desert book advance publicity

Okay, I found this today, and it makes up for the vitriol of my previous blog entry from yesterday...or perhaps affirms all of that and takes me to some new dimension that I, the nervous emerging writer/editor, still struggle to recognize, let alone understand...this is all new to me, folks! Out here.....

http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/no-place-for-a-puritan-the-lit.html

Today's Brindle report: his physical therapy continues, he is the favorite dog in the hospital, and he is getting spoiled on a mix of canned and dry food (at home it's dog bone treats and dry good, although an expensive brand of chow so I don't feel too guilty.) His legs are moving, though he still can't quite stand on them.

Empty Nest update, today's Tarah report: better than yesterday, one of those "time is frozen" Sundays that we endure with increasingly August and September tension as the heat presses on and sometimes even gets worse....yes, it was Tarah, yesterday, sobbing at 4 pm. To reiterate, it was one of those "close" late summer days where you feel so shut in with dark curtains and A/C and sensory outside deprivation you may as well be in Nome, Alaska during December...sobbing....Alex was gone playing poker with friends, the kitty didn't want to hang out with her, she was sick of watching "lost" reruns on her laptop, the apartment was a mess, she was lonely.....and later, after I tried to convince her to visit me at the house, she called in a panic from the Shell station. Not only had she heard, at 9 pm, gunshots so loud that she'd hit the deck and fled (police and helicopter swarming the complex,) but she'd just locked her keys in the car. Good thing MOM paid for her Triple A card for a year.....I don't remember having one of those at 21....today is much better, I was a morning wreck, but she called at lunchtime from work, "everything is fine, and Alex apologized for not rushing home at 10 pm when I cut my foot on the kitchen table and thought I needed stitches." Oh, good. Nirvana once again. I can't wait for them to get married.

As for me. Online classes (three sections of 1B) are under control + I managed, after four hours of staring at the computer,to hack out my Eng 1A and creative writing syllabi. Do I detect a faint tremor of.....feeling okay about fall semester, after all? I have a great, if really packed, schedule of classes, and it's been my dream to teach creative writing, which I will be for the second year....so I can say it's all good, and time to toss that Mojave Green rattlesnake off the blanket on my chest. Hurl the whole thing, blanket and reptile, far across the room and jump and run!

And, I have a book coming out. I might be the lone ranger, walloping around an empty desert with a big three ring notebook of some 400 pages printed out, invisible to polite society, but there it is. I've rescued it from the dark corner of my hot garage, and I'm even going to take it to work tomorrow and build a shrine to it.

Brindle Update

Update on Brindle's inability to walk:
The vet from the neurological animal center just called....Brindle had an MRI to check his spinal cord and associated spinal fluids and membranes and bones of his skeleton - it appears to be something congenital that sometimes gives way, breaks, shards, in dogs. He is alert and doing well, and as sweet and friendly as ever with the staff there, and will be kept overnight and receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment to help him heal and regain his ability to walk. I'm so grateful he is at one of the best facilities in the country.

He has feeling in his toes, and can wag his tail a bit, all excellent signs. I was able to hold and pet him for about half an hour at 5:30 this morning....he laid his head on my lap and groaned and relaxed a bit...and is a favorite with the hospital staff. Then, I headed back to Palm Desert from the cool mist-fog of sunrise, Orange County on the wide-hipped "thick" 405 south up to the 55 to the 91, the Orange Crush, and the 215 to the 60 to the 10. There is something comforting in the hypnotic and shared freeway consciousness...the tangle of feeling and emotion between me and this dog, and my abandonment-heart, I've been anxious and nervous all day more than usual and not able to much sleep, and Shasta is staying close by, curled near me and worried about her little brother. In a way she's as much Brindle's mom as I am.

A stop in Mo Val at Denny's for a slippery breakfast and the strange entertainment of a car fire in a lot across the street, a strange car with a rear engine, not a Volkswagen, much smoke, people crowding around, the inevitable fire engine, no one hurt, the car didn't migrate into cumulus flame clouds and the car was left abandoned in the end, and no people, a nondescript donut shop, I drove home into the desert overwhelm, expanse sand and inexpensive light, too much for the eyes, and not long ago, the world made sense to me, daughters and the "little kids" were all at one with me and life was manueverable without smackdowns and grief at losing those I love, or is it just now that my heart has been so ripped open that I am finally able to feel, in a Buddhist angled windowpane, and all love flows in and out with breathing...of course to feel, to love, our hearts must steeple with compassion. We never really lose...we merge as one.

