Anne Marie Schlekeway: Business muse, founder of Kiss My ALS, and Zesty Artista extraordinaire.

Here’s the bottom line (which is a very Anne-Marie thing to say): Anne Marie Schlekeway, a friend and former colleague of mine at Landmark Education, is what you might call A Force to be Reckoned With.  She’s a successful consultant and business muse.  She’s a beautiful, vital, brilliant woman with a wicked wit. (Love that.)  She’s also been diagnosed with ALS, or Lou Gherig’s disease, and has founded Kiss My ALS  to raise both awareness and funds for research on the terminal illness.

One of the impacts of this disease on Anne Marie is that she has lost the power of speech. That, however, has in no way dampened her irrepressible self-expression, as you’re about to see.  In her own words: “It took losing the power of speech for me to find my true voice.”

Please do yourself a favor and treat yourself to the ingenius Speechless Speech on Powerful Speaking and Happiness  (<– click here to experience) Anne Marie recently delivered in Chicago.  You will be in awe of her, of that you can be certain. But more to the point (Anne Marie’s point, I might add), you will be left inspired by yourself and your own capacity for courage…for meaningful creation…and for being fully, happily engaged in life.

Thanks for the opportunity to share this amazing person and her important message with you.

Live lusciously, my friends.

Each morning when I get up, make myself a latte, and gaze out one of the windows of my house, I am flooded with a sense of peace and gratitude for the simple pleasures that grace my life. 

I recently read that an environmental psychologist at Cornell University looked at more than 300 children between the first and fifth grade, noting for each youngster how many plants were in their families’ homes, how much green they could see from their windows, and whether their backyards had dirt, cement or grass in them.  Her findings? Those who had more exposure to green were far more capable of facing stressful situations and had longer attention spans.

I think we all have an intuitive sense of that, but it’s always nice when science proves what our hearts already knew.  Regardless of where you live, you can make sure to expose yourself to some soul-restoring green.

Live lusciously, my friends.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m a little prone to wanting to hang onto things as they are.

That might come as a surprise to some who know me.  “You?” I can imagine them saying, hands on hips like a row of skeptical Rockettes, their left eyebrows all cocked in unison.  I have, after all, developed something of a reputation for changing course in life the way some people change their knickers – one jaunty kick and it’s into the basket, on with the new, and away I go.

And yet…

There are moments I wish I could re-experience.  Places I’ll likely never see again.  People I love who have drifted out of my life or are no longer with us.  Life’s like that.  But I resist it.  It shouldn’t be that way, I think.  It just shouldn’t.

But it is.

I am happiest when I just let all that in. And have it be the way it’s meant to be. When I dive fully into the moment and swim in it and gulp the air and rub up against life like a happy pup rolling in the grass for no reason.  I can remember the instant I got that years ago, when my younger daughter, Simone, was just a wee tyke and we were having a perfectly ordinary morning – or so I thought – and something extraordinary happened for me, thanks to her:

Scribble Singing

—for Simone

We’re minutes from the preschool, my head abuzz

with all the wrong words, my brain straining

for a better way to say what it is that needs to be said

in this poem trying to push its way out of me,

and I jump, startled, when Simone, face pressed

to her window, gazing at the sour man in the car

idling next to ours, takes a sharp breath and breaks out

in song, her voice clear and fearless, a four-year-old

lark serenading stalled traffic with her other-world dialect,

the lyrics all sounds never sung before.

The words using her as their instrument are so fragile,

so dragonfly-wing transparent, seconds later I’m

unable to hear in my mind just what the secret syllables were.

What was that little song, sweetie? I wait for the pre-K,

crayoned title: Kittens, or My Best Friend, Ashley.

