I swam 3 times this week! Scott and I decided to go early, before the water aerobics class. For almost the entire swim, I had the lane to myself. In the last 5 minutes, a woman (I think) I shared a lane with earlier in the week joined me. I did my usual swim of continuous 200s, broken up by breathing, but I added a twist in the middle: for a 600, or maybe an 800?, I swam faster and kicked harder on the even 50s (when I was breathing every 4 and 6 strokes). It felt fun to go faster.
Today’s pool friends: shimmying shadows on the pool floor, making everything look strange and off-kilter; the older woman in the pale blue suit who is not particularly fast, but is a strong swimmer; a guy in black trunks who was also a strong swimmer; a guy in olive green shorts walking and stretching the length of the shallow end; my squeaky nose plug; a guy in black shorts with a belt on, aqua jogging in the deep end. No fuzz or unsettling floating things.
I tried to think about my echolocation hybrid piece, but I struggled to keep a thought in my head. Instead I counted strokes, and noticed other people, and turned off most of my conscious thought.
Earlier this morning, I quarried another Emily Dickinson poem: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark:
one syllable: We grow Dark when light put holds lamp Her step night then fit meet road those brain not moon sign star come out grope hit tree in but They learn see sight life straight
two syllable: away neighbor witness goodbye moment newness vision erect larger evenings disclose within bravest little sometimes forehead either darkenss alters something adjusts itself midnight almost
three syllable: accustomed uncertain directly
my poem:
Brain alters — gropes the Dark, hits lamp light, and meets night directly. Away moon! Away stars! Goodbye sight. The moment adjusts — they learn larger uncertainties, witness newness within, fit vision into the almost, then meet the evening erect, but not straight.
The other day, I came across a powerful poem by Pat Parker on poems.com. Wow!
One Thanksgiving Day Priscilla Ford got into her Lincoln Continental drove to Virginia Street in downtown Reno and ran over thirty people. Six of them died.
One Thanksgiving Day Priscilla Fordgot into her Lincoln Continental drove to Virginia Street in downtown Reno and ran over thirty people. Six of them died.
. . .
Priscilla Ford got into her Lincoln Continental drove to Virginia Street in downtown Reno and ran over thirty people. Six of them died and now Priscilla Fordwill die. The state of Nevada has judged that it is not crazy for Black folks to kill white folks with their cars. Priscilla Ford will be the second woman executed in Nevada’s history. it’s her highest finish in life.
More swimming! Another day off from running because my glute is sore. I miss winter running, but I’m happy to get the chance to swim again. Today I put a set of 10 x 100 on 1:30 with 15 seconds rest in the middle of my continuous 200s. Was able to get the heart rate up to 166 for some part of it — average for the whole swim was 133.
Pool friends: more shadows, a guy in blue swim trunks next to me, swimming freestyle; a woman in my lane, in blue, swimming almost in the middle of the lane and swimming slow enough that I passed by her almost every other lap; 2 women aqua walking (too leisurely to be called aqua jogging), brainstorming Christmas gift ideas — the woman nearest to me was in a bright blue suit and had strong, graceful legs under the water. Lots of blue.
As always, I did a lot of counting strokes, but not laps, and flip turns. I don’t remember thinking about much. I wondered if my hip/glute would start hurting; it didn’t. I wondered how many laps I had done and when Scott would show up at the end of my lane.
For the last 5 minutes, the pool emptied out. I think there was only one other person swimming with me — they were in the far lane. Friday afternoon is a good time to come, I guess.
Before the swim, I proofread my manuscript — and found a few errors — and discovered that Ken Burns is doing a documentary about Thoreau. The whole thing will be out in March, but a small 22 minute preview is available now on youtube. Nice! I started watching it and thinking about the late 1800s — what was happening here in Minneapolis and St. Paul, what was happening with Laura Ingalls (Scott and I are watching the entire Little House tv series), and what was happening in the country — the Civil War, the Mankato 38, transcendentalism, romanticism, self-reliance, Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Whitman. (I could add the rest of the world here, too). A couple of Christmases ago, I got the annotated Pioneer Girl and I think I’ll try to read it this spring. It’s helpful to put all of these dates together; it makes them seem less in the past, more part of a continuous present.
Ken Burns documentary, coming in March
After my swim, Scott and I were talking in the hot tub about the many layers of dating involved with the Little House stories: 1. the “actual” events, 2. the events as perceived/lived by Laura, 3. her telling of them in Pioneer Girl, 4. her re-telling of them with her daughter Rose in the Little House books, 5. the various generations of kids who have read/been obsessed with the books, 6. and the 1970s television show.
SWOLF
(added a few hours later): I almost forgot to write about SWOLF. It’s a new swimming metric on my Apple watch. Had to look it up because I had no idea what it meant.
SWOLF = swim + golf = measuring your efficiency by combining time for a lap with number of strokes taken (source) .
Just like you want a lower stroke count in golf, a lower number for your SWOLF is good and means your more efficient swimmer. I don’t understand (or play) golf, so I’m not sure how deep the comparison is. Is it just a matter of a lower number is better? Anyway, according to my watch, my SWOLF number is good, which means I am efficient swimmer, which I already knew. I don’t care that much about metrics — maybe because mine are good (not great, but also not bad) and I don’t need to worry about them — but I might try to find some fun ways to experiment with SWOLF in my poetry — as an acronym? A different portmanteau? — and my training — are there sets I can do to decrease my number? I’d like to play around with the idea of efficiency — an efficient machine — and the benefits and harms of increased efficiency, in swimming, in writing, in life.
SWOLF = soon we open like feathers / She wants only laughing fools / Sara washes out last fall / sassy Waynes orchestrate loud frolics / sick waterways often lack freedom / sleet: winter’s other liquid form / some wedding officiants lack feeling / sharks want our love finally / swimming while on life’s feather (FWA) / stinky wet owls like fish (FWA) / sipping whisky on lingering flowers (FWA) / slender wisps organize lavish festivals
Hooray for swimming! My right upper glute still hurts — not all of the time; it’s very localized, but when it hurts, it hurts. Thankfully swimming doesn’t bother it. Biking didn’t either, yesterday. I’m not sure if running would, but I’m not willing to try and risk making it even more sore.
Today’s swim friends: shadows on the pool floor; slashes of orange everywhere (mostly signs indicating which lanes were for lap swimming); a small clump of hair; chlorine; a guy in black swim trunks doing a combo of swimming near the bottom, aqua jogging, and freestyle; a woman in a blue and green suit swimming freestyle then backstroke, her arms sweeping so wide they went under the lane line and brushed against my arm in the next lane; a woman in a pale blue or white suit sharing my lane, swimming freestyle and breaststroke and backstroke and some strange hybrid of butterfly on her back.
A nice swim, I didn’t count my laps, just my stokes. Halfway through I did a breathing ladder, by 50s: breathe ever 2/3/4/5/6/7/6/5/4/3/2. I also did a set of 2 or 3 200s in which I breathed 3/4/5/6 and kicked harder on the even breaths.
Just before we left, I (think) I finished my manuscript. It’s 79 pages and I’m very proud of it. I’ve officially been writing these poems for 4 years, but they build off of attention work I’ve been doing since I started this log in 2017. I’ll submit it to a contest this month, and if I don’t win that (these things are always very competitive and based on many factors that don’t have anything to do with the quality of the work), I’ll send it out to other places.
Swimming on a Sunday morning is always risky. 4 out of the 6 lanes are closed to lap swimmers and open for a water aerobics class. Today I got there about 10 minutes before the class began and the pool was almost empty. Slowly it started filling up, mostly with people taking the class. For a big chunk of my swim I was still able to have a lane to myself. I liked watching the people doing water aerobics — mostly women, at least 1 or 2 men — especially their sassy legs. I described them to Scott as sassy because I couldn’t think of a better word for the way, exuberantly and with attitude, they jumped or pointed their toes or lifted their legs. They were feeling good, which was fun to witness. I love how happy people are when they get to move more freely through water.
note: I had a good swim. I felt strong and powerful and I enjoyed watching the class, but I was also irritated by some other swimmers and my own inability to see. I’ll mention it here, but I’d rather remember the good parts of the swim.
locker room encounters
Exiting the shower, encountering a friendly woman who said, you still have some soap on your face. I replied: oh, thanks for letting me know!
an older (late 50s or 60s?) woman in a swim suit looking confused as she entered a section of lockers. She looked around, then left, then entered another set of lockers and stopped in front of one, hesitated, then put her key in the lock confidently.
another woman, older than the older woman, returning to her locker from the shower. Wheezing in a high-pitched and pained way, almost sounding like she was whispering, help me help me
3.65 miles trestle turn around 17 degrees / feels like 2 100% snow and ice covered
It snowed again last night. A dusting. I think we might get a lot of snow this winter. Hooray! I’m ready for winter running! Today, I didn’t like running straight into the wind at the beginning, but it wasn’t too bad and it was at my back on the way home. I liked running with the yaktrax. At first, my feet were sore, but that didn’t last long. There were a few runners, some walkers. No skiers or bikers.
Geese! A small vee in the sky, a cacophony of honks under the trestle. When I looked up to watch the geese, I admired the BLUE! sky, with only a few clouds.
Running back, I heard the tornado siren. No worries — it’s the first Wednesday of the month and that’s when they test it. One problem: it’s supposed to be tested at 1, and it was noon. Mentioned it to Scott and his suggestion: someone forgot to adjust the timer for daylight savings time.
Anything else? Near the end of my run, I enjoyed listening to the quick, sharp sound of my spiked feet piercing the snow. The sliding bench was empty. Oh — the streets looked bright silver — caused by the sun hitting the ice and snow on the road. The river was streaked with white, and not completely covered. I noticed traces of dirt on the trail where the park workers had come through to make the path less slippery — they don’t use salt because it would do damage to the river. A small thing, but evidence: of someone else here before me, the daily labor of maintaining safe (and fun) winter trails, and care for others.
Richard Siken!
I think I posted a Richard Siken! heading a few months ago, but his new book is so amazing, it’s worthy of another heading with an exclamation point. Last night, during Scott’s jazz rehearsal, I read more of I Know Some Things, including Sidewalk:
It was clear that something had happened that wasn’t going to unhappen. In the emergency room, the woman at the desk kept asking me questions. All my answers were stroke, dizzy, numb. I kept saying the words in different ways so she would understand. She didn’t. She didn’t believe me. They put me in the waiting room, which I knew was wrong, and I realized that I had messed it up because I didn’t call for an ambulance. I kept falling asleep in the waiting room. I looked much worse, slack and crooked, the two sides of my face moving at different speeds. I went back to the desk and said help. They put me in a room. No one believes that I know what I know because sometimes I miss a part or tell it sideways.
Tell it sideways. I love this idea of telling something sideways — and, as someone who does/tells things sideways a lot, I get how it can alienate you from others.
What does it mean to tell something sideways? Of course I’m thinking immediately of Emily Dickinson and tell all the truth but tell it slant, but I’m also thinking about a book I used to teach when I taught queer theory — The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways by Kathryn Bond Stockton. And I’m thinking about my peripheral vision and how see/think/imagine in its edges and not in the center.
swim: 1.25 miles 88 laps ywca pool
It is always a wonderful day when I can swim! I felt strong and relaxed. The pool was not crowded. Everyone got their own lane — all 4 of us. There was a lifeguard on duty, which is rare. I overheard her saying to someone in the hot tub: I love going in the hot tub after a long day of giving swimming lessons! My pool friends today were the shadows. The shadow of the lane line. I liked watching what happened as the pool got deeper: at first it was straight and parallel, but soon it angled. Lots of angled shadows on the pool wall. The floor was shimmying from shadows. The blue-tiled t on the wall at the end of the lane letting you know there’s a wall, looked distorted to me. Almost like the lines at the center of an Amsler grid when I look at it.
locker room encounter
Two older women talking near my locker. Or, one woman talking at the other, speculating on the state of things, talking about bifurcated society and the haves hoarding it over the have-nots and then believing that if it compresses enough, people will fight back. The other woman, not buying it. As she left, the first woman called out, I’ll see you up there. We can sweat it out! After she left, the second woman mumbled, YOU can sweat. When I laughed she explained that she didn’t sweat easily and it was hard for her and she feels uncomfortable when she can’t and she wishes she could just sweat.
My reaction: At first — come on ladies, this is the locker room. We come here to escape and have fun and to not think about the state of things. Then, when I heard that they hadn’t worked out yet, I got it. Oh, you just haven’t worked out yet! Also: I wondered if the second woman (the woman who couldn’t sweat) enjoyed working out with the first woman (who used bifurcated and talked at her and told her they would sweat),
Another great swim, another 1.5 loops to add to my tally of loops swum in 2025! The pool wasn’t too crowded. At one point, I was the only one in the water. When another swimmer arrived, she called out, we’ve got the whole pool to ourselves! I noticed the shadows on the pool floor flickering. A swimmer next to me, in a black t-shirt and green with a blue pattern, or blue with a green pattern, swam some freestyle, some breaststroke for the deeper part of the lap, then aqua jogged in the more shallow part. There was another male swimmer on the other side of him, swimming freestyle. At first I thought he was fast, and that it might be fun to race (in my head), but he turned out not to be fast enough to make it fun.
I wasn’t planning to, but I decided to do 2 sets of faster 200s: 3 x 200 on 3 min, with 30 sec rest. By decide I mean, the idea of swimming a faster 200 with the clock popped into my head early in my swim, so I did it. As I swam I thought, I should turn this into a set of 3. Then, in the last of the 3 I thought, I should do an easier 800 then do the set again. There was never really a plan, and even though I did choose to do it, I didn’t really; it just happened. As I swam, I thought about how it might help me mentally — specifically for endurance, but also for overall well-being — to add some harder swimming sets this winter instead of only moderate and steady lap after lap.
Anything else about the swim: as always, I saw orange everywhere. No fuzzy friends, I recall staring down at the drain and recalling how past Saras would imagine, only in a fearful flash, that Jaws would pop out of it. I lost track of my laps during a 200 and thought about how ridiculous it is that I can get off track just counting 8 laps — my miscounting today was not my first rodeo (the first time I remember hearing this delightful phrase was when my PT was letting me know that my kneecap had probably suffered a subluxation many times).
a draft almost done
The goal: be finished with this manuscript before the end of 2025. A thought this morning as I read through it and reflect on echolocation: it’s all about locating and being located in this place, in time and space. That locating involves:
being the someone that makes sounds that will bounce off something else to create an echo, and the someone that listens for echoes made by others to locate something
being the something that is located/placed/found
being the echo that is created by one subject’s sound being received by another subject
Always, three. Immediately, I ‘m thinking about my poem, “An Exchange on the Winchell Trail” which involves a walker, a runner, and the You (in thank you/you’re welcome) that passes between them. And then I’m thinking about a line in my poem, “Everything”:
trinity: a baby owl in the hollow of a tree, the woman who points it out, the girl who stops to look
other threes: rock, river, air / girl, ghost, gorge / triple chants — 3 beats / grandfather, mother, daughter
Another think I’m working through: the little poems in which I take the words of another — mostly poets — and fit them into the form of my breathing pattern: 1 2 3 breathe / 1 2 breathe. The original name: form fitters. Can I think of a better one? Breaths? Breathing (with?) [author’s name]?
during the swim
Every so often, as I swam, I thought about naming my form fitters, “breathing with . . .”. I wondered if I should use only the poet’s first name, as a way to indicate more familiarity. Later after the swim, I mentioned it to RJP, and she thought “Breathing with Emily” sounded a little cheesy. I guess I agree and am thinking that “Breathing with Emily Dickinson” sounds better. Does it?
Any day I get to swim is a great day! Another good swim that started with my ritual: push off from the wall and swim just above the blue squares on the pool floor until I reach the deep end, which is about 2/3rds of the way, then surface. Today I shared the lane with another good swimmer. She was using pull buoys and hand paddles and had a strong freestyle stroke. Nice. As I swam, I thought about my latest visual, echolocation poem and wondered if I could figure out a form to read (not listen to) that prioritized aural over visual. Saw lots of orange — orange cones off to the side, orange cones ahead of me, blocking off the hot tub, orange swim trunks on Scott. No pool friends — fuzz or clumps or bandaids. Also don’t remember seeing any dancing shadows. Only the intense smell of chlorine and the almost leaking of googles and the familiar feeling of stroking and breathing and flipping at the wall.
This poem-of-the-day on poets.org! All of it is wonderful, but since it’s long, I’ll post only the second half. I love a great winter poem!
But, in January, we hold this promise. While lake ice shifts, dark a murmur, a creak. Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— always where two touch, night glistens. When distant wolf howls, answer comes.
Imagine the upturned muzzle, body a triangle of sound. Hazel eyes mere slits. This reverence—an ancient hunger for pack. See, too, each black branch; limbing—bare, suspended in soon.
How pristine the listening posture of pine marten, of fisher, of fox— each body cocked. To pounce, to dive nose-first into snow’s secrets, to search winter tunnels for mice.
We, too, poised like supplicants— rawness of the world a prayer we read but cannot speak. Silence an invocation, heavy as tobacco sinking into snow—into earth’s altar.
Against moon’s brilliance, slit your eyes. Let warmth of reflected light fill you; that holy—that glance of tiny gods. Make of your hands an empty globe, your body a vessel taut as river.
This image of snow at night! I love opening the back door, looking out at the snow in moonlight, and delighting in the snow sparkling like diamonds, or how I remember stars in the sky sparkling in a cartoon from when I was a kid.
Now moonlight falls on snow crusts— always where two touch, night glistens.
g listens — I never noticed, or thought about, how glistens is listens with a g. Glistens = sound traveling to ears (and eyes?), glazed with glitter
In her about this poem, Blaeser mentions being inspired by Kaveh Akbar’s talk on poetry and spirituality. You can watch and listen and read the whole thing online, here: The Word Dropped Like a Stone: Sacred Poetics Under the Reign of the Money God. Great title, and opening paragraph:
Today the great weapon used to stifle critical thinking is a raw overwhelm of meaningless language at every turn—on our phones, on our TVs, in our periphery on billboards and subways. So often the language is passionately absolute: immigrants are evil, climate change is a hoax, and this new Rolex will make you irresistible. Interesting poetry awakens us, asks us to slow down our metabolization of language, to become aware of its materiality, how it enters into us. Sacred poetry, from antiquity to the present, teaches us to be comfortable sitting in mystery without trying to resolve it, to be skeptical of unqualified certitudes. This lecture will orbit poems drawn from the past forty-three centuries, poems that remind us language has history, density, complexity. In surveying these examples, we’ll discuss how language art might serve as a potent antidote against an empire that would use empty, vapid language to cudgel us into inaction.
Another swim. Hooray! It took some time to get my nose plug and goggles sorted — they were leaking — and my cap wasn’t ever quite on right, but it was a great swim. A solid 45+ minutes of moving through the water. I shared a lane with a woman who did some interesting sets. Lots of dolphin kick on her back. Some of the time she swam on her back, feet first — normally to move forward you swim head first. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen that before. She was doing a strange spread-finger paddle. She was already swimming when I started, and kept going after I finished. I wonder how long she swims for. I wasn’t trying to be competitive with her, but I probably was, in spite of my best attempts to be chill. Mostly, we were at opposite ends of the pool, but a few times I would catch up to her. Difficult to pass — was she trying to race me? Once our hands hit as we passed each other.
To focus my attention on something else, I looked down at the dancing shadows on the pool floor. Soft, not very distinct, like the floor was moving. It wasn’t that bright outside, so there were no big circles of light. Didn’t notice any pool friends — no fuzz.
hike: 30 minutes with RJP around the gorge 35 degrees
Hiked with RJP to some favorite spots that I’ve written about so she could take some pictures. She’s doing a series of colored pencil drawings inspired by GGG poems for her final project in her drawing class! Very cool!
We took the old stone steps to the river, then back up and over to the winchell trail and the oak savanna. RJP took a picture of the tree growing through the fence — I hope she’s able to draw it. She took lots of pictures of steps and rocks and trees. Oh — and the surface of the river.
run: 4 miles wabun bluff / locks and dam no. 1 / river road 35 degrees
An afternoon run. Only 4:00 and it’s already getting dark. Chilly, but not too cold. The lack of wind helped. Lots of leaves on the trail, but not too many runners. A steady stream of cars, kids playing soccer over at the school — kick it higher! higher! Parents waiting to pick up kids at Dowling Elementary. Some voices down in the gorge. Could it be rowers? I couldn’t tell. The gate into the Locks and Dam no. 1 was closed. Is it closed for the season?
