Tag: no headphones

sept 8/RUNSWIM

4.3 miles
veterans home and back
61 degrees

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

  1. the sound of the rushing creek, 1: just before it falls over the limestone ledge
  2. the sound of the rushing creek, 2: far below, as I ran over the bridge to the Veterans Home
  3. a soft mist rising from the falling water
  4. a half-filled parking lot at the falls
  5. a full parking lot at the Veterans Home
  6. an empty parking lot at Locks and Dam no 1
  7. above on the bluff at Waban Park, a view of the river, the water rushing over the concrete, one white buoy, several redorangepink buoys
  8. an American flag waving near the Veterans Home
  9. 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
  10. 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?

A new poet to read and podcast episode to listen to!
Translation of the Lilies Back into Lists/ Laynie Brown
Laynie Brown: Apprentice to a Breathing Hand (tinhouse podcast)

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.

sept 7/RUN

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

  1. at the bottom of the hill, the surface of the river was covered with swirls of green-tinged foam
  2. the pedestrian gates to the lock and dam were open — I thought it was closed?
  3. 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
  4. running parallel to a runner slightly slower than me. me, on the dirt trail in the grassy boulevard, them, on the river road trail
  5. down on the winchell trail, admiring the color of the river: light blue and only partly visible through the green leaves
  6. no puddles, but patches of soft dirt and mud from yesterday’s multiple rain showers
  7. 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
  8. the strange shuffle of someone’s feet — part-walk, part-run, part-skip
  9. lots of cars parked on the street, lots of people walking towards the river — longfellow’s annual clean up the river event
  10. 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.

sept 6/RUN

5.1 miles
bottom of franklin and back
53 degrees

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

  1. a greeting from Dave, the Daily Walker: Happy 100 days after your birthday! Dave is the best — well, maybe not with his math!
  2. dark and green in the tunnel of trees, a circle of faint light up on the hill
  3. at least one yellowish orangish tree
  4. down in the flats the river’s surface was laced with grayish-white foam
  5. someone sitting on the sliding bench as I ran north, their bike propped behind the back of the bench
  6. 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
  7. finally took the dirt path that cuts behind some benches just south of the trestle
  8. 2 people walking 2 dogs, one person saying to the other something about an unwalked dog needing to be walked
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

31 may 2023

3

And here’s an excerpt from the draft of the poem I wrote:

first movement,
a making

space for each
other, then

a cloud of
Yous to pass

through. Bodies
enter cloud,

cloud enters
bodies

sept 4/RUN

4.2 miles
minnehaha falls and back
53 degrees

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

  1. a cool, dark green
  2. far ahead, tunnels of bright light
  3. birdsong — difficult to identify
  4. a coxswain — rowers down below!
  5. kids arriving at school — heard, not seen: excited voices
  6. a roaring creek
  7. every bench, empty — a stone wall, occupied by a person leaning and looking at their phone
  8. tall grass smell: almost like cilantro
  9. sharp, yippy barks at the falls — two little dogs greeting each other
  10. 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.

sept 3/RUN

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/mystery deepening/quieting/deepening interior/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

sept 2/RUNBIKESWIM

5 miles
franklin loop
70 degrees

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

  1. someone covered over the graffiti on the steps that read, stop hate, with blue paint
  2. sky, part 1: gray, heavy
  3. sky, part 2; blue and cloudless
  4. empty river
  5. white foam on the edge of the east bank near the franklin bridge
  6. kids laughing on the playground at the church daycare
  7. some orange and red leaves beyond the fence near east river road
  8. the squeal of tires near the trestle — what happened?
  9. orange cones lining the path: there must have been a race or a sponsored bike ride this past weekend
  10. 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.

aug 30/RUN

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

  1. a speedy runner sprinting past me, his feet striking the ground with a loud slap — Slap! Slap! Slap!
  2. crunch crunch — discarded acorn shells on the trail
  3. the steady whooshing of car wheels
  4. 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
  5. empty benches, including the one above the edge of the world
  6. crash! crash! some critter rooting around in the bushes in the park
  7. kids laughing and yelling at the park playground
  8. 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
  9. a roller skier on the walking trail doing a strangely slow shuffling exercise with her poles and roller skis
  10. a coxswain down below — rowers!

quieting of the spirit (from 29 aug 2024)

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. 

