Tag: vision

march 16/RUNGETOUTICE

2.3
river road, south / lena smith boulevard, north
15 degrees / feels like 0
50% snow-covered

Many of the sidewalks were completely bare and dry, almost all of the trail was covered in slick snow. In some stretches, the trail was covered with chunks of snow from the snow plows that had just passed by. Running south, with the sun and the wind at my back, and on the short strips of bare pavement, it felt good. Then I ran through a puddle. I didn’t notice that my foot was soaked for several minutes, but when I did I decided I should head home; it was cold enough that I was (mildly) concerned for my wet toes. Good call, past Sara! When I got home, one of my toes was burning.

10 Things

  1. bright BLUE sky
  2. the sounds of shoveling and scraping and snow-blowing all around
  3. at the end of each block, I encountered an almost knee-high wall of snow where the plow had come through
  4. the surface of the river looked eerie and strange, pale and spotted with chunks of ice
  5. no kids’ voices from the school playground: for preK – 5th graders, school was closed, for 6th – 12th graders e-learning — that would suck! give the big kids a snow day too, I say!
  6. the rumble of two plows approaching, first a small one, then BIG one — I moved to the far side to avoid the spray of snow
  7. I encountered a few other runners but no skiers or bikers
  8. head north, I ran into a wall of wind — ugh! howling and biting
  9. I bet it was pretty and looked very winter wonderland-y — I couldn’t tell you because I was too busy trying not to slip!
  10. if it hadn’t been for the terrible wind, my wet toes, and the slick and uneven path, it would have been a great run — even with the bad conditions, I had some wonderful moments outside

mind-body connection

On last week’s episode of the podcast Nobody Asked Us, Kara Goucher talked about how she started taking a low dose of some (unnamed) anti-anxiety medication and it’s helping with her dystonia (“a movement disorder that causes the muscles to contract. This can cause twisting motions or other movements that happen repeatedly and that aren’t under the person’s control” — Mayo Clinic). She has discussed many times on the podcast how dystonia has made it very difficult for her to run, especially on pavement.

mind body connection — watch until 15:58

This mind-body connection is fascinating to me. Does her anti-anxiety med just make her more relaxed, or does it do something more to the brain — and maybe the neural mapping of her movements?

HOLES 4

Today I’m mapping my words on a copy of the “Still Life” article. I”m trying something different. In Holes 1, 2, and 3, I taped the paper together first and then found the words and drew the holes over and around the words. Today, with such a long article, I’m finding the words and drawing holes around them first, before I tape the pieces together. Will that make a difference? Not sure, but I might switch around the order of the pages to shape how the holes look together.

I drew and colored in holes on 3 out of the 8 pages, and tried adding some color to a few. I’m wondering if some of the holes should messier, with less defined borders or jagged, rough. I have limited ability in drawing; can I push myself some more? Here’s an image of one of the pages:

a page of holes 4 / “Still Life”

march 13/RUNGETOUTICE

4 miles
wabun hill and back
34 degrees

Wasn’t planning to run this late afternoon, but snow is coming and Scott was going out for a run and I got my new pair of shoes, so I decided to go for it (or get after it as Carrie Tollefson would say). Scott and I didn’t run together, just at the same time (5:45 pm) and in the same place (near the gorge). What a great run! Was it the sun and the crisp, early spring cold? The healthy food I ate for breakfast and lunch? The new shoes? I’m not sure, but I felt strong and fast and free. On my way back, I encountered a HUGE group of runners running north, all much faster than me. At some point, I heard someone call out, good job Mill City Runners! Of course, Mill City. That’s one of the biggest running groups in the twin cities. Wow, I knew they were big, but I had no idea they were that big!

I liked running in the early evening. Other than the huge group of runners, there weren’t that many people out on the trails. I noticed the light was lower, but it was too early to see any evidence of a sun about to set. The favorite thing I noticed: wild turkeys! Half a dozen grazing in the grass just north of turkey hollow, another one of them grazing in the grass between the trail and the road.

I stopped briefly at Rachel Dow Memorial Bench and took a picture of the blue water and the thin branches softening my view:

the very blue river with some bare branches on the bluff softening my view
blue / 13 march

Friday the 13th! Tonight Scott and I will do our annual tradition of watching Friday the 13th. It’s not as good as Halloween, but it has its moments.

update, 14 saturday 2026: We watched it and Scott figured noticed something neither of us had in our previous viewings of the movie (5 or 6 or more?): each of the deaths is foreshadowed by something that happened earlier in the movie: the character who is murdered on the archery field is almost hit with an arrow a few hours earlier; another character recounts a dream she had where the rain turns into a river of blood which she calls her shower dream, only a few scenes before an axe splits her skull in a shower stall; Alice (the final girl) is surprised by the town weirdo or town prophet, depending on your perspective, when she opens the door to the pantry and he emerges, calling out, you’re doomed. you’re all DOOMED!, and then hides in that same pantry later that nightonly to be found by the killer

