From all quarters (and nickels and dimes).

March 27, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Of time necessity, today’s will be short. Strangely(?), I had a
very particular intention yesterday to show up to my job and do my best–my
actual best, not my “sorta kinda all you need to do” best.

By 1pm, I had a migraine so awful, I thought I’d puke, and
went home.

In addition, yesterday morning I received an email that proposed an
answer to a few of the questions I’ve been posing about purpose, direction,
intention, and desire for next steps. I forwarded it to a friend, and asked her
professional opinion and input. We got to talk (or email) about what interests
me, and what doesn’t, what I do want to engage in, what I don’t. And through
the course of our conversation, I came to a pretty good conclusion that may
result in more action. Because of the nature of my readership, I am necessarily
vague, but know that I sit here today with more information than I had
yesterday in answer to some of my recent questions.

As the saying goes: Call it odd, or call it G-d.

adulthood · adventure · anger · courage · family · fear · healing · health · hope · love · perseverance · relationships

Nature vs. Nurture.

March 23, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Being raised by a psychoanalyst, I grew up believing pretty
strongly in Nurture vs. Nature. I believed adamantly in Tabula Rasa, and that
every aspect of my personality was developed in reaction to my environment.

Eventually, even through a Psychology Major (that switched
to Minor), I began to admit that perhaps there were a few inborn traits that one
has out of the womb, but the majority of a human’s personality was forged out
of their experiences before the age of 3.

But, I have to admit that the aggregate of my own lifetime
experiences, up to and including a Leukemia diagnosis, has begun to make me
admit that perhaps there is something more to the Gattaca within us. Perhaps
something like perseverance, courage, and visceral insistence on life has more
to do with my wiring as “human” and as “Molly,” in particular.

I would never peg myself as someone brave or bold. I don’t
charge into the fray, or head corporations, or tie myself to a tree before a bulldozer. I have few
of the outward markings I would associate with leader or change-maker.

But I am compelled to admit that my undertakings as an adult
do, in sum, mark me as someone willing to rage, to rail, to fight, to excavate all in the
service of healing.

Though perhaps if my formative years hadn’t been what they
were, I wouldn’t find the need to heal from much. Perhaps.

I had a therapist a few years ago who said something novel
to me: Your dad is not a courageous man. This struck me as apocryphal. My father, the one so quick to temper and anger and
rule of iron fist was not brave? Isn’t that what violence is—bravery? Isn’t
that what power is—anger?

Yet, her words rang so unbelievably true. Like seeing the Wizard behind
the curtain in Oz. I know now that that kind of anger does usually hide and
house one who is critically afraid. I mean, I usually wear my black leather
jacket when I’m feeling more insecure, as if its made of chainmail instead of
leather.

But, I was on the phone with a friend yesterday, answering
her question about why I was in Victoria’s Secret the other day. I told her
about my upcoming trip to meet my consummate penpal—and she squealed. She
thought it was so bold and brave, and adventurous, and ALIVE. She rattled on
that this experience is going to help so many other people down the line, help
women to see that life is meant to be
lived.

It sounded so epic when she mirrored it back like that! And
maybe it is. And maybe it’s not.

But, I do know that with every meditation, every alternative
healer, every inventory, every striving, every goddamn picking myself up, that
I am taking something back. That I am reclaiming something. And if that impulse
to charge onward, in light of all that is, is called courage, then I guess the
Wizard granted me a heart on the day that I was born.

change · community · friends · gratitude · health · perseverance

Time: in fair and foul

March 8, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Oops, I did it again — I changed my clocks on the wrong day! (Last time, I changed them in the wrong direction!) I don’t think I’m cut out for this.

In speaking of time, tomorrow will mark one year from my
final day of chemo. Last year, today, March 8, I was in Kaiser hospital, 6th
floor, on the “off day.” Since I had Leukemia, the
treatment is different than you hear for outpatient breast cancer treatment or
even lung cancer (not that they don’t go through hell, too). How the treatment
went is that each month I spent a week in the hospital (after the initial first month in),
and would get chemo on days 1, 3, 5, and then on day 6, if I looked healthy
enough, I could go home.

