The Lionhearted

March 13, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I didn’t want a cat. I sat for a friend’s once, and their
constant up-in-my-grillness was off-putting to my isolatory nature.

My aunt had cats; was/is the stereotypical cat lady,
unmarried, living alone, 3 cats of circulation when one dies.

They’re nice and sweet sometimes, and good for petting. But all
that fur! Forget it.

My ex had a cat. It was good enough, companionable enough,
but there were so many things in his apartment that identified him as a cat-lover/owner: the framed New Yorker cover
with a cat; a magazine about cats (that he swears his brother bought him as a
gag-gift); the industrial vacuum meant for all that fur.

It took me almost a year to put up curtains in my last
apartment, because to do so would mean that I couldn’t abscond in the middle of
the night. I would have to unscrew it slowly, with meaning and intention; I was
committed to something.

Commitment was the largest reason I didn’t want a cat. Not the commitment of keeping it fed and littered, but the commitment of
caring.

My brain would go immediately to, “I don’t know how I could
deal with its death.” The hypothetical death of a hypothetical cat. The
consequences of feeling that deeply for anything frightened me.

And yet. During the time I was with that ex, I moved to
Oakland from San Francisco for grad school, and I was living a bridge away from
anyone I knew, and things were a little lonely here in my studio apartment.

After a side-track story I won’t tell now, I ended up adopting Stella from the SPCA. A green-eyed (no freaky yellow-eyed cats please!), silken, mottled
brown/black two-year old cat.

She has been one of the best things that’s ever happened to
me.

She’s not an in-your-face’r. She’ll hang when she wants to,
and over the 3 years we’ve lived together now, she began to sit more and
more in my lap as I meditate in the morning or nap on the couch. Over time,
we’ve grown more accustomed to one another; and over time I’ve gotten to see
how much my love wants to express itself.

I say things that only my mother must have said to me in
endearment. They come naturally and without thought, these names and phrases
that I whisper to her, or chide at her. The sweetened names of love that were
hanging out inside me until there was a vessel in which to pour them.

I didn’t want a cat.

I didn’t want the responsibility of love.

But it’s opened rooms in me where there were only walls.

acting · authenticity · letting go · life · receiving · safety

I Came In Here For An Argument

March 12, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I’ve been recalling the above-referenced Monty Python
sketch. In the first moments, a customer walks into a room and the man behind
the desk there begins to berate him. The customer stops him, and exclaims, I came
in here for an argument! – At which point, the man behind the desk apologizes
and says, Oh, this is Abuse. Argument is down the hall. (It’s a very funny
sketch, and I do it no justice here – please make liberal use of Youtube.)

I’ve been thinking about what kind of lesson I think I’ve
been signed up for. What ideas I have about what I’m supposed to be learning in
this life, at this time, in this moment. And how maybe the room I’ve thought
I’ve walked into isn’t that room at all. That although I have some ideas and
hopes/generalities about the parts of myself I’m supposed to be working on
right now – the fact is, that I’m not actually the one choosing my courses.

I’ve had enough experience to learn that I have to let go of
what I think this lifetime’s lessons are for other people (that they should learn self-esteem,
compassion, ease, or forgiveness), and I’ve had mild success at that –
understanding that what I would have this person learn this time around may not
be what the Fates or Universe or Gods would have them learn. That although I
very much and fully think that this person ought to learn how to be softer or
to be more resolved, they’re apparently not here on my course schedule, and so
I have to let go, or else be in the pain of trying to manipulate my will into theirs.

However, it hasn’t yet ever occurred to me that I need to
let go of what my ideas are for my
lifetime. But it is now.

Because some of these lessons I’m learning aren’t ones I
would’ve consciously signed up for.

Last night, at my callback for this play, I was asked to
read a scene as the mother to a teenage girl who stood on stage with me. We
read the scene, and the director said it was good, but to slow it down, and
really find the emotional connection in it. We ran it again, and I was pretty sure
I didn’t do that.

