Another bike ride. Windy! The only problem I had biking over to the lake was almost running into the cement wall at the start of the double bridge. I was moving over for an approaching biker and went too far. Was it a vision error, or just a freak occurrence? Luckily, I adjusted quickly and was fine, although I played back a version of crashing into the hip-high cement in my head for a few minutes. Yikes. The rest of the bike ride was fine until I got to the bike racks and was trying to dismount. My sandal got caught in my pedal and I scraped the back of my calf with the sharp edges of the pedal as I narrowly avoided falling — that would have hurt. This one was not a vision error. Realized that I had scraped some skin off and was bleeding a little. Ugh! Waited an extra 15 minutes to go into the water to make sure it was okay and had completely stopped bleeding– it was and it had.
The bike ride back did not involve any near misses. Just gravel, sun, and 3 bike surreys nearing the locks and dam no. 1. Would they get stuck on the double bridge?
image: looking off to the left as I biked, noticing the blue river through the trees — water! Thought about all the water I encounter on this bike ride: river, falls, creek, 2 lakes.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 73 degrees
Not too many people here for the swim. 10? 20? Rough water, rougher than last night. The swells/waves kept trying to push me to the left. I managed to stay on the course; the first green buoy struggled to do the same. It seemed to be drifting towards the second orange buoy. During the first loop, I contemplated doing only one loop. Then I decided I could do 2. By the end of 2, I decided on 3. After 3, resting in the shallow water I thought I could do a 4th. Nice work, brain and shoulders and legs!
10 Things
hearing the life guard call out, attention open swimmers, the course is now open. have a great swim!
seagulls circling in the sky — were they looking for fish? Did they find any?
I could see my hand in front of me under the water — not clear enough to read my watch, just clear enough to see a hand
the green buoy closest to the beach was also very close to the far white buoy — only a narrow space between buoys for swimming through. If it had been more crowded, that would have been a cf
a few vines sliding past my arms
swimming wide around another swimmer as we neared the green buoy — she stopped. As I breathed on that side I could see her face, but not that clearly. Was she scowling at me?
someone — a kid? — banging a stick on a metal pole on the beach. It sounded like a flag hitting the flagpole — pretty sure there aren’t any flags near the beach
Liz (she introduced herself to me) asking about open swim: excuse me, can you tell me about open swim? I’m training for an upcoming triathlon
a leaking, squeaking nose plug. I wonder if the swimmer I was passing could hear it underwater?
the final green buoy kept seeming farther away, like I would never reach it — like the hallway in Poltergeist that the mom is running down to the reach the room where Carol Ann is. Decided to count how many strokes it would take to get there, which broke the spell
I often think about this scene while I’m trying to reach the final green buoy.
What a morning! Blue sky, sun, shade, legs and lungs that work. During my warm-up walk towards the river, I was surprised by the absence of birds. Where are they this morning? Maybe it’s because I got a late start: after 10. Continue to feel better about my runs. I’m finding ways to slow down and lower my heart rate. A new goal: be able to keep my bpm below 165 for more (most?) of the run. Right now, it’s around 168-170.
Heard, but didn’t see the falls, both at minnehaha and locks and dam no. 1. Ran past a stopped surrey. Thought about stopping at the park bathroom, but didn’t. Encountered some big branches blocking part of the trail under the ford bridge on the trail just below wabun. Passed by a group of workers in bright yellow vests painting the fence. Enjoyed the sound and feel of soft, sandy dirt under my feet as I ran beside the paved path.
to swim or not to swim?
Yesterday, I received an email from open swim club that unacceptable levels of blue-green algae were found at the main beach and that Minneapolis Parks has issued an advisory. They are not closing the beach, just encouraging people to use caution. For context, when the e-coli is too high, they close the beach. It’s a little unclear, but it looks like open swim club is still happening. An advisory didn’t stop open swim club in 2022. I just searched in my log and found mentions of it — and me not caring about it — on July 26 and 28, 2022. I guess 2022 Sara was much chiller than 2024 Sara. Sigh. That means I definitely have to go and swim at open swim tonight!
I think at least 3 factors have contributed to my worries around blue-green algae: 1. swimming through the green goo last week. It was so gross and unsettling!, 2. my unfortunate willingness to google things and read descriptions of what can happen to you in blue-green algae — I need to stop doing this!, and 3. reading this passage in a beautiful essay about swimming:
Sometimes, in the lakes and the tarns where I like to swim, there is another kind of blue. The blue-green of algal bloom. The Environment Agency and the Lake District National Park tell us that this algal bloom is a naturally occurring phenomenon. That is true, in the same way that cholera is a naturally occurring phenomenon. They tell us this because they do not want us to worry. Algal blooms are made up of cyanobacteria, a kind of naturally occurring photosynthetic organism. It ranges, apparently, from unicellular and filamentous to colony-forming species. (I like those words: unicellular, filamentous. Sometimes I imagine my thinking has become filamentous.)
Some types of blue-green algae produce toxins. You cannot tell whether it is toxic or not by looking at a Harmful Algal Bloom—toxic to me or to wildlife or to the dog over there that is now swimming through the water to fetch the stick I threw in before I’d even noticed the blue-green bloom.
