Tag: Alice Oswald

aug 1/RUN

4 miles
the monument and back
68 degrees
AQI: 163

The wild fire smoke is still here. Mostly it didn’t bother me, but it did make running a little harder. The worst smoke moment was when I came off the lake street bridge and turned onto the river road — not hard to breathe so much as hazy. There weren’t too many runners out there, some walkers, a few bikers, a family of hikers and shadow falls.

10 Things

  1. graffiti on the lake street bridge steps: STOP HATE
  2. a fancy water fountain, bubbling, in the grand yard of the U of M President’s house that Gov. Walz rented while his mansion was being renovated
  3. someone asleep on a hard stone bench by the Monument — in the hot sun, wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a stocking cap
  4. the bells of St. Thomas — ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / — the time, 10:45
  5. an orange flash on the sidewalk — the smoky light or spray paint?
  6. a boat speeding up the river, leaving streaks on the water’s surface
  7. no kids outside at the church preschool — were they staying inside because of the smoke, or was it not recess?
  8. the graceful curve of the bridge’s arch — I checked if anyone was climbing on it (nope) — my daughter told me about how kids do that (her included, but only once and only halfway across)
  9. the soft trickle of water near Shadow Falls
  10. a stone wall above the ravine, leaning — it had a sign on it that I couldn’t read, so I took a picture of it to study later
Furnished to the city of St. Paul by the Kettle River Co.

I could mostly read it when I looked at the photograph, but I had to doublecheck with Scott.

I wish the lake was open so I could have gone to open swim for the first day of my “Swimming One Day in August” project, but at least I was able to run. I am almost didn’t go out because of the smoke. Glad I decided to!

The smoke doesn’t seem that bad so, for the first time in weeks, we have the windows open! I like the relief that air conditioning brings, but I hate how it makes me feel trapped in the house. As I sit at my desk writing this, I just heard the feebee call of the black-capped chickadee through the open window!

Today I’m working on more swimming sonnets and Inklings. Some subjects: water quality, blue-green algae, milfoil, water as the medium, loops at lake nokomis are actually triangles, the color of the water, Alice Oswald seeing self in water, again and more darkly, Mary Oliver and the deepening and quieting of the spirit

a little later: I almost forgot about the mushrooms! Walking north before my run, I saw some HUGE mushrooms in a neighbor’s yard. The first one I noticed had lost its cap and I thought it was a newly cut tree trunk. I think there were a cluster of 4 or 5 mushrooms. I started reciting Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms in my head. I thought about mushrooms as the fruit of fungi and little explosions and expressions of the self (like through poetry) as emerging like mushrooms. For the rest of the run I checked the grass for more mushrooms, but don’t recall seeing any more.

a lot later: RJP checked out a book for me, Mary Oliver’s Blue Pastures, so I could read some of Oliver’s sand dabs and the chapter, “Pen and Paper and Breath of Air.” I’m on the second page and I already needed to stop and archive some of her ideas:

First, in describing her practice of keeping a notebook, she writes that she doesn’t write in it from front to back, but just opens a page and writes anywhere and everywhere. She uses “private shorthand” to record phrases and feelings.

The words do not take me to the reason I made teh entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. this is important. I can, then, think forward again to teh idea—that is, teh significance of the event—rather than back upon it. I ti s the instant I try to catch in the notebooks, not the comment, not the thought. And, of course, this is so often waht I am aiming to do in the finished poems themselves.

“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver

And here’s one of the phrases she put in a notebook:

A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.

“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver

july 30/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
71 degrees

Hazy and smoky this morning. Canadian wild fires again. A present from the wind. It looked bad, but didn’t bother my breathing too much. Inspired by the wind, I listened to my “Beaufort Scale” playlist until I reached the old stone steps near the south entrance of the Winchell Trail. Then I listened to the water falling out of the sewer pipe and splashing on the rocks down to the river.

a stone wall with a plaque that reads, WPA 1938
WPA 1938

I took this picture of a stone wall built by the WPA, and possibly by grandfather, on the stone steps at the edge of the 44th street parking lot. 1938 was four years before my mom was born. Was my grandfather working for the WPA then?

