Water and Stone

RUN! entries tagged: water and stone / water

It is the nature of stone
to be satisfied.
It is the nature of water
to want to be somewhere else.

Everywhere we look:
the sweet guttural swill of the water
tumbling.
Everywhere we look:
the stone, basking in the sun, 

or offering itself
to the golden lichen.“Gravel”/Mary Oliver

Sometimes the man felt like the bird and sometimes the man felt like a stone—solid, inevitable—The Language of Birds/Richard Siken

I wasn’t sure what I would do with this theme, I just knew I wanted to spend some time with water and stones and how they are understood in poetry. Then, on June 3rd, I revisited Lorine Niedecker’s (the nie is pronounced knee) beautiful poem, Lake Superior, and her notes from a 1966 vacation, traveling around Lake Superior (found in the excellent book Lake Superior). 

from Lake Superior

In every part of every living thing
is stuff that once was rock

In blood the minerals
of the rock

from Lake Superior Country, Vacation Trip ’66

The journey of the rock is never ended. In every tiny part of any living thing are materials that once were rock that turned to soil. These minerals are drawn out of the soil by plant roots and the plant used them to build leaves, stems, flowers and fruits. Plants are eaten by animals. In our blood is iron from plants that draw out of the soil. Your teeth and bones were once coral. The water you drink has been in clouds over the mountains of Asia and in waterfall of Africa. The air you breathe has swirled thru places of the earth that no one has ever seen. Every bit of you is a bit of earth and has been on many strange and wonderful journeys over countless millions of years. 

Niedecker weaves together geological facts she acquired with accounts from explorers and details from her vacation. I decided to review my old notes on the geology of the gorge, and read more about the history of this area, particularly in terms of how white settlers arrived and occupied (stole) Dakota land. I made a timeline of key events near the gorge, read through the terribly shady treaties that Pike made with the Dakota, discovered a little more about how the gorge formed when Lake Agassiz spilled over the ice shelf on the edge of western Minnesota, remembered the layers of gorge rock–St. Peter sandstone, Glenville Shale, Platteville Limestone, studied geological time–Eons, Eras, Periods, Epochs, and Ages–and read more about how some scientists believe we are still in the Holocene Epoch, while others believe we moved into the Anthropocene. 

A few reasons I’m excited about Niedecker
  • She writes about the lake I was born on, Lake Superior, and geology and geography that resonates with me
  • Her process: all the notes condensed down to a pithy, beautiful poem + the type of notes: history mixed with her travel stories, critical commentary on land and language and globalization
  • The forms of her poems and how the later ones might be influenced by her vision diagnosis when she was 46–she had nystagmic (your eyes constantly move, struggle to focus)
  • Her attention to and writing about rocks and water
  • The impact of her work through the WPA Writers program on the guide for Wisconsin + her work with Aldo Leopold
  • This brief essay, Switchboard Girl, in which she writes about her struggle to find work with her eye condition. I’m planning to read this closely; it might give me some useful language for understanding and communicating my own struggles with work after my diagnosis
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.
Things Learned That Might End Up In A Poem
  • Traveling north from the confluence to Minneapolis, the falls moved, on average, 4 feet per year
  • Due to commerce–lumber and flour mills–and damming the river, the pace of the falls retreat increased. By the early 1860s, just before the Eastman tunnel collapsed and destabilized the falls, it was retreating 100 feet a year
  • About 1000 feet past where the falls was stabilized by the Army Corps of Engineers (1870), the limestone stops. If the falls had not been stabilized, it would have eventually disappeared at this point. We still rely on the concrete apron, first built in 1870, for the stability of the river–and the continued delivery of water to about 1 million Minneapolis homes
  • St. Anthony Falls was the name given by Father Hennepin when he visited them in 1680. The falls already had (at least) 2 names: Owamni-yomni is ‘whirlpool’ in the Dakota language, Gakaabika is ‘severed rock’ in the Ojibwe language. Emphasis on water (Dakota), emphasis on rock (Ojibwe)
  • Longfellow never visited Minnehaha Falls. He wrote his famous poem, “The Song of Hiawatha” based on his reading of Henry Schoolcraft’s accounts of Indian legends. It takes place in the UP, near the pictured rocks
  • The Song of Hiawatha is a very popular source for city/town names around the country. There’s a Nokomis, Florida
  • Lake Itasca is named by Schoolcraft. It’s not a variation on an indigenous name, but the mashing up of the latin phrase for true/head source: verITAS CAput
  • The sacred Spirit Island was removed/destroyed by the Army Corps of Engineers in the 1960s for the Lock and Dam
The Poems I Read
An exercise not yet tried

Gather together as many different definitions, understandings, descriptions for stone and rock as you can find in the poems you read for this month. Write a poem or poems using some of them.

