POEM: mountain twilight breath
breathe in joy
days light creeps up
White Mountains to sky pink clouds
saved breath of earth
crosses the belly of the valley
rushes up sage
wrestles with cottonwoods
redwings robins ride to roost
creek roars past
3 pillars of an old house rise
breathe out peace
I wrote this poem for last week’s readwritepoem prompt while camping at Keough Hot Springs at about 4500′ on the slope of the Sierra while gazing at the White Mountains where we’d camped the previous nights (see posts below for details on bristlecones, camping, and wine!)
DAY 1
July 5, White Mountains, Inyo National Forest, Eastern California served with
porkloin, grilled corn, and 2005 Marquis Philips “Roogle” shiraz, chilled briefly in a bucket of snow
At 10,000’, we’ve left paved road and the Schulman Grove of the Bristlecone Pines in the White Mountains of California’s Inyo National Forest to climb steadily up a well maintained dirt and gravel road. Sagebrush, a calf high shrub, dots the hillsides with soft green, and sends up gray green flower spikes which will bloom yellow by late August. Abundant coral red Indian paintbrush bracts burst in color between the sage while purple lupine lines the road and sends wafts of grape through the window to mingle with whiffs of sage.
We’re headed for the Patriarch Grove at over 11,000’ where, we have been warned a large snowpatch blocks the road requiring an extra mile hike-in to see the twisted, bony trees scatter about the dolomite hillside.
Bristlecones are called the “ancient ones” because, as far as trees go, they outlive everything else by hundreds of years. Many have lived thousands of years. Creosote, a head high desert shrub found in the Mojave just south and thousands of feet down, live this long as well but there’s some debate whether an old individual is the same plant or a clone.
Regardless, there is something about these desert climes that keep these trees and shrubs hanging around for generations longer than anything or anywhere else.
I don’t blame the bristlecones for sticking around—this is one of my favorite places on earth, and I am sharing it for the first time with my son and my husband, both of whom are eagerly peering out the windows as we wind our way up the mountain to the Patriarch Grove, scoping out possible camping sites along the way. From previous trips, I know there are a few right on the ridge of the range, sites where we will be able to peer down into the Owen’s Valley to see the lights of Bishop—and even more to my taste, to see the peaks of the Sierra, adorned still with white in avalanche shoots, the glaciers in the Palisades as well as remaining patches in assorted places.
We still scoff however at the possibility of snow on this side of the valley. It is HOT—in the 90s here at 11,000’ and climbing—how could there be a patch of snow still on the road which will detain us from arriving at our goal?
But as we near, we do find the road closed, with a weak patch of snow, and there, yes, a large one, large enough to sustain an extensive snowball fight by a group of a dozen or so teens and their families up for the day from Bishop.
We make sandwiches while others BBQ hot dogs. The terrain feels like the moon—white hillsides of dolomite are very otherworldly, even though we are surrounded by vehicles and people. Bristlecones live just up the hill from us too—stark, bizarrely shaped and formed by winter ice wind whipped to splinter off the bark, stripping off the cambium layer which sustains its growth, leaving just enough life for it to preserve another year.
The 4 year old is ecstatic and fascinated by the snowball fight. He lives yearlong on the coast, and even though we went on three ski trips this year, he loves and is entranced by snow; he is anxious for us to hurry down and join in on the snowball fight. He doesn’t quite understand the logistics as well as the social dance involved—these are teens from Bishop we don’t know and—these are TEENS. We are old enough to be their parents. We know they don’t want us around. But we stop at the snow patch, watch the antics, exchange some snowballs, and then, when the teens move on, we do too.
We don’t get very far when the 4 year old finds a patch of snow in a gully and insists on going up there. Go right ahead, we encourage him; he gets quite a ways up before he turns around and joins us. We continue on, but by this time in the afternoon, he’s about out of steam so when he suggests we head back, we do. It’s time to find a campsite. We’ll save these bristlecones for another day and see the Schulman Grove trees tomorrow. First, we use a sauce pan to scoop snow into ziplock bags and a bucket to assist our rapidly depleting ice.
