UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTIONS

Are you happy?

How old are you?

Why don't you go on vacations?

Why don't you like living in NYC?

How are you feeling today?

When can we have lunch?

What's "HAPPY?" I can't define it. Can you?

My age, HOW OLD I am puts me into a category that limits my freedom to be what I am.

VACATION is a period spent away from what I am.

LIVING IN NYC disconnects me from nature --sun, moon, sky and land. I like to be connected to all that.

HOW I'M FEELING is what I'm writing, explaining right here.

LUNCH, a midday meal, however light, makes me sleepy so I don't eat lunch.

The only important question in the list is how old I am. Easy to say the numbers, but the moment I do -- plop -- I'm defined by heavily advertised pictures, medical concepts, insurance policies, and your ideas about age. My being able to cavort, dance around like a kid, view the world as a teenager, a young mom, a motherly mother, or a sage, approaching the end of life -- is primary. I don't think I could write if I weren't free and able to do that.

In writing my plays and the novels, I became whomever I needed to be -- the central character or a minor character, any age, male or female. I just wore the clothes, absorbed the family background, lived in the world that my character lived in.

Writing my blog is different. Easier, more fun -- I'm me -- right now today, or yesterday or tomorrow. But reading my blog, maybe a question pops into your mind and you'd like to know more about something.

So, if you have a couple of questions, just click the TALK TO EM, ASK EM icon, and ask away. I'll answer right away, quickly, honestly ... maybe circuitously, if I need to protect my family or hang onto my freedom to dance around as me.

If it's an uncomfortable question, you won't get an answer -- I'll turn it around and ask you question.

CANDY JAR ON MY DESK

Periodically, I ask myself, What am I doing eight hours a day? Where am I heading?

I don't do a lot of house-cleaning (I let the dust accumulate, and do the moping, waxing, tidying only when I'm on the mood, or it's absolutely necessary). But my home is a home, and a thousand things catch my eye every day. and become a "mmm" thought, and part of a plan.

Being self-employed and therefore the boss (having been the boss most of my life) I've evolved Em's way of doing things.

I make every day a work day, and it's more or less planned -- details pre-arranged, the "deck" cleared, with my mood, my inner self geared and ready to do what I've planned to do.

I make my own schedule. But I'm free to indulge in whatever hits me -- more sleep, a second breakfast, or some spur of the moment meandering in the outside world. Mostly I stick to "Turn on the computer" -- look at my list (got a list on my desk), and proceed with what's next.

For six months I've been doing a blog. (Google says: "Blog is a web log, chronicle or diary where you share your thoughts with others.")

I write one every day. Sometimes worriedly, sometimes mischievously, sometimes very quickly, usually five or six hours are involved, sometimes more.

Yes, it's self-expression. but crafted --revised, re-written. re-conceived sometimes as if the daily post is part of a book. (Every word in a book has to studied, verified, and shaped to relate to what's already written.)

At first, when Fran, my Website designer, suggested that I write a blog, I read a few blogs and thought, "No way --bloggers are would-be writers, just putting down stuff off the top of their heads."

But now that I'm getting the hang of it, even though sometimes I feel like I'm in a river of amateur swimmers, splashing around -- I'm having fun. Blogging has become my job. Though I wonder if I can keep this up (a blog a day) for another six months or a year? Two years? Won't I run out of ideas ?

Fran, who's become my blog coach, sends me links to interesting, current doings -- fascinating, sometimes funny, often scary tidbits in the news, big deal (and little deal) events I might want to write about ... "Like a columnist --Em, you are a columnist!" Fran said.

Mmm. Columnist sounds better, feels better than" blogger." (It's like putting on a new sneaker, new ballet slipper.)

So what to write about, with Fran's help, along with my own daily doings is like an candy jar, chock full of gum balls, pretty colored jaw breakers. It's a magic jar that keeps refilling itself.

TOOTHBRUSH SIGNALS

Two minutes in the morning, two minutes at night -- that's "shiny pearly whites" time for Em.