Crazy Ralph warning the kids

Later, Scott also realized that there were connections with the murder weapon. For example: the arrow through Jack’s throat ends up at the archery range where Brenda is killed; the axe that splits Marcy’s skull is later found, bloodied, of course, by Alice in Brenda’s bed

a few memorable lines:
Jack (Kevin Bacon), about a coming storm: the wind just shifted a good 180 degrees and it’s going to tear down the valley like a son of a gun
Brenda (can’t remember the actor’s name, but Scott looked her up and she died at the age of 49 in 2007 from pancreatic cancer — my mom died at 67 from pancreatic cancer in 2009), reacting to Bill fixing the generator: what hath God wrought

HOLES

Reworking Holes 3 to allow for better spacing of the holes. Here’s the new version of the poem:

read sentences
sliced in half
with strangeness
each one glitch ing
just enough
to scramble the senses OR scramble the meaning

fall through the hole
your reading eyes find
and land in a logic
of blur and almost
on the border between
real and imagined

And here’s a photo of it:

holes 3

RJP and I went to the Textile Center and it was fun and helpful to think about translating my ideas about holes into actual fabric and textures. I found some black netting that will be helpful and another wildly color thin fabric that might work. The question now is: how to use the fabric. I’m not sure it’s can be as simple as cutting the fabric in the shape of my blind spot — that just seems like bad decoration. What I want to do is use texture to convey how I see/read and what it feels like to do these things with my blind spot. My blind spot is rarely actually visible, and when it is, it’s not a black, opaque spot.

  1. A few new ideas: cover the words where the blind spot is in plastic that you can see through, but that makes words too fuzzy to read.
  2. A lattice of twigs, gathered at the gorge, covering the blind spot — when I see these twigs, it often reminds of my scrambled central vision.
  3. Some sort of fuzzy, fluffy texture that evokes softness, which is one thing that happens to my central vision with less working cones: everything is softer, less detailed, not sharp or harsh

The key, I think, is to use texture to communicate different aspects of my new ways of seeing with hardly any cone cells: it’s fuzzy and soft; it’s vague; it seems like there’s a film over it and that I can almost see it but not quite

Get out ICE

Read about Minnesota lawyers quietly organizing to help immigrant families:

Lawyers Built a Network: MPR also reported Thursday that hundreds of Minnesota attorneys volunteered during the surge to challenge immigration detentions in federal court, creating a rapid pro bono legal network across the state. Lawyers from a wide range of practice areas stepped in, and the article describes a system that turned scattered cases into coordinated courtroom action. It is one more reminder that some of the most important resistance in this story has happened quietly, inside petitions, filings, and courtrooms.

Sean Snow on Facebook / 13 march 2026

and from the article Sean Snow is referencing:

Since the beginning of so-called “Operation Metro Surge” in December, attorneys in Minnesota have filed more than 1,000 cases challenging the legality of immigration arrests and detentions.

Many of those filings came from lawyers who don’t normally practice immigration law.

Hundreds of attorneys volunteered to help free people detained by ICE

march 12/RUNGETOUTICE

4.45 miles
the monument and back
35 degrees

Ran over the lake street bridge and to the monument today. When was the last time I ran this route? Just checked, it was 5 nov 2025. Wow! Of course, part of the reason why I haven’t run over there is because of the winter; they don’t plow the sidewalk on the bridge, and St. Paul, where the monument is, doesn’t plow their trails as well as Minneapolis. But another reason is definitely ICE; I’ve been staying closer to home with my runs because it feels safer.

Today’s run was good; I felt (mostly) strong, although my legs/feet are sore from wearing the shoes that make them hurt. It was windy and cold on the bridge, but it was beautiful. Steel gray water, open and high enough to hide the sandbars. Scattered stretches of the east and west banks were glowing with white snow. The sun was dulled by a thin layer of clouds.

10 Things

  1. drip drip drip drip — the steady drip of water falling off the bridge near the east steps
  2. graffiti — pink and orange and black block letters under the bridge
  3. I only encountered 1 or 2 people over the bridge, both walking
  4. the bells of st. thomas chiming at noon! 15 minutes later, at 12:15
  5. running above shadow falls I glimpsed a dark flash of something — a tree? no, a person
  6. with several more glances I realized the person was not hiking but running
  7. they were nearing the worn dirt trail that climbs up and out of the ravine
  8. St. Paul has replaced the port-a-potty at the edge of the monument parking lot — there is much less graffiti on this new one, and the door closes all the way — hooray!
  9. near the edge of an overlook on the east bank, staring out at the other bluff and down at the water — a hiker emerges
  10. a plaque on the bench for, “what a woman” Sharon. She was born 2 weeks after my dad was in 1941 and died in 2002 — so young!

