Tag: Alice Oswald

feb 16/RUN

note: I’m starting this post at 9:50 am. The temp is 4 degrees / fees like -11. The wind is 11 mph with gusts up to 20 mph. At this point, I’m thinking I will run inside on the treadmill. Will I, or will some part of me convince the rest to run outside?

3.5 miles
ford bridge and back
7 degrees / feels like -10
50% snow-covered

We did it. Good job legs and lungs and heart, you convinced brain that we really needed to be outside this late morning! Almost all of the layers were on: 2 pairs of black running tights; dark gray tank top; green long-sleeved shirt; orange pullover; dark purplish/blueish/grayish pullover with hood; purple jacket; orange striped buff; black fleece cap with ear flaps; black gloves; pink striped gloves; 2 pairs of socks — gray (long) / black (short). At times, I was too warm.

It was wonderful and sometimes hard, especially when I was running into the wind on the way back. It was also bright — glad I had my sunglasses. Encountered someone in orange with their hand up to shield their eyes as they walked south. Saw the round shadow of a street lamp and the jagged shadow of a small tree. Passed a group of four walkers, laughing and yelling and having fun on the double bridge.

Did I think about purple at all? I can’t remember now. The only color I recall noticing was orange.

the purple hour (15th and 16th of feb)

3:38 am / dining room / 15 feb

the heat turnning on, the house shifting settling, my legs restless
purple mountains — in Japan, looking out at the mountains, different shades of purple — fall, 1994
Emily Dickinson purple — sunsets and sunrises
someone shoveling at 4 am

[discussion below added at 10:30 am on 16 feb]

Where Ships of Purple—gently toss — / Emily Dickinson

Where Ships of Purple—gently toss —
On Seas of Daffodil—
Fantastic Sailors—mingle—
And then—the Wharf is still!
F296 (1862) 265

No one does sunsets better than Dickinson. I wonder if Amherst sunsets are still so colorful. Where I’ve lived sunsets are primarily red, pink, and gold, but the ones she describes often have purple. This one does, too. Here she sees great ships, large purple clouds, gently tossing in their moorings. The sea beneath them is tinted golden, “Daffodil,” from the setting sun. The mingling and fantastic sailors are no doubt smaller clouds that move among the larger ship-like ones, their shapes constantly changing. When the sun sets the sky turns dark and “the Wharf is still!”

the prowling bee

The prowling bee has been such a wonderful resource for me. Reading the comments for this poem, there was speculation about why the Amherst sunsets were so brilliant and purple:

Romantic era sunsets WERE particularly vivid, due to volcanic ash from several cataclysmic eruptions worldwide. The Hudson River School artists and their sunsets might not have been hyperbole, after all, nor were ED purple sunsets.

Another commenter doubted this suggestion, so I did a quick search and found a pop science article about a study on sunset paintings and volcanic ash: How Paintings of Sunset Immortalize Past Volcanic Eruptions

Volcanoes can cause some of the world’s most spectacular sunsets. An eruption spews small particles of gas, dust and ash, called aerosols, high into the atmosphere where they can spread around the world. The particles can’t be seen during the day, but about 15 minutes after sunset, when conditions are right, these aerosols can light up the sky in brilliant “afterglows” of pink, purple, red or orange.

The impact of climate/climate disruptions on how we see color? Fascinating. Earlier this morning, while doing my “on this day” practice, I reread my entry from 16 feb 2024. In it, I described a photo I took above the gorge.

The most important thing about this image is how the branches create a net which mimics how my vision often works — I can almost see what’s there, but not quite. Secondary, but connected, is the feeling of being disoriented, off, almost but not quite, untethered, which comes from swirling forms and the climate crisis — there’s almost always snow on tthe ground here in February. Where are my Minnesota winters?

This last bit about climate crisis and lack of snow returns me to the ash in the sky and its effect on how 19th century artists saw and depicted the world. Many places to go with this, for now I’m thinking about how my vision loss (or the making strange of my vision) has enabled me to be more open (than many people with “normal” vision) to understanding vision as complex and not as simple or straightforward as “what you see is what you get.” Does that make sense?

