12 miles confluence + falls 66 degrees / humidity: 86%
12 miles! I’m running today instead of swimming because I am sick or have a sinus infection or my allergies are acting up because of the lake water (the e coli is very high at lake nokomis — over 1000). Since Friday, I’ve felt out of it. It started with a sore throat in the morning. I hoped it was just because I slept with the window open, but it wasn’t going away and I started feeling sinus pressure and stuffiness. Saturday was unpleasant (not quite miserable, but close, and I was whiny about it). I really dislike when my sinuses close up and I can’t breathe through my nose. Not being able to breathe is one of my big fears. If the stuffiness is due to the lake water, I might have to end my season early. If it’s because I’m sick, I might be able to swim again next week. As much as I love swimming, I hate being stuffed up and having a lot of trouble breathing. I’ll be bummed if I have to stop swimming already, but not too bummed: I’ve swum a lot this summer, and I need to prioritize marathon training.
But, back to today. 12 miles! I knew I would do 12 miles but, because I’m still stuffed up, I wondered how much of it would be walking. I surprised myself by feeling pretty good for a lot of it. I took one 5 minute walk break in the middle, but otherwise I mostly stuck to a plan: 3 mins run / 1 min walk. I wonder if I would go slower or faster if I switched up the ration to 90 sec run/ 30 sec walk. I’ll have to try that in this upcoming week.
Even though I made a playlist — Hello, Goodbye — for the entire run, I didn’t begin listening to it until my 5 minute walk break after the confluence. Before that, I listened to my key jingling in my pocket, a souped-up car going too fast on the east river road, blue jays screeching, hidden water falling, the clicking and clacking of roller skier’s poles. When I finally put in the playlist, I remember feeling nostalgic while listening to Lionel Richie’s “Hello” — oh, 10 year old Sara watching the video with the blind girl and the creepy, stalker professor! 1984 and 85 were some wonderful years for watching movies and music videos. I also remember feeling tender when Adele sang, “Hello from the other side.” I thought about my mom. She’s been dead for almost 17 years. How is that possible? Running by the falls, the telephone section of the playlist started. I got a boost with Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” and ran too fast for a few minutes. Down by the locks and dam no. 1, I heard Lady Gaga sing, “Out in the club and I’m sipping that bubb” in her song “Telephone” — I’m assuming she means bubbly/champagne?
10 Things
running over the lake street bridge, looking down at the river — blue, scaled, the wake of some small boat streaked across the surface
the steps on the lake street bridge that lead down to the trail: clothes were strewn all over the steps — what happened? I decided to take the road over to the trail instead
running parallel to another runner — first on opposite sides of the trail then, when she crossed the road, opposite sides of the road — I think I was slightly faster than her, so I was creeping up. If I wasn’t running 12 miles, I might have sped up to pass her faster, but I think that would have burned too many matches (or spent too many pennies) and I would have suffered later in the run because of it
noticing all of the dirt trails leading up from the river on the way to hidden falls, remembering my hike with my college friend last week, wondering if we could have taken any of them
a new regular? a short (4.5 feet tall, maybe) older woman who I also saw here last time. She was walking, I was running. Both times she was wearing shorts. should I call her short shorts?
the view from the confluence overlook: a parking lot below — will the view be better once the leaves are off of the trees?
stopping at a “good” water fountain near the skate park, where good = designed for water bottles, so it’s easy to fill them up — most of the water fountains are old school and curves, making it almost impossible to fill up a water bottle
hearing the roar of the water rushing over the concrete dam at locks and dam no. 1
waving a thanks to a guy who moved out of the way as I ran by the parking kiosk
my new favorite bench — somewhere between the 2 entrances to Hidden Falls park, perched on a stretch of the bluff that’s wide open, with a beautiful view of the river below — was empty1
It was supposed to be partly or mostly cloudy today, but I don’t recall see any clouds. So much bright sun! I didn’t hear any rowers or chiming bells, no fragments of conversation. No geese or turkeys.
Memorable haunts I encountered: lake street bridge; above shadow falls; the monument; the ford overlook; hidden falls; my new favorite bench; the confluence; ford bridge; wabun disc golf course; the falls; the bottom of locks and dam no. 1, then the top; the double bridge; the oak savanna; the ancient boulder; the welcoming oaks; the tunnel of trees.
I’d like to do a run that turns around at this bench. I’m thinking it would be between 7 and 8 miles long ↩︎
8.5 miles franklin + ford loop 70 degrees / humidity: 70%
That was hard! I had barely started and I already felt too hot, my legs too sore. By the time I reached 3 miles, I abandoned my system of run 3 mins, walk 1 min and the doubt started creeping in — how can I possibly run a marathon in less than 2 months? The pressure and worry too — I have to run more this week or I’ll get too off track!
a brief flash: this run is a failure / you can’t do the marathon
The flash passed and I simply kept going. I walked when I needed to — which seemed often — and ran when I could. I drank water and ate an energy chew. And I kept going. One foot in front of the other. A step then another step then another. Sometimes running, often walking.
heart broken: I noticed the gentle and labored whirr of a bike wheel — deep, quiet, singular — and thought about how, in my state of struggle, I was tender and open to the world and its different sounds. Every sensation — a man’s disembodied voice high on a hill, a bird calling from the gorge, a cool-ish breeze on my sweat-soaked face, the strong smell of weed near the overlook — was clear, acute. Not irritating or overwhelming, like sensations can be when I’m anxious, but calling to me, like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –over and over announcing my place in the family of things.
10 Things
a carolina wren calling out cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger
a loud sound — is that a radio on a bike? no, a kid shrieking in a bike trailer, then the adult biking calling out sternly, what’s going on back there?
a single canoe on the river with at least 3 people in it, hugging the west side of the shore
a coxswain’s voice, giving instructions, his voice distorted by a bullhorn
Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
a spring gushing through the rock on the east side of the river — not seen, only heard
footsteps behind me, never gaining, just hovering in the air
playing chicken with a woman walking with ski poles on the bridge — I won because I wasn’t going to move and I was on the proper side
a man in the grass, near the locks and dam no. 1 parking lot lifting one heavy barbell — squatting and thrusting with it — his movement reminded me of a shot putter preparing to hurl the shotput
more than half a dozen roller skiers, going fast up the hill, their poles clicking on the asphalt, several of them continuing past me, 4 of them turning around in front of me — sharply, quickly — the last one misjudging the turn and stumbling, then apologizing to me for almost getting in my way
I reflected on the run, which was both a failure and a success — a failure because I had to walk much more than I planned, a success because I didn’t give up and wasn’t nearly as slow as I thought I would be.
I heard Des Linden’s words in my head, you can do hard things. Yes. Most of the point of running another marathon is to give me the opportunity to prove that to myself — I can do hard things. There is something satisfying about facing a difficult/overwhelming task that you can’t imagine being able to do, and just starting to do it and never stopping until it’s done. To a lesser degree that happened at my swim last night. On loop 1 of 4, I felt tired and awkward, my body heavy in the water. A brief thought — can I really do this for an hour and a half? Then I stroke and kicked and breathed until I finished loop 4. Never quite believing or not believing; just doing and not thinking.
A deepening and quieting of the spirit = a deepening of the resolve, a quieting of the voices that encourage you to quit / a muting of an ego/I that believes going slow or walking or straying from an exact plan = failing, a digging into the depths for new forms of belief
breaking news: an audiobook I requested from the library just became available! I Contain Multitudes / Ed Yong.
Every animal, whether human, squid, or wasp, is home to millions of bacteria and other microbes. Ed Yong prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light — less as individuals and more as the interconnected, interdependent multitudes we assuredly are.
from the “about this title” blurb in Libby
I’ve tried reading or listening to a more recent book by Yong. I can’t remember what about it made me stop. It would be wonderful if I liked this book and could listen to it on my long run (at least 12 miles) on Saturday.
Back to hearts breaking apart. I looked up, “breaking apart” and Poetry Daily (poems.com) and found this excellent poem. I’m thinking of it less in terms of my 1 day in august project and more in terms of my Holes/How I Read project.
Language is breaking apart in our hands. In the darkness, we can only make out the shapes of letters on the pages. We’ve been reading like this for hours, or forever, it seems, but now the sun fades out our windows and particles of darkness block the white bays the letters gather in their limbs— the blank spaces that make them legible, where the illuminate of the pale page makes shape.
Each word, suddenly the shape of a small animal. Lines of small animals creating a blurred grid on the page.
A moment longer and the darkening brings out the beady eyes, glowing, reflecting the light from the headlight of our eyes.
(An inherent light inside the eye— who had that idea, that I feel now in my sockets?)
In the neighboring darkyards not cherryglow but a single candle left flickering out
I want to return to this poem, later, when I’m working on Holes again. There is some great ways of describing reading in low light and with limited vision!
swim: 3 loops (6 mini) cedar lake open swim 71 minutes 86 degrees
The past two cedar lake swims were cancelled because of blue-green algae. Today it was open and almost empty and wonderful. There were lifeguards and more than a dozen open swimmers, but hardly anyone else. Was it because they just opened the beach at 3pm today?
Hardly any wind and only a few waves. Lots of floating strands of milfoil. I was subject to at least one full body scan as I passed over a vine. A few kayaks and canoes. I saw bubbles but now sparkle friends. No flashes of fish either.
The air was hazy. I kept thinking my goggles were fogged, but it looked as fuzzy with or without the goggles. Difficult to see, but just enough for me to navigate. Other swimmers weren’t able to navigate in the haze and sinking light. Or, they didn’t care whether they were swimming on course or not. I noticed several swimmers swimming way over on the wrong side. Cedar vibes.
Before leaving home for the swim, I thought about how MO’s poem would change if you focused on space instead of time — There is space here for the sinking and settling of the spirit? Every so often, I thought about space and here in relation to my swimming, but I don’t remember what I thought. A task for tomorrow?
10k ford loop + ford overlook 67 degrees / humidity: 86%
No sun this morning, so it felt cooler, less difficult. Because of the smoke, the heat, and my cold last month, I’m behind on my marathon training, but I’m not too worried. This week, I’m getting back on track.
For the first two miles, I didn’t have my headphones in. Other than traffic, I don’t remember hearing much. Oh — a sprinkler turning on, a biker laboring up the hill, the soft thud of my feet striking the ground, a kid running and jumping as they crossed the street, a fountain at my fancy house, bubbling. For miles 3-5, I listened to Olivia Rodrigo’s latest album. Mile 6, my “Doin’ Time” playlist.
The surface of the water, viewed from the lake street bridge was scaled and empty. No rowers this morning. The surface viewed from the lake street bridge was more of the same, with the addition of a thin trail in the center — the wake from a canoe or a small motorboat?
I passed a tall man who was walking with ski poles, twice and a regular, skirt with sandals (who no longer pairs her skirt with sandals but white socks and running shoes.
I don’t remember what I thought about. For my next run, I’d like to memorize a new poem to recite in my head, or return to one I’ve already memorized. Could that make the run easier? Or, maybe not memorize an entire poem, but fragments related to stillness (inspired by “the deepening and quieting of the spirit”). Maybe a fragment or two from this one:
August, driving from North Bend, from Empire, we saw how the waves gut the bluffs until they are pocked, whole scoops of rock being pawed out by water. But this year nothing moves at Shore Acres, the water is static as land, and stripes of foam bone its slate like a corset. We are here for the end of movement. You stay to watch the ocean. I go back to the Japanese garden. I only want to see stillness where I expect it, the sombre willow, the colossal Monterey pine; I sit, making myself limestone and basalt, on the grounds of what was once the summer house of a pioneer shipbuilder. Now it is nobody’s private estate, but the home of a gardener who pulls yellow roses through the mist in hedged circles. I think I am stone as the arrowheads of pines vanish into the understory of cloud. I have stopped longing for whatever it was I desired and have given in to the body’s basic need for rest. Bare feet, bare face, I wait at what I imagine to be a shrine’s gate gathering the kind of force required to stop loving, as only stone can.
I sit,/making myself limestone and basalt, and I think I am stone — I want to remember and reflect on these lines and put them into conversation with what A Oswald wrote in an interview for the Paris Review:
“They read me my rights and asked whether I knew I was breaking the law, and did I want to come easily or did I want to be an obstruction. And I said, ‘I’m happy to be arrested, because I don’t believe it’s an offense,’ and that I didn’t want to come easily, and so I lay down and imagined my heaviest self. I was imagining I was made of gold or lead, just enjoying the difficulty the police were having picking me up.
Two more additions to this conversation:
1
The ones who leave come back with stories: an excitement in their eyes. But the ones who stay
witness little changes: dust, weather, breath. What happens to them happens so slowly it seems not to be happening at all. (the ones who stay :: faith shearin
2
The girl wants to be too big to lift, too much trouble to move, a boulder beholding small changes: dust, breath, weather, rocks and cone cells eroding — what happens so slowly it seems not to be happening at all. (Platteville Limestone / Sara Lynne Puotinen)
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim* 90 minutes 85 degrees
*It is a Monday and open swim is usually at Cedar Lake on Mondays, but the parks department closed Cedar’s beaches because of blue-green algae so open swim moved to Nokomis
I think this is the first time I’ve ever swum across the lake on a monday evening. As Scott drove me over, I wondered how different it would be. It wasn’t that different, but it was trivia night at Painted Turtle, so it was extremely crowded for Scott, who has a beer and works on his laptop while i swim. During lap 3 or 4, when I paused in the middle of the lake to admire the sun, much lower in the sky than in July, I could hear the noise from the restaurant. Wow! So many LOUD voices — a proper din. Also — I overheard one swimmer say, as we waited an extra 10 minutes for them to set up the course, the lifeguards are from Cedar and they’ve never set the buoys up here before. A group of 5 or 6 swimmers had a lot to say about how the buoys were being placed in the water as we waited. Another difference: many more menacing swans, a few of them getting way too close to the course. Near the beginning, I swam right next to them; I kept looking to make sure they weren’t going to turn into me.
The water was a wonderful temperature; not too warm or too cold. It was mostly calm and buoyant and easy to swim through. With the bright sun that was lower in the sky, it has almost impossible for me to sight on the way back to the big beach. It didn’t matter, I still knew where to go, it was just a little less fun always (as opposed to only some of the time) swimming into a void.
There were several swimmers faster than me, which was a nice change. A few of them passed me quickly, others I could swim behind to see where I needed to go. Here seeing = the flash of a bright pink buoy, tethered to one swimmer’s waist, or some white foam from another swimmer’s stroking arm or kicking feet.
For several stretches, I recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August.” I was trying to think about the stanza:
Something has pestered me so much I though my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.
I particularly wanted to think about the word mechanical, but I don’t think I did. All I remember now (I’m writing this next morning because I didn’t have time or energy last night after a late dinner) is reciting all of the lines over and over. Oh — and I remember that I was struck by the first stanza’s time now and the last stanza’s time again. In my head I repeated, time now / time again / time now / time again.
Anything else? Bubble, but no sparkle friends; a few planes above me; water sloshing over me; 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left 1 2 3 4 5 6 / 1 2 3 4 5 6 7; always the swan boats lurking in the background; the surface of the water beside the buoy, bright orange; seagulls in the sky; a whistle being blown on shore — 7 pm; the occasional strand of floating milfoil wrapping around my head or my shoulder; some other vines of milfoil reaching up from the bottom; the patch of milfoil just off of the swimming area thickening again; a canoe or two crossing the course; the surface of the water on the way to the big beach glowing from the sinking sun.
The course seemed longer than it usually is, with the buoys placed farther from each other. How does it compare to other 4 loop swims this summer?
*Looking at the data from today’s swim vs. 17 aug, I know what the strokes don’t seem to add up with the corresponding distance. It’s because I started my workout early, then had to wait in the water until they let us go. The watch recorded 35 or so yards of distance while I stood there. Also, I read through the entry and realized last year’s 4 loop swim was at Cedar and not Nokomis.
4.15 miles minnehaha falls and back 77 degrees / dew point: 72
I was supposed to swim this morning, but it was raining and windy with a chance of thunderstorms, I was tired from last night’s swim, and it was the queen stage of the Tour de France Femme avec Zwift, so I decided to skip open swim today. Scott and I watched the stage instead and it was awesome. The women’s tour has been way more exciting than the men’s. Kassia Niewiadomma Phinney destroyed the field on an HC climb.
After the stage finished, the rain had stopped, so I went out for a run. Right after I returned, a clap of thunder. Nice timing! It was hot and humid and I sweat a lot. I ran 90/30 for almost all of the run. Because of the humidity, my heart rate was still high, but my pace was steady. I’d like to try this 90/30 again on a longer run, and when it’s a little cooler.
For the first mile, I ran without headphones. Do I remember anything I heard? I think I heard some construction noises and at least one car? Oh — just remembered: I heard the bells of St. Thomas! After that, I put on the latest “Off the Rails” podcast. They were talking about the new women’s pro baseball league and the terrible version of the National Anthem that opened the season at a stadium in Illinois.
10 Things
there were a lot of people near the falls and waiting to pay for parking in the parking lot
the bells of st thomas! I heard at least one chime (this is when I remembered that I had heard the bells, or a bell, then I added it in the previous paragraph)
the sky was dark — thick, heavy, holding a storm waiting to happen
small puddles all over the trail
sometimes windy, sometimes still
the trail that dips below the road south of the double bridge was especially dark and mysterious-looking
a tiny kid — maybe 2? — running away from an adult and another kid near the parking lot
as the run went on, the sky got darker and heavier
someone has painted the tops of two wooden railings on the path bright colors: one is orange, one yellow
another runner emerged near 42ndas the winchell trail climbed out of the gorge, then they immediately turned and followed the trail back below
10.1 miles confluence and back 62 degrees AQI: 36!
10 miles. That was not easy. Much cooler today, better air quality, but still warm. I sweat a lot. By mile 5, my pony tail was dripping. I could feel it on my shoulder, hear the wet strands of my hair swishing as I moved. I decided not to bring my handheld water bottle, which was a big mistake. Two thirds of the way through, I ran out of gas.
3 things that worked well:
managed my unfinished business — even before I finished mile 1, I felt like I needed a port-a-potty, but taking walk breaks and not thinking about it, helped the need to poop go away
just kept moving (mostly running, some walking) — I wasn’t sure how much I could run today and when I realized that the route to the confluence and back was almost 2 miles short, I could have stopped sooner, but I decided I need to keep going, so I did
nice route — even though this route was too short, I liked it — the stretch of the east river road between hidden falls and the confluence is beautiful — such amazing views!
3 things to work on:
don’t forget the water bottle
don’t forget snacks
work on being more consistent with the run/walk method — on the next run, try 90/30 again
As I ran under the road at Hidden Falls, I thought about the small stretch of hidden falls that was daylighted when they redid this area a few years ago. I listened as it rushed to the edge then fell over it and smelled its fishy smell.
10 Things
running over the ford bridge, admiring the river, 1: the brownish water was calm, still, flat, not even a ripple
running over the ford bridge, admiring the river, 2: because the surface was still, I could see below it — the faint outline of several sandbars
a short (under 5 ft) older woman i, stretching next to the hidden falls park sign, at the top of the hill, later I encountered her again; she was walking, I was running
a strange pair of sounds on either side of the road, call and response. Bird song I had never heard before, sounding almost like machines or alarms — was it 2 birds, or 2 people with some kind of device making the noise?
what a view! — 1/2 mile from the confluence overlook, the trail and a bench are high above a bend in the river where you can see the mississippi and the minnesota rivers — I would have stopped but someone had brought a chair and was sitting in front of the bench
near the far entrance to hidden falls — a roller skier perched at the top — were they about to bomb down the steep hill?
at the confluence — a lime green bike, wedged in the corner of the overlook — too many leaves below to see anything — a warm water water fountain
a bird crying out, sounding like they were in distress — a woman came to the edge where I was standing and said the sound came from an eagle on the other shore
2 men running on the ford bridge, one of them was turned around and running backwards
2 older men, carrying signs to place along the bike path that said something like, bikers, use caution! alert walkers with an “on your left” or a bell — Yes!
Just before I heard the eagle (mentioned in #8), I took a picture of a view of the river:
east river road, heading to downtown St. Paul
Running near where this picture was taken, I suddenly remembered a conversation I had with FWA at the dog park earlier this year. We were deep in the gorge, looking up at this bluff I was running on this morning. I said, this summer, when I’m training for the marathon, I want to run up there. And I am!
1 Day in August
Bummer! As I write this, I received an email from Open Swim. It’s cancelled tonight because there are blue-green algae blooms at one of the Cedar Lake beaches. Must be serious if they’re cancelling the swim; usually they just post an advisory and caution club memebers to “swim at your own risk.”
Reading the first verse of Mary Oliver’s poem again, my eyes stopped on among the flux of happenings” and I thought about the floating particles I encounter while swimming in Lake Nokomis. Often I call them my sparkle friends. They are the little bits of sediment or muck or aquatic plant that float in the water in front of me. They sparkle because of shafts of light in the water, and they seem to be in a constant motion of floating at me. I imagine some people might think my friends are gross, but I don’t, and I love the strange, trippy effect they create as I swim through them. I wrote one of my inklings about them:
Particles before buoy 1
Lit by thin shafts of light, they put on a show. Their frenzied disco of shimmer sparkle shake stirs us up.
I like MO’s use of among here — among the flux of happenings. The deepening and quieting of my spirit comes among this flux, these little happenings.