Phantom Seed on Poets & Writers database

This is wonderful....I just discovered that Phantom Seed is listed on the Poets and Writers database...no wonder I'm getting wonderful submissions and inquiries from all over the country and beyond. Issue #3, coming out in September and representative of authors from as far away as Denmark, is our best issue yet. Check back later on Phantom Seedlings for updates on Issue #3 readings throughout so-Cal this fall and winter!

http://www.pw.org/content/phantom_seed_magazine



Cover of Phantom Seed issue #1, spring 2008
shadows, February sunset, Thousand Palms Oasis

A big thanks to April Durham, my new co-editor and fab director of the Small Wonder Foundation in Riverside, CA, for her extensive work on the layout and design of our latest and greatest! I love the continuing desert-inland empire symbiosis of it all..

Prayer for Brindle + Good Thoughts

Please say ome prayers for my precious baby-boy dog, Brindle...I'm waiting for a quick toast snack and slamming a beer, yah I know it's wrong and illegal to drink a beer and then DRIVE but you probably would, too, I hardly drink ever and can barely restrain myself from slamming down a few shots of...vodka, something, though I don't even ever buy liquor.

I am about to rushing Brindle down to Fountain Valley to a dog neurologist. I just got back from the 24 hour vet's office to grab on overnight bag. He's only 3 1/2 years old, but I found him lying outside this evening on the back porch, unable to move his back legs and apparently in shock. Tarah and Alex came over and we managed to get him onto a sleeping bag (he weighs 100 lbs) and into the back of the car....the emergency vet in Indio has diagnosed him with some kind of neurological problem, possibly a slipped hernia, maybe a hereditary thing....

this is so UNREAL, it's 1:26 a.m. and we just got back from that vet's office and the vet in Fountain Valley, a 2 hour drive, is the only place that can treat him. He needs an MRI and further diagnosis and possibly surgery. The vet here gave him a pain shot, and I'm crying my eyes out, sorry for the shitty cliche but this is my BABY and my BOY and just tonight, earlier he was cheering up me and Tarah with antics and couch-hugs, and earlier this a.m. I awoke on my couch to see him on the other couch, claiming his sleep-in and giving me a big wagful of tail....this dog has the most love and sweetness and joy of any dog I've ever known.....

he was even wagging his tail earlier tonight and in so much pain. I am beside myself. Please think good thoughts for my Brindie-Boy. Thank you...will try to keep you posted. Gotta go.

Slouching Towards....

College of the Desert.....start of fall semester....the late-August-humid shuffle through unbelievably long distances in suffocation humidity/high temperatures....the fountain at mid-campus drained, and the rest of the place torn up, fenced off, construction and expensive new buildings in the midst of state economic collapse....unable to get cash from the ATM machine in cafeteria building....and brightly, a stack of Solstice 2006 with cosmic, vibrant, orange painting by a talented student and portrait artist from Thailand. It was exactly ten years ago, August, 1999 that I walked into a classroom filled with English 50 students, my first session at COD. Tarah was entering 6th grade at nearby Marywood Country Day School. I was renting a house on Silver Moon Trail in the Silver Spur neighborhood in south Palm Desert from my friend Bob Kretschmar, where I lived for three years.


"A Philosophy of Buddha and Three Daughters of Buddha" by Chusit Wijarnjoragij

Best of all, a new adjunct instructor, waiting to meet with the dean, sitting in a chair and thumbing through the book with great interest....flashback to my job interview at Cochise College in southern Arizona in 1998, when I was in a similar seat and waiting for my interview and was lured in by a copy of Mosaic, their lit-mag....my inspiration for generating the Solstice lit-mag program at COD, in fact! A beautiful repast.

City of Palm Desert Mural.....

Here I am, im-muralized as poetess laureate of College of the Desert....love the cosmic colors!



For more info on this painting - I'm a small part of a large mural that covers several walls - go to the City of Palm Desert public art site.....the mural on the wall of the library community room is online, along with a description of the project, which was painted by my friend, the artist Susan Evans....if you look REAL close, just to the left/below the exit sign in the photograph, you'll see me....reading from a book of poetry....yes, it's true! I've been immortalized as the COD poet laureate in this mural...I posed a few years ago for Susan while I was wearing a yellow shirt, and the book I'm reading from is a copy of the COD Solstice, the college lit-visual arts magazine I founded, issue #1. Dig it!

http://www.palm-desert.org/arts-culture/public-art/art-details?id=173