When I started this entry, I was planning to go to open swim this afternoon, but I checked the air and water temperatures: hot, and saw on the radar that there’s a chance of rain. When I combine that with my desire to be cautious with my healing shoulder I decided I should take a break from swimming today. I didn’t run, either. So hot and sticky this morning! Instead, I worked on my plastic project and my cork board map of lake ideas. Fun!
the next morning: Hours after writing this first paragraph, the smoke from wildfires in northern Minnesota and the Boundary Waters arrived. By the time I went to bed, the AQI (air quality index) was almost 500 (anything over 125 is dangerous; 500 is hazardous). This morning it’s in the 400s. Scary stuff, especially when you think ahead to how this will most likely be happening more frequently. The smoke isn’t supposed to lift until noon on Friday, so open swim will probably be cancelled tonight and tomorrow.
the plastic process
This morning, I reorganized the area of my studio where I gather and process my plastic. Then I cut up part of a milk jug, which creates a cool texture of brittle little shards, and another one of my seltzer bottles. Later in the day, I showed some of the stranger remnants of plastic to FWA and he suggested using the top of the seltzer bottle as some sort of view finder or monocle — something that, when you looked through it, created a visual effect. Distorts what you see? Adds layers of color? Allows you to isolate words? I’m going to have fun playing around with this!
I showed it to Scott and he said, it’s a loupe. A what? A loupe (loop) “is a simple, small magnification device used to see small details more closely.[1] They generally have higher magnification than a magnifying glass, and are designed to be held or worn close to the eye. A loupe does not have an attached handle, and its focusing lens(es) are contained in an opaque cylinder or cone” (wikipedia). A new word, learned!
Here are some things I’ve been doing with the plastic so far:
Cutting up plastic into strips and shards, separating them by color. So far, I’m using these shards/strips to show the color of the lake during open swim. Maybe I’ll turn them into some sort of mosaic, or create interesting sounds with them. As I handle them, I’ve been thinking about the importance of texture for how I see and how I understand/process/identify color.
Looking for and setting aside bigger strips of clear plastic to use for my holes/how I read series — to cover words and/or make them harder/impossible to read.
Cutting out and collecting words printed on plasticbags to turn into found poems about vision or swimming in the lake or something else I haven’t thought of yet.
I’m planning to make things with these plastics, and I’m also using the processing of them as an opportunity to critically reflect on how much plastic I use and to explore plastic as metaphor for my vision and distanced relationship to the world. Maybe I should study plastic for a month? I’m also using the act of processing as something I can do with my hands that is physical and tactile and repetitive enough to open me up to wandering and wondering.
3 loops (6 cedar loops) cedar lake open swim 77 degrees
Summer! A beautiful night for a swim. Hardly any wind, warm sun. There were lots of swimmers with yellow and pink buoys. Someone was playing dance music over at Hidden Beach. As I rounded the far buoy during loops 5 and 6, I did several breaststrokes so I could listen. A few very long milfoil vines stretched up from the bottom, which is much deeper than lake nokomis.
I recited some of my favorite lines about swimming from Alice Oswald’s Dart. He dives, he shuts himself inthe deep soft-bottom silence — I forgot to recite the next line, which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous — and jumped ahead to, he lifts the lid and shuts and lifts the lid and shutsand the sky jumps in and out of the world he loafs in. I couldn’t quite remember how the next line started, but now I do: Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts. Love those lines!
10 Things
a swimmer wades in the shallow water near the buoy waitint — to warm up? to get the courage to swim across? to take in the beauty of an early evening?
bubble friends! more of them, below me
a tapping on my toe as I rounded the far buoy — was it another swimmer? a fish? something else? who knows
music, laughter, lots of chatter at hidden beach
all I could sight on the way out was the red kayak of the lifeguard
all I could sight on the way back was the break in the trees
a few spots of glimmering surface
the orange buoy at hidden beach was rarely there and when it was, it was only an orange dot, or the idea of an orange dot
the orange buoy at point beach was muted and covered in shadow — I never saw it from far away, only when I was pretty close to it
strange undercurrents in the water — something disturbing the water — sometimes it was another swimmer, sometimes it wasn’t
A great swim. I did one more loop than I did last time and never really stopped — other than the brief seconds when I readjusted my nose plug. In the later loops, my feet felt a little strange. Were they about to cramp? I paused and treaded water as I assessed them.
Found this in my entry from 2025 on 22 june — the return of my “On This Day” practice!:
Saturday 6:30 a.m. Swimming.
Red water plants waver up from the bottom in an attitude of plumes. How slow is the slow trance of wisdom, which the swimmer swims into.
“An Essay on Swimming” / Anne Carson
Thinking about the Eurasian Watermilfoil (milfoil) at Lake Nokomis, It does not waver in an attitude of plumes. It is a thick thatch, choking out the light, wrapping itself around arms, legs, shoulders.
Thinking more about the Eurasian milfoil, I recalled looking it up and posting some information about it a few years ago. I searched, and found it: 5 july 2024
aquatic plant management
“A few days ago, I looked up information about the vegetation/vines that I swim above in lake nokomis. I looked them up a few years ago, and recall learning that they were milfoil, but this summer I started doubting that I was remembering the name right. I was! There are two types of watermilfoil:
Eurasian watermilfoil : invasive, choking out native plants Northern watermilfoil: native, food for the fish
On the Minneapolis Parks’ site, they describe aquatic plant management, which was fascinating. The most effective way to control Eurasian watermilfoil is to harvest it, either with a mechanical harvester or by scuba divers (!). The mechanical harvester, which from what my bad eyes can see is a boat with a big spinning blade
removes plants that are in the top four to six feet of water. The harvested plant material is removed from the water and stored until the end of summer when it is brought to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum to be used as organic fill for their operations.
The scuba divers, who only do this on Wirth Lake and Lake Nokomis, hand-pull the watermilfoil in areas that are inaccessible for the mechanical harvester. I wonder what areas are inaccessible and if I’ve ever witnessed the scuba pulling and not realized it. Very cool!”
Looking through the page today (2026), I noticed that they have a harvesting map for 2026. I also read on the aquatics plant management site that harvesting happens (roughly) from memorial day – aug 31st. I decided to send Minneapolis Parks a message and ask if and when they were planning to harvest the milfoil this summer. Hopefully they will answer, and hopefully it’s soon!
In the meantime: I will avoid that area! And maybe, I’ll try thinking about entanglements and knots and being tethered in ways that restrict, bind, limit. Or, I’ll think about weeds and invasive species and lake vegetation and how and why it overtakes lakes.
a note from Sara-this-second and Sara-since-Saturday and Summer Sara for Sara-sooner-or-later Listen lady, we are taking a break from reading and holes and Alice in Wonderland. We want to be immersed in water — waterlogged and water-logging! Come back in the fall!1
I want to finish my May monthly challenge summary this afternoon and then shift into re-reading my favorite swimming/water poems and working on my waterlog project and returning to Alice Oswald and Anne Carson. ↩︎
6 miles hidden falls loop 61 degrees humidity: 77%
The sun and the humid air made it feel warmer than 61. If only it could feel like this tomorrow during open swim — warm, that is. A quiet, calm morning. Not too crowded on the trails or the roads. Lots of dappled light, flickering leaves. The only time I remember looking at the water was when I had just started crossing the ford bridge. I could see the dark reflections of the fir trees on the water.
I wore my bright yellow shoes. Today, they didn’t feel so bad. Before I went out for my run, I studied the bottom of my shoes. The Brooks Ghosts are already starting to wear down near the big toe, but the Saucony Cohesions and Rides are not. So, do the Ghosts change where I strike my foot, or are they just thinner at that spot? One day I’ll get my stride evaluated by someone at Mill City Running or another local running store.
I did some variations on the Galloway method (90 sec run/30 sec walk). I started with 15 minutes of running, then 90/30 for some time, then 3 min/1 min. Next time I need to commit to just running 90/30 the entire time and see what happens.
Right as I began running, I looked far ahead at the small circle of light at the end of a tunnel of sidewalk and trees. I thought about Alice and her view as she first falls down the hole:
downand down
Watching this again, I remembered the light from above being brighter. Oh well, I still like it as inspiration for my hole series. Does it work for blur (see below)?
A few times, I recited “We Grow Accustomed to the Dark” by Emily Dickinson as I ran. Not sure I ever made it all the way through; I was distracted by the sound of a skateboard or the flash of a leaf or the feeling of sweat dripping down my face.
As I ran by the empty benches near the Ford/Power Plant overlook, I imagined biking here on some other day and sitting and reading a book, or writing or poem, or taking in the world around me.
10 Things
loud music — dance? techno? — booming from a bike speaker
a sprinkling, tinkling sound — was it falling water or rustling leaves?
a few puddles from yesterday’s rain
soft, wet dirt on the trail between the river road and lena smith boulevard
the flickering shadow of one leaf being moved by the wind
2 older men talking, sitting at a picnic table near the skate park in Highland Park
a woman running with a stroller, crossing near hidden falls — did she or the kid she was pushing make any noise? I don’t think so
hot sun, then refreshing shade, at Highland Bridge
passing a woman talking on a phone: then, what is it?
2 women walking — one, to the other: I haven’t perfected my pizza yet
holes and Alice
As I (finally) worked on my summary for April’s monthly challenge, I was inspired to return to the holes project. I want to keep experimenting with the Alice in Wonderland angle and the rabbit hole. What inspiration can I get from some of the scenes in Alice in Wonderland (1951)? So far, I have 3 scenes in particular: Alice falling down the hole1, Alice talking with the Caterpillar, and Alice and the Cheshire Cat.
Just now, I re-watched the Cheshire Cat scene and I’m thinking of pairing it with parts of hole 3: “land in a logic of blur and almost” and “read sentences sliced in half, glitching just enough to scramble what is real and imagined.” At the beginning of the scene, the cat is only a voice singing nonsense words, then a mouth, then eyes. Later, he is only footprints and stripes. How to represent that on the page? And, is that more almost than blur? Should the line be, “land in a logic of almost’?
Another part of this new approach is to simplify the image so that it is easier to understand as form/silhouette. I’m thinking of putting it on a single page — the page in which the word “hole” appears in the NYer essay — instead of the 4 panels. I’m hoping that will translate more effectively online (and on smaller screens).
Back to hole 3: what if I made the blur and almost as two different scenes/pages — one is blur, one almost. “Almost” would be the cat, and “Blur” would be –? I’ll keep thinking about that one. Blur = soft and fuzzy forms, before we grow accustomed to the Dark, right after the light has gone out, or grown too dim? Maybe, the image of a small hole of light, with everything else growing darker?
is water alive?
I was looking for something else (search on poets.com = “blur”) and found a wonderful essay about a poem, “on the water” and its dis/connection to ecopoetics. The author of the essay and the poem, Moheb Soliman, says this about water:
It’s a sacred hook—an existentially common denominator—the basis of everything, to build on together. You understand, but you’re deeply ambivalent about the abstraction of water. Water like a banner quivering in place, placeless. You fear placelessness. It’s why you are addicted to Google Maps. Isn’t everybody? Totalizing specificity, proper naming, sublime order, knowable space.
