july 14/RUNSWIM

run: 3.6 miles
marshall loop
67 degrees
8:40 am

Another beautiful day! After all the biking yesterday, feeling tired today. The run felt good, but now I lack motivation to write or remember my run. Still, I’ll try. This week in my class, we’re shifting gears to talk about rhythm, breathing, and translating wonder into words. I decided I’d try to think in triples as I ran: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry/blackberry. Now I’ll try to summarize my run in triples:

singing birds
serenade
neighborhood
daycare kids
playground yells
lake street bridge
up the hill
one lane closed
passing cars
feeling tired
sweating lots
stop to walk
cross the road
avoid bikes
yellow vest
trimming trees
shadow falls
up the steps
down a hill
music on
Taylor Swift
Paper Rings
lifting knees
quick fast feet
ending strong
check my stones
wipe my face
breathe in deep

That was fun! Writing out, “singing birds,” reminded me of the birds I first heard as I walked out my door and up the block. Their 2 note song (not the black-capped chickadee “feebee”) sounded like they kept telling me to Wake up! Wake up! No rowers on the river, which was a pretty shade of blue. Admired how the trees along the shore cast a gentle shadow on the water.

Last night, or was it very early this morning?, I woke up and went downstairs to get some water. Something bright was behind the curtain. The moon? The moon! So big, so bright, so perfect hanging half way up the sky over my backyard. I went out on the deck and marveled at it for a moment. The moon, never not astonishing! Here’s an acrostic poem (I love acrostic poems!) about the moon.


Moon/ AMY E. SKLANSKY

Marvelous
Opaque
Orb.
Night-light
for the world.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees
5:30 pm

Writing this the morning after. Arrived at the beach: so windy! The water was choppy, but not too bad. Tried to think about rhythms and breathing as I swam. I remember thinking about how chanting words can help in many different ways: connect you with your breathing, keep you focused and on pace, open you up and make words strange which could lead to new (and better?) words, and is a way to hold onto/remember ideas that come to you while you’re moving (try to remember the idea through a few words or a phrase). I thought about that for just a few minutes. The rest of the time, I was preoccupied with breathing, staying on course, avoiding other swimmers, and worrying that my calf and feet might be tightening up. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things I Noticed

  1. a silver flash below me — this has to be fish, right?
  2. one dark plane hovering in the air, hanging in the sky for a long time
  3. nearing an orange buoy, it shifted in the wind and the waves. Hard to get around it.
  4. the green buoy was closer than it often is to the big beach, so was the first orange buoy
  5. clouds, no sun
  6. far off to my right: steady, speedy swimmers, approaching the buoy at a sharp angle
  7. a lifeguard kayaking in just before the beginning of open swim, apologizing for the wait (even though it was just 5:30). My response, “no worries,” and I meant it. The lifeguards really have their shit together this year
  8. wiped out after the 3rd loop, I thought I tucked my cap under the strap of my suit. Nope, it must have fallen in the water. Bummer
  9. lots of muck and sand and a few little bits of vegetation under my suit when I got home and took a shower
  10. feeling both so much love for the lake, the lifeguards, and the other swimmers AND also feeling irritated by and competitive with any swimmers near me.

No ducks, or seagulls, or dragonflies, or swans (peddle boats)…not too many people at the beach — are they on vacation this week?

july 13/BIKESWIMBIKEBIKE

bike, round 1: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
66 degrees
9:00 am

Biked to the lake with FWA for our swim training. I can tell he’s getting more fit on the bike, which is great. As we biked on the side streets he told me all about the walking dead episode he just watched. All I remember it that it was a beautiful day and that I felt so happy to watch as the lake come into view. Such a wonderful lake!

swim: 3 white buoy loops (= .5 loops)
lake nokomis big beach
68 degrees
9:30 am

Told FWA he had to push himself a little more. He did 3 loops with almost no stops. For the last 1/2 loop, we raced. As he said, “I really went for it.” I think he’s almost ready to try swimming across. How wonderful it is to be able to share this with him, and to spend this time with him!

bike, round 2: 17 miles
river road/hidden falls/crosby farm/st. paul riverfront/summit/river road
78 degrees
2:00 pm

