Category: adventure

adventure · dating · internet dating · love

Love in an Elevator – of Zeros and Ones

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Long have I harbored, and still do, the idea that I will
“meet the person on the way to meeting myself.” Meaning, that if I am engaged
in doing things that ignite and enliven me, and I happen to meet a dude on the way,
great – if I don’t meet a dude there, well, I went for me anyway. The other
thing about that method is that you already know that you have something in
common, wherever it is you are or what you’re doing – more than what you’ll know
by internet dating, which the only thing you know for sure you have in common
is that you both internet date. Or seek to.
So, that’s all well and good to “meet the person…yadda yadda
yadda,” but, well, what if you haven’t, and it’s time to grease the wheels a
little? Enter the internet. And, for me, most recently (as in Sunday) Tinder.
Ah yes, the new fangled, smart-phone app, where you swipe a
photo left to reject and swipe right to approve. If you both “swipe right” on
one another, you get the chance to chat. I like the idea of this better than my
previous forees into internet dating, because there’s none of
this “so and so winked at you” or
“looked at your profile,” or even so-and-so messaged you and his photos are of
him in a sports bar with five of his best bros swilling pints. In those situations,
the most fun part is the polite decline. How to answer, if to answer the, “Hey hows it goin”?
Once, I politely declined a guy’s “advances,” and got a
lovely diatribe on how all women were superficial bitches. That was fun. So,
Tinder – you can only communicate if you’ve both agreed you pass the first gate.
Last night, I was supposed to have a coffee date with
someone who passed the gate, but he got sick and texted to cancel and
reschedule. About an hour later, I just took down my profile.
I’ve done it before. My second stint on OkCupid lasted 12
hours—from when I put the profile up at night, to when I woke up horrified in
the morning, and took it down!
I was talking to a friend last night before my date was
cancelled about my amalgam of feelings around the whole “internet dating thing”: That I felt glad to get out there; that I felt loser-ish to “have to”
date that way; that I was excited for the date, but also trepidatious about
meeting a stranger who all I know is from two photos and a witty sentence.
And then the date was cancelled, and I was relieved.
It’s not to say that I won’t restart again, but I usually do internet dating only so long as I can stomach the concept. And
it’s hard (for me) to quiet the nausea long enough to “get out there.” That’s
okay. As Alanis Morissette says in her song “21 Things I Want In A Lover”
(which may as well be my WSM Craigslist ad), I’m in no rush, ‘cause I like
being solo…In the meantime I’ll live like there’s no tomorrow.
And though I agree with the second part, and will continue
to go out to meet myself and potentially meet you too, my desire for dinner for
two may bring me back to 140-character witticisms and culling my most
swipe-rightable photos.

adventure · fear · friends · laughter · sobriety

Both/And.

Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

Tonight I go back into Kaiser hospital for my second round
of chemo. According to my current understanding, this is round 2 of 5.
However, I don’t really know. I went to Stanford on Friday
for what the Kaiser folks had told me (I have it in writing!) was a
“consultation” about bone marrow transplant (Can we all pass a moment of
silence for my even having to use the phrase “bone marrow transplant?). But,
when I arrived at Stanford, they seemed raring to go – ready, set, destroy your
immune system & hope the new one takes!
I was not so prepared for that. The doctor spoke for about
an hour and a half about what’s involved, and used the term “mortality rate”
much too often for me to feel at all like this was something I want to do. Then, they want you to talk to a social worker about
relocating down into the Stanford area for anywhere from 3-6 months. That
conversation, they said, would take another hour and a half.
At that point, I was too emotional – I mean, come on, doctors, this isn’t a theory – This is MY
LIFE, and I told them that I wasn’t able to
speak to the social worker then. They seemed all shocked and surprised that
someone couldn’t sit through 3 hours of people telling them how they may die,
and even if they don’t here are all these lovely other side effects, then also sit through someone
telling them how they need to up-end their entire lives to live somewhere alone
and foreign and away from all the trappings of normalcy they’re trying so
desperately to hold on to.
Really? You don’t get
that I need to leave now?
But, leave I did. And have had a few days of overwhelming,
What the Fuck – Now What?
I spoke with my friend who’s an oncology nurse at Kaiser –
actually we met when she started taking care of me last round, and is coming
this afternoon to pick up and foster my cat while I’m inpatient – so, we’re, like, friends
now. 🙂 But, she also knows about all this stuff.
Not all the facts are in, and I emailed my doctor last night
to say, Um, so, Stanford seems to think I need a transplant NOW, and you have
told me that we can wait to see if I have a recurrence of the cancer, and then
do a transplant THEN – so, Uh, what’s the story here? However, my nurse friend
said that with Leukemia, it can simply be a waiting game if you don’t go the
transplant route.
As I was talking to her yesterday, I was waiting for my
friend to come pick me up so we could go to Ocean Beach in SF. I said to her, yes, I have a good chance IF I make it through. She said, Well,
have a good time at Ocean Beach, IF you make it through. …
I got some info in the mail from a cancer society, and they
have a pamphlet about coping. In the back, they have a sort of daily inventory
– how did you feel today, did you laugh today.
With all of this hyper serious stuff happening, it’s hard to
find balance. I hadn’t laughed in days – certainly not after the Stanford
“You’re gonna live if you don’t die” visit.
But, yesterday, I did laugh. My nurse friend ended up coming
with us too. And off we were to Ocean Beach, laughing, silly, poking fun at
ourselves and each other.
And, oh, the beach. I’ve been wanting to go to the beach
since I got out of the hospital. Something about that massive body of water,
this uncontained thing, this thing that is totally out of my control, but is
working anyway – I wanted to witness it. I wanted to splash in it and squish my
toes in the sand of it. To breathe in it. And I did. We did.
We were there for a few hours, walking, sitting on a
towel, poking at things with our toes, crumbling sand in our fists. Laughing at children and dogs; admiring some very Ryan Gosling-esque abs on the surfers. It was a gorgeous day.
There was some cancer talk, but not too much. We went to
Java Beach for coffee re-ups, and I ran into a friend there. I remembered how I
used to spend my Saturday midnights there with a group of people who came to be friends –
What else do you do on a Saturday night at midnight when you’re young and not
at the bar? You drink coffee and eat left-over pastries by candelight and talk
about how awesome it is we’re alive and getting better. And sometimes how hard it is to be alive and getting better.
We went down to the Bayview where a friend of mine was
having an open studios art show. The whole warehouse was sculpture. Each artist
a sculptor. It’s rare that I see so much sculpture – usually the museums I’m at
are paintings or photographs. To see all this metalwork. It was amazing. So creative, and alive. And my
friend’s marble sculptures, as if melted out of the unhewn block.
We walked around out back and took in the Bay from that
angle. We saw the city from West to East, and we came home tiredly satisfied.
I sat for a few minutes, emboldened from my day of levity,
sunshine, the taste of salt on my teeth, and read some of the binder Stanford
gave me the day before. But I didn’t sit long with it.
I went to go meet up with some fellows for an hour, spoke a
little of what’s going on with me, and then had burgers and a movie with a
friend from SF. We saw that Seven Psychopaths movie, and it was really great – startling, gruesome in the
over-the-top meant-to-be-funny way, and just creative tongue-in-cheek
storytelling. For those hours, I didn’t think about myself or my cancer at all.
I laughed, gasped, sat in the dark with strangers doing the
same normal thing on a Saturday night.
I guess it’s going to be like this for now. The pendulum
from normal to not taking some very quick strokes. But last night, I got to note
that I did laugh that day. The reality of my situation was just the same
as the day before, but yesterday, I got to laugh, and reality became just an iota different. 

adventure · decision · faith · family · finances · judaism · say yes · shabbat · work · writing

