Tag: swim

june 22/SWIM

3 miles/ 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees

Another good swim. I didn’t get off course but I did find it much harder to sight the buoys. Was it all the bobbing bright orange swim caps that I mistook for the buoy, or that I didn’t rinse out all of the baby shampoo I use to anti-fog my goggles so my eyes stung, or the bright sun, or another decline in my vision? Swimming with the sun behind me, I usually could see a smudge of orange and swam straight to the little beach, but swimming into the sun, I couldn’t sight the green buoys at all. I mostly used the roof at the big beach as a guide and when I thought I was sighting the hulking shape of the green buoy, I usually was sighting a sailboat.

Breathed every 5 strokes almost the entire time. A few 5 then 6, or 3 then 5, or 3 then 4. Might have seen a few fish below me, or they could have just been sun streaks. Last week, I saw several dragonflies hovering above the water, looking like little helicopters. Didn’t notice any tonight. No airplanes either. I encountered a few swimmers out in the middle of the lake, but mostly I felt alone, which was fine with me. Every so often, it felt strange and unsettling, but I didn’t mind. I don’t remember hearing anything and all I remember feeling was the choppy waves as I neared the big beach. When I got out of the water, my right eye burned so much that I had to keep it closed. Bright sun + a trace of baby shampoo still in the google = bad news

Earlier today, I spent some time reading up about geological time. Eons and eras, periods, epochs, and ages. So much classification and names for divisions of time! Western science is really into naming things, often after people. It might be interesting to read an intellectual history of geology in the 19th century, but only if it’s written by an engaging writer, like Bill Bryson. I wonder if he writes about geology in his book, A Brief History of Nearly Everything?

Conversation with a Pebble/Alyson Hallett

Here’s what I’ve been wondering. If fire hides in wood
what hides in a stone?

I hold a pebble
in the palm of my hand. It looks like an egg that wants to hatch.

I do not know how long
it will take, how long its incubation or breaking through.

My time is slow, Pebble says. Slower Than you can imagine.

I know this is true.
I kiss the pebble,
Watch the moisture from my lips sink in.

That’s what I’m hiding,
It says. Water. The tiniest Rivers, lakes, seas.

Ideas of what water
Can be. Yes, pebble says,
I am hiding all the world’s memory.

june 18/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees

First time since august of 2019 that I’ve biked to the lake. So grateful that my vision is good enough for me to do it. When I lose my central vision, will I still be able to bike? Biking is important because I can no longer drive (or, I no longer feel safe driving): it’s much faster than walking and much more fun than taking 2 buses over to the lake (I don’t think there’s a direct bus route to the lake, so even though nokomis is 4 miles away, you have to transfer). Biking is not too bad unless I have to pass another biker who is going too slow, then it’s scary. Very hard to see for sure if someone’s coming the other way. No passing needed on the way there, and only twice on the way back. What a gorgeous, sunny, summer day!

swim: 3 miles/3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees
sunny/no chop

Last year, open swim added more days to their schedule–this bummed me out since I wasn’t doing open swim because of covid and in solidarity with my kids who couldn’t do the fun things they wanted to do in order for all of us to stay safe and healthy. I’m very glad they kept the expanded schedule for this year. Very cool to be able to swim on Friday mornings across the lake!

Morning swims are usually harder for me because the position of the sun makes it difficult to sight the buoys to the little beach, which only has the sparkle of an overturned rowboat as a landmark. Evenings are easier, because when the sun shines in my eyes or the buoys are backlit, I can always rely on the towering light poles or the roof of the boathouse to keep me on track. Today, the sun made it hard to see the little beach, and the buoys were only hulking, colorless shapes, but I was fine. The little rowboat was a bright beacon—at least, I think it was the rowboat; I saw something vaguely shining and decided it was the rowboat and I was swimming the right way. I could sense the final buoy from a long way off. I never saw anything that was orange, no flash or dot. Instead, I felt the buoy was there. I sensed the absence of the water or the beach and my brain told me that that void was buoy. So weird.