Heading back toward Shulman Grove, we descend steeply on the short section of paved road, then climb back up to the ridge where we inspect then reject one campsite—too exposed, but great views—and continue on until we find the “perfect”site—a bit more off the road than others, a few trees, and awesome views down and across the valley. Plenty of flat space for the van and even a makeshift whiffle ball diamond; no bugs, not too hot, the sliding door opens out west toward the sierra, the windshield faces the trees—limberpines and bristlecones, but not likely much older than a few hundred years. Certainly not “ancient ones” but of the same stock! The oldest ones are only found in these two groves. A number of very old ones grow in Nevada at Great Basin National Park, and the oldest one ever found lived there until the 1950s when a scientist named Curry cut it down to figure out its age when his coring failed.
Under the shade of a bristlecone, I make us a table using two found fallen tree branches—the 4×4 piece of plywood we keep in the back of the van balances on them with the help of a flat rock. This is where we set up the portable propane BBQ. While the boys practice hitting the whiffle ball and running bases, I put a bottle of 2005 Marquis Philips shiraz in the snow in the bucket; the label has a “Roogle”—a mythical eagle/kangaroo creature seems appropriate this July 4 weekend.
Time to relax, enjoy the afternoon, and break into a new book –Barbara Henning’s You, Me and the Insects (2006 Spuyten Duvil) about her stay in Mysore India to study yoga and life. I am instantly present deeply in two places—getting camp set up here in the White Mountains, getting her place set up in India, preparing food, distracted occasionally by family by memory by things to do. Her book is full of observations, almost like a meditation—I see my mind thinking about this, I am now observing that. It’s vivid and masterful. I’m in heaven.
And it keeps getting better! The Big Monkey BBQs corn, then a very peppery porkloin while I stir fry squash. The Roogle is incredible, its rich, vivid flavor, and intense fruitiness standing up to and balancing the peppery porkloin.
“You have a shiraz mustache!” laughs my husband and my child joins in.
The Marquis Philips 2005 is a shiraz to cut your teeth on, one that sticks to your ribs and your upper lip. The 15.9 alcohol plus the altitude socks it to me quick; the wine is smooth but edgy at the same time—just like our campsite!
The smoke from recent fires light the clouds a deep blood orange. The day cools. The child sleeps. We sit in campchairs, watch the slender moon set, feel close to the stars. A day well done.
GLOW some summer fun in LA CA & beyond
This Summer The DO LAB, producers of Lightening in a Bottle, are once again taking the show on the road, to the Midwest, the East Coast, and even Europe. So if you’ve been waiting for the Do LaB to come to a festival at a town near you, here’s where you’ll find them:
www.apwfestival.com August 8th-10th ~ All Points West (New York) www.virginfestival.com August 29th-31st ~ Electric Picnic (Ireland) August 8th-10th ~ Virgin Festival (Baltimore) www.electricpicnic.ie
CLOSER TO LA, GLOW
in and around Santa Monica’s Pier
Saturday July 19, 2008 7pm-7am FREE 10pm KCRW DJ Garth Trinidad (a favorite!!)
CLOSER TO LA, GLOW
in and around Santa Monica’s Pier
Saturday July 19, 2008 7pm-7am FREE 10pm KCRW DJ Garth Trinidad (a favorite!!)
Glow will fill the hours between dusk to dawn with compelling, enchanting and effervescent sights and sounds situated in spaces and times that expand possibilities for where, how and when the public experiences contemporary art.
With the historic Santa Monica Pier and adjacent world-famous Santa Monica Beach as their space, artists were commissioned to create unique and inviting works of art that welcome the public to be both audience and actor for twelve celebratory hours. Inspired by the wildly successful Nuit Blanche in Paris, Glow takes its spirit from the fabled grunion that live in local waters and come ashore several times a year to spawn in the sand creating a momentary sensation of iridescence.
So yes I had my meeting and yes I think it went well and yes I will write about it sometime…
But now we are packing up the van and heading out for the Eastern Sierra–Fourth of July in Independence California population small, home of the Winnedumah (est 1924) and the Road Kill Cafe, the best little French restaurant in Ecotopia!
