Reflections on a Wintry Storm

It doesn't feel like the desert. I was out this evening, getting take-out from Panda Express - mixed vegetables, noodles, and some kind of firey chicken dish, and somehow I ended up with three eggrolls - two veggie and one chicken - and I admit that I took a total of eight pairs of chopsticks in different colored packs. I have been dieting lately, living on pots of lentils and rice, on blueberries and nuts, and, well, chopsticks just work better with that and in this part of town (the entire region, I daresay) I can't think of a single place to buy chopsticks legitimately. Ah, it's just light pieces of bamboo, and very "go green" and low carbon-footprint, as well. Cheaper than running the dishwasher with a full rack of knives and forks. So there. And my headlights flashed, as I pulled into a parking spot, on the white contact lenses of a dark figure in a black hoody, waiting for the bus. Nouveau vampire, I suppose, in the town of the bourgeoise and very few in betweens. My friend, who's gone along for the ride with me, says, "don't look at that guy. Don't act scared." I laugh. I'm not. Either.

Dark night. Too cold, too damp. Wet streets. It doesn't feel like what should already be well into our desert winter "spring." Our sense of spring usually begins in late January, and by late February, flowers are starting to singe, days are creeping towards 90 degrees, and nights are fragrant with orange blossoms and a warm, dry balm. The big, 10-day-long Indian Wells tennis tournament, just a mile or two from my house and an early leg of the international tennis tour that leads to Forest Lawn and Wimbledon, is ready to go. That, along with things like the Bob Hope Golf Classic at PGA West, minus Mr. Woods this year, are our sort of local versions of the Olympics. I catch a real chill while pumping gas, a damp, cold, mountain wind heavy with moisture and the smell of nearby snow. A maroon Rolls Royce pulls in beside me while my friend runs into the mini mart to get dark chocolate Raisinettes. My 2005 Toyota Rav-4, flush with 105,000 miles and lots of off-roading experience, desperately needs to be cleaned. I emptied the trash earlier today, but there is a gob of melted chocolate on one of the rugs, and chunks of dirt from one of my many recent hikes on the floor. Time. I'm still looking for my 1099-R tax form for the 403(b) lump sum distribution I took out a few months ago (long story you don't want to hear) so I can get my 2009 tax return back, and it's a minor miracle that my fridge is clean but I still haven't written a new poem in days, or is it months?

And so in this odd dislocate, when I'm actually thinking of using the fireplace again, a night when the dogs will pretend to be invisible so I don't put them outside, I glue myself to the computer. To watch CNN news and youtube and weather channel videos and stories on the freaky spate of earthquakes and tsunamis and snowmaggedons that continue to plague. Mudslide on a Portugese Island, snow in San Antonio. First 8.8 earthquake in my lifetime, first all-California-coast tsunami warnings, 2 feet of snow smothering New York City. I've done a lot of starting at the computer screen in the last few days, on a sort of anticlimactic fatigue low. I took a day off work this past week and slept. Today, I was due at a poetry festival in North Hollywood, but woke up to rain and instantly fell back asleep until noon.

And I found myself almost malfunctioning while teaching Thursday's English 1A. Vaguely wandering into an adjacent classroom to find an erasable marker to write on the board with while my students wrote sample thesis statements and topic sentences for essay #1: argue for or against the good of the Internet. The other teacher....we exchange names..."oh, YOU're Ruth Nolan, with that new book, right? I've heard about you...." I promise to bring him one, he's a new adjunct recently graduated from the UCR MFA program. Of course this feels good! I realize I've been talking to him for five minutes, and roam back into my class and my students are laughing good naturedly at my obvious....spaciness. We're on good terms, me and them, fortunately, they know I am funny, as in entertaining in my teaching in a good way, I'm always getting them to laugh, so this is part of the program...right? The blissful way to higher education. Always.

