PIANO

Fran (my blog coach) sent this in an e-mail -- click -- it's a fun stairway exercise .

Fran knows I'm a dancing nut -- every once in a while, my husband and I meet in the hall between our offices and bow to each other, clasp hands above our heads, and dance a stately minuet, humming a tune we both know (but aren't sure if it's Bach, Beethoven, or Mozart).

Having seen the stairs in Odenplan, Stockholm, I searched YouTube, and found piano stairs in Tokyo -- found myself remembering the movie "Big" -- the great scene when Tom Hanks and his friend were dancing -- playing chopsticks on a giant keyboard at F A O Schwarz.

Whoosh -- memories of my piano lesson days came over me. I was going to be a concert pianist, or a doctor, or a ballerina.

Ah yes -- but my best friend, Harriet, was a natural at the piano. Her hands, her stubby fingers with pillows on the end of each finger -- those fingers said she was born to play. When Harriet played anything -- even without the pedal -- the keys had resonance -- her music filled the room.

Not so for Em. I loved to put Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" on the record player, and pretend I was playing it. Whenever I played the piano, I swayed -- let my body feel and display the emotions -- the ripples, the chords, and boy -- did I ever use the pedal!

When I read that pianists practiced for hours each day I was sure it was going to be my career. I knew once my piano teacher gave me a piece of music to play, I'd practice morning! noon! and night!

My piano teacher, Mrs. Gregg, with her huge, up-lifted, corseted front, was shaped like the prow of a ship, and gave orders like a captain, commander in chief. She had me playing Czerny scales, and dinky kiddie tunes. After I begged, she gave me a piece of sheet music -- Poldini's "General Bum-Bum." She said, "Practice it, memorize it, my dear, and you'll play it at the piano recital you and my students will be giving at my church."

I would have preferred to play Beethoven's "Fur Elise," but another one of her students had dibbs on that.

Alas, "General Bum Bum" was a boring march, with nothing for me to feel. The more I practiced, the dumber, the stiffer, the worse it sounded.

On the recital day, I was very nervous. As the hour approached I felt nauseous. Sitting in the church pew, waiting for my name to be called, I was shivering.

I marched down the aisle. Sat on the piano bench. My hands were chunks of ice but I proceeded to play "General Bum Bum" -- made no mistakes, but gee -- it sounded dumb, dead, stiff, awful.

Afterwards Mrs. Gregg folded me into her chest and said "Excellent, my dear. Next week I'll give you Poldini's Opus 79 to master. It's a lyric waltz, in three quarter time."

Mom said, "You played all right, dear" ' but I knew from my cold hands, shivering, and the wish I were dead feeling I had when I walked from the pew to the piano bench, sat, and put my hands on the keyboard, that I was not going to be a famous concert pianist.

Doctor was better. Ballerina was much better-- so it was after that performance that I set to work on convincing my father that I had to have ballet lessons.

Well, I danced in Tokyo ...

So, if I ever go back to Tokyo, or visit Odenplan, would I use the piano stairs?

Yes, I would! I'd like to do what Tom Hanks did in "Big."

After chop-sticks, with my feet on half-toe, I'd plunk out the opening of "General Bum Bum," thanking my lucky stars that I went for ballerina, NOT concert pianist.

HALLOWEEN

What to wear? It was my birthday, a week before Halloween. Halloween was my favorite holiday. I'd never given a party before. We were going to celebrate Halloween and my 9th birthday.

I had dropped hints about what I wanted for my birthday -- a makeup kit with everything in it -- a ring with my birthstone -- a wristwatch, guitar, or a real art easel and a set of oil paints.

Daddy's car was parked temporarily on the street . The party was going to be in the garage. We'd decorated the garage with orange crepe paper scallops. Orange paper plates and cups were stacked on two card tables. A skeleton hung on the garage door. The large pumpkin which I carved all by myself, was on a stool. A candle was in it, ready to be lit.

The pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey game was tacked up on a white sheet. A 5 gallon wash-tub that was used for soaking clothes was clean and full of water. We were going to have a bobbing for apples game.

My class from school was invited. Kids I liked and also the one's I didn't like -- I'd handed out the invitations that I'd crayoned to everyone.

My sister made me a tall witches hat from some stiff black cardboard she'd bought at the art store. We found a piece of black cloth for a cape. I wanted a wand. We used an old black umbrella, tied shoe laces and string around it to keep it flat and pointy.

The morning of the big day I woke early -- excited -- nine-years-old seemed wonderfully old, mature, important.

At breakfast my first gift was plunked down in front of me -- not wrapped -- it was a handsome jewelry box, brown, with brass corners. It had three drawers. The inside of the box was lined with a soft green felt. It looked like Mother's jewelry box but smaller.

"Look, it has three keys!" one of my sisters said, as if three keys were very important.

I didn't need three drawers or three keys. I didn't have any real jewelry -- just wooden beads, a tin ring from a crackjack box, a fake watch from Woolworth's 5 & 10. I figured a birthstone ring, and maybe the wristwatch were in the other boxes. Three gift-wrapped boxes were sitting on the buffet near the coffee pot.

One box was a grey pearl pen and pencil set. The other box was fancy stationery --pink and blue paper, pink and blue envelopes. The third box had a red leather diary in it -- small, with a little key and lock.

I felt awful. I felt like crying. The disappointment, the shock -- a box, pen and pencil, stationery, a diary -- was that all?

The day went downhill from that point on.

There were things to do -- the usual tidy-upping that a person has to do every day. I felt old and sad -- being nine felt like a not good thing.

My sisters helped me put on my makeup -- zig-zag eyebrows, tons of lipstick, and round rouge spots on my cheeks. My two braids hung on either side of my tall witches hat. My cape was fastened with a large-sized safety pin. I smiled a big real smile when my sister took a picture. I figured I'd win the prize for the best costume. The prize was a kaleidoscope. I loved kaleidoscopes.