You will recognize me by the shirt above (possibly the comfiest in the universe) or the bird tree “vote the environment” Patagonia eco shirt (from my solstice post) or this one which I got off the back of friend Dave Staeheli just before he climbed into bed in our guest room: 
:
Plus of course the Patagonia skirt I wrote about a week or so ago…not to mention the shiraz mustache and the pink highlights in my hair!
Looks like I’ll be missing the Poetry Train and READWRITEPOEM this week–sorry folks! I am out in the Sierra wilderness singing my heart out to the stars! If I get a chance, i will post and poem and join you!
PS My next shirt purchase will be by Paul Squire (aka GingaTao). If you can’t read it here, the original poem can be found on the blog “hello,” http://gingatao.wordpress.com/2008/06/25/some-things-are-not-ghosts/
YES!!
After days and days of waiting waiting waiting, I actually have a meeting scheduled with Dan the Man, the Grateful Palate himself, here briefly from Australia!! Not exactly sure where I will be going next–or when–but I am optimistic! More waiting in stores now! Watch for an upcoming post: a meeting with the Grateful Palate!
Hmmn, really need to do something about that CV (see post below…) How do I turn that monster into a resume??? A little research and a talk with Annie’s friend HR expert Joan Morton suggests:
* 2 pages (max–I have seen CVs that run into the double digits!)
* list 4-5 accomplishments
1) Art Predator newspaper column, radio show, blog;
2) grant writing: large and small from several hundred to several thousand to multiyear, multi-bill mega grants;
3) teaching: yoga, mountaineering, college undergrad and grad, education, environmental studies, writing, literature, creative writing, critical thinking;
4) grant facilitator, program director, marketing, recruitment, website & brochure design, promotional video;
5) published poet/exhibiting artist
* summarize, summarize, summarize: get the career into one 3-5 line sentence (35 words!)
sheesh
* determine 3-5 key attributes
* find 3 references
That shouldn’t be too hard! (any volunteers?)
Turning my CV into a resume is not going to be easy–like transforming a novel into a sitcom! and I have to figure out what to wear!! I don’t think my Patagonia skirt and t-shirt and TEVAs will cut it!
wish me luck!
Obviously, Matt Harding enjoys his “job”–traveling the world, dancing, blogging…(see the post below). But most people, when you mention work, turn up their noses. Who wants to work?
I remember visiting Jackie Kilpatrick a professor of literature at CSUCI. We’d been in grad school together at Uncle Charley’s Summer Camp, we’d taught a college core course together, and now here she was a tenured professor in American Lit, a dean even, in her office, working one day when I was giving an artist friend a tour. “How much do you work?” my friend asked. Jackie started describing her classes, her projects, plays and books she was reviewing…”It sounds like you work all the time.”
She smiled and agreed. “I love it,” she said.
Driving back to Art City, I asked my friend, “What’s work? When you’re painting all day and night, or creating art, is it work? Do you mind?” I know as a writer or when I’ve done art projects or broadsides for ART/LIFE, when I am working on a project whether it be painting or putting in a garden or organizing an event, it might be considered work, but it’s not–it’s work I choose to do, that I enjoy doing. I am always thinking about projects I want to do–big ones like adding on a home office or retiling the bathroom, or small ones like painting a bookcase or moving furniture around, working on this blog, poetry projects, book projects. It’s like popcorn in my brain, so many ideas firing, which one to eat first?
My friend Dave Staeheli climbs mountains for a living, specifically Denali, turns wood as an artist, and does finish carpentry. He’s visiting us right now, after two successful trips this season up the big mountain. So I asked him about work. He brought up the idea of avocation and vocation. Vocation is a job, a calling; avocation is a volunteer project, something you do that you love, that can become a vocation. He went from having an avocation as a climber and it became a vocation–a job where he gets paid to do something he loves. What really matters, we decided, is that you choose the right job. An avocation is what you want to do and whether you make money or not doesn’t matter; if it does become a job, it can destroy your avocation although that can be a pleasant way to make an income.
I told my yoga teacher Bryan Legere I was looking for a fulltime job, looking to do something new. “I’m sorry,” he responded.
