Tag: 10 things

may 15/RUN

3.3 miles
river road, north/south
68 degrees

Whew. Went out early — before coffee or any food — because it was already 68 degrees. The warm temps and unfinished business made the run harder than it should have been. Still, it was a beautiful morning, especially when I was walking and feeling the breeze. A lot of attention was given to making sure I didn’t finally have the poop story that most runner’s seem to have, so was I able to notice 10 things? Yes!

10 Things

  1. the welcoming oaks — green and tall, difficult to see anything other than the trunk
  2. the tree that looks like a tuning fork
  3. light shining on top of ancient boulder, which was empty of rocks
  4. a parks truck under the lake street bridge, workers up in a bucket doing something to the bridge, listening to music — a familiar classic rock song — was it Hotel California?
  5. the river, the air were still, quiet
  6. a flash of a sound below — was that a coxswain?
  7. a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt
  8. the mitten tulips are still up, near the trestle
  9. two older white women, dressed all in black, discussing nutrition
  10. the sliding bench seems to have slid a bit more, the green beneath has grown thicker and greener

holes

Last night I had a thought: create a visual poem that uses the image of bugs pinned to a specimen board as a way to critically express the idea of words trapped in fixed meanings. But, which NYer essay, which found poem? This morning, another thought: use the essay about the New York cemetery (Hole 4 / Still Green) and part of the poem that I had previously cut. Yes!

draft, previously cut text:

you
can’t
exhume
the
bodies
but
you can
make
room
for
life
in this place
where
the dead
are
interred

crack
open a grave
with
a
new
way
of
seeing (or reading?)

inspirations: a specimen board + Alice in Wonderland, caterpillar scene

Here are some examples of the specimen board from an article about bug collections at Manitoba Museum:

boards at Manitoba Museum
specimen drawers
the collection before processing/pinning

I could imagine this as part of an installation, with the words/phrases cut out individually and positioned in a heap with a label identifying them. The second image has the specimen’s in a drawer. I’d like ot experiment with that too — O have a jewelry box that might work for that, and drawers from an old optometrist desk. Fun!

I mentioned Alice in Wonderland as an inspiration because of how prominent making language strange is in this scene. Also, the bug connection, and the butterfly at the end!

Alice, the Caterpillar, and the strangeness of words

I came up with this idea because pins seem to be playing a prominent role in my visual poetry. They started as the temporary way to achieve the effect I wanted, but at some point I realized that they were another character in my visual story.

The question now: do I work on this now, or keep working on my blooms? Sara-this-second’s answer is: blooms first!

blooms / 15 may

may 12/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
67 degrees

Woke up this morning and couldn’t believe how warm it felt. Is spring over, and summer here? I’d like the lake water to warm up, but I don’t want it to be this warm yet. Wore my summer (lack of) layers: shorts, tank top, baseball cap. Encountered lots of bikes whizzing by, at least 2 pelotons, too.

best biking moment: a biker passing another biker hauling a trailer with at least one kid who I heard laughing and yelling out in delight as they approached from behind.
kid in trailer calling out, Fun! as the biker passed.
passing biker: on your left then FUN!

I felt relaxed and unhitched from the world, floating. It was partly from the effort of moving this much under the warm sun, partly from my vision, and partly from the dreamy, surreal way the shadows of leaves-in-wind danced on the asphalt.

10 Things

  1. bright yellow vests on many of the bikers, a few walkers
  2. kids laughing on the school playground
  3. the white foam of the falls falling
  4. more bursting/blooming shadows
  5. the parking lots at the falls were blocked off — were they planning to repaint the lines, or trim trees, or what?
  6. a rushing creek
  7. the siren from an ambulance near the falls, uttering a half-scream every few seconds — warning cars to get out of the way?
  8. the smell of fertilizer on the ornamental grass near the wall with “Song of hiawatha”
  9. a dozen bikers stopped near the hill up to the ford bridge — as I passed them, I heard one say, is everyone ready?
  10. empty benches

I listened to the wind as I ran south, my “It’s Windy” playlist heading north. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze” / Seals & Crofts

holes — blooms

Woke up thinking about flowers and blooms and decided to watch the singing flower scene from Alice in Wonderland for inspiration. Less than a minute in, I found this flower, which I love. It’s orange and messy and more about texture than any fine detail. Can I replicate it on a page? Will it work? Can I put the text of the found poem in the center of it?

a shaggy flower -- a ball of orange in the center of the screen with a few petals looking sticking out like hair
an orange flower singing to Alice

And here’s that flower flanked by two others, just starting to sing. Instead of the mouths, the word of the poem?

an orange ball of a flower flnaked by 2 pink flowers
pink / orange / pink flowers singing

Okay, and here’s a different flower with the same general form (or is it the same flower?)

