16
April 2025
Finding Passion
Writing
Wildacres Retreat
Passion, A Memory, and Moving On
These are no ordinary times. Not in the outer world, nor in the inner world of Self. For those focused above the fray, it is a time of self-discovery, of letting go of the old, of embracing possibility, of renewal on every level. What is happening now on Earth is unprecedented, unpredictable, and far reaching. Think galactic. It is an acceleration and expansion of energy, and there is no going back. Not ever. What it ultimately boils down to in every given moment is the choice between love and fear.
Wildacres Retreat Spring
I have been on this journey of self-discovery for a very long while, and I’ve found that who I believe I am and why I believe I’m here has changed many times. In these last five years especially, over and over I have been called to test my wings, to metaphorically leap off many cliffs. Because of a series of unexpected challenges during that time, challenges I wasn’t always sure I had the strength to survive, I find that now, at seventy-eight, I no longer know who I am or what my passion or purpose is from my Soul’s perspective. And without passion and purpose, I often wonder why I am even still here in a body.
I know that following one’s passion is a way to open the heart, and a way to serve, but in truth, passion for me these days has been fleeting. I have moments of course, moments of heart wide open, moments of being astonished, but then I find myself sinking back into feeling like a stranger to this unfamiliar Self and the current life I’m living in Longmont, Colorado, in the midst of these outwardly new, yet inwardly familiar mountains. Not knowing where you’re heading can be a wonderful thing if entered into with excitement, curiosity, beginner mind, but all I often feel is old and lost and alone.
Sculpture Wildacres Retreat
I also know that in this new energy, it’s imperative for me to move on from old mental meanderings, and I’ve been seriously revisiting what now brings me any degree of passion. I discovered that both passion and purpose from a Soul level for me have always been tied to creativity, and that through choice and circumstance, I’ve had to divest myself of many previous creative so called “identities.” I am no longer a leather artisan, a jewelry designer, a website designer, a hair stylist, a poet. But am I still a writer?
Am I still a writer if I don’t write to win competitions or to get published, things in which I no longer have any interest? Am I a writer if I only enjoy writing on this little, obscure personal blog where I invite readers to glimpse my authentic life, warts and all? Am I a writer if I am no longer invested in what anyone actually thinks about what I write? Yet I find that one of the times I feel what might be described as passion, as exhilaration, even as purpose is when I complete a piece, carefully choose images, and design the page to share on this blog.
The writing of it, however, can be difficult for me, can include what I call “writing frenzy” where I forget to brush my teeth or eat, when I’m at the computer late into the night. The exhilaration comes only after all the revisions, after I feel that I’ve conveyed what I wanted to with clarity, honesty, a degree of literary flair, offered something new to contemplate, and hopefully included a drizzle of inspiration.
Yet there’s still that after feeling, a sort of grieving after having to let go of something I’ve created. It’s a smaller version of the same feeling I always had after completing any of my published writings — short story, novel, memoir, even poetry. There’s an emptiness, a necessary emptiness. It’s an emptiness that can only be filled by the Self, an emptiness that contains the possibility of all things.
When I decided to write this piece, there was something I wanted to include that I hoped was still in the drawer of folders left in the downsized desk that now lives in my bedroom. I began to peruse the files. I didn’t find what I was looking for, but what I did find were other forgotten writing related things that reinforced that perhaps writing was something I had intended to pursue in this lifetime. There were a few accolades, short story contest wins, encouraging reviews for my novel and memoir, poems that placed in competitions and/or were published in some fine journals. But really, my publications were limited, and these kind words were few and far between. Not many have been able to relate to much of what I have written. My writings arose from some deep place within that didn’t fit neatly into any literary category. There were always aspects of spirituality, the larger perspective, and often out-of-body players in what landed on my page. My novel, A Love Apart, was, maybe in 2005, ahead of its time inter-dimensionally, but it was a story I felt strongly compelled to create.
As I continued searching through files, in one near the back I found something unexpected. For nine summers, I had attended a writers workshop and retreat at Wildacres Retreat high in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. We called it our Magic Mountain. What I found was a short, light-hearted, very bizarre piece I had written in 2001 on the afternoon of the day between the workshop and retreat weeks. I thought it would be fun to share it that evening at the informal readings in the beautiful North Lodge lobby.
Finding it after all this time made me both laugh and cry. In it were memories of yet more dear friends who have since passed on, people I have loved. Even though, in that moment, the memories were so clear, so was the sense of how far I have moved on from that me, from that life, from those times. But that summer of 2001 was maybe my favorite year on the mountain. Although it has no literary merit, everything I wrote in this quirky recollection really happened just as described. I offer this snippet of my past in loving memory of my dear friends E. Bruce Hoch and Marlana Moench.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
Every summer I go to a writer’s workshop atop a mountain in the North Carolina Blue Ridge. Friends I haven’t seen all year are there. I begin counting down the days three months before. I become very excited. I have many expectations.