“Healthy enough.” Sheesh. What a thing.

A year before that, I was probably working on and
procrastinating on my MFA Poetry thesis at Mills College.

There was a moment after my diagnosis during which I was
sitting at this same kitchen table, likely in these same pajamas, when I looked
out this same window at the cypress trees that grow over the roof of the
building next door. I’ve always watched them, since I’ve lived here. They’re
one of the few trees in my area that loses leaves, and then regrows them in
full regalia in the spring and summer.

I sat at this table, and as it was October/November, I
watched it shedding the last of its leaves for the year. And I wondered if I
would see its leaves return. If I would be alive to witness it.

And I was. And I will be when, once again, the brown tree suddenly sports those green buds that never cease to surprise me, like an overnight graffiti
artist.

Perhaps some people think my marking of this time is morbid.
And maybe it is. But, it’s impossible for me to turn away from. I don’t always
think about it; in fact, over the course of these few months, the “this time
last year” thought has become pretty scarce. But sometimes, there are moments to remember, to recall, measure against, and
praise to high bloody heaven and hell and all the imps in between that *I made it,* through all of it — the terror, the loneliness, the unknowing, the isolation of it. I made it through alive, and healthy, my eggs still ticking in my ovaries, my blood producing what it ought to. I made it through the arguments with doctors, through giving myself injections, through Christmas in an inpatient bed.

I made it through with your soup waiting for me in the hospital fridge, with the cup of coffee you went out of your way to Peet’s to buy, with the fuzzy blanket and the neon socks you brought to keep me warm.

I made it through with the green shakes you made for me, and the protein drinks you sought out at Whole Foods. With the burritos you bought and the chicken you made. I made it through with our conversations about leaving your store, leaving your soon-to-be ex-wife; about polyamory and the ’89 fire. I made it through when you held my hand as I bawled into your chest, heaving the Ugly Cries because I knew you could take it.

I made it through when you brought a big book and a 12 and 12, and we sat and talked about other things anyway. But the praying helped.

A year ago tomorrow, I will have been awoken at 6 in the
morning. I will have had my pee measured, my temperature and blood pressure
taken, and swallowed the pre-medication meant to stave off nausea. I
will then have gotten dressed, eaten whatever plastic-wrapped breakfast they’d
provided, done my morning pages, meditated, and perhaps written my blog if I
could get it in before I got hooked up to the IV pole.

The nurses will have come in in yellow apron suits over their
scrubs, and thick blue gloves and goggles. The two, always two, would call
the numbers of my ID back to each other, the volume of the chemo, confirming
the three hours it was to drip into the port line that entered my chest and
pumped into my heart.

A year ago tomorrow, in the evening, they would do the same
12 hours from the first one. And by the time the bag of clear but ominous
liquid was empty and the machine was beeping loudly for the nurse, I will have tucked into the stiff hospital bed with that fuzzy blanket, curled up maybe with a book, maybe too tired to
read, and they would come back in their yellow suits and thick gloves, and
unhook the tube from my chest.

And I will have had my last round of chemo. (Ever.)

direction · family · performance · perseverance · theater

Postcards from the Edge (of a Bookshelf)

March 6, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Two nights ago I picked up a book that’s been on my shelf
since July of last year. I brought it back with me from New Jersey, where I’d
stayed with my brother and attended a good friend’s wedding. My brother was
getting set to move from his (omg LUXURY) apartment (by SF standards) to
Baltimore to live with his long-time girlfriend. (Seriously — a huge one-bedroom for $950. Come ON!, she drooled.)

He was getting rid of nearly everything. And my brother is a
keeper of books.

I didn’t know this about him. We haven’t lived in the same
place since I was … 23 and he was 20, still living in our childhood home. So, for about
ten years I haven’t been able to witness him living on his own, developing his
own habits and patterns, becoming a real self-sufficient adult who buys his own
eggs and toilet paper, and who apparently keeps books.

I am not a keeper of books. I am a library whore. I love
them, escaped to the one in our neighborhood growing up, and mostly, I like to
live light. But, as I’ve settled into my own adult-ness, and one place-ness,
and probably not moving anytime soon-ness, I’ve begun to slowly add to these shelves.

