Tag: no headphones

sept 24/RUN

3 miles
trestle turn around
54 degrees
13 days until the marathon!

Overcast, cool. A steady stream of cars. I was planning to greet the Welcoming Oaks, but I forgot. Encountered many runners, walkers, someone (I think) was heading to the rowing club, and at least one roller skier. I noticed a few streaks of red and yellow, but mostly everything is still green.

Since I ran 20 miles on Sunday, today I only did 3 miles. My legs were slightly sore, but not too bad. I’m pleased with my recovery. I was especially pleased that I pushed through the moments when it felt a little harder. To keep my heart rate below 170, I chanted in triple berries in mile 3: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry.

10 Things

  1. in the first mile, encountered a woman’s cross country team — a core group of 12? then pairs of slower runners trailing behind, one final runner at the very back — as I passed them I could hear their labored breathing — they were all running fast!
  2. happy, excited voices rising up from the rowing club
  3. a car pulling out right in front of another one at the top of the lake street hill — the second car honked once, but no yelling or repeated honks or crash sounds
  4. click clack click clack — a roller skier’s poles
  5. in the third mile, encountered the team again — still fast, still jagged breaths
  6. no sparkle on the water, flat featureless blue
  7. running south, I could feel the faintest outline of my shadow — was I imagining it?
  8. more spray paint on the path — bright green and orange, looking sloppy
  9. the sharp crack of an acorn hitting the asphalt
  10. above the ravine, at the wooden fence — all thick green, no view, one of the fence slats had been pushed away from the others by a leaning tree

Before and after my run I listened to a recording I did this morning of myself reading 4 of my water poems. I’m proud of them.

Watched a short video with Hanif Abdurraqib while I at my breakfast (peanut butter toast). I love this definition of writing:

I think about writing as being in the pursuit of beautiful language to extract or shake out a curiosity that’s been long haunting me in a pleasurable way. And I’ll do as much as it takes and seek out as much language as it takes to get there.

Windham Campbell Prize, 2024, Haniq Abdurraqib

I want to remember an idea I encountered in an explanation of yesterday’s poem of the day on poets.org. The poem was “Villany” in LA by Gabrielle Civil. Here’s their explanation:

About this Poem

“More than just rendering something in another language, the Oxford Learner’s Dictionaries remind us that translation is ‘the process of moving something from one place to another.’ What better way to signal that than a poem about public transit? In their book Villainy, Andrea Abi-Karam moves love and grief for those who died in the 2016 Ghost Ship [warehouse] fire in Oakland to me [as I’m] riding the train in Los Angeles. As with most translations, I move my reading into something else: this time, a new poem, which receives the original and carries it like a holy relic into a different city.”

Gabrielle Civil

I’d like to think more about translation and this movement and how I might play with it in my writing about running and swimming and my running/swimming-as-writing.

sept 20/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop
65 degrees

Such a beautiful morning! I marveled at it with a woman we passed on the stairs down to the east river road. Sunny and still with sharp, satisfying shadows. The first 5 miles were, as I said to Scott, not hard but not easy either. Just one foot in front of the other, moving forward. I had some unfinished business (which is my euphemism for needing to poop) that I had tried to finish before the run started, but couldn’t. Around 5 miles, we stopped at a porta potty — the last one for several miles — but it was locked and it didn’t seem like anyone was coming out anytime soon. I’m not even sure anyone was in there. So I kept going and it got a lot harder. Some stomach cramps and muscle clenching made the run more of a struggle, mentally and physically. But I did it and I don’t feel terrible now that I’m done.

10 Things

  1. flat, still, blue water with dozens of single leaves sitting on the surface
  2. clear, sharp shadows on the bridge — the railing slat shadows were a series of thin parallel lines
  3. the sun reflecting off of the water and through the railing slats was very bright and trippy — so many flashes of light as the shine shot through the slats in a steady rhythm
  4. at first we couldn’t hear shadow falls, but as we neared the monument, I heard the tiniest trickle
  5. pleasing contrast — the bright blue of the sky against the green leaves of a maple tree
  6. slashes of red and orange in the bushes at knee-level
  7. running across the highway 5 bridge, the cars were loud but a speeding motorcycle was louder
  8. more leaping grasshoppers, landing on our legs and feet
  9. a group of people standing in a circle near coldwater springs
  10. a screaming bluejay