It was such a nice day, that I asked Scott if we wanted to go for a bike ride. We biked to our favorite tap room, City House, right on the river in St. Paul. Very cool. The biking was definitely harder in terms of seeing, but I did it. Biking through Crosby Farm was bumpy and hard to see potholes, but it was beautiful. I heard so many wonderful birds! We biked around a lake on a wooden boardwalk that was overgrown — so strange and cool.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. big, fluffy clouds
  2. chirping, trilling, singing birds!
  3. the smell of pot
  4. rowers on the river, 1 or 2 at a time. One pair was taking it very slow. I watched (and heard) their paddles double-slap the water
  5. protestors on the lake street bridge — no war with Russia
  6. the huge houses on summit ave — thinking about how my grandpa would drive my mom down summit every sunday and dream about having one of these houses
  7. going the wrong way on an overgrown, crater-filled path in Crosby Farm
  8. a plane, very high in the sky, white. With my vision, I first thought it might be the moon. For a few glances, I could see it in my peripheral, but not my central vision. Finally, it appeared.
  9. lots of speedy, e-bikes in the bike lane as we biked back on Summit
  10. a tall, crooked, flagless flagpole at the University Club

july 12/RUNSWIM

run: 3.1 miles
dogwood coffee run
66 degrees
6:45 am

An early run with Scott to beat the heat. We ran north on the river road trail, then over to Brackett Park, then to Dogwood Coffee. We stopped to admire my stacked stones at the ancient boulder. Heard some bluejays. Noticed the sun sparkling on the water, and cutting through the thick, humid air. Heard the loud whooshing? thrashing? of an eliptigo as it sped past us on the bike trail. Scott said he thought it sounded like two lumberjacks were sawing down a tree, with one of those big saws that you hold on either end and push back and forth. I remember thinking Scott’s acting out of this saw was entertaining.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees
5:30 pm

Another great swim, even though it was very choppy on the way back from the little beach. Managed to stay on course with barely any sighting of the orange buoys. I write about this so much, but it’s always strange and amazing to be able to swim straight and keep going when I can’t really see where I am.

Half the sky was blue and clear, the other half looked like a storm was moving in. Later, after we left the lake, it poured. I wondered how much it would have to be raining for them to cancel open swim. Usually they only cancel it when there’s thunder or lightening.

Saw more silver flashes below me. Also, a dark shadow as I swam around one of the buoys. At some point, I heard a squeak. Someone else’s wetsuit? I got to punch the water a few times, when I swam straight into it. Fun! Breathed every 5, then when it got choppier, every 4, or 3 then 4 then 3 again. I don’t remember seeing any swan boats or sail boats or paddle boarders. No music or yelling, laughing kids.

Back in April, I collected poems about dirt — soil, humus, fungi, and dust. Here’s another poem to add to the dust pile. It’s by Ted Kooser. He is such a wonderful poet!

Carrie / Ted Kooser

“There’s never an end to dust
and dusting,” my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There’s never an end to it.

I love his line breaks and his beautiful first sentences. I should check out his collected works and study him more.

july 11/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails (long)*
78 degrees
dew point: 67
10:30 am

Another hot morning. Couldn’t go out for my run until after 10. Would it have mattered if I went earlier? Already at 7, it felt uncomfortably humid and warm. For much of the run, I was thinking about the lecture I’m working on for next week and trying to work through a problem. A little over a mile and a half in, part of a solution came to me. I stopped and recorded my thoughts.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. overheard: a neighbor saying to someone else as she watched me run by, “I’m sweating just watching her run.”
  2. a bike behind me, very slowly approaching. First, a bell, the sound of bike wheels, a little kid talking. Then, a woman with a young kid in a bike trailer, and another little kid on a bike behind her passed by
  3. at least 2 women chatting far behind me — were they on bikes? on foot? how soon would they reach me? Never saw or heard them again
  4. the steady buzzing/thumping of a jack hammer
  5. the coxswain speaking through a bullhorn to her rowers
  6. the rush of wind through the trees sounding like water falling or rushing or being forced out of a hose
  7. the trickle of water out of the sewer pipe near 42nd street
  8. even through all of the clouds, the sun cast shadows of the trees on the sidewalk…a strange, slightly muted, image
  9. looked for my usual view of light and water piercing through the leaves near the tunnel of trees. It’s not there this year — why not? more vegetation? the angle from which I looking?
  10. the little stones I stacked on the ancient boulder yesterday were gone. Did the wind blow them off? Did someone/something knock them over? Were they there and I just didn’t see them?

july 10/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees (there) / 80 degrees (back)
9:15 am (there) / 10:45 am

Biked with Scott to the lake. Went a little faster than with FWA. Do I remember anything? Not much. Hearing the lifeguards setting up the buoys as we neared the lake, feeling the wind rush past my ears, being passed by a very nice biker near Nokomis.

When I asked Scott what he remembered, he reminded me of a cool image I pointed out to him: a band of orange light, about a foot high, stretching across the brick wall of the beach house, above the bike racks. It was a reflection from the solar panels near Sandcastle.

