rachael rice

making #magicalradical art for living and dying on a damaged planet at patreon.com/rachaelrice

[rachaelrice]

Liberating Grief Recording from Rachael Rice on Vimeo.

[karrova]

Magnolia, 1984

Ellsworth Kelly

[rachaelrice]

bc71fb0e20794327957a0bd48e6fad05 from Rachael Rice on Vimeo.

[polishcostumes]

Some embroidery motifs from the region of Kujawy, north-central Poland.

(see examples of costumes under Kujawy tag)

Images via wiano.eu , strojeludowe.net

[ymutate]

Jana Brike

[rachaelrice]

Just finished the Sinéad O’Connor doc and am feeling so fully now what a touchstone she was for me beginning in 8th grade when I sang her song Black Boys On Mopeds from the first album I bought on cassette as my first public solo performance for my NJ middle school audience, when everyone else was into cock rock and hair bands. Ffw a couple years & I’m being called Sinead every day by a bunch of ignorant assholes at my rural VT high school after shaving my head. It’s wild how transgressive that was, and watching her doc, it’s like no one could ask her any other question. Ffw a few decades & it’s 2015; I’m at the Dolly Hoot: the annual Dolly Parton tribute night fundraiser for Siren Nation, a local org that supports women in the arts, where I’ve played a number of times. At the finale number a bunch of friends from @dontshootpdx stage a demo in the middle of our song & we raise banners for Black Lives Matter while the song stops, a young black dancer drops to the ground, & everyone on stage chants, I CAN'T BREATHE. The audience is a combination of stricken & inspired, but mostly offended, as was the coordinator, who cut all ties. I was never asked back to that show or any other similar show. Between that stunt & the co-occurring shunning among some well-heeled intuitive painter boss bitches I’d been associating with who peddle products with words like brave and revolution, I’ve felt the sting of having a career effectively throttled by the kind of shit Sinéad was booed off the stage for. But the look in her eye is all I need. I’m nowhere near her level, but I’m here for the ones who forgo fame, book deals, summit lineups, speaking tours & workshops where no one has to wear a mask – the ones who refuse to reenact empire & call it being successful. Everyone can see what's going on They laugh 'cause they know they're untouchable Not because what I said was wrong Whatever it may bring I will live by my own policies I will sleep with a clear conscience I will sleep in peace Maybe it sounds mean But I really don't think so You asked for the truth and I told you Through their own words They will be exposed They've got a severe case of The emperor's new clothes https://www.instagram.com/p/CkHbn4wPUJR/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

Memes via @poorprolesalmanac (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjgJMkMp_lb/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

GATES OF GRIEF - GATE FOUR: What We Expected & Did Not Receive A video interview with @daresohei The fourth gate of The Gates of Grief in Francis Weller’s book The Wild Edge of Sorrow begins: “This threshold into sorrow calls forward the things that we may not even realize we have lost. When we are born, and as we pass through childhood, adolescence, and the stages of adulthood, we are designed to anticipate a certain quality of welcome, engagement, touch, and reflection. In short, we expect what our deep-time ancestors experienced as their birthright, namely, the container of the village. "We are born expecting a rich and sensuous relationship with the earth and communal rituals of celebration, grief and healing that keep us in connection with the sacred. This is our inheritance, our birthright, which has been lost and abandoned. On some level, we are waiting for the village to appear so we can fully acknowledge our sorrows.” In this conversation with Dare Sohei, host of The Death Practice Group and co-creator with @kaullarissa of Animist Arts, we interrogate the pervasive grief, especially in white western healing circles, over the loss of – and we dare even say – entitlement to – the sacred cow of The Village. I mean we kind of make it into BBQ ribs. The smoke billows around these questions: • What does non-addictive rage look like? • What happens when you create whole identities out of things you don’t like? • How can it be that wealth, hoarding, and perpetual griefs are barriers to intimacy? • Why is hoarding the start of addiction? • WHY ARE WE LIKE THIS??? • And how do we not die mad about it? "All of this narrative and all of this justice rhetoric and all of this needing to be a good person or not a bad person, all of this is in some way, a resistance to intimacy, which is a resistance to play because the only way you get intimacy is to play." -dare Patrons-only post unlocks starting at $1: patreon.com/rachaelrice. Transcript, video and audio provided. To go into more depth on the practices we discuss in this convo, join us Weds. 9/28 at 4pm PT for the next session of In The Night Garden: The Death Practice Group. Links In Bio! #grief https://www.instagram.com/p/CjBDFSgPe4R/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