I know I’ve written about “among” before; found it! On 16 may 2025, past Sara wrote a lot of things that are very helpful to present Sara as I think about MO’s use of among!
side note: the more I follow my muse here — and, maybe, my muse is a fish or floating milfoil or a sparkle friend? — the more clear it becomes: this year’s Swimming One Day in August is about engaging in a deeper reading of MO’s words — expanding on meanings, connecting them to her other work, reading thembeside my experiences in the lake.
But, back to among. Here’s what I wrote in my 16 may 2025 entry:
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.
5 aug 2026 Sara, interjecting here: using among to refer to things collectively reminds me of a favorite (and very popular line) from MO in “Wild Geese”:
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
among: your place in the family of things — so, the deepening and quieting of the spirit could be finding one’s place in the world? Where you belong? when you’re in your element? Of course this reading is different from the predominant one in which quieting your spirit among the flux of happenings means being present and calm, not worrying about all the noise around you.
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.
Reading through this past entry, and thinking about MO’s next verse —
Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part —
I remembered MO’s words in another of her poems:
I Go Down To The Shore/ Mary Oliver
I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall– what should I do? And the seas says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
Here the sea doesn’t hold her until she grows easy or tell her what she should do, but they (the sea is they, because the sea is not an it) offer a suggestion, find your place in the family of things, do the work you were meant to do.
And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe–that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself, out of work and love, a handsome life.
Upstream/ Mary Oliver
I use this passage in the introduction to my “How to Be” project on my Undisciplined site.
an idea: Perhaps I should revisit Upstream and Long Life. I own both of them. Also, how about another read through of The Leaf and the Cloud?
Warm again this morning. Humid, too. Not easy to run, but still nice to be outside and breathing air that wasn’t that smoky. I was planning to run through the grounds of the veterans home and over the tall bridge then to the falls, but the bridge was closed, so I had to adjust my route. No bridge, no John Stevens’ house, no Big Feet statue or falls. Instead, I ran through Wabun, over to the edge of Minnehaha park, then back north on the river road.
Mostly I ran for 2 minutes then walked for 45 seconds. I listened to the audio book, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. I saw a regular, Skirt with Sandals. Like I mentioned the last time I wrote about her, she no longer wears sandals, but running shoes. Should I rename here? Anything else? I don’t recall seeing the river or hearing any rowers. No turkey sightings. I did see one roller skier and heard their poles clicking the paved path. And I ran, carefully, over some acorns scattered across the sidewalk.
a word I’ve learned before but forgot: mondegreen
Returning to my poem-of-the-day practice, which I haven’t done for some time, I encountered a word that looked familiar but that I couldn’t remember the meaning of: mondegreen. It’s the title of Poetry Daily’s poem for today.
Mondegreen: “a word or phrase that results from a mishearing especially of something recited or sung” (Merriam Webster).
origins: from the mishearing in a Scottish ballad of “laid him on the green” as “Lady Mondegreen”
example: Up until a few years ago, I always the heard the line, what are we doing here?, from “Grease” as what do we do in PE?
I mentioned mondegreens to Scott and he offered up his favorite:
From “The Heart of Rock and Roll” from Huey Lewis and the News: Scott heard the old boy may be barely breathing as the oboe may be barely breathing.
Mondegreen/Bobby Elliott
I mistake the sound of a recycling cart hitting the curb for the latch of our gate and picture him instantly: my father stumbling into the light of the backyard to shoot himself. I’d been looking at the fruit trees and the fire pit, the loose board of the old fence in the wind. I’d been thinking of how lost you’d have to be to believe you knew everything there was to know about yourself. And now this sound I mistake for my father going through with it: one awful letter in his coat pocket to me, another to my unborn son.
Reading an interview with the poet, I discovered that this book is autobiographical and about his father, but that father is “very much alive.” This fact offers an interesting shift in meaning for me, like something new clicking into place. But, more than the father, I’m interested in the idea of mishearing, mis-imagining, mis-seeing, mis-interpreting. It reminds me of something I’ve posted on here a few times (26 jan 2025 / 22 feb 2026):
The Ten Muses of Poetry
Mishearing
Misunderstanding
Mistranslating
Mismanaging
Mislaying
Misreading
Misappropriating cliches
Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
Mississippi (the river)
And, here’s a line from a scientific study using mondegreens: “Expectations and prior knowledge can strongly influence our perception.” How does that impact what I see and what I hear?
Also, this passage from the same study:
An elegant method to examine top-down modulation of perception is to employ stimuli which can induce two concurring percepts which has been extensively employed in vision research using reversible figures, such as Rubin’s vase-face illusion [8]. So far, much less is known about how expectations can alter perception in the auditory modality. For speech content, such ambiguous stimuli that can be perceived in two different ways are called ‘slips of the ear’ which have been described as phenomena during which ‘a listener reports hearing, as clearly and distinctly as any correctly perceived stretch of speech, something that does not correspond to the speaker’s actual utterance’.
Slips of the ear reminds me of something else I read in the 22 feb 2026 entry about squinting with your ears:
A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.
swim: 2 loops (6 mini mini loops) cedar lake open swim 86 degrees / wind: 16 mph
Windy, which made the water choppy. So choppy that the lifeguards couldn’t use the buoys and needed to shorten the course. Instead of swimming from beach to beach, we swam out into the middle of the lake and turn around near a lifeguard at a kayak. That might be some of the choppiest water I’ve ever swum in. I wonder how it compares to mild chop on Lake Superior or an ocean?
10 Things
bobbing green caps
bright yellow orange pink buoys
the water’s surface was corrugated (a word Anne Carson used to describe a lake she swam in)
a swimmer returning from the middle, doing a powerful backstroke — not looking or able to see where he was going — just swinging his arms, chopping the water — did he run into anyone?
a strong spray from behind — waves crashing into me?
so many scratchy vines floating in the water — one got stuck on my back and I had to stop to fling it off
a pale blue sky, a few patches of bright blue
a group of women in the shallow water in the swimming area — chanting and taking pictures — a party? a cult meeting? a religous ceremony?
leaking goggles
breathing mostly on my right side
A vigorous rocking as I swam. Between that delightful distraction and the constant need to look out for other swimmers and to find the turn around point, I didn’t think about Mary Oliver’s poem at all. Only after, did I realize I was living one of her verses:
I went down in the afternoon to the sea, which held me until I grew easy.
Yes, that lake water this late afternoon/early evening held me and rocked me, helping me to forget any worries or irritations I had. The water was rough, but not overwhelming. No waves rushing into my mouth when I breathed at the wrong time, just swells nudging me from side to side. Fun!
8 miles ford + hidden falls loop 68 degrees / humidity: 87%
That was hard! I had wanted to run 10 miles, but the route I took was a lot shorter, my legs were tired, and the sun was hot, so I only did 8. Good enough for me today. I ran the first mile without stopping, then 2 min run / 45 seconds walk for most of the rest. After listening for Shadow Falls, 15 minutes in, I put in my headphones and listened to an audiobook I recently checked out, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It’s a great book to listen to while running: a good distraction.
10 Things
running up the hill above the ravine, hearing the water falling at shadow falls
another running passing me, then the sour smell of someone working hard
a peloton on the road — a dozen riders
a big group of shirtless runners: 20 or so? a college cross country team?
encountering many runners (most) approaching me, running the other direction
a sour, sharp smell near the overlook at hidden falls — from the creek water?
so much sweat — my shoulders were soaked
baby turkeys! near the 44th street parking lot, grazing in the grass
a boisterous group of runners — 5 or 6 women laughing
Patches of mud and some felled trees — because of yesterday’s rain and occasional strong wind?
No roller skiers, no geese, no bugs, no acorns underfoot — usually the acorns begin falling at the end of July. When will they fall this year? (update, a few hours later: Scott and I took Delia the dog on a short walk and, at the end of the block, acorns on the sidewalk!)
Before starting my run, the line from Mary Oliver’s “Swimming One Day in August” popped into my head — it is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit. I imagined this deepening and quieting as an inner stillness. I hoped to think about that as I ran, but I was too distracted my the heat, my legs, and the effort.
So far, I’ve heard 2 hours (out of almost 12) of the audio book, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. It’s about two friends, Sadie and Max, who love playing and making video games. I’ve haven’t read the summary and don’t know that much about the book, but I’m assuming they make some big video game together. Do they fall in love, too? The first video game Sadie makes in her seminar at MIT is called EmilyBlaster and it involves pen-as-gun that shoots out the words of Emily Dickinson poems. Nice. I looked it up, and the game actually exists online, EmilyBlaster. I tried playing it. Admittedly, with my bad vision and limited gaming skills, I sucked, but it was pretty cool. The first poem was “I felt a Funeral in my Brain,” which I memorized a few years back. It felt strange to try and shoot these words as I recited them in my head. I can’t believe I’ve never heard about this video game before.
EmilyBlaster is one of Sadie Green’s earliest games, and one of the first games I invented for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow as well. It’s the simplest game in the book, and I needed it to be convincingly something a clever college student might be able to make on limited resources and time in the 1990s. The game was inspired by the poetry of Emily Dickinson and by edutainment games of the 1980s, like Math Blaster! I liked the slight subversiveness of making a game where the object was to shoot poetry, and I thought that Emily Dickinson’s compact verse style and memorable phrasings would make for perfect targets.
More on echolocation and bells and bioregionalism. I recalled something I’d heard about earlier in the year. Here’s what I wrote at the end of my entry for 9 jan 2026:
Working on a tiny (24 word) poem tentatively titled bio-regionalism, and I was thinking about something I recalled hearing from Stanley Tucci in his series on regions in Italy and their food: he said that a region/neighborhood was/is defined by anyone who was in earshot of that neighborhood’s church bells. I looked it up and found this helpful definition and video from Rick Steves. The term is campanilismo:
During Tuscany’s medieval and Renaissance prime, this region was a collection of feuding city-states dominated by rich families. To this day, Tuscans remain fiercely loyal to their home community, and are keenly aware of subtle differences between people from different cities, towns, and villages. (Italians have a wonderful word for this: campanilismo, meaning that a community consists of the people within earshot of its bell tower — campanile.)
I love this idea of defining a community, your home-place, by its bells. My bells are the bells of St. Thomas, just across the river.
And here’s the poem:
Defining a Neighborhood
It begins from the ground up with feet following, and ends when ears listening can no longer hear the bells.
It needs some work! I’d like to include it in Echolocation — should it be a separate poem, or should I add in some lines in my opening poem, Listen, where I first introduce the bells?
Hot, so hot! And hard, especially when I was running in the sun, which was a lot of the time. As I neared the monument, I could hear shadow falls — it hasn’t rained in several days, where is that falling water coming from? I also heard construction workers working on a huge house (the U of M President’s house that Gov. Walz was living in while they repaired the governor’s mansion) on the river road and a carolina wren calling, cheeseburger cheeseburger or tea kettle tea kettle. I decided on cheeseburger because I like cheeseburgers, but not tea. I passed by a small break in the trees and saw a flash of white — was it a plastic bag or a white cat? On my return trip I wondered what I’d see: nothing. A few options: either someone picked up the bag or I saw something that wasn’t there or it was an animal and that animal moved. Another thought: maybe it was a possum? I didn’t hear any rowers or roller skiers or fragments of conversation. On the bridge, I stopped at the overlook to study the surface of the water. Tiny scales or corrugation. No sparkle spots, but small waves moving upstream. I also looked at the texture of the green leaves; it was giving me broccoli vibes.
Before I started running again, I turned on my color playlist and heard the line from “Bein’ green”:
It’s not that easy bein’ green Having to spend each day The color of the leaves
*
It’s not easy bein’ green It seems you blend in With so many other ordinary things And people tend to pass you over ‘Cause you’re not standing out Like flashy sparkles in the water
As I walked the final blocks back to my house, a phrase appeared in my head, not moving through but moving in. Not passing through a place, but dwelling in it. Before my run, I had been thinking about echolocation and navigation and what it means to be located in/by a place. I started thinking about Lorine Niedecker and an article I read about her ecopoetics as dwelling with place. With — I had misremembered it as in, but now I want to add moving with a place to my thinking about being located in space and time. Hearing this phrase, moving with a place, makes me think of Juliana Spahr and breathing and the space around everyone with lungs.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 87 degrees
Choppy water! A storm is moving in, I think. It might rain all day tomorrow — I hope not. I want to do open swim tomorrow morning and/or run. The water was rough all the way through, from above to below. The feeling of an undertow, waves, getting rocked roughly. It was so choppy that one of the green buoys kept moving around. I’m not sure what was happening — was it the wind or lifeguard error — but as I swam towards buoy 2, I saw that buoy 4 was right next to it, and on the wrong side: close to the left instead of far to the right. I kept swimming towards the little beach and didn’t worry about it. A few minutes later, I neared the 4th buoy, now in place, or I thought it was in place, but as I kept swimming towards it, it wasn’t getting closer but farther away. Then I realized what was happening; the lifeguards were dragging it. I finally gave up on trying to swim around the far edge of it and just cut in towards the big beach. Chaos! It was fun to swim in the chaos and the choppy waves, but it was also tiring. And, my goggles were fogging up, which made it even more challenging to try and sight anything. I decided 2 loops was enough for me.
I did a lot of breathing every 5 and every 6 with some every 3 or every 4. I can’t remember what color the water was, but I do remember seeing bubbles around my hands. The milfoil seemed to be thickening again near the far white buoy. Bummer.
A little cooler this morning. The AQI wasn’t that high, but there must have been some smoke in the air because the spots of light on the path looked pinkish-orange. A steady run. Felt strong, sweat a lot.
10 Things
rowers’ voices, down below
click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles hitting the sidewalk
running parallel with another runner — I was on the paved path, they were on the dirt trail near folwell
2 women sitting on the curb at the top of the locks and dam hill — taking a break after doing a hill workout? waiting for someone? just sitting and talking?
running under the east river road at hidden falls, listening to the creek water rushing down then over hidden falls — what creek is this again? looked it up: Hidden Falls Creek — but, actually, it’s not a creek but a stream of storm water*
minneapolis park workers, mowing the grass beside the trail, stopping and waiting for me to pass
the smell of freshly cut grass
the river, below me on the ford bridge: flat and still and empty
spots of sunlight on the trail, stained orangish-pink
dust or smoke, stirred up by work they were doing at the old power plant near the locks and dam
*When I looked up the name of the creek at Hidden Falls, I found a Hidden Falls Resource Management Plan from 2004 and this description:
Today, Hidden Falls Regional Park encompasses 130 acres andn1.6 miles of shoreline and is an important natural area within the Mississippi River Corridor Critical Area and the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area. It is an oasis of floodplain forest along the Mississippi River visited by local residents and visitors using the park’s trails throughout the year. Visitors utilizethe park for hiking, fishing, running, bicycling, dog walking, birdwatching, wildflower watching, picnics, and boating. The park is a significant stopover place for migrating songbirds and waterfowl traversing the Mississippi Flyway. The park also serves as an outflow for storm water from adjacent neighborhoods north and west of the park via storm sewers that end in the bluffs along the park’s eastern edge.
And here’s a description of where I ran as I followed the creek to an overlook of the falls:
For decades, Hidden Falls has been a nearly inaccessible trickle dripping out of a culvert behind the Ford Plant in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. Bounded by a tight curve in the Mississippi River Boulevard (MRB), the falls offered visitors two options: a steep climb down crumbling limestone stairs or a rocky hike up from the Hidden Falls Park picnic pavilion.
This month, with the opening of a new tunnel and walkway under MRB, a new viewing platform and the partial daylighting of Hidden Falls Creek, the falls are ready to be discovered by many more visitors.
Originally, Hidden Falls Creek was fed by a natural spring located near Cleveland Avenue and Ford Parkway. The creek above the falls was buried into a culvert sometime in the past century during the development of Highland Park. Now, the falls are connected to a whole new source of water via the Highland Bridge development’s massive stormwater management system, creating a consistent flow of water over the falls.
A creek, daylighted! Reading a little further in the article, I found a video from Dr. Greg Brick (I’ve read and enjoyed his great book, Subterranean Twin Cities) at the site as they were working on it a few years ago:
the video ends with a useful note: the only parts of the site that originated with the WPA are the fire pits. The steps came later.
It was cool to watch this video and think about it the history of where I ran this morning. It’s easy to not notice or reflect on the spaces you’re moving through. Now, five years later, the evidence of the planning and the labor done to create the path under the road, the overlook on the edge, and the daylighted creek are hidden to those not giving attention.
echoes
Thinking about the daylighted creek and the work done to restore/open up the area around Hidden Falls, I’m wondering about echoes beyond the definition of sound bouncing off an object and returning to a listener. Echo as trace, vestige, evidence of what came before. My collection of poems is filled with traces/evidence of what was/is there before me: countless other living things, human and non-human. I am not alone.
Echolocation is a practical tool for navigation; using echoes/changes in sound to gain a sense of the terrain — hearing where a tree or a car or a drop-off is. I use sound in this way to supplement (enhance?) my weak central vision. But echolocation, as in, locating the echoes-as-traces-as-evidence-as-proof that others are there or have been there, is also important to me.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 87 degrees AQI: 70
3 loops! No pain in my shoulder! No panicking in the middle of the lake! Only a near foot cramp at the end of loop 3 and misjudging where buoy 4 was on the first loop. A good swim. I felt strong and steady and mostly breathed every 5. There were a few patches of cold water but also patches of very warm, almost hot, water. It was 100 degrees yesterday, so that must have hotted up the lake. It was crowded — on the course, all around the beach, at Painted Turtle. I saw my sparkle friends, noticed that the water was a pale green, felt something touch my toe (a fish, I think). Heard sloshing water and other swimmers chatting near the final buoy; I was treading water to assess my cramped foot.
Overheard: one swimmer to another near the 5th buoy — I feel like I was all over that course!
Overhear: one swimmer to another, on the beach — what do you do if you can’t quite do another loop? I wish there was a half loop option!
The sky was a pale blue with a few clouds. There were kayaks and paddle boarders and a few menacing swans on the edge. No sail boat — probably because there was hardly any wind.
Swimming one day in August is coming and I think I’m ready for it!
3.35 miles wabun hill and back 68 degrees wind: 15 mph / gusts: 26mph AQI: 50
Woke up feeling bad. Sore throat, a little stuffed up, sore/achy, out of it. Both FWA and Scott have felt this way too. We could be sick — covid? — but most likely, it’s the smoke and bad air quality from the weekend. Mine could also be caused by HRT, at least the achiness. Hopefully I will fell better soon. Yes, I am whining a little because I dislike sore throats and feeling out of it, but mostly I’m writing about feeling sick for future Sara to read in a few months or years.
note: Future Sara here — one day later, that is — after a covid test, we’re pretty sure it’s just the wildfire smoke that is causing this. A rough night and a difficult morning. I write more about it in my 22 july 2026 entry.
It’s hard to feel too bad when it’s so nice outside. Cooler and fresher. A breeze, a lower AQI. I decided I couldn’t waste this weather, so I went out for a run. I also thought it might make me feel better, which it both did and didn’t. Ran south on the trail to the locks and dam, then up the wabun hill. Stopped at the top to look out at the river. All I can remember is thinking that it was higher than it had been. Ran down the hill, then back north on the trail. Listened to my “Plastic Fantastic” playlist but don’t remember much of what I heard, other than this line from Lady Gaga in “Plastic Doll,” I’m no toy for a real boy, and these from AQUA’s “Barbie Girl,” You’re my doll, rock’n’roll, feel the glamour in pink/ Kiss me here, touch me there, hanky panky. “Barbie Girl” is such a terrible song.
10 Things
the bright purplish lights of a bike approaching
a group of 5 or 6 bikers, chatting loudly, biking on the road and backing up cars
Regular, 1: waving to Santa Claus!
Regular, 2: passing Skirt with Sandals — she wasn’t wearing hiking sandals, but running shoes!
a group of women, walking together down the locks and dam hill
a man with a fancy camera on the walking side of the pedestrian bridge, taking pictures of the ravine
a woman, looking down at her phone, standing in the middle of the path
3 people standing on the sidewalk, talking, completely blocking the entrance
adjusting my cap so it wouldn’t blow off in the wind
peering through the green on the way up the Wabun hill: before you pass under ford bridge, some rock face, deep in the shadows, then dirt, then grass
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 78 degrees (air) / 82 (water) AQI: 77
Was feeling crappy all day, but Scott really wanted to go over to the lake and I didn’t want to miss an opportunity to swim (who knows what the AQI will be tomorrow), so we went. I’m glad we did. A good swim, much better than the run. I felt strong and confident and happy to be in the water. It was choppy with little swells rolling in behind me as I neared the third buoy. And more waves in the back stretch.
overheard, swimmer 1: it’s not too bad out here. the wind has calmed down. swimmer 1: don’t say that, you’ll jinx it! *the wind picks up* swimmer 2: see what you did — you ruined it for all the swimmers! (laughter from both of them)
I was committed to only swimming one loop. Between the choppy water, me being a little out of it, and my still sore shoulder, I didn’t want to overdo it. Hopefully I can swim more at the end of the week and next week.
The water was more blue green tonight. I think I saw bubbles, but no silver flashes. now menacing swans or clueless kayaks or drifting sailboats. I don’t remember seeing any birds or planes or dragonflies. No squeaks or leaks from my new nose plug.
4.6 miles locks and dam / wabun hill / veterans home / falls 76 degrees / dew point 72 AQI: 70
Hot! So much sweat! Sun. The air was thick but not smoky. I’ll take it. Yesterday, while I was swimming, Scott ran around the lake once, which is not quite 3 miles. The AQI was almost double at 137. Last night his throat started burning, like swallowing acid, he said, and his throat closed up a little. He thinks it’s because of the high AQIand that he breathes only through his mouth when he runs. I thought about what happened while I was running and noticed how I was breathing in through my nose and out through my mouth. It’s all of my rhythmic breathing, I think: In 2 3 / Out 2.
