Tag: poem

july 17/RUN

4 miles
minnehaha falls and back
82 degrees / dew point: 72
AQI: 62

Hooray, the smoke moved out! Boo: not in time to have open swim this morning. Oh well, went for a run instead. It was hot and humid, but the air wasn’t hazardous and I had (finally) tied my shoes properly so that my feet weren’t sliding around, so I was happy to get outside and move. Mostly running, with some walking. In my approximate fashion, I followed a plan of intentional run/walk segments — 4/1 | 4/1 | 2/1 | 90/30 | 2/1 | 2/2.

10 Things

  1. 2 porta potties at the park with a temporary hand sanitation kiosk beside them — what even is happening here today? update: an art fair
  2. a food truck — orange, yellow, and red — Cafe Cairo
  3. the white foam of the falls
  4. a shopping cart with a few things in it — some sort of electronics — in the middle of the narrow trail below the road
  5. big spots of light in the midst of the shadowed trail, near the cart
  6. a city truck blocking the path that leads down to the locks and dam — a crane in the air
  7. the water in the water fountain was hot — yuck!
  8. a person briskly crossing the parking lot, stopping in time to let me run by
  9. a biker weaving over to the walking trail to avoid the bright sun on the bike path
  10. the tangy — sweet and sour and rotting — smell left behind by the garbage truck

While I moved, I listened to the podcast about microplastics that I mentioned yesterday: Science Vs. Microplastics. I enjoyed it, even as I was a bit skeptical (thanks to another podcast, Maintenance Phase) when they started discussing a rise in/crisis of obesity without interrogating the term at all, like: how have designations for who is considered obese changed? Why is the term so morally and politically charged? But, I decided to let go of my criticisms and just listen. Here are two things I’d like to remember:

1 — we’re not consuming a credit cards worth of microplastics every week, but our endocrine system is being disrupted by chemicals in/on the plastic

The idea that we are consuming a large amount of microplastics (some people have suggested a credit cards worth a week!) doesn’t hold up, but concerns about the chemicals in/on the plastic getting into our bodies are warranted:

WZ … this idea that these chemicals on, in plastics are messing with our hormones. Take me through the science! Firstly what would these – how would they mess with our hormones?
RR They’re tricksters! So they like bust in and they take over this important role from our actual hormones. So – hormones are all about binding to receptors on cells in order to send messages throughout the body. And they’re involved in SO MUCH, they do a lot day to day but also they help these key developmental things happen over the course of our whole lives. So if these chemicals are messing with it – that could be pretty bad. Here’s what Pat Hunt told me – she’s our scientist from the top of the show …
PH I think of it kind of as radio static. You know, your hormones control everything. Your growth, your metabolism, your sleep, your reproduction. And it’s all by these finely tuned signals. And here’s this static in the system.
RR So these endocrine disruptors are the static. They interfere with the hormones by binding to the receptors that hormones are supposed to bind to, and that could mess up those signals.
WZ And we know these chemicals are in our environment, like, we know for sure? They’re in my body right now?
RR Yeahhhh probably, we know that just about everybody is exposed to them

Science Vs. Microplastics, transcript

2 — cut back on plastic consumption, including hair and skin products, but consider the benefits vs risks of using products that have plastic (like canned beans, which have plastic in the lining)

I don’t know, the thing is, like, the thing is with this topic that’s so frustrating, I still, even though I’ve been working on this for a couple months, and I’ve had these conversations with scientists who are like, Oh, I don’t I don’t buy canned food if I can help it. Every time I go to the grocery store, I stock up on my canned beans. I can’t quit it. And it’s like I think the problem is like without more specific information about how bad is it. What is my risk? I’m not able to weigh the risks of the plastics getting into my canned beans against the benefits of canned beans. I know the benefits: They’re cheap, healthy, easy. I like em. So for right now I’m kind of assuming the b

Science Vs. Microplastics, transcript

This episode has 84 footnotes — a great resource for more words and understandings about plastic. Here’s a disturbing passage:

The growth of plastics production in the past 65 years has substantially outpaced any other manufactured material. The same properties that make plastics so versatile in innumerable applications—durability and resistance to degradation—make these materials difficult or impossible for nature to assimilate. Thus, without a well-designed and tailor-made management strategy for end-of-life plastics, humans are conducting a singular uncontrolled experiment on a global scale, in which billions of metric tons of material will accumulate across all major terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems on the planet. 

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

And this:

plastics’ largest market is packaging, an application whose growth was accelerated by a global shift from reusable to single-use containers. As a result, the share of plastics in municipal solid waste (by mass) increased from less than 1% in 1960 to more than 10% by 2005 in middle- and high-income countries

Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made

A lot to take in and think about — or try not to think about. Not as a way to be absolved or to deny accountability and responsibility, but as a way to endure. Sometimes thinking about the amount of waste that accumulates every year month week day second is too much. I imagine a door to a room where that information exists and I shut it. Don’t want to dwell in there, I might say to someone — the wind, a tree, Scott. update: I usually shut the door when I’m in a big store with too much plastic stuff, like IKEA.

do you ever feel like a plastic bag?

1 — American Beauty

1999

I don’t think I really liked this movie — Kevin Spacey was a terrible creep, but I often think of this scene where I see a plastic bag dancing in the wind.

2 — Firework/ Katy Perry

Do you ever feel/like a plastic bag/drifting through the wind/wanting to start again?

I can’t remember why I did it, but I put this song on one of my first playlists when I started running in 2011. Anytime I hear it, I think of that wonderful time when my life opened up and I became a runner.

3 — Tony Hoagland

There is No Word/ Tony Hoagland

There isn’t a word for walking out of the grocery store
with a gallon jug of milk in a plastic sack
that should have been bagged in double layers

—so that before you are even out the door
you feel the weight of the jug dragging
the bag down, stretching the thin

plastic handles longer and longer
and you know it’s only a matter of time until
bottom suddenly splits.

There is no single, unimpeachable word
for that vague sensation of something
moving away from you

as it exceeds its elastic capacity
—which is too bad, because that is the word
I would like to use to describe standing on the street

chatting with an old friend
as the awareness grows in me that he is
no longer a friend, but only an acquaintance,

a person with whom I never made the effort—
until this moment, when as we say goodbye
I think we share a feeling of relief,

a recognition that we have reached
the end of a pretense,
though to tell the truth

what I already am thinking about
is my gratitude for language—
how it will stretch just so much and no farther;

how there are some holes it will not cover up;
how it will move, if not inside, then
around the circumference of almost anything—

how, over the years, it has given me
back all the hours and days, all the
plodding love and faith, all the

misunderstandings and secrets
I have willingly poured into it.

Ah, I love Tony Hoagland’s poetry. He often writes about swimming — I’ve memorized 2 of his water poems and recite themwhile I’m swimming around the lake, How sad it was that he died of cancer a few years ago!

4 — a plastic bag exhibit in Germany

A German exhibition documents the history of plastic bags, showcasing their evolution from a culture of convenience and design, opposed to the environmental nuisance they have become today.

The German Museum for Everyday Culture has dedicated a special exhibition to the history and design of plastic bags. ‘Adieu Plastiktüte!’ (Goodbye, Plastic Bag!) featuring a collection of more than 50,000 plastic bags from the last 50 years, looks back at the history and evolution of this innovation of convenience. Showcasing various designs, the exhibition illustrates how they were considered attractive advertising spaces, communicating the individuality of both brands and consumers. Though out of style these days, plastic bags were once a rocking cultural trend.

the humble plastic bag

AQI (3:35pm): 61

july 12/SWIM

1 loop
lake nokomis open swim
85 degrees
water temp: 81 degrees*

*measured on 6 july, so probably warmer today, almost a week later

Today the goal was to take it easy on my shoulder. It had been feeling better by the end of this week, but I’m thinking about my bigger goal for the summer: swimming one day (24 collective hours) in august, so I didn’t want to overdo it. Just past the first orange buoy, my shoulder began to ache a little and then ached, dully, for the rest of the loop. I think I can still swim; I just need to do less as I rehab it — strengthening exercises + RICEing it — well, mostly IIcing it: icing and Ibuprofen. It’s a bummer that my shoulder still hurts, especially since I was looking forward to July being a big month of swimming, but I’m not too upset. It could be a chance to approach my open swims differently, maybe spend more time going slow or stopping in the middle of the lake!

When Scott and I arrived at the lake, I noticed all the glittering on the surface. My first thought: wow, that looks so cool. My second thought: all that glitter means the surface is not smooth and that means the water is choppy. And it was. Also, warm — so warm! I liked the choppiness. It wasn’t rough — no big waves were crashing into me. Instead it was constant — wave after wave after wave, making me rock from side to side.

It was fitting that there were waves, because I’m working on revising/condensing a poem about waves (literal waves at open swim and waves of grief after my mom died). Hopefully today’s swim can serve as inspiration.

10 Wave Things

  1. stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 1: difficult to see anything, like my hands or bubbles or fish
  2. stirred-up water below the surface with lots of sediment floating in front of me, 2: water color was a mix between pea soup green and lentil dahl yellow
  3. stirred-up water above the surface, making it difficult to see buoys
  4. the surface: all glittered up
  5. no white-caps, but lots of spray flying high in the air
  6. an increased amount of breaststroke by other swimmers
  7. more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my right
  8. more breathing on one side, 1: in the first half of the loop, I breathed mostly to my left
  9. the yellow safety buoy tethered to my torso was bobbing vigorously
  10. I did not feel like I was fighting the water, but that it was holding me and reminding me it was there

Do I remember the sound of waves? No, I don’t recall the sloshing sound of the water as it rushed over my ears. I bet it was loud.

Found this poem when I searched, “waves” on poets.org. It’s a golden shovel poem, where the last word in each line comes from a different poem. The original golden shovel was Terrence Hayes creating a poem that ended each line with words from Gwendolyn Brooks’ “We Real Cool.”

[Waves rolling up] ii. / Kimiko Hahn

After Tada Chimako

If I don’t taste the complicated waves—
if I only see the rolling,
only hear the roiling up
or smell those waves
—then I will tumble
head over
stance. Then I spring
up, drenched in partisan sand.

I’d like to try something like this with my waves poem to suggest another meaning. I could either use words from a poem about grief or moving water. For grief, maybe Emily Dickinson, for water, Niedecker or Oswald? Maybe one of my favorites?

several hours later: 6:04 / 90 degrees, feels like 94

a reminder when experimenting with my wave poem: don’t try to force it — find some poems I like about waves or grief and see what happens

Sitting under my crab apple tree, where it is much cooler than on the deck, I reread an interview with Alice Oswald in the winter 2026 Paris Review. I’ve posted bits from it already. Today, since I’ve been thinking about spiriti visivi and insects, I wanted to post these lines:

1

. . . the contracts you make with the natural world that allow you to be in a place, the feeling of living somewhere you don’t own.

(But don’t you own the house?)

Yes, but it’s very clear that it’s really the insects who own it, and the river that comes right up to the garden. The rain comes through the ceiling. It’s interesting, the way the dead and the natural world are sort of exchangeable. That might sound theoretical, but ancient Greek lament, and lament from everywhere, has always used birds and plants as intermediaries for communicating with the dead. And I feel, when I’m here, a deference toward my uncle and my father, who once looked after the house, that’s kind of interchangeable with the deference I might feel toward a bird or an insent.

2

[after discussing the sound that flies and grasshoppers make, the interviewer asks: Is it the choral sound that you love?]

And the fact that they don’t speak with their mouths. I love the way insects speak with their wings or legs. For a

Interview with Alice Oswald

After the interview were 4 new poems from AO, including this one about the fly. 3 fly poets I immediately think of: Emily Dickinson, Aracelis Girmay, and Alice Oswald.

Fly-play/ Alice Oswald

Enter a fly
no sooner nowhere than here
wiping her rear-view eye and
tapping the world
with one foreleg

What is it you wish for Fly?

She merely glitters to me of silence
tapping . . . tapping the world
walks backward . . . refers me to her myth
and exits . . .

The scene is summer

Enter a yellow curtain:

One servant dressed simply as the sun
going in and out with a beam of dust
one fly . . .

WHAT IS YOU WISH FOR FLY?

She merely rotates for me her mask
as if to bring something
born in one world back in another

Then round and round with her weak voice
pleading that her one belonging is her life
which lasts but a day . . .

But you know full well, Fly, it takes
400 insect years for me to lift my ahnd
and by the time it lands
I too will be mute, I too will be you

glitter / silence / tapping
refers me to her myth? what is the myth of the fly?

Here’s another fly poem from AO: Flies

july 2/SWIM

3 loops
lake nokomis open swim
83 degrees

What a wonderful night for a swim! The first loop was smooth and fast. I felt like a boat, powering through the water, my feet little rudders. I’m not sure what happened during the second loop, but it was much tougher. Water trying to pull me down, 2+ foot waves crashing over me. Did the wind pick up? Whatever happened had stopped by the third loop. Calm again.

note: I’m writing this list the next morning because I didn’t have time last night.

10 Things

  1. blueish green water
  2. clear, and bigger than usual, bubbles being made by my hands — translucent
  3. mostly the light was not too bright, until it was — at one spot, not far after rounding buoy 3, light suddenly illuminated the water in front of me and I saw a thin strand of something — hair? — floating in front of me
  4. a flash of silvery white just below me — a fish?!
  5. my reoccurring optical illusion: swimming back towards the big beach, I kept thinking I was seeing the silhouette of a lifeguard on a kayak — it was there, out of the corner of my eye, but when I passed it, it was gone — was a lifeguard there, or something else that I was imagining was a lifeguard — another swimmer? the tree line? a far off boat?
  6. before open swim began, encountering a guy who called out, doesn’t this water feel great! Then he started singing a Backstreet Boys song — I don’t think it was “I want it that way” but I can’t remember
  7. nearing a far buoy, experiencing that strange effect of the buoy always appearing far away, and me feeling like I’m swimming in place
  8. passing a swimmer doing breaststroke, experiencing that irritating effect of the swimmer seeming to speed up and me feeling like it’s taking forever to pass them
  9. maybe because of the choppy water or the light making it hard for them to sight the buoys, several swimmers were doing a mix of freestyle and breaststroke — a few strokes of freestyle, then stopping to look, then a burst of breaststroke, then freestyle again
  10. as is often the case, the water was extra turbulent and more crowded around the final buoy — a cluster of swimmers nearing it at the same time*

*I like to refer to this section of the swim as Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. Mostly, I find it fun.

Earlier in the afternoon I printed out and posted the draft of a poem I wrote about 5 years ago that doesn’t quite work . . .yet. The current title: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. It’s about the joy I find in fighting the “waves” and the choppy water as I swim across and around the lake. The poem is up on my big cork board and I’m planning to gather together and post all of its references: facts about the lake, lines of poetry, the significance of particular words, etc. I don’t want to overwork the poem, but I do want to give a lot of attention to making it work. As I swam through the rougher water in my second loop, I thought about the poem and the fun I have in punching the waves and battling the spray. I prefer the waves crashing into me over the waves sucking me down. The former requires strong shoulders; the latter demands frantic kicks.

The overall vibe of last night’s swim was strong and steady. Stroke after stroke after stroke with little kicks beginning with my hips. 1 2 3 4 5 breathe right and 1 2 3 breathe left and 1 2 3 4 5 6 breathe right and 1 2 3 4 breathe left. My feet, relaxed, shifting slightly to adjust my direction.

laked words / laked forms

written earlier in the day: Yesterday, while writing about an podcast interview with Moheb Soliman, I posed these questions, How do rivering words look different from laked ones? What else do lakes do, besides pooling? I was reminded of that question, when I encountered what I wrote on 18 august 2025:

Later in her process notes, Hartigan describes the three forms she uses in her book:

The forms I arrived at became a way of moving with different paces in time, moving in primarily three different forms/paces: hour entries which are prose-like and which move at a slower loosely-shadowed mental pace that allows for sentences; second entries which are like little insect legs notching forward with alliteration and gap-jumping nonlinear narratives; and a variety of lyrics that often use the slash as an entrance. They work together and of course the forms mix and disrupt their own boundaries too. The slash was important to my mental movement. 

Very cool. I’m thinking about my own forms and how to express different modes of swimming in the lake. Inklings, which is the chapbook I’m working on, are short 5 syllable, 5 line, flash encounters with the lake. Brief glimpses, approximations, things witnessed in the midst of motion. Then I have some shortened sonnets — 5 syllable 14 line poems represent more sustained encounters. What other form to use, and what does it represent?

—

I imagine inklings as changing form slightly (line length, syllable count) depending on the type of water. On and in the lake, my inklings are 5 lines / 5 syllables because that is my stroke/breath pattern. It is different in a pool (I switch up my strokes more), and, if I swam in the sea, I imagine it would be different, too: shorter — 2 or 3 strokes, then a breath, as I navigated the choppier water.

The inklings in my chapbook aren’t just about a type of water, but are specific to one body of water, Lake Nokomis, and one organized activity in that water, open water swim club. I would like to gather details about open swim and the lake for my further reflections on my inklings.

Another thought that I don’t want to forget that I had while reading my entry from 18 aug: For this year’s “Swimming One Day in August” challenge (24 non-consecutive hours of swimming during the month of August, partly inspired by M Oliver’s poem of the same name), I want to return to time and clocks and being inspired by Endi Bogue Hartigan and on orchid o clock.

note: As I work on this, I am overwhelmed. I have so many ideas, so many experiments to try. It feels like I should write something BIG, but there’s too much to read to write to do. I’ve been trying Annie Dillard’s bird by bird method: slowly archiving one thing then another thing then another (see my How To Be project for my ongoing efforts). I think what I’d like to do now is something (fairly) straightforward: 1. Collect all of my summer/swimming log entries in one document 2. Do a rough edit (cut out non-swim and non-water bits) 3. Do another rough edit and another.

more HOMES / Moheb Soliman

walking a beach : moheb soliman

I’ve also typed in the text without the proper spacing, which is too fiddly to do on wordpress:

Walking a beach a drive away from Oswego

Algae break water webs of puce the shoreline lipstick left by
the lake on lovesick miles of napkin good-bye Fudgies snap your towels
of assy sand make the kids chase down the wrappers I’ll replant their
gutted hawthorn and piss off the beach fire from the driftwood
it’s time we got back to work consummate vacation fuck the lake
no love to salvage memories of drinking each other completely
empty of their taste better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating
with anything precious fenced the lifestyle we desired here
the zoos of microenvironments the patios crawling out of the mudflats with
the frogbit floating in impenetrable mats the glass pole dance of dusk
slick stage left just hold your liquor and keep down the zebra mussel-
sucking noise when the speckled black other shoe drops just look away
vacate the promises

2

As I read this poem, and some others in the collection, I thought about something else Soliman said in their interview:

And as far as the writing and the editing, you know, I just am such a convoluted writer sometimes and like I feel like a really sometimes poetry from your writing is like a problem solving, you know, like, how do you just stack this house of cards up enough to sit and just back away before it falls down?

Just enough to not collapse. This idea reminds me of a game I play with myself: how much data/information do I need to “see” something? The version of this game that I play in the water is: how many times do I need to sight the orange or green buoys in order to stay on course? The answer: not many! I’d like to play this game on land, with words. How little can I write/say and still communicate how/what I’m seeing or feeling or experiencing? Beyond a game, as my vision continues to decline (the end point: no more central vision) and my ability to read decreases, I must rely on fewer words. I want my poetry to reflect that economy.

experiment: Take an existing poem that I’ve written and try to take as much out of as I can without it losing its meaning. I think I’ll start with a favorite poem that has never quite worked: Look pal, this isn’t the sea. A further thought: put the poem on my board, along with all of my thoughts, log entries, poems/lines from others about it. Gather as much information as possible, put it on the board, then condense it. Condense!

Poet’s work/ LORINE NIEDECKER

Grandfather   
   advised me:
         Learn a trade

I learned
   to sit at desk
         and condense

No layoff
   from this
         condensery

What a master of condensery L Niedecker was!

2 — better to forget the acrid pics of summers luxuriating
with anything precious fenced

acrid pics — looked up acrid to double-check meaning: “strong, sharp, unpleasantly biting smell” and “bitter in language/feeling” — tried to remember, did polaroids smell? Yes, a distinctive warm, chemical smell. Is his use of acrid here a deliberate conjuring of polaroids? I grew up with polaroids, and using the word acrid offers a much more visceral reader response than just pics or pictures. And acrid as bitter — some regret over what happened/didn’t happen on those summer trips, over not being on vacation anymore?

anything precious fenced — here I’m thinking of Alice Oswald’s description of the sea as unfenced in Nobody: “If you want to imagine the colour of Odysseus’ gown you will have to swim out into the unfenced place, the place not of definitions but of affirmations. ” And, I’m thinking about lucille clifton’s “unfenced is” in “All Praises.”

I’m also thinking about Soliman’s own critical (as in, seemingly negative) use of the word “precious” in his interview:

I was just doing a lot of, like, site, I don’t know if the word would be site-specific writing, you know, just writing on the go, you know, like showing up and wanting to capture a place and not feeling too precious about capturing it because really being there was so, like, sublime, you know, it was just so amazing and seeing such, like, really beautiful hidden pockets of the Midwest and, you know, these, like, oceanic spaces, you know, where you wouldn’t think, you know, Michigan would offer that or something.

and

A lot of these poems are these justified text blocks with like, internal line breaks. And a lot of them started as lineated poems. Uh, and I just liked the ones that weren’t like that more because I felt like line breaks were too precious sometimes.

Just in poetry, not just mine, but sometimes I just kind of bristle at line breaks, you know? Um, they make, yeah, sometimes they make poems feel too precious. And I wanted this to have a bit more of a, like, robustness, you know? That they’re, they kind of just sit there on the page, you know, like a paragraph, you know?

june 30/RUNSWIM

run: 3.25 miles
2 trails +
75 degrees
humidity: 77% / dew point: 68

Hot! And not too terrible. Yesterday morning, walking to a coffee shop in the heat and humidity I felt like I struggled to breathe but today, when it’s almost as hot, I didn’t struggle at all1. As I ran above, I listened to my “Doin’ Time” playlist. Below, I listened to water trickling out of the sewer pipes and the occasional voice and the cars driving by. I noticed puddles and some wet dirt (it briefly rained earlier this morning). I thought about how fast the summer is going by and if I encounter any coyotes or the den that I’ve seen signs about.

No rowers or roller skiers or regulars. No poetry or flashes of inspiration. And that was fine with me. I was relaxed and free and happy to feel how strong my legs and back are, thanks to several weeks of solid swims.

