Category: change

acceptance · adulthood · change · courage · discovery · forgiveness · gratitude · grief · honesty · intimacy · kindness · love · meditation · progress · recovery · sex · sexuality · sobwebs · spirituality

Somewhere New.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For several months now, I’ve been working on a particular
area of healing. For those of you who have read the “Savage Love,” then “Savage Beauty” blogs, you know that I’ve been working on healing my relationship with
my sexuality, and my past behavior and experience in this area.
This is likely going to be a little heavy – for which I’m
not thrilled, but I’m honest – so if that’s not what you want today, I’m sure Cyanide
& Happiness will provide some levity
today.
On my way back from the sweat lodge this Sunday, I was riding
with my friend who was running the lodge. I told her that earlier this year,
and late last year, each time I’d “go in” via meditation or shamanic journey
work to ask what I need to do next to move forward, I was presented with the information
that I needed to work on this stuff – sexual trauma and other murky stuff. I have been. Working
with my therapist on EMDR for a little bit (though I’m not seeing her
currently, due to finances), and in these other more alternative ways.
And most of all, through my thesis.
Basically what my thesis trails is a path through my sexual
history. That story parallels my mental breakdown, and my parents’ divorce, but really,
what is being excavated and brought into the light is all of that. The
“highlights” or representative incidents.
Over ages 16 through 24 (a little earlier than 16, but
that’s when it really took off with a very chicken-or-egg tag team with my drinking), is a napalm blanket of sorrow, shame, and
dissociation. When riding in the car with my friend on Sunday, I said to her
that I hadn’t “been in” to ask for a while if I’m “done” with this particular
set of work or not, and wondered if maybe I was, but/and as I found out a little this morning, there are still
some corners left to sweep.
I am grateful that I had the courage to put all of what I
needed to onto paper in my thesis. But, I’m also aware that it goes much deeper
and further than the stark, strobe-like glimpses that I give you, the reader.
And this morning, in meditation, I began to psychicly clear out some of the
cobwebs. (I just accidentally wrote “sobwebs,” which I suppose is pretty accurate
for this morning.)
In fact, I did something pretty literal to sweeping out – in my mind’s
eye, I walked through and into all those situations I remember, and
unfortunately or not, I remember quite a lot quite vividly apparently — more
than I thought I did. I walked through these times and places, into these
couplings and actions, and burned sage there. I carried this sage through all
the circumstances I could remember, and asked them to be cleared of any energy
which is no longer needed.
There are the few where there was kindness,
and the kindness will remain, but there are the many that were out of a sense of obligation, or resignation, or force; or just wanting to feel better; or just wanting to feel anything other than what
I felt. There are those that are truly tragic, and require some extra doses of
compassion and witness, instead of repression.
I don’t know what may or not come of this work this morning.
It was sort of “unbidden;” I didn’t have the intention as I closed my eyes for
meditation this morning to do any of that – but I guess the Powers That Be had
that intention for me, anyway.
One thing I asked for aloud in the prayer circle in Sunday’s
sweat lodge during the final prayer round – the one where we get to pray for
ourselves, out loud so others know what we need – I prayed for healing around
physical intimacy. And that’s where the majority of my tears came on Sunday. My
relationship with my body, my femininity, sexuality, sex, intimacy, being
present in my body when being intimate – all of this needs healing. I’d still
rather hide within my body – offer you it, but not what’s inside it; assume
it’s really all you want from me anyway, so I might as well just give you only
that out of spite – even if you in fact want more. But, hiding within myself doesn’t work
anymore. Beating myself out of my body – or having someone do it for me – doesn’t work anymore. Not being present
is painful now. And not voicing my physical needs to a partner is another way of hiding.
I don’t really know what to do about it yet. I know that I
don’t do what I used to. But I feel like I’ve swung to the opposite side of the
spectrum – from the vixen to Betty Crocker, as I’ve put it. But I know opening
these doors, clearing these wounds, being willing to treat my flesh with care,
and being willing to meet all of you with all of me are mile-markers of
progress.
I’d like to be done with this work. I’d like to declare
myself fit for duty. Maybe it’ll always be an ongoing process, maybe it’ll come
to a place of plateau. I don’t know. But apparently I’m ready to clear the
sobwebs, and arrive at somewhere new. 
acceptance · adulthood · change · friendship · honesty · progress · self-care · self-support