So I, using youtube to find commercials to help my students identify the various persuasive appeals to teach them how this argument stuff works. How manipulated most of them have been, by our one-two visual-sales pitch punch since the day they were born. Or maybe the day after. ME, the no-TV-in-my-home defender since the day I left my parents' home at 17, am formally....addicted? Consumed by? Dependent on? All of the above? On my Internet connection. I may be a tragedy junkie, tears coming to me as I view scenes from Chile - and think back on those from Haiti posted just weeks ago - and shudder to hear the tsunami sirens in Hawaii, where I visited a month and a half ago. Or I may just be human, concerned about the tragedies occurring in the world, just like I am so deeply affected by my college students' plights, with our school a budget-hungry mess and none of us knowing where the cuts are going to bite in more deep than they already have, who is going to steer this storm-pitched boat across the moody and imposing sea to the next uknown shore. Navigating without the technologies we've always know, or the cash.

It's been a whirlwind past few months. For me personally, for those around me, for the world, as we all know. My book launch, several launches, that is: at the Riverside library on December 5th - UCR-Palm Desert on January 29th - again at the Riverside library on a warm February 13 for UCR Writers Week - and the talk I gave for our College of the Desert campus recently, to which only three people came, one of them my loyal and good friend Jean Waggoner, who I've taught with for the past ten years. Mind pinioned with the weight of trying to live up to the book's scope and delivery: upcoming lectures at the La Quinta, Corona, and Palm Springs libraries, as well as a slot on a panel of writers and my friend and mentor Malcolm, who's moderating, at the upcoming Western Wilderness Conference 2010 in Berkeley. Papers I need to fill out for that. Exciting news from Heyday that the California Voices reading with me and two famous authors is a "go" for this May - and that little voice in my head, how did I get to this? Can I step into these new shoes? Or should I run for the open desert with my North Face two person backpacking tent, a few gallons of water, and my boots, and disappear until I can breathe again?

Back to the stuff that seems more within my "normal" realm. Scraping together a few readers and workshop leaders for the 2010 brand new Joshua Tree Writers workshop, which I'm coordinating for the UCR CA Museum of Photography photo shoot, Dry Waterfall, (I think that's the correct name) this April. Need to return a phone call to my friend Susan Sorrells in Shoshone, CA to coordinate books sales at the Shoshone Museum, where she's the curator. And so on. A mixed miasma of weather, new patterns, and the ups and downs, I'm learning, of my pursuit of the fulltime writers life. One day I'm featured in the press, and the next I'm cuddled on the couch at home with the dogs, wondering if I should buy new straps and take my canoe down to the Salton Sea, go snowshoeing on top of the tram. Call my friend Cyrus in Ashland, Oregon (which I do tonight) or do the easy thing: jump on the mountain bike and take a long cruise around town. Like I did yesterday near sunset. I got on Tarah's mountain bike - my choice, one of three sets of wheels I have - and rode 6 miles to my favorite city park art bench, a tribute to Spain and all good things Spanish, laid in mosaic tile on a corner near a field that leads to UCR-Palm Desert campus on one side, and a high-end RV park on the other - and sit near the mosaic head of Salvador Dali, my favorite piece. Lean the bike against one low wall, run my fingers over the large smooth tile that constitutes the better half of Christopher Columbus' beard, wishing he'd never been, and having a much-anticipated, hour long therapy session with my doctor, who lives in Riverside.

Watching the sun go down, sketching the near-full-moon with my imagination, sensing the train that rumbles nearby, between the rows tamarisk trees planted on each side of the Southern Pacific Railroad, adjacent to Interstate 10. Trees that aren't native here, and are a nuisance, sending deep roots far into the water table that can't be entirely cut out. Trees that always grow back. Like my own uneasy feel for the increasingly unstable world we are all in. Is it too much mirror-effect with instant visual coverage via this Internet? Has it always been this way, or is the world closing in on itself insansely?

