3 loops 54 minutes lake nokomis main beach 62 degrees
A little colder this morning. The water was warmer than the air. Windy, too. I liked how the wind made the water choppier — another day of gentle rocking. Swam loops off of the main beach, near the 4 white cylindrical buoys. I wasn’t too close to them because of all of the milfoil just under the surface. So many vines reaching up to briefly wrap around my heels and ankles!
I was joined in the lake by the vines, a few seagulls, maybe a duck (can’t remember), a silver canoe in the wading area with at least 2 people in it, fish (I’m imagining), my sparkle friends, and, at the end, 2 cute little kids and an adult (Dad?) giving one of them a piggy back ride and singing a silly song to them. again! again! they cried.
Wow, did I feel the deepening and quieting of the spirit! Recited Oliver’s poem and thought about that quieting as a stillness in my core, and the stillness not as motionless but a steadiness — enduring, endurance, duration, drarable. I was less certain about the deepening. Not going too deep in the water; I like to be just under the surface. And not deep and thinking too much — I’m remembering Maxine Kumin’s line about the thinker as the sinker. I like deepening as commitment, a rootedness, a settling in.
I condensed the words in Oliver’s first verse:
now time said / quiet happens now I / flux now / I quiets / flux happens
I’m thinking of deepening and quieting as condensing. Getting to the essence of something, removing the layers, cutting through the flux of happenings to a/the core.
hour entry:it is reported/ Endi Hogue Hartigan
It is reported that 11th century Chinese peoples employed a wooden clocklike instrument that calibrated time by burning camphor, rhubarb, aromatic scents through the particular mapped incineration path of freshest ash, one could map the hour of day… it is Mountain Pear o’clock, it is Pine Ball it is Maze Petal it is Spine Curl o’clock, only part of this is imagined.
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
at the top of the hill, in-between the top and bottom of the bridge, a family was sitting on a bench
the gate near the columns of the bridge was unlatched and slight ajar
beyond it, hollowed out bricks with a strange pattern
empty benches all the way down
the reflection of the bridge on the water’s surface, upside down
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
the echo of my footsteps under the bridge
the clicking of a bike’s gear across the service road
thought about what RJP told me yesterday: someone went over this locks and dam in a canoe (or was it a kayak?) yesterday
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.
/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.
5 loops (9 cedar loops) 95 minutes cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
A fabulous evening: no wind, sun, calm water. I felt so strong and buoyant for much of the swim. High on the water, a steady kick, strong arms. The light around 7 was that great late summer evening light. The sun setting earlier than in July — a chance to see a different sort of sparkle on the surface. Point beach was shallower than usual. I was able to stand up farther out than I ever have before — or, was I just standing in a different spot? The floor of this beach is very uneven. Lots of prickly vines, single strands passing slowly over my legs, clusters or clumps or knots almost getting tangled with my kicking feet.
before the swim
Continuing to read and think about Endi Bogue Hartigan’s on orchid o’clock as I experiment with what it could mean to swim one day in august. In process note #27, Hartigan writes this about the process of working on the book:
I dove into reading about the history of horology, clock systems, and theories/philosophies of time and my mind wandered through these histories for years, clock history being an incredible palimpsest of histories: religious, industrial, scientific, astronomical, governmental, economic, natural, more. The history of clocks and time measure includes everything from the capitalist puppetry of measuring industrial time to drive efficiency, to the synchronization with atomic clocks from computers where real time headline bleed into our screens and consciousness, to medieval monks creating mechanisms to wake for morning prayers. Time itself as a concept has no one definition. And while clock measure is cultural it is also so personal, is used to keep us close to our beloved ones and moments. I wrote from this interlay, and the more I wrote the more I wrestled with how we inherit these interwoven histories and constraints, but also fight against them and can slip boundless out of them.
The mechanization and measurement of time. I’m thinking of the second verse of Oliver’s poem:
Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.
