Tag: biking

feb 15/BIKERUN

bike: warm-up
run: 3 miles
basement
outside: 4 inches of snow

Snow! Finally. My first real shovel session of the winter. Thought briefly about running outside on the trail, but when Scott told me he had heard the city hadn’t plowed the bike path, I decided against it. I watched more of the first episode of Dickinson with the audio description on while I biked. Listened to my winter playlist while I ran. I blocked the display panel, so I wouldn’t know the time. When I finally checked, I thought it would be 15 minutes at the most. It was 25. Wow.

Watching/listening to the audio description, it was interesting to notice when/how they chose to describe something and when they didn’t. An example: In one scene, Sue is sitting in the parlor. We see her looking and pointing, then we see a basket with a letter in it hanging outside of the window. Sue says, Austin. Look. At this point, the audio description (AD) says, Sue points to a hanging basket. Austin opens the basket and removes a small envelope addressed to Sue. I was struck by the AD choice to wait to describe Sue’s pointing until after the action was over. Something — poetic whimsy? — was lost in not describing Sue’s strange pointing — it seemed, at least to me, almost comical. Should it have been described? I’m not sure; I mention it to highlight how ADs involve choices of what to include or not include, often for clarity or brevity.

I must have still been thinking about this choice to not immediately describe the pointing while I was running because I suddenly had an idea about the significance of what my image descriptions leave out. I wanted to remember my thought so I pulled out my phone to record it, but the audio is messed up and I can’t understand what I’m saying. Bummer. My descriptions will be explicitly subjective. I want to emphasize how we always make choices when describing what we’re seeing — what’s important and what’s not. Our brains do this too when we’re seeing — it’s called filtering.

before the run

While rereading an entry from this day (15 feb) in 2022, I discovered that past Sara had been thinking about alt-text as poetry. I mentioned wanting to create alt-text for my beloved mannequin photos and posted some links:

I’ve already started using the first link. Just now, I read through the twitter thread. Very helpful! Here are some highlights — BTW, putting together these notes has used up a lot of my visual “spoons” for the day.

Not describing everything, but getting to why the image is there:

I think people who find providing alt text overwhelming think too much about describing every last detail in the image, when it’s more like, ok, why did YOU post it? …focus on why you’re posting the image or what it’s supposed to do or how other people would recognize it

Alt-text predates “accessibility”:

“alt” here is short for “alternate” and originates from HTML—back in Ye Olde Days if an image took 10 minutes to load or otherwise broke, you’d provide alt text that the browser would display in place of the image so you still knew what was going on

different than an image description, alt-text is only for necessary images, not decorative ones:

and alt text is different from image descriptions; alt text describes the purpose of the image and isn’t typically included if something is purely decorative—but do note that even a gif for example carries semantic meaning and is thus NOT purely decorative

intended to be brief

alt text is meant to be short, as it would get cut off by the image bounding edges otherwise

example of alt-text vs. image description

alt text for a chart: “Graph showing increase in alt text use on Twitter”
image description for a chart: “A graph titled ‘Increase in alt text use on Twitter.’ The y-axis shows percentage of images including alt text. The x-axis shows time in years from 2008–2022…”

craft it

don’t be afraid to put your personality into alt text or be funny or use alt text to extend your shitpost, like imagine using a screenreader & your entire TL is dry descriptions until “a dog so cute I screeched” appears

look to audio descriptions for good examples of image description and using brevity

I think there’s a lot to learn from audio descriptions too for how to provide alt text & image descriptions! try turning on audio descriptions on a show or movie and observe how to pack in detail, especially given the time constraints—you only have a few seconds to describe smtg — boba fett’s audio descriptions are amazing, they’re wonderfully evocative while also including details I wouldn’t have known, not being a star wars fan (like they note that the palace is jabba’s and name which character’s helmet he picks up)

it’s subjective

accessibility is a fluid concept that depends a lot on audience; there’s no one “best” way to write alt text or an image description, because fundamentally it’s about what details other people care about, and that will change across topics and groups

an extended example of using alt-text to further/enhance the story

I am DYING, here is an incredible example of alt text augmenting the experience for someone using accessibility features—it calls out only the visual features that are important (’90s aesthetic, scalloped border) and provides the context that makes this reply hilarious

Katherine Crighton
@c_katherine

Screencapture of a Denny’s tumblr ad. Of key interest, aside from its very 1990s aesthetic, is the scalloped border around the ad–at the time, it was intended by Tumblr’s parent company to denote to casual readers that the contents within the border were a paid advertisement. Specifically, only those who had paid for space would be granted the scalloped border. Denny’s, the restaurant chain and purveyor of surreal humor on social media, demonstrated with this ad that while the intent was to monetize this border, in actuality all one had to do was take a screencap, drop in your own ad, and then post the resulting image via the normal, non-monetized process– it would then appear the same way to the end-user, whether or not Tumblr’s owner recieved a dime. This method of deriving ad income was dropped shortly after the Denny’s “ad” pointed out this flaw.

