community · dating · Jewish · spirituality

Jew

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

For me, living without a connection to Judaism in my life is
like living without sunshine. You get really used to it, and begin to forget
what it was like to have the sun on your face; you forget how your internal
organs relax when you bathe in it; and simply get used to walking with a degree
of closure in your heart and body.
I am not a religious Jew. Never was; my family never was.
But, I went to Hebrew school and Sunday school growing up, while my school pals
were going to CCD (Catholic something something – which we also referred to as
Central City Dump). I had my Bat Mizvah, and learned by rote the things I was
supposed to learn to get up in front of people and ascend into “adulthood.” But
those aren’t the sunshine inducing aspects for me.
When I stand in a sanctuary with other Jews, and we begin to
sing, I am transcended.
There is an ancient movement in my body and heart which
begins to stir, and is moved to tears on occasion of its loveliness and
fullness. My first “spiritual experience,” I remember quite clearly. I attended
a Jewish sleep-away camp in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania for a few
intermittent years in my youth, and this happened when I was either 11 or 14.
Every Friday night, the entire camp would dress in white and walk up to The
Chapel on the Hill. This was an open, outdoor arrangement of lots of benches
facing outward over the soccer fields and dodgeball pits, out toward the very
treed landscape. The chapel itself is sort of an AT-AT looking structure (yes,
that’s a star wars reference), so you could see through it, and from above,
it’s actually shaped like a Star of David, I once heard.
I was sitting on one of these benches, looking out over the
landscape as the sun was setting, beginning Shabbat (the day of rest) and I was watching the
trees. Forgive me if I’ve told you this story or used these words, but it’s the
best I can do. The movement of the leaves, the undulation of the trees – I had
a moment when I felt like there was more order to the shining glints and waves
than there was chaos. But too that there was just enough chaos to make it live.
Too ordered to be chaos, too chaotic to be strict – this was my first known
experience that there must be something out there greater than myself – a G-d,
an order, a “reason,” a constant.
For me, being Jewish has (perhaps ironically considering world history) helped to save
my life. I’ve written here before and said before that for me, Judaism was a
thread throughout my life, it was just always there. Something to touch base
to, to hold on to, to get in touch with when everything else seems or feels
unknown. When I was in high school, I was not the most popular or friend-having
girl – shy, awkward, like many, I began making friends through the Jewish
community outside of high school, and began to really form my personality,
without the constraints or assumptions of people in school who had known me for
years as shy & awkward. I began to be funny, more outgoing, social. In a lot of ways, I
credit making those friendships, having met these other kids through a weekly
Jewish high school program, for helping me to survive those terribly isolating
years.
When I was living in South Korea, somehow I got hooked up
with another Jew through friends who told me about a Passover seder that was
happening on the American Army base, and I attended the seder there, with the
booklet we read from in Hebrew, English, and Korean – it was very weird, but
also, very very home.
When I arrived in San Francisco, through a series of
coincidences, I found myself a good friend of an Orthodox Jewish rabbi and his
family, who invited me to Shabbat lunches in their home, holiday services, and
generally took me under their Jewish wing. Although their religious adherences
are far more “observant” than I want to be, I love them, and they love me.
And finally, let’s not forget typing “Jewish San Francisco”
into google when I was desperate for a job, and ended up working for a Jewish
Educational non-profit recently. And last year, as I moved to Oakland, and
wanted to keep my toe “in the Jewish waters”, I began to teach 5th&6th
grade at a congregational school in Berkeley on Saturday mornings.
But, mostly, what reminds me of the unique strength of my
connection to this history, community, path, and identity, is when I went with
my friend Barb recently to a “young adult service” at a contemporary Reform
synagogue in SF. As I was raised with my high school Jewish community with song
leaders, and clapping, and laughing, and foot stomping, and singing in rounds,
and levity, this is what was reminded in me at that service. There were
guitars, and perhaps a tambourine – Jews love their acoustic guitars! And
then, there were voices.
A congregant gave a little speech during the service,
and he basically told my story. About how he is connected to this community
through song – how he’d forgotten his voice, and remembers it here. And he
cried a little with gratitude, and we all felt it. And my friend Barb and I
commented afterward that there’s a spiritual community she and I have in common
outside of Judaism, but then, there, here, we get to connect to, perhaps not
something “else”, but something more, much much more. Deeper, as if through our
outside community, we get to experience a spirituality that is skin deep, but
through this Jewish connection, we get it in our bones. In the roots of our
family trees. In the dirt of earth 6000 years old.
And as we sang that day a few months ago, I remembered the
sunlight of Judaism. Of Jewish community. It’s not the laws, the rules, the
Bible (which I have issues with, but it doesn’t really matter) –it’s that
swept-away feeling. It’s the feeling of certainty and faith I had when looking
out over the Pocono sunset.
Why mention this all? Firstly, because it’s good for me to
remember that in some ways, I’ve been living without sun lately. And secondly,
because it comes up always when I begin to date someone new – the first
question out of two of my good girlfriend’s mouths when I said I was meeting
someone new was “Is he Jewish?”. And he’s not. And like I said recently on
here, I don’t yet know if it’s a dealbreaker. I never have. I know that it’s
important to me. I know that if I have
children, I want them to be raised in a similar way that I was, with the all
knowledge that my experience may not be theirs, but I want them to know what
bubbe’s matzoball soup tastes like.
Does it matter? Does it matter if your partner is the same
religion as you? Does it matter that some of the strongest and most powerful
experiences of my life occurred and continue to occur in a Jewish setting?
Well, yes, that does matter, but it matters to me. Does it need to matter to
the other person? Such is the conundrum of modern life. And not so modern.
Questions of intermarriage are on the books, the old books, for millennia. But, I do want to be able to
exchange bubbe’s matzoball soup-type memories. I want the shared history. I
want the shared experience.
I discount it again and again. And ultimately am not ready
to give up questioning it yet. Letting the guys I date not be Jewish (My
dad’s family isn’t, and I love getting “both”).
So, for now, the answer is, I don’t know. The answer is also
to re-engage myself in the community that I miss. And I’m going on a 2nd
date on Friday night, with a Catholic. 
acting · dating · fun · recovery · self-care

