Ladyfest I.E. Sunday, August 2nd, 2-11 pm.

Everyone is welcome to attend! This is a community-based one-day art and music event. Ladyfest I.E. will feature creative workshops and music at Back to the Grind coffee shop in downtown Riverside, CA from 2-11 p.m. I'm presenting:
4:00 p.m. power poetry: the magic to transform
8:00 p.m. Ruth Nolan poetry reading



here is a more detailed schedule (Pharaoh's den is upstairs at the Grind)
2:00-2:50 p.m.
RYPA at Pharaoh's Den
Planned Parenthood at Back to the Grind

3:00-3:50 p.m.
Self-Defense at Back to the Grind
Zine Making at Pharaoh's Den

4:00-4:50 p.m.
Consent at Pharaoh's Den
poetry workshop/Ruth Nolan/at Back to the Grind

5:00-6:00 p.m.
Machismo in the Punk scene whole group discussion

6:15-7:15 p.m.
Food Not Bombs Dinner

7:15-7:35 p.m.
Jackie Joice Spoken Word

7:35-8:00 p.m.
Tuberculosis

8:00-8:20
Ruth Nolan Poetry Reading

8:20-8:45 p.m..
Coke Bust

8:55-9:20 p.m.
Sick Fix

9:30-9:55 p.m.
Parche de Ira

10:05-10:30 p.m.
For Fuck Sake

10:40-11:05 p.m.
all or nothing hc

this image can also be viewed at
http://i720.photobucket.com/albums/ww204/radical_grita/August2ladyfestflyer.jpg

Circus Circus Hotel Casino, Reno + Vegas and a Slinky T-Shirt

Ruth and baby Tarah wearing Irish sweater + Ruth and Tarah high school graduation party

So I realize she's doing the same thing I was doing at her age, and that is getting her own place to live. And she turns 21 on Tuesday. I'm going shopping for some bling for her, and maybe for me, too, and having a surprise party for her at her workplace-doctor's office next week (ice cream cake, same kind I had at her baby shower 21 Julys ago) and a nice dinner with the grandparents at Wally's Desert Turtle, a classic 50's place in Rancho Mirage. Lovely stuff. And I had to borrow $350from her in cash because I lost my ATM card last week, and she's parked her Lexus on the street overnight because her and Alex are out and about in his Camaro, and I'm putting together issue #3 of Phantom Seed literary magazine. Life in a shimmer world of mirage, we are so Palm Springs. I'm mom and I drive a modest Toyota RAV4. I do have a classic 1989 Nissan Pulsar T-Top that's parked in driveway next to the missing palo verde tree, with a cover on it, but it needs a battery.

OK, who writes about this stuff? I am starting to understand the idea of mid-life-crisis in its full blows.....this isn't a temporary hitch, it's a knockout in a glaring boxing ring, and, how did I get here? I'm only 46, and I feel 23. So, when did all this life procession itself by? I'm contracting images of trapeze artists and sword-swallowing strong men, baby elephants in pink skirts and a full bar that revolves on a kiddy merry-go-round.....the idea of "circus" of the absurd drives itself into the garage of my head. What hugely outgrown outfit is this costume of a three bedroom, two-bath, two-car-garage, swimming pool + jacuzzi house falling around my ankles? Weight has poured off of me in recent months, and the ceiling caves in. I'm the star of a one-woman-disintegration in slo-mo, happening too-fast. A wire slinky, uncoiling apart and together back and forth descending the stairs. The old kind, from when I was a kid. And when the wires got ever so slightly bent, the slinky wouldn't work anymore. And the wiring harness in that RAV4 was chewed through by a big rat that got under my engine hood a few years ago. Cost $6,000 mostly covered by AAA.


Tarah in Kaui, Hawaii at age 13

I am reeling from this sense of a sledgehammer coming down on my head. Whoa, whoa, whoa. I'm so single my teeth hurt. I'm so alone in this house the dog has now appropriated the wicker couch where my star blanket and panda bear live. My abandoned bed by night, the sleeping couch by day. I'm so single I'm digging up old coffee cups from a 1989 stopover in Las Vegas (Apple Valley to Zion National Park) to remember when she was a wee little thing. I'm so single I'm listening to the New York Dolls at full blast on a crappy PC speaker. I'm so single I'm abandoning my rubber bands. I'm so single I have my shiva deity parked at my left wrist. I'm so single a dusty printer is staring me down. I'm so single I might go buy a bitch on a rope soap set for one and a small bottle of marijuana-infused shampoo. It's time to go visit my cool, always-humorous and humor-finding D.J. and rockstar guitar and bassist brother Jerry, who lives in Silver Lake, L.A. and drives a smooth Mercedes. He'll ferret me around town to clubs and fun things and music scenes and help me get my mojo back, and he'll laugh at the wildest stories I tell, he's only 15 months younger than me and we always were close as kids.

