I love Mondays. & A Return to Art.

November 22, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

It’s my least busy day of the week, and I get to see some of
my favorite people. My friend came by this morning and saw my holiday cards
pinned up on a string of ribbon and said, you painted those? or maybe it was you painted those? 😉 in any case, yes. it’s strange, i
still get pretty thrilled when my paintings turn out well – it’s something I’ve
had to cozy up to, work at, come back to.

a few years ago, I’d stopped drawing completely. i had too
long associated doing art with drinking a 40oz – well, whatever the Korean measuring equivalent was (they had 3 types of beer: piss, pisser, and pissest, but, they
worked). It’s funny cuz art was really the one thing my roommates there knew
about me, about my hobbies – besides the drinking – and so each gave me some
kind of drawing or painting set for Christmas.

I lived with two guys, one a Canadian, one a Texan, that
first contract year. Their contracts run February to February because of the
whole Chinese New Year thing; it was October when I got there in 04, and
February of 06 when I left. But that first 4 months, I spent in this smaller
more agricultural town – there was a pig slaughterhouse not far, and the lunch
lady at the school would go into the hills/mountains to get some sprouts and
things for the lunch … the always popular hot dog soup.

My Canadian roommate was the adventurous type, he found the
well of fresh mountain water where you could stand with your jug and some
ancient Korean woman. He also once reported a troop of Korean soldiers passing
by him in the pitch dark one night when he was up the mountains alone.

In any case, when I stopped drinking, I stopped drawing. I
used to sit with my 40 and draw or paint (infrequently) until I couldn’t really
see the lines so clearly anymore, then stop – drawing that is. So I didn’t
know, for a while, how to draw sober.

When I finally did take my things out (the end of my sketch
book is pretty hilarious, lots of fucked up looking women – i’ve always drawn
women, bodies, faces, i don’t know why – maybe cuz it’s what I see most often,
or because there were fashion magazines around when I was little –
but also, women are beautiful. just beautiful, i love drawing them, still). So,
i took my things out about a year and a half after I’d gotten sober and tried to
sketch one of these magazine women. – Utter Fail.

Well, at least, I thought it was at the time. I spent the
longest time trying to get the lines just right, and got so frustrated over and over till i just quit the whole thing
and shoved the sketch pad and pencils back into some drawer. Done.

Then, I started to host parties.

Somehow hosting became the thing that brought out my
creativity again. The first party was a holiday one (Star of David Christmas
Cookie party), and I didn’t do any “actual” art, but I rearranged everything
(moved my bed onto it’s end up against the wall!) and I went to the party
supply store and got some fancy looking sheets of scrap-booking paper and
arranged them on my bedroom wall in a diamond like pattern, and I took all my variously
received holiday cards and taped them in a pattern on the living room wall.

Come to think of it – when I moved into that one bedroom
apartment from the room I was renting in some (very nice) lady’s house in the
outer Sunset is when it all started again. I had all sorts of creative ideas
for the apartment – i got to choose the paint colors, the flooring, and I had a
semi-disaster when I decided to paint half my bedroom a crimson, bordello red,
and left the other half white, as I intended to do a stencil of a damask
pattern in black and white all over the other side … this never came to
fruition, and finally my house painter friend came and painted the rest of the
room red!

The next party was a “Pre-Val Hearts&Stars” and I
created a whole tableau of mushy words in a crossword pattern and cut out each
letter and pasted them on my wall (among sex, lust, and other words, “conceive”
got a few eye-brow raises) ;P But still no painting.

HollerWeen! 2009, I painted. Well, I started with oil
pastels. I did a version of Munch’s Scream
with a jack-o-lantern head instead, and I was thrilled with it. I loved to get
my fingers dirty again, smushing the colors around, messing up, going over, and
just getting in there. It was
wonderful. I did a few other riffs on some famous paintings (“Cece n’est pas
une pumpkin”, and Warhol’s Marilyn with jack-o faces instead. And one in the
kitchen I wasn’t sure was “okay” of Jesus on the cross with a jack-o head…!)

