This should be a great event - this Wednesday at College of the Desert, April 29.
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Poetry April 29 College of Desert Open Mic + Performance Poetry + Music
This should be a great event - this Wednesday at College of the Desert, April 29.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Gummi Bear poem
Gummi Bear
the prompt for April 5th - "write about an animal"
mid-sized, the length of my palm
your short pink fur, black-stitched smile
initials, “GB” imprinted on the top
of your left paw, you ride along with
my car keys, clipped to the ring,
popping out of my purse, catching
a wailing child’s eye, I’m in a forested
monotony of a grocery line, comfort
foods like pizza and chocolate bars
spill from my car, I’m 42 years old,
maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s okay
if I tell people I heard you growl,
I’ll eat gobs of soft, multi-colored
candies in your resemblance tonight
I hope you don't take it personally.
by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
rewrite 4.5.09
the prompt for April 5th - "write about an animal"
mid-sized, the length of my palm
your short pink fur, black-stitched smile
initials, “GB” imprinted on the top
of your left paw, you ride along with
my car keys, clipped to the ring,
popping out of my purse, catching
a wailing child’s eye, I’m in a forested
monotony of a grocery line, comfort
foods like pizza and chocolate bars
spill from my car, I’m 42 years old,
maybe it’s okay, maybe it’s okay
if I tell people I heard you growl,
I’ll eat gobs of soft, multi-colored
candies in your resemblance tonight
I hope you don't take it personally.
by Ruth Nolan
copyright (c) 2009 by Ruth Nolan
rewrite 4.5.09
Friday, April 3, 2009
The Problem with Wind
Poetry A Day from Poetic Asides - Friday, April 3rd
the challenge is to write a poem a day this month, which is national poetry month. I'll have to backtrack to the first two days of the month, but here we are starting up with April 3.
Today's assignment: write a poem that starts, "the problem with ---" (find something)As it was VERY windy here today in Palm Desert, I chose to write about the wind.
The Problem with Wind
the orange and grapefruit flowers,
tiny white things snuggled into the tips of waxy leaves,
are stripped in a few hard blows from the citrus trees,
fewer fat handfuls of fruit this December
wind, in the desert in spring, has a face,
a wobbly smile gritty with sand. It has hands
that clobber like fists, much like your voice.
cars are stopped as if in a snowstorm, visibility low.
Just last night, the freeway was clear,
30 miles downhill from the Indian casino
on Interstate 10, windmill farms, wind is welcome
there, no vanishing overnight lovers in their arms.
This wind, you’ll say it has nothing to do with you,
hurtles downhill from the pass, 50 miles per hour gusts
generated by the numb cloud cover of the inland
region where you live, storm butted against mountain.
Venturi effect, stifled at the bottleneck until released
in this violence as air moves impatiently through this
narrow passage, impeded by two high ranges,
rain on your side, schizophrenic air forces here,
pressuring palm trees until they lose many fronds,
promises of fruit whisked down wind until next
year, perhaps, another resurrection, I watered
them last week, what did I know then
Ruth Nolan
runolan@aol.com
c. 2009 by Ruth Nolan
the challenge is to write a poem a day this month, which is national poetry month. I'll have to backtrack to the first two days of the month, but here we are starting up with April 3.
Today's assignment: write a poem that starts, "the problem with ---" (find something)As it was VERY windy here today in Palm Desert, I chose to write about the wind.
The Problem with Wind
the orange and grapefruit flowers,
tiny white things snuggled into the tips of waxy leaves,
are stripped in a few hard blows from the citrus trees,
fewer fat handfuls of fruit this December
wind, in the desert in spring, has a face,
a wobbly smile gritty with sand. It has hands
that clobber like fists, much like your voice.
cars are stopped as if in a snowstorm, visibility low.
Just last night, the freeway was clear,
30 miles downhill from the Indian casino
on Interstate 10, windmill farms, wind is welcome
there, no vanishing overnight lovers in their arms.
