Tag: poem

june 24/SWIM

5 cedar loops (2.5 nokomis loops)
cedar lake open swim
76 degrees

A wonderful swim! No numb fingers, no worries about being too cold or cramping or running into thick thatches of milfoil. A little choppy, but no waves crashing over me. During loop 4 or 5 I stopped to tread water for a minute at Hidden Beach while I adjusted my nose plug. As I kicked my feet, I could feel the vines reaching up, touching my toes and heels.

I don’t recall seeing or feeling any fish. No stray vines that wrapped around my shoulders either. I was routed twice: once by a lifeguard on a kayak who incorrectly (imho) thought I was swimming off course, and once by a swimmer taking a sharper angle than I was. Both times I had to stop my stroke. I didn’t care.

I felt good when I was done, like I could have done another loop or two. I delighted in all of the bubbles surrounding my hands. I wondered how close to the oncoming swimmers one swimmer was going as I tracked his cap, his buoy, and his frothy kick. I stopped several times to adjust my new nose plug.

Earlier today, before the swim, I was reminded of these lines from the wonderful poet/swimmer, Maxine Kumin:

from “Morning Swim”

the beat
rose in the fine thrash of my feet,

rose in the bubbles I put out
slantwise, trailing through my mouth.

My bones drank water; water fell
through all my doors. I was the well

that fed the lake that met my sea.

I didn’t think about these lines as I swam, but I did give a lot of attention to my feet and my kicking legs as I moved. Did I notice a beat? Would I describe the kicking of my feet as a fine thrashing? I like the idea of my bones drinking water. It reminds me of the lines from Alice Oswald I re-memorized last week: giving water the full weight and size of myself in order to imagine it, water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding.

unravel (this morning)

Watching a behind the scenes video for Olivia Rodrigo’s “The Cure” (it’s very cool to see how they created the red thread unraveling effect) and heard these lines: Why can’t you come stitch me up? I suddenly thought about Emily Dickinson and her lines about seams and stitching. Then I thought about Homer’s Penelope and how she wove the funeral shroud for her father all day, then unraveled it each night, to trick her suitors.

tag: aquatic plants

This morning, I’m searching through past entries for mentions of milfoil and tagging the entries with “aquatic plants.” As I read through the entry for 10 july 2025, I found this description:

Sparkle friends, bubbles. an orange glow off to the side, marble legs, ghostly milfoil, blue sky with a few clouds. Above: blue water, below: a light greenish-blue. An interesting effect: looking up blue, down below green.

10 july 2025

It made me think about my chapbook, inklings, and how to talk and write about it. In it, I have brief poems about my sparkle friends, bubbles, ghostly milfoil. In other entries, I’ve written more about marble legs and the orange glow off to the side. Could I expand on inklings through my waterlogged project? A book-length manuscript combining poems with the descriptions of lake experiences that inspired them? Could Mary Oliver’s Long Life be an inspiration for this project?

Here are a few more bits from my reading through milfoil entries that I’d like to remember and play around with for the rest of this week:

1 — rumors whispered by bubbles, spread through nets of ghostly vines (4 july 2025)

Alice Oswald’s nobody and pondering a word, rumor/rumour:

what kind of a rumour is beginning even now
under the waterlid she wonders there must be
hundreds of these broken and dropped-open mouths
sulking and full of silt on the seabed
I know a snorkeller found a bronze warrior once
with the oddest verdigris* expression and maybe
even now a stranger is setting out
onto this disintegrating certainty this water
whatever it is whatever anything is
under these veils and veils of vision
which the light cuts but it remains

unbroken

*verdigris: a green or bluish deposit especially of copper carbonates formed on copper, brass, or bronze surfaces

A fun rumor to make imagine believe in spread: maybe your brain, or some part of your brain, or your breath, or some other part of you that is not (only) you, has secret conversations with the water in which the water reveals the location of the buoy and the part of you that is you but not (only) you guides you towards it. Of course, this only works if you listen, which I have learned to do. Can you?

rumour (OED): 

General talk or hearsay, not based on definite knowledge

General talk or hearsay personified
1600: “Open your eares; for which of you wi’l stop The vent of hearing, when lowd Rumor speaks?”/ W. Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 2 Induct. 2

Clamour, outcry; noise, din. Also: an instance of this

To make a murmuring noise

This last one — to make a murmuring noise — reminds me of the idea of bubbles speaking to me in a soft, faint, bubble-whisper. And now, I’m thinking of a book that I checked out of the library years ago: How to Read Water. Since the ebook is available, I just checked it out again! What are water’s languages?