Yet, like many, you try and reject colonial hegemony. You can’t help but revere Indigeneity. But water flows one way at divides—you’re either duped by western science water as inanimate substance, or you’re co-opting animist beliefs about water. You don’t think of water as alive, nor of it as just a resource. Is there no other way?
The line, You don’t think of water as alive reminded me that I have Is a River Alive?on my Libby audiobook shelf. TIme to start listening/reading, I think!
Perhaps a question to pursue this summer: (how) is a lake alive?
Writing this, I was thinking about the moment before she/we grows accustomed to the Dark and can only see the whites of her eyes, but now I’m also thinking about the moment before that when we see her from the perspective of her cat Dinah as she call out, with delight, Goodbye Dinah! Goodbyyyyyyyeeee! How could I imagine that on a page?↩︎
Finishing up this morning on my 4th hole poem, I was committed to setting this series aside for a few months. But as I made my final-ish bloom by pinning shreds of the essay, something kept crawling by me. Back and forth and back and forth, on the edge of the desk. I pushed my stool away from the table, giving this something room to move without needing to crawl on me. An ant? A tick? I watched as it suddenly dangled before me on a thread. A spider! My first thought was, go away!, but later as I told FWA about the encounter, I thought about it differently: what if this spider was communicating with me — Sara! Don’t forget about me. Where are the spider webs you were planning to weave over the words of your poems? Of course I could interpret what was happening as an indifferent spider just doing spider things (what are spider things?), but I could also interpret it like I did those rabbits back in February: an invitation to keep exploring this project in new ways.
a flash — the webs return me to thinking about spiriti visivi and Dante and Wallace Stevens’ light as spiders spreading its webs over our eyeballs and invisible strings in the water that hold us like nets, then light as an insect, then back to my visual poem with specimen boards.
The trick: to tie it in with water, which isn’t a difficult trick, I think. Something about invisible forces/grids/strings/nets that hold us, where holding = tethering, connecting, trapping, restraining and containing.
another flash: Looking at my hole 3, I’m thinking about how the lines shooting out from the center of each verse, are offering a visible trace of the movement of an eye. Cool. I want to play with this idea some more — of tracking and embodying that movement of an eye receiving (capturing?) light and reading words.
Fall through the hole eyes can’t see, land in a logic of blur and almost
other random thoughts with some connection to accepting invitations
I think that I was very fortunate in an early career where I did well. But I wish I believed in myself enough to have allowed myself to financially flounder for a couple of years, instead of doing well. Because I now see, oh, life is a marathon, not a sprint. I would have gotten there.
Yeah. And what would you have done in the floundering? What is something that you’re like, oh, I might have gotten this or that out of it? Because I think a lot of people who are young and who are currently floundering feel like it will never work out. Right? But I encourage the flounder. First of all, it’s more likely one is going to flounder right now because there are not so many defined career paths, unemployment is impossible. A college degree buys you nothing. A grad degree buys you maybe something, maybe not. And debt is so high. I think floundering, while the young people I know are incredibly anxious and justifiably so, with my retrospect, I think it’s the best thing you can do.
Yes. I know because I think it also flies in the face of this sort of productivity “narrative, you know, like everything has to yield, like every extracurricular has to yield, you know, your degree has to yield, like, oh my god. And so I do like that you’re like in defense of floundering. I am, I hope one day you will write a book. In defense of floundering.”
2 — On keeping that window open / Matt Damon on Conan Needs a Friend
Ben said this great thing, which was, “Judge me for how good my good ideas are, not how bad my bad ideas are.” And and it was it’s a very profound thing for a 20-year-old to say. um because he recognized that we needed the freedom to kind of barf out all those ideas you know and so often as you know when you’re writing it’s not you write down the bad idea because it’s iterating, you know it that can build into a good idea right and so he was basically giving both of us the permission to just keep the window as wide open as we could.
I think there was something else I wanted to add here, perhaps from Richard Powers’ archival interview for Between the Covers, but I can’t remember now.
Warm and windy. So windy that I had to take my cap off as I crossed the lake street bridge. The river looked low. I think I saw a long sandbar near the east shore. My feet were still a little sore, but mostly felt okay. Chanted in triple berries for the first 2 miles. Listened to my bunnies and rabbits playlist for the last mile.
11 Things
no rowing shells on the water, but the big white motor boat that follows alongside the rowers was out there, near the dock at the rowing club
workers on the other side of the lake street bridge, fixing something and making a lot of noise doing it
glittering waves close to the easi bank
shadow falls was falling vigorously
running up from the under the bridge on the st. paul side, looking below at the water, envious of my shadow in the water
on the ledge of the overlook at the monument: a insulated coffee mug, white
below the overlook, a person with a dog
tea kettle tea kettle or cheeseburger cheeseburger — a carolina wren somewhere
a person wearing something bright orange, sitting with their bike near the upper entrance to shadow falls
kids being dropped off at the daycare at the church, some by car, one by bike
a handmade wood sign declaring ICE OUT in a neighbor’s front yard on the next block
holes
Time to wrap up this hole project for a few months. I have 4 visual poems that I think are . . . not finished but . . . ready to be considered done. Hole 1, Hole 3, Hole 5a, and Hole 5c. I can imagine returning to them in the fall and trying new (more advanced?) techniques with thread and grids and layers — not just 2D, but 3D.
Well, I would have finished all of the hole poems if a HUGE limb hadn’t fallen right outside my window. We (Scott, FWA, and I) had to drop everything and remove the tree, which took almost 2 hours. Scott happened to be working on a YouTube video as it happened and got a recording of it falling. Yikes!
4 miles ford overlook, east river 64 degrees humidity: 84%
Ran with Scott on his 15th run-a-versary. (Mine is tomorrow.) We talked about his gig two nights ago — the jazz combo that he plays bass in, when we started running, and whether or not I got covid a few months ago, which would explain some of my strange ailments + uneven test results. We were supposed to run 8 miles today but even before the run started, we reduced that amount. I wore my new Saucony Cohesions: navy blue with lavender lining and soles. They felt better, but not amazing. I realized that I need to retrain my stride so I don’t run on my toes. Did I start running on my toes more when I switched to Brooks? Possibly.
Writing this entry several hours later, my feet feel pretty good, so I think the switch to the new shoes might help my feet recover better.
It rained off and on yesterday and most of last night; everything was damp today: the sidewalk, the overgrown limbs with their new leaves, my face. The air was still and the surface of the river was flat and motionless. We heard a strange sound near some trees. We think it was a bird, but right before we passed it later in the run, Scott read a handmade brown sign that said, Warning. Coyote den nearby, and we wondered if a coyote had made the loud alarm-like sound we had heard earlier.
rabbit hole
In February, I studies rabbits and bunnies and rabbit holes. This afternoon, I was listening to Lily Allen’s latest album, West End Girl, and I heard these lyrics at the begging of the last song, “Let You W/in”:
I’ve become invisible, stuck here in my palace I’m so fucking miserable in my rabbit hole, yeah, I’m Alice And I’m expected to be nice picking up the pieces What is it you sacrifice? I’m protecting you from your secrets
Does rabbit hole work here as anything other than a way to use Alice to rhyme with palace? I’m not sure. Regardless, I really like this album. Speaking of rabbit holes, I’ve written about how Heather Cox Richardson loves to use the expression in her daily YouTube chats — that’s a rabbit hole I don’t have time for right now. Last week, she said it again and added, I should write books about all of the rabbit holes I’m mentioning. From the 1950s Disney animated Alice, rabbit hole seems to mean daydreaming or reverie or being led astray — or too deep in — by one’s curiosity. HCR seems to be referring to actual rabbit holes, with their labyrinth of twisty tunnels. Of course, she’s also using it in the way that it is popularly used now: getting lost in a topic, ending up somewhere strange and unexpected.
3.1 miles trestle turn around 69 degrees humidity: 74%
The earliest run I’ve done in some time — 7:30, which is not that early. I liked running earlier. Next time, I’d like to run by 7. Greeted Mr. Morning! for the first time in months. All year, I’ve been running later in the morning or early in the afternoon, so I’ve missed seeing all of the regulars.
The other day I remembered that I had a pair of Saucony Cohesions that I’ve only wore a handful of times because they made one of my toes hurt. I wondered if they would work better (that is, hurt less) than my Brooks’ Ghosts. Yes! Ever since I wore an old pair of Saucony’s to mow the lawn, I’ve been thinking about returning to Saucony’s for my marathon training. Maybe I’ll buy a new pair; they’re less than half the price of the Brooks shoes, and they’re navy with light pink soles.
10 Things
the Welcoming Oaks — tall, green
boom boom — construction noise from across the river
clank clank clank — something banging/being banged below the trestle
the crack just north of the trestle is shifting and growing — what once was a crack became a trench, and now a ledge — orange cones all around it as warning
someone was sitting at the sliding bench
a walker in a bright yellow jacket — were they a rower heading down to the rowing club?
the parkway was buzzing with cars commuting to work
bright headlights from an approaching bike
a lone honk from a goose somewhere below
a man and a dog crossing the path then entering a steep trail down to the river through small hole in the wall of green
later in the day: Watching a video about her life as a pro runner, Lauren Gregory said this: “Consistency isn’t just about showing up when things are going well; it’s about building a life that allows you to keep showing up.” For Gregory, this means routine.
I really like combining Gregory’s idea of life-building practices routines with Des Linden’s famous call to keep showing up:
hike: 50 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 77 degrees
A warm, but not as warm as I thought it would be, hike. It started with irritation: a guy standing with his dog right in front of the entrance, blocking the way in, barely moving enough to let us by. Why? We both wondered what he was doing and why, out of all of the places he could be waiting, he was standing right in front of the gate.
Most of the rest of the hike was good. FWA reported on all of the theories about Subnautica 2, and discussed how thoughtful the creators of the game are in their early release — hardly any bugs and a well-developed story. When he mentioned that the area where a huge tree lived was called Xanadu, I asked him if the creators of the game named it that as a more general reference to the pop culture idea of Xanadu, or the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla Kahn. He thought it was possible they were referencing the poem. All I could remember from it was most of the first 2 lines: In Xanadu, did Kubla Kahn —- decree.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills, Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree; And here were forests ancient as the hills, Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon-lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing, A mighty fountain momently was forced: Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail, Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail: And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through wood and dale the sacred river ran, Then reached the caverns measureless to man, And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean; And ’mid this tumult Kubla heard from far Ancestral voices prophesying war! The shadow of the dome of pleasure Floated midway on the waves; Where was heard the mingled measure From the fountain and the caves. It was a miracle of rare device, A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!
A damsel with a dulcimer In a vision once I saw: It was an Abyssinian maid And on her dulcimer she played, Singing of Mount Abora. Could I revive within me Her symphony and song, To such a deep delight ’twould win me, That with music loud and long, I would build that dome in air, That sunny dome! those caves of ice! And all who heard should see them there, And all should cry, Beware! Beware! His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice, And close your eyes with holy dread For he on honey-dew hath fed, And drunk the milk of Paradise.
dog name: I didn’t hear any dog names directly, but I think I heard a woman, who sounded exasperated, calling to her dog down by the water, Scarlet! Scarlet! Come here!
my 2 favorite sounds: First, the bullfrogs. As we neared the end of the trail, at the beach, I could hear the loud buzz of the frogs. The noise was coming from the other side of the water, where the river turns into a creek that winds through a section of the floodplain forest. Second, Delia’s thundering feet. As Delia ran past me, I could hear her little paws pounding the ground — on sand, then grass, then firmer dirt. I love that sound!
holes / strings
I’m continuing to work on my found poems project, but I’d like to wrap it up so I can spend the summer with water. What I need to do now is document my process so that I can remember what I was doing when I pick it back up in the fall. Will I be able to stop, or will I keep working on it regardless of my intentions? We’ll see.