R-E-S-P–…oh you know the rest

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Things I have the power to change:
my hair color
my perspective.
That’s the list for now. Sure, it could be really long, but
that’s what occurs to me at the moment. I haven’t, in fact, changed my hair
color in a few years – after the blonde debacle, and subsequent re-browning –
and, it sort of feels that i haven’t changed my perspective all that much
lately either.
I met up with a friend in SF yesterday, as I went about my
day flyering the city (note the gazillion workshop flyers on the lampposts of Hayes
Valley), and basically, she told me that although she could see that this was
important to me to talk about – where I am in my life, basically, … or rather,
my opinion of where I am in my life –
that she just couldn’t process with me anymore. That she herself, as I well
know, is in a similar position, going through similar changes in her life, and
I guess she’s just fed up with the whole “Let’s figure it out” routine. And so,
she told me, gently, that I’m still in the problem, and not the solution, and
that until I start to do things or see things differently, of course it’s going
to be painful for me.
I was both disappointed, and heartened – our friendship is
that strong, that we can let one another know when we’re being crazy,
basically, and that the other just can’t bear witness to crazy right now.
I have a few marching orders, work I’m doing with a woman
one-on-one, that I can proceed to progress on, and that’s where the change will
come. But, for now, my friend is right – as Jung said (loose paraphrase): we cannot solve the problem at the
level of the problem.
So, if all I have at the moment is my ground level view,
it’s better for now to stop reporting back from the (perceived) bleak front lines, and do
the work I have in front of me which will help me to get a foothold up and out.
Perhaps this all sounds sort of vague, but it’s all I got.
I was reflecting this morning on respect – that something
that I can change is how I respect myself or don’t. Who am I to disparage
myself for not being x y or z? How would I react if a friend came to me and
“should” all over me? (You should know, it should be different, you should have
figured it out already, you should be better…)
I’m realizing that all the time that I spend in lamenting
this situation is time I’m spending beating myself up, and treating myself
unkindly – and without respect. What would it be like to respect myself – to
look at myself from an outsider’s view? To congratulate myself on my
accomplishments, take real stock and account of things that I have done and
talents that I have. What would it be like to take a more well-rounded view of
myself? Would I ever disparage myself as
in the above paragraph? Discounting all that I am? No. Because here are a few
reality checks – a) I’m human – guess what, I come with assets and liabilities. b) I’m hosting a workshop that I’ve
dreamed up, crafted, advertised and implemented all by myself today. (with due
thanks to all my helpers!) and, c) I am poised to graduate from graduate school. I didn’t
make it to my college graduation. I got
high as fuck after my high school one. This time, I’m showing up – period. I’m showing up
entirely differently.
I’ve changed. I have
become someone worthy of respect – most emphatically of my own respect. If I
can begin to take ownership of feelings like that – or rather facts like that – then I can begin to move from the
problem into the solution. I do not need to know anything about what “will
happen.” What I do need to be very careful I count along side of the things I
have “to work on,” are the things that are worthy, lovable, respectable about
myself.
Because in the end, I’m the person with the power to change
my perspective. Because I will inform others’ interactions with me, Fate’s
interactions with me, by leading by my own example of realistic, balanced, and earned respect. 

change · compassion · forgiveness · fortitude · life · maturity · poetry · progress · recovery · San Francisco

