2.5 miles 44th street parking lot and back 35 degrees
Ran n the afternoon. Colder today. I wore gloves and a headband to cover my ears. It felt harder, maybe I ran too soon after lunch?
It snowed last night. Not much — not even an inch, but enough to cover the grass and make everything glow white. By the time I went out for my run, the paths were clear.
omens of spring-to-come: someone was roller blading! Not roller skiing, but roller blading. And, a woman was running in shorts. It’s not unusual to see a man running in shorts during the winter, but it’s rare to see a woman. That usually doesn’t happen until it’s spring, or feels like spring, or is warm enough to be spring.
I was planning to finish my rabbit recap today, but then I started thinking about and experimenting with my holes poem. No time for the rabbits — well, except for several paragraphs below, when I realize that my naming of this poem, Holes (or hole?), is probably at least partly a reference to the rabbit hole!
New Yorker Experiment #4, continued
Today some part of me decided that we (the Saras) would offer a more detailed account of the process of thinking through my latest poem, so that’s what we’re doing.
I want to keep working on my fourth experiment. Yesterday afternoon, I printed out the New Yorker article, “A Screaming Skull,” and found my poem on its four pages. Then I taped the pages together and mapped the poem out. The theme: holes. I imagine it as part of a larger project about my blind spot. Maybe this project won’t be all erasure/found poems; I might try to connect it to some other work on the blind spot — work I’ve been doing for several years now, but haven’t quite figured out how to turn it into something. Yes! Experiment #3 — swap the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision with shadow (or shadowed?) acts, wild and improbable could connect with my study of JJJJJerome Ellis, the stutter, and his liturgy of the name! Very cool!
I took a picture of what I’ve done so far:
12
What to do next? The second image offers a possible approach: Applying my blind spot — the one I recently created by staring at a blank wall until it appeared, then tracing it — to each of the “found” words. I could sketch the blind spot directly on the page, around the word, OR I could place a cut-out version of the blind spot on top of the word. Maybe I’ll try a practice sketch. Another idea, which is probably definitely beyond my technical ability: create an animation of the process of reading this that starts with an overview of the poem, then zooms into the first word, encircled by the blind spot which appears as I read it. Then it moves to the next word/phrase, and the next, and the next until the poem is finished. I could also do it as a series of stills (instead of an animation). You could look at each one individually1, the image as a whole, and the series of images in a gallery.
I like this last idea! The focus on individual words — isolated from the other words and the meaning as a whole, which is how I read, because what’s left of my central vision is so small it can only fit a few words, and which is how I often (but not always) experience the world with my big blind spot — in isolation, and removed from others. A question: should I keep the larger poem as a square, stacked 2 x 2 pages? Or should I have it extend as 4 pages across? I can play around with it.
an hour or two later: Here’s something I tried with a paper cut-out of my blind spot as a template. I’m thinking I should ask Scott to make a sturdier, cardboard version of this template.
in progress / 1 PM / 7 march 2026
Something to think about: should I have the blind spots on the entire poem/map? I was going to write: no, because that’s not how I would see it; I would see a somewhat fuzzy version of the map of the poem. But this poem is not an accurate representation of how I see. I hardly ever see my blind spot as a gray blob. But the blind spot is there and it distorts how/what I see and I need to represent in some way that others can see too.
Another question: should I hand-sketch this poem, or figure out how to do it on the computer? I like the hand drawing — the material aspect of it + I can do it all myself — but drawing it by hand is messy and unreliable. I’m thinking that this series will be part of my vision art installation — along with my snellen charts and mood rings. It seems too messy if I don’t do it on a computer.
Also: how should the individual stills look? Should they be a close-up on that part of the poem, or just the word/phrase centered in an otherwise blank page? Should they include the blind ring? If I have more of the text, should it be too fuzzy/distorted to read, or should I have it surrounded by gray? Looking at the words on this screen, I see: 1 or 2, maybe 3 short words in focus, then other words too dim or fuzzy to read, and, after staring for a few seconds, a glowing dark ring around it. This ring is not solid or very dark, it’s almost gauzy, like a veil, or the feeling that there’s a ring there. Does that sound strange?
(rabbit) holes: Today I start a new volume of my Plague Notebook: vol. 28! I’m calling it, What about Epstein, Trump? As I was writing in it, describing my latest visual poem, Holes, a thought: Am I calling this holes (or hole?) partly because of my recent study of rabbit holes?! Maybe! And maybe I could bring rabbit holes into a poem about my blind spot!?
Get Out ICE
“Accountability in this case looks incredibly simple. Minnesota must investigate the violation of constitutional rights at the hands of Noem and her ICE agents and prosecute where appropriate. The best part about this process is that Trump can’t pardon state convictions.” Boom. (from a Occupy Democracy post, citing a MSNOW interview with Tim Walz)
While applying my blind spot to the phrase, “another word for,” I realized that that phrase was too big to fit inside the inner ring. So, that’s a new limit to how I can construct this, and other blind spot, poems: the phrases/lines must be able to fit within my blind spot. It wasn’t a big deal in this poem; I just took out the for from “another name for” and found it somewhere else in the article. ↩︎
3.5 miles locks and dam no. 1 48 degrees / drizzle
A few more warm days, then cold again. I didn’t mind the drizzle, everything was gray and soft and misty and wet. Dripping and whooshing and seeping. Of course, now that I’m home, the rain has stopped and the sun is almost out. I ran to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 hill and admired the ford bridge. It looked more like a painting than an actual bridge — although it sounded like a bridge, with trucks rumbling overhead!
I love the reflections in this picture I took, especially the upside down street lamps and railings.
If the sky were a little darker, the river a little lighter, you might not be able to tell which bridge is up, which is down — at least, I wouldn’t be able to tell!1
Smiled at several runners and walkers and bikers. Made note of all the empty benches and parking lots. There were not too many people out there. For the last bit of the run I was able to get deeper into the mist by running on the Winchell trail. Very haunted and other-worldly!
I listened to water for the first half of the run, and “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist for the second. A new song popped up: Rabbit // Hole by Siddhartha Khosla. It’s part of teh music for a one-season series called Rabbit // Hole with Kiefer Sutherland. It’s a great song to run to. Near the beginning, the music breaks up for a few seconds then plays again then breaks up. I imagined a fast moving rabbit passing by an object when the music broke up, then being in the clear (when the music resumed), then passing my another object when the music broke up again.
Rabbit Recap, part 3
Can I finish this rabbit recap today? Nope. I got distracted with other stuff.
11 —20 feb 2026
All late fall and winter, 2 or more bunnies have been hanging out under our crab apple tree — at night, in the afternoon, at sunrise and sunset. They’re very bold, these bunnies, not running off when I walk by. When this happens, I’ve started saying, these bunnies are as bold as brass! Why? Not sure. And, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: I like bunnies or rabbits about as much as I like squirrels, which is not at all.
Get Out ICE
Yesterday afternoon, Scott came to my desk n the front room and said, Do you want to hear some good news? I mean, some actual good news?Kristi Noem was fired!
from Needle & Skein (the red hat people)
As of March 5th, we have raised an incredible $705,000 to help our immigrant communities here in MN. This is just us. Other yarn shops in Minnesota and around the country have also raised money and generously donated both here and locally. ICE is still here. Our fight is not over. Join us.
If you are a business who has raised money, please send us a message. We would love to try and get a full picture of what the amazing fiber community worldwide has accomplished.
Read the comments for more on how the fiber arts community is showing up!