Some very helpful ideas in this thread —

the why/purpose is the focus. In my “how I see” images, I’m not interested in describing everything in the image — I probably can’t because of my limited vision, but the ways it serves as an example of “how I see.” I’m also interested in bringing some elements of ekphrasis into this — what are those? I need to spend more time thinking about that!

the idea of brevity. I’d like to make these descriptions short. I think it might be helpful for my creative process to pick a meaningful number of characters or words or syllables. I’ll think about that some more.

listening to audio descriptions for guidance — I think I’ll bike this morning and watch/listen to a Dickinson episode! I did!

a ramble of thoughts:

thought one: Recently, I’ve started proof-reading my poems by listening as the screen reader reads them. I noticed that the speaker (mine is Fred — according to system preferences on my mac) can do enjambments (a sentence split up over multiple lines) when the sentence is at the beginning of the line. But when the sentence begins in the middle of a line, Fred pauses at the end of that line and reads the next line as a new sentence. Enjambment is much more a visual device. My alt-text poems should not use visual devices, but rely on aural ones. What are these? I know rhyme, meter, alliteration, assonance. Time to study! I’ll start with my Mary Oliver poetry handbook!

thought two: I’m just remembering a great line from June Jordan in her guidelines for critiquing a poem:

Punctuation (Punctuation is not word choice. Poems fly or falter according to the words composing them. Therefore, omit punctuation and concentrate on every single word. E.g., if you think you need a question mark then you need to rewrite so that your syntax makes clear the interrogative nature of your thoughts. And as for commas and dashes and dots? Leave them out!)

So, try writing my descriptions without punctuation. BUT, I’m also thinking of Dickinson and how important punctuation (em dashes, for example) were for her. How could I use punctuation to shape how Fred speaks my words?

thought three (barely formed): One feature of many ekphrastic poems is a contentious/combative dialogue between word and image. What about twisting that to push at the conflicts between hearing a word versus seeing an image?

All these thoughts might be too much, and might not lead anywhere I want to go, but I’ll keep with them for a little bit longer. I was just telling Scott last night, or was it this morning?, that I appreciate how past Sara includes discussions of intended plans. Sometimes I don’t act on these plans — and maybe it seems like I have too many ideas or that I’m all over the place, or that I’m not following through — but it’s cool to be able to trace the origins of the projects that do happen. And the plans that I didn’t act upon? Maybe I just not ready for them yet.

a few hours later:

Here are some notes from Bojana Coklyat in Conversation with Shannon Finnegan:

we can get more out it alt-text than just compliance:

SF: Something that has always been a hope of mine with the project is that for people who aren’t as familiar with access, it introduces them to a way of thinking about access as creative and generative and collaborative and process-oriented, and that might also influence the way they think about access in other parts of their lives.

BC: Alt text is so often approached through the lens of compliance, like, Okay, let’s just get this done. But when you’re paying attention to the language you’re using and how you’re putting it together, that’s already changing things. That’s already shifting things.

space and symbolism

BC: I was talking to Chancey Fleet, who works at the Andrew Heiskell Braille and Talking Book Library in New York, and Chancey said something to me and I was just like, Whoa, I have to really think about that. She said, “Is it that we really live in such a visual culture? Is the most important thing visual, or is it space and symbolism?”

I was thinking about that all day yesterday. And going back to this exhibit I went to yesterday, there was a metal piece that kind of looked like scaffolding or architecture. And then we had the chance to walk through it, and it was like, Yeah, this is the experience. It’s walking through it and understanding the space of it. It’s not necessarily, OK, this part’s five feet tall, it’s metal, and it intersects with this piece that’s metal. It was so much more about walking through it, navigating it, and even navigating it with someone.

I think that might be something I’ll start to think about more with alt text: symbolism and space and how those fit in when you’re describing something.

SF: I love that idea of thinking about symbolism. I often find that in descriptions, when someone uses a metaphor or a comparison, it really helps me understand what the subject of the description is really like, and that feels really related to this idea of symbolism. It’s like: What are your associations with this thing, rather than just with how 

jan 19/BIKERUN

bike: 10 minute warm-up
run: 4 miles
treadmill, basement
outside: 6 degrees, feels like -7

Because I was sick earlier this week, I’m being cautious and not running outside when the feels like temp is below 0. Running on the treadmill isn’t as interesting, but it is helping me to keep my heart rate down.

Watched a Hot Ones while I biked, listened to the audiobook for The Woman in the Window (in honor of windows month!) for almost 3 miles, then my winter playlist for the last mile.

The run felt easy and not too tedious. I looked over at my shadow — a giant head swaying. I think I saw the shadow of my ponytail swinging a few times. When I looked again, I lost my balance a little and stepped off the side briefly. Oops.