I see this morning that I didn’t really trust that I could
convey that kind of emotion, and so I barreled through it again. I didn’t trust
that I could be good enough, or believable enough, or hold the emotion of love,
care, and concern enough to portray it.

So the lesson becomes “trust,” instead of “follow my dreams.” Trusting that if I
slow down, I’ll be okay. That if I allow myself to be seen (a lesson that’s
been on my syllabus for a while), I’ll be okay. Trusting oneself is not an easy
lesson to learn. Trusting in the safety of being oneself is not an easy lesson
to learn.

There’s a phrase I’ve been mulling on this morning: There
comes a point in your recovery when you stop backing away from alcohol, and you
turn around and start walking toward G-d.

Whatever your thoughts are about “god,” the idea, to me, is
that eventually, we move beyond being motivated by fear, and must begin to be
motivated by love.

The idea that I know what room I walked into, what lesson
I’m supposed to learn, is a manipulation based on the fear that I can’t be
myself, that I’m not okay with whatever “is.” To accept the fact that I don’t have the syllabus for my life and that
the Fates will steer me toward whatever lesson they deem necessary for the goodness of all, means I have
to be willing to let go of my expectations for my life and myself. For all my
aspirations and intentions, in many ways.

To let go, doesn’t mean to abandon. It means to release
control, or perceived control. To let go doesn’t mean to not audition, pursue,
or practice what is in front of me. It doesn’t mean to reject or eject
anything, in fact.

For me, this morning, “to let go” means “to allow what is.”
To allow what is in me, in you, in the cards, in our hearts to BE.

I’ve never had the greatest relationship with the phrase,
“Let go.” It feels like falling. But “To allow what is” feels like releasing
and accepting in a warm way.

So, I will walk today into the classroom of life, and I will
allow what is here to mold and shape me, and I will allow that I am cared for
and need not brace for it, and I will allow that I am safe in the care of these
lessons, and I will allow myself to shed one millimeter of armor between us.

I will allow the idea, just the idea!, that I am actually
totally and completely held, and therefore be able to turn my attention from
clenching and bracing to opening, giving, and receiving.

Bonus quote: “G-d steers the boat; all you have to do is row.”

courage · fear · happiness · healing · love · relationships

"Forget Your Troubles, Come On, Get Happy"

March 11, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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So you’ll have to bear with me – I haven’t totally got this
one down.

I was on the phone with a trusted friend Sunday morning. I
was giving her the update about this potential Cupcake Situation, the pros and
cons, the merits and demerits. The gnawing maw of my brain.

I fully expected her to say something like, That sounds
reasonable. It makes sense to not do something that has potential negative
consequences. Yes, continuing on the path of solitude sounds like the right one
toward health.

Instead, she surprised me by saying, Life is meant to be
lived.

Instead, I surprised myself by beginning to cry.

Somehow, hearing her “permission” enabled me to feel what
was actually happening in my heart. The joy, the longing, the contentment, just
in the idea and fancy of anticipating being with this Cupcake.

And I said something to her, actually I sobbed something to
her, that I’m not sure I ever admitted or understood – “I don’t know how to be
happy.” And I cried some more.

I don’t know how to let myself be happy. To admit good
things. To trust that I’m able to face good things – that I even think I have
to “face” them is evidence that I still think happiness is something to be
battled.

In my early experience, happiness wasn’t reliable, and so
you mistrusted it. You forced away the “temptation” of happiness because if you
allowed it in, it would corrode. Better to be mildly miserable than submit to
betrayal.

It’s astonishing to me that I’m still facing this same
demon. This same old pattern of beliefs and behavior. But then, I must be at a
place where I’m ready and able to uproot it in a new way.

I read an email from the Cupcake (the person I’ll potentially spend a few days with next month) telling me that he welcomes the chance to
melt with me, open his heart, sit in lazy contentment. That the idea of doing
so stirs something in him, emotionally and physically.

