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Ruth Nolan Encourages Workshop Participants to Speak Out About Suicide

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A blog from: The Staff of Poets and Writers

Posted by RW Blogger on 4.26.13

The (In)Visible Memoirs Project runs no-cost, community-based writing workshops throughout the state of California, with the aim of creating a literary landscape that pushes back on dominant literary discourse’s exclusionary practices. Between January and April, writer Poets and Writers supported writer Ruth Nolan taught an (In)Visible Memoirs workshop at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California. Project director Rachel Reynolds writes about the workshop.

The thing about invisibility is that there are real risks to refusing its cloak. Invisibility counts on these risks for its effective deployment. Anyone who has found their space at the periphery—which is more of us than not—knows how terrifying it can be to push back the curtain and demand to be counted. As the person at the helm of programming for the (In)Visible Memoirs Project, I am constantly awed by how many people—instructors, participants, and community sponsors alike—are ready to let their stories ring out.

According to the AFSP (American Foundation for Suicide Prevention), nearly 40,000 people took their own lives in 2010. In the same year, the AFSP identified nearly 460,000 attempted suicides. Tallied together, roughly half a million people navigated suicide directly in 2010. The lives of countless others were impacted too, as friends and family of those directly involved struggled to walk this terrain.

When professor Ruth Nolan responded to my call for new (In)Visible Memoirs Project workshops this past fall, she wrote, “All too often, suicide survivors become victims, too, of social prejudices and judgments, and having experienced this myself, I have come to realize there is a huge need to give suicide survivors a safe and productive space to write, identify, and heal.” We leapt at the chance to support her in her goal of providing the first-ever workshop for people who live in the Palm Desert region and have lived with the impact of suicide.

Ruth Nolan is a force. A professor at College of the Desert in Palm Springs, she teaches writing and literature in addition to advising the college literary magazine. She is a widely published poet and prose writer, and an editor to boot. Armed with both personal experience and the chops required to deftly usher writers into a carefully crafted safe space, we knew she would provide a transformative experience for her workshop participants. What we could never have predicted, though, was just how far she’d take them or how essential the space she held was.

Meeting with seven participants—who spanned a forty-year age range and various social and ethnic identities—Ruth discovered that many of them had either wanted or been invited to speak at public suicide awareness events in the region but then felt their story was too dark, or worse, been asked not to share it. Immediately, Ruth made space for sharing these stories a workshop priority. What began as a shedding of silence within the confines of workshop meetings gained momentum and bloomed into multiple readings at public events. As I write this today, Ruth and members of her workshop have just finished recording some of their work for radio broadcast. From silence to center stage in the course of a twenty-hour workshop—Ruth and her workshop participants are writers of the fiercest sort.

Photo:L to R: Darlene Arciga, Tim Johnson, Kimberly Martinez, & Ruth Nolan. Credit: Ruth Nolan.
Major support for Readings/Workshops in California is provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Additional support comes from the Friends of Poets and Writers.

April, Me, And A Common Poorwill.....

It's April 2013, and just as I have in many an April past, since I've lived in the exotic desert climate in one of California's hottest deserts, in the Coachella Valley,  I hear tonight the chirping, mid-night mating song of a lone bird, known as a Common Poorwill, indigenous to this part of the desert.

There's one here in my neighborhood - just one in this desert block, which seems right on the mark, since this is a bird that claims a wide territory, room for only one bird, and it's not clear to me if its a female or male. It's been one year exactly since I heard the midnight April song of this very same species of bird, the song of another long-flyer making its dark, cheerful song,  one year since  I moved out of my house on California Drive in the Palm Desert Country Club, a nice, open ceiling, tile-floored house I owned for ten years. And it sort of feels like I got a divorce, or like I'm reminiscing over the bittersweet territory of a lost, long-term love relationship, with all is good and bad components entwined.

Last April, at this exact time, before the dogs and cat and I were learning to negotiate life in the much-smaller, one bedroom duplex that we are living in now, I was spending every minute of my week-long spring break from my teaching job, as well as a few extra days on either side of that week, packing, sorting, renting a Uhaul, gathering moving help, doing the hard physical work of lifting, loading, unloading and cleaning, and generally wondering if I had completely lost my mind, or if I was making the wise passage  into a new, lightweight and creatively transformational phase of my life (i.e., carving out more time to write, something I'd been dreaming of for years; freeing myself from the financial burden of a steep monthly mortgage payment; making a clean break with a tricky and fairly troubling chapter of my life, and so forth.)

Most people I mentioned this house-selling thing to weren't exactly enthused. Most grew quiet, and I could see the look of sympathy cross their brows, even if they smiled and said "what a wonderful change!"  Many came right out and asked if I was in foreclosure; I could tell that most assumed, even when I assured them otherwise, that this was an unfortunate thing; that it probably had to do with me not being able to afford the house anymore. Not the truth. It was never cheap, it was never easy, but it wasn't cheap. Owning a house! The American Dream! And for a single-parent, single woman! Almost a miracle!

So why did I sell my house, and was it the right thing to do?

My house. It wasn't my dream house, but it was my house, as good as any and the pleasant place of many good hours of sleep. Most of all, it was my sense of security: the satisfaction of making a commitment to my first long-time home; the safety of knowing, until the whole world changed, that I had a terrific financial investment I could draw on when the time was right, my back-up plan, should all else fail.  the problem with this American Dream is that it did fail, and it failed hard. Not only once, but several times, in a slow-sequence, slow-rewind type of repeat, something I'd never dreamed was possible, until it was in my face. Like so many others, I lost my investment - although grateful and fortunate that I hadn't invested a down payment in the home -, and sadly had to accept that the considerable nest egg I had relied on in my mind could no longer sustain my sense of financial security into old age.

