for this life I need a squirrel

I Remember Galileo by Gerald Stern

Originally published in The Red Coal (1981)

I remember Galileo describing the mind
as a piece of paper blown around by the wind,
and I loved the sight of it sticking to a tree
or jumping into the back seat of a car,
and for years I watched paper leap through my cities;
but yesterday I saw the mind was a squirrel caught crossing
Route 80 between the wheels of a giant truck,
dancing back and forth like a thin leaf,
or a frightened string, for only two seconds living
on the white concrete before he got away,
his life shortened by all that terror, his head
jerking, his yellow teeth ground down to dust.

It was the speed of the squirrel and his lowness to the ground,
his great purpose and the alertness of his dancing,
that showed me the difference between him and paper.
Paper will do in theory, when there is time
to sit back in a metal chair and study shadows;
but for this life I need a squirrel,
his clawed feet spread, his whole soul quivering,
the hot wind rushing through his hair,
the loud noise shaking him from head to tail.
   O philosophical mind, O mind of paper, I need a squirrel
finishing his wild dash across the highway,
rushing up his green ungoverned hillside.

End-of-the-Year MadLove: A Call to Artists and Rebels

Crazy sages, 

I've got some slots open in my coaching schedule, and I'd love it if these next few months especially, I could rock out with artists, rebels and visionaries. YES! 

The back story is I'll be doing NANOMO (or whatever it's called when everyone sits down and writes a novel in a month), and energetically, it would rock my world to be working with clients who are on a similar path. So...

I'm hot to work with people who are:

• Coming into their artist selves, full force
• Ready to express themselves like never before
• Want their expression to be a whole-life experience, not just showing up on the page, canvas or stage
• Hungry for breath-taking challenges
• Itching to go over the top
• Timidity and fear, be damned

**Note: You do NOT have to be a full-time artist-ish to sign on. You just have to desire amping your connection to your inner-expression. Boom.

I'll be channeling my wacky painting professor with the wispy white hair and icy blue eyes who walked in on the first day of class wearing a fur coat and clanking cowboy boots, and said:

"Do not place your canvas upon the easel to lay your paint strokes down unless you wildly believe that what you're about to create will set the world on fire."

Hint: YOUR world is the first world to lite up, brilliant being. Get yourself giddy as fuck: that's what we're going for. Let the magic pour from there.

Cost:

One month of coaching (three 45 minute sessions, plus a half-hour Spark Sesh on da house) is $180 if you pay upfront, or $210 if you pay per session. 

Three months (eight 45 minute sessions, one 2 hour Discovery Session, and a half-hour Spark Sesh on da house) is $600 if you pay upfront, or $700 if you pay per session.

More on working with me right here, and some loving testimonies clients have offered up right here. Shoot me a line at rachmadlove@gmail.com if you're interested, and we'll get this party started! 

~~~~~~

Also! A blog-ouncement:

I'll be hibernating my writing, leaving this baby bare of words for most of the month. Whatever it takes to protect the sanctity of the book, right? 

love love love!

Holllaaa,

rach-o-ween ;)

Begin, fool. We're all stumbling, anyway.

here we have it, lovelies: a foolish face.

After graduating from college, I was working for Jen Lemen in her little art studio on the third floor of her house, doing fruitless things like trying to get the scanner to work. The reality is, Jen was exponentially generous with her mentorship, and often, I'd leave her house a bit rattled--her capacity to shoot truth like a tin can atop a tree stump, a bit uncanny.

The thing with you, Rach, is you're terrified to look foolish. She said it ever-so nonchalantly one summer afternoon with the windows open and the birds singing careless and free.

FUCK. Don't you love/hate it when someone nails you right on the head?

Here I am, five years later, still stomaching that reality. As I practice the art of stepping all the way into myself, I can feel the precarious edge of foolishness lurking, waiting for my missteps, haunting me with the threat of falling into some deep abyss of shame.

I can feel how unavoidable foolishness is, if I'm to truly pronounce myself, sound myself out one syllable at a time. It's clear that the art of becoming is much like the English language--with certain things that make no sense, follow no patterns, and are just plain old stupid. And still, we must learn them by heart. We must pronounce them wrong, over and over and over again. We must continue to read aloud, anyway. In front of the whole class. Everyone listening as we stumble on words like unique, Illinois, amateur.

So the question remains: Am I willing to lean into the challenge? To try my hand at something that actually scares me? To publicly show you, This is really where I am. Right here, right now, this is my damn best work. Foolish mispronunciations, and all.

And I notice, the best way to write this book might be to pretend that no one will ever read it--no one's actually listening as I sound myself out, one stumbling ah-tem-pt at a time. This is for me. My growth. My learning.

And, you see, that's the whole real challenge for most of us, anyway--to hold (or let go) and evaluate (or not evaluate) our experiences for ourselves. To set our own standards, be our own judges, sing our own praises, feel satisfaction intrinsically.

To cross our own mountains--because we must--for ourselves.

To live for ourselves. To become full and round and every bit as devilish as delightful. To love all our wild, untamed parts, and all the ways we worry. To be foolish enough to begin, not knowing where this damn road will lead, or what might happen along that long stretch of nothing, somewhere between mountain and sea.

Because it's there, in those stretches when you run out of gas or lose the tire like a tumbleweed spinning away without reason, that you grin or sob with liveliness. It's at the edges where you discover indigo, burnt sienna, colors beyond Crayola packaging. Where you find the fullness of yourself. Where you learn to love the fool that brought you there.

So with that, here's a short list of things that I'm letting myself embrace, despite the ways I wobble:

1. Skateboarding. (I suck and I'm terrified, but I love it so much I'm doing it anyway).
2. Dating woman. (I've always been queer, but when you've been married to a dude for 7.5 years, dating women raises all your foolish/clueless flags... as if dating, in general, didn't already).
3. Writing a book. (Okay--I've been writing since I was seven. But a book? About my fucking life? Eeeep!).
4. Going on dates alone. (It actually feels scary to take myself to the movies, a concert, a club. But I'm doing it. Because, hell, I know how to treat a lady).
5. Paying all my bills and completely supporting myself financially. (Brian was the... uh... breadwinner. I tremble every time I open my bank statement. It's a work in progress, but, damn it, I'm committed).
6. Dying my hair. (This doesn't sound like a big deal, but if/when I actually dye my hair red/orange, IT COULD LOOK TERRIBLE AND I COULD BE EMBARRASSED THAT I WAS A FOOL TO DO IT).

And I'm willing to do these things--to take myself to these ledges--to find out who I really am in my discomfort and my power. Because, what the fuck? What else am I gonna do? Stay here? Awkward and afraid? Half-knowing and half-trembling, waiting for someone to scoop me up and save me from myself? Hell no. I may be afraid of myself, but that right there, is a fear I'm willing to face. The most important one of all.

