Ran over the lake street bridge and to the monument today. When was the last time I ran this route? Just checked, it was 5 nov 2025. Wow! Of course, part of the reason why I haven’t run over there is because of the winter; they don’t plow the sidewalk on the bridge, and St. Paul, where the monument is, doesn’t plow their trails as well as Minneapolis. But another reason is definitely ICE; I’ve been staying closer to home with my runs because it feels safer.
Today’s run was good; I felt (mostly) strong, although my legs/feet are sore from wearing the shoes that make them hurt. It was windy and cold on the bridge, but it was beautiful. Steel gray water, open and high enough to hide the sandbars. Scattered stretches of the east and west banks were glowing with white snow. The sun was dulled by a thin layer of clouds.
10 Things
drip drip drip drip — the steady drip of water falling off the bridge near the east steps
graffiti — pink and orange and black block letters under the bridge
I only encountered 1 or 2 people over the bridge, both walking
the bells of st. thomas chiming at noon! 15 minutes later, at 12:15
running above shadow falls I glimpsed a dark flash of something — a tree? no, a person
with several more glances I realized the person was not hiking but running
they were nearing the worn dirt trail that climbs up and out of the ravine
St. Paul has replaced the port-a-potty at the edge of the monument parking lot — there is much less graffiti on this new one, and the door closes all the way — hooray!
near the edge of an overlook on the east bank, staring out at the other bluff and down at the water — a hiker emerges
a plaque on the bench for, “what a woman” Sharon. She was born 2 weeks after my dad was in 1941 and died in 2002 — so young!
Holes
Currently, I have 3 Holes erasure poems. Holes 1 is about my uneasy fellowship with the word. Holes 2 is about how the hole (my blind spot) makes it unprofitable to have faith in the visible. And Holes 3 is about falling through the hole into “who knows where”, on the border between the real and surreal. I need to do at least one more hole about the small holdout-of-a-hole in the very center of my vision that enables me to still read (even if that reading is slow and sometimes unreliable).
Tomorrow, RJP and I go shopping for textiles and textures at the Stashery, so today I’m working on mapping out Holes 3. I’m using “Me, Myself, and I: Helen Oyeyemi’s Novel of Cognitive Dissonance” from The New Yorker, August 25, 2025. Here is the version I just drafted:
swap the dead-eyed liturgy of doomed vision with shadowed acts that leap for the light (OR flee from the light?)
read sentences sliced in half with strangeness each one glitch ing enough to let in the improbable
fall through the hole your reading eyes find / or your reading finds / or your eyes find and land in a logic of blur and almost
Is this too many words to easily/cleanly map out? Let’s find out! And if not, let’s shift the form to make it work! — several minutes pass — Okay, I mapped it, and it seems like too many words. I think I’ll save my “darling” — the line that started it all about swapping the dead-eyed liturgy for another project — a liturgy of shadowed acts and the periphery! Anyway, I’ll try to keep the rest of the poem, and figure out the rest of holes is a project tomorrow morning.
Get Out ICE and Ice
The other day I wondered when the ice would be gone from Lake Nokomis. This morning, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board offered a prediction!
Minneapolis Parks Water Quality staff have tracked “ice off” dates on city lakes for decades. Ice off is declared when a lake is substantially free of ice after being fully frozen.
We’re probably not setting any records like 2018 or 2024, which dominate the record books. Staff estimate we could see ice off on small lakes like Powderhorn and Loring as soon as this weekend. It will probably be a few more weeks for larger lakes.
Will the HUGE winter storm we’re expecting on Saturday night and all day Sunday impact the ice off date? BTW, I’m pretty sure that they used to refer to this as the ice out date; I think they’ve changed it because of the very negative association with ICE. I checked past entries on my log, and yes, that was what it was called. Negative association aside, I like ice out better than ice off.
Still feeling like spring, another run with bare arms for the second half. Chirping birds, rushing falls, a knocking woodpecker. Kids on a field trip, walking on the river road trail. Only a few random clumps of snow remaining in the grass. I’m sure we will still get snow, either later this month, or in April, but it won’t stick around. Spring is coming!
I recited Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” and Lisa Olstein’s “Dear One Absent This Long While.” I intended to think about my mom on her birthday, but I forgot to, or did I? I’m sure she was there when I recited — in my head — the last lines of Olstein’s poem: Your is the name the leaves chatter/at the edge of the unrabbited woods.
As I listened to the rushing falls, I recalled my discussion yesterday about the poster with the words, Believe Your Eyes. I thought more about why you should Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes, although less catchy, is more accurate. I recorded a thought into my phone:
5 march 2026
transcript: the sound of minnehaha falls and, occasionally, some wind. “I’m thinking about my poster and switching it from Believe Your Eyes, to Believe Your Ears and Your Eyes. And I’m thinking about, on their own, they’re both unreliable, but when they work together, and with the other senses, they offer a more accurate representation of what’s happening.”
Listened to the birds, my feet striking the grit on the path, someone say, I’m a classroom teacher near the overlook, the falls, sounding like a June rainstorm on the first half of my run. Listened to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist on the second half. I started with “Rabbit Fur Coat,” and was struck by this verse:
She put a knife to her throat “”Hand over that rabbit fur coat”” When my ma refused, the girl kicked dirt on her blouse “”Stay away from my mansion house””
My mother really suffered for that Spent her life in a gold plated body cast.
This last bit about the gold plated body cast — what a great way to describe someone who is obsessed with objects, like gold or fur coats, that bring status and luxury.