I also had to face the facts: for far too long, I'd been sinking far too much money into a high monthly mortgage, an investment that now had no viable return for what I was putting in out of my hard-earned wages.  I'd done everything right: I could afford it, and my interest rate was fixed at a terrific low rate, but it was still squeezing far too much money out of my earnings, even as I was losing side work I'd relied on, teaching workshops and other side gigs in addition to my full time job as a professor,  due to a tight economy. In addition, the house needed work. I'd bought it almost brand new, but after ten years, it was time for costly repairs. It seemed like I was always consumed by something or other: removing the spent-out dishwasher, and living with a gutted-out-hole under the counter for a year, after deciding I didn't want to invest $500 on a new one; fixing a broken drawer; and replacing the front gate to the tune of $700 when the old wooden one finally caved in. I even ended up cutting down (with expensive, hired help of course), the three giant, needle-armed palo verde trees in my front yard. One split in half one night and fell across the driveway; another blew over in a rogue windstorm; the third was felled by a termite infestation. As a single woman, struggling to keep home ownership together by myself, financially and physically, it all just got to be too much.

There were also other factors. I went through a string of wild-eyed, completely enthralling and then debilitating love relationships in that house, that left me depleted and more alone than I ever could have imagined I'd be. My only child grew up, got married, and moved away. More loneliness and a sense of abandoned grief. I endured, for more than five years, vicious, hating, harassing neighbors from across the street who took every opportunity they could to yell at me, scream *fuck you*, call the police on my barking dogs and many other imagined things, and even throw eggs at my car, and friends' cars, when left in the driveway. California Drive was also a busy street, a sort of thruway cutting through a neighborhood between busy avenues, and the constant traffic, as well as the heavy traffic noise from a nearby 6-lane boulevard, always made me feel a bit on edge. Right before I put the house up for sale, too, there was a drive-by shooting in the street in front of my house. Increasingly, it felt like a scary place to live, especially by myself.

My house. At 76530 California Drive. It was a house built of stucco, a house with a red tile roof, a house with a wall around the back and side yards and most of the front, a house with three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a two-car garage, a nice patio and a pool. It was my house, and now it's not.  In a short, six-month period, the first half of the year 2012, I went into an all-too-familiar downward de-mobilizing of living circumstances and business status, like millions of other Americans have also done since the stock market crashed in September, 2008. It was something I'd never imagined; like all others such as I from the tail end of the Baby Boom/leading edge of Generation X crowd (born in the early to mid 1960's), I'd only ever known the sharp, ever-steady curve of upward mobility my entire life, and jumping blithely into owning my first home at age 38 had seemed so easy. Agonizing about whether to sell or not to sell, during a three-year period, and finally deciding on doing a short sale,  was anything but easygoing. It cost me many tears, many sleepless nights, and lots of pages of what I see now as completely unnerved and on-the-edge poetry that I wrote during this time.

This year, I often find myself missing what still feels like my home. As oppressive as owning that house had become  - the list of repairs and problems is endless - the carpets were thrashed and needed replacing; the pool pump was shot and the hot tub heater was broken; I had been enduring a horrific citrus rat invasion that I couldn't curb, no matter how many instant-zapper traps I set out during that last summer that I lived there (22 rats dead in three months, and more still coming!) it was still my home, and a part of my is in deep mourning for what I willingly parsed away. Another part of me is in a sense of all-too-buoyant relief - the kind of relief you get when you've been carrying a heavy backpack uphill on a hike, and put the pack down, and almost spring out of your socks from the release of the weight. it's a sense of freedom, lightness, but it's almost too much to bear, like staying out in the sun at the beach far too long, knowing you're getting sunburned, far more than the tan you thought you deserved.

I miss a lot of things. Things that I'll never get back. Loss, and losing things, was the reason I sold the house, made a run for it - as fast as a person can do, when negotiating what to do with ten years of accumulated things that had added up between my daughter and I....I miss my daughter, of course. It was the house she grew up as a teenager and young adult in. I miss the pool parties, I miss the citrus trees and palm trees that I nurtured and watered; I miss the garden I cultivated. I sometimes think about the Christmas tree that I planted outside the living room window after the holiday season in 2004; it was only five feet high and easily managed when I planted it, and over 30 feet high and still covered with my loving decoration of permanent outdoor ornaments by the time I moved. I miss the bare-boned palappa, a wooden-framed structure over my old patio, which had at one time been completely covered with palm fronds; with every big windstorm, a few more fronds had blown off. By the time I moved, there were only three withered fronds left. 