Holes

Currently, I have 3 Holes erasure poems. Holes 1 is about my uneasy fellowship with the word. Holes 2 is about how the hole (my blind spot) makes it unprofitable to have faith in the visible. And Holes 3 is about falling through the hole into “who knows where”, on the border between the real and surreal. I need to do at least one more hole about the small holdout-of-a-hole in the very center of my vision that enables me to still read (even if that reading is slow and sometimes unreliable).

Tomorrow, RJP and I go shopping for textiles and textures at the Stashery, so today I’m working on mapping out Holes 3. I’m using “Me, Myself, and I: Helen Oyeyemi’s Novel of Cognitive Dissonance” from The New Yorker, August 25, 2025. Here is the version I just drafted:

swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doomed vision
with shadowed acts
that leap for the light (OR flee from the light?)

read sentences
sliced in half
with strangeness
each one glitch ing
enough to let in
the improbable

fall through the hole
your reading eyes find / or your reading finds / or your eyes find
and land in a logic
of blur and almost

Is this too many words to easily/cleanly map out? Let’s find out! And if not, let’s shift the form to make it work! — several minutes pass — Okay, I mapped it, and it seems like too many words. I think I’ll save my “darling” — the line that started it all about swapping the dead-eyed liturgy for another project — a liturgy of shadowed acts and the periphery! Anyway, I’ll try to keep the rest of the poem, and figure out the rest of holes is a project tomorrow morning.

Get Out ICE and Ice

The other day I wondered when the ice would be gone from Lake Nokomis. This morning, Minneapolis Parks and Recreation Board offered a prediction!

Minneapolis Parks Water Quality staff have tracked “ice off” dates on city lakes for decades. Ice off is declared when a lake is substantially free of ice after being fully frozen.

We’re probably not setting any records like 2018 or 2024, which dominate the record books. Staff estimate we could see ice off on small lakes like Powderhorn and Loring as soon as this weekend. It will probably be a few more weeks for larger lakes.

MPRB post

Will the HUGE winter storm we’re expecting on Saturday night and all day Sunday impact the ice off date? BTW, I’m pretty sure that they used to refer to this as the ice out date; I think they’ve changed it because of the very negative association with ICE. I checked past entries on my log, and yes, that was what it was called. Negative association aside, I like ice out better than ice off.

march 11/RUNGETOUTICE

4.25 miles
minnehaha falls and back
35 degrees

Snow. A dusting last night, then a little more in the morning. An inch? Enough to make everything white. I was happy to be done with winter, but I don’t mind the snow. Since past snow has already melted and the ground has already warmed up, the snow didn’t stick around. By the time I went out for my run in the afternoon, almost everything was clear. The run didn’t feel easy, but I pushed through several difficult moments and kept going. Hooray for mental victories!

I listened to the dripping and gushing and the wheel whooshing as I ran south, 2 playlists — “Bunnies and Rabbits” and “the Wheelin’ Life” — as I ran back north.

10 Things

  1. sh sh sh — the shifting grit under my feet
  2. the wet pavement was shining and sparkling in the sun — so bright sometimes that I thought it was slick ice
  3. entering minnehaha park, the parking lot was empty
  4. exiting the park 10 or more minutes later, there was one car at the far end of the parking lot
  5. the creek was rushing
  6. the sidewalk on the bridge just above the falls was wet and clear — last week someone had chalked a long message on it, which I couldn’t read because of my bad vision
  7. on the walk just before I started, I noticed a small black bird skittering along the grass — it had a small circle of white feathers below its eye
  8. a runner in a bright red jacket stopped at the Rachel Dow Memorial Bench, a minute later they ran down a hill on the winchell trail
  9. only 1 or 2 small patches of ice, a few puddles
  10. I almost didn’t remember this one! — three people on the bridge over the falls, looking over the creek side. One, to the others, pointing down at the creek: look, there’s 75 cents! One of the others, joked (I hope): better go down there and get it!

Rabbit Recap

Slowly but surely, I’m getting to the end of my rabbit recap, but not today! See past rabbit recaps here: 9 march, 6 march, 5 march, and 4 march.

14 — 25 march 2026

Here’s a useful explanation of some reasons why I do monthly challenges about new topics, like rabbits (or wind or dirt, etc.):

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.

A quick summary of some rabbits references and reveries: the killer bunny in Monty Python; Bunny Lebowski; Rabbit in Red matchbook from Halloween; Jimmy Stewart’s invisible bunny in Harvey; Max and Ruby; the PBS doc The Pill; Rabbit in Winnie-the-Pooh; the Cadbury Creme Egg Bunny; The Runaway Bunny; fix me hausenpffefer right away!

Rabbits in Diane Seuss:

excerpt from backyard song / Diane Seuss — I LOVE this whole poem. I’d like to use it as inspiration for a hole poem and a bunny poem!

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

excerpt from Her first poem had a rabbit / Diane Seuss — I want to bring in the optical illusion of the bunny and duck + the idea of what seems mild but is really wild

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.