My mountain friends are wonderfully strange. They have names like Eugene B and J Luke and Debbie D and Carolyn E and Big Jer and Exquisite Marlana. They sometimes speak in Shakespeare or Farsi or in accents or in their own made-up polyglot. Even when they speak in plain English, their words are unexpected. One evening, when I was feeling a little down, I went to Eugene B’s room looking for company. I wasn’t exactly sure what was bothering me.
“Is it…sexual?” he said.
“No.”
“Is it…shopping?” he said.
“No.”
“Is it…shoes?” he said.
“No.”
He was trying to help.
“Do you want to brush your teeth?” he said, as he began to brush his own.
“No. I don’t think so,” I replied. “I don’t know what it is, but it will pass.”
When Eugene B was finished brushing, he went over to the desk drawer and opened it. There were many interesting things inside: a waffle ball, brown knee socks in a lacy design, a hairy half-eaten peanut butter cookie, a loofah sponge, Miracle Gro plant fertilizer sticks, one black platform shoe off a Barbie Doll. Eugene B took out a sealed toothbrush and gave it to me.
“Here,” he said. “You can have this.”
I was deeply moved
“Is it…batteries?” he said. He pulled out a twelve-pack of AA batteries.
“No,” I said, then changed my mind. “Well, yes, I could use one for my alarm clock.”
He seemed genuinely pleased he could finally help.
Another night, when I was looking for Debbie D and Carolyn E, but couldn’t find them, I stopped at Eugene B’s to see if he knew where they were. There was a woman in his room, sitting in a chair, eating Chinese food. He gave me a three-pack of Batherapy.
My roommate was Exquisite Marlana, and thanks to her, we always had the best room, I think. This is why. The first thing she did was remove the flowered bedspreads and check the color of the blankets underneath. We had good colors — forest green on her bed and ecru on mine. Then she assessed if the beds were in proper Fengshui alignment. Thank goodness they were, or else, in order to turn them, we would have had to rip out and re-install the sink and vanity. I’m not kidding.
Then she took out this thing she invented called Room-In-A-Bag. It contained a very large black and white print scarf made of handkerchief cotton, two long Indian Sari-type shawls in muted oranges and olives with gold threads running through them, Nag Champa incense, a patchouli oil candle, a small prayer altar with a Buddha, several semi-precious stones, and photographs of the Dalai Lama and the workshop director, Judi Hill. I added three rose-scented votive candles and draped my multi-colored Balinese sarong over the bed. We also brought yellow Elatior Begonias for the windowsill. Next year we will bring those glow in the dark stars for our ceiling.
Last week, I taught the Leprosy song to Carolyn E and Exquisite Marlana. It’s supposed to be based on the melody of The Beatles’ Yesterday, but the version I remembered had more of a tango rhythm, and had different words. I’m not sure what possessed me to do it, but I did it. I used to sing it with high school friends. Our version was a song about body parts falling off into assorted liquid refreshments. An eyeball into a highball, a shoulder blade into lemonade, a fingernail into ginger ale and such. My favorite part is when, after eyeball, you flick your index finger along the inside of your cheek and make a big POP. Exquisite Marlana added another verse about an upper tit and a hairy pit. You point to your armpit when you sing it.
Anyway, we decided to take the act down to the lobby and try it out in public. We sang it for Bill Spencer (the only one with a regular name) who didn’t even laugh and said he didn’t want to know us anymore. We sang it for J Luke who was totally repulsed and said we were very very very very sick. We sang it for Eugene B, who, as expected, was the only male person who appreciated its humor. Big Jer then said that me and Exquisite Marlana and Carolyn E looked like the Witches of Eastwick, so we girls began to plan some secret initiations and spell casting for the following week. Carolyn E turned to young, cute David Deck, who was sitting behind her, and asked if he was staying for the retreat.
I was also in the best workshop, I think. It was short story with Rand Cooper. We called ourselves Cooper’s Coop. We all read our stories out loud. It was against the rules. We read about bad dreams, priest infatuation, Michelob as metaphor, a blind horse and a seeing-eye goat, a goddess named Lu, missing Mia, talking beets, people named after Japanese cars, and Mamie Romaine…slut. Many many women audited our workshop just to see Rand Cooper run his fingers through his hair. On the last day, because he couldn’t keep anything short (our average class ran four hours), Rand Cooper lost a bet and had to bring in sour apple martinis for everyone. In our class photo, he insisted upon posing himself horizontally across several of our laps.
Another great thing that happened was our time in the café in the little nearby town at the foot of the mountain. A bunch of us ate lunch and dinner there on the transition day between the workshop and retreat week and it’s very possible we might never be allowed back. The highlight of lunch was when Bill Spencer had a fit of hysterics probably brought on by having had less than three hours sleep in seven days. We were all, of course, laughing A LOT, but at one point Bill started and couldn’t stop. It was that silent, inside laughing when your solar plexus is in a giant knot and your face muscles are frozen in a kind of terrified grin and then while you’re laughing so hard you start to cry and now you’re doing both and you can’t stop either one and your nose is dripping and your face is turning purple and everyone around you is either sadistically egging you on or about to dial 911.