I miss the *fuck you* that I scratched into a bedroom wall one night in an angry-at-a-missing-lover rage, and I miss the holes I kicked into the stucco walls the few times I had bad news I couldn't bear. Like the time my partner, who was living with me for a good two years out of that latter ten, committed suicide, leaving one day with a gun, never to return. Like the time my daughter told me she'd had been date raped by a boyfriend, months after it happened and the perpetrator long gone. Like the time a man who romanced me and asked me to marry him (I said yes, in a loving blaze) disappeared on me without a trace. I had a stalker for several years, necessitating a restraining order and a good measure of fear, as well.  But I lived life in that house, and I lived it long and hard, I lived it with people, with lovers and family and friends, I lived it in quiet peace and in raging arguments, I lived it alone in tears and overwhelming feelings of abandonment, I lived it in the giddy uplift of a poem well written, of a book edited, published, and praised, and no one can ever take that away. Even though it often felt, and still feels, like ghosts now haunt me down, the way they rabidly search for the spoils of Halloween, there is something firmly rooted in my memories of the house on California Drive, good times, loving times, hopeful times, and all of the stuff in between, the stuffing and bits and pieces that life is actually, and richly, made of. Sort of like an awkward, but tenacious and tough, bird's nest, the place where the tired songbird goes to rest at dawn, after a full-throated night.

Now, I'm in a small place, a very nice part of town, paying half the monthly payment in rent as I was straining to pay on my former mortgage. I'm  in a much quieter neighborhood than where I was before.  I'm still not used to it. Half of my things have been in storage for the past year, including my extensive collection of books, which is becoming more difficult to do without. It feels so strange to have to call and negotiate with a landlord when I need something fixed, although a relief. Before I moved here last September - to a part of Palm Desert I lived in when I first moved here in 1999, prior to buying my house -, I spent several months living first in a one-room studio, and then a month staying at my parents' condo, dogs and cat and all, while they were traveling in Europe; during all that time, I basically lived out of a few suitcases. The thing is, it felt good to live like that, and I had a sense of adventure and forward momentum I hadn't experienced in a long time.

This feeling has faded, and I admit it's been a rather strange past seven months. It's April 2013, one year exactly after I moved out of my house on California Drive in the Palm Desert Country Club, a house I owned for ten years. I still don't feel grounded, and I still don't feel settled in and packed. I still don't see as much money saved as I had hoped for, and  I'm feeling restless and even isolated here; I still miss my daughter, who is in Washington and expecting a baby now, a wonderful bit of news that makes me feel even more restless, dislocated, and on edge with anticipation and the depth of the many miles between us now.

And while the Common Poorwill of this neighborhood sings its heart out in the desert tonight, a new April, behind my new, temporary home, sounding identical to the one I listened to last April at my former house,  I'm still in a holding pattern, and still don't know where home is, but while I continue in my mid-life drift, my memories of my ten years in the house on California Drive endure, and no one can ever take that away from me. I'm rooted there, just as that place is rooted forever and firmly within me.

My New Story....Exact Opposites...on KCET Artbound L.A.

Not a Wasteland after all! The California Desert: A Place of Life, Magic, and Heartfelt Music!! Straight out of the remote California Desert town of Blythe! These guys are my friends and former creative writing / poetry students at College of the Desert....feeling and sharing the love all-around on this one!

Exact Opposites' Desert Hip Hop Radiates From Arid Blythe

In the past decade, April has become the season of music festivals in the California desert, particularly the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, an annual three-day music and arts festival headlining some of the world's most famous musicians and bands that takes place each spring in the City of Indio at the lushly landscaped Empire Polo Fields. However, the most ardent fans of music might want to take a drive a little farther into the easternmost stretches of Riverside County, along Interstate 10, into the land that Southern California almost forgot, to the tiny town of Blythe (population 21,000), situated at our state's border with Arizona at the Colorado River.

For those of us who have passed through with barely a nod (except to get gas in the long, six-hour journey across the desert from L.A. to Phoenix and back, and stagger from extremely hot temperatures that often reach 120 degrees in the summer,) it might come as a surprise to learn that fertile artistic roots have flourished here, 100 miles in each east/west direction from the nearest small town, and much farther than that from an urban center -- but they can, and do. The hip-hop, genre-bending music group, Exact Opposites, comprised of three Blythe natives and one member from Coachella Valley, not only celebrates the remotest nuances of their hometown, but create original, transformational music with a style all their own, drawn from their lives in this unlikely desert mecca.

I-Fit-The-Description, Meccanism, and Jae Rawkwell.| Photo: Courtesy of Exact Opposites.

Exact Opposites is a collective of musical talent drawn together to create quality music with a unique style. The band currently consists of Daddy Fat Strings (bassist), Jae Rawkwell (turntablist), Meccanism (vocalist & drummer), and I-Fit-The-Description (vocalist). And, in a somewhat unusual mix, members of the group are African American, Mexican American, and Anglo American. According to co-founding member Taurean Wright, who grew up in Blythe, "Positive music is a community effort; we strive to be grounded and concerned with today's topics. Our music forms our response to our community's concerns -- such as racial tensions and a high rate of crime and violence, as well as drug abuse and poverty -- and our community has reciprocated with a respectful appreciation for our music."

Wright, along with best friend and Blythe native Marx Moxon, emphasize they are proud of their roots in Blythe, and work to celebrate the strengths of life in their small hometown. For example, their first single and video, "Fertile Roots," from "Manufactured," is their ode to Blythe, and pays tribute to the small town that gave them their strong roots and celebrating a spirit of racial unity. Citing musical influences such as the Roots, an American Grammy Award-winning hip hop/neo soul band, and Mos'Def, aka, Dante Terrell, an American actor and MC, Exact Opposites is distinguished by a strong stage presence and a soul sound, along with poetically-driven lyrics and, as they say, they "make an intention to produce positive, boundless music" that both embraces and defies some of the basic musical tenets of hip hop, soul, and rap.