The kids who came to the party came with relatives. The relatives sat on chairs and the bench. I got three handkerchiefs, two coloring books, a book of paper dolls, a comic book, a crossword puzzle book, and a rag doll. The gifts seemed to be gifts the kids had been given when they were younger.

I didn't win the prize for best costume. My sister was the host, and she got the relatives to indicate the winner by applauding. There were two other witches, two gypsies, one fairy, boys in dumb costumes except the winner -- he wore a top hat, and tap shoes. He came as Fred Astaire.

Shall I go on with this sad story. I didn't win pin-the-tail-on-the donkey. Blobbing for apples my hat fell in the water, but I did manage to get an apple.

The unhappy, not good ... no ... it was more than not good -- it was a bad birthday -- and this bad birthday has stayed somewhere in my mind where one's negativity resides.

Is it why I don't celebrate my birthday? Has it made me anti-social?

I don't celebrate birthdays because advertising my age at this point in time, turns conversations into "how do you feel?" ... "how's your health?" ... "you mean you're still working?" And I'm not anti-social -- my expectations are minimal, and at the same time HUGE.

Maybe this is why I carry around, mentally, a black umbrella -- to put up in case in rains -- to have just in case I need a magic wand.

NEW SHOES

I am not in the mood to dig into the confused thoughts I have about my new ballet slippers.

I'm still focused on the Kennedy family, the processionals, the funeral. And today, more than last week, I feel as if I'm Mrs. Nero- fiddling-while-Rome-is-burning.

The shouting war over health, the anti Obama rocks that are being thrown at him. I can't get the war, the rocks out of my mind.

All my pet peeves are peeving me -- ads selling medications that I, the patient, am supposed to suggest to my doctor -- ads mentioning the serious, life-threatening SIDE EFFECTS (grim things on that list that all the drug makers seem to use.) Also ads promoting the female as a sex pot/fool, in too much makeup, in low-cut, too short, too tight (BAWDY BAD TASTE) clothes.

And prices -- everywhere, everywhere, raised for no reason -- am I going to list the offending items?

No. I will focus on my new pink shoes.

In the studio, late last night, after I'd turned off the Kennedy burial, I put on my barre-taking T-shirt and tights.

I put on my new shoes. Boing! Like a loud bell, I realized I haven't been paying attention to POINTING my feet.

(What? That's a sin! Pointing your feet is to ballet dancer, like petting a dog is to a pet owner. It's essential! basic! major!)

My feet have always been a problem for me as a dancer. "Wrong" feet said the doctor my parents consulted when, after my first summer in New York, my Achilles tendons ached so much that I couldn't walk. The doctor x-rayed them, studied them, frowned, and declared, "This child has wrong feet -- these feet won't allow her to do 'toe dancing.'"

Little Em blocked it out. My parent eventually blocked it out because after I rested my feet for six weeks (strapping them with adhesive the way the doctor showed me how to do), the pain vanished. I blocked it out, but never forgot the doomful words.

As a beginner, I used to point hard, point and stretch my poor feet to death. Forcing my insteps to bulge, I found a way to make them look "pointy" -- by digging the toe of the ballet slipper into the floor. (I knew it was bad. "It's wrong technically," said my beloved teacher Margaret Craske, at the Met's Opera Ballet School.)

So of course, last night as soon as I donned my new slippers, I pointed, pointed hard, started stretching my "poor feet to death," forcing the instep to bulge.

Boing, boing -- the loud bell rings.

"Hey, gee --" I'm asking myself -- "Why am I making a big deal over pointing my feet? I am not dancing for an audience! No one sees me other than me when I glance at the mirror, and occasionally JC who doesn't notice my feet -- he loves my concentrated, unbreakable "actress" focus.

Gee, I'm thinking, "Am I going to be worrying about pointing my feet for another year? Two years? Till these shoes wear out? Am I going to be pointing my feet hard till the day I die?"

STOP! ... The country's in mourning, and I'm mourning, and fretting about what ...?

Will I obey my words, my thoughts, my practical, logical nature?

BOING! I don't know.

"BREAK A LEG" SAID CLORIS L.

I needed money.

An agent from my Dance Drama Duo days phoned -- the midday show on WPIX TV wanted some dancing tomorrow -- two and a half minutes of dance before Cloris Leachman's spot on the show.

I said, "Uh-a-a- ..." Quickly explained that Mark Ryder wasn't available (we were divorced), but I could do a solo."

I got the booking. I had a solo, but it was "Ballad of the False Lady," not appropriate for TV, seven-minutes long, very "modern dance" in a long black dress.

Somebody said, If there's a will, there's a way ...

Sitting on the piano stool, I stared at my stack of records. (This was back in the days of 78's and the LP's.) I'd been single for a month. I'd been playing "Don't Get Around Much Anymore." The Woody Herman and his orchestra version was on my record player's spindle, echoing in my lovelorn brain.

I turned the record over. The other side, "Laughing Boy Blues." was a weird piece -- woodwinds, then laughter, probably the guys in the band doing the "ha ha ha ha" theme, while the drummer did a jazzy, rock and roll rhythmic improvisation.

So I whirled on the piano stool, did a bouncy, bent-kneed step in my bare feet, echoing it with floppy arms. I un-clipped my hair -- tossed my hair and head up and down with the laughter theme, each time wilder, and faster. When the woodwinds were doing their moan theme, I imitated it with shoulders, and mournful frowning face.

I whipped up a costume-- blue leotard top and short skirt I sewed on my sewing machine -- seams and the hem were crooked, but with me on the piano stool, who would notice?

