not in my crotch!