predictability bores me.

not that it's the worst thing in the world to be predictable. but when you meet those really juicy and totally unpredictable but still well-intentioned/beautiful-hearted people... you know, the ones who talk esoteric science babble and seem really dweeby, but then all of the sudden begin serenading you with adorable song and dance. it's just the absolute most charming thing in the world. and it reawakens the little girl in me who really knows how to play. and through all the crazy-serious-over-thoughtful stuff i write about in this blog, at the end of the day, all i want to do is play. really. i want to hypnotize you to make you quack like a duck. or roll over like a dog. then clap my hands and make everything go back to normal. i want to perform a dazzling production of the wizard of oz in my very own living room as my housemates eat dinner. i want to walk in on things that look strange and perverse but are really just two or three or four or five humans experimenting with the craziness of being human. you know... like... playing leap frog or picking each other's noses. whatever!

i want all the freaks and geeks to hang out on my front porch and talk too loud until the wee hours of the night. i want the guy with the pleather trench coat. and the girl with the checkered tube top. and the kid with wheels on the bottom of his tennis shoes. and the old man with the neon hat, fully grown beard and glass of whisky with a straw cut just to size.

or these guys.

i want the hula hooper and the belly dancer and the palm reader and the margarita shaker. i want em all! i especially want the artists. the mystics. the sages. the dreamers. but you already knew that ;)

life's too short to feel bored. and i'm letting you in on a little secret: i'm a bit bored here in the district. but still hopeful that local weirdos are out there, ready and willing for me to hang out with them and make them feel really really funny. (who doesn't like feeling funny?) so if you're local and if you're any of the above, please, note the sign below.

ENTER HERE. (this place ... the one in my heart... loves you a lot).

tonight was wonderful~being at a graduation party with more freaks and geeks than i've been around in a while. (if you haven't already figured out, the term "freaks in geeks" in my book is a big compliment). it made me miss college perk and the gem of all the wandering people who went through those doors, sat on those couches, sang at that mic, talked on those porches. not sure if i've ever mentioned it here, but my life goal in high school and the beginning of college was to open a coffeehouse like college perk. a place for people to meet and mingle, to sing and dance, to drink brews and booze. but mostly, a place for people who otherwise would've been considered a freak or geek in the bad sense of the term...a place for those guys to belong. belonging is a big theme in my life that i've yet to delve into as much as i could. but that'll be for another time. that would be way too predictable ;)

so who knows...maybe that long time dream deferred is worth reconsidering.

night, all. besos, baci, and a big smothering wet one!

don't tell mom the babysitter's dead

(was that anyone else's favorite movie when they were 12?)

as if you care, a list of things you do when you spend the weekend pet-sitting for your parents in the burbs, cut off all human-interaction, save the employees at Giant and runners at the Atholton track:

read old letters from dear ones dating back to 1995 and cry at the overwhelm of it all
wonder what all the old men you ever fell in love with are doing now
write a somewhat pathetic letter to one
think about writing to another, but restrain
read your mother's journal (with her permission) from when she lived in germany with her greek lover, to when she met your father
read your old blog... the one where you used to say whatever the fuck was on your mind and care a whole lot less about who read or what they'd think
cut your own hair...really, really short
run the same familiar route you ran for every summer of your life growing up
walk past an old lovers house and contemplate knocking on the door and saying hi to his parents. again. restraining.
watch the big hurt and thoroughly enjoy it
cook when you're hungry
nap
read more and more and more
contemplate 100 different ways of retaliating against that fuck from your past and/or at least making him feel like a fuck... then realize that you don't know if you know how to do that anymore. (make someone feel like a fuck). or even if that's what you really want. what do you really want?! who knows. some sort of genuine apology... some sort of acknowledgement of how out of line the whole thing was. how irresponsible he was. how it could've been him in serious trouble. but it wasn't because you really loved the fuck. lucky fuck. really.
begin writing a short story about the epic love affair instead
eat an entire bag of dark chocolate chips
spend way too much time on facebook
watch "book tv" ... about the life of dr. suess
go to bed early
wake up late
cuddle with the dog
listen to incredible music
worry about filling the space with enough meaningful, worthwhile shit. because god forbid i take time off from my incessant striving toward a better self, community, world.
let. it. go. (for now)

watch these videos until you actually feel tired:





(ps--these guys--the low anthem--are who jodi & i met back at college perk in 2005. this blog post from back in the day is hilarious!)

