april 13/HIKE

60 minutes
Minnehaha Falls Off Leash Dog Park
62 degrees

Another great hike beside the river and through the sand flats of the dog park. Much warmer than last time. Humid too. Not quite still, but quiet, calm, overcast. At the end of the walk, as we ascended a hill I described what I saw to FWA: the sky was bluer at the bottom of the sky near the fence; it faded to white as your eyes traveled higher. Was it just my strange vision? No, FWA saw it that way too.

We talked about one of FWA’s favorite teachers from High School. We agreed that she was one of the few teachers who really saw FWA and his neurodivergence. This led to discussing roommates and how hard it is to be understood by them when your brain is not neurotypical. We talked about our senior years of college and our desire to be done. And, like always, we talked about One Piece and other dogs and strange looking trees.

10 Things

  1. brackish water at the beach on the edge of the park
  2. soft sand that seemed deeper — had Minneapolis Parks dumped some dredged sand down since we were here last?
  3. a motor boat traveling slowly up river, making waves
  4. Delia doing my favorite thing: jumping over a log while running, her front and back paws stretched straing out like Superdog
  5. the water looked soft and brown and flat
  6. the faintest flashes of green all around — new buds on the trees!
  7. a woodpecker knocking on dead wood
  8. dots of green on the ground — moss, new grass — everywhere
  9. rolling over several rocks on the ground — not falling or twisting anything
  10. a woman walking a dog on a leash, calling out to them: no, you can’t! you lost your privileges when you ran away from me!

Grids

a summary: I’ve been playing around with Holes 4. I put it on my new corkboard wall and tried different thread/yarn/string. Then I played around with how to have the thread (which represents the lines of an Amsler Grid and being mapped in space/time) emerge from my blind spot in the center of the panels. Then I added red yarn and connected the words of the poem to each other.

more experiments with Holes 4 / 13 april 2026

I discussed it with RJP, which was fun, and we both decided that this black thread/red line effect was didn’t fit with the words of Holes 4. They were better suited to Holes 5 — maybe 5b? I want to print out the poems for each of these holes and post them on my board; this might help me keep track of all of them. The text from Holes 4 describes not seeing the hole or any lines, but everything as seltzer fizz and nothing that is something not sharing its secrets. That poem should have lots of little circles (seltzer bubbles/fizz) and create an optical illusion — you stare at the dark dots and then you see them everywhere else, almost like an after image. This poem might also have the words as enlarged?

note: I love my new board and being able to discuss my ideas with my kids; they have some very interesting ideas. Also, I think returning to a study of grids and learning how other people — artists and scientists — have used them could help guide my next steps.

what’s next:

  1. I want to continue studying grids; I’ll start by reading (or trying to read) the book for the Charles Gaines exhibit.
  2. I also want to keep pushing at my poems, so I’ll continue working on Holes 6, which is Lines 1.
  3. And, I want to think more about lines, which means it is time for a lines/strings/thread playlist!

Charles Gaines and Gridwork

In the intoduction to the book, summary descriptions are offered for his works:

1 — Regression

28 drawing / 4 sets of 7

An arbitrary shape was chosen, and numbers were assigned to different squares of the graph according to their position. The numbers were then employed in simple arithmetic calculaitons to generate the form used in the next drawing in the sires. As the numbers threatened to overflow the parameters of the drawing, Gaines used what he calls a “radical divider” to contain teh propagation of his system. The final drawing in each set determined the starting point for the next, and so from any arbitrary starting point an infinitely expanding number of drawings could result.

Gridwork: An Introduction

Gaines was “interested in where systems fail or regress, revealing the innate contradiction of the objective or scientific enterprise. In other words, his work reveals the limations of systems.

2 — Walnut Tree Orchard

Each, a triptych — a photograph of a tree, a drawing in which the photograph is transcribed into numbers plotted onto a grid, and a second drawing that overlays all the previous grid drawings in the set onto the image from the second drawing.

This line, this series “makes visible the limits of photography, highlighting its single-point perspective, its flattening of space, gave me an idea: should I read/think about how reading happens and/or how we believe it happens, and play with that in my series?

3 — Incomplete Texts

used literary texts, picked ones that appear to supply information in a straightforward, truthful manner and submit them to processes of abstraction that complicate meaning

based on a page from Roy Nickerson’s Brother Whale
he systematically removed letters from copies of they typeset page and transferred them to a grid
this transformed the text into a series of fragments recalling whistles/clicks of whale song

note: It is difficult for me to actually see his grid images, so I’m struggling to understand what Gaines is doing in his different series. I want to dig deeper into his interview and other discussions of his grid system so I can understand how/why he’s using it1. This understanding might help me clarify how/why I’m using it — or, will it take me too deep into academic Sara territory?

Decided to google, “artists who use grids” and found this awesome exhibit that was at the High: Off the Grid. Very cool! I lived in Atlanta for almost 4 years and I never once went to this museum. Why not?

a flash of an idea: what if I turned Holes 3 into a “straight” grid, where the x-axis is blur, and the y-axis is almost. I could number the grid boxes with x and y coordinates and then have those coordinates next to the corresponding words in a poem key? I could either print out graph paper OR create a grid on the paper with string and a loom?

the poem for Holes 3:

Fall through the hole
your reading eyes find
and land in a logic
of blur and almost.

Yes! The new experiment to try: the two pages from the New Yorker essay on a cardboard loom/grid, under a grid made out of black embroidery thread. I might add the shadow (a faint trace) of my blind spot drawn on the essay. The grid is also a graph with x-axis and y-axis named, blur (x) and almost (y). Each of the grid boxes has numbered x and y coordinates. Next to the graph/grid is a key/map with the xy coordinates. You look up the xy coordinates to find the words of the poem. Will this work? Consulting with Scott, he had some additional ideas: put the words in alphabetical order + put a pin and a number (signaling the order of words) next to the word — Scott compared it to dots on a map).

