Category: fortitude

action · art · creativity · fortitude · gratitude · inspiration · progress · school · trying

Through the Tunnel

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Well, I suppose I’m better than yesterday. A number of
contributing factors. Met up with friends in the morning, got asked to go see a
play this Sunday, got asked to go to that Dharma Punx meditation group tonight,
made plans with a friend for tomorrow afternoon, made plans with a friend for
Sunday afternoon, got my thesis paperwork signed by the folks I needed and it was
confirmed that the last signature I need can
be gotten on Monday without penalty, was congratulated (even without the
uploading) that I will now have an MFA degree and that that’s an accomplishment
even if I don’t feel it right now, ran into my professor who’s helping me with
next Saturday’s workshop and got some details worked out, got my locker
combination from the sports center and put on the sneakers I’d hidden in there
almost 8 months ago, took a REALLY long walk through the awesome grounds at
school, had a lovely little conversation with a lizard, walked through the
school’s herb and healing plant tour, got some good rehearsal in for acting
class, had some good convo’s with student friends of mine, came home and wrote
the performance piece for May 1st and really like how it turned out,
and then had a long convo with a great friend of mine.
So…. yes, things pass. I needed ALL of that to get through
the funk, and there’s still the lingering notes of Beethoven’s funeral march
playing in the back of my head, but I don’t feel quite nearly as pissy or whiny
as yesterday. This is good.
Plus, I’ll babysit for nearly all of today, and kids, even
though I’m always nervous to babysit for that long of periods (how the f can I
entertain kids that long!), they’ll help me get back into the more playful,
much less self-serious frame of mind.
There was an enormo orange cat perched on the garage
overhang as I was writing my morning pages this morning. I always try to get my
cat to notice these things, and tap vigorously out the window, but she rarely
seems to get it and thinks I’m just playing. D’ah, well.
Luckily, it feels, there’s really nothing more to report.
Getting through my emotional tornado was enough news for me. Oh, I also got a
few new books from the library before my scheduled phone call with this woman
who used to work at galleries, and now works for a law firm or something for
art and artists – i forget exactly what she does, but I wrote it down. I wrote a lot down.
We’ve been trying to schedule this call for nearly a year. I let the thread drop sometime in October, and finally picked it back up
this month. And we finally got to speak. She was really helpful and informative,
as I gather information about what jobs there are in the fine art world. She
asked why I was more interested in the art world than the writing world, and I
said, I guess I just feel so surrounded by writers, that I like the avenue of something
else. Plus, I told her that personally, I love painting because it gives my
brain an alternate route to process and develop things – she said to definitely
use that sentiment in interviews.
Plus, she gave me info on the other worlds of fine art. The
trifecta, apparently, is galleries, museums, and auction houses. She said that
my writing background shouldn’t deter me (as in my lack of fine art/art history
background), that as long as I “present well,” and do good work, there’s no
reason that this world should be prohibited from me. Which is great news.
So, now I have more info on jobs in that field, a website
for fine art jobs to check out, and a contact to run things by. She’s actually
a friend of my ex, and he’d put us in touch a million years ago, so, shout out
to him. I toyed with texting him my thanks, but figured the best thanks is to
just go forward with this work. He doesn’t really need to know. … As my ability
to let go of all outcome or response from him is limited, and it’s better that
I just leave it be. But I am hugely grateful.
A lot got done yesterday. My eyeballs are quite red and dry
from all the computer hours logged, so I’ll be glad to focus on kids today, the
most anti-computer screen-like things of all.
It’s just sloughing off the old, I suppose. Fear is normal,
but really, it’s just boogymen, and I have a massive flashlight powered by all
y’all. So, thanks. 