Happy Birthday Mom
If she hadn’t died in 2009, my mom would be celebrating her 84th birthday today. 17 years gone. Some memories of her have softened, lost their edges, others have been condensed into a flash or a few words. I was reminded of some of those words the other day when I heard Heather Cox Richardson say, oopsie poopsies. As I remember it, Mom was driving me and my best friend (JO) home. When we pulled into the garage, she called out, Front door service, Missy Doodles! I can’t remember our reaction in that moment — did JO and I exchange looks? did we laugh at her? — but I do remember that it became something we repeated to each other later for a laugh and as a way to mock my mom (mostly good-naturedly, I think).
Why does this dumb sentence stick, when others don’t? Maybe it’s partly because my mom often had a strange way of saying things — happy as a clam bake is another one that comes to mind; also, the way she pronounced absurd — abzurd — and milk — melk (I do that one too). There must be many more that I’m not remembering now; I should ask my sisters. These strange ways of speaking were part of her charm. Front door service, MissyDoodles fits with these others. I googled it just now, thinking it might be a famous catch-phrase from before my time, or that Missy Doodles might have been a character on some show from the 50s or 60s. Nope.
Returning to HCR’s oopsie poopsies, I’m thinking about how she uses it instead of swearing.1 Another connection to my mom surfaces: not swearing, or rarely swearing, or swearing in French or German. And now I’m thinking about her shit rock, which is now my shit rock. I created a digital story about it 10 or so years ago. I also posted about it on my TROUBLE blog. I need to find the video and a transcript of the story somewhere on a hard drive. I’ll post it when I find it.
the Rabbit Recap continues
Yesterday, working backwards, I made it through page 5, page 4, and half of page 3 of entries tagged, rabbit.
6 — 15 nov 2022
The optical illusion: the rabbit or the duck
I surmise that my general visual experience is something like your experience of optical illusions. Open any college psychology textbook to the chapter on perception and look at the optical illusions there. You stare at the image and see it change before your eyes. In one image, you many see first a vase and then two faces in profile. In another, you see first a rabbit then a duck. These images deceive you because they give your brain inadequate or contradictory information. In the first case, your brain tries to determine which part of the image represents the background. In the second case, your brain tries to to group the lines of hte sketch together into a meaningful picture. In both cases there are two equally possible solutions to the visual riddle, so your brain switches from one to the other, and you have the uncanny sensation of “seeing” the image change. When there’s not much to go — no design on the vase, no features on the faces, no feathers, no fur — the brain makes an educated guess.
When I stare at an object I can almost feel my brain making such guesses.
Sight Unseen / Georgina Kleege
7 — 27 sept 2022
Those who have it to give are like cardinals in the snow. So easy and beautifully lit. Some are rabbits. Hard to see except for those who would prey upon them: all that softness and quaking and blood. (I’ve Been Thinking about Love Again/ Vievee Francis)
rabbits — visible only to those who prey upon them — all that softness and quaking and blood.
8 — 1 dec 2021
You only spot the rabbit’s ears and tail:
when it moves, you locate it against speckled gravel, but when it stops, it blends in again; (First Snow / Arthur Sze)
So, does a bunny have two distinctive aspects to their form: ears and tail? Ears if it’s only the head, ears and tail if it’s the entire silhouette. Most things blend into the backyard if they’re still for me. I only see them by their movement and maybe the flash of a tail streaking away.
9 — 25 dec 2025
A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. (Ode to Gray / Dorianne Laux)
Why are stuffed animal toy bunnies usually gray when real rabbits are more often brown?
10 — 15 may 2025
“It suggests the fatal indecision of a rabbit caught in a hunter’s flashlight. . . .” Rabbits as prey, always needing a way to be escape, when cornered, they shut down. Survival strategy: run until you can’t then go stiff, play dead. The idea of always looking for an exit resonates for me. I would much rather avoid a bad/dangerous/uncomfortable situation than confront it. Wherever I go, I always look for the exits, or the entrances into other worlds.
And now I’m wondering about rabbits playing dead and how that works. According to a few different sites, it’s called tonic immobility or trancing and it is”
a behavioural response to a perceived threat, characterised by muscular rigidity, profound motor inhibition, and suppressed vocal behaviour. This behaviour occurs when freezing in response to a predator approach, fight, or flight are no longer perceived as options (Gallup 1974, Gallup 1977). McBride et al. (2006) observed that rabbits held in a tonic immobility position had elevated respiratory rates, heart rates, and plasma corticosterone concentration. Additionally, they expressed fear behaviours such as widened eyes and flattened ears, and demonstrated more hiding behaviours and fewer grooming behaviours post-trancing.
In yesterday’s Politics Chat, talking about her reaction to the news that Trump was bombing Iran, she said, “I said all the swear words you never think I say.” ↩︎
Get Out ICE
From Recovery Bike Shop in Northeast Minneapolis:
This is what community looks like. This is what “bustling” looks like. This is looking out for our neighbors. This is taking care of our own. This is supporting our city.
We feel safer when other people are around. We are those people. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. And when we make our street a place that’s comfortable for walking, more people will feel comfortable walking. It’s a virtuous cycle. And it’s something we can do.
So come walk with us every Thursday evening at 5:30. Meet at Recovery Bike Shop. (And next week we’ll be walking in the sun!)
Note: any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer.
Any time you are out walking, you are making your community safer. I love this idea!
New Yorker Experiment #4
But before I move onto #4, I added some numbers to #3, so it was easier to follow the path of the poem:
Experiment #4: A Screaming Skull / New Yorker 18 august 2025
text:
You may feel like a shadow.
Another name for blind is a hole in the vision
You may feel like a shadow.
I tried photocopying the pages from the New Yorker, but the quality is terrible. Also, I ran out of time. I like the idea of another name for blind is . . . but I could find the right words to fill that in. I’ll work on this one more tomorrow. I think that my theme for these is my vision.
