I look to the dark sky,
without my glasses
the night is fuzz,
I am in the warm pool
desert midnight - there you are,
star dandelion
here you are
splintered glass
rainbow light
ready
to blow away-
where you are
here and there
you hold steady, and everywhere
before you emerge
and merge
with me
and I touch you
with a finger, the same finger
I fingered on the oak tree
where you slipped
from your body
the way a snake
parts with its outgrown skin
and swims away
through the tall grass
through the sea sky
where, here,
you and I part
and meet
again
in the dark places
while all around us
it will be this way -
eternally, always was
the way stars
break apart
the way galaxies
are born
and die
and remain
unseen
--Ruth Nolan
copyright(c) 2010 by Ruth Nolan
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Andreas Canyon Haiku Series, 7.14.10, Palm Springs
San Andreas Haiku Series
fan palm oasis
everything stings, sticks or stabs
beauty killed you too
yellow butterflies
cottonwood fluff, deep water
burial at noon
we walked the canyon
two dragonflies, orange, blue
one loses a wing
heatwave: I seek shade
you’re hiding behind the sun
I can’t find you
lavender half dry
moisture clings to mesquite beans
you died in mid-spring
your dandelion eyes
blink on sun-lidded breezes
one last wink, all mine
it’s time to change rocks
the frog is ready to leap
fondle the trigger
by Ruth Nolan
Andreas Canyon Haiku Series
copyright (c) 2010 by Ruth Nolan
In memory of P.H., 1985-2010, he hiked there, too, more than once and he climbed the razor-wire fence to see what was beyond where we weren't supposed to go
...and thanks to my friend and haiku goddess, Deborah P. Kolodji, for guiding the Andreas Canyon Haiku Walk and Write with me this past May....and for inspiring me to write these tonight.
fan palm oasis
everything stings, sticks or stabs
beauty killed you too
yellow butterflies
cottonwood fluff, deep water
burial at noon
we walked the canyon
two dragonflies, orange, blue
one loses a wing
heatwave: I seek shade
you’re hiding behind the sun
I can’t find you
lavender half dry
moisture clings to mesquite beans
you died in mid-spring
your dandelion eyes
blink on sun-lidded breezes
one last wink, all mine
it’s time to change rocks
the frog is ready to leap
fondle the trigger
by Ruth Nolan
Andreas Canyon Haiku Series
copyright (c) 2010 by Ruth Nolan
In memory of P.H., 1985-2010, he hiked there, too, more than once and he climbed the razor-wire fence to see what was beyond where we weren't supposed to go
...and thanks to my friend and haiku goddess, Deborah P. Kolodji, for guiding the Andreas Canyon Haiku Walk and Write with me this past May....and for inspiring me to write these tonight.
Monday, July 12, 2010
Red Arrow Gallery, Joshua Tree: Desert Poetry & Prose, Saturday July 24, 7:00 pm
In case you can't read the tiny print: it's at the Red Arrow Gallery, in downtown Joshua Tree, 61597 Twentynine Palms Hwy (Hwy 62). For more information, visit Red Arrow Gallery at www.theredarrowgallery.com, email info@theredarrowgallery.com or call 760-366-3700. The reading is free to the public, and will feature free wine, cheese and crackers, for attendees. You can also email me at runolan@aol.com
The reading starts at 7:00 pm, and I am honored to be reading with critically-acclaimed writer Deanne Stillman author of Mustang: the Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West - A Los Angeles Times Best Book, 2008 and winner of the California Book Award Silver Medal for nonfiction. Deanne is also author of the outstanding, award-winning book Twentynine Palms: A True Story of Murder, Marines, and the Mojave, , which Hunter Thompson called "A strange and brilliant story by an important American writer."
I will be reading my prose and poetry from the anthology I've edited, No Place for a Puritan: the literature of California's deserts (Heyday Books, 2009) and also new desert writing I have been generating. Copies of the anthology, along with Phantom Seed: a literary magazine of California desert poetry & prose, a magazine I co-edit, and copies of my two poetry chapbooks, Dry Waterfall and Wild Wash Road, (both on Petroglyph Books) will also be available for sale.
A BIG thank you to gallery owner & writer Cheryl Montelle for organizing and hosting this in her super-cool high desert gallery!! Thanks, Cheryl, for all you do, for so many desert-related artists and writers, and the desert communities!
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Fourth of July, London Planetree
Finally. Mind-spin has slowed. The pool water warms to above many tepid degrees. Swimming is now for night, for the silent shriek of stars. They say we are approaching the Milky Way, and it's at night that this I can most feel. I feel tepid. I've been on auto-pilot in many no-fly zones for months.
It's a time to crawl back to my blog, crawl back to my inner stance and inner self, to that quiet and private, ironically human-connecting place called "home," which means the house on California Drive, behind stucco walls, shouldering a wild sunflower garden that I planted and nurture myself, resting on the large-tiled, cool floors on a woolen blanket I got at Warner's Hot Spring Ranch last winter....going within, going within, air conditioning clicking on and off, complete stillness. Reflecting, reflecting, processing, staggering inwardly, meditating, slowing....it...down...