My morning toothbrush, a Philips Sonicare, sits in a charger with a bright green light. Once I press it's green button, it signals me every thirty-seconds. During each interval, I do a "think" that sets the mood for the first few hours of my morning. Sometimes I'm just sleepily thinking, oh, dear another day, or remembering what the dentist suggested last time I was there.

This morning, I found myself recalling yesterday -- bright-eyed, helpful "Joey," at the Footlocker store, ordering the classic Reeboks that no stores are carrying anymore, getting my sneakers delivered to my home.

When I gave him my address, why did I say -"it's our building." Was I bragging, implying we're rich? Sure, we're rich compared to Joey, but not rich like the guys on a Fortune Magazine list. Did I want Joey to think I was "somebody?"

I got off that "think" track quickly. It reminded me of how I was feeling last November -- before I had my Website and published my novels on line. I felt like a "nobody." I don't want to dwell on why and how I got to that place, when the place where I'm at now is fun, and much better.

My two-minutes were up. I galloped down the stairs to my office, and blogger's world.

And my inner timer -- an eager feeling -- checking my email, checking my blue galaxy painting that I use for a bulletin board. The IDEAS page signals me, tells me what to attack -- the subject and one word notes that focus me on what I was thinking, when I put down the idea.

After doing all the things you do to get your computer going, get your fingers on the keyboard, I play the piano on the keys -- usually allegro, until I get another signal -- the look-around, the "mmm" that tells me, get another cup of coffee. Or a snack.

I pay attention to the signals: Sleepy means my mind is wandering, tells me, "take a break." A restlessness, a sudden impulse to phone someone, is a signal -- it says STOP -- "Em, you're unclear --you're writing rambling sentences."

That's my signal, to go looking on the internet, for a picture to decorate what I'm writing about.

Click and you'll hear the silly song that I found.

Toothbrushing in the evening is a different routine, a different brush -- an Oral B with a beautiful blue light on its charger.

The Oral B has no intervals -- it just beeps when the two-minutes are up. So I'm on my own, doing a "think" on the news we've been listening to, drifting into a review of my day, what I wrote, what I'm going to be working on tomorrow, quite often grabbing a pencil, writing down a new idea. But sometimes, when I'm tired, the two minutes seems endless, boring -- I even turn it off before the beep.

I'm not selling toothbrushes, but the Oral B's up and down pulsations are around 20,000 per minute. And three years ago it cost $55. We bought my Sonicare around the same time for $109. (It sells now for $135.) It delivers 31,000 brushing strokes per minute -- that's a lot of brushing.

Which is better? Lower numbers, lower cost, with freedom to roam in your mind, anywhere for two minutes, versus two minutes of controlled intervals of thinking?

I like the beautiful blue light Oral B better, but the four intervals on the green for go Sonicare feels like it takes less time. I like signals. I listen and look and hear them, find them -- throughout my day as a writer. Like punctuation, signals keeps me more gainfully, creatively, happily employed.

MILKING THE EM COW

Right now
I' m a cow
Ow!
Got two mighty milkers, two farmers working on my udders ( my utters) -- squeeze/pull -- grip/yank.

I learned to milk a cow on a farm near Madison, Wisconsin when I was six. My sisters and I spent a summer there doing great things -- pitch-forking piles of hay, climbing trees and picking cherries, shaking branches and picking up the apples when they fell, collecting eggs in the hen house, pulling carrots from the vegetable garden, sometimes cucumbers, squash or red ripe tomatoes.

My cow was Bess. She was old and easier to milk than younger cows. I'd pull in the stool, sit below her, position the bucket and reach -- squeeze and pull, grip and yank. Bess knew I was an inexperienced kid and sometimes kicked with her hind legs, and knocked over the stool, and sometimes the bucket.

The two farmers who want my milk -- my words, my papers, my important private memories -- both of them are eager tightwads. They want to get it from me and give me nothing. I think, they think -- that I think I'm being honored by their milking.