Water Thoughts
  • What is open water swimming and how does it differ from wild swimming? Where does organized lake swimming fit in to various categories of swimming? It’s not wild but it’s not like swimming in a pool. Why do I prefer open water swimming to pool swimming and (most likely) wild swimming? (july 1)
  • Reflecting on why it bothered me so much when people didn’t follow the “traffic” rules in the water: I long for order, and to not care when there isn’t any (july 5). 
  • Should I try to turn my swimming poems into one long poem (july 8)?
  • My game for the summer: How little visual data do I need to still keep swimming, to not panic or swam way off course?
  • What’s another word for sloshing (july 11)?
  • I want to write more about the joy of rough water and big(gish) waves (july 13)
  • Instead of being annoyed with how off-course the green buoys are, I’m understanding it as an opportunity to practice sighting and to play my game (how much visual data do I need) (july 15).
  • A description of sighting a green buoy (july 16)
  • Thinking about how much perspective changes in the water: big buoys look tiny, planes look like birds, dragonflies like helicopters (july 18).
  • My central vision is getting worse + being back in love with cedar lake (july 19).
  • The smoke from the wildfires in Canada combined with the choppy waves and the military planes flying low overhead made me feel like I was in a scene from Apocalypse Now (july 20).
  • Going off course and mistaking a buoy for a lifeguard, and a lifeguard for a buoy (july 21).
  • Noticing how much helicopters resemble dragonflies (july 23).
  • Yes, fish make noise (july 24). 
  • Drought in Minnesota, wildfires in Canada. The absence of water (last week of july).
Literal and Metaphorical Meanings of Water
  • Literal: The sensation of swimming in rough water, with waves crashing into me or rocking me or pushing me along. Currents that move me off course. Tall waves that disorient. Swells that make it harder to stroke in the water and breathe. All the spray. Feeling powerful as I use my shoulders to lift higher out of the water and slice through it. The initial panic I feel as I adjust to breathing and stroking differently. The enjoyment I get out of wrestling with the water. The satisfaction, from staying on course. The way time disappears as I focus on breathing and not swallowing too much water–no before or after, only now.
  • Metaphorical: Waves of emotion–grief, joy, worry, anxiety–washing over me. Often unanticipated, invisible at first, like the lake from the shore looking deceptively calm. Learning to handle the intensity/overwhelmingness: fighting the waves, surrendering to them, learning to adapt and adjust, relenting to the water or moving with instead of against it. Water as cleansing, scouring, washing away memories. Flowing, erasing, saturating.
Water Poems Studied This Month:
Water Poems Previously Studied:
Favorite Lines

Morning Swim/ Maxine Kumin

My bones drank water; water fell
through all my doors. I was the well

that fed the lake that met my sea

water in love/ ed bok lee

Worship, splash, guzzle, or forget
it clears any difference
Stone washer and mountain dissolver
that will
outlive us, even the memory of
all any eyes touched

open water/ ada limón

But I keep thinking how something saw you , something
was bearing witness to you out there in the ocean
where you were no one’s mother, and no one’s wife,
but you in your original skin, right before you died, 
you were beheld, and today in my kitchen with you
now ten years gone, I was so happy for you.

Fog-thick morning/ Lorine Niedecker

Fog-thick morning—
I see only
where I now walk. I carry
my clarity
with me. 

The Thing is/ Ellen Bass

when grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs

The Pond at Dusk/ Jane Kenyon

A fly woulds the water but the wound
soon heals. Swallows tilt and twitter
overhead, dropping now and then toward
the outward-radiating evidence of food.

To Swim, To Believe/ Maxine Kumin

Each time I tear this seam to enter, 
all that I carry is taken from me, 
sucked in the dive. 
Lovers, children, even words go under. 
Matters of dogma spin off in the freestyle
earning that mid-pool spurt, like faith.
Where have I come from? Where am I going?
What do I translate, gliding back and forth
erasing my own stitch marks in this lane?

By the Sea/ Emily Dickinson

I started early, took my dog,
And visited the sea;
The mermaids in the basement
Came out to look at me.

The Nude Swim/ Anne Sexton

All the fish in us
had escaped for a minute.
The real fish did not mind.
We did not disturb their personal life.