Another SPRING day! It felt so warm that halfway through the run, I took off my pull-over and ran with bare arms. No gloves, nothing covering my ears. Even with less layers I was warm. The walking path was clear enough that I was able to run past the Welcoming Oaks and the tunnel of trees. There were a few puddles and chunks and sheets of ice and for one stretch near the lowest point, snow covered almost the entire path. A few times my foot slipped a little but never enough to make me worry I’d fall.
I felt good and my legs felt strong. I was able to run up 3/4 of the franklin hill before I stopped for a walk break. The only part of me that hurt was one of my toes on my right foot. I was wearing different shoes than I normally do — a Saucony Ride instead of a Brooks Ghost — and something about this version of the has never worked for me. I’ve had these shoes for more than a year — 2 years? — and they always cause something to hurt, like my toe or my calf.
10 Spring Things
open river! down in the flats, when I could get very close to it, I watched the small spots of foam as they slowly floated downstream
sh sh sh — the sound of my feet running over the grit on the edge of the trail
good morning! hello friends! — greeting the Welcoming Oaks
the loud and steady sound of water rushing down over the ledges in the ravine
a woman running in shorts and a jog bra
mud, on the edge of the path — once, as I turned a corner, I stepped in it and almost twisted something
whoosh! car wheels speeding through a puddle, water flying up
along with the mud, bare dirt, some grass
last week, running under the franklin bridge when it was even wetter than today, I noticed a black jacket on the ground, soaked. Today that same jacket was hanging from a branch, dry
like yesterday, where there was ice on the path, there were also dead leaves — suddenly realized: someone from Minneapolis Parks had most likely spread the leaves as a natural way to make the path less slippery (as opposed to ice-melt and all of its chemicals)
Rabbits in Art
1 — Rabbit by Jeff Koons
I’m fairly certain that I’ve seen and/or heard of Koons’s Rabbit, but I only thought of it for this “rabbits in art” exploration when it came up in my google search.
DETAILS
Jeff Koons (b. 1955) Rabbit stainless steel 41 x 19 x 12 in. (104.1 x 48.3 x 30.5 cm.) Executed in 1986.D
You can find the image, both close-up and to scale, on Christies auction house site. I’m choosing not to post the image in this entry because of copyright concerns. Even though my use of the image should easily fall under fair use.1
In 2019, this controversial sculpture sold for $91 million. Christies’ page for this auction item has a lot of good information about the sculpture — it’s history, significance, probably all of the citations to articles about it that you might ever need.
Here’s the opening paragraph of Christies’ essay about it:
Since its creation in 1986, Jeff Koons’s Rabbit has become one of the most iconic works of 20th-century art. Standing at just over three feet tall, this shiny steel sculpture is at once inviting and imposing. Rabbit melds a Minimalist sheen with a naïve sense of play. It is crisp and cool in its appearance, yet taps into the visual language of childhood, of all that is pure and innocent. Its lack of facial features renders it wholly inscrutable, but the forms themselves evoke fun and frivolity, an effect heightened by the crimps and dimples that have been translated into the stainless steel from which it has been made. Few works of art of its generation can have the same instant recognizability: it has been on the cover of numerous books, exhibition catalogues and magazines; a monumental blow-up version even featured in the 2007 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. For an artist such as Koons, who is so focused on widening the sphere in which art operates and communicates, Rabbit is the ultimate case in point.
Childhood — all that is pure and innocent. Fun and frivolity.
And here’s what Jeff Koons says about it, cited in Kurt Varnadoe’s essay for Art Forum, 1986: Jeff Koons’s Rabbit:
This snarky little thumper has other stories to tell too. Koons said, “To me the Rabbit has many meanings. It is a symbol of the playboy, of fantasy and also of resurrection.” (The joining of those last two terms alone can provide food for long thought, or skepticism.) “But to me, the Rabbit is also a symbol of the orator making proclamations, like a politician. A masturbator, with a carrot to the mouth.”
I mentioned Monty Pythons killer rabbit last week. It comes up again in this article about drawings of bad bunnies in medieval art.
Rabbits can often be found innocently frolicking in the decorated borders or illuminations of medieval manuscripts, but sometimes, for reasons unknown, these adorable fluffy creatures turn into stone-cold killers. These darkly humorous images of medieval killer bunnies still strike a chord with modern viewers, always proving a hit on social media and popularised by Monty Python and the Holy Grail’s Beast of Caerbannog, ‘the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!’.
I like this explanation for why bunnies were depicted as killers:
In real life, rabbits and hares are docile prey animals. But in decorated initials and marginalia, medieval artists often depicted ‘the world turned upside down’, where roles are reversed and the impossible becomes the norm. So here, rabbits are violent hunters hellbent on punishing anyone who has committed crimes against rabbit-kind.
Last week when I mentioned Monty Python, I didn’t know they were referencing a trend in medieval art/manuscripts of rabbits behaving badly, I thought they made it up as a joke!
I think it might be time to synthesize/summarize some of this bunny information. But, that’s a project for this afternoon! Now it’s time for day two of my New Yorker Found Poem experiment!