I'm so single I don't remember how to hang shower curtains, and so single I think the overhead fluourescent lighting in her vintage 1960 Palm Desert Country Club micro-apartment is cool. I'm so single I'm weeping gratefully that she is only 2 miles down the road. I'm on the other end of golf from her. Wildly swinging at a solo game I don't know how to play and have long resisted learning, all stubborn ten tennis years I've spent here (I used to be a tournament player as a teen/young adult, so that stuff is easy for me,) a tiny white ball bending in an arc towards the sun, and then out of site, the idea of finding the hole, a blackhearted joke of the lonely desert soul, nevermind the basket of yellow-green tennis balls parked in the garage, waiting to be hit into precise square courts, that's one game I know how to win. As if it mattered, my most-valuable-varsity-tennis-player trophy sitting on a shelf. Long before Tarah was born. We're not in high school anymore. Neither is she. Singlehood, a lightweight paperback book waiting to be put into script.


Tarah wearing the Slinky t-shirt + Mom, Catalina Island camping trip....Tarah high school graduation, 17, in 2006

My daughter, and most memorable recent lovers, are blue eyed with blonde hair. Except for Tarah's dad, black & brown and tall, stunningly handsome guy of Sioux Indian ancestry, former Army Ranger. A picture of him at 23 melts my eyes into summer ice cream, shirt off, red beret at perfect asshole tilt, and cold-blooded stare. I've gotta find those pictures he self-took of us in the desert back in the day, both of us holding AK 47's and bullet belts draped around my chest and waist, and the ubiqitous 12-pack of beer perched on a rock behind us...he runs a good sweatlodge and has good tattoos, he lives in Denver. I have been a superb mom. Even today, on moving day. I thought she'd take more furniture from her room but she doesn't want the dresser or bed. She did come back to do a load of towels and raid the cupboard: chicken soup, a box of couscous (I raised her eating exceptionally well) and other things I'll never realize are missing, I'm sure.

At least (or most) I have my writing career, they all say. Shit, I was never one of those late 80's, big-haired, reebok-wearing, Jane Fonda aerobic wannabes (though I did once do a gym workout to songs by the Pet Shop Boys with my friend Suzy, who had just had a breast enlargement.) No malls for us, just river rafting, camping, hiking, trips to Hawaii and Ireland, New York and the east coast.....and all kinds of museums and poetry readings, of course. She did the coolest kid things, like posh private schools and trips to Disneyland in limos with rich girflriends, ASB and proms, she was the only grandkid on both sides for years and all the expensive presents under the Xmas tree from childless aunts and uncles were for her, she even had her own pony in the backyard at one time! How might one such as I feel such angst, so independent I hiked remote desert peaks while 6 months pregnant, by myself, stayed on the mountain bike till my 8th month, and ventured to carry Tarah to the top of Mt. San Jacinto in a kiddy backpack at 15 months? "When she is out of high school, I get to do what I want!!!!"

To paraphrase my writer-friend Mary Sojourner, writing of one of her own perilous life passages, it's a bit like traversing one of the too-tight lava tubes that lace the underground around Flagstaff, Arizona, where we both lived in the mid 1990's (she helped me with my master's thesis of poetry, "Negotiating With Testosterone), walls sharp and unyielding but no other way through, and blacker than dark. Gloves, gloves, I need gloves. And new brake pads. Oh, forgot, my friend Mike just did the front brakes on the Toyota the other night, just in time. Now what, now what.


Tarah and some of the hands that fed, or ate....

Ruth's KCET Arts Block Poetry Interview

For anyone interested in hearing my poetry interview and reading on KCET Arts Block live.....

http://kcet.org/explore-ca/on-demand/podcasts/archive-page2.php

Scroll down on the KCET Arts Block column on the above link and you'll see the link to my interview.

In the interview, I expound somewhat diametrically on poetry, the desert, and...you guessed it, desert poetry, along with some of my own poetry.

Thanks to Ching-In Chen, my terrific and kindly interviewer (and stellar poet!) and my poetic consort and role model Juan Felipe Herrera, whose interview is coupled with mine on the link.