A week or so ago, I discovered Moheb Soliman’s Homes, a collection of poems about the Great Lakes. I requested it from my local library and picked it up on Sunday. Here’s one of the first poems:

from Homes

At Point Pelee–Leamington,
Sandusky–Cedar Point / Moheb Soliman

This beach has more than two sides
more than the lake and the parking lotmand cultivated and sandwiches farms
and kiosked
aside it
and defies properties
I’ve peed
behind every sorta flora
scared away all kinda fauna
I crossed the lines
of r&r
to bridge the banks of main and head streets and waters
I tried myself
had myself
washed ashore to hamlets
faceup
the whole time
my figure
a petty viaduct only shallow beach could love
I swam each day I changed
myself in the Corolla
and diaspored
footfalls of mollusky sand all over the motel districts of Canuck Sanduskys
where in touch more
with
nature’s what they are
more
than
amusement
or
national park
and
lark
Cedar Point and the
tip
this land does not come to
two
states
means ends
nations
and defies commodity
recreation’s and conservation’s
this place
has
more
than
the
all-night
or
primitive drive-thru and the camping
this whole time my body held in feet
of surf
not diverting to the water
or exiting
but bridges fail all the time nothing new
bridges are being built and rebult
all over these lakes
adding sides to
no end
defying the accounts of travelers
homing in
pointing out
we came in off the water
not really having been
out there
you come out of the water turn right
around get back in there
I’m going out to the water
never really having left there

I wasn’t sure how to keep the spacing with my typing, so I took a screen shot of the page (see above). I’d like to hear the poet read one of these poems to get a better sense of how to understand their spaces….I found them reading it!

Does this help? I’ll hav to listen a few more times, and read more of the poems in this collection. I should also watch this:

So much to think about in this short prose poem. Today, if I can remember as I am battling the wind and the waves, I’d like to think about these lines:

but bridges fail all the time nothing new
bridges are being built and rebult
all over these lakes

There are literal bridges and metaphorical bridges and metaphor as bridge. I want to think about the bridges in the ending lines:

we came in off of the water
you come out of the water
I’m going out to the water / never having really left there

swim: 2 loops
lake nokomis open swim
90 degrees

It didn’t seem windy but, wow, the water was wild. Very choppy, with an undertow and lots of waves. Mostly I breathed on my right side and did as much punching of the water as stroking. Rounding the buoy during the second loop, a lifeguard approached and called out, we need to evacuate the water! head to the beach! I wasn’t sure what was happening, but I didn’t ask, just swam to the beach. A few minutes later, we all heard a lifeguard tell everyone that the open swim course was just for open swimmers. Then another lifeguard (or was it the same one?) call out, there was a distressed swimmer, but we were able to help them. I’m not surprised that someone was distressed out there; it was rough. I didn’t mind how rough it was, but I didn’t want to blow out my shoulder with another loop. So I stopped after two. I told Scott that June is for being cautious as you build up your muscles, but July is for pushing yourself to keep going. July doesn’t start until tomorrow, so I’m fine with stopping tonight.

I had wanted to think about bridges and being on the water or in the water or out at the water, but I was too distracted by the waves and the need to give attention to breathing and not swallowing water and delighting in the fun of fighting the waves and winning.

A question to ponder: will this be the week (the month?) of choppy water? I don’t mind having a few choppy days, but I hope the water calms down.

  1. Just checked and the humidity was worse yesterday, 89%, so I guess that could have been why it was harder. ↩︎

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

april 10/RUN

2.8 miles
2 trails
50 degrees

Sun and shadows and spring air. Also: chirping birds, bare earth, buds. A beautiful afternoon for a run, after a morning having fun making a grid and reading an essay backwards and thinking about threads and strings and scotomas.

The river was a blueish-gray, the sky was empty of clouds. Now, sitting at my dining room table, I hear cardinals, but out near the gorge I think it was wrens, or could it have been sparrows? Oh — at least one pileated woodpecker and the feebee of a chickadee.

tmi note for marathon-training Sara: the run was made difficult by unfinished business. I need to do more work on figuring this problem out!

My favorite image: Walking and running back through the neighborhood, I noticed (and not for the first time) a delightful maple tree. A straight and solid trunk then 2 thick branches rising out of it. One of them slanted only slightly to the side, the other bent midway up, looking almost like a knee. Yes! This tree offers a classic example of the tree looking like an upside down person, their head, shoulders buried in the dirt, only their torso and crotch and legs sticking out of the ground. Oh, why didn’t I bring my phone today so I could take a picture of it?! I’ll have to go back. It’s on 35th street between 46th and 45th avenue. I wonder, will anyone else be able to see what I see in a picture of it? when standing beside the tree?

grids and lines and strings and threads

note: I’m starting this in the morning just after a big breakfast. I’m listening to early The Kinks, “Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire” from 1969 and “The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society” from 1968. I love early The Kinks!

Continuing a discussion I began yesterday but wasn’t able to continue:

I found this quote from Chuck Close about why he used the grid method:

Almost every decision I’ve made as an artist is an outcome
of my particular learning disorders. I’m overwhelmed by
the whole. How do you make a big head? How do you make
a nose? I’m not sure! But by breaking the image down into
small units, I make each decision into a bite-size decision.
I don’t have to reinvent the wheel every day. It’s an on-
going process. The system liberates and allows for intuition.

National Gallery of Art

Breaking the image down into small units. Working in small units and seeing fine detail — those are functions of central vision. Peripheral vision is the big picture, that big head, those whole noses. Most of what I see these days is big picture — whole, fuzzy forms. The central vision I have is very small and seems to be very near the center of my central vision. How big is the one grid — that tiny island surrounded by gray water — that allows me to see anything as more than an almost form? The only detail I can really see (I think?) is a word in small print.

Just gave about an hour to creating the grid for the bigger version of my scotoma. In the “normal” sized one, each grid is .25 x .25. In this grid, it’s .8 x .8. I’m listening to a 1970 album by The Kinks, “Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One.”

The grid is fiddly and involves a lot of measuring. It is slow, repetitive work. As I measured and drew line after line, I thought about how this work might open me up to new ideas and that this process by me, Sara-barely-not-blind, is part of the work I am creating. It is not only the finished product of a visual poem, but all of the labor that went into it that makes the meaning. Much of that work is invisible (although I’m documenting it), but it colors and haunts and shapes what I am trying to communicate.

2 grids, a bigger one drawn with pencil on cardboard, a smaller one made from ink with by blind spot drawn on it
2 grids and a blind spot

Now, it’s time to use the grid to create a super-sized scotoma, and then, to play around with different materials for laying the scotoma over the words of Holes 5b! Possible materials: trace the scotoma directly onto the paper and then color it in. Cut out different types of plastic — ziploc? a grocery bag? cling wrap? What about a very, very small grid made out of black thread? Fiddly, but fun!

Before I return to that, I need a break, so I’ll return to my close reading of a book review on memoirs by daughters about their fraught relationships with their mothers. I picked this selection from the NYer because: it’s a book review, and I love book reviews!; it uses a lot of language about connections and separations; and it uses hole, thread, and line.

My close reading = start with the last paragraph of the essay, then the second to last, then the third to last, etc. So, backwards. It’s a strange way of reading, being thrown into ideas that are presented as familiar, but haven’t been introduced yet. Slowly, the more I read, the more sense it makes.

Misfits / The Kinks (1978)

I started my close reading of the NYer book review, What to Make of the Mother Who Made You/Rebecca Mead, yesterday afternoon while drinking a surprisingly good NA beer at Arbeiter. Here’s a list of words/phrases I found during that reading, along with my additional words from today’s reading:

  • when the facts are unbearable, it’s natural to escape into
  • coordinates
  • accomodate
  • (to) make sense to myself
  • disorientation
  • knowledge
  • ghost
  • humbled
  • should be
  • to write one’s way out of
  • shedding
  • knotted
  • threads
  • familiar
  • searching
  • hunt it down like prey
  • in the other room
  • readers
  • almost blind
  • estranged
  • against
  • reframing
  • obedience
  • en chant ment
  • elsewhere
  • world made whole again
  • inheritances
  • family
  • moves
  • opens
  • traces
  • artificially formed
  • origins
  • sober
  • square
  • closed
  • door
  • discomfort
  • feelings
  • slither
  • seize d
  • character
  • disembowel eat
  • spotted
  • rupture
  • alone
  • defiance
  • entanglements
  • kinship
  • matriarch
  • loom
  • shadows and absences
  • ordinariness tempo
  • lens
  • locating
  • mess ily
  • tending
  • cancer
  • seen
  • naked
  • con found ing
  • pro CLAIM
  • think about
  • offspring
  • runs through
  • nothing, subdued
  • account
  • assumes command
  • between
  • emerge
  • maintain ed distance
  • light
  • center
  • entwined
  • depend
  • reckon

Again, these words speak to a strained relationship between daughter and mother. I’m thinking that my mother here is written language and the words on a page to be read with failing/failed eyes. A distant mother, a daughter uncertain as to how to reconnect (or to keep the connection), or even if she wants to stay connected.

In the midst of all of this, I’m also wanting to get more inspiration from a collection of erasure poems that I discovered last fall and have been hugely influenced by: a wonderful catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard. Here’s one of her found poems that uses lines:

a poem from a wonderful catastrophe/ colette love hilliard

I like how the lines are slanted and all coming out of one source which resembles the sun. I might try having lines of black thread emerging from a center hole in a 4 panel poem. The threads just barely covering all of the words, the words of the poem printed on circles attached (pinned?, sewn?) on top of the strings. I want to try that now! Can I do that AND make my super-sized scotoma?

a few minutes later: I will do the scotoma tomorrow; the sun is too bright in the room for me to see the grid! And, before I can try out the black threads, I need to remap Holes 4. So, tomorrow for both of these.

RJP just stopped by and when I showed her what I was working on, she reminded me about Coraline and her other mother who lives on the other side of the door (here, instead of Alice’s hole, there is Coraline’s door). The other mother has buttons for eyes which reminded RJP of the holes I traced on my Holes 5. So cool! I could try adding buttons to my Holes 6, which is using a text about mothers and daughters!

summary of the day: A lot of great ideas, a few plans, a little making.

David Bowie Essentials — the last song heard, “Suffragette City”

april 2/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees / steady drizzle

The forecast, rain all day, but when I looked out my window it didn’t seem too bad. No ice, above freezing, so I decided to go for a run, which was an excellent decision. I was bundled up and barely felt the rain — well, I guess I felt my soaked socks and cold legs (through my running tights), but I didn’t care. It was wonderful to be outside, mostly alone, only a few other walkers and runners joining me.

Because of the rain, I was wearing an old pair of Saucony’s (3 or more years old?) and didn’t run too fast. That helped me stay relaxed and able to keep going for longer. Maybe I should train some more in these shoes and save my new ones for faster runs, races, and until I’m trained up to run longer?Everything was wet. My favorite wet thing was the slick mirror Godfrey Boulevard made from the rain and new asphalt. Very cool! I saw my running self, trees, and sky and I thought about the upside down world where they all lived.

10 Things

  1. the creek water falling fast over the limestone ledge on the bridge at the top of the falls
  2. the deep puddle I stepped in that I thought was only a reflection of light on the trail
  3. drip drip drip of water off the brim of my cap
  4. taking off my hood, folding the flaps of my hat, and hearing the steady patter of rain
  5. in through the nose 2 3 / out through the mouth 2 — 123/12
  6. a steady, almost invisible rain with the occasional big drop — plain rain or freezing rain?
  7. the lid of the toilet in the porta potty was wedged behind a bar and couldn’t be closed
  8. empty benches / mostly empty parking lots
  9. bright headlights cutting through the trees on the other side of the ravine
  10. running by the Horace Cleveland Overlook parking lot and seeing an animal care truck (another name for animal control?) — is there a wolf or a coyote or a bear in the gorge — it’s always possible; they’ve all been spotted before

worms after the rain

It’s raining now, but sometime later today or tomorrow or the next day, it will stop and the worms will appear on the sidewalk. Here’s a poem I found about those worms:

Advice/ Dan Gerber

You know how, after it rains,
my father told me one August afternoon
when I struggled with something
hurtful my best friend had said,
how worms come out and
crawl all over the sidewalk
and it stays a big mess
a long time after it’s over
if you step on them?

Leave them alone,
he went on to say,
after clearing his throat,
and when the rain stops,
they crawl back into the ground.

march 20/RUNGETOUTICE

5.5 miles
the flats and back
55 degrees

Happy first day of Spring! Many years it still feels like winter, but today it was SPRING! If I didn’t have to jump over a lumps of snow I wouldn’t have remembered it snowed almost a foot less than a week ago. Wonderful weather for a run — sun and not too much wind. I wore shorts, a short sleeved shirt and a lightweight pullover which I took off right before I turned around. For half the run, bare arms and bare legs!

a regular: Daddy Long Legs! As I ran back south, he greeted me, Hello again! Does he remember me from past years, or did he think he’d already seen me once today? (he’s done that before.) I’m choosing the believe he remembers me. I wonder if he has a name for me, like I do for him?

The ice on the surface of the river has melted. Down in the flats I was able to get close — only feet away — from the surface: some foam floating on the water moving slowly south.

holes

As I told RJP, I’ve hit the point in the process of these poems where I’m beginning to doubt myself and what I’m doing. Part of it, I explained to her, is because I dwell in the almost and struggle to find how to execute the final bit and/or give it the “polish” it needs. I’m not giving up. Instead, I’m trying a different approach: cut-outs. Would ths work better if the words were cut-out — a way to isolate them — instead of encased in holes? Can I do both? What if I had some of the words encased in the holes and some cut-out? Would that make it a little less complicated and less messy + easier to execute?

The question to return to again and again: what will serve the message/meaning/intentions of the poem?

Searching for visual poetry, I found some good stuff, including this interview with Monica Ong, these great visual poems from Sarah J. Sloat, some answers to the question, what is visual poetry? and this anti-poem from  SHRIRAM SIVARAMAKRISHNAN:

bee plus see times bee

feb 28/RUNGETOUTICE

3.95 miles
wabun hill loop*
20 degrees

*wabun loop = river road, south/ go down locks and dam road / go up the steep hill that leads to wabun / through the park and back down to the river road / river road, north

future Sara might want to remember this, present Sara hopes it’s more like Venezuela, less like starting WW3: Trump, without approval from Congress, and Israel bombed the hell out of Iran last night or early this morning.

Colder today, but hardly any wind or sun. Last night the temperature dropped so quickly that there was a very wide ring around the moon. Showed it to Scott and he said it was a moon dog. I don’t recall ever seeing one of these before. Yesterday meteorologists were predicting snow today/tonight, but the forecast has shifted again. No snow, just cold.

My legs felt awkward for the first 5 minutes of the run, but then I warmed up and they felt better. By the third mile, they felt strong and efficient. It feels like I have more energy and power in my legs. Are the iron pills I’m taking to raise my ferritin working, or is it just a placebo effect?

When I got to the lock and dam no. 1, I decided — just seconds before I did it — to turn and run up the steep hill that leads to Wabun Park. It was mostly covered in ice, but also dead leaves, so it didn’t seem too slippery. As I neared the top, I walked for a stretch. At the top, I stopped to admire the view through the chainlink fence of the river and the island and the St. Paul side, then I walked until the ice had stopped. In the park, there were several small ice rinks where melted water had refroze.

10 Things

  1. someone was on the frisbee golf course at Wabun park — I couldn’t quite see, but I’m assuming they were playing
  2. at the top of the bluff, a big stretch of the paved path was covered in a thick sheet of ice
  3. also at the top of the bluff, on the other side neared to the park, there was a small clearing with a decomposing trunk and thick logs — do people come here to sit at night and watch the lights on the bridge?
  4. the hill leading up to wabun was mostly thin layers of ice mixed with thick, jagged layers of ice, butat least part of the trail was coated with dry leaves
  5. although there were walls of snow or thick chunks of ice at some of the entrances and exits, the walking paths were mostly clear
  6. empty benches, empty parking lots
  7. running, looking down at the winchell trail and seeing a person walking — they looked so far down, I felt so high up
  8. stopping to walk on the double bridge, hearing the loud shuffling of a runner’s feet approaching from behind
  9. do I remember any color, or was it all just pale gray and white today?
  10. the low rumble of a LOUD truck driving too fast on the river road

Like yesterday, I don’t remember what I listened to when I wasn’t listening to headphones and my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. Traffic? The shuffling of my own feet? No birds or bells or fragments of conversation from other runners or walkers. A memorable song on my playlist: The Young Rabbits / the Jazz Crusaders

Rabbit Eyes: how they se, what they see

Rabbits have 3 eyelids, 3 tear glands, one tear duct. They rarely blink — only 12 times an hour — and can sleep with their eyes open which helps keep them safer. How? It

allows their light receptors to remain active. If a predator nears, their brain receives signals faster, enabling a quicker response than if their eyes were closed.

Rabbit Eye: a Complete Guide

To see without actively seeing. Two immediate thoughts: 1. I’m fascinated by passive seeing and how it works in the human brain (especially mine) and 2. how exhausting to sleep with your eyes open! I’d like to learn more about how this works.

How to tell when a rabbit is sleeping? Their nose stops twitching.

Here’s something I have in common with rabbits: they can’t see red and have a lot less cone cells than a normally sighted human. I can see red, but not that often. Also, they rely more on rod cells (and they have more of them than humans) and see better (best?) in low light. Peripheral vision!

rabbit eyes were built to excel in low light situations. Rabbits are usually the most active in the hours around dawn and dusk, when it’s not too bright out but also not pure darkness. This is a time of day when rabbits have the advantage over both predators that are nocturnal and see best in the dark, and predators that are diurnal and see best when there is bright light. 

7 fun facts about rabbit eyes / the bunny lady

Crepuscular!

360 degree view: “the rabbit visual system is designed–not for foraging and locomotion–but to quickly and effectively detect approaching predators from almost any direction. The eyes are placed high and to the sides of the skull, allowing the rabbit to see nearly 360 degrees, as well as far above her head” (What Do Rabbits See?)

Rabbits have a blind spot in front of their face.1 Like me! I wonder how the sizes of our blind spots compare? “The central blind spot in the rabbit’s field of view precludes a three-dimensional view of nearby objects. When your bunny cocks her head and seems to be looking at you “sideways,” she is actually looking as straight at you as is possible for a bunny” (What Do Rabbits See?). Sideways! Periphery! Me too. To really see something straight on, like where eyes are on a face, I need to look off to the side, at a shoulder. Sometimes when I watch tv, I look off to the edge of the screen to see what’s happening in the center.

And this!: “The image formed by the area centralis is relatively “grainy” compared to the one formed by your (normally sighted human with all cone cells intact) fovea, but it serves the rabbit well. Using this image, your voice, body movements and scent as cues, your rabbit can recognize you (his favorite human)–as long as you’re not carrying a scary box that completely changes your familiar shape!” (What Do Rabbits See?). Yes! Sometimes, like when I’m in a store and have separated from whoever I’m with, I use a combination of voice, body movement, overall silhouette, known distinctive features — like glasses or haircut or unusual dress — to identify them. My sense of smell is not good enough to identify by scent, though.

lack of depth perception and parallax motion: “rabbits have evolved in creative ways to overcome this limitation, enhancing their ability to spot predators and make a quick escape. Rabbits employ a method known as “parallaxing”, moving their heads back and forth to gauge the distance and size of distant objects” (Rabbit Eye: A Complete Guide). Sometimes I have trouble with depth perception. Could I use parallaxing to help me navigate better? I googled, “Can visually impaired humans use parallax motion to detect depth.” Yes! I should practice this parallaxing when I’m out running above the gorge! I found this answer on a Reddit thread that was started with this question, if we need both eyes in order to see depth (depth perception), why is it also possible to see said depth when you close one eye? What a useful thread about how our brains fill in gaps and determine depth based on patterns and a library of known depths. And even better than this thread, here’s an article about a scientific study that was designed to explore and answer the question, “Can people with different forms of low vision use motion parallax to improve depth judgments?” The answer? Yes! And many people with low vision use it without realizing. And it should be introduced to people with low vision as a tool early on in their vision loss. And not enough research has been done on it. This study is from 1997. Has more research been done since then? Has it been adapted by low vision educators?

Here’s something I found from Duke Health in 2013. It’s specifically about low vision as having vision only in one eye, but it’s still helpful:

Adults who lose vision in one eye also have more collisions when walking, especially on the side where they lost the vision. That’s where sessions with an orientation and mobility specialist can help.

“The emphasis is on helping people to judge distances by using monocular clues, such as something called motion parallax. If you’ve ever seen a cat moving its head or eyes side to side before it jumps, that’s motion parallax,” Dr. Whitaker said.

Duke Health

Returning to the parallaxing quote: “This behavior is less common in familiar environments (such as their home), as rabbits memorize their surroundings. However, introducing a rabbit to a new home or a new furniture layout often prompts this scanning technique during initial explorations.” Yes! I’ve memorized my surroundings, which has made it easier to navigate both my physical environment and my new reality of living with a lot less vision — inside my familiar world, I am far less aware of a loss. New environments can be scary, unsettling, upsetting. I need to be brave2 and build up skills and explore new environments.

This last sentence, and footnote 2 below, highlights something that I am doing with my poetry/attention/moving practice. Not only am I working on my craft (writing poetry) and increasing my capacity for care and attention and my commitment to where I live and the many creatures I live with, I’m also acquiring tools and learning how to see in new ways. For example, today I’m studying rabbits in a wide range of ways because it’s fascinating and delightful and because how they see shares some similarities with how I see. Like the bat (and echolocation), rabbits offer strategies for seeing with less (or without) central vision.3

hinged skulls/big feet: “When they do smell, see or hear a predator, rabbits have to be able to make quick escapes. To help with this bunnies have very large back feet, and hinged skulls to absorb shock. Their cranial hingeallows rabbits to run at speeds above which the impact of their feet would rattle their brain around” (Rabbits have hinged skulls).

family:  Leporidae / order: lagomorpha / backyard rabbits: eastern cottontail, sylvilagus floridanus

Looking through the wikipedia entry for eastern cottontails, I found this about habitat:

The eastern cottontail is a territorial species that relies on speed and agility to evade predators. When chased, it typically escapes in a zigzag pattern and can reach speeds of up to 18 mph (29 km/h). Cottontails favor habitats where they can feed in the open but quickly retreat to cover when threatened. Preferred environments include forest edges, swamps, brushy thickets, hedgerows, and open fields with nearby shelter. Instead of digging burrows, eastern cottontails rest in a form—a shallow, scratched-out depression in grass or beneath dense vegetation. . . .

The rabbit eye in A Young Hare

There was a moment in the year 1502, so the story goes, that the eye of a dead rabbit reflected the real window of Albrecht Dürer, who, with his watercolors and genius and passion for detail, painted that eye with the window in it. It then became art, and, then, art again: the painted eye with the painted window in Diane Seuss’s “Young Hare” that connects the artist to the poem’s speaker. “Why does the window feel so intimate in the hare’s unreadable eye?” the speaker asks, and the answer is that the window in the eye represents a straddling between worlds, between then and now, between artist and viewer, between life and art.

Diane Seuss

I’ve tried looking at the painting online and my eyes cannot offer enough detail to see the hare’s eye and the window in it. I have read Diane Seuss’ poem about it, The Young Hare, and believe I don’t need to see the eye myself to understand its significance or its beauty.

