Tag: 10 things

july 2/SWIM

3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

What a wonderful night for a swim! The first loop was smooth and fast. I felt like a boat, powering through the water, my feet little rudders. I’m not sure what happened during the second loop, but it was much tougher. Water trying to pull me down, 2+ foot waves crashing over me. Did the wind pick up? Whatever happened had stopped by the third loop. Calm again.

note: I’m writing this list the next morning because I didn’t have time last night.

10 Things

  1. blueish green water
  2. clear, and bigger than usual, bubbles being made by my hands — translucent
  3. mostly the light was not too bright, until it was — at one spot, not far after rounding buoy 3, light suddenly illuminated the water in front of me and I saw a thin strand of something — hair? — floating in front of me
  4. a flash of silvery white just below me — a fish?!
  5. my reoccurring optical illusion: swimming back towards the big beach, I kept thinking I was seeing the silhouette of a lifeguard on a kayak — it was there, out of the corner of my eye, but when I passed it, it was gone — was a lifeguard there, or something else that I was imagining was a lifeguard — another swimmer? the tree line? a far off boat?
  6. before open swim began, encountering a guy who called out, doesn’t this water feel great! Then he started singing a Backstreet Boys song — I don’t think it was “I want it that way” but I can’t remember
  7. nearing a far buoy, experiencing that strange effect of the buoy always appearing far away, and me feeling like I’m swimming in place
  8. passing a swimmer doing breaststroke, experiencing that irritating effect of the swimmer seeming to speed up and me feeling like it’s taking forever to pass them
  9. maybe because of the choppy water or the light making it hard for them to sight the buoys, several swimmers were doing a mix of freestyle and breaststroke — a few strokes of freestyle, then stopping to look, then a burst of breaststroke, then freestyle again
  10. as is often the case, the water was extra turbulent and more crowded around the final buoy — a cluster of swimmers nearing it at the same time*

*I like to refer to this section of the swim as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Mostly, I find it fun.

Earlier in the afternoon I printed out and posted the draft of a poem I wrote about 5 years ago that doesn’t quite work . . .yet. The current title: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. It’s about the joy I find in fighting the “waves” and the choppy water as I swim across and around the lake. The poem is up on my big cork board and I’m planning to gather together and post all of its references: facts about the lake, lines of poetry, the significance of particular words, etc. I don’t want to overwork the poem, but I do want to give a lot of attention to making it work. As I swam through the rougher water in my second loop, I thought about the poem and the fun I have in punching the waves and battling the spray. I prefer the waves crashing into me over the waves sucking me down. The former requires strong shoulders; the latter demands frantic kicks.

The overall vibe of last night’s swim was strong and steady. Stroke after stroke after stroke with little kicks beginning with my hips. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right and 1 2 3 breathe left and 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right and 1 2 3 4 breathe left. My feet, relaxed, shifting slightly to adjust my direction.

laked words / laked forms

written earlier in the day: Yesterday, while writing about an podcast interview with Moheb Soliman, I posed these questions, How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? I was reminded of that question, when I encountered what I wrote on 18 august 2025:

Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:

The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement. 

Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?

—

I imagine inklings as changing form slightly (line length, syllable count) depending on the type of water. On and in the lake, my inklings are 5 lines / 5 syllables because that is my stroke/breath pattern. It is different in a pool (I switch up my strokes more), and, if I swam in the sea, I imagine it would be different, too: shorter — 2 or 3 strokes, then a breath, as I navigated the choppier water.

The inklings in my chapbook aren’t just about a type of water, but are specific to one body of water, Lake Nokomis, and one organized activity in that water, open water swim club. I would like to gather details about open swim and the lake for my further reflections on my inklings.

Another thought that I don’t want to forget that I had while reading my entry from 18 aug: For this year’s “Swimming One Day in August” challenge (24 non-consecutive hours of swimming during the month of August, partly inspired by M Oliver’s poem of the same name), I want to return to time and clocks and being inspired by Endi Bogue Hartigan and on orchid o clock.

note: As I work on this, I am overwhelmed. I have so many ideas, so many experiments to try. It feels like I should write something BIG, but there’s too much to read to write to do. I’ve been trying Annie Dillard’s bird by bird method: slowly archiving one thing then another thing then another (see my How To Be project for my ongoing efforts). I think what I’d like to do now is something (fairly) straightforward: 1. Collect all of my summer/swimming log entries in one document 2. Do a rough edit (cut out non-swim and non-water bits) 3. Do another rough edit and another.

more HOMES / Moheb Soliman

walking a beach : moheb soliman

I’ve also typed in the text without the proper spacing, which is too fiddly to do on wordpress:

Walking a beach a drive away from Oswego

Algae break water webs of puce the shoreline lipstick left by
the lake on lovesick miles of napkin good-bye Fudgies snap your towels
of assy sand make the kids chase down the wrappers I’ll replant their
gutted hawthorn and piss off the beach fire from the driftwood
it’s time we got back to work consummate vacation fuck the lake
no love to salvage memories of drinking each other completely
empty of their taste better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating
with anything precious fenced the lifestyle we desired here
the zoos of microenvironments the patios crawling out of the mudflats with
the frogbit floating in impenetrable mats the glass pole dance of dusk
slick stage left just hold your liquor and keep down the zebra mussel-
sucking noise when the speckled black other shoe drops just look away
vacate the promises

2

As I read this poem, and some others in the collection, I thought about something else Soliman said in their interview:

And as far as the writing and the editing, you know, I just am such a convoluted writer sometimes and like I feel like a really sometimes poetry from your writing is like a problem solving, you know, like, how do you just stack this house of cards up enough to sit and just back away before it falls down?

Just enough to not collapse. This idea reminds me of a game I play with myself: how much data/information do I need to “see” something? The version of this game that I play in the water is: how many times do I need to sight the orange or green buoys in order to stay on course? The answer: not many! I’d like to play this game on land, with words. How little can I write/say and still communicate how/what I’m seeing or feeling or experiencing? Beyond a game, as my vision continues to decline (the end point: no more central vision) and my ability to read decreases, I must rely on fewer words. I want my poetry to reflect that economy.

experiment: Take an existing poem that I’ve written and try to take as much out of as I can without it losing its meaning. I think I’ll start with a favorite poem that has never quite worked: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. A further thought: put the poem on my board, along with all of my thoughts, log entries, poems/lines from others about it. Gather as much information as possible, put it on the board, then condense it. Condense!

Poet’s work/ LORINE NIEDECKER

Grandfather   
   advised me:
         Learn a trade

I learned
   to sit at desk
         and condense

No layoff
   from this
         condensery

What a master of condensery L Niedecker was!

2 — better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating
with anything precious fenced

acrid pics — looked up acrid to double-check meaning: “strong, sharp, unpleasantly biting smell” and “bitter in language/feeling” — tried to remember, did polaroids smell? Yes, a distinctive warm, chemical smell. Is his use of acrid here a deliberate conjuring of polaroids? I grew up with polaroids, and using the word acrid offers a much more visceral reader response than just pics or pictures. And acrid as bitter — some regret over what happened/didn’t happen on those summer trips, over not being on vacation anymore?

anything precious fenced — here I’m thinking of Alice Oswald’s description of the sea as unfenced in Nobody: “If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. ” And, I’m thinking about lucille clifton’s “unfenced is” in “All Praises.”

I’m also thinking about Soliman’s own critical (as in, seemingly negative) use of the word “precious” in his interview:

I was just doing a lot of, like, site, I don’t know if the word would be site-specific writing, you know, just writing on the go, you know, like showing up and wanting to capture a place and not feeling too precious about capturing it because really being there was so, like, sublime, you know, it was just so amazing and seeing such, like, really beautiful hidden pockets of the Midwest and, you know, these, like, oceanic spaces, you know, where you wouldn’t think, you know, Michigan would offer that or something.

and

A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.

Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?

july 1/RUNSWIM

4.6 miles
veterans home
74 degrees / drizzle?
humidity: 89%
dew point: 69

Woke up at 6 am to get in a run before it rained, then heard thunder. Bummer. Had to wait until 9. When I left, the sun was coming out but a mile in, the wind picked up. Did it start drizzling or was that just dripping trees? I think it was a little of both.

It was hot and difficult and I wasn’t sure how much I’d be able to do when I started — 2 miles? 3? — but then I just kept going and it kept feeling a little more doable. Just make it to southern entrance to the Winchell Trail. And, just make it to the locks and dam parking lot. And, just make it to the top of the Wabun hill. Once I got to the top and kept going through Wabun park, there was no turning back, just through the grounds of the Veterans home and over to the falls then north on the river road to home.

10 Wet Things

  1. big puddles on the sidewalk
  2. smaller puddles on the path
  3. muddy ruts
  4. dripping trees
  5. dripping ponytail
  6. soaked shirt
  7. roaring falls
  8. gushing sewer pipe
  9. whooshing wheels
  10. damp face

Early this morning, while making breakfast, I listened to a podcast interview with Moheb Soliman whose book, Homes, I’ve just started reading. Love it! I think I’ll buy this book as a birthday present to myself!

In the interview, the interviewer mentions another poet who I’d also like to check out: Cecily Nicholson. Cecily Nicholson: interview + book, Crowd Source

Also in the interview, Soliman reads several of his poems, including this one:

Great Lake Swamp come heavy-use wetlands:
powers of Toledo origin song

Who let this wetland wet / Who cut this little inlet / Laid the hill for golden
hours / Fit the logs with the salamanders / Foretold the lichen and the mosses
/ Who offered the wildlife crossing

Along this promenade I sing / about how the world’s made / my behorned
serenade to nobody but

Who wet this aggregate / Who raised this bamboo deck / Who had these
grasses mown / Who made the birches grow in groves / Who made this prairie
seric1 / Carved out a space for heron

This is my behorned little dirge / I sing along this little bridge / about how this
little world’s birthed by no body but

Who left this river wet / Sowed the embankment / Set the grade for the slope
of the island / Spawned the minnows to feed the walleye / Who knows the
ripples till flood / Who reads teh dried-out flats of mud

About how the world’s mocked up / I sing along this ply boardwalk / This is
where the trombones stop

for nobody / By no body but / you local / No melody but vocals / As is / La la /
La li / La las / La lis / As is

Who let this wetland wet? I love all of these question about the creating of a place. I frequently think (and ask) about how the paths I run on, the lakes I swim in, were made what they are by people, particularly the city of Minneapolis and Minneapolis Parks. For years, I’ve been studying the documents and the places to find evidence of this creating and shaping.

Before reading the poem, Soliman says this:

And this is a big part of our discourse right now that, you know, humans aren’t separate. I mean, I have a really hard time kind of following that to the end, because I do feel that there’s a profound difference in how much we are able to control and shape that world to the point where we’re not really a part of it in the same organic way that so many other parts of it are, you know, and a lot of the poems like sometimes absurdly, you know, and I mean, I could even read some of those like, but absurdly play with that idea that, you know, we created this place, you know, the hiking trail, like it is actually, it’s not just some natural path.

You know, there’s a lot that has gone into making you feel that you are here at one in a harmonious, quiet moment in the woods or on the lake. And, you know, so our hand is like so strong in those places, and it would be really, like, naive to just write a poem about being out in the woods without also being aware about, of how we came to that place, and how humans are really, uh, yeah, sort of different and yet a part of.

Commonplace interview with Moheb Soliman

I was prompted to find this interview because I wanted to hear Soliman read his own poems; I hoped that might help me understand the strange spacing of the lines. He addresses this desire directly in the interview:

A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.

Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?

Yet, I still love, like, the wordplay of, like, enjambment, and, uh, so, I came to a point where I thought, well, either all of these have to be these text blocks, or they just all need to go to lineated. And I spent a lot of time, like, reworking so many of them into these text blocks. And at one point I was really terrified that, like, I’ve made the reading experience really hard for people.

I don’t know, because to me, I’m just so familiar with them. They’re really, I see them in my head and I understand how they move, like, you know, orally, you know. So, it’s part of the reason I, like, really appreciate the chance to read them, because I feel like if I can just get my voice into someone’s head about the book, it’ll just make the rest of the experience, you know, easier.

Very helpful to read this, and to hear him read his own poems. The next thing he says is also helpful, and is sparking some new thoughts on (my) forms:

A friend of mine kind of made this interesting point where they sort of, like lakes, like on the page. They just kind of pool there with some like, gaps. And I think she was kind of first saying how the poems have a real flow. And then we were talking about how poems sometimes really feel like rivers, you know, and without really meaning to, I kind of forced these to have a bit more of like a lake, like, you know, here they are, in one place, and there, there’s the pooling, you know, that’s happening.

Oh — I want to think about this some more! How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? They settle, shimmy in place . . . . This question is an excellent one to think about and to go back into my log to find some answers!

a few minutes later: they sink and sour and are stuck, still, stagnant, unstirred. Could it be that lakes, more than oceans or seas or rivers, are about what’s at the bottom, what sinks down, unmoved by currents? Stale and stymied. Layered and sedimented, cyclical – circular

plastic project

Since March, or was it April?, I’ve been collecting the plastic that we use for some unspecified future project. It started with old freezer bags, but expanded to include grapefruit, zucchini, and mini cucumber bags. Now I have sandwich and pita bread bags and the plastic bags that covered the new fan I recently bought. My favorite one: the plastic shell my new googles came in, which looks like another pair of clear goggles.

Definitely in April, I began deconstructing the freezer bags — cutting off the bright blue (zip) locking part, cutting open the clear plastic, then cutting out the white label. Last week, I decided I wanted to use the blue zip lock parts for some sort of visualizing of the lake. Maybe a big map of a lake nokomis loop? My first thought was to connect the strips together with thread or tape, but that didn’t really work. This week, another idea: shred the plastic! I tried to do it in the paper shredder, which would have shredded it almost instantly, but that wasn’t working. So, instead, I’m using my mother-in-law’s old silver scissors and snip snip snipping the strips. This snipping labor is reminding me of the satisfaction I got in the winter from drawing and shading in circle after circle on my New Yorker essays. There is something therapeutic about using my hands in this repetitive task, but also something that encouraged deep, creative thinking. These blue plastic strips are also satisfying to scoop up and sift through my fingers. Will these plastic blue shards become part of my map, or just the process that leads me to that map? Time will tell.

from the zip on a freezer bag to shards of blue lake
  1. seric = silk ↩︎

A few other thoughts:

As I cut up these little shards, I thought about all the plastic that ends up in the lake and an ocean and my organs and tissues and bodily fluids. Yikes!

As I accumulate more and more plastic I wonder: how can I stop using so much plastic? First step: stop using ziploc bags for storing my half used produce! Make my own bread? What else?

Telling Scott about my shards last night, he suggested trying to (just barely) melt them. In one of my bouts of insomnia I looked it up and found some suggestions, but not for what I wanted. In the various sources, toxic fumes was brought up more than once. Also: homemade shrinky dinks.

They are not the same texture, but I have some great green plastic — from zucchini and cucumber bags, and from the plastic wrap on two olive oil bottles. I’d like to mix some bits of them with the blue and see how that affects the color. Could I melt these together?

swim: 3 loops (6 mini)
cedar lake open swim
84 degrees

A calm and warm lake! Wonderful for swimming. I did 6 cedar loops without stopping. or only stopping mid-lake to adjust my nose plug. I noticed orange and pink buoys. Was mine the only yellow one? A few vines wrapped around my head and shoulders as I returned to the first buoy. The water was green-ish. The only fish I encountered were little minnows near shore. My bubble friends trailed below and in front of me.

overheard, one lifeguard to another — I told him he needed to head over to lake nokomis to pick up his swim cap.

A uncapped swimmer was out in the middle of the lake, some more uncapped swimmers were lurking at the far orange buoy.

Anything else? I felt strong and smooth, and often the swimming seemed effortless. Even so, I was glad to be done at the end of the 6th loop.

june 29/WALKSWIM

walk: 50 minutes
to loons coffee and back
79 degrees
humidity: 89%

The heat wave has hit. I had planned to get up early and run this morning, but when I checked the weather and realized that it would already be 76 degrees with almost 90% humidity at 6am, I decided to skip it. As I get older, my tolerance for heat gets worse. So, instead of running, Scott and I walked to Loons for a birthday coffee.

10 Things

  1. some screeching bluejays
  2. the feebee of a black-capped chickadee
  3. a willow in a yard bent over the sidewalk in a arch, creating cool, green shade
  4. a cacophony: 2 bus ticket machines beeping and calling out warnings beside each other, a woman yelling — this is annoying the shit out of me! — at her companion who had pushed the buttons too many times
  5. acquiring a sheen of sweat before reaching the coffee shop
  6. the sharp, truncated bark of a dog somewhere far off
  7. walking by a pick-up truck, hearing a man inside the cab call out, it’s siesta time! — later learning from Scott about the things I didn’t see: 2 construction workers sprawled out on scaffolding in the back of the truck, looking at their phones
  8. the loud buzz of a chainsaw, orange cones blocking off a street: someone getting a tree trimmed or removed
  9. the cottonwood three: 3 gigantic, towering cottonwood trees in the front yard of a 1950s rambler on the triple (or more) sized lot
  10. a bit banner draped across a neighbor’s fence: I’m not mad at you (Renee Good’s last words)

a response from minneapolis aquatics!

Since open swim began, I’ve been frustrated with the amount of milfoil at the beginning of the swim course. Frustrated, and a little anxious. I thought about complaining to open swim. I also wondered if it was even worth saying anything. Then I decided to contact Aquatics and ask about when and if they would be harvesting the milfoil this summer. I ended my email with, I deeply appreciate all that you do to make it possible for us to swim across the lake, and I meant it. I love Minneapolis Parks and I love open swim. I wasn’t sure if anyone would respond, but they did this morning. A long email outlining the different steps they’re taking to alleviate the problem, including another round of harvesting with SCUBA divers and possibly enlisting lifeguards to help. Can the milfoil be controlled? I’m not sure, but it helps to know that they recognize the problem and are trying to do something about it.

swim: 1.5 loops
cedar lake open swim
92 degrees / wind: 17 mph

Very choppy water, which I don’t mind, but I also don’t want to pull a muscle by working too hard to stroke through it, so I only did 3 cedar loops tonight. The water was warmer; I didn’t feel cold at all when I was done. Hooray! I mostly breathed every 4, with the occasional 5 or 3 or 2. Almost always on the right. The beach was very crowded and the vibes were very Cedar. Wading in the water, I could smell weed somewhere nearby.

