My MFA Poetry Thesis, May 2012

May 9, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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(hard to reproduce the format here, but you’ll get the drift. continuing to share what it is I do and have done with you.)

The Intelligence of Memory

Molly Daniels

For all of us who live to the other side of silence.

“Memory is like
a

shifting collage,

a narrative spun
out of scraps and

constructed
anew

whenever recollection takes place.”

Kathleen
McGowan

he tells me it’s obvious i’m inexperienced. i don’t tell him
pushing my head under his sleeping bag is disconcerting.

i accuse the boy i’m dating of
leaving so quickly after sex that he forgot his shoes. he tells me i’d insisted
the night before that they were mine, and wore them home.

they wheel another college student
into the ward. he’s chanting, Do not go gently into that good night! and i think bemusedly, i could do this for a while.

the poem i want to write has the
word nipple in it   it won’t
be taut or blushed   just
nipple, right there   because
you know how it tastes   the
slight give of density between teeth and under the ply of your tongue

when they knock on my dorm and pull me out of bed, i have to take my retainer
out first.

She drops a carton of cereal. It splatters against the
baseboards. She pauses, and begins to wail as though the o’s are all the things she cannot manage. I reach
to the sink with a sudden glass and open the tap. Oxygen bubbles cloud it. I
hold it out to her and she shakes her soggy head, It’s dirty. I tell her it’s
just the bubbles. She hiccups and insists, No, it’s dirty. I fill another
glass.

months later, a friend will tell me
the only coherent thing i said that day was, i only feel normal when i’m drunk.

my breath comes short   and shallow in gasps of
clinging—No—clutching—No—manic tantrum thrashes—No!   i cannot let this go   i need this   them
his   i need you to
make me better   i need you to
make me feel better   adore me   touch me   writhe on top of me   so in that suspension   i can feel alive   writhe on top of me so in that suspension   i can feel alive   your breath comes short and shallow in gasps of clinging—Yes—clutching—Yes—manic
tantrum thrashes—Yes! malleate
me   pound me   beat me out of myself   so i can be in the quiet   beat me out of myself    so i can be in the quiet

the other patients will tell me
they assumed it was heroin because of the jutting hipbones.

and because neither of us know what we’re doing, i don’t
know my discomfort is his finger in the wrong hole.

my first time is an apology. he puts on his shoes when he’s
done.

he comes over at 3am sweating booze. it burns as he pushes
in from behind.

the scent of day lilies cloys the air. they’re
supposed to rot in dirt.

this could be anything you’d forget   or anything you remember   this could be the thing you’d
always remember   but isn’t at
all how you remember it   this could
be the experience you wish you had   the
experience you did have or the experience you’d wanted to have   but now that it’s happening   you’re wishing it were
different   wish it were
more   you wish you knew what
came next

i’ve skidded out on just-damp
pavement. the cutlass nose-deep in a copse of trees. i can’t get my fingers to
steady around my cigarette. the hicktown cops make quite a show of marching me
into their holding cell.

My mother taught three special topics courses at a
university in the 90s. Psychology of Fashion (special emphasis on fetish fashion); Barbie on the Couch, a
Psychoanalytic Perspective (final projects
produced several mutilated dolls); and Female Serial Killers (surprisingly few; generally preferring poison).

She tells me she realized if she twisted just one more inch, she’d break his
arm. He stutters from the time he is verbal.

crocuses like periscopes through snow skeleton stakes of tomato
plants a brick
patio swims in a decade of oak and maple leaves

We sit on a bench outside the outlet mall. She wears
black pleather pants. I have a cigarette. She’d rather I didn’t but she smoked
when she was my age. The other two are inside some men’s store. She asks how my
summer away was and a cute boy walks by and looks toward us on the bench. She
says that he’s cute. That she’s been emailing with a nineteen year old
somewhere in the middle states. That she was going to buy a plane ticket to go
out and see him. I don’t remember where. I’m glad to have the numbing thrum of
adderall to push the din of rage and panic back behind my collarbone. At the
last minute she decided not to go. I tell her not to hit on any of the guys I
thought were cute too. She laughs. I examine the filter. My dad walks out of
the store.

my lips travel down his body and
freeze to a sudden stop at his waistband. flashbacks blind my retinas and i
cling to his thigh, barely breathing in the dark. he tells me that it’s okay,
that we can just have sex, instead.

my mom later tells me she came to see me once, but i don’t
remember. she tells me i was zonked out on meds, and her voice trails off, and
she gets this terrified look in her eyes.

my dad’s first wife, i was told, ended up in bellevue. now
she lives in brooklyn.