The mechanical part. The clock! That twelve-figured moon skull, that white spider belly! Regular. Ordering disorderly life. Ordinary (Oliver, Upstream). the hours on their rounds, twelve white collar workers who manage the schedules of water (A Oswald, Dart).
Precise. Neat little boxes. Nothing approximate about it, exact. The closest I can get to precision when measuring my encounter with lake water. The next closest is arm strokes, but only because I’m steady with my strokes and rarely stop or vary it. My Apple watch records this data. It even distinguishes breast stroke from freestyle. How?
Where does an Apple watch fit into the study of clocks? To my swimming one day in August?
Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:
The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement.
Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?
hour entry: “calendaring” is a verb/ Endi Bouge Hartigan
“Calendaring” is a verb. You can “clock yourself in.” These terms like rows of hothouse orchids living in some God-forsaken pre-purchase interval steam. New verbs for new measures, new signs of transaction as home, this moon hour spent “off the clock,” but tracked, this noon hour packed in screen-time and foam, this stem of the orchid holding itself up as an orchid. you can even check off “orchid,” you can list for Tuesday, “unnatural hothouse mixture of purple and green.”
clock yourself in / measuring data / transactor or transacted or transaction? / tracked / tricked / off the clock / on the clock / in the clock
calendar / 7 days / every day / any day / a certain day / day after day / all day / once a day / 30 days has september
orchids in rows / hothouse / swimmers doing loops / a dredged-out lake / unnatural green / fertilizer run-off / blue-green algae o-clock / an exchange — a perfect lawn for an unswimmable lake
during the swim
Thought about days and remembered my “On This Day” practice. I should use that in my thinking and writing about one day in August. Also thought about another way, in addition to minutes, strokes, and distance, that I use to measure duration: active calories. Finally, as I counted my strokes between breaths — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — I thought about counting as a comforting practice and about counting and accumulation (minutes/hours accrued) versus counting as a repeating of numbers with no accumulation (1 2 3 4 5 breathe). Of course, there is accumulation with these strokes and I keep track of it on my watch: total number of strokes. But, the act of counting in the water over and over is different.
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.
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.
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 69 degrees (there) / 72 (back)
I’m getting serious about my 24 hours of swimming in a month this week. Decided to bike over the lake for a short morning swim. The bike ride was great. I only had to pass one person! I didn’t have any moments of panic when everything seemed a little fuzzy. As usual, the bike ride back was easier and seemed to go by much faster. Biking down the hill between Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha, I noticed another redone path leading down to the dock. Someday I’ll run over here and check it out.
5 Bike Things
a group of kids congregating at the bike safety course that used to be a tennis court
creek water rushing by near the spot where kids like to swim
some sort of rock music that I couldn’t identify coming from a bike
the marsh area near my favorite part of the creek path didn’t have any water, just mud
passing my the wooden bridge at lake nokomis — an intensely sour rotten fishy smell — yuck!
swim: 6 mini loops / 1.5 lake nokomis loops 35 minutes main beach lake nokomis 70 degrees
A wonderful morning for a swim. Calm, empty water. There were a few kayaks and swan boats, but otherwise, I was the only human in the water, at least near the bench. Plenty of vines and fish below me, ducks nearby, planes and seagulls above. I’m swimming again tonight, so I didn’t want to do too much this morning.
5 Swim Things
a plane flying directly overhead, looking like a shark
swooping seagulls
a kayak crossing in front of me
ghost vines reaching up
thin strips of light extending below, diagonally
I recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my body. Had to give myself a little pep talk during loop 2 — no, there are NOT any giant turtles or things with sharp teeth lurking below, waiting to dart up and drag me down. I rarely have these fears, and they don’t make me panic, but occasionally when I’m swimming alone, off of the main beach, a what-if thought creeps in. What if there is something down there waiting for me?