Starting in 2006 and with just two microphones and a turntable, I.Fit.The.Description, Meccanism and D.J. Rawkwell toured Coachella Valley and Los Angeles as they structured their vision and foundation. They cut their teeth in the rough-and-tumble realms of underground hip hop, and emerged wiser, more balanced, and with a destination in sight. Like so many hip hop acts before them, they decided to go it alone. In the DIY ethic that spawned punk and early rap, they got to work on their own. Since 2008, the group has released four albums on their own label, Sonata Orchestration: "Manufactured" (2008); "Sonata Average Mixtape" (2008) "The Amazing Adventures of Quick Draw McGraw and Huckleberry Hound" (2010), which serves as somewhat of a tongue-in-cheek jab at the sharp contrast between the Wild West typified by Blythe and the urbanity of its closest Southern California metropolis connection, Los Angeles. "The Learning Experience" (2012), the group's first live LP, catches their spitfire lyrics and flow at their most raw.

Since that time, Exact Opposites has played dozens of shows throughout Southern California, from Blythe to Coachella Valley to L.A., and has earned high praise from various music critics, who have compared them to musicians and groups such as J. Cole, Mac Miller, Atmosphere, Wale, Macklemore. Music critic Blackmilk of Soulified.com says, "The more I listen to Exact Opposites, the more their music gets reminiscent of a classic Wu Tang album with a west coast twist." The group has firmly planted their foundation in today's music scene by opening up for Blackalicious at the Key Club in Hollywood to performing at the legendary Whiskey A Go Go and each show in between with names like Del Tha Funkee Homosapien, Planet Asia, The People Under the Stairs, Yelawolf, and the late GURU of Gangstar.

"Staying true to our roots, and trying to give back to our community; we want to build community and send a positive message through our music" says Wright, who recently organized a student aid fundraiser show that the group played at Cal State, Long Beach, as well as a show benefiting students at his and Moxon's alma mater, Palo Verde High School in Blythe. For them, Blythe isn't just a place you pass through; it's home. Stark and otherworldly as it may be, their hometown is the center of their world. It's the magnetic North by which they orient their path ahead. "You've got to know where you come from in order to know where you are going," he says. "It's our goal to embrace what many people perceive as the dead-endness of Blythe, and to find the strength of people, community, and ordinary lives, and build on that, and share that, through our music, and that is what Exact Opposites is about."

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Top Image: Exact Opposites | Photo: Courtesy of Exact Opposites.

"I just want to be wonderful"

I don't even think I breathed in 2012. Sold my house on California Drive after owning it for 10 years. Short Sale. Put most of my things into storage- what I didn't give away straight out.  Lived on IPA beer and Junior Mint candies for awhile, living in transit -- first in a hotel room in Palm Desert, then bouncing around until I finally landed in a small duplex in South Palm Desert in the vintage mid-century architecture neighborhood of Silver Spur. Where I am now. Just got home from visiting Tarah and Alex, who are now living at Fort Lewis, Washington, and expecting a baby boy in August. The cat soothes my lonely night, curled up by my feet. I've re-posted some older postings from 2010. I don't know why they popped up as being posted *today*, April Fool's Day 2013, but here they are, out of sequence but always right on time.

I'm wrapping up teaching a workshop for the nationally-based Memoir Project non-profit writing organization....the theme I'm working with as I facilitate a group of 6 wonderful writers is *suicide*.  I selected the topic myself I read for Valley Voices of the Muse this Friday, April 5 as the featured poet in Palm Springs. Saturday, I'm a featured poet at 100,000 Poets for change at a big, three-day international festival in Santa Rosa....I'm in the lineup with poets representing Grito Mujer, a women's rights organization.

Tarah is too damn far away. Every trip to and from Seattle fills my heart and then exhausts it as I return to stone-cold walls. I never could have imagined how hard living alone would be. I realize that I've only lived alone, really, until now, for short times. At 19, it was fun - for a short while. Now, living alone symbolizes losses and changes and 9.0 earthquakes in my personal life that I didn't ask for or want or even expect or have the capacity to conceive. So many rugs have been pulled out from beneath my feet in the past few years. It's a wonder I still stand. But I do.

Drinking green juice and playing with my house pets, and picking up my love for hiking again. I love teaching creative writing at College of the Desert this spring, as I did this past fall. Fabulous class. Great students. I weep at every invitation, even if some envelopes remain unopened. Thank you for thinking of me. Pass the superglue, the self-stick postage stamps.

Faster than words

So my mind and life are moving faster than words. Faster than cathedral bells reach the outposts of village life, faster than love can knock a person down, in all its incarnations, celebratory and shattering. And finally I sit in front of my blog. The desert is kind of a church of its own, as is all of nature. It's what we have in the American west. Lacking visceral history of, you know, those shrines to Christianity - we uneasily sprout temples and mosques here - nature somehow for me works best. It's a place of imagination rather than a surface of insanity. A template for metaphoric understanding. That I have to intuit on top of all this mess.