Before I stop, I’d like to get some orange thread — regular + embroidery — and experiment with incorporating it into my otherwise black and white (and gray) visual poems.
I’d also like to figure out the words for my poem using a NYer essay reviewing memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. In my version, mother = word, and it’s about my fraught relationship with seeing/reading/making sense of the written word.
a few hours later: As I worked on finding words in the essay, phrases and fragments kept popping up, then an idea came to me: Pick out a few of these phrases, which offer a way to describe my experiences reading, particularly in terms of how words connect me to the world. Pair a phrase with one of the spiders-on-drugs webs that has been inspiring me. Map the words on a panel, create the spider web over it. I love the idea; can I actually make it?
Some of the webs are easier than others; all of them seem too much to try without some sort of help. One of Chuck Close’s grids?! I definitely want to do the caffeine web, but I think I should start with something easier, like marijuana:
drug-induced webs
I also want to do “sleeping pills” — especially since I often fall asleep while I’m reading!
spider on sleeping pills makes web
I think I’ll do 3 or 4. Here are the phrases I want to refine/condense:
1
When the forms are too fuzzy I escape into coordinates
note: I like the idea of this and the linking of coordinates to the grid and mapping and my desire to find concrete ways to locate my vision loss, but I’m not sure it makes enough sense as is. I’ll keep thinking about it.
2
the ordinariness of language lost
3
gaze — an act of creation and of demolition — made hole again
4
nothing, subdued, entangled
5
shadows and absences born certainty died (or ruptured?)
6
kinship between eye, world, word confounded threads twisted, knotted, cut
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
so many cars on the road, zooming past, fast!
the falls were gushing white foam
a line of surreys waiting to take over the paths and annoy Scott
2 people sitting on a bench, another next to them in a wheelchair, all of them laughing about something, having fun
passing a couple, overhearing the guy saying something cliched — I wish I could remember the expression — I think he was being ironic
2 dozen middle-schoolers (I think?) running along the trail — spread out, some fast, some much slower — a track team?
stopping at the huge boulder that looks like a chair, a person emerged out of the oak savanna
a biker’s bright headlight cutting through the trees
big groups of people all around the falls
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!
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
green everywhere — nothing more specific, just green and green and green
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?
cracks and ruts and holes on the paved trail everywhere — more now than in the fall
voices below — rowers? no, walkers on the winchell trail — deep in conversation
4 or 5 cars parked on the way down to the locks and dam — at least 2 were running with radios on
a bright silver flash — sun reflecting off a car hood
empty benches
the water under the ford bridge was mostly a calm blue with a few waves and a faint reflection of the bridge’s arch
nearing the top of the wabun hill, hearing a chainlink fence rattling: someone playing on the frisbee golf course
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-up3 holes taped on window, long view
First, a few more blooms, then some time with my specimen display poem. The idea so far is:
a white background the size of an amsler grid, covering the “found” word
the word printed out, the reinforced with card stock, salvaged from free home show tickets Scott received in then mail because of a client
the reinforced word stuck with a pin, then pinned in the center of the white grid
a frame created with dark pencil around the white grid
Like different bugs, the words will be of varying sizes. Is this enough? Probably not. I’m sure as I work on it, more ideas will come to me.
I mapped out the words on the 4 pages, then did one, “room,” to test it out.
“room”
I tried something different with “life” — I wanted to reference butterflies and how, in the scene from Alice in Wonderland, the caterpillar turns into a butterfly at the end. Not sure it works. I like the idea of referencing orange in all of the poems in some way. Orange is my color these days.
life
Something is missing with this so far. I’ll keep working on it. Maybe an idea will come to me while I’m working on another bloom? Is it too much orange?
a few hours later: I’m thinking that I should try making the frame for “life” be orange instead of black and the grid be white instead of orange.
Whew. Went out early — before coffee or any food — because it was already 68 degrees. The warm temps and unfinished business made the run harder than it should have been. Still, it was a beautiful morning, especially when I was walking and feeling the breeze. A lot of attention was given to making sure I didn’t finally have the poop story that most runner’s seem to have, so was I able to notice 10 things? Yes!
10 Things
the welcoming oaks — green and tall, difficult to see anything other than the trunk
the tree that looks like a tuning fork
light shining on top of ancient boulder, which was empty of rocks
a parks truck under the lake street bridge, workers up in a bucket doing something to the bridge, listening to music — a familiar classic rock song — was it Hotel California?
the river, the air were still, quiet
a flash of a sound below — was that a coxswain?
a roller skier in a bright yellow shirt
the mitten tulips are still up, near the trestle
two older white women, dressed all in black, discussing nutrition
the sliding bench seems to have slid a bit more, the green beneath has grown thicker and greener
holes
Last night I had a thought: create a visual poem that uses the image of bugs pinned to a specimen board as a way to critically express the idea of words trapped in fixed meanings. But, which NYer essay, which found poem? This morning, another thought: use the essay about the New York cemetery (Hole 4 / Still Green) and part of the poem that I had previously cut. Yes!
draft, previously cut text:
you can’t exhume the bodies but you can make room for life in this place where the dead are interred
crack open a grave with a new way of seeing (or reading?)
inspirations: a specimen board + Alice in Wonderland, caterpillar scene
boards at Manitoba Museumspecimen drawersthe collection before processing/pinning
I could imagine this as part of an installation, with the words/phrases cut out individually and positioned in a heap with a label identifying them. The second image has the specimen’s in a drawer. I’d like ot experiment with that too — O have a jewelry box that might work for that, and drawers from an old optometrist desk. Fun!
I mentioned Alice in Wonderland as an inspiration because of how prominent making language strange is in this scene. Also, the bug connection, and the butterfly at the end!
Alice, the Caterpillar, and the strangeness of words
I came up with this idea because pins seem to be playing a prominent role in my visual poetry. They started as the temporary way to achieve the effect I wanted, but at some point I realized that they were another character in my visual story.
The question now: do I work on this now, or keep working on my blooms? Sara-this-second’s answer is: blooms first!
53 minutes minnehaha off-leash dog park 67 degrees
What joy to walk with my son and Delia-the-dog through this beautiful stretch of land beside the river. FWA set the tone by singing an awesome Sonic (video game) song about following your rainbow. Then, as we hiked down the hill beside a chainlink fence — the secret back way to the river that avoids the steps and a lot of the people/dog congestion — I was inspired by the dancing shadows to talk about how everything is always moving slightly in my vision. Almost like pixels, but not quite. FWA said that his vision is like that sometimes. Then he added that many people see that way, enough that it’s referenced (visually) in the video game, Tarkov. We talked about the fallibility of vision and the illusion that many people have about vision as seeing what is actually and exactly there, like looking through a camera lens. This led to a discussion of how most/many people struggle to understand or believe that a table can be there and not there, solid and more space than anything else. Which philosopher talked about the table as not existing? I can’t remember. Next: FWA brought up something he had read or watched about humans as quantum computers.
Just before that, as we lamented the fact that people often don’t have the capacity for holding both the there and the not-there of a desk simultaneously, FWA said, everyone thinks in such rigid ways, or something like that. I pointed out that his very statement was rigid by using the absolute word, everyone.
And then, we encountered Thor. Delia must have known, with her insistence on going down closer to the river, that someone special was there today. Or maybe it was FWA, with his willingness to agree and follow her today when he would normally refuse. Whoever knew, or didn’t, today we hiked down to the river sooner that we usually do and were greeted by the cutest, most wonderful, little ball of milk chocolate fur — a feisty little dog that chased Delia around, dragging his little leash through the sand, while his human giggled with delight. She said that this was his first time at the dog park. Somehow I knew to ask, what is your dog’s name?Thor, she said. Thor?! A perfect name, I think. Later I said to FWA, that was all I needed, my day has been made. Thanks Thor.
For the rest of the walk, I enjoyed hearing the birds and admiring the deep contrast between the rich brown of the trunks with the deepening greens of the leaves, all while listening to FWA describe the video game that came out this morning: Subnautica 2. It sounds very cool and FWA does such a great job of describing it. A flash of a thought/feeling: FWA is meant to make (at least one) amazing video game. The task: how to help him get to a place (mentally, physically) where he can do this.
As we left the dog park, I felt gratitude for getting to be at this park this morning with FWA and Delia and Thor, and hardly any bugs!
holes and flowers
I’ve decided I’m not finished with my shredded paper blooms, so I started working on more. I made some with no orange, then one with an orange dot the shape of my working central vision, then one that was all orange with the circle with the word of the poem at its center. Oh — I like this! Could I make an entire meadow of these flowers, mixing in the word blooms with other blooms?
I like these flowers and am excited that I was able to come up with this idea. I like how they look and the idea of the shredded word bloom as metaphor for reading and the relationship between word and meaning — taking the essay and literally shredding it, then constructing something new out of it.
a flash: As I making the blooms, jabbing the pin into the paper shreds, I thought about the collecting of butterflies and other bugs and then pinning them in a box to display. Not sure what to do with that, other than remember it for some possible future Sara.
hole 5a with more flowers
When I showed it to Scott, he liked how the green pin in the center of the white circle looks like an eye. That wasn’t totally intentional, which is very cool. I like how it’s an eye, too!
a playlist?
When RJP came over today, we talked about my blooms and she encouraged me to put together a playlist for the project. Fun! This playlist will be more complicated than past playlists, which have been focused on one, relatively clear, subject. This playlist will involve many subjects. Broadly, Holes is about how I read with a hole in my central vision. Three things echo throughout: 1. playing with words, 2. the hole in my vision visually represented by my blind spot (which I traced by staring at a blank wall), 3. the Amsler grid/lines/threads that map/connect words to meaning to worlds. Tomorrow, I’ll start putting it together.
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.
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
bright yellow vests on many of the bikers, a few walkers
kids laughing on the school playground
the white foam of the falls falling
more bursting/blooming shadows
the parking lots at the falls were blocked off — were they planning to repaint the lines, or trim trees, or what?
a rushing creek
the siren from an ambulance near the falls, uttering a half-scream every few seconds — warning cars to get out of the way?
the smell of fertilizer on the ornamental grass near the wall with “Song of hiawatha”
a dozen bikers stopped near the hill up to the ford bridge — as I passed them, I heard one say, is everyone ready?
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?
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?
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 / 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:
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
took a page of the essay and colored it in with orange colored pencil
used my template for my blind spot and drew, then cut out, petals from it
glued the petals on, then the word from the poem
big picturecloser-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!
