Tag: headphones

nov 2/RUNSWIM

4 miles
locks and dam no. 1
39 degrees

Okaaay 39 degrees! As I said to Scott, this is my weather! Love it. Black running tights, long-sleeve green shirt, black vest, black gloves, buff. I felt relaxed and strong and not in need of a port-a-potty. Windy. Lots of leaves on the trail, some of them wet and slick, especially thick on the part of the path south of the double bridge that dips below the road and on the hill climbing up to Wabun park. Some BRIGHT yellow, an occasional slash of red. Any orange? I don’t think so. The river under the ford bridge was darker gray with scales. The gate was closed so I couldn’t run all the way to the locks and dam door. Heard some geese honking, on the ground, not in the sky. Someone was sitting at the Rachel Dow Memorial bench, no one was sitting at the one above the edge of the world. Encountered several other runners — all older men? — and lots of walkers. One woman, climbing up and out of the locks and dam behind me, suddenly blew her nose, which startled me enough to prompt her to apologize.

At the halfway point, I stopped to walk up the hill and put in “The Life of a Showgirl” on shuffle.

favorite image: After the run, walking home, the wind picked up and a swirl of leaves, like confetti, flying through the air. Yellow leaves, I think. Wow!

before the run

Encountered some interesting language on instagram this morning:

You can’t think your way into a new life, you have to train for it.
Consistency creates safety.
Repetition rewires truth.
Embodiment is built, one breath at a time.

Whether it’s your healing, your art, or your leadership
you don’t need to perform change, you need to practice it.
That’s why our rituals matter: breath, movement, stillness.
They turn insight into muscle memory.

Don’t chase becoming. Train remembering…

source

train / not in your head, but your body / repetition / habit / ritual / rewire / don’t perform, practice / breath movement stillness / greater understanding deep in the muscles / don’t become, remember

My first reaction: on a surface level, many of these words resonate for me — embodiment, training, habits and repetitions and rituals, remembering

This is an ad for a 3 hour retreat led by Mariel Hemingway. I was curious (and skeptical), so I went to her site to learn more. At the bottom of the page, I found this:

Disclaimer: The Return of the Queen™ is a sacred space rooted in personal experience, spiritual reflection, and embodied remembrance.

Mariel Hemingway offers guidance based on her own lived journey — not as a therapist, medical professional, or licensed counselor, but as a woman who has walked the path of deep inner healing and returned with wisdom to share. The content and practices shared throughout this experience are designed to support emotional exploration, self-inquiry, and spiritual growth. They are not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, or therapeutic care. Every woman’s path is unique. Results will vary depending on your personal history, readiness, and the depth of your participation. Please honor your own inner and outer needs. If you require clinical or medical support, we lovingly encourage you to seek care from a licensed provider. This is not about fixing or diagnosing. This is about remembering. Thank you for honoring the sacredness of this space and taking full responsibility for your own wellbeing..

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At the top of the page, it describes the retreat as a “3-hour journey back to your Sovereign Self.”

Sovereign Power

Sovereign has everything to do with power. It often describes a person who has supreme power or authority, such as a king or queen. God is described as “sovereign” in a number of Bible translations. In addition to describing ones who have power, the word sovereign also often describes power: to have sovereign power is to have absolute power—that is, power that cannot be checked by anyone or anything. Nations and states are also sometimes described as “sovereign.” This means that they have power over themselves; their government is under their own control, rather than under the control of an outside authority.

Merriam-Webster dictionary entry for sovereign

The language of sovereignty doesn’t work for me, even as I recognize the need to claim your own life. And I don’t like “queen” and the understandings of power it evokes.

Past Sara, the feminist academic, could have spent the entire day dissecting these words and the foundation that undergirds them, but Sara-right-now isn’t interested in wasting time in that way. Although, I am interested in giving some attention to other models that are about embodiment, training, practice, remembering but not Power and control and Sovereignty. Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses memory and remembering; she links it to deeper traditions and human and non-human communities.

The idea of distinguishing between practice and performance is interesting to me. Just yesterday, I submitted a poem to be considered for a journal issue with the theme of performance. Here’s what they wrote about performance:

Theme Description: The theme for this issue is performance. To perform is to, for some audience, create the illusion that reality is this, rather than that. We do this everywhere–our social (and social media) lives, our dress, our relationships, our feelings, our genders, all performed in their ways; all around us there is the low hum of wishful artifice imparting an intended impression onto seen and unseen—perhaps even imaginary–spectators. Taken to its logical conclusion, a reasonable, if cynical, truth emerges: performance, in our day-to-day, is so essential, so inextricable from our quote-unquote “authentic selves,” that perhaps the authentic self is simply the sum of a lifetime of performances–that the show has somehow become its own type of truth. In professional wrestling, the word for this is “kayfabe”–the unspoken agreement that not only is the show inextricable from reality, but that, in essence, the performance is the reality. Or is it? How do we perform, and for whom? Send us your work!

What is the relationship between performance and reality? My submission to this call was about my running/training/performing beside the gorge. Here’s what I wrote to explain how it fits with the theme:

“When I learned that I was losing all of my central vision, I started giving more attention to the world and my favorite place in it, the Mississippi River Gorge in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Regularly, I return to it, run around it, and write about what I’ve noticed there. This habit is a ritual is a ceremony, happening almost daily, that when performed brings a new world in which I am still able to see, but strangely, into existence.”

The title of my poem: How to Be When You See Strangely, Performances Daily

swim: 1.4 miles / 1.5 loops
ywca pool

We rejoined the Y and I was able to swim!! I’m excited to swim inside this winter, to reunite with my pool “friends”: the shadow on the pool floor, the fuzzy things floating near the bottom, the pale torsos and froggy legs, the friendly people. Today it was the nice guy who, when I asked him if I could share a lane with him, said Of course!

oct 31/RUN

5 miles
franklin loop
43 degrees
cold drizzle

This is Halloween. This is Halloween. As I ran, I listened to Apple Music’s Halloween dance mix. A great run. I felt so fast and strong and capable of running hard for long periods of time. And I did — relatively speaking. Faster and longer without stopping than I have in the past year.

10 Things

  1. slick leaves on the path — don’t remember hearing them squeak
  2. running on the east side, near meeker island dam, a large group of kids laughing and playing on the other side. too far to be at a school playground. were they on the white sands beach?
  3. puddles on the franklin bridge
  4. a runner running far ahead of me, then walking, the stopping to sit on a bench — he wore bright blue shorts
  5. bright headlights
  6. the river from the franklin bridge — a view of the trestle and reflections of trees, but no rowers
  7. the river from the lake street bridge — empty pewter river, pale brown sandbar, slight ripples
  8. on the franklin bridge, a small red dot off in the distance, then it turned green — a stoplight
  9. a person with a dog, turning down and entering the meeker dog park
  10. a soft rain, difficult to notice with my hat and tights and sweat

October viewing update

Finished Theater of Blood — so good! Although the second to last death was super gross — let’s just say it involved gluttony and a funnel. And the last “death” — presumably the worst because it was the final one — was more terrible than actually dying; it involved hot knives and blinding the one remaining critic. Sigh — the idea that not being able to see is a fate worse than death, or a living death. Regardless, I really enjoyed the movie.

Also watched John Carpenter’s The Thing. I really liked it — some gross special effects, but a very good movie. Good pacing, good acting, a good premise with haunting questions about trust and how/where enemies lurk.

Current Writing

I’m on a role right now with my writing. I have so many things to work on, that I don’t want to take the time to explaing them right now!

oct 21/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
44 degrees / rain

Brrr. Rainy and chilly today. Time to find my gloves — my hands were going a little numb by the end. Ran north to the trestle. A few other walkers and runners joined me — we didn’t move together, just in the same place (above the gorge), at the same time (early afternoon). Tried to run relaxed and not too fast. The relaxed part happened, but not the not too fast part. The path was wet and leaf-covered and slightly slippery. The sprawling oak by the ancient boulder and at the entrance to the tunnel of trees was a metallic — frosted gold and silver. Wow! The floodplain forest below the tunnel of trees was glowing pear and butter. Double wow! I never looked at the river or heard a bird, but I did smell hot chocolate, burnt coffee, and pipe smoke.

Thought about revisions to my latest poem and the refrain I put at the end of it, created to chant while running. I played around with different rhythms. First, the words:

no after / only here / Remember / Remember / reMember /

Actually, the original, un-tested-out-by-the-gorge-version was: there is no after/there is only here / remember / remember / remember. But as soon as I tried to chant it, I could tell it wouldn’t work — too many words for my running rhythms.

no After
no After
no After
only here

only here
only here
here here here
here here here

Remember
Remember
reMember

Remember
here
reMember
here
here here here

Re Mem Ber
here here here

The lines inspiring these chants are: There is no after. There is only here and a moving away from and returning to it.

Also thinking about my What time is it? (2020) poem that involves a list of o’clocks. I’m thinking maybe I should be brave (a word RJP and I are using a lot these days), and include something about George Floyd. It’s an important part of what I wrote about in May/June of 2020 in this log. What do I mean by brave here? I’m going to think about that some more.

oct 13/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
55 degrees

Fall, leaves, fall; die, flowers, away;/lengthen night and shorten day; (Emily Brontë). Ran at noon because I got my hair cut this morning. A great time for a run, at least today. Sunny, calm, cool. I wore my bright yellow shoes and felt strong. Chanted in triple berries, then one of my Your Are Here poems:

Held up by the openness,
Not hemmed in by the trees.

Admired the golden leaves, but forgot to look at the river. Did I notice it even once? If I did, I can’t remember. I did notice the rushing creek and the gushing water fall. Saw a school bus, then heard some kids laughing at the playground by the falls. At my favorite spot, I stopped to look at the falls. Then I walked up the hill and put in Taylor Swift’s new album.

10 Things

  1. bright blue, cloudless sky
  2. the faint outline of the moon above a still green tree
  3. folwell bench: one person sitting there
  4. bench above the edge of the world: empty
  5. benches at the falls: all empty
  6. a runner behind me — were they catching up? for a few minutes I could hear their shuffling feet, then nothing — did they turn off somewhere, or was I just going faster?
  7. something on the bottom of my shoe was making as shshshsh sound as I ran. Stopped at a rock to rub it off
  8. the sweet smell of tall grass near “The Song of Hiawatha”
  9. a leashed dog spinning around and jumping up, then sitting calmly beside a human
  10. puddles on the part of path near the ford bridge — a result of last night’s rain

GGG — before the run

I think I’m getting closer to being done with this collection? One of the poems I still have to write is called “Everything.” It is two pages wide. In the upper left corner of one page is: I go to/the gorge/to witness. In the lower right corner of the second page is: everything. These lines are the rock walls framing the open space of the gorge above the water/ground. In the open space, I’m planning to fill it with things I’ve witnessed at the gorge, culled from the 10 Things I noticed lists I’ve been making for at least 5 years. Just now, a thought: what if I organize the things to reflect the seasons, so the upper right quarter = spring, lower right = summer, lower right = fall, upper left = winter. In theory it sounds good, but what will it look like?

oct 9/RUN

3.6 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees

Another cool morning! Today, I glowed: a bright orange sweatshirt, bright blue running shorts with lighter blue swirls, bright yellow running shoes, a purple-pink-blue running hat. Did it make me run faster? Maybe. I felt much better on the run this morning. Was it because I didn’t have any unfinished business, or because I was going only about half the distance? Or a little bit of both? I ran south and recited part of my new You Are Here poem about the grassy boulevard. I like it.

10 Things

  1. red leaves
  2. the occasional thump of an acorn hitting the ground
  3. the loud rumble of a school bus approaching Dowling
  4. scales on the river near the locks and dam — no clear reflection of the bridge today, instead more of an impressionist painting of it
  5. the bridge in the 44th street parking lot was empty, so was the one near folwell
  6. a dog’s bark, deep and loud, in the trees near Becketwood
  7. more golden light through the trees
  8. heading north, descending on the path that dips below the road, seeing a big but not the trail — hidden behind leaves
  9. the bench at the edge of the world: empty
  10. a buoy (not orange) bobbing in the river under the ford bridge

Listened to cars and dogs as I ran south. Put in “Taylor Swift” essentials retuning north.

Since I wrote about the grassy boulevard this morning, and being alone, and freedom, here’s a fitting poem:

Grass, 1967/ Victoria Chang

When I open the door, I smile and wave to people who only
have eyes and who are infinitely joyful. I see my children,
but only the backs of their heads. When they turn around, I
don’t recognize them. They once had mouths but now only
have eyes. I want to leave the room but when I do, I am
outside, and everyone else is inside. So next time, I open the
door and stay inside. But then everyone is outside. Agnes
said that solitude and freedom are the same. My solitude is
like the grass. I become so aware of its presence that it too
begins to feel like an audience. Sometimes my solitude grabs
my phone and takes a selfie, posts it somewhere for others
to see and like. Sometimes people comment on how
beautiful my solitude is and sometimes my solitude replies
with a heart. It begins to follow the accounts of solitudes
that are half its age. What if my solitude is depressed? What
if even my solitude doesn’t want to be alone?

Chang’s version of solitude involves being watched, stared at, judged and assessed, evaluated. And it involves a distance created with eyes and staring and being on display. My solitude, or maybe my loneliness, involves a lack of seeing — not of being seen, but of not seeing when I’m being seen.

oct 8/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls and back
48 degrees

48 degrees! Wore shorts again with my compression socks. Wasn’t cold at all. In fact, felt warm and sweat a lot by the end. Not as easy of a run as it was yesterday. Unfinished business, tired legs. Even so, a few mental victories. Made it to Hidden Falls for the first time this year! (I checked and my last run to Hidden Falls was on 8 dec 2024).

A beautiful run along the river road, on the edge of Wabun Park, over the ford bridge, by the river again, above Hidden Falls. I stopped at the overlook there and marveled at the view. Such a view of the river valley on the way to St. Paul. I thought about the openness of this view: wide, far and also uncluttered, not much to look at, just open space. Nothing to try to see and not be able to. A chance to focus on other senses or not focus at all, but just to be.

There were a few things I saw that delighted me. My view was of the tops of trees. In the distance, some leaves silvered and shimmered in the sun light and wind. Glittering trees — I’ve written about that before. Then, a plane high overhead. At first, dull and dark, but as it hit the light, it sparkled and flashed, a shiny dot in the otherwise blue.

I listened to hammers pounding nails, kids yelling, and cars driving by until I reached Hidden Falls. Then I put in Taylor Swift’s “The Life of a Showgirl” on the way back.

today’s study of Air, before the run:

I’m thinking about how/why something becomes/is open: the planning by rich men of spaces, both as inviting — for experiencing wonder and stillness, and as buffers –protecting from the unwanted; the process of succession (see 4 may 2025) and meadow becoming thicket becoming forest becoming open/barren field; how Minneapolis Parks, National Parks, and the Longfellow Neighborhood Association work to keep spaces within the park; how the city of Minneapolis clears out encampments in the gorge. I’m thinking about my own experience with my blind spot: an opening that won’t close, that stays open to how vision really works and it limits, that opens me up and softens me, offering room to dwell in a place without judgment and enabling me to experience the world differently and outside of, or on the edge, of late capitalism and Progress! and excessive growth.