Days here, now, are heat and sun blinded.
Fourth of July. How I wish you were here. Fireworks. That sums it up, about the two of us, me, and my absent shadow-twin. Thank you for downloading all of the music of Pink Floyd on my PC....how I listen to it now. My first album, bought in a giddy, I-just-got-paid-from-my-first-job-at-Victorville-McDonald's shopping spree:
Dark Side of the Moon.
Dad's headphones, the diamond-needled stereo, the 70's vintage swivel orange chair. Head back. Stoned by that music, beyond immaculate. Still. Something you and I shared. So I could be 16 again, and 47, and 25, and everything beyond, before and in between. Me and You. And the Doors. Of course. Blake, my favorite poet. How I loved turning you on, to the Gates of Heaven and Hell. The Songs of Innocence and Experience. You had a brilliant mind for knowledge and words. Break on Through. You Did.
And here I am. I broke on through. Through what, and to where? Oh, dark desert bed-room. I own a three bedroom house, and my office is the darkest room of all. Where I write, where I work, where I try to keep piles of work and poetry and writing manuscripts neat. Happy pictures of me. With Tarah. When we were so naive.
Back to our Holiday Weather. It's much cooler than it would normally be. We're at 103, instead of 113, without humidity. Still. This is our shut-in season. Where others elsewhere are coming alive, agitating about, the desert is in reverse time. Tourists are mostly gone (except for a few here to enjoy cheap, summer hotel rates at fine resorts)...the wicker blinds in my office are mostly down, and the deep blue sari I've stretched behind them keeps the sun from heating my time.
So, this summertime. In the low desert. I now have two MP3's, filled with tunes.
You can only really see and breathe and inhabit fully when the long afternoon finally smalls itself down into shadows. The mind begins to gel. So it's rather brave I'm writing this at 2:21 pm. I see that the moment I look down. And get this. That is the date of Philip's birth. He'd smile to see the synchronicity of that. We were both intensively into Jungian mythopoetics and philosophy...Ah. Now, the computer screen says 2:22. And that is the number of Phil's cemetery plot, his final resting place, at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside. Number 222. Somehow, this is all cosmic, and this is all soothing, and this is all good. I have to brush away a few tears. Grief does not know anything familiar. Grief has its own agenda. It's my constant accomplice now, and sometimes it is benevolent and at other times it's a sword that pins me down. Today, I am glad I'm writing. Finally, after months of difficulty articulating. Who, what or where I am.
This is no coincidence, our ancestors might say.
And this is to know: that I am not in the same degree I was before. My life, my psyche, my self, are light years deeper and richer and exponentially lifted beyond anything I thought I was at the beginning of 2010. I am a Tiger. A water Tiger. and this is my year. I am also a Scorpio, and everything is amazing, deep, butterfly-dancing, migrations of old and singing of new songs. Could I call this a crossroads? Life has been a wild game of ping-pong, soccer, basketball. I soothe into rhythms that are familiar to my athletic sensibility, my poetic flow....but this is the wildest mesh of games I've ever been in. Is this a field, or is it a court? Am I on a table that's suddenly getting smashed up? Tennis is familiar, really my game, but I don't play now because, well, I bought racquets for two, and one person is gone.
This is a time to read the words of elders. To listen to wisdom. To sit deep in Palm Canyon, at water's edge. To let waterfalls curl out of tangled words. To rest in a park, in a grove of London Planetrees, studying mushrooms that have sprouted from an absent spot where a tree has died, or been taken out, and not replaced, from a perfect, linear arrangement of rare and fragile, imported sycamores. The whole story is here.
Perhaps, more accurately, I'm experiencing a great and deep and widening and narrowing circling in, circling in, rounding about, and returning to some familiar home. Same bones, different angles and curves; trails I've walked but never before knew...like this. Great triumphs and life-thrust events: Tarah's wedding, Mom & Dad's 50th anniversary, not-common family visits from those I've been close to and in many ways lost touch in life's rush: my cousin Shari and her four beautiful children who I deeply love; my cousin Beth who was/is like a sister to me (together, in San Bernardino and the desert, we grew up, until she got married at 18 and moved away...to Texas!), and her two teenage boys; and the terrible shock and sorrow of my psychic soulmate and lover and best friend Phil's suicide death in early April, in a remote area called the Badlands, which is rather invisibly lodged between Moreno Valley/Calimesa and the beautiful citrus towns of Redlands and Loma Linda. A place of ancient, old California Oak trees in tall grasses, tucked into rolling hills. A place most people have never known, or will quickly forget. But. Not Me. It's not far from a modern-day freeway rest-stop where a band of Native Americans died in the southern California smallpox epidemic of 1863 which, like all fevered epidemics, breaks forth out of sky, and soil, and breath, and rages through the softest smiles, breaking out in death, only to suddenly depart, the wounded left in shock. It may have been the infected blankets. No one has said. Few even know this happened. Somehow, I do. How it happened. Yeah. That's for the authorities. Why? Approach that one on foot, whatever you do.
