So hot and humid this morning! Decided to go for a run before the storm arrived. Ran around the neighborhood just in case it started pouring or thundering. It didn’t and still hasn’t even though the forecast said there was 100% chance. Strange weather this summer. So many expected storms not happening, so many unexpected storms happening.
Greeted Mr. Holiday, a regular — good morning! He replied, Morning! It’s so humid out here! I agreed. Noticed the street one block over closed for tree work then saw a very tall crane halfway down the street. No tree dangling from its claw yet. Heard water gushing at the ravine. Did it rain overnight? Felt relaxed and strong and not too warm at first. A little overheated later.
Earlier this morning, watched Courtney Dauwalter win the ultramarathon, Hardrock 100. She’s amazing. Also saw one of my favorite cyclists, Lotte Kopecky gain 2 more seconds in the Giro D’Italia. She’s only 1 second behind Longo Bourghini heading into tomorrow’s final stage!
wildlifeupdate: It’s been a busy summer in our yard. Distraught sparrows, wild turkeys on the fence, dead bunnies, bats hiding in umbrellas, and now a big ass wasp nest perched on one of the highest branches of our crab apple tree. Yikes! RJP noticed it yesterday. Time to call in the experts!
I’m still reading Heidi Julavits, The Folded Clock. I love her sense of humor and enjoyed her thoughts on being afraid to swim alone because of sharks:
I am scared to swim alone not because I might drown but because I might be attacked by a shark. Mine is an unwarranted phobia (shared by basically every person in my generation, i.e., those of us who grew up with Jaws); companionship is an illogical cure. To date, there have been no shark attacks in our harbor. Should a shark, against all statistics, appear, a friend (unless he or she is swimming with a machine gun) will be unable to save me from it. But I feel safe in knowing—before I am pulled underwater to my death by an animal, I can share a final what the fuck? moment with a sympathetic human.
Ran with Scott around the lake before open swim. Hot! For most of it, I felt fine, but the last few minutes were hard. I can’t remember what we talked about — Scott mentioned something about selling a few subscriptions to his plugin during his band rehearsal last night — nice. I remember admiring the sparkling water and noticing some small waves, hearing many different birds singing, feeling the lack of shade in the stretch between the bridge and the little beach. Saw some geese and ducks — oh, here’s something I talked about: I mentioned to Scott how I wasn’t seeing many birds while I swam — no ducks crossing my path and no seagulls perched on the white buoys. I wonder why I’m not — are they not there, or am I just not noticing them?
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees
Warm, both the air and the water. Even so, it was refreshing after the run. The green slimy stuff was everywhere. Most of the swimming area at the big beach had globs of it on the surface. I told Scott it made me think of ectoplasm from Ghostbusters. Still gross, but I’m getting used to it, and now that I know it won’t get me sick, I don’t care that much. Some of it was dried out, a little more brittle, less slimy.
The water was rougher than I expected. No big waves, but enough chop that I had to breathe mostly on my right side and felt more tired at the end of each loop. Also, it was difficult to see much because of the swells.
My favorite part of the swim was the reflections on top of and below the surface. Above, the bright buoys made the water glow orange and green as I rounded them. Noticing this I wondered what reflections I might see on the underside of the surface. I swam a little deeper and looked up at the surface of the water from below: a reflection of my hands! Very cool looking.
My least favorite part of the swim was the algae and the thick branch that I swam into in the middle of the lake. First I was startled, then I had a flash of memory: Chief Brodie sees something in the surf and wades out; a charred dead body falls on him (from Jaws). Watching that movie when I was a kid still haunts me.
The color of the water was delightful. Mostly, I looked at it and thought green. Sometimes the green had hints of blue. Sometimes, when I was swimming near the ectoplasm-algae, it was bright green. And sometimes, when I noticed light streaming down from above, it had flecks of gold. Writing this last bit I realized that I haven’t seem much of the sediment this week — all the vibrating flecks looking like sparkles. I hope they come back (and the algae leaves!).
added several hours later: A few things I forgot: man walking in the shallow water with a metal detector, two women expressing concern about the algae floating near the start of the swim, and two women celebrating after checking their watches and seeing how far they swam. Finally, the “official” name for the green slime in the water is algae scum, according to the lake quality site. For the water quality at Lake Nokomis main beach, there’s a note in the special consideration section: “Stay out of algae scum if blown into beach area.” Well, I tried! Algae scum seems a fitting name for this gross stuff.
