The Cahuilla Village site again, late March, days past equinox
flowers at twilight, dry, dead mesquite wood for the fire
potsherds, walk carefully, and flashlights for the possible rattlesnake,
yes, they are already out, it's been warm for many days
7 weeks ago, after winter wet storm, early February full moon
we were also here, working hard to start a fire
wood was damp, the soil moist, the night quickly grew cold
moon boldly full, coyote parties circling us, full throat
Last night, mustard grass weeds in front of the fire pit
and a stick insect, first one I've ever seen outdoors
we rescue him from the heat, in our hands, handfuls of stars
cupped by the dips of Santa Rosa Mountain Range
the north side of Martinez Canyon, ancient traverse of Indians.
These, some of the most rugged mountains in our state,
full of wild canyons and angry cactus, as if they say,
all you people, go away, this is the land of 120 degree summers.
Fishtraps nearby, and we site on a huge pile of sand, old beach,
ancient Lake Cahuilla, sleeping circles here, dogs howling
from cluster of nearby homes of Torres Martinez Indian Reservation
on the other side of the earthen dam, lights of Indio beyond
a nice way to spend a few hours on a Saturday evening
before tiptoeing back to my friend's ranch, the long drive
down Jackson Avenue through the last of the 100 year old
date palms crowding the narrow road almost to Hwy 111.
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sitting by Water at Oasis+ Susan Lang + Horsethief Creek
This past Wednesday, finally feeling well, I took a private, short walk in the Coachella Valley Preserve and found a safe little place at the bottom of a short cliff to nestle in next to a trickle of water. As always, the flow, sound, rhtyhm and healing pulse of water in the middle of a desert oasis, shaded by fan palms and thick water grasses, was a miracle - as was and is the healing smooth of flowing water. Sitting in damp soil, legs crossed, meditating on water, and drawing small pictures in the sand, with pieces of stone and sticks, humming to myself. A good hour or more. So much transformation for which I was, and am, grateful. A fifteen minute drive and five minute walk from my house, which is situated in the middle of the desert on a former range of ancient sand dunes, now known as the Palm Desert Country Club.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Film Screening: Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps Thurs March 26 Riverside Library
Please join poet/writer/professor Ruth Nolan, College of the Desert, and Reginald Cortez Woolery, Artist, Director of Digital Studio & Education Outreach at UCR-California Museum of Photography, for a screening of the collaborative and experimental film "Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps" at the downtown Riverside public library. Thursday, March 26. Riverside downtown library located on Mission Inn Road, adjacent to the Mission Inn and the 91 Freeway, Mission Inn Road exit -
FREE. 7 p.m.
Read more about the film at the UCR Arts Block site at (copy and paste into your web browser)
http://artsblock.ucr.edu/action.lasso?-database=scoop&-table=online&-op=cn&institution_key=1&-op=cn&event_object_ID=2008.0011.0192&-response=events_dis.lasso
See you there!
Ruth
Poetry Blurb of the Day
this, from the amazing poet Wendy Rose
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
Monday, March 23, 2009
Volunteers and Me
This spring, I've planted nothing, not deliberately,
but volunteers arouse themselves, anyway
winter chasers of last year's garden optimisms.
Orange and yellow, round, on blossomy nasturtiums,
tiny, on second generation mininature marigolds
bold, and cupping their faces to the sun
on lanky California poppies. Everything
I planted last year was organic, I think I even see
sprigs of baby romaine lettuce, and a few
junior high school sized sunflower stalks,
my daughter's pictures on her 6th grade volleyball team
rimming the kitchen window when I peer out to stare.
Nearly ten years have gone by since she was that small,
and just last year the garden was a thing
worth tending to, a thing that earmarked this house
for a home, neatly sprouted, watered daily.
The wind, we're in the shadow desert and the mountains
take all the rain. We've choked since yesterday
on fine-grained sand. I am suddenly compassionate
for these brave pioneers pushing their way through
the dirt from last year's crop, unwatered since
the rains of early February and now we're past March equinox.
And so I take the hose, and spray them down, randomly
pull the weeds that dominate the garden this year,
thinning out the spaces so the poppies can sing,
so the nasturtiums can wink at my daughter when she
sometimes comes home, so the tiny marigolds make me realize
that no flower is too small. My efforts are schizophrenic,
I'm taking a number of diverse prescription drugs right now
for a strange garden of issues and ills, I should be resting
so that the hole in my jaw from a just-pulled wisdom tooth
can heal, I grab fat dandelion plants with forefinger and thumb
closest to the root and ripping these behemoths out, randomly
grabbing handfuls of tall, unwanted plants, I'm sure I'll quit
before I get them all, I have no plan and am tiring already,
it's important for my flowers to see. Any day, temperatures
in the desert will peak at 90, then 100, degrees, these flowers
may not survive. I will close the blinds and withdraw into the
tile floor cool of my house, and probably won't feel like
doing any more watering, Ill be planning my own exodus
from the heat, my daughter and I once made this our home,
but the uprooting from childhood to young adulthood
has rendered my once well-tended garden a strange thing.
meantime the volunteers smile at me, and I at them
thanking them silently for their brief-lived generosity.
Ruth Nolan
March 23, 2009
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
but volunteers arouse themselves, anyway
winter chasers of last year's garden optimisms.
Orange and yellow, round, on blossomy nasturtiums,
tiny, on second generation mininature marigolds
bold, and cupping their faces to the sun
on lanky California poppies. Everything
I planted last year was organic, I think I even see
sprigs of baby romaine lettuce, and a few
junior high school sized sunflower stalks,
my daughter's pictures on her 6th grade volleyball team
rimming the kitchen window when I peer out to stare.
Nearly ten years have gone by since she was that small,
and just last year the garden was a thing
worth tending to, a thing that earmarked this house
for a home, neatly sprouted, watered daily.
The wind, we're in the shadow desert and the mountains
take all the rain. We've choked since yesterday
on fine-grained sand. I am suddenly compassionate
for these brave pioneers pushing their way through
the dirt from last year's crop, unwatered since
the rains of early February and now we're past March equinox.
And so I take the hose, and spray them down, randomly
pull the weeds that dominate the garden this year,
thinning out the spaces so the poppies can sing,
so the nasturtiums can wink at my daughter when she
sometimes comes home, so the tiny marigolds make me realize
that no flower is too small. My efforts are schizophrenic,
I'm taking a number of diverse prescription drugs right now
for a strange garden of issues and ills, I should be resting
so that the hole in my jaw from a just-pulled wisdom tooth
can heal, I grab fat dandelion plants with forefinger and thumb
closest to the root and ripping these behemoths out, randomly
grabbing handfuls of tall, unwanted plants, I'm sure I'll quit
before I get them all, I have no plan and am tiring already,
it's important for my flowers to see. Any day, temperatures
in the desert will peak at 90, then 100, degrees, these flowers
may not survive. I will close the blinds and withdraw into the
tile floor cool of my house, and probably won't feel like
doing any more watering, Ill be planning my own exodus
from the heat, my daughter and I once made this our home,
but the uprooting from childhood to young adulthood
has rendered my once well-tended garden a strange thing.
meantime the volunteers smile at me, and I at them
thanking them silently for their brief-lived generosity.
Ruth Nolan
March 23, 2009
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
No Place for a Puritan Preface comment....
from Cyrus Emerson, of Riverside Inlandia 5.0 writers workshop:
As a strong supporter of the move toward alter(native) green power I fully agree with you. Getting power through solar and wind mills is meant to protect the environment. By building on open lands, these companies are once again hurting the environment. I would like to see a greater concentration of green power in the cities. In order to do this, large cities like Los Angeles, will need to be rebuilt from scratch into 21st Century cities with new technologies to improve energy efficiency.