Gloves on!/ Anne Carson

*

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

aug 28/RUN

3.8 miles
river road, north/south
61 degrees

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:

A Lexicon of Light/ George Looney

     –after Claude Monet’s Charing Cross Bridge series

It’s not accurate to say we know
what we see. Truth is, few understand

the physics of color. What Monet knew
had little to do with science. He was

intent on getting the bridge, and everything
that gave the bridge context, right. Language

isn’t accurate enough. To depict the world
with color and form—to make a place

and moment of time a composition—is
no more precise a vocabulary. Vision

tends to end up being an imposition
more than a recognition of how the fog

consumes much of the bridge, as if nothing
is able to fully connect one side

of the Thames to the other. Distance
often asks too much of us, and Monet

found ways to accept that insistence. His
endlessly varied harmonies of color

wrote a new definition of accuracy. The bridge
is more than a construction passed over

by trains and imbued with shifting colors
with the time of day. It becomes, for the artist,

a lexicon of light and all that light does
to this world. At times everything is more

certain, and we want to stand on the bridge
and compose a tune, humming, that the sun,

glittering in the river, inspires. Other times,
we want to be nothing but a faint music,

too distant or muted to be identified,
drifting along with the soothing mist and fog.

accurate / know /
see / Truth

physics of color


not accurate, right



color and form

composition
not precise

vision as more imposition than recognition of how the fog consumes the bridge?






harmonies of color — a new definition of accuracy



shifting colors with the time of day

lexicon of light and all that light does to this world

aug 27/BIKESWIMRUN

bike: 8.6 miles
lake nokomis and back
64/71 degrees

Hooray for feeling comfortable on a bike! Able to see enough to not feel scared.

…sitting on the back deck to write this, a wave of ear piercing cicada buzz just passed by. Wow! What’s the decibel level of that?

Rode into the wind for a lot of the ride — and not just the wind I was making with my moving body. Wondered if it would be choppy at the lake. (it was). At one point, when the wind seemed particularly strong, I could feel how un-aerodynamic I was — an upright form fighting against air. I tried to get more aerodynamic, leaning low and over my hips, my bike as parallel to the ground as I could get it. Thought about ironman triathletes who can bike like in an even more parallel position for almost 5 hours. Wow, how many hours of training and lifting and working with a coach must you need to keep that form for so long?

The bike ride back was wonderful. What a beautiful late summer day! Sunny, warm in a way that’s welcome because it was cooler in the morning.

swim: 2 loops
56 minutes
lake nokomis main beach
66 degrees

I did it! 1440 minutes, 24 hours, one day swimming in August! Hooray for ambitious goals that push you to do a little more than you would have otherwise. Swimming a total of 24 hours (over 21 swims) was a commitment for sure, but it wasn’t an unreasonable commitment. And the biggest challenge was not getting my body to swim that many minutes — and miles, over 40 — but having clean water and an open lake. Lake Nokomis was closed for 2 weeks in August due to elevated e-coli and algae blooms.

24 hours was a good goal. Enough to challenge me and enable me to get deeper into my swimming and writing about swimming, but not too deep to sink me, to overwhelm and injure me. That’s another definition of Mary Oliver’s deepening and quieting of the spirit: deepening my commitment, steadily chipping away at the time (a quiet = still = steady approach).

The water was empty of other humans. I don’t remember seeing/hearing any ducks or geese or seagulls either. Lots of milfoil, both tethered and floating in segments on the surface. Too many milfoil vines near the white buoys. They seem to be increasing every time I swim. Boo! I went much farther out to avoid them, and when I veered closer, I could feel them wrapping around my wrists and ankles. Join us, I briefly imagined them saying. No thanks!

Yesterday while looking up recent drownings in Lake Nokomis — the ones I remember are the South High football player in 2013 and the 11 year old girl in 2023 — I discovered that someone else drowned last week. A woman who (presumably) took her own life. Rescuers were searching for more than 24 hours, looking for the body. They found it. As I swam out to the white buoys, I thought about this woman and the others that had drowned, wondered how terrified I would be to encounter their dead bodies bobbing in the water. Another meaning of deepening/quieting of the spirit.

The water shimmered in the sun, sometimes like silver, sometimes glass. There were little waves, big enough to make a noise, but not big enough for white caps. Before I got used to the rocking movement, I was slightly dizzy. I liked the chop. I was able to got faster heading north with the wind, and more powerfully heading south against it.