FALL EQUINOX I CHING READING As we move towards Yin in the northern hemisphere, it is harvest time. Reaping what was sown, we have success. Lung, large intestine, letting go. Transitioning. Warming as it cools. We can enjoy the fruits of our labor. This reading is about appreciating gains but maintaining balance, in a time when light and dark are equal, for eventually darkness prevails. Image: hag torches from mullein stalks dipped in beeswax and coated with herbs, frankincense, copal, flowers. For warming as it cools. For harvest celebrations and in-gathering. For lungs and for softness, and for approaching darkness with the aid of fire, the flame of awareness. 63 • Ji Ji • After Completion / Already Across • Above - Kan : Water • Below - Li • Fire Keywords: ferrying complete : after fording the stream : mission accomplished : everything in its place : consolidating gains : watching carefully : minding the kettle : auspicious at the beginning : disorder in the end Via Liu Ming: Jiji is about he continuity of change and questions the notion that it is possible to be truly finished or complete. When we start out, the goal is to cross a river, when we get to the other side of the river we realize that there is still more to do. The obvious end of efforts and the accomplishment of a goal, are, more often than not, the beginning of what must be done next. Everything is ending well but decline and disorder are inevitable. Do not hurry or press for completion. Jiji is cautionary. Do not imagine that change ever stops. Things do not come to an end. When you succeed, do not assume things are complete or finished. Via The Laws of Change by Jack M Balkin: Water over fire: This is the image of things After Completion. Thus the superior person Contemplates difficulties And guards against them in advance. Pay attention to details. Do not rest on your laurels. The lesson of this hexagram is that when things have reached completion, your work has only begun. #AutumnEquinox #FallEquinox #HagTorch #MulleinTorch https://www.instagram.com/p/Ci53MevPLZJ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

As the summer season winds down, here are some before and afters of our little front yard where we've been replacing the lawn with gardens. We added some native plants and some flowers for beauty and the pollinators, but mostly everything needed to be food or medicine. It's pretty messed up that planting food is now somehow a privilegey thing to do when growing food and farming was mostly always done by poorer people, but here we are: not everyone has the time, the space, the access to decent soil, clean water, sunlight, able-bodiedness, a knowledge base, and the means to purchase organic, local, native seeds and plants. The barriers are very real. It's not like it increases the value of your home, bizarrely. But at the same time, you'd be hard-pressed to convince me there isn't something you can grow and eat. Even when I was renting and on food stamps. Yes, it's a lot of work. I struggle with how much pain I'm in after working even just an hour or so. My chiropractor remarked that when studying cadavers, the farmer's heart was literally twice the size as the desk job guy's. The colonial history of lawns and manicured gardens is super gross. People watering their lawns blow my fuckin' mind. Anyway. A few of the neighbors have started tearing up their lawns too. We've expanded the collab garden next door to the next family down the block where this year we grew squash and tomatoes in their parking strip. I know a lot more about their family now. We have more neighbor's phone numbers this year to share all the extra produce. Here's a partial list of what we planted: Apple tree Comfrey Beets Radishes Onions Leeks Kale (JFC, way too much kale. Do y'all need any? I will drop some off.) Perennial spinach chard Butternut squash Carrot Green beans Tomatoes Marigold Amaranth Calendula Salal Rhubarb Blueberries Sunflowers Basil Cucumber Ground cherry Bearberry Thyme Dill Parsley Cilantro Feverfew Blue Hyssop Angelica Valerian Bee Balm Chamomile Yarrow Echinacea St Johns Wort Datura Moonflower Clematis Zinnia Daisy Black Eyed Susan Nasturtium Red madder Day Lily Poppy Shout out to @resiliencedesign and #HarrietFasenfast (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/CixrL6upvLp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

New interview out on Last Born In The Wilderness Podcast with my dear friend @patterns.of.behavior. Tune in for some insights around how #deathphobia shows up everywhere - even in radical spaces - and what death work really serves to teach us all. I also reveal my favorite kind of pen. ••• Artist, writer, and death worker @rachaelrice joins me to discuss death practice, entitlement, and honesty in our time of collapse and extinction. “At the root, this discussion is about death — the shades of acceptance, and fear, of it. That’s what this conversation encircles and embraces. Death — as the event that unites all living beings; as a practice; as the elephant in the room; and finally, as the ultimate teacher.” Support the podcast and listen to this interview before the public release: https://www.patreon.com/lastborninthewilderness #linkinbio ✨ or visit rachaelrice.com/interviews https://www.instagram.com/p/CijeJTzuKZh/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