Farmer Mr. Hugh knew my partner Mark Ryder and me when we are starting out. The "produce" is a book sort of based on my life with "invented" characters -- a dance team survival story. Thanks for the compliment, farmer Hugh -- you already milked me twice in two phone calls and three emails -- enough is enough.

Farmer Mrs. Moira knew Todd Bolender who made a name for himself as a choreographer by selling the NYC Ballet a ballet he created for me, "Still Point." It was my fully detailed libretto, my choice of music, my title and my dancing that inspired Bolender to create movement other than classical ballet steps. He went on to head the ballet company in Cologne, and create a ballet company in Kansas City.

Moira's produce that she'll take to the market place (various publishers), will be a book on Bolender and perhaps a mention of me based on questions and answers in our half dozen emails exchange -- lots of milking, squeezing, trying to fill the milk pail with more stuff, like copies of the libretto and my correspondence with Bolender.

Hey, enough! I need my memories, my adventures, my milk for my blog.

Moo! Moo -- now you know, and these two farmers know, that the Em cow is milked out. I'm kicking over the bucket.

THINGS NOT TO WRITE ABOUT

Blogging is changing me. Writing a new post every day is ... wow ... a huge job, a much bigger challenge than I ever imagined.

As a novelist I never wrote about me. I used things that happened to me --mostly big deal events -- and made them happen to the characters I invented -- the heroines in my novels and the villains.

(Villains are fun. Like "dear best friend" Aileen in Somebody Book I, Installment B, page 39 -- she's a clever, gossip mongering, liar who deliberately seduces and marries the man my heroine loves. Aileen was based on a loving dear friend of mine who was after JC.)

The real me -- not just my love life, my dreams, dancer-strivings, car crash, being booed onstage, those stories, a few months ago were a merely a source -- I called it my secret place. (Take a peek at the post I wrote March 24th --"Secret Place." It's out of date. The past few months of blogging, posting something every day -- I can't do it as an invented character -- I have to be me.)

So what won't I write about?

BEDROOM.
Sex. (It's in my novels, not in my blog) I won't invite you into my bedroom, but I'll tease and bouree (a ballerina's fast move on her toes in pink toe shoes) all around the subject.

DEPRESSION.
My own occasional black moods, my fears about dying, growing old -- I'll tell you how I avoid black thoughts, but I won't blog about them. I've learned to turn them around. For instance, say it -- express what's depressing you in a sentence. Then, reverse one of the negative words. Fears about dying = LIVING. (Try another sentence -- old = YOUNG.) It's an easy exercise. Even if you're skeptical, give it a try -- it does turn depressing thoughts around.

WORRIES and WOES
I make lists. A list helps me. A list shapes an amorphous black mood into small, handleable chores, specifics you can deal with.

So what else don't I write about?

I won't know till I stub my toe on it. Right now in my daily blogging, I push away the fences, open the gates, pull up the window shade and let light in. And say truthfully, clearly, as unfancy as possible -- what I'm thinking.

GOODY "GOOGS"

Little bites, big bites the vast, varied conglomeration of tasty morsels is unbelievably delicious.

I know Google is not a human. It's a quiet, discreet, benignly sprawling inanimate interwoven thing that's there, but doesn't exist unless you seek it out

You don't eat it, just chew, swallow, and digest what you get ...

I have on my computer an old Encyclopedia Britannica, a current Britannica, a World Book, Encarta, two Groliers, a huge file I made of history from 1900 to 2000, anything-everything that rang a bell in my mind. On my shelves, there are World Almanacs from 1985 to 2008, a hard cover edition of the Lexicon, the Columbia Encyclopedia, Merriam Webster Encyclopedia, and the Americana Encyclopedia -- an old one, a newer one....

All of them are ... gathering dust.

A goog (my word for a bit of information) is ... WOW ... almost instantly, effortlessly obtainable. And googs by the dozen are saved by me (unnecessarily) in my work files ... why? Because I'm a fact hog. When I find out something I didn't know. I put it someplace where I can find it again. (Like in my file called "Verbee" -- I put words I suddenly can't remember, or names -- often celebrity names that are attached to faces I remember but names/appellations, alas, are getting to be too many for me to retain.