In The Woman in the Window, Anna is agoraphobic and has been stuck in her fancy house for 10, or was it 11?, months. She keeps her windows shut tight and spies/watches/looks at her neighbors through them (with the help of a high-powered camera lens). In the chapter I just heard (18), a woman she is watching, Jane Russell, looks back and waves, which freaks Anna out. She realizes that just as she watches others, they could be watching her.

side note: I know very little about this story other than that someone is murdered, Anna sees it, and no one believes her. Listening to this chapter and being introduced to Jane Russell, I’m guessing she’s the one getting murdered. I’m also getting the feeling that not only will people not believe that Anna saw the murder, they won’t believe that Jane Russell is real. She’s just Anna’s drunk/over-drugged hallucination. Am I right, or have I seen The Lady Vanishes too many times (thanks 1980s HBO!) Continuing with Lady Vanishes vibes, I’m wondering if the small portrait Jane sketched of Anna that she hastily shoved in her drawer will be proof (if to no one else, at least to herself) that she’s not making it up! Jane does/did exist! In The Lady Vanishes it’s the message written in the fog on the window, or the sugar packet that proves the little old lady who vanished actually exists — am I remembering that right? I think I’m conflating the 1938 original with the 80s remake here. Anyway, I’m probably wrong about Jane not being real. She has a son who can verify her existence. It was the random moment when Jane sketches Anna that made me think of this scenario. Future Sara, let me know after you’ve finished the book!

update from feb 1st Sara: A lot of what I thought was right, but not quite. Lots of slight twists. For example, everyone believes Anna exists, but she’s someone else. The portrait does come up and does reinvigorate Anna’s flagging belief in what she thinks she saw, but it doesn’t serve as an a-ha moment or matter much to others. And all the stuff with the son? I probably shouldn’t have been, but it surprised me.

In addition to the actual windows in her house, there’s also the window of the computer screen. After she waves back at Anna, Jane comes over and they talk. Jane asks Anna what she does in the house all day. Anna describes the chatroom she participates on and the french lessons she takes online. Then Jane calls the computer, “her window to the world.” The window as Windows (mircrosoft) has come up in my exploration of windows and their meanings already — earlier today even, when I was reading the Part 2 article I mention a few paragraphs below.

Magritte and windows

(written before the run) On the 15th, while rereading entries from that day in past years (thanks to Scott’s “On This Day” plug-in!), I encountered a great vision poem that I had read before, but not that closely, I guess, because I missed how much it spoke to me and my experience with vision loss. The poem: Ekphrasis as Eye Test/ Jane Zwart. And the verse that particularly spoke to me was this:

Other losses begin in the middle of the field:
redacting the kiss at a picture’s center–
wrapping lovers’ heads in pillow slips; hovering doves
at eye level anywhere hatted men stand.
They could be anyone, the strangers Magritte painted
almost as their mothers, maculas wasted, would see them.

  • the kiss, lovers’ heads in pillow slips: The Lovers
  • the dove and the hatted man: Man in a Bowler Hat
  • Magritte’s mother killed herself by jumping off a bridge when he was 13. When her body was found days later, her nightgown was wrapped around her head (I can’t remember where I read that — found it!)

When I read these lines, I didn’t immediately get the references I mentioned above, but I did recognize the featureless faces and wasted maculas in my own vision. I recall liking Magritte exhibit when I was kid — I had a poster of the business men floating in the sky — but I hadn’t thought about him much since.

I inherited my mom’s copy of a 1992 exhibition she saw at the Art Institute of Chicago, but I hadn’t looked through it much, if at all. I picked it up and saw the cover — his painting with a train emerging from a fireplace — and thought: Charles Bonet Syndrome! CBS happens to some people as they lose their central vision; it often involves strange hallucinations. I read about people seeing waterfalls coming out of skyscrapers, old carriages coming down the street, and a dozen cooked eggs on a fireplace mantel. A train emerging from a fireplace seems to fit in these.

The cover of Magritte book. At the center, a fireplace with a black train, steam coming out of the top, emerging from its center. On the mantel, a clock. And behind that, a big mirror. In the bottom right corner, the book title: Magritte
Magritte on my desk, next to Forrest Gander’s “Circumambulation of Mt. Tamalpas” under the glass

Of course, there are other meanings intended with this train, but I immediately saw it as CBS hallucination. Looking through the book at all the featureless faces and faces obscured by apples and doves, I recognized my own inability to see faces. Very cool.

This morning I decided to dig into Magritte a little more. I discovered (or maybe remembered) that one of his reoccurring themes was windows — fitting for this month’s theme! Fearing copyright issues (I’ve been burned before), I’m not posting any of the images here. Instead, go here for examples: Magritte windows.

In my brief research (googlin’), I found this: Part 2: Magritte’s Window Paintings. At the end of the post there’s an article on the symbolism of windows, with some useful descriptions:

This intimate relation between the window, seeing, and perception (cf. eye/gaze) has become part of everyday language: the eyes as windows to the soul (or heart, or mind) [1] point out the possibility of looking inside a person through the opening of his eyes, where an inner state is reflected.

note: 1 The notion of  the ‘eyes as the window to the psyche’ goes back at least to a text by the Skeptic philosopher Sextus Empiricus (2nd century A.D), who might be citing an even earlier text. Cf. Carla Gottlieb. The Window in Art. From the Window of God to the Vanity of Man. A Survey of Window Symbolism in Western Painting (New York: Abaris, 1981), pp.49f.

