Manzanar Free Press
a real sign commemorating a real building and a real newspaper at the Manzanar WW2 Japanese-American Internment Historical Site, painted fresh as of summer, 2008
words flow like rocks from
mountains to river: bouldered
slopes catch the news
my little late night, post-rollerblading-at-twilight try at haiku - think I'm getting the use of the colon in hand. "By the time I came out of the birth canal I was black and blue," writes one of my freshman composition students in his "this is me" essay. Boulders also shoulder passages. Some of them, razored lava rock tubes.
Only one way through. Dark chocolate-covered almonds or peanuts. Take your pick. I have samples of both. I don't know if I'm tired or inspired. Both. Late night haiku writing (or my efforts at it) has a way of rejuventating me.
The fall edition of the Inlandia Writers Workshop, Version 4.0, begins Thursday, Sept 24, from 6-8 pm at the downtown Riverside Library. Free to all, come as you are, bring paper + pen or a laptop if you'd like. I'm the instructor, once again. This workshop is sponsored by the Inlandia Institute and a generous grant from Poets and Writers/the James Irvine Foundation. IWW Version 4.0 will meet for six consecutive sessions on Thurday eves, with the exception of Oct 1 and Nov 5. This session will focus on the California deserts - including the Mojave - as the basis for a regional writing exercise.
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
No Place for a Puritan @ UCR Writers Week
I am stoked! Just found out today that a panel presentation/discussion for No Place for a Puritan will be on the schedule for UC Riverside's writer's week, 2010, next February. Hurrah! More details to come, closer to the date.
Sept 21, autumn is loose....sort of
so I turn my attention to my blog - writing here is so good for me, my staggering earlier-in-the-day migraine instantly disappears, and I'm finding my Imitrex in preparing more pictures from last Thursday night's smash hit reading event to post - so many friends came from locally and afar. The event symbiosed in such a beautiful collaboration of true community spirit that it's taken a few days to wrap my head around it, so to speak....there I was on Wednesday, sweating literally and figuratively at home in Palm Desert, too nervous to work on my online classes and other "school" work - the books had not yet arrived at 3 pm, I couldn't reach our printer in San Diego by phone, except for the high-maintenance (but nice) phone calls I left, and I had a big reading featuring two magazines and many readers scheduled for the very next day.
Oh yes, and three possible sound systems - my friend Mike, an Inlandia writers participant from this past summer, had gone to radio shack and picked up a $20 microphone bearing his name; Henry, from the local bands Mute Point and Polite, had offered to show up with a good mike; and I had been promised by a friend of Jen, of Riverside, that there would be an amplifier and mike ready for us by 4 pm. However, being 60 miles away from the Grind until the day of, an hour before, not to mention a very full teaching and work schedule right up until Thursday afternoon, made it impossible for me to nervously So, I had no idea what would happen even once I reached Back to the Grind in Riverside on Thursday, or even take time to make phone calls to follow through! Luck, grace, and many outstanding people collaborated on poetry-time to bring this event together in the way that the very best community happenings just happen to....gel and vibrate shimmering electronic light!
Thanks to Darren, owner of the Grind, for allowing us the use of his basement!
Marion from the Inlandia Institute along with the new intern/assistsant, Cyrus, who did so much legwork making posters, signs, publicity, and helping set up and make book sales!
JEN, who set up the sound system hours early on Thursday, arranged a stool and table and taped-on flowers to the mike, and left me not only a gracious note about how to use the sound system, but also a lavendar plant! My favorite. THANKS, JEN! And thanks, Wendy, for connecting Jen to our event.
Jean, coming all the way down from Idyllwild in a bright red shirt.
Laurie, super-poet of the desert, for joining me to and from Palm Desert to enjoy the read...
Mike S., for buying a mike that he will have to return to the store.
Henry, who I just met last weekend, for also bringing a mike AND for packing Jen's amplifiers and equipment in my car, up a flight of stairs (along with his Mute Point bandmates, thanks, guys!) and for attending our reading!
Julie, who shared her own amazing poetry and brought CSUSB students
Mike C., for bring students from RCC and also giving a dynamic reading performance of his poetry
Dr. Harki Dhillon, for gracing our reading with his memoirs!
Mary for her wonderful reading and presence...
