3.75 miles top of wabun, bottom of locks and dam no. 1 43 degrees
It felt warmer than 43 today. Today’s sign of spring: the shadows of budding leaves on the tree, looking like sparkler explosions on the sidewalk. I’ve written about these in past springs — was it last April or the April before? The sky was bright blue, the water was scaled with waves. Encountered bikers and runners and walkers. No surreys yet or roller skiers. No songs blasting from radios. No soaring birds or bird shadows or birdsong. Some flashes of green, several occupied benches. I started to recite Philip Larkin’s “The Trees” — The trees are coming into leaf/Like something almost being said/Their recent buds relax and spread/Their greenness is a kind of griefi.
For the first half I listened to everything around me, for the second half: my “Windows” playlist. Demi Lovato’s anthem, “Skyscraper” came on and even though it is cheesy and overwrought, I started running faster to it and felt something deep opening. Cathartic. If it hadn’t been so crowded I might have started crying, which would have been a great release. Even without the tears, it felt good to run fast and feel free/d.
Right before my run, RJP cameo ver to tell us all about her success with the fashion show at St. Kate’s. She didn’t have any garments in it, but she served on a committee for it and helped set it up. It’s hard to put into words how big of a victory this was/is for RJP.
a quick note about Robert Macfarlane and the river:As I washed the incredible amount of dishes that had accumulated — almost ALL of them! — I finished listening to the Between the Covers episode from last year with Robert Macfarlane.side note: when did Between the Covers switch from Tinhouse to Milkweed?And does that mean I need to go through and fix my past links to episodes? Probably. Future Sara (does Sara sent somewhere work as a name?) get on that! What a gift! I’m currently waiting for the audiobook of What is a River? I checked it (or the ebook version) on 10 august but didn’t listen to it. I must have been busy doing my swimming one day in august challenge. Or maybe I wasn’t ready to hear the words. I am now. Currently the waiting time is “several months” and I am 54th in line. I hope it comes in time for summer. This is a perfect water book for my water season! Maybe if it doesn’t come in time, I’ll buy it as an early bday present? I just checked on Moon Palace and the paperback is coming out on June 9th! I’ll have to preorder it. I could spend the rest of the afternoon writing about the interview, but I’ll leave that for when I start reading — either with my eyes or ears — the book in June,
holes
I didn’t have much time this afternoon, but I started experimenting with 2 ways to cover my blind spot template on the page. First, I created a cross-hatch pattern on one of them with a ruler and pencil. Second, I used a ziploc plastic bag. Because the bag was clear, I distressed it by drawing a spiral repeatedly using a pencil. I like the effect.
1 — cross-hatched hole2 — ziploc bag
Experiments to try tomorrow: a plastic bag (grocery store), black netting, static dots, dark pencil erased.
3.25 miles locks and dam no. 1 and back 41 degrees / feels like 24 wind: 16 mph / gusts: 27 mph
That wind! I seemed to be running into in every direction. Had to wear my winter layers: tights, 2 shirts and a pullover, hood, gloves. One too many layers and unnecessary gloves. The sun and sharp shadows, combined with the green grass and new flowers made it look warmer and springier than it was. By Wednesday it’s supposed to be 79 degrees. Then, by the end of next week, 50s. That’s a Minnesota-spring for you.
grids and holes
To distract me from the run, I decided to listen to my “Window” playlist. When I got to “Waving Through a Window” I started thinking about the window as a barrier between me and the world, which made me think of the grid on my visual poems as not only being about mapping and locating and connecting (as thread or string or line), but as net or a veil or a thing that blocks my immediate access to the word and the world. Yes! The grid as both offering connection and preventing it, or obscuring it, or weakening it.
Here’s another version of the double grid that I did last night. I noticed that I am feeling much more confident with my graph making. I worried less about it not being straight and just drew lines and most of them are straight, or as straight as I want!
double grid, version 2
I wonder what this would like if it was twice as far away and made out of some of my thicker thread? I’d like to see, but using what? Should I find some wood and nail long nails into the wood? Yes! Should that be tomorrow’s project? I’m sure we have a scrap piece of wood and some long nails in the basement!
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the grid/thread/string aspect of this project and how to make it, but I don’t want to forget the hole. Reading through my entries from March, I found this:
I’d like to push at this idea of a hole in the vision, with the hole not being (just) empty or a void, but something — like a rabbit hole: an in-between space, a passageway, a liminal space, a threshold, but also a clearing (JJJJJerome Ellis), the Nothing around which something functions, the gorge.