I breathed every 5 or every 3 then 4 then 5 or every 6. Before we started, I heard another swimmer on the beach telling a friend:

“I try to breathe every 3 strokes.”
“That’s good, that’s what you’re supposed to do.”
“Yeah, but then I feel like I’m going to pass out!”

Did this swimmer mean that they need more air and every 3 is too many strokes in-between breaths? I guess I’m pretty strange with my breathing every 5 or 6, every so often, 7. It doesn’t bother me to stay underwater that much longer. It helps me stay lost longer.

At one point, heading toward the little beach, I tried reciting “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” After a few lines, I realized that it was too distracting, that I needed to focus more on swimming straight and staying on course.

june 17/SWIM

2 miles/2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

Another great open swim. So far, I’m enjoying this new course. It’s longer and more forgiving, I think. Swimmers are spread out wider so you don’t have to worry about running into anyone going the opposite direction. It helps that more people are doing open swim too. More limbs to sight when I can’t see the buoys. I felt strong when I was swimming, and stronger when I was done. I love the feeling of my arm muscles after swimming. A warm glow, slightly sore, physical evidence of effort.

Not sure if or when I’ll get used to how strange and remarkable it is to be able to swim this course when I can hardly see the buoys–just a quick flash of orange green or the idea of it bobbing in front of me. Could it be that my brain “sees” the buoy even when I don’t consciously see it with my eyes? From the research I’ve done on vision, I think it’s possible. The body is remarkable. Swimming is remarkable. I love how confident I feel when I swim. Probably the most confident I ever feel doing anything. I never doubt or second-guess myself in the water. I just swim. I wish more things in life could feel this easy—well, not easy, but right or natural.

I did a lot of breathing every five strokes. Sometimes every six or every three or every three then four. Saw some ducks, was rocked by some waves, saw some flashes that might have been fish.

For much of the day, I was reading/reviewing the history of the Mississippi Gorge, starting with the occupation and renaming of Owámniyomni to St. Anthony Falls by Father Hennepin in 1680. Much of my focus today, without entirely intending it to be, was the tracing of commerce and capital, from furs to timber to flour to hydroelectric power. Learned about Franklin Steele and his tactics for grabbing land and making money. (Why Nobody Wants to Talk About Franklin Steele) What a terrible person, yet he did so much to make Minneapolis what it is today. Difficult to figure out how to reconcile the benefits of progress with the terrible damage it causes. Maybe they can’t be reconciled.

june 15/SWIM

2 miles/ 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
82 degrees

The first open swim! The first open swim! A perfect evening for it. The course was slightly different this year. There were the usual 3 orange buoys in a straight diagonal line from the north end of the big beach to the little beach, but there were also 2 bright green buoys a little further south. Huh? I had to ask another swimmer who looked like she knew what she was doing–actually, I heard her tell someone else that she had swam this course last year. They’ve changed up the course a little to make it safer and longer. Instead of always having the buoys on your left like they’ve done in the past, they are always on your right. The path is a straight shot from the northern end of the big beach to the little beach using the orange buoys. But on the way back, you travel much wider, using the invisible (to me) green buoys, and aim for the southern end of the main beach.

When I started swimming, I thought this new route would be a problem for me and how I’ve learned to swim without seeing that much, but I quickly got used to it, and decided that I liked it better. I like how it’s longer and that it’s wider. I can’t see the color green at all in the water, so the return buoys, if I manage to “see” them are just big, smudged hulks (and sometimes I confuse them with the similar shaped smudge of a sail from a sailboat further south), but I can use the silvery white rooftop at the big beach to guide me back to shore. I’m grateful for such a big landmark.

