Tag: swim

feb 6/SWIM

2 miles
ywca pool

Met RJP at the pool again after she was done with her classes. Added in about 1000 yards of swimming with the pull buoy. I tried reciting the poem I memorized yesterday — Linda Pastan’s “Vertical” — while I swam, but it was difficult. I couldn’t sync up the lines with my breathing rhythms. I don’t think I was ever able to recite the whole thing, only the first bit: “Perhaps the purpose of leaves is to conceal the verticality of trees which we notice in December as if for the first time: row after row of dark forms yearning upwards.”

10 Things

  1. cloudy water, at least as much, maybe more?, crud than the last time I swam: floating hairballs, some strange stain on the wall tiles in my lane
  2. when I got in the pool, there was only one other swimmer. More people came, then left. At one point, most of the lanes were filled, but it was never too crowded
  3. I could see that a storm was moving in by how the pool floor kept getting darker then lighter as the thickening clouds moved past the sun
  4. heard a click underwater several times. Decided it was caused by the swimmer next to me — her knee of elbow clicking as she did the breaststroke
  5. watching my daughter swimming freestyle underwater — looking strong and serious. Once as I passed her, I kept my head below looking over at her until she looked back
  6. doing my starting ritual of pushing off and them swimming underwater until I reached the blue line and the end of the shallow water, I held my arms out straight in front of me, almost squeezing my ears. I felt like I could have stayed underwater until I reached the wall
  7. the muscle I felt most while I was swimming today was my calf, and especially as I kicked harder during my first lap. It wasn’t sore, and it didn’t hurt, I just felt it more
  8. following behind my daughter, trying to stay slow and never pass her, I started my flip turn then stayed at the wall, suspended underwater
  9. worked on my flip turn, trying to flip with my core, and not my arms
  10. every so often, when the sun came out from behind the clouds, I saw a circle of light on the pool floor

Yesterday I posted a poem from Linda Pastan that describes a sparrow as “brief as a haiku.” That made me think of the first poem in her final collection, Almost an Elegy:

Memory of a Bird/ Linda Pastan

Paul Klee, watercolor and pencil on paper

What is left is a beak,
a wing,
a sense of feathers,

the rest lost
in a pointillist blur of tiny
rectangles.

The bird has flown,
leaving behind
an absence.

This is the very
essence
of flight—a bird

so swift
that only memory
can capture it.

All of this quick movement and the brevity of the bird in flight, also made me think of another poem by Pastan I discovered today:

The Birds/ Linda Pastan

are heading south, pulled
by a compass in the genes.
They are not fooled
by this odd November summer,
though we stand in our doorways
wearing cotton dresses.
We are watching them

as they swoop and gather—
the shadow of wings
falls over the heart.
When they rustle among
the empty branches, the trees
must think their lost leaves
have come back.

The birds are heading south,
instinct is the oldest story.
They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Because of my interest in peripheral vision and what it means to see movement (as opposed to sharp, fixed details), I’m always trying to find poems that offer details and descriptions of movement. I love how much Pastan focuses on how the birds move — they swoop and gather, cast wing shadows, rustle like leaves. She doesn’t offer any descriptions of their color, size, or sound. She doesn’t even name them. I don’t miss those details. The description of their movement is enough.

I love all of this poem, but today, especially this:

They fly over their doubles,
the mute weathervanes,
teaching all of us
with their tailfeathers
the true north.

Their doubles, the mute weathervanes? Tailfeathers as teachers? So good!

feb 2/SWIM

1.2 miles
ywca pool

Met my almost 17 year-old daughter at the pool and then we swam together. She’s swimming for online gym. I love swimming with my kids. This summer I swam at the lake with my 19 year-old son, now I get to swim at the pool with my daughter. I try to stay chill and not scare them with my enthusiasm, but it’s difficult.

Tried using a pull buoy for the first time in a few years. So much easier to breath when my body is higher up on the water. I should probably find some more drills to help with keeping me higher.

A few laps in I noticed an oval of bright light on the pool floor, not near the windowed wall, but the windowless one. A strange, beautiful thing to see.

I pushed off the wall underwater for my first lap ritual and swam just above the pool bottom. Noticed a black thread or hair floating right below my nose. A strange, ugly thing to see. Lots of crud in the water this afternoon. Nothing big or too gross, but small bits of something that made the water cloudy.