The lake was great. After I finished, I stood in the swimming area and took it all in. At the edge of the shore, I noticed the water was a bright green — uh-oh, hope there aren’t algae blooms!
swim: 3.5 loops 70 minutes cedar lake open swim 79 degrees
Double swims today. The water at cedar was choppy. Mostly, I loved it. The only parts I didn’t like: having to breathe on only one side more often and the stretch where the water seemed to be pulling me down. It was harder to stroke. Otherwise, it was great. Oh — except for all of the vines. Lots of full body scans today, with a vine traveling down my body as I swam over it.
5 Cedar Things
a young kid hiding in the buoy near point beach
a lifeguard in a kayak near hidden beach, close to the far buoy — part red blur, part dark silhouette
the idea of orange in the distance as I tried to sight — only a tiny orange dot
cloudless sky
2 girls laughing and swimming at the beach
added the next morning: Just remembered something I really didn’t want to forget about last night’s swim. Standing in the shallow water, preparing to start my swim, I overheard parents with their 2 young boys — 5 or 6 or 7? They were trying to get them back into their kayaks.
mom: we talked about this. we can’t take the kayaks unless you paddle all the way back. get in the kayak.
kid 1: I’ll get in the kayak if you buy me a nintendo. kid 2: yeah, a nintendo.
Damn. . . .I didn’t stick around to see what happened, but I’m betting the mom wasn’t falling for this shit.
a few hours before my swim: just got word, finally, that lake nokomis is reopening after a week of being closed. not because the e-coli was that bad all week, but because they only test it once a week.
5 loops 100 minutes lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees
A wonderful night for a swim! The water was choppy, but gentle, and never forcing me to alter the side I breathed on. 1 2 3 4 5 right 1 2 3 4 5 left. Before the swim began, I encountered an older man and we talked about how much we love open swim. We agreed: it’s our favorite thing to do. As I started my swim, I thought about this wonderful exchange and this swimmer who loved what he was doing and I was happy.
10 Things
a plane parallel to the water, flying low but not too low
a dragonfly just above the surface
a distant swan boat
my sparkle friends were moving fast and into me as I swam
thick, murky water
seagulls
ducks — quack quack
the long, low light heading back to the big beach
the alert on my watch beep beep beeping underwater at the end of a loop — was it a reminder about the amber alert we got earlier today — did other people hear it under water?
more ghostly vines, one wrapping around my foot
I recited Mary Oliver’s, “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my spirit. Peaceful, calm, relaxed, in my element.
This entire poem is fire, but for the sake of space I’ll just the pertinent section in today’s entry:
from Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson
There is a geometry of water, for this Squares off the clouds’ redundancies And sets them floating in a nether atmosphere All angles and elongations: every tree Appears a cypress as it stretches there And every bush that shows the season, A shaft of fire. It is a geometry and not A fantasia of distorting forms, but each Liquid variation answerable to the theme It makes away from, plays before: It is a consistency, the grain of the pulsating flow.
geometry: the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something / relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles
geometry and not distorting form — angles and points and lines off due to water and unreliable vision
Thinking about geometries of water and Anne Carson’s anthropology of water and the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles. Suddenly remembered a reference to geometry that I’d like to experiment with:
“Closed because geometric mean of E. coli exceeds 126 MPN/100 mL“
It’s the message on the parks lake water quality map, explaining why the beach is closed. Will it reopen in time for tonight’s open swim? I hope so!
Geometric mean, what’s that? While Minneapolis Parks doesn’t explain, I found another site with some helpful information: E-coli Open Water Data
tests take 24 hours to process, that’s why I’m still waiting for the results to show up now, even though they tested yesterday (could this 24 hours be another example of swimming, one day in august?)
MPN = most probable number
this site is out of Toronto so it gives the acceptable rates for Canada. In Canada, it’s under 200 MPN, which is higher than here in Minneapolis: 126
I asked FWA — my science guy — what the geometric in geometric mean means and he explained it this way: they make an imaginary grid for the lake and then take samples from different sections of the grid, then they average those samples to get the MPN/ML number. So geometric = grid
The grid makes me think of my vision and the visual field test and the amsler grid and imagining the lake as a grid with different sections of it muted or extinguished or replaced with other sections of the grid that I can actually see.