No turkeys or geese or fat tires or roller skiers. No music blasting from radios or droning leaf blowers. Plenty of squirrels, but none of them darted in front of me. Too busy rooting around in the dry leaves, making a racket.
cells remember
Found a great blog post on Poetry Foundation about cells:
symbiogenesis: we came about not only through competition but through acts of cooperation. We carry evidence of species merger in our cells, and of species relation in almost every structure we daily rely upon. Is there one piece of us that doesn’t also, in some form, belong to someone else? Your fingers ghosting chimp as they slender in the air. Lobe-finned fishes did protolungs, acorn worms might have done something like a heart. The more complex organs, like eyes, had to be developed many times, but jellyfish saw first, and not for us. Biology is remembering. Our cells remember ancient chemical interactions, pre-life, and our limbs remember salamanders. A poem remembers our past in language and posits a future in the simplest sense, like a to-do note, hoping that it will be read at some point hence, reminding us of something worth knowing. It can cast back between the “its” and the “octopus” in the second paragraph of this blog and remember the relation. In addition, it’s an ecosystem that, ideally, like any functioning ecosystem, deals with its own waste.
Like the octopus’s smart shadow, a poem’s shadow also always knows more than we do.
Another swim! Hooray. It felt good and not hard to swim for a little over 45 minutes. I stopped a few times for a sip of water but mostly just kept swimming, breaking it up (mentally) by 200s and different breath/stroke rates: 3/4/5/3 then 2/3/4/5 then 3/4/5/6. It’s dark and gloomy today so not as many shadows on the pool floor. The water was mostly clear, too, so no fuzz or band-aid friends. When I stopped on the wall to drink some water, the guy next to me asked how long I swim for. At first I couldn’t answer, so he said, jokingly, wow, you swim so much you can’t even remember! I finally answered, about 2 miles. He was impressed. I said, I love the water! He responded, I used to. There’s a story there, I think.
Anything else I remember? It was very difficult, almost impossible, to tell if there were swimmers in the lane when I was trying to figure out where to swim. Also, the woman next to me, who was also a good swimmer, had on the same open swim cap as me — bright pink. Scott said she also had almost the same water bottle as me. Hers was a little bigger. As I swam, I kept seeing orange off to the side. Orange signs, orange cones. I did think about much as I swam. I’ll have to give myself a challenge, like memorizing a poem or poems to recite as a I stroke. What other fun experiments could I try?
cells and water
Inspired by my swim, I decided to search for “water cells poetry.” I found this cool blog post by a poet who did a short residency with 7th grade science students, involving looking closely and attention to patterns, both in cells and poetry. The title of the post: One Small Drop of Water: Poetry on the Cellular Level
As part of the exploration, they created an object, a handmade book. The artist/teacher mentioned “Traditional Four Hole Japanese Binding.” I looked it up, and found a book I’ve requested from the library: At Home with Handmade Books. Fun! Maybe I’ll start making homemade books?!
Okaaay 39 degrees! As I said to Scott, this is my weather! Love it. Black running tights, long-sleeve green shirt, black vest, black gloves, buff. I felt relaxed and strong and not in need of a port-a-potty. Windy. Lots of leaves on the trail, some of them wet and slick, especially thick on the part of the path south of the double bridge that dips below the road and on the hill climbing up to Wabun park. Some BRIGHT yellow, an occasional slash of red. Any orange? I don’t think so. The river under the ford bridge was darker gray with scales. The gate was closed so I couldn’t run all the way to the locks and dam door. Heard some geese honking, on the ground, not in the sky. Someone was sitting at the Rachel Dow Memorial bench, no one was sitting at the one above the edge of the world. Encountered several other runners — all older men? — and lots of walkers. One woman, climbing up and out of the locks and dam behind me, suddenly blew her nose, which startled me enough to prompt her to apologize.
At the halfway point, I stopped to walk up the hill and put in “The Life of a Showgirl” on shuffle.
favorite image: After the run, walking home, the wind picked up and a swirl of leaves, like confetti, flying through the air. Yellow leaves, I think. Wow!
before the run
Encountered some interesting language on instagram this morning:
You can’t think your way into a new life, you have to train for it. Consistency creates safety. Repetition rewires truth. Embodiment is built, one breath at a time.
Whether it’s your healing, your art, or your leadership you don’t need to perform change, you need to practice it. That’s why our rituals matter: breath, movement, stillness. They turn insight into muscle memory.
train / not in your head, but your body / repetition / habit / ritual / rewire / don’t perform, practice / breath movement stillness / greater understanding deep in the muscles / don’t become, remember
My first reaction: on a surface level, many of these words resonate for me — embodiment, training, habits and repetitions and rituals, remembering
This is an ad for a 3 hour retreat led by Mariel Hemingway. I was curious (and skeptical), so I went to her site to learn more. At the bottom of the page, I found this:
Disclaimer: The Return of the Queen™ is a sacred space rooted in personal experience, spiritual reflection, and embodied remembrance.
Mariel Hemingway offers guidance based on her own lived journey — not as a therapist, medical professional, or licensed counselor, but as a woman who has walked the path of deep inner healing and returned with wisdom to share. The content and practices shared throughout this experience are designed to support emotional exploration, self-inquiry, and spiritual growth. They are not a substitute for professional mental health, medical, or therapeutic care. Every woman’s path is unique. Results will vary depending on your personal history, readiness, and the depth of your participation. Please honor your own inner and outer needs. If you require clinical or medical support, we lovingly encourage you to seek care from a licensed provider. This is not about fixing or diagnosing. This is about remembering. Thank you for honoring the sacredness of this space and taking full responsibility for your own wellbeing..
At the top of the page, it describes the retreat as a “3-hour journey back to your Sovereign Self.”
Sovereign Power
Sovereign has everything to do with power. It often describes a person who has supreme power or authority, such as a king or queen. God is described as “sovereign” in a number of Bible translations. In addition to describing ones who have power, the word sovereign also often describes power: to have sovereign power is to have absolute power—that is, power that cannot be checked by anyone or anything. Nations and states are also sometimes described as “sovereign.” This means that they have power over themselves; their government is under their own control, rather than under the control of an outside authority.
The language of sovereignty doesn’t work for me, even as I recognize the need to claim your own life. And I don’t like “queen” and the understandings of power it evokes.
Past Sara, the feminist academic, could have spent the entire day dissecting these words and the foundation that undergirds them, but Sara-right-now isn’t interested in wasting time in that way. Although, I am interested in giving some attention to other models that are about embodiment, training, practice, remembering but not Power and control and Sovereignty. Robin Wall Kimmerer discusses memory and remembering; she links it to deeper traditions and human and non-human communities.
The idea of distinguishing between practice and performance is interesting to me. Just yesterday, I submitted a poem to be considered for a journal issue with the theme of performance. Here’s what they wrote about performance:
Theme Description: The theme for this issue is performance. To perform is to, for some audience, create the illusion that reality is this, rather than that. We do this everywhere–our social (and social media) lives, our dress, our relationships, our feelings, our genders, all performed in their ways; all around us there is the low hum of wishful artifice imparting an intended impression onto seen and unseen—perhaps even imaginary–spectators. Taken to its logical conclusion, a reasonable, if cynical, truth emerges: performance, in our day-to-day, is so essential, so inextricable from our quote-unquote “authentic selves,” that perhaps the authentic self is simply the sum of a lifetime of performances–that the show has somehow become its own type of truth. In professional wrestling, the word for this is “kayfabe”–the unspoken agreement that not only is the show inextricable from reality, but that, in essence, the performance is the reality. Or is it? How do we perform, and for whom? Send us your work!
What is the relationship between performance and reality? My submission to this call was about my running/training/performing beside the gorge. Here’s what I wrote to explain how it fits with the theme:
“When I learned that I was losing all of my central vision, I started giving more attention to the world and my favorite place in it, the Mississippi River Gorge in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Regularly, I return to it, run around it, and write about what I’ve noticed there. This habit is a ritual is a ceremony, happening almost daily, that when performed brings a new world in which I am still able to see, but strangely, into existence.”
The title of my poem: How to Be When You See Strangely, Performances Daily
swim: 1.4 miles / 1.5 loops ywca pool
We rejoined the Y and I was able to swim!! I’m excited to swim inside this winter, to reunite with my pool “friends”: the shadow on the pool floor, the fuzzy things floating near the bottom, the pale torsos and froggy legs, the friendly people. Today it was the nice guy who, when I asked him if I could share a lane with him, said Of course!
4 miles the monument and back 72 degrees humidity: 80% / dew point: 64
More gnats, more heat, more sweat. Ran over the lake street bridge and up the summit hill to the Monument. Ran the first mile, did 2 minutes running/ 1 minute walking for the second mile, and mostly running, some walking for the rest. My right knee was sore because the kneecap slid out last night. I had to pop it back into place by going up and down the stairs. When it slides out it rubs the tendons or ligaments or something and they’re sore the next day. No big deal.
10 Things
a bunch of kids sitting on the sidewalk outside of the church with the daycare — an adult called out to some other adult, I checked the website. They should be picking them up by 9
a gnat flew into my eye — all the way, now the corner of my eye is sore
no rowers on the river, only small waves
peering over the side on the lake street bridge, checking out the sandbar. How far below the surface is it? How deep is the water around it?
the faint sound of falling water at shadow falls
a railing in front of a neighbor’s house, adorned with garlands and lights
several wide cracks on the trail halfway down the summit hill, outlined in orange
running up the summit hill, hearing a biker slowly approaching then creeping past me
checking my watch during a walk break, the numbers blurred and difficult to see — a combination of my bad vision and feeling slightly dizzy/dazed from the heat
the jingling of my house key in my pack, the thudding of my pack against my shorts
I don’t remember much from the run because it was hot and tiring. What did I think about?
Listened to kids, cars, random voices, and a dog barking running to the Monument. Put in my “The Wheeling Life” playlist on the way back. First song up, “Day by Day” from Godspell. In this song., the wheel is moving forward, progressing towards a better relationship with God. Wow — Jesus-rock was a thing in the 70s. The refrain for the song:
Day by day, day by day, oh dear Lord, three things I pray, to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, follow thee more nearly. Day by day.
bike: 7.5 miles lake nokomis and back 79/75 degrees
Earlier today, Scott and I drove by lake nokomis and we noticed that the buoys were still up, so we decided to bike over to the lake in the late afternoon. If the blue algae was gone, I’d swim. So we did, and it was! The bike ride was great, even if it was windy. The thing I remember most about the bike was hearing the twack of the pickle ball at a pickle court on the way there, and a tennis court on the way back. Also: someone mowing their lawn and kids playing at the lake nokomis rec center playground.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis main beach 76 degrees
The water was clearer and warmer and slightly less choppy than the last time I was here. Still too many vines reaching up from the bottom. I had to swim farther out in the lake to avoid them. Saw at least 2 paddle boarders, a sailboat, a kayak. No fish, but seagulls. Heard geese honking from the other shore. Some adult was playing with a kid and calling out, Nestea Plunge. Yes! I can still picture the dude standing with his back to the pool, falling back into the water.
Noticed the mucked-up underside of a once red, now pinkish orange buoy. Was fascinated by the bubbles on the otherwise smooth surface of the water. Felt some thin vine tendrils encircling my wrist, some thicker and sharper vines brushing against my leg. I don’t remember seeing any planes, but I do remember some wispy clouds.
Fall! Noticed a few more slashes of orange and yellow and some red leaves on the ground. More acorn shells on the trail. At the beginning my knee — I can’t remember if it was the left or the right one — hurt, a dull not sharp pain. I can’t remember when it stopped. Maybe it was when I started feeling the rumbling of unfinished business. When I reached the falls, I went to the bathroom. I’m ready to be done with perimenopause.
Running south, I listened to chickadees and music blasting from a bike radio — I recognized the 70s or 80s rock song, but now I’ve forgotten what it was. Just past the Veterans home, I put in my “the Wheeling Life” playlist.
10 Things
the sound of the rushing creek, 1: just before it falls over the limestone ledge
the sound of the rushing creek, 2: far below, as I ran over the bridge to the Veterans Home
a soft mist rising from the falling water
a half-filled parking lot at the falls
a full parking lot at the Veterans Home
an empty parking lot at Locks and Dam no 1
above on the bluff at Waban Park, a view of the river, the water rushing over the concrete, one white buoy, several redorangepink buoys
an American flag waving near the Veterans Home
strange flashes and a distorted view out of my central vision as I ran across the bridge — a result of facing the sun, I think
soft shadows from the chain link fence on the bridge
While I ran, I chanted in triples. I was hoping to center or ground or locate myself in the time and place. First, berries, then:
I am here/I am here/I am here I am now/I am now/I am now I am here/I am here/I am here It is now/It is now/It is now here here here/ now now now/ here here here/ now now now
Then, I added a condensed version of some Emily Dickinson:
Life life life/death death death/bliss bliss bliss/breath breath breath
Then:
I am here/I am here/I am here/Here I am 123/123/123/123
Throughout the run, I thought about locating myself and how I might translate that for my project. A list of surfaces? my landmarks? a topographical map?
Reviewing old notes and entries, including 19 may 2025, which includes a bit on context, I encountered the phrase, there or there abouts. I had written it in my notebook after hearing it several times on the TNT coverage of the giro d’italia (the tour of italy cycling race). Yes. When I locate myself, it’s not here! or there. but there or thereabouts. Maybe that could be the title of a poem for the collection?
there or thereabouts
double bridge old stone steps ancient rock / stacked with stones sliding bench near the fence under tree on the edge (of the world) high above down below in the flats past the creek wrapped in green off the ground / in the air deep in oak riverside locks and dam sewer pipe steep ravine brand new trail snowy path in the groove seeping hill leaking ledge eagle’s perch spreading crack
Do I want to do this poem in triples? Not sure. It is how I locate myself sometimes — by chanting in triples about what’s around me. This syncs up my feet with my breath and my surroundings. But, how does it sound? And does it work as a poem?
swim: .75 loop lake nokomis main beach 76 degrees wind: 29 mph gusts
Another swim! When RJP told me the buoys were still up I knew I needed to swim again. Wow, it was choppy, and wow, that water was cold, but it wasn’t too cold and the choppy water was fun. I think there were whitecaps. In one direction, I could mostly ride the waves, the other direction, I punched water. Both fun, but in different ways. Speed from one, power the other. Got tangled in some vines, but nothing I couldn’t get out of. Noticed: soaring and hovering seagulls, held up by wind; planes, bobby buoys, voices, and water rushing over me, water crashing into me, water dragging me forward and sideways. I wouldn’t want to swim in water like that every time, but it was fun today.
I was planning to bike over to the lake and swim this morning but it looked gloomy and ominous, and then started raining and thundering for several hours. Bummer. By the time it stopped raining it had warmed up and the sun came out. Even so, I went for a hot and humid run. Everything was wet. A slick trail, dripping branches, wet shoes and shirt.
10 Things
someone covered over the graffiti on the steps that read, stop hate, with blue paint
sky, part 1: gray, heavy
sky, part 2; blue and cloudless
empty river
white foam on the edge of the east bank near the franklin bridge
kids laughing on the playground at the church daycare
some orange and red leaves beyond the fence near east river road
the squeal of tires near the trestle — what happened?
orange cones lining the path: there must have been a race or a sponsored bike ride this past weekend
the sliding bench was empty of people but close to a thick veil or green
Listened to voices, cars, and drips for the first half of the run, my “Doin’ Time” playlist for the second half. The song I remember the most was Peter Gabriel’s “Playing for Time.”
Oh, there’s a hill that we must climb Climb through all the mist of time It’s all in here what we’ve been through
Not a fan of the phrase, mist of time, but these lyrics reminded me of a few lines from Mary Oliver that I read right before heading out for my run:
Slowly up the hill, like a thicket of white flowers, forever. (The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)
The lines just preceding these were a series of good-byes to the world: the swaying trees, the black triangles of the winter sea, oranges, the fox sparrow, blue-winged teal, lettuce, turnip, rice fields, the morning light, and the goldfinches.
Down, I’m getting it down Sorting it out So everything I care about Is held in here All of those I love, inside
Listening to these lines, I thought about Oliver’s deepening of the spirit. I thought about the interior and moving inside of yourself and of burying memories and ideas not as a way to avoid them, but to protect them. I also thought about someone growing older and having memory-loss and trying to hold onto faces and names and experiences. I weighed the possibilities and limitations of going deep inside as compared to opening up to the outside. All of these thoughts came at once — not in a linear progression — in a burst which lasted until I heard these lines less than a minute later:
There goes the sun Back from where it came The young move to the center The mom and dad, the frame
I just remembered: at the start of my run, I was thinking about the difference between ordinary and extraordinary time, which was a continuation of thoughts that began earlier this morning. Habits, routines, activities/events experienced again and again — the mundane — versus the scattered, sporadic occasions that break up the routine. While meaning and memories are often found in the singular moments, I’m drawn to the rituals and repetitions and daily events as where imporant meaning dwells.
Everyday. everyday = ordinary / every day = each day, daily.
Everyday—I have work to do (“Work” in The Leaf and the Cloud/ Mary Oliver)
I love that she writes everyday and not every day, so it’s not, each day I have work to do but, ordinary, everyday life: don’t bug me, I have work to do!
bike: 7.5 miles lake nokomis and back* 75/71 degrees
*instead of the river road trail, we took 44th until the falls park, which is shorter
A good bike ride with Scott. As usual, better on the way back — easier, more relaxed. On the way there: wind. No problems with panicking about not seeing. The ride home was great: the sun was setting soon. Passed by adults playing soccer or flag football or some team sport in the field by the duck bridge, and kids playing soccer at Hiawatha school. RJP and FWA both played for a season at Hiawatha. I played for 5 or 6 years when I was kid in Northern Virginia. I loved it; they didn’t.
swim: 2 loops lake nokomis main beach 74 degrees
Only 4 other people in the lake, and none of them were swimming laps, just standing around and talking — brrr, I bet that was cold! I swam far from the white buoys and almost completely avoided the milfoil. Only a few times, I got too close and felt the vines on my toes and wrists. For most of the swim there was wind and choppy water. In one direction, it pushed me along. In the other, I got to swim straight into it, which I liked doing. Mostly, a fun swim. The vines were the only bad thing about it. They were too thick by the one buoy so I didn’t want to circle around it. This made it much harder to loop, so I mostly stopped and twisted around. I noticed some birds in the sky and a few planes. Trees on the distant shore were looking less green — were any of them changing?
I thought about how this might be my final swim of the season. It’s cooler for the rest of the week — highs in the 60s, so they might take down the buoys soon. It’s been a great season. I swam for longer, both distance and time. And, I had fun reciting more water lines in my head and writing about water.
A beautiful morning! Sunny, only a slight breeze, algae-free water. There were 2 exuberant kids and a scraping shovel somewhere, so it wasn’t quiet above the water. But below: a deep soft-bottomed silence. My only complaint: too much milfoil! The vines were thick and just under the surface, wrapping around my wrist, touching my toe. Once, when I stopped to tread water, a vine encircled my foot. I wasn’t worried about them pulling me under, but I didn’t like brushing against them or having a pale clump suddenly appear in my face. I swam far out from the white buoys to avoid them, but then I had to worry about paddle boarders and kayaks. The vines were irritating enough to make me think maybe open swim season is ending. I want to keep coming this week until they take down the buoys, but navigating these vines is taking some of the fun out of swimming in the lake.
10 Things
2 women on a blanket speaking in Spanish
4 kids playing soccer in the sand, one the kids looked about 2 years old
a big bird high up in the sky, soaring
at least one plane taking off from the nearby airport
aggressive bird shadows — sharp, too close
sparkles on the water
racing a kayak, both of us parallel to the beach — I was winning, then I looped around
a metal detector man waving his machine over the sand
a few shreads of clouds in a pale blue sky
paddle boarders exiting the water — I’m so glad we were able to paddle board! And it wasn’t too warm!
Minutes after my swim, I felt the gentle, burning glow of muscles having been used. I will miss that feeling this winter!
The Poetry Daily’s poem-of-the-day is I, Lorine Niedecker. Very cool and difficult for my cone-compromised eyes to read, I’m glad they included an essay by the author about the process of writing the poem.
Surely, the finest way to appreciate Niedecker would be to read her well. And then repeated reading, reading aloud, transcribing the vibrant phrases on to paper, oh and even framing then. But how to linger in the presence of this voice, and let it echo within oneself, make her a part of oneself? Perhaps by applying Niedecker to Niedecker, I would arrive at a new condensary. De- and re- constructing her poems, deleting words, conflating words, writing through her writing.