Cloris Leachman, the guest star, was already a name in television, theater, and films. She attended North Western University with one of my sisters . She watched me doing my number in the rehearsal. The station's piano stool whirled more easily, and faster than mine, making my movements more exciting. The stagehands and camera guys gave me the thumbs up, and appreciative nods.

When I introduced myself to Miss Leachman, she murmured, "Yes, I do remember your sister, your younger sister of course."

"Oh no..." I corrected her. "She's my older sister ."

"Oh .. really?" C.L. murmured skeptically.

"I'm the younger sister. She's definitely my older sister."

C.L.. gave me a withering look and turned away. Had I offended her? Maybe she didn't want me to think of her as a contemporary of my older sister.

At show time, dressed in my costume I warmed up holding onto a chair.

"Stand by." called the AD.

Cloris Leachman leaned in and said, "My God, you're wearing THAT, that ratty thing? You look awful!"

"Places Miss F." The AD called.

Cloris L caroled sweetly, with marvelous diction. "Break a leg, dear!"

Her good luck wish is not what a dancer needs to hear, and "ratty awful" was echoing as I did my "Laughing Boy Blues" bouncing, whirling, hair flying. a big down-frown on my face.

It was a hit. WPIX asked me back to do it again, the following week.

I didn't watched Cloris Leachman on "Dancing with the Stars." I wasn't thinking "break a leg, dear" but I was kind of relieved when I heard that she and her partner got the lowest scores.

BABY-SITTING SATCHMO

Broke, unemployed, divorcee -- there I was, a trained dancer, with reviews -- "Little lithe and utterly lovely" said Walter Terry in the NY Herald Tribune; and no income. (In the divorce deal I got what I wanted -- the company, the studio, the sound equipment, the $600 debt my ex husband and I had borrowed from his mother. He got what he wanted, a new wife, and a teaching job at a major university.)

Meanwhile ... rent, utilities, food ... I had to get a job. A friend of a friend knew the producer of the Bell Telephone Hour. Strings were pulled. They needed a "go-fer" -- pay was $450 per week, starting immediately.

I hated the title. I didn't know what to wear. In blue jeans, blue silk blouse, sneakers, hair in a pony tail, I arrived at NBC. Upstairs on the twelfth floor I was given a list: props to assemble, music to deliver to the rehearsal; dressing room assignments to give to the star -- told to follow Mr. Louis Armstrong around and run errands, act like a hostess, "make the Negro comfortable."

GULP! In the arts, prejudice takes a different form. Blacks were moving in, taking over, getting grants, directing, choreographing, contributing fantastic music. Secretly I resented them for being IN, me being just another white dancer and a white choreographer, with white artistic ideas -- nothing fascinating like black people in the arts were now contributing. But the tone of my boss at NBC, the way he said "Negro" was scary.

Mr. Louis Armstrong sat in the star's dressing room, with his wife. He was friendly, and kind, and he asked my name. The guys in his band were in the other rooms. A huge guy said to call him "Big Daddy" and get him some ice. I did. I whirled and whizzed around hyper-efficiently. I knew how to do income tax, book tours, run a dance company, make costumes, drive a bus, and stand over a mal-functioning engine at a gas station and not be sold a ridiculous repair.

Now, I copied music for Voorhees the conductor. I helped the choreographer stage the entrance and exit of the singing chorus. By the third day, I was definitely a member of the Bell Tel production family. The associate director said "You're doing the work of an associate producer. A girl like you -- if you join the union, you could be earning $900 a week."

Louis Armstrong, the star, was going to be performing on a set (they called it a wagon), which would be slid onto the main area, just below Voorhees and the Bell Telephone orchestra.

The producer told the choreographer who told me -- "Get Armstrong and his boys on their wagon during our orchestra's tune up."

I said, "That's ten minutes before Armstrong's going to perform. Why not get Mr. Voorhees to announce him? Then, hit Satchmo with a spotlight, follow him as he and his men take their places." (That was the way people were usually introduced on the Bell Telephone Hour shows which I'd watched as part of my preliminary training in the NBC office.)

"I don't think so" said the choreographer. I made a beeline for the director. "No," the director said, "They don't want a spotlight on Armstrong."

The producer, the big boss came into the main stage, with a list of the guest stars for the next show. It tickled me, sort of ... and worried me, sort of ... Was I going to be a regular nine to five employee now.?. What about my daily ballet class, and getting bookings for the company?

I cleared my throat and told him -- "It would be easy for me to stage Mr. Armstrong and the band, and keep the Telephone Hour tradition -- I can get them to march in as Mr. Voorhees announces them. "

He said, "No %x@#$& nigger with a snot handkerchief is making an entrance in my show."

But-but-buts filled my mind. I guess my jaw dropped because he laughed a not pleasant laugh, and said, "You take care of errands, dear, I'll take care of the art."

So, the distinguished Mr. Armstrong on the Bell Telephone Hour waited on the wagon, and then the lights faded up as Conductor Voorhees said, " The Bell Telephone Hour is proud to present -- Louis Armstrong, and his "boys" (Click the link! It's a great band!)

The tech on Camera One told me afterwards, he'd been told "No close-ups!"

The tech on lights said, "No spot -- they don't want to see Satchmo sweating."

I went back to life as a single woman, worrying about money. I taught kiddie classes, booked a tour, and never did get to be an associate producer.

Our president had a summit meeting yesterday -- beer and talk with the Cambridge cop and the black Harvard professor, and put out that small fire ...

After many, many years, that's what we have to do ... Birthers, blue dogs.. twitterers, bloggers, Tea Party People, all the media publicizing it -- repeating the ugly words the cop and prof exchanged, scrutinizing each word, debating them, booing them, alleluia-ing them -- paying profoundly close attention to racial aspects of having a black president -- everyone repeating the ugly stuff over and over and over and over ... Aren't we brain-washing ourselves even though we know that electing Obama was, and is a wonderful beautiful thing for our nation and the whole world?