Restraint of Thumb and Send

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

So, it’s official. I am still sick and am going to pick up
an Rx from Kaiser shortly. I called out of work, which felt so lame considering
I’d just had a week off, but my brain also feels as though it’s been gelled
into a jell-O mold. Perhaps bunt cake shaped, next to candied lemon slices.
Hence the delay of this morning’s blog.
The first time I got sick in sobriety, I was very confused.
I suppose that having a near-chronic strep throat from smoking til I couldn’t
swallow anymore made something as mild as a cold very unique and novel. Also, I
think that when your blood is half alcohol, it fends off most infections.
I’d woken up that time a little off, not really feeling much
gumption, and decided to go shopping. I bought a large cup of coffee and
wandered the stacks of shoes in DSW shoe store for about an hour, and left with
a purchase in hand and an empty coffee cup…and yet I didn’t feel any better. I
was very confused. Shouldn’t this have worked? Coffee and shopping? They make
everything better, right? They always cured the melancholia I assumed I was
having. But, nope. Still felt off. What could be wrong?
I swear, I really didn’t get it. Finally, I realized as if
inventing the light-bulb, OH! I must be sick! It was a moment of brilliance.
Luckily, I have gotten to know myself and my body better since then, and am
willing to take care of myself in ways that don’t involve retail therapy –
which, FYI, doesn’t cure a sinus infection.
As to the title of this blog. With my brain in the wonky
suspended state it’s currently in, well, it’s had a lot of time to latch upon
obsessing about the guy I went out with on Monday, and pro-ing and con-ing and
measuring the distance between here and where he lives. My brain likes to
satellite around it, like your tongue going to a sore spot in your mouth, drawn
there unintentionally.
So, if there’s “Restraint of Tongue and Pen,” I heard once
that in these modern marvel text-addicted days, there’s also “Restrain
of Thumb and Send.” I have composed lots of them already in my busy, befogged
brain. But haven’t yet sent any. I sort of feel like it’s the same advice as,
Don’t make any phone calls or major decisions after 10pm. So, don’t contact a
dude when your eyeballs feel like there’s marching band drum practice behind
them.
But. I might. 😉
What else is on my mind is the women’s retreat I’m going to
this weekend, which I’ve gone on for the last 4 years or more, and I’m glad I’m
taking care of this cold&sinus thing before then, as it’s also really hard
to meditate with said marching band practice. I began reading Shakespeare’s Henry
V last night, as I got a confirmation email
for my audition slot in two weeks(!!), and that’s one of the plays the company is
doing this year. From the introduction in my book to that play, however, the
consensus was it’s not the best play, but I’ve never read it, and perhaps a
commentary on an inflated political figure is a good parallel for our times.
Lastly, on my mind is fluidity. I met with a girlfriend on Monday
for coffee, and she’s an expressive arts therapist. She asked me what was up
with me lately, and I was again reiterating my non-desire to be a teacher when
school is done. That there’s a sense in me lately that I don’t want to be tied
to a geographical region. There’s some kind of impending knowledge that I want
more fluidity than that, than being tied to a region, besides my other
non-desires to teach at the moment.
So, my friend asked if she could do a little “work” with me
then. Sure, why not. She asked me to close my eyes and imagine that fluidity,
which I’d also called joy, and to create and act a movement to it. So, I closed
my eyes, and I wiggled and waved my arms and body, gently and arms open. We
both laughed, and then she asked me then to think about teaching, and to create
a movement to that. My arms immediately contracted in, and sort of harrumphed in a Rodin’s
“Thinker” pose, continuing to sigh and constrict in this closed pose.
It was very telling. She said there was more we could do
with it, but I had to leave for said date. This wasn’t “new” knowledge, but it
was certainly another underlining of the knowledge I have, and a kinesthetic
expression of where I want to go. Follow the joy. Follow the fun. Follow the
fluidity.
What that means in practical terms, I don’t yet have any
idea. But to commit to a teaching job at this juncture, to actively pursue one,
would be equivalent to dipping my soul in cement, and I want to be much lighter
than that. And, I believe I’m worth more consideration than that.