Cyrus Emerson
Sales Account Executive
Corn Digital
13945 Central Ave.
Chino, CA 91710
Tel. (909) 680-3671 ext. 41
Fax (909) 680-3675
cyrus@corndigital.com
www.corndigital.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
As a strong supporter of the move toward alter(native) green power I fully agree with you. Getting power through solar and wind mills is meant to protect the environment. By building on open lands, these companies are once again hurting the environment. I would like to see a greater concentration of green power in the cities. In order to do this, large cities like Los Angeles, will need to be rebuilt from scratch into 21st Century cities with new technologies to improve energy efficiency.
Cyrus Emerson
Sales Account Executive
Corn Digital
13945 Central Ave.
Chino, CA 91710
Tel. (909) 680-3671 ext. 41
Fax (909) 680-3675
cyrus@corndigital.com
www.corndigital.com
Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail
Friday, March 13, 2009
Throwing Down Some Gold (Chains)
So today I decided to drive west on the I-10 past the windmills, and into the wildlife corridor of Whitewater Canyon, leading to the end of the road at 4.5 miles and the newly-created Whitewater Preserve, a part of the wonderful Wildlands Conservancy Project of California. Water was flowing, I parked at the renovated fish hatchery, and the dogs were ready to roll!
We hiked upstream a mile or so - after a river crossing; Brindle loves to swim in cold wild waters, while Shasta more quickly picks her way to the other side - both, so happy to explore an area that is new to them. I've only been here a few times.
Last October was my last visit here. I met my friend -- there, and he was not happy. I was not happy. I had recently made him move out of my house in a fallout that was not unlike a flareup on a fireline, or a whole frickin' wildfire in itself. We'd been there before, the previous October,2007, and I remember we met in separate cars, as this past time, me coming from the desert and him from Riverside. Then, it was dark by the time we left, and he drove ahead of me and pulled out and lay on his car hood, watching the stars.
This past October, 2008, we decided to meet, for reasons unknown to either of us except to go out for a hike. We walked the short walk to the flowing water, and I was going more slowly, behind, recording footsteps for a film collaboration I was doing with the UCR-CA Museum of photography, eventually turned into a feature flick called "escape to reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps." My friend walked ahead, and I finally caught up to him, sitting on a rock at water's edge. We didn't stay long before making our way to our separate cars, and I remember feeling pretty jolted and bummed out on the twisty road down to the freeway from the preserve. He raced ahead of me. Out of sight. It was the start of realizing that I wasn't as rich as I thought, that this friend was not as at-the-ready-for-me as he had always been, that the gold mine was running out of gold.
Today, on a spring day following a gripping, cold, moisture-rich winter, I take long, slow breaths, and forgive myself for mistakes I made then. It's Friday, March 13, and I walk alone, with the dogs, penetrating farther and deeper up the wide flood plain of Whitewater Wash, spotting a few budding wildflowers, and focusing on calming my recently so-frantic and fevered mind.
I understand this year, so far grown and moved ahead from last year, that I was a workaholic then, and didn't make enough time for someone I cared about. I didn't appreciate, didn't have the awareness I have now of what many of my actions and choices mean. I have learned and grown so much since even then, five months ago: it takes hiking alone, again, after months of steady companionship with this friend, for me to really understand the ironic but real: that a life of people, connections, and community, is what I crave and need - not just to overaccomplish, overachieve, excel and overdo.
I actually felt, in a dream state one early morning a few months ago, when I'd had a personal and highly private early morning meltdown of myriad confusing emotions: anger...stress....life.....frustration....loneliness....fear.....by, and I'm embarrassed to admit, dumping an entire shelf of books and swiping the top shelf, filled with jewelry, pictures, rocks and other oddities from many hikes, a general sort of decorative altar, across the room, before punching a few holes in the thin sheet of my bathroom wall. Crying for a long time, as I thought of the loneliness at the empty bedroom, the pain our friendship agitated into without recourse or relief, that horrible night with police in and out of my house.
Gone. Fucking gone. Leaving just enough things behind to find, while cleaning out the garage or a closet, and start the madness all over again. This time, though, Whitewater promises to purify and cleanse - though my eyes tear up a bit, as my mind strolls through that part of the fast-action-movie-blur my mind and life have become in months past....sharing a fair amount of space alongside the "other" stuff blasting like overamplified speakers at far-too-close range. I tell myself, my mantra on this walk: slow down, breathe, heal on the earth, walk in beauty, one...step....at...a...time.
Talking to my realtor friend today, who laid out the options: home mortgage restructuring (lower payments;) short sale; foreclosure; and, wise of him, encouraging me not to do anything too hasty or rash. Stressing out over the workload of my college job that feels so crunched up and impossible to face, particularly my online classes, with a new system, blackboard, that seems to be all screwed up - a better system than the old one, for sure, but having just made the switch this semester, halfway through the school year, on top of the other mind-boggling changes we've endured at the school, it's just too much - not to mention I'm teaching two classes online that I haven't taught for a few years, at a time when my life is already in nutty crazy flux.
The exhaustion, inevitable, from finishing a HUGE project of the past several years - not quite done, a few final tweaks, but 99% there, let's hope. The exhaustion and gaping, mouth-open disbelief of synapse-frying changes in just one short year, of the national mood we're all in, crashing in valleys we've collectively been hurled into by unimaginable avalanches of evil and greed that's been unbridled for "x" number of years, and the few, small fragments of sanity and balance I fixate on the way my dogs spot water from the top of the bluffs and mainline it down as fast as they can. Today, an afternoon of walking, breathing, praying, chanting, thanking, weeping, and focusing on the rash of orange poppies spread across one high hillside, a bright font of spring hope on otherwise barren slopes.
Fear of success. My therapist says to enjoy the journey I am on, as my life continues to move forward in the direction of my life as a writer, and a teacher of writing - creative writing. But it's terrifying to leave the shadow self behind, the self that was for years hiding behind the veil of "teacher" and "mom" and made a structure of that, one that enabled me for a long time to live a more unexamined life. Now, it's "me" and that is a lot to be grateful for, but it also terrifies. New territory, still chained by one ankle to the old, somewhat free, somewhat tied, and trying to calm down enough to pick the lock and figure out a strategy for letting myself go.
I thought I was alone - but encountered an elderly man on the way down, with an old Irish Setter - we chatted awhile, and I remembered the gallant male Irish Setter who was my family's beloved pet when I was a kid. Toby and I were very close, and he was my companion when I first began hiking - that was when we moved to Apple Valley when I was 13 years old, the wide, spacious desert, and I'd take off across the open spaces from our backyard and make my way to the top of a nearby rock mountain called Catholic Hill. And one day, my mother cried out in the morning as she looked out the front window - Toby, lying still on the side of our rural road, dead, hit during the night by a car. We all cried, my mom and brothers and I - dad? - for a few days on end, on and off. It was one of the worst losses of my young life, and I still want to cry now, thinking about him, what a wonderful dog, friend, companion, at a time in my life when I was such a geek, thought boys would never like me, that I'd forever be a nerdy girl wearing ugly glasses that my dad would glue with shoe-goo if they broke because we were too poor then to buy replacement glasses.
And likewise, today, I mourn other losses - love lost? Not lost from my heart, as I open my arms wide to the sky on that hike, and tell everyone I love them, even if they aren't here - lovers and friends who have come and gone - my love remains forever yours. Losses of people in more recent years, people who have died, family members of friends who have recently died - my heart is with you all.
And I also turn again to the hillside of poppies, and then to the water, and study the far-off hills. And I think of abundance and rebirth and the bounty that fills my life, to the extent that I am so overwhelmed I can barely cope most of the time these days - it's not from loss that I stagger about, it's from abundance - it's from so many good things that have come my way, that I can barely remember to catch my breath. Welcome this, embrace it, and calm the racing mind. I am here today with two wonderful dogs, Brindle, especially, a sort of replacement doofus Toby, thirty years down the trail of life - a terrific, beautiful, grown young adult daughter, many friends, although so many are so far away - caring parents and siblings and other family members - and a lot of colorful life memories - with more yet to be carved away out of the sides of my life's canyon hills.