50 minutes minnehaha off-leash dog park 53 degrees
Spring! Another beautiful dog park morning. Today it was calm and quiet, with a soft breeze. So many birds that I couldn’t identify. Soft sand, still water, no bugs. I talked about how great it would be to spend the entire day hiking then camping somewhere. No time or energy for worrying thoughts. FWA said that that was how band tour had always been for hime.
10 Things
the soft knocking of a woodpecker
a map of the dog park near a chain-link fence
a dog named Rosie whose grandmother was named Rosie
a HUGE tree trunk, stripped bare
green crawling up trunks — new leaves
big dogs suddenly appearing, running silenting through the trees at full speed
a litte dog, also quiet, chasing Delia then running off, then chasing her again
a field full of dandelions
the very strong smell of poop suddenly — FWA and I both checked our shoes to make sure we hadn’t stepped in something
feet sinking into soft sand, almost tripping on little rocks
hole 5a
My found text in the NYer essay, “Mystery Man” — a what is this? feeling grows as text blooms into nonsense — is the inspiration for my visual approach to Hole 5a. Each found word is the white center to a flower bloom made from petals cut out of the essay in the shape of my small, still functioning central vision. Yesterday, I cut out the petals (more practice with scissors! I’m getting better!) and the words. Today I need to figure out how to make the blooms. Here, making = creating an easy process for forming the bloom, gluing it together, arranging it on the pages, and affixing it to those pages. A key consideration: develop a process that is forgiving so that if I screw one bloom up I’m not screwing up the entire, 4 panel, poem.
With my vision, these blooms are much harder to create than I had anticipated. I can only see approximately how the should/could line up. Scott had a great idea: color them. Yes! I’ve decided to color the petals orange, using a colored pencil. Coloring them helps me to see them a little better, but I still need more practice on making them look good enough to use.
2 attempts at orange blooms
top: I had already glued the flower together when Scott suggested coloring them, so I had to color them as one.
bottom: I colored the petals separately, then glued them on a white sheet of paper, then glued on the word and cut the whole thing out.
More practice tomorrow. At first, I was discouraged at how hard it was to do this, and how bad my flowers looked, gut then I remembered I could practice and keep trying and they probably will look better.
I tried looking up “making paper flowers” online, but only YouTube videos came up, and those are almost impossible for me to follow with my bad vision. I’ll have to be more precise with my search. I decided to look up images of paper flowers — it was mostly screen shots from YouTube videos — and then I looked up images of flowers. A thought: My flower should be an easy, approximate shape — what about a circular shape with lots of small petals — this would be less about lining up petals abd more about texture.
Another thought: get inspired by looking up flowers. Find a shape that is visually interesting and that I can do! Yesterday, RJP got me flowers for mother’s day. Do any of these work?
mother’s day flowers
I don’t really think so. I’m excited to be curious about flowers tomorrow morning and find one that works for this project — and my vision!
a quick note: I just remembered how much I love globe thistles because they’re cool looking and because my mom liked them. I liked to try doing something with it! I just remembered that my mother-in-law bought me a wonderful book about garden flowers for mother’s day years ago. The globe thistle is in it, with a great picture!
run: 7 miles walk: 2 miles around lake nokomis and back 52 degrees
A long run with Scott. The plan: run to lake nokomis and around it, stop at falls coffee, walk home the rest of the way. Falls coffee was too crowded, so we tried Aria instead. Very good. Most of the run felt good. We did 9/1, then at the lake run 1 mile, walk 1/10th of a mile. The last 1/4 of mile was the hardest. My feet hurt and my legs were sore. The walk back was hard — too long + not enough stretching. Now I’m icing my right knee, which is very stiff.
It was fun to run to the lake. It is the first time this year. Last night we walked to Minnehaha Falls, today we ran to Lake Nokomis. It’s officially summer, Scott said. Hooray! Less than a month until open swim. I couldn’t believe it, but the buoys are already up! Wow, that water must be cold!
Scott told me about a YouTube video he had recently watched: a biker discussing one way the people are stealing bikes, and how we almost fell for it. They lock their bike to your bike, then wait until it’s dark, then they cut your lock. How to avoid this: carry extra locks to buy some time, or try to find a police officer and get them to cut the lock off. Also: lock your bike in a public, clearly visible place, and don’t lock to a pole that someone might be able to lift or unbolt. I talked about my holes project, memories of past runs, and how June 1st (Scott) and June 2nd) will be our 15th running anniversary. I also returned us to a discussion from a few days ago about what it might have looked like when passenger pigeons covered the sky in the late 1800s. When I had described it a few days ago as “blotting out the sun,” Scott had said that that poetic imagery wasn’t accurate. Today I talked about how, when I’m swimming in the lake and a cloud covers the sun, it does feel dramatic and like the sun if being blotted out. We agreed that it wasn’t as complete as a solar eclipse, but that it probably made the sky darker. Like day for night, I said.
quick research after the run: Here’s a quote I found that describes this blotting out:
In the early 1800s, ornithologist Alexander Wilson observed a single flock, which he estimated at 2.3 billion passenger pigeons, that blacked out the sky and took three days to pass overhead.
2 of the pickleball courts were empty — is pickleball falling out of favor, or is there some other explanation?
the lake water was blue and choppy
halfway around the lake, a loud splash — was it a fish jumping out of the water, a duck diving down?
running past Howe, noticing a plane ascending at (what seemed to me to be) a very steep pitch
nokomis road at the spot that crosses the bike path was closed again — why? — last summer it was closed, too
the little beach barely seems like a beach these days — the big tree, which offered so much shade, is gone, and the water has claimed half of the sand
the condition of the path was terrible — big cracks marked with orange spray paint everywhere
crossing the cedar bridge, near a light post, hearing this squeaking noise, we both wondered if the noise was made by a bird or the tall post
no flowers yet at longfellow garden
walking home, a memory flashed — the last time I remember walking home this way — after a run, with coffee in my hand, was on my birthday in 2021. I didn’t know it, but I had covid
note: we ran beside the creek for more than a mile, but I can’t remember noticing it at all. Was it high? Low? Babbling or gushing? I have no recollection.
holes
Today, I hope to finish drawing the numbers on Hole 5c (the hole process). I’m also working on Hole 5a (my hole perspective): life on the way to wonder land / a what is this? feeling grows / as text blooms into nonsense This version of the hole is referencing Alice in Wonderland and going down the rabbit hole. Do the images of the falling down a hole and blooms work together? Could I combine a page made dark with lines and thread with blooms of text? For the blooms, I’m thinking of making petals out of cut out words from the essay. I like this idea of texture; the blooms would stick out of the flat essay pages. Blooms/bursts/flares of light with the center of the flower being the word of the poem?
during the run: As I mentioned my ideas to Scott, I had another thought — what if the blooming was like my favorite spring shadows, the shadows of the little leaf explosions on the tips of branches. Instead of making those shadows dark, they would be bursts of white/light against the dark text?
As a place to start, I’m trying out slanted lines for darkening the text. Is this enough? I think I’ll try drawing in some more lines. An additional question: how will it look when all the panels are put together?
My hole perspective, lines 1
The white dot is where some wirds from the poem are on the page and the center of a future bloom.
I found a tutorial for making paper roses. It’s more than I imagine I’ll do, but a starting point for thinking how to create a bloom on the page.
ideas for blooming paper
I won’t use cardstock for my petals, but another print out of the essay. Will it work? Sunday (or Monday) Sara will find out!
I almost forgot. I signed RJP and I up for open swim!! It starts in a month.
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
rustling below — an animal, maybe a turkey? No, a human in a bright red jacket
ruts and cracks all over the few parts of the lower trail that are paved
green exploding everywhere, new leafs on a tree, pushing through the slats of the wrought iron fence
voices of kids, playing at the school playground
blue water
tree shadows, some sprawling, some exploding
a new layer of gravel
ran through a small cloud of gnats and trapped at least two in my eye juice — yuck!
very soft and deep sand on the small trail winding through the floodplain forest
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:
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.
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
the smell of freshly cut grass somewhere — was it near Wabun, or was that at my last run through Wabun
the top of a wooden fence, missing
another fence top, broken and slanted
gushing water below, 1: on the bridge connecting the veterans home and the river road
gushing water below, 2: above the falls, the creek below
gushing water below, 3: the sewer pipe in the 42nd street ravine
shshshsh of the soft suface on the dirt trail next to the paved path
the very LOUD monthly severe weather siren that blasts the first Wednesday of every month
a few school buses in the falls parking lot, at least one group of people clustered above the falls
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?).
Initially I was planning to run south but then I remembered that Scott and RJP had seen a cool art display near the trestle so I ran north to find it. First I ran through the neighborhood, past the daycare playground which was empty of kids, and over the lake street bridge to the east side of the river. Then I ran north to franklin, west over the bridge, and then south to the trestle.
A beautiful morning! Ran into the wind for the first half, with it behind me for the second half. I had to adjust my cap a few times to make sure it wouldn’t fly off, but otherwise the wind didn’t bother me. In fact, I liked what it did to the surface of the water as I ran over the lake street bridge: a wide stretch of rough scales.
I did 9/11 and it helped me to not run too fast. I felt strong, especially in the second half of the run.
As I neared the trestle from the north, I began looking for the art display. I finally found it in a grassy stretch near the part of the walking trail that splits from the bike trail. It’s a cluster of mitten tulips! We’re not sure who did it, or why, but I love it!
After stopping to take these pictures, I kept running south. As I neared the tunnel of trees, I saw that the road was closed. Then I saw smoke — a lot of smoke. Were they smoking the sewers in the neighborhood. Then I heard the crackling of fire on the hill below lena smith boulevard. Oh — a controlled burn. I stopped to take some video. For some reason, most of it is in slow motion again. Only the first five and last five seconds of it are at normal speed.
controlled burn / 5 may 2026
holes, grids, other worlds and other mothers
Yesterday I gave myself a task: weave thread through the plastic grid, sew thread on paper, sew thread on a plastic bag. A preliminary2 verdict: thin yarn on the plastic grid is possible iff I find the right purpose; paper might work if I think more deliberately about it; plastic has a lot of possibility. I’d like to try replicating a drug-induced spider web on it! My sewing skills are very limited — limited = 7th grade home-ec class + the occasional darning of pants/shirts + sewing up the rip on the brand new couch that Delia the dog made when we first got her 10 years ago. Will that stop me? Maybe in the past, but not today! I’ve already cleared the first hurdle: I threaded a needle! Yes, with my very bad vision, I managed to thread the eye of a tiny needle. Oh — the eye of a needle?! That’s an interesting connection to this project and my poem about the string that ties eye to words to world.
eye = needle / string = thread
I posted about this last week (I think?), but I’m reminded of Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Tattoo,” again and the lines, light is like a spider . . . it crawls under your eyelids/And spreads its webs there–/Its two webs./The webs of your eyes Spiders and threads and eyes. Now thread = light = that invisible thing that connects us to words and meaning. So good!
Maybe I should also try creating the web on the latch hook grid? I don’t have a needle with an eye big enough for the thin yarn I’m using, so I’ll try to do it with my hands.