Lykken Trail

I read a newspaper headline while I was at Del Taco in Palm Desert, where there are no drive throughs, and I ordered two hard shell bean tacos and a green burrito and read the story of how two hikers' bodies were found on the Lykken Trail just above Palm Springs, they both went out mid-afternoon last Saturday when it was about 115 degrees and super humid, it happens every year. Why don't the trailheads out here have severe heat warnings? You can't even fly an airplane when it's this hot. Extreme heat can, and does, ground flights here. There's a big disconnect between landing here in a new car with hella A/C, and stepping out....

Having been hospitalized several times for dehydration in recent years myself, and that with drinking mega-water and gatorade and doing all the right things (stay in shade, wear heat and sunscreen) and STILL getting way messed up, well, yeah, it's hotter than hell, and that's a concrete statement emblazoned in melting roads. Us and Death Valley sharing the nation's top temps last weekend. Even in the middle of the night. There is zero shade on these desert hiking trails. Barely even a bush. Shade is THE essential desert survival tool, that, and water. Lots of it, carry at least a gallon, not in plastic because the heat leaches poisons out, maybe a virgin gas can, in the car wherever you drive. More water, more water in a place with virtually none than most people can imagine drinking in their entire lives.

The weirdest thing is you can look right down onto Palm Springs, a thumbprint away, just below all those trails looping across the mountain flanks, so this adds to the sense of very false security. But the town is its own artifice, its own temporary erection on the waves of heat on its sand-scraped surface, so buying into any of it as real is a fallacy. A distortion of light on sand. Bending the mind. That's why people come here to drink and play, do things they would never dream of doing anywhere else - you've heard of what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas?

To begin to attempt an articulation of the dishonesty of this place: how about the covered naked bridge (how oxymoronic can it get?) above Indian Canyon Blvd, arching from one nude hot springs resort to another.....and, the fact that my daughter went to school with a young man whose parents own the resort....I've long gone to nudist-flying Deep Creek Hot Springs, on the naked high desert backside of the San Bernardino Mountains, so it was no shock to either of us. Over the top is an understatement for this place. Anyway, it's a lot better, but less interesting for sure, than an all-expenses-paid three day trip to the small town of Muscoy, wedged between Rialto-at the edge of Frisbee Park - and the murder-capital-of-the-U.S. west side of San Bernardino. I heard that one of my former poetry professors from CSUSB was murdered with a baseball bat in downtown Muscoy some years ago.

Maybe people are trying too hard. To get the the top of Mt. San Jacinto and back down in a day, and various folks have died attempting that one in both summer (120) and winter (ice), Cactus to Clouds is not recommended for the weak. A friend of mine, Jack, who is highly educated, from Vermont, and looks just like a young Richard Burton, has invited me to go, but, uh, well, maybe the Bump n'Grind, another hike down here, is more my style now, only 4 miles not twenty, and a mere 1,000 foot elevation gain and drop, not 10,000. Growing up in the remote desert, like I did, the only thing to do is drive way on dirt powerline roads and hike in the desert during the nicer months of the year; almost-frozen beer is for summer.

Well, what happens in Palm Springs doesn't even happen in Vegas. And those hikers may looked down and thought they were hallucinating, before they succumbed to the psychotic horrors of quick heatstroke and death, which probably set in within a few hours or less from when they handily started their hikes, the nursing home where my stalker's father died a few years ago in a blizzard of 120 + degree days, it's on Ramon Road near Kirk Douglas Drive and the waterfall at the Palm Springs Airport. Superglide.

Redlands Boulevard

Thumbprint

How can I live in a trough and graben indent between the Pacific and Continental plates so low the sea once through here crashed to shore, the valley of little shells. Uh, it's so hot it takes all effort to not melt, out for dinner at 9 pm and `107 degrees, misty humidity in the streetlights, looks like fog, and wind from the south full of damp air, thunderstorms somewhere. 45% humidity, which at 107 degrees at 9 o clock at night is...being shut in a bathroom with a hot shower going, full steam. Hard to breathe. Reggae is the answer and smooth dancing with tights on, looking into the mirror in my guest bedroom. I think a giant stepped here in between.

The dogs pretty much own my master bedroom now, I haven't slept on my bed for months. Bare mattress and Brindle is on it. He's the new mister of this place. It's his bed. I only go in there for clothes. He wears the gangster chain. Neither Shasta or he will go outside to pee or eat because of the heat. They subsist on dog treats. I sleep on the wicker couch. It started with Christmas ornaments. I have a star quilt and a panda bear. I'm going to my friend Gayle Brandeis' wedding tomorrow in Riverside and a baby shower also there for another friend in the evening, Amy Floyd from my Inlandia Writers workshop. She's having a little boy next month. Tarah is on a dime moving out, engaged, wedding's bumped up, and I'm paying for flowers.

