4 miles the monument and back 72 degrees humidity: 80% / dew point: 64
More gnats, more heat, more sweat. Ran over the lake street bridge and up the summit hill to the Monument. Ran the first mile, did 2 minutes running/ 1 minute walking for the second mile, and mostly running, some walking for the rest. My right knee was sore because the kneecap slid out last night. I had to pop it back into place by going up and down the stairs. When it slides out it rubs the tendons or ligaments or something and they’re sore the next day. No big deal.
10 Things
a bunch of kids sitting on the sidewalk outside of the church with the daycare — an adult called out to some other adult, I checked the website. They should be picking them up by 9
a gnat flew into my eye — all the way, now the corner of my eye is sore
no rowers on the river, only small waves
peering over the side on the lake street bridge, checking out the sandbar. How far below the surface is it? How deep is the water around it?
the faint sound of falling water at shadow falls
a railing in front of a neighbor’s house, adorned with garlands and lights
several wide cracks on the trail halfway down the summit hill, outlined in orange
running up the summit hill, hearing a biker slowly approaching then creeping past me
checking my watch during a walk break, the numbers blurred and difficult to see — a combination of my bad vision and feeling slightly dizzy/dazed from the heat
the jingling of my house key in my pack, the thudding of my pack against my shorts
I don’t remember much from the run because it was hot and tiring. What did I think about?
Listened to kids, cars, random voices, and a dog barking running to the Monument. Put in my “The Wheeling Life” playlist on the way back. First song up, “Day by Day” from Godspell. In this song., the wheel is moving forward, progressing towards a better relationship with God. Wow — Jesus-rock was a thing in the 70s. The refrain for the song:
Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord, three things I pray, to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly. Day by day.
bike: 7.5 miles lake nokomis and back 79/75 degrees
Earlier today, Scott and I drove by lake nokomis and we noticed that the buoys were still up, so we decided to bike over to the lake in the late afternoon. If the blue algae was gone, I’d swim. So we did, and it was! The bike ride was great, even if it was windy. The thing I remember most about the bike was hearing the twack of the pickle ball at a pickle court on the way there, and a tennis court on the way back. Also: someone mowing their lawn and kids playing at the lake nokomis rec center playground.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis main beach 76 degrees
The water was clearer and warmer and slightly less choppy than the last time I was here. Still too many vines reaching up from the bottom. I had to swim farther out in the lake to avoid them. Saw at least 2 paddle boarders, a sailboat, a kayak. No fish, but seagulls. Heard geese honking from the other shore. Some adult was playing with a kid and calling out, Nestea Plunge. Yes! I can still picture the dude standing with his back to the pool, falling back into the water.
Noticed the mucked-up underside of a once red, now pinkish orange buoy. Was fascinated by the bubbles on the otherwise smooth surface of the water. Felt some thin vine tendrils encircling my wrist, some thicker and sharper vines brushing against my leg. I don’t remember seeing any planes, but I do remember some wispy clouds.
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 73 degrees humidity: 84% / dew point: 64
Yes, another day of uncomfortably hot and humid conditions. Another morning with sweat and a flushed face. Also, something new: swarms of gnats. Getting in my eyes, my mouth, my nose, on my shirt. After the run, getting ready for a shower, I counted more than a dozen dead gnats on my chest. Yuck!
Do I regret going out for the run? Not one bit. Even with the heat and the gnats, it was beautiful — changing leaves, sparkling water, a bright blue sky, a gushing creek and a roaring falls. Plus, the gnats have inspired me. I want to write about them for Girl Ghost Gorge!
Tried something new for the second half of the run: run 2 minutes, walk 1. It worked out well. I think I’ll try this again. Maybe I’ll experiment with the amounts: 3 minutes of runner/1 minute of walking or 2 minutes of running/30 seconds of walking?
For the first time in a while, I saw the regular, Mr. Santa Claus. We greeted each other with a wave.
gnats Returning to the gnats, I’ve been thinking about them more lately because of Endi Bogue Hartigan and her mention of them in her poem, “Running Sentences,” especially these lines:
c A chorus sings in swarms of gnats.
b First the body on the path, but first the body as circumference,
a First the cloud of gnats first the movement through the cloud
collective noun: a cloud of gnats / a swarm of gnats / a horde of gnats / a rabble of gnats
3.5 miles locks and dam no 1 72 degrees humidity: 84% / dew point: 69
Overcast today. Everything dark, everything gray and deep green. A few sprinkles at the start. On my warm-up walk, I heard The Clash’s “Should I Stay or Should I Go” coming from the corner where some workers were making the sidewalk more accessible. Later at the river, I heard some more music blasting out of a bike speaker that I recognized but can’t remember the name of now.
The first almost 2 miles of the run was okay, then it got hard, then I locked in and zoned out and it was no longer hard or easy, it just was.
10 Things
passing an entrance to the Oak Savanna: a deep, dark, green hole
a yellowish-orangish tree
slashes of red on the side of the path, waist-high
more orange leaves scattered in the trees
dozens of small red leaves on the side of the trail
thwack thwack acorns falling
someone took down the sign alerting people to a conservation area and asking them to stay on the paved trail
one car parked at the bottom of the locks and dam no 1 hill, window slightly open, low music playing, the smell of cigarette smoke
bright headlights cutting through the gray sky
the ford bridge reflected in the water looking like a window or a portal
ford bridge window / 16 sept 2025
Vuelta update: Yesterday, the final stage of the Vuelta was shut down when it entered Madrid. Protesters had occupied the course and pulled down all the signs/flags, toppled the barricades. There was no violence, just chanting and holding up signs that said, in Spanish, Down with the State of Israel. There was a large police presence that was attempting to manage the crowd, but they weren’t using force or rubber bullets or tear gas. Very different from what happened here in Minneapolis in 2020.
Today’s thoughts about my Girl Ghost Gorge project:
1 rituals. What rituals do I do during my run?
greet the Welcoming Oaks
greet the Regulars
listen for roller skiers and rowers and water dropping out of the sewer pipe
track the changing of the leaves, especially in the floodplain forest
make note of whether or not the benches are empty
notice the river
stop at the sliding bench or at the bench above the edge of the world
stop in the flats or at the bottom of the locks and dam no 1 to study the river surface
count the stones stacked on the ancient boulder
2 You Are Here: Trestle: In this poem, I’d like to include something about how it’s rarely used for trains. Now it holds electric blue yarn bombs and ghost bikes and flowers for June
3.25 miles locks and dam no 1 and back 73 degrees humidity: 67
Typical September weather in Minneapolis: cool, then hot, then hotter. I went out for my run late because I was watching Vingegaard finally show some panache on the final, ridiculously steep, climb of the Vuelta. Perhaps the most memorable thing about the Vuelta this year were the pro-Palestinian protesters. They disrupted several of the stages, resulting in the shortening of at least 2 of them, including the individual time trial. Mostly they peacefully (I think) occupied the finish line or lined the course with Palestinian flags. A few groups were more disruptive: cutting down a tree to block the road, running down from a hill and almost hitting some of the riders, and today, blocking the road and (possibly?) tackling one of the riders. I support the protesters and their movement, even as I disagree with some of their tactics that put the riders at risk.
10 Things
2 runners ahead of me, one in an orange vest. when I passed them, I overheard one say to the other, only 1.3 miles left. we can do it.
same runners, later, walking, one to the other: you go ahead, I’m walking the rest
the wheels of a roller skier, sounding rickety and rusted — or was it the uneven asphalt?
leaves floating in the wind, looking like flying birds
pale blue water below
encountering a guy with a dog: excuse me / oh — you scared me, you’re quiet / I’m sorry / no, that’s a good thing I thought: me, the running ninja
a coxswain’s voice below — rowers!
a small peloton on the road
an organized run, probably a 20 miler for the upcoming marathon — participants were wearing orange vests
the tree that was blocking most of the winchell trail has finally been moved
It was tough out there. I chanted a reminder in triples: in the heat/time on feet. Because it’s so hot, I’m not worrying about how slow I’m going, or how much of it I’m walking instead of running. It’s all about just getting out there and spending time moving.
Just discovered this book! I’m hoping I can find it in a library somewhere:
Out the front door, across the street, down the hill, and into Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx. This is how Ben Ratliff’s runs started most days of the week for about a decade. Sometimes listening to music, not always. Then, at the beginning of the pandemic, he began taking notes about what he listened to. He wondered if a body in motion, his body, was helping him to listen better to the motion in music.
update 28 dec 2025: A few days ago, I picked up a hard copy of this book from the library. I haven’t had a chance to read it. Part of my reluctance might be that it’s a lot of text, and there’s no table of contents or chapter titles. Difficult to get a sense of the book without those, especially for me with my limited vision.
4.5 miles monument and back 60 degrees humidity: 93%
A mist hanging above the river. A heavy white sky. It looked very cool, but felt too humid. Heavy legs. Not a great run, but still wonderful to be moving through the mist. Noticed more leaves changing, mostly yellow. Heard water falling in the Summit ravine: Shadow Falls. I imagined that it was not water falling, but shadows. Then I thought about myself shedding shadows as I ran. A cool image.
On the lake street bridge heading west, 2 more memoriable images.
First, a single shell on the river, rowing towards the mist. The rower in a bright yellow shirt. I couldn’t hear the paddles, but saw them gliding through the water.
Second, looking down at the shadow of the bridge: dark with a quivering edge. I thought about how all edges I see are often moving like this. The moving edge of the bridge is because of wind on water. The moving edges for me are because of dying cone cells.
bridge shadow, moving edge
Recited some of the chants I’ve been working on:
girl ghost gorge soft slow sight
saint peter saint peter saint peter sandstone glenwood glenwood glenwood forMAtion plateville platteville plateville limeston glac ial till glac ial till
In the late afternoon, Scott and I went to the lake. He was planning to take a walk, I was going to swim. I even brought my wetsuit. But, when I went down to the water, I immediately knew it wasn’t going to happen. The water lapping the shore was bright green and the water beyond it looked like green paint. Blue-green algae blooms. Maybe the blue-green algae was only in this spot, but probably it wasn’t. I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. So I took off my wetsuit and went for a walk with Scott instead.
4 miles river road, north/south 65 degrees humidity: 87%
Went out for my run later than I’d like because I was watching the final climb on the Vuelta. I was hoping Vingegaard would do something special but sadly he didn’t have the legs (as commentator Christian likes to say). Other favorite phrases from Bob and Christian on Peacock’s coverage of the tour: going from strength to strength, fire power, full cry, and Jonas & co..
The run was a little difficult, partly because of the humidity, partly because of my need for a port-a-potty. Sigh. Oh — and the front of my left knee felt weird — tight? — for the first 5 or so minutes. Even with the difficulty, there were moments I felt strong and bouncy. I did a few strides (sprints, fast bursts) at the end.
Thinking about Girl Ghost Gorge some more, working on triple chants related to rock.
st. peter sandstone st. peter sandstone st. peter sandstone limestone shale
Fall! Noticed a few more slashes of orange and yellow and some red leaves on the ground. More acorn shells on the trail. At the beginning my knee — I can’t remember if it was the left or the right one — hurt, a dull not sharp pain. I can’t remember when it stopped. Maybe it was when I started feeling the rumbling of unfinished business. When I reached the falls, I went to the bathroom. I’m ready to be done with perimenopause.
Running south, I listened to chickadees and music blasting from a bike radio — I recognized the 70s or 80s rock song, but now I’ve forgotten what it was. Just past the Veterans home, I put in my “the Wheeling Life” playlist.
10 Things
the sound of the rushing creek, 1: just before it falls over the limestone ledge
the sound of the rushing creek, 2: far below, as I ran over the bridge to the Veterans Home
a soft mist rising from the falling water
a half-filled parking lot at the falls
a full parking lot at the Veterans Home
an empty parking lot at Locks and Dam no 1
above on the bluff at Waban Park, a view of the river, the water rushing over the concrete, one white buoy, several redorangepink buoys
an American flag waving near the Veterans Home
strange flashes and a distorted view out of my central vision as I ran across the bridge — a result of facing the sun, I think
soft shadows from the chain link fence on the bridge
While I ran, I chanted in triples. I was hoping to center or ground or locate myself in the time and place. First, berries, then:
I am here/I am here/I am here I am now/I am now/I am now I am here/I am here/I am here It is now/It is now/It is now here here here/ now now now/ here here here/ now now now
Then, I added a condensed version of some Emily Dickinson:
Life life life/death death death/bliss bliss bliss/breath breath breath
Then:
I am here/I am here/I am here/Here I am 123/123/123/123
Throughout the run, I thought about locating myself and how I might translate that for my project. A list of surfaces? my landmarks? a topographical map?
Reviewing old notes and entries, including 19 may 2025, which includes a bit on context, I encountered the phrase, there or there abouts. I had written it in my notebook after hearing it several times on the TNT coverage of the giro d’italia (the tour of italy cycling race). Yes. When I locate myself, it’s not here! or there. but there or thereabouts. Maybe that could be the title of a poem for the collection?
there or thereabouts
double bridge old stone steps ancient rock / stacked with stones sliding bench near the fence under tree on the edge (of the world) high above down below in the flats past the creek wrapped in green off the ground / in the air deep in oak riverside locks and dam sewer pipe steep ravine brand new trail snowy path in the groove seeping hill leaking ledge eagle’s perch spreading crack
Do I want to do this poem in triples? Not sure. It is how I locate myself sometimes — by chanting in triples about what’s around me. This syncs up my feet with my breath and my surroundings. But, how does it sound? And does it work as a poem?
swim: .75 loop lake nokomis main beach 76 degrees wind: 29 mph gusts
Another swim! When RJP told me the buoys were still up I knew I needed to swim again. Wow, it was choppy, and wow, that water was cold, but it wasn’t too cold and the choppy water was fun. I think there were whitecaps. In one direction, I could mostly ride the waves, the other direction, I punched water. Both fun, but in different ways. Speed from one, power the other. Got tangled in some vines, but nothing I couldn’t get out of. Noticed: soaring and hovering seagulls, held up by wind; planes, bobby buoys, voices, and water rushing over me, water crashing into me, water dragging me forward and sideways. I wouldn’t want to swim in water like that every time, but it was fun today.
3.5 miles bottom locks and dam no 1 60 degrees / humidity: 59%
What a difference low humidity and less direct sun makes! Today’s 61 felt much cooler. A wonderful, early fall morning. Often September still feels like summer — that is, it’s uncomfortably warm — but this year it definitely feels like fall. It looks like it too. Leaves changing color already. At the bottom of the locks and dam, looking over at the east bank of the river, I think I noticed changing leaves. Not sure what color, just the sense that they were no longer green green green.
10 Things
at the bottom of the hill, the surface of the river was covered with swirls of green-tinged foam
the pedestrian gates to the lock and dam were open — I thought it was closed?
encountering an adult and a kid on bikes having just crossed the road. The kid: why didn’t they stop? the adult: because they were breaking the law
running parallel to a runner slightly slower than me. me, on the dirt trail in the grassy boulevard, them, on the river road trail
down on the winchell trail, admiring the color of the river: light blue and only partly visible through the green leaves
no puddles, but patches of soft dirt and mud from yesterday’s multiple rain showers
near the 38th street steps, another runner emerged from the trees and the part of the winchell trail that travels down to the oak savanna
the strange shuffle of someone’s feet — part-walk, part-run, part-skip
lots of cars parked on the street, lots of people walking towards the river — longfellow’s annual clean up the river event
water streaming out of the 42nd street sewer pipe
girl ghost gorge
It’s fall, so good-bye my obsession with open swim, hello girl and ghost and gorge. I’m hoping to build on the dozen poems I wrote last year and create a full collection. I want to add some different forms and approach my obsessions from different perspectives.
On the way home, a thought, partly inspired by W Berry’s reversal of wild and domestic: my collection of poems / hybrid pieces is about locating myself and making a home beside/above/near the gorge. In a disorienting time — for many reasons, including my vision loss — I’ve been running by the gorge to orient myself, to find a home space, to establish an enduring location.
connections and re-connections: place, family, others, a larger history, the non-human world, my body, a nation (not sure if nation is the right word here, but I’m thinking about the park system and public works projects in the US), past and future Saras.
a flash: somehow bring in the unigrid brochure that I did, or something like it, into the book — a map, a nod to the national parks — would this fit in this collection, or should it be a separate project? If not the unigrid brochure, take some inspiration from the WPA poets hired to write guide books, like Lorine Niedecker. Add in a few entries inspired by that?