Back to Alice Oswald’s words and her bronze warrior. Have I written about these particular lines (I’ll check later)? I’m thinking of the ghosts — people who drowned, objects forgotten or carelessly discarded — on the bottom of the lake. What do/can they say to me? Do their messages travel through the pale milfoil that stretches up to the light?

2 — a lake is not as wild as the river or the sea, but it’s wilder than a pool (9 july 2024)

An open water slogan I’ve seen before: no walls. No lane lines or lanes. But, this isn’t Homer’s sea, Alice Oswald’s unfenced purple. There are shores in sight (well, mostly in sight) and only vines, fish, and swan boats to encounter. No sharks or motorized boats or big waves. Does that mean the lake is all routine? Safe, steady, predictable?

from A Swim in Co. Wicklow/ Derek Mahon

Spirits of lake, river
and woodland pond preside
mildly in water never
troubled by wind or tide;
and the quiet suburban pool
is only for the fearful —

no wind-wave energies
where no sea briar grips
and no freak breaker with
the violence of the ages
comes foaming at the mouth
to drown you in its depths.

Lake Nokomis is affected by wind and watermilfoil reaches out to grip me near shore almost every swim. No, it’s not the sea, but it’s also not a suburban pool.

In the lake, you can’t see much, either above or below. Above: water, vague trees, sky, sand. Below: your hand, ghost vines, silver flashes. No bottom, just void, nothing, or something not-seen. 

In an essay about open swimming in the sea, Lauren Groff (love her writing and her awesome Olympic triathlete sister!) writes:

There is danger, a great deal of it. There are sharks that circle her. They wait. Their teeth shine in the murk. Their bodies lazily trail her shadow as it darts over the coral reef. 

Lake Nokomis doesn’t have sharks. It has uncertainty, mystery, a floor only 15-20 feet below scattered with things we can’t see because the water is stirred up, murky. I wonder, which is scarier? Swimming above sharks you can see, or above a nothing that could be anything that you can’t?

swim: 3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
75 degrees

A few hours before open swim started, the sky unzipped and it rained hard. I think that might be the reason the water was so full of vegetation: whole vines, chunks of vines, and some green slimy substance. Gross! Before I realized what was happening, I swam through the slime — bright green, soft but not in a pleasant way. I’m glad my mouth was closed and I had a nose plug in. Hopefully it’s not toxic. In the 10 years I’ve been doing open swim, this is the first time I’ve experienced anything like this slime. I almost stopped after one loop, but decided to swim 2 more.

added, 10 july 2024: Reading back through my description, I wanted to add that I didn’t just swim through one random patch of this green slime. It was everywhere, all around the lake. Starting the first loop, before I realized the slime was there, I recall feeling something on the side of my head and wondering if some of my hair had escaped from my cap. No — I think it was some of the slime. The first loop was the worst, but for every loop, I could see it, often below me, but sometimes near the surface.

Okay, against better judgment — mine and Scott’s — I looked it up and it might be blue-green algae, which could be bad and make me sick. Hopefully not. Probably not. If were blue-green algae I think someone would have seen it and they would have cancelled open swim. Future Sara will let us know. (note: future Sara added an update on the original entry)

3 — working on inklings (1 aug 2025)

Today I’m working on more swimming sonnets and Inklings. Some subjects: water quality, blue-green algae, milfoil, water as the medium, loops at lake nokomis are actually triangles, the color of the water, Alice Oswald seeing self in water, again and more darkly, Mary Oliver and the deepening and quieting of the spirit

note: I should look for the pages document in which I might have drafts of some of the poems that I didn’t use!

4 — some poetry lines (12 june 2020)

O for the rising ozone, the dropping oxygen, for algae overblooming like an omen or an oracle.
(from O/ Claire Wahmanhom

5 — a ramble on lake water testing (14 aug 2025)

a ramble on lake water testing

A revelation just last week. Minneapolis Parks tests the lake water weekly, and testing the water is better than not testing the water. But the slow and rigid system of testing only on Mondays and getting results on Tuesdays (e-coli) and Wednesdays (algae blooms) combined with the fickle changes in quality based on weather and other environmental factors, means the testing is not very accurate for what the conditions are at any given time. On an abstract level, it seems obvious to me that you can’t rely on tests to guarantee safe water, but on an experiential level — that is, being in the water swimming for over an hour at a time roughly 6 times a week for 11 summers — I needed an unquestioned faith in those tests and the park’s ability to let me know when it was/wasn’t safe to swim in order to get in the water.