I like this idea and how it forces the reader to slow down and read the poem one word at a time. This isn’t quite how I read, but it gives a sense of how much slower I read, how many less words I can read. I also like the idea of a map, because part of why I am drawn to the grid is because of the way it enables me to locate and visualize my blind spot and vision loss.

  1. Reading the interview will have to wait for tomorrow. My eyes are tired from what I’ve already read, which was only about a dozen pages. ↩︎

april 12/RUN

4.25 mile
franklin loop
65 degrees
dew point: 62

Strange weather. Yesterday it was in the 40s and raining, today it could get up to 80 degrees. Then 70s all week and high of 40 next Saturday. I wore shorts and a tank top today and felt fine — not too hot or cold. For the first time this year, I ran with Scott. Hooray for old traditions returning! We did 9 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking, which helped keep us steady. We both agreed that we’ve been very undisciplined with the steadiness of our runs. Yes, I’ve continued to run about 20 miles per week, but I haven’t had much of a plan and I’ve usually made it for 2 miles without stopping, then running and walking the rest. Time to get more serious and work of my mental toughness.

Scott talked about his latest musical composition — a suite inspired by Artemis and its voyage to the dark side of the moon. It’s in 26/81. I talked about the YouTuber, Ms Space Cadet, her struggle running, and how she was running faster than her fitness because of her new shoes. I also mentioned the podcast I’m listening to: an interview with Robert Macfarlane about his recent book, Is a River Alive? So good! I was listening to it this morning as I colored in my holes/circles for a redo of Holes 4 (more on that below).

We passed a race in progress on the river road. I think it was the Gopher 10 mile, but I’m not positive. At one spot, where the spectators and volunteers were thick, I heard someone call out, you can do it! you’re stronger than you think! (is that what they said, or am I remembering it wrong?)

The air was thick, the trail still damp from last night’s rain. Noting green yet, everything still brown. No rowers on the river. No roller skiers. No memorable birds.

grids and threads

I’ve put Holes 4 on my new corkboard (which doesn’t seem to want to stay stuck to the wall in this humid weather) and experimented with black thread and gray yarn. FWA likes the thread, and Scott thinks I need something in-between both. Dark string? We don’t have dark string, but we do have white string? Should I try that?

experimenting with lines / 12 april

I did try the white string and didn’t like it. More experiments with thinner yarn and embroidery thread tomorrow!

  1. I had to double-check with Scott on that strange time signature. He also sent me the breakdown to the movements: I. Launch [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8]
    II. Journey Through the Void [4/4 + 4/4 + 5/4]
    III. Mare Orientale [6/8 + 6/8 + 6/8 + 4/4]
    IV. The Terminator [6/8 + 7/8 + 6/8 + 7/8]
    V. L.O.S. [3/4 + 2/4 + 3/4 + 3/4 + 2/4]
    VI. Eclipse [7/8 + 7/8 + 7/8 + 5/8]
    VII. The Return [6/4 + 7/4]
    VIII. Splashdown [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8] ↩︎

april 10/RUN

2.8 miles
2 trails
50 degrees

Sun and shadows and spring air. Also: chirping birds, bare earth, buds. A beautiful afternoon for a run, after a morning having fun making a grid and reading an essay backwards and thinking about threads and strings and scotomas.

The river was a blueish-gray, the sky was empty of clouds. Now, sitting at my dining room table, I hear cardinals, but out near the gorge I think it was wrens, or could it have been sparrows? Oh — at least one pileated woodpecker and the feebee of a chickadee.

tmi note for marathon-training Sara: the run was made difficult by unfinished business. I need to do more work on figuring this problem out!

My favorite image: Walking and running back through the neighborhood, I noticed (and not for the first time) a delightful maple tree. A straight and solid trunk then 2 thick branches rising out of it. One of them slanted only slightly to the side, the other bent midway up, looking almost like a knee. Yes! This tree offers a classic example of the tree looking like an upside down person, their head, shoulders buried in the dirt, only their torso and crotch and legs sticking out of the ground. Oh, why didn’t I bring my phone today so I could take a picture of it?! I’ll have to go back. It’s on 35th street between 46th and 45th avenue. I wonder, will anyone else be able to see what I see in a picture of it? when standing beside the tree?

grids and lines and strings and threads

note: I’m starting this in the morning just after a big breakfast. I’m listening to early The Kinks, “Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire” from 1969 and “The Kinks Are teh Cillage Green Preservation Society” from 1968. I love early The Kinks!

Continuing a discussion I began yesterday but wasn’t able to continue:

I found this quote from Chuck Close about why he used the grid method:

Almost every decision I’ve made as an artist is an outcome
of my particular learning disorders. I’m overwhelmed by
the whole. How do you make a big head? How do you make
a nose? I’m not sure! But by breaking the image down into
small units, I make each decision into a bite-size decision.
I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. It’s an on-
going process. The system liberates and allows for intuition.

National Gallery of Art

Breaking the image down into small units. Working in small units and seeing fine detail — those are functions of central vision. Peripheral vision is the big picture, that big head, those whole noses. Most of what I see these days is big picture — whole, fuzzy forms. The central vision I have is very small and seems to be very near the center of my central vision. How big is the one grid — that tiny island surrounded by gray water — that allows me to see anything as more than an almost form? The only detail I can really see (I think?) is a word in small print.

Just gave about an hour to creating the grid for the bigger version of my scotoma. In the “normal” sized one, each grid is .25 x .25. In this grid, it’s .8 x .8. I’m listening to a 1970 album by The Kinks, “Lola Versus Poerman and the Moneygoround, Part One.”

