Tag: Alice Oswald

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.

july 7/RUNSWIM

4.25 miles
monument and back
71 degrees
dew point: 64

Hot! I’ve never liked running in the heat but now that I’m taking lexipro my heat intolerance has increased. For some moments of the run I felt great, other moments I didn’t. So I walked some, ran some, and walked again at different stretches.

10 Things

  1. I kept seeing orange flashes — a sign, a cone, a tree marked for removal
  2. kids yelling and laughing outside at a daycare attached to a church
  3. the river from above, on the bridge, heading east: brown, and looking shallow — were those sandbars I was seeing near the surface?
  4. trickling water out of the limestone below the bridge
  5. the sound of shadow falls, falling
  6. a kid’s voice rising from the ravine
  7. construction on the other side of the lake street bridge — orange cones, trucks, yellow-vested workers, the buzz of equipment
  8. the river from above, on the bridge, heading west: blue and covered in the reflections of clouds*
  9. click clack — a roller skier
  10. seen, not heard: a dog, by the clanging of their collar

*stopped at the bridge overlook to take a picture of the clouds reflected on the surface of the water. Is it just me, or does this look like an impressionist painting?

a view from above the river: gray, corrugated water with reflections of clouds and trees
river with clouds, 7 july 2025

the color of water

How to Read Water is fascinating. Here are some things I’d like to remember from the chapter on color:

The colors we see in water depend on the brightness and angle of the light and the water’s depth, as well as what’s on, in, and under that water.

How to Read Water

something to consider: are you looking at water, or something in or under the water, or a reflection on water’s surface. Is it the color of water, or the color of the ground beneath the water (a puddle), or the color of cloud on its surface? What angle are you looking from?

. . . in many circumstances when we think we are looking at the water, we are actually looking at something different and in the distance. Looking out to the sea in the distance is a great example: What we see in that situation is dominated by the reflection of the sky even further in the distance. This is why the distant sea appears blue in fine weather and gray on overcast days.

How to Read Water

This water looks blue because it’s reflection the sky is one I’ve heard a lot, but I think I’ve always heard it as the reason, not one reason under certain circumstances.

What about when we see different colors — which I often do as I run across the bridge and look down at the water? The different colors are based on how much of the water we are actually seeing. Sometimes I see brown, sometimes blue.

You will notice this if you look for it, but not if you don’t because our brain has gotten used ot this effect and so oesn’t register it as at all peculiar.

something to try: Can you find the area/the moment where the shift takes place from looking only at reflections to being able to see water?

the exact color that can travel furtherest through the water without being absorbed: blue-green color, wavelength = 480 nanometers

Is it a big cloud or Jaws? People often think it has gotten deeper or there are fish around when the water darkens, but it might just be a big cloud.

eutrophication = excessive nutrients — algal blooms reduce light, use up a lot of oxygen, change the color of the water

oligotrophic = low in nutrients, clear

my sparkle friends! “A lot of the particles that see in water will be inorganic, a mixture of mud, sand, clay, silt, chalk, and other substances, each one affecting the colors we see.” Do I see them as anything other than the color sparkle?

Today I’m swimming at Cedar Lake, which is much deeper than Lake Nokomis. It is also more of a “natural” lake than nokomis. What impact do these factors have on its colors and my experiences of them?

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

The water by the orange buoy closest to Point Beach was almost hot — so warm! It was a little cooler in the middle of the lake and near Hidden Beach, but not that cool. It was also calm. Not much wind, no waves. A few vines floating over and under and around me. Some milfoil by the beach. I forgot to look at the color of the water from above, but I did look below. Blue-green, a few hints of yellow. Opaque.

10 Things

  1. driving past another part of the lake: the surface covered with green vegetation
  2. clear blue sky, then a few clouds, the more clouds, then dark
  3. the first orange buoy seemed much farther out in the water
  4. breathing to my right, seeing some other swimmers halfway across the lake
  5. yellow safety buoys
  6. something in the sky — a plane? a bird? I’m uncertain
  7. the warm water was buoyant; I felt higher on the water
  8. bubbles around my hands
  9. a line of white buoys at hidden beach
  10. a breaststroker, stroking with intensity — are they trying to race me?

Is that what bothers me about breaststrokers I encounter: that they always look so intense and like they are trying to race me or keep up with me? I think of breaststroke as a chill stroke, where you glide and kick as you travel on the surface of the water, able equally to see above and below. But, there’s nothing chill or relaxed about the breaststrokers i encounter!