Water down the center, towards the desert - but here, for now, in the slightly higher, near-mountains, I find cool relief and a moment's pause to hug all of it with my own arms to my heart. And when I stop into the visitor center, I make a new friend, one of the preserve rangers, and he's friendly and excited by my easy ability to connect the dots and remind him that I'd told the other ranger recently I'd love to do, as I did last spring, another poetry writing workshop there - have a poetry reading - and he says, "I've been wanting to learn to write more," and I feel my day is complete. I'm here too, today, to write a new story in my life's book, and there are empty pages waiting to unfold, and fill. Slowly, slowly, I am healing and getting a grip on all of this new overwhelm, in its terrors and its joys.
We hiked upstream a mile or so - after a river crossing; Brindle loves to swim in cold wild waters, while Shasta more quickly picks her way to the other side - both, so happy to explore an area that is new to them. I've only been here a few times.
Last October was my last visit here. I met my friend -- there, and he was not happy. I was not happy. I had recently made him move out of my house in a fallout that was not unlike a flareup on a fireline, or a whole frickin' wildfire in itself. We'd been there before, the previous October,2007, and I remember we met in separate cars, as this past time, me coming from the desert and him from Riverside. Then, it was dark by the time we left, and he drove ahead of me and pulled out and lay on his car hood, watching the stars.
This past October, 2008, we decided to meet, for reasons unknown to either of us except to go out for a hike. We walked the short walk to the flowing water, and I was going more slowly, behind, recording footsteps for a film collaboration I was doing with the UCR-CA Museum of photography, eventually turned into a feature flick called "escape to reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps." My friend walked ahead, and I finally caught up to him, sitting on a rock at water's edge. We didn't stay long before making our way to our separate cars, and I remember feeling pretty jolted and bummed out on the twisty road down to the freeway from the preserve. He raced ahead of me. Out of sight. It was the start of realizing that I wasn't as rich as I thought, that this friend was not as at-the-ready-for-me as he had always been, that the gold mine was running out of gold.
Today, on a spring day following a gripping, cold, moisture-rich winter, I take long, slow breaths, and forgive myself for mistakes I made then. It's Friday, March 13, and I walk alone, with the dogs, penetrating farther and deeper up the wide flood plain of Whitewater Wash, spotting a few budding wildflowers, and focusing on calming my recently so-frantic and fevered mind.
I understand this year, so far grown and moved ahead from last year, that I was a workaholic then, and didn't make enough time for someone I cared about. I didn't appreciate, didn't have the awareness I have now of what many of my actions and choices mean. I have learned and grown so much since even then, five months ago: it takes hiking alone, again, after months of steady companionship with this friend, for me to really understand the ironic but real: that a life of people, connections, and community, is what I crave and need - not just to overaccomplish, overachieve, excel and overdo.
I actually felt, in a dream state one early morning a few months ago, when I'd had a personal and highly private early morning meltdown of myriad confusing emotions: anger...stress....life.....frustration....loneliness....fear.....by, and I'm embarrassed to admit, dumping an entire shelf of books and swiping the top shelf, filled with jewelry, pictures, rocks and other oddities from many hikes, a general sort of decorative altar, across the room, before punching a few holes in the thin sheet of my bathroom wall. Crying for a long time, as I thought of the loneliness at the empty bedroom, the pain our friendship agitated into without recourse or relief, that horrible night with police in and out of my house.
Gone. Fucking gone. Leaving just enough things behind to find, while cleaning out the garage or a closet, and start the madness all over again. This time, though, Whitewater promises to purify and cleanse - though my eyes tear up a bit, as my mind strolls through that part of the fast-action-movie-blur my mind and life have become in months past....sharing a fair amount of space alongside the "other" stuff blasting like overamplified speakers at far-too-close range. I tell myself, my mantra on this walk: slow down, breathe, heal on the earth, walk in beauty, one...step....at...a...time.
Talking to my realtor friend today, who laid out the options: home mortgage restructuring (lower payments;) short sale; foreclosure; and, wise of him, encouraging me not to do anything too hasty or rash. Stressing out over the workload of my college job that feels so crunched up and impossible to face, particularly my online classes, with a new system, blackboard, that seems to be all screwed up - a better system than the old one, for sure, but having just made the switch this semester, halfway through the school year, on top of the other mind-boggling changes we've endured at the school, it's just too much - not to mention I'm teaching two classes online that I haven't taught for a few years, at a time when my life is already in nutty crazy flux.
The exhaustion, inevitable, from finishing a HUGE project of the past several years - not quite done, a few final tweaks, but 99% there, let's hope. The exhaustion and gaping, mouth-open disbelief of synapse-frying changes in just one short year, of the national mood we're all in, crashing in valleys we've collectively been hurled into by unimaginable avalanches of evil and greed that's been unbridled for "x" number of years, and the few, small fragments of sanity and balance I fixate on the way my dogs spot water from the top of the bluffs and mainline it down as fast as they can. Today, an afternoon of walking, breathing, praying, chanting, thanking, weeping, and focusing on the rash of orange poppies spread across one high hillside, a bright font of spring hope on otherwise barren slopes.
Fear of success. My therapist says to enjoy the journey I am on, as my life continues to move forward in the direction of my life as a writer, and a teacher of writing - creative writing. But it's terrifying to leave the shadow self behind, the self that was for years hiding behind the veil of "teacher" and "mom" and made a structure of that, one that enabled me for a long time to live a more unexamined life. Now, it's "me" and that is a lot to be grateful for, but it also terrifies. New territory, still chained by one ankle to the old, somewhat free, somewhat tied, and trying to calm down enough to pick the lock and figure out a strategy for letting myself go.
I thought I was alone - but encountered an elderly man on the way down, with an old Irish Setter - we chatted awhile, and I remembered the gallant male Irish Setter who was my family's beloved pet when I was a kid. Toby and I were very close, and he was my companion when I first began hiking - that was when we moved to Apple Valley when I was 13 years old, the wide, spacious desert, and I'd take off across the open spaces from our backyard and make my way to the top of a nearby rock mountain called Catholic Hill. And one day, my mother cried out in the morning as she looked out the front window - Toby, lying still on the side of our rural road, dead, hit during the night by a car. We all cried, my mom and brothers and I - dad? - for a few days on end, on and off. It was one of the worst losses of my young life, and I still want to cry now, thinking about him, what a wonderful dog, friend, companion, at a time in my life when I was such a geek, thought boys would never like me, that I'd forever be a nerdy girl wearing ugly glasses that my dad would glue with shoe-goo if they broke because we were too poor then to buy replacement glasses.
And likewise, today, I mourn other losses - love lost? Not lost from my heart, as I open my arms wide to the sky on that hike, and tell everyone I love them, even if they aren't here - lovers and friends who have come and gone - my love remains forever yours. Losses of people in more recent years, people who have died, family members of friends who have recently died - my heart is with you all.
And I also turn again to the hillside of poppies, and then to the water, and study the far-off hills. And I think of abundance and rebirth and the bounty that fills my life, to the extent that I am so overwhelmed I can barely cope most of the time these days - it's not from loss that I stagger about, it's from abundance - it's from so many good things that have come my way, that I can barely remember to catch my breath. Welcome this, embrace it, and calm the racing mind. I am here today with two wonderful dogs, Brindle, especially, a sort of replacement doofus Toby, thirty years down the trail of life - a terrific, beautiful, grown young adult daughter, many friends, although so many are so far away - caring parents and siblings and other family members - and a lot of colorful life memories - with more yet to be carved away out of the sides of my life's canyon hills.