I just watched a clip from Coraline on YouTube titled, “Coraline — Meeting “Other Mother.” I want to think more about the other mother’s button eyes and the idea of the hole as a portal between the world of her mother and other mother. Question: So far, I’ve taken inspiration from Alice in Wonderland and Coraline about holes to other worlds, but what other classic kid movies/books feature a hole/portal? Just as I wrote those last words I recalled Narnia and “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which I loved reading as kid. A connection: the portal/hole/door is in a wardrobe, closet and through clothes. Is the thread/cloth connection significant?
other mother, button eyesthrough the small door between
55 minutes minnehaha off-leash dog park 59 degrees
More green, less dogs, a lot of wind, loose sand. Delia the dog was in her element — such joy in her body as she ran and leaped and sparred with other dogs. FWA and I talked about a distracted dog owner who failed to recognize that her big dog was overwhelming Delia. We both noticed how the beach was much smaller and the river much larger. Most of the mucky shoreline gone.
As we headed back, there was shouting ahead, then an older woman approached us and asked if she could walk with us. She explained that when she asked a man to get his big dog away from her small dog he called her a cunt and then yelled at her, then he kept harassing her. She didn’t feel safe. When the red-faced man (that is, according to FWA; I couldn’t see his face) paused and denied what happened, FWA successfully de-escalated the situation, saying to the man, just walk away. He did and we walked part of the way with the woman and her dog, Scotchie, short for Butterscotch. Love that name! After we parted ways, FWA and I analyzed our re/actions. I’m proud of FWA and I’m glad the situation was quickly defused.
We heard the pileated woodpecker, black-capped chickadees, and some corvid that didn’t sound like a crow and wasn’t screechy enough to be a blue jay.
grids
Scott and I went to Costco and loaded up on Grapefruit. I noticed a lattice/grid on the bag. Can I use it? It’s red (or orange? or pink?) so I’m not sure, but maybe?
grapefruit bag grid
I placed the grid directly over another holes poem just to see what it would look like. A thought: if this visual poem was in black and white, how would it look?
grapefruit bag grid — black and white
One inspiration for this switch to black and white: a story from Scott about the set on the Adams Family tv show1. While the show was in black and white to make it look more gothic, the actual set was in crazy colors. Nice!
While gathering a few different plastic bags from our Costco shopping to play around with, I thought about how my interest in plastic bags — because they seem to be an effective way to describe the distance between me and words and the world — is giving me a chance to give attention to the (over) use of plastic in packaging. So much plastic. More broadly, my interest in using everyday objects in my visual poetry is helping to give attention to objects that I would otherwise not notice. A door to a new way of being in the world is opening!
I almost forgot about another grid I discovered. Yesterday, RJP and I were at Michaels picking up a few supplies — yarn for her, needles and pins (no, not The Searchers song) for me. Sudden inspiration hit: what about the grids used in latch hook?!2 We asked a very helpful employee and found them. Yes! There is potential, I think, for using this in my Holes 4 poem. I wish I would have bought more than one!
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1: panel with words of poem cut out 2: panel with bigger words of poem pasted on 3: both panels
I’m wondering what it would look like to play around with thread or yarn woven through the holes?
tomorrow’s plan: weave thread through plastic grid; sew with thread through/on plastic bag; sew with thread through/on printer paper.
Fun fact: I loved watching this show when it was on reruns; I had a crush on Gomez/John Astin. ↩︎
I know about latch hooking from my older sister MLP who loved to do it so much that once she latch hooked a map of China for a school report! ↩︎
Sunny, cool-ish. Overdressed in tights and my hooded pullover. Everywhere green and gorgeous. I was too dazzled by the green to notice the river. Was it sparkling? I also didn’t notice the falls — how hard and fast were they falling? I do remember giving a quick glance to the creek: gray, open, flowing fast.
When I wasn’t thinking about anything, which was much of the time, I thought about not running too fast and pushing through tough moments
10 Things
a class-sized group of kids down in the oak savanna — running above, I heard their voices, then saw them hiking below the mesa on the winchell trail
passing a guy on veterans bridge — I was about the say hi when I noticed he was talking into a phone
the surrey kiosk is up — today, on a wednesday, it was empty and closed
running down the locks and dam hill, passing a man, exchanging greetings — hello / hi
encountering a series of bikers — spaced far enough apart that I wondered if they were together — the first two had bright headlights on
from behind, the faint noise of bike wheels moving very slowly, finally passing — a woman very upright in a bright yellow jacket biking very casually
explosions of white blossoms on some of the trees lining the trail
a mower at wabun, the smell of freshly cut grass
the parking lot at veterans home was crowded and full
a moment: running just north of the 44th street parking lot — shadows then suddenly more light: a net or web of shadows, some sprawled, some with little circles at the tips (the buds of trees)
When I saw these shadows I stopped running, pulled out my phone, and took a few pictures. A thought: this net of shadows would be the grid/net obscuring the text of a NYer essay. I’ll have to play around with it. As I kept running, I thought about shadowboxes and silhouettes and playing around with them in a visual poem. I stopped twice more to take shadowed pictures.
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I decided to post all the pictures that I took so I could study them some more. I like imagining these shadows as a net or a veil, a weaving/gathering of threads/strings/lines that affect my view of what is beneath them. Here it is the sidewalk, on the NYer page, it’s the words.
a thought: I’ve been trying to create neat and precise (well, precise-ish) grids of lines to mimic the Amsler grid, but does that really express/show how I see, or how I feel about, the words as I try to read them? What if I drew a “normal” grid directly on the text and then made the grid elevated above it more slanted, askew, not straight or orderly?
a few hours later: I made another frame out of cardboard and then tried to turn it into a loom that I could thread a grid on. Unsuccessful. Too hard to cut the slats enough so I could wind thread through it. I’m not completely giving up on this idea, but I think I’ll take a break from it. A little discouraging, but that’s okay. I think I just need some time to build up the skills to figure it out.
Before working on my Holes project, a quick walk as the rain hit with Delia the dog. At first only a drizzle, but by the time we made it around the 2nd block, rain. I could barely tell with my raincoat on — a bright green jacket inherited from my dead mother-in-law — and my hood up. For the rest of the day: rain. No heavy storms, just a steady rain.
drip drip drop little April showers
Making
First, more fun with distressing plastic. I “drew” an Amsler Grid on a ziploc bag. Then I draw another one with my blind spot in the center. Then I cut the center of the spot out. I like this technique, and it’s very easy to do, and to replicate!
The perpetual problem with this plastic: it looks cool when I hold it up, but it doesn’t quite work when placed on the page: you can’t see the distressed grid and it doesn’t obscure enough of the words.
At some point, another thought: create a frame out of strips of cardboard. First I tried strips that were 2 inches thick. I slotted the strips to make the frame, then put the distressed plastic with the amsler grid/blind spot over it. I placed this frame over one panel of Holes 4. I liked it, but it was messy. And difficult to read. I wondered, would making a thinner frame help? I made one with 1 inch strips and added a different distressed Amsler grid. Still messy, still not quite right.
assessment: I like the idea of the frame, but I need to work on the execution — learn to cut the cardboard more neatly. Also: I need to make the words just a little more legible — if not, the actual words, the shadow of their presence.
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image of poem panel — I like how the words of this panel create their own poem: it‘s you that is something (yes, I know that it is technically its and not it’s, but I don’t care)
side profile of 2 frames
the first attempt with the thicker frame
second attempt with the thinner frame placed over a panel where the words of the poem have been cut out
None of what I made was very successful, but it’s so much fun to try making things. Even as I still am not very good at it, I love that I keep trying. And I can tell I’m gaining confidence and improving. I still struggle to cut through cardboard effectively, but my lines are getting straighter. I’m glad I’ve stopped using my bad vision as an excuse!
note: if I can figure out how to more effectively execute the cardboard frame, I could use it as a loom for my thread grid!
also
Here are 3 other things that I’d like to make note of, and return to:
1 — achilles exercises
To help with achilles pain, strength the calf muscles: the gastrocnemius and soleus. I want to check out the 5 exercises mentioned in this post.
2 — The Art of Kindness, Helen J. Shen interview
I’ve barely started listening to this amazing interview with Helen J. Shen! There’s some great insight on the difference between being nice and kind and how to acknowledge, then let of of imposter feelings, and that’s just in the first 17 minutes!
3 — crocheted technology
Scott sent RJP and I a link to this brief post about crocheting — I don’t crochet, but I’m thinking a lot more about fiber arts these days!
For tomorrow: a run, a ophthalmologist appointment (how bad is my vision these days?), and reading more poems — and posting one here. I’m really enjoying all the making and experimenting, but I haven’t been reading other people’s poetry that much in the last month1.
Right after writing and publishing this thought I realized that I have been looking at and posting poetry — I’m reading Her Read by Jennifer Sperry Steinorth and loving it. I’ve been looking at visual poetry, but not any other forms. ↩︎
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
smell: cannabis somewhere nearby
a cardinal’s pew pew pew call
a bike peloton (15-20 bikes) on the paved path
someone on e-bike zooming by on the road
more green buds
some empty benches, some occupied
someone on a bike biking alongside a runner — marathon training, maybe for Grandma’s Marathon?
a white car speeding down the locks and dam hill, turning around, then speeding back up it
gnats! one landing on my check near the edge of my eye — I could see a black spot in my peripheral vision
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 1view 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?
55 minutes minnehaha off leash dog park 49 degrees
Cooler today, but sunny with a soft breeze. Wonderful for moving. FWA and I agreed that there was energy in the air, a lifting — of impending storms, oppressive heat, humidity. The dog park vibe today: chill. Dogs moving quickly and quietly.
today’s dog name: Sunny (or Sonny?)
10 Things
glittering water
a small boat, fishing near the end of the trail
the LOUD knocking from a pileated woodpecker
a very big uprooted trunk, almost upright, leaning in the hollow of a living tree
deep, soft sand
the slapping sound of Delia’s water running through the water at the edge of the shore
the soft, thundering thump of Delia’s running feet on the soft dirt
2 HUGE fluffy white dogs
a small (smaller than delia) dog emerging from the woods — first, a flash, then right in front of of us — first they jumped up on me, then FWA, as if to say, hi! hi!
even more green on the trees, on the ground
While we hiked, FWA and I discussed Ariadne (see below). It started with me asking FWA if he was familiar with Ariadne’s thread from his reading of The Odyssey in college, or Percy Jackson in elementary school. He said, sure, but I mostly know it from Tarkov (a Steam video game). Of course. I’m always fascinated by all the stories/history FWA knows from playing video games. A few minutes later,FWA said, I think I also know it from Kaos (a Netflix show about greek mythology starring Jeff Goldblum as Zeus.
holes and strings and words
This morning, I feeling a bit overwhelmed and disoriented by all of my ideas about holes and strings and threads. Instead of trying to think and theorize my way out of it, which is my inclination — I’ve decided to stop trying to figure it out and follow some more trails. These trails may offer some answers, or they may cause me to get even more entangled (ensnared, knotted).
1 — Ariadne’s Thread
In yesterday’s post, Ariadne came up in a quote from the intro to Her Read. I knew the name, but couldn’t remember why. Just as I began typing In yesterday’s post, I remembered! It was mentioned in a poem about Icarus that I posted here on 19 june 2025: Altitude/ Airea D. Matthews. This poem has a favorite line, which I think fits here:
Bliss is a body absconding warp speed toward a dwarf star whispering, Unsee the beheld.