When I read this (for like the 8th time), I was walking
outside my work, trying to get away from the gnawing Pro/Con-ing catalogue
inside me. I reread it on my phone on a side street in Berkeley. I had to stop walking. I crouched
down in the sunny afternoon, held the screen toward my face, and felt the same feeling I would have on Sunday when my friend said, Life was meant to be lived.
Something moved, something heard this. Something within me allowed the
possibility for even a moment to trust that someone was honestly saying, Let’s
be happy. I offered myself the possibility that I could be happy.

And on that sidewalk, my eyes filled with salt water, my brain
temporarily ceased arguing, and I felt in my heart.

I just felt in my heart, being in it. hearing it, feeling
it. I was moved.

I don’t know how to be happy. It’s not something I know how
to do. Like a learned skill, this will be something I will have to try my hand
at, and be inexperienced at, but try anyway.

I’ve been amazingly dexterous at learning all kinds of new
things–grad student, performance poet, bassist, actor, painter–physically at
least. Emotionally, I’ve learned how to be more honest, how to have more
feelings than anger, depression, and mania, how to be more visible and trust I
won’t be shot.

I don’t know how to be happy. But if my emotional responses
are any indication (whether this whole Cupcake thing comes to fruition or not),
I am apparently, on some level, ready to see if I can be.

And I hereby give myself
permission to try.

acting · adulthood · calm · connection · excitement · health · performance · theater

Wow. Wowie Wow Wow

March 10, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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(Christopher Walken on SNL; check it out if you don’t
know; too funny)

You know when they (I) say “Both/And”? That life is both
this, and that. It is inimitable and gripping, and sallow and challenging? That
life is “everything all at once”?

That you are both excited for your new callback and getting
dressed to get a possible melanoma removed?

Yeah. Both/And.

So, that’s happening right now. In a little while.

I went to the dermatologist about a month ago to get a
strange new mole checked out on my back. She told me that that one was nothing
to worry about; that, in fact, it’s the kind of mole you only see on fully adult
homosapiens. So, I asked, then basically, this new mole is a Rite of Passage
Mole? That I’m officially an adult human, now? Wow. Weird to have your skin
tell you it!

You, Molly Louise, you are now officially an
adult. Instead of a parade, statue, medal, or email from the Universe, you get
this nifty little mole on your back. Holler!!! Luckily, I think it’s kind of
awesome and funny, and I’m really not concerned about the aesthetics of it –
it’s not gross or repulsive or anything. It doesn’t have a satellite moon
orbiting it or have a hair growing from it. – although the Derm said that a
hair is usually a good sign that a mole is not malignant.

(It’s this an awesome
blog topic!)

“BUT,” she said. …

“This other one…” and took out the little 6-inch ruler she
kept in her white lab coat. “Well, this other one, …”

Yeah, that one’s kind of new too, in the last year for sure,
I told her.

So, today I have it taken out. Which means, they have to dig
all the way through ALL of the layers of skin into the fatty flesh below, and
take out, like a dowel in the earth, a cylinder of my skin. Yum.

It’s a small thing, it’ll only leave a centimeter of a scar,
but for a few days, until the stitched, sewn-together skin around it heals and
seals together (our bodies are amazing), no heavy lifting or working out the same way.

Meh. C’est la vie. Small price to pay for solace of mind.

Although, when I told someone when I found this out
those few weeks ago, that it was a possible skin cancer thing, they said, oh,
no big deal, that’s simple, they gauge it out. Done. … Well, I felt like that was a tad insensitive. I mean, this was coming from another young
cancer survivor!

I’m not “worrying twice,” and it is something you just take
out (I think – I don’t know – I’m not Googling anything until the doc indicates
I ought to). But, it’s still a (what’s “less than worrying”) – Ah, concerning, it’s still a concerning thing. So, I’m concerned.
So I get it checked out.