I didn’t run into any other swimmers, and I didn’t get way off course. At one point, I stopped to try and sight where I was, and a person swimming to my left stopped too. I think they were following me, hoping I would guide them the right way. I did. So strange and amazing and delightful to be able to navigate with such minimal, fleeting signals. How difficult was it for other people to see? When they looked straight ahead, just barely lifting out of the water, could they see the orange buoys clearly, a beacon in the empty blue and green? Or, were they like me, who was only able to see the smear of orange when I turned my head so that I could view what was straight from the side? Most of the time, the orange dot disappeared when I looked at it directly. Only once or twice, when it hit just right, did it appear. I was reminded of how much my sighting and seeing is based on trusting my straight strokes and learning to effectively and efficiently use the scant clues I have from what I do see. Open water swimming is a great confidence boost for me, and a reminder of how much I can still function. When I lose my central vision completely (which will almost surely happen soon), will it get worse, or have I learned to see mostly through my periphery already? I don’t know. For now, I’m happy to be swimming and not panicking, feeling strong and confident and at home in the water.

Searching for poetry about buoys, I found this awesome post by a poet-in-residence at a boat yard–Underfall Yard. They’re exploring the area, reading about boats and buoys and swimming and water, leading poetry workshops for visitors, planning poetry readings. I would love to do something like this! Wow. Very cool and inspiring!

And, a poem about orange buoys!

june 12/RUNSWIM

run: 1.1 miles
lake nokomis
72 degrees

Did a quick 10 minute warm-up before going for my swim. 8:30 and already crowded trails. I heard at least one mourning dove. Favorite thing: hearing and feeling my feet shuffling on the sand on the edge of the trail.

swim: 1 mile/ 6 loops
lake nokomis big beach
73 degrees

Another mile beside the white buoys at the big beach. Such a wonderful swim. I don’t remember seeing any minnows at the edge of the water. No ducks either. Instead, milfoil. During my first loop a strand of it wrapped around my shoulders and face and I had to stop and fling it off. Then, a few loops later, I felt something on my thigh. At first I thought it was just the water being pushed by my arm. Then I reached down and pulled out another milfoil strand. I imagined the lake was attacking me, then decided it was embracing me.

When I started, there was a fitness class in the water and I heard the instructor calling out, “Lift those knees!” I saw some kayakers, paddle boarders, another swimmer. I noticed a steady processional of planes in the air above me.

I used my new bright yellow buoy. It works very well. As usual, I wore a nose plug which doesn’t bother me at all. White rimmed open water goggles, a bright blue latex swim cap, a purple-patterned on black TYR suit.

The sun was bright on the water. I definitely don’t have photophobia, a possible symptom of cone dystrophy, because the brightness didn’t bother me at all. Looking out at the water, so shiny and reflective, I briefly wondered how will I see the big orange buoys next week when I swim across the lake.

At one point when I was swimming, I thought about the origins of Lake Nokomis and when it got it’s current name. Looked it up (wikipedia): It used to be called Lake Amelia, most likely named for the daughter or wife of Captain George Gooding who came with the first troops in 1819. When the Minneapolis Park Board purchased the land in 1908 and in 1910 renamed it Nokomis, after (of course) Longfellow’s poem.

See a map of then Minneapolis Park Board Director Theodore Wirth’s ambitious plans for the lake in 1913

from EXAQUA [Oh, that’s what I was]/ Jan-Henry Gray

Oh, that’s what I was originally thinking of with the notion of swimming or orbiting that you mentioned: a giant essay that interrupts (or cleaves?) into the book. To cleave is to separate and to bring together. To yoke. To it: I’m thinking of this essay I want to write as… Essay as Ocean. Not necessarily in a geographic, landscapey way but weirder, queer, dense, full of strange currents with different temperatures, something immersive, at times panicky, the feeling of losing oxygen but delighted by the sight of strange objects that litter the ocean floor. An oasis of sight. Geography textbooks and all of that richly descriptive language. How can anyone read about the unseen formation of volcanoes or the glacial creation of lakes and not feel connected to the Earth—capital E? Essay as a vast, limitless, edgeless, impossible-to-keep-in-one’s-head-all-at-once phenomenon. Essay as a way of breaking up the rest of the poems that surround it. I wanted to offer a break, a reprieve. Freedom from forms.