Scott and I didn’t talk as much on this run. With my unfinished business, I was trying to focus on moving and didn’t have much to say. Mostly I talked about that or the condition of the path — I rolled my ankle twice (mildly, I hope). Scott talked about where we were (distance/time) in terms of the marathon and how he needs to practice for his gig on Saturday night. I also talked about how the Minneapolis Parks have very specific guidelines for the paved paths along the river — how level they must be, how much distance is required from the road. Scott said that that doesn’t seem to be the case in St. Paul and that he prefers to run on Minneapolis trails.

liquid looking

I’ve started writing around the idea, from Alice Oswald, of liquid looking. I need to gather the different definitions in one space (a job for later today?), but for now I want to mention what I was writing yesterday. It’s about the fish in me escaping (from Anne Sexton), a school of minnows at my feet as I entered the water, and imagining those fish as the insects, the spirits of sight, that Dante describes and that Alice Oswald understands as the light that travels and returns, making it possible for us to see. Here are a few lines from AO (Nobody):

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

In my version, the ambassadors of vision are little fish, and they speak in bubbles, not Greek, and they bubble-whisper the colors of things, like the water. I need to work on bringing in just a little bit more of the origin — Dante’s/Oswald’s idea of light spirits/insects — so that it makes sense for the reader. Here’s another passage from an interview with AO that might help:

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 . . . .

A Conversation with Kit Fan and Alice Oswald

Here’s what I wrote yesterday:

I enter water

and the fish in me

escape — a school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-
to the murk beyond
the buoys. I won’t
see them again but
they are there flashing
below returning
to speak in bubble-
whisper all the names
of water’s colors
silver pewter bronze
copper’s weathered green
reddish-purple rust

Reading this again, I’m thinking about the next line from Anne Sexton’s poem, “The Nude Swim”: The real fish did not mind. I’m really interested in this distinction between the real fish and my fish escaping and what it means and I think I’d like to bring that in here. It fits with something Scott was saying about the poem last night when I read it to him — something about beyond metaphor. I can’t remember, but I think it speaks to what real might mean here.

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape — perhaps they
will join that school of
minnows who dart past
lunging kids before
disappearing in-

OR

I enter water
and the fish in me
escape. The minnows
do not mind as they
dart past lunging kids
on their way to what’s
beyond the buoys.
I won’t see my fish
again but they’re there.

I could also end the poem with an altered version of AO’s, There are said to be microscopic. . . There are said to be tiny fish in the eye/who speak Bubbles . . .

sept 17/RUN

5 miles
bottom of franklin turn around
70 degrees / dew point: 63

So much sweat! The bill of my cap, the end of my ponytail, the tip of my nose dripping before I finished the first mile. Ran 3 without stopping, then walked until my heart rate was down to 135. Started running again to the metronome at 175 and finished with my winter playlist — time for a new playlist!

I liked running to the metronome (through my headphones, from the metronome/tuner app on my phone). I was able to match my foot strikes with the beat fairly quickly, but it took a few minutes for it to lock in. When that happened, I could feel the transformation from the edge of the beat (just before or after it) to the deep center of it. My foot strike seemed different, more solid and strong. The beat sounded different, less generic and more connected to a physical source (my foot). And I felt different, inside the beat, no longer a body but that steady clicking sound. Very cool.

It’s not quite the same, but I’m thinking of myself as Annie Dillard’s bell being struck. Also, Emily Dickinson and these lines:

As all the Heavens were a Bell,
And Being, but an Ear,
And I, and Silence, some strange Race,
Wrecked, solitary, here –

10 Things

  1. slashes of red in the bushes
  2. a pinkish-orangish clump of leaves
  3. almost all green in the floodplain forest
  4. a shimmering circle of light: the sun on the river through a gap in the trees
  5. a steady stream of commuting cars
  6. mostly overcast, with occasional sun, enough sun for me to see my shadow as I walked home
  7. at the beginning of my run, a for sale sign in a front yard, by the end of my run, it was gone
  8. running down franklin, the trees were a yellowish green
  9. at least one roller skier — maybe 2, unless it was the same skier
  10. the bright, generous smile of a woman walking past me

Yesterday, I came across this cool poetry project, The BardCode Project:

In the BardCode Project Gregory Betts has analysed and mapped the rhyme patterns within Shakespeare’s 154 sonnets. Shakespeare built his famous sonnets by a unique sound pattern of rhymes in the final syllable, the tenth column, of each line. Betts asks, and answers, the question: What was Shakespeare doing in the rest of the sonnet?

