8 miles top of I-94 bridge (near downtown) 61 degrees
Could summer finally be here? I hope so. Scott and I ran north on the river road, down the franklin hill, through the flats, up the I-94 hill, then everything, in reverse. The first 6 or so miles of it felt fine; that last bit, not as much. My feet hurt, and I think it’s because of my shoes. They felt better this week than last week, but I’m still wondering if I should look into some other shoes.
Scott and I talked about amateur runners doping (me), our complicated feelings about bikers (Scott), the virtue of reasonableness (me), labor arbitrage in relation to the production of electric basses (Scott), and how a Lutheran church in south Minneapolis is giving land to an American Indian organization as reparations (me). The first half of the run went by quickly as we talked. During the second half, my feet started hurting, the sun felt warmer, and we were both thirsty, so I noticed the time and the miles more.
11 Things
someone on an elipti-go machine
Hi Dave! / Hi Sara! Hi Scott! — greeting Dave the Daily Walker — it’s been some time since I’ve seen him
click clack click clack — a roller skiers poles
a group of 1/2 dozen bikers, at least 3 of them young kids
a line-up of 4 cars, following behind a slower biker chatting on the phone
a thin, oily-looking skin on the river’s surface in the flats
a lone rower on the river! I listened to their oars gently slapping the water
mostly filled benches
the smell of honeysuckle drifting out of the gorge
rows of black garbage bags filled with vegetation — I think it was Friends of the Mississippi River volunteers removing garlic mustard
the spring that emerges from the rock face below the west bank of the U of M was gushing water
A good run. It helps to run with Scott. Today’s victories: running up the entire (long and steep) I-94 hill; running up 3/4 of the franklin hill; keeping steady for most of the run; finishing a minute faster than last week on a tougher route.
Things to work on: try lock laces; bring water — or stop for water
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
run: 8 miles around lake nokomis and back 62 degrees humidity: 86%
A long run with Scott. 8 miles this week. It felt easier than the 7 miles last week. The only problem: my feet. About 4 miles in, I noticed my socks were bunching up and under the ball of my feet, which was painful and made me alter my gait. Next time: different socks.
I started the conversation with Alice in Wonderland and the scene with the Cheshire Cat; it’s an inspiration for my found poem about landing in the logic of blur and almost. Scott talked about his YouTube channel — the main one and one of his secondary channels that he jokingly created for one of the gnomes in our backyard. I also talked about shifting my perspective on my unfinished business problem: not trying to avoid it, but learning how to accept and manage it while I’m running. What else did Scott talk about? A lot, I just can’t remember what.
10 Things
the green looked and felt greener, the brown richer and darker after last night’s rain
birds! so much birdsong everywhere and all the time
a mini-ambulance parked on minnehaha parkway, a Ghostbusters logo painted on the side
an older man with a cane calling out to us as we ran around the lake — the birds are attacking me! Just then, a bird swooped down on him
a little dog with a big, fluffy tail, shaking their butt as they walked
the view of the lake from the cedar avenue bridge: completely still, the reflection of ascending plane travelling across it
puddles — most of them on the lake trail
stopping at the port-a-potty near the little beach: no toilet paper in either one
more benches than last year set up around the stage at the falls — Scott guessed that they start out with a lot, but the number dwindles over the course of the summer as the benches get broken, I wondered if people stole them
the view near the bench above the edge of the world is gone until next fall, now it’s a wall of green green green
hike: an hour minnehaha off-leash dog park 61 degrees
The air was cool, but thick down in the floodplain. The ground was soft and firm, in some spots muddy. So many birds! I wish I would have had my phone and recorded them. Hardly anyone was at the park — because of last night’s rain? and today’s humidity? The few cars were all parked on the one side of the parking lot. No one, including FWA, wanted to be the first to park on the other side. The surface of the water was covered in some sort of scum. When we got closer we realized what it was: seeds.
dog names: Dolly (or Ollie), Squirrel, and ? — I can’t remember the name of the Corgi we encountered.
We talked about the social life of birds and Subnautica 2 and delighted in Delia’s joy. I noticed she seemed to be leaping more as she ran; we agreed that it was probably because of the firmer ground.
added the next morning: I forgot to mention the moss, or was it lichen?, that I studied on the side of some big trees down in the floodplain. Very cool — an intense green covering the soft and wet bark on one side, while dry and rough bark was on the other side.
The greens and browns were enchanting. So were the birds. And the quiet — so peaceful and still.
And today, after months of focusing almost exclusively on my “how I read”/ holes poems, here’s a bit of a beautiful poem from Tracy K. Smith:
My son listens into daylight, head tilted, eyes tuned past the range of the seen.