I loved it – and so I intended to do Valentine’s again the following
Spring and I wanted to do something big – really big. I began these enormous
sexy lips with a white flower in between them in oil pastels and colored
pencil. It was daunting, I was frustrated, but I had a party to finish it for.
This was why I had been doing all this
art – I had a party to throw – my party was my muse. And it worked. I didn’t
feel satisfied with that one for some time, it didn’t feel “done” till I got
some good suggestions on it (drawing a flower on a 5 foot piece of paper is
really hard!). But finally, I signed my name on that paper, and it was done
too.

So, then, here I am now (this blog is getting long, and
maybe you don’t care), but it’s wonderful for me to remember how tentative I
was, how frustrated and upset and worried that I’d never be able to draw again.
And now? Over my bed hang 7 sexy paintings of people, body parts, attached to a
garden trellis like a headboard – and like I said, it’s not perfect, there are
things I see that I know others don’t. But I love it. It makes me happy, and
it’s hot.

And now here are my holiday cards, beginning to line my
wall, and they’re silly and fun, and somewhat impressive even to me.

That’s what I love about this work – I continue to amaze
myself especially when I come with a spirit of fun. Creating paintings for a
purpose (a head board, a holiday card, a party) gives me the juice, the north
on my creative compass – and even though, sure, I’m in school for writing, and
I’ve been trying to get in to acting, watching one branch of my creative tree flower
is actually pretty encouraging.

Though, now I drink tea, not Hite.

oil pastel on posterboard 2009

acting · action · joy · laughter · performance · responsibility

Let the sunshine in.

November 19, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I do a work/trade at the Dailey Method workout studio on
Friday mornings – it’s pretty harmless, except for the occasional bout of
entitlement from clientele or having to cover childcare with a usually wailing baby who knows his mom is in the next room and if he only
screams long enough, she’ll come. But, this morning, childcare lady came, there
weren’t any payment traffic jams in the 5-minute turn around between the morning classes,
and I had my Theater Bay Area magazine with
me. Highlighted.

The other night, I set my alarm clock for ten minutes, and
sat with a highlighter and the magazine. And opened it. I knew that if I had
too long, I’d feel overwhelmed, and 10 minutes felt like a good beginning. It
was actually easier than I’d thought, just reading through the descriptions of casting calls –
some were obviously not right for me – male, far away, or another ethnicity.
But a few were. 4, in fact. One was a reach, but I highlighted it any way: Lead
frontman in a The Who’s Tommy production
company. – But hey, I’m just highlighting, no need to rule any thing out. And
then my alarm went off, magazine closed.

So this morning, *thumpthump* *thumpthump* I took the
magazine out at my desk shift while class was going on, and… I sent 3 emails. (I
want to research the playwright for the 4^th, as they were specific
about it, and I don’t know the name). I sent my small little actor’s resume and
my headshot a friend took for me in January, and a blurb about why I’m
interested, and can’t wait to meet you, yadda yadda.

I’ve done this. I’ve sent out at least a thousand resumes in
my working day. I know how to fashion a cover letter. So, I did. And I send the
Roger Daltrey one too. – That one, I got a response to right away – he said
they’d filled that slot, but were still looking for an Acid Queen and/or
backup. I said, count me in. Who knows, he said they have someone interested in
managing their group who needs to see the new Daltrey, and probably won’t start
going until mid-December, more yadda yadda, so, no high hopes. But I did it – I made baby
steps.

Actually, I think proposing that I’d be a great frontman to
your production is a major leap, and perhaps I need to learn to mitigate
better, so I can stay realistic, hopeful, but realistic, and not stamp out my
own dream by taking too-large, developmentally inappropriate steps – but that
said, I was glad I replied to the ad, because it might lead to something else.
Like anything, this is a game of persistence. And so, great, I sent out 3
emails – one bounced back! – but I have one more to send, and other work to do
as assigned/suggested by my actress friend.