Poetic Noise.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I was all set to write a blog about 7 years. How really when
someone is 6 years old, they’re beginning their 7th year of life.
How I’ve been here in the SF Bay Area 6 years to the day, and so I begin my 7th year in
the Bay. And how, further, and don’t quote me, that our cells are said to regenerate every 7 years – all of them – so that I am now beginning a set of 7. Any and all cells that I had in my body when I arrived in San Francisco
have absolutely been purged and regrown, replaced.
I think about this, and intended to write about all the
things that have changed in these 6 full years. About where I am not as I begin
my 7th – about how I feel it’s completely cosmically appropriate
that I stand ready to graduate from a Master’s program and contemplate a return
to the East Coast, and even maybe a career.
I wanted to list things like getting my teeth fixed, a
several-year process that I started here, after 10 years of having a few molars pulled
in high school but never replaced, which made me self conscious in photos,
though few others noticed (I certainly do now, as I smile entirely with every
ounce of my cheeks).
I was going to write about my return to art. About taking up the pencil after several years’ neglect and the first tentative and
judgmental sketches which I shoved away for another few years before warming up
and into myself – culminating in selling a painting last year – me?! of all people.
The last 6 years witnessed a return to the stage, auditions,
head shots, community plays. Two acting classes, and two performance poetry
classes, and some modeling to further my return to being present in my skin.
They also signaled a return to writing, the scribbled in
margins and the back of notebook hobby of mine. Who knew that beginning to post
my poems as Facebook notes for several years would morph into what it is now –
reading in public, (almost) owning my mantle of poet. 
I got a cat, for chrissake. Something I was loathe to do –
my first pet-able animal I’ve ever owned, and having her hasn’t make me a crazy cat
lady… so I’m told.
I put up curtains, set root in San Francisco, didn’t run
away, cut and run, shrink or hide. I’ve emerged slowly, shyly, tentatively,
reluctantly and painfully for sure.
I took guitar lessons and voice lessons. Which I dropped,
but the piano creeps in these days, sending crescendos of joy into my marrow.
For years, while I’ve been here, whenever someone told me
that they were in school full-time, I looked at them as though they were a
movie star, a little starry eyed and goofy and admiring, and said (I remember
so clearly), I envy people who do that – go to school fulltime. And now I’m one
of them. I forget that I really asked for this. I asked for it often and
deeply.
As each of the cells on this corporeal form have dived their
swan song into the ether, I have changed. People sometimes use the term inwardly
rearranged – how literal it is here.
Yes, I intended to write my blog about that – about the
nature and surprise of continuing to beat a heart consistently for 7 years.
But I read my email before I came to write this, and there’s
some poetic noise in the interwebs about some highly public class tension that
occurred last night in the direction of a classmate, and I’m just sort of sad
about it.
We are all human. We are all trying to be free from
suffering and doing the best we can. 
How we act and react — teacher, student, classmate … parent, co-worker, acquaintance, dude who cut me off on the highway — is simply and ultimately the best we can offer for that day. We may not like it or approve – we may reprove ourselves for how we acted or reacted or neglected to act – but we also get to reflect and change what isn’t working for us, whether that’s our perspective or action. 
So mixed with the awe and gratitude I feel for not being the sloppy,
grubbing, manic splash of a young woman I was when I arrived in San Francisco 6
years ago today, I also feel a melancholy compassion for last night’s wounded artist (who
for all I know, may not be), and for the reality that we are all somewhere in the process of this perpetual
self-renewal.
abundance · action · anger · change · faith · freedom · frustration · growth · progress · relationships · romance · self-care · spirituality · work