10 Things the Wind Did

  1. open swim was delayed by at least 5 minutes because they couldn’t get the buoy to stop drifting away
  2. it was also delayed because the lifeguard was struggling to swim back with it in the heavy chop
  3. runners coming in at an angle, 1: the first half of the loop, they were at my back, which sometimes made it easier to swim and sometimes didn’t
  4. runners coming in at an angle, 2: the second half of the loop, I mostly swam straight into them, which made it harder to breathe and to stroke and to see anything
  5. with barely any visibility, I got very close to swimming straight into 3 women — I felt the current their kicking legs made in time and was able to shift my angle
  6. big splashes and sprays from flailing arms
  7. returning to point beach at the end of the second loop, trying to round the buoy, noticing it moving away from me: it had come untethered from the anchor — I gave up and didn’t try to loop around it
  8. returning to point beach at the end of the third loop, I saw that orange buoy way out and off course
  9. leaking goggles, dislodged through the force of waves battering my head
  10. only 3 loops today: too tiring to do more

A great birthday swim! I like swimming in choppy water, especially at the end of my June when I’ve built up my shoulders from 20+ miles of swimming already.

june 27/RUN

6 miles
veterans home + extra
64 degrees

Another beautiful morning. Quiet, calm, low-ish humidity. Ran on as much soft dirt as I could find, which helps my feet. Ran for 12 minutes straight, then 90/30 for the rest — with an occasional 2 or 3 minutes of running thrown in. My legs felt strong and bouncy. My feet started hurting around mile 4. I need to figure this one out. I think it’s mostly warts — yuck! — a few on the ball of my feet, one or two on or under a toe.

10 Things

  1. a coxswain’s voice, down in the gorge
  2. the dirt trail on the grass between lena smith and the river road was narrow and overgrown
  3. nearing locks and dam no. 1, voices somewhere in the trees — on the upper trail leading to the ford bridge
  4. ding ding ding ding ding the recorded bell from the light trail train passing through a intersection
  5. the soft roar of the creek far below me as I crossed the tall bridge that connects the veterans home to the park
  6. a glimpse of the trail Scott, RJP, and I hiked yesterday evening through the trees, below
  7. mostly empty benches
  8. a few e-bikes on the trail, going way too fast
  9. glanced over at the statue of Big Feet/Gunner* when I turned to run through the archway near the falls
  10. surfaces: asphalt, concrete, dirt, roots, brick, sand

*I looked up Gunner on this log because I knew I had written about him. A fun coincidence: I wrote about him on June 27th, 2021! “Ran south on the river road trail past the falls and stopped at the big statue just past the pergola garden. When I would walk or bike the kids over here, about 10 years ago, we (or was it mostly me?) called this statue “big feet” because all the kids could see was his big feet. There was also a little feet (John Stevens)–a much smaller statue not too far way. Today I wanted to find out who Big Feet actually was. I assumed he might be someone connected to Fort Snelling–Zebulon Pike or Snelling or Franklin. Nope. Gunner Wennenberg, a Swedish composer, poet, and politician. This statue was erected on June 24th, 1914.”

Found this bit about names on Poetry Daily (poems.com):

A name is a word but not a word. Some words are names and some names are words. When you’re alive your name means you; sometimes it means the you you mean to yourself; more often the you you are to each person who knows you well enough to use it. If it’s a word, it also means what it means as a word in the mouths of people who don’t know you, and also sometimes in the mouths of people who do know you. When you’re dead your name means you until the people who used it are all gone and then it means pure sound (if your name was not a word), or it goes back to meaning what the word means (if your name was also a word).

Danika Paige Myers on Grave Markers

june 26/SWIM

4 loops
lake nokomis open swim
66 degrees

Wow! A beautiful morning for a swim. Mostly smooth water, a little warmer, sun. I felt strong and relaxed. I avoided the milfoil again by swimming out from the middle of the swimming area, closer to the last green swim buoy. I had to pass over some ghostly vines, but they weren’t tall enough to bother me. I couldn’t see the 2nd orange buoy until it was almost right in front of me (as usual). I thought about how many years — and loops and strokes and kicks — it has taken me to get used to trusting myself and my shoulders and not worrying when I can only see water and sky and generic trees. Occasionally I encountered other swimmers and the lifeguards. I don’t remember seeing any birds or dragonflies or military planes.

What did I think about? 10 Things

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left
  2. through black then cold red then cold brown then warm, giving water the full size and weight of myself in order to imagine it (A Oswald, Dart)
  3. why is that orange buoy (tethered to a swimmer) swimming so far away from the next green buoy? are they off course, or is it my strange sense of the path in the water?
  4. when you can’t see the buoys, use the direction that your sparkle friends are floating as a guide (which is really the angle of the sun — I think — as it illuminates the particles and makes them sparkle
  5. he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in (A Oswald, Dart)
  6. I should recite more water poems next time — but not, M Oliver’s “Swimming One Day in August” — that’s reserved for August
  7. out here, in the middle of the lake, I am not alone, but I feel alone, both singular and not — not human, but water or fish
  8. should I get out and go the bathroom? (yes, and I did, after loop 2)
  9. is that another swimmer or a wave? (a wave)
  10. (as I approached the last green buoy) I thought about being trapped under it by other swimmers as I rounded it — not in this lake, today, because they’re weren’t many swimmers, but if I were in a open swim race with serious swimmers

I saw my sparkle friends and some swan boats and sail bots on the edge of the lake. I felt the cold water on my fingers, a slimy vine on my shoulders. On the sand, near the lifeguard stand, the air smelled like a farm pasture — the faint scent of manure. And I heard a tinny chime several times on the back stretch of loop 2. I wondered if it was my watch — no, my watch doesn’t chime like that. Was it someone else’s watch? A far away boat? Water does strange things to sound.

I love morning swims at Lake Nokomis! Everything is a little quieter, calmer. Today, Scott came with me and ran his 10 miles. I finished before he did and was able to sit on the sand and take in the lake and the beach and beauty of late June afternoon.

encounters with others

As I exited the water to walk over the bathroom, a guy asked me about the quality of the water and how deep it was. It’s great / probably about 12-15 feet where we’re swimming.

Walking out of the bathroom, heading back toward the water, a man asked, excuse me, I signed up for open swim club. Where do I pick up cap?

Exiting the water after loop 4, a little kid called out to me, Isn’t this great? I love playing in the water!!

Bark bark — officially there are no dogs allowed on the beach, but there was one today, barking a greeting to swimmers as they exited the water — hello friend!

Here’s a photo Scott took of the final green buoy as we sat at Painted Turtle after my swim:

the final green buoy of a loop at Lake Nokomis

I wanted to add a new poem in this entry, so I searched, “aquatic plants” on poems.com and found this great prompt in Orchid Tierney’s EcoPoetry Now essay about her poem, “a field guide to future flora”:

Writing Prompt

this field guide began with a series of interviews with random plants—including artifical flowers—that I encountered on my daily movements—in my garden, on the street, in parks, at work, on the Amazon digital store. I read these interviews as an exploration into the breach of an alien consciousness. look, vegetal life may exceed our capacity to comprehend but these life forms still demand that we listen. perhaps their particular modes of communication travel at scales too slow for our species to register. but those unnamed flowers in your garden—perhaps the little ones, blue and purple in their faces that nudge into dirt—have demonstrated a special kind of intelligence to do so. if you sat down to interview these strange kin on your lawn, what would you say to them? what would they say in return? this is not a metaphor. go on. sit. listen. you have to watch them for a very long time.

Orchid Tierney’s EcoPoetry Now essay about her poem, “a field guide to future flora”

I’d like to try this with the Eurasian Milfoil at the edge of swimming area. My questions would be spoken in my head, not out into the water. Maybe I’ll bike over early one morning? What do I want to ask this milfoil? What might it want to tell me? An initial thought: Eurasian milfoil is an invasive species, brought to North American sometime in the late 1800s or early 1900s on the hull of some boat (I’ll double-check that — just checked. I had recalled reading somewhere that it was brought by a boat, but this helpful resource, There’s more to milfoil, offers another, equally vague explanation: “Eurasian watermilfoil was brought to the U.S. as an ornamental plant decades ago. The state first became aware of it as an invasive plant in the 1970s.”

Orchid Tierney’s entire essay is awesome, offering many ideas to ponder. They begin with this line, what if, as Maureen M. McLane suggests, we are already preplant?

Preplant?! I tried to find the source of this question, but couldn’t. I did find McLane’s collection, This Blue, and requested it from my local library. Maybe the question is in there? Regardless of where they ask it, I like this question. It makes me think of Lorine Niedecker’s and Alice Oswald’s discussions of us as being distilled to our animal -vegetable – mineral selves — or something like that; I’ll have to search for the lines later.

a mapping

I cleared off my bulletin board for the summer, wanting to come up with swim and water things to cover it. An idea: what if I create a map of the open swim circuit on it? I could include the orange and green buoys, the patches of milfoil, specific locations of inklings + other things I experience in that water. Yes! This sounds fun!

to remember and add to my How to Be project

Found this useful discussion of naming thing in an interview with Maureen McLane about This Blue. I wanted to archive it here, and find where I write about naming on my “How to Be” project.

HM: This Blue seems very interested in how language changes the way we inhabit a landscape. Its first poem contains those lines, “Take it up Old Adam—/every day the world exists/to be named,” and in later poems there are trees that are said to go unnamed, or wildflowers that have forgotten their names.

MM: I think it’s very interesting—what it means, say, to come across the name for a plant in French. Part of this question of naming and place aligns with my interest in English as a big and actually multilingual instrument. I guess I really do subscribe to the notion of language in general, and names in particular, as having a kind of spell-like or incantational or incarnational potentiality. That’s a pretty archaic and powerful trope. I was not a person who grew up knowing the names of almost anything. I often encountered things first verbally and only then in the world.

Actually, Jamaica Kincaid talks about this, in another key, in her book Lucy, where the heroine talks about having Wordsworth shoved down her throat—his poem about daffodils. Our heroine is from the West Indies and she’s in New York as a nanny, and her employer wants to take her to Central Park and show her all the daffodils. This is the first time Lucy’s seen actual daffodils, and Lucy’s incredibly annoyed with this bourgeois white woman who’s trying to have her say, “Isn’t that beautiful?” So I think that, (a) Kincaid is amazing, but (b), another way to think about it is that words are as palpable as things. A lot of my poems might be working through that: how we can feel that way, and how naming both honors things and lets them blossom, but how names may not be the only, or very efficient, way for talking about energy in the world.

Learning the name of a fungus could really anchor you in a region; certain words for trees could conjure something about the American Northeast. But somebody like Wordsworth, for all his yammering on about nature, apparently couldn’t tell one bird from another. So I sort of feel like my interest here both is and is not about being an actual naturalist. There are a lot of ways to anchor oneself in the world. For me, it tends to be a linguistic anchoring.

Talking with Maureen McLane, author of This Blue

june 25/RUNSWIM

10 miles
ford loop + hidden falls + veterans home + falls + locks and dam
60 degrees
humidity: 80%

10 miles. It’s been a few years since I ran 10 miles. I just looked it up and, according to my records, it’s been since Sept 29, 2024. That’s a week before the marathon. Wow. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t fast. My feet really hurt in the last mile. And I did it. And I feel good about it. More than good, great. These long runs are really helpful for me as I try to work on my mental strength and endurance.

Yesterday I was listening to Kara Goucher giving advice on her podcast. What I remember her saying is this: find something positive to focus on for each stretch. Don’t allow yourself to think about what’s going wrong; think about what you are doing right. For many of the running stretches I felt strong and bouncy and in a dreamy state. Not sure I’d call it a flow state, but a state of non-thinking. Of being.

When I was thinking, I thought about my running. In the last three miles, I thought: I need to be particularly intentional in these last miles of my long run to not let it fall apart. I need to work at keeping to my schedule of walk runs. Keeping to this schedule should be something I work on in future long runs.

my route

My route took me many different places: through the neighborhood, past the daycare at the church, over the lake street bridge, beside shadow falls and the monument, on the edge of the new Highland bridge development, just above Hidden Falls, next to a skate park, over the ford bridge, past Wabun and the splash pad, through the veterans’ home grounds, behind the John Stevens’ house; above the falls, back up to wabun, down to the locks and dam no. 1, then north on the west river parkway. There was lots of shade and only a few stretches of direct sun. It was cool and overcast for the first half, a little warmer and sunny for the second half.

10 Things

  1. one rowing shell out on the river — I noticed in my peripheral as I crossed the lake street bridge — kept trying to see it in my central vision, but never could
  2. a woman’s voice at the construction site for home being renovated — she said something like, they’ll be here to hook up the garbage disposal — is that what she said? I can’t quite remember
  3. the soft shushing of my feet as they stuck the soft dirt then slid backward
  4. music blasting from a bike
  5. the soft rushing of water down the channel under the bridge that leads to a hidden falls overlook
  6. a ladder at an angle, leaning against a house, reaching a window on the second story
  7. the hum of skateboard wheels, a flash of a skater behind me, the sound of the board flipping as the skater went up a ramp
  8. a woman sitting on a bench near the veterans home, reading something
  9. 2 people, close together, on the little bridge overlooking the falls, taking a selfie
  10. the thwack of the flag rope hitting the pole in the wind

For the first mile, I listened to the traffic, then I put in Olivia Rodrigo’s new album. I listened to it 3 times as I ran. They lyrics I remember most come from the song “Expectations”: past mistakes are just new information

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
74 degrees

I entered and exited the swim course at the other end of the beach and avoided the worst patches of milfoil. Only a few ghostly vines not quite reaching my toes. Nice. I like starting there, much closer to the last green buoy. It’s less crowded and it shifts where and when a new loop begins. At least, this is what I thought as I swam the second loop and reached the second orange buoy, which was now the third buoy I swim by in a loop and not the second.

The water was a little warmer, or I was. Whatever the reason, the result: no freezing feet or fingers. I witnessed lots of bubbles, some menacing swims, lifeguards that were too close to the buoys, forcing me to take sharper angles around them. No fish seen below, one bird, flying low with its wings spread wide, above, a duck near the shore as I swam into the beach. Two little girls, chasing after it.

Overheard: one of the girls to the other — then he picked it up with his bare hands and threw it!

Overheard: one kid to another, on the beach — how old are you? Eight, you’re eight?!

A big exercise day today. Almost 1500 active calories. 10 miles of running, a mile and half of swimming. It felt good.

june 22/SWIM

3 loops (6 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
77 degrees

Summer! A beautiful night for a swim. Hardly any wind, warm sun. There were lots of swimmers with yellow and pink buoys. Someone was playing dance music over at Hidden Beach. As I rounded the far buoy during loops 5 and 6, I did several breaststrokes so I could listen. A few very long milfoil vines stretched up from the bottom, which is much deeper than lake nokomis.

I recited some of my favorite lines about swimming from Alice Oswald’s Dart. He dives, he shuts himself in the deep soft-bottom silence — I forgot to recite the next line, which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous — and jumped ahead to, he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shuts and the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. I couldn’t quite remember how the next line started, but now I do: Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts. Love those lines!

10 Things

  1. a swimmer wades in the shallow water near the buoy waitint — to warm up? to get the courage to swim across? to take in the beauty of an early evening?
  2. bubble friends! more of them, below me
  3. a tapping on my toe as I rounded the far buoy — was it another swimmer? a fish? something else? who knows
  4. music, laughter, lots of chatter at hidden beach
  5. all I could sight on the way out was the red kayak of the lifeguard
  6. all I could sight on the way back was the break in the trees
  7. a few spots of glimmering surface
  8. the orange buoy at hidden beach was rarely there and when it was, it was only an orange dot, or the idea of an orange dot
  9. the orange buoy at point beach was muted and covered in shadow — I never saw it from far away, only when I was pretty close to it
  10. strange undercurrents in the water — something disturbing the water — sometimes it was another swimmer, sometimes it wasn’t

A great swim. I did one more loop than I did last time and never really stopped — other than the brief seconds when I readjusted my nose plug. In the later loops, my feet felt a little strange. Were they about to cramp? I paused and treaded water as I assessed them.

Found this in my entry from 2025 on 22 june — the return of my “On This Day” practice!:

Saturday 6:30 a.m. Swimming.

Red water plants waver up from the bottom in an attitude of plumes. How slow is the slow trance of wisdom, which the swimmer swims into.

“An Essay on Swimming” / Anne Carson

Thinking about the Eurasian Watermilfoil (milfoil) at Lake Nokomis, It does not waver in an attitude of plumes. It is a thick thatch, choking out the light, wrapping itself around arms, legs, shoulders.

Thinking more about the Eurasian milfoil, I recalled looking it up and posting some information about it a few years ago. I searched, and found it: 5 july 2024

aquatic plant management

“A few days ago, I looked up information about the vegetation/vines that I swim above in lake nokomis. I looked them up a few years ago, and recall learning that they were milfoil, but this summer I started doubting that I was remembering the name right. I was! There are two types of watermilfoil: 

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

On the Minneapolis Parks’ site, they describe aquatic plant management, which was fascinating. The most effective way to control Eurasian watermilfoil is to harvest it, either with a mechanical harvester or by scuba divers (!). The mechanical harvester, which from what my bad eyes can see is a boat with a big spinning blade

removes plants that are in the top four to six feet of water. The harvested plant material is removed from the water and stored until the end of summer when it is brought to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to be used as organic fill for their operations. 