A few thoughts:
First, I’d like to return to my original version of Holes 1, with my blind spot around each of the words. I want to experiment with different ways to “make” that blind spot — color it in with dark pencil; erase that pencil, leaving only a trace; a plastic bag; a net of thread; sparkles or something that resembles static — how do you realize that?; the black netting I bought with RJP. Instead of Holes 1, I’m using Holes 5c about the two holes.
Second, I’d like to find a New Yorker article about a gorge or a river or a field and make a hole poem out of it. I found an article: The Landscape in Winter
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
flashes of white flowers on the edge of the bluff: the spring ephemerals!
little kid voices, laughing, somewhere deep in the gorge
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?
chickadeedeedee
a verbal greeting with a walker: good moring! / good morring!
honking geese, a honking car horm
a grayish-brownish-blue river, empty
bright LED headlights, cutting through the thick gray air
slashes of bright green are beginning to appear in the floodplain forest!
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 griddouble 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?
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
flashes of bright green in my periphery as I ran by trees with new buds
hot sun
music coming from the grassy boulevard: people sitting in chairs, listening to music
squirrels squawking at each other
a loud thumping noise at the skate park
someone in white sitting on the ledge looking over the river
a biker in an orange shirt, biking very slowly over the ford bridge
the voices of kids laughing and yelling on the playground
a biker in a winter coat with a stocking cap and gloves on
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 booka 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:
Only 56 degrees? It felt much warmer than that! My hair is soaked with sweat, my face feels flushed still, minutes after finishing. Spring is here! I listened to a piece we’re playing for community band concert in a week, Bookmarks as I ran south, and my “Doin’ Time” playlist running north.
I waved and smiled at as many people I encountered as I could. Did I ever speak? I think I did, once. Even with my music playing, I could hear the kids having fun on the playground and the roar of the falls at the park. At least a dozen people were walking around the park, 4 of them were standing at my usual spot. As I stopped to take off my sweatshirt, I heard a thump thump thump behind me: a young kid running over to the steps. They were fast! A few minutes later, I heard several people calling out, woooooo or weeeeee, close to those steps. It sounded like someone was being swung in the air, or lifted up and down.
Anything else? Several of the benches were occupied, but not the one above the edge of the world. I stopped there to admire the river. I don’t remember what it looked like, just that it was open and wide and peaceful.
at the clinic (earlier this morning)
Today I had to go to the clinic to get two cervical polyps removed. No big deal — an easy procedure with only a 1% chance that the polyps would be cancerous. I was hardly anxious at all, even when they took my blood pressure, which is huge improvement from my last visit in early February. Hooray!
A few observations: Passing by a door, hearing a kid on the other side losing their shit. Hearing them a minute later while in the bathroom at the lab. This was never verified, but I think they were also at the lab, getting blood drawn. Yikes for the drawer of that blood and for the one getting it drawn!
Heading towards the lobby, passing an older woman (with all gray hair) about to be weighed, taking off her shoes and jacket, saying, hold on, I want to take off as much as possible to weigh as little asI can! I’m kidding. Was she, though? Hearing this, I though about my mom and how, when she was on chemo for stage 4 pancreatic cancer, she desperately didn’t want to lose weight because she was already too thin, and I thought about the doctor on a Facebook post who specializes in peri/menopausal discussing how being strong is so much more important than being skinny, especially for older women. With these thoughts, I wasn’t giving shade to the woman getting weighed; I was reflecting on the discord with older women’s bodies and the impact of oppressive beauty standards on their bodies.
Anything else? Oh — on my back on the table, feet in the stirrups, I looked up at the ceiling and noticed a dot. I stared at it, trying to imagine the Amsler Grid and to see my blind spot. Did I? I can’t remember now.
Driving home, I struggled to find a fun/pleasing/alliterative way to describe Sara in the present moment. I mentioned to Scott how well it worked with our daughter’s name: RJP right now. Scott suggested two awesome versions for me:
Sara this second Sara since Saturday
I love both of these so much. How much? Enough to try and write a poem about them! I’ll try to think about them on my run1. One reason I like Sara this second is because I love the idea that I have so many present Saras that they can’t be contained in minutes; I need seconds! And Sara since Saturday? I said to Scott, this is an example of alliteration helping you to find more meaning. Sara last Saturday isn’t nearly as awesome as Sara since Saturday!
grids holes thread
I was planning to work on the grid for Holes 3 this afternoon — current options: drawing a grid directly on the text OR creating a loom frame and making a grid out of thread to place over the text — but I’m not sure I have enough energy or vision for it. Maybe I need some more food?! The snack has happened, some water too. A recharge! I want to start with a loom frame for my 2 panel poem. I’ve cut out the frame and figured out the measurements for the grid, but now I’ve run out of time!