Later in the swim, I noticed lines of light on the bottom close to the window. Remembered to look up above the water as I flipped at the wall. Today above the surface looked pink to me. Forgot to notice the moving shadows on the pool floor.

At the beginning of the swim, when there was only one other person in the water, I heard some splashing or sloshing underwater. Was it from me? I don’t think so.

Later, after the swim, in the hot tub with Scott, I noticed another woman sitting in the corner, miming freestyle strokes in the hot water.

Also in the hot tub: crouching down, my chin just above the surface, I watched the light catch the spray of water made by one of the jets, making the spray look like fizz from my favorite grapefruit seltzer. Below, the jet made the water look like swirling smoke.

not a cabinet of curiosities

Talked to Scott about my class and my week on wonder as curiosity, which is coming up in a few weeks. There’s a quote by Thoreau that I’m interested in challenging. Well, maybe not challenging, but imagining curiosity against?

[24] In winter, nature is a cabinet of curiosities, full of dried specimens, in their natural order and position.

A Winter Walk/ Thoreau

Thoreau is describing a particular type of western scientific attention: study the natural world as individual things (specimens) to be isolated, classified, and categorized. To learn about, not from. To see non-human beings only as objects, never subjects.

I want to contrast this cabinet of curiosities with Robin Wall Kimmerer and her expanded understanding of knowing:

I would describe my journey as a circle, moving out into academia but coming back to the way that I knew plants as a child. I grew up in a rural area much like where we’re sitting today, and I was interacting every day with plants in the garden, the woods, or the wetlands. I couldn’t go outside without being surprised and amazed by some small green life. I suppose it was their great diversity of form that first drew my interest: that on a small patch of ground there could be so many different ways to exist. Each plant seemed to have its own sense of self, yet they fit together as a community. And each had a home, a place where I knew I could find it. This inspired my curiosity.

From as far back as I can remember, I had this notion of plants as companions and teachers, neighbors and friends. Then, when I went to college, a shift occurred for me. As an aspiring botany major, I was pressured to adopt the scientific worldview; to conceive of these living beings as mere objects; to ask not, “Who are you?” but, “How does it work?” This was a real challenge for me. But I was madly in love with plants, so I worked hard to accommodate myself to this new approach.

Later in my career, after I’d gotten my PhD and started teaching, I was invited to sit among indigenous knowledge holders who understood plants as beings with their own songs and sensibilities. In their presence, and in the presence of the plants themselves, I woke from the sleep I’d fallen into. I was reminded of what I’d always known in my core: that my primary relationship with plants was one of apprenticeship. I’m learning from plants, as opposed to only learning about them.

I was especially moved by an elderly Diné woman who told the biographies of each plant in her valley: its gifts, its responsibilities, its history, and its relationships — both friendships and animosities. As a scientist I had learned only about plants’ physical attributes. Her stories reminded me of how I had encountered plants as a young person. That’s why I say I’m coming full circle after all these years — because I’m able to stop speaking of plants as objects.

2 Ways of Knowing/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

I’m struggling to turn all of my thoughts about curiosity and wonder into a pithy, coherent statement for a lecture. So much time spent circling around these ideas. Frustrating.

jan 29/SWIM

2 miles
ywca pool

Was planning to run on the track, but when we got to the y I realized I had forgotten my shoes and a running shirt. Oops. Luckily I remembered my swimming stuff and that the pool wasn’t too crowded. I’m fine sharing a lane with someone, but it’s difficult for me to circle swim. Sometimes, it’s hard to see other people when I have to pass them because of my vision.

Because I like making note of my vision challenges, both to share them with others and to document them for myself, I’ll offer three from today at the Y:

one: checking for an open lane. I looked as carefully as I could to see if there was an empty lane. When I saw what I thought was one, I checked it twice more to be sure. It looked empty to me. I got in, was adjusting my goggles, and suddenly a swimmer came from behind in my lane and pushed off the wall. This lane was not empty. It was no big deal, and the swimmer was happy to share a lane, but it’s frustrating to try carefully to see something and not be able to. Of course, this could happen to anyone when you’re not paying attention, but I was paying attention and this isn’t the first time this has happened. I’m getting better at not letting it bother me too much or remind me of what I’m losing.