Trim it all back and see a clear day, a world that makes sense. Look around. The sky is different than it used to be. Or maybe I just didn't experience winter back then. Or it's just another fluke wet cold winter, like, say, in 1933. Before I was born. And then, log online, and read an article that says tsunami warning canceled in Japan, and then realize that was posted LAST night, and that was for a 7.0 quake that struck off the coast Friday, click again, and here it is, yes, the udpate, a 9 foot wave expected to hit the Japanese coast tonight, from the Chilean earthquake, and now I'm getting Haiti and Chile confused in the footage and I'm not sure where to send the 10 bags of clothes I have marked for giveaway in my garage or sure which bike I'll ride next time I slide out, to get away from the house, the piles of student papers waiting to be read, the piles of desert book promotional materials and places that want me to read at waiting to be addressed.

I know my top priority is returning my newly-married daughter's three phone calls from just a little while ago, urgently waiting to be fed, and she was here the other night, a little drunk and crying for her favorite teddy bear, Curly, that she's had since she was a little girl, and hugging tightly to her chest the tiny pink Dior bear her aunt Mary gave to me at Tarah's baby shower before T was born, back in the designer 80's when everyone was rich. The one with a little rattle inside its soft exterior. Me, finding a calm within this ongoing mother-daughter storm, and helping Tarah to her car, hugging her, wiping her tears, and gently telling her to go home, to her apartment two miles away, where Alex would be sure to be waiting for her and tuck her into bed, something I can't do anymore.

How I didn't cry, eludes me. But those pictures of Chile today, and the shivery fear of what an 8.8 quake must have felt like, still traumatized by childhood memory of the 6.4 in Sylmar when I was a little kid, my God, that one was like a train running through my room - Chile must have been a three minute nuclear bomb. And this rain, filling in for what chokes deep inside of me. The desert, not what it usually is, and in my garden I can't tell the weeds from the nasturtiums and lettuce and watermelon and carrots I've planted, just have to let them all go and wait for a drier day. A day without pelting rain and wind, a day that relinquishes uncertainty to calm.

Time...for hot cranberry tea and reading the tabloids, maybe watching black and white LA noir film clips from the 40's on youtube on my beloved laptop, rubbing Brindle on his big, warm ears and scratching beneath his mug, where he can't scratch with his hind legs anymore, because of the spinal cord injury and temporary paralysis that broke my heart last August. On top of all these breaks, these breaks, with what I once thought I was so sure of. One day you're on the Pacific Plate, the next, on the Continental Shelf, and where I am now, somewhere in between drifting on an old, ancient sea floor. In, this new type of desert. Goodnight to all. Sleep well.

Warners Hot Springs, Anza Borrego, Kumeyaay Indian Village Site

Just returned today from a weekend visit to Warner Springs (homeland of the Cupa Indians) which is on one of the old California roads, between San Diego and Palm Springs, in mountains that aren't too high or too low.....and along the old Butterfield Stage Coach Route, earlier the de Anza Spanish Trail, and for centuries, an ancestral Indian trail for many known and unknown crossings: grooved into the land like butter nestled in the slivers of bread between the air and crust.


the spring where water begins.....

An amazing place. Left Palm Desert late Saturday afternoon, traversing Seven Level Hill, Highway 74, a vertical 4,000 feet in less than 15 minutes, and taking extra care; four lives have been lost in two horrific car accidents up there in the past two weeks. Very sad. I never answer the cell phone and don't even listen to the stereo on this road, not even my NASA deep space healing tone CD, which always soothes. Whisk past Carrizo Road. Movie Star Homes Up Here, hidden from the road.


south towards the Salton Sea....from the hilly roads....with ancient sea level imprinted on the low rocks, in front of the little dam....I have two friends who live on large family date and citrus ranches near there...

Entered a dark cloud zone, and suddenly, the mountain town of Anza, stopped for water and a diet coke - and a sudden whim to buy five various types of candy bars and a pack of starbursts and the movie Borat on DVD - as well as a lighter. Cold, winter weather and people dressed like Montana. Instant winter.