Rosy sunset yesterday. I sat on the rocks above Box Springs in Riverside as the sun began to go down. For a long time. On the edge of wilderness, limned by the merge of freeways. With a safe and nurturing friend. We shared a power spot, inhabited by Cahuilla Indians, until it was more than completely dark. At the base of the sacred mountains, a place I've learned to hike and love when I'm making my rounds from the desert to the I.E., still doing it for now, more than 2 1/2 years and no sign of the pilgrimage letting up. I realize that the best thing for me to do is sit, wherever I am. So yesterday, in evening air that was beautifully cool, I sat on the rocks at Box Springs until I felt the scenery circling around me. Like red-tailed hawks above the Asistencia and Mary Jane Cemetery on the other side of the ridge.

Mike Cluff a poet/teacher friend offered to help me put together Slouching Towards Mt. Rubidoux Manor. As did another of my students. April Durham, co-editing Phantom Seed issue 3 with me. Saw Reggie Woollery, my friend and also the UCR-CA Museum of Photography artistic director at Back to the Grind. And Frey, from my writer's workshop. I'm doing a poetry workshop for Ladyfest on August 2nd. I'm scoring the submissions for Sun Runner magazine writers issue; that's a desert magazine out of 29 Palms. My friend Wendy will meet me at Gayle's wedding, and my friend Michael will go with me. Chrystine my drum priestess held a drum circle in Idyllwild today and then she called me. Kath Abela & Deb Kolodji invited me to a poetry workshop. Very sweet friends. Keeping me knitted in the loop. I'm a kite without a string. Tarah is moving out next week. I am in the big house alone. Me and the A/C.

A friend calls to tell me that there are only two places hotter than where I am tonight: Thermal, California, which is only a few miles down the road from me, and Death Valley.

My daughter, almost 21, is drunk

FUCKING ASSHOLE
there, she said it and I echoed it.
My good friend C. the drum wizardess
says to articulate my power
and, well, it's better
than driving the car on the freeway
going 120 miles per hour,
couldn't do that anyway
the car is out of alignment
and I think the tailpipe is falling off
my friend M. a car buff as it turns out
had my car over the weekend
and he detailed it out, even
did the tires, fixed the garage door opener
and taught me where to put it
on the headliner and where to push
to get it to connect, he is one with cars
and he's so cool he refused any money from me
the sign of a true gent, a real friend
doing something from the heart, for free

ahh, whoops, young adult angst revenge!

THE HEAT IS A MOTHERFUCKER
and it's all okay, TAKE ME ON, 114 degrees at noon
10 pm and it's still 102
get in the pool? no joke.
the water's about 92.

FUCK THE BANK
so the house is $100k upside down?
Sometimes she's the mom these days
and I'm some kind of 13 years old.
Funny stuff, huh?
ha ha ha ha ha.

nowhere to run, time to walk
she's going to drive to her boyfriend's
she's having a meltdown and hit her head on the wall
and he won't answer his phone
my fault, I bought the wine
and the bud light
and I'm drinking none.
I, well I, have awesome prescription drugs.

She cooks dinner for his --34u47847$&%($%&( mom
gets screamed at
cleans up their couch after the cat has diarrhea on it,
pays a lot of their bills
listens to witch-mom's wine-soaked convolutions
The kids love each other
it's all good with me
even if my daughter is paying for the wedding.
Ok, yeah yea, they're in love. Uh huh.
Best of all, he's a very, very good man.
In spite of tonight. Give him a break, he's only 23.

Uh, where are the parenting books?
Hello, 1-800 post partum parent, yes?
almost 21? teach her to pole dance.
move out of the house (you, not her)
go to the Cobalt club in L.A.
one night it's poetry,
the next night, it's punk rock.
That's right, I grew up on the Sex Pistols.
Okay, okay okay

I'M GONNA HAVE IT MY....WAY
good. She's decided to call the fiance
to duke it out on the phone
why is he putting together
a crossword puzzle with his mom tonight
instead of being here with her?
When she's had a horrible day,
she's been working too hard,
taking care of them.
I'm glad glad glad she's here.
The upside down pineapple cake
sponges us together tonight
and the cherries on this one
are plump and real and they're not
even cut in half like a non-ass.
Take that, cynics.