And, mostly it is safe in the water. And it is clean. I get very irritated when someone who doesn’t know what they’re talking about says to me, eww, how can you swim in that dirty water!? Minneapolis Park workers and volunteers do an amazing job of keeping the water quality high. And this is partly due to their regular testing. But, these tests can’t guarantee anything.

What am I trying to do here? I’m not blaming the parks department; these tests are expensive and it would be difficult to test regularly enough to keep up with the quick shifts in wind and rain and the groundwater problems (like unstable sewer systems) that have existed from the beginning of the lake’s modern shape in the 1920s when workers excavated peat and used it to build up the surrounding neighborhood. Not to mention climate change and erratic weather and an excess of nutrients getting into the water from lawn fertilizers. And people feeding ducks who poop in the water which increases the amount of e-coli. No, I think Minneapolis Parks, especially Minneapolis Aquatics, are amazing.

All of this is complicated and messy with no easy answers. And it’s scary. I’ve been wondering for a few years when it’s going to happen — because it seems inevitable that it will happen — that lakes will no longer be safe to swim in, unfiltered outside air will no longer be safe to breathe. And this is how it happens, I think. Not all of sudden, but slowly. More days with bad test results and beach closures. Or inaccurate test results and water that is pea-soup green and slimy and that might get you sick.

I suppose this last paragraph sounds depressing, and it is, and also it isn’t. I love swimming in lake nokomis, and I would do a tremendous amount to keep swimming in it. Maybe it’s time to figure out what I can do to help keep it safe.

6 — in the still water of a lake, land will try to reclaim water (5 july 2025)

. . . ponds and lakes are far from permanent; rivers will tend to grow naturally with time as they do their own excavating, but the opposite is true for still water. Unless ponds and lakes are given some help, they will all eventually return to land, It starts with algae, then the rushes and other shallow water plants getting a foothold, and this allows sediments to gather, water turns to wet mud, and a reinforcing cycle begins that culminates in the water losing the battle against the encroaching land.

How to Read Water/ Tristan Gooley

june 19/SWIM

3 loops / 1733 strokes
lake nokomis open swim
65 degrees / drizzle
water temp: < 70 degrees

Cold water! I might need to wear my wetsuit for the next swim. I can handle feeling cold at the beginning; it’s the deep cold that I feel in my hands and feet after an hour of swimming that I don’t like. Is it that I have poor circulation? Whatever it is, my right middle finger was starting to go number halfway in. I didn’t want to stop swimming, so I kept wriggling it mid-stroke and trying to punch the water extra hard with that hand. I wonder if it would help if I ran a mile or 2 as a warm-up before the swim?

Cold water aside, it was a great swim. A little drizzle, overcast. Not too many people or boats. Only a few swan boats and one paddle boarder.

I decided to try swimming through the milfoil again at the start. It was still there, but not too bad. The trick: don’t try to swim freestyle through it; don’t try to swim at all. Just glide over it with the occasional breaststroke kick.

I saw a few silver flashes under me near the first orange buoy and one small dead fish, belly-up near the beach. No minnows, but a few bubbles and my sparkle friends — sediment particles coming at me as I swam towards the big beach.

I followed a swimmer — I think it was a woman, but why do I think that? Did I see something other than their orange buoy for a second? — for at least 2 of the loops. I wasn’t trying to follow them — I didn’t want to follow them — but we were going almost the same speed and taking the same trajectory from buoy to buoy. In addition to their orange buoy, I noticed some pink and yellow safety buoys, too. Also noticed at least two people swimming the wrong direction. You are supposed to always keep the buoys to your right, but they had them to their left.

There weren’t any waves, but sometimes the water was choppy, and sometimes it felt like it was being sucked from under me, which makes it harder to feel any power or control in your stroke. Swimming back to the big beach, I often had to breathe every 2 or 4 — always breathing to my right, because the water was high on the left side.

Right before I left for the swim, I reread one of Alice Oswald’s description of swimming in Dart. So good!