Back to the connections/being located thread: I wrote in my Plague Notebook vol. 26: Locating myself on eroding, shaky ground. Too unstable for a foundation? No, but offering a new way of thinking about location and connection and where I might root myself. Not just rooted in the ground, but connected to water and air — the river, the gorge. The location is and is not a place: a specific location with paths and forests, a river, limestone and sandstone walls AND the absence of land that the gorge frames — space, air, Nothing.
Another cooler run. Shorts with my bright orange sweatshirt. Ran to the bottom of the franklin hill before I stopped to walk and use one of the few port-a-potties on the route. There used to be at least one more under the lake street bridge, but they removed it. Chanted in triple berries to keep steady and distracted, or focused, depending on your perspective.
Listened to rowers and a beeping bike that I thought might be a bird before I saw it and striking feet, all around. Lots of runners out there this late morning. Listened to my “Moment” playlist once I started running again. It started with U2’s “Stuck in the Moment” and I thought about my latest insomnia rut.
10 Things
a greeting from Dave, the Daily Walker: Happy 100 days after your birthday! Dave is the best — well, maybe not with his math!
dark and green in the tunnel of trees, a circle of faint light up on the hill
at least one yellowish orangish tree
down in the flats the river’s surface was laced with grayish-white foam
someone sitting on the sliding bench as I ran north, their bike propped behind the back of the bench
returning south, the sliding bench was empty so I stood behind it and assessed the crumbling hill and the block view of the white sands beach
finally took the dirt path that cuts behind some benches just south of the trestle
2 people walking 2 dogs, one person saying to the other something about an unwalked dog needing to be walked
2 women walking in the flats, one of them to the other: It’s by Ann Patchett. I wish I would have written down the passage.
running on the north double bridge — just past the old stone steps — something caught my eye on the fence. On the way back, I remembered to stop to check it out. A small cut-out of Frump’s head on a popsicle stick with a caption: ‘tator on a stick. I took a picture, but decided not to post it*
*it took me a minute to understand fully the meaning here — at first I was thinking of the state fair, but finally it hit me that tator = dictator. Memories of reading Simon Schma’s Citizens about the French Revolution and heads on pikes being paraded around Paris. A sad and scary time in this country to have a president who foments such violence and violent responses in others.
You
1
A line from Endi Bogue Hartigan’s poem “Running Sentences”:
First the cloud of gnats first the movement through the cloud and then the body, not a cloud
Something about running through gnats — which I’ve done many times — and the body as not a cloud, triggered past thoughts about encountering someone on the trail and what happens to the You in the time/space between my Thank you and someone else’s You’re welcome when I thanked them for moving over.
2
These were the original thoughts, from a 31 may 2023 log entry:
I had a breakthrough in the second mile as I passed a walker and a dog on the Winchell Trail. They noticed me before I reached them and moved to the side. I said thank you and the woman replied you’re welcome. As I continued running on the steep-ish trail with no railing I thought about how when I said thank you, I was the I, she was the you. But when she answered you’re welcome, I become the you and she the I. Each of us both. Then I started thinking about the space and time between when we each embodied the pronoun, before my I turned into a you or her you into and I. This is the space of possibility where unhitching can happen, when we can be both a you and an I or something else that doesn’t divide and separate or assign us a fixed role — as active I or passive you. A moment when we can experience or behold the is below the threshold of thought, over and above society and its constructs.
Cool enough today for my bright orange sweatshirt! Excellent running weather. I felt strong and was able to push through a few moments when I wanted to stop. Thought about the perception of time during difficult moments, particularly in terms of how to endure it — learning to hold multiple perceptions at once: time on a short scale, day by day, minute by minute, step by step / on a long scale, think beyond this moment to a bigger goal / as in flux, this feeling can/will change again, and again
10 Things
a cool, dark green
far ahead, tunnels of bright light
birdsong — difficult to identify
a coxswain — rowers down below!
kids arriving at school — heard, not seen: excited voices
a roaring creek
every bench, empty — a stone wall, occupied by a person leaning and looking at their phone
tall grass smell: almost like cilantro
sharp, yippy barks at the falls — two little dogs greeting each other
Hi Sara! / Hi Dave!
After stopping at my favorite spot at the falls, I put in my “The Wheeling Life” playlist. Most memorable song today: “Windmills of my Mind” and these lines:
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half-forgotten dream Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
I thought, ripples. Such a great word and image on the surface of the water, or from tall grass in a field, or through the thick leaves on a tree. Later, on my walk back, I thought more about ripples and triples and inklings:
an inkling
a ripple
a flicker
a ruffle
a whisper
a rumor
a tumor — where did that come from?
a lurking
a leaking
a speaking — soft, slow, barely audible
added a few minutes later: Early this morning, 5:30 am, I briefly woke up to stretch my restless leg. I noticed a flashing light through the blinds. An ambulance? The police? A fire truck? No. A runner with a flashing headlight running in the street. I’ve never seen that before, but that’s probably because I’m hardly ever up this early. Would I see it more if I were up this early? Probably.
3.1 miles 2 trails + tunnel of trees 56 degrees / humidity: 80%
Fall! Cooler this morning for my run. Windy, too. Ran south on the paved path, then north on the Winchell Trail. Heard kids arriving at Dowling Elementary. It’s the second day of school. Also heard wind rushing through the trees and some water falling out of the sewer at 42nd but not at 44th. No rowers or packs of runners or fragments of conversation.
Chanted in triple berries — strawberry/blueberry/raspberry — for several minutes then other triples — mystery/mystery/mysterydeepening/quieting/deepeninginterior/exterior/deep deep down Thought about surfaces again and their value. Wondered: should I spend a month studying surfaces?
Listened to my “The Wheeling Life” playlist for the last mile of the run. Started with “Proud Mary” and my feet found the fast beat. I swung my arms back and forth but imagined they were rolling like wheels. Rollin’ Rollin’ Gave the most attention to the lyrics of XTC’s “Season Cycle”:
Darling, don’t you ever sit and ponder (darling, did you ever think) About the building of the hills a-yonder (all this life stuff’s closely linked?) Where we’re going in this verdant spiral (‘Round and ’round) who’s pushing the pedals on the season cycle?
It’s September, so it is time to wrap up my reading of Endi Bogue Hartigan’s oh orchid o’clock. Here’s another great hour entry:
hour entry:The hawk is an approximate whisking together/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
The hawk is an approximate whisking together of fractions of itself the 23 intervals in the second the eye can see the 500 intervals in the second the ear can hear the 100 intervals in the second the bird can see. The second is forming midair like any duration or station in sun. Say “look a red-tailed hawk” and in that second the alliterative span of flashes of light formed by a moving pinking-sheared wing shape becomes it. I wish my words to become unfit for a second, to not make such burred sad sounds. The unspoken fractions of our seconds are expressed imprecisely all the time in seconds. “I’ll be there in a second.” “He was gone for a second.” “The next second they were on the ground.”
intervals / frames per second / illusion: converting what’s still into motion, what’s motion into a still / duration station span / blurred imprecise approximate
motion, the animation of the still still, the freezing of motion Oliver’s quieting of the spirit = slowing and smoothing of the motion
I was planning to bike over to the lake and swim this morning but it looked gloomy and ominous, and then started raining and thundering for several hours. Bummer. By the time it stopped raining it had warmed up and the sun came out. Even so, I went for a hot and humid run. Everything was wet. A slick trail, dripping branches, wet shoes and shirt.
10 Things
someone covered over the graffiti on the steps that read, stop hate, with blue paint
sky, part 1: gray, heavy
sky, part 2; blue and cloudless
empty river
white foam on the edge of the east bank near the franklin bridge
kids laughing on the playground at the church daycare
some orange and red leaves beyond the fence near east river road
the squeal of tires near the trestle — what happened?
orange cones lining the path: there must have been a race or a sponsored bike ride this past weekend
the sliding bench was empty of people but close to a thick veil or green
Listened to voices, cars, and drips for the first half of the run, my “Doin’ Time” playlist for the second half. The song I remember the most was Peter Gabriel’s “Playing for Time.”
Oh, there’s a hill that we must climb Climb through all the mist of time It’s all in here what we’ve been through
Not a fan of the phrase, mist of time, but these lyrics reminded me of a few lines from Mary Oliver that I read right before heading out for my run:
Slowly up the hill, like a thicket of white flowers, forever. (The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)
The lines just preceding these were a series of good-byes to the world: the swaying trees, the black triangles of the winter sea, oranges, the fox sparrow, blue-winged teal, lettuce, turnip, rice fields, the morning light, and the goldfinches.
Down, I’m getting it down Sorting it out So everything I care about Is held in here All of those I love, inside
Listening to these lines, I thought about Oliver’s deepening of the spirit. I thought about the interior and moving inside of yourself and of burying memories and ideas not as a way to avoid them, but to protect them. I also thought about someone growing older and having memory-loss and trying to hold onto faces and names and experiences. I weighed the possibilities and limitations of going deep inside as compared to opening up to the outside. All of these thoughts came at once — not in a linear progression — in a burst which lasted until I heard these lines less than a minute later:
There goes the sun Back from where it came The young move to the center The mom and dad, the frame
I just remembered: at the start of my run, I was thinking about the difference between ordinary and extraordinary time, which was a continuation of thoughts that began earlier this morning. Habits, routines, activities/events experienced again and again — the mundane — versus the scattered, sporadic occasions that break up the routine. While meaning and memories are often found in the singular moments, I’m drawn to the rituals and repetitions and daily events as where imporant meaning dwells.
Everyday. everyday = ordinary / every day = each day, daily.
Everyday—I have work to do (“Work” in The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)
I love that she writes everyday and not every day, so it’s not, each day I have work to do but, ordinary, everyday life: don’t bug me, I have work to do!
bike: 7.5 miles lake nokomis and back* 75/71 degrees
*instead of the river road trail, we took 44th until the falls park, which is shorter
A good bike ride with Scott. As usual, better on the way back — easier, more relaxed. On the way there: wind. No problems with panicking about not seeing. The ride home was great: the sun was setting soon. Passed by adults playing soccer or flag football or some team sport in the field by the duck bridge, and kids playing soccer at Hiawatha school. RJP and FWA both played for a season at Hiawatha. I played for 5 or 6 years when I was kid in Northern Virginia. I loved it; they didn’t.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis main beach 74 degrees
Only 4 other people in the lake, and none of them were swimming laps, just standing around and talking — brrr, I bet that was cold! I swam far from the white buoys and almost completely avoided the milfoil. Only a few times, I got too close and felt the vines on my toes and wrists. For most of the swim there was wind and choppy water. In one direction, it pushed me along. In the other, I got to swim straight into it, which I liked doing. Mostly, a fun swim. The vines were the only bad thing about it. They were too thick by the one buoy so I didn’t want to circle around it. This made it much harder to loop, so I mostly stopped and twisted around. I noticed some birds in the sky and a few planes. Trees on the distant shore were looking less green — were any of them changing?
I thought about how this might be my final swim of the season. It’s cooler for the rest of the week — highs in the 60s, so they might take down the buoys soon. It’s been a great season. I swam for longer, both distance and time. And, I had fun reciting more water lines in my head and writing about water.
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 63 degrees / humidity: 86%
Felt cooler at the beginning, then the sun came out. Warm! A good run. There was a nice spray coming off of the falls and lots of people taking selfies. I felt strong and able to run 2.25 miles without stopping for a walk break. A slow, steady progression towards more endurance. By winter will I be able to run 10 miles without stopping? I hope so.
Listened to cars and one runner’s slapping feet and rushing water on the first half of my run, then my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist on the second half. I was hoping that listening to songs about shadows would make more of them appear! Did it? I don’t think so.
10 Things
a speedy runner sprinting past me, his feet striking the ground with a loud slap — Slap! Slap! Slap!
crunch crunch — discarded acorn shells on the trail
the steady whooshing of car wheels
2 walkers, or maybe runners who were taking a walk break, walking towards me, one of them saying, let’s turn around, the other, let me get some water up ahead first
empty benches, including the one above the edge of the world
crash! crash! some critter rooting around in the bushes in the park
kids laughing and yelling at the park playground
a runner with a white shirt wrapped around her waist, running on the bike path, then on the edge closest to the bike path, forcing runners and bikers to more around her
a roller skier on the walking trail doing a strangely slow shuffling exercise with her poles and roller skis
stillness: Anne Carson and taming uncontrolled movement:
The other day I discovered an essay by Anne Carson about her experiences with Parkinson’s, especially with trying to navigate tremors and tame uncontrolled movement. My experiences with vision loss are very different, yet I recognize similarities in terms of focused attention as a way to combat constant motion.
Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull: the books tell me to pay conscious, continual attention to actions like walking, writing, brushing my teeth, if I want to inhibit or delay the failure of neurons in the brain. It is hard to live within constant striving.
Since being diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease, I’m giving conscious, but maybe not constant, attention to how I see, to the complicated process of seeing. Some of this attention is out of curiosity and astonishment. And some of it is about helping neurons to fire in new ways and learning how to see differently.
The uncontrolled motion I experience is not tremors, but images that constantly shift and shimmer and buzz, usually in ways too subtle to see clearly. I feel them — soft notes of disorientation, dizziness, restlessness. Maybe you could call them tremors? The ground never ceasing to unsettle.
Recently, I’ve been writing about the different definitions of still. Is the constant motion I see never still? I’m not sure. I think I’m striving for new ways of defining that word and of accessing the feeling of being still, enough, calm.
still / enough / calm / quieter
Here are 2 more poems from Hartigan’s excellent collection, On Orchid O’clock that I want to put beside each other:
hour entry: Sorry, I am at the gym this instant/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
I am at the gym again this instant and of it, in its treadmills, its black tongues and beetle shines its oily handles in time and time and time intervals and people cupped and kept in beeps and measures, always. I’m nearly half done with my pre-programmed eliiptical slot, having spent 211 calories. This very instant a woman, having come in from the street, is staring at the smeared glass of the vending machine an instant too long, the change hot in her palm, a kind of calm as yet unspent. And I am bent away from God, running horizontally in place, & all instance protests movement, all instance must be thick with protest, coated with candle wax of sadness, walking upright like unlit wicks.
The treadmills black tongue / time and time and time intervals (intervals as verb?) / people cupped and kept in beeps and measures / 211 calories / I am bent away from God
hour entry: Orchids because orchids are impossibly mimicking / Endi Bogue Hartigan
Orchids because orchids are impossibly mimicking the milk fluid capture of being orchids, orchids because they are grown commercially in soldiering rows in hothouse tents, because they are given as gifts for merely being orchids, because they are inherently exceeding themselves and held as if rare, though they are not, their stems are second hands untimed and slightly skewed to binding. Orchids because they are wrist-colored, because they are eyelid textured, because they are partial light captured, because they are hard to keep living. And on the slope of a hillside of a rainforest of my childhood was an orchid nursery. I don’t know I ever entered it, but knew the plastic walls sweat.
I love the repetition in this poem — the orchids, because orchids as partial light captured / eyes as orchid textured / the slope of a hillside of a rainforest of my childhood
Cooler this morning. Quiet. Ran earlier than usual: 7:30. Lots of traffic on the road, some on the trail too: walkers, runners, bikers, strollers, at least 2 roller skiers. I could hear one of the roller skiers as it approached, scraping their poles on the ground. No clicks and clacks, just scraaaape scraaaape. Running past the rowing club, I encountered a group of people in bright yellow vests emerging from below. Were they rowers, and did they wear those vests on the water?
After reaching the river, I noticed the fence slat, pushed loose by a leaning tree trunk, was looser today. Greeted the Welcoming Oaks, good morning! hello friend! The sunlight was beautiful in the tunnel of trees — thin strips of light coming through the leaves.
Found this poem yesterday. It’s great for my interest in ekphrastic poetry and color:
Cooler! It makes such a difference for my running when it’s cooler outside. Easier, more relaxed. I’m looking forward to more fall and winter running! Running north I listened to the wind, the birds, a strange sound — a kid crying out? a dog barking? — coming out of a neighbor’s house. Running south I put in my “It’s Windy” playlist. Windy has stormy eyes/that flash at the sound of lies.