Every book I've written has a QF file (quick find) with any and every word I've looked up and used in the book.

I'm a lousy speller. Google the word and it usually comes out spelled correctly. I need information about some wispy, small, very vague memory, which (even sloppily) I've gathered into a sentence, and it will be clarified, able to be located in time, in some category.

Words, ancient, current things, ideas, ditties, rhymes, slang etc., etc.

Okay, I know just about everyone who goes online finds out about Google and Yahoo and the others. I'm just newly in love. I just want to somehow, in some way say to somebody -- to all the bodies, brains, minds, typing fingers, translating, downloading, participants, paid or unpaid employees, contributors, editors, conceptualizers, thank you Google Guys.

You can't call them up. Can't e-mail or write them. So I can just say it again. Google, you've made my life richer, my mind broader, my ability to do my work, any work, more fun, easier, faster, better.

SEX STUFF

I keep expecting to get an e-mail from someone who's read "Somebody" on my Website -- a complaint.

About Cordelia's immorality.

(Actually, I'm hoping a reader will write me about this. I know from the stats on The Readery, that people are reading my books and downloading "Somebody," but I'm not getting queries from my readers.)

Why would someone complain? Because my heroine has two lovers at the same time. And not when she was young, (or wild and restless -- Cordelia never goes through that phase). But in her sixties, she begins a love affair, and in her seventies, while continuing this love affair, she begins a sexual relationship with the man whom she wanted to marry when she was seventeen. In her eighties and nineties, she is sleeping with two men.

Why did I create love affairs for my heroine at the end of her life? And write the sleeping together scenes, full-out describing the sex?

I wanted to make Cordelia a woman who's active in her old age; not just a grandmother, but vitally involved with what's going on the world. That's a personal dream of mine -- to keep going, to keep learning, building, doing, trying new things till the end of my life.

And my writing, as I've explained, isn't about me. But aspects of me are there, in the character. That's why I'm touting my work-harder-as-you-grow-older ethic. (I haven't studied Calvinism, but I've been told many times, it's a Calvinistic idea)

Cordelia's two lovers are men she's known for many years as dear friends. Toward the end of her life each of them, in a different way, provides her with sexual pleasures, and supports her continuing her work as a congresswoman and editor of a newspaper syndicate.

Her two lovers know about each other and become good friends. All three characters are enriched by their relationship with one another.

Even as I'm explaining this, I enjoy the idea -- lovers, fun, excitement -- I'm saying to myself and to you, the reader -- do what you have to do in order to look forward to each day, to enjoy your time on the earth.

Here's where you'll find the two lovers, and the beginning of the "sex" writing. Take a look."Somebody" Book II, Installment bb. p.661-663; p. 665-667.

DIALOGUE WITH MYSELF

Who do you think you are -- taking aspects of your life, putting them into books? Making a 32 page website for your books , taking pow-pow, ouch, eek, oh no, woe, dear God, help-help moments from your life and working them into 300, 400, 800 page tomes ...

Yep, that's what you did. And since YOU are writing this tirade as if you were a reader wandering into The Readery with all those books in a virtual library, you ought to include in your attack on Em, her wry, slanted, sometimes gnarled, knotted and twisted vision of life.

Hey, I tried to pull away from ME. Tried to write about Machiavelli and Savonarola, the Renaissance priest who burned books, made friends with up-and-coming artists, and had them arrested, tortured, burned at the stake. It didn't work. I couldn't find my voice -- couldn't find a place for myself in it at all.

And I tried to write about Clare Boothe Luce -- couldn't do it till I turned her into Cordelia/me. I had to invent a similar but different background for Cordelia, because Clare's reactionary politics made it impossible for me to BE her.

How dare you -- you, a high school graduate, valedictorian because you used your memory, your charm, your ability to work longer hours, harder, do things over and over -- you who walked out on college and hammered yourself into a dancer -- you're using your own little voice ... How dare you write?

