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?
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!
The heat broke. Yes! Still overheated by the end, but much easier to run in the 60s than the 80s. Did my 9/1 again. About 2 minutes into the third segment of running, nearing a steep hill, I briefly contemplated taking another walk break. Then I remembered that I took an extra walk break around the same time yesterday. This might become a habit, I thought, so I decided to keep going. Make it to the top of the hill. Make it to the parking lot. Make it to the bench above the edge of the world. Then I was at 9 minutes. Victory!
Before I went out for my run, I revisited CAConrad’s TL;DR and their advice for listening:
listen to the most immediate sounds in the building. Let the layers reveal themselves, shifting to what you hear further away, then further.
When you feel you have heard everything, wait. Sit there a little longer, listening for the faintest of traffic in the sky or a faraway rumble.
As I ran, I listened for the the layers. Running above the falls, on the other side of the creek, I tried to listen to what was beyond the soft rushing of the water over limestone. Cars, a train horn, birds, my foot steps. I tried to listen for voices at the overlook. Did I hear any? I don’t think so.
10 Sounds
a car, whooshing by me on the street
a few pebbles crunching under the wheel
the soft knocking of a woodpecker
kids laughing on the playground
the creek, tumbling over rocks
the soft rush of the falls
scraping — someone working on the new trail below me
the clicking of a roller skier’s poles across the road
the sharp clanging of a dog collar
the shifting of a bike gear
what is a tree?
Yesterday, walking on the gravel road that leads to the cedar lake beach, I noticed the husk of a tree — a sad-looking trunk with no top and no branches. When I pointed it out to Scott he said, that’s not a tree. Trees have branches. Even little trees have branches. Running today, I suddenly wondered about a tree’s root system and what was underground. Can that define a tree? Looked it up, and according to several sources, there is no universal or official scientific definition of a tree. The generally accepted idea is that it has a single, thick trunk, branches, a root system.
run 5
broke still again about third steep world cedar
below heard water think wheel creek trail beach
skier break might extra habit bench sharp thick
I have a third wheel habit. again, water, my break below. a beach bench thick with habit trail-think, creek-think, beach-think: one is still, one sharp, one thick world —break what brokeagain steep bench habit beyond the linear layer, a wheel world could be heard
floating again
I returned to Anne Carson’s Float today and found many delightful things in her pair of lectures, “Uncle Falling,” including this:
Uncle Falling / Anne Carson
I like to write lectures. My favorite part is connect- ing the ideas. The best connections are the ones that draw attention to their own frailty so that at first you think: what a poor lecture this is–the ideas go all over the place and then later you think but still, what a terrifically perilous activity it is, this activity of linking together all the threads of human sin that go into making what we call sense, what we call reasoning, an argument, a conversa- tion. how light, how loose, how unprepared and unpreparable is the web of connections between any thought and any thought.
CHORUS 1: Here’s a thought
CHORUS 2, 3: Here’s another
CHORUS 1, 2, 3, 4: How about getting from here to there
CHORUS 4:How about spending some time in mid-air
CHORUS 3: Much depends upon the fact
CHORUS 2: that one falls
CHORUS 1: or one does not fall
swim: 3 loops open swim lake nokomis 80 degrees
A wonderful night for a swim! Warm water, hardly any chop, no glaring sun. So many sparkle friends and bubbles and muscles being worked. And, a ferret on the loose? The lifeguards caught a ferret and kept asking if anyone was missing a ferret. I felt strong and fast and free — no worries about getting off course. Who cares? A great swim.
run: 4.05 miles minnehaha falls and back 71 degrees dew point: 66
It felt warmer than 71, the air thicker than a 66 dew point. Had to remind myself a few times that I could stick to my 9/1 plan. And I did — at least through the first 3 cycles. Had to do an extra minute of walking at 32 or 33 minutes in, but then I got right back on track. A victory!
overheard: Just starting my run, I overheard one woman say to the other: that was the first time I ever saw a spider biting me! As opposed to waking up with spider bites, not knowing when you got them, I suppose.