I listened to my Plastic Fantastic playlist. I was particularly struck by The Sugercube’s “Dear Plastic,” so I looked up the lyrics:
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon te-te-te-terylene
made of atoms by tender fingers and determined heads of inventors tickling perfection
p-p-p-plastic r-r-r-rayon
I was born aeons ago before anything human was known my friends the alchemists told me everything was natural and always will be that way and possible to make gold from dirt
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon
dear plastic be proud don’t imitate anything you’re pure, pure, pure
p-p-p-plastic n-n-n-nylon
I believed I was their dustbin for knowledge took everything and digested of course I became big, big and really really strong
today I’m old and withering away my friends the alchemists long disappeared into dust I no longer get anything fruity no longer gold made from dirt the only thing I get is spacefood on a tray
p-p-p-plastic p-p-p-plastic p-p-p-plastic…
As I was walking the last few blocks after I finished running, I thought about Elastigirl from Pixar’s The Incredibles and how her superpower is the ability to stretch and transform into (almost) any shape she wants or needs and then return to her original shape. Plastic can make new shapes without returning to the original shape. I looked up, “elasticity vs. plasticity” and found this:
Objects deform when pushed, pulled, and twisted. Elasticity is the measure of the amount that the object can return to its original shape after these external forces and pressures stop.
The opposite of elasticity is plasticity; when something is stretched, and it stays stretched, the material is said to be plastic (source).
AQI (1:00pm): 45 AQI (4:40pm):61
swim: 1 loop (2 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim 88 degrees AQI (5:30pm): 61
I would have loved to swim more loops, but it was warm and windy and my shoulder started hurting near the end of the first loop. A bummer, but at least I was able to swim for almost 30 minutes in the lake. No terrible air quality. I am grateful for any chance to swim.
The vibe was very cedar lake, with the disgusting, almost totally filled porta potty with no toilet paper, randos swimming out the buoy and getting in the way of swimmers — watch out! — and open swim club members swimming as close to or as far from the buoy as they wanted, occasionally crossing the path of swimmers going the other way.
The water was green with notes of yellow and opaque. I was able to see a few of my bubble friends, but nothing else. No fish or milfoil or sparkle friends. I don’t think I ever see sparkle friend here — not the sediment sparkles under water or the glittery sparkles on the surface.
added the next day: I wanted to replicate the color of the water with my plastics, but didn’t have time last night. I’m not sure either of these quite capture the mix of (mostly) green with some yellow:
123
1: back of cukes plastic bag held close to the window 2: back of cukes plastic bag held far from the window 3: a square of a yogurt container covered with seltzer water shards
I think 2 is too yellow. I think there’s a section of 3, on the right side, that might best capture my memory of the water. I also like the overall color of 1.
Another hot morning. Another successful run. Not fast, but steady. Mostly running with some walking. 2 Regulars sightings: Santa Claus and the walker that always wears a skirt and sandals — I feel like I named her, but I can’t remember what. I checked the log and I have mentioned the woman wearing sandals and a skirt 3 times, but have never named her. I think I’ll call her Skirt with Sandals, which is a reference to a phrase we’ve (Scott, RJP, FWA, and me) used many times over the years: socks with sandals. It’s from the show within a Disney show: So Random in “Sonny with a Chance.” I used to unironically wear socks with sandals frequently.
I heard the far off echo of workers hammering something, trickling water, the click and clacking of roller skiers’ poles above me. As the skiers passed me, I heard 2 of them discussion “Love Island.” At least one of them didn’t like the show. I’ve never watched it, but RJP was very invested in this most recent season which ended earlier this week.
In Hawaiʻi, you often hear the term “island time,” referring to the slow pace that pervades the culture here. But for me, standing on land just a few hundred years old, island time is a reminder that this is a place in the process of being both made and unmade. Here in ʻĀhihi, there are barely any trees—the soil still thin atop the hardened rivers of basalt and scoria. Not enough time has passed to erode these sharp and porous remnants into dirt. Yet in that short stretch of centuries, between that time and this one, the island has changed irrevocably. When I began snorkeling, I was warned there was little left to see on Maui, most reefs dead and dying—a result of rampant tourism, overfishing, commercial runoff, and warming waters.
island time — land just a few hundred years old — I’m thinking about lake time and how lake nokomis only celebrated its 100th birthday in 2014 (see: 12 july 2025). Before that it was marshy land — wider and shallower. 100 years is the approximate time it takes for a human-made lake (nokomis was a marsh, dredged, made into a lake) to act like a natural like
“I settle into my liminal position, turning my back to the earth as I know it: the solid ground under my feet replaced by weightlessness. I trespass into this unknown world—below me, I feel how time itself has turned the stone to sand. At last, I cross the threshold with my entire body.“
“I am held in the veil between these worlds that are each, astonishingly, part of this place that we call Earth. Within minutes, my cells acclimate to the cool buoyancy. I am carried away from everything I know. As I kick out, the mechanisms of my movement grow more and more effortless. Anything heavy or painful drains from me. In the water, I am held—a child rocked in a mother’s arms. My body moves differently here, swaddled and swept in the cadence of waves, alongside all the creatures who share this space. . . .”
“I am flying now—a wingless bird gazing down, seeing the universe anew. Like Icarus, I feel the warmth of the sun against my back. Between realms, I face an ecosystem nothing like my own.”
seeing the universe anew — in the ocean, everything might be clear and vivid below, but in lake nokomis, and with my bad eyes, everything is murky, muddled, felt in the briefest of flashes.
“Beneath the inscrutable blue-black mirror of the water’s surface lies this universe in technicolor. “
What is the color of the lake water? As part of my plastics project, I’m gathering the colors of the water that I see when I swim. The plastics project = keeping as much of the plastic that my family uses for visual poetry projects — produce bags, seltzer water bottles, ziploc baggies, miscellaneous. packaging, T Joes’ pasta/rice bags. Here are the colors I’ve collected so far in greens and blues. (The lake is usually much moregreen than blue.)
plastic origins, from top left to bottom right: granola bag, little cukes bag, russet potato bag, Trader joe’s pasta bag, bottle of olive oil, bottle of seltzer water, squash bag
Are these all “green”? I see them that way. The bright green of the upper center is what the water looks like when a blue-green algae bloom is present. Last night’s warm and stirred up water at cedar lake resembles the brownish yellowy green in the lower left. Number 2 and 3 in the bottom row are shards from bottles, while the rest are bags, only colored on one side.
lake nokomis blue
plastic origins, from top left, top right, bottom: Trader Joes’ rice bag, shards of the locks from ziploc baggies, Trader Joes’ pasta bag. I don’t think I ever seen the lake water look like this below the surface, but above, when it’s sunny and I’m looking at it from the right angle: blue, often with purple vibes.
Scott asked me what I plan to do with these colors. I’m not sure yet, but I know it will be part of something that expresses how I see color and how color works in a city lake that resides in a lake city that prioritizes access for everyone and that is working hard to keep the lake and its people safe and healthy in the midst of a climate crisis (almost apocalypse?).
Once I gather more colors that fit, I could create some visual poem to place beside this poem, which is in by chapbook, Inklings:
Fish 3 between buoys 3 and 4
The fish in us escape. They flash and streak and leap, then return to bubble whisper the names of water’s colors.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim air: 96 degrees water: 84 degrees
Hooray! 2 (almost) pain-free loops at lake nokomis open swim! Before it started, I was able to talk with 2 other swimmers about how much we love open swim. They were a little older than me — 5 or 10? years — and just as enthusiastic about the water.
10 Things
2 girls — older high schoolers or in college? — flirting with 2 guys at Painted Turtle: loud, awkward giggles
a guy playing guitar, accompanied by a recording — I know I enjoyed 2 of his songs, even danced to one, but I can only remember the other — an instrumental “Careless Whispers”
very choppy water — not the type of waves that put up a fair fight, that you can punch, but the ones that unsettle, disorient, jostle
swallowing a wave of water, which made me more careful about when and where I breathed and stroked
1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left
a very LOUD metallic buzz beneath the surface — somewhere someone was doing something that was causing this noise — was it a boat? a machine drilling somewhere?
slosh slap
bubble friends!
being routed by lifeguards when I swam too wide of an angle
the first orange buoy was almost in the middle of the lake — maybe the farthest I’ve ever seen it
The water was opaque and the color was somewhere between these 2 colors:
4 miles river road, north/south 85 degrees / dew point: 72
Last night, I planned to do my run early in the morning, but when I woke up it was already hot so Scott and I decided to walk and get coffee instead. As we walked back on the river road trail, we realized that it didn’t feel too terrible. There was shade and a breeze and the humidity was lower. When we got home, we both changed, then went out for runs — I went at 10:15, Scott at 10:40. I was surprised at how fine I felt. I was hot, but I didn’t feel like I would faint or get heat stroke; I just felt like I was working hard. No anxiety about it — a mental victory! Was it because of my HRT patch? Possibly.
Almost all of my route was in the shade, which was by design; I wouldn’t have been able to run in this heat with direct sun. I encountered many walkers, a few bikers, 1 or 2 other runners, 2 big groups of kids — one on bikes, one on foot.
I listened to my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist. I told Scott later that I was trying to manifest shade. It worked.
10 Things
dappled light, jagged patterns of light on the trail
kids on bikes in bright yellow vests
2 bikers stopped near the trail, recovering or fixing something on their bikes after climbing the franklin hill
no bugs — no swarms of gnats encircling my face or single gnats trying to swim in my eye juice
the crack north of the trestle is still blocked off — this stretch had the most sun
passing a walker on the path in flip flops, near the rowing club — did they just finish rowing? probably
a scooter on the edge of the trail, but not far enough on the edge — if I hadn’t been paying attention, I could have tripped over it
air quality is good — no smoke from colorado fires this year!
bright blue sky
a flushed face, sweat-soaked shirt
swim: 1.5 loops (3 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 95 degrees
Wow, the water was warm! As another swimmer said to me, it’s like bath water. I tried to remember that and not swim too hard. Hot air temp + hot water temp = hot Sara, with no chance to cool down. No worries. I swam slow and steady. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. By the 3rd loop, I had increased my strokes: 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 breathe left
Great news: My shoulder didn’t hurt at all on the first loop, and it hardly hurt on loops 2 and 3, and now, an hour later, it doesn’t hurt at all. Hooray!
Not so great news: I sacrificed my other new nose plug to the lake. Treading water at the end of loop one, trying to adjust my nose plug and unfog my googles, the nose plug fell down into the murky depths. Oh well. These nose plugs were slightly too big: I had to adjust them almost every loop. Time to go back to the slightly more expensive ($7 instead of $2) nose plugs. I wish I could find the exact one that I’ve been wearing for more than 5 years, but they’re always changing things, making them “better,” and I don’t think they make the exact one I have now.
The water was calm on the way to Hidden beach, rough on the way back. It was also yellow and murky. I saw some of my bubble friends but no silver flashes. I got tangled up in a few floating vines, had to stop swimming as clueless paddle boarders crossed the swimming course.
images of the day: the wide arc of some swimmers on the other side of the loop, swimming back. What I saw: some splashes, a few caps, buoys, the idea of a curved line. Also, the occasional swimmer, swimming down the middle, or crossing over to swim in the wrong direction. All these swimmers — their elbows and white foam and buoys — looked so far away. Distance is distorted in and on the water.
3.9 miles wabun hill and back 67 degrees / humidity: 87%
An early-ish run. Started at 7:45. If I had run earlier, the temperature would have been a few degrees cooler, but the humidity and dew point would have been higher. Which is worse, higher temp or higher dew point? Dew point, I think. I’ll have to test it out — if I can get up earlier!
For the past month or so, I’ve been struggling with my feet and ankles. I’ve tried a few different pairs of shoes to see if any of them were better. This week — on Tuesday and today — I went back to my Brooks Ghosts. They seem to be working better. Today I realized (or remembered?) to put my laces through the extra holes at the top of the shoe. I think I had tried this early on with these shoes, but it felt too tight, then. It worked!
10 Things
gobble gobble gobble a turkey calling out from a tree in turkey hollow
a bike rushing past me on the wabun hill
an older man and woman stopped at the bottom of the locks and dam hill
thwack thwack the chain from the flag hitting the flag pole
a few bits of glitter on the surface of the river under the ford bridge
the older man and woman halfway up the hill, each of them dragging a tire
almost all benches were empty
stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial bench for a quick view of the river and to retie my shoe
the wabun hill was covered in wet dirt — a little slippery when descending it
a woman standing on the edge of the trail, looking out somewhere, taking a picture of something
strong shoulders
Open swim tonight, but no Sara swimming. It’s a bummer, but I know that it’s a very bad idea to try and swim with my sore shoulder, My favorite, self-proclaimed “best PTs in the world,” Bob and Brad have some exercises for me to try in the next couple of days:
run: 4.1 miles monument and back 70 degrees humidity: 87% / dew point: 68
More uncomfortably warm conditions. Difficult, but doable. I did my run/walk plan: 5/1 (mile 1) — 1.5/.5 (miles 2-4). My feet didn’t hurt that much, and I had a lot of energy, especially in my legs, at the end of the run. I’ll take that as a victory. I listened to my striking feet and dripping water (shadow falls) and the st. thomas bells for the first half, Olivia Rodrigo for the second.
10 Things
St. Thomas bells — faint and short, 8:45, I think
rowers!, 1: on the way to st. paul, crossing the lake street bridge, 2 double rowing shells in the blueish gray water
rowers!, 2: on the way back to minneapolis, crossing the lake street bridge, 4 6-man rowing shells + the white boat with the coxswain
coxswain to rowers: okay and stop. good job!
overcast — a gray sky — is it going to rain? no: soon, sun
the dreamy reflection of clouds on the pale blue gray river
the path near shadow falls: cracked, cratered, ridged — dangerous!
at the top of the shadow falls hill, passing an adult and a kid wearing a backpack — summer school?
honk honk
near the beginning: a woman walking with a dog, holding the leash too loose, the dog licking my leg — sunday, I didn’t mind; today I did
swim: 1 loop lake nokomis open swim 81 degrees
Written the next morning. Almost perfect conditions. Smooth, warm water, not too crowded, overcast. For the first half of the loop, I felt strong and relaxed, but sometime not long after I rounded the third buoy, my right shoulder started to hurt. It was difficult to lift my arm. Ouch. When I reached the final green buoy, I stopped and rested for a few minutes in the beach area. I tried to swim again. Nope. I had to stop. A big bummer. I think I could have swum 5 loops tonight in this water.
Looked it up in the middle of the night (which might seem like a bad idea, but didn’t make me any less able to sleep) and it’s probably swimmer’s shoulder, caused by overuse. Swimmer’s shoulder is a common injury. I’m hoping that taking the rest of the week off will be enough to make it better. The silver lining: I still have more than half of the season left, so I should be able to swim again.
run: 11 miles ford loop + veterans home + lake nokomis (x2) 66 degrees humidity: 92% dew point: 60+
I did it! It was humid and hot in the sun and my feet started hurting by mile 4, but I did it! I ran through the neighborhood, then over the lake street bridge, up shadow falls’ hill, past the monument and (mostly) up the east side of the river. I crossed the ford bridge, went through wabun park to the veterans’ home, crossed over another bridge, ran on the edge of the park, then beside minnehaha creek. When I reached Lake Nokomis, I had to run around it twice.
10 Things
teakettle teakettle — a carolina wren
a single rowing shell on the river
from the bridge, the water looked fuzzy, the air above it hazy
just past the monument, I heard the St. Thomas bells — I think it was 7:30
mostly dry dirt, or slightly damp earth on the desire path beside the paved trail — one spot was squishy mud and I almost twisted my ankle on it
cloudy then sunny then shade then sun and sun and sun then shade
someone on the other side of the mustache bridge, running and pushing a stroller, blasting some upbeat music that I didn’t recognize
the creek water is high! I especially noticed that as I ran over my favorite part of the trail
a woman with a dog — she wasn’t holding the leash tight enough and the dog leaned over and licked my knee as I ran by (surprisingly, I didn’t care)
running and walking over the cedar bridge, looking down at the water’s surface: a soft gray blue with reflections of clouds
For more than half of the run, I listened to the birds and my feet and the sloshing water in my handheld water bottle. Near the falls, I put in “Olivia Rodrigo Essentials.” Even though I’ve turned it off many times before, apple music was still set to fading songs, which means it took the last few measures of one song and made its beat match the beat of the next song. When this first happened, the last bit of the first song suddenly slowed, sounding so strange that I was worried I might be having heat stroke. Why does Apple do this? Boo.
3 things to celebrate / 3 things to work on
I kept the negative thoughts away (hooray)
I was able to eat a fig bar during the run and didn’t feel an urgent need to go to teh bathroom (yay)
My legs felt good in the last mile and I had some energy (woo hoo)
My feet hurt for almost half of the run (boo)
My ankles hurt some too — I need to tie my shoes tighter and/or get shoes in a smaller size (bummer)
As is often the case after a hard effort, I was cranky at the end when I met up with Scott (grr)
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
The plan: run to the lake for open swim. Scott would bring my bag with my stuff. I wanted to do at least one loop of swimming. I imagined it would be refreshing and restorative for my sore legs. And it was. Wow, that water! Almost perfect. Calm and warm enough. There was milfoil but no blue green algae. As I neared the beach, I could see clumps of the milfoil washed up on shore. Yuck!
The swimming felt easy and relaxing. Steadily, I stroked, breathing every 5 strokes. Occasionally I stopped stroking and listened to the quiet as I tread water. All I could hear was the soft slap of the water from another swimmer’s hand.
Today, I started counting strokes as I passed by the 4th buoy. 275 to get to 5th and final buoy.
A strange feeling: as I swam from buoy 3 to 4, I could see the green buoy up ahead. It seemed like I kept drifting out, almost too far to the left. Trying to correct my path felt strange and awkward. I briefly wondered if there was a current I wasn’t consciously feeling or if my run had made me less able to swim straight.
overheard: one swimmer to another: not many people here this morning! and you don’t have to rush off after we’re done, do you? and the water is wonderful! Except for the weeds!
Today I decided to start at the normal spot, instead of entering at the far end of the swimming area. The weeks were there, and I had to shorten my stroke when I reached them, but they weren’t too bad and didn’t last that long.
Speaking of weeds, I noticed a bad patch just below the cedar bridge when I was running. So thick, just below the surface. Looking brown and orange, then dark dark green.
Today would have been a perfect day to swim 5 loops. And if I hadn’t run for 2 hours before swimming, I would have done it. I wish I could have, but I’m glad I didn’t try. That would have been too much!
added at the end of the day: Even though I ran 11 miles and swam 1.5 miles today (and achieved 300% of my move goal), I don’t feel wiped out or that sore. Only my feet hurt, and that’s because of the warts (yuck!).
earlier today, I was looking through my 5 july entries from past years. I would like to remember some things from them, including:
1 — 2025
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
Shallow water plants getting a foothold. No!
2 — 2024
Because the buoys are positioned by lifeguards every swim — they paddle out on kayaks where they are advised by someone on shore where to drop their anchor — and because there’s no exact spot for each of buoys, the loop distance varies. Today it was long, which I like — the more distance, the better! Here’s a comparison on 3 different 4 loop swims by number of strokes I took / distance (which I’m pretty sure my watch doesn’t measures accurately):
25 june 2024: 2094 strokes / 3100 yards 30 june 2024: 2124 strokes / 3600 yards 5 july 2024: 2374 strokes / 4000 yards
I like how approximate the course is. Some things about it are set, some aren’t.
3 — 2021
Why I do and don’t like Cedar Lake + differences between Nokomis and Cedar Lake (see 23 June 2021). The first time I ever swam at Cedar Lake was 14 August 2019.
4.6 miles veterans home 74 degrees / drizzle? humidity: 89% dew point: 69
Woke up at 6 am to get in a run before it rained, then heard thunder. Bummer. Had to wait until 9. When I left, the sun was coming out but a mile in, the wind picked up. Did it start drizzling or was that just dripping trees? I think it was a little of both.
It was hot and difficult and I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do when I started — 2 miles? 3? — but then I just kept going and it kept feeling a little more doable. Just make it to southern entrance to the Winchell Trail. And, just make it to the locks and dam parking lot. And, just make it to the top of the Wabun hill. Once I got to the top and kept going through Wabun park, there was no turning back, just through the grounds of the Veterans home and over to the falls then north on the river road to home.
10 Wet Things
big puddles on the sidewalk
smaller puddles on the path
muddy ruts
dripping trees
dripping ponytail
soaked shirt
roaring falls
gushing sewer pipe
whooshing wheels
damp face
Early this morning, while making breakfast, I listened to a podcast interview with Moheb Soliman whose book, Homes, I’ve just started reading. Love it! I think I’ll buy this book as a birthday present to myself!
