3.7 miles marshall loop 70 degrees / dew point: 61
It started raining off and on around 8:30. I don’t mind swimming in the rain, but I wasn’t sure the lifeguards would go out on the lake in this weather. So no open swim. Instead I ran in the early afternoon. Sticky, but not too hot. No sun. Not too many people. Saw some rowers on the river. The surface of the water was a strange texture, roughened by the wind.
memorable moment
Nearing the 3 way intersection at the river road and 36th: a swarm of vespas — 15? One after the other. Not all of them were bright yellow, but at least one was. Wow.
wordle challenge
5 tries: bench / prose / lower / gored / rodeo
In her dream there’s always a bench. Often the benches I run by have small plaques on them, dedicated to some lost loved one. I hope my family does this for me.
They shut me up in Prose/ Emily Dickinson
They shut me up in Prose – As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet – Because they liked me “still” –
Still! Could themself have peeped – And seen my Brain – go round – They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason – in the Pound –
Himself has but to will And easy as a Star Look down opon Captivity – And laugh – No more have I –
lowercase
maggie and millie and molly and may / e.e. cummings
maggie and milly and molly and may went down to the beach(to play one day)
and maggie discovered a shell that sang so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and
milly befriended a stranded star whose rays five languid fingers were;
and molly was chased by a horrible thing which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and
may came home with a smooth round stone as small as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever we lose(like a you or a me) it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
A few days ago, I read the book in The Odyssey titled, “Bloodshed.” Very gory. So many spears and arrows and swords and bloody, gored bodies.
I had probably heard the phrase before, but my first memory of this isn’t your first rodeo is from my physical therapist describing how my kneecap has probably slid out of its groove many times before without me fully realizing it.
So warm! Still glad I went out for a run, but it was hard. My knees are sore, my legs sluggish. Heard lots of birds, a roller skier’s clicking poles, talk radio blasting from someone’s car, faint voices from below, water trickling out of a sewer pipe. Encountered bugs — mosquitos? gnats? — near the ravine. Passed by a person on the folwell bench, reading. Was greeted by one walker: good morning! As I ran on the Winchell trail I thought about the importance of giving some gesture — a greeting, eye contact, a stepping over to make room — when nearing another person. Without it, you’re saying to them, to me you don’t exist.
When I finished my run, I pulled out my phone and recited Alice Oswald’s “A Short Story of Falling.” Only two mistakes: I gave it the wrong title and I said “in a seed head” instead of “on a seed head.”
“A Short Story of Falling” / 22 june 2023
wordle challenge
Bad luck with the wordle today. I almost had it in 3, but I had too many choices that could be correct. I had 4 tries but at least 5 options.
At the end of the swim another swimmer called out, these conditions are the best! (or something like that; I can’t quite remember). I agreed. Calm, pleasingly warm water, well-placed buoys. I could barely see the buoys, but I still swam to them without a problem. Lots of swans in the water, a few menacing sailboat — one with a bright orange and red sail.
I swam for a loop and a half then briefly stopped at the little beach for a quick rest. Swam another loop and a half and stopped at the big beach. Got out to go the bathroom, then one more loop. Taking a 5 or so minute break between loops 3 and 4 really helped. I should remember to do that more often.
I’m writing this swim summary the next morning. Can I remember 10 things?
10 Things
at least one plane
half a dozen swan boats lurking at the edges
one swan stuck in the dead zone between buoys
streaks below me — fish?
irritating swimmers: 2 fast women that kept swimming past me, then stopping to get their bearings, then swimming again. With my slower, steadier stroke, I kept getting passed by them, then passing them when they stopped, then getting passed by them again when they restarted their swim
both the orange and green buoys closest to the beaches (orange to the little beach, green to the big) were not that close to the shore
no waves
no ducks
breathed every 5 strokes, sometimes every three, once or twice every six
hardly ever saw one of my landmarks from the past few years: the overturned boat at the little beach
Ran earlier today, at 7:15. A little cooler, quieter. For the first few minutes, I recited Alice Oswald’s “A Short Story of Falling” which I memorized yesterday. Ran south on the grassy boulevard between edmund and the river road. Crossed over at Becketwood, then ran down to the southern entrance of the Winchell Trail.