Man&Dog - All Day With No Rest from Daphne Gardner on Vimeo.

memory lane

self exposed: links to blogs from my years in high school! guess what? not much has changed.

feb 2005: on the past, appropriately.

march 2005: when i grow up i want to be ....

may 2005: what WE gain

okay... really, though, after all this reminiscing, the most important thing i've gathered from it all is this: the joy or loneliness that i felt in the past years was directly related to how honest i was and who i was being honest with. jodi and i used to get HIGH off of each other's truth. just the mere act of letting it out, and saying yes to each other, to all of our uncertainties and questions and confusion and pain... we were so brave and we didn't even know it. so vulnerable without even trying. we trusted each other so deeply. really. we could just say it all. ask it all. offend or piss each other off, but be young enough to forgive ourselves. i think we need to remember that no matter how old we get, we are always still clueless to so much around us. we are still allowed to offend and piss each other off. we are still forgivable. truly.

i know that right now in my life i have a big gift... and that's being in the same time and place again with my soulsisters from high school. we've been through the world together, already. and we need to remember that. anyway, i want to. i want to step back into that place of complete trust. of curiosity. of admitting that there is so much i still don't know about them or myself or the world before us. because when we're in that place together, we see things so clearly. no pretenses cloud us. we're just broken, silly people with a whole lot of hope.

it's all about the we. the us. how we feel together, who we are together, what we can make of the world when we know enough to lean into the friendship and trust that we've spent so long building. nothing matters more. this much we've taught each other, for sure.

some of my thoughts tonight, as i pet-sit at my parents house, sorting through old photos and letters and poems and memories i'd buried to the grave... life is so cool.

oh! and i cut my own hair tonight. like--chop, chop, chop. practically all gone! :-D

when enough is enough and your heart can't wait

this musing was inspired by a series of notable events in the past few weeks, and also, a cumulation of life-long dis-belonging to the powers that be, which run all of our lives. i invite you to join me on this journey toward a more outwardly simple, inwardly rich life. or if nothing else, to reawaken the pieces of vigor and truth in your heart and body that have been buried along the way.

lots of love*

the movement of your heart from Rachael Maddox on Vimeo.

ps-the sound and image are off. if this bothers you, you can just close your eyes and listen :)

recent inspiration:
~voluntary simplicity--the collective and the book
~listening to the people speak from the past and the present
~pathways to bliss by joseph campbell ... you can read the first 140 pages right here & now
~elizabeth gilbert talking about the trail blazing us women still have before us
~quitting my job & being hired for an infinitely more meaningful one all in the same week
~the little cooperative village that i'm living in made up of people i absolutely love
~sunday mornings at malcom x park doing acro yoga and dancing to drums ... the look on the face of someone upside down and on top of you brings incomparable joy
~a little dream project that i've been nurturing like a child that needs tons of attention, kindness & protection

the leaning tower of books

(in the little artist village of ein hod, israel. my tower is much messier than this!)

i have an amazing talent for beginning books and not finishing them, but still insisting that one day soon (!) i'll pick them all back up again and finish them once and for all. so they musn't travel far. no, no. not beyond my bedside table.

to tell you the truth, this talent reaches past book collecting and onto idea collecting, dream collecting, omg-if-i-just-had-this-and-this-i-could-make-THIS collecting.

a week ago i had a complimentary trial session with a wonderful life coach named julica. during our session, she asked me if there was something--a problem or challenge i'd been experiencing--that i'd like to try to work through with her. it was the end of a REALLY long day and i was a bit under the gun trying to think of a good problem i'd been having. (because it had to be the hundred dollar problem if i was gonna get free advice.)

finally, i landed on something that seemed at the time to be a bit guarded. a problem that i didn't really care about. just a problem that i could identify. that problem was doing a complete creative u-turn on the free joy project. remember that? i was totally obsessed when i got back from israel, but then dropped it like it was hot about a week and a half in. what was going on? why did i drop this project that i was so intimately excited about--so absolutely driven toward?

the truth is, i wasn't ready to shelf that baby. i was just really scared to keep going. i was more than a little terrified that if i really let my juices flow--if i really opened myself and my version of joy to the world--i wouldn't make it out alive. no--i'd be seen as a complete lunatic, a weird outsider, an unwanted fool, and everything that ever excited me would be deemed worthless and silly. it makes sense that i turned my back on the project. i was protecting myself from the possibility of some serious suffering and rejection. whether or not those things would've happened, my belief was that they most definitely would, and i'd be completely crushed and paralyzed if i were to actually follow through on my dream.

