looks like they inspired?

There should be a phrase for the opposite of that's just like, of it reminds me of. Language keeps me from easily reversing the subject.

When Kerry was sledding down the hill on his stomach, Aunt Nancy said he looks just like the penguins on the Wii, I thought: no, the penguins look just like Kerry. But, in pointing out the things we see, we are failing to reverse our order. Could we evolve to say Kerry! Look at how he slides on the snow! The Penguins on the wii look just like him! Or, Kerry looks like what the penguins on the Wii are imitating!

What is happening to us, now that the real sensations of the world remind us of our own simulations of it? Who has wrested control of our capacity to be inspired?

new school

On my first day I got a list of forty names.

To pick up from their classrooms.

To do this job right I'd need hours, or days, but I have 10 minutes.

There is no time to make this a safe transition.

Clutching little tentative hands, holding little weeping shoulders.

wanting to make it okay, its okay, little strangers.

I don't know anything about you to know why you're reacting so intensely.

I know I'm another strange adult telling you where to go,

after a long day of strange adults telling you where to go.

How do I tell you I'm different, and am I?

I'm going to trust you, so we're going to like each other. But now there's no time.

firmly grasping their tiny hands, pushing the undersides of their backpacks down the hall

all I have to offer is an empathetic smile, crouched down to their eye level.

Its like herding cats down the hallway

these two swinging their clasped hands

this one dragging his backpack, that one dropping her coat.

one grabs each of my hands, one runs out front, one speeds back in the opposite direction.

There are other lines of children, and teenagers, and parents, and teachers.

They are looking at me and they are moving faster and quieter and in straighter lines.

I am so frustrated! My little masses breed anonymity.

I think or maybe yell at them: what is so difficult about being quiet and staying in line?!

Quickly I learn: there is always a reason

that catatonic little body in room 214 is afraid of the bathroom, so hasn't peed all day.

one's streaming tears are for his father, who some days gets off work in time

to pick him up early from after school to play chess, but not today.

She runs back down the hall because she forgot the leather jacket her mother just bought her

He drags his backpack because he was teased all day, he is weary and ashamed.

This one punches all the little Russian girls and wanders,

That one speaks openly of violence and greed- he's 5.

I don't know the reasons yet, but someone will.

Children aren't ghosts, they're full people.

What if all the teachers knew that its the system that's flawed, and the kids aren't to blame?

As weeks go by I often think: kindergarden is torture

yesterday they were all rain-drenched from a field trip with a backpack full of fresh picked apples and a pumpkins bigger than their head- they lug and skid them in my direction, this self-sufficiency is beyond them. Would it really be so hard for the parents to be allowed back up in to the classroom at the end of each day, so they didn't have to move their things up and down stairs?

When I share stories of tantrums and meanness the parents say

it's just that by the afternoon, they're so tired. she hasn't figured out how to eat lunch in 20 minutes yet, up until he went to kindergarden he always took a nap.

I assure them that their child isn't the only one.

Where is the optimism in this? Why have two months go by and I don't dread my job?

Because I know being an administrator means trouble-shooting: I spend much more time fixing the few problems than witnessing the many small joys.

Because a good education, or a good life, is not one where a person is always happy. That my children cry and scream and punch and crumble does not mean the school is bad, it means they feel comfortable expressing their feelings.

Because I am strongest in the face of some perceived injustice, and increasingly I see schooling this way.

Because children are beautiful, trusting and resilient. They smile and they crawl in my lap and clutch my arm, and let me hold their heads and waists and shoulders when they are serious or sad.

Because I am learning to do hard things that are useful, and which I will do better for the rest of my life for having done this job this year.

Because I believe that I am good at this work, and that there is such a thing as a transcendent educator, and that learning to be this is the same as learning to be the best version of myself.

Preparations for Departure

Last month I went to Philadelphia to see my old friend Dan's show in the Philly Fringe Festival. It was called Preparations for Departure and was created and performed by Colin Aarons, Jessie Bear, Emma Furguson, Daniel Perelstein, Sasha Shahidi and Jackie Vitale. I am writing a review for them, to use my small piece of public space to amplify the huge feat of their production. I'm sorry its taken me so long, Dan, its been a busy month.

Six friends play house in an old factory basement on the fringe of philadelphia. I wander the space with the rest of the audience and smile at how clearly it spells out this process: All the old furniture they could find, and their hand written letters arranged carefully in the nooks of this raw cement room. I melt watching Dan playing the youngest brother. The way these friends relish their scripted, imagined domestic life together makes obvious how intimately they know and love each other.

Collaboration is hard. As I watch the show I am astonished that these friends conceived this play from nothing in two months, and that they lived together while they did this. When they unravel their family, half-way through the show, it goes from slightly saccharine to ballsy: they stop time, rewind, slow it down, speed it up, fragments of the story bounce around the space and you know the chaos is entirely intentional. They are in perfect sync with each other. I make up stories that they did not intend me to see, and I gasp and cry. This is what intimacy is for, their show is an almost too explicit example. It confirms my conviction that big acts of sharing with other people are the most worthwhile kind of difficult.

Dan comments on the size of the audience: small. and lots of cast member's family. He scans the web for reviews that night, nervously. Where is the public? Where is the praise? They have worked so hard. I want for him the validation he craves because his show is beautiful, but feel saddened by the external craning towards success. I want it too. It is painful that the audience never gets out even a fraction of what you put in. How else could we frame our success?

There are Really No Experts Up There

I return to this city, I have never thought much of as an adult.
Only the passing: I live here
or, I will never live here
or, It makes me miserable even to visit.

and here I am, worrying for my feet in their hemp slippers as I walk again on concrete.
Sitting on the subway, for hours, like everyone else.
Reading new books from the book store I stumbled in to, eating the plastic-wrapped sandwich from the nice bakery when I don't make time to pack lunch.
With gentleness, I try to shrug off the compromises of transition.
Settling takes a long time, or maybe all the time I have.