After their explanation, Rao offers a writing prompt:
Pick a poet who moves you, isolate their characteristics, and apply this to their work. Using words from within their own work, write the narrative of their poetics or/and biography. Example: Get romantic and didactic with Wordsworth, apply surrealism on André Breton …
Imitation is the best form of flattery, but also of ridicule—so this kind of repetition can function as a spotlight or a spoof. I suggest choosing a poet you absolutely adore, as it’s better to have such a voice under your skin.
Someday I’d like to try this with Niedecker, but right now, I’m more interested in Alice Oswald and her collection, Nobody. And, maybe Mary Oliver, too — especially since I’m using her poem, Swimming, One Day in August.
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 64/71 degrees
Hooray for feeling comfortable on a bike! Able to see enough to not feel scared.
…sitting on the back deck to write this, a wave of ear piercing cicada buzz just passed by. Wow! What’s the decibel level of that?
Rode into the wind for a lot of the ride — and not just the wind I was making with my moving body. Wondered if it would be choppy at the lake. (it was). At one point, when the wind seemed particularly strong, I could feel how un-aerodynamic I was — an upright form fighting against air. I tried to get more aerodynamic, leaning low and over my hips, my bike as parallel to the ground as I could get it. Thought about ironman triathletes who can bike like in an even more parallel position for almost 5 hours. Wow, how many hours of training and lifting and working with a coach must you need to keep that form for so long?
The bike ride back was wonderful. What a beautiful late summer day! Sunny, warm in a way that’s welcome because it was cooler in the morning.
swim: 2 loops 56 minutes lake nokomis main beach 66 degrees
I did it! 1440 minutes, 24 hours, one day swimming in August! Hooray for ambitious goals that push you to do a little more than you would have otherwise. Swimming a total of 24 hours (over 21 swims) was a commitment for sure, but it wasn’t an unreasonable commitment. And the biggest challenge was not getting my body to swim that many minutes — and miles, over 40 — but having clean water and an open lake. Lake Nokomis was closed for 2 weeks in August due to elevated e-coli and algae blooms.
24 hours was a good goal. Enough to challenge me and enable me to get deeper into my swimming and writing about swimming, but not too deep to sink me, to overwhelm and injure me. That’s another definition of Mary Oliver’s deepening and quieting of the spirit: deepening my commitment, steadily chipping away at the time (a quiet = still = steady approach).
The water was empty of other humans. I don’t remember seeing/hearing any ducks or geese or seagulls either. Lots of milfoil, both tethered and floating in segments on the surface. Too many milfoil vines near the white buoys. They seem to be increasing every time I swim. Boo! I went much farther out to avoid them, and when I veered closer, I could feel them wrapping around my wrists and ankles. Join us, I briefly imagined them saying. No thanks!
Yesterday while looking up recent drownings in Lake Nokomis — the ones I remember are the South High football player in 2013 and the 11 year old girl in 2023 — I discovered that someone else drowned last week. A woman who (presumably) took her own life. Rescuers were searching for more than 24 hours, looking for the body. They found it. As I swam out to the white buoys, I thought about this woman and the others that had drowned, wondered how terrified I would be to encounter their dead bodies bobbing in the water. Another meaning of deepening/quieting of the spirit.
The water shimmered in the sun, sometimes like silver, sometimes glass. There were little waves, big enough to make a noise, but not big enough for white caps. Before I got used to the rocking movement, I was slightly dizzy. I liked the chop. I was able to got faster heading north with the wind, and more powerfully heading south against it.
The sky was a deep blue with a few clouds. They were fluffy like cotton balls, some of them big, like a whole ball, some of them wispy and small, like one chunk of the ball. Noticed a plane, parallel to the water.
The water was thick with particles, impossible to see too far in front of me — only my hand and the trailing bubbles.
Heading north, following the path of an open swim loop, I looked up and imagined that the orange buoy was far off in the distance. Oh, to have it appear to be able to swim out and beyond it!
When I finished the swim, I sat on the sand, feeling the sun on my back, looking out at the water and reflecting on the season. What a summer! I hope to come back to the lake more times this week and until they remove the buoys, but whatever happens, I met my goal and have no regrets about how much I swam this summer. Good job, Sara!
today’s inspiration
One of the poems-of-the-day offers inspiration for my Swimming One Day project:
There’s a poem I tried to write about bathing you the last day you were alive.
On one of our drives home: I want to die without shame.
You didn’t elaborate. I described standing across from a stranger
paid to do this work, her presence anchoring me in the task
with you between us. From this distance I can use the word task.
Your pain the astrologer said A gift for others
A mixing bowl filled with warm water
we dipped washcloths into before wringing them out
rested between your legs. The phrase utilitarian tenderness served
some containing purpose I needed at the time.
A great effort to come up to the surface of yourself
to say what you said to us. A student writes two lines
about an aging parent they think are boring and may cut.
That poem did not belong to language, and surpassed touch
Dough rising somewhere under a red and white
dishtowel in that bowl
about this poem
“The task is attempting to write the poem again the task is bathing the dying the task is work done for wages the task is recognizing the encounter that refuses containment that insists on experience outside narrative time the task is to not entomb memory in language to not reduce grief to a quotable thing the task is to feel the edge of a void and keep going inside the feeling the task summons in you the task continues despite”
inspirations
create a set of poems — one of them is the main poem, another about it, explaining it in some way, sideways or front ways or back ways, and maybe a third one that condenses it (like Hardly Creatures and the original poem, replica, souvenir)
a pair of poems, the second, the reflection of the first, as if on the surface of water, and darker, like A Oswald’s line about water letting you see twice but more darkly
take an idea — in the poem it is “task” — and play around with a wide range of meaning. I’m thinking: “day” or “quiet/still”
run: 2.45 miles around lake nokomis 76 degrees
Went back to the lake in the evening with Scott. He started running north, I started south around the lake. I haven’t run here at all this summer. Stopped at the little beach briefly to check out the algae. Since my swim this morning, the test results have come in and there is an blue-green algae advisory at both beaches. They tested it on Monday when it was the worst. It’s better today.
Over halfway around, I passed a young boy walking by himself. After I passed him, I heard somebody running like they were trying to catch me. I think it was him. The footsteps lasted for 30 seconds? a minute? then stopped. I kept running until I reached the overlook on the cedar bridge then briefly stopped to take in the view. I noticed waves and the silhouettes of 2 kayaks in the distance, silvery water.
10 Lake Things
a guy calling out, no! drop it! drop it! no! no! — I’m assuming they were talking to their dog, but I didn’t see
a kid’s loud foot strikes
a group of people crossing the path, heading for the dock
the soft sand of the dirt trail next to the path
2 kids climbing the leaning tree that I used to run by and think it looked like a woman arching her back
an opening in the vegetation, an empty bench, a person closer to shore
2 women’s voices on the water near shore — were they in a kayak or a canoe?
the bridge has lane markings for a bike path — that’s new
the smell of cigarette smoke near the booth where they test for zebra mussels
a woman and a man blocking part of the path — the guy practicing a stretch as the woman gave him pointers — his coach?
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 62/66 degrees
Feeling a bit tired and out of it this morning. Yesterday, Scott and I biked over to the State Fair and spent the entire day walking around with 145,000 other people (a record!). Wow, crowded. And fun. And great to bike there instead of driving or taking a bus. We biked 10 miles and walked almost 9.
Even with all of yesterday’s exercise, today’s bike ride wasn’t too difficult. Not easy to see with the gray sky, but not too many people around so it didn’t matter. Encountered acorns, walkers, runners, a few other bikers, and one dude on a hover board.
swim: 1 loop (6 mini loops) 30 minutes lake nokomis main beach 65 degrees
The water looked smooth and silvery from the shore, so I was excited to get in. When I did, uh-oh, a film of green. Not quite looking like green paint, but not not looking like green paint either. Blue-green algae blooms? I got out and walked the shore, wondering what to do. Was it an isolated patch? Should I stay out of the water? I was thinking of biking over to the other beach when I saw another swimmer get in. Decided to go for it, but only a shorter swim until the testing results come out later today — they always test the water on Mondays with results on Tuesdays.
It felt great to be in the water, but I was uneasy. Would I run into slime? No, but I encountered even more milfoil than usual. So many vines reaching up to tap my foot or wrap around my wrist. No thanks.
Out, just past the white buoys, the water didn’t seem too bad — no slime, not that green. Quiet, calm. No boats or other swimmers. One seagull that was committed to their perch on a white buoy. 4 geese having a conversation on the edge of the shore. A few ducks. The water was colder. By the 6th loop, my hands and feet were getting a little numb. Time to get out!
10 Things
swirls of green on the surface when looking from abover
goose poop on the sand, feathers in the water
thick, opaque water
a silvery surface in the distance
seagull on a buoy
swimming directly over some clusters of milfoil, inches from my face, its sudden appearance was unsettling
a feathery soft tap on my heel — swimming over milfoil
a kid at the nearby playground repeating the same phrase over and over (6, 7, 8? times) it’s so quiet
wading through water, a line of green at the point of contact between suit and lake
clouds then, at the end, the sun breaking through
Swimming One Day
With today’s morning swim, I’m down to 56 minutes left. If it were actually a day, it would be 11:04 pm. Very close. Hopefully the lake won’t be shut down with algae blooms in a few hours! If that happens, I will still swim the 24 hours by finding water somewhere, but it will be more difficult.
hour entry: That it never/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
-That in 1751 Carolus Linneas conceived of a floral clock, a botanical garden designed with species that blossomed predictably at certain hours of day, so that walking through it, one could tell time from the petals.
That it never worked may have been critical to the pollen of future ruins and revolts, that the lily wrist opacity decided not to show itself, that 6:00 industry was lost to the ants and the nectar chambers, that I got nothing intended done all day and coworkers floated between cubicle sunbeams, that the cockle shell women and the snapdragon breaths and the pin code clues and the politicians’ shoes never quite stood to stand there in a punctuating sequence, that all sequence would stymy and revolt, that Mary mary, alarm and delay and caterpillar-staring, that the empirical battalion of the flower clock disintegrated by noon, that subsequently there would be wilderness of soon and soon and soon where the ruins of the instrument held us.
Is this poem in the collection that mostly directly references the title, on orchid o’clock? Possibly. I love the idea of a botanical clock! And also, I don’t. What a delightful way to connect the natural world with our sense of time and what an impossible way to impose invented time on the natural world. And that wilderness of soon by noon? I love that as a description of rewilding! I want to memorize this poem for tomorrow’s swim!
An idea somehow inspired by giving attention to this poem : 24 short poems — inklings? — about swimming one day in august.
3 loops 54 minutes lake nokomis main beach 62 degrees
A little colder this morning. The water was warmer than the air. Windy, too. I liked how the wind made the water choppier — another day of gentle rocking. Swam loops off of the main beach, near the 4 white cylindrical buoys. I wasn’t too close to them because of all of the milfoil just under the surface. So many vines reaching up to briefly wrap around my heels and ankles!
I was joined in the lake by the vines, a few seagulls, maybe a duck (can’t remember), a silver canoe in the wading area with at least 2 people in it, fish (I’m imagining), my sparkle friends, and, at the end, 2 cute little kids and an adult (Dad?) giving one of them a piggy back ride and singing a silly song to them. again! again! they cried.
Wow, did I feel the deepening and quieting of the spirit! Recited Oliver’s poem and thought about that quieting as a stillness in my core, and the stillness not as motionless but a steadiness — enduring, endurance, duration, durable. I was less certain about the deepening. Not going too deep in the water; I like to be just under the surface. And not deep and thinking too much — I’m remembering Maxine Kumin’s line about the thinker as the sinker. I like deepening as commitment, a rootedness, a settling in.
I condensed the words in Oliver’s first verse:
now time said / quiet happens now I / flux now / I quiets / flux happens
I’m thinking of deepening and quieting as condensing. Getting to the essence of something, removing the layers, cutting through the flux of happenings to a/the core.
hour entry:it is reported/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
It is reported that 11th century Chinese peoples employed a wooden clocklike instrument that calibrated time by burning camphor, rhubarb, aromatic scents through the particular mapped incineration path of freshest ash, one could map the hour of day… it is Mountain Pear o’clock, it is Pine Ball it is Maze Petal it is Spine Curl o’clock, only part of this is imagined.
3.6 miles locks and dam #1 74 degrees humidity: 88% / dew point: 65
I’m trying to write this entry but I’m distracted by the little kids next door in the front yard — such cute voices. One of them was singing a song — take this grass. . .broken world. . . broken glass.
Refrain: hot, humid. Even so, a better run today than the last one I did. When was that? Tuesday (checked my log). Ran all the way to the bottom of the locks and dam #1 hill without stopping. Noticed the river. Such reflections! Clouds, trees, the bridge. Took a picture:
bridge / clouds / surface / sky
The water was smooth beneath the bridge and rippled (corrugated, as Anne Carson wrote) farther out.
Everything is still this morning, calm, quiet. Partly inspired by my 21 aug 2024 entry, I thought about being still. Not as not moving, but as a calm, steadiness. Stillness as the space between beats, when both of my feet are off the ground. Or, stillness as my strong core that floats through that space — suspended as held up in the air, not as stopped.
10 Bridge Things
at the top of the hill, in-between the top and bottom of the bridge, a family was sitting on a bench
the gate near the columns of the bridge was unlatched and slight ajar
beyond it, hollowed out bricks with a strange pattern
empty benches all the way down
the reflection of the bridge on the water’s surface, upside down
a car nearing the bottom, voices — couldn’t hear what they were saying but imagined it was about whether or not the locks and dam was open
the echo of my footsteps under the bridge
the clicking of a bike’s gear across the service road
thought about what RJP told me yesterday: someone went over this locks and dam in a canoe (or was it a kayak?) yesterday
at the top of the hill again, a man read the sign to a little kid who started jumping and asked him to join — by the time I reached them, they were both jumping and laughing and making goofy noises
the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings
still
I thought about being quiet and calm and the opposite of restless and anxious. Then I thought about my core — literally and figuratively. Core = my core muscles, strong back, a straight spine. Core = enduring values, character. I felt the stillness within my self and my body even as the world blurred and floated and drifted around me. Then, Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit” popped into my head — amongst the flux of happenings. Yes! A stillness of the spirit, where stillness is being satisfied and balanced and present in the moment, not needing to do more or feel guilt or regret for what was or wasn’t done.
/I still the clock by holding the pendulum coin still so that the mechanism stops and I can sleep without the consciousness of it.
to still the clock is a ritual of the demagnification of clocks.
/it is a kind of violence of fiction for the clock to not function as a clock while others click and breathe and blink.
the eyes blink more before they stop functioning as eyes.
/the rapid eye movement of dream frightening being pure pulse, pure frenetic zag force
/to watch a gold-painted platinum extravagant clock you’re an excess you’re a fire you’re in competition with the tiredness of time. /to hold in your satiny eyelids the still unstill pendulum of the gaudy machination you are in unison
with the aspirant expirations of the day.
still / holding / pending / stop sleep / not function / click / breathe / blink / dream / pulse / excess / rapid fire extravagance / tiredness / still unstill / aspire to expire
underwater the end (expiration) is the breath (expire) the end / forced above / evicted from below / no longer water but air
In this poem, to still is to stop, to end, the deep sleep
swim: 6 loops 110 minutes cedar lake open swim 82 degrees
The final open swim of the season. It goes so fast! Another great night for a swim. Warm, sunny. I liked that the wind made the water less smooth — not too rough, a gentle rocking. The course was set up strangely and even though I complained about it afterwards, I think I liked the challenge of it. One buoy was in the middle of the lake, the other was at the far left edge of hidden beach. At first I worried that this set-up would cause chaos with swimmers crossing over the path and running into to each other, but it was fine.
a risky moment: Because the course was so far to the left, I swam in water I haven’t before. Almost halfway across, I swam straight into a nest of vines — the biggest cluster of vines I’ve ever experienced. I didn’t panic and was able to swim out of it, but I could imagine a weaker swimmer struggling to free themselves and getting wrapped more tightly. As I swam away from it, I thought about the high school football player that drowned off of the little beach at lake nokomis about 10 years ago. That’s probably how it happened.
Some things irritated me: the swimmer that I tried to pass but sped up to prevent it, another swimmer stopped at the buoy, blocking the way, the unmoving lifeguard on his kayak too close in on the course, the bright sun making it almost impossible to see anything on the way back, the scratchy vines. But more things relaxed and delighted me: the gentle water, feeling strong and able to swim for so long, swimming past other swimmers like they were standing still, the faint clouds in the sky, the solitary orange buoy sitting on the surface of the water glowing, glimpsing other swimmers off in the distance — only inklings: the flash of a yellow or orange buoy, a bright pink cap, white foamy water.
overheard:
a mom with 2 kids, one who was around 4 or 5, the other a baby in her arms, to a lifeguard: Can he swim out to the orange pyramid? lifeguard: (thinking she meant the baby and not the kid) alone? mom: oh no, not the baby!
Later I heard her recounting the story to a friend. They were laughing about it.
At the end of the second to last loop, I stopped at the beach, stood in the shallow water and the sand, checked my watch, and decided to do one more loop. For the final loop, I felt Mary Oliver’s one day in August, everything calm and quiet. I thought about what a great season it has been, how grateful I am to have this time swimming, and how satisfied I am to have taken advantage of it. No open swims until next June. I thought about how no next season is guaranteed; a lot could happen between now and then. Then I remember the story of my great-grandmother Johanna standing out in the field at the farm near the end of the fall to behold the familiar view, wondering if she’d still be around the next fall.
Hooray for biking to a lake that is open again! Had a few (almost) moments of panic — maybe not panic, but feeling unsettled. Everything blurred or smudged. I could see enough but not as much as I wanted to. The rest of the time, the ride was more than fine.
Nearing the double bridge, I could hear a bike approaching from behind. I slowed down to let him pass and he called out, in a chill and kind voice, you’re good — it’s single file here. After making it through the bridge, as he passed me, he called, those e-bikes are scary! I agreed, but wasn’t sure why he mentioned it. Only now, writing this, did I remember that some e-bike passed me going very fast and without warning me. I suppose that was what he was referring to.
swim: 1.75 loops (6 mini loops) 45 minutes lake nokomis main beach 72 degrees
The lake and the beach were empty. Noticed some signs near the shore — oh no, is the beach still closed? Nope. Those signs were for more information about blue-green algae and weren’t announcing that the beach was closed.
The water was great. Not too cold, clearer than cedar lake. Saw some of my sparkle friends and a lot of ducks. At least 2 different ducks crossed my path as I swam. quack quack
Forgot to count loops; counted number of strokes for one loop (250) and each of the four white cylindrical buoys as I swam past them, and my five strokes between breaths.
Encountered a lot of pale milfoil, a few paddle boarders, a canoe. No other swimmers.
Right before starting my swim, I heard a dog barking on the other side. Something about the deep sound, repeated half a dozen times, that seemed solemn or ominous.
It was wonderful to be swimming in lake nokomis all alone. So quiet! So relaxed. A definite deepening and quieting of the spirit.
For part of a loop, I recalled the woman I met who had been bit by a fish and was unsettled. Will any fish come and bite me today? Then I remembered that it annoyed her, but it didn’t seem to hurt or haunt her. Barely a nibble.
Later, I recall thinking about how my world is always underwater: distorted and approximate forms, softened features, a sense of disconnection but also a new logic of connection. Right after that thought, I noticed how underwater was green, above blue — blue sky, blue surface, green everything else
hour entry:I made a chart today a beautiful/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
I made a chart today a beautiful weekly chart for links and breakages and shoulder pulls and astronaut walks. Some items are measured in repetitions, some in minutes and I endeavor to note on which days I have devoted my body’s minutes and repeated movements through time space onto this chart. At the end I hope for late endorphin states, and an even gait, and for uncertain ailments to dissipate by my discipline.
chart / shoulders / repetitions / measured minutes / devotion to minutes to repetitions to even gaits to uncertain ailments
What does my watch watch?
minutes / loops / beats / strokes / effort / uneven gaits / balance / breath / pace / distance / errors / miscalculations / days / dates / hours / location / light / how loud that military plane flying overhead was / ambient light / laziness / discipline / dedication / obsessions / hesitations / regrets
swim: 3.25 loops 75 minutes cedar lake open swim 81 degrees
Another beautiful night for a swim! And the buoys were back where they belong: close to point and hidden beach. I didn’t feel too sore even though I swam earlier today. My shoulders were fine the whole swim, but my right tricep started to ache on the second to last loop.