And then, a pivot. I started thinking about Canadian wildfire smoke and air quality and smells — sewer smells. I wondered, why does it sometimes smell so bad, and how do they handle those smells? Looked it up:

Sewage pipes from much of the West Metro converge at this site. Here, they drop their contents into deeper pipes that then carry the sewage under the river and on to the Metropolitan Wastewater Treatment Plant east of downtown St. Paul. When the sewage drops, sewer gasses are forced out. For years, smells were managed through use of a biofilter (a.k.a. woodchips), but results were mixed and local residents and park users requested improvements.

The new odor-control structure will house four carbon filters that should prove far more effective. Scheduled to come online in early 2017, the small building will soon be fitted with a charcoal gray metal roof along with frosted windows in the north and south roof peaks. Next spring, it will be painted more natural colors and the lot will be revegetated with grass.

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after the run

I think I’ll leave smells and sewers for another day. Back to space-as-buffer-zone. Way back in 2017 or 18, when I first read the Gorge Management Plan from 2002, I encountered a description of the Boulevard that I’ve wanted to write about:

West River Parkway marks the transition between the natural communities of the River Gorge and the residences of the Longfellow neighborhood.

To function as an effective transitional zone, the boulevard should retain the natural character of the Gorge but also be visually acceptable to local residents and those using the boulevard and its pedestrian trails.

Gorge Management Plan, 2002

A transition zone, a threshold space between private (neighborhood) and public (park) land. Back in 2017, I imagined this transition as a way for me to prepare myself for the sacred practice of my run. A place to pass through — to leave behind the mundane world and enter the sacred. A place for getting ready to notice and slow down and let go. I think there is room to imagine that as an intent of Cleveland and early park planners. But, when I discovered the terrible history of Edmund Boulevard, named after Edmund Walton who brought red-lining and racial covenants to Minnesota, I read this buffer-zone differently. A buffer as “protection,” exclusion, denying access, keeping out, creating distance and division. And, Edmund’s white supremacist work is not in the past. These racial covenants and red-lining continue to shape the racial mapping of Minneapolis and who has access to home ownership, especially homes in places with open spaces and good air.

How do I want to reference this context in a poem? I’m not sure, but I’m thinking it will be in a poem titled, You Are There: Lena Smith Boulevard.

oct 6/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
50 degrees

The heat broke! Hooray. My run felt so much better, and dreamier, everything fuzzy and soft. My right knee felt a little strange at the very beginning of the run, but better the longer I ran. The air was crisp, the sun was bright, and the leaves were orange and red and yellow. Today I noticed a stretch of yellow just north of 42nd.

Listened to kids biking to school, water rushing over the limestone ledge and the falls, and at least one song out of a bike radio as I ran south. Put in Taylor Swift’s new album, “The Life of a Showgirl.”

10 Things

  1. Nearing a walker, about to pass them from behind, they suddenly spit. It missed me, but I was grossed out and stuck out my tongue without thinking. Morning! Oh no — it was Mr. Morning!
  2. a row of buses lined up in front of Dowling Elementary — another school week begins
  3. remnants of the marathon — not trash, but barricades, waiting to be picked up
  4. more red and orange leaves — not full trees, but slashes in the bushes
  5. the surface of the river was burning white again
  6. a white truck with an arm and bucket parked in a falls paking lot — was it there to clean up after the marathon?
  7. a rushing creek with foam that looked silvery purpley, oxidized green, blue, then pewter
  8. water trickling out of the sewer pipes
  9. empty benches
  10. the sweet smell of the tall grass — a thought today: is this a smell from my childhood in North Carolina?

some things for future Sara

1

Yesterday, Scott and I walked over to the river and watched the first wave of marathon runners reach mile 17. We saw the wheelers — I love seeing the motion of the silver handlebars turning turning and turning. We saw the men’s lead pack, their heels bouncing rhythmically like balls. We saw the lead woman and second place — a runner I’ve been following for 5 or 6 years now on Instagram. And we saw the GOAT of Ultra running, Courtney Dauwalter. I wish I had remembered to where (added the next day: where instead of wear? wow. a mistake, or is it? In that moment, I was, in fact, lamenting, oh, where are my glasses!) my glasses — in addition to losing my cone cells, I’m near-sighted. If I’m standing still, glasses can help see some far off things, like “exit” signs or moving bodies. Scott and I were inspired and have decided that we want to give the marathon another go, hopefully next year.

2

Finished the novel, Victorian Psycho yesterday. The final section was an epic bloodbath. The violence didn’t seen gratuitous, but fit, and it was so beautifully written. Descriptions of scarlet ribbons streaming from throats. After I finished, I suddenly realized that this final section must be a reference/homage to the Odyssey and Odysseus’s slaughtering of the suitors, which was also a bloodbath.

3

When Scott and I walked into Costco, we discovered that they were offering free, no appointment necessary, flu and COVID shots. Nice! We needed them so we waited about 5 minutes and then got jabbed. So convenient! Past Sara, who drove up to Duluth to get her first vaccine in 2021, would be shocked.

Lena Smith Boulevard

Last year — 29 jan 2024 — I wrote about an effort to rename Edmund Boulevard because of its namesake, Edmund Walton, who was responsible for racial covenants in this area and across Minneapolis. The efforts of community members and a community organization worked! The boulevard is being renamed after Minnesota’s first black woman lawyer, Lena Smith. The renaming was approved on sept 11, 2025. When will we see new street signs?

I’m thinking of this renaming today because I’m working on poems related to Air. Ever since I read a few lines in Gorge Management Plan from Minneapolis parks about this boulevard as a threshold space, I’ve wanted to write something about it. Now I want to add in some lines about the renaming, and the ongoing history of this place, and who is and isn’t given access to these open spaces.

Speaking of AIR, I’ve also wanted to write about lungs and breath and idea of room to breathe out by the gorge. A thought just popped into my head: the Canadian wild fires! I’ve been writing about the Air Quality Index and the thick smoke that travels south from Canadian wild fires for a few years on this blog. Maybe that could be part of my AIR section, too?

oct 4/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails + ravine
72 degrees
dew point: 62

8:30 in the morning and 72? Ugh. I’m glad it’s cooling down on Monday. My IT band felt strange for the first few minutes, but after that I forgot about it.

10 Things

  1. noticed the difference in drips at the 2 ledges — one concrete, one limestone — in the ravine between the 35th and 36th street parking lots — the concrete ledge, which was higher up, dripped less and slower
  2. a greeting from Mr. Morning!
  3. a peloton — 2 dozen bikers? — on the bike path
  4. not much yellow, but lots of red and orange
  5. the Winchell Trail was muddy parts — when did it rain?
  6. almost running into a walker, thinking that I was coming up behind them instead of them coming towards me — sometimes I can’t tell when someone is facing me or turned away
  7. the trail through the oak savanna: only a swirl of leaves and mulch
  8. a little more of a view at the edge of the world and the folwell bench
  9. a thick haze, trapped in the oaks in the savanna
  10. the surface of the river burning white
the surface of the river burning through the trees / Rachel Dow Memorial Bench

I decided to take a video of the river instead of a photo; I wanted to capture the movement of the light on the surface.

for future Sara: Ran past a house all gussied up for Halloween on 34th near Seven Oaks. A figure in black leaning over the fence, graves and skeletons in the front yard. I need to walk by here at night.

Listened to water trickling and voices below for the 2.5 miles of the run. Put in Taylor Swift’s new album for the last bit.

excerpt from Karma Affirmation Cistern Don’t Be Afraid Keep Going Toward the Horror / Gabrielle Calvocoressi

it’s okay. To know you’re part craven smuggler.
Part thief. Maybe if you know your animal.
I mean really know your animal.
You won’t become a builder of factories
or slave ships. Maybe instead of building
a ship somewhere in your body
you just let yourself feel the pain and
humiliation. No need to make it beautiful
for some future reader. Just say how much
you wanted to hurt someone like you got hurt.
And then just watch that for a while. It’s okay
to feel horribly ashamed. Best not to look away.
The gate to joy is past the factory and past
the reader and maybe it’s past your last breath
on this planet. There’s nothing you can do about it.
You come from the cistern of brutality
and hunger. You are the resonator. Just breathe.

Best not to look away. Wow! On the Poetry Foundation site, the poet reads this poem and they do a great job.

sept 30/RUN

4.1 miles
river road, north/south
65 degrees
humidity: 75%

Yesterday, it was almost 90 degrees. It will be in the 80s all this week. Ugh. I’m ready for cooler weather! I felt okay during the run, but now, after it, I’m wiped out. Thankfully, the sun was hidden behind a thick layer of clouds. I ran the entire first mile, then the second with one walk break in the center, and the third: run 3 mins, walk 1 min.

10 Things

  1. 2 packs of male runners, around a dozen in each pack, a gap of 20 or 30 seconds between each — the U of M or Macalester or St. Thomas cross country team?
  2. exchanged greetings with Mr. Morning! He was wearing a bright orange t-shirt
  3. some more red leaves as I descended into the tunnel of trees
  4. 3 stones stacked on the ancient boulder
  5. a steady stream of cars on the road
  6. a man standing above the limestone steps that lead to the Winchell Trail near the trestle, waiting
  7. someone sitting at the sliding bench — have I ever sat on the bench? it looks too precarious, right on the edge of a steep slope
  8. the crack just north of the trestle is still cracking
  9. a bird: cheesburger cheeseburger cheeseburger (a black-capped chickadee)
  10. the Welcoming Oaks are still green

My mom died 16 years ago today. I wanted to think about her on the run, but I was too distracted by my effort and the humid conditions. For the second half of my run and part of my walk home, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist. Some lyrics in the last song I heard made me think of my mom. Time will heal from Time Song/ the Kinks. I thought about how much time has passed since Mom died and how I feel her absence less intensely than I used to. I wouldn’t call it healing; just finding ways to live with the grief.

listing

I want to include some 10 Things lists in my Girl Ghost Gorge collection. Partly because they are part of my practice, and partly because the writing of lists, and the gathering of things noticed that listing involves, is a way to create substance to my ghost-like, untethered self. It is also a way to ease my restlessness. The idea — if I write enough lists, I’ll get tired and/or stop being so restless and unsatisfied. I’m not sure how many lists to do. Maybe 4? One for each season?

sept 17/RUNBIKESWIM

4 miles
the monument and back
72 degrees
humidity: 80% / dew point: 64

More gnats, more heat, more sweat. Ran over the lake street bridge and up the summit hill to the Monument. Ran the first mile, did 2 minutes running/ 1 minute walking for the second mile, and mostly running, some walking for the rest. My right knee was sore because the kneecap slid out last night. I had to pop it back into place by going up and down the stairs. When it slides out it rubs the tendons or ligaments or something and they’re sore the next day. No big deal.

10 Things

  1. a bunch of kids sitting on the sidewalk outside of the church with the daycare — an adult called out to some other adult, I checked the website. They should be picking them up by 9
  2. a gnat flew into my eye — all the way, now the corner of my eye is sore
  3. no rowers on the river, only small waves
  4. peering over the side on the lake street bridge, checking out the sandbar. How far below the surface is it? How deep is the water around it?
  5. the faint sound of falling water at shadow falls
  6. a railing in front of a neighbor’s house, adorned with garlands and lights
  7. several wide cracks on the trail halfway down the summit hill, outlined in orange
  8. running up the summit hill, hearing a biker slowly approaching then creeping past me
  9. checking my watch during a walk break, the numbers blurred and difficult to see — a combination of my bad vision and feeling slightly dizzy/dazed from the heat
  10. the jingling of my house key in my pack, the thudding of my pack against my shorts

I don’t remember much from the run because it was hot and tiring. What did I think about?

Listened to kids, cars, random voices, and a dog barking running to the Monument. Put in my “The Wheeling Life” playlist on the way back. First song up, “Day by Day” from Godspell. In this song., the wheel is moving forward, progressing towards a better relationship with God. Wow — Jesus-rock was a thing in the 70s. The refrain for the song:

Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord, three things I pray, to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly. Day by day.

bike: 7.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
79/75 degrees

Earlier today, Scott and I drove by lake nokomis and we noticed that the buoys were still up, so we decided to bike over to the lake in the late afternoon. If the blue algae was gone, I’d swim. So we did, and it was! The bike ride was great, even if it was windy. The thing I remember most about the bike was hearing the twack of the pickle ball at a pickle court on the way there, and a tennis court on the way back. Also: someone mowing their lawn and kids playing at the lake nokomis rec center playground.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis main beach
76 degrees

The water was clearer and warmer and slightly less choppy than the last time I was here. Still too many vines reaching up from the bottom. I had to swim farther out in the lake to avoid them. Saw at least 2 paddle boarders, a sailboat, a kayak. No fish, but seagulls. Heard geese honking from the other shore. Some adult was playing with a kid and calling out, Nestea Plunge. Yes! I can still picture the dude standing with his back to the pool, falling back into the water.

Noticed the mucked-up underside of a once red, now pinkish orange buoy. Was fascinated by the bubbles on the otherwise smooth surface of the water. Felt some thin vine tendrils encircling my wrist, some thicker and sharper vines brushing against my leg. I don’t remember seeing any planes, but I do remember some wispy clouds.

sept 14/RUN

4.1 miles
river road north/south
70 degrees
humidity: 88% / dew point: 68

Ugh! Uncomfortably warm again today. A flushed face and dripping ponytail. Was able to greet 2 regulars: Dave, the Daily Walker and Mr. Morning! Admired sparkles on the water, heard the coxswain from below, smelled the sourness of the sewer. I tried to do my “beat” experiment:

mile 1: triple berry chants strawberry/raspberry/blueberry
mile 2: listen to metronome at 175
mile 3: listen to music

I went too fast with the triple berries, then didn’t have the metronome turned up enough to feel the beat. By the time I got to mile 3, I was overheating. After that, it was difficult to run for that long. Lots of walking. I’ll have to try this experiment again when it is much cooler.