The Man with No Hands

a man with no hands
came to my writing class,
sat there awhile
before he told me
he forgot to bring a pen
he is from San Bernardino
where I was born
at a hospital that squarely faces
a cemetery to the north
where my grandpa and grandma are buried
in a spot without a headstone
I know, because one day a few years ago
I went there, with Tarah, then 16
and went a little headfirst
into emotional promiscuity
when I discovered the plot was unmarked,
just a lumpy spot beneath a pine tree
a kindly golf cart driver,
the man who makes the rounds
on the neat little roads
day by day
to ensure
that no one steals a body
came up to me, hands shoving
his shirt into his pants,
offered to help,
Tarah said he was
checking out my ass
as I bent over the grass
and licking his lips at her,
No matter,
we ended up finding
the site, and it made me feel
exhumed, by paperweight,
a few lines for a few poems
pinned down
before a Santa Ana wind
molests the pages at the fringe
and the print becomes unreadable
the hand forgets to move
the mind remembers
its awful phantom pain
of limbs removed
to make way
for new stories
on the body
of an amputee, nothing to lose
and so I offer the man
a handful of goddamn pens:
purple, black or blue

Ruth Nolan c 2009 Ruth Nolan

Prayer Shot

2% organic milk, and I've been told by a trusted confidante that things tend to go the way they've already been going, and with a 2% effort, energy moves in the direction you want things to go. And Tarah and Alex are here this afternoon, planning their wedding. It's to be in January, at Silver Rock Resort. Right at the watermark of the ancient inland sea shoreline. I've discovered recently that I live precisely where the beach for the Sea of Cortez once was, northernmost.

So today it's 113 degrees, el desierto, and I thawed a frozen solid half gallon of 2% fat organic milk on the supernovaheated front sidewalk in 15 minutes or less. Last night, I was in L.A., Venice, Silver Lake and Hollywood. Had the privilege and high honor of being invited to read at Beyond Baroque, the "ground zero" of the L.A. poetry scene since the 70's. There are still trippy lit-mags and zines lining the racks, cool things done on typewriter and mimeograph, and featuring L.A. poetry O.G.'s like Bukwoski.

Copies of my odd-horizoned desert lit mag Phantom Seed #1 already there, and crappy copies of the first run of my 2007 chapbook "Dry Waterfall." I switched those for a few that are good, and made a prayer shot with issue #2 of Phantom Seed, profiling that in front of the few issues of #1. Issue #3 soon to be, and the cool Pacific ocean breeze, sluicing across the open back of my risque halter top. The silk and beaded one I bought while shopping with my friend Swamiji in some exotic store, in NYC, I think, when we were on a Bhakti poetry tour a few years ago.

And circling back to L.A., Jet Blue is what I always fly these days to and from the east coast. I was in very erudite reading company, and honored to be invited - a fundraiser for and celebration of Askew literary magazine, a newspaper-folio style which comes out of Venice, CA and edited by poets Phil Taggart and Marsha de la O. My poetry has appeared in a past issue, and I'd like to contribute again. Nothing quite like hearing a spray of 20 incredible poets/readers, all at the top of their game and on point. The lights on the podium+microphone were too-bright, I couldn't see a thing except the page below me, and three tiny plastic bottles of Evian water lining the left, and finally one of the poets, who recited an excellent poem by memory, twisted open one of the bottles, but didn't drink it till he left the stage. Pivot, swish.

I rewrote my poem "Maturity Class," and read that. Made it a little more cutting-edge although I chickened out and cut some of the edge out right before I read. Funny that my poem was straddled in position between sex-sexuality poems right before me and right afterwards. I had a line about the daughter in the poem gagging on her milk, when reading a certain chapter, but switched it to the mother/narrator gagging on green tree (assonance with the word, "maturity,") and I've learned recently that lowfat or skim milk is the favorite drink of sustenance, in lieu of food, for anorectic women and girls.

I can't publish the poem here right now. It's been accepted for the upcoming issue on "gender" in Poemeleon magazine, which requires first-time online publishing rights, and has already been print-published in Pacific Review magazine. How many times can I change that poem around? I like to think I'm getting more punk and rebel and daring, which I've always been, just now it's sprinkling into my poems, or maybe sort of volcanic-erupting - I always wanted to be a singer in a rock band!

Afterwards, I drifted off the freeway, gratefully, onto the gritty streets of Hollywood, Silver Lake, my brother Jerry a cool DJ who lives in a walkup apartment above a much-filmed liquor store. He ferries us through backstreets to Thai Town in his Mercedes S-8, and Mike says he'd just as soon grab something from McDonald's and ride around all night, but I insist on real food, so we ended up at Astroburger a local S.V. hangout spot, and ate greasy patty melts while being stared down by two tables of L.A. cops. The hollywood restaurants were all full with Friday night partiers. No more pretend, no more late night food finding games. We didn't want to wait for something respectable. Process it all today with the milk.

