Cell Phone Time

photo copyright (c) 2008 Ruth Nolan

Wireless Love

yesterday my cell phone
was dead, when you tried to call
to set up another weekend adventure
into the desert, it was the damn new
phone, I'm still figuring it out
the one I bought this week
because I lost my reliable old Nokia
in the desert near the petroglyphs
25 miles due northeast of Lucerne Valley
past where the "bros" swamp dust with their platoons
of ridiculous off road vehicles, where I sat pregnant
21 years ago this upcoming spring, alone,
and found a pink arrowhead, then I had a girl,
where you and I sat in the darkening car
while you chugged one Fat Tire beer
you opened it with my mountain climbing clamp
that I use for my car keys
as I'm wont to lose them frequently
clipping on and off rubber bands, USB port drive,
school keys and gate keys of all stripes
from when you lived with me
and were paranoid because I have a stalker
who lives down the street, he once busted in my gate
and the one I had rebuilt hangs unevenly
and it's a matter of time before the big dog
knocks it down, his clawmarks scar its face,
visits from the UPS man and bug spray guy,
then you opened a second beer
and I drove too fast
so we wouldn't get stuck in the soft sand road
I have driven these desert paths for years
and I know how to avoid the jagged rocks
beer foam spraying your chin
just you and me, in the dark November twilight
too fast how it came down on us
in our petroglyph finger tracing spree
we couldn't duplicate that this weekend
first my new phone dead
because I forgot to pay the bill
and your phone is down tonight,
I imagine how you forgot to renew
your pay per minute card
and waited for me to call yesterday, last night
when we'd hoped you would come by
so we could disappear into a desert shadow
or morning or some rock phantasmagoria
just you and me, the way it's always been
with us, alone in the desert
where I'll put my head on your chest,
you are just tall enough for me to make
the perfect rest, very few others in my life
have stood this high, and it's a peaceful place
and you might put your arms around me,
it seems you wrap them twice,
and nothing can penetrate that,
not the loss of the old phone
that bounced off the top of my car
and was so far out in the desert
it wasn't worth driving out to find,
it was so old anyway, and I imagine it
sitting there dead and dull, keeping time
in its faded battery heart with the old
stone art, I imagine you buying more minutes
and our intersections colliding again
because they always do
I'll call me or you'll call you,
it's hard to connect, you live 60 miles
away and I'm way out in the desert,
two freeways, badlands, a giant casino
and windmills mismatching the path
between us, a bridge over white river rocks
and we will talk about our next drive
penetrating cities and busy lives, mine much more
than yours, which I celebrate and resent
to the end of some dirt road I remember
from when I was your age, that old cliche
but something so new
my primitive umbilicial cord wire
guide connecting me to the desert's placenta
again, a place where I will sit and be nothing,
say nothing, blend into the dry earth again
and you will sit there too, our hearts
merging into one universe
you'll call me tonight, I hope
or I will try again to call you
this perfect alone ring tone.

Ruth Nolan c. 2008

Dec, Jan, Feb, March Ruth Nolan Lit-Events!

Greetings! From the Phantom Seedling....

Here are some December desert literature and poetry events some of you may wish to attend. Check back in a few days (it's Saturday, 11.29 of Thanksgiving weekend) - I'll have more things posted, and will also try to post a more expansive winter/spring calendar. I can't believe how many things I'm doing. But IT'S ALL GOOD, as they say - thanks - Ruth

Friday, December 5th - 6:00 p.m.
Poetry Reading - College of the Desert poets!
Barnes and Noble at the Westfield Mall, Palm Desert
6 p.m., open and free to the public!
Join us for a wonderful reading by poet/students from Ruth Nolan's creative writing and poetry classes at College of the Desert.
Hosted by the incomparable Patricia D'Alessandro
email Ruth for more information runolan@aol.com

Saturday, December 6th, 10 a.m. -2:00 p.m.
Desert PEN Woman Book and Art Fair - FREE and open to the public
Desert Falls Country Club (on Country Club Drive, Palm Desert
just east of Cook Street - heading towards Indio - can't miss it - big WATERFALL in front!)
featuring Ruth Nolan, author of Dry Waterfall (poems) and Phantom Seed (desert lit mag)
and many other women writers and artists. Books and art for sale! This is a fundraising event.
Optional lunch ($45) with guest speaker Joni B. Cole, author of The Water Cooler Diaries
for more information contact Marge Dodge, coordinator
margedodge1@aol.com or 760-333-0733

Saturday, December 13, 1:30-4:30 p.m.
Desert Literature Lecture + Slide Show
Living Desert University, Palm Desert
presented by Ruth Nolan, professor and editor of a new California desert literature anthology
(forthcoming from Heyday Books, fall 2009)
for more information/to register:
Living Desert University http://www.livingdesert.org/
Michelle Moe, Education Supervisor 760-346-5694 ext 2501
or Ruth Nolan runolan@aol.com 760-964-9767

Sunday, December 14th, 6 p.m.
Trap Door Poetry Reading
Featuring: Joshua Tree Eco-Poets Mike Cipra & Caryn Davidson
open mike + features
Palm Springs Art and Wine
Free to the public - age 21+ requirement

Inlandia Writers Workshop
Riverside Public Library, Riverside CA
starts Thursday, January 8th, 2009 6:30-8:30 p.m.
workshop leader: Ruth Nolan
Dates: January 8th, 15, 29, February 5, 12, 26
FREE and open to the public. More information coming soon.

