"It's not about the applause."

I’m doing it again. This “auditioning” thing. 

It makes me nervous, giddy, excited, daunted, and happy, underneath all the neurosis. Seems I’m the perfect image of an actor, then, eh?!

But really. I was thinking about it when I was in To Kill A Mockingbird recently, about tweaking the title of Lance Armstrong’s memoir, “It’s not about the bike”: It’s not about the applause. 

At the end of the show, the performance, onstage, when I come out for my bow, I don’t really hear it. Adrenaline in my ears, it’s part of a wall of sound crossed with Charlie Brown's teacher’s voice: Wah Wah Wah. It's the briefest moment. Shorter than an orgasm. It can't be why you do it. 

It’s not about the applause. 

Because in the moment that the audience is able to reflect on what they’ve seen and pass judgement positive or negative, they’re already out of the moment — and that’s not what this acting thing is about for me. 

Not that I have much experience! But from that which I do, I realize that it’s more about what’s happening in the moment of performance with the audience, the experience created with them in real time. Whether that’s engagement, boredom, emotional stirring. 

For me, those moments of connection are what it’s about. To create a space and an environment for others to have an emotional experience they otherwise might not have had that evening. 

For me, it’s always been about that. From poems written years ago that highlight my desire to incite a revolution or evolution in people through performance. 

You can hear it from the stage. Whether the audience is holding their breath, gasping at a sudden revelation. Or crying, you can hear the sniffling. Or laughing, or that one person in the audience who laughs harder than others, or is trying not to laugh because no one else is. 

It’s this petrie dish of human experience. How will they respond, react, be moved, if at all?

I love it. I love being a part of it. I love having a small hand in moving people, of allowing them the moments of anonymity in the dark theater to be moved. That intimacy, even though I will never see their faces. That authenticity they get to experience, even though they paid for it. 

Isn’t that what Aristotle spoke of when he said theater was a catalyst of mass catharsis?

So in those few moments when I’m timing when to step out and down to the apron of the stage, and for a moment be Molly instead of character, it’s like stepping out as the man behind the curtain in Oz. Like seeing how a magic trick works. 

It’s lovely and I won’t fein that it isn’t bolstering to get applause, but I rush that part in my head, braced against it somehow, not really hearing it, just trying to bow and let the next person have theirs. 

Sure, it’s gratifying as we, the whole cast, stand there hands clasped over our heads, knowing that this sound is a show of appreciation and gratitude and approval. 

And I won’t say I don’t like it or hope for it. But. 

It’s not about the applause. 

Retail Christmas: A Family Tale

'Twas the day before Christmas and all through the store

not a creature was stirring, it was really a bore. 

But some time in the day as I walked back from lunch, 

a gentleman remarked, Gee you don’t hunch. 

What great posture you have, and a convo was struck 

as his wife later joined and we talked cardio stuff

He and I spoke of their trip from Vancouver,

his wife in a fight with their my-aged daughter

I listened and shared; it was strange to be sure

to stand in the racks of not-quite couture

and be talking about things that do really matter

and not prattle on with plastic-smiles, idle chatter.

I gave words of wisdom that were passed on to me

about just showing up and letting her be. 

We even talked of my dad, how things there are rotten;

he said try again, love is never forgotten. 

I have my own opinion and still question his advice

it was odd to talk about this, but somehow quite nice. 

Out came his wife, and we put things on hold,

I said a kind goodbye and to stay warm in the cold. 

But as the wife handed me her card and I entered her digits

She shared she and her daughter were really quite in it. 

I didn’t mention I knew, and just made the suggestion

Tell her you love her and are there to listen. 

We smiled, it was strange, and out of the norm

to be talking real life in this capitalist storm. 

A few hours later, my feet throbbing with pain,

I couldn’t wait to get out and back to the east bay. 

When a coworker said there’s someone looking for you,

around the corner came the wife & her husband, too. 

“I wanted to tell you,” she started to sob, 

"I took your advice while I tried on some bras.

“I texted my daughter I was hurt, but am here,

and, Look! She replied!” her face stained with tears.

I read from her phone, while her husband looked on

a bit happy and startled at her goings on.

“I wanted to tell you, I’m so glad we met,

I wouldn’t have been ready before what you said.”

We teared up, exchanged hugs in the DVF stacks,

a slice of what matters near a discount sale rack. 

They left that day a little lighter it seemed,

and I wondered if this is what ‘meant to be’ means. 

I don’t know why I’m there, in the overpriced store,

but for a minute I’m reminded what humanity’s for. 

And maybe it’s not to sell lots of clothes,

to perfect my eyeliner or hike up my hose. 

Instead I was given the gift of what’s real: 

On the day before Christmas, I helped a family heal. 

God Shot

I suppose this could have been summarized as a facebook update, but I thought to write it instead. (On, yes, my very new [refurbished] MacBook Air, so generously given to me as a Chanukah gift from several contributors.

Yes, it’s materialistic [Ooh, shiny!], but yes, too, there are things that I couldn’t do with my old dinosaur that might come in handy — like if I wanted to work from home, Facetime my mom, or watch Netflix on something other than my cellphone!)

Yesterday, I had the day off from my retail job. I didn’t put this on Fbk either, but I had to take 3 days off last week after hobbling from my job mid-Tuesday to my chiropractor, my right ankle swollen and awful. The retail job is hard. The store itself is as large as a city block, and you’re standing most of the time, walking the length of the store others, and there’s no sitting. 

Now, I know when I quit my regular desk job, I said I didn’t want to sit at a desk 40 hours a week, but maybe something in the middle, eh?

And it was with this experience and knowledge, my feet still hurting, but apparently getting used to it, as my coworkers and dr said I would, that I went yesterday morning to a cafe to continue working on my holiday collage cards. 

I wanted to get out of the house, and I didn’t know if I’d get kicked out of the cafe as I spread cardstock, magazines, scissors and a glue stick out on the table. But, I wanted the human connection, too. 