Back to the kids. They may or may not rent my house from me, while I move...? I've agreed to pay for the flowers, for the wedding, and I'm numbing all this wedding overload and the shock of how fast everything is going down with that, out by writing on my blog, in and out of consciousnss, as Tarah says. They're on the couch, I'm at the kitchen table, across the room from them.

Huh? Oh yeah, high end Mexican food for the catering. Uh, yeah, Silver Rock Resort for the reception, where they hold the Bob Hope classic. Umm, what? Wedding dresses, oh yeah, oh yeah, I'm with you. Who's more 23 right now, me or her? I distinctly realize I'm a coward, hiding behind this tiny laptop screen, tapping little letters into words on the fingernail-dented keyboard. What, Tarah? Oh, where do I want to eat? Ruth, you are totally ignoring me? If you don't want to go we are leaving right now. Where do you want to go? Mom!! Okay okay, just a few more words....

I'm getting that feeling of my life heading for a cliff. What am I going to do, by myself, alone in the world, without her? Shoulda gotten married years ago, but that's one of those ass-kicking hindsight things that do absolutely no good right now. This is something I can hardly believe, a tattoo getting bigger and bigger, an empty nest, awful cliche, and mine isn't nestled gracefully in some beautiful elm tree next to a lovely singing creek, but warped by desert summers and embedded in a tangled, mace-fisted colla cactus tree, that mismatched lopsided nest now warped and branded deeper and deeper onto my forehead. So this is the shit that sends moms into full tilt boogie, how long can I keep playing pinball, odd chords of the Who's "Tommy" in my video-eye and I'm in jr. high again. Good. They're on the couch together, giddy in their plans, and sidetracked leafing thru some wedding guidebook stuff.

I've got just a minute here. We're off for spaghetti and iced tea at Mario's. And I'm paying for flowers. It's going to be okay. And more. Who will I work with? Goldfish pretzels sink and swim. As they tell me, assure me, you can prove it by the watermarks on rocks nearby, yes, this whole town was once under the sea.

things missed + gained

It's a predictably hot Friday in Palm Desert. I'm inside. Ceiling fan and air purifier rhythms collide. Webster's dictionary added a plethora of new words today, among my favorite is the phrase "sock puppet." Semantics and word play are my #1 things. Besides hiking, whitewater rafting/canoeing, bicycling, camping, all things close to the earth and inhabiting my poetic body and soul. Dreams, Reflections, Memory. By Jung. A book I need to read. Some confirmation and guidance in my current status of "it's complicated" and "I'm not 46, I'm 23 again!!!!" Sometimes, even 17, or 13. Relationship status should really indicate, "one's relationship with oneself. Or selves."

My brother John is having a minor surgery in Oakland, CA today. My mom's cousin in Ohio last week suffered a terrible tragedy. Thieves broke into his house at 2 am to get at his rare coin colletion (people he didn't know) and ended up breaking his neck. If he lives, he will be a quadriplegic for the rest of his life. Last night, I was lightened considerably by leading my creative writing workshop at the Riverside Library (touche ending for a rough day)and hanging out with a group of wonderful friends afterwards, who are all part of my group - Mike S, Mike C, Jean, and Wendy. I am so grateful for the wonderful people in my life. Do they even know how much their friendship and circle of goodness mean to me? Especially last night.

Hopscotch to the week. A week of moods, thin cirrus clouds high, a new and much better gynecologist than my previous one met with me, and guess what, I can still have kids. My poetry babies + maybe more. Therapy appointments and a face-cleansing facial, shopping for new clothes. Since Tarah was not with me at Ross Dress for Less, I was on my own, and I boldly asked every passerby in the store to help me decide what was good and what was not. At the discount dress rack, a rarity place for me to be, I asked a woman who turned out to have a great sense of humor.

She said, "I know how to shop, honey. I'm from Dallas, was born with a silver spoon in my mouth and it's still there. The shopping is terrible here in the desert, even with all the high-end stores, but let me help." First thing she said was don't buy any hippy things, because I probably had a lot of them in my closet, and the 60's are gone (how did she know? Oh yeah, I was wearing a tie dye shirt.) She picked out some awesome sun dresses for me. Only in Palm Desert. I am thinking I could probably get by slipping Brindle the Big Dog into stores if I put a "working dog" collar on him - who's to know? He deserves to be there as much as the diamond-collared chihuahuas.....