New Yorker experiment #5
These experiments are slow-going. I run out of time to work on them. I struggle to see what I’m doing. I’m messy and haven’t figured out how to work with glossy magazine paper. So why am I continuing these experiments? I asked that to Scott and FWA in the kitchen the other day and then answered it myself: For some reason, I2 want to do these erasures, so I’ll keep doing them until I don’t want to or can’t (because it is too hard with my bad vision).
a flash of an idea: As I was writing that last paragraph, I was thinking about how visual poetry is increasingly inaccessible to me as my few remaining cone cells die (are the dying or just malfunctioning?) Then this popped into my head: yesterday’s erasure involved using marker to cover almost the entire text. When I had FWA and RJP read it, they both got marker on their hands — not in big streaks, but in tiny marks that almost looked like cuts or scratches. What if I made these erasures about touch too? My first thought was about doing the erasure in such a way that created a residue. Second thought: what if these erasures involved texture and touch — here, I’m reminded of the kids’ book Pat the Bunny and its different textures to touch: the soft bunny fur, the rough bunny . . . nose? I can’t remember what was the rough thing in the book. If you can touch these erasures and their textures, which would somehow speak to the words/ideas on the page, maybe you can hear them too? I’m thinking of scales, and thick layers of paper, maybe some holes where the paper has been ripped open, some extra rough sections, some smooth, like a thin film, crinkly, soft, sharp-ish. And — maybe in terms of the visual aspect, find ways to cover it that reflect or glow or shimmer or sparkle. I can see these textures in a way that I can’t see the typical flat, black expanse of an erasure. So things like glitter, little mirrors, metallic surfaces, ridges. What about covering it with things that offer colors only visible in the light — thinking of bird feathers here. So many ideas! Again, difficult to execute without it looking like a mess, but fun to try.
Before I had that last flash of inspiration, I was thinking about how I’ve decided (as of yesterday) that the overarching theme of these found poems is my vision and how I see. Then I thought, I should apply my blind spot to these pages. Create an amsler grid out of the text, and then place a cut-out of my blind spot (found while starting at a blank wall and then drawing what I see) on top of the words to find the poem.
Maybe some of these erasures could be all/only about texture, some all/only about my blind spots, and some both. And just now, another thought: What if these erasures were all about my blind spot and the idea of blind spots? Would this work: one of the erasures could be covered in spots or dots or holes in the paper?
So many fun ideas to try. I imagine that some of them will only ever be ideas that are good in theory but don’t work on the page.
Oh — I almost forgot, until I looked over at an open tab that reads, “tools to use for magazine erasure poems,” I started writing about this experiment because I wanted to mention my need for better materials. I love how writing in this log opens me up and helps me to see new things to try! Before writing about textures, the supplies I thought I needed were: sharpies, an exacto knife (can I see well enough to use this?) and possibly paint. Texture through thicker and thinner layers of paint is an interesting idea. Now I’m thinking I need scraps of fabric — next week, RJP and I should go to the fabric scrap store at the Textile Museum! — that are soft and rough and bumpy and gauzy. I need glitter and sparkles and little things that reflect and crinkle. Fun!
Here’s a new version of experiment #3. I decided to paste the text into a document so I could have an easier time drawing on the text. Is this a good solution? I’m not sure, but I do like how this version looks:
swap the dead-eyed liturgy
Bummer. I just realized that I erased the ed on doomed. It is supposed to read: of doomed vision (I guess doom vision could work?).
text:
swap the dead-eyed liturgy of doom OR doomed3 vision with shadow acts wild and improbable
And now I’m redoing yesterday’s experiment:
text:
Another name for barely
not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the world.
Both Scott and FWA could tell, but only after studying it for a minute. The giveaway: the waviness in the upside down version — in the streetlamps for FWA, the arch for Scott. I wouldn’t have been able to notice that because most lines/edges, if I can see them, look wavy! ↩︎
Who/what is the “I” here? Not the fully conscious Sara-I. I am not entirely sure why I keep returning to these erasures — either in this particular experiment, or in previous experiments — when they are so difficult with my vision and I’m not very good at them. Is it shadow Sara, nudging me? ↩︎
I prefer doomed vision; I think it works better. I really like this idea of challenging/getting rid of/swapping out a dead-eyed liturgy, where liturgy = “Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance” (wikipedia). ↩︎
Spring-y! Sun, above freezing, and a clear walking path! I was able to take the trail that dips below the road between the double bridge and locks and dam no. 1! Also: birds and grass and no gloves. A good run. I feel more power in my legs and able to run for longer without stopping. I heard kids on the playground, the call of a bird that sounded mechanical — similar to the strange, high-pitched siren I heard earlier today, and the doppler effect on the light rail bells as I ran south to the falls. I heard Panic at the Disco, Radiohead, Gene Autry, and The Jazz Crusaders on the way back home.
Speaking of hearing, as I write this at my desk, I can hear a woodpercker outside my window pecking on a tree in our front yard that I think is dead or dying. Every peck is saying, right right right right (you’re) right. Ugh! Is it time to call a tree service?
At some point during the run I thought about I wasn’t thinking about much of anything. Then I thought, the purpose of today’s run is not to work out a writing problem, or encounter some inspiration, but to move and breathe, feel the sun on my face, and be by the river.
10 Things
a thin skin of ice on the river
larger areas of the creek open with dark water, some snow stretching out from the banks
an occupied bench! someone is sitting on the bench at the 44th street parking lot
overheard: some guy talking to his two friends about something being only 2 loops — when I passed them a few minutes later, I noticed they had on shorts and running shoes on
that same truck that seemed to be hiding under the bridge last week was back again today — why?
a few parts of the trail that still had any ice or snow were also covered with dead leaves
enough snow had melted so that I could cross the road and walk on a wide strip of grass instead of mud and snow
vision mistake: up ahead of me, it looked like a truck was parked on the path, blocking the way. I crossed over to the parking lot then immediately realized the curve in the trail made it look like the truck was blocking it, but it wasn’t. Oops
more people near the falls, more cars parked in the parking lot
stopped at Rachel Dow Memorial bench to admire the view through the slender tree trunks and to take a few pictures.
sitting beneath the bench looking up at the trees / 2 march 2026
more rabbits bunnies
It started on 20 feb, this occupation with bunnies.1 When will it end? Not today! Here are some more bunny things I’d like to archive:
1— buuuuunnies
In footnote 1, I mention that bunny is fun to say. That might be partly because when I say it, I think of how Tom Haverford says it on Parks and Recreation2:
2 — Boynton Bunnies
At first he was skeptical, but I’ve managed to get Scott thinking about and noticing bunnies and bunny-related things everywhere! This morning he sent me an image someone posted on social media:
you say rabbits, and I say bunnies / you say comics, and I say funnies
Actually, I don’t say funnies — who says funnies? — but it worked for the reference to “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.” Is Sandra Boynton still popular in 2026? I remember her greeting cards in the 80s and her kids books in the aughts. What was the one with the cd/songs that FWA and RJP loved? did they love it? I can’t remember; I think they at least liked it, or was that just me who did? I think the book/album was Philadelphia Chickens.
In addition to sending me random bunny images he finds, Scott was willing to watch the Disney Alice in Wonderland, which was awesomely weird, and sadly could never be made now, I think. Some of the nonsense in it, which was fabulous, reads not as kooky kid imagination but as being under the influence of psychedelics. There was also this menacing edge to the characters Alice encounters: they seemed fun or dangerous at any given moment. Two examples: the flowers in the garden — that head Rose! — and Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum — doing fun acrobatics but also stopping Alice from leaving.
3 — the Bronze Bunny
Their official name is “Cottontail on the Trail” because they are a bronze statue of a cottontail and they are right on the minnehaha bike trail, but I always call them the bronze bunny. Other people call them the Minnehaha Bunny.
The sculpture has garnered the nickname of the “Minnehaha Bunny” from residents.[4] Children often climb on the sculpture and people who live nearby have frequently costumed and decorated it based on seasonal occasions or topical events such as leaving eggs by the sculpture during Easter or cladding the mouth of the sculpture with a large cloth face mask during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I’ve written about this bunny on here before. They’re 4.5 or so miles from my house so I only see them on bike rides and long runs when I am training for the marathon. Passing the bunny on a run is a big deal; it means that I’m fit enough to run for 10 miles or more.
This bunny was erected in 2002, but it seems like it’s been here much longer.
I’ve tried to say rabbits, but I just like bunnies better. I think it’s partly because of how it sounds as I say it. ↩︎
Finding and creating this clip took WAY longer than it should have. I kept at it because I was determined to get the clip, not because Tom saying “buuunnies” was worth it (I think I spelled buuuunnies with one n in my title, ugh), but because I wanted to figure this out. Before losing most of my cone cells it was so much easier to do stuff like this. ↩︎
Get Out Ice
Here’s an example of an existing group using their established community to provide mutual aid and support to people during the ICE occuption: How a Dungeons & Dragons meetup turned into mutual aid during ICE operations. Members have organized “know your rights” workshops, accompanied immigrants to appointments, coordinated food donations, and made barbecue for families in need.