I think my Rite-of-Passage Mole might be on to something.

And, further in the Wow category, this acting
thing. Wowie wow wow, man.

It’s so fun. Sure, I talk about the isolation it offers when
you’re practicing lines alone, auditioning alone, but, the camaraderie that it
leads to, is the point. The opportunity to turn the light on in an audience, to
share something with someone else, is the point. And this is the path to that.

I’m stoked.

I have no clue if this is beginner’s luck, if anything more
will happen, if I’ll circle around the drain of “aspiring actor” for years.
But, SO WHAT.

When I think back to what it felt like on Saturday to join into the
lobby of a group of folks, stand around awkwardly in a room with
other aspirers, to have my name called, and to walk down the dark aisle of the
near-empty theater. To stand on a real stage under real lights, state my name and my piece, and
perform it. To have the director say, “Very nice. Thank you.” To then walk back
up that aisle less than two minutes later, and gather my purse and walk back
out into the amazing Berkeley Spring day?

Well, I’ll tell you:

Wow.

dating · health · joy · passion · sex · uncertainty

Craving Cupcakes

March 9, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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For reasons unknown by me, I came home the other night and
while in my closet, took down the book He’s Just Not That Into You. It sits in a pile of books I own that I’ve taken to
the bookstore to sell back to them, but they’re not having it – it shares space
with the Twilight saga – and for
further reasons unknown, I haven’t just put these books out on the street or
donated them yet, and so they’ve stayed for several years.

Taking down Not That Into You, I read the chapter titles that at the time I bought the book I
imagined I would sneer at and laugh at in obviousness, but that on reading, in
fact, offered a swift kick upside my besotted brain. For example: He’s just not
that into you if he’s not asking you out; he’s just not that into you if he has
a girlfriend/is married; and my personal eye-opener at the time: he’s just not
that into you if he only wants to see you when he’s drunk.

But what struck me the other night as I perused the chapter titles was
the one added on after the first printing, the one entitled: Life after
He’s Just Not That Into You.

I flipped there, and the female co-author writes about the
typical stages she’d seen in herself and in those who’d taken the book’s
message to heart.

First, there’s empowerment: YES! I Get It! I see that these
mixed messages are just smoke-screens, I’ve stopped waiting by the phone, I’ve
stopped accepting “Let’s hang out” as an acceptable “date.” My life is awesome!

Then there’s loneliness: Great, he’s out of my phone and out
of my life, what do I do now?

Quickly followed by temptation: Okay, so if I know that he’s just putting up a smoke-screen, and I get
that this isn’t a relationship – then I’m in full knowledge participation, and
it’s okay, right? Then I can’t really get my feelings hurt, right, because I
know that this is not what either of us really wants, right? Besides, the door
isn’t breaking down with guys asking me out on real dates, and I’m lonely,
horny, and just give me a BREAK already!

I called this yesterday, over lunch with a friend, the
cupcake moment.

We all know this temptation. I’ll set it up for you:

It’s someone’s birthday at the office. They’ve brought in a
dozen of the most delicious looking cupcakes from the 4 dollar a cupcake place
with the clever name. Everyone stands around this offering and awkwardly sings
Happy Birthday to the person of honor, and you feel a little proud, and a
little separate as you gouge the cupcakes out of their container and hand them
to your coworkers, expressing that, No thank you, you’re not having one.

You know how you feel after you’ve eaten one, you know they’re not actually as good as they look, and it’s
not worth the calories or kicking off the sugar addiction. You’ve had SO MANY
afternoons where you’ve had half a cupcake, only to return for the other half,
another whole, and maybe, another half or two.

You know that to put one bite of this thing into your mouth
is to set off a series of woeful and painful head moments of debate,
self-derision, and self-pity.