Friday, January 16th, 2009
Desert literature lecture and slide show
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park Historical Society
presented by Ruth Nolan - more information coming soon - time and small fee

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009
Ruth Nolan, desert poet, lecture + workshop, guest speaker
PEN women's luncheon, Palm Desert

Saturday, February 21, 2009
Desert Poetry Writing Workshop
The Living Desert University
1:30-4:30 p.m.
workshop leader: Ruth Nolan
for more information/to register:
Living Desert University http://www.livingdesert.org/
Michelle Moe, Education Supervisor 760-346-5694 ext 2501
or Ruth Nolan runolan@aol.com 760-964-9767

NOTE: I will be setting up several more of my fun and well-received "desert poetry writing" workshops, all in beautiful outdoor desert settings such as Whitewater Preserve, for next spring. I'll post those on my blog when I have dates/times/places confirmed.

Thursday, March 26th, 2009
Screening of Film: Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps
An experimental film in and of Joshua Tree National Park
Riverside Public Library time TBA - free to the public
meet some of the film's collaborators!

NOTE: I am setting up more screenings for the Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps film, to be shown in various locations throughout winter and spring. There will be one at the Salton Sea State Recreation Visitor Center sometime this winter or spring - check back! That is one groovy place to visit!

hasta la vista - that is it for now.

Late November Pantoum 11.25.08

(why did I shop for new clothes: jeans, socks, purses, blouses - today at a store that is so going out of business that movers were extricating the store's furniture from their anchors as I shopped, and no bathroom to use? $120 for a garbage bag full of goodies, how odd that without trying them on I know they are the perfect fit, that the store will be vacant next week. And I'll wear them somewhere new, not in the empty place, the way I feel so expansive on a college campus that ghosts me - a shoulder touch and slip-sideways fault walk -the state of Coatlicue, in-between worlds. And yes, the fever, the warm face, as I walk the old halls, shop in the ghost store for the best deals, it's OK to buy the next size up, that way I can wear baggy jeans and not feel bad that I'm not a size 8-10 anymore. Freedom to gain a few pounds, wish tears would warm my cheeks and fill the empty spaces in between lovers who are not here tonight, late November and Thanks"stealing" soon and I am so alone, working too damn hard again, will the desert book intros and bios EVER be done, will the bibliography ever pass the course, will the permissions ever be all in hand?)

Late November Pantoum

I thought our love was thunderstorm, rain hitting the rake

Naked by the pool, sunrise, July, daring the lightning

I was devoted to me and you were devoted to you

The tall cat coffee mug I borrowed from your mom's house

Naked by the pool, sunrise, July, daring the lightning

Bisecting Mojave in May, the cup's handle snapped in September

The tall cat coffee mug I borrowed from your mom's house

I'm walking to my morning poetry class, students waiting

Bisecting Mojave in May, the cup's handle snapped in September

Reading the beat poets today, the boil of Ginsberg's Howl

I'm walking to my morning poetry class, students waiting

I've overheated the cup today, November, I burn my hand

Reading the beat poets today, the boil of Ginsberg's Howl

Love near a mountain park at night, hands on breasts

I've overheated the cup today, November, I burn my hand

Parked in my car, leaning across console, your fingers are cold

Love at the Box Springs Mountains, dark, hands on breasts

Bears in a forest, tall as people, pounding berries from the trees

Parked in my car, leaning across console, your fingers are cold

The desert, my poetry students, my dogs, wonder where I am

Bears in a forest, tall as people, pounding berries from the trees

We held each other and the hot rain ran down our long souls

The desert, my poetry students, my dogs, wonder where I am

America is another poem we’ll study today, where are you?

We held each other and the hot rain ran down our long souls

Summer in the desert compressed us together into one bone

America is another poem we’ll study today, where are you?

I’m obliged to tell my students how to explicate a poem

Summer in the desert and the hot rain ran down our long souls

You initiate sex with me, and then you go off to sleep alone

I’m obliged to tell my students how to explicate a poem

And the bears are satiated now, nosing into winter holes

You initiate sex with me, and then you go off to sleep alone

I brew a fresh pot of coffee, the dog’s back wounds nearly gone

And the bears are satiated now, nosing towards winter holes

I loved you because you pulled into a violent rainstorm

I brew a fresh pot of coffee, my dog’s back wounds nearly gone

and wrapped me in your arms and your heart was beating warm

I loved you because you pulled me into a violent rainstorm

broken cup, silent desert, I rake my voice across another poem

Ruth Nolan copyright (c) 2008

Ruth's Interview on KCET.ORG - deserts and poems

check out my recent interview on Arts Block Live - I'm highly honored to be included on this site, alongside an admired and big-name poet! On this podcast, I talk about my desert poetry, and the new California desert literary projects I'm deeply involved with: the desert literature anthology for Heyday Books (fall, 2009) and Phantom Seed, the new lit-mag I started this year.