In that 19 june post, I kept thinking about unseeing:
Unsee as different than not-seeing (which I ‘ve thought/written about before). Not seeing is a static thing; you just don’t see it. To unsee is more active and also suggests a process of unravelling which is where my vision is at.
A few minutes later in the walk, I thought about flipping the phrase to, behold the unseen.
I like thinking about to unsee as a verb, an act, a process, a type of prayer? Just as seeing is not a static thing, where you simply see, but a process of light and signals and filtering and guessing by the brain, unseeing is a process of slow (or sporadic) unravelling then adapting — a brain doing mysterious and magical things with the scrambled and limited data it receives, a mind developing new ways to witness/behold without stable and dependable eyes.
Wow. All of this thinking about unseeing the beheld and unraveling vision, returns me to another thread in the book review about Helen Oyeyemi’s new book: swap the dead-eye liturgy of doomed vision for shadow acts wild and improbable. Is there something there to return to?
In my brief searching for Ariadne’s thread, I found a description of it as a method in logic for “solving a problem which has multiple apparent ways to proceed—such as a physical maze, a logic puzzle, or an ethical dilemma—through an exhaustive application of logic to all available routes” (wikipedia).
I found this bit about how Ariadne’s thread differs from “trial and error” interesting:
The terms “Ariadne’s thread” and “trial and error” are often used interchangeably, which is not necessarily correct. They have two distinctive differences:
“Trial and error” implies that each “trial” yields some particular value to be studied and improved upon, removing “errors” from each iteration to enhance the quality of future trials. Ariadne’s thread has no such mechanism, and hence all decisions made are arbitrary. For example, the scientific method is trial and error; puzzle-solving is Ariadne’s thread.
Trial-and-error approaches are rarely concerned with how many solutions may exist to a problem, and indeed often assume only one correct solution exists. Ariadne’s thread makes no such assumption, and is capable of locating all possible solutions to a purely logical problem.
In short, trial and error approaches a desired solution; Ariadne’s thread blindly exhausts the search space completely, finding any and all solutions.
The goal is not the solution/answer, but an exploration of possibilities. I also like the idea of using the thread approach in my erasing of text in a New Yorker article. The key: it’s arbitrary!
With a little more research, I also found this brief description:
The phrase “Ariadne’s Thread” refers to to the problem-solving technique of keeping a meticulous record of each step taken, so that you can always backtrack and try alternatives if your first efforts fail to yield results.
side note: this might be helpful in tracking my creative experiments so I don’t lose some of my initial ideas.
Before I left for the dog park with FWA, I had an exciting idea about how Ariadne’s thread seems to contrast with Alice’s rabbit hole. Here are some notes I jotted down so I wouldn’t forget:
tension = going down a rabbit hole (free fall, untethering, getting lost) versus ariadne’s thread (logic, finding, tethered to the world/meaning/language) — part of the feeling/process/practice of reading — what is the relationship to the word, how do I read? I answer with a mix of phenomenology (describing/showing my mechanics or reading words on a page) and an invitation to a new relationship with words, a new way for meaning and connecting and communicating not based on progression or logic or efficient understanding.
2 — a plastic bag
Some good ideas with the thread, but also too much thinking and theorizing and trying to fit ideas into a concept. I want to be led by the making and experimenting, not some concept. So, I returned to playing around, this time with my ziploc bag again. I like this material as the material for the hole or the effect the hole makes on words. I decided to deconstruct (that is, cut and spread open) the bag, the distress it with a pencil (drawing spirals and lines and zigzags on it). Then I realized it was almost the size of a single page: I can use it as a veil over the entire page!. I decided to create two bag sheets to make the text more difficult to read. Then I put them on 2 stacked pages of an essay — the same page. I found a word, eye, and cut it out of the one page so that you could still see it on the second (same) page. A hole in the page — I like this idea. Unfortunately, this version of it didn’t quite work; I’ll have to play with it more. Running out of time, I decided to write the word in bigger letters just to test out the effect. It needs some work, but it has potential.
a test: 2 sheets of distressed ziploc bag over text with a hole cut out to reveal a poem
For this picture, I held the papers up in front of the window with sun streaming in. I need to distress the plastic more.
same pages/poem, light source on, not through
A thought: as I work on these poems about reading, consider the light source; it strongly impacts how and what I can see. How can I replicate different levels of light, from BRIGHT to dim.
Another thought: more frequently, I’ve been placing holes on the page to erase the text, like my blind spot made out of black netting. I like the idea of experimenting with ways to cover the text, like with this distressed ziploc. I could also use layers of netting and thread grids — ones that are straight and ordered, others that are tangled and slanted.
Her Read
a page from Her Read/ Jennifer Sperry
Wow, this is very cool! I’d like to use this as inspiration. I’ll have to spend some time with this to see if I can read it. I like the color and how the words for the poem are all over the place and the arrows/directions.
No run today. I’m taking it easy because Scott and I are running a 10k race this Saturday. Neither of us are ready and we will certainly be walking some of it, but it’s the official start of marathon training, which is exciting.
youtube
Yesterday at Arbeiter, Scott and I talked about YouTube and possibilities for vision-related videos. He talked about consistency, fine-tuning the process, and finding a small and regular way to create videos. I mentioned one idea: I could do brief videos — shorts? — in which I describe a moment of Sara-seeing, or Sara not-seeing. Strange examples happen every day — not seeing words that I’ve already written and writing over them; not being able to read text quickly or billboards at all; not seeing something that is bright red and obvious to everyone else — like a cardinal; not seeing a face and automatically looking through my peripheral to find it. Most of these I’ve mentioned aren’t that funny, but I have lots of instances of strange/absurd/funny ones too. The key for starting this project: keep it simple and short; I’m not interested in having this take over the other things I’m doing right now. The next step: figure out the process and start doing them.
holes
This morning, I’m re-working Holes 1. So far, I’ve drawn the Amsler Grid directly on the text for panels/pages 1 and 2. Then I printed and cut out the words of the poem and placed them on/over the grid. When I looked at the picture I had taken of it, I wasn’t satisfied. The words weren’t visible enough. Next I tried something I keep returning to but haven’t quite figured out: a 3D grid made from thread and pins above the grid + blind spot on the page. I like the effect of this, but now I need to figure out how to attach the words to the grid. Should I create a third layer with only the words? And should that layer be on top or in the middle –and, if in it’s in the middle, how do I do that?
holes 1, sideholes 1, above
I discovered something interesting as I worked on this poem as 4 different panels/pages. Each of the pages, which include words from different parts of the longer poem, create their own poem. Some of those poems work better than others, but they can all be read individually. The smaller poem in this panel is:
a hole in your is
Okay, the other panels don’t work as well as poems, but I bet I can tweak them to make them work. Another challenge!
A recap for Holes 1: keep thinking about how/where the words fit on the grid (and how they make visible the idea of the poem, a hole making an uneasy fellowship with the word; ruminate: should there be a single or double grid on this one?; and how can I tweak the words to make 4 individual poems?
big picture thoughts: This series offers a progression towards more confusion, or a more peculiar relationship with the word as a reader. I want to demonstrate that progression visually through the changing configuration of the hole, the string/line/thread, and the word. So far, I’ve been experimenting with what material to use to represent the hole — pencil shading, black netting. Next up, the plastic bag! I also want to try making the “magic” blind spot decoder that I mentioned yesterday: when you place it over a certain spot, a new poem is revealed.
As for the string/line/thread, I’m using a double grid. I also want to try a crime board, where the thread becomes a string that connects all of the words. And, a hanging mobile with the words dangling from strings — does it need to spin? Other thoughts: broken or knotted strings AND strings coming out of the center hole and angling out to sections of words. I should write these up and match them to my poems!
Her Read/ Jennifer Sperry
This book! It’s an erasure of a history of art book by Herbert Read that only includes one woman sculpture, and only as an afterthought.
From the introduction to the erasure:
Thread, fabric, the Fates, the spin, life span — women in all the ages past made what was both essential and perishable: life, cloth, food.
When you look at the cover of this book, you find an identity inextricable from embroidery: the cover of Herbert Read’s book, its original title and author, are altered with stitching and patchwork — so we are first called to think of erasure by cross stitching, a crossing out that is, at the same time, a women’s traditional kind of making, and not unlike the fibrous threads that close a wound. Or, Ariadne’s thread, a clew that leads out of the labyrinth of Western iconography.
Some great thread thoughts! I’m mentioned this a few weeks ago: I want to use thread in my found poems/erasures as a way to connect with my fiber artist Mom who died in 2009, and my fiber artist daughter, RJP, who is currently majoring in fashion design in college. And, to my grandmothers — one, a sewer, knitter, and cross stitcher (Orliss), the other a weaver (Ines). And more broadly to women’s way of making. This mention of Ariadne is intriguing to me — I need to revist that story; I like the idea of the line of the grid as a thread that leads me out of a maze of some sort.
cover, Her Read / Jennifer Sperry
I think I read that the red splotches are Sperry’s blood, from a wound she received while using a knife to cut the spine of the book.
I thought I might take a walk today, or a run, but in the end I decided to watch the Boston Marathon and then experiment with different materials. Fun!
holes
A few more experiments: a plastic grocery bag (1); black netting (2)
1 — grocery bag
This material was difficult to cut and not as effective as the ziplock bag: effective = distorted, harder to read, creating a disconnection with the words
2 — black netting
I like the netting and the feeling of black. However, this netting was hard to cut! So hard that I couldn’t manage to cut the inner hole to expose the word/s of the poem. I should ask RJP for advice, or have her cut it. Examining the effect closer, I like it. Now I need to find out how to cut a hole into for the poem word! And, how should I attach this netting?
2 layers3 layers4 layers2 layers / 2 holes
I asked FWA which version he preferred and he liked the lighter look with 2 layers. I can’t decide. It will probably be easier to decide when I figure out how to cut out the center and expose the words. Which one offers the better balance of emphasizing the poem word while not being too dark.
I asked Scott and he thought that working with black netting might be too difficult and that the look of it also had been done before. He’s a fan of the ziploc bag look. I like that look, but I don’t think it translates from a distance, and the “big picture” is part of what I’m trying to achieve. Also, as I told RJP, part of why I am doing these poems is to show what my vision is like as I read (and, if I’m being honest, to “prove” that it’s real and substantial). I’m still liking the netting most. Is there another material that could achieve a similar effect but was easier to work with? What about window screens? I like window screens because they are already framed. Could I find some used ones at ReStore? Does the screen offer enough of a distortion?
No time to look for screens today, so I decided to play around with the netting some more. I printed out the words and pinned them on top of 3-5 net holes. One of them has a lattice drawn under it, one is shaded in with pencil, a few have 3 holes, some four, one five. The hole with five also has the outline of the hole erased. Which treatment works best?
Impatient as I am, I quickly pinned the word to the nets to the paper and took the picture in full sun. It’s a bit messy and the shadows are obscuring part of the text. Even so, I like this effect! I’m looking forward to working on it some more tomorrow. Future Sara (or, Sara sent somewhere — still not sure if that works) also needs to figure out how to direct the viewer/reader to the order of the words of the poem. A number by each? A key with panel numbers next to the word?
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?