action · balance · fortitude · love · recovery

Talking Alarm Clock Meditation

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

When I sit for meditation, if I’m timing it, I set my alarm
clock to the setting where it plays back a recording. I can record whatever I
want, 8 seconds long.
I bought this little clock before I set off to teach English
in South Korea in 2004, and had my mom record herself telling me to wake up,
so that I could hear her voice on the opposite side of the earth.
At some point the recording got recorded over, I
accidentally pushed the recording button, and it got erased, so I’ve gotten the
chance to have it say whatever I want it to.
For the past few years, I’ve recorded and rerecorded myself
saying “Thank you,” so at the end of my meditation time, instead of an alarming
beeping as it’s set to wake me up, I hear a soft voice repeat that phrase till
I hit the stop button.
Today, I accidentally erased that recording, and went to say
“Thank you” again into the little microphone in the back, but instead, I
recorded myself giggling. 😉 And I played it back, and it giggled, and I
giggled back at it, cuz it’s so silly but infectious, and at the end of my
meditation time this morning, it giggled at me. And as I reached to shut it
off, I giggled too. It’s very silly.
And yet, I’ve been hearing and reading more about the power
of laughter and smiling. A friend of mine’s been participating in a heart-smile
meditation with a friend at school. She said basically, they just sit around
for an hour … smiling. She said it feels weird, but sort of funny and cool, and
that the facilitator/friend of ours said that you have to actually smile with
your face, you can’t just smile inside.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this. In fact, I
think I probably read it first in Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love during her sojourn to Indonesia and to the Balinese
medicine man, who told her to smile “even in her liver.”
And in another book I’m reading, they talk about the healing
power of laughter. About the frequency that gets emitted when we laugh, about
how it can heal us, about how we can change our current thoughts, simply by
laughing.
I haven’t done the meditation, although I’m curious, and
probably will sit in with those girls sometime soon. But, something this
morning – well, I just didn’t want to record the staid “Thank you” again. I
wanted something lighter. Laughier.
I think this whole “power of positive thinking” thing has
its merit. And I’m also getting to notice the needed balance between magical thinking
or “visioning” or collaging with the very earth-oriented action steps that I’m
having to take. I believe there’s a dovetailing of these two actions. Visioning
and taking action.
If I don’t use my imagination to concretize or even
vague-itize what it is I want in this life, I will be a 50 year old secretary.
If I only spend my time “manifesting,”
creating collages, or being in my magical accidental thinking, then nothing
will actually change.
However, I need the basis of those visions, those dreams,
desires, callings, whatever people are talking about when they say “follow your
bliss,” in order to figure out what the hell my bliss is.
Of course, the second part is the action. And luckily, I’m
at a moment in my life when I’m becoming more open to the baby steps that it
takes. These look small this week. But, they’re not.
I called my credit card companies to close my current
accounts. I called those store credit cards still listed on my credit report
which I haven’t used, or seen, in years (Mandees anyone?). I have one more
“hard” call to make. I have a collection agency on my report, with initials below it that are the same as one of the hospitals I was in when I was 21. I don’t know
if that’s what it’s referring to, or if I still owe money to them or not. But, clarity is better than fear or
vagueness.
Other action items of this week are to let you, and my other
communities, know that I’ll be participating in a reading at school at the end
of this month as a part of an open mic/party night. I told this to someone on
Sunday, and she insisted that an action I take this week is to LET PEOPLE KNOW.
To continue out of my hiding and isolation, and to let people know.
In that vein, I’m to work on a chapbook for the reading.
Basically, a small collection of my poems, so that I might be able to sell them
there. It’ll be about the same time my thesis final draft is due, and I should have a good
portion of work at that point.
Putting my work out there; putting myself out there; closing
up these holes of old accounts and fears. These are what enable me to move a
mountain one spoonful at a time. And if a giggling alarm clock helps me get
there, so be it. 

abundance · courage · family · forgiveness · fortitude

My Life is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My Body is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order