i want to bring my leaning tower of books back into the conversation. thinking about this insistence that i finish these books has got me wondering, what if i already have? what if i'm already done with them? did i gain what i needed? did i get the glimpses of insight i was looking for? am i ready to move on? if there answer is yes, then let it be. i'm learning this today as i quietly move buky fuller to the shelf. it's okay to call a spade a spade, to call something finished by my own standards, to declare when i'm done.

but even still, i know i wasn't finished with the free joy project. just like the other 7 books i've got leaning on my bedside table. and today i'm reminding myself that it's also okay to go back to the pieces of unfinished ideas i left behind, to keep my dreams piled up beside me like a little stack of reminders, to be scared and retreat for a while, to take time to regain my courage.

it's simply okay--to be where i am, in whatever leaning tower of unfinished dreams i furnish. and the good news is--it's okay for you to be there, too. because i know that soon, when we re-muster the fearlessness that couples deep passion, we'll begin walking again on stronger footing toward the dreams that are simply waiting for us.

if nothing else: 10 things i'm doing to protest the BP oil spill

1. reduce my dependence on oil by biking or metroing as much as possible. by choosing to go places where i don't have to drive to get there.
2. read about groups that are organizing against BP and oil dependency. show up to protests in solidarity.
3. write and talk about what's happening. every day.
4. change my facebook profile picture to one that reminds people of what's happening. (pretty distractions won't solve oil spills).
5. tell more people about CleanCurrents an EASY and CHEAP option for changing to wind and solar power in a matter of minutes. (because even if it's not BP oil, it's a dependence on oil that must stop).
6. boycott BP.
7. put the pressure back on the system, not solely on altruistic individuals. we did not cause this problem. gigantic greed-hungry corporations within a capitalist paradigm did. but many of us DO buy into the system. and that buy-in of most americans is causing us some serious damage. we need a system that plans for the worst and acts accordingly. not one that neglects the worst and says the market will take care of things. if you were the market, would you so generously decide to give billions to oil spill clean ups, just because it's needed? organize for a new system.
8. organize a hair-cutting party and then send it all down to the gulf through this grassroots organization ... and then tell all the teachers in my family about the demo/hair cutting challenge that they can do with their classes/schools
9. stay informed about what's going on.
10. and this one's really really important:
"One final paragraph of advice: Do not burn yourself out. Be as I am-a reluctant enthusiast... a part time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves and your lives for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it. While you can. While it is still there. So get out there and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, encounter the grizz, climb the mountains. Run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, that lovely, mysterious and awesome space. Enjoy yourselves, keep your brain in your head and your head firmly attached to your body, the body active and alive, and I promise you this much: I promise you this one sweet victory over our enemies, over those deskbound people with their hearts in a safe deposit box and their eyes hypnotized by desk calculators. I promise you this: you will outlive the bastards." - Edward Abbey

joyful energy fixes everything

really.



(i smiled the entire time i saw these ADORABLE guys from montreal. comp tickets, by the way!!)

the way things change

i've never been good at adjusting to big changes. but i've always been good at creating them. at giving the finger to my current situation that's driving me insane, and opening my arms to possibility. somehow my heart knows that terror is an illusion, and necessity for change is an all-trumping truth. because whenever i begin to feel like Everything Must Change, it's almost always born out of a willingness to own my authenticity. to claim my needs. to be honest about what I've been not-so-honest about.

but damn, does this terror feel real!

it's terrifying, but beautiful. and even on days when i can't wrap my head around the beauty, it's unavoidable. so i'm trying my best to say yes to this quick flip of a switch when my life changes from dark to light. even when i feel like the rope in a tug-of-war between stability and possibility. even when i'm doubtful that my eyes can adjust after spending so long in the dark. i'm throwing in all my chips, hoping that my heart truly holds all the knowing it needs, that possibility really has the courage to win.

what about you? i truly want to know: where does your heart go when it knows it's time for change? how does your soul piece transition together?

perspective and the things i learn from him

me: "you're so sweet to me, cutie. even today!"
brian: "that's because i just lost my job. i didn't lose you."


it'll be a tough transition. but brian's reminding me that hope is more important than fear, and possibility much stronger than loss. this man's the greatest gift.

on my mind