This quotation fits with the erasure poem I’ve been working on this morning:
“In a story, you can be the underdog who defeats the big, bad, evil entity,” said D&D player Kat Hennan. “I think that having that kind of thought exercise and storytelling right now is extremely important.”
New Yorker Found Poetry Experiment, Day 1:
Picked a random old New Yorker. Found an interesting article, “The End of the Essay: What comes after A.I has destroyed college writing? / Hua Hsu. Put my watch timer on for 30 minutes.
Poem:
question: Has there ever been a time in human history when the arts could not offer hope and help us to be open to more possibilities? answer: Never
A good first try. It’s funny that I want to do these visual poems when I struggle so much to see the words or how to make the boxes and lines that I need, but something in me keeps persisting, so I’ll keep trying. Hopefully it will get easier.
It’s messy — and with my vision, it will always be. and I added an extra to that’s just floating out there, disconnected. It’s too busy with too many lines. But it was fun and challenging and I like the poem I came up with a response to an article about AI ruining college writing.
When I showed it to Fletcher, he liked it and said there were ways to refine it. I agree, but not to this poem. I wrote on the original essay and I don’t have another copy. The question: next time should I scan the essay before drawing on it, or is the risky (you only get one shot) approach part of the challenge and the fun?
experiment #1 / 2 march 2026
note: I also need to learn how to take better pictures of my work!
5 miles river road, north/river road, south/lena smith 50 degrees 50% puddles / 5% mud, dead leaves wind: 10 mph / 35 mph gusts
Sunny, warmer, windy! Had to tighten my cap so it wouldn’t fly off. It felt like spring, or like spring is coming soon, and I loved it. There was a moment, early on, when I ran past dead leaves on a lawn and the sun hit them just right so that they gave off a smell that I remember from childhood: late fall in Northern Virginia, walking through a small stretch of woods on the edge of suburbia. A good memory, even if I don’t like suburbs.
So many puddles and slow-moving streams on the sidewalk. I wondered how long it would take for at least one of my socks to get soacked. Not even a block! I didn’t see the puddle I stepped in, just suddenly felt cold in my left foot. Oh well. A soaked sock was always going to happen. I think it took a mile for the squish squish squish to begin.
This run was wonderful! I went farther than I thought I would — all the way to the Franklin bridge. And I felt stronger. I even did some strides at the end. I can’t remember what I heard besdie the gorge for the first half, but for the second half I put on my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. The first song that came on, “Young Rabbits,” a jazz song by The Jazz Crusaders, was wonderful to run to. Later, “Mad as Rabbits” came on and I wondered the origins of that expression. Is it from Alice in Wonderland too? Yes and no. Probably the modern use of it comes from the character, the March Hare, who throws a mad tea party in AIW, but its earlier origins are this, according to wikipedia:
To be as “mad as a March hare” is an English idiomatic phrase derived from the observed antics said to occur[1] only in the March breeding season of the European hare (Lepus europaeus). The phrase is an allusion that can be used to refer to any other animal or human who behaves in the excitable and unpredictable manner of a March hare.
Near the very end of my run, a sudden thought about a rabbit that plays a pivotal role in a dystopia novel I read 2 or more years ago. I can’t remember the name of the novel. Thankfully I can look it up on my library checkout history! Found it: The Memory of Animals / Claire Fuller. I would check it out again, but for some reason, my library no longer makes it available as an e-book. Boo.
rabbit fur coat, part 2
My favorite reader just texted to remind me of a infamous rabbit fur coat reference in a song: Miss Thang’s “Thunder and Lightning”:
You’re walking around like you SO fly in that 37 Dollar Rabbit Coat! Honey, That coat had to be destroyed last week after it bit the neighbors child!
This line is from the album, The Answer: Rap vs. Rap (1987) and is in response to lyrics from Orange Juice Jones in his song (The Rain) about discovering that his girlfriend was cheating on him:
And my first impulse was to run up on you and do a Rambo Whip out the jammy and flat-blast both of you But I ain’t wanna mess up this 3700 dollar lynx coat
So good! A few days ago, at the end of my run, I had remembered Miss Thang’s line (which is superior to Jones’, imho), but then forgot it again before I returned home. I’m so grateful that my best friend reads this blog and remembered us listening to it in high school and texted me from Tokyo about it!
I wish I could add it to my actual playlist, but sadly it’s not on Apple music, so I’ll just have to include it in my written one and imagine Miss Thang singing back to Jones as I listen to “The Rain” on the apple music playlist (because of course, his song is streaming even those hers isn’t).
Miss Thang’s scathing reference to a rabbit, and not a lynx, fur coat, reinforces my sense of Jenny Lewis’ rabbit fur coat; it is low-end luxury and barely status, owned by those who want to appear wealthy but aren’t. In the case of Lewis’ mom, the coat represents a toxic fixation on status and wealth. In the case of Jones, the coat represents the illusion of status.
A bonus: not only did remembering this song give me another example of the rabbit fur coat, it solved a recent mystery. For the past few days, I’ve been trying to remember who references the Trix slogan in a song — silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. Now I know: it’s Orange Juice Jones in “The Rain”!
Here’s a video with the 2 songs mashed-up. Go to YouTube to see all of the lyrics:
that 37 Dollar Rabbit Coat? Honey, That coat had to be destroyed last week after it bit the neighbors child!
rabbit hole
In yesterday’s entry I mentioned that Heather Cox Richardson said, at least twice in her Politics Chat, that she wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole. But today, I will!
1 —Disney Animation
Last night after waking up from my first sleep1, I went downstairs and started watching Disney’s classic animated Alice in Wonderland (1951). I only got as far as the rabbit hole scene, which is delightfully trippy and brings back memories of my many visits to Disney World as a kid in the 80s (my grandparents lived in Deltona — not Daytona, as people used to try and correct — a small town outside of Orlando). Details I remember from my 1 am viewing: 1. she falls down a hole after entering a tunnel, her kitten does not — her POV: far down below, looking up at a small hole of light and kitten — she calls out excitedly, goodbyeeeee!!!; 2. the speed of her fall slows as the bottom of her blue dress billows like a parachute; 3. she passes armchairs and side table on her way down; 4. at one point she lands in a rocking chair and begins rocking, while still floating down; 5. there’s a brief shot of the exterior of this opening/vertical tunnel: it’s a queerly angled tall and narrow brick building; she calls out to the White Rabbit at some point — he’s falling through, too; just before she lands she catches her foot on something — a window frame? — and softly tumbles to the ground.
How much of that is correct? Can I find a clip to watch to check? Yes!
down the rabbit hole
Mostly I was right2, but I missed many delightful details: her bright eyes glowing in the otherwise darkness; she pulls a chain, and turns on a small lamp; she catches a passing book and begins reading it; she sees her reflection in the mirror, which is upside down. Oh, this animation — I love it!
2 — I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!
In my visions of the white rabbit, I had forgotten his pocket watch and mutterings of being late, which are why Alice follows him. She wonders, what is he late for? It must be something important, like a party! How does time work in this animated film? In the original Lewis Carrol book? In terms of the rabbit hole in the popular imagination, time in the rabbit hole is twisted, slowed down, gets wasted. The rabbit hole is the enemy of time’s efficiency, productivity, precision. When explaining why she couldn’t dig into something, HCR says, I don’t have time for that right now.
3 — rabbit holes / burrows / warrens
In a preliminary search3, I discovered this interesting fact:
Rabbits live underground in warrens. Hares live in aboveground nests. (Cottontail rabbits are the exception: like hares, they live in aboveground nests.)
So, because the rabbits that live in my backyard are cottontails, there are no rabbit holes for me to fall through!
Also, here’s the difference between warrens and burrows: a burrow is one rabbit’s home, a warren is the neighborhood/network of tunnels for a colony of rabbits.
Looked on the Minnesota DNR site and found out this about cottontail habitat and range:
Throughout the year, cottontails are found in brushy areas such as woodlots, shelterbelts, and even around shrub and conifer plantings in suburban areas. During summer they feed on grasses and clovers, but in winter they eat twigs and bark, especially of fruit trees. Large tree and brush piles are popular shelters for rabbits. The range of one cottontail is no more than five acres (about the size of four football fields). They run along trails within thick brush to escape predators.