For the Girl Ghost Gorge collection I’m working on, I’ve decided to add some You Are Here poems: poems that locate me/the reader in one particular (and meaningful to me) location above or with or among the gorge.

possible you are here locations

  1. the trestle
  2. folwell bench
  3. sliding bench
  4. the edge of the world
  5. double bridge
  6. ancient boulder with stacked stones
  7. franklin hill
  8. turkey hollow
  9. 44th street ravine
  10. 42nd street ravine
  11. 35th street ravine
  12. welcoming oaks

sept 13/RUN

3.25 miles
locks and dam no 1 and back
73 degrees
humidity: 67

Typical September weather in Minneapolis: cool, then hot, then hotter. I went out for my run late because I was watching Vingegaard finally show some panache on the final, ridiculously steep, climb of the Vuelta. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the Vuelta this year were the pro-Palestinian protesters. They disrupted several of the stages, resulting in the shortening of at least 2 of them, including the individual time trial. Mostly they peacefully (I think) occupied the finish line or lined the course with Palestinian flags. A few groups were more disruptive: cutting down a tree to block the road, running down from a hill and almost hitting some of the riders, and today, blocking the road and (possibly?) tackling one of the riders. I support the protesters and their movement, even as I disagree with some of their tactics that put the riders at risk.

10 Things

  1. 2 runners ahead of me, one in an orange vest. when I passed them, I overheard one say to the other, only 1.3 miles left. we can do it.
  2. same runners, later, walking, one to the other: you go ahead, I’m walking the rest
  3. the wheels of a roller skier, sounding rickety and rusted — or was it the uneven asphalt?
  4. leaves floating in the wind, looking like flying birds
  5. pale blue water below
  6. encountering a guy with a dog: excuse me / oh — you scared me, you’re quiet / I’m sorry / no, that’s a good thing I thought: me, the running ninja
  7. a coxswain’s voice below — rowers!
  8. a small peloton on the road
  9. an organized run, probably a 20 miler for the upcoming marathon — participants were wearing orange vests
  10. the tree that was blocking most of the winchell trail has finally been moved

It was tough out there. I chanted a reminder in triples: in the heat/time on feet. Because it’s so hot, I’m not worrying about how slow I’m going, or how much of it I’m walking instead of running. It’s all about just getting out there and spending time moving.

Just discovered this book! I’m hoping I can find it in a library somewhere:

Out the front door, across the street, down the hill, and into Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. This is how Ben Ratliff’s runs started most days of the week for about a decade. Sometimes listening to music, not always. Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, he began taking notes about what he listened to. He wondered if a body in motion, his body, was helping him to listen better to the motion in music.

Run the Song: Writing About Running About Listening/ Ben Ratliff

update 28 dec 2025: A few days ago, I picked up a hard copy of this book from the library. I haven’t had a chance to read it. Part of my reluctance might be that it’s a lot of text, and there’s no table of contents or chapter titles. Difficult to get a sense of the book without those, especially for me with my limited vision.

sept 11/RUN

4.5 miles
monument and back
60 degrees
humidity: 93%

A mist hanging above the river. A heavy white sky. It looked very cool, but felt too humid. Heavy legs. Not a great run, but still wonderful to be moving through the mist. Noticed more leaves changing, mostly yellow. Heard water falling in the Summit ravine: Shadow Falls. I imagined that it was not water falling, but shadows. Then I thought about myself shedding shadows as I ran. A cool image.

On the lake street bridge heading west, 2 more memoriable images.

First, a single shell on the river, rowing towards the mist. The rower in a bright yellow shirt. I couldn’t hear the paddles, but saw them gliding through the water.

Second, looking down at the shadow of the bridge: dark with a quivering edge. I thought about how all edges I see are often moving like this. The moving edge of the bridge is because of wind on water. The moving edges for me are because of dying cone cells.

bridge shadow, moving edge

Recited some of the chants I’ve been working on:

girl ghost gorge
soft slow sight

saint peter saint peter saint peter sandstone
glenwood glenwood glenwood forMAtion
plateville platteville plateville limeston
glac ial till
glac ial till

In the late afternoon, Scott and I went to the lake. He was planning to take a walk, I was going to swim. I even brought my wetsuit. But, when I went down to the water, I immediately knew it wasn’t going to happen. The water lapping the shore was bright green and the water beyond it looked like green paint. Blue-green algae blooms. Maybe the blue-green algae was only in this spot, but probably it wasn’t. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. So I took off my wetsuit and went for a walk with Scott instead.

sept 10/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
65 degrees
humidity: 87%

Went out for my run later than I’d like because I was watching the final climb on the Vuelta. I was hoping Vingegaard would do something special but sadly he didn’t have the legs (as commentator Christian likes to say). Other favorite phrases from Bob and Christian on Peacock’s coverage of the tour: going from strength to strength, fire power, full cry, and Jonas & co..

The run was a little difficult, partly because of the humidity, partly because of my need for a port-a-potty. Sigh. Oh — and the front of my left knee felt weird — tight? — for the first 5 or so minutes. Even with the difficulty, there were moments I felt strong and bouncy. I did a few strides (sprints, fast bursts) at the end.

Thinking about Girl Ghost Gorge some more, working on triple chants related to rock.

st. peter sandstone
st. peter sandstone
st. peter sandstone
limestone shale

platteville limestone
platteville limestone
platteville limestone
shale sandstone

10 Things

  1. a big orange X spray painted on a tree
  2. another orange x, smaller, painted on another tree
  3. gushing ravine
  4. more yellowing trees
  5. hello friend! to the still green welcoming oaks
  6. tunnel of trees — red leaves on the path, green on the branches
  7. orange construction signs — road closed ahead E. Franklin
  8. click clack click clack a roller skier
  9. ghost bike for June hanging high in the trestle — dried flowers wound through the spokes
  10. the sharp bark of a dog below, on the winchell trail

sept 8/RUNSWIM

4.3 miles
veterans home and back
61 degrees

Fall! Noticed a few more slashes of orange and yellow and some red leaves on the ground. More acorn shells on the trail. At the beginning my knee — I can’t remember if it was the left or the right one — hurt, a dull not sharp pain. I can’t remember when it stopped. Maybe it was when I started feeling the rumbling of unfinished business. When I reached the falls, I went to the bathroom. I’m ready to be done with perimenopause.

Running south, I listened to chickadees and music blasting from a bike radio — I recognized the 70s or 80s rock song, but now I’ve forgotten what it was. Just past the Veterans home, I put in my “the Wheeling Life” playlist.

10 Things

  1. the sound of the rushing creek, 1: just before it falls over the limestone ledge
  2. the sound of the rushing creek, 2: far below, as I ran over the bridge to the Veterans Home
  3. a soft mist rising from the falling water
  4. a half-filled parking lot at the falls
  5. a full parking lot at the Veterans Home
  6. an empty parking lot at Locks and Dam no 1
  7. above on the bluff at Waban Park, a view of the river, the water rushing over the concrete, one white buoy, several redorangepink buoys
  8. an American flag waving near the Veterans Home
  9. strange flashes and a distorted view out of my central vision as I ran across the bridge — a result of facing the sun, I think
  10. soft shadows from the chain link fence on the bridge

While I ran, I chanted in triples. I was hoping to center or ground or locate myself in the time and place. First, berries, then:

I am here/I am here/I am here
I am now/I am now/I am now
I am here/I am here/I am here
It is now/It is now/It is now
here here here/ now now now/ here here here/ now now now

Then, I added a condensed version of some Emily Dickinson:

Life life life/death death death/bliss bliss bliss/breath breath breath

Then:

I am here/I am here/I am here/Here I am
123/123/123/123

Throughout the run, I thought about locating myself and how I might translate that for my project. A list of surfaces? my landmarks? a topographical map?

Reviewing old notes and entries, including 19 may 2025, which includes a bit on context, I encountered the phrase, there or there abouts. I had written it in my notebook after hearing it several times on the TNT coverage of the giro d’italia (the tour of italy cycling race). Yes. When I locate myself, it’s not here! or there. but there or thereabouts. Maybe that could be the title of a poem for the collection?

there or thereabouts

double bridge
old stone steps
ancient rock / stacked with stones
sliding bench
near the fence
under tree
on the edge (of the world)
high above
down below
in the flats
past the creek
wrapped in green
off the ground / in the air
deep in oak
riverside
locks and dam
sewer pipe
steep ravine
brand new trail
snowy path
in the groove
seeping hill
leaking ledge
eagle’s perch
spreading crack

Do I want to do this poem in triples? Not sure. It is how I locate myself sometimes — by chanting in triples about what’s around me. This syncs up my feet with my breath and my surroundings. But, how does it sound? And does it work as a poem?

A new poet to read and podcast episode to listen to!
Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists/ Laynie Brown
Laynie Brown: Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (tinhouse podcast)

swim: .75 loop
lake nokomis main beach
76 degrees
wind: 29 mph gusts

Another swim! When RJP told me the buoys were still up I knew I needed to swim again. Wow, it was choppy, and wow, that water was cold, but it wasn’t too cold and the choppy water was fun. I think there were whitecaps. In one direction, I could mostly ride the waves, the other direction, I punched water. Both fun, but in different ways. Speed from one, power the other. Got tangled in some vines, but nothing I couldn’t get out of. Noticed: soaring and hovering seagulls, held up by wind; planes, bobby buoys, voices, and water rushing over me, water crashing into me, water dragging me forward and sideways. I wouldn’t want to swim in water like that every time, but it was fun today.

sept 6/RUN

5.1 miles
bottom of franklin and back
53 degrees

Another cooler run. Shorts with my bright orange sweatshirt. Ran to the bottom of the franklin hill before I stopped to walk and use one of the few port-a-potties on the route. There used to be at least one more under the lake street bridge, but they removed it. Chanted in triple berries to keep steady and distracted, or focused, depending on your perspective.

Listened to rowers and a beeping bike that I thought might be a bird before I saw it and striking feet, all around. Lots of runners out there this late morning. Listened to my “Moment” playlist once I started running again. It started with U2’s “Stuck in the Moment” and I thought about my latest insomnia rut.

10 Things

  1. a greeting from Dave, the Daily Walker: Happy 100 days after your birthday! Dave is the best — well, maybe not with his math!
  2. dark and green in the tunnel of trees, a circle of faint light up on the hill
  3. at least one yellowish orangish tree
  4. down in the flats the river’s surface was laced with grayish-white foam
  5. someone sitting on the sliding bench as I ran north, their bike propped behind the back of the bench
  6. returning south, the sliding bench was empty so I stood behind it and assessed the crumbling hill and the block view of the white sands beach
  7. finally took the dirt path that cuts behind some benches just south of the trestle
  8. 2 people walking 2 dogs, one person saying to the other something about an unwalked dog needing to be walked
  9. 2 women walking in the flats, one of them to the other: It’s by Ann Patchett. I wish I would have written down the passage.
  10. running on the north double bridge — just past the old stone steps — something caught my eye on the fence. On the way back, I remembered to stop to check it out. A small cut-out of Frump’s head on a popsicle stick with a caption: ‘tator on a stick. I took a picture, but decided not to post it*

*it took me a minute to understand fully the meaning here — at first I was thinking of the state fair, but finally it hit me that tator = dictator. Memories of reading Simon Schma’s Citizens about the French Revolution and heads on pikes being paraded around Paris. A sad and scary time in this country to have a president who foments such violence and violent responses in others.

You

1

A line from Endi Bogue Hartigan’s poem “Running Sentences”:

First the cloud of gnats first the movement through the cloud
and then the body, not a cloud

Something about running through gnats — which I’ve done many times — and the body as not a cloud, triggered past thoughts about encountering someone on the trail and what happens to the You in the time/space between my Thank you and someone else’s You’re welcome when I thanked them for moving over.

2

These were the original thoughts, from a 31 may 2023 log entry:

I had a breakthrough in the second mile as I passed a walker and a dog on the Winchell Trail. They noticed me before I reached them and moved to the side. I said thank you and the woman replied you’re welcome. As I continued running on the steep-ish trail with no railing I thought about how when I said thank you, I was the I, she was the you. But when she answered you’re welcome, I become the you and she the I. Each of us both. Then I started thinking about the space and time between when we each embodied the pronoun, before my I turned into a you or her you into and I. This is the space of possibility where unhitching can happen, when we can be both a you and an I or something else that doesn’t divide and separate or assign us a fixed role — as active I or passive you. A moment when we can experience or behold the is below the threshold of thought, over and above society and its constructs.

31 may 2023

3

And here’s an excerpt from the draft of the poem I wrote:

first movement,
a making

space for each
other, then

a cloud of
Yous to pass

through. Bodies
enter cloud,

cloud enters
bodies

sept 4/RUN

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
53 degrees

Cool enough today for my bright orange sweatshirt! Excellent running weather. I felt strong and was able to push through a few moments when I wanted to stop. Thought about the perception of time during difficult moments, particularly in terms of how to endure it — learning to hold multiple perceptions at once: time on a short scale, day by day, minute by minute, step by step / on a long scale, think beyond this moment to a bigger goal / as in flux, this feeling can/will change again, and again

10 Things

  1. a cool, dark green
  2. far ahead, tunnels of bright light
  3. birdsong — difficult to identify
  4. a coxswain — rowers down below!
  5. kids arriving at school — heard, not seen: excited voices
  6. a roaring creek
  7. every bench, empty — a stone wall, occupied by a person leaning and looking at their phone
  8. tall grass smell: almost like cilantro
  9. sharp, yippy barks at the falls — two little dogs greeting each other
  10. Hi Sara! / Hi Dave!

After stopping at my favorite spot at the falls, I put in my “The Wheeling Life” playlist. Most memorable song today: “Windmills of my Mind” and these lines:

Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream

I thought, ripples. Such a great word and image on the surface of the water, or from tall grass in a field, or through the thick leaves on a tree. Later, on my walk back, I thought more about ripples and triples and inklings:

  • an inkling
  • a ripple
  • a flicker
  • a ruffle
  • a whisper
  • a rumor
  • a tumor — where did that come from?
  • a lurking
  • a leaking
  • a speaking — soft, slow, barely audible

added a few minutes later: Early this morning, 5:30 am, I briefly woke up to stretch my restless leg. I noticed a flashing light through the blinds. An ambulance? The police? A fire truck? No. A runner with a flashing headlight running in the street. I’ve never seen that before, but that’s probably because I’m hardly ever up this early. Would I see it more if I were up this early? Probably.

sept 3/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails + tunnel of trees
56 degrees / humidity: 80%

Fall! Cooler this morning for my run. Windy, too. Ran south on the paved path, then north on the Winchell Trail. Heard kids arriving at Dowling Elementary. It’s the second day of school. Also heard wind rushing through the trees and some water falling out of the sewer at 42nd but not at 44th. No rowers or packs of runners or fragments of conversation.

Chanted in triple berries — strawberry/blueberry/raspberry — for several minutes then other triples — mystery/mystery/mystery deepening/quieting/deepening interior/exterior/deep deep down Thought about surfaces again and their value. Wondered: should I spend a month studying surfaces?

Listened to my “The Wheeling Life” playlist for the last mile of the run. Started with “Proud Mary” and my feet found the fast beat. I swung my arms back and forth but imagined they were rolling like wheels. Rollin’ Rollin’ Gave the most attention to the lyrics of XTC’s “Season Cycle”:

Darling, don’t you ever sit and ponder (darling, did you ever think)
About the building of the hills a-yonder (all this life stuff’s closely linked?)
Where we’re going in this verdant spiral
(‘Round and ’round) who’s pushing the pedals on the season cycle?