The grid is fiddly and involves a lot of measuring. It is slow, repetitive work. As I measured and drew line after line, I thought about how this work might open me up to new ideas and that this process by me, Sara-barely-not-blind, is part of the work I am creating. It is not only the finished product of a visual poem, but all of the labor that went into it that makes the meaning. Much of that work is invisible (although I’m documenting it), but it colors and haunts and shapes what I am trying to communicate.

2 grids, a bigger one drawn with pencil on cardboard, a smaller one made from ink with by blind spot drawn on it
2 grids and a blind spot

Now, it’s time to use the grid to create a super-sized scotoma, and then, to play around with different materials for laying the scotoma over the words of Holes 5b! Possible materials: trace the scotoma directly onto the paper and then color it in. Cut out different types of plastic — ziploc? a grocery bag? cling wrap? What about a very, very small grid made out of black thread? Fiddly, but fun!

Before I return to that, I need a break, so I’ll return to my close reading of a book review on memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. I picked this selection from the NYer because: it’s a book review, and I love book reviews!; it uses a lot of language about connections and separations; and it uses hole, thread, and line.

My close reading = start with the last paragraph of the essay, then the second to last, then the third to last, etc. So, backwards. It’s a strange way of reading, being thrown into ideas that are presented as familiar, but haven’t been introduced yet. Slowly, the more I read, the more sense it makes.

Misfits / The Kinks (1978)

I started my close reading of the NYer book review, What to Make of the Mother Who Made You/Rebecca Mead, yesterday afternoon while drinking a surprisingly good NA beer at Arbeiter. Here’s a list of words/phrases I found during that reading, along with my additional words from today’s reading:

  • when the facts are unbearable, it’s natural to escape into
  • coordinates
  • accomodate
  • (to) make sense to myself
  • disorientation
  • knowledge
  • ghost
  • humbled
  • should be
  • to write one’s way out of
  • shedding
  • knotted
  • threads
  • familiar
  • searching
  • hunt it down like prey
  • in the other room
  • readers
  • almost blind
  • estranged
  • against
  • reframing
  • obedience
  • en chant ment
  • elsewhere
  • world made whole again
  • inheritances
  • family
  • moves
  • opens
  • traces
  • artificially formed
  • origins
  • sober
  • square
  • closed
  • door
  • discomfort
  • feelings
  • slither
  • seize d
  • character
  • disembowel eat
  • spotted
  • rupture
  • alone
  • defiance
  • entanglements
  • kinship
  • matriarch
  • loom
  • shadows and absences
  • ordinariness tempo
  • lens
  • locating
  • mess ily
  • tending
  • cancer
  • seen
  • naked
  • con found ing
  • pro CLAIM
  • think about
  • offspring
  • runs through
  • nothing, subdued
  • account
  • assumes command
  • between
  • emerge
  • maintain ed distance
  • light
  • center
  • entwined
  • depend
  • reckon

Again, these words speak to a strained relationship between daughter and mother. I’m thinking that my mother here is written language and the words on a page to be read with failing/failed eyes. A distant mother, a daughter uncertain as to how to reconnect (or to keep the connection), or even if she wants to stay connected.

In the midst of all of this, I’m also wanting to get more inspiration from a collection of erasure poems that I discovered last fall and have been hugely influenced by: a wonderful catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard. Here’s one of her found poems that uses lines:

a poem from a wonderful catastrophe/ colette love hilliard

I like how the lines are slanted and all coming out of one source which resembles the sun. I might try having lines of black thread emerging from a center hole in a 4 panel poem. The threads just barely covering all of the words, the words of the poem printed on circles attached (pinned?, sewn?) on top of the strings. I want to try that now! Can I do that AND make my super-sized scotoma?

a few minutes later: I will do the scotoma tomorrow; the sun is too bright in the room for me to see the grid! And, before I can try out the black threads, I need to remap Holes 4. So, tomorrow for both of these.

RJP just stopped by and when I showed her what I was working on, she reminded me about Coraline and her other mother who lives on the other side of the door (here, instead of Alice’s hole, there is Coraline’s door). The other mother has buttons for eyes which reminded RJP of the holes I traced on my Holes 5. So cool! I could try adding buttons to my Holes 6, which is using a text about mothers and daughters!

summary of the day: A lot of great ideas, a few plans, a little making.

David Bowie Essentials — the last song heard, “Suffragette City”

april 9/HIKE

60 minutes
Minnehaha Falls Off Leash Dog Park
40 degrees

With the sun, it felt warmer down in the floodplain forest, although my hands are still cold many minutes later even though I wore gloves. I don’t like the cold hands, but I didn’t mind the cold air. So many wonderful deep breaths — in and out, in and out.

The trees are still bare, so FWA and I could see far in any direction. For the entire time, FWA was telling me the story of the latest video game he’s been playing, Clair Obscura. So good — both the game (at least as I understand it from FWA’s description) and FWA’s describing of it. His excellent way of describing the games to me reminds me of how I enjoy New Yorker book reviews as something about and entirely separate from the acutal book they are reviewing. Often the review is better than the book. I’m not saying that’s true of the video game, although I guess it is for me because I don’t play video games (partly because I miss a lot details that I can’t see).1

I love hearing FWA’s accounts; he’s so good at them. They require my full attention and engagement — which is a good thing, and a hard thing (hard because it is hard to stay focused and not get distracted for that long with so many interesting ideas, and because FWA gets frustrated and can tell when I’m not fully listening). Even as I listened to and engaged with FWA’s story, was I able to give attention to the river and the trees and the bluffs? Yes! Here are 10 things I noticed:

10 Dog Park Things

  1. at the top of a small rise: a HUGE tree with a girth wider than 2 of me could hug. Wow!
  2. tree tableau: one tree bent over in an arch across the path, another tree leaning in and onto its trunk, the next tree in the middle of the sandy path just on the other side of the arcj
  3. talking with some dog walkers, feeling one of the dog’s behind me, putting its snout under my coat and sniffing my butt
  4. bright blue sky with a few fluffy clouds
  5. a thin white foam near the shore
  6. the sharp, foul smell of Delia’s poop as I tied up a poop bag
  7. greeting another walker — good morning, what a beautiful day!
  8. a pileated woodpecker, laughing
  9. a thick wall of bare trees on the other side of the chainlink fence
  10. a guy with 2 dogs, talking — I think into a bluetooth, but maybe just to himself?