In the interview, the interviewer mentions another poet who I’d also like to check out: Cecily Nicholson. Cecily Nicholson: interview + book, Crowd Source
Also in the interview, Soliman reads several of his poems, including this one:
Great Lake Swamp come heavy-use wetlands: powers of Toledo origin song
Who let this wetland wet / Who cut this little inlet / Laid the hill for golden hours / Fit the logs with the salamanders / Foretold the lichen and the mosses / Who offered the wildlife crossing
Along this promenade I sing / about how the world’s made / my behorned serenade to nobody but
Who wet this aggregate / Who raised this bamboo deck / Who had these grasses mown / Who made the birches grow in groves / Who made this prairie seric1 / Carved out a space for heron
This is my behorned little dirge / I sing along this little bridge / about how this little world’s birthed by no body but
Who left this river wet / Sowed the embankment / Set the grade for the slope of the island / Spawned the minnows to feed the walleye / Who knows the ripples till flood / Who reads teh dried-out flats of mud
About how the world’s mocked up / I sing along this ply boardwalk / This is where the trombones stop
for nobody / By no body but / you local / No melody but vocals / As is / La la / La li / La las / La lis / As is
Who let this wetland wet? I love all of these question about the creating of a place. I frequently think (and ask) about how the paths I run on, the lakes I swim in, were made what they are by people, particularly the city of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Parks. For years, I’ve been studying the documents and the places to find evidence of this creating and shaping.
Before reading the poem, Soliman says this:
And this is a big part of our discourse right now that, you know, humans aren’t separate. I mean, I have a really hard time kind of following that to the end, because I do feel that there’s a profound difference in how much we are able to control and shape that world to the point where we’re not really a part of it in the same organic way that so many other parts of it are, you know, and a lot of the poems like sometimes absurdly, you know, and I mean, I could even read some of those like, but absurdly play with that idea that, you know, we created this place, you know, the hiking trail, like it is actually, it’s not just some natural path.
You know, there’s a lot that has gone into making you feel that you are here at one in a harmonious, quiet moment in the woods or on the lake. And, you know, so our hand is like so strong in those places, and it would be really, like, naive to just write a poem about being out in the woods without also being aware about, of how we came to that place, and how humans are really, uh, yeah, sort of different and yet a part of.
I was prompted to find this interview because I wanted to hear Soliman read his own poems; I hoped that might help me understand the strange spacing of the lines. He addresses this desire directly in the interview:
A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.
Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?
Yet, I still love, like, the wordplay of, like, enjambment, and, uh, so, I came to a point where I thought, well, either all of these have to be these text blocks, or they just all need to go to lineated. And I spent a lot of time, like, reworking so many of them into these text blocks. And at one point I was really terrified that, like, I’ve made the reading experience really hard for people.
I don’t know, because to me, I’m just so familiar with them. They’re really, I see them in my head and I understand how they move, like, you know, orally, you know. So, it’s part of the reason I, like, really appreciate the chance to read them, because I feel like if I can just get my voice into someone’s head about the book, it’ll just make the rest of the experience, you know, easier.
Very helpful to read this, and to hear him read his own poems. The next thing he says is also helpful, and is sparking some new thoughts on (my) forms:
A friend of mine kind of made this interesting point where they sort of, like lakes, like on the page. They just kind of pool there with some like, gaps. And I think she was kind of first saying how the poems have a real flow. And then we were talking about how poems sometimes really feel like rivers, you know, and without really meaning to, I kind of forced these to have a bit more of like a lake, like, you know, here they are, in one place, and there, there’s the pooling, you know, that’s happening.
Oh — I want to think about this some more! How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? They settle, shimmy in place . . . . This question is an excellent one to think about and to go back into my log to find some answers!
a few minutes later: they sink and sour and are stuck, still, stagnant, unstirred. Could it be that lakes, more than oceans or seas or rivers, are about what’s at the bottom, what sinks down, unmoved by currents? Stale and stymied. Layered and sedimented, cyclical – circular
plastic project
Since March, or was it April?, I’ve been collecting the plastic that we use for some unspecified future project. It started with old freezer bags, but expanded to include grapefruit, zucchini, and mini cucumber bags. Now I have sandwich and pita bread bags and the plastic bags that covered the new fan I recently bought. My favorite one: the plastic shell my new googles came in, which looks like another pair of clear goggles.
Definitely in April, I began deconstructing the freezer bags — cutting off the bright blue (zip) locking part, cutting open the clear plastic, then cutting out the white label. Last week, I decided I wanted to use the blue zip lock parts for some sort of visualizing of the lake. Maybe a big map of a lake nokomis loop? My first thought was to connect the strips together with thread or tape, but that didn’t really work. This week, another idea: shred the plastic! I tried to do it in the paper shredder, which would have shredded it almost instantly, but that wasn’t working. So, instead, I’m using my mother-in-law’s old silver scissors and snip snip snipping the strips. This snipping labor is reminding me of the satisfaction I got in the winter from drawing and shading in circle after circle on my New Yorker essays. There is something therapeutic about using my hands in this repetitive task, but also something that encouraged deep, creative thinking. These blue plastic strips are also satisfying to scoop up and sift through my fingers. Will these plastic blue shards become part of my map, or just the process that leads me to that map? Time will tell.
from the zip on a freezer bag to shards of blue lake
As I cut up these little shards, I thought about all the plastic that ends up in the lake and an ocean and my organs and tissues and bodily fluids. Yikes!
As I accumulate more and more plastic I wonder: how can I stop using so much plastic? First step: stop using ziploc bags for storing my half used produce! Make my own bread? What else?
Telling Scott about my shards last night, he suggested trying to (just barely) melt them. In one of my bouts of insomnia I looked it up and found some suggestions, but not for what I wanted. In the various sources, toxic fumes was brought up more than once. Also: homemade shrinky dinks.
They are not the same texture, but I have some great green plastic — from zucchini and cucumber bags, and from the plastic wrap on two olive oil bottles. I’d like to mix some bits of them with the blue and see how that affects the color. Could I melt these together?
swim: 3 loops (6 mini) cedar lake open swim 84 degrees
A calm and warm lake! Wonderful for swimming. I did 6 cedar loops without stopping. or only stopping mid-lake to adjust my nose plug. I noticed orange and pink buoys. Was mine the only yellow one? A few vines wrapped around my head and shoulders as I returned to the first buoy. The water was green-ish. The only fish I encountered were little minnows near shore. My bubble friends trailed below and in front of me.
overheard, one lifeguard to another — I told him he needed to head over to lake nokomis to pick up his swim cap.
A uncapped swimmer was out in the middle of the lake, some more uncapped swimmers were lurking at the far orange buoy.
Anything else? I felt strong and smooth, and often the swimming seemed effortless. Even so, I was glad to be done at the end of the 6th loop.
Hot! And not too terrible. Yesterday morning, walking to a coffee shop in the heat and humidity I felt like I struggled to breathe but today, when it’s almost as hot, I didn’t struggle at all1. As I ran above, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist. Below, I listened to water trickling out of the sewer pipes and the occasional voice and the cars driving by. I noticed puddles and some wet dirt (it briefly rained earlier this morning). I thought about how fast the summer is going by and if I encounter any coyotes or the den that I’ve seen signs about.
No rowers or roller skiers or regulars. No poetry or flashes of inspiration. And that was fine with me. I was relaxed and free and happy to feel how strong my legs and back are, thanks to several weeks of solid swims.
A week or so ago, I discovered Moheb Soliman’s Homes, a collection of poems about the Great Lakes. I requested it from my local library and picked it up on Sunday. Here’s one of the first poems:
from Homes
At Point Pelee–Leamington, Sandusky–Cedar Point / Moheb Soliman
This beach has more than two sides more than the lake and the parking lotmand cultivated and sandwiches farms and kiosked aside it and defies properties I’ve peed behind every sorta flora scared away all kinda fauna I crossed the lines of r&r to bridge the banks of main and head streets and waters I tried myself had myself washed ashore to hamlets faceup the whole time my figure a petty viaduct only shallow beach could love I swam each day I changed myself in the Corolla and diaspored footfalls of mollusky sand all over the motel districts of Canuck Sanduskys where in touch more with nature’s what they are more than amusement or national park and lark Cedar Point and the tip this land does not come to two states means ends nations and defies commodity recreation’s and conservation’s this place has more than the all-night or primitive drive-thru and the camping this whole time my body held in feet of surf not diverting to the water or exiting but bridges fail all the time nothing new bridges are being built and rebult all over these lakes adding sides to no end defying the accounts of travelers homing in pointing out we came in off the water not really having been out there you come out of the water turn right around get back in there I’m going out to the water never really having left there
I wasn’t sure how to keep the spacing with my typing, so I took a screen shot of the page (see above). I’d like to hear the poet read one of these poems to get a better sense of how to understand their spaces….I found them reading it!
Does this help? I’ll hav to listen a few more times, and read more of the poems in this collection. I should also watch this:
So much to think about in this short prose poem. Today, if I can remember as I am battling the wind and the waves, I’d like to think about these lines:
but bridges fail all the time nothing new bridges are being built and rebult all over these lakes
There are literal bridges and metaphorical bridges and metaphor as bridge. I want to think about the bridges in the ending lines:
we came in off of the water you come out of the water I’m going out to the water / never having really left there
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 90 degrees
It didn’t seem windy but, wow, the water was wild. Very choppy, with an undertow and lots of waves. Mostly I breathed on my right side and did as much punching of the water as stroking. Rounding the buoy during the second loop, a lifeguard approached and called out, we need to evacuate the water! head to the beach! I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I didn’t ask, just swam to the beach. A few minutes later, we all heard a lifeguard tell everyone that the open swim course was just for open swimmers. Then another lifeguard (or was it the same one?) call out, there was a distressed swimmer, but we were able to help them. I’m not surprised that someone was distressed out there; it was rough. I didn’t mind how rough it was, but I didn’t want to blow out my shoulder with another loop. So I stopped after two. I told Scott that June is for being cautious as you build up your muscles, but July is for pushing yourself to keep going. July doesn’t start until tomorrow, so I’m fine with stopping tonight.
I had wanted to think about bridges and being on the water or in the water or out at the water, but I was too distracted by the waves and the need to give attention to breathing and not swallowing water and delighting in the fun of fighting the waves and winning.
A question to ponder: will this be the week (the month?) of choppy water? I don’t mind having a few choppy days, but I hope the water calms down.
Just checked and the humidity was worse yesterday, 89%, so I guess that could have been why it was harder. ↩︎
Another beautiful morning. Quiet, calm, low-ish humidity. Ran on as much soft dirt as I could find, which helps my feet. Ran for 12 minutes straight, then 90/30 for the rest — with an occasional 2 or 3 minutes of running thrown in. My legs felt strong and bouncy. My feet started hurting around mile 4. I need to figure this one out. I think it’s mostly warts — yuck! — a few on the ball of my feet, one or two on or under a toe.
10 Things
a coxswain’s voice, down in the gorge
the dirt trail on the grass between lena smith and the river road was narrow and overgrown
nearing locks and dam no. 1, voices somewhere in the trees — on the upper trail leading to the ford bridge
ding ding ding ding ding the recorded bell from the light trail train passing through a intersection
the soft roar of the creek far below me as I crossed the tall bridge that connects the veterans home to the park
a glimpse of the trail Scott, RJP, and I hiked yesterday evening through the trees, below
mostly empty benches
a few e-bikes on the trail, going way too fast
glanced over at the statue of Big Feet/Gunner* when I turned to run through the archway near the falls
*I looked up Gunner on this log because I knew I had written about him. A fun coincidence: I wrote about him on June 27th, 2021! “Ran south on the river road trail past the falls and stopped at the big statue just past the pergola garden. When I would walk or bike the kids over here, about 10 years ago, we (or was it mostly me?) called this statue “big feet” because all the kids could see was his big feet. There was also a little feet (John Stevens)–a much smaller statue not too far way. Today I wanted to find out who Big Feet actually was. I assumed he might be someone connected to Fort Snelling–Zebulon Pike or Snelling or Franklin. Nope. Gunner Wennenberg, a Swedish composer, poet, and politician. This statue was erected on June 24th, 1914.”
Found this bit about names on Poetry Daily (poems.com):
A name is a word but not a word. Some words are names and some names are words. When you’re alive your name means you; sometimes it means the you you mean to yourself; more often the you you are to each person who knows you well enough to use it. If it’s a word, it also means what it means as a word in the mouths of people who don’t know you, and also sometimes in the mouths of people who do know you. When you’re dead your name means you until the people who used it are all gone and then it means pure sound (if your name was not a word), or it goes back to meaning what the word means (if your name was also a word).
10 miles ford loop + hidden falls + veterans home + falls + locks and dam 60 degrees humidity: 80%
10 miles. It’s been a few years since I ran 10 miles. I just looked it up and, according to my records, it’s been since Sept 29, 2024. That’s a week before the marathon. Wow. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t fast. My feet really hurt in the last mile. And I did it. And I feel good about it. More than good, great. These long runs are really helpful for me as I try to work on my mental strength and endurance.
Yesterday I was listening to Kara Goucher giving advice on her podcast. What I remember her saying is this: find something positive to focus on for each stretch. Don’t allow yourself to think about what’s going wrong; think about what you are doing right. For many of the running stretches I felt strong and bouncy and in a dreamy state. Not sure I’d call it a flow state, but a state of non-thinking. Of being.
When I was thinking, I thought about my running. In the last three miles, I thought: I need to be particularly intentional in these last miles of my long run to not let it fall apart. I need to work at keeping to my schedule of walk runs. Keeping to this schedule should be something I work on in future long runs.
my route
My route took me many different places: through the neighborhood, past the daycare at the church, over the lake street bridge, beside shadow falls and the monument, on the edge of the new Highland bridge development, just above Hidden Falls, next to a skate park, over the ford bridge, past Wabun and the splash pad, through the veterans’ home grounds, behind the John Stevens’ house; above the falls, back up to wabun, down to the locks and dam no. 1, then north on the west river parkway. There was lots of shade and only a few stretches of direct sun. It was cool and overcast for the first half, a little warmer and sunny for the second half.
10 Things
one rowing shell out on the river — I noticed in my peripheral as I crossed the lake street bridge — kept trying to see it in my central vision, but never could
a woman’s voice at the construction site for home being renovated — she said something like, they’ll be here to hook up the garbage disposal — is that what she said? I can’t quite remember
the soft shushing of my feet as they stuck the soft dirt then slid backward
music blasting from a bike
the soft rushing of water down the channel under the bridge that leads to a hidden falls overlook
a ladder at an angle, leaning against a house, reaching a window on the second story
the hum of skateboard wheels, a flash of a skater behind me, the sound of the board flipping as the skater went up a ramp
a woman sitting on a bench near the veterans home, reading something
2 people, close together, on the little bridge overlooking the falls, taking a selfie
the thwack of the flag rope hitting the pole in the wind
For the first mile, I listened to the traffic, then I put in Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. I listened to it 3 times as I ran. They lyrics I remember most come from the song “Expectations”: past mistakes are just new information
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 74 degrees
I entered and exited the swim course at the other end of the beach and avoided the worst patches of milfoil. Only a few ghostly vines not quite reaching my toes. Nice. I like starting there, much closer to the last green buoy. It’s less crowded and it shifts where and when a new loop begins. At least, this is what I thought as I swam the second loop and reached the second orange buoy, which was now the third buoy I swim by in a loop and not the second.
The water was a little warmer, or I was. Whatever the reason, the result: no freezing feet or fingers. I witnessed lots of bubbles, some menacing swims, lifeguards that were too close to the buoys, forcing me to take sharper angles around them. No fish seen below, one bird, flying low with its wings spread wide, above, a duck near the shore as I swam into the beach. Two little girls, chasing after it.
Overheard: one of the girls to the other — then he picked it up with his bare hands and threw it!
Overheard: one kid to another, on the beach — how old are you? Eight, you’re eight?!
A big exercise day today. Almost 1500 active calories. 10 miles of running, a mile and half of swimming. It felt good.
Hot! Bright sun. Some shade. I watched my shadow beside and below me as I ran the stretch of the east river trail between the lake street bridge and shadow falls. Heard a coxswain, then 20 minutes later saw the white boat on the river. I think I saw some rowers, too, but it might have just been waves.
I did 90/30, which should have felt easy, but didn’t. But it kept my pace and heart rate a little lower. Wore my Brooks Ghosts and some new socks — size: youth. I like this size — not too tight or too loose. My feet felt okay until the last mile when the widest part, below the big toe, started to rub, then slightly ache. No Brooks for my long run, either tomorrow or Thursday. 10 miles this week.
Listened to the cars and the kids and the sound of my feet striking the ground for the first half, then Olivia Rodrigo’s new album, you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love, for the second part. I like it; it’s fun to run to. As I walked back, I listened to her song, “Purple” — I better add that to my color playlist!
10 Things
the sandbar, under the lake street bridge, was just beneath the surface of the river
little kids being dropped off at the church daycare — as I ran by, I heard the bell for them to go inside and start the day
cars backed up on the bridge due to a red light far up the hill
voices in the ravine, near shadow falls
the bottom of the water fountain at the monument was flowing continuously — had someone left something on? was the button stuck? no, I think it’s designed to do that for draining and dogs
only one open spot at the monument parking lot
workers were doing something under the lake street/marshall bridge — it didn’t impact pedestrians or the walking trail, but the road up the hill was closed
a line of bikers on the trail — about 8 silver riders in bright yellow vests
running by a house — a flash of red, then a small bird landed on a railing — mostly it had no color for my bad eyes, but a few times I could see that it was red
the slide-y (but not slippery) feel of my feet striking the soft sandy grit on the desire path next to the paved trail
note: It is 2:44 pm and thunderstorms are predicted, starting at 4. Open swim is set to begin at 5:30. Will it happen? Future Sara, let us know! . . . Future Sara here: cancelled at 4 pm, amidst a steady rain with occasional thunder.
weeds / entanglement
Remembering this hours after my run: near the end of the walk home, I thought about nets and being entangled. Why? Just remembered! It was the lines in Olivia Rodrigo’s “Purple” in which she sings about unraveling. Wait — not “Purple” but “The Cure”:
[Chorus] And my head is full of poison, and my heart is full of doubt I got toxins in my bloodstream, you tried hard to suck ’em out And it feels like medication, and it’s good for me, I’m sure But it don’t matter how your love feels anymore It will never be the cure
I thought about unraveling is the unwanted thing here; she’s falling apart. But, unraveling can be desired; I’d like for the thick knots and tangles of milfoil to unravel in the swimming area at lake nokomis. This lead me to think about nets and how they can trap us or keep us safe. And knots — in hair, of stomach anxiety, with thread, they’re bad, but on anchors, on the ends of drawstrings, for keeping shoes tied tightly as you run, they’re good.
Knot is a tangle, a problem that needs unraveling. Not is the thing that isn’t / doesn’t /wouldn’t. Knot a securing, a way of holding on.
When I looked up the lyrics of “The Cure,” I discovered that Rodrigo is calling her tour the Unraveled Tour and has a very cool video for the song, which involves some visually freaky and cool unraveling:
Midway through the video Rodrigo begins unraveling as red threads emerge from her outstretched fingers. More and more red appears.
screenshot from “The Cure” by Olivia Rodrigo / red thread emerges from an outstretched hand
And here’s another knot poem that I posted on this log years ago. It’s a favorite of mine:
Mostly I’d like to feel a little less, know a little more. Knots are on the top of my list of what I want to know. Who was it who taught me to burn the end of the cord to keep it from fraying? Not the man who called my life a debacle, a word whose sound I love. In a debacle things are unleashed. Roots of words are like knots I think when I read the dictionary. I read other books, sure. Recently I learned how trees communicate, the way they send sugar through their roots to the trees that are ailing. They don’t use words, but they can be said to love. They might lean in one direction to leave a little extra light for another tree. And I admire the way they grow right through fences, nothing stops them, it’s called inosculation: to unite by openings, to connect or join so as to become or make continuous, from osculare, to provide with a mouth, from osculum, little mouth. Sometimes when I’m alone I go outside with my big little mouth and speak to the trees as if I were a birch among birches.
Her discussion of trees talking to each other and growing through fences returns me to the Knot Work / Not Work poem. Here’s what Jishin No-ben (Lee Ann Roripaugh, trans.) writes about tree knots and burls:
from Knot Work / Not Work / Knot Hole / Not Whole: a Mapping
2. Formed in trunks where branches used to be, or where the trunk’s growth has choked off the smaller, lower branches in a tree. Each knot the mark of a tightening tourniquet surrounding a phantom limb. Each knot a scar, a toughening over to cauterize loss, seal the body shut so it doesn’t bleed out in the snow. In a concentration camp in Minidoka, Idaho, wood artist George Nakashima learned to burnish the souls of trees through their scars: their knots, their holes, their cracks, their broken histories.
. . .
4. Burl’s the wood formed when a tree is sick or stressed, causing the grain to arabesque into strange spirals, distorted forms, eye-spotted with visible knots. Burl erupts when infestations of insects or mold spread unchecked beneath bark’s façade, the burl becoming larger, more ornate, as the tree continues to grow. They sound like tumors, or eyesores, but burl’s actually expensive and rare. A tree can’t survive without its burl. When burl is cut from a tree while it’s still alive, the tree dies.
I’d like to use these descriptions of tree biology as an inspiration for my discussion of milfoil biology — about how milfoil spreads and chokes out the light and starves fish and ensnares swimmers’ arms.
Decided to run a loop around lake nokomis before open swim in order to be warmed up when I entered the cold water. The run was hard. It felt warm and my gait felt awkward. My favorite part about the run was nearing the big beach and hearing, then seeing, swimmers rounding the far green buoy. I thought: that will be me in a few minutes! And it was.
Overheard: a group of 7 or 8 runners, one of them calling out to the others: They didn’t give us any room. I guess they thought it was their path. Yep, I’ve thought, and probably said, that same thing to Scott on some run around this lake.
I was just reminded of this when I heard the bells of St. Thomas as I write this at my dining room table: When we arrived at the lake, I heard some bells chiming in the distance. I’m assuming a church service was starting somewhere — maybe at the church on Cedar, near Fat Lorenzos?