A thing for “gardener” Sara to note: when winterizing the backyard, DON’T trim back the hydrangeas or hostas anymore! Leave them for the rabbits!
Also found these disturbing “fun facts” — they are listed under the heading, “Fun facts”,” but, are they fun? Not for the rabbits!
Cottontails are nervous animals that may die of shock if handled or caged. Cottontail meat is tasty favored by gourmet chefs who often cook it fried, in stews, or braised with herbs and vegetables.
Back to hole-less cottontails. A new metaphor is needed — not falling down and through to other worlds, but something about edges and shadows and the fringes — the periphery! Dwelling on the edges, in the corners, not traveling to new worlds, but noticing the other worlds that are already there, have always existed in the midst of my world.
First sleep is a reference to historian A. Roger Ekirch’s book, At Days Close and a BBC article that I posted about on 17 jan 2025 about sleeping habits in the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead of 8 straight hours, a sleep, a waking, then another sleep. My sleeping doesn’t quite work that way lately and involves more than 2 sleeps: a sleep, getting out of bed to pace or bounce on an exercise ball, another sleep, watching 20 minutes of something, a sleep, a bounce, a sleep. ↩︎
it’s the exterior of another building; she’s doesn’t get her foot caught but lands upside down hanging from the window ↩︎
My searches are mostly just googling the terms and looking through AI and then, independently, several of the sources in the search results. I have never really used/relied on AI before, so this was a good opportunity to suss it out. It can be helpful, but its conclusions are uneven and information unreliable. AI can make broad claims based on singular sources, and those sources aren’t always primary, but sometimes a rando’s blog entry. In terms of search results, the links are often businesses selling a product; any information posted is ultimately in service of selling that product. Or, the links have information designed for an individual/consumer. For example, the rabbit/bunny information my searches yielded were often for pet owners (how to take care of your rabbit) or homeowners who need to manage/get rid of rabbits-as-pests. ↩︎
Dust bunnies; the Energizer Bunny; Bunny from Season 2 of “Only Murders in the Building”; Watership Down (which I remember my sister reading, but I never have); Liam (here in the twin cities, taken by ICE) and his bunny ears / Louise from Bob’s Burgers and hers; Bugs Bunny and “Kill the Rabbit”; bunny ears as tv antennas; lucky rabbit’s foot; playboy bunnies and staying at the Playbook Hotel in Buffalo because it was the cheapest option when I was 8; calling my daughter honey-bunny
And here’s a wonderful poem that I found the other day. It fits with the theme of rabbit holes and underground dwellings:
In Portland we don’t use the word, we dance around it – furry things, we’d say, the furry things are in backfield again. As a child I only knew I should never look directly at them, the same way I knew not to look at the sun. It was wrong. It would hurt later on. My grandfather called them underground mutton – the first time I heard the phrase I laughed, and he didn’t. I guess that means it’s okay to eat them. That it’s okay to roast and spit them but never see them. As an adult I learnt the fear behind the superstition – my home is always on the brink of slipping, because long ago we built mines where we shouldn’t. And, like always, nature far outshone the humans: the furry things would run before the rockfalls, the men would disappear beneath them. So when they skipped in fields en masse, bobtails flashing, we would know that somewhere below ground people were trapped, were crushed, were suffocating. We would know that when the underground mutton set to dancing, the Earth was eating the miners.
One more rabbit thing: Inspired by my talk of the periphery, I think I will give attention to rabbit vision and rabbit eyes tomorrow. 3 sources to start with: “rabbit vision” google search, Rabbit Eye, and this discussion of a famous painting with a rabbit eye that inspired Diane Seuss.
Get Out Ice
Part of what I’m trying to do in my “get out ice” effort is to document examples of resistance. I’d like to turn it into an archive of practices of care-as-resistance (love) Here’s one I found from Sean Snow, who provides great daily summaries on Facebook:
Dungeons & Dragons Mutual Aid: A Twin Cities gaming group with 2,500 members made headlines for pivoting from tabletop adventures to a sophisticated mutual aid network. They are now coordinating food deliveries, “Know Your Rights” workshops, and legal support for members affected by recent events. What began as a social club has evolved into a logistical hub that leverages existing trust to provide real-world refuge. This grassroots response demonstrates how established community bonds can be repurposed to protect neighbors during times of crisis.
2 miles river road, north/lena smith, south 22 degrees
Sunny, cold, shadowed. Most distinctive shadow: the ball-like one, made by the light of the street light. It was nice weather for a run. Not too cold, or too warm, clear trails. Unfortunately, I struggled. Sore legs, unfinished business, and some fatigue. And now I’ll struggle not to worry about what caused the bad run — this worrying about my health is the way my anxiety is expressed. No fun.
Even with my not-so-great run, can I remember 10 things I liked (or loved)?
10 Things
the feel of my feet sliding on the grit as I ran up the lake street hill
the bright orange graffiti under the lake street bridge
the surface of the river, covered in a thin skin of ice, a pale gray
the bright blue and empty sky
the deep footprints on the snow-covered walking path, descending just below the road
feeling strong and relaxed as I ran up the hill from under the bridge
the sheen of the thin glaze of ice on the shaded sidewalk
some puddles on the sidewalk where snow from a yard had melted
looking through a net of bare, slender trunks
chirping birds, all around
For the first part of my run, I listened to the traffic and my feet striking the gritty ground. For the second part of the run and the walk, I put in my new “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist — see below. I heard these songs today:
Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit
I’d liked the speed/fast beat of the Bad Bunny song, the storytelling in “Rabbit Fur Coat,” the 80s kid nostalgia of Abracadabra, and the little North Carolina Sara nostalgia of Eddie Rabbit (from June 1980, when I was 6). Jenny Lewis’ story about her poor (both, no money and tragic figure) mom made me think of Diane Seuss and her use of a rabbit motif — see below and this diane seuss and rabbits.
Rabbits, Rabbits, Everywhere — written earlier today
As is usually the case when I give attention to something I haven’t given much attention to before, that something is suddenly everywhere, or not everywhere, but the instances of it seem to grow exponentially (you might say, they breed like rabbits). The rabbit/bunny/hare floodgate has been opened! This morning, I’m finding so many rabbit references!
And what’s the point of all of this? Following the rabbit down the rabbit hole is a wonderful distraction. It is also an excellent opportunity to learn. And to learn more about rabbits, which leads to caring about them as living things and as symbols. This caring might (is) enabling me to open up a closed part of myself (closed = strong dislike of rabbits). And it is helping me to think more broadly and specifically about the impacts of humans and human encroachment on environments and the consequences of that encroachment for humans and non-humans. Plus, all (or any) of it could inspire new poems.
Here are a few rabbit-related things:
1
The killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I should rewatch this movie because I remember the rabbit in the cave (or is it a bunny) at the end, but not that clearly. Is the joke that rabbits/bunnies are soft and cute and frail and couldn’t possibly be vicious killers?
2
Bunny Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. It’s been long enough since I’ve seen this film that I all I can remember is that she is the young wife of the Big Lebowski, who is kidnapped and is a catalyst for much of the action. Is that right? I could look it up, but I’d rather use this lack of remembering as a reason to watch the movie again.
3
Rabbit in Red matchbox from Halloween. Near the beginning of the movie, the nurse who has accompanied Dr. Loomis to pick up Michael Myers from the mental hospital and bring him to his parole hearing lights a cigarette using a match from this matchbook just before Micheal Myers attacks them and escapes in their car. Later that same matchbook appears in the grass near the dead body of a mechanic. A clue! Michael Myers must have been here! And now he’s going home to finish what he started!
4
Harvey, a Jimmy Stewart movie from 1950 in which Stewart befriends a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. I have never seen it, but when I was younger, after having watched Rear Window, I developed a bit of a crush on Jimmy Stewart. Maybe that’s why I thought of this? I looked to see if it was streaming anywhere or available from the library. Nope.
5
Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max. A cartoon with baby brother/big sister bunnies. My kids watched this when they were young, thanks to hand-me-down dvds from my sister whose kids watched it when they were young. When and where did it air? What I remember most about this show was that the adults were almost non-existent and Ruby was the suffering big sister who rarely got to have any fun because she had to mother clueless Max. The gendering in this one — wow!