Perhaps I do not know that things will ever feel out of limbo,
but I do know I am definitely still in it until I find an apartment.
the process has been and continues to be messy.
Four of us debating, fighting, frustrating, falling apart at one another.
Where should four young white kids live? And for how much money? And in how much space? And with what sense of urgency? And under what terms?


And in what literal space?

Shut up with the discussion, lets stand in a place and say yes or no.
When shit gets messy, we all talk about it and then I feel really good.
And then it gets bad again.
How much togetherness? How much patience? How much compromise? How much self-interest?
Stretching my infinite gullies of empathy, or artificially narrowing my options?
There are definitely no experts up there to tell me how to do this.

And so, there is no reason to navel-gaze.
Rachel, You have already made this decision.
The willingness- from my gut and not my brain- feels really good, and correct.
Trusting that I only have partial control over this situation.
Entering in to our second month of hunting, I feel much more calm.
There are many more decisions left to make.

An anecdote of hesitancy for our growing esteem for convenience

A few months ago, my parents got iphones. Equal parts pleased and horrified, I watched them integrate this new technology; fumbling with the tiny keyboards, googling things that excite them in the car, downloading music identification programs and dumb gimmicks and laughing riotously at the sound bites included in their new ifart application. seriously.

Since we switched our family cellphone carrier so that they could upgrade to these smart phones, William and were invited along- he said yes, and unsurprisingly, I said no. Insisted that my old phone was fine and refused to switch plans myself....until the universe intervenes and my phone of course broke that week. of course. Practicality won out over what-might-have-been-morality-or-maybe-just-greenwashed-naivete, and I chose not to switch to a mediocre "green" cell phone carrier, but to get a new phone on our new family plan. I painted her with the junky nail polish I hoard exactly for this purpose, and programmed her name, Patience, in to the top screen, an unintentionally centering reminder every time I look nervously at my phone.

This weekend my family of four piled in to the car with our three smart phones and one dumb phone for a weekend on the beach. Honestly, I can't remember the last time we got along so well on vacation- not that everything went perfectly, but none of us got arbitrarily worked up in the unique ways my brother and I have inherited from our parent's dispositions.

Were we really all so much more mature than before? Everything just seemed to go so smoothly. When we got lost, someone would query our location on satellite and look up directions. When we didn't know where to eat, someone would google a good place go to. When we wandered off from each other, we'd just text each other to figure out where to meet up again. When conversation got stale or tense, Will or Dad would call up the Youtube video that I'm embarrassingly obsessed with right now (no seriously, its deeply wonderful: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms2klX-puUU), and we'd sing along.

So this is great, right? This little device just smoothed out all the ripples, took care of the mechanics, the logistics, the dumb stuff that gets in the way of appreciating that we are a family of smart and healthy people, who might differ and argue, but who ultimately are blessed for our circumstances and for loving each other and getting along.

But I find this so disturbing, that we are trusting this technology to intervene frequently in our family, and trusting it to assume so many of the little responsibilities that stem from the circumstances of every day life. I worry society is loosing these skills- to navigate, to make plans, to trust other people to take responsibility for their own whereabouts and safety, to think ahead about objects or knowledge we'll need later on, to ask other people for help or recommendations, to be content with not always knowing what the best option is, to let some things be mysteries, to negotiate daily tensions with the people who are most important to us.

This is the change that is happening in the world around me. I have no control over our decision to embrace an expanding variety of mobile technology. I go on this tirade a lot, lately, and I've been forcing myself to find some lightness in the situation. I shrug and smile and say: I don't know, I guess I'm just a late adapter. I didn't get a cell phone until it felt like everyone I knew had one and payphones started disappearing. I'm sure I'll come around. This casualness puts whoever I'm with at ease.

This change in technology makes me feel angry and scared. Indignant, like why the fuck do people want to do this to their lives, and how come I don't get a say, and why does everyone find it so rude when I want to talk about it?

On family vacation, though, what I mostly felt was sad. Every smart phone intervention made me want to make some snarky comment. When I did, my brother and parents laughed and rolled their eyes at me in that loving way they often do. When I kept my mouth shut, I'd spend the time articulating some more forceful anti-technology rant that I sometimes couldn't hold back from espousing a day or an hour later. Either way, I know I'm enhancing my family's view of me as an anachronistic curmudgeon who takes herself and the world too seriously.

And this makes me feel so distant, just like I did when I was 10, but didn't have any beliefs to back it up back then, and so I wonder whether its just my contrarian disposition that makes me feel this way about smart phones- or about anything else, or whether I was a crazy intuitive child who had none of the words to describe why the world made me upset. There is no way of knowing, ever, whether my beliefs determine my disposition or the other way around.

And so here I am writing against technology on my blog, on the internet, not claiming to be a purist but wondering if some day will come when I will want to be and will be brave or sad enough to try.

Talking Towards Clarity: a vocab list for the summer

Here are the important words for the summer: the words I tried out to express what was going on as it happened, the words that allowed me to reach for something newly true.

Struggle
Endlessly useful since I stumbled on to it at Arvo's House this spring, with two basic uses: articulating internal struggle, and respectfully, positively discussing "negative" feelings about other people's choices and creative endeavors. I am trying the experiment of replacing "dislike" with "struggle with" as often as possible, though a good deal of the time I find the resulting statements very scary, and can't say that they're true. This seems to reveal what about myself and the world I'm unwilling to look at, unwilling to change.

Agency
generally used in discussion of adulthood. I started thinking about this at Buck's Rock, trying to describe the look of panic in the teenager's eyes as they left camp, and the immense sense of relief it brought on in me, to no longer be at their moment in life. A useful term for describing the exciting and terrifying possibilities of being an adult (see below). Also seems to be useful in articulating parts of the creative process. Still looking for a good definition of the term, though. I feel like I'm wielding it around experimentally.