Listened to the gentle whooshing of car wheels. the clicking and clacking of ski poles, and birds for most of the run. Put in a Bruno Mars playlist for the last mile.
After I finished my run, I recited Alice Oswald’s “A Short Story of Falling” into my phone. Only messed up one line (I think).
10 Things
click clack click clack
the rambling root spread across the dirt trail
the steady dripping — more than a trickle, less than a rush — of the water falling from the sewer pipe
the soft (not mushy) blanket of dead leaves on the winchell trail
the sharp sparkle of the light on the water
shhhhhh — the wind passing through the leaves on the trees
the soft roar of the city underneath everything
the leaning branches have been removed — thanks Minneapolis Parks People!
an almost exchange of the You and I — me: right behind you, excuse me an older woman with a dog: mmhmm
no bugs, no gnats, no geese
wordle challenge
3 tries: front / brine / crane
front runt stunt blunt hunt shunt grunt redundant brine sign fine line shine dine design unwind spine twine crane explain refrain detain rain insane
front
frontispiece:
1
a: the principal front of a building b: a decorated pediment over a portico or window
2
: an illustration preceding and usually facing the title page of a book or magazine
Its back and forth, ad nauseum, ought to make the sea a bore. But walks along the shore cure me. Salt wind’s the best solution for dissolving my ennui in, along with these protean sadnesses that sometimes swim invisibly as comb-jelly a glass or two of wine below my surface. Some regrets won’t untangle. Others loosen as I watch the waves spreading their torn nets of foam along the sand to dry. I walk and walk and walk and walk, letting their haul absorb me. One seal’s hull scuttled to bone staves gulls scream wheeling above. And here… small, diabolical, a skate’s egg case, its horned purse nested on pods of bladderwort that still squirt BRINE by the eyeful. Some oily slabs of whale skin, or —no, just an edge of tire flensed from a commoner leviathan. Everywhere, plastic nurdles gleam like pearls or caviar for the avian gourmand and bits of sponge dab the wounded wrack-line, dried to froths of air smelling of iodine. Hours blow off down the beach like spindrift, leaving me with an immense less-solipsistic sense of ruin, and, as if it’s a gift, assurance of ruin’s recurrence.
crane
“The Crane Wife” parts 1, 2, and 3 from the Decemberists
swim: 1 small loop (1/2 big loop) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
First open swim with FWA at cedar lake! A great night for it: calm, clear, not too crowded. The buoys were up tonight. Hooray!
Yay for being able to bike without fear! The ride was hot but was fine. The key: don’t bike too fast. I noticed: no progress on the duck bridge that was removed a few months ago for repairs; hot pink tape or paint or something marking the cracks in the trail — the pink was very easy for me to see…nice! and a dude in an e-bike with a kid going way faster than the 10 mph speed limit.
swim: 3 loops (2.25 miles) 88 degrees choppy
3 slightly choppy loops today. Definitely more difficult with the choppy water — how choppy was it? Not really that bad (compared to real chop in the ocean or a big lake), but it still made it harder to breathe. Saw 2 or 3 planes, some random woman floating in an inner tube in the middle of the lake (almost ran into her). Raced a swan boat, dodged flailing kids at the beach and breaststrokers mid-lake. Again this year, breaststrokers are my nemesis. Couldn’t see the green buoys at all; I used the glowing rooftop at the big beach as my guide. I couldn’t even see the green buoys when I was 20 feet away from them because of the bright sun. Didn’t bother me at all. I just kept swimming, only stopping to adjust my goggles and make sure my stiff left knee was okay. For just a flash, I thought about Tony Hoagland’s poem (below) and the way water speaks. I thought about how, because I’m in the water and not standing on the shore, I can listen and understand (at least a little).
wordle challenge
3 tries:
water / inert / frost
a winter morning
water inert frosted glass slicked up streets endless and empty
water inert on morning window: frost
a description by Alice Oswald in her reading of “A Short Story of Falling” that I listened to this morning as I memorized her beautiful poem:
What I love about water is that it spends its whole time falling. It’s always, apparently, trying to find the lowest place possible, and when it finds the lowest place possible, it lies there wide awake.