6
The documentary from PBS, The Pill. When I taught a class about debated issues within feminism, we usually started with a section on Reproductive Justice. Instead of focusing on abortion, we looked more broadly at women’s reproductive health and their access to care and control over their own bodies. I often screened this documentary and I recall a section with rabbits in a lab that also included the story of how they experimented on women in Puerto Rico. I can’t easily stream this again, so I’m relying on my memory and the transcript. The section is called, “A Cage of Ovulating Females.” Here’s the mention of the rabbits:
Margaret Marsh, Historian: Gregory Pincus wasn’t a physician, he was a scientist. And so he could give the pill to as many rabbits as he wanted to. Rabbits everywhere could take this pill. But he couldn’t give the pill to women. He wasn’t a doctor. He couldn’t run a clinical trial on human beings.
Getting the pill to market would require approval from the Food & Drug Administration, and that would entail a large-scale human trial. In exasperation, Katharine McCormick, asked, “Where can we find a cage of ovulating females?”
Puerto Rico had a network of birth control clinics and no Comstock laws. Pincus called it “the perfect laboratory.”
The experiments on Puerto Rican women were considered a success, but some of the women suffered terrible side effects: headaches, nausea, dizziness, vomiting.
7
Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh — Winnie-the-Pooh’s neighbor who sometimes wishes he wasn’t — there’s a real Dennis the Menace vibe happening here, with Pooh as Dennis, Rabbit as the menaced neighbor. Yesterday I read about how Lewis Carrol intended the White Rabbit to be a sharp contrast to Alice:
For her ‘youth’, ‘audacity’, ‘vigour’, and ‘swift directness of purpose’, read ‘elderly’, ‘timid’, ‘feeble’, and ‘nervously shilly-shallying’, and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I’m sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver and his whole air suggest a total inability to say ‘Boo’ to a goose!”
I see a similar contrast between Pooh (as Alice) and the Rabbit (as White Rabbit):
8
Cadbury Creme Egg Bunny. Growing up, I LOVED these eggs. Unlike now, in the 80s and 90s you could only get them around Easter. More than any other, these eggs are my favorite childhood candy. Do they hold up? Not really. I remember the commercial with the bunny that sounds like a chicken:
the 1983 commercial with copy read by the Smuckers guy!
9
9
Diane Seuss and rabbits. Yesterday I remembered a line from a favorite Diane Seuss poem, I Look Up at my Book and out at the World Through Reading Glasses:
The load of pinecones at the top, a brown smudge which could be anything: a wreath of moths, a rabbit strung up like a flag.
She’s referencing some famous still life painting with the rabbit, I think — this is in her collection all about still life paintings, Still LIfe with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. I looked up “Diane Seuss and rabbits” and found two other poems by her with rabbits in them!1
Uncorked, I had a thought: I want the want I dreamed of wanting once, a quarter cup of sneak-peek at what prowls in the back, at what sings in the wet rag space behind the garage, back where the rabbits nest
in it. Life story at age fourteen sifted through a rabbit.
It had a tattoo on a hand in it. And cherries, the kind that come in a can.
She tended toward rabbits back then. Toward the theoretically mild
that are really wild. Like ducks on a pond that is really a moon
full of menacing weeds. The duck gets ready for noon, she wrote. Yes,
nonsense, I guess. She embroidered a poem on a foam
pillow with a felt pen. Pinned an actual cherry on it back then
life story sifted through a rabbit — drawing upon this poem and a few others, AI suggests that Seuss frequently uses the motif of rabbit to explore themes of wildness, vulnerability, and the grotesque. In the summary, it (AI) misnames the poem “Basket,” which is the name of the journal, not this poem.
theoretically mild, really wild
Ducks on a pond, right next to the rabbit? That has to be reference to the optical illusion — do you see a duck or a rabbit? — right?
11
The Runaway Bunny — This was one of my favorite books as a kid. At first, I wondered why I thought that, then I found the book and opened it and saw why:
my copy from 1978
added, 28 feb 2026: I was never a big Velveteen Rabbit fan, but there is another bunny book I loved as a kid, Pat the Bunny.
11
Looney Tunes: I want hasenpfeffer! I am almost certain that when I watched this cartoon as a kid, this was the first time I had heard of hasenpfeffer or imagined that rabbit was something you could eat. I still never have, but whenever I hear the word hasenpfeffer I think of this cartoon.
Hasenpfeffer
From a comment: “The King wants Hasenpfeffer which is traditional Dutch and German stew made from marinated rabbit or hare, cut into stewing-meat sized pieces and braised with onions and a marinade made from wine and vinegar.”
What to do with all of this rabbit-holing? I want to orbit around all, or at least many, of these ideas. Bring them into poems. Write a series of small poems about rabbits and bunnies and hares. As I was writing this last line, another bunny zapped into my head — The Runaway Bunny! I’ll add it above. What form should these rabbit poems take? Could this be an inspiration — Seven American Centuries? Whatever the form, I like the idea of returning repeatedly to century bunny/rabbit themes, and telling a story across the poems, not in one poem.
Yesterday I realized I could easily do footnotes and I’m here for it! Googling “Diane Seuss and rabbits” the AI explanation seemed useful and it was, but also a bit suspect. When I clicked on the links offered at the end of the AI summary and read the source, it often wasn’t saying what AI claims it saying. AI takes some liberties, I think. ↩︎
a Rabbit/Bunny/Hare playlist
When Scott reminded me of Thundercat’s song “Rabbot Ho,” I knew I needed to make a playlist for this recent preoccupation!
Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit
The Young Rabbits / The Jazz Crusaders
Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits / Magnetic Fields
Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) / Florence + the Machine
Sitting at my desk in the morning, I heard some noise — rustling, I think? — just outside the window. Freezing rain or snow — graupels. Then it started snowing, not too hard, but enough to cover everything. No! I wanted to run today. Luckily, it warmed up and by the time I was ready to run, everything had melted.
10 Things
a police car parked parallel to the road in the first falls parking lot
aside from the police car, the lots were empty
a lime scooter leaning against a bench
one guy standing at the bridge overlooking the falls, with an orange hat or an orange something else (I couldn’t see)
voices below on the other side of the wall, down in the falls
no one else in the park
big puddles everywhere — my one foot was soaked only 5 minutes into the run
kids yelling and laughing on the playground
the river was covered with ice and snow with one sliver of open water
a walker approaching me, walking 3 tiny dogs — this made me smile
The run was mostly great. At times, my legs felt heavy (or, at least, heavier than they usually do) and I stopped to talk a few extra times. Were they sore or my lack of ferritin or some other ailment? The second half felt easier.
bunnies — nudge? muse? pest? ghost?
note: I started writing this section yesterday and have spent over four hours this morning wandering through the spaces it created . There’s a lot of movement in it — traveling from thought to thought to thought, here to here to here. Future Sara, and anyone else reading this, you might get lost.
So far I’ve written two bunny poems without really trying to. I’m starting to believe they want me to write about them. This very idea suddenly appeared in my third poem. I started writing about the moment when I first noticed the bunnies in the backyard at night and realized they had probably always been there. Then I wrote in my Plague Notebook 27: I didn’t choose to notice them as much as they decided to be noticed. And I thought: muse! Could this poem be about bunnies in the backyard and about bunnies as the thing that has decided it’s time for me to write, and write about them? For years now, I’ve disliked bunnies, and never imagined writing about them. But now here I am, writing about them, and I fear that I might learn to like bunnies.
All of this has me wondering, what is a/my muse? I’m familiar with the term, but have never seriously studied it, either as a concept or through examples of it in the popular imagination. Do I want to now? Is it necessary for my poem? Maybe instead of devoting a month to it — although that could be fun! — I’ll give it a day or two?
No angel speaks to me. And though the wind plucks the dry leaves as if they were so many notes of music, I can hear no words.
Still, I listen. I search the feathery shapes of clouds hoping to find the curve of a wing, and sometimes, when the static of the world clears just for a moment
a small voice commes through, chastening. Music is its own language, it says. Along the indifferent corridors of space, angels could be hiding.