I’m always searching for references to this phrase as I interrogate the idea that we see each other’s souls, and their humanity, by looking into their eyes.

The window as an opening in a wall refers to an absence which can be filled – by a material (glass, wood, paper, stone), by that which is seen through it, or by something rather immaterial like light or air. If defined as an absence, the window becomes a frame for its variable content, a marker of difference between what is inside and outside.

I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about Nothing lately, so I’ll have to add this idea of absence/frame to my list of ways of understanding the word/concept. Maybe I’ll add it to the series of Nothing poems I’ve been working on, which have emerged from my stripping down and reimagining my Haunts poem.

jan 18/BIKERUN

bike: 10 minute warm-up
run: 3.65 miles
basement
outside temp: 9 degrees / feels like -4

for future Sara: Tuesday night while sitting in the South High band room, listening to the community jazz band rehearse, I suddenly felt sick — a little like I might faint again, hot and tingling all over, very sensitive to loud sounds. Later on the way home in the ridiculously cold car, I had the chills and felt like I might throw up. Went home and straight to bed. Stayed in bed all the next morning. Not covid (I tested), but maybe the flu?

update, 29 dec 2024: I’m pretty sure that what I experienced was a panic attack. I had another one in May and then went on lexapro.

listening to my Window playlist: I Threw a Brick Through a Window/U2

I feel much better — almost normal — today. I’ve decided that I had the flu and the flu shot I got in November prevented it from being more severe (whew!). Of course this experience gave me some mild anxiety — was I sick, or was the faint-feeling signaling some bigger problem? How long would I be sick? At some point, would I have trouble breathing? Sigh — I dislike how much more I worry these days.

Tip Toe Thru’ the Tulips with Me/Annette Hanshaw

Since I felt pretty good today, I decided to try running on the treadmill. After my feet warmed-up in the cold basement, I felt great. Listened to my winter 2024 playlist and covered the panel displaying the time. I kept telling myself, one more song and I’ll check how much time I have left. When I finally checked, the time was at 31 minutes! Very cool; I thought maybe it would at 21 or 22 minutes. I like playing this game when I’m running on the treadmill; much better than staring down at the display.

Open a New Window/Mame Soundtrack

Noticed my shadow running alongside me. Stared at the water heater straight ahead of me: fuzzy and shifting very slightly. Also, the image had some static.

Look Through Any Window/The Hollies

As I write this, I’m making note of the window songs that are playing. It’s a bit difficult and I feel pressure to hurry up and write something before the next song comes on.

Nan You’re a Window Shopper/Lily Allen

In Nan, You’re a Window Shopper Allen complains — is she complaining or lamenting? — about her nan whose life is so constricted — taking a look, but you never buy/ and mad as fuck/only just alive

Window/Fiona Apple

Window/Daniel G. Hoffman

Is is no more than an eyehole
On the outside scene
Making everything
–The snow, the runaway dog,
The boys brawling and the car
Skidding against the tree–
Content to be contained
Within a reasonable frame?
Or could it be

A casement dividing
A real Observer from a view
Of untrammelled possibility,
Its pane connecting
A man in a room in
Steam heat and a battered chair
With his future
Which he could not see
Were it not there?

Window Shopping/Just Derrick

Perhaps it’s the lens that allows
Errant swifts and swallows
In a downward swoop
Of their tumbling flight
To glimpse the man waiting
For the future to happen–
While he’s caged in time
They’re free to look in,
And its gift is insight.

Junk/Paul McCartney

I noticed that Hoffman’s next poem is titled, Door. I’ll have to read that one when I study doors!

From Junk:

Buy, buy, says the sign in the shop window
Why, why? says the junk in the yard

Bust Your Windows/Jazmine Sullivan

I’ll bust the windows out your car
You know I did it ’cause I left my mark
Wrote my initials with a crowbar
And then I drove off into the dark

Maybe I’ll try experimenting with a themed playlist? I could listen and pick out a few lyrics from each song, then write about them, or turn them into a poem?

jan 15/BIKERUN

bike: 15 minute warm-up
run: 3.7 miles
basement
outside: -1 degrees, feels like -18

When I checked the weather earlier the feels like temp was -22 and it has to be feels like -20 or warmer for me to go outside for a run. Would I have gone out there if I knew it had warmed up to feels like -18? Possibly. Oh well, the bike and run inside were fine. I listened to a new playlist I created while I ran and didn’t think about much except for my form — swinging my arms, lifting my hips, keeping my shoulders relaxed and my core sturdy.

I looked up and straight ahead at the water heater in front of me. It was fuzzy in the center. As I looked at it, I noticed my shadow — much bigger than me — off to the side.

Okay, now I remember one thing I thought about: the mouse/mice that live in our basement. Would I see one of them flit by? (nope.)

Looking out my window, I just saw someone run by on the sidewalk. So, someone is willing to run in this cold.