The Young Hare / Diane Seuss

Oh my love, Albrecht Dürer, your hare

is not a spectacle, it is not an exploding hare,

it is not a projection of the young hare

within you, the gentleness in you, or a disassembled hare,

nor a subliminal or concealed hare,

nor is it the imagination as hare

nor the soul as a long-eared, soft-eared hare,

Dürer, you painted this hare,

some say you killed a field hare

and brought it into your studio, or bagged a live hare

and caged it so you could look hard at a wild hare

without it running off into thorn bushes as hares

will do, and you sketched the hare

and laid down a watercolor wash over the hare

and then meticulously painted-in all the browns of hare,

toast brown, tawny, dim, pipe-tobacco brown of hare,

olive, fawn, topaz, bone brown until the hare

became dimensional under your hand, the thick hare

fur, the mottled shag, the nobility of the nose, the hare

toenails, black and sharp and curved, and the dense hare

ears, pod-shaped, articulated, substantial, erect, hare

whiskers and eyebrows, their wiry grace, the ruff of hare

neck fur, the multi-directional fur over the thick hare

haunches, and did I say the dark inside the hare

ears, how I want to follow the darkness of the hare

and stroke the dark within its ears, to feel the hare

ears with my fingers, and the white tuft, the hare

anomaly you painted on its side, and the fleshy hare

cheeks, how I want to squeeze them, and the hare

reticence, how I want to explore it, and the downturned hare

eye, it will not acknowledge or appease, the black-brown hare

eye in which you painted the reflection of a window in the hare

pupil, maybe your studio window, in the hare’s

eye, why does that window feel so intimate in the hare’s

unreadable eye, why do I press my face to the window to see the hare

as you see it, raising your chin to look and then back to the hare

on the page, the thin hair of your brush and your own hair

waving gold down your back, hair I see as you see the hare.

In the hare’s eye you see me there, my swaying black hair.

Oh, I love this poem and how it allows me to reflect on what it means to study/explore/be inspired by something and someone.4 And what wonderful work she does with her linking of hare with the hair of the paint brush, the hair of the artist, the hair of the person viewing the painting/writing and reading? the poem!5

  1. They also have a blind spot in the center of the back of their head, preventing full 360 degree vision. ↩︎
  2. I don’t usually like the use of the word brave to describe how I’m navigating new ways of seeing — as in, someone responding to hearing that I’ve lost vision with, you’re so brave! As if just continuing to exist with such a diagnosis, which they really imagine as a death sentence, is being brave. But seeking out unfamiliar situations that frighten/unsettle me in order to get better at navigating because I want a fuller life is me being brave. ↩︎
  3. Additionally, the language used to describe how low light animals see/navigate can be helpful in understanding and communicating to others the strange ways I see. Maybe I can borrow that language as I try to describe how I see? ↩︎
  4. Taking this discussion back to its origins a week ago, I’m returning to the muse. I don’t see the rabbit as my muse, but as both a gate — an opening — and a teacher. ↩︎
  5. Reading this poem is making me want to read Seuss’ “Two Dead Peacocks” collection again, and more closely, as part of my ekphrastic project. I just ordered it from Moon Palace Books! ↩︎

Get Out Ice

As a reminder of some of the ways Minnesotans have resisted ICE this winter, Racket offered this list:

Fifty-thousand people thronging the streets of downtown Minneapolis in subzero temperatures to protest ICE’s presence in the Twin Cities. Thousands more pedaling their bikes through south Minneapolis, many in “peaceful observer, don’t shoot” vests, to honor a cyclist killed by state violence. Massive papier-mâché puppets presiding over rallies and memorials as brass bands play songs of liberation, and luminaries on frozen lakes spelling out messages like “ABOLISH ICE” and “ICE OUT 4 GOOD.” 

Anti-ICE Ice Fishing, Subzero Marches, and Art Sled Activism: A Winter of Protest in the Twin Cities

The rest of the article describe the bike ride, sponsored by Angry Catfish, in honor/memory of Alex Pretti.

feb 27/RUNGETOUTICE

5 miles
river road, north/river road, south/lena smith
50 degrees
50% puddles / 5% mud, dead leaves
wind: 10 mph / 35 mph gusts

Sunny, warmer, windy! Had to tighten my cap so it wouldn’t fly off. It felt like spring, or like spring is coming soon, and I loved it. There was a moment, early on, when I ran past dead leaves on a lawn and the sun hit them just right so that they gave off a smell that I remember from childhood: late fall in Northern Virginia, walking through a small stretch of woods on the edge of suburbia. A good memory, even if I don’t like suburbs.

So many puddles and slow-moving streams on the sidewalk. I wondered how long it would take for at least one of my socks to get soacked. Not even a block! I didn’t see the puddle I stepped in, just suddenly felt cold in my left foot. Oh well. A soaked sock was always going to happen. I think it took a mile for the squish squish squish to begin.

This run was wonderful! I went farther than I thought I would — all the way to the Franklin bridge. And I felt stronger. I even did some strides at the end. I can’t remember what I heard besdie the gorge for the first half, but for the second half I put on my “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist. The first song that came on, “Young Rabbits,” a jazz song by The Jazz Crusaders, was wonderful to run to. Later, “Mad as Rabbits” came on and I wondered the origins of that expression. Is it from Alice in Wonderland too? Yes and no. Probably the modern use of it comes from the character, the March Hare, who throws a mad tea party in AIW, but its earlier origins are this, according to wikipedia:

To be as “mad as a March hare” is an English idiomatic phrase derived from the observed antics said to occur[1] only in the March breeding season of the European hare (Lepus europaeus). The phrase is an allusion that can be used to refer to any other animal or human who behaves in the excitable and unpredictable manner of a March hare.

Mad as a March Hare

Near the very end of my run, a sudden thought about a rabbit that plays a pivotal role in a dystopia novel I read 2 or more years ago. I can’t remember the name of the novel. Thankfully I can look it up on my library checkout history! Found it: The Memory of Animals / Claire Fuller. I would check it out again, but for some reason, my library no longer makes it available as an e-book. Boo.

rabbit fur coat, part 2

My favorite reader just texted to remind me of a infamous rabbit fur coat reference in a song: Miss Thang’s “Thunder and Lightning”:

You’re walking around like you SO fly in that 37 Dollar Rabbit Coat! Honey, That coat had to be destroyed last week after it bit the neighbors child!

This line is from the album, The Answer: Rap vs. Rap (1987) and is in response to lyrics from Orange Juice Jones in his song (The Rain) about discovering that his girlfriend was cheating on him:

And my first impulse was to run up on you and do a Rambo Whip out the jammy and flat-blast both of you But I ain’t wanna mess up this 3700 dollar lynx coat

So good! A few days ago, at the end of my run, I had remembered Miss Thang’s line (which is superior to Jones’, imho), but then forgot it again before I returned home. I’m so grateful that my best friend reads this blog and remembered us listening to it in high school and texted me from Tokyo about it!

I wish I could add it to my actual playlist, but sadly it’s not on Apple music, so I’ll just have to include it in my written one and imagine Miss Thang singing back to Jones as I listen to “The Rain” on the apple music playlist (because of course, his song is streaming even those hers isn’t).

Miss Thang’s scathing reference to a rabbit, and not a lynx, fur coat, reinforces my sense of Jenny Lewis’ rabbit fur coat; it is low-end luxury and barely status, owned by those who want to appear wealthy but aren’t. In the case of Lewis’ mom, the coat represents a toxic fixation on status and wealth. In the case of Jones, the coat represents the illusion of status.

A bonus: not only did remembering this song give me another example of the rabbit fur coat, it solved a recent mystery. For the past few days, I’ve been trying to remember who references the Trix slogan in a song — silly rabbit, Trix are for kids. Now I know: it’s Orange Juice Jones in “The Rain”!

Here’s a video with the 2 songs mashed-up. Go to YouTube to see all of the lyrics:

that 37 Dollar Rabbit Coat? Honey, That coat had to be destroyed last week after it bit the neighbors child!

rabbit hole

In yesterday’s entry I mentioned that Heather Cox Richardson said, at least twice in her Politics Chat, that she wouldn’t go down the rabbit hole. But today, I will!

1 — Disney Animation

Last night after waking up from my first sleep1, I went downstairs and started watching Disney’s classic animated Alice in Wonderland (1951). I only got as far as the rabbit hole scene, which is delightfully trippy and brings back memories of my many visits to Disney World as a kid in the 80s (my grandparents lived in Deltona — not Daytona, as people used to try and correct — a small town outside of Orlando). Details I remember from my 1 am viewing: 1. she falls down a hole after entering a tunnel, her kitten does not — her POV: far down below, looking up at a small hole of light and kitten — she calls out excitedly, goodbyeeeee!!!; 2. the speed of her fall slows as the bottom of her blue dress billows like a parachute; 3. she passes armchairs and side table on her way down; 4. at one point she lands in a rocking chair and begins rocking, while still floating down; 5. there’s a brief shot of the exterior of this opening/vertical tunnel: it’s a queerly angled tall and narrow brick building; she calls out to the White Rabbit at some point — he’s falling through, too; just before she lands she catches her foot on something — a window frame? — and softly tumbles to the ground.

How much of that is correct? Can I find a clip to watch to check? Yes!

down the rabbit hole

Mostly I was right2, but I missed many delightful details: her bright eyes glowing in the otherwise darkness; she pulls a chain, and turns on a small lamp; she catches a passing book and begins reading it; she sees her reflection in the mirror, which is upside down. Oh, this animation — I love it!

2 — I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date!

In my visions of the white rabbit, I had forgotten his pocket watch and mutterings of being late, which are why Alice follows him. She wonders, what is he late for? It must be something important, like a party! How does time work in this animated film? In the original Lewis Carrol book? In terms of the rabbit hole in the popular imagination, time in the rabbit hole is twisted, slowed down, gets wasted. The rabbit hole is the enemy of time’s efficiency, productivity, precision. When explaining why she couldn’t dig into something, HCR says, I don’t have time for that right now.

3 — rabbit holes / burrows / warrens

In a preliminary search3, I discovered this interesting fact:

Rabbits live underground in warrens. Hares live in aboveground nests. (Cottontail rabbits are the exception: like hares, they live in aboveground nests.)

source

So, because the rabbits that live in my backyard are cottontails, there are no rabbit holes for me to fall through!

Also, here’s the difference between warrens and burrows: a burrow is one rabbit’s home, a warren is the neighborhood/network of tunnels for a colony of rabbits.

Looked on the Minnesota DNR site and found out this about cottontail habitat and range:

Throughout the year, cottontails are found in brushy areas such as woodlots, shelterbelts, and even around shrub and conifer plantings in suburban areas. During summer they feed on grasses and clovers, but in winter they eat twigs and bark, especially of fruit trees. Large tree and brush piles are popular shelters for rabbits. The range of one cottontail is no more than five acres (about the size of four football fields). They run along trails within thick brush to escape predators.

Eastern Cottontail / Minnesota DNR

A thing for “gardener” Sara to note: when winterizing the backyard, DON’T trim back the hydrangeas or hostas anymore! Leave them for the rabbits!

Also found these disturbing “fun facts” — they are listed under the heading, “Fun facts”,” but, are they fun? Not for the rabbits!

Cottontails are nervous animals that may die of shock if handled or caged. Cottontail meat is tasty favored by gourmet chefs who often cook it fried, in stews, or braised with herbs and vegetables.

Back to hole-less cottontails. A new metaphor is needed — not falling down and through to other worlds, but something about edges and shadows and the fringes — the periphery! Dwelling on the edges, in the corners, not traveling to new worlds, but noticing the other worlds that are already there, have always existed in the midst of my world.

  1. First sleep is a reference to historian A. Roger Ekirch’s book, At Days Close and a BBC article that I posted about on 17 jan 2025 about sleeping habits in the 17th and 18th centuries. Instead of 8 straight hours, a sleep, a waking, then another sleep. My sleeping doesn’t quite work that way lately and involves more than 2 sleeps: a sleep, getting out of bed to pace or bounce on an exercise ball, another sleep, watching 20 minutes of something, a sleep, a bounce, a sleep. ↩︎
  2. it’s the exterior of another building; she’s doesn’t get her foot caught but lands upside down hanging from the window ↩︎
  3. My searches are mostly just googling the terms and looking through AI and then, independently, several of the sources in the search results. I have never really used/relied on AI before, so this was a good opportunity to suss it out. It can be helpful, but its conclusions are uneven and information unreliable. AI can make broad claims based on singular sources, and those sources aren’t always primary, but sometimes a rando’s blog entry. In terms of search results, the links are often businesses selling a product; any information posted is ultimately in service of selling that product. Or, the links have information designed for an individual/consumer. For example, the rabbit/bunny information my searches yielded were often for pet owners (how to take care of your rabbit) or homeowners who need to manage/get rid of rabbits-as-pests. ↩︎

a few more rabbit related things

Here’s a list of 20 pop culture rabbits/bunnies. One I had forgotten: the boiled pet rabbit in Fatal Attraction.

Dust bunnies; the Energizer Bunny; Bunny from Season 2 of “Only Murders in the Building”; Watership Down (which I remember my sister reading, but I never have); Liam (here in the twin cities, taken by ICE) and his bunny ears / Louise from Bob’s Burgers and hers; Bugs Bunny and “Kill the Rabbit”; bunny ears as tv antennas; lucky rabbit’s foot; playboy bunnies and staying at the Playbook Hotel in Buffalo because it was the cheapest option when I was 8; calling my daughter honey-bunny

And here’s a wonderful poem that I found the other day. It fits with the theme of rabbit holes and underground dwellings:

[Rabbit] / by Amy Wolstenholme

In Portland we don’t use the word, we dance around it –  furry things, we’d say, the furry things are in backfield again. As a child I only knew I should never look directly at them, the same way I knew not to look at the sun. It was wrong. It would hurt later on. My grandfather called them underground mutton – the first time I heard the phrase I laughed, and he didn’t. I guess that means it’s okay to eat them. That it’s okay to roast and spit them but never see them. As an adult I learnt the fear behind the superstition – my home is always on the brink of slipping, because long ago we built mines where we shouldn’t. And, like always, nature far outshone the humans: the furry things would run before the rockfalls, the men would disappear beneath them. So when they skipped in fields en masse, bobtails flashing, we would know that somewhere below ground people were trapped, were crushed, were suffocating. We would know that when the underground mutton set to dancing, the Earth was eating the miners.

One more rabbit thing: Inspired by my talk of the periphery, I think I will give attention to rabbit vision and rabbit eyes tomorrow. 3 sources to start with: “rabbit vision” google search, Rabbit Eye, and this discussion of a famous painting with a rabbit eye that inspired Diane Seuss.

Get Out Ice

Part of what I’m trying to do in my “get out ice” effort is to document examples of resistance. I’d like to turn it into an archive of practices of care-as-resistance (love) Here’s one I found from Sean Snow, who provides great daily summaries on Facebook:

Dungeons & Dragons Mutual Aid: A Twin Cities gaming group with 2,500 members made headlines for pivoting from tabletop adventures to a sophisticated mutual aid network. They are now coordinating food deliveries, “Know Your Rights” workshops, and legal support for members affected by recent events. What began as a social club has evolved into a logistical hub that leverages existing trust to provide real-world refuge. This grassroots response demonstrates how established community bonds can be repurposed to protect neighbors during times of crisis.

Sean Snow

feb 25/RUNGETOUTICE

2 miles
river road, north/lena smith, south
22 degrees

Sunny, cold, shadowed. Most distinctive shadow: the ball-like one, made by the light of the street light. It was nice weather for a run. Not too cold, or too warm, clear trails. Unfortunately, I struggled. Sore legs, unfinished business, and some fatigue. And now I’ll struggle not to worry about what caused the bad run — this worrying about my health is the way my anxiety is expressed. No fun.

Even with my not-so-great run, can I remember 10 things I liked (or loved)?

10 Things

  1. the feel of my feet sliding on the grit as I ran up the lake street hill
  2. the bright orange graffiti under the lake street bridge
  3. the surface of the river, covered in a thin skin of ice, a pale gray
  4. the bright blue and empty sky
  5. the deep footprints on the snow-covered walking path, descending just below the road
  6. feeling strong and relaxed as I ran up the hill from under the bridge
  7. the sheen of the thin glaze of ice on the shaded sidewalk
  8. some puddles on the sidewalk where snow from a yard had melted
  9. looking through a net of bare, slender trunks
  10. chirping birds, all around

For the first part of my run, I listened to the traffic and my feet striking the gritty ground. For the second part of the run and the walk, I put in my new “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist — see below. I heard these songs today:

  1. Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
  2. Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
  3. Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
  4. Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
  5. I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit

I’d liked the speed/fast beat of the Bad Bunny song, the storytelling in “Rabbit Fur Coat,” the 80s kid nostalgia of Abracadabra, and the little North Carolina Sara nostalgia of Eddie Rabbit (from June 1980, when I was 6). Jenny Lewis’ story about her poor (both, no money and tragic figure) mom made me think of Diane Seuss and her use of a rabbit motif — see below and this diane seuss and rabbits.

Rabbits, Rabbits, Everywhere — written earlier today

As is usually the case when I give attention to something I haven’t given much attention to before, that something is suddenly everywhere, or not everywhere, but the instances of it seem to grow exponentially (you might say, they breed like rabbits). The rabbit/bunny/hare floodgate has been opened! This morning, I’m finding so many rabbit references!

And what’s the point of all of this? Following the rabbit down the rabbit hole is a wonderful distraction. It is also an excellent opportunity to learn. And to learn more about rabbits, which leads to caring about them as living things and as symbols. This caring might (is) enabling me to open up a closed part of myself (closed = strong dislike of rabbits). And it is helping me to think more broadly and specifically about the impacts of humans and human encroachment on environments and the consequences of that encroachment for humans and non-humans. Plus, all (or any) of it could inspire new poems.

Here are a few rabbit-related things:

1

The killer rabbit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I should rewatch this movie because I remember the rabbit in the cave (or is it a bunny) at the end, but not that clearly. Is the joke that rabbits/bunnies are soft and cute and frail and couldn’t possibly be vicious killers?

2

Bunny Lebowski in The Big Lebowski. It’s been long enough since I’ve seen this film that I all I can remember is that she is the young wife of the Big Lebowski, who is kidnapped and is a catalyst for much of the action. Is that right? I could look it up, but I’d rather use this lack of remembering as a reason to watch the movie again.

3

Rabbit in Red matchbox from Halloween. Near the beginning of the movie, the nurse who has accompanied Dr. Loomis to pick up Michael Myers from the mental hospital and bring him to his parole hearing lights a cigarette using a match from this matchbook just before Micheal Myers attacks them and escapes in their car. Later that same matchbook appears in the grass near the dead body of a mechanic. A clue! Michael Myers must have been here! And now he’s going home to finish what he started!

4

Harvey, a Jimmy Stewart movie from 1950 in which Stewart befriends a 6 foot tall invisible rabbit. I have never seen it, but when I was younger, after having watched Rear Window, I developed a bit of a crush on Jimmy Stewart. Maybe that’s why I thought of this? I looked to see if it was streaming anywhere or available from the library. Nope.

5

Max and Ruby, Ruby and Max. A cartoon with baby brother/big sister bunnies. My kids watched this when they were young, thanks to hand-me-down dvds from my sister whose kids watched it when they were young. When and where did it air? What I remember most about this show was that the adults were almost non-existent and Ruby was the suffering big sister who rarely got to have any fun because she had to mother clueless Max. The gendering in this one — wow!

6

The documentary from PBS, The Pill. When I taught a class about debated issues within feminism, we usually started with a section on Reproductive Justice. Instead of focusing on abortion, we looked more broadly at women’s reproductive health and their access to care and control over their own bodies. I often screened this documentary and I recall a section with rabbits in a lab that also included the story of how they experimented on women in Puerto Rico. I can’t easily stream this again, so I’m relying on my memory and the transcript. The section is called, “A Cage of Ovulating Females.” Here’s the mention of the rabbits:

Margaret Marsh, Historian: Gregory Pincus wasn’t a physician, he was a scientist. And so he could give the pill to as many rabbits as he wanted to. Rabbits everywhere could take this pill. But he couldn’t give the pill to women. He wasn’t a doctor. He couldn’t run a clinical trial on human beings.

The Pill

And here’s one bit about Puerto Rico:

Getting the pill to market would require approval from the Food & Drug Administration, and that would entail a large-scale human trial. In exasperation, Katharine McCormick, asked, “Where can we find a cage of ovulating females?”

Puerto Rico had a network of birth control clinics and no Comstock laws. Pincus called it “the perfect laboratory.”

The Pill

The experiments on Puerto Rican women were considered a success, but some of the women suffered terrible side effects: headaches, nausea, dizziness, vomiting.

7

Rabbit from Winnie-the-Pooh — Winnie-the-Pooh’s neighbor who sometimes wishes he wasn’t — there’s a real Dennis the Menace vibe happening here, with Pooh as Dennis, Rabbit as the menaced neighbor. Yesterday I read about how Lewis Carrol intended the White Rabbit to be a sharp contrast to Alice:

For her ‘youth’, ‘audacity’, ‘vigour’, and ‘swift directness of purpose’, read ‘elderly’, ‘timid’, ‘feeble’, and ‘nervously shilly-shallying’, and you will get something of what I meant him to be. I think the White Rabbit should wear spectacles. I’m sure his voice should quaver, and his knees quiver and his whole air suggest a total inability to say ‘Boo’ to a goose!”

The White Rabbit in Fandom

I see a similar contrast between Pooh (as Alice) and the Rabbit (as White Rabbit):

8

Cadbury Creme Egg Bunny. Growing up, I LOVED these eggs. Unlike now, in the 80s and 90s you could only get them around Easter. More than any other, these eggs are my favorite childhood candy. Do they hold up? Not really. I remember the commercial with the bunny that sounds like a chicken:

the 1983 commercial with copy read by the Smuckers guy!

9

9

Diane Seuss and rabbits. Yesterday I remembered a line from a favorite Diane Seuss poem, I Look Up at my Book and out at the World Through Reading Glasses:

The load of pinecones at the top,
a brown smudge which could be anything: a wreath
of moths, a rabbit strung up
like a flag.

She’s referencing some famous still life painting with the rabbit, I think — this is in her collection all about still life paintings, Still LIfe with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. I looked up “Diane Seuss and rabbits” and found two other poems by her with rabbits in them!1

excerpt from backyard song / Diane Seuss

Uncorked, I had a thought: I
want the want
I dreamed of wanting once, a
quarter cup of sneak-peek
at what prowls in the back, at
what sings in the
wet rag space behind the garage, back
where the rabbits nest

Her first poem had a rabbit/ Diane Seuss

in it. Life
story at age fourteen sifted
through a rabbit.

It had a tattoo on a hand
in it. And cherries, the kind
that come in a can.

She tended
toward rabbits back then.
Toward the theoretically mild

that are really
wild. Like ducks on a pond
that is really a moon

full of menacing weeds.
The duck gets ready for noon,
she wrote. Yes,

nonsense, I guess.
She embroidered a poem
on a foam

pillow with a felt pen.
Pinned an actual
cherry on it back then

life story sifted through a rabbit — drawing upon this poem and a few others, AI suggests that Seuss frequently uses the motif of rabbit to explore themes of wildness, vulnerability, and the grotesque. In the summary, it (AI) misnames the poem “Basket,” which is the name of the journal, not this poem.

theoretically mild, really wild

Ducks on a pond, right next to the rabbit? That has to be reference to the optical illusion — do you see a duck or a rabbit? — right?

11

The Runaway Bunny — This was one of my favorite books as a kid. At first, I wondered why I thought that, then I found the book and opened it and saw why:

book inscription: To little Sara on Easter 1978 -- from Mommy and Daddy
my copy from 1978

added, 28 feb 2026: I was never a big Velveteen Rabbit fan, but there is another bunny book I loved as a kid, Pat the Bunny.

