Leaving Palm Desert

I've decided to leave Palm Desert by summer - would like to relocate somewhere towards the I.E., preferably in mountainous areas for the summer, i.e., Forest Falls, Angelus Oaks, Crestline, Running Springs, or areas behind Yucaipa in the lovely foothills. I promised myself I wouldn't spend another summer here. I moved here in 1999 and this is year 10, and every summer it's been a struggle to deal with the heat for four or five long months. Even the POOl is no relief during July and August, as the water temp is in the 90's! Pulling the plug, pulling the plug, on things here, detaching from the electricity hookups of this home and place for good.

The parents sold the childhood home in the much cooler high desert climes of Apple Valley a few years ago (there went THAT partial-summer escape route) and I simply can't afford the mortgage on this house, $400/month electric bills, being stuck indoors day after gloomy day - a reverse cabin fever of harsh winter climates. It's not worth it, when an hour or less away lay lovely, gentler summer lifestyles. And hey, those of you in Riverside who say it's hot there - you got NOTHING on this place! Average daytime temp in July-August is around 115 and I've seen the nighttime temp here one July, at midnight, sitting at 100 degrees! Paying for this place....trying to rent a summer place....no longer can do. Freedom!

It's daunting, however, this letting-go. I lived in a rental a mid-century architecture pad, owned by a friend of mine, for my first three years, and then bought my house in 2002, prior to the housing bubble. So I'm not in any real trouble with the finances, but it seems ridiculous to pay a mortgage in an expensive-to-live tourist town, with my daughter Tarah almost 21 and getting on her own, when I really never wanted to live here in the first place - my job brought me here, nothing else.

But, like all good desert stories, this one has been fertile. Starting from virtually nothing, except my new-found college teaching job in hand, I built small empires - a college literary magazine program; many poetry readings and series; made many friends, most of who have come and gone while I've been here. I've been carving out a very focused scholarly field of study in desert lore and literature. I raised Tarah, and she went to some of the best schools in the state - Palm Desert High prepared her well for her college years. We've had fun. We've eaten at numerous cool places, enjoyed the cosmopolitan funk and mid-century legacy of the place in many ways. Soaked in Desert Hot Springs spas many times over. Had some amazing times with many amazing people, many from all over the world. But everyone comes, and goes. And so it is for my time here, too.

This is not a longterm place for most, and I suddenly understand why many, such as my friend Swami Ramanananda, just had to one day pull up roots and go. Speaking of Swami, he had a wonderful spiritual center for 2 years that I was overjoyed and honored to be part of - lots of fun - but I feel the spiritual center and vibe of this region is long gone, especially since he left town a few years ago. I just don't belong in a Republican stronghold. I've explored all the great mountains and hikes, many times over, and now it's a situation where it's starting to haunt me. I remember people and friends I've hiked with, and the memories are lovely, but sad, because I do them now alone. Because the desert, at heart, is isolationist, I don't have longtime roots here, and let's face it, empires in the deserts of the world tend to come and go.

I'm going to ease on over to the west, towards the coast. Continue to build on the writing communities I've connected with in the past few years, and go from there. Keep the day job on a 2 day/week commute. Visit my parents, who live here now fulltime, except for lengthy trips they're now enjoying abroad, and their usual 3 or 4 month summer exodus, now that they are retired. I'll be like my brothers, who all live far away - it's delectable to come here in the winter, visit, hike, enjoy, and leave to where there are people, places with true community, and where the gated "community" and "closed garage door" thing is not a lifestyle.

So I'm putting it out the universe - bold and scared, at once. Give up being a homeowner, at least for awhile - rent, simplify, and be closer to my new friends, and an hour closer to the beach. I'm actively seeking a cool housing situation - short term/summer or possibly more longterm, so if anyone reading this blog has ideas, please post 'em to my blog or feel free to email me at runolan@aol.com and wish me well! Selling the old 2nd car....having another yard sale....a good feeling to purge, again, as I haven't done in more than five years. I thrive on change and new things - which I did when I moved here - and it's just - time to go. Don't know where I'll end up in the longterm, but it's great to take one step at a time for now.