We have to stop fanning that old fire -- put it out, put out the embers of a fire that's been burning in America since the first black slaves three-hundred years ago.

THE SHADOW KNOWS

The scary voice croaked -- "What evil lurks in the hearts of men ... Ha ha ha ha ... "

It was terrifying. It implied danger --an enemy hiding in my room, ready to destroy me. I listened to this popular radio drama regularly, nibbling peas from the pea pods. (See my April 16th post "Green Olives.") The Shadow was a spooky hero, who knew who was bad and evil .

Shivering, I wondered if the Shadow knew I'd stolen an extra olive out of the olive jar, and I'd "borrowed" my sister's "Aggie" -- lost it in the backyard bushes. As the show ended, I'd croak with it --"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit ... the shadow knows."

... Evil lurks in the heart ... Bitter fruit ... Even now I sometimes sing-song the words when something unpleasant happens -- someone who's been nice is suddenly rude, or a friend suddenly becomes an enemy.

My friend R was a few years older than I, and someone I counted on. We liked the same music, the same choreography, and when I needed to hire dancers, her experience was better than mine. I responded to looks (tall male dancers, shapely, not too skinny, pretty females), while R responded to technique.

R often advised me about personal things . "Wear more makeup, Em. Spray your hair -- loose ends age you, Em. Don't be buddy-buddy with the kids in rehearsal, Em." I'd nod, but her ideas about grooming and handling employees were wrong for me.

(Even now, I miss her, as a friend and coworker, though she hurt me by putting her "growing older" fears in my mind .)

Just before JC and I moved back to New York from Malibu, I phoned R. I had a project I'd been hugging in my mind, thinking of doing. Jabbering, about the old days, I thanked R for nagging me to do less balletic steps in my Vivaldi solo, and mentioned "Shattering Panes."

"I'm thinking about directing my play, R -- doing a showcase or a staged reading with you as my assistant."

R seized the moment -- jab slash! Right off the bat mentioned a similar play that had bombed, and money -- the union rules that made my showcase idea impossible financially -- and went on about 'inexperienced' directors.' Wow! She thoroughly killed my optimistic, confident playwright's sense that this was the right time for me to try out my play in New York.

I didn't do it. In fact, I couldn't go back to thinking positively about PANES till last year.

Anyway, it got me thinking about other projects, and I went onto other things. But the incident resonates. It changed me -- makes me avoid reunions with dancers who've worked for me, and other former employees.

Does evil lurk in theirs hearts? Is it lurking in mine? Or is it a fact of life, that people you've been buddy-buddy with when you were the boss, have resentments, negative feelings about what you've shared, that they need to express.

I'm not sure why R turned against me. But I'm careful about show-biz hugs and kisses. I avoid the personal chit chat that makes an employee also a friend.

I try to keep my distance.

I HAVE A SONG TO SING, O ....

I grew up with two sisters, older than me, and a younger brother. The eldest sister, gone from my life before she died, was gone because she didn't want me to be in her life. Didn't want to see me, or talk to me.

I can't explain why easily, but I'll try because I want to understand.

My second sister is the center of her own large, devoted, successful family. I am a foreigner. They might have taken me in if I'd made an effort, but I couldn't. Didn't. What she is -- strong, over-powering in her opinions, makes me disappear. Silence overcomes me. I'm not able to join in and be what I am

My brother drowned at 18. My father, who'd already had a series of strokes, died that same year. Mom went to Europe with me and my dance company. She never really recovered from losing her son and husband, but she was in my life, always there for me -- her light is on all the time in my office, as I said in "Night Light," (posted April 13th.)

It's my oldest sister I want to sing a song to ...

She played the piano. We sang Gilbert and Sullivan songs, words, rhymes, tunes that still ring in my mind.

She inspired me. To read. To draw. To play-act. To go for broke, Have big dreams. Reach for the highest branch of the tree, the highest star -- beyond the stars, and dig into the earth, the stones, and rock below below. Have a large vocabulary -- including all the sex words, cuss words, all the lingo of her/my generation -- plus humor, "dirty" mind, curiosity, about what "dirty" was, and why it wasn't dirty.

Semantics mattered. He, my first love at age 15, was fascinated by Semantics, and my sister. He was in love with her, or maybe she was in love with him? I thought so. She said so. But Semantics meant "Cow one is not cow two" -- (their favorite quote from Hayakawa's "Language in Action") -- ergo, her love, his love, my love mattered in three separate, different ways.

"Em, " (I'm addressing myself:) "You couldn't create a deeper more complicated relationship..." (I reply:) "Shut up! Just tell how she inspired you."

She made a costume. Japanese lady, kimono, wig , Was it a costume she wore in some Gilbert and Sullivan operetta? I was too young to attend a performance. What I remember is the long hatpin she poked through the fake hair, buns, a roll -- all made from parts of a black cotton stocking -- so real --such an elegant hairdo, such an incredible costume!

She made me a witch costume, made me make myself a gypsy costume. Out of kitchen curtains that I gathered on the sewing machine -- the very first thing I ever sewed -- gypsy skirt, gypsy top!

(Somewhere in this blog I wrote about a costume I made from a pattern, a dress with a bustle for a Thanksgiving pageant. Gosh, I wouldn't have had the nerve, zest, fire -- to undertake such a project it weren't for her!)

She lived in the top of our house in the attic room with eaves. A magic room, a place of her own, where, if you visited, you were in her world and could see, perceive, touch, reach for, grab, latch onto the realm of dreams.

Sad side of her ... I experienced that later ... Small, tight, closed-off areas of her which prevented her, in her own life, from having the expansiveness that I feel I have, I know I have because of her.