The Masculine Mystique

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Firstly, I would like to quote an acquaintance of mine as
they responded once to my tirade on SF’s chilly weather – “Then Move.” Touche,
quite right. And I will, just not today.
Secondly, my morning pages were like something out of a
schizo’s notebook this morning, and I’m rather heartened than alarmed by it.
As I began to, again, write that I could paint, a sentence which was followed immediately in my head by the thought, “Yeah, right,” … my morning pages turned
on me, and began a near-two page rejoinder along the lines of Stop Fucking
Saying Yeah Right, and GO DO IT! I channeled the very pissed off and frustrated
voice/part inside me that is exceedingly
tired of the self-defeating, Eeyore-like part of me that crosses all my
interests with a “Yeah, but,” or a “How will I make any money?”
I was happy to see that this activated part was so adamant,
and demanded that I Just Fucking Do It, rather than what I’ve been doing for a
very long time, question, debate, lolly-gag, despair. This voice is the fuck despair
voice. It is the voice, one might say, of my inner masculine.
I’m a little hesitant to draw the dividing line between
feminine and masculine in this way; feminine as pondering and questioning;
masculine as action and fortitude. But, it sort of feels like that to me, and
it’s only my interpretation. There are
plenty of other ways to categorize, or not, these disparate voices and parts of
ourselves. But, for the sake of the argument, I’ll call it my masculine side.
And the truth is, it’s right. Whatever it is, or I call it.
Because this is the point in the job search where I get frustrated and think,
well, nothing will come of it anyway, so phooey, here’s another admin job. My
internal beings of all sorts are having a coup. Nuh, Uh. Time’s up. Off the
pity pot, lady. Get on it.
And further more, Yes, You Can. Furthermore,
to segue,
you/I have very recent experience in NOT behaving as you
would have in the past. You very
recently responded to a situation MUCH differently than factual evidence
had it before. This means … you’re different. You’ve changed. You can do things
now that you couldn’t before, and your mental register aligns with a much
healthier set of behavior and thinking now.
The case in point, is that I was asked to go to the theater
by a boy…man. There is nothing wrong with this person, except that a) I
accepted the extra ticket thinking he has a girlfriend, so I thought it was a friend thing (I found out later he does not), and b) he is new to
the not-drinking world.
Over the last 3 days, I have felt icky – like the princess
and the pea. I know from my own experience that the first few months of not
drinking and trying a whole new way of life – no, not first few months, first
few years (or year, AT LEAST), are so incredibly
formative, that I would be damned to throw a wrench into the wheel works of
someone else’s critical development. I know people who have gotten involved, and it’s
worked out marvelously, but I, surprisingly, was feeling way too uncomfortable
about it.
Sobriety, mine or someone else’s, was way more important to
me than a fucking non-date date. No matter how long it’s been, how intriguing
it is, how fun it could be. Not doing it.
So, through a series of phone calls to friends, and a
confirmation that it’s the respectful thing for us both, yesterday, I texted
the dude and said I’d rather stick to seeing him “around,” than go for coffee.
That I felt “murky” around it.
You know what he said?
“Okay. No worries!”
???!!!
All my f’ing belly aching, and heming and hawing, and “Okay,
No Worries”?? Wow, this honesty thing really f’ing works.
Through a series of circumstances, the timing was different
than he thought, so I get to go see the play by myself and also get to have a
clean, peer-like relationship with this dude. I don’t have to feel weird, or
avoid, or future-trip about it. The play is the bonus prize – the actual prize
is the relief of doing the right and honest thing for myself, and sticking to a
new way of being.
I know from direct experience that I haven’t always
responded that way to someone who was new to not drinking, and I experienced
the fallout of that, however brief it was. I, apparently, have learned from my
experience. And my internal alarm system is calibrated to this new way of
being.
I say all this to say, that my masculine side has a point.
All that writing this morning about Just Do It has a point. The point is that I’m not the person I used to be. I don’t have the same
reactions I used to, and so I don’t have to follow the same actions I used to.
This whole “new way of living” has made itself quite apparent in my life, and I
can allow the boon of that to propel me forward.
I don’t have to be afraid anymore. Afraid there isn’t
enough, or I’m not good enough, or I’ll never make it anyway, or that a
creative life is a stupid one.
In fact, I don’t have these fears anymore, really. They’re
just echoes. There’s nothing real to scare me. There’s no one stopping me, or
chiding me, or making fun of me.
And if there ever is, I apparently have a massive bully to
yell affirmations at them. 
change · growth · letting go · sacrifice · surrender