Poem in San Gabriel Valley Quarterly

A poem of mine appears in the new issue of the San Gabriel Valley Quarterly #41, which just came out - edited by my friend the poet Don Kingfisher Campbell - scroll down to see my poem, "Figures of Thought." There are also other numerous and other wonderful poems in this collection. Thanks, Don, for your hard work on this publication!

http://sgvpq.blogspot.com/

Reading at UCR-Palm Desert Tonight

I just returned home from a reading of UCR-MFA program faculty members....it was incredibly inspirational and I was so honored to be included in this reading! I shared the preface to the desert literature anthology.

I re-acquainted with several writer friends whose works I admire immensely: Tod Goldberg, Rob Roberge. And, I made several new writer acquaintances, among them the acclaimed writer Deanne Stillman and poet Alba Cruz-Hacker......

I especially admire the gutsy and honest prose writing of the very talented Rob Roberge, who is also a super-sweet and genuinely humorous guy! He read from a piece of his appearing in the new anthology, "Orange County Noir." I am hoping to work with Ashanti Press (time willing) to propose doing something for "desert noir," as it seems I've already made a bit of a scene in that element...

Finally, I was amazed and overjoyed with the comic relief and smart commentary of a multimedia presentation of one of the faculty members - a blowup of a desert mansion on a hillside (film) alongside his reading of desert real estate ads, noting that the mansion being blown up was a short sale. Exactly where I am, and it was so synchronous and also hilarious.

It was good to intermingle with amazing writers, enjoy another trip to the stunning UCR-Palm Desert campus - where I've also, in the past few years, attended several shows/exhibits, presented at last year's CA Desert Indian Conference, taken a southern California Indian class with the esteemed anthropologist Dr. Lowell Bean, and also have taught several quarters of poetry for UCR extension.

I even got inspiration for a collection of new poetry/prose I'd like to embark on, and realized that this idea is a peaceful, relief-finding way to write my way through some very painful stuff I've lived through in the last 2 years. I don't want to give away the title, but it will be a collection of poetry, prose, and it's going to be raw and real and brilliant (I hope.) As the writer-avant garde artiste William Burroughs said, and I am loosely paraphrasing, the only way he could get through the agony of his accidental shooting of his wife was to write his way through it.

And that, my friends and humble readers of my silly little blog, is where I am at. I find myself succumbing a bit, tonight, to the rapid onset of round #2 of a virulent sinus infection - first onset was exactly a month ago; I did the Z-pack, got better but still tired, and of course have over-done it since and now it's back - could be I was still harboring the thing, or maybe I got reinfected because my daughter Tarah came home with it last Wednesday. Great. Off to z-pack and bed.

But tonight, for awhile, I soared on my strengthening literary wings. I am so uplifted and grateful that I attended the reading tonight - and participated! Thanks, Tod, for letting me share!

Trapdoor Poetry March 8th Palm Springs

Trapdoor Poetry and host Ruth Nolan Present...
Don Kingfisher Campbell and the Emerging Urban Poets

Sunday, March 8th 6 p.m.
Palm Springs Art and Wine
www.palmspringswineandart.com

242 N Palm Canyon Dr
Palm Springs, CA 92262
(760) 325-9991

open microphone to precede the reading. 21+ age requirement.

Desert Places, Map, Desert Anthology

here are the places that will be named on the map now being drawn up by a cartographer for No Place for a Puritan: the literatue of California's Deserts

Amboy, CA
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Apple Valley
Death Valley National Park
Joshua Tree National Park
East Mojave National Preserve
Barstow
Anza-Borrego Desert State Park
Blythe, CA
Palmdale
Cajon Pass
Baker CA
Chemehuevi Reservation
Chocolate Mountains
Coachella Valley
Colorado Desert
Colorado River
Colorado River Indian Reservation
Death Valley Junction
Death Valley National Park
Desert Center, CA
Angeles National Forest
Sierra Nevada
Edwards Air Force Base
Fort Irwin
Fort Mojave Indian Reservation
Furnace Creek, CA
Ghost Mountain
Hoover Dam
Hwy 10
Hwy 111
Hwy 62
Hwy 395
Hwy 95
Hwy 86
I-10
I-15
Hwy 78
Imperial Valley
Indio, CA
Johannesburg, CA
Joshua Tree National Park
Lone Pine
Las Vegas, NV
Los Angeles, CA
Lucerne Valley
Manzanar, CA
Mecca Hills
Mojave
Mojave Desert
Mojave River
Mojave Road
Morongo Indian Reservation
Needles, CA
Niland, CA
Old Woman Mountains
Owens Valley
Palm Springs, CA
Panamint Mountains
Randsburg, CA
Ridgecrest
Riverside, CA
Salton City, CA
Salton Sea
San Bernardino Mountains
San Bernardino, CA
San Gorgonio Pass
San Jacinto Mountains
Santa Rosa Mountains
Slab City, CA
Soda Lake
Tehachapi Mountains
Telescope Peak
Tucson, AZ
Twentynine Palms, CA
US-Mexico border
Victorville
Yuma, AZ