Scribble singing, she answers, with a small bird-chest sigh,

as if she were telling me something I’d been told

many times.  Scribble singing, of course, how is it I didn’t

know that? An unspoiled soul’s magic scat, private sky-writing,

beyond-language smoke rings let fly in soprano puffs,

their soul aspiration the brief pleasure of feeling the lips

shape strange, loopy sweetness, tickling the unprepared ear

with their bright, radiating noise, the tired heart

treated to a comforting pat, a good-natured nudge, a childlike

kiss.  And then the libretto’s erased forever, of course,

its brilliant, ringing vapor dissipated as it must be,

its transitory thrill distilled to an ebbing echo

in the car.  So quiet.  My daughter, having long since moved

on to other wonders, looks heavenward, puzzled, then

to me with the question:  Why are the clouds closing?

Because it’s going to rain, I say, disappointed, back-ended

by grief there on the highway, the foggy smudges

of my own scribble songs too faint now to make out,

though I’m fairly certain I can almost recall what it’s like

to know that goombah-mah-cha-cha is chewy and tart,

whereas a booley-looley, as any fool knows, will coat

your tongue like thick honey.  I wish

I were like her, I wish I could love the impermanence,

the ghostiness, the slip-slidiness of words, of things,

of people, and I hope for her sake

she holds off that untamable love’s flight

as long as her wise, brave self is able, that it will be

lifetimes before she loses her scribble-singing voice,

before she’s indifferent, unmindful, forgets the poetry—

God-years before she’s unable to find the words

she turns and recites to me now: I want to go

to a parade today, please, or a fair.

I’m growing! Look how big my feet are this morning!

If you grew, mama, you’d be a giant, bump your head

on the ceiling.  You’d be taller than trees, too big for the sky.

—by Deborah Beroset

May your scribble-singing voice be ever at the ready, and may you sing many joyful songs with it, however out of tune.  And come happy hour, have a booley-looley on me.

Live lusciously.

Have you seen Coco Before Chanel yet? I finally got my chance this week, happy as a clam at high tide in the south of France at the prospect of going to a movie with one of my daughters, and even more delighted to be doing so in a theatre that serves vinho verde.

I loved Audrey Tautou in Amelie, figured I’d like her in this, and I was right. The film is, as you would expect, a sweet confection for the eyes, and our little Audrey has gone from winsome sprite to tres formidable. And oh, that Coco. Don’t know how much you know about the woman and her life, but I’m here to tell you, she was most definitely a Zesty Artista.

And so, my lovelies, I have gathered here for your amusement and inspiration some Coco-inspired takeaways for Zesty Artistas everywhere. (And before any Chanel scholars in the crowd get their lingerie in a bunch, let me disclaim: These are drawn from the movie, which is of course a Hollywood studio version of what happened, but so what. We’re just having fun here, so lighten up.)

1. Allow yourself to be restless and dissatisfied. When you’re clear you’re boring yourself to death, that’s a powerful motivator to shake things up and reinvent.

2. Make bold requests. It takes some moxie to ask for what you want, doesn’t it? But being comfortable is overrated. Put it out there. Sometimes people say yes. (And what’s more, you’d be surprised how inspiring it can be for others when we ask big things of them and they come through.

3. Be willing to do things badly. Did Coco let it stop her when she didn’t know which end of a horse was which? Mais non. She simply climbed up there and took off, bouncing and flailing for all the world to see. Over time she developed mastery – because she was willing to look like a beginner.

4. Show your true colors. When all the women around her were going for brightly-colored finery and frippery, Coco went out on the town in an elegant little all-black number. She pleased herself with her designs and didn’t pretend to like something she didn’t.

5. Work with what you’ve got. It’s too easy to wait to begin something important until all the circumstances are just so. Instead, pull a Coco: When life gives you your boyfriend’s sweaty old polo pants, make haute couture.

6. Give yourself room to breathe. Quicker than you can say “pass moi la scissors,” our young, struggling heroine becomes Coco the Corset Ripper.  Away with all those constrictions and uncomfortable bits!  A gal needs a little freedom to move.

 7. Be opinionated. Women didn’t come to Coco Chanel for flattery.  They came to her for fabulousness.  She trusted her own eye, her own vision, and she wasn’t afraid to express it.  Right on.