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
78 degrees
9:45

Very choppy today. Still wonderful. Open swim is one of my favorite things. For the first loop, the waves pushed me out farther away from the buoys. Mostly, I liked the rocking — not too rough, but not gentle either. I think I noticed a few silver flashes below me. Didn’t see the sky much, too many waves. Today I mostly saw water or a lifeguard kayak, a pink cap, or a yellow or orange buoy tethered to a swimmer. Swimming around the last green buoy was a wild ride; it felt like the water was pushing me along. Noticed a few other swimmers getting away off course, being pushed by the waves. Sometimes I breathed every 5 strokes, but more often it was every 4. I breathed on the side that was away from the waves.

I don’t remember seeing any ducks, or being brushed by any vegetation, or waring noticing a menancing sailboat. No extra loud beaches or little kids asking me questions about swimming across the lake.

I found a quote from a Mary Oliver poem (in Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s first post for her World of Wonder column) that I’m planning to use in my lecture for my class this week. This is the orgin of the quote (with the quote in italics):

The Ponds/ Mary Oliver

Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe

their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —

the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch

only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?

I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight —
and this one is a glossy cheek

half nibbled away —
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.

MO’s description here of choosing to believe in the beauty or the good or whatever you’d call it, and not the flaws, reminds me of how I mostly see the world with my diseased eyes: because I can’t always look closer (not much central vision), I see the world as softer, in more general forms. I can’t see the small flaws or the ugliness as often. This inability to see details causes lots of problems, but it also enables me to look on the world with less scrutiny. Not sure how it works for other people who have damaged central vision, but that’s how it works for me.


july 9/BIKESWIMBIKERUN

bike: 7.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
70 degrees
9:00 am

FWA has figured out the shortest way to get to the lake, and when we bike over there to train for his swim across the lake, we always take it. We also bike much slower than I do by myself. It’s nice to bike slower. It’s safer, I notice more, and I’m less tired when we get to the lake. My most distinctive memory of this bike ride was seeing the flash of intense blue from a bird as it flew away. Was it just a blue jay, or something more interesting, like an indigo bunting? I checked with FWA, and he agreed it was blue.

swim: 1.5 small loops (500 yards?)
lake nokomis big beach|
73 degrees
9:30 am

A beautiful morning for a swim, even if we didn’t swim that much. I need to start pushing FWA to swim a little bit more. The thing I remember most about the swim was seeing 2 swam pedal boats off in the distance. One of them was facing us, looking menacing.

run: 3.5 miles
lake nokomis — one way
82 degrees
4:30 pm

So hot! I had the crazy idea of doing a one way run to the lake, then meeting Scott for a beer. I had to stop a few times to walk. Even though it was hot, I made it. It was very crowded at the beach — so many people! Lots of fun people watching. Lots of swans, kayaks, paddle boards, canoes, inner tubes out on the water.

Colors I noticed at the lake

  1. a woman’s bright blue suit with a ruffled collar
  2. blindingly bright white swan boat + a woman’s pale legs
  3. another women’s black adn white 2 piece suit (top: black, bottom: white)
  4. a young girl’s pale green board shorts
  5. a small bird, all black
  6. an orange ball
  7. an extra bright yellow bikini top
  8. woman in the water: dark red velvet overalls
  9. boat sail: yellow and red
  10. a lifeguard’s red suit

july 8/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
75 degrees
9:00 am (there) / 10:45 (back)

More people on the trail this morning. Less chance to notice anything other than how close I was to other people. Even so, I’ll try to remember 5 things on the way to the lake, and 5 things on the way back.

10 Things I Noticed While Biking

on the way to the lake

  1. a park worker in a bright yellow and orange vest, weeding, on a part of the path that was blocked off with orange cones
  2. several walkers on the biking side of the trail
  3. pounding from the construction site across from the DQ that I momentarily thought was my bike pedal doing something weird
  4. wind rushing past my ears
  5. a close encounter with several ducks — under a bridge, as I hugged the far edge of the trail to avoid an approaching pedestrian and biker: ducks, right there!

on the way back from the lake

  1. getting stuck behind 2 slow moving bikes — difficult to pass, difficult to bike slowly enough to not run into them (6 mph?)
  2. behind another slow-moving biker — as they went up or down a hill, they shifted gears with slow, awkward clicks
  3. another biker behind us, too impatient not too pass: “on your left”
  4. the lines on the bike path have been touched up, but the big bump on the trail hasn’t been fixed
  5. road closed sign for july 13th. No, not again!!

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees
9:45 am

Every time I come to an open swim, I am deeply grateful that this program exists. To be able to swim across the lake for 2 hours, 6 times a week? Sometimes I can’t believe that something this wonderful is actually allowed to continue without being “improved” in ways that make it worse.