"I wish my life could go back to where it was before April 9th."
That is the first thing I wrote in the now-gathering stacks of big yellow notepads where I've been journaling intensively, the moment I found out about Phil's death. In a horrible way. By calling a number on a notecard left on my door, when I arrived home from Berkeley at mid-day on April 11th - feeling sad, disappointed Phil's car was gone, and disturbed by the horrible nightmares I'd had on Friday night, and the fact that I was unable to reach him by phone - the number of the Cabazon police. Who were pretty fucking abrupt in how they told me. Why are THEY even in San Timoteo Canyon? How do they know? It had to have been an accident. It was, the dull voice on the other end told me, most certainly not. Fuck you. I may have said. Every story ends the way it is supposed to be. Except for this one.
To hear that, some stranger's voice telling me my loved one was long-dead, over the goddamned phone, and proceed to grill me like the inquisition..... instinctively, I reached for a clean yellow journal and a pen. All I could do was start writing. And then, begin to sob. And grab the phone to start making what were undoubtedly madwoman, hysterical calls. That journal, and two subsequent ones, have been through so much in the past three months I've had to duct-tape the tablets together. Phone numbers, emails for friends of Phil's who I met in the most unlikely get together of a young man's funeral, he was a widely popular guy, and his family, and the private investigator, and more. How can I keep this all straight? I'm in hypertext. Non-Linear Land. And Water. And Sky. End on End within. This is the end, my friend.
It's July 4th, and I've been floating on auto pilot for the past three months. One reading and lecture and friend outreach and event and crushing afternoon or evening and class to teach and family event to class to reading to event....for three months. And now, time has come to land. I'm landing, and I'm not sure about this at all. I want my life back. But I'm 12 weeks down the road, in this odd little, metaphorical unplanned "pregnancy" that has me in chokehold, no turning back. Certainly, some great thing will be born of this. For now, I'm carrying the baby and the bathwater, which is increasingly heavy, and warm, and isolating, and not sure how to bear this new body of mine, how to balance in heaven or on earth, where to place my feet, and what to do with my heart.
The missing plane-tree. Where I instinctively sat. And cried. It will take time for those of us remaining in the beauty of grass and trees to grow around where you are so suddenly not. For now, a few mushrooms, and butterflies, and puffs of cigarette smoke. A season of long, drawn breathing. Summer. Is Here. Like it or not. The colors, the raging light. Mixed in with the pulling in. To avoid Heatstroke. The soothing, quiet beauty of desert summer nights, the deep end of the pool.
It's a time to crawl back to my blog, crawl back to my inner stance and inner self, to that quiet and private, ironically human-connecting place called "home," which means the house on California Drive, behind stucco walls, shouldering a wild sunflower garden that I planted and nurture myself, resting on the large-tiled, cool floors on a woolen blanket I got at Warner's Hot Spring Ranch last winter....going within, going within, air conditioning clicking on and off, complete stillness. Reflecting, reflecting, processing, staggering inwardly, meditating, slowing....it...down...
Days here, now, are heat and sun blinded.
Fourth of July. How I wish you were here. Fireworks. That sums it up, about the two of us, me, and my absent shadow-twin. Thank you for downloading all of the music of Pink Floyd on my PC....how I listen to it now. My first album, bought in a giddy, I-just-got-paid-from-my-first-job-at-Victorville-McDonald's shopping spree:
Dark Side of the Moon.
Dad's headphones, the diamond-needled stereo, the 70's vintage swivel orange chair. Head back. Stoned by that music, beyond immaculate. Still. Something you and I shared. So I could be 16 again, and 47, and 25, and everything beyond, before and in between. Me and You. And the Doors. Of course. Blake, my favorite poet. How I loved turning you on, to the Gates of Heaven and Hell. The Songs of Innocence and Experience. You had a brilliant mind for knowledge and words. Break on Through. You Did.
And here I am. I broke on through. Through what, and to where? Oh, dark desert bed-room. I own a three bedroom house, and my office is the darkest room of all. Where I write, where I work, where I try to keep piles of work and poetry and writing manuscripts neat. Happy pictures of me. With Tarah. When we were so naive.
Back to our Holiday Weather. It's much cooler than it would normally be. We're at 103, instead of 113, without humidity. Still. This is our shut-in season. Where others elsewhere are coming alive, agitating about, the desert is in reverse time. Tourists are mostly gone (except for a few here to enjoy cheap, summer hotel rates at fine resorts)...the wicker blinds in my office are mostly down, and the deep blue sari I've stretched behind them keeps the sun from heating my time.
So, this summertime. In the low desert. I now have two MP3's, filled with tunes.