two: finding my locker. I don’t always use the same locker in the locker room, and sometimes I don’t stop to memorize where it is. Luckily the Y switched from locks, where you bring your own combination lock, to keys with a shiny safety pin and the number of the locker attached. When I’m done swimming and I head to my locker, I stop for a minute to stand still and study the key, slowly making out the number on it. Then I carefully scan the lockers until I find mine. Like the empty lane that wasn’t, my need to study my locker key isn’t that big of a deal. But, it has been an adjustment, to slow down this much, and to look to others like I don’t know what I’m doing or that I need help. I don’t mind asking for help when I need it, but I find it stressful to be offered help when I don’t.

three: feeling older than I am. At the sink before swimming, I heard a grandmother talking with a young kid (her granddaughter, I assume): can you be my eyes for me and get that? My eyes aren’t working well today. I say these words to my daughter at least several times a week, which doesn’t bother me. I’m glad to have the help, but I’m 48, which is really young to have the eyes of someone in their late 70s or 80s.

All three of these challenges aren’t big, but they’ve required lots of adjustments and accommodations and extra effort. I don’t mind doing them as long as I can swim. And what a great swim it was! I felt strong and relaxed and almost in a dream floating above the pool floor shimmering with shadows. The mysterious white thing that I’d wondered about a few days ago was gone. Now, in another lane, something else — a string? strands of hair? — were hovering a foot above the bottom. The woman I was sharing a lane with alternated between freestyle, backstroke, and an extra froggy breaststroke. Near the end of the swim, a very fast swimmer arrived in the lane next to me. So much fun to watch him fly by and shoot like a rocket off the wall after a flip turn! Once as he approached, after lapping me at least twice, I kept my head underwater longer so I could watch his fast flip turn.

a moment of sound

Sometimes when it’s this cold outside (feels like -8), it’s harder to get outside for a walk. So instead, I go outside for a minute or two — a moment — and record a moment of sound. Today’s moment was at 1:30 pm in my sunny backyard. My favorite part: the wind chimes, the chirping bird, and that crunchy snow!

jan 29, 2023 / 1 pm / backyard

jan 26/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool
outdoor temp: 14 degrees

Swim! I wouldn’t have minded running in the cold today. It’s sunny and bright. But I’m trying to swim at least once a week. Partly because I love swimming, partly because it feels good after a few hard runs on the rough paths. Today’s swim was wonderful. Only one other person in the pool. The sun was streaming in the big windows and making the whole pool floor dance with shadows.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. the woman next to me was wearing a swim cap that looked like it was from open swim. I wanted to ask her, but we were never stopped at the same time
  2. she was in a black suit — I think it was a tri suit. She swam breaststroke and freestyle and also ran in the deep end, her legs pedaling under the water
  3. there was something big and white on the pool floor, right on the part that slants down — what was it? I couldn’t tell*
  4. after the woman next to me left, I was alone in the pool for most of the time
  5. shadows on the pool floor, 1: faint, from the trees outside, flickering gently
  6. shadows on the pool floor, 2: a sharp, long cylinder of darkness — the lane line
  7. shadows on the pool floor, 3: the sun brightened and more dancing shadows with a long strip of light
  8. shadows on the pool floor, 4: in the lane next to me, a small ball of light — the opposite of a shadow, glowing. In the shallow end of the pool. I could see it from the far end after finishing my flip turn
  9. colors noticed: orange (of course), blue, a little green, yellow (maybe?) near the door to the locker room
  10. not always, but sometimes, I noticed the small bubbles my hands made as they pierced the water

*the white thing on the bottom was very distracting. What is it? I kept looking down, trying to study it, but with my bad eyes, I didn’t have a chance. It was almost the size of my fist. I thought about swimming down and picking it up. Gross! I decided one of the kids on the Otter’s swim team would probably pick it up during practice this afternoon.