Well, I tried to think about them, but I forgot before I reached the river. I recall a flash of Sara since Saturday and then wondering why he chose Saturday, with 3 syllables, instead of Sunday, with two. Is it because Sunday doesn’t sound quite right? ↩︎
Sun and shadows and spring air. Also: chirping birds, bare earth, buds. A beautiful afternoon for a run, after a morning having fun making a grid and reading an essay backwards and thinking about threads and strings and scotomas.
The river was a blueish-gray, the sky was empty of clouds. Now, sitting at my dining room table, I hear cardinals, but out near the gorge I think it was wrens, or could it have been sparrows? Oh — at least one pileated woodpecker and the feebee of a chickadee.
tmi note for marathon-training Sara: the run was made difficult by unfinished business. I need to do more work on figuring this problem out!
My favorite image: Walking and running back through the neighborhood, I noticed (and not for the first time) a delightful maple tree. A straight and solid trunk then 2 thick branches rising out of it. One of them slanted only slightly to the side, the other bent midway up, looking almost like a knee. Yes! This tree offers a classic example of the tree looking like an upside down person, their head, shoulders buried in the dirt, only their torso and crotch and legs sticking out of the ground. Oh, why didn’t I bring my phone today so I could take a picture of it?! I’ll have to go back. It’s on 35th street between 46th and 45th avenue. I wonder, will anyone else be able to see what I see in a picture of it? when standing beside the tree?
grids and lines and strings and threads
note: I’m starting this in the morning just after a big breakfast. I’m listening to early The Kinks, “Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire” from 1969 and “The Kinks Are teh Cillage Green Preservation Society” from 1968. I love early The Kinks!
Continuing a discussion I began yesterday but wasn’t able to continue:
I found this quote from Chuck Close about why he used the grid method:
Almost every decision I’ve made as an artist is an outcome of my particular learning disorders. I’m overwhelmed by the whole. How do you make a big head? How do you make a nose? I’m not sure! But by breaking the image down into small units, I make each decision into a bite-size decision. I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. It’s an on- going process. The system liberates and allows for intuition.
Breaking the image down into small units. Working in small units and seeing fine detail — those are functions of central vision. Peripheral vision is the big picture, that big head, those whole noses. Most of what I see these days is big picture — whole, fuzzy forms. The central vision I have is very small and seems to be very near the center of my central vision. How big is the one grid — that tiny island surrounded by gray water — that allows me to see anything as more than an almost form? The only detail I can really see (I think?) is a word in small print.
Just gave about an hour to creating the grid for the bigger version of my scotoma. In the “normal” sized one, each grid is .25 x .25. In this grid, it’s .8 x .8. I’m listening to a 1970 album by The Kinks, “Lola Versus Poerman and the Moneygoround, Part One.”
The grid is fiddly and involves a lot of measuring. It is slow, repetitive work. As I measured and drew line after line, I thought about how this work might open me up to new ideas and that this process by me, Sara-barely-not-blind, is part of the work I am creating. It is not only the finished product of a visual poem, but all of the labor that went into it that makes the meaning. Much of that work is invisible (although I’m documenting it), but it colors and haunts and shapes what I am trying to communicate.
2 grids and a blind spot
Now, it’s time to use the grid to create a super-sized scotoma, and then, to play around with different materials for laying the scotoma over the words of Holes 5b! Possible materials: trace the scotoma directly onto the paper and then color it in. Cut out different types of plastic — ziploc? a grocery bag? cling wrap? What about a very, very small grid made out of black thread? Fiddly, but fun!
Before I return to that, I need a break, so I’ll return to my close reading of a book review on memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. I picked this selection from the NYer because: it’s a book review, and I love book reviews!; it uses a lot of language about connections and separations; and it uses hole, thread, and line.
My close reading = start with the last paragraph of the essay, then the second to last, then the third to last, etc. So, backwards. It’s a strange way of reading, being thrown into ideas that are presented as familiar, but haven’t been introduced yet. Slowly, the more I read, the more sense it makes.