1:50 am / dining room / 16 feb

doorways/thresholds are definitely purple — a deep, dark purple
the air above the gorge: different versions (tints/shades) of purple
purple hums, a soft lavender static in my ears
lachrymose purple 
originally wrote violet static, but looked up the color again and thought it was too dark for the static I was hearing in my head

9:46 am / front room / 16 feb

Thought more about violet. Decided to search, “Alice Oswald violet.” Found this beautiful poem:

Violet/ Alice Oswald

Recently fallen, still with wings out,

she spoke her name to summon us to her darkness.

Not wanting to be seen, but not uncurious,

she spoke her name and let her purple deep eye-pupil

be peered into.

‘Violet,’ she said

and showed her heart under its leaf.

Then she leant a little frightened forwards

and picked a hand to pick her.

And her horrified mouseface, sniffed and lifted close,

let its gloom be taken and all the sugar licked off its strangeness

while we all stood there saying, ‘Violet! Violet!’

fingering her blue bruised skin.

Finally she mentioned

the name of her name

which was something so pin-sharp,

in such a last gasp of a previously unknown language,

it could only be spoken as a scent,

it could only be heard as our amazement.

“purple deep eye pupil”: so good!

“the name of her name” — I wrote in my notes: the flower is never one solid, consistent color — the color is an abstraction, a taking one part for the whole, a disconnection — to name a color is to reduce the experience and perception of that color to one thing — colors cannot be fully named

What is lost — in our perception, experience of the world — when we reduce what we see to a fixed color/fixed name?

This question reminds me of something I read in Turning to Stone on the importance of naming yesterday:

The names themselves are, of course, human constructs, but the act of naming requires making distinctions that sharpen the powers of observation.

*

Taxonomy is comforting because it creates a sense of control and finitude in a chaotic and open-ended world.

Turning to Stone / Marcia Bjornerud

Lists! I love lists. My lists aren’t taxonomies, but something else . . .

The proper name of God is a list.

Valentina Izmirlieva in Aster of Ceremonies

Once I get the audiobook of Aster of Ceremonies, I want to put name as taxonomy and control in conversation with JJJJJerome Ellis’ “Liturgy of the Name” and “Benediction.”

feb 4/RUN

4.1 miles
minnehaha falls and back
7 degrees / feels like 2

Lots of layers today. Too many. Under the jacket and pull-over and sweatshirt and shirt I was sweating. Like yesterday, the first mile was hard. I had several small victories as I pushed through moments of wanting to cut the run short.

10 Things

  1. happy, wild kids on the playground — I thought I heard one kid call out, thank you thank you thank you then Sara Sara Sara
  2. a bird singing — couldn’t quite hear the tune, just understood it was a bird
  3. the few times I ran on snow it crunched — crisp, compact
  4. the falls were dribbling over the ledge
  5. 2 vehicles in the parking lot, one of them was a pick-up truck
  6. a car honking far behind me in the parking lot — were they honking at me?
  7. a pink plastic bag in the small wood near the ford bridge — full of something
  8. a few walkers, one woman bundled up, wearing a white mask over her mouth and nose
  9. several fast runners, speeding by me
  10. the river was almost all white

Chanted some tripe berries, then triple birds, partly inspired by hearing Kacey Musgraves’ song, Cardinal, last night:

cardinal
chickadee
woodpecker
woodpecker
cardinal
attention
ATTENtion
aTTENtion
attenTION

the purple hour

I have eliminated Facebook from my morning routine and I’m not missing it at all. No gnus is good gnus with Gary Gnu*. Maybe I’ll check the news once a week? So, instead of Facebook, I went straight into poets.org then Poetry Foundation then poems.com. On Poetry Foundation, I found a wonderfully titled essay, The Joy of Attention by Jasmine Dreame Wagner. The whole essay is great and I’d like to return to it. When she mentioned Carolyn Forché’s Blue Hour (which I’ve requested from my local library), an idea slowly, or not so slowly, crept into my consciousness: doing a variation of Wagner’s experiment — going to the same place at the same time every day, giving attention, then listing what you notice (without metaphor) — that involves my restlessness/insomnia at night and calling it Purple Hour. At 1 A.M. last night, sitting at the dining room table, up because of restless legs, I wrote, What color is restlessness? Then I wrote: purple / grayish purple. My answer, I’m sure, was inspired by Alice Oswald, her lecture Interview with Water and her mention of purple in Nobody. In the exercise, Wagner suggests writing in a notebook. Should I do that, or type it up in a document?