Returning to #2 and the tree tableau: I wanted to stop and take a picture of this beautiful image but I knew that would upset and derail FWA and I’ve learned the hard way to respect that and to recognize that it is part of his ADHD/(possibly) autistic brain. I was planning to write all of this in a footnote, but then a song came on, “People Take Pictures of Each Other” from The Kinks, and I had to put it on stage, here in the text. It opens with these lines:

People take pictures of the Summer
Just in case someone thought they had missed it
And to prove that it really existed

Was Ray Davies reaching through time to sing this to me? Improbable as that is, wouldn’t it be cool? I guess, from one perspective, he is!

grids — lines — strings — threads — yarn

note: I began writing this after coffee and a substantial breakfast of blueberries and yogurt and granola. Lots of thoughts from here to here to here that I think was influenced by that coffee and food!

There are many ways to think about grids, and many ways that I like them. Today I am thinking about the lines and how they connect and locate and tether us to worlds, to people, to logics, to meaning and language and words. I’m thinking about this metaphorically and literally. The Amsler Grid is made up of ink lines. Can I represent it in my visual poem as string and thread and yarn?

A few minutes ago, yarn as telling a story popped into my head and I wondered what the origins of that expression were. It’s nautical:

“story, tale,” often implying “marvelous, incredible, untrue,” colloquial, by 1812 in the figurative verbal phrase spinning a yarn (also yarning).

It is said (by 1823) to be originally nautical, a sailors’ expression, from the custom of telling stories while engaged in sedentary work such as yarn-twisting

yarn — etymology

So many directions I could go with these ideas. I love this idea of thinking about the grid and the material/meaning of its lines. In a New Yorker article that I’ve already used for at least 2 (maybe 3) sections of Holes 5, the phrase, pull the strings, appears. I noticed last week and put it aside. Now I’m thinking of shifting my poems from Holes to Threads (or strings or lines). Whereas the rule with Holes poems is that “hole” had to be in the text, I’m thinking of being more flexible with this new direction: maybe, for each new essay/article that I use, I find a different name/word for connecting lines. I already have strings (from “Mystery Man”) to work with. And, I found another article, about Arundhati Roy’s new memoir that has “hole” AND “thread.”

Another related thought: Lines, especially on a rigid grid, don’t always connect us in welcomed ways. They can tie and bind and trap us too. There’s a tension with lines and strings and threads: we want to be connected, and we want to break free from the connections that do harm to us. Entangle2 and unravel. Entangle and unravel.

Okay, I started this thought in footnote 1, but I’m bringing it back up here. I’m thinking about evidence boards (or murder boards or red string boards) and how they map out a crime. I don’t see my vision loss as a crime, but I do see it as a mystery — not to be solved, but to be mapped and located and witnessed — yes, witnessed!

And now, after hiking at the dog park and eating lunch and doing the dishes, I’m attempting to return to these ideas and dig deeper into them. But, it’s hard to get back i that flow.

Maybe creating a list of tasks?

  • think/read/experiment more with murder boards: redo the second holes and put it on a (card)board back with yarn and pins
  • begin a new playlist: grids, lines, strings, threads
  • make a poem with strings in it out of the “Mystery Man” article
  • give some time to Holes 6 and its hole and thread found in the New Yorker book review, “What to Make of the Mother Who Made You?”
  • create the proportionately bigger scotoma template for Holes 5b, experiment with placing it or tracing it over the words of the article
  • revisit the erasure collection, a splendid catastrophe for inspiration

Okay, lots of ideas. Let’s return to the one we started yesterday — 5b and the two holes and figuring out how to represent those 2 holes on the page (1 hole — the very small amount of central vision I still have left, 1 hole — the fuzzy, filmy, fading/faded central vision graveyard that surrounds/encircles what’s left — hole 1 = the word / hole 2 = the void or wall or circle that encases/entombs the word and is always waiting to consume it.

A visual inspiration for the dark/light contrast in this poem and in my experience of the holes as I read words on a page:

the image is dark except for two white ovals with blue dots
bright eyes in the dark

In my memory, Alice’s eyes were much brighter than I can see in this image. Something to think about: my version/vision of the dark due to my blind spot is never like this; I mean, it’s not all black. When looking at faces in can be a dark, smoky/smudged gray. When looking at words, I might see a faint dark ring. Sometimes it’s fuzzy or static — it’s not Nothing; it is something that is always moving. And here’s where I can get into Alice nonsense speak: It is not that I see Nothing; I don’t know that the something that is there is missing for me. I see no thing, without knowing that I’m seeing nothing. I think I need to work on that explanation.

But, back to the inspirational image. I like the contrast and the white eyes against the background. Do I want to make my word holes look more like eyes in this one? If I can do it without looking cheesy, yes!