And, lo, I did not get kicked out. I sat there at the large “handicap accessible” table (don’t worry, no wheelchairs rolled in), and I continued cutting and glueing, pasting and maneuvering images. Even used the alphabet letter stamps I’d bought 2 years ago and the ink I’d been given when I was sick. 

I sat there, content, enjoying, a little self-conscious and waiting to be scolded when a family with two daughters (I’d overheard) home from college for the winter break sat down next to me. One of the daughters tapped her family and looked over at what I was doing, and remarked, “Isn’t that cool?”

It was a sweet thing. I finished the card I was making and put it to the side of my over-large table, knowing I would hand that one to her when I left the cafe. 

A few minutes later, her mother turned and asked me what I was doing, if these were for sale or what? I replied, No, these are just holiday cards, my presents to my friends. For fun. And then I handed her the one set aside and said, “This is for your daughter.” 

She took it, surprised and grateful, and we exchanged names and shook hands. And I smiled at her daughter who’d admired my work. (“No one will ever believe I made this,” I heard the daughter say to her sister, amused.)

I smiled. I was glad to give her something. I was gratified that she’d admired something I consider so elementary and basic and fun for me. 

And then, as the family packed up on their way out of the cafe, the mom turned to me again and handed me an envelope with the words Happy Holidays written on the front. I thanked her, and wished them all well, and they left. 

In the envelope was a holiday card in which she’d written, “Thank you for your kindness to my daughter. Happy holidays.” And there was a twenty dollar bill. 

It was one generosity inspiring another. But it was more than that to me. 

I have felt so unmoored during this "job transition” time. Especially since I’ve taken on this retail job and can barely make it through a day with a breath to myself. I come home late, exhausted, and fall into bed. Chores are undone. Dishes unwashed. Groceries unbought. 

I cried Monday morning on the floor of my closet as I got ready for the day, exhausted from the long Sunday hours. I have felt so alien to myself with so little “me” time, so little time to think about or explore what could or should be next. 

I have felt lost, and a bit hopeless on the career/job horizon. 

And yesterday morning, I sat in a cafe, doing something I love to do because it’s fun and creative and easy and whimsical. Because I know people will enjoy them, if even for only a few weeks on their mantle. 

I sat there, and I was seen. My work was seen. And it was appreciated. 

I was an artist and I was rewarded, if that's the word for it. I was in the world and I was given a “god shot” — a moment of, Moll, you’re on a path, we promise. This, arting, is one of them. Being in the world is one of them. 

Go out. Be seen. Create. Give. 

We see you. The Universe and those in it see me. 

It was one moment. One interaction. One family. But it meant more to me than they knew. As lost as I feel, it was a reminder that I’m not a total fool for not toeing the party line. 

This experience doesn’t point me in a direction, but it is a welcome dose of hope when I very much needed to know that what I can give to the world is indeed greater. 

Writing Vows on my Couch.

We won’t be perfect. We won’t like each other sometimes. For months even, as we take turns, unevenly, cleaning up after the kids.

We’ll forget, for possibly years, how we loved the laughter in each other’s eyes, and the soft graze of your fingertips on the back of my hand.

We’ll forget the nestling and nuzzling, and how that made us feel safe against unknowns and inner demons. How we felt known to each other, seen by each other in a way that had made us actually whisper we'd "never felt this way before." 

We’ll forget what that inside joke was, and only remember the shadow of it that time we’ll pass a fire hydrant painted green. We'll be too tired to say anything about it. 

We won’t be happy. Not always. We’ll trudge sometimes and just fall into bed, with maybe a peck, and maybe just rolling over.

I’ll remember that time I lay on my couch in my studio apartment knowing that this decadent solitude wouldn’t last, that I would share my space with someone eventually.

I’ll know it’ll be worth it. The irritations. I won’t clean my dishes, it’s true. But I’ll make the bed. And you'll tell that story about the thunderstorm at basecamp until I harden against hearing it anymore.

I’ll know when I forget the moment of falling that it was meant to happen. And there will be small pocket-, breath-sized moments when I won’t remember, but I’ll be introduced to it again, new.

We’ll change. Our bodies will age. I will want to have sex more than you. I'll notice how the skin on your face begins to sag forward when you're on top of me. And there will be no helping my breasts.

We’ll each look with lust at other people, because we’re married, not dead. And I will be jealous, but I will be human, too.

The way you don't discipline the kids will bother me, and sometimes we’ll talk about it. The way I am more strict with her than I am with him will bother you.

We won’t be perfect. We’ll forget how falling in love feels like a satellite burning a reentry through the atmosphere. We’ll forget the tentative and amazed way our faces looked when we first came in each other’s arms.

We won’t have aloneness. We won’t have privacy. We won’t have independence.

We will evolve into creatures we ourselves don’t know, and so can’t understand in the other.

But we will, we will, stay the course. Unless it’s truly burning down, we will hold tight during the less-so times, we will try to remember the intimacy of small moments: to hold a door, to whisper a thanks, to hug and be still with one another.

We will try to be in love for 3 seconds each day.

Because it will have saved us both. 

The Miracle of 12 - 13 - 14

“I’m getting married on 12/13/14,” I half-joked to my coworker early this year.

I just love the order, the numbers, the unique fact that consecutive dates like that won’t happen again until 2103 (1/2/03).

My favorite time of day? 12:34.

Although "5:55" is another favorite, because my brother and I used to stand in front of the microwave (the only digital clock in the house then), look at the time and announce, “Five fifty-five!” and then lean over sideways, our heads upside-down, and announce, “Fifty-five five!” and then stand up straight and do it again: 5:55!! 55:5!!

I love that kind of order and ease, palindromes, sequences.

THREE POINT ONE FOUR ONE FIVE NINE – I THINK PI IS MIGHTY FINE!, is one our mother taught to us.

And so, when early this year, I looked at the calendar and saw that one of these special dates was coming up, I declared to my coworker that would be my wedding anniversary date.

Now, this was, say June, maybe? No boyfriend. No prospects. It would be a short engagement! But I figured, What the hell, it’s always good to declare things to the Universe. Why not?

And 6 months later, yesterday, it hit. December 13th, 2014.

No, I did not get married. Alas.