However… tonight, me and two of my girl friends went to see
HAIR in SF, and at the end of the play, you can go up on stage to dance with
the band and all the other audience and cast members – and so as me and my two
friends jiggled around to the finale song, laughing and loving it, I told myself to get used to the
heat of those lights.

abundance · creativity · fear · joy · maturity

T.I.M.E: Twisted Ideas Miraculously Erased

November 18, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Feeling decidedly better today. And I realize that “decide”
is the key word there.

I awoke this morning, early, again (although, yes, I do
realize that 6am is not that early for some people!), and as I was writing my
Morning Pages, and staring at my clock, and writing “I have to figure out
how to manage my time better, I spend 5 minutes grumbling out of bed, and 2
minutes heating up my coffee, and 15 minutes on my morning pages – though
really they take 30, so I scrimp on days when there isn’t time…”

And I sort of went off on this vein, but somewhere in the
middle I decided to simply take the full time it was going to take and write all
three long-hand pages of my morning pages. Somewhere in there, I was struck
with the thought that I have been treating time like I’ve treated money – addressing it from
a place of scarcity instead of abundance. As something I have to struggle for and will never have enough of. When I was done with the pages, I
stood up, and although technically this would be the moment in the morning
where I would bolt a shower and stream out the door with wet hair, I said
aloud, “I’m hungry.” … then I answered myself, “Then you should eat.”

And so I did. I cooked my eggs, like I’m known to do, and I
sat and ate them and drank my cup of coffee, not at a brunch-y leisurely pace,
but not shoveling them down either. Something had unlatched in the region of my
guts, and I was consciously reminding myself to breathe, and that I was giving
myself this time. “There is enough time, There is enough love, There is enough
money” are some affirmations my little financially savvy friends use 😉 (They also use “I am enough, I have enough, I do enough” – crazy notions, huh??) Then I
took a shower and it took as long as it took. I had my clock in the bathroom,
but at this point, I was past the time I would usually catch the reliable bus,
and had somewhere inwardly agreed that I would take the unreliable bus and
whatever happened would happen. ~
I even blowdried my hair – I haven’t done that in the morning before work in …
a while. It’s a luxury of time (but also helps to keep me healthy in winter months). Then I did my makeup and got dressed, and got a
snack ready for work, so I knew I’d have something to eat and not starve again.

And I walked out of the house – two days ago, I literally
(well, not literally I guess!) flew down
the stairs and nearly knocked into the person also going out the front door at
that moment. But this morning, I walked. In my purple coat and teal scarf and
green bag, and warm hair and world-ready face. And you know what? I ran into a
friend as I was walking to the unreliable bus, and I asked him if I could get a
ride to BART, and he said it was about time I took him up on his many offers
for a ride.

And I got to work 10 minutes late. Only ten minutes late. But the difference between how I
walked in made all the difference in the world. Sure, maybe next time, I’ll get
there in better time, but somehow, the minute yet immense change in my attitude toward my time – how I was
spending it – addressing it – and now hopefully making it work for me, instead
of breathing erratically in the face of a ticking clock – hopefully this will
turn into change. Not feeling like I’ve got a vice on my heart and being
preemptively guilty about not being “where I’m supposed to be, when I’m
supposed to be” feels like a good start.

And, by the way, I got let out of work early (for a work
errand, so I was told I can still bill my full time), and I went to BLICK art
supply store and bought envelopes for my holiday cards – because under the
decreased pressure in my temples, I get to be creative. And give myself time to
be so.

Holiday card #2: watercolor&embossing on paper 🙂

action · adulthood · faith · joy · letting go

Compensation

November 16, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

A friend once told me that the Universe gives us
compensations. This was after I’d just spent an emotionally, mentally,
physically, and spiritually bankrupting week at my family home in NJ last month – I was
there to clean out my childhood room as my dad and his fiancé have purchased a
new construction home in Florida and plan to move there in April, so he is
clearing out the house to get it ready for sale.