New Ending, No Place for a Puritan

Following is the rewrite I did for the ending of the preface for the desert anthology. I've managed to work in a few important statements about the oncoming onslaught of windmill and solar power farms that will soon mushroom across the California deserts, along with new power grids, so many wildflower replacements blinking the sun back towards itself and filling the wide views with seas of lop-lop blade and sound.....

The NEW end of the desert book preface - by Ruth Nolan
No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California's deserts

Decades have passed since the desert first took my breath away, and much has changed. I now live in the area of the desert near Palm Springs, where golf courses and posh resorts crowd the horizon, and the endangered bighorn sheep is commemorated in decorated art statues in nearby shopping malls. The entire California desert is threatened with overpopulation, pollution, and other social and climactic ills facing contemporary society. The population of Victorville has exploded to more than 100,000 people, and smog now fills the easy expanses once billed by real estate flyers as “the land of the champagne climate.” A new potential threat to the desert is the rush to install solar and windmill power facilities throughout vast tracts of the remaining open desert spaces as our nation turns to alternate energy sources. What remains of the open spaces I saw as a child from the summit of Cajon Pass will likely soon be transformed into massive power grids, fed by acre upon acre of windmill and solar farms. The selection “Problems with Windmills,” by Katherine Siva Saubel and Eric Elliott, shows the detrimental impact of a windmill facility on a vast hillside near Palm Springs. The area was once rich with barrel cactus, whose flowers served as an important food source for the region’s Cahuilla Indians, and is now all but barren of plant life.
The desert suddenly seems much smaller to me now, but the literary legacy appears much bigger. This is a land of people, of struggles and gains, and, more recently, a region of politically-charged and intensely debated land use designation and management. The California desert has long been—and continues to be—far more than a mere wasteland waiting for people to carelessly exploit or briefly endure it. In the stories in this collection, the desert sings. It hums with the pulse of overlapping human lives, a river of sound that sometimes overflows its shores, and at other times travels quietly underground.

copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan

March - Time for the Short Sale

March is here, and already for us in the low desert, the dread of HEAT on the way. Warm days, odd, near-thunderstorm weather this afternoon as I went rollerblading through my neighborhood, the Palm Desert Country Club. Today, I awoke to the neighbors' two puppies barking, barking, barking.....and saw, when I looked out the front door, the ubiqutious UHAUL moving van in front of the house. The lady with the bad back and golf cart and three kids, moving out. She's been there only a matter of months, and I've been through this with that house five times already in less than five years. It's sad, and unsettling. Where do they all go? It is haunting.

A disheveled sort of day - a Monday following a weekend of poetry gathering with friends in Riverside at my friend April's Small Wonder Foundation (with I.E.-based poet-writers Julie Paegle, Cyrus Emerson, April Durham, and me) - thanks, April, for hosting the event and bringing together a small circle, and for me, yesterday scurrying to catch up with long-put-off house chores: cleaning the yard, picking the last grapefruit and oranges from the trees to ward off citrus rats, and earning terrible arm scratches while raking beneath the bouganvellia - weeding the garden, blocking the busted-up front gate so the dogs can't knock it open again, and throwing my canoe onto the pool, enjoying the soothe of float, if only in my imagination, because when I'm home, I rarely have time to relax. It's always catch-up time, and this time, for having gone to Riverside and back four times in the past week for various events, often arriving home at very late hours! Last Sunday for a women's poetry group I'm honored to belong to at my friend Cati's house; Wednesday, to facilitate a terrific NEA Big Read literary circle ("Crash, Boom, Love" by Juan Felipe Herrera and "Bless Me, Ultima" by Rudolfa Anaya;) my Thursday night Inlandia Writers Workshop (very fun!) and Saturday, for the poetry reading at April's salon. No wonder I'm tired!