Transcendent
Almost by definition, there's no way to pin down how I've been trying to use this word. It emerged first in the phrase transcendent friendship, something I came to while grappling for language to describe the experience of being with Zander and Jonah this summer. Entirely unique but not catagorically different: the intensity of my two months of sharing with them allowed me to articulate the catagory of relationships that become their own internal world, and that yeilds some something that feels huge. The idea of transcendence is not entirely secular, but somehow I'm sensing that the word itself is farmiliar enough that I can get away with using it in a secular context, or at least that it doesn't feel too far out of my realm of experience to use it to authentically describe my own experiences.

Adult
This is a messy one. At 23, I feel bashful about speaking of myself as an adult, but also it feels true. I might be a new adult, a young one, but what I and all my peers are really doing right now is definitely getting a handle on adulthood. Priorities, careers, ambitions, money, bodies, families, relationships: these are the things we stumble in to discussing and then look wide-eyed in fear at each other (not unlike the look of teenagers getting their agency taken away: the "oh shit, this is real" look) I am struggling a lot with the relationship between partnership and adulthood. I feel that the realities and challenges of being partnered with Kerry are helping me grow up: be a better listener, more open minded (okay, just slightly....), more patient, more giving. I know I am tapping in to this ability in how I deal with other people, but Kerry is really the site of this slow learning. I balk at myself, attempting to define the process of maturing through such a conventional standard. And I reassure myself: this is by no means the only way to adulthood, or the only path in my life that is growing me up. But real, committed acts of sharing between people- labels aside- is a positive avenue of growing. As I feel myself becoming both more willing and more able to enact sharing, I find myself thinking that I am becoming more adult.

Start Where I am Comfortable, Move to Where I struggle

after all of those fliers for healing circles around Portland, I can't use the word 'healing' without grimacing, and so instead I say about my summer, that it undid, unravelled, reset, restarted. As I left, the thoughts lingering were: gratitude, comfort, ease, transcendence, readiness and and fulfillment of ideals.

Buck's Rock is a city of tiny wooden cabins, hundreds of them, probably, 500 or so people bustling through their days, Working in small nooks, living in tiny enclaves. The young people, or rather their caretakers, pay a tremendous amount of money to be there, and the slightly-less young, the anyone-over-roughly-17, are themselves paid-if very little- to be the surrogate caretakers. Their jobs are very specific. They live with the young people, or they cook their food, they direct their plays, or sew their costumes, or instruct them in painting or video editing or sports. My job was to teach yarn crafts to whoever wandered up the hill to the weaving studio wanting to know. Some days I taught 15 crochet lessons, some days I waited and made hats for my friends.

This is by no means some Ultimate place, but like any other small and isolated community it takes on an other worldliness that makes it so important for those who stumble in to it and for whom it resonates. Returning to work there was accepting, if sheepishly, all the privilege that allowed me to be one of those people- my parents attentiveness and affluence that bought me a place of belonging in my 6 summers there.

If not healed than reset, restarted: my two month's returning did so much to make me feel composed and okay.

Some of this was no surprise: At Buck's Rock I felt like a good teacher. Because I was teaching skills I am well versed in, my days were filled with small revelations in how to teach better. Because of the ease with which I could navigate this strange institution, the ways rules and routines resurfaced from embedded teenage memory, I had strong opinions and the comfort to articulate them. Because many people already knew my name, it didn't take long for them to stop and wish to talk with me. I felt again like the world was interested in what I have to say.

Some ways I could not have anticipated, or two of them. Or one of them. I am filled with so much gratitude for the company of two new and old good friends. Zander, who came back to camp with me, and who I knew I was setting off to recharge a friendship with, and Jonah, who I had not even seen in 6 years, maybe, but who I knew immediately. within 12 hours. would be important to the journey I was about to go on for the summer. When people ask about my summer, there is no language that feels serious and real enough to explain how important they were to me. Maybe this will come to me with time. It doesn't feel sufficient to say that they were just really good friends.

And a million little ways: Thin walls that let the rain and wind through, so you are never quite inside. Grass and trees everywhere, sunshine for picnics for lunch. Endless arrangements of hundreds of colors of yarn, access to clay and glass and sewing machines and a million other arts I didn't have time to try. People to cook for me and do my laundry, so much free time and safety. Kind of being a kid again, but now I yearned for purpose and not for freedom, could fill my time with purpose because I'm some adult now, freedom is a given. I felt affirmed that I am not a child any longer.

Start where I am comfortable.
Move to where I struggle.

Two months was a luxurious chunk of time to revel, to accept all the affirmations available at buck's rock and to store it up, holes of doubt filled with resevoirs of confidence for the future when it will not be so easy.

I am moving to new york city, the week after next. I will run an after school art program at a magnet school on the lower east side. I am filled with doubt about these choices, but choosing to see them as imperfect and correct. What isn't easy also isn't wrong. Moving to the place I struggle wth most, moving towards actions and ideas that challenge me, making space for the friendships there with all of their non-idealness, incompletion, moving forward together with kerry committed to the space between him as a person and the unattainable ideal partnership, moving closer to my family and all the discomfort and challenge the details of each other brings up, moving towards art-making because ultimately there is no other option.

I couldn't stay at Buck's Rock forever, even if I wanted to, and yet/but also I happy that it is time to move on. There is no time I'll be more ready.

Buck's Rock Earth Day: BREaD

"Find your work and do it"
"Find your work and do it"
"Find your work and do it"

And there is so much work to do.

-likeafleshyspine.blogspot.com

This little piece of work fell on me, BREaD, allowed to be my brainchild, this day for earth. I have no good langauge to describe it, still, it all comes out too serious or too stupid. Earth Day, a problematic compromise, better-existing-than-not but I-wish-it-was-not-necessary. If only every day could be Earth Day, I have said and cringed. But with BREad, I push this place that changed me so much as a young person a little bit in the direction I am pushing myself.