Tarah comes over today, actually I pick her up en route home from Victorville, where I spent two evenings, along with Brindle and Shasta, but not two days, since Saturday. Tarah and Alex are ensconced in their new studio apartment in Palm Springs, and I'm happy for them having their own place again. I've decided to get the hell out of here on weekends, because weekends - the whole summer - have been hell and I think I can out-drive hell at least some of the time, because I have a good car and southern California is intricately knitted, each unique pocket of diversity, from desert to oceanfront to neighborhood to suburb to cityscape, in a wrinkled mirror pattern all its own that I've yet to entirely, far from ever fully exploring and knowing, with a freeway system that can transport even the most cynical and weary among us into a zen of river-transport that eases the soul from the worst of it. Even as we cross, on perilous, multi-layered "clover leafs," atop massive gashes of sand known as "dry washes" that sometimes perilously flood. But not very often. Waterways without water do the job, for those of us here. That, and the freeways, with their endless opportunities to land along some offramp somewhere entirely new. "Anywhere but here."

And most of all, getting the hell out of here at the end of a work-week helps to soothe the phantom pain, the ebb and flow of the memories I don't want to have, that I never dreamed would haunt me now. Last September, this exact weekend. We were blasting Break On Through to the Other Side, Jim Morrison, eerie and concise Doors, while driving up the Grapevine, heading to Big Sur. Redwood magic, mist-sun on one of my favorite beaches - with the blowhole - soothed by a hike to a waterfall, magnificent pictures that I sobbed over at the funeral, that I made a visual poem from....slightly foggy morning and deer on the lawn....our first weekend back together, really back together. One year ago. This time. Where do I go? From that. The house is emptier than a lightning-scored log. Reminding of some violent moment in the forest that no one saw, a force so violent and secondary that it felled and gutted a giant, ancient redwood tree and knocked it down, a sinkhole and gash so magnanimous a line of Volkswagens could be packed inside of it. Growing ferns, and new limbs, towards the sun. Unstoppable, unsinkable. The way life in the deep places somehow goes on in some ancient ritual of ceremony, a will of its own, and we measure our small progress alongside of it, and mark fragments of time that will someday be entirely overgrown. That is us. You and me. The lot of us. The forest is bigger than I thought, how ignorant was I, and you've been swallowed while I look towards the cathedral rays of light to find my way back to something I once thought. Water brims over the tall rocks. One year ago. You and me, our private time and thoughts. Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, and the comparative literary treatise by a Princeton professor on Jim Morrison and the French poet Rimbaud. One year ago. We alternated those two books in the Big Sur Lodge. It was a perfect mix. And I hope you didn't lose the book on Rimbaud. I need it now, I think I can read his poetry in French once again.

Tarah comes to help me as a personal assistant and I'm so relieved, and joyed to have her here: my instant-muse, inspiring me into desert writing and book consciousness. IV drip for dehydrated mom, after a long, strange, suffocating, intensive care kind of summer. Spending this afternoon in our own brand of ironic humor, instant understanding of one another, many laughs, shared lunch, and most of all, back to helping each other out - priceless and teary for me. Much more often than not, in recent months, the world has felt much more hostile than safe for me; much more jagged than smooth; more alone and isolated than I've ever felt.....ever. As my therapist tells me: you walk through hell - one step at a time and just keep moving ahead. Literally, symbolically. This summer has been one inferno I never could have dreamed. Flames lick southern California still, and if it's any small relief, the suffering of dreadful searing summer temps has been more intense in L.A. than here, unheard of. But the burden shared, somehow, it makes me feel a little more connected and understood, if by proxy: I'm not the only one in the sun's glare. And it's late September and the sunflowers are still flowering yellow and it has to cool off, we've already had a few cool licks in this strange, strange grief of song.

Tarah helps me sort through stacks of papers and scattered papers that have accumulated for months and months. I see that the more recent the notes, the more scattered, frantic, and discombobulated is my writing. Even last January, February, March, I was keeping neat, logical notes. Frenzy has been my theme since then, since that lopsided day in April when my world, my spirit, my body, my life, was torn apart - although there are patterns emerging: scrambled messages from the interior of the insanity of grief, and all kinds of phrases, phone numbers, jottings, words, for writing ideas - from poetry collection titles to metaphors to intriguing language clips I've heard or innovated to new writing project ideas, including three short stories I'm trying to baste enough nerve together to write. For some reason, I'm terrified. To the point where, when these stories are at the knife-edge, I gather the dogs, the dog food dish, the bag of dog food (some eaten by crickets already), a box of various books (Puritan, Slouching, Dry Waterfall, Phantom Seed) and the big yellow writing notepads and drive to the high desert, not much cooler but offering a bed in the slow, quiet, safety of Aunt Jeanne's house, with a big yard for the dogs. Tarah. She laughs at my insane pile of sticky notes, reads some of the poem fragments out loud, and laughs in a nice way.....Mom. You are trippy. And it's okay.