~~~~~

What about you, dear soul? If you were willing to sound yourself out slowly, one syllable at a time, what might you pronounce? What dares might you dream to begin, foolishness be damned, knowing that we all wobble, we all fall, and everyone gets as many chances as they give themselves?

ciao, darling.

half moon shining, 

mo-ped winding,

you dance in the streets like you're free.

and i, a dreamer,

top-down, ever-eager,

can't ever hide the truth in me.

i'll miss you.

more than

you or i

dare say.

~~~~~~

standing, shedding,
helpless as a tree.

i don't fear
getting close.

i don't pretend
letting go.

i let you touch me.

i feel every
slowly, slowly.

every biting
thrust.

every smack
and suck.

i trust
all the way past

goodbye. 

At Least You Get to be an Artist

In 10 days I'll be sweating my way up and down stairs, carrying lofty furniture and a few backpacks full of clothes. I've moved a ton in the past decade. It's the nature of the times. But this feels different. Like I'm moving into myself. And somehow, strangely enough, it feels like the most scary of territories. What are my real limits? Where are my true edges? Who am I when left to my own devices? 

I'm a boarder-free kinda gal, so it's easy to scare the shit out of myself. Few things feel off-limits, bad or dangerous. (Sorry, Ma. I know I drive you up the wall). 

Which brings me to being an artist: 

In August, I challenged myself to writing a poem a day. What resulted was a total undressing. A deluge of rhythms and lines. A river I could not dam up--not now, not anymore. I dug up ten thousand buried moments--past, present, future. I let what was just below the surface bubble to the top, boil over, burn. And burn, indeed, I did. All the way to the bone.

Life has been feeling as unruly as a dancing fire. Where will the next flame wisp? It's impossible to know. There is no pattern to fire. It's free. It's transitional.

And I hate to say it, like it may be true, but perhaps what I'm really moving into is a life that is unprotected, fully lived, felt to the edges with nothing left to do but write about it. Immortalize it. Somehow find its beauty.

It's like my pond mutated into an ocean in a moments time, but my body stayed the same size. I'm strong, a good swimmer, but where am I going? To the edge? Must I always seek the edge? Or could I just let myself float where I am for a while, enjoying the sun on my face, not worrying about where I am? Letting the fire die in the water, if only for a day.

And then there's gratitude. Some of my very closest friends are in immense grief right now, coping with things no one ever imagines will actually happen to them. I can feel empathy swelling in me, as I sit face-forward with their cracked open lives. I know how it feels to be tied to the bed, fucked, trying to find any morsel of pleasure possible, in such harrowing circumstances. 

And I think maybe this is what art is for: framing the unimaginable truth, honoring the tiniest reflections, making sense out of the insane. Staying awake when you just want to sleep, numb, smoke cigarrettes to hell and back.

Because there is nothing sturdy about living. Even when we build stone castles as homes, the troops eventually march in. The catapults fire. It all burns. And this moment is as good as it gets for now. With everything twirling and spiraling in a craze, with no guarantees for the story you'd like to call your own--at least you still get this: to be an artist. 

You get to move into yourself, and travel to the edges you never knew lived inside of you. You get to appreciate the backroads at sunset and curse the traffic jams of your soul. You get to have it all in there, in that crazy self of yours. Again and again, living in paradox--powerless and powerful beyond belief--you get to dance the artists' dance, sweating, pounding, occasionally resting off-beat. You get to make something, as your final shout at life. 

This is the life of an artist. Dam-free. Flowing. Teetering between float and swim. It all pours out, it all comes in. And you are vulnerable. The occasional sink is bound to creep in. But alive, you are. You are living. And while sometimes it's delayed, put off for those late nights clicking away at the keyboard, you are feeling, deeply. You are asked, really, one thing only: to dive all the way in. To get drenched. To show us. Or if not us, yourself.

Because it's really about you, isn't it? Becoming. Becoming the person who's needed in order to live the life that's arrived. Inventing. Surrendering. Playing. Trying shit on until something actually fits your new, unfamiliar size and shape.

There's a lot that I'm showing myself, as a beginning. Writing in private. Experimenting like a 13 year old whose trying to find her sense of style. This book is terrifying me. It's the most fun I've had since my senior year of college when I'd paint for 8 hours straight, leaving the studio as the sun was coming up, forgetting where I was or what was next on my agenda. It's forcing me to stay awake, in a time when I'd be oh-so-tempted to just fall away, asleep, crashed inside an aimless car of fear.

Art. It's saving me. It's making me brave.

And you? What's your artist up to these days? Has she saved you lately? Is she seeking to come out and make something beautiful from your crazy, magical life? Are you letting her?? Do tell. I'd love to hear.

crazy raw + glad,

rach