Unsettled: the pristine, slight days of perfect tangerine light of January yielded to the always-too-quick maze of February, the short month, too much jam packed into its contraction, and in the yang principle, this month is for expansion. Friday, an afternoon hike into Pushwalla Palms, parking my car in the usual spot off of Washington, heading north, sneaking in through the barbed wire, following an old road till canyon drop off, then up a slope, down another trail into the oasis proper - a fair amount of water running. Finishing the loop, heading west, as dark settles in - coyotes howling, across the road, but Brindle and Shasta both spooked and running back towards me at the sound. Grateful when I see the twilight-shaded hulk of my Toyota RAV4 ("Little Rippy,") I've been on this hike before when it was so dark I had to use the key alarm to find it!

Again, I saw the horse trailer of a deaf woman who donates her days during the winter by riding her horse into the preserve to do all kinds of maintenance. She'll be gone again soon as the weather turns hot, to go somewhere else until late October or November. I saw her in a side draw, but pulled the dogs around the long way; Brindle was quite nervous last time he saw that horse. So many memories, super-layered into the deep canyon mud walls; it could be only yesterday that I hiked here with Brindle as a puppy in wildflowers so thick and tall he was almost buried, or with a friend who was in my life and is gone, with my daughter and her boyfriend, taking the ridge trail back into sherbet sunset when they were still in high school, or with my parents that hot Easter Sunday when my dad almost put his hand directly onto a baby rattler on a palm log. I am imbedded, my life of 10 years here, and yet, saying good bye to it all, too. I can't believe how many times, using different loops, I've done this hike - at least 12-15, I'd guess, or more. One of my usual, "can only do it in that window from late October - if we're lucky, till mid-April. I emerge from the last group of sparse palm trees; lots of big mud chunks in the wash, fallen from the hillsides in our heavy rains this year - and there is is, as I stand, a cluster of rocks begins to fall from the canyon lip, and rushes down, piquing the brief interest of the dogs. Rockslide, on demand. The earth moves. I too plan to move. Soon

Longer days, nearing spring equinox, and for me, suddenly, almost, the final wrap of desert anthology. My journeying circles, here, in this desert, coming to their rounded ends. The sand dunes are gone, and for many reasons, my life has an urgency about it for moving on. I had no idea, when I embarked on this book project, in spring of 2007, after the success of the book "Inlandia", which sparked a literary renaissance not only for writers in the Inland Empire, but in my own heart and mind, awakening and connecting me with other writers and a writing community, mostly in Riverside, for the first time in my life - a huge, huge awakening and validation that someone like me, born in San Bernardino and somehow relegated to years of lonely if amazing and deeply imprinting years of desert wandering - actually had something worthile to write, to connect to, to compile, to say. I can't express the extreme effect this had on my life! (See my blogspot picture - that is me at the Inlandia release party in Nov, 2006, signing a copy of "Inlandia!"

As a part of this, and based on my number of years teaching desert literature courses at my college and various symposiums and beyond, I began seeing the sincere need for a "desert" book, that my time in the desert, after being here for most of my life, would also be nearing the end of its legacy. This book project has consumed me, and increasingly so since last summer. I spent days and days indoors, escaping the 115 degree blinding heat, poring through piles of manuscripts, always adding one more thing, taking out one more thing, and then beginning on the permissions-getting. Learning as I have gone along, with the tutelage of Gayle Wattawa at Heyday - and looking back, realizing this has been a crash course in the graduate school of copyright laws, the world of editors and publishers and agents, as well as writers, and the wildness of the very idea and act of putting together....an anthology!

I've added friends and strangers along my literary journey. Some have come and gone; few remain. Even today, my mom was here, helping me go through the last batch of permissions-organizing. I've begged and borrowed help from anyone I can, and even hired other friends to pitch in where they can. I've put off several weekend trips to what would've been way-cool desert conservation meetings, East Mojave, Tecopa, not to mention vacationing and time off; canceled the Mendocino Writers Conference last year to get this book done; have irritated numbers of people whose works can't fit, irritated friends and family for who I've had to say, "I've GOT to get this...intro and bio version #29 finished by tonight....have to talk to an agent in NYC to talk the price down for the Joan Didion piece....faxing contract materials to Pauline Esteves, esteemed Timbisha Shoshone tribal elder, for the right to reprint her statement of Homeland to congress in 2000 - heavy stuff!