Anyway, got the clothes home and Tarah looked through them and was hugely impressed. MOM, how did YOU pick out these things? Well....a pair of Coach-brand sandals that turned out to be very expensive, a bitchy high end. She took a few for herself (they ended up not fitting me) and modeled for Alex, then made me try on a couple of the dresses. Alex was very impressed. Oh yeah, and some slick heels I already had, used to wear them to designer events in my Swami days - good luck hunting, Alex said, as he hugged me goodybe. Tarah drifted off in a cloud of lovely light turqoise. They were on their way to breakfast at 1 pm, and they'd been planning to drive to Berkeley and back in two days and bring back some furniture he left in his college dorm there, but it turns out after myriad drama phone calls in the past few days to me - from Tarah - they didn't go after all. Hired a mover to bring the stuff down here. Wonder how much that is costing, and who pays. Don't ask, don't tell. Oh, that, and they want to get married in January. Shit, I forgot to buy underwear at the store. That's why I originally went in there! I did get a faux giraffe print purse. The one without the chemicals that can cause cancer.

Sock puppet. Be someone online and no one will ask or tell. God, only 2 more weeks and Tarah will be 21. July 28th. On the 27th, my nephew Mikhael will be 13. AGHWYEI what happened to the babies and toddlers! I want to get a tattoo on my left bicep, with the name "Tarah" in beautiful script, and two pictures overlapping, one of her as a blonde-ish curly haired toddler with big blue-green eyes, and one now, with her wise and lovely 1/4 Sioux Indian face, long brown hair, and compassionate gaze.

Live Through This

I just scarfed a 300 calorie package of Pepperidge Farms mini chocolate chunk dark chocolate Nantucket crispy cookies. How this connects to my memories of childhood summers spent in Southampton, Long Island - clamming, fishing on my uncle's boat, off the dock of the family bungalow before celebrities moved in, I will never know. My Aunt Eileen, my favorite aunt, still living there, who gave me tootsie pops and encouraged me to love her beautiful Irish Setter, Tarah, back when I was a little kid, is on hospice care. In her 80's now and not doing well. My Uncle Bobby, pure Italian and a huge-hearted guy, is caring devotedly for her.

It makes me so very sad. Wish I were there right now, back in 1969. Sand dunes, the ocean kind. My beautiful aunt, my dad's older sister, who cared for him when he was a little boy, and so very Irish-looking with her fair skin and red hair. She has always been my queen, and you can also guess where the inspiration came for my daughter's name. The world then innocent, between my long dark hair and singing "Row Your Boat" while my Aunt Catherine (dad's sister) paddled me and a boatload of boys (cousins and brothers, I, the only girl) off the dock. I remember when my big cousin Carl rescued me from the ocean, when I sliced the bottom of my left foot open on a piece of glass, holding me close to his chest with kindness and love while I cried and cried. That memory has always sustained me.

I'm in the desert, California. Yeah. Far from the north Atlantic shore. So I spend my afternoon, in between spins on the stationary bike while reading a stack of tabloids, all these not-so-ancient celebrities going dead on us all at once and it's a full moon tonight, I was also just outside throwing a tennis ball for the dogs and watering my palm trees and hardy sunflower plants - my afternoon on the Internet, chatting on facebook and catching up on emails, it's nice to feel so connected to family and friends, colleagues, writers, even while spinning away in a healing solitude in my own summerly home. Phone calls and facebook. My mom, my brother John, my friend Ethan, the doctor's office. I answer none. When my friend Mike calls, we talk for an hour or more. In the mid-afternoon, bane of a July day, a wonderful young friend and poet, Zac, called. I talked to him, too, and we tossed about the idea of a group excursion to Deep Creek hot springs. He has a knack Later, Facebook, on and on, I change my profile pictures to ones of me smiling full-on, pictures from 2 or 3 years ago. It's all good. People comment on my silly phrases, and I comment on theirs. Feels coffee shop bonding-good.

Tarah and Alex stop by, Tarah gasps at the cost of tuition $$ she owes Pitzer College for that last semester when she came home early and forgot to un-enroll....apparantly she is converting to Catholicism, though from what, I don't know. I know, I forgot to get her baptized when she was born, but I was raised a strict Catholic, after all, never left the church. Well, well, well. They leave. The empty nest gets bigger and bigger all the time. Like there never were any birds living here, just some wasted tree with an unusable "V". Yeah, and that tree that fell down in my yard recently. Nature speaks. What exhalation from tonight's full moon?