Here’s what I read:

Then I jumped in a rush of gold to the head,
through black and cold, red and cold, brown and warm,
giving water the weight and size of myself in order to imagine it,
water with my bones, water with my mouth and my understanding
where my body was in some way a wave to swim in,
one continuous fin from head to tail
I steered through rapids like a canoe,
digging my hands in keeping just ahead of the pace of the river

—

He dives, he shuts himself in a deep soft-bottomed silence
which underwater is all nectarine, nacreous. He lifts
the lid and shuts and lifts and shuts and the sky
jumps in and out of the world he loafs in.
Far off and orange in the glow of it he drifts

What I remembered (but slightly wrong) was this:

open the lid and shut, open the lid and shut

I recited it for a few minutes as I punched through the chop, lifting my head to breathe, then dropping it again to avoid a face full of water.

I heard then saw some military planes taking off. The water was blue-ish gray, the visibility low. At one point, I had a moment of panic when I was so used to the safety buoy belt around my waist that it felt like it wasn’t there. Oh no, did I lose my phone? Nope. I checked and it was still there.

It was a good swim. Again, I swam straight to the buoys even when I didn’t think they were there. I had the occasional flash of panic when I suddenly though, what if I got a cramp or felt faint here, in the middle of the lake?, but those flashes didn’t last long.

june 12/SWIM

1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
69 degrees
wind: 16 mph / gusts: 32 mph

The first Friday morning open swim! Windy. Again, the water temperature was warmer than the air. In the water: ah! Out of the water: brrrrr!! The new way to start the swim: swimming through a patch of thick vegetation. Oh well. I’ll get used to it during open swim. A question: will it be possible to swim around the white buoys on days I don’t have open swim, or will the weeds be too thick? Maybe I can find out by going for a morning swim on Monday?

RJP came with me to the lake. She wasn’t ready to swim across the lake, and said she might try going in for a swim in the beach area. When I returned from my first loop, there she was! We swam together for a few minutes, then I convinced her to swim out to the white buoy. She did, but it freaked her out, especially when she saw the little big of milfoil there. I told her that the milfoil was much, much worse on the other side. We agreed that she might not be ready to swim across the lake this summer. She might try to swim at a pool instead.

It was almost impossible for me to see the buoys heading toward the little beach. Because it was morning, the sun was in my eyes. I kept swimming and didn’t panic when nothing but waves and trees and blue sky were in front of me. Eventually, the flash of the buoy far off to my right. I adjusted it, then swam straight to the third buoy. On the way back, it was easier to see the buoys, but harder to stroke through the water. So much chop! Mostly, I didn’t mind the water being choppy, although it did tire me out.

10 Things

  1. slimy lake floor — covered with milfoil leaves
  2. sparkles on the water surface
  3. ghost vines, 1: reaching up, far enough down in some spot near shore that I could only see the ghostly tips
  4. ghost vines, 2: clustered just below the surface, making it impossible to swim a full freestyle stroke
  5. shaft of light reaching down to the bottom at an angle
  6. 1 2 3 4 breathe right 1 2 3 4 breathe right
  7. 1 2 breathe right 1 2 3 breathe left 1 2 breathe left 1 2 3 breathe right
  8. 2-3 foot waves, rolling at an angle
  9. finishing the swim, standing up, feeling the very cold air
  10. standing in the shallower water (almost up to my shoulders), a small black bird — small enough that I thought it might be a butterfly — flew right past my face

things not noticed or forgotten: sparkle friends, bubbles, silver flashes, the water surface glowing orange because of a reflection from the orange buoy, sailboats, menacing swans, kayakers

SWIMMING 1935/ Peter Davison

SIX SENTENCES FOR ROBERT PENN WARREN

He thrashed his way across the yellow lake,
high in the water streaming past his shoulders
one arm akimbo, then the other, feet
churning like a paddlewheel behind,
and never faltering to whistle, whoop,
spout like a whale, but simply, ceaselessly
trudgening forward to attack the water
the lake had clamped between its bulldozed knees.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

For more than forty years I’ve watched this swimmer
in elements no less unknown than water
tell secrets of the ways we make a poem,
the way of Lilburne Lewis with an ax,
the way of entrance to a woman’s body,
the way a deer can bleed to death in snow.

The swimmer’s ears are sealed from careless words
that picnickers are shouting from the shore:
his eyes squeeze shut, to open only when
he takes a sight upon that destination
to which ambition, force, despair have pointed.

How can he, in the cavern of the lake,
let up his churning enterprise to listen,
since, for the sake of breathing, he must swim
as though the shore ahead did not recede,
as though he did not know we never arrive?

His body keeps the pulse of water music
that swimmers cradle as they force a passage,
forever pressing the receding shore,
crazed one-eyed gods who gape into the sun.

