Friday, September 4, 2009
Slouching Towards Mt Rubdioux Manor + Phantom Seed Reading Back to the Grind September 17
if you click the picture.....it gets bigger and you can everything on the flyer.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
everything is dandelion
so the day goes auto flying...that is, on pilot....a wonderful English 1A class and I enjoyed our discourse....ended up asking them to all sign up for twitter accounts so I can easily text them if and when class is cancelled....save a parking spot, sleep in.
off to teach creative writing, my plum and joy....waited nine years to get this class and it's a splendid evening assignment, with already 40 people signed up - either I'm really popular or classes are so packed that people are taking whatever they can get. Maybe both.
I want to add a disclaimer to my friends and fans (tongue in cheek on that one) for bearing with my kvetching of recent past. If you haven't and don't want to read it, it is the posting from Aug 30, titled Post Partum Professor. It's shouldered off now and the cord snapped off and I'm holding up better than I'd ever have thought I would, even managed to get a few poetic inspiration lines scratched and caught up on my texting during an Ed Tech meeting, reconvened with a few longtime friends/colleagues, my friends Claudia (librarian) and Bina (Information Systems Administrator) and....
I have a fresh pot of coffee cooking in the empty faculty lounge, guess I'm the only one in our division besides our Italian teacher Prof. Sottile to be teaching an evening class. And as my older brother John convinced me on the phone last night, hey...now, I only have to work for me...so it will be all fun and parties when I'm not at work from now on - no pressure to run a household and be a fulltime parent. What has haunted me now seems like opportunity. At golden, heat compressed last.
off to teach creative writing, my plum and joy....waited nine years to get this class and it's a splendid evening assignment, with already 40 people signed up - either I'm really popular or classes are so packed that people are taking whatever they can get. Maybe both.
I want to add a disclaimer to my friends and fans (tongue in cheek on that one) for bearing with my kvetching of recent past. If you haven't and don't want to read it, it is the posting from Aug 30, titled Post Partum Professor. It's shouldered off now and the cord snapped off and I'm holding up better than I'd ever have thought I would, even managed to get a few poetic inspiration lines scratched and caught up on my texting during an Ed Tech meeting, reconvened with a few longtime friends/colleagues, my friends Claudia (librarian) and Bina (Information Systems Administrator) and....
I have a fresh pot of coffee cooking in the empty faculty lounge, guess I'm the only one in our division besides our Italian teacher Prof. Sottile to be teaching an evening class. And as my older brother John convinced me on the phone last night, hey...now, I only have to work for me...so it will be all fun and parties when I'm not at work from now on - no pressure to run a household and be a fulltime parent. What has haunted me now seems like opportunity. At golden, heat compressed last.
September 1st
ah, that the poet shapes the landscape
first, in case you missed it, here is the Heyday Books advance PR blurb for No Place for Puritan.
http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/no-place-for-a-puritan-the-lit.html
so the poet
engages it, dances it, gathers it, lies back on it and shapes storylines...narrative arcs on sand dunes, rain where dry lake beds mock the lonely lover, and a straight lined highway engulfs the poet in its square arms, what of my recursive path? Circles for me. I missed a deadline for the poets and writers California writers exchange, I assumed materials could be sent via email, like most everyplace else, but alas, when I went to meet the Aug 31 deadline at around 10 pm last night...it was a surprising snail mail deadline. I can console myself with the usual....there are probably 10,000 people applying for it and therefore your chances were slim...but...damn.
So here, in its lieu, in lieu of much missed lovers and daughter and dog and poetic stream of consciousness - it is late summer, fires scour the mountains and eat houses and a few people - what about the couple who tried to ride it out in their backyard hot tub? Reminds me of friends I hiked into Deep Creek with a few years back, who refused to hotfoot it out of there when I saw a major fire break out, downwind from us....they refused to leave and very nearly died while the fire burned over them later (I pretty much RAN up the steep hill to my car!) and they huddled low in the creek, wet towels over choking faces) - I can't wait to go to Burning Man, in fact my friend Van, one of the Deep Creek Fire survivors, is an avid attendee.