Sea Poem/ Alice Oswald

what is the sound of water
after the rain stops you can hear the sea
washing rid of the world’s increasing complexity, 
making it perfect again out of perfect sand

oscialation endlessly shaken
into an entirely new structure

Some Exercises to Try
  1. Write about the connections between water and grief. 
  2. Make a list of reasons why you love water.
  3. Explore these questions further: what is “wild” swimming? how does open water swimming differ from wild swimming? what connections does open water swimming share with pool swimming, with wild swimming?
  4. Compose an ode or a love poem about your shoulders. 
  5. Answer in whatever form you wish: what does swimming help you to remember? what does it allow you to forget?
  6. Write as many poems as you can about open swim: the encounters, the fish, the choppy water, the lifeguards, your pre and post swim rituals.
  7. Water, a collection
    1
    What wd it be to be water, one body of water 
    (what water is is another mystery) (We are 
    water divided.) It wd be a self without walls, 
    with surface tension, specific gravity a local
    exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising, 
    rising to fall, falling to rise.
    (from Springing/ Marie Ponsot)
    2
    A fly wounds the water but the wound   
    soon heals.
    (from The Pond at Dusk/ JANE KENYON)
    3
    We are creatures of constant awe,
    curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
    at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.
    And it is not darkness that unites us,
    not the cold distance of space, but
    the offering of water, each drop of rain,
    each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
    (from In Praise of Mystery/ Ada Limón)
    4
    What I love about water is that it spends its whole time falling. It’s always, apparently, trying to find the lowest place possible, and when it finds the lowest place possible, it lies there wide awake. 
    (from remarks before reading “A Short Story of Falling” / Alice Oswald)
    5
    All water understands. 
    But you, you stand on the shore
    of blue Lake Kieve in the evening
    and listen, grieving
    as something stirs and turns within you.
    Not knowing why you linger in the dark.
    Not able even to guess
    from what you are excluded
    (from The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund)
    6
    Squatting softly in the cool, tea-colored water, 
    hearing my own breath move in and out,
    leaning close to see the tattered, soft-edged
    purses of the flowers,
    with their downward hanging cones and coppery antennae.
    —This is more tenderness than I had reason to expect
    from this rude life in which I built
    a wall around myself, in which I couldn’t manage to repair
    my cracked-up little heart.
    (from Crossing Water/ Tony Hoaglund)
    7
    may came home with a smooth round stone
    as small as a world and as large as alone.
    For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
    it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
    (from maggie and millie and molly and may / e.e. cummings)
    8
    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)
    9
    I’m hungry
    & wonder, has everything important happened
    & what is more important than this,
    like a secret adventure, like an affair I’m having
    with everyone I see, their soft or washboard bellies,
    their flat or rounded butts, their rippling hair
    or shiny domes, their fragile ankles,
    their beautiful bones, all our atoms swimming, swimming
    & making us visible & I shove off the wall,
    reaching my arms out, embracing the whole
    magic show, with ten more laps to go.
    (from Romance/ Susan Browne)
    10
    Cloud talks to lake; mist
    speaks quietly to creek.

    Lake says something back to cloud,
    and cloud listens.
    No water is lonely water.
    (from from The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund)
    10
    I think the sea is a useless teacher, pitching and falling
    no matter the weather, when our lives are rather lakes
    unlocking in a constant and bewildering spring.
    (from From Nowhere/ Marie Howe)
    11
    Spirits of lake, river
    and woodland pond preside
    mildly in water never
    troubled by wind or tide;
    and the quiet suburban pool
    is only for the fearful —
    no wind-wave energies
    where no sea briar grips
    and no freak breaker with
    the violence of the ages
    comes foaming at the mouth
    to drown you in its depths.
    (from A Swim in Co. Wicklow/ Derek Mahon
    12
    we found a little unknown grotto
    where no people were and we 
    entered it completely
    and let our bodies lose all
    their loneliness.
    All of the fishes in us 
    had escaped for a minute.
    The real fish did not mind. 
    We had not disturbed their personal life.
    We calmly trailed over them 
    and under them, shedding
    air bubbles, little white 
    balloons that drifted up
    into the sun by the boat 
    where the Italian boatman slept
    with his hat over his face.
    13
    It is time now, I said
    for the deepening and quieting
    of the spirit
    among the flux of happenings.
    *
    I went down in the afternoon
    to the sea
    which held me, until grew easy.
    14
    The following afternoon, under a blue sky fringed white with distant clouds on the horizon, four of us swam in 360 feet of turquoise water in a sheer-sided quarry on Belnahua. The island encricled a huge natural swimming pool, raised above sea level, whose waters were so utterly transparent that when we swam, we saw our shadows far down, swimming ahead of us along the bottom. All around, only yards away, was the deeper blue of the open sea, and the Hebrides: Fladda, Scarba, Jura, Lunga, the Garvellachs (the ‘Islands of the sea’, St. Coumba’s favourite place), Luing, Mull and Colonsay. The light and the skies kept changing all afternoon: from bright blue with distant dazzling clouds to deepening red and gold. Diving from the rocks into the immensely deep, clear, brackish water, intensified the giddy feeling of aquatic flying. 
    Waterlog / Roger Deakin (237)
    I memorized a few water poems, too:
    Summer Studies/ Tony Hoagland
    A Short Story of Falling/ ALICE OSWALD
    The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund
    II from Evaporations/ Alice Oswald
    first half of The Nude Swim/ Anne Sexton
    Swimming, One Day in August/ Mary Oliver
Water, a collection