Before swimming, I worked on memorizing some more lines from Alice Oswald, this time from Nobody, but I got stuck on the beginning and wasn’t able to recite them in my head as I swam:

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
with pigment caught in their shivering hair-like receptors
and this is how the weather gets taken to and fro
and the waves pass each other from one color to the next
(Nobody/ Alice Oswald)

july 6/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
71 degrees

What a beautiful morning for a swim. Sunny, not too windy. The water was warm and smooth. The sky was blue, the water a greenish-blueish-olive. Flashes of orange every so often. There were a few canoes crossing the path, but no menacing swans or stalking sailboats.

1 2 3 4 5 breathe right
1 2 3 4 5 breathe left

10 Things

  1. a green buoy that sometimes looked white, sometime blue, occasionally green, and often disappeared
  2. a few minnows
  3. glitter on the water from other swimmers’ hands and feet
  4. squeak squeak — my nose plug, leaking air
  5. a feeling of something disturbing the water, then bubbles, then pale legs: how I know I’m nearing another swimmer
  6. the far green buoy looking white and blending into the sailboats in the distance
  7. clear water in the beach/swimming area
  8. pink and yellow safety buoys tethered to torsos
  9. Scooby-doo bubbles
  10. shafts of light underwater, looking like they were coming up from the bottom

Like I did on Thursday, I recited lines from A Oswald on the last segment on my loop. Thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again. I do a lot more shutting, then lifting I think.

july 4/REST

Fourth of July, so no open swim. Bummer. Too hot to run, besides I haven’t taken a day off from running since last Thursday. Today a break from disciplined moving outside. But not from thinking and writing and reading and dreaming.

Sometimes when something is missing, what you have left is making and believing (Keith S. Wilson).

Copying this quotation from Keith S. Wilson into this entry, I wasn’t thinking about the missing in relation to the green buoy I couldn’t see last night, yet swam straight towards. But somehow, it was the next thought I had as I stared at the words.

a few hours later: I’m sitting under the crab apple tree in my backyard in the shade — thank you, tree, for this shade on a hot day — and I’m re-reading Alice Oswald’s nobody and pondering a word, rumor/rumour:

what kind of a rumour is beginning even now
under the waterlid she wonders there must be
hundreds of these broken and dropped-open mouths
sulking and full of silt on the seabed
I know a snorkeller found a bronze warrior once
with the oddest verdigris* expression and maybe
even now a stranger is setting out
onto 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

*verdigris: a green or bluish deposit especially of copper carbonates formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces

A fun rumor to make imagine believe in spread: maybe your brain, or some part of your brain, or your breath, or some other part of you that is not (only) you, has secret conversations with the water in which the water reveals the location of the buoy and the part of you that is you but not (only) you guides you towards it. Of course, this only works if you listen, which I have learned to do. Can you?

rumour (OED):

General talk or hearsay, not based on definite knowledge

General talk or hearsay personified
1600: “Open your eares; for which of you wi’l stop The vent of hearing, when lowd Rumor speaks?”/ W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 Induct. 2

Clamour, outcry; noise, din. Also: an instance of this

To make a murmuring noise

This last one — to make a murmuring noise — reminds me of the idea of bubbles speaking to me in a soft, faint, bubble-whisper. And now, I’m thinking of a book that I checked out of the library years ago: How to Read Water. Since the ebook is available, I just checked it out again! What are water’s languages?

Back to Alice Oswald’s words and her bronze warrior. Have I written about these particular lines (I’ll check later)? I’m thinking of the ghosts — people who drowned, objects forgotten or carelessly discarded — on the bottom of the lake. What do/can they say to me? Do their messages travel through the pale milfoil that stretches up to the light?

july 3/RUNSWIM

3.1 miles
2 trails
72 degrees
dew point: 70

8 a.m. and already 72. It’s going to be hot today. Heard some birds and the coxswain and water trickling, then dropping steadily. The river was pale blue through the trees. When I heard the rowers I wondered how hot they were on the water without any shade.

overheard: an adult runner to a kid biking behind them — you’re doing such a good job!

Wore my bright yellow shoes — the ones I bought over a year ago and have tried to wear several times but always give up because they hurt my feet and my calves. They seem to be working now.

10 Things

  1. purple flowers just beyond the fence
  2. blue sky
  3. empty bench
  4. a roller skier holding their poles up instead of using them
  5. noisy birds near the tree that fell a few days ago onto the winchell trail
  6. a small circle of shimmer: sparkling water seen through a gap in the trees
  7. several stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  8. a small group of bikers — 4, I think — speeding past, one of them wearing a bright pink shirt
  9. a women with a dog stepping off the path near the bench above “the edge of the world”
  10. faint lines of yellow and orange and pink and purple chalk on the 38th street steps

orbit

This morning, another orbit around an idea that I’ve been orbiting for a few years now:

1

He aligns himself and moves forward with his face in the water staring down at the bottom of the lake. Old, beautiful shadows are wavering steadily across it. He angles his body and looks up at the sky. Old, beautiful clouds are wavering steadily across it. The swimmer thinks about symmetries, then rotates himself to swim on his back staring at the sky. 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.