Now, to embrace the joie de vivre, here is a lovely poem by Bukowski that I found while leafing through piles of teaching materials, in preparation for my 12:30 pm Eng 1A class today (that is a little more than an hour away, and I've got to yet leave the house), and no apologies for being a poet and a bit off the worn path, as Morrison said, "out here we is stoned, immaculate" and tomorrow I have a very coveted appointment to meet with the renowned Juan Felipe Herrera (what a forever generous person and true poetry hero!) for a poetry get together and I know this will shot-arm me into my poetic and prosaic pulse, my fireline escape route from the flames, and in fact, my redemption and power. I've given up on comma splices, as you may have noticed, have seen so many students using them inadvertently over the years that it's become my latest poetry technique.
Made a Mistake
charles bukowski
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties (ruth: worn-so-much-by-me gray dickies t-shirt that it's shredded with holes)
and showed them to her (him) and
asked, "are these yours?"
and she (he) looked and said,
"no those belong to a dog."
She (I) left after that and I haven't seen her (him)
since. I keep (not) going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes are still there.
I take the Maltese cross (Indian dreamcatcher)
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to the doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship (beat up car missing a rim on drivers wheel) she (he) drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man (um, still young, not yet siliconed or liposuctioned or botoxed and proud of it 40 something woman)
wondering where the good luck (the hikes and poetry glitter) went.
sorry Bukowski, but I sense that you would understand.
off to teach - the wizard - ceiling fans are my best friends today - it occurs to me I haven't been on the earth nearly enough so it's time to go sit beneath the big trees in the mountains, the ones that were spared the slaughter of last century logging due to their remoteness, and have claimed and maintained their spacious identity, the big tree in fact where I've seen huge mountain lion tracks in the snow whilst I've cross country skied, in the Mt. San Jacinto wilderness. Yes, that's where I must go, soon.
first, in case you missed it, here is the Heyday Books advance PR blurb for No Place for Puritan.
http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/no-place-for-a-puritan-the-lit.html
so the poet
engages it, dances it, gathers it, lies back on it and shapes storylines...narrative arcs on sand dunes, rain where dry lake beds mock the lonely lover, and a straight lined highway engulfs the poet in its square arms, what of my recursive path? Circles for me. I missed a deadline for the poets and writers California writers exchange, I assumed materials could be sent via email, like most everyplace else, but alas, when I went to meet the Aug 31 deadline at around 10 pm last night...it was a surprising snail mail deadline. I can console myself with the usual....there are probably 10,000 people applying for it and therefore your chances were slim...but...damn.
So here, in its lieu, in lieu of much missed lovers and daughter and dog and poetic stream of consciousness - it is late summer, fires scour the mountains and eat houses and a few people - what about the couple who tried to ride it out in their backyard hot tub? Reminds me of friends I hiked into Deep Creek with a few years back, who refused to hotfoot it out of there when I saw a major fire break out, downwind from us....they refused to leave and very nearly died while the fire burned over them later (I pretty much RAN up the steep hill to my car!) and they huddled low in the creek, wet towels over choking faces) - I can't wait to go to Burning Man, in fact my friend Van, one of the Deep Creek Fire survivors, is an avid attendee.
Now, to embrace the joie de vivre, here is a lovely poem by Bukowski that I found while leafing through piles of teaching materials, in preparation for my 12:30 pm Eng 1A class today (that is a little more than an hour away, and I've got to yet leave the house), and no apologies for being a poet and a bit off the worn path, as Morrison said, "out here we is stoned, immaculate" and tomorrow I have a very coveted appointment to meet with the renowned Juan Felipe Herrera (what a forever generous person and true poetry hero!) for a poetry get together and I know this will shot-arm me into my poetic and prosaic pulse, my fireline escape route from the flames, and in fact, my redemption and power. I've given up on comma splices, as you may have noticed, have seen so many students using them inadvertently over the years that it's become my latest poetry technique.
Made a Mistake
charles bukowski
I reached up into the top of the closet
and took out a pair of blue panties (ruth: worn-so-much-by-me gray dickies t-shirt that it's shredded with holes)
and showed them to her (him) and
asked, "are these yours?"
and she (he) looked and said,
"no those belong to a dog."