2 orange flowers, one with the face of a lion, the other a tiger
2 orange flowers / dandelion and tiger lily

note: it was only when looking at the similar thumbnail image that I was able to see the lion. I was struck by this image because of the spiky petals and the messy, but easily identifiable shape. I might be able to replicate this.

nonsense blooming

a few hours later: The bloom has gone through a number of iterations today. Where I’ve landed now is this:

  1. Noticed that an old notepad I have — from way back when I was teaching at the U, around 2010 — is bright orange and decided to use it in my blooms, so I cut out a circle of it to use as the base
  2. took a page of the essay and colored it in with orange colored pencil
  3. used my template for my blind spot and drew, then cut out, petals from it
  4. glued the petals on, then the word from the poem
big picture
closer-up

The problem: it doesn’t look good. Also the problem: Gluing and arranging the petals in/on the orange circle requires good working central vision, which I don’t have. The orange circle is the location of my blind spot, so everything that enters it disappears. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Maybe I should ditch the petals in the shape of my working central vision and try something else. But what? No petals? Petals made from words? Petals made from shedded paper with the words of the essay (colored orange) on it?

an hour later: I took a page of the essay and shredded it, then shredded a few small pages of bright ORANGE paper. Then, after some trial and error, decided on a new approach. I pushed individual shreds of the essay and the orange paper through a pin to create a “3-D” flower. Tomorrow I’m thinking of switching out the words of the poem in circles for the words enlarged and cut-out like I did for Hole 1: in the shape of a rectangle and glued in the space where they exist in the essay. Here’s the first, quick version of my flower:

word flower, made from shredded text and orange paper

I like this and, more importantly, I can execute it with my terrible central vision. I’d like to try making one that has even more shredded paper to see how that works.

Wow, this took a LONG time. How fun to waste so much time in such a glorious way! Whatever the finished product looks like to others, the process of experimenting and not listening to the Censor who tries to shut me down (saying, you’re not an artist! or you don’t make things! or people who can’t see don’t do visual art!), is such an important thing to do, particularly for me as I try to reclaim my agency in the wake of vision loss. Plus, I feel connected to my mom when I’m doing these things. She was an amazing artist. I wish she was still alive; she would have some great ideas for me!

may 11/HIKE

50 minutes
minnehaha off-leash dog park
53 degrees

Spring! Another beautiful dog park morning. Today it was calm and quiet, with a soft breeze. So many birds that I couldn’t identify. Soft sand, still water, no bugs. I talked about how great it would be to spend the entire day hiking then camping somewhere. No time or energy for worrying thoughts. FWA said that that was how band tour had always been for hime.

10 Things

  1. the soft knocking of a woodpecker
  2. a map of the dog park near a chain-link fence
  3. a dog named Rosie whose grandmother was named Rosie
  4. a HUGE tree trunk, stripped bare
  5. green crawling up trunks — new leaves
  6. big dogs suddenly appearing, running silenting through the trees at full speed
  7. a litte dog, also quiet, chasing Delia then running off, then chasing her again
  8. a field full of dandelions
  9. the very strong smell of poop suddenly — FWA and I both checked our shoes to make sure we hadn’t stepped in something
  10. feet sinking into soft sand, almost tripping on little rocks

hole 5a

My found text in the NYer essay, “Mystery Man” — a what is this? feeling grows as text blooms into nonsense — is the inspiration for my visual approach to Hole 5a. Each found word is the white center to a flower bloom made from petals cut out of the essay in the shape of my small, still functioning central vision. Yesterday, I cut out the petals (more practice with scissors! I’m getting better!) and the words. Today I need to figure out how to make the blooms. Here, making = creating an easy process for forming the bloom, gluing it together, arranging it on the pages, and affixing it to those pages. A key consideration: develop a process that is forgiving so that if I screw one bloom up I’m not screwing up the entire, 4 panel, poem.