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 67 degrees
It felt warmer today, maybe because it was sunny. I noticed pink and yellow and orange safety buoys tethered to torsos, bent elbows, glittering water, a few splashes. Some swimmers wore wet suits, some wore training suits. I don’t think I noticed any swan boats or non-lifeguard kayaks.
I’m not sure I felt strong, but I felt stronger in the lake than last week. I decided as I stroked 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left that June is always a more challenging month for open swim: the water’s colder and I’m using muscles that I haven’t used for 9 months.
The milfoil in the swimming area and near the start of the loop was terrible. Thick stretches of it, with individuals vines wrapping around my wrists and feet. I managed to avoid the worst of it on the way out, but when I returned I got stuck in a wide patch of it that I struggled to swim out of. As I have said to more than one person, I am a very strong, experienced swimmer and, even so, I had a few flashes of panic as I wondered how to get out and around these vines. I am seriously concerned that someone will drown in them. They are in the swimming area.
I wonder, is there anything Minneapolis Parks can do about this? Also, if enough people complain, will they have to close down the beach? I don’t want that, but I also don’t want someone to drown in this water or these vines to not be addressed. Sigh.
I’m glad that I ran and that I was able to swim 2 loops in slightly warmer water. Unfortunately, it didn’t help my mood. A few days ago, I wondered what was worse: perimenopausal anxiety or perimenopausal irritability. I thought anxiety was worse, but today, I am irritated and upset and I think it’s just as bad as anxiety. Oh well, like a wave, it will pass over.
Speaking of passing over, I noticed the dark shadow of a plane, blocking out the sun for a few seconds. Even though I know what it is, it is strange and settling (and kind of cool) when it happens.
10 Things
bubbles — surrounding my hands as they entered the water
clouds
breathing to one side: blue sky
breathing to the other side: clouds
stopping in the middle of the lake: silence, solitude
the bright orange first buoy, sometimes looking orange, sometimes white, once or twice green, a few times not there
swimmers: 3 across, a good space between us, all heading towards the far green buoy at the different angles
overheard before beginning: Theo, get your shoes! It’s time to go!
exiting the water, watching as a toddler in a polka dot bathing suit ran across the sand and towards the swings
6 miles hidden falls loop 61 degrees humidity: 77%
The sun and the humid air made it feel warmer than 61. If only it could feel like this tomorrow during open swim — warm, that is. A quiet, calm morning. Not too crowded on the trails or the roads. Lots of dappled light, flickering leaves. The only time I remember looking at the water was when I had just started crossing the ford bridge. I could see the dark reflections of the fir trees on the water.
I wore my bright yellow shoes. Today, they didn’t feel so bad. Before I went out for my run, I studied the bottom of my shoes. The Brooks Ghosts are already starting to wear down near the big toe, but the Saucony Cohesions and Rides are not. So, do the Ghosts change where I strike my foot, or are they just thinner at that spot? One day I’ll get my stride evaluated by someone at Mill City Running or another local running store.
I did some variations on the Galloway method (90 sec run/30 sec walk). I started with 15 minutes of running, then 90/30 for some time, then 3 min/1 min. Next time I need to commit to just running 90/30 the entire time and see what happens.
Right as I began running, I looked far ahead at the small circle of light at the end of a tunnel of sidewalk and trees. I thought about Alice and her view as she first falls down the hole:
downand down
Watching this again, I remembered the light from above being brighter. Oh well, I still like it as inspiration for my hole series. Does it work for blur (see below)?
A few times, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson as I ran. Not sure I ever made it all the way through; I was distracted by the sound of a skateboard or the flash of a leaf or the feeling of sweat dripping down my face.
As I ran by the empty benches near the Ford/Power Plant overlook, I imagined biking here on some other day and sitting and reading a book, or writing or poem, or taking in the world around me.
10 Things
loud music — dance? techno? — booming from a bike speaker
a sprinkling, tinkling sound — was it falling water or rustling leaves?
a few puddles from yesterday’s rain
soft, wet dirt on the trail between the river road and lena smith boulevard
the flickering shadow of one leaf being moved by the wind
2 older men talking, sitting at a picnic table near the skate park in Highland Park
a woman running with a stroller, crossing near hidden falls — did she or the kid she was pushing make any noise? I don’t think so
hot sun, then refreshing shade, at Highland Bridge
passing a woman talking on a phone: then, what is it?
2 women walking — one, to the other: I haven’t perfected my pizza yet
holes and Alice
As I (finally) worked on my summary for April’s monthly challenge, I was inspired to return to the holes project. I want to keep experimenting with the Alice in Wonderland angle and the rabbit hole. What inspiration can I get from some of the scenes in Alice in Wonderland (1951)? So far, I have 3 scenes in particular: Alice falling down the hole1, Alice talking with the Caterpillar, and Alice and the Cheshire Cat.
Just now, I re-watched the Cheshire Cat scene and I’m thinking of pairing it with parts of hole 3: “land in a logic of blur and almost” and “read sentences sliced in half, glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined.” At the beginning of the scene, the cat is only a voice singing nonsense words, then a mouth, then eyes. Later, he is only footprints and stripes. How to represent that on the page? And, is that more almost than blur? Should the line be, “land in a logic of almost’?
Another part of this new approach is to simplify the image so that it is easier to understand as form/silhouette. I’m thinking of putting it on a single page — the page in which the word “hole” appears in the NYer essay — instead of the 4 panels. I’m hoping that will translate more effectively online (and on smaller screens).
Back to hole 3: what if I made the blur and almost as two different scenes/pages — one is blur, one almost. “Almost” would be the cat, and “Blur” would be –? I’ll keep thinking about that one. Blur = soft and fuzzy forms, before we grow accustomed to the Dark, right after the light has gone out, or grown too dim? Maybe, the image of a small hole of light, with everything else growing darker?
is water alive?
I was looking for something else (search on poets.com = “blur”) and found a wonderful essay about a poem, “on the water” and its dis/connection to ecopoetics. The author of the essay and the poem, Moheb Soliman, says this about water:
It’s a sacred hook—an existentially common denominator—the basis of everything, to build on together. You understand, but you’re deeply ambivalent about the abstraction of water. Water like a banner quivering in place, placeless. You fear placelessness. It’s why you are addicted to Google Maps. Isn’t everybody? Totalizing specificity, proper naming, sublime order, knowable space.
Yet, like many, you try and reject colonial hegemony. You can’t help but revere Indigeneity. But water flows one way at divides—you’re either duped by western science water as inanimate substance, or you’re co-opting animist beliefs about water. You don’t think of water as alive, nor of it as just a resource. Is there no other way?
The line, You don’t think of water as alive reminded me that I have Is a River Alive?on my Libby audiobook shelf. TIme to start listening/reading, I think!
Perhaps a question to pursue this summer: (how) is a lake alive?
Writing this, I was thinking about the moment before she/we grows accustomed to the Dark and can only see the whites of her eyes, but now I’m also thinking about the moment before that when we see her from the perspective of her cat Dinah as she call out, with delight, Goodbye Dinah! Goodbyyyyyyyeeee! How could I imagine that on a page?↩︎
9.15 miles lake nokomis and back 57 degrees / humidity: 87%
My longest run in more than a year. It is humbling to feel like 9 miles was the most I could do (at least today) when I ran a marathon just 2 years ago. Of course, thanks to perimenopausal anxiety, I have flashes of worrying that it’s not being out of shape but something physically wrong with me. A few days ago, Scott and I had a discussion — which is worse: peri/menopausal anxiety or peri/menopausal irritability? I guess, being irritable is a drag for everyone around you, but it seems less draining than worrying that every small ache or pain means you might have a terminal illness. I am rarely irritated, but I am often anxious.
I ran the first mile without stopping, then moved into my 90 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking. I like this method, although I was a little disappointed that my heart rate was still higher. Was it the humidity? Is that just how my heart rate works when I’m running? Is it a bigger concern — some heart problem? Or was it because I ran the first mile without stopping instead of doing the 90/30 from the beginning? I imagine it was mostly the humidity and doing a continuous first mile. At the halfway point, I experimented with the ratio: 3 min run/1 min walk and 2 min run/1 min walk.
assessment: I feel pretty good now, and I definitely had more energy at the end of the run. My feet hurt — not as much as they have in past runs, but the ball of both feet still ached at the end. Also: my ankles were a little sore, too.
Even though it was humid, and I wished I had worn my tank top instead of a short-sleeved shirt, I didn’t feel too hot. Lots of shade, a cool-ish breeze. I heard at least one woodpecker, laughing; the babbling creek; a dog losing its mind — bark bark bark bark — across the creek. I greeted several walkers and runners, stopped at the park bathroom right before reaching mile 8. I ran past some guy watching a pickleball match; counted several kayaks out on the water; encountered a biggish group of runners ahead of me — would I get tangled up with them? No, thankfully they stopped at the playground to do some exercises and to pair up. As I passed them, I could hear someone calling out, okay, now find someone with about your same pace.
For 8 of the miles, I listened to the world around me. Cars streaming past on the parkway; the hum of a hoverboard on the bike path; kids calling out to each other at the creek; and the thwack of the ball on the pickle ball court. For mile 9, I put in my “windows” playlist. The song I most remember was one I’m almost skipped, Pete Seeger’s “Fly through my window” — little bird little bird fly through my window
random bummer news: The Minneapolis Park Board voted to close the dog park and one of the most decorated American female mid-distance runners, Jenny Simpson, had a medical emergency while pacing a mile race on Monday night: her heart stopped and they gave her CPR for 20 minutes before it restarted. She’s in the hospital now, recovering. She is 39 and just retired from running a few years ago.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 70 degrees
Brrrrr. I’m not sure what the water temperature was, but it felt cold. Probably 70 degrees. The water was a bit choppy today and full of menacing swan boats and a few clueless kayaks. I couldn’t always tell if the kayak was a lifeguard moving across the course or some random kayaker not paying attention to the course — or maybe not realizing there was a course. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told them what was going on.
I took RJP’s advice and started at the far edge of the beach, in line with the last green buoy, to avoid the tangles of milfoil at the other end of the beach. It helped a lot. The only milfoil I encountered was a few stray vines in the middle of the lake. One wrapped around my head and I had to fling it off, mid-stroke.
10 Things
clear bubbles, made by my piercing hands
a strange squeaking, rubbing noise as a swan boat neared
often the orange buoys look white, the green ones too
again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I couldn’t see them — only them when I was about 15 feet away from them
the rope tethering the last green buoy to the lake bottom was at a sharp angle
entering the water, I walked past 3 guys skipping rocks at the edge of the water
a few silver flashes
almost ran into another swimmer — I didn’t see them until they were right there
sighting a green buoy, swimming towards it, seeing a sailboat near it and wondering if I had seen the buoy at all or just a boat — always, the buoy was there
my first few steps in the water: brrrrr! very cold — I warmed up but felt very cold by the end, after sitting at Painted Turtle for a half an hour, my heels were numb
4 miles up to wabun, down to lock and dam 60 degrees wind: 14 mph
I was supposed to do open swim this morning, but it was 57 degrees and very windy and I decided that was too much for me this early in the season. Lots of wind = choppier water = more sighting = sore neck, So instead I watched Paul (steak sause not sexass) Seixas abandon and Del Toro win, then went out for a windy run.
It was a tough decision not to swim; I really don’t like missing open swims. But, as I walked through our alley before I started the run and felt the cool and windy air, I was glad I hadn’t gone. The run was good. The first 5 minutes always feel strange now. Is it that my shoes aren’t quite right, or that I’m getting older, or something else I’m not imagining? I think it’s more a redesign of the shoes than anything else.
I don’t remember what I thought about, and not much of what I noticed. I ran on the narrow and root-y strip of dirt in the grassy boulevard until I reached the 44th street parking lot. I don’t remember hearing any distinctive birds or avoiding any squirrels.
10 Things
a trio of roller skiers on the double bridge
2 bikers crossing in front of me to bike down to the overlook at the south entrance of the winchell trail
a bike zooming by me
a man sitting on a bench near the locks and dam, fishing
a squeaking noise as something on a light pole was jarred loose in the wind
choppy water under the ford bridge
the dirt path that winds through the grass was narrower in past years — are people using it less?
someone slowly jogging up the locks and dam hill, then stopping at the top
3 people spread across the bottom of the wabun hill, one of them pusing a bike and holding a (too) loose leash with a small dog
an older couple, the man pushing a walker, on the edge of the trail near the coyote den nearby sign, looking at something — the river? the coyote den? something across, on the east bank?
For most of the run I don’t remember much of what I heard. For the last mile, I listened to my “It’s Windy” playlist. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze.”
I almost forgot about the shadows! Actually, I did forget about the shadow for several hours until suddenly they popped into my head. At the locks and dam, running by a fence, I saw some sharp shadows and stopped to take a picture:
shadows / locks and dam no 1 / 14 june 2026
Fence and shadow, shadow and fence. Which is more real?
Ran up Marshall past Cretin, Cleveland, and Prior. Turned on Fairview and over to Summit, then on the edge of the St. Thomas campus. We missed the bells by 6 minutes. Bummer. It was a good run. As we walked home, I told Scott that I was successful for a few reasons: 1. I didn’t look at my watch or check my heart rate; 2. I had a shift in perspective because of the success of my last long run; 3. our run together was only 5 miles instead of 9; and 4. it was slightly cooler outside.
2 images from the run
one — running down the last bit of Summit to the Monument, passing two runners heading up Summit. One runner to the other: it sounded like a gravel-y screech. Then he fully committed to imitating it. It was funny and shocking to hear such strange sounds. Scott and guessed that he was trying to tell the other runner about a bird sound he had heard at some other time.
two — a bike passing us as we ran down the Summit hill near Shadow Falls blasting Average White Band’s “Pick Up the Pieces.”
It was a beautiful morning. Sunny, but with lots of shade. Near St. Thomas I greeted my shadow. Later, I switched places with Scott as we ran so I could be closer to the railing and the edge. I told him that I wanted to let my shadow run closer to the river. I noticed her just above the tops of the trees below us.
The river was low. We could see a sandbar just below the surface. The paths weren’t too crowded.
An unusual encounter: a line of 20 or so kids and adults, dressed up for a hike with big backpacks. Were they going on a camping trip. Scott said, it’s funny how all of the kids moved over to let us run by; it was the adults who were clueless. Yep, that sounds right.
Scott talked about the movie clips he’s using in his latest YouTube video. I recounted several instances — one good, one bad, one neutral — of people drafting off me during runs. We ended by discussing the different Indiana Jones’ movie openings, especially the moment in Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when Harrison Ford hides in the fridge and gets flung up in the air when the bomb goes off. I had a suggestion for a future run topic: rank the top 10 best comic moments in Bond films with Roger Moore.
added at 6:45 pm: For reason I can’t remember, I decided to read my entries from June of 2025. Because the log posts them from last day to first, I’m reading them that way. Already on 30 June, so many wonderful ideas. A random thought as I read it: Richard Siken’s latest book — I Know Some Things. I started reading it and posting about it this past winter (the last time was on 3 dec 2025). I need to return to it. There are a lot of books I purchased in the last year that I haven’t finished. Maybe the rest of June could be about reading Siken and the other books I haven’t had time to read yet? Or, at least this next week could be about reading all of Siken’s book. I could take it to the lake or the falls or on bike rides somewhere else.
8.1 miles ford loop + hidden falls 64 degrees dew point: 59
Technically, if I follow Scott’s plan, I’m supposed to run 9 miles today. But I’m going hiking at the dog park later this morning and swimming at the lake this evening, so I kept it to 8. I wasn’t fast, but I’m pleased with this run. I didn’t feel great at the beginning; it was very sticky and breathing wasn’t that easy. My heart rate shot up pretty fast, too. I wondered how I could keep running when it was already so hot and I felt so bad. Then I decided to not worry about how much I walked and to just keep going. For the ford loop (the first 4 miles), I ran until my heart rate reached 169, then I walked until it got down to 125. At Hidden Falls, I tried something new: run 90 seconds, walk 30 seconds. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having to look at my watch so much and stopping every 1.5 minutes, but I didn’t mind it, and breaking the time up into small increments made it go by faster — or made me think less about it as some big, overwhelming amount. This is the Galloway method of training. I think I’ll try it on my next long run for the entire run.
For most of the run, I listened to my book, Ariadne. For the last mile, I listened to my bunnies playlist.
5 Running and 5 Hiking Things
the overcast sky made the green in the tunnel of trees seem deeper and darker
a slash of orange on the ancient boulder
a big log floating in the river near the east side of the ford bridge — was it a log? a boat? a person?
a coxswain calling out instructions over his bullhorn to some rowers — heard, not seen
roots buckling the sidewalk, looking like slithering snakes
the entrance to the dog park was dark and green and inviting in an almost sinister way
evidence all around of the big storm 2 nights ago: giant felled trees, trunks tipped over and reaching for the river, a thick branch that must have been blocking the trail before someone cut it
drops of rain hitting the surface of the river, creating slight ripples that distorted the water near the shore
bark bark bark bark bark bark — an enthusiastic dog
kerplunk! splash! a dog swimming more than halfway across the river, moving fast
hike: 40 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 63 degrees drizzle off and on
dog name:the swimming dog’s name was Millie — okay Millie, come here — a human calling to the dog
According to FWA, it’s supposed to rain off and on all day. We managed to mostly miss it, only a few drips on the river surface. We talked about terrible chemistry professors and doing hip thrusts with weights on your lap. FWA performed an imaginary conversation between Delia and another dog. In this conversation, they talked about how great the dog park is. Delia bragged about getting to come twice a week and the other dog said they only went once but that the yard surrounding their mansion was bigger than the dog park.
Now I invite you to find the water. In Diné thought, change happens in fours, manifestation happens in fours. There are four sacred mountains, four worlds that we emerge from into our current world. I invite you to create a poem in four steps.
First: find a body of water to sit with and listen. A river, a lake, an ocean—let it connect with the water inside of you. And let the sound that it makes work on your body and your mind and your heart.
Second: build your relationship with the water. Listen for what the water has awakened inside of you. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body? What stories are brought to the surface?
Third: follow the reverberations. Write down some of your thoughts, your feelings, your memories. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, or about making things sound writerly or whether they make sense or not.
Fourth: make an offering to the water. Share what the water gave life to in the form of your poem. Touch the water and give thanks.
waterlogged: heavy with water, dense, difficult to manage, not dry, less buoyant, damaged/distorted/warped by excess water, soggy, characterized by the presence of a lot of water
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis open swim 64 degrees (air) 71 degrees (water)
After finishing my run and the hike, it started raining. Off and on, all day. By the time I went to open swim the temperature had dropped enough that the water was much warmer than the air. There was wind, too, which made the water choppy. I didn’t care. It was fun to swim into and through the waves. I swam straight to many of the buoys even when I barely realized I was seeing them. I think I did less sighting and more swimming without looking. It’s strange how much more comfortable I feel now when I see so much less.
a regular:As I exited the water an older man heading in asked me how it was. I said, it’s choppy, but I like it that way. He agreed and then we talked about the crazy amount of milfoil in the water. I have decided that I have said enough about it — it’s out of control and dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of someone drowning in it. And, like blue green algae blooms, I just need to get used to it and find ways to avoid and/or endure it. Just before he left, the man introduced himself and shook my hand. I’m Joe. / I’m Sara./ Nice to meet you.
Other things I remember: a few patches of blue sky; opaque water with a few silver flashes; a woman swimming, her arms entering the water without her elbows bending; the roar of rushing wind; swimming just barely over the top of the milfoil; the ridgeline of the wave as it rippled over the water; a swimmer exerting a lot of extra energy kicking, white foam everywhere; the hard bump of my safety buoy hitting me in the waves; the silcence and solitude when I stopped in the middle of the lake; looking to my right and seeing a dark line of clouds, hovering
3.15 miles locks and dam turn around 70 degrees humidity: 88% / dew point: 67
Sticky. Moist. Steamy. Wet. Not raining, but water water everywhere. It felt cool on my fingers and face when I brushed against a bush or when the wind shook the leaves.
Sometimes I felt great, sometimes I didn’t. I was wearing my old black Sauconys because it was so wet and they made my toe hurt for the last mile. My heart rate was higher too. I’ve determined (decided?) that my heat tolerance has decreased because of perimenopause. I’m having some hot flashes and struggling to run/move/stand/be in the heat. I’m thinking of asking for Hormone Replacement Therapy.
As I ran, I recited Wallace Steven’s poem, “Tattoo.” The light is like a spider./ It crawls over the water./It crawls over the edges of the snow./ It crawls under your eyelids/And spreads its webs there. I love this idea of the light like a spider spinning its webs under your eyelids. I also like that the first thing Stevens’ spider-light does is crawl over the water — a good connection to my water season, which starts tomorrow! Open swim!