It’s September, so it is time to wrap up my reading of Endi Bogue Hartigan’s oh orchid o’clock. Here’s another great hour entry:

hour entry: The hawk is an approximate whisking together/ Endi Bogue Hartigan

The hawk is an approximate whisking together of fractions of itself the 23 intervals in the second the eye can see the 500 intervals in the second the ear can hear the 100 intervals in the second the bird can see. The second is forming midair like any duration or station in sun. Say “look a red-tailed hawk” and in that second the alliterative span of flashes of light formed by a moving pinking-sheared wing shape becomes it. I wish my words to become unfit for a second, to not make such burred sad sounds. The unspoken fractions of our seconds are expressed imprecisely all the time in seconds. “I’ll be there in a second.” “He was gone for a second.” “The next second they were on the ground.”

intervals / frames per second / illusion: converting what’s still into motion, what’s motion into a still / duration station span / blurred imprecise approximate

motion, the animation of the still
still, the freezing of motion
Oliver’s quieting of the spirit = slowing and smoothing of the motion

sept 2/RUNBIKESWIM

5 miles
franklin loop
70 degrees

I was planning to bike over to the lake and swim this morning but it looked gloomy and ominous, and then started raining and thundering for several hours. Bummer. By the time it stopped raining it had warmed up and the sun came out. Even so, I went for a hot and humid run. Everything was wet. A slick trail, dripping branches, wet shoes and shirt.

10 Things

  1. someone covered over the graffiti on the steps that read, stop hate, with blue paint
  2. sky, part 1: gray, heavy
  3. sky, part 2; blue and cloudless
  4. empty river
  5. white foam on the edge of the east bank near the franklin bridge
  6. kids laughing on the playground at the church daycare
  7. some orange and red leaves beyond the fence near east river road
  8. the squeal of tires near the trestle — what happened?
  9. orange cones lining the path: there must have been a race or a sponsored bike ride this past weekend
  10. the sliding bench was empty of people but close to a thick veil or green

Listened to voices, cars, and drips for the first half of the run, my “Doin’ Time” playlist for the second half. The song I remember the most was Peter Gabriel’s “Playing for Time.”

Oh, there’s a hill that we must climb
Climb through all the mist of time
It’s all in here what we’ve been through

Not a fan of the phrase, mist of time, but these lyrics reminded me of a few lines from Mary Oliver that I read right before heading out for my run:

Slowly
up the hill,
like a thicket of white flowers,
forever.
(The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)

The lines just preceding these were a series of good-byes to the world: the swaying trees, the black triangles of the winter sea, oranges, the fox sparrow, blue-winged teal, lettuce, turnip, rice fields, the morning light, and the goldfinches.

Down, I’m getting it down
Sorting it out
So everything I care about
Is held in here
All of those I love, inside

Listening to these lines, I thought about Oliver’s deepening of the spirit. I thought about the interior and moving inside of yourself and of burying memories and ideas not as a way to avoid them, but to protect them. I also thought about someone growing older and having memory-loss and trying to hold onto faces and names and experiences. I weighed the possibilities and limitations of going deep inside as compared to opening up to the outside. All of these thoughts came at once — not in a linear progression — in a burst which lasted until I heard these lines less than a minute later:

There goes the sun
Back from where it came
The young move to the center
The mom and dad, the frame

I just remembered: at the start of my run, I was thinking about the difference between ordinary and extraordinary time, which was a continuation of thoughts that began earlier this morning. Habits, routines, activities/events experienced again and again — the mundane — versus the scattered, sporadic occasions that break up the routine. While meaning and memories are often found in the singular moments, I’m drawn to the rituals and repetitions and daily events as where imporant meaning dwells.

Everyday. everyday = ordinary / every day = each day, daily.

Everyday—I have work to do (“Work” in The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)

I love that she writes everyday and not every day, so it’s not, each day I have work to do but, ordinary, everyday life: don’t bug me, I have work to do!

bike: 7.5 miles
lake nokomis and back*
75/71 degrees

*instead of the river road trail, we took 44th until the falls park, which is shorter

A good bike ride with Scott. As usual, better on the way back — easier, more relaxed. On the way there: wind. No problems with panicking about not seeing. The ride home was great: the sun was setting soon. Passed by adults playing soccer or flag football or some team sport in the field by the duck bridge, and kids playing soccer at Hiawatha school. RJP and FWA both played for a season at Hiawatha. I played for 5 or 6 years when I was kid in Northern Virginia. I loved it; they didn’t.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis main beach
74 degrees

Only 4 other people in the lake, and none of them were swimming laps, just standing around and talking — brrr, I bet that was cold! I swam far from the white buoys and almost completely avoided the milfoil. Only a few times, I got too close and felt the vines on my toes and wrists. For most of the swim there was wind and choppy water. In one direction, it pushed me along. In the other, I got to swim straight into it, which I liked doing. Mostly, a fun swim. The vines were the only bad thing about it. They were too thick by the one buoy so I didn’t want to circle around it. This made it much harder to loop, so I mostly stopped and twisted around. I noticed some birds in the sky and a few planes. Trees on the distant shore were looking less green — were any of them changing?

I thought about how this might be my final swim of the season. It’s cooler for the rest of the week — highs in the 60s, so they might take down the buoys soon. It’s been a great season. I swam for longer, both distance and time. And, I had fun reciting more water lines in my head and writing about water.

aug 30/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
63 degrees / humidity: 86%

Felt cooler at the beginning, then the sun came out. Warm! A good run. There was a nice spray coming off of the falls and lots of people taking selfies. I felt strong and able to run 2.25 miles without stopping for a walk break. A slow, steady progression towards more endurance. By winter will I be able to run 10 miles without stopping? I hope so.

Listened to cars and one runner’s slapping feet and rushing water on the first half of my run, then my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist on the second half. I was hoping that listening to songs about shadows would make more of them appear! Did it? I don’t think so.

10 Things

  1. a speedy runner sprinting past me, his feet striking the ground with a loud slap — Slap! Slap! Slap!
  2. crunch crunch — discarded acorn shells on the trail
  3. the steady whooshing of car wheels
  4. 2 walkers, or maybe runners who were taking a walk break, walking towards me, one of them saying, let’s turn around, the other, let me get some water up ahead first
  5. empty benches, including the one above the edge of the world
  6. crash! crash! some critter rooting around in the bushes in the park
  7. kids laughing and yelling at the park playground
  8. a runner with a white shirt wrapped around her waist, running on the bike path, then on the edge closest to the bike path, forcing runners and bikers to more around her
  9. a roller skier on the walking trail doing a strangely slow shuffling exercise with her poles and roller skis
  10. a coxswain down below — rowers!

quieting of the spirit (from 29 aug 2024)

stillness: Anne Carson and taming uncontrolled movement:

The other day I discovered an essay by Anne Carson about her experiences with Parkinson’s, especially with trying to navigate tremors and tame uncontrolled movement. My experiences with vision loss are very different, yet I recognize similarities in terms of focused attention as a way to combat constant motion.

Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull: the books tell me to pay conscious, continual attention to actions like walking, writing, brushing my teeth, if I want to inhibit or delay the failure of neurons in the brain. It is hard to live within constant striving. 

Gloves on!/ Anne Carson

*

Since being diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, I’m giving conscious, but maybe not constant, attention to how I see, to the complicated process of seeing. Some of this attention is out of curiosity and astonishment. And some of it is about helping neurons to fire in new ways and learning how to see differently. 

The uncontrolled motion I experience is not tremors, but images that constantly shift and shimmer and buzz, usually in ways too subtle to see clearly. I feel them — soft notes of disorientation, dizziness, restlessness. Maybe you could call them tremors? The ground never ceasing to unsettle.

Recently, I’ve been writing about the different definitions of still. Is the constant motion I see never still? I’m not sure. I think I’m striving for new ways of defining that word and of accessing the feeling of being still, enough, calm.

still / enough / calm / quieter

Here are 2 more poems from Hartigan’s excellent collection, On Orchid O’clock that I want to put beside each other:

hour entry: Sorry, I am at the gym this instant/ Endi Bogue Hartigan

I am at the gym again this instant and of it, in its treadmills, its black tongues and beetle shines its oily handles in time and time and time intervals and people cupped and kept in beeps and measures, always. I’m nearly half done with my pre-programmed eliiptical slot, having spent 211 calories. This very instant a woman, having come in from the street, is staring at the smeared glass of the vending machine an instant too long, the change hot in her palm, a kind of calm as yet unspent. And I am bent away from God, running horizontally in place, & all instance protests movement, all instance must be thick with protest, coated with candle wax of sadness, walking upright like unlit wicks.

The treadmills black tongue / time and time and time intervals (intervals as verb?) / people cupped and kept in beeps and measures / 211 calories / I am bent away from God

hour entry: Orchids because orchids are impossibly mimicking / Endi Bogue Hartigan

Orchids because orchids are impossibly mimicking the milk fluid capture of being orchids, orchids because they are grown commercially in soldiering rows in hothouse tents, because they are given as gifts for merely being orchids, because they are inherently exceeding themselves and held as if rare, though they are not, their stems are second hands untimed and slightly skewed to binding. Orchids because they are wrist-colored, because they are eyelid textured, because they are partial light captured, because they are hard to keep living. And on the slope of a hillside of a rainforest of my childhood was an orchid nursery. I don’t know I ever entered it, but knew the plastic walls sweat.

I love the repetition in this poem — the orchids, because
orchids as partial light captured / eyes as orchid textured / the slope of a hillside of a rainforest of my childhood

aug 28/RUN

3.8 miles
river road, north/south
61 degrees

Cooler this morning. Quiet. Ran earlier than usual: 7:30. Lots of traffic on the road, some on the trail too: walkers, runners, bikers, strollers, at least 2 roller skiers. I could hear one of the roller skiers as it approached, scraping their poles on the ground. No clicks and clacks, just scraaaape scraaaape. Running past the rowing club, I encountered a group of people in bright yellow vests emerging from below. Were they rowers, and did they wear those vests on the water?

After reaching the river, I noticed the fence slat, pushed loose by a leaning tree trunk, was looser today. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks, good morning! hello friend! The sunlight was beautiful in the tunnel of trees — thin strips of light coming through the leaves.

Found this poem yesterday. It’s great for my interest in ekphrastic poetry and color:

A Lexicon of Light/ George Looney

     –after Claude Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge series

It’s not accurate to say we know
what we see. Truth is, few understand

the physics of color. What Monet knew
had little to do with science. He was

intent on getting the bridge, and everything
that gave the bridge context, right. Language

isn’t accurate enough. To depict the world
with color and form—to make a place

and moment of time a composition—is
no more precise a vocabulary. Vision

tends to end up being an imposition
more than a recognition of how the fog

consumes much of the bridge, as if nothing
is able to fully connect one side

of the Thames to the other. Distance
often asks too much of us, and Monet

found ways to accept that insistence. His
endlessly varied harmonies of color

wrote a new definition of accuracy. The bridge
is more than a construction passed over

by trains and imbued with shifting colors
with the time of day. It becomes, for the artist,

a lexicon of light and all that light does
to this world. At times everything is more

certain, and we want to stand on the bridge
and compose a tune, humming, that the sun,

glittering in the river, inspires. Other times,
we want to be nothing but a faint music,

too distant or muted to be identified,
drifting along with the soothing mist and fog.

accurate / know /
see / Truth

physics of color


not accurate, right



color and form

composition
not precise

vision as more imposition than recognition of how the fog consumes the bridge?






harmonies of color — a new definition of accuracy



shifting colors with the time of day

lexicon of light and all that light does to this world

aug 24/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
58 degrees

Cooler! It makes such a difference for my running when it’s cooler outside. Easier, more relaxed. I’m looking forward to more fall and winter running! Running north I listened to the wind, the birds, a strange sound — a kid crying out? a dog barking? — coming out of a neighbor’s house. Running south I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist. Windy has stormy eyes/that flash at the sound of lies.

2 strange ensembles:

  1. a biker stopped on the edge of the path, his back turned to me. I almost didn’t see him because he blended into the trees. I think he was wearing a camo jacket and shorts. Why would you do that?
  2. a runner approaching me in a half-zipped shirt — or was it a bike kit? — and no socks or shoes. They were running barefoot. I’ve seen that before, but rarely. I thought that trend went away 7 or 8 years ago?

Early on, I chanted in triple berries: strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Then, other triples: intellect/mystery/passing through/persistent/enduring. Persistent and enduring came as I passed by the big crack that they’ve tried to repair several times but just keeps coming back. I started thinking about my persistence and then stillness and deepening as steadiness, which led to thoughts of my core. I imagined my belly button was leading me. I thought in a triple: who needs eyes? Then I imagined seeing with my stomach or my shoulders or my feet. I focused on my center as balanced and stabilized and still as it moved through the windy bluff above the gorge. Finally, I thought about my belly button as the place that once tethered me directly to my mom. How long did these thoughts last? I’m not sure.

10 Things

  1. roller skiers
  2. someone wearing all black sitting at a bench
  3. river surface, 1: rough, empty
  4. river surface, 2: looking north it was flat, south a glitter path
  5. a shorter runner passing me, holding a sweatshirt awkwardly
  6. the big crack in the path, still blocked off
  7. no more limestone slabs stacked and looking like a lounging person under the franklin bridge
  8. a damaged fence: the top slat missing
  9. returning south, the wind was at my back, enabling me to go faster
  10. no stones stacked on the ancient boulder — too windy?

I thought about the wind and how I noticed it only as it encountered objects — trees, fences, rocks, me. Then I thought about what happens when it doesn’t encounter anything, which led me to wind tunnels and aerodynamic testing and then a line from Rita Dove’s poem, “Voice-over”:

because now you’re all throat,
a tunnel skewered by air.

aug 21/RUNSWIM

3.6 miles
locks and dam #1
74 degrees
humidity: 88% / dew point: 65

I’m trying to write this entry but I’m distracted by the little kids next door in the front yard — such cute voices. One of them was singing a song — take this grass. . .broken world. . . broken glass.

Refrain: hot, humid. Even so, a better run today than the last one I did. When was that? Tuesday (checked my log). Ran all the way to the bottom of the locks and dam #1 hill without stopping. Noticed the river. Such reflections! Clouds, trees, the bridge. Took a picture:

bridge / clouds / surface / sky

The water was smooth beneath the bridge and rippled (corrugated, as Anne Carson wrote) farther out.

Everything is still this morning, calm, quiet. Partly inspired by my 21 aug 2024 entry, I thought about being still. Not as not moving, but as a calm, steadiness. Stillness as the space between beats, when both of my feet are off the ground. Or, stillness as my strong core that floats through that space — suspended as held up in the air, not as stopped.