I love this poem and I want to spend some time with it. I was just telling STA about how great swimming is for disorienting you, distorting your senses. Immersive, panicky, delightful, strange. And the line, “How can anyone read about the/unseen formation of volcanoes or the glacial creation of lakes and not feel connected/ to the Earth–capirtal E?”

june 10/SWIM

1 mile
lake nokomis big beach
30 minutes

Another mile swimming just off the big beach around the white buoys! Another almost perfect weather day–no wind, sun, warm, but not too warm, water! I checked online, the water temp is 75, which is plenty warm for me. Today I used my new safety buoy, not for safety, but to hold my phone and keys so I don’t have to leave them in my yellow backpack on the beach while I swim. It’s an inflatable buoy–bright yellow–with a dry pouch inside that you can store stuff in. You hook it to a belt that you wear around your waist. Pretty slick. For 7 years, when I swim, I leave my yellow backpack on the beach and it always makes me a little nervous, especially because it has my phone and my bike lock key. Now, I won’t worry. And, it’s good to have a buoy so that other people in boats can see me.

Right before my swim on Tuesday, as I put my swim cap on in the shallow water, I watched little minnows quickly swimming away from my approaching feet. Such a sweet and delightful thing to witness! What is the collective noun for minnows? A flash of minnows? A flurry of minnows? Looked it up and found some other answers: a swarm, a stream, a school of minnows. The minnows were still there this morning. I can’t remember if they stay all summer; I’ll have to check from them in July and August.

Since I had my phone with me, my distance was more accurate: today the activity app said I swam 1.08 miles, as compared to Tuesday when it said I swam .67 miles. I have decided that, for my purposes, 6 loops = 1 mile. 2 miles swam, 98 to go!

I didn’t see any flashes below me, or shafts of light, but I did encounter a few ducks right before I started, and a few bits of milfoil floating in the water. I noticed how the white buoys disappeared in my central vision, then reappeared in my periphery. I saw a paddle boarder and another swimmer–mostly I sensed another swimmer, hearing their hands occasionally slap the water, glimpsing a quick flash of foaming water in their wake.

I breathed every 5 strokes or five/six/five or three/four/five/three or every six. As I swam every six I thought about a poem I wrote a few years ago, “Submerged,” and how I like stroking more, breathing less in order to spend more time submerged, pretending I’m a fish. Sometimes I thought about my wonderful son FWA and how he graduated from high school last night. Those thoughts made my swim more relaxed. Other times I thought about something else–I can’t remember what, just that it involved worries–and my swim was harder, less free.

Found these two excerpts from Niedecker’s poem, “For Paul” (1950). The first one is about her failing vision: in 1949, she was diagnosed with nystagma (roving eyes). The second one is about June:

You are far away
sweet reason

Since I saw you last, Paul
my sight is weaker . . .

I still see–
it’s the facts are thick–
thru glass:

*

Hi, Hot-and-Humid

That June she’s a lush

She marsh wallows, frog bickering
moon pooling, green gripping

Fool
Keep cool

In my June 8th log entry, I posted Niedecker’s poem, “Paean to Place.” Love this poem. In an article about Niedecker’s ecopoetics, I found a link to a facsimile of a hand-written version of this poem that she made into a book for a friend. Nice!

Paean to Place, facsimile

Last night at FWA’s graduation, the principal gave an introduction/welcome in which he did a land acknowledgment, recognizing the land/city where the school was built is Dakota land. I wasn’t able to hear exactly what he said because a group of people two rows back wouldn’t shut up–am I the only person who actually wants to listen to (and enjoys) the speeches? Probably. Anyway, I’m not sure of his wording, or if he used the words “stolen” or is versus was Dakota land, but I was glad to hear him say something. Just hours before graduation, I was reading an article about land acknowledgment, its problems and possibilities: WHERE WE STAND: THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA AND DAKHÓTA TREATY LANDS

I’m thinking about how to incorporate a deeper recognition and acknowledgment of the history of that land I write about in my bio and through my poems.

june 8/SWIM

1 mile/6 loops
lake nokomis, big beach
84 degrees

My first real swim (30 minutes straight) since September of 2019! Very exciting. My apple watch consistently underestimates the distance, so I’m not quite sure, but based on my pace and past loop swimming, I’ve decided I swam a mile. My first mile of many this summer, I hope. It’s ambitious, but I’d love to swim 100 miles this summer. Only 99 left.