What he seeks to see is vibratory. A butterfly’s itch. The pitch at which a mind
is freed to dart, spark, break into flight. His gaze rakes space. What does his ear see? Beads
of breath rising from the body of a bee. A whiff of rain batting a new green leaf. I watch him—
What does his ear see? I like the images of hearing in this poem.
hole 4b
Yesterday, I spent some more time with my found poem inspired by a specimen board. It’s slowly coming together, but I have more work (thinking, executing) to do with it.
So far, I’ve cut the words out of the essay, leaving holes where they were. I printed out the words — in sizes according to their importance. I also cut out labels for each word, with the poem position and location. I need to figure out how I’d like to put the “board” on the panels — glue the labels directly on the page along with the pinned words OR make this board on a different page to be placed over the existing text. It would be easier (and less risky) to do it on a separate page, but I like the idea of doing it directly on the panels.
I took some pictures to document my progress:
here’s the board with the words arranged by size with their labelsHere are the 4 panels of the essay. The big space where there are no holes is where the “board” will be placedI was inspired by the Manitoba Museum picture I posted the other day to take this one
Today, I began working on it some more, but it is dark outside today and I mostly rely on natural light to see in my studio space, so no more cutting or drawing or pasting for me today. Maybe it isn’t just the light; after my 8 mile run and hour long hike, I’m tired!
hole 3
Before running this morning, I thought a little more about another hole that is in the preliminary stage. The text involves the phrases, land in the logic of blur and almost and glitching just enough to scramble what’s real and imagined. I think the Cheshire Cat could be inspiration for these lines. How? Visually, I’m not quite sure yet, but I’m struck by the cat’s song at the beginning. The words sound like words, and they’re almost English, but they’re not quite. And the cat appears in varying degrees of visibility: just a mouth, a full body, indented footprints in the dirt.
“Most everyone’s mad here. You may have noticed that I’m not all there myself”
The caterpillar scene was about words and language and As, Es, Is, Os, and Us; the Cheshire Cat scene seems to be about finding your way when you’re lost in a world of nonsense and madness (where madness = beyond/outside of logic, upside down). Yes, locating and being located. Reading and language helps locate us and us locate/orient ourselves. I’ll think some more about how the Cheshire scene might inspire me.
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!
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!
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
7 miles lake superior boardwalk, duluth 37 degrees
An impromptu trip to Duluth with Scott. Our first trip alone since last April when we went to visit my best friend in Iowa. We need more of these. This morning, we ran together above Lake Superior through Leif Erikson park and 3 miles north, then turned around and headed back. As we ran, I told Scott that the theme of the run was water.
10 Water Things
thin sheets of ice on the water! earlier from the window of our room, I had noticed the texture of the water and wondered what was causing the strips of rough water amongst the smooth stretches
water gushing out of a sewer pipe embedded in a ravine
crack crackle crackle the ice sheet butting up against the rocks near shore and cracking — such a cool sound!
drip drip drip water dripping out of some pipe deep in a backyard
the rushing of the creek under the high wooden bridge we ran over
Lake Superior — blue and beautiful, one giant ship, anchored miles from shore
drip drip drip sweat dripping off my face
a pool of water on the floor of the port-a-potty
benches dotted on the bluff, filled with people enjoying the view
almost all of the ice gone — I thought all of it was, until I noticed a few sheets still on the surface as we walked up the steps after the run
While we ran, we talked about our kids and Star Trek and an article Scott had read about fraternal twin girls with the same mother but different fathers. I saw my shadow and started singing Me and my Shadow. Scott asked who had sung it and when I said, I wasn’t sure but I had a version with Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis on my shadows playlist, he said, Sammy Davis Jr. is his shadow? Yikes. And I said, Jesus, how have I never noticed that before. Then a string of associations: I mentioned that they sang it on a tv special which led to a discussion of the Andy Williams Christmas special, then the kids in it, which reminded Scott of the scared kid on the Ray Coniff Christmas Special who hears a creepy story about a little gray lamb read to her by the guy who played Wilbur on Mr. Ed — Scott couldn’t remember the actor’s name. Scott started reminiscing about watching Mr. Ed with his mom on Nick at Nite, which prompted me to start singing the theme song from “The Patty Duke Show” — because, of course I would.
It was a good run, and a great mental victory. As I said to Scott, I’m excited to push myself mentally to run these longer distances. It is a wonderful feeling to successfully push through these tough moments.
a quick note about grids
Yesterday, while driving back from 2 Harbors to our hotel in Duluth we started talking about the show Alone and then what it means to be “off the grid,” Yes — another meaning of grids! How can I play around with this in my exploration of grids?!