So you’ve been so good. It’s been weeks, or maybe months
since you’ve let yourself fall into the pattern. And sometimes, it’s so easy to
say No thanks, and be on with your day. The cupcakes don’t whisper at you. The
longing doesn’t bite at your throat.

And then you find yourself in the moments when you say, I have been so good – and what the hell good is it doing
me, anyway? What kind of a martyr, saint, ascetic am I, anyway? What am I
proving and to whom?, the thoughts run. …

What kind of martyr or saint am I?

What kind of pleasure-avoiding, overthinking, “principled”-living dullness am I?

So, you stand at the cupcake moment. You’ve seen the outcome
of this moment on both sides, and you don’t know which path you’ll go down. You
stand equally torn toward “health” and “pleasure.” And you haven’t enough
experience yet to know that sometimes health and pleasure are available in the
same situation. And remember, it’s been SUCH A LONG TIME since you’ve had that
kind of pleasure, anyway. That kind of solace.

The final phase of “Life after He’s Just Not That Into You”
is Balance.

The book says, “Life, love, dating—it’s all a process. There
will be highs and lows, disappointments and temptations, and it all might take
a while. If you are just so lonely that you simply have to get into a less than
ideal situation, for God’s sake, get out of it before the guy makes you cry or
mope in bed all day… No matter how long you end up being without a
relationship, you will always be worth it.”

I stand at a cupcake moment right now. “Sometimes I think
‘health’ and ‘reason’ are the great enemies of ‘passion’ and ‘love,’” he wrote
me. And I think he’s right. However, though I don’t have much experience with
them being aligned, I do believe they can be.

Will our heroine submit to the temptation and luster to sink
into the arms of comfort and human affection? Will she turn away from the
alluring embrace and continue to march the lonely path toward an imagined ideal
of a less complicated entanglement?

Tune in to find out!

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.)

commitment · discovery · fear · performance · theater

Give me some wool, and I’ll spin you a yarn.

March 7, 2014 Molly Daniels Hayes1 Comment

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I have another audition tomorrow, this one for the role of a
mother in her early 40s. And I’ve been thinking about who I can believably “play,” what my
“place of life” would be as a woman in her early 30s? I feel too young to be
the queen, to be the mother of adult children, but I feel too old to be the
ingénue or the lover. But I suppose I fall more easily castable into the latter
category. Lover, Romantic, Unwed.

So many actors have sordid pasts and upbringings, making it
easy and understandable to want to lay on the skin of someone else, the idea
that it’s easier (safer?) to be someone else than it is to be yourself. However, I think
I’m realizing that to take on the skin of someone else means that I have to
find that person within me, those feelings, and then face them, understand and
inhabit them. And not all of those feeling are easy for me to have. Not all of
those parts are natural for me to play.

And I think that’s why I love it and am challenged by this
so much. (With all my scant experience!) I will have to find the romantic within me, the tyrant within
me, the tortured within me. I’m going to have to let my internal flashlight
illuminate corners I’d rather mark off-limits. Some of those corners I avoid
because I’m afraid I’ll enjoy them too much—Who doesn’t want to dissolve into
rage instead of pulling yourself up to decency? Who doesn’t want to allow the
gnawing chatter to become a cacophony and play itself into Ophelia’s mad death?
How easy it is to go mad; how very hard to stay sane.

And, surely, some of the corners of experience I may be
asked to play, I don’t want to go into because I’ve spent so many years
avoiding what they demand of me. To fully feel passion, desire, or even (don’t
say it!) love?

It’s amusing to me that once I changed up my blog settings
to list the subject tags in order of frequency, “love” became the first one. I
think it makes sense if you put before it the words: “avoidance of,”
“challenges with,” “attempts at,” “softening to,” “fear of.” But, just “love?”
Hm. Yes, it makes me smile.