11

Looney Tunes: I want hasenpfeffer! I am almost certain that when I watched this cartoon as a kid, this was the first time I had heard of hasenpfeffer or imagined that rabbit was something you could eat. I still never have, but whenever I hear the word hasenpfeffer I think of this cartoon.

Hasenpfeffer

From a comment: “The King wants Hasenpfeffer which is traditional Dutch and German stew made from marinated rabbit or hare, cut into stewing-meat sized pieces and braised with onions and a marinade made from wine and vinegar.”

What to do with all of this rabbit-holing? I want to orbit around all, or at least many, of these ideas. Bring them into poems. Write a series of small poems about rabbits and bunnies and hares. As I was writing this last line, another bunny zapped into my head — The Runaway Bunny! I’ll add it above. What form should these rabbit poems take? Could this be an inspiration — Seven American Centuries? Whatever the form, I like the idea of returning repeatedly to century bunny/rabbit themes, and telling a story across the poems, not in one poem.

  1. Yesterday I realized I could easily do footnotes and I’m here for it! Googling “Diane Seuss and rabbits” the AI explanation seemed useful and it was, but also a bit suspect. When I clicked on the links offered at the end of the AI summary and read the source, it often wasn’t saying what AI claims it saying. AI takes some liberties, I think. ↩︎

a Rabbit/Bunny/Hare playlist

When Scott reminded me of Thundercat’s song “Rabbot Ho,” I knew I needed to make a playlist for this recent preoccupation!

  1. Rabbot Ho / Thundercat
  2. Baile InoLVIDABLE / Bad Bunny
  3. Rabbit Fur Coat / Jenny Lewis
  4. Abracadabra / Steve Miller Band
  5. I’m Drivin’ My Life Away / Eddie Rabbit
  6. The Young Rabbits / The Jazz Crusaders
  7. Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits / Magnetic Fields
  8. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) / Florence + the Machine
  9. Rabbit Fighter / T. Rex
  10. Jack Rabbit / Elton John
  11. Here Comes Peter Cottontail / Gene Autry
  12. White Rabbit / Jefferson Airplane
  13. White Rabbit / George Benson
  14. Rabbit Will Run / Iron & Wine
  15. Breathe (in the Air) / Pink Floyd
  16. Pink Rabbits / The National
  17. Mycomatosis / Radiohead
  18. Alice / Peggy
  19. Mad as Rabbits / Panic at the Disco
  20. Bunny is a Rider / Caroline Polachek

feb 22/RUNGETOUTICE

3 miles
river road, north/lena smith hill x 3
15 degrees / feels like -2
wind: 24 mph gusts
100% clear path

A late afternoon run. It was cold but I had on (almost) all of the layers — 2 pairs of running tights, 2 base layer shirts, 1 hooded pull-over, a jacket, a buff, a cap with ear flaps, 2 pairs of gloves — so I was very warm. Only now, back inside at my desk, can I feel how the cold burned my face. I saw a few walkers, but I think I was the only runner. The river was open, the paths were clear, the sky was a grayish white.

overheard: 2 men walking a dog, heading north — when can we get out of this wind?!

Yes, the wind was rough. I don’t recall it stirring up anything, just howling, and feeling cold. 3 miles was enough for me today.

thank you past Sara!

Performing my morning ritual — my “On This Day” practice in which I read past entries from this day — I reread 22 feb 2024 and my lengthy discussion of pain. Such a gift today when I seem to be having an almost 2 month long argument with my body. I hesitate to call it pain, although I am in some discomfort. It started with a mild but persistent “cold” (never tested it, so I’m not sure what it was) that lasted more than 2 weeks. Then the discovery of high blood pressure at an annual check-up, which I’m monitoring for the next month (doctor’s orders), and that is sometimes normal, sometimes not, and is leaving me unsettled by its refusal to be one or the other. Combine that with the return of anxiety, a stretch of particularly bad restless legs and insomnia, and the acceleration of fascism in the US. Fascism aside, none of these are that big of a deal, and maybe that’s part of the problem. If they were actually a big deal, I would learn how to accept and accommodate them. Instead they linger as uncertainties, specters of worry, causing a rift between me (who is the me here?) and my body. (This litany of minor complaints is offered as gift to future Sara who most likely won’t read them as complaints, but as the documenting and archiving of what it felt like to be living in this strange and terrible and hopeful time.)

I’m not sure when I created the hashtag, body in pain, but I should do more with it — maybe create a page? And maybe I can do a little more with the 2024 entry and this — 18 august 2017.

Get Out Ice

Fight
Unlawful
Conduct
Keep
Individuals and
Communities
Empowered Act

Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have sent a blunt message to Immigration and Customs Enforcement with the introduction of a new bill.

The “Fight Unlawful Conduct and Keep Individuals and Communities Empowered Act” – or F*** ICE Act – was introduced Thursday in the State Assembly. It aims to extend residents’ rights under state law to sue federal immigration officials for unconstitutional conduct. 

“There have to be real consequences if ICE breaks the law,” said Katie Brennan, an Assembly Democrat who is co-sponsoring the bill alongside former Hoboken mayor Ravi Bhalla, also a Democrat, according to The New York Times.

The Independent

Many of the articles about this FUCKICE Act described it as vulgar in the headline, which reminds me of a great quote from an article in MPR recently about mocking ICE and the Dildo Distribution Delegation:

“When people come out and say, ‘Well that was really vile or vulgar or distasteful,’ it sets up the question: isn’t it more distasteful and violent and vulgar to shoot people in the back of the head when they’re at a protest or to kill the citizens of Minneapolis?” Winchester said.

misheard

Read a poem last night, or was it early this morning?, by Kelli Russell Agodon that connects with my interest yesterday in sense misperceptions, and reminds me of something I wrote about on a log entry from 26 jan 2025: the 10 muses of poetry, including: Mishearing, Misunderstanding, Mistranslating, Mismanaging, Mislaying, and Misreading. The poem: “Coming Up Next: How Killer Blue Irises Spread —Misheard health report on NPR” And here’s something else from that 26 jan 2025 entry to put with all of this:

A second key might be “eavesdropping.” As it happens I have deficient eyesight and hearing, not enough to impair my regular function but enough that I can, as my colleague Karla Kelsey puts it, “squint,” either with the eye or the ear, without difficulty. Some of my best lines—especially the generative lines, the bits of poetic grist from which poems develop—come from phrases I’ve misheard in conversation or (at least initially) misread as text. I guess you could say I “own” such material—I make a lyric and creative claim to it—by mishearing or misreading it.

An Inheritance Reassembled

I bought a collection by Waldrep after discovering this intervew, and a few of his poems. Maybe it’s time to read it!

feb 21/RUNGETOUTICE

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
18 degrees / feels like 6

After a week of warmth, winter is back and this time the paths are clear! Hooray! It is (almost) never the cold but the uneven trails that bother me in January and February (and March and often April). I felt good as I ran south and even better as I ran back north. As I ran, I thought about how I was wearing my dead mother-in-law’s purple jacket and my dead mother’s teal cap with the tassels. I liked feeling as if they were both there with me. I also thought about #2 (see below) and what it means to be good at something. I imagined it not as something you are, I am good at x or y or z, but as a moment you experience or as a means to a deeper end: to feel free or satisfied or joyful — because I can run well, I am able to float on the trail and devote more attention to this place or to travel farther on this trail or enter the flow state and feel closer to the earth, the air, the water.

10 Things

  1. a flash or a slash or a blur of bright red below me — with a second glance I saw that it was a person with a red coat walking on the winchell trail
  2. a BRIGHT dot and a thought whispered in my head — yellow — an instant later recognition, a crosswalk sign
  3. thump thump thump the deep bass of a song exploding out of a car
  4. another car, more music — a song that I could almost but not quite hear — I strained my ears to identify any lyrics or a melody, but couldn’t
  5. the faint echo of the train bells near the falls
  6. the falls were still gushing from behind the ice columns, the dark water of the creek was rushing
  7. a group of people standing at the wall, looking down at the falls — they were laughing and cheering as they threw something below — I think they were snowballs
  8. the river was completely open and was mostly a deep brownish blueish dark gray — it stretched wide and far and looked more like a wall than water
  9. my feet slid (but didn’t slip) on the grit on the trail
  10. the paths held a range of people — single walkers, walkers with dogs, running pairs, running trios, adults and kids walking single-file — but the benches held nothing — they were empty

some things to remember

1

For almost a year now, I’ve been jumping from project to project. In the spring, it was color, then in the summer it was water and inklings, in the fall my book manuscript on echolocation and the gorge, and this winter it has been love. So many projects! And I have more big ideas that have been simmering for years and waiting for the light of my attention. But, I also like wandering without a clear purpose or goal. I like devoting a month to a random topic, like shadows or windows or wind, making a playlist for it, exploring new things that I haven’t encountered before. It’s difficult to balance a desire to wander and experiment with the need to turn it into something.

And right now, the need to turn it into something is winning. Even as I write this, I’m thinking of another project which would be part of a larger manuscript on how I see. So far, I have written about how I am seeing color (inner and outer color), how I navigate, looking at the world as if through water (inklings), now it’s time for another section/chapbook of this — thoughts? Optical illusions or hallucinations or mistaken identities? I’m imagining this might include examples from my log of seeing something in a very WRONG way — like disembodied legs walking toward me on the trail.

My starting point could be to gather: examples from past entries; lines from poems that speak to/of the beauty and the danger of these illusions; some research on illusions by scientists and psychologists; excerpts from essays by G. Kleege and Naomi Cohn; examples in art — like Monet and Magritte. Along the way, I want to turn this work of gathering into a resource page for others.

2

In my post from 21 feb 2017, I posed the question, what does it mean to be good at running? What does it mean to be good at something? And now I’m wondering, what does it TAKE to be good at something? The word excellence echoes in my head as I think about my studying of Aristotle and the figure skating in the 2026 winter Olympics. Two different models: Ilia Malinin (the quad god) and Alysa Liu. And I’m also thinking about the idea of needing to suffer for your art and where joy fits into your practice. And, another question — is the goal always to be good, to excel, to master?

3

A book to buy, or to check out of the library: Against Breaking — the power of poetry / Ada Limón

4

A mural to find:

a storm drain mural for water quality, designed and painted by local artist Precious, shows a sunset over a cityscape in vibrant colors. You can see it at the Mississippi River Gorge scenic overlook along Mississippi River Boulevard in Highland Park.

FMR

5

a poem to read again and to place beside my restlessness, my desire for movement, and my desire to find new ways to understand stillness:

The Art of Silence / Christine Anderson

a Buddhist monk taught me to sit silently
be the moon floating over my back field
a buttercup cradled in a clump of spring grass
sit hushed
as the broad shoulders of granite mountains
in their shawl of clouds—
sit despite
an unquiet morning
that buzzes and twitters and zips
sit to be a dewdrop
in the garden
a perfect pearl of daybreak—
a Buddha
sitting.

Get Out Ice

Found a substack list of LOTS of anti-ICE stuff happening around the cities. This one seemed particularly fitting:

We want ICE OUT!!! Of our city, our state, our community, and for one night only, out of our margaritas.

Celebrate National Margarita Day this Sunday 2/22 at Hai Hai with NO ICE margaritas to support our restaurant community. ICE doesn’t belong here anymore and we are pulling frozen water out of our favorite cocktail to prove it. A portion of each No Ice Marg sold will be donated to @thesaltcurefund for restaurants in need. If and when ICE leaves, restaurants will have a long way to go to recover from the impact their occupation has had on our community, join us for a drink and some laughter and help us take one step forward towards recovery.

Hai Hai Instagram post

feb 18/RUNGETOUTICE

It is 1:30 pm. It is sometimes raining, sometimes snowing, and is all-the-time windy. It is also 32 degrees. But the pavement is bare and it might not be this clear for a few days because we are supposed to get some more snow. Should I go out for a short run when I have the chance? Or, are the conditions too crappy, my left knee too sore? Future Sara will let us know! Sara from 2:47: I did it! I went out for a run in this blustery weather!

3.3 miles
river road, south/north/neighborhood, south
31 degrees / feels like 17 / snow
wind: 25 mph gusts

Not the best conditions, but I’m glad I went outside. I started by running south on the river road trail, but it was tough. I was running straight into the wind and stabbing snowflakes. I turned around at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, then turned off the river road and onto Lena Smith Boulevard at 32nd. I was plannng to do some hills but the road was blocked off. Instead, I meandered through the neighborhood.

I encountered one other runner, at least one fat tire. Any walkers? I can’t remember. It was difficult to see what was ahead of me. Snow was thick in the air and I pulled the visor of my cap down low to block it. If I saw the river, I don’t remember what it looked like. When I turned around to head north again, it was much easier and more fun. The snow was swirling in front of my face, looking like white confetti or bits of styrofoam. It wasn’t as cool, but it reminded me of the scene at the men’s Free Ski Big Air final that Scott and I watched last night. The sky was black, the heavy snow was illuminated by the bright lights of the venue. I remember admiring it and wishing it would snow here again so I could run through it. Well, the snow today wasn’t nearly as heavy as what I saw on the tv, but it was still delightful. It will probably be a slippery nightmare tomorrow, but today it was fun!

Lisel Mueller!

I’ve posted several poems by Lisel Mueller over the years: When I Am Asked/ Lisel Mueller, The Blind Leading The Blind/ Lisel Mueller, Sometimes, When the Light/ Lisel Mueller, Things/ Lisel Mueller, and Monet Refuses the Operation/ Lisel Mueller. But, I’ve never checked out any of her collections until now. Yesterday I picked up Alive Together: New and Selected Poems / Lisel Mueller. I started at the beginning, and stopped when I found this poem:

Losing My Sight / Lisel Mueller

I never knew that by August
the birds are practically silent,
only a twitter here and there.
Now I notice. Last spring
their noisiness taught me the difference
between screamers and whistlers and cooers
and O, the coloraturas.
I have already mastered the subtlest pitches in our cat’s
elegant Chinese. As the river
turns muddier before my eyes,
its sighs and little smacks
grow louder. Like a spy,
I pick up things indiscriminately:
the long approach of a truck,
car doors slammed in the dark,
the night life of animals—shrieks and hisses,
sex and plunder in the garage.
Tonight the crickets spread static
across the air, a continuous rope
of sound extended to me,
the perfect listener.

coloratura = elaborate ornamentation of a vocal melody, especially in operatic singing by a soprano.

I imagined that Mueller knew something about vision loss when I read her, “Monet Refuses the Operation” a few years ago, but I didn’t know that for the last 20 years of her life (she died in 2020), she was losing her vision and couldn’t read. I found out about that while reading this interview, “Slightly Larger Than Life Size“:

Mueller speaks always in a steady, gentle tone—even when describing the death of her beloved husband, Paul Mueller, in 2001 or the partial loss of vision she has suffered over the last 20 years. “I’m blind for reading, really,” she explains plainly, almost as if she were describing someone else. “I use an enlarging machine. And I have two friends who come read to me.” 

Mueller also no longer writes, in part because of her diminishing vision. She treats this circumstance with the same tough realism—compellingly at odds with the ethereal nature of her poetry—as the other hardships in her life. “I do miss writing,” she replies when asked the obvious question. “But I simply don’t have the images coming to me anymore that would start a poem. The language no longer flows. I would have to force it and come up with some artificial things, and that’s not my way. I’m someone who has learned to put up with things as they are. Because of the blindness, because of what happened to my husband, because of leaving the country that I was born in and coming here—I accommodate myself.”

Slightly Larger Than Life Size

I accommodate myself. Love that line! A title for a poem, I think. I wouldn’t say I put up with things; rather, I adapt and find new ways to be, to see. I like the line about not forcing it and coming up with artificial things. I agree.

In my imagined poem titled, “I accommodate myself,” I might start it with a line from Mueller’s “Losing My Sight”: I never knew . . . . / Now I notice. Maybe I should make a list of all of things I’ve noticed since my vision began declining?

The perfect listener. Reading this line, I immediately thought of Ed Bok Lee’s line in “Halos“:

That visual impairment improves hearing,
taste, smell, touch is mostly myth.

I do notice things much more than I did before my vision loss; I’ve made it a big part of writing/attention practice. I’ve devoted many runs to listening or smelling or feeling the various textures. So, being a good listener didn’t just happen because my vision declined; I worked for it. Yet, even as I’m noticing more with my ears, I do also seem to struggle to hear what people are saying to me. So much so that I asked for my hearing to be checked at my last appointment. It was fine. So, what’s happening? Why do I need more time to process what people are saying, or need to ask them to repeat it? FWA thinks I might have an audio processing disorder — something one of his favorite Youtubers has. Possibly. I think it has more to do with how people use visual cues — gestures, their surroundings — to convey the meaning of their speech. People with normal sight don’t realize how much they are relying on vision when they speak and they don’t recognize how that impacts people who cannot see the things that they are referencing. I find this frustrating and also fascinating to think about how we our senses work together.

One more thing about Mueller’s poem. I’d like to memorize it. There are too many wonderful lines that I don’t want to forget.

Sharing the Love

I have not given much any attention to building an audience here or on social media and, as a result, no one is seeing/responding/sharing my love poems. It is probably also because of the algorithm. Scott suggested that I put the link in the first comment and post a picture of a dog. It’s time for me to think again about if I want a bigger audience. Actually, the better question is: how can I reach people with my work? For me, it’s less about a big audience, more about finding ways to share what I’m doing and connect with others. Experiment time! The goal for me is not a bigger audience, but finding ways to contribute and connect. Hmm . . . I’ll have to think about it some more.

a few minutes later: As a first step, I’ve decided to try sharing my love poems again on Facebook. I put the link in the first comment and posted a photo, not of a dog, but of this Valentine that Scott noticed in the bathroom at Arbeiter Brewing:

Valentine, I’m falling for you & hoping the system does, too.

Also, I posted the STOP ICE photo that I posted here yesterday on my Instagram.

Maybe one of the biggest reasons I’m not sharing on social media is because it’s hard for me to do it with my bad vision. Everything takes so much longer and I can’t always see when I’ve made a mistake. And, I’ve been self-conscious about posting photos that I imagine are poorly cropped or framed strangely. Time to get over that.

Get Out Ice

Seen on a bathroom door at Arbeiter Brewing:

sickers on a bathroom door at Arbeiter

feb 11/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees
15% sloppy

Sun! Above freezing! Melting and melted snow! And I think I remember hearing chirping birds somewhere. Plus, the falls were faintly falling! Today’s run felt much better than yesterday’s. I felt stronger and calmer and more capable of handling everything — running included.

10 Things

  1. two benches at the park were occupied, one near Sea Salt and one just across the road from the Longfellow House
  2. a low, dull whine coming from the indoor ice rink at Minneahaha Academy
  3. the gentle curve of the retaining wall wrapped around the ravine between 42nd and 44th, covered in white
  4. much of the snow near the bench above the edge of the world was melted — the bench was empty, the river was white
  5. a few cars in the parking lots at the falls
  6. two people standing on the path at the edge of the falls looking up at something — but what?
  7. 2 fat tires
  8. a man and a dog emerging from a snow-covered trail, climbing a snow bank and then crossing the road
  9. a long honk from a car across turkey hollow
  10. the soft sound and the slide-y feel of my feet striking the grit on the path

As I ran, I thought about my low ferritin and wondered what impact it has made on my running. Is it why I struggle to run more than 4 or 5 miles at a time? Then I imagined how much better my running might be after a few months of taking the iron pills my np (nurse practitioner) prescribed for me.

Here in Minnesota, we have a few months (if we’re lucky!) before it’s spring, but it sure feels like it today. In honor of that feeling, here’s a Mary Oliver poem I just discovered in my recently purchased Little Alleluias:

A Settlement / Mary Oliver

Look, it’s spring. And last year’s loose dust has turned
into this soft willingness. The wind-flowers have come
up trembling, slowly the brackens are up-lifting their
curvaceous and pale bodies. The thrushes have come
home, none less than filled with mystery, sorrow,
happiness, music, ambition.

And I am walking out into all of this with nowhere to
go and no task undertaken but to turn the pages of
this beautiful world over and over, in the world of my
mind.

***

Therefore, dark past,
I’m about to do it.
I’m about to forgive you

for everything.

I love this poem! To turn the pages of this beautiful world, to forgive the dark past, to declare, I’m about to do it in a poem. I want to borrow that line.

Get Out Ice

An IRL friend shared a post on Facebook with some wise words about care and love. The whole post is great, but here’s an excerpt that explicitly discusses care and another form of love: relational humility and the de-centering of needs/desires

So beloved white women kin, please let us watch each other. If you see this happening, please turn towards our kin and ask them to hold a contradiction with you: we need the efforts and care that are being brought forth, this strategy that uses our privileges to build things that are needed but, at the same time, and with the greatest of humility, we have to recognize that we carry within us deeply rooted survival needs that are about our own comfort and centering; our desire to feel and be seen as valuable and worthy. And because those needs are deeply rooted, we often don’t see them when they crop up, although others do. Which is why practicing relational humility rather than defensiveness is key to this moment.

Link arms with each other and say, hey, while we are doing this work, let’s check each other on what we are bringing to it. Who else are we in relationship with? How are we checking our actions against something other than the minds of other white women? Is there anyone else doing the same thing or something similar and can we help them rather than start something new? Is there a part of us doing this thing because we have an image of ourselves as brave and selfless, a kind of inner hero narrative? Come on, loves, tell the truth. Where are we holding on to control rather than care, feeling a sense of ownership to our work that we are attached to, expressing false humility when we actually want the attention, and believing that we know what is best for whatever moment we are in? Are we trying to build an empire or just a moment for the people nearest to us, people we want to create safe? Loves, beloveds, there are a number of white women engaging in empire building right now, even though it is called care.

Raffo Susan

there are a number of white woman engaging in empire building right now, even though it is called care.

love

I have written 14 love poems using words/lines/phrases from the social media statements of local businesses. For Valentine’s Day, I want to gather them in a small chapbook to be shared and spread. I’d like to include a brief introduction that would explain what, why, and how I put these together, and might offer a more straight-forward description of how love is being imagined and practiced here in Minnesota. This afternoon and tomorrow, I need to write this introduction.

feb 9/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls and back
39 degrees
40% sloppy (snow/ice/puddles)

Ran in the afternoon, which is when I run most days this winter. It felt much better than yesterday. I think the effects of the second shingles shot are lessening. And I was less worried about blood pressure and heart rate too; both have gone down — not quite to normal numbers, but much closer than a few days ago.

It was sloppy out there! The snow and ice weren’t slippery — thanks Minneapolis Parks Department for sprinkling dirt on the trail! — but they were wet, and there were deep puddles in several spots. I managed to avoid completely soaking my shoes or socks.

Today it is gray and a dingy white — writing that, I’m thinking of a line from a Diane Seuss poem; I’ll find it after I finish this recounting of my run*. Gloomy, humid, wet. I didn’t mind. It felt more like early spring than deep into winter. Right after going outside, I even smelled thawing earth! There were some runners and walkers and bikers on the trail, but no cross country skiers or eliptigos or hoverboards. (Earlier today, when Scott and I were heading back from a meeting, we saw someone speed by on a hoverboard!)

The falls and the creek were frozen and everything was still. No one else around, which was a little unsettling. A few minutes later, heading out of the park, I heard some kids at the playground. Earlier, as I passed the parking lot, I heard the train bells and horn blaring. Was it a normal alert that the train was crossing an intersection, or a different warning?