But I did get something else. An outpouring of love that rivals the strongest romantic connection:

Yesterday, you all erased my cancer debt. In 36 hours. Less than two days. Poof! Gone. Done. Finished. Eliminated.

FREE.

Yesterday evening, I became free. Because of the love and generosity of you, my friends, your friends, and even people I barely know.

One of the donors is a woman I helped at my sales job this week. A brand new woman I hit it off with, and happened to mention the launch of the campaign on Friday.

“Send me the link,” she said. And she donated, too.

Over 60 people contributed to the campaign, not to mention the shares and “likes” and “We’re with you” emails and messages.

In 36 hours. It’s done. Something that has harangued me since I got sick is over. Something I put in every monthly budget and calculate how long it will take, and that I can never move from my apartment with that debt. Something I was shackled to. 

Until yesterday. 

Now, I have to wait for the campaign to officially close in January, and for the crowdfunding site to take their cut and then send me the donations.

But then, I get to write a check to my landlord. And I get to say, Yes, it’s time to clean out that janitor room–cum art studio, unstick the windows, clean out the dried cat poop, put a lock on the door, and hand me a key. 

And then I get to move my art supplies up. Out of my closet. Out of random drawers.

The half-started art projects, the oil paint, acrylics, and embossing gun, the colored pencils, and easel, and oil pastels, collage magazines, glue sticks, stamps and stickers, brushes and sketchpads and canvases, exact-o knives and glitter.

All of this. All of this hidden away in my studio apartment closet. All of this out. Up. Lit. Alive. With me, available to me. Creation incarnate.

I get to m o v e  o n.

12 13 14.

I didn’t get married yesterday. But what is a wedding except a display of love, commitment, hope, cherishment?

On 12/13/14, I absolutely received that. Your love, your hope, your belief in me.

Wow.

And: Thanks. 

A Kick Start.

Well, folks. Tomorrow I will publish my indiegogo campaign to help me pay the back-rent accrued when I was in chemo.

It’s been a short, strange, and amazing process. About 2 weeks ago, I was sitting with a friend in a café, both of us “applicationing,” online searching, looking for work, looking for authenticity.

I said to him, “You know my favorite thing I ever did? I hosted this group art show in SF.”

I showed him the LocalArtists Productions page, practically defunct and way out-dated. I told him how successful it was, people came, people who didn’t know they could sell their art sold their art. I even sold some!

People laughed, ate, met, mingled. It was divine.

I then told my friend that I haven’t painted much since then. That I can’t really in my small apartment with a cat who likes to walk over wet paint. I told him about this art studio I found while exploring the 4th floor of my apartment building, and how I’d inquired to my landlord about it, and how he’d said, yes, I can rent it for $25 a month(!!!), if I pay off my back rent.

Almost $4000 now. Out of work for 6 months, only working part time after that. I racked up quite the debt. And have been slowly paying it back. But…

Here’s where lightning struck. My friend said to me, “You should do a Kickstarter. This is exactly the kind of thing people use crowdfunding for."

I looked at him, stunned, quizzical, a little vague. I tilted my head, trying to process what was just said, offered, opened up before me.

I replied, incredulous, “I guess people would donate to a cancer survivor who wanted to make art again, wouldn’t they?”

And so it was, 2 weeks ago we started something new.

Planning meetings, a few video shoots, a lot of “omigod, I’m not even wearing any make-up, I wish I’d smile, I look awful” moments. And it’s done. It’s being polished, and tomorrow morning, I will push this campaign out into the world in the hopes that others will actually feel something from it.

In the hopes that I can stop writing “back-rent” in my monthly budget. In the hopes that I can sever that weight of debt from that time in my life.

As I sat with my friend going over the language in the campaign, we have been talking a lot about “closing the cancer chapter.” And I turned to him and said, “This isn’t closing it, you know? This doesn't make it 'over.'”

There is no “closed” when it comes to cancer. I’m in remission. I’m 2 years into the 5 year “almost as healthy as normal people” period. But it’s never closed. It can be moved on from in many ways, but the simple existence of the campaign itself is proof that I’m willing to move into the world in a way I wasn’t before cancer.

Everything I do is in reaction to it.

I told my friend, tearfully, that this campaign is important. It’s helpful. But it isn’t the end. The “closing the chapter” is a great sound-byte, and I’m using it. But it was important for me to say to him, “Not quite.”

For better or worse.

I am proud of the strides I’ve made since being sick. I’m proud of the advancements and actions I’ve taken – being in a band, singing, being in plays, a musical, going to Hawaii, Boston, Seattle, trying dating again, flying a goddamned plane! – and I’m overwhelmed by the support I have gotten.

But, it’s so hard to sit with the reality that I am who I am because of what I went through.

I still get nervous when I get a sore throat, cuz that’s how I was diagnosed. I still have to keep extra tabs on my health insurance. I still have a butterfly-shaped scar on my chest where the chemo tube went.

And last week I put on a sweater I hadn’t worn in a while, and pulled a strand of hair caught in it. The hair, my hair, was long, past shoulder length. It was from before I was sick. Before my hair fell out.

It was like seeing a unicorn. Evidence of a mythical time. A time called, “Before.”

It existed. I existed.

The cancer chapter isn’t closed. I don’t know if it ever does.

That doesn’t mean that I don’t take action and strides and make use of the persistent lesson to live.

I am proud of the woman I have become and continue to evolve into. I know she exists now. And maybe she always did. 

From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.

Last Tuesday night as I sat at a rainy Oakland BART waiting for the shuttle to take me within walking distance of my apartment, my friend called.

She’d remembered that it was my first day of training for my department store sales job and wanted to know how it went. I told her, Good. A lot of corporate training-style stuff. Different department managers introducing themselves. Lots of powerpoint presentations about the history and brand of the company. And there were to be 3 days of this.

I told her I was most nervous (I told her I was trying to call it “curious”) about what would happen when I actually got onto the sales floor the following Saturday.

I haven’t worked retail since high school.

She told me we were both having “first day” experiences. She’d just this afternoon signed a contract with a small graphic design firm to be a partner with them, and she, too, was “curious” as to how it would all work out.