Joan, for reading, sans Gilligan the loyal workshop dog-comrade....
Mae, for her awesome reading
Michelle, hurrah hurrah for the freeways of downtown!
Cindy, for reading her visual poetry
Brandon, a famous San Diego poet, for making the long trek - and ditto to Debbie, coming from Pasadena...
Celeste, for her hard work helping the summer workshop and her contributions...
Peter and Lorraine, for reading their outstanding short stories and giving our reading a delectable edge
Mario, our photographer-galore
and everybody else, all the workshop participants and readers, and friends, and others who wandered in, or sat through the entire thing....I am so fortunate to have been there, too!
April! We missed you! Everyone LOVES both books, and you did a fantastic job. Truly the unsung hero (though I did my best to laud your praises) of our evening.
And Terri - thanks for shipping the books at 4:45 pm (all is well, and to heck with UPS for botching up your previous shipping order...THANK YOU!)so I'd have them by 11 a.m. on Thursday - I was sleeping in...heard the doorbell...and there they were, three neat boxes stacked on my doorstep. Truly, the 11th hour. The best way for these kinds of things to take place.
More pictures coming soon. It takes time to resize them so I can post, and there are many English 1B discussion questions (I have three sections, 100 students there, not to mention English 1A in real-time, 35 there, and creative writing in real-time too, another 35. Wipe the brow again and again.)
And now, I must tell you, the palo verde tree that was at least 10 years old and quite small when I bought my house 7 years ago and split in two from being top heavy this June and had to be cut down....is now transforming itself into a palo verde bush. Tarah and Alex came by yesterday to go out to a late lunch, and Tarah and I were laughing our heads off, looking at the oddity this thing has become. It survives by its own new brand, it never did conform, living in half, it tells me what happens after things fall apart and then begin again. With its own humor and tenacity.
Plants in this desert, all 110 degrees (or more, it may have been, it was 106 degrees at 6 o'clock!) of today in a late summer/early fall heatwave not uncommon for this part of the world, yes, our first day of fall, and someone's dog was barking when I took this picture and it wasn't mine, Brindle had some problems this past weekend (digestive and too delicate to detail on a public blog) but he is now doing fine, and being very loved in a wonderful home by terrific people I can only hope to repay some day, somehow.
It was a weekend that also involved a major $$$$$ shopping binge at Ross Dress for Less - me and Tarah - she helps with fashion sense, thank God, but also loaded up the cart with a few clothes for her, and Alex, and makeup...for me, as well as nail polish kits....how can I turn my only and beautiful and wise daughter down? Dresses, jackets, jeans, blouses, sweaters, wallet, pricey pastel shaded faux snake skin shoulder bag, 5 or 6 new pairs of one of a kind shoes for me - as Tarah reminded me, you can never have too many pairs of shoes, and she learned that from me - I even let her "do my eyes," I trust her so much...until she started curling the eyelashes. I still can't believe she didn't actually pull them out. Beauty = pain. I thought it was beauty = truth - she knows Keats as well as I, and I can't WAIT to see the new movie "Bright Star." IM'ing my mom, who's in Rome, Italy, after being in Ireland for two weeks, with my dad.
They are both taking Italian classes and will be there another few weeks....my dad showed a copy of the desert anthology to our extended family in Killibegs, Ireland, a beautiful fishing village on Ireland's western coast, and he said they really enjoyed hearing my mom read them the preface. Reasons to return to Ireland (was there in 2002 for a family reunion) - my grandmothers' hometown is just an hour's drive from Sligo Castle, Yeat's legendary western Irish home. One of THE all time knockout poets! Last time, we were rushing for a train and only could stop by for ten minutes, imagine my agony.
And I somehow made it through the Badlands and back again this weekend to the Riverside Mayor's Ball on Saturday night, surprised to see kobe beef burgers on the menu and so many people I already know. Dancing to "Sexy Back" in my red high heeled shoes - my daughter just rolled her eyes when I told her how silly I must have seemed, but guess what. Mom's the new version of ping pong ball and the game seems to be going well, not much different than tennis and much lighter as well.