Alice Oswald
Water is never inert always falling searching for somewhere else to be even in rest as frost on winter’s window it watches waits wants to find the floor
The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund
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.
All water is a part of other water. River rushes to reunite with ocean; tree drinks rain and sweats out dew; dew takes elevator into cloud; cloud marries puddle;
puddle
has long conversation with lake about fjord; fog sneaks up and murmurs insinuations to swamp; swamp makes needs known to marshland.
Thunderstorm throws itself on estuary; waterspout laughs at joke of frog pond. All water understands.
All water understands. Reservervoir gathers information for database of watershed. Brook translates lake to waterfall. Tide wrinkles its green forehead and then breaks through. All water understands.
But you, you stand on the shore of blue Lake Kieve in the evening and listen, grieving as something stirs and turns within you.
Not knowing why you linger in the dark. Not able even to guess from what you are excluded.
1.5 miles* (2 loops) lake nokomis open swim 69 degrees / light rain
*not quite sure of the distance, but I’m basing it on my strokes (which are very consistent) and comparing them to strokes per mile in the pool
Hooray for another open swim! Had to miss 2 this week because of moving Scott’s dad, so I’m very glad I was able to get to the lake this morning. I LOVE lake swimming. It’s hard, but is so satisfying and freeing. I love the gentle burn I feel in my shoulders for a few hours after I’m done. It was cold(er) and the water was a little choppy. I had to breathe on my right side most of the time. The few times I turned to breathe on my left side, water rushed over my head. I couldn’t really see the buoys but it didn’t matter. I was able to keep swimming and stay on course.
It was 10 years ago that I first swam across the lake for open swim. I was nervous and almost didn’t do it. I loved it instantly. I love it even more now.
10 Things
a slight drizzle that I couldn’t feel in the water
brightest color: the pink safety buoy tethered to a torso
second brightest color: the orange buoy that was rarely visible
dimmest color: the green buoys
opaque water — no visibility underwater
a single swan boat
something flying in the air above me that could have been a plane, a bird, or a bug. I couldn’t tell
a few green-capped heads bobbing near the far orange buoy
the faintest white form of a vertical buoy just off the big beach — as I swam towards it, I could see the form hovering underwater
my fingers going slightly numb, my right shoulder burning near the end of the second loop
wordle challenge
5 tries: wrest / cribs / spank / souls / SHYLY
WREST
For the wrest of the day I will put a w first in words that begin with r. I didn’t have to wrest the answer from her; she told me willingly.
from Lucky Day Still/ David Rivard Lucky day still spent wrestling the private problems and obsessions encountered first in your youth but played out now within the spectacle of public aging (tho, strangely, as you age you feel less & less seen by the young, a citizen active in frequencies of light waves increasingly invisible—not even boring to 15-year-olds).
CRIBS
MTV Cribs — this is where the magic happens…. crib sheet cribbage wars scribble caribous (verb) to confine
Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves.
And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.
SHYLY
Slowly shyly the way into the words appears —
the problem of finitude (wrestling with death) constrained in the awareness of impending non-existence (cribbed) the sharp shock of what used to be (spank) but is no more (when great souls die)
Ran on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road heading south, then down to the winchell trail for the way back. A good run where I mostly ran slow with a few stretches of fast.
Listened to the water dripping, the cars gently whooshing, giant mowing machines whirring on the way south and for most of the winchell trail north. Put in Lizzo for the last mile.