10 Bridge Things

  1. at the top of the hill, in-between the top and bottom of the bridge, a family was sitting on a bench
  2. the gate near the columns of the bridge was unlatched and slight ajar
  3. beyond it, hollowed out bricks with a strange pattern
  4. empty benches all the way down
  5. the reflection of the bridge on the water’s surface, upside down
  6. a car nearing the bottom, voices — couldn’t hear what they were saying but imagined it was about whether or not the locks and dam was open
  7. the echo of my footsteps under the bridge
  8. the clicking of a bike’s gear across the service road
  9. thought about what RJP told me yesterday: someone went over this locks and dam in a canoe (or was it a kayak?) yesterday
  10. at the top of the hill again, a man read the sign to a little kid who started jumping and asked him to join — by the time I reached them, they were both jumping and laughing and making goofy noises

the deepening and quieting of the spirit
among the flux of happenings

still

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

21 aug 2023 log entry

I still the clock./ Endi Bogue Hartigan

/I still the clock.

/I still the clock by holding the pendulum coin still so that
the mechanism stops
and I can sleep without the consciousness of it.

to still the clock is a ritual of the demagnification of clocks.

/it is a kind of violence of fiction for the clock to not
function as a clock while others click and breathe and blink.

the eyes blink more before they stop functioning as eyes.

/the rapid eye movement of dream frightening being pure
pulse, pure frenetic zag force

/to watch a gold-painted platinum extravagant clock you’re an excess you’re
a fire you’re in competition with the tiredness of time.
/to hold in your satiny eyelids the still unstill pendulum of
the gaudy machination you are in unison

with the aspirant expirations of the day.

still / holding / pending / stop
sleep / not function /
click / breathe / blink / dream / pulse / excess / rapid fire extravagance / tiredness / still unstill / aspire to expire

underwater the end (expiration) is the breath (expire)
the end / forced above / evicted from below / no longer water but air

In this poem, to still is to stop, to end, the deep sleep

swim: 6 loops
110 minutes
cedar lake open swim
82 degrees

The final open swim of the season. It goes so fast! Another great night for a swim. Warm, sunny. I liked that the wind made the water less smooth — not too rough, a gentle rocking. The course was set up strangely and even though I complained about it afterwards, I think I liked the challenge of it. One buoy was in the middle of the lake, the other was at the far left edge of hidden beach. At first I worried that this set-up would cause chaos with swimmers crossing over the path and running into to each other, but it was fine.

a risky moment: Because the course was so far to the left, I swam in water I haven’t before. Almost halfway across, I swam straight into a nest of vines — the biggest cluster of vines I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t panic and was able to swim out of it, but I could imagine a weaker swimmer struggling to free themselves and getting wrapped more tightly. As I swam away from it, I thought about the high school football player that drowned off of the little beach at lake nokomis about 10 years ago. That’s probably how it happened.

Some things irritated me: the swimmer that I tried to pass but sped up to prevent it, another swimmer stopped at the buoy, blocking the way, the unmoving lifeguard on his kayak too close in on the course, the bright sun making it almost impossible to see anything on the way back, the scratchy vines. But more things relaxed and delighted me: the gentle water, feeling strong and able to swim for so long, swimming past other swimmers like they were standing still, the faint clouds in the sky, the solitary orange buoy sitting on the surface of the water glowing, glimpsing other swimmers off in the distance — only inklings: the flash of a yellow or orange buoy, a bright pink cap, white foamy water.

overheard:

a mom with 2 kids, one who was around 4 or 5, the other a baby in her arms, to a lifeguard: Can he swim out to the orange pyramid?
lifeguard: (thinking she meant the baby and not the kid) alone?
mom: oh no, not the baby!

Later I heard her recounting the story to a friend. They were laughing about it.

At the end of the second to last loop, I stopped at the beach, stood in the shallow water and the sand, checked my watch, and decided to do one more loop. For the final loop, I felt Mary Oliver’s one day in August, everything calm and quiet. I thought about what a great season it has been, how grateful I am to have this time swimming, and how satisfied I am to have taken advantage of it. No open swims until next June. I thought about how no next season is guaranteed; a lot could happen between now and then. Then I remember the story of my great-grandmother Johanna standing out in the field at the farm near the end of the fall to behold the familiar view, wondering if she’d still be around the next fall.

aug 19/RUNSWIM

2 miles
2 trails
72 degrees
humidity: 94% / dew point: 70

Ugh — so thick! Oh well, there’s one good thing about this consistently hot and humid weather in the morning: it’s making me want to be done with summer and ready for fall and winter running. My calf almost cramped after 4 minutes of running again. I had to walk it off. I wonder what’s causing this?

Heard a lot of rowers on the river. And not just the coxswain this time; I also heard rowers cheering for each other. Was it a class? The U of M team? I stopped on the winchell trail to try and see them but I couldn’t. Too many leaves in the way.

Evidence of rain everywhere. Lots of mud, gushing and spurting sewers. The pipe that dumps neighborhood water down the ravine and into the river at 44th was loud. I decided to stop and record a video of it. In the background, you can hear the coxswain.

water falls / coxswain calls

When I wasn’t on the winchell trail, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist, including Beck’s “Time Bomb.” The first time I heard that song was in the Funny or Die video with Will Ferrell and ? (can’t remember the other actor) going around Los Angeles and high-fiving everyone. Tried to find a clip of it but couldn’t.

When I looked up “time bomb beck video” a promo video for charity: water came up from 16 years ago. The organization was seeking donations to help in drilling for water in Central Africa. I don’t know enough about whether or not this is a good (effective, responding to the needs of the people by asking them what they need) organization, and I couldn’t tell from the video, partly because I couldn’t see it very well, but its reminder, at the beginning, that water is life and its emphasis on access to water offers an important link between time and water and a powerful contrast between my experience, living among so many lakes, and the experience of others without easy access to water.

I am reminded of a passage in Anne Carson’s “1=1.” After describing a scene of a train car in Europe over-stuffed with people fleeing war zones, she writes:

 a scene so much the antithesis of her own morning she cannot enter it. What sense it makes for these two mornings to exist side by side in the world where we live, should this be framed as a question, would not be answerable by philosophy or poetry or finance or by the shallows or the deeps of her own mind, she fears.

1=1/ Anne Carson

Impossible to answer, important to dwell within the discomfort of it.

hour entry: When John Adams wrote / Endi Bogue Hartigan

Another toll, another count of automatic weapon casualties, another occasion of America losing track of its math. I read today that when John Adams wrote “Thirteen Clocks were made to Strike together,” clocks were a tolling of public event, rung, an occasion or station in sun. I slept, and woke, I slept too long and woke. I tried to count the measured world by reading. Read “Thirteen Clocks,” read the late morning sun slant, read the current count outpaces past casualty counts, read “just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns.” Something automatic in measure, too automatic. I woke out of 9.25 hours of sleep I calculated automatically upon waking. I saw a crow out the window that was the occasion of a crow pecking frozen specks. I read the headlines leaking into headlines, saw the orchid sky calculating nothing. I have an inclination to stream and I don’t know what it means today. I have an inclination to lie in my husband’s shoulders crook and let the day snowdrift let the dimness become wide, so a shoulder is a kind of stream too. The argument is made that the streaming of time is a perception trick. The argument is made that we have moved past occasion to incremental measure that we are obsessed with measure and stricken. I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water. The early clocks were water clocks but it was shown that water was imprecise, was subject to pressure and pore—even streams of consciousness can encounter ducts and brim. I am conscious of my husband’s warmth because of more than his warmth. Do not mistake headlines for measure. We were held in God’s soft pocket. Do not mistake automatic grieving for water.

toll / automatic / occasion / track / count measures / measure counts / outpace / streaming time / from occasion to increment / obsess / to stream is to move through water not seconds or minutes or hours / water exceeds measure is imprecise is more than our grief

the imprecision of water clocks / “The history of timekeeping is the story of the search for ever more consistent actions or processes to regulate the rate of a clock.” / “Since the rate of flow of water is very difficult to control accurately, a clock based on that flow could never achieve excellent accuracy. People were naturally led to other approaches.”

source: A Walk Through Time — Early Clocks

precision / division / headline as occasion as increment as measured line between

a line to keep/to use: I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water.

Maybe this could be the title of a poem? Something about softness and imprecision and the inability to be contained in easily measurable ways. And how my vision loss has made for liquid looking (Alice Oswald), and a way to see the same or better than others in the water. Moving through water offers a different logic and makes the existing logic strange — distorted, weathered, unreliable, imprecise.

And now, instead of moving through water, I’m thinking of Bruce Lee’s short poem about being water:

Empty your mind. Be
formless shapeless
like water 
now you put 
water into a cup
it becomes the cup you put
water into a bottle
it becomes the bottle you put 
it into a tea pot
it becomes the tea pot
now water can flow or it can
craaaaasshh
be water my friend

Be water versus be like water. Metaphor versus simile. Metaphor removes the encounter with the other; you become the other (see Anne Carson and the anthropology of water).

people always believe that metaphor is more poetic. But I’ve always loved simile. One of the reasons is that simile keeps both worlds alive at the same time whereas metaphor changes one for another. So you get this beautiful kind of doubled feeling with the simile. 

The whole art of everything is about forgetting yourself

Searching for something else, I just came across this excellent answer to the question, Do you carry a notebook?

AO: No, I don’t much. If I travel like now I do take a notebook. I find by the time I get back home I haven’t got the sort of liveliness. Mostly I try to take things into my head. I really believe in the sort of inarticulate ways of thinking. So the fact that you can read the whole day, all day long, and then when you’re composed it can come out again. I like that process of it not yet being in language, changing your mind round. And I’m more and more wary of the kind of willed and conscious act of writing. More and more I leave my mind to do it by itself. So I will, you know, go out and be kind of shocked by all the colours and pictures and smells and then purposefully not think of them linguistically. I think that the underneath mind will then do the work and that’s the mind I’m interested in. So the skill for me is then learning how to raid that underneath mind and then, when you do pick up a pen, you’re listening just hard enough so that you don’t use your surface mind. You get down to the mind that has taken everything in.

The whole art of everything is about forgetting yourself

Instead of the underneath mind, the underwater mind, or the just beneath the surface mind? The water-logged mind?

swim: 3 loops (? cedar loops*)
75 minutes
cedar lake open swim
85 degrees

*a strange course set-up: the first buoy was halfway out in the lake, the second was close to shore and to the right of hidden beach, so I’m not sure of the distance. Judging my time and effort, I’m guessing that I did 3 nokomis loops.

note: I didn’t have time to write this entry right after my swim, so I’m writing it the next morning.

Another wonderful night with hardly any wind. Beautiful light. Warm water, except for when I stopped swimming to tread water and extend my feet as far below as I could. Then it was cold. Crowded tonight: the last free night of the season. The water was fast, flat, opaque. My goggles were fogged for a lap or two until I licked the inside, then they were clear. I wasn’t sure if that would work, but it did.

My favorite image: on the second half of the loop, heading back to the beginning, breathing to my right and seeing a line of swimmers in the distance heading towards hidden beach. What did I actually see? the rare flash of an arm, a pink cap, churned up water.

After 3.5 loops, I stopped to take a quick break and check my time. Oops, the workout never started. I remember pressing start on my watch, but sometimes this happens. Oh well. Even without the data, I swam for 30 minutes before turning on my workout.

After finishing the swim, drying off in the grass, I encountered another swimmer who had a strange request. A fish bit my mole, could you check to make sure it’s not bleeding? The other day, a fish bit me and when I got home I had a scab.

The fish bite? What? I can’t remember if I’ve written about it this summer, but I haven’t noticed any fish. Not one sighting of a silver flash, definitely no encounters. The other swimmer continued, I’m just so slow out there and they’re attracted to my moles. Yikes!

She joked that she was going to ask her roommate to make fish for dinner so she could get some revenge. With each bite she’d say, I’m not food, YOU’RE food!

aug 16/RUN

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
75 degrees
humidity: 89% / dew point: 71

Ran in-between raindrops. It started raining yesterday afternoon and kept going, off and on, all morning. Then, right before my run, the sun came out. Now that I’m done, it’s dark again. More rain coming.

Everything wet. Slick, too. Mud, puddles, crushed acorns: dangerous. I slipped once but barely. So thick out there! No rowers or roller skiers or regulars. Some bikers, walkers, other runners. Stopped at the sliding bench — the only view was dark green. Then stopped north of the trestle to check out how the crack was doing. The trail is still blocked off with tape and orange cones, the crack has grass where there used to be dirt and is opening up again.

a crack in the paved path is growing grass. It stretches towards an orange cone.
the persistent crack / 16 aug 2025

Listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist on shuffle and was inspired when “Once in a Lifetime” came on, especially this refrain about water

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.

Except, as I was running, I heard the line not as after the money’s gone but after the BODY’S gone, which really fit in with my thinking about time, water, and selfhood and started a train of thought about the I above ground returning to the not-I underground/underwater — or the not-water self above returning to the water self below.

The body’s gone also fit with a reoccurring theme in the playlist: the limits of time and death. “Out of Time” and “Closing Time.” Instead of reading death/body gone as running out of time or no longer having any time, I thought about it as something other than a possession — time flows through us and we flow through time. We don’t spend it or own it, we live in it and with it and through it.

It is time now, I said

In my “On This Day” practice this morning, I encountered a series of lines and ideas about time from 16 aug 2021. I stopped at this entry, not reading any more of the aug 16 entries, and decided that today would be about time. Later I realized how fitting it was to study time in the midst of my attempt at living within Mary Oliver’s poem, “Swimming, One Day in August.” It is time now, I said/ for the deepening and quieting of the spirit/ among the flux of happenings. It is time.

During a swim, I lose track of time, have no idea what time it is, as I swim continuously around the buoys. If time is measured at all, it is in loops. And often, I lose track of those too. Was that 3 loops or 4? I can’t recall.

Maybe time is measured in location? Near one shore or the other, one buoy or the next? Here then there then here again

If there’s something gimmicky about trying to swim the equivalent of one day in August, it’s also a great goal for me: not impossible, but requiring some commitment and swimming more than I would otherwise swim. And it’s concrete and straightforward: be in the water, moving, for a total of 24 hours. And it’s satisfying, watching the minutes increase.

And it does something strange to time and it’s passing. Technically I understand a day to be 24 hours, but I don’t usually think about (or count) some of those hours — like the ones in which I’m sleeping, or the ones in which I’m lost in writing or in reading a book. I don’t think I can quite articulate it right now, but accumulating these minutes is a different type of living in time.

It’s a delightful waste of time. No great accomplishment, just a fun experiment. Of course, it’s only a waste in terms of productive time. I am not achieving anything big here that you might put on a resume. It’s not making money, and it’s not creating a product. It is, I think, making me faster and stronger, but not in the most efficient ways.