2 strange ensembles:
a biker stopped on the edge of the path, his back turned to me. I almost didn’t see him because he blended into the trees. I think he was wearing a camo jacket and shorts. Why would you do that?
a runner approaching me in a half-zipped shirt — or was it a bike kit? — and no socks or shoes. They were running barefoot. I’ve seen that before, but rarely. I thought that trend went away 7 or 8 years ago?
Early on, I chanted in triple berries: strawberry/raspberry/blueberry. Then, other triples: intellect/mystery/passing through/persistent/enduring. Persistent and enduring came as I passed by the big crack that they’ve tried to repair several times but just keeps coming back. I started thinking about my persistence and then stillness and deepening as steadiness, which led to thoughts of my core. I imagined my belly button was leading me. I thought in a triple: who needs eyes? Then I imagined seeing with my stomach or my shoulders or my feet. I focused on my center as balanced and stabilized and still as it moved through the windy bluff above the gorge. Finally, I thought about my belly button as the place that once tethered me directly to my mom. How long did these thoughts last? I’m not sure.
10 Things
roller skiers
someone wearing all black sitting at a bench
river surface, 1: rough, empty
river surface, 2: looking north it was flat, south a glitter path
a shorter runner passing me, holding a sweatshirt awkwardly
the big crack in the path, still blocked off
no more limestone slabs stacked and looking like a lounging person under the franklin bridge
a damaged fence: the top slat missing
returning south, the wind was at my back, enabling me to go faster
no stones stacked on the ancient boulder — too windy?
I thought about the wind and how I noticed it only as it encountered objects — trees, fences, rocks, me. Then I thought about what happens when it doesn’t encounter anything, which led me to wind tunnels and aerodynamic testing and then a line from Rita Dove’s poem, “Voice-over”:
because now you’re all throat, a tunnel skewered by air.
3.6 miles locks and dam #1 74 degrees humidity: 88% / dew point: 65
I’m trying to write this entry but I’m distracted by the little kids next door in the front yard — such cute voices. One of them was singing a song — take this grass. . .broken world. . . broken glass.
Refrain: hot, humid. Even so, a better run today than the last one I did. When was that? Tuesday (checked my log). Ran all the way to the bottom of the locks and dam #1 hill without stopping. Noticed the river. Such reflections! Clouds, trees, the bridge. Took a picture:
bridge / clouds / surface / sky
The water was smooth beneath the bridge and rippled (corrugated, as Anne Carson wrote) farther out.
Everything is still this morning, calm, quiet. Partly inspired by my 21 aug 2024 entry, I thought about being still. Not as not moving, but as a calm, steadiness. Stillness as the space between beats, when both of my feet are off the ground. Or, stillness as my strong core that floats through that space — suspended as held up in the air, not as stopped.
10 Bridge Things
at the top of the hill, in-between the top and bottom of the bridge, a family was sitting on a bench
the gate near the columns of the bridge was unlatched and slight ajar
beyond it, hollowed out bricks with a strange pattern
empty benches all the way down
the reflection of the bridge on the water’s surface, upside down
a car nearing the bottom, voices — couldn’t hear what they were saying but imagined it was about whether or not the locks and dam was open
the echo of my footsteps under the bridge
the clicking of a bike’s gear across the service road
thought about what RJP told me yesterday: someone went over this locks and dam in a canoe (or was it a kayak?) yesterday
at the top of the hill again, a man read the sign to a little kid who started jumping and asked him to join — by the time I reached them, they were both jumping and laughing and making goofy noises
the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings
still
I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done.
/I still the clock by holding the pendulum coin still so that the mechanism stops and I can sleep without the consciousness of it.
to still the clock is a ritual of the demagnification of clocks.
/it is a kind of violence of fiction for the clock to not function as a clock while others click and breathe and blink.
the eyes blink more before they stop functioning as eyes.
/the rapid eye movement of dream frightening being pure pulse, pure frenetic zag force
/to watch a gold-painted platinum extravagant clock you’re an excess you’re a fire you’re in competition with the tiredness of time. /to hold in your satiny eyelids the still unstill pendulum of the gaudy machination you are in unison
with the aspirant expirations of the day.
still / holding / pending / stop sleep / not function / click / breathe / blink / dream / pulse / excess / rapid fire extravagance / tiredness / still unstill / aspire to expire
underwater the end (expiration) is the breath (expire) the end / forced above / evicted from below / no longer water but air
In this poem, to still is to stop, to end, the deep sleep
swim: 6 loops 110 minutes cedar lake open swim 82 degrees
The final open swim of the season. It goes so fast! Another great night for a swim. Warm, sunny. I liked that the wind made the water less smooth — not too rough, a gentle rocking. The course was set up strangely and even though I complained about it afterwards, I think I liked the challenge of it. One buoy was in the middle of the lake, the other was at the far left edge of hidden beach. At first I worried that this set-up would cause chaos with swimmers crossing over the path and running into to each other, but it was fine.
a risky moment: Because the course was so far to the left, I swam in water I haven’t before. Almost halfway across, I swam straight into a nest of vines — the biggest cluster of vines I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t panic and was able to swim out of it, but I could imagine a weaker swimmer struggling to free themselves and getting wrapped more tightly. As I swam away from it, I thought about the high school football player that drowned off of the little beach at lake nokomis about 10 years ago. That’s probably how it happened.
Some things irritated me: the swimmer that I tried to pass but sped up to prevent it, another swimmer stopped at the buoy, blocking the way, the unmoving lifeguard on his kayak too close in on the course, the bright sun making it almost impossible to see anything on the way back, the scratchy vines. But more things relaxed and delighted me: the gentle water, feeling strong and able to swim for so long, swimming past other swimmers like they were standing still, the faint clouds in the sky, the solitary orange buoy sitting on the surface of the water glowing, glimpsing other swimmers off in the distance — only inklings: the flash of a yellow or orange buoy, a bright pink cap, white foamy water.
overheard:
a mom with 2 kids, one who was around 4 or 5, the other a baby in her arms, to a lifeguard: Can he swim out to the orange pyramid? lifeguard: (thinking she meant the baby and not the kid) alone? mom: oh no, not the baby!
Later I heard her recounting the story to a friend. They were laughing about it.
At the end of the second to last loop, I stopped at the beach, stood in the shallow water and the sand, checked my watch, and decided to do one more loop. For the final loop, I felt Mary Oliver’s one day in August, everything calm and quiet. I thought about what a great season it has been, how grateful I am to have this time swimming, and how satisfied I am to have taken advantage of it. No open swims until next June. I thought about how no next season is guaranteed; a lot could happen between now and then. Then I remember the story of my great-grandmother Johanna standing out in the field at the farm near the end of the fall to behold the familiar view, wondering if she’d still be around the next fall.
Ugh — so thick! Oh well, there’s one good thing about this consistently hot and humid weather in the morning: it’s making me want to be done with summer and ready for fall and winter running. My calf almost cramped after 4 minutes of running again. I had to walk it off. I wonder what’s causing this?
Heard a lot of rowers on the river. And not just the coxswain this time; I also heard rowers cheering for each other. Was it a class? The U of M team? I stopped on the winchell trail to try and see them but I couldn’t. Too many leaves in the way.
Evidence of rain everywhere. Lots of mud, gushing and spurting sewers. The pipe that dumps neighborhood water down the ravine and into the river at 44th was loud. I decided to stop and record a video of it. In the background, you can hear the coxswain.
water falls / coxswain calls
When I wasn’t on the winchell trail, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist, including Beck’s “Time Bomb.” The first time I heard that song was in the Funny or Die video with Will Ferrell and ? (can’t remember the other actor) going around Los Angeles and high-fiving everyone. Tried to find a clip of it but couldn’t.
When I looked up “time bomb beck video” a promo video for charity: water came up from 16 years ago. The organization was seeking donations to help in drilling for water in Central Africa. I don’t know enough about whether or not this is a good (effective, responding to the needs of the people by asking them what they need) organization, and I couldn’t tell from the video, partly because I couldn’t see it very well, but its reminder, at the beginning, that water is life and its emphasis on access to water offers an important link between time and water and a powerful contrast between my experience, living among so many lakes, and the experience of others without easy access to water.
I am reminded of a passage in Anne Carson’s “1=1.” After describing a scene of a train car in Europe over-stuffed with people fleeing war zones, she writes:
a scene so much the antithesis of her own morning she cannot enter it. What sense it makes for these two mornings to exist side by side in the world where we live, should this be framed as a question, would not be answerable by philosophy or poetry or finance or by the shallows or the deeps of her own mind, she fears.
1=1/ Anne Carson
Impossible to answer, important to dwell within the discomfort of it.
hour entry:When John Adams wrote / Endi Bogue Hartigan
Another toll, another count of automatic weapon casualties, another occasion of America losing track of its math. I read today that when John Adams wrote “Thirteen Clocks were made to Strike together,” clocks were a tolling of public event, rung, an occasion or station in sun. I slept, and woke, I slept too long and woke. I tried to count the measured world by reading. Read “Thirteen Clocks,” read the late morning sun slant, read the current count outpaces past casualty counts, read “just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns.” Something automatic in measure, too automatic. I woke out of 9.25 hours of sleep I calculated automatically upon waking. I saw a crow out the window that was the occasion of a crow pecking frozen specks. I read the headlines leaking into headlines, saw the orchid sky calculating nothing. I have an inclination to stream and I don’t know what it means today. I have an inclination to lie in my husband’s shoulders crook and let the day snowdrift let the dimness become wide, so a shoulder is a kind of stream too. The argument is made that the streaming of time is a perception trick. The argument is made that we have moved past occasion to incremental measure that we are obsessed with measure and stricken. I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water. The early clocks were water clocks but it was shown that water was imprecise, was subject to pressure and pore—even streams of consciousness can encounter ducts and brim. I am conscious of my husband’s warmth because of more than his warmth. Do not mistake headlines for measure. We were held in God’s soft pocket. Do not mistake automatic grieving for water.
toll / automatic / occasion / track / count measures / measure counts / outpace / streaming time / from occasion to increment / obsess / to stream is to move through water not seconds or minutes or hours / water exceeds measure is imprecise is more than our grief
the imprecision of water clocks / “The history of timekeeping is the story of the search for ever more consistent actions or processes to regulate the rate of a clock.” / “Since the rate of flow of water is very difficult to control accurately, a clock based on that flow could never achieve excellent accuracy. People were naturally led to other approaches.”
precision / division / headline as occasion as increment as measured line between
a line to keep/to use: I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water.
Maybe this could be the title of a poem? Something about softness and imprecision and the inability to be contained in easily measurable ways. And how my vision loss has made for liquid looking (Alice Oswald), and a way to see the same or better than others in the water. Moving through water offers a different logic and makes the existing logic strange — distorted, weathered, unreliable, imprecise.
And now, instead of moving through water, I’m thinking of Bruce Lee’s short poem about being water:
Empty your mind. Be formless shapeless like water now you put water into a cup it becomes the cup you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle you put it into a tea pot it becomes the tea pot now water can flow or it can craaaaasshh be water my friend
Be water versus be like water. Metaphor versus simile. Metaphor removes the encounter with the other; you become the other (see Anne Carson and the anthropology of water).
people always believe that metaphor is more poetic. But I’ve always loved simile. One of the reasons is that simile keeps both worlds alive at the same time whereas metaphor changes one for another. So you get this beautiful kind of doubled feeling with the simile.
Searching for something else, I just came across this excellent answer to the question, Do you carry a notebook?
AO: No, I don’t much. If I travel like now I do take a notebook. I find by the time I get back home I haven’t got the sort of liveliness. Mostly I try to take things into my head. I really believe in the sort of inarticulate ways of thinking. So the fact that you can read the whole day, all day long, and then when you’re composed it can come out again. I like that process of it not yet being in language, changing your mind round. And I’m more and more wary of the kind of willed and conscious act of writing. More and more I leave my mind to do it by itself. So I will, you know, go out and be kind of shocked by all the colours and pictures and smells and then purposefully not think of them linguistically. I think that the underneath mind will then do the work and that’s the mind I’m interested in. So the skill for me is then learning how to raid that underneath mind and then, when you do pick up a pen, you’re listening just hard enough so that you don’t use your surface mind. You get down to the mind that has taken everything in.
Instead of the underneath mind, the underwater mind, or the just beneath the surface mind? The water-logged mind?
swim: 3 loops (? cedar loops*) 75 minutes cedar lake open swim 85 degrees
*a strange course set-up: the first buoy was halfway out in the lake, the second was close to shore and to the right of hidden beach, so I’m not sure of the distance. Judging my time and effort, I’m guessing that I did 3 nokomis loops.
note: I didn’t have time to write this entry right after my swim, so I’m writing it the next morning.
Another wonderful night with hardly any wind. Beautiful light. Warm water, except for when I stopped swimming to tread water and extend my feet as far below as I could. Then it was cold. Crowded tonight: the last free night of the season. The water was fast, flat, opaque. My goggles were fogged for a lap or two until I licked the inside, then they were clear. I wasn’t sure if that would work, but it did.
My favorite image: on the second half of the loop, heading back to the beginning, breathing to my right and seeing a line of swimmers in the distance heading towards hidden beach. What did I actually see? the rare flash of an arm, a pink cap, churned up water.
After 3.5 loops, I stopped to take a quick break and check my time. Oops, the workout never started. I remember pressing start on my watch, but sometimes this happens. Oh well. Even without the data, I swam for 30 minutes before turning on my workout.
After finishing the swim, drying off in the grass, I encountered another swimmer who had a strange request. A fish bit my mole, could you check to make sure it’s not bleeding? The other day, a fish bit me and when I got home I had a scab.
The fish bite? What? I can’t remember if I’ve written about it this summer, but I haven’t noticed any fish. Not one sighting of a silver flash, definitely no encounters. The other swimmer continued, I’m just so slow out there and they’re attracted to my moles. Yikes!
She joked that she was going to ask her roommate to make fish for dinner so she could get some revenge. With each bite she’d say, I’m not food, YOU’RE food!
3.1 miles trestle turn around 75 degrees humidity: 89% / dew point: 71
Ran in-between raindrops. It started raining yesterday afternoon and kept going, off and on, all morning. Then, right before my run, the sun came out. Now that I’m done, it’s dark again. More rain coming.
Everything wet. Slick, too. Mud, puddles, crushed acorns: dangerous. I slipped once but barely. So thick out there! No rowers or roller skiers or regulars. Some bikers, walkers, other runners. Stopped at the sliding bench — the only view was dark green. Then stopped north of the trestle to check out how the crack was doing. The trail is still blocked off with tape and orange cones, the crack has grass where there used to be dirt and is opening up again.
the persistent crack / 16 aug 2025
Listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist on shuffle and was inspired when “Once in a Lifetime” came on, especially this refrain about water
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down Letting the days go by, water flowing underground Into the blue again, after the money’s gone Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.
Except, as I was running, I heard the line not as after the money’s gone but after the BODY’S gone, which really fit in with my thinking about time, water, and selfhood and started a train of thought about the I above ground returning to the not-I underground/underwater — or the not-water self above returning to the water self below.
The body’s gone also fit with a reoccurring theme in the playlist: the limits of time and death. “Out of Time” and “Closing Time.” Instead of reading death/body gone as running out of time or no longer having any time, I thought about it as something other than a possession — time flows through us and we flow through time. We don’t spend it or own it, we live in it and with it and through it.
It is time now, I said
In my “On This Day” practice this morning, I encountered a series of lines and ideas about time from 16 aug 2021. I stopped at this entry, not reading any more of the aug 16 entries, and decided that today would be about time. Later I realized how fitting it was to study time in the midst of my attempt at living within Mary Oliver’s poem, “Swimming, One Day in August.” It is time now, I said/ for the deepening and quieting of the spirit/ among the flux of happenings. It is time.
During a swim, I lose track of time, have no idea what time it is, as I swim continuously around the buoys. If time is measured at all, it is in loops. And often, I lose track of those too. Was that 3 loops or 4? I can’t recall.
Maybe time is measured in location? Near one shore or the other, one buoy or the next? Here then there then here again
If there’s something gimmicky about trying to swim the equivalent of one day in August, it’s also a great goal for me: not impossible, but requiring some commitment and swimming more than I would otherwise swim. And it’s concrete and straightforward: be in the water, moving, for a total of 24 hours. And it’s satisfying, watching the minutes increase.