You can only really see and breathe and inhabit fully when the long afternoon finally smalls itself down into shadows. The mind begins to gel. So it's rather brave I'm writing this at 2:21 pm. I see that the moment I look down. And get this. That is the date of Philip's birth. He'd smile to see the synchronicity of that. We were both intensively into Jungian mythopoetics and philosophy...Ah. Now, the computer screen says 2:22. And that is the number of Phil's cemetery plot, his final resting place, at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside. Number 222. Somehow, this is all cosmic, and this is all soothing, and this is all good. I have to brush away a few tears. Grief does not know anything familiar. Grief has its own agenda. It's my constant accomplice now, and sometimes it is benevolent and at other times it's a sword that pins me down. Today, I am glad I'm writing. Finally, after months of difficulty articulating. Who, what or where I am.
This is no coincidence, our ancestors might say.
And this is to know: that I am not in the same degree I was before. My life, my psyche, my self, are light years deeper and richer and exponentially lifted beyond anything I thought I was at the beginning of 2010. I am a Tiger. A water Tiger. and this is my year. I am also a Scorpio, and everything is amazing, deep, butterfly-dancing, migrations of old and singing of new songs. Could I call this a crossroads? Life has been a wild game of ping-pong, soccer, basketball. I soothe into rhythms that are familiar to my athletic sensibility, my poetic flow....but this is the wildest mesh of games I've ever been in. Is this a field, or is it a court? Am I on a table that's suddenly getting smashed up? Tennis is familiar, really my game, but I don't play now because, well, I bought racquets for two, and one person is gone.
This is a time to read the words of elders. To listen to wisdom. To sit deep in Palm Canyon, at water's edge. To let waterfalls curl out of tangled words. To rest in a park, in a grove of London Planetrees, studying mushrooms that have sprouted from an absent spot where a tree has died, or been taken out, and not replaced, from a perfect, linear arrangement of rare and fragile, imported sycamores. The whole story is here.
Perhaps, more accurately, I'm experiencing a great and deep and widening and narrowing circling in, circling in, rounding about, and returning to some familiar home. Same bones, different angles and curves; trails I've walked but never before knew...like this. Great triumphs and life-thrust events: Tarah's wedding, Mom & Dad's 50th anniversary, not-common family visits from those I've been close to and in many ways lost touch in life's rush: my cousin Shari and her four beautiful children who I deeply love; my cousin Beth who was/is like a sister to me (together, in San Bernardino and the desert, we grew up, until she got married at 18 and moved away...to Texas!), and her two teenage boys; and the terrible shock and sorrow of my psychic soulmate and lover and best friend Phil's suicide death in early April, in a remote area called the Badlands, which is rather invisibly lodged between Moreno Valley/Calimesa and the beautiful citrus towns of Redlands and Loma Linda. A place of ancient, old California Oak trees in tall grasses, tucked into rolling hills. A place most people have never known, or will quickly forget. But. Not Me. It's not far from a modern-day freeway rest-stop where a band of Native Americans died in the southern California smallpox epidemic of 1863 which, like all fevered epidemics, breaks forth out of sky, and soil, and breath, and rages through the softest smiles, breaking out in death, only to suddenly depart, the wounded left in shock. It may have been the infected blankets. No one has said. Few even know this happened. Somehow, I do. How it happened. Yeah. That's for the authorities. Why? Approach that one on foot, whatever you do.
"I wish my life could go back to where it was before April 9th."
That is the first thing I wrote in the now-gathering stacks of big yellow notepads where I've been journaling intensively, the moment I found out about Phil's death. In a horrible way. By calling a number on a notecard left on my door, when I arrived home from Berkeley at mid-day on April 11th - feeling sad, disappointed Phil's car was gone, and disturbed by the horrible nightmares I'd had on Friday night, and the fact that I was unable to reach him by phone - the number of the Cabazon police. Who were pretty fucking abrupt in how they told me. Why are THEY even in San Timoteo Canyon? How do they know? It had to have been an accident. It was, the dull voice on the other end told me, most certainly not. Fuck you. I may have said. Every story ends the way it is supposed to be. Except for this one.
To hear that, some stranger's voice telling me my loved one was long-dead, over the goddamned phone, and proceed to grill me like the inquisition..... instinctively, I reached for a clean yellow journal and a pen. All I could do was start writing. And then, begin to sob. And grab the phone to start making what were undoubtedly madwoman, hysterical calls. That journal, and two subsequent ones, have been through so much in the past three months I've had to duct-tape the tablets together. Phone numbers, emails for friends of Phil's who I met in the most unlikely get together of a young man's funeral, he was a widely popular guy, and his family, and the private investigator, and more. How can I keep this all straight? I'm in hypertext. Non-Linear Land. And Water. And Sky. End on End within. This is the end, my friend.