Yesterday afternoon, torrential rain, thunder, wind, and hail whipped through our neighborhood. It lasted only 20 minutes, but it was intense. Not scary — except to Delia-the-dog — but wild. It looked like it was snowing: Christmas in July! And the hail was so loud on the roof and the skylight. Today as I ran, I surveyed the damage by the river. Big branches on the dirt path, leaves scattered, a whole tree at the end of edmund:
big tree, felled
Of course I only took one picture, so I had to use it. Not sure if it effectively conveys the size of the tree?
Decided to take the winchell trail to check out the damage below. Some branches down, but nothing blocking the path. Dirt and mud and muck everywhere. I started chanting in my head,
silt / loam / glacial till silt and / loam and / glacial till
Listened to water gushing out of the sewer pipe and down the slope at 42nd. Also listened to the birds — not one type in particular, but a chorus of BIRD. Noticed the shade on the path and the tiny spots of light. Looked at the river, a hazy heat hovering just above and thought, hot! No relief from that view.
Before I run, I read an excerpt from the novel Elixir. I wanted to think about this quote as I ran:
We were near water. There is a river. If you couldn’t hear it or see it, its ions vibrated in the air and you inhaled water, day and night.
In the summer when the leaves block my view and I can’t see the river, I still know it’s there and it is always part of my run in some way.
the Seine, open water swimming, and water quality
I’ve been seeing lots of headlines about the problems with water quality in the Seine for open water swimming events at the Olympics. I mentioned it to RJP and she said she’d heard (on TikTok, natch) that people were pooping in the Seine in protest. Is that true? While looking it up, I found this helpful video: Can Paris fix it’s poop problem?
Okay, read some more, and the “Paris Poop Protest” is a thing. People were encourage to do it on June 23rd, when the President of France and the mayor of Paris were planning to swim in the Seine to prove it was safe. When Macron and Hidalgo postponed their swim, the poop protest was postponed too. So many interesting things to think/write about with this in terms of city infrastructures, rivers, threats to cities’ waterways, the negative and positive impacts of hosting the Olympics, and more. Swimming in public water, feeling the effects of how it’s managed in my body, has given me a deeper perspective on this issue of water quality and water management. I’m so grateful to have access to safe water here in Minneapolis.Everyone should have access to safe water.
time and water
Reading more of The Folded Clock, I was inspired to think about the relationship between time and water. Here are a few thoughts:
1 — anne carson
. . . the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.
1 = 1 / Anne Carson
2 — heidi julavits
As we stroked past I thought I saw George growing older and older. His grandchildren beside him grew older, too, taking his place before being replaced themselves by their children. It was like a trick of stop-time photography, everyone shading into everyone else. . . . Time passed. I started to doze. The cold water had slowed our pulses but everything else spun at great speed. I worried I would awake to find myself an old woman, my husband dead, my daughter grown and turned into me. But life, when I woke up, was as I’d left it.
The Folded Clock / Heidi Julavits
3 — samantha sanders
[on swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter] The exhilaration is remarkable. I feel like we’ve discovered the fountain of youth.
Swimming Through / Samantha Sanders
4 — alice oswald
it is not me but close to me a kind of cloud or smoke-ring made of nothing and yet it will outlast everything because it is deep it i sa dead field fenceless a thickness with many folds in it promiscuous and mingling which in its patience always wears away the hard thing
or is it only the hours on their rounds thinking of the tides by turns twelve white-collar workers who manage the schedules of water
nobody / alice oswald
In their lunch hour I saw the shop-workers get into water They put their watches on the stones and slithered frightened Into the tight-fitting river And shook out cuffs of splash And swam wide strokes towards the trees And after a while swam back With rigid cormorant smiles Shocked I suppose from taking on Something impossible to think through Something old and obsessive like the centre of a rose And for that reason they quickly turned And struggled out again and retrieved their watches Stooped on the grass-line hurrying now They began to laugh and from their meaty backs A million crackling things Burst into flight which was either water Or the hour itself ascending.
from Evaporations/ Alice Oswald
5 — darby nelson
I posted this quote back on 16 august 2021, but I want to post it again here:
We talk of time as the river flowing. I never questioned the implications of that metaphor until I was struck by the words of Professor Dave Edmunds, Native American, on a display in the Indian-Western Art Museum in Indianapolis. Edmunds wrote, ‘Time as a river is a more Euro-American concept of time, with each event happening and passing on like a river flows downstream. Time as a pond is a more Native American concept of time, with everything happening on the same surface, in the same area—and each even is a ripple on the surface.’
If I think of time as a river, I predispose myself to think linearly, to see events as unconnected, where a tree branch falling into the river at noon is swept away by current to remain eternally separated in time and space from the butterfly that falls in an hour later and thrashes about seeking floating refuge.