For this last week I drowned in BREaD. Ran frantically, flaked out on my real job and pulled every favor and sobbed on the front porch of Girls Annex after I had to plead my 200 coworkers to find 3 more volunteers. I felt isolated, self-righteous, delusional, enraged. And then I think but I would not be the person who would take on this event if I had not been through this place when I was young. I have to have faith in Buck's Rock, this institution that meant everything to me 10 years ago, but now some days I see only as failed potentials and flaws. Buck's Rock moves me: I feel raw at the realities of privilege that did not enter my mind 10 years ago, and mushy with sentiment for my own adolescence and the sweetness of those summers of connecting with other people for real for the first time. I remind myself that I am making BREaD with buck's rock, not in protest of it. This is an enactment of an ideal: motivation by equal parts love and rage. I am offering what I know back to those who have loved me and will listen. I am not cutting ties. I continue to engage in exactly those places where fucked-upness happens, because I am given so much license to engage here, out of equal parts seedy privilege and beautiful trust.

This week organizing again proved itself to be a transcendent work. I wake and sleep bread, every free moment, every conversation an opportunity to further it. There is only It. There is no more Me. I am now certain: there is almost no difference between making art, making education and making change. They can all be routines or experiences, and they are what push me to that other part of myself, that most intense breaking point where something Real is Happening.

My sense of perspective goes and comes, like during any project: I make hasty mistakes, grow bags under my eyes. my heart beats faster. Do I love big projects more for their results or for the connectedness their urgency makes me feel? I run to the field late one night and throw my hands up as the clouds recede:

this is all for you. whatever you are. big clouds and starry sky. I wish I believed you could send me affirmation that I am doing right by you, planet. whether pathetic, symbolic, or giant, these thing I make are all I have to offer.

For next year, or for some other project, I ought to remember:
-do not underestimate young people's interest in serious things. some kids are ready, and they should be catered to. perhaps everything else is just fluff.
-educational organizing is two tiered: teaching the teachers is teaching, too.
-big plans don't go well hastily, so don't plan anything you know you don't have time for.
-no one can snicker when you show self awareness. the most important thing I said to staff was "I know this sounds super crunchy and earnest, but that's just kind of my game"
-the final outcome is always smaller than the dreams. this does not mean you did not succeed.
-interpersonal connection is not an illegitimate path towards learning. do not be afraid to ask favors from friends.
-if you want good media coverage, recruit people to do it far ahead of time and get on the same page about what good radio/newspaper/photo representation looks like.
-people do better with warning: get the schedules to the campers at least a day before.

http://www.photoblog.com/bucksrock

Seasons In The Valley

I went to see Seasons In the Valley to be a good new local to the Hudson valley. All I knew was that it was about migrant workers on Hudson valley farms. An organic farmers cooperative was showing it as a fundraiser. I thought: 'hell yeah! way to be political!'

I assumed, like a colleg-y liberal, that any film about migrant workers would be critical, a film about globalized labor and human rights. It turns out a distinct half of the audience agreed with me.

I chuckled to myself as I picked a seat: 'oh, look at this age segregation. young folks in the back...those cool kids...and old folks in the front.' I sat with the old. The movie started late, to a disappointingly sparse crowd. The premise was this: It's just so great that Hudson valley apple farmers can hire men from Jamaica to do work that no local will do! what a beautiful symbiotic relationship! The enemy: the globalization of the food system, which makes Hudson valley farming an economic impossibility, collapsing this way of life that is noble for both the farmers and their workers. The film, it seemed, saw itself as capturing this beautiful slice of life just before it died.

I saw the Jamaican men's homes and children, built and educated with apple farm money. The farmers talked about how hardworking and reliable the Jamaicans are, and their wives waxed poetic about their apple picking skills (it's like watching ballet!) and the character of all Jamaicans (Jamaicans are just the salt of the earth!). It took me close to half the movie to realize that this jubilant tone was not a set-up for a deep, dark expose. The white American farmer's peachy, superficial praises felt condescending to me, and I craved for the film to name them as such. Instead, there was a critical-ish segment about overt racism that the migrants experience: cashiers who won't touch their hand when they give change, an old man who hit a migrant worker with his car and was let off with a low fee. The white farmers shook their heads and the Jamaican workers said basically whatever. white idiots...it's their problem. no reason for me to get bothered. I'm just doing what I have to do to support my family The racists were this anonymous other. not interviewed in the film, peripheral to the story.

I am unsettled. What biases made me assume that there was no positive story to tell about migrant workers? Why is it that I can't take these farmers praises of their hired help at face value? Why do I find these Jamaican men's attitude frustrating? I find myself wishing for them the privileges in life that would give them the option to get more pissed. I leave wanting to assert that globalization of food production is just one peice of the big problem, that globalized labor is a parallel, interconnected problem. But then, I don't have the facts to back myself up. I know that this movie is inaccurate. I know that there are great violations of workers rights that occur in the Hudson valley- hey, I had friends who did work about that in college! but I don't know enough to know what in this movie is actually wrong, besides a gut sense that no one is speaking entirely honestly for the camera...

When the lights come up, I realize that the audience segregation marks more than age. The film-maker, taking questions, points to a farmer featured in the film in the row in front of me. Two professors in the back row are PISSED and spew criticism about the responsibilities of representation, the need to acknowledge historical trends of oppression, the unacknowledged skewing of the interviewees comments by perspective and skin tone of the American film crew, and the root cause of compensation: if this extremely hard work was compensated fairly, Americans would do it. instead we exploit the hardships of the depressed Jamaican economy, without looking at how America makes that so, to get this 7-days-a-week backbreaking labor done.


oh be quiet! I find myself thinking at the academs, after a while. Let these sweet farmers have their rural lives. Their affection for their workers is offensively diminutive, yes, but to them this is radical, and you must admit it's progress. Let them send their grandchildren to college and be labor rights advocates.. These changes take time. And yet my attitude towards these farmers makes me feel condescending. Isn't respect believing that all people are capable of grasping the full truth of their reality? Isn't it my work, as a young person, as an artist, a person with access to great education, as a person at all, to try to make what I believe to be the larger contextual truth clear to any person in terms we can both understand ? Or what if the farmers are downright lying, and these are the very farms that are overworking, underpaying, exploiting, endangering their workers? I have no way to know.