The BardCode project maps out the full sound pattern of rhymes in all ten columns across all of Shakespeare’s sonnets. Colour coding these sound-codes results in a visual text rich with the sonic patterns of the poems. Suddenly, for the first time, you can see the BardCode.

BardCode Projects

sept 15/RUN

14 miles
randolph to the river / crosby farms / confluence
75 degrees / dew point: 68

And now it seems you are still summer. Still the high, familiar, endless summer. . . A warm September day. We started later than we should (9:30), but Scott and I both wanted to sleep in. Sun, some shade, an occasional breeze.

We took a new route: south on the west river road, over the ford bridge, north on the east river road, west on randolph — past st. kate’s, a walgreens, trader joes, a cool coffee place, a-side public house — to shepherd road and the river. Through crosby farms and past 2 lakes — crosby lake and ? lake, up a STEEP hill to the confluence, above hidden falls, over ford bridge again, and finishing north on the west river road. Wow, such different terrain. Randolph is a very cool avenue. Near 7th street, there are some great restaurants and quirky houses, their yards stuffed with flowers and sculptures and other whimsical thing.

It was hot! An hour in, we were both soaked. So much sweat! Tough conditions.

Mostly we were quiet, conserving eneergy, but we talked about the hills and the heat. Scott sang the song from his favorite childhood movie, Midnight Madness. Then he mentioned how he wanted to study its composition and explore what chords make a song a disco song. I recited W.S. Merwin’s “To the Light of September” at one point. I also talked about wanting to check out Phillip’s Aquatic Center with RJP this fall.

update, 17 sept: Reading a past entry (from 17 sept, 2023), I remembered that Scott talked about an article he read about how they (St. Paul? Minneapolis?) has been handling the ongoing problem of people stealing wires out of street lamps for copper. They’ve replaced the copper with aluminum and put signs on the posts that say something like, these wires contain aluminum and have no value. Scott added that aluminum isn’t as efficient as copper, but it’s helping with the theft problem. Typing this up, I also remember a random thought I had about street lamps vs. street lights. I was suggesting to Scott that we should start running again at the streetlight ahead of us in the parking lot. I thought, why did I call this a street light and not a street lamp? Is it because it’s much taller? A boring thought, I know, but I could imagine using it in a poem.

update, 21 sept 2024: I also forgot about the surrey! Finishing up the last miles of our run, entering the pedestrian side of the double bridge, we witnessed a surrey biking through the narrow bike part of the path. I have always wondered what happens when surreys (which aren’t supposed to travel this far from the park) reached the double bridge. How could they make it through? It was tight, but they did it. Not nearly as dramatic as I had imagined.

14 Things

  1. some poop smeared on the sidewalk — someone must have stepped in it and then dragged it for several feet
  2. passing by, but not stopping to read, several st. paul sidewalk poems near st. kate’s
  3. the patio at carbone’s pizza place, looking very inviting with its chair in the shades and its planters creating some space from the road (mentioned this to Scott and he said there was also a sign that read, caution pizza crossing)
  4. the loud beeping of a crosswalk sign (scott said it sounded more like the rapid fire of a machine gun, and I agree)
  5. up and down and up and down — so many hills on randolph!
  6. a few small leaves fluttering in front of me as we ran on the trail next to shepherd road
  7. a woman on the ground, stretching, her bike nearby. as we ran by, she called out, way to go runners! you can do it!
  8. the cool shade of the cracked trail in crosby farms
  9. overheard: a walker to another walker — tomorrow we’re going to tum rup thai. they moved locations into a bigger space. I said to scott, where did they move? I want to go! just looked it up, and I can’t find the new location anywhere
  10. the delightful knocking of a woodpecker on dead wood, echoing in the quiet forest
  11. a group of high school cross country runners taking over the trail by the confluence. one kid was swinging his leg out onto the path
  12. lots of bikers calling out, on your left
  13. crossing the ford bridge again, looking down at the water, noticing the bumpy texture created by small waves
  14. a guy (a dad?) on a bike blasting some music, two little kids sitting behind him in a safety seat