10 Things
one of the recently re-mulched trails that leads down into the oak savanna looked dark and deep and mysterious — partly due to a late June abundance of green leaves blocking out the light, partly the sun behind the clouds
a smattering of young runners in small groups — a high school cross-country team already in training?
empty benches
the steady hum of some construction equipment
a sour smell coming from a trash can
a packed shopping cart parked on the lowest part of the trail that dips below the road
the flash of a very small bird — a hummingbird? — flying past me
an over-the-shoulder sideways glance at the falls: all white foam
2 people waiting to pay for parking at the falls
mostly overcast with a few stretches of pale sun
A good run. A low average heart rate. A steady pace. A chance to be above the gorge and the river. And, interesting thoughts. Earlier this morning, I was reminded of some ideas about movement and death and the Homeric mind, and they fluttered like loose threads behind and beside me as I ran.
thread 1: entangled, murky, thick-layered
As I ran on the Winchell Trail through the thick green, I thought that when I’m running by the gorge, I think of it in broad, basic ways: tree, rock, bluff, bird, water. Then my mind wandered, and I wondered: (Why) do we need more specific, “technical” names in order to connect with the land? I thought about the importance of names and the violence of occupying and renaming, the value of knowing the history of a place, understanding how it works scientifically, and placing it in a larger context (space, time). Then, as I ran up the short, steep hill by Folwell, I thought about how important it is to learn to think on all of these levels at once, or at least be able to switch back and forth between them. I can experience the gorge as water, rock, tree, bird, wind, or as stolen land occupied and used, abused, restored, protected, ignored, exploited. As a geological wonder, slowly–but not really slowly in geological time, 4 feet per year–carved out by the river eroding the soft St. Peter sandstone. As both wild/natural and cultivated/managed–the site of erosion due to water, and erosion due to the introduction of invasive species, industry, too many hikers, bikers, houses nearby. There isn’t an easy way to reconcile these different understandings and their impacts.
from To chlorophyll, refineries, coal, furnaces beneath early skyscrapers, fossils/ Caroline Kenworthy
Life’s long inhale of nutrients, and longer, hotter exhalation in decay. Packed, still, silent.
Hard to remember that matter hums constantly. These cars and highways— how much of moving is death rearranged.
I kept thinking about this idea of death rearranged. At point, I thought, of course — recycling, decomposing, rebirth = rearranging. I like this word choice — rearranging.
thread 3: Homeric mind
this physical thing that moves. So, if you imagine a place over the sea, your mind actually has to get there. So, even though it may be as fast as the light, it is physical movement.
The mind as moving — not just through associations, but literally moving, traveling.
As I thought about movement and connection, and death rearranged on my walk back after the run, I passed by a painted rock at the edge of neighbor’s side garden that read, We are our ancestors with an arrow pointing to plants. Yes. No one is gone, just rearranged, reconfigured. And, we are connected deeply to the green.
walk: 3 miles east lake library and back 78 degrees
Walked to the library to pick up Anne Carson’s Float. I’ve checked it out once or twice before but I’m thinking this time I might be more interested in it. (2 hours and several naps later: nope. Still don’t understand it or why it’s called float, but I found a review of it and Mary Ruefle’s My Private Property that might help.) It was fun walking through the neighborhood, looking at how different neighbors deal with their slanting lawn. FWA is interested in re-doing ours for us. Wood, rock, stone, mulch, hostas, ornamental grass. My favorite flowers: the vines with the bright purple flowers — clematis, I think, and the dozens of cacti with beautiful yellow blooms. Saw a lime green door, like mine, on a bright blue garage. A perfect blue for the green, but maybe too much for a whole house. And, it clashed with the purple fence. Heard some loud christian rock blasting from a backyard and a 2 story tall skeleton wearing a green t-shirt in a front yard. Kids on scooters, yelling from inside houses, lounging by the pool at longfellow park.
Speaking of kids, we live next to a daycare. It’s never been a problem because the kids usually stay inside so I never hear them. A few months ago, Sheila (our neighbor and owner of the daycare) began letting 2 little girls play outside in their front yard and our side yard. They are very loud and like to scream a lot. And they are right outside of my windows so I hear them and see them flitting and darting out of the corner of my eye. Thankfully they haven’t opened our gate . . . yet. It doesn’t seem like they are being supervised. Today Scott noticed that one of them had picked up a giant branch — taller than them — and was waving it around — through the air, at the other little girl. No adults stopped them until about 15 minutes later when they were scolded. Yikes.
5
point could stick least first extra right track other green light cloud empty group cross smell front never being story
trash trail below heart above loose thick gorge think basic bluff water order value place short steep giant adult until
forth abuse carve house death early decay still there about after arrow plant check twice might later stone mulch hosta
empty group smell basic bluff order thick heart track cloud water light green house plant extra loose trash never think twice
swim: 5 cedar loops (2.5 lake nokomis) cedar lake open swim 80 degrees
First open swim of the season at Cedar Lake. Wonderful conditions. Warm-enough water and no chop. I felt strong and fast and smooth. I didn’t stray too far to the center. They have a new lifeguard who was actually telling people dogs weren’t allowed in the water and requiring people to have swim caps. Is Cedar Lake going to lose some of its chill vibes?
The water was olive green, but more yellow than the blue of lake nokomis. I didn’t see any fish or get wrapped in vines. No canoes crossed my path, either. Not too many clouds in the sky. No planes or birds.