9 Things I Noticed
the water was blue when I had a clear view and a blinding, shining white through the gaps in the trees
another friendly exchange and shift from I to You when I thanked a pedestrian for moving over for me: Thank you! You’re welcome!
couldn’t hear the water dripping below 42nd because of the dizz dizz dizz of a giant machine up above
the same almost fallen branches, leaning over the winchell trail
rowers! never saw them, but heard the coxswain prepping them on what to do in a race
lots of cars steadily and gently moving north on the river road
birds birds birds — didn’t see them, only heard them
wet dirt on the trail — was it dew or did it rain last night?
lots of bikers and walkers — less runners, no roller skiers
A few degrees cooler this morning, but still warm.
I’m listening to a very (too?) long audio book right now and I’m trying to finish it before it’s due back at the library in 7 days — The Covenant of Water, 31 hours. I decided to listen to it for the first half of my run. Sometimes I like listening to audio books while I run, not so much today. My mind kept wandering and I had trouble paying attention to the story. Plus, because I had headphones on, I felt disconnected from the gorge and the trail.
Even in my distracted state I still managed to notice a few things:
10 Things I Noticed
Mr. Walker Sitter was perched on his walker just above 42nd street ravine
the falls roaring gushing rushing down the limestone
more bikers than walkers or runners on the trail
the surreys lined up, ready to take over the trails
an older woman, biking, calling back to some other bikers, did I miss the turn-off? Oh, here it is!
a sprinkler watering the flowers near the fountain which no longer works and the low limestone wall with “Song of Hiawatha” etched on its top
the dirt trail leading into the small wood on the hill up to ford parkway, looking both inviting and buggy
approaching a guy who had been running when I saw him far ahead of me, but now was walking. Right before I reached him, he started running again
a big black something on the ground — an oversized glove? a hat? a knee brace? I couldn’t tell
most of the dirt on the trail between edmund and the river road was tightly packed, but a few stretches where loose and sandy
Wordle Challenge
5 tries: tough/wheat/haste/hated/hater
Nap-Hater
Middle-aged, it’s tough to watch wheat gently waving in the wind without haste and not want to slow down yourself but as a kid I hated anything slow — snails, sermons, that quiet time right after lunch when you were supposed to be still on your cot. Wedged between other writhing bodies all of us desperate to be done with this dark room we felt the dripping of each second and despised it.
Today’s Water: Water Sign :: Cancer
In comes and goes in waves, but today I’m not worried that I have cancer. This irrational and rational fear took hold of me a few years ago and it’s been hard to shake, especially as I witness family and friends struggle with and die from it. Yesterday I read about a friend’s ovarian cancer and the terrible life-extending drugs she has to keep taking post-chemo to prevent the cancer from coming back. They cost $24,000 a month. Her insurance covers it, but what if it didn’t? What would she do? Would my shitty insurance cover these costs, if I had cancer?
Ode to Money, or Patient Appealing Health Insurance for Denial of Coverage/ Katie Farris
I don’t know what money is. Moss? The mink’s crescent teeth? Or maybe money is the morning I woke at dawn to wander past the orange blossoms, a smell with four dimensions, touching me through time. Is that
currency?
My uncle, Christopher Marlowe, mad, drank the visions until he died. You bury treasure.
To determine a family’s net value, make a list of assets, then subtract liabilities. Asset: Geraldine Fox’s 1948 degree in chemistry. Liability: William Marlowe’s propensity for hurting his daughter. Am I doing this right? Is this
the gold standard?
Asset: seeing light that isn’t there, like a ship passing through the narrow harbors of my eyes, scraping— is burying treasure a cash transaction?
I once buried a half- decayed skunk I fished from my Uncle Christopher’s garbage can, covered in bees. X marks the spot.
In sum: perhaps the moon’s an insurance adjuster.
America’s optimistic to dye its money green. Leaves are green because of chlorophyll, which is the machine that turns sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide into leaf, stem, and root. All the little blades of grass left behind by the lawn mower like Civil War soldiers. Same as cash.
A heavy-bodied moth
caught between glass and screen casts its shadow down into the palm of my hand: one dark coin.