Water down the center, towards the desert - but here, for now, in the slightly higher, near-mountains, I find cool relief and a moment's pause to hug all of it with my own arms to my heart. And when I stop into the visitor center, I make a new friend, one of the preserve rangers, and he's friendly and excited by my easy ability to connect the dots and remind him that I'd told the other ranger recently I'd love to do, as I did last spring, another poetry writing workshop there - have a poetry reading - and he says, "I've been wanting to learn to write more," and I feel my day is complete. I'm here too, today, to write a new story in my life's book, and there are empty pages waiting to unfold, and fill. Slowly, slowly, I am healing and getting a grip on all of this new overwhelm, in its terrors and its joys.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Leaving Palm Desert
I've decided to leave Palm Desert by summer - would like to relocate somewhere towards the I.E., preferably in mountainous areas for the summer, i.e., Forest Falls, Angelus Oaks, Crestline, Running Springs, or areas behind Yucaipa in the lovely foothills. I promised myself I wouldn't spend another summer here. I moved here in 1999 and this is year 10, and every summer it's been a struggle to deal with the heat for four or five long months. Even the POOl is no relief during July and August, as the water temp is in the 90's! Pulling the plug, pulling the plug, on things here, detaching from the electricity hookups of this home and place for good.
The parents sold the childhood home in the much cooler high desert climes of Apple Valley a few years ago (there went THAT partial-summer escape route) and I simply can't afford the mortgage on this house, $400/month electric bills, being stuck indoors day after gloomy day - a reverse cabin fever of harsh winter climates. It's not worth it, when an hour or less away lay lovely, gentler summer lifestyles. And hey, those of you in Riverside who say it's hot there - you got NOTHING on this place! Average daytime temp in July-August is around 115 and I've seen the nighttime temp here one July, at midnight, sitting at 100 degrees! Paying for this place....trying to rent a summer place....no longer can do. Freedom!
It's daunting, however, this letting-go. I lived in a rental a mid-century architecture pad, owned by a friend of mine, for my first three years, and then bought my house in 2002, prior to the housing bubble. So I'm not in any real trouble with the finances, but it seems ridiculous to pay a mortgage in an expensive-to-live tourist town, with my daughter Tarah almost 21 and getting on her own, when I really never wanted to live here in the first place - my job brought me here, nothing else.
But, like all good desert stories, this one has been fertile. Starting from virtually nothing, except my new-found college teaching job in hand, I built small empires - a college literary magazine program; many poetry readings and series; made many friends, most of who have come and gone while I've been here. I've been carving out a very focused scholarly field of study in desert lore and literature. I raised Tarah, and she went to some of the best schools in the state - Palm Desert High prepared her well for her college years. We've had fun. We've eaten at numerous cool places, enjoyed the cosmopolitan funk and mid-century legacy of the place in many ways. Soaked in Desert Hot Springs spas many times over. Had some amazing times with many amazing people, many from all over the world. But everyone comes, and goes. And so it is for my time here, too.
This is not a longterm place for most, and I suddenly understand why many, such as my friend Swami Ramanananda, just had to one day pull up roots and go. Speaking of Swami, he had a wonderful spiritual center for 2 years that I was overjoyed and honored to be part of - lots of fun - but I feel the spiritual center and vibe of this region is long gone, especially since he left town a few years ago. I just don't belong in a Republican stronghold. I've explored all the great mountains and hikes, many times over, and now it's a situation where it's starting to haunt me. I remember people and friends I've hiked with, and the memories are lovely, but sad, because I do them now alone. Because the desert, at heart, is isolationist, I don't have longtime roots here, and let's face it, empires in the deserts of the world tend to come and go.
I'm going to ease on over to the west, towards the coast. Continue to build on the writing communities I've connected with in the past few years, and go from there. Keep the day job on a 2 day/week commute. Visit my parents, who live here now fulltime, except for lengthy trips they're now enjoying abroad, and their usual 3 or 4 month summer exodus, now that they are retired. I'll be like my brothers, who all live far away - it's delectable to come here in the winter, visit, hike, enjoy, and leave to where there are people, places with true community, and where the gated "community" and "closed garage door" thing is not a lifestyle.
So I'm putting it out the universe - bold and scared, at once. Give up being a homeowner, at least for awhile - rent, simplify, and be closer to my new friends, and an hour closer to the beach. I'm actively seeking a cool housing situation - short term/summer or possibly more longterm, so if anyone reading this blog has ideas, please post 'em to my blog or feel free to email me at runolan@aol.com and wish me well! Selling the old 2nd car....having another yard sale....a good feeling to purge, again, as I haven't done in more than five years. I thrive on change and new things - which I did when I moved here - and it's just - time to go. Don't know where I'll end up in the longterm, but it's great to take one step at a time for now.
The parents sold the childhood home in the much cooler high desert climes of Apple Valley a few years ago (there went THAT partial-summer escape route) and I simply can't afford the mortgage on this house, $400/month electric bills, being stuck indoors day after gloomy day - a reverse cabin fever of harsh winter climates. It's not worth it, when an hour or less away lay lovely, gentler summer lifestyles. And hey, those of you in Riverside who say it's hot there - you got NOTHING on this place! Average daytime temp in July-August is around 115 and I've seen the nighttime temp here one July, at midnight, sitting at 100 degrees! Paying for this place....trying to rent a summer place....no longer can do. Freedom!
It's daunting, however, this letting-go. I lived in a rental a mid-century architecture pad, owned by a friend of mine, for my first three years, and then bought my house in 2002, prior to the housing bubble. So I'm not in any real trouble with the finances, but it seems ridiculous to pay a mortgage in an expensive-to-live tourist town, with my daughter Tarah almost 21 and getting on her own, when I really never wanted to live here in the first place - my job brought me here, nothing else.
But, like all good desert stories, this one has been fertile. Starting from virtually nothing, except my new-found college teaching job in hand, I built small empires - a college literary magazine program; many poetry readings and series; made many friends, most of who have come and gone while I've been here. I've been carving out a very focused scholarly field of study in desert lore and literature. I raised Tarah, and she went to some of the best schools in the state - Palm Desert High prepared her well for her college years. We've had fun. We've eaten at numerous cool places, enjoyed the cosmopolitan funk and mid-century legacy of the place in many ways. Soaked in Desert Hot Springs spas many times over. Had some amazing times with many amazing people, many from all over the world. But everyone comes, and goes. And so it is for my time here, too.
This is not a longterm place for most, and I suddenly understand why many, such as my friend Swami Ramanananda, just had to one day pull up roots and go. Speaking of Swami, he had a wonderful spiritual center for 2 years that I was overjoyed and honored to be part of - lots of fun - but I feel the spiritual center and vibe of this region is long gone, especially since he left town a few years ago. I just don't belong in a Republican stronghold. I've explored all the great mountains and hikes, many times over, and now it's a situation where it's starting to haunt me. I remember people and friends I've hiked with, and the memories are lovely, but sad, because I do them now alone. Because the desert, at heart, is isolationist, I don't have longtime roots here, and let's face it, empires in the deserts of the world tend to come and go.
I'm going to ease on over to the west, towards the coast. Continue to build on the writing communities I've connected with in the past few years, and go from there. Keep the day job on a 2 day/week commute. Visit my parents, who live here now fulltime, except for lengthy trips they're now enjoying abroad, and their usual 3 or 4 month summer exodus, now that they are retired. I'll be like my brothers, who all live far away - it's delectable to come here in the winter, visit, hike, enjoy, and leave to where there are people, places with true community, and where the gated "community" and "closed garage door" thing is not a lifestyle.
So I'm putting it out the universe - bold and scared, at once. Give up being a homeowner, at least for awhile - rent, simplify, and be closer to my new friends, and an hour closer to the beach. I'm actively seeking a cool housing situation - short term/summer or possibly more longterm, so if anyone reading this blog has ideas, please post 'em to my blog or feel free to email me at runolan@aol.com and wish me well! Selling the old 2nd car....having another yard sale....a good feeling to purge, again, as I haven't done in more than five years. I thrive on change and new things - which I did when I moved here - and it's just - time to go. Don't know where I'll end up in the longterm, but it's great to take one step at a time for now.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Poem in San Gabriel Valley Quarterly
A poem of mine appears in the new issue of the San Gabriel Valley Quarterly #41, which just came out - edited by my friend the poet Don Kingfisher Campbell - scroll down to see my poem, "Figures of Thought." There are also other numerous and other wonderful poems in this collection. Thanks, Don, for your hard work on this publication!
http://sgvpq.blogspot.com/
http://sgvpq.blogspot.com/
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Reading at UCR-Palm Desert Tonight
I just returned home from a reading of UCR-MFA program faculty members....it was incredibly inspirational and I was so honored to be included in this reading! I shared the preface to the desert literature anthology.