An idea: what about a chapbook titled, Swimming One Day in August, that plays around with different understandings of a day and its relation to time? I could write about this goal, where 1 day = 24 hours. But I could also write about a day = a random day of swimming in august or a collage of days swimming in august from just 2025, or from all of the days I’ve written about since 2017?

For Mary Oliver, a day is the day before in which the narrator went in the afternoon/to the sea/which held me until I grew easy. It is also today, now — It is time now, I said. And it is tomorrow (and the tomorrow after that?) — About tomorrow, who knows anything./ Except it will be time again/for the deepening and quieting of the spirit. Here day is a daily habit. (Another approach to this challenge could be: swimming every day in august. This might be difficult, since I don’t have reliable access to water to swim in.)

I like how Oliver sets up time in this poem. She’s talking about yesterday, today, and tomorrow but without beginning or end. When did this habit start? Was it yesterday, when she was pestered, or was it some other yesterday before that? And when will it end? It is also not linear, involving progress. With its repeated habit, it’s circular, a loop, going to the same place day after day: the sea to be held. Is it the same time every afternoon, or just, vaguely, “afternoon.” And, what counts as afternoon, how late does it go? To me, afternoon is before 5, but to Scott it’s before 6.

aug 14/RUN

3.5 miles
locks and dam #1
73 degrees

Another hard run. Hot! Lots of sweating and stopping to take walk breaks. Ran to the bottom of locks and dam #1 for a great view of the river. I can’t remember its color — blue, I think — but I remember the small waves on it and the faint wake from a long gone boat. Oh, and the single white buoy and the roar of rushing water one way and the ford bridge the other.

At the bottom of the locks and dam, I noticed some bright orange leaves:

fall is coming / 14 aug 2025

Not the greatest picture, but I’ll post it anyway. So orange! Too soon!

Saw someone emerge from the trail that dips below the road to cross the path and wondered if they had just come up from the new trail that descends deeper into the gorge. Encountered 2, maybe 3, roller skiers, walkers, runners, a few bikers. Below the road I stopped to walk and listen to the acorns falling from the tree and thumping on the ground. Then started running again over acorn shells.

I thought about my Swimming, One Day in August project and had an idea: what if I tried swimming in bde maka ska and lake harriet? Or, some other lakes nearby? Or, one of the clearest lakes in the state, Square Lake, in Stillwater?

a few hours later: Hooray! Just received an email that all future open swims will be at Cedar! So as long as Scott can drive me over there, I don’t have to miss a single one.

a ramble on lake water testing

A revelation just last week. Minneapolis Parks tests the lake water weekly, and testing the water is better than not testing the water. But the slow and rigid system of testing only on Mondays and getting results on Tuesdays (e-coli) and Wednesdays (algae blooms) combined with the fickle changes in quality based on weather and other environmental factors, means the testing is not very accurate for what the conditions are at any given time. On an abstract level, it seems obvious to me that you can’t rely on tests to guarantee safe water, but on an experiential level — that is, being in the water swimming for over an hour at a time roughly 6 times a week for 11 summers — I needed an unquestioned faith in those tests and the park’s ability to let me know when it was/wasn’t safe to swim in order to get in the water.

And, mostly it is safe in the water. And it is clean. I get very irritated when someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about says to me, eww, how can you swim in that dirty water!? Minneapolis Park workers and volunteers do an amazing job of keeping the water quality high. And this is partly due to their regular testing. But, these tests can’t guarantee anything.

What am I trying to do here? I’m not blaming the parks department; these tests are expensive and it would be difficult to test regularly enough to keep up with the quick shifts in wind and rain and the groundwater problems (like unstable sewer systems) that have existed from the beginning of the lake’s modern shape in the 1920s when workers excavated peat and used it to build up the surrounding neighborhood. Not to mention climate change and erratic weather and an excess of nutrients getting into the water from lawn fertilizers. And people feeding ducks who poop in the water which increases the amount of e-coli. No, I think Minneapolis Parks, especially Minneapolis Aquatics, are amazing.

All of this is complicated and messy with no easy answers. And it’s scary. I’ve been wondering for a few years when it’s going to happen — because it seems inevitable that it will happen — that lakes will no longer be safe to swim in, unfiltered outside air will no longer be safe to breathe. And this is how it happens, I think. Not all of sudden, but slowly. More days with bad test results and beach closures. Or inaccurate test results and water that is pea-soup green and slimy and that might get you sick.

I suppose this last paragraph sounds depressing, and it is, and also it isn’t. I love swimming in lake nokomis, and I would do a tremendous amount to keep swimming in it. Maybe it’s time to figure out what I can do to help keep it safe.

aug 12/RUNSWIM

run: 2.2 miles
2 trails
73 degrees

Hot! As usual, I should have gone out before 9:30, but I slept in. When I was in the shade, it wasn’t too bad. Wore my bright yellow shoes. They were fun for the first 3 minutes — very bouncy — but I started to feel both of my calves cramping up. I stopped to avoid anything worse and walked for a few minutes before starting up again. Is it the shoes? Possibly. My calves have been fine and then I started wearing these shoes again and now my calves are cramping occasionally. Last week, I woke up early in the morning to a charley horse just starting to happen. Was able to stop it before it turned into a knot. Whew.

Even though it was hot, I’m glad I got out by the gorge. Beautiful. Fall is coming. Leaves drifting down in the soft wind. Half-crushed acorns all over the sidewalk. A deep green everywhere. The winchell trail was cooler in the shade. Tricking water near the ravines (3 — 44th, 42nd, and 36th). Decided for the first time in a long time to take the dirt path past the 38th street steps and visit the oak savanna. It was dark and overgrown. Branches reaching across the trail, the dirt path that leads to the ravine narrowing to almost nothing.

10 Things

  1. at least 2 or 3 benches occupied, including the one near folwell
  2. a runner accompanied by a biker discussing how much mileage someone else was doing — marathon training?
  3. the river: sparkling, blue, empty
  4. a bird — cheeseburger cheeseburger
  5. another bird: me me me
  6. the fallen tree on winchell: still there, still blocking 2/3 of the path, still holding browned leaves
  7. squeak squeak a swing across the road at minnehaha academy
  8. movement — a bird? a squirrel? the wind moving a single leaf
  9. loud noises in the bushes — a bird? a squirrel?
  10. the worn wooden steps leading to the ravine — still cracked on a few boards — noticed that the steps are rectangular boards placed on the slope with a handrail, and some sort of wedge at the top

swim: 6 loops
90 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees

Wonderful! The water was a little rough, but nothing too bad. No waves crashing into me. The course the lifeguards set up with how they positioned the buoys was off today. It didn’t fit with any of my strategies for sighting. The lifeguards were too close to the buoys heading out to the little beach, and the fourth buoy was much farther south than it usually is. The final buoy was too close to the orange buoy and too far from the beach. No triangle today. Not sure what shape it was. I’m almost positive I swam 6 loops, but the distance was so much shorter that it seemed more like 5. I’ll still count it as 6.

Lots of vines. Setting sun. Bubbles. Menacing swans and sailboats. Strange flashes underwater. Seeing orange. A roaring plane. Thin shafts of light. Not as many sparkle friends.

aug 9/RUN

3.25 miles
trestle turn around
75 degrees
thunder – drizzle – rain

Dark out there this morning. My weather app and the radar said 0% chance of rain. Ha! I didn’t hear any thunder until I had already turned around and was heading back. I didn’t feel the rain until I was running a treeless stretch of the trail. Greeted Mr. Morning! Heard water rushing in the ravine. Smelled onions as a group of male runners — a big pack of cross country runners? — ran by. Forgot to look down at the river but did remember to glance at the sliding bench. Noticed that the crack in the path north of the trestle is still blocked off and still cracked — are they waiting until fall to fix it? Will they fix it? Saw dogs and runners and walkers and 4 bikes going by much faster than the 10 mph speed limit and 2 guys talking at the edge of the path that I think were rowers who just finished a session on the river.

What did I think about? I can’t remember. I wasn’t working through any ideas for a poem or the chapbook I’m putting together. I wasn’t thinking about anything I read this morning or worried about the news. Can I remember even one thought I had? Oh, here’s one: when it thundered, a flash of concern — do I need to find shelter? can I make it home before the storm begins? (I did.)

This morning before my run, I found out that 4 of my poems, including my purple hour poem, that were accepted at the beginning of the summer went live today on Trampoline Poetry! Very exciting! I also learned a few days ago that another one of my mood rings — Incurable — will be published later this month. Nice.

aug 7/SWIM

5 loops
90 minutes
lake nokomis open swim
86 degrees

Yes! A wonderful swim, and another hour and a half to add to my goal of reaching 34 hours by the end of the month. The water was choppy, which I liked, except for when it made it hard to get a stroke in and I felt like I was sinking. The water was thick and filled with my sparkle friends. Several times it felt like the buoy kept getting farther and farther away, until I broke the spell and suddenly had reached it. I saw some menacing sailboats and 1 or 2 paddle boarders. The light during the last loop was very cool — why? I guess because it was giving very chill twilight vibes. Noticed a few planes flying low and lots of seagulls and ducks. A few flashes down below — fish?

I felt strong and can tell that I’m getting stronger as I do more longer swims. A thought — could I possibly manage 7 loops in 2 hours? That would be amazing!

A few lines from two poems discovered this morning:

There is the clarity of a shore
And shadow,   mostly,   brilliance

summer

                the billows of August
(from “From the Sustaining Air“/ Larry Eigner

The clarity of a shore and shadow. Not sure about the shore, but I like the idea of shadows bringing clarity. They do for me.

2

I am pointless. This I come to know
by pressing ear to night’s machinery.
Outside, the words rub each other
until they are dull: calibrate, resurface,
surface, invest, investigate, snowy, open,
environ, woman, wooden, system.
I look where little nodes of language cling,
lichen-like, to what will have them.
(from “Rose-crowned Night Girl”/ Emily Skillings

I read this line about being pointless and it helped me to think about pointless meaning more than useful or not worthwhile. To be pointless is to not have points, to be smooth instead of rough, nothing sharp about you. My vision is point-less but not pointless. Everything softens with my fuzzy gaze.

added after the swim: During loop 4 or 5, I started thinking about pointless again as a way to indicate a dot — it’s a star without points. Earlier today I was working on a poem that describes a dot as a distant star. After thinking about pointless I thought about how the star/point, which was the far-off buoy, wasn’t always there — it flickered.

added 8 aug 2025: Just remembered a few more things. After the swim, I met Scott at Painted Turtle for a beer. We watched the ducks in the water, bobbing and floating and almost getting into fights with seagulls. We also watched the final swimmer being escorted into shore by 3 lifeguards. I told Scott that being the last swimmer, that is, staying until the very end of open swim, is a goal every year. I think I’ve done it once. Then we watched the green buoys heading in for the night, looking so much smaller than they do in the water when you’re right next to them.

aug 6/RUNSWIM

2.2 miles
2 trails
68 degrees
dew point: 64

Humid. It rained last night — everything is wet — but there must been wind, too, because small branches and leaves were scattered over parts of the path. No big trees.

10 Sounds

  1. Bird
  2. the coxswains speaking through their bullhorns
  3. a faint radio with someone singing, some vibrato
  4. the steady trickle out of the sewer pipe near 42nd
  5. good morning, excuse me / morning! no, excuse me (passing a walker)
  6. morning! a greeting from Mr. Morning!
  7. good morning / good morning (greeted by an older runner)
  8. the whirr of a motor on an e-bike zooming by
  9. another runner’s music coming from her phone as she ran by — some poppy upbeat song that I can’t remember
  10. who run the world? girls! Beyoncé from my headphones and my mood: Energy playlist

Listened to the poem I wrote yesterday before I headed out for my run. This is my tentative ending:

tethers us to each
other — swimmer and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight
and to rarely see

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
60 minutes
cedar lake open swim
81 degrees

Choppy today. Sometimes hard to stay high on the water. Lots of vines. Saw some planes and birds above, no fish below. The surface looked silvery. Sometimes the sun was out, sometimes it was behind a cloud. Once a big, hulking cloud, looking like something other than a cloud from my perspective half-submerged in the water — a monster, like godzilla?

Forgot to recite Mary Oliver or think about the deepening and quieting of the spirit, but I felt it. Relaxed, happy, strong. Swimming for an hour wasn’t difficult.

Found this description of how we are both part of and separate from water saved on my reading list:

Nature—the non-built environment, creatures—is a realm of supreme “otherness” with which we are already always in strange relation. We plead for communion with this nature; it cannot answer us; so we project that onto it, that feeling of harmony and oneness at a shore or a vista. We are both a part of that natural sphere and stand distinctly apart within it, in our creaturely and industrial/technological dominance over it. You are both part of that sphere, and stand painfully apart, with your consciousness, language, cumbersome car and computer.

Moheb Soliman on “On the water”

Now I’m thinking about Anne Carson and her definition of anthropology (as in, “Anthropology of Water”). I wrote about it on 13 july:

encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I.

added on 8 aug 2025: I forgot to mention a delightful thing that happened on the way over to cedar lake: a vee of geese — 20? — flying low over Bde Maka Ska then just above us — and, lucky me, I had the moon roof open to watch! — then heading towards Lake Harriet.

aug 4/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
66 degrees
dew point: 61
AQI: 81 (moderate)

Better air! Well, less smoky air. Also, humid air. Heavy air. I checked the weather for rain. Nope. Leaving the house, I was greeted (or threatened or warned) by my next door neighbor, the bluejay. Screech! Screech! I admired the beautiful flowers — dark and light purple, orange, yellow — of the neighbor who lives with Matt the Cat. On the paved path, I glanced down at the oak savanna — dark green — and over at the leaning, almost twisted, fence. Heard the coxswain giving rowers their workout, something about 75ers, and wishing she had a micro-stop on her watch (at least, I think that’s what she said). Also heard rustling in the leaves, sounding bigger than a squirrel. A dog? A turkey? Heading down the hill at the Cleveland overlook, the river looked green and still through the trees. Someone was sitting on the bench in the grass near the stone wall. It was dark enough that the cars and bikes had their headlights on.

Because it’s cooler than the air is better, I have the windows open. Several squirrels are rooting around in the bushes. The sound is irritating me as I write this entry.

Listened to the cars and the rowers and the birds running south and on the Winchell Trail, then a few songs by Lawrence for the last stretch from the 38th street steps to home.

Swimming One Day in August

Because the big beach at Lake Nokomis has been closed due to high levels of e-coli, I haven’t had a chance to swim yet in August. Finally today, at Cedar Lake, I will start working towards my goal of swimming a total of 24 hours (= 1 day) in August. As part of that project, I’m devoting time out of the water to swimming in Minneapolis lakes, too by reading, researching, reflecting, and writing on water. Today, I’m reviewing the history of Cedar Lake, thanks to a masters thesis I found a few years ago.