Aquatic Plant Management

The scuba divers, who only do this on Wirth Lake and Lake Nokomis, hand-pull the watermilfoil in areas that are inaccessible for the mechanical harvester. I wonder what areas are inaccessible and if I’ve ever witnessed the scuba pulling and not realized it. Very cool!”

Looking through the page today (2026), I noticed that they have a harvesting map for 2026. I also read on the aquatics plant management site that harvesting happens (roughly) from memorial day – aug 31st. I decided to send Minneapolis Parks a message and ask if and when they were planning to harvest the milfoil this summer. Hopefully they will answer, and hopefully it’s soon!

In the meantime: I will avoid that area! And maybe, I’ll try thinking about entanglements and knots and being tethered in ways that restrict, bind, limit. Or, I’ll think about weeds and invasive species and lake vegetation and how and why it overtakes lakes.

a note from Sara-this-second and Sara-since-Saturday and Summer Sara for Sara-sooner-or-later Listen lady, we are taking a break from reading and holes and Alice in Wonderland. We want to be immersed in water — waterlogged and water-logging! Come back in the fall!1

  1. I want to finish my May monthly challenge summary this afternoon and then shift into re-reading my favorite swimming/water poems and working on my waterlog project and returning to Alice Oswald and Anne Carson. ↩︎

june 21/RUNSWIM

run: 2.3 miles
lake nokomis
64 degrees

Decided to run a loop around lake nokomis before open swim in order to be warmed up when I entered the cold water. The run was hard. It felt warm and my gait felt awkward. My favorite part about the run was nearing the big beach and hearing, then seeing, swimmers rounding the far green buoy. I thought: that will be me in a few minutes! And it was.

Overheard: a group of 7 or 8 runners, one of them calling out to the others: They didn’t give us any room. I guess they thought it was their path. Yep, I’ve thought, and probably said, that same thing to Scott on some run around this lake.

I was just reminded of this when I heard the bells of St. Thomas as I write this at my dining room table: When we arrived at the lake, I heard some bells chiming in the distance. I’m assuming a church service was starting somewhere — maybe at the church on Cedar, near Fat Lorenzos?

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
67 degrees

It felt warmer today, maybe because it was sunny. I noticed pink and yellow and orange safety buoys tethered to torsos, bent elbows, glittering water, a few splashes. Some swimmers wore wet suits, some wore training suits. I don’t think I noticed any swan boats or non-lifeguard kayaks.

I’m not sure I felt strong, but I felt stronger in the lake than last week. I decided as I stroked 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left that June is always a more challenging month for open swim: the water’s colder and I’m using muscles that I haven’t used for 9 months.

The milfoil in the swimming area and near the start of the loop was terrible. Thick stretches of it, with individuals vines wrapping around my wrists and feet. I managed to avoid the worst of it on the way out, but when I returned I got stuck in a wide patch of it that I struggled to swim out of. As I have said to more than one person, I am a very strong, experienced swimmer and, even so, I had a few flashes of panic as I wondered how to get out and around these vines. I am seriously concerned that someone will drown in them. They are in the swimming area.

I wonder, is there anything Minneapolis Parks can do about this? Also, if enough people complain, will they have to close down the beach? I don’t want that, but I also don’t want someone to drown in this water or these vines to not be addressed. Sigh.

I’m glad that I ran and that I was able to swim 2 loops in slightly warmer water. Unfortunately, it didn’t help my mood. A few days ago, I wondered what was worse: perimenopausal anxiety or perimenopausal irritability. I thought anxiety was worse, but today, I am irritated and upset and I think it’s just as bad as anxiety. Oh well, like a wave, it will pass over.

Speaking of passing over, I noticed the dark shadow of a plane, blocking out the sun for a few seconds. Even though I know what it is, it is strange and settling (and kind of cool) when it happens.

10 Things

  1. bubbles — surrounding my hands as they entered the water
  2. clouds
  3. breathing to one side: blue sky
  4. breathing to the other side: clouds
  5. stopping in the middle of the lake: silence, solitude
  6. the bright orange first buoy, sometimes looking orange, sometimes white, once or twice green, a few times not there
  7. swimmers: 3 across, a good space between us, all heading towards the far green buoy at the different angles
  8. overheard before beginning: Theo, get your shoes! It’s time to go!
  9. exiting the water, watching as a toddler in a polka dot bathing suit ran across the sand and towards the swings
  10. chanting to myself, lifts the lid and shuts1
  1. I need to re-memorize the A Oswald lines so that I can recite them properly! ↩︎

june 20/RUN

6 miles
hidden falls loop
61 degrees
humidity: 77%

The sun and the humid air made it feel warmer than 61. If only it could feel like this tomorrow during open swim — warm, that is. A quiet, calm morning. Not too crowded on the trails or the roads. Lots of dappled light, flickering leaves. The only time I remember looking at the water was when I had just started crossing the ford bridge. I could see the dark reflections of the fir trees on the water.

I wore my bright yellow shoes. Today, they didn’t feel so bad. Before I went out for my run, I studied the bottom of my shoes. The Brooks Ghosts are already starting to wear down near the big toe, but the Saucony Cohesions and Rides are not. So, do the Ghosts change where I strike my foot, or are they just thinner at that spot? One day I’ll get my stride evaluated by someone at Mill City Running or another local running store.

I did some variations on the Galloway method (90 sec run/30 sec walk). I started with 15 minutes of running, then 90/30 for some time, then 3 min/1 min. Next time I need to commit to just running 90/30 the entire time and see what happens.

Right as I began running, I looked far ahead at the small circle of light at the end of a tunnel of sidewalk and trees. I thought about Alice and her view as she first falls down the hole:

down
and down

Watching this again, I remembered the light from above being brighter. Oh well, I still like it as inspiration for my hole series. Does it work for blur (see below)?

A few times, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson as I ran. Not sure I ever made it all the way through; I was distracted by the sound of a skateboard or the flash of a leaf or the feeling of sweat dripping down my face.

As I ran by the empty benches near the Ford/Power Plant overlook, I imagined biking here on some other day and sitting and reading a book, or writing or poem, or taking in the world around me.

10 Things

  1. loud music — dance? techno? — booming from a bike speaker
  2. a sprinkling, tinkling sound — was it falling water or rustling leaves?
  3. a few puddles from yesterday’s rain
  4. soft, wet dirt on the trail between the river road and lena smith boulevard
  5. the flickering shadow of one leaf being moved by the wind
  6. 2 older men talking, sitting at a picnic table near the skate park in Highland Park
  7. a woman running with a stroller, crossing near hidden falls — did she or the kid she was pushing make any noise? I don’t think so
  8. hot sun, then refreshing shade, at Highland Bridge
  9. passing a woman talking on a phone: then, what is it?
  10. 2 women walking — one, to the other: I haven’t perfected my pizza yet

holes and Alice

As I (finally) worked on my summary for April’s monthly challenge, I was inspired to return to the holes project. I want to keep experimenting with the Alice in Wonderland angle and the rabbit hole. What inspiration can I get from some of the scenes in Alice in Wonderland (1951)? So far, I have 3 scenes in particular: Alice falling down the hole1, Alice talking with the Caterpillar, and Alice and the Cheshire Cat.

Just now, I re-watched the Cheshire Cat scene and I’m thinking of pairing it with parts of hole 3: “land in a logic of blur and almost” and “read sentences sliced in half, glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined.” At the beginning of the scene, the cat is only a voice singing nonsense words, then a mouth, then eyes. Later, he is only footprints and stripes. How to represent that on the page? And, is that more almost than blur? Should the line be, “land in a logic of almost’?

Another part of this new approach is to simplify the image so that it is easier to understand as form/silhouette. I’m thinking of putting it on a single page — the page in which the word “hole” appears in the NYer essay — instead of the 4 panels. I’m hoping that will translate more effectively online (and on smaller screens).

Back to hole 3: what if I made the blur and almost as two different scenes/pages — one is blur, one almost. “Almost” would be the cat, and “Blur” would be –? I’ll keep thinking about that one. Blur = soft and fuzzy forms, before we grow accustomed to the Dark, right after the light has gone out, or grown too dim? Maybe, the image of a small hole of light, with everything else growing darker?

is water alive?

I was looking for something else (search on poets.com = “blur”) and found a wonderful essay about a poem, “on the water” and its dis/connection to ecopoetics. The author of the essay and the poem, Moheb Soliman, says this about water:

It’s a sacred hook—an existentially common denominator—the basis of everything, to build on together. You understand, but you’re deeply ambivalent about the abstraction of water. Water like a banner quivering in place, placeless. You fear placelessness. It’s why you are addicted to Google Maps. Isn’t everybody? Totalizing specificity, proper naming, sublime order, knowable space.

Yet, like many, you try and reject colonial hegemony. You can’t help but revere Indigeneity. But water flows one way at divides—you’re either duped by western science water as inanimate substance, or you’re co-opting animist beliefs about water. You don’t think of water as alive, nor of it as just a resource. Is there no other way?

Moheb Soliman on “on the water”

The line, You don’t think of water as alive reminded me that I have Is a River Alive? on my Libby audiobook shelf. TIme to start listening/reading, I think!

Perhaps a question to pursue this summer: (how) is a lake alive?

  1. Writing this, I was thinking about the moment before she/we grows accustomed to the Dark and can only see the whites of her eyes, but now I’m also thinking about the moment before that when we see her from the perspective of her cat Dinah as she call out, with delight, Goodbye Dinah! Goodbyyyyyyyeeee! How could I imagine that on a page? ↩︎

june 18/RUNSWIM

9.15 miles
lake nokomis and back
57 degrees / humidity: 87%

My longest run in more than a year. It is humbling to feel like 9 miles was the most I could do (at least today) when I ran a marathon just 2 years ago. Of course, thanks to perimenopausal anxiety, I have flashes of worrying that it’s not being out of shape but something physically wrong with me. A few days ago, Scott and I had a discussion — which is worse: peri/menopausal anxiety or peri/menopausal irritability? I guess, being irritable is a drag for everyone around you, but it seems less draining than worrying that every small ache or pain means you might have a terminal illness. I am rarely irritated, but I am often anxious.

I ran the first mile without stopping, then moved into my 90 seconds of running, 30 seconds of walking. I like this method, although I was a little disappointed that my heart rate was still higher. Was it the humidity? Is that just how my heart rate works when I’m running? Is it a bigger concern — some heart problem? Or was it because I ran the first mile without stopping instead of doing the 90/30 from the beginning? I imagine it was mostly the humidity and doing a continuous first mile. At the halfway point, I experimented with the ratio: 3 min run/1 min walk and 2 min run/1 min walk.

assessment: I feel pretty good now, and I definitely had more energy at the end of the run. My feet hurt — not as much as they have in past runs, but the ball of both feet still ached at the end. Also: my ankles were a little sore, too.

Even though it was humid, and I wished I had worn my tank top instead of a short-sleeved shirt, I didn’t feel too hot. Lots of shade, a cool-ish breeze. I heard at least one woodpecker, laughing; the babbling creek; a dog losing its mind — bark bark bark bark — across the creek. I greeted several walkers and runners, stopped at the park bathroom right before reaching mile 8. I ran past some guy watching a pickleball match; counted several kayaks out on the water; encountered a biggish group of runners ahead of me — would I get tangled up with them? No, thankfully they stopped at the playground to do some exercises and to pair up. As I passed them, I could hear someone calling out, okay, now find someone with about your same pace.

For 8 of the miles, I listened to the world around me. Cars streaming past on the parkway; the hum of a hoverboard on the bike path; kids calling out to each other at the creek; and the thwack of the ball on the pickle ball court. For mile 9, I put in my “windows” playlist. The song I most remember was one I’m almost skipped, Pete Seeger’s “Fly through my window” — little bird little bird fly through my window

random bummer news: The Minneapolis Park Board voted to close the dog park and one of the most decorated American female mid-distance runners, Jenny Simpson, had a medical emergency while pacing a mile race on Monday night: her heart stopped and they gave her CPR for 20 minutes before it restarted. She’s in the hospital now, recovering. She is 39 and just retired from running a few years ago.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees

Brrrrr. I’m not sure what the water temperature was, but it felt cold. Probably 70 degrees. The water was a bit choppy today and full of menacing swan boats and a few clueless kayaks. I couldn’t always tell if the kayak was a lifeguard moving across the course or some random kayaker not paying attention to the course — or maybe not realizing there was a course. I wouldn’t be surprised if no one told them what was going on.

I took RJP’s advice and started at the far edge of the beach, in line with the last green buoy, to avoid the tangles of milfoil at the other end of the beach. It helped a lot. The only milfoil I encountered was a few stray vines in the middle of the lake. One wrapped around my head and I had to fling it off, mid-stroke.

10 Things

  1. clear bubbles, made by my piercing hands
  2. a strange squeaking, rubbing noise as a swan boat neared
  3. often the orange buoys look white, the green ones too
  4. again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I couldn’t see them — only them when I was about 15 feet away from them
  5. the rope tethering the last green buoy to the lake bottom was at a sharp angle
  6. entering the water, I walked past 3 guys skipping rocks at the edge of the water
  7. a few silver flashes
  8. almost ran into another swimmer — I didn’t see them until they were right there
  9. sighting a green buoy, swimming towards it, seeing a sailboat near it and wondering if I had seen the buoy at all or just a boat — always, the buoy was there
  10. my first few steps in the water: brrrrr! very cold — I warmed up but felt very cold by the end, after sitting at Painted Turtle for a half an hour, my heels were numb

june 16/RUNSWIM

3.1 miles
2 trails
69 degrees

A sunny afternoon. Warmer than I thought it would be. Not an easy run, but I did it, and I got to travel on the winchell trail, which was shaded. Mostly the trail was in complete shade, but occasionally some sun came through. In a few spots it glowed so much that I wondered if it was white paint. Nope — I double-checked, just sun. I heard some kids above, then a person sitting on the 38th street steps having a disturbing conversation about someone being shot in the head. I hope they were talking about a movie or a tv show.

5 Run and 5 Swim Things

  1. the path was thick with bikers
  2. the road was crowded with cars
  3. the two benches that I recall noticing were occupied
  4. puddles on the trail from last night’s rain
  5. 2 kids on the dirt part of the winchell trail — the younger kid to the older one: do it! the older kid’s response: that’s mean!s
  6. several military jets flying above the lake
  7. water color: a pale blue-green
  8. little spirits at my feet! (minnows near the shore)
  9. a few friends: sediment and bubbles
  10. the water was so low — near the shore, it was far from the lifeguard stands and there was a little drop-off near the water

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
70 degrees

A great swim! Again, I swam straight to the buoys without seeing them. And when I couldn’t see anything but water and trees and sky, I didn’t panic at all.

A few silver flashes below. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right 1 2 3 4 5 breathe left. Sometimes, 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right. Steady strokes. Sometimes I was sore, sometimes I was worried about my heart rate1, and all of time I was deeply grateful to be swimming in this lake with my strong shoulders and back.

Some dog updates

First, on Saturday, Delia the dog started limping and not putting any weight on her back left leg. On Monday the vet delivered the bad news: a torn ACL. Major bummer! Delia is in good spirits. In fact, she’s managed to figure out how to hop on that leg pretty effectively. It’s hard having to stop her. Currently we’re trying to decide between surgery or not. If she were a bigger dog, there would be no question: surgery. But, with smaller dogs, taking it easy and rehabbing might be enough. Surgery is expensive and traumatic, but so is not being able to run and jump and do much of anything for many months.

Second, it is seeming more likely that the off leash dog park will be closing by the end of 2026. It is on sacred Dakota land, I support the returning of this land (see this article for more info). At first, I was sad about losing it, but then Delia tore her ACL and we think it might have been at least partly due to an aggressive and unsupervised dog at the park. Many dog owners are great with their dogs at the park, but some use it as daycare, ignoring the rules of keeping your dog within sight. Even if the dog park stayed open, I don’t think we would taking Delia back there.

  1. last night at cedar lake, my average heart rate for the swim was 160, which was alarming. Usually it’s under 130. Combine that with my anxiety over any anomaly in my watch data, and I was a little worried. Checked my heart rate after I was done: 126. Phew. Back to normal. ↩︎

june 15/SWIM

2.76 degre5 loops (5 cedar loops)
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees

The first open swim at cedar lake. It was great. I swam for (almost) an hour. The water was cold, but not too choppy or fishy or full of vegetation. Only 2 or 3 big vines wrapped around my head or shoulder. My hands were cold by the fourth loop and my neck was sore.

10 Things

  1. big white clouds up above as I swam
  2. dark purple-ish clouds hovering as we drove away
  3. the vine that wrapped around my shoulders was scratchy and sharp, the one that wrapped around my head was not
  4. a new lifeguard — he was very enthusiastic and earnest about giving people information about open swim
  5. a small bird or a dragonfly zoomed in front of me once as I lifted my head
  6. successful sighting heading towards hidden beach — after a few years of trying, I think I’ve cracked the code!
  7. bright pink and yellow buoys
  8. bright green caps
  9. bubbles — made as my hand pierced the water
  10. clear enough to see my hand and my watch and the bottom right near shore but not much else

spider web

I’m stepping back from devoting all of my attention to the holes and lines and spiders and webs (at least I think I am), but I wanted to try out a web over one of my four panel found poems. So far, I’ve created a basic web over the unmarked text. Next, I might figure out how to mark the text and/or create a distorted (NASA drugged-out) web. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m slow in figuring out how to make things, but eventually I get there. Today I learned that for strength purposes, I should create the outer rings of the web first. Also learned that passing the thread over then under when looping makes it tighter. I think I’d like to study how the spider makes the orb web some more for ideas.

spider web / 15 june / hole 6

june 13/RUN

4 miles
up to wabun, down to lock and dam
60 degrees
wind: 14 mph

I was supposed to do open swim this morning, but it was 57 degrees and very windy and I decided that was too much for me this early in the season. Lots of wind = choppier water = more sighting = sore neck, So instead I watched Paul (steak sause not sexass) Seixas abandon and Del Toro win, then went out for a windy run.