“Fair use allows limited, unlicensed use of copyrighted images for purposes like criticism, commentary, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research. It is a legal defense based on four factors: purpose (e.g., non-profit, educational), nature of the work, amount used, and effect on the market” (source). I have been unfairly fined before, for using an image on an academic blog (over $700 in 2012). ↩︎
“It is rare for a domesticated animal to be both considered food and a treasured pet” (source). ↩︎
New Yorker Found Poem Experiment #2
10:30 am — Before starting to work with an article, I decided to sort through RJP’s old markers and find ones that still work. At some point during the process, I realized that this looking through old markers was making me dizzy; something about it was too much for my brain and my cone-starved eyes. I stopped sorting. I should have taken a break, instead I did something else. A few minutes later, I felt woozy and needed to sit down. My hands were shaking and my legs felt tingly. My pulse was fine, but my blood pressure was elevated — 158. I think I was having a mild panic attack, triggered by the dizziness from my bad vision. Boo. It seems as if my anxiety is back. I had a nice stretch of a year+ without it. It also seems like I will need to be more careful with how I use my eyes. Too much trying to closely see something might trigger another one of these. Am I right in my assessment?
I am noticing that my vision has deteriorated more. It’s even harder to recognize the faces of actors on tv, harder to see my kids’ faces when they talk to me. Am I getting closer to the complete end of central vision?
Because of this incident, I did not start my second experiment this moring. Should I now, at 2:10 pm, or will it trigger more dizziness and anxiety?
Yes, I did it. I need to make sure I test out/find the right tools and be more deliberate in what I’m doing. I’m very messy — which is mainly because of my vision, but not completely. I’ve always been an almost and a that’s good-enough girl.
These poems are from a July 2025 article, Money Talks:
1 — Let me ask you a question
Let me ask you one questions
I like the idea of this, with all of the questions marks, but it is really sloppy and it doesn’t highlight the text that I’m using, “Let me ask you a question.” I would try this one again, but if I plan it more carefully and work on my question marks!
2 and 3
2: In the middle of a story, you are either in or you are out 3 — About nothing: it is a junk drawer for everything nobody ever heard of
Again, messy and poorly executed. I like that I used less words than the last one. I need to figure out a way to draw that I can do with my unreliable vision. It’s hard to see enough to color within the box or to draw straight lines, even with a ruler!
I like the idea of nothing as a junk drawer. It might make even more sense if I found a much, and could make nothing into nothing much.
I am listening to HCR’s politics chat for today and she said, as she often does, OOPSIE POOPSIE. I love when she says that!
2.6 miles river road, south/north 28 degrees 25% ice-covered
A beautiful morning for a run! Sunny, warmer, clearer trails. There was some ice, but most of it had been sprinkled with dirt so it wasn’t slick and dangerous — there’s a metaphor there, right? I was glad to be out on the trail, albeit with some anxiety. Two days ago, at my annual check-up, my blood pressure was in the high zone. High enough to need to monitor it daily for a month to see if I need to go on medication. Some other test results were “abnormal,” too: high cholesterol, high thyroid, low ferritin. Bad test results make me anxious, or is my potentially out-of-whack thyroid? Or maybe it’s just living in a city occupied by ICE for more than 2 months and living under a federal administration that is careening towards full totalitarianismvileevilunhingedextremely dangerous falling apart and is desperate to hold onto power. I’m struggling to find the words to effectively describe this administration. So, yes, I was worried as I ran, wondering if my heart rate should sky-rocket the more I ran. Thankfully it didn’t. The run wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t the big escape I had hoped for, but it did bring me some delight and some beautiful moments to look to when I’m feeling overwhelmed. Can I find 10?
11 Moments of Beauty
the sizzling sound of wind moving through the brittle leaves still remaining on a tree
quiet, then the softest knocking cutting through — a woodpecker somewhere close by?
yes! looking up at a tree, I could actually see the white underwing of a downy woodpecker, it’s tiny head hammering a branch
wide stretches of clear, dry trail
stopping at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, looking out at the frozen river, wondering what Rachel would do in this moment, then believing she would be part of this amazing love spreading across the city, the state, the country
a good morning from a passing walker
a feeling of movement below me, then spotting a walker on the Winchell Trail, the remembering running down there, nearer to the river on a warm day
the rhythmic clicking of a passing runner’s snow spikes on the bare pavement — click click click
running over the slick ice and not slipping or sliding because Minneapolis Parks had sprinkled dirt — and not salt — on it recently
speaking — out loud, but softly — the words to Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling” that I re-memorized earlier this morning — It is the story of the falling rain/to turn into a leaf and fall again/It is the secret of a summer’s shower/to steal the light and hide it in a flower
(added 9 feb) a woman below, on the winchell trail, calling out, her name is Freya!, and a man responding, you’re a good girl! — just yesterday, Scott, Delia, and I had encountered this friendly woman and her dog near 7 Oaks. She was so friendly and kind that we agreed encountering her had made walking out in the cold, on the icy paths, worth it
Just writing this list, and the words preceding it, have made me feel better, more relaxed!
Get Out Ice
Even if I’ve written this before, I’ll write it again: I am finding that focusing on the fierce love and care that Minneapolis is practicing and de-centering/quieting the endless examples of ICE awfulness is helping me to endure this time. Well, more than endure. The love I am witnessing, and attempting to practice in my own way, is inspiring and making me hopeful about possible futures. It is also restoring my belief in democracy.
Here are 2 examples I shared on Facebook today:
1 — Rebecca Solnit post
One of the nuts things about organizing in the Twin Cities right now is that even the most long term organizers who’ve been here for decades can’t keep keep track of all the resistance that is going on. There are so many self-organizing crews just doing work that in any conversation with someone from another neighborhood you might stumble over a whole collective of people resisting in ways you didn’t think of. There’s a crew of carpenters just going around fixing kicked-in doors. There are tow truck drivers taking cars of detained people away for free. People delivering food to families in hiding. So many local rapid response groups that the number is uncertain but somewhere between 80 and the low hundreds . . . .
every restaurant, church, karate dojo, dance studio, school, barber shop, and other small business has created their own underground grassroots supportive network to protect their neighbors, get people to and from work, and raise funds to pay everyday bills.