I hope all of this makes sense to future Sara. Now, time to create my supersized scotoma!

update, a few minutes later: I started to think about how I might create the bigger version. There are probably many ways that are obvious to people who make things, but I have not been a maker and it’s all new to me. I like the idea of re-creating the grid, just bigger. Suddenly a thought: doesn’t the artist Chuck Close do (or, didn’t he do) something like this to create his portraits? Yes! He’s one of the most famous artist-users of a grid. Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA) has several of his works, but none can be viewed right now. The Walker has some too — I can’t readily see if they’re available for viewing. Some deeper digging is needed.

Here’s a video on how to use it:

Chuck close and the grid

And here is a great resource: Chuck Close at the Walker

Almost every decision I’ve made as an artist is an outcome
of my particular learning disorders. I’m overwhelmed by
the whole. How do you make a big head? How do you make
a nose? I’m not sure! But by breaking the image down into
small units, I make each decision into a bite-size decision.
I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. It’s an on-
going process. The system liberates and allows for intuition.

†National Gallery of Art

  1. file this with my Holes/Grid discussion: in thinking about all the ways I’m expressing something about myself through this series, I’ll add the significance of using the New Yorker and some book reviews. I love these book reviews and the access they give me to words/worlds that would otherwise be inaccessible (also thinking of the fun section on NY events and the restaurant reviews). Using New Yorker articles in these found poems is a way to reference that; it’s also a way to be able to still read them: slow, repeatedly, in strange order, and one word at a time. ↩︎
  2. I looked up, opposite of unravel, and found twist, knot, tangle, entangle. I love the idea of entanglement! Reading more of the Merriam-Webster entry, I read about unraveling a mystery/solving something, lessening the confusion. Yes! These ideas return to something else showing up in my visual poem: the image of a crime board — what is it called — where you put pictures of the suspects on a board and then use string or yarn to link them. I should read up on that concept some more, maybe watch some movies or shows that use it?! Is this linking used in other things that don’t involve solving a crime? How do I google that? ↩︎

april 8/RUN

3.75 miles
wabun hill
60 degrees
wind: 25 mph gusts

Windy and warm this afternoon. Shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Hooray! My feet feel strange in my new shoes. Hopefully I’ll get used to them soon. Sometimes it felt easy, sometimes it didn’t. I stopped several times to admire the view. There is new, brightly colored graffiti under the ford bridge. I noticed it when I stopped to look at the hill of dirt (some of it looks like loose dirt to me — is it?) that the pilings for the bridge push up against.

The favorite thing I experienced this afternoon: At the bottom of the hill near the locks and dam no. 1, I stopped to admire the river. The surface was undulating in the wind. It was only slightly moving, creating a strange feeling — not of dizziness, but of everything shimmering or flickering.

holes 5b

Here’s a draft of another poem made from words in “Mystery Man”:

two holes
one —
the only place
where reading is still possible
a small island
surround by
the other and its
not even firelit
free fall into nothing

I’d like to make the New Yorker text for this poem white on a black background. Is that possible? Can I achieve the effect of being in the dark in some other way? Maybe I’ll try shading text with pencil first? I’m still not sure. I’ll need to look for some more inspiration.

an hour or so later: Here’s something I’d like to try tomorrow that I thought of earlier — for my 2 holes poem I want to trace my scotoma/blind spoi on the 4 panels. I want one that covers a substantial amount of the text/pages. I’m thinking a 16 x 16 inch grid, which I already have. I’m not thinking that I’ll use the grid on the poem, but I’ll use it to measure the proportions of the bigger scotoma. Fun! I’m sure there are much more efficient ways to do what I’m trying to do, but I like the DIY nature of this approach. I also like how it’s not overwhelming for me, with my very limited crafting/making skills. If I spend too much time on crafting something that is trying to look polished and fancy, I might lose all of my creative energy. I should find a class to take in which I can learn some of these skills!

april 7/RUN

4.1 miles
river road, north/south
39 degrees
wind: 10mph / gusts: 15 mph

Boo to the cold, although it only really felt cold during my walk warm-up. Maybe the boo should be reserved for the wind which was directly in my face running south. But, even with the wind and the cold, there was sun and clear paths and birds and open water. Spring! My legs and back felt strong, and my feet were locked into a steady rhythm. I encountered at least one large-ish group of runners, many groups of walkers, dogs. No roller skiers. Any bikers? I can’t remember. At least one stroller.

Running north, I listened to my feet striking the ground and birds chirping. Running south, I put in my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist. Song I remember most: “Shadow Stabbing” by Cake.

My anxiety has returned, which is a bummer, but not unexpected. There are so many reasons it could be back (I mean, looking at the news for today — Drump’s deadline for Iran is tonight — JFC). My latest theory: I am experiencing another vision shift (more cones lost?) that sometimes makes me feel dizzy. Dizziness triggers (mostly) mild physical panic. Combine that with hormonal changes, thanks to perimenopause. Nothing too overwhelming, but still draining and uncomfortable. I understand the anxiety better now than a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean I can anticipate it. Before my run, I felt a little dizzy. That dizziness (or imagined dizziness?) lingered a little during the run then returned right after. Sigh.

added later in the day: Finishing this entry up at my desk, I saw the shadow of a bird fly by which reminded me of the bird shadows this morning as I ran. It happened more than once, a dark something flying over my head as I ran: a bird’s shadow!

grids and holes and reading

My Holes series has several elements: the hole, the grid, reading. All of them are important in these visual poems. Also important: these are visual poems. The words in them matter as much (or more? or on the same level?) as the visuals.

What am I trying to express with this series? The strange and strained and magical way in which I can still read words even with most of my central vision gone. The progression of my declining ability to see words and its untethering effects.

a couple hours later: Playing around with my first Holes, this morning, I focused on figuring out how to connect the sections of the poem, to map the path from word to word to word on the page. That process of reading is key to this series1. After ruminating, which frequently meant standing and staring at the poem on cardboard, trying to figure out how to make this rectangular 4-panel poem fit into the square of an Amsler Grid, I came up with something to try. Fasten the poem panels to cardboard by placing pins next to the words of the poem, then connect/map the words with black thread. When I tried that, the thread was more fiddly to work with than my eyes and hands liked, and it didn’t show up that well:

black thread map / Can you see the thread? Just barely, for me.