the sacrificial bull

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I’d written some in the blog “The Hero’s Journey” in January, when
we’d been asked in a workshop what part of a particular mythological journey we
were on. It was the story of the Minotaur, but it begins years before with his father, or
maybe even grandfather? Can’t remember.
The part that I identified with in the story was when the
hero (one of them) asks to be crowned king by Poseidon, the sea god. The god
agrees to make him king, but only if he will sacrifice this gorgeous white bull
Poseidon gives to him. The hero, thinking, sure of course, anything, says No
problem. And he becomes king.
Problem is, he becomes attached to the white bull, perhaps
even falls in love with it, I can’t remember. But he refuses to sacrifice the
bull, and instead sacrifices 100 goats to appease the god.
The god is not appeased. And ruin falls on generations of
his family, including on the poor not of this world/not of that Minotaur.
I’d written then that I felt like I was at the point in the
journey when I’m being asked to sacrifice the bull, but instead have been
sacrificing a litany of goats. There were a few things I had in mind as being
“the bull,” something I wasn’t ready to give up, and instead would twist myself
into a mental and emotional pretzel to keep, thereby “sacrificing goats.” But
the gods have not been appeased, the bull remains, and I am plagued.
This morning, while writing my Morning Pages, I was struck
by an awful thought. A thought so harrowing, I gasped aloud, “No.” Not this.
I was talking with a friend last night after class, and she
is looking to move from her house with 7 roommates, to a more manageable house
with 4, perhaps. She told me how much she’s looking to spend, how much
she pays now, and that went in my mental hopper.
So, this morning, when writing, when the thought came to me
that perhaps I ought to get a room in a house with other people – I was struck
aghast. This cannot be my bull. My apartment, with afternoon sunlight, big enough,
where people come and say, It’s perfect for you. No, not this.
I was so terrified of the idea of giving this place up for
money, to sacrifice this small little studio for a room in a house with
roommates that I actually started to tear a little in desperation.
What this did, then, was show me that giving up this housing
situation would be another goat. It is not the housing I need to give up, it is
the staying small. It is my refusal to put myself out there. And perhaps, I
have hit a bottom when this option has become my best thinking’s best resort.
I began to write in the pages that I am willing – I am
willing to give up my hiding. To work, to earn, to share my gifts, to stop
staying small. I am willing to be big to save this apartment from my own hari
kari.
Whether that’s the lesson of this or not, I don’t know. But
I do know that I am not at all willing to give this apartment up at the moment.
For all I have to say about Oakland, etc., I live in a wonderful neighborhood,
close to my communities of choice, and as conveniently located as possible. My apartment
itself has become a part of my skin, taking on the tone and tenor of my inner
changes – dressed in the swag of my current expression. Not this.
Staying small, hiding, refusing to take the action that will
really help me move forward (i.e. really putting on the damned workshop I’ve
been working on for a year), not believing in myself and my abilities — these are my bull. The familiar but horrifically
painful and consequence-producing patterns of my contracted, constricted behavior is my bull.
The apartment is not. I still do leave it up to the Invisible
Sky Faerie, but faced with the option of giving up this seriously not that
expensive apartment, I’m becoming willing to sacrifice my bull. I am becoming willing to Go Big, and Go Home.
change · courage · poetry · vulnerability

We have Lift-Off

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, on Wednesday, I called my girl friend from school, and
my first words on her voicemail were, “I need help.” She called me back immediately.
I asked her if I could just come over to work on my thesis
in her presence, just to have another human around as I was attempting
to compile and sort and order my poems into a cohesive whole.
I used to do this as a kid, have a parent just sit nearby –
I didn’t need their input or help, just needed a person there to help me feel
calm enough and supported enough to do the work. She said sure.
So I went over with snacks, like a good Jew, and actually,
she did begin to read it. Some are poems she’d seen before, some are
new. She really liked them. Moreover, one of my concerns is that because my
thesis is basically about me and my story, was it too “myopic,” too personal to
reach anyone else besides me? She said no – she said, in fact, reading my own
stuff helped her to think about her own – she said it was important, and that
she liked how it was written.
She had some good insights and points about how to make it a
cohesive whole, and although my innards scream, “REALLY?!?! YOU LIKE
IT???,” she did.
Yesterday, I went to a coffee shop with everything I’ve got
and began to edit some of them, and to look at the few edits my friend made. It
was interesting. She’d suggested that I consider, as I’m editing and working on
this, to remember that this isn’t “my” story, this is a work I’m giving to
others. That perhaps that could help to take some of the emotional charge and
swept-awayness out of it. Because it’s the same as most “selfish/self-less”
work – I get the benefits of sharing this and someone else gets the benefit
from hearing it.
I tried to keep some of that in mind yesterday. But mostly
what I was struck by was, indeed, how much my writing has changed over the last year. It was a year ago around
this time that my professor “accused” (she says still slightly burned) my
writing of being melodramatic and cliché.
So, I wrote in reaction to that comment, and began to write
in the most “non-emotional,” facts only way that I could.
Turns out – it’s good. My friend asked me this week if I
knew that my strength lay in minimalism – I said no, I had no idea! I had no
idea this writing, this style would come out of me or this master’s program.
But it has. And I like it. She said, she likes that it’s snarky. And indeed it
is. I like that that comes across. It’s quite tongue-in-cheek. Very “lay this out in front of you without any affect,” because the affect is
in how you are absorbing it, what it arises in you – When someone tells you something horrific in a
flat tone, you think serial killer. Well, it’s sort of something like that. The
non-emotionalism is allowing me to tell the story.
Perhaps, one day, if I choose to come back to this content,
I will flesh it out or approach it differently, but for now, this is the only
way I can let you know what happened without freaking out. And you don’t need to know how I felt. Your reaction is likely the same as mine – and that’s the
important part for this writing, or maybe any. To get the reader to feel
something.
So, as I sat, surrounded by other people, my safety blanket,
at the café yesterday and began to chop off whole parts of my earlier work, I began
to see that this body of work may actually work, and that perhaps my writing is
worth while. 