It was a tough decision not to swim; I really don’t like missing open swims. But, as I walked through our alley before I started the run and felt the cool and windy air, I was glad I hadn’t gone. The run was good. The first 5 minutes always feel strange now. Is it that my shoes aren’t quite right, or that I’m getting older, or something else I’m not imagining? I think it’s more a redesign of the shoes than anything else.

I don’t remember what I thought about, and not much of what I noticed. I ran on the narrow and root-y strip of dirt in the grassy boulevard until I reached the 44th street parking lot. I don’t remember hearing any distinctive birds or avoiding any squirrels.

10 Things

  1. a trio of roller skiers on the double bridge
  2. 2 bikers crossing in front of me to bike down to the overlook at the south entrance of the winchell trail
  3. a bike zooming by me
  4. a man sitting on a bench near the locks and dam, fishing
  5. a squeaking noise as something on a light pole was jarred loose in the wind
  6. choppy water under the ford bridge
  7. the dirt path that winds through the grass was narrower in past years — are people using it less?
  8. someone slowly jogging up the locks and dam hill, then stopping at the top
  9. 3 people spread across the bottom of the wabun hill, one of them pusing a bike and holding a (too) loose leash with a small dog
  10. an older couple, the man pushing a walker, on the edge of the trail near the coyote den nearby sign, looking at something — the river? the coyote den? something across, on the east bank?

For most of the run I don’t remember much of what I heard. For the last mile, I listened to my “It’s Windy” playlist. Favorite song today: “Summer Breeze.”

I almost forgot about the shadows! Actually, I did forget about the shadow for several hours until suddenly they popped into my head. At the locks and dam, running by a fence, I saw some sharp shadows and stopped to take a picture:

shadows / locks and dam no 1 / 14 june 2026

Fence and shadow, shadow and fence. Which is more real?

june 12/SWIM

1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
69 degrees
wind: 16 mph / gusts: 32 mph

The first Friday morning open swim! Windy. Again, the water temperature was warmer than the air. In the water: ah! Out of the water: brrrrr!! The new way to start the swim: swimming through a patch of thick vegetation. Oh well. I’ll get used to it during open swim. A question: will it be possible to swim around the white buoys on days I don’t have open swim, or will the weeds be too thick? Maybe I can find out by going for a morning swim on Monday?

RJP came with me to the lake. She wasn’t ready to swim across the lake, and said she might try going in for a swim in the beach area. When I returned from my first loop, there she was! We swam together for a few minutes, then I convinced her to swim out to the white buoy. She did, but it freaked her out, especially when she saw the little big of milfoil there. I told her that the milfoil was much, much worse on the other side. We agreed that she might not be ready to swim across the lake this summer. She might try to swim at a pool instead.

It was almost impossible for me to see the buoys heading toward the little beach. Because it was morning, the sun was in my eyes. I kept swimming and didn’t panic when nothing but waves and trees and blue sky were in front of me. Eventually, the flash of the buoy far off to my right. I adjusted it, then swam straight to the third buoy. On the way back, it was easier to see the buoys, but harder to stroke through the water. So much chop! Mostly, I didn’t mind the water being choppy, although it did tire me out.

10 Things

  1. slimy lake floor — covered with milfoil leaves
  2. sparkles on the water surface
  3. ghost vines, 1: reaching up, far enough down in some spot near shore that I could only see the ghostly tips
  4. ghost vines, 2: clustered just below the surface, making it impossible to swim a full freestyle stroke
  5. shaft of light reaching down to the bottom at an angle
  6. 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right
  7. 1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
  8. 2-3 foot waves, rolling at an angle
  9. finishing the swim, standing up, feeling the very cold air
  10. standing in the shallower water (almost up to my shoulders), a small black bird — small enough that I thought it might be a butterfly — flew right past my face

things not noticed or forgotten: sparkle friends, bubbles, silver flashes, the water surface glowing orange because of a reflection from the orange buoy, sailboats, menacing swans, kayakers

SWIMMING 1935/ Peter Davison

SIX SENTENCES FOR ROBERT PENN WARREN

He thrashed his way across the yellow lake,
high in the water streaming past his shoulders
one arm akimbo, then the other, feet
churning like a paddlewheel behind,
and never faltering to whistle, whoop,
spout like a whale, but simply, ceaselessly
trudgening forward to attack the water
the lake had clamped between its bulldozed knees.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

For more than forty years I’ve watched this swimmer
in elements no less unknown than water
tell secrets of the ways we make a poem,
the way of Lilburne Lewis with an ax,
the way of entrance to a woman’s body,
the way a deer can bleed to death in snow.

The swimmer’s ears are sealed from careless words
that picnickers are shouting from the shore:
his eyes squeeze shut, to open only when
he takes a sight upon that destination
to which ambition, force, despair have pointed.

How can he, in the cavern of the lake,
let up his churning enterprise to listen,
since, for the sake of breathing, he must swim
as though the shore ahead did not recede,
as though he did not know we never arrive?

His body keeps the pulse of water music
that swimmers cradle as they force a passage,
forever pressing the receding shore,
crazed one-eyed gods who gape into the sun.

Oh, I like this! The description of the poet as swimmer resonates for me.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

Celebrating the instincts of the body. Yes!

The “for Robert Penn Warren” in the epitaph was in another swimming poem I found earlier in the search (Swimming After Thoughts/ Jay Parini). Did RPWarren swim a lot? Yes, and it was deeply connected to his writing/creating process:

The rhythm of Robert Penn Warren’s life now is settled but not sedate. He rises early, fixes his own breakfast, exercises with a set of barbells kept on the living room floor then dons trunks and a plastic cap and makes the short walk to a bower-hidden swimming hole behind his summer home. He swims nearly a mile in the chilly water, sculling along at a steady, rigorous pace. The clay-bottomed pool is surrounded by ferns and high trees, and in the morning—as thin, miasmic bars of sunlight filter down, dappling the water in tones of emerald and gold—it is Edenic. Here, his body aching slightly from the exertion and his mind free from worries, Warren slips into a creative trance. This is the the hour when the images bloom. The swims are never draining, are in fact less taxing than distance running, the exercise he used to stimulate himself when he was younger. As Warren strokes back and forth through the glittering pond, a poem usually flowers. 

Robert Penn Warren Finds His Place to Come To

Continuing to read, I found this cool connection to a writer and their memoir about vision loss that I checked out and read (some of, at least) 6 or more years ago:

Three years ago, Eleanor Clark was partially blinded by the disease macular degeneration. At first, the condition seemed hopeless and was emotionally devastating. Clark had written several books, and in 1965 had won the National Book Award for her non-fiction account of the men and women who work in the French oyster industry, The Oysters of Locmariaquer. Her vision stabilized about six months after she was stricken, allowing her to perceive dim, impressionistic glimpses of the world and return to her writing. Composing sentences by drawing giant Magic Marker letters on blank sheets of newsprint then transcribing these jottings with a large-type typewriter while peering through a lighted magnifying glass, she wrote a book about the fight to regain control of her life: Eye, etc.


RPWarren’s wife is Eleanor Clark, the author of Eye, etc! I recognized the book from the description of her writing process with big black markers. I should return to this book! (I just requested it from my local library!)

june 11/RUNHIKE

8.1 miles
ford loop + hidden falls
64 degrees
dew point: 59

Technically, if I follow Scott’s plan, I’m supposed to run 9 miles today. But I’m going hiking at the dog park later this morning and swimming at the lake this evening, so I kept it to 8. I wasn’t fast, but I’m pleased with this run. I didn’t feel great at the beginning; it was very sticky and breathing wasn’t that easy. My heart rate shot up pretty fast, too. I wondered how I could keep running when it was already so hot and I felt so bad. Then I decided to not worry about how much I walked and to just keep going. For the ford loop (the first 4 miles), I ran until my heart rate reached 169, then I walked until it got down to 125. At Hidden Falls, I tried something new: run 90 seconds, walk 30 seconds. I wasn’t sure if I could handle having to look at my watch so much and stopping every 1.5 minutes, but I didn’t mind it, and breaking the time up into small increments made it go by faster — or made me think less about it as some big, overwhelming amount. This is the Galloway method of training. I think I’ll try it on my next long run for the entire run.

For most of the run, I listened to my book, Ariadne. For the last mile, I listened to my bunnies playlist.

5 Running and 5 Hiking Things

  1. the overcast sky made the green in the tunnel of trees seem deeper and darker
  2. a slash of orange on the ancient boulder
  3. a big log floating in the river near the east side of the ford bridge — was it a log? a boat? a person?
  4. a coxswain calling out instructions over his bullhorn to some rowers — heard, not seen
  5. roots buckling the sidewalk, looking like slithering snakes
  6. the entrance to the dog park was dark and green and inviting in an almost sinister way
  7. evidence all around of the big storm 2 nights ago: giant felled trees, trunks tipped over and reaching for the river, a thick branch that must have been blocking the trail before someone cut it
  8. drops of rain hitting the surface of the river, creating slight ripples that distorted the water near the shore
  9. bark bark bark bark bark bark — an enthusiastic dog
  10. kerplunk! splash! a dog swimming more than halfway across the river, moving fast

hike: 40 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
63 degrees
drizzle off and on

dog name: the swimming dog’s name was Millie — okay Millie, come here — a human calling to the dog

According to FWA, it’s supposed to rain off and on all day. We managed to mostly miss it, only a few drips on the river surface. We talked about terrible chemistry professors and doing hip thrusts with weights on your lap. FWA performed an imaginary conversation between Delia and another dog. In this conversation, they talked about how great the dog park is. Delia bragged about getting to come twice a week and the other dog said they only went once but that the yard surrounding their mansion was bigger than the dog park.

Possibly for the swim this afternoon: a prompt from Manny Loley

Now I invite you to find the water. In Diné thought, change happens in fours, manifestation happens in fours. There are four sacred mountains, four worlds that we emerge from into our current world. I invite you to create a poem in four steps.

First: find a body of water to sit with and listen. A river, a lake, an ocean—let it connect with the water inside of you. And let the sound that it makes work on your body and your mind and your heart.

Second: build your relationship with the water. Listen for what the water has awakened inside of you. What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body? What stories are brought to the surface?

Third: follow the reverberations. Write down some of your thoughts, your feelings, your memories. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, or about making things sound writerly or whether they make sense or not.

Fourth: make an offering to the water. Share what the water gave life to in the form of your poem. Touch the water and give thanks.

waterlogged: heavy with water, dense, difficult to manage, not dry, less buoyant, damaged/distorted/warped by excess water, soggy, characterized by the presence of a lot of water

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
64 degrees (air)
71 degrees (water)

After finishing my run and the hike, it started raining. Off and on, all day. By the time I went to open swim the temperature had dropped enough that the water was much warmer than the air. There was wind, too, which made the water choppy. I didn’t care. It was fun to swim into and through the waves. I swam straight to many of the buoys even when I barely realized I was seeing them. I think I did less sighting and more swimming without looking. It’s strange how much more comfortable I feel now when I see so much less.

a regular: As I exited the water an older man heading in asked me how it was. I said, it’s choppy, but I like it that way. He agreed and then we talked about the crazy amount of milfoil in the water. I have decided that I have said enough about it — it’s out of control and dangerous. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear of someone drowning in it. And, like blue green algae blooms, I just need to get used to it and find ways to avoid and/or endure it. Just before he left, the man introduced himself and shook my hand. I’m Joe. / I’m Sara./ Nice to meet you.

Other things I remember: a few patches of blue sky; opaque water with a few silver flashes; a woman swimming, her arms entering the water without her elbows bending; the roar of rushing wind; swimming just barely over the top of the milfoil; the ridgeline of the wave as it rippled over the water; a swimmer exerting a lot of extra energy kicking, white foam everywhere; the hard bump of my safety buoy hitting me in the waves; the silcence and solitude when I stopped in the middle of the lake; looking to my right and seeing a dark line of clouds, hovering

june 9/HIKEBIKESWIM!

8:43 am — The first open swim of the year isn’t until the late afternoon, but I’m already excited. Currently I am sitting at my desk. Outside of my window, workers are cutting down the maple tree in our front yard. Someone is up in a bucket with a chainsaw sawing the thick branches then securing them with rope, someone else is on the ground to catch them. It’s a slow, noisy process — and strangely quiet, too. No loud THUMPS! from a branch hitting the ground. Noises: chainsaw, rumble of their big trucks, whine of a leaf blower, thud of the truck bed bottom as the cut limbs are discarded / Noises not heard: no heavy thumps, no shouting from workers to each other1, no beeps or alarms. It is now 9:02. I wonder how long it will take for them to cut it all down.

It’s sad to lose such an old tree — the only (or one of the only?) maples on the block. Everything else is linden/basswood or locust.

It’s also not sad. Mostly this tree has been a nuisance — leaf debris and whirly gigs clogging our gutters, thick tangles of roots taking over our sewer pipe. Every year Ron the Sewer Rat has had to chop those roots up so that our sewer wouldn’t back up.

In front of my window: the bucket is being raised again; it’s herky jerky yet smooth motion almost like a strange dance.

And it’s a relief. Ever since a huge branch fell from this tree last fall, I’ve been worried that another would fall and hurt someone or something. I’m glad we’re finally doing something about it.

currently: branches are gently falling in front of me, a few of them reflecting on the glass of a desktop boom! boom! — as they are tossed in the back of a truck / now it’s raining little twigs and bigger twigs and branches

10 Things About this Maple Tree

  1. Unsuccessfully attempting to weed-whack around it, giving up and hand-pulling the tall, flowering grass
  2. it is a wonderful example of a tree looking like a person, buried upside down, their head and shoulders in the dirt, while their torso and legs stick up in the air
  3. this winter/early spring, I could hear a woodpecker drumming on its dead wood — brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
  4. one summer a few years ago, FWA helped me to try to get rid of some ants “naturally” by pouring boiling water in their ant hill — not sure if it killed the ants, but it destroyed the grass around the base of the tree
  5. last summer, or the summer before, I noticed a new branch growing near the bedroom window and thought, we should really cut that while we can still can, then watching it grow bigger and bigger until it was too late
  6. recently noticed: a big eye in the middle of the trunk where a sizable branch used to be
  7. the leaves on this trees, which turn a golden yellow, are the last to fall in November
  8. all i can see of this tree from the two windows in front of my desk is the edge of its trunk
  9. a sudden thought: I hope we’re not disrupting too many critters’ homes — I don’t recall hearing or seeing any nests in the winter
  10. I won’t miss having to sweep up whirly gigs on the front sidewalk or pull them out of the table on the deck or the planter in the backyard

I’m sure the loss of this tree will have effects (negative and positive) that I can’t even imagine.

hike: 40 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
78 degrees

FWA and I cut our walk short today because he had to go to the bathroom. We only hiked to the BIG felled tree. The parking lot was more than half full, but it didn’t feel crowded. Everyone was evenly spaced out and doing their own thing, not clustered at the entrance or on the trail. For the first half of the hike, it was cool and calm, with a gentle breeze. No encounters with aggressive dogs or jerky humans. No dog names overheard. Several very FAST! dogs. So fast that they couldn’t be bothered to stop and play with Delia. One German Shepherd zoomed by so fast that I gasped — wow, that dog is fast!

FWA schooled me on a video game term2: de/buffing. Used in sentence: Walking through that second patch of sun, I was debuffed and never recovered.

de/buffed: (from Reddit because I can’t remember FWA’s exact definition) “Debuff is a game term that means something was hit with an attack that causes negative affects. In this case it “de-buffs” your agility. In games, buff means you strengthen; to improve.”

We talked about how Delia loves to plop down in the soft sand then imagined a t-shirt with the many versions of Delia chilling:

  • ploppin’
  • DOD (dead on deck) when Delia lays down on the deck , with her head landing last, looking like she’s passed out or dead on the deck
  • DOR — a DOD variation: dead on rug
  • wedged between two of Scott’s pillows on our bed
  • wedged between the edge of her bed and the removable cushion
  • sprawled out quietly on the rug, under the dining room table
  • resting misery face: in her bed, her head hanging over the edge, looking miserable

11:01 am Louder thumps as leafless chunks of branches fall / the front yard is strewn with little branch trees / the bucket, suspended halfway up the tree / a big claw reaching up to grab branches, lift them, then toss them in the back of a truck

11:04 am one worker in an orange vest threw up the rope to the guy in the bucket, now the rope is being tied to a branch — when and how will it fall? gently or roughly? with a loud Boom! or a soft thud? / a spray of saw dust is coming down / the branch gently floated down, attached to the rope — I saw it dangling in front of the window! — then boom boom — two quick, deep booms / So much debris in our front yard — very grateful I don’t have to pick it up!

11:10 am

view from my window / 11:10 am

11:14 am

The sound of a big branch falling, then its cylindrical reflection in the glass top on my desk. A very dead, tall and thin branch falling, reflected in the glass / a worker with a chainsaw, cutting a big branch off a bigger branch — grrrrrrrrrrr

1:07 pm

Sawing the trunk: sawdust sparks / dangling from a rope / the ground nears

swimming with Lauren Groff

Sure, I have many ideas and projects and plans for what I’d like to write/make/create this summer, but I also have a strong desire (need? ache?) to just be with the water and the swimming and the words (or lack of words). I want to return to Anne Carson and Alice Oswald and Lauren Groff and Tony Hoaglund and Anne Sexton and Maxine Kumin and re-memorize their poetry. I also want to revisit past Sara’s thoughts about water and swimming and first days of open swim.