My Home is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order
My Finances are in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order
My Time is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order
My Family is in Harmony and in Perfect Living Order
Now that you’ve vomited, gagged, or simply stopped reading,
this is the phrase that occurred to me this morning. Particularly around my
family.
These are affirmations, which means that they may not be
precisely “true” at present, but the point is to work at believing them, and to
bring them into being. Affirmations have a long history, with me too, of being
thought of as poppy-cock, and nonsense, and sooooo gushy icky lovey for only the really far out
hopeless cases of wishful, magical thinkers.
And, be that as it may, what harm can they do.
It’s like the removal of the paintings of women hidden from
the viewer. What harm can it do? It’s like seeing a holistic chiropractor who
recommended gargling with (diluted!) apple cider vinegar because I was getting
sick. What harm can it do? It’s like believing that my parents will behave themselves when they see
each other at my graduation.
Like the anxiety/control bug will do, this parasite will
glom onto anything to maintain its existence. And, currently, now that it looks
like I may well graduate (WHEW!), it looks like my parents are coming out to see me
“walk” for graduation.
I’m… anxious in advance. My parents were not the fighting
kind when they were married. They were the not talking kind, speaking, toward
the end especially, only about who has a dentist appointment that day, or when
they’ll be home, etc. So, it’s difficult to imagine a reality in which they
talk less, but, I’m in it. We’re in it.
In fact, it’s worse. Because now, there’s rancor and
distrust and dislike. There’s resentment basically. And for the most part,
since their divorce ten years ago, a) they do not talk, email, communicate
(except through my brother and me), and b) if they mention each other, it’s
with bile.
So, my anxiety bug has been glomming onto the event of their
being in the same place at the same time, and how uncomfortable their tension
makes me.
It’s been suggested that I can let each of them know that
this is on my mind, and that I look forward to a happy occasion. They don’t
have to be best friends – they never really were – they just have to get along
enough to celebrate a happy occasion. My happy occasion.
My therapist said yesterday that it’s typical for people who
have had to take on adult responsibilities prior to adulthood to get a little
paralyzed and fearful when faced with adult rites of passage, such as
graduation. That we have put on such a show and action of being adult before our
years that when we’re actually faced with real acts of adulthood, we don’t
really know what to do with that. There’s a feeling that we haven’t in fact
grown up enough to take on the responsibilities we’re being asked to take on.
The fact is, I didn’t graduate undergrad with my friends and
roommates. I was in a mental institution at the time, coming off a combination
of drugs and alcohol, most of which noone knew I was abusing so much. I
remember my fear of what would happen when I graduated. This fear of going home
to live with my dad (my parents had only divorced that year) and knowing that
he and I were at odds. Seeing that my roommates and friends were all getting
ready to prepare for it, and I was in some bar, occasionally some bar in Philly, miles
away from school and responsibility.
And in a final act of “I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing
– H E L P!!!,” I shaved my head – bicced it – in a moment of defiance, rage, and desperation.
I didn’t know why I was really doing it then – it seemed … logical? It seemed
like my only recourse. It felt like I was on that electric walkway at the
airport, and its moving along underneath me, but I’ve lost my footing, and its
dragging me, scraping me apart as others stand so calmly heading toward their
future.
I did graduate, and “walk” a year later, once the chaos all
settled. But, certainly, it’s been on my mind as I set to graduate this May. The
same sense … or maybe it’s just a similar sense – of not knowing what I’m
doing; that I don’t know what’s on the other side of this change; that don’t
you know how lost I am still, and I’m not sure I’m ready for this.
However, the truth is much different. It’s different than my
fear, and it’s much different than the reality of 9 years ago. The truth is, I’ve
been told by my academic advisor that this fear is normal. I’ve been told by my
therapist that this fear is normal. And, I’ve been told that I am certainly not
who I was 9 years ago. That the resources and foundation that I’ve worked to
build is actually quite solid, and my fears are no more than that. Just fears.
Just worries that Molly doesn’t know how to do it perfectly.
That Molly is at a different place than some of her high school and college
peers with their children, spouses, and minivans. I’m just worried that I’m
still a foundering vessel – but I’m not. I can let myself be. I can let myself
fall into the abyss of despair, worry, and self-pity. But that really doesn’t
take into account the facts.
The fact is, I’m much more capable to take care of myself
and my life than ever before, and I have a host of people to help me when I
feel like I’m failing at it. And, the fact is that whatever happens between my
parents when they come visit is not a reflection that I have somehow failed. That their tense relationship is an
outside reflection of my inability to have a normal, sane, happy life.
Not true. And, so I will repeat the above mantras, in their
purpose to solidify from wish and desire to truth. And maybe even get a little
excited and proud that I have accomplished something rather remarkable. 🙂
community · fortitude · gratitude · grief · love