4.2 miles lena smith – river road, north / river road – lena smith, south 42 degrees / wind: 15 mph 75% puddles, sloppy ice
Yuck! Not as fun running today, dodging puddles and slick strips of snow/ice on the trail. Warmer, but windier too. Parts of the run were great — I felt strong and efficient and sturdy. Other parts of it were not as great — a few times the path was covered either in a deep puddle or uneven, slippery ice. I am glad I went, and grateful to get to see the river — which was completely open, not frozen at all — but all of it was covered in a thin fog of fear. I heard sirens a few times and wondered if someone was being taken. Just before I went out for my run, Scott told me that someone had been taken just around the corner from us sometime in the last week.
10 Things
city workers trimming trees, blocking the street
a thick sheet of dirty ice covering almost half of a street — from curb, to the middle
black chickadees singing, cheese burger cheese burger
one biker, mostly biking in the road but on the path for a brief stretch
the sound of sirens across the road, lasting less than a minute
the wind, howling in my ears
a dog barking off in the distance
the sound of water splashing up as cars drove through puddles
a gray sky with no sun, then blue with sun, then gray again
city workers gone, a big pile of freshly trimmed branches — narrow ones — near the curb, 3 slender orange cones near the sidewalk
Get Out ICE
There are too many terrible headlines today about what’s happening with ICE in Minnesota, and it’s one of those days when I feel too tired to talk about them. I’m tired because of the headlines, because of the gray, sloppy weather, and because I tried (unsuccessfully, for now) to use a big ice breaker to break up the slippery ice on our small driveway. I chipped away at it for 30 or 40 minutes and had some success with a small patch, but I didn’t want to injure myself (because: 51 year-old bones and joints), so I stopped. I’m sure there’s a better (as in, more effective, less hard on my body) way to deal with this ice. — there’s a metaphor in there, I think. Anyway, I can’t force myself to post details from Trump and his cronies’ terribleness today, so instead, here are two videos that I’d like to watch repeatedly of the mississippi where the ice has mostly broken up and is floating, along with foam, downstream: here, the ice is getting out.
foam and ice, getting out / 5 jan 2024ice on the mississippi / 5 jan 2024
Fear less / Tracy K. Smith
Thank goodness for the poets! Last week, I checked out the e-book version of Tracy K. Smith’s memoir and reflection on the value of poetry, Fear less, and just now I read some of the first chapter. Hopefully tomorrow I will post some quotations and respond to her powerful words, but for now, I’ll just mention that I’m reading it.
4.25 miles lena smith boulevard 34 degrees path: 100% ice / road: 5% ice*
*there are so many reasons why ICE is terrible and needs to get out and should be abolished. Here’s a small one: I like thinking and writing about winter ice — how it covers the trails, what it sounds feels looks like, the different forms it takes. But now that word overwhelming means: Immigration and Customs Enforcement and hate and evil. I want my ice back! Well, maybe not the thick, jagged ice that is currently cover the entire river road and made it impossible to run on today.
Today begins the 10th year of this log. I’m so grateful that I was able to run outside to celebrate it. It has been a whole week since I’ve been able to run outside above the gorge: too slippery on the trails and sidewalks. Today the roads were mostly clear, but the paths were not. So, I ran north on Lena Smith Boulevard until it ends at Minnehaha Academy on 32nd, then turned around and ran south until I hit 38th, then back north to 32nd, then south up the hill. Halfway up, I decided to do the hill again — hill repeats! So when I got to the top (it’s a small hill, so it only took 1 minute to climb it), I turned around and ran back down it. At the bottom, I took a 45 second break then ran up it again. I did that 5 times. It felt good!
During one of my breaks, I noticed a woman across the road, on the trail, holding up a big white sign. I couldn’t read what she had written on it, but I imagine it was Abolish ICE or something about Minnesotans standing up for each other because all the cars were honking. It was wonderful, hearing all the honks, and her loud, Thank You! after they did it. I started imagining different ways I could do something like her during my daily running practice. I decided a sign or banner would be too awkward. Next I thought about pinning a sign to my jacket. Then, the idea: work with RJP to design a shirt or something I could wear that offered some sort of resistance to ICE and/or expressed my love for my city. Should it just say LOVE? Whatever it is, I want it be big and brightly colored and easy to see/read. RJP stopped by and I talked to her about it. She’s excited!
Ice Get Out, Know Your Rights
Know Your Rights
Another more accessible version:
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: WHAT TO DO IF YOU’RE STOPPED BY POLICE, THE FBI OR IMMIGRATION Police are supposed to keep us safe and treat us all fairly, regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin or religion. This card provides tips for interacting with police and understanding your rights. Note: Some state laws may vary. Separate rules apply at checkpoints and when entering the U.S. (including at airports).
IF YOU ARE STOPPED FOR QUESTIONING Upon request, show police your driver’s license, registration and proof of insurance. If an officer or immigration agent asks to look inside your car, you can refuse to consent to the search. But if police believe your car contains evidence of a crime, your car can be searched without your consent. Both drivers and passengers have the right to remain silent. If you are a passenger, you can ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, sit silently or calmly leave. Even if the officer says no, you have the right to remain silent. YOUR RIGHTS ▪ You have the right to remain silent. If you wish to exercise that right, say so out loud. ▪ You have the right to refuse to consent to a search of yourself, your car or your home. ▪ Regardless of your citizenship status, you have constitutional rights. ▪ You have the right to a lawyer if you are arrested. Ask for one immediately. ▪ You have the right to record police actions as long as you do not interfere with their activities and are not breaking any other law. Stay calm. Don’t run. Don’t argue, resist or obstruct the police, even when you are innocent or police are violating your rights. Keep your hands where police can see them. Ask if you are free to leave. If the officer says yes, calmly and silently walk away. If you are under arrest, you have a right to know why. You have the right to remain silent and cannot be punished for refusing to answer questions. If you wish to remain silent, tell the officer out loud. In some states, you must give your name if asked to identify yourself. You do not have to consent to a search of yourself or your belongings, but police may “pat down” your clothing if they suspect a weapon. You should not physically resist, but you have the right to refuse consent for any search. If you do consent, it can affect you later in court.