dating · fun · integrity · Jewish · performance · responsibility · self-care

Bless It or Block It

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

How many things can one person wholly commit to?
I went on a first date yesterday via a set-up. It was
really fun. We got along great, and had a nice time. And so, now all the
‘What-if’s pop into my brain. Or, the questions, doubts. He’s not Jewish. Is
that a Deal-breaker – I’ve never yet decided. He lives an hour&a half away. I don’t
have a car – I’ve done that “medium-distance” relationship before. It looks
like – or it did look like – attempting to shove all the things you would be able
to do throughout a week into the weekend. Get all the fun and funny and
adventure and rest and sexy time all in the 48 or so hours you have together.
It was a lot of pressure to only be “happy”, and sort of exhausting. Plus, at the time, I also had
a car.
But, mostly what’s been on my mind since yesterday (besides
the obvious knowledge that I actually don’t have to do anything right now, as I haven’t been asked out for a 2nd
date yet, so … slow the crazy train). … But, How many things can one person … or how many fledgling things can one person commit to?
By this, I am considering my new-found and very fledgling
commitment to myself and my dreams. It’s ironic(?) that after going through the
book Calling in The One, which helped to
push me into the direction of performance, stage, music, following my dreams
basically, that now, here I am faced with a potential opportunity for romance,
and I’m hesitant. Is there enough of me to go around?
The next few weekends look like this: women’s new year’s
retreat in Napa, audition, audition, audition. Yes. Three auditions in the two
weekends following the retreat. And then there’s the rehearsal that will begin
for The Vagina Monologues, which I’m in
at school at the end of February.
So, … hence, “bless it or block it.” Were this gentleman
Jewish, living in SF or Oakland, were I a private transportation owning female,
would I, do I want a relationship right now? After doing all that “work” to
make myself available for a relationship, have I simply cleared the space for a
relationship with myself? Which, don’t get me wrong, is incredible. I’m
entirely thrilled and proud of myself for heading, however haltingly, in the
direction of something which incites joy in me just thinking about it. But, is
there enough left over? Do I want there to be?
These are the questions that arise after one date! But, it’s
not him, or the date – it’s me – what am
I available for? Beginning to take the most delightful and frightening and nail
biting steps in the direction of my heart’s desires for myself is a lot of
work. It is a commitment. And
when I began CITO, actually when
I read the preview pages on Amazon before purchasing this dubiously titled book, I knew as soon as I read “If we’re finding
an absence of a supportive, nurturing, committed relationship in our lives, we
have to ask ourselves where are we not these things to ourselves?”, I knew then
immediately where I wasn’t committed to myself, in this area of my “silly”
nudges, dreams, aspirations, desires.
So, now here I am. Becoming more fully committed to myself
and watching this tree bear the fruit. The fruit is joy, not the job, the part,
the gig, it’s the joy of watching myself head there. It’s entirely new and rad
and incredible to begin to remove the roadblocks I’ve arbitrarily placed in my
own path. (I can’t be on stage because I’m too tall; I can’t play open mics
because I can’t play guitar well enough.)
I’m willing to remain open at this moment to whatever
happens next. Maybe we’ll be friends. Maybe he won’t even contact me again.
Maybe he’ll ask me out and I’ll say yes. But, none of that is happening at this
very moment. What is happening now is that I need to get ready for work at my
SF temp gig, and I have some lovely Little Star Pizza leftover to take for
lunch.
That, and it’s time to print some more headshots. 😉
action · courage · dating · performance · singing