Here’s a recent interview I did with @petermichaelbauer of @rewildportland on what it means to be “collapse-aware” and how it intersects with death work. I so deeply respect the work of Rewild Portland: their work around ancestral skills, the deeper understandings and co-mingling with “invasive species,” their collaborations with Indigenous land-tenders and native language speakers, and their deep resistance to how “rewilding” has become yet another gate-kept trademark for western white people to monetize and escape from the real work of staying with the trouble. I send my pre-teen to their tween kid year-long outdoor program, and it has been so transformative. Peter has taught me so much about how the dire straits we find ourselves in today didn’t start with the advent of capitalism, and we get INTO IT during this #podcast. Turns out, collapse is a feature, not a bug, of humans. And the cultural tech, high-res analysis, and practical applications of it all to mitigate that is part of the good work Rewild Portland attempts to support. Give a listen via the link in my bio, or head to rachaelrice.com/interviews. . . . . . #rewild #rewilding #rewildpdx #rewildportland #collapse #collapseconscious #deathdoula #deathpositive #TheDawnOfEverything #ExtinctionRebellion #DeepAdaptation #AncestralSkills #PrimitiveSkills #Hospice #OrphanWisdom #OutdoorEducation #CollapseAware #PDX #Resilience #Sustainability #Capitalism #AntiCapitalism #Antifa #PortlandOregon https://www.instagram.com/p/ChdDixyv6vk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

And if all your hopes survive / Destiny will arrive / My very first album I ever owned and listened to start to finish was Olivia Newton-John’s Greatest Hits Vol. 2 (1982) and I had it on vinyl: it folded open to one side with her eyes open, the other when them closed. I was six and it was everything to me. https://www.instagram.com/p/ChD3GBGJidN/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

What happens after it all falls apart and whoever it was you trusted, Mommy Ideology, Father Story, Uncle Sam, Auntie Try Hard, your actual parents, your “allies,” your “sister wives” and your “ride or dies” all took their masks off, they didn’t care, they betrayed you, they stole your ideas, your land, they made you sick, they made empty promises, they took a powder, they turned into ghosts? Practice. What happens after you’ve “done the work,” “set boundaries,” “taken up space,” “aligned with your vision,” “took the hero’s journey,” and somehow ended up with the fuzzy end of the lollipop? What happens after nothing happens? Practice. What about after all the therapy, the vagal toning, the plant medicines, the green envy juices and the ceremonial-grade pop tarts, and your guts are full of microplastic, your adrenals are now fucked, and your body does its scorekeeping in secret? What then? Practice. What if you sustainably girlbossed too close to the sun and you end up needing others to share, and no one saved you, and you want to heal from it all, but the kids still need to go to school where they might get child-sacrificed for Westernist Freedom? What if there’s only burnout at the end of the scramble to have a solid point of view? And if everything chronic and inflamed in your life isn’t about your choices, but about what you have adopted as “reality” – a View distorted by the abysmal hunger game of modernity? And there’s no one to usher in your arrival on death’s door: it’s only a highlight reel on repeat as the volunteers wipe your ass – if you’re lucky. We all go to ground, we all get eaten. There is stability in that, there is relaxation, there is vividness. What if: There is no state of being healed. There is only practice. The next session of In The Night Garden is Weds. July 20, 4pm PT. Recordings available. Year-long program. Nothing out there like it, trust & believe, I’ve been looking. No one will sell you a bridge to the Obsidian Basket, but if you join us, you’ll get to touch it. I mean you’re already there. https://www.animistarts.art/the-death-practice-group facilitated by @daresohei #deathpractice https://www.instagram.com/p/CgNtT31pcm_/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