What form should my rabbit poems take? an inspiration — Seven American Centuries

New Yorker Experiment: A hole through the bottom of the known world

Today I worked on the template for my hole poem that erases the “Whisker Wars.” It has some of my blind spot, some big circles (from a iron pill cap), some medium sized-circles (lexipro cap), small (a quarter), and extra small (a penny). I want to create texture for the blind spots but leave the circles alone as pencil/gray.

a hole through the bottom of the known world

My choice of blind spots vs. circles, and the size of the circles, was mostly decided by what would fit where, but there might be some room to play around with some of it. I’ll think about it some more.

The words: nothing still / details drift like snow / cut off heads with pewter-colored faces float / a hole through the bottom of the known world / here it’s unprofitable to have faith in the visible — should it be what is visible?

added an hour later: I realized a further clarification on the idea of the hole and holes. The blind spot creates a hole in my vision, an absence that has created an uneasy fellowship with the world and made it unprofitable to have faith in the visible. But, there is also the small hole that remains in the otherwise dark blind spot that enables me to still read — it’s a small hole, and it’s getting smaller, but it’s still there. I’m noticing that my whisker wars poem offers many different sizes of holes depending on how many words I’m trying to fit in it. I need to have a poem that highlights that tiny hole holdout — ooo, holdout is a word in the whiskey wars article. Should I do a completely different poem using the same text?

Get out ICE

Each morning a local journalist, Sean Snow, offers updates on what’s happening in Minnesota, both what ICE and those in state and federal government that support ICE are doing, and how people and their communities are fighting back. I read them on Facebook, but he also posts them on Threads, Instagram, Tiktok, and YouTube. Today one of his examples

— sitting at the dining room table, drinking my coffee while I write this, I just heard a long goose fly by — honk honk —

was about “a real act of public memory” n St. Paul:

Testimony Builds The Record: Minnesota residents, advocates, and families testified Tuesday in St. Paul before the chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights about what they experienced during Operation Metro Surge. Star Tribune reported that people described racial discrimination, abusive detention conditions, treatment of protesters, and the deaths of two citizens, all in hopes of pushing the commission toward a formal investigation. This was not a final ruling or a courtroom win. But it was a real act of public memory and accountability on a day when it would have been easy for the country to start looking away.

Sean Snow on Facebook / 11 march 2026

march 10/GETOUTICE

Today I had a blood test to re-check my iron and my thyroid in the morning. No coffee or food until it was done at 11, so also no running. Just sitting and writing and witnessing the world outside my windows: walkers, one runner, some dogs, the little girl at the daycare next door named Mabel stopping a walker and forcing a conversation, elementary boys — so LOUD — running down the street.

New Yorker Experiment / Holes

A slight shift in my first hole poem. Instead of, another name for barely not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the world, it is, another name for barely not blind is a hole in your vision that makes for an uneasy fellowship with the word. So, word not world. Since this poem is about how I read, word makes more sense to me. Part of me would like to keep both world and word, but most of me thinks I should keep it simple with word.

In my draft version, I’ve hastily shaded in the circles/my blind spot with pencil, so they are all gray blobs and dots. The only times I recall seeing gray blobs are: looking at a backlit face and staring at the wall for several seconds. When I look at text, like on this screen, I see a few words in the center and then . . . what? Difficult to put into words. Everything is buzzing, shifting, textured. I want to experiment with the blind spot blob in my poem by adding texture — I mentioned adding gauze or glitter on 8 march. RJP and I are planning to visit the Stashery at the Textile Center this week to see if I can find some cool materials.

While I let that simmer, I’ll return to the last page of experiment #5 (continued from 9 march):

words that stand out from Whisker Wars, page 3

  • face / faced
  • self-mastery
  • the Lord knows who
  • hold outs persist ed
  • who was as devoted as
  • you might think
  • emerged
  • embraced
  • writing
  • float /ed
  • only
  • unprofitable
  • propaganda
  • a sideshow staple / enfreakment
  • mishaps
  • cannot fully explains
  • died
  • few of us see
  • express rapture at seeing
  • poem reads
  • endures

Here’s what I have so far:

nothing still
details
drift like snow
cut off heads
with pewter-colored faces float

a hole through the bottom
of the known world.

here it is unprofitable
to have faith / to put faith / to believe
in the visible / what is visible

an uneasy fellowship with the world

As of now, I’ve decided to use the line uneasy fellowship with the word, but I also do have an uneasy fellowship with the world because I am barely not blind. Here’s an example of that uneasy fellowship from today’s visit to the clinic for a blood test:

I walk into the clinic with Scott and he points out the line for me to stand in as I wait to be checked in. It’s happened so fast that I have not had a chance to read the sign that tells me what this line is, I just know I’m supposed to stand in it. So I stand and wait with the person behind the counter directly in front of me, several feet away. There is another line with people in it, waiting, with a person behind the counter directly in front of them. I wait, looking vaguely in front of me at the person behind the counter and the person they are helping, trying not to stare or look as if I’m impatient (even though I am). To the side, I notice the person being helped at the other counter is done and hear the woman behind that counter tell the person in her line, wait. Then I hear her call out sharply, Scheduled! And then, Scheduled! I wonder what she means; it sounds strange. And then, Scheduled! I feel several quick, sharp pokes in my back. The person behind me is trying to get my attention. I realize that the woman behind the opposite counter is calling out to me. I am “Scheduled” because I have a scheduled appointment.1 Oh, I’m sorry! I approach the counter and she barks at me, name and date of birth! She softens a little after I answer promptly.