To go back to that bucket of water — to wave a blue gown above it and ask, What is that color which Homer calls porfurium? It is not blue exactly; it gets translated as purple but purple is a settled color whereas Homer’s word is agitated. It derives from the sea verb porfurion which means to roll without breaking, so it is already a fluid word, a heaped up word, a word with underswell, not a pigment but an emanation from the nature of water. To get a true sense of porphyrion you need to see the sea in it and for Homer the sea is unhuman full of strange creatures missed colored unplowable and this is my favorite word it is a peritone meaning unfenced. If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. Yes I’m afraid you will have to find your way to the p volume of Johnson’s unwritten dictionary. There you will discover a dark light word an adjective for edgelessness — a sea word used also of death smoke cloth mist blood between bluish purple and cobalt mauve. It appears mid-ocean when the wind perhaps makes a network of backblowing glitters that the underswell moves sideways as when a big sea swells with noiseless waves. It is used of the heart meaning his heart was a heaving not quite broken wave. It indicates a surface but suggests a depth a mutation of flatness or noiseless sheen, a sea creature, a quality of caves, any inlet or iodine or shaded stone, a type of algae or rockfish, anything excessive or out of focus or subliminal — for example: a swimmer seen from underneath, a rotting smell, a list of low sounds, an evening shadow or sea god, a whole catalogue of simmering grudges storms waves and solitudes or deep water including everyone who has drowned in it. To be purpled is to lose one’s way or name, to be nothing, to grieve without surfacing, to suffer the effects of sea light. to be either sleepless or weightless and cut off by dreams — find yourself in the silence underneath an overhanging way that or thereabouts is the color of a bluish violet ultramarine gown so the great poet sang.

Interview with Water

from Paean to Place/Lorine Niedecker

How much less am I
in the dark than they?

Effort lay in us
before religons
at pond bottom
all things move toward
the light

Except those
that freely work down
to ocean’s black depths
in us an impulse tests
the unknown

from Nobody/ Alice Oswald

The sea she said and who could ever drain it dry
has so much purple in its caves the wind at dusk
incriminates the waves
and certain fish conceal it in their shells
at ear-pressure depth
where the shimmer of headache dwells
and the brain goes

dark

purple

purples to think about: heels echoing, doors creaking closed, deep pits. The gentle, queer curve of a branch towering over the trail — as I ran under it I thought, that’s very purple. Then the face of a child in the midst of bellowing frustration — I didn’t see their face, but I imagined it could be a deep purple. Purple whispers in the trees.

Mary Ruefle’s Purple Sadness

some guidelines on the experiment

[from Wagner, things to observe]

  • Record what you see, hear, smell, feel, and taste during each visit.
  • Aim to record at least six new observations each time.
  • On days when you’re pressed for time, allow yourself to simply record: “ailanthus, roof moss, fireplace wood smoke, fence squirrel, birdbath.” Phrases can be just as powerful as full sentences.
  • Note the small observations as much as the significant ones: “eclipse.”
  • When you notice that something in the visual field has changed, be sure to reflect on this change.
  • Observe movement in addition to stasis.
  • Pay attention to the appearance of new items and the absences of others.
  • Familiarize yourself with the specifics of your environment.
  • Resist the urge to create metaphor or simile; instead, log what you see. Recognize the world for what it is.

After recording your observations for a few days or weeks or years, Wagner suggests reflecting on the process of this experience by writing in reverse — starting at the back of the notebook and writing until you reach the first entry. Write in the margins and any empty spaces; “write until your reflections on your process become entangled with your observations; let the notebook become a gnarled and ecstatic poem.”

While Wagner writes everything by hand in a notebook, I might try typing up and/or dictating my observations, printing them out and then writing all over the printed paper. I’m thinking my approach will be be better for my weak eyes.

Will I stick to pure observation? I’m not sure; I might experiment with different ways of understanding my restlessness, and the purple of it all.

*After double-checking how to spell Gary Gnu, I decided to look up the theme song for The Great Space Coaster. Yes! You’re welcome future Sara!