One website tells me that “In humans,” algal blooms “have been known to cause rashes after skin contact and illnesses if swallowed.” I know this to be true because once, before any of us swimmers knew what an algal bloom was or what it might do, I swam through the blue-green scum. My skin began to burn, then it came up in large blotches of red, and some of them began to blister. I thought if I stayed in the cooling water, it would stop. It didn’t. I had seen the bluegreen water but had not known, and anyway, if I had known, apparently you can’t tell only by looking. I got out of the water and drove to the doctor’s surgery. He couldn’t tell. He poked the blotches and asked how long I’d had them and more of those kinds of questions because in those days even doctors didn’t know the right kind of questions to ask.
When the levels of the lakes fall because of the lack of rain, or when there has been another extended period of unusually hot weather, that’s when the algae come out to play. To make us not know which one is which. Sometimes the algae are the result of human sewage build-up in the lake. This one is not nice to play in. And sometimes the algae occur because of agricultural fertilizers running off from the surrounding fields and fells that have built up over time. So yes, it is natural. Of a kind.
According to scientists, cyanobacteria and the toxins they produce “represent one of the most hazardous waterborne biological substances that produce a range of adverse health effects from mild skin irritations to severe stomach upsets and even fatal consequences.” And it doesn’t end there. If the bloom lasts and continues to build, it blocks sunlight from the water, depriving fish and the plants that bloom in their own funny, unseen way on the bottom of the lakes and tarns, and aquatic insects too. If it all goes on too long, the plants can’t obtain oxygen and can’t assimilate the blue-green-grey filtered light of the sun.
filamentous (def): thread-like; the backs of feathers are filamentous
Thinking that is filamentous? Thread-like — small, tenuous ideas combining. Is a net filamentous? I’m reminded of my month with dirt and this bit from 21 April 2022:
many fungi live in the soil, where their thread-like filaments, called hyphae, spread into fans and tangle into cords through the dirt. If you could make the soil liquid and transparent and walk into the ground, you would find yourself surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae (137).
Mushrooms at the End of the World
Thought about imagining the soil was liquid and transparent and then entering it, surrounded by nets of fungal hyphae. What if I could swim in the soil? Swim through these nets of fungal hyphae?
Some nets I’d like to swim through, some I don’t!
Also, I think the blue-green algae in lake nokomis is because of lawn fertilizer run-off.
24 pools
Here’s some more Olympic swimming facts to put next to my discussion of water quality in the Seine from last week. Olympic swimming events start tomorrow and, apparently, some swimmers are concerned about the depth of the pool: deeper = faster = less waves and the Paris pool is just barely over the minimum required depth: 2.15 meters/2 meter min req). While reading this article on swimswam, Paris Swimming Pool Depth Raises First Concerns, I discovered this delightful fact: there are 24 pools for the Paris Olympics, including competitions pools and warm-up pools. Wow!
bike: 8.5 miles lake nokomis and back 82 degrees
My first solo bike ride to the lake this year. Hard to believe. Some of it was because Scott has been coming with me to run while I swim and some of it was because I thought my tires were leaking air. I think it might be that I’m not pumping them up properly. The bike ride was great. I wasn’t worried about seeing at all. No scary moments, wondering where the curve was or having to check again and again and again before passing someone. Also, no pain in my left leg during the bike. In past years, this has been an unexplained problem.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 82 degrees
I did it! It was a beautiful night for a swim. There were some open water swimmers, but not as many as on Tuesday. Lots of non-club members wading in the swimming area, even with the advisory. I watched out for blue-green algae as I swam, but didn’t notice any anywhere. A few times, I had an itchy-prickly sensation — a toe, my calf, a finger. Was I imaging it? I decided the reason I’m more nervous about the algae this year is because I swam through so much of it last week.
So, the algae wasn’t a problem. Instead, I had to contend with swan boats pedaling and boarder paddling across the swimming area. When I first sighted them, I often mis-identified them as lifeguard boats. Also a problem — well, maybe not a problem, but a challenge — was the sun. Not only bright, but doing something to the air so everything looked hazy. Difficult to see anything, especially on the way back to the big beach. The stretch between the first and second orange buoys was strange. The sun was hitting my goggles in such a way that caused a weird red streak underwater in my left eye. Not bright red, just red.
Other than streaks of red, the water was a pale, almost yellow, green. Low visibility. No sparkle friends or bubbles, barely a view of my hands. The water was full of swells. No waves crashing into me or going over my head, but a lot of rocking. Occasionally I had to breathe just on one side to avoid inhaling water.
We drove over to the lake this morning — I swam, Scott ran. Perfect conditions! Calm, empty water. No other swimmers or boaters. Amazing! Definitely a time for Mary Oliver’s “deepening and quieting of the spirit.” I wish I could do this every morning!