But if I think of time as a lake, I see ripples set in motions by one even touching an entire shore and then, when reflected back toward the middle, meeting ripples from other events, each changing the other in their passing. I think of connectedness, or relationships, and interacting events that matter greatly to lakes.
For Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson
When I think of time and water, I think of erosion and geologic time, and the wearing down of things by the water over years, decades, centuries. I think of generational time, and the family members, the hearty Finns on my dad’s side, who loved and excelled at swimming. I think of Sara-time and one of the key constants in my life and many selves: I love water and swimming in it. I think of losing track of time while swimming, and tracking it on my watch to look at later. I think of time measured by strokes and loops instead of minutes, measured by open swims instead of days.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 84 degrees
I swam 4 loops but the buoys were set up in such a way that the distance of 4 loops today was almost the same as 3 loops on other days. Oh well, I’m still counting it as 4. The water was very warm, too warm. Lots of stuff in it, but not as much as on Tuesday. More green slimy stuff, but now that I recognize and know it’s not toxic, it didn’t bother me as much.
I decided I wanted to listen as I swam. I didn’t hear much, just water sloshing over my head. The water was still, flat, sometimes feeling fast, sometimes slow. There was a haze in the air that made it as difficult to see as if my googles were fogged up. I felt strong and smooth and fast and happy.
Before the swim, I asked a few women if they had swum on Tuesday and if they had seen the green goo. Neither of them had. I realized later, as I swam, that I wasn’t asking because I wanted reassurance that whatever it was was not harmful. I just wanted to find someone else to acknowledge that it was strange and gross and something worth reacting to. On Tuesday, no one else seemed to care or be talking about it.
10 Things
2 women laughing and talking as they tread water between the last orange buoy and the shore
impossible to see either of the green buoys with the sun and the haze
at least 2 menacing swans
the ghost vines are multiplying in numbers and size — creepy!
cloudy sky
a few pockets of cold water throughout the lake
crowded swimming area, beach and park — everyone here on a hot day
the surface of the water above was blue and calm and shiny and smooth
the surface of the water below was greenish-brownish-yellowish
I swam high on top of the surface, feeling extra buoyant
3.25 miles trestle turn around 78 degrees / dew point: 66
For the first mile, in the shade it felt almost cool or, at least not HOT! Hardly any bugs, but tons of chirping birds, one black-capped chickadee calling out for a response which never came. A few other runners, walkers, a group of bikers. After turning around at the trestle I passed by 3 women instructing a fourth on how to use an unfamiliar bike. Somewhere I smelled tobacco — from a car? below on the winchell trail? a walker’s clothes? Admired the glowing purple flowers on the edge of the trail and the stretch of the path that was all shade, except for a few splotches of light. One splotch was big enough to see my shadow in before we both disappeared into the shade. The river was calm and pale blue. The green was thick excess. The stretches of trail in the direct sun were warm. At least twice I pushed myself to keep running when I wanted to stop. At the trestle I put in my old “Winter” playlist
immersion
This summer I’m devoting a lot of attention to water and swimming and my experiences during open swim. After reading Lauren Groff’s essay, Swimming, Anne Carson’s story 1=1, and watching Samantha Sanders’ mini doc, Swimming Through, I’m thinking about why I love open water swimming and how to describe the experience of moving in/with/through water. Here are 3 descriptions from Groff, Carson, and Sanders.
1 – Groff
there is a moment in swimming when, after a while, the body’s rhythm grows so comfortable that the swimmer loses awareness of herself. There is a marrow-deep letting go. She isn’t thinking. Her brain is off, her body is on autopilot. She is elevated; happy is not the word for it. To be and not to be, simultaneously: some people call this state ecstasy, others call it zen. They are, perhaps, different names for the same phenomenon. It is difficult to attain, and there are a thousand ways to attain it. Some meditate, others do peyote, others focus so hard on their art that the world itself falls away and they look up, days or hours later, to be staggered by what they have created in the full flare of their own white heat.
Groff’s last bit, “in the full flare of their own white heat” reminds me of Mary Oliver and one of her poems that I posted on 10 july 2022: “The Ponds”:
from The Ponds/ Mary Oliver
Still, what I want in my life is to be willing to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even to float a little above this difficult world. I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
The white heat also makes me think of Emily Dickinson. But, the flare of white heat seems like the wrong sort of metaphor for what happens to you in the water. Also, even as we float in the water, we are still fully in it, not above it.
2 — Carson
. . . no interaction with another person ever brought her a bolt of pure aliveness like entering the water on a still morning with the world empty in every direction to the sky. That first entry. Crossing the border of consciousness into, into what?