Already today, I’ve been reading about the dredging of the lakes. 2.5 million cubic yards of peat and sand and wetland were dredged out of nokomis; it took 4 non-stop years. The sand went to the beach, the peat and wetland to making the park bigger and building a neighborhood. Why dredge? Not just because it would make a lake I could swim in a century and a half later. Original Park Board Superintendent Theodore Wirth was thinking about economic growth and the future of a city:

Wirth is outspoken in his belief in the utility of taming nature to increase land value and develop the city’s natural resources. By dredging and creating more shoreline, the park board could improve the parkland, thereby making the property surrounding the parkland a more desirable place to live. The increased value of the private property could provide a greater tax base for the city and for the Park Board, which could use the revenue to continue to acquire and improve park space.

Cedar Lake History/ Neil Trembley

swim: 4 loops
75 minutes
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees

Wonderful night for a swim! Calm water, not too warm or too cold. Not too crowded. And even with fogged up goggles (I haven’t treated them in a few weeks), I didn’t get too far off course.

The water felt a little sluggish — not buoyant. There were tons of sharp and scratchy vines, some individual strands, others in clumps. The water was opaque — no fish sightings tonight.

The sky was white; no clouds to notice. I think I remember seeing one bird. Oh — every so often the sky would break open and there was sun. It didn’t last that long.

I wanted to think about Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting” but there was none of that tonight. I was swimming hard — not all out, but not stopping either.

aug 3/RUN

2.25 miles
2 trails
70 degrees
AQI: 151

Another short run today. The air quality is still bad, but it didn’t bother me — or, I’m so used to it bothering me that I didn’t notice. Wore my bright yellow shoes again and felt bouncy. Listened to my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist running south, the gorge running north: trickling water, laughing kids, someone talking about walking on a boardwalk, a beeping/ringing noise on repeat somewhere below. Noticed a haze above the river, everything washed out, pale. The tree that fell a few weeks ago is still there, unmoved. The benches were empty, the trails were thick with bikes. No more mud. Acorn shells on the sidewalk.

Walking back after the run, I thought about my inkling poems and how I like to/have to try and guess what something is based on very little data. Some lines came to me —

It’s a game, really —
Name that Tune but for
forms. I can name that
form in 2 curves . . .

Searching for “inkling” on poets.org, I found these great lines:

For what is prophecy but the first inkling
of what we ourselves must call into being?
The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.

It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard—
and recognized, of course. The gift is listening
and hearing what is only meant for you.
(from Prophecy/ Dana Gioia)

And now I’m thinking about inklings as creatures, and not just hunches or ideas or guesses or a call/prophecy to listen to. An inkling is the tiny creature that speaks to us — not a little man, but a spirit or an insect or Dante’s spiriti visivi.

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 the entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. this is important. I can, then, think forward again to the idea—that is, the significance of the event—rather than back upon it. It is the instant I try to catch in the notebooks, not the comment, not the thought. And, of course, this is so often what 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 31/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
59 degrees
AQI*: 157

*Air Quality Index

Cooler! Smoky, again. Ran on the dirt trail on the other side of the river road heading south. Noticed how the trail didn’t seem quite as wide as it did a few years ago during the pandemic when more people were using it. Wondered how many feet have to tread over the same spot to make a trail, and how long it takes for a forgotten trail to revert to grass. Crossed over to the paved path by Becketwood and stayed on it to the falls, then past the falls, then over the Veterans bridge then down the steep hill to the very bottom of the ford bridge then north thenhome.

Listened to cars and birds and voices as I ran south. Put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist returning north. Tried to forget that I was hot and wanted to stop as I listened to Peter Gabriel and Michael McDonald singing about forgetting.

10 Things

  1. orange light dotting the path
  2. turkeys! 4 female turkeys (hens) bobbing their necks and moving slowly, 1 male (a tom) following behind — the hens ignored me as I stopped to look, but the tom turned and stare
  3. the rush of minnehaha creek below me as I ran over the veterans bridge
  4. standing on the bridge above the falls, watching it tumble down to the creek below
  5. a man and a little kid sitting at the bench near the boulder
  6. the path blocked off near Godfrey by 2 trucks and some cones — not sure what they were working on
  7. the path blocked off near folwell by cones: park workers repainting the biking and walk signs
  8. a new person painted on the paved path — glowing white, I checked to see if anyone had drawn in a face yet (nope)
  9. my shadow — I could see my pony tail bobbing as I moved
  10. fake bells x 2: the ding-ding-ding of the light rail pulling out of the station and the chiming of the st. thomas bells at 7:45

excerpt from 38. Shedding the Old/ Samantha Thornhill

Such as the lobster 
cracking loose 
from its exoskeleton 
after moons of moulting,  
or the viper that squeezes 
out of the skin 
of its remembrance, 
this oracle invites you
to rewild yourself,
to unbox, detox, and de-
clutter your blood. 

Rewild yourself!

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 29/RUNRUN

2.5 miles
2 trails
73 degrees
dew point: 70

Another hot and hazy morning. I remembered to notice the river and it looked . . . thirsty? Trying to think of the best word that conveys the opposite of refreshing and cool. Uninviting? Thick? Stuck? Inert? By the Cleveland Overlook it was green and dull and thick. Below the Winchell Trail near the south entrance it was a pale blue with a soft haze hovering above it. Farther north on the trail it was bright blue with a few spots of sparkle through the trees.

Because of the intense thunder storm last night, there was water everywhere — puddles, gushing sewers, squishy mud. The puddles were small but filled with the reflections of trees and flat, still. The mud was slick and slippery. Two distinctive sewer sounds/movements: 1. below 44th street, the water was pulsing, coming in waves — a moment of steady flow, then nothing, then water flowing again. I stopped to lean over the railing and watch it. 2. below 42nd street, the water was rushing out of the pipe, making a small waterfall on the rocks below — a continuous dropping of water.

With all the wind and rain last night, I expected there to be more trees or branches down than there were. Was there any new debris? I don’t think so.

The weather is strange this week: very hot and humid and sunny during the day — we’ve had several heat advisories, then violent storms move in quickly at night. Last night, it started with the wind. I opened the front door and watched the trees bending, twisting, waving. Very unsettling to watch. Then the sky unzipped and rain came down in sheets. Will it happen again tonight? I hope not.

For future Sara: Scott and I discovered a new sport to watch during the Aquatic World Championships — men’s 27 meter (that’s 9 stories!) and women’s 20 meter diving. Why can’t the men and women dive from the same height? Anyway, I’d never heard of this before. An extremely HIGH platform is created outside with a small circular pool at the bottom — don’t worry, the water is deep. Divers jump — they enter feet first — from high up, doing flips and twists and somersaults as they plummet. It’s so dangerous that they have 4 first-responders in the pool waiting to rescue them if they need it. And the first thing they do after surfacing is alert the responders with a thumbs up. What? Wow. Like other diving competitions, a lot of the score is determined by how much splash they make entering the water. I can’t see the splash, because of my bad vision, but I still enjoy watching it. After the dive, they show several slow-motion replays, including one from below. You watch as the diver nears the water; Scott says it reminds him of seeing someone falling to their death.

Discovered this beautiful poem yesterday:

Someone Is the Water/ Austin Araujo

I am alone but for this vein
splitting the earth open
and we are silent, the stream and I

far away from our mouths. The stream
folds over itself, my hand
speculating under the surface.

The stippled faces of orioles
sail by slowly, their dark wings working
hard as tired men pulling oars

in a landscape painting, their lantern
chests dotting a modest pattern
across the sky, over this brook

a mile from your house—from you
who are alone but for your sons
and your sons’ refusal to recognize

you cloaked under a sadness,
the color of whose cloth is muted
as these late-afternoon birds.

The stream sluices crawdads
and stones, carefully takes its bend
like a tongue spackled with canker sores.
I still expect it to speak. I’ve come
to listen to this slow
unfurling, hoping I’ll fall

asleep as it turns like a lullaby
a child promises he will strain
to hear, to memorize. I make sense

of smudged pastoral visions.
Gone, the birds long gone.
Palms, I cup water with bent palms.

run: 3 miles
trestle turn around
86 degrees

I was supposed to go to open swim, but the beach has been closed for a week because of e-coli. Not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s because of the storm. What a bummer! I’m supposed to start my “swimming one day in august” project on 1 august. It will be more difficult to do it now that I’m missing august 1 and 3. Thankfully Cedar Lake is open so at least I can swim there tomorrow.

Since I couldn’t swim, I decided to do another run. It was hot, but the humidity was lower so it seemed less terrible than this morning’s run.

10 Things

  1. I think I heard the rowers; I know I saw a few of them heading down the hill to the dock
  2. traffic was backed up — so many cars trying to turn onto lake street
  3. a mini peloton — a dozen bikers — whirred by me on the river road
  4. someone in a strange t-shirt with lots of words or logos or symbols that I couldn’t make sense of was sitting on the ledge under the trestle listening to heavy metal on their phone
  5. a walker, dressed in brown shorts and a brown shirt, passing me twice, their head titled to the side
  6. the sliding bench was a cool, dark green
  7. the spray paint on the ancient boulder looked extra orange today — did someone touch it up recently?
  8. a lime scooter parked in the middle of the walking path under the bridge
  9. the big crack north of the trestle looks about the same as it did last week — not bigger — but the path is blocked off with caution tape, orange cones, and a warning spray-painted on the asphalt
  10. as I neared them, someone was emerging from the old stone steps

july 28/RUNSWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
70 degrees
dew point: 65

Cooler than last week, but still too warm for me. Felt drained and my feet were sore from my shoes — the Saucony Rides strike again. Even so, happy to be out beside the gorge with my friends — the boulders, benches, trees, shadows, walkers, runners, river. But not the bikers — too many of them, and too many close calls.

Last night, we had some intense wind and thunderstorms. Eveidence of it is everywhere: leaves, twigs, branches, whole trees scattered near the trail, gushing sewer pipes, muddy paths. The water from the 44th street pipe gushed out in spurts, almost like a bucket filling up then dumping over. The water from the 42nd street sewer pipe rushed with a steady flow of water, like a waterfall.

I ran closer to the river and I remember looking at it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. Was it smooth? scaled? blue? gray? brown? I don’t recall. I do remember not hearing any rowers.

I didn’t have any deep thoughts about water or swimming or life or, if I did, they didn’t stick around. Instead, I thought about how my feet were sore and my legs felt sluggish, how I wanted to stop, and how I had some unfinished business and needed to get to a bathroom soon.

swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
88 degrees

The water was warm but calm and more greenish than usual. Lots of scratchy vines and swimmers swimming in the middle. Also, a giant rubber ducky inner tube floating beside the course. The safety buoy of the day was a clunky, lumpy orange one. Lots of other yellow and pink buoys too. The sky had a few clouds but was mostly blue. Made sure to notice the bubbles around my hands. At the end of the swim, near shore, I went a little deeper in the water — it was cool, which felt nice.

As Scott and I left the beach I noticed an older woman waving at someone, than a little kid yelling excitedly, Grandma!

No bathroom stop in the one port-a-potty today. Someone puked on the floor right next to the toilet. Yuck!

24 july/RUNBIKESWIM

run: 4 miles
the monument and back
73 degrees
dew point: 69

Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.

Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.

I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.

Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.

Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:

clouds reflected on river
river clouds

note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.

visual fields, landscapes, meadows

1

At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.

2

Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”

It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”

the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance

3

as
though there
swung at the end
of a tunnel,
a passage dotted
with endless
points of
arrival, as
though our gaze
started just outside
our faces and
corkscrewed its way
toward the horizon,
processual,
as if looking
took time to happen
and weren’t
instantaneous,
offered whole in
one gesture
before we
ask, before our
will, as if the far
Sonoma mountains
weren’t equally ready
to be beheld as
the dead
fly on the sill)
(Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)

What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood.
(Naomi Cohn)

4

A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.

5

“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”

“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.

As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees / 79 degrees

Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.

I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark

There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!

images collected in consciousness
like a tree alone on the horizon
(Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)

july 23/RUN

2.55 miles
2 trails
77 degrees
dew point: 73

So warm already at 8 am! Decided to do a quick run anyway. Felt better than I thought especially on no coffee or food, but it was still hard. Listened to the new Lorde (recommended by RJP) while I ran south to the entrance of the Winchell Trail. Listened to turkeys and trucks and coxswains while I ran north.

10 Things

  1. a coxswain below giving instructions through a bullhorn — take a drink before class begins . . . today we’ll start with some stroke work: 22/22/22/24
  2. the distant gobble of turkeys
  3. the rumble of a truck
  4. a roller skier
  5. a biker in a bright yellow shirt working on their aero position, back bent low and straight over the bike
  6. the tree that fell and blocked 3/4 of the trail is still there, its leaves now brittle and brown
  7. empty benches
  8. voices above me, approaching steadily — bikers or runners?
  9. another coxswain — difficult to hear over my music
  10. cracked pavement below — some small and shallow, others deeper and slanted, all waiting to twist ankles

a few hours later: a steady rain

Returning to this log entry to wander with a question I posted yesterday:

What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? 

Darby Nelson is referring to lakes and how little can be seen below the surface. Landscape is a strange word choice here. Landscape refers to a view/tract of land that’s inland. What’s the word for a water view? Waterscape? Beyond that, the OED definition of landscape is about a view, a portrait, a picture. What is the experience/perception of a space — land or water — called that doesn’t prioritize or exclusively rely on vision?

I’m also thinking about how a landscape is scenery, an object to gaze at, the background. What if we made the lake the subject? How would we understand and name our relationship to it? Ecosystems popped into my head — maybe not the right word, but another way to think about what the water we’re observing, especially when we’re in it, is. And, what if we (you, me) are not individuals separate from the lake as observers but ecosystems too?

It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as a biological individual. All organisms are intricately nested collectives: networks of relationships between cells and microbes that make it impossible to say where one “individual” starts and stops. Humans are no exception: We carry around more microbial cells than we do our own.

Entangled Flourishing

In the same entry I posted the above quotation (8 april 2022), I also posted and discussed Arthur Sze’s poem “Entanglements.” I especially like these lines:

your field
of vision tears, and an underlying landscape
reveals a radiating moment in time.

“(during my run) I reflected on the underlying landscape as layers that can’t be seen with your eyes, only smelled or felt or imagined. And I delighted in the idea of so much happening, so much present beneath me that I couldn’t see, that I didn’t need to see, for it to exist or to affect me or to be connected to me.”

Field of vision? Suddenly I thought about my interest in writing a poem/s about taking the visual field test (see 1 july 2025). And I’m thinking about landscapes and fields and meadows (see 2 may 2025). A line popped into my head: a meadow of moments — no, a moment meadows.