And left on the turn in the town of Aguanga heading south - instead of going to Temecula - past an olive vineyard offering free samples of virgin oil, and into a charming town called Sunshine Summit, where I always stop at Ocean's Burrito Restaurant. And through the thicket called Oak Grove, and past the 1830, adobe hilltop Catholic Church. Warner Springs, with its Olympic size 104 degree hot spring pool, and quaint cabins. Nothing quite like gathering six spaghetti floaties and drifting on my back, watching the occasional plate of stars appearing through moving clouds....nothing like drizzle on the face while neck deep in 10 feet of hot water....and more...

a day trip south through a tiny town called San Felipe....on the old de Anza Historical Trail. Rain has just smashed the mud a little further down, more water on top, it's just downpoured here. Through Earthquake Valley. Stop at a little market for a huge bag of potato chips and a solitary twin-blade razor.


I hike the mile to the pictographs - remnants of puberty rites of young Kumeyaay Indian girls. Similar colors and shapes are also found on rocks near Idyllwild and in Joshua Tree National Park and throughout the Santa Rosa/San Jacinto Monument. A cold wind, scarf from an Indian fashion show in Palm Springs around my head. I'm alone, same spot where in 2008 the cover shot for my poetry chapbook "Dry Waterfall" was taken, when a group of 40 or so hiking men approaches...one photos me. Thanks!


And the ride home....the next day....patchy rain and skies of clear...I've driven to the top of Santa Rosa Mountain before, on a very long dirt road that takes more than an hour to climb. One hot summer day Tarah and I rescued a non English speaking hiker, who'd been abandoned by his friends after an all night party with Tequila on top - with gatorade and directions to the highway to Temecula - a long walk - about 10 more miles, we said.


And back to the low desert again - family of barrel cactus - warm - didn't even rain here while we were gone and the house looks untouched. The dogs wag me in the door.

Ruth and Brindle, Today

one of my favorite things to do with Brindle, my big lunka-dog who is always, always making me laugh and inspiring me....tonight, he found a little "shelf" on the overhang between my memory foam mattress and the bed mattress beneath it, where he rested his chin....on the floor, you see, I took my wooden bed apart and hijacked Tarah's old mattress. Brindie sleeps on the floor in my room at night and Shasta on a warm blanket, with water, in the garage, because she has a habit of waking up and waking me up at 3 a.m. precisely each night if she's in my bedroom so she can go outside, and just when I'm falling alseep again, she'll scratch at the sliding door.

Anyway, my mom and aunt Jeanne came by this afternoon on their way home from a trip to Laughlin. They marveled at my new iron front gate - with a deadbolt and key, that that! - and the tippiness of a starting-to-bloom, high-as-the-roof cactus whose genus and name I do not know, pink kisses with brisks of yellow, pollenating frills.

And so, my aunt took a picture of me reminding Brindle to be very, very nice in taking his dog treat....I trained him as a puppy in his big metal-barred cage, to always be super gentle when taking treats or food from a person's hand, good thing because now his mouth is big enough to wrap around the calf of my ankle. Good thing he is nice. That is my mom, Beverly, in the background, taking a lesson from me.

Brindie! Making us all laugh. Good Boy!!

Feb 15 Spring Has Arrived, Low Desert

We've had weeks of colder than normal weather, well months....as I recall it's been a big chill since November...December....big chill for us. Lots and lots of rain. Yesterday was the first day for these few months that have felt warm and dry, and hyperbolic amounts of sunlight that alternately have made me feel energized and exhausted. A little frantic in the garden, planting the first batches of nasturtiums and carrots and lettuce and watermelon and desert wildflowers. And more than little irritated that my hot tub motor/pump went out. According to Dave, my longtime loyal and cool friend/pool guy, the motor I need isn't even manufactured anymore. And I finally got my yard cleaned, first time in two years. A shock to see the ground, and no citrus rat nests this year under the machete'd off bougainvellia. The citrus trees aren't so wild-eyed. I've helped them birth, down to the last fruit, which lingered long in this season's european monastery; the greenery is lush and about to pop into flowers and hatchling more fruit, which will take almost a year to ripe.