1

What wd it be to be water, one body of water 
(what water is is another mystery) (We are 
water divided.) It wd be a self without walls, 
with surface tension, specific gravity a local
exchange between bedrock and cloud of falling and rising, 
rising to fall, falling to rise.
(from Springing/ Marie Ponsot)

2

A fly wounds the water but the wound   
soon heals.
(from The Pond at Dusk/ JANE KENYON)

3

We are creatures of constant awe,
curious at beauty, at leaf and blossom,
at grief and pleasure, sun and shadow.

And it is not darkness that unites us,
not the cold distance of space, but
the offering of water, each drop of rain,

each rivulet, each pulse, each vein.
(from In Praise of Mystery/ Ada Limón)

4

What I love about water is that it spends its whole time falling. It’s always, apparently, trying to find the lowest place possible, and when it finds the lowest place possible, it lies there wide awake. 
(from remarks before reading “A Short Story of Falling” / Alice Oswald)

5

All water understands. 

But you, you stand on the shore
of blue Lake Kieve in the evening
and listen, grieving
as something stirs and turns within you.

Not knowing why you linger in the dark.
Not able even to guess
from what you are excluded
(from The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund)

6

Squatting softly in the cool, tea-colored water, 
hearing my own breath move in and out,

leaning close to see the tattered, soft-edged
purses of the flowers,
with their downward hanging cones and coppery antennae.

—This is more tenderness than I had reason to expect
from this rude life in which I built

a wall around myself, in which I couldn’t manage to repair
my cracked-up little heart.
(from Crossing Water/ Tony Hoaglund)

7

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea
(from maggie and millie and molly and may / e.e. cummings)

8

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)

9

I’m hungry
& wonder, has everything important happened
& what is more important than this,
like a secret adventure, like an affair I’m having
with everyone I see, their soft or washboard bellies,
their flat or rounded butts, their rippling hair
or shiny domes, their fragile ankles,
their beautiful bones, all our atoms swimming, swimming
& making us visible & I shove off the wall,
reaching my arms out, embracing the whole
magic show, with ten more laps to go.
(from Romance/ Susan Browne)

10

Cloud talks to lake; mist
speaks quietly to creek.

Lake says something back to cloud,
and cloud listens.
No water is lonely water.
(from from The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund)

10

I think the sea is a useless teacher, pitching and falling
no matter the weather, when our lives are rather lakes

unlocking in a constant and bewildering spring.
(from From Nowhere/ Marie Howe)

11

Spirits of lake, river
and woodland pond preside
mildly in water never

troubled by wind or tide;
and the quiet suburban pool
is only for the fearful —

no wind-wave energies
where no sea briar grips
and no freak breaker with
the violence of the ages
comes foaming at the mouth
to drown you in its depths.
(from A Swim in Co. Wicklow/ Derek Mahon

12

we found a little unknown grotto
where no people were and we 
entered it completely
and let our bodies lose all
their loneliness.

All of the fishes in us 
had escaped for a minute.
The real fish did not mind. 
We had not disturbed their personal life.
We calmly trailed over them 

and under them, shedding
air bubbles, little white 

balloons that drifted up
into the sun by the boat 
where the Italian boatman slept
with his hat over his face.

13

It is time now, I said
for the deepening and quieting
of the spirit
among the flux of happenings.

*

I went down in the afternoon
to the sea
which held me, until grew easy.