With my vision, these blooms are much harder to create than I had anticipated. I can only see approximately how the should/could line up. Scott had a great idea: color them. Yes! I’ve decided to color the petals orange, using a colored pencil. Coloring them helps me to see them a little better, but I still need more practice on making them look good enough to use.

2 attempts at orange blooms

top: I had already glued the flower together when Scott suggested coloring them, so I had to color them as one.

bottom: I colored the petals separately, then glued them on a white sheet of paper, then glued on the word and cut the whole thing out.

More practice tomorrow. At first, I was discouraged at how hard it was to do this, and how bad my flowers looked, gut then I remembered I could practice and keep trying and they probably will look better.

I tried looking up “making paper flowers” online, but only YouTube videos came up, and those are almost impossible for me to follow with my bad vision. I’ll have to be more precise with my search. I decided to look up images of paper flowers — it was mostly screen shots from YouTube videos — and then I looked up images of flowers. A thought: My flower should be an easy, approximate shape — what about a circular shape with lots of small petals — this would be less about lining up petals abd more about texture.

Another thought: get inspired by looking up flowers. Find a shape that is visually interesting and that I can do! Yesterday, RJP got me flowers for mother’s day. Do any of these work?

mother’s day flowers

I don’t really think so. I’m excited to be curious about flowers tomorrow morning and find one that works for this project — and my vision!

a quick note: I just remembered how much I love globe thistles because they’re cool looking and because my mom liked them. I liked to try doing something with it! I just remembered that my mother-in-law bought me a wonderful book about garden flowers for mother’s day years ago. The globe thistle is in it, with a great picture!

the globe thistle /

may 9/RUNWALK

run: 7 miles
walk: 2 miles
around lake nokomis and back
52 degrees

A long run with Scott. The plan: run to lake nokomis and around it, stop at falls coffee, walk home the rest of the way. Falls coffee was too crowded, so we tried Aria instead. Very good. Most of the run felt good. We did 9/1, then at the lake run 1 mile, walk 1/10th of a mile. The last 1/4 of mile was the hardest. My feet hurt and my legs were sore. The walk back was hard — too long + not enough stretching. Now I’m icing my right knee, which is very stiff.

It was fun to run to the lake. It is the first time this year. Last night we walked to Minnehaha Falls, today we ran to Lake Nokomis. It’s officially summer, Scott said. Hooray! Less than a month until open swim. I couldn’t believe it, but the buoys are already up! Wow, that water must be cold!

Scott told me about a YouTube video he had recently watched: a biker discussing one way the people are stealing bikes, and how we almost fell for it. They lock their bike to your bike, then wait until it’s dark, then they cut your lock. How to avoid this: carry extra locks to buy some time, or try to find a police officer and get them to cut the lock off. Also: lock your bike in a public, clearly visible place, and don’t lock to a pole that someone might be able to lift or unbolt. I talked about my holes project, memories of past runs, and how June 1st (Scott) and June 2nd) will be our 15th running anniversary. I also returned us to a discussion from a few days ago about what it might have looked like when passenger pigeons covered the sky in the late 1800s. When I had described it a few days ago as “blotting out the sun,” Scott had said that that poetic imagery wasn’t accurate. Today I talked about how, when I’m swimming in the lake and a cloud covers the sun, it does feel dramatic and like the sun if being blotted out. We agreed that it wasn’t as complete as a solar eclipse, but that it probably made the sky darker. Like day for night, I said.

quick research after the run: Here’s a quote I found that describes this blotting out:

In the early 1800s, ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a single flock, which he estimated at 2.3 billion passenger pigeons, that blacked out the sky and took three days to pass overhead.