Poetry readings. On the road, hugging wild mountains and shouldering through passes on two lane highways and wide freeways, very California, if you didn't already know. negotiating urban traffic jams and finding places on unfamiliar city streets. For a good part of the past two days. I drove the two hours back and forth from the low desert, over the Santa Rosa Plateau - Pinyon, Anza, down to Temecula on Hwy 74 and 371, then onto the I-15 south to Escondidio. Had a nice time and made some new friends - and met other poetry folks I already know. It was a good reading with some fine poets. Release party for the San Diego Poetry Annual, guess their coup this year was publishing a few poems by the noted Dorianne Laux. I was in an afternoon workshop with her in Palm Desert a few years ago, a wonderful day.

So I'm honored to have had my poem "Forest Falls" included, too. They were going to publish my poem "Falling Star," too, but it's rather long and there was a lack of room. Reading last night at Back to the Grind in Riverside, and also this Friday at Beyond Baroque as part of a lineup for Askew magazine contributors. I'm so happy to be back on board with this all. I'll be doing a guest poetry session, for the third year in a row, for my friend Don Kingfisher Campbell's Occidental College-upward bound program for teens. A lot of fun. I miss working with high school kids. Poetry readings, the people who turn out, the alt-culture generated, has become a central part of my life. It's so much better than TV or remote control.

Live
through
this

Palo Verde Part 3, two left in my yard

the Palo Verde legacy goes on....I even wrote a poem about them awhile back. A man named Lucino Leon, who does landscaping, and was connected to me by my kind neighbor across the street, cut the tree down on Monday morning. I stepped out through the gate rather early, and was surprised by the open space, the grind of a chainsaw, the tree already mostly down, and high cumulus clouds with a dark, widespread underbelly....humidity and a rain possibility and filtering sun. He'd already consumed half a huge thermos of ice water. I was on coffee, barely, in the tall cat mug that's missing its handles. A bit hot. What....does it mean. About my formidable ability to love, and miss, my faux trees? About my capacity to handle an emergency? About the idea that it's time for me to clear my view and move move move? The trees are falling down and dying for me, except for one, front and center and damn strong. A trilogy, a triage nurse has come and gone, a sort of Father Son and Holy Ghost, a wholesome nature-kind of menage a trois, now down to menage a deux.


view looking northeast....new view...of the golf course and Little San Bernardino Mountains, which mark the transition zone-line of demarcation between the westernmost fringe of the Colorado-Sonoran desert where I live, and the start of the higher, northern reaching Mojave Desert

and there is actually a nuclear power plant called Palo Verde, west of Phoenix. Hmm. I used to get a shiver down my spine when I'd pass it, south of the I-10, Oz-Land apparition with domed....reactors? scaping out of the middle of nowhere. It's 2.5 hours of flat open brutal desert, that I-10 from the River to Phoenix. I used to do it without A/C in my Jeep, when I lived in Arizona, frozen bottles of water packed on my neck, melting at an unbelievably rapid pace. Now I can barely handle summer in the hottest desert where I live, even with high-cranked AC in home and car.


the stump....


view of the gated front yard - a dead palo verde - was healthy until this spring. I think some type of nasty winged termite got into it and it withered away. One down, maybe one more to go, and then maybe I'll get the ladder out and get Alex and Tarah back and trim the one in the frontyard so I can back out of the driveway without my car paint getting scraped. It's one thing to get scratched while doing tricky manuevers on desert dirt roads, a little closer, say, to some cool trailhead or a little farther from whatever is weighing me down, edging out and honing in on clarity and a view so quite you might, perhaps (is this cliche?) hear the sun coming up, or the moon talking to you--and another thing to get scratched by some dumb overwatered tree in your, sigh, boring old driveway. Going into the desert. All these years. Better than meds, and who's to know, or care? What of all those holy men, Jesus, having visions in the desert and sparking a new religion that's thrived and endured for 2k years? The best place in the world, to listen for God. In fact, I have a friend, R, who sold his house in El Cerrito hills with a perfect view of the Golden Gate Bridge and he went way out there, a few years ago, with his prayer beads and a small bedroll in a 1974 Toyota pickup with a shell that only goes 60 mph at best, and no one has heard from him since.


and a desert flower for you - in my very own yard. It loves water and leftover coffee grounds, and I think some of that broken ceramic cat mug handle, maybe some beads from a necklace that exploded in the front yard one night somehow, are in its nestly little watering trench, too. The tree comes down on me. It was.