Be Lightning.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It will be impossible to write today without acknowledging
yesterday. Puffy eyed and dehydrated, as if I drank all the salt water
that I poured out yesterday.
A bottle of root beer was spilled ceremony-like into a glass
of vanilla ice cream. Like when someone spills a person’s favorite drink onto
their grave in memoriam.
Someone chuckled at the number of women he’d slept with who
came to the funeral. That that said something, that they all showed up.
A woman he worked with told about the practical jokes he’d
done at work, like rearranging her cubicle when she was gone for lunch, so that
when she came in, it was all walled in and backwards, and she couldn’t get into
it.
What I thought of him was that he
was like the initial spark of a lightning bolt. That all of the ions became
electrified just by being in his
vicinity, just by being adjacent to him. That suddenly the whole place, the
whole sky was lit up. He had that effect.
I am not among the women he slept
with. I was not friends with him in a familiar, close way. But I was in his
vicinity, often, and I too had been lit up by him. Heartened by his just being
there, even if he was sulky and sarcastic, as he was more and more. It just
felt good to know him. Just to know he was here.
There were more than 200 people
there yesterday, with standing room only, and all the doors to the small chapel
opened wide for people to crowd in together. I shook with repressed sobs. His
mother was in a mildly hysterical, altered state that you associate with
someone with dementia – oh, isn’t this nice, what’s your name. …
In Judaism, parents who have lost
a child get a free pass to heaven, no questions asked. In Judaism, we also
don’t do open caskets. So this was the first time I’d been near a … one.
Awkward in his My Girl made-up face. The slight raised angle of his
eyebrows toward the middle that always made him look like he was eager, or
worried.
I’d written a blog a while back
about death, and how it occurred to me that what was left was love, and
children’s laughter. There was a child there yesterday, his nephew, playing
outside the opened doors where people were crowding in. And love is not even
the right word for what was felt in that chapel yesterday. It’s not even close
to big enough.
With no other course, I am
inspired to honor this life, his life, by attempting to be a fraction of the electric ion that he was. To quit my solitude and hiding. To love as
much as I can, as I know I’m here to do. And lastly, with no other course, to accept that this had to be done. That this was necessary. That he needed to go home. That he needed to go back. 
For all of the lives you brightened. For the one thing that held you back from “getting it.” For addiction’s baffling ability to cut us down. And for your legacy that poured from every eye in that chapel.  May you be at peace. 

fear · fortitude · poetry · responsibility · school

Make It Work

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

True to the mixed bag that life is, yesterday was a mixed
day. I’m insanely grateful that I wrote my confirmation of the goodness of the
Universe blog before I checked my email
yesterday morning. Because in that email was one from Thursday from my thesis advisor
which stated that my blog cannot be my thesis – that it is being rejected. …
And further that she strongly recommends, “no, let me put it more firmly,” she
writes, that I must go “thesis in progress.”
TIP means that I pay about $500 for the luxury of not having
to turn something in this semester. It means that I pause the thesis process
and am able to work on it and deliver something and meet with her still over
the course of the next year. It also means that I cannot “walk” for graduation
in May.
I write her back that this is my reluctancy to do this. And
that for the love of G-d, I want to be “done” when I am done. But I don’t tell
her that this time; I’d already done so in our previous … terse email exchange
before I handed in my blog in a “well, I don’t have anything better to give”
moment.
She says back that, okay, bring all the poetry I’ve got when
we meet on Tuesday, and we’ll try to make something work, “no promises.” Cobble
something together out of poetry and prose, and to clear my slate for the next
month to do a lot of revision, and who knows, she says, “you may just like it.”
Sniff. Ahem. It’s not
that I don’t like writing, or haven’t enjoyed writing poetry in the past. But, she asked me, I just don’t get
it, didn’t you come here to write a book? And this is where she and I are on very different pages. What
I have to inform her, I don’t know if I do. But, no, lady, I did not come to school to write a book. I have no
aspirations to be published. I believe there is a rich landscape of poets whom
I consider awful to not my style but have much merit to striking and inspiring. Do I really feel the overwhelming
need to put my voice in with them? As a book? In that limited particular, stick
on a shelf in some dusty graduate school library and possibly a few books
stores with shelves already lined with a million books in an underlit poetry corner?
No. I don’t have an overwhelming need to do that.
Do I believe in my voice? Yes. That’s what I’m doing here,
in this blog. With my community, and in other creative manners. Do I believe that
even if there are a million other people
on the shelf that I have as much a right as any of them to add my voice? Of
course. But that doesn’t mean I want to. Not now. Not in this way.
But, I’ve now recognized the pattern I have with her, which
is her as the little man in The Wizard of Oz in the circlular porthole
of the gigantic green Emerald City door saying “No way No how, nobody gets in
to see the wizard.” And we exchange a few emails, and then she says, Well,
we’ll see what we can do.
In the time between No Way No How, and We’ll See What We
Can Do, I am thrust into a dither of indignation, righteousness,
misunderstoodness, and despair. And then, on the other side, I am back to feet on the
ground, Okay, cool, we’ll see what we can do, hope, things can and will work
out – they always do, and I have faith that by doing some work it will.
That, dearests, is not her fault or her problem. That I get thrown WAAAAY overboard into a tizzy is not her
fault. And now, especially that I see the pattern, I am more prepared for it,
and more able to do what I’ve heard other people say, which is “to wear the world as a
loose garment.”
The reality is, yes, my family has plans to come out to see
me walk for graduation. I don’t believe they have their plane tickets yet
though. I do want to walk at graduation.
I do want to be “done” in May. I do want to move on to other things, and take a
flatbed of gratitude for the time that being in school has given me to pursue
all the other angles of healing that I’ve needed to pursue.
The reality is that if it does come down to it, I will take
the thesis in progress. I will be disappointed, my family will be disappointed,
but this really is the best I can do. And I have to allow myself that
compassion. If I could have written a book of poetry, I would have. But that’s
not what I’ve been doing. So be it. I am where I am now, and that’s looking at
making something work. I’ve seen Tim Gunn say his catch phrase in both his dubious, one-eyebrow-raised tone, and in his hopeful get-er-done tone.
I don’t need hope here, I just need to do the work. Satisfy
this requirement and get on with my life. This woman is not my enemy. Nor is
she my judge and jury.
So, beginning Tuesday, I will not be a poet, I will be an
editor. I can do that. 
courage · dating · fortitude · Jewish · relationships · self-care