It's July 4th, and I've been floating on auto pilot for the past three months. One reading and lecture and friend outreach and event and crushing afternoon or evening and class to teach and family event to class to reading to event....for three months. And now, time has come to land. I'm landing, and I'm not sure about this at all. I want my life back. But I'm 12 weeks down the road, in this odd little, metaphorical unplanned "pregnancy" that has me in chokehold, no turning back. Certainly, some great thing will be born of this. For now, I'm carrying the baby and the bathwater, which is increasingly heavy, and warm, and isolating, and not sure how to bear this new body of mine, how to balance in heaven or on earth, where to place my feet, and what to do with my heart.
The missing plane-tree. Where I instinctively sat. And cried. It will take time for those of us remaining in the beauty of grass and trees to grow around where you are so suddenly not. For now, a few mushrooms, and butterflies, and puffs of cigarette smoke. A season of long, drawn breathing. Summer. Is Here. Like it or not. The colors, the raging light. Mixed in with the pulling in. To avoid Heatstroke. The soothing, quiet beauty of desert summer nights, the deep end of the pool.
Friday, June 25, 2010
I am still here....
A near two-month hiatus from blog writing....
I just wanted to let everyone know I'm winding my way down from a very intensive past several months...a blur and whirl of teaching, lecturing, unbelievable, surrealistic and life-warping tragedy, deeper sorrow than I've ever known, the richest rewards, internal synergies, incredible gifts of reading and speaking with top notch writers, opportunities and joys of the reading moment that are among the most tangible word leaps and spirit connecting and "success" than I ever could have expected or believe I'd ever witness, sweeter memory than I've ever touched, sharper loneliness than I've ever felt, work-shopping, greater gifts than I've ever unboxed, morphing and mingling with groups and individuals of amazing people....from Mapping the Desert to my friend the Marine, from cousin upon cousin visiting from Oklahoma and Texas to student poets and artists at C.O.D.....
connecting the dots from one amazing, uplifting, transformational poetry reading to the next, going to a music rave in Joshua Tree, collaborating on several writing projects, publishing an e-zine, returning to supermom status (Tarah and Alex have moved in with me, sign of the cross,) spending time with more family in the past month than in the past several years, and healing, healing, healing, transforming....tragedy into beauty, life into poemas, heart-shock to memory, and my storied landscape into innovative reality...I am beyond honored that people follow and lead me, time weave through and beyond hugs and words....o, life tapestry...
More than anything, I've been carrying giant yellow notepads for the past several months, writing and writing and writing everything I can: every feeling, every dream, every grief, small joy, private 107 degree afternoon gut sobbing sessions, snuggling up against the random facebook IM session here and there (several who do so much to comfort and support me,) friend outreaches, gentle lentil soup making even without appetite, my big dog approaching me when I crumple on tile floor to show me the love, for every person who saddens me by not making that call, I embrace midnight nude full moon pool swims and sweet mountain waterfall, sage collecting, and wildflower embracing....I'm grateful to be surrounded and immersed in so much love. Year of the Tiger, 2010, and I'm a water tiger.
Keeping my head just above surface line. Immersing, full body and head, and emerging occasionally to remember, I am real. Sometimes. Summer, end-June, and finally finally time to reflect, go within. 2morrow I board a flight for Ashland, Oregon. Peace and pine trees, my first time there. Kiss touch, my loved one. You are and were for real. As I brace for flight and then, the calm of air soaring....above clouds...touchscreen, get a new i-pad, and magick memory and love into i-touch. i-hug. you. Remember. My name is Love.
I just wanted to let everyone know I'm winding my way down from a very intensive past several months...a blur and whirl of teaching, lecturing, unbelievable, surrealistic and life-warping tragedy, deeper sorrow than I've ever known, the richest rewards, internal synergies, incredible gifts of reading and speaking with top notch writers, opportunities and joys of the reading moment that are among the most tangible word leaps and spirit connecting and "success" than I ever could have expected or believe I'd ever witness, sweeter memory than I've ever touched, sharper loneliness than I've ever felt, work-shopping, greater gifts than I've ever unboxed, morphing and mingling with groups and individuals of amazing people....from Mapping the Desert to my friend the Marine, from cousin upon cousin visiting from Oklahoma and Texas to student poets and artists at C.O.D.....
connecting the dots from one amazing, uplifting, transformational poetry reading to the next, going to a music rave in Joshua Tree, collaborating on several writing projects, publishing an e-zine, returning to supermom status (Tarah and Alex have moved in with me, sign of the cross,) spending time with more family in the past month than in the past several years, and healing, healing, healing, transforming....tragedy into beauty, life into poemas, heart-shock to memory, and my storied landscape into innovative reality...I am beyond honored that people follow and lead me, time weave through and beyond hugs and words....o, life tapestry...
More than anything, I've been carrying giant yellow notepads for the past several months, writing and writing and writing everything I can: every feeling, every dream, every grief, small joy, private 107 degree afternoon gut sobbing sessions, snuggling up against the random facebook IM session here and there (several who do so much to comfort and support me,) friend outreaches, gentle lentil soup making even without appetite, my big dog approaching me when I crumple on tile floor to show me the love, for every person who saddens me by not making that call, I embrace midnight nude full moon pool swims and sweet mountain waterfall, sage collecting, and wildflower embracing....I'm grateful to be surrounded and immersed in so much love. Year of the Tiger, 2010, and I'm a water tiger.