when getting honest about the
amphetamines, my mom tells me her therapist insisted she come see him 7 days a
week, or be committed.

my therapist leans forward in
earnest. you do know you’ve had a breakdown, right?

i meet with a 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.

i can’t let you be nice to
me    you skim and caress
and   i can’t take it   you are gentle and whisper   and   no
not here   there is
nothing breathing here   just
do it   take it   please don’t honor this   please i am going to break   Please
kindness does not belong in here

i hold my palm against all the
objects i’ve piled in the center of my room and ask them each where they
belong.

i’ve removed the velvet cloak from
my stuffed bunny. with my now-shaved head, we are both naked and new.

he sounds like an impostor every time he recites the blessing over the shabbat
candles. as if crossing the border of religion frees him of his past, or gives
him access to ours.

he hurls his words: you look like your mother. that night, i simply shave it all off.

i’m on that electric walkway at
the airport. its moving along beneath me, but i’ve lost my footing, and its
dragging me, scraping me apart as others stand so calmly heading toward their
future.

the doctor stares at his clipboard, a few pages up-turned in
his hand. he glances vaguely

toward me – i hear there’s something about your hair?

afterward, he tells me he wants to take me out, like to
dinner. i ask why. he tells me he likes me, wants to get to know me. i stop
answering his calls.

my dad grips the arms of a green plastic chair. his knuckles
are white. i’m not angry at you, he spits, i’m angry at your disease.

i cannot let this go   him   them
what will i be without this fractured electricity whirling around my body   who will i be without you to
bring me to life   how will i
know myself?   in the morning   i remember the Beatles. i hear them deep within my story and as i listen   i remember: I love the Beatles   i love to laugh at my own
jokes   i’d love to embrace
fully   without savage tongues or suspended reality i find myself to be a woman   scared   scarred
and beautiful. and it is this constant   this one unalterable truth about myself   that enables me for one unguarded moment to lean over the edge of
uncertainty   to spread my
arms   and fall in

huddled on the closet floor, phone clutched to my
ear, my friend tells me: i’m thinking
of checking out a meeting.

this is the feeling of
your arm tight around my ribcage
this is the feeling of your thigh soft beneath mine   i
sense my consciousness escaping
it’s not safe to be here
exposed   from so much
more than clothes   this
is the feeling of your heartbeat
gentle against my back
this is the feeling of your lips   pressed sleepy at my shoulder   i
want to detach   to run away
from myself   to leave my
body leave just two bodies   base discardable
this is the feeling of your hand twining firmly into mine   this is the feeling of my body
melting into yours   but i   am human
and you   are human   naked and safe   here i breathe

this could be the time you get it right   the time you remember there is no
right   this time you don’t
wish it were any different
and you don’t come back for more.

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“I lived there once.”

May 8, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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An odd line of thought and conversation has been happening
lately. Mostly including the term “OkCupid.” …

Dating. What does dating look like in post-cancerland? Do
you tell people? Is it a first date thing, a second, an on-your-profile thing?
What does your profile look like, when you have just one or two accurate photos
of the new length of your hair, that despite the rave compliments and an honest
thank you, still feels weird to acknowledge? Does it “matter?” and yet how can it not?

Does it have relevance to the woman I am today, the woman I
may present to people I’m just meeting? I don’t tell people, usually, anymore.
Although, yesterday as I checked out my groceries at Trader Joes, the teller
was very taken with the “early Mia Farrow” ‘do, asking if it was the first time
I’d cut it like that, and I answered, Well, I didn’t really have a choice – I
lost it. He looked confused, and said laughingly, What, you mean it fell out?
And I said, with a smile, still playing the “up”ness of the interaction, Yes.
It fell out. It was quite an ordeal. And his smile fell off his face, as he
understood.

So, I don’t tell people. Why do that? But, isn’t it an
integral part of who I am, and what I’ve lived through in my life? Just as the
facts that I don’t drink or smoke anymore, that I’m from New Jersey, and that I lived
in Korea for two years? But it’s different. It’s differently weighted. I would put
on my profile that I don’t drink, I think I have in the past, or it usually
comes up at least in passing on a first date – if it’s a good one. What do you
reveal about yourself? What is relevant? And really, does and how does this mean something about me?

Is cancer part of who I am, or is it just a large desolate
city I drove through once, and remember, but didn’t take any souvenirs? Have
souvenirs hitch-hiked with me? Have I taken on bits of the town that color how
I continue to move forward? – Well, to that, the answer is certainly Yes (I am
not playing instruments, softball, or working out again because I thought they
were good ideas [they were good ideas pre-cancer] – I’m doing them because they have become “time is short”/carpe diem imperatives post-cancer).