I dare. It comes naturally to me. It's thinking and talking and listening and laughing and whispers, and innermost secrets, all balled up, compacted, and yet, easily accessible.

And so much easier for me than dancing ever was ...

'The only other thing I've done that was easy, was teaching children, telling them stories, enacting all the characters while inventing true imaginary tales.

What do you mean -- you mean true and also imaginary?

Yep. The oppositional aspects of real and unreal, are why I do it so well. When things don't fit, my imagination and warrior self (the cook, painter, dancer-improviser who is bored by steps), can mix it together and make it taste/look/feel right, and flow.

If you wandered onto a website like the one you've got, thanks to Fran and Sue and JD, would you read those books? Would you want to download all those pages about invented heroines who are all bits of her, the writer, the one who calls herself EM?

Mmm. I'd be curious. Critical, picky. Curious ... I'd give it a try ....

BEETHOVEN ROOMS AT MY HOUSE

My actor guy -- I tease and poke fun at his dunce-like inability to handle the computer.

But ...

He's Beethoven ... hunched over the Yamaha, staring at the music paper on his computer monitor, fiddling with the keyboard, inserting grace notes, while wife Em, (he calls me Mrs. Shakespeare) is across the hall putting words into the blog page on her computer.

I'm astounded by the way he handles one of the most complicated computer programs I've ever seen.

Finale ... You can compose music with it, play it, create sheet music, as well as import music from other sources. The composer and lyricist guys who wrote the musical "Urinetown," introduced JC to it.

When the program freezes and he calls the Computer Fixer Em to fix it, I have to wind up my brain key -- it's complicated -- I keep forgetting how to do it. Fingers chugging, I reset the modes and options, as the manual instructs you to do if Finale freezes. And get my thank-you kiss smack, as Beethoven's back to the keyboard.

I remember processes as if they're a ballet combination. (Not tap dancing -- as I've explained in other posts, itty-bitty toe -heel tap steps utterly defeat me.)

Well, my Beethoven CAN do them; AND sing intricate lyrics, hit a G while he's itty-bitty step-stepping, inserting minute details of phrasing, ad-lib verses, double-bar repeats, triplets, sixteenth and thirty-second notes.

AND importing new pages of sheet music from Hal Prince's "Paradise Found." He selects instrumentation, transposes it, clicks "play" and accompanies himself, as he's getting ready for Monday's workshop rehearsal. (He's playing the part of a sex-starved Shah with a hundred wives.)

All this -- daily rehearsals, a show at night, while Beethoven continues to do most of the shopping, lugs the recycle and trash bags down our four flights, makes his divine, fluffy-whipped potatoes to go with the spicy Chinese veg and scrod entree I'm cooking for our nightly jamboree --him playing his song from the musical --me reading aloud a post I've been writing. Afterward, there's an exchange of family/friends news and gossip, then the last seconds of a Lakers or Mets game while we're loading the dishwasher, and Beethoven and Shakespeare settle down to watch the final edition of the evening news.



Yep, end of our busy, creative day is mostly a festival. When JC played the music, and sang that Shah song he's working on ...
And hit that final note ... wow, I love his voice!

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.

MIRROR MIRROR

I can't avoid mirrors. My house is full of them. I wrote a post about this just the other day. I wrote loud and clear about mirrors in two of my books. I ought to follow and obey my own preaching ...

I have to say it one more time. Mirrors are for the young! To see who they are! To recognize, wonder, build a dream, picture themselves as a ... whatever... a princess, a prince, police chief, nurse ... whatever...

Put your kitten or puppy in front of mirror; they peer at it for a second or two -- not as long as little child perhaps -- you can sense that your pets see the image, wonder about it before they go on to more tangible things. (I find myself waiting for them to have fun, to play with the image.)

But sister, auntie, cousin, mother, wife, blogging Advice-Giver- Em is putting up a warning finger: Mirror mirror on the wall -- it's not your friend.