I also know that acting isn’t therapy, and can’t be primarily intended to process my own demons or fears through its use, but I can’t help
but imagine there will be some side-effects like that. I imagine that I’ll get
to see where my flashlight is happy to go, and where it isn’t. Where I’m
naturally at ease, and where I’ll have to cull my acting chops.

But, isn’t that the thrill of anything new? Isn’t that the
thrill of being alive? Being challenged to feel, do, and be that which you
weren’t able to before, simply by the act of showing up with intention?

I have no idea how long or wide this acting path will be for
me. But the caves it is already calling me to explore are worth the
price of admission.

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.

authenticity · sex · sexuality

grubby fantasy paws

March 4, 2014 Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

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I was watching Louis C.K. on Netflix the other day when he had Parker Posey on as the love
interest. She was the cutesie shop girl, helping him find a book for a made-up
reason so he could talk to her.

When he finally works up the guts to ask her out, he goes on
a long cute/awkward monologue about how it must be hard to be a cute girl in
the city, because you just want to do your job and help someone out, and then
they end up asking you out, and you just wanted to be helpful.

It cuts (like the show is wont to do) to a clip of him doing
stand-up, and he talks about how being a pretty girl in the world means that
you have to be every guy’s walking cum fantasy. That as soon as a guy looks at
you, you feel shot in the eye with cum. You walk down the street, and have
buckets of cum thrown at you.

Now, granted, this is hyperbole and intended for comedic
effect, but. C’est vrai, non?

You know I’ve been working on how to walk authentically –
how to carry myself authentically in the
world, without feeling usurped by other people’s impressions and thoughts about
me, particularly about my appearance, and therefore without hiding myself,
internally or externally.

I’ve written about how when I notice you noticing me, I stand
a little straighter, walk a little more precisely, and also stop breathing. I
withdraw a part, an authentic part, of myself when I know you’re watching.

How, then, be an actor, eh?

And they’re related, but we’re talking more about beauty
here, because one hopes that people see more than visage while I’m in
performance. And that I offer more than visage, too.

But I was chiding myself, or simply noticing with intention
to “change it,” that I withdraw, or protect a part of myself when I notice you
noticing. I thought that if put up a shield around myself when I notice leers
or glances or lolling tongues, that I was doing something inauthentic, that I
was hiding myself, which is what I’m attempting not to do in this lifetime.

But, then I heard Louis C.K.’s joke, and I thought, Not
everyone’s thoughts are benevolent. Not everyone who looks is looking with
kindness. And I don’t want to be a target for cum-buckets.

So, in effect, I do
have to put up some kind of armor or protection (or, erm, prophylactic) in the world of men. Sorry,
guys. But, I can’t expose the all of me, because that lays it out to be
perverted, literally. There is
some kind of a way that I need to be able to walk with a bit of a buffer
between me and you so that I don’t get thrown by all the lustful thoughts.

And, perhaps, you think I’m conceited and self-centered and
believe I’m hot shit. But, a) if you read this for any period of time, you know
that’s not true, and b) so what. I know that I am not the most hideous thing to
walk the planet, and I know I garner unwanted attention that is purely
physical.

This weekend at the call-back (for the role I didn’t
get; c’est la vie), the practice was over, and I was walking to the play
house’s kitchen to throw away my tea. One of the men who’d been auditioning was
milling around the entrance to the kitchen. He said he needed to use the
bathroom which was why he was in that section of the house, but he never
actually went. He made small talk, and then asked if he could give me his
number.

Automatically, since I assume people are being benevolent
and kind human beings, I said yeah, sure. And then he tried to get me to
remember his phone number, to recite it, and when that was obviously not working, and I’d
realized enough that this was an “advancement,” I made no significant effort to
get a piece of paper or take out my phone, and the whole thing just faded and I
said, maybe I’d see you at rehearsal sometime.

I want to be a person engaged in the world. I want to be
authentic, and show up, and be present. And I don’t want your grubby fantasy paws on
me, either.

Trust me: if I want your cum on me, I’ll ask for it.