sept 12/RUN

10k
duluth lake walk
63 degrees / humidity: 89%

Windy, muggy, hilly. Mostly, the lake looked pewter a few times like oxidized copper — a rusty, tarnished green. Fluttering, falling leaves, leaf by leaf. Slashes of red and gold. Up north smells — pine? wildflowers? Up and down over little rises beside Lake Superior. Kids laughing and yelling in Leif Erickson Park. Morning! — a greeting from another runner. A woman with 2 dogs, wearing bright yellow pants, not looking as she stepped back on the trail in front of us. Rocky beaches below, echoes of hollow, metallic stones knocking against each other.

Textiles: soft sand, cracked and puckered asphalt, pliable springy wood slats, unyielding concrete.

Overheard, one woman walker to another — and we’d get ALLmost two days!

A good run with Scott on our quick trip to Duluth with RJP. We did 9 minutes run / 1 minute walk the whole way. The marathon is less than a month away. Next week: a 20 miler!

sept 6/RUN

10 miles
confluence loop*
57 degrees

*lake street bridge / east river road to confluence / highway 5 bridge / fort snelling / past minnehaha dog park / minnehaha falls / west river road

Ran with Scott on a loop I’ve wanted to do ever since we tried part of it last November. Because there are several isolated stretches, I’ve never wanted to do this run by myself. I’m glad Scott could come with me today. It’s a great loop.

Near the beginning of the run, I recited the poem I just memorized, “To the Light of September” and we talked about blue plums and whether we’ve ever eaten them (no). Scott wondered where Merwin was writing about — the landscape seemed familiar. I know Merwin ended up in Hawaii, but I thought he might have taught at Iowa or on the east coast. Looked it up and he was born in NYC and lived there — and in Spain and France too — in his early adult years. In the 70s, he moved to Hawaii.

10 Things

  1. the fee bee of a black capped chickadee
  2. bright red leaves in the low bushes
  3. all the yellow leaves on a the tree near Marshall last week are gone this week
  4. the shshshsh of the sandy dirt with every foot strike
  5. what a view of the mississippi from high above as it rounds the bend!
  6. crossing the highway 5 bridge, admiring my shadow down below, running over the treetops
  7. the disorienting effect of the sun coming through the railing slats as we ran
  8. a cloud of grasshoppers at fort snelling — jumping out of the way just before we reached them
  9. a man walking above the falls in BRIGHT yellowish-orange shorts
  10. a cloud of dust, which I thought was smoke at first, stirred up by construction work at the site of a new house

During mile 6, we ran up a long hill that wasn’t too steep but was in the sun and faced the wind and seemed to stretch on forever. At the start of it I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep going, but I put one foot in front of the other and didn’t stop, and I made it. At the top there was shade and I called out, Victory!

For the first 8 miles, Scott and I ran for 9 minutes, then walked for 1. Our pace was at least a minute faster than when I’m running on my own. Nice! I’ll have to do more 9/1 on my 18 mile run on Sunday.

added a few hours later: I almost forgot about the gnats! So many gnats swarming us as we ran from Fort Snelling to the falls. Scott was particularly bugged by them. Mostly I didn’t care, but at least one or two flew into my mouth. Thankfully, not down my throat!

I love anagrams and the spell they cast on words, and I love this poem, which was the poem of the day on the poetry foundation site:

Anagrammer/ Peter Pereria

If you believe in the magic of language,
then Elvis really Lives

and Princess Diana foretold I end as car spin.
If you believe the letters themselves

contain a power within them,
then you understand

what makes outside tedious,
how desperation becomes a rope ends it.

The circular logic that allows senator to become treason,
and treason to become atoners.

That eleven plus two is twelve plus one,
and an admirer is also married.

That if you could just rearrange things the right way
you’d find your true life,

the right path, the answer to your questions:
you’d understand how the Titanic

turns into that ice tin,
and debit card becomes bad credit.