And I spend Sunday at West Hollywood Book Fair where I run into several friends - Gayle, Chrystine, Cheryl - and chat with people at the PEN writer's booth, make new writer connections, Red Hen Press, Book Soup, and eat a giant blue snow-cone. It's the little things that soothe, and I give into them. Free bookmarks. Childhood-favorite treats I haven't eaten in years (the snow-cone.) I pose for a headshot that will be photo-shopped into a scene from a classic novel for part of a photo series to be featured on the PEN website (a scene from the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird, when Atticus Finch is on his way to kill the "mad dog.") The free Urth-Cafe reader/author backstage lunch area (well, I did do a live reading for Guerrilla Reads, and all online-journal of video clips.....let's see, Ghost Flower, Friendly Fire, Wonder Valley, Ochoa's Farm and I forget what else....) then, on to Pasadena for the annual southern California Haiku Society's publication-reading, this year, the 10th anniversary edition, titled this year, "Island of Egrets." I have five haiku published this year, based on a haiku walk I led through the powerful, transformational Andreas Canyon in the oases of Indian Canyons, on Cahuilla Indian land in Palm Springs. So I read my haiku aloud and did it barefoot, in a new dress, because my shoes were hot. The event was on an outside patio. More friends, lots of them. Debbie, Kath Abela, Mike, Oleg, Naia, Marcyn, Billie, and more. Nice people. A safe day. Indian food afterwards, lots of it, and ice cold beer, with some really nice people and bless them, they made me laugh with many jokes and good humor. Lots of dark freeway driving after that and I didn't feel so addicted to the tabloids this weekend, or to a wrenching day of nonstop crying, as I did last Sunday. I even had to buy a pack of cigarettes - Native American ultra lights - at a Palm Desert liquor store (plus Perrier, large bottle) and I don't even smoke, but I was so upset just the act of buying cigarettes calmed me down. Today, Tarah disapproves: Mom, are you smoking? No, the pack is unopened, see? I was really upset last weekend....so I bought them. Tarah knows me well, so she doesn't ask. Her mom, the quirky poet. It's beautiful and wonderful to be understood and not judged.

Time to take Tarah home. I run her by Bank of America, but not until we stop at Coffee Bean for two large size (one for each of us) ice Japanese cherry-green teas on crushed ice. It's nice that one of my creative writing students is working there, and we chat with him for awhile. I write Tarah a check and pay her an advance for 20 hours of work she'll be doing for me in the next few weeks. She is wearing a beautiful red dress that looks very cute on her. Her hair is long and dishwater blonde, and her eyes, today, look light blue-gray. At other times they are smoldering green. I hold back tears as I wait for her, call and order a vegan dinner to go (for one, me) from Native Foods, which I'll pick up in Palm Springs just before I take her home. I want to go the long way, on Highway 111, so I can keep her with me just a few minutes longer. She chats about finding one of her middle school friends on facebook, a girl with a famous uncle (Mario Lanza, the singer) and talks about the time she went with her friend to Disneyland in a limo in the 6th grade, about how some of her super-rich Palm Desert friends are now living: brand new sports cars, parents who own global corporations - really - those who are all over Europe having fun - and she sighs. And says, but I'm happy, really happy, because I'm married to someone I love, and I'd rather have that than all the money in the world without love.

You were married in one of the town's most beautiful cathedrals. I'm good at driving on the freeways. My aunt lives in a neighborhood subdivision in the flanks of the massive, ancient Mojave River where an entire woolly mammoth skeleton was found not long ago. On Grand Mammoth Lane, near Grand Triassic Road. Some things endure. Some things, endure. Even if we have to imagine them because they're gone. Like you. It's all changed but somehow the road winds back in on itself again, and I've been driving or driven along these freeways, and earlier incarnations of them, since I was a little girl. A snow cones with blue syrup on a heat-shocked day. A lot of the ice melts into a blue mess before I can finish it. Catholic weddings, cars going too fast. It feels like home, a single long sigh of relief passing through a heart that is somehow always out of place. Tarah is living in Palm Springs, on a street named for one of the desert's giant lizards: Chuckwalla Road.

"they had no word for this"

"you must change your lives"
--Rainer Maria Rilke, from "Letters to a Young Poet"

My name is Ruth Nolan. I'm a creative writing and English professor and book editor/author living in Palm Desert. This is a piece of writing I never could have imagined, prior to this past spring, writing, let alone dreaming. This is a tragic telling, one from which I am scantily protected, nearly five months after the fact, after my life and the lives of so many others connected to a single instant's event, went from white to black without a blink, and changed painfully, horrifically, irrevocably. Some days - like today - I feel so weighted down and crushed I can barely perform. Crying jags come on, unannounced, with a schedule of their own. As I shared with a friend recently - who also suffered a shocking loss of her own not long ago - and she agreed: "I'm okay. But I'm not okay. I'm really not okay."

It's not easy to write this. My stomach is in knots, and I've been dreading sharing this for months. My sole encouragement: to share my story, the barely speakable, tragic ending to the story of an amazing person who was one of the best friends and most gifted people I've known in my entire life, in the hopes that this will help others in their struggles to heal from the loss, such as this one, of someone they loved better than life itself. I write this in a mixed state of shock, tears, numbness, and overwhelm, and it is through these words that I hope to continue to move through the most tragic event I've experienced in my life.

And I write this because I've been asked to write this, by a newly-created local organization - part of the nationwide American Foundation for the Prevention of Suicide - that is reaching out to intervene for others: before it is too late. I teach at a college, and so many of my young adult students are struggling with difficulties and challenges I never imagined at their age: lack of jobs, lack of classes, parents losing homes, a ten-year-old war claiming so many of their own, and more. They need adult support, and although I can barely manage it now, my abiding concern for all of my students - past - present- future - helps me write this now. Like it not, I'm a community leader, and so, I pen these words now, and share a bit of my private details - far from all of them - in the hope that it might help someone you know. Or you.