Enjoy! I'd love and welcome all comments and feedback to my interview!

http://www.kcet.org/explore-ca/on-demand/podcasts/

Yrs Truly,
Ruth

To Hohm-e from Prema

this is a personal posting to special someone I hope will read this.... the card and music are fantastic. The OM necklace pendant is thoughtful and precise. My best birthday presents, with hand-inscripted lettering. Dinner was so fun.

forgive me for pursuing you so ardently. Not my style and out of character but you've stirred my heart and it's pulsing for you. We know each other as room-mates, I think the most intimate kind of bond, of 8 months' time. We've been friends for almost 2 years. We share an enduring bond. I am warm in your embrace, odd as it feels to be parked on a street, you ready to go, before we begin to feel too many things and before lights go on in your house. Not cozying up for an evening in my living room, you in the rocking chair and me on the perma-laptop.

The moon, at first a floodlight that couldn't be happening, on my drive home from the I.E. soft blanketed darkness, extra deep in this nearing-winter Solstice night. Past the blinking needle-high casino, the zigzag curves through windmill forests, the long, open road, and in the mountains to the left, that light- towards 29 Palms? No - it was the essence of moon, surprising me with its not-yet-rising. I knew that moon had been full, but this night was so dark, it took moments to surmise. And I fell in love.

Looking up a minute later, the heavy moon, lofted not-full but large over the jagged horizon. How could it have risen so quickly? The night had become rich and mellowy and full, in one faint twist of road. Past Date Palm Road, and bearing down to Palm Desert - that last straight stretch of Interstate 10. And then, the moon was partially obscured again. I understood it wasn't a trick of timing, or time lapse, but of position. The waning moon was playing hide and seek, a peekaboo, behind the nearby arid range - and then, before Cook Street Exit, it was a sliver of light again, its orb concealed. The moon never fell out of the sky. It only seemed to be playing tricks of mind.

This is how I feel about us, homie. A symbolic recognition that I can only hope is a premonition of how friendship, and maybe love, again, will unfold between us. The darkest night, the shortest days, the stars glowing in gentle company but not quite bright enough to consolidate the jag of being alone in the world - although we are stardust, too - and then, a surprising glow, hard to believe, and there it is - the moon! Maybe a bit topsy turvy, not in the full shone elegance and bravery it displayed a week or two ago when full, but there altogether, and larger than small. Bigger than millions of stars, on its own, a stellar moment of sky, reflection of blindness we can finally peer our way through - a round window of love, shaven just a bit on top, behind the mountain, above the mountain, partially obscured.

Don't give up on us homie. The moon hasn't forgotten us, either. My heart, your hug, and my forever telling you how sorry I am, and how, to this moment of now-the-moon-is-high and it's all going to be all right, I look to a new cycle of dark, and then light, in the pierce of winter solstice.

The moon forgives its gravities to a vast planet that blinds its surface. Maybe your orbit will once again trace into mine, and this time, a further study of the many craters and nuances - like we are entirely new friends, galaxy, supernova. With the affection and love it's taken me a lifetime to fully comprehend. The beauty, the beauty, the innocence and the serene.

Success, Gardens, Dry Lakes, Old Mojave Road

Success with my Joshua Tree Imprimature poem....and the film collaboration with CA Museum of Photography. Success with Phantom Seed, Issue #2 amazing readings and events. Beyond what I could've imagined. Success with desert conservation groups, presenting as a guest speaker at the Desert Protective Council annual meeting last month. Success with the desert anthology for Heyday, still ironing out some tough spots but the intent is out there, most of the hard work has been done and more hard work is being done. Success with College of the Desert Solstice. Success with Trapdoor Poetry Series in Palm Springs, welcoming the wonderful poet and friend, Ching-In Chen last night. Success in teaching a California Desert Indian class for Desert Institute a few weekend ago. Success in professional networking and community building - the community thing is by far the most important thing. I'm finding my literary niche - the desert. I'm building on that, in every way shape and form.