And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake:
angles
trajectories
following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it)
the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
the angle of that rope line
how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
the sharp angles of prickly vines
parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
perpendicular lines: water and light pole
buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
buoys as cylinders
buoys as equilateral triangles
angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface
More on geometry . . . searched geometry on Poetry Foundation and this was the first result:
All the roofs sloped at the same angle. The distance between the houses was the same. There were so many feet from each front door to the curb. My father mowed the lawn straight up and down and then diagonally. And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.
We knew them only in summer when the air passed through the screens. The neighbor girls talked to us across the great divide: attic window to attic window. We started with our names. Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope, and below was the rest of our lives.
slopes angles
distance = feet
lines straight diagonally
screens = grid divide line bar
We knew them only in summer when the air passed through the screens. The neighbor girls talked to us across the great divide: attic window to attic window. We started with our names. Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope, and below was the rest of our lives.
All of this geometry talk has inspired me to craft a sonnet about grids and seeing and the grid in my eye tethered to the grid in the water. I have a first draft that needs a little work. The poem is about how I’ve been using sighting buoys during open swim to learn how to see in new ways, or to function without needing to see things clearly or often. Or, is it about the parallel paths that learning to sight and learning to rarely or unreliably see have taken and how that’s shaped my experiences with vision loss? or, are both of those conclusions too heavy-handed? Should it be stranger?
1
tethers us to each other — swimming and vision, buoy and body, to sight but rarely see
2
tethers us to each other — swimming and vision, buoy and body, to use sight to learn how to see
Typing up both of these endings, I like the first one better. I’ll keep thinking about it.
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.
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
graffiti on the lake street bridge steps: STOP HATE
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
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
the bells of St. Thomas — ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / — the time, 10:45
an orange flash on the sidewalk — the smoky light or spray paint?
a boat speeding up the river, leaving streaks on the water’s surface
no kids outside at the church preschool — were they staying inside because of the smoke, or was it not recess?
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)
the soft trickle of water near Shadow Falls
a stone wall above the ravine, leaning — it had a sign on it that I couldn’t read, so I took a picture of it to study later
Furnished to the city of St. Paul by the Kettle River Co.
I could mostly read it when I looked at the photograph, but I had to doublecheck with Scott.
I wish the lake was open so I could have gone to open swim for the first day of my “Swimming One Day in August” project, but at least I was able to run. I am almost didn’t go out because of the smoke. Glad I decided to!
The smoke doesn’t seem that bad so, for the first time in weeks, we have the windows open! I like the relief that air conditioning brings, but I hate how it makes me feel trapped in the house. As I sit at my desk writing this, I just heard the feebee call of the black-capped chickadee through the open window!
Today I’m working on more swimming sonnets and Inklings. Some subjects: water quality, blue-green algae, milfoil, water as the medium, loops at lake nokomis are actually triangles, the color of the water, Alice Oswald seeing self in water, again and more darkly, Mary Oliver and the deepening and quieting of the spirit
a little later: I almost forgot about the mushrooms! Walking north before my run, I saw some HUGE mushrooms in a neighbor’s yard. The first one I noticed had lost its cap and I thought it was a newly cut tree trunk. I think there were a cluster of 4 or 5 mushrooms. I started reciting Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms in my head. I thought about mushrooms as the fruit of fungi and little explosions and expressions of the self (like through poetry) as emerging like mushrooms. For the rest of the run I checked the grass for more mushrooms, but don’t recall seeing any more.
a lot later: RJP checked out a book for me, Mary Oliver’s Blue Pastures, so I could read some of Oliver’s sand dabs and the chapter, “Pen and Paper and Breath of Air.” I’m on the second page and I already needed to stop and archive some of her ideas:
First, in describing her practice of keeping a notebook, she writes that she doesn’t write in it from front to back, but just opens a page and writes anywhere and everywhere. She uses “private shorthand” to record phrases and feelings.