Early on the morning of Friday, April 9, 2010, I awoke my boyfriend Philip to tell him good-bye. I was headed for Berkeley, California, to make a presentation at the Western Wilderness Conference, 2010. I didn't want to leave. Philip had been acting so exhausted, remote, dozing on the couch the day before, and he told me he thought he had the flu. I had cooked him a really nice dinner, and was moved to tears when, in a very sweet voice, he suddenly said out loud (I thought he was asleep): I really love to watch you cook for me. It makes me feel loved:

He insisted that I go to the conference. I told him I'd be racing back on Sunday morning, that I'd pick him up all kinds of cool fliers and handouts at this environmental event. We'd do something fun the next weekend, when he felt better. Visit one of the many hot springs resorts we loved to check out, during the three years we were friends. Maybe get in another desert wildflower spring hike in the Santa Rosa Mountains. Or talk about our ideas for organic gardening/farming, Philip's passion. And so I flew to Oakland.

I remember standing on a balcony at the Martin Luther King, Jr. student union, top floor, in the late afternoon, and looking out at a clear view of the San Francisco Bay, and feeling, suddenly, really quiet - a spiritually effervescent moment that put me in a strange daze and made me uneasy for the rest of the night. That evening, I had a series of horrific dreams, which awoke me, and I struggled to make it through Saturday until the evening's presentation and then catch the first plane home. As we all often do, I managed to (barely) curtail thoughts of "something wrong at home," somehow pulled through making my presentation, and rushed home. And from there, it was all a horror show. Five police cars arrived not long after I did.

My house had been staked out since Friday night, neighbors later told me. I was advised - not knowing what was going on, only that Philip's car was gone - to call the Cabazon Police. And I was told, in an impassive phone call, that my longtime friend and lover was "gone" from a "shooting accident" that had happened on Friday afternoon. Which had turned out very quickly to be ruled the dreaded word nobody ever wants to experience: suicide. It's still so hard to reconcile, to look at pictures of me at that event, knowing Philip was already "gone" by then, and I had absolutely not the least clue. Except that I had that awful, gnawing feeling in my gut and felt compelled to take the earliest Sunday morning plane home, phone calls to him going unanswered. Which wasn't unusual for Phil, he wasn't one to chat on the phone. Maybe, I thought, he ran out of minutes. Which was also common. And then. I got home. But....we had just gone camping! We had fun plans! Phil - a doctor's son - had plans for his organic farming ambitions - for his deep interest in natural healing practices & alternative medicine, which was incredibly knowledgeable about -- ! ?????

My life went off a cliff that day. It plunged from helicopter to broken bone free-fall on a flight I never embarked on, an entanglement with every body part going the wrong way. I stunned awake to find myself on a remote peak where I sometimes doze and sometimes awake and scream and sometimes find small solace in the visit of a yellow butterfly or the new nest of a small bird, or hummingbirds keeping tabs, and lately even bees coming to comfort me - before night falls again and I'm trying to not get sliced by stars, and trying to keep the maurauding mountain lions at bay. Some moments, a promise of cloud or moisture for burn wounds. Infection raging, and then cooling down. Not knowing if am human or if I'm in clock zone without arms.

It was and continues to be a beautiful spring day turned inescapable nightmare that rages on its own accord, like a fully-engaged wildfire that can't be contained - I used to work on helicopter hotshot and fireline crews, some fires rage for weeks, they develop a life of their own - and this, my friends and strangers, is a permanent fire season. A fire that never went out and is only, barely manageable. Not contained, not controlled. Just survived. Sometimes it backs down, and I am walking through mountainsides of ash - alternating between cold gray matter and suddenly burnt on a "hot spot" that never cooled off. We've had zero rain this summer. And fall is usually worse for those of us in southern California. I control nothing. The fire runs this show. It takes my entire stamina to survive.

My message to anyone and everyone reading this. Philip: talented, brilliant, self-made, entrepreneur, beloved by everyone he knew, gorgeous, kind, gifted musically and cosmic beyond words - never said a word. None of us will ever know "why" and it really doesn't matter now. What matters is that one of the planet's finer soul-brothers is inexplicably gone, just gone, leaving behind only a few material things. A walking stick, a few clothes in my house which I returned to his family; music downloaded on my PC which I listen to every day. The reminders every day in every way. I can't take a hike, can't think a thought, can't take a breath without inhaling the pain of this loss. He was 25 years old and wise and perfect far beyond his years. He and I knew each others' souls firsthand from the minute we met and I refuse to un-imagine the views and beauty of the incredible vistas -Jungian, literally, poetically - that we shared and inspired each other to find. Nothing, not even this tragedy, can detract from what he added to our friendship, and to those whose lives he touched in his brief time here. He was one-of-a-kind.

That he had the inner torment, pain, whatever it was that made him feel that he had to end his life - and never shared it to me or his family - is among the worst side effect of this. I can't imagine how I knew someone so well, or thought I did, and lived with for first a year, in 2008, and then for the 6 months leading up to his death - would choose to kill himself. Let alone someone with such a bright mind and soul, spirit of aliveness, passionate love for life, potential, a young man who earned the full admiration and inspiration of everyone he knew. That he felt this was what he had to do - I knew/know Philip that well, to know that this was not a rash choice, he was incredibly smart and strategic in how he lived his life - indicates to me that he felt he was without recourse or alternate option. Look at the pressures facing us as individuals and a society today. I think it's no coincidence, awfully, that young-adult and middle-age-adult suicide is on a sharp rise. And this is what I wish to address now.