60 minutes Minnehaha Off-Leash Dog Park 68 degrees
Another hike with FWA and Delia. So beautiful! Today, FWA shared a realization about something that happened to him in 5th grade that was traumatic and has had a lasting impact. This realization explains so much about him and how he retreated into himself in middle school. My heart aches for that sweet, young boy! Oh, how I wish I would have recognized it when it was happening for what it was! But, I’m not sure I could have; I don’t think he even realized how much it impacted him until now.
dog names overheard: Daphne (a french bulldog); Carly (a standard poodle); and Danny, short for Lt. Dan (from Forest Gump (a corgie — Lt. Dan because he has no/short legs) and Ari (no idea what kind of dog Ari was, I never saw them, just heard their owner irritatingly calling for them ALL the time — Ari! Ari! Aaaaarrrriiii!)
10 Things
a stopped, silent motor boat
thin white foam on lapping the shore
a log floating by, looking like a beaver (at least to me)
more flashes of green
a gaggle of honking geese, first flying then landing somewhere under a bridge
a black puppy with white paws the same size as 10 yr old Delia
a dirty golden retriever jumping on me (I didn’t care)
a sweet mid-sized white dog acting like a cat, approaching then leaning into me (also didn’t care)
a new entrance to the dog park, set farther in and farther from the road
woodpeckers knocking on wood! Once, a deep and very hollow sound — FWA and I guessed it was a big bird and a very hollow piece of wood. Another time, a quicker, softer knocking, sounding like a rattling jawbone to me
Near the end I mentioned hearing a rock bouncing off a hollow spot in the packed dirt, which prompted FWA to start talking about sink holes. There are lots of sink holes all around the river. At one point during this discussion, I thought about my holes project and how our discussion fit. Here’s one way to think about it: as we talked about sink holes I mentioned (or thought, I can’t remember) how freaky the idea of a hole opening up in the ground and swallowing someone or something unsettled me. Why is this so unsettling to me? The idea of being swallowed, of disappearing without a trace, of being trapped without an escape from somewhere deep? Could it also be the falling part too? The dizziness, your stomach dropping, the total loss of control? Possibly. Three thoughts related to my Holes series:
1
Dizziness. Feeling dizzy, like I might pass out, then a soft panic after trying to read for too long, or while trying to read labels at a grocery store. More than once, I’ve stopped and closed my eyes and held onto the grocery cart to ground myself.
2
Disorientation and feeling lost. I can’t read the names of stores or restaurants on the signs outside of buildings, so it can be very hard to get my bearings in a new place.
3
Delight. This morning, I watched the scene from the animated Alice in Wonderland again and marveled (again) at Alice’s reaction to falling down the hole. As she plunges into the darkness, she looks back at her cat standing at the top of the hole, and calls out to them in a delighted and excited voice, Good bye Dinah! Goodbyeeeeeeeee! Alice is not terrified or confused. As she continues to fall, she says something like, Now I will think nothing of falling down stairs!
grids and lines and threads
This morning, a return to thinking through the bigger picture of this series. A reminder from my thoughts from 7 april: the jacked-up spider web experiment in which NASA scientists gave spiders several different substances than studied the webs they created on those substances. A visual inspiration for this series! I’m printing out some images to put at the top of my cork board.
my cork board with the spider webs in the top right corner
Before the hike, I gave myself 3 tasks for today: 1. collect/work on Holes 5a, b, and c, also known as Hole Perspective, Hole Time, and Hole Process. Try to include “strings” or “pull the strings” in one of these poems; 2. draw/shade the dots encasing the words for Holes 3; and 3. work on the poem for Holes 6/Strings 1 — the book review about daughter’s memoirs
Holes 5a, 5b, 5c and Strings 1
Holes 5a
My hole perspective — life on the way to wonderland.
I fall through a what is this? feeling as text bloom into nonsense.
Holes 5b
hole time — measured in word (or words) one word then one then one word
Holes 5c
the hole process — a small island where reading is still possible waits as the large nothing that surrounds it grows
Strings 1
the strings that tie words to the world of meaning have come un done
I like these!
2 — Draw the holes in Hole 3
I did it. And it took much longer than I anticipated, so no third thing today. I drew larger holes and then created an elevated grid over it, first on my wall board and then on a piece of cork board on my desk. I think the holes are too big; they should be dots to match the center dot of the amsler grid and of points mapped on the x and y axis.
grid with big dots
I’d like to plot the small dots on the map of the text and then place the grid over it. I think I need to print the text directly on a graph to plot it properly — or is there another (easier?) way to do this?
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? ↩︎
60 minutes Minnehaha Falls Off Leash Dog Park 62 degrees
Another great hike beside the river and through the sand flats of the dog park. Much warmer than last time. Humid too. Not quite still, but quiet, calm, overcast. At the end of the walk, as we ascended a hill I described what I saw to FWA: the sky was bluer at the bottom of the sky near the fence; it faded to white as your eyes traveled higher. Was it just my strange vision? No, FWA saw it that way too.
We talked about one of FWA’s favorite teachers from High School. We agreed that she was one of the few teachers who really saw FWA and his neurodivergence. This led to discussing roommates and how hard it is to be understood by them when your brain is not neurotypical. We talked about our senior years of college and our desire to be done. And, like always, we talked about One Piece and other dogs and strange looking trees.
10 Things
brackish water at the beach on the edge of the park
soft sand that seemed deeper — had Minneapolis Parks dumped some dredged sand down since we were here last?
a motor boat traveling slowly up river, making waves
Delia doing my favorite thing: jumping over a log while running, her front and back paws stretched straing out like Superdog
the water looked soft and brown and flat
the faintest flashes of green all around — new buds on the trees!
a woodpecker knocking on dead wood
dots of green on the ground — moss, new grass — everywhere
rolling over several rocks on the ground — not falling or twisting anything
a woman walking a dog on a leash, calling out to them: no, you can’t! you lost your privileges when you ran away from me!
Grids
a summary: I’ve been playing around with Holes 4. I put it on my new corkboard wall and tried different thread/yarn/string. Then I played around with how to have the thread (which represents the lines of an Amsler Grid and being mapped in space/time) emerge from my blind spot in the center of the panels. Then I added red yarn and connected the words of the poem to each other.
more experiments with Holes 4 / 13 april 2026
I discussed it with RJP, which was fun, and we both decided that this black thread/red line effect was didn’t fit with the words of Holes 4. They were better suited to Holes 5 — maybe 5b? I want to print out the poems for each of these holes and post them on my board; this might help me keep track of all of them. The text from Holes 4 describes not seeing the hole or any lines, but everything as seltzer fizz and nothing that is something not sharing its secrets. That poem should have lots of little circles (seltzer bubbles/fizz) and create an optical illusion — you stare at the dark dots and then you see them everywhere else, almost like an after image. This poem might also have the words as enlarged?
note: I love my new board and being able to discuss my ideas with my kids; they have some very interesting ideas. Also, I think returning to a study of grids and learning how other people — artists and scientists — have used them could help guide my next steps.
what’s next:
I want to continue studying grids; I’ll start by reading (or trying to read) the book for the Charles Gaines exhibit.
I also want to keep pushing at my poems, so I’ll continue working on Holes 6, which is Lines 1.
And, I want to think more about lines, which means it is time for a lines/strings/thread playlist!
Charles Gaines and Gridwork
In the intoduction to the book, summary descriptions are offered for his works:
1 — Regression
28 drawing / 4 sets of 7
An arbitrary shape was chosen, and numbers were assigned to different squares of the graph according to their position. The numbers were then employed in simple arithmetic calculaitons to generate the form used in the next drawing in the sires. As the numbers threatened to overflow the parameters of the drawing, Gaines used what he calls a “radical divider” to contain teh propagation of his system. The final drawing in each set determined the starting point for the next, and so from any arbitrary starting point an infinitely expanding number of drawings could result.
Gridwork: An Introduction
Gaines was “interested in where systems fail or regress, revealing the innate contradiction of the objective or scientific enterprise. In other words, his work reveals the limations of systems.
2 — Walnut Tree Orchard
Each, a triptych — a photograph of a tree, a drawing in which the photograph is transcribed into numbers plotted onto a grid, and a second drawing that overlays all the previous grid drawings in the set onto the image from the second drawing.
This line, this series “makes visible the limits of photography, highlighting its single-point perspective, its flattening of space, gave me an idea: should I read/think about how reading happens and/or how we believe it happens, and play with that in my series?
3 — Incomplete Texts
used literary texts, picked ones that appear to supply information in a straightforward, truthful manner and submit them to processes of abstraction that complicate meaning
based on a page from Roy Nickerson’s Brother Whale he systematically removed letters from copies of they typeset page and transferred them to a grid this transformed the text into a series of fragments recalling whistles/clicks of whale song
note: It is difficult for me to actually see his grid images, so I’m struggling to understand what Gaines is doing in his different series. I want to dig deeper into his interview and other discussions of his grid system so I can understand how/why he’s using it1. This understanding might help me clarify how/why I’m using it — or, will it take me too deep into academic Sara territory?
Decided to google, “artists who use grids” and found this awesome exhibit that was at the High: Off the Grid. Very cool! I lived in Atlanta for almost 4 years and I never once went to this museum. Why not?
a flash of an idea: what if I turned Holes 3 into a “straight” grid, where the x-axis is blur, and the y-axis is almost. I could number the grid boxes with x and y coordinates and then have those coordinates next to the corresponding words in a poem key? I could either print out graph paper OR create a grid on the paper with string and a loom?
the poem for Holes 3:
Fall through the hole your reading eyes find and land in a logic of blur and almost.
Yes! The new experiment to try: the two pages from the New Yorker essay on a cardboard loom/grid, under a grid made out of black embroidery thread. I might add the shadow (a faint trace) of my blind spot drawn on the essay. The grid is also a graph with x-axis and y-axis named, blur (x) and almost (y). Each of the grid boxes has numbered x and y coordinates. Next to the graph/grid is a key/map with the xy coordinates. You look up the xy coordinates to find the words of the poem. Will this work? Consulting with Scott, he had some additional ideas: put the words in alphabetical order + put a pin and a number (signaling the order of words) next to the word — Scott compared it to dots on a map).
I like this idea and how it forces the reader to slow down and read the poem one word at a time. This isn’t quite how I read, but it gives a sense of how much slower I read, how many less words I can read. I also like the idea of a map, because part of why I am drawn to the grid is because of the way it enables me to locate and visualize my blind spot and vision loss.
Reading the interview will have to wait for tomorrow. My eyes are tired from what I’ve already read, which was only about a dozen pages. ↩︎
Strange weather. Yesterday it was in the 40s and raining, today it could get up to 80 degrees. Then 70s all week and high of 40 next Saturday. I wore shorts and a tank top today and felt fine — not too hot or cold. For the first time this year, I ran with Scott. Hooray for old traditions returning! We did 9 minutes of running and 1 minute of walking, which helped keep us steady. We both agreed that we’ve been very undisciplined with the steadiness of our runs. Yes, I’ve continued to run about 20 miles per week, but I haven’t had much of a plan and I’ve usually made it for 2 miles without stopping, then running and walking the rest. Time to get more serious and work of my mental toughness.