Oh yeah, and I got a new gate put on today! An iron thing, iron bars painted black, the dogs puzzling over their new view of the outside world. The last version of my gate was nailed on by Jeff a year or two ago, a rather lopsided conconction that finally, weeks ago, popped out. The guys who built today's iron fence came by a week ago and nailed the old one shut, because the dogs almost nailed the mean neighbor across the street one day while I was at work. Note from the dog catcher to secure my dogs in the yard. Too much rain, swollen wood, dogs jumping on it. The original gate, a pretty, sculptured thing made of too-thin balsa or something, gave way when my stalker busted it down, just before he entered my yard and threw his pomeranian dog through the doggie gate in an effort to make me laugh and gain entry. I think Jeff was there that night, too. The gate in all its incarnation has many stories. And the wood that Jeff bought for his version and so neatly measured and trimmed with his skillsaw is now leaning against my stucco wall and I don't know what to do with it.

UCR Writer's Week desert book reading + panel discussion was a charm. It was wonderful. Malcolm met me for lunch at Relish deli in Riverside, and we strolled through Back to the Grind, and to the library, and were met from the door by friends of mine. Friends I didn't know were friends, but who now are, which makes me happy and also surprised. Michael Jayme of UCR and a terrific writer did a great job moderation; Deanne and Tod were awesome; Mario of Inlandia + Mike + my awesome friend Allison from Laguna Beach who came all the way to Riverside! - held it together and sold a lot of books, and I gave away my last copy of Phantom Seed issue 3. I read my desert poetry and got to espouse the finer points and sophisticated essence of the greater chapters of Puritan. We had fun at the Grind afterwards, along with another friend Mike, laughing and joking and eating grilled cheese and cheesecake....nice to say hi to Darren, who invited me back to do a poetry reading 'anytime I like." Laughing tonight as I read a funny pantoum written by one of my creative writing students where he pokes fun at being a Puritan in the desert.

I need to sew a large button back onto my new black trenchcoat....iron 13 shirts....look for socks....I took the handlebars of my mountain bike off with an allen wrench to try to adjust it for a higher ride and now my front tire is on crooked and I can't get it right...my cell phone has lost its capacity to text message and I'm now out of touch with a handful of new "text friends" I developed recently...I bought a beautiful cut of salmon at Ralphs and burned it when I left it cooking and got lost in English 1A online stuff....but the good stuff was salvageable and it has gone down nicely 2nite with organic skim milk + organic vegan chocolate chip cookies.

I've had a blazing migraine all day, and yesterday I took a very long bike ride to sand dunes and lay on my back and looked south to Point Happy, rocks still outstanding the Del Taco restaurant at this old Cahuilla Indian Village site - and also the shoreline of ancient Lake Cahuilla. I experienced my 2nd earthquake in one year in the Riverside library 2nd floor auditorium on Saturday - and my dad gave me a teddy bear for Valentine's Day. Chatting with my friend Cyrus this evening - he was just driving over the CA-Oregon border, en route home to Ashland from a weekend in Santa Cruz. A friend is visiting and he's watching a Quentin Tarantino movie in my living room while I type this.

Tarah's entire bedroom has been cleaned out, even the carpets, and by some miracle, the carpet guy got some unmentionable stains out of it (like where Tarah's cat died, and where Brindle had an accident, and where Tarah herself spilled glasses of red wine and a bowl of spaghetti and so forth, you know, those touchy adolescent years) and everything from the bedroom is sitting on my front porch until I figure out what to do with it. Except for her bed. I've dismantled the frame and am sleeping on her old mattress on my bedroom floor, on top of a slice of expensive and soothing memory foam I bought at Costco with my new membership (a long story on that one, since I've rebelled against getting a Costco card all my adult life, until now, and yeah, it involved a guy and the shock of finding myself at the checkout with a $900 bill for stuff I didn't realize I'd put in the cart...including 6 months of 2012/possible crash of the dollar any day now survival food, like 10 lbs of quinoa, 100 power bars, 42 cans of progresso chicken and wild rice soup, a 5 lb bag of dried mangos, 200 lbs of dog food, large bites for big dogs.....12 cases of perrier water in grapefruit, lemon, lime and orange flavorings.....a carton of organic omega three nut and fruit mix in nifty three hundred calorie, protein and good carb packets, say, for a designer lunch....2.5 lbs of organic lavender tinged flaxseed oil, and much more....thanks to the guy....he's looking out for me....but he'd kill me if I told you his name.)