4 miles river road, north/south 30 degrees 100% loose snow
Loose snow. Difficult to move through. For almost all of the run, it was fine. I was careful, deliberate, light on my feet. On the last stretch, running up that a hill, I ran faster to pass a woman with 2 dogs. She was walking fast and I was irritated? Was she doing something worthy of irritation? She and her dogs were walking in such a way that took over most of the path and forced me into the uneven snow. And, she seemed to speed up as I neared her, like she was racing me. Not long after passing her, it happened. I rolled my ankle in the loose snow. oh shit, I exclaimed. It was fine for the rest of the run, and it seems fine an hour later. I’m RICEing (rest ice compression elevate) to be safe. To increase the odds that all will continue to be fine, it’s time for some fun with medical terms: RICE
R I C E
routinely, I crave eggplant
rust is corroding energy
rapt, I consider everything
rippled ice concerns Edgar
reciting Issa causes enlightenment
rabbits implore, cancel Easter!
rooted in creative excess
restive, impatient, contrary, edgy
rude individuals can’t empathize
ribald, irritating, caterwauling, egomaniacs
Rosie is counting elements
Rankled, I cry, Enough!
river island causeway eddy
Other memories from the run: the bells of St. Thomas playing a Christmas song, but which one?; crows cawing steadily, and syncing my steps to their song; several cars swinging wide to avoid splashing me with the melted snow; waving twice at a guy in a red jacket — once on my way north, then again on my way south; stopping several times to walk when the snow became too soft and uneven; small splashes of yellow dotting the snow, some bright, some faded; the road was bare and wet, the trail was not; feeling strong as I lengthened my torso, stretched out of my hips, opened my chest, and increased my cadence.
On This Day: January 5, 2025
Found these beautiful lines from the wonderful Carl Phillips while revisiting 2025’s January 5th entry:
Moving With: Carl Phillips
What if, bet- ween this one and the one
we hoped for, there’s a third life, taking
its own slow, dreamlike hold, even now —
blooming in spite of us? (from “Sky Coming Forward”)
Moving with Li-Young Lee:
for those three primary colors: staying, leaving, and returning. (Big Clock/Li-Young Lee)
Found this delightful poem this morning. I thought about the contrary crows when I heard the crows by the gorge.
On one side of the pond, a woman heads west in stone, while on the other, it’s a man heading east, but with the same extravagant gestures of headlong flight—one leg thrown back and both hands launched forward. And sometimes it’s on the tip of one of the lifted heels that a pigeon sits, and sometimes it’s on a thumb, but usually it’s on a head, often one on each, making a mockery of the phrase “in headlong flight.”
Though now they’re rebuilding the pond, so they’ve drained it, with the odd result that the pigeons have gone and have been replaced by crows. They too particularly like to perch on the statues’ heads, but, determined to assert their alterity, they make sure that they’re always facing backward.
4.5 miles minnehaha falls 20 degrees 100% snow-covered
Not a single bare spot on the trail or the road. Hard on the ankles, calves, and the eyes — so bright and white and endlessly nothing. Difficult to see where the snow was loose and where it wasn’t. It didn’t bother me; I’m just happy to be outside moving, connected to this place. Tried to greet everyone I saw — runners, walkers, at least one biker — with a wave or a hello.
10 Things
the smell of chimney smoke lingering near a neighbor’s house
soft ridges of sand-colored* snow covering the street — tricky to run over and through
empty benches
(almost) empty parking lots
a hybrid/electric car singing as it slowly rounded a curve near locks and dam no. 1
the sound of the falls falling over the ledge: almost gushing
scattered voices echoing around the park — at least one of them was from an excited kid
stopping to tighten my laces, a woman in a long coat nearby, standing and admiring the falls
splashes of yellow on the snow
bird song then a burst of birds briefly filling the sky
*sand-colored: using these words, I immediately thought of a favorite poem that I’ve memorized, I Remember/ Anne Sexton: the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color — no more than sand was a color
I listened to the quiet — barely any wind — for the first half of the run, then put in my “Sight Songs” playlist on the way back. Memorable songs: Sheena Easton’s nasally high notes in “For Your Eyes Only,” and the lyrics in the refrain —
The passions that collide in me The wild abandoned side of me Only for you, for your eyes only
Yikes. Also, these lines from The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”:
And if I swallow anything evil Put your finger down my throat
And if I shiver please give me a blanket Keep me warm, let me wear your coat
And these, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which I don’t recall ever hearing:
Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be. . .
. . .Every now and then I know there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you
(Almost) 9 Years!
Typically each year, I mark the anniversary of this log as the first of January, with a new year beginning on that day. But, that’s not the real anniversary of this log. It’s January 12th, 2017. Why the 12th and not the 1st? I’m not quite sure; I’ll have to look through my journal from that year. It seems fitting, with my affinity (see D. Seuss below) for the approximate, the almost, to not start on the first day of the year!