One man asks why none of the Jamaican workers are here to see themselves on the screen. A woman asked why they didn't film at the Jamaican bar. There is a an all-white generational/cultural/class deadlock here, and I am sitting on the wrong side. I yearn to be some intermediary, but what I say comes out all rosy...in response one of the professors tells me there's a petition I can sign for fair farm labor laws, if I want something I can do to help.

That's not enough. There are a lot of idealistic rich young white signatures on that petition that don't really know what the situation is, because we only read about it. It's not our life.

I ask the filmmaker: isn't there a way you can present this film in such a way that it helps the community it's about make positive change? There is so much that is charged about this film, in what it includes and what it leaves out. How can you use that as an opportunity to inspire growth, change, awareness?

He says to me isn't that what we're doing now? I can't hide my dissatisfaction. This is a conflict, otherness-es in this rural college town are just being affirmed. no one is moving towards common ground.

But I like this film, I have no regrets about it. I set out to make the film I want to make and I made it. Now it's grown up, it's like a child that's gone to college. I'm not responsible for it any more.
Only now do I get mad. No. this can't be the way. Don't evoke your role as an artist, and say you're not responsible for the affects of what you do. Responsibility is your role. You got these two demographics in a room together to watch your film, which is a great and beautiful feat. Now its your job to do something with that, to do your little bit to make more peace.

But who am I? Hell, I sign the petition, but to me this is one in a litany of problems that I have only obscure or common-citizen connections to, that I can write about, read about online, but release as, ultimately, not my piece of work.

gulp

Hana said this winter: oh, you've already made the decision to be an artist. That is what you're doing, Rachel. you don't have a choice' Okay, okay, I guess you're right. Hana. Mom. Dan. Laura. Alison. people I respect deeply in every part of my life, and who I desperately want to be right.

But what does that even mean? With what time and space? With whose permission, and towards what goals? I know I don't have the answers, but I've just begun the first step of allowing myself to want.

I struggle with any cinematic narrative of what happens to me, much as, like anyone, I relish in sharing them. Stories about stumbling in to love and heart wrenching break-ups, about going far away to realize how much I love my home.

This is the one I am struggling with right now: that I have no choice but to call myself an artist. gulp. I did it. everything is better, everything, when at the end of the day I say 'lets go to the studio' and all my crap is there, even if all I do is make beautiful little drawings. Or if I do nothing. And despite the fact that it's still hard to get myself to work.

I guess I failed to channel my sense of self away from the things I make, I haven't had any authentic desire to try really be a teacher or a farmer or a student or a citizen in the same way as I, self consciously say, I am (gulp) an artist. I can do lots of other things but I am committing to wrestle with this label first.

And right before I left for the farm that turned out so awfully, my parents said I should use this room off the garage as a studio. I had actually forgot it existed, until they cleared it out this year and kerry commented on how beautiful it was. And it is -so- perfect and beautiful. you spoiled brat...of course a better thing than you would have thought to dream of was waiting there in your back yard.

My own contract for this position. Moore flow charts. Beautiful drawings. Hats to sell. Recycled notebook pamphlets. Birthday, graduation, anniversary presents. Curriculums for summer. Jobs for the fall. New Big Dreams. There is so much to make.

Place I do(n't) belongn

Today an old dream died.
That there might be a place where I could go where I would instantly be my best self
I could take with me all the things I am proud of, and leave my shit behind
I'd bring the clothing I look beautiful in and the books I ought to read.
Make only enough money to get by and want only what it could purchase.
work selfless all day, and improve myself in every spare minute at night.
With none of the trappings of my previous corrupt life and self, I could be only good.

Where is this place? Strangely I placed the wishing on to something so particular.-internships-
go and work for strangers, and accept housing as payment. if they do good work they must be better people than you, and if you make their life your life, you will instantly be good.

In Portland the distance between this dream and reality was devastating, and I struggled with it. made some peace and left. It was hard and messy, and I learned a lot and have no regrets.

Part of what allowed me to feel good about leaving was the plans I'd made. teaching crafts this summer, farming for the spring.


The one week on the farm, well, that killed this dream.


At first I was only embarrassed at my own assumptions of what this place that hired me would be like. My gut learned quickly what my brain already knew: that growing up in farmland, you are a very different person than that rosy-faced city slicker who got in to growing food out of their politics. This farm is not a lovely liberal haven but a business. A hard day's work. I felt determined to learn about growing food here as some antidote to that brain-oriented urban world I grew up in to.

But slowly I found the people mean, and felt myself embroiled in interpersonal dynamics that would obviously only get messier. Felt on edge in their home. Was not learning much about how they did things, was not so impressed with what I could glean, after all the on-paper idealist farm theory, the time spent with farmers with perspectives more like mine. Sure, privilege and class and culture all helped me feel uncomfortable at this farm, but just because people aren't like me doesn't automatically make them better people, either. They can still be in fucked up power dynamic relationships, unhappy zombie work lives, slaves to the television just like everyone else. Labelling them 'authentic' and translating that to wisdom is as condescending as it is respectful.

My best self lies in the trajectory I was born in to. Problematic as it may be, it is not a worse story than anyone else's. Instead of living for free in the house of struggling strangers, I'm now in the second home of my own family, whose abundances and struggles I know too well project any false dreams in to. I can't believe it's come to this, living here for free for the month, working for neighbors to make some spending money. This is not to say I ought to live here without deliberation, or even without guilt. But for now it feels right.