At the bottom of the steps is the Winchell Trail and the 44th street sewer pipe/ravine. Also, the curved wall that I like to admire from above as I run by and the spot in the trail that transitions from crumbled asphalt to cracked. Yesterday I wrote about the sound of the water falling. I decided to stop and record it today:

water falling at the 44th street ravine

10 Things

  1. a section of the fence on the edge, missing a slat
  2. something on the asphalt ahead — a big puddle? no spots of light shining through a gap in the trees — a pool of light!
  3. smoke on the water (waTER — Deep Purple/Pat Boone reference) — my view from the Winchell trail through the trees, light blue looking fuzzy and faded through the smoke
  4. the faint voices of kids on playground
  5. the blending of car wheels above with wind in the trees and water falling down the ravine
  6. an older couple walking fast and with purpose, especially the woman who was leading the charge, seen twice
  7. a small bird flittering by, a flash of yellow — was it yellow, or was it a trick of the light, or was it my unreliable vision?
  8. the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored — well, at least, a few steps are — the yellow and orange and purple ones
  9. glancing across the road and doing a double-take: is that a turkey or a young tree with its trunk covered in black plastic?
  10. empty benches

swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees

Very glad Cedar Lake is okay so that open swim could happen. It was windy and choppy and smoky. At first I thought my goggles were fogged up, but then I realized it was the smoke in the air. Air quality was bad: 168, which is unhealthy. With the choppy water, it took a few loops to get into a rhythm. Lots of breathing on one side, or breathing every 2 or 3 strokes.

I’ve been working on a new poem form today. I’m calling it inkling. It’s inspired by an Alice Oswald line from Dart: the inkling of a fish. Inkling as vague, the idea of, a whisper, unproven, a rumor. My little poems — 3-5 lines, I think — are about describing or evoking the feeling or idea of something that you can’t quite see, or that you feel more than anything else. My first one will be about fish.

july 22/SWIM

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
89 degrees
choppy

A great swim, but choppy! Lots of breathing on one side to avoid waves. Sighting buoys (and other swimmers) was harder, everything lost in the waves. The first loop was the toughest. Got into a groove after it and managed to do 2 more loops before pausing to tread water at a white buoy and then beginning the final loop. It was crowded in the water — kids wading at the beach, adults taking advantage of the free night at open swim. Because of the crowds and the choppy water, it was difficult to give attention to the water or the bubbles or anything else. Did I manage to notice 10 things?

10 Things

  1. sparkle friends — particles floating, churning in the water
  2. so many vines reaching up from the bottom, wrapping around my wrist or ankles — it didn’t bother me, but I could imagine that freaking out some other swimmer
  3. a plane flying low, parallel to the water
  4. hot pink safety buoys tethered to torsos
  5. the pale foot of a breaststroker under the water
  6. the silhouette of an upright lifeguard on a kayak, marking the edge of the course
  7. someone swimming at the edge of my vision — far off to the left
  8. 3 swimmers with yellow safety buoys clustered together, treading water and talking
  9. mostly blue sky, a few clouds
  10. paused at the buoy, witnessing a strange sight: the way a swimmer was breathing and sighting in the choppy water, jerking their head high up and out of the water — at first I thought they were doing a double-take when they noticed me, but nope, that’s just the way they swim

before the swim

Each summer of swimming builds on the last. I get stronger, able to swim for longer without stopping. It’s not a deliberate choice or part of a training plan — I have no training plan for swimming; I just swim until I am too tired or I have to go to the bathroom or I’ve run out of time. I have loose goals: 100 miles for the summer or a 5k or 6 loops or the full 2 hours in one session. This year: swimming cumulatively for a day, or 24 hours, in August. It’s a goal inspired by the title of a Mary Oliver poem: Swimming, One Day in August. It’s possible, but it will take some planning and pushing myself to achieve.

In July, I’m finding myself thinking about how much time I’m spending above the surface versus below it. This year, I’m below much more than above. In past summers, I’ve done less loops and more stops at shore in-between. This year, I might occasionally pause mid-lake for 5-10 seconds, or take a 30 second break at the beach between the 3rd and 4th loop, but mostly I’m swimming freestyle without stopping. 60-90 minutes of 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. That’s a lot of time submerged and becoming acquainted with the underwater world!

Below, my thoughts are the bubbles that surround me. Above, they become words that hover above the water or travel across the lake — maybe they get lost beyond the horizon, or maybe they linger, later taking the form of words on a page. Last night, swimming the stretch from hidden beach back to point beach, I imagined each breath as one word bursting into the air: 1 2 3 4 5 BLUE 1 2 3 4 5 GRAY. I didn’t get very far with my words before I was distracted by something — another person? a scratchy vine? trying to sight an invisible buoy? I’d like to play around with this some more while I’m swimming tonight. Does each breath have to be only one word?