She told me that morning, she’d read this story about a guy who’s mentor suggested that he make a decision to not worry for one year. That whenever he got nervous, or tried to “figure things out,” or was anxious about an outcome, he made the commitment that he would simply not worry, that he would trust in the “universe,” and understand that he didn’t have to know the outcome. He just had to do what was in front of him and take small actions.

Needless to say, he had a great year.

As I huffed into the phone on Tuesday night, walking through the dark blocks toward my house, I asked my friend if she wanted to make a pact with each other. That for one year we wouldn’t worry.

And so, we did. We each announced to each other our commitment (middle names and everything) not to “not worry,” but to catch ourselves as quickly as we could, and to remember to “let it go,” and, for me, to have faith in the benevolence of the universe and the unfolding of my path.

When I’m scared of not making my sales numbers, and this whole retail thing doesn’t really work if you don’t. When I’m worried that retail hours and theater hours are the same and how will I be able to do both. When I am concerned that I quit a full-time time to have time to engage in creative project, to find a “fulcrum” job (more pay, fewer hours), and I've ended up in another full-time job…

I've been telling myself this past week, “From Thanksgiving to Thanksgiving.” Because that’s a year for my friend and me. One year of not worrying. Of trusting that it’ll not only be okay, but that it’ll be great.

To trust that if I simply do what’s next, make that next phone call to a friend, hang up that next sweater, show up to that next audition, the world will have a way of working out.

Sure, I’ve been nervous this week -- making calculations, staring wide-eyed at rehearsal schedules, wondering if this position will be temporary or not -- but I’ve been remembering that catch phrase, whispering it aloud, and it’s helped.

Today will be my second day on the sales floor. I am scheduled with them through the start of January with an option to extend. I have an audition set up for late January for a great musical. And I have COBRA payments to starting this month.

But I'm not going to worry one bit. ;P

“Finding His Way”

Today will be my first day of training for women’s clothing sales at Neiman Marcus.

I never imagined I’d write that, but I’m not ashamed of it either. Nervous? Yes. Worried I will have to be aggressive to make sales? Yes. A little trepidatious at having to learn all new things about brands and quotas and sales targets? Yes.

Grateful? You bet.

An interesting thing happened the other day. I was asking a friend about a guy we both know, who I'd just met: What does he do for a living?

“He’s a server. He dropped out of law school. He’s finding his way.”

Aren’t we all, I replied.

And I noticed something. Although I still believe that pursuing our passions and earning a livable wage are ideals for me in my own life and in the life of a potential romantic partner, when I heard what this notably attractive man did for a living, I accepted it.

This, is new for me. Call me a snob, and perhaps I have been, but because of my own vicious drive to “do something” worthy in my lifetime, because of my own aching need to “move the needle of human progress forward” through my employment, I have been judgmental of my own jobs. And of others’.

But I noticed that I didn’t have that same snobbery come up when told about this guy’s job. Perhaps, I have gained – or been brought down to – a level of humility around what people are doing in and with their lives.

Which means, perhaps I am finding that same compassion and acceptance for myself. Perhaps. Maybe. Surprisingly.

Do I still want to do work that enlivens me and helps others on their own path? Yes. But I am accepting where I am today for the first time in a long time.

Partly, it’s because I’m taking action outside of my “regular work hours” to engage in activities like acting, and singing, and getting ready to make this video-ask to help get an art studio. Perhaps now, for reasons unknown to me, I am beginning to call those other hours worthy, enough, more than enough. And they begin to settle the aching gnaw of “WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE???” that dogs my every step.

Perhaps, although this new work could be considered not “high” employment (working toward a greater good and utilizing my skills and talents), perhaps I’ve just become grateful to have any employment at all. Or at the very least, employment that doesn’t sit me behind a computer screen 40 hours a week.

I am delighted and surprised at this internal shift. This loosening of the noose around myself and others’ over how they pay their rent. Obviously, it’s none of my business what others do for work, but it’s a question we all seem to ask nonetheless. And in its answering, we begin to categorize and label people according to a caste system.

Maybe it’s realizing I’m part of the caste of people who are bright, creative, and longing. I am one of those “finding his way.”

I have found a compassion and acceptance of this place. (Though the shrewd part of me wonders if that means I’ll now move into the “found” category because of my new "achievement/enlightenment"… And I can offer a wry smile to that "never good enough" part of myself.)

To finding our way, be we server or CEO – Humans, all. 

Spurious Etymology: The Racial Edition

I was in my graduate education class on racial inequality when a fellow student, a well-careered, educated, respected black man told us, “The term picnic is derived from ‘pick-a-nigger,’ when white people would choose a black man to lynch during their outdoor meals.”

Yesterday, I came across a thread shared on Facebook by someone I also respect and whose views I take seriously: “Boycott Black Friday: The term ’Black Friday’ comes from the practice of slave owners selling their human property for cheap so they can help prepare the landowners for winter.”

At the risk of opening a dialogue, which is my intention, it is my opinion that forwarding and repeating these false and fake etymologies pour gasoline on what is already a virulent flame.

It is my opinion that inaccurate messages like these water down what are factual and horrifying truths about race relations in this country (and around the world). By fomenting these untruths, we are diluting and falsifying a message that is already true enough and already has more than enough evidence: Taken as a whole, Whites continue to be opportunist against, ignorant toward, and oppressive of Blacks. 

That’s the message we do see rightly repeated through Cory Booker's article being passed around asking people to substitute the name “Rodney King” with “Michael Brown.” It’s the message we need to see when the yearbook-looking page of young brown faces scrolls through our thread, a litany of the most “popular” crimes, an egregiously low accounting of the true number of racial homicides, abuses, and discriminations.

There is a message here that is already true enough, one that is, unfortunately, infinitely repeated, and that is the injustice, the malevolence, and the strict adherence to a status quo of hatred.

I cannot say I “stand with” Ferguson. To say that is to assume that I have any idea whatever what it is to live in a skin that is not my own. I can’t rightly say that I can sympathize with a race of friends that have been abused, ignored, or turned against singly for their color.

