<div dir="ltr"><meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.2 (Win32)"><meta name="CREATED" content="20080829;12410273"><meta name="CHANGED" content="16010101;0"><style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font color="#000080"><font color="#000000"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font size="3"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="">Submit!<br></span></span></span></font></font></font></font></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif">xoxo,</font></font></font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font color="#000000"><font size="3"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif">Ching-In<br>
</font></font></font></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><b><font color="#000080"><font color="#000000"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font size="3"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="">Phantom
Seed<br>A Literary Magazine of and about the Heart of the California
Desert</span></span></span></font></font></font></font></b></p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><br>
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><font color="#000080"><font color="#000000"><font face="Palatino Linotype, serif"><font size="3"><span lang="en-US"><span style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="">Now
accepting submissions in all genres: poetry, fiction, essays,
articles, interviews....for issue #2 to be published Sept 21. Please
submit work that reflects the essence of the desert: particularly,
but not limited to the California desert region.<br><br>We especially
like writing that transcends the everyday with mystique desert
visions induced in such activities as UFO sighting; speaking up and
taking a brave stand against the corpo-terrors of proposed windmill
and solar panel farms, mega-watt voltage lines (as if we need more -
the desert is already maligned with them,) and toxic and urban
landfills that threaten some of the last sacredness and spiritual
purity of what is left in California's southeasternmost wedge; the
alt-magic occurring in the vibrations of middle of nowhere raves, in
the loneliness of a desert refugee, in the bravery of the art of
disappearing into the desert...most of all: what can you tell us
without telling? What shadows comprise the heart of your "desert"
love and "experiences" and "spiritual renewal" or
"country-club-loving, Mojave and Western Colorado/Sonoran Desert
sunrise magic?"<br><br>That is what we are looking for, here at
"The Seed." What you can write about by not-telling, not
selling-out, not-telling people when you find an amazing hot springs
on a gun-shooting outing with an ex-Army ranger who later becomes
your boyfriend; when you find sleeping circles in a place far off any
map; when you actually live in some crude, ramshackle old
homesteader's shack lacking plumbing and floorboards, in a remote
area where old hippies sip peyote tea 24/7 and long-subdued members
of the Manson family stop by with bags of oranges en route to
cultivating their small marijuana crops in little canyons spilling
from the coastal mountain ranges, whose locales I shall never name,
when you live sans A/C in your house or car and just take naps in the
hot part of the day....<br><br>So, to all you new "desert
lovers" - more advice on your Phantom Seed submissions from this
"indigenous-gangsta" desert girl who grew up hiking places
like Rattlesnake Canyon and chillin' at Cock Rock, watering a lone
juniper out near the Lucerne Valley cutoff (dirt road 20 miles from
"town,) with her little baby in a backpack; working the fire
crews to protect immensely imaginative crags of brittle mountain near
Slash X Ranch - back when the desert wasn't yet "in vogue,"
wasn't yet picture smeared (think: "the Joshua Tree album by U2)
across album covers, mass produced in advertising campaigns and
trashed during major film-making (which, to be honest, began way back
in the 20's with silent movies and, epitomically, Cecile B. De
Mille's "Old Testatement" movie, even before my time,
though we all believed it was Israel....).....and now, with the
Internet.....way too easy to figure it all out! So, that's what WE
WOULD LOVE FOR YOUR WRITING to be about, for the Seed: bring on your
best work and get real about writing the landscape you think you
wanna love (woo your supposed crush) and call your own.<br><br>Do it
well: with top-notch writing and select words that an only come from
the random desert experiences such as hugging creosotes after the
rare rain, doing something bad like burying a few obsidian arrowheads
so that the obvious petroglyph-thieves in a sadly neglected BLM
archaological site don't get ahold of those, too...getting stuck 40
miles off-road near some unmapped volcanic plug far, far from Barstow
on a cold February day and....walking that 40 miles when the
distributor cap on your '72 Toyota dies out and flagging down some
guy close to midnight on the closest entrance to the I-40 who wants
to take you to a cheap Hinkley hotel (sorry, can't go there)....help
clean up myriad meth-lab remains while on fire patrol in places NOT
protected by the loving little wedge of the ever-precious and
immensely "cell phone safe" designer Joshua Tree Park and
surrounding hamlets of trendy, Sedona-in-the-making Joshua Tree, 29
Palms, Yucca. Well, it could all go in 2012, or if firearms are once
allowed, loaded and concealed, in the Park, or if the smog gets too
bad, or the rock climbers go on strike but....it's pretty good for
now, albeit all the darknesses on the fringe...<br><br>I challenge
you. Be real. Write about what you are really doing, seeing, thinking
out here. If you are manifesting the California desert to fulfill
your inner search dreams, you aren't the first. Others have come to
mine its gold, seek its austere God-gaze - nothing quite like it to
set your spirits right and wash your urban sins away. If you are here
to make a buck, yada yoo ha. Write about it! If you're manufacturing,
perhaps use a peusdonym, but we want your story! If you want to come
clean about shotgunning a covey of raven, this is the place to do it.