Keeping my head just above surface line. Immersing, full body and head, and emerging occasionally to remember, I am real. Sometimes. Summer, end-June, and finally finally time to reflect, go within. 2morrow I board a flight for Ashland, Oregon. Peace and pine trees, my first time there. Kiss touch, my loved one. You are and were for real. As I brace for flight and then, the calm of air soaring....above clouds...touchscreen, get a new i-pad, and magick memory and love into i-touch. i-hug. you. Remember. My name is Love.
Badlands
Badlands
Here,
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
I see people circling on freeways,
the circling
of red tailed hawks above
ancestral Cahuilla land
in Redlands, Box Springs Mountains,
at the Santa Ana River
close to downtown Riverside
with its Mission Inn,
realize there were no Mission Indians,
only slaves,
now the old asistencia on Barton Road
sits by Loma Linda hospital behavioral center
and the monument of de Anza
adjacent to the river,
stippled with graffitti, urine, blood
so I begin to live in circles,
repeating the same affirmations
listening to NASA voyager recordings
of outer space over and over again
making the rounds from Palm Desert
past Chino Canyon, where all of
creation was begun
through the shouldered gap
of San Gorgonio Pass
through Badlands, Riverside, Redlands
the I-10 to the 60 to the 91 south,
and looping back,
passing Mary Jane Cemetery
and back home,
after easing downhill
through the windmill farms
I see open space
where once there was a tree, views
of the little San Bernardino mountains
a bit more breeze
and I want to photograph the absence,
frame it with memory, now I can see
familiar patterns of stars,
a better view of passing satellites
tracing their faithful circumference
around the earth faster than planets do
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
it will give me hope, I hope
I hope I hope I hope
that things really are connected,
better this than the whip of thorned
cactus stinging me in the face
every time I stepped into the front yard,
the sad fact of a bird's nest tossed
onto the ground by a blast of wind,
the hooks of religions that rope us in,
the dams that block us all,
the demon intaglios can't be pulled
to the sea on the Colorado River
anymore from the tops of canyon walls
the water is re-assigned
before it reaches the sea,
tell me there is no obsessive
compulsive disorder here,
just a smooth meditation
of people walking the same
pilgrimages, embellishing here,
pruning here, entirely colonizing
over there, new volunteers,
a deeper groove in the old flood
channels each time the heavy
rains push water over the top,
magical strata revealed in rock,
unimagined layers of sand
richer in color and theme
the same stories played out over
and over again, circularly
Red tailed hawk
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
Morning, 11 a.m.
by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2010 Ruth Nolan
Ruth Nolan, June 25, 2010
Here,
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
I see people circling on freeways,
the circling
of red tailed hawks above
ancestral Cahuilla land
in Redlands, Box Springs Mountains,
at the Santa Ana River
close to downtown Riverside
with its Mission Inn,
realize there were no Mission Indians,
only slaves,
now the old asistencia on Barton Road
sits by Loma Linda hospital behavioral center
and the monument of de Anza
adjacent to the river,
stippled with graffitti, urine, blood
so I begin to live in circles,
repeating the same affirmations
listening to NASA voyager recordings
of outer space over and over again
making the rounds from Palm Desert
past Chino Canyon, where all of
creation was begun
through the shouldered gap
of San Gorgonio Pass
through Badlands, Riverside, Redlands
the I-10 to the 60 to the 91 south,
and looping back,
passing Mary Jane Cemetery
and back home,
after easing downhill
through the windmill farms
I see open space
where once there was a tree, views
of the little San Bernardino mountains
a bit more breeze
and I want to photograph the absence,
frame it with memory, now I can see
familiar patterns of stars,
a better view of passing satellites
tracing their faithful circumference
around the earth faster than planets do
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
it will give me hope, I hope
I hope I hope I hope
that things really are connected,
better this than the whip of thorned
cactus stinging me in the face
every time I stepped into the front yard,
the sad fact of a bird's nest tossed
onto the ground by a blast of wind,
the hooks of religions that rope us in,
the dams that block us all,
the demon intaglios can't be pulled
to the sea on the Colorado River
anymore from the tops of canyon walls
the water is re-assigned
before it reaches the sea,
tell me there is no obsessive
compulsive disorder here,
just a smooth meditation
of people walking the same
pilgrimages, embellishing here,
pruning here, entirely colonizing
over there, new volunteers,
a deeper groove in the old flood
channels each time the heavy
rains push water over the top,
magical strata revealed in rock,
unimagined layers of sand
richer in color and theme
the same stories played out over
and over again, circularly
Red tailed hawk
The pretty hills
The pretty hills
Morning, 11 a.m.