I don’t recall hearing any birds or seeing any squirrels. No wild turkeys or yipping dogs. No bad music blasting out of a car window. Passing a trash can at 42nd, my nose crinkled as it got a faint smell of poop. My first thought: a diaper, but more likely dog poop. Yuck!

Near the end of my run, I decided to recite — again, out loud! — Alice Oswald’s “The Story of Falling.” It helped distract me, or focus me, or moved my mind somewhere other than how much more I had to run. I think it’s time to return to reciting poems on the trail! Maybe I’ll start with my Emily Dickinson experiment: pick a different ED poem to recite for each mile run.

*Here’s the Diane Seuss poem. It’s so good, and not too long, so I’ll post the whole thing again. I first posted it on 1 june 2024, when I was reading Seuss’ Pultizer Prize winning, Frank.

Legacy/ Diane Seuss

I think of the old pipes, 
how everything white 
in my house is rust-stained, 
and the gray-snouted
raccoon who insists on using
my attic as his pee pad, 
and certain
sadnesses losing their edges, 
their sheen, their fur
chalk-colored, look
at that mound of laundry, 
that pile of pelts peeled away
from the animal, and poems, 
skinned free of poets, 
like the favorite shoes of that dead 
girl now wandering the streets
with someone else’s feet in them.

white as rust-stained, certain sadnesses as dull, soft, and chalk-colored

Get Out Ice

This morning, I watched Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Wow! So much love. Such a powerfully layered f–k you to hate! So many beautiful stories of a culture!

Here’s what was written about it on Facebook:

I watched Bad Bunny deliver the most American halftime show I have ever seen. Then I came home and watched it again. And I am not okay. In the best possible way.

He sang every single word in Spanish. Every. Single. Word. He danced through sugarcane fields built on a football field in California while the President of the United States sat somewhere calling it “disgusting.” Lady Gaga came out and did the salsa. Ricky Martin lit up the night. A couple got married on the field. He handed his Grammy, the one he won eight days ago for Album of the Year, to a little boy who looked up at him the way every child looks up when they dare to believe the world has a place for them.

And then this man, this son of a truck driver and a schoolteacher from Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, stood on the biggest stage on the planet and said “God bless America.”And then he started naming them.

Chile. Argentina. Uruguay. Paraguay. Bolivia. Peru. Ecuador. Brazil. Colombia. Venezuela. Panama. Costa Rica. Nicaragua. Honduras. El Salvador. Guatemala. Mexico. Cuba. Dominican Republic. Jamaica. The United States. Canada. And then, his voice breaking with everything he carries, “Mi patria, Puerto Rico. Seguimos aquí.” My homeland, Puerto Rico. We are still here.

The flags came. Every single one of them. Carried across that field by dancers and musicians while the jumbotron lit up with the only words that mattered: “THE ONLY THING MORE POWERFUL THAN HATE IS LOVE.”

I teared up. I’m not ashamed to say it. I sat on my couch and I wept because THAT is the America I believe in. That is the American story, not the sanitized, gated, English-only version that small and frightened people try to sell us. The REAL one. The messy, beautiful, multilingual, multicolored, courageous one. The one that has always been built by hands that speak every language and pray in every tongue and come from every corner of this hemisphere.

That is the America I want Jack and Charlotte to know. That when the moment came, when the whole world was watching, a Puerto Rican kid who grew up to become the most-streamed artist on Earth stood in front of 100 million people, sang in his mother’s language, blessed every nation in the Americas, and spiked a football that read “Together, we are America” into the ground. Not with anger. With joy. With love so big it made hate look exactly as small as it is.

And what did the President do? He called it “absolutely terrible.” He said “nobody understands a word this guy is saying.” He called it “a slap in the face to our Country.” The leader of the free world watched a celebration of love, culture, and everything this hemisphere has given to the world, and all he could see was something foreign. Something threatening. Something disgusting.

Let that sink into your bones.

The man who is supposed to represent all of us looked at the flags of our neighbors, heard the language of 500 million Americans across this hemisphere, and felt attacked. That’s not strength. That’s not patriotism. That is poverty of the soul.

. . .

Bad Bunny didn’t say “ICE out” tonight. He didn’t need to. He just showed the whole world what America looks like when we are not afraid of each other. When culture is shared, not policed. When language is music, not a threat. When a flag from every nation in this hemisphere can walk across a football field together and the only words you need are the ones he gave us:

The only thing more powerful than hate is love.

Michael Garrett — NC Senate

jan 28/RUN

3.5 miles
under ford bridge and back
7 degrees
50% snow-covered

A run outside! Cold, but not even close to some of my coldest runs in past years (I’ve run in a feels like temp of -20). I haven’t run outside much this month, so I forgot how to dress for it. Today, too many layer. Hand warmers and foot warmers and 3 shirts under my jacket.

Hardly anyone else on the river road path. A few walkers, a few bikers, any other runners? I can’t remember, but I don’t think so. Heard some cars honking in the distance. ICE must be nearby.

The river was white and looked cold. The parts of the path that weren’t covered in snow were stained white from salt — was it salt or something else? I know Minneapolis Parks is committed to not putting down salt because it ends up in the river. Most of the walking trail was buried in snow. Only one stretch, just north of 38th had some bare asphalt. I walked on it, then got stuck when it was covered in snow again. The snow looked brittle and made a sharp crack as I stepped on it. Mostly it wasn’t deep, but when it was, it was uneven and awkward to walk through. Empty benches, sharp shadows, blue sky. A strange feeling all around: unsettled.

Alice Oswald Interview, part 3

[on the idea of a Homeric formula] That seemed entirely wrong to me, this habit of draining the meaning out of the poems, of seeing orality as a machinelike way of composing. I was enraged by being given statistics about how many times a certain word or simile is used. To me, it felt clear that it was a more entranced way of composing, thta the poets would get into a kind of intoxicated state where they could incredibly, almost magically, find exactly the right adjective, the right meaning for the right place in the right melody.

 an interview with Alice Oswald

Get Out Ice

1

a fragment from Facebook: Not deescalate but:

abolish
withdraw

prosecute
witness

2

Love #9: After

We are still here.
We are still loving our neighbors, 
still supporting our community, 
still caring about the constitution.

We are staying warm, 
staying strong, 
staying impossible to ignore. 

Read this poem this morning and remembered when my mom died, how a colleague took me out for coffee and told me that grief is a continued connection to the person you lost. I’ve often thought about her words, and I use them to embrace my grief.

Sisyphus / Sharon Lessley

As if weightlessness were aspirational―
what nonsense―

                                  your death,

        a stone 

I can only hope to shoulder forever. Imagine
it gets better―

                                  what nothing

        am I left with

then? Even despair carries a particular
charge: that fantastic

                                  last whiff of lavender

      detergent

imprinted on the collar of a holiday sweater―

                                    mama,

the mourners are assembling. March me 
up that hill …

Your death a stone I can only hope to shoulder forever.

jan 8/BIKERUNGETOUTICE

minneapolis update: peaceful protests last night, more protests today, Noem/Trump are attempting to escalate it, Walz calls for peaceful protests and “good trouble”, FBI takes investigation away from Minnesota, public school is cancelled for rest of the week after ICE enters campus and threatens staff/students at Roosevelt High School (the threatening was yesterday, the cancellation begins today).

And, just discovered this: Renee Nicole Good was a poet who won an award for this poem: On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs

bike: 30 minutes
basement
run: 2 miles

Icy outside, so inside on the bike and the treadmill. Important to get in some exercise for stress relief. Watched clips from the US figure skating championships while I biked, listened to Mood: Energy” while I ran. Songs: Panama/ Van Halen; We Got the Beat/ Go Gos; I did Something Bad/ Taylor Swift; My Sharona/ The Knack — an at least one other song I can’t remember now. It felt good to move, especially for the second mile of my run. A few times, I felt like I was floating. The thing I remember most: my bobbing shadow off to the side, in the shadows, near the old coal shoot — yes, my house is old enough to have a coal shoot in the basement.

Wow, this poem:

[from the time we were talking]/ Henri Meschonnic

Translated from the French by Gabriella Bedetti & Don Boes

from the time we were talking
to stones
we took on their
meaning their time and now
their memory is in us it
walks in our footsteps it moves
in our warmth we no
longer distinguish
between what they say and us
the time of the stones is us and
we are full of cries that we
leave in our wake like
stones
holding on to each other
to find among them our
path

This morning, barely one day after a woman was shot and killed by ICE here in Minneapolis, this poem speaks to me in a different way than it would have the day before. Before I would have thought about the time of stones as living in geologic time or talking to/with/as stones as echoes or Kafka’s parable of Prometheus in which Prometheus becomes part of the rock (“According to the second, Prometheus, goaded by the pain of the tearing beaks, pressed himself deeper and deeper into the rock until he became one with it.”) but now I’m thinking of the stones — like Emily Dickinson’s granite lip — as tombs and the dead talking (or trying to) talk to us:

If I couldn’t thank you,
Being fast asleep,
You will know I’m trying
With my Granite lip!  

jan 5/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
30 degrees
100% loose snow

Loose snow. Difficult to move through. For almost all of the run, it was fine. I was careful, deliberate, light on my feet. On the last stretch, running up that a hill, I ran faster to pass a woman with 2 dogs. She was walking fast and I was irritated? Was she doing something worthy of irritation? She and her dogs were walking in such a way that took over most of the path and forced me into the uneven snow. And, she seemed to speed up as I neared her, like she was racing me. Not long after passing her, it happened. I rolled my ankle in the loose snow. oh shit, I exclaimed. It was fine for the rest of the run, and it seems fine an hour later. I’m RICEing (rest ice compression elevate) to be safe. To increase the odds that all will continue to be fine, it’s time for some fun with medical terms: RICE

R I C E

  • routinely, I crave eggplant
  • rust is corroding energy
  • rapt, I consider everything
  • rippled ice concerns Edgar
  • reciting Issa causes enlightenment
  • rabbits implore, cancel Easter!
  • rooted in creative excess
  • restive, impatient, contrary, edgy
  • rude individuals can’t empathize
  • ribald, irritating, caterwauling, egomaniacs
  • Rosie is counting elements
  • Rankled, I cry, Enough!
  • river island causeway eddy


Other memories from the run: the bells of St. Thomas playing a Christmas song, but which one?; crows cawing steadily, and syncing my steps to their song; several cars swinging wide to avoid splashing me with the melted snow; waving twice at a guy in a red jacket — once on my way north, then again on my way south; stopping several times to walk when the snow became too soft and uneven; small splashes of yellow dotting the snow, some bright, some faded; the road was bare and wet, the trail was not; feeling strong as I lengthened my torso, stretched out of my hips, opened my chest, and increased my cadence.

On This Day: January 5, 2025

Found these beautiful lines from the wonderful Carl Phillips while revisiting 2025’s January 5th entry:

Moving With: Carl Phillips

What if, bet-
ween this one
and the one

we hoped for,
there’s a third
life, taking

its own slow,
dreamlike hold,
even now —

blooming in
spite of us?
(from “Sky Coming Forward”)

Moving with Li-Young Lee:

for those three
primary
colors: staying,
leaving, and
returning.
(Big Clock/Li-Young Lee)

Found this delightful poem this morning. I thought about the contrary crows when I heard the crows by the gorge.

Birds on Statues/ Cole Swensen

On one side of the pond, a woman heads west in stone, while on the other, it’s a man heading east, but with the same extravagant gestures of headlong flight—one leg thrown back and both hands launched forward. And sometimes it’s on the tip of one of the lifted heels that a pigeon sits, and sometimes it’s on a thumb, but usually it’s on a head, often one on each, making a mockery of the phrase “in headlong flight.”

Though now they’re rebuilding the pond, so they’ve drained it, with the odd result that the pigeons have gone and have been replaced by crows. They too particularly like to perch on the statues’ heads, but, determined to assert their alterity, they make sure that they’re always facing backward.

jan 3/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls
20 degrees
100% snow-covered

Not a single bare spot on the trail or the road. Hard on the ankles, calves, and the eyes — so bright and white and endlessly nothing. Difficult to see where the snow was loose and where it wasn’t. It didn’t bother me; I’m just happy to be outside moving, connected to this place. Tried to greet everyone I saw — runners, walkers, at least one biker — with a wave or a hello.

10 Things

  1. the smell of chimney smoke lingering near a neighbor’s house
  2. soft ridges of sand-colored* snow covering the street — tricky to run over and through
  3. empty benches
  4. (almost) empty parking lots
  5. a hybrid/electric car singing as it slowly rounded a curve near locks and dam no. 1
  6. the sound of the falls falling over the ledge: almost gushing
  7. scattered voices echoing around the park — at least one of them was from an excited kid
  8. stopping to tighten my laces, a woman in a long coat nearby, standing and admiring the falls
  9. splashes of yellow on the snow
  10. bird song then a burst of birds briefly filling the sky

*sand-colored: using these words, I immediately thought of a favorite poem that I’ve memorized, I Remember/ Anne Sexton: the grass was as tough as hemp and was no color — no more than sand was a color

I listened to the quiet — barely any wind — for the first half of the run, then put in my “Sight Songs” playlist on the way back. Memorable songs: Sheena Easton’s nasally high notes in “For Your Eyes Only,” and the lyrics in the refrain —

The passions that collide in me
The wild abandoned side of me
Only for you, for your eyes only

Yikes. Also, these lines from The Who’s “Behind Blue Eyes”:

And if I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat

And if I shiver please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat

And these, from Bonnie Tyler’s “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” which I don’t recall ever hearing:

Every now and then I know you’ll never be the boy you always wanted to be. . .

. . .Every now and then I know there’s no one in the universe as magical and wondrous as you

(Almost) 9 Years!

Typically each year, I mark the anniversary of this log as the first of January, with a new year beginning on that day. But, that’s not the real anniversary of this log. It’s January 12th, 2017. Why the 12th and not the 1st? I’m not quite sure; I’ll have to look through my journal from that year. It seems fitting, with my affinity (see D. Seuss below) for the approximate, the almost, to not start on the first day of the year!

On This Day: January 3, 2022

Reading this past entry today, I re-discovered this beautiful poem by a favorite poet, Diane Seuss, Love Letter. Rereading it, so many words, phrases, ideas tapped me on the shoulder, invited me it! Here’s the second half of the poem:

I’m much too sturdy now to invest
in the ephemeral. No, I do not own lace
curtains. It’s clear we die a hundred times
before we die. The selves
that were gauzy, soft, sweet, capable
of throwing themselves away
on love, died young. They sacrificed
themselves to the long haul.
Picture girls in white nighties jumping
off a cliff into the sea. I want to say
don’t mistake this for cynicism
but of course, it is cynicism.
Cynicism is a go-to I no longer have
the energy to resist. It’s like living
with a vampire. Finally, just get it
over with, bite me. I find it almost
offensive to use the word love
in relation to people I actually love.
The word has jumped off
so many cliffs into so many seas.
What can it now signify?
Shall I use the word affinity
like J.D. Salinger, not a good
man, put into the mouths
of his child genius characters? I have
an affinity for my parents. An affinity
for you. I will make sure you are fed
and clothed. I will listen to you
endlessly. I will protect your privacy
even if it means removing myself
from the equation. Do those sound
like wedding vows? Are they indiscriminate?
Well then, I am indiscriminate.
I am married to the world.
I have worked it all out in front of you.
Isn’t that a kind of nakedness?
You have called for a love letter.
This is a love letter.

sturdy! I love this word — the sound and the feeling of it: I like being sturdy. My Girl (in my Girl Ghost Gorge poem, the preferred version of me — Sara, age 8).

the “gauzy, soft, sweet selves” — these gothic girls, jumping off cliffs into the sea — a very different version/vision of a girl than mine

Linking these lines to others from Seuss, I imagine one version of her girl to be the one that died when her father did — she writes about him in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl. That girl’s father became sick when she was 2 and died when she was 7.

Of course, this is only one version of her girl. How many different versions of girls do I have? Do I write about?

Affinity?! Yes, I need to put that beside my list of “love?” words, accustomed, familiar, acquainted, known. Affinity = kinship, attraction, liking/affection, causal relationship, attractive force, “a relation between biological groups involving resemblance in structural plan and indicating a common origin”

Right now, I’m reading “You” as the poem and poetry.

Indiscriminate = not marked by careful distinction — ambiguous, sloppy? a (too) rough approximation?

love letter world . . . suddenly, I’m thinking of Emily Dickinson: This is my letter to the world that never wrote to me

That was fun, giving some time to these words! I am drawn — do I have an affinity? — to Diane Seuss’s words. Is it because my introduction to her was her fabulous poem about vision that begins with the line, the world, italicized? Or her ekphrastic poems, in Still Life with Two Dead Peacocks and a Girl?

a return to the ekphrastic! I am reminded of my past reading and writing about still life, especially with Diane Seuss. I’m imagining my “how to see” series of ekphrastic poems with a section on still life paintings and one on pastoral poems! Also, a section on artists with vision conditions or that particularly resonate for my vision: Magritte, Monet, Vincent Van Gogh. Ideally, a series of poems. But first, taking the time to gather all of the resources together, then to stay open to what could happen! I’m also imagining a section on cut-outs/silhouettes, which I studied during my shadow month.

Colette Love Hilliard and the erasure poem

Last night I bought CLH’s  a wonderful catastrophe. Wow! I love it. This one reminded me of my blind spot/mood ring visual poetry:

from A Wonderful Catastrophe / Colette Love Hilliard

jan 1/RUN

4.6 miles
minnehaha falls and back
11 degrees
100% snow-covered

A wonderful way to start the new year: a run outside, in the snow, above the gorge! There were moments when it felt easy, but mostly it was hard because of the uneven, loose slow. I think my calves are going to be sore all day from the effort! Not injured, just tired from being used to push through and keep balance in the snow. Ever since we got the 5.8 inches of snow last weekend, it has been snowing a inch of two every night. It’s beautiful, but not fun to drive in — I’ve heard; I haven’t driven in at least 5 years because of my vision. It’s not always fun to run in (and on), either. But I’m not complaining, I loved being out there today.

I encountered runners, walkers, at least one fat tire. No cross country skiers or regulars. I heard some people sledding at the park, and the light rail leaving the station — oh, and a woman saying to someone she was walking with, I just need to get the shoes and I’ll be fine. What shoes? Fine for what?

10 Things

  1. a bright while, almost blinding — I’m glad I had some dark tree trunks to look at
  2. snow on the side of a tree making a pleasing pattern on the textured trunk
  3. the falls were falling and making noise — more trickle than gush
  4. the dark gray water of the creek was moving through shelves of ice and snow
  5. the sounds of my yak trax in the snow: crunching and clopping and clicking
  6. the smell of a chimney smoke hovering in the air
  7. a small dome of snow on top of a wooden fence post
  8. empty benches
  9. a crunching noise behind me: crusty ice in my braid hitting the collar of my jacket
  10. overheard: an adult to a kid playing in the backyard, are you having fun?

Running up and out of the park, I had a moment of freedom and happiness — ah, to be outside moving in this fresh air and all of this snow! I thought about my wonderful, low-key New Year’s Eve with Scott and our kids, both of whom are doing so much better at the end of the year than they were at the beginning, both excited and hopeful about the next year.

Today I’m submitting my book manuscript to another press, Yes Yes Books. Before I went out for my run, I drafted a pithy description of my collection, Echolocate | | Echolocated:

“Echolocate, echolocated: to locate using echoes instead of sight, to be located by the echoes you offer. In this collection, a girl and her ghosts visit a gorge daily to locate and be located by the rocks, a river, and the open air and all who are held by it.”

Here’s a beautiful poem I discovered the other day about (not) naming.

Against Specificity / Virginia Kane

Hanif says never put a bird in a poem
without saying what kind of bird.

I want to agree. I like my blues
cerulean, my clouds cumulonimbus.

I prefer my mountains baptized
and my rivers carved with names.

Your reader will find you 
in the details, everyone says,

but when I write about memory
I am just writing about loss.

Here, I forget to tell
the flowers you brought me

they are irises. I decide
the dogwoods we laid under

are just those trees. The months
I knew you, crisp and labeled,

all become that year.
When you leave,

I christen nothing.
I call it what it wasn’t.

dec 29/SHOVELBIKEWALK

shovel: 30 minutes
12 degrees / feels like 0
bright sun

The official word is that MSP (airport), which is only a couple of miles away, got 5.8 inches of snow. It wasn’t too hard to shovel; thankfully it got a lot colder yesterday and overnight. No longer heart attack snow. Under the powdery stuff, there was some crust, but it didn’t seem too slippery either. I would love to go out for a run by the gorge, but I don’t think that’s a good idea for my glute/hip/back. It’s tough to resist.

10 Things

  1. bright blue sky
  2. warm sun on my face
  3. fogged up sunglasses
  4. an unsettling creaking noise above me: some frozen branches on our big maple in the front which seems to be dying (evidence: big branches have already fallen this fall + several woodpeckers have been drumming on the wood)
  5. the whiny rumble of a snow blower in the distance
  6. a cold spray on my face when the wind blew some of the snow I’d just shoveled
  7. the recycling and trash can lids frozen shut
  8. rabbit prints along the side of the house, near the garage
  9. a sharp rumble nearby: another slow blower, closer and in the alley
  10. sprawled branches of the crab apple tree, weighed down with snow and ice

bike: 35 minutes
basement

Resisted the urge to go outside and run; biked in the basement instead. Almost finished the first episode of season 2 of Wednesday. Like in the first season, she attends a boarding school, Nevermore. Did I know that Edgar Allan Poe was the founder? Probably. Some outcasts are psychics or wolves, can control bugs or shoot electricity out of their fingertips. I can’t remember if there’s only one siren or more. This season has Steven Buscemi as the principal and a scar-faced crow. It was helpful to watch the episode with audio description on — such relief to actually see and understand and to not not know what is going on. Yes, that is a double negative, and yes, I meant to write it — the feeling of uncertainty is not knowing, so the relief is in not being in that state of not knowing: to not not know

walk: 20 minutes
neighborhood
13 degrees

Managed to convince Scott to go outside for a quick walk around the block. It was cold, especially walking into the wind, but I had hand warmers in my gloves, which helped a lot. Scott did not, so he was very cold, and didn’t want to walk for long.

What did I notice? One neighbor had put salt down on their sidewalk (boo). Most of the sidewalks were shoveled. The street 2 blocks over had lights strung up from one end of the street to the other. I never see these lit up, because I don’t walk this way at night. A friendly woman greeted us halfway down another block — hello! / hi!. She was giving treats to a cute dog. Anything else? I can’t remember.

Found a purple poem earlier this morning:

an excerpt from Language Lessons/ Judith Kiros

Translated from the Swedish by Kira Josefsson with Judith Kiros

is it only words. On and on. If you shook up the words. On a
particular shade of purple being extracted from spiraling shells.
If the repetition had less to do with the broken-apart sea, see my
skin and my arms rippling like a wave, on and on again, I’ve
dyed them navy. On receiving a gift in your childhood, a purple
doll with foaming skirts, beneath them nothing, between her
legs nothing, what a perfect wave of black nymph. On violet.
Or on lavender. On being lowered into an ocean of colors. On
your head being pushed beneath the surface, on and on again,
to the tune of seashells knotting their purple insides. Don’t give
yourself up for free; there is a point in talking back to the sea. On
a particular shade of vague purple. On the way a shadow struts,
violet, across the page.

a particular shade of purple: tyrian purple, made from snail shells
violet, lavender, being lowered into an ocean, pushed beneath the surface: this makes be think of Alice Oswald and Nobody and Odysseus and his purplish-blueish cloak

I like the idea of being lowered into an ocean of colors
shade of vague purple

My favorite: the way a shadow struts,/violet, across the page

I love the word strut, especially when it involves a shadow! Immediately, it reminds me of another favorite line from “My Invisible Horse and the Speed of Human Decency “/ Matthew Olzmann:

I’m not asking for much.  A more tender world 

with less hatred strutting the streets.