I let the pool pump motor linger another few weeks at a shop in Riverside so I can fund another run of 100 Phantom Seed #2 books. The response, love, community circling and avid interest in the desert has bowled me over. Two events, one at Riverside Library October 4, another at Palm Springs Library Oct 27, were tremendous successes, not only with high attendance but a beautiful and heart-rending turnout of contributors-readers!!! I skip grading another stack of student essays so I can go to Trap Door Poetry - was out of town for three weekends in a row recently: Oct 17-19 at Desert Studies Center; Oct 25-26 in Joshua Tree; Nov 1-2 again in Joshua Tree to teach a class for Desert Institute. I regretfully had to bow out on two recent East Mojave gatherings, due to work I needed to get done for the desert anthology, and more recently, for essential rest at home. All these great things I want to bandwagon onto! And I am, as much as I can! I got really spoiled having two sabbaticals in a row for the past two autumn seasons.

Although I feel I'm living in a ghost home now, my spirit only halfway here if that, halfway at College of the Desert, my literary underpinnings shoring me up but feeling fairly weakened by strong undercurrents of professional obligations and a strange bottom sinking of dead anchor weight, too. A very weird mix. I resent my past, the past that's piled up on me here - although it was "the thing" for so long, my 10 year tenure here in the brute desert has really come to an end and now it's a matter of me tying up loose ends and shape shifting, now, it feels, to the wind. Tarah, too, aching to move to Berkeley, she's 20 and I know I sure didn't want to be hanging around with my parents at that age - she has a dedicated boyfriend and I think she's ready to take on the steps of that new maturity - a move to a new town. She is bright and strong and together.

Challenges and struggles to shed old skin. Yesterday I cleaned up my garden area, the lovely bricked patio with surrounding soil I have planted, let lie fallow, and re-planted again this past spring. It was lush and green in early summer - boiling over with marigolds, peppers, squash, poppies, baby lettuce, and various stripes of mint - lovely scents. It died off during the summer, at my behest; too much water. And so, into autumn, and I just cleared it out yesterday - grabbing the big pruners for the volunteer junior sized palo verde tree - still sharp! - and hauling the long branches for storage into the backyard (a few droppings landing in the pool, whoops) - clipping the overgrown, also volunteer, lantana bush, with its pretty and psychedelic flowers that resonate with my good friend Swami Ramanda's joyous stories of his time in India with his great guru, Anandamayi Ma.

I was in bed last night, post poetry reading, and feeling the sensation of ripping old roots out of my heart - pulling that sucker wide open to the wind, the whiles of the world, to everything dark and secret, and saying, look, soil - it's time for change! It's time for oxygenation and fresh air and a time for the earth to lay quietly for this brief desert "winter" (if you can call it that, 90 degrees yesterday) but the shortening days are testimony to my inner truth - and at least we're not burning up out here like they are in O.C. and L.A. but the energy, that tinder-crisp feeling of irritation and incindiary sensations, upon me. Dig up what's been buried under and left to stagnate under the soil - bring it to light - terrify the open heart - let the wind blow through - let the flowers of laughing, bliss-saturated gurus enter me from every angle - when I can surrender my worries and sorrows, my obsessions over lost love - not be attached to what came to seem so essential - be grateful for love when it has showered me this past two years, in whatever imperfect forms -

There were moments of perfect love, there were moments of perfect love, and like the desert on a flowery spring April morning, the contrast to heat-warped insane white lightning July afternoons, I hold the feelings of success and achievement side by side with the brute force of the desert at its most punishing and worst, and keep in mind that I can see and feel all of the seasons at once, and that what feels now like an endurance test of marching across a dry lakebed, only imagining the luxury of water, only imagining the safety of shade, and bracing myself for the possiblity of skeletons of those who didn't make it, and for the cock-tease of that ever-mirage, tapping me on the shoulder with shimmering visions of hugs and love and easy money and easy men, well - I place myself on the old Mojave Road, and I am a pioneer in life and love, and understand that for me, it's a lonely sojourn, and that I will savor people, community, the shelter and warmth of their hearts, even whilst many of them will help themselves to what is in my generous pockets - it's all one. The moments of grief, the moments of perfect love.

The desert never disappoints. In its emptiness, we find a gift of something pure. And in a rush of wind, it vanishes again, but we know it was there. We know it was there. And that has to be enough. I've planted the garden, and I've pulled its dead roots out. The soil is cool and damped, and Shasta the dog clawed a little bit of it up, and I apparently slept through an earthquake in the early hours of morn, and I'm meeting my homie for dinner in Redlands tonight, and we will not talk about love, and I'm believing in my visions, apparation birds, and they seem to be vultures but then again, maybe sweet little cactus wrens, and maybe I'm the loose mountain lion now on the prowl, a little deranged, a little suckered by young love, and a little saddened by the sweet taste on my tongue that turned to agave cactus heart - uncooked - and just knowing the old Indian trail that crosses the huge California desert, my literal and literary journey and landscape, makes me feel better - walking the road with others who've criss-crossed this expanse - and bringing it all together, building a campfire for everybody, bringing it all back home.