She (I) left after that and I haven't seen her (him)
since. I keep (not) going there, leaving notes stuck
into the door. I go back and the notes are still there.
I take the Maltese cross (Indian dreamcatcher)
cut it down from my car mirror, tie it
to the doorknob with a shoelace, leave
a book of poems.
when I go back the next night everything
is still there.
I keep searching the streets for that
blood-wine battleship (beat up car missing a rim on drivers wheel) she (he) drives
with a weak battery, and the doors
hanging from broken hinges.
I drive around the streets
an inch away from weeping,
ashamed of my sentimentality and
possible love.
a confused old man (um, still young, not yet siliconed or liposuctioned or botoxed and proud of it 40 something woman)
wondering where the good luck (the hikes and poetry glitter) went.
sorry Bukowski, but I sense that you would understand.
off to teach - the wizard - ceiling fans are my best friends today - it occurs to me I haven't been on the earth nearly enough so it's time to go sit beneath the big trees in the mountains, the ones that were spared the slaughter of last century logging due to their remoteness, and have claimed and maintained their spacious identity, the big tree in fact where I've seen huge mountain lion tracks in the snow whilst I've cross country skied, in the Mt. San Jacinto wilderness. Yes, that's where I must go, soon.
Monday, August 31, 2009
desert book advance publicity
Okay, I found this today, and it makes up for the vitriol of my previous blog entry from yesterday...or perhaps affirms all of that and takes me to some new dimension that I, the nervous emerging writer/editor, still struggle to recognize, let alone understand...this is all new to me, folks! Out here.....
http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/no-place-for-a-puritan-the-lit.html
Today's Brindle report: his physical therapy continues, he is the favorite dog in the hospital, and he is getting spoiled on a mix of canned and dry food (at home it's dog bone treats and dry good, although an expensive brand of chow so I don't feel too guilty.) His legs are moving, though he still can't quite stand on them.
Empty Nest update, today's Tarah report: better than yesterday, one of those "time is frozen" Sundays that we endure with increasingly August and September tension as the heat presses on and sometimes even gets worse....yes, it was Tarah, yesterday, sobbing at 4 pm. To reiterate, it was one of those "close" late summer days where you feel so shut in with dark curtains and A/C and sensory outside deprivation you may as well be in Nome, Alaska during December...sobbing....Alex was gone playing poker with friends, the kitty didn't want to hang out with her, she was sick of watching "lost" reruns on her laptop, the apartment was a mess, she was lonely.....and later, after I tried to convince her to visit me at the house, she called in a panic from the Shell station. Not only had she heard, at 9 pm, gunshots so loud that she'd hit the deck and fled (police and helicopter swarming the complex,) but she'd just locked her keys in the car. Good thing MOM paid for her Triple A card for a year.....I don't remember having one of those at 21....today is much better, I was a morning wreck, but she called at lunchtime from work, "everything is fine, and Alex apologized for not rushing home at 10 pm when I cut my foot on the kitchen table and thought I needed stitches." Oh, good. Nirvana once again. I can't wait for them to get married.
As for me. Online classes (three sections of 1B) are under control + I managed, after four hours of staring at the computer,to hack out my Eng 1A and creative writing syllabi. Do I detect a faint tremor of.....feeling okay about fall semester, after all? I have a great, if really packed, schedule of classes, and it's been my dream to teach creative writing, which I will be for the second year....so I can say it's all good, and time to toss that Mojave Green rattlesnake off the blanket on my chest. Hurl the whole thing, blanket and reptile, far across the room and jump and run!
And, I have a book coming out. I might be the lone ranger, walloping around an empty desert with a big three ring notebook of some 400 pages printed out, invisible to polite society, but there it is. I've rescued it from the dark corner of my hot garage, and I'm even going to take it to work tomorrow and build a shrine to it.
http://www.heydaybooks.com/upcoming/no-place-for-a-puritan-the-lit.html
Today's Brindle report: his physical therapy continues, he is the favorite dog in the hospital, and he is getting spoiled on a mix of canned and dry food (at home it's dog bone treats and dry good, although an expensive brand of chow so I don't feel too guilty.) His legs are moving, though he still can't quite stand on them.