For a flash, I wanted to cry, but didn’t. It is such a small thing that doesn’t really matter. For a brief moment, I was that person, the irritating one in the line that wasn’t paying attention, holding everything up. Yet, it is a reminder of what I can’t do, or what I can barely do, or what I can only do with a lot of effort — and patience from those around me. It is a reminder that I am nearly (legally) blind.

I suppose these moments might matter less the more I experience them — both because I’ll get better at accounting for them and better at not being bothered by them. And I suppose I should experience them more. I just told FWA and RJP and they disagreed. FWA said “Choosing to be in those situations is like selling your soul!” Yes! Repeated this conversation to Scott and he said, but you do need to learn how to deal with these situations. I suppose. Maybe I can find some middle ground?

It helped to talk with FWA and RJP and have them not only validate but bolster my assessment of the situation as not my fault. A thought: did the woman say more than Scheduled!, but all i heard was that part? I don’t think so.

Get Out Ice

The ice at Lake Nokomis is fraying at the edges. Will the lake ice be completely gone by the end of the month?!

  1. Not to long after this happened I wondered: why didn’t she call out, person in the scheduled line or something with a bit more of an explanation. ↩︎

march 9/RUNGETOUTICE

4.5 miles
veterans home and back
50 degrees

With the sun and the bare ground it felt warmer than 50 degrees, so I wore shorts! I started with long-sleeves, but by 2 miles, I shed that skin and ran the rest of the way with bare arms too. Ah, spring! Not the easiest run. It might have been because I didn’t wait long enough after my second breakfast/early lunch.

1

One of the best things about the run was heading south and admiring the river. Waves on the surface reflecting the light. A shimmer scene. Dazzling. I haven’t seen sun on open water like this for many months.

2

Since I’m thinking about holes and spots, which also means circles and loops, I thought about a playlist I made a year ago (25 march 2025), and decided to listen to it. Much of it is about seasons and cycles, but as I ran I thought about the hole inside the wheel and falling through it — into another dimension? another way of being? a space not consumed by the expected (normal) life? Then I thought about my growing blind spot and how it has cracked open “normal” life — this cracking can be painful and difficult, but it has offered new possibilities and an entrance to another way of being.

3

After stopping to put in my playlist, as I ran down the hill and away from the park, by right foot felt strange. Was there a rock in my tread? I finally stopped and looked. Not a rock, a hole in my shoe where my middle toes strikes down. I guess that proves it: I’m not a heel or mid-foot but a toe striker! Unlike the hole in my vision, I don’t really see an upside to this hole in my shoe — well, I guess it means I have get to buy new shoes, and, if any are still available, in a bright color!

minutes later: Done! My new Brooks Ghost 17s are dark blue, turquoise, and green!

a close-up of the bottom of my running shoe with a white circle which is a hole that goes all the way through
a hole in my running shoe

I have never had a hole in the bottom of my running shoe. I’ve had holes on the side where my bunion/wide foot has pushed through, but never a hole on the bottom. I think it’s funny that this hole happened just as I’m thinking and writing about holes. I feel like I need to incorporate this hole into my project!

A Return to my Rabbit Recap

11 continued — 20 march 2026

sources of bunny inspiration: 1. rabbits who eat buckthorn bark may pee smurf blue; 2. identifying the dark forms in the backyard as rabbits; 3. origins of “bold as brass”; 4. optical illusion — duck or bunny; 5. a cup full of 3 rabbit breaths (poem); 6. jackrabbit trapped in a wildfire (poem); 7. the rock that is not a rabbit (poem); 8. little girls deciding who will have their bunny when they die (poem); 9. a rabbit offering themselves to quell a woman warrior’s hunger (book)

12 — 24 march 2026

Bunny as muse? nudge? pest? ghost?

What am I doing as I keep putting the two bunnies in my backyard into my poems? And why do I insistent on calling these wild and mature eastern cottonwood rabbits bunnies? I’m not sure these rabbits are indifferent to me, but I think they notice me in terms of whether or not I am a threat to their main activity: grazing in the grass.