by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2010 Ruth Nolan
Ruth Nolan, June 25, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
called out of darkness
Yes, the angel thing. I am definitely transpired by angels just about now. They are finding me, lifting me gently and surprisingly and without expectation or payment through the upside down skyfall that has become my life. "Called out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession" by Anne Rice. Staring at me from my office desk. Lots of white. Tonight I've been invited to read poetry at Space 120 bar/art center in Palm Springs. Tomorrow I've been invited to help put together "The Common Good" e-zine with College of the Desert students, then on to my Inlandia Writers workshop. Saturday I'm teaching a poetry of place workshop at Mt. San Antonio College. Sunday I'll be part of a collaborative desert writing/arts activity. I'm sending the last of the pages for the COD Solstice lit-mag, 2009-10, to the printer in San Diego. My friend Reggie, artistic director at UCR-CMP museum of photography, calls me just to say hi. Little things keep me moving along and busy.
Less than a month ago, I attended an event - with Philip - at UCR-Palm Desert, featuring the vampire-turned-angel author Anne Rice. I seem to have been having an interesting synchronicity with Anne Rice in recent months. I've never read her books. I am not a vampire fan. Not even close. I know she's a major author, and from picking up a copy of her newest book in which she examines the roots and basis and memories and continuation of her early Catholic faith. Like me, she was imbedded in Catholic ceremony and rhetoric, a hushed and gothic thing across the years and locations. Me, in humble and eerie, palm-tree-santa-ana-wind laced, mysterious downtown San Bernardino where as a little girl I was pushed into a dark confessional booth in an empty church, lit only by the votive candles flickering beneath a statue of the Virgin Mary with the baby Christ. I could hear the tall palms scratching the church's brick spyres, a rather old building for a very new, Inland Empire settlement. Overlaced atop an old cienega, a murky, lowland swamp. Near the present day Central City Mall. I know now that a Serrano Indian massacre took place there, and Mormons from Utah tried to claim it, but returned home when recalled by their prophet after a few short years. Willie Boy was held in the jail there one time, and the area is now one of the highest per-capita crime city districts in the country.
Anne Rice lives in Rancho Mirage now, not far from me, having re-located after the Hurricane Katrina armaggedon in New Orleans and the death of her poet-husband Stan Rice. I've met her cool and talented son Christopher at the Palm Springs Book Fest in recent years, chatted him up and looking forward to reading his newest book. The desert book came out in November. I learned that after our first reading/event in downtown Riverside in early December, Anne Rice had just been signing her new book at the Mission Inn next door. And when I went to sign copies of Puritan @ the Palm Desert Barnes and Noble shortly after that, the sales clerk told me Anne Rice had just been there signing books the day before; he'd displayed my book next to hers - prime real-estate, he smiled - and he gave me the last copy the store had of her handsomely-bound Vampire Chronicles Trilogy, signed. As a gift. I hadn't even asked for it.
I read in the Inland Empire Weekly that Anne Rice had done most of the writing for her memoir at the Mission in, during 2007-2008...even more interesting because that was the precise time that the Inlandia anthology came out, and that I began to do some serious hanging out and hanging in with the poetry scene in downtown Riverside at Jeff's apartment and Back to the Grind and Wednesday night poetry with my friend Joel Lamore's group. Sitting in the apartment, studying the moroccan-era spires of the Riverside Art Museum, Congregational Church, and other stunning, late 19th-early 20th century landmark buildings of the former Citrus Capital of the west, and jewel of southern California, in this downtown district of Riverside, California, next to the glorious Mission Inn, which stands to this day in priceless, antique-and-history-filled homage to an era gone by, and a new era unfolding. Yes, that's right. Anne Rice had picked up the energy, or perhaps imported it, and wrote most of her novel during extensive stays at the Mission Inn, and there I was, floating around next door, doing my things, connecting, breaking out in my own little Inland Empire gothic swirl of a poetry and writing scene. Meeting so many cool people and connecting to community which has continued to proliferate in my divided-between-the-desert-and-I.E.-life to this day.
For more than three years, it's been a back and forth life, that hour drive from one of the most intensive, stunning deserts in the world, into a supremely windy pass and a wall of blowing sand, through a windmill farm, past a canyon raging with Whitewater, past a huge, multi-storied casino on the Morongo Indian Reservation, through a gentle pass where snow often falls in winter, and rain much more often, then a thrilling mountain ride on a narrow road through the sharp and dangerous Badlands, and soothing out into the former Mexican rancheria of Moreno Valley, past Box Springs and Cahuilla Mountain, and into the valley of Riverside, nurtured by the oft-overlooked Santa Ana River. De Anza's little road. Wow. And Mike calls me late at night while I talk on and on in nonsense rhyhmes. Wendy calls to check on me. Day by day, friend after friend reaches out to me. What did I do to deserve this? Breaking the silence of desert homesteading. And Lindsey, Cahuilla Indian who's in my writing class, gives me a beautiful, huge braid of sweetgrass to burn, and a burden basket to hang above my front door, that she just picked up at the Albuquerque Powwow of the Nations last week. I'm incredibly blessed, to be touched by such beauties and gestures in such a time as this, and I'm floored. No words.
