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Wednesday, December 31, 2014

"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. 

Friday, December 26, 2014

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. 

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

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. 

Sunday, December 21, 2014

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. 

Sunday, December 14, 2014

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. 

Thursday, December 11, 2014

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. 

Monday, December 8, 2014

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

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

“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.