14

The following afternoon, under a blue sky fringed white with distant clouds on the horizon, four of us swam in 360 feet of turquoise water in a sheer-sided quarry on Belnahua. The island encricled a huge natural swimming pool, raised above sea level, whose waters were so utterly transparent that when we swam, we saw our shadows far down, swimming ahead of us along the bottom. All around, only yards away, was the deeper blue of the open sea, and the Hebrides: Fladda, Scarba, Jura, Lunga, the Garvellachs (the ‘Islands of the sea’, St. Coumba’s favourite place), Luing, Mull and Colonsay. The light and the skies kept changing all afternoon: from bright blue with distant dazzling clouds to deepening red and gold. Diving from the rocks into the immensely deep, clear, brackish water, intensified the giddy feeling of aquatic flying. Waterlog / Roger Deakin (237)

I memorized a few water poems, too:

  1. Summer Studies/ Tony Hoagland
  2. A Short Story of Falling/ ALICE OSWALD
  3. The Social Life of Water/ Tony Hoaglund
  4. II from Evaporations/ Alice Oswald
  5. first half of The Nude Swim/ Anne Sexton
  6. Swimming, One Day in August/ Mary Oliver
Water’s Rules and Offerings

From a line in Anne Carson’s “1 = 1”: Every water has its own rules and offerings. How do those rules and offerings change depending on what type of water it is — sea or river or lake or pool?

2 july 2024 — Cole Swensen’s Gave and perspective

Yesterday I started thinking again about different bodies of water and how poets write about them: Mary Oliver (ponds), Lorine Niedecker (lakes), Alice Oswald (rivers, the sea). I also remembered Cole Swenson and their writing about the river Gave de Pau in Gave. I think I need to buy this book!

Water’s rules/offerings also depend on where you are in relation to the water:

As I looked down at the river from high above on the gorge, I thought about the rowers and their paddles and how different their experience of the water was to mine. Down there in the water, I bet it’s choppy and bumpy, with wind and spray. Up here, it’s almost flat and gray blue. No feeling of motion — no waves or the unsettling sense of being higher on water that’s on the edge of spilling over somewhere.

5 july 2024

Lake Nokomis vegetation
Eurasian watermilfoil : invasive, choking out native plants
Northern watermilfoil: native, food for the fish

7 july 2024 — no more silver boat bottom

A few random thoughts: I don’t miss the silver-boat bottom and even if it were still here, the course is set up in a way that would make it unhelpful for guiding me. I only breathe through my mouth when I swim because of my nose plug. Longterm, what kind of impact does that have on my swimming, breathing, fitness? It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me: breaststrokers always seem to be trying to race me. They irritate me. Not that I’m complaining, but how come I never see any snakes in this water (or eels)?

8 july 2024 — cedar lake vibes

The buoy across the lake was fine for the first loop, then partly deflated for the second loop, then completely flat for the rest of the loops. Just an orange blob on the water. I’ve never seen that before! Of course it happened at Cedar lake. 

Another Cedar lake moment:
A woman to the lifeguard: Excuse me, my son doesn’t have a cap, and he’s not 18 (the minimum required age for open swim), but could he swim across?
Lifeguard: As long as he’s a good swimmer, it should be okay.

Maybe I would have been critical of these things in the past, but I’m not now. Deflated buoys and underage swimmers are just part of the cedar lake vibe.

9 july 2024 — look pal, this isn’t the sea

Yesterday, I wrote about looking for a balance between routine and disruption. This morning (7:30 am), I’m thinking about how open swim club offers one model. Swimming across the lake during open swim is a routine with a few set rules: a designated time, lifeguards lining the route, buoys you are supposed to always keep to your right. But, how you choose to follow those rules is up to you. Show up early (often they open the course before it’s officially supposed to start), or halfway through, or even at the last minute. Do just one loop or as many as you can fit into two hours. Swim straight from one buoy to the next in a tight, efficient line or loop wide, taking up as much lake as you can. Swim without stopping, or stop often to catch your breath or orient yourself or feel the openness and solitude of the lake. Round the far buoys or go past them to pause at the shore. Use a kick board or fins, a snorkel. Wear a wetsuit or a tri-suit or a swim suit but always some suit (another rule: no naked swimming). 

An open water slogan I’ve seen before: no walls. No lane lines or lanes. But, this isn’t Homer’s sea, Alice Oswald’s unfenced purple. There are shores in sight (well, mostly in sight) and only vines, fish, and swan boats to encounter. No sharks or motorized boats or big waves. Does that mean the lake is all routine? Safe, steady, predictable?

which is worse? Lake Nokomis doesn’t have sharks. It has uncertainty, mystery, a floor only 15-20 feet below scattered with things we can’t see because the water is stirred up, murky. I wonder, which is scarier? Swimming above sharks you can see, or above a nothing that could be anything that you can’t?