My ideas about thoughts below and above the water are partly inspired by the lines from Alice Oswald that I’ve memorized and have been reciting in my head:

dived again and surfaced
and smelt all the longings of grass-flower smells
and bird-flower sounds and vaporous poems
that hang in the chills above rivers
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

the vaporous poems as my thoughts bursting into the air and hanging above the surface?

and thoughts escaping to the surface to move beyond the self

I wish I was there or there he thinks and his mind
immediately

as if passing its beam through cables
flashes through all that water and lands
less than a second later on the horizon
and someone with a telescope can see his tiny thought-forms
floating on the sea surface wondering what next

*

like spirits of sight whose work is on the water
where the massless mind undulates the intervening air
shading it blue and thinking

I wish I was there

or there

All the time in the water, the front half of me submerged except for my quick breathe every 5 strokes, has me wondering about which world is real, which a dream. On 3 July, I posted a quotation from Anne Carson that ended with, Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them. Which way is up, which down?

I’m thinking of May Swenson’s “Water Picture” and her vivid description of a water world as the world above water in reverse:

Treetops deploy a haze of cherry bloom for roots, where birds coast belly-up in the glass bowl of a hill

The first line of her poem — In the pond in the park
all things are doubled — reminds me of something Alice Oswald said in her “Interview with Water” lecture: when you look at water, it allows you to exist twice but more darkly (see full quote from 20 june 2024)

And that line reminds me of part of Oswald’s Nobody:

I lost track of
the underneath of things everything became my mirror
once I stood up to look over the side
I sat down again terrified it was myself I saw
thronged and pitch-green
spilling over the top of the earth
the same soft dust-sheets over my hands as the clouds
the same thick curtain across the horizon

Above and below the surface is not just reversal, the same backwards, symmetry, but something else. In her lecture, the lines before the bit about twice darkly, Oswald says:

but the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction. Water is never the same as itself. Rivers can only exist as similarities, lakes reflect more than their own volume

The surface offers the illusion of reversal, one way up, the other down. Below the surface, beyond its mirror, another world waits to be witnessed. And not with eyes — the visibility in lake nokomis is currently 6.6 feet. In the middle of the lake, all I see below me are particles, stray vines, an occasional flash, and murky green-blue-yellow. Not so much dark, as Nothing.

I’m fascinated by surfaces, or what Oswald calls the waterlid. What does the surface look like from below looking up? I should make note of it today. Also, from above, looking down?

Looked up some notes, and found this great quotation from Darby Nelson in his book, For the Love of Lakes:

Human understandings rely heavily on the endless flood of messages from our eyes. But with a lake, the laws of optics work against us. Its reflective surface and the water’s rapid absorption of light with increasing depth conspire to keep much of a lake hidden from view. At a lake, open your eyes and you don’t see half of it. Nearly all the visual input from a lake comes as surface reflections, mere superficialities. Thoreau reveled in reflections. He felt because they were constantly changing they could present previously known truths from new points of view. But those truths don’t penetrate into the world of the lake below, a truth with which he seems unconcerned. What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? How can we fully perceive what we cannot see?

For the Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson

during the swim

I wanted to think about these things and recite some lines as I swam, but I was distracted by the effort of choppy, crowded water, always looking out for waves crashing over me and making it hard to breathe, or random slow or stopped swimmers. Near the end of the swim, I decided to dip lower in the water so that I could see the surface from below — a wavy, slightly distorted version of the sky and clouds. Cool!

july 21/RUNSWIM

run: 1.75 miles
from minnehaha falls to home
73 degrees / dew point: 64

A quick run with Scott from the falls back home before the rain started. We made it! Checked the weather on my watch after we finished — 95% chance of rain in 8 minutes. Ran at 1 pm, which might be my least favorite time to run. It felt hard. Still, I’m glad we did it. (It never rained.)

We stopped to walk where the trail dips below the road so I could point out the new trail they’ve created that winds down to the river. I can’t wait until they’re finished. It looks cool. Speaking of cool, I was trying to convey to Scott how I felt about the air and what the impending storm was doing to the sky and the air and green of the gorge. First I said “cool,” but it’s not cool (temperature), so I started to clarify, I mean the atmosphere, but realized that atmosphere could be related to temp so I said, I mean the vibe is cool. Cool is such a strange word — both full of meaning and history and empty too. For 35 years, I’ve been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond it, but it never works. How many times a day do I use this word?