Go Toward the Open Door.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Wise women have told me this occasionally over the last few
years. And, this is just the opportunity I
got this weekend – to go toward the open door.
Originally planned for this weekend, was helping my
immensely talented and ambitious friend by volunteering at her art show
benefit for Japan. My volunteering for her had come as a status reduction from being in the art show, as during the time of my unemployment, I
realized I was not energetically inclined toward creative production, nor,
unfortunately, toward the donation of any art I currently own. So, I
downgraded myself to volunteer last month.
Then, I continued to be unemployed, and although now (halleLUjah) employed, I don’t get paid until the 15th
of this month. Her show was planned for last night, Saturday night, and I have
$40 to my name until Friday. I had to tell her I couldn’t do it. I simply couldn’t afford the roundtrip to the city. It just wasn’t feasible.
Do I/did I feel like a flake? Yeah. Was there anything I
could do about it? No.
In the meantime, having unceremoniously bowed out of
volunteering, on Friday morning my office was in the midst of heading out for
the weekend to a “Shabbaton,” basically, a weekend at an overnight summer camp
in the Santa Rosa mountains, where 250 members of the congregation (did I
mention I work, now, at a synagogue?), kids, grandparenty-types, Board members,
staff members, would all gather and have a hella Jewish weekend (well, hella Reform Jewish weekend – which includes guitars, LOTS of
clapping on the up-beat, and the community-sanctioned use of a cappuccino machine on
Shabbat).
I, was not going to go. I told them over this week and a
half of my new employment that I wouldn’t be able to go, as I was volunteering
with my friend’s art show. And, part of me didn’t really want to see these
people, as I was still feeling rather resentful at being a freakin’ secretary,
answering phones and manipulating mail merges.
However, there was another part of me who is, about 7, I’d
say. And she, every time I heard someone
wish me a good weekend as they were departing on Friday afternoon,
would say to me, I wanna go to
camp!.
I wanna go. I wanna go to camp. I wanna sleep in a bunk,
and clap during song session, and eat at long uncomfortable tables, and see the
mountains. I wanna go to camp!
She whispered this to me all day. Indeed, she’d been
whispering it with increasing intensity all week, but adult me was too pissed at
these people for having supporting roles in the drama of my life that was once
again entitled, “Molly: The Disgruntled Employee.”
Then, however, came the reality that I would not, in fact,
be joining my friend for her art show. And I’d been offered a ride by another
reluctant employee earlier in the week, that she was going up on Saturday
morning, coming back on Sunday, and I could ride with her.
She’s new to the office as well, and I could sense that
perhaps we could get along. So I told her I’d think about it. And, as she was
generously giving me a ride the the bus stop on Friday afternoon, long after almost
everyone else had defected for the mountains, my little girl was screaming to
be heard.
I was, in fact, on the bus home when I finally gave in to
her. I called the woman, and I told her that if she was still willing, I’d love
to ride with her to the Shabbaton.
Because, in reality, my alternative now, without the art
show, was to sit on Saturday in my apartment, continue to read my Zadie Smith
novel, see a few friends, and putz around, as per usual. I saw that very
clearly as I rode that bus through Berkeley. Everything as per boring usual.
I have been camping once
this summer. Several months ago now. I have kept my childlike spirit drowned
out with the adult business of interviewing, resumes, finance planning,
budgeting, cost efficiency, worry worry worry. There has been nearly NO play in
the last 3 months. At all. A few movies here and there for a break from the
awful soul-crushing of unemployment, but other than that, no glitter, sparse laughter, begrudging fun, and a riotous need to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
So, I said YES. I went toward the open door.
The adult in me was also very calculatingly clear, with its
Cheshire cat smile, that this weekend away would not cost me a penny. That I
would have good meals I didn’t have to cook, pay for, or clean up from. That I
would get the chance to go to the mountains, and hike there, as I did, without
paying for a rental car, gas money, a camp site, anything at all.
I would be able to get out of dodge simply by saying “yes.”
To think that I almost didn’t makes me laugh at myself.
The weekend itself was both satisfying, and exhausting.
Exhausting, as I was “on” the whole time, schmoozing with people, making my new
presence known. It was not an entirely selfless or avocational decision to go up, obviously –
it was/is also important to me that people got to know me as more than the
receptionist, should the ears of the executive director be listening to the
chatter in the water. Phrases like “raise” and “room for growth” come to mind
as I go forward with this job. It was a political decision. – Also, it
exposes/d me to people who might be good contacts later on.
Indeed, there was a published/working poet there with whom I
got to spend some good conversations. The last one included my bald question,
“Is it worth the fight?” [to be a writer, to pursue this {or indeed any} art, to continue to
put one word after another as a sign that we mean something to ourselves, others, this world we live in – that we are not floating mindlessly through it – that we value our experiences – that we mold and shape them and
ply them and tongue them and pinch them into these characters we imprint on paper
and screen … Is it worth the fight to do this?]
His answer, after the knowing laugh, was yes, if you believe
it is.
I believe it is. I believe in marking my existence. I
believe in questioning it, turning it, shaping it, and being shaped by it.
I believe in inviting you to share it with me. To tell me how you see it, to let me have my own world shaped for a
moment or more by how it is you walk in the world.
By saying yes to this weekend, I allowed cherished and often
dismissed parts of me to sing in the sunshine. To look at the Milky Way, for
Christ’s sake. To dance in a circle of women, to talk blogging with a
stay-at-home dad. I got to see a fawn pounce through the brittle brush and pet
baby goats, and to sing at my most favorite service in
all of Judaism, Havdallah, the closing of Shabbat, where we say good-bye to the
week we’ve had, and we welcome the week to come. The service where we invite
the sweetness of Shabbat to come with us into and sustain us through the coming week.
It is a service that dances the edge of wistful, grateful
endings and limitless, renewed beginnings. And, simply, it has the best music.
Shavuah Tov, friends – May you have a happy week.  

action · adulthood · adventure · dating · family · forgiveness · Jewish · letting go · life · travel · willingness