And when Ben was about to throw out (or dear god, I hope
donate!) almost all his books, I scoured his shelves for anything that wouldn’t
weigh down my carry-on bag too much. I took a few “classic” novels,
returned my copy of Catch-22 to myself,
a few books on physics, and two on acting.

One is by Mamet, and is a little too mean for me (not as in
base, but as in incompassionate and didactic). The other is called Auditioning by Joanna Merlin.

My brother had the great experience and success of doing the
plays in high school and in college, and I even flew back once for his star
performance in undergrad (the play of which I cannot recall), to attempt to
make up for the years when I’d been absent from his life. He was a fun actor,
an able one, and I still hope/wish that he takes it up again one day.

Confidentially, (if this place can be called that), acting
was one place for him that his stutter completely disappears, and he is the
confident man I know him to be.

The Auditioning book
hadn’t a crease in its spine. Brand new. And Ben gladly passed it on to me.

I began reading it again because in class at Berkeley Rep on
Monday, I opened the notebook I’d brought, which I use for theater stuff, apparently.
In the notebook were some handwritten notes and quotes from Merlin’s book. I
must have written them down when I was reading the book last summer, and then
promptly put it back on the shelf.

The quotes were revelations, the extending of a hand down
into the dark world of trying and hoping and trying some more in the
course-less world of theater. I took the book back off the shelf the other
night, and haven’t been able to put it down since.

There’s practical information about what happens at an audition,
compassionate anecdotes about sitting in the waiting room for one, and tips and
exercises for how to explore a scene or monologue. It’s a great book. I’m
devouring it. And I know I’m at a place where it’s relevant now, where it
wasn’t when I began it a year ago.

I have a frame of reference now; I have a better
understanding of the challenges I’m putting in front of myself, and the ones
that are inherent to the process.

If my best friend hadn’t gotten married, if I hadn’t had the funds to go, if I hadn’t stayed
with my brother, if he hadn’t been discharging all his books, if I hadn’t taken
this class at Berkeley Rep, if I hadn’t picked up this very notebook, I
wouldn’t have gotten this gift.

This tome is a welcome hug and nudge on a path I’ve never
walked before – but someone else has.

change · fear · perseverance · sex · sexuality

Nightmares / However…

March 5, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Nightmares

I have noticed over the last several years that I only get
nightmares when I’m about to change something really big. When something really
big is changing. I never had nightmares growing up, or none to really take note
of, but in the last near-decade, I’ve had about 3 or 4, plus last night’s.

The first time it happened, I was still in therapy, and was
able to process with her. I came to realize that, for me, my nightmares were
like big boogeymen waving me away from the work I was doing. However, instead of
being something that frightens me away from the path I’m on, I realized that if my subconscious
is going to pull out all the stops and create a massive ‘hell dimension’ for
me, then I must be doing something right. I must be on the right track toward
health, and the scared part of my ego, my habits, my core fears must be truly
shaking in their boots that I’m about to abandon or walk through a pattern that
doesn’t serve me. I am about to shed whatever it is that’s blocking me from my highest
good, and, altruistic though the nightmares’ goal is (to “keep me safe” by
holding me back in a stagnant pattern), that pattern I’m working on is about to go.

For me, nightmares are actually a guidepost that I’m on the
right path. And desperately terrifying though they are in the moment, and in
the moments after I wake in a panic, like last night, I do know they are simply
showing me that the work I’m doing is poignant and positive.

My brain can be a bit of a dick sometimes.

However…

To continue the thoughts from yesterday about discovering
the necessity of wearing or having some kind of buffer between me and the
untoward thoughts that come toward me as I walk in the world, there is a
rub—and not the good kind.

The rub is that I also want to be seen, I also want to be
attractive, I also want to be asked out. So, if I conclude that in order to be
“safe” in the world, I have to put up a boundary between me and you, then that
means that I’m deterring positive as well as negative attention.

And then I’m back to the thought of being “the undefended
self,” a book I’ve heard the title of, and am loathe to pick up (yet).