The water was about as good as it gets. Not too cold, no chop, no debris. I could see the white buoys out of my periphery. I think I saw a few big fish swimming below me and some beams or streaks of light. Swimming so close to the white buoys, I got a good look at the brown muck on the underside of the buoys at each end. Yuck. I “raced” a paddle boarder paddling in from the middle of the lake, and avoided a few other boats. I mostly breathed every 5 strokes. Sometimes 5, then 6. A few times, 3. A lot of the time I thought about how my right shoulder–the one I injured last spring scraping paint off of the deck–ached a little more than my left, and whether or not the every-so-often sharp pain in my right ear was the start of something, but occasionally I thought about how much I love swimming, and how, even more than running, it gives you a way into another world, where your senses don’t work, or work strangely. Very cool. I like this water world.

For a few hours after I had finished, my body, especially my shoulders, felt slightly and pleasantly sore–not that miserable sore where you can barely move, but the sore you feel when you have worked your muscles and they are grateful to be used in this way finally, after a long 16 months away from the water.

My theme this month is water and stone. As I read through various essays, poems, articles, I’m coming to realize that I’m understanding the theme through the work of one of my new (not new, she’s died 4 years before I was born in 1970, but new to me) favorite poets: Lorine Niedecker. Here’s the opening to a beautiful poem that might serve as an inspiration for me (note: her cool spacing didn’t work when I pasted it into wordpress. Click on the poem to read it with the cool spacing):

Paean to Place/ LORINE NIEDECKER

And the place
was water
Fish
fowl
flood
Water lily mud
My life

in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
born
in swale and swamp and sworn
to water

I was born on water, Lake Superior in Hancock, Michigan, and my mom was too, Mississippi River in West St. Paul, Minnesota. While my mom never learned to swim, or love being in the water, I did. As a digital story I created more than 5 years ago begins: “I have loved water all my life.”

june 6/RUNswim

2.5 miles
lake nokomis
75 degrees

STA and I drove over to the lake early to avoid the heat and then ran around it. Hot and sunny, but not too bad for me; STA was having some difficulty with his knee and hip, so not so good for him. Lots of people to dodge, mostly in packs of 2 or 3 or more. We weren’t trying to avoid them as much as just not run into them. The highlight of the run: passing 3 people standing near a pooping dog, hearing one of the people say: Such a big poop and right by a trashcan! Good dog! He said this in a voice that you usually hear when someone is praising a toddler. Okay, maybe I also liked feeling the breeze coming off of the lake and watching it glimmer and feeling almost normal and locking into a steady rhythm with my arms swinging the same amount and in perfect chorus with my legs. Oh–and I also remember stretching at a table near Sandcastle and noticing the light from the overhang reflecting on the pavement, making it glow a pale, pretty blue.

swim: just a quick dip in the drink (100 yards?)

I wanted to test out the water before open swim, which starts on the 15th!, so I decided to try a quick swim. It wasn’t that cold, just lots of waves from all the wind. My first time swimming since August of 2019. It felt like I never stopped, and strange and unknown at the same time. In other Junes the lake water has been clear, but not today. Couldn’t see a thing below me. Also hard to see above water. Time to prepare for vague shapes, and not knowing where I’m going, and trusting straight strokes. Always good practice and it makes every swim more exciting–will I get way off course? will the lifeguard have to come get me? I really hope that I can swim a lot this summer. Could I manage 100 miles? I’ll see. Open swim has expanded; I can swim 6 days a week. Minneapolis Parks is amazing.

Here’s a poem for this month’s theme of water and stone. Wow.