Everything was great in the water except the vines. So many vines — strands, clumps, nets of vines. I kept swimming through them and as they hit me with their sharp scratchiness, I flinched. I’m glad I didn’t pull something in my neck with all the flinching I was doing! And the vines didn’t want to leave. They wrapped around my feet, my wrists, shoulders, head. One persistent clump wrapped around my safety buoy and kept tapping me on the thigh until I finally realized what it was and ripped it off and threw it.
The sky was blue with a few fluffy clouds and an occasional soaring bird. Oh, and a dragonfly! I haven’t seen many of those this summer.
Today I noticed the spray from my arm as I lifted it out of the water. Dripping in an arc as my hand traveled from my hip to past my head and back into the water.
One more day of open swim club. How can it be over already?
Ugh — so thick! Oh well, there’s one good thing about this consistently hot and humid weather in the morning: it’s making me want to be done with summer and ready for fall and winter running. My calf almost cramped after 4 minutes of running again. I had to walk it off. I wonder what’s causing this?
Heard a lot of rowers on the river. And not just the coxswain this time; I also heard rowers cheering for each other. Was it a class? The U of M team? I stopped on the winchell trail to try and see them but I couldn’t. Too many leaves in the way.
Evidence of rain everywhere. Lots of mud, gushing and spurting sewers. The pipe that dumps neighborhood water down the ravine and into the river at 44th was loud. I decided to stop and record a video of it. In the background, you can hear the coxswain.
water falls / coxswain calls
When I wasn’t on the winchell trail, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist, including Beck’s “Time Bomb.” The first time I heard that song was in the Funny or Die video with Will Ferrell and ? (can’t remember the other actor) going around Los Angeles and high-fiving everyone. Tried to find a clip of it but couldn’t.
When I looked up “time bomb beck video” a promo video for charity: water came up from 16 years ago. The organization was seeking donations to help in drilling for water in Central Africa. I don’t know enough about whether or not this is a good (effective, responding to the needs of the people by asking them what they need) organization, and I couldn’t tell from the video, partly because I couldn’t see it very well, but its reminder, at the beginning, that water is life and its emphasis on access to water offers an important link between time and water and a powerful contrast between my experience, living among so many lakes, and the experience of others without easy access to water.
I am reminded of a passage in Anne Carson’s “1=1.” After describing a scene of a train car in Europe over-stuffed with people fleeing war zones, she writes:
a scene so much the antithesis of her own morning she cannot enter it. What sense it makes for these two mornings to exist side by side in the world where we live, should this be framed as a question, would not be answerable by philosophy or poetry or finance or by the shallows or the deeps of her own mind, she fears.
1=1/ Anne Carson
Impossible to answer, important to dwell within the discomfort of it.
hour entry:When John Adams wrote / Endi Bogue Hartigan
Another toll, another count of automatic weapon casualties, another occasion of America losing track of its math. I read today that when John Adams wrote “Thirteen Clocks were made to Strike together,” clocks were a tolling of public event, rung, an occasion or station in sun. I slept, and woke, I slept too long and woke. I tried to count the measured world by reading. Read “Thirteen Clocks,” read the late morning sun slant, read the current count outpaces past casualty counts, read “just three percent of adults own half of America’s guns.” Something automatic in measure, too automatic. I woke out of 9.25 hours of sleep I calculated automatically upon waking. I saw a crow out the window that was the occasion of a crow pecking frozen specks. I read the headlines leaking into headlines, saw the orchid sky calculating nothing. I have an inclination to stream and I don’t know what it means today. I have an inclination to lie in my husband’s shoulders crook and let the day snowdrift let the dimness become wide, so a shoulder is a kind of stream too. The argument is made that the streaming of time is a perception trick. The argument is made that we have moved past occasion to incremental measure that we are obsessed with measure and stricken. I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water. The early clocks were water clocks but it was shown that water was imprecise, was subject to pressure and pore—even streams of consciousness can encounter ducts and brim. I am conscious of my husband’s warmth because of more than his warmth. Do not mistake headlines for measure. We were held in God’s soft pocket. Do not mistake automatic grieving for water.
toll / automatic / occasion / track / count measures / measure counts / outpace / streaming time / from occasion to increment / obsess / to stream is to move through water not seconds or minutes or hours / water exceeds measure is imprecise is more than our grief
the imprecision of water clocks / “The history of timekeeping is the story of the search for ever more consistent actions or processes to regulate the rate of a clock.” / “Since the rate of flow of water is very difficult to control accurately, a clock based on that flow could never achieve excellent accuracy. People were naturally led to other approaches.”
precision / division / headline as occasion as increment as measured line between
a line to keep/to use: I have an inclination to obsessively stream, to arise and move not through incremental measures of occasion but through water.
Maybe this could be the title of a poem? Something about softness and imprecision and the inability to be contained in easily measurable ways. And how my vision loss has made for liquid looking (Alice Oswald), and a way to see the same or better than others in the water. Moving through water offers a different logic and makes the existing logic strange — distorted, weathered, unreliable, imprecise.
And now, instead of moving through water, I’m thinking of Bruce Lee’s short poem about being water:
Empty your mind. Be formless shapeless like water now you put water into a cup it becomes the cup you put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle you put it into a tea pot it becomes the tea pot now water can flow or it can craaaaasshh be water my friend
Be water versus be like water. Metaphor versus simile. Metaphor removes the encounter with the other; you become the other (see Anne Carson and the anthropology of water).
people always believe that metaphor is more poetic. But I’ve always loved simile. One of the reasons is that simile keeps both worlds alive at the same time whereas metaphor changes one for another. So you get this beautiful kind of doubled feeling with the simile.
Searching for something else, I just came across this excellent answer to the question, Do you carry a notebook?
AO: No, I don’t much. If I travel like now I do take a notebook. I find by the time I get back home I haven’t got the sort of liveliness. Mostly I try to take things into my head. I really believe in the sort of inarticulate ways of thinking. So the fact that you can read the whole day, all day long, and then when you’re composed it can come out again. I like that process of it not yet being in language, changing your mind round. And I’m more and more wary of the kind of willed and conscious act of writing. More and more I leave my mind to do it by itself. So I will, you know, go out and be kind of shocked by all the colours and pictures and smells and then purposefully not think of them linguistically. I think that the underneath mind will then do the work and that’s the mind I’m interested in. So the skill for me is then learning how to raid that underneath mind and then, when you do pick up a pen, you’re listening just hard enough so that you don’t use your surface mind. You get down to the mind that has taken everything in.
Instead of the underneath mind, the underwater mind, or the just beneath the surface mind? The water-logged mind?
swim: 3 loops (? cedar loops*) 75 minutes cedar lake open swim 85 degrees
*a strange course set-up: the first buoy was halfway out in the lake, the second was close to shore and to the right of hidden beach, so I’m not sure of the distance. Judging my time and effort, I’m guessing that I did 3 nokomis loops.
note: I didn’t have time to write this entry right after my swim, so I’m writing it the next morning.
Another wonderful night with hardly any wind. Beautiful light. Warm water, except for when I stopped swimming to tread water and extend my feet as far below as I could. Then it was cold. Crowded tonight: the last free night of the season. The water was fast, flat, opaque. My goggles were fogged for a lap or two until I licked the inside, then they were clear. I wasn’t sure if that would work, but it did.
My favorite image: on the second half of the loop, heading back to the beginning, breathing to my right and seeing a line of swimmers in the distance heading towards hidden beach. What did I actually see? the rare flash of an arm, a pink cap, churned up water.
After 3.5 loops, I stopped to take a quick break and check my time. Oops, the workout never started. I remember pressing start on my watch, but sometimes this happens. Oh well. Even without the data, I swam for 30 minutes before turning on my workout.
After finishing the swim, drying off in the grass, I encountered another swimmer who had a strange request. A fish bit my mole, could you check to make sure it’s not bleeding? The other day, a fish bit me and when I got home I had a scab.
The fish bite? What? I can’t remember if I’ve written about it this summer, but I haven’t noticed any fish. Not one sighting of a silver flash, definitely no encounters. The other swimmer continued, I’m just so slow out there and they’re attracted to my moles. Yikes!
She joked that she was going to ask her roommate to make fish for dinner so she could get some revenge. With each bite she’d say, I’m not food, YOU’RE food!
5 loops (9 cedar loops) 95 minutes cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
A fabulous evening: no wind, sun, calm water. I felt so strong and buoyant for much of the swim. High on the water, a steady kick, strong arms. The light around 7 was that great late summer evening light. The sun setting earlier than in July — a chance to see a different sort of sparkle on the surface. Point beach was shallower than usual. I was able to stand up farther out than I ever have before — or, was I just standing in a different spot? The floor of this beach is very uneven. Lots of prickly vines, single strands passing slowly over my legs, clusters or clumps or knots almost getting tangled with my kicking feet.
before the swim
Continuing to read and think about Endi Bogue Hartigan’s on orchid o’clock as I experiment with what it could mean to swim one day in august. In process note #27, Hartigan writes this about the process of working on the book:
I dove into reading about the history of horology, clock systems, and theories/philosophies of time and my mind wandered through these histories for years, clock history being an incredible palimpsest of histories: religious, industrial, scientific, astronomical, governmental, economic, natural, more. The history of clocks and time measure includes everything from the capitalist puppetry of measuring industrial time to drive efficiency, to the synchronization with atomic clocks from computers where real time headline bleed into our screens and consciousness, to medieval monks creating mechanisms to wake for morning prayers. Time itself as a concept has no one definition. And while clock measure is cultural it is also so personal, is used to keep us close to our beloved ones and moments. I wrote from this interlay, and the more I wrote the more I wrestled with how we inherit these interwoven histories and constraints, but also fight against them and can slip boundless out of them.
The mechanization and measurement of time. I’m thinking of the second verse of Oliver’s poem:
Something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part.
The mechanical part. The clock! That twelve-figured moon skull, that white spider belly! Regular. Ordering disorderly life. Ordinary (Oliver, Upstream). the hours on their rounds, twelve white collar workers who manage the schedules of water (A Oswald, Dart).
Precise. Neat little boxes. Nothing approximate about it, exact. The closest I can get to precision when measuring my encounter with lake water. The next closest is arm strokes, but only because I’m steady with my strokes and rarely stop or vary it. My Apple watch records this data. It even distinguishes breast stroke from freestyle. How?
Where does an Apple watch fit into the study of clocks? To my swimming one day in August?
Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:
The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement.
Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?
hour entry: “calendaring” is a verb/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
“Calendaring” is a verb. You can “clock yourself in.” These terms like rows of hothouse orchids living in some God-forsaken pre-purchase interval steam. New verbs for new measures, new signs of transaction as home, this moon hour spent “off the clock,” but tracked, this noon hour packed in screen-time and foam, this stem of the orchid holding itself up as an orchid. you can even check off “orchid,” you can list for Tuesday, “unnatural hothouse mixture of purple and green.”
clock yourself in / measuring data / transactor or transacted or transaction? / tracked / tricked / off the clock / on the clock / in the clock
calendar / 7 days / every day / any day / a certain day / day after day / all day / once a day / 30 days has september
orchids in rows / hothouse / swimmers doing loops / a dredged-out lake / unnatural green / fertilizer run-off / blue-green algae o-clock / an exchange — a perfect lawn for an unswimmable lake
during the swim
Thought about days and remembered my “On This Day” practice. I should use that in my thinking and writing about one day in August. Also thought about another way, in addition to minutes, strokes, and distance, that I use to measure duration: active calories. Finally, as I counted my strokes between breaths — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — I thought about counting as a comforting practice and about counting and accumulation (minutes/hours accrued) versus counting as a repeating of numbers with no accumulation (1 2 3 4 5 breathe). Of course, there is accumulation with these strokes and I keep track of it on my watch: total number of strokes. But, the act of counting in the water over and over is different.
4 loops (8 cedar loops) 95 minutes cedar lake open swim 69 degrees
Would it rain? Would they cancel the swim? It seemed uncertain when I woke up to gloom, but the storm stayed south and the water was great. Smooth, mostly calm, not too crowded, easy to see. The first 3 and a half loops felt so easy and fast. I stopped at hidden beach for a quick break and a chance to see the lake from above the water for more than a brief flash every 5 strokes. The beach was quiet, empty. I could hear wind in the trees, then some bugs. I think I saw a few people getting ready to do open swim. They were up in the grass putting on wetsuits. Started swimming again and did another 3 loops before taking a minute or two break at hidden beach again. swam 1.5 more loops before deciding I was done — my legs decided for us. Nearing the first buoy, my legs felt like they were about to cramp, so I stopped kicking and dragged myself in for the last 50 feet or so.
strange vision
Several times, something strange happened with my color vision. Looking up quickly to sight, I noticed the lifeguard’s kayak. Instead of red in looked white and (almost) robin’s egg blue. Later, getting closer to more than one swimmer, their swim cap was white and the same blue instead of bright pink. Both with the kayak and the caps, when I got closer they returned to normal — red and pink.
10+ Things
white sky — sometimes I could see the sun through the clouds, but it never emerged
a swirl of vines, passing over my head, shoulders, torso, lingering near my ankles
the swimming area at hidden beach was wide and long and almost empty — at least one other open swimmer was standing in the shallow water
for the first 4 loops, the water was all smooth, during loop 5 it was much choppier heading to hidden beach
a bird in the air — was it big or small? I couldn’t quite tell. I’m thinking small
opaque water
a scratchy vine, pricking my arm
noticing the surface above the water from my vantage point: submerged, only my eyes out of the water, like an alligator
stopping at the little beach: a dog barking, a collar clanging
making note of the procession of swimmers on the other side of the course, heading to hidden beach when I was heading from it — a slow and steady line of swimmer
after the swim, walking past a big puddle on the dirt/gravel road, its surface had scales on it from the wind
I never got completely lost in the swim, although I had moments where I wasn’t thinking about my stroke or breathing or sighting.
Thinking about time, last night I started reading Endi Bogue Hartigan’s on orchid o’clock. Here’s the opening poem, which I think will be a great inspiration for me in playing around with “one day in august.”
I’m talking about the rotation/ Endi Bogue Hartigan
—The predictable commencement of annual flooding of the Nile River is said to have formed the foundation of the ancient Egyptian calendar. Calculations were made using nilometers, vertical water-measurement devices, influencing taxation, crop planning, and more.
I’m talking about the black cows in the pasture along the highway between here and the office: some days the black cows’ snouts are pointed in the same direction in the morning and the opposite direction in the evening, all 200-300 or so, parallel dipping their snouts: some days they are helter-skelter; some days the shadows are crisp some days the shadows are swallowed but they have shadows on all days; and the wet eyes of the cows have an angle with which they lean into the wet grass, so they are a kind of dials to themselves and their light, visible to themselves or not. I might be comforted driving by saying cow shadow o’clock, saying east black cow o’clock, I might be comforted by talking about their rotation.
/it is child eyelash o’clock /it is having to look o’clock it is Nile flood o’clock /it is percolate o’clock
/it is morning birds plus socket sound of car closing / 21st century pastoral o’clock it is flashflood fear o’clock /it is TV van at the shooting site rim
/it is miscount of the dead o’clock /it is remember to call remember to call find a corner to make a call o’clock
/it is the blue jay screech o’clock /it is having to look o’clock /it is innocent eyelash o’clock /it is the clock continuing despite
o’clock /people emptying from their eyes /it is yesterday’s rose-dew o’clock
/it is tearing the work blouse off its hanger o’clock/ it is tearing and not /it is that blouse again that headline again it is
everything I forgot creeping up in tides /it is people split and swelled
confiding overflow o’clock /it is the shadow of a gun / the shadow of the cow o’clock /it is what is allowed in the shadow
/it is the president’s turned up o’clock it is America’s deadliness and dailiness o’clock /it is glued to the headline o’clock
it is lunchhour-beeline o’clock /it is it’s only Tuesday o’clock another curbside memorial o’clock another caterpillar miracle o’clock another
people emptying from their lives o’clock or into their lives o’clock the Nile floods every hotspell in this week
/it is child-wake, it is flood of what’s at stake o’clock, /it is the morning rupture the American rupture that
shadow-bleeds and swells /it is the felling of the shadow o’clock /I’m talking about the black cows.
4 loops (8 cedar loops) 100 minutes cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
A great swim. I think I’ve only ever swum at cedar lake in the morning one other time, in august of 2019 when lake nokomis was closed for the rest of the season because a few kids pooped near the big beach and the e-coli was crazy high. I liked it, although it took some adjusting. In the late afternoon, the sun is always in my eyes on the back half of the loop. This time, in the morning, it was in my eyes during the front half. The first loop felt great, the second a little harder as I worked on my stroke and breathing properly, but by the third loop I had locked into a steady rhythm. I wasn’t paying attention to my stroke or breath, I was just moving through the water.
10 Things
an orange glow on the water just below the orange buoy
orange at the edge of my vision as I swam
something big and white through the trees and on the shore. When I was swimming, it just looked white, but when I stopped to study it, I realized it was a house
a vine landed on my shoulder and I was able to whip it off with my hand mid-stroke
a small bird flying fast above me
someone with a bright pink safety buoy, swimming wide around the course
the surface of the water: blue with soft ripples
only a few clouds
lifeguard as landmark: on the edge of the course
lifeguard as obstacle: too close to the orange buoy
In the later loops, I started reciting the Alice Oswald lines I’d memorized last month. Struggled a little, but managed to remember most of them. Even as I struggled with the lines, the act of reciting them distracted me — or, did it focus me? — and I entered the flow –everything water and motion. In my head, as I stroked 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left 1 2 3 a slight head lift to sight 4 5 breathe right, I linked this flow state with some sentences from Anne Carson’s “1=1”:
And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it. Not at all like meditation—an analogy often thoughtlessly adduced—but, rather, almost forensic, as an application of attention, while at the same time, to some degree, autonomic.
Oh yes, for much of that 100 minute swim, I was in it, in the water, in my life, in motion, where motion = the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action.
Speaking of motion, I found this from Susan Tichy this afternoon:
All I wanted for the poem was openness, a merging of muscle-memory with the skittering of words down the page, to know as a process of motion.
Does muscle-memory = those ten thousand adjustments? In the early loops, my adjustments — of my head for better breathing, elbows for better power, hips for more buoyancy — were conscious and took me out of myself, but in the later loops, I didn’t think about how I was stroking or breathing and sighting, I just did it.
In her mention of skittering of words down the page, Tichy is talking about her efforts to write about mountains. How to describe it in terms of today’s lake water? Bobbing on the page? Gliding across the page, directed by currents, re-routed by waves or lifeguards or other swimmers?
Another hard run. Hot! Lots of sweating and stopping to take walk breaks. Ran to the bottom of locks and dam #1 for a great view of the river. I can’t remember its color — blue, I think — but I remember the small waves on it and the faint wake from a long gone boat. Oh, and the single white buoy and the roar of rushing water one way and the ford bridge the other.
At the bottom of the locks and dam, I noticed some bright orange leaves:
fall is coming / 14 aug 2025
Not the greatest picture, but I’ll post it anyway. So orange! Too soon!
Saw someone emerge from the trail that dips below the road to cross the path and wondered if they had just come up from the new trail that descends deeper into the gorge. Encountered 2, maybe 3, roller skiers, walkers, runners, a few bikers. Below the road I stopped to walk and listen to the acorns falling from the tree and thumping on the ground. Then started running again over acorn shells.
I thought about my Swimming, One Day in August project and had an idea: what if I tried swimming in bde maka ska and lake harriet? Or, some other lakes nearby? Or, one of the clearest lakes in the state, Square Lake, in Stillwater?
a few hours later: Hooray! Just received an email that all future open swims will be at Cedar! So as long as Scott can drive me over there, I don’t have to miss a single one.
a ramble on lake water testing
A revelation just last week. Minneapolis Parks tests the lake water weekly, and testing the water is better than not testing the water. But the slow and rigid system of testing only on Mondays and getting results on Tuesdays (e-coli) and Wednesdays (algae blooms) combined with the fickle changes in quality based on weather and other environmental factors, means the testing is not very accurate for what the conditions are at any given time. On an abstract level, it seems obvious to me that you can’t rely on tests to guarantee safe water, but on an experiential level — that is, being in the water swimming for over an hour at a time roughly 6 times a week for 11 summers — I needed an unquestioned faith in those tests and the park’s ability to let me know when it was/wasn’t safe to swim in order to get in the water.