On This Day: January 3, 2022
Reading this past entry today, I re-discovered this beautiful poem by a favorite poet, Diane Seuss, Love Letter. Rereading it, so many words, phrases, ideas tapped me on the shoulder, invited me it! Here’s the second half of the poem:
I’m much too sturdy now to invest in the ephemeral. No, I do not own lace curtains. It’s clear we die a hundred times before we die. The selves that were gauzy, soft, sweet, capable of throwing themselves away on love, died young. They sacrificed themselves to the long haul. Picture girls in white nighties jumping off a cliff into the sea. I want to say don’t mistake this for cynicism but of course, it is cynicism. Cynicism is a go-to I no longer have the energy to resist. It’s like living with a vampire. Finally, just get it over with, bite me. I find it almost offensive to use the word love in relation to people I actually love. The word has jumped off so many cliffs into so many seas. What can it now signify? Shall I use the word affinity like J.D. Salinger, not a good man, put into the mouths of his child genius characters? I have an affinity for my parents. An affinity for you. I will make sure you are fed and clothed. I will listen to you endlessly. I will protect your privacy even if it means removing myself from the equation. Do those sound like wedding vows? Are they indiscriminate? Well then, I am indiscriminate. I am married to the world. I have worked it all out in front of you. Isn’t that a kind of nakedness? You have called for a love letter. This is a love letter.
sturdy! I love this word — the sound and the feeling of it: I like being sturdy. My Girl (in my Girl Ghost Gorge poem, the preferred version of me — Sara, age 8).
the “gauzy, soft, sweet selves” — these gothic girls, jumping off cliffs into the sea — a very different version/vision of a girl than mine
Linking these lines to others from Seuss, I imagine one version of her girl to be the one that died when her father did — she writes about him in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. That girl’s father became sick when she was 2 and died when she was 7.
Of course, this is only one version of her girl. How many different versions of girls do I have? Do I write about?
Affinity?! Yes, I need to put that beside my list of “love?” words, accustomed, familiar, acquainted, known. Affinity = kinship, attraction, liking/affection, causal relationship, attractive force, “a relation between biological groups involving resemblance in structural plan and indicating a common origin”
Right now, I’m reading “You” as the poem and poetry.
Indiscriminate = not marked by careful distinction — ambiguous, sloppy? a (too) rough approximation?
love letter world . . . suddenly, I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me
That was fun, giving some time to these words! I am drawn — do I have an affinity? — to Diane Seuss’s words. Is it because my introduction to her was her fabulous poem about vision that begins with the line, the world, italicized? Or her ekphrastic poems, in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl?
a return to the ekphrastic!I am reminded of my past reading and writing about still life, especially with Diane Seuss. I’m imagining my “how to see” series of ekphrastic poems with a section on still life paintings and one on pastoral poems! Also, a section on artists with vision conditions or that particularly resonate for my vision: Magritte, Monet, Vincent Van Gogh. Ideally, a series of poems. But first, taking the time to gather all of the resources together, then to stay open to what could happen! I’m also imagining a section on cut-outs/silhouettes, which I studied during my shadow month.
Colette Love Hilliard and the erasure poem
Last night I bought CLH’s a wonderful catastrophe. Wow! I love it. This one reminded me of my blind spot/mood ring visual poetry:
from A Wonderful Catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard
4.45 miles minnehaha falls and back 36 degrees humidity: 90%
Moist, thick, big puddles everywhere. I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and by my last mile I could hear my one shoe squish squish squishing. Since it was warm, it didn’t bother me. Oh — just remembered — my shoe/sock got wet at the falls — the cobblestones near the falls were full of puddles. There were a few slick spots, but mostly it was just wet.
For 3 miles, I listened to the wet wheels, whooshing, crows cawing, and people calling out to each other as I ran. For the last mile: TSwift’s Life of a Showgirl
10 Things
the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
calmly letting a walker know I was approaching from behind — right behind you/thank you! I meant to say, you’re welcome, but didn’t, then lamented my failure to exchange the you until I realized I had with my right behind YOU –if I had said, the you would have been traveled 3 times: from the-walker-as-you when I said, right behind you, to me-as-you when she said, thank you, to the walker-as-you again with, you’re welcome
overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
a clump of something not moving ahead of me on the trail — dead leaves? A darting squirrel. I studied it closely to make sure it didn’t run in front of me
a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
the trail on the bike side of the double bridge was mostly wet ice with 2 narrow strips of bare pavement that narrowed even more until not even my toe could fit in their groove
crows! just before starting my run, they were gather in the trees above me. when I stopped to start my workout on my watch, they cawed furiously, as if to say, keep moving!
Just before the run, I got an email about one of the chapbook contests I entered — back in July. I didn’t win, but I got, along with 4 other poets, an honorable mention. I’ll happily take that! The chapbook I submitted included earlier versions of several of the poems that I revised for my manuscript. I think the poems are even better now.
In the last mile of my run, a sudden thought: I should submit something for tiny wren lit’s tiny zine series. It says they’ll open again in early 2026: submit a tiny zine
safari reading list, review:
1 — contentment
Found a poem about contentment while reviewing my Safari Reading List. I’m partial to the words satisfied or enough or still, but contentment works too.
Yes, I can be content anywhere, but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair, on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk, in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost, to say I wish you could come here to the present, my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet everything I’ve found.
about this poem: “Making peace with the past has been a common theme in my work, so I decided to try to write about making peace with the present.”
Blessèd art thou, No One. In thy sight would we bloom. In thy spite.
A Nothing we were, are now, and ever shall be, blooming: the Nothing-, the No-One’s-Rose.