Did you drive your car today, say, from Palm Springs to Victorville,
to shop up there at Home Depot for the best deal on your new "energy
saving" solar panel that you'll install in the Morongo cabin?
Write about it! If you are involved in desert activism, i.e., "Stop
the proposed ower lines across Anza Borrego," or "Green
Path....Isn't," or if you were at the Pappy & Harriet's
music fest fundraiser to stop Eagle Mountain Dump, good for you -
treat yourself by seeing swanky NYC-snooty art exhibits at the Palm
Springs Museum (well, we used to have a desert exhibit, but with all
the mid-century architecture here, ahem, that doesn't suit our needs,
we need "real" art for "educated" people).....but
above all, remember that "the desert is OK - you are OK. It will
be here long after the human sillinesses rise and fade. There is a
silver lining, after all, to life in the land of the enduring and
brutal sun.....and stories galore that need to be written to make it
all the much richer....<br><br>Take the bold approach. Pretend that
the desert is ALL that you have, that manifest destiny did NOT bring
you here, that this is everything, no going back, there is no Jersey
shore or Michigan lake-safety, and all you have left in your tiny
human-ness measured meekly against this austere and centuries-old
homeland of the timbisha shoshonee, chemehuevi, cahuilla, kumeyaay,
serrano, halchidon, paiute, mojave, and many other indigenous peoples
who were smart enough to learn to live at one with the land (that is,
with utmost respect for the powers that be in those volcanoes and in
those sandy wastelands, knowing the waterholes and not giving 'em
away for golf) long before the desert was a fashion statement, a
blank screen for Hollywood, proving grounds for the US military and
Ford Corp and Nuclear Warheads, United, and lately, the giant maw of
the Enron-inspired, desert-whoring energy-corps, Bush presidency
style (only how many months more to go?)....and write well!<br><br>From
Your Editor<br><br>HOW TO SUBMIT<br>Email submissions preferred:
include your name, contact information (email, phone, address) on
each and every page of your submission. Please submit as attached
document or copied/pasted into the body of your email. Subject line:
Submission - Phantom Seed. Submit to:<br><a href="mailto:runolan@aol.com">runolan@aol.com</a> OR land
address: Ruth Nolan/76530 California DR, Palm Desert, CA 92211. We
regret that submissions cannot be returned.<br><br>Phantom Seed,
Issue #1 (June 21/summer issue) available for $5 per copy. Contact
editor at above email. Available via mail or at the Santa Rosa/San
Jacinto Mountains National Monument Visitor Center, Hwy 74, Palm
Desert. Upcoming issues soon to be available at venues throughout the
California desert.<br><br>Phantom Seed Issue #2 release reading: Palm
Springs Library, Monday, October 27th, 6:30 p.m. Free and open to the
public! Copies of issue #2 will be available. More information to
come soon.<br><br>Editor: Ruth Nolan, M.A., College of the Desert
professor, anthology and book editor/publisher, and author of:
Negotiating With Testosterone (1995, Northern Arizona University;)
Wild Wash Road (1996) and Dry Waterfall (2008) (Petroglyph Books.)
>From age 13 on, after exile from southern California's "Inland
Empire," Ruth grew up in the Mojave Desert, worked for the BLM
as a helicopter hotshot and engine crew firefighter in the California
Desert District, and has extensively hiked, traveled, and embraced
the essence of her desert homeland. (hey, it's better than San
Bernardino.) </span></span></span></font></font></font></font>
</p>
<meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.2 (Win32)"><meta name="CREATED" content="20080229;23072100"><meta name="CHANGED" content="20080801;16394200"><style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
--></style><meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.2 (Win32)"><meta name="CREATED" content="20080229;23072100"><meta name="CHANGED" content="20080801;16394200"><style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
--></style><meta http-equiv="CONTENT-TYPE" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><title></title><meta name="GENERATOR" content="OpenOffice.org 2.2 (Win32)"><meta name="CREATED" content="20080229;23072100"><meta name="CHANGED" content="20080829;12400790"><style type="text/css">
<!--
@page { size: 8.5in 11in; margin: 0.79in }
P { margin-bottom: 0.08in }
-->
</style>
</div>