Once More, With Feeling*

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The sun is officially moving in a higher arc around the
building which shadows it, making for more hours of sunlit sofa warming and
fewer minutes of chilly “come out come out wherever you are.”
I actually hurt my back crawling into bed yesterday –er, this
morning. it’s true. something went crunch. or perhaps crack. i think it was the
final sprint in high heels up the bernal heights’ hill a few minutes before
midnight. the *clink clonk* one hears as a woman approaches in heels is also
the sound of her spinal vertebrae collapsing ;P
That said, it was a pretty wonderful evening. friends,
laughter, small talk, awkwardness, zipcar, east bay, sf, fireworks, dancing,
redbull, hilarious mystery science theater 3000 fireworks commentary, old friends, new
friends, a candle-lit lantern floating generously up the hill with new year’s
wishes alight upon it.
I do look forward to getting back to putting this blog up
earlier in the morning. It’s been delayed this week because of sickness … and
today because of new years’ revelry recuperation.
Those of you who click here through my facebook may already
have seen, but I had an early morning dream last night/this morning, which,
though odd, I also count as a portend of things to come. Well, some things.
I dreamt that actor paul giamatti with laryngitis
offered me to play a gig on Thursday, January 17th at the Loriah
Room on Geary and/or Market and 8th. We can pull some of this apart on a
number of counts: a) I watched a dvd with Paul Giamatti in it on Friday; b) my
school friend’s girlfriend’s name is Mariah; c) i’ve been contemplating “gigs”
lately.
To address b, Mariah’s name is likely on my mind because I’m
going on a date tomorrow. My friend’s girlfriend (Mariah)’s college friend’s
husband’s best friend… asked me out. Yes, we call that degrees of separation
for sure. Basically, it’s two couples in between the two of us. Apparently, he
came up to visit over Thanksgiving, and my school friend thought we might be
good together, so I told her sure, give him my info. Last week, he emailed me,
and we’re meeting up for coffee and possibly lunch tomorrow. So, yes, her name
has been on my mind in reference to this set-up. And yes, I’m excited, and no I
also have no clue what this guy looks like either! Lol.
Unlike the disastrous blind date of a month or two ago,
however, this one comes with good references! 😉 So, we’ll see. Coffee, not china
patterns. And I enjoy the practice.
As to “c”, I was taking a class last year in which for the
end of the year project, we each had the opportunity to do a little “open mic”
action if we wanted. Some spoke poetry, or read from their personal manifestos.
I sang.
I sang with accompaniment from a classmate, Ivan, who I
found out that day is a really wonderful guitarist. I was going to play the
chords myself as I sang, but I’m not that great a guitarist, and asked him if
he’d play. He picked up the tabs right then, and within a half hour, we were
ready to go “on stage.” It was in the Dean of Student’s house on campus, and
there were about 50 or so people in attendance, mostly school mates, people’s
families. And I sang. He played. We ruled. 😛
Well, maybe we didn’t *rule* but actually, we were pretty
good. And Ivan has been popping up in my mindbrain over the last week or so as
someone to contact to maybe begin doing little open mics with around town.
See, I’ve had this belief that I can’t really do music because I can’t play any instruments well. I can
sort of plunk out some very basic guitar chords, and I often do, alone in my
apartment. I can also plunk out some semi-nonsense on my bass guitar, which I
sometimes do, alone in my apartment. And, finally, I can sort of plunk out some
chords on a piano, which I sometimes do alone in my apartment on a USB plug-in
keyboard, on any piano I may pass in my travels, or alone at the piano in the chapel at
school. There’s a sign on that piano which says for any music student looking to practice, go to the Music Department; for anyone looking for spiritual enrichment and outlet, play on, sister. I’ve been known to sit there for several half hours on end to unload
whatever is happening in my brain. And, sometimes then, I sing too. 
Piano was always my brother’s forte. He was the musician, I
was perhaps the singer, perhaps the silent writer. He’s actually quite good,
self-taught, and I admire his skill. He’s been playing our grandfather’s piano
ever since it came to our house when my brother was 8 and I was 11. The most
I’d tend to play then was one or the other part of Heart & Soul. And he and
I still play it for old time’s sake. But, sitting alone in the circular stone
chapel at school, I find the songs that want to be played. And I am moved, relieved, happy.
Alone in my car, when I had one, I’d invent all kinds of
songs and lyrics. Which would flit out of my head as soon as my seatbelt
unfastened. The thing for me about music, about singing, and apparently about
piano, is that I get to find out what mood I’m in. That may sound strange, but
it sort of puts me in touch with a non-verbal mood ring or divining rod. The
tone will be major or minor; slow and dirge-like; upbeat and syncopated. How am
I feeling today? I’ll open my throat and find out. I’ll place my fingertips
against the cool ivory and show you.
So, here we are, back to performance. As, if you may have
gathered, all of the above dabblings into music happen alone. This morning, then, after my very unusual dream, I
was nudged again. And I emailed Ivan to ask if he’d be interested in
collaborating on some very low-key, no pressure, key word fun openmics.
This way, I don’t have to be Jimi Hendrix to get out there. I don’t have to be
Van Halen, or Slash, or Stevie Ray Vaughn. I can be Molly, tentative soul and
creative, with a voice and a melody that will tell me where I want to be led. 


*shout out to KatieB with reference to the Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s musical episode. if you haven’t seen it, it’s worth it. 😉
authenticity · creativity · fear · fortitude · performance · recovery · responsibility · spirituality

Ready Steady Go

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

About 3 years ago, when I was living in Cole Valley in San
Francisco, I went for a walk. I was packing to go home for a visit, I remember,
and was feeling overwhelmed, and decided to take a walk through my new-ish
neighborhood. I took a left instead of a right, and walked past a sign, The
Sword and The Rose. Maybe you know it. Maybe you’ve walked right by it. As
unless you notice the faded paint on the cracked wooden sign, you wouldn’t know
to walk into the alley between two buildings. You wouldn’t know that beyond the
trash bins was a gate, through which is a sitting garden, overgrown with vined
plants and a running water fountain with a stone bench. Beyond this is a small
one room shop, that looks like a hobbit’s house, and you have to, well, I have
to, duck slightly through the Dutch door.