And, mostly it is safe in the water. And it is clean. I get very irritated when someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about says to me, eww, how can you swim in that dirty water!? Minneapolis Park workers and volunteers do an amazing job of keeping the water quality high. And this is partly due to their regular testing. But, these tests can’t guarantee anything.
What am I trying to do here? I’m not blaming the parks department; these tests are expensive and it would be difficult to test regularly enough to keep up with the quick shifts in wind and rain and the groundwater problems (like unstable sewer systems) that have existed from the beginning of the lake’s modern shape in the 1920s when workers excavated peat and used it to build up the surrounding neighborhood. Not to mention climate change and erratic weather and an excess of nutrients getting into the water from lawn fertilizers. And people feeding ducks who poop in the water which increases the amount of e-coli. No, I think Minneapolis Parks, especially Minneapolis Aquatics, are amazing.
All of this is complicated and messy with no easy answers. And it’s scary. I’ve been wondering for a few years when it’s going to happen — because it seems inevitable that it will happen — that lakes will no longer be safe to swim in, unfiltered outside air will no longer be safe to breathe. And this is how it happens, I think. Not all of sudden, but slowly. More days with bad test results and beach closures. Or inaccurate test results and water that is pea-soup green and slimy and that might get you sick.
I suppose this last paragraph sounds depressing, and it is, and also it isn’t. I love swimming in lake nokomis, and I would do a tremendous amount to keep swimming in it. Maybe it’s time to figure out what I can do to help keep it safe.
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 68 degrees / 73 degrees
Ahhh! What a morning! A relaxed ride. Again, no worries about what I could and couldn’t see. On the way there, I thought about metaphors (inspired by the lines below). An idea, which is not new, but is good to remind myself of: in poetry, it’s not all about meaning with words, but the movement and shifting they create. Thoughts, experiences, ideas flow freely until they bump into words. Words direct the movement (from encounter to revelation or understanding).
The most memorable thing on the bike back. Climbing the hill near the rec center and where bikes cross the parkway, I heard — HEY ASSHOLE WATCH OUT! — a car and a biker stopped in the road, the biker yelling at the driver for not stopping, the driver apologizing. Then — you’re a Minnesota driver, that’s what YOU are! I didn’t really see what happened, but I know it’s hard to see all the bikers when you’re driving. I also know that drivers don’t always look. The driver’s apology seemed sincere; the biker’s yelling was very loud and aggressive. And what’s up with insulting Minnesotans?
earlier today
Heard from an open window, a woman talking to someone, presumably a young kid: it‘s actually a t — saTurday
Returning to some lines from a poem I posted a few days ago, Difference/ Mark Doty:
nothing but something forming itself into figures then refiguring,
sheer ectoplasm recognizable only as the stuff of metaphor.
swim: 2 loops (8 mini loops) 50 minutes lake nokomis main beach 73 degrees
Wow wow wow! What a swim. This might be one of the top swims of the summer, and the one that fits best with Mary Oliver’s words in Swimming, One Day in August:
it is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit among the flux of happenings.
…
I went down in the afternoon to the sea which held me, until I grew easy.
I think I swam 8 loops. I stopped a lot to tread water and listen to the silence. So quiet! I was all alone, but not. So relaxing. I felt completely at ease, which is not a feeling I have that often. No wind, no waves, the surface flat and still except for the bubbles I was creating that popped on the surface. A few seagulls perched on the white buoys — hello friends! A few clouds in the blue sky. My fingers frequently got caught on milfoil reaching up from the bottom, but it was almost like we were high-fiving or greeting each other — nothing menacing about the vines today. There were 2 metal detector dudes chatting and detecting. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, so no idea about what they found. Neither of them yelled out excitedly, I got it!
10 Things
seagulls — in the sky, on the buoy
water like velvet
a thin skin of something on the surface in the swimming area
the contrast between the sloshing as I swam freestyle and the silence as I tread water and bobbed
the only thing I could see under water were bubbles
the surface: almost a mirror, flat, blue
the roar of one plane overhead
workers fixing the picnic tables — they pulled off the tops and the seats earlier in the week — having fun and listening to country music
standing in the swimming area, facing the sun, closing my eyes and still seeing the reflection of the light on the surface
thinking it was almost too silent — why was there no noise? — then hearing the pounding of a hammer from the workers near Painted Turtle
NOOOOOOOOO!! Got an email this afternoon that both beaches at Lake Nokois are closed immediately due to blue-green algae. They test the water every Monday and, as I just learned, the results for e-coli come in on Tuesday, but blue-green algae comes in on Wednesday. It might clear up before next week, but they won’t test again until Monday, and won’t have the results until Wednesday. So the earliest they can open up the lake is next Wednesday. I’ll miss 4 open swims. Then Thursday will be the last open swim of the season. Such a bummer, but at least I got my magical morning, and I didn’t encounter any algae. I saw it on Monday, but I think it’s already cleared up.
swim: 3 loops (6 mini loops) 65 minutes cedar lake open swim 79 degrees
Other than the abundance of scratchy, clingy vines, the water was perfect. Calm, smooth, not too cold (or too warm). So relaxing! The water was a little greener than usual, but no algae blooms. Hopefully it will stay that way. There were a few pockets of very cold water near the far buoy. The sun was making the water sparkle. I stopped a few times to enjoy the silence out in the middle of the lake. Encountered a kayak and a paddle boarder who seemed extra tall standing straight up and above me. A strange sight — a giant walking on water.
Only 2 more cedar lake swims this season and no swimming at all until next Monday. Boo.
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 69 degrees (there) / 72 (back)
I’m getting serious about my 24 hours of swimming in a month this week. Decided to bike over the lake for a short morning swim. The bike ride was great. I only had to pass one person! I didn’t have any moments of panic when everything seemed a little fuzzy. As usual, the bike ride back was easier and seemed to go by much faster. Biking down the hill between Lake Nokomis and Lake Hiawatha, I noticed another redone path leading down to the dock. Someday I’ll run over here and check it out.
5 Bike Things
a group of kids congregating at the bike safety course that used to be a tennis court
creek water rushing by near the spot where kids like to swim
some sort of rock music that I couldn’t identify coming from a bike
the marsh area near my favorite part of the creek path didn’t have any water, just mud
passing my the wooden bridge at lake nokomis — an intensely sour rotten fishy smell — yuck!
swim: 6 mini loops / 1.5 lake nokomis loops 35 minutes main beach lake nokomis 70 degrees
A wonderful morning for a swim. Calm, empty water. There were a few kayaks and swan boats, but otherwise, I was the only human in the water, at least near the bench. Plenty of vines and fish below me, ducks nearby, planes and seagulls above. I’m swimming again tonight, so I didn’t want to do too much this morning.
5 Swim Things
a plane flying directly overhead, looking like a shark
swooping seagulls
a kayak crossing in front of me
ghost vines reaching up
thin strips of light extending below, diagonally
I recited Mary Oliver’s “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my body. Had to give myself a little pep talk during loop 2 — no, there are NOT any giant turtles or things with sharp teeth lurking below, waiting to dart up and drag me down. I rarely have these fears, and they don’t make me panic, but occasionally when I’m swimming alone, off of the main beach, a what-if thought creeps in. What if there is something down there waiting for me?
The lake was great. After I finished, I stood in the swimming area and took it all in. At the edge of the shore, I noticed the water was a bright green — uh-oh, hope there aren’t algae blooms!
swim: 3.5 loops 70 minutes cedar lake open swim 79 degrees
Double swims today. The water at cedar was choppy. Mostly, I loved it. The only parts I didn’t like: having to breathe on only one side more often and the stretch where the water seemed to be pulling me down. It was harder to stroke. Otherwise, it was great. Oh — except for all of the vines. Lots of full body scans today, with a vine traveling down my body as I swam over it.
5 Cedar Things
a young kid hiding in the buoy near point beach
a lifeguard in a kayak near hidden beach, close to the far buoy — part red blur, part dark silhouette
the idea of orange in the distance as I tried to sight — only a tiny orange dot
cloudless sky
2 girls laughing and swimming at the beach
added the next morning: Just remembered something I really didn’t want to forget about last night’s swim. Standing in the shallow water, preparing to start my swim, I overheard parents with their 2 young boys — 5 or 6 or 7? They were trying to get them back into their kayaks.
mom: we talked about this. we can’t take the kayaks unless you paddle all the way back. get in the kayak.
kid 1: I’ll get in the kayak if you buy me a nintendo. kid 2: yeah, a nintendo.
Damn. . . .I didn’t stick around to see what happened, but I’m betting the mom wasn’t falling for this shit.
Another great swim, even if my goggles kept leaking. I had to stop several times to fix them. The water was not too rough but wasn’t still either. It offered a gentle rocking. My sparkle friends were abundant today and coming at me, like swimming through stars or light like it looks in a time lapse video. Mostly it was cloudy, but sometimes the sun came out and the surface of the water sparkled. From a bird’s view above, I imagine they were able to watch it turn from pewter to silver to pewter again.
The buoys near the main beach were in close, which I like. It means the course is longer. Was it? I’ll compare these different days, all swimming 4 loops:
8 aug: 2010 strokes / 1.78 miles 22 july: 2347 / 2.29 miles 17 july: 2660 / 2.64 miles 11 july: 2020 / 1.89 miles
Okay. I was wrong. Today’s four loops was the shortest 4 loops out of this sample of 4 4 loop swims.
10 Things
a sloshing sound of water — was it my arms piercing the water that made this sound, or my head turning to breathe or my torso being rocked by the water?
a plane
opaque water
bubbles around my hands
my feet feeling like rudders
the sky, white and thick with clouds
later the sky, split open, the sun peeking through
sparkles on the water
the far off dot of the green buoy not looking green but white
the area around the white buoys thick with milfoil
Took a screen shot of my path today. The off-course lines are when I went to the swimming area at the big beach to fix my googles.
4 loops at lake nokomis / 8 aug 2025
A scalene triangle, almost an isosceles.
Today I’m working on adding to my inklings (inkling poems / 5 line, 5 syllable small poems that spread rumors, drop hints, whisper, are approximate/vague/rough in their descriptions). Today’s inklings are about sketching different points on the course. One of the inklings, which serves as an intro to the larger goal of describing my course is title, “Plotting the course.” As I swam, I realized that this has a double meaning. Plotting as in identifying/marking points on the course and plotting as in create a story/plot for my experience swimming around the course. With that in mind, I’d like to write more about the story/stories I want to tell. Of course, plotting also means secret planning to do something/hatching a scheme. Will that meaning factor in too?
5 loops 90 minutes lake nokomis open swim 86 degrees
Yes! A wonderful swim, and another hour and a half to add to my goal of reaching 34 hours by the end of the month. The water was choppy, which I liked, except for when it made it hard to get a stroke in and I felt like I was sinking. The water was thick and filled with my sparkle friends. Several times it felt like the buoy kept getting farther and farther away, until I broke the spell and suddenly had reached it. I saw some menacing sailboats and 1 or 2 paddle boarders. The light during the last loop was very cool — why? I guess because it was giving very chill twilight vibes. Noticed a few planes flying low and lots of seagulls and ducks. A few flashes down below — fish?
I felt strong and can tell that I’m getting stronger as I do more longer swims. A thought — could I possibly manage 7 loops in 2 hours? That would be amazing!
A few lines from two poems discovered this morning:
There is the clarity of a shore And shadow, mostly, brilliance
The clarity of a shore and shadow. Not sure about the shore, but I like the idea of shadows bringing clarity. They do for me.
2
I am pointless. This I come to know by pressing ear to night’s machinery. Outside, the words rub each other until they are dull: calibrate, resurface, surface, invest, investigate, snowy, open, environ, woman, wooden, system. I look where little nodes of language cling, lichen-like, to what will have them. (from “Rose-crowned Night Girl”/ Emily Skillings
I read this line about being pointless and it helped me to think about pointless meaning more than useful or not worthwhile. To be pointless is to not have points, to be smooth instead of rough, nothing sharp about you. My vision is point-less but not pointless. Everything softens with my fuzzy gaze.
added after the swim: During loop 4 or 5, I started thinking about pointless again as a way to indicate a dot — it’s a star without points. Earlier today I was working on a poem that describes a dot as a distant star. After thinking about pointless I thought about how the star/point, which was the far-off buoy, wasn’t always there — it flickered.
added 8 aug 2025: Just remembered a few more things. After the swim, I met Scott at Painted Turtle for a beer. We watched the ducks in the water, bobbing and floating and almost getting into fights with seagulls. We also watched the final swimmer being escorted into shore by 3 lifeguards. I told Scott that being the last swimmer, that is, staying until the very end of open swim, is a goal every year. I think I’ve done it once. Then we watched the green buoys heading in for the night, looking so much smaller than they do in the water when you’re right next to them.
Humid. It rained last night — everything is wet — but there must been wind, too, because small branches and leaves were scattered over parts of the path. No big trees.
10 Sounds
Bird
the coxswains speaking through their bullhorns
a faint radio with someone singing, some vibrato
the steady trickle out of the sewer pipe near 42nd
good morning, excuse me / morning! no, excuse me (passing a walker)
morning! a greeting from Mr. Morning!
good morning / good morning (greeted by an older runner)
the whirr of a motor on an e-bike zooming by
another runner’s music coming from her phone as she ran by — some poppy upbeat song that I can’t remember
who run the world? girls! Beyoncé from my headphones and my mood: Energy playlist
Listened to the poem I wrote yesterday before I headed out for my run. This is my tentative ending:
tethers us to each other — swimmer and vision, buoy and body, to sight and to rarely see
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) 60 minutes cedar lake open swim 81 degrees
Choppy today. Sometimes hard to stay high on the water. Lots of vines. Saw some planes and birds above, no fish below. The surface looked silvery. Sometimes the sun was out, sometimes it was behind a cloud. Once a big, hulking cloud, looking like something other than a cloud from my perspective half-submerged in the water — a monster, like godzilla?
Forgot to recite Mary Oliver or think about the deepening and quieting of the spirit, but I felt it. Relaxed, happy, strong. Swimming for an hour wasn’t difficult.
Found this description of how we are both part of and separate from water saved on my reading list:
Nature—the non-built environment, creatures—is a realm of supreme “otherness” with which we are already always in strange relation. We plead for communion with this nature; it cannot answer us; so we project that onto it, that feeling of harmony and oneness at a shore or a vista. We are both a part of that natural sphere and stand distinctly apart within it, in our creaturely and industrial/technological dominance over it. You are both part of that sphere, and stand painfully apart, with your consciousness, language, cumbersome car and computer.
Now I’m thinking about Anne Carson and her definition of anthropology (as in, “Anthropology of Water”). I wrote about it on 13 july:
encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I.
added on 8 aug 2025: I forgot to mention a delightful thing that happened on the way over to cedar lake: a vee of geese — 20? — flying low over Bde Maka Ska then just above us — and, lucky me, I had the moon roof open to watch! — then heading towards Lake Harriet.
a few hours before my swim: just got word, finally, that lake nokomis is reopening after a week of being closed. not because the e-coli was that bad all week, but because they only test it once a week.
5 loops 100 minutes lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees
A wonderful night for a swim! The water was choppy, but gentle, and never forcing me to alter the side I breathed on. 1 2 3 4 5 right 1 2 3 4 5 left. Before the swim began, I encountered an older man and we talked about how much we love open swim. We agreed: it’s our favorite thing to do. As I started my swim, I thought about this wonderful exchange and this swimmer who loved what he was doing and I was happy.
10 Things
a plane parallel to the water, flying low but not too low
a dragonfly just above the surface
a distant swan boat
my sparkle friends were moving fast and into me as I swam
thick, murky water
seagulls
ducks — quack quack
the long, low light heading back to the big beach
the alert on my watch beep beep beeping underwater at the end of a loop — was it a reminder about the amber alert we got earlier today — did other people hear it under water?
more ghostly vines, one wrapping around my foot
I recited Mary Oliver’s, “Swimming, One Day in August” and felt the deepening and quieting of my spirit. Peaceful, calm, relaxed, in my element.
This entire poem is great, but for the sake of space I’ll just the pertinent section in today’s entry:
from Swimming Chenango Lake/ Charles Tomlinson
There is a geometry of water, for this Squares off the clouds’ redundancies And sets them floating in a nether atmosphere All angles and elongations: every tree Appears a cypress as it stretches there And every bush that shows the season, A shaft of fire. It is a geometry and not A fantasia of distorting forms, but each Liquid variation answerable to the theme It makes away from, plays before: It is a consistency, the grain of the pulsating flow.
geometry: the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something / relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles
geometry and not distorting form — angles and points and lines off due to water and unreliable vision
Thinking about geometries of water and Anne Carson’s anthropology of water and the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles. Suddenly remembered a reference to geometry that I’d like to experiment with:
“Closed because geometric mean of E. coli exceeds 126 MPN/100 mL“
It’s the message on the parks lake water quality map, explaining why the beach is closed. Will it reopen in time for tonight’s open swim? I hope so!
Geometric mean, what’s that? While Minneapolis Parks doesn’t explain, I found another site with some helpful information: E-coli Open Water Data
tests take 24 hours to process, that’s why I’m still waiting for the results to show up now, even though they tested yesterday (could this 24 hours be another example of swimming, one day in august?)
MPN = most probable number
this site is out of Toronto so it gives the acceptable rates for Canada. In Canada, it’s under 200 MPN, which is higher than here in Minneapolis: 126
I asked FWA — my science guy — what the geometric in geometric mean means and he explained it this way: they make an imaginary grid for the lake and then take samples from different sections of the grid, then they average those samples to get the MPN/ML number. So geometric = grid
The grid makes me think of my vision and the visual field test and the amsler grid and imagining the lake as a grid with different sections of it muted or extinguished or replaced with other sections of the grid that I can actually see.
And now I’m thinking about the geometric ways in which I approach swimming in the lake:
angles
trajectories
following a line, working to understand that relationship between points and surfaces (swimmers’ hands piercing the water and plotting my course with glitter)
lines and angles (wider angles to achieve distance from other swimmers, to find the buoy without seeing it)
lines and surfaces (try to follow a line that cuts across a wave/swelled surface instead of directly into it)
the line of the rope tethered to the buoy and a weight, anchoring the buoy
the angle of that rope line
how the angle of the sun and the angle of the buoy determine how likely I am to see it and how much orange is reflected on the surface of the water
the angle of the lifeguards in relation to the angle of my projected path, how the difference between these angles affects how straight I swim
same with the angle of other swimmers’ paths
the sharp angles of prickly vines
parallel lines: water and airplane, kicking feet, body and bottom, body and big beach
perpendicular lines: water and light pole
buoys as balls, spheres, orbs
buoys as cylinders
buoys as equilateral triangles
angles of elbow, the arc of an elbow’s path from out of the water to back in
grid quadrants: 1. from big beach to little beach, 2. from little beach to middle green buoy, 3. from middle green to final green buoy, 4. from final green buoy to first orange buoy
rounding the buoy vs. cutting a sharp angle
coordinate points: hand/water, a swimmer/another swimmer’s toe, orange buoy/surface
More on geometry . . . searched geometry on Poetry Foundation and this was the first result:
All the roofs sloped at the same angle. The distance between the houses was the same. There were so many feet from each front door to the curb. My father mowed the lawn straight up and down and then diagonally. And then he lined up beer bottles on the kitchen table.
We knew them only in summer when the air passed through the screens. The neighbor girls talked to us across the great divide: attic window to attic window. We started with our names. Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope, and below was the rest of our lives.
slopes angles
distance = feet
lines straight diagonally
screens = grid divide line bar
We knew them only in summer when the air passed through the screens. The neighbor girls talked to us across the great divide: attic window to attic window. We started with our names. Our whispers wobbled along a tightrope, and below was the rest of our lives.
All of this geometry talk has inspired me to craft a sonnet about grids and seeing and the grid in my eye tethered to the grid in the water. I have a first draft that needs a little work. The poem is about how I’ve been using sighting buoys during open swim to learn how to see in new ways, or to function without needing to see things clearly or often. Or, is it about the parallel paths that learning to sight and learning to rarely or unreliably see have taken and how that’s shaped my experiences with vision loss? or, are both of those conclusions too heavy-handed? Should it be stranger?
1
tethers us to each other — swimming and vision, buoy and body, to sight but rarely see
2
tethers us to each other — swimming and vision, buoy and body, to use sight to learn how to see
Typing up both of these endings, I like the first one better. I’ll keep thinking about it.