action · change · fantasy · fear · integrity · responsibility

Magical Accidental Orgasm

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In The Vagina Monologues,
there is a piece in which a woman comes to the realization while in a
“Vagina Workshop” that she had avoided finding her clitoris. That she had
believed that orgasms happen to
her, that they weren’t something she should… have a hand in. She was
occasionally the recipient of magical, accidental orgasms (on horseback, or in
water, she says), but had never actually made one happen herself.
When she was instructed in the workshop that it was time to
find her clitoris, she noticed she began to panic. She had to now give up
the idea that someone would come along and give her orgasms, she had to now give up the
idea that someone was coming to live her life for her.
Her lines occurred to me as I walked toward yesterday’s professional
development seminar for writers. The sense that I was having to give up the
idea that someone would come along and live my life for me – that someone else
would make the decisions, take the actions that would enable me to be a something. A writer, an artist, a worker.
I have magical, accidental thinking too. And as I noticed I
was experiencing a strange sense of sadness on my way to the seminar yesterday,
I realized this was why. It is becoming time for me to “find my clitoris.” To
stop waiting for someone to do this for me, to stop waiting for someone to hand me
the roadmap for my life, and time for me to begin actually taking action if I
want results.
This brought grief. The death of my magical thinking. The
death of my hope that I could float along on half steam. Because I have floated along on half steam, the recipient of
magical gifts from the Universe. The problem with floating along without my own
power is that I now come to approach the job market, the work world, with no
sense of self-esteem. What have I
done? Where have I been a real
asset?
Sure, I have a long resume, with a host of attributes, but
none of them have anything to do with what gives me fire. When a friend
suggested recently that once May comes along, I’ll find my “fuck yeah” job at
40 hours a week with benefits… I thought I would vomit. Or rather, my whole
internal organ system went momentarily into a freeze. FUCK NO. 40 hours a week
with benefits sounds like a prison sentence. But it’s always what I’ve fallen
back on. I’m a good little worker bee; under half-steam I can coast along on
charisma and menial labor.
That is not my “fuck yeah” job. So what is? Because I have
ultimately avoided finding my “spot,” I have no idea.
But, I have now realized that I’ve been wishing that someone
would make those decisions and take those actions for me. That I would
magically and accidentally end up in the career, field, job that I love.
And I’ve realized that this is not true. And further, back
to the self-esteem thing, it doesn’t build it. Being gifted by the Universe has
been wonderful; I’ve been able to walk through the fire of dramatic uprisings
in finances and personal relationships. I have done this with as much work as I
thought was necessary, but not much more.
I am frightened. I have never really done much of the
showing up wholly and fully, and so I don’t yet have the experience that I can.
But, I know for absolute certain that if I don’t let go of my magical thinking,
I will “end up” in another cubicle, and I have promised myself, sworn to
myself, and begged myself to not do that.
This means accepting that I am worth the effort; and that I
am worthy of the effort. That I am worthy of my full attention, and don’t need
to be dependent on or subject to the random twists of fate. 
It’s time to take
matters into my own hand.
art · change · painting · sexuality · trying

The Art of Progress.