I’ve been thinking about buying and reading Katie Farris’s collection about her breast cancer, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive, even before it came out in April. Maybe I should get it and read it this summer?
3.1 miles trestle turn around 72 degrees dew point: 61
Ran with Scott this morning. Another warm, thick, still morning. We followed Scott’s getting-back-into-running training plan: run 15 minutes, walk 2, run 15 minutes. Our walk started right by the trestle. My left hip felt a little stiff, my left knee harder to lift at the beginning, but I mostly felt fine. My big right toe isn’t hurting anymore.
10 Things I Noticed
birds, 1: several little birds on the path, reluctant to fly away, forcing a biker to slow down
birds, 2: more of these little birds — sparrows? finches? — stopped right in front of me a few minutes later
the white bike — a memorial for some biker killed by a car years ago — hanging upsdie down under the trestle
green green green
cottonwood fuzz lining the sides of the path, a pale green, looking like corroded copper to me
a few puddles of water near the sidewalk edges — did it rain last night, or had nearby grass been watered?
hi dave! hi sara! hi scott! I was impressed that Dave the Daily Walker remembered Scott’s name, so was he
only 1 or 2 small rocks stacked on the ancient boulder
the cracks in the paved trail that they just redid 2 years ago are spreading and deepening, splitting the trail in two. I made note of a small hole that I’ll need to remember to avoid next time I run this way
a woman in a BRIGHT pink shirt and BRIGHT green pants — wow! I wonder if this is the same woman in the BRIGHT pink pants the other day?
No bugs, no roller skiers, no view of the river. No music, no packs of runners, no irritating encounters. No rowers, no overheard conversations, no drumming woodpeckers.
today’s wordle challenge
3 tries / wrong place SCOUT
Here a few “poems” with these words:
They call her wrong place scout because she always seems to find the place no one was looking for (or wanted).
wrong place scout
I was in the wrong place but it must have been the right time I had found the wrong camp but stumbled on the right line I was near the wrong guy but he must have said the right words He led me through the wrong door but out into the right world.
There is no wrong place to be when you are scouting mystery.
I forgot about the dark bird I saw rooting in the hydrangeas looking like it landed in the wrong place until today when I learned about the purple martin scout and decided that that was what it was.
Even though the finished products of this wordle challenge aren’t the greatest, the experiment was fun to do. I thought about different meanings of scout and listened to/studied the lyrics of Dr. John’s “Right Place, Wrong Time.” I also learned about purple martins and remembered a strange bird I watched in my back yard the other day. Bonus: I became aware of the existence of “Minnesota’s Largest Purple Martin House” in Audubon, Minnesota. Wow.
Here’s a water poem that is by one of my favorite poets and will be etched on NASA’s Europa clipper as it travels to study one of Jupiter’s moons:
Hot, thick, very poor air quality. There’s a warning about the bad air until midnight: “fine particle pollution” from wild fires in Quebec. I don’t think it really bothered me as I ran.
I ran south on the dirt trail in the grass between edmund and the river road, crossed over to the trail, then headed down to the southern entrance of the Winchell Trail. Ran north until 38th, took the steps up, returned to trail past the ravine, through the tunnel of trees, then crossed over the edmund at 33rd.
Listened to cars whooshing by, kids heading to school, water sprinkling out of the sewer pipe for the first 2 miles. Listened to a Bruno Mars playlist for the last mile.
Before the run, I was thinking about water and The Odyssey — I was reading it all weekend — and how much Odysseus and his men ache for home. And I was imagining how restless they’ll be if and when they get home and stay for too long. Restlessness and staying reminded me of a few things:
Mary Oliver’s restless water and her satisfied stones in The Leaf and the Cloud:
It is the nature of stone to be satisfied. It is the nature of water to want to be somewhere else.