I know that there is a rich history of the term within African American culture and jazz and that it’s been appropriated by white culture, but I don’t know the history that well. In poetry, my immediate thought about cool is Gwendlyn Brooks amazing, “We Real Cool.” I also think about Beatnik poetry and the Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene in Hairspray:

“your hair is really uncool”

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
79 degrees
rain

Overcast, gray. Calm water, warm-enough air. A great night for a swim. As I swam, I monitored the sky, noticing it getting darker and thicker. Wondered if it would start raining. During loop 4, it did. It’s always difficult to tell if it’s raining when I’m swimming. Today I felt a drop on my check and then paused to lift my head out of the water — a steady rain. I think I heard it underwater, but I couldn’t see it, and barely felt it. No thunder, so open swim kept going. Hooray!

10 Things

  1. a graying sky
  2. a big canoe moving fast across the swim course
  3. even as I tried to stay on the edge of the course, the current pushed me toward the center
  4. pale green, opaque water
  5. bubbles encasing my hands
  6. attacks from floating vines
  7. a party with a campfire and barking dogs at hidden beach
  8. buoyant, feeling held by the water
  9. after: itchy skin
  10. standing up in the sand after the last loop — a final look at the buoys and the water

Remembered the first line from the A Oswald poem fragment that I forgot several times last week: this disintegrating certainty

Thought about the bubbles and imagined that they were holding me up, like some sort of raft or inner tube.

My legs felt like rudders, my torso rocked rhythmically, my shoulders rose and fell.

july 20/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
67 degrees

Wow! What a morning for a swim. Sunny and not too windy. I couldn’t see the green buoys heading towards the little beach, but I didn’t care. I’m used to my eyes not seeing the buoys and trusting that some part of me has seen them and is leading me the right way, and I use other things to keep on course — sparkles on the water, which mean other swimmers are around, the lifeguard kayaks on the edge of the course, buildings.

10 Things

  1. a swirled glob of vines
  2. orange safety buoys tethered to torsos
  3. cloudless blue sky
  4. pale green water
  5. a young kid calling out to another kid — look at the little fish!
  6. a swim clinic for people doing the Y-tri — the instructor encouraging people to take breaks if they needed to — of course it’s hard! it’s okay to take a break
  7. little specks: swan boats in the distance
  8. little specks: green buoys looking like far off white dots
  9. sparkle friends
  10. a paddle boarder crossing the path, then a kayak

Recited my Alice Oswald lines: He dives. He shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence . . . Underwater, the silence was more than a lack of sound, not empty but still — the same view with no variations: the pale green water studded with particles. No shafts or light, no fish.

Recited some lines of my own, too: I go to the lake/to beholld to be/ held by the water

a return to EXAQUA

“Water is the medium, the texture, the weight, the space, the motion/emotion or your writing/thinking. Would you agree? Is that too tidy? Your work is attuned to water and being close to it (or, better, being inside it) is important to you” (EXAQUA/ Jan-Henry Gray).

What might it look like to have water be the medium, the texture, the weight space motion emotion of my writing/thinking?

medium = way in which the writing is delivered — print, digital, audio, visual
water as medium = delivered with water = the bubbles sparkles wound on the water my piercing hands leave

Giving water the weight and size of myself
in order to imagine it, water with my bones
water with my mouth and my understanding

weight and size of myself = swimming in the lake, again and again, a full immersion — without wetsuit or raft — more time below the surface than above, my full devotion and attention

july 17/RUNSWIM

4 miles
river road, north/south
57 degrees
humidity: 80%

In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.

10 Things

  1. rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
  2. after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
  3. the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
  4. good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
  5. good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
  6. click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
  7. a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
  8. smell of cigarette smoke
  9. the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
  10. the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me

I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!

to remember and return to

water and time / log entry for 11 july 2024

lines to memorize for today’s swim?

this disintegrating certainty this water
whatever it is whatever anything is
under these veils and veils of vision
which the light cuts but it remains

unbroken
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:

swim: 4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?

I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.

I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.

Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.

Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.

july 16/RUN

Rain this early (7 am) morning. Hopefully stopping in a few hours. Watching the tour and rereading old entries from july 16ths. Discovered this excellent description of a buzzing bug:

The Locust/ Leonara Speyer

Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree
Near-by:
It seems to burn its way through the air
Like a small, pointed flame of sound
Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.

note: I first posted this poem on 16 july 2022. I posted it again last year in 2024. Maybe I should memorize it?

a few hours later: what a stage of the tour (stage 11)! Pogacar crashing; Visma waiting for him. What will happen tomorrow in the Pyrenees?

It is 10:30 and a light rain. Won’t stop until 12:30. Do I wait, or go now? It’s probably refreshing and it might be fun to run in the rain . . .

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
66 degrees
light rain

I did it, and it was a great run! Back to the 9/1 (9 minutes running / 1 minute walking) and feeling strong and relaxed. The light rain helped to cool me down, and I liked how my feet glided on the wet trail. Glided sounds strange. How about glode or glid or glod? Started the run by chanting in triple berries then turning everything I noticed into triples — river road, dripping trees, running feet, rushing cars. Listened to everything dripping for the first 30 minutes, then put in the “Energy” playlist for the last stretch.

10 Things

  1. gloom with the occasional bright flash from headlights
  2. one flash looked lower — I think it was a reflection in a big puddle!
  3. the ravine by 42nd was gushing like the falls
  4. the falls were giving off a fine, gauzy spray
  5. a stranded surrey near the longfellow house — were they getting wet in the rain?
  6. someone walking up the hill at the edge of the park, carrying an umbrella
  7. above the creek, the grass next to the sidewalk was soaked with a line of big puddles
  8. the sprawling reflection of a tree in a wide puddle on a sidewalk
  9. the silhouette of a bird on a wire, looking very Bird
  10. the bells of St. Thomas — faint, distant

an hour later: I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake tonight but I just got an email: “canceled due to inclement weather.” Bummer.

a few random Alice Oswald bits

1

On her process of translating what she notices into a poem, and on poetry as framing the silence:

She and her husband, playwright Peter Oswald, divide their day in two – walking their sons to and from school through fields. But she doesn’t take a notebook with her. She believes in the subconscious, in what is brewing on a ‘non-verbal level’. She thinks ‘a flavour or feeling builds up, almost a sculptural shape that could be a living creature, or a dance or a painting’. Only later comes the ‘plastic art of finding the words’.

There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. ‘One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.’ 

into the woods

2

Wood Not Yet Out/ Alice Oswald

closed and containing everything, the land
leaning all round to block it from the wind,
a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees
sections of distance tilted through the trees
and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking
does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking
bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun
vanishes up, instantly come and gone.
once in, you hardly notice as you move,
the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love
to stand among the last trees listening down
to the releasing branches where I’ve been –
the rain, thinking I’ve gone, crackles the air
and calls by name the leaves that aren’t yet there

Oh, that ending! Now I’m imagining what the rain does when it thinks I’m not around! Today the rain didn’t crackle the air but . . . dotted it? feathered it? poked or punctured it?

3

The other day I came across Alice Oswald’s description of a project she’ll be working on next year as a fellow at Columbia University. She’s calling it Interviews with Anon:

At the Institute, Oswald will write a procession of passersby, not all of whom are human and many of whom are imperfectly seen: “My inspiration is the wandering, bartering, folktale style of Herodotus, who included 940 characters in his Histories. I shan’t be writing history. Perhaps it will be more like a headcount or even a carnival.”

Interviews with Anon

Very cool! I can’t wait to read/hear this in a few years.

july 13/SWIMBIKE

5 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

5 loops on a beautiful Sunday morning! Even though we’re still under bad air quality advisory and there was smoke and haze lingering above the lake, I didn’t have any trouble breathing. The smoke-haze made it difficult to see the buoys, however. Who cares — not me! I still swam straight towards the buoys.

My 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left or 1 2 3 right 1 2 3 4 right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left was relaxed and steady. My arms and legs in constant motion, rotating and kicking.

I call my circuits around the buoys loops, but that’s not quite right. They are more triangles, not curved but a straight line with 3 buoys from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach, then a straight line with 2 buoys from the little beach to the southern end of the big beach, then a straight line parallel to beach from the last green buoy to the only orange one and the start of one circuit, the beginning of another. Swimming in the lake is less about curves and more about lines and angles. Angled elbows, a straight back — parallel, the intersecting legs-as-lines. The first segment was fairly smooth and fast, the second was choppy and sluggish, and the third was smoother and faster.