It looked like it might rain and it was a little windy, but the water was fine. Warm, not too choppy. Mostly, I breathed every 5 strokes. Sometimes, 3 or 4 or 6. Once, when a wave hit me as I surfaced, after 2 strokes. Saw some more planes, but no dragonflies or birds. Where are the seagulls? I’m trying to remember the last time I noticed a seagull on the water.

I just remembered: just before I started the swim, I could hear the creeaakk of the swing at the top of the beach. I think they’ve needed to oil that swing for 10 years now.

Leila Chatti has the most amazing abecedarian poem in The Nation. Here’s a portion of it:

from Google/ Leila Chatti

july 7/RUNSWIM

3.25 miles
2 trails, the mostly dirt version*
76 degrees
humidity: 81% / dew point: 70
9:15 am

*I ran south on the dirt trail between Edmund and the river road. Crossed over at 42nd to the river road trail, then down to the Winchell Trail. Through the oak savanna, up the gravel by the ravine, down through the tunnel of trees, over to the dirt trail at 33rd and Edmund.

A dew point of 70? That’s pretty miserable. It didn’t bother me today. I was thinking about attention and listening to all of the sounds: birds, trucks, lawn mowers, cicadas, cars, roller skiers, singing bikers.

one thing I remembered, one I forgot

remembered: As I ran by the ancient boulder, I remembered to check if there were any stacked stones. Yes! 4 tiny stacked stones, hidden in the curve of the boulder. I saw these stones yesterday too, but forgot to write about them. Seeing these small stones, I wonder how many times I’ve glanced at the boulder and thought there were no stacked stones on it, when there were these tiny ones, hidden.

forgot: I forgot to look at the river even once. I even ran closer to it, down on the Winchell Trail, then forgot to turn right and look. Was it blue? brown?

Near the end of my run, I stopped for a few minutes to record my thoughts:

thought after run / july 7

letting attention flow through you, not holding onto it, letting it go
things remembered: the steady soundtrack of my striking feet and my labored lungs because of the humidity
people talking loudly in the background
trading off of lines between birds and cicadas, no constant soundtrack, in and out
cars zooming by, a loud truck, bikers singing
what were the bikers singing? ridiculously delightful
overheard: a biker listening to talk radio
more cars whooshing by
all the things I’m curious about: surfaces and how they’re made — who made them and through what process
birds chirping, the steady striking of my feet on the dirt

As I listen back to the recording, I’m struck by all the background sounds, some of which I notice and remark on, others which I don’t. It’s funny how much of our surroundings we tune out — like the cars or the birds or the people.

Here’s a poem I found on twitter this morning. Love Carl Phillips!

My Meadow, My Twilight/ Carl Phillips

Sure, there’s a spell the leaves can make, shuddering,
and in their lying suddenly still again — flat, and still,
like time itself when it seems unexpectedly more
available, more to lose therefore, more to love, or
try to…

          But to look up from the leaves, remember,

is a choice also, as if up from the shame of it all,
the promiscuity, the seeing-how-nothing-now-will-
save-you, up to the wind-stripped branches shadow-
signing the ground before you the way, lately, all
the branches seem to, or you like to say they do,
which is at least half of the way, isn’t it, toward
belief — whatever, in the end, belief
is… You can
look up, or you can close the eyes entirely, making
some of the world, for a moment, go away, but only
some of it, not the part about hurting others as the one
good answer to being hurt, and not the part that can
at first seem, understandably, a life in ruins, even if —
refusing ruin, because you
can refuse — you look
again, down the steep corridor of what’s just another
late winter afternoon, dark as night already, dark
the leaves and, darker still, the door that, each night,
you keep meaning to find again, having lost it, you had
only to touch it, just once, and it bloomed wide open…

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
80 degrees
5:30 pm

A great night for a swim! Calm water, overcast, not too crowded. I swam without stopping for 45 minutes, and I swam straight to each buoy, even though I hardly saw them. As usual, just the smallest flash that something was there. Sometimes I could tell it was orange or green, but usually it was just the idea of a hulking shape way ahead of me, or the smallest smudge of something. So strange.

10 Things I Noticed

  1. no fish below me
  2. the orange buoys were in a straight line, the one closest to the little beach wasn’t that close
  3. most of the buoys tethered to torsos were yellow
  4. a flash of green, then a swimmer directly ahead of me, way off course — I had to swing wide to avoid them
  5. another swimmer, pushing me off to the side. I had to stop and swim behind, then around them (this happened at least twice)
  6. the far green buoy was in line with at least two white sailboats, which made it hard to sight
  7. a plane overhead, no blue sky, only clouds
  8. breathed every 5 strokes: 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
  9. encountered a family of ducks out in the middle of the lake
  10. the water was slightly clearer than on Tuesday, but not as clear as at Cedar Lake. I could watch my hand stretch out in front of me, but only saw dark green below