So things about me are
different, but upon meeting someone new, do they need to know what made me that
way? Is cancer relevant, or are the actions it catalyzed? Is it a part of me,
or a part of my past? And if it’s a part of my past, how to integrate the fear
of its recurrence that will always be present in a degree of severity or
another? To explain that in the staff meeting at work when they report on the progress of another co-worker’s chemo, I have to repeat the mantra, This is not about me, this is not about me, as my heart freezes over with concrete. To have to stop watching one of my favorite t.v. shows because a character is now battling cancer. To have begun to put the gas to the floor board out of that shrieking town, and pretend I can’t see it in my rear-view anymore.

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Sharing the Sandbox

May 6, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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It’s strange to think that one year ago at this time, I was
getting ready to graduate with a Master’s Degree. All that happened since then;
the joy of having my whole family, including my dad and his fiancé come out to
see me; my dad getting to see me perform my final for acting class, and his
commenting on how surprised and impressed he was at my performance. (And my own
bits of, A little late to notice that I’m talented, but thanks.) My mom and
brother witnessing me read a poem at the “Spiritual” commencement ceremony, and
getting to experience what I’d been trying to do for two years in school. The
positive feedback from strangers and listeners.

The bits of momentum I had then; the job hunting beginning,
but not too worried. The calls with the ‘this would be so perfect for me!’
start-up arts education school and gallery… who could only pay $30k. The
trolling of craigslist for apartments and roommates in New Jersey, because
maybe it was time to go back. The increase in the fevered pitch of anxiety and
worry about money, and jobs, and position, and location, and future, and
security.

Four months of that, till I was hired where I am now, when I
had literally $3.98 in my bank account at my first paycheck.

The oscillation between those moments of triumph and
community, and those moments of perceived failure and desolation. The poor hard
wrenching of my psyche and little heart and big ego, ending indeed in cancer.

I mean, I went to Hawaii because of cancer (and friends’
generosity). I’m working through truly old relationship patterns because I have
to, because they’re here. I have formed strong friendships with people I barely
knew because they showed up for me with a plate of cupcakes, a bowl of soup, a tub of pudding.

Someone told me last week that it sounded like I was
postponing joy until I had a different job and job title. When, in fact, that’s
backwards. The job is what it is, and will be until it isn’t. (said Alice.) But I’m the thing
that can change, and I am.

Those things that brought me joy, community, and a sense of
self and self-esteem last year at this time—acting, performing my work, meeting
up with playful friends—those are the things that I’m grabbing back to again.
My friend’s band I sang with the other week has two other gigs in June they’ve
invited me to sing with. I have two writing groups set up, a softball team I’ll
begin playing with in June, and callouses that please oh
please I hope form soon on my poor pinky from playing my guitar again, however
inexpertly.

I mean, I put videos on facebook of me singing! The thing I
always have said no one knows I do. It’s time that you do.

I have a play that I’m in with a host of folks I love, and
my job title is still the same.

I have to budget carefully, owing several months of backrent
from when I was sick, and I proposed a monthly poker night with my friend who
just moved close by.

I bought a ticket home to see a best friend get married, and
I just finished chemo two months ago.

Joy can coexist next to financial insecurity, job
dissatisfaction, and even debt.

I don’t think I knew this before.

And I certainly didn’t practice it.

One year ago, I was getting prepared to graduate; I had
pride, a grin the size of Wisconsin, and family and friends supporting me.
Truthfully, there is no reason–aside from my own stubborn curmudgeonness–that this
year I shouldn’t have the same.

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A Perverse Act of Gentility

May 6, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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Continuing to catalogue old writings, here is another of the 2004 Shayna series. Again, in deference to my younger self, editing was kept to a minimum. Therefore, judge lightly 😉 Related post: “The Wave”

A Perverse Act of Gentility

Martin leaned in toward Shayna.

The scene was a common one in the months that followed their
introduction. Shayna found comfort and excitement in Martin’s company,
ping-ponging opinions about movies, politics, South Park. Martin was pleasantly
knowledgeable, funny, and one of Shayna’s few friends at school with whom she
felt she could be her true quirky self.

Mostly, they convened at his apartment, smoked pot or drank
cheap wine, and watched a movie. Shayna would courteously depart some nights
more quickly than others, if Martin had, as he usually did, edged toward her
during the course of the movie. On other nights, Shayna would repeat into Martin’s contorted pleading eyes that she loved his company, but wasn’t interested
in anything romantic with anyone at the
time.

Of course, this wasn’t entirely true, but to say she found
his breath odorsome, his teeth overlarge, and his physique lacking would
certainly have led to an irreparable rift in their friendship, and leave her quite
alone again.