It’s the great space coaster, get on board

sept 20/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop
65 degrees

Such a beautiful morning! I marveled at it with a woman we passed on the stairs down to the east river road. Sunny and still with sharp, satisfying shadows. The first 5 miles were, as I said to Scott, not hard but not easy either. Just one foot in front of the other, moving forward. I had some unfinished business (which is my euphemism for needing to poop) that I had tried to finish before the run started, but couldn’t. Around 5 miles, we stopped at a porta potty — the last one for several miles — but it was locked and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming out anytime soon. I’m not even sure anyone was in there. So I kept going and it got a lot harder. Some stomach cramps and muscle clenching made the run more of a struggle, mentally and physically. But I did it and I don’t feel terrible now that I’m done.

10 Things

  1. flat, still, blue water with dozens of single leaves sitting on the surface
  2. clear, sharp shadows on the bridge — the railing slat shadows were a series of thin parallel lines
  3. the sun reflecting off of the water and through the railing slats was very bright and trippy — so many flashes of light as the shine shot through the slats in a steady rhythm
  4. at first we couldn’t hear shadow falls, but as we neared the monument, I heard the tiniest trickle
  5. pleasing contrast — the bright blue of the sky against the green leaves of a maple tree
  6. slashes of red and orange in the bushes at knee-level
  7. running across the highway 5 bridge, the cars were loud but a speeding motorcycle was louder
  8. more leaping grasshoppers, landing on our legs and feet
  9. a group of people standing in a circle near coldwater springs
  10. a screaming bluejay

Scott and I didn’t talk as much on this run. With my unfinished business, I was trying to focus on moving and didn’t have much to say. Mostly I talked about that or the condition of the path — I rolled my ankle twice (mildly, I hope). Scott talked about where we were (distance/time) in terms of the marathon and how he needs to practice for his gig on Saturday night. I also talked about how the Minneapolis Parks have very specific guidelines for the paved paths along the river — how level they must be, how much distance is required from the road. Scott said that that doesn’t seem to be the case in St. Paul and that he prefers to run on Minneapolis trails.

liquid looking

I’ve started writing around the idea, from Alice Oswald, of liquid looking. I need to gather the different definitions in one space (a job for later today?), but for now I want to mention what I was writing yesterday. It’s about the fish in me escaping (from Anne Sexton), a school of minnows at my feet as I entered the water, and imagining those fish as the insects, the spirits of sight, that Dante describes and that Alice Oswald understands as the light that travels and returns, making it possible for us to see. Here are a few lines from AO (Nobody):

There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye
who speak greek and these invisible
ambassadors of vision never see themselves
but fly at flat surfaces and back again

In my version, the ambassadors of vision are little fish, and they speak in bubbles, not Greek, and they bubble-whisper the colors of things, like the water. I need to work on bringing in just a little bit more of the origin — Dante’s/Oswald’s idea of light spirits/insects — so that it makes sense for the reader. Here’s another passage from an interview with AO that might help:

I was just thinking an awful lot about light and vision and the way … well, light as an insect, really, which is not just Homer, it’s also Dante. I always loved this part of Dante where he talks about the spiriti visivi, I think they’re called. And this idea that when you look at things, what’s happening is these kind of, you know, these creatures are sort of moving out from your eye to the world and moving from the world back into your eye. I was trying to sort of slow down my senses while I wrote this poem and imagine even a sort of passage between myself and the world was a creature, living creature of some kind . . . .

A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

Here’s what I wrote yesterday:

I enter water

and the fish in me

escape — a school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-
to the murk beyond
the buoys. I won’t
see them again but
they are there flashing
below returning
to speak in bubble-
whisper all the names
of water’s colors
silver pewter bronze
copper’s weathered green
reddish-purple rust

Reading this again, I’m thinking about the next line from Anne Sexton’s poem, “The Nude Swim”: The real fish did not mind. I’m really interested in this distinction between the real fish and my fish escaping and what it means and I think I’d like to bring that in here. It fits with something Scott was saying about the poem last night when I read it to him — something about beyond metaphor. I can’t remember, but I think it speaks to what real might mean here.

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape — perhaps they
will join that school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-

OR

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape. The minnows
do not mind as they
dart past lunging kids
on their way to what’s
beyond the buoys.
I won’t see my fish
again but they’re there.

I could also end the poem with an altered version of AO’s, There are said to be microscopic. . . There are said to be tiny fish in the eye/who speak Bubbles . . .

aug 31/RUN

4 miles
marshall-loon loop*
70 degrees

*north through the neighborhood, over to lake street, up the marshall hill, turn right at prior, then right at Summit, down to the river, back over the bridge, stop at Loons for coffee

Ran with Scott this late morning. We talked mostly about our son and how to help him as he tries to figure out what he can do with his music major after he graduates next year. Scott pointed out the signs on the huge and fancy houses on Summit opposing the new hockey arena at St. Thomas. I pointed out the one streetlamp that is still lit on the St. Paul side.