The Museum of Stones/ Carolyn Forché – 1950-

These are your stones, assembled in matchbox and tin,
collected from roadside, culvert, and viaduct,
battlefield, threshing floor, basilica, abattoir–
stones, loosened by tanks in the streets
from a city whose earliest map was drawn in ink on linen,
schoolyard stones in the hand of a corpse,
pebble from Apollinaire’s oui,
stone of the mind within us
carried from one silence to another,
stone of cromlech and cairn, schist and shale, horneblende,
agate, marble, millstones, ruins of choirs and shipyards,
chalk, marl, mudstone from temples and tombs,
stone from the tunnel lined with bones,
lava of a city’s entombment, stones
chipped from lighthouse, cell wall, scriptorium,
paving stones from the hands of those who rose against the army,
stones where the bells had fallen, where the bridges were blown,
those that had flown through windows, weighted petitions,
feldspar, rose quartz, blueschist, gneiss and chert,
fragments of an abbey at dusk, sandstone toe
of a Buddha mortared at Bamiyan,
stone from the hill of three crosses and a crypt,
from a chimney where storks cried like human children,
stones newly fallen from stars, a stillness of stones, a heart,
altar and boundary of stone, marker and vessel, first cast, lode and hail,
bridge stones and others to pave and shut up with,
stone apple, stone basil, beech, berry, stone brake,
stone bramble, stone fern, lichen, liverwort, pippin and root,
concretion of the body, as blind as cold as deaf,
all earth a quarry, all life a labor, stone-faced, stone-drunk
with hope that this assemblage of rubble, taken together, would become
a shrine or holy place, an ossuary, immoveable and sacred
like the stone that marked the path of the sun as it entered the human dawn.

This poem. Beautiful and powerful and haunting. I need to spend some time with it. So much to think about and reflect on. Here are two other things to put beside it:

From the Emily Dickinson Lexicon, entry for stone

stone (-s), n. [OE stán, wall; Gk. ‘pebble’.] (webplay: body, buildings, cold, dead, earth, express, eye, fall, fences, forgot, glance, gold, great, hard, heart, lie, lifeless, means, mirror, myself, perfectly, Philosopher’s, sense, set, small, stand, still, supposed, turning, universally, use, walls, water, weight).

  1. Hard mineral substance.
  2. Piece of rock; [fig.] thing which has a characteristic of a rock: unbreakable, inanimate, unfeeling, immovable, lack of consciousness, used to throw at things, used to break things, used in building structures.
  3. Jewel; precious gem.
  4. Grave; sepulcher; crypt; mausoleum; burial vault; [fig.] large stone covering the entrance of Jesus Christ’s sepulcher which was removed at the time of his resurrection.
  5. Coffin; casket; solid enclosure holding a dead body.
  6. Headstone; monument marking a grave.
  7. Imaginary substance thought to be able to turn other substances into gold. 
  8. Phrase. “[Written / set / stamped] in stone”: unalterable; prescribed by fate; will of God.

gneiss (which has come up in a few different places for me in the last few days):

Gneiss is a foliated metamorphic rock identified by its bands and lenses of varying mineral composition. Some of these bands (or lenses) contain granular minerals that are bound together in an interlocking texture.

Gneiss: Metamorphic Rock

STA’s favorite joke from high school science class:

She was gneiss, but he took her for granite.

sept 7/RUNSWIM

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
58 degrees

A great run! A cooler temp makes all the difference for me. What do I remember? Walking towards the river, listening to the electric hum of the bugs, the cawing of the crows, the rumble of the garbage truck. Seeing so many bright colors today–glowing yellowish green and orange shirts, aquamarine and hot pink shorts. Encountering a few roller skiers, a rollerblader, groups of runners, a water station set-up not too far from the overlook. Hearing the rowers on the river. Admiring the sparkling sun on the water, just barely cutting through the thick curtain of leaves.

Still Burning
BY GERALD STERN

Me trying to understand say whence
say whither, say what, say me with a pencil walking,
say reading the dictionary, say learning medieval
Latin, reading Spengler, reading Whitehead,
William James I loved him, swimming breaststroke
and thinking for an hour, how did I get here?
Or thinking in line, say the 69 streetcar
or 68 or 67 Swissvale,
that would take me elsewhere, me with a textbook
reading the pre-Socratics, so badly written,
whoever the author was, me on the floor of
the lighted stacks sitting cross-legged,
walking afterwards through the park or sometimes
running across the bridges and up the hills,
sitting down in our tiny diningroom,
burning in a certain way, still burning.