I re-acquainted with several writer friends whose works I admire immensely: Tod Goldberg, Rob Roberge. And, I made several new writer acquaintances, among them the acclaimed writer Deanne Stillman and poet Alba Cruz-Hacker......
I especially admire the gutsy and honest prose writing of the very talented Rob Roberge, who is also a super-sweet and genuinely humorous guy! He read from a piece of his appearing in the new anthology, "Orange County Noir." I am hoping to work with Ashanti Press (time willing) to propose doing something for "desert noir," as it seems I've already made a bit of a scene in that element...
Finally, I was amazed and overjoyed with the comic relief and smart commentary of a multimedia presentation of one of the faculty members - a blowup of a desert mansion on a hillside (film) alongside his reading of desert real estate ads, noting that the mansion being blown up was a short sale. Exactly where I am, and it was so synchronous and also hilarious.
It was good to intermingle with amazing writers, enjoy another trip to the stunning UCR-Palm Desert campus - where I've also, in the past few years, attended several shows/exhibits, presented at last year's CA Desert Indian Conference, taken a southern California Indian class with the esteemed anthropologist Dr. Lowell Bean, and also have taught several quarters of poetry for UCR extension.
I even got inspiration for a collection of new poetry/prose I'd like to embark on, and realized that this idea is a peaceful, relief-finding way to write my way through some very painful stuff I've lived through in the last 2 years. I don't want to give away the title, but it will be a collection of poetry, prose, and it's going to be raw and real and brilliant (I hope.) As the writer-avant garde artiste William Burroughs said, and I am loosely paraphrasing, the only way he could get through the agony of his accidental shooting of his wife was to write his way through it.
And that, my friends and humble readers of my silly little blog, is where I am at. I find myself succumbing a bit, tonight, to the rapid onset of round #2 of a virulent sinus infection - first onset was exactly a month ago; I did the Z-pack, got better but still tired, and of course have over-done it since and now it's back - could be I was still harboring the thing, or maybe I got reinfected because my daughter Tarah came home with it last Wednesday. Great. Off to z-pack and bed.
But tonight, for awhile, I soared on my strengthening literary wings. I am so uplifted and grateful that I attended the reading tonight - and participated! Thanks, Tod, for letting me share!
I re-acquainted with several writer friends whose works I admire immensely: Tod Goldberg, Rob Roberge. And, I made several new writer acquaintances, among them the acclaimed writer Deanne Stillman and poet Alba Cruz-Hacker......
I especially admire the gutsy and honest prose writing of the very talented Rob Roberge, who is also a super-sweet and genuinely humorous guy! He read from a piece of his appearing in the new anthology, "Orange County Noir." I am hoping to work with Ashanti Press (time willing) to propose doing something for "desert noir," as it seems I've already made a bit of a scene in that element...
Finally, I was amazed and overjoyed with the comic relief and smart commentary of a multimedia presentation of one of the faculty members - a blowup of a desert mansion on a hillside (film) alongside his reading of desert real estate ads, noting that the mansion being blown up was a short sale. Exactly where I am, and it was so synchronous and also hilarious.
It was good to intermingle with amazing writers, enjoy another trip to the stunning UCR-Palm Desert campus - where I've also, in the past few years, attended several shows/exhibits, presented at last year's CA Desert Indian Conference, taken a southern California Indian class with the esteemed anthropologist Dr. Lowell Bean, and also have taught several quarters of poetry for UCR extension.
I even got inspiration for a collection of new poetry/prose I'd like to embark on, and realized that this idea is a peaceful, relief-finding way to write my way through some very painful stuff I've lived through in the last 2 years. I don't want to give away the title, but it will be a collection of poetry, prose, and it's going to be raw and real and brilliant (I hope.) As the writer-avant garde artiste William Burroughs said, and I am loosely paraphrasing, the only way he could get through the agony of his accidental shooting of his wife was to write his way through it.
And that, my friends and humble readers of my silly little blog, is where I am at. I find myself succumbing a bit, tonight, to the rapid onset of round #2 of a virulent sinus infection - first onset was exactly a month ago; I did the Z-pack, got better but still tired, and of course have over-done it since and now it's back - could be I was still harboring the thing, or maybe I got reinfected because my daughter Tarah came home with it last Wednesday. Great. Off to z-pack and bed.
But tonight, for awhile, I soared on my strengthening literary wings. I am so uplifted and grateful that I attended the reading tonight - and participated! Thanks, Tod, for letting me share!
Friday, March 6, 2009
Trapdoor Poetry March 8th Palm Springs
Trapdoor Poetry and host Ruth Nolan Present...
Don Kingfisher Campbell and the Emerging Urban Poets
Sunday, March 8th 6 p.m.
Palm Springs Art and Wine
www.palmspringswineandart.com
242 N Palm Canyon Dr
Palm Springs, CA 92262
(760) 325-9991
open microphone to precede the reading. 21+ age requirement.
Desert Places, Map, Desert Anthology
here are the places that will be named on the map now being drawn up by a cartographer for No Place for a Puritan: the literatue of California's Deserts
Amboy, CA
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Apple Valley
Death Valley National Park
Joshua Tree National Park
East Mojave National Preserve
Barstow
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Blythe, CA
Palmdale
Cajon Pass
Baker CA
Chemehuevi Reservation
Chocolate Mountains
Coachella Valley
Colorado Desert
Colorado River
Colorado River Indian Reservation
Death Valley Junction
Death Valley National Park
Desert Center, CA
Angeles National Forest
Sierra Nevada
Edwards Air Force Base
Fort Irwin
Fort Mojave Indian Reservation
Furnace Creek, CA
Ghost Mountain
Hoover Dam
Hwy 10
Hwy 111
Hwy 62
Hwy 395
Hwy 95
Hwy 86
I-10
I-15
Hwy 78
Imperial Valley
Indio, CA
Johannesburg, CA
Joshua Tree National Park
Lone Pine
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Lucerne Valley
Manzanar, CA
Mecca Hills
Mojave
Mojave Desert
Mojave River
Mojave Road
Morongo Indian Reservation
Needles, CA
Niland, CA
Old Woman Mountains
Owens Valley
Palm Springs, CA
Panamint Mountains
Randsburg, CA
Ridgecrest
Riverside, CA
Salton City, CA
Salton Sea
San Bernardino Mountains
San Bernardino, CA
San Gorgonio Pass
San Jacinto Mountains
Santa Rosa Mountains
Slab City, CA
Soda Lake
Tehachapi Mountains
Telescope Peak
Tucson, AZ
Twentynine Palms, CA
US-Mexico border
Victorville
Yuma, AZ
Amboy, CA
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Apple Valley
Death Valley National Park
Joshua Tree National Park
East Mojave National Preserve
Barstow
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Blythe, CA
Palmdale
Cajon Pass
Baker CA
Chemehuevi Reservation
Chocolate Mountains
Coachella Valley
Colorado Desert
Colorado River
Colorado River Indian Reservation
Death Valley Junction
Death Valley National Park
Desert Center, CA
Angeles National Forest
Sierra Nevada
Edwards Air Force Base
Fort Irwin
Fort Mojave Indian Reservation
Furnace Creek, CA
Ghost Mountain
Hoover Dam
Hwy 10
Hwy 111
Hwy 62
Hwy 395
Hwy 95
Hwy 86
I-10
I-15
Hwy 78
Imperial Valley
Indio, CA
Johannesburg, CA
Joshua Tree National Park
Lone Pine
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Lucerne Valley
Manzanar, CA
Mecca Hills
Mojave
Mojave Desert
Mojave River
Mojave Road
Morongo Indian Reservation
Needles, CA
Niland, CA
Old Woman Mountains
Owens Valley
Palm Springs, CA
Panamint Mountains
Randsburg, CA
Ridgecrest
Riverside, CA
Salton City, CA
Salton Sea
San Bernardino Mountains
San Bernardino, CA
San Gorgonio Pass
San Jacinto Mountains
Santa Rosa Mountains
Slab City, CA
Soda Lake
Tehachapi Mountains
Telescope Peak
Tucson, AZ
Twentynine Palms, CA
US-Mexico border
Victorville
Yuma, AZ
New Ending, No Place for a Puritan
Following is the rewrite I did for the ending of the preface for the desert anthology. I've managed to work in a few important statements about the oncoming onslaught of windmill and solar power farms that will soon mushroom across the California deserts, along with new power grids, so many wildflower replacements blinking the sun back towards itself and filling the wide views with seas of lop-lop blade and sound.....