10 Things
a biker blasting music from speakers — country music (I think) — before I could hear much of it, it was distorted by the Doppler effect
the brown sign that reads, caution, coyote den, is still there — are the coyotes?
bright headlights piercing through the dark green and gray
the sewer pipe near 42nd was gushing
a long line of cars on the road
a string of bikers on the path
a few puddles
the wind picked up, the trees shifted, making me wonder if it started raining agin
a group of kids laughing somewhere in the distance, approaching
2 lime scooter parked on the edge of trail — both times I neared them, I thought they were people
lines / strings / webs / spiders
a spider moment: As I was about to take a shower, I noticed spider traveling down the tiles. I didn’t want to kill it, or douse it with water, so I turned on the water with the spray pointed away from the tiles and asked the spider to leave. They did — not because of the words, but because of the pressure/feeling of the water.
how long do spiders live?Although most spiders live for at most two years, tarantulas and other mygalomorph spiders can live for over 20 years. (source)
how long have modern spiders existed? The main groups of modern spiders, Mygalomorphae and Araneomorphae, first appear in the Triassic well before 200 million years ago. (source)
orb orb (spiral) webs, orb as eye, orbiting, encircling/enclosing, a spherical body
Alice Oswald, a spider referencein Nobody
A goddess or fog-shape in full wedding dress sulks in that loneliness what a winter creature whose lover loathes the everlasting clouds of her and sits in tears staring at the pleasure-crinkled sea but she as if a dash of hope discoloured her sight stands waiting the way a spider when it wishes to travel simply lets out a silken
aerial
electrostatically alert through every hair to the least shift of the atmosphere at last it lifts on tiptoe and lovely to behold like a bare twig it begins to blow wherever the wind will take it but the wind is the most distracted messenger I know
After citing this, Kit Fan writes:
The new lines at the end of the page carry a rhyme scheme (aabcbc) rare in Nobody and connect the goddess (the owl-eyed Athena who is Odysseus’s protector in The Odyssey?) with the precise, calculated work of a spider, breathing a different kind of life into the “discoloured” world without the watercolors. The two versions of Nobody create a counter-parallel universe for Oswald’s reimagination of The Odyssey, revisualizing the epic as a collage made out of imagist fragments or glimpses of “water-stories,” as the jacket to the UK version calls them. The two texts speak to each other like twins staring at themselves in the mirror, registering uncanny similarities and differences.
The precise calculated work of a spider. Tomorrow, I want to write a little more about the making of a web and the use of spun silk to travel. I also want to return to Alice Oswald and reread The Odyssey again. I love the Wilson translation! I just looked it up and the movie coming out next month is based on this translation. Excellent!
8 miles lake nokomis and back 68 degrees humidity: 83% / dew point: 60
So hot! I had planned to bring my water but at the last minute, I didn’t. I should have. At the halfway point, my heart rate was high for such an easy pace. Had to take several walk breaks. I really struggle to run in the heat.
Some things to remember for future runs: run earlier, bring water, drink water the night before, come prepared with poetry distractions (e.g.: recite poems in head).
Scott and I realized that doing our long runs together is not a good idea. We have different strategies and different weaknesses that need to be addressed. So instead, we’ll plan to run our middle distance weekly run together.
What did we talk about? Not much; we were too hot and uncomfortable running. Just remembered something as I wrote “many” in number 5 of my10 things. We discussed the range of descriptive words: a pair, a few, some, several, lots, many, most, all. I talked about how I use lots too often and that it sounds clunky. We also talked about bringing the kids to the playground at Lake Nokomis, especially to the big dinosaur, and losing touch with some old friends.
10 Things
a woman with a hose, watering some flowers in her front yard. as we ran by, she called out: free shower?
a loud hose hissing nearby
a lively game on the pickle ball court, with an enthusiastic player cheering loudly for someone
everything completely still, heavy — Scott pointed out how the tops of the trees weren’t moving at all
blue water with many sparkles
blue-green algae advisory at the beach, 2 kids in the water
running over the bridge, looking down and seeing the glowing green water — yuck!
passing another runner with a dog — good morning! / morning!
at the Lake Nokomis playground, running by a log with rows of evenly cut holes — what is this for? how do kids play with it?
the booming voice of an announcer at the big beach: a charity event for lymphoma
Not the best run, but I’m choosing to think of it as a reminder to be more deliberate and disciplined in my training.
webs
I decided to make a spider web on a piece of cardboard. Some improvement is needed, but I’m pleased with it as my first attempt. Will I do anything with this? Unsure, but it keeps coming up, so I’m seeing where it leads.
my first attempt at a web, using light gray-blueish yarn
Warm and windy. So windy that I had to take my cap off as I crossed the lake street bridge. The river looked low. I think I saw a long sandbar near the east shore. My feet were still a little sore, but mostly felt okay. Chanted in triple berries for the first 2 miles. Listened to my bunnies and rabbits playlist for the last mile.
11 Things
no rowing shells on the water, but the big white motor boat that follows alongside the rowers was out there, near the dock at the rowing club
workers on the other side of the lake street bridge, fixing something and making a lot of noise doing it
glittering waves close to the easi bank
shadow falls was falling vigorously
running up from the under the bridge on the st. paul side, looking below at the water, envious of my shadow in the water
on the ledge of the overlook at the monument: a insulated coffee mug, white
below the overlook, a person with a dog
tea kettle tea kettle or cheeseburger cheeseburger — a carolina wren somewhere
a person wearing something bright orange, sitting with their bike near the upper entrance to shadow falls
kids being dropped off at the daycare at the church, some by car, one by bike
a handmade wood sign declaring ICE OUT in a neighbor’s front yard on the next block
holes
Time to wrap up this hole project for a few months. I have 4 visual poems that I think are . . . not finished but . . . ready to be considered done. Hole 1, Hole 3, Hole 5a, and Hole 5c. I can imagine returning to them in the fall and trying new (more advanced?) techniques with thread and grids and layers — not just 2D, but 3D.
Well, I would have finished all of the hole poems if a HUGE limb hadn’t fallen right outside my window. We (Scott, FWA, and I) had to drop everything and remove the tree, which took almost 2 hours. Scott happened to be working on a YouTube video as it happened and got a recording of it falling. Yikes!
4 miles ford overlook, east river 64 degrees humidity: 84%
Ran with Scott on his 15th run-a-versary. (Mine is tomorrow.) We talked about his gig two nights ago — the jazz combo that he plays bass in, when we started running, and whether or not I got covid a few months ago, which would explain some of my strange ailments + uneven test results. We were supposed to run 8 miles today but even before the run started, we reduced that amount. I wore my new Saucony Cohesions: navy blue with lavender lining and soles. They felt better, but not amazing. I realized that I need to retrain my stride so I don’t run on my toes. Did I start running on my toes more when I switched to Brooks? Possibly.
Writing this entry several hours later, my feet feel pretty good, so I think the switch to the new shoes might help my feet recover better.
It rained off and on yesterday and most of last night; everything was damp today: the sidewalk, the overgrown limbs with their new leaves, my face. The air was still and the surface of the river was flat and motionless. We heard a strange sound near some trees. We think it was a bird, but right before we passed it later in the run, Scott read a handmade brown sign that said, Warning. Coyote den nearby, and we wondered if a coyote had made the loud alarm-like sound we had heard earlier.
rabbit hole
In February, I studies rabbits and bunnies and rabbit holes. This afternoon, I was listening to Lily Allen’s latest album, West End Girl, and I heard these lyrics at the begging of the last song, “Let You W/in”:
I’ve become invisible, stuck here in my palace I’m so fucking miserable in my rabbit hole, yeah, I’m Alice And I’m expected to be nice picking up the pieces What is it you sacrifice? I’m protecting you from your secrets
Does rabbit hole work here as anything other than a way to use Alice to rhyme with palace? I’m not sure. Regardless, I really like this album. Speaking of rabbit holes, I’ve written about how Heather Cox Richardson loves to use the expression in her daily YouTube chats — that’s a rabbit hole I don’t have time for right now. Last week, she said it again and added, I should write books about all of the rabbit holes I’m mentioning. From the 1950s Disney animated Alice, rabbit hole seems to mean daydreaming or reverie or being led astray — or too deep in — by one’s curiosity. HCR seems to be referring to actual rabbit holes, with their labyrinth of twisty tunnels. Of course, she’s also using it in the way that it is popularly used now: getting lost in a topic, ending up somewhere strange and unexpected.
Warm, sunny. Not too bad in the shade. Ran down to the entrance of the locks and dam no. 1, turned around, stopped to walk for a few minutes, put in my “Moment” playlist, then started running again, When I got to “Lose Yourself,” I did a few strides. Felt a few brief flashes of a runner’s high.
10 Things
bawk bawk cockadoodle doo! heard from far away, slowly approaching — what is that? A bike with an open bike trailer passed by, 2 kids in the back pretending to be a chicken and a rooster
no cars on the way down to the locks and dam, only one car parked at the bottom
some voices above me, on the trail going up to Wabun or on the ford bridge
an orange water cooler with a sing, “Mill City Running” near the bench above the edge of the world
empty benches — maybe one or two occupied
a biker passing, blasting techno music — even if there had been a doppler effect on the music how would you be able to tell?
swallowed a bug — forgot about it until an hour later when I had a few coughing bouts — Bug! I called out, to no one
the rush of leaves through the trees sounding like falling water
stopping at a water fountain near the end of my run, waiting for another runner to finish, soaking my hat — I have no memory of what it felt like to put the wet hat on. Did it drip down my face? Did it feel cool? I have no idea
Walking back, noticing a grid on the lattice of a neighbor’s fence — at first I thought, squares, then lines
I started thinking about grids and lines and my interest in them, which led to thinking about how open swim involves some lines, or maybe not lines but trajectories — from buoy to buoy to buoy, and it also has an imaginary grid and points on that grid. But, open swim also has no lane lines. You are tethered/connected to the world and others in a different logic. I’ve already written about this in a few different ways, including in this poem, from my recently published chapbook, Inklings:
My geometry
of open swimming: an eye, lake water. Both of us now grids with one dot in our centers — a cone cell that works, a buoy that beacons. A line drawn between passes through vacant lots and murky seas as it tethers us to each other — swimmer and vision, buoy and body, to sight and to rarely see.
Cooler this morning, earlier too. My goal was to run at 7. My watch says I started the run at 7:07, which means I left the house around 7. Nice. Wore my old (2021, I think) Sauconys that I stopped wearing because they made by big left toe hurt. At mile 4, my toe started hurting again. Bummer. Back to Brooks again or buying a new pair of cheaper Sauconys.
Ran to the falls without headphones, listening to the cars and the geese returning north. Ran back listening to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and The Jazz Crusader’s “Young Rabbits” helped me to pick up the pace. I need to create a playlist for pace — maybe mix it in with my beat/metronome experiment: 1 mile with no music or beat / 1 mile with metronome at 172-180 / 1 mile with music.
10 Things
honk honk honk honk geese returning
sparkling water
soft shadows
a runner behind, breathing heavily, closing in, then disappearing — where did they go?
white foam (the falls)
a roller skier — or was it a roller blader?
tufts of symmetrically place ornamental grass mixed with purple blooms near “The Song of Hiawatha”
a woman in a bright yellow windbreaker passing me on a bike, calling out morning!
Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
ending at the big rock that looks like a chair, stepping on it to look down at the oak savanna: green green green
a return
This winter, I replaced many of my regular habits with new ones: (almost) no alcohol; waiting an hour to drink coffee in the morning; more protein, fiber, and iron; instead of sitting at the dining room table for 1+ hours when I woke up reading poems-of-the-day, I watched a brief video then started work on my Holes project; a consistent bedtime routine — ready at 10, asleep by 10:30. I also transformed my workspace. I added a huge cork board to one wall. It’s been fun to mix it up and try new things. I’d like to continue with many of these new things, and I also want to return to a few I’ve shifted away from, especially reading / studying / memorizing other people’s poetry.
In writing this log entry, I decided to visit my favorite poetry sites — poets.org; poetryfoundation, poets.com. On Poetry Foundation I discovered a wonderful podcast series, Wake, Butterfly:
Matsuo Bashō wrote:
Wake, butterfly— it’s late, we’ve miles to go together.
Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating.
The final installment, which is the first I’ve encountered and will listen to, is with Marie Howe, one of my favorite poets! I think I’ll listen to it on the deck.
an hour or so later: I listened to it as I mowed the back yard. Usually I listen to the Bob’s Burgers Soundtrack (and I did today, too, after the 15 minute podcast ended). I’ve also listened to podcasts with Joy Harjo and Vs. with Danez Smith and Franny Choi, and several Agatha Christie books.
I love Marie Howe’s voice. Two times I recall hearing it before: when she was interviewed for On Being 6 or 7 years ago (at least) and in her brief discussion and recitation of her poem-in-progress, “Singularity.” In this podcast, she describes living with a big Irish Catholic family and the stories they would tell. She talks about war (WWII and Vietnam) and how she found poetry. Then she offers this:
I think the poem uses our stuff, you know, like it uses the details of my life, but the details are not important. The details are the cup … That hold something you can’t quite see, but you can feel, I hope. Because when it works, I feel something I can’t see. When I was writing a book called What the Living Do, it wasn’t done yet and I didn’t know how it wasn’t done. It had enough pages, it had an arc, I guess. But I was thinking about when I was in high school and. I was living up in the attic of our house with my brother. My brother lived in one room and I lived in another, and my dad would come up there when he was drunk and, um, pester me for hours—the way a drunk person does, wanting attention, wanting something, and it was very difficult. That’s one of the stories in my heart about my younger life, and I thought, “OK, what else is also true about that story?” And I remember actually standing up from my desk in New York here, and turning around, turning my body around 180 degrees and saying, “What else is true?” And I saw my brother Tom, who would come into the room and try to get my dad out, or would come into the room after my dad had left, and I wanted to praise him. So I want to offer you this invitation. Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.
Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.
I love this idea of taking a fixed story and finding something else in that story to praise. I think I need to sit with this one for a few hours.
Before then, this:
The Maples/ Marie Howe
I ask the stand of maples behind the house,
How should I live my life?
They said, shh shh shh . . .
How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.
A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,
And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.
A squirrel scrambled up a trunk
then along the length of a branch.
Stand still, I thought,
See how long you can bear that.
Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,
drinking light breathing.
—
This standing still — seeing how long I can bear it — seems like a great thing to do everyday. As part of this: explore different ways to be still. What is it to be still?
The beginning of this poem reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem that I’ve posted on this log several years ago (2 july 2020):
I Go Down To The Shore/ Mary Oliver
I go down to the shore in the morning and depending on the hour the waves are rolling in or moving out, and I say, oh, I am miserable, what shall– what should I do? And the seas says in its lovely voice: Excuse me, I have work to do.
3.1 miles trestle turn around 69 degrees humidity: 74%
The earliest run I’ve done in some time — 7:30, which is not that early. I liked running earlier. Next time, I’d like to run by 7. Greeted Mr. Morning! for the first time in months. All year, I’ve been running later in the morning or early in the afternoon, so I’ve missed seeing all of the regulars.
The other day I remembered that I had a pair of Saucony Cohesions that I’ve only wore a handful of times because they made one of my toes hurt. I wondered if they would work better (that is, hurt less) than my Brooks’ Ghosts. Yes! Ever since I wore an old pair of Saucony’s to mow the lawn, I’ve been thinking about returning to Saucony’s for my marathon training. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair; they’re less than half the price of the Brooks shoes, and they’re navy with light pink soles.
10 Things
the Welcoming Oaks — tall, green
boom boom — construction noise from across the river
clank clank clank — something banging/being banged below the trestle
the crack just north of the trestle is shifting and growing — what once was a crack became a trench, and now a ledge — orange cones all around it as warning
someone was sitting at the sliding bench
a walker in a bright yellow jacket — were they a rower heading down to the rowing club?
the parkway was buzzing with cars commuting to work
bright headlights from an approaching bike
a lone honk from a goose somewhere below
a man and a dog crossing the path then entering a steep trail down to the river through small hole in the wall of green
later in the day: Watching a video about her life as a pro runner, Lauren Gregory said this: “Consistency isn’t just about showing up when things are going well; it’s about building a life that allows you to keep showing up.” For Gregory, this means routine.
I really like combining Gregory’s idea of life-building practices routines with Des Linden’s famous call to keep showing up:
hike: 50 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 77 degrees
A warm, but not as warm as I thought it would be, hike. It started with irritation: a guy standing with his dog right in front of the entrance, blocking the way in, barely moving enough to let us by. Why? We both wondered what he was doing and why, out of all of the places he could be waiting, he was standing right in front of the gate.
Most of the rest of the hike was good. FWA reported on all of the theories about Subnautica 2, and discussed how thoughtful the creators of the game are in their early release — hardly any bugs and a well-developed story. When he mentioned that the area where a huge tree lived was called Xanadu, I asked him if the creators of the game named it that as a more general reference to the pop culture idea of Xanadu, or the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Kahn. He thought it was possible they were referencing the poem. All I could remember from it was most of the first 2 lines: In Xanadu, did Kubla Kahn —- decree.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
dog name: I didn’t hear any dog names directly, but I think I heard a woman, who sounded exasperated, calling to her dog down by the water, Scarlet! Scarlet! Come here!
my 2 favorite sounds: First, the bullfrogs. As we neared the end of the trail, at the beach, I could hear the loud buzz of the frogs. The noise was coming from the other side of the water, where the river turns into a creek that winds through a section of the floodplain forest. Second, Delia’s thundering feet. As Delia ran past me, I could hear her little paws pounding the ground — on sand, then grass, then firmer dirt. I love that sound!
holes / strings
I’m continuing to work on my found poems project, but I’d like to wrap it up so I can spend the summer with water. What I need to do now is document my process so that I can remember what I was doing when I pick it back up in the fall. Will I be able to stop, or will I keep working on it regardless of my intentions? We’ll see.
Before I stop, I’d like to get some orange thread — regular + embroidery — and experiment with incorporating it into my otherwise black and white (and gray) visual poems.
I’d also like to figure out the words for my poem using a NYer essay reviewing memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. In my version, mother = word, and it’s about my fraught relationship with seeing/reading/making sense of the written word.
a few hours later: As I worked on finding words in the essay, phrases and fragments kept popping up, then an idea came to me: Pick out a few of these phrases, which offer a way to describe my experiences reading, particularly in terms of how words connect me to the world. Pair a phrase with one of the spiders-on-drugs webs that has been inspiring me. Map the words on a panel, create the spider web over it. I love the idea; can I actually make it?
Some of the webs are easier than others; all of them seem too much to try without some sort of help. One of Chuck Close’s grids?! I definitely want to do the caffeine web, but I think I should start with something easier, like marijuana:
drug-induced webs
I also want to do “sleeping pills” — especially since I often fall asleep while I’m reading!
spider on sleeping pills makes web
I think I’ll do 3 or 4. Here are the phrases I want to refine/condense:
1
When the forms are too fuzzy I escape into coordinates
note: I like the idea of this and the linking of coordinates to the grid and mapping and my desire to find concrete ways to locate my vision loss, but I’m not sure it makes enough sense as is. I’ll keep thinking about it.
2
the ordinariness of language lost
3
gaze — an act of creation and of demolition — made hole again
4
nothing, subdued, entangled
5
shadows and absences born certainty died (or ruptured?)
6
kinship between eye, world, word confounded threads twisted, knotted, cut
8 miles top of I-94 bridge (near downtown) 61 degrees
Could summer finally be here? I hope so. Scott and I ran north on the river road, down the franklin hill, through the flats, up the I-94 hill, then everything, in reverse. The first 6 or so miles of it felt fine; that last bit, not as much. My feet hurt, and I think it’s because of my shoes. They felt better this week than last week, but I’m still wondering if I should look into some other shoes.
Scott and I talked about amateur runners doping (me), our complicated feelings about bikers (Scott), the virtue of reasonableness (me), labor arbitrage in relation to the production of electric basses (Scott), and how a Lutheran church in south Minneapolis is giving land to an American Indian organization as reparations (me). The first half of the run went by quickly as we talked. During the second half, my feet started hurting, the sun felt warmer, and we were both thirsty, so I noticed the time and the miles more.
11 Things
someone on an elipti-go machine
Hi Dave! / Hi Sara! Hi Scott! — greeting Dave the Daily Walker — it’s been some time since I’ve seen him
click clack click clack — a roller skiers poles
a group of 1/2 dozen bikers, at least 3 of them young kids
a line-up of 4 cars, following behind a slower biker chatting on the phone
a thin, oily-looking skin on the river’s surface in the flats
a lone rower on the river! I listened to their oars gently slapping the water
mostly filled benches
the smell of honeysuckle drifting out of the gorge
rows of black garbage bags filled with vegetation — I think it was Friends of the Mississippi River volunteers removing garlic mustard
the spring that emerges from the rock face below the west bank of the U of M was gushing water
A good run. It helps to run with Scott. Today’s victories: running up the entire (long and steep) I-94 hill; running up 3/4 of the franklin hill; keeping steady for most of the run; finishing a minute faster than last week on a tougher route.
Things to work on: try lock laces; bring water — or stop for water
3.75 miles top of wabun hill, bottom of locks and dam 55 degrees
Goodbye gloom, hello sun! Shadows, the promise of summer returning! I was a little nervous about running this morning because my feet have been hurting ever since my 8 mile run on Monday. But, I was fine. I felt strong and happy to be outside in the sun before bugs and heat join us in a few weeks.
