Tag: headphones

may 21/HIKERUN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

run: 4.5 miles
reverse veterans home
64 degrees

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

10 Things

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

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

holes 3

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

threads over essay

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

may 20/RUN

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

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

10 Things

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

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

Low Vision

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

back to hole 3

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

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

6 april

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

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

The words of the poem:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

may 13/RUN

5.6 miles
ford loop
60 degrees

Warm again this morning. I wasn’t planning to do the ford loop, but I wanted to run a 5k before walking so I just kept going south on the east river road and by the time I reached 3.1 miles it seemed too far to turn around. So I kept going and did the ford loop. My legs felt sore again (again = my 7 mile run with Scott last Saturday). Why so sore?

I think I heard the rowers on the river, but when I looked down at the water it was empty. Saw one roller skier. Admired the glittering waves below me as I crossed the lake street bridge. Ran near St. Thomas but never heard the bells. Bad timing, I guess. The wind was so strong on the ford bridge as I headed east that I had to take off my cap. I also had to walk with purpose so that I wasn’t blown over. Yikes.

holes

A few months ago, when I started working on my visual poems about how I read (holes), I decided to let myself be obsessed with it, to fall down the rabbit hole and follow it where it led me. I don’t normally do this because I like to be in control and I’m always afraid of being too much and of following a wrong path too far. I’m enjoying this experience — it’s so much fun! Even so, I do find myself missing reading more poetry by other people and writing non-visual poetry. Part of me is worried that I won’t/can’t find my way back there, but most of me is deciding to trust my urge to create what I’m creating.

This morning before my run, I made a few more flowers, then printed out the text of the poem to glue onto the essay. After the run, I glued the words and pinned the flowers. Here’s what it looks like so far. I’m thinking I need more flowers, but how many? They’re fun to make.

hole 5a with flower blooms

And here’s a close-up of the flowers:

flower bloom, close-up

may 12/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
67 degrees

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

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

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

10 Things

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

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

holes — blooms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

nonsense blooming

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

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

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

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

word flower, made from shredded text and orange paper

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

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

may 7/RUN

3.4 miles
2 trails
52 degrees

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

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

10 Things

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

more holes

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

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

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

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

holes 2 : phase 2, 7 may

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

may 6/RUN

4.7 miles
veterans home in reverse
42 degrees

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

10 Things

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

grids and holes 1

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

holes 1 / 5 grids

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

april 26/RUN

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

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

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

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

10 Things

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

holes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

view 1
view 2

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

april 19/RUN

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 hole
2 — ziploc bag

Experiments to try tomorrow: a plastic bag (grocery store), black netting, static dots, dark pencil erased.

april 18/RUN

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

april 15/RUN

4.65 miles
ford overlook and back
63 degrees

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

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

10 Things

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

holes and grids and threads

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

pin shadows

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

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

grid shadows in the early evening sun