a review of A Feathered River

10 Things

  1. 2 of the pickleball courts were empty — is pickleball falling out of favor, or is there some other explanation?
  2. the lake water was blue and choppy
  3. halfway around the lake, a loud splash — was it a fish jumping out of the water, a duck diving down?
  4. running past Howe, noticing a plane ascending at (what seemed to me to be) a very steep pitch
  5. nokomis road at the spot that crosses the bike path was closed again — why? — last summer it was closed, too
  6. the little beach barely seems like a beach these days — the big tree, which offered so much shade, is gone, and the water has claimed half of the sand
  7. the condition of the path was terrible — big cracks marked with orange spray paint everywhere
  8. crossing the cedar bridge, near a light post, hearing this squeaking noise, we both wondered if the noise was made by a bird or the tall post
  9. no flowers yet at longfellow garden
  10. walking home, a memory flashed — the last time I remember walking home this way — after a run, with coffee in my hand, was on my birthday in 2021. I didn’t know it, but I had covid

note: we ran beside the creek for more than a mile, but I can’t remember noticing it at all. Was it high? Low? Babbling or gushing? I have no recollection.

holes

Today, I hope to finish drawing the numbers on Hole 5c (the hole process). I’m also working on Hole 5a (my hole perspective): life on the way to wonder land / a what is this? feeling grows / as text blooms into nonsense This version of the hole is referencing Alice in Wonderland and going down the rabbit hole. Do the images of the falling down a hole and blooms work together? Could I combine a page made dark with lines and thread with blooms of text? For the blooms, I’m thinking of making petals out of cut out words from the essay. I like this idea of texture; the blooms would stick out of the flat essay pages. Blooms/bursts/flares of light with the center of the flower being the word of the poem?

during the run: As I mentioned my ideas to Scott, I had another thought — what if the blooming was like my favorite spring shadows, the shadows of the little leaf explosions on the tips of branches. Instead of making those shadows dark, they would be bursts of white/light against the dark text?

As a place to start, I’m trying out slanted lines for darkening the text. Is this enough? I think I’ll try drawing in some more lines. An additional question: how will it look when all the panels are put together?

My hole perspective, lines 1

The white dot is where some wirds from the poem are on the page and the center of a future bloom.

I found a tutorial for making paper roses. It’s more than I imagine I’ll do, but a starting point for thinking how to create a bloom on the page.

ideas for blooming paper

I won’t use cardstock for my petals, but another print out of the essay. Will it work? Sunday (or Monday) Sara will find out!

I almost forgot. I signed RJP and I up for open swim!! It starts in a month.

may 7/RUN

3.4 miles
2 trails
52 degrees

52 in the afternoon is not warm enough for spring, but it was fine for my run. Sunny, still, beautiful shadows. All over the sidewalk: little explosions of shadow buds on the tips of branches. While on the upper trail I listened to my “Sight Songs” playlist, when I went below I listened to voices floating above, rustling below, and the warning cries of black-capped chickadees.

I took the lower trail through the oak savanna, past the ravine, up the gravel trail to the ancient boulder, down to the tunnel of trees, then down the old stone steps to the river.

10 Things

  1. rustling below — an animal, maybe a turkey? No, a human in a bright red jacket
  2. ruts and cracks all over the few parts of the lower trail that are paved
  3. green exploding everywhere, new leafs on a tree, pushing through the slats of the wrought iron fence
  4. voices of kids, playing at the school playground
  5. blue water
  6. tree shadows, some sprawling, some exploding
  7. a new layer of gravel
  8. ran through a small cloud of gnats and trapped at least two in my eye juice — yuck!
  9. very soft and deep sand on the small trail winding through the floodplain forest
  10. loose gravel on the hill out of the ravine, making it more challenging to run

more holes

Still playing around with how to visualize the different hole poems and how to introduce/present the different elements: word, line/string/thread, hole. A wild idea last night that I can barely imagine executing. For a poem in which I have a double grid — one grid drawn directly over the poem, another created out of thread elevated above it — I would use needles instead of pins for stringing the thread. Yes, this is ridiculous — if I’m doing the math right, that would be 84 needles to thread, which I will never have enough spoons for. But wait — what if I put 2 needles on the center dot and used pins for the perimeter? How would this look? I’ve been thinking of the needle as eye ever since I used the phrase, threading the eye of a needle. Hmm, that idea needs to simmer some more.