And it does something strange to time and it’s passing. Technically I understand a day to be 24 hours, but I don’t usually think about (or count) some of those hours — like the ones in which I’m sleeping, or the ones in which I’m lost in writing or in reading a book. I don’t think I can quite articulate it right now, but accumulating these minutes is a different type of living in time.
It’s a delightful waste of time. No great accomplishment, just a fun experiment. Of course, it’s only a waste in terms of productive time. I am not achieving anything big here that you might put on a resume. It’s not making money, and it’s not creating a product. It is, I think, making me faster and stronger, but not in the most efficient ways.
An idea: what about a chapbook titled, Swimming One Day in August, that plays around with different understandings of a day and its relation to time? I could write about this goal, where 1 day = 24 hours. But I could also write about a day = a random day of swimming in august or a collage of days swimming in august from just 2025, or from all of the days I’ve written about since 2017?
For Mary Oliver, a day is the day before in which the narrator went in the afternoon/to the sea/which held me until I grew easy. It is also today, now — It is time now, I said. And it is tomorrow (and the tomorrow after that?) — About tomorrow, who knows anything./ Except it will be time again/for the deepening and quieting of the spirit. Here day is a daily habit. (Another approach to this challenge could be: swimming every day in august. This might be difficult, since I don’t have reliable access to water to swim in.)
I like how Oliver sets up time in this poem. She’s talking about yesterday, today, and tomorrow but without beginning or end. When did this habit start? Was it yesterday, when she was pestered, or was it some other yesterday before that? And when will it end? It is also not linear, involving progress. With its repeated habit, it’s circular, a loop, going to the same place day after day: the sea to be held. Is it the same time every afternoon, or just, vaguely, “afternoon.” And, what counts as afternoon, how late does it go? To me, afternoon is before 5, but to Scott it’s before 6.
Another hard run. Hot! Lots of sweating and stopping to take walk breaks. Ran to the bottom of locks and dam #1 for a great view of the river. I can’t remember its color — blue, I think — but I remember the small waves on it and the faint wake from a long gone boat. Oh, and the single white buoy and the roar of rushing water one way and the ford bridge the other.
At the bottom of the locks and dam, I noticed some bright orange leaves:
fall is coming / 14 aug 2025
Not the greatest picture, but I’ll post it anyway. So orange! Too soon!
Saw someone emerge from the trail that dips below the road to cross the path and wondered if they had just come up from the new trail that descends deeper into the gorge. Encountered 2, maybe 3, roller skiers, walkers, runners, a few bikers. Below the road I stopped to walk and listen to the acorns falling from the tree and thumping on the ground. Then started running again over acorn shells.
I thought about my Swimming, One Day in August project and had an idea: what if I tried swimming in bde maka ska and lake harriet? Or, some other lakes nearby? Or, one of the clearest lakes in the state, Square Lake, in Stillwater?
a few hours later: Hooray! Just received an email that all future open swims will be at Cedar! So as long as Scott can drive me over there, I don’t have to miss a single one.
a ramble on lake water testing
A revelation just last week. Minneapolis Parks tests the lake water weekly, and testing the water is better than not testing the water. But the slow and rigid system of testing only on Mondays and getting results on Tuesdays (e-coli) and Wednesdays (algae blooms) combined with the fickle changes in quality based on weather and other environmental factors, means the testing is not very accurate for what the conditions are at any given time. On an abstract level, it seems obvious to me that you can’t rely on tests to guarantee safe water, but on an experiential level — that is, being in the water swimming for over an hour at a time roughly 6 times a week for 11 summers — I needed an unquestioned faith in those tests and the park’s ability to let me know when it was/wasn’t safe to swim in order to get in the water.
And, mostly it is safe in the water. And it is clean. I get very irritated when someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about says to me, eww, how can you swim in that dirty water!? Minneapolis Park workers and volunteers do an amazing job of keeping the water quality high. And this is partly due to their regular testing. But, these tests can’t guarantee anything.
What am I trying to do here? I’m not blaming the parks department; these tests are expensive and it would be difficult to test regularly enough to keep up with the quick shifts in wind and rain and the groundwater problems (like unstable sewer systems) that have existed from the beginning of the lake’s modern shape in the 1920s when workers excavated peat and used it to build up the surrounding neighborhood. Not to mention climate change and erratic weather and an excess of nutrients getting into the water from lawn fertilizers. And people feeding ducks who poop in the water which increases the amount of e-coli. No, I think Minneapolis Parks, especially Minneapolis Aquatics, are amazing.
All of this is complicated and messy with no easy answers. And it’s scary. I’ve been wondering for a few years when it’s going to happen — because it seems inevitable that it will happen — that lakes will no longer be safe to swim in, unfiltered outside air will no longer be safe to breathe. And this is how it happens, I think. Not all of sudden, but slowly. More days with bad test results and beach closures. Or inaccurate test results and water that is pea-soup green and slimy and that might get you sick.
I suppose this last paragraph sounds depressing, and it is, and also it isn’t. I love swimming in lake nokomis, and I would do a tremendous amount to keep swimming in it. Maybe it’s time to figure out what I can do to help keep it safe.
Hot! As usual, I should have gone out before 9:30, but I slept in. When I was in the shade, it wasn’t too bad. Wore my bright yellow shoes. They were fun for the first 3 minutes — very bouncy — but I started to feel both of my calves cramping up. I stopped to avoid anything worse and walked for a few minutes before starting up again. Is it the shoes? Possibly. My calves have been fine and then I started wearing these shoes again and now my calves are cramping occasionally. Last week, I woke up early in the morning to a charley horse just starting to happen. Was able to stop it before it turned into a knot. Whew.
Even though it was hot, I’m glad I got out by the gorge. Beautiful. Fall is coming. Leaves drifting down in the soft wind. Half-crushed acorns all over the sidewalk. A deep green everywhere. The winchell trail was cooler in the shade. Tricking water near the ravines (3 — 44th, 42nd, and 36th). Decided for the first time in a long time to take the dirt path past the 38th street steps and visit the oak savanna. It was dark and overgrown. Branches reaching across the trail, the dirt path that leads to the ravine narrowing to almost nothing.
10 Things
at least 2 or 3 benches occupied, including the one near folwell
a runner accompanied by a biker discussing how much mileage someone else was doing — marathon training?
the river: sparkling, blue, empty
a bird — cheeseburger cheeseburger
another bird: me me me
the fallen tree on winchell: still there, still blocking 2/3 of the path, still holding browned leaves
squeak squeak a swing across the road at minnehaha academy
movement — a bird? a squirrel? the wind moving a single leaf
loud noises in the bushes — a bird? a squirrel?
the worn wooden steps leading to the ravine — still cracked on a few boards — noticed that the steps are rectangular boards placed on the slope with a handrail, and some sort of wedge at the top
swim: 6 loops 90 minutes lake nokomis open swim 78 degrees
Wonderful! The water was a little rough, but nothing too bad. No waves crashing into me. The course the lifeguards set up with how they positioned the buoys was off today. It didn’t fit with any of my strategies for sighting. The lifeguards were too close to the buoys heading out to the little beach, and the fourth buoy was much farther south than it usually is. The final buoy was too close to the orange buoy and too far from the beach. No triangle today. Not sure what shape it was. I’m almost positive I swam 6 loops, but the distance was so much shorter that it seemed more like 5. I’ll still count it as 6.
Lots of vines. Setting sun. Bubbles. Menacing swans and sailboats. Strange flashes underwater. Seeing orange. A roaring plane. Thin shafts of light. Not as many sparkle friends.
2.1 miles to falls coffee 75 degrees / humidity: 91% dew point: 70
Maybe because it was overcast, it didn’t feel as bad as the numbers would suggest. Still sweat a lot, but didn’t feel miserable. Ran with Scott to Falls Coffee. Ran on edmund, parallel to the YWCA tri racers biking on the river road. I remember doing this race — three times, in 2013, 2014, and 2015. I can’t remember why I didn’t sign up for it in 2016 — maybe because my favorite part, the swim, was too short and the bike was too long. In 2017, I was signed up, with RJP, to do a mother-daughter super sprint, but then I got injured. After that, I didn’t do it because my vision was too bad to go that fast and be that close to other bikers (and, because I never really liked the biking part). I love watching professional triathlons — Ironmans, T100s, WTCS Olympic distance races, and Super-tris, but I don’t like racing them.
Scott and I didn’t talk much as we ran; I think we were both too warm. Heard cicadas and birds and people calling out, good job! you got this!, way to go ladies!, to the racers. A steady stream of bikers on the road, some heading out, others returning.
We got coffee at Falls Coffee then walked back through the neighborhood, including through the playground at FWA and RJP’s elementary school. My favorite thing: little birds — sparrows? — lifting off from the pavement, like little bubbles bursting up in the air. Another thing: hearing cicadas buzzing and birds chirping at the same time — not a duet, I said to Scott, but two songs being sung at the same time that almost, but not quite, fit together.
3.25 miles trestle turn around 75 degrees thunder – drizzle – rain
Dark out there this morning. My weather app and the radar said 0% chance of rain. Ha! I didn’t hear any thunder until I had already turned around and was heading back. I didn’t feel the rain until I was running a treeless stretch of the trail. Greeted Mr. Morning! Heard water rushing in the ravine. Smelled onions as a group of male runners — a big pack of cross country runners? — ran by. Forgot to look down at the river but did remember to glance at the sliding bench. Noticed that the crack in the path north of the trestle is still blocked off and still cracked — are they waiting until fall to fix it? Will they fix it? Saw dogs and runners and walkers and 4 bikes going by much faster than the 10 mph speed limit and 2 guys talking at the edge of the path that I think were rowers who just finished a session on the river.
What did I think about? I can’t remember. I wasn’t working through any ideas for a poem or the chapbook I’m putting together. I wasn’t thinking about anything I read this morning or worried about the news. Can I remember even one thought I had? Oh, here’s one: when it thundered, a flash of concern — do I need to find shelter? can I make it home before the storm begins? (I did.)
This morning before my run, I found out that 4 of my poems, including my purple hour poem, that were accepted at the beginning of the summer went live today on Trampoline Poetry! Very exciting! I also learned a few days ago that another one of my mood rings — Incurable — will be published later this month. Nice.
Humid. It rained last night — everything is wet — but there must been wind, too, because small branches and leaves were scattered over parts of the path. No big trees.
10 Sounds
Bird
the coxswains speaking through their bullhorns
a faint radio with someone singing, some vibrato
the steady trickle out of the sewer pipe near 42nd
good morning, excuse me / morning! no, excuse me (passing a walker)
morning! a greeting from Mr. Morning!
good morning / good morning (greeted by an older runner)
the whirr of a motor on an e-bike zooming by
another runner’s music coming from her phone as she ran by — some poppy upbeat song that I can’t remember
who run the world? girls! Beyoncé from my headphones and my mood: Energy playlist
Listened to the poem I wrote yesterday before I headed out for my run. This is my tentative ending:
tethers us to each other — swimmer and vision, buoy and body, to sight and to rarely see
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) 60 minutes cedar lake open swim 81 degrees
Choppy today. Sometimes hard to stay high on the water. Lots of vines. Saw some planes and birds above, no fish below. The surface looked silvery. Sometimes the sun was out, sometimes it was behind a cloud. Once a big, hulking cloud, looking like something other than a cloud from my perspective half-submerged in the water — a monster, like godzilla?
Forgot to recite Mary Oliver or think about the deepening and quieting of the spirit, but I felt it. Relaxed, happy, strong. Swimming for an hour wasn’t difficult.
Found this description of how we are both part of and separate from water saved on my reading list:
Nature—the non-built environment, creatures—is a realm of supreme “otherness” with which we are already always in strange relation. We plead for communion with this nature; it cannot answer us; so we project that onto it, that feeling of harmony and oneness at a shore or a vista. We are both a part of that natural sphere and stand distinctly apart within it, in our creaturely and industrial/technological dominance over it. You are both part of that sphere, and stand painfully apart, with your consciousness, language, cumbersome car and computer.
Now I’m thinking about Anne Carson and her definition of anthropology (as in, “Anthropology of Water”). I wrote about it on 13 july:
encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I.
added on 8 aug 2025: I forgot to mention a delightful thing that happened on the way over to cedar lake: a vee of geese — 20? — flying low over Bde Maka Ska then just above us — and, lucky me, I had the moon roof open to watch! — then heading towards Lake Harriet.
Better air! Well, less smoky air. Also, humid air. Heavy air. I checked the weather for rain. Nope. Leaving the house, I was greeted (or threatened or warned) by my next door neighbor, the bluejay. Screech! Screech! I admired the beautiful flowers — dark and light purple, orange, yellow — of the neighbor who lives with Matt the Cat. On the paved path, I glanced down at the oak savanna — dark green — and over at the leaning, almost twisted, fence. Heard the coxswain giving rowers their workout, something about 75ers, and wishing she had a micro-stop on her watch (at least, I think that’s what she said). Also heard rustling in the leaves, sounding bigger than a squirrel. A dog? A turkey? Heading down the hill at the Cleveland overlook, the river looked green and still through the trees. Someone was sitting on the bench in the grass near the stone wall. It was dark enough that the cars and bikes had their headlights on.
Because it’s cooler than the air is better, I have the windows open. Several squirrels are rooting around in the bushes. The sound is irritating me as I write this entry.
Listened to the cars and the rowers and the birds running south and on the Winchell Trail, then a few songs by Lawrence for the last stretch from the 38th street steps to home.
Swimming One Day in August
Because the big beach at Lake Nokomis has been closed due to high levels of e-coli, I haven’t had a chance to swim yet in August. Finally today, at Cedar Lake, I will start working towards my goal of swimming a total of 24 hours (= 1 day) in August. As part of that project, I’m devoting time out of the water to swimming in Minneapolis lakes, too by reading, researching, reflecting, and writing on water. Today, I’m reviewing the history of Cedar Lake, thanks to a masters thesis I found a few years ago.
Already today, I’ve been reading about the dredging of the lakes. 2.5 million cubic yards of peat and sand and wetland were dredged out of nokomis; it took 4 non-stop years. The sand went to the beach, the peat and wetland to making the park bigger and building a neighborhood. Why dredge? Not just because it would make a lake I could swim in a century and a half later. Original Park Board Superintendent Theodore Wirth was thinking about economic growth and the future of a city:
Wirth is outspoken in his belief in the utility of taming nature to increase land value and develop the city’s natural resources. By dredging and creating more shoreline, the park board could improve the parkland, thereby making the property surrounding the parkland a more desirable place to live. The increased value of the private property could provide a greater tax base for the city and for the Park Board, which could use the revenue to continue to acquire and improve park space.
Cedar Lake History/ Neil Trembley
swim: 4 loops 75 minutes cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Wonderful night for a swim! Calm water, not too warm or too cold. Not too crowded. And even with fogged up goggles (I haven’t treated them in a few weeks), I didn’t get too far off course.
The water felt a little sluggish — not buoyant. There were tons of sharp and scratchy vines, some individual strands, others in clumps. The water was opaque — no fish sightings tonight.
The sky was white; no clouds to notice. I think I remember seeing one bird. Oh — every so often the sky would break open and there was sun. It didn’t last that long.
I wanted to think about Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting” but there was none of that tonight. I was swimming hard — not all out, but not stopping either.
Another short run today. The air quality is still bad, but it didn’t bother me — or, I’m so used to it bothering me that I didn’t notice. Wore my bright yellow shoes again and felt bouncy. Listened to my “Slappin’ Shadows” playlist running south, the gorge running north: trickling water, laughing kids, someone talking about walking on a boardwalk, a beeping/ringing noise on repeat somewhere below. Noticed a haze above the river, everything washed out, pale. The tree that fell a few weeks ago is still there, unmoved. The benches were empty, the trails were thick with bikes. No more mud. Acorn shells on the sidewalk.
Walking back after the run, I thought about my inkling poems and how I like to/have to try and guess what something is based on very little data. Some lines came to me —
It’s a game, really — Name that Tune but for forms. I can name that form in 2 curves . . .
Searching for “inkling” on poets.org, I found these great lines:
For what is prophecy but the first inkling of what we ourselves must call into being? The call need not be large. No voice in thunder.
It’s not so much what’s spoken as what’s heard— and recognized, of course. The gift is listening and hearing what is only meant for you. (from Prophecy/ Dana Gioia)
And now I’m thinking about inklings as creatures, and not just hunches or ideas or guesses or a call/prophecy to listen to. An inkling is the tiny creature that speaks to us — not a little man, but a spirit or an insect or Dante’s spiriti visivi.