She was cramped and tamped down. Cramped as if she'd put herself into the wrong quarters of a wrong house. Tamped as you tamp down grass seed you're seeding in a lawn -- pressed into the earth, but missing water, minerals, those elements in the soil that enable you to sprout.

She did though. She had a baby. She broke all sorts of rules. She tried outrageousness, tried hedonistic wild behavior. She acted, play-acted. Bravely rejected people and things that might have protected her, and kept her safe. And she got hurt.

If she were alive I'd say "Sit down! Listen to me, dammit! You mean more to me, meant more to me, did more for me than anyone I know. Taught me, nourished me, showed me, led me, boosted me -- everything that is good about me today was pushed, gently pushed out of the nest by you, my incredible, inspiring sister."

How can I ever post this? If my other sister reads this, she might be hurt, or angry. If my niece reads this, it may give her pain ... Well, maybe joy ... My niece, the tender dear child my sister had, saw and lived and got from her mother, all these things in a different form.

A YEAR, A MINUTE

Child's Time ... Never will I forget the feeling ... slow slow ... how long it took Mom to get things on the table for breakfast, how hard it was to chew and get it down ("Chew, don't gulp it down," said Mom), when outdoors was beckoning, next door neighbor's kids were hooting and calling.

Cruel it was, to fold my napkin, roll it, and fit it back into its napkin ring, and ("Finish your milk," said Mom) -- take that one last gulp of milk, and then, only then, there was a whole huge day.

Hop Scotch, Hide and Seek, skinning my knee, getting Mercurochrome and a bandage, Giant Steps game, lunch, nap on the sun porch where my sister's potato plant vines grow visibly longer as I close my eyes, wondering when I'd be old enough to stay up all day till bedtime?

Grown up Time ... ten, fifteen years later? Never enough time. Off to class at 10 A.M. learning Hindu gestures, dashing to 1 o'clock intermediate ballet, rush-rush shower, five minutes to eat and head for the launderette, hurry home, time for bed.

Lover Time ... Waiting for the mailman ... Waiting for the phone to ring ... Listening for footsteps on the stairs ...

Curtain Time ... arriving always at least 3 hours early; makeup; change clothes, warm up barre; costume, waiting in wings, stretch, leg lifts, little jumps ...

Dancer Time ... thirty-one, two, four... am I'm over the hill ... thirty-five, seven, nine, is it too late, it's too late to be major, important, famous ...

Hospital Time ... 3 hrs till the next pill; making conversation with nurses, counting chimpanzees, watching the big clock on the wall -- its minute hand circling, little hand inching, big hand not moving at all.

Writer Time ... month, half year, year, plotting plot, re-plotting, re-revising waiting for agent, editor response, planning when to e-mail, how to remind them, what to say about a new project ...

Internet Time ... a river it is, sometimes a pond, with flotsam and jetsam to jump into, or leap over ...

Today, waking, planning what to accomplish today, I thought -- ought to do more, work faster, it's already summer and next month ... My goodness. it'll be Christmas in a minute!

TIGHT TAUT SHEETS

How can I be so messy, when all I want is order?

I remember the days when I couldn't fall asleep without smoothing the bed sheets, tucking in the edges military nurse style. Triangular corners (same as when you wrap a birthday present), folding the edge of the left side into a triangle, then the other edge in, so the triangles make a perfect, flawless corner which tucks in smoothly, and disappears.

And the edge of the sheet, the comforter (we called it that in winter) ... it was so wonderfully, exquisitely comforting when folded in on itself -- three inches -- making a three inch neat, perfect border like a picture frame.

Did I want to sleep in a picture frame?

My toes were pointed. Turned-out. At an early age, I started practicing my toes being pointed and turned-out so that "pointed, turned-out" would became a life-long habit, a happily forever-ever-after habit.

My arms, straight, solider straight at my sides, palms down. Oh, maybe once in awhile I'd fold my hands, and holding my hands went to sleep with my head straight back. It had to be straight, in the center of the puffed-up pillow. With the pillow case smoothed by my hand -- a hand, like an iron, can iron away all the wrinkles.

Who am I? What have I become, that I no longer care about ironed sheets? I pull, yank, twist, kick sheet and blanket up so the edge will fall in around my cold feet, which I don't point, or turn out. I just let them lay wherever they land.

How, when did I change? Was it a little fold here, a sloppy edge there, a gradual weariness which allowed me to close my eyes and not see or feel the unsymmetrical cover covering me so haphazardly? Don't I care? Have I stopped caring?

Or do I still care, but let things fall where they will because I don't have time anymore -- at my age and stage in life, I can't afford to take the time to sleep in a flawlessly smooth, neat, perfect, symmetrical cocoon?

GREEN GREEN VINE

JC's family is a vine -- that's what I said to myself, the day I met them.

(I was nervous, wanting them to like me, wanting to like them, and have like become love. But I was divorced, and from an agnostic Jewish family, who didn't bring me up with any religion. That's a story to tell when you know me better, when you're used to the way I think-talk-write.)

I felt his family was a vine many times. Like yesterday. His niece called when JC was at the theater performing. She told me what she was planning to tell "Uncle Johnny." The way she says his name ... lovingly, reverently ... She sings it, knowing he's there for her, even if she's called when she couldn't reach him.

The vine, the Uncle Johnny part of it, rambles this way and that way, weaves around the other cousins, nieces, nephews, grandchildren, spouses. Attaches itself to other families, who by marriage have annexed themselves and grown into another twist, another curving tendril climbing, winding, intertwining with other vines in the state of Tennessee, the Carolinas, creeping along, sending offshoots to the Virginas, and the deep south.