Another thought: before I ran I was thinking about a quote from Theodore Roethke that I posted on jan 15, 2020:

Today there’s no time for the
mistakes of a long and slow
development: dazzle or die.

I wrote about it in an “On this Day: January 15, 2020/2022” page this morning. I was wondering about the value of dazzling in a quick flash versus shimmering with a slow burn. Then these words/ideas popped into my head: flare, flame, a candle burning at both ends, a mushroom erupting and busting through the pavement, moss growing over rocks, fungi nets spreading underground.

I also thought about spending some time on the phrase “slow burn.” Just now I looked it up on Poetry Foundation (search: slow burn) and found a wonderful poem, Over Time by Martha Collins. Here’s one bit of it:

an excerpt from Over Time/ Martha Collins

7

Then gone and then to come:
all the time, except the split
second, except—

All the time in the world.

And out of this world?

Oh little heart on my wrist,
where are we going?

Oh little heart on my wrist! Yesterday I started listening to a podcast with Jenny Odell about her most recent book on time and I decided that when the book was ready (I requested it from the library), I would finally dedicate some time to clocks and time and other forms of time that don’t involve clocks. Very cool!

jan 13/BIKERUN

bike: 30 minutes
basement
run: 1.15 miles
outside: 7 degrees / feels like -10

A short run today because I’ve run every day this week so far, and because it’s windy and snowy and cold outside. Watched the first 20 minutes of Jennifer Lawrence’s comedy, No Hard Feelings, while I biked. I like her and I’m finding this movie funny so far. I listened to Taylor Swift’s Reputation while I ran. Tried out my new bright yellow shoes for the first time. I like how they feel and how they look. Quite possibly they will be the shoes I wear when I run the marathon next October. I don’t remember thinking about much as I ran — I focused on my arm swing and staying relaxed and lifting my hips. We turned the treadmill the other way a few months ago so now I won’t see my inverted moon on the dark window anymore. What strange image will replace it? I don’t remember any today. But I’ll have to look for one the next time I run on the treadmill, which will probably be on Monday; it might be arctic hellscape cold then.

Emily Dickinson’s Windows

Here are some useful ideas from an article — Emily Dickinson’s Windows — I found yesterday, which seems to be an extended version of an article I read a few days ago:

  • creative freedom
  • architectural prop: By my Window, The Angle of a Landscape
  • her envelope poems resembled a window with curtains
  • a magic lens — the warped quality of 19th century windows: the world let loose, nature liquefied — her practice of looking/writing — up and out the window/down at the paper — descriptions as incremental fragments (A Slash of Blue! A Sweep of Gray!)
  • the window grid creates a pattern — 12 panes — reflected in the formal structure of her poems (degrees, steps, notches, plunges) — each word, line, or stanza is well-defined slot/pane that spotlights an image/emotional state/quality of experience — ’Tis this – invites – appalls – endows – Flits – glimmers – proves – dissolves – Returns – suggests – convicts – enchants Then – flings in Paradise – (Fr 285)
  • an act of undoing in each pane — nature loosening up (a neat frame in a formless center)
  • each pane a diagram of rapture
  • looking through/touching the glass, she connected with the artisans who made it, who left evidence of their labor –warps and striations that were once the artisan’s breath (windows made through glass blowing? wow)
  • glass blowing and imagery of fiery furnaces, metal flames, boiling, white heat
  • mid 19th century — glass consciousness
  • ED’s poems as her own form of glass blowing — creative process of transforming words into poems = making sand into glass into windows

the window grid creates a pattern — 12 panes — reflected in the formal structure of her poems (degrees, steps, notches, plunges) — ’Tis this – invites – appalls – endows – Flits – glimmers – proves – dissolves – Returns – suggests – convicts – enchants Then – flings in Paradise – (Fr 285)

I love this idea of how the windows influenced the form of her writing. Also, the combination of the orderliness/structure of the frame and the unruliness/undoing-ness of her words. It might be fun to use my windows — 2 sets with 2 panes each, a bar in-between the windows, one set in front, one to my right side — as the structure for a few experiments. As I write this, I’m thinking about Victoria Chang’s truck moving across each window frame and Wendell Berry’s black criss-crossed frame.

Here’s a wonderful ED poem that is mentioned in the article:

By my Window have I for Scenery (797) / Emily Dickinson

By my Window have I for Scenery
Just a Sea—with a Stem—
If the Bird and the Farmer—deem it a “Pine”—
The Opinion will serve—for them—

It has no Port, nor a “Line”—but the Jays—
That split their route to the Sky—
Or a Squirrel, whose giddy Peninsula
May be easier reached—this way—

For Inlands—the Earth is the under side—
And the upper side—is the Sun—
And its Commerce—if Commerce it have—
Of Spice—I infer from the Odors borne—

Of its Voice—to affirm—when the Wind is within—
Can the Dumb—define the Divine?
The Definition of Melody—is—
That Definition is none—