This wind, you’ll say it has nothing to do with you,
hurtles downhill from the pass, 50 miles per hour gusts
generated by the numb cloud cover of the inland
region where you live, storm butted against mountain.
Venturi effect, stifled at the bottleneck until released
in this violence as air moves impatiently through this
narrow passage, impeded by two high ranges,
rain on your side, schizophrenic air forces here,
pressuring palm trees until they lose many fronds,
promises of fruit whisked down wind until next
year, perhaps, another resurrection, I watered
them last week, what did I know then
Ruth Nolan
runolan@aol.com
c. 2009 by Ruth Nolan
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Cahuilla Village Site: Fishtraps, New Moon
The Cahuilla Village site again, late March, days past equinox
flowers at twilight, dry, dead mesquite wood for the fire
potsherds, walk carefully, and flashlights for the possible rattlesnake,
yes, they are already out, it's been warm for many days
7 weeks ago, after winter wet storm, early February full moon
we were also here, working hard to start a fire
wood was damp, the soil moist, the night quickly grew cold
moon boldly full, coyote parties circling us, full throat
Last night, mustard grass weeds in front of the fire pit
and a stick insect, first one I've ever seen outdoors
we rescue him from the heat, in our hands, handfuls of stars
cupped by the dips of Santa Rosa Mountain Range
the north side of Martinez Canyon, ancient traverse of Indians.
These, some of the most rugged mountains in our state,
full of wild canyons and angry cactus, as if they say,
all you people, go away, this is the land of 120 degree summers.
Fishtraps nearby, and we site on a huge pile of sand, old beach,
ancient Lake Cahuilla, sleeping circles here, dogs howling
from cluster of nearby homes of Torres Martinez Indian Reservation
on the other side of the earthen dam, lights of Indio beyond
a nice way to spend a few hours on a Saturday evening
before tiptoeing back to my friend's ranch, the long drive
down Jackson Avenue through the last of the 100 year old
date palms crowding the narrow road almost to Hwy 111.
flowers at twilight, dry, dead mesquite wood for the fire
potsherds, walk carefully, and flashlights for the possible rattlesnake,
yes, they are already out, it's been warm for many days
7 weeks ago, after winter wet storm, early February full moon
we were also here, working hard to start a fire
wood was damp, the soil moist, the night quickly grew cold
moon boldly full, coyote parties circling us, full throat
Last night, mustard grass weeds in front of the fire pit
and a stick insect, first one I've ever seen outdoors
we rescue him from the heat, in our hands, handfuls of stars
cupped by the dips of Santa Rosa Mountain Range
the north side of Martinez Canyon, ancient traverse of Indians.
These, some of the most rugged mountains in our state,
full of wild canyons and angry cactus, as if they say,
all you people, go away, this is the land of 120 degree summers.
Fishtraps nearby, and we site on a huge pile of sand, old beach,
ancient Lake Cahuilla, sleeping circles here, dogs howling
from cluster of nearby homes of Torres Martinez Indian Reservation
on the other side of the earthen dam, lights of Indio beyond
a nice way to spend a few hours on a Saturday evening
before tiptoeing back to my friend's ranch, the long drive
down Jackson Avenue through the last of the 100 year old
date palms crowding the narrow road almost to Hwy 111.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Sitting by Water at Oasis+ Susan Lang + Horsethief Creek
This past Wednesday, finally feeling well, I took a private, short walk in the Coachella Valley Preserve and found a safe little place at the bottom of a short cliff to nestle in next to a trickle of water. As always, the flow, sound, rhtyhm and healing pulse of water in the middle of a desert oasis, shaded by fan palms and thick water grasses, was a miracle - as was and is the healing smooth of flowing water. Sitting in damp soil, legs crossed, meditating on water, and drawing small pictures in the sand, with pieces of stone and sticks, humming to myself. A good hour or more. So much transformation for which I was, and am, grateful. A fifteen minute drive and five minute walk from my house, which is situated in the middle of the desert on a former range of ancient sand dunes, now known as the Palm Desert Country Club.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Last Saturday afternoon, I went, perhaps a bit unwisely - I'd had a wisdom tooth pulled just 24 hours earlier - to to the area known as Pioneertown, north of and higher elevation than the town of Yucca Valley, in the high desert, about an hour's drive from my house. Destination: a beautiful private home nestled at 4,500 feet in the maw of a range of rocky ridges known as the Sawtooth Mountains for a literary event and reading by the wonderful desert writer Susan Lang. Susan grew up in Pipes Canyon on her mother's homestead, and has written a trilogy of books on her mother's life there - the most recent one, "Moon Lily," is recently published.