I am not going to write fake stuff, that life is always great, and that nobody should every think of killing themselves. What I will say is this: a suicide does not occur in isolation. It digs a deep wound through everyone associated, and leaves lifelong traumatic loss-marks. Perhaps if we, as a society, can finally move beyond our bullshit attitudes, dismissal, cruelties and marginalization of those who are more aware, awake, vulnerable, alone, and affected by the collective trials facing all of us now, then perhaps the topic of "suicide" can be elicited - with a strong emphasis on what leads to these thoughts in the first place - and we, as a culture, can begin to articulate the language of this most awful and irreversible of things, and perhaps cultivate an awareness and empathy - not just sympathy afterwards, but PREVENTION, damnit - that allow us as a collective whole to stem the awful tide of desperation that churns in so many peoples' souls in these scary times. As it does sometimes in me, like anyone else.

I take my inspiration now (and believe me, it's a narrow thread, but I cling to it like a stranded sailor lost at sea for days might cling to that tiny piece of raft....or wood....somehow mustering the belief and strength in rescue, safety, a better day): from the simple fact that many of the tribes of Native American people of our country, who have lived in harmony for centuries - prior to Anglicization - with their souls, within extremely close and sustainable, inclusive and integrated communities, and with the earth, had no word for suicide. They not only didn't have suicide. They had no word for it. Because no one ever felt so alone, so without a concept or a word when experiencing some heavy stuff, that they felt that body-death could solve one's inner, insolvent and inarticulable struggling and pain.

Suicide is not romantic. It's no joke. It's a violent form of genocide in its own way, no matter how "alone" someone thinks they are. If the concept of death is seen as alluring, or mystical, or a last ditch act that will "end the pain and lead a better afterward," then that probably offers some form of relief/encouragement to someone suffering abysmal emotional-mental-brain physical pain - tragically, ironically, it's often the sense of "being cut off from others" that leads to someone thinking they are only ending their life - not in a certain way ending something in the lives of all of those who a related to, or know them.

Remember: suicide is not natural. I'm no expert, but my own research has allowed me to tentatively conclude here that it is an extreme matter, which comes from the pressure, internal and external, extreme circumstances, biological and social. In so many cases, we are dealing that fatal combination of biological propensities, which increasingly can't endure our roughshod, chaotic societal ways. How about, as a culture, we get over the concept of "death as the end" and start to celebrate our eternal soul-selves here on the planet, in a sustainable way. Pain never goes away. We have to learn to negotiate with it. The pain that suicide causes to myriad others solves nothing, it only spreads the pain, as does war. It's as erroneous of a solution as is pouring battery acid on all of your skin just because your finger has a cut and hurts. We must learn to help and heal each other, in the here and now. It doesn't happen in isolation. It takes "the whole village."

Let's feel safe to ask for help. Let's feel safe to offer help. Most of all, let's feel safe, and not waste any more time, to create a society-wide "help desk" where those suffering the unimaginable overload of brain-synapse-stimuli network breakdown can feel safe to ask for help, and safe to receive help, and safe to have a vocabulary of words to use to articulate what they feel. Without thinking it's a black mark forever on their reputation. Without, most importantly, feeling isolated, feeling failed, feeling that "death" is the only option. Education, here, with compassion, is key. Most of all, let's end the "blame game" that leads many who commit suicide to never tell anyone of their plans - the idea that those considering suicide are "defective" somehow.

Would we tell someone with diabetes to just "snap out of it," or tell them we are tired of hearing them talk about their insulin dosages? Having many diabetic friends + family members, I believe that talking about their medical condition on a regular basis is what allows them in managing their illness, and in feeling some comfort in this. I've watched awareness + education of breast cancer take huge strides in my lifetime, erasing the onetime stigma (my grandmother died far too young of advanced breast cancer in the 70's because she was too embarrassed to tell anyone until it was too late) and saving countless lives. Likewise, AIDS_HIV education-prevention has made huge strides thanks to fairly early social discussion and awareness, even though it continues, sadly, to retain stigma to some.

Mental illness- depression - and all its other forms - all of the conditions that can and do far too often tip the scales for someone who is vulnerable to them - need to become table topic discussion words right now!! Let's erase the stigma once and for all, take the "mental" out of "illness." Let's quit mocking and dismissing those with "mental illness" and pushing them aside, social behaviors that I assure you only make matters exponentially, often with fatal consequences, much worse for those suffering, so often in silence. It's not hard, so sadly, to see why some people suffering like this choose not to talk about it. Because they know that they are then sitting ducks, when it comes to so many crucial life needs: like finding a job, or even just functioning in the many areas of society that are necessary for us all. Let alone the stigmas coming so often from one's own family and friends in regards to the "diagnosed." I can't imagine we'd be so cruel to one with a heart condition. Which may or may not have been exacerbated by genetics + modern life, but probably was/is a combination of both and quite hard to avert.

It's my hope to work with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, particularly for teens and young adults, to help take the steps towards understanding. Not just helping "survivors" and not just putting a band-aid on the "problem." But to help us all, as a collective whole, learn what it means to create, develop, and practice compassion for humankind, the type of love-living and acceptance and open discussions and behavior that lessen, and starting NOW, this ridiculous concept of each individual struggling alone against increasingly insurmountable odds.

with my best, if tired, foot forward - hoping I am on some kind of solid ground - and most sincerely - Prof Ruth Nolan/College of the Desert.

And most of all, in the quiet and loving memory of Philip, and with respect and honoring of his loving family.In fact, Philip himself created this blog for me more than two years ago, and encouraged me to start this blog, and creatively selected my user-name and password, so I feel his energy here with all of us in the here and now.