What does the visual field test have to do with the lake or my experiences swimming in it? A lot, I think. Somehow I want to bring together the visual field test with my swimming and sighting buoys. How? Not sure yet.

july 19/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
72 degrees
humidity: 85%

Because I waited until after today’s tour stage — the last one in the Pyrenees — it was humid and hot out by the gorge! Other than the heat, the run was not too bad. I chanted in triples for about a mile and tried to keep my chest up, shoulders relaxed, arms in a controlled swing. I don’t remember hearing the rowers or seeing the river.

10 Things

  1. the entrance to a steep dirt path above the rowing club on the other side of the path that goes under the lake street bridge
  2. a runner behind me, coming fast, slapping his feet on the paved path
  3. a biker sternly telling the runner, you’re on the bike path!
  4. the runner not reacting because he was wearing headphones
  5. the fence panel that they were redoing yesterday was in place and its new, unpainted wood stood out against the other brown panels
  6. a wooden slat of the fence jutting out by the ravine because of a leaning tree — watch out!
  7. 2 older women sitting on a bench — one to the other: not bad, 2 miles in 2 hours
  8. a flash of orange in the peripheral — a hidden tree trunk marked for removal
  9. slightly more of a view at the sliding bench — I think park workers trimmed the trees
  10. the crack north of the trestle looks like it might have grown some more

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 15/RUN

1.75 miles
neighborhood
80 degrees
dew point: 70

Wanted to do a longer run today, but it was too hot! At first I wasn’t going to run at all, but I decided to do a short one to, as I sang to Scott, kick start my heart. Of course I sang the melody of this song completely wrong and of course we had to listen to the original. Ugh! And of course I had to remind Scott that one of the many soccer teams I was on as a kid was named Motley Crüe. Another team: Jabberwockies.

When I was in the shade it wasn’t too bad, but in the direct sun — HOT! I had wanted to run to the overlook on the bridge but I noticed, at the last minute — a few feet from the sign — that the sidewalk was closed. So, I turned down and ran south on the river road trail. Ah, shade!

10 Things

  1. my bright yellow running shoes
  2. the neighbor who is always sitting on his front steps smoking was there but wasn’t smoking
  3. the excited chirping of little kids on the playground at the daycare
  4. from a biker: that was so sweet — the tone of sweet made me think kind, thoughtful, not awesome
  5. a long line of cars on lake street
  6. my shadow, straight and strong
  7. 2 runners crossing the street, standing in the bike path, a biker approaching, heads up! / oh, sorry!
  8. the rush of wind through the trees
  9. a steady stream of cars on the river road making it difficult to cross
  10. the dark brown dirt, the gentle curve of the green grass, the sharp edge between of a front yard on 46th

This Be the Place: a Pond

Today is the first rest day of the tour so no cycling to watch all morning. Instead I returned to my morning reading practice of visiting poetry sites and rereading past log entries. A lot of great stuff, including: This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart

The “several-acre” space is a pond, which struck me as strange. I think of ponds as small bodies of water and several-acres sound big. But is it (big, that is)? Maybe several acres is small. What distinguishes a pond from a lake? I recall looking up brooks and streams and creeks and rivers when I was reading Emily Dickinson’s poem, Have you got a Brook in your little heart (see 13 march 2021), but not ponds. So I looked it up. Fascinating!

pond or lake: the distinction is arbitrary

The term “lake” or “pond” as part of a waterbody name is arbitrary and not based on any specific naming convention. In general, lakes tend to be larger and/or deeper than ponds, but numerous examples exist of “ponds” that are larger and deeper than “lakes.” . . .Names for lakes and ponds generally originated from the early settlers living near them, and the use of the terms “lake” and “pond” was completely arbitrary. Many have changed names through the years, often changing from a pond to a lake with no change in size or depth. Often these changes in name were to make the area sound more attractive to perspective home buyers.

Lake or Pond: What’s the Difference?

from lake to pond to wetland

Learned that the study of inland waters is limnology. And the terms, lotic and lentic, too:

surface waters are divided into lotic (waters that flow in a continuous and definite direction) and lentic (waters that do not flow in a continuous and definite direction) environments. Waters within the lentic category gradually fill in over geologic time and the evolution is from lake to pond to wetland. This evolution is slow and gradual, and there is no precise definition of the transition from one to the next.

Lake or Pond: What’s the Difference?

From lake to pond to wetland reminds of my discussion of ecological succession and Robin Wall Kimmerer at the begining of May. A meadow becomes a thicket, a thicket becomes a forest.

Was Lake Nokomis ever a (bigger) lake that became a pond, then a wetland, then a lake again? Yes!

The landscape around Lake Nokomis was formed by natural forces, to be a place that absorbed and stored water. Over 11,000 years ago, glaciers carved through the land, and then retreated and melted. As the ice blocks that were left behind melted, they formed an expansive system of interconnected wetlands and lakes. Under these saturated conditions organic material from dead plants was unable to completely decompose, forming extensive peat deposits — a wetland soil. Because peat readily absorbs moisture and can hold up to 10 times its weight in water, it can act as a barrier and prevent rainfall from draining into deeper layers of the soil. This can cause water to accumulate, or perch, above the peat. Once abundant wetlands in South Minneapolis were filled or development.

In 1853, the U.S. Surveyor General’s Office conducted the first government land survey of the landscape around Lake Nokomis, then called Lake Amelia. The area contained over 1,500 acres olakes and wetlands. At that time, the natural lakes were larger and shallower than today. Since then, nearly 60% of the area’s wetlands have been filled. In their place is today’s built landscape.

Lake Nokomis Area Groundwater and Surface Water Evaluation

if we opened people up, we’d find landscapes

Linda Gregg might call my pond a “resonant source,” a term she uses for places that are “present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts.” These are the Ur-images of our creative psyches, that live with us and inform our writing. “If we opened people up,” remarked the filmmaker Agnès Varda, “we’d find landscapes.” Along with a Virginia creek and cornfields and the wood with its mayapples, this pond is inside me: as summer, as stillness, as childhood—as peace.

This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart

You can not realize you are in despair, looking at a pond’s surface.

I love the surface of Lake Nokomis. How when I lift my head out of the green water to sight, I see blue. How its ripples sparkle and its small waves sometimes look like other swimmers. How dragonflies hover above, bubbles hang just below it. How it often hides its moods from those at a distance; what looks calm and still from afar, feels rough and active from within.

ponds and writers: Maxine Kumin and Henry David Thoreau

Two writers that popped into my head as I think and read about ponds; Maxine Kumin and her homemade pond, Pobiz Pond, on her farm and Thoreau and Walden Pond. I just requested Kumin’s memoir in which she writes about how she and her husband, along with help from friends, dug out a pond on their farm property.

Other poetry people who love ponds? Mary Oliver, of course!

note: I was planning to swim, but open swim was canceled because of thunderstorms forecasted for 6:30.

july 14/RUN

3.1 miles
locks and dam #1 and back
72 degrees / humidity: 84%
air quality: 117

Hot! Humid! Hazy! The shade helped. Avoided the crowded river road trail. Heading south I ran on the narrow, root-filled dirt trail on the grassy boulevard until I reached the parking lot, then the trail to Locks and Dam #1. Heading back north, I ran on the Winchell Trail.

There was a moment when I heard the soft rush of cars, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe, and . . .? I know there were 3 distinct sounds that I noticed all at once and that I imagined putting in a contrapuntal poem. Was the third sound the rowers? the birds? the tapping which might have been a woodpecker on a tree, or a squirrel with a nut? It wasn’t the wind, because there is no wind today. I felt its lack, but also saw it on the surface of the water. Still, thick. It wasn’t the buzzing of workers sawing or mowing or building something. What was it? Just remembered! The soft then sharp buzz of cicadas, which came in waves. I knew I’d remember it! (It only took 2 hours.)

The common thread for these 3 noises is their steady, insistent beat, not moving time forward, but around and around, on repeat.

swimming words

Catch water, thumb first then the semi-circle pull,
arms straight, centre, down. Palm push back, twist
shoulder to breath. And recover.
Kick. Kick. Kick.

Catch. Pull. Push. Twist, Recover.
CatchPullPush. TwistRecover.
CatchPullPushTwistRecover.
Catchpullpushtwistrecover
(No Moon/ Tanis Rideout)

The Catch/ Tanis Rideout

Stretch bone to breakwall and the tidal roar of thirty thousand
swamps, refuses to crest, to break. Thirst for the bubbled silence
of midnight, midlake, midstroke when the limelight was all
to reach for, a trap door opening to a world below.

Pulse counts in an orchestra — it’s only a paper moon
waterlogged and beaming up, a lighthouse lamp spinning
in time. A course to decipher all the way to safe harbour.
There’s a table laid in checkered cloth. The catch of the day muscles away.

At the edge, pulled bodily from a lake that holds fast and drags
thighs, shins against stacked stone and laps the bloody threads.
It won’t return you whole to the land.

Love the title of this poem and the last line. Does the lake return me whole to the land? What does it mean to be returned whole? And, is that to be desired?

I was planning to do open swim at Cedar Lake tonight, but there is a heat advisory and it’s 90 degrees, so Scott and I will go on Wednesday instead, when it’s much cooler.

process influences constraint

Last week, I read about Sarah Riggs’ approach to writing her latest collection, Lines:

In my poem “November 14” from Lines we start with “Only hour only thought: speech speech.” At the age of 47 I set out to write the book in 47-minute time periods. Roughly an hour, an only hour so to speak, in a field of time dedicated only to thinking/ speaking. Increasingly hard to do this century, with text messages et cetera punctuating thought.  So on October 15, 2018, I started on a dictation of the mind so to speak, in which second thoughts are also written, and set my phone timer for each writing session, at the same café for many of the poems.  Not written so much as transposed.  I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be. There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written.  To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series. To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses. 

Sarah Riggs on Writing Lines, and the Revolutionary Pleasure of Process, Influence, and Constraints

Process, Influence, and Constraints. I love all 3 of these, and think about them quite a bit. I like how Riggs opens the essay: “The bird song and street noise and lilt of the subway and recent phone conversations go into our poetry. We are made up of influences, there is no blank page or screen, as has been said many times.”

In terms of influence, Riggs offers these suggestions:

Channel an influence or more than one.  You can choose to riff on or translate someone else’s work. You can choose epigraphs. Dedicate or address your work to someone.

I like the idea of translation. I’ve been playing around with something I call form fitters, where I take words from other poets I love and fit them into my running rhythms (3/2 or 2/1 or 3/3/3/4) and swimming breath patterns (5 syllable lines or 3/4/3/4 or 5/4/5/4). I also like the idea of taking a line and making it the title or, what about the last line?, of a poem. Playing around with influences could be a fun month-long project?!

july 10/RUNBIKESWIM

2.5 miles
2 trails
71 degrees
dew point: 67

Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.

Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?

The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees / 78 degrees

Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
79 degrees

Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.

The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.

Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.

A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.

july 9/RUN

3.75 miles
river road, north/south
70 degrees
humidity: 74%

Summer! Not the easiest running with the heat, but it’s beautiful by the gorge. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and he wished me a happy birthday again!

10 Things

  1. a coxswain’s voice below me
  2. a very loud bird across the road, trilling not screaming
  3. a sea and sky of green in the tunnel of trees
  4. a woman walking down the center of the path, gesturing to herself
  5. the two big cracks on the stretch of path just north of the trestle have been filled in with dirt
  6. orange cones and orange spray paint surround the cracks to warn pedestrians
  7. looking through a gap in the trees, seeing the air above the gorge, feeling so open and peaceful
  8. an orange day lily on the edge of the trail
  9. empty benches
  10. the sliding bench looks like it has slid more

I stopped to take a few pictures of the bench:

sliding bench / 9 july 2025

During the run and after, I recited AO’s lines from Nobody about the microscopic insects in the eye who speak Greek. Such a great poem! And such a great poem to memorize!


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 5/RUN

2.5 miles
2 trails
72 degrees / drizzle
dew point: 71

The Tour de France starts today! Hooray! Scott and I are watching it live this year and enduring the terrible U.S. coverage. I miss Orla and Robbie and Adam and Rob and Ant and Nico. Oh well. At least we can watch it. Decided to do a quick run before the thunderstorms started up again. So hot and thick! But quiet, calm, almost empty.

10 Things

  1. the leaning tree 2 doors down our block is marked orange — will they take it down this week?
  2. the tree that fell over the winchell tree last week is still there, blocking the trail — today, no birds surrounding it
  3. dark green trees
  4. pale blue river
  5. white-gray sky
  6. a bullhorn beep then a coxswain’s voice — rowers!
  7. dripping leaves
  8. gushing ravine
  9. thick air
  10. the sound of rain in the trees but not the feel of it on my skin

le tour, day one: some crashes, a few riders already abandoning including Ganna, crosswinds, tight corners, Remco and Roglich already losing time. Bob Roll’s phrase du jour: put the hammer down. A sprint finish: Jasper wins (boo), Girmay gets second

Yesterday, in a ramble about rumors and whispers, I stumbled upon a tentative theme for the month: the language of water. First step: read/skim How to Read Water.

Here’s an interesting bit I’d like to remember:

. . . ponds and lakes are far from permanent; rivers will tend to grow naturally with time as they do their own excavating, but the opposite is true for still water. Unless ponds and lakes are given some help, they will all eventually return to land, It starts with algae, then the rushes and other shallow water plants getting a foothold, and this allows sediments to gather, water turns to wet mud, and a reinforcing cycle begins that culminates in the water losing the battle against the encroaching land.

How to Read Water/ Tristan Gooley

Reading through this chapter on lakes, I’m realizing that you can determine the depth of a lake by surface-level clues — ducks and swans = shallower water / cormorants (have I ever seen a cormorant?) = deeper. Clouds over land are different than clouds over water, so in bigger lakes you can tell if there are islands by looking at the clouds.

random: Watching a commercial during le tour, I heard the pairing of grit and determination in describing a brand. I said to Scott that I should write a poem with pairs of words like Grit & Determination, that are frequently together, in which they break up and then look for new partners. What are some common pairings/partners: Salt & Pepper, Shiny & New, New & Improved, Footloose & Fancyfree, In & Out?

note from 24 june 2026: Reading this last bit, I’m reminded of a bit Scott and I watched on Parks & Rec last week. While talking about the beauty pageant she and Tom were judging Leslie mentioned the talent and poise portions. Tom said something like, oh, are the dancers from Talent & Poise going to be there?

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 29/RUN

3 miles
trestle turn around
71 degrees

I would have liked to do open swim today, but FWA and I heading to Austin, MN to see the musical, Hairspray, so I didn’t have time. Oh well, a run instead. I walked some, and flew a lot. Feeling fast and full of energy on the path. I hoped I would see Dave, the Daily Walker so that we could greet and when he asked me how I was doing I’d say, It’s my birthday. And it happened, and he did wish me a happy birthday!

As I ran, I listened to my bday 2018 (2018?!) playlist — a lot of Lizzo and Justin Bieber. Wow.