I think they’ve shortened the swimming area by taking out one of the buoys, so my 11 beach loops wasn’t as long as I thought it would be. Oh well. I swam for 45 minutes with my head only popping up out of the water every 5 strokes. Nothing but light green water to see below me, bubbles, and the occasional ghost vine. No seagulls on the buoys or big swans crossing too close. No other swimmers. I stopped two or three times at the far buoy: silence. When I breathed all I could see were Trees Sky Shore. When I lifted my eyes out of the water — alligator style — to sight, all I could see was the blue surface, dotted with something — water bugs?
7 miles flats and back 67 degrees / humidity: 84% ending in drizzle
7 miles! And I didn’t feel like I was about to die at the end! Big progress. Ran the first 3 miles without stopping, then tried out what Scott did yesterday in his run: zones/heart rate training. Run until my heart rate reaches 170, then walk until it reaches 135. My heart rate is usually between 170 and 175 for all of my runs, so 170 is actually on the low end. I rev high. This worked remarkably well. I felt relaxed and managed to stay around 167 for most of it. And focusing on my heart rate distracted me.
10 Things
started by running north through the neighborhood: the guy who usually sits on his stoop and smokes wasn’t there this morning
smelled breakfast — sausage, toast — as I ran by longfellow grill
between lake street and franklin it was difficult to see the river — too many leaves, only the occasional flash of blue-gray
nearing the trestle, voices — rowers below! heard, but not seen
at least twice I’ve mentioned the orange cat spray-painted on the sidewalk. It’s not a cat, but a turkey. Today I noticed all the feathers
honking geese (I think) under the franklin bridge
the river was brown and half clear, half streaked with foam
a spring below the U of M was gushing — a little waterfall spilling out over the road. Water heard 2 ways: 1. seeping out of the rocks and 2. spraying up from under car wheels
near the bottom of the franklin hill, under the 1-94 bridge, leaves stick out from a leaning branch, looking like a leg to me. Several times I’ve thought there was a person there before I realized it was a tree
cool rain drops on my hot face at the end of the run
Listened to my feet, the rowers, cars, seeping water for the first half. Put in my color playlist for the second half.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 77 degrees
Finally, I get to do another open swim! A beautiful evening with no swells and warm water. The first 2 loops were a little intense with a group of triathletes training for an upcoming race swimming in a line. But the third and fourth loops were much more peaceful, quiet. I didn’t stop at the shore between loops, and mostly swam freestyle without stopping, but once or twice I switched to breaststroke and took in the solitude and the smooth-as-glass water and the silence. Wow! Swimming freestyle without stopping, your head barely out of the water, is a much different experience than swimming breaststroke, with your head almost always out of the water. I like it; I feel less like a human and more like a fish, underwater for an hour.
Today’s swim was wonderful but didn’t involve much giving attention to anything other than sighting buoys, looking out for other swimmers, and counting strokes. Did I notice 10 things?
only one or two globs of algae
the water was olive green, or was it lentil green?
the sun was lower in the west and muted because of the clouds
no vine or twig encounters!
no sailboats, either — was that because there wasn’t any wind?
a wet-suited woman swimming a fast freestyle, then stopping to sight, then fast, then power breaststroking
feeling something up ahead disturbing the water, then seeing it, finally: a breaststroker’s powerful kick
at the beach, people with picket signs, park workers on strike and/or park worker supporters — I support the park workers!
leaving the beach overhearing 2 women who just finished swimming: women 1: I think I did more than the race distance women 2: you did double the distance! You can do this! women 1: Yes, I can do this!! I’m assuming they were both training for an upcoming triathlon
no planes or birds or shafts of light or glittering water or sparkle friends
a description of swimming
I cannot imagine a cessation to swimming, to my arms making their endless arcs, my hands gone to paddles, my body propelled forward a pull at a time, my feet feeling more like seal flippers, my shoulders rolling and rolling, and the slow whip of the turn, my head down and the push through the bubbles and blue andthe great intake of air, a breath that keeps a human able to move through water as if we were not gone from our breathable blue past (I will Always Inhabit the Water/ Lidia Yuknavitch).
Did a one-way run to the lake to meet RJP for a swim. Now that she’s 18, she’s old enough to swim across the lake, but she needs to get used to the scary, unsettling feeling of lake swimming, when you can’t see anything and scratchy vines reach up to grab your leg and there’s no bottom to touch. Her first attempt overwhelmed her — staring into a void of yellow, nothing to see in front, nothing solid to feel below. I told her about the first time I swam out to the buoys and across the lake. It was hard and I was scared. I kept thinking about Jaws. I could only swim 1 loop. It’s taken me 10 years to build up physically and mentally to swim as much as I do, I said. Later, when we were home, she said she wants to try again; she liked how it felt after she swam and maybe it wouldn’t be so scary once she got used to it. I hope it works out. I love swimming with her and feel so much joy watching her strong arms cut through the water.
One more thing about the swim: After RJP got out of the water, I swam a loop. If you ignored the algae scum, it was perfect water: still, not cold, empty. As I neared each white buoy, I displaced a seagull from their perch. Seagulls! I haven’t seen them much this summer, maybe that’s because I haven’t been swimming alone, in the morning?