The NEW end of the desert book preface - by Ruth Nolan
No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California's deserts
Decades have passed since the desert first took my breath away, and much has changed. I now live in the area of the desert near Palm Springs, where golf courses and posh resorts crowd the horizon, and the endangered bighorn sheep is commemorated in decorated art statues in nearby shopping malls. The entire California desert is threatened with overpopulation, pollution, and other social and climactic ills facing contemporary society. The population of Victorville has exploded to more than 100,000 people, and smog now fills the easy expanses once billed by real estate flyers as “the land of the champagne climate.” A new potential threat to the desert is the rush to install solar and windmill power facilities throughout vast tracts of the remaining open desert spaces as our nation turns to alternate energy sources. What remains of the open spaces I saw as a child from the summit of Cajon Pass will likely soon be transformed into massive power grids, fed by acre upon acre of windmill and solar farms. The selection “Problems with Windmills,” by Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, shows the detrimental impact of a windmill facility on a vast hillside near Palm Springs. The area was once rich with barrel cactus, whose flowers served as an important food source for the region’s Cahuilla Indians, and is now all but barren of plant life.
The desert suddenly seems much smaller to me now, but the literary legacy appears much bigger. This is a land of people, of struggles and gains, and, more recently, a region of politically-charged and intensely debated land use designation and management. The California desert has long been—and continues to be—far more than a mere wasteland waiting for people to carelessly exploit or briefly endure it. In the stories in this collection, the desert sings. It hums with the pulse of overlapping human lives, a river of sound that sometimes overflows its shores, and at other times travels quietly underground.
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
The NEW end of the desert book preface - by Ruth Nolan
No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California's deserts
Decades have passed since the desert first took my breath away, and much has changed. I now live in the area of the desert near Palm Springs, where golf courses and posh resorts crowd the horizon, and the endangered bighorn sheep is commemorated in decorated art statues in nearby shopping malls. The entire California desert is threatened with overpopulation, pollution, and other social and climactic ills facing contemporary society. The population of Victorville has exploded to more than 100,000 people, and smog now fills the easy expanses once billed by real estate flyers as “the land of the champagne climate.” A new potential threat to the desert is the rush to install solar and windmill power facilities throughout vast tracts of the remaining open desert spaces as our nation turns to alternate energy sources. What remains of the open spaces I saw as a child from the summit of Cajon Pass will likely soon be transformed into massive power grids, fed by acre upon acre of windmill and solar farms. The selection “Problems with Windmills,” by Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, shows the detrimental impact of a windmill facility on a vast hillside near Palm Springs. The area was once rich with barrel cactus, whose flowers served as an important food source for the region’s Cahuilla Indians, and is now all but barren of plant life.
The desert suddenly seems much smaller to me now, but the literary legacy appears much bigger. This is a land of people, of struggles and gains, and, more recently, a region of politically-charged and intensely debated land use designation and management. The California desert has long been—and continues to be—far more than a mere wasteland waiting for people to carelessly exploit or briefly endure it. In the stories in this collection, the desert sings. It hums with the pulse of overlapping human lives, a river of sound that sometimes overflows its shores, and at other times travels quietly underground.
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
March - Time for the Short Sale
March is here, and already for us in the low desert, the dread of HEAT on the way. Warm days, odd, near-thunderstorm weather this afternoon as I went rollerblading through my neighborhood, the Palm Desert Country Club. Today, I awoke to the neighbors' two puppies barking, barking, barking.....and saw, when I looked out the front door, the ubiqutious UHAUL moving van in front of the house. The lady with the bad back and golf cart and three kids, moving out. She's been there only a matter of months, and I've been through this with that house five times already in less than five years. It's sad, and unsettling. Where do they all go? It is haunting.
A disheveled sort of day - a Monday following a weekend of poetry gathering with friends in Riverside at my friend April's Small Wonder Foundation (with I.E.-based poet-writers Julie Paegle, Cyrus Emerson, April Durham, and me) - thanks, April, for hosting the event and bringing together a small circle, and for me, yesterday scurrying to catch up with long-put-off house chores: cleaning the yard, picking the last grapefruit and oranges from the trees to ward off citrus rats, and earning terrible arm scratches while raking beneath the bouganvellia - weeding the garden, blocking the busted-up front gate so the dogs can't knock it open again, and throwing my canoe onto the pool, enjoying the soothe of float, if only in my imagination, because when I'm home, I rarely have time to relax. It's always catch-up time, and this time, for having gone to Riverside and back four times in the past week for various events, often arriving home at very late hours! Last Sunday for a women's poetry group I'm honored to belong to at my friend Cati's house; Wednesday, to facilitate a terrific NEA Big Read literary circle ("Crash, Boom, Love" by Juan Felipe Herrera and "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfa Anaya;) my Thursday night Inlandia Writers Workshop (very fun!) and Saturday, for the poetry reading at April's salon. No wonder I'm tired!
Unsettled: the pristine, slight days of perfect tangerine light of January yielded to the always-too-quick maze of February, the short month, too much jam packed into its contraction, and in the yang principle, this month is for expansion. Friday, an afternoon hike into Pushwalla Palms, parking my car in the usual spot off of Washington, heading north, sneaking in through the barbed wire, following an old road till canyon drop off, then up a slope, down another trail into the oasis proper - a fair amount of water running. Finishing the loop, heading west, as dark settles in - coyotes howling, across the road, but Brindle and Shasta both spooked and running back towards me at the sound. Grateful when I see the twilight-shaded hulk of my Toyota RAV4 ("Little Rippy,") I've been on this hike before when it was so dark I had to use the key alarm to find it!
Again, I saw the horse trailer of a deaf woman who donates her days during the winter by riding her horse into the preserve to do all kinds of maintenance. She'll be gone again soon as the weather turns hot, to go somewhere else until late October or November. I saw her in a side draw, but pulled the dogs around the long way; Brindle was quite nervous last time he saw that horse. So many memories, super-layered into the deep canyon mud walls; it could be only yesterday that I hiked here with Brindle as a puppy in wildflowers so thick and tall he was almost buried, or with a friend who was in my life and is gone, with my daughter and her boyfriend, taking the ridge trail back into sherbet sunset when they were still in high school, or with my parents that hot Easter Sunday when my dad almost put his hand directly onto a baby rattler on a palm log. I am imbedded, my life of 10 years here, and yet, saying good bye to it all, too. I can't believe how many times, using different loops, I've done this hike - at least 12-15, I'd guess, or more. One of my usual, "can only do it in that window from late October - if we're lucky, till mid-April. I emerge from the last group of sparse palm trees; lots of big mud chunks in the wash, fallen from the hillsides in our heavy rains this year - and there is is, as I stand, a cluster of rocks begins to fall from the canyon lip, and rushes down, piquing the brief interest of the dogs. Rockslide, on demand. The earth moves. I too plan to move. Soon
Longer days, nearing spring equinox, and for me, suddenly, almost, the final wrap of desert anthology. My journeying circles, here, in this desert, coming to their rounded ends. The sand dunes are gone, and for many reasons, my life has an urgency about it for moving on. I had no idea, when I embarked on this book project, in spring of 2007, after the success of the book "Inlandia", which sparked a literary renaissance not only for writers in the Inland Empire, but in my own heart and mind, awakening and connecting me with other writers and a writing community, mostly in Riverside, for the first time in my life - a huge, huge awakening and validation that someone like me, born in San Bernardino and somehow relegated to years of lonely if amazing and deeply imprinting years of desert wandering - actually had something worthile to write, to connect to, to compile, to say. I can't express the extreme effect this had on my life! (See my blogspot picture - that is me at the Inlandia release party in Nov, 2006, signing a copy of "Inlandia!"