The only one in the pool, nearly submerged for 45 minutes, I felt alone and not alone:

Alone and Not Alone/ Carl Sandburg

There must be a place
a room and a sanctuary
set apart for silence
for shadows and roses
holding aware in walls
the sea and its secrets
gong clamor gone still
in a long deep sea-wash
aware always of gongs
vanishing before shadows
of roses repeating themes
of ferns standing still
till wind blows over them:
great hunger may bring these
into one little room
set apart for silence

I found this poem last week and have been wondering when to post it. Today was the day. I like Carl Sandburg and his space for shadows, his sea and its secrets, his one little room set apart for silence!

jan 19/SWIM

1.6 miles
ywca pool
outside: snowing (2+ inches)
31 degrees

Hooray for another swim. Such a good feeling to be moving through the water. Maybe it was because it was still snowing, but the pool was almost empty. Excellent. Mostly, I swam continuous 200s, breathing 3/4/5/6 by 50s. Starting the second mile, I tried something new, partly as a way to stretch my legs/bend my knees without stopping: I added in an occasional 25 of breaststroke. It seemed to work well.

dancing shadows

About 1000 yards in, I noticed the pool floor was moving slightly. I think it was the faint shadows of the snowflakes falling* on the other side of the big windows that stretch across the one side of the building. It made everything feel magical and dreamy and strange.

*Actually, when I was swimming, I thought the shadows were from the trees. It wasn’t until I was writing this entry, right now, that I realized it was probably the falling snow making the dancing shadows. Very cool. I think if I had realized that it was the snow, the whole experience of swimming would have felt even stranger and dreamier.

In addition to the moving shadows, I saw one solid shadow line stretching the length of the pool — a shadow of the lane line. Where was that shadow coming from? The bright ceiling light or the light from the snowy sky?

Seeing these shadows and continuing to pay attention to them, shifted me into a different state of being, one that was dreamier and surreal, and where I rethought what was possible or impossible. I imagined the water as air that I was swimming through. When I reached the deep end and looked down at the pool floor below me, I imagined that I was flying high above the ground through empty space. How fun and distracting. I forgot how many flip turns I had done, how many laps I still wanted to do.

Some other things I noticed:

  1. the sloshing of the water (below)
  2. the loud voices of some women talking and joking (above)
  3. the water running guy, doing running drills in the shallow end, then pushing off and vigorously kicking in the deep end, then finishing with some freestyle
  4. everything seemed blue below
  5. everything orange above
  6. the water was not completely clear, but wasn’t that cloudy either
  7. no harsh chlorine feeling
  8. I swam in lane 2, no one ever swam in lane 3, running dude was in lane 5
  9. nothing floating in the water, only random bits of something on the pool floor
  10. little bubbles in front of me as I sliced through the water and a slight spray as I lifted my elbow up into the air

Remembered reading a description of swim practice and the pool early in the morning, thick with a chlorine haze, in Leanne Shapton’s Swimming Lessons. Thought it might be nice to collect a few pool descriptions. Also thought about composing some more swimming breathing poems, where syllables match my breaths: 3/4/5/6.

Happy Birthday, Edgar Allen Poe (b. Jan 19, 1809)

I randomly searched, “Edgar Allen Poe swimming” and discovered that he was a swimmer! I had no idea. I found a promising article, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast,” but it was beyond a paywall so I couldn’t read it. Then I found this bit of information on a listicle about him:

Poe was a big fan of the long walk. He took many solitary strolls over High Bridge in the Bronx in 1847, after his wife Virginia died. There, staring up at the stars, he would conceive his lengthy cosmic prose poem, Eureka. But he also liked rowing and swimming: as a young lad, he was renowned among his friends for swimming six miles upriver in the Charles River in Virginia, and when he moved to New York City (for the second time) in 1844, one of his first acts was to row a skiff up the East River, all the way up past Roosevelt Island.

sidenote: I want to write a poem titled, “Edgar Allen Poe — Exercise Enthusiast”!

jan 12/SWIM

1.5 miles
ywca pool

Another swim this week! Noticed in the locker room that a few more people were wearing masks. Should I wear one? Before my swim, a strange sound: a woman walking into the shower area fully clothed, including sneakers that were clicking and clopping like she had yaktrax on. Did she? She went into a shower stall to find the stuff she’d left behind.

A nice swim. My googles leaked a few times, so did my nose plug. Did continuous 200s with my hypoxic breathing (3/4/5/6). Near the end, I turned it into 2 400s and changed my breathing every 100 instead of 50.

Three things I noticed:

1 — looking up at the flip turns

During one flip turn at the far wall, I looked up from underwater as I turned. In a flip turn, as you head into the wall you flip on your back underwater, then twist back on your stomach as you push off the wall (at least I do). I looked up while I was on my back, just before I pushed off. I noticed a yellowish-orangish glow. The lights from above water. It looked so cool that I made sure to look up several more times as I flipped. I couldn’t see anything but bright lights, which was a nice contrast to the pale blue of being underwater.