My dictionary says -- "vine: inert vegetation whose stem requires support, which climbs by tendril or twining, or creeps along the ground." The image stays with me as the vine, over the years, has gotten denser, tangled, sprawling, surrounding JC. Not me. Just JC. Not JD. It's a pang, remembering JD as a teenager, trying to become part of the family, realizing he couldn't, discovering he couldn't be himself if he let himself be overgrown by them.

I've heard young members in the family talking about seeing the world, and becoming a different person in a different place. Seen them not go. Just settle into the whorl, their place on the vine. Yes. I've seen new leaves, new tendrils dormant, unable to escape or separate or move away from the roots. And yes, JC did escape, and separate. He's the only one in the family that I know of who has. (JC says there are few others who have , but I never met them.)

It's a powerful moralistic ideal JC has in him, bred into him. He's a part of the family that has never been dormant, quiescent or caught by the twirls and whirls of this ever larger green growing vine.

Why does make me glad to be a tree on separate ground, with roots twining off in other directions ? Despite the cousins and their offspring who can't get away, the vine is still a marvelous thing, especially because something so green and strong and powerful as JC is a part of it. Maybe that's all the vine needs, a JC growing toward the sun.

WHAT TO READ?

I like to read before I close my eyes for the night. Get involved with someone else's life, temporarily leave my own.

I've been re-reading some of my Robert Parker mysteries, and I'm very much involved the second time around. Was I skipping the first time I read the book?

Possibly -- I don't read word by word, except when I've got error messages, and have to study a computer manual. In Winnetka, Illinois, 1st grade, 2nd, and 3rd, I was taught speed-reading, along with writing (printing), arithmetic, and sex things, in a class called "How Humans Reproduce." It was this wonderful progressive education that made me a misfit when we moved to Harrisburg, where my teachers didn't like the fact that I couldn't write in cursive longhand, and I annoyed my classmates with the big words, sometimes "wicked" words I liked to use.

After a dozen Parker's, I'm currently re-reading Scott Turrow's "Personal Injuries," that I'd read when I was commuting between NY and Malibu, distracted with moving back to NY, and list-making for the moving van guys. We'd lived in Malibu while JC was doing a TV series; returned to NY while he was doing the musical, "Urinetown." (Performers go where the action is, and Broadway is a better place for JC the actor, who's done many leading roles in plays and musicals.)

Finishing the Turrow book as the plane landed back in NY, I remember the ending was powerful, but I couldn't have said what the plot was about, not till now, reading it again.

Turrow has a knife-cutting ability to get to the soul of a character, to describe pain, passion, emotion, fear. What a perfect book to re-discover, right now, when I'm writing, writing, writing. If I were working on a novel, I'd be researching, doing think-writing, leisurely outlining, leisurely jotting down random ideas.

Posting for a blog is night and day different. You're writing a small essay with a beginning, middle, and some kind of finish. Doing one every day -- whew! I'm not sure I can keep on doing it, but I'm doing it -- finding it's revving me up to keep going, write more, and more.

So Turrow is my buddy , a great companion now. I am reading only 4 or 5 pages a night. Trying not to speed-read. The moment I realize I'm skipping words, I stop.

When I finish the Turrow, I've got a batch of Elmore Leonard books I've picked out to re-read -- quirky leading men, complicated crimes, robberies, killings, by guys who've been in jail. Got a couple of months' supply lined up. And then ... Who? What?

Picking a new writer to keep me company at night is ... well, it's not like picking a lover. I'm going to be very reserved, cautious when I get a recommendation from a friend. And very skeptical -- reading a sample, 10 -20 pages at least, before making a commitment.

Want to hear something odd? I shy away from women writers, romances, female heroines. Being me, a soul-searcher with a tough, mean eye on myself for phoniness, falsity, and B.S, I wonder if it's competitiveness, some form of female prejudice, but I'm turning off the thoughts. I have to keep away from feminine ideas, a female's point of view, keep my distance from ME when I'm trying to read myself into slumber-land.

MAKEUP EVOLUTIONS

I used to check myself in a small mirror I carried in my purse. Make sure my mascara and orange lipstick weren't smudgy, be sure there weren't specs of soot anyplace, or something awful like spinach on a tooth. But the times, and my traditions have changed.

There are still women who pull out a compact, after they've finished dining in a fancy restaurant, and reapply their lipstick -- eek, ick, yuck -- it not only seems rude and ridiculous -- it implies profound insecurity. It's unchic! Definitely a NO NO!

Let's get a little history going here. I started wearing makeup at age eleven. Pancake. And lipstick. I was sure my nose was huge (it isn't, it wasn't), but feeling like Cyrano, seeing my proboscis when I peered across my own face -- horrors -- the shine on it was horrible. So I'd lick my finger, rub it on the pancake, and pat it on my nose.

Then came adolescent blackheads, pimples, and a general tendency toward greasiness. At school I carried pancake and my sponge in a flowered zippered pouch I bought for 25 cents at Woolworth's, and re-applied pancake in the girls' room. Sometimes in an emergency, in the hallway as I traveled from class to class, I'd turn to the wall and quickly pat myself with the sponge.

Did I really? I did! Haven't thought about this for a long time, but I have a lunch meeting today to discuss various PR possibilities. I need to look my very best.

Ads keep reminding all of us to do more, much more, and there's a slew of new wonderful products to apply that are guaranteed to hide, cover, improve, create perfect skin, fabulous eyes, and lips. They are promoting stage makeup tricks.

I learned to apply stage makeup early on. Lining and shading the lips, lining upper and lower eyelids, making "ballerina" eyes ala Audrey Hepburn, highlighting/shadowing cheekbones, powdering lashes, augmenting your own lashes with false ones, layering on mascara, then powder, then more layers of mascara. It's all been in my repertoire for years. But the fact is, most of the tricks I learned for stage, are now what an ordinary teenager knows how to do.