This morning, I returned to Holes 1 and thought about how to find the words on the pages of the New Yorker essay. This poem was the start of this w/hole journey, so I imagine it as an introduction to the series and to the key elements — in particular: hole = blind spot and line/string = lines of amsler grid. Sara this second has decided on this plan: a grid with my blind spot on it for each panel, drawn over the words of the poem / the words printed out on other paper, then cut out and pasted on top of the grid, each numbered / an additional grid with blindspot/hole drawn at bottom as key/for explanation. Here’s the first stage:

text with 4 grids, each containing a dark blob (my blind spot) and the words: another name for barely not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the word.
Holes 1 / phase 1 (7 may)

an hour or two later . . . Next, I drew on an Amsler Grid then glued on a caption and the title of the poem. I still need to draw the hole in my vision directly on the grid. This will require scaling the hole down. I’m thinking of trying out the Chuck Close grid method on another amsler then cutting it out and tracing it on the “real” one. That’s post-run Sara’s job.

holes 2 : phase 2, 7 may

I like it! I was able to (very) roughly approximate my hole to fit in the smaller grid, but I won’t post it here until it has been published somewhere.

may 6/RUN

4.7 miles
veterans home in reverse
42 degrees

Brr. Was glad I wore my winter tights this early afternoon. I almost wish I had had gloves near the beginning. Saw the parks crew out near the savanna, looking like they were getting ready for another controlled burn. Overcast, windy.

10 Things

  1. the smell of freshly cut grass somewhere — was it near Wabun, or was that at my last run through Wabun
  2. the top of a wooden fence, missing
  3. another fence top, broken and slanted
  4. gushing water below, 1: on the bridge connecting the veterans home and the river road
  5. gushing water below, 2: above the falls, the creek below
  6. gushing water below, 3: the sewer pipe in the 42nd street ravine
  7. shshshsh of the soft suface on the dirt trail next to the paved path
  8. the very LOUD monthly severe weather siren that blasts the first Wednesday of every month
  9. a few school buses in the falls parking lot, at least one group of people clustered above the falls
  10. empty benches

grids and holes 1

A favorite journal, Unlost, is open for submissions. They feature found and visual poems. I’d like to submit a few of my found poems, so today I started fine-tuning holes 1. First I finished drawing grids and my blind spot/hole on the panels of the essay:

holes 1 / 5 grids

I could keep all the pages intact, then place some plastic over all them OR I could cut out the grids, put plastic over each, then place them beside each other to create the poem. I also like the idea of the double grid with pins and thread. Maybe I’ll try the pins tomorrow (and maybe I’ll leave the plastic for non-hole poems?).

may 2/RUN

7 miles
lake superior boardwalk, duluth
37 degrees

An impromptu trip to Duluth with Scott. Our first trip alone since last April when we went to visit my best friend in Iowa. We need more of these. This morning, we ran together above Lake Superior through Leif Erikson park and 3 miles north, then turned around and headed back. As we ran, I told Scott that the theme of the run was water.

10 Water Things

  1. thin sheets of ice on the water! earlier from the window of our room, I had noticed the texture of the water and wondered what was causing the strips of rough water amongst the smooth stretches
  2. water gushing out of a sewer pipe embedded in a ravine
  3. crack crackle crackle the ice sheet butting up against the rocks near shore and cracking — such a cool sound!
  4. drip drip drip water dripping out of some pipe deep in a backyard
  5. the rushing of the creek under the high wooden bridge we ran over
  6. Lake Superior — blue and beautiful, one giant ship, anchored miles from shore
  7. drip drip drip sweat dripping off my face
  8. a pool of water on the floor of the port-a-potty
  9. benches dotted on the bluff, filled with people enjoying the view
  10. almost all of the ice gone — I thought all of it was, until I noticed a few sheets still on the surface as we walked up the steps after the run

While we ran, we talked about our kids and Star Trek and an article Scott had read about fraternal twin girls with the same mother but different fathers. I saw my shadow and started singing Me and my Shadow. Scott asked who had sung it and when I said, I wasn’t sure but I had a version with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis on my shadows playlist, he said, Sammy Davis Jr. is his shadow? Yikes. And I said, Jesus, how have I never noticed that before. Then a string of associations: I mentioned that they sang it on a tv special which led to a discussion of the Andy Williams Christmas special, then the kids in it, which reminded Scott of the scared kid on the Ray Coniff Christmas Special who hears a creepy story about a little gray lamb read to her by the guy who played Wilbur on Mr. Ed — Scott couldn’t remember the actor’s name. Scott started reminiscing about watching Mr. Ed with his mom on Nick at Nite, which prompted me to start singing the theme song from “The Patty Duke Show” — because, of course I would.