Saturn Returns.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Every twenty-eight years, the planet Saturn returns in its
orbit around the sun to place it had been when we were born. Every 28 to
approximately 30 years, there is a window of time which some people call
“Saturn Returns.” According to some, this period of time is ripe with change
and opportunity. Usually there are major life changes in this period, either
positive or negative, and according to legend, the lessons that we do not learn
during this first period of Saturn Returns around our 30th birthday,
we have the opportunity to learn again as we approach 60; and if we’re lucky
enough to be healthy for it, again around our mid to late 80s.
In what is proving to be one of the most uncomfortable
changes I’m making in this, my period of Saturn Returns, I cancelled my date
with the Catholic for tonight, and am finally, after many f’ing years of
debate, accepting that a Jewish partner is not only important to me, but
necessary.
What makes this choice hard? Or this admittance? Well, it
feels like I’m closing a very large shiny door behind which are many large
shiny non-Jews. I also have debated whether this is “self-will,” me attempting
to shoe-horn myself into a belief that isn’t true or fair, one that says I’ll only date
Jews. How closed off is that?
But, the truth, the very hard truth of it is, that it’s the
only thing for me to do. I have been down the relationship path with men who
are not Jewish (in fact, no serious relationship I’ve ever had has been with
someone Jewish). What inevitably happens is that I spend a very large amount of
time while in the relationship debating whether it is a “deal-breaker,” until my brain feels like an out
of shape yoga participant. Achy, cranky, tired.
Ironically enough, on my date with this Catholic gentleman
on Monday, we’d been talking briefly about tattoos, and I said how I’d been
delaying my next one, as it’d be a large commitment. That I carry a quote from
a Starbucks coffee cup in my wallet which says something like, To commit to
something, in work, or in play, is to remove our brain as a barrier to our
life.
To commit to this decision, to set down this whirling dervish of questioning … could be
a relief. I have never dated women – do I lament that I’ve “cut off” an entire
portion of the population? No. I’ve finally come to admit that dating someone
taller than me is actually really important to me. And that’s felt like a
sacrifice too. But, it’s funny, I’ve been noticing a lot more cute tall men
over the last two months…
Because what it all comes down to isn’t about religion or
self-will, it’s about abundance. Can I actually let myself believe that if I
really do, in my heart of hearts, want to spend a romantic life with someone
Jewish, can I believe that there is a tall, attractive, employed, happy, funny,
Jewish man out there? Seems like a tall order! (uh, no pun intended.) But, is
it? I mean, when I think about the kinds of miracles that I’ve witnessed in my
life and in the lives of others, am I still willing to debate the power of
what’s possible in this world? When I look at the majority of the community I
know as people who have been pulled back from the gates of insanity and death
to become working members of society with entirely incredible things to
contribute – am I still unwilling to
allow myself to believe?
The painful answer is no. I am not unwilling anymore. I have
been beaten into a state of reasonableness, I have suffered under the pain of
my manic debating society, and I have resigned from that committee. I am
willing to commit to the belief that my needs are important. Haven’t I been
saying that here for a while? Haven’t I run into places in my professional life
where I’ve agreed to things I don’t want, only to have to back out? Haven’t I
made a conscious and kind-to-myself decision to not do that anymore?
Isn’t this the same thing? Isn’t this the same cosmic
lesson? To listen to myself. To allow my needs to be heard. To be responsible
to myself with care, not dismissal. Yes. It is.
And so, here I sit, willing to allow the same consideration to my romantic life that I am newly showing myself in the areas of my professional and creative life, to
allow that faith, that sense of fun, and play, and direction, and the firm
belief that wherever these bits in the cement are coming from, I can trust that
I am being led to a life worth living.
It feels so uncomfortable. Which sort of points out to me
that it’s the “right” thing. I’ve resigned before to the “easy” route of accepting whatever’s in front of me, only to end up in pain. This is making a resolute decision to groove a new
path. 
A good girl friend reminded me yesterday that crazy things happen when people are supposed to be
together, so if this particular gentleman or another non-Jew is actually
supposed to be it, he will be. “If it’s meant to be, you can’t fuck it up; if
it’s not meant to be, you can’t fix it.”
But ultimately, she also said that she sees this decision as me letting go of the rock in the middle of the river, and allowing myself to float. 
So, here’s to learning the lessons this orbit around. Bring
on the miracles.
authenticity · creativity · fear · fortitude · performance · recovery · responsibility · spirituality