As a part of this, and based on my number of years teaching desert literature courses at my college and various symposiums and beyond, I began seeing the sincere need for a "desert" book, that my time in the desert, after being here for most of my life, would also be nearing the end of its legacy. This book project has consumed me, and increasingly so since last summer. I spent days and days indoors, escaping the 115 degree blinding heat, poring through piles of manuscripts, always adding one more thing, taking out one more thing, and then beginning on the permissions-getting. Learning as I have gone along, with the tutelage of Gayle Wattawa at Heyday - and looking back, realizing this has been a crash course in the graduate school of copyright laws, the world of editors and publishers and agents, as well as writers, and the wildness of the very idea and act of putting together....an anthology!
I've added friends and strangers along my literary journey. Some have come and gone; few remain. Even today, my mom was here, helping me go through the last batch of permissions-organizing. I've begged and borrowed help from anyone I can, and even hired other friends to pitch in where they can. I've put off several weekend trips to what would've been way-cool desert conservation meetings, East Mojave, Tecopa, not to mention vacationing and time off; canceled the Mendocino Writers Conference last year to get this book done; have irritated numbers of people whose works can't fit, irritated friends and family for who I've had to say, "I've GOT to get this...intro and bio version #29 finished by tonight....have to talk to an agent in NYC to talk the price down for the Joan Didion piece....faxing contract materials to Pauline Esteves, esteemed Timbisha Shoshone tribal elder, for the right to reprint her statement of Homeland to congress in 2000 - heavy stuff!
I understand that few of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances, wide network of literary comrades share my passion for this project - and at this point, more determination and discipline and a touch of craziness in my drive to pull every ounce of professional experience and acumen to stay focused and get it done - whilst enduring heavyduty teaching semesters at College of the Desert....in recent months I've survived on the tiny joys popping up from one author correspondence or another, or, say, scoring a hard-to-get permission, or better, tracking down an obscure family member-copyright holder, or getting a way-cool permission from a way-cool famous writer for a great price, and how I savor those kind words and supportive sentences scribbled on sticky notes and small papers along with permissions sent and granted - and how exciting to meet, albeit in email or letter, so many of the country's most amazing writers - the excitement is beginning to stir, however, as I share and read, where I can, the preface that I wrote to the book.
My love affair with desert literature, legacy, and lore, as well as the heartbreak over seeing the purity of line in my desert being cracked and broken day by day by wanton development - parallels the heartbreak for me of love relationships, too, that have run directly alongside this whole book project affair of the last two years. Relationships flamed and fanned with passion, with pure intention, and suddenly, as threatened and doomed as desert corridors slated for windmill development under the guise of "everything green is good." Green is only the temporary color of things in the desert, and only following a brief winter of heavy rain, to be followed by scorching heat and withered grass, wildfires, white-sere day upon day. Hope and despair, love and loneliness, passion and pain, side by side by side. Turning with seasons, upside-down-on-a-mortgage, lucky for that fixed interest rate, but at what price, to be left alone?
A mirage - here and gone - tempting and destructive- true and false - water really as/is in that (dry) lakebed, and water is (not) there for the drinking - insanity mirroring stability - lies and desperation - and flood - stuck in mud - crackling the caked dry ruts with tires or boots - you could see a city of people here, and you can also see the sharpest loneliness you'll ever have met -
Yes. I've made some kind of literary journey across miles and miles of page sands, turning chronicle through my front room, navigating salts and scoping the water holes, the population centers, the dry lakebeds, the emptiness, the urgency of impending environmental doom - desert lands leased for windmills & solar farms & power lines galore - going green is not good for our desert, except for now, the quick burst of widlflowers. Again, this spring, the first good season for flowers since 2005, following our last winter of real rain. Economic rock-bottom we've hit and continue bouncing off of, like the rocks on that hillside cascading down, but we did get some serious rain and every desert rat knows the intense importance of that!
Today, but perhaps not next week or tomorrow, pink desert sand verbena sprout their short songs on the few remaining emtpy lots in my neighborhood - when I bought my house in 2002, the four square miles of sand dunes, ancient, steepled, sidewinder-tracked, glimmering, shimmering, phantasmorgastic white dunes swifting and sculpting behind me, proferring thick stands of centuries-old mesquite dozens of feet high. Now, a golf course or two. Lovers come and gone during this book. The collapse of our economy - last year at this exact, exact time one day off to the day, I refinanced my home, and it was worth more than $100 k than it is now - the absolute truth. I was buying $400 Dolce and Gabbana leopard print glasses, thinking nothing of it. Supporting a live-in friend on the endless ATM card, buying posh groceries at designer markets, going entirely organic, my sense of security intact - hadn't even thought of selling the house, of making a move. And through all of this, always, me, tracing the same hikes over again; revisiting and circling and re-circling the fat and slowly-diminshing and refining desert book manuscript, carving it until only the perfect story of bones remained.
And so it is with my life. What seemed comfortable a year ago, suddenly is extreme excess. Get rid of it all, I say. I've had one yard sale and realize I only sold about10% of what needs to go. A finished anthology is complete, and says much more with much less. The story of my house, my desert living, is suddenly pared down and nearly complete, too. A paean, this book, to my own life and time. The book is the goal, has been the goal, and when I look around me, at my 3 BR 2 BA w/pool and 2 car garage house, it is time for so much to go. Stories now are my home, and like the neighbors next door, the fifth set of renters in so many years, I am about to one day soon just up and pack and move out. It is time for a new trail, one in a cooler and more peopled clime. With one helluva book at my side to read and share, sort of a one-woman desert show, Ruthie Palm Tree Seed. Or maybe, in certain moments, proferring pockets of the small black seed of Joshua. And perhaps, not having to imagine, fistfuls of rain bombarding me like desperate prayers.
A disheveled sort of day - a Monday following a weekend of poetry gathering with friends in Riverside at my friend April's Small Wonder Foundation (with I.E.-based poet-writers Julie Paegle, Cyrus Emerson, April Durham, and me) - thanks, April, for hosting the event and bringing together a small circle, and for me, yesterday scurrying to catch up with long-put-off house chores: cleaning the yard, picking the last grapefruit and oranges from the trees to ward off citrus rats, and earning terrible arm scratches while raking beneath the bouganvellia - weeding the garden, blocking the busted-up front gate so the dogs can't knock it open again, and throwing my canoe onto the pool, enjoying the soothe of float, if only in my imagination, because when I'm home, I rarely have time to relax. It's always catch-up time, and this time, for having gone to Riverside and back four times in the past week for various events, often arriving home at very late hours! Last Sunday for a women's poetry group I'm honored to belong to at my friend Cati's house; Wednesday, to facilitate a terrific NEA Big Read literary circle ("Crash, Boom, Love" by Juan Felipe Herrera and "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfa Anaya;) my Thursday night Inlandia Writers Workshop (very fun!) and Saturday, for the poetry reading at April's salon. No wonder I'm tired!
Unsettled: the pristine, slight days of perfect tangerine light of January yielded to the always-too-quick maze of February, the short month, too much jam packed into its contraction, and in the yang principle, this month is for expansion. Friday, an afternoon hike into Pushwalla Palms, parking my car in the usual spot off of Washington, heading north, sneaking in through the barbed wire, following an old road till canyon drop off, then up a slope, down another trail into the oasis proper - a fair amount of water running. Finishing the loop, heading west, as dark settles in - coyotes howling, across the road, but Brindle and Shasta both spooked and running back towards me at the sound. Grateful when I see the twilight-shaded hulk of my Toyota RAV4 ("Little Rippy,") I've been on this hike before when it was so dark I had to use the key alarm to find it!