So I tried dark gray thread, which was easier to work with and showed up much better. Maybe as the series progresses and my tether to the world through words weakens, I’ll use thinner, less visible thread?

gray yarn

One thing to fix for a different version: adjust the pin so that the thread line between with and word doesn’t cross the center — to do this, possibly switch to another “the” lower on the panel.

I like the yarn better! I realized that one of the key elements of this poem is to show the process of reading, the act of jumping from word to word to word, how the connections between words are increasingly complicated and convoluted. As I was thinking about that mapping, I remembered some images that I’ve seen several times and that Scott mentioned the other day: a spider’s web after taking various drugs . Here, lines = grids = webs!

The next experiment = putting the 4 paneled poem on cork board, using gray yarn and push pins. Another thing to add: draw more holes (circles), color them in with pencil, then erase them to leave a ghost (afterimage-ish).

during the run: holes

During the run, I thought about printing the New Yorker article on graph paper and adding an x and y axis for plotting the words. I might do that for a few of the Holes — as my vision gets stranger, so do the names of x and y. Maybe Holes 1 is x = time and y = space. Another Holes could be x = real and y = imagined. I should look through the other poems and determine their x and y axis.

questions: Are the lines from the Amsler grid (that is, the lines that make up the grid) and the lines that connect the words and map them on the visual poem the same as the Amsler lines? Can they sometimes be the same in one poem, and different in another?

  1. A thought as I wrote this sentence: part of the process of moving from word to word is running into words on a line that I didn’t see. In my Plague Notebook, I have countless examples of visual errors in which I write words on top of each other. This works differently in reading — in reading, I only see the word I am reading — but it connects. This not seeing + words on top of each other could be represented by the increasing jumbled way my lines from word to word are mapped. ↩︎

april 6/RUN

4.35 miles
minnehaha falls and back
32 degrees / feels like 17

Cold again. Because of the low feels like temp, I overdressed: 2 pairs of tights, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, pullover. Halfway through I ditched the pullover, which was awkward as I struggled to take it off without removing the outer layer.

Tried to stay steady and slow. Chanted in triple berries in my head. Took several walk breaks — not because I was tired, but to take pictures or to record my thoughts or to take off my second layer.

Thought about grids and nets (more on this below) as I ran. Recorded some thoughts on my phone:

recording 1: I’m thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me. And I’m thinking about the xy axis and a map and the visual field. And mapping and locating yourself within the known world and how reading is so important to that locating and figuring out how to navigate without that.

recording 2: Thinking more about why nets or grids or that particular way of being located is to be held, to be connected, to be located, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you). So not in this free fall. To orient yourself in some way. To not be entirely unmoored. Because as fun as it sounds in theory to be untethered and unlimited by these restrictions, physically it does not feel good. Dizzy, disoriented, nauseated (sometimes). A slow, growing anxiety.

This last bit about the ill effects of being unmoored was inspired by how I felt as I started my run. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I did feel a little dizzy and disconnected from the path, unable to clearly see what was ahead of me. I wasn’t blind to the trail or anyone on it. I was disoriented and anything I saw was vague and barely formed. This way of seeing unsettled me; it also made everything feel dreamy and not real or unreal or surreal. By the end of the first mile, it had dissipated somewhat.

So, why the Amsler grid? First, the obvious: it’s a vision test and I am writing around (and through) vision tests in much of my vision/visual poetry. Another explanation: it represents a mapping, a locating, a connecting to the known world (where known partly = “normal”/medical understandings and models of seeing). Also, it is a reference point from and a starting point that readers can understand (a place of common ground, a concrete and easily expressed and understandable model and map for blind spots in central vision/visual field).

grids / nets

I was planning to study worms and bugs for my April challenge, but that will have to wait. This month is about grids and nets and matrices. I chose this topic because I want to dig deeper into the grid and what role it plays in my Holes series, and also because of a series of pieces that AMP pointed out to me at MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts):

text: Charles Gaines Numbers and Trees: Tiergarten Series 3: Tree #1, #2, #4, #6
Charles Gaines / Numbers and Trees

I found a book from one of his exhibits and requested it from the local library. When I get it, I’ll discuss the grids more. (I also plan to return to MIA soon to study the pieces more closely). Here’s one photo of them that I particularly like of me, FWA, and RJP, who is talking with her hands in a way that I love.

3 people -- a son, a daughter, their mother -- stand in front of a series of trees. The daughter gestures with her hands.
3 people looking at art, 2 of them talking about it, one with her hands

. Heading out for my run this morning, I wanted to notice grids. A few minutes later, all I could think about was the twisted/bent fence at the falls that I noticed last Thursday. I regretted not stopping to take a picture of it then, so I took several today. Here are 2:

1

Remembering this crooked fence and then taking pictures of it, inspired me to expand my grid/net/matrix month to fences too — this fence + chainlink fences. Things that contain, orient, map, frame.

To start this grid exploration, some research on the Amsler Grid. Have I done any research about it in past years? Not that I can find!

Amsler Grid

The Amsler grid, used since 1945, is a grid of horizontal and vertical lines used to monitor a person’s central visual field. The grid was developed by Marc Amsler, a Swiss ophthalmologist. It is a diagnostic tool that aids in the detection of visual disturbances caused by changes in the retina, particularly the macula (e.g. macular degeneration, Epiretinal membrane), as well as the optic nerve and the visual pathway to the brain. An Amsler grid can show defects in the central 20 degrees of the visual field.