And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.
To swim, especially freestyle, with your head mostly underwater, only surfacing to breathe (as opposed to breaststroke, where you always have a frog-eye view), is to be immersed in water, not floating above it. And not burning a white heat, but —? Something I can’t quite name yet. The it you are in, is not just water, but life.
3 — Sanders
There are many wonderful, beautiful moments in this doc about resilience and community and transformation, but I especially love this moment, starting 10 minutes in, in which they describe the shift from tracking the temperature to giving attention to — witnessing — the ice. To me, this might speak to Carson’s idea of crossing the border of consciousness into something/somewhere else.
We became very obsessive about how cold the water was getting. You know, it’s 50, then it’s 40, then it’s 40.2, then it’s 39. I had two thermometers that both busted this year in the cold water, I didn’t get another one. We just figure that it’s cold. So then it’s about I can’t wait to swim in the snow. Then it was like, I can’t wait to swim when there’s ice.
And then we had no idea what did ice mean? You know, this winter it meant so many different kinds of ice because you know, there’s the first ice that was like a very thin, thin layer of ice. Almost like snowflakes on the water. Break them as I stroked and then turn around and they would have reformed behind me. Ice that was so sharp that you actually were getting cut and you needed to be careful.
The feeling of swimming is the feeling of noticing the world, not existing above it, but fully in it, immersed, aware, witnessing the slight changes in temperature, or where waves usually start, or how the weather affects the opacity of the water.
A few minutes before this ice part, one of the women says this about the experience of swimming in very cold water: I feel metallic! I love that — maybe that should be the title of a poem, “To feel metallic”?!
added a few hours later: I almost forgot to include some sources that I’d like to gather then read then archive:
“The Anthropology of Water” / Anne Carson in Plainwater — go to the U library for this one
*several years ago — maybe 10? — I put The Folded Clock on my wishlist and got it for Christmas of that year. Apparently this was before I got into the habit of writing the date on the first page, so I can’t remember exactly what year that was. I also can’t specifically remember why — maybe because I was into memoirs? Anyway, I know I read some of it before but I didn’t realize that she wrote about swimming in lakes!
Julavits is swimming in a Berlin lake, filled with algae. This is the last paragraph:
The best thing about my first Berlin swim was this. When I took off my bathing suit, the crotch was bright green from the algae that had collected there. It was like getting my period for the first time and seeing the shock of color where normally there is only white.
The Folded Clock
When I took my suit off after my green algae filled swim, the muck that usually collects beneath my suit on my stomach and under my breasts included some bright green bits? chunks? traces? I’m glad that it collected there and not in my crotch!
3.35 miles ford bridge and back 68 degrees / dew point: 62
Ran an hour earlier today, but it was still hot and muggy. Quiet, calm, not too many walkers or bikers or runners on the trail. With the thick green, I don’t recall seeing the river once. Chanted triple berries. Heard the faint trickling down in the ravine, then from the sewer pipe. Some rustling in the brush. Construction sounds — big planks of wood being dropped? There were birds, I’m sure, but I don’t remember hearing them. No roller skiers or rowers or shadows. Lots of water in the form of humidity and sweat and post-rain run-off.
Repetition, Routine, and Quotes Taken Out of Context
After my run, scrolling around (reading old RUN! posts from today and poetry people tweets), I came across 2 ideas about repetition/routine. The first was a quote from Karlheinz Stockhausen about repetition and walking and breathing:
Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing.
I always want to find the context for these context-less quotes spread online, so I looked it up. Sometimes it can be tedious, finding the source, but today, quick satisfaction! I didn’t know who Karlheinz Stockhausen was, but now I (kind of) do: a big deal — an experimental composer, very influential in 20th century music, including hip-hop and techno (is that the right umbrella term?), according to this cool documentary, Modulations. I also found the unpublished interview from which this quote comes. Here’s some context for the quote:
Q: One of your comments is that a lot of times it’s too repetitive?
A. Yes. I think it’s more interesting to create music which transforms, shapes figures, so that one can follow a process. Repetition is based on body rhythms, so we identify with the heartbeat, or with walking, or with breathing. This has been the tradition for thousands of years of basic musical songs, tunes. But since the middle of the century in particular, the music has become very irregular in rhythm. And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition. I think it’s simply more interesting than repetitive technique.
When I read the out-of-context quote (which is shared a lot), I thought it was about the value of repetition and its connection to breathing, but in context, the quote is criticizing repetition as something to move beyond. Context matters (imho)!