A title for a poem? Crepuscular. Why don’t rabbits flee when I approach? Do they see me as non-threatening? Has human encroachment screwed up their sense of friend and foe? My mom, a pesky bunny, and a drive out the country. Peter Rabbit: the horror movie.

the rabbit hole: 

“Down the rabbit hole” is an English-language idiom or trope which refers to getting deep into something, or ending up somewhere strange. Lewis Carroll introduced the phrase as the title for chapter one of his 1865 novel Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, after which the term slowly entered the English vernacular. The term is usually used as a metaphor for distraction.[1] In the 21st century, the term has come to describe a person who gets lost in research or loses track of time while using the internet.wikipedia

Out-of-control curiosity. Distraction. Losing track of time. Getting lost in strange worlds. These are presented as bad things. Are they? Many of them are embraced within poetry. And they are great tools of refusal and resistance against late-capitalism and wannabe fascist governments — you’re not working for/perpetuating the system while you’re following the rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole online.

13 — 27 feb 2026

The rabbit hole. “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.”

I want to think more about this shifting metaphor in my understanding and use of hole in my erasure poem (or poems?)

New Yorker Experiment #5

First, an update on Holes. There’s an empty space without text in the lower left corner. I’m thinking of putting a definition or a quote or a line there. Or, I could put my poem written out in a straightforward way in the space. Would that undercut of enhance the experience of reading the poem? The text could also be an explanation of my version of reading; peripheral — big picture / central — one word or small phrase at a time, often experienced in isolation.

I’ve started (just barely) working on experiment #5. I’m using an article from July 28, 2025 titled “The Whisker Wars.” All I’ve done so far is write down words that stood out to me on two out of the three pages. I want to try experimenting directly on the New Yorker pages so I have a decision to make: two of the pages are back to back, so I need to pick either the first or second page. I’ll read through both of them and see which one I like better.

Hmmm….there’s a cartoon on the second page with the caption, “That’s an area for creativity and unstructured play.” I might want to use a few of those words.

words/phrases the stand out, page 1:

  • portrait
  • a game of Now You See It, Now You Don’t
  • in the beginning, not a whisper
  • otherwise
  • drift like snow
  • wonder
  • notice
  • russet-and-gray
  • pewter-colored
  • abrupt shift
  • who left
  • entanglements
  • weirdness
  • yellow
  • bore a hole through the bottom (of my coffin)
  • still

page 2

  • traces
  • people saw it as separate (from the body)
  • replaced by a view
  • faith
  • framed
  • revealed
  • meanwhile
  • from
  • however
  • trends
  • norms
  • world all know / known
  • waves
  • an area for creativity and unstructured play
  • lies details
  • natural
  • rather
  • nothing
  • believe (rs)
  • teach you
  • visible
  • cut
  • choice

Get Out ICE

On 5 march 2026, NPR posted a story about how doctors and nurses in Minnesota have created an underground network of medical care for people who are too scared to leave their homes. “There are now about 150 doctors — a volunteer “rapid response” team that has made more than 135 home visits” (When ICE came, Minneapolis created underground health networks).

These members of the care network have helped women in labor, babies with the flu, “At the Faribault clinic where Carroll works, staff members deliver medicine, food and other necessities to patients. A staffer drives 12 middle and high school kids to and from school every day in a clinic van.”

For more on ICE’s impact on healthcare in Minnesota, listen to this podcast: How ICE’s presence is affecting health care in Minnesota

march 8/WALKGETOUTICE

walk 1: 60 minutes
minnehaha off leash dog park
45 degrees

The hiking with Delia and FWA at the dog park is back! I’ve missed our walks and chats and encounters with other dogs. This morning it was beautiful: sunny, not too cold, calm. There was some mud at the top of the hill, but not much in the flats. We heard woodpeckers knocking and calling. Felt squishy mud and sand that nearly sunk me — so soft and difficult to climb out of! Saw the tall bluff on the other side of the river and remembered moving along its rim during my longer runs to the confluence when I was training for the marathon. A spring goal: be trained up enough to run this loop again by May.

FWA and I talked about rules and norms and our difficulty in following them. Not because we like to break rules for the sake of breaking rules, but because they didn’t work for us and that we recognized otherways to be outside of them.

Often on these walks through the dog park, I hear people calling out the names of their dogs. Today I recall it happening only once: Rosie! Come here Rosie! I mentioned to FWA how I’ve encountered several dogs named Rosie around here. I wondered if they spell the name Rosie, or Rosy, or Rosey?

Two favorite dogs: One was a shiba inu1 that was running around its human in wide circles, with the human holding a long leash and remarking to someone else, I feel like I’m playing with the airplane on a string toy I had as a kid. The other dog was tall and lean and a beautiful gray. He (I heard his human say he) was graceful and gentle and leaped over Delia to avoid bumping into her. I was so impressed, that I mentioned to his human what a wonderful dog he was. The human was wearing BRIGHT blue running shoes. Nice!

walk 2: 60 minutes
neighborhood / winchell trail
58 degrees

A wonderful afternoon walk with Scott. We walked through the neighborhood and down to the Winchell Trail at the river. Open water, blue, with glowing white snow on the banks of the other side. A pileated woodpecker: drumming then laughing then calling out. Other walkers in tank tops and shorts. A steady stream of cars.