Melting Boxes and Falling Cards

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I may or may not have a date this weekend with a jew I met
on okCupid. We had made tentative plans for Sunday, but I had double booked and
asked to meet up on Saturday instead, and haven’t heard back yet. We’ll see.
I’m talking with another CupidJew; jdate, I have a coffee date aligned for next
Friday, but I’m not entirely enthused on this one – and let another thread fall
when I realized I wasn’t really interested in meeting this other dude. 
Who knows. It’s like the job applications. Send stuff out –
see what sticks. I do feel like I’d like to apply to more teaching jobs though.
It’s really funny. Maybe 6 or so months ago, I met with a girl friend who works
with Expressive Arts Therapy, and she asked how “teaching” felt in my body – to make a
motion or movement – that would express what being “a teacher” would mean to
me. Then, I contracted and constricted my body, on the tack that teaching is a
sedentary, stoic, geographically uninspired profession.
Surprisingly or not, I don’t think I feel that way anymore.
Maybe I’d express it a little more wiggly now – maybe because it is a little
more (or a lot more) wiggly than I’ve previously boxed it in. I also would like
to apply outside of the Bay a little more. I know that moving costs a lot, and
yadda yadda, but, in the spirit of “what do I know about Fate,” I’m willing to
throw my net wider, and my seeds farther, and see what sprouts, … or is caught.
… You get the idea.
What a concept – pushing my ideas out of the proscribed
boxes in which I’ve held them.
Interestingly, my mom comes to mind. “Mother,” lord, what a
“concept.” What huge, enormous expectations and qualities we – or I – hurl upon
such a word. My ideas were formed way back when – she’s crazy, unavailable,
manic-depressive, and dying of her own neuroses – and these have kept pretty
calcified over the years. She’s better now (G-d bless medication), but it’s hard for me to allow that.
If she’s not crazy, if I don’t mistrust her, where are we? How do we engage? Obviously, similar questions can be brought about my dad, and even my brother.
… and more broadly, myself, you, the world, etc. Boxes. Boxes with a label,
Discard After 1987, or maybe after 1996. Certainly, way past their due date by
2012.
I think of this about my mom today in again reflecting on
the agingness of my parents – having seen them both two weeks ago for my
graduation. They’re getting older. They’re not going to be able to do or go or
share or be what they had been. And so, I wrote my mom an email yesterday I
titled “If you build it, they will come,” and in it I simply wrote, “Sometime
in the not too distant future, you and I should go to Paris. That is all. Love,
Molly.”
My mom has never been, nor have I. I’ve been clicking on
this contest prize for a trip for two to Italy for a few weeks now – because,
you gotta buy a ticket if you want to win the lottery, right – and I realize
that there are some things that if I want to do with my mom, I better start to
do them now. Sure, I have no idea if something like a trip to Paris or Italy,
or anywhere, will take place, but the time is getting shorter when they’d,
she’d, be able to really traipse about. Traipsing is a young people’s – or
younger people’s – pastime.
I am glad that the boxes in which I’ve held my parents are
disintegrating like so much wet cardboard. It’s a little scary. But, rather,
it’s not scary, as much as new.
I wish I could let the boxes around myself melt as much. One
of the dudes I’m talking with on the dating site is very encouraging and
interested in my bass playing, though I keep on telling him it’s really a lack of bass playing, and a lot of me being silly and
denying myself (although, surely, I didn’t put it quite that way – impressions,
you know!) 😉
But, it’s another box. My girl friend I was supposed to
speak with about her bass playing, our phone call didn’t happen, and I haven’t
rescheduled. Although I am having two info interviews around theater next week.
One in person with a friend of mine who is an active actor (but has a “real”
job, too), and the other by phone with my former acting teacher at school, who
is the casting director at a local renowned theater company. So, there’s that.
There’s a lot. And as I was telling someone yesterday, a
house of cards must be taken down very slowly and carefully. Not all at once. I
don’t think I’d much like being shaken all the way down to my bonsai tree nubs.
Or pruned, I suppose would fit that metaphor better! But point being, that
dismantling old beliefs and behaviors takes patience, practice, and an ability
to leave it alone for a while.
It’s not some jenga game I have to finish in a proscribed
period of time. (I’m ripe with metaphors today! ha! enjoy or apologies, either
way!) There are time-sensitive matters – my parents’ aging, obtaining
employment so I can feed and house myself, but even that one is a little fluid
right now, although surely top of my mind – I do have this temp work I’m doing,
which I’ll be doing for likely another 2 weeks. I’ve been applying, and we’ll
see. I’d like to apply to different avenues, and we’ll see. I plugged “jewish”
into my searches on the dating site, and we’ll see.
“…and action is its key word.” Amen. 