I'm inundated by super white skinned (but with a flush of too much red atop, too much sun too quick and very, very bad for the skin cancer cause) always larger than size 12, pointedly not-botoxed by sometimes face lifted.... Canadians.... Seattleits.... Chicagoans....Oregonflights...etc...have all landed at Palm Springs airport together and I think they were all walking out at McCallum Grove this past weekend, swooning over creosote bushes and having heart palpitations at the wonder of a scraggly smoke tree in a not so dry wash....like they all arrived at once on February 1st or something. Avoid the stores until evening, avoid restaurants, avoid popular hikes, and try not to drive.

Bed. Never before 1 or 2 am. So, that gives me 8 minutes here. I'm so glad I have a job where I don't have to be there until 12 noon and only on Tuesday and Thursday. Tarah calls me when she's getting off work at 5 pm each day, and my day is only getting started....

Feb 8th

The star is back in my sky and my mattress is on the floor of my room. More space, deeper heart, NASA inner space recordings playing on the PC speakers hour upon layered midnight. Guide.

Amazing, rugged hike in the Santa Rosa/San Jacinto Mountains yesterday afternoon, on the other entry into wilderness on the Boo Hoff Trail - last weekend, entered from the mouth of the La Quinta cove - what magic! what power and awe, even to my well hiked eyes....instead of watching the super blow. At the end of one of the canyons that lead in from the desert. Soft and articulate shadows blending the lowering sun. The day after rain, and the desert plants are green, and starting to flower. Early desert spring. It could be 100 degrees next month. But for now, oranges are sweet, flowers hold their promises, and the wild desert lavendar bushes smell of delight. I picked a few sprigs...I could feel and hear them hum. An old Indian trail, I'm told. The plants are full of personality, so alive. In the deep wilderness zone.

And tonight, Brindle ate two giant crowns of broccoli and a few licks of cilantro, plus some mashed sweet potato. He has a full bowl of dog food. He's gone vegan on me.
I love my memory foam mattress.

Wilderness pictures, soon to come.

And I must add that the Puritan/desert book reading last Friday, January 29th at UCR-Palm Desert campus was an awesome event! The lineup proper included me, Jo Scott Coe, Juan Felipe Herrera, Tod Goldberg, Judy Kronenfeld, Rebecca K O'Connor, Julie Paegle, Susan Straight and Deanne Stillman. Hurrah! Thanks, Inlandia Institute personnel for helping make this stellar on a deep winter desert night!!!

Now I'm rolling up my sleeves for our next event, UCR Writers Week, Saturday Feb 13, downtown Riverside Library, 2-4 pm. Panel reading + discussion and Malcolm Margolin, my publisher from Heyday Books, will be joining us!!

Yours Truly. What I wished for, came true. Dreams, Memories, Reflections.

I'm Here!

It's Saturday, February 6, a rainy and soggy day in the desert of southern California, Coachella (conchilla) valley to be more zoned in and I've made my way back to my desert blog, at long last!

So. So much in the past few months since I've last posted here. Life and the business of living, of family, of connecting and directing and just resurrecting sometimes descends and wraps around us all like these El Nino visitors, huge circuses of clouds and damp desert, wildflower beginnings are damped down by more rain and yet more rain in this already-record year. Early February, because I remember this weekend a year ago exact, is full of drizzle and over-hanging orange and lemon trees in Thermal and Coachella, and packed with Canadians and ex-California, now-Oregon and Washington seasonal residents, shopping at posh Ralph's on Country Club across from the 7 Star Marriott in Palm Desert is a bit of a hash.