Better air! Well, less smoky air. Also, humid air. Heavy air. I checked the weather for rain. Nope. Leaving the house, I was greeted (or threatened or warned) by my next door neighbor, the bluejay. Screech! Screech! I admired the beautiful flowers — dark and light purple, orange, yellow — of the neighbor who lives with Matt the Cat. On the paved path, I glanced down at the oak savanna — dark green — and over at the leaning, almost twisted, fence. Heard the coxswain giving rowers their workout, something about 75ers, and wishing she had a micro-stop on her watch (at least, I think that’s what she said). Also heard rustling in the leaves, sounding bigger than a squirrel. A dog? A turkey? Heading down the hill at the Cleveland overlook, the river looked green and still through the trees. Someone was sitting on the bench in the grass near the stone wall. It was dark enough that the cars and bikes had their headlights on.
Because it’s cooler than the air is better, I have the windows open. Several squirrels are rooting around in the bushes. The sound is irritating me as I write this entry.
Listened to the cars and the rowers and the birds running south and on the Winchell Trail, then a few songs by Lawrence for the last stretch from the 38th street steps to home.
Swimming One Day in August
Because the big beach at Lake Nokomis has been closed due to high levels of e-coli, I haven’t had a chance to swim yet in August. Finally today, at Cedar Lake, I will start working towards my goal of swimming a total of 24 hours (= 1 day) in August. As part of that project, I’m devoting time out of the water to swimming in Minneapolis lakes, too by reading, researching, reflecting, and writing on water. Today, I’m reviewing the history of Cedar Lake, thanks to a masters thesis I found a few years ago.
Already today, I’ve been reading about the dredging of the lakes. 2.5 million cubic yards of peat and sand and wetland were dredged out of nokomis; it took 4 non-stop years. The sand went to the beach, the peat and wetland to making the park bigger and building a neighborhood. Why dredge? Not just because it would make a lake I could swim in a century and a half later. Original Park Board Superintendent Theodore Wirth was thinking about economic growth and the future of a city:
Wirth is outspoken in his belief in the utility of taming nature to increase land value and develop the city’s natural resources. By dredging and creating more shoreline, the park board could improve the parkland, thereby making the property surrounding the parkland a more desirable place to live. The increased value of the private property could provide a greater tax base for the city and for the Park Board, which could use the revenue to continue to acquire and improve park space.
Cedar Lake History/ Neil Trembley
swim: 4 loops 75 minutes cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Wonderful night for a swim! Calm water, not too warm or too cold. Not too crowded. And even with fogged up goggles (I haven’t treated them in a few weeks), I didn’t get too far off course.
The water felt a little sluggish — not buoyant. There were tons of sharp and scratchy vines, some individual strands, others in clumps. The water was opaque — no fish sightings tonight.
The sky was white; no clouds to notice. I think I remember seeing one bird. Oh — every so often the sky would break open and there was sun. It didn’t last that long.
I wanted to think about Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting” but there was none of that tonight. I was swimming hard — not all out, but not stopping either.
Hazy and smoky this morning. Canadian wild fires again. A present from the wind. It looked bad, but didn’t bother my breathing too much. Inspired by the wind, I listened to my “Beaufort Scale” playlist until I reached the old stone steps near the south entrance of the Winchell Trail. Then I listened to the water falling out of the sewer pipe and splashing on the rocks down to the river.
WPA 1938
I took this picture of a stone wall built by the WPA, and possibly by grandfather, on the stone steps at the edge of the 44th street parking lot. 1938 was four years before my mom was born. Was my grandfather working for the WPA then?
At the bottom of the steps is the Winchell Trail and the 44th street sewer pipe/ravine. Also, the curved wall that I like to admire from above as I run by and the spot in the trail that transitions from crumbled asphalt to cracked. Yesterday I wrote about the sound of the water falling. I decided to stop and record it today:
water falling at the 44th street ravine
10 Things
a section of the fence on the edge, missing a slat
something on the asphalt ahead — a big puddle? no spots of light shining through a gap in the trees — a pool of light!
smoke on the water (waTER — Deep Purple/Pat Boone reference) — my view from the Winchell trail through the trees, light blue looking fuzzy and faded through the smoke
the faint voices of kids on playground
the blending of car wheels above with wind in the trees and water falling down the ravine
an older couple walking fast and with purpose, especially the woman who was leading the charge, seen twice
a small bird flittering by, a flash of yellow — was it yellow, or was it a trick of the light, or was it my unreliable vision?
the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored — well, at least, a few steps are — the yellow and orange and purple ones
glancing across the road and doing a double-take: is that a turkey or a young tree with its trunk covered in black plastic?
empty benches
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Very glad Cedar Lake is okay so that open swim could happen. It was windy and choppy and smoky. At first I thought my goggles were fogged up, but then I realized it was the smoke in the air. Air quality was bad: 168, which is unhealthy. With the choppy water, it took a few loops to get into a rhythm. Lots of breathing on one side, or breathing every 2 or 3 strokes.
I’ve been working on a new poem form today. I’m calling it inkling. It’s inspired by an Alice Oswald line from Dart: the inkling of a fish. Inkling as vague, the idea of, a whisper, unproven, a rumor. My little poems — 3-5 lines, I think — are about describing or evoking the feeling or idea of something that you can’t quite see, or that you feel more than anything else. My first one will be about fish.
Cooler than last week, but still too warm for me. Felt drained and my feet were sore from my shoes — the Saucony Rides strike again. Even so, happy to be out beside the gorge with my friends — the boulders, benches, trees, shadows, walkers, runners, river. But not the bikers — too many of them, and too many close calls.
Last night, we had some intense wind and thunderstorms. Eveidence of it is everywhere: leaves, twigs, branches, whole trees scattered near the trail, gushing sewer pipes, muddy paths. The water from the 44th street pipe gushed out in spurts, almost like a bucket filling up then dumping over. The water from the 42nd street sewer pipe rushed with a steady flow of water, like a waterfall.
I ran closer to the river and I remember looking at it, but I don’t remember what it looked like. Was it smooth? scaled? blue? gray? brown? I don’t recall. I do remember not hearing any rowers.
I didn’t have any deep thoughts about water or swimming or life or, if I did, they didn’t stick around. Instead, I thought about how my feet were sore and my legs felt sluggish, how I wanted to stop, and how I had some unfinished business and needed to get to a bathroom soon.
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 88 degrees
The water was warm but calm and more greenish than usual. Lots of scratchy vines and swimmers swimming in the middle. Also, a giant rubber ducky inner tube floating beside the course. The safety buoy of the day was a clunky, lumpy orange one. Lots of other yellow and pink buoys too. The sky had a few clouds but was mostly blue. Made sure to notice the bubbles around my hands. At the end of the swim, near shore, I went a little deeper in the water — it was cool, which felt nice.
As Scott and I left the beach I noticed an older woman waving at someone, than a little kid yelling excitedly, Grandma!
No bathroom stop in the one port-a-potty today. Someone puked on the floor right next to the toilet. Yuck!
3 loops, long* lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees humidity: 80%
*there are no set locations for the buoys, so each swim the distance is a little different. Sometimes shorter than usual, today longer. I usually compare by number of strokes. 3 loops last Thursday was 1, 700 strokes, 3 loops today was 2000 loops.
Hot! The few times I stopped mid-lake to adjust by nose plug or googles I was overheated. That doesn’t happen often when I’m in the water! The first loop was choppy with swells. Not rough, but active, and difficult to breathe on my right side. The choppiest part of the loop was the last segment back toward the big beach. Loops 2 and 3 were calm. I guess the wind died down. No sign of blue-green algae blooms.
10 Things
a pale yellow something below me in the water — a leaf? a fish? a vine?
blue sky with puffy white clouds
sloshing sounds as water lapped over me
a plane flying low and parallel to the water
squeaks from my leaking nose plug
spots of sparkling water in the distance
sparkle friends moving fast
below the surface, the water was a greenish-yellow
rounding the buoy, noticing the angle of the rope as it disappeared into deeper, darker water
swimming into a few vines — thin, not scratchy or slippery
I thought about doing 4 loops, but at the end of the third I could tell that my body was done. Hours later, writing this and feeling tired, I’m glad I listened and stopped.
Returned home and watched Tadej Pogacar win the tour and Wout Van Aert win the stage. Excellent.
run: 4 miles the monument and back 73 degrees dew point: 69
Thought about going out for a run around 6:30 am but watched Pogacar defend his yellow jersey in the alps instead. Excellent. Finally made it out for a run at 10:30. Not as bad as yesterday, but too warm, especially in the direct sun.
Chanted in triple berries. Admired the reflections of clouds on the river. Heard the kids on the playground at the church preschool. Put in the soundtrack to “Operation Mincemeat” for the second half.
I thought briefly about fields — visual and of tall grass and open vistas — and buoys and dots and simple forms.
Walking home after the run, I noticed someone stopped on the corner with a dog. I wondered why they were stopped — was there a car coming? should I not cross? Got to the other side and realized that it was my son, FWA, and our dog, Delia. It’s happened before — just last week — but it’s always upsetting when I don’t recognize my kids or my husband or my dog. For a moment, they’re only strangers.
Crossing back over the lake street bridge, I took a few pictures of the clouds reflected on the river:
clouds reflected on riverriver clouds
note: I had to crop out my finger from the left hand corner. Even with the cropping, I think these are cool pictures.
visual fields, landscapes, meadows
1
At the end of yesterday’s entry I wondered what sighting buoys and swimming in the lake had to do with the visual field test. I’m still thinking about it. On a literal level, the way I’ve trained myself to sight a buoy, lining up its path, then trusting myself to swim straight to it even when I can’t see it, is how I took the visual field test last month: I fixed on the center dot and looked straight at it, or where I knew it to be when I couldn’t see it. My eyes didn’t wander. Another connection: at a distance, the buoy doesn’t look like the shape that it is — a triangle — it looks like a small dot in the center of my vision.
2
Yesterday, reviewing early july entries, I encountered this definition of visual field: “that portion of space in which objects are visible at the same moment during steady fixation of the gaze in one direction.”
It reminded me of definitions of landscape I came across yesterday in the OED: “A view or prospect of natural inland scenery, such as can be taken in at a glance from one point of view.”
the space in which objects are visible at the same time, what all can be taken in (simultaneously) with one glance
3
as though there swung at the end of a tunnel, a passage dotted with endless points of arrival, as though our gaze started just outside our faces and corkscrewed its way toward the horizon, processual, as if looking took time to happen and weren’t instantaneous, offered whole in one gesture before we ask, before our will, as if the far Sonoma mountains weren’t equally ready to be beheld as the dead fly on the sill) (Pastoral/ Forrest Gander)
What I remember of better eyesight is how the world assembled all at once, an effortless gestalt—the light, the distance, the dappled detail of shade, exact crinkles of a facial expression through a car windshield, the lift of a single finger from a steering wheel, sunlight bouncing off a waxed hood. (Naomi Cohn)
4
A quick glance — my eyes emerge from the water like an alligator to look ahead for the buoy. Often all I see is a green mass of trees and empty water. Occasionally, a bright dot, far off. I don’t see it every time I look, but enough times to keep steadily swimming towards it. No time to think, not enough data to be certain, but I believe it’s the buoy, and usually I’m right. A few times I’ve mistaken a bright swim cap or a car’s headlight or a sailboat for the buoy.
5
“A field is used more often to describe an area managed by people. The field before you was once an orchard and pasture belonging to a farmer. A meadow is used to describe a wild area.”
“Fields and meadows start when trees have been removed from an area. This can occur naturally with a forest fire or flood, or humans may cut down a forest. Seeds from grasses and weeds take root shortly after and a meadow is born.
As the trees within my macula disappear, my forest meadows. here I’m thinking about my classic memory from science class with the inverted tree in the back of the eye.
bike: 8 miles lake nokomis and back 82 degrees / 79 degrees
Biked to the lake! No worries, felt relaxed and able to see well enough, or if I couldn’t see, able to navigate well enough. No moments of panic. Biking back was the best. Long shadows, cooler, people biking/walking/running and enjoying the calm evening. I admired the shadow of me on a bike, looking larger than life.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 82 degrees
Yesterday, open swim sent out a warning about blue-green algae. They weren’t closing the lake, just encouraging people to be cautious. I didn’t see any algae blooms, although I noticed that the water was a more vivid, electric green. The water was warm and calm and wonderful. With the sun, it was difficult to see — I could see dots, which I trusted were buoys as I swam towards the little beach, but swimming back towards the big beach, barely anything other than bright sun, sparkling water. I managed to see the buoys at least once and trusted my shoulders to guide me across. I don’t think I’ll ever not be amazed that this works, that I swim straight to the buoys when I can’t (or barely can) see them.
I tried something new as a I swam. Each time I tilted my head to breathe, I thought a word, usually 1 syllable but occasionally 2: squish flash flit fly flush flare zip zap bird tree cloud blue girl ghost gorge life death bliss breath bubbles bike run float lift shut jump black red orange feet toe hand face field grass give take spirit sprite light dark
There were many other words, but I don’t remember them all. I might try this again. Maybe some great words/images will burst out?!
images collected in consciousness like a tree alone on the horizon (Crows/ Marilyn Nelson)
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 89 degrees choppy
A great swim, but choppy! Lots of breathing on one side to avoid waves. Sighting buoys (and other swimmers) was harder, everything lost in the waves. The first loop was the toughest. Got into a groove after it and managed to do 2 more loops before pausing to tread water at a white buoy and then beginning the final loop. It was crowded in the water — kids wading at the beach, adults taking advantage of the free night at open swim. Because of the crowds and the choppy water, it was difficult to give attention to the water or the bubbles or anything else. Did I manage to notice 10 things?
10 Things
sparkle friends — particles floating, churning in the water
so many vines reaching up from the bottom, wrapping around my wrist or ankles — it didn’t bother me, but I could imagine that freaking out some other swimmer
a plane flying low, parallel to the water
hot pink safety buoys tethered to torsos
the pale foot of a breaststroker under the water
the silhouette of an upright lifeguard on a kayak, marking the edge of the course
someone swimming at the edge of my vision — far off to the left
3 swimmers with yellow safety buoys clustered together, treading water and talking
mostly blue sky, a few clouds
paused at the buoy, witnessing a strange sight: the way a swimmer was breathing and sighting in the choppy water, jerking their head high up and out of the water — at first I thought they were doing a double-take when they noticed me, but nope, that’s just the way they swim
before the swim
Each summer of swimming builds on the last. I get stronger, able to swim for longer without stopping. It’s not a deliberate choice or part of a training plan — I have no training plan for swimming; I just swim until I am too tired or I have to go to the bathroom or I’ve run out of time. I have loose goals: 100 miles for the summer or a 5k or 6 loops or the full 2 hours in one session. This year: swimming cumulatively for a day, or 24 hours, in August. It’s a goal inspired by the title of a Mary Oliver poem: Swimming, One Day in August. It’s possible, but it will take some planning and pushing myself to achieve.
In July, I’m finding myself thinking about how much time I’m spending above the surface versus below it. This year, I’m below much more than above. In past summers, I’ve done less loops and more stops at shore in-between. This year, I might occasionally pause mid-lake for 5-10 seconds, or take a 30 second break at the beach between the 3rd and 4th loop, but mostly I’m swimming freestyle without stopping. 60-90 minutes of 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. That’s a lot of time submerged and becoming acquainted with the underwater world!
Below, my thoughts are the bubbles that surround me. Above, they become words that hover above the water or travel across the lake — maybe they get lost beyond the horizon, or maybe they linger, later taking the form of words on a page. Last night, swimming the stretch from hidden beach back to point beach, I imagined each breath as one word bursting into the air: 1 2 3 4 5 BLUE 1 2 3 4 5 GRAY. I didn’t get very far with my words before I was distracted by something — another person? a scratchy vine? trying to sight an invisible buoy? I’d like to play around with this some more while I’m swimming tonight. Does each breath have to be only one word?
My ideas about thoughts below and above the water are partly inspired by the lines from Alice Oswald that I’ve memorized and have been reciting in my head:
dived again and surfaced and smelt all the longings of grass-flower smells and bird-flower sounds and vaporous poems that hang in the chills above rivers (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
the vaporous poems as my thoughts bursting into the air and hanging above the surface?
and thoughts escaping to the surface to move beyond the self
I wish I was there or there he thinks and his mind immediately
as if passing its beam through cables flashes through all that water and lands less than a second later on the horizon and someone with a telescope can see his tiny thought-forms floating on the sea surface wondering what next
*
like spirits of sight whose work is on the water where the massless mind undulates the intervening air shading it blue and thinking
I wish I was there
or there
All the time in the water, the front half of me submerged except for my quick breathe every 5 strokes, has me wondering about which world is real, which a dream. On 3 July, I posted a quotation from Anne Carson that ended with, Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them. Which way is up, which down?
I’m thinking of May Swenson’s “Water Picture” and her vivid description of a water world as the world above water in reverse:
Treetops deploy a haze of cherry bloom for roots, where birds coast belly-up in the glass bowl of a hill
The first line of her poem — In the pond in the park all things are doubled — reminds me of something Alice Oswald said in her “Interview with Water” lecture: when you look at water, it allows you to exist twice but more darkly (see full quote from 20 june 2024)
And that line reminds me of part of Oswald’s Nobody:
I lost track of the underneath of things everything became my mirror once I stood up to look over the side I sat down again terrified it was myself I saw thronged and pitch-green spilling over the top of the earth the same soft dust-sheets over my hands as the clouds the same thick curtain across the horizon
Above and below the surface is not just reversal, the same backwards, symmetry, but something else. In her lecture, the lines before the bit about twice darkly, Oswald says:
but the surface of water is complicated by transparency, and its transparency is complicated by refraction. Water is never the same as itself. Rivers can only exist as similarities, lakes reflect more than their own volume
The surface offers the illusion of reversal, one way up, the other down. Below the surface, beyond its mirror, another world waits to be witnessed. And not with eyes — the visibility in lake nokomis is currently 6.6 feet. In the middle of the lake, all I see below me are particles, stray vines, an occasional flash, and murky green-blue-yellow. Not so much dark, as Nothing.
I’m fascinated by surfaces, or what Oswald calls the waterlid. What does the surface look like from below looking up? I should make note of it today. Also, from above, looking down?
Looked up some notes, and found this great quotation from Darby Nelson in his book, For the Love of Lakes:
Human understandings rely heavily on the endless flood of messages from our eyes. But with a lake, the laws of optics work against us. Its reflective surface and the water’s rapid absorption of light with increasing depth conspire to keep much of a lake hidden from view. At a lake, open your eyes and you don’t see half of it. Nearly all the visual input from a lake comes as surface reflections, mere superficialities. Thoreau reveled in reflections. He felt because they were constantly changing they could present previously known truths from new points of view. But those truths don’t penetrate into the world of the lake below, a truth with which he seems unconcerned. What kind of landscape even exists in the absence of vision? How can we fully perceive what we cannot see?
For the Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson
during the swim
I wanted to think about these things and recite some lines as I swam, but I was distracted by the effort of choppy, crowded water, always looking out for waves crashing over me and making it hard to breathe, or random slow or stopped swimmers. Near the end of the swim, I decided to dip lower in the water so that I could see the surface from below — a wavy, slightly distorted version of the sky and clouds. Cool!
run: 1.75 miles from minnehaha falls to home 73 degrees / dew point: 64
A quick run with Scott from the falls back home before the rain started. We made it! Checked the weather on my watch after we finished — 95% chance of rain in 8 minutes. Ran at 1 pm, which might be my least favorite time to run. It felt hard. Still, I’m glad we did it. (It never rained.)
We stopped to walk where the trail dips below the road so I could point out the new trail they’ve created that winds down to the river. I can’t wait until they’re finished. It looks cool. Speaking of cool, I was trying to convey to Scott how I felt about the air and what the impending storm was doing to the sky and the air and green of the gorge. First I said “cool,” but it’s not cool (temperature), so I started to clarify, I mean the atmosphere, but realized that atmosphere could be related to temp so I said, I mean the vibe is cool. Cool is such a strange word — both full of meaning and history and empty too. For 35 years, I’ve been trying to expand my vocabulary beyond it, but it never works. How many times a day do I use this word?
I know that there is a rich history of the term within African American culture and jazz and that it’s been appropriated by white culture, but I don’t know the history that well. In poetry, my immediate thought about cool is Gwendlyn Brooks amazing, “We Real Cool.” I also think about Beatnik poetry and the Pia Zadora/Ric Ocasek scene in Hairspray:
“your hair is really uncool”
swim: 3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 79 degrees rain
Overcast, gray. Calm water, warm-enough air. A great night for a swim. As I swam, I monitored the sky, noticing it getting darker and thicker. Wondered if it would start raining. During loop 4, it did. It’s always difficult to tell if it’s raining when I’m swimming. Today I felt a drop on my check and then paused to lift my head out of the water — a steady rain. I think I heard it underwater, but I couldn’t see it, and barely felt it. No thunder, so open swim kept going. Hooray!