I have devoured all three, including the earlier books, "Juniper Blue" and "Small Rocks Rising." Although I had a crushing headache by the time I arrived - 5,000 foot elevation gain with a massive late-late-winter storm barreling in, compounded by my very recent and fairly traumatic oral surgery - I managed to connect instantly with Susan herself. We talked about desert writing, growing up in the remote high Mojave desert - as I did - and being community college English professors - she is at Yavapai College in Prescott, AZ, where she also founded and ran the Hassayampa Writers workshop for 10 years. Susan was and is an amazing, charismatic person and I feel so grateful to have met her and talked for those 15-20 minutes, through my wisdom tooth headache, about writing, teaching, and.....the power of the desert and the role it's played in our lives and in our writing.
Before dinner even got started, I left the party, and my friend Caryn (who I'd picked up at the Canyon Coffee Shop in Yucca Valley en route) there, stumbled home with headache-galore, but with a new book in hand, which I consumed the next day while keeping company with one of the very intense windstorms we sometimes get here in the lower desert at this time of year, all palm fronds flying about, sand and dust blowing, and the howling contrast against the usual calm we experience most of the time.
And today, a perfect spring day, the pleasure of hiking to Horsethief Creek, in a canyon tucked into a fold of the Santa Rosa Mountains - part of the newly-designated Santa Rosa- San Jacinto Mountains National Monument. I haven't hiked there since last year at this time. In the ten years I've lived in Palm Desert, it's been a favorite - I've been there may ten times: with Tarah; with my parents; with my friend Kurt and the College of the Desert ecology club; with my friend Darlene; with a few other friends; and several times on solo excursions. This was the hike I had a real emergency on, four years ago, when I did the hike alone on too hot of a day, too fast on the way out, in May, and got heat exhaustion on the way out - and ended up going to the hospital for dehydration treatment. None of that today - blissful temps and a cool breeze, time spent sitting on a giant boulder mid-stream, time to go inward, rinse my Hindu prayer beads in the snowmelt water, and gather huge, open-handed expanses of sweet mountain sage.
The trail from the area known as Pinyon, situated about 1/3 of the way from Palm Desert and the mountain town of Idyllwild, to the creek itself, is a 2.5 mile up and down, 5 miles roundrip altogether, with more uphill on the way out - and it traverses amazing chapparal country at the 4,000-5,000 foot level - a mix of desert cacti, particularly beavertail cactus, agave, and arid, low mountain trees, particulary pinyon, and in the folds of several draws, and of course along Horsethief Creek, cottonwood, which today, were in early spring hallucinogenic green mode.
I went today on a whim. It must be spring cleaning of sorts. I have been through such intensity in the past six months of event and emotion and upheaval and change that I have developed a newfound compassion for myself, for others, and am supremely grateful for the beauties of spring. After weeks of exhaustion, sickness, malaise and the recent upper left wisdom tooth pull I've endured, this was a very welcome excursion. I paced myself, rested at the creek, and meditated as I walked.
The low desert has about maxed out on flowers. Our wildflower season begins as early as late January/early February and often is over by early or mid-March, depending on when we get our first cluster of 90 degree days. We've had a few warm ones this month, so the flowers are exiting already. However, we are so fortunate to have frequent and common elevation and climate change at our fingertips in this part of the world. The adjacent higher elevations are just now springing into full bounty. The drive up Highway 74 was magnificent, a quick rush through 7-level Hill and it's hairclip turns, from sea level to 4,000 feet in about 15 minutes - hillsides flush with yellow flowers, bright pink cactus blossoms, red ocotillo and Indian Paintbrush, purple lupine.