10 Things

  1. pink and orange zinnias in a yard
  2. a shrieking (or hissing?) squirrel in a tree
  3. a blue river, emptied of boats
  4. a bright yellow chair outside of a salon
  5. a dead black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk
  6. a biker slowing then calling out, on your right, before passing us on our left
  7. people sitting outside, laughing and enjoying their coffee at Loons
  8. a friendly barista*
  9. the bathroom for the building, which has always been open now has a keypad on it**
  10. not seen, but described by Scott — being blinded by the sun reflecting off of the flat, metal surface of a stupid cybertruck***

*I’m realizing as I write this that I couldn’t see this barista very clearly and I’m wondering if my vision has gotten worse and I’m so used to it that I hardly notice.

**Customers at Loons and Longfellow Grill now have to punch in a code to use the bathroom. I think the bathrooms should be open. I was wondering if they were having too many people coming up from the river just to use the bathroom. Up until last fall, there has always been a porta potty under the lake street bridge for runners, walkers, rowers, and people living in the gorge. They should bring it back — everyone should have access to a bathroom!

***I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these abominations, but Scott HATES them. They sound terrible.

Mountains/ Alice Oswald

Something is in the line and air along edges,
Which is in woods when the leaf changes
And in the leaf-pattern’s gives and gauges,
The water’s tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
Which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between paces.
An outlet fills the space between two horses.
 
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
Accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
 
And certain evenings, something in the balance
Falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
And then inslides itself between moments
And spills the heart from its circumference;
And this is when the moon matchlessly opens
And you can feel by instinct in the distance
The bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
Like intentions among suggestions.

I think this poem fits in with my study of the in-between moments. So many great lines in the last stanza: falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense; spills the heart from its circumference — I like this idea of a leaky heart that breaks open/out of its borders; intentions among suggestions.

aug 15/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees

There was a chance of scattered thunderstorms tonight so I wondered if open swim would happen, but the weather shifted and I was able to swim 4 choppy loops, some of it even with sun.

10 Things

  1. cold. water
  2. fluffy clouds
  3. translucent bubbles
  4. a duck crossing my path near the big beach
  5. the orange buoy looking like a moon, faint and far off
  6. choppy water — breathing only to my right for long stretches
  7. lake water with a soft green glow
  8. a few vines floating by
  9. swans and sailboats
  10. the most popular color for safety buoys tethered to torsos today: bright pink

I can’t remember if I posted this bit from Nobody before, but I’m posting it again as something to think about while I swim:

if only my eyes could sink under the surface
and join those mackerel shoals in their matching suits
whose shivering inner selves all inter-mirrored
all in agreement with water
wear the same

wings

I’m thinking about how opaque the lake water is, how I’ve only seen a few fish, and never a group of them shivering or shimmering, how my eyes are hardly involved in lake swimming. Okay, they’re involved, but to a much lesser extent than one would expect.

question: do I want to be in agreement with water?

With all of the swells and choppy water, I was not in agreement with it today. Or was I? I didn’t mind swimming into walls of water, unable to see, stroking harder, lifting my head higher. I don’t want the water to be this rough all of the time, but sometimes it’s fun, like today.

aug 2/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees

An almost perfect morning for a swim: sunny, warm, barely a ripple in the water. Amazing. I couldn’t see the orange buoys, but it didn’t matter. Steady and straight, right to them. On the first loop, something hard bumped into me — a twig? — and, for a moment, I was startled out of my stroking and breathing trance. I thought about what was down below me, imagining some fish swimming up and bumping into me. Then I forgot about it and almost everything else.

As I entered the water, more than a dozen tiny minnows parted at my feet — the fish in me escaping!