(Small confession: I've never had the patience to "do" the tiny lower lashes. a lash by lash process that must be done with NO mistakes.)

It's time to get ready for the meeting. Though I wear very little makeup, it can take a half-hour to do slender subtle lines on my lids, pencil in my brows; and brush my lashes up with a dry mascara wand. Then, apply lipstick, a touch of palest pink and blot it till it's almost not there. (If you happen to see my picture someplace, take an extra good look.)

After lunch while we're discussing specifics, if I'm wondering how I look (of course I'll wonder, girls are brought up and taught to wonder), there will probably be a clean butter knife to glance at, or a quick check of myself in a teaspoon or tablespoon mirror.

THE COOK

Back in the days when we counted every penny and ate apples, chuck steak and rice, I started using canned peaches and discovered that chicken was cheaper -- very tasty when I added vinegar and a little Sweet & Lo.

JC bought me a cookbook, but measuring and following directions -- oh dear! It was like tap dancing as far as I was concerned -- too many steps, more intricate than "shuffle, hop, ball,change," and everything had to be done exactly as prescribed.

I decided to make Hungarian stuffed cabbage. I saw my mother make it and knew the routine. Buy a large cabbage, gently remove the leaves, carve off the spine of each leaf, boil them briefly. Gently lay them out on a clean tabletop. Mix ground hamburger, egg, salt pepper and garlic powder, white rice (steamed in oil and water) and half a can of tomato soup, roll a small handful of meat into each cabbage leaf. Add another can of tomato soup, cover and cook for couple of hours.

In HEART CITY, Installment D, page 57 -- heroine Hally makes it when she's trying not to think about infidelity. But I have fun making it, dancing around the kitchen, making the sauce thicker with tomato paste, tangier than Mom's, ultra sweet and sour.

In my hold-onto-every-penny days, I realized I could do Chinese, Hawaiian, depending on what vegetables, what pan was available. We had a large 20 inch square electric fryer with a heat control dial, that enabled me to use it as if it were a wok.

Got nervy, bold. Without a second thought, using a second large pan, I made dinners for 8, 10 or 12 friends, with them sitting on the floor, plates, utensils purchased at 14th street Salvation Army store; jam jars and paper cups were what we used for water or the wine our friends usually brought.

Got bolder -- what I liked was unexpected guests. When JC's family came to New York for a Baptist convention, spur of the moment I concocted a meal for 22 Southern Baptists, Em style Chinese/Hawaiian, added pineapple, cashews, and tangerine segments to the meat and vegetables, plus vinegar, soy and sweetener, on top of a mountain of rice. Dessert: I piled the Southern Baptists into my Ford Truck Station Wagon, and took them on a tour of Harlem, pointing out beggars, drug sellers, prostitutes, and ramshackle dwellings -- am proud of that -- shocking, surprising them with the other side of the city.

My cooking has developed. I can cook almost anything just by tasting, and noting the colors -- French, Latin, Far East Indian, American Indian. John likes to make rye bread in the Cuisinart he bought us for Christmas, and every so often good old southern fried chicken, in between my latest experiments with scallops, calamari, melon, walnuts, and saffron rice.

What is this cooking talent? Sometimes dinner's so delicious that my guys say you ought to open a restaurant.

No, I don't want to open a restaurant. My cooking is like my blogging, a little of this, a little of that -- a feeling spur of the moment -- off I go, traveling where I feel like going, making a feast. Word feasts and food feasts come from the same thing -- big curiosity and a lot of nerve.

GREEN OLIVES

After school, every evening, I used to listen to the radio. Mom allowed me to snack on 12 pods of shell peas. I'd eat them slowly. Make them last. When peas went up in price, Mom made me carrot sticks. I sneaked a handful of pods, then a double handful, and got a stomach ache. Mom knew, (saw the almost empty bag of peas in the pantry) and raw peas were no longer allowed.

At the dinner table my sisters and I were allowed just one green olive. I longed for two.

Is wanting more a matter of greed? Is wanting to be stronger than your sister competition? What about wanting more dresses, more pennies for my Empire State bank, more dolls than my best friend, Mary Ellen, who had a collection?

After I won the "Count the Feathers in the Turkey" contest that the Evening News ran on the page with the comics, I loved winning. I'd tasted success. The prize was a polished brown wooden bookshelf. It had a "World Book Encyclopedia" on its shelves. I liked looking up things, browsing through them, but more than that, I liked that I'd won them.

I didn't win any other contests. By the time I won best costume at Halloween, and won a state art contest, I was onto other types of competitions. Splits, leaps, elevation, high extensions. And then ... other things.

It keeps changing, but when I "win," (celebrate) quite often I reward myself with olives -- eat all I want. JC knows this and buys olives for me, brings them home with champagne. He does most of the shopping when he's in a play on Broadway. After the show, stops at a neighborhood store because it's never crowded after eleven p.m.

Knowing I was happy about what's been happening with my books, last night JC handed me a paper bag -- a pound and half of fresh shell peas.

NIGHT LIGHT

I have a very old brass candle holder that's electrified, that a nurse whom I never met, sent me from the Jewish Home where my mother spent her last days.

(Why a Jewish retirement facility when my father was "agnostic" and the boss of the family? That's another story to tackle, some other time.)

I don't like the way Mother's life ended. She gave up. She couldn't help it and none of us could help her. The way your parents leave the world is part of what they give you, but I hold on to other things about her.

Feisty Mom ... she gave me feist, and spunk and don't give up the ship, reach for the highest star -- managed to give me that within a very busy family life with daughters and a son, and an elegant, much beloved, hugely catered to husband who was "above her," she said. And she certainly taught us that. It was as he lived on another plain, a higher nobler world to which we were occasionally invited, which we sometimes visited and shared with him.