“Why?” I asked. He admitted that it seemed most people with fulltime jobs are unhappy.
“But it doesn’t have to be that way,” I responded. “Look at you–you have a fulltime job–you teach yoga 2-3 classes a day, 3 or more days a week, with weekend intensives, plus your own practice doing yoga hours everyday–is that work? Plus you have your businesses, the Great Yoga Wall, and the Sunrider. You’re working all the time. But it’s different because you’re doing what you want to do, what interests you what challenges you. That’s the kind of work I want to find. Work that I can sink my teeth into. Work where I will learn and where almost every day offers a different challenge. Where I can write, think and create, make.”
My Holy Grail: looking for work that’s an avocation, a vocation, a calling. Not just a job.
We should feel good about the work we do. But most of us don’t. Most of us find work anaesthetizing–it puts us to sleep, it deadens us and turns us into consumers, too tired to cook, to grow food, to make art, to learn to do for ourselves. I want –no, I demand!–an aesthetic experience. You should too. Unhappy with your work? Do something about it! Tell me about it–your work, your search, your vocation, your avocation! The revolution will not be televised!
waiting for my dance card to fill…
Got my dance shoes on and I’m ready to join you Matt!
Well maybe not, maybe I’ll keep waiting for another job opportunity…(click on the link below to see why…)
art predator comes of age
On the night of the time change from daylight savings last November, I decided to see if I could get a blog going in that “extra” hour. ART PREDATOR is the product!
Heading into my ninth month of blogging, I’m about to achieve 18,000 page views (by July 4, Independence Day, and my actual anniversary). Getting to 18 (thousand hits!) makes me feel like I did when I turned 18–a sense of coming of age, a legitimacy for what I’m doing here, offering here. I’m overjoyed and astounded, and recognize some responsibility too–just like I felt at 18. (In the US, you can vote at 18 and be killed or drafted by the government but you can’t drink until you’re 21–now that’s gonna be a party over here in a few weeks!)
One of the highlights was getting 5,000 hits on my blog in 30 hours around the lunar eclipse Feb. 19. That was a truly amazing, stunning experience. At first, I thought something was wrong with my stats page when I saw how many readers had viewed my blog! I am thrilled with the steady growth of this blog (averaging 100 page reads a day this month–3,000 in 30 days!) and immensely pleased to have regular visitors, both old friends and new.
Another highlight is becoming part of the ReadWritePoem community and the Monday Poetry Train. Participating has been a great excuse for getting around and seeing, reading, and experiencing other blogs. I am looking forward to finding and developing a similar on-line community on wine!
Being able to post images, video and audio is an additional highlight of my foray into blogging. I loved being able to post the mp3 by Emil Brikha of my poem “I want to be that man.”
I can honestly say blogging has changed my life. It has opened me to a new way of teaching and using the net with my students (the write alley), it has helped me with raising awareness and funds via the Art City blog, as well as a new direction as a writer. It’s given me a new, international audience for my writing, especially my poetry, and it’s shown me the work of amazing writers, like Australian Paul Squires (hello, gingatao!) and east coast jillypoet, and more, poets who I would never have discovered otherwise. And it’s fun to keep up regularly with long-time poet friends like Danika at Open Channel.
My first blogoversary isn’t until early November 2008 but I hope you will help me celebrate my coming of age by sharing your favorite poems and posts from this blog (see my page “favorites”) and with this poem. Maybe you will share your coming of age story below or link to your blog!
The following prose poem “Navigation,” published in ART/LIFE’s 18th anniversary issue, is my “coming of age poem:” In some ways it is also a found poem, and a list poem in that it lists items found in my VW van.
To extricate myself from my vw van, the one you helped me buy, in order to take it to Dan the Dismantler I must undress the dead, reveal the forgotten, remove all articles of personality, leave only the corpse.
And I find myself on my 18th birthday facing the immensity of adulthood, my mouth stirring form novocaine numbness. Instead of returning to school this January morning, I walk along Surfer’s Point avoiding surging waves, stumblingly alone in this salty wet world. Reaching down, I grab a piece of driftwood, connecting with its salty wet world. The earth holds my hand; I let go of childhood with the other.