Also discovered this morning: Fragment Thirty-six / HD and the reading guide by Dan Beachy-Quick — I’d like to return to this some other day, when I have time.

one final note: I have posted a log entry, either running or biking, on this day every year that I’ve written in this log: 2017-2025. Tomorrow, I’d like to experiment with mashing up or combining or erasing or scrambling or cutting up the words in these entries to make a new piece of writing — most likely, a poem.

dec 28/SHOVELBIKE

shovel
26 degrees

Winter storm warning today. Heavy, wet snow, up to 8 inches possible. It’s supposed to snow all day, but there was enough of a break for me to get outside and clear some of it away. In the middle of shoveling, it started snowing again, but now, less than hour later, it has stopped again — or, at least slowed.

This snow is the bad kind — not powdery or soft, but heavy and wet. Heart attack snow. Branch breaking snow. Power lines going down snow.

While I shoveled, I wore one of Scott’s mom’s winter coats and RJP’s Christmas present: a crocheted neck warmer, in light green with purple trim. So well made — very warm and comfortable!

No running today. My glute/hip pain is back. It aches sometimes when I sit for too long. I need to run 1.7 miles to reach my goal of 950 miles, but I have until Wednesday, so I won’t push it!

a few hours earlier

Looking out the window above my desk and watching the snow fall, I discovered this poem:

Origins/ Laura Ann Reed

Nowhere but in the occasional dream
can I know again
with certainty
those hills, the dead-end road,

the solace of so often walking—
with such little thought
as to where time was leading me—

                    to the place

where the asphalt gave way
to stone, dust,
and an amber imbroglio of manzanita.

No longer fluent in my primal dialect,
the tones rising with the sap
of the blue eucalyptus, I can only recall

that I thought like a child.
And reasoning like a child, I thought
it best to keep secret

                    the certainty of my love

for the aromatic leaves,

        the strips of bark day by day
        peeling back to expose

the radiant layers: a gesture

        toward the desperation to be known.

more time with the safari reading list

1 — an interview with Fanny Howe (FH) in the Kenyon Review (KR) / bewilderment, openness, fear, and secularizing belief

KR: But a tinker, a traveler, is often a searcher, and as you’ve said, lyric is searching for something that can’t be found. In one of your essays you describe a “poetics of bewilderment” which is very intriguing to me: “An enchantment that follows a complete collapse of reference and reconcilability.” To me that sounds like a frightening state of being. Not a little mess, but a big one! Is that frightening to you?

FH: I think it is frightening. Staying completely open to what might happen and trying not to prefigure what is coming at you is frightening. The imagination is in jeopardy. Belief is bold. There’s a philosopher I like called Gianni Vattimo and he’s written a book called Belief (he is a nihilist) and in it he talks about the secularization of belief and turns it into a positive event, being the collapse of hierarchical structure; and he says that Christ was attempting to secularize belief, to return it to the ground. And one of the terms he uses is infinite plurality, that the relations and contingencies that mark your movement through time are always taking place in ways that are outside judgment and imagination. That is sort of where I would like to stand, without being terrified. It involves an openness.

Fanny Howe Interview 2004

openness is anti-control

KR: Openness to. . . ?

FH: To . . . everything . . . it’s like seeing the future coming at you instead of yourself walking into the future. It’s a reversal of the time relationship, so that you have to welcome it because it’s approaching and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. That’s the best way I can describe it. It is definitely anticontrol.

currently watching

Scott and I are currently making our way through “Little House on the Prairie.” Last night’s episode was about Laura and Mary, and their sexist/idiot friend Carl, getting stuck on a runaway caboose. It was awesome, especially when Pa ripped some dude off of his horse so he could “borrow” a fresh horse to catch up to the train. As great as that episode was, it couldn’t compare to the one the night before in which Ma is trapped in the house, alone, with tetanus. She’s losing it — passing out in the rain, passing out on the floor — but still has enough wherewithal to heat up a big knife and cut out the infection before passing out again. Damn. This show is dark, and I love it.

Also watched: Die Hard as our Christmas movie, which was also excellent, and The Thursday Murder Club, with a fabulous cast.

And, started a great Poetry in America episode about Robert Pinsky’s poem “Shirt.”

bike: 20 minutes
basement

several hours later: Still snowing. Decided to do a quick bike ride before Scott took over the basement to record. Not much of a workout, but it felt good to move my legs and get my heart rate up a little. Finally started watching the new season of Wednesday — season 2. I can’t remember when it came out — last fall?

dec 26/RUN

4.45 miles
minnehaha falls and back
36 degrees
humidity: 90%

Moist, thick, big puddles everywhere. I tried to avoid them, but I couldn’t avoid all of them and by my last mile I could hear my one shoe squish squish squishing. Since it was warm, it didn’t bother me. Oh — just remembered — my shoe/sock got wet at the falls — the cobblestones near the falls were full of puddles. There were a few slick spots, but mostly it was just wet.

For 3 miles, I listened to the wet wheels, whooshing, crows cawing, and people calling out to each other as I ran. For the last mile: TSwift’s Life of a Showgirl

10 Things

  1. the small patches of snow on the trail or the road, seeping murky gray-green-dirty white liquid
  2. the rusty orange leaves, dead, still clinging to the trees
  3. calmly letting a walker know I was approaching from behind — right behind you/thank you! I meant to say, you’re welcome, but didn’t, then lamented my failure to exchange the you until I realized I had with my right behind YOU –if I had said, the you would have been traveled 3 times: from the-walker-as-you when I said, right behind you, to me-as-you when she said, thank you, to the walker-as-you again with, you’re welcome
  4. overheard: a man leaving a group of people at the falls, calling out, I’m going back to pay the meter!
  5. clusters of people — 6-8 at the overlook just above the falls, and at the overlook close to “The Song of Hiawatha”
  6. a clump of something not moving ahead of me on the trail — dead leaves? A darting squirrel. I studied it closely to make sure it didn’t run in front of me
  7. a distant thumping, heard when stopped to put it my headphones — nearing, another running plodding along
  8. seen with peripheral vision: some frozen crystals on my cheek
  9. the trail on the bike side of the double bridge was mostly wet ice with 2 narrow strips of bare pavement that narrowed even more until not even my toe could fit in their groove
  10. crows! just before starting my run, they were gather in the trees above me. when I stopped to start my workout on my watch, they cawed furiously, as if to say, keep moving!

Just before the run, I got an email about one of the chapbook contests I entered — back in July. I didn’t win, but I got, along with 4 other poets, an honorable mention. I’ll happily take that! The chapbook I submitted included earlier versions of several of the poems that I revised for my manuscript. I think the poems are even better now.

In the last mile of my run, a sudden thought: I should submit something for tiny wren lit’s tiny zine series. It says they’ll open again in early 2026: submit a tiny zine

safari reading list, review:

1 — contentment

Found a poem about contentment while reviewing my Safari Reading List. I’m partial to the words satisfied or enough or still, but contentment works too.

from A Beautiful House with a Hot Tub and Pool/ Jason Schneiderman

Yes, I can be content anywhere,
but alas sadly: No. It’s not true. I can’t be content here
in my uncomfortable present, in my uncomfortable chair,
on the uncomfortable subway, at this uncomfortable desk,
in this uncomfortable classroom. But oddly, I am content 
to visit the past, to say Hello everything I’ve lost, 
to say I wish you could come here to the present, 
my lost companion trees. I wish you could meet 
everything I’ve found.

about this poem: “Making peace with the past has been a common theme in my work, so I decided to try to write about making peace with the present.”

2 — a no-one rose

from Psalm/ Paul Celan (trans. John Felstiner )

Blessèd art thou, No One.
In thy sight would
we bloom.
In thy
spite.

A Nothing
we were, are now, and ever
shall be, blooming:
the Nothing-, the
No-One’s-Rose.

I love this bit of Celan’s poem and the No-one’s-Rose! No One — a someone who is No One: what type of sight do they have? We were, are, shall be nothing, blooming. I want to use this — maybe as a breathing with poem — in a collection* about the gorge/gap/bling spot.

*maybe not a collection, but a series of attempts, orbiting around the idea or feeling or experience of the Nothing in the gorge and in my vision.

Speaking of orbiting: Last night, I was trying to name/remember something, but I couldn’t, quite. I kept almost getting the right name, but I was off, approximate. As I talked, I moved my hands around in a circle, as if to indicate I was circling around the name. I called out, I’m orbiting it! I do this a lot. I wish I could remember the exact example, to make this story more understandable, but I can’t.

3 — CAConrad’s Queer Bubbles

There are some great bits in this article about Conrad and their rituals in The Paris Review:

“I love being inside the ritual,” he says. “It’s like speaking in tongues. It’s not just automatic writing … Every nuance, every adjustment to the ritual, alters the language that comes out of me.”

Exercises like these are nothing new in poetry—Conrad cites Bernadette Mayer and Charles Olson as two practitioners of similar methods—but he insists that his rituals are chiefly inspired by his childhood, specifically the Pennsylvania Dutch Country where his grandmother taught him to meditate and where he took an interest in the occult, from local water diviners to the hex signs painted on barns. But as much as his work owes a debt to Boyertown, it is a deliberate rebuke to the bigotry, violence, and oppression he found there.

Queer Bubbles

I’m familiar with B Mayer’s work — a class on her list is what led me to poetry! — but I don’t know that much about Charles Olson. I should look into him more, like his archeology of morning (on a site that offers footprints not blueprints, which reminds me of my old academic slogan for my ethical/pedagogical approach: an invitation to engage, not a how-to manual) and the polis / Polis is This:

Polis is This

In his two books of (Soma)tic rituals and poems, A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon and ECODEVIANCE—a third collection, While Standing in Line for Death, will be published this September—the rituals and resulting poems appear opposite one another. Because the rituals are written in the second person, at times the books read like the world’s most bizarre and inventive self-help guides, manuals for what you might call acute mindfulness. One ritual starts like this: “Eat a little dark chocolate before getting on the subway. Sit in the middle of the car … Then close your eyes, and as the car rolls on its tracks make a low hum from deep inside you … As soon as the car stops write 9 words as fast as you can before the train moves again … Repeat this humming and writing for 9 stops.” He credits his rituals with lifting him out of depression and grief.

Queer Bubbles

The use of You — a bizarre self-help manual or how-to on mindfulness!

the blind ring project returns to haunt this log

Doing some reading about lit journals that accept visual poetry, I was introduced to the amazing erasures of Colette LH. So beautiful and wonderful. Here’s the first one I experienced:

(un)certainty

Then I saw this one, Brain, and I started thinking about what I could do with my blind spot black-out ideas, and now I’m wondering about doing something with my peripheral. These white trails above, in (un)certainty are making me think about movement and direction and motion as it relates to my peripheral vision. Hmmm….

I want to buy their 2018 chapbook: a wonderful catastrophe and this, Celestial Timpani from Yavanika Press

dec 25/WALK

30 minutes
neighborhood
34 degrees / mist-drizzle

An afternoon walk with Scott and Delia. Gray, mild, misting. Some ice on the sidewalk, few cars on the road. Walking on Lena Smith Boulevard, looking over the hill and down into the gorge, I said, that looks so pretty, then realized it probably didn’t to anyone else. The view was gray sky, brown trees, rusted leaves, and the feeling of a river beyond it — a flash of a car or a runner traveling through the tunnel of trees. Scott said, it’s peaceful, but I wouldn’t call it pretty. At first I agreed, but then I decided it did look pretty to me.

A low-expectations Christmas. RJP made gifts for all of us: for Scott, a dark gray hat with yellow trim; for me, a neck warmer in green with a purple stripe; for FWA, light gray mittens. Beautifully crafted. We had a nice dinner, then watched Die Hard for the first time since it came out in 1988. Loved it — even though I could only see about half of it. Scott and I agree: a new tradition.

in the morning

Another Christmas is here. I’m sitting at the dining room table while everyone else is still asleep or hiding out in their rooms. Looking for something, I decided to search through my Safari Reading list — it’s the main way I save links. Found Dorianne Laux’s “Ode to Gray” at the bottom. Very cool! I love this poem and the idea of creating a list of all of the things of a certain color that are meaningful to me.

Ode to Gray/ Dorianne Laux

Mourning dove. Goose. Catbird. Butcher bird. Heron.
A child’s plush stuffed rabbit. Buckets. Chains.

Silver. Slate. Steel. Thistle. Tin.
Old man. Old woman.
The new screen door.

A squadron of Mirage F-1’s dogfighting
above ground fog. Sprites. Smoke.
“Snapshot gray” circa 1952.

Foxes. Rats. Nails. Wolves. River stones. Whales.
Brains. Newspapers. The backs of dead hands.

The sky over the ocean just before the clouds
let down their rain.

Rain.

The seas just before the clouds
let down their nets of rain.

Angelfish. Hooks. Hummingbird nests.
Teak wood. Seal whiskers. Silos. Railroad ties.

Mushrooms. Dray horses. Sage. Clay. Driftwood.
Crayfish in a stainless steel bowl.

The eyes of a certain girl.

Grain.

Ode to Gray/ Dorianne Laux

Oh, and the absolute first thing I have saved on my reading list is a wonderful poem from Tomas Tranströmer (love his poetry!):

After Someone’s Death./ Tomas Tranströmer

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, pale, shimmering comet’s tail.
It shelters us. It makes the TV images fuzzy.
It settles in cold droplets on the power lines.

You can still shuffle along on skis in the winter sun
through groves where last year’s leaves hang on.
Like pages torn from old telephone books—
all of the names swallowed up by the cold.

It’s still pleasant to feel the heart beating.
But the shadow often seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armor of black dragon scales.

it makes the TV images fuzzy / you can still shuffle along on skis / last year’s leaves / the shadow often seems more real than the body — so many lines that speak to me!

dec 24/RUN

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls
33 degrees
10% slick ice

Great weather for a run. Only needed one pair of gloves and no jacket. For the first mile, I didn’t encounter anyone, but as I neared the falls, more walkers and runners. I tried to greet everyone I encountered with a wave or a good morning. There was some ice, but I only slipped once or twice. The creek was flowing and I could hear the falls falling behind the thick ice columns. Running up the hill and on my way out of the park I heard voices below in the part of the park that is both the bottom of a massive sledding hill in the winter and a wading pool in the summer.

On my way home, I stopped at the bench above the edge of the world and admired the open view to the river below and the other side. Beautiful. Heard more people down below, on the winchell trail.

late night blind spot revelations

Last night, another thought: I’d like to take a break from structured writing that is shaped by a larger project. Time to experiment more instead. Also: time to add to my “How to Be” project, do my year-end summary, and edit my writing experiments list. Oh — and read some more of the poetry books I bought this year.

Discovered this poem the other day and wanted to remember it, especially for how it incorporates research about lichens into the poem:

The Lichens/ Talvikki Ansel

Crinkly-thin, the perfect marriage of algae and fungi, 
furbelowed and curled.


                                               venerable ancestors: strange as vellum, 
                                               an onion poultice, leather jerkin

                                                
Johann Dillen’s portraits of 1741: 
the ‘Strange Charactered Lichen, Black Dotted Wrinkled Lichen,
Leprous Black Nobb’d Lichen,
Crawfish Eye-like Lichen.’

                                                the youngest occupy a wicker couch, 
                                                eavesdrop on the aunties’ tales, wonder 
                                                why so aged-looking, their skin?

‘Wanderflechten’—those who traveled
on deer’s hooves, birds’ feet, hot air balloon baskets over arid land.


                                                travel’s allure, the turquoise ring, scarab bracelet

                                                
Those who embraced the seductions of moths’ wings, 
gave their bodies to the hungers  
of the ‘Brussels Lace Moths, Beautiful Hook-Tips, the Dingy Footman.’

                                                when can we stay out past dawn?

                                                
Lichens who gave sustenance, grew thin,
flailed against famine, 
lichen packed in the bodies of mummies.

                                                these have an aura, a blue-mauve cloud
                                                we can’t imagine the ribs’ furrows

                                                
Erik Acharius, 1808, the “father of lichenology,”  
fastens samples onto herbarium sheets,
lichens’ filaments and flakes suspended.

                                               nice—but not our father, who is spores and fragments

A thin cord anchors lichens to rock,
small bits chip off, wear of paw pad and fur,
take hold elsewhere.

                                               we hear the wind caressing bark

                                                
Lichens swept up by grazing reindeer,
hot breath devouring, rub of meaty tongues,
meat toxic to herders— 
radioactive fallout the lichens never meant to harbor.

                                               ghostly stalks of trees, an ashy forest 
                                               we can barely look

A single spruce hosts a rare green and red-lobed lichen.

                                                the odd one out, the one no one ever set eyes on


Lichens in the armpits of marble statues
differentiated from lichens on the thighs, 
eaten by snails on moonless nights.

                                               moonglow, 
                                               something we don’t know here, no one’s talking

                                                
A hummingbird’s nest, its outer layer  
shingled gray-green with lichen flakes, a point of pride, see—

                                               how beautiful they were, and useful.

dec 19/SWIM

1.5 loops
101 laps
ywca pool

Another swim! Today the pool was not that crowded, and by the time I was done, it was almost empty. Then, after Scott and I got out of the hot tub, it was completely empty. I almost wanted to get in and swim some more. I probably would have if we didn’t need to go shopping. Scott commented on how calm and still it was.

The swim felt good — mostly. At the beginning, a little harder to breathe, but as I warmed up, it got easier. The woman next to me also had an open swim club cap on; I would have said something to her, but I was afraid I was seeing it wrong. She was a strong, slow swimmer. She swam freestyle with some snorkeling and breaststroke mixed in. Many new friends in the other lane: first, someone in black swim trunks, kicking furiously as they swam freestyle for a 50, then stopping, then breaststroke, then a break. They lasted 5 or 10 minutes. Next was someone in an orange suit, doing a slanted breaststroke. After them another fast-ish freestyler. My favorite friend: the shadows dancing on the pool floor. Everything looked almost animated — like a cartoon, not quite real, and also hyper-real.

Continuous 200s again. A ladder of 50s: breathing 2/3/4/5/6/7/6/5/4/3. A set of continuous 100s, with the second fifty faster and more kicking — a 6 beat kick?

In the hot tub, I asked Scott if he wanted to increase his mileage to make his workout longer, so that I could swim longer. I’d like to increase my average per workout from 1.5 to 2 loops/miles. He said yes! I need to figure out some fun writing/attention/imagining/thinking experiments as I swim for January.

This past Tuesday, during the community jazz band rehearsal in which I don’t play, I read more of Jana Prikyl’s Midwood. Some of it I like, much of it I don’t understand, which could mean I need to read it several more times, or that I just don’t like it. Here’s a poem I copied into my plague notebook that spoke to me immediately.

Another Visit/ Jana Prikyl

A flock of Boy Scouts dispersing early morning
from the summits down into the valley
while I looked from the window of another
visit to that city, considering the bus routes
I’d sew together along the rim of the hills
and the park tucked under the shoulder of a slope
I mean to see but never do, made of transparencies
that dropped their leaves on top of leaves
description falls, it’s there without me

dec 14/SWIM!

1.5 loops
100 laps
outside: -5 degrees

I swam 3 times this week! Scott and I decided to go early, before the water aerobics class. For almost the entire swim, I had the lane to myself. In the last 5 minutes, a woman (I think) I shared a lane with earlier in the week joined me. I did my usual swim of continuous 200s, broken up by breathing, but I added a twist in the middle: for a 600, or maybe an 800?, I swam faster and kicked harder on the even 50s (when I was breathing every 4 and 6 strokes). It felt fun to go faster.

Today’s pool friends: shimmying shadows on the pool floor, making everything look strange and off-kilter; the older woman in the pale blue suit who is not particularly fast, but is a strong swimmer; a guy in black trunks who was also a strong swimmer; a guy in olive green shorts walking and stretching the length of the shallow end; my squeaky nose plug; a guy in black shorts with a belt on, aqua jogging in the deep end. No fuzz or unsettling floating things.

I tried to think about my echolocation hybrid piece, but I struggled to keep a thought in my head. Instead I counted strokes, and noticed other people, and turned off most of my conscious thought.

Earlier this morning, I quarried another Emily Dickinson poem: We Grow Accustomed to the Dark:

one syllable: We grow Dark when light put holds lamp Her step night then fit meet road those brain not moon sign star come out grope hit tree in but They learn see sight life straight

two syllable: away neighbor witness goodbye moment newness vision erect larger evenings disclose within bravest  little sometimes forehead either darkenss alters something adjusts itself midnight almost

three syllable: accustomed uncertain directly

my poem:

Brain alters —

gropes the Dark,
hits lamp light,

and meets night
directly.
Away moon!
Away stars!
Goodbye sight.
The moment
adjusts — they
learn larger
uncertainties,
witness newness
within, fit
vision into
the almost,
then meet the
evening erect,
but not straight.

The other day, I came across a powerful poem by Pat Parker on poems.com. Wow!

excerpt from One Thanksgiving Day/ Pat Parker

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

One Thanksgiving Day
Priscilla Fordgot into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died.

. . .

Priscilla Ford
got into her
Lincoln Continental
drove to Virginia Street
in downtown Reno
and ran over thirty people.
Six of them died
and now Priscilla Fordwill die.
The state of Nevada
has judged
that it is
not crazy
for Black folks
to kill white folks
with their cars.
Priscilla Ford
will be
the second woman
executed in Nevada’s history.
it’s her highest
finish in life.

dec 4/RUN

4.3 miles
minnehaha falls and back
9 degrees / feels like 0
50% snow-covered

The coldest run of the season, so far. All the layers, including the hand warmers, which I wouldn’t have used if I didn’t already have an open pair from FWA. No yaktrax today, and I (think I) regret it. I thought the path would be clear enough today without them, but I was wrong. My feet felt very strange when I first started running without the spikes (and without the more cushiony Saucony Rides that I’ve worn all week — today I wore Brooks Ghosts). It was hard, my legs felt heavy. I only wanted to to run a mile. But I kept going and by the time I got to under the Ford bridge I decided that I could keep going to the falls.

The creek is half frozen, and the water still flowing seemed thick and sluggish. Water was still rushing over the ledge, but there was less of it. About half of the falls is frozen with huge columns of ice.

10 Things

  1. the strong smell of weed in the 44th street parking lot
  2. the voices of kids playing on the school playground
  3. the river surface is more ice than water, and white
  4. very few people out walking or running
  5. the rumble of a park worker’s mini-truck at the falls
  6. empty parking lots at the falls
  7. empty benches, too
  8. the smell of a fire on Lena Smith bvld — coming from someone’s chimney
  9. the wind rushed through dead leaves on a tree — they sounded like rushing water
  10. the green gate at the falls’ steps is now closed and locked

I just checked out Jana Prikryl’s Midwood. It’s all about the middle of things, and midlife.