Oh, I like this! The description of the poet as swimmer resonates for me.

That forward motion, hinging on the shoulder,
that steady beat, the tug of arms and legs,
that deafness, purposefulness, isolation
he kept despite the hurl of rushing water—
these were the obsessions of a poet
who celebrates the instincts of his body
religiously as one who greets the sunrise
crosslegged at the entrance to a cave.

Celebrating the instincts of the body. Yes!

The “for Robert Penn Warren” in the epitaph was in another swimming poem I found earlier in the search (Swimming After Thoughts/ Jay Parini). Did RPWarren swim a lot? Yes, and it was deeply connected to his writing/creating process:

The rhythm of Robert Penn Warren’s life now is settled but not sedate. He rises early, fixes his own breakfast, exercises with a set of barbells kept on the living room floor then dons trunks and a plastic cap and makes the short walk to a bower-hidden swimming hole behind his summer home. He swims nearly a mile in the chilly water, sculling along at a steady, rigorous pace. The clay-bottomed pool is surrounded by ferns and high trees, and in the morning—as thin, miasmic bars of sunlight filter down, dappling the water in tones of emerald and gold—it is Edenic. Here, his body aching slightly from the exertion and his mind free from worries, Warren slips into a creative trance. This is the the hour when the images bloom. The swims are never draining, are in fact less taxing than distance running, the exercise he used to stimulate himself when he was younger. As Warren strokes back and forth through the glittering pond, a poem usually flowers. 

Robert Penn Warren Finds His Place to Come To

Continuing to read, I found this cool connection to a writer and their memoir about vision loss that I checked out and read (some of, at least) 6 or more years ago:

Three years ago, Eleanor Clark was partially blinded by the disease macular degeneration. At first, the condition seemed hopeless and was emotionally devastating. Clark had written several books, and in 1965 had won the National Book Award for her non-fiction account of the men and women who work in the French oyster industry, The Oysters of Locmariaquer. Her vision stabilized about six months after she was stricken, allowing her to perceive dim, impressionistic glimpses of the world and return to her writing. Composing sentences by drawing giant Magic Marker letters on blank sheets of newsprint then transcribing these jottings with a large-type typewriter while peering through a lighted magnifying glass, she wrote a book about the fight to regain control of her life: Eye, etc.


RPWarren’s wife is Eleanor Clark, the author of Eye, etc! I recognized the book from the description of her writing process with big black markers. I should return to this book! (I just requested it from my local library!)

may 28/RUN

4.25 miles
falls and back
61 degrees

Cooler this morning, earlier too. My goal was to run at 7. My watch says I started the run at 7:07, which means I left the house around 7. Nice. Wore my old (2021, I think) Sauconys that I stopped wearing because they made by big left toe hurt. At mile 4, my toe started hurting again. Bummer. Back to Brooks again or buying a new pair of cheaper Sauconys.

Ran to the falls without headphones, listening to the cars and the geese returning north. Ran back listening to my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Bad Bunny’s “BAILE INoLVIDABLE” and The Jazz Crusader’s “Young Rabbits” helped me to pick up the pace. I need to create a playlist for pace — maybe mix it in with my beat/metronome experiment: 1 mile with no music or beat / 1 mile with metronome at 172-180 / 1 mile with music.

10 Things

  1. honk honk honk honk geese returning
  2. sparkling water
  3. soft shadows
  4. a runner behind, breathing heavily, closing in, then disappearing — where did they go?
  5. white foam (the falls)
  6. a roller skier — or was it a roller blader?
  7. tufts of symmetrically place ornamental grass mixed with purple blooms near “The Song of Hiawatha”
  8. a woman in a bright yellow windbreaker passing me on a bike, calling out morning!
  9. Mr. Morning! — morning! / good morning!
  10. ending at the big rock that looks like a chair, stepping on it to look down at the oak savanna: green green green

a return

This winter, I replaced many of my regular habits with new ones: (almost) no alcohol; waiting an hour to drink coffee in the morning; more protein, fiber, and iron; instead of sitting at the dining room table for 1+ hours when I woke up reading poems-of-the-day, I watched a brief video then started work on my Holes project; a consistent bedtime routine — ready at 10, asleep by 10:30. I also transformed my workspace. I added a huge cork board to one wall. It’s been fun to mix it up and try new things. I’d like to continue with many of these new things, and I also want to return to a few I’ve shifted away from, especially reading / studying / memorizing other people’s poetry.