10 july 2024 — immersion and water, 3 descriptions

Lauren Groff: “there is a moment in swimming when, after a while, the body’s rhythm grows so comfortable that the swimmer loses awareness of herself. There is a marrow-deep letting go.”

Anne Carson: “And then the (she searches for the right word) instruction of balancing along in the water, the ten thousand adjustments of vivid action, the staining together of mind and time so that she is no longer miles and miles apart from her life, watching it differently unfold, but in it, as it, it.”

Sanders: “I feel metallic”

11 july 2024 — time and water

 anne carson — staining together of time and mind

. . . 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

Heidi Julavets — stop-time photography, the swimmer slowed while everyone else sped up

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

samantha sanders — the fountain of youth

[on swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter] The exhilaration is remarkable. I feel like we’ve discovered the fountain of youth.Swimming Through

Alice Oswald — 12 white-collar workers, the hour itself ascending

or is it only the hours on their rounds
thinking of the tides by turns
twelve white-collar workersNobody

and from their meaty backs
A million crackling things
Burst into flight which was either water
Or the hour itself ascending.Evaporations

Darby Nelson — ripples, connections, relationships

 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 the Love of Lakes

19 july 2024 — the rhythms and rules of the waves

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.

23 july 2024 — freestyle > breaststroke

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. 

25 july 2024 — everything glowing orange and olympic pools

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. 

Since noticing this orangey-red underwater, it’s happened again, several times. 

I discovered this delightful fact: there are 24 pools for the Paris Olympics, including competitions pools and warm-up pools. Wow!

28 july 2024 — the rhythms and rules of the waves, the moon

Side to side rocking heading east from the big beach to the first buoy, the current pushing me a little to the north. Choppy, but no water crashing into or over me. Somewhere between the last orange buoy and the first green one, rough. Mostly breathed to my right. The buoy and other swimmers were lost in the waves. Draining. This is where my back would start to ache. The most challenging spot was rounding the green buoy closest to the big beach. Big waves wanting to push me under the buoy. It took 4 tries, but on the last loop I angled my boat-body right to avoid this pushing. Heading north, parallel to the big beach, the water rippled behind and over me. Mostly giving me a boost, sometimes sucking the energy out from under me. As I swam this last stretch, I wondered if I could learn to ride the waves or angle in ways that avoided the roughest contact.

I love the almost/half/barely-view of the first orange buoy after rounding the green buoy. I think I’ve written this before, but it reminds me of the faintest trace of the moon in the afternoon sky. Sometimes a faint orange, sometimes only the silhouette of something that makes the Sara in the back of my head whisper, moon.

30 july 2024 — Alice Oswald’s inkling of a fish

the inkling of a fish — mostly, all I get in the middle of the lake are inklings of fish: silver flashes below. I’m glad. Near shore, in the shallow water, minnows seem more like inklings of fish than fully realized fish. I love inkling as a hint or suggestion: the inkling of a buoy, a whisper from a fish, orange or come this way or over there

Plague Notebook, Vol 21 notes

1 july: types of water — pond / Mary Oliver and Maxine Kumin, sea/ Alice Oswald, river/ Alice Oswald and Cole Swensen, lake / Lorine Niedecker and Tony Hoaglund

not sure, sharp edges, but soft, leaky, eroding, porous

8 july: Lorine Niedecker’s collage technique in “Lake Superior” — putting together poem from different layers of lake’s history

Nature alone cannot explain this landscape, you need history too. 

11 july: states of time — zone =time slows = peak physical, flow = time flies = peak mental

We can never be the fish, but in flashes we can be like the fish

drift dream

17 july: Alice Oswald says to look at things liquidly. What does that mean and how do we do that? How do I do that?

“To swim is to be a part of things” (Bonnie Tsui). 

20 july: from “Swimming Chenango Lake” — the geometry of water — the shape and relative arrangement of the parts of something, the relationship of points, lines, surfaces, angles

22 july: rivering 

23 july: “Swimming: a body slowing toward prayer and presence inside rhythm and weightlessness” (Lidia Yuknavitch). 

27 july: to river (verb) — to move, slice through, transform, divide, break open, reshape, cut, unsettle, occupy, overwhelm, erode

28 july: the fish dimension