Speaking of Lauren Groff (which I did, above), I’m currently reading her short story collection, Brawler. Here’s a short video in which she talks about it and how swimming made her a writer:

In addition to finding this video, I also found this short blog entry about Groff’s love of swimming:

I was expecting to enjoy Lauren Groff’s collection of short stories Delicate Edible Birds, but I had no idea that here was another work of swim-lit. Like Groff’s first novel, the marvelous The Monsters of Templeton, these stories take place around bodies of water, and they’re also much concerned with swimming and swimmers. (I’ve not finished the book yet, but I’ve just started reading one story about a deep-sea diver). I realized that I’d read the story L. Debard and Aliette before, in the 2006 Atlantic Fiction Issue, and remember it quite vividly these years later– turned out I liked Lauren Groff before I even knew Lauren Groff. It’s an amazing story of poolside sensuality. The stories linked by these swimming references in a way that intrigues me, and certainly satisfies by latest literary fixation. How positively timely.

More Swim-lit

2:30 pm — workers are done, tree is gone, only a 4 ft stump that we have to figure out what to do with remains — hopefully a gnome home!

blue-green algae advisory

Open Swim is not cancelled, but there is a blue-green algae bloom in the water and a water advisory. The “official” Open Swim Club Facebook page has an announcement with the required warning, but the tone definitely seems to be: we have to warn you, but we think if you use caution, you’ll be fine. We’d like to say it’s fine and you should swim, but we can’t. I’m still going, but maybe I’ll only do one loop. And maybe I’ll try to swim a little slower and to look out for it. Can I see it? Not easily.

bike: 8 miles
lake nokomis and back
85 degrees

Biking to the lake for open swim was great. Warm, but not too crowded and I was able to pass someone without any stress. We didn’t bike fast, but it didn’t feel slow and it’s always safer to bike slow when you can’t focus fast. The bike ride back was harder, with too much wind and clueless walkers walking in the middle of the bike path. Scott rang his “passive agressive bell” (his name for it) half a dozen times and one woman didn’t even notice.

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis
87 degrees

A great first swim. I couldn’t see much, and I didn’t care, my shoulders and brain still swam me straight to the buoys. There were some clueless swan boats and too many vines — it’s crazy how thick they are near the start of the swim! — but they didn’t bother me. I was happy to be swimming and felt strong.

It’s too late and I need to eat, so no more writing about the lake tonight. Tomorrow if I can remember anything, I’ll add some more.

10 Water Things (the morning after)

  1. murky water, but enough clarity for me to be able to see my hand and watch and . . .
  2. bubbles! my bubble friends are back — clear little orbs stirred up as my hands entered the water
  3. a scratchy-squeaky noise as I neared another swimmer — was it their wetsuit? a cracking of a joint or a bone or?
  4. vines 1: started out by swimming straight into a knot of milfoil — when I tried to do a full stroke green strings wrapped around my wrist — join us down below, they seemed to be whispering
  5. vines 2: at the end of the second loop, near the white buoys, ghostly vines emerging from below, not yet close enough to touch
  6. vines 3: rounding the far white buoy, getting stuck in another tangle of milfoil — as I said to another swimmer a few minutes later, I’m a very strong swimmer and those vines made me nervous!
  7. finding one distinctive break in the green in an otherwise generic tree line to use to sight the far green buoy
  8. this year, there are 2 orange buoys and 3 green ones
  9. noticing the pale rope that tethers the buoy to the lake floor as I swam over it
  10. suddenly noticing something in front of me, stopping and hearing a person in a kayak call out, kayak — I think it was a lifeguard, but it could have just been a clueless kayaker crossing the swim course
  1. Mentioned how quiet the workers are to Scott. He found out why when he talked to them: they have headsets. Nice! ↩︎
  2. On our bike ride to the lake I quizzed Scott on this term. He had heard it but couldn’t remember what it was. He said it’s primarily used in first-person shooter games, which he doesn’t play. ↩︎

june 8/RUN

3.15 miles
locks and dam turn around
70 degrees
humidity: 88% / dew point: 67

Sticky. Moist. Steamy. Wet. Not raining, but water water everywhere. It felt cool on my fingers and face when I brushed against a bush or when the wind shook the leaves.

Sometimes I felt great, sometimes I didn’t. I was wearing my old black Sauconys because it was so wet and they made my toe hurt for the last mile. My heart rate was higher too. I’ve determined (decided?) that my heat tolerance has decreased because of perimenopause. I’m having some hot flashes and struggling to run/move/stand/be in the heat. I’m thinking of asking for Hormone Replacement Therapy.

As I ran, I recited Wallace Steven’s poem, “Tattoo.” The light is like a spider./ It crawls over the water./It crawls over the edges of the snow./ It crawls under your eyelids/And spreads its webs there. I love this idea of the light like a spider spinning its webs under your eyelids. I also like that the first thing Stevens’ spider-light does is crawl over the water — a good connection to my water season, which starts tomorrow! Open swim!

10 Things

  1. a biker blasting music from speakers — country music (I think) — before I could hear much of it, it was distorted by the Doppler effect
  2. the brown sign that reads, caution, coyote den, is still there — are the coyotes?
  3. bright headlights piercing through the dark green and gray
  4. the sewer pipe near 42nd was gushing
  5. a long line of cars on the road
  6. a string of bikers on the path
  7. a few puddles
  8. the wind picked up, the trees shifted, making me wonder if it started raining agin
  9. a group of kids laughing somewhere in the distance, approaching
  10. 2 lime scooter parked on the edge of trail — both times I neared them, I thought they were people

lines / strings / webs / spiders

a spider moment: As I was about to take a shower, I noticed spider traveling down the tiles. I didn’t want to kill it, or douse it with water, so I turned on the water with the spray pointed away from the tiles and asked the spider to leave. They did — not because of the words, but because of the pressure/feeling of the water.

how long do spiders live? Although most spiders live for at most two years, tarantulas and other mygalomorph spiders can live for over 20 years. (source)

how long have modern spiders existed? The main groups of modern spiders, Mygalomorphae and Araneomorphae, first appear in the Triassic well before 200 million years ago. (source)

orb orb (spiral) webs, orb as eye, orbiting, encircling/enclosing, a spherical body

Alice Oswald, a spider reference in Nobody

A goddess or fog-shape in full wedding dress
sulks in that loneliness what a winter creature
whose lover loathes the everlasting clouds of her
and sits in tears staring at the pleasure-crinkled sea
but she as if a dash of hope
discoloured her sight stands waiting
the way a spider when it wishes to travel
simply lets out a silken

aerial

electrostatically alert through every hair
to the least shift of the atmosphere
at last it lifts on tiptoe and lovely to behold
like a bare twig it begins to blow
wherever the wind will take it but the wind
is the most distracted messenger I know

After citing this, Kit Fan writes:

The new lines at the end of the page carry a rhyme scheme (aabcbc) rare in Nobody and connect the goddess (the owl-eyed Athena who is Odysseus’s protector in The Odyssey?) with the precise, calculated work of a spider, breathing a different kind of life into the “discoloured” world without the watercolors. The two versions of Nobody create a counter-parallel universe for Oswald’s reimagination of The Odyssey, revisualizing the epic as a collage made out of imagist fragments or glimpses of “water-stories,” as the jacket to the UK version calls them. The two texts speak to each other like twins staring at themselves in the mirror, registering uncanny similarities and differences.

Water Stories

The precise calculated work of a spider. Tomorrow, I want to write a little more about the making of a web and the use of spun silk to travel. I also want to return to Alice Oswald and reread The Odyssey again. I love the Wilson translation! I just looked it up and the movie coming out next month is based on this translation. Excellent!

june 6/RUN

8 miles
lake nokomis and back
68 degrees
humidity: 83% / dew point: 60

So hot! I had planned to bring my water but at the last minute, I didn’t. I should have. At the halfway point, my heart rate was high for such an easy pace. Had to take several walk breaks. I really struggle to run in the heat.

Some things to remember for future runs: run earlier, bring water, drink water the night before, come prepared with poetry distractions (e.g.: recite poems in head).

Scott and I realized that doing our long runs together is not a good idea. We have different strategies and different weaknesses that need to be addressed. So instead, we’ll plan to run our middle distance weekly run together.

What did we talk about? Not much; we were too hot and uncomfortable running. Just remembered something as I wrote “many” in number 5 of my10 things. We discussed the range of descriptive words: a pair, a few, some, several, lots, many, most, all. I talked about how I use lots too often and that it sounds clunky. We also talked about bringing the kids to the playground at Lake Nokomis, especially to the big dinosaur, and losing touch with some old friends.

10 Things

  1. a woman with a hose, watering some flowers in her front yard. as we ran by, she called out: free shower?
  2. a loud hose hissing nearby
  3. a lively game on the pickle ball court, with an enthusiastic player cheering loudly for someone
  4. everything completely still, heavy — Scott pointed out how the tops of the trees weren’t moving at all
  5. blue water with many sparkles
  6. blue-green algae advisory at the beach, 2 kids in the water
  7. running over the bridge, looking down and seeing the glowing green water — yuck!
  8. passing another runner with a dog — good morning! / morning!
  9. at the Lake Nokomis playground, running by a log with rows of evenly cut holes — what is this for? how do kids play with it?
  10. the booming voice of an announcer at the big beach: a charity event for lymphoma

Not the best run, but I’m choosing to think of it as a reminder to be more deliberate and disciplined in my training.

webs

I decided to make a spider web on a piece of cardboard. Some improvement is needed, but I’m pleased with it as my first attempt. Will I do anything with this? Unsure, but it keeps coming up, so I’m seeing where it leads.

my first attempt at a web, using light gray-blueish yarn

june 3/RUN

4.5 miles
the monument and back
65 degrees

Warm and windy. So windy that I had to take my cap off as I crossed the lake street bridge. The river looked low. I think I saw a long sandbar near the east shore. My feet were still a little sore, but mostly felt okay. Chanted in triple berries for the first 2 miles. Listened to my bunnies and rabbits playlist for the last mile.

11 Things

  1. no rowing shells on the water, but the big white motor boat that follows alongside the rowers was out there, near the dock at the rowing club
  2. workers on the other side of the lake street bridge, fixing something and making a lot of noise doing it
  3. glittering waves close to the easi bank
  4. shadow falls was falling vigorously
  5. running up from the under the bridge on the st. paul side, looking below at the water, envious of my shadow in the water
  6. on the ledge of the overlook at the monument: a insulated coffee mug, white
  7. below the overlook, a person with a dog
  8. tea kettle tea kettle or cheeseburger cheeseburger — a carolina wren somewhere
  9. a person wearing something bright orange, sitting with their bike near the upper entrance to shadow falls
  10. kids being dropped off at the daycare at the church, some by car, one by bike
  11. a handmade wood sign declaring ICE OUT in a neighbor’s front yard on the next block

holes

Time to wrap up this hole project for a few months. I have 4 visual poems that I think are . . . not finished but . . . ready to be considered done. Hole 1, Hole 3, Hole 5a, and Hole 5c. I can imagine returning to them in the fall and trying new (more advanced?) techniques with thread and grids and layers — not just 2D, but 3D.

Well, I would have finished all of the hole poems if a HUGE limb hadn’t fallen right outside my window. We (Scott, FWA, and I) had to drop everything and remove the tree, which took almost 2 hours. Scott happened to be working on a YouTube video as it happened and got a recording of it falling. Yikes!

may 30/RUN

3.7 miles
bottom of locks and dam
71 degrees

Warm, sunny. Not too bad in the shade. Ran down to the entrance of the locks and dam no. 1, turned around, stopped to walk for a few minutes, put in my “Moment” playlist, then started running again, When I got to “Lose Yourself,” I did a few strides. Felt a few brief flashes of a runner’s high.

10 Things

  1. bawk bawk cockadoodle doo! heard from far away, slowly approaching — what is that? A bike with an open bike trailer passed by, 2 kids in the back pretending to be a chicken and a rooster
  2. no cars on the way down to the locks and dam, only one car parked at the bottom
  3. some voices above me, on the trail going up to Wabun or on the ford bridge
  4. an orange water cooler with a sing, “Mill City Running” near the bench above the edge of the world
  5. empty benches — maybe one or two occupied
  6. a biker passing, blasting techno music — even if there had been a doppler effect on the music how would you be able to tell?
  7. swallowed a bug — forgot about it until an hour later when I had a few coughing bouts — Bug! I called out, to no one
  8. the rush of leaves through the trees sounding like falling water
  9. stopping at a water fountain near the end of my run, waiting for another runner to finish, soaking my hat — I have no memory of what it felt like to put the wet hat on. Did it drip down my face? Did it feel cool? I have no idea
  10. Walking back, noticing a grid on the lattice of a neighbor’s fence — at first I thought, squares, then lines

I started thinking about grids and lines and my interest in them, which led to thinking about how open swim involves some lines, or maybe not lines but trajectories — from buoy to buoy to buoy, and it also has an imaginary grid and points on that grid. But, open swim also has no lane lines. You are tethered/connected to the world and others in a different logic. I’ve already written about this in a few different ways, including in this poem, from my recently published chapbook, Inklings:

My geometry

of open swimming:
an eye, lake water.
Both of us now grids
with one dot in our
centers — a cone cell
that works, a buoy
that beacons. A line
drawn between passes
through vacant lots and
murky seas as it
tethers us to each
other — swimmer and
vision, buoy and
body, to sight and
to rarely see.

may 29/WALK

35 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
75 degrees

A shorter walk because of the heat and the aggressive energy from other dogs. Lots of very fast running and circling and barking. Two dogs ran by me so close, I could feel their wind on my legs. As we walked, we could hear a chorus of LOUD barks up ahead — one so loud that it was echoing.

dog name: Chief / a big German Shepherd / on a leash, tightly controlled by his owner. Of course Delia teased the dog before we had a chance to stop her. The owner held on tight and managed to keep the dog under control — no chief, no! I wondered to FWA if they had recently adopted an abused dog who needed a lot of help getting socialized to other dogs.

The sand in the floodplain was deep and soft. I could feel it seeping into my sandals. It was cool, which was nice until it got stuck and collected under my covered toes. These are not the shoes to wear here! I declared to FWA. Why did I buy hiking sandals with a closed toe? I remember: they were half off.

Before Chief shifted the energy, FWA was giving a wonderful description of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid 4 animated movie. He’s so skilled at telling stories and conveying the energy of the characters. My favorite part: when he acted out the voice of one of the characters who broke their compass. That’s it. We’re lost.

Even though she was tired and hot, having plopped down in the sand at least once, when Delia saw some bigger dogs up ahead running in circles around a tree and through some grass, she tried to join in. She wasn’t fast enough. When she tried harder, they ignored her. Oh Delia, you’re out of your league. Finally, she gave up.

moment of joy: a tall Dad holding the hand of a very little girl (2 or 3?) as she looked up at him smiling or giggling and hiked down the hill gracefully.

11 Unhinged Energy Things

  1. the moment Chief’s owners noticed us up ahead and prepared themselves for the encounter — the woman took a deep breath and said, it will be okay or get ready or we can do this
  2. that sand! — so soft and deep and slippery — the coolness of it as it poured into my sandal
  3. kerplunk! crash! a very large something thrashing through the water — a big dog, I thought — no, 2 or 3 big dogs
  4. an owner calling to a dog (I can’t remember the dogs name) and the dog running as fast as I’ve ever seen a dog run. Wow!
  5. two big dogs running beside then past me — any closer and they would have taken me out
  6. BARK! BARK! yip yip bark bark ruff ruff — the cacophony of dogs up ahead, playing or fighting or who knows what at the beach at the end of the trail
  7. a strange and loud knocking or clanking sound up above us, in the tree
  8. dog after dog after big dog, flashing past, some barking, some silent — somehow the silent ones felt even more unnerving
  9. dumping sand out of my sandals near the car, feeling something strange and sticky on the bottom of my foot that wouldn’t come off — a bug?! — a slight panic and a frantic waving of my foot– realizing minutes later that I had put a bandaid on last night
  10. FWA driving us back on the river road — a car that was going 12 mph in a 20 mph zone that hardly anyone ever obeys — average speed for most cars here = 30 mph — a growing back-up of cars behind it — FWA turning off of the road at the first available chance with a flourish and declaring, someone needs their license taken away!
  11. encountering a truck on a narrow city street, noticing a low-to-the-ground recumbent bike drafting off it then trying to pass it while the truck was still moving — FWA was so distracted that he pulled out in front of another truck

may 28/RUN

4.25 miles
falls and back
61 degrees

Cooler this morning, earlier too. My goal was to run at 7. My watch says I started the run at 7:07, which means I left the house around 7. Nice. Wore my old (2021, I think) Sauconys that I stopped wearing because they made by big left toe hurt. At mile 4, my toe started hurting again. Bummer. Back to Brooks again or buying a new pair of cheaper Sauconys.

Ran to the falls without headphones, listening to the cars and the geese returning north. Ran back listening to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and The Jazz Crusader’s “Young Rabbits” helped me to pick up the pace. I need to create a playlist for pace — maybe mix it in with my beat/metronome experiment: 1 mile with no music or beat / 1 mile with metronome at 172-180 / 1 mile with music.

10 Things

  1. honk honk honk honk geese returning
  2. sparkling water
  3. soft shadows
  4. a runner behind, breathing heavily, closing in, then disappearing — where did they go?
  5. white foam (the falls)
  6. a roller skier — or was it a roller blader?
  7. tufts of symmetrically place ornamental grass mixed with purple blooms near “The Song of Hiawatha”
  8. a woman in a bright yellow windbreaker passing me on a bike, calling out morning!
  9. Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
  10. ending at the big rock that looks like a chair, stepping on it to look down at the oak savanna: green green green

a return

This winter, I replaced many of my regular habits with new ones: (almost) no alcohol; waiting an hour to drink coffee in the morning; more protein, fiber, and iron; instead of sitting at the dining room table for 1+ hours when I woke up reading poems-of-the-day, I watched a brief video then started work on my Holes project; a consistent bedtime routine — ready at 10, asleep by 10:30. I also transformed my workspace. I added a huge cork board to one wall. It’s been fun to mix it up and try new things. I’d like to continue with many of these new things, and I also want to return to a few I’ve shifted away from, especially reading / studying / memorizing other people’s poetry.