I'm not going to aim for this liberation through uprooting: drastically changing location, or willing my interests, passions and joys to change. Kerry made a good point about this, that I've been thinking a lot: it can be a terrible thing to live on one's born privileges, but it can be antagonistic to refuse one's privilege and believe that salvation lies in pretending I'm self-made. Everyone is community made. All of this support from my family, these opportunities or ways of thinking I have learned from this college I paid for, I do not want reject them on principle, I want to sort them. I am not transplanting, I am pruning myself and my family tree.

Struggle

I was flipping through books on the farmer's shelf in Santa Fe,
One was something like "the 10 essential questions of judaism, answered!"
It was mostly terrible, but it said:

Q: does a person need to believe in god to be a good jew?
A: No, many jews do not. What defines Judaism is to be in relationship with god, to not be apathetic to his existence. To be a good jew is to struggle with him.

Now, I am not ready for the question of god,
(not to mention the pronoun they use...)
or don't find it relevant and might not ever,
but nevertheless this struck me.
Definition by struggle.

I have begun to use this word, constantly.
in any situation where I wish to honor my commitment to sit with
something I haven't figured out yet, and might not ever.

The peak was two weeks ago, at Alison's thesis opening.
I spent three days with her project: helping set up, at the opening, on my own on the floor, trying to put in to charted words.
I did not love it with ease, but felt committed to wrestle with it
look hard at the things that inspire me and frustrate me.
try to find words.
I would say to her:
I struggle with your project, alison,
but I hope you see this as a compliment.
that is what I intend it to be



If I make a list of all of the things I struggle with,
the result names all the important parts of who I am.
A more complete list, a more honest version,
than I'd make if I sat down to make a list titled
"all of the important parts of who I am"

And so I have started making this list.
What do I struggle with?
The privileges I was born with, my race, my unshaking desire to spend time making art, my impact on the planet, new york city, judaism, my relationships with my parents, my brother, kerry, my former housemates, alison, max. My extended family. My desire for nesting.

and then, if I title this list as "the defining things about rachel" I have a more honest picture of myself than I have ever made before. A list to struggle with.

big thoughts in the midst of America

like many others, I have traveled across my country.
In real time, (not airtime)
or something close to it. Automobile time.
Dips in to small towns for gasoline between hours of superhighway.
Days or hours between trips off the highway, to SEE some of the things that we are actually passing, and I realize all of these cliches for myself:
how huge this nation is. Every place we whiz by is a world of places.
These endless roads through desserts and plains and mountains and forests.
These strip malls, billboards, box stores, rest stops, "indian trading posts"
(really, what the fuck? I was surprised to see one, but there must have been hundreds)
These things too, are America.

Because we are not anything more than tourists. We're not special. We are taking the highway that the government made for all of the long-trekking americans in their gasoline chugging cars. that is what we are.

here is my own poem to America, cringing as I add to the chorus who writes one.
The great, great opportunities of this vast space,
and the tremendous burden of our scale
the yearning for a one-ness, for a nation as trustworthy as a small town.
this, the 300 million of us can never be.
Too many humans, too many towns. stores, objects, options, jobs for America to ever assume the honesty of looking someone in the eye.
The story of this country is the growing anonymity, or maybe the fight against it.
Each facilitated by that exact search for interconnectedness,
made possible by technology. the roads, the railways, the maps, the corporations, the telephones, the cell phones, the internet that make us all feel like we can each connect with anyone. that make us believe we could all know each other.

With my aliegence to the big America I must by definition be nameless,
in the grand scheme of things. In Portland I felt like there were a million of me, on their bikes to their low-pay-feel-good job. I want to feel like part of a movement, but it makes me feel like a cog. Find someplace smaller and different, make a commitment to belong to some more just place.

but I am all an American. my good and my bad.
this white jewish new york vegetarian queerish progressive artsy college grad kid, driving from the coast of fantasies back to the coast of home with a nice guy and a new car filled with old clothes.
There is nothing of me that is not part of this story.
Despite all this privileged pressure to be Wordly and Travelled,
I could live my life in this nation, and only grow my worldview, still not know nearly all of it.
There is soo much truth for any one person to hold as true.
Even just here, in America.

Do I tell you about the beautiful things I have seen? The gorgeous mountains and sculptures, the curious lives so much unlike my own.
They take so much more space in my memory than the hours of strip malls and suburbs.
Many places made me say "how could you live here?" off of any exit on any road.
But when we find the place we are stopping, when it is the home of a person. a life. there is something beautiful there. This is not random, of course, they are places we sought because we thought they'd be nice. But I am also trying to remember to think against judgement (something I am not good at) Often I don't believe it, but maybe everyone in America is doing the best they can.

goodbye

"but whyyyy are you leaving, rachel?" they clung to my arms and waist. Goodbyes bring out sentimentality, and the children at both schools shed their disinterest in me that at first made me so distraught, but with which I'd grown comfortable. I have learned to accept that good teaching is a confrontation of my ego: when students are most engaged they are not smiling up at me to thank me. Sometimes, being a good teacher means not being needed, means being ignored.

But when I am leaving, I am no longer in the background of their child-centered life. Now it felt greedy to say: I am leaving now, I will no longer make this safe container. our classroom, our school. Now you must think about me as a person, not a quiet force, because I am going but your container remains.

I looked them in their eyes and cling their little bodies, frecked round faces, rosy cheeks, stretchy velor dresses, tight ponytails:
If I were just deciding whether or not to be your teacher, of course I would stay. But when I look at my whole life, all of the different options that are in both places right now, it feels right for me not to be here. I am excited to go, and I know that there are lots of people who will care for you here.

At one school this felt more true than the other, especially after the rudest girl in my class said, after I scolded her for maybe the 10th time that hour, "now don't you ruin your nice streak before you go!" ohh, that attitude in her that every teacher tries to break down. If I was the nice teacher, how are the others? She was the student that taught me to find it in myself to be authoritative and firm.

