The day after the Thanksgiving weekend I took off for my own private holiday, driving east on the 10 freeway past Riverside and San Bernardino, past the hills of Palm Springs to the dusty little town of Desert Hot Springs and the Sagewater Inn & Spa, where the doors are painted turquoise, the linens are European, you’re handed a pound of Gramma B’s coffee cake when you check in and aahhh, the mineral water flows into the Jacuzzi at 104 degrees. The last two years I’ve made reservations to come out here, after a recommendation from a friend, and have cancelled each time, either for financial or scheduling reasons. This time I was determined to get out here. I knew I’d need it after my usual bout of “holiday fever” over the Thanksgiving weekend. (We won’t go there for now.)

I brought three suitcases. The first had my clothes and toiletries. The second was really a plastic filing case, but I used it to tote all the food I’d need for three days, as each room has its own kitchenette. In the third suitcase was all my reading material: The New Yorker from two weeks ago with an article on Robert Hass & Mark Strand’s new books of poems, the Sunday L.A. Times crossword puzzle and Book Review (with an article on Bukowski), literary journals (FIELD, Willow Springs, Pool, The Ledge), my trusty Moleskine journal, a spiral notebook with notes from all my poetry workshops and, of course, a plethora of books: The Universal Myths by Alexander Eliot and Joseph Campbell (for an upcoming workshop with David St. John), Handbook of Poetic Forms, by Ron Padgett, The Situation of Poetry by Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass’  and Mark Strand’s new books, They Came to See a Poet: Selected Poems by Tadeusz Rozewicz, Hapax: Poems by A.E. Stallings and The Paper Rose (a new book of poems by my Vermont College professor, Tom Absher). Oh, a few more, but enough is enough.

It takes awhile to settle into not doing your routine. I’ve had the urge several times today to go into town and find a bookstore or a grocery store or go on some inane errand that will get me out of my room, away from the very thing I came here to do. Funny how that is. I do have to ease into it and I find two things very helpful: water and television. No, not at the same time—that could be dangerous. Taking baths, showers, dipping in the Jacuzzi, drinking lots of water (which is fantastic here), all these things get me relaxed and unwound from the city. TV, well, it’s a distraction and one that has to be carefully monitored or it could end up consuming inordinate amounts of precious reading and writing time. I find them (distractions) valuable as process time, beyond the very useful ones of sleeping, walking and meditating, which all fall under the healthy category, whereas blobbing out in front of the tube is purely indulgent and necessary in allowing myself freedom to simply enjoy without guilt.

I’ve been here a little over 24 hours and have another 40 or so to go before the two hour drive back home to L.A. I’ve gotten through a couple of journals, organized some poems for submissions, read that New Yorker article and gotten half-way through the crossword puzzle. Dinner is over, I’ve watched enough TV for the day, so it must be time for a soak in the hot tub, where, who knows, under those magnificent stars, inhaling the good, clean, dry air, any number of transcendent poems may arrive to fill up the rest of my evening. If not, I’m sure the faces of the books strewn across the white duvet will be vying for my attention to fill up a few minutes of these precious hours in the desert.

Pictures and a Desert poem by Tom Absher below. Also, if you are interested in any of the books or journals I mention, just roll over the title and click for a link to more info. 

Courtyard outside of my room. It’s been windy today, as you can see.

View of the mountains with the whirling windmills below.

Wood carving of a Chief at a nearby Museum

 
 There are 15-20 inns and spas in this area of Desert Hot Springs. They run the range of funky to sublime. This one is the former, but I do love the sign!

THE DESERT

Many people have walked
into one desert or another
to find their gods, like Arabia,
east of the Euphrates, an unholy
violence of heat, sand and those
salamanders which thrive
on fire from the sun, because
there is so little else to eat.

If one seeks to hear the voice
of a deity it might be found there,
where sky overwhelms the land,
where there is no sound
but the pulse of blood in the ear.

It has been said that divinity
does not speak in thunder clouds
or a whirlwind, or from the bottom
of a well, but in the presence
of animals, or the voice of a child,
ordinary, soft-spoken words, sounds,
musings, a question,
a voice so small one must go
into the desert to hear it,
to believe it.

I have heard it is a voice that addresses us every day
in one form or another,
but we never notice,
perhaps like the voice Abraham heard
before he set out for the Promised Land,
that place overrunning with milk and honey
and war, endless war—
words first heard so faintly
so close by, he might have thought
they were from the salamander
beneath his feet:

Return here often and listen for me.

Tom Absher
The Paper Rose
Plain View Press, Publishers