Misfits / The Kinks (1978)
I started my close reading of the NYer book review, What to Make of the Mother Who Made You/Rebecca Mead, yesterday afternoon while drinking a surprisingly good NA beer at Arbeiter. Here’s a list of words/phrases I found during that reading, along with my additional words from today’s reading:
when the facts are unbearable, it’s natural to escape into
coordinates
accomodate
(to) make sense to myself
disorientation
knowledge
ghost
humbled
should be
to write one’s way out of
shedding
knotted
threads
familiar
searching
hunt it down like prey
in the other room
readers
almost blind
estranged
against
reframing
obedience
en chant ment
elsewhere
world made whole again
inheritances
family
moves
opens
traces
artificially formed
origins
sober
square
closed
door
discomfort
feelings
slither
seize d
character
disembowel eat
spotted
rupture
alone
defiance
entanglements
kinship
matriarch
loom
shadows and absences
ordinariness tempo
lens
locating
mess ily
tending
cancer
seen
naked
con found ing
pro CLAIM
think about
offspring
runs through
nothing, subdued
account
assumes command
between
emerge
maintain ed distance
light
center
entwined
depend
reckon
Again, these words speak to a strained relationship between daughter and mother. I’m thinking that my mother here is written language and the words on a page to be read with failing/failed eyes. A distant mother, a daughter uncertain as to how to reconnect (or to keep the connection), or even if she wants to stay connected.
In the midst of all of this, I’m also wanting to get more inspiration from a collection of erasure poems that I discovered last fall and have been hugely influenced by: a wonderful catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard. Here’s one of her found poems that uses lines:
a poem from a wonderful catastrophe/ colette love hilliard
I like how the lines are slanted and all coming out of one source which resembles the sun. I might try having lines of black thread emerging from a center hole in a 4 panel poem. The threads just barely covering all of the words, the words of the poem printed on circles attached (pinned?, sewn?) on top of the strings. I want to try that now! Can I do that AND make my super-sized scotoma?
a few minutes later: I will do the scotoma tomorrow; the sun is too bright in the room for me to see the grid! And, before I can try out the black threads, I need to remap Holes 4. So, tomorrow for both of these.
RJP just stopped by and when I showed her what I was working on, she reminded me about Coraline and her other mother who lives on the other side of the door (here, instead of Alice’s hole, there is Coraline’s door). The other mother has buttons for eyes which reminded RJP of the holes I traced on my Holes 5. So cool! I could try adding buttons to my Holes 6, which is using a text about mothers and daughters!
summary of the day: A lot of great ideas, a few plans, a little making.
David Bowie Essentials — the last song heard, “Suffragette City”
3.75 miles wabun hill 60 degrees wind: 25 mph gusts
Windy and warm this afternoon. Shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Hooray! My feet feel strange in my new shoes. Hopefully I’ll get used to them soon. Sometimes it felt easy, sometimes it didn’t. I stopped several times to admire the view. There is new, brightly colored graffiti under the ford bridge. I noticed it when I stopped to look at the hill of dirt (some of it looks like loose dirt to me — is it?) that the pilings for the bridge push up against.
The favorite thing I experienced this afternoon: At the bottom of the hill near the locks and dam no. 1, I stopped to admire the river. The surface was undulating in the wind. It was only slightly moving, creating a strange feeling — not of dizziness, but of everything shimmering or flickering.
holes 5b
Here’s a draft of another poem made from words in “Mystery Man”:
two holes one — the only place where reading is still possible a small island surround by the other and its not even firelit free fall into nothing
I’d like to make the New Yorker text for this poem white on a black background. Is that possible? Can I achieve the effect of being in the dark in some other way? Maybe I’ll try shading text with pencil first? I’m still not sure. I’ll need to look for some more inspiration.
an hour or so later: Here’s something I’d like to try tomorrow that I thought of earlier — for my 2 holes poem I want to trace my scotoma/blind spoi on the 4 panels. I want one that covers a substantial amount of the text/pages. I’m thinking a 16 x 16 inch grid, which I already have. I’m not thinking that I’ll use the grid on the poem, but I’ll use it to measure the proportions of the bigger scotoma. Fun! I’m sure there are much more efficient ways to do what I’m trying to do, but I like the DIY nature of this approach. I also like how it’s not overwhelming for me, with my very limited crafting/making skills. If I spend too much time on crafting something that is trying to look polished and fancy, I might lose all of my creative energy. I should find a class to take in which I can learn some of these skills!
4.1 miles river road, north/south 39 degrees wind: 10mph / gusts: 15 mph
Boo to the cold, although it only really felt cold during my walk warm-up. Maybe the boo should be reserved for the wind which was directly in my face running south. But, even with the wind and the cold, there was sun and clear paths and birds and open water. Spring! My legs and back felt strong, and my feet were locked into a steady rhythm. I encountered at least one large-ish group of runners, many groups of walkers, dogs. No roller skiers. Any bikers? I can’t remember. At least one stroller.