And I find myself at 36 stripping my van. Old stamps I will return for new: 29 cent Buffalo soldiers from the post office in Moose Wyoming, 13 cent Old Glories, 29 cent Statue of Liberties. Matchbooks I check for function and phone numbers: two from a trip to New York City for Jane’s wedding, the SOB’s light up, but not the St Moritz even if I got lit there; I never went to Chico’s Lounge in Reno but Alix must have because here’s her phone number, also Dave’s address in New Mexico and Carolyn’s in Oregon. A false eyelash stuck to the rear view mirror after a party. A note from the Dungslingers. Three pairs of new bobby socks–pink, white, cream–still in the bag with the receipt. Both hot pink hoop earrings I wore th night of the burn in 1995. The aluminum stovetop espresso machine I bought at Peet’s when I worked there. The plate I promised to return after I ate its ceasar salad. The American Airlines overseas flight bag from a flight I never took complete with socks, comb, listerine, and partially used nail file. An unused condom. The driver’s side floor mat. Learn in Your Car Spanish.
Earplugs covered in glitter. The temporary rose tattoo Patty gave me the day of Bunny’s memorial service. A lace ribbon from when I recited poetry at the Renaissance Faire. A shiny costume jewelry pendant on a gold colored chain my Great Aunt Irene gave me grandmother who died last year. A bottle of Elope, a knockoff of my favorite perfume, Escape. Parts to a nail clipper. Incense that won’t burn. A memo pad with nothing in it I want to remember. The abalone lighter holder I found in the Sierra and a working lighter. A rhinestone hair clip I wore to the opening of the San Francisco Ballet with Robin. Chicken fried rice I’ll never eat. Notes about a white corvair I will never drive. A snap I’ll never know the function of. Raid I didn’t know I had and swear I never bought. Two carabiners, one magenta, from Teton Mountaineering. A handful of sage from Nevada. Cut glass from a chandelier in the blue house in Moss Landing. A dream pillow, lavender and sweet smelling when squeezed. Your shaving kit with the broken zipper I claimed six years ago. The orange ribbon you gave me. The residue, the resilience of you.
And I find myself recognizing that every six years the days and the dates are the same. We watched the sun set on your 39th birthday, a Friday; this, your 45th birthday is a Friday. We will not be together. Every six years, all the cells on the body are replenished. These cells–the skin on the small of my back, my nipples–never knew your touch, never touched you. Muscle memory fades.
You face me as I decide fates–toss, recycle, keep. But what do I do about the glow in the dark stars? These ancestors, they shine on the corpse I must let go. Holding on to their illumination, I seek redemption.
poem: waiting…
ART/LIFE was a limited edition art and lit magazine that published 11 issues a year for 25 years. I produced 30 or more broadsides with my art and poetry in it for about 10 years, from 1995 to 2004. Above is the cover of the Dec. 2001 (Issue #232) below is a broadside I did of my 3:15 experiment poem “waiting” as published in that 19th anniversary issue. The brad in the middle that serves as hands rotates, as does the clock face to reveal the poem as the reader spins it around. I posted the poem (text only) back in January but I am 
posting it again since that is what I am doing–waiting! Waiitng to hear from Santa about the gift of working for the Grateful Palate via an interview or response to my letter (see previous post below)! Looking for work, finding meaningful satisfying work, changing fields, opening yourself to new opportunities…entails a lot of waiting as anyone unemployed and looking for work realizes!
it takes a long time
when you’re waiting waiting waiting
for the light at the end of the tunnel waiting
for the ice cream to freeze waiting
for the flame to catch waiting
for the sun to shine waiting
you can’t wait
too hard
it will never come
you must wait
softly lightly
with poise
balancing
the waiting
on your head
it wants to fall
the waiting
ends
the waiting
begins again
the waiting
is balanced
on your head
you are walking
forward
you wait
you wait
and the sun does shine
and the eggplant grills
and the tea is brewed
and the hot fudge melts
and there
is love.
(Ride the Monday Poetry Train! Check out Readwritepoem–the prompt this week is to do an experiment with found words; this offering is an experiment of a different sort!)
art predator 