And so, the Anne Rice symphony plays in my mind, a thread, a direction, an inspiration beyong my own imaginings. Her book, about finding and reconfirming faith, and moving from vampires to angels. Transforming her fascination with otherworldly dimensions and energies that guide us with unseen hands, from darkness into the light. And I write about this not to be a name dropper, because as I said I haven't read her vampire books. But I am inspired by her meditation on the power of angels and the power of angels in my life in recent months and recent weeks. A music unheard but felt. A confession I no longer need to make, because I've not shame, not sinned, and not as alone carrying such burdens as I once thought I was. And I can put the heavy rocks down and I can sit on a 1950's era postmodern-architecture lawn chair I found at an abandoned house long ago, at 1 a.m., and fall into the lullaby of the hypnotic, full moon. Blazing its way through yet another stunning night-cloud. My feet resting and safe on the level and clean cement around the pool. Moon in the water. The way I like.
Driving to Palm Springs yesterday. I live in a free float fog now. Alone in the house and with my cell phone by my head as I sleep. It's not easy to sleep even when I'm beyond exhausted, as I was last night. I bury my face in Phil's clothes sometimes. I talk to him out loud, most pointedly to ask questions. I almost....see him sitting in the rocking chair in my room, one of his favorite hangs. I touch the last of the avocados that he bought on his last trip to Clark's organic store. It's very ripe now and must be eaten soon or become inedible. Will do. Days don't have much structure. I exist from point to point. I have a full schedule that pleases me. The culmination of my years as a teacher, professor, and more recently, book editor and writer and lecturer and photographer and artistic collaborator and so forth. It's a different story every day, which is both fun and also at times exasperating and imbalancing. So I write something new and make up a new act each day for the scenes that continue to unfold.
Like wings. Sky transformation. Yesterday the weather shift. I had to get up early and was surprised by a phone call from Eduardo, artist-poet-organizer extraordinaire, a COD student. Inviting me to come the the campus FAME club meeting. Yes, I will and did. A wonderful Eng 1A class at 12:30, discussing symbolism in Silko's novel "Ceremony," and enjoying so much that the students were really understanding the importance of the novel on a personal, individual level. Then off to give a lecture on the desert book at Palm Springs Library. Wind had become loud. Freeway driving, the usual blowing around. Down Sunrise, into calm, and meeting my friend Julie Warren, the activities director at the library. A wonderful talk, sold books, met nice people, and was so heartened to see friends Lee Balan, one-of-a-kind artiste and poet/writer, and Phil Polazzo, cool hippy-generation author of the fantastic novel Hunga Dunga. Four of my creative writing students also came, and we met on the grass outside afterwards, watching an incredible, powerful comet/tornado/spinning top cloud in the sky....talking of how this was a spirit thing, that it seemed like a person looking down. I had thought the same thing earlier when spotting magnificent wing-shapes in the late afternoon cloud formations while driving to Palm Springs. Philip, shielding and carrying me along from one point to the next, which is about how I am living my days and nights right now.
I live for the wing brushes touching down on my from all directions now, unexpectedly. Angels are looking out for me and I don't know from where they come or why I deserve, but here they are. Tarah comes over Monday night, gives me extra hugs, hangs out with me, just because she wants to. We revive our always super-close mother/daughter bonds. My friend Susanne in Las Vegas sends a beautiful card of a sand dune to express her condolences and give me hugs. Cyrus calls on and off from Ashland and we delve into literary sub-topics and discuss my latest lectures and talks, his work as an audio-book producer at Blackstone Audio. My brothers Pat and Jerry, just returned from a weekend in Death Valley, post one incredible black/white sand dune picture after another on facebook. Another parallel synchronicity. I was just there a few weeks ago with Phil, in another big windstorm and spring storm, and we also took photos at Zabriskie Point and the San Dunes. The flowers were just starting to come out. I drove south, studying the ancient river channel that flows south, or should I say north: the mysterious, snake-shaped Amargosa River, flowing southward through a valley east of Death Valley...then looping back in a long arc to join Death Valley in its southernmost wedge, 100 miles south.
And I should add, that for the Timbisha Shoshone, whose homeland this has long been: this it Tuppuuh. A place of life. Of rebirth. Of the center of all creation and sustainability. The circle traces without breaking, through canyons and sand to join itself again. Like an angel, picking up the broken-winged. Shape-shifting through the sky on its own whim. Surrender to this, on your knees. Hummingbirds in the garden, a few dog bones for the dogs, the wind picks up suddenly here this afternoon, I sweep thorns from the drive. Pick plastic bottles from the pool. Sweep the dirt Shasta dug out of the garden last night back into place. Red ocotillo flowers peer at me. Sunflowers are so wise. And the orange poppies have landed in my yard too. They won't last long.
(photo by Lee Balan - taken in the sky above Palm Springs, 4.27.10)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)