He was going to yoke my brother into the task of clearing
out my room – and somehow, not really being sure if I’d cleared out all the sex
toys, drugs, or writings about such things – and in addition wanting the
experience and process of the ritual of “leaving my childhood home” – I made a
snap decision to buy a flight home in October. My dad’s not really a
sentimental kind of guy, and wasn’t really getting that it was an emotional
thing that the house I grew up in – that we shared a family life & history
in – was about to be sold.

That same friend also told me that her parents had sold her
childhood home without her packing up her things, and that if my dad wanted to
clear it out, then whatever he found was his own fault/problem, and that
although it sort of sucked that she didn’t get to do it herself, it happened,
and it was what it was. But, luckily, I knew I had the money, and there was a
cheap deal on a flight, and off I went… to a whirlwind of entirely fucked up.

In describing the state of the house to friends once I
returned to SF, two people asked word for word “Was anyone living there??” And
my answer was yes – yes, two adult men, my dad and my brother, were there,
living in a home that had dead flies on all the window sills, dead bugs caught
in the scum of the oven hood, beyond the forever unmowed, uninviting lawn. You
remember when I said we never had people over growing up? Yeah, my house was
not the entertainment house. It has gotten significantly worse since my mom
moved out ten years ago after my parents’ divorce, and to be fair, my dad has
been splitting his time between his own home (he kept the house – my mom is a
city dweller by very nature) and his fiance’s home, and keeping up the
maintenance of a barely used home is a trial. Plus, my brother had been away at
graduate school until last year, so … The house reflects the loneliness and neglect.

I did a lot of work before I went home on untying my
identification with the house – if it only had more attention, love,
consideration of its assets, it could be beautiful, exciting, a success. I was
livid that the 200-year-old oak tree in the front lawn was now rotting, and
will have to come down before the house is sold – its roots had died; I felt
personally affronted by this.

So, I went home – to pack, but also to make peace with all of that. With the deep depression, the anger, the
resentment, the despair that house witnessed. To make peace with the shattered
door frame to my bedroom as it was once attempted to be kicked down. And also,
to thank it. To honor what was, what it sheltered, what it witnessed, and then
to let it go.

I did sort of well – no, I did as absolutely as massively
well as I possibly could in the situation. When on a streaming tears emergency
phone call to an SF friend, she asked me what more I could be doing at that
moment (We’d just come back from visiting my dad’s parents in Queens – and
their home is, without any exaggeration, a fertile candidate for an episode of
“Hoarders”, … and some very strong meds). I thought about what more I could be
doing at that moment, and the answer was nothing; I was doing absolutely everything
I knew to do in moments of distress – Once we’d gotten home from Queens, I went
out for a long walk, I called my spiritual teacher lady (who said we all have a
Grey Gardens branch of the family tree)
😉 and I made plans to go to dinner with a girl friend who knew my situation.
So, I told my friend on the phone, I was literally doing all that I could be
doing – and I knew then, that that had to be enough. I was fucking
uncomfortable – I was sad, anguished at the
state of my family’s homes, of their comfort with or ambivalence toward or
simply paralyzing despair in the face of such obvious … sickness. Yes, I was
uncomfortable, but I also was doing the very best I could – that had to be
enough.

So, I went to dinner with a girl friend; I cleared out my
childhood room (there was only one book of porn and no drugs!); and I saged the
damn place – because I don’t want no bad jujus hangin’ out there in NJ while
I’m all the way back here in CA.

And I came home.

In the tiny window of my layover in Detroit, I get a phone call
from the temp agency in SF asking me if I want to work at the interior design
firm again – I could start the very next day. … Having cleared out the old, I made way for the new.

And so my wise, wonderful, now-Brooklynite friend told me
upon hearing this story: “The Universe gives us compensations.”