How listen is the same as silent,
and not one letter separates stained from sainted.

sept 4/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
65 degrees

Cooler again this morning. Fall is coming. Last night, over at Minnehaha Falls having some beers at Sea Salt, Scott and I were talking about September and how it’s in-between summer and fall. I mentioned an W.S. Merwin poem (To the Light of September) about the light in September and the subtle ways everything is shifting. I remembered the idea of the poem, but not the words, so this morning I decided to start memorizing it. I memorized the first half, with its glint of bronze in the chill mornings and fall as something already here but only as a name that tells of it, whether it is present or not. Throughout the run, I recited the lines in my head. Did I see evidence of fall? Not that I recall. No discarded acorns or changing leaves of glints of bronze.

sept 2/RUN

16 miles
lake nokomis — 2 loops / minnehaha park / ford bridge
60 degrees

16 miles! My longest run ever, I was slow, it was difficult, I walked a lot, but I did it. Ran over to Lake Nokomis and around it twice, then took minnehaha creek path to the falls park all the way to the fort snelling trail. Turned around, ran over to the Veterans home, through Waibun, over the ford bridge, up to the overlook, then back over ford.

For the first hour, I listened to the gorge, the creek, the lake, and people I encountered. For the rest of it, I listened to an audiobook — Anthony Horowitz’s Close to Death. One of the characters in it is named Andrew Pennington and it took me several miles to pay enough attention to process that and realize that it was a reference to “Uncle Andrew” — Andrew Pennington in Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile.

16 Things

  1. at one spot, the creek was bubbling, burbling, gurgling
  2. at another spot, it was rushing and gushing
  3. and at a third spot, it was glittering in the sunlight
  4. a small yippy dog across the creek — heard, not seen, so I guess it could have been big but it sounded small (and annoying) — losing its shit for a minute — yip yip yip yip yip
  5. a fishy smell at the lake that was surprisingly pleasant — smelled like summer or vacation
  6. the lake water was blue and flat and empty
  7. encountering another runner with her dog on the creek path — she called it, What are you training for? me: the marathon her: good luck!
  8. the pickle ball court was full — thwack! thwack! thwack!
  9. from the cedar bridge the water was smooth with just one bright spot from the sun
  10. one kayak gliding across
  11. a group with fishing poles, kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the path
  12. crossing the parkway under the mustache bridge, avoiding where the asphalt had erupted — huge, ankle-twisting craters
  13. the flowers at Longfellow Gardens! Orange, pink, yellow, red, soft green! Wow
  14. Waibun park was full of Labor Day visitors — at picnic tables, the splash pad, on the playground
  15. heading down the short hill between ford and the locks and dam no. 1 — the few patches of light were glowing . . . pink — 14 miles into my run, was I hallucinating? No — the light must have been filtering through some reddening leaves
  16. 2 women with dogs, stopping and kindly waiting for me to pass before crossing the narrow duck bridge

It was crowded on the trails, but I only remember how kind people were. Waiting for me to pass, not hogging the path, calling out encouragement.

Like I mentioned above, my pace was slow — over 12 minutes/mile, but that’s fine with me. The marathon is not about time, but pushing through and proving I can keep going when it seems too tough.

Recently read:

I feel like poetry is going on all the time inside, an underground stream.

John Ashbery

I’d like to do something with this idea of the underground stream, especially in relation to daylighting — the process of bringing streams buried in concrete and under city infrastructure back into the light.

added, 3 sept 2024: I forgot until today something else I’d like to remember — seeing steam coming off of my face, looking like my breath, the combination of sun, humidity, a warm body, and cool air (I think)

aug 31/RUN

4 miles
marshall-loon loop*
70 degrees

*north through the neighborhood, over to lake street, up the marshall hill, turn right at prior, then right at Summit, down to the river, back over the bridge, stop at Loons for coffee

Ran with Scott this late morning. We talked mostly about our son and how to help him as he tries to figure out what he can do with his music major after he graduates next year. Scott pointed out the signs on the huge and fancy houses on Summit opposing the new hockey arena at St. Thomas. I pointed out the one streetlamp that is still lit on the St. Paul side.