This discussion of repetition and disruption of that repetition reminded me of a poem from Carl Phillips (posted on 8 july 2023), Western Edge, that I had just re-read
I need you the way astonishment, which is really just
the disruption of routine, requires routine.
I like need repetition and routine and establishing habits that my brain can visually interpret, but I also need love disruption, interruption, moments of astonishment. My ongoing question — how to balance the routine with the astonishing?
swim: 3 nokomis loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 78 degrees
A beautiful night for a swim! Calm water, warm air. Too many vines floating in the water. They kept passing over me, trailing, lingering. I said to Scott that it felt almost like a violation, the way they slowly moved from my shoulder, down my torso, then my leg. Yuck! He joked, it was a vine-olation. The vines were also a problem near shore, growing up from the bottom in a thick tangle. It’s not difficult to imagine someone getting stuck in them and drowning.
The buoy across the lake was fine for the first loop, then partly deflated for the second loop, then completely flat for the rest of the loops. Just an orange blob on the water. I’ve never seen that before! Of course it happened at Cedar lake.
Another Cedar lake moment: A woman to the lifeguard: Excuse me, my son doesn’t have a cap, and he’s not 18 (the minimum required age for open swim), but could he swim across? Lifeguard: As long as he’s a good swimmer, it should be okay.
Maybe I would have been critical of these things in the past, but I’m not now. Deflated buoys and underage swimmers are just part of the cedar lake vibe.
10 Things
blue sky with a few puffy white clouds
something flying through the air — a plane? a big bird? I turned on my back for a minute to check: plane — I could hear the roar of the engines
the orange blob from a distance, not whispering orange, more like a random very quick blip — orng
scratchy vines poking my arm
murky water, difficult to see my hand, yellowish brown
log rolling — a giant red fake log
before the swim, standing by the lifeguard stand — creeaakk — the lifeguard opened a big trunk, looking for something. I wonder how often they open it? Judging my how much it creaked, not too often!
the deflated buoy was far away from hidden beach — no chance to see or hear how many people were swimming there
the water was warm, but near the shore where it was still deep, there were pockets of very cold water
on the last loop, I could feel the muck under my suit, against my skin, scratching me. I almost stopped to pull it out, but when do I ever stop?
Finally, the water was warm! Warm enough that I wasn’t freezing on the drive home, wrapped in blankets. And I didn’t have to take a long, hot shower to thaw out. Another wonderful swim. Strong, confident strokes. Steady, barely a break in the rhythm — 1 2 sight 3 4 5 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right 1 2 sight 3 4 5 breathe left — once to adjust my nose plug, a few times to avoid drifting swimmers, and once to stand at the big beach between loops 3 and 4.
today, 4 loops = 3800 yards
10+ Lake Things
getting ready to start, overheard: a tiny, older woman in wetsuit to another women in a tri-suit — are you ready to swim? the tri-suit replies: no, I don’t want to do this wetsuit: you don’t want to swim? tri-suit: no, but I have a race on the 14th
a delightfully creaking swing, sounding almost like it was calling out or scolding me — creeaakkk creeaakk
glittering sediment in the water
pale, ghostly legs near the buoys
lifeguards for the win: the course set up and open 5 minutes early! and the buoys were fairly in line with each other!
no swans or geese or ducks or minnows (at least that I recall)
loop 1: sun, a few clouds
loop 2: less sun, more clouds, half the sky turning white
loop 3: more sun again
bubbles, bubbles everywhere from exhaling and piercing the water
I added to the collection of sad, scattered hairbands at the lake floor by accidentally dropping mine at the end of the swim
at the beginning: a metal detector dude, wading in the water!
A few random thoughts: I don’t miss the silver-boat bottom and even if it were still here, the course is set up in a way that would make it unhelpful for guiding me. I only breathe through my mouth when I swim because of my nose plug. Longterm, what kind of impact does that have on my swimming, breathing, fitness? It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me: breaststrokers always seem to be trying to race me. They irritate me. Not that I’m complaining, but how come I never see any snakes in this water (or eels)?
During loop two, I recited Anne Sexton’s “The Nude Swim” as I swam. All this in us had escaped for a minute is still my favorite line, although I also like, we entered in completely and let our bodies lose all their loneliness. I also recited a bit from MO: It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.
scott’s big band concert
Last night, FWA and I went to Scott’s big band concert. It was outside beside a beautiful lake in a small town northwest of Minneapolis. It lasted for 2 hours. Sitting there, I witnessed the changing light — from bright to shadows to sun descending, sky suggesting pink. At one point, I turned to FWA and mentioned the pink then asked, is it pink? And he said, no and looked at me a little strangely. I responded, I love how my vision makes everything magical. It didn’t look PINK! but more like a whisper, a trace, the slightest hint of pink, as if someone was whispering to me, pink. Was I anticipating the sunset I expected? Or maybe just more attuned than FWA to the changing light, having given so much attention in the past few years to subtle shifts in color?