adventure · community · cooking · joy · performance · self-care

Italian Hot and Sweet

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

First of all, thank you for the outpouring of love which
you’ve sent me over the last 24 hours. I am grateful for your love and care.
I took yesterday off from work at the suggestion of the
receptionist, whom I called to say I was running late and was dragging a bit as
my grandmother had passed away, and she asked, Why are you coming in? Stay
home. And I said, well, I have those projects I want to finish so maybe I don’t
have to come in next week, and I’ll be in as soon as possible.
After about another 10 minutes of semi-aimlessness, I called
back and said, you know what, I’m going to take your suggestion and not come in
today – I’ll be in on Monday. And, so I will. I do have one project, not to
finish, since it’s epic, but to show her how to do, to pass the torch, and once
I do that, complete that task, I will be done there. I say with a finality that
allows for change 😉 But, I am feeling so over it. Sure, lots of people feel
“over” their jobs, but I have the opportunity and the freedom to make a change,
and so, I will make it. Before I get too resentful, too late, and burn a bridge
I may need some day.
One of my options for alternative income will be approved or
denied on Sunday. I’m auditioning for the live modeling guild in the Bay Area,
and they pay well. Like I’ve said before, they also require “motorized
transportation,” but I’m not all too worried about that. I have a feeling
things are in the works around me and a car. First of all, because I reached
out for help around finding one, and second because I have the support system
of my financial folks to help me really piece together the amount I can spend –
although I haven’t sat down with them yet, I let two people know that I would
be reaching out to do so.
Today is my audition for a musical theater company, and true
to my Serenity Moth, I haven’t practiced whatsoever. I have the music for one
of the two songs I’ll sing, but am still not sure what my second one will be.
And, I wish I’d practiced. Duh.
It’s “funny.” I had done my numbers in December, and had
come to the conclusion that I actually didn’t need to work these few weeks before school started, but
greed and anxiety came in, and I took the two weeks at the temp job. “Funny” is
that last week I was stupidly sick, and worked one full day. That’s it.
Then, this week, with my increasing lateness to work, and then taking off
yesterday, I haven’t worked a full week anyway. It’s like the Universe saying, See, darling, sometimes things will end up the way they’re supposed to
anyway – and you would have been better off not fighting it.
Yesterday, I did meet up with a friend for tea, and we spoke
poetry, and school, and artistic integrity and honesty. And it was just nice to
sit in the middle of the day drinking a hot beverage with a beloved friend. I
wish I’d allowed myself the last two weeks to do that. But, c’est la vie.
Perhaps lesson learned.
Afterward, I took a walk up over the border between Oakland and
Piedmont (aka the rich section), and went up to my favorite tree swing. There
are a number of swings in the streets up there, hanging from the trees closest
to the sidewalk and street, and although when I first began to sit on them last
year, I felt self-conscious, like these were someone else’s and I shouldn’t be
on them – I’ve gotten over it 😉 And I sat for a while on my favorite swing,
swinging intermittently and letting myself oscillate back to center – which
sort of feels like a metaphor for yesterday.
The later afternoon I spent on my couch in the dwindling
sunshine reading Eat Pray Love, a book
I’ve read before, and which seemed exactly the book I felt like reading. And
perhaps influenced by the first section when the author is in Italy, and
influenced by her self questioning (What would you, self, like to do?), in the evening, I asked myself
what I wanted to eat. Nothing on
the commercial strip seemed like what I wanted, so I decided to go to the
grocery market, and just see what appealed and cook something. I had a vague
idea about a pasta dish I’ve made before (also likely influenced by the “food porn”
section of the book) but they didn’t have fresh basil (it’s not at all
basil season at the moment), so I started to pick up random vegetables that
spoke to me.
This blog perhaps is longer than I intended, but a long time
ago in a galaxy far away, I was a 19 year old suburban college student in the
summer between sophomore and junior year, and I was blazingly in love with an
Italian-American. Blazingly – burn hot, burn quick. He, of the red growling IROC
camaro, yes, really, and against-stereotype dredlocks, was a chef. (Well, at the
moment, he worked at a pizza shop, but…)
One evening, he and I were in the kitchen of my house and he
decided to cook up dinner. He began to do the most amazing thing. Something I
had never ever seen before. He started to randomly take items, vegetables, meat, out
of the refrigerator and prepare them for the pot. How do you know what to
put in?? I squealed. Without a
recipe??
I was shocked. I had never seen someone cook in this way
before – without a recipe. He replied, I just know what I like, so I throw it in.
It was so novel. It perhaps sounds ridiculous to you, but at
that moment, my entire world of cooking and food was cracked wide open – and
beyond that, my ideas of rules, freedom, joy, frivolity, experimentation were
cracked open as well. It was a pinnacle moment for me. And each time I just
begin to “throw stuff in,” I still get a thrill of adventure.
So, when, yesterday, I was in the grocery store, and had to
abandon my very specific basil recipe, I found myself creating something
entirely new. Would it work? Who cares – I want to try. So, with a basket
filled with locally-made pasta, sun-dried tomatoes, capers, Italian sausage –
hot and sweet, a log of mozzarella, stalks of asparagus-thin broccoli, and a few sweet red peppers,
I headed home to the healing power of food, creation, adventure, and self-care.
P.S. it was marvelous! – but next time, ix-nay on the
capers 😉

action · adventure · compassion · courage · creativity · finances · forgiveness · gratitude · growth · joy · recovery · relationships · responsibility · romance · self-care · spirituality