8. Admit you’re afraid… then jump anyway.   How about that scene where Coco’s leaving behind her wealthy socialite lover, heading off to Paris to make her fortune?  He wants his exotic paramour to stick around, and she knows it.  Yet still she is willing to admit to him (according to the movie script, anyway), “I’m frightened.”  And then off she goes.  Pretty great that she doesn’t feel like she has to put on a brave, confident face all the time.

 9. Be willing to be heartbroken.   Your heart is like good china – if you keep it tucked away for safekeeping, you’ll wind up with pristine, chip-free dishes that never got to give you pleasure.

10. Live (and love) with gusto and abandon.  Playing it safe is not the Zesty Artista way, ladies, as you know.  So get out there with your zesty selves and tear it up.  Roll around in life, learn some new dance steps, make some messes, have some fun. 

Live lusciously as only you can.

O, the dithering.
The wondering.

The choir in my head singing yeah-buts and what-ifs in four-part harmony.  Shall I hum a few bars for you?  I’ll bet you know it:  “Don’t have enough time for this…Don’t have enough money…Don’t have it all figured out…My ideas are crummy….” And on it went.

Until the day I simply chose.

It was October 30, 2009 –  the eve of Halloween, when we’re given permission to be any outrageous dang thing we want, and then we’re rewarded with candy.  Boyfriend and I were tooling along the highway headed toward Iowa to visit my mother for the weekend.  And at some point during that drive, I chose to forge ahead with the time I have.  The money I have.  The ideas I have.  I chose not to re-think and analyze everything a thousand different ways.  You could say I chose to make some mistakes in the interest of making something happen.

On that day, Zesty Artista was born. Because I said so.  I turned to Boyfriend and announced, “I’m doing it.”

All right then,” he said. “That’s good.”  (Insert devilishly handsome smile here.)

And in that moment, life altered.

What I accomplished in the next week astonished me.  Zesty Artista became an entity recognized by the State of Missouri.  Zesty Artista got her very own tax ID.  Then came the city business license.  The bank account with its tiny-but-mighty seed money.  And lo and behold, a debit card with the Zesty Artista moniker on it.   I called an incredibly talented graphic designer friend and asked her to design my logo and web site, and then she enlisted the services of yet another amazing woman to pull all the levers and dials to get the pretty stuff safely launched into cyberspace.

There have been so many creative decisions to make, so many opportunities to revert to analysis paralysis.  But once things are set in motion, there are deadlines, and promises to keep, and you just take a small step…and then another…until suddenly you look up, and you’re in a whole different place.

Will there be decisions I make that I’ll regret?  Sure. Are some of the initial roads I go down going to turn into dead ends? Probably.  Will this involve late nights and weekends of work while ignoring the dust bunnies and unfolded laundry taking over my house?  Already happening.  But who cares?

I’m on the road, baby.  I’ve got the top down, and the wind is whippin’ my hair around and the music’s turned up way loud and I’ve got big love in my life and I’m excited.

So, my friend, I ask you this: What’s the thing that’s gnawing at you, wanting to happen?  Where are you dithering when you could be driving?  What makes your heart beat faster, makes you a little nervous, gives you that thrilling little zing?

Perhaps it’s time to get behind the wheel and just go…time to get your zesty on. You get to say.

And so I raise a virtual glass of bubbly in honor of the Zesty Artista in us all – the wild, bold creative spirit with its infinite array of expressions.  And as my toast, I offer this quotation, which is right up there amongst my all-time-favorites and never fails to stir me deep down where I live.  Thank you for sharing this moment with me.

Until Committed

…Until one is committed, there is hesitancy,

the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness.

Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation),

there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which

kills countless ideas and splendid plans:

that the moment one definitely commits oneself,

then providence moves, too.

All sorts of things occur to help one

that would never otherwise have occurred.

A whole stream of events issues from the decision,

raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents

and meetings and material assistance

which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.

I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:

Whatever you can do,

or dream you can,

begin it.

Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.

- W. H. Murray
from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition

Here’s to the genius, power and magic in us all.

Live lusciously.