10 Things
green everywhere — nothing more specific, just green and green and green
a voice on a speaker at Dowling Elementary telling kids to stay in the classroom until they were told they were free to move around — was this a safety drill? an active shooter? field day?
cracks and ruts and holes on the paved trail everywhere — more now than in the fall
voices below — rowers? no, walkers on the winchell trail — deep in conversation
4 or 5 cars parked on the way down to the locks and dam — at least 2 were running with radios on
a bright silver flash — sun reflecting off a car hood
empty benches
the water under the ford bridge was mostly a calm blue with a few waves and a faint reflection of the bridge’s arch
nearing the top of the wabun hill, hearing a chainlink fence rattling: someone playing on the frisbee golf course
my face, slick with sweat and the new sunscreen I just bought at Costco yesterday
I listened to feet striking the ground as I ran south, my “slappin’ shaddow” playlist on the way north. Song I remember the most: White Room / Cream
Low Vision
Yesterday I had my first low vision therapy appointment. It was an assessment. She asked me what I’d like help with — she worded it differently, but I can’t remember how. First I said that I’d like help with interacting with people when I can’t see their faces, and then something more useful: I’d like some strategies for dealing with that uncomfortable moment when I enter an unfamiliar place and can’t make sense of my surrounding. She recommended 2 apps to try (more on that later) and the basic technique of grounding myself by standing with my back against a wall and taking a minute to get my bearings. I like the idea of stopping and standing against a wall. Two of my big problems are feeling pressured by others, or having them try to help me when I want to figure it out myself. Standing back should help with those problems.
back to hole 3
Woke up yesterday to a realization: I really like the idea of my specimen board, but the execution of it feels forced and not very interesting. Time to set that one aside for now (or forever?). I decided to finally begin my summary of April’s monthly challenge, partly because I don’t want to get too far behind on my summaries, and partly to shift my attention back to grids and holes and lines. I only needed to read a few days into April to find some (re)direction. Here’s what I wrote on 6 April:
I’m thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me….how reading is so important to that locating and how being located is to be held, to be connected, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you).
6 april
This morning, before my run, I decided to rework hole 3. A new plan:
my standard 4 panels — 3 panels of page 1 of the book review of Helen Oyeyemi’s new book, A New New Me, 1 panel of page 2
4 short verses — the first 3 mostly “found” on one of the 3 page 1s, the 4th made out of the words from verses “1-3 that are “found” on page 2
a grid + hole in the top right corner with many strands of thread emerging from it to cover the words of the poem
The words of the poem:
verse 1: swap out the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision for (with?) looks of shadowed magic
verse 2: Fall through the hole your eyes don’t see, land in a logic of blur and almost
verse 3: read sentences sliced in half, each one glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined
verse 4: in a scramble looks logic, eyes read blur as what is
one tiny cheat: even though I don’t use as in the first 3 verses, I added it to verse 4 because I needed to — can I keep playing around with this to make it fully work?
I would like to have this on my cork board before the sun begins streaming in the front windows. How will the shadows fall on the panels? What might the thread-shadows say? If this looks cool, I’d like that to be part of the poem.
I have the panels up on the cork board. I didn’t have time to do anything but mark where the found words go, but I was able to create some thread lines. Now I wait. And wait. And wait. It wasn’t until 7pm that the shadows began to appear. The ones from the threads weren’t as interesting as I wanted, so I started experimenting with other ways to make shadows. A flash of a thought: tape my blind spot on the window where the light is streaming in so it can cast a shadow on the paper. Yes! I had three templates, so I taped them all up. I want to play with this some more tomorrow — hopefully it will be sunny again!
3 holes taped on window, casting shadow on essay, close-up3 holes taped on window, long view
run: 8 miles around lake nokomis and back 62 degrees humidity: 86%
A long run with Scott. 8 miles this week. It felt easier than the 7 miles last week. The only problem: my feet. About 4 miles in, I noticed my socks were bunching up and under the ball of my feet, which was painful and made me alter my gait. Next time: different socks.
I started the conversation with Alice in Wonderland and the scene with the Cheshire Cat; it’s an inspiration for my found poem about landing in the logic of blur and almost. Scott talked about his YouTube channel — the main one and one of his secondary channels that he jokingly created for one of the gnomes in our backyard. I also talked about shifting my perspective on my unfinished business problem: not trying to avoid it, but learning how to accept and manage it while I’m running. What else did Scott talk about? A lot, I just can’t remember what.
10 Things
the green looked and felt greener, the brown richer and darker after last night’s rain
birds! so much birdsong everywhere and all the time
a mini-ambulance parked on minnehaha parkway, a Ghostbusters logo painted on the side
an older man with a cane calling out to us as we ran around the lake — the birds are attacking me! Just then, a bird swooped down on him
a little dog with a big, fluffy tail, shaking their butt as they walked
the view of the lake from the cedar avenue bridge: completely still, the reflection of ascending plane travelling across it
puddles — most of them on the lake trail
stopping at the port-a-potty near the little beach: no toilet paper in either one
more benches than last year set up around the stage at the falls — Scott guessed that they start out with a lot, but the number dwindles over the course of the summer as the benches get broken, I wondered if people stole them
the view near the bench above the edge of the world is gone until next fall, now it’s a wall of green green green
hike: an hour minnehaha off-leash dog park 61 degrees
The air was cool, but thick down in the floodplain. The ground was soft and firm, in some spots muddy. So many birds! I wish I would have had my phone and recorded them. Hardly anyone was at the park — because of last night’s rain? and today’s humidity? The few cars were all parked on the one side of the parking lot. No one, including FWA, wanted to be the first to park on the other side. The surface of the water was covered in some sort of scum. When we got closer we realized what it was: seeds.
dog names: Dolly (or Ollie), Squirrel, and ? — I can’t remember the name of the Corgi we encountered.
We talked about the social life of birds and Subnautica 2 and delighted in Delia’s joy. I noticed she seemed to be leaping more as she ran; we agreed that it was probably because of the firmer ground.
added the next morning: I forgot to mention the moss, or was it lichen?, that I studied on the side of some big trees down in the floodplain. Very cool — an intense green covering the soft and wet bark on one side, while dry and rough bark was on the other side.
The greens and browns were enchanting. So were the birds. And the quiet — so peaceful and still.
And today, after months of focusing almost exclusively on my “how I read”/ holes poems, here’s a bit of a beautiful poem from Tracy K. Smith:
My son listens into daylight, head tilted, eyes tuned past the range of the seen.
What he seeks to see is vibratory. A butterfly’s itch. The pitch at which a mind
is freed to dart, spark, break into flight. His gaze rakes space. What does his ear see? Beads
of breath rising from the body of a bee. A whiff of rain batting a new green leaf. I watch him—
What does his ear see? I like the images of hearing in this poem.
hole 4b
Yesterday, I spent some more time with my found poem inspired by a specimen board. It’s slowly coming together, but I have more work (thinking, executing) to do with it.
So far, I’ve cut the words out of the essay, leaving holes where they were. I printed out the words — in sizes according to their importance. I also cut out labels for each word, with the poem position and location. I need to figure out how I’d like to put the “board” on the panels — glue the labels directly on the page along with the pinned words OR make this board on a different page to be placed over the existing text. It would be easier (and less risky) to do it on a separate page, but I like the idea of doing it directly on the panels.
I took some pictures to document my progress:
here’s the board with the words arranged by size with their labelsHere are the 4 panels of the essay. The big space where there are no holes is where the “board” will be placedI was inspired by the Manitoba Museum picture I posted the other day to take this one
Today, I began working on it some more, but it is dark outside today and I mostly rely on natural light to see in my studio space, so no more cutting or drawing or pasting for me today. Maybe it isn’t just the light; after my 8 mile run and hour long hike, I’m tired!
hole 3
Before running this morning, I thought a little more about another hole that is in the preliminary stage. The text involves the phrases, land in the logic of blur and almost and glitching just enough to scramble what’s real and imagined. I think the Cheshire Cat could be inspiration for these lines. How? Visually, I’m not quite sure yet, but I’m struck by the cat’s song at the beginning. The words sound like words, and they’re almost English, but they’re not quite. And the cat appears in varying degrees of visibility: just a mouth, a full body, indented footprints in the dirt.
“Most everyone’s mad here. You may have noticed that I’m not all there myself”
The caterpillar scene was about words and language and As, Es, Is, Os, and Us; the Cheshire Cat scene seems to be about finding your way when you’re lost in a world of nonsense and madness (where madness = beyond/outside of logic, upside down). Yes, locating and being located. Reading and language helps locate us and us locate/orient ourselves. I’ll think some more about how the Cheshire scene might inspire me.
Whew. Went out early — before coffee or any food — because it was already 68 degrees. The warm temps and unfinished business made the run harder than it should have been. Still, it was a beautiful morning, especially when I was walking and feeling the breeze. A lot of attention was given to making sure I didn’t finally have the poop story that most runner’s seem to have, so was I able to notice 10 things? Yes!
10 Things
the welcoming oaks — green and tall, difficult to see anything other than the trunk
the tree that looks like a tuning fork
light shining on top of ancient boulder, which was empty of rocks
a parks truck under the lake street bridge, workers up in a bucket doing something to the bridge, listening to music — a familiar classic rock song — was it Hotel California?
the river, the air were still, quiet
a flash of a sound below — was that a coxswain?
a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt
the mitten tulips are still up, near the trestle
two older white women, dressed all in black, discussing nutrition
the sliding bench seems to have slid a bit more, the green beneath has grown thicker and greener
holes
Last night I had a thought: create a visual poem that uses the image of bugs pinned to a specimen board as a way to critically express the idea of words trapped in fixed meanings. But, which NYer essay, which found poem? This morning, another thought: use the essay about the New York cemetery (Hole 4 / Still Green) and part of the poem that I had previously cut. Yes!
draft, previously cut text:
you can’t exhume the bodies but you can make room for life in this place where the dead are interred
crack open a grave with a new way of seeing (or reading?)
inspirations: a specimen board + Alice in Wonderland, caterpillar scene
boards at Manitoba Museumspecimen drawersthe collection before processing/pinning
I could imagine this as part of an installation, with the words/phrases cut out individually and positioned in a heap with a label identifying them. The second image has the specimen’s in a drawer. I’d like ot experiment with that too — O have a jewelry box that might work for that, and drawers from an old optometrist desk. Fun!
I mentioned Alice in Wonderland as an inspiration because of how prominent making language strange is in this scene. Also, the bug connection, and the butterfly at the end!
Alice, the Caterpillar, and the strangeness of words
I came up with this idea because pins seem to be playing a prominent role in my visual poetry. They started as the temporary way to achieve the effect I wanted, but at some point I realized that they were another character in my visual story.
The question now: do I work on this now, or keep working on my blooms? Sara-this-second’s answer is: blooms first!
run: 7 miles walk: 2 miles around lake nokomis and back 52 degrees
A long run with Scott. The plan: run to lake nokomis and around it, stop at falls coffee, walk home the rest of the way. Falls coffee was too crowded, so we tried Aria instead. Very good. Most of the run felt good. We did 9/1, then at the lake run 1 mile, walk 1/10th of a mile. The last 1/4 of mile was the hardest. My feet hurt and my legs were sore. The walk back was hard — too long + not enough stretching. Now I’m icing my right knee, which is very stiff.
It was fun to run to the lake. It is the first time this year. Last night we walked to Minnehaha Falls, today we ran to Lake Nokomis. It’s officially summer, Scott said. Hooray! Less than a month until open swim. I couldn’t believe it, but the buoys are already up! Wow, that water must be cold!
Scott told me about a YouTube video he had recently watched: a biker discussing one way the people are stealing bikes, and how we almost fell for it. They lock their bike to your bike, then wait until it’s dark, then they cut your lock. How to avoid this: carry extra locks to buy some time, or try to find a police officer and get them to cut the lock off. Also: lock your bike in a public, clearly visible place, and don’t lock to a pole that someone might be able to lift or unbolt. I talked about my holes project, memories of past runs, and how June 1st (Scott) and June 2nd) will be our 15th running anniversary. I also returned us to a discussion from a few days ago about what it might have looked like when passenger pigeons covered the sky in the late 1800s. When I had described it a few days ago as “blotting out the sun,” Scott had said that that poetic imagery wasn’t accurate. Today I talked about how, when I’m swimming in the lake and a cloud covers the sun, it does feel dramatic and like the sun if being blotted out. We agreed that it wasn’t as complete as a solar eclipse, but that it probably made the sky darker. Like day for night, I said.
quick research after the run: Here’s a quote I found that describes this blotting out:
In the early 1800s, ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a single flock, which he estimated at 2.3 billion passenger pigeons, that blacked out the sky and took three days to pass overhead.
2 of the pickleball courts were empty — is pickleball falling out of favor, or is there some other explanation?
the lake water was blue and choppy
halfway around the lake, a loud splash — was it a fish jumping out of the water, a duck diving down?
running past Howe, noticing a plane ascending at (what seemed to me to be) a very steep pitch
nokomis road at the spot that crosses the bike path was closed again — why? — last summer it was closed, too
the little beach barely seems like a beach these days — the big tree, which offered so much shade, is gone, and the water has claimed half of the sand
the condition of the path was terrible — big cracks marked with orange spray paint everywhere
crossing the cedar bridge, near a light post, hearing this squeaking noise, we both wondered if the noise was made by a bird or the tall post
no flowers yet at longfellow garden
walking home, a memory flashed — the last time I remember walking home this way — after a run, with coffee in my hand, was on my birthday in 2021. I didn’t know it, but I had covid
note: we ran beside the creek for more than a mile, but I can’t remember noticing it at all. Was it high? Low? Babbling or gushing? I have no recollection.
holes
Today, I hope to finish drawing the numbers on Hole 5c (the hole process). I’m also working on Hole 5a (my hole perspective): life on the way to wonder land / a what is this? feeling grows / as text blooms into nonsense This version of the hole is referencing Alice in Wonderland and going down the rabbit hole. Do the images of the falling down a hole and blooms work together? Could I combine a page made dark with lines and thread with blooms of text? For the blooms, I’m thinking of making petals out of cut out words from the essay. I like this idea of texture; the blooms would stick out of the flat essay pages. Blooms/bursts/flares of light with the center of the flower being the word of the poem?
during the run: As I mentioned my ideas to Scott, I had another thought — what if the blooming was like my favorite spring shadows, the shadows of the little leaf explosions on the tips of branches. Instead of making those shadows dark, they would be bursts of white/light against the dark text?
As a place to start, I’m trying out slanted lines for darkening the text. Is this enough? I think I’ll try drawing in some more lines. An additional question: how will it look when all the panels are put together?
My hole perspective, lines 1
The white dot is where some wirds from the poem are on the page and the center of a future bloom.
I found a tutorial for making paper roses. It’s more than I imagine I’ll do, but a starting point for thinking how to create a bloom on the page.
ideas for blooming paper
I won’t use cardstock for my petals, but another print out of the essay. Will it work? Sunday (or Monday) Sara will find out!
I almost forgot. I signed RJP and I up for open swim!! It starts in a month.
Initially I was planning to run south but then I remembered that Scott and RJP had seen a cool art display near the trestle so I ran north to find it. First I ran through the neighborhood, past the daycare playground which was empty of kids, and over the lake street bridge to the east side of the river. Then I ran north to franklin, west over the bridge, and then south to the trestle.
A beautiful morning! Ran into the wind for the first half, with it behind me for the second half. I had to adjust my cap a few times to make sure it wouldn’t fly off, but otherwise the wind didn’t bother me. In fact, I liked what it did to the surface of the water as I ran over the lake street bridge: a wide stretch of rough scales.
I did 9/11 and it helped me to not run too fast. I felt strong, especially in the second half of the run.
As I neared the trestle from the north, I began looking for the art display. I finally found it in a grassy stretch near the part of the walking trail that splits from the bike trail. It’s a cluster of mitten tulips! We’re not sure who did it, or why, but I love it!
After stopping to take these pictures, I kept running south. As I neared the tunnel of trees, I saw that the road was closed. Then I saw smoke — a lot of smoke. Were they smoking the sewers in the neighborhood. Then I heard the crackling of fire on the hill below lena smith boulevard. Oh — a controlled burn. I stopped to take some video. For some reason, most of it is in slow motion again. Only the first five and last five seconds of it are at normal speed.
controlled burn / 5 may 2026
holes, grids, other worlds and other mothers
Yesterday I gave myself a task: weave thread through the plastic grid, sew thread on paper, sew thread on a plastic bag. A preliminary2 verdict: thin yarn on the plastic grid is possible iff I find the right purpose; paper might work if I think more deliberately about it; plastic has a lot of possibility. I’d like to try replicating a drug-induced spider web on it! My sewing skills are very limited — limited = 7th grade home-ec class + the occasional darning of pants/shirts + sewing up the rip on the brand new couch that Delia the dog made when we first got her 10 years ago. Will that stop me? Maybe in the past, but not today! I’ve already cleared the first hurdle: I threaded a needle! Yes, with my very bad vision, I managed to thread the eye of a tiny needle. Oh — the eye of a needle?! That’s an interesting connection to this project and my poem about the string that ties eye to words to world.
eye = needle / string = thread
I posted about this last week (I think?), but I’m reminded of Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Tattoo,” again and the lines, light is like a spider . . . it crawls under your eyelids/And spreads its webs there–/Its two webs./The webs of your eyes Spiders and threads and eyes. Now thread = light = that invisible thing that connects us to words and meaning. So good!
Maybe I should also try creating the web on the latch hook grid? I don’t have a needle with an eye big enough for the thin yarn I’m using, so I’ll try to do it with my hands.
I just watched a clip from Coraline on YouTube titled, “Coraline — Meeting “Other Mother.” I want to think more about the other mother’s button eyes and the idea of the hole as a portal between the world of her mother and other mother. Question: So far, I’ve taken inspiration from Alice in Wonderland and Coraline about holes to other worlds, but what other classic kid movies/books feature a hole/portal? Just as I wrote those last words I recalled Narnia and “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which I loved reading as kid. A connection: the portal/hole/door is in a wardrobe, closet and through clothes. Is the thread/cloth connection significant?
other mother, button eyesthrough the small door between
7 miles lake superior boardwalk, duluth 37 degrees
An impromptu trip to Duluth with Scott. Our first trip alone since last April when we went to visit my best friend in Iowa. We need more of these. This morning, we ran together above Lake Superior through Leif Erikson park and 3 miles north, then turned around and headed back. As we ran, I told Scott that the theme of the run was water.
10 Water Things
thin sheets of ice on the water! earlier from the window of our room, I had noticed the texture of the water and wondered what was causing the strips of rough water amongst the smooth stretches
water gushing out of a sewer pipe embedded in a ravine
crack crackle crackle the ice sheet butting up against the rocks near shore and cracking — such a cool sound!
drip drip drip water dripping out of some pipe deep in a backyard
the rushing of the creek under the high wooden bridge we ran over
Lake Superior — blue and beautiful, one giant ship, anchored miles from shore
drip drip drip sweat dripping off my face
a pool of water on the floor of the port-a-potty
benches dotted on the bluff, filled with people enjoying the view
almost all of the ice gone — I thought all of it was, until I noticed a few sheets still on the surface as we walked up the steps after the run
While we ran, we talked about our kids and Star Trek and an article Scott had read about fraternal twin girls with the same mother but different fathers. I saw my shadow and started singing Me and my Shadow. Scott asked who had sung it and when I said, I wasn’t sure but I had a version with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis on my shadows playlist, he said, Sammy Davis Jr. is his shadow? Yikes. And I said, Jesus, how have I never noticed that before. Then a string of associations: I mentioned that they sang it on a tv special which led to a discussion of the Andy Williams Christmas special, then the kids in it, which reminded Scott of the scared kid on the Ray Coniff Christmas Special who hears a creepy story about a little gray lamb read to her by the guy who played Wilbur on Mr. Ed — Scott couldn’t remember the actor’s name. Scott started reminiscing about watching Mr. Ed with his mom on Nick at Nite, which prompted me to start singing the theme song from “The Patty Duke Show” — because, of course I would.
It was a good run, and a great mental victory. As I said to Scott, I’m excited to push myself mentally to run these longer distances. It is a wonderful feeling to successfully push through these tough moments.
a quick note about grids
Yesterday, while driving back from 2 Harbors to our hotel in Duluth we started talking about the show Alone and then what it means to be “off the grid,” Yes — another meaning of grids! How can I play around with this in my exploration of grids?!
Sunny, cool-ish. Overdressed in tights and my hooded pullover. Everywhere green and gorgeous. I was too dazzled by the green to notice the river. Was it sparkling? I also didn’t notice the falls — how hard and fast were they falling? I do remember giving a quick glance to the creek: gray, open, flowing fast.
When I wasn’t thinking about anything, which was much of the time, I thought about not running too fast and pushing through tough moments
10 Things
a class-sized group of kids down in the oak savanna — running above, I heard their voices, then saw them hiking below the mesa on the winchell trail
passing a guy on veterans bridge — I was about the say hi when I noticed he was talking into a phone
the surrey kiosk is up — today, on a wednesday, it was empty and closed
running down the locks and dam hill, passing a man, exchanging greetings — hello / hi
encountering a series of bikers — spaced far enough apart that I wondered if they were together — the first two had bright headlights on
from behind, the faint noise of bike wheels moving very slowly, finally passing — a woman very upright in a bright yellow jacket biking very casually
explosions of white blossoms on some of the trees lining the trail
a mower at wabun, the smell of freshly cut grass
the parking lot at veterans home was crowded and full
a moment: running just north of the 44th street parking lot — shadows then suddenly more light: a net or web of shadows, some sprawled, some with little circles at the tips (the buds of trees)
When I saw these shadows I stopped running, pulled out my phone, and took a few pictures. A thought: this net of shadows would be the grid/net obscuring the text of a NYer essay. I’ll have to play around with it. As I kept running, I thought about shadowboxes and silhouettes and playing around with them in a visual poem. I stopped twice more to take shadowed pictures.
12345678910
I decided to post all the pictures that I took so I could study them some more. I like imagining these shadows as a net or a veil, a weaving/gathering of threads/strings/lines that affect my view of what is beneath them. Here it is the sidewalk, on the NYer page, it’s the words.
a thought: I’ve been trying to create neat and precise (well, precise-ish) grids of lines to mimic the Amsler grid, but does that really express/show how I see, or how I feel about, the words as I try to read them? What if I drew a “normal” grid directly on the text and then made the grid elevated above it more slanted, askew, not straight or orderly?
a few hours later: I made another frame out of cardboard and then tried to turn it into a loom that I could thread a grid on. Unsuccessful. Too hard to cut the slats enough so I could wind thread through it. I’m not completely giving up on this idea, but I think I’ll take a break from it. A little discouraging, but that’s okay. I think I just need some time to build up the skills to figure it out.