The reason I wrote today’s blog on this? This afternoon I
found the most perfectly ‘couldn’t be more perfect’ purple wool coat that I’ve
been actively envisioning, believing in, and hunting down for the last month –
on sale. And after the blind date disappointment, I remember her words, and
smile joyfully at my plum compensation. 😉

abundance · courage · dating · joy · letting go · love · performance · responsibility · self-care

weekend update.

November 14, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

yesterday, I went to a “meditation & creative writing”
workshop with a friend from school, and although we both agreed we were ready
to leave at the lunch break, i got out some writing that needed to get out. my
friend said afterward that her qualm with workshops like those is that they
continue to bring people back into the very story they’re trying to let go of,
but for me, like I said in the “Excavation” blog, my writing isn’t about
spinning my wheels or wishing it were different anymore. I’ve found traction
on this stuff, but for me, for my process, it still needs to come up and out.

My friend/spiritual teacher lady said to me today that in
Buddhism, they talk about those things as blocks, things that are solid and we
knock up against and then back away from – and that they must become diluted
for us to move through them. And so, I hear what my friend is saying – and I
have certainly been there, simply hitting up against the bricks of my “story”,
but – it feels different lately.
It doesn’t feel as solid, weighted, or shameful. There are still pieces that
need processing, but on the whole, I do feel I’m getting through to the other
side – the side where there is freedom and levity and possibility –

and action. To update on another item this week, I’ve scheduled phone conversations in the next week with those two working actors in SF I
mentioned – indeed giving not only voice to my desire to perform, but also
giving traction to that as well by actually putting in some action. Sure, I’m nervous
to head in this direction, as uncertain and as fraught with nay-sayers or
“realistic” people as it is (esp. when those people live in my head) – but it’s one of those internal nudges that hasn’t
gone away, and the longer that I listen to myself, the stronger it has become.

Sure enough, my electric guitar came out of the closet this
week. The bass came out with the amp a few months ago, the acoustic is out
always, as is the small keyboard that mainly gets used when i’m plunking out
notes for my singing class– but, they’re here. and like the performance thing, “singing in a rock and roll band” is not going away either, and it too is just getting
stronger. That’s another one I feel retarded talking about – like, who am i, i’m too old, too square, and what have i done and i don’t know that much music and i don’t
have enough tattoos. … but, sure, be ALL of that as it may – i still want to sing
in a band. i can fucking taste the metal of the microphone. do i know what kind
of music? – it’s becoming clearer – it’s not “pretty” singing. i don’t want to
sing pretty, I want to sing passionate – and if they intersect, which to a
point i imagine they will, then all the better, but i’m not looking to do
pretty – i’m looking to do raw. I wrote an email to a girl friend/acquaintance
lady about a year ago because i read some of her facebook updates and watched
her go through the same thing, and she emailed me back echoing that her teenage
rock girl just wouldn’t go away – and at some point we listen.

or perhaps we don’t, but that’s not my story – anymore.

so, true to CITO, my closet is getting cleared and
organized, and an entire drawer is now empty – because “the universe abhors a
vacuum”, so if you build it – or clear it – they will come. plus, I feel
mentally freer in some way, like how you feel when you go away on vacation and
know you’ll come back to a clean apartment (it was once suggested to me to put
dirty dishes in the fridge so they won’t rot when you’re away – and sadly, i
have done this!). or like in feng shui where you’re not supposed to have
anything under the bed, because even if out of sight, it is taking up “room” …
energetically 😉

to close out my updates for the week, i will also tell you
that I finally wrote that “renegotiating old agreements” letter to the cousin
this morning on my way into the city – and about an hour ago, I wrote the last line on one of the petals from the flowers I bought myself, and let it go out
the window (burning didn’t seem the “right” thing with this).

and finally, yes, I went on my blind date today – it wasn’t a disaster, and there
might be a second one. but in the meantime, i’m going to continue taking
these itty bitty actions: moving the instruments out, talking to people in the
field I want to be in, and completing exercises that help me see myself, my
blocks, and my gifts more clearly.