Running north, I listened to my feet striking the ground and birds chirping. Running south, I put in my “I’m Shadowing You” playlist. Song I remember most: “Shadow Stabbing” by Cake.
My anxiety has returned, which is a bummer, but not unexpected. There are so many reasons it could be back (I mean, looking at the news for today — Drump’s deadline for Iran is tonight — JFC). My latest theory: I am experiencing another vision shift (more cones lost?) that sometimes makes me feel dizzy. Dizziness triggers (mostly) mild physical panic. Combine that with hormonal changes, thanks to perimenopause. Nothing too overwhelming, but still draining and uncomfortable. I understand the anxiety better now than a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean I can anticipate it. Before my run, I felt a little dizzy. That dizziness (or imagined dizziness?) lingered a little during the run then returned right after. Sigh.
added later in the day: Finishing this entry up at my desk, I saw the shadow of a bird fly by which reminded me of the bird shadows this morning as I ran. It happened more than once, a dark something flying over my head as I ran: a bird’s shadow!
grids and holes and reading
My Holes series has several elements: the hole, the grid, reading. All of them are important in these visual poems. Also important: these are visual poems. The words in them matter as much (or more? or on the same level?) as the visuals.
What am I trying to express with this series? The strange and strained and magical way in which I can still read words even with most of my central vision gone. The progression of my declining ability to see words and its untethering effects.
a couple hours later: Playing around with my first Holes, this morning, I focused on figuring out how to connect the sections of the poem, to map the path from word to word to word on the page. That process of reading is key to this series1. After ruminating, which frequently meant standing and staring at the poem on cardboard, trying to figure out how to make this rectangular 4-panel poem fit into the square of an Amsler Grid, I came up with something to try. Fasten the poem panels to cardboard by placing pins next to the words of the poem, then connect/map the words with black thread. When I tried that, the thread was more fiddly to work with than my eyes and hands liked, and it didn’t show up that well:
black thread map / Can you see the thread? Just barely, for me.
So I tried dark gray thread, which was easier to work with and showed up much better. Maybe as the series progresses and my tether to the world through words weakens, I’ll use thinner, less visible thread?
gray yarn
One thing to fix for a different version: adjust the pin so that the thread line between with and word doesn’t cross the center — to do this, possibly switch to another “the” lower on the panel.
I like the yarn better! I realized that one of the key elements of this poem is to show the process of reading, the act of jumping from word to word to word, how the connections between words are increasingly complicated and convoluted. As I was thinking about that mapping, I remembered some images that I’ve seen several times and that Scott mentioned the other day: a spider’s web after taking various drugs . Here, lines = grids = webs!
The next experiment = putting the 4 paneled poem on cork board, using gray yarn and push pins. Another thing to add: draw more holes (circles), color them in with pencil, then erase them to leave a ghost (afterimage-ish).
during the run: holes
During the run, I thought about printing the New Yorker article on graph paper and adding an x and y axis for plotting the words. I might do that for a few of the Holes — as my vision gets stranger, so do the names of x and y. Maybe Holes 1 is x = time and y = space. Another Holes could be x = real and y = imagined. I should look through the other poems and determine their x and y axis.
questions: Are the lines from the Amsler grid (that is, the lines that make up the grid) and the lines that connect the words and map them on the visual poem the same? Can they sometimes be the same in one poem, and different in another? (note from 16 april: I’m not sure what I mean here with the same and different lines.)
A thought as I wrote this sentence: part of the process of moving from word to word is running into words on a line that I didn’t see. In my Plague Notebook, I have countless examples of visual errors in which I write words on top of each other. This works differently in reading — in reading, I only see the word I am reading — but it connects. This not seeing + words on top of each other could be represented by the increasing jumbled way my lines from word to word are mapped. ↩︎
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
a speedy runner in white down below, on the winchell trail — beside me, then ahead of me, then gone
soft, shimmering shadows
a LOUD siren coming from behind, then an ambulance speeding by on the river road
empty benches
the view from the sliding bench: uncluttered, the sands gleaming so white that it looked like snow
soft, dry dirt — no more mud
one car then another then another passing by on the river road
dried flowers hanging from the pink sign reading, Someone was taken by ICE here
a slower biker riding on the grass between the river road and seabury
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)”?
(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.
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! ↩︎
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
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
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
goose honks near the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1
swirling leaves
the round shadow of the light on the street lamp
more scales on the gray water
chanting in triple berries to keep a steady pace
running on the rim of the bluff, looking down at the winchell trail which was empty and farther down than I usually remember
at the top of the wabun hill, stopping to look through the chain link fence at the river
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.
1234
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?
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. ↩︎