10 Things

  1. cloudless blue sky — bright, but not quite cerulean
  2. a dragonfly near the surface — at least I think it was dragonfly, it looked big, but too small for a bird — size is often distorted when looking in the lake
  3. swimming south towards the bridge, shafts of light were rising up from the bottom of the lake
  4. a few planes in the air
  5. both green buoys were easy to sight — bright, white dots in the distance
  6. hardly any other swimmers in the water — in the best way possible, I felt alone
  7. water surface: blue, flat, smooth
  8. stopping briefly in the middle of the lake, hearing the sloshing and rhythmic splashing of someone else’s strokes
  9. after the swim, walking near the bike rack: the solar panels on top of the picnic structure were casting pale orange shapes on the sidewalk
  10. swimming east towards the little beach, the bubbles my hands make were sparkling and glittering in the sun, too sparkling to be real, looking like something you’d see in a cartoon*

*Days after writing this, I happened to be watching classic Scooby-Doo and saw the bubbles I was thinking of:

unreal, sparkly, bubbles-as-outlines

Speaking of bubbles, I searched for them on Poetry Foundation and found these lines:

Its bubbles are words
meant for no one.
(from In the Aquarium/ Dunya Mikhail)

I like imagining my underwater bubbles as words being released, not as speech intended for any one, but as something else: a letting go? an accident — leaking words all over the lake?

I’m reminded of Alice Oswald’s restless thought bubbles in Nobody released from the body and traveling across the water, there and there and there.

I’m also reminded of Anne Sexton and “The Nude Swim”:

We calmly trailed over them
and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white
balloons that drifted up
into the sun

What patterns do I leave on the surface with my strokes, and how long do they last? What if my bubbles could float above and witness them?

july 30/SWIM

5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
90 degrees

5 loops! An almost perfect night: warm, sunny, calm. I don’t think there were any waves. No green goo, either. They (whoever they are — I’ll have to look it up) tested the water on Monday and lifted the blue-green algae advisory. Hooray! I felt strong and relaxed — except for when I got boxed in between a freestyler and a breaststroker and accelerated for 5 minutes to get clear of them.

I couldn’t see the green buoys at all and got a bit off course in the back stretch on every loop, but I didn’t panic or get upset. In the first loop, the second green buoy was way off course: too close to the other green buoy and too far out to the south. They moved it during my second loop and I had no idea where it was. I ended up swimming behind the lifeguard. I remember not caring and approaching the rest of the swim as a fun challenge: can I manage to do one loop right? My last loop was the closest. I briefly considered doing a 6th loop, but when I thought about my troubles sighting the last green buoy, I decided against it.

10 Things*

  1. blue sky with a few wispy clouds
  2. mostly warm, almost hot, water with a few pockets of cold, which felt great
  3. a few scratchy vines, one forced me to stop stroking to fling it off
  4. menacing swan count: 3
  5. doing a few quick breaststroke strokes and catching a glimpse of something small, but not that small, flying just above the water — hope it was a dragonfly
  6. stopping in the middle of the lake, hearing happy voices at the big beach: crowded
  7. the light! later in the summer, the sun lower in the west, giving everything — water, trees, beach — a warm glow
  8. later, after getting beers at the Painted Turtle, Scott pointed out that a few of the swan boats had lights on them! very cool
  9. real birds — a row of ducks, then a duck and ducklings
  10. menacing kids: 2, tormenting the ducks

from Dart/ Alice Oswald

like a ship the shape of flight
or like the weight that keeps it upright
or like a skyline crossed by breath
or like the planking bent beneath
or like a glint or like a gust
or like the lofting of a mast

such am I who flits and flows
and seeks and serves and swiftly goes —
the ship sets sail, the weight is thrown,
the skyline shifts, the planks groan,

the glint glides, the gust shivers
the mast sways and so does water

then like a wave the flesh of wind
or like the flow-veins on the sand
or like the inkling of a fish
or like the phases of a splash
or like an eye or like a bone
or like a sandflea on a stone

such am I who flits and flows
and seeks and serves and swiftly goes —
the waves slide in, the sand lifts,
the fish fades, the splash drifts,
the eye blinks, the bone shatters,
the sandflea jumps and so does water

the inkling of a fish — mostly, all I get in the middle of the lake are inklings of fish: silver flashes below. I’m glad. Near shore, in the shallow water, minnows seem more like inklings of fish than fully realized fish. I love inkling as a hint or suggestion: the inkling of a buoy, a whisper from a fish, orange or come this way or over there

What are the phases of my stroking splash? What will glint tonight at open swim? I thought briefly about these things as I swam, but I don’t remember what I thought. I’ll have to try again on Thursday.