2 — gurgle, slosh, squeak

In a few of my recent log entries about pool swimming, I’ve mentioned that I didn’t hear anything but an occasional squeak from my nose plug. For a few laps today, I decided to listen. I heard some gurgling, a lot of sloshing as the water washed over my head, and a few squeaks from my nose plug. Nothing too exciting, but sound, always there. I guess I usually tune it out.

3 — crud on the pool floor

In addition to the usual specks of junk on the tiles, there was another chunk of white something on one tile, and some fuzzy brown things floating near the bottom of the lane next to me. Sometimes when I’m swimming, I think I see a thing floating off to the side. I check: it seems like nothing. Maybe it is nothing, or the trick of the light, and maybe it is something, some small bit of visual data sent to my brain that my eyes barely saw.

This week, I’ve been working on the class I’m teaching this winter about developing a practice of noticing and wonder and turning it into better words. Yesterday and today, I’ve focused on wonder as delight and curiosity. In the midst of this, my sister sent me a link to an article about the value of being in awe. Excellent. I enjoyed the article and I’m always excited when ideas about wonder, being open, and practicing awe are spread, and yet there’s something about the discussion that bothered me, something that seemed to be missing. Instead of dissecting the article and cutting down the things I didn’t like about it, which I used to do in my past life as an academic, I’d like to offer an expansion to one of the recommendations for how to learn to be in awe:

Practice mindfulness.

Distraction, Dr. Keltner said, is an enemy of awe. It impedes focus‌, which is essential for achieving awe‌.

“We cultivate awe through interest and curiosity,” Ms. Salzberg said. “And if we’re distracted too much, we’re not really paying attention.”

Mindfulness helps us focus‌ and lessens the power of distractions. “If you work on mindfulness, awe will come.” And ‌some studies show‌ that people who are meditating and praying also experience more awe.

“Awe has a lot of the same neurophysiology of deep contemplation,” Dr. Keltner said. “Meditating, reflecting, going on a pilgrimage.”

So spending time slowing down, breathing ‌deeply and reflecting — on top of their own benefits — have the added advantage of priming us for awe.

In this section, mindfulness seems to be loosely defined as focusing attention on something, being curious about it — the key here is IT. What you’re paying attention to is the object for you (the subject) and your focused gaze. What if this idea of paying attention (and being present to the world, which is another slogan for mindfulness) was reciprocal with the world? What if the world wasn’t the object, but subject or subjects? What if the value of being in awe was not only about confronting the vastness of the world beyond each of us as individuals, but about opening us up to experience how we are connected to/entangled with the world? I am pretty sure that what I’m trying to say doesn’t make sense to anyone else but me right now. That’s fine. Instead of spending the rest of the afternoon trying to make it intelligible (which is something else I would have done in my former academic life), I’ll offer up a poem that I found by searching, “mindfulness” on the Poetry Foundation site. I think this poem speaks to an expansion of what mindfulness could/can be as a creative, imaginative, reciprocal practice — a practice of not just focusing, but looking, seeing, beholding (see Ross Gay here). It’s that eye at the end — not only expanding what noticing is, but (I think, at least) speaking to the eye in Elizabeth Bishop’s poem about the fish. See my jul 7, 2021 entry for more of a discussion of fish eyes and beholding.

Pot of Gold/ Ingrid Wendt

For Elizabeth Bishop, 1911–1979, with gratitude

We talk, you and  I, of  mindfulness, here in the world above
          water, but what’s below is watchfulness,
                     pure and simple: creatures trying not to be eaten,
          creatures relentlessly prowling or simply waiting for meals to
 
cruise on by. Except maybe parrotfish.
          Ever industrious, ever in motion, it’s hard to find one not
                     chomping on Yucatán limestone reefs. What we see as
          dead, bleached coral or crusted limestone shelves, for them

is re-embodied Fish Delight. Which means I find them by
          eavesdropping. Ah, those castanet choruses clicking, clacking,
                     a coven of  promises leading me on until there:
          below my mask and snorkel, a dozen or more upside-down