Oh yes, and three possible sound systems - my friend Mike, an Inlandia writers participant from this past summer, had gone to radio shack and picked up a $20 microphone bearing his name; Henry, from the local bands Mute Point and Polite, had offered to show up with a good mike; and I had been promised by a friend of Jen, of Riverside, that there would be an amplifier and mike ready for us by 4 pm. However, being 60 miles away from the Grind until the day of, an hour before, not to mention a very full teaching and work schedule right up until Thursday afternoon, made it impossible for me to nervously So, I had no idea what would happen even once I reached Back to the Grind in Riverside on Thursday, or even take time to make phone calls to follow through! Luck, grace, and many outstanding people collaborated on poetry-time to bring this event together in the way that the very best community happenings just happen to....gel and vibrate shimmering electronic light!
Thanks to Darren, owner of the Grind, for allowing us the use of his basement!
Marion from the Inlandia Institute along with the new intern/assistsant, Cyrus, who did so much legwork making posters, signs, publicity, and helping set up and make book sales!
JEN, who set up the sound system hours early on Thursday, arranged a stool and table and taped-on flowers to the mike, and left me not only a gracious note about how to use the sound system, but also a lavendar plant! My favorite. THANKS, JEN! And thanks, Wendy, for connecting Jen to our event.
Jean, coming all the way down from Idyllwild in a bright red shirt.
Laurie, super-poet of the desert, for joining me to and from Palm Desert to enjoy the read...
Mike S., for buying a mike that he will have to return to the store.
Henry, who I just met last weekend, for also bringing a mike AND for packing Jen's amplifiers and equipment in my car, up a flight of stairs (along with his Mute Point bandmates, thanks, guys!) and for attending our reading!
Julie, who shared her own amazing poetry and brought CSUSB students
Mike C., for bring students from RCC and also giving a dynamic reading performance of his poetry
Dr. Harki Dhillon, for gracing our reading with his memoirs!
Mary for her wonderful reading and presence...
Joan, for reading, sans Gilligan the loyal workshop dog-comrade....
Mae, for her awesome reading
Michelle, hurrah hurrah for the freeways of downtown!
Cindy, for reading her visual poetry
Brandon, a famous San Diego poet, for making the long trek - and ditto to Debbie, coming from Pasadena...
Celeste, for her hard work helping the summer workshop and her contributions...
Peter and Lorraine, for reading their outstanding short stories and giving our reading a delectable edge
Mario, our photographer-galore
and everybody else, all the workshop participants and readers, and friends, and others who wandered in, or sat through the entire thing....I am so fortunate to have been there, too!
April! We missed you! Everyone LOVES both books, and you did a fantastic job. Truly the unsung hero (though I did my best to laud your praises) of our evening.
And Terri - thanks for shipping the books at 4:45 pm (all is well, and to heck with UPS for botching up your previous shipping order...THANK YOU!)so I'd have them by 11 a.m. on Thursday - I was sleeping in...heard the doorbell...and there they were, three neat boxes stacked on my doorstep. Truly, the 11th hour. The best way for these kinds of things to take place.
More pictures coming soon. It takes time to resize them so I can post, and there are many English 1B discussion questions (I have three sections, 100 students there, not to mention English 1A in real-time, 35 there, and creative writing in real-time too, another 35. Wipe the brow again and again.)
And now, I must tell you, the palo verde tree that was at least 10 years old and quite small when I bought my house 7 years ago and split in two from being top heavy this June and had to be cut down....is now transforming itself into a palo verde bush. Tarah and Alex came by yesterday to go out to a late lunch, and Tarah and I were laughing our heads off, looking at the oddity this thing has become. It survives by its own new brand, it never did conform, living in half, it tells me what happens after things fall apart and then begin again. With its own humor and tenacity.
Plants in this desert, all 110 degrees (or more, it may have been, it was 106 degrees at 6 o'clock!) of today in a late summer/early fall heatwave not uncommon for this part of the world, yes, our first day of fall, and someone's dog was barking when I took this picture and it wasn't mine, Brindle had some problems this past weekend (digestive and too delicate to detail on a public blog) but he is now doing fine, and being very loved in a wonderful home by terrific people I can only hope to repay some day, somehow.