How to walk in the world with enough self-ownership that I
don’t feel corroded by the lascivious thoughts of some, but attract the
interest of others?

I mean, surely, we all know, (well, for me this is true) –
physical attraction means a lot on first impression. But, if I’m walking with
some kind of “you can’t touch me” attitude, then the guys who I may want to touch me will get that message too.

I don’t know the answer yet. I think much of it will lie in
the work I’m doing and starting to do that caused my nightmare in the first
place—around healing my relationship with sex, sexuality, and trust. I probably
don’t know the answer yet, because I’m trying to divine it out of the same
information and pattern I’ve always had and used.

There’s a phrase I’ve heard: “You can’t fix a broken brain
with a broken brain.” And extreme and diagnostically critical as that notion
may be…

My brain can be a bit of a dick sometimes.

community · compassion · grief · healing · perseverance

The Tell-Tale Heart

February 24, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Written 2011:

i meet with a grad student who tells me
not to take split-level poetry because all the under-grads write about is date
rape – so i don’t tell him about the drunken carride from two strangers, later
finding an earring twisted into my shirt, or being turned away from four Korean
hospitals because rape is not an emergency.

i read an article on how to snag a
man which suggests that women think about something naughty when out because
women won’t pick up on it, but the men will – so, i imagine licking pre-cum
from a cock, which provides a lascivious revolt against public decorum and not
undamp panties.

but, in the unwalled house of my
memory, these situations sometimes mix – and the salt sours, the armor
rebuilds, and the currency of reality cripples.

In Bernie Siegel’s book, Love, Medicine, and Miracles, he reports that his research has shown that most cancer patients have suffered a
significant breach in trust at an early age.

“I will slice your face with a
razor blade/

and watch your smile fade.”

– The couplet I often recite in my head when I’m feeling
cornered, scared, and angry.

I informed you a little while ago that it seems like
repairing my relationship with intimacy, trust, and sex is probably back on the
agenda. Yesterday, after my work at my shamanic journey group, this was made
pretty apparent.

And luckily, one of my great friends in attendance told me
afterward that our mutual friend is having a hugely positive experience with a
therapist/healer around similar issues. I plan to contact her today.

In fact, I’d referred the same friend to my own “intuitive” (read:
psychic), and it’s just humorous to me that me and this group of women have
this rolodex of woo-woo witchy healer folks. And damned, if I’m not grateful
for it.

For those unfamiliar, shamanic journeying (according to my
novice understanding) is pretty much an intense meditation, but there’s a drum,
the sound of which is purported to help induce a dream-like state—it’s like a
guided meditation, where instead of listening to someone’s voice tell you to
follow down a path in the forest, you sort of follow the drum, and make your
own path through the forest. I’ve been journeying for years now, and find it to
be one of the best and quickest ways to access internal information—however
uncomfortable that information may be.

Yesterday’s overall message was that I have to repair my
relationship to trust. Yuck.

It’s like trust for me is a broken port, and until it’s repaired,
there will be glitches and sparks and melted fuses.

The thing about sexual trauma is this: you want to show
people (the right people) the wound, you want to share about it, you want to
exorcise it, you want to talk about it in order to heal from it, to release it and move on from it. You want to
expose it to fresh air so that it heals instead of festers. You want to bring
it into the sun and let the forces at work do their magic to create something
beautiful out of something horrifying.

And yet.

Because of the nature of sexual trauma as a secret, and the prevalence of people dismissing it as exaggeration… You also
don’t want to share about it. You are ashamed to bring it out, to tell anyone,
to share about it. You feel that to mention it is to invite revulsion,
rejection, dismissal. And perhaps, you have experience to back up that fear,
and so you remain locked up tight with it, and it will continue to burn a hole
in your heart.

The longer you hold onto it, the more painful it becomes,
until it becomes something so immense in your heart and head that you can’t
imagine that you can actually share it with other people, because it will
overwhelm everyone, including yourself.

This, is why god made therapists. Healers. And friends with
rolodexes.