Ready Steady Go

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

About 3 years ago, when I was living in Cole Valley in San
Francisco, I went for a walk. I was packing to go home for a visit, I remember,
and was feeling overwhelmed, and decided to take a walk through my new-ish
neighborhood. I took a left instead of a right, and walked past a sign, The
Sword and The Rose. Maybe you know it. Maybe you’ve walked right by it. As
unless you notice the faded paint on the cracked wooden sign, you wouldn’t know
to walk into the alley between two buildings. You wouldn’t know that beyond the
trash bins was a gate, through which is a sitting garden, overgrown with vined
plants and a running water fountain with a stone bench. Beyond this is a small
one room shop, that looks like a hobbit’s house, and you have to, well, I have
to, duck slightly through the Dutch door.

Inside is one of those curio shops. There’s a small wood
burning stove that always seems lit, around which are two high backed cushioned
chairs with ancient knitted throws. In the cases are crystals of every color and intention,
ones to wear, ones to put on an altar, ones smoothed or raw in form. The shelves are stacked high with
different types of sage to burn, candles created on different days of the week, jars of loose incense with yellowing labels of handwritten ingredients seen only in spell books.
And in the corner is a small circular table set with a stained glass lamp, a shawl, and two small straw woven chairs. It is here that you can have your cards
read.
And once, I did. Not that day, having walked breathlessly
out of my manic and nervous packing session into this stalled garden out of time.
That day when I was able to collect myself in the mystery and magic of the
darkened, perfumed room. But I knew I would be back.
The man read from Native American animal cards, which I’d
never seen or heard of before. I was not very “into” Tarot before, but I have
learned enough to know there are many paths to the mountaintop, so to speak.
It is my belief that under the right circumstances, and with
the proper intention, we are told, not “the future” or the unknown, but rather,
truths about ourselves. It is my experience that what is revealed to me,
through cards, or meditation, or other spiritual practices, are knowledges which I
already hold, which are simply being drawn out from the shadows, or crystallized
in more accessible terms.
So, when the man drew a card he called Grandmother Spider in
my reading, and told me that this card was the most creative and powerful card
in the deck, I was not surprised, but rather challenged. Challenged to live up
to this truth which I had known about myself, and which continues to be
mirrored back to me and bubbled up within me.
You can go Google the card if you like; it says that the
Spider wove the Universe. Is, in essence, the Great Creator. I don’t deign to
think that I am unique in having this spark (truly, I believe we all have it), but I am beginning to honor its
presence in my life.
Performance. People have asked me what I mean when I say I
want to perform. They ask, Act? … And that’s not the entirety of it at all. I
wrote a poem in August of last year, which I’ve pasted below, called
Pyrotechnic Performance. In my first blog-a-day posting on this website in
November, I wrote about it. (Pulling a Carmen.) And, this morning, I wrote
about it, in my Morning Pages. What do I mean by performance? And why am I called to do it?
I’ll quote here from those pages, because this is the
change of course of the Ocean Liner, this is the portend and promise of the New
Year, and most critically of all, because this is still is my challenge. I have a
financial mess, which means I cannot afford an acting coach. I am willing to
pay $50 for a zipcar tonight to get to New Year’s Eve parties, which I have
rented and am psyched about, but I am still on the sideline of my own commitment to this truth. I know this is
eroding, this stagnation, this hesitation, this fear. To loosely quote
Nelson Mandela, it is not our darkness of which we are most afraid, but our
light. Hiding in financial crises, dead-end (and deadening) jobs, being late,
being “shy,” these are the snakeskins which I am shedding.
Because I want to be available, I am coaxed by this light,
this promise, and as you’ll read, I have a commitment not only to myself to
fulfill, but one to you as well. So, to a new year, to a challenge I am becoming
brave enough to face, and to the undocumented bounty of facing a truth I’ve
known all along.
A Safe and Happy New Year, Friends. And as Bill Murray says
in Ghostbusters, See you on the other
side, Ray.
Performance, A Challenge (12 31 11)