Another said "will our next art teacher be colorful, rachel?" and my heart cracks open. Just weeks earlier they were saying "why do you dress like that?" and I assumed I was being judged, 8 year olds thinking I'm uncool. Their sadness at me leaving restored my confidence that teaching is something that I am good at, and for my last few days I relished every moment like I wish I had all year. The timing made me ache so hard.

Parallel Path

Only in the relinquished expectations of I-am-leaving-soon, of course, I am able to relax in to where I am and see how this life right now might become a full one. I imagine the parallel path, where I was not choosing to leave in two weeks or even three months, and the steps I would take:

Were I not in half-detachment, I can only imagine the love I'd put in to the studio, the classroom at school I can almost call "mine" these days, by how others defer to my decisions there. They remark: we should find an intern to run the studio next year, a volunteer. It is really a full time job, and they say I do it well. I ache: if I cared to really do my best here, ot would be a beautiful place. An art studio where I have total control of the layout, and the students make whatever they please? I am satisfied with the place the the student's products, but just that. Leaving, I feel this confidence in my ability to do things I am proud of, and as I am commended and faired well at the school, my potential feels like a secret.

In parallel life I might apply to work there, part time. I might stay at my other school, or not.

The neighborhoods I'd live in. The friendships I'd pursue. The places I'd keep buying and finding my groceries, the dance class I'd keep taking, the drawings I'd make, the cafe's I'd try to show them at. This could be a life, here, but it is not the one I am choosing.
I opened all these doors, seven months ago I knew no one here, and now I am closing them. It feels unfull, these people who do not really know me yet, and who I do not know yet, but never will. Frustrations not worth resolving, tensions I fake my way through with pleasantries. I am escaping soon.

Sometimes it feels like a break up: the bad outweighs the good, here, and so it is not worth the effort to mend whats not right. I worry sometimes that I am running away, momentarily, but I know that the things this phase has brought up in me will not dissapear when I leave. That I don't have to stay here to confront them.


I have actually come to the period of conclusion, after so much waiting. boxes laying open in my room to be packed. Everyone I know knows I am going, they look at me and its the first thing they think. endless loops of 'so, soon, eh?" conversations, without meaning to we have all started to detach.

today on discipline

We teachers chatted after classes about the girls who were fighting
who I chose not to send to my superior (against the rules, I was reminded)
and tried to talk to, talk through
with no progress
but no punishment for all that pent up bitterness that made them shove each other.

blah, blah, these damn kids. the crazy things they do
and you talk about the dirty things they say, and how you say
"would you think that was appropriate if I told your mother?"
and they stop.

It dawns on me:
you don't
see these kids
as human

and for this minute freeschooling has won me over.

oversexed media meets just-pre-hormonal students after school
and so of course they're going to play around with that language
of course this is of intrigue to them, it is to you, teacher, isn't it?
If we call these words "inappropriate" and try to extract them from school
then school is a place where big things get hidden
and grown ups are the keepers of the big fake machine
who don't have any real information on those real things

and then we're not moving forward, generations aren't passing on what they know
and we are stuck being lucky if we come to re-articulate
that these things we all do are human and not exotic or sell-able or full of shame.
Are you thinking about your actions, really, when you scold a child for using their new words. It made me angry, how the other teachers just nodded. These damn kids. This damn school.

response, or, grasping back that quickly fading passion

In response to the prompt kerry posed for his ahtists friends (last entry):

I have been struggling with this.
It feels like a harking back,
the part of me that has this on the tip of my tongue is fading.
I am petrified it will disappear.

What is art? This makes me stuck.
Some questions I more want to answer:
what could art be?
what is art for?
why should we make it?

Art is naming your own agenda. What will I make? and when and where and why? Lining up your reasons with the practicals of time and space, getting yourself together to make a thing. From this we grow. I see art-making as having an inexhaustible and mostly untapped educational potential. Learning to make art one is proud of is essentially they same thing as learning to be a person you are proud of- to name what you want to achieve, to reach for it, and to find peace in the distance between the reality and the ideal.

There are two products of art: the object and the learning. We have spent forever trying to name what makes the object great, how much it is worth or how it ought to be discussed and ranked. But that learning, that other product, remains unclassified. When I have access to this other product- that is when I know the artist and/or have meaningful access to their process- I find it to be deeply moving. The lessons, the experience, the thrill, the devastation, the satisfaction, the knowledge, the factoids, the feedback that the artist gets as a result of making their creative product is the most moving bundle of intangible something that I can imagine existing, and yet the viewers are usually given very little access to it.

Maybe this does not matter, maybe these beautiful bundles of learning that art makes within its makers are meant to be hidden. If this is true, the language around art ought to shift: artists do not make art for the benefit of society, rather art makes artists for the benefit of society. So we, as artists, have some obligation to push ourselves to make art that will change us. We should lay out projects for ourselves that we are deeply invested in, and we should do them with our everything: brain, heart, body, gut. However we define it, we ought to make things that will inspire us to be better people.

But what about the audience? I am not satisfied with the learning of art being hidden, or even obscured. I want artists not only to strive to make art that moves them, but to try to let others in to what they have learned as much as possible. I am not interested in indirectness, I believe art is challenging enough for the viewer without the artist trying to hold anything back . Art is desperate. Use ever strategy you have: try every angle. every option. use every material. use language. repeat yourself. write an artists statement, a long one aimed at the dumbest people you can imagine. make it so children will get it. Show how you made it. show pictures. hang up your sketches. Put out your journal and a guest book. make your mother sign your guest book. sit next to your artwork and explain it. ask questions, answer questions. try to understand yourself and make yourself understood.