In writing this log entry, I decided to visit my favorite poetry sites — poets.org; poetryfoundation, poets.com. On Poetry Foundation I discovered a wonderful podcast series, Wake, Butterfly:

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we’ve miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. 

The final installment, which is the first I’ve encountered and will listen to, is with Marie Howe, one of my favorite poets! I think I’ll listen to it on the deck.

an hour or so later: I listened to it as I mowed the back yard. Usually I listen to the Bob’s Burgers Soundtrack (and I did today, too, after the 15 minute podcast ended). I’ve also listened to podcasts with Joy Harjo and Vs. with Danez Smith and Franny Choi, and several Agatha Christie books.

I love Marie Howe’s voice. Two times I recall hearing it before: when she was interviewed for On Being 6 or 7 years ago (at least) and in her brief discussion and recitation of her poem-in-progress, “Singularity.” In this podcast, she describes living with a big Irish Catholic family and the stories they would tell. She talks about war (WWII and Vietnam) and how she found poetry. Then she offers this:

I think the poem uses our stuff, you know, like it uses the details of my life, but the details are not important. The details are the cup … That hold something you can’t quite see, but you can feel, I hope. Because when it works, I feel something I can’t see. When I was writing a book called What the Living Do, it wasn’t done yet and I didn’t know how it wasn’t done. It had enough pages, it had an arc, I guess. But I was thinking about when I was in high school and. I was living up in the attic of our house with my brother. My brother lived in one room and I lived in another, and my dad would come up there when he was drunk and, um, pester me for hours—the way a drunk person does, wanting attention, wanting something, and it was very difficult. That’s one of the stories in my heart about my younger life, and I thought, “OK, what else is also true about that story?” And I remember actually standing up from my desk in New York here, and turning around, turning my body around 180 degrees and saying, “What else is true?” And I saw my brother Tom, who would come into the room and try to get my dad out, or would come into the room after my dad had left, and I wanted to praise him. So I want to offer you this invitation. Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.

Marie Howe in Wake, Butterfly

Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.

I love this idea of taking a fixed story and finding something else in that story to praise. I think I need to sit with this one for a few hours.

Before then, this:

The Maples/ Marie Howe

I ask the stand of maples behind the house,

How should I live my life?

They said, shh shh shh . . .

How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.

A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,

And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.

A squirrel scrambled up a trunk

then along the length of a branch.

Stand still, I thought,

See how long you can bear that.

Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,

drinking light breathing.

—

This standing still — seeing how long I can bear it — seems like a great thing to do everyday. As part of this: explore different ways to be still. What is it to be still?

The beginning of this poem reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem that I’ve posted on this log several years ago (2 july 2020):

I Go Down To The Shore/ Mary Oliver

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out, 
and I say, oh, I am miserable, 
what shall–
what should I do? And the seas says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

may 27/BIKE!

8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
80 degrees

My first bike of the season. Every spring since I learned I was losing my central vision, I’m uncertain about my biking. Will I still be able to see? Will it be too scary? Has my vision declined too much (what is too much?)? Today, it was fine. I think that’s mostly because I’ve memorized the path and learned to navigate with less sight. Plus, I don’t try to go too fast (or fast at all, really). What a gift to have another summer to bike to the lake or to downtown or the library or wherever I want!

I brought my goggles and swim cap and a nose plug, but when my goggles leaked and the water was a bit scummy and I forgot to put on my nose plug, I decided not to swim any loops. Instead, I just waded out to water past my shoulders and enjoyed how the water cooled me down. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too cold. Maybe I’ll go swimming tomorrow?

10 Water Things

  1. sparkle friends! close-up, they looked like silvery glitter, with a broader view like some sort of green-ish scum
  2. a very bright blue, cloudless sky
  3. someone swimming freestyle just past the edge of the buoys
  4. little minnows near my feet
  5. just outside of the pink buoys the lake floor was slimy and soft — some sort of vegetation
  6. 3 teen girls, locking their bikes up, then complimenting each other on their nails
  7. 2 young boys, locking their bikes up, one lamenting to the other, I should have brought my wallet for ice cream!
  8. sitting on a bench facing the water, behind me, 2 bikers talking to each other as they biked — biker one: I didn’t mind walking in the rain, but I was cold. biker two: you were old? biker one: no, I was COLD! biker two: I thought you said old! biker one: Yes, I’m 80 years old!
  9. rustling on the edge of water, under a tree, hidden — a duck? a person? something/someone else?
  10. drifting sounds: a baby crying, a bike chain rattling, a dog collar clanging softly, giggles, 2 adults and a kid talking about ice cream

It was wonderful, and wonderfully cool, to sit on the bench facing the water in the shade. Every year I tell myself that I should spend more time at the lake, and I do spend a lot of time there, swimming loops at open swim, but I could spend even more time. I want this year to be the year that spend the most time that I ever have! Future Sara, let me know how it works out!

hole 6

I printed out the four panels from essay 6, What to Make of the Mother Who Made You, taped it up, and cut a hole in the center. Then I mapped my words with pins on my cork board. First I wound string around the pins, next: embroidery thread.

hole 6

I like bits of it, but it doesn’t work. Not yet. I’m thinking this one might need to wait until the fall. I think it’s time to finish the 3 or 4 of these that I’m satisfied with and temporarily wrap this project up. It’s time for swimming and water and (possibly) starting a YouTube channel to promote my first chapbook, Inklings.

may 26/RUNHIKE

3.1 miles
trestle turn around
69 degrees
humidity: 74%

The earliest run I’ve done in some time — 7:30, which is not that early. I liked running earlier. Next time, I’d like to run by 7. Greeted Mr. Morning! for the first time in months. All year, I’ve been running later in the morning or early in the afternoon, so I’ve missed seeing all of the regulars.

The other day I remembered that I had a pair of Saucony Cohesions that I’ve only wore a handful of times because they made one of my toes hurt. I wondered if they would work better (that is, hurt less) than my Brooks’ Ghosts. Yes! Ever since I wore an old pair of Saucony’s to mow the lawn, I’ve been thinking about returning to Saucony’s for my marathon training. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair; they’re less than half the price of the Brooks shoes, and they’re navy with light pink soles.

10 Things

  1. the Welcoming Oaks — tall, green
  2. boom boom — construction noise from across the river
  3. clank clank clank — something banging/being banged below the trestle
  4. the crack just north of the trestle is shifting and growing — what once was a crack became a trench, and now a ledge — orange cones all around it as warning
  5. someone was sitting at the sliding bench
  6. a walker in a bright yellow jacket — were they a rower heading down to the rowing club?
  7. the parkway was buzzing with cars commuting to work
  8. bright headlights from an approaching bike
  9. a lone honk from a goose somewhere below
  10. a man and a dog crossing the path then entering a steep trail down to the river through small hole in the wall of green

later in the day: Watching a video about her life as a pro runner, Lauren Gregory said this: “Consistency isn’t just about showing up when things are going well; it’s about building a life that allows you to keep showing up.” For Gregory, this means routine.

I really like combining Gregory’s idea of life-building practices routines with Des Linden’s famous call to keep showing up:

hike: 50 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
77 degrees

A warm, but not as warm as I thought it would be, hike. It started with irritation: a guy standing with his dog right in front of the entrance, blocking the way in, barely moving enough to let us by. Why? We both wondered what he was doing and why, out of all of the places he could be waiting, he was standing right in front of the gate.

Most of the rest of the hike was good. FWA reported on all of the theories about Subnautica 2, and discussed how thoughtful the creators of the game are in their early release — hardly any bugs and a well-developed story. When he mentioned that the area where a huge tree lived was called Xanadu, I asked him if the creators of the game named it that as a more general reference to the pop culture idea of Xanadu, or the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Kahn. He thought it was possible they were referencing the poem. All I could remember from it was most of the first 2 lines: In Xanadu, did Kubla Kahn —- decree.

Kubla Kahn/ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!
And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced:
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:
And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.
Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean;
And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves;
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight ’twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

dog name: I didn’t hear any dog names directly, but I think I heard a woman, who sounded exasperated, calling to her dog down by the water, Scarlet! Scarlet! Come here!

my 2 favorite sounds: First, the bullfrogs. As we neared the end of the trail, at the beach, I could hear the loud buzz of the frogs. The noise was coming from the other side of the water, where the river turns into a creek that winds through a section of the floodplain forest. Second, Delia’s thundering feet. As Delia ran past me, I could hear her little paws pounding the ground — on sand, then grass, then firmer dirt. I love that sound!

holes / strings

I’m continuing to work on my found poems project, but I’d like to wrap it up so I can spend the summer with water. What I need to do now is document my process so that I can remember what I was doing when I pick it back up in the fall. Will I be able to stop, or will I keep working on it regardless of my intentions? We’ll see.

Before I stop, I’d like to get some orange thread — regular + embroidery — and experiment with incorporating it into my otherwise black and white (and gray) visual poems.

I’d also like to figure out the words for my poem using a NYer essay reviewing memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. In my version, mother = word, and it’s about my fraught relationship with seeing/reading/making sense of the written word.

a few hours later: As I worked on finding words in the essay, phrases and fragments kept popping up, then an idea came to me: Pick out a few of these phrases, which offer a way to describe my experiences reading, particularly in terms of how words connect me to the world. Pair a phrase with one of the spiders-on-drugs webs that has been inspiring me. Map the words on a panel, create the spider web over it. I love the idea; can I actually make it?

Some of the webs are easier than others; all of them seem too much to try without some sort of help. One of Chuck Close’s grids?! I definitely want to do the caffeine web, but I think I should start with something easier, like marijuana:

drug-induced webs

I also want to do “sleeping pills” — especially since I often fall asleep while I’m reading!

spider on sleeping pills makes web

I think I’ll do 3 or 4. Here are the phrases I want to refine/condense:

1

When the forms are too fuzzy
I escape into coordinates

note: I like the idea of this and the linking of coordinates to the grid and mapping and my desire to find concrete ways to locate my vision loss, but I’m not sure it makes enough sense as is. I’ll keep thinking about it.

2

the ordinariness of language lost

3

gaze — an act of creation and of demolition — made hole again

4

nothing, subdued, entangled

5

shadows and absences born
certainty died (or ruptured?)

6

kinship between eye, world, word confounded
threads twisted, knotted, cut

may 24/RUN

8 miles
top of I-94 bridge (near downtown)
61 degrees

Could summer finally be here? I hope so. Scott and I ran north on the river road, down the franklin hill, through the flats, up the I-94 hill, then everything, in reverse. The first 6 or so miles of it felt fine; that last bit, not as much. My feet hurt, and I think it’s because of my shoes. They felt better this week than last week, but I’m still wondering if I should look into some other shoes.

Scott and I talked about amateur runners doping (me), our complicated feelings about bikers (Scott), the virtue of reasonableness (me), labor arbitrage in relation to the production of electric basses (Scott), and how a Lutheran church in south Minneapolis is giving land to an American Indian organization as reparations (me). The first half of the run went by quickly as we talked. During the second half, my feet started hurting, the sun felt warmer, and we were both thirsty, so I noticed the time and the miles more.

11 Things

  1. someone on an elipti-go machine
  2. Hi Dave! / Hi Sara! Hi Scott! — greeting Dave the Daily Walker — it’s been some time since I’ve seen him
  3. click clack click clack — a roller skiers poles
  4. a group of 1/2 dozen bikers, at least 3 of them young kids
  5. a line-up of 4 cars, following behind a slower biker chatting on the phone
  6. a thin, oily-looking skin on the river’s surface in the flats
  7. a lone rower on the river! I listened to their oars gently slapping the water
  8. mostly filled benches
  9. the smell of honeysuckle drifting out of the gorge
  10. rows of black garbage bags filled with vegetation — I think it was Friends of the Mississippi River volunteers removing garlic mustard
  11. the spring that emerges from the rock face below the west bank of the U of M was gushing water

A good run. It helps to run with Scott. Today’s victories: running up the entire (long and steep) I-94 hill; running up 3/4 of the franklin hill; keeping steady for most of the run; finishing a minute faster than last week on a tougher route.

Things to work on: try lock laces; bring water — or stop for water

may 21/HIKERUN

hike: 55 minutes
minnehaha off-leash dog park
60 degrees

note: I’m writing this the next morning. I was so busy working on pasting words for Hole 3 that I forgot to work on it.

Cool, overcast, humid. Some birds, but not as many as on Monday. An unfortunate encounter with a dog and their human who was not giving any attention to the dog and how they were being too aggressive with Delia the dog. At one point, FWA and I had to surround Delia and I called out to the dog, in my don’t-fuck-with-me-mom-voice: good-bye! go away! Finally the human noticed, (sort of) apologized and called to their dog, who ran off. But, as soon as we started moving again, the dog was back. FWA called out, would you please control your dog? And, finally, she did.

Wow, that made us mad. I’m glad that the human didn’t try to engage with us anymore because it might have escalated. A few minutes later, as we kept walking, I thought about the incident with the woman who had felt threatened by a guy she had confronted a few weeks ago in a new way.

FWA and I stewed about the encounter for a few more minutes until we encountered a sweet and HUGE black dog and their human. What breed is your dog? / A Great Russian Terrier. / What’s their name? / George. George! As George approached me, his head at my hip (he is that tall), she warned, George has a wet face. What a sweet face and disposition! FWA agreed, adding that George had the energy of an old soul. Walking away, I wondered about the origins of the Great Russian Terrier, imagining them in Peter the Great’s entourage.

a few minutes later: I was wrong. They were bred by the Soviet Army and served as guard dogs at the Siberian Steppes. Yikes!

Watching this video, I was reminded of George. What a sweet dog, and a sweet human who has cared for him so well!

water level watch: for the past month or so, I’ve been taking note of the rising and falling water level at the beach at the tip of the park. One time, the water had consumed most of the beach, another time it was so low that we could walk far enough to reach a biggish log. Today that log was underwater by about 40 feet (in distance, not depth).

run: 4.5 miles
reverse veterans home
64 degrees

Since my blue running shoes seem to be bothering me, I decided to try out my bright yellow shoes again. It felt so strange to run in them for the first 5 minutes, like everything was discombobulated. Awkward, wrong. Slowly I got used to them, but they didn’t feel okay until mile 4. And they never felt great. Sigh. Am I going to need to invest in different shoes?

10 Things

  1. so many cars on the road, zooming past, fast!
  2. the falls were gushing white foam
  3. a line of surreys waiting to take over the paths and annoy Scott
  4. 2 people sitting on a bench, another next to them in a wheelchair, all of them laughing about something, having fun
  5. passing a couple, overhearing the guy saying something cliched — I wish I could remember the expression — I think he was being ironic
  6. 2 dozen middle-schoolers (I think?) running along the trail — spread out, some fast, some much slower — a track team?
  7. stopping at the huge boulder that looks like a chair, a person emerged out of the oak savanna
  8. a biker’s bright headlight cutting through the trees
  9. big groups of people all around the falls
  10. the faint chiming of the light rail’s recorded bells

A good run — not the best, but definitely not the worst. Other than my feet burning near the end of mile 3 (thanks, warts), I felt strong and fit. For the entire run, I listened to an audiobook that is due in 3 days: The Buffalo Hunter Hunter / Stephen Graham Jones. Such a great book, and difficult/painful to read as it forces me to confront the violence against indigenous peoples that is the inheritance of all settler colonists. The violence in the book (it is a horror book about a vampire) is not gratuitous but reflective of the horrific violence done to American Indians in order to take their land.

holes 3

Today I cut out the words of the poem and pasted them on the essay. Realized after I did it that I should have numbered them — one of my main ways of guiding the reader in what direction to go when reading the words. Oh well, this is only a preliminary version. I played around with how to thread it — from the upper right hand corner to mimic my blooms poem, or in the center and all around. I like the center better. I told RJP that I liked to try using a bigger needle for the center — the eye — and have the thread go through that. RJP told me I need a tapestry needle. Time to go shopping again!

threads over essay

Next up: play around with light to create shadows. As I worked on this thread technique, I wondered if it might not work better for another of my poems about the strings unravelling? Instead of thread for this one, maybe I should focus on playing around with shadows a lot more? Fun!

may 20/RUN

3.75 miles
top of wabun hill, bottom of locks and dam
55 degrees

Goodbye gloom, hello sun! Shadows, the promise of summer returning! I was a little nervous about running this morning because my feet have been hurting ever since my 8 mile run on Monday. But, I was fine. I felt strong and happy to be outside in the sun before bugs and heat join us in a few weeks.

10 Things

  1. green everywhere — nothing more specific, just green and green and green
  2. a voice on a speaker at Dowling Elementary telling kids to stay in the classroom until they were told they were free to move around — was this a safety drill? an active shooter? field day?
  3. cracks and ruts and holes on the paved trail everywhere — more now than in the fall
  4. voices below — rowers? no, walkers on the winchell trail — deep in conversation
  5. 4 or 5 cars parked on the way down to the locks and dam — at least 2 were running with radios on
  6. a bright silver flash — sun reflecting off a car hood
  7. empty benches
  8. the water under the ford bridge was mostly a calm blue with a few waves and a faint reflection of the bridge’s arch
  9. nearing the top of the wabun hill, hearing a chainlink fence rattling: someone playing on the frisbee golf course
  10. my face, slick with sweat and the new sunscreen I just bought at Costco yesterday

I listened to feet striking the ground as I ran south, my “slappin’ shaddow” playlist on the way north. Song I remember the most: White Room / Cream

Low Vision

Yesterday I had my first low vision therapy appointment. It was an assessment. She asked me what I’d like help with — she worded it differently, but I can’t remember how. First I said that I’d like help with interacting with people when I can’t see their faces, and then something more useful: I’d like some strategies for dealing with that uncomfortable moment when I enter an unfamiliar place and can’t make sense of my surrounding. She recommended 2 apps to try (more on that later) and the basic technique of grounding myself by standing with my back against a wall and taking a minute to get my bearings. I like the idea of stopping and standing against a wall. Two of my big problems are feeling pressured by others, or having them try to help me when I want to figure it out myself. Standing back should help with those problems.

back to hole 3

Woke up yesterday to a realization: I really like the idea of my specimen board, but the execution of it feels forced and not very interesting. Time to set that one aside for now (or forever?). I decided to finally begin my summary of April’s monthly challenge, partly because I don’t want to get too far behind on my summaries, and partly to shift my attention back to grids and holes and lines. I only needed to read a few days into April to find some (re)direction. Here’s what I wrote on 6 April:

I’m thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me….how reading is so important to that locating and how being located is to be held, to be connected, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you).