In writing this log entry, I decided to visit my favorite poetry sites — poets.org; poetryfoundation, poets.com. On Poetry Foundation I discovered a wonderful podcast series, Wake, Butterfly:

Matsuo Bashō wrote:

Wake, butterfly— 
it’s late, we’ve miles 
to go together.

Poetry magazine presents Wake, Butterfly, a series of intimate portraits that invite listeners to keep creating. 

The final installment, which is the first I’ve encountered and will listen to, is with Marie Howe, one of my favorite poets! I think I’ll listen to it on the deck.

an hour or so later: I listened to it as I mowed the back yard. Usually I listen to the Bob’s Burgers Soundtrack (and I did today, too, after the 15 minute podcast ended). I’ve also listened to podcasts with Joy Harjo and Vs. with Danez Smith and Franny Choi, and several Agatha Christie books.

I love Marie Howe’s voice. Two times I recall hearing it before: when she was interviewed for On Being 6 or 7 years ago (at least) and in her brief discussion and recitation of her poem-in-progress, “Singularity.” In this podcast, she describes living with a big Irish Catholic family and the stories they would tell. She talks about war (WWII and Vietnam) and how she found poetry. Then she offers this:

I think the poem uses our stuff, you know, like it uses the details of my life, but the details are not important. The details are the cup … That hold something you can’t quite see, but you can feel, I hope. Because when it works, I feel something I can’t see. When I was writing a book called What the Living Do, it wasn’t done yet and I didn’t know how it wasn’t done. It had enough pages, it had an arc, I guess. But I was thinking about when I was in high school and. I was living up in the attic of our house with my brother. My brother lived in one room and I lived in another, and my dad would come up there when he was drunk and, um, pester me for hours—the way a drunk person does, wanting attention, wanting something, and it was very difficult. That’s one of the stories in my heart about my younger life, and I thought, “OK, what else is also true about that story?” And I remember actually standing up from my desk in New York here, and turning around, turning my body around 180 degrees and saying, “What else is true?” And I saw my brother Tom, who would come into the room and try to get my dad out, or would come into the room after my dad had left, and I wanted to praise him. So I want to offer you this invitation. Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.

Marie Howe in Wake, Butterfly

Consider one of the stories of your life that feels fixed, and allow yourself to gaze around that story—quite physically—around the room of it or the time of it and to find something else in that story, even if the story is a painful one, to find something else in that story that’s praisable.

I love this idea of taking a fixed story and finding something else in that story to praise. I think I need to sit with this one for a few hours.

Before then, this:

The Maples/ Marie Howe

I ask the stand of maples behind the house,

How should I live my life?

They said, shh shh shh . . .

How should I live, I asked, and the leaves seemed to ripple and gleam.

A bird called from a branch in its own tongue,

And from a branch, across the yard, another bird answered.

A squirrel scrambled up a trunk

then along the length of a branch.

Stand still, I thought,

See how long you can bear that.

Try to stand still, if only for a few moments,

drinking light breathing.

—

This standing still — seeing how long I can bear it — seems like a great thing to do everyday. As part of this: explore different ways to be still. What is it to be still?

The beginning of this poem reminds me of a Mary Oliver poem that I’ve posted on this log several years ago (2 july 2020):

I Go Down To The Shore/ Mary Oliver

I go down to the shore in the morning
and depending on the hour the waves
are rolling in or moving out, 
and I say, oh, I am miserable, 
what shall–
what should I do? And the seas says
in its lovely voice:
Excuse me, I have work to do.

may 26/RUNHIKE

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

  1. the Welcoming Oaks — tall, green
  2. boom boom — construction noise from across the river
  3. clank clank clank — something banging/being banged below the trestle
  4. 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
  5. someone was sitting at the sliding bench
  6. a walker in a bright yellow jacket — were they a rower heading down to the rowing club?
  7. the parkway was buzzing with cars commuting to work
  8. bright headlights from an approaching bike
  9. a lone honk from a goose somewhere below
  10. 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.