Again, I saw the horse trailer of a deaf woman who donates her days during the winter by riding her horse into the preserve to do all kinds of maintenance. She'll be gone again soon as the weather turns hot, to go somewhere else until late October or November. I saw her in a side draw, but pulled the dogs around the long way; Brindle was quite nervous last time he saw that horse. So many memories, super-layered into the deep canyon mud walls; it could be only yesterday that I hiked here with Brindle as a puppy in wildflowers so thick and tall he was almost buried, or with a friend who was in my life and is gone, with my daughter and her boyfriend, taking the ridge trail back into sherbet sunset when they were still in high school, or with my parents that hot Easter Sunday when my dad almost put his hand directly onto a baby rattler on a palm log. I am imbedded, my life of 10 years here, and yet, saying good bye to it all, too. I can't believe how many times, using different loops, I've done this hike - at least 12-15, I'd guess, or more. One of my usual, "can only do it in that window from late October - if we're lucky, till mid-April. I emerge from the last group of sparse palm trees; lots of big mud chunks in the wash, fallen from the hillsides in our heavy rains this year - and there is is, as I stand, a cluster of rocks begins to fall from the canyon lip, and rushes down, piquing the brief interest of the dogs. Rockslide, on demand. The earth moves. I too plan to move. Soon
Longer days, nearing spring equinox, and for me, suddenly, almost, the final wrap of desert anthology. My journeying circles, here, in this desert, coming to their rounded ends. The sand dunes are gone, and for many reasons, my life has an urgency about it for moving on. I had no idea, when I embarked on this book project, in spring of 2007, after the success of the book "Inlandia", which sparked a literary renaissance not only for writers in the Inland Empire, but in my own heart and mind, awakening and connecting me with other writers and a writing community, mostly in Riverside, for the first time in my life - a huge, huge awakening and validation that someone like me, born in San Bernardino and somehow relegated to years of lonely if amazing and deeply imprinting years of desert wandering - actually had something worthile to write, to connect to, to compile, to say. I can't express the extreme effect this had on my life! (See my blogspot picture - that is me at the Inlandia release party in Nov, 2006, signing a copy of "Inlandia!"
As a part of this, and based on my number of years teaching desert literature courses at my college and various symposiums and beyond, I began seeing the sincere need for a "desert" book, that my time in the desert, after being here for most of my life, would also be nearing the end of its legacy. This book project has consumed me, and increasingly so since last summer. I spent days and days indoors, escaping the 115 degree blinding heat, poring through piles of manuscripts, always adding one more thing, taking out one more thing, and then beginning on the permissions-getting. Learning as I have gone along, with the tutelage of Gayle Wattawa at Heyday - and looking back, realizing this has been a crash course in the graduate school of copyright laws, the world of editors and publishers and agents, as well as writers, and the wildness of the very idea and act of putting together....an anthology!
I've added friends and strangers along my literary journey. Some have come and gone; few remain. Even today, my mom was here, helping me go through the last batch of permissions-organizing. I've begged and borrowed help from anyone I can, and even hired other friends to pitch in where they can. I've put off several weekend trips to what would've been way-cool desert conservation meetings, East Mojave, Tecopa, not to mention vacationing and time off; canceled the Mendocino Writers Conference last year to get this book done; have irritated numbers of people whose works can't fit, irritated friends and family for who I've had to say, "I've GOT to get this...intro and bio version #29 finished by tonight....have to talk to an agent in NYC to talk the price down for the Joan Didion piece....faxing contract materials to Pauline Esteves, esteemed Timbisha Shoshone tribal elder, for the right to reprint her statement of Homeland to congress in 2000 - heavy stuff!
I understand that few of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances, wide network of literary comrades share my passion for this project - and at this point, more determination and discipline and a touch of craziness in my drive to pull every ounce of professional experience and acumen to stay focused and get it done - whilst enduring heavyduty teaching semesters at College of the Desert....in recent months I've survived on the tiny joys popping up from one author correspondence or another, or, say, scoring a hard-to-get permission, or better, tracking down an obscure family member-copyright holder, or getting a way-cool permission from a way-cool famous writer for a great price, and how I savor those kind words and supportive sentences scribbled on sticky notes and small papers along with permissions sent and granted - and how exciting to meet, albeit in email or letter, so many of the country's most amazing writers - the excitement is beginning to stir, however, as I share and read, where I can, the preface that I wrote to the book.
My love affair with desert literature, legacy, and lore, as well as the heartbreak over seeing the purity of line in my desert being cracked and broken day by day by wanton development - parallels the heartbreak for me of love relationships, too, that have run directly alongside this whole book project affair of the last two years. Relationships flamed and fanned with passion, with pure intention, and suddenly, as threatened and doomed as desert corridors slated for windmill development under the guise of "everything green is good." Green is only the temporary color of things in the desert, and only following a brief winter of heavy rain, to be followed by scorching heat and withered grass, wildfires, white-sere day upon day. Hope and despair, love and loneliness, passion and pain, side by side by side. Turning with seasons, upside-down-on-a-mortgage, lucky for that fixed interest rate, but at what price, to be left alone?
A mirage - here and gone - tempting and destructive- true and false - water really as/is in that (dry) lakebed, and water is (not) there for the drinking - insanity mirroring stability - lies and desperation - and flood - stuck in mud - crackling the caked dry ruts with tires or boots - you could see a city of people here, and you can also see the sharpest loneliness you'll ever have met -
Yes. I've made some kind of literary journey across miles and miles of page sands, turning chronicle through my front room, navigating salts and scoping the water holes, the population centers, the dry lakebeds, the emptiness, the urgency of impending environmental doom - desert lands leased for windmills & solar farms & power lines galore - going green is not good for our desert, except for now, the quick burst of widlflowers. Again, this spring, the first good season for flowers since 2005, following our last winter of real rain. Economic rock-bottom we've hit and continue bouncing off of, like the rocks on that hillside cascading down, but we did get some serious rain and every desert rat knows the intense importance of that!
Today, but perhaps not next week or tomorrow, pink desert sand verbena sprout their short songs on the few remaining emtpy lots in my neighborhood - when I bought my house in 2002, the four square miles of sand dunes, ancient, steepled, sidewinder-tracked, glimmering, shimmering, phantasmorgastic white dunes swifting and sculpting behind me, proferring thick stands of centuries-old mesquite dozens of feet high. Now, a golf course or two. Lovers come and gone during this book. The collapse of our economy - last year at this exact, exact time one day off to the day, I refinanced my home, and it was worth more than $100 k than it is now - the absolute truth. I was buying $400 Dolce and Gabbana leopard print glasses, thinking nothing of it. Supporting a live-in friend on the endless ATM card, buying posh groceries at designer markets, going entirely organic, my sense of security intact - hadn't even thought of selling the house, of making a move. And through all of this, always, me, tracing the same hikes over again; revisiting and circling and re-circling the fat and slowly-diminshing and refining desert book manuscript, carving it until only the perfect story of bones remained.
And so it is with my life. What seemed comfortable a year ago, suddenly is extreme excess. Get rid of it all, I say. I've had one yard sale and realize I only sold about10% of what needs to go. A finished anthology is complete, and says much more with much less. The story of my house, my desert living, is suddenly pared down and nearly complete, too. A paean, this book, to my own life and time. The book is the goal, has been the goal, and when I look around me, at my 3 BR 2 BA w/pool and 2 car garage house, it is time for so much to go. Stories now are my home, and like the neighbors next door, the fifth set of renters in so many years, I am about to one day soon just up and pack and move out. It is time for a new trail, one in a cooler and more peopled clime. With one helluva book at my side to read and share, sort of a one-woman desert show, Ruthie Palm Tree Seed. Or maybe, in certain moments, proferring pockets of the small black seed of Joshua. And perhaps, not having to imagine, fistfuls of rain bombarding me like desperate prayers.
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