This night however, Martin was not content with her excuses.

“Don’t you find me attractive?” he demanded when she pulled
away.

“It’s not that,” Shayna defended, weakened by the cheap
wine, most of which had emptied itself down her throat, not his. “You know that
I just don’t want anything romantic with anyone right now. I love spending time
with you; we have a great time. Why does it have to be different?”

“Because I like you! Because for months we’ve sat on this
couch, and I’ve wanted to kiss you, and I’ve respected you enough not to.”

“Well, I appreciate your chivalry, Martin,” she attempted
without sarcasm, “but that doesn’t change how I feel. It would change our
friendship, and I really don’t want to see that happen.” The topic was tiresome
to her–the bent truths, white lies; it drained her – is this all men wanted
from her?

The look of pure, fulfilled joy on his sleeping face
sickened her. She crept from his bed at the first slant of light, forgetting
her rings on his desktop, and blinked into the street.

No, she hadn’t kissed Martin out of force, but rather out of
exhaustion, to be rid of the topic. He’d placed his hands so gently on her body,
skimming her parts.

And she was angry.

She’d compromised herself, and wanted the weight of it to be
congruous with the act. If he’d ground
into her, panting with lust, she’d have understood. She could easily let her pall of cheap, whoring disgust fall into
an eerie abyss of disregard–it was a feeling she was familiar with.

But he hadn’t. He’d brushed over her lovingly, admiringly.
And she hated him for it. For prolonging her shame with each slow touch. For distorting the act into a caricature of true feeling.

Arms folded tight against her, Shayna stalked home in
humiliation and disgust for the man who’d held her like an angel.

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The Huntsman

May 3, 2013 Molly Daniels Hayes2 Comments

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I realized something important this morning.

I’ve had an emotional week; doing a lot of work around my
dad. And in doing more exploration this morning, I found something new.
Different.

On Wednesday, my therapist asked me what my vengeance needs
to do to feel complete, better, satiated, heard. I paused, as it took a moment
to see something; My vengeance wants for my dad to suffer as I did, to
acknowledge and atone for his abusive and neglectful behavior. But, I saw just
then, this is something my vengeance cannot have. It wants something it can’t
have, and so, I said, what it needs, really, is to stop hunting.

It was a moment of clarity for me, to see that this thing
that I’ve wanted so badly, have twisted myself and my relationship to the
world, god, myself in order to bring to fruition, is a fool’s errand. It is of
non-consquence. It is a quest that cannot be completed.

So, I have to help my vengeance to let go. Let go of the
quest for punishment and retribution, and to accept. Accept that surrender.

This morning, I saw more than this. Behind and beyond my
vengeance is something else. Because, what my vengeance wants is for my father
to recognize his brutality, and to change it. It doesn’t and won’t stop at
acknowledgement; I want change. I want him to heal.

I want to save my dad.

The fantasy follows as such: Because of my intervention, my
father realizes his wrongs, deeply acknowledges them, atones by being
remorseful and by taking actions to
right himself, to heal his hurt places. Because of my actions, because of my
anger, my father lives. My father is saved. Because of my indignation, he gets
better.

I “like” this new uncovering. This deeper layer of meaning
and intention behind my anger, because it fits with me, with who I am, and my
motivations. With how I tried to behave with my mom, but that took a much
different form. I wanted to do the same thing with my dad; the flip side of the
coin – love/hate. Save her with love; save him with hate.

In both cases, I have been unsuccessful. Mostly because it
is not my job, and I am not capable of saving or changing anyone. My mother
changed because she decided to. My mother didn’t kill herself because she
decided not to. It wasn’t me.

My father will or won’t change regardless of my actions.
It’s time to stop hunting… but I realize only now that I have been like Snow
White’s Huntsman: plotting to kill, but really intending to save.

It makes my heart grow a few sizes in my chest. It doesn’t
change that I have to stop my quest and accept that my life is to be lived for
me, and not in order to align with or rebel against my father’s ideologies. But
it does change how I feel about myself. About my motivations. And, actually, it
does make it a little easier to let go.

In the end, I love my father deeply; so much so that I have
made a life’s work of being what he has wanted or not wanted me to be. I
realized this love this morning.

My therapist said on Wednesday that it sounds like there are
three versions of my father: the good dad (sports, camping, teaching me how to
swim dad), the neglectful dad, and the angry shaming dad. The rub is that I
can’t know who is on the other end of the phone when I call; I can’t direct
dial the good dad.

But I can choose to let go of saving the others.

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The Wave.