The words do not take me to the reason I made teh entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. this is important. I can, then, think forward again to teh idea—that is, teh significance of the event—rather than back upon it. I ti s the instant I try to catch in the notebooks, not the comment, not the thought. And, of course, this is so often waht I am aiming to do in the finished poems themselves.
“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver
And here’s one of the phrases she put in a notebook:
A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.
“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver
Wasn’t planning to run the ford loop, but I started it and then just kept going. It felt good, relaxed, not hard to keep my heart rate a little lower. My pace was slow, but it didn’t feel slow, or fast, or any speed really.
10 Things
mist
dripping
spray
mirrors
puddles
graffiti
traffic
bridge
debris
slick
It rained all day yesterday, and some early in the morning. Started again during my run. Everything dripping wet, including me, although I didn’t really feel it, or couldn’t distinguish it from my sweat. Before I started running, as I walked through the neighborhood, I looked into the puddles on the sidewalk and admired how they had become mirrors, reflecting the sky and the trees. Running over the river, I looked down at the east bank and saw colorful graffiti all over the rocks at the base of the lake street bridge. In spots, the trail was slick with mud or covered in debris — fallen leaves, broken branches, grit. Crossing the ford bridge, I looked north and was delighted by the mist, making everything seem fuzzy and unformed. The traffic on the bridge was thick — I couldn’t see or feel any spray coming off of their wheels, but I could hear it.
overheard: one runner to another — you can bank the time. Another use of time as a commodity.
Listened to the water, in its various forms, for the first half of my run. Put in my “moment” playlist for the second half. The most memorable song today: One Moment in Time/ Whitney Houston
A line that stood out to me:
And in that one moment of time I will feel I will feel eternity
I thought about Mary Oliver’s definition of eternity and how Whitney Houston’s doesn’t fit with it. MO understands eternity as creative time that’s outside of the ordinary and beyond the self. Houston’s eternity seems more like eternal glory.
As I listened to all of the lyrics, I thought about Whitney Houston’s tragic life and terrible death — an overdose. I also thought about the idea of one moment and what happens after that moment is over. And this made me think about post-Olympic blues, or post-marathon blues, or post-publishing a poem blues.
To keep myself distracted and steady, I chanted in triple berries —– strawberry blueberry raspberry. Then I chanted my poem — I go to the gorge/to find the soft space/between beats.
more on the moment as between
Read a very brief interview with Marie Howe the other day. She mentioned a poem that inspired her and that she wished everyone would read: The Season of Phantasmal Peace/ Derek Walcott. Beautiful! Here’s a line to remember that describes the moment:
and this season lasted one moment, like the pause between dusk and darkness, between fury and peace
Before my run, I began listening to a talk by Jennifer Chang, “Other Pastorals: Writing Race and Place“. She mentions one between in the presentation of her thesis statement: how poets of color use pastoral to grapple with the complex composition of place as a tension between lived and learned experience. She recites another between from Rick Barot’s “On Gardens”: somewhere between/what the eye sees and what the mind thinks/is the world, landscapes mangled/into sentences, one color read into rage.
Chang also mentions context: If you look at the word “garden” deep enough you see it blossoming in an enclosure meant to keep out history and disorder.
Chang’s lecture is part of the Bread Loaf conference in 2019. This page has many great links for future Sara to explore.
And here is helpful essay with some ideas for thinking about the pastoral, and links to poems, like Rita Dove’s Reverie in Open Air, which I’ve already posted on this log. The second half of Dove’s poems fits with early May’s theme of grass:
But this lawn has been leveled for looking, So I kick off my sandals and walk its cool green. Who claims we’re mere muscle and fluids? My feet are the primitives here. As for the rest—ah, the air now Is a tonic of absence, bearing nothing But news of a breeze.