Empty Nest update, today's Tarah report: better than yesterday, one of those "time is frozen" Sundays that we endure with increasingly August and September tension as the heat presses on and sometimes even gets worse....yes, it was Tarah, yesterday, sobbing at 4 pm. To reiterate, it was one of those "close" late summer days where you feel so shut in with dark curtains and A/C and sensory outside deprivation you may as well be in Nome, Alaska during December...sobbing....Alex was gone playing poker with friends, the kitty didn't want to hang out with her, she was sick of watching "lost" reruns on her laptop, the apartment was a mess, she was lonely.....and later, after I tried to convince her to visit me at the house, she called in a panic from the Shell station. Not only had she heard, at 9 pm, gunshots so loud that she'd hit the deck and fled (police and helicopter swarming the complex,) but she'd just locked her keys in the car. Good thing MOM paid for her Triple A card for a year.....I don't remember having one of those at 21....today is much better, I was a morning wreck, but she called at lunchtime from work, "everything is fine, and Alex apologized for not rushing home at 10 pm when I cut my foot on the kitchen table and thought I needed stitches." Oh, good. Nirvana once again. I can't wait for them to get married.
As for me. Online classes (three sections of 1B) are under control + I managed, after four hours of staring at the computer,to hack out my Eng 1A and creative writing syllabi. Do I detect a faint tremor of.....feeling okay about fall semester, after all? I have a great, if really packed, schedule of classes, and it's been my dream to teach creative writing, which I will be for the second year....so I can say it's all good, and time to toss that Mojave Green rattlesnake off the blanket on my chest. Hurl the whole thing, blanket and reptile, far across the room and jump and run!
And, I have a book coming out. I might be the lone ranger, walloping around an empty desert with a big three ring notebook of some 400 pages printed out, invisible to polite society, but there it is. I've rescued it from the dark corner of my hot garage, and I'm even going to take it to work tomorrow and build a shrine to it.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Brindle Update
Update on Brindle's inability to walk:
The vet from the neurological animal center just called....Brindle had an MRI to check his spinal cord and associated spinal fluids and membranes and bones of his skeleton - it appears to be something congenital that sometimes gives way, breaks, shards, in dogs. He is alert and doing well, and as sweet and friendly as ever with the staff there, and will be kept overnight and receive hyperbaric oxygen treatment to help him heal and regain his ability to walk. I'm so grateful he is at one of the best facilities in the country.
He has feeling in his toes, and can wag his tail a bit, all excellent signs. I was able to hold and pet him for about half an hour at 5:30 this morning....he laid his head on my lap and groaned and relaxed a bit...and is a favorite with the hospital staff. Then, I headed back to Palm Desert from the cool mist-fog of sunrise, Orange County on the wide-hipped "thick" 405 south up to the 55 to the 91, the Orange Crush, and the 215 to the 60 to the 10. There is something comforting in the hypnotic and shared freeway consciousness...the tangle of feeling and emotion between me and this dog, and my abandonment-heart, I've been anxious and nervous all day more than usual and not able to much sleep, and Shasta is staying close by, curled near me and worried about her little brother. In a way she's as much Brindle's mom as I am.
A stop in Mo Val at Denny's for a slippery breakfast and the strange entertainment of a car fire in a lot across the street, a strange car with a rear engine, not a Volkswagen, much smoke, people crowding around, the inevitable fire engine, no one hurt, the car didn't migrate into cumulus flame clouds and the car was left abandoned in the end, and no people, a nondescript donut shop, I drove home into the desert overwhelm, expanse sand and inexpensive light, too much for the eyes, and not long ago, the world made sense to me, daughters and the "little kids" were all at one with me and life was manueverable without smackdowns and grief at losing those I love, or is it just now that my heart has been so ripped open that I am finally able to feel, in a Buddhist angled windowpane, and all love flows in and out with breathing...of course to feel, to love, our hearts must steeple with compassion. We never really lose...we merge as one.