The wild fire smoke is still here. Mostly it didn’t bother me, but it did make running a little harder. The worst smoke moment was when I came off the lake street bridge and turned onto the river road — not hard to breathe so much as hazy. There weren’t too many runners out there, some walkers, a few bikers, a family of hikers and shadow falls.
10 Things
graffiti on the lake street bridge steps: STOP HATE
a fancy water fountain, bubbling, in the grand yard of the U of M President’s house that Gov. Walz rented while his mansion was being renovated
someone asleep on a hard stone bench by the Monument — in the hot sun, wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, and a stocking cap
the bells of St. Thomas — ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / ding dong ding dong / — the time, 10:45
an orange flash on the sidewalk — the smoky light or spray paint?
a boat speeding up the river, leaving streaks on the water’s surface
no kids outside at the church preschool — were they staying inside because of the smoke, or was it not recess?
the graceful curve of the bridge’s arch — I checked if anyone was climbing on it (nope) — my daughter told me about how kids do that (her included, but only once and only halfway across)
the soft trickle of water near Shadow Falls
a stone wall above the ravine, leaning — it had a sign on it that I couldn’t read, so I took a picture of it to study later
Furnished to the city of St. Paul by the Kettle River Co.
I could mostly read it when I looked at the photograph, but I had to doublecheck with Scott.
I wish the lake was open so I could have gone to open swim for the first day of my “Swimming One Day in August” project, but at least I was able to run. I am almost didn’t go out because of the smoke. Glad I decided to!
The smoke doesn’t seem that bad so, for the first time in weeks, we have the windows open! I like the relief that air conditioning brings, but I hate how it makes me feel trapped in the house. As I sit at my desk writing this, I just heard the feebee call of the black-capped chickadee through the open window!
Today I’m working on more swimming sonnets and Inklings. Some subjects: water quality, blue-green algae, milfoil, water as the medium, loops at lake nokomis are actually triangles, the color of the water, Alice Oswald seeing self in water, again and more darkly, Mary Oliver and the deepening and quieting of the spirit
a little later: I almost forgot about the mushrooms! Walking north before my run, I saw some HUGE mushrooms in a neighbor’s yard. The first one I noticed had lost its cap and I thought it was a newly cut tree trunk. I think there were a cluster of 4 or 5 mushrooms. I started reciting Sylvia Plath’s Mushrooms in my head. I thought about mushrooms as the fruit of fungi and little explosions and expressions of the self (like through poetry) as emerging like mushrooms. For the rest of the run I checked the grass for more mushrooms, but don’t recall seeing any more.
a lot later: RJP checked out a book for me, Mary Oliver’s Blue Pastures, so I could read some of Oliver’s sand dabs and the chapter, “Pen and Paper and Breath of Air.” I’m on the second page and I already needed to stop and archive some of her ideas:
First, in describing her practice of keeping a notebook, she writes that she doesn’t write in it from front to back, but just opens a page and writes anywhere and everywhere. She uses “private shorthand” to record phrases and feelings.
The words do not take me to the reason I made the entry, but back to the felt experience, whatever it was. this is important. I can, then, think forward again to the idea—that is, the significance of the event—rather than back upon it. It is the instant I try to catch in the notebooks, not the comment, not the thought. And, of course, this is so often what I am aiming to do in the finished poems themselves.
“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver
And here’s one of the phrases she put in a notebook:
A fact: one picks it up and reads it, and puts it down, and there is an end to it. But an idea! That one may pick up, and reflect upon, and oppose, and expand, and so pass a delightful afternoon altogether.
“Pen and Paper and Breath of Air” in Blue Pastures/ Mary Oliver
4.5 miles minnehaha falls and back 59 degrees AQI*: 157
*Air Quality Index
Cooler! Smoky, again. Ran on the dirt trail on the other side of the river road heading south. Noticed how the trail didn’t seem quite as wide as it did a few years ago during the pandemic when more people were using it. Wondered how many feet have to tread over the same spot to make a trail, and how long it takes for a forgotten trail to revert to grass. Crossed over to the paved path by Becketwood and stayed on it to the falls, then past the falls, then over the Veterans bridge then down the steep hill to the very bottom of the ford bridge then north thenhome.
Listened to cars and birds and voices as I ran south. Put in my “Remember to Forget” playlist returning north. Tried to forget that I was hot and wanted to stop as I listened to Peter Gabriel and Michael McDonald singing about forgetting.
10 Things
orange light dotting the path
turkeys! 4 female turkeys (hens) bobbing their necks and moving slowly, 1 male (a tom) following behind — the hens ignored me as I stopped to look, but the tom turned and stare
the rush of minnehaha creek below me as I ran over the veterans bridge
standing on the bridge above the falls, watching it tumble down to the creek below
a man and a little kid sitting at the bench near the boulder
the path blocked off near Godfrey by 2 trucks and some cones — not sure what they were working on
the path blocked off near folwell by cones: park workers repainting the biking and walk signs
a new person painted on the paved path — glowing white, I checked to see if anyone had drawn in a face yet (nope)
my shadow — I could see my pony tail bobbing as I moved
fake bells x 2: the ding-ding-ding of the light rail pulling out of the station and the chiming of the st. thomas bells at 7:45
Such as the lobster cracking loose from its exoskeleton after moons of moulting, or the viper that squeezes out of the skin of its remembrance, this oracle invites you to rewild yourself, to unbox, detox, and de- clutter your blood.
Hazy and smoky this morning. Canadian wild fires again. A present from the wind. It looked bad, but didn’t bother my breathing too much. Inspired by the wind, I listened to my “Beaufort Scale” playlist until I reached the old stone steps near the south entrance of the Winchell Trail. Then I listened to the water falling out of the sewer pipe and splashing on the rocks down to the river.
WPA 1938
I took this picture of a stone wall built by the WPA, and possibly by grandfather, on the stone steps at the edge of the 44th street parking lot. 1938 was four years before my mom was born. Was my grandfather working for the WPA then?
At the bottom of the steps is the Winchell Trail and the 44th street sewer pipe/ravine. Also, the curved wall that I like to admire from above as I run by and the spot in the trail that transitions from crumbled asphalt to cracked. Yesterday I wrote about the sound of the water falling. I decided to stop and record it today:
water falling at the 44th street ravine
10 Things
a section of the fence on the edge, missing a slat
something on the asphalt ahead — a big puddle? no spots of light shining through a gap in the trees — a pool of light!
smoke on the water (waTER — Deep Purple/Pat Boone reference) — my view from the Winchell trail through the trees, light blue looking fuzzy and faded through the smoke
the faint voices of kids on playground
the blending of car wheels above with wind in the trees and water falling down the ravine
an older couple walking fast and with purpose, especially the woman who was leading the charge, seen twice
a small bird flittering by, a flash of yellow — was it yellow, or was it a trick of the light, or was it my unreliable vision?
the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored — well, at least, a few steps are — the yellow and orange and purple ones
glancing across the road and doing a double-take: is that a turkey or a young tree with its trunk covered in black plastic?
empty benches
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Very glad Cedar Lake is okay so that open swim could happen. It was windy and choppy and smoky. At first I thought my goggles were fogged up, but then I realized it was the smoke in the air. Air quality was bad: 168, which is unhealthy. With the choppy water, it took a few loops to get into a rhythm. Lots of breathing on one side, or breathing every 2 or 3 strokes.
I’ve been working on a new poem form today. I’m calling it inkling. It’s inspired by an Alice Oswald line from Dart: the inkling of a fish. Inkling as vague, the idea of, a whisper, unproven, a rumor. My little poems — 3-5 lines, I think — are about describing or evoking the feeling or idea of something that you can’t quite see, or that you feel more than anything else. My first one will be about fish.
Another hot and hazy morning. I remembered to notice the river and it looked . . . thirsty? Trying to think of the best word that conveys the opposite of refreshing and cool. Uninviting? Thick? Stuck? Inert? By the Cleveland Overlook it was green and dull and thick. Below the Winchell Trail near the south entrance it was a pale blue with a soft haze hovering above it. Farther north on the trail it was bright blue with a few spots of sparkle through the trees.
Because of the intense thunder storm last night, there was water everywhere — puddles, gushing sewers, squishy mud. The puddles were small but filled with the reflections of trees and flat, still. The mud was slick and slippery. Two distinctive sewer sounds/movements: 1. below 44th street, the water was pulsing, coming in waves — a moment of steady flow, then nothing, then water flowing again. I stopped to lean over the railing and watch it. 2. below 42nd street, the water was rushing out of the pipe, making a small waterfall on the rocks below — a continuous dropping of water.
With all the wind and rain last night, I expected there to be more trees or branches down than there were. Was there any new debris? I don’t think so.
The weather is strange this week: very hot and humid and sunny during the day — we’ve had several heat advisories, then violent storms move in quickly at night. Last night, it started with the wind. I opened the front door and watched the trees bending, twisting, waving. Very unsettling to watch. Then the sky unzipped and rain came down in sheets. Will it happen again tonight? I hope not.
For future Sara: Scott and I discovered a new sport to watch during the Aquatic World Championships — men’s 27 meter (that’s 9 stories!) and women’s 20 meter diving. Why can’t the men and women dive from the same height? Anyway, I’d never heard of this before. An extremely HIGH platform is created outside with a small circular pool at the bottom — don’t worry, the water is deep. Divers jump — they enter feet first — from high up, doing flips and twists and somersaults as they plummet. It’s so dangerous that they have 4 first-responders in the pool waiting to rescue them if they need it. And the first thing they do after surfacing is alert the responders with a thumbs up. What? Wow. Like other diving competitions, a lot of the score is determined by how much splash they make entering the water. I can’t see the splash, because of my bad vision, but I still enjoy watching it. After the dive, they show several slow-motion replays, including one from below. You watch as the diver nears the water; Scott says it reminds him of seeing someone falling to their death.
I am alone but for this vein splitting the earth open and we are silent, the stream and I
far away from our mouths. The stream folds over itself, my hand speculating under the surface.
The stippled faces of orioles sail by slowly, their dark wings working hard as tired men pulling oars
in a landscape painting, their lantern chests dotting a modest pattern across the sky, over this brook
a mile from your house—from you who are alone but for your sons and your sons’ refusal to recognize
you cloaked under a sadness, the color of whose cloth is muted as these late-afternoon birds.
The stream sluices crawdads and stones, carefully takes its bend like a tongue spackled with canker sores. I still expect it to speak. I’ve come to listen to this slow unfurling, hoping I’ll fall
asleep as it turns like a lullaby a child promises he will strain to hear, to memorize. I make sense
of smudged pastoral visions. Gone, the birds long gone. Palms, I cup water with bent palms.
run: 3 miles trestle turn around 86 degrees
I was supposed to go to open swim, but the beach has been closed for a week because of e-coli. Not sure why, but I’m guessing it’s because of the storm. What a bummer! I’m supposed to start my “swimming one day in august” project on 1 august. It will be more difficult to do it now that I’m missing august 1 and 3. Thankfully Cedar Lake is open so at least I can swim there tomorrow.
Since I couldn’t swim, I decided to do another run. It was hot, but the humidity was lower so it seemed less terrible than this morning’s run.
10 Things
I think I heard the rowers; I know I saw a few of them heading down the hill to the dock
traffic was backed up — so many cars trying to turn onto lake street
a mini peloton — a dozen bikers — whirred by me on the river road
someone in a strange t-shirt with lots of words or logos or symbols that I couldn’t make sense of was sitting on the ledge under the trestle listening to heavy metal on their phone
a walker, dressed in brown shorts and a brown shirt, passing me twice, their head titled to the side
the sliding bench was a cool, dark green
the spray paint on the ancient boulder looked extra orange today — did someone touch it up recently?
a lime scooter parked in the middle of the walking path under the bridge
the big crack north of the trestle looks about the same as it did last week — not bigger — but the path is blocked off with caution tape, orange cones, and a warning spray-painted on the asphalt
as I neared them, someone was emerging from the old stone steps
Cooler than last week, but still too warm for me. Felt drained and my feet were sore from my shoes — the Saucony Rides strike again. Even so, happy to be out beside the gorge with my friends — the boulders, benches, trees, shadows, walkers, runners, river. But not the bikers — too many of them, and too many close calls.
Last night, we had some intense wind and thunderstorms. Eveidence of it is everywhere: leaves, twigs, branches, whole trees scattered near the trail, gushing sewer pipes, muddy paths. The water from the 44th street pipe gushed out in spurts, almost like a bucket filling up then dumping over. The water from the 42nd street sewer pipe rushed with a steady flow of water, like a waterfall.
I ran closer to the river and I remember looking at it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. Was it smooth? scaled? blue? gray? brown? I don’t recall. I do remember not hearing any rowers.
I didn’t have any deep thoughts about water or swimming or life or, if I did, they didn’t stick around. Instead, I thought about how my feet were sore and my legs felt sluggish, how I wanted to stop, and how I had some unfinished business and needed to get to a bathroom soon.
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
The water was warm but calm and more greenish than usual. Lots of scratchy vines and swimmers swimming in the middle. Also, a giant rubber ducky inner tube floating beside the course. The safety buoy of the day was a clunky, lumpy orange one. Lots of other yellow and pink buoys too. The sky had a few clouds but was mostly blue. Made sure to notice the bubbles around my hands. At the end of the swim, near shore, I went a little deeper in the water — it was cool, which felt nice.
As Scott and I left the beach I noticed an older woman waving at someone, than a little kid yelling excitedly, Grandma!
No bathroom stop in the one port-a-potty today. Someone puked on the floor right next to the toilet. Yuck!
run: 4 miles the monument and back 73 degrees dew point: 69
Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.
Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.
I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.
Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.
Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:
clouds reflected on riverriver clouds
note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.
visual fields, landscapes, meadows
1
At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.
2
Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”
It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”
the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance
3
as though there swung at the end of a tunnel, a passage dotted with endless points of arrival, as though our gaze started just outside our faces and corkscrewed its way toward the horizon, processual, as if looking took time to happen and weren’t instantaneous, offered whole in one gesture before we ask, before our will, as if the far Sonoma mountains weren’t equally ready to be beheld as the dead fly on the sill) (Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)
What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood. (Naomi Cohn)
4
A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.
5
“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”
“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.
As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.
bike: 8 miles lake nokomis and back 82 degrees / 79 degrees
Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 82 degrees
Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.
I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark
There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!
images collected in consciousness like a tree alone on the horizon (Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)
So warm already at 8 am! Decided to do a quick run anyway. Felt better than I thought especially on no coffee or food, but it was still hard. Listened to the new Lorde (recommended by RJP) while I ran south to the entrance of the Winchell Trail. Listened to turkeys and trucks and coxswains while I ran north.
10 Things
a coxswain below giving instructions through a bullhorn — take a drink before class begins . . . today we’ll start with some stroke work: 22/22/22/24
the distant gobble of turkeys
the rumble of a truck
a roller skier
a biker in a bright yellow shirt working on their aero position, back bent low and straight over the bike
the tree that fell and blocked 3/4 of the trail is still there, its leaves now brittle and brown
empty benches
voices above me, approaching steadily — bikers or runners?
another coxswain — difficult to hear over my music
cracked pavement below — some small and shallow, others deeper and slanted, all waiting to twist ankles
a few hours later: a steady rain
Returning to this log entry to wander with a question I posted yesterday:
What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision?
Darby Nelson is referring to lakes and how little can be seen below the surface. Landscape is a strange word choice here. Landscape refers to a view/tract of land that’s inland. What’s the word for a water view? Waterscape? Beyond that, the OED definition of landscape is about a view, a portrait, a picture. What is the experience/perception of a space — land or water — called that doesn’t prioritize or exclusively rely on vision?
I’m also thinking about how a landscape is scenery, an object to gaze at, the background. What if we made the lake the subject? How would we understand and name our relationship to it? Ecosystems popped into my head — maybe not the right word, but another way to think about what the water we’re observing, especially when we’re in it, is. And, what if we (you, me) are not individuals separate from the lake as observers but ecosystems too?
It is becoming increasingly clear that there is no such thing as a biological individual. All organisms are intricately nested collectives: networks of relationships between cells and microbes that make it impossible to say where one “individual” starts and stops. Humans are no exception: We carry around more microbial cells than we do our own.