10 Things During the Concert
at the end of a song, just as the singer was hitting a fabulous high note, a train passed nearby, its horn blaring, sounding like part of the music
someone was smoking a pipe nearby — later Scott complained that he could smell it on stage; I smelled it, but it didn’t bother me
a woman behind me cackling
another woman in a flowing turquoise skirt walking by then stopping to listen to the Stevie Wonder medley then swaying to — now I can’t remember which Wonder song it was, Sir Duke?
no bugs!
birds! — high in the sky, one bird awkardly flapping its wings, frantic with speed
birds! — shooting up in the sky like fireworks or static on a screen, one at a time
the lake behind me — I could feel it but couldn’t see it because to turn and look would seem as if I was staring at the people behind me — oh, why didn’t they position the band shell in front of the lake!
during the concert, people were playing basketball at the court next to the stage — I don’t remember hearing them, just seeing bodies moving back and forth
in the distance, to my right, carnival rides — a spinn-y ride lit up in red and green and blue lights — as dusk neared, I watched the lights glow
It was a long night — we left the house at 3:45 pm, got to the concert venue at 5, waited around until the concert started at 6, then listened for 2 hours, and finally got home at almost 10. But I’m glad I went, and grateful that FWA came too. So many cool images to witness and remember.
The struggle continues. Another difficult run, another beautiful morning. Birds! Flowers! Blue sky! Sweat. Sore legs. Weak will. Chanted triple berries for a few minutes, which helped me keep going longer than I thought I could. Had fun running to “Virtual Insanity” — it helped me pick up my cadence for a few minutes
10 Things
running on the dirt path between edmund and the river road, a sharp pain on the shin — not a muscle but a bug stinging me
flowers: purple orange red yellow pink
walking past the house with a dog named Merry, 2 cars with canoes on top, excited voices — returning from a trip or leaving for one?
one of the people: Shit! I’m already sweating
the meadow just beyond the ford bridge was silent — no buzzing cicadas or croaking frogs today
above on the ford bridge, voices somewhere — no intelligible words just 2 women making noise
traces of mud on the trail — not gloppy, just wet
the trail, busy with zooming bikes
thud thud thud a power walker approaching from behind during my cool-down walk
a big boulder on the side of the trail, a small, hollowed out part of top, filled with water — water and stone
Seeing this stone, I was reminded of Octavio Paz’s poem “Water, Wind, Stone”:
Water hollows stone, wind scatters water, stone stops the wind. Water, wind, stone.
Wind carves stone, stone’s a cup of water, water escapes and is wind. Stone, wind, water.
Before the run, I gave myself the task of trying to think about water and stone as I ran. The only thing I remember is this rock with the small pool of water in it.
3.2 miles trestle turn around 71 degrees / humidity: 78% light rain
Raining all day today. After talking to FWA about how he likes to walk in the rain, I decided to run before the rain got heavy — thunderstorms are predicted in the late afternoon. I never mind running in the rain, but I’m usually reluctant to start in it. I’m glad I went for it today. What a beautiful green: deep, rich, fresh (but not refreshing!), comforting. The rain was light enough that I barely felt it — no soaked, clinging shirt of shorts (that happened a few weeks ago).
I’m not sure if it was raining all the time or it stopped sometimes or it was a combination of light rain with dripping trees. It was fun to run under and beside the trees when the rain-soaked leaves rustled. One time I misjudged how low a branch was and ran through it instead of under it — the cool water on my face was a surprise then a relief.
Under the lake street bridge somebody had parked a lime scooter in the middle of the walking path, forcing walkers/runners to veer out into the bike path. Dangerous — bikes bomb down the hill and cut close to the edge of the path without warning. Also, I can’t always see these scooters, or I can sort of see that they’re there, but can’t properly judge my distance from them. Hard to believe I haven’t already been impaled by the handlebars of one of these scooters (or bikes)!
I was not alone on the trail. Mostly walkers, many with umbrellas — no menacing blue umbrella guy who takes over the entire path and won’t budge an inch. Some runners, one talking on a bluetooth headset. No roller skiers. Any bikers? I can’t remember.
Bright car headlights. The whooshing of wheels through the puddles on the road.