Sitting and relaxing on huge boulders on the creek was relaxng and rejuventating. In one place, I lay back and watched a light-shimmer that seemed almost like smoke emanate from a rock wall that rose hundreds of feet above the creek - and I could see many tough cactus plants growing sideways straight out of rock! There were mini waterfalls and beautiful water slides, and I ran my hands on smooth rock across the face of one such pale-pink-and-red rock fantasy, water rushing down its wide surface in a shallow skim. I also soaked my feet in a pool, and carefully and respectfully gathered sage - my usual place to do so - in fact, some of the big clusters I collected are now scenting my entire house - I've laid them out to dry on the kitchen counter. I only select sage in years of water abundance, and this year the usual plants I visit seemed to be doing well.
I was concerned, however, that with the recently published map of the monument, the area has shown drastic increase of usage even since last year. Today, a weekday, I counted 23 other hikers, one in a group of 16 - I've never seen more than 4 or 5 other people on that hike, ever. And, the area heading upstream from the creek crossing actually has a fairly worn footpath now, something I never saw before. The blessing/bane mix of a new national monument - more protection = more people and, so often, a great, little known place being loved to death. This had been, heretofore, strictly a "locals" place, and now, it's obvious it's getting quite well known to others.
Thank you, Mother Earth, for this healing landscape and geography, for the people in my life - with all of the ups and downs that many of them bring to me as I grow in awareness and continue to emerge from my longtime "privacy" shell, a longtime defense mechanism, and reach out more and more to people in my actions, in my phone calls and emails, in my shared hikes, and in my growing sense of compassion - as never before, I take the risk to build new friendships in ways that are more meaningful to me than the ways I used to take people much more for granted; I reconstruct old friendships and find ways to heal and soothe pains and sorrows I've experienced with people I love, working on transformations and new levels of "being," and more than ever now, I give thanks for each and every person who graces my life.
I'm also so happy I was able today to get out there and do a good hike - taking my time; after all, it's been only a week since I had oral surgery, and I must admit I have a fragment of that last-weekend headache visiting me again - for renewing me and for the many blessings of the day. Deep appreciation, and a growing awareness of what it really means "to walk in beauty," glistens in my little home tonight, the way the thin sliver of very new moon limned the bottom aspect of the just-audible moon, not far above the monlith of the San Jacinto Mountains to the west, in a navy blue sky, nearly all the way to complete darkness, but not quite - the evening star, alongside.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Film Screening: Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps Thurs March 26 Riverside Library
Please join poet/writer/professor Ruth Nolan, College of the Desert, and Reginald Cortez Woolery, Artist, Director of Digital Studio & Education Outreach at UCR-California Museum of Photography, for a screening of the collaborative and experimental film "Escape to Reality: 24 hrs @ 24 fps" at the downtown Riverside public library. Thursday, March 26. Riverside downtown library located on Mission Inn Road, adjacent to the Mission Inn and the 91 Freeway, Mission Inn Road exit -
FREE. 7 p.m.
Read more about the film at the UCR Arts Block site at (copy and paste into your web browser)
http://artsblock.ucr.edu/action.lasso?-database=scoop&-table=online&-op=cn&institution_key=1&-op=cn&event_object_ID=2008.0011.0192&-response=events_dis.lasso
See you there!
Ruth
Poetry Blurb of the Day
this, from the amazing poet Wendy Rose
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
from the Endangered Roots of a Person
Becoming strong on this earth is a lesson
in not floating, in becoming less transparent,
in becoming an animal shape against the sky.
A nice, reflective excerpt on a beautiful spring desert day. I'm sitting on the back patio and enjoying, this time of year, when it's wonderfully possible to sit outdoors and enjoy weather and perfect spring temps and look at flowers in the yard - a spate of orange and yellow poppies and nasturtiums.
Walk in beauty....namaste....
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