The arrows toward healing this next came from “going in” to
my meditation with questions about my recent fatigue. Over the last month or
so, I’ve been so fucking tired, and my western and eastern doctors can’t figure
it out, except that my eastern doc said, “You’re energy center is depleted.”
Well, yeah. But why?

The information I got last night was that I have been
fighting this, this knowledge, these experiences, this anger, this sorrow, …
well, for years. I’ve been avoiding it for just as long. I’ve been fighting
dealing with it, but it’s there. Believe you me, apparently, it’s there. And
somehow my awareness has cracked open about it. Somehow, I am aware that I am
exhausted from this fight, from this constant battle to suppress, dominate, and
deny.

Some veil has lifted, some curtain shifted, and I am finally
able to experience the exhaustion.

And if I want to get healthy, then I have to heal it. And if
I want to heal it…–well, as I mentioned earlier, I’m more than a little
ambivalent about doing so.

First things first. Call my friend who’s working with
someone. Get that info.

Second thing? Ensure that I approach and treat myself with
the most radiant compassion and care that I can muster, cuz,

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

aspiration · dreams · faith · perseverance · theater · trying

Voice of Dreams Past

February 18, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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When I left South Korea in February 2004, my neighbor and
Canadian co-worker gave me a journal as a parting gift. I didn’t realize til
later on the plane back to America that he’d written inside, “Good Luck on
Broadway.”

I just searched my blog to see if I’d written about this
segment of my life earlier, and I have, but it’s worth revisiting today.

When I left my ESL teaching post in Korea, my first “real”
job post-undergrad, I had the idea I would come back to the States and “break
onto Broadway,” that I would work my way through the underworld of New York,
the clichéd waitress by day, actor by night.

As I was applying for jobs, I went to get my nails
done—because surely that’s a priority to someone looking for food service
work…? I was in the salon, and began to chat with the woman next to me. I
told her about where I’d been, where I thought I’d be going, and she said
something that infiltrated. To paraphrase: You know you have to start in
community theater, right? It takes years to do anything worthy of note. You don’t just
start at the top.

Her words, combined with a moment of clarity about my
ability to cope with life on life’s terms, led me to abandon my dream, drive
west, and set up a new life in California. You can read about that story here.

But.

Last night, I went to my first rehearsal for the new play
I’m in. It’s a staged mock-trial about the Rape of Nanking by the Japanese
during World War II. It’s not a Sam Shepard, or Shakespeare, or Kushner. It’s
not something I’ll actually advertise to my friends to come see, because I
believe there will be more plays, with better scripts and an actual plot that I
will want to encourage you to see me in. But, it’s a start. And, as I wrote
earlier, I’m happy to be in your bad plays. And really, I am.

But, this thing happened while I was waiting for my table-reading rehearsal to begin: I heard voices.

Specifically, I heard a woman, probably a young woman, as
the rehearsals are at SF State, singing operatically, and there was a chorus
behind her. When I heard it, I stopped short, and followed the sound.

I stood on one side of a wall, the theater on the other. It must have been the scenery shop,
with spray-painted borders on the walls and floors, immense pieces of mirror
and wood. The sort of haphazard array of items you think of in any work-shop. I
stood there, and I listened to them sing. To the accompanying pianist, the voice
of the director, telling them something I couldn’t quite hear. She lit up the
whole place, this disembodied voice.

And I remembered that part of this whole thing for me. That
part of the motivation, that part of the dream.

Because, as you may have (or maybe I should have) gathered by now, this theater thing
and this singing thing are related.

I do know enough to know that what that woman in the nail
shop said was correct. That it does take years. But what my 24-year old self
wasn’t able or willing or balanced enough to say was, So what? Yeah, And?
That’s what I’m doing here, lady—I’m beginning.

I could look around the room at the director and my fellow
actors and report that they’re all 10 years younger than me.

I could stand in that hallway listening to the voice of my
own aspiration and wail I should have studied theater in undergrad.

I could comb through my neglected childhood,
and poke a finger into the wound of not being encouraged to pursue my talent
and my dreams.

But, Julia Cameron wrote something very significant to her
naysayers (internal and external) in The Artist’s Way when she began learning to play the piano in her
50s.