Inside is one of those curio shops. There’s a small wood
burning stove that always seems lit, around which are two high backed cushioned
chairs with ancient knitted throws. In the cases are crystals of every color and intention,
ones to wear, ones to put on an altar, ones smoothed or raw in form. The shelves are stacked high with
different types of sage to burn, candles created on different days of the week, jars of loose incense with yellowing labels of handwritten ingredients seen only in spell books.
And in the corner is a small circular table set with a stained glass lamp, a shawl, and two small straw woven chairs. It is here that you can have your cards
read.
And once, I did. Not that day, having walked breathlessly
out of my manic and nervous packing session into this stalled garden out of time.
That day when I was able to collect myself in the mystery and magic of the
darkened, perfumed room. But I knew I would be back.
The man read from Native American animal cards, which I’d
never seen or heard of before. I was not very “into” Tarot before, but I have
learned enough to know there are many paths to the mountaintop, so to speak.
It is my belief that under the right circumstances, and with
the proper intention, we are told, not “the future” or the unknown, but rather,
truths about ourselves. It is my experience that what is revealed to me,
through cards, or meditation, or other spiritual practices, are knowledges which I
already hold, which are simply being drawn out from the shadows, or crystallized
in more accessible terms.
So, when the man drew a card he called Grandmother Spider in
my reading, and told me that this card was the most creative and powerful card
in the deck, I was not surprised, but rather challenged. Challenged to live up
to this truth which I had known about myself, and which continues to be
mirrored back to me and bubbled up within me.
You can go Google the card if you like; it says that the
Spider wove the Universe. Is, in essence, the Great Creator. I don’t deign to
think that I am unique in having this spark (truly, I believe we all have it), but I am beginning to honor its
presence in my life.
Performance. People have asked me what I mean when I say I
want to perform. They ask, Act? … And that’s not the entirety of it at all. I
wrote a poem in August of last year, which I’ve pasted below, called
Pyrotechnic Performance. In my first blog-a-day posting on this website in
November, I wrote about it. (Pulling a Carmen.) And, this morning, I wrote
about it, in my Morning Pages. What do I mean by performance? And why am I called to do it?
I’ll quote here from those pages, because this is the
change of course of the Ocean Liner, this is the portend and promise of the New
Year, and most critically of all, because this is still is my challenge. I have a
financial mess, which means I cannot afford an acting coach. I am willing to
pay $50 for a zipcar tonight to get to New Year’s Eve parties, which I have
rented and am psyched about, but I am still on the sideline of my own commitment to this truth. I know this is
eroding, this stagnation, this hesitation, this fear. To loosely quote
Nelson Mandela, it is not our darkness of which we are most afraid, but our
light. Hiding in financial crises, dead-end (and deadening) jobs, being late,
being “shy,” these are the snakeskins which I am shedding.
Because I want to be available, I am coaxed by this light,
this promise, and as you’ll read, I have a commitment not only to myself to
fulfill, but one to you as well. So, to a new year, to a challenge I am becoming
brave enough to face, and to the undocumented bounty of facing a truth I’ve
known all along.
A Safe and Happy New Year, Friends. And as Bill Murray says
in Ghostbusters, See you on the other
side, Ray.
Performance, A Challenge (12 31 11)
I want to perform. I want to ignite, excite, catalyze, engender, enmorphize. I want you to witness me. I want you to be changed in the witnessing. I want the love in you to awaken and stir as I open myself to you. I want to be there for it. Present. My best, most available self. I want you to fall in love with yourself in the process. Discover the ancient and cavernous depth of your heart. I want to be your tour guide. To lead you where you are ready to be led. I want to change the world, for good. One heart at a time, beginning with my own. And I am becoming Ready. I am ready to transform.
Pyrotechnic Performance: What I want to do when I grow
up. (8 5 10)
I want to startle your emotions and steamroll you with
feeling. I want to seize and agitate the flames of my inner fuel and fury and
ignite and catch you on fire too. I want to blast you out of your seat aghast
at the wonder that is G-d bellowing through me. I want to own this. I want to
master play and expand this. I want to hone sharpen and broaden the depth of
what I have to offer you. I want to journey with you through the lands of the
psyche and crash you upon the shores of revelation. I want to allow you to lick
and contemplate these wounds as you stagger toward the exit when I’m done. 

I want
to heave you into oblivion and gently reel you back in.
fortitude · joy · laughter · persistence · recovery

Ocean Liner

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I retract my endorsement of Airborne.
Just kidding. I just am not feeling as better as I’d like,
especially as it comes up to New Year’s Eve tomorrow.
Although I remember the last several New Year’s, which was a
new development, none of them have been particularly outstanding. Last year, I
was on the roof of a friend’s condo in SF, watching the fireworks over the Bay
– which was wonderful – with my soon to be ex – which was less wonderful, but a
great attempt at shoe-horning romance into a moment.
This year’s remains to be seen, with a party with some local
friends’ bands, and some dances out in SF that could be a raucous good time.
But I’m not feeling particularly raucous at the moment. But things change. And
this is the season for it.
I was reminded this morning as I was writing my Morning
Pages about a conversation I’d had with my friend Luke on our Misfit Christmas. We
were talking about the economy, and he was saying that people’s expectations
are that things can change on a dime, in an instant, immediately show results.
Whereas the more accurate truth is that change is like the course of an ocean
liner. It.does.not.stop. when you want it to. (See: Titanic) ;P
He drew his finger in a long, wide arc along the coffee shop table and said that
as an ocean liner begins to change course, it continues to look like it’s still
going along its original path, it continues out into the treacherous water, slowly evening a turn-about. It is not instantaneous, and
it is not immediately obvious or apparent.
Which means, that for anything that does change in this manner, like most things in this world, it requires patience.
This morning, I was reflecting that the change of the year, a
sudden WHAM BANG HELLO NEW YEAR!, might not equate with the reality of the
subtlety of change. But, personally, I feel it. The planet changing
its course in the cosmos, slowly slingshotting back around. The impending
change of the year has begun – it’s not one moment at midnight when Dick Clark
leads us all in some bedazzled primal chant. It’s more covert, and ultimately more kind
than that.
Changes that happen all at once are called emergencies.
Lucky for us, life is not always in the habit of confronting us with change in
these violent manners.
I’m not sure of my entire point here, but I suppose I’m
attempting to provide a bit of cosmic comfort, reinforcement of the
positive course I am on and perhaps you are on, and g-d willing the economy is on! Or maybe I’m just being wistful at the close of a
year, which, of course, it also is.
I was 14 and at a new year’s dance and a girl friend of mine
was in near hysterics. She said that the change of new year’s always gave her
anxiety. I got a text just now in which a friend asked me if I didn’t also have
the new year’s depression.
Lucky for me, no. I’ve bought my ticket on this ocean liner.
Cast in my lot. Threw down the gauntlet. Thrown in my hat. I am down with you,
Ocean Liner. I am concerned that I don’t know where you’re going once you make
your change in course, but I’m also mildly thrilled to see where you will go. To call on the spirit of “Must be present to Win”
and “Just Row,” I will make my best attempt to stand like Rose at the bow of
the ship and throw my arms open unto the unknown. 
faith · fortitude · love · self-care · sex