Princesses sway as one, in their pink and blue checkerboard
          gowns, their long, long dorsal crowns
                     cobalt-striped, and turquoise, and fuchsia—useless—
          no Prince to be found, not even in fish identification books,

just me and my ardor. Bewitched, each day I hang, transfixed,
          above them in a slightly different
                     place in that once-pristine, once-undiscovered Yal-Ku lagoon,
          its cradling mix of salt and fresh water

letting me hold myself, and time, and the rest of the world
          stock still. Sometimes I’m even luckier: out of the deepest
                     shadows (as out of my book) ventures
          the shy Midnight Parrot, a constellation of neon blue

mosaic scrawled on its head, its body—two feet long—
          as dark as blue can get and still
                     not be black, its parrot beak (that family
          trait) munching rocks and shitting sand. Puffs of it,

great big clouds of  it, murking the water until
          finally settling down
                     (it’s how, some scientists
          say, sandy floors of  tropical reefs are born).

But had I dared the slightest move, my Midnight
          would have, just like that, become Dawn.
                     And so it could have been, as well, with that one
          tremendous fish, secretive, off at the edge, among

the maze of  boulders piled on boulders, broken sandstone
          columns, deep channels between them, there—
                     in a shaft of  sun, the end of all my seeking
          and what I hadn’t known I’d sought—three feet long, at least

and all alone, clown-sized lips and eyelids the brightest possible aqua
          blue in an orange-gold face,
                     the way a child might rub its mother’s most dramatic
          eye shadow onto the most unlikely places:

forehead, cheeks, even the outermost edges of  every single
          emerald-green fin, even the edge of  the deep red tail, its tips
                     turned up at the corners—that tremendous fish was eating
          nothing, that fish wasn’t moving at all, except it turned its head

and one tremendous eye caught mine. And held it. Taut.
          Oh, I almost stopped
                     breathing. And the fish stopped
          everything, too, except for slowly pulsing gills—opening,

closing, opening, closing—in sync with my own
          pounding heart. Was I
                     the watcher or the watched? How long did we stay
          like that, hooked to one another, held in water’s palm,

as through my every cell, over and over, rang Rainbow, unstoppable
          Rainbow, until I had no beginning, I had no end,
                     Rainbow I was and happily would
          be still, had not a wayward cloud blundered in.

jan 9/SWIM

1.6 miles
ywca pool

Finally able to get back to the pool! It felt good to swim, and tiring. My googles kept leaking and I had trouble not stopping to fix them. Now my eyes are sore. Still, always grateful to be able to swim.

Tried a new set: 6 x 200s, continuous / even 200s breathe every 3/4/5/6 by 50, working on kicking out of the flip turn / odd 200s breathe every 3/4/3/4 by 50s, working on taking at least one stroke out of the flip turn before breathing. The odd 200s were difficult; I like to breathe right away after a flip turn. In the summer, there are no flip turns, which I prefer, so I don’t have to worry about when I breathe.

Split a lane with a woman I’ve swam next to before. I think she has the same green and black TYR suit I wore a few years ago. She’s a strong swimmer, but not that fast. Today she swam freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke. Sometimes she had booties on her feet. Other times she walked/marched/ran the part of the lap in the shallower end.

A man in a black shirt and black swim trunks swam on the other side of me. He was doing underwater running drills in the shallow end with a lot of running backwards. I wonder if we was coming back from an injury or just cross-training. When he got to the deep end, he swam freestyle and breaststroke. At one point I stopped to drink some water and I realized that he was having a loud, animated conversation with the aqua jogger in the next lane. I had not heard it all as I was swimming. When I started swimming again, I could see he was talking — something about how he was moving underwater, his legs, how his body was positioned — but I still couldn’t hear he was talking. Strange, but not strange.

As always, I noticed the orange of the signs on the pool deck, the orange of Scott’s swim trunks.

Noticed a few cracks or bits of crud stuck to the tiles at the bottom of the pool as I swam above them. Thought about the wonderful book, The Swimmers, and the story in it about the mysterious cracks that began appearing in the basement pool.

Did I think about anything else? This is tiring. My feet/legs feel like rudders. Is Scott standing at the end of my lane? Is this swimmer/runner next to me trying to race? How can I balance supporting my daughter when she’s anxious and needs to stop doing things, with holding her accountable and not letting her stop doing everything? Why are my goggles leaking? That’s all I remember.