Wet Concrete.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today is the last day of work before the winter break. And
although mine is polka-dotted with gorgeous adventures with wonderful women,
what i’m really looking forward to is sleep! And cleaning my apartment.
There’s some kind of shift happening, or a solidification
rather. I feel the cement getting stronger beneath my feet. As though I have
poured the foundation, and it’s looked messy and strange – like getting a
degree in poetry, putting together an art show, cleaning out my childhood home
for sale, getting out of a relationship, beginning to audition for theater. I
haven’t known what any of these pieces have meant as they’ve come up and I
examine them and lay them down, like Indy choosing the right chalice at the end
of Last Crusade, hmm, consider, lay aside.
I’ve just been picking up these pieces with curiosity.
And now they’re all poured into the mold of my life’s
foundation, and I can’t explain to you why, but there is a joy that is arising
that feels so uniquely new and pervasive, that I know these are associated.
With a stronger foundation to stand on, I’m freer to explore, create, test
theories, fail, try. I’m no longer standing on quick-sand, undermining myself
as soon as a notion crosses my mind or path.
I also know that there are likely a thousand more things
that will go in this foundation, that it won’t ever be “complete,” but isn’t
that the point of life? (She says with any idea like she knows what “the point”
of life is!!)
But, I tell you, something is happening. Which is a good
thing, because I can spin out into “I have no idea what’s happening/going to
happen”-land really quickly.
For now, today is my last day of 2011 working at a job I
enjoy. I’ve been asked to come back on January 3rd when the office
reopens, and it has been suggested to pay off my credit cards with this money
I’ll earn, instead of ear-mark it for a car, … but we’ll see 😉 My credit cards
don’t have high balances (no one ever trusted me enough to give me too much
credit! – including myself), but the interest rates are exorbitant, and one of my tasks is to call to ask for a lower
rate. I’ve done this before, and they’ve said no. I’ve done this recently, and
they’ve said no.
But the woman who suggested it said that this is one of
those holes that needs to be closed up. Why pour water into a sieve? In order
for me to hold abundance in my life, there are places where I need to be ready
to receive it. So, this is one of those action places, a place where the
foundation can become firmer. The woman also suggested a script for calling
them, some key phrases and an attitude, that scare the crap out of me. Because
they mean taking true accountability and responsibility for myself and my
finances by letting someone else know that this is not okay. Paying almost 20%
on a credit card, and not touching the principal is (apparently!) not okay. And
I need to close these holes. I also will let go of the results, because they
may still say no, but the action of taking action to care for myself and
respect my own boundaries is the lesson, and the trial.
I get reflective around the turn of the year, and around my
birthday. For all the floundering I sometimes believe I’m doing in my life, the
truth is that progress is being made. It has not been the easiest year, and the
hardships have variously set me to a variety of tasks and new things:
  • the
    breakup caused me to lean on my girlfriends, and have the experience of getting
    through that “slammed by a mack truck”ness of early breakup;
  • the breakup led to
    rebounding, which produced my best painting yet (in my opinion) – lol;
  • the
    japan disaster prompted my friend to host an art show with donation to japan at
    which she asked me to read my poetry, for my first time in public outside of
    the school community;
  • my bitterly harrowing lack of income over the summer
    caused me to get in with a community of people who work on financial security
    and abundance issues;
  • later, working too
    much caused me to come up against boundaries of self-care and are helping me to
    say yes     and no with integrity;
  • packing up my childhood home for sale caused me to root out the sadness and
    grief that lived there, and here in my heart, and to begin to perspectivize 😉
    it with more serenity;
  • having that wonky conversation with my mom over the
    summer caused me to take space to reassess how I am able to engage with her in
    ways that feel mutual, responsible, respectful, and loving to us both;
  • being
    single caused me to pick up     Calling in the One to help foster love and care within myself and help
    to radiate outward;
  • my grandmother, my dad’s mom, is dying, and this is causing
    me to see my dad with more compassion than I have, perhaps, ever, and to listen
    to him as a person, not as “Dad” with all its attendant baggage and
    expectations.
So, there’s just some reflections which come immediately to
mind. There are more. But as the saying goes something like, “out of every season of grief, when life seemed heavy or unjust, new lessons for life are learned and new resources of growth and courage are discovered.” And for me, these seasons of grief were simply filtering out the junk in the pouring concrete. 
adventure · integrity · joy · life · school