I don’t know what that is like, and I won’t presume that I do. I know that I find it a vicious and terrifying symptom of a culture of fear and insistence on the labeling of “other.” I know that I can feel pain for the families, for the friends, for the history of violence. But, I will never be able to truly know what it is like to be discriminated against or singled out as a bad influence, a person of interest, a danger.

And because of this, because of my own inability to truly "get it," the existence of truth seems all the more crucial. I, we, all need to know what is happening, to sit with the discomfort and the horror of truth, if there will ever ever be a possibility for change. And I am ignorant enough to hope it is possible, and bitter enough to assume that it isn’t.

But I ask that the message that is already so potent, powerful, and real not be diluted with fake etymologies, like ‘picnic’ or ‘Black Friday.’

What we are seeing, experiencing, and shutting down malls over doesn’t need the support of those falsehoods. Unfortunately, we have plenty of evidence of a war against blacks without them. 

Re-Ignition.

Unstructured time isn’t the best for me, and yet I am feeling a bit panicky about my upcoming full-time employment in sales starting on Tuesday. What has been lovely about this time, besides the “brain space” I spoke of the other day is that I’ve gotten to take my long walks again, meet up with my folks again, play with my cat again.

I’ve enjoyed being unemployed, though I know it’s not sustainable.

On that note, though, I’ve been meeting up to "co-work" at cafes with a friend also looking for work and get some applicationing done. This has led to conversations, which have led to ideas, which are leading to action. Particularly around things that “light me up.”

Such as the long-lost “LocalArtists Productions” I started a few years ago, which hosted a successful group art show, but in which I put too much of my own money and ended up in a pickle. Since then, I’ve sort of let that idea drift. But talking to my new friend about what lights me, I said, “My favorite thing I’ve ever done? This group art show I put on.”

Even as I sat listening to my friend at her CD release party the other week, I looked around the space. I came home and looked up the rental costs for that space: this could be a great place to host another one.

I love bringing people together, people who “normally would not mix.” I’ve met so many types of artists on my path – poets, writers, painters, photographers, musicians, actors – that it only makes sense that I bring them together. “Oh, you make jewelry, my friend does still photography, maybe you can work together.” “You’re a painter, my friend just participated in an open studios, maybe you can talk to her about getting your work out there.”

There are too many opportunities to learn from and collaborate with each other. I don’t want us to miss any!

So, I may be starting a Kickstarter campaign soon. To pay off my back rent (accrued when I was in chemo) so that I can rent out the art studio space on the 4th floor of my apartment building. I said to my friend over our laptops, “Yeah, people would be willing to donate to a cancer survivor who wants to produce art again, wouldn’t they?”

They’re slightly different avenues I’m beginning to chase down again: One is the studio space I want to rent so that I can start working again. The other is the creation of a space for artists to get together, these events and gatherings that I love to host.

I feel putting grease behind one will help with the grease behind the other. And so, before I start my full-time work on Tuesday, my friend and I are going to brainstorm about the video, and maybe even get to making it.

Because time is ticking away and we all have art to make and people to meet. 

I’ve started hearing voices again.

I’ve started hearing voices again.

Now, before you call the padded-room brigade, this is a good thing.

In the time and space I’ve had since quitting my full-time job at the end of October (despite the roar of negative thoughts and virulent self-questioning), I have begun to find space behind the thinking. And it is within this space that I’ve always germinated the seeds of my writing.

When I explain it in person, I raise my arm behind my head, and wave my hand in the general direction of “back here.” I tell them that it’s like there’s a room back behind my head, where the ideas start to percolate. They marinate, germinate, ruminate, and when they’re ready -- the indicator popping up like the thermometer in a slab of roasting turkey -- I open the door and chase them onto a page.

By the time the door opens, they’re pretty fully-formed. But they need the time and space and freedom to sit back there, talking amongst themselves, these ideas. I can hear them back there, murmuring. I begin to hear bits of phrases. The sense of a topic, a genre.

My waking thoughts start to curve in that direction; they start to gather information that all funnels to the same place. I collect these bits and feed them like coal into a furnace.

It’s partly, I know, the time and space that I have to think, not crowded with the demands of a 40-hour job. But it’s also working on “To Kill a Mockingbird,” reading the book at night, becoming immersed the language. (I used the word “rightly” twice in a recent blog; I become a sponge and a regurgitant of what I feed my brain.) It’s also watching Netflix's “Peaky Blinders,” and being stunned by the cinematography, the bold and sweeping camera work inspiring me, reminding me of the nuance and exaltation of art.

It’s listening to NPR, and a man's purple report of bison grazing in Canada, when the song of birds “split the silence like a candle,” and it became “the end of a day that started as a morning.”

I begin to collect these images, words, sensations like a magpie, not knowing what will be useful, but shoveling it all in anyway, trusting my process of alchemy.

I’ve begun hearing voices again. And this brings me hope.

Spiritual Echolocation

I am not the best judge of my progress or my abilities. But, even though I can’t rightly see myself, I’m beginning to notice that I am hearing it from others.

And this in itself feels like progress: At least I’m hearing it.

There was a time when I described compliments as one of those bug zapper lamps people hang on their porch. The bugs merely get within range of the lamp and they get zapped dead. Same with compliments for me: Anything positive that was said would get deflected before it even got close to touching me. None of that here, pew! pew!

I'd said that you can’t receive a compliment if there’s no complementary place within you to receive it. If there’s nowhere it fits within your own understanding of yourself, then there’s no way that it can be accepted. There’s no ring of truth, because you don’t believe it yourself.

Time passed, and I’ve become more able to receive positive feedback about certain things, because I have begun to hone and cultivate the place within me that is receptive, the place within me that believes you because I believe it myself.

That said, there’s room for growth.

This week, I’ve had several experiences where I’ve been told about my progress and abilities, and even though I can’t quite feel this, I’m beginning to recognize that I believe them, I believe others are seeing this, even if I'm not myself.

Hence, spiritual echolocation. I can’t see it myself, but I believe in the feedback I’m receiving – so there must be something to it.