If the bunnies are my muse, I didn’t seek them out. I looked out the window one winter night and saw them on the lawn, not knowing what they were. Did they seek me out, or are they indifferent to me? Did they reveal themselves, or did I just happen to notice them one day? I think I do less trying to find a muse, more trying to create the conditions where it could be possible. I noticed the bunnies because I was doing a month-long practice I called the purple hour. It involved using the time when I woke up in the middle of the night, unable to sleep, to notice purple and write about it. One night, I was studying the different purples in the backyard and there they were, the bunnies. And maybe it’s more than creating the conditions where it’s possible; it’s also about being open to what could be a muse, letting it in.
Muse — to be occupied by, possessed, taken over, haunted, held captive, in the thrall of?
This idea of captivity reminded me of the poem, Captivity/ Siddhartha Menon which I posted on this log on 15 may of this year. In an essay, Menon wrote this about the final line of the poem:
“You are paralyzed.” It suggests the fatal indecision of a rabbit caught in a hunter’s flashlight, and snaps the poem shut” (Siddhartha Menon on Epigraphs).
My rabbit/bunny is back! This sentence is the only mention of a rabbit in a 872 word essay about a poem that features a bird. Where will my bunnies appear next?
Returning to definitions of muse, I googled it, and just past the dictionary entry — the nine daughters of Zeus, a person/personified force who is the inspiration for an artist — in the “People also ask” section was this question: What makes a woman a muse? Here’s the AI generated answer:
A woman becomes a muse through qualities like enigmatic allure, deep connection, and embodying creative energy, acting as a profound source of inspiration for an artist, often sharing a unique bond that fuels artistic expression, though not always romantically. Muses can be captivating personalities, friends, lovers, or even strangers who embody traits like wisdom, charisma, or mystery, prompting the artist to create, often embodying a living, breathing work of art themselves, inspiring everything from specific works to an artist’s entire focus.
Eww. The uneven power dynamics here, between the subject (isn’t it most often a male artist?) and the object (a woman who is not an artist, or is not considered an artist) that inspires them bother me. After images of male artists and their models flashed in my mind, a phrase appeared: Manic Pixie Dream Girl. I recalled encountering a critical feminist essay about this trope back in the day (around 2007 or 2008, when I was teaching pop culture and queer theory at the University of Minnesota). I searched for it. Not an essay, a video from Feminist Frequency. Yes! I remember them. This video holds up. Around 4 and a half minutes in, they link the trope directly with the Muse:
manic pixie dream girl
And now I’m thinking about birds in poetry and how they’re used to do a lot of the heavy lifting of a poem. She’s not the only poet to write about it, but here’s a good example of this idea from Ada Limón:
does this bird want to be in this poem today? Maybe it doesn’t. You know, we always want to turn the animal into something else, right. And sometimes I want to let the animal be. Of course animals are symbols, of course they turn into our metaphors. I mean, that happens. But I also think there are moments when you just think, okay, the birds aren’t going to save me.1
All of this makes me wonder: what am I doing as I keep putting the two bunnies in my backyard into my poems? And why do I insistent on calling these wild and mature eastern cottonwood rabbits bunnies? I’m not sure these rabbits are indifferent to me, but I think they notice me in terms of whether or not I am a threat to their main activity: grazing in the grass.
Now I’m remembering an interesting fact I encountered the other day: much of the eastern cottonwood rabbit’s time is spent eating, 6-8 of the day, both during the day and at night!) Okay, I looked it up again and I was right about the 6-8 hours a day, but here’s a delightful detail: primarily during dawn and dusk. Rabbits are crepuscular grazers. Crepuscular (cre PUS cular)?! What a word, and a good title for a poem?!
But, back to if rabbits (I still want to call them bunnies) notice me or not. Is my assumption correct about noticing me in terms of my threat level? Another google:
Wild rabbits are acutely aware of humans, perceiving them primarily as potential predators due to their innate, high-alert survival instincts. They utilize exceptional hearing and a keen sense of smell to detect people, often fleeing immediately to safety. While they may learn to tolerate consistent, non-threatening human presence over time, they generally maintain a healthy fear of people.
Yes! So, here’s something interesting: in the poem I’m working on right now, tentatively titled, Bold as Brass, my backyard bunnies do not care that I’m passing by; they keep grazing. They’re seemingly so indifferent that I’ve started calling out a pre-boomer phrase (and unironically!) to anyone around me: those bunnies are bold as brass! Where’s their healthy fear of humans? Is it that they can tell I am no threat, or are they being impudent? Or, has something screwed up their “normal” behaviors, and could that something be human-caused (like the over-developing of land, the loss of “natural” habitats, the increased need to live in the midst of humans?) Could that be the true heart of this poem?
Possibly, but first, another plunge2 down that rabbit hole! What do “experts” say about my theory of encroaching landscapes? Looked up “rabbits encroaching landscape” and What to do about wild bunnies? appeared. Here’s the subtitle: “Timid wild rabbits may occasionally eat plants in the garden, but usually live unnoticed on the fringes of our yards.” Usually unnoticed and on the fringes? Two favorite themes in my poems! Also included in one of the first paragraphs: edges, in-betweens.3 Back to “usually unnoticed,” here’s another useful bit from the article:
Here today, gone tomorrow is one way to describe rabbits in suburbia. Given the many predators who make meals of rabbits, their populations can rise and fall dramatically over the course of a year.
Come on, now, the pun was set up for you: hare today, gone tomorrow! Anyway, does my recent (for the last year) notice of backyard rabbits, almost every day, count as part of this normal rise and fall of rabbit populations? Or does it indicate something else?
The line about the gardens make me think of two things. First, a memory. My mom loved gardening and was especially proud of her West Des Moines garden (I created a digital story about it a few years ago). I recall the rabbits liked her flowers, especially her roses. On the advice of a neighbor, she sprinkled bone meal around the bush, which didn’t work. Not wanting to kill the rabbit, she managed to catch it — I can’t remember how, maybe with the help of that same neighbor — and drove 10 or 15 miles out of town and into the prairie to release the rabbit.
Second, a few feelings I recall having decades ago when reading the section in Peter Rabbit when Peter Rabbit’s coat gets caught on Mr. McGregor’s fence and he’s trapped and then when he manages (barely, at least how I remember it) to make it home and has to recuperate in bed. The feelings: not fear or relief but an understanding that life was dangerous and serious and an ambiguity as to who was in the wrong — the bold, misbehaving Peter who disobeyed his mother’s orders and stole vegetables, or the hard-working farmer who was planning to kill Peter as punishment. I recall thinking I was supposed to think Peter was in the wrong, but I wasn’t buying it.
What to do with these rabbit wanderings? And where has my plunge down the rabbit hole led me? It seems fitting to conclude this ramble with the rabbit hole, which is a reference to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and her following of the white rabbit down into Wonderland. Of course, “down the rabbit hole” is also a term used for getting lost on the internet:
“Down the rabbit hole” is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction.[1] In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.
Out-of-control curiosity. Distraction. Losing track of time. Getting lost in strange worlds. These are presented as bad things. Are they? Many of them are embraced within poetry. And they are great tools of refusal and resistance against late-capitalism and wannabe fascist governments — you’re not working for/perpetuating the system while you’re following the rabbit hole.
Does that work when the getting lost is online, where the rabbit hole is designed to be the way curiosity is monetized: the more levels of the rabbit hole you enter, the longer you stay lost in all of the information offered, the more attention you give to a site and its advertisers.
I started this ramble yesterday after realizing my third bunny poem might be about the muse. That realization was partly inspired by a recent rereading of an excerpt from Tommy Pico’s poem, “IRL.” Somehow I’ve made it back to that beginning.Here’s the last section of that excerpt:
All I need is my phone. Subway, elevator, drifting off in a convo—no one really seems to notice, occupied by their own gleaming pod of longing. I am the captain of my shit, possessed by the spirit of Instagram I am omnipotent on Twitter on Blurb on Vine Soap boxes on the street corner of my mind Clear, boosted, boundless something come stop the shaking A sun to fly towards iMean something to do: mimicry of purpose. The injury of hunger is: death. The word of the day is: Gloze. To explain away. Glowing gauze glozes the etc. Weather.com says Stay inside forever, or drop dead. We’ve ads for you to click. You n me? It’s going to take soooo long for us to know each other ten years.