And a few more grass lines from Jennifer Chang:
Stalk of wither. Grass- noise fighting weed-noise. Dirt and chant. Something in the field. (Pastoral/ Jennifer Chang)
What sound does grass make? Wind through the grass, crunching over dry, brittle grass, feet on grass — bunny’s feet:
I think my favorite sound was the soft footsteps of the bunny hurrying across the lawn. A silvery whisper only possible to hear on a calm summer morning like today. I love the sound of animal feet moving — running or hopping through the grass
4.15 miles trestle+ turn around 60 degrees wind: 35 mph gusts
Another earlier run. Cooler and windy! Luckily, I wasn’t running straight into it for that long, or if I was, it didn’t bother me. I felt strong and relaxed and like I’m slowly getting back into the groove.
Right after my run, we drove down to St. Peter to help FWA move out of his dorm. He graduated a few weeks ago. I didn’t have time to write this entry until I got back. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
the green has taken over the gorge, no more wide open view of the river, only a splotch of bright white through the small gap in the trees
heard, not seen: a roller skier’s clicking poles
Good Morning! to Mr. Morning!, twice
running past the field at Minneahaha Academy, all dug up. Scott thinks they’re putting in a new irrigation system
little purple flowers — not sure if it was Siberian Squill, maybe some other purple flower?
empty benches
passed the dirt rail near the trestle and thought about taking it but didn’t
a small blue ball under the trestle
most of the stones stacked on the ancient boulder — there had been 6 — were blown over in yesterday’s storms, only 2 small pebbles were still stacked
the big crack just past the trestle that they’ve patched up several springs in a row is cracking again. 2 out of the 3 sections of it have big cracks, the one closest to the trestle has a big crater
I decided to stop and take a picture of it:
crack, overview / 16 may 2025crack, close-up / 16 may 2025
Listened to the blowing wind as I ran north, my “Beaufort Scale” playlist running south.
among / between
When I read and posted Lorine Niedecker’s poem about standing among the birch last week —
For best work you ought to put forth some effort to stand in north woods among birch.
I was struck by the word among and wondered how it was different from between. I looked it up this afternoon and, after wading through discussions about how between is used with 2 items, among with more than 2, I came across a helpful distinction in Merriam Webster:
We use between when we want to express a relation to things and have them considered as individual and usually equal entities.
Among, on the other hand is the best word to use when referring to things collectively and imprecisely.
I like among in LN’s poem, although I wonder about the effect of using between (or beside or with) instead. to stand/in north woods/between birch. Among indicates a kinship — among all of us trees, but between suggests an actual place — stand between this birch and that birch and an exchange — between us. I like both meanings. I like imaging my best work as trying to become a tree. But I also like the idea of my best work happening when I stand between birch — giving and receiving air.
I was reminded of among and between while reading this passage from Marie Howe:
That was really a big deal. I was given this place to be without any expectations really. And everything changed so that the particulars of life—this white dish, the shadow of the bottle on it—everything mattered so much more to me. And I saw what happened in these spaces. You can never even say what happened, because what happened is rarely said, but it occurs AMONG the glasses with water and lemon in them. And so you can’t say what happened but you can talk about the glasses or the lemon. And that something is in BETWEEN all that.
You can name/describe the collection of things (among), but you can’t find words to describe how their meaning has changed in that moment. Often when I think about the slight shifts in meaning between small words, like among or between, I’m reminded of an essay I read about Mary Oliver and her mousier words. I love mousy words! Meanwhiles and in-betweens and yous and wes and usses (is that the plural of us?).
…it’s tempting to be blinded by the more immediately visible parts of speech: the monolithic nouns, the dynamic verbs, the charismatic adjectives. Mousier ones—pronouns, prepositions, particles—go ignored.