july 29/RUN

8 miles
almost to downtown and back
71 degrees
humidity: 90% / dew point: 69

8 miles! I ran first half without stopping, slow and steady. The heat and humidity didn’t bother me too much. I can tell I’m getting mentally stronger. Not too long after the turn around, at the Bohemian Flats parking lot, I stopped for water and the port-a-potty. Stopped at the next port-a-potty too. So glad they were there! I know most runners have at least one terrible poop story, but I didn’t want today to be the day I made mine! Other than gastro issues, the run wasn’t too bad. I was slow, but I kept going and stuck to the heart rate plan: when it hit 168, I walked until it dropped to 135, then I started running again until it hit 168 again.

10 Things

  1. 4 or 5 stones stacked on the boulder
  2. the blue graffiti under the lake street bridge is not letters, but shapes of some sort
  3. a park worker on a big, lawn mower/tractor, whipping around trees, cutting the grass
  4. hello friends! — greeting the Welcoming Oaks
  5. a mother yelling at her kid — Carly Jane (or something close to that), put your legs down NOW!
  6. river water moving fast — I could actually hear it flowing south
  7. another park vehicle with bright headlights, trimming trees next to the trail
  8. gushing seeps in the limestone below the U of M campus
  9. a radio blasting out of a car window — didn’t recognize the song
  10. there was a crocheted sweater — orange and lime green, I think — in the port-a-potty at the flats

Cole Swensen and rivering

opening line from Gave/ Cole Swensen

no river rivers

What is to river? I can imagine rivering as the act of being beside and with the river — walking or running — or in it — swimming, rowing — witnessing the river.

Here’s another use of river as verb from swims/ Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

The river is something that happens,
like exercise or illness, to the body
on any given day
I am rivering.

On 16 august 2022, I posted this line from Burnett’s poem, I am rivering, and wondered, could there be such a thing as lake-ing? And how does it differ from rivering?

Rivering and lake-ing and streaming and brooking and creeking made me think of a line from Anne Carson’s “1 = 1”:

Every water has its own rules and offering.

What are rules and offerings of the Mississippi River and Lake Nokomis?

Cole Swensen is particularly interested in walking, both generally and specifically beside the Gave River. Here’s an interview I’d like to read in which she talks about her walks and walking.

Other sources to remember:

Cole Swensen and bridges

Swensen has a section in Gave where she lists different bridges, and “other ways of crossing.” I’d like to archive the information about Mississippi bridges that I’ve gathered — names, interesting histories, etc.

clear water

Skimming through Gave, trying to find the section on bridges, my eyes fell on the phrase, the water is brilliantly clear, and I suddenly remembered watching surfing competition in the Olympics. It’s taking place in Tahiti and the coverage was great. They even had a cameraman in the water. At one point, we got a view underwater of the surfers’ legs sitting on boards. So clear! Such visibility! When I swim in the lake, I can barely see my hand. What would it be like to swim in water that was that clear? Amazing and frightening and a bit overwhelming at the beginning, I think.

july 28/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
77 degrees
wind: 11 mph, 21 mph gusts

Choppy today. Lots of swells and breathing on my right side. Sun, haze, sparkling water. I might have seen a few sparkle friends underwater, but no seagulls or fish. At least one swan boat and one paddle boarder. No algae or prickly vines. The water was a pale green with a hint of blue. Mostly opaque, although I could see my hands and the beautiful bubbles they shed. The sky was a pale blue with a few clouds.

The swim was hard. My back was sore from having to stretch higher to sight buoys and other swimmers hidden behind waves. I grew tired from battling the swells. I loved it — what a great workout! For short stretches, I got into a steady rhythm and felt Mary Oliver’s deepening and quieting of the spirit. I didn’t stop thinking. I didn’t feel like I was outside of myself. I felt relaxed and emptied, suspended in water, moving up and down, side to side. Not worried, just shoulders and calves and triceps and lungs rotating and kicking and flexing and breathing.

wave/swell pattern: Side to side rocking heading east from the big beach to the first buoy, the current pushing me a little to the north. Choppy, but no water crashing into or over me. Somewhere between the last orange buoy and the first green one, rough. Mostly breathed to my right. The buoy and other swimmers were lost in the waves. Draining. This is where my back would start to ache. The most challenging spot was rounding the green buoy closest to the big beach. Big waves wanting to push me under the buoy. It took 4 tries, but on the last loop I angled my boat-body right to avoid this pushing. Heading north, parallel to the big beach, the water rippled behind and over me. Mostly giving me a boost, sometimes sucking the energy out from under me. As I swam this last stretch, I wondered if I could learn to ride the waves or angle in ways that avoided the roughest contact.

image: I love the almost/half/barely-view of the first orange buoy after rounding the green buoy. I think I’ve written this before, but it reminds me of the faintest trace of the moon in the afternoon sky. Sometimes a faint orange, sometimes only the silhouette of something that makes the Sara in the back of my head whisper, moon.