“Do you know how old you’ll be by the time you actually get
proficient at this thing?”

Yes, the same age I’d be if I didn’t.

I saw my friend Matt onstage last week. He’s been working in
the theater industry since his 20s, went to school for it. He’s 50 now. He’s not famous. It’s his first SF play. But he’s
working. Always working. And he loves it.

And isn’t that the damned point.

acting · clarity · commitment · consistency · dreams · growth · perseverance

Get Real.

February 12, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

Blogger lets you see what posts are being read, how many
times, and where in the world the reader is (HELLO! Those of you in Poland, Germany & Israel…whoever you are!). This morning, I saw that someone had read
“Pulling a Carmen,” my first blog-a-day in November of 2011. I haven’t stuck
with it daily, but fairly enough.

Amazingly, a) it’s the same things I talk about now (wanting
to act and perform; letting myself be in a relationship; owning my dreams), but
b) it also shows me where things have
changed: I have been a bass player in a
band – I certainly wasn’t in Winter of 2011 when I wrote that; I wasn’t until Spring of 2013.

In that blog, I write that my
relationship with others is reflected in my relationship with myself: how am I not committed to myself and my goals? And here I am present-day, whittling down my goals to only theater, finally.

This week, I
wrote the lead singer in the band I play bass in that I can’t be in the band
anymore. It’s sad, but I know it’s ultimately for the best. It’s a pruning
game—like a bonsai. Or fichus. (cuz who doesn’t love the word fichus). And I
think it will ultimately help me in my attempts to focus on and even achieve
anything at theater.

I write about all the same things that I write about now,
but I do think I’m at a different place with them. I mean, I guess I write
about the same things all the time: relationships, healing, self-care,
self-derision, past experience, authenticity, perseverance.

Perseverance. I’ve written a bunch about that before, but
without one goal to head toward, the whole thing becomes dispersed, scattered,
and ineffectual.

Yesterday, I put down a deposit for real headshots.

The friends I’ve had who’ve helped me out over the years
produced incredible photos, artistic, fun, and fun to shoot—but they’re not
“acting headshots.” And there just is an industry standard. I’ve been trying to get the name of someone from an actor
friend of mine, but her voicemails are all garbled, and somehow it hasn’t been
working.

Enter Yelp. Yesterday after some searching and
clicking and emailing, I sent half of the $350 fee to this woman in Berkeley.

Later that day, I got emails back from my other inquiries,
friends, who would be willing to do a much reduced rate, or photos in exchange for
babysitting.

I cursed myself (mildly) for being so impetuous and
imprudent, for not being patient and thereby “wasting” money.

And then, I looked at these friends’ websites, and I said,
ya know, it’s worth it.

As Maybelline says, I’m worth it. (or is it clarol?)

Because, after hm, 3 years of headshots that I felt either
okay, or less than okay about (fine photos though they were), I’ve been being prudent and cutting corners and trying alternatives–It’s time to put
my money where my mouth is. And I mouth about being an actress.

Does this mean I’m suddenly an actress? No. Does it mean
that I’m taking myself seriously enough to invest in myself? Yes. Does it mean
that I can focus more on what I’m showing the auditors rather than what I’ve
handed them, or emailed them? YES.

Because it IS my calling card, my first impression. And if I
want to be a professional, I get professional help. If I want this to be real, then I get real.

I could look at that first blog and laugh/lament that I’m
talking and writing and working on the same damned things 3 years later. And a
little bit, I do. But I also recognize that big things have shifted since then,
too. I’m glad to have this kind of record to mark my progress. Even when
progress looks circuitous and labyrinthine.

The last line in that first blog is that maybe there’s a
tall attractive employed funny Jewboy who is looking for a
“writer/singer/actress…bass player.” At the time I wrote that, “bass player” was only a
vague hope and notion, a funny, last second, “doorknob comment” throw-away, because you shouldn’t really know that it’s important to me. Today, I get to own that mantle. I am a bass player. I
play bass, I’ve been in a band. And I am now hoping to own the mantle of
actress.

If you glue it, they will come.