Scott talked about his latest musical composition — a suite inspired by Artemis and its voyage to the dark side of the moon. It’s in 26/81. I talked about the YouTuber, Ms Space Cadet, her struggle running, and how she was running faster than her fitness because of her new shoes. I also mentioned the podcast I’m listening to: an interview with Robert Macfarlane about his recent book, Is a River Alive? So good! I was listening to it this morning as I colored in my holes/circles for a redo of Holes 4 (more on that below).
We passed a race in progress on the river road. I think it was the Gopher 10 mile, but I’m not positive. At one spot, where the spectators and volunteers were thick, I heard someone call out, you can do it! you’re stronger than you think! (is that what they said, or am I remembering it wrong?)
The air was thick, the trail still damp from last night’s rain. Noting green yet, everything still brown. No rowers on the river. No roller skiers. No memorable birds.
grids and threads
I’ve put Holes 4 on my new corkboard (which doesn’t seem to want to stay stuck to the wall in this humid weather) and experimented with black thread and gray yarn. FWA likes the thread, and Scott thinks I need something in-between both. Dark string? We don’t have dark string, but we do have white string? Should I try that?
experimenting with lines / 12 april
I did try the white string and didn’t like it. More experiments with thinner yarn and embroidery thread tomorrow!
I had to double-check with Scott on that strange time signature. He also sent me the breakdown to the movements: I. Launch [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8] II. Journey Through the Void [4/4 + 4/4 + 5/4] III. Mare Orientale [6/8 + 6/8 + 6/8 + 4/4] IV. The Terminator [6/8 + 7/8 + 6/8 + 7/8] V. L.O.S. [3/4 + 2/4 + 3/4 + 3/4 + 2/4] VI. Eclipse [7/8 + 7/8 + 7/8 + 5/8] VII. The Return [6/4 + 7/4] VIII. Splashdown [5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 5/8 + 6/8] ↩︎
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 the Village 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 Powerman 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. ↩︎
4.35 miles minnehaha falls and back 32 degrees / feels like 17
Cold again. Because of the low feels like temp, I overdressed: 2 pairs of tights, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, pullover. Halfway through I ditched the pullover, which was awkward as I struggled to take it off without removing the outer layer.
Tried to stay steady and slow. Chanted in triple berries in my head. Took several walk breaks — not because I was tired, but to take pictures or to record my thoughts or to take off my second layer.
Thought about grids and nets (more on this below) as I ran. Recorded some thoughts on my phone:
recording 1: I’m thinking about grids and the lines and why it matters to me. And I’m thinking about the xy axis and a map and the visual field. And mapping and locating yourself within the known world and how reading is so important to that locating and figuring out how to navigate without that.
recording 2: Thinking more about why nets or grids or that particular way of being located is to be held, to be connected, to be located, to be seen or recognized or have others aware (of you). So not in this free fall. To orient yourself in some way. To not be entirely unmoored. Because as fun as it sounds in theory to be untethered and unlimited by these restrictions, physically it does not feel good. Dizzy, disoriented, nauseated (sometimes). A slow, growing anxiety.
This last bit about the ill effects of being unmoored was inspired by how I felt as I started my run. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I did feel a little dizzy and disconnected from the path, unable to clearly see what was ahead of me. I wasn’t blind to the trail or anyone on it. I was disoriented and anything I saw was vague and barely formed. This way of seeing unsettled me; it also made everything feel dreamy and not real or unreal or surreal. By the end of the first mile, it had dissipated somewhat.
So, why the Amsler grid? First, the obvious: it’s a vision test and I am writing around (and through) vision tests in much of my vision/visual poetry. Another explanation: it represents a mapping, a locating, a connecting to the known world (where known partly = “normal”/medical understandings and models of seeing). Also, it is a reference point from and a starting point that readers can understand (a place of common ground, a concrete and easily expressed and understandable model and map for blind spots in central vision/visual field).
grids / nets
I was planning to study worms and bugs for my April challenge, but that will have to wait. This month is about grids and nets and matrices. I chose this topic because I want to dig deeper into the grid and what role it plays in my Holes series, and also because of a series of pieces that AMP pointed out to me at MIA (Minneapolis Institute of Arts):
Charles Gaines / Numbers and Trees
I found a book from one of his exhibits and requested it from the local library. When I get it, I’ll discuss the grids more. (I also plan to return to MIA soon to study the pieces more closely). Here’s one photo of them that I particularly like of me, FWA, and RJP, who is talking with her hands in a way that I love.
3 people looking at art, 2 of them talking about it, one with her hands
. Heading out for my run this morning, I wanted to notice grids. A few minutes later, all I could think about was the twisted/bent fence at the falls that I noticed last Thursday. I regretted not stopping to take a picture of it then, so I took several today. Here are 2:
1
Remembering this crooked fence and then taking pictures of it, inspired me to expand my grid/net/matrix month to fences too — this fence + chainlink fences. Things that contain, orient, map, frame.
To start this grid exploration, some research on the Amsler Grid. Have I done any research about it in past years? Not that I can find!
Amsler Grid
The Amsler grid, used since 1945, is a grid of horizontal and vertical lines used to monitor a person’s central visual field. The grid was developed by Marc Amsler, a Swiss ophthalmologist. It is a diagnostic tool that aids in the detection of visual disturbances caused by changes in the retina, particularly the macula (e.g. macular degeneration, Epiretinal membrane), as well as the optic nerve and the visual pathway to the brain. An Amsler grid can show defects in the central 20 degrees of the visual field.
In the test, the person looks with each eye separately at the small dot in the center of the grid. Patients with macular disease may see wavy lines or some lines may be missing. . . .
Although originally intended for use in clinical settings, the Amsler grid has proven highly adaptable for home monitoring. Its portability and ease of use enable patients to participate actively in the management of their ocular health, allowing earlier detection of disease progression and more timely medical intervention.
This idea of it being for use at home connects to my desire to use whatever materials and words I can find around me for this Holes series. There’s more there, I think.
I’d like to spend a few minutes (maybe later today or tomorrow morning) writing more about lines and grids and mapping and why it’s important to me, both in this series and in my understanding/description of my vision loss.
While looking for more on Amsler and the grid, I found out about Edward Munch and his vision loss at 60. As he was experiencing it, he drew a series of sketches/paintings, some with grid lines, some annotating the strange ways he saw. Very cool. Here’s more about it from a exhibit at the Tate. Is there a book for the exhibit and could it be at my local library? Yes! I just requested it.
60 minutes Minnehaha Off Leash Dog Park 40 degrees / sun
note: writing this entry on monday (6 april) morning because I was busy yesterday talking non-stop with my wonderful older sister who was visiting.
A wonderful hike through the dog park with FWA, AMP, and Delia. It was cool but felt much warmer with all the sun. More than once, I took a deep breath, sighed, and said, this feels so good — to be outside here, now! Delia was in her element, and so was I: hiking on a wide and open trail with people I love, having great conversations about storytelling and trees and other things I can’t remember.
overheard: a tween protesting to an older sister or mother or some adult — I really didn’t MEAN to reference 6 7! The older sister’s response — oh yes you did!
10 Things
a pileated woodpecker calling out several times and in several different spots
a few stretches of goopy mud with footprints
a dalmatian — long and lean with bright white fur and dark spots
a distant knocking of a woodpecker on some dead wood
a woman, frazzled, calling out for her dog — Tubby or Toby or Trouble? (I couldn’t quite hear the name, even though she called it at least a half a dozen times)
another dog’s name: Lola
a tree graveyard — barren: mud/dirt, a few tall trunks with no branches or bark, half-sheared
trying (and just barely succeeding) to locate Delia’s poop so I could pick it up
a contrast in textures: first firm mud then hard dirt studded with rocks then loose, soft sand
a full parking lot on Easter Sunday
Dalmatian: I mentioned to AMP that the concentration of melanin in a dalmatian’s spots can often cause hearing loss. I looked it up on a past log entry and discovered that I was approximately/almost right but also wrong:
Interesting fact from Scott and Mental Floss: 30% of all Dalmatians are deaf:
Around 30 percent of all Dalmatians are inflicted with deafness as a result of their spotted markings. Breeding dogs with this coat can lead to a lack of mature melanocytes (melanin producing cells) in the inner ear. Without these, dogs can become hard of hearing. Dogs with larger patches of black are less likely to be deaf.
It was a wonderful sister visit. I was able to show my Holes series to AMP, who is an amazing visual artist, and get some helpful and exciting feedback. So many new experiments to try with layers and different types of paper. We talked a lot about the Amsler Grid. She suggested trying out graph paper or making my own graph paper by copying and enlarging my handmade grid, made on a loom with thread. Also: plastic sheeting — I like plastic sheeting because I have often described feeling like I’m seeing/experiencing the world through a plastic bag or bubble. And: stencils for the circles, which would make the tracing part easier. Oh — and she mentioned using something other than canvas for the backing because pins would not be stable. Wood was one of her suggestions — I could learn to cut my own wood (I know I could do it even with my bad vision, but would I want to?) and drill into it.
A thought: there is something significant about my reliance on found materials for this project. I’m taking the words from old New Yorker articles. I’m using my kids’ old craft materials — markers, pencils, glue sticks, yarn — and various things around the house for circles — a penny, dime, nickel, quarter, candle cap, 2 pill bottle caps (including the cap from my lexapro). My grid is made from old cardboard (a shoebox from my running shoes). I like the idea of making these found materials as part of the form/limits.
Crayons! I just remembered another thing my sister said. Crayons are fun to work with. She said a lot of stuff that I wish I could remember; here’s one thing I did: you can create thick layers with crayons that you can scrap off with a knife or a sharp edge or something. I would love to find a use for the ridiculously big bin of crayons we have in the basement.
A reminder: AMP reminded me that not all of the ideas might work in this series, but I can save them for other projects. A refrain to apply to any new idea/experiment: does it serve the message I am trying to convey? What is that message? More on that in the next post and after my Monday run!
Happy first day of Spring! Many years it still feels like winter, but today it was SPRING! If I didn’t have to jump over a lumps of snow I wouldn’t have remembered it snowed almost a foot less than a week ago. Wonderful weather for a run — sun and not too much wind. I wore shorts, a short sleeved shirt and a lightweight pullover which I took off right before I turned around. For half the run, bare arms and bare legs!
a regular:Daddy Long Legs! As I ran back south, he greeted me, Hello again! Does he remember me from past years, or did he think he’d already seen me once today? (he’s done that before.) I’m choosing the believe he remembers me. I wonder if he has a name for me, like I do for him?
The ice on the surface of the river has melted. Down in the flats I was able to get close — only feet away — from the surface: some foam floating on the water moving slowly south.
holes
As I told RJP, I’ve hit the point in the process of these poems where I’m beginning to doubt myself and what I’m doing. Part of it, I explained to her, is because I dwell in the almost and struggle to find how to execute the final bit and/or give it the “polish” it needs. I’m not giving up. Instead, I’m trying a different approach: cut-outs. Would ths work better if the words were cut-out — a way to isolate them — instead of encased in holes? Can I do both? What if I had some of the words encased in the holes and some cut-out? Would that make it a little less complicated and less messy + easier to execute?
The question to return to again and again: what will serve the message/meaning/intentions of the poem?
