[Cwgrad-announcements] call for submission for Phantom Seed, lit mag of CA desert

[Ching-In Chen]

Submit!

xoxo,

Ching-In

*Phantom Seed
A Literary Magazine of and about the Heart of the California Desert*


 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.

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?"

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....

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.

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...

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....

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!

>From Your Editor

HOW TO SUBMIT
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:
runolan at aol.com OR land address: Ruth Nolan/76530 California DR, Palm
Desert, CA 92211. We regret that submissions cannot be returned.

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.

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.

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.)
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