Scott and I stopped at a deluxe, Scott called it a “high-rise”, free library. It had a shelf of adult books and a shelf with kids books and dog treats. I gave Delia a treat, which was for dogs twice her size. As we left I said to Scott, I would like to find a way to make the kind of delight I feel encountering things like this possible for others. What sort of delightful thing could I put up in our yard?

There was a note on the door of the library explaining that the owner re-stocked it frequently and had an instagram account where she gave book reviews! It’s @beccasnotsolittlefreelibrary. I followed her, and thanked her in the comments for bringing joy to our neighborhood.

Holes (aka New Yorker experiment)

Should I try some new erasures, or continue to work on turning my “hole in your vision” into something? Maybe I’ll try both. I’d like to push at this idea of a hole in the vision, with the hole not being (just) empty or a void, but something — like a rabbit hole: an in-between space, a passageway, a liminal space, a threshold, but also a clearing (JJJJJerome Ellis), the Nothing around which something functions, the gorge.

a note about reading and writing: I like using an erasure to show how I read words.2 Taken as a whole, words are too fuzzy or unintelligible to read. I can only read them as individual words. And when looking at one word, I often don’t see of the others around it, just one word then then next word then then next. I used to be able to grasp full phrases and sentences at once — at least I think I did. This not seeing the surrounding words is a problem when I write. My Plague Notebooks are full of examples of words running into each other, or one word being written over another. Whenever this has happened, I try to make note of it by writing Vision Error and drawing an arrow to it.

messy black text in a journal, two words mashed together: I'm/metallics, then an arrow pointing to them and more words: Vision error
vision error from the Plague Notebook, vol. 15 spy balloons, winter class, snow / 13 april 2023

Throughout the day, I was adding blind spots and then, when those were too big for the space, I added smaller circles (made by tracing the bottle caps for my iron pills and my old lexipro pills). Here’s how it looks now:

Four sheets of text taped together. Several circles are sketched over the text. Each ciricle has a hole in the center, revealing a word or pharse of my hole poem. Some of the circles are the shape of my blind spot, some are just circles
holes / work in progress

I’m pleased with how it is looking. As of now, I’m imagining this version as a template for another, more polished version. I might replace some of the pencil shading with material — like gauze or netting. Maybe other holes will be filled in with glitter or sparkling something, feathers, twigs?

  1. FWA identified it as a shiba inu; I couldn’t see it well enough to do that — it was all blur and bark to me ↩︎
  2. It might be interesting to do some audio, too. I’d like to record myself reading something for the first time, to show how I struggle to read words. ↩︎

march 6/RUNGETOUTICE

3.5 miles
locks and dam no. 1
48 degrees / drizzle

A few more warm days, then cold again. I didn’t mind the drizzle, everything was gray and soft and misty and wet. Dripping and whooshing and seeping. Of course, now that I’m home, the rain has stopped and the sun is almost out. I ran to the bottom of the locks and dam no. 1 hill and admired the ford bridge. It looked more like a painting than an actual bridge — although it sounded like a bridge, with trucks rumbling overhead!

I love the reflections in this picture I took, especially the upside down street lamps and railings.

an arched bridge stretching from one end of the frame to the other with a clear reflection on the river surface

If the sky were a little darker, the river a little lighter, you might not be able to tell which bridge is up, which is down — at least, I wouldn’t be able to tell!1

Smiled at several runners and walkers and bikers. Made note of all the empty benches and parking lots. There were not too many people out there. For the last bit of the run I was able to get deeper into the mist by running on the Winchell trail. Very haunted and other-worldly!

I listened to water for the first half of the run, and “Bunnies and Rabbits” playlist for the second. A new song popped up: Rabbit // Hole by Siddhartha Khosla. It’s part of teh music for a one-season series called Rabbit // Hole with Kiefer Sutherland. It’s a great song to run to. Near the beginning, the music breaks up for a few seconds then plays again then breaks up. I imagined a fast moving rabbit passing by an object when the music broke up, then being in the clear (when the music resumed), then passing my another object when the music broke up again.

Rabbit Recap, part 3

Can I finish this rabbit recap today? Nope. I got distracted with other stuff.

11 — 20 feb 2026

All late fall and winter, 2 or more bunnies have been hanging out under our crab apple tree — at night, in the afternoon, at sunrise and sunset. They’re very bold, these bunnies, not running off when I walk by. When this happens, I’ve started saying, these bunnies are as bold as brass! Why? Not sure. And, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea: I like bunnies or rabbits about as much as I like squirrels, which is not at all.

Get Out ICE

Yesterday afternoon, Scott came to my desk n the front room and said, Do you want to hear some good news? I mean, some actual good news? Kristi Noem was fired!

from Needle & Skein (the red hat people)

As of March 5th, we have raised an incredible $705,000 to help our immigrant communities here in MN. This is just us. Other yarn shops in Minnesota and around the country have also raised money and generously donated both here and locally. ICE is still here. Our fight is not over. Join us. ❤️

If you are a business who has raised money, please send us a message. We would love to try and get a full picture of what the amazing fiber community worldwide has accomplished.