Before meeting RJP, I ran. Hot! Some shade, lots of sun. I felt pretty relaxed for the first 2 miles, then I started negotiating with my legs: Can you make it to the turn-off past the mustache bridge before we walk? How about until we get over the duck bridge? Okay, we’ll take a quick walk break under the echo bridge. And we did, 2.6 miles into the run, but only for 10 or 15 seconds. When I started running again, I thought about how hard it is to notice anything when you’re distracted by the heat and the effort and your legs pestering you to walk. Can I name 10 things I noticed?
10 Things Noticed While Distracted by Heat and Fatigue
park workers out near the trail, moving and weed-whacking
since the last time I ran on the dirt trail between edmund and the river road someone has trimmed the tree branch that leaned over the trail — thank you, park worker!
a little mud, some soft, sandy dirt, scattered tree limbs
water rushing out of the sewer pipe — steady, soft
someone biking on the walking path
the creek was high and tumbling over rocks, impersonating a babbling brook
through the trees, a kayak gliding down the creek — would they stay in until just below the mustache bridge? Does anyone turn around and paddle against the current?
thwack thwack people playing on the pickleball court, hitting the balls hard
a haunting call — was it a mourning dove or a kid? difficult to tell
heading to the water fountain, wondering if that was where the person approaching was heading too, realizing finally that it was RJP — always unsettling when I don’t recognize the kids or Scott
Found this poem that I had archived in a document named, “Reading Links List” a few years ago: My First Black Nature Poem/ LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs. So many great lines. Here’s what I wanted to remember today:
the green clearness. so mud olive I cannot see the bottom.
Mud olive — that’s the color I’ve been trying to name. That’s the mix of yellow and green with a hint of blue that I’ve been seeing as I swim across the lake!
But not this morning. This morning the lake was pale yellow; near the surface it almost looked white. Not nearly as pleasing as olive colored!
Before the run and swim, I drank coffee and looked for inspiration from the few people still on twitter. Jackpot! Found some wonderful poems from Moist (which I’ll save for another entry) and the Ten Muses of Poetry — from the writer, Andrei Codescru, in his book, The Poetry Lesson. I’ve never heard of Codescru — he’s great. I found the chapter his Ten Muses are in and read it. Funny and strange and great. I wonder, would I enjoy taking a class from him? Probably.
The Ten Muses of Poetry
Mishearing
Misunderstanding
Mistranslating
Mismanaging
Mislaying
Misreading
Misappropriating cliches
Misplacing objects belonging to roommates or lovers
Misguided thoughts at inappropriate times, funerals, etc.
Mississippi (the river)
Ending with the Mississippi? Yes!
read / heard / watched
read: Just finished reading this book excerpt on lithub: Kinds of Blue: On the Human Need to Swim. It’s an excerpt from Abundance/ Karen Lloyd. After reading the wonderful essay, I requested to book from the library!
heard: Listening to a 6 part series called Tested, written and recorded by Rose Eveleth for NPR and CBC.
Who gets to compete? Since the beginning of women’s sports, there has been a struggle over who qualifies for the women’s category. Tested follows the unfolding story of elite female runners who have been told they can no longer race as women, because of their biology. As the Olympics approach, they face hard choices: take drugs to lower their natural testosterone levels, give up their sport entirely, or fight. To understand how we got here, we trace the surprising, 100-year history of sex testing.
watched: This short video about Katie Ledecky came up on YouTube for me the other day. As a long distance swimmer, I think Katie Ledecky is amazing. I wanted to archive it for 2 reasons. First, starting at 2 minutes when she discusses how she knew that she loved swimming when she broke her arm and still wanted to get into the water. She even put a plastic bag over her arm so she could. I was thinking about this idea, but not remembering where it came from, when I was talking to RJP about trying to swim again in the lake. When you love something, you’re willing to try almost anything to keep doing it.
The second reason I wanted to archive this video was because of the story about her kid-self and how she never loses sight of the fact that swimming is something she “started just for fun, on a summer league swim team” (video start: 4:08). That idea, combined with the old footage of her as a very young kid, makes me think of Sara, age 8, and how much of what I’m trying to do now, is to reclaim her spirit and try to translate it for Sara, age 50, without losing the fun and the passion and the exuberance I had back then.
bike: 3 miles arbeiter and moon palace books 84 degrees
I was planning to do open swim at cedar lake at 5:30, but I checked the weather and learned that an intense storm would be moving through at 6 — high winds, thunder, hail. Not good for the car, or for someone swimming in the lake. What a bummer! I had a book to pick up at the book store, Gave / Cole Swensen, so we decided to bike to Moon Palace and then wait out the storm at Arbeiter Tap Room. What a storm! Wind, rain, thunder, but no hail. We thought we were leaving after the storm, but as we unlocked our bikes, more rain.
5 loops again! I swam 4 without stopping, then got out of the water to check in with Scott before returning and swimming one more loop. Felt strong and relaxed and happy. I remember thinking, this is it — it = the best, a moment I want to live in and return to when I need it. Steady strokes. Breathing every 5. Not seeing the buoys but swimming straight towards them. Not effortless or easy but satisfying.