In the test, the person looks with each eye separately at the small dot in the center of the grid. Patients with macular disease may see wavy lines or some lines may be missing. . . .

Wikipedia Entry

and:

Although originally intended for use in clinical settings, the Amsler grid has proven highly adaptable for home monitoring. Its portability and ease of use enable patients to participate actively in the management of their ocular health, allowing earlier detection of disease progression and more timely medical intervention.

the Amsler Grid in Everyday Practice

This idea of it being for use at home connects to my desire to use whatever materials and words I can find around me for this Holes series. There’s more there, I think.

I’d like to spend a few minutes (maybe later today or tomorrow morning) writing more about lines and grids and mapping and why it’s important to me, both in this series and in my understanding/description of my vision loss.

While looking for more on Amsler and the grid, I found out about Edward Munch and his vision loss at 60. As he was experiencing it, he drew a series of sketches/paintings, some with grid lines, some annotating the strange ways he saw. Very cool. Here’s more about it from a exhibit at the Tate. Is there a book for the exhibit and could it be at my local library? Yes! I just requested it.

april 5/HIKE

60 minutes
Minnehaha Off Leash Dog Park
40 degrees / sun

note: writing this entry on monday (6 april) morning because I was busy yesterday talking non-stop with my wonderful older sister who was visiting.

A wonderful hike through the dog park with FWA, AMP, and Delia. It was cool but felt much warmer with all the sun. More than once, I took a deep breath, sighed, and said, this feels so good — to be outside here, now! Delia was in her element, and so was I: hiking on a wide and open trail with people I love, having great conversations about storytelling and trees and other things I can’t remember.

overheard: a tween protesting to an older sister or mother or some adult — I really didn’t MEAN to reference 6 7! The older sister’s response — oh yes you did!

10 Things

  1. a pileated woodpecker calling out several times and in several different spots
  2. a few stretches of goopy mud with footprints
  3. a dalmatian — long and lean with bright white fur and dark spots
  4. a distant knocking of a woodpecker on some dead wood
  5. a woman, frazzled, calling out for her dog — Tubby or Toby or Trouble? (I couldn’t quite hear the name, even though she called it at least a half a dozen times)
  6. another dog’s name: Lola
  7. a tree graveyard — barren: mud/dirt, a few tall trunks with no branches or bark, half-sheared
  8. trying (and just barely succeeding) to locate Delia’s poop so I could pick it up
  9. a contrast in textures: first firm mud then hard dirt studded with rocks then loose, soft sand
  10. a full parking lot on Easter Sunday

Dalmatian: I mentioned to AMP that the concentration of melanin in a dalmatian’s spots can often cause hearing loss. I looked it up on a past log entry and discovered that I was approximately/almost right but also wrong:

Interesting fact from Scott and Mental Floss: 30% of all Dalmatians are deaf:

Around 30 percent of all Dalmatians are inflicted with deafness as a result of their spotted markings. Breeding dogs with this coat can lead to a lack of mature melanocytes (melanin producing cells) in the inner ear. Without these, dogs can become hard of hearing. Dogs with larger patches of black are less likely to be deaf. 

10 oct 2020

It was a wonderful sister visit. I was able to show my Holes series to AMP, who is an amazing visual artist, and get some helpful and exciting feedback. So many new experiments to try with layers and different types of paper. We talked a lot about the Amsler Grid. She suggested trying out graph paper or making my own graph paper by copying and enlarging my handmade grid, made on a loom with thread. Also: plastic sheeting — I like plastic sheeting because I have often described feeling like I’m seeing/experiencing the world through a plastic bag or bubble. And: stencils for the circles, which would make the tracing part easier. Oh — and she mentioned using something other than canvas for the backing because pins would not be stable. Wood was one of her suggestions — I could learn to cut my own wood (I know I could do it even with my bad vision, but would I want to?) and drill into it.

A thought: there is something significant about my reliance on found materials for this project. I’m taking the words from old New Yorker articles. I’m using my kids’ old craft materials — markers, pencils, glue sticks, yarn — and various things around the house for circles — a penny, dime, nickel, quarter, candle cap, 2 pill bottle caps (including the cap from my lexapro). My grid is made from old cardboard (a shoebox from my running shoes). I like the idea of making these found materials as part of the form/limits.

Crayons! I just remembered another thing my sister said. Crayons are fun to work with. She said a lot of stuff that I wish I could remember; here’s one thing I did: you can create thick layers with crayons that you can scrap off with a knife or a sharp edge or something. I would love to find a use for the ridiculously big bin of crayons we have in the basement.

A reminder: AMP reminded me that not all of the ideas might work in this series, but I can save them for other projects. A refrain to apply to any new idea/experiment: does it serve the message I am trying to convey? What is that message? More on that in the next post and after my Monday run!

april 2/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees / steady drizzle

The forecast, rain all day, but when I looked out my window it didn’t seem too bad. No ice, above freezing, so I decided to go for a run, which was an excellent decision. I was bundled up and barely felt the rain — well, I guess I felt my soaked socks and cold legs (through my running tights), but I didn’t care. It was wonderful to be outside, mostly alone, only a few other walkers and runners joining me.

Because of the rain, I was wearing an old pair of Saucony’s (3 or more years old?) and didn’t run too fast. That helped me stay relaxed and able to keep going for longer. Maybe I should train some more in these shoes and save my new ones for faster runs, races, and until I’m trained up to run longer?Everything was wet. My favorite wet thing was the slick mirror Godfrey Boulevard made from the rain and new asphalt. Very cool! I saw my running self, trees, and sky and I thought about the upside down world where they all lived.