May 1, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I began to re-write Sunday’s college class story closer to how
it happened, but then I remembered I’d already written it. Amazingly, still
preserved in the bowels of my desk, here is a story from my 2004 creative
writing fiction class. To maintain the integrity of my 22 year old self, one
year removed from the incident, I’ve tried not to edit too much… 😉

The Wave

She had written a poem about the back of his neck, and the
“myopic neglect” of such, before she knew his name. She had sketched the
angular side of his face from two rows back, and laughed inwardly at his witty
comments to his friends beside him. The haphazard moles that spotted his neck
and cheek were points of endearment, and the unwashed hair a point of
character.

For two months, Shayna had pined for this film amateur, his
tight black jeans and his yellow plaid shirt. There were a few – two –
occasions where she’d actually looked him in the eyes while passing in the
hallway, and for her, time drew in its breath and hollow echoes of the world bordered around her. Those two walking-on-water moments merely intensified Shayna’s
belief that this man/boy was part of her destiny.

And so, on a late October day, before her Art of Cinema
class, she approached Craig, having learned his name from the class roster they all signed. Craig was just parking his bicycle outside the building,
and none of his entourage were present. Entourage was perhaps not the right
word, as Craig was by no means self-important and his friends were not
followers, but Shayna was always intimidated by this group, who wore shaggy
hair and gads of knowledge. Especially Chloe. Perhaps ‘intimidated’ isn’t the right word for how Shayna felt about
Chloe; it was more like bewilderment and vague dislike. Her class points were
empty, and her daggers for Shayna were fat. Though never overt about her
passion, Shayna sensed that Chloe had her own gravitational pull toward Craig.
So that when Shayna orbited near the two of them –outside the building,
leaning on the rail, comfortably smoking cigarettes—she was inclined to keep
her distance.

Therefore, on this October day, Shayna grabbed the wing of
Fate and approached the lone, if winded cyclist.

“Hi.” Craig looked up as Shayna continued, “I know this
might sound weird, but I was wondering if maybe you wanted to get a cup of
coffee or a drink sometime?” And then Shayna’s world froze…

“Um…sure.”

“I know this is awkward, I mean, I don’t even know your
name,” she lied, and smiling, held out her hand. “I’m Shayna.” Craig reached
forward and held the outstretched hand. She could feel the adding-machine of his
brain attempting to compute who this stranger was, trying to download a person
in a touch.

“Craig.” He let her hand go, but maintained the gaze that
stapled her to the spot like a stuck butterfly. “Um, yeah, let me get your
number,” and he slid his cell phone from a tight black pocket.

She watched him type in the numbers. “Shayna,” she repeated,
confirming. Craig looked up at her and nodded, sliding the phone back. Trying
to make more of the scene, but inwardly dying to escape, “So, what do you think
of this class?”

“Which one?” He was grabbing a paper-bag lunch from the back
of his bike.

“Belton. He’s a little… I don’t know if ‘long-winded’ is the
right word…”

“I think he just takes time to put his thoughts together.”
He looked at Shayna, expecting perhaps more than she had scripted.

“Yeah… Okay, well, I guess I’ll see you in there.” And
Shayna turned, walking toward the entrance, unsure if she was more distraught
now having actually approached Craig, feeling perhaps like a stalker, an idiot,
an insecure American female. In the fog of her mind scrolled the adage: “Best
to be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

Classes passed as they had, with Shayna sitting not too
close to Craig, but within the orbit of his voice. There was little opportunity
for acknowledgement on either part, because Shayna did her best to bolt from
the classroom before another encounter could occur. She wanted him to call, so
she could fill out the stick-figure image of herself she was sure she’d
conveyed. She wanted him to call, so she could laugh aloud at the things he
said. She wanted him to call, so she could etch into her memory the smell of
his unwashed hair. But despite her fantasy, Shayna felt that any casual
small-talk would just make her appear a foundering oddity. So, she fled, and
his only image of her remained a stick-figure in motion.

One Wednesday, Shayna left the building a few minutes late.
She saw through the glass-paned front door Craig and his intellectual group
loitering outside, and drew in a deep breath. Craig looked up at her as she
exited, and…waved. Her heart trampolined. Other members of the group turned to
look at who he could possibly be waving at, and puzzled, studied Shayna. She
could not brave approaching the whole seething frontal lobe, having to prove
her likability – her cool factor – to their prickly group antennae, or to draw
herself out in front of Chloe, standing at Craig’s side like one of his moles.

So, she smiled demurely into his eyes alone, nodded, and
walked into the night, leaving him to explain her relevance, or to allow his
advancement to fall as an innocuous gesture to an anonymous ghost.