Which in itself is success. The dot to dot connect. A night of stars, which seem to offer permanence to us even while they burn out in front of our eyes. The beauty, cannot be denied. Compassion and success, sadness and disbelief - this ancient lake network is so wide.

c. 2008 Ruth Nolan

Earth Poetry Quotes

The poetry of the earth is never dead. ~John Keats

What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

I can enjoy society in a room; but out of doors, nature is company enough for me. ~William Hazlitt

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better. ~Albert Einstein

Nature is my medicine. ~Sara Moss-Wolfe

The world is mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful. ~e.e. cummings

Nature is a writer's best friend. ~Agavé Powers

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. ~Jean Giraudoux

For 200 years we've been conquering Nature. Now we're beating it to death. ~Tom McMillan, quoted in Francesca Lyman, The Greenhouse Trap, 1990

Oh Beautiful for smoggy skies, insecticided grain,
For strip-mined mountain's majesty above the asphalt plain.
America, America, man sheds his waste on thee,
And hides the pines with billboard signs, from sea to oily sea.
~George Carlin

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her. ~Francis Bacon

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. ~Chief Seattle, 1855

When one tugs at a single thing in nature, he finds it attached to the rest of the world. ~John Muir

The old Lakota was wise. He knew that man's heart away from nature becomes hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans too. ~Chief Luther Standing Bear

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. ~Rachel Carson

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain. ~Henry David Thoreau

The Birth Day

Well, it's come and almost gone. A quiet one this year. Started out with poetry class.....a day with my poetry students is a day in heaven - I have a wonderful group of all young people, say, under 25, and they are so attentive, into the spirit and passion of it, and writing some amazing poems. Coming forth in such a heartfelt way.....supernova!

I decided to buy donuts this morning and take them to the class, to celebrate my birthday. Of course, they all disappeared! I felt like such a Mom.

Beautiful day- as is often the case here in Palm Desert, on any November 13 - warm and the sun and temperature just right! The kind of day perfect for a hot spring or the spa - which I didn't do, because I am waiting for my pool motor to be fixed and replaced Dec 1 (next paycheck) so I can use the hot tub in my backyard. I would've liked to have gone to Desert Hot Springs, but didn't make it.

In the mail, two large cards! From my two wonderful 2nd cousins, my cousin Shari's girls, Rebecca and Cathleen (13 and 15.) They live in Oklahoma now, and I miss them so. This meant the world to me. Thanks, girls! You rock! Tarah surprised me, after work, with a gigantic hello Kitty card and a small chocolate cake, along with a bonsai garden. I so worry about her - living here with me, without friends, working at the doctor's office, her boyfriend in Berkeley, and want only happiness and abundance for her - I know she has to find it for herself, and I feel that some of my life stresses lately have been a burden on her. My wonderful daughter, surprising me with her thoughtfulness and generosity. I was nowhere near that considerate with my mom at her age, and probably wasn't for another 10 or 15 years past Tarah's age. She's so mature it blows my mind, and yet, I worry about her over-attachment to one boyfriend, her need to grow up and settle down, and his floating in college - what is he doing up there, so far from her? She came home from college last year to be with him - and then he left her here.

Dinner with my parents at Sammy's Woodfired Pizza, Palm Desert. They bought me a french coffee press. My aunt Jeanne came down from Victorville and bought me....coffee beans! They are going to help me with some of the final stages of the desert book. What a wonderful relief. I'm so thrilled about the Heyday desert anthology, but it's so ongoing and so much work and I feel like I'm handling it so inadequately, and need all the support I can get!

Birthday phone calls from: my friend Armi - singing happy birthday (thanks, my friend!); Phil - two calls, how sweet! - my brother Jerry in L.A. - haven't talked to him in months......talked to brother Patrick last night. We're going to run, for the third year in a row, the local 5 k turkey trot. A little piddle for him, as he is an ultra marathon runner, but he's so nice, humoring me with our 45 minute times.....he could do it easily in 25 or less....a nice brother! Nice emails/ facebook/ myspace postings from several of my students, from my friend Avideh in the bay area, from Cati in Riverside, Chrystine in Redlands, Patricia in DHS, Todd in Missouri (a high school friend!), Susanne in Las Vegas, Dustin in Korea......I'm going to make 100% effort to remember everyone's birthdays, with cards or just an online posting - I even got a few messages from "friends" I don't really know - but receiving love and goodness all around is the most important thing.

I just have to remember that - to accept other people's kindness and love. Instead of hiding out and hardening my heart when I feel alone. Maybe writing on this blog, corny as it sometimes feels, is a way of that reaching out. And making all of you who are reading this feel less alone. In the world. My goal. To be a connect the dots between us all, ambassador of words. Make the deserts between us feel more ecologically sustained and balanced. Good night to all!

On a cooling desert night - shortening days - time to take another drive into the Mojave, this time east into the Granite Mountains for the fall desert committee meeting on Saturday. I'm scheduled to give a little talk on desert literature. It should be a miracle, being out there. A beautiful, beautiful place, and I haven't been to the Granite Mountains Preserve, proper - great people, too, all focused on desert conservation issues and preservation.