10 Things

  1. the creek water falling fast over the limestone ledge on the bridge at the top of the falls
  2. the deep puddle I stepped in that I thought was only a reflection of light on the trail
  3. drip drip drip of water off the brim of my cap
  4. taking off my hood, folding the flaps of my hat, and hearing the steady patter of rain
  5. in through the nose 2 3 / out through the mouth 2 — 123/12
  6. a steady, almost invisible rain with the occasional big drop — plain rain or freezing rain?
  7. the lid of the toilet in the porta potty was wedged behind a bar and couldn’t be closed
  8. empty benches / mostly empty parking lots
  9. bright headlights cutting through the trees on the other side of the ravine
  10. running by the Horace Cleveland Overlook parking lot and seeing an animal care truck (another name for animal control?) — is there a wolf or a coyote or a bear in the gorge — it’s always possible; they’ve all been spotted before

worms after the rain

It’s raining now, but sometime later today or tomorrow or the next day, it will stop and the worms will appear on the sidewalk. Here’s a poem I found about those worms:

Advice/ Dan Gerber

You know how, after it rains,
my father told me one August afternoon
when I struggled with something
hurtful my best friend had said,
how worms come out and
crawl all over the sidewalk
and it stays a big mess
a long time after it’s over
if you step on them?

Leave them alone,
he went on to say,
after clearing his throat,
and when the rain stops,
they crawl back into the ground.

april 1/REST

It would have been nice to run today because it is supposed to rain and snow for the next few days, but my IT band hurt in the middle of the night, making sleeping more difficult, so I’m taking a break today.

A new monthly challenge: Worms / Bugs

After a month of only experimenting with Holes, I’d like to add in a monthly challenge: worms/bugs. This challenge is inspired by a few things:

1

Last week, standing on the deck and enjoying the warming weather while Delia did her final pee of the night (what we call the “final hurrah”) I started hearing this strange noise. It sounded like rain, but it wasn’t raining. Lots of somethings crawling, all over the yard. Could it be mice? I tried staring, but couldn’t see anything but dead leaves. Whatever it was, it sounded like it was right by me. I felt like Harry Potter spotting Peter Petigrew’s moving footsteps on the Marauder’s Map but not seeing him — except I wasn’t seeing anything, just hearing it. The next week, I heard it again and managed to convince Scott to come out and listen too. And, he heard it, and was as freaked out about it as I was! If it had only been me who heard it, Scott and the kids might have dismissed it as “Sara doing Sara things” (where doing Sara things = seeing things very strangely/fantastically/improbably or impossibly).1 But he heard it and did what he does when he can’t explain it: he asked Facebook. The answer: earthworms. Of course! We didn’t rake up any of our leaves last fall (on the advice of Minneapolis Parks or Friends of the Mississippi River) and the earthworms were making those leaves rustle as they moved through them. Instead of being grossed out, I find this realization delightful and delightfully freaky. Such a strange experience to hear the dirt/leaves/grass alive all around us!

2

I might not have thought to devote a month to worms if I hadn’t also picked up a book at the library 2 days ago that has an entire chapter on Bugs. In Sea of Grass, two environmental reporters write about the prairie — land that looks barren but is teeming with life. The book has a LOT of words (too many for my bad vision?), but it looks interesting. Without a way to focus, like a particular challenge to study bugs/worms, attempting to take on this book would be too overwhelming for me. So, I’ll start this month with bugs and Sea of Grass.

3

I didn’t think of this third inspiration until I started writing this entry: what living things do you often find in holes? Rabbits, of course, but also Bugs! and Worms!2

Bugs Bunny — writing this last sentence and putting rabbits and bugs together reminded me of Bugs Bunny. Why is he named Bugs? I looked it up: he’s named for the character’s initial director: Ben “Bugs” Hardaway (wikipedia).

In addition to reading the bugs chapter, I can imagine studying: some great worm and bug poems; the idea of light as an insect; Socrates philosopher as gadfly/pest; rereading Kafka’s Metamorphosis; more on monarchs.

holes

Oh, the fiddle and faddle of it all! Almost too much for me, I think. The stringing of the loom with thread, I mean. RJP and I went to Michaels and got a few supplies: more thread, a sharper box cutter, pins, and (RJP’s suggestion) some canvases to put the poems on so I can use pins to connect the words of the poem with thread.

This afternoon, I measured and cut out a 4.5 x 4.5 loom and glued a 4 x 4 grid on it. Then I threaded the loom — very tiring! I think I need a bigger square, ideally more hefty than card stock, but less bulky than regular cardboard — a shoe box. And, I need to make the slats for the thread deeper and more consistently cut. My cuts weren’t the greatest because I struggled to work with the box cutter on the cardboard. More practiced, I hope, will make it easier. Maybe I should also try practicing differently: not threading an entire loom, but experimenting with a few cuts first?

  1. I’ve been hearing this phrase, “X doing X things” a lot in reference to superstar endurance athletes being awesome — like when Taylor Knibb dominates a middle distance triathlon by ripping on the bike course and the announcer says, that’s just Taylor doing Taylor things, and I’ve been wondering how I might apply it to myself. I think it works here. I don’t see my Sara-way-of-seeing as bad; I like being strange and improbable! Could that be the title of a chapbook or full collection: Sara Doing Sara Things? Another phrase I’ve been hearing a lot on podcasts and race commentary in running and triathlon is: give her her flowers or he hasn’t gotten his flowers or they deserve their flowers. It’s a reference to the practice of giving a bouquet of flowers to someone after their concert or play or some sort of performance — they also give flowers to the winners of track races in the Diamond League ↩︎
  2. Hearing Scott’s um, actually in my head, I’ll add that I understand that bugs/insects and worms are not the same thing and that worms are not bugs. Maybe a better way to name this challenge is “creepy crawling things below the ground or near the ground”? ↩︎