Kubla Kahn/ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

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

may 18/RUNHIKE

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

  1. the green looked and felt greener, the brown richer and darker after last night’s rain
  2. birds! so much birdsong everywhere and all the time
  3. a mini-ambulance parked on minnehaha parkway, a Ghostbusters logo painted on the side
  4. 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
  5. a little dog with a big, fluffy tail, shaking their butt as they walked
  6. the view of the lake from the cedar avenue bridge: completely still, the reflection of ascending plane travelling across it
  7. puddles — most of them on the lake trail
  8. stopping at the port-a-potty near the little beach: no toilet paper in either one
  9. 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
  10. 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:

God of Song/ 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 labels
Here are the 4 panels of the essay. The big space where there are no holes is where the “board” will be placed
I 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.

april 28/EYEDOCTOR

Went to an eye doctor this morning that I saw 8 years ago. Back then, early in my processing of my vision loss, I had accepted it, but I didn’t know much about my vision and I was a bit overwhelmed. When I told the doctor I had been diagnosed with Best’s Disease, he said that it didn’t look like Best’s to him; it was a more vague cone dystrophy. He was very clinical in his approach and way of communicating and I thought he was an asshole. Today he was just as clinical, but I didn’t think he was an asshole. He was nice and openly admitted that they don’t know a lot about these eye disorders and he explained that I might have Best’s, and I might not. There were no answers. There was also no acknowledgment of my vision as a strange or serious thing. Only neutral language and talk of returning in a few years to have it checked again. Oh, and the suggestion that my thinning retina looks similar to age-related macular degeneration and might respond to injections in my eyes every two months for the rest of my life. But, those injections won’t improve the retina thinning, just help it not thin anymore, and there haven’t been any studies on eyes like mine so there’s no guarantee that they will work and that means the very expensive procedure definitely won’t be covered by insurance. I left the appointment feeling frustrated and disappointed. Scott and I talked about it as we walked back to the parking garage. I recall saying something like, it sucks to lose my vision, but what makes me okay with it is that it’s so strange and fascinating. I want a doctor to acknowledge that strangeness. After saying that I’m unusual in my perspective and that most people want reassurance that it’s not too strange or severe, Scott added: you want to lean into the freakiness of it. Yes I do. I don’t care that there’s no cure, or that they don’t know much about it. I don’t want to submit to (and pay for) every expensive test they have to exhaust the possibilities of what it could or couldn’t be. I just want an expert to acknowledge the strange and serious and terrible beauty of my vision! But of course, the medical approach to eye care, with its emphasis on fixing and curing and making people “normal” again, doesn’t allow for that.

Here’s a positive thing that came out of that appointment: I advocated for myself! The doctor was about to leave and even though he didn’t ask if I had any questions, I offered one: do you have any resources for living with low vision. He said, oh, of course, that’s a good idea! I’ll give you a referral for a low vision specialist and occupational therapy. Yes. I’m ready to learn more about low vision specialists and their approach to vision and vision loss! (I know that I’ll have to be very clear about what I want and need — and it’s about tips and tricks for navigating and not how to be normal! Advocating for myself her was a big deal; getting information about low vision resources was one of my main reasons for this appointment!

And one more interesting thing, a concept that could be the title of a poem, or at least the primary influence: Variant of Uncertaint Significance. When talking about genetic testing and using it to try to determine what exactly my eye condition is he mentioned it multiple times.

VUS When analysis of a patient’s genome identifies a variant, but it is unclear whether that variant is actually connected to a health condition, the finding is called a variant of uncertain significance (abbreviated VUS). In many cases, these variants are so rare in the population that little information is available about them. Typically, more information is required to determine if the variant is disease related. Such information may include more extensive population data, functional studies, and tracing the variant in other family members who have or do not have the same health condition.

found poems (non Holes)

Before leaving for the ophthalmologist, I returned to a favorite erasure collection, A Wonderful Catastrophe, and read a few poem that offer inspiration:

from A Wonderful Catastrophe/ Colette Love Hilliard

I listen to the leaves
and
try to forget about
that
World within my head

from A Wonderful Catastrophe/ Colette Love Hilliard

I
remembered
loss could be
beautiful

I was hoping to run today, but I didn’t have time before my appointment, my eyes were very dilated for hours and I wouldn’t have been able to be out there in the very BRIGHT sun.

april 24/HIKING

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

  1. glittering water
  2. a small boat, fishing near the end of the trail
  3. the LOUD knocking from a pileated woodpecker
  4. a very big uprooted trunk, almost upright, leaning in the hollow of a living tree
  5. deep, soft sand
  6. the slapping sound of Delia’s water running through the water at the edge of the shore
  7. the soft, thundering thump of Delia’s running feet on the soft dirt
  8. 2 HUGE fluffy white dogs
  9. 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!
  10. 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.

april 23/MAKING

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, side
holes 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.

april 21/RUNHIKE

4.2 miles
shadow falls / monument and back
50 degrees

The earliest run I’ve done in some time. I started just after 8, which would have been a late run five years ago. I want to get back to early morning runs as it gets warmer. Even in 50 degrees, I was sweating. Is it the effort of hot flashes?