The sky was a deep blue with a few clouds. They were fluffy like cotton balls, some of them big, like a whole ball, some of them wispy and small, like one chunk of the ball. Noticed a plane, parallel to the water.

The water was thick with particles, impossible to see too far in front of me — only my hand and the trailing bubbles.

Heading north, following the path of an open swim loop, I looked up and imagined that the orange buoy was far off in the distance. Oh, to have it appear to be able to swim out and beyond it!

When I finished the swim, I sat on the sand, feeling the sun on my back, looking out at the water and reflecting on the season. What a summer! I hope to come back to the lake more times this week and until they remove the buoys, but whatever happens, I met my goal and have no regrets about how much I swam this summer. Good job, Sara!

today’s inspiration

One of the poems-of-the-day offers inspiration for my Swimming One Day project:

Task/ Ari Banias

There’s a poem I tried to write about
bathing you the last day you were alive.

On one of our drives home:
I want to die without shame.

You didn’t elaborate.
I described standing across from a stranger

paid to do this work, her presence
anchoring me in the task

with you between us.
From this distance I can use the word task.

Your pain the astrologer said A gift
for others

A mixing bowl
filled with warm water

we dipped washcloths into before
wringing them out

rested between your legs.
The phrase utilitarian tenderness served

some containing purpose
I needed at the time.

A great effort
to come up to the surface of yourself

to say what you said to us.
A student writes two lines

about an aging parent
they think are boring and may cut.

That poem did not belong
to language, and surpassed touch

Dough rising somewhere
under a red and white

dishtowel in that bowl

about this poem

“The task is attempting to write the poem again the task is bathing the dying the task is work done for wages the task is recognizing the encounter that refuses containment that insists on experience outside narrative time the task is to not entomb memory in language to not reduce grief to a quotable thing the task is to feel the edge of a void and keep going inside the feeling the task summons in you the task continues despite”

inspirations

  • create a set of poems — one of them is the main poem, another about it, explaining it in some way, sideways or front ways or back ways, and maybe a third one that condenses it (like Hardly Creatures and the original poem, replica, souvenir)
  • a pair of poems, the second, the reflection of the first, as if on the surface of water, and darker, like A Oswald’s line about water letting you see twice but more darkly
  • take an idea — in the poem it is “task” — and play around with a wide range of meaning. I’m thinking: “day” or “quiet/still”

run: 2.45 miles
around lake nokomis
76 degrees

Went back to the lake in the evening with Scott. He started running north, I started south around the lake. I haven’t run here at all this summer. Stopped at the little beach briefly to check out the algae. Since my swim this morning, the test results have come in and there is an blue-green algae advisory at both beaches. They tested it on Monday when it was the worst. It’s better today.

Over halfway around, I passed a young boy walking by himself. After I passed him, I heard somebody running like they were trying to catch me. I think it was him. The footsteps lasted for 30 seconds? a minute? then stopped. I kept running until I reached the overlook on the cedar bridge then briefly stopped to take in the view. I noticed waves and the silhouettes of 2 kayaks in the distance, silvery water.

10 Lake Things

  1. a guy calling out, no! drop it! drop it! no! no! — I’m assuming they were talking to their dog, but I didn’t see
  2. a kid’s loud foot strikes
  3. a group of people crossing the path, heading for the dock
  4. the soft sand of the dirt trail next to the path
  5. 2 kids climbing the leaning tree that I used to run by and think it looked like a woman arching her back
  6. an opening in the vegetation, an empty bench, a person closer to shore
  7. 2 women’s voices on the water near shore — were they in a kayak or a canoe?
  8. the bridge has lane markings for a bike path — that’s new
  9. the smell of cigarette smoke near the booth where they test for zebra mussels
  10. a woman and a man blocking part of the path — the guy practicing a stretch as the woman gave him pointers — his coach?

aug 24/RUN

5.25 miles
bottom of franklin hill
58 degrees

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:

  1. 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?
  2. 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

  1. roller skiers
  2. someone wearing all black sitting at a bench
  3. river surface, 1: rough, empty
  4. river surface, 2: looking north it was flat, south a glitter path
  5. a shorter runner passing me, holding a sweatshirt awkwardly
  6. the big crack in the path, still blocked off
  7. no more limestone slabs stacked and looking like a lounging person under the franklin bridge
  8. a damaged fence: the top slat missing
  9. returning south, the wind was at my back, enabling me to go faster
  10. 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.