It was a good run, and a great mental victory. As I said to Scott, I’m excited to push myself mentally to run these longer distances. It is a wonderful feeling to successfully push through these tough moments.

a quick note about grids

Yesterday, while driving back from 2 Harbors to our hotel in Duluth we started talking about the show Alone and then what it means to be “off the grid,” Yes — another meaning of grids! How can I play around with this in my exploration of grids?!

april 29/RUN

4.65 miles
veterans home, reverse
47 degrees

Sunny, cool-ish. Overdressed in tights and my hooded pullover. Everywhere green and gorgeous. I was too dazzled by the green to notice the river. Was it sparkling? I also didn’t notice the falls — how hard and fast were they falling? I do remember giving a quick glance to the creek: gray, open, flowing fast.

When I wasn’t thinking about anything, which was much of the time, I thought about not running too fast and pushing through tough moments

10 Things

  1. a class-sized group of kids down in the oak savanna — running above, I heard their voices, then saw them hiking below the mesa on the winchell trail
  2. passing a guy on veterans bridge — I was about the say hi when I noticed he was talking into a phone
  3. the surrey kiosk is up — today, on a wednesday, it was empty and closed
  4. running down the locks and dam hill, passing a man, exchanging greetings — hello / hi
  5. encountering a series of bikers — spaced far enough apart that I wondered if they were together — the first two had bright headlights on
  6. from behind, the faint noise of bike wheels moving very slowly, finally passing — a woman very upright in a bright yellow jacket biking very casually
  7. explosions of white blossoms on some of the trees lining the trail
  8. a mower at wabun, the smell of freshly cut grass
  9. the parking lot at veterans home was crowded and full
  10. a moment: running just north of the 44th street parking lot — shadows then suddenly more light: a net or web of shadows, some sprawled, some with little circles at the tips (the buds of trees)

When I saw these shadows I stopped running, pulled out my phone, and took a few pictures. A thought: this net of shadows would be the grid/net obscuring the text of a NYer essay. I’ll have to play around with it. As I kept running, I thought about shadowboxes and silhouettes and playing around with them in a visual poem. I stopped twice more to take shadowed pictures.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

I decided to post all the pictures that I took so I could study them some more. I like imagining these shadows as a net or a veil, a weaving/gathering of threads/strings/lines that affect my view of what is beneath them. Here it is the sidewalk, on the NYer page, it’s the words.

a thought: I’ve been trying to create neat and precise (well, precise-ish) grids of lines to mimic the Amsler grid, but does that really express/show how I see, or how I feel about, the words as I try to read them? What if I drew a “normal” grid directly on the text and then made the grid elevated above it more slanted, askew, not straight or orderly?

a few hours later: I made another frame out of cardboard and then tried to turn it into a loom that I could thread a grid on. Unsuccessful. Too hard to cut the slats enough so I could wind thread through it. I’m not completely giving up on this idea, but I think I’ll take a break from it. A little discouraging, but that’s okay. I think I just need some time to build up the skills to figure it out.

april 26/RUN

4 miles
up wabun / down locks and dam
59 degrees
overcast

It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so I ran today. Warm — shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Spring! I ran south on the trail. Lots of bikers but no reckless biking. I almost wrote that I forgot to look at the river, or that I don’t remember what I saw when I looked at the river, but then I remembered that I noticed it at the bottom of the locks and dam hill. Blue-gray and choppy,

sight of the day: a little kid (2 or 3?) hanging over the edge of a part of the wooden fence on the edge of the hill leading down to the oak savanna, an adult holding onto them tightly. What can you tell from a scene while running of a little kid with their back to you? Not much, I guess, but it felt like the kid had a wonderful curiosity, and the adult with them was supporting/encouraging/safeguarding it.

running thoughts: I felt strong and more confident, having run the 10k race yesterday. I ran too fast — I need to slow down! After the run was finished my achilles felt a little strained or strange or both. One of my funning YouTubers has achilles problems and they keep them in check by doing calf raised after every run. Maybe I should try that?