I want to perform. I want to ignite, excite, catalyze, engender, enmorphize. I want you to witness me. I want you to be changed in the witnessing. I want the love in you to awaken and stir as I open myself to you. I want to be there for it. Present. My best, most available self. I want you to fall in love with yourself in the process. Discover the ancient and cavernous depth of your heart. I want to be your tour guide. To lead you where you are ready to be led. I want to change the world, for good. One heart at a time, beginning with my own. And I am becoming Ready. I am ready to transform.
Pyrotechnic Performance: What I want to do when I grow
up. (8 5 10)
I want to startle your emotions and steamroll you with
feeling. I want to seize and agitate the flames of my inner fuel and fury and
ignite and catch you on fire too. I want to blast you out of your seat aghast
at the wonder that is G-d bellowing through me. I want to own this. I want to
master play and expand this. I want to hone sharpen and broaden the depth of
what I have to offer you. I want to journey with you through the lands of the
psyche and crash you upon the shores of revelation. I want to allow you to lick
and contemplate these wounds as you stagger toward the exit when I’m done. 

I want
to heave you into oblivion and gently reel you back in.
fortitude · joy · laughter · persistence · recovery

Ocean Liner

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I retract my endorsement of Airborne.
Just kidding. I just am not feeling as better as I’d like,
especially as it comes up to New Year’s Eve tomorrow.
Although I remember the last several New Year’s, which was a
new development, none of them have been particularly outstanding. Last year, I
was on the roof of a friend’s condo in SF, watching the fireworks over the Bay
– which was wonderful – with my soon to be ex – which was less wonderful, but a
great attempt at shoe-horning romance into a moment.
This year’s remains to be seen, with a party with some local
friends’ bands, and some dances out in SF that could be a raucous good time.
But I’m not feeling particularly raucous at the moment. But things change. And
this is the season for it.
I was reminded this morning as I was writing my Morning
Pages about a conversation I’d had with my friend Luke on our Misfit Christmas. We
were talking about the economy, and he was saying that people’s expectations
are that things can change on a dime, in an instant, immediately show results.
Whereas the more accurate truth is that change is like the course of an ocean
liner. It.does.not.stop. when you want it to. (See: Titanic) ;P
He drew his finger in a long, wide arc along the coffee shop table and said that
as an ocean liner begins to change course, it continues to look like it’s still
going along its original path, it continues out into the treacherous water, slowly evening a turn-about. It is not instantaneous, and
it is not immediately obvious or apparent.
Which means, that for anything that does change in this manner, like most things in this world, it requires patience.
This morning, I was reflecting that the change of the year, a
sudden WHAM BANG HELLO NEW YEAR!, might not equate with the reality of the
subtlety of change. But, personally, I feel it. The planet changing
its course in the cosmos, slowly slingshotting back around. The impending
change of the year has begun – it’s not one moment at midnight when Dick Clark
leads us all in some bedazzled primal chant. It’s more covert, and ultimately more kind
than that.
Changes that happen all at once are called emergencies.
Lucky for us, life is not always in the habit of confronting us with change in
these violent manners.
I’m not sure of my entire point here, but I suppose I’m
attempting to provide a bit of cosmic comfort, reinforcement of the
positive course I am on and perhaps you are on, and g-d willing the economy is on! Or maybe I’m just being wistful at the close of a
year, which, of course, it also is.
I was 14 and at a new year’s dance and a girl friend of mine
was in near hysterics. She said that the change of new year’s always gave her
anxiety. I got a text just now in which a friend asked me if I didn’t also have
the new year’s depression.
Lucky for me, no. I’ve bought my ticket on this ocean liner.
Cast in my lot. Threw down the gauntlet. Thrown in my hat. I am down with you,
Ocean Liner. I am concerned that I don’t know where you’re going once you make
your change in course, but I’m also mildly thrilled to see where you will go. To call on the spirit of “Must be present to Win”
and “Just Row,” I will make my best attempt to stand like Rose at the bow of
the ship and throw my arms open unto the unknown. 
faith · fortitude · love · self-care · sex