For the first time in three years, I've basically been home! Wow, a real concept. I've only been to the Inland Empire side of the mountains once or twice since the New Year began. So, I helped coordinate and partake in my daughter Tarah's elegant wedding to high school sweetheart Alex on Saturday, January 16, the last sunny and warm day in the desert before all the rain began. Timing. Everything was beautiful about it, and Tarah pulled off real glamour. St. Francis Church in La Quinta,a priest who has the same name as her famous Sioux Indian agent three-greats-grandpa Major James Mc Laughlin, and it knitted the Nolans together in a way we haven't glamored in years. All of us, the parents and brothers looking sharp and full of wit in the front row of the church. Trilogy golf club resort also in La Quinta, overlooking a faux lake and stunning desert crag mountains as the son went down. Not into the water, but down to his knees to show his love for Tarah. We had real glamour pictures, a la brother Jerry's friend Pablo who is a celebrity and fashion photog in L.A. and I'll post my due share of them here!

January was also a month of family! My 2nd cousin Una, one of a huge clan of Irish relatives who live in western Ireland, county Donegal, was here for a few weeks and I had the great pleasure of doing lots of hanging out and touring her through Joshua Tree Park on a super rainy day, unto a full rainbow over the town of Joshua Tree at sunset! Pictures also forthcoming. And January was a month of Hawaii. I went to Honolulu for five days and didn't get stung by a jellyfish and did eat at awesome Japanese restaurants and did shop at Macy's and did hang out at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and did a lot of bike riding over near Diamond Head. I missed my flight on a Thursday night out of LAX so I stayed at the Palos Verdes Inn in Redondo Beach, a very affordable and little-known, cool place that my family's stayed quite a bit over the years and done family reunions, just 20min from the airport, and managed to get on a standby in the morning - getting on that plane and flying away felt like the most cush thing I've done in a few years. Back then, a few years ago, I took really nice trips and vacations, with Tarah, all the time, two weeks of camping, weeklong river rafting trips, visits to family on the East coast, on the glam sand dune shores of the Carolinas....so...circling and cycling back around again to the time when I got away and relaxed! It didn't hurt matters that I got a super cheap price on my package deal to Hawaii, and had a bit of money saved for that trip as I've not gone anywhere in so long! Hurrah!

Aside from that. The Desert Book is out, and I've done a few events! Riverside Library on December 5th, and it was well attended and we sold a lot of books + January 29th here at UCRiverside Palm Desert campus, where we sold a lot of wine and I was extremely priveleged to sit in the front row next to the great Susan Straight! And share a stage with her. Invites to lecture and read: Saturday the 13th for UC Riverside Writers Week, which is another huge honor, a Western Wilderness Conference in Berkeley in April, Palm Springs Library, and more....can I keep up? I have an assitant now, an amazing creative writing student of mine, and it seems we've barely scratched at it. Another assistant helping me with some college-related duties, my brother John planning our parents' 50th wedding anniversary for June, singlehandedly, well, with his girlfriend who is great at that kinda stuff and has more time than me, and another friend helping me clean and clear out the house, ie Tarah's old bedroom. We pulled all the furniture and waist-high bags and boxes and had the carpet cleaned (organically, of course) and the empty room made me cry. More than that, stunned me. The rest of the house is next. Even having the yard thoroughly cleaned and stuff hauled away and all the trees cut and trimmed this past week blew my mind - stuff piles up and we resent it, for sure - but when we just swath it aside - is it easy to let go? Memories. Do they sustain us or drain us? Tough questions of the 40-something years.

More coming soon and particularly pictures and more desert vibes but for now. A catch up to the hologram of my inside out halfway there and halfway finished life and centerpoint, and the rainbows run through it all. True. I saw another one on my office wall today, and the one last week was on my topographical, wall-hung California map....and it fell on the desert.

Your friend and literary muse on this soothing and somewhat stuffy, unfamiliary clinging damp, with a few potshots at stars, Saturday night. -- Ruth