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In considering ways to accrue and earn funds, I read that I
should make a list of things that I could sell, but not anything associated
with hobbies. It’s a good thing that was written there, because at first, I
immediately go, well, I guess I can sell my bass amp. Which I’ve been lugging
around for 5 years, and the bass guitar for … gosh, since college, almost 10 years. The bass which I do
not know how to play – not really. I fuck around with it, sometimes even plug
it in (which make my insides all joyfully trembly), and I have this bass riff that I enjoy to play that I made up. But, I
don’t know any songs or the scales (yet).
So, luckily it was written not to sell hobby things, because
I have a lot of such hobby items I’d start to list, like putting my disowned
children on the chopping block.
Then, in another book, the author told the story of a man,
an artist, who had several paintings around his home with a woman turned away
from the viewer. The person visiting his home said, I think you may have
trouble in your love life. The artist was shocked – yes, he did indeed. And she
pointed out that all these paintings, which he had made, were of women turning
away from him. And through her suggestions, he painted different, new paintings
– at first with multiple women in them together with a man(!), and later, of
just one man and one woman. Guess what happened.
So, I look at the art piece I have above my bed – 7
paintings of women, the central one of a man kissing a woman, and she’s looking
out at the viewer. The others are all obscured, obstructed, partial views of
women. As if you can never see, or have, all of her. Just these parts you have
to put together yourself in your mind. Sexy though they may be to me, I’m very
reminded of the above story of the artist.
This art piece reflects detachment, a “you can’t have all of
me” just the parts I choose to show you. I think it’s interesting to think on
it this way. As that’s certainly my M.O. in love and relationships.
Particularly around sex – I’ll give you my body, but like the woman looking
away from her lover and toward the camera, I won’t give you my self, my
attention, my all.
Therefore, it occurs to me, that perhaps it is time to let
this piece go. It represents a way of being that I want to move away from, and
perhaps… though I am terrified to begin the process – perhaps someone else
might want it – Might want to buy it.
Now, I realize this moment, that I ought not sell it to
someone who’s read this blog! G-d forbid I hand another person a scene of
loneliness! – but that’s my association. Other people have said, sensual and really
good and creative.
I’d written previously about my reluctance to sell my art,
art that means something to me – particularly one piece I sold very quickly without much thought to its importance to me, or to a price that would honor that
importance. But, this feels like I’m doing the work to let this one go. That I
am prepared and preparing to allow this piece of me to go out into the world.
There’s a café around the corner from me with a sign by the cash register: “Are you an artist? Then you should show here!” or something like
that. I think I’ll ask them what they think. 
“Find Me – Take Me”. Watercolor&mixed media. Nov ’12.
Asking Price $1500.00

change · laughter · life · self-care

Red Light, Green Light, One Two Three

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Remember that game? It was a schoolyard game when I was a
kid, and I recalled the above phrase as I was folding my new hand and dish
towels onto their rack in my kitchen yesterday afternoon.
I took down my red towels, and put up my new green ones. Spring,
country, moss-colored luxury. Red light = Stop. Green light = Go. It felt
rather metaphorical.
I’d bought the red ones several years ago for my last
apartment, to go with the black, white, and red theme I wanted to have. And I carried
them with me to this apartment. But, yesterday as I stood in the abundant
radiance of Bed Bath & Beyond… I was attracted to the green. Apparently,
with my few other purchases yesterday, I am moving from that former color scheme
to a new one in my kitchen: mossy green, blond wood, and white. I like it.
It feels like spring. It also feels like change.
To me, the red now feels stark, instead of sexy or modern as
it used to. The green feels soft, and cozy, and just a bit cheeky, like it’s
about to tell you the punch line to a roll-your-eyes joke.
Last year around this time, I was invited to read some
poetry of mine at a friend’s art show opening. At the time, I was in the thick
of the awfulness of break-up land, and would rather slice my eyeballs with a
razor than produce art. For me, art is a product of health and at least some
healthy passion – be that anger, joy, or even contentment. As it was, I was
quite depressed and lethargic, and “producing” anything felt like a Herculean
effort. But I agreed.
During that time, as I was aware that I was not in any mood
to create, that I was still in the contracted, inverted phase of winter, I
noticed the copse of tall trees that I see out my kitchen window. Every day I
see them as I write my morning pages, tall over the building next door, at
least a hundred feet tall, and observe them going through the seasons of the
year.
One of those March mornings, I noticed the trees were
beginning to bud. I gasped. I’m not ready!
I’m not ready for production, expansion, greenery. I want stark, barren,
lifeless.
But, bud the trees did, and read poetry I did.
This week, I got an email from a woman at school inviting me to again participate in their annual open mic at the end of the month. And this year as I watch the trees begin to bud again, bolstered by their augur of Spring, I identify with their quiet expansion, and I
answer, yes.
I can’t wait to see what I’ll write. 🙂

abundance · change · letting go · recovery · self-care · work

The Last Mile.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

 or “Romance & Finance.”