Cricket-sounds, gentle weather, and pre-holiday vibrations to all of you. Your editor.....at the Phantom Seed.

90 minutes to go, I'm another year old

November night. I was born in San Bernardino and it was a rainy day and perhaps St. Bernardine's Hospital was not yet reputed for its ghost nuns stalking hallways.

This, an afternoon soft sunset bike ride, caught by surprise at the outlined beauty of the sky, the very full moon at horizon, sky still light, behind a pink veil, and the yield to slow stain of colors until the entire sky seemed to be in collusion to give me a wonderful embrace as I turned the corner, as I turn the corner on another year of my life, coming to a close. Not what I expected. In the desert, you expect sharp things, abrupt beginnings and endings, a brace against what can't be embraced. Only pretended. Or better, pantomimed.

I measure my time in this sphere by a sort of connect the dots from November to November. The just-darkening time of year. Always right after the time change, and conveniently before the holiday hoopla. Usually during the week of Veteran's Day, so it's often a week with a day off and a day I wish I could take off. Last year, I remember distinctly that I took a desert hike. With Phil. And then, off to Jeff's for a birthday party with potato tacos and many friends and a drum circle and I ended up going a little smash-ballistic with a tennis racket and handfuls of candy that erupted from a pinata they had for me. The country was not yet in economic meltdown. We had not yet elected (hurrah!) Barack Obama. We had not yet endured so much. I was on sabbatical last fall and much more relaxed, spending much time in my own inward journey of metaphor and outward days in the open spaces. We had more innocence. I was a year younger. I didn't have a touch of fascitis in my right heel. I was probably not as healthy then as I am now. I was not in therapy, and I had not yet started a literary magazine, and I had fewer poems published.

Tonight I cruised on my Mojave Red mountain bike, a nice Schwinn, orange reflective vest and extra care taken crossing the freeway-busy roads here, 6 lanes wide with people soaring through. Staying on sidewalks, talking on the cell to my mom - parents back from 5 weeks in Italy - and my younger brother, who lives in San Jose, who is sadly breaking up with his girlfriend of 2 years. I try to call Philip, we had plans to celebrate my birthday with dinner and a movie tonight, but then I decided against going to Riverside because I was feeling extra tired the past few days, due to a lot of hard working on the desert book and at my teaching job, and several weekends in a row of being away from home - desert excursions and teaching gig for Joshua Tree Park Desert Institute.

And so, I spent the last hour of the daylight, the wedge between sundown and complete dark, less than an hour at this time of year, and in a quiet hush, marvelling at the last piece of unadulterated sand dunes adjacent to the Indian Wells tennis gardens. I wanted to dissolve in them, lay my back against that pure white and be a newborn baby again - untouched by pavement and too much brightness and the tracks of so many across my back, and perhaps the whisper of a ghostly "Hail Mary" across my forehead, cleansing me of carnal sins. Instead, I passed on by, taking the 7 mile bike route I rode, easier now that the weather is cool, not the "take it slow, it's HOT" strain of June, July, August, when Phil and I rode so many miles together around my neighborhood, 9 or 10 o'clock at night, and still so stifling.

I look to the fireplace - Phil had the rocking chair parked there. I wrote a lot of poetry with him sitting there and reading. I really miss the guy. I hadn't lived with anyone, aside from my daughter, for almost 20 years. Wow! We are still friends. We just spent the weekend out at Tecopa Hot Springs, tentatively feeling our way into friendship and regaining a foothold on what we enjoy(ed) together. Quiet time, the feeling of being not so alone with....someone else who understands what it means to be really alone in the world. And interesting, because both of us have enormous numbers of "people connections" and when in public, can easily charm and
empower an entire room, when we are "on" and in our "groove." A rare and ironic find.

And so in one hour, 20 minutes, I will be notching up to the next year, another passage, a round sweep of moon and sun, from one November afternoon to the next, and I'm not far from where I was born, maybe 60 miles, but how much ground I've come. I've carved out an adult life, with this teaching gig and raising a kid, and now I'm restless, aching for the next set of adventures: more graduate school, an enhanced literary and teaching career, a desert lit anthology in the works and the sudden desire to "get the hell out of here." It will have been 10 years next August since I arrived in this wedge of California desert, and I'm gangbusters to get the hell on out. No more summers here.

Kid is grown, house is ready to be sold, well, almost, and I'm ready to downsize, as they say, embrace my writer's voice and dig in full board into the literary and writers life and world. I'm so bored with my community college job I have to really discipline myself to sit here in this house and do the work. It's not hard. It is worn dull, like a knife that is no longer sharp. I can't imagine connecting that off-color dot any more than I have to in order to springboard to the next set of goals. I've maxed out on everything here. I've hiked every desert hike, many times. I've done the rounds of events and fun things. I've not only seen friends and colleagues go, I've seen many come AND go! I've always been the one to quick-live, staying in one place 2 years or so for many years. My time has come.