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Aren’t you a pretty thing, What’s your name …

April 29, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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“And they found that once the door of willingness was open,
it could always be opened a little bit more.” ~ anonymous (paraphrase)

This has been an interesting month and few weeks. 6 weeks
ago I had my final round of chemo. Since then, I’ve gone back to work, been
leant a car, been on a non-date date that has dematerialized to nada, bought
IKEA lamps to flank my new bedframe, redecorated, written Morning Pages, been
to therapies, and signed up for a softball league.

I’ve sung with a friend’s band in public, and was good
enough, which is good enough for me. I contacted my school about renting music
and art studio space, finally continuing a line of communication that my gmail
tells me I began with them literally two years ago. I’ve noticed I stopped reading
fiction, and was pleasantly engrossed with my friend’s copy of The Art of
Fielding as a diversion. I’ve watch a lot
of t.v. on my computer, but I’ve also noticed that my dishes are getting done
more frequently, without my demanding it of myself.

It is this last bit that I am hopeful about. That without
beating myself up to change, patterns that had been entrenched will simply
shift, and one day, I’ll just notice they’re completely different.

There’s a lot of demand on myself following all this cancer
stuff. And even though my friends gently admonish/remind me that it’s
unreasonable to think that I’ll change my life and my self and my patterns when
I just finished fighting off cancer, there is the great part of me that feels
that it is because I have just fought
off cancer that I must change all these things – and tout suite.

Because there’s the linger not only of the disappointment of
accumulated years of mediocrity, — or if I were more fair to myself, hiding —
but there’s also the imperative of the cosmic clock that cancer has installed
in my being – hurry up and fix yourself, you never know if I’m coming back, it
intones.

Surely, no one is skilled at getting “better” under such
pressure. And so, yes, I do have to let up on myself, but that’s one thing to
say, and even act, it’s another to believe. Because there is also still the
idea, fiction as it may be, that if I don’t “do this better”, this life thing better, that the cancer will come back.
There’s also the idea, perhaps like many of this age/generation, that life is
quickly passing and I feel like I’m barely oriented to the spinning orb we’re
all attached to.

“Easy does it” comes to mind. I have enough collaged
reminders of the word “Relax.” But the hyper-vigilance, and perfectionism,
don’t have time for relax.

One way that today I am trying to counter-balance my crazy
is to write this, write my blog, which because of my work schedule, and the
rest of my typical morning practice, I’ve had to skip to be to work
(relatively) on time. So, I got up a few minutes earlier, to ensure I had time
for this, because, as you can see, I need some outpouring of the crazy, in
order to be a little emptied for the sanity.

I met with my writing group yesterday. It was only two of us
this time, but it was our first meeting since cancer, so it was a welcome
return to normalcy. We spoke a lot about where we were in thinking about our
writing, what we had to give to it, and came to the idea that perhaps it could
be fun again, instead of something that feels like another job, as she put it.
To play with it, instead of be beaten by it. Sounds a lot better, eh?

This precipitated the story I wrote yesterday, which I
realize, I’ll just write as it actually happened, and put up here, because
there’s a real version of that story, as I’m sure many of us have, and perhaps
I’m simply better at non-fiction, or maybe that real story simply should be
told instead of some fantasy version where the dorky girl gets the cool guy. In
the real version, I assure you, she doesn’t.

But not because he didn’t show interest, but because she (I)
didn’t pursue, in fact, she tried to disappear from his notice. Which I feel is
pretty emblematic of my m.o.

Hiding. The thing that underlays all of this, me. Hiding
from jobs, relationships, vulnerability, authenticity.

My therapist and I came up with some phrases after some work
we did last week which are meant to counteract this habit and pattern of
hiding, diminishing, and, perhaps, shame.

My feelings are valid.

It is okay to act authentically.

I will be safe and protected if I do.

I am lovable no matter my feelings.

I am pretty familiar with the diminishing part/habit. There
are probably some more threads to untangle, but I’m less familiar with trusting
that I will be loved and cared for if I express myself authentically. I am not
familiar with trusting that I will be okay. To come right down to it, I’m not
familiar with trusting. To a point, sure, but beyond that, when they say a leap
of faith? I’ve already hooked up my carabeener and holster, because damned if
I’ll let you drop me and be disappointed again.

The biggest fear, that I’ll be tricked into trusting. That
I’ll be tricked, betrayed, after I have trusted. And that I’ll be shattered
from it – something I fear I won’t come back from again.

So, how do you trust, when you’re terrified? When the thing
you’re supposed to learn is trust, and the only way to learn it is by trusting?
How do you unhook the harness, and say, okay, I’ll play, because I am tired of
being diminished, and, truthfully, I’m tired of being suspicious?