I love the linking of thinking with moving here–swimming, walking, running.

Mannequin of the day:

I am always fascinated by the eyes in these mannequins–the little bit of white in the corner of the pupil and the curls veiling the one eye. The way her pupils are shifted up and to the side. What is she looking at? Is it my shoulder? One of the first things the ophthalmologist told me when I was diagnosed with cone dystrophy was that I’d need to learn to look just past people’s shoulders if I wanted to see their faces. Once my central vision was gone, I would only be able to see them through my peripheral. How unsettling is it to others to look at them this way? I do not look at people’s shoulders…yet. For now, I either avoid looking or I just stare into their dim, fading, dead-pupil faces and pretend that they don’t look like a lifeless mannequin.

swim: .9 miles (1600 yards)
lake nokomis

Guess who got to swim in Lake Nokomis this afternoon? Me! When I got back from my run, I found out that the lake was open again (after being closed due to some kid pooping in the water and spreading e-coli and getting several dozens of other people sick…boo). I didn’t think I’d be able to swim in this lake again this year. Now I get to give a proper good-bye. Hopefully, I’ll be able to swim in it more times this week. With my wetsuit I’ll keep swimming until they won’t let me or there’s ice or I decide I”m over it. Open swimming is the best! The water was calm. Everything was a dull, light gray except for the trees on the other side. Already starting to turn slightly. Light green and yellow. After the swim, headed over to sandcastle with Scott for a beer and some fries. Does it get any better than this?

august 22/RUNSWIM

3 miles
trestle turn around
63 degrees

Brand new too white running shoes this morning. My favorites: Saucony Grid Cohesions. Started on version 4 (I think), am now on 11. Cheap and dependable. Thought about upgrading but I’m too frugal. Also, when I buy expensive shoes, I feel pressure for them to be perfect–they better be, if I spend $120 on them, I think. Usually this ends with me wearing shoes that don’t quite work for too long because I spent so much money on them. So inexpensive grid cohesions it is. They worked well today.

Started with an audio book but decided to turn it off and listen to my feet striking the ground–was I plodding too much? Also got to hear the intense, quiet rush of traffic as people hurrying off to work. Chanted some three syllable words, mostly strawberry and raspberry. Didn’t look at the river even once. Barely noticed the lake street bridge or the overlook above the rowing club or the railroad trestle. I guess I was thinking too much about the run and how my legs were sore. I do remember looking to see if anyone was sleeping behind the bench, near the bridge. Sometimes people do in the summer. One time I saw someone sleeping on the hard, uneven paving stones under the bridge. Ouch. Encountered some walkers, no regulars. No Daily Walker. No roller skiers or rollerbladers. Any other runners? At least one, running much faster than me.

I like the form of this poem and how each stanza ends with an introduction to the next stanza. I want to experiment with it.

Seek/ Sophia Holtz

the moon is a cataract that can’t see rats
chewing bone-filled trash, the satellites
passing above us making maps
of everything we touch. a machine

recognizes a human face, I forget
everyone’s names, & somewhere
a man is making a list of threats
he’s calling law. sometimes while I walk

I look for places where I could hide
because once or twice in my life
a man has tried to follow me home.
certain games are practical,

the way animals gnaw on what’s inedible
so they’ll become better knives.
at work, the children are playing
in an open space, all of them hiding

behind a trashcan, the game more ritual
than search, but it also reminds me
of towns likely burned to the ground
before they were emptied, or at the very least

erased from the map. if you’re small
your best trick is to become invisible.
even insects know this: how many
generations for a moth to resemble lichen.

swim: 1.7 miles
cedar lake

The final open swim of the season. As always, it’s difficult to believe that another year is done. A beautiful evening, a beautiful lake. So pleased that I was able to swim five days in a row. Breathed every five and five/six/five. Heard some planes, felt lots of scratchy, sharp water weeds. Checked out the opposite shore–I think it’s hidden beach. Really nice.