Seems like a good day to post some photos of queer, mixed-race, disabled, openly Communist artist and political agitator #FridaKahlo from the recent exhibit at the @PortlandArtMuseum. Seen here are some allegorical sketches denouncing US imperialism: “Lady Liberty” (Workers of the World Unite, 1945). From the exhibit: “In these drawings, Kahlo articulated her opposition to political and military developments in the United States, calling on workers to unite against the loss of freedom and what she considered a rising new Fascism. The surviving sketches, though never realized as a finished painting, speak to Kahlo’s interest in the potential for her work to spark political change.” The show also included many rare photos of Kahlo in her wheelchair, with her doctor, in bed making art, at anti-fascist and workers’ rights events. “Kahlo wrote in her diary, ‘I’ve been sick for a year now. Seven operations on my spinal column. Doctor Farill saved me. He brought me back the joy of life.’ Here, she poses with her surgeon, Dr. Juan Farill. Despite being physically depleted, Kahlo holds her palette, showing strength and determination. On the easel is her last signed self-portrait, painted a few years before her death in 1954.” All nation-states are the product of super limited imaginations haunted by #deathphobia and the foundational #queerness of existence. Watch out for all that anti-Communist propaganda out there around the current war with Russia and ya know, Stranger Things. Also, July is #DisabilityPrideMonth so put your masks back on if you want to actually “center the most marginalized” among us. #DisabilityJustice #Communism #WorkersRights #Artist #AntiFascism #July4th #StatueOfLiberty #WearAMask (at Portland, Oregon) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cfm4UHkvvC4/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

IN THE NIGHT GARDEN • THE DEATH PRACTICE GROUP via @daresohei: we exist as living dreams inside a larger living dream. in this, living means something other than 'the opposite of dead, or not-living'. living in this case would mean something like that which qi-time-movement animates, that which is animate-relational, made up of compound relations. this would encompass everything that materialists consider alive and dead, animate and inert, subject and object, animal, plant, mineral, gas, liquid, etc. which is to say, everything. the same everything that animists know is animate, relational, compound. a livingness that has no opposite, that encompasses all possible forms, appearance and potential. we come to some quandary, limited by our own reflective capacities: is there a meaningful distinction between this definition of livingness and sentience? how can we define sentience? the materialists will never find it because they are looking for "things" and so they will only ever find things. the animists seem to have already found sentience, but they cannot prove it, it is an unprovable is-ness. a quantum effect based on the position (totality) of the observer. like a mirror, the universe dream reflects back the observer, so the quality of the observer's 'spirit', or animating forces, is reflected. dingy quality of observational projection, dingy quality of reflection. the game, as they say, is afoot. if we understand that the entirety of universe is like mirrors reflecting mirrors, what is the light these mirrors reflect? where does it come from? these questions are at the core of nondual animism and they have been thoroughly explored. the beauty of the universal dream is that it cant be owned, cant be proven. each observer/traveler/explorer must reckon with the reflections they receive. this is the great gift, the open secret. In The Night Garden #DeathPractice first session is 6/22 at 4pm PT. Link in bio or head to animistarts.art. https://www.instagram.com/p/Ce2eFqVrjSp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[rachaelrice]

GATES OF GRIEF • GATE THREE: THE SORROWS OF THE WORLD Finally, the moonflowers have cracked through their seeds and are making an attempt. The datura have also figured out which way is up, a tendency beyond my current capacity for orienting, plants being so much smarter than I am. Like a lot of you, I’ve hit a bit of a wall with the relentless pile of intractable circumstances I sometimes feel buried under, and it’s hard to know if it’s buried like a corpse or like a seed. Either way, something gets transformed in the process. There’s a lot of “I don’t know” that feels necessary to admit. How do we stay in the world when some days I can barely stand to stay in my body? When we live in a post-trust culture? Where we don’t get a guarantee of healing, or being saved, or being someone who saves anyone else, because there’s no way to not be on the take anymore? What is the third thing after what is known, and what is unknown? It seems to be the Unknowable. So perhaps we come to know grief not as a feeling, but as a capacity to practice a relationship not just to the unknown but to the unknowable, and that’s the little trap door that opens when you sink all the way to the bottom. You’ve scrolled so far down, a secret menu pops up, and it’s called Death Practice. “Because It’s not just for caring for the sick and dying, or caring for the ecosystem, it’s not just that, but it contains all of that, and the immediacy of all those fears. And all that pain and desire will get you through the door. Because if it’s just conceptual, you can’t do it. It has to hit you somewhere that you really don’t like at first. “And then you’re really just ready to dedicate yourself to it.” – @daresohei IN THE NIGHT GARDEN: THE DEATH PRACTICE GROUP Nondual animist gatherings with Dare A monthly practice group begins June 23rd. Read more + listen to an in-depth video about what this is, and what this isn’t, by pushing any book on critical race theory or queering gender or catabolic collapse on the shelf and the whole thing spins around to let you in >>> patreon.com/rachaelrice OR >>> animistarts.art/the-death-practice-group • LINKS IN BIO https://www.instagram.com/p/Cd9kNChJreN/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=