Holding the High Watch

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The best laid plans, right? I had grand ones for this week,
then I got sick. I am on the mend, past the worst I think (insert ad for
Airborne here [despite others’ nay-saying about its efficacy, I swear by it,
and finally stocked up yesterday]).
It has given me the opportunity to nest a little bit; I
haven’t cleared my NJ boxes, but I have put up the revised “vision of love”
collage. It’s so much better than the
last – I wish I’d taken a before photo of the beige yawn it had been! And I
have another decorating project I might get to.
I think I know why I got sick – what tipped the scales from
‘minor winter ill-health’ to full-blown ‘duuuude, I don’t feel so good.’ I made
out with someone. — Not that this is karmic retribution or anything, but that he must have been sick too. 
A few days ago, I was in the car with a guy friend of mine.
We have a teeny bit of history having been involved for a full 4 hours 😉 a few
years ago but have remained pretty good friends, sort of sweeping it under the
rug. We often talk about our dating lives and such, and as he’s giving me a
ride home, we begin to talk about it again, what’s going on, etc, lighthearted,
etc.
Except…
I begin to say that I am of two minds lately. The one mind
that knows I’m “holding the high watch” as it were for something real,
potentially lasting, and ultimately revolutionizing. (Realistic… right? [I do
think so actually!]) I tell him about the work I’d been doing via Calling in The
One, and about how I am attempting to
create my best life, so when I meet someone, I’m fully present and accountable
for myself, I’m engaged in a life that makes me happy, and I’m not seeking for
someone else to make me happy or to take care of the needs within myself that
are actually my responsibility.
This is basically the aim of the book, and of a lot of the
spiritual work I do. To become my authentic and most available and active self.
That said,
I am also of another mind. Which says, I’m 30 years old, my
bones and ligaments only getting older and less nimble, and these are prime sex
years that I feel I’m wasting! It feels like a tragedy to let each day go by
without engaging in one of life’s greatest pleasures.
My guy friend says that it sounds like my body is saying one
thing and my head is saying another – but I really think it’s everything all at
once, to use that phrase again. My heart & head know what I’m doing,
holding the high watch, creating space, making room, expanding my life in
positive ways. They/I know that this “lull” is temporary, and perhaps in fact
necessary to sort of flush the system, or simply not clog it with anything less
than awesome.
In his car out front of my apartment, I ask, Has this whole
conversation been your way of saying you want to make out? and he laughs, I’m not
that transparent, am I?
But, being a hot-blooded human and woman, and knowing the
course of the conversation had been headed here, and having actively
participated in it, we make out.
And it’s fun and hot for a full ten minutes or so, and then
I know I have to leave. I don’t want to sleep with him, though, surely it would
be fun, but I am very familiar with fun
of this sort, this particular sort, which looks like neither of us actually
being romantically attracted to each other whatsoever, and I am also very familiar with the … blasé sort of let-down feeling
as you each pick up your discarded socks and clunk through some small talk and
try to figure out how quickly you can get out of there.
Sex is temporary. Love is not.
So, despite the “tragedy” of “wasted sex years,” I am clear
on what I am heading toward. I am clear on the woman and partner I want to be.
Clear-ish. I know it’s fluid. But I also know I am very much done (she says,
knowing things may always change) with vapid sex.
Besides, Good Vibrations appreciates my business.