10 Things

  1. pink and orange zinnias in a yard
  2. a shrieking (or hissing?) squirrel in a tree
  3. a blue river, emptied of boats
  4. a bright yellow chair outside of a salon
  5. a dead black-capped chickadee on the sidewalk
  6. a biker slowing then calling out, on your right, before passing us on our left
  7. people sitting outside, laughing and enjoying their coffee at Loons
  8. a friendly barista*
  9. the bathroom for the building, which has always been open now has a keypad on it**
  10. not seen, but described by Scott — being blinded by the sun reflecting off of the flat, metal surface of a stupid cybertruck***

*I’m realizing as I write this that I couldn’t see this barista very clearly and I’m wondering if my vision has gotten worse and I’m so used to it that I hardly notice.

**Customers at Loons and Longfellow Grill now have to punch in a code to use the bathroom. I think the bathrooms should be open. I was wondering if they were having too many people coming up from the river just to use the bathroom. Up until last fall, there has always been a porta potty under the lake street bridge for runners, walkers, rowers, and people living in the gorge. They should bring it back — everyone should have access to a bathroom!

***I’m not sure I’ve ever seen one of these abominations, but Scott HATES them. They sound terrible.

Mountains/ Alice Oswald

Something is in the line and air along edges,
Which is in woods when the leaf changes
And in the leaf-pattern’s gives and gauges,
The water’s tension upon ledges.
Something is taken up with entrances,
Which turns the issue under bridges.
The moon is between paces.
An outlet fills the space between two horses.
 
Look through a holey stone. Now put it down.
Something is twice as different. Something gone
Accumulates a queerness. Be alone.
Something is side by side with anyone.
 
And certain evenings, something in the balance
Falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense
And then inslides itself between moments
And spills the heart from its circumference;
And this is when the moon matchlessly opens
And you can feel by instinct in the distance
The bigger mountains hidden by the mountains,
Like intentions among suggestions.

I think this poem fits in with my study of the in-between moments. So many great lines in the last stanza: falls to the dewpoint where our minds condense; spills the heart from its circumference — I like this idea of a leaky heart that breaks open/out of its borders; intentions among suggestions.

aug 29/RUN

9 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees / dew point: 72

I thought it was supposed to be cooling down this week. I was wrong. This run was tough and I was slow. Still, I pushed through and did it. 72 is a high dew point — in the miserable and “adjust your expectations” range. I tried to remember that as I ran and then stopped to walk. Mostly I did and was kind to myself.

While the run overall was difficult, it wasn’t all struggle. Running up the hill between Lake Hiawatha and Lake Nokomis, a walker called out, looking good! There were wild turkeys along the side of the road. The buoys are still up at the main beach. There was more shade than sun. The shadows were dancing in the wind. The river water was sparkling, the creek water was gently moving, the lake water was softly lapping the shore.

Recently, I heard a suggestion for keeping a steady rhythm on a long run: listen to a metronome. I decided to try it, at 175 bpm. Pretty cool. My phone app metronome was set for even beats not a time signature (like a heavier downbeat) so I heard steady, unstressed clicks. It was strange and fun when I lined up my feet with the beats so it sounded like my foot was making the noise as it struck the ground. It reminded me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when the librarian is stamping the books at the same time Jones is stamping the floor with a heavy post. As his ink stamp hits the page, a loud thud happens, and he wonders (while staring strangely at the stamp) how he could be making such a noise.

I wonder what might happen if I did set the metronome for different rhythms, like 4/4 or 3/4 or 6/8?!

anne carson

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

Righting oneself against a current that never ceases to pull . . . When I swim across Lake Nokomis, I trust straight, steady strokes to get me across the lake. I’ve lined up the buoys, set a course, then let my good form (shoulders, head position, breathing on both sides with even strokes) lead me to a buoy that I usually can’t see. I also have help from the lack of current in such a small lake. When I swim across Cedar Lake, those same straight strokes don’t help as much. I have to adjust constantly, fight against a current I can’t quite feel. When I don’t, I drift into the middle of the course, then too far over to the other side where swimmers are heading the other way. Even as I try, I can’t read or properly predict this current — is it a current, or something else? Often I drift. On my best loops, it feels awkward, forced, too conscious — more lifting my head to sight, a constant swimming against water that wants me somewhere else.

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.