The girl just wants ta dance.

December 2, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I just came back from a Keb’ Mo’ concert. if you don’t know
him or his music, I highly encourage you to youtube him. It’s delta bluesy funny + sad + honest. I don’t know how I found out about him, but I’ve been listening
to him for at least 6 years now, and he’s in my top at least 5 musicians.

The show was incredible.

He was funny and humble, and so freaking talented (a steel
guitar could melt my soul). and his voice. what emotion that man has. I actually welled up a few times in
the beginning when it was just him and his guitar – just out of pure joy and
appreciation that a man, and music, like this exist in the world.

It was wonderful. I smiled til my cheeks hurt, I stood up
with the two ladies next to me when no one was dancing yet, and just clapped
and hooted and shimmied till… well, not till anything. I just did. I just was.
I was happy.

The only downside to
any of it is that I yelled and howled so much that I think I strained my throat
and I have a vocal performance for my singing class tomorrow! But – It was so
worth it – it was worth being out on a “school night”. Worth taking BART home from the city. It was worth it
to be able to sit at the bus stop with an older African American lady who’d
been in my row at the show and gush about how just tickled pink we were.

I won’t go on about his music, but well, everyone left
feeling joyful – that was the palpable emotion. The induced and provoked and
invoked emotion. And not all music shows are like that. I do also love the harder more
rock-y stuff to dance myself out to, but that produces a way different emotion – more RWAHH!! LIFE IS LOUD AND RIGHT NOW!!! Lol, but then again, you can’t really dance to punk rock either – it’s more like snap your head in time with the fastest beat,
throw in some shoulder, and occasionally shimmy some hips. I dance at the
shows. I’m that girl now.

I used to not be – or only when I was drunk and became …
well, let’s just say lecherous and often involving Elaine-like flailing (and
falling). So when I wasn’t drinking when I went out anymore, at first I felt I
had to be “super cool” by not acting like I was into the music – which likely I
wasn’t cuz I was probably too busy thinking about what everyone was thinking
about me. Yeah, I have that kind of self-centeredness. But, it’s gotten WAY
better. And I love to dance. Perhaps I’m not a particularly good dancer (I hold
with the view that the best dancer is the person having the most fun) but I do
have rhythm of sorts and I just love to let my body just get into the stream of
the music, to just let it do what it wants to do in response to what I’m
hearing, what I’m feeling from the bass and the crowd.

So, yeah, me and two middle aged white ladies stood up and
danced. Eventually more people did too – the domino effect, because likely I’m
not the only one who thinks about what other people will think of me. But this
is certainly a period of “but do it anyway” for me.

On the way out, a guy asked me out – and I said Not right
now but thanks. On the way to BART a guy told me he liked my outfit and that he
had “nothing to follow that.” It was sweet.

It appears to be true – the happier I am, the more
approachable I am. Not that that’s the end goal – it’s just interesting to
notice.

The last thing is, Keb Mo’s last song of the encore went,
“She’s not lookin’ for a lover/She’s not lookin for Romance/The girl just wants
ta dance.” Amen.

abundance · action · courage · direction · faith · fear · finances · Jewish · joy · letting go · life · responsibility · synchronicity

Effective but Wordless Chant

November 30, 2011 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So I did look at one SF apartment ad today. It was through
my old employer, a property management company, which is how I got my sweet
deals on my SF and Oakland apartments. Granted, it wasn’t a handout-out, I
worked well there – maybe not that hard, but it wasn’t that challenging or enticing, and
eventually I found myself overcome by the Ugly Cries (maya’s accurate term) in my car at lunch one Friday on the phone
with a friend having another job existential crisis.

That day I gave my two weeks notice, that night I threw my 1st pre-Valentine’s party, the following day, I went blonde. This was almost 3 years
ago now. My boss wasn’t pleased, but he knew I wasn’t happy –
that I wanted to do something creative, anything.

So that began several months – two, to be exact – of
job hunting. I remember I didn’t even tell my parents I’d quit my job and was
looking for work cuz I just couldn’t face their “Are you kidding me, in this economy??” spiel. It was hard then – I had notes all
over my SF apartment – “This is a world of grace and abundance and I am letting
go.”

A friend afterward told me to change to wording to “–and I
allow myself to receive” – more “open.”

Two years before that, I’d been “downsized” from a corporate
real estate firm, my first long term gig in SF, and was on unemployment for the
full 6 months. The first month? Awesome – yay paid vacation. By the end of six months? I was desperate. I began to
answer every ad. The very week my unemployment was going to run out, I had two job interviews one day, and I’m driving to one of
them, out somewhere near Bayview, and I’m in my car and I have this
mini-epiphany: I had every single thing I needed at that moment. I had eaten
breakfast, I had coffee in me, I had gas in my car – I didn’t need anything
else at that moment – no money in my hand, nothing. For that moment, I was
completely taken care of.