10 Things
a graying sky
a big canoe moving fast across the swim course
even as I tried to stay on the edge of the course, the current pushed me toward the center
pale green, opaque water
bubbles encasing my hands
attacks from floating vines
a party with a campfire and barking dogs at hidden beach
buoyant, feeling held by the water
after: itchy skin
standing up in the sand after the last loop — a final look at the buoys and the water
Remembered the first line from the A Oswald poem fragment that I forgot several times last week: this disintegrating certainty
Thought about the bubbles and imagined that they were holding me up, like some sort of raft or inner tube.
My legs felt like rudders, my torso rocked rhythmically, my shoulders rose and fell.
Wow! What a morning for a swim. Sunny and not too windy. I couldn’t see the green buoys heading towards the little beach, but I didn’t care. I’m used to my eyes not seeing the buoys and trusting that some part of me has seen them and is leading me the right way, and I use other things to keep on course — sparkles on the water, which mean other swimmers are around, the lifeguard kayaks on the edge of the course, buildings.
10 Things
a swirled glob of vines
orange safety buoys tethered to torsos
cloudless blue sky
pale green water
a young kid calling out to another kid — look at the little fish!
a swim clinic for people doing the Y-tri — the instructor encouraging people to take breaks if they needed to — of course it’s hard! it’s okay to take a break
little specks: swan boats in the distance
little specks: green buoys looking like far off white dots
sparkle friends
a paddle boarder crossing the path, then a kayak
Recited my Alice Oswald lines: He dives. He shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence . . . Underwater, the silence was more than a lack of sound, not empty but still — the same view with no variations: the pale green water studded with particles. No shafts or light, no fish.
Recited some lines of my own, too: I go to the lake/to beholldto be/ held by thewater
a return to EXAQUA
“Water is the medium, the texture, the weight, the space, the motion/emotion or your writing/thinking. Would you agree? Is that too tidy? Your work is attuned to water and being close to it (or, better, being inside it) is important to you” (EXAQUA/ Jan-Henry Gray).
What might it look like to have water be the medium, the texture, the weight space motion emotion of my writing/thinking?
medium = way in which the writing is delivered — print, digital, audio, visual water as medium = delivered with water = the bubbles sparkles wound on the water my piercing hands leave
Giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it, water with my bones water with my mouth and my understanding
weight and size of myself = swimming in the lake, again and again, a full immersion — without wetsuit or raft — more time below the surface than above, my full devotion and attention
4 miles river road, north/south 57 degrees humidity: 80%
In the 50s! What a beautiful morning. Sunny, calm, cool. My gait felt strange, awkward, for the first 1/2 mile. Was it the shoes? I wore Brooks instead of Sauconys. The humidity was high — lots of sweat, not dripping but pooling near my nose. Chanted in triples for the first mile.
10 Things
rowers! heard 2 different coxswains
after 5 or 6 months, they’re finally replacing the fallen fence panel above the northern end of longfellow flats
the dirt they put in the crack north of the trestle has settled and the crack is back and as big as before — at one point will this be unfixable?
good morning! / good morning! — exchanged greetings with a runner with a dog
good morning! — Mr. Holiday wished me a good morning
click click thought it was a roller skier, but it was a biker changing gears
a circle of light below the sliding bench — have they cleared some branches for more of a view here?
smell of cigarette smoke
the dark dirt of a steep trail leading down to the river
the loud slap of a runner’s shoes as he passed me, running fast, or at least much faster than me
I was watching the tour as I compiled the 10 Things list, but had to put my computer away when they reached the last climb — a tough HC. Pogacar went for it near the bottom and Vingegaard couldn’t follow. Wow!
this disintegrating certainty this water whatever it is whatever anything is under these veils and veils of vision which the light cuts but it remains
unbroken (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
while I’m swimming today: recite this bit and the others from Dart and Nobody:
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 71 degrees
Open swim is back and I did 4 loops! A wonderful night, in and out of the water. The water was smooth and fast and not too warm or too cold or too crowded. Entering the lake, I watched as a motorized paddle board zoomed by, then another. What? As I swam toward and then past the orange buoy I heard a metallic buzz in the water. Was it because of these paddle boards? I am very grateful that motorized boats aren’t allowed on nokomis. If they were, would I be hearing this buzzing sound all of the time?
I was off course in the first loop; the sun made it very difficult to see the green buoys. But it wasn’t a big deal. On the second loop, I figured it out.
I marveled at the contrast between above and below the surface. Above was a smooth blue, below a glittering green. Checked out my bubbles. Felt the water darken when the sun went behind a cloud. Was attacked by a few stray vines.
Thought about how much I love the water and how confident I am in it, and then about how dangerous and scary and deadly it can be.
Recited Alice Oswald lines — not the new ones I just memorized, but the ones I’d already been reciting in my head.
5 loops on a beautiful Sunday morning! Even though we’re still under bad air quality advisory and there was smoke and haze lingering above the lake, I didn’t have any trouble breathing. The smoke-haze made it difficult to see the buoys, however. Who cares — not me! I still swam straight towards the buoys.
My 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left or 1 2 3 right 1 2 3 4 right 1 2 3 left 1 2 3 4 left was relaxed and steady. My arms and legs in constant motion, rotating and kicking.
I call my circuits around the buoys loops, but that’s not quite right. They are more triangles, not curved but a straight line with 3 buoys from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach, then a straight line with 2 buoys from the little beach to the southern end of the big beach, then a straight line parallel to beach from the last green buoy to the only orange one and the start of one circuit, the beginning of another. Swimming in the lake is less about curves and more about lines and angles. Angled elbows, a straight back — parallel, the intersecting legs-as-lines. The first segment was fairly smooth and fast, the second was choppy and sluggish, and the third was smoother and faster.
10 Things
something/someone tapped my toe mid-lake — I couldn’t see anyone, was it a fish? a twig?
particles suspended, glittering — my sparkle friends!
my hands wrapped in bubbles
a loose vine passed over my legs, got stuck in my fingers
a military plane flying fast
light green, a hint of yellow, water
glitter on the surface of the water where other swimmers where
hazy blue sky
a gentle rocking from the water
near the end of the final loop — a sore back
I recited my 4 A Oswald lines about microscopic insects in the eye and surfacing and diving again and giving water the weight and size of myself and lifting the lid and shutting it. Such great lines! Admired the bubbles on my hands, thought of Anne Sexton and shedding them and then believed the bubbles were little thoughts and feelings and ideas that some part of me was shedding and offering to the water and anyone in it.
Thought about my gorge poem that begins, I go to/the gorge / / to find the/soft space. Started composing one for the lake: I go to/the lake // to be held. Thought about the verb, to behold, then beheld, which reminded me of a line in a poem that I love and had pondered on 19 june: Unsee the beheld! / Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews
Unsee the beheld where to unsee is to observe/witness with a sense other than sight, or to unravel, come undone or redone, transformed. Who/what is the beheld? Me, held by the water. So, to unsee me, to let go of me/I and have an encounter/exchange with that which is not-I: the water. I haven’t written about this bit yet, but yesterday I was thinking about Anne Carson and her anthropology of water and I wrote in my Plague Notebook, encounter with that which you cannot contain, control, that is not You — the not-I. In the lake, I am held by the water — rocked, enveloped, lifted — but in the process of being held I dissolve, or the small part of Sara the ecosystem that is I is saturated. Yes, this makes sense to me, but will it to anyone else, including future Sara?
I read mention of May Swenson’s poem “Swimmers” yesterday and I happened to have it in Nature: Poems Old and New. I’m still trying to figure out the different ways I can read the stanzas — across; down the left, then down the right, then bottom?down the left, to the bottom, and up the right? down the left only? down the right only?
Swimmers/ May Swenson
Tossed by the muscular sea, we are lost, and glad to be lost in troughs of rough
love. A bath in laughter, our dive into foam, our upslide and float on the surf of desire.
But sucked to the root of the water-mountain — immense — about to tip upon us the terror of total
delight — we are towed, helpless in its swell, by hooks of our hair;
then dangled, let go, make to race — as the wrestling chest of the sea, itself tangled, tumbles
in its own embrace. Our limbs like eels are water-boned, our faces lost to difference and
contour, as the lapping crests. They cease their charge, and rock us
in repeating hammocks of the releasing tide — until supine we glide, on cool green
smiles of an exhaling gladiator, to the shore of sleep.
However I read it, it’s good!
bike: 4 miles the falls and back 84 degrees
Biked to the falls with Scott for a beer and a hike and some time to be in the midst of others. Sassy, strong little girls, BIG dogs, small yippy dogs, a hiker with poles, surreys, kids playing soccer, a guy that looked like Mr. Hand, 2 long-haired dachshunds in the ice cream line, a LONG ice cream line, a LONGER food line. A roaring falls, a raging creek, blocked-off steps and wooden path. A dog that plopped down and refused to move, a guy walking by, laughing and calling out to his friend, that dog is done!
Great water! Warm, buoyant, calm, and near the shore, clear. A steady — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left — swim. Felt strong and relaxed and rhythmic. Didn’t see the buoys that often but knew exactly where they were.
10 Things
the tops of the mifoil: green, wispy, some feathery, some stringy
light green water
green buoys looking robin’s egg blue
the sharp angle of the taut rope with a weight on its end, anchoring the buoy
ducks swimming near shore
glowing bubbles covering my hands
the lifeguard talking through the speaker, testing 1 2 3 attention open swimmers, the course is now open. enjoy your swim!
pale legs underwater — parallel to the ground, kicking breaststroke then fluttering
the feel of something in the water, then a trail of bubbles, then a pale leg — a quick swerve around another swimmer
rounding the green buoy closest to the little beach, getting a brief glimpse of the next buoy — green, looking only like a bright dot, and only visible sometimes
Recited my AO lines again. a rush of gold to the head — giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it — she surfaced and peered around and dived again and surface and saw someone
the beginning of a lake
I started rereading Argument with the Lake this afternoon — a poetry collection I bought in 2018 — and discovered this description of the origins of a lake. I’ll add it to my growing collection of descriptions — of a river in England (see: 30 aug 2024) and a lake in Germany (see: 2 july 2024).
from Begin/ Tanis Rideout
This lake, like others, was dug out. Glacial ice grinding south, scouring weak Silurian stone, an arctic tsunami leaving only the backbone of the escarpment. Canadian Shield and broken tumble of kames in its retreat.
The glacial rebound cast this lake of shimmering waters, Ontario. Give or take a geologic blink. And now, a girl on Holocene shores measures the distance — her to here. Fifty-four kilometres as the crow flies, the herring gull, the cormorant with dried wings. Sixty-four against the current. Three point two kilometres an hour, slower than a winter housefly bumbling against your window
Sticky, but feels cooler because of the cloud cover. Felt relaxed and able to keep running without stopping. Wore my bright yellow shoes, which seem to not be hurting my feet/calves as much. The river was a light gray-blue, the trees dark green. Heard voices near the ravine — was it the workers finishing the new trail? Also heard the clicking and clacking of ski poles up above near the road.
Several trucks and workers in and around the house that used to have the poetry window (it hasn’t had a poem for more than a year). I wonder where the poetry people went?
The tree is still across the winchell trail. Every time I encounter it I’m cautious, looking out for people coming the other way, hidden behind its branches. Today, there were 2 people, but they were paying attention and waited for me to pass. Thanks!
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 80 degrees / 78 degrees
Biked with Scott to the lake. Nice! No scary moments. I felt confident and didn’t once question where I was going or where the trail was or if that thing ahead of me was a crack or not. Loud birds. A car not knowing how to drive in a round-a-bout. High creek water under the echo bridge. An ultimate frisbee game in the field between the duck and echo bridges. Slanting light. Kids wading in the creek.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
Another orange buoy gone, replaced with a green one. Only one left. For 11 years, seeing the orange buoy has been my thing. I’ve dreamed about them, written poems about them, and now they’re being replaced with green buoys. That’s okay, but I will miss them and all of my orange thoughts.
The water was a little rougher. Not too rough, more like gentle rocking. Some stray vines, lots of breathing only to my right side. Difficult to see the buoys. Recited my Alice Oswald poems as I swam and thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again and the sky jumping in and out. During the second half of the third loop, I stopped in the middle of the lake just to see what it was like. So quiet and wonderful. I couldn’t hear anything from the sky or the beach or other swimmers. Very cool.
Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.
A great swim. I feel strong and free and grateful to be moving and pushing my body. Big shoulders, no calf cramps, no numb/tingling fingers.
Got out for my run a little earlier today. Still warm and humid. The bunion on my left foot has a blister on it, which hurt at the beginning of the run. Looking up the anatomy of the foot, I discovered that the bone below the big toe is actually two pea-shaped bones called sesamoids. I’ve been thinking that I might want to devote a month, or a few weeks, to the foot. Maybe September?
Noticed the river for the first time as I turned down to enter the Winchell Trail from the south. Through the trees it looked green and warm and stagnant. A little later, on the Winchell Trail, a pale blue with a spot of sparkle. Greeted by Mr. Morning! as I exited the 38th street steps.
10 Things
empty benches
a parked scooter with its red lights still blinking
heard water dripping down the ravine and thought of a grotto with a waterfall
the tree that fell on the trail last week is still there, blocking 2/3rds of the trail
a faint voice below — a rower?
2 people across the road near Becketwood, crouched near the trees — looking at something? picking up trash? weeding?
a steady stream of cars
a cool green under the tree cover on the Winchell Trail
a week later, the 38th street steps are still rainbow colored
someone walking around the overlook, headed to the part of the stone wall where a dirt trail descends — was he planning to take it?
more How to Read Water
glitter path: a long line of shimmering reflections stretching into the distance. The shape of the glitter path is a measure of how high the sun is and the roughness of the waves.
if you see the glitter path bulge at some spot, that indicates rougher waves
wider glitter path = rougher water narrower path = calmer water
“the faces of the waves act as mirrors”
seeing faces in waves / pareidolia: the habit of our brains to find patterns and ascribe meaning where there may be none
orange!
If you are gazing down into cloudy water looking at your own shadow, there are a couple of extra effects worth keeping an eye out for. The first is that your shadow may have an orange-hued fringe around it. This happens because the tiny particles in the water don’t reflect all wavelengths (and therefore all colors) back equally to you. Orange makes it back more easily than the others. The second effect, which, if you see the orange “halo” effect, is definitely worth looking for, is that you may spot shafts of sunlight emerging from your shadow and radiating out away from it underwater. This effect is sometimes nicknamed the “aureole effect.” These radiating rays are caused by an optical effect of looking in the opposite direction to the sun
How to Read Water
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 83 degrees
Warm, buoyant, calm water. I felt fast and strong and confident. Lots of swimmers, a few floating vines. No ducks or fish or dragonflies. At least 2 military planes — black — screaming across the sky. The far green buoy looked robin’s egg blue to me again today. My nose plug squeaked. The water looked mostly light greenish blue with a think layer near the surface that almost looked white. I saw some orange off to the side and shafts of light rising up from the bottom. Translucent bubble encased my hands.
I recited bits from AO’s Dart and Nobody as I looped.
Noticed a swimmer looking so far away from the orange buoy and wondered how much of it was my off perspective and how much of it was them being off course. Probably more me; I struggle with depth perception.
almost forgot: during the second half of a loop, the water suddenly got a lot darker for many seconds — a minute? However long it actually was, it felt like a long time. I couldn’t see what caused it, but I’m imagining the darkness was caused by a cloud. On other days, I felt a shorter darkness pass when a plane passes over the sun.
4.25 miles monument and back 71 degrees dew point: 64
Hot! I’ve never liked running in the heat but now that I’m taking lexipro my heat intolerance has increased. For some moments of the run I felt great, other moments I didn’t. So I walked some, ran some, and walked again at different stretches.
10 Things
I kept seeing orange flashes — a sign, a cone, a tree marked for removal
kids yelling and laughing outside at a daycare attached to a church
the river from above, on the bridge, heading east: brown, and looking shallow — were those sandbars I was seeing near the surface?
trickling water out of the limestone below the bridge
the sound of shadow falls, falling
a kid’s voice rising from the ravine
construction on the other side of the lake street bridge — orange cones, trucks, yellow-vested workers, the buzz of equipment
the river from above, on the bridge, heading west: blue and covered in the reflections of clouds*
click clack — a roller skier
seen, not heard: a dog, by the clanging of their collar
*stopped at the bridge overlook to take a picture of the clouds reflected on the surface of the water. Is it just me, or does this look like an impressionist painting?
river with clouds, 7 july 2025
the color of water
How to Read Water is fascinating. Here are some things I’d like to remember from the chapter on color:
The colors we see in water depend on the brightness and angle of the light and the water’s depth, as well as what’s on, in, and under that water.
How to Read Water
something to consider: are you looking at water, or something in or under the water, or a reflection on water’s surface. Is it the color of water, or the color of the ground beneath the water (a puddle), or the color of cloud on its surface? What angle are you looking from?
. . . in many circumstances when we think we are looking at the water, we are actually looking at something different and in the distance. Looking out to the sea in the distance is a great example: What we see in that situation is dominated by the reflection of the sky even further in the distance. This is why the distant sea appears blue in fine weather and gray on overcast days.
How to Read Water
This water looks blue because it’s reflection the sky is one I’ve heard a lot, but I think I’ve always heard it as the reason, not one reason under certain circumstances.
What about when we see different colors — which I often do as I run across the bridge and look down at the water? The different colors are based on how much of the water we are actually seeing. Sometimes I see brown, sometimes blue.
You will notice this if you look for it, but not if you don’t because our brain has gotten used ot this effect and so oesn’t register it as at all peculiar.
something to try: Can you find the area/the moment where the shift takes place from looking only at reflections to being able to see water?
the exact color that can travel furtherest through the water without being absorbed: blue-green color, wavelength = 480 nanometers
Is it a big cloud or Jaws? People often think it has gotten deeper or there are fish around when the water darkens, but it might just be a big cloud.
eutrophication = excessive nutrients — algal blooms reduce light, use up a lot of oxygen, change the color of the water
oligotrophic = low in nutrients, clear
my sparkle friends! “A lot of the particles that see in water will be inorganic, a mixture of mud, sand, clay, silt, chalk, and other substances, each one affecting the colors we see.” Do I see them as anything other than the color sparkle?
Today I’m swimming at Cedar Lake, which is much deeper than Lake Nokomis. It is also more of a “natural” lake than nokomis. What impact do these factors have on its colors and my experiences of them?
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar lake loops) cedar lake open swim 82 degrees
The water by the orange buoy closest to Point Beach was almost hot — so warm! It was a little cooler in the middle of the lake and near Hidden Beach, but not that cool. It was also calm. Not much wind, no waves. A few vines floating over and under and around me. Some milfoil by the beach. I forgot to look at the color of the water from above, but I did look below. Blue-green, a few hints of yellow. Opaque.
10 Things
driving past another part of the lake: the surface covered with green vegetation
clear blue sky, then a few clouds, the more clouds, then dark
the first orange buoy seemed much farther out in the water
breathing to my right, seeing some other swimmers halfway across the lake
yellow safety buoys
something in the sky — a plane? a bird? I’m uncertain
the warm water was buoyant; I felt higher on the water
bubbles around my hands
a line of white buoys at hidden beach
a breaststroker, stroking with intensity — are they trying to race me?
Is that what bothers me about breaststrokers I encounter: that they always look so intense and like they are trying to race me or keep up with me? I think of breaststroke as a chill stroke, where you glide and kick as you travel on the surface of the water, able equally to see above and below. But, there’s nothing chill or relaxed about the breaststrokers i encounter!
Before swimming, I worked on memorizing some more lines from Alice Oswald, this time from Nobody, but I got stuck on the beginning and wasn’t able to recite them in my head as I swam:
There are said to be microscopic insects in the eye who speak Greek and these invisible ambassadors of vision never see themselves but fly at flat surfaces and back again with pigment caught in their shivering hair-like receptors and this is how the weather gets taken to and fro and the waves pass each other from one color to the next (Nobody/ Alice Oswald)
What a beautiful morning for a swim. Sunny, not too windy. The water was warm and smooth. The sky was blue, the water a greenish-blueish-olive. Flashes of orange every so often. There were a few canoes crossing the path, but no menacing swans or stalking sailboats.