MIDWOOD 1/ Jana Prikryl

Out of the garment of the land
out of the
of

There in the ravine the place
that’s deepest,
bent

I found an interview with her, and found this last bit interesting:

So there is little punctuation, and I avoided titles at first because they’re so performative. Ultimately I realized that without titles the poems ran together too much, but I stuck to two-word titles to keep them all quiet. Many of the titles repeat words from the poem because often the extracted word pair, as a title, pulls new meaning or significance from the phrase. That kind of underlining, and the other kinds of repetition in the book, seem like ways of tightening the screws, bringing the writer and reader into a smaller and smaller room to study these documents together. Hopefully a transaction takes place that is confidential—somehow secret, transgressive, inexpressible in any other form.

Short Conversation with Poets: Jana Prikryl

I’m using repetition in my collection, but I think (or, I’m hoping, at least) that it creates more space, instead of less.

Random things that happened today:

first, an hour or so before heading out for my run, I got another rejection email about 3 of my poems. Slowly I’m getting better at not letting it upset me. Intellectually, I know how hard it is to get something published (5% acceptance rate, roughly), and how much it’s based on fit or reader/editor preference, or some other thing out of my control. Still, it can sting, especially when I really believe in something I’ve written. Today, I’m okay.

second, RJP had to go to a textile event for her textiles class, so I went with her to the Textile Center. Wow! So inspiring and exciting to see RJP in her element and tender as I thought about my mom, a fiber artist, who would have loved coming here.

Third, I’ve known about this song ever since I saw Camp in the theater, back in 1999 (or 2000?), but I don’t think I remembered that it was a Christmas song. I guess because it has turkey in the title, I thought it was a Thanksgiving song. A video of it being performed on The Ed Sullivan Show came up this morning, and I have decided it’s the Christmas song of 2025:

dec 3/RUNSWIM

3.65 miles
trestle turn around
17 degrees / feels like 2
100% snow and ice covered

It snowed again last night. A dusting. I think we might get a lot of snow this winter. Hooray! I’m ready for winter running! Today, I didn’t like running straight into the wind at the beginning, but it wasn’t too bad and it was at my back on the way home. I liked running with the yaktrax. At first, my feet were sore, but that didn’t last long. There were a few runners, some walkers. No skiers or bikers.

Geese! A small vee in the sky, a cacophony of honks under the trestle. When I looked up to watch the geese, I admired the BLUE! sky, with only a few clouds.

Running back, I heard the tornado siren. No worries — it’s the first Wednesday of the month and that’s when they test it. One problem: it’s supposed to be tested at 1, and it was noon. Mentioned it to Scott and his suggestion: someone forgot to adjust the timer for daylight savings time.

Anything else? Near the end of my run, I enjoyed listening to the quick, sharp sound of my spiked feet piercing the snow. The sliding bench was empty. Oh — the streets looked bright silver — caused by the sun hitting the ice and snow on the road. The river was streaked with white, and not completely covered. I noticed traces of dirt on the trail where the park workers had come through to make the path less slippery — they don’t use salt because it would do damage to the river. A small thing, but evidence: of someone else here before me, the daily labor of maintaining safe (and fun) winter trails, and care for others.

Richard Siken!

I think I posted a Richard Siken! heading a few months ago, but his new book is so amazing, it’s worthy of another heading with an exclamation point. Last night, during Scott’s jazz rehearsal, I read more of I Know Some Things, including Sidewalk:

excerpt from Sidewalk/ Richard Siken

It was clear that something had happened that wasn’t going to unhappen. In the emergency room, the woman at the desk kept asking me questions. All my answers were stroke, dizzy, numb. I kept saying the words in different ways so she would understand. She didn’t. She didn’t believe me. They put me in the waiting room, which I knew was wrong, and I realized that I had messed it up because I didn’t call for an ambulance. I kept falling asleep in the waiting room. I looked much worse, slack and crooked, the two sides of my face moving at different speeds. I went back to the desk and said help. They put me in a room. No one believes that I know what I know because sometimes I miss a part or tell it sideways.

Tell it sideways. I love this idea of telling something sideways — and, as someone who does/tells things sideways a lot, I get how it can alienate you from others.

What does it mean to tell something sideways? Of course I’m thinking immediately of Emily Dickinson and tell all the truth but tell it slant, but I’m also thinking about a book I used to teach when I taught queer theory — The Queer Child, or Growing Up Sideways by Kathryn Bond Stockton. And I’m thinking about my peripheral vision and how see/think/imagine in its edges and not in the center.

swim: 1.25 miles
88 laps
ywca pool

It is always a wonderful day when I can swim! I felt strong and relaxed. The pool was not crowded. Everyone got their own lane — all 4 of us. There was a lifeguard on duty, which is rare. I overheard her saying to someone in the hot tub: I love going in the hot tub after a long day of giving swimming lessons! My pool friends today were the shadows. The shadow of the lane line. I liked watching what happened as the pool got deeper: at first it was straight and parallel, but soon it angled. Lots of angled shadows on the pool wall. The floor was shimmying from shadows. The blue-tiled t on the wall at the end of the lane letting you know there’s a wall, looked distorted to me. Almost like the lines at the center of an Amsler grid when I look at it.

locker room encounter

Two older women talking near my locker. Or, one woman talking at the other, speculating on the state of things, talking about bifurcated society and the haves hoarding it over the have-nots and then believing that if it compresses enough, people will fight back. The other woman, not buying it. As she left, the first woman called out, I’ll see you up there. We can sweat it out! After she left, the second woman mumbled, YOU can sweat. When I laughed she explained that she didn’t sweat easily and it was hard for her and she feels uncomfortable when she can’t and she wishes she could just sweat.

My reaction: At first — come on ladies, this is the locker room. We come here to escape and have fun and to not think about the state of things. Then, when I heard that they hadn’t worked out yet, I got it. Oh, you just haven’t worked out yet! Also: I wondered if the second woman (the woman who couldn’t sweat) enjoyed working out with the first woman (who used bifurcated and talked at her and told her they would sweat),

nov 29/RUN

3.3 miles
trestle turn around
26 degrees / snow
100% snow-covered

Wasn’t planning to run outside today, while it snowed, but something changed my mind — was it seeing people walking out my front window? Was it remembering that I have yaktrax? Was it not wanting to run on the treadmill? I’m not quite sure, but suddenly I found myself getting ready to go out, then leaving the house, then running through a winter wonderland. It wasn’t too cold, or too windy, and with the yaktrax, it wasn’t too slippery. There were times when I was cold or when my feet were a little sore from running with the yaktrax, but mostly I enjoyed being out there in the snow. Snow! Covering every inch of the ground, on the bluff, in the sky. The river was pewter and still open, but for how long? Some dog was losing it down below — maybe they were at the white sands beach, or on the part of the Winchell Trail that descends south from the trestle. So much barking. I’d like to imagine there barks were from the joy and the delight or frolicking through the snow.

Anything else? Some other walkers, at least 2 or 3 other runners, 3 fat tire bikers. Climbing up from under the lake street bridge, I listened to dead leaves on a tree shaking in the wind, sounding like gushing water. I heard more trees later closer to the old stone steps. I stopped at the sliding bench and noticed someone walking on the trail that winds beside the white sands beach.

earlier in the day

It is snowing again this morning. Barely more than flurries, but adding to the thin layer already started a few days ago. Encountered this poem on Instagram this morning, and wanted to remember it. It’s from one of my favorite poets/writers, Wendell Berry:

LIKE SNOW/ Wendell Berry

Suppose we did our work
like the snow, quietly, quietly, 
leaving nothing out.

Something else I encountered this morning that I’d like to remember:

Originally found here: Exploring Dakota Lands and Waters

later, after the run

It may have started as flurries this morning, but it’s bigger flakes now, and they’re piling up. 2 or 3 inches. I shoveled right after I finished running and now, 30 minutes later, the deck is covered again. I wonder how much will we get when it stops snowing?

update, Monday (1 dec 2025): It snowed all night. Apparently we got almost 4 inches, although it seems like more to me.

nov 27/RUN

4.5 miles
john stevens’ house and back
27 degrees
wind: 18 mph
25% ice covered path

Too cold and icy for Scott, so no Thanksgiving run together. It’s too bad we couldn’t do it, but he made the right choice. Too much wind, too much ice, too many other people running and walking. He would have been miserable. I didn’t love all the run — it was hard to run into that wind! — but I loved a lot of it. It wasn’t too cold or windy or icy for me. Winter running is back!

10 Things

  1. clip clop clip clop a runner approaching from behind, wearing ice spikes and running on bare pavement
  2. 2 runners descending on the part of the path below the road south of the double bridge, one of them in a bright orange jacket
  3. minnehaha falls was rushing and (almost) roaring — I stopped at my favorite spot to watch it fall fast, and in sheets, over the ledge
  4. sometimes a little cloudy, sometimes bright sun
  5. the train bells at 50th street station were chiming frantically
  6. a group of people paying for parking at the falls — I wish I could remember what woman said . . .
  7. kids voices over at longfellow house — were they sledding down the hill like RJP did, when she was a kid?
  8. the view above the edge of the world was open and wintery and calming — I kept my distance from the bench because there was a big branch that looked like it might fall in the strong wind
  9. a human, in dark clothing, and a dog, standing at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench
  10. the 38th street steps are blocked off for the season — today they were thick with ice

update, the next day: I forgot about the silver surface of the river! Runnng south, it burned in the distance as bright sun hit rough water. Wow!

Happy to have a relaxed, drama-free Thanksgiving. The kids are doing much better, and are getting along. RJP made the stuffing this year; FWA, mac-n-cheese. I made 2 pies: apple and maple cream. And, for the first time, I made my own pie crust! I’m proud of myself for saying I was going to do it, then actually doing it. Now we just have to see how it tastes.

Friday morning (the next day): The pies were excellent! Both of them, thanks to Smitten Kitchen: Maple Cream Pie and Even More Perfect Apple Pie. Scott said the maple cream one reminded him of pumpkin pie but better. I was delighted by how the 1/4 teaspoon of ground ginger brightened the apple pie. When I took my first bite I said, it’s so bright! that ginger really brightens it up!, which FWA found hilarious.

Found this poem today. What does the Mississippi River Gorge smell like?

Yaquina River/ Lana Hechtman


The river smells like the absence of sea,
like sky that has lost its confidence,

current wafting down the centuries from 
natives who lived and died on these shores,

the breaths of children’s laughter, their songs
ripple the slow water that goes

only at the pace it is determined to go.
The river smells like bufflehead feet and goose

feathers, salmon scales and brown silt,
fallen cedar boughs, dropped fir cones,

like women brave enough to swim
and gritty motor boat bottoms.

Slick as oil, clear as rain.
The river smells like green and bronze,

the blue of berries and purple of night, 
smells of floods and grief, of relief 

in times of drought, of every dreamer
who ever skipped stones upon it.

The river smells of sun’s sloped shoulders
and moon’s languid kisses, 

and the riverbank smells like a place
to plant myself for all my remaining years

rich delta, aroma I have come to love
despite missing the sea.

nov 19/RUN

5.2 miles
bottom and franklin and back
39 degrees

Another great late morning for a run. Overcast, possibly some drizzle/freezing rain/flurries. Not too cold, not too windy. Everything gray with brown and dull yellow. Listened to music because I had the King George song from Hamilton in my head — Billie Eilish, then my time and moment playlists. Even with the headphones in, I could hear a loud rumble below. Some sort of big machine doing something — was it at the white sands beach? I noticed a walker notice the sound too. He was startled, then confused, then curious as he peered down, trying to figure out what was causing the ruckus.

Witnessed a big, dark brown squirrel dart fast across my path. So fast that I didn’t have to stutter-step. Stopped at the bottom of the hill for a port-a-potty stop and to admire the river: blueish gray with little ripples. All open, no ice chunks yet. Stopped again at the sliding bench and in the tunnel of trees just above the floodplain forest. Took out my headphones and listened to the gorge. It sounded like it might be softly raining. Heard loud rustling, saw a flash of movement down below. Felt calm, relaxed.

At the sliding bench, I took a picture of the progress: open! no leaves to block out my view of the white sands beach, only thin branches that I can see through!

sliding bench / 19 nov 2025

One more thing about the run that I almost forgot. During the second half, after I climbed out of the flats, I felt fast and free. I had a huge smile on my face and was almost feeling a runner’s high. I haven’t experienced one of those in a while.

more of echo location

echolocation: using sonar flashes to “see” / interpreting echoes (as sound, as reverberations from the past) / navigation / location / locating and being located / finding being found / placing being placed / listen for echoes / gain substance and become an echo / repeat, not same but similar / the location of echoes / an indication of a big and open space / using words and sounds and syllables to place my self, to become more than ghost, girl

“Echolocation is the act of emitting a sound that bounces off an object or surface and comes back to you as an echo. This echo can help determine distance, location, motion, size, shape or surface material” (source).

Passive echolocation is sound that occur incidentally in the environment. As a car travels through a tunnel, the sound changes as the car enters the tunnel, travels through it and exits the tunnel. The sound your cane makes on the ground as you tap or roll will be different when you are next to a building compared to in an open area without obstruction.

Active echolocation, on the other hand, is sound you consciously produce like clapping your hands or clicking your tongue. Eventually, the sound you create bounces off other objects and comes back to you. Since your brain is familiar with the sounds you make, the echoes are easier for you to distinguish. By consistently emitting a sound and waiting for the sound to change, you can use active echolocation to help you navigate through an environment.

source

 How does the
sound of your
footsteps change
as you move
from tile floor
to carpet?
Listen to
the sound your
voice makes when
you are in
a small room
compared to
a large room.

Sit in a
moving car
passing by
parked cars. Roll
your window
down. Listen
to how sound
shifts between
each parked car
as you pass them.

you learn to
hear doorways
and walls and
wide open
spaces

Echolocation is an interesting metaphor within poetry and an important practical approach to navigating an unseen (or not seen) world.

Location for me is about recognition — being seen, offered a place in the family of things, and recognizing others (being held by/holding). And it is also about literally locating and navigating a world. As my vision fails, what other ways can I safely move through space?

And, here are a few lines from U A Fanthorpe that link echoes with ghosts and remind me of echolocation — especially those humpback whales:

Ghosts of past, present, future.
But the ones the living would like to meet are the echoes
Of moments of small dead joys still quick in the streets

These are the ghosts the living would prefer,
Ghosts who’d improve our ratings. Ghosts
Of the great innocent songs of freedom
That shoulder their way round the world like humpback whales

nov 8/RUN

5.5 miles
falls / veterans home / ford bridge
34 degrees

Wonderful November weather — at least, I think so. Sure, the sky was gray and it was just above freezing but the color left on the trees was intense and the views were open, and the river — the river! — steel blue with scales, curving and stretching. Running over the ford bridge, admiring the red and yellow and orange tree line on the west bank, looking out at the open water, I smiled and reflected on how lucky I am to live here and how glad I am that I’ve dedicated myself to the place for almost a decade.

I experimented with the route today. I ran to the falls then past them to the tall bridge then over to the veterans home and across the ford bridge. Under the bridge and over to the other side then across and north to the winchell trail. A falls, a creek, a river, some seeps. 2 bridges. Above, over, beside, and through the locks and dam no. 1. 3 parks.

10 Things

  1. 2 roller skiers
  2. 2 fat tire bikes
  3. a tree the color of golden chrysanthemums
  4. deep grayish blue river with soft scales
  5. the road over the bridge to the veterans home was blocked off with cones and tape, but the walking wasn’t
  6. the strong smell of week as I passed by a walker on the ford bridge
  7. running above on the ford bridge, looking down at the painted lines of parking spaces at locks and dam no 1
  8. running near the edge of the bluff, the yellowed leaves were thick on the path
  9. a young kid near the edge, a mom calmly saying, it makes me nervous to have you that close to the edge. if you tripped you could fall straight down
  10. running over the tall bridge, admiring the sandy trail far below me

Looked up “cellular” on poetry foundation and found this wonderful poem:

A Body’s Universe of Big Bangs/ Leslie Contreras Schwartz

A body must remind itself
to keep living, continually,
throughout the day.

Even at night while sleeping,
proteins, either messenger, builder,
or destroyer, keeps busy

transforming itself or other substances.
Scientists call these reactions
—to change their innate structure,
dictated by DNA—cellular frustration,

a cotton-cloud nomenclature for crusade,
combat, warfare, aid, unification,
scaffold, or sustain.

Even while the body sleeps, a jaw slackened
into an open dream, inside is the drama
of the body’s own substances meeting

one another, stealing elements,
being changed elementally,
altered by a new story

called chemical reaction.
A building and demolishment,
creating or undoing,

the body can find movement,
functioning organs, resists illness—
or doesn’t. Look inside every living being

and find this narrative of resistance,
the live feed of being resisted.
The infant clasping her fist

or the 98-year-old releasing
hers. This is how it should be,
we think, a long story carried out

to a soft conclusion. In reality,
little deaths hover and nibble,
little births opening mouths
and bodies the site of stories

the tales given to us, and retold, retold,
never altered, and the ones forgotten,
changed, unremembered

until this place is made of only
ourselves. Our own small dictators,
peacemakers, architects, artists.

A derelict cottage,
a monumental church
struck in gold, an artist’s studio

layered with paints and cut paper,
knives and large canvas—

the site the only place
containing our best holy song:

I will live. I will live. I will keep living.

I love so much about this poem and the poetic way Schwartz describes what a cell does in (and to) the body. These lines were particularly striking:

and bodies the site of stories

the tales given to us, and retold, retold,
never altered, and the ones forgotten,
changed, unremembered

until this place is made of only
ourselves. Our own small dictators,
peacemakers, architects, artists.

Cells as dictators, architects, artists? Nice. As I think about more expansive understandings of what it means to be an artist, I especially like this idea of a cell as an artist.

Googled more about the history of the discovery of the cell and was reminded that central to the discovery, and the very idea of a cell, is the microscope and the ability to see a cell. This made me think of Robin Wall Kimmerer and something she said in an interview about western science. Can I find it?

Maybe this, from “Ways of Knowing”:

Both Western science and traditional ecological knowledge are methods of reading the land. That’s where they come together. But they’re reading the land in different ways. Scientists use the intellect and the senses, usually enhanced by technology. They set spirit and emotion off to the side and bar them from participating. Often science dismisses indigenous knowledge as folklore — not objective or empirical, and thus not valid. But indigenous knowledge, too, is based on observation, on experiment. The difference is that it includes spiritual relationships and spiritual explanations. Traditional knowledge brings together the seen and the unseen, whereas Western science says that if we can’t measure something, it doesn’t exist.

Two Ways Of Knowing: Robin Wall Kimmerer On Scientific And Native American Views Of The Natural World

Or maybe it was this, from “How to See” in Gathering Moss?

We poor myopic humans, with neither the raptor’s gift of long-distance acuity, nor the talents of a housefly for panoramic vision. However, with our big brains, we are at least aware of the limits of our vision. With a degree of humility rare in our species, we acknowledge there is much that we can’t see, and so contrive remarkable ways to observe the world…Electronic microscopes let us wander the remote universe of our own cells. But at the middle scale, that of the unaided eye, our senses seem to be strangely dulled. With sophisticated technology we strive to see what is beyond us, but are often blind to the myriad sparkling facets that lie so close at hand. We think we’re seeing when we’ve only scratched the surface….Has the power of our devices led us to distrust our unaided eyes? Or have we become dismissive of what takes no technology but only time and patience to perceive?

“How to See” in Gathering Moss/ Robin Wall Kimmerer

For further reading, see this article on the history of the cell.

And this video is fun: The Wacky History of Cell Theory

nov 5/RUN

4.25 miles
marshall loop (to Summit)
47 degrees

What a run! Late fall/November is the best — half leaved, half unleaved. Cooler, more energy in the air. Two things I want to remember more than anything else:

1

Running down the summit hill, nearing the lake street/marshall bridge, a woman ahead of me, walking with another person, wearing the most amazing BRIGHT pinkish orangish jacket. She glowed. As I ran by I called out, I love your bright jacket. She slapped her thigh in delight and called back, It’s my don’t hit me jacket. Then we both laughed.

2

Just cresting the final hill and almost to the ancient boulder, I passed by two women walking and talking and marveling at how beautiful this place is. They both agreed, they hoped they never had to leave it. Then the younger woman, presumably the daughter, said to the older woman (mother): I only want to live here or where you are. That broke me open in the best way possible. I want to make that the title of a poem.

Reflecting on these moments, I imagined turning them into 2 (very brief) acts of a play. Act 1: the bright colored jacket, Act 2: mother and daughter share a moment.

I had a great run. I did the Marshall hill loop. I ran up the whole thing and didn’t stop to walk until I reached the Monument. Then I climbed down a few steps to listen to the shadows fall. After a few minutes, I ran back home — down the summit hill, past the woman in the bright jacket, over the bridge, up the ancient boulder and past the mother and daughter.

added 5 hours later: I just remembered the river and standing on the lake street bridge, peering over the edge and staring into the glitter path. Such bright, sparkling water! I’m not sure I could have stared at it as long and as directly as I did if I didn’t have so many dead cone cells. Bright lights don’t bother me much anymore.

bells

I’m working on the final (I think) poem in my collection. It’s a reworking of my ending poem for the OG haunts. And it’s inspired by some words from Annie Dillard (in “Seeing” from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek) that I’ve fit into my running/breathing form:

My whole life
I’d been 
a bell but
never
knew until
I was
lifted and
struck. Now
I am still
ringing.
—Annie Dillard

Here’s what I wrote in a pages document I’m using to gather some thoughts:

something about becoming a bell, or remembering that I was a bell — vibrating, carrying and passing on the songs — ancient rhythms of grief joy love anger restlessness buried deep within her, knocked loose by this place, by her ghosts, by her never ending movement — everything buzzing, ringing, chiming, pulsing, thrumming, strumming — even the oldest rocks shimmy and shake and shift and settle — her body, an echo, her feet adding to the ruts and the grooves, leaving a trace in foot strikes and words and shadows and, a scattering of Saras all around

For some of my run I thought about bells and Annie Dillard’s quotation about being a bell and Ammons and energy and movement and cells bouncing and shaking and disintegrating and being replaced and movement and — I wish I could remember the rest of what I was thinking, but I can’t.

I do remember one other bell-related thing I thought about. The book closes with Annie Dillard’s bell struck quotation. It begins with some lines from Emily Dickinson and “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain” that I fit into my breathing/running form:

As all the
Heavens
were a Bell,
Being
but an Ear

I am both bell and ear. Some substance of the Heavens/the Bell/the Eternal resides within me. And, to be = to notice, to listen

before the run

Yes, to this poem-of-the-day on poets.org and the discovery of a new word (or the remembering of a word long forgotten): vermiculation!

Some Melodious Plot/ Anthony Borruso

The United States government murdered over 12 billion birds over the course of 1959 
threw [sic] 2001. As they killed off the real birds they replaced thim [sic] with surveillance 
drone replicas. Indistinguishable from a biological bird. There are now no real 
birds left. 

—Official Birds Aren’t Real Informational Van Bumper Sticker

i. The Philosophical Ornithologist

It is, as all things are, a problem 
of perspective. What you think

you are watching, watches 
you. Your binoculars convince

themselves they’re quotation marks. 
The spy in the song, the feathered

thoughts, the cold hard data 
you spun into silky fact

that the comment section couldn’t 
wait to run its fingers over.