Found this delightful poem by Paige Lewis this morning:

I’m not Faking My Astonishment, Honest/ Paige Lewis

Looking out over the cliff, we’re overwhelmed 
by a sky that seems to heap danger upon us. We 
end up staring at a single white fluff in the air— 
feather, fur, dandelion puff—we don’t care 
to define it. The relief of having something 
to focus our attention. At home, our patio furniture 
unscrews itself under the usual sun. On this trip— 
well, I’m not any sadder, I just have more space 
for my sadness to fill. I don’t want to give 
particulars. A woman huffing up the trail behind 
us says to her hiking partner, It wasn’t my size,
but it was only 9 dollars. And now all I want 
is to see what it is. The future refuses 
to happen, so where else should I turn?

I love the line breaks in this poem and what they do to the meaning– we don’t care/to define it and The future refuses/to happen. I love the line, I don’t want to give/particulars, and And now all I want/is to see what it is. I enjoy overhearing conversations and trying to make sense of them, although I’m not sure I’d like to know what it is; I’d rather imagine what it might be.

dec 30/SWIM

1 mile
ywca pool

Another fun swim with RJP! Today, instead of continuous 200s, I mixed it up with a few faster 50s, 3 100 IMs, and a bunch of 200s. I stopped several times to talk with RJP. At one point, we were swimming together. I kept looking at her underwater, trying to catch her eye. She never noticed.

Anything else? The water was clear. The chlorine didn’t burn my nose. My googles only leaked a little. I don’t remember hearing many sounds — no squeaks from my nose plug. As usual, it was all about orange. Every time I turned my head, I saw orange (the orange signs on the pool deck) or looked for orange (the orange of Scott’s swim trunks).

a new form: the minison

Found a new poetic form that I’d never heard of before: minison. A mini sonnet. The only “rule” is that the poem is 14 letters long. Wow. Discovered The Minison Project and went down a rabbit hole.

rabbit hole trip (14 letters):

begin here: Issue 0 of the zine
go deeper here: The Minison Zine
get your bearings here: The Minison Project
find other examples here: corkwood blossom and the fourteen ghosts
fall further here: Seymour Mayne – Hail: 14 word Sonnets

a few favorite minisons:

fourteen ghosts
between the snow
nonstop farting
about aboutness

a favorite 14 word sonnet:

DECEMBER FLIGHT/ Seymour Maynes

These
starlings
swerve
in
flocks,
turning
their
frantic
wings
towards
the
sun’s
slanting
light.

So much fun! I could see these as being great for playing around with words, experimenting, and finding better words for describing a run or a swim. What could I say about my swim today?

  • butterfly hurts
  • winter swimming
  • flip turn fiasco
  • leaking goggles
  • staring at Rosie
  • I only see orange

When I have more time, I’d like to try these out more. Maybe suggest them in my class?!

dec 28/SWIM

1 mile
ywca pool

Just RJP and me today. We swam for about 1/2 hour. Crowded. We still managed to find a lane to split. At some point, I noticed a line of kids walking the pool deck. Otters swim team. RJP and FWA were on the team for 4 or 5 year. I wonder if it was strange for RJP to see all of them out of the corner of her eye as she kept swimming? I forgot to ask.

update (later that day): I asked RJP and she said that the kids weren’t Otters. They were just learning to swim and had on swimming vests. I asked, were the vests orange? Yes, she said. Of course, orange. Every time I swim at the y, I see orange, always orange. Will that make it into my orange poem? Possibly.

There were 2 women swimming next to us. One of them pushed off the wall for her first lap in a sprint. At least it looked like a sprint. The other woman was a little slower, more measured. 3 lanes across, a guy was swimming fast, doing a hard set. Another woman was walking underwater and stretching her legs.

There was a low buzz from the leisure pool as kids burned off holiday energy.

A good swim. I’d like to figure out how to swim for longer. It’s hard because RJP and Scott don’t want to stay quite as long as me, and they’re the ones who can drive. I’ll figure something out. For now, I’m just happy to be swimming in the winter!

Later, in the car, RJP told me about some older women she overheard in the locker room. They seemed like old friends, she said, and were happily chatting away. I love this about locker rooms. So many people are happy, having just worked out. I’m glad RJP noticed it too.

Here’s a color poem I discovered yesterday. I want to study it to see how it can help me with my color poems.