It was a weekend that also involved a major $$$$$ shopping binge at Ross Dress for Less - me and Tarah - she helps with fashion sense, thank God, but also loaded up the cart with a few clothes for her, and Alex, and makeup...for me, as well as nail polish kits....how can I turn my only and beautiful and wise daughter down? Dresses, jackets, jeans, blouses, sweaters, wallet, pricey pastel shaded faux snake skin shoulder bag, 5 or 6 new pairs of one of a kind shoes for me - as Tarah reminded me, you can never have too many pairs of shoes, and she learned that from me - I even let her "do my eyes," I trust her so much...until she started curling the eyelashes. I still can't believe she didn't actually pull them out. Beauty = pain. I thought it was beauty = truth - she knows Keats as well as I, and I can't WAIT to see the new movie "Bright Star." IM'ing my mom, who's in Rome, Italy, after being in Ireland for two weeks, with my dad.
They are both taking Italian classes and will be there another few weeks....my dad showed a copy of the desert anthology to our extended family in Killibegs, Ireland, a beautiful fishing village on Ireland's western coast, and he said they really enjoyed hearing my mom read them the preface. Reasons to return to Ireland (was there in 2002 for a family reunion) - my grandmothers' hometown is just an hour's drive from Sligo Castle, Yeat's legendary western Irish home. One of THE all time knockout poets! Last time, we were rushing for a train and only could stop by for ten minutes, imagine my agony.
And I somehow made it through the Badlands and back again this weekend to the Riverside Mayor's Ball on Saturday night, surprised to see kobe beef burgers on the menu and so many people I already know. Dancing to "Sexy Back" in my red high heeled shoes - my daughter just rolled her eyes when I told her how silly I must have seemed, but guess what. Mom's the new version of ping pong ball and the game seems to be going well, not much different than tennis and much lighter as well.
Friday, September 18, 2009
pictures from reading last night
Phantom Seed issue 3 is out and already burning the fireline. Awesome reading last night at Back to the Grind in Riverside, love the basement there. Friends came from all over: San Diego, Pasadena, Palm Desert (me + a friend) and so forth. 3 hours of nonstop glory. Also Slouching Towards Mt. Rubidoux Manor #2 release, from the third installment of the Inlandia Writers Workshop, which I teach.
with my friend, poet + professor Julie Paegle of CSUSB
my friend Cyrus with Slouching Towards Mt. Rubidoux Manor + some homies from a local band, friends of his cousins
Ruth and the cool guys from the band who loaded up the amp + equipment up the stairs and into my car + Phantom Seed Issue 3
at back to the grind
with my friend, poet + professor Julie Paegle of CSUSB
my friend Cyrus with Slouching Towards Mt. Rubidoux Manor + some homies from a local band, friends of his cousins
Ruth and the cool guys from the band who loaded up the amp + equipment up the stairs and into my car + Phantom Seed Issue 3
at back to the grind
98 is the new 42
so Brindle is now back from the vet hospital in Orange County. I had him from Sunday-Wednesday, and it was a flashback to the early Tarah years. Brindle is doing better, and definitely did NOT want to be confined to a blocked off space in the bedroom. He made several escapes, by pushing the wicker chairs aside - remember, he's a hearty 10pound dog - and actually crawling under my bed. NO Brindle, don't slide under there, you'll hurt yourself! Not easy pulling him out and keeping him from knocking his back on the metal shelf. Like a small child, he doesn't understand the danger he is in. And, he think he owns my bed - as in, jumping atop my rather high mattress and claiming it for himself. Yes, he does pretty much fit all the way across its queen frame when stretched out for a serious nap.
The bedrooms are the only carpeted rooms in the house, you see, and tile, with its slippery slide, is a dangerous surface for him to ambulate his still-loopy back legs. His front half wants to run - strong chest and shoulders - yet his back half is in recuperation from his spinal cord bleed, and the legs give out. He still needs to be walked outside to do his bathroom duties, and held up with a sort of harness. 6-8 times per day, and wanting to jump on my (HIS) bed in the back room - it was not going to work for me, with my chaotic schedule. I had to keep him AND Shasta in the back room the past three days, because if SHE got to come out and be with me on my living room computer, then HE wouldn't quit barking. No wonder I call them "the little kids."