In honor of a run in the rain (more fun to say than a rain-run, or is it?), I decided to look to my friend, Emily Dickinson, for a poem. She did not disappoint!
The Skies can’t keep their secret! They tell it to the Hills – The Hills just tell the Orchards – And they—the Daffodils!
A Bird – by chance – that goes that way – Soft overhears the whole – If I should bribe the little Bird – Who knows but she would tell?
I think I won’t – however – It’s finer – not to know – If Summer were an Axiom – What sorcery had snow?
So keep your secret – Father! I would not – if I could – Know what the Sapphire Fellows, do, In your new-fashioned world!
I found this poem on a favorite site, The Prowling Bee. I love how the blog author, Susan Kornfield, describes ED’s role as a poet:
Dickinson again chooses the naturalist’s approach to the world rather than the academic’s or theologian’s. She observes in rich detail but is quite reluctant to draw conclusions. Better, to her, the wonder than to have the Latin names and dry scientific knowledge. I suppose this is a poet’s eye, looking at each event, each bit of the world that catches the eye, afresh. Those of us who name, categorize, and systemetize, inject at least one layer between us and the actual world. This preference for questions over answers is one reason why we love our poets!
This poem reminds me of Tony Hogland poem that I memorized as part of my 50 for 50: The Social Life of Water
All water is a part of other water. Cloud talks to lake; mist speaks quietly to creek.
Lake says something back to cloud, and cloud listens. No water is lonely water.
a few hours later: No thunder storms yet (at 2:40 pm), just a steady rain, a dark sky. I’m writing in this already finished post to add an article that I read on MPR News about Minneapolis Park Workers going on strike. The article offers some powerful descriptions of the difficult labor — physically, emotionally — that many park workers do.
Lane [a park worker] says he’s been with Minneapolis parks for more than a decade, arriving at 5 a.m. daily in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, during 2020 riots that followed the murder of George Floyd and regularly, when tasked to clean up homeless encampments.
It can be a grueling job, he said. He’s frequently cleaning up broken glass, needles and feces, ensuring the public spaces are safe to enjoy. On one of his most difficult days, Lane said he watched a woman die from an overdose. But like any other day on the job, he pushed on.
“Just to see the poverty was disheartening,” he said. “It touched me, man. I cried a few times just thinking about how people are living out here.
Wow. I often notice and appreciate the park workers, but it’s usually related to tree-trimming or road patching. I don’t think enough about this other, less visible, labor. What a difficult task to clear out encampments, especially if you disagree with the decision that they need to be cleared out. Last month, while running with Scott, I recall pointing out all of the tents and tarps and stuff propped up near a trash can on the trail just above the gorge. I wasn’t sure why it was there, but now I imagine it was the aftermath from an encampment clear out by park workers.
4 miles monument and back* 65 degrees / dew point: 62 drizzle**
*a new route? Through the neighborhood, over the lake street bridge, up the summit hill, over to the Civil War Monument and back **or as I’ve been known to say, spittin’ (does that come from the UP? the south? the midwest?)
Even though the dew point was high, the drizzle helped it feel cooler. Everything dark and quiet, calm, green. Passed the guy who is always sitting on his front stoop smoking. Also passed kids arriving at the church daycare. Pushed myself to keep running up the summit hill even though I wanted to stop. Made it!
Chanted triple berries for a mile or two. It helped distract me. raspberry / blueberry / strawberry
10 Things
shadow falls was gushing through the trees
the street lamps were glowing on the st. paul side
rowers on the river! an 8-person shell. The coxswain was advising them on where to place the paddles in the high water (we have a river flood warning)
morning! from a passing runner — good morning!
the river was a beautiful gray blue, the trees a rich green
so windy on the bridge heading east that I had to take my cap off and hold it
the whining of a power saw in the distance
alone at the monument overlook
sometimes it was a drizzle, sometimes just a mist — difficult to tell which while running and sweating
enveloped in dark green in the tunnel of trees — the only light was green light and a small circle of white at the top of the hill
As I looked down at the river from high above on the gorge, I thought about the rowers and their paddles and how different their experience of the water was to mine. Down there in the water, I bet it’s choppy and bumpy, with wind and spray. Up here, it’s almost flat and gray blue. No feeling of motion — no waves or the unsettling sense of being higher on water that’s on the edge of spilling over somewhere.