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A Writer Writes. Even Mediocrely. (That’s the phrase, right?)

April 29, 2013 Molly Daniels Hayes2 Comments

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Inspired by this afternoon’s conversation with my writing
group buddy, Jenelle, this story is based on pw.org’s Prompt: Write a story that opens with your main character
doing something that is completely antithetical to his or her personality.
Having not written fiction in a long time, here is a cliché short story in
which little happens! Enjoy!

Ordinarily, she’d never have said such a thing, but once it
was done there was no unsaying it. The entire class, in their half-piano desks, turned; the professor, wearing tweed without irony, furrowed his wiry brows.

Orly tugged on the hem of her skirt, and sputter-mumbled
herself into rephrasing. “It – I – You’d asked what reason the main character
might have for delaying such an important meeting, and I just think – well,
based on the lascivious language the author uses elsewhere in the chapter – well, I just think she might
delay in order to … to masturbate.”

A student in the 2^nd row who’d turned around shifted
his gaze to the guy across the aisle and raised his eyebrows in Groucho Marx
innuendo. The girl to her left, Wendy, simply stared, like Orly was a pop icon,
or on fire.

Into the silence, Professor Grant regained his composure by
flipping back and forth a few pages of the novel they’d been discussing, and
the rustling caught wind through the classroom as other students scoured their
books as well.

“Surely, Miss Elliot, we each have an interpretive reading, and
yours is quite … creative, but I see little evidence of your so-called
‘lascivious language’ in Motley’s prose. Perhaps you’ve confused our text with The
Interpretation of Dreams?”

The few students who understood snickered and made a few
last side-long glances toward Orly, now curving her spine low into the
molded seat, and consciously willing her foot to stop hyper-jangling as the class
resumed its course.

After class, she quickly descended the front ADA-approved ramp and
turned left out of the 6pm crowd toward the dusky brick buildings that
flanked the Commons.

“Orly!” someone called behind her. “Orly, wait up!” Orly
turned around as Mike Gordon hurried out of the mill of students. She paused to
mentally check that her skirt still faced forward and hadn’t edged around sideways
like it does, and ran her tongue over her teeth for good measure. “Hey, Mike,”
she replied, and turned back as he caught up to her, matching her pace, his
messenger bag thumping their rhythm.

“That was pretty lame of Grant to call you out like that. I
mean, I think what you said made sense. It’s too bad it’s just a bunch of
prudes in that class.”

Orly inwardly smiled, and, with more nonchalance than she
felt, breathed, “Oh, it’s no big deal. I mean, I should know by now to fly
under the radar with Grant.”

“Ha! Then who’d keep that class interesting?”

They walked along into the deepening darkness, the wan peach
of street lights punctuating their path until it T-d into Emerson Boulevard.
They both came to a stop on the same square of pavement and faced each other
for the first time that evening.

“So, I guess you’re off to the library?” Mike asked.

“Why would you assume that?”

“Because it’s where I always see you,” he said, looking
amused. “Books splayed open across the whole table like the bodies of Gettysburg!”

Orly laughed. “So that’s what you think of me? Some
bookworm, huh?” she teased back.

“No, no, it’s just I – I just meant…” At this, he finally
broke his gaze and watched a car pass. “No, I just thought maybe we could study
together sometime. I think you’d have a good influence on me, is all.”

“Well, Michael Gordon,” Orly said and turned, indeed, toward the library, “it’s about time someone did!”

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April 25th

April 24, 2013August 9, 2017 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