The water was choppy, full of swells. From the big beach to the first orange buoy, it was difficult to stroke; I felt like I was flailing. Not being hit with big waves, but feeling like the water just under me didn’t want to cooperate. From the far orange buoy to the far green buoy, it was difficult to see anything, everything kept hiding behind a wave. Mostly I breathed on my right side. The last stretch of the loop, parallel to the big beach, was the best. Pushed from behind by the waves, I felt like I was on a people mover. My strokes were stronger and faster and easier.
The water was yellowish-green, with the occasional glob of algae, one or two prickly vines. My sparkle friends (the sediment/particles) were back! No fish sightings or near misses with other swimmers. No menacing swans. Probably because of the choppy water, the lifeguards kept drifting too close to the buoys, which made for tighter angles around the course.
During the last stretch of the fourth loop, as I looked through the water and saw nothing but bubbles and my hands, I thought about how this opaque water doesn’t represent the void or nothingness or the absence of something but a different way of being, one that is not only possible, but is already being lived. I don’t think this quite makes sense yet. Suddenly I thought about Judith Butler and her idea of making room for other ways of being. The aim is less to create an endless number of new ways of being, and more to acknowledging and support ways that already exist but have been ignored, silenced, reviled, feared. I’m getting somewhere with this, I think, but I’m not quite there yet. Something about how poetry, for me, is about this making room, giving a language to ways of being that already exist but only on the edge, the periphery — not only, but especially my way of being.
Two days ago, I was watching a video about the World Champion triathlete Beth Potter and her pre-Olympics training. Her swim coach was giving instructions to her training group at the lake: Before the buoy, you need to sight it and then do 20 strokes in with your eyes closed. See if you can hit the buoy. Potter’s response: Eyes closed? Coach: Yeah, yeah, a bit of blind swimming. I remember hearing someone during open swim a few years ago say that if your stroke is good/straight, you should be able to swim to the buoys with your eyes closed. I’m guessing that’s what Potter’s group is working on — making sure they have proper form.
One reason open swim club has been so meaningful for me for the last decade is how it has helped me to learn how to be — how to navigate, function — when I can’t see. To trust straight strokes, to get comfortable with other senses.
Random things to remember for future Sara: After possibly breaking a rib in his bat encounter, Scott is healing — he’s running and sleeping in the bed and not waking up each morning in agony. He and FWA are playing 4 instruments each in the pit for Spongebob Square Pants. I saw it last night: great. RJP moves into her dorm for her first year of college in a little over a month. Tadej Pogacar is achieving super-human watts as he bikes his way up the Alps and towards a resounding victory in the Tour de France. The lexapro seems to be working; I have so much less anxiety. The election continues to be shit show that I’m trying to ignore.
4 miles river road, north/south 73 degrees humidity: 86% / dew point: 60
A wonderful sunny morning. Not too hot yet, although the humidity took its toll. By the end of the run, I was dripping sweat. Another improved run. Went farther before I stopped for a quick break, then convinced myself to keep going on the way back. Believing again that I can do the marathon in October.
Decided to listen today. Thinking about how delightful it is to move through the neighborhood, passing from sound to sound.
Sounds
a chorus of BIRD — chattering, chirping, cheeping
a little toddler voice trying to repeat binoculars after his mom said it in a neighbor’s backyard
the shshshsh of my feet striking grit on the sidewalk
overheard from one biker to another — and it was so quiet you could hear the water lapping against the shore
a male coxswain below instructing rowers
my house key softly jingling in my pack
a walker’s keys jangling loudly in his pocket
whoosh after whoosh after whoosh of car wheels passing on the road
the buzz on a riding lawn mower — a park working mowing the grass beside the trail
2 sets of tap tap tap tapping from roofers — about a dozen taps each, at slightly different speeds, then a short break, then more taps
the quiet hops of a bunny moving across a neighbor’s grass
a lawn mower hitting a twig or a root — thwack!
the clicking of a roller skier’s poles
I think my favorite sound was the soft footsteps of the bunny hurrying across the lawn. A silvery whisper only possible to hear on a calm summer morning like today. I love the sound of animal feet moving — running or hopping through the grass, thundering over hard dirt, scampering in the soft snow.
Its hot voice sizzles from some cool tree Near-by: It seems to burn its way through the air Like a small, pointed flame of sound Sharpened on the ecstatic edge of sunbeams.
Speyer is describing a locust but as I wrote on the 16 july 2022, her description makes me think of a brood of cicadas. This sound is LOUD and interrupts you, demanding you notice it. The bunny’s soft footsteps were quiet and easily unnoticed. It feels like an accomplishment to have been quiet and aware enough to hear them.
So, I’m thinking about sound today. Another inspiration: Ears don’t lie.
Hearing is our fastest sense. (Who knew?!) Horowitz says that it takes our brain at least one-quarter of a second to process visual recognition. But sound? You can recognize a sound in 0.05 seconds. And our brain is so adept at hearing the differences between sounds, we can sense changes of sound that occur in “less than a millionth of a second,” according to Horowitz’s book [The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind].
