Tag: liquid looking

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!

june 9/REST

I might have biked or swam today if it hadn’t been so breezy and cool. 57 degrees? No thanks. Tomorrow, no matter the temperature, I’ll be swimming in the lake! Open swim! Open swim!

Become/River/ Meridian Johnson

How does it feel
              to be
in that moment before we take the full-length of our flesh?
Lie still and breathe.
There are no mistakes here.
Stillness of mind.

The universe is a shawl to wrap about the shoulders
              dark     pervasive
                           ever-sensing.

                           By the river two ducks fly above the morning current.
On the opposite bank
              two black dogs rousing the bushes.
The naked tree shadows scratch the ground, shifting through wind.

To own the space deep in the cell
                           deeper
                                          deeper yet
                                                            cobalt blue.
                                                            The Beginning.

When we’re giving ourselves that much space
principle shimmering                                          intake.

                                                                              The river begins.

The naked tree shadows scratch the ground, shifting through wind. I love this description of tree shadows on the ground!

When we’re giving ourselves that much space . . . the river begins. I’m thinking about the idea of rivering — to river — that poets have discussed. who? I’ll search for it on this log. Found some!

from swims/ Elizabeth-Jane Burnett

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

Not that the river is like the body
or the river is the body
but both have gone
and what is left is something else.

a thought from 16 aug 2022: I wonder, is there such a thing as lake-ing? How does it differ from rivering? Also: what is the something else that is left? I like the idea of the water being a verb and not a noun.

opening line from Gave/ Cole Swensen

no river rivers 

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

a note for future Sara: Since we (the Saras) are interested in this sort of thing, here’s how I found this poem:

  1. reading past entries from 9 june, I clicked on a link to an essay about green poems that I mentioned in 2019 (good job past Sara!)
  2. read through the essay, and clicked on the link for a poem discussed in it: Reverent Green
  3. which is in a lit journal called, Wildness.
  4. checked out the submission guidelines — I’m going to submit here! — where it was recommended that I read through past issues to see what they’re looking for
  5. scrolled through the issue from 2017 that Reverent Green is in and found Become/River

Back to the river and rivering. Every summer, during open swim season, I devote myself to water, especially the lake. A perpetual question: how does a lake form of water differ from its river form or rain form (it’s raining right now) or sweat form or puddle form or glass of water form or creek form? Will this be the summer that I’m able to write a poem/poems about this? I hope so!

Before writing these last few sentences, I intended to give attention to green, and growing in green, and my ekphrasis project, and circumambulation, but now I’m thinking it’s time to return to water. It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.

I’m remembering last year’s attention given to the rules of water (Anne Carson) and liquid looking (Alice Oswald). Yes! Time for summer/swimming-Sara to emerge!

hardly creatures

Still reading and thinking about Rob Macaisa Colgate’s Hardly Creatures and how it’s inspiring me with its inventive form and powerful voice. A few things:

  1. the collection as a museum, organized around different wings of an imagined building (“a gallery of our own”), including: entryway, fine art, audiovisual room, gift shop/exit. What if I created a collection of poems about the gorge that was organized around a route, with different sections corresponding to different landmarks?
  2. places to rest or to gather strength or to be cared for: the “bench” sections, which are all about Eli, Colgate’s partner. Benches have become increasingly important in my gorge running practice. I have started regularly pausing at a few benches, and I have made note of the plaques on many of them. Ooo — maybe benches could be a theme for a month!
  3. “Hopescrolling” — labeled as ALT text and consisting of a series of brief descriptions of engagement with social media

Speaking of “Hopescrolling,” here’s RMColgate’s explanation of the poem:

JGJ: Can we talk about “Hopescrolling?” The poem felt very modern, how it referenced so many different virtual spaces, all these posts on social media, and captured tens of disparate experiences all at once. What inspired you to capture that?

RMC: I love to scroll, and I don’t really feel bad about it either. Like, I’m really on that phone! 

As we entered the later stages of the pandemic, and because of the challenge of the earlier stages, a lot of the reciprocal energy was clapping back at things like Zoom, virtual events, and people started talking about how much they loathed them. I don’t think it was totally because they loathed them. I think a lot of it was because it reminded them of a challenging time. Of course, the interpersonal connection is different digitally—I’m not necessarily going to say worse or better—but I also spent a lot of time thinking about how essential digital community is for so many disabled people. 

Like I said earlier, I’m a really sleepy person. I take these anti-psychotics, and they have a huge sedative effect. I have trouble getting out of bed a lot of the time. I rarely work at my desk more than I’m working on the couch, like I am right now. And sometimes I still want to be at my friend’s event, but I’m about to pass out, and so I want to do it from bed. With “Hopescrolling,” I was trying to have a poem that was like, “You know what, the internet is good and digital connection is actually meaningful. And I know we don’t want to say that because we love being together in person, but let me just make a case for it.” And so I just started literally bookmarking tweets, Tiktoks, and Instagram posts that had takes on disability. You could see people in the comments, expressing their authentic feelings on disability without feeling like they were in a conversation about ableism or something. 

Interview

sept 20/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop
65 degrees

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

10 Things

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

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

liquid looking

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

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

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

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

A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

Here’s what I wrote yesterday:

I enter water

and the fish in me

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

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

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

OR

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

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