Weird Science.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Winter solstice approaches. So despite the dwindling hours
of sunlight and what feel like dwindling hours of productivity, change is on
the move. I love thinking about stuff like that – my brother is an “earth
scientist” – basically, he’d steeped in physics, chemistry, and biology, and at
the moment is working as a cleaner upper of this here our earth.
He once sent me a text photo, when he began his job last
year in environmental remediation, of a teeny tiny little frog balancing on my brother’s blue hazmat gloves,
with the note saying, “I’m cleaning his home.” 🙂 It was the very sweetest thing.
Once, Ben and I heard the rumor that on the equinoxes in
spring and fall, you could balance an egg on its end in a window of like 3
minutes, and it wouldn’t fall over because the earth was positioned in such a
way that the gravitational pull was completely equal. – It worked! It totally
balanced on it’s little fat bottom end for about a minute or two before it
lopped over onto its side like all other days of the year.
We used to sit at home on the couch, and he’d basically
translate what he’d just read from Stephen Hawking’s The Universe in a
Nutshell, and we’d talk about the expanding
and contracting of the universe, and about black holes, and just science-y
stuff in general. It was great. I rarely, if ever, get to talk to people about
stuff like that, mainly because I’m so novice, and also, it just doesn’t come
up – so, did you hear about Pluto doesn’t really count! (And p.s. I feel bad
for Pluto’s demotion!)
When I was in college, heading toward, well, I wasn’t always
in my right mind, I was taking a physics course, and one of the classes was on
relativity. And in the “Whoa, man” state of mind I was in, after class, we’re
all outside waiting for the bus, and I don’t really know anyone in the class,
being an English major, and I say to one dude as the bus approaches, isn’t it
crazy, the bus is moving relative to us, but we’re moving on the spinning earth, and
the earth is moving in orbit… You can see why lots of stoners get blown away by
such concepts ;P
But, it – science, math – comes up for me. Strange as it may
seem. My brother was a double major in geo-physics and music theory. Art and
science aren’t as far apart as they may seem. All my painting is is increasing
the viscosity of a pigment to deposit it on another surface 😉 One thing that
came up repeatedly for me over the number of times that I did the Artist’s Way
was to take a math class. Weird, I know. But we’re asked several times
throughout the course to list – without overthinking it – 5 classes we’d want
to take if money and time and fear weren’t an issue. And each time, math would
be on that list.
I was proctoring an SAT exam about 2 years ago for some
extra cash, and I was looking at the test in the aching silence of the room as
these poor students are having meltdowns and panic attacks about their future,
and sine and cosines swim in their graphing calculators. It was actually fun.
To feel these very old creaky wheels in
the back of my brain trying to remember the formula for triangles and circles.
I didn’t remember the harder stuff, but there was an inner perking up of, hey,
I know this stuff, and hey, do we get to do this. (I actually did better on my
SATs in math, twice, than I did in english, so…)
I don’t know what it means, but in keeping with listening to
my inner nudges, and knowing that this math/science thing has come up several
times over the last 4 or 5 years, maybe it’s time to listen. I actually looked
to see if I could do one at my school, but they are waaaay advanced, and I need like algebra 1 again! Not
lecture and lab. Math can be fun. Science was way fun the way my brother and I
used to talk about it. The way that he would explain these concepts to me, and
we could converse about them.
Keep ‘em coming, little nudges. I don’t know what yet to do
with you – but I have utter faith that I will. 
abundance · adventure · creativity · faith · gratitude · holidays · joy · laughter · self-care