Holding the High Watch

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

The best laid plans, right? I had grand ones for this week,
then I got sick. I am on the mend, past the worst I think (insert ad for
Airborne here [despite others’ nay-saying about its efficacy, I swear by it,
and finally stocked up yesterday]).
It has given me the opportunity to nest a little bit; I
haven’t cleared my NJ boxes, but I have put up the revised “vision of love”
collage. It’s so much better than the
last – I wish I’d taken a before photo of the beige yawn it had been! And I
have another decorating project I might get to.
I think I know why I got sick – what tipped the scales from
‘minor winter ill-health’ to full-blown ‘duuuude, I don’t feel so good.’ I made
out with someone. — Not that this is karmic retribution or anything, but that he must have been sick too. 
A few days ago, I was in the car with a guy friend of mine.
We have a teeny bit of history having been involved for a full 4 hours 😉 a few
years ago but have remained pretty good friends, sort of sweeping it under the
rug. We often talk about our dating lives and such, and as he’s giving me a
ride home, we begin to talk about it again, what’s going on, etc, lighthearted,
etc.
Except…
I begin to say that I am of two minds lately. The one mind
that knows I’m “holding the high watch” as it were for something real,
potentially lasting, and ultimately revolutionizing. (Realistic… right? [I do
think so actually!]) I tell him about the work I’d been doing via Calling in The
One, and about how I am attempting to
create my best life, so when I meet someone, I’m fully present and accountable
for myself, I’m engaged in a life that makes me happy, and I’m not seeking for
someone else to make me happy or to take care of the needs within myself that
are actually my responsibility.
This is basically the aim of the book, and of a lot of the
spiritual work I do. To become my authentic and most available and active self.
That said,
I am also of another mind. Which says, I’m 30 years old, my
bones and ligaments only getting older and less nimble, and these are prime sex
years that I feel I’m wasting! It feels like a tragedy to let each day go by
without engaging in one of life’s greatest pleasures.
My guy friend says that it sounds like my body is saying one
thing and my head is saying another – but I really think it’s everything all at
once, to use that phrase again. My heart & head know what I’m doing,
holding the high watch, creating space, making room, expanding my life in
positive ways. They/I know that this “lull” is temporary, and perhaps in fact
necessary to sort of flush the system, or simply not clog it with anything less
than awesome.
In his car out front of my apartment, I ask, Has this whole
conversation been your way of saying you want to make out? and he laughs, I’m not
that transparent, am I?
But, being a hot-blooded human and woman, and knowing the
course of the conversation had been headed here, and having actively
participated in it, we make out.
And it’s fun and hot for a full ten minutes or so, and then
I know I have to leave. I don’t want to sleep with him, though, surely it would
be fun, but I am very familiar with fun
of this sort, this particular sort, which looks like neither of us actually
being romantically attracted to each other whatsoever, and I am also very familiar with the … blasé sort of let-down feeling
as you each pick up your discarded socks and clunk through some small talk and
try to figure out how quickly you can get out of there.
Sex is temporary. Love is not.
So, despite the “tragedy” of “wasted sex years,” I am clear
on what I am heading toward. I am clear on the woman and partner I want to be.
Clear-ish. I know it’s fluid. But I also know I am very much done (she says,
knowing things may always change) with vapid sex.
Besides, Good Vibrations appreciates my business. 
action · integrity · joy · performance · persistence · self-care