I know that feeding off external validation is not the way to walk about the world, but what it’s doing for me is giving me hope that one day I can see it. There is an existence of a cave wall. Others are telling me so. If that is truth, there is hope that I will see it, too.

On Friday night, after the first act of our opening night of To Kill a Mockingbird, the director came backstage. He was beaming. He was so glad and proud of the work I was doing on-stage.

I was dubious. But I thought Wednesday’s preview night went much better; it felt better.

He told me he was the only rightly judge of my performance, and Friday night, I was better.

Whether I felt it or not.

On Saturday morning, I went for my semi-regular voice lesson. And at the end of a phrase I’d sung, my teacher applauded and cheered – he even gave me a high five.

“Did you hear that?” he asked, delighted.

No, I didn’t. I can’t hear myself.

The noise and buffer between what is and what I perceive is loud and thick.

“We’re going to have to record you more then,” he said. “You have to get used to hearing yourself.”

This morning, I was on the phone with my mentor, and I reported these incidents to her, as I begin to parse out these places where I’m being told one thing, but I’m hearing and sensing another.

She, too, had told me that I’m farther along than I can feel. And she gave me a metaphor (because we all know I love those!):

She told me I am a tree creating deep, deep roots. A solid foundation. And you can’t always see that growth above ground, but it’s happening.

We were talking (again) about my questioning of where and who I am this lifetime and where I’m going. And she said, some people have really gorgeous foliage, and weak roots.

We’re doing the work now -- early, some might say -- that others come to in mid and later life. Creating a root system, carving out the rot, cleaning the wounds.

Like a field of asparagus, you don’t see its heroic work until one morning you turn, and the whole field has sprouted green, fully formed, like Athena.

I am not used to hearing or seeing myself clearly. I’m not adequately armed with the ability to track my own progress. And thank god for other people, then!

But I do feel the promise and the hope of their reflection. I am beginning to hear what they’re saying instead of zapping it, because I'm beginning to uncover the place within me that believes it myself.

I’m starting to open to a truth that’s been, and is, hard for me to swallow:

I am worthy. 

storytime

In soft, rainy weather like this, you warm up a mug of cider, coffee, cocoa, cradling your palms around it for heat. You sink into the couch and watch vaguely out the window as everything gets welcomely drenched.

Your mind begins to drift, out of plan-making, errand-plotting, and back into the story that’s always being told.

It’s the one you were told before you were born. About wood nymphs, and magic, and the luminescence of play. It tells of quests and triumphs, failures and wounds burdened. It reminds you of the goat you rescue and the crow you chase out of the darkness. The lovers you are meant to kiss and those who trick you into it.

In the story that is always behind thought, you meld with ancient heroes, you are the foes they vanquish, and the cities they lay waste to. You are the sword of justice and of vengeance. Both the hag and lady of the lake. You are the unquantified stem cell of protagonist.

In grey weather like this, you aren’t yourself any longer, because you’ve gone back to what you've always been: everything. nothing. and teeming with every ending ever conceived. 

Near – Far. Near – Far.

Anyone else remember those segments on Sesame Street?

Well, I recall it this morning around desire. Around the idea that if we’re not happy with what we have right now, why would we expect something more would make us happy later? If we’re not content in the “near,” how can we expect to be happy in the “far””

That said, I don’t know that I completely agree with this concept. I do “get” that it is important to recognize the gifts around us. Especially at this time of year, it’s easier to get that reminder to “give thanks.” It’s what I’m teaching my 4th graders lately, about gratitude, being happy with what’s around us, noticing what we have, and how lucky we are. By nature of our birth, we’ve landed in a circumstance where we’re healthy, educated, and pretty well off. In many ways, we’ve hit the lottery in comparison to the 8 million other souls on this planet.

I can count my blessings, though they are innumerable.

And yet.

What about the phrase, “It helps to envision our spiritual objective before we try to move toward it”? Isn’t that implicitly saying that we can want more, and we have to clarify what that is so we can get there? Isn’t there an inherent longing or dissatisfaction? A seeking?

So, today, I sit with the duality of … reality (sorry!): I am content with my life, and I want more for it.

A friend once said to me when I was in a lot of pain around a previous job, “Just stand at the copy machine and be grateful you are.” Included in that idea is being grateful for: being alive, healthy, employed.

And yes, of fucking course I am and was. But does that mean, Don’t dream beyond that?

Does that mean the longings of a soul are symptoms of being ungrateful? Hmm….

Happiness breeds happiness. Contentment seems to attract more of itself. I am a “law of attraction” kind of believer. I comprehend that living in where I am with adulation and appreciation and awe is crucial.

But. …

How do you truly sit with that frisson?

In the immediate present, in the “near,” I am going tonight to perform in a community theater production. A good community theater, at that. For years, I’d been dabbling at acting, and only at the start of the year did I make a conscious commitment toward it.

I am adamantly grateful, and also, this was all borne of restless desire and dissatisfaction.

I don’t know. I don’t think I can “figure it out,” and maybe I don’t have to. But, I will always find it difficult to “sit” in gratitude for things that make me feel I’m wasting my life. I have too much respect for the time we’re given to simply “be” in where I’m at when that feels deadening.

And maybe that perspective is “wrong,” and it perpetuates my dissatisfaction. Maybe this longing and seeking keep me from feeling fulfilled, but for today at least – however off-balance it may make me – I do have one foot in the near, and one firmly planted in the far.

Because, sorry Ekhart Tolle: I believe in the Power of Then. 

Life: Whether you Like it or Not.

For many years, I’ve considered my personal and professional stagnation as though I were a traveler sitting at the base of a crossroad. The sign pointing in many directions reads any manner of options, but I sit there, gazing at the sign for eons, waiting for one of the arrows to light up, to indicate, This, here, Molly, is the way to go. This is the path to your destiny. This is the path to fulfillment, release, energy and passion. It may be cloudy at parts, but we promise, this is the way toward your highest good.

Yet, signposts have an annoying way of being inanimate, and this revelation has never happened.