So, I spoke with the HR woman at work, and today and tomorrow will be my last days temping here with this interior design firm. Last days for now, as school starts on Wednesday, and the reality is I’m really, really worn. The word I used to the HR person was “spare.” That’s how I’m feeling at the moment. In fact, I’m writing this blog at work right now, as I DID make my effort to get to work on time… then I realized that the Oakland bus system and BART are running on a Sunday schedule for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and so my reliable bus was not coming 😛

But, I caught a bus, and made it in anyway. On my way in, I was reading from a book which shares the stories of people who have recovered from the insanity of financial woes, and the story I read really hit me. I realize that, with the upcoming influx of tax return and student loan disbursement, I’m right about to throw myself back into my own merry-go-round of financial problems.

All my fetishizing of having a car won’t solve my problem. Taking jobs I don’t want to take won’t solve my problem, but not actually taking consistent and persistent action toward earning money in alternative ways won’t solve my problem either. Luckily, last night, I got a call from a woman who is willing to help me walk through the steps I need to take to get clearer and freer from this roller coaster of poverty/manic spending/poverty/manic spending. Cuz that’s my pattern. I am broke broke broke, in a panic, and then a miracle occurs, I have a job, money again, and then I start to live in magical thinking, and spend spend spend. And I’m back to where I was.

Now, it’s usually not “all bad”, so I justify it. It’s been, in the past, a lot of spending large wads of money on parties for my friends, or a “gotta get away” weekend (i.e. I’m not taking enough daily care of myself, and need to blow a large wad on RAMPANT self-care. You know, TIME TO RELAX folks. It doesn’t really work that way, I’ve discovered.).

I feel like things are going to turn. That these are the last vestiges of my best ideas about how to earn, save, and spend money. (I say “save” with only the most passing acquaintance with an ING account that’s had $0.09 in it for over a year.) So, that feels good. That the sun *is* around the corner, and that I’m crawling the last mile on ragged, glass embedded knees. The last mile that I’ve had to crawl to see that I just can’t fucking crawl anymore.

Perhaps I’ll only have to turn this corner once, perhaps I’ll have to turn it more than once. But I really do hope that things are going to shift for me. In the end, it’s not at all about money. It’s about my availability to my life. Being distracted by my money woes is a great way to stay small, and contracted, and constricted. And as I head into all these new adventures in my life, I would like to create a firmer foundation to stand on – and part of that is getting off this merry-go-round, and listening to how other people have walked from the soul-crush of financial insecurity into the hopeful, secure world of abundance and clarity.

It’s also not about “making a lot of money.” As, I’ve had wonderful salaries in the past, and still only have $25 in my ING account, which I put in last month.

Finally, it has occurred to me that my cycle of nothing then something then nothing looks a lot like my relationships with men. It’s everything all at once, or it’s nothing nothing at all. It’s gorging on the love and intensity of a relationship, or it’s like the lonely echo down a long well shaft. Remember what I said about the Italian? Burn hot, burn quick? Yeah, well my longest (also most recent) relationship *just* made it over the 7 month mark – and the one before that (about 3 years prior) was six months. (Embarrassing, but true, prior to that, my longest official “girlfriend/boyfriend” relationship was 6 weeks. … 6 weeks with the alcoholic painter; 6 weeks with the alcoholic chef; and, oddly, firstly, 6 weeks with the non-alcoholic but tanning bed addicted jerzey guido …)

Vicious “Everything or Nothing” wields its ugly head here too.

I truly believe that as I heal one, I heal the other. And I’ve begun healing both in different ways recently.

So, To letting go of my old and best ideas, which have led me to a temp job, zero “real” prospects, and exhaustion.

Bring on the corner. (gently please?) 🙂