This source led me to a Radiolab story that includes Horowitz: Never Quite Now. This story is not just about sound, but our nerves and neurons and how long it takes for us to process the world. Here’s a helpful description of how our body sees and then wants a pen:
JAD: Okay, so the eye takes the light that’s reflected off the pen, turns it into a little electrical signal, and then sends that deep into the middle of the brain.
CARL ZIMMER: Takes a couple hundredths of a second.
JAD: Bounces around for a bit, and then within …
CARL ZIMMER: A few more hundredths of a second …
JAD: The signal has made it …
CARL ZIMMER: All the way back to the rear end of the brain, where you start processing vision.
JAD: But this is just the beginning.
CARL ZIMMER: Right. Now you’ve gotta like figure out what you’re seeing.
JAD: So our jolt is off again, this time toward the middle of the brain and then down toward the bottom.
CARL ZIMMER: To these other regions ..
JAD: That start to decode the signal.
CARL ZIMMER: The first visual region is called V1.
JAD: Next up …
CARL ZIMMER: V2, V4, and so on. And they’re gonna sharpen the image, make out contrasts, edges.
JAD: And then electricity goes back towards the front of the brain.
CARL ZIMMER: After, let’s see, another tenth of a second or so …
JAD: We finally get to a place where we think …
CARL ZIMMER: “Oh, that’s a pen.”
ROBERT: We haven’t gotten yet to “I want it”.
CARL ZIMMER: Exactly.
JAD: For that to happen, the electricity has to jump from one part of the front of the brain to another and another before you can finally say …
CARL ZIMMER: “That’s a nice pen. I could use a pen.”
JAD: [laughs]
ROBERT: [laughs]
CARL ZIMMER: And we are still not done, you know. Then—then—then …
JAD: Little jolt heads northCARL ZIMMER: To sort of the top of your brain. So we—we’ve gone from your eyes to the back of your brain, around up to the front of your brain again. And now we’re up to the top of your head where you set up motor commands, and then you can grab the pen.
ROBERT: Christ!
JAD: So I mean, you add all this up and what are we talking about here
Later in the story, Seth Horowitz describes how hearing is the fastest sense and mentions the startle circuit:
SETH HOROWITZ: A sudden loud noise activates a very specialized circuit from your ear to your spinal neurons.
JAD: You mean it bypasses the brain?
SETH HOROWITZ: Yeah, it’s the startle circuit. If yousuddenly hear a loud noise, within 50 milliseconds, that’s 50 thousandths of a second, so you’re talking20 times faster than cognition, your body jumps, will begin the release of adrenaline. No consciousness involved. It’s five neurons, and it takes 50 milliseconds.
I’ve written about the word startle before — I especially like Emily Dickinson’s startled grass. There’s a poem in here somewhere, involving bodily recognition (or reaction?) versus brain cognition.
swim: 5 loops lake nokomis open swim 79 degrees
5 loops! What a great night for swimming in the lake! Calm, goo-free water, strong shoulders, a willing back, enough time to swim an extra loop. Amazing. Writing this a few hours later, I’m wiped out, but I felt good the whole time I was swimming. I swam for 80 minutes without stopping.
I wanted to give attention to sound as I swam, and I did. Mostly, I heard the sloshing of the water as I moved through it. Once I heard a plane roaring above me and another time I heard a lifeguard calling out. Not much else. In past years, I’ve heard squeaks or strange clanging noises, but not tonight. Just slosh slosh slosh.
The water was a pale green with the idea of pale yellow — I didn’t see yellow as much as feel that it was there. Visibility was limited, but I could see my hand in front of me, bubbles, and the underside of the water’s surface, which was very cool.
There were a few menacing swans and some kayaks.
From the shore I could see that the orange buoys were in a straight line. In the water, swimming past them, it didn’t seem as straight. At least once for each loop, I could see the orange dots of the three buoys. The green buoys were more difficult. I didn’t care; I knew where they should be and swam that way.
The big storms yesterday pushed out all of the algae scum. Hooray! The lake was clear and beautiful. My friends, the sparkling particles, were back. I think I’ll call them the water spirits. I swam 3 1/2 loops without stopping, then did a few breaststroke strokes in the middle of the lake before finishing up. I felt strong and relaxed during it, tired after. A great swim. Soon I’d like to add at least one more loop. Maybe this week?
The water was higher than usual. I noticed that the base of the light pole where swimmers sometimes put their stuff was underwater today. Scott told me that the little beach was gone — no sand, just water all the way to the grass.