But as I sit today, I recognize something new. Beyond the fork in the road, I’m beginning to see another path that I hadn’t identified before. It’s the path of my true desires.

I have sat waiting for the gods to tell me a or b, but secretly, I’ve always wanted c, and refused to see that as an option. “It’s hard for your to let yourself dream,” a therapist opined recently.

And it is.

To speak aloud what you truly want is to invite criticism and disappointment. Better to keep the dreams locked tight, even to the detriment of myself, because it’s “easier” than going after what I really want.

The problem with that pattern is that it means you don’t develop a history and a catalogue of places where you have moved beyond those doubts and spoken up, acted up, been seen. And so you continue to assume what you really want is not something you can have.

The history of denying what I want is long. It is best to be quiet, unheard, unseen, have few needs, because the lower you set the bar the easier it is to meet the meagerness.

I reflected yesterday on the way to our preview night of the play how you can always set yourself up to “succeed” when you place the bar achingly low. When you paint over your dreams with “realistic expectations,” you’re never called to reach out of your comfort zone. You can sit on the couch watching Netflix until the end of time, eating peanut butter out of a jar, and quietly erode all sense of the divine spark within you.

Not that I’ve done that. (wink)

But the divine has a way of being omnipresent, no matter what you do to ignore, dismiss, or erode its guidance and encouragement.

I haven’t a clue what experiences I’m opening up to as I watch this third path unfurl before me. Recognizing foremost that I’ve denied myself the ability to see what I’ve always wanted is a start. Recognizing that I’ve refused to acknowledge that I can have what I want, that my needs don’t have to be pauperistic, that it is safe in the reality of today to express myself is a start.

I’ve written many times before about the emerging option of being safe and seen. Safe doesn’t mean “not bold,” or setting the bar low, here. It means that I am not going to be punished for wanting what I want this lifetime.

This is a hard concept for me to integrate. But, more slowly than I would really love, I’m accepting that the sanest, safest, and surest way toward fulfillment is actually believing it’s available. Whenever I’m good and ready to set down the peanut butter and walk toward it. 

The Truth Will Out.

(A quick note before I run off to our full-day tech rehearsal. To Kill a Mockingbird opens this Friday!)

On the heels of the “Don’t forget your North Star” blog yesterday and contemplation this week, I went to have a voice lesson with a former castmate. We spoke afterwards about my job transition and how he’d realized what his North Star was years before, and sure, he had to jump through hoops to get there, but it was and is worth it. 

He was telling me we have to listen most of all to ourselves, not to others, and to not let their voices drown out our own. But I replied, Their not giving me their ideas, they’re asking “What do you want to do?” and I keep on answering, “I don’t know.”

But I sat with that for a moment, and I corrected myself: No, That’s not true. I do know: I want to perform; I just keep dismissing it.

That, performance, is my North Star.

I went last night to see a friend of mine perform at her CD release party. The talent was phenomenal, but beyond that was the brilliance of her pieces. Honed, practiced, cultivated brilliance. That’s beyond, “You’re talented.”

I sat in the audience, and during one of her songs, I was brought to tears with its beauty. With the privilege of being alive and able to listen and be moved by such art. She created an atmosphere and an experience that wouldn’t have existed if she didn’t.

I want to do that. 

And I think it’s possible. I just have a few hoops to jump through. And a lot of learning and honing to do.

It is very easy for me to dismiss what it is I want, because it sounds frivolous or flighty in the light of day. It sounds vague and too artsy and too uncertain. But I’ve fought with myself for years to cop to my desires, and each time I dismiss it, I pull myself back into the dance of "I don't know what I'm doing with my life."

I can dismiss performance for many reasons: believing I’m not good enough; that it’s too late; for financial reasons; for I-want-to-be-approvable reasons. I want the easy check-box on the form of life: What do you do for a living?

Or, more accurate, What does your soul want to do?

In talking with my voice teacher, he basically said it’s possible, and it’s worth it. I drove back from there to meet with two women to get some perspective on all this job transition stuff, and to firm up actions steps I can take in the maelstrom of “What the F* are you doing?” that invades my brain.

They said, too, it’s possible, and it takes work. Don’t give up. Do not go back to sleep.

Here are some steps to take, Yes you’ve taken some of them before, but here they’re being suggested again. Try again. Talk to my friend, my sister, this guy I know.

No, it won't look like being a self-supporting performer, but it will look like earning enough to support those endeavors.

The artists I’ve met and spoken to this week all have day jobs. But they do it in service of their dream. It’s not an either/or proposition: Art or Financial Stability. Dream or Devastation.

It’s hard for me to keep my eye on where I want to go, and that’s why I have you guys to help me. When I finally ask. And when I finally am open enough to listening. To you, and to myself. 

Ooh, Shiny!

“Don’t forget your dreams, why you’re doing this,” she told me on the phone.

Easy to say when you have income, I replied silently.

I’d told my friend I was on my way to an interview for a sales position. And she reminded me where my North Star was.

But sometimes you have to steer out of the storm in order to get back on course, right?

That said, this is the usual “Molly looking for work pattern”: Spend a few weeks seeking the thing I actually want, see that it’s harder than I thought, or notice that I don’t know how to go about it and give up on it, and then go toward the easy but unfulfilling role.

This search result looks like a different sheep’s clothing, but it’s still a wolf.

I’m trying to interrupt the usual flow of events at the point of acknowledging that “It’s too hard” really translates as “I don’t know how.” Because from there, I can ask for more help.

That is hard, too. To ask for help when you’re not really sure what you’re asking or who to turn to.

I feel like the simple son of the Passover Four Questions, The one who doesn’t even know how to ask.

For the one who didn’t know how to ask, the questions and answers were provided to him. He just had to show up, in his ignorance, and learn.

I have been able to interrupt other patterns of behavior mid-way, once I saw them. The flirting with the married men. Waiting until my fridge was empty to buy groceries, and eating tuna from the can. Following thoughts down a dark path toward isolation and despair.

This is no different. But changing, modifying all of the above took (and takes) effort. Concerted consciousness. Awareness of my feelings, of my triggers. All borne of scarcity mind. There’s not enough. I can’t have any. I don’t know how to advocate for myself.