Heart Art and Romance.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Today was a good day. I worked my desk shift at the gym, got
to talk a little trash/indignation about the leering guy who came into class
yesterday … and got kicked out. A “back spasm” doesn’t allow you to sit & stare at
women whose legs are up over their head with their cooches hanging out. Then I
came home, began to boil some cinnamon for ghetto air freshener, and cleaned my
apartment, including the dishes.
I normally would not have done that, having been awake at
6:45 this morning, but I had a girl friend coming over to meet for an hour, and
if it weren’t for those weekly meetings, my house would likely devolve into a
sanctuary for monocellular creatures. So, it always makes me feel good to clean
it up – I do believe that my home environment is a direct reflection of my
headspace – hence the post-nuclear disaster.
After she left, I took a good old fashioned nap. After
that…I went on Theater Bay Area, and took my own kick-in-the-butt from this
morning’s blog and emailed 2 casting directors…and…signed myself up for an
audition slot in January…for a musical. That’s right. A musical theater
company. Cuz, whatever dude. I’m gonna suck at anything I do in the beginning.
and this IS the beginning. So, whatever. I’m going to try my best – maybe NOT
do what I did for Sunday’s audition and actually learn my monologues and songs
far enough in advance to really feel confident. … well, confident-ish.
There are two more casting calls to apply to, but they only
list phone numbers, which is a whole new level of fear ;P so, that’ll wait
until Monday – normal business hours, right?
Then, I got ready for a party. A holiday glitter dance party
to be exact, and man was it fun. I saw people from SF I hadn’t seen in a while,
and met new people who live here in Oakland, plus my SF transplant/defector friend, who I’m really glad to have on this side of the Bay.
I danced, I was silly, and energetic, and shy and awkward,
and *tall* in my lovely heels and skirt I wore again :). And I drank a lot of
ginger lemonade punch, and laughed at others’ silly dance antics – and some
really good dance battles! It was fun. I hadn’t felt that in a long time. I was
really glad to be there, social awkward self-centered fear aside. I had fun.
Some of the women were part of an Artist’s Way group who had
their annual “check-in” today, and were going to do an intention setting. It’s
like new year’s resolutions, or any resolutions, only instead of all the
self-will-power of a resolution (damnit, it’s gonna happen – THIS year),
it has the openness and groundedness of being rooted in love, truth,
self-respect, and ultimately, Faith.
So, I got to write down my intention on a piece of paper,
and we all walked out of the house party to the backyard like a wonderfully
powerful, giddy coven under a full though cloud covered moon, and around the circle we voiced our intentions, burned them, and said a
little prayer/blessing of honoring our intentions into the universe. It was
pretty affirming – and so unexpected! I’ll tell you mine, because, hey, an intention
isn’t a birthday wish, it’s a statement of what I intend to do, and to bring into
my life through my action and adherence to my core. It was short, as I didn’t know it was happening till last minute – but that also helped me to
edit.
“To follow thru with my heart, art, and romance.”
Simple, yeah; silly, to some; but, to me, that’s what
I’m doing, and I intend to continue doing it. 

adventure · courage · laughter · modeling · performance

Somebody feed the models.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

welp, if i still took drugs, tonight would have been a nice
night to do it. as it was, i was perfectly present for the shrieks of the event
coordinator, the reverberations of increasingly drunken model cackling in a
room the size of a postage stamp, and the soreness of my toes.
That said 😉 It was pretty cool. It was just a long night –
from 5 – 11, and I left just as things were really getting “swinging” – there
was a band who was just getting their gear set up on the runway we all walked –
I more like ran, than walked. I was first, and I felt like I didn’t have
anyone’s cues to follow, and just sort of went, spun a few times and left! I’m
sure I did just fine 😛
I did meet a lovely man as I was passing out chocolate
balls. (yes, but, no, they were not schweaty.) But as I was leaving I didn’t see
him, so what will be will be. It was nice to flirt in a very light-hearted not
too serious way. Just talk-ish as we watched the other models in the non-profit
clothing.
I also wrote out my monologues for tomorrow, as I’m one of
those kinesthetic learners, and need to write something down in order to really
remember it – tell anyone who has seen me with a sonnet of scribbles on the
back of my right hand (I’m lefty – and I won’t lose my hand – perfect
note-taking).
It was intense with a lot of chaos happening, but it was a
gorgeous old Victorian house in San Francisco right on Alamo square park – near
the Painted Ladies aka the Full House houses.
There’s not much else to report today. I’ll get to see if
any of the photos will be useful for my portfolio, but really, I’m more
intrigued by acting these days than modeling. I did see one girl I’d done
modeling with earlier in the year for the same non-profit – this sort of very
Kate Moss accented blonde model…who is studying to be a teacher at this really
prestigious union of schools. So, she said she’ll let me know next time she
does stuff, and sometimes she even gets paid 😉
It was my first “runway” show – I’d done a little bit of
photo modeling before, but mainly for friends, and nothing “serious”, really. I
do have a profile on a professional website for photographers and models, but,
hell if they’re not really creepy.
I once met up with a photographer over coffee to talk about
his vision, as he’d emailed me, and I was new to the site and thought, well,
I’m not going to say yes without meeting him, but sure I’ll meet him – IN
PUBLIC. He did a lot of nudity, and I wanted to talk about that, as I wasn’t
sure I was comfortable with that (with google these days!! I may be a teacher
myself one day, or a mom!). So we met in a café, and he was telling me about
his “vision”… and in walks a woman who really seemed surprised to see him there
– and he introduces me to his wife. The woman glares at me, then at him with a politely plastered smile
on her face. Then when she leaves with her coffee, he tells me that she’s a
therapist over at the hospital that’s nearby.
Hm, a guy with a thing for having women place realistic
skulls over their vag while otherwise totally naked, and a woman who dives into
often sick people’s brains. Yep, a perfectly fucked up match.
In the end, I declined the offer to shoot with him, despite
his protestations that his images were “relatively tame.”
So, I sometimes troll my profile on that website, but for
the most part, keeping my clothes on when recording for posterity seems like a
good idea. Well, that is until the artist’s live model audition in January!
(but, it’s paid, accredited, and highly professional – really!) 😉