"Forbidden", Make that "Attainable" Joys

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I have a piece of paper dated in October of 2008 from an Artist’s
Way exercise. It’s entitled “Forbidden
Joys,” and is a list of ten things that we would love to do, but feel we can’t
or are not allowed for whatever reason. It could also be called a Bucket List,
I suppose.
Dated about 6 months later is a strike through of the word
“Forbidden” and above which is now written “Attainable.”
I’ve added three more things to the list, but the last thing
added was dated in 2009. I’ve carried this list through my move, and
found it maybe two months ago when I took The Artist’s Way book down again while looking for quotes for my
workshop on Creativity and Spirituality in the Spring.
The list is only about a third accomplished. And I’ve decided
not to “update” it from what I’d written, as I know there are now more and
different things I’d add. But, I want to honor this list, because there are still things on it that I would really love to do, if I
let myself.
The things that are now crossed off are: Go blonde; Audition for a play; Get furniture and paint my place (prior to that, I’d been using Office Depot boxes as night&coffee tables); Ice
skate; and Paint a canvas.
I still want to continue to audition for plays, and I still
want to Ice skate, and I want to paint more canvases, but “breaking the seal”
as it were, or going on an inaugural run through each of these is a great
beginning.
Those that still remain are: Bass lessons; Camp in the
wilderness; See the southwest again; Go on a real vacation; Sing in a band;
Have a dog (not sure if now having a cat counts, but I’m leaving it!); Build a
(non-Ikea) bookcase; and Take flying lessons.
This last one, I am most poised to do at present, as I got
one of those LivingSocial, Groupon-y type emails last week…For a two-hour
introductory flying lesson.
Typically, these are really expensive. I’ve actually looked
up this company before, during this past summer, when I was trying to find
work, and thought that maybe volunteering somewhere I was interested to learn
would be good experience, so I emailed a whole bunch of flight schools in the
area, as well as a whole bunch of sailing schools. But none had any openings.
But, I did get to see what was available out there. … And to see how insanely
expensive it is to get licensed to fly a small plane, which is ultimately what
I’d like to do.
I love flying. I have found over the past few years that I
write pretty well and pretty prolifically at 30,000 feet. There is a level of
suspension of reality, of detachment from every and anything that may be going
on – I feel freer and more unfettered than I almost ever feel. The only thing
comparable to me is really hiking out somewhere, or being up in Sonoma, for
whatever reason. I once about Sonoma that “my guts release the strictness I didn’t know
they were in.” And it’s true. I feel open, unclenched, serene.
So, in an effort to follow my nudges and listen to myself
and take responsibility for my dreams, I bought the intro flying lesson. It’s a
step. And I’ll get to cross it off my “Attainable Joy” list. And “Sing in a
band,” I know you’re there, and I’m listening. 
faith · growth · recovery · self-care

Vitamin D

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

I sit here in the long, angled slants of winter sun, bundled
in my pjs, robe, and two blankets, with a bowl of cinnamon apple I just made. I
was told recently that Vitamin D is a really great healer, and as I’m sick and
had to cancel my plans for today, I’m sopping up this natural resource as much
as I can.
As I’m sick, this blog may not make much sense 🙂 and may
have contributed to the ‘downer’ mood of yesterday’s, but, c’est la vie.
I said a few months ago, around the time that I was preparing
to go home to pack up my house that I felt like my life was “Everything all at
once.” The money stuff was hitting a wall again, family was a beast, and I
generally felt overwhelmed.
A turn came when I also realized that “Everything all at
once” must include the good things too.
Right? If it’s everything, everything, all this drama and hardship and challenge and chaos, what must also
be happening and available is calm, serenity, growth, and gifts.
Perspective is everything.
So, if at the same time that I’m experiencing a profound
bolstering in my sense of inner strength, this doesn’t preclude that there is
also … life, with all its attendant twists.
To take a narrative turn, my only tattoo is on my left
wrist, and it is of the sun. In my senior year of college, the wall opposite my
bed had a filled-in doorway to the next room, but the molding for the door was
still there. When I’d painted the room, I’d left the molding white, so it was
like a frame. Knowing I was inching toward a tattoo of the sun, I decided it
would be a good idea to live with one for a while, to see if I got sick of it.
So, I began to draw on my wall in that frame, an enormous
sun, with each flame around it different and specific, and within the circle of
the sun was the infinity symbol drawn sort of like a ribbon or mobius strip, so
it was three-dimensional, folding in on itself, traveling infinitely.
These two images to me, infinity and the sun, were images of
“constants.” Things that would always be (though yes, the argument can be made
about the sun, but in my lifetime at least, it is a constant!). An anchor
amidst whatever else was going on, these things would always be.
When I brought my design to the artist, my wrist was too
small to take the detail of the drawing, and so we simplified it majorly.
Sometimes people assume that the lines within the circle on my wrist are of a
yin-yang, which sort of bothers me 😉 as I want to say, ew, no, I’m not that hippie, lol. But, I know what it represents.
Along those lines of constancy, for the last … maybe 4
years, I’ve been playing with another tattoo design, but have hesitated because
it would cover the entire right side of my body from top of my ribs to my
hipbone, and part of me feels “bad” or guilty rather to cover the work that is
already there – me 😉 The art G-d already made. It’s like graffiti – you never
tag over someone else’s work. Never.
So, twice, I’ve brought my design in to two different
artists. One was not quite my style, but still has my deposit, I believe! The
other, I found about a year ago, when searching online for someone who would be
good with the design I had in mind – and lo and behold, this guy had just
opened up a shop above Union Square, and I met with him, and we emailed photos
and sketches ad nauseum, and finally, we got it right.
Then, I got into grad school, and was soon to be unemployed,
and let him know, and he said cool, and to get in touch when I wanted to do it.
The design combines the images of the “hand of G-d” and the
“tree of life.” The trunk of the tree would be the wrist of a hand, with the
main branches as the outward curving of fingers. But it would look like a tree,
of course, and that’s what drew me to this guy. I’d seen some work he did where
the trees looked so intricate and phenomenal – it’s hard to do a tree! So, you wouldn’t be entirely sure, or
it wouldn’t be obvious, that it
was a hand, but it is.
The branches would be covered in each of the seasons, moving
from one to the next, Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring (so that the sparse branches
of winter weren’t on an end, and also, to indicate that after the death of
winter, there is always spring).
The root system would travel down over my hipbones, equally
as massive and firm as the branches, because the degree to which we flower is
equal to the degree to which we are rooted, I believe.
I still think about this design, and it fits in well with my
first one with regard to constancy – the constancy of a Higher Power in my life
and the constancy of the potential to grow and flower continuously, infinitely.
We’ll see what happens, he still has my deposit too, and I
still have his final design. But I love the ideas I’ve chosen to live with, and
I don’t for a second regret the one on my wrist. And as the sun, here, now,
today, makes it’s slow way from behind another building onto me tucked into my
cozy couch, I am again grateful. For the reminder that it’s okay to be still
and mend today as tomorrow will come too; the reminder that growth is infinite
and continuous; and that there is always, always something to count on. 
family · holidays · letting go · love