So, I'm happy to report that I've had the great luck-blessing of finding a temp.home for him while he continues to recover. One of my students, Beatriz, an amazing woman, has taken him in to her home in Cathedral City, not far from my house. Lots of love, in-home care from her young adult children, and most of all, Beatriz's warm generosity for Brindle, and by association, me. She only needs to keep her puppy chihuahua away from tantalizing the big guy into hazardous pay. Thank you Beatriz + family for your extensive generosity. I miss my "baby" but he continues to get well and hopefully will be back home soon again.
The bedrooms are the only carpeted rooms in the house, you see, and tile, with its slippery slide, is a dangerous surface for him to ambulate his still-loopy back legs. His front half wants to run - strong chest and shoulders - yet his back half is in recuperation from his spinal cord bleed, and the legs give out. He still needs to be walked outside to do his bathroom duties, and held up with a sort of harness. 6-8 times per day, and wanting to jump on my (HIS) bed in the back room - it was not going to work for me, with my chaotic schedule. I had to keep him AND Shasta in the back room the past three days, because if SHE got to come out and be with me on my living room computer, then HE wouldn't quit barking. No wonder I call them "the little kids."
So, I'm happy to report that I've had the great luck-blessing of finding a temp.home for him while he continues to recover. One of my students, Beatriz, an amazing woman, has taken him in to her home in Cathedral City, not far from my house. Lots of love, in-home care from her young adult children, and most of all, Beatriz's warm generosity for Brindle, and by association, me. She only needs to keep her puppy chihuahua away from tantalizing the big guy into hazardous pay. Thank you Beatriz + family for your extensive generosity. I miss my "baby" but he continues to get well and hopefully will be back home soon again.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Claremont 9.9.09 + Empty Mom
I had a very enjoyable evening this past Wednesday at Casa de Salsa restaurant in Claremont, CA, home of the elite, private Claremont colleges and one of the most literary and hip spots on the west coast. I gave a lecture on California desert literature, embedding poetic selections from No Place for a Puritan and a few of my own poems into my talk. Nothing's better than to read, connect with people, and share the desert-as-I-feel it. Also got a chance to share and promote Phantom Seed lit mag, issue #3 is coming out next week and our newest issue is the grooviest to date.
here I am with some new friends and wonderful Claremont people, Barbara and Mark Ashworth and Barbara's son...they are also avid fans of the California desert.
It was nice to see a number of poetic friends: Lucia Galloway, a wonderful poet who lives in Claremont; Bruce Williams, another desert poet who teaches at San Antonio Community College in San Dimas; Mike Cluff, another poet-professor who's at Riverside City College, RCC, and my friend/writer Cyrus Emerson, an aspiring audio-novel innovator. I also made a few new friends, and basked in the joy and sublimity of spending an evening with people who enjoy poetry!
and here is the hostess with the mostest, the incomparable Helen Graziano, Claremont poetess laureate....Helen is a standout poet and indefatiguable coordinator of many stellar poetry readings and events in Claremont. She is also a contributor to Phantom Seed.
Thanks, Helen, for inviting me!
And so, another blissful poetic synchronicity, the making sense of what randomly holds me at the edge of abyss - for a night, and through today, the edge smoothed, a salve provided for the "shock and awe" of starting back to teaching fulltime (many more students, many fewer classes,) as well as the ongoing....numb and oft-disoriented coping with "empty nest" and this strange, silent house I find myself in, 21 years of fulltime house-sharing, with the lovely Tarah, of course, and now, the cord's cut, or should I say, yanked out so hard I'm kinda staggering around - staying sober, good girl. Hm, haven't lived alone since I was 23. Then, it was fun, because I was "leaving home" and the quiet, after growing up in a raucous Irish family of 6, still space meant everything, "my own" small house was a real achievement. My 1930's adobe cabin on Nancotta Road, owned by an Australian man named Mr. Brindle, and the namesake of my dog Brindle (who is yet in recovery from his tragic and inexplicable spinal cord injury at a vet hospital, but slowly regaining use of his back legs.) I had pistachio trees and an outdoor adobe brick fire pit on my 3 acres in then-remote Apple Valley, and my friends and I had some terrific parties under the close-neighbor stars....all for $100/month!