Around the age of sixteen, beware ... (Maybe a bit older --sixteen needs to observe the physical changes in one's face and body). When you stop growing in leaps and bounds around twenty, you better slow it down. Look at yourself perhaps once or twice a day before you go out, and check your outfit, make sure you're combed and clean. Because at twenty-five, you really ought to start breaking the habit.

Start counting; note how many times a day you're looking. Do you look in store windows you're passing on the street and see yourself, glassine, ghostly, transparent? Do it less. Ration it. Cut it down.

Mirror mirror on the wall -- it brings on the downfall of us all. (Rhyming makes it more fun to write about this.)

Thirty! That "happy birthday" is the right time to make a resolution. Use the mirror as a tool, for doing what you need to do to be presentable. Once done, it's done. You're done. Turn away.

You have to be vigilant So many things are telling us to see yourself, watch yourself, study yourself, squint, evaluate your prowess, your potential in love, commerce, career, sports -- all your prowesses may still be ascending, expanding, increasing but youth doesn't last forever.

Hey, I could be wrong. Take all the ages I've listed and add ten years to each one. And that'll help. But stop looking in the mirror. S - T - O - P. It's an obsession. It doesn't matter. It does not help you. It limits you. You are real. and what you see in the mirror is just an image.

What I'm saying is not just for females. It's a message to my guys, and everyone I know . "The privilege of mirrors belongs to the young." I wish I'd pay attention to what I preached on Page 666 and 698 in "Somebody." Bk II. And in "Karen of Troy," p.16, 38, 44, 95, 204. Track it down.

(Being a multinational family, I can say-- it ain't chopped liver, paté, grits, or pie with ice cream. It's basic, big deal Em Philosophy. So look it up on TheReadery and pay attention.

Try a day without a mirror. Go cold turkey.

It's a relief not to see, but just to be who you are.

NEW STUFF

This is what my husband calls a laundry list. I'm tabulating what I've learned since January when I had a dial up modem. When it took 13 hours to update Norton Virus from 08 to 09; took 9 hours to download just the trial version of Word Perfect Office X 4.

Mid January, everything changed. Our son JD had been nagging me, gently, for more than a year. "You've got to get DSL. You're behind the times, Mom. You can research, you can download anything, everything in just a couple of minutes -- you can't really use the internet, Mom, if you don't upgrade your tools."

Okay. I upgraded. Didn't really feel it was necessary or essential, but when you son says you're behind the times, you pay attention!

Instantly, all my office chores, all the things I did on a daily basis were topsy-turvy unfamiliar.

My ability to download fast got me a fantastic new browser. Puzzling over it, struggling to create a consistent view for all the new things -- whiz bang -- I learned to transfer addresses, forward, open, close, various accounts, while big stuff was going on. We (web designer Fran, JD and I) were building me TheReadery and Em's Talkery, a blog -- html, URL stuff, tabs, bookmarks, with dial-up modem me, mile-a-minute signing in and out of seven -- yes, seven e-mail addresses with a passel of passwords.

Meanwhile, JC had bought a Mac. Big Musical Numbers, choreography, major leading roles JC learns and performs letter perfectly. JC fixes electrical circuits, toilets, sinks, drains, leaks, tiles, locks, pilot lights on the stove, the thermocouple on the furnace. A computer turns him into a dunce. So I, who am a natural computer person, while racing around doing all the other stuff, had to learn the basics on the Mac in order to help JC.

Same time, installing a router, more gigs of Mem on my Dell, fussing with 17 phone extensions -- crawling under desks, tables, behind steel cabinets, book shelves investigating jacks in corners that haven't been vacuumed for fifteen years.

Also trekking into the courtyard at the rear of our building, helping tech guys figure where our ancient wires came in, why we had static, trying to get rid of call-waiting, (I hate call-waiting), while I'm learning to write, edit, post a blog, how to find an IP address, make a link, clear my cache, install stats, gadgets, images, scan and crop jpg files.