Facebook post

Read the comments for more on how the fiber arts community is showing up!

New Yorker experiment #5

These experiments are slow-going. I run out of time to work on them. I struggle to see what I’m doing. I’m messy and haven’t figured out how to work with glossy magazine paper. So why am I continuing these experiments? I asked that to Scott and FWA in the kitchen the other day and then answered it myself: For some reason, I2 want to do these erasures, so I’ll keep doing them until I don’t want to or can’t (because it is too hard with my bad vision).

a flash of an idea: As I was writing that last paragraph, I was thinking about how visual poetry is increasingly inaccessible to me as my few remaining cone cells die (are the dying or just malfunctioning?) Then this popped into my head: yesterday’s erasure involved using marker to cover almost the entire text. When I had FWA and RJP read it, they both got marker on their hands — not in big streaks, but in tiny marks that almost looked like cuts or scratches. What if I made these erasures about touch too? My first thought was about doing the erasure in such a way that created a residue. Second thought: what if these erasures involved texture and touch — here, I’m reminded of the kids’ book Pat the Bunny and its different textures to touch: the soft bunny fur, the rough bunny . . . nose? I can’t remember what was the rough thing in the book. If you can touch these erasures and their textures, which would somehow speak to the words/ideas on the page, maybe you can hear them too? I’m thinking of scales, and thick layers of paper, maybe some holes where the paper has been ripped open, some extra rough sections, some smooth, like a thin film, crinkly, soft, sharp-ish. And — maybe in terms of the visual aspect, find ways to cover it that reflect or glow or shimmer or sparkle. I can see these textures in a way that I can’t see the typical flat, black expanse of an erasure. So things like glitter, little mirrors, metallic surfaces, ridges. What about covering it with things that offer colors only visible in the light — thinking of bird feathers here. So many ideas! Again, difficult to execute without it looking like a mess, but fun to try.

Before I had that last flash of inspiration, I was thinking about how I’ve decided (as of yesterday) that the overarching theme of these found poems is my vision and how I see. Then I thought, I should apply my blind spot to these pages. Create an amsler grid out of the text, and then place a cut-out of my blind spot (found while starting at a blank wall and then drawing what I see) on top of the words to find the poem.

Maybe some of these erasures could be all/only about texture, some all/only about my blind spots, and some both. And just now, another thought: What if these erasures were all about my blind spot and the idea of blind spots? Would this work: one of the erasures could be covered in spots or dots or holes in the paper?

So many fun ideas to try. I imagine that some of them will only ever be ideas that are good in theory but don’t work on the page.

Oh — I almost forgot, until I looked over at an open tab that reads, “tools to use for magazine erasure poems,” I started writing about this experiment because I wanted to mention my need for better materials. I love how writing in this log opens me up and helps me to see new things to try! Before writing about textures, the supplies I thought I needed were: sharpies, an exacto knife (can I see well enough to use this?) and possibly paint. Texture through thicker and thinner layers of paint is an interesting idea. Now I’m thinking I need scraps of fabric — next week, RJP and I should go to the fabric scrap store at the Textile Museum! — that are soft and rough and bumpy and gauzy. I need glitter and sparkles and little things that reflect and crinkle. Fun!

Here’s a new version of experiment #3. I decided to paste the text into a document so I could have an easier time drawing on the text. Is this a good solution? I’m not sure, but I do like how this version looks:

an erasure poem, spelling out: swap the dead-eyed liturgy of / doomed / vision / with / shadow / acts / wild / and / improbable
swap the dead-eyed liturgy

Bummer. I just realized that I erased the ed on doomed. It is supposed to read: of doomed vision (I guess doom vision could work?).

text:

swap the dead-eyed liturgy of
doom OR doomed3
vision
with
shadow
acts
wild
and
improbable

And now I’m redoing yesterday’s experiment:

text:

Another name for
barely

not
blind
is a hole in
your vision
that
makes
for
an
uneasy fellowship
with
the world.

  1. Both Scott and FWA could tell, but only after studying it for a minute. The giveaway: the waviness in the upside down version — in the streetlamps for FWA, the arch for Scott. I wouldn’t have been able to notice that because most lines/edges, if I can see them, look wavy! ↩︎
  2. Who/what is the “I” here? Not the fully conscious Sara-I. I am not entirely sure why I keep returning to these erasures — either in this particular experiment, or in previous experiments — when they are so difficult with my vision and I’m not very good at them. Is it shadow Sara, nudging me? ↩︎
  3. I prefer doomed vision; I think it works better. I really like this idea of challenging/getting rid of/swapping out a dead-eyed liturgy, where liturgy = “Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembrance, supplication, or repentance” (wikipedia). ↩︎

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 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!