I thought she was ... pretty, with her auburn hair ... too concerned with keeping her house clean, her dinner table set perfectly ... too concerned with money. More than once, I said out loud, "I don't love my mother," when I was living in Manhattan with friends who were in and out of psychoanalysis, discussing the importance of rejecting your parents, coming to terms with how they screwed you up.

Boy oh boy ... she didn't screw me up. She gave me health, a body, resilience, a healing capacity, a powerful life force. It's in my bones, my muscles, my blood, my skin, my pores. And she was always always there whenever I opened my mouth and said Mom I need ... money ... a hand ... a helper ... courage ... a sympathetic ear ... words to bolster me ...

She lent me a pile of money when, a week before opening on Broadway, I discovered my "balanced check book" was actually $20,000 overdrawn. She copied orchestrations for me, note by note, chords, crescendos, trills, phrasing ... couldn't read a note of music but did it for me. Did all those motherly things -- mended, cleaned, cooked, shopped -- when I was over my head with work.

I can't explain right now why her life ended alone, and why she gave up. I know all the circumstances, I know why, inch by inch, how it happened that she wasn't surrounded with family, loving children in the last years of her life.

Yet the way she left the world gives me something precious and powerfully important. I will go when my time comes with ...... hey, I'm not a swimmer, I can't dive, but I'll do a swan dive with toes arms, torso aligned and cleave the water with neat waves and ripples that tell my guys I'm okay. It's okay.

I keep Mom's light in my office above my desk, my computer, my special books. It's got a small green bulb in it. I keep it lit.

CREDENTIALS

Age 11, on Saturdays I sold blouses; at 12, I cashiered at a men's store. In NYC, claiming to be an experienced assistant, I was Typist-File Clerk at Hearst Publications, mostly alphabetizing card files -- my typing was hunt and peck. Later, became advertising director for Dance Magazine till I quit, because, after six weeks they asked for a copy of my college degree so I could get a raise. (I was fifteen, claiming to be a twenty-one-year -old graduate.)

It happened again a year later. I worked for Forest Neighborhood Settlement House teaching dance for two dollars an hour. With my invented credentials, that job paid for my own dance lessons. I resigned when they gave me a paper to fill out for their NY Board of Education files.

So I helped out a potter making pots for her kiln, ran a summer program at a playground in the Bronx, filed cards, ran errands, addressed envelopes, mopped floors, scrubbed toilets, painted the walls at the Humphrey-Weidman Studio Theater. Till one day, after folding and stuffing brochures about their summer course, with ridiculous bravado, I borrowed their card file. It was a list of colleges where they'd performed.

I put together a brochure, and booked a tour for myself and a possible dance partner. Handsome, tall, ultra masculine, (you might say "macho") Mark Ryder, leading man for Martha Graham, had a lot of theories of what a man's role in dance ought to be. (More about all that later.)

We got a first "booking." Then, we choreographed a program. What came first, the chicken or the egg? The booking got us going.

After that, I never had to have a paying job. We were earning a living that supported us in the un-fancy style to which I have never become un-accustomed.

Creating credentials for Karen's lawyers in Troy, for Ivy's mid-western club lady friends, Rose’s customers in Harrisburg, and all those inhabitants of Heart City, Oklahoma – there was no danger of being found out, forced to resign, or fired.

It's fun -- each project is filled with people I knew, know, have met, wanted to meet, almost met, bumped into, wondered about ... if you were one of them, I'll bet you wouldn't guess that a bit of you is there on the page.

SECRET PLACE

I used to have a diary. I started it with Dear Bobby...(Bobby Fine was a relative, about 18 when I was 11, handsome, tall, and he paid attention to me, acted like I was important which was important to me). I kept writing in it daily for many many months. I was determined to be a dancer and wanted to go to New York City and study ballet at the School of American Ballet which had pictures of it and some of its students, in "Life Magazine."

When I went to New York that summer, to live with Aunt Minna in Queens and study at Boris Novikoff's Ballet School at the Metropolitan Opera House, I stopped writing. I was in it, fulfilling my dream, and struggling with unexpected nightmares. Aunt Minna and her husband were saying nasty things about my parents. A scary thing happened on the subway traveling to my ballet classes -- at rush hour, a man tried to touch me under my dress. Then I moved from Aunt Minna's to Mrs. Merriam's boarding house, which was closer to the school, but extremely lonely, and I was always hungry. Though my parents gave me an allowance, I had only twenty cents a day for a midday snack at the automat -- a corn muffin. And my Achilles tendon in my right foot had started to ache from doing "point work," and a serious problem was developing that was going to endanger my future as a "great dancer."

All the details of that dream, the tendon, Mrs. Merriam's, loneliness ... the next things that happened on my way are burned in my mind.

I don't write daily diaries, or logs anymore. I wrote a daily something on my computer when I got my first computer in the seventies. It was an Exxon. (Hardly anyone had a computer back then). I used my daily log on the Exxon, to express/list/ assemble what was on my mind, worrying me, depressing me. It became a complaint list. And gradually I realized that the writing in my "wklog" (that's what I called it) was interfering with my real writing which was working on a book. It was "The Woman" back then, supposedly a story about Claire Booth Luce whom I was turning into me.

Turning into me ... me turning into her. So the hundred thousand Emily stories, events, inner snapshots, all those memories of dancing, booking tours, traveling, hoping, waiting for phone calls, writing letters, meeting people, performances, living ... just living ... are in a place I don't want to visit except when I'm writing a book, using myself. Using me dressed in the clothes, the dreams, the thoughts of a character I evolved in order to tell/write/make a story ... that's My Secret Place. No. I don't want to go to my secret place and write about me. That's for my new novel about Leah, the DANCER I'm working on ....