Where will I be next November? This winter will give me the opportunity to explore more of the desert - wrap up the desert book - and in a way, I feel that by creating these things, I am saying goodbye. To something that once familiarized, is already spent and done - opening up the way to the next set of intent. This is a quiet birthday year, in contrast to last year's zaniness. I have spent more quiet adult birthdays than busy ones. And so, it is all good. I will work most of the day away, teaching poetry and on the desert book, and then share dinner with family, I believe.

Looking to the stars, because we lack elders, and as I get a bit older, I don't know who to turn to for advice - who really knows? We don't have real guides anymore, only what we can piece together, us amateur archaeologists - Father and Mother Time - and the shadows of the wise ones from earlier cultures. Down to the wire, now. For what they're worth, in their quiet and fickle coming and going, swishing in stiff black robes and high, starched habits up and down ancient halls - I can almost smell the heavy smolder of the priests' frankincense pendulum - and realize that I just might be able to hang out and enjoy a little time with those Ghost Nuns after all.

New Joshua Tree Film! Wants to be Shown...

New film set in Joshua Tree National Park!
Official premier - release was held on November 6, 2008
at the UCR California Museum of Photography

Escape to Reality - 24 hours at 24 fps
an experimental film

Featuring images by 60+ southern California photographers
who captured a 24 hour period of the Park in May, 2008
with over 1 million photographic images

Poetry and Narration by Ruth Nolan
Music by Friends of Dean Martinez and Ranges

This is a 25 minute film in the tradition of the great photographer, Edward Muybridge
created in collaboration with the UCR-California Museum of Photography, Riverside CA
and poet/writer Ruth Nolan, College of the Desert

To set up a FREE screening in your area.....
please contact Ruth @ runolan@aol.com (760) 964-9767

or: contact
Reginald Cortez Woolery
Artist, Director of Digital Studio
& Education Outreach

UCR/California Museum of Photography
3824 Main Street
Riverside, CA 92501
ph (951) 827-4796
reginald.woolery@ucr.edu

In A Desert

In a desert, the Mojave grasses narrow canyons, ice cream colors, deep walls, five springs on the Amargosa, River along China Ranch, date farm in a pocket of psychedelic melt, tongue first, glacier lake obsidian shelf 600 feet walking to neopolitan shores, wake up, hot water,
splurge dissolve, in a desert

coyote stalks your walk as you as you visit the burned out tamarisk grove (invasive species, you see), howls bouncing from rock to rock, holes of glacier hollow, are you frozen, are you heat-stroked, are you for real?
A remaining tree, for the nesting owls, mucky waterhole

Tecopa Hot Springs, ancient water, mud towers
Shoshone, woolly mammoth and 12 million year old camel tracks
old cemetery, babies buried at the base of wind-howl mud walls,
miners' dugouts in limestone cliffs

in a desert, your passion passes the sand dunes, stirred to dust, rain visits from the north, and swirls to the east
the tone of voice is dry, the weeping never this exhausted

the sunset hallucinates mountains to millions of tiny folds, your future face
colors and rainbows and pallid dirt, it never did care, although it cradles you with illustrious visual sweets, before you black out, smothered by stars

In a desert, this is the northern Mojave.

c. 2008 Ruth Nolan

Desert Protective Council - Oct 26 meeting

Here's a link to the Desert Protective Council meeting on Sunday, October 26. I read my poem, Joshua Tree Imprimature, and talked briefly about Phantom Seed literary magazine, and also sold many copies. The meeting took place at the 29 Palms Inn, and featured some amazing speakers, topics, and a talk by Curt Sauer, superintended of Joshua Tree National Park.

http://www.dpcinc.org/blog/2008/10/30/dpc-annual-meeting/

Enjoy!

Desert Institute

I feel my life has been brazed by a wildfire - in the past year. That is, fire has scoured the excess blockage, and now "what is" can be seen. My own open heart, my own poetic visions, my own courage and strength I'm finding to take the baby but strengthening steps into the path of a writer, to write and speak my truth, from the heart.

I had a wonderful weekend, teaching a California Desert Indian literature course for the Desert Institute at 29 Palms, California Visitor Center. A memorable experience with my second hike to 49 Palms Oasis in the past two weekends. A little warm, but not too bad.

Nothing like sharing stories, such as ones about the Chemehuevi and Serrano who used Oasis of Mara as their ancestral home for centuries - and being right at the spot while doing so. I missed the communal feeling and togetherness and spiritual connection granted last year by Matt Leyvas, Chemehuevi Salt Song singer - who did a beautiful ceremony last year with sage and singing and bird rattle right there at the oasis. There were many people in attendance at that one. What an honor, to have partaken.