I forget what it was now, but I even began this little chant
while I was on my way to that interview. Something about being content and
caffeinated, or something? That afternoon, I had my other interview – at the
property management firm. And I got that job. The woman I was replacing
happened to be out sick that day (she was going on maternity leave), and so I
interviewed with the owner of the company – and we got along fabulously. (A big part of me feels that had I met the woman instead, I wouldn’t have made it through the door.) The
mug that I’m drinking out of now, he gave to me because he got tired of me
using the one that had a photo of his kids printed on it for my coffee (it was
the biggest mug!, What?). The one he bought has sort of colorful swirls on it,
and he said it reminded him of the tattoo on my wrist.

So, yeah, he wasn’t pleased when I left my job with them,
but, obviously still liked me enough to let me have parties in my SF apartment,
and to move here into the Oakland one on a slight deal. – actually, it’s a really good deal, i
should be (and am!) really grateful – the rent isn’t that much cheaper, but I didn’t
have to pay security deposit, or pet deposit, so that’s quite generous.

Reminds me the theme of today’s CITO is generosity …

But, back to grace and abundance, and letting go – or
“receiving” rather.

I quit that job with the property management, and spent two
months looking for creative work, again. And finally what happened was I woke
up one morning and asked myself, still groggy from sleep and receptive to the universe, What else
am I interested in?

The reply came, Well, I like being Jewish. … So I typed “Jewish San Francisco” into
Google, and applied to every position there was.

I got one of those positions. (Actually I applied to one I didn’t get, but my resume got passed along to someone else in this Jewish
education non-profit, and I got that job
– for which I was surely more well suited.) …

Then, on a not so whimish been-looking-at-the-college’s-website-for-three-years whim, I apply to the MFA program, and get in. (Note, there: I actually intended to apply to the Master’s in Literature Program, but didn’t have a current academic paper, and am pretty sure none of my professors from college remember me … but the admissions coordinator for the English Department told me that the MFA program, I just needed 15-20 recent poems. How many did I happen to have recently? 16.) Nudgey McNudgerson, you sly Universe, you.

I dunno. I guess I’m feeling reflective about all of this –
about all of my “being taken care of” and steered into a more … “Molly” direction — because I have no clue what’s going to
happen when school is over in May. I quite imagine that it will work out well –
and I also imagine I’ll freak out a bit anyway.

But, if any of the above isn’t evidence that I’m being
gently but firmly guided, I don’t know what is.

So, Universe, Let me be receptive to the strange and unusual
nudges you have to give me. I sit here, in a heated apartment, with food in my
belly, electricity running, December rent paid, and I’m chanting the tune to
that chant whose words I no longer remember. Amen.

adventure · cosmo · decision · goblin · life

Choose Your Own Adventure

June 10, 2010 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I awoke this morning with the words “Choose your own adventure” echoing in my head. You remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80s? You would come to a point in the chapter when the character is presented with two or three options on how to proceed. To follow your choice you turn to either page 31 or page 36. And depending on which page you turn to, your destiny, or the character’s, will change. Perhaps page 31 was a positive destiny landing in fruit tree-lined palace entrance; perhaps it was “and then you tumble into a dungeon and are eaten by a hemoglobin-starved goblin

As a pre-teen, I was not prepared for an ending I didn’t “like,” and am here to admit — I cheated. I would turn to page 31, read the next few paragraphs, and if I didn’t like what it said, I would go back and choose the other adventure, creating the destiny for myself and my reading experience that I wanted, instead of accepting what was presented to me

My life emerged to much the same pattern. Whether it is the Libra in me, weighing the pros and cons, and sitting at the crossroad brow furrowed with pro and cons lists strewn around me, and thusly moving nowhere. Whether it is the result of the pattern my life and its series of disastrous choices, I hate making decisions without knowing how they will turn out. Give me the few pages of each choice, and I’ll make my decision then.

Unfortunately, life is not in the habit of handing me the answers.

Therefore, I have come to learn to rationally consider my choices, but, in the end, to simply take a leap. Whichever road. Any decision, any action, will give me a different result than sitting, chewing my nails, and wondering what’s past the bend.

Life does let me go back, in part. If the decision leads me to a result I don’t want, I can return to the intersection and sally forth to the other destiny with newly acquired clarity about my desires, needs, and values. Sometimes I don’t know it’s the road I don’t want to go down until I’ve actually gone down it.

As I’ve been making decisions around the course of my life lately, I’ve had to remember very clearly that each path has merit, but to choose one, ANY one is better than standing still. This is very hard for me. I want to know the outcome, I want the answers, and I will pout and stagnate if you don’t let me know that I will be okay if I take this road. What I’ve learned is that either way, I will be okay. That I must choose one adventure. Today, I choose things like, moving to the East Bay instead of back to New Jersey. I choose to attend grad school instead of plodding along in a safe, but uninspiring, job. Today, I choose things like finishing the five-foot flower painting, because no matter how it turns out, it will be done, and I get a sense of accomplishment.

I awoke this morning with those words, “Choose your own adventure,” in my head. I am the agent of my own change, and I can, today, trust that my decisions will lead me toward a positive ending, even if it’s simply learning that there’s a goblin down that way.