I decided to run through the neighbor hood, and past the Church daycare. The kids were outside already and having fun. It sounded like one kid was playing some sort of game where he was blasting his enemies as he ran near the perimeter of the fence — take that! pew pew pew! I admired the river as I ran over the lake street bridge. Blue, calm, inviting reflections. No rowers yet. At the Monument, I could hear Shadow Falls roaring, which only happens after rain, so I stepped off the trail and hiked for a closer look. A runner with a dog passed me at one point, both of them having no problems navigating the narrow and steep trail on the edge of the bluff — good morning! thank you! / hi! sure! I couldn’t see the falls falling but I heard the gentle rushing of water. In a flash, I thought of the poem I wrote last year, especially this part:

Deep in
the autumn
when rain
rarely happens
and nothing
flows down
off the ledge,
listen
for something
other
than water,
listen for
shadows instead.

Shadows of

soldiers,

Shadows of

mothers, 

Shadows of

paved-over creeks.
Shadows that
signal
what else could
be here now
Shadows that dwell
in-between.

Speaking of shadows, I saw mine, down in the ravine, beside me on the path, climbing a tree.

In addition to the runner and the dog, there was another hiker on the trail, and a few different pairs of fast runners near the hill that climbs out of the monument park. I heard the roar of a plane, then saw the flash of silver in the sky. Also heard cheeseburger cheeseburger — I think that’s a carolina wren? Yes! Looking it up, the results said it was a black capped chickadee, but I knew it wasn’t. I found the carolina wren when I remembered the other words people think this song sounds like: tea kettle tea kettle.

This run wasn’t easy — sore legs, unfinished business — but I’m glad I did it. I love being outside in the early-ish morning. Today it was 8, but I’d like to be up and out by 6:30 or 7 this summer.

With summer, and high humidity coming, here’s a poem to help me endure it:

Ode on Humidity/ P. Scott Cunningham

What am I if not what happens
when I try to run away?

Water falls out of me like
an opinion. I’m like a screen
door banging between two rivers.

Dear air, what’s inside me
you’re so desperate to take?

I put on the Atlantic like a sweater.
My head bobs on the surface
of a lake I’m named after.

Where do I belong?
My head asks. My body,
exasperated, answers.

hike: 60 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
with FWA and Delia
63 degrees

Ahhh! A wonderful late morning for a hike. The green continues to creep up the trees. More exploding shadows of new buds. I only recall hearing one dog name: Liza. Liza, don’t you ambush that dog! That dog was Delia, and if there was any ambushing being done, it was by Delia to Liza and her human. Delia loves to get other dogs worked up, which the humans don’t see, or ignore. They assume because Delia is small and cute she is always the one being preyed upon. Ha! Another typical Delia dog encounter: a big talk playing fetch in the water. Delia thought it looked fun and wanted to join in. The big dog barked at her, which seem to translate to: back off! this is my game, and this is my stick!

Often as we’re walking, FWA and I talk about video games or the past or One Piece. Today we wer’re mostly quiet, except for my occasional commentary on this tree or that leaf. I was fine not talking; I liked having the chance to listen to all the different sounds: birds, footsteps, a nearby stream rushing or gushing or swirling in an eddy.

holes

Today, more cutting out black netting holes and layering and mapping them on the paper. For now, I’m pinning them, but I’m wondering if I could fasten them with a button through the center and then glue the word to the button? Would that work on paper? Only one way to find out — I just need more buttons and a needle!

Here’s one version of Holes 1. I wrote numbers directly on the page to indicate how to read it, but I’m not sure if I want to keep them. Also, I kept the cross-hatched hole and the pencil shaded one for now.

the numbered version

another note: the shape of the word is the shape of my working central vision. In theory, I like doing this, but I think the shape looks awkward. I’d prefer a circle instead.

the hole process
island
where
reading
still
possible
waits
as
large
something
that
surrounds
it
grows

another note: I want to make the shade part around the hole process larger
also: instead of individual numbers, I could number the 4 pages/panels and identify the location of the words in a small key

word
island
where
reading
still
possible
waits
as
large
something
that
surrounds
it
grows

panel
1
1
1
2
3
4
4
2
2
4
4
3
`1