And this -- advocating for myself -- was part of a very long conversation I got to have with my mom yesterday (as I chopped and roasted vegetables, making that conscious move to feed myself well and stop eating out all the time or going slightly hungry).

The other day, after I’d boldly walked into Neiman Marcus with no resume and no plan and ended up in an impromptu interview with the HR director, I spent dinner with a friend. I was asking her about sales, since that’s her vocation. I was talking about the statistic I’d heard that women rarely negotiate their salary, and men nearly always do.

She handed me a book titled, Women Don’t Ask. And I’m devouring it. Studies that show men see opportunities to ask where women assume circumstances are fixed. Indeed, the cultural pressures and reinforced gendered stereotypes that keep women in positions of not advocating for themselves are plenty virulent, too.

I said to my friend that if I got this position in sales with Neiman Marcus, I’d hope that I don’t go all mousy-girl. That I don’t begin to feel like an impostor, feeling I don’t belong helping women with gobs of disposable income.

And she said something interesting: Since cancer, you haven't been mousy-girl.

She said before then, it’s true, I can turn (in my own interpretation) not mousy, but quiet observer. I will stand back, get the lay of the land, and then maybe add some ideas. But for the most part, I’ll remain fringe.

In fact, in high school, a boy once asked, “Do you ever talk?”

You’d hardly know me by that attribute anymore! But that part of myself exists.

Although, less so these days.

I recounted all this to my mom, my friend’s comment about my new assertiveness, and how I’d lost that subdued, passive nature since surviving Leukemia. I gave my mom a simple example:

That same afternoon, I’d gone to pick up some lunch at this organic yummy place. There were two platters of smothered polenta: one had two slices left, and looked like it had been on the warmer for a few hours. Next to it was another that was obviously just pulled from the oven, piping hot and bright colored.

The older woman ahead of me ordered polenta, and got a slice from that bedraggled lot. I ordered polenta after her, and I asked if I could have a slice from the new batch.

"Sure, of course."

The older woman waiting for her change looked at me, with a look of, “That’s not quite fair.” But, it was. I’d asked. She hadn’t.

I am not the mousy girl I was. I am a self-advocate. Some of it was borne of cancer and my time bargaining with nurses and doctors on what I needed ("I guess that’s okay – no one’s ever asked before."). I completely changed my experience to suit my desires in what one usually sees as an immovable situation.

In the present, not knowing how to proceed – how do I market myself as an essay tutor, how can I market myself as a home organizer, all in service of the fulcrum, all to leave time available for creative and intellectual pursuits – doesn’t mean I can’t proceed. It means I have to ask for help. I have to ask for help on how to even form my questions.

And I have to remember that I’m no longer the woman who gets handed old polenta. 

Vision Quest

I was talking with an acquaintance the other day about what I know to be true. I know that, up or down, since I left my home at the age of 23 I have always had a safe place to live. Everything else in my life -- job, money, friendships, romance -- can be in upheaval, but no matter what continent, coast or city I find myself in, I manage to find a safe and comfortable place to live.

My acquaintance said, for him, he knows that all he needs is a rucksack and he’s fine.

We’re at different places and have different needs for sure.

But it causes me to think about my assumptions about my life. I have this assumption, this belief and history to back it up, that I will always be taken care of on the home front.

I also have assumptions and belief and history to back it up that even though I don’t know how, financially, I always do land of my feet. But that usually it takes a long while, and the outcome of that is not always what I want to be doing, but I am eventually safe there, too, even if a little battle-weary.

I also have other beliefs and history backing up my assumptions: I don’t know how to live a balanced life. I don’t know how to have a relationship. Or how to earn enough to support myself in a field I love.

I have beliefs about myself that keep me stuck. And what I then have is entitlement.

Someone should tell me what I should do, because I don’t know how.

I've been looking back at some of the writing work I’ve been doing lately, finally moving on past the section on amending relationships in my life, and in my prior writings and inventory work, I read that entitlement around jobs comes up virulently.

And only a few days ago was I able to see that for me, entitlement is an outcome of hopelessness. I can’t, I don’t know how, I’ll fuck it up – you do it for me. You make it work.

Another thing I noticed in my writing was how some of my despairing fears have dissipated since I began that inventory work over 6 months ago. Some of the same haranguing thoughts about my own ability to speak up for myself, to follow my dreams, to do things I don’t know how to do have been challenged since the time I’ve written them.

Since the beginning of 2014, when I decided I was going to make a go of this acting thing, I’ve been in 4 plays. That doubles the number I’ve been in since 2006. I made a decision and followed it up with action. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I took a few classes at Berkeley Rep that I didn’t find altogether transforming; I found a proper headshot photographer; I replied to audition calls.

I have been stalling on putting myself out there for my essay tutoring work, because I don’t know how to do it.

And this leads to a feeling of, If it’s supposed to happen, then it will. It’ll just happen.

A friend calls it “going rag-doll on G-d.” Okay, you want “surrender,” you want me to let go of my plans because my ideas are limited by my fears? Sure – here, you have it. You drag me along into the life I want to have.

The point is, there’s a difference between surrendering and giving up.

This blog is a little all over the place today, but so’s my brain.

Basically, I have some beliefs about my life, like my home, that make me feel secure. I have other beliefs about my life, like my earnings, that make me feel uncertain and hopeless.

There’s really no reason for the difference, except I continue to reinforce them both. I am blind to the changes that occur in and around me when it comes to perpetuating my negative beliefs.

But looking back at my work from 6 months ago, acknowledging the success of following a dream, I really have to acknowledge that I don’t have to do things the same way, right? I really do have to let myself see that I’m not as helpless as some part of me wants to believe, right? I do have to accept that I’m not as broken as I want to believe, right?

And, so this is the work, now. To pull back from the chatter which causes me to stagnate and become paralyzed against action. The work is to see that positive beliefs exist within me, and to let those fuel my action toward my next place.

I am not stuck. I am not helpless. I am not depressed, deficient, or despairing. I am only short-sighted. 

And for that, I can get better glasses.