Origins.

Molly Daniels HayesLeave a comment

My Christmas was as it’s been the past four years now – In
San Francisco, with my great friend Luke, at the posh Kabuki movie theater, and thai food on Fillmore, followed by meeting up with some of our
fellows. We saw the new Sherlock Holmes and it was just as fun and satisfying
as the first – as my mom once put it around movies of this caliber, they’re the
kind of movies that just make your popcorn taste better 🙂 They’re not going to
change your life, but they are fun – just what one wants on a Jewish Christmas day.
Before converting to Judaism to marry his first wife, my dad grew up in an Irish Catholic family in the Bronx & Queens,
and so I also have a “real” Christmas tradition and memory of all of that. We
used to drive to Queens each year on Christmas eve and decorate the tree, and
my dad’s mom, step-dad, and half-brother would always have this elaborate and
wonderful Christmas village set up. All the little stores and shoppes 😉 We’d
put on tinsel, and the clothes-pin reindeer every kid made in school. It was
always a wonderful tradition.
Over the years, though, as things have gotten worse with
them, the tree and the village stay out all year round, and are now covered in
many years of dust and filth. And although I have a great deal of love and
compassion for them and their increasing mental illness, shut-in ways, I can’t
help but feel a little cheated at the loss of my connection to a family
history.
My grandmother is in the hospital, her leg recently
amputated, and finally her other son and husband have agreed that their house
isn’t safe for her (the only bathroom is on the 2nd floor). So, to
me, it’s a blessing – she’ll be in a nursing home till she passes, and it’s a
little bit of dignity she’ll get back as she’s cared for in this way.
However, with the loss of her, …
My last name is not really my last name. I mean it is. It’s
on my birth certificate, and it’s on my father’s. But before that, it didn’t
exist.
My grandmother got pregnant at 15 by a “Spanish electrician
named Joe.” This was all I’ve known, all my dad’s known until very recently
about his father. Irish Catholic family? 1950s? Unwed teenage pregnancy? This was not okay, and my dad’s
first few years of life were actually spent on a farm in upstate New York. The
last name was “borrowed” from a family friend from whom my grandmother’s family
asked if they could use his last name on the birth certificate. And so, our new lineage was born. With a
big fat question mark on my dad’s dad’s side of the family tree.
More than a question mark, however, were cloaks of secrecy and
shame, and a large edict to never mention this. I can’t imagine how it must
have been for my grandmother.
A few years ago, while in her kitchen, helping to prepare
the Yorkshire pudding for Christmas dinner, I asked her more questions about my
unknown grandfather. Besides saying what she would come to only say about it,
“It was a long time ago,” (end of conversation), she also said that years after
my dad was born, my grandmother’s mother showed her letters Joe had sent
her during the pregnancy which her mom had intercepted and kept hidden – letters which said that he wanted to help and be involved.
Crushing. I imagine. I told this to my dad, and he was
stunned – he never asks, or talks about it.
I’ve done a little research, and in the Bronx in the 1950s, the
“Spanish” population, not knowing if that meant Spain Spanish or Latino
Spanish, it is likely that he, my dad’s father, was either Puerto Rican or
Dominican.
The last information I’ve gotten from my grandmother was
when I sent her a letter about 2 years ago, asking politely and nicely and just
… a little desperately, for more information. And she wrote back, It was a long
time ago, times change, we move on.
And now, she lays in a hospital bed, losing her memory, and
dying with the last of any secrets or clues to my lineage, my brother’s
lineage, and that of my father. Her husband married her when my dad was 6, and
they had another son. And that’s that.
It was years before I
knew any of this about my dad’s dad. I knew that the man I knew as my
grandfather was my dad’s step father, but I was always told that there was a
real Daniels, with a backstory – a descendant of a Scottish clan – and everything.
So, Christmas. There’s a bit of acceptance I’ll just have to
work on around this. Some people really don’t know their heritage at all. Some
are adopted, or were taken from their homeland generations ago, entirely divorced from their origins.
I don’t really know what else to say about it. It feels like
a loss, like a sadness. And I’ll always be curious, and I wish I knew more, and I often assume that my nearly black hair and dark eyes like my father are from this Latin lineage, and
I sometimes wonder if I’ll ever find those letters from Joe in the packing up
of boxes once they’re all gone. 
But I do know that over the last few years,
when I’ve been in spiritual circles during which we’re asked to name our
ancestors, I name him, Grampa Joe, and call him into my circle.