I understand that few of my friends, colleagues, acquaintances, wide network of literary comrades share my passion for this project - and at this point, more determination and discipline and a touch of craziness in my drive to pull every ounce of professional experience and acumen to stay focused and get it done - whilst enduring heavyduty teaching semesters at College of the Desert....in recent months I've survived on the tiny joys popping up from one author correspondence or another, or, say, scoring a hard-to-get permission, or better, tracking down an obscure family member-copyright holder, or getting a way-cool permission from a way-cool famous writer for a great price, and how I savor those kind words and supportive sentences scribbled on sticky notes and small papers along with permissions sent and granted - and how exciting to meet, albeit in email or letter, so many of the country's most amazing writers - the excitement is beginning to stir, however, as I share and read, where I can, the preface that I wrote to the book.

My love affair with desert literature, legacy, and lore, as well as the heartbreak over seeing the purity of line in my desert being cracked and broken day by day by wanton development - parallels the heartbreak for me of love relationships, too, that have run directly alongside this whole book project affair of the last two years. Relationships flamed and fanned with passion, with pure intention, and suddenly, as threatened and doomed as desert corridors slated for windmill development under the guise of "everything green is good." Green is only the temporary color of things in the desert, and only following a brief winter of heavy rain, to be followed by scorching heat and withered grass, wildfires, white-sere day upon day. Hope and despair, love and loneliness, passion and pain, side by side by side. Turning with seasons, upside-down-on-a-mortgage, lucky for that fixed interest rate, but at what price, to be left alone?

A mirage - here and gone - tempting and destructive- true and false - water really as/is in that (dry) lakebed, and water is (not) there for the drinking - insanity mirroring stability - lies and desperation - and flood - stuck in mud - crackling the caked dry ruts with tires or boots - you could see a city of people here, and you can also see the sharpest loneliness you'll ever have met -

Yes. I've made some kind of literary journey across miles and miles of page sands, turning chronicle through my front room, navigating salts and scoping the water holes, the population centers, the dry lakebeds, the emptiness, the urgency of impending environmental doom - desert lands leased for windmills & solar farms & power lines galore - going green is not good for our desert, except for now, the quick burst of widlflowers. Again, this spring, the first good season for flowers since 2005, following our last winter of real rain. Economic rock-bottom we've hit and continue bouncing off of, like the rocks on that hillside cascading down, but we did get some serious rain and every desert rat knows the intense importance of that!

Today, but perhaps not next week or tomorrow, pink desert sand verbena sprout their short songs on the few remaining emtpy lots in my neighborhood - when I bought my house in 2002, the four square miles of sand dunes, ancient, steepled, sidewinder-tracked, glimmering, shimmering, phantasmorgastic white dunes swifting and sculpting behind me, proferring thick stands of centuries-old mesquite dozens of feet high. Now, a golf course or two. Lovers come and gone during this book. The collapse of our economy - last year at this exact, exact time one day off to the day, I refinanced my home, and it was worth more than $100 k than it is now - the absolute truth. I was buying $400 Dolce and Gabbana leopard print glasses, thinking nothing of it. Supporting a live-in friend on the endless ATM card, buying posh groceries at designer markets, going entirely organic, my sense of security intact - hadn't even thought of selling the house, of making a move. And through all of this, always, me, tracing the same hikes over again; revisiting and circling and re-circling the fat and slowly-diminshing and refining desert book manuscript, carving it until only the perfect story of bones remained.

And so it is with my life. What seemed comfortable a year ago, suddenly is extreme excess. Get rid of it all, I say. I've had one yard sale and realize I only sold about10% of what needs to go. A finished anthology is complete, and says much more with much less. The story of my house, my desert living, is suddenly pared down and nearly complete, too. A paean, this book, to my own life and time. The book is the goal, has been the goal, and when I look around me, at my 3 BR 2 BA w/pool and 2 car garage house, it is time for so much to go. Stories now are my home, and like the neighbors next door, the fifth set of renters in so many years, I am about to one day soon just up and pack and move out. It is time for a new trail, one in a cooler and more peopled clime. With one helluva book at my side to read and share, sort of a one-woman desert show, Ruthie Palm Tree Seed. Or maybe, in certain moments, proferring pockets of the small black seed of Joshua. And perhaps, not having to imagine, fistfuls of rain bombarding me like desperate prayers.