Now - the achievements seem so passe, and I often find myself kind of wandering around the house on California Drive, wondering "how did this come about? My mortage is many, many times more multiplied than my first, modest rent. I'm in a designer desert town filled with shopping glitz and the occasional Rolls Royce, in my closeted (stucco-walled-in) 3 BR, 2 BA (at the urging of my former boyfriend Rob, a former realtor who told me just what type of house is most saleable, of course that was before this housing disaster), 2 car garage, pool + hot tub, fully desert landscaped yard....Oh yeah, I moved here for that fulltime job 10 years ago, and much of my decision to move to Palm Desert was based on moving to a place that worked best for Tarah (i.e., grandparent proximity.) This big house? Did I BUY this thing?" A sort of child or young adult, sustained in this newness and oddity by my own adult creation...it seems impossible that I did it: raised Tarah mostly on my own, built a career, bought a house, made a home, edited a desert lit-book. A life. And I had sand dunes, four square ancient miles of them, behind me, inviting long views to Mt. San Jacinto, now obliterated by golf and mansions....all of which has brought me to...some new kind of "here" that I want to run screaming away from! I step back and "see" how closed in I've gotten, that open space has eluded me, and I've always relied on houses that give good porch and wide nature views. Of COURSE I'm stifled here! I'm an open-desert and mountain and desert river and lake (yes, there is (mostly pilfered) water here....canoeing woman!
Realizing everything was filtered through the Tarah daughter/Ruth Mom lens for 21 year, and now that identity and sense of orientation has shifted radically, and a mix of fatigue, satisfaction, and loss, not to mention more than a bit of fear and confusion over how to (re) invent myself as a "single 46 year old woman/adult" person. Walking across the large-tile floors, from one bedroom to the next, they're mostly empty (master BR = furniture stacked in it) and the hallway is way too long. I can't even muster the heart to mop the floors, or tear the dead weeds from the garden. Yeah, one of the palo verde trees fell over and we had to cut it apart and have it hauled away for an outrageous $$ sum, but it's bushing back out again and I don't know wether to let it grow shaggy and weird or keep trimming it back before those sharp limbs get too big to cut w/my modest tree clippers.
My brother John, 48, an unmarried man with no children, who also teaches in Oakland, CA, says, "just enjoy it, now you only have to work and take care of yourself." Well, I say, I don't think I ever really learned how to take care of myself - I've always taken care of Tarah." Not to mention - what IS a single adult life? In one's 40's, not early 20's (I had Tarah at 24.) Anchored by the culmination of college degrees and career creating, and now unachored at the hip, the navel station, but still with the adult baggage, and without the adult-child responsibilities that were a driving force for me for so many years - a reinvention that must involve all parts of development, age, experience, and inexperience. Even the way I interact with people is different now. I feel glimmers of being a confident and professional 46, and shimmers of being an awkward and shy 23. Half my age and then doubled, and confused by it all.
Sometimes I don't know how to drive to the grocery store, which is 2 miles down from my road, without any turns, and Albertson's, bless its familiar-aisled heart (food for one: organic skim milk, fresh orange juice, Thompsons sourdough muffins, fat free mozarella cheese, organic coffee and tea, organic oatmeal and healthy crunch cereal and flaxseed to add, a bit of sliced turkey meat, pre-cooked, thin-crust CA Pizza Kitchen pizzas, salad greens and spinach and broccoli, avocados and grapes and bananas and a stack of tabloid magazines, and oh yeah, bottles of Perrier - this is the simple diet, and I eat at all odd hours now anyway.) What is this? A skillet? What in this drawer? Why these piles of silverware. Too many cups. Dishes only once/week? Weird weird weird. Cooking, other than microwaving, making coffee, pouring milk or juice, and using my toaster oven to make pizza or english muffins, is entirely out of the question. There's a reason I buy pre-made salad mix.