The Anthropology of Water/ Anne Carson

Which way is up? Which way down? Which real? Imagined? Symmetries or similarities?

2

I began more seriously than ever to learn the names of things—the wild plants and animals, natural processes, local places—and to articulate my observations and memories. My language increased and strengthened, and sent my mind into the place like a live root-system. And so what has become the usual order of things reversed itself with me: my mind became the root of my life rather than its sublimation. I came to see myself as growing out of the earth like the other native animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place, which would fall back into the earth like leaves in the autumn.

Native Hill/ Wendell Berry

Brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place.

3

Reading Berry, I’m reminded of Arthur Sze’s discussion of mushrooms as poems:

I began to think I love this idea that the mycelium is below the surface. It’s like the subconscious, then when the mushroom fruits pops up above ground, maybe that’s like this spontaneous outpouring of a poem or whatever.

4

Then, I returned, as I often do, to the beginnings of a poem:

Maybe like mushrooms, we rise
or not rise, flare —
brief bursts from below
then returns 
to swim in the dirt…

5

Could we be more like fungi/mushrooms, with their nets of mycellium, than trees with their roots and branches and one trunk? Googled it: Animals and fungi are each other’s closest relatives: congruent evidence from multiple proteins

6

And back to W. Berry and the reversing of wild and domestic:

VI.

our word “domestic” comes from the Latin domus, meaning “house” or “home.” To domesticate a place is to make a home of it. To be domesticated is to be at home.

X. 

But if we were really to pay attention to what we’ve been calling “wilderness” or “the wild,” whether in a national park or on a rewooded Kentucky hillside, we would learn something of the most vital and urgent importance: they are not, properly speaking, wild.

XI. 

Our overdone appreciation of wildness and wilderness has involved a little-noticed depreciation of true domesticity, which is to say homemaking, homelife, and home economy.

XII. 

With only a little self-knowledge and a little sitting still and looking, the conventional perspective of wild and domestic will be reversed: we, the industrial consumers of the world, are the wild ones, unrestrained and out of control, self-excluded from the world’s natural homemaking and living at home.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
90 degrees

Another great swim! Felt strong — no strange calf pain, or feet that feel like they might start cramping, or fear over not seeing buoys. The water was warm and green. The sky was blue with a few clouds. No dragonflies or planes or menacing swans, although there was a lurking sailboat. The far green buoy still looked blue to me, when I could see it as having color. Often it looks like a white dot, or just a colorless dot that I understand as buoy.

I saw pale legs and green globs and a vague orangish red light and sparkle friends and bubbles and ghostly milfoil underwater. No ducks or fish or seagulls. For the last stretch of each loop, I recited the lines from Alice Oswald’s Dart that I just memorized:

1

Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head,
through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm,
giving the water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it,
water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding

2

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

Such great lines that feel familiar when I’m swimming in the middle of the lake.

june 23/RUNWALKSWIM

run: 4.05 miles
minnehaha falls and back
71 degrees
dew point: 66

It felt warmer than 71, the air thicker than a 66 dew point. Had to remind myself a few times that I could stick to my 9/1 plan. And I did — at least through the first 3 cycles. Had to do an extra minute of walking at 32 or 33 minutes in, but then I got right back on track. A victory!

overheard: Just starting my run, I overheard one woman say to the other: that was the first time I ever saw a spider biting me! As opposed to waking up with spider bites, not knowing when you got them, I suppose.

10 Things

  1. one of the recently re-mulched trails that leads down into the oak savanna looked dark and deep and mysterious — partly due to a late June abundance of green leaves blocking out the light, partly the sun behind the clouds
  2. a smattering of young runners in small groups — a high school cross-country team already in training?
  3. empty benches
  4. the steady hum of some construction equipment
  5. a sour smell coming from a trash can
  6. a packed shopping cart parked on the lowest part of the trail that dips below the road
  7. the flash of a very small bird — a hummingbird? — flying past me
  8. an over-the-shoulder sideways glance at the falls: all white foam
  9. 2 people waiting to pay for parking at the falls
  10. mostly overcast with a few stretches of pale sun

A good run. A low average heart rate. A steady pace. A chance to be above the gorge and the river. And, interesting thoughts. Earlier this morning, I was reminded of some ideas about movement and death and the Homeric mind, and they fluttered like loose threads behind and beside me as I ran.