6 april

This morning, before my run, I decided to rework hole 3. A new plan:

  • my standard 4 panels — 3 panels of page 1 of the book review of Helen Oyeyemi’s new book, A New New Me, 1 panel of page 2
  • 4 short verses — the first 3 mostly “found” on one of the 3 page 1s, the 4th made out of the words from verses “1-3 that are “found” on page 2
  • a grid + hole in the top right corner with many strands of thread emerging from it to cover the words of the poem

The words of the poem:

verse 1: swap out the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision
for (with?) looks of shadowed magic

verse 2: Fall through the hole your eyes don’t see, land in a logic of blur and almost

verse 3: read sentences sliced in half, each one glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined

verse 4: in a scramble looks logic, eyes read blur as what is

one tiny cheat: even though I don’t use as in the first 3 verses, I added it to verse 4 because I needed to — can I keep playing around with this to make it fully work?

I would like to have this on my cork board before the sun begins streaming in the front windows. How will the shadows fall on the panels? What might the thread-shadows say? If this looks cool, I’d like that to be part of the poem.

I have the panels up on the cork board. I didn’t have time to do anything but mark where the found words go, but I was able to create some thread lines. Now I wait. And wait. And wait. It wasn’t until 7pm that the shadows began to appear. The ones from the threads weren’t as interesting as I wanted, so I started experimenting with other ways to make shadows. A flash of a thought: tape my blind spot on the window where the light is streaming in so it can cast a shadow on the paper. Yes! I had three templates, so I taped them all up. I want to play with this some more tomorrow — hopefully it will be sunny again!

3 holes taped on window, casting shadow on essay, close-up
3 holes taped on window, long view

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!

view 1
view 2

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

april 24/HIKING

55 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
49 degrees

Cooler today, but sunny with a soft breeze. Wonderful for moving. FWA and I agreed that there was energy in the air, a lifting — of impending storms, oppressive heat, humidity. The dog park vibe today: chill. Dogs moving quickly and quietly.

today’s dog name: Sunny (or Sonny?)

10 Things

  1. glittering water
  2. a small boat, fishing near the end of the trail
  3. the LOUD knocking from a pileated woodpecker
  4. a very big uprooted trunk, almost upright, leaning in the hollow of a living tree
  5. deep, soft sand
  6. the slapping sound of Delia’s water running through the water at the edge of the shore
  7. the soft, thundering thump of Delia’s running feet on the soft dirt
  8. 2 HUGE fluffy white dogs
  9. a small (smaller than delia) dog emerging from the woods — first, a flash, then right in front of of us — first they jumped up on me, then FWA, as if to say, hi! hi!
  10. even more green on the trees, on the ground

While we hiked, FWA and I discussed Ariadne (see below). It started with me asking FWA if he was familiar with Ariadne’s thread from his reading of The Odyssey in college, or Percy Jackson in elementary school. He said, sure, but I mostly know it from Tarkov (a Steam video game). Of course. I’m always fascinated by all the stories/history FWA knows from playing video games. A few minutes later, FWA said, I think I also know it from Kaos (a Netflix show about greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus.

holes and strings and words

This morning, I feeling a bit overwhelmed and disoriented by all of my ideas about holes and strings and threads. Instead of trying to think and theorize my way out of it, which is my inclination — I’ve decided to stop trying to figure it out and follow some more trails. These trails may offer some answers, or they may cause me to get even more entangled (ensnared, knotted).

1 — Ariadne’s Thread

In yesterday’s post, Ariadne came up in a quote from the intro to Her Read. I knew the name, but couldn’t remember why. Just as I began typing In yesterday’s post, I remembered! It was mentioned in a poem about Icarus that I posted here on 19 june 2025: Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews. This poem has a favorite line, which I think fits here:

Bliss is a body absconding
warp speed toward 
a dwarf star whispering,
Unsee the beheld.

In that 19 june post, I kept thinking about unseeing:

Unsee as different than not-seeing (which I ‘ve thought/written about before). Not seeing is a static thing; you just don’t see it. To unsee is more active and also suggests a process of unravelling which is where my vision is at. 

A few minutes later in the walk, I thought about flipping the phrase to, behold the unseen.

I like thinking about to unsee as a verb, an act, a process, a type of prayer? Just as seeing is not a static thing, where you simply see, but a process of light and signals and filtering and guessing by the brain, unseeing is a process of slow (or sporadic) unravelling then adapting — a brain doing mysterious and magical things with the scrambled and limited data it receives, a mind developing new ways to witness/behold without stable and dependable eyes.

Wow. All of this thinking about unseeing the beheld and unraveling vision, returns me to another thread in the book review about Helen Oyeyemi’s new book: swap the dead-eye liturgy of doomed vision for shadow acts wild and improbable. Is there something there to return to?

In my brief searching for Ariadne’s thread, I found a description of it as a method in logic for “solving a problem which has multiple apparent ways to proceed—such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma—through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes” (wikipedia).

I found this bit about how Ariadne’s thread differs from “trial and error” interesting:

The terms “Ariadne’s thread” and “trial and error” are often used interchangeably, which is not necessarily correct. They have two distinctive differences:

“Trial and error” implies that each “trial” yields some particular value to be studied and improved upon, removing “errors” from each iteration to enhance the quality of future trials. Ariadne’s thread has no such mechanism, and hence all decisions made are arbitrary. For example, the scientific method is trial and error; puzzle-solving is Ariadne’s thread.

Trial-and-error approaches are rarely concerned with how many solutions may exist to a problem, and indeed often assume only one correct solution exists. Ariadne’s thread makes no such assumption, and is capable of locating all possible solutions to a purely logical problem.

In short, trial and error approaches a desired solution; Ariadne’s thread blindly exhausts the search space completely, finding any and all solutions.

The goal is not the solution/answer, but an exploration of possibilities. I also like the idea of using the thread approach in my erasing of text in a New Yorker article. The key: it’s arbitrary!

With a little more research, I also found this brief description:

The phrase “Ariadne’s Thread” refers to to the problem-solving technique of keeping a meticulous record of each step taken, so that you can always backtrack and try alternatives if your first efforts fail to yield results.

side note: this might be helpful in tracking my creative experiments so I don’t lose some of my initial ideas.

Before I left for the dog park with FWA, I had an exciting idea about how Ariadne’s thread seems to contrast with Alice’s rabbit hole. Here are some notes I jotted down so I wouldn’t forget:

tension = going down a rabbit hole (free fall, untethering, getting lost) versus ariadne’s thread (logic, finding, tethered to the world/meaning/language) — part of the feeling/process/practice of reading — what is the relationship to the word, how do I read? I answer with a mix of phenomenology (describing/showing my mechanics or reading words on a page) and an invitation to a new relationship with words, a new way for meaning and connecting and communicating not based on progression or logic or efficient understanding.

2 — a plastic bag

Some good ideas with the thread, but also too much thinking and theorizing and trying to fit ideas into a concept. I want to be led by the making and experimenting, not some concept. So, I returned to playing around, this time with my ziploc bag again. I like this material as the material for the hole or the effect the hole makes on words. I decided to deconstruct (that is, cut and spread open) the bag, the distress it with a pencil (drawing spirals and lines and zigzags on it). Then I realized it was almost the size of a single page: I can use it as a veil over the entire page!. I decided to create two bag sheets to make the text more difficult to read. Then I put them on 2 stacked pages of an essay — the same page. I found a word, eye, and cut it out of the one page so that you could still see it on the second (same) page. A hole in the page — I like this idea. Unfortunately, this version of it didn’t quite work; I’ll have to play with it more. Running out of time, I decided to write the word in bigger letters just to test out the effect. It needs some work, but it has potential.

a test: 2 sheets of distressed ziploc bag over text with a hole cut out to reveal a poem

For this picture, I held the papers up in front of the window with sun streaming in. I need to distress the plastic more.

same pages/poem, light source on, not through

A thought: as I work on these poems about reading, consider the light source; it strongly impacts how and what I can see. How can I replicate different levels of light, from BRIGHT to dim.

Another thought: more frequently, I’ve been placing holes on the page to erase the text, like my blind spot made out of black netting. I like the idea of experimenting with ways to cover the text, like with this distressed ziploc. I could also use layers of netting and thread grids — ones that are straight and ordered, others that are tangled and slanted.

Her Read

a page from Her Read/ Jennifer Sperry

Wow, this is very cool! I’d like to use this as inspiration. I’ll have to spend some time with this to see if I can read it. I like the color and how the words for the poem are all over the place and the arrows/directions.

april 17/RUN

5.25 miles
franklin loop
63 degrees / drizzle
humidty: 85%

I beat the storm! Yes, there was drizzle, but no strong wind or thunder, so I’ll take the victory. Today I felt strong and relaxed and capable. Not anxious or overwhelmed. Today I also feel vulnerable and open to the world, ready to embrace any slight shifts in perspective.

Image of the Day: Running north on the east bank, looking down at the river: a sea of bright, fresh green. On this side of the gorge, between lake and franklin, there used to be a park down below, so there’s wide stretches of cleared land and open grass. Even knowing that, the green looked like water not grass to me, high up on the bluff.

Realization of the day: Returning to the west bank, running south, admiring the straight-ish ridge line across the gorge and wondering how it could be almost uniform, I realized something: this ridge line was made by humans — leveled after logging and road and residence building. What did it look like before settler colonists arrived?

on training for the marathon: Today I ran 9, walked 1. After crossing over Franklin, I did a 5 minute walk to get my heart rate below 170. Then another 9/1. After this last one I checked how long it took to get my heart rate down to 135: 2 minutes. A goal for future Sara: cut that time in half, or even more.

10 Things

  1. flashes of white flowers on the edge of the bluff: the spring ephemerals!
  2. little kid voices, laughing, somewhere deep in the gorge
  3. a guy yelling near a car parked across the parkwy on seabury — was it “fun” yelling as he played with a kid, or “unhinged” yelling at someone?
  4. chickadeedeedee
  5. a verbal greeting with a walker: good moring! / good morring!
  6. honking geese, a honking car horm
  7. a grayish-brownish-blue river, empty
  8. bright LED headlights, cutting through the thick gray air
  9. slashes of bright green are beginning to appear in the floodplain forest!
  10. several stones stacked on the ancient boulder

grids and strings and threads (oh my)

It’s a few hours after I returned from my run and it’s hailed twice and thundered and dropped 15 degrees since then. Boo. I tried a new thing with Holes 3: drew a graph directly on the words, mapped the words on the xy axis, lightly shaded in the words, repinned the grid over that, and then used thread to finish it. I like the doubling, almost out of focus feeling that the pencil grid and the string grid create. I don’t think the words are clear enough yet. I’ll have to keep working on that.

double grid
double grid, a slightly closer look (find fall and almost)

Here’s something else I tried: encasing the words in circles (using a penny) then roughly erasing the circles:

ghost hole effect

Another thought: map the words on a grid, then color in the rest of the grid box around the word or phrase from the poem. How would that look? Maybe I’ll try it on a smaller scale?

april 16/HIKE

60 minutes
Minnehaha Off-Leash Dog Park
68 degrees

Another hike with FWA and Delia. So beautiful! Today, FWA shared a realization about something that happened to him in 5th grade that was traumatic and has had a lasting impact. This realization explains so much about him and how he retreated into himself in middle school. My heart aches for that sweet, young boy! Oh, how I wish I would have recognized it when it was happening for what it was! But, I’m not sure I could have; I don’t think he even realized how much it impacted him until now.

dog names overheard: Daphne (a french bulldog); Carly (a standard poodle); and Danny, short for Lt. Dan (from Forest Gump (a corgie — Lt. Dan because he has no/short legs) and Ari (no idea what kind of dog Ari was, I never saw them, just heard their owner irritatingly calling for them ALL the time — Ari! Ari! Aaaaarrrriiii!)

10 Things

  1. a stopped, silent motor boat
  2. thin white foam on lapping the shore
  3. a log floating by, looking like a beaver (at least to me)
  4. more flashes of green
  5. a gaggle of honking geese, first flying then landing somewhere under a bridge
  6. a black puppy with white paws the same size as 10 yr old Delia
  7. a dirty golden retriever jumping on me (I didn’t care)
  8. a sweet mid-sized white dog acting like a cat, approaching then leaning into me (also didn’t care)
  9. a new entrance to the dog park, set farther in and farther from the road
  10. woodpeckers knocking on wood! Once, a deep and very hollow sound — FWA and I guessed it was a big bird and a very hollow piece of wood. Another time, a quicker, softer knocking, sounding like a rattling jawbone to me

Near the end I mentioned hearing a rock bouncing off a hollow spot in the packed dirt, which prompted FWA to start talking about sink holes. There are lots of sink holes all around the river. At one point during this discussion, I thought about my holes project and how our discussion fit. Here’s one way to think about it: as we talked about sink holes I mentioned (or thought, I can’t remember) how freaky the idea of a hole opening up in the ground and swallowing someone or something unsettled me. Why is this so unsettling to me? The idea of being swallowed, of disappearing without a trace, of being trapped without an escape from somewhere deep? Could it also be the falling part too? The dizziness, your stomach dropping, the total loss of control? Possibly. Three thoughts related to my Holes series:

1

Dizziness. Feeling dizzy, like I might pass out, then a soft panic after trying to read for too long, or while trying to read labels at a grocery store. More than once, I’ve stopped and closed my eyes and held onto the grocery cart to ground myself.

2

Disorientation and feeling lost. I can’t read the names of stores or restaurants on the signs outside of buildings, so it can be very hard to get my bearings in a new place.

3

Delight. This morning, I watched the scene from the animated Alice in Wonderland again and marveled (again) at Alice’s reaction to falling down the hole. As she plunges into the darkness, she looks back at her cat standing at the top of the hole, and calls out to them in a delighted and excited voice, Good bye Dinah! Goodbyeeeeeeeee! Alice is not terrified or confused. As she continues to fall, she says something like, Now I will think nothing of falling down stairs!

grids and lines and threads

This morning, a return to thinking through the bigger picture of this series. A reminder from my thoughts from 7 april: the jacked-up spider web experiment in which NASA scientists gave spiders several different substances than studied the webs they created on those substances. A visual inspiration for this series! I’m printing out some images to put at the top of my cork board.

my cork board with the spider webs in the top right corner

Before the hike, I gave myself 3 tasks for today: 1. collect/work on Holes 5a, b, and c, also known as Hole Perspective, Hole Time, and Hole Process. Try to include “strings” or “pull the strings” in one of these poems; 2. draw/shade the dots encasing the words for Holes 3; and 3. work on the poem for Holes 6/Strings 1 — the book review about daughter’s memoirs

Holes 5a, 5b, 5c and Strings 1

Holes 5a

My hole perspective —
life on the way to
wonderland.

I fall
through a what is this?
feeling as text bloom into nonsense.

Holes 5b

hole time —
measured in word (or words)
one word then one then one word

Holes 5c

the hole process —
a small island where reading is still possible waits
as the large nothing that surrounds it grows

Strings 1


the strings that tie
words to the world of meaning
have come un done

I like these!

2 — Draw the holes in Hole 3

I did it. And it took much longer than I anticipated, so no third thing today. I drew larger holes and then created an elevated grid over it, first on my wall board and then on a piece of cork board on my desk. I think the holes are too big; they should be dots to match the center dot of the amsler grid and of points mapped on the x and y axis.

grid with big dots


I’d like to plot the small dots on the map of the text and then place the grid over it. I think I need to print the text directly on a graph to plot it properly — or is there another (easier?) way to do this?

april 15/RUN

4.65 miles
ford overlook and back
63 degrees

Hot! Time to start running much earlier in the day! Yes, a return to morning running could be the next step in my efforts to regain some healthy discipline.

Earlier today I found another song to add to my “Remember to Forget” playlist — Forget Me Nots / Patrice Rushen, so I decided to listen to it while I ran for 9 minutes, then walked one. Midway through the playlist, “Forget Me Nots” came on and as I listened to it, I thought about Emily Dickinson’s “If recollecting were forgetting”. Listening to Elvis Costello’s “Veronica” about a woman with dementia, I thought about how the new name Scott came up with for present Sara, Sara this second, has a much different meaning when applied to someone who has no memory beyond the now.