10+ Things
blue sky, some white clouds
people on paddle boards, canoes in the middle of the lake
no encounters with scum or vines
the water was calm during the first loop, choppier during loops 2-4
burped underwater which I thought would make a loud, echoing sound — nope
the far green buoy looked white and blended in with the sailboats
ending the loop, sighting the first orange buoy, it looked like a faint moon to me — almost like when you can see just barely see the moon during the day
minnows near shore
2 lifeguards flirting through their walkie talkies with a third who was out on the course dropping a buoy — it’s not perfect, but we don’t need perfect / but I want perfect / giggle giggle
the color of the water was a golden greenish-blue — shafts of light reached down from above and up from below — green, but a green that made you think blue, too, not clear but clean and fresh
I don’t remember the water temperature so I think it was in that balanced state — not cold or hot
Unsettled by last night’s assassination attempt. Between that and the aftermath of the debate, what a shit-show this election is. As we drove to the lake, I recited Mary Oliver — It is time now, I said, for the deepening and quieting of the spirit amongst the flux of happenings. Yesterday something had pestered me so much I thought my heart would break. I mean, the mechanical part. The swim helped me to quiet my unsettled feelings.
Ran with Scott around the lake before open swim. Hot! For most of it, I felt fine, but the last few minutes were hard. I can’t remember what we talked about — Scott mentioned something about selling a few subscriptions to his plugin during his band rehearsal last night — nice. I remember admiring the sparkling water and noticing some small waves, hearing many different birds singing, feeling the lack of shade in the stretch between the bridge and the little beach. Saw some geese and ducks — oh, here’s something I talked about: I mentioned to Scott how I wasn’t seeing many birds while I swam — no ducks crossing my path and no seagulls perched on the white buoys. I wonder why I’m not — are they not there, or am I just not noticing them?
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 80 degrees
Warm, both the air and the water. Even so, it was refreshing after the run. The green slimy stuff was everywhere. Most of the swimming area at the big beach had globs of it on the surface. I told Scott it made me think of ectoplasm from Ghostbusters. Still gross, but I’m getting used to it, and now that I know it won’t get me sick, I don’t care that much. Some of it was dried out, a little more brittle, less slimy.
The water was rougher than I expected. No big waves, but enough chop that I had to breathe mostly on my right side and felt more tired at the end of each loop. Also, it was difficult to see much because of the swells.
My favorite part of the swim was the reflections on top of and below the surface. Above, the bright buoys made the water glow orange and green as I rounded them. Noticing this I wondered what reflections I might see on the underside of the surface. I swam a little deeper and looked up at the surface of the water from below: a reflection of my hands! Very cool looking.
My least favorite part of the swim was the algae and the thick branch that I swam into in the middle of the lake. First I was startled, then I had a flash of memory: Chief Brodie sees something in the surf and wades out; a charred dead body falls on him (from Jaws). Watching that movie when I was a kid still haunts me.
The color of the water was delightful. Mostly, I looked at it and thought green. Sometimes the green had hints of blue. Sometimes, when I was swimming near the ectoplasm-algae, it was bright green. And sometimes, when I noticed light streaming down from above, it had flecks of gold. Writing this last bit I realized that I haven’t seem much of the sediment this week — all the vibrating flecks looking like sparkles. I hope they come back (and the algae leaves!).
added several hours later: A few things I forgot: man walking in the shallow water with a metal detector, two women expressing concern about the algae floating near the start of the swim, and two women celebrating after checking their watches and seeing how far they swam. Finally, the “official” name for the green slime in the water is algae scum, according to the lake quality site. For the water quality at Lake Nokomis main beach, there’s a note in the special consideration section: “Stay out of algae scum if blown into beach area.” Well, I tried! Algae scum seems a fitting name for this gross stuff.
Yesterday afternoon, torrential rain, thunder, wind, and hail whipped through our neighborhood. It lasted only 20 minutes, but it was intense. Not scary — except to Delia-the-dog — but wild. It looked like it was snowing: Christmas in July! And the hail was so loud on the roof and the skylight. Today as I ran, I surveyed the damage by the river. Big branches on the dirt path, leaves scattered, a whole tree at the end of edmund:
big tree, felled
Of course I only took one picture, so I had to use it. Not sure if it effectively conveys the size of the tree?
Decided to take the winchell trail to check out the damage below. Some branches down, but nothing blocking the path. Dirt and mud and muck everywhere. I started chanting in my head,
silt / loam / glacial till silt and / loam and / glacial till
Listened to water gushing out of the sewer pipe and down the slope at 42nd. Also listened to the birds — not one type in particular, but a chorus of BIRD. Noticed the shade on the path and the tiny spots of light. Looked at the river, a hazy heat hovering just above and thought, hot! No relief from that view.
Before I run, I read an excerpt from the novel Elixir. I wanted to think about this quote as I ran:
We were near water. There is a river. If you couldn’t hear it or see it, its ions vibrated in the air and you inhaled water, day and night.
In the summer when the leaves block my view and I can’t see the river, I still know it’s there and it is always part of my run in some way.
the Seine, open water swimming, and water quality
I’ve been seeing lots of headlines about the problems with water quality in the Seine for open water swimming events at the Olympics. I mentioned it to RJP and she said she’d heard (on TikTok, natch) that people were pooping in the Seine in protest. Is that true? While looking it up, I found this helpful video: Can Paris fix it’s poop problem?