Of course I'm still Tarah's MOM, but I'm a distant figure now, one reachable by phone and for guidance on life's little things (what do you do when you run out of $$ before the next paycheck? I can't get the college classes I wanted. My boyfriend is pissing me off. The cat has ringworm. Black water is coming out of the apartment faucet.) I've become #1 advice dispenser, via cell phone. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Okay, back to the fun-relief of last Wednesday night! Good vibes....it's all good. I'm learning to be my own mom. "It will all be okay, and it will all work out. Don't worry." At least the washing machine hasn't gone entirely out, tho it doesn't spin the clothes dry enough, and the pool guy, my friend Dave, keeps coming to keep the chlorine floater afloat, and sits to talk with me when I'm available and knows that when I'm not, I'm probably asleep at 1 pm and he doesn't knock, and my water timer is working so everything is getting watered. Shasta demands a doggy bone every morning, but other than that she's completely quiet and keeps to self, sad that HER little boy, Brindle has been gone, and at a loss herself of where to put herself for condolence, other than beneath my bed or curled always at my feet wherever I happen to house-be at the time. And big clouds out the window, I've opened it for view, hint of rain, if 108 degress on 9.11 is hot enough, over the desert mountains, to wring moisture from the sky and bless thunderheads, zig-zag-zig electricity for midnight inspiration. And so I write.
here I am with some new friends and wonderful Claremont people, Barbara and Mark Ashworth and Barbara's son...they are also avid fans of the California desert.
It was nice to see a number of poetic friends: Lucia Galloway, a wonderful poet who lives in Claremont; Bruce Williams, another desert poet who teaches at San Antonio Community College in San Dimas; Mike Cluff, another poet-professor who's at Riverside City College, RCC, and my friend/writer Cyrus Emerson, an aspiring audio-novel innovator. I also made a few new friends, and basked in the joy and sublimity of spending an evening with people who enjoy poetry!
and here is the hostess with the mostest, the incomparable Helen Graziano, Claremont poetess laureate....Helen is a standout poet and indefatiguable coordinator of many stellar poetry readings and events in Claremont. She is also a contributor to Phantom Seed.
Thanks, Helen, for inviting me!
And so, another blissful poetic synchronicity, the making sense of what randomly holds me at the edge of abyss - for a night, and through today, the edge smoothed, a salve provided for the "shock and awe" of starting back to teaching fulltime (many more students, many fewer classes,) as well as the ongoing....numb and oft-disoriented coping with "empty nest" and this strange, silent house I find myself in, 21 years of fulltime house-sharing, with the lovely Tarah, of course, and now, the cord's cut, or should I say, yanked out so hard I'm kinda staggering around - staying sober, good girl. Hm, haven't lived alone since I was 23. Then, it was fun, because I was "leaving home" and the quiet, after growing up in a raucous Irish family of 6, still space meant everything, "my own" small house was a real achievement. My 1930's adobe cabin on Nancotta Road, owned by an Australian man named Mr. Brindle, and the namesake of my dog Brindle (who is yet in recovery from his tragic and inexplicable spinal cord injury at a vet hospital, but slowly regaining use of his back legs.) I had pistachio trees and an outdoor adobe brick fire pit on my 3 acres in then-remote Apple Valley, and my friends and I had some terrific parties under the close-neighbor stars....all for $100/month!
Now - the achievements seem so passe, and I often find myself kind of wandering around the house on California Drive, wondering "how did this come about? My mortage is many, many times more multiplied than my first, modest rent. I'm in a designer desert town filled with shopping glitz and the occasional Rolls Royce, in my closeted (stucco-walled-in) 3 BR, 2 BA (at the urging of my former boyfriend Rob, a former realtor who told me just what type of house is most saleable, of course that was before this housing disaster), 2 car garage, pool + hot tub, fully desert landscaped yard....Oh yeah, I moved here for that fulltime job 10 years ago, and much of my decision to move to Palm Desert was based on moving to a place that worked best for Tarah (i.e., grandparent proximity.) This big house? Did I BUY this thing?" A sort of child or young adult, sustained in this newness and oddity by my own adult creation...it seems impossible that I did it: raised Tarah mostly on my own, built a career, bought a house, made a home, edited a desert lit-book. A life. And I had sand dunes, four square ancient miles of them, behind me, inviting long views to Mt. San Jacinto, now obliterated by golf and mansions....all of which has brought me to...some new kind of "here" that I want to run screaming away from! I step back and "see" how closed in I've gotten, that open space has eluded me, and I've always relied on houses that give good porch and wide nature views. Of COURSE I'm stifled here! I'm an open-desert and mountain and desert river and lake (yes, there is (mostly pilfered) water here....canoeing woman!