This might be the image of the summer. Maybe I could put it in a poem with the image of the moon on water that I used to see in the dark basement window, made by a lightbulb, as I ran on the treadmill? Yes!

I’m continuing to revisit AO’s Dart. we change ourselves into the fish dimension. The fish dimension? I love it! Sounds like a great title for a poem.

excerpt from Dart/ Alice Oswald

He dives, he shuts himself in a deep, soft-bottomed
silence,
which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts
the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky
jumps in and out of the world he loafs in.
Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts

I feel the silence under the water, but I also feel it above. A few times during my swim today, I stopped stroking and tread water, my head out in the air. Quiet. Only a few soft slaps of the water by other swimmers’ hands and feet.

nacreous = iridescent/iridescence = “a lustrous rainbowlike play of color caused by differential refraction of light waves (as from an oil slick, soap bubble, or fish scales) that tends to change as the angle of view changes (Merriam-Webster Dictionary).

Last week, the water had streaks of red — or maybe tangerine? — in it. Today, blue-green. Not iridescent below, maybe above?

I love describing stroking through the water as lifting and shutting the lid! Also, the sky jumping in and out the world he loafs in. So good! I want to play with these images!

A different take on the far off orange glow: a buoy, or the idea of a buoy, or the certainty that a buoy, orange and glowing, is there.

july 27/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin hill and back
76 degrees
humidity: 80% / dew point: 71

Brutal out there this morning. Beautiful, too. Ran 2 miles without stopping then started relying on my heart rate to determine if I ran or walked. Above 168 = walk / Below 136 = run. Tried to stay slow and relaxed and unbothered by other people passing me. It worked!

10+ Things

  1. a large stack of stones on the boulder — 5 or more?
  2. rowers, down below — a coxswain’s voice
  3. bright blue bubble-letter graffiti under the lake street bridge
  4. smell: hot chocolate — in this heat? deep, rich, feeling like winter
  5. overheard: 1 runner to another — and of course, she made all those passive-aggressive comments
  6. a big group of shirtless runners (10 of them?), a smaller group of runners with shirts (5 or 6)
  7. a runner, in all black, including black pants (in this heat!?), steadily running up the franklin hill ahead of me
  8. sparkling water through the gap in the trees
  9. a very tall runner — young, long and gangly legs
  10. roller skiers — 2 or 3 — clicking and clacking with their poles
  11. a big bird, soaring above, a huge wingspan

Thinking about the Mississippi and what it means to me and my practice. Finished a first read-through of Cole Swensen’s Gave — lots of inspiration. And just now, out on the hot deck, I was rereading Alice Oswald’s Dart. I want to remember this passage from the perspective of the naturalist looking for eels:

from Dart/ Alice Oswald

the elver movement of the running sunlight
three foot under the road-judder you hold
and breathe contracted to an eye-quiet world
while an old dandelion unpicks her shawl
and one by one the small spent oak flowers fall
then gently lift a branch brown tag and fur
on every stone and straw and drafting burr
when like a streamer from your own eye’s iris
a kingfisher spurts through the bridge whose axis
is endlessly in motion as each wave
photos its flowing to the bridge’s curve
if you can keep your foothold, snooping down
then suddenly two eels let go get thrown
tumbling away downstream looping and linking
another time we scooped a net through sinking
silt and gold and caught one strong as bike-chain
stared for a while then let it back again
I never pass that place and not make time
to see it there’s an eel come up the stream
I let time go as slow as moss, I stand
and try to get the dragonflies to land
their gypsy-coloured engines on my hand

I love her descriptions throughout this section and the gentle rhymes. Is there a way to translate this eye-quiet, slow attention while running? Is it possible — both in language and as a practice of attention? Something I’d like to think about . . . .