Ennui The latest trend among those trapped in a post-pandemic plane is to neigh with horsey impatience softly scream into a skein of restlessness
The Horse Girls trending: on the plane between child and young adult wild neigh and reserved whinny they skein obsessions out of their edgy ennui OR out of their ennui
So, I started the run with all of these thoughts still lingering. Within a mile, I started thinking more about restlessness and water. At the end of the run, I pulled out my smart phone and recorded some of those thoughts:
june 5, 2023
transcript: June 5. Just finished my 2 trails run, a 5K. Today I was thinking about restlessness and water and the idea that usually water is restless, constantly moving. But today, in this thick humid morning with haze and poor air quality, it is everything else that is restless, and the water that refuses to move. The river stills. The sweat hovers on my chin, refusing to fall, to bring relief. We are restless: the cars, impatient, as they move past me on the road. Even my legs, as I try to run down hills, refuse to move with any speed. Contrast between the restless and the still.
I remember looking at the river and seeing haze. The only water that was moving at all was the water steadily dripping out of the sewer pipe.
Another thing I just remembered from before my run: I briefly thought about a vision poem I encountered last week and have wanted to post here. Today’s the day!
Because my husband is going slowly blind, the lights in our house have motion sensors. As I walk through the rooms I am the star of the show, lit one-by-one by spotlights as I go. Desiring the dark, I must sit motionless. One itch, one twitch, and up come the houselights, rendering me suddenly—again—audience of me.
Tonight we are sitting in the dark beside the Christmas tree. Its strands of blinking lights remind my husband of his childhood, when he could see. I find it funny they don’t remind him of the blinking lights that ring the edges of his eye field, proof of his rods and cones one-by-one dying. Not ha-ha funny, the other kind.
There are things ha-ha funny about going blind though. Like that time he walked wearing a three-piece wool suit into the deep end of a swimming pool in a hotel in Italy. I wasn’t there—he told me later. I was at home, turning lights on and off through only my anxious pacing.
Sitting by the Christmas tree, I squeeze my husband’s hand—squeeze and release, squeeze and release—my hand blinking in his. It’s such a tiny motion the sensors don’t detect it. Someday my husband will sit in the dark and wave his arms wildly and still be in the dark. One-by-one every- thing happens, every disappearance appears.
Ran with Scott. Another hot, sunny morning. After a few minutes of warming up, I recited the latest poem I memorized for my list of 100 poems: Tony Hoagland’s “Summer Studies.” Later, near the end of the run, I recited 2 Emily Dickinson poems, “I felt a cleaving in my Mind” and “Hope is a thing with feathers.” Reciting the poems, then talking about them a little, helped distract us from our sweaty effort.
The big event of the run that Scott wanted to make sure I mentioned was the set-to between a small pileated woodpecker and a squirrel. We heard the squeak of a bird, then some rustling of leaves, then I saw a furry darting streak in the tree. Who won, I wonder? And why were they fighting?
Other bird events: A female cardinal flew out in front of Scott just as he was running around a tree ahead of me. I saw him flinch, but not the whirr of the brown bird in flight. A band or scold or screech of blue jays shrieked out across the grass between edmund and the river road, which prompted us to have a conversation about how much better crows are then blue jays. No turkeys in turkey hollow.
We ran past the house on edmund that posts a poem in the front window. A new one about sunflowers! I can’t remember what it’s called, or who wrote it. I’ll just have to run by the house again to figure it out. I don’t have strong opinions about sunflowers. Maybe that’s because I hardly ever see them.
Looking for water poems, I found something else, beside a water poem:
After our run, walking Delia the dog, Scott and I talked about Wordle, which I just recently started playing. I told him about my morning routine: a quick look at Facebook, then re-memorize a few poems, read the poem of the day at 3 poetry sites, then wordle. He suggested I try a new experiment: write a poem every day for a month inspired by the wordle that day:
The number of lines = the number of tries I have to make Each line must include the word that I guessed possible bonus = the theme of the poem is the correct word
Today: 4 tries: farce blame beads beast
What a farce to blame the sun for the beads on your brow you, beast, were born to sweat.
I don’t really like this, but it’s a start. Maybe I’ll add one more rule: a 5 minute time limit?