The mood this fall is so different than last year. I was on sabbatical last fall, running mucks with my friend Philip all across the desert-scape. We took hikes to the Indian Canyons in Palm Springs - to Corn Springs way out near Blythe - several sites in Joshua Tree, including one trip along the road to Pinto Basin, and another to hike the summit of Ryan Mountain (that was one of my sacred visit frequent hikes, back in the 1980's, when I used to frequent the park from Apple Valley), and again on a cold day to the area near Black Rock, to climb a small peak. I was also privvy to exploring the closed-to-the-public Deep Canyon area, with my friend Cassandra, who worked there for one year and has since left.

Fall was mellow last year - was it Phil's steady company and shared love of the desert, or that I was on relief from the pressures of teaching, or that just a year ago, our country's economy was in pre-meltdown calm? I'd also not yet broken up with Jeff (or should I say, been broken up with,) hadn't finished co-authoring the Palms to Pines Birding and Nature Trail map, which turned out to be a big disappointment with a colleague (no book to follow, my colleague turning a cold shoulder on me in terms of doing events and dampening my enthusiasm for the map) - why is it that life seems to have been so much more innocent just one brief four-season round ago?

Phil hadn't yet lived with me, and moved back to Moreno Valley; Tarah hadn't yet decided to leave Pitzer and return home. I hadn't yet returned to playing tennis - hadn't yet done Phantom Seed magazine. Lots of spring poetry writing workshops were in store. I hadn't refinanced the house, and the desert anthology was still in the dark ages.

Now, the world and my life have both jettisoned ahead. Presidential election 2008 tomorrow - is it possible that the dark stain, the edgy burden so many of us have felt for the past 8 years, is finally to be lifted and cleansed? This, in itself, along with the crash and burn of the American dollar and the subprime meltdown have put everyone that much more on edge - I saw a bad car crash en route home from Riverside last night, and several more while on the road there and back again today for a doctor appointment. An edgy time, time to slow down and make conscientious effort to be focused. I listened to Jai Uttal and his Hindu-music blend on the drive there, and Joni Mitchell Ladies of the Canyon on the way home.

I just finished doing all of the intros and biographies for the more than 80 pieces. I'm still in a daze from working so hard. Phil has lived here, and moved out, and we're taking small steps at being friends and reclaiming our shared love of desert outings. I've published two issues of Phantom Seed, my new desert literary magazine that I edit - with huge success! We sold out of 100 copies in just a month's time, during October. I plan to print more soon. I already have many submissions for issue 3, which I hope to publish in March. Tarah is living at home, working full time making good money for a doctor in Rancho Mirage.

I'm doing more hiking, again, in Joshua Tree National Park. I've won an affiliate writers residency, just collaborated on a film produced by the CA Museum of Photography - screening this Thursday - and was honored as a guest speaker at the Oct 26 Desert Protective Council's Annual Meeting at 29 Palms Inn. I have met many amazing desert protectors and conservationists in this past year, particularly since summer. I've gotten a more solid focus on writing - although I've not written as much as I would like, since college started up in September, some big projects, to follow the desert book, are in the works, and ruminating in my mind.

It's weird to be "back" at the college. I haven't taught a fall semester there since 2005. Three years! I feel so much like moving on, like I already have moved on, sort of a ghost shadow partway there, doing my work, but also with such a wider scope now. That is what the sabbatical did for me more than anything - gave me the chance to ground my vision as a writer - make connections that are essential for this - and build a new life outside of the routine that my work there had become, since I moved here in 1999. This year, it finally feels like Tarah is grown up - a young adult, still, but much more grounded in herself and her ideas for how to live her life than she was just a year ago.

I have ideas of pursuing an MFA or PhD, now. I've learned so much about the CA desert, and have developed a parallel interest in CA Desert Indian literature, a subject which continues to unfold for me in leaps and bounds in accompaniment to the amazing body of writing that is emerging right now. I want to sell my house and move from Palm Desert. I feel so ungrounded in terms of where to go - but know some forward movement and flowering is already so in blossom within me - my inner self and outer circumstances. I see myself so much more now as a writer, and editor, and lecturer - and learner. I envy a friend of mine who is divorcing; she was able to pick up and move out of her house. I own my own home, so it isn't as easy as "I will be the one to leave." The only thing to leave is everything I've pursued and built here - no one to hold down the past for me and provide a nice backboard for my own forward momentum.

Mid life crisis - or growing-older wisdom and blossoming? Probably both. I'm a lot of steps outside of the old staircase I once climbed up and down, just sort of loping the best I can up a lot of new slippery but exciting slopes. I'm so glad I got the desert book introductions and biographies completed. It just about killed me. This is the first day in weeks that I've sat back and gone, "ahhhh." Now, it's just about finishing up getting some outstanding permissions to reprint certain pieces.

Off to bed - tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

I read Joshua Tree Imprimature last night to an audience in Riverside - it felt good and I think people were mesmerized. I was very rhythmic, which is just about right, as I based it on the pulse and pattern of the Navajo Night Chant.