It—suggests to our Faith—
They—suggest to our Sight—
When the latter—is put away
I shall meet with Conviction I somewhere met
That Immortality—

Was the Pine at my Window a “Fellow
Of the Royal” Infinity?
Apprehensions—are God’s introductions—
To be hallowed—accordingly—

The pine tree as a sea with a stem? I love this idea!

jan 7/BIKE

bike: 35 minutes
basement

Met my running goal for the first week of 2024 yesterday, so today I biked. Again, no problem with my left knee, which is great. I’d like to do more with the bike this winter — maybe try to bike for a little longer? Watched the tokyo triathlon mixed relay. I don’t remember what I thought about and I don’t remember hearing/feeling/seeing/smelling anything while I biked — oh, one thing: a strand of my hair was out of my ponytail and it kept touching the nape of my neck — irritating.

Right after I got up this morning (I slept in until 8:30!), I found out about John Cage’s A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity. Very cool . I found it while reading this:

When I am stuck, I walk. I don’t wear earbuds or headphones when I walk, nor when I travel by train or bus, because I want all of my senses to be centrally alive to what’s around: the music that lurks in the crevices of city sounds, forest sounds, desert sounds. I am reminded of John Cage’s art piece A Dip in the Lake: Ten Quicksteps, Sixty-two Waltzes, and Fifty-six Marches for Chicago and Vicinity, a map with colored lines and vectors that reconstruct the city transversely from without in the layering of aleatoric drift over cartographic direction. To this end, unstructured walking, the pure derive of walking, can become something like a divinatory practice, chance-based yet ritualized.

Jose-Luis Moctezuma

today’s windows

  1. bedroom window
  2. front room, my desk windows
  3. picture window from desk to living room
  4. kitchen window
  5. car window
  6. looking up in grocery store, ceiling window
  7. back door window
  8. sliding glass door window
  9. basement windows — one to the north, one to the south, one west that is dark because it’s under the deck

jan 4/BIKE

40 minutes
basement

A nice day, not too cold and with no snow, but I ran a 10k yesterday and I’m trying to be responsible with my training and not overdo it. But, after feeling frustrated when my password wouldn’t reset and overwhelmed by my haunts obsession, I knew I needed exercise. So I biked in the basement. It felt good, and my left knee didn’t hurt like it did last year. I feel much better now. While I biked I watched an old PTO triathlon race and forgot about my frustration.

Is there a word for experiencing frustration when something won’t work online? It’s not an overall fear or hatred of technology or computers, but a temporary breakdown/panic when I can’t get it to work, or when I need to resubmit a password but can’t find it, or when I know there’s something I haven’t filled out in an online form, but I can’t see what or where it is. It’s also anger at how poorly designed online forms are or how the user experience (UX) doesn’t consider enough people’s differing abilities — especially older people or young-ish people like me, who can’t see very well — or, as Scott just mentioned to me, how UX can be designed to direct people in ways they don’t want. This last thing is called dark or deceptive patterns. An example: a site makes it confusing and almost impossible to unsubscribe or cancel online.

Maybe reading this site, Deceptive Patterns, could give me some better words.

Before — or maybe it was after? — I was derailed by passwords, I came across an interview with the writer/philosopher/nature writer/climate change activist, Kathleen Dean Moore.

Here’s how I got there:

  1. Thinking about water and stone and air I remembered something I read in a beautiful essay by Jake Skeets, My Name is Beauty. Skeets is quoting another writer, Viola Cordova and her essay, “Language as Window” — they’re both talking about moving (swimming) through the world, not walking on it
  2. I searched for that essay and found that it was in a collection by Cordova, How it Is (I was able to check it out from my public library!), which was edited by Kathleen Dean Moore
  3. A link for Moore’s site came up and I was intrigued by its name, River Walking, so I checked it out, and in the media section I found a great interview, Why I Write

I miss the days of wandering through libraries, from shelf to shelf, following footnotes and bibliographies to new ideas and friends, but I’m grateful for the internet and ebooks, especially as my central vision deteriorates.

Anyway, here’s something I just read in the interview about forms of thinking:

everybody – should have an education in three kinds of thinking:

Critical thinking. The essential art of reaching reliable conclusions on the basis of evidence; the ability to defend yourself against flawed arguments or deceptive assumptions. This is the foundation of a rational life.

Empathetic thinking. The art of putting yourself in another’s place, seeing the world through their eyes, and asking what you would believe and do in their situation; the art of asking questions about why they believe what they do and make the decisions they do. This is the foundation of justice and compassion.

Hypothetical thinking, the “if, then” art. The ability to entertain an idea; the ability to consider that things might be different from the way they are now; the art of following a chain of possibilities beyond those immediately apparent. This is the foundation of imagination.