I don’t understand all that is happening in this excerpt, but the more I read it, the more doors it opens for me and my thinking about the internet, IRL, and the Muse.4
“the birds aren’t going to save me” — I suppose my initial turn to the bunnies was with that expectation, where saving = giving me something else to think about other than ICE and Occupation Minneapolis and fascism and my high blood pressure and insomnia ↩︎
My choice of plunge is deliberate; it’s a reference to Emily Dickinson’s “I felt a funeral in my Brain” — And then a Plank in Reason, broke,/And I dropped down, and down,/ And hit a World, with every plunge,/And Finished knowing – then – ↩︎
Something else included: “rabbits will excrete, eat and re-digest their own droppings to obtain the maximum amount of nutrients.” I wonder if that’s part of what the rabbits in my yard are doing when they spend so much time stock-still in the snow. ↩︎
One last thing about the Muse that I want to mention for a future discussion. What if the bunnies/rabbits are not a muse, or a catalyst for action (which was said of the white rabbit in Alice in Wonderland), but a gate? As in, Marie Howe opening in “The Gate”: I had no idea that the gate I would step through / to finally enter this world / would be the space my brother’s body made↩︎
3 miles river road, north/lena smith hill x 3 15 degrees / feels like -2 wind: 24 mph gusts 100% clear path
A late afternoon run. It was cold but I had on (almost) all of the layers — 2 pairs of running tights, 2 base layer shirts, 1 hooded pull-over, a jacket, a buff, a cap with ear flaps, 2 pairs of gloves — so I was very warm. Only now, back inside at my desk, can I feel how the cold burned my face. I saw a few walkers, but I think I was the only runner. The river was open, the paths were clear, the sky was a grayish white.
overheard: 2 men walking a dog, heading north — when can we get out of this wind?!
Yes, the wind was rough. I don’t recall it stirring up anything, just howling, and feeling cold. 3 miles was enough for me today.
thank you past Sara!
Performing my morning ritual — my “On This Day” practice in which I read past entries from this day — I reread 22 feb 2024 and my lengthy discussion of pain. Such a gift today when I seem to be having an almost 2 month long argument with my body. I hesitate to call it pain, although I am in some discomfort. It started with a mild but persistent “cold” (never tested it, so I’m not sure what it was) that lasted more than 2 weeks. Then the discovery of high blood pressure at an annual check-up, which I’m monitoring for the next month (doctor’s orders), and that is sometimes normal, sometimes not, and is leaving me unsettled by its refusal to be one or the other. Combine that with the return of anxiety, a stretch of particularly bad restless legs and insomnia, and the acceleration of fascism in the US. Fascism aside, none of these are that big of a deal, and maybe that’s part of the problem. If they were actually a big deal, I would learn how to accept and accommodate them. Instead they linger as uncertainties, specters of worry, causing a rift between me (who is the me here?) and my body. (This litany of minor complaints is offered as gift to future Sara who most likely won’t read them as complaints, but as the documenting and archiving of what it felt like to be living in this strange and terrible and hopeful time.)
I’m not sure when I created the hashtag, body in pain, but I should do more with it — maybe create a page? And maybe I can do a little more with the 2024 entry and this — 18 august 2017.
Get Out Ice
Fight Unlawful Conduct Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act
Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have sent a blunt message to Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the introduction of a new bill.
The “Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act” – or F*** ICE Act – was introduced Thursday in the State Assembly. It aims to extend residents’ rights under state law to sue federal immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct.
“There have to be real consequences if ICE breaks the law,” said Katie Brennan, an Assembly Democrat who is co-sponsoring the bill alongside former Hoboken mayor Ravi Bhalla, also a Democrat, according to The New York Times.
Many of the articles about this FUCKICE Act described it as vulgar in the headline, which reminds me of a great quote from an article in MPR recently about mocking ICE and the Dildo Distribution Delegation:
“When people come out and say, ‘Well that was really vile or vulgar or distasteful,’ it sets up the question: isn’t it more distasteful and violent and vulgar to shoot people in the back of the head when they’re at a protest or to kill the citizens of Minneapolis?” Winchester said.
misheard
Read a poem last night, or was it early this morning?, by Kelli Russell Agodon that connects with my interest yesterday in sense misperceptions, and reminds me of something I wrote about on a log entry from 26 jan 2025: the 10 muses of poetry, including: Mishearing, Misunderstanding, Mistranslating, Mismanaging, Mislaying, and Misreading. The poem: “Coming Up Next: How Killer Blue Irises Spread —Misheard health report on NPR” And here’s something else from that 26 jan 2025 entry to put with all of this:
A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.
4.25 miles minnehaha falls and back 18 degrees / feels like 6
After a week of warmth, winter is back and this time the paths are clear! Hooray! It is (almost) never the cold but the uneven trails that bother me in January and February (and March and often April). I felt good as I ran south and even better as I ran back north. As I ran, I thought about how I was wearing my dead mother-in-law’s purple jacket and my dead mother’s teal cap with the tassels. I liked feeling as if they were both there with me. I also thought about #2 (see below) and what it means to be good at something. I imagined it not as something you are, I am good at x or y or z, but as a moment you experience or as a means to a deeper end: to feel free or satisfied or joyful — because I can run well, I am able to float on the trail anddevote more attention to this place or to travel farther on this trail or enter the flow stateand feel closer to the earth, the air, the water.
10 Things
a flash or a slash or a blur of bright red below me — with a second glance I saw that it was a person with a red coat walking on the winchell trail
a BRIGHT dot and a thought whispered in my head — yellow — an instant later recognition, a crosswalk sign
thump thump thump the deep bass of a song exploding out of a car
another car, more music — a song that I could almost but not quite hear — I strained my ears to identify any lyrics or a melody, but couldn’t
the faint echo of the train bells near the falls
the falls were still gushing from behind the ice columns, the dark water of the creek was rushing
a group of people standing at the wall, looking down at the falls — they were laughing and cheering as they threw something below — I think they were snowballs
the river was completely open and was mostly a deep brownish blueish dark gray — it stretched wide and far and looked more like a wall than water
my feet slid (but didn’t slip) on the grit on the trail
the paths held a range of people — single walkers, walkers with dogs, running pairs, running trios, adults and kids walking single-file — but the benches held nothing — they were empty
some things to remember
1
For almost a year now, I’ve been jumping from project to project. In the spring, it was color, then in the summer it was water and inklings, in the fall my book manuscript on echolocation and the gorge, and this winter it has been love. So many projects! And I have more big ideas that have been simmering for years and waiting for the light of my attention. But, I also like wandering without a clear purpose or goal. I like devoting a month to a random topic, like shadows or windows or wind, making a playlist for it, exploring new things that I haven’t encountered before. It’s difficult to balance a desire to wander and experiment with the need to turn it into something.
And right now, the need to turn it into something is winning. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of another project which would be part of a larger manuscript on how I see. So far, I have written about how I am seeing color (inner and outer color), how I navigate, looking at the world as if through water (inklings), now it’s time for another section/chapbook of this — thoughts? Optical illusions or hallucinations or mistaken identities? I’m imagining this might include examples from my log of seeing something in a very WRONG way — like disembodied legs walking toward me on the trail.
My starting point could be to gather: examples from past entries; lines from poems that speak to/of the beauty and the danger of these illusions; some research on illusions by scientists and psychologists; excerpts from essays by G. Kleege and Naomi Cohn; examples in art — like Monet and Magritte. Along the way, I want to turn this work of gathering into a resource page for others.
2
In my post from 21 feb 2017, I posed the question, what does it mean to be good at running? What does it mean to be good at something? And now I’m wondering, what does it TAKE to be good at something? The word excellence echoes in my head as I think about my studying of Aristotle and the figure skating in the 2026 winter Olympics. Two different models: Ilia Malinin (the quad god) and Alysa Liu. And I’m also thinking about the idea of needing to suffer for your art and where joy fits into your practice. And, another question — is the goal always to be good, to excel, to master?
a storm drain mural for water quality, designed and painted by local artist Precious, shows a sunset over a cityscape in vibrant colors. You can see it at the Mississippi River Gorge scenic overlook along Mississippi River Boulevard in Highland Park.
a Buddhist monk taught me to sit silently be the moon floating over my back field a buttercup cradled in a clump of spring grass sit hushed as the broad shoulders of granite mountains in their shawl of clouds— sit despite an unquiet morning that buzzes and twitters and zips sit to be a dewdrop in the garden a perfect pearl of daybreak— a Buddha sitting.