Phantom Seed on Poets & Writers database
This is wonderful....I just discovered that Phantom Seed is listed on the Poets and Writers database...no wonder I'm getting wonderful submissions and inquiries from all over the country and beyond. Issue #3, coming out in September and representative of authors from as far away as Denmark, is our best issue yet. Check back later on Phantom Seedlings for updates on Issue #3 readings throughout so-Cal this fall and winter!
http://www.pw.org/content/phantom_seed_magazine
Cover of Phantom Seed issue #1, spring 2008
shadows, February sunset, Thousand Palms Oasis
A big thanks to April Durham, my new co-editor and fab director of the Small Wonder Foundation in Riverside, CA, for her extensive work on the layout and design of our latest and greatest! I love the continuing desert-inland empire symbiosis of it all..
http://www.pw.org/content/phantom_seed_magazine
Cover of Phantom Seed issue #1, spring 2008
shadows, February sunset, Thousand Palms Oasis
A big thanks to April Durham, my new co-editor and fab director of the Small Wonder Foundation in Riverside, CA, for her extensive work on the layout and design of our latest and greatest! I love the continuing desert-inland empire symbiosis of it all..
Prayer for Brindle + Good Thoughts
Please say ome prayers for my precious baby-boy dog, Brindle...I'm waiting for a quick toast snack and slamming a beer, yah I know it's wrong and illegal to drink a beer and then DRIVE but you probably would, too, I hardly drink ever and can barely restrain myself from slamming down a few shots of...vodka, something, though I don't even ever buy liquor.
I am about to rushing Brindle down to Fountain Valley to a dog neurologist. I just got back from the 24 hour vet's office to grab on overnight bag. He's only 3 1/2 years old, but I found him lying outside this evening on the back porch, unable to move his back legs and apparently in shock. Tarah and Alex came over and we managed to get him onto a sleeping bag (he weighs 100 lbs) and into the back of the car....the emergency vet in Indio has diagnosed him with some kind of neurological problem, possibly a slipped hernia, maybe a hereditary thing....
this is so UNREAL, it's 1:26 a.m. and we just got back from that vet's office and the vet in Fountain Valley, a 2 hour drive, is the only place that can treat him. He needs an MRI and further diagnosis and possibly surgery. The vet here gave him a pain shot, and I'm crying my eyes out, sorry for the shitty cliche but this is my BABY and my BOY and just tonight, earlier he was cheering up me and Tarah with antics and couch-hugs, and earlier this a.m. I awoke on my couch to see him on the other couch, claiming his sleep-in and giving me a big wagful of tail....this dog has the most love and sweetness and joy of any dog I've ever known.....
he was even wagging his tail earlier tonight and in so much pain. I am beside myself. Please think good thoughts for my Brindie-Boy. Thank you...will try to keep you posted. Gotta go.
I am about to rushing Brindle down to Fountain Valley to a dog neurologist. I just got back from the 24 hour vet's office to grab on overnight bag. He's only 3 1/2 years old, but I found him lying outside this evening on the back porch, unable to move his back legs and apparently in shock. Tarah and Alex came over and we managed to get him onto a sleeping bag (he weighs 100 lbs) and into the back of the car....the emergency vet in Indio has diagnosed him with some kind of neurological problem, possibly a slipped hernia, maybe a hereditary thing....
this is so UNREAL, it's 1:26 a.m. and we just got back from that vet's office and the vet in Fountain Valley, a 2 hour drive, is the only place that can treat him. He needs an MRI and further diagnosis and possibly surgery. The vet here gave him a pain shot, and I'm crying my eyes out, sorry for the shitty cliche but this is my BABY and my BOY and just tonight, earlier he was cheering up me and Tarah with antics and couch-hugs, and earlier this a.m. I awoke on my couch to see him on the other couch, claiming his sleep-in and giving me a big wagful of tail....this dog has the most love and sweetness and joy of any dog I've ever known.....
he was even wagging his tail earlier tonight and in so much pain. I am beside myself. Please think good thoughts for my Brindie-Boy. Thank you...will try to keep you posted. Gotta go.
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