Why I Write / Kathleen Dean Moore

dec 31/BIKE

bike: 30 minutes
basement

Sometime last night, my left leg/knee started to hurt, then it snowed and left slippery sidewalks, so today I decided to be cautious and bike. Watched a replay of the Kona Ironman from 2017 while I biked. At one point, they interviewed 6 (or 5?) time Ironman winner Natasha Badmann. I remember her! She had an amazing perspective on one of the toughest parts of the course: the energy lab. She saw it as giving her energy, not taking it away — the energy of inspiration from the powerful waves off in the distance. Wow, to be that present when you’re 6 or 7 hours into a tough race is impressive. As I biked, I thought about athletes and the different ways they try to overcome the strong desire to stop, give up. I find Badmann’s approach to be a helpful lesson in letting go — not trying to control your thoughts or getting rid of your pain, but releasing them and shifting to another way of being — a way in which you’re not centered, but witnessing something beside yourself. Does that make sense?

Before biking, I had a good morning filled with ideas: 1. creating a series of short poems in which I use my favorite lines from other poets by fitting them into my running/rhythmic breathing form: 3/2 and 2. using my 3/2 form and writing poems that are one sentence long.

I also watched an amazing talk by Ed Hirsch on poetry, the poem, and the reader:

I wish there was a transcript. If there is, I can’t find it, so here are some of my highlights:

Poetry exists to inspire the reader not to inspire the writer, that the purpose of poetry is in the relationship between a poet, a poem, and a reader. And it’s in that connection between them.

Talking about his teacher at Grinnell told him:

You have the gifts to be a poet, but what you’re writing is not poetry. It’s not even close to poetry. What you’re writing down are your thoughts and your feelings but you’re not trying to craft anything, you’re not trying to make anything. You’re not writing in relationship to any other poetry. You’re not reading poetry and so you’re not really a poet right now. You are a person who writes poetry. You have to read poetry and connect your poems to what you’re reading.

He discusses reading Gerard Manley Hopkins and feeling a profound connection. It spoke deeply to him and he wanted to know/study how Hopkins could achieve this.

Holy shit, this thing’s a sonnet? You mean, he’s not just writing out his poems the way I write out mine? He’s actually making it rhyme and everything? That seems generous to me. I want to do that. I’m going to try and make something for someone in the future so that they can feel about my poem the way I feel about Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem.

Then he talks about how Hopkins’ poem was so distanced from him by time, location, experience, yet it spoke to him more than anything else he had heard. He realized that poetry can communicate more deeply than social conversation.

Celan: a poem is a message in a bottle, not guaranteed to reach anyone; a poem is sent out to some future person

Poets are people who, not so much want to express themselves, but feel so encountered by other poems that they want to respond in kind. That’s why Emily Dickinson calls the poets she reads, “her kinsmen of the shelf.”

The reader plays an important role in the understanding of poetry. The message in the bottle only finds its life when it’s activated in you. When you become the secret addresse.

There are a few poems you read and you go, I feel almost like I’ve written the poem to which I’m actually only responding to.

poetry: the gift of privacy and participation: It gives you interiority and it also gives you connection.

Poetry as stored magic that can’t be paraphrased

Poetry exists in the relationship between the poet who wrote it, the poem which encapsulates the experience, and the reader who reads it.

His discussion here reminds me of an interview I read and posted at some point in the last few years:

We are not diminished but enlarged by grief, by our refusal to vanish, or to let others vanish, without leaving a verbal record. We need poetry to help us transform the oceanic depths of feeling into art. Poetry rises out of one solitude to meet another in recognition and connection. It companions us.

And, yes, poetry is connected to contemporary life, but it’s also always connected to other poetry. We need an archive of eloquence and response.

Interview with Edward Hirsch

dec 29/BIKE

bike: 30 minutes
basement

Warm enough to run outside, but we just got back from our trip and I fell and jarred my neck two night ago and I’m very sore, so I’m taking at least one more day off from running and biking in the basement instead.

Of course there’s more to the story, and because I’m pretty sure future Sara wants to remember, I’ll add a few more details: I fell because I fainted. I fainted because of low blood pressure. I had low blood pressure because of a reaction to ingesting a small dose of an edible — pineapple express. Some reasons I might have had a reaction: pineapple express is a sativa (stimulant) strain and I didn’t need to be stimulated; we had just completed the Hot Ones challenge and I was feeling very ill; I hadn’t eaten much all day and had been standing for hours; I had drank 2 beers; I was seeing family member I hadn’t seen in years and confronting loss; Scott had taken the other half of the gummy and his highly stimulated reaction was too much for me; I should have sat down, but I was walking around because pacing helps me to feel better.

Here’s what happened: Right after we finished the last hot sauce for Hot Ones — which was spicy, but didn’t bother me nearly as much as my stomach — I started feeling strange and off and like I might throw up. I started walking around the apartment, which is what I often do when I feel sick. I felt a heaviness in my body, like a wave of something dropping down from my head and settling in my feet. The last thing I remember is hearing voices talking (probably everyone in the other room) and then a loud smack. Suddenly Scott was calling my name and I was on the floor opening my eyes. Everyone was standing in front of me, staring. I saw FWA first and was struck by how much he and everyone else looked like a still from a film, posed for a dramatic moment. My hand and wrist hurt; so did my butt. I felt overwhelmed and angry that they were all staring at me. Scott’s perspective: He heard a loud smack. When he got to me I was passed out on the floor, twitching. He thought I has having a seizure. He shook me gently a few times before I woke up. Scott walked me to a bed and after some convincing I sat down. He left and I could hear his agitated voice in the next room (he was feeling the effects of the gummy too). He yelled-whispered, I’m really worried about her; I don’t think she’s okay. I responded by yelling from the bed, He’s tripping! Don’t listen to him. I’m fine. And, mostly I was.