In the same entry I posted the above quotation (8 april 2022), I also posted and discussed Arthur Sze’s poem “Entanglements.” I especially like these lines:
your field of vision tears, and an underlying landscape reveals a radiating moment in time.
“(during my run) I reflected on the underlying landscape as layers that can’t be seen with your eyes, only smelled or felt or imagined. And I delighted in the idea of so much happening, so much present beneath me that I couldn’t see, that I didn’t need to see, for it to exist or to affect me or to be connected to me.”
Field of vision? Suddenly I thought about my interest in writing a poem/s about taking the visual field test (see 1 july 2025). And I’m thinking about landscapes and fields and meadows (see 2 may 2025). A line popped into my head: a meadow of moments — no, a moment meadows.
What does the visual field test have to do with the lake or my experiences swimming in it? A lot, I think. Somehow I want to bring together the visual field test with my swimming and sighting buoys. How? Not sure yet.
run: 1.75 miles from minnehaha falls to home 73 degrees / dew point: 64
A quick run with Scott from the falls back home before the rain started. We made it! Checked the weather on my watch after we finished — 95% chance of rain in 8 minutes. Ran at 1 pm, which might be my least favorite time to run. It felt hard. Still, I’m glad we did it. (It never rained.)
We stopped to walk where the trail dips below the road so I could point out the new trail they’ve created that winds down to the river. I can’t wait until they’re finished. It looks cool. Speaking of cool, I was trying to convey to Scott how I felt about the air and what the impending storm was doing to the sky and the air and green of the gorge. First I said “cool,” but it’s not cool (temperature), so I started to clarify, I mean the atmosphere, but realized that atmosphere could be related to temp so I said, I mean the vibe is cool. Cool is such a strange word — both full of meaning and history and empty too. For 35 years, I’ve been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond it, but it never works. How many times a day do I use this word?
I know that there is a rich history of the term within African American culture and jazz and that it’s been appropriated by white culture, but I don’t know the history that well. In poetry, my immediate thought about cool is Gwendlyn Brooks amazing, “We Real Cool.” I also think about Beatnik poetry and the Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene in Hairspray:
“your hair is really uncool”
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 79 degrees rain
Overcast, gray. Calm water, warm-enough air. A great night for a swim. As I swam, I monitored the sky, noticing it getting darker and thicker. Wondered if it would start raining. During loop 4, it did. It’s always difficult to tell if it’s raining when I’m swimming. Today I felt a drop on my check and then paused to lift my head out of the water — a steady rain. I think I heard it underwater, but I couldn’t see it, and barely felt it. No thunder, so open swim kept going. Hooray!
10 Things
a graying sky
a big canoe moving fast across the swim course
even as I tried to stay on the edge of the course, the current pushed me toward the center
pale green, opaque water
bubbles encasing my hands
attacks from floating vines
a party with a campfire and barking dogs at hidden beach
buoyant, feeling held by the water
after: itchy skin
standing up in the sand after the last loop — a final look at the buoys and the water
Remembered the first line from the A Oswald poem fragment that I forgot several times last week: this disintegrating certainty
Thought about the bubbles and imagined that they were holding me up, like some sort of raft or inner tube.
My legs felt like rudders, my torso rocked rhythmically, my shoulders rose and fell.
4 miles river road, north/south 72 degrees humidity: 85%
Because I waited until after today’s tour stage — the last one in the Pyrenees — it was humid and hot out by the gorge! Other than the heat, the run was not too bad. I chanted in triples for about a mile and tried to keep my chest up, shoulders relaxed, arms in a controlled swing. I don’t remember hearing the rowers or seeing the river.
10 Things
the entrance to a steep dirt path above the rowing club on the other side of the path that goes under the lake street bridge
a runner behind me, coming fast, slapping his feet on the paved path
a biker sternly telling the runner, you’re on the bike path!
the runner not reacting because he was wearing headphones
the fence panel that they were redoing yesterday was in place and its new, unpainted wood stood out against the other brown panels
a wooden slat of the fence jutting out by the ravine because of a leaning tree — watch out!
2 older women sitting on a bench — one to the other: not bad, 2 miles in 2 hours
a flash of orange in the peripheral — a hidden tree trunk marked for removal
slightly more of a view at the sliding bench — I think park workers trimmed the trees
the crack north of the trestle looks like it might have grown some more
4 miles river road, north/south 57 degrees humidity: 80%
In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.
10 Things
rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
smell of cigarette smoke
the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me
I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!
this disintegrating certainty this water whatever it is whatever anything is under these veils and veils of vision which the light cuts but it remains
unbroken (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?
I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.
I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.
Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.
Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.
Rain this early (7 am) morning. Hopefully stopping in a few hours. Watching the tour and rereading old entries from july 16ths. Discovered this excellent description of a buzzing bug:
Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree Near-by: It seems to burn its way through the air Like a small, pointed flame of sound Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
note: I first posted this poem on 16 july 2022. I posted it again last year in 2024. Maybe I should memorize it?
a few hours later: what a stage of the tour (stage 11)! Pogacar crashing; Visma waiting for him. What will happen tomorrow in the Pyrenees?
It is 10:30 and a light rain. Won’t stop until 12:30. Do I wait, or go now? It’s probably refreshing and it might be fun to run in the rain . . .
4.25 miles minnehaha falls and back 66 degrees light rain
I did it, and it was a great run! Back to the 9/1 (9 minutes running / 1 minute walking) and feeling strong and relaxed. The light rain helped to cool me down, and I liked how my feet glided on the wet trail. Glided sounds strange. How about glode or glid or glod? Started the run by chanting in triple berries then turning everything I noticed into triples — river road, dripping trees, running feet, rushing cars. Listened to everything dripping for the first 30 minutes, then put in the “Energy” playlist for the last stretch.
10 Things
gloom with the occasional bright flash from headlights
one flash looked lower — I think it was a reflection in a big puddle!
the ravine by 42nd was gushing like the falls
the falls were giving off a fine, gauzy spray
a stranded surrey near the longfellow house — were they getting wet in the rain?
someone walking up the hill at the edge of the park, carrying an umbrella
above the creek, the grass next to the sidewalk was soaked with a line of big puddles
the sprawling reflection of a tree in a wide puddle on a sidewalk
the silhouette of a bird on a wire, looking very Bird
the bells of St. Thomas — faint, distant
an hour later: I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake tonight but I just got an email: “canceled due to inclement weather.” Bummer.
a few random Alice Oswald bits
1
On her process of translating what she notices into a poem, and on poetry as framing the silence:
She and her husband, playwright Peter Oswald, divide their day in two – walking their sons to and from school through fields. But she doesn’t take a notebook with her. She believes in the subconscious, in what is brewing on a ‘non-verbal level’. She thinks ‘a flavour or feeling builds up, almost a sculptural shape that could be a living creature, or a dance or a painting’. Only later comes the ‘plastic art of finding the words’.
There is also, in her poems, a sense of the silence behind every word. ‘One of the differences between poetry and prose is that poetry is beyond words. Poetry is only there to frame the silence. There is silence between each verse and silence at the end.’
closed and containing everything, the land leaning all round to block it from the wind, a squirrel sprinting in startles and sees sections of distance tilted through the trees and where you jump the fence a flap of sacking does for a stile, you walk through webs, the cracking bushtwigs break their secrecies, the sun vanishes up, instantly come and gone. once in, you hardly notice as you move, the wood keeps lifting up its hope, I love to stand among the last trees listening down to the releasing branches where I’ve been – the rain, thinking I’ve gone, crackles the air and calls by name the leaves that aren’t yet there
Oh, that ending! Now I’m imagining what the rain does when it thinks I’m not around! Today the rain didn’t crackle the air but . . . dotted it? feathered it? poked or punctured it?
3
The other day I came across Alice Oswald’s description of a project she’ll be working on next year as a fellow at Columbia University. She’s calling it Interviews with Anon:
At the Institute, Oswald will write a procession of passersby, not all of whom are human and many of whom are imperfectly seen: “My inspiration is the wandering, bartering, folktale style of Herodotus, who included 940 characters in his Histories. I shan’t be writing history. Perhaps it will be more like a headcount or even a carnival.”
Wanted to do a longer run today, but it was too hot! At first I wasn’t going to run at all, but I decided to do a short one to, as I sang to Scott, kick start my heart. Of course I sang the melody of this song completely wrong and of course we had to listen to the original. Ugh! And of course I had to remind Scott that one of the many soccer teams I was on as a kid was named Motley Crüe. Another team: Jabberwockies.
When I was in the shade it wasn’t too bad, but in the direct sun — HOT! I had wanted to run to the overlook on the bridge but I noticed, at the last minute — a few feet from the sign — that the sidewalk was closed. So, I turned down and ran south on the river road trail. Ah, shade!
10 Things
my bright yellow running shoes
the neighbor who is always sitting on his front steps smoking was there but wasn’t smoking
the excited chirping of little kids on the playground at the daycare
from a biker: that was so sweet — the tone of sweet made me think kind, thoughtful, not awesome
a long line of cars on lake street
my shadow, straight and strong
2 runners crossing the street, standing in the bike path, a biker approaching, heads up! / oh, sorry!
the rush of wind through the trees
a steady stream of cars on the river road making it difficult to cross
the dark brown dirt, the gentle curve of the green grass, the sharp edge between of a front yard on 46th
This Be the Place: a Pond
Today is the first rest day of the tour so no cycling to watch all morning. Instead I returned to my morning reading practice of visiting poetry sites and rereading past log entries. A lot of great stuff, including: This Be the Place: A Several-Acre Space of Tenderness/ Han Vanderhart
The “several-acre” space is a pond, which struck me as strange. I think of ponds as small bodies of water and several-acres sound big. But is it (big, that is)? Maybe several acres is small. What distinguishes a pond from a lake? I recall looking up brooks and streams and creeks and rivers when I was reading Emily Dickinson’s poem, Have you got a Brook in your little heart (see 13 march 2021), but not ponds. So I looked it up. Fascinating!
pond or lake: the distinction is arbitrary
The term “lake” or “pond” as part of a waterbody name is arbitrary and not based on any specific naming convention. In general, lakes tend to be larger and/or deeper than ponds, but numerous examples exist of “ponds” that are larger and deeper than “lakes.” . . .Names for lakes and ponds generally originated from the early settlers living near them, and the use of the terms “lake” and “pond” was completely arbitrary. Many have changed names through the years, often changing from a pond to a lake with no change in size or depth. Often these changes in name were to make the area sound more attractive to perspective home buyers.
Learned that the study of inland waters is limnology. And the terms, lotic and lentic, too:
surface waters are divided into lotic (waters that flow in a continuous and definite direction) and lentic (waters that do not flow in a continuous and definite direction) environments. Waters within the lentic category gradually fill in over geologic time and the evolution is from lake to pond to wetland. This evolution is slow and gradual, and there is no precise definition of the transition from one to the next.
From lake to pond to wetland reminds of my discussion of ecological succession and Robin Wall Kimmerer at the begining of May. A meadow becomes a thicket, a thicket becomes a forest.
Was Lake Nokomis ever a (bigger) lake that became a pond, then a wetland, then a lake again? Yes!
The landscape around Lake Nokomis was formed by natural forces, to be a place that absorbed and stored water. Over 11,000 years ago, glaciers carved through the land, and then retreated and melted. As the ice blocks that were left behind melted, they formed an expansive system of interconnected wetlands and lakes. Under these saturated conditions organic material from dead plants was unable to completely decompose, forming extensive peat deposits — a wetland soil. Because peat readily absorbs moisture and can hold up to 10 times its weight in water, it can act as a barrier and prevent rainfall from draining into deeper layers of the soil. This can cause water to accumulate, or perch, above the peat. Once abundant wetlands in South Minneapolis were filled or development.
In 1853, the U.S. Surveyor General’s Office conducted the first government land survey of the landscape around Lake Nokomis, then called Lake Amelia. The area contained over 1,500 acres olakes and wetlands. At that time, the natural lakes were larger and shallower than today. Since then, nearly 60% of the area’s wetlands have been filled. In their place is today’s built landscape.
Linda Gregg might call my pond a “resonant source,” a term she uses for places that are “present as essences. They operate invisibly as energy, equivalents, touchstones, amulets, buried seed, repositories, and catalysts.” These are the Ur-images of our creative psyches, that live with us and inform our writing. “If we opened people up,” remarked the filmmaker Agnès Varda, “we’d find landscapes.” Along with a Virginia creek and cornfields and the wood with its mayapples, this pond is inside me: as summer, as stillness, as childhood—as peace.
You can not realize you are in despair, looking at a pond’s surface.
I love the surface of Lake Nokomis. How when I lift my head out of the green water to sight, I see blue. How its ripples sparkle and its small waves sometimes look like other swimmers. How dragonflies hover above, bubbles hang just below it. How it often hides its moods from those at a distance; what looks calm and still from afar, feels rough and active from within.
ponds and writers: Maxine Kumin and Henry David Thoreau
Two writers that popped into my head as I think and read about ponds; Maxine Kumin and her homemade pond, Pobiz Pond, on her farm and Thoreau and Walden Pond. I just requested Kumin’s memoir in which she writes about how she and her husband, along with help from friends, dug out a pond on their farm property.
Other poetry people who love ponds? Mary Oliver, of course!
note: I was planning to swim, but open swim was canceled because of thunderstorms forecasted for 6:30.
3.1 miles locks and dam #1 and back 72 degrees / humidity: 84% air quality: 117
Hot! Humid! Hazy! The shade helped. Avoided the crowded river road trail. Heading south I ran on the narrow, root-filled dirt trail on the grassy boulevard until I reached the parking lot, then the trail to Locks and Dam #1. Heading back north, I ran on the Winchell Trail.
There was a moment when I heard the soft rush of cars, the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe, and . . .? I know there were 3 distinct sounds that I noticed all at once and that I imagined putting in a contrapuntal poem. Was the third sound the rowers? the birds? the tapping which might have been a woodpecker on a tree, or a squirrel with a nut? It wasn’t the wind, because there is no wind today. I felt its lack, but also saw it on the surface of the water. Still, thick. It wasn’t the buzzing of workers sawing or mowing or building something. What was it? Just remembered! The soft then sharp buzz of cicadas, which came in waves. I knew I’d remember it! (It only took 2 hours.)
The common thread for these 3 noises is their steady, insistent beat, not moving time forward, but around and around, on repeat.
swimming words
Catch water, thumb first then the semi-circle pull, arms straight, centre, down. Palm push back, twist shoulder to breath. And recover. Kick. Kick. Kick.
Stretch bone to breakwall and the tidal roar of thirty thousand swamps, refuses to crest, to break. Thirst for the bubbled silence of midnight, midlake, midstroke when the limelight was all to reach for, a trap door opening to a world below.
Pulse counts in an orchestra — it’s only a paper moon waterlogged and beaming up, a lighthouse lamp spinning in time. A course to decipher all the way to safe harbour. There’s a table laid in checkered cloth. The catch of the day muscles away.
At the edge, pulled bodily from a lake that holds fast and drags thighs, shins against stacked stone and laps the bloody threads. It won’t return you whole to the land.
Love the title of this poem and the last line. Does the lake return me whole to the land? What does it mean to be returned whole? And, is that to be desired?
I was planning to do open swim at Cedar Lake tonight, but there is a heat advisory and it’s 90 degrees, so Scott and I will go on Wednesday instead, when it’s much cooler.
process influences constraint
Last week, I read about Sarah Riggs’ approach to writing her latest collection, Lines:
In my poem “November 14” from Lines we start with “Only hour only thought: speech speech.” At the age of 47 I set out to write the book in 47-minute time periods. Roughly an hour, an only hour so to speak, in a field of time dedicated only to thinking/ speaking. Increasingly hard to do this century, with text messages et cetera punctuating thought. So on October 15, 2018, I started on a dictation of the mind so to speak, in which second thoughts are also written, and set my phone timer for each writing session, at the same café for many of the poems. Not written so much as transposed. I determined each poem would be 47 lines, and the lines do not need to be connected to ones before or after, though they could be. There would be 47 poems. The name of each poem is the date it was written. To be in time, in the calendar, to have a project that is a book that is a series. To feel in the momentum of it. To slant into dream, to invite that we survive through the tilt and whir of connecting synapses.