1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
10 Things
a green buoy that sometimes looked white, sometime blue, occasionally green, and often disappeared
a few minnows
glitter on the water from other swimmers’ hands and feet
squeak squeak — my nose plug, leaking air
a feeling of something disturbing the water, then bubbles, then pale legs: how I know I’m nearing another swimmer
the far green buoy looking white and blending into the sailboats in the distance
clear water in the beach/swimming area
pink and yellow safety buoys tethered to torsos
Scooby-doo bubbles
shafts of light underwater, looking like they were coming up from the bottom
Like I did on Thursday, I recited lines from A Oswald on the last segment on my loop. Thought about lifting the lid and shutting it again. I do a lot more shutting, then lifting I think.
8 a.m. and already 72. It’s going to be hot today. Heard some birds and the coxswain and water trickling, then dropping steadily. The river was pale blue through the trees. When I heard the rowers I wondered how hot they were on the water without any shade.
overheard: an adult runner to a kid biking behind them — you’re doing such a good job!
Wore my bright yellow shoes — the ones I bought over a year ago and have tried to wear several times but always give up because they hurt my feet and my calves. They seem to be working now.
10 Things
purple flowers just beyond the fence
blue sky
empty bench
a roller skier holding their poles up instead of using them
noisy birds near the tree that fell a few days ago onto the winchell trail
a small circle of shimmer: sparkling water seen through a gap in the trees
several stones stacked on the ancient boulder
a small group of bikers — 4, I think — speeding past, one of them wearing a bright pink shirt
a women with a dog stepping off the path near the bench above “the edge of the world”
faint lines of yellow and orange and pink and purple chalk on the 38th street steps
orbit
This morning, another orbit around an idea that I’ve been orbiting for a few years now:
1
He aligns himself and moves forward with his face in the water staring down at the bottom of the lake. Old, beautiful shadows are wavering steadily across it. He angles his body and looks up at the sky. Old, beautiful clouds are wavering steadily across it. The swimmer thinks about symmetries, then rotates himself to swim on his back staring at the sky. Could we be exactly wrong about such things as—he rotates again—which way is up? High above him he can feel the clouds watching his back, waiting for him to fall toward them.
The Anthropology of Water/ Anne Carson
Which way is up? Which way down? Which real? Imagined? Symmetries or similarities?
2
I began more seriously than ever to learn the names of things—the wild plants and animals, natural processes, local places—and to articulate my observations and memories. My language increased and strengthened, and sent my mind into the place like a live root-system. And so what has become the usual order of things reversed itself with me: my mind became the root of my life rather than its sublimation. I came to see myself as growing out of the earth like the other native animals and plants. I saw my body and my daily motions as brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place, which would fall back into the earth like leaves in the autumn.
Native Hill/ Wendell Berry
Brief coherences and articulations of the energy of the place.
3
Reading Berry, I’m reminded of Arthur Sze’s discussion of mushrooms as poems:
I began to think I love this idea that the mycelium is below the surface. It’s like the subconscious, then when the mushroom fruits pops up above ground, maybe that’s like this spontaneous outpouring of a poem or whatever.
4
Then, I returned, as I often do, to the beginnings of a poem:
Maybe like mushrooms, we rise or not rise, flare — brief bursts from below then returns to swim in the dirt…
our word “domestic” comes from the Latin domus, meaning “house” or “home.” To domesticate a place is to make a home of it. To be domesticated is to be at home.
X.
But if we were really to pay attention to what we’ve been calling “wilderness” or “the wild,” whether in a national park or on a rewooded Kentucky hillside, we would learn something of the most vital and urgent importance: they are not, properly speaking, wild.
XI.
Our overdone appreciation of wildness and wilderness has involved a little-noticed depreciation of true domesticity, which is to say homemaking, homelife, and home economy.
XII.
With only a little self-knowledge and a little sitting still and looking, the conventional perspective of wild and domestic will be reversed: we, the industrial consumers of the world, are the wild ones, unrestrained and out of control, self-excluded from the world’s natural homemaking and living at home.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 90 degrees
Another great swim! Felt strong — no strange calf pain, or feet that feel like they might start cramping, or fear over not seeing buoys. The water was warm and green. The sky was blue with a few clouds. No dragonflies or planes or menacing swans, although there was a lurking sailboat. The far green buoy still looked blue to me, when I could see it as having color. Often it looks like a white dot, or just a colorless dot that I understand as buoy.
I saw pale legs and green globs and a vague orangish red light and sparkle friends and bubbles and ghostly milfoil underwater. No ducks or fish or seagulls. For the last stretch of each loop, I recited the lines from Alice Oswald’s Dart that I just memorized:
1
Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head, through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm, giving the water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it, water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding
2
He dives, he shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts
Such great lines that feel familiar when I’m swimming in the middle of the lake.
4 miles minnehaha falls and back 73 degrees humidity: 75%
I planned to get up early and go out sooner, when it was still in the 60s, but I decided I needed sleep more, so I didn’t go out for my run until 9. Hot! I managed to stick with my plan for longer than I thought I could, and also to know when I needed to walk a little more.
10 Things
a line of bikes — 20? — emerging from under the ford bridge to turn up the trail right in front of me — nobody called out, runner, to alert the others
a faint spray coming off of the falls
a group of workers — do they belong to the semis parked in front of the park building? — cooling off in the shade
a turkey on the hidden part of the trail that dips below the road — when they saw me, they turned and almost slithered into the vegetation
a sandbag near a drain in the grass, initially looking like a dead animal
a faint voice below — a coxswain, I think!
trickling water at the 44th street ravine
the water fountain on the edge of the park does not work yet — or ever this summer? I’ll have to check again
a tree down on the winchell trail, almost, but not quite, covering the entire trail
a biker’s headlights cutting through the trees where the road curves
As I ran and walked, I thought about my vision tests. First, the colorblind plates. The feeling when I took the test was relief and recognition — positive feelings. Later, more mixed feelings. The loss of a language is difficult. But, failing the test is an opportunity to form a new relationship with color. How to represent that? I’m still struggling.
Second, I thought about the visual field test. I have taken it 3 times, I think — once when I was first diagnosed, once 3 years later, and just last month. You put your chin on a chin rest, press your forehead up against a bar, and look through a visor. You’re supposed to stare directly at a center dot and click a button when you see flashes in other areas of the visual field. How could I represent that in a poem?
I’d like to ask the ophthalmologist who administered my test if I could get a copy of the scan, to see exactly what my field looks like. Then, I might try to map my field onto a poem somehow — or map a poem onto my field. It could be like an erasure poem — an erasure of my own writing? Another idea: instruct the reader to keep staring into the center at the dot and try to see the words in different parts of the visual field. This one could be a series of “images” of the field with words.
As I keep thinking about these tests, here’s some more information about the visual field test.
on this day inspiration
On 1 July 2020, I posted Aram Saroyan’s famous “electric” poem:
I’ve discovered that the best work I can do now is to collect single words that happen to strike me and to type each one out in the center of a page. The one word isn’t “mine” but the one word in the center of the page is. Electric poems I call them (in case anyone starts throwing Concrete at me)—meaning that isolated of the reading process—or that process rendered by the isolation instant—each single word is structure as “instant, simultaneous, and multiple” as electricity and/or the Present. In effect the single word is a new reading process; like electricity—instant and continuous.
And now I’m thinking about my visual field test poetry, wondering how I might find an “electric” word to put in the center. And, could I put some related words in other parts of the field? What about a phrase?
here
I need to think more about what word/s to use. I like here, but it also seems like a place-holder for a more dynamic word. Thought about “don’t look away” or “look here” or “stare” or no word, but a dot or an x or ?
Now I’m remembering Rob Macaisa Colgate’s Hardly Creatures and his series of 3 poems: the first, the original artwork, the second was a replica, the third a souvenir. I could write a “regular/intact” poem, then condense it to fit with my visual field.
swim: 3 loops lake nokomis open swim 83 degrees
A great swim! One of the orange buoys was missing, but they replaced it with a green one. The buoys seemed to be farther out and it took 3 tries for me to finally swim straight to the final green one. But I did; I cracked the code.
10 Things
loose vines, wrapping themselves around me
menacing swans
military planes buzzing overhead — heard and seen
a nice chat with another regular — an older women I’ve seen for a couple of years. I asked her about the course; she asked me why the water was so cold
pale, marble legs underwater
frog legs almost kicking me
ghostly milfoil
the far green buoy, nearest the little beach, always looked pale blue to me
A late start, almost 10 am. Hot! A beautiful summer morning. Sun, soft shadows, sprinkling water, green, blue. I didn’t hear it, but it rained last night. Puddles and mud on the winchell trail. The river was brown and still.
overheard: a counselor to a group of camp kids taking a nature walk — be careful not to brush up and against anything! if you see poison ivy, don’t touch it!
Walkers, runners, bikers. No rowers or roller skiers. A strange sight near the crosswalk to the river trail: a stuck semi at a strange angle — the cab going one way, the trailer the other. What happened?
Above the trail was hot and dry, below slick, slippery, shaded. Voices drifting down. Shadows shifting. Dripping, rustling.
I chanted in triple berries, trying to keep my left and right foot strikes even. Soon, I’d like to pull out my phone and record my running — is it steady, or could I have some strange hitch I’m not aware of?
Was thinking about my colorblind plates again and what feelings taking and failing that test evoked. The snellen chart feeling is anxiety, uncertainty. The amsler grid, more curiosity and wonder and validation/recognition. The Ishihara Colorblind plates? A door opening — not only sudden awareness but a shifting and passing through something that, before, had only lived inside my head. A new understanding.
I was thinking about the dots in the plate. Dots. Circles. Loops. Os.
opened occupy orbit organic outcast official obvious oracle occipital oak overt O! oof ointment oddity omen or outfield outrage/ous ostrich ossify outage outstanding
open online orifice onset organs outer limits ophthalmology olfactory organization orange orchard Oh! oaf ornamental odor obscure/d orphaned occult opt/ion octopus out of control outlet outdoors
For more O inspiration, I’m looking to O/ Claire Wahmanholm. I posted it on here back on 12 june 2020. Here are some of her Os:
once oil overgrown ore only oblivion outdated
operation opus olive obelisk origin overrun oxygen
Oh, obstreperous one. Ornery, outside of ordinary. . .
Does this help me to get any closer to figuring out what to do with my colorblind test? Maybe. Regardless, it was fun!
before the run
Today’s morning reading-while-drinking-coffee was wonderful. Here are some things I encountered:
one
hey, I get it. But look! how much pleasure is on the other side of that which only momentarily torments you! Think about the miracle of the other side, if you can get there, and you can! I get it! There is much we have to do to keep ourselves alive! Much of it mundane and some of it displeasing, but sunsets are cool and if you do enough of the mundane you get to see one of those from time to time! . . . Imagine the other side, the next moment, the thing that awaits beyond what exhausts you!
@nifmuhammad / Hanif Abduraqib
What luck to be alive at the same time as Hanif Abduraqib. So wise and loving. For years, I have been monitoring, imagining, writing about the other side in this log. It’s a real place: the opposite side of the gorge, usually the east side because I run on the west side more. My mother was born and raised on that other side. And, it’s an imagined place — a view, a vista, open space for breathing and being otherwise; the moments when, I don’t want to stop running.
“In concussion recovery therapy, there is an exercise where you must go through the alphabet, and list words that correspond with the letters as you go. Each round, you are given a theme. These themes can include names of people, cities, countries, foods, colors, and more. Doing this week after week, as I rewired my brain, I couldn’t help but think of the learned alphabets unique to every individual—the ones we inherit, the ones we claim, [and] the ones we try and run away from. From there, I wrote into one of my loudest alphabets: manic depression.”
The alphabets we inherit, we claim, we try and run away from. Wow!
swim: 2.5 loops (5 cedar lake loops) cedar lake open swim 74 degrees
A little windier and choppier today. A current in the lake was pushing everyone swimming west to the wrong side of the buoy. By the fourth and fifth laps, I had finally figured out how to stay on course. I kept noticing the sky. First it was blue with only a few clouds. Then half of it was blue, the other half darker. By the last lap: gray. When I reached the shore I realized that it was raining. I had no idea!
No scratchy vines or clear bubbles. No flashes of fish or crazy kayaks. No planes or birds or dragonflies. All I remember is opaque water and occasionally sighting the orange dots and yellow and pink safety buoys tethered to torsos. Oh — and someone/something touching my calf. Most likely another swimmer.
I didn’t think about much as I swam except 1 2 3 4 5 breathe 1 2 3 4 5 breathe. I felt how my right arm has been getting stronger as I swim more and that I could use my tricep to move higher and faster through the water. I was irritated by some swimmers. Raced a few others, most likely without them knowing I was.
bike: 8.6 miles lake nokomis and back 61/64 degrees
Cooler this morning. When I got up I briefly thought, I don’t need to go today; it’s too cold. Silenced that voice and went — a great bike ride! The gray made it harder to see, but I didn’t care. I don’t remember having a single scary moment. Encountered runners and walkers and other bikers, several surreys just past the park, one chill biker with a dog in the front, listening to music (I think it was jazz?) as he went. Heard the creek rushing, had to dismount when the new part of the path was covered with black sandbags, noticed a few people sitting in the grass on the stretch between lake hiawatha and lake nokomis. My favorite part: rounding the curve, seeing the orange buoys in the water as I neared the beach. Open swim!
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 62 degrees
4 loops today! 3 in a row, a bathroom break (out of the water!), then back in for another loop. The water was warmer than the air and clear near the shore. Starting my last loop, I swam through the swimming area and was able to see the bottom the entire way — only “unnatural” thing I saw was a bright colored pair of goggles.
The first buoy was far away from the big beach. The second buoy kept moving — and not just because of wind, I watched as the lifeguard tugged it to a different spot during one loop, then dragged it to the third orange buoy during the 3rd loop — why?
Today there was a sailboat out in the water. Not menacing — it hugged the edge of the shore, staying far from the course.
Most of the bubbles looked like scooby-doo bubbles — translucent and outlined (for clip/discussion, see 2 aug 2024), but the one at the bottom end of visual field kept looking like a glob of snot — gross!
The water was a darkish green-blue. The milfoil was orange-green. The sky, pale blue.
Someone parked in the parking lot had their headlights on and before I realized that, I was using it to sight, thinking it was the far green buoy. Nope.
It was a great morning for a swim. What a loss it would have been if I had skipped it, what a gift to have gone!
overheard, at 11:15 (open swim ends at 11:00): one swimmer talking to another — I kept making excuses until I finally said to myself, you have to go! stop doing the dishes!
birds
On mornings when the birds singing — which is most days, but not today — I’d like to remember and chant these lines from the end of “Birdsong of Shaker Way” by Ann-Margaret Lim:
one more day, filled with birds— brightened, lightened, trilled by birds:
Bird, bird, bird. Hello bird. You lift me up bird. You sing the day beautiful, bird.
finds from my On This Day practice
1
Reading my past entries from 27 june, I reunited with some favorite lines from the wonderful poet, Tomas Tranströmer in his poem, “Under Pressure.” I decided to fit them into my breathing form:
You can see beauty
only from the side,
hastily, Dense grain
on the field, colours
in a yellow stream. Rest-
less shadows in my head
are drawn there. They want
to creep in to grain
and turn gold.
2
From 27 june 2023, definitions of about:
about: reasonably close to; almost; on the verge of; on all sides; around the outside; in many different directions — here and there; near; concerning . . . out and about (oot and a boot — Minnesota style)
As I read this poem, I thought about how I often imagine myself as a boat in the water. Not a fish deep in the lake, but a boat, on the line between surfaced and submerged, half of me underwater, half always exposed to the air.
5
today voice curve water beach clear shore think third green sight
great scary chill biker front music heard creek black grass would
today: great — a chill felt on the curve I heard music: a grass voice a water voice a green voice a shore voice a creek voice — all here today, singing together here in the water, wouldclear sight make anything less scary? a chillin the water
update, 28 june, 2025: This morning, reading through past entries, I remembered a few more things about the swim yesterday. First, breathing. I did my usual 1 2 3 4 5 breathe, but also 1 2 3 and 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. Then I tried 1 2 3 breathe right 1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left. I’ve been trying out how it feels to stroke less between breaths. I also was conscious of how my sighting fit into all of this — 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 sight 4 5 breathe left. I never breathe when I sight; I just lift my forehead out of the water. Why does this matter? Beyond its impact on the biomechanics of my stroke and on my ability to keep straight and moving towards the buoy even when I can’t see it, stroke/sight/breath is fascinates me in terms of the spaces/moments it creates above and below the surface, in water and air, as fish and human, boat body and mind. Which of these spaces is more real, which less? If both are real, what reality do they offer?
When I’m swimming, how much time do I spend with my head and half my body submerged versus above the water? That is, how long do I get to inhabit my water world?
Second, planes. Lake Nokomis is near the airport, so there are often planes high above — circling like sharks, I like to imagine. During the swim I noticed several places that seemed to be sped up. It looked like they were moving extra fast? Where they? Or was I just seeing them strangely?
The heat broke. Yes! Still overheated by the end, but much easier to run in the 60s than the 80s. Did my 9/1 again. About 2 minutes into the third segment of running, nearing a steep hill, I briefly contemplated taking another walk break. Then I remembered that I took an extra walk break around the same time yesterday. This might become a habit, I thought, so I decided to keep going. Make it to the top of the hill. Make it to the parking lot. Make it to the bench above the edge of the world. Then I was at 9 minutes. Victory!
Before I went out for my run, I revisited CAConrad’s TL;DR and their advice for listening:
listen to the most immediate sounds in the building. Let the layers reveal themselves, shifting to what you hear further away, then further.
When you feel you have heard everything, wait. Sit there a little longer, listening for the faintest of traffic in the sky or a faraway rumble.
As I ran, I listened for the the layers. Running above the falls, on the other side of the creek, I tried to listen to what was beyond the soft rushing of the water over limestone. Cars, a train horn, birds, my foot steps. I tried to listen for voices at the overlook. Did I hear any? I don’t think so.
10 Sounds
a car, whooshing by me on the street
a few pebbles crunching under the wheel
the soft knocking of a woodpecker
kids laughing on the playground
the creek, tumbling over rocks
the soft rush of the falls
scraping — someone working on the new trail below me
the clicking of a roller skier’s poles across the road
the sharp clanging of a dog collar
the shifting of a bike gear
what is a tree?
Yesterday, walking on the gravel road that leads to the cedar lake beach, I noticed the husk of a tree — a sad-looking trunk with no top and no branches. When I pointed it out to Scott he said, that’s not a tree. Trees have branches. Even little trees have branches. Running today, I suddenly wondered about a tree’s root system and what was underground. Can that define a tree? Looked it up, and according to several sources, there is no universal or official scientific definition of a tree. The generally accepted idea is that it has a single, thick trunk, branches, a root system.
run 5
broke still again about third steep world cedar
below heard water think wheel creek trail beach
skier break might extra habit bench sharp thick
I have a third wheel habit. again, water, my break below. a beach bench thick with habit trail-think, creek-think, beach-think: one is still, one sharp, one thick world —break what brokeagain steep bench habit beyond the linear layer, a wheel world could be heard
floating again
I returned to Anne Carson’s Float today and found many delightful things in her pair of lectures, “Uncle Falling,” including this:
Uncle Falling / Anne Carson
I like to write lectures. My favorite part is connect- ing the ideas. The best connections are the ones that draw attention to their own frailty so that at first you think: what a poor lecture this is–the ideas go all over the place and then later you think but still, what a terrifically perilous activity it is, this activity of linking together all the threads of human sin that go into making what we call sense, what we call reasoning, an argument, a conversa- tion. how light, how loose, how unprepared and unpreparable is the web of connections between any thought and any thought.
CHORUS 1: Here’s a thought
CHORUS 2, 3: Here’s another
CHORUS 1, 2, 3, 4: How about getting from here to there
CHORUS 4:How about spending some time in mid-air
CHORUS 3: Much depends upon the fact
CHORUS 2: that one falls
CHORUS 1: or one does not fall
swim: 3 loops open swim lake nokomis 80 degrees
A wonderful night for a swim! Warm water, hardly any chop, no glaring sun. So many sparkle friends and bubbles and muscles being worked. And, a ferret on the loose? The lifeguards caught a ferret and kept asking if anyone was missing a ferret. I felt strong and fast and free — no worries about getting off course. Who cares? A great swim.