Okay, read some more, and the “Paris Poop Protest” is a thing. People were encourage to do it on June 23rd, when the President of France and the mayor of Paris were planning to swim in the Seine to prove it was safe. When Macron and Hidalgo postponed their swim, the poop protest was postponed too. So many interesting things to think/write about with this in terms of city infrastructures, rivers, threats to cities’ waterways, the negative and positive impacts of hosting the Olympics, and more. Swimming in public water, feeling the effects of how it’s managed in my body, has given me a deeper perspective on this issue of water quality and water management. I’m so grateful to have access to safe water here in Minneapolis.Everyone should have access to safe water.
time and water
Reading more of The Folded Clock, I was inspired to think about the relationship between time and water. Here are a few thoughts:
1 — anne carson
. . . 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.
1 = 1 / Anne Carson
2 — heidi julavits
As we stroked past I thought I saw George growing older and older. His grandchildren beside him grew older, too, taking his place before being replaced themselves by their children. It was like a trick of stop-time photography, everyone shading into everyone else. . . . Time passed. I started to doze. The cold water had slowed our pulses but everything else spun at great speed. I worried I would awake to find myself an old woman, my husband dead, my daughter grown and turned into me. But life, when I woke up, was as I’d left it.
The Folded Clock / Heidi Julavits
3 — samantha sanders
[on swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter] The exhilaration is remarkable. I feel like we’ve discovered the fountain of youth.
Swimming Through / Samantha Sanders
4 — alice oswald
it is not me but close to me a kind of cloud or smoke-ring made of nothing and yet it will outlast everything because it is deep it i sa dead field fenceless a thickness with many folds in it promiscuous and mingling which in its patience always wears away the hard thing
or is it only the hours on their rounds thinking of the tides by turns twelve white-collar workers who manage the schedules of water
nobody / alice oswald
In their lunch hour I saw the shop-workers get into water They put their watches on the stones and slithered frightened Into the tight-fitting river And shook out cuffs of splash And swam wide strokes towards the trees And after a while swam back With rigid cormorant smiles Shocked I suppose from taking on Something impossible to think through Something old and obsessive like the centre of a rose And for that reason they quickly turned And struggled out again and retrieved their watches Stooped on the grass-line hurrying now They began to laugh and from their meaty backs A million crackling things Burst into flight which was either water Or the hour itself ascending.
from Evaporations/ Alice Oswald
5 — darby nelson
I posted this quote back on 16 august 2021, but I want to post it again here:
We talk of time as the river flowing. I never questioned the implications of that metaphor until I was struck by the words of Professor Dave Edmunds, Native American, on a display in the Indian-Western Art Museum in Indianapolis. Edmunds wrote, ‘Time as a river is a more Euro-American concept of time, with each event happening and passing on like a river flows downstream. Time as a pond is a more Native American concept of time, with everything happening on the same surface, in the same area—and each even is a ripple on the surface.’
If I think of time as a river, I predispose myself to think linearly, to see events as unconnected, where a tree branch falling into the river at noon is swept away by current to remain eternally separated in time and space from the butterfly that falls in an hour later and thrashes about seeking floating refuge.
But if I think of time as a lake, I see ripples set in motions by one even touching an entire shore and then, when reflected back toward the middle, meeting ripples from other events, each changing the other in their passing. I think of connectedness, or relationships, and interacting events that matter greatly to lakes.
For Love of Lakes/ Darby Nelson
When I think of time and water, I think of erosion and geologic time, and the wearing down of things by the water over years, decades, centuries. I think of generational time, and the family members, the hearty Finns on my dad’s side, who loved and excelled at swimming. I think of Sara-time and one of the key constants in my life and many selves: I love water and swimming in it. I think of losing track of time while swimming, and tracking it on my watch to look at later. I think of time measured by strokes and loops instead of minutes, measured by open swims instead of days.
swim: 4 loops lake nokomis open swim 84 degrees
I swam 4 loops but the buoys were set up in such a way that the distance of 4 loops today was almost the same as 3 loops on other days. Oh well, I’m still counting it as 4. The water was very warm, too warm. Lots of stuff in it, but not as much as on Tuesday. More green slimy stuff, but now that I recognize and know it’s not toxic, it didn’t bother me as much.
I decided I wanted to listen as I swam. I didn’t hear much, just water sloshing over my head. The water was still, flat, sometimes feeling fast, sometimes slow. There was a haze in the air that made it as difficult to see as if my googles were fogged up. I felt strong and smooth and fast and happy.
Before the swim, I asked a few women if they had swum on Tuesday and if they had seen the green goo. Neither of them had. I realized later, as I swam, that I wasn’t asking because I wanted reassurance that whatever it was was not harmful. I just wanted to find someone else to acknowledge that it was strange and gross and something worth reacting to. On Tuesday, no one else seemed to care or be talking about it.
10 Things
2 women laughing and talking as they tread water between the last orange buoy and the shore
impossible to see either of the green buoys with the sun and the haze
at least 2 menacing swans
the ghost vines are multiplying in numbers and size — creepy!
cloudy sky
a few pockets of cold water throughout the lake
crowded swimming area, beach and park — everyone here on a hot day
the surface of the water above was blue and calm and shiny and smooth
the surface of the water below was greenish-brownish-yellowish
I swam high on top of the surface, feeling extra buoyant