Process, Influence, and Constraints. I love all 3 of these, and think about them quite a bit. I like how Riggs opens the essay: “The bird song and street noise and lilt of the subway and recent phone conversations go into our poetry. We are made up of influences, there is no blank page or screen, as has been said many times.”
In terms of influence, Riggs offers these suggestions:
Channel an influence or more than one. You can choose to riff on or translate someone else’s work. You can choose epigraphs. Dedicate or address your work to someone.
I like the idea of translation. I’ve been playing around with something I call form fitters, where I take words from other poets I love and fit them into my running rhythms (3/2 or 2/1 or 3/3/3/4) and swimming breath patterns (5 syllable lines or 3/4/3/4 or 5/4/5/4). I also like the idea of taking a line and making it the title or, what about the last line?, of a poem. Playing around with influences could be a fun month-long project?!
Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.
Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?
The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 80 degrees / 78 degrees
Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.
The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.
Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.
A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.
3.75 miles river road, north/south 70 degrees humidity: 74%
Summer! Not the easiest running with the heat, but it’s beautiful by the gorge. Greeted Dave, the Daily Walker and he wished me a happy birthday again!
10 Things
a coxswain’s voice below me
a very loud bird across the road, trilling not screaming
a sea and sky of green in the tunnel of trees
a woman walking down the center of the path, gesturing to herself
the two big cracks on the stretch of path just north of the trestle have been filled in with dirt
orange cones and orange spray paint surround the cracks to warn pedestrians
looking through a gap in the trees, seeing the air above the gorge, feeling so open and peaceful
an orange day lily on the edge of the trail
empty benches
the sliding bench looks like it has slid more
I stopped to take a few pictures of the bench:
sliding bench / 9 july 2025
During the run and after, I recited AO’s lines from Nobody about the microscopic insects in the eye who speak Greek. Such a great poem! And such a great poem to memorize!
Got out for my run a little earlier today. Still warm and humid. The bunion on my left foot has a blister on it, which hurt at the beginning of the run. Looking up the anatomy of the foot, I discovered that the bone below the big toe is actually two pea-shaped bones called sesamoids. I’ve been thinking that I might want to devote a month, or a few weeks, to the foot. Maybe September?
Noticed the river for the first time as I turned down to enter the Winchell Trail from the south. Through the trees it looked green and warm and stagnant. A little later, on the Winchell Trail, a pale blue with a spot of sparkle. Greeted by Mr. Morning! as I exited the 38th street steps.
10 Things
empty benches
a parked scooter with its red lights still blinking
heard water dripping down the ravine and thought of a grotto with a waterfall
the tree that fell on the trail last week is still there, blocking 2/3rds of the trail
a faint voice below — a rower?
2 people across the road near Becketwood, crouched near the trees — looking at something? picking up trash? weeding?
a steady stream of cars
a cool green under the tree cover on the Winchell Trail
a week later, the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored
someone walking around the overlook, headed to the part of the stone wall where a dirt trail descends — was he planning to take it?
more How to Read Water
glitter path: a long line of shimmering reflections stretching into the distance. The shape of the glitter path is a measure of how high the sun is and the roughness of the waves.
if you see the glitter path bulge at some spot, that indicates rougher waves
wider glitter path = rougher water narrower path = calmer water
“the faces of the waves act as mirrors”
seeing faces in waves / pareidolia: the habit of our brains to find patterns and ascribe meaning where there may be none
orange!
If you are gazing down into cloudy water looking at your own shadow, there are a couple of extra effects worth keeping an eye out for. The first is that your shadow may have an orange-hued fringe around it. This happens because the tiny particles in the water don’t reflect all wavelengths (and therefore all colors) back equally to you. Orange makes it back more easily than the others. The second effect, which, if you see the orange “halo” effect, is definitely worth looking for, is that you may spot shafts of sunlight emerging from your shadow and radiating out away from it underwater. This effect is sometimes nicknamed the “aureole effect.” These radiating rays are caused by an optical effect of looking in the opposite direction to the sun
How to Read Water
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 83 degrees
Warm, buoyant, calm water. I felt fast and strong and confident. Lots of swimmers, a few floating vines. No ducks or fish or dragonflies. At least 2 military planes — black — screaming across the sky. The far green buoy looked robin’s egg blue to me again today. My nose plug squeaked. The water looked mostly light greenish blue with a think layer near the surface that almost looked white. I saw some orange off to the side and shafts of light rising up from the bottom. Translucent bubble encased my hands.
I recited bits from AO’s Dart and Nobody as I looped.
Noticed a swimmer looking so far away from the orange buoy and wondered how much of it was my off perspective and how much of it was them being off course. Probably more me; I struggle with depth perception.
almost forgot: during the second half of a loop, the water suddenly got a lot darker for many seconds — a minute? However long it actually was, it felt like a long time. I couldn’t see what caused it, but I’m imagining the darkness was caused by a cloud. On other days, I felt a shorter darkness pass when a plane passes over the sun.
4.25 miles monument and back 71 degrees dew point: 64
Hot! I’ve never liked running in the heat but now that I’m taking lexipro my heat intolerance has increased. For some moments of the run I felt great, other moments I didn’t. So I walked some, ran some, and walked again at different stretches.
10 Things
I kept seeing orange flashes — a sign, a cone, a tree marked for removal
kids yelling and laughing outside at a daycare attached to a church
the river from above, on the bridge, heading east: brown, and looking shallow — were those sandbars I was seeing near the surface?
trickling water out of the limestone below the bridge
the sound of shadow falls, falling
a kid’s voice rising from the ravine
construction on the other side of the lake street bridge — orange cones, trucks, yellow-vested workers, the buzz of equipment
the river from above, on the bridge, heading west: blue and covered in the reflections of clouds*
click clack — a roller skier
seen, not heard: a dog, by the clanging of their collar
*stopped at the bridge overlook to take a picture of the clouds reflected on the surface of the water. Is it just me, or does this look like an impressionist painting?
river with clouds, 7 july 2025
the color of water
How to Read Water is fascinating. Here are some things I’d like to remember from the chapter on color:
The colors we see in water depend on the brightness and angle of the light and the water’s depth, as well as what’s on, in, and under that water.
How to Read Water
something to consider: are you looking at water, or something in or under the water, or a reflection on water’s surface. Is it the color of water, or the color of the ground beneath the water (a puddle), or the color of cloud on its surface? What angle are you looking from?
. . . in many circumstances when we think we are looking at the water, we are actually looking at something different and in the distance. Looking out to the sea in the distance is a great example: What we see in that situation is dominated by the reflection of the sky even further in the distance. This is why the distant sea appears blue in fine weather and gray on overcast days.
How to Read Water
This water looks blue because it’s reflection the sky is one I’ve heard a lot, but I think I’ve always heard it as the reason, not one reason under certain circumstances.
What about when we see different colors — which I often do as I run across the bridge and look down at the water? The different colors are based on how much of the water we are actually seeing. Sometimes I see brown, sometimes blue.
You will notice this if you look for it, but not if you don’t because our brain has gotten used ot this effect and so oesn’t register it as at all peculiar.
something to try: Can you find the area/the moment where the shift takes place from looking only at reflections to being able to see water?
the exact color that can travel furtherest through the water without being absorbed: blue-green color, wavelength = 480 nanometers
Is it a big cloud or Jaws? People often think it has gotten deeper or there are fish around when the water darkens, but it might just be a big cloud.
eutrophication = excessive nutrients — algal blooms reduce light, use up a lot of oxygen, change the color of the water
oligotrophic = low in nutrients, clear
my sparkle friends! “A lot of the particles that see in water will be inorganic, a mixture of mud, sand, clay, silt, chalk, and other substances, each one affecting the colors we see.” Do I see them as anything other than the color sparkle?
Today I’m swimming at Cedar Lake, which is much deeper than Lake Nokomis. It is also more of a “natural” lake than nokomis. What impact do these factors have on its colors and my experiences of them?
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar lake loops) cedar lake open swim 82 degrees
The water by the orange buoy closest to Point Beach was almost hot — so warm! It was a little cooler in the middle of the lake and near Hidden Beach, but not that cool. It was also calm. Not much wind, no waves. A few vines floating over and under and around me. Some milfoil by the beach. I forgot to look at the color of the water from above, but I did look below. Blue-green, a few hints of yellow. Opaque.
10 Things
driving past another part of the lake: the surface covered with green vegetation
clear blue sky, then a few clouds, the more clouds, then dark
the first orange buoy seemed much farther out in the water
breathing to my right, seeing some other swimmers halfway across the lake
yellow safety buoys
something in the sky — a plane? a bird? I’m uncertain
the warm water was buoyant; I felt higher on the water
bubbles around my hands
a line of white buoys at hidden beach
a breaststroker, stroking with intensity — are they trying to race me?
Is that what bothers me about breaststrokers I encounter: that they always look so intense and like they are trying to race me or keep up with me? I think of breaststroke as a chill stroke, where you glide and kick as you travel on the surface of the water, able equally to see above and below. But, there’s nothing chill or relaxed about the breaststrokers i encounter!
Before swimming, I worked on memorizing some more lines from Alice Oswald, this time from Nobody, but I got stuck on the beginning and wasn’t able to recite them in my head as I swam:
There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye who speak Greek and these invisible ambassadors of vision never see themselves but fly at flat surfaces and back again with pigment caught in their shivering hair-like receptors and this is how the weather gets taken to and fro and the waves pass each other from one color to the next (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
The Tour de France starts today! Hooray! Scott and I are watching it live this year and enduring the terrible U.S. coverage. I miss Orla and Robbie and Adam and Rob and Ant and Nico. Oh well. At least we can watch it. Decided to do a quick run before the thunderstorms started up again. So hot and thick! But quiet, calm, almost empty.
10 Things
the leaning tree 2 doors down our block is marked orange — will they take it down this week?
the tree that fell over the winchell tree last week is still there, blocking the trail — today, no birds surrounding it
dark green trees
pale blue river
white-gray sky
a bullhorn beep then a coxswain’s voice — rowers!
dripping leaves
gushing ravine
thick air
the sound of rain in the trees but not the feel of it on my skin
le tour, day one: some crashes, a few riders already abandoning including Ganna, crosswinds, tight corners, Remco and Roglich already losing time. Bob Roll’s phrase du jour: put the hammer down. A sprint finish: Jasper wins (boo), Girmay gets second
Yesterday, in a ramble about rumors and whispers, I stumbled upon a tentative theme for the month: the language of water. First step: read/skim How to Read Water.
Here’s an interesting bit I’d like to remember:
. . . ponds and lakes are far from permanent; rivers will tend to grow naturally with time as they do their own excavating, but the opposite is true for still water. Unless ponds and lakes are given some help, they will all eventually return to land, It starts with algae, then the rushes and other shallow water plants getting a foothold, and this allows sediments to gather, water turns to wet mud, and a reinforcing cycle begins that culminates in the water losing the battle against the encroaching land.
How to Read Water/ Tristan Gooley
Reading through this chapter on lakes, I’m realizing that you can determine the depth of a lake by surface-level clues — ducks and swans = shallower water / cormorants (have I ever seen a cormorant?) = deeper. Clouds over land are different than clouds over water, so in bigger lakes you can tell if there are islands by looking at the clouds.
random: Watching a commercial during le tour, I heard the pairing of grit and determination in describing a brand. I said to Scott that I should write a poem with pairs of words like Grit & Determination, that are frequently together, in which they break up and then look for new partners. What are some common pairings/partners: Salt & Pepper, Shiny & New, New & Improved, Footloose & Fancyfree, In & Out?
note from 24 june 2026: Reading this last bit, I’m reminded of a bit Scott and I watched on Parks & Rec last week. While talking about the beauty pageant she and Tom were judging Leslie mentioned the talent and poise portions. Tom said something like, oh, are the dancers from Talent & Poise going to be there?
8 a.m. and already 72. It’s going to be hot today. Heard some birds and the coxswain and water trickling, then dropping steadily. The river was pale blue through the trees. When I heard the rowers I wondered how hot they were on the water without any shade.
overheard: an adult runner to a kid biking behind them — you’re doing such a good job!
Wore my bright yellow shoes — the ones I bought over a year ago and have tried to wear several times but always give up because they hurt my feet and my calves. They seem to be working now.
10 Things
purple flowers just beyond the fence
blue sky
empty bench
a roller skier holding their poles up instead of using them
noisy birds near the tree that fell a few days ago onto the winchell trail
a small circle of shimmer: sparkling water seen through a gap in the trees
several stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a small group of bikers — 4, I think — speeding past, one of them wearing a bright pink shirt
a women with a dog stepping off the path near the bench above “the edge of the world”
faint lines of yellow and orange and pink and purple chalk on the 38th street steps
orbit
This morning, another orbit around an idea that I’ve been orbiting for a few years now:
1
He aligns himself and moves forward with his face in the water staring down at the bottom of the lake. Old, beautiful shadows are wavering steadily across it. He angles his body and looks up at the sky. Old, beautiful clouds are wavering steadily across it. The swimmer thinks about symmetries, then rotates himself to swim on his back staring at the sky. Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them.
The Anthropology of Water/ Anne Carson
Which way is up? Which way down? Which real? Imagined? Symmetries or similarities?
2
I began more seriously than ever to learn the names of things—the wild plants and animals, natural processes, local places—and to articulate my observations and memories. My language increased and strengthened, and sent my mind into the place like a live root-system. And so what has become the usual order of things reversed itself with me: my mind became the root of my life rather than its sublimation. I came to see myself as growing out of the earth like the other native animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place, which would fall back into the earth like leaves in the autumn.
Native Hill/ Wendell Berry
Brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place.
3
Reading Berry, I’m reminded of Arthur Sze’s discussion of mushrooms as poems:
I began to think I love this idea that the mycelium is below the surface. It’s like the subconscious, then when the mushroom fruits pops up above ground, maybe that’s like this spontaneous outpouring of a poem or whatever.
4
Then, I returned, as I often do, to the beginnings of a poem:
Maybe like mushrooms, we rise or not rise, flare — brief bursts from below then returns to swim in the dirt…
our word “domestic” comes from the Latin domus, meaning “house” or “home.” To domesticate a place is to make a home of it. To be domesticated is to be at home.
X.
But if we were really to pay attention to what we’ve been calling “wilderness” or “the wild,” whether in a national park or on a rewooded Kentucky hillside, we would learn something of the most vital and urgent importance: they are not, properly speaking, wild.
XI.
Our overdone appreciation of wildness and wilderness has involved a little-noticed depreciation of true domesticity, which is to say homemaking, homelife, and home economy.
XII.
With only a little self-knowledge and a little sitting still and looking, the conventional perspective of wild and domestic will be reversed: we, the industrial consumers of the world, are the wild ones, unrestrained and out of control, self-excluded from the world’s natural homemaking and living at home.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 90 degrees
Another great swim! Felt strong — no strange calf pain, or feet that feel like they might start cramping, or fear over not seeing buoys. The water was warm and green. The sky was blue with a few clouds. No dragonflies or planes or menacing swans, although there was a lurking sailboat. The far green buoy still looked blue to me, when I could see it as having color. Often it looks like a white dot, or just a colorless dot that I understand as buoy.
I saw pale legs and green globs and a vague orangish red light and sparkle friends and bubbles and ghostly milfoil underwater. No ducks or fish or seagulls. For the last stretch of each loop, I recited the lines from Alice Oswald’s Dart that I just memorized:
1
Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head, through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm, giving the water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it, water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding
2
He dives, he shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts
Such great lines that feel familiar when I’m swimming in the middle of the lake.
Started at 7:30 a.m. and it was already hot and humid. That sun! Ran with Scott. We talked about AI and whether or not art was a purely human expression and how, within running circles, humidity is considered a “poor man’s altitude training.” We ran over the lake street bridge and the franklin bridge and above the mississippi rowing club and wondered what the loud buzzing noise below was. Trucks. My guess: doing something with the sewer vents by the rowing club. Scott’s guess: pulling a car out of the river.
10 Things
a single rower on the river
graffiti under the lake street bridge: Stop Hate
cloudless blue sky
everywhere, a thick green veil
all the benches we ran by were facing a wall of green — on the other side of that: an unseen river
2 runners ahead of us disappearing into the trees — passing the spot a minute later, we noticed a steep dirt trail
the cracked pavement that I’ve been monitoring for years has grown into a sinkhole
the color of the river: brown in the foreground, blue in the background
I don’t remember seeing shadows, just experiencing the cooling effects of shade
beep beep beep — a truck backing up somewhere nearby
We started out doing 9/1, but had to take an extra minute of walking after the second interval. Still, we got outside and moved over 4 miles in the heat. Small victories: we ran more again in the last 2 miles and we ran up the entire section of the franklin hill even though I had initially wanted to walk it.