10 Things

  1. smell: cannabis somewhere nearby
  2. a cardinal’s pew pew pew call
  3. a bike peloton (15-20 bikes) on the paved path
  4. someone on e-bike zooming by on the road
  5. more green buds
  6. some empty benches, some occupied
  7. someone on a bike biking alongside a runner — marathon training, maybe for Grandma’s Marathon?
  8. a white car speeding down the locks and dam hill, turning around, then speeding back up it
  9. gnats! one landing on my check near the edge of my eye — I could see a black spot in my peripheral vision
  10. the boot hanging off a stalk in a neighbor’s yard is still there, a month later

holes

Today I’m experimenting with different ways to visualize my Holes 4 poem:

you look at words. you don’t see the gaping hole. you see seltzer fizz and a nothing that is something not sharing its secrets.

First, I cut up a ziploc bag and made dots in it with a pencil. This looks like fizz or static or snow, which is cool. A problem: you can feel it, but you can’t really see it. How to make those marks show up? Then I cut the static ziploc into the shape of my blind spot — actually, I cut out 20 of them. It’s still not visible, but I like the texture and the idea of making the visual less visible. I think I’ll use these somewhere.

After spending some time with distressed ziploc bag and not getting anywhere, I tried a different approach. First, streamline the poem, get rid of the fizz, and get over the idea of trying to represent fizz or static. Here’s the new version of the poem:

you look at words, you don’t see the gaping hole, you see a nothing that is something not sharing its secrets.

When I shortened the poem, I was able to “find” it on four instead of six of the pages of the new yorker essay.

Next, instead of trying to make fizz, I decided to distress a new sheet of ziploc plastic with a criss-cross pattern. I really like it!

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I really like this way of distressing the plastic. And, it’s easy to do and to replicate! When I put it directly over the text of the essay, it didn’t obscure the text enough. Soon I realized that it needs to be at a slight distance. I keep coming back to the idea that these poems need to be 3-D. How should I do that?

april 25/RACE

6.4 miles*
falls to lake to ford to falls
Get in Gear
45 degrees / drizzle

*I started my watch before the start line and we didn’t take the tangents so we were weaving around the course.

A good start to marathon training. Probably By far, the slowest 10k I’ve ever run in a race (partly due to a port-a-potty stop 3 miles in), but Scott and I ran together, we felt strong, and we didn’t stop for any walk breaks. A big mental victory, especially in that last mile, which seemed to last forever.

Near the beginning of the race, as faster runners were passing slower runners, I had 3 people in a row clip my elbow as they ran by. I asked Scott, do I run with my elbows sticking out? He said no, but I’m not so sure.

I can’t remember what Scott talked about, but I remember talking about pro runners running with wide elbows to claim space on the track, and the music they played — My Way — at the house with the bleachers on the marathon route. I talked about past versions of this race — we run it at least 5 times, probably more. I remember we were talking about how many races we’ve run total. I guessed at least 50. Scott looked it up on his spreadsheet: 65.

Just before mile 4, an older woman rang a cowbell and chanted this:

Get/ in/ Gear/ x (4/4
You/ are/ get/ ting/ in/ gear (6/4)

It was awesome in its awkward earnestness and deadpan delivery. It prompted me to start chanting and talking about chanting with Scott. I did my classic triple berry chants for a few minutes. Scott said that doing this would drive him insane. I said that it helps keep me focused.

The last mile seemed to go on forever but I found some energy at the end to pick up the pace. It felt so fast, but it was really only about what I used to run as an average pace for an entire 10k. Wow, I have slowed down as I have gotten older.

10 Things

  1. the gentle tapping of rain on the port-a-potty roof
  2. little kids chanting, go! go! go!
  3. an enthusiastic woman behind me in the start corral responding to the announcers, how is everyone feeling? with a shriek
  4. the pavement was wet and felt slippery under my shoes
  5. several non-racing runners calling out to some runners, go mill city running!
  6. frequent big cracks in the asphalt
  7. crossing the ford bridge, hearing a white car continuously honking as they drove by us
  8. wild turkeys! in a yard — I didn’t see then, just heard another running point them out to someone and then another runner calling out to the turkeys, hey turkey! gobble gobble!
  9. feeling the rain falling mid-race and not caring
  10. nearing the finish line — not seeing it, but close enough to hear the crowd — hearing an air horn go off