10 Things

  1. something/someone tapped my toe mid-lake — I couldn’t see anyone, was it a fish? a twig?
  2. particles suspended, glittering — my sparkle friends!
  3. my hands wrapped in bubbles
  4. a loose vine passed over my legs, got stuck in my fingers
  5. a military plane flying fast
  6. light green, a hint of yellow, water
  7. glitter on the surface of the water where other swimmers where
  8. hazy blue sky
  9. a gentle rocking from the water
  10. near the end of the final loop — a sore back

I recited my 4 A Oswald lines about microscopic insects in the eye and surfacing and diving again and giving water the weight and size of myself and lifting the lid and shutting it. Such great lines! Admired the bubbles on my hands, thought of Anne Sexton and shedding them and then believed the bubbles were little thoughts and feelings and ideas that some part of me was shedding and offering to the water and anyone in it.

Thought about my gorge poem that begins, I go to/the gorge / / to find the/soft space. Started composing one for the lake: I go to/the lake // to be held. Thought about the verb, to behold, then beheld, which reminded me of a line in a poem that I love and had pondered on 19 june: Unsee the beheld! / Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews

Unsee the beheld where to unsee is to observe/witness with a sense other than sight, or to unravel, come undone or redone, transformed. Who/what is the beheld? Me, held by the water. So, to unsee me, to let go of me/I and have an encounter/exchange with that which is not-I: the water. I haven’t written about this bit yet, but yesterday I was thinking about Anne Carson and her anthropology of water and I wrote in my Plague Notebook, encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I. In the lake, I am held by the water — rocked, enveloped, lifted — but in the process of being held I dissolve, or the small part of Sara the ecosystem that is I is saturated. Yes, this makes sense to me, but will it to anyone else, including future Sara?

I read mention of May Swenson’s poem “Swimmers” yesterday and I happened to have it in Nature: Poems Old and New. I’m still trying to figure out the different ways I can read the stanzas — across; down the left, then down the right, then bottom?down the left, to the bottom, and up the right? down the left only? down the right only?

Swimmers/ May Swenson

Tossed
by the muscular sea,
we are lost,
and glad to be lost
in troughs of rough

love. A bath in
laughter, our dive
into foam,
our upslide and float
on the surf of desire.

But sucked to the root
of the water-mountain —
immense —
about to tip upon us
the terror of total

delight —
we are towed,
helpless in its
swell, by hooks
of our hair;

then dangled, let go,
make to race —
as the wrestling chest
of the sea, itself
tangled, tumbles

in its own embrace.
Our limbs like eels
are water-boned,
our faces lost
to difference and

contour, as the lapping
crests.
They cease
their charge,
and rock us

in repeating hammocks
of the releasing
tide —
until supine we glide,
on cool green

smiles
of an exhaling
gladiator,
to the shore
of sleep.

However I read it, it’s good!

bike: 4 miles
the falls and back
84 degrees

Biked to the falls with Scott for a beer and a hike and some time to be in the midst of others. Sassy, strong little girls, BIG dogs, small yippy dogs, a hiker with poles, surreys, kids playing soccer, a guy that looked like Mr. Hand, 2 long-haired dachshunds in the ice cream line, a LONG ice cream line, a LONGER food line. A roaring falls, a raging creek, blocked-off steps and wooden path. A dog that plopped down and refused to move, a guy walking by, laughing and calling out to his friend, that dog is done!

july 11/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
73 degrees

Great water! Warm, buoyant, calm, and near the shore, clear. A steady — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — swim. Felt strong and relaxed and rhythmic. Didn’t see the buoys that often but knew exactly where they were.