Of course, the pigeons adapted 
to an urban space—they’re party birds

with smokey plumage, and they grow 
peckish unless they’re bobbing

beaks to Milli Vanilli or waving 
glow sticks around the Sabrett stand.

Ancient Egyptians and Williamsburg 
hipsters have nothing in common

except how their feelings take sharp 
angles in broad daylight when the sun

nests in their beards. What I mean 
is that the bygone is hellbent

on a comeback, i.e., the early bird 
pecks a blog post about the importance

of visually manifesting the worm— 
actually encompassing its wriggle

in your quaint skull before 
taking it to beak. You know though

that we are post-extinction and fully 
flapped out—just look at us,

ogling Mother Nature’s augmentation 
with craned necks, covering every

millimeter of the visible world 
with the vermiculations of a stock

ticker. Something’s wrong. Like, 
real wrong: I knock on mountains

and hear a vast metallic thud. I sleep 
on eiderdown, but can’t seem to

squawk loud enough to stir the other 
Denny’s denizens from their Grand

Slam breakfasts. In Altoona, Pennsylvania 
and Waco, Texas, I can feel my face

being scanned every time I munch 
a Big Mac. On this highway, a pit stop

is a pit stop is a pit stop and overhead 
migration is a chance to grease gears

and re-feather the avian bait-and-switch.

vermiculation: Merriam-Webster entry

1: TORTUOUS, INVOLUTE

2: full of worms : WORM-EATEN

3

a: VERMIFORM (resembling a worm in shape)

b: marked with irregular fine lines or with wavy impressed lines
(line in the feathers of a bird)

cells and spindles

Yesterday I mentioned that a line from Hix’s cell phone reminded me of A.R. Ammons’ garbage. Today, I’m revisiting garbage to find and think about the lines.

Reading through it again, I found this:

we, give rise to to us: we are not, though, though
natural, divorced from higher, finer configurations:

tissues and holograms of energy circulate in
us and seek and find representations of themselves

outside us, so that we can participate in
celebrations high and know reaches of feeling

and sight and thought that penetrate (really
penetrate) far, far beyond these our wet cells,

right on up past our stories, the planets, moons,
and other bodies locally to the other end of

the pole where matter’s forms diffuse and
energy loses all means to express itself except

as spirit, there, oh, yes, in the abiding where
mind but nothing else abides, the eternal,

until it turns itself into another pear or sunfish

These lines stayed with me as I ran today.


nov 4/RUN

4 miles
river road, north/south
49 degrees

We were planning to go to the Y, but when we stepped outside and felt how beautiful it was, we changed our plans. Instead of swimming, I would go running. I’m glad I did; it was beautiful out there! Saw on the forecast that rain turning into snow is possible on Saturday. It’s coming: winter! Felt strong again and bouncy, able to pop off the asphalt with my powerful leg swings and foot strikes. Nice!

I’m writing this 3 hours late because we had a mini kid crisis with parking tickets and passes. Had to help figure that out. Can I remember 10 things?

10 Things

  1. Good morning Dave! / Good morning Sara
  2. running in shorts with bare legs, warmed by the sun
  3. a tall oak, 2 of its branches stretched, looking almost like shrugging shoulders
  4. a lime bike below me in the bushes
  5. stopping before the trestle, walking through dead leaves, standing on the edge of the bluff, looking down to the below the trestle and at the blue river
  6. the warning tape and cones around the big crack north of the trestle have been removed — has the crack cracked more? Possibly
  7. standing by an empty bench nearing franklin, walking past it to another bluff edge and another open view of the river and the other side
  8. sliding bench: empty
  9. my shadow: sturdy, strong, moving fast
  10. after the run, walking back through the grass, kicking up dead leaves and delighting in their crunchiness

Listened to the last part of the Invisibilia episode that I mentioned yesterday. According to the neuroscientists, there is no thing in our body that doesn’t change over the course of our lifetime, even our brain cells are transformed. I need to listen to it again; I was distracted.

3 hours later:

“Neurons don’t die and get replaced, but the atoms that make them up are constantly turning over.”

memory: “each time we think about a memory, we corrupt it”

“we have this illusion of continuity”

Looked up “cell” on poems.com and found this great poem:

Always and Only from Material/ H.L Hix

A drop of water changes shape if it falls through an electric field
(the thunderstorm, say, that gave God material form
in Job, then in Lear trued troposphere to terror).
The drop takes the shape of a spindle (the same that turns,
in the myth of Er, on the knees of Necessity)
and sends out from tl1e positively-charged spindle-point
a slender filament of electrical force.
Or take your red blood cells, which in the blood itself
retain the shape of a dimpled disc, a spongy
rubber ball squeezed lightly between finger and thumb.
A little water, though, to thin that blood, and the cell
turns spherical; a little salt, and the entire
cell shrinks and puckers, grape into raisin.
Mysteries attend even membrane formation.
No pure liquid ever froths or foams. Something
must be dissolved or suspended, to sustain
the additional surface area, the passage
from smooth and taut to bubbled and subdivided.
I feel subdivided, denatured, quasi-solid.
I often fall through electrical fields. I can speak
only as I do: in fragments, of a continuum.

This last bit: I feel subdivided, denatured, quasi-solid./ I often fall through electrical fields. I can speak/ only as I do: in fragments, of a continuum.

Hix’s mention of the spindle reminds me of A.R. Ammons and garbage. I remember that he writes about the spindle early on — in relation to presocratic philosophers, I think? I’ll have to find the reference.

I always forget what denatured means: take away or alter the natural qualities of.

Do I feel subdivided, denatured? No, I don’t feel fragmented or altered, just unstable and never quite finished.,

This poem comes from a book that I might like to find: BORED IN ARCANE CURSIVE UNDER LODGEPOLE BARK

“H. L. Hix demonstrates a Thoreauvian burrowing of the mind—a burrowing of fifty poems—into fifty “seed sentences” from fifty “soil texts” from natural history. The poems burrow, too, into common yet rarified encounters with “the carcass of an elk,” or the sun which “contains all direction,” or the “breathing of Breathing” of a “fresh-brushed red-brown ribcage-rounded coat” of a horse. We readers are invited to burrow along with Hix, not unlike “generations of a beetle species” who can “migrate /deeper into a cave than any individual / could travel to get out.” The exploration yields glimpses of the mystic part and the elusive, mythic whole as well as a profound and sobering reflection of the human experience upon planet Earth.”         

nov 3/RUN

4.5 miles
minnehaha falls, new variation
45 degrees

Late fall fabulousness! More of a view, sparkling water, crisper air, brightly colored leaves. Had fun trying out a variation on the minnehaha falls loop: the regular version until I reached the steps near the falls. I took them down, then ran beside the creek until I reached the last bridge before the path is closed. Crossed over the creek, turned back up towards the river road. Climbed up a hill that led me to the bottom of wabun park. Ran up some easy steps — a stretch of slanted sidewalk, a set of 5 or 6 steps, sidewalk, steps, sidewalk, steps. Ran past the splash pad that I used to take the kids to 12 or so years ago, then down the steep hill to the locks and dam.

I’m feeling stronger, physically and mentally. Scott and I are thinking about doing the marathon again in fall of 2026.

10 Things

  1. the tree that is usually red 2 doors down is yellow-orange this year
  2. the view to the other side is opening up — less leaves on the trees
  3. river surface — bright white and burning
  4. a thinner falls
  5. a subdued creek down below — not rushing or gushing but also not still
  6. honking geese near the splash pad in Wabun
  7. the gate down to the falls is still open
  8. empty benches above the edge of the world and at Rachel Dow Memorial bench — I decided to stop at the edge bench, which is not right on the edge but several dozen feet in — walked over to the edge and admired the water and sun and openness of it all
  9. bright pink graffiti under the ford bridge
  10. good morning/morning! greeting a woman in a puffer jacket that I think I saw in the same spot yesterday

after the run

I am officially ready for winter running. Scott and I went to Costco and they had some great winter stuff set up in the front. New gloves, 2 new pairs of running tights and base layer shirts, and all the hand and foot warmers that I could possibly need! Guess that means I’ll have to run outside in the arctic cold so I can use them!

cells cells cells cells cells

Today I’m returning to EAP and “The Bells,” which I my using as a template for my own “The Cells” poem. Three versions of cells that I’ve been working with so far: dying/dead photoreceptor cone cells; the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells and late capitalism; and the narrowing of a world out of anxiety and necessity —

writing this, now I’m wondering about cells as individual building blocks of living things and the phrase, on the cellular level. What exactly does that mean? basic functional and structural unit of an organism.

And now, I’m looking up cellular level and “cell small room” and reading about “understanding health at the cellular level” and having a wonderful thought: why not devote a month to the cell and some of its different meanings? Fun! In the past 2 months, I haven’t posted monthly challenges; I’ve been too busy working on a draft of Girl Ghost Gorge. As I finish that (because I want to be finished for a while and submit it for a first book contest), I’d like to return to the delightfully wandering work of picking a topic and finding as many different ways to imagine and understand it as I can.

a lingering thought: I am enjoying using EA Poe’s “The Bells” as a starting point for a poem, but I’m not sure I’m a good enough poet (yet? ever?) to wrangle rhyme and meter the way he does in his poem. So tricky and easy to overdo it.

and now a random thought bursting in my brain: what is poetry, at the cellular level? the basic unit, the building block of poetry? Rhyme, meter, sound, pulse, something else?

from definitions of cell on Merriam Webster: a single room, usually for one person

cellular, celluloid, cell phones cell towers, the creepy movie The Cell

Looked up cell on poets.org. Found this Sara poem!

Sara in Her Father’s Arms/ George Oppen

Cell by cell the baby made herself, the cells

Made cells. That is to say

The baby is made largely of milk. Lying in her father’s arms, the little seed eyes

Moving, trying to see, smiling for us

To see, she will make a household

To her need of these rooms—Sara, little seed,

Little violent, diligent seed. Come let us look at the world

Glittering: this seed will speak,

Max, words! There will be no other words in the world

But those our children speak. What will she make of a world

Do you suppose, Max, of which she is made.

Sara, little seed! Love it. And, Come let us look at the world/glittering and What will she make/of a world of which she is made

WHAT? Whoa!

So, reading this poem and the opening lines, Cell by cell, the baby made herself, the cells/made cells, prompted me to ask and then investigate: How often are our cells replaced? And do all of them get replaced every 7 years? I found information about the time span of different types of cells, an explanation of why the 7 years thing is a myth, and then this from NPR: Does Your Body Really Refresh Itself Every 7 Years?

I watcher their video and got to the part, which is almost at the end, when they say this:

And there’s one more part of you that lasts your whole life

2:14Months before you were born,

2:16a little cluster of cells stretched and filled themselves with transparent protein

2:21As you grew, even after birth, more and more fibers were added, but that center endured

2:28This is your lens the window through which you are watching this video right now2:34and its core has remained the same since the moment you first opened your eyes

generated transcript on YouTube

Sara’s little seed eyes?! I had no idea that the lens lasts!

Video (can’t embed it)
A tumblr post with more info

And found out this about the lens:

What is the eye lens made of?

The lens of your eye is made up of structural proteins called crystallins. This is why it’s sometimes called the “crystalline lens.” It has the highest concentration of proteins of almost any tissue in your body. These specialized proteins give the lens its transparency and focusing power. Mature crystallins have no nucleus or organelles — they lose them as they mature. This adds to their clarity and transparency.

But having no nucleus or organelles also prevents the cells from reproducing. This means they don’t “turn over,” as most of your body’s cells do. The cells arrange themselves in concentric layers, like tree rings. Throughout your life, new cells continue to grow at the outer edges of the circle, while the older cells compress toward the center. Eventually, the older cells at the center begin to show wear and tear.

source

Like little tree rings?! You better believe that that is making it into a poem at some point!

future explorations and ideas to play with: If (most) of our cells are being replaced, what makes us us? And, are they really “our” cells? Or, do we all just live together (Oppen’s household)? Is a body one thing?

Listen to Lulu Miller on an Invisibilia episode, especially the last story:

Finally Lulu talks to a scientist to come up with a complete catalogue of all the things about us that actually do stay stable over the course of our lives. They look at everything from cells to memories until ultimately they come up with a list — but it’s a really short list.

a final note: Questions about cells and bodies and what makes us us are ones I’ve been asking for a long time, but I was especially preoccupied with them after my mention of M. Hemingway and her retreat for reclaiming the “sovereign self” in yesterday’s post.

oct 29/RUN

4.5 miles
veterans home in reverse
49 degrees

Another beautiful late fall day. Sun, sparkling river, gushing falls, red and orange and yellow leaves. Parts of the run were easy, parts of it weren’t. Felt tired this late morning/early afternoon. Ran up the hill through Wabun to the veterans home, then over the bridge, past John Stevens’ house and to the falls. The bench above the edge of the world was empty but the Rachel Dow Memorial bench had two people sitting on it. ALL of the kids were outside on the Minnehaha Academy playground as I ran past it on the other side of the road. Two memorable things: 1. a teacher calling out to a student — no, no, we do not climb the fence. get down! and 2. I heard a trumpet playing Reveille. It sounded like a live trumpet and not a recording. Is that what they play to call kids in from recess?

Scott sent me this poem. I’m posting it partly for its cleverness, partly for our shared dislike of licorice, and partly because I love the word It.

It/ Gertrude Sturdle

It is never
what it seems to be
unless it is licorice.
And then
sadly
it is.

the cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells, cells

Yesterday I mentioned using Poe’s “The Bells” as a template for my own poem about the cells: dying cone cells, strange rod cells, the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells, a narrowing of space (cell as room, place). I started working yesterday afternoon and am back at it this morning before my run. Fun!

version 1

EA Poe’s original first verse:

Hear the sledges with the bells—
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells—
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

My version

Feel the leaving of the cells —
the failed cells.

What a world of loneliness their abandonment foretells.

How they tumble, tumble, tumble,
In the fading of the light.

While the cones start to crumble
,
All the rods seem to rumble
in the loosening of her sight;
Then it’s grays, grays, grays,
and a veil of fuzzy haze.
With an undead half possession and the cast of haunting spells
On the cells, cells, cells, cells,

Cells, cells, cells—
On the slumbering and the stumbling cells.

type of bell: sleigh bells
bells / foretells / wells
merriment / melody

tinkle / oversprinkle / twinkle

a line about the night air
night / delight
time time time
time/rhyme
tintinabulation / musically
bells repeated 7 times
jingling / tinkling — slant rhyme

cells: dead cone cells

cells / foretells / spells

world — loneliness / abandonment
tumble / crumble / rumble
grays grays grays
grays / haze
undead half possession

oct 22/RUN

3.1 miles
2 trails
44 degrees

Blustery, cool, full of color. Reds and oranges and yellows. Everything wet from yesterday’s rain. The winchell trail was covered in leaves, some wet, some dry, most of them rusty red. I greeted a guy I passed with a good morning, then realized it wasn’t morning, but afternoon. Oops. He said morning back. I wonder if he realized the mistake. Thanked several other walkers for moving over to let me pass. Heard some kids yelling at the playground and one guy yell out to someone else, that’s Ben. Ben is here. A woman stood at the top of the old stone steps, studying something below. Was she deciding whether or not to take them down? Wondering what was down there, or whether or not the steps were too slick?

Every so often, I thought about a line that I haven’t quite found a home for in GGG: Each loop adds substance, tightens the tether, but never enough to stop the looping.

Began chanting: looping and/looping and/looping again

After I finished running, as I walked back, I had 2 ideas for fun experiments with the lines.

first: switch up the order of the words — mimicking of swirling water falling from a limestone ledge? or, take part of it and create an anagram?

second: do a variation on the golden shovel form by taking the tether/never/looping sentence and ending each line of a new poem with the words from it, in order, so that it spells out the sentence. Or, to mimic the rock walls of the gorge, start each line of the new poem with the first half of the sentence, then end each line with the second half. Too contrived? Future Sara will let me know.

Found a wonderfully wandering poem this morning, “Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College.” It’s long, so I’ll just an excerpt:

excerpt from Reading Virginia Woolf in a Women in Literature Class at Bergen Community College/ Carlie Hoffman

when my sister asked if I’d ever
kissed anyone. I was just beginning
freshman year, working to get my time
down for swim team where I’d spent summer
ditching birthdays & the ice cream
truck’s persuasive tune to practice
the butterfly & freestyle & learning to dive
less crooked, which was going as well
as expected until Andrew
sat next to me on the bus
ride home from the pool during tryouts,
his chlorine-dried hand on my shoulder
a little too long without asking when he asked
my name & he has a crush on you
said my friend Becca while faking
a gagging sound in her throat. I said yes
even though I hadn’t kissed anyone & maybe
this was my first true poem, lying
to my sister in support of love, stealing imagery
from the books I’d read in the library
to avoid the cafeteria

I love her definition of a poem: lying to someone in support of love, stealing imagery from other poets

Richard Siken!!

I love Richard Siken’s new book that I picked up from Moon Palace Books Monday night. Read this poem while Scott was rehearsing with the community jazz band:

The List/ Richard Siken

I tried to say something nice to the nurse. I introduced myself. She said we had already met. I thought she was moody until I realized she was several nurses, each working their own shift. To them I was Hamlet in a long line of Hamlets. My problems were unimpressive and not unique. I had a grief counselor, like everyone, and a suicide counselor, because I had said the wrong thing. I wrote in my notebook. I made a list, a working glossary. My handwriting was big and crooked. Meat. Blood. Floor. Thunder. I tried to understand what these things were and how I was related to them. Doorknob. Cardboard. Thermostat. Agriculture. I understood North but I struggled with left. Describing the world was easier than finding a place in it. The suicide counselor said the people who hadn’t shown up weren’t going to show up, that the ones that had stopped coming would not be coming back. She had seen it before, she saw it every day. The person they knew was gone. To them, I had broken the contract: I had left first and they were already grieving. I started a second notebook, for venom and hard feelings—things that would leak into the list if I let them. It was harsh and ugly. It was true and harsh and ugly and it made me feel sick. What do I know? What do I know for sure? I built up meaning with a double set of books. —A doorknob is a rock for the hand. It opens a hole in the wall. —A doorknob is your stupid head. You will not survive this.

I remember reading the line, Describing the world was easier than finding a place in it, as part of “About this Poem” explanation of “Real Estate.” I loved the line so much I turned it into a form fitter — my name for the lines that I shaped into my breathing rhythm of 3/2 syllables. I always thought it belonged in a poem, and here it is. Wow!

Describing 
worlds is

easier 
than find

ing your place 
in them

OR

Describing
worlds is

easy. Find
ing your

place in them
is hard.

oct 9/RUN

3.6 miles
bottom of locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees

Another cool morning! Today, I glowed: a bright orange sweatshirt, bright blue running shorts with lighter blue swirls, bright yellow running shoes, a purple-pink-blue running hat. Did it make me run faster? Maybe. I felt much better on the run this morning. Was it because I didn’t have any unfinished business, or because I was going only about half the distance? Or a little bit of both? I ran south and recited part of my new You Are Here poem about the grassy boulevard. I like it.

10 Things

  1. red leaves
  2. the occasional thump of an acorn hitting the ground
  3. the loud rumble of a school bus approaching Dowling
  4. scales on the river near the locks and dam — no clear reflection of the bridge today, instead more of an impressionist painting of it
  5. the bridge in the 44th street parking lot was empty, so was the one near folwell
  6. a dog’s bark, deep and loud, in the trees near Becketwood
  7. more golden light through the trees
  8. heading north, descending on the path that dips below the road, seeing a big but not the trail — hidden behind leaves
  9. the bench at the edge of the world: empty
  10. a buoy (not orange) bobbing in the river under the ford bridge

Listened to cars and dogs as I ran south. Put in “Taylor Swift” essentials retuning north.

Since I wrote about the grassy boulevard this morning, and being alone, and freedom, here’s a fitting poem:

Grass, 1967/ Victoria Chang

When I open the door, I smile and wave to people who only
have eyes and who are infinitely joyful. I see my children,
but only the backs of their heads. When they turn around, I
don’t recognize them. They once had mouths but now only
have eyes. I want to leave the room but when I do, I am
outside, and everyone else is inside. So next time, I open the
door and stay inside. But then everyone is outside. Agnes
said that solitude and freedom are the same. My solitude is
like the grass. I become so aware of its presence that it too
begins to feel like an audience. Sometimes my solitude grabs
my phone and takes a selfie, posts it somewhere for others
to see and like. Sometimes people comment on how
beautiful my solitude is and sometimes my solitude replies
with a heart. It begins to follow the accounts of solitudes
that are half its age. What if my solitude is depressed? What
if even my solitude doesn’t want to be alone?

Chang’s version of solitude involves being watched, stared at, judged and assessed, evaluated. And it involves a distance created with eyes and staring and being on display. My solitude, or maybe my loneliness, involves a lack of seeing — not of being seen, but of not seeing when I’m being seen.

oct 4/RUN

3.25 miles
2 trails + ravine
72 degrees
dew point: 62

8:30 in the morning and 72? Ugh. I’m glad it’s cooling down on Monday. My IT band felt strange for the first few minutes, but after that I forgot about it.

10 Things

  1. noticed the difference in drips at the 2 ledges — one concrete, one limestone — in the ravine between the 35th and 36th street parking lots — the concrete ledge, which was higher up, dripped less and slower
  2. a greeting from Mr. Morning!
  3. a peloton — 2 dozen bikers? — on the bike path
  4. not much yellow, but lots of red and orange
  5. the Winchell Trail was muddy parts — when did it rain?
  6. almost running into a walker, thinking that I was coming up behind them instead of them coming towards me — sometimes I can’t tell when someone is facing me or turned away
  7. the trail through the oak savanna: only a swirl of leaves and mulch
  8. a little more of a view at the edge of the world and the folwell bench
  9. a thick haze, trapped in the oaks in the savanna
  10. the surface of the river burning white
the surface of the river burning through the trees / Rachel Dow Memorial Bench

I decided to take a video of the river instead of a photo; I wanted to capture the movement of the light on the surface.

for future Sara: Ran past a house all gussied up for Halloween on 34th near Seven Oaks. A figure in black leaning over the fence, graves and skeletons in the front yard. I need to walk by here at night.

Listened to water trickling and voices below for the 2.5 miles of the run. Put in Taylor Swift’s new album for the last bit.

excerpt from Karma Affirmation Cistern Don’t Be Afraid Keep Going Toward the Horror / Gabrielle Calvocoressi

it’s okay. To know you’re part craven smuggler.
Part thief. Maybe if you know your animal.
I mean really know your animal.
You won’t become a builder of factories
or slave ships. Maybe instead of building
a ship somewhere in your body
you just let yourself feel the pain and
humiliation. No need to make it beautiful
for some future reader. Just say how much
you wanted to hurt someone like you got hurt.
And then just watch that for a while. It’s okay
to feel horribly ashamed. Best not to look away.
The gate to joy is past the factory and past
the reader and maybe it’s past your last breath
on this planet. There’s nothing you can do about it.
You come from the cistern of brutality
and hunger. You are the resonator. Just breathe.

Best not to look away. Wow! On the Poetry Foundation site, the poet reads this poem and they do a great job.