I love this bit of Celan’s poem and the No-one’s-Rose! No One — a someone who is No One: what type of sight do they have? We were, are, shall be nothing, blooming. I want to use this — maybe as a breathing with poem — in a collection* about the gorge/gap/bling spot.
*maybe not a collection, but a series of attempts, orbiting around the idea or feeling or experience of the Nothing in the gorge and in my vision.
Speaking of orbiting: Last night, I was trying to name/remember something, but I couldn’t, quite. I kept almost getting the right name, but I was off, approximate. As I talked, I moved my hands around in a circle, as if to indicate I was circling around the name. I called out, I’m orbiting it! I do this a lot. I wish I could remember the exact example, to make this story more understandable, but I can’t.
3 — CAConrad’s Queer Bubbles
There are some great bits in this article about Conrad and their rituals in The Paris Review:
“I love being inside the ritual,” he says. “It’s like speaking in tongues. It’s not just automatic writing … Every nuance, every adjustment to the ritual, alters the language that comes out of me.”
Exercises like these are nothing new in poetry—Conrad cites Bernadette Mayer and Charles Olson as two practitioners of similar methods—but he insists that his rituals are chiefly inspired by his childhood, specifically the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where his grandmother taught him to meditate and where he took an interest in the occult, from local water diviners to the hex signs painted on barns. But as much as his work owes a debt to Boyertown, it is a deliberate rebuke to the bigotry, violence, and oppression he found there.
I’m familiar with B Mayer’s work — a class on her list is what led me to poetry! — but I don’t know that much about Charles Olson. I should look into him more, like his archeology of morning (on a site that offers footprints not blueprints, which reminds me of my old academic slogan for my ethical/pedagogical approach: an invitation to engage, not a how-to manual) and the polis / Polis is This:
Polis is This
In his two books of (Soma)tic rituals and poems, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon and ECODEVIANCE—a third collection, While Standing in Line for Death, will be published this September—the rituals and resulting poems appear opposite one another. Because the rituals are written in the second person, at times the books read like the world’s most bizarre and inventive self-help guides, manuals for what you might call acute mindfulness. One ritual starts like this: “Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car … Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you … As soon as the car stops write 9 words as fast as you can before the train moves again … Repeat this humming and writing for 9 stops.” He credits his rituals with lifting him out of depression and grief.
The use of You — a bizarre self-help manual or how-to on mindfulness!
the blind ring project returns to haunt this log
Doing some reading about lit journals that accept visual poetry, I was introduced to the amazing erasures of Colette LH. So beautiful and wonderful. Here’s the first one I experienced:
Then I saw this one, Brain, and I started thinking about what I could do with my blind spot black-out ideas, and now I’m wondering about doing something with my peripheral. These white trails above, in (un)certainty are making me think about movement and direction and motion as it relates to my peripheral vision. Hmmm….
4.25 miles minnehaha falls 33 degrees 10% slick ice
Great weather for a run. Only needed one pair of gloves and no jacket. For the first mile, I didn’t encounter anyone, but as I neared the falls, more walkers and runners. I tried to greet everyone I encountered with a wave or a good morning. There was some ice, but I only slipped once or twice. The creek was flowing and I could hear the falls falling behind the thick ice columns. Running up the hill and on my way out of the park I heard voices below in the part of the park that is both the bottom of a massive sledding hill in the winter and a wading pool in the summer.
On my way home, I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world and admired the open view to the river below and the other side. Beautiful. Heard more people down below, on the winchell trail.
late night blind spot revelations
Last night, another thought: I’d like to take a break from structured writing that is shaped by a larger project. Time to experiment more instead. Also: time to add to my “How to Be” project, do my year-end summary, and edit my writing experiments list. Oh — and read some more of the poetry books I bought this year.
Discovered this poem the other day and wanted to remember it, especially for how it incorporates research about lichens into the poem:
Crinkly-thin, the perfect marriage of algae and fungi, furbelowed and curled.
venerable ancestors: strange as vellum, an onion poultice, leather jerkin
Johann Dillen’s portraits of 1741: the ‘Strange Charactered Lichen, Black Dotted Wrinkled Lichen, Leprous Black Nobb’d Lichen, Crawfish Eye-like Lichen.’
the youngest occupy a wicker couch, eavesdrop on the aunties’ tales, wonder why so aged-looking, their skin?
‘Wanderflechten’—those who traveled on deer’s hooves, birds’ feet, hot air balloon baskets over arid land.
travel’s allure, the turquoise ring, scarab bracelet
Those who embraced the seductions of moths’ wings, gave their bodies to the hungers of the ‘Brussels Lace Moths, Beautiful Hook-Tips, the Dingy Footman.’
when can we stay out past dawn?
Lichens who gave sustenance, grew thin, flailed against famine, lichen packed in the bodies of mummies.
these have an aura, a blue-mauve cloud we can’t imagine the ribs’ furrows
Erik Acharius, 1808, the “father of lichenology,” fastens samples onto herbarium sheets, lichens’ filaments and flakes suspended.
nice—but not our father, who is spores and fragments
A thin cord anchors lichens to rock, small bits chip off, wear of paw pad and fur, take hold elsewhere.
we hear the wind caressing bark
Lichens swept up by grazing reindeer, hot breath devouring, rub of meaty tongues, meat toxic to herders— radioactive fallout the lichens never meant to harbor.
ghostly stalks of trees, an ashy forest we can barely look
A single spruce hosts a rare green and red-lobed lichen.
the odd one out, the one no one ever set eyes on
Lichens in the armpits of marble statues differentiated from lichens on the thighs, eaten by snails on moonless nights.
moonglow, something we don’t know here, no one’s talking
A hummingbird’s nest, its outer layer shingled gray-green with lichen flakes, a point of pride, see—