10 Things

  1. flashes of bright green in my periphery as I ran by trees with new buds
  2. hot sun
  3. music coming from the grassy boulevard: people sitting in chairs, listening to music
  4. squirrels squawking at each other
  5. a loud thumping noise at the skate park
  6. someone in white sitting on the ledge looking over the river
  7. a biker in an orange shirt, biking very slowly over the ford bridge
  8. the voices of kids laughing and yelling on the playground
  9. a biker in a winter coat with a stocking cap and gloves on
  10. the desire path on the grassy boulevard is a mix of packed dirt, mud, roots, and greening grass

holes and grids and threads

The saga continues. I said to Scott earlier, after pushing my eyes to the limit with measuring 9/16th of an inch and attempting to cut straight slits and placing 84 pins 1/2 inch apart to create a grid, why I am so stubbornly committed to this project when it is to fiddly and challenging for my limited vision? I am not sure, but something in me won’t quit. I want to make a series of visual poems that use grids made out of thread and string and yarn and that require skills far beyond my ability (at least my ability right now) and that are exhausting and frustrating and take a lot of time. And, I WILL make it, dammit! I could use graph paper for the grid, but I want to use thread/string and have the lines be 3-dimensional. The thread/yard is partly as a connection to my fiber artist mom and my fiber artist daughter. The 3D is for the shadows and for what the floatinggrid boxes do to how we see/don’t see the words within them. I just finished my first attempt on placing the grid over Holes 3. I measured a 10×10 square over the words and then placed 21 pins on each of the 4 sides. Then I wound the thread around the pins to create the grid.

a 10×10 grid made of black thread and pins, placed over a NYer book review of Helen Oyeyemi’s new book
a closer look at the grid and the first word of the poem, fall

I really like this grid overlay, even as I recognize that I need to do more to it to make it make sense to a reader/viewer. The pins are difficult to work with on the thin cork board. They twist and bend out of place. What will I use for a different/the final version of this poem? I showed it to Scott and he suggested a frosted plexiglass layer with only the words of the poem visible. At least, I think that’s how he described it; I’m not quite understanding what he means. I’m wondering if encasing the words in a small dot (both a reference to the center dot of an Amsler grid AND xy coordinates on a graph) might work. One problem: I don’t want to remove the pins and draw the dot in, then have to re-string/pin the grid. I need a better solution for that!

I do like the elevated grid and the way you have to look through and around it to find the right word. I also like the thin thread that you almost can’t see. That’s how my vision often works: it’s not a solid wall of black, but the faint trace of something, sometimes feeling like a net or a screen that makes it harder to focus on anything. One more thing: when I ‘m reading, it does feel like each word or phrase is encase in a grid, with nothing outside of the grid in focus.

note: I’m warming to Scott’s plexiglass idea, even as I’m still not totally understanding what Scott means. What does the plexiglass do to the effect of the grid-thread? The focus on this poem is the graph-grid and the x = blur, y = almost coordinates.

It’s 5:38 and the sun is streaming in my front room studio. I’m waiting for it to hit my grid poem, and hoping it leads to cool grid shadows!

It’s 6:38 pm and some shadows have finally arrived! I asked Scott to take the picture because I wasn’t sure I could capture it effectively.

pin shadows

At first I didn’t notice the pin shadows, I just thought the pins had become twisted out of shape. But no — the pins are fine; it’s their shadows that are all askew. Nice!

Delighted by the result, I decided to take my own picture:

grid shadows in the early evening sun

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 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 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.

march 31/RUN

4.25 miles
river road, north/south
45 degrees

Overdressed. When I checked the temp, it read 45 but feels like 34 so I added a layer, which was a mistake. Lots of dripping sweat and a flushed face. My goal today was to try and take it easy with a steady 10 minute pace. I was mostly steady, but ran faster than that. I need to figure out how to slow down again; my new shoes make me want to run faster than I can sustain for long runs.

I chanted in triple berries to keep steady and to lose track of words and ideas: strawberry/blueberry/raspberry. It worked. I don’t remember what I thought about.

For some of the run, it felt hard to keep going and for some of it, it was easy. I think it’s time to experiment more with ways to distract myself — or to lead my mind in directions other than, this is hard, I can’t keep going, when can I stop?

overheard: I think I heard something at the beginning of the run that I wanted to remember but I lost it when I started chanting in triples. I do remember hearing something at the end: Two women walking, one to the other — it feels so good to have the sun on my face!

10 Things

  1. a speedy runner in white down below, on the winchell trail — beside me, then ahead of me, then gone
  2. soft, shimmering shadows
  3. a LOUD siren coming from behind, then an ambulance speeding by on the river road
  4. empty benches
  5. the view from the sliding bench: uncluttered, the sands gleaming so white that it looked like snow
  6. soft, dry dirt — no more mud
  7. one car then another then another passing by on the river road
  8. dried flowers hanging from the pink sign reading, Someone was taken by ICE here
  9. a slower biker riding on the grass between the river road and seabury
  10. the chain is still strung across the top step of the old stone steps, blocking the way down to the river

holes

Arts and crafts fun. This morning I did a test run of a yarn grid for Holes 1. A 9 x 9 square of cardboard with 1/2 inch slits all around. A long piece of blue yarn1 which I wound through the slits. A poem under the yarn grid: circles/dark holes encasing the words: off center era.

Assessment:

  • I need an exact-o knife for more precise cuts
  • the blue yarn is too thick and makes it impossible to read; try dark thread instead
  • make sure that the thread is long enough before starting to wrap it around the notches
  • follow this order: cut notches, place/attach (glue?) poem to cardboard, make sure the thread is long enough then wind it around
  • question: if I’m using thread, can I use a thinner frame, like cardstock instead of cardboard?

Here’s a picture of my test poem — should I call it, “(i’m in my)”?

a blue grid over found text, a black dot in the center then three dots scattered around it reading "off center era"
(in my) off center era

Okay, I tried it with thread and it works better, I think, but I need to be neater with it. Although, I do like the color of the blue. . . . For the larger Holes series, I need the black thread. In Holes 1, the Amsler Grid is straight, but by Holes 3, the lines will be much more crooked and warped. Black thread is much more effective for this warping.

(in my) off center era

A few more thoughts: It looks like I’ll need to take the circle-encased words and place them over the grid to be legible — the easiest way to do that is with the words as cut-outs, although I could also try weaving the thread under them (but that sounds difficult and beyond my limited skill and ability as “barely not blind.” Also, more thread is needed for back-up. And, should I create a frame around the holes poem that covers the ends? It could be a basic frame, either purchased or made, but I like the idea of creating some texture and/or a collage — maybe the black mesh fabric I bought, or ___? It needs to be something related to the holes poems and the act of reading? I’ll keep thinking about it. Would it work to have the words of the found poem on the frame?

update from yesterday’s post

First, yesterday I mentioned a discussion of three types of freedom that I was having with FWA at the dog park: I was looking for my PhD advisor’s book that discusses it. I can’t find my copy yet, but I found it online:

Second, yesterday I also mentioned that I was picking up 2 books from the library: Sea of Grass: the Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of the American Prairie and a found poem collection by Annie Dillard, Morning Like This. More on both of these tomorrow.

  1. Finding a long enough strand of yarn took at least 3 tries. I thought I had a long enough strand then it would run out half way through and I would have to unravel what I had already done. Something important to remember for the official grid: make sure the yarn/string/thread is long enough before you begin! ↩︎

march 28/RUN

4 miles
river road, south/wabun/bottom of locks/river road, north
38 degrees / feels like 22
wind: 15 mph / gusts: 32 mph

Another windy run. Cold-ish, too. Wore running tights, shorts, 2 long-sleeved shirts, a pull-over, a hat, a hood, gloves. I didn’t feel overheated until the end. Lots of cars on the road, not that many people on the trail. Are they all going to the No Kings March at the capitol? I (kind of) wanted to go, but big crowds are not the easiest for me and Scott, RJP, and FWA struggle in them too, so I’m skipping it.

According to my watch, I slept for 7 hours and 21 minutes last night. That is a lot for me! And, my sleep score1 was 77. I think it helped me to feel stronger on the run.

10 Things

  1. reaching the top of the wabun hill, I heard the clanging of the bell — is there a bell up here? no — it was a kid banging on something at the playground
  2. wild turkeys — 4 or 5 of them, under the ford bridge! I passed close by them as I ran up the wabun hill. By the time I return back down the hill, they were gone
  3. goose honks near the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1
  4. swirling leaves
  5. the round shadow of the light on the street lamp
  6. more scales on the gray water
  7. chanting in triple berries to keep a steady pace
  8. running on the rim of the bluff, looking down at the winchell trail which was empty and farther down than I usually remember
  9. at the top of the wabun hill, stopping to look through the chain link fence at the river
  10. a boot, stuck on a stalk on the boulevard of matt the cat’s house
serve and a boot / the pink sign near the far house says, “someone was abducted by ICE here.”

The abduction by ICE happened early on, between the murders of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Two people were pulled from their car and taken; the car was left by the side of the road.

In addition to this boot picture, I also took some pictures of the view through the chainlink fence.

1
2
3
4

I like this series of pictures. It reminds me a little of how I see. I can see better through my peripheral vision than my central — even when and if I don’t want to. It’s distracting to focus on the edge details sometimes, and it makes what’s in the center look even fuzzier to me. In thinking about my Holes series, does this happen at all when I’m reading? Is there a way to connect this fence with the lines in an Amsler Grid? An idea: what if I drew a giant Amsler Grid over the top of the entire, 4 panel, Holes 1 poem?

  1. What does the sleep score mean? I’m less interested in the specifics of it at this point, and more interested in tracking which direction that number is headed. 77, which is only “OK” according to Apple health info, is the highest number I’ve had in the past almost 2 weeks. A goal by May: a number in the 80s. ↩︎

march 27/RUN

5.5 miles
ford loop
35 degrees / feels like 18
wind: 18 mph / gusts: 29 mph

Brr. I was underdressed this morning in only one long-sleeved shirt, a vest, tights, shorts, stocking cap, gloves. It was the wind that made it feel cold. Running north and east it blew into me. It was especially bad on the ford bridge. Even with the wind, a great run. Sun! Shadows! The feeling of spring!

Some of the run was hard, some of it wasn’t. A little bit of unfinished business, legs that were sometimes sore and heavy. Does it have to do with the iron pill I’m taking? I am not anemic, but on the very low end of ferritin stores — and have been for 4 or more years now — so I’m getting serious with trying to increase my iron. A pill everyday, first thing in the morning with a grapefruit. No coffee or other food for at least an hour. Hopefully my ferritin will increase a lot so I don’t have to get an expensive iron infusion. And hopefully that increased ferritin will make it easier for me to run longer because Scott and I signed up for the marathon in October again!

10 Things

  1. a siren — off in the distance, then closer, closer, then almost right behind me, then stopped — the closer it got, the more distorted the siren became — I wonder who/what needed this emergency truck?
  2. a dirt trail behind a bench and railing at the bottom of the summit hill that led to a delightfully open view of the river and the west bank
  3. running over the lake street bridge, wind on water, a scaled surface, gray
  4. bright blue sky with a few puffy clouds
  5. an almost full parking lot at the monument, only 2 spots open
  6. several groups of walkers with dogs, some emerging from the trails below the bluff, some entering them
  7. the wind on the ford bridge! slow and steady, squaring my shoulders and leaning into it
  8. goose honks under the ford bridge
  9. empty benches
  10. an interesting image of vine on the neighbor’s fence
fence / 27 march

holes

Yesterday I watched the clip with the caterpillar from Disney’s Alice in Wonderland and I started thinking more about language and letters and our relationship with words and meaning through reading.

O u e i o A

The scene begins with Alice peering through the leaves at a caterpillar smoking a pipe and singing the vowels. The vowels — the building blocks of language — is this cellular level of the english language? Taken on their own, apart from words and sentences and paragraphs, the vowels aren’t non-sense, but they offer very little sense. I found an old stencil of the alphabet that I inherited from my mom in a drawer yesterday. Could I stencil in the vowels in a way that didn’t look cheesy or ridiculous? I’m not sure.

A thought while I was running: I’m in the process of editing my poems, which involves erasing holes that contain words that I’m no longer using. What if those erased words, those ghosts, remained as traces, haunting the page? Almost like an after image? I’ve noticed that after staring at these dark holes on the page, they start to move around and appear in places they aren’t. (writing that last sentence, I’m reminded of Alice’s nonsense speech to her cat: nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t

A deconstructed amsler grid: an Amsler grid has 38 lines, not including the frame. I decided to use pieces of dried spaghetti and scatter 38 of them on top of 4 panel poem. I’m not sure what I will use in the final version. Sticks? Lines at strange angles drawn on the paper, over the holes and text? Here’s a picture of it.

holes 5 / wip

I had no plan for where the lines would go, I just dropped the spaghetti wherever — should there be a plan, or is haphazard better? Maybe I scatter the dried spaghetti haphazardly first, then replicate that with thick black lines on the actual poem? The only rules: 38 lines, all the same length.

Ok, I scattered the spaghetti and drew in the lines. Here’s what it looks like:

holes 5 wip 2

I just realized I only added 32 lines. I need to add 6 more. Are the lines dark enough? Does it make sense that they are a deconstructed amsler, or do I need to add in a more explicit reference to that somewhere on the poem?

march 23/HIKERUN

hike: 60 minutes
minnehaha dog park
37 degrees

Went to the dog park with FWA and Delia this morning. Chilly but sunny and still down in the floodplain. Beautiful. No snow, hardly any mud, lots of felled trees. Halfway in we encountered an awesome dog carrying a stick that was 3 times as wide as his head. His owner said, the governor is about 200 feet ahead. Last summer, I recalled watching a video of Gov. Walz being interviewed at the dog park, so I knew he came here. About 5 minutes later, there he was! Alone and friendly. Hello! Hi! Of course, I couldn’t see well enough to recognize him, but FWA could. I wish I could have seen that it was him. I would have told him thank you.

5 Dog Park Things / 5 Winchell Trail Things

  1. a section of the river, sparkling in the sun
  2. the bark of the giant felled tree that FWA and I have walked around all this year had been stripped recently — a huge section of the trunk was barkless and gleaming white
  3. faint footprints through the small stretches of mud
  4. a motorboat rumbling by, making waves that rushed onto the shore near Delia
  5. a woodpecker knocking on some dead wood, another (or the same one?) laughing
  6. shadows everywhere — trees, the fence, lamp posts
  7. the winchell trail path was covered in dry leaves that made a delightful crunch as I ran over them
  8. a steady stream of cars (at 3:30 pm)
  9. empty benches
  10. no snow, no puddles

2.8 miles
river road / winchell / lena smith
46 degrees

A quick run — in time and distance and speed. I should have slowed it down; it would have been easier. It’s hard to slow down in my new shoes! I was tired and felt the beginnings of a side stitch a mile in — I ate a protein bar too soon.

Today has been an off day — not terrible, there were many good moments in the hike and the run. But I woke earlier than I should have and felt, for lack of better word, weird. Untethered, fuzzy, maybe a little woozy, tired.

holes

As I continue to work on my holes poems, it has emerged that a few things are present in all of five of them: a hole, that hole’s impact on how I read, my blind spot, and the Amsler grid.

Why the Amsler Grid?

  1. it connects these hole poems with my last round of visual vision poems, mood rings, which take the shape of an amsler grid
  2. it ties in with the larger theme of all of my visual vision poems: vision tests — first, the snellen charts, then the amsler grid
  3. it gives a context for my vision loss and grounds it in within a scientific/medical model of seeing/not seeing
  4. it offers another way to visualize my untethering from that model/logic of test/diagnosis

This 4th one is especially interesting to me. I’m imagining fun ways to play with the implosion or destruction or destabilizing of the sharp, stable, rigid lines of a grid. The lines coming loose, or the lines a ladder without rungs — no way out of the hole, the lines collapsing and being sucked into the black hole, the lines forming a new path, a break in the lines — a gap, a dash, a slash, a breaking out of the lines — an opening, an exit, a room a door unlocked. What could that look like as part of my erasure poem? I mean, what, with my very limited skills in visual art, could I make possible?

I think I need to watch Alice in Wonderland again — should I read it, too? The hole in my vision as Alice’s rabbit hole. A passing through to wonderland. One difference: for Alice, Wonderland is the opposite of sense or nonsense.

everything would be what it wasn’t

I’d like to take this idea of non-sense out of the binary, Sense/Nonsense, to imagine non-sense as being more than just not sense. What if non-sense was its own kind of sense, just like Nothing is not nothing but something outside of our logic or language or ability to name it. Or, like I say in Holes 4, “a nothing that is something not sharing its secrets.

a flash: as I was working on the above list, I suddenly thought about the debate over whether or not listening to an audio book was reading. Does reading only happen with eyes? I like to distinguish it this way: reading with my eyes and reading with my ears. After this thought, a further thought: what if I created a holes poem that wasn’t visual, but aural? I could pick one of the New Yorker stories/articles that you can listen to, and figure out a poem from that. How might that work?

I had intended to work on all of this today, but I was busy all day: a birthday week coffee run with RJP, the dog park with FWA, weekly shopping with Scott, a run + cooking and laundry and a nap.

sleep

I decided to use my Apple watch this week to monitor my sleep. I’m averaging 6 1/2 hours a night, which I think is good for me, but only “okay” for my sleep score. Maybe that’s because I’m waking up every 2 hours. I have to get out of bed and stretch or go to the bathroom or walk around for 10 or 20 or more minutes before falling back asleep again. A thought occurred to me: could my low vision be contributing to my sleep problems? I googled it and yes, it might:

Visual impairment can lead to disturbances in the circadian rhythm20 and exacerbate neuropsychiatric conditions such as anxiety and depression, ultimately impairing central nervous system functionality and contributing to the development of insomnia21. Existing research underscores the negative impact of visual impairment on sleep patterns. Studies conducted in Russia found that individuals with visual impairment had more than twice the odds of reporting insomnia symptoms compared to those without, with this association remaining significant even after adjusting for factors such as age and gender21. This finding further confirms the link between visual dysfunction and sleep disturbances. Community research in the U.S. suggested that older adults with visual impairment are more likely to experience various sleep issues, such as difficulty falling asleep, trouble staying asleep, early morning awakenings, and daytime sleepiness22. Additionally, such individuals often report increased disrupted sleep patterns and a higher prevalence of sleep/wake disturbances23.

low vision and insomnia study

But, this study studied different visual impairments than I have. What about cone dystrophy or macular degeneration, which has similar effects? I looked it up and found some articles that link it, but it’s mostly about anxiety over vision loss that cause the sleep disturbances. I know I have some anxiety about the final break, when none of my cone cells work and all of my central vision is gone, but I think the connection between sleeping and not seeing or seeing differently is more complicated for me. I’ll have to ask the ophthalmologist at my appointment next month.