Now that I'm 5 months old on the internet, I'm counting on being faster, smarter, more educated, shrewder when I hit 8 months, and brilliant when I'm one-year- old.

Yes, I'm bragging. I really have learned a lot. My head is fat with new routines, and I'm contemplating, yes, looking ahead -- learning about 64 bits versus 32, and quad processors for a new NEW computer, which means ... Holy Moley Minorka, installing all this tricky, bedeviling, intricate, confusing, somewhat unstable up-to-date stuff all over again! But yay hurray -- JD was right -- it's a whole new world, and I've joined it.

BIG FAT BOOKS

I always liked sagas ... lots of people to get to know, a long story that involved me for hours and hours, days. even a week.

Back in the days when I went to the library and took out six or eight books at a time, and read them in my sheet tent with a flashlight turned on after we were told "lights out," the fatter the book, the better. Short stories were over and done with too quickly. I loved being in my tent, breaking the rules till my parents turned off all the lights in the house and retired for the night.

Time swirls, and blends your youngest years into the pudding of when you were almost an adult. It's a gelled bowlful of memories that don't belong to early adolescence, or the scary days when I was for the first time on my own – that summer I was lonely alone in a boarding house, reading/skimming whatever readable material I found in a stranger's shelf. And later, there was a summer when I tried to give up dancing. Though I was still in high school, I went to Antioch College, stayed with my sister who was a senior there, and developed my intellect.

Did I stop reading altogether? At Antioch College I didn't read, I mended books part time, earning money so I could join in with a crowd who didn't want me in the crowd because I was too young. But I fell in love. And later, enrolled and went to the University of Chicago because he was there.

It seemed like a great place to develop my intellect, but I was overcome by the load of books I was supposed to read.The brochures said an average student dedicated 53 hours a week to reading. I remember the University's famous Great Books List. Most of the good fiction I'd already read, and the non-fiction were books like "Herodotus," which I tried to read on the train heading east on my first Christmas Vacation, deciding, spur of the moment, no more college. And began my life as a going to be great dancer person in Manhattan, New York.

I'm blurring over the reasons behind the reasons, other than dancing that I came to the city. My brilliant Antioch College man (we were both 16) was transferring to NYU, or was it MIT? Can't remember because I don't want to remember this seriously unrequited love phase of my life. it belongs in a book, not a blog.

The next time books came into my life, they were my constant companion, my entree, my dessert whenever I was on tour. All the tours, all the miles I've traveled in transcontinental tours of the US ... and then all over the world, I read books, books, books, paperbacks, hard covers on trains, planes, busses and cars ... dancing and reading before and after my barre, those hundreds of barres I took in hotel rooms, those hundreds of books -- always, the bigger the better.

It's probably why, after my accident and rehabilitation, I wanted to dance to Mahler, and did dance all seventy minutes of Mahler's "Fifth Symphony" at Lincoln Center.

Well, that hunger for big and bigger projects affects me even now. I like to evolve plots over time, not over one event. I don't want a character I've invented to disappear, say goodbye, be gone after a mere 300 pages.

Re my big fat long book -- I didn't just re-vise it, I re-conceived it. "The Woman" (her birth in 1900 to age 86) became "Cordelia," birth till age 70; turned into "Woman of the Century" (1900 till age 99), which became "Dressed in Mama's Dreams" (same age span), then "Cordelia's Almanac" (more emphasis on history), and now, with less emphasis, "Somebody."

Doing the last two revisions, I went into my mystery book phase, reading myself to sleep with Robert Parker, Elmore Leonard, and Nelson DeMille -- the plots, old and new of Cordelia's story, every night seemed to unravel and need rewinding at bed time.

I was hooked on those three master mystery writers, read everything I could buy, new and old paperbacks. Thank you, Ebay Half.com, but it wasn't just cheapskate, practicality. Hardcovers are hard to hold when you're reading in bed. Furthermore, there was no more shelf space left in my home. And no more room in my mind for big fat long stories.

Yes ... the big fat long size of "Somebody" is one of the reasons why it hasn't been published, and why "Somebody," Book I, and Book II is sitting on the shelf in my virtual library at The Readery.