“He’s tripping,” might become the new line that RJP and FWA will affectionately (and mockingly) utter for the next year. Last year it was “the fries make it worse!” when Scott tried eating a fry to help temper the heat from that year’s hot sauce challenge.

what I think happened when I fell: Either I instinctively braced my fall, or my hands were already up by my head because when I feel especially sick/anxious/bad, I gather my hair and tug at the roots. This saved me from really knocking my head hard on the floor. I still hit my head, but it was after I fell. I think I might have mild whiplash, judging by the soreness of my neck. This is the first time I have ever fainted in my life — at least that I can remember. Strange and fascinating and unsettling.

Anyway, that is why my neck has jarred and why I’m taking another day off from running.

While I biked I watched (not for the first or even second time), a replay of the women’s triathlon at the Rio Olympics. Go Gwen! I felt strange a few times and thought about what would happen if I fainted while on the bike. But I was fine and kept going and will work hard to not add fainting and falling to my list of anxieties.

Here’s a book I discovered this morning that I’d like to read: Personal Best: Makers on Their Poems that Matter Most

sept 5/BIKESWIMBIKE

bike: 8.5 miles
lake nokomis and back
82 degrees

Another hot day. Tomorrow, 20 degrees cooler. Windy too. I could feel it rushing past my ears. No panic on the bike — my brain has adjusted to my current state of (not) seeing. As usual, the bike ride back felt faster (time and speed) than the ride there.

5 Biking Things and 5 Swimming Things

  1. sewer construction all around the neighborhood — half of the street was blocked with trucks or huge circular holes in the pavement or pipes
  2. biking past the falls: they’ve patched (only) part of the potholes on the bike path near godfrey, the rest are still bumpy
  3. the creek on the other side of the duck bridge: mucky, stagnant, low — yuck!
  4. passing under the duck bridge, biking slowly and carefully, I heard a shuffling noise but couldn’t see anyone for a few seconds. Oh, there they are — a walker on the other side of the path
  5. a sound like rushing water near the bridge over Lake Hiawatha — I’m pretty sure it was wind. So much wind!
  6. blowing up my safety buoy near the bike rack, a man said, it’s windy out there today! when I responded with some noise — a grunt? — he added, it’s making you work for it
  7. swimming one direction, being pushed from behind and (a little) under, swimming the other direction, slam! straight into little walls of water
  8. screeching seagulls near the shore, honking geese on the other side
  9. stopped at the farthest white buoy to adjust my nose plug: a big splash less than 25 feet away — was it a fish? a boat? a fishing seagull? something menacing about to swim into me?
  10. more ghost vines below me and a wandering swimmer that I think I actually saw and didn’t just imagine

swim: 1.5 loops
lake nokomis main beach
82 degrees

Very choppy and surprisingly cool. With all of the 100 degree weather, I thought the water would be warmer. Opaque water, deep near the white buoys, shallow near the orange ones. My shoulders felt strong, my calves a little strange — sore? ready to cramp? When I finished my swim, I stood, then sat, in the shallow water and looked out at the lake, wondering if this would be my final swim of the year. What a wonderful season!

writing while walking (some sources)

Coastal scientists describe a coast as fractal—dividing infinitely into smaller and smaller increments, all the way down to a protruding rock, a tide line, or even a boot track that fills with water and extends the water’s edge. In retrospect, I would define the relationship of coast to poetic line much as you do. In practice, though, I arrived at the form by creating it, abandoning others that felt unrelated to the landscape or its foot-feel. There are rhythms to walking on rough ground, a step-after-step persistence that swallows obstacles, like irregular lines that nonetheless carry forward through the poem. There’s also a sensory excitement in a sea-rock-light-wind-bird-flower-seal-seep-peat-rain-salt—oh look, there’s a whale!—environment that subsumes attention to any one thing into the press of the whole. I don’t compose on foot as Brian Teare has described in his essay “En Plein Air Poetics,” but I share what he calls the “proprioceptive ecstasy” of oxygen-filled blood and an unlocked mind.

from The Syntax of Sedimentation: An Interview with Susan Tichy

I think I need to order and study — a monthly challenge? — Tichy’s North | Rock | Edge

One of the primary ways I make ecopoetics an active practice is by drafting poems on foot in the field.

Writing while walking makes explicit the intimate relationship between a site and my body, and though writing while walking obviously privileges language as its end-product, it derives that language from relation lived through the physical especially.

En Plein Air Poetics: Notes Towards Writing in the Anthropocene / Brian Teare