I am self-conscious writing this, because I worry that those who are reading this and know my artwork will laugh a little. Whose artwork or what approach could possibly fufil these desires besides the one I took last year, where the space within which I was grappling with my ideas about myself in the world was framed as the artwork itself. Yes, this continues to be how I think about making art. It's my own ideal. I interpret my own imperative, that art be about learning, as a call to make art that directly addresses big social and ecological issues of the world today. I struggle with work with more oblique subject matter, but I am excited about this struggle. I do not think abstract work, work about aesthetics or work with indirect content is meaningless or irrelevant, but I feel unsatisfied with it: Almost all art work I see makes me yearn for a good explanation of why the work is worth the materials it takes to make it. It is denial to think that people don't see what a work of art is made out of, and so art can never entirely transcend being about what it is made out of.

And yet, those of us who look at art often forget this. We see paintings as being about whatever the image on the painting is of. Casted or carved figures are not about metal or plaster or stone or wood. Videos don't have to be about video. I am frustrated by this, but also stuck: does this mean I think every artist has to reinvent the wheel? There has to be some way to use the conventions of art history to our own ends, to play within the options of particular media and for that to be enough.

A few times in my life I have seen artwork that speaks directly to my experience as a human being: emotions, sensations, knowledge, worries, or that is in itself an experience that is so unique or moving that it demands to be processed and integrated in to my life afterwards. Most of the time I enjoy art, though, it is via the knowledge I have been given as a student or art and art history. I have the language and the chronology, the recognition, that allows me to access what a work of art is trying to accomplish. It is accessed through the particular privileges of my own life. As trained artists and fortunate, educated people there is a great temptation to use this knowledge set as the launching point for our artwork, and to some extent it is inevitable. I believe that we have an obligation to be conscious of this trend, and to at the very least be able to name how our work is derived from the social/historical construction of art we have inherited and embraced.

I believe that we should try to make art that allows the audience in, that does not assume the viewer has any codebook of art to help them access it, and that makes some acknowlegement of the unnamed learning-product, in the conventional object-product. Doing this requires an acceptance that the mission is impossible, because no one will ever get as much from your work as you do. Maybe so many hold themselves at an arms length from their own work because they are afraid that if they eliminated this distance, they would have to confront the reality that they cannot be fully understood. better not to try. Making art is selfish- it will never do as much for any other person as it does for you. Any potential for giving to others by making artwork is secondary: it lies in the search to make them understand all that you have gotten from your work. You will never achieve this mission, but I believe we should still really try.

prompt from him for us

"I have been wanting to know what really is going on when we make art and when we look at art. What is going on in our heads? What are our rules for making? What are your most dogmatic guidelines? What things make you cringe? What do you think is immoral when it comes to art making? What will you never ever do? What should art do and why? Why do you believe any of this?

An example of one of my own dogmatic rules is that I think installation should always be about architecture, hence why I make pieces about architecture. I believe that historically architecture is the foundation of installation; Kurt Schwitter's Merz Bau was a room, not a piece on a pedestal. I recall Zak laughing at the idea of art that makes money. That is one of "his rules," maybe (I don't want to speak for him). This is what I want to get at.

I imagine that our responses will disagree more than agree. At least I hope so, but we should remember to not take these responses too personally either. Though I have this dogmatic rule of "installation must address architecture," it certainly is not the only means I judge an installation with. I'd imagine that we are both open minded people, but I want to see the side of us that is close-minded.

I see these responses as being the antithesis of artist statements we may have written. I see the artist statement as addressing internal issues (i.e.- "I use only car parts when making pieces because my father was a mechanic, and being witness to this blah blah blah), whereas these I see as being about external factors. For example, "I use car parts in my work because I want to appeal to an unrepresented-in-galleries working class public blah blah blah." As we get more into it, sure, we might find that these two things are more close together than they are far apart, yet here we are making that very distinction.

Make these as long as you like. I am ready to read pages and pages."

anger

He threw a punch when he was called a sissy
for claiming that the capture-the-flag teams were unfair.
It flew in the air, missed the face by a yard.

Obvious revelation of the day:
Rage is real.
And not just that, but close to the surface.
If this long-haired child, sweet and smart
with gentle wise parents
who once burst in to tears so hard
when there was no more vegan pizza.
could react with all his raw sincerity by throwing a punch.

Both boys were upset, but when I asked them what happened
were brimming with apologies.
"I-was-just-upset-I-didn't-want-to-hurt-him-I-had-no-intention-to-he's-my-friend"
I told them both it would probably mean a lot
to the other to apologize.
and I didn't even follow them to witness, when they approached each other.

The teams were unfair, he was right.
we watched the good team cream the bad team,
and he quickly joined the next round

honesty like a free school 8 year old
I guess does not mean moving beyond getting mad
but rather learning how to let rage flow through and out of you, and to move on.

what about esoteric?

First improv dance class in almost a year, I left with the word "esoterica" rattling around my brain. I thought I made it up, but the dictionary said its real.


Es-o-te-ric-a. Things understood or meant by a select few.
"a" from the latin, a pluralizing suffix.
esoterica
curiosa
judaica

knew I would remember this body esoterica, but I surprised myself with how intensely- skill sets, cues, silent language. First half of class, paired with someone much more learned, I was nervous to prove myself. relieved when I recognized esoterica cues, but nervous to use them, to be seen as a by-the-rules-beginner. In this method: if I lean this way you are supposed to roll that way. why? you don't have to, but it works, thats why.

Second set: partner much less studied than me. We end up a mess, he misses all the cues, but I am much more excited.

What is the use of this cultivated knowledge, related on itself? Art is like that, too, the taught understanding of how things are supposed to be looked at, what certain choices are meant to mean.

I spend spare moments today thinking about this- what do I do with self-generated creative languages, histories? Art languages, dance traditions, pedagogies. Is it okay to be a dabbler, to take a little bit of traditions and synthesize in to my own? is this creative or non-commital?

I am not in general a seeker of moderation, but I think this question breaks my rule.