6.4 miles* falls to lake to ford to falls Get in Gear 45 degrees / drizzle
*I started my watch before the start line and we didn’t take the tangents so we were weaving around the course.
A good start to marathon training. Probably By far, the slowest 10k I’ve ever run in a race (partly due to a port-a-potty stop 3 miles in), but Scott and I ran together, we felt strong, and we didn’t stop for any walk breaks. A big mental victory, especially in that last mile, which seemed to last forever.
Near the beginning of the race, as faster runners were passing slower runners, I had 3 people in a row clip my elbow as they ran by. I asked Scott, do I run with my elbows sticking out? He said no, but I’m not so sure.
I can’t remember what Scott talked about, but I remember talking about pro runners running with wide elbows to claim space on the track, and the music they played — My Way — at the house with the bleachers on the marathon route. I talked about past versions of this race — we run it at least 5 times, probably more. I remember we were talking about how many races we’ve run total. I guessed at least 50. Scott looked it up on his spreadsheet: 65.
Just before mile 4, an older woman rang a cowbell and chanted this:
It was awesome in its awkward earnestness and deadpan delivery. It prompted me to start chanting and talking about chanting with Scott. I did my classic triple berry chants for a few minutes. Scott said that doing this would drive him insane. I said that it helps keep me focused.
The last mile seemed to go on forever but I found some energy at the end to pick up the pace. It felt so fast, but it was really only about what I used to run as an average pace for an entire 10k. Wow, I have slowed down as I have gotten older.
10 Things
the gentle tapping of rain on the port-a-potty roof
little kids chanting, go! go! go!
an enthusiastic woman behind me in the start corral responding to the announcers, how is everyone feeling? with a shriek
the pavement was wet and felt slippery under my shoes
several non-racing runners calling out to some runners, go mill city running!
frequent big cracks in the asphalt
crossing the ford bridge, hearing a white car continuously honking as they drove by us
wild turkeys! in a yard — I didn’t see then, just heard another running point them out to someone and then another runner calling out to the turkeys, hey turkey! gobble gobble!
feeling the rain falling mid-race and not caring
nearing the finish line — not seeing it, but close enough to hear the crowd — hearing an air horn go off
A quick run before it warms up later today. 80 degrees at 5. My legs felt heavy and sore and something doesn’t seem quite right with my new shoes. Nothing felt smooth. Hopefully, I’ll break in the shoes and it will be okay.
Even with the struggling, I’m glad (as always) that I went out for a run. A beautiful spring morning! Birdsong, bright sun mixed with cool breeze, green buds, shadows.
My favorite part about the run: the sun was coming from the east and creating sharp shadows of the fence on the sidewalk1. As I ran below on the winchell trail, the lines from the wrought iron fence were so distinct that I thought I was running on a boardwalk instead of a sidewalk. The lines reminded me of the stretch of wooden walkway near the Guthrie. It didn’t feel like a boardwalk, but my brain kept making me think that it was.
Other things noticed: the sound of water trickling out of the ravine at 42nd; a woman power walking in the street, swinging her arms with purpose; kids laughing and talking as they got dropped off for school; mostly empty benches, one or two occupied; the bells of St. Thomas; the rumble of construction work somewhere nearby; a steady stream of cars commuting to work.
from the library
Last week I requested the graphic poem, Her Read by Jennifer Sperry, and today I was able to pick it up! Scott and I did our usual routine: pick up a book at the library, head over to Arbeiter for a beer because it’s about a block away. This book looks really great. I”m excited to dig into it tomorrow!
As I was telling Scott about the slat shadows, I realized that it was less the direction of the sun and more the fact that there were no leaves blocking the fence. In the summer, when I usually run down on the Winchell trail, there are no shadows because of the thick leaves. ↩︎
4.2 miles shadow falls / monument and back 50 degrees
The earliest run I’ve done in some time. I started just after 8, which would have been a late run five years ago. I want to get back to early morning runs as it gets warmer. Even in 50 degrees, I was sweating. Is it the effort of hot flashes?
I decided to run through the neighbor hood, and past the Church daycare. The kids were outside already and having fun. It sounded like one kid was playing some sort of game where he was blasting his enemies as he ran near the perimeter of the fence — take that! pew pew pew! I admired the river as I ran over the lake street bridge. Blue, calm, inviting reflections. No rowers yet. At the Monument, I could hear Shadow Falls roaring, which only happens after rain, so I stepped off the trail and hiked for a closer look. A runner with a dog passed me at one point, both of them having no problems navigating the narrow and steep trail on the edge of the bluff — good morning! thank you! /hi! sure! I couldn’t see the falls falling but I heard the gentle rushing of water. In a flash, I thought of the poem I wrote last year, especially this part:
Deep in the autumn when rain rarely happens and nothing flows down off the ledge, listen for something other than water, listen for shadows instead.
Shadows of soldiers, Shadows of mothers, Shadows of paved-over creeks. Shadows that signal what else could be here now Shadows that dwell in-between.
Speaking of shadows, I saw mine, down in the ravine, beside me on the path, climbing a tree.
In addition to the runner and the dog, there was another hiker on the trail, and a few different pairs of fast runners near the hill that climbs out of the monument park. I heard the roar of a plane, then saw the flash of silver in the sky. Also heard cheeseburger cheeseburger — I think that’s a carolina wren? Yes! Looking it up, the results said it was a black capped chickadee, but I knew it wasn’t. I found the carolina wren when I remembered the other words people think this song sounds like: tea kettle tea kettle.
This run wasn’t easy — sore legs, unfinished business — but I’m glad I did it. I love being outside in the early-ish morning. Today it was 8, but I’d like to be up and out by 6:30 or 7 this summer.
With summer, and high humidity coming, here’s a poem to help me endure it:
What am I if not what happens when I try to run away?
Water falls out of me like an opinion. I’m like a screen door banging between two rivers.
Dear air, what’s inside me you’re so desperate to take?
I put on the Atlantic like a sweater. My head bobs on the surface of a lake I’m named after.
Where do I belong? My head asks. My body, exasperated, answers.
hike: 60 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park with FWA and Delia 63 degrees
Ahhh! A wonderful late morning for a hike. The green continues to creep up the trees. More exploding shadows of new buds. I only recall hearing one dog name: Liza. Liza, don’t you ambush that dog! That dog was Delia, and if there was any ambushing being done, it was by Delia to Liza and her human. Delia loves to get other dogs worked up, which the humans don’t see, or ignore. They assume because Delia is small and cute she is always the one being preyed upon. Ha! Another typical Delia dog encounter: a big talk playing fetch in the water. Delia thought it looked fun and wanted to join in. The big dog barked at her, which seem to translate to: back off! this is my game, and this is my stick!
Often as we’re walking, FWA and I talk about video games or the past or One Piece. Today we wer’re mostly quiet, except for my occasional commentary on this tree or that leaf. I was fine not talking; I liked having the chance to listen to all the different sounds: birds, footsteps, a nearby stream rushing or gushing or swirling in an eddy.
holes
Today, more cutting out black netting holes and layering and mapping them on the paper. For now, I’m pinning them, but I’m wondering if I could fasten them with a button through the center and then glue the word to the button? Would that work on paper? Only one way to find out — I just need more buttons and a needle!
Here’s one version of Holes 1. I wrote numbers directly on the page to indicate how to read it, but I’m not sure if I want to keep them. Also, I kept the cross-hatched hole and the pencil shaded one for now.
the numbered version
another note: the shape of the word is the shape of my working central vision. In theory, I like doing this, but I think the shape looks awkward. I’d prefer a circle instead.
the hole process island where reading still possible waits as large something that surrounds it grows
another note: I want to make the shade part around the hole process larger also: instead of individual numbers, I could number the 4 pages/panels and identify the location of the words in a small key
word island where reading still possible waits as large something that surrounds it grows
5.25 miles franklin loop 63 degrees / drizzle humidty: 85%
I beat the storm! Yes, there was drizzle, but no strong wind or thunder, so I’ll take the victory. Today I felt strong and relaxed and capable. Not anxious or overwhelmed. Today I also feel vulnerable and open to the world, ready to embrace any slight shifts in perspective.
Image of the Day: Running north on the east bank, looking down at the river: a sea of bright, fresh green. On this side of the gorge, between lake and franklin, there used to be a park down below, so there’s wide stretches of cleared land and open grass. Even knowing that, the green looked like water not grass to me, high up on the bluff.
Realization of the day: Returning to the west bank, running south, admiring the straight-ish ridge line across the gorge and wondering how it could be almost uniform, I realized something: this ridge line was made by humans — leveled after logging and road and residence building. What did it look like before settler colonists arrived?
on training for the marathon: Today I ran 9, walked 1. After crossing over Franklin, I did a 5 minute walk to get my heart rate below 170. Then another 9/1. After this last one I checked how long it took to get my heart rate down to 135: 2 minutes. A goal for future Sara: cut that time in half, or even more.
10 Things
flashes of white flowers on the edge of the bluff: the spring ephemerals!
little kid voices, laughing, somewhere deep in the gorge
a guy yelling near a car parked across the parkwy on seabury — was it “fun” yelling as he played with a kid, or “unhinged” yelling at someone?
chickadeedeedee
a verbal greeting with a walker: good moring! / good morring!
honking geese, a honking car horm
a grayish-brownish-blue river, empty
bright LED headlights, cutting through the thick gray air
slashes of bright green are beginning to appear in the floodplain forest!
several stones stacked on the ancient boulder
grids and strings and threads (oh my)
It’s a few hours after I returned from my run and it’s hailed twice and thundered and dropped 15 degrees since then. Boo. I tried a new thing with Holes 3: drew a graph directly on the words, mapped the words on the xy axis, lightly shaded in the words, repinned the grid over that, and then used thread to finish it. I like the doubling, almost out of focus feeling that the pencil grid and the string grid create. I don’t think the words are clear enough yet. I’ll have to keep working on that.
double griddouble grid, a slightly closer look (find fall and almost)
Here’s something else I tried: encasing the words in circles (using a penny) then roughly erasing the circles:
ghost hole effect
Another thought: map the words on a grid, then color in the rest of the grid box around the word or phrase from the poem. How would that look?Maybe I’ll try it on a smaller scale?
Strange weather. Yesterday it was in the 40s and raining, today it could get up to 80 degrees. Then 70s all week and high of 40 next Saturday. I wore shorts and a tank top today and felt fine — not too hot or cold. For the first time this year, I ran with Scott. Hooray for old traditions returning! We did 9 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking, which helped keep us steady. We both agreed that we’ve been very undisciplined with the steadiness of our runs. Yes, I’ve continued to run about 20 miles per week, but I haven’t had much of a plan and I’ve usually made it for 2 miles without stopping, then running and walking the rest. Time to get more serious and work of my mental toughness.
Scott talked about his latest musical composition — a suite inspired by Artemis and its voyage to the dark side of the moon. It’s in 26/81. I talked about the YouTuber, Ms Space Cadet, her struggle running, and how she was running faster than her fitness because of her new shoes. I also mentioned the podcast I’m listening to: an interview with Robert Macfarlane about his recent book, Is a River Alive? So good! I was listening to it this morning as I colored in my holes/circles for a redo of Holes 4 (more on that below).
We passed a race in progress on the river road. I think it was the Gopher 10 mile, but I’m not positive. At one spot, where the spectators and volunteers were thick, I heard someone call out, you can do it! you’re stronger than you think! (is that what they said, or am I remembering it wrong?)
The air was thick, the trail still damp from last night’s rain. Noting green yet, everything still brown. No rowers on the river. No roller skiers. No memorable birds.
grids and threads
I’ve put Holes 4 on my new corkboard (which doesn’t seem to want to stay stuck to the wall in this humid weather) and experimented with black thread and gray yarn. FWA likes the thread, and Scott thinks I need something in-between both. Dark string? We don’t have dark string, but we do have white string? Should I try that?
experimenting with lines / 12 april
I did try the white string and didn’t like it. More experiments with thinner yarn and embroidery thread tomorrow!
I had to double-check with Scott on that strange time signature. He also sent me the breakdown to the movements: I. Launch [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8] II. Journey Through the Void [4/4 + 4/4 + 5/4] III. Mare Orientale [6/8 + 6/8 + 6/8 + 4/4] IV. The Terminator [6/8 + 7/8 + 6/8 + 7/8] V. L.O.S. [3/4 + 2/4 + 3/4 + 3/4 + 2/4] VI. Eclipse [7/8 + 7/8 + 7/8 + 5/8] VII. The Return [6/4 + 7/4] VIII. Splashdown [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8] ↩︎
4.35 miles minnehaha falls and back 32 degrees / feels like 17
Cold again. Because of the low feels like temp, I overdressed: 2 pairs of tights, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, pullover. Halfway through I ditched the pullover, which was awkward as I struggled to take it off without removing the outer layer.
Tried to stay steady and slow. Chanted in triple berries in my head. Took several walk breaks — not because I was tired, but to take pictures or to record my thoughts or to take off my second layer.
Thought about grids and nets (more on this below) as I ran. Recorded some thoughts on my phone:
recording 1: I’m thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me. And I’m thinking about the xy axis and a map and the visual field. And mapping and locating yourself within the known world and how reading is so important to that locating and figuring out how to navigate without that.
recording 2: Thinking more about why nets or grids or that particular way of being located is to be held, to be connected, to be located, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you). So not in this free fall. To orient yourself in some way. To not be entirely unmoored. Because as fun as it sounds in theory to be untethered and unlimited by these restrictions, physically it does not feel good. Dizzy, disoriented, nauseated (sometimes). A slow, growing anxiety.
This last bit about the ill effects of being unmoored was inspired by how I felt as I started my run. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I did feel a little dizzy and disconnected from the path, unable to clearly see what was ahead of me. I wasn’t blind to the trail or anyone on it. I was disoriented and anything I saw was vague and barely formed. This way of seeing unsettled me; it also made everything feel dreamy and not real or unreal or surreal. By the end of the first mile, it had dissipated somewhat.
So, why the Amsler grid? First, the obvious: it’s a vision test and I am writing around (and through) vision tests in much of my vision/visual poetry. Another explanation: it represents a mapping, a locating, a connecting to the known world (where known partly = “normal”/medical understandings and models of seeing). Also, it is a reference point from and a starting point that readers can understand (a place of common ground, a concrete and easily expressed and understandable model and map for blind spots in central vision/visual field).
grids / nets
I was planning to study worms and bugs for my April challenge, but that will have to wait. This month is about grids and nets and matrices. I chose this topic because I want to dig deeper into the grid and what role it plays in my Holes series, and also because of a series of pieces that AMP pointed out to me at MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts):
Charles Gaines / Numbers and Trees
I found a book from one of his exhibits and requested it from the local library. When I get it, I’ll discuss the grids more. (I also plan to return to MIA soon to study the pieces more closely). Here’s one photo of them that I particularly like of me, FWA, and RJP, who is talking with her hands in a way that I love.
3 people looking at art, 2 of them talking about it, one with her hands
. Heading out for my run this morning, I wanted to notice grids. A few minutes later, all I could think about was the twisted/bent fence at the falls that I noticed last Thursday. I regretted not stopping to take a picture of it then, so I took several today. Here are 2:
1
Remembering this crooked fence and then taking pictures of it, inspired me to expand my grid/net/matrix month to fences too — this fence + chainlink fences. Things that contain, orient, map, frame.
To start this grid exploration, some research on the Amsler Grid. Have I done any research about it in past years? Not that I can find!
Amsler Grid
The Amsler grid, used since 1945, is a grid of horizontal and vertical lines used to monitor a person’s central visual field. The grid was developed by Marc Amsler, a Swiss ophthalmologist. It is a diagnostic tool that aids in the detection of visual disturbances caused by changes in the retina, particularly the macula (e.g. macular degeneration, Epiretinal membrane), as well as the optic nerve and the visual pathway to the brain. An Amsler grid can show defects in the central 20 degrees of the visual field.
In the test, the person looks with each eye separately at the small dot in the center of the grid. Patients with macular disease may see wavy lines or some lines may be missing. . . .
Although originally intended for use in clinical settings, the Amsler grid has proven highly adaptable for home monitoring. Its portability and ease of use enable patients to participate actively in the management of their ocular health, allowing earlier detection of disease progression and more timely medical intervention.
This idea of it being for use at home connects to my desire to use whatever materials and words I can find around me for this Holes series. There’s more there, I think.
I’d like to spend a few minutes (maybe later today or tomorrow morning) writing more about lines and grids and mapping and why it’s important to me, both in this series and in my understanding/description of my vision loss.
While looking for more on Amsler and the grid, I found out about Edward Munch and his vision loss at 60. As he was experiencing it, he drew a series of sketches/paintings, some with grid lines, some annotating the strange ways he saw. Very cool. Here’s more about it from a exhibit at the Tate. Is there a book for the exhibit and could it be at my local library? Yes! I just requested it.
4.45 miles minnehaha falls and back 35 degrees / steady drizzle
The forecast, rain all day, but when I looked out my window it didn’t seem too bad. No ice, above freezing, so I decided to go for a run, which was an excellent decision. I was bundled up and barely felt the rain — well, I guess I felt my soaked socks and cold legs (through my running tights), but I didn’t care. It was wonderful to be outside, mostly alone, only a few other walkers and runners joining me.
Because of the rain, I was wearing an old pair of Saucony’s (3 or more years old?) and didn’t run too fast. That helped me stay relaxed and able to keep going for longer. Maybe I should train some more in these shoes and save my new ones for faster runs, races, and until I’m trained up to run longer?Everything was wet. My favorite wet thing was the slick mirror Godfrey Boulevard made from the rain and new asphalt. Very cool! I saw my running self, trees, and sky and I thought about the upside down world where they all lived.
10 Things
the creek water falling fast over the limestone ledge on the bridge at the top of the falls
the deep puddle I stepped in that I thought was only a reflection of light on the trail
drip drip drip of water off the brim of my cap
taking off my hood, folding the flaps of my hat, and hearing the steady patter of rain
in through the nose 2 3 / out through the mouth 2 — 123/12
a steady, almost invisible rain with the occasional big drop — plain rain or freezing rain?
the lid of the toilet in the porta potty was wedged behind a bar and couldn’t be closed
empty benches / mostly empty parking lots
bright headlights cutting through the trees on the other side of the ravine
running by the Horace Cleveland Overlook parking lot and seeing an animal care truck (another name for animal control?) — is there a wolf or a coyote or a bear in the gorge — it’s always possible; they’ve all been spotted before
worms after the rain
It’s raining now, but sometime later today or tomorrow or the next day, it will stop and the worms will appear on the sidewalk. Here’s a poem I found about those worms:
You know how, after it rains, my father told me one August afternoon when I struggled with something hurtful my best friend had said, how worms come out and crawl all over the sidewalk and it stays a big mess a long time after it’s over if you step on them?
Leave them alone, he went on to say, after clearing his throat, and when the rain stops, they crawl back into the ground.
4 miles river road, south/wabun/bottom of locks/river road, north 38 degrees / feels like 22 wind: 15 mph / gusts: 32 mph
Another windy run. Cold-ish, too. Wore running tights, shorts, 2 long-sleeved shirts, a pull-over, a hat, a hood, gloves. I didn’t feel overheated until the end. Lots of cars on the road, not that many people on the trail. Are they all going to the No Kings March at the capitol? I (kind of) wanted to go, but big crowds are not the easiest for me and Scott, RJP, and FWA struggle in them too, so I’m skipping it.
According to my watch, I slept for 7 hours and 21 minutes last night. That is a lot for me! And, my sleep score1 was 77. I think it helped me to feel stronger on the run.
10 Things
reaching the top of the wabun hill, I heard the clanging of the bell — is there a bell up here? no — it was a kid banging on something at the playground
wild turkeys — 4 or 5 of them, under the ford bridge! I passed close by them as I ran up the wabun hill. By the time I return back down the hill, they were gone
goose honks near the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1
swirling leaves
the round shadow of the light on the street lamp
more scales on the gray water
chanting in triple berries to keep a steady pace
running on the rim of the bluff, looking down at the winchell trail which was empty and farther down than I usually remember
at the top of the wabun hill, stopping to look through the chain link fence at the river
a boot, stuck on a stalk on the boulevard of matt the cat’s house
serve and a boot / the pink sign near the far house says, “someone was abducted by ICE here.”
The abduction by ICE happened early on, between the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Two people were pulled from their car and taken; the car was left by the side of the road.
In addition to this boot picture, I also took some pictures of the view through the chainlink fence.
1234
I like this series of pictures. It reminds me a little of how I see. I can see better through my peripheral vision than my central — even when and if I don’t want to. It’s distracting to focus on the edge details sometimes, and it makes what’s in the center look even fuzzier to me. In thinking about my Holes series, does this happen at all when I’m reading? Is there a way to connect this fence with the lines in an Amsler Grid? An idea: what if I drew a giant Amsler Grid over the top of the entire, 4 panel, Holes 1 poem?
What does the sleep score mean? I’m less interested in the specifics of it at this point, and more interested in tracking which direction that number is headed. 77, which is only “OK” according to Apple health info, is the highest number I’ve had in the past almost 2 weeks. A goal by May: a number in the 80s. ↩︎