At dinner, the highlight was when someone, I can’t remember who, went to the restroom. Not the actual going to the restroom (although that might have been a highlight for the person), but rather what we did in preparation for their return. We all squatted down around one long side of the table so we’d be facing them when they walked back in, and rested just our heads on it, as if we had been decapitated, and made weird faces. Can you picture it? It was really really funny. At least to us.
But one of the very best of all the things we did was walk after dark down to the end of the blacktop to look for fireflies and at Mars. Arm in arm, we leaned into the night, let it embrace us. And afterwards, we gathered in the gazebo, listened to J Luke’s bluesy riffs reverberate through us and dreamed out loud of never going home.
Some call our mountain retreat the dream and lowland life the real world, but I think our mountain is the reality. When away, things seem fuzzy, senseless, like a somnambulistic shadow walk, while being there feels like the sharply focused, exquisitely rendered true dance. I want to wake up again. I want to fling my arms wide and whirl breathless beneath the naked yellow moon.
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Many thanks for taking me back to those imperishable intervals of communion and creation at the Wildacres Retreat—of allowing me to glimpse through your eyes that special time with those special friends. Now that you’ve begun a new chapter, no, make that a rebirth, in Colorado, it’s only natural you feel adrift from your former passion and purpose. No longer working with leather, designing jewelry or websites, or styling hair, you are asking yourself who you are? Yes, you continue to write but wonder if it is worth the effort if your audience may be more limited? Does it matter what people think of your words? Is their value dependent on the opinions of others?
The other identities you’ve assumed were no more than costumes worn in a play whose final curtain has descended. They weren’t you but functions, learned performances, whereas your innate gift as a writer is your essence. It is who you are—no more escapable than shadow.
This is a blessed time for you—a time of weightless freedom. The anxiety you may currently be experiencing on the cusp of the unknown, is the exhilaration of limitless potential forming around you. The roles which circumstance has obliged you to play have come to the end of their script. And now you have the opportunity to pen your own future as limitless as your talent. Love, Bobby
Thank you so much, dear Bobby, for your fine and wise words of encouragement. I will open a space for them. Big love to you.
darling rachelle, that WAS the most exquisite workshop, and you captured it perfectly, all down to sam’s mamie romaine. what high times we had. i have a snap shot of all those heads peaking above the table…i ‘ve got to go look for it now. you have inspired me. i, also, no longer call myself a writer. well in that i no longer write, other than my journal. sometimes sentences seem so useless. i love that we got to room together one year at WA. i, too remember marlana and our fine friend EB hoch. i think of him often. i invoke his quirky POV in so many instances. he blessed our lives, as did all close friends on that magic mountain. peace, my girl.
I also have a photo of the heads. I was going to put it in the post, but I didn’t have room. DebbieD posted one on FB and sent me another one. You may not be writing these days, but boy are you painting prolifically and wonderfully! Brava chérie. And I loved rooming with you, not only for you amazing self, but because I got to be close to the tins of the best biscotti ever! It’s good to be able to share the memories, especially of the inimitable E Bruce Hoch. lovelove…
Hi dear Rachelle, glad to see another episode. I feel for you, not being able to identify passion in the same way as in the past, and so experiencing yourself as directionless in an unfamiliar state of being. In my own disheartening version of this state, I also often feel directionless. At the last retreat, Mingtong suggested that we form a vision of what we wanted for our lives in three years and in 10 years. In this part of the lifecycle, that’s a tough assignment. I appreciate your courage in putting out so directly how you are feeling–“old and lost and alone.”
Wonderful that you brought in those very happy memories, with the pictures and the liveliness of what you wrote back then. Love seeing your happiness in the image in the class picture. I have reflected on this a lot… In a way, those wonderful moments from the past are”then,” but in a way they are also “now”– as are those moments from other lives. Yet here we are still experiencing “lost and alone” at this time of old age. From this point forward, passion and creativity must evidently arrive in different forms, so the unknown is the Santa Rosa center of the picture.
Since my accident, the sacrum fracture in two places, I’ve been from hospital to nursing home to assisted living, and finally back to my own apartment, but I still can’t walk without the Rollator, and I experienced diminishing but still significant pain. So I have not been practicing in the morning group the way I did for so long, with you. Don’t know if you’re still there yourself. I know you took a break with your arm problem so you will understand.
And what is next?? I ask that for myself — that also will await with interest what you write next, because I trust that creativity is in your nature and though it may change forms, it will never end for you in this life.
Hello dear Sara. I’m glad to hear you seem to be making good progress recovering from your injury. That’s an interesting suggestion from Mingtong, the proponent of the “I don’t know.” Ha. For me, it seems a lot more helpful to stay in the moment, where everything is anyway. I also await with interest what I’ll write next. I do attend John’s practice when I can on M, W, and F. Hope to see you there soon. Big Love….