Yesterday I started thinking again about different bodies of water and how poets write about them: Mary Oliver (ponds), Lorine Niedecker (lakes), Alice Oswald (rivers, the sea). I also remembered Cole Swenson and their writing about the river Gave de Pau in Gave. I think I need to buy this book! Anyway, I looked up a few more of their poems and read one titled, “To Circumferate.” These lines stuck with me:
With a careful adjustment of eye there are no buildings. A city of trees and hedges
As I ran back from the monument, looking left to the ravine and the trees, I thought about that line and imagined the stretches of grass, the trees, the green ravine as a city — the only city — no buildings or houses or roads or cars, only trees and tall grasses and bushes leading down to the river.
All of this thinking about different bodies of water reminded me of something I started to read but had to return to the library before I got very far, Visitation/ Jenny Erpenbeck. I took a screen-shot of the first two pages and the amazing description of water within them:
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 75 degrees / drizzle
A great swim! Now I’m cold and tired and hungry!
10 Things
more ghost vines glowing below
one menacing white swan
the water below was a deep green with some blue
the water near the shore was still clear enough to see the sandy bottom
the sky was pale — no sun, except for a few times when it almost broke through
it’s the free night for open swim so more bobbing buoys — yellow was the most popular color
breathed mostly every five
tangled in a few vines, one leaf didn’t want to go away
stopped once or twice in the middle of the lake — calm, quiet — I should stop more
some little speck got in my eye at the beginning of the swim — I should have stopped to fix my goggles, but I just kept swimming, now it’s still stuck in there
Feeling a little off since yesterday afternoon — the slightest sore throat, a little stuffy, tired. Can’t decide if it’s allergies from swimming in the lake or something else (tested, not COVID). Future Sara, let me know.
This first July run was the same as most of my June runs: difficult, but worth it. The first half was fine, the second half hard. Sore legs, hard to keep going. I think a lot of it is mental, but I’m not sure how to fix it. For now, more swimming, shorter runs.
One thing that helped in the first half was reciting two poems: Still Life with Window and Fish / Jorie Graham and The Social Life of Water / Tony Hoagland. It was a good distraction. I think it might help if I figured out a task or project or activity before each run. That has helped me in the past.
10 Things
greeted the Welcoming Oaks — good morning! good morning!
admired the green view down to the floodplain forest — deep green, scraggly excess
noticed the purple flowers lining the trail
heard the rowers below — not yet on the river, but down below near the boathouse, laughing
encountered a long line of unevenly spaced kids in yellow vests on bikes — lots of stragglers near the back
not a single view of the river that I remember
heading north: wind pushing from behind, heading south: in my face, cooling me off
one bug almost landing in my eye
several stones stacked on the ancient boulder — was it 4 again?
the outline of an orange cat spray-painted on the sidewalk — even though it probably doesn’t look like Garfield, every time I see it I think, Garfield
Why was the cat named Garfield? The other day, when Scott and I were walking, I thought I heard a woman call out to their dog, Neil! Come here Neil! And I thought that that would be an awesome name for a dog, but not as awesome as Bob Barker. Update: In mid-July, running by this orange spray-painted figure, I realized that it looks more like a turkey with feathers than a cat. Of course, I still haven’t stopped to study it more carefully; I only see what my diseased eyes can see as I run by. I should probably stop to check, but I doubt I will.
Alice Oswald and color vision
I’m fascinated by something that I read in Alice Oswald’s interview with Kit Fan:
and this may again be an effect of thinking about the project with an artist, I was just thinking an awful lot about light and vision and the way … well, light as an insect, really, which is not just Homer, it’s also Dante. I always loved this part of Dante where he talks about the spiriti visivi, I think they’re called. And this idea that when you look at things, what’s happening is these kind of, you know, these creatures are sort of moving out from your eye to the world and moving from the world back into your eye. I was trying to sort of slow down my senses while I wrote this poem and imagine even a sort of passage between myself and the world was a creature, living creature of some kind
And here are 2 places where that idea shows up in Nobody:
from Nobody/ Alice Oswald
page19
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 and sometimes mist a kind of stupefied rain slumps over the water like a teenager and sometimes the sun returns whose gold death mask with its metallic stare seems to be
blinking
page 30
When trees take over an island and say so all at once some in pigeon some in pollen with a coniferous hiss and run to the shore shouting for more light and the sun drops its soft coverlet over their heads and owls and hawks and long-beaked sea-crows flash to and fro like spirits of sight whose work is on the water where the massless mind undulates the intervening air shading it blue and thinking
I wish I was there
or there
I was planning to think about these lines as I swam at the cedar lake open swim, but when we got there it was too windy. No buoys, no lifeguards. People were still swimming, and I might have too, if I didn’t feel so tired and — not stuffed up, but congested in some way, like I’d swallowed too much lake water at the last swim. So many waves, almost 30 mph wind gusts.