Cuz, one month into being 30? Eat It, Saturn Returns! ~ I’m totally
learning my lessons on this go-round! 😛

Plus, I started those hand-made holiday cards I said I would too 😉

abundance · family · finances · holidays · joy · responsibility

Thanks-Giving Myself the Day Off

November 11, 2011August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My girl friend texted me yesterday to ask if I had
Thanksgiving plans, and then invited me to spend it with her family. I thanked
her, but told her I’d consider it and get back to her. What I had to consider
were my many little plans and designs. …

The first of which was whether to pick up the catering shift I was offered. In fact, they asked if I’m available on all the upcoming
holidays – Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. And zoom
– my fear brain goes, Of course! I’m not busy those days, I’m not working my
temp job, so I’m not earning on those days – I should do it. (Pause 1:
“Should”). I don’t have any plans yet, East Coast orphan that I am, I don’t
have any family here, and my friend who hosted last year said that it was too
expensive to do it this year. I won’t be hosting, as I now live in Oakland… and no
one comes over to this side! and also my apartment isn’t big enough.

…Then, I start to consider every other East Coast orphan (San Francisco has a lot, and we tend to gravitate toward each other) And I begin to wonder what they’ll be doing–

And I wouldn’t want to leave my friends high and dry on the
holidays–

And I better make sure they have plans–

Or maybe I’ll host anyway–

Or maybe I’ll ask someone else to host–

And wouldn’t it be nice to have all my friends together for
the holiday, if I can only figure it out. (Pause 2: “Figure it out”)

Or maybe …

Maybe, (breathe), I will simply show up to a friend’s family
dinner with homemade pumpkin pie, and a smile.

I asked my financial savvy buddies what they thought about
my working on a or all holidays, and they said, a) ask my HP (higher power –
i.e. get quiet and ask myself what is the “Super Molly” thing to do, and what
is the “Human Molly” thing to do), and b) maybe choose only one holiday to work –
perhaps one that isn’t while I’m also in school. (FYI, catering is not as
easy as just serving plates – it’s hauling cases of water glasses, wine glasses, champagne glasses, salad plates, dinner plates, dessert plates, table linens, tables, decks of
wooden chairs, wine, water, and food up and down flights of stairs or across lawns, all while
attempting to not look like you’re breaking a sweat in front of the client – It
usually knocks me out for the entire next day, as my body is not
nearly as resilient as it used to be.)

What would “Human Molly” do? Hmm. Well, first off, she loves holidays. I do. I absolutely could squeal with
delight about the holidays. I love the memories I have of them, the smells
associated, the warmth I feel that permeates all layers of skin and soul. I
love them. I get squishy thinking about them. – When I was living in South
Korea for two years, they did not get squishy about Christmas – or, duh, Thanksgiving.
They got a little commercial about it, sure, with some inflatable Santas and
some tinsel in the department stores – but for the most part, it was an
atheist’s wet dream winter season. And, how I missed home then. – I have come to conclude that my
affinity for the holidays has a lot to do with the fact that it was pretty much
the only time of year my family acted normal. We had people over – which never
ever happened during the rest of the year. We had smiles and played nice, and
façade or not, I loved it. It made me feel safe, and like maybe not everything
was fucked.

Luckily, I now know what I need to earn in November and therefore how
much I need to work. And the reality is, I don’t need to work on Thanksgiving: the “should”s (see above)
are always a major tip off I’m about to put myself in a situation I’ll resent
or regret.

I am also aware that anything I feel a frantic need to
“figure out” is a sign that I’m trying to organize things that likely don’t
need to be organized. My fellow East Coasters are entirely capable of figuring
out their own plans – they’re not asking me to create their holiday, and I will
feel much calmer not trying to create them!

So, as you might have guessed by now, I texted my girl
friend back this morning telling her that I would love to join her family for
Thanksgiving. Relieved of my own machinations, I can now look forward to just showing up – with pie. 😉

Hosting Thanksgiving 2009 in my SF apartment. (Turkey never made it to the table!)