10 Things

  1. the tops of the mifoil: green, wispy, some feathery, some stringy
  2. light green water
  3. green buoys looking robin’s egg blue
  4. the sharp angle of the taut rope with a weight on its end, anchoring the buoy
  5. ducks swimming near shore
  6. glowing bubbles covering my hands
  7. the lifeguard talking through the speaker, testing 1 2 3 attention open swimmers, the course is now open. enjoy your swim!
  8. pale legs underwater — parallel to the ground, kicking breaststroke then fluttering
  9. the feel of something in the water, then a trail of bubbles, then a pale leg — a quick swerve around another swimmer
  10. rounding the green buoy closest to the little beach, getting a brief glimpse of the next buoy — green, looking only like a bright dot, and only visible sometimes

Recited my AO lines again. a rush of gold to the head — giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it — she surfaced and peered around and dived again and surface and saw someone

the beginning of a lake

I started rereading Argument with the Lake this afternoon — a poetry collection I bought in 2018 — and discovered this description of the origins of a lake. I’ll add it to my growing collection of descriptions — of a river in England (see: 30 aug 2024) and a lake in Germany (see: 2 july 2024).

from Begin/ Tanis Rideout

This lake, like others, was dug out. Glacial ice grinding south, scouring
weak Silurian stone, an arctic tsunami leaving only the backbone of the escarpment. Canadian Shield and broken tumble of kames in its
retreat.

The glacial rebound cast this lake of shimmering waters, Ontario. Give
or take
a geologic blink. And now, a girl on Holocene shores measures the
distance —
her to here. Fifty-four kilometres as the crow flies, the herring gull,
the cormorant with dried wings. Sixty-four against the current.
Three point two kilometres an hour, slower than a winter housefly
bumbling against your window

july 8/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
67 degrees
humidity: 86%

Got out for my run a little earlier today. Still warm and humid. The bunion on my left foot has a blister on it, which hurt at the beginning of the run. Looking up the anatomy of the foot, I discovered that the bone below the big toe is actually two pea-shaped bones called sesamoids. I’ve been thinking that I might want to devote a month, or a few weeks, to the foot. Maybe September?

Noticed the river for the first time as I turned down to enter the Winchell Trail from the south. Through the trees it looked green and warm and stagnant. A little later, on the Winchell Trail, a pale blue with a spot of sparkle. Greeted by Mr. Morning! as I exited the 38th street steps.

10 Things

  1. empty benches
  2. a parked scooter with its red lights still blinking
  3. heard water dripping down the ravine and thought of a grotto with a waterfall
  4. the tree that fell on the trail last week is still there, blocking 2/3rds of the trail
  5. a faint voice below — a rower?
  6. 2 people across the road near Becketwood, crouched near the trees — looking at something? picking up trash? weeding?
  7. a steady stream of cars
  8. a cool green under the tree cover on the Winchell Trail
  9. a week later, the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored
  10. someone walking around the overlook, headed to the part of the stone wall where a dirt trail descends — was he planning to take it?

more How to Read Water

glitter path: a long line of shimmering reflections stretching into the distance. The shape of the glitter path is a measure of how high the sun is and the roughness of the waves.

if you see the glitter path bulge at some spot, that indicates rougher waves

wider glitter path = rougher water
narrower path = calmer water

“the faces of the waves act as mirrors”

seeing faces in waves / pareidolia: the habit of our brains to find patterns and ascribe meaning where there may be none

orange!

If you are gazing down into cloudy water looking at your own shadow, there are a couple of extra effects worth keeping an eye out for. The first is that your shadow may have an orange-hued fringe around it. This happens because the tiny particles in the water don’t reflect all wavelengths (and therefore all colors) back equally to you. Orange makes it back more easily than the others. The second effect, which, if you see the orange “halo” effect, is definitely worth looking for, is that you may spot shafts of sunlight emerging from your shadow and radiating out away from it underwater. This effect is sometimes nicknamed the “aureole effect.” These radiating rays are caused by an optical effect of looking in the opposite direction to the sun

How to Read Water

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

Warm, buoyant, calm water. I felt fast and strong and confident. Lots of swimmers, a few floating vines. No ducks or fish or dragonflies. At least 2 military planes — black — screaming across the sky. The far green buoy looked robin’s egg blue to me again today. My nose plug squeaked. The water looked mostly light greenish blue with a think layer near the surface that almost looked white. I saw some orange off to the side and shafts of light rising up from the bottom. Translucent bubble encased my hands.

I recited bits from AO’s Dart and Nobody as I looped.

Noticed a swimmer looking so far away from the orange buoy and wondered how much of it was my off perspective and how much of it was them being off course. Probably more me; I struggle with depth perception.

almost forgot: during the second half of a loop, the water suddenly got a lot darker for many seconds — a minute? However long it actually was, it felt like a long time. I couldn’t see what caused it, but I’m imagining the darkness was caused by a cloud. On other days, I felt a shorter darkness pass when a plane passes over the sun.