Realizing everything was filtered through the Tarah daughter/Ruth Mom lens for 21 year, and now that identity and sense of orientation has shifted radically, and a mix of fatigue, satisfaction, and loss, not to mention more than a bit of fear and confusion over how to (re) invent myself as a "single 46 year old woman/adult" person. Walking across the large-tile floors, from one bedroom to the next, they're mostly empty (master BR = furniture stacked in it) and the hallway is way too long. I can't even muster the heart to mop the floors, or tear the dead weeds from the garden. Yeah, one of the palo verde trees fell over and we had to cut it apart and have it hauled away for an outrageous $$ sum, but it's bushing back out again and I don't know wether to let it grow shaggy and weird or keep trimming it back before those sharp limbs get too big to cut w/my modest tree clippers.
My brother John, 48, an unmarried man with no children, who also teaches in Oakland, CA, says, "just enjoy it, now you only have to work and take care of yourself." Well, I say, I don't think I ever really learned how to take care of myself - I've always taken care of Tarah." Not to mention - what IS a single adult life? In one's 40's, not early 20's (I had Tarah at 24.) Anchored by the culmination of college degrees and career creating, and now unachored at the hip, the navel station, but still with the adult baggage, and without the adult-child responsibilities that were a driving force for me for so many years - a reinvention that must involve all parts of development, age, experience, and inexperience. Even the way I interact with people is different now. I feel glimmers of being a confident and professional 46, and shimmers of being an awkward and shy 23. Half my age and then doubled, and confused by it all.
Sometimes I don't know how to drive to the grocery store, which is 2 miles down from my road, without any turns, and Albertson's, bless its familiar-aisled heart (food for one: organic skim milk, fresh orange juice, Thompsons sourdough muffins, fat free mozarella cheese, organic coffee and tea, organic oatmeal and healthy crunch cereal and flaxseed to add, a bit of sliced turkey meat, pre-cooked, thin-crust CA Pizza Kitchen pizzas, salad greens and spinach and broccoli, avocados and grapes and bananas and a stack of tabloid magazines, and oh yeah, bottles of Perrier - this is the simple diet, and I eat at all odd hours now anyway.) What is this? A skillet? What in this drawer? Why these piles of silverware. Too many cups. Dishes only once/week? Weird weird weird. Cooking, other than microwaving, making coffee, pouring milk or juice, and using my toaster oven to make pizza or english muffins, is entirely out of the question. There's a reason I buy pre-made salad mix.
Of course I'm still Tarah's MOM, but I'm a distant figure now, one reachable by phone and for guidance on life's little things (what do you do when you run out of $$ before the next paycheck? I can't get the college classes I wanted. My boyfriend is pissing me off. The cat has ringworm. Black water is coming out of the apartment faucet.) I've become #1 advice dispenser, via cell phone. Sigh, sigh, sigh.
Okay, back to the fun-relief of last Wednesday night! Good vibes....it's all good. I'm learning to be my own mom. "It will all be okay, and it will all work out. Don't worry." At least the washing machine hasn't gone entirely out, tho it doesn't spin the clothes dry enough, and the pool guy, my friend Dave, keeps coming to keep the chlorine floater afloat, and sits to talk with me when I'm available and knows that when I'm not, I'm probably asleep at 1 pm and he doesn't knock, and my water timer is working so everything is getting watered. Shasta demands a doggy bone every morning, but other than that she's completely quiet and keeps to self, sad that HER little boy, Brindle has been gone, and at a loss herself of where to put herself for condolence, other than beneath my bed or curled always at my feet wherever I happen to house-be at the time. And big clouds out the window, I've opened it for view, hint of rain, if 108 degress on 9.11 is hot enough, over the desert mountains, to wring moisture from the sky and bless thunderheads, zig-zag-zig electricity for midnight inspiration. And so I write.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Tarah birthday pictures
I surprised Tarah at work - she is a front desk receptionist for Dr. Younis in Palm Desert - on her 21st birthday this past July 28.
Tarah turns 21..ice cream cake + proud mom and a little Hannah M...
Tarah and Velvet...the doctor's pet, who goes to work every day...
Tarah turns 21..ice cream cake + proud mom and a little Hannah M...
Tarah and Velvet...the doctor's pet, who goes to work every day...
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