We want ICE OUT!!! Of our city, our state, our community, and for one night only, out of our margaritas.
Celebrate National Margarita Day this Sunday 2/22 at Hai Hai with NO ICE margaritas to support our restaurant community. ICE doesn’t belong here anymore and we are pulling frozen water out of our favorite cocktail to prove it. A portion of each No Ice Marg sold will be donated to @thesaltcurefund for restaurants in need. If and when ICE leaves, restaurants will have a long way to go to recover from the impact their occupation has had on our community, join us for a drink and some laughter and help us take one step forward towards recovery.
It is 1:30 pm. It is sometimes raining, sometimes snowing, and is all-the-time windy. It is also 32 degrees. But the pavement is bare and it might not be this clear for a few days because we are supposed to get some more snow. Should I go out for a short run when I have the chance? Or, are the conditions too crappy, my left knee too sore? Future Sara will let us know! Sara from 2:47: I did it! I went out for a run in this blustery weather!
3.3 miles river road, south/north/neighborhood, south 31 degrees / feels like 17 / snow wind: 25 mph gusts
Not the best conditions, but I’m glad I went outside. I started by running south on the river road trail, but it was tough. I was running straight into the wind and stabbing snowflakes. I turned around at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, then turned off the river road and onto Lena Smith Boulevard at 32nd. I was plannng to do some hills but the road was blocked off. Instead, I meandered through the neighborhood.
I encountered one other runner, at least one fat tire. Any walkers? I can’t remember. It was difficult to see what was ahead of me. Snow was thick in the air and I pulled the visor of my cap down low to block it. If I saw the river, I don’t remember what it looked like. When I turned around to head north again, it was much easier and more fun. The snow was swirling in front of my face, looking like white confetti or bits of styrofoam. It wasn’t as cool, but it reminded me of the scene at the men’s Free Ski Big Air final that Scott and I watched last night. The sky was black, the heavy snow was illuminated by the bright lights of the venue. I remember admiring it and wishing it would snow here again so I could run through it. Well, the snow today wasn’t nearly as heavy as what I saw on the tv, but it was still delightful. It will probably be a slippery nightmare tomorrow, but today it was fun!
I never knew that by August the birds are practically silent, only a twitter here and there. Now I notice. Last spring their noisiness taught me the difference between screamers and whistlers and cooers and O, the coloraturas. I have already mastered the subtlest pitches in our cat’s elegant Chinese. As the river turns muddier before my eyes, its sighs and little smacks grow louder. Like a spy, I pick up things indiscriminately: the long approach of a truck, car doors slammed in the dark, the night life of animals—shrieks and hisses, sex and plunder in the garage. Tonight the crickets spread static across the air, a continuous rope of sound extended to me, the perfect listener.
coloratura = elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing by a soprano.
I imagined that Mueller knew something about vision loss when I read her, “Monet Refuses the Operation” a few years ago, but I didn’t know that for the last 20 years of her life (she died in 2020), she was losing her vision and couldn’t read. I found out about that while reading this interview, “Slightly Larger Than Life Size“:
Mueller speaks always in a steady, gentle tone—even when describing the death of her beloved husband, Paul Mueller, in 2001 or the partial loss of vision she has suffered over the last 20 years. “I’m blind for reading, really,” she explains plainly, almost as if she were describing someone else. “I use an enlarging machine. And I have two friends who come read to me.”
Mueller also no longer writes, in part because of her diminishing vision. She treats this circumstance with the same tough realism—compellingly at odds with the ethereal nature of her poetry—as the other hardships in her life. “I do miss writing,” she replies when asked the obvious question. “But I simply don’t have the images coming to me anymore that would start a poem. The language no longer flows. I would have to force it and come up with some artificial things, and that’s not my way. I’m someone who has learned to put up with things as they are. Because of the blindness, because of what happened to my husband, because of leaving the country that I was born in and coming here—I accommodate myself.”
I accommodate myself. Love that line! A title for a poem, I think. I wouldn’t say I put up with things; rather, I adapt and find new ways to be, to see. I like the line about not forcing it and coming up with artificial things. I agree.
In my imagined poem titled, “I accommodate myself,” I might start it with a line from Mueller’s “Losing My Sight”: I never knew . . . . / Now I notice. Maybe I should make a list of all of things I’ve noticed since my vision began declining?
The perfect listener. Reading this line, I immediately thought of Ed Bok Lee’s line in “Halos“:
That visual impairment improves hearing, taste, smell, touch is mostly myth.
I do notice things much more than I did before my vision loss; I’ve made it a big part of writing/attention practice. I’ve devoted many runs to listening or smelling or feeling the various textures. So, being a good listener didn’t just happen because my vision declined; I worked for it. Yet, even as I’m noticing more with my ears, I do also seem to struggle to hear what people are saying to me. So much so that I asked for my hearing to be checked at my last appointment. It was fine. So, what’s happening? Why do I need more time to process what people are saying, or need to ask them to repeat it? FWA thinks I might have an audio processing disorder — something one of his favorite Youtubers has. Possibly. I think it has more to do with how people use visual cues — gestures, their surroundings — to convey the meaning of their speech. People with normal sight don’t realize how much they are relying on vision when they speak and they don’t recognize how that impacts people who cannot see the things that they are referencing. I find this frustrating and also fascinating to think about how we our senses work together.
One more thing about Mueller’s poem. I’d like to memorize it. There are too many wonderful lines that I don’t want to forget.
Sharing the Love
I have not given much any attention to building an audience here or on social media and, as a result, no one is seeing/responding/sharing my love poems. It is probably also because of the algorithm. Scott suggested that I put the link in the first comment and post a picture of a dog. It’s time for me to think again about if I want a bigger audience. Actually, the better question is: how can I reach people with my work? For me, it’s less about a big audience, more about finding ways to share what I’m doing and connect with others. Experiment time! The goal for me is not a bigger audience, but finding ways to contribute and connect. Hmm . . . I’ll have to think about it some more.
a few minutes later: As a first step, I’ve decided to try sharing my love poems again on Facebook. I put the link in the first comment and posted a photo, not of a dog, but of this Valentine that Scott noticed in the bathroom at Arbeiter Brewing:
Valentine, I’m falling for you & hoping the system does, too.
Also, I posted the STOP ICE photo that I posted here yesterday on my Instagram.
Maybe one of the biggest reasons I’m not sharing on social media is because it’s hard for me to do it with my bad vision. Everything takes so much longer and I can’t always see when I’ve made a mistake. And, I’ve been self-conscious about posting photos that I imagine are poorly cropped or framed strangely. Time to get over that.
4.05 miles river road, north/south 51 degrees 50% sloppy
51 degrees! Another run with bare arms. Lots of puddles, but also lots of dry path. I was able to run on the walking path for long stretches. The surface of the river has cracked — no open water yet, but patches of thinner ice in light gray were scattered all over. A bike passed by blasting music: “Losing my Religion” by REM. I heard some kids’ voices at a playground before I reached the river. Saw/heard an ambulance rumble by on the river road, its LOUD siren freaking out all the nearby dogs. Near the end, recited Alice Oswald’s “A Story of Falling” as I ran — in my head, not out loud. Also near the end, heard the bells of St. Thomas chime twice — it’s 2:00 already? Wow.
I stopped to walk several times, often because I had become trapped on a part of the path that was suddenly blocked by a short wall of snow or a deep puddle. One of the stops was at a bench nearing Franklin that I have delighted in noticing before. It is dedicated to “Margaret Carlson, Dog Lover.” Today I remembered to take a picture of it!
“She cherished her girls; Schnapps, Candy, Maggie, Mitzi and Suzi*”
*yes, it should be a colon, not a semi-colon, but who cares; I’d rather give my attention to the fact that one of her “girls” is named Schnapps, and another, Candy!
I’m not sure if I’ve written this yet, but I’d like to remember: when I go out running now, I carry a whistle and my passport ID card. And I don’t listen to any music, so I can be better aware of what’s happening around me.
Get Out Ice
I am almost finished with my collection of love poems. Here’s the final poem, which is an erasure of a Facebook statement by Carbone’s Pizzeria on Cedar near Lake Nokomis:
This New Normal / 15 February 2026
This New Normal
We are with you. We love you. love Always. We Love We Love We Love We Love this new normal together, love