Found this definition of poetry by Wang Ping. Several years ago, she wrote a wonderful poem about the Mississippi River Gorge.
That’s what poetry is: a wind, a leaf of grass that ties time and space together (Wang Ping).
field
Continuing to think about the visual field test and the idea of my visual field. Today: what is a field? and can I play around with the idea of a field?
The visual field is “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction”; in ophthalmology and neurology the emphasis is mostly on the structure inside the visual field and it is then considered “the field of functional capacity obtained and recorded by means of perimetry”.
A single, fixed view from one direction — the space, and what’s contained within that space that can be seen.
I think I’ll leave thoughts about visual fields alone for now. Instead, I want to turn to a wonderful chapbook I just bought — as part of an entry fee for a chapbook contest — from Driftwood Press: Questions about Circulation
The kitchen ceiling falls to the floor— soaked plaster, moldy wood. Hundred-year-old floors warp something more sinister than time in the farmhouse. Plants grow to cover the windows, the smell chokes a massive colony of honeybees takes up in the siding, raccoons come and go from the basement window.
This is the process by which a home becomes not, a process other than a real estate transaction— spills, arguments, accidents, cruelties. You see other farmhouses stripped of paint ducking behind wilding shrubs and flowering weeds. The boundary between in and out blurs, a sign with shameful orange letters on the door. What action and inaction, what ruins a house for the body and the lungs and recollection? Rain, the creep of ivy, the sedimentary accumulation of dirt this is the opposite of the joy of work.
1
Scott and I recently discovered more seasons of the Great House Revival where people take abandoned houses in Scotland Ireland (oops) and restore them. There are lots of discussions of water damage and rotten floorboards and overgrown yards and critters wandering in and out of basements and kitchens and first-floor (which is the second floor in a U.S. house) bedrooms.
2
Ever since I discovered the concept of re-wilding, I’ve been thinking about my eyes becoming wild again. At some point, my cone cells began scrambling then leaking then scarring then dying. Sometimes, I think of my central vision less like a wilderness, and more like a wasteland. But, there is something wild/feral about the refusal to fix/tame an image. Everything moves slightly — shakes, shimmers, fuzzes, fizzes. Nothing is still.
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 73 degrees humidity: 75%
I planned to get up early and go out sooner, when it was still in the 60s, but I decided I needed sleep more, so I didn’t go out for my run until 9. Hot! I managed to stick with my plan for longer than I thought I could, and also to know when I needed to walk a little more.
10 Things
a line of bikes — 20? — emerging from under the ford bridge to turn up the trail right in front of me — nobody called out, runner, to alert the others
a faint spray coming off of the falls
a group of workers — do they belong to the semis parked in front of the park building? — cooling off in the shade
a turkey on the hidden part of the trail that dips below the road — when they saw me, they turned and almost slithered into the vegetation
a sandbag near a drain in the grass, initially looking like a dead animal
a faint voice below — a coxswain, I think!
trickling water at the 44th street ravine
the water fountain on the edge of the park does not work yet — or ever this summer? I’ll have to check again
a tree down on the winchell trail, almost, but not quite, covering the entire trail
a biker’s headlights cutting through the trees where the road curves
As I ran and walked, I thought about my vision tests. First, the colorblind plates. The feeling when I took the test was relief and recognition — positive feelings. Later, more mixed feelings. The loss of a language is difficult. But, failing the test is an opportunity to form a new relationship with color. How to represent that? I’m still struggling.
Second, I thought about the visual field test. I have taken it 3 times, I think — once when I was first diagnosed, once 3 years later, and just last month. You put your chin on a chin rest, press your forehead up against a bar, and look through a visor. You’re supposed to stare directly at a center dot and click a button when you see flashes in other areas of the visual field. How could I represent that in a poem?
I’d like to ask the ophthalmologist who administered my test if I could get a copy of the scan, to see exactly what my field looks like. Then, I might try to map my field onto a poem somehow — or map a poem onto my field. It could be like an erasure poem — an erasure of my own writing? Another idea: instruct the reader to keep staring into the center at the dot and try to see the words in different parts of the visual field. This one could be a series of “images” of the field with words.
As I keep thinking about these tests, here’s some more information about the visual field test.
on this day inspiration
On 1 July 2020, I posted Aram Saroyan’s famous “electric” poem:
I’ve discovered that the best work I can do now is to collect single words that happen to strike me and to type each one out in the center of a page. The one word isn’t “mine” but the one word in the center of the page is. Electric poems I call them (in case anyone starts throwing Concrete at me)—meaning that isolated of the reading process—or that process rendered by the isolation instant—each single word is structure as “instant, simultaneous, and multiple” as electricity and/or the Present. In effect the single word is a new reading process; like electricity—instant and continuous.
And now I’m thinking about my visual field test poetry, wondering how I might find an “electric” word to put in the center. And, could I put some related words in other parts of the field? What about a phrase?
here
I need to think more about what word/s to use. I like here, but it also seems like a place-holder for a more dynamic word. Thought about “don’t look away” or “look here” or “stare” or no word, but a dot or an x or ?
Now I’m remembering Rob Macaisa Colgate’s Hardly Creatures and his series of 3 poems: the first, the original artwork, the second was a replica, the third a souvenir. I could write a “regular/intact” poem, then condense it to fit with my visual field.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 83 degrees
A great swim! One of the orange buoys was missing, but they replaced it with a green one. The buoys seemed to be farther out and it took 3 tries for me to finally swim straight to the final green one. But I did; I cracked the code.
10 Things
loose vines, wrapping themselves around me
menacing swans
military planes buzzing overhead — heard and seen
a nice chat with another regular — an older women I’ve seen for a couple of years. I asked her about the course; she asked me why the water was so cold
pale, marble legs underwater
frog legs almost kicking me
ghostly milfoil
the far green buoy, nearest the little beach, always looked pale blue to me
A late start, almost 10 am. Hot! A beautiful summer morning. Sun, soft shadows, sprinkling water, green, blue. I didn’t hear it, but it rained last night. Puddles and mud on the winchell trail. The river was brown and still.
overheard: a counselor to a group of camp kids taking a nature walk — be careful not to brush up and against anything! if you see poison ivy, don’t touch it!
Walkers, runners, bikers. No rowers or roller skiers. A strange sight near the crosswalk to the river trail: a stuck semi at a strange angle — the cab going one way, the trailer the other. What happened?
Above the trail was hot and dry, below slick, slippery, shaded. Voices drifting down. Shadows shifting. Dripping, rustling.
I chanted in triple berries, trying to keep my left and right foot strikes even. Soon, I’d like to pull out my phone and record my running — is it steady, or could I have some strange hitch I’m not aware of?
Was thinking about my colorblind plates again and what feelings taking and failing that test evoked. The snellen chart feeling is anxiety, uncertainty. The amsler grid, more curiosity and wonder and validation/recognition. The Ishihara Colorblind plates? A door opening — not only sudden awareness but a shifting and passing through something that, before, had only lived inside my head. A new understanding.
I was thinking about the dots in the plate. Dots. Circles. Loops. Os.
opened occupy orbit organic outcast official obvious oracle occipital oak overt O! oof ointment oddity omen or outfield outrage/ous ostrich ossify outage outstanding
open online orifice onset organs outer limits ophthalmology olfactory organization orange orchard Oh! oaf ornamental odor obscure/d orphaned occult opt/ion octopus out of control outlet outdoors
For more O inspiration, I’m looking to O/ Claire Wahmanholm. I posted it on here back on 12 june 2020. Here are some of her Os:
once oil overgrown ore only oblivion outdated
operation opus olive obelisk origin overrun oxygen
Oh, obstreperous one. Ornery, outside of ordinary. . .
Does this help me to get any closer to figuring out what to do with my colorblind test? Maybe. Regardless, it was fun!
before the run
Today’s morning reading-while-drinking-coffee was wonderful. Here are some things I encountered:
one
hey, I get it. But look! how much pleasure is on the other side of that which only momentarily torments you! Think about the miracle of the other side, if you can get there, and you can! I get it! There is much we have to do to keep ourselves alive! Much of it mundane and some of it displeasing, but sunsets are cool and if you do enough of the mundane you get to see one of those from time to time! . . . Imagine the other side, the next moment, the thing that awaits beyond what exhausts you!
@nifmuhammad / Hanif Abduraqib
What luck to be alive at the same time as Hanif Abduraqib. So wise and loving. For years, I have been monitoring, imagining, writing about the other side in this log. It’s a real place: the opposite side of the gorge, usually the east side because I run on the west side more. My mother was born and raised on that other side. And, it’s an imagined place — a view, a vista, open space for breathing and being otherwise; the moments when, I don’t want to stop running.
“In concussion recovery therapy, there is an exercise where you must go through the alphabet, and list words that correspond with the letters as you go. Each round, you are given a theme. These themes can include names of people, cities, countries, foods, colors, and more. Doing this week after week, as I rewired my brain, I couldn’t help but think of the learned alphabets unique to every individual—the ones we inherit, the ones we claim, [and] the ones we try and run away from. From there, I wrote into one of my loudest alphabets: manic depression.”
The alphabets we inherit, we claim, we try and run away from. Wow!
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar lake loops) cedar lake open swim 74 degrees
A little windier and choppier today. A current in the lake was pushing everyone swimming west to the wrong side of the buoy. By the fourth and fifth laps, I had finally figured out how to stay on course. I kept noticing the sky. First it was blue with only a few clouds. Then half of it was blue, the other half darker. By the last lap: gray. When I reached the shore I realized that it was raining. I had no idea!
No scratchy vines or clear bubbles. No flashes of fish or crazy kayaks. No planes or birds or dragonflies. All I remember is opaque water and occasionally sighting the orange dots and yellow and pink safety buoys tethered to torsos. Oh — and someone/something touching my calf. Most likely another swimmer.
I didn’t think about much as I swam except 1 2 3 4 5 breathe 1 2 3 4 5 breathe. I felt how my right arm has been getting stronger as I swim more and that I could use my tricep to move higher and faster through the water. I was irritated by some swimmers. Raced a few others, most likely without them knowing I was.
I would have liked to do open swim today, but FWA and I heading to Austin, MN to see the musical, Hairspray, so I didn’t have time. Oh well, a run instead. I walked some, and flew a lot. Feeling fast and full of energy on the path. I hoped I would see Dave, the Daily Walker so that we could greet and when he asked me how I was doing I’d say, It’s my birthday. And it happened, and he did wish me a happy birthday!
As I ran, I listened to my bday 2018 (2018?!) playlist — a lot of Lizzo and Justin Bieber. Wow.
5 miles bottom franklin hill and back 68 degrees humidity: 87%
It felt warm and humid today. Difficult. I managed to stick to 9/1 for the first 30 minutes, then I was less consistent as my heart rate stayed elevated. Still, I had some small victories: 1. I ran up most of the franklin hill — more than I thought I would/could; 2. I made it through 3 9/1 circuits when I thought I could only do 2; 3. I ran up a hill and kept running until the end of edmund instead of giving up early.
10 Things
a runner’s bright orange shorts
another runner’s sturdy and strong form running up the hill
the water in the flats: rough, textured, corrugated
3 roller skiers climbing a hill — the first faster, ahead of the 2 others who were good-naturedly complaining about how fast he was
5 or 6 runners — part of a team — shirtless and fast
strange construction noises coming from above me on the I-94 bridge
Mr. Morning!
no sign of the tree that fell in the tunnel of trees on Thursday evening
evidence of last night’s rain: a few puddles, wet branches
a very short stretch of deep, muddy tire tracks through the grass between the road and the path
5
humid today stick first heart small
would could until early ahead still
night muddy track grass above noise
Humid today; I was sticky. My heart at first felt small, tight. If I could, I would not have waited until it was light. I would have left when it was still early, ahead of the sun. Last night, rain. Now a track of muddy grass. Climbing up, above the gorge, my heart grows, opens, makes a joyful noise.
a thought: not sure how this 5 experiment is working so far. Not that inspiring yet. I’ll give it a few more days.
later, in the evening: I’ve been watching Western States 100 off and on all day. I wanted to make note of an expression they’ve been using. Referring to course records and past splits for runners, the commentators described current competitors as chasing the ghost of the record holder. The lead male runner is trying to beat Jim Walmsley’s course record from 2019, so they keep saying, he’s chasing Jim’s ghost. I find this fascinating.
2.5 miles neighborhood / lake street bridge / tunnel of trees 69 degrees on and off drizzle
It’s supposed to rain all day today but when I woke up it hadn’t started yet, so I went for a quick run. A drizzle was already happening when I left the house, but I went anyway. I thought the rain might make it cooler. It did not. So hot! There was a lot of traffic on lake street and cars backed up on the bridge. The run was good: I felt strong and relaxed, then overheated and tired, then strong again. I stopped at the top of the hill that starts under the bridge to admire one of my favorite views of the river: always open and wide, even in the thick of summer — no leaves blocking; all the trees are below.
1
Admiring the view, a sudden sense of silver sparkling. A bird leaving a tree? I looked to the side and saw a dark wing out of the corner of my eye.
2
Running over the lake street bridge, I looked down at the water. A rower, and another rower, and another! All in single shells, parting the water and leaving lines on the surface. I had to stop and admire them for a few seconds.
3
Near the end, I descended to the tunnel of trees. Suddenly enveloped in a pleasing dark green.
Other things: a biker’s bright yellow jacket;the buzz of kids arriving at a daycare; the faint clicking of ski poles; greeting Mr. Holiday (I think); a walker’s peachy-orange shirt; the honk from a impatient car; a speck of something in the water far below — a stone?; a mixture of moistures — sweat and rain; making note of the tree cover by which parts of the path were getting wet and which were not
5
today quick house might there again under river thick sense water sweat which
rower shell green other biker faint think peach shirt speck below cover stone
under peach cover OR under cover peach quick! under there below: water, stone, a river thickwith think today, a shell sense: under cover might there be an other sense, below stone, under water? today I sweat in thick green under green, a faint sense of a stone house that holds water under think, below sense: river which biker might sweat water? which, peach stone?
What other fruit might want to go under cover as a peach?* An apple? a plum? My favorite today: a river thick with think
*I mentioned the under cover peach to Scott and he said, like a private investigator, which got me going: Peach is a PI. Because she lived in Georgia for a spell, her former partner when she was a cop affectionately named her Peach. This partner died on duty and under suspicious circumstances (was it another cop? the chief of police? the mayor?). Devastated, Peach quit the force and opened up shop as a private investigator. Each week, she goes under cover to solve a new case. Somehow these cases keep revealing more clues — they thicken the plot — about what happened to her beloved partner, which puts Peach in danger. Someone doesn’t want her to find out what happened. Will Peach figure it out in time, or will she be silenced like her old partner? This hour long drama would be part of our imaginary Saturday night line-up, along with Cruise Ship Detective (you can never have too many detective shows, right?) and Stunt Bus. Read this to Scott and he suggested that Under Cover Peach be on Sunday nights. He also read me the list we created of other shows:
Hollywood Knights (like Hollywood Squares, but chess) Doggy Hauser, DVM Sing or Swim (a singing competition with a dunk tank) Phantasm Island Breakfast Club (a new detention crew with Bender each week)
ice dippers
Last night after open swim, Scott and I went over to Painted Turtle for a beer and state-fair quality cheese curds (yum!). Another couple invited us to share a table since it was so crowded. They lived by lake harriet and after learning that I was a swimmer, asked if I’ve ever swum in the winter in one of the ice holes at lake harriet? What? I was not aware that such things existed! I looked it up, and I might have to try it this year! Minneapolis Ice Holes: New Dippers
Did some more sleuthing and found out that there’s a club at lake nokomis too: Nokomis Bifrost. The hole is located north of the little beach. This upcoming winter, I’m doing it! I’m hoping FWA will try it with me — he loves the cold.
update: I asked FWA and he wasn’t too enthusiastic — I like the cold, but not cold water, he said. When I mentioned it to RJP, she was intrigued. I think she might try it with me!