7 years ago tomorrow evening, I arrived in San Francisco. The first moments of getting lost at the tangle of onramps near the Bay Bridge. The “quiet” first to drinks in square leather chairs on California at Divis, which I had to ask my host to repeat, it’s full name, and then spell. The walk back down the hill past several bars, the need for a cigarette, which led to shots with people as willing to yell celebratorily before throwing them back while my friend waited for me to finish getting up to my blood-alcohol equilibrium. Her total unknowingness when I’d asked to stay on her couch in the Victorian with elaborate moldings, steep stairs, and cavernous ceilings with medallions that used to hang chandeliers. The map in the kitchen, framed, that showed everything I didn’t yet know about where I was and the bowl of organic fruit on the stainless steel-and-wood island that indicated she and her roommates did. “Is this all you brought,” she asked at my one large suitcase. “I would have packed a U-Haul with a bed and desk…” and everything I didn’t realize or think to realize to bring on my loosely charted drive across country. Like her bookshelf lined with poignant, funny indie authors and photography books, her bedroom hung with the art and travel accoutrements of a young 20-something with much more wherewithal, worldliness and self-confidence than I had. The photo of her and her smiling old brother, the one I tried to sleep with once, as I would the other couch surfer in her house, but who sent me back to my own, as her friend, the other newbie in town, wouldn’t. The toilet beside which I would kneel for my last time ever to toss up the pitchers of margarita-mixed tequila served by the bartender who shared his rolled cigarette but refused to kiss me under the awning of his establishment where I’d been left by my friend to my desperate, near-pleading come-ons. The Kezar bar where I learned of the game flip-cup and downed the unflipped cups on my way out with those who’d last-minute invited me to a show at the Fillmore, where I, according to my credit card statement, bought several rounds of shots on me. The band was something hippy-Jew-bluegrassy and the pot induced thoughts: Did I drive here? The post-tequila day, when I softly resolved I wouldn’t drink that day by Ocean Beach at the Park Chalet where my one friend’s boyfriend was playing a daytime set with his band and I there decided that a Blood Mary was a breakfast drink, which was, I do remember followed by pitchers of beer. The booting up of my senses, the snap into gear, as my vision came on line and showed me some unfeatured, perhaps bearded stranger standing a foot from me engaged in what must have been a charming conversation I must have been participating in as the sun and sky took on that ethereal duskiness. Is it interrupting when you inject consciousness into your own speaking and ask where the band went? Or odd to turn in the morning to the couch surfer and say without guile for the first time since meeting that you regret you can’t be friends now, because you have the utter inability to be friends with guys you’ve slept with? Is it strange for him to look puzzled and mildly alarmed at the prospect of really meeting the person he jumped into bed with? Perhaps it’s not strange, then, that the day after the band blackout I sat in a room with other people who’d also finally realized that alcohol was the problem and not the solution, or that I learned San Francisco geography by driving from one church basement to the next.

me and my gracious host, April 25, 2006

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Coincidentally …

April 21, 2013 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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It’s been a week of coincidences, reminding me I’m not
alone, that people care, and that I can take action in my life to move forward
and take care of myself.

First, I ran into my friend the acupuncturist, who I was
just thinking about, and got the instructions for this technique he told me last
time we met.

Next, I took myself for a facial at a fancy sf salon (chemo’s a little weird on the skin), and an
old co-worker/current friend happens to work there now, so I got a treatment for
free, plus enormous hugs.

Finally, I was walking to the movies yesterday, and ran into
an old schoolmate who had just been thinking of me, and wanted to put me in touch with a writer friend of hers.

Add to that, that I called one of my friends with a band
last Sunday, and she invited me to sit in with her band practice today,

And I guess you have a Universe or world where good things
happen, too.

It’s been so strange to be moving out of cancer world. It
begins to feel less real, and yet, it still colors and informs everything. I am
not oblivious to the fact that I’m blessed
to be even just alive, let alone taking actions that make me happy. I actually
danced in my apartment yesterday. Thanks to the shuffled Pandora music playing on the laptop donated by a school friend of mine, I got to relive some
90s ridiculousness, and bounce around to Blink 182 and R.E.M.

I haven’t felt that kind of umph in a while. … Although it
helped that I slept until noon yesterday, despite the gorgeous weather. My body has needed it. Waking up for work,
and not napping in the afternoons as I had been is taking its toll on me, but I
will continue to get stronger.

Also, I got on the work-trade list for the workout studio I
love, and will soon have access to unlimited free classes – lifted “seat”? Here I
come!

There are things that I have control over. What I do, and
how/when I do them. Sometimes these things aren’t done, because of patterns and
habits of self-denial. But, I’m actively looking at and working on those too. I
have two therapists, and a psychic (ahem, “intuitive”)! It’s not
just about “getting out there.” Anything is easy once or twice, and then
several days of non-stop t.v. It’s about getting to the root of the pattern and
cutting them out, letting them go, recognizing their falsehood while doing the things I do have control over.

I can call that friend with the band. I can email my writer
friend that, yes, I will go to that reading with him. I can dance in my
apartment, and remember that music and joy do exist in this world. … I can make
the phone call to the Tax Board and ask for help working out this 2010 IRS
business – and I can speak to a woman there who thinks all is perfectly well,
and we can totally sort this out, no problem.

Taking action. Sometimes that means, like yesterday, staying
in my pajamas til 4pm; playing dress-up with the dresses a friend recently gifted me to feel feminine again; taking a
long-needed shower and shaving places that the cocoon of cancer made me forget; and laughing with nostalgic delight as Presidents of the United States sing “Peaches” behind a happily shimmying me.