thread 1: entangled, murky, thick-layered

As I ran on the Winchell Trail through the thick green, I thought that when I’m running by the gorge, I think of it in broad, basic ways: tree, rock, bluff, bird, water. Then my mind wandered, and I wondered: (Why) do we need more specific, “technical” names in order to connect with the land? I thought about the importance of names and the violence of occupying and renaming, the value of knowing the history of a place, understanding how it works scientifically, and placing it in a larger context (space, time). Then, as I ran up the short, steep hill by Folwell, I thought about how important it is to learn to think on all of these levels at once, or at least be able to switch back and forth between them. I can experience the gorge as water, rock, tree, bird, wind, or as stolen land occupied and used, abused, restored, protected, ignored, exploited. As a geological wonder, slowly–but not really slowly in geological time, 4 feet per year–carved out by the river eroding the soft St. Peter sandstone. As both wild/natural and cultivated/managed–the site of erosion due to water, and erosion due to the introduction of invasive species, industry, too many hikers, bikers, houses nearby. There isn’t an easy way to reconcile these different understandings and their impacts.

23 june 2021

thread 2: moving as death rearranged

from To chlorophyll, refineries, coal, furnaces beneath early skyscrapers, fossils/ Caroline Kenworthy

Life’s long inhale of nutrients, and longer, hotter exhalation in decay. Packed, still, silent.

Hard to remember that matter hums constantly.
These cars and highways— how much of moving is death rearranged.

I kept thinking about this idea of death rearranged. At point, I thought, of course — recycling, decomposing, rebirth = rearranging. I like this word choice — rearranging.

thread 3: Homeric mind

this physical thing that moves. So, if you imagine a place over the sea, your mind actually has to get there. So, even though it may be as fast as the light, it is physical movement.

 A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

The mind as moving — not just through associations, but literally moving, traveling.

As I thought about movement and connection, and death rearranged on my walk back after the run, I passed by a painted rock at the edge of neighbor’s side garden that read, We are our ancestors with an arrow pointing to plants. Yes. No one is gone, just rearranged, reconfigured. And, we are connected deeply to the green.

walk: 3 miles
east lake library and back
78 degrees

Walked to the library to pick up Anne Carson’s Float. I’ve checked it out once or twice before but I’m thinking this time I might be more interested in it. (2 hours and several naps later: nope. Still don’t understand it or why it’s called float, but I found a review of it and Mary Ruefle’s My Private Property that might help.) It was fun walking through the neighborhood, looking at how different neighbors deal with their slanting lawn. FWA is interested in re-doing ours for us. Wood, rock, stone, mulch, hostas, ornamental grass. My favorite flowers: the vines with the bright purple flowers — clematis, I think, and the dozens of cacti with beautiful yellow blooms. Saw a lime green door, like mine, on a bright blue garage. A perfect blue for the green, but maybe too much for a whole house. And, it clashed with the purple fence. Heard some loud christian rock blasting from a backyard and a 2 story tall skeleton wearing a green t-shirt in a front yard. Kids on scooters, yelling from inside houses, lounging by the pool at longfellow park.

Speaking of kids, we live next to a daycare. It’s never been a problem because the kids usually stay inside so I never hear them. A few months ago, Sheila (our neighbor and owner of the daycare) began letting 2 little girls play outside in their front yard and our side yard. They are very loud and like to scream a lot. And they are right outside of my windows so I hear them and see them flitting and darting out of the corner of my eye. Thankfully they haven’t opened our gate . . . yet. It doesn’t seem like they are being supervised. Today Scott noticed that one of them had picked up a giant branch — taller than them — and was waving it around — through the air, at the other little girl. No adults stopped them until about 15 minutes later when they were scolded. Yikes.

5

point
could
stick
least
first
extra
right
track
other
green
light
cloud
empty
group
cross
smell
front
never
being
story

trash
trail
below
heart
above
loose
thick
gorge
think
basic
bluff
water
order
value
place
short
steep
giant
adult
until

forth
abuse
carve
house
death
early
decay
still
there
about
after
arrow
plant
check
twice
might
later
stone
mulch
hosta

empty group smell
basic bluff order
thick heart track
cloud water light
green house plant
extra loose trash
never think twice

swim: 5 cedar loops (2.5 lake nokomis)
cedar lake open swim
80 degrees

First open swim of the season at Cedar Lake. Wonderful conditions. Warm-enough water and no chop. I felt strong and fast and smooth. I didn’t stray too far to the center. They have a new lifeguard who was actually telling people dogs weren’t allowed in the water and requiring people to have swim caps. Is Cedar Lake going to lose some of its chill vibes?

The water was olive green, but more yellow than the blue of lake nokomis. I didn’t see any fish or get wrapped in vines. No canoes crossed my path, either. Not too many clouds in the sky. No planes or birds.

A great early evening for a swim!