Against Pink / Dara Yen Elerath

Pink is an unhappy hue, not soothing like cerulean, nor calming like lavender or gray. It is the color of fingernails shorn away, blood dripping from the waxen quick. It is the color of a sunburned arm. The color of harm that lingers on cut shins for days. Pink is not the shade of buttercups or daisies. It is the color of poisonous brugmansia blooms, of poppies that bring on sleep. Pink saturates the face in anger. It is the cast left on a cutting board by a hunk of uncooked meat. Pink, too, is the bittersweet shade of passion subdued, passion that has slipped from burgundy to rose. It is only a tincture of desire and so carries the least conviction. It is the tint that drifts away unnoticed in the night. Be frightened of pink. Do not think it the innocent color of dresses or barrettes, the blush of areolas, strawberry snow cones, or grenadine martinis. Try, for once, to see it rightly. It is frightening. It is the hue of a person’s insides, the color of a womb. That room where life arises. That room where babies are made. Where arms, legs, and heads are created. Eyes, blood, and tiny teeth.

dec 26/RUNSWIM

run: 2.5 miles
ywca track

Went to the Y with Scott and RJP this morning, so I ran there. First time running on the track in 4 or 5 years. Wasn’t too bad — not that crowded. Very quiet. I forgot to count laps so my distance is approximate — my watch never seems to be accurate indoors. Listened to “swim meet motivation” playlist and observed people as I passed them.

10 People I Noticed on the track

  1. a man, sometimes running (slowly), sometimes walking, wearing black gloves — not boxing gloves but also not winter gloves
  2. another guy, pulling a sled at the far corner
  3. a woman running, the key to her locker jangling in her pocket with every step
  4. an older white woman with white hair — was she wearing a pink sweatshirt, or was it blue? I can’t remember now. She walked pretty fast on the track, but was slow on the stairs when I was behind her earlier
  5. RJP, walking — I waved at her every time I passed by. Was it annoying?
  6. someone using rattle ropes, off to the side, furiously lifting them up and down
  7. a woman on an eliptical machine in front of one of the windows
  8. an older white guy with white hair in jeans and a maroon shirt walking around the track
  9. Scott, running
  10. another older white man wearing gray shorts, walking

I don’t remember thinking about much, or noticing anything that interesting, or overhearing some strange conversation.

swim: .25 miles
ywca pool

Only needed a quarter of mile to reach my year goal of 120 miles. Not a very ambitious goal for an entire year of swimming; this goal was mostly for the open swim season. I’m thinking this year, since I’m swimming in the pool, I need to make it a lot bigger. 200 or 300? Not sure. Split a lane with RJP. Crowded today because of the break. All I remember was swimming next to a bunch of swim team kids, feeling sluggish in my first lap underwater, and noticing how the water was clearer than it had been last week.

Found this hybrid journal online. A call for submissions from jan 1-2. I want to submit something — either a mood ring or a colorblind plate, but which? One note: some of the site is almost unreadable for my bad vision. Not nearly enough contrast! Thankfully the journal pdf is easier to read.

I love lists, so I was excited to see this poem in the first issue:

List of Things to Make a List of/ Beth Mulcahy

Make a list of
things that sound like thunder but are not conversations to have
hard conversations to have
what makes conversations hard what makes conversations easy
things to do to get through a hard day
songs that helps with getting through a hard day
people to tell about it what to tell them
people not to tell
ways to prevent it
how to describe it
how to tell people the truth when to tell people the truth things you have said
things you should not have said things you should have said things you should say
to someone specific to anyone
to no one
how to let go of retroactive anxieties
things you used to care about that you don’t anymore things you wish you cared more about
things that used to be different
examples of passive aggressive statements examples of things that are too direct (harsh)
ways of beating around the bush
ways of cutting to the chase
how to calm yourself down
apologies you owe
things you can’t forgive
things you can’t forget
things you should forget
things that are your fault
things that are not your fault
the hardest things you’ve had to do
how to make things easier
for self
for others things you can explain
things that you cannot explain things you can’t describe things to write through
things that are private
people who love you
people who love you and also like you
things you have to offer
things to say to people you love things to say about the weather people you talk to every single day people you don’t know anymore people you loved who are dead ways to let things go
how to keep from having to let go ways to pay attention
things to pay attention to
things to ignore
places to fly away to
ways to be where you are