Yes ... blogging is educating me, though it often feels as if I'm working in a wrong style, wrong form. I keep thinking I'm rambling. I ought to confine each post to one idea, and not jump from my past to the present.

Yes ... there's more to say, but not now. Not in one post, not if you're a recovering writoholic, not sure, when I work on my next book, if I really want to sober up and write about one year in a person's life, not ninety-nine, not the whole shebang.

FOUR HUSBANDS ?

Mrs. AR asks:
Would you read my book and tell me if there's a future for it?

I've had four husbands, not legal marriages, but men I've lived with. Each one is a love story. Should I send it to agents or publishers? I started writing my book three years ago and worked very hard to describe how we met, moving in together, me taking care of him, and why we broke up. I think lots of other women would benefit from reading my story.

Em says:
I'm not the right person to help you get it published. Get a list of agents, and try it -- write a letter to ten names. Then, try publishers. Try ten names. Work on a paragraph that tells what the book is about.

Clue: In reading your e-mail, what caught my attention was -- why does Mrs. AR think other women would benefit from reading her story? Is it a pattern -- four semi husbands, love, living together, breaking up? Is this pattern something you advocate, or do you think it's something others should avoid? Include this, perhaps, in your letter to agents, and publishers.

If you get replies, even if they're rejections, try more names. Keep trying. Don't let the rejections bog you down. Discouragement is part of the process.

REVENGE

Someone, when I was studying dance with Carmelita Maracci in California, put pins, slender straight pins in my brassiere.

I didn't put it on, didn't get hurt, but it was chilling.

Something like what happened to me when the dance company, (my first job as a dancer) told Charles that if he didn't fire me, they we quitting.

... It was more than chilling ...

Charles called me into the studio. Everyone was assembled. Each of them had a complaint S. said: She's rude, and aggressive."

... I'd worn her rehearsal skirt ... it was hanging with all the others, I didn't know it was reserved ...

B. said: "We think she's the one who's been stealing."

Personal things quite often disappeared from the bags and purses that dancers left on the seat, during class. A watch, some bracelets, coins. B. mentioned a silver hair clip.

... She'd shared her sandwich with me, given me half of a bar of candy, lent me a dime for a phone call yesterday, which I hadn't paid back. I didn't have much money, but I certainly wasn't a thief ...

P. and her husband, J. complained about my bitten nails, about me bragging, about the slave girl solo which Charles had given me. They said: "She's too wild. The way she's doing it, It's not dancing, It's hokey, melodramatic."

Everyone found something awful to say. Ten dancers. They were united: I was immoral, pushy, a show off, thief, liar, an unprofessional untalented dancer.

I wanted to run away and never come back, I didn't want to show up for the next day's rehearsal. I desperately wanted to quit. It was my first job paying job as a dancer. I'd told my parents, I'd already borrowed a suitcase.

A week later, I was on tour with the company . Nobody wanted to room with me. Single rooms in the hotels were very costly. I got the names of cheaper places, from desk clerks, and stayed in tourist homes. Sat by myself on the bus. Dined by myself on groceries that I bought at local supermarkets. Did my warmups, always in a corner. But, I still had my solo.

I know their names and have followed their careers -- their marriages, teaching assignments, in various schools and colleges, two of them went on to choreograph on Broadway and TV, minor shows you've never heard of. Their dreams, Broadway and TV things we had talked about as friends, sharing cokes and coffee, did not come true.

Not one of them came close to achieving what I've achieved. I made it. They didn't.

Wait a minute, why am I writing this ... ? Because I can't e-mail the bad guys? Because I don't feel revengeful -- because I'm feeling a tinge of sadness, that's vanishing like smoke and becoming plain regular breathable air?

I see that posting this is my way of forgiving them.

READING WHAT YOU WRITE

You write a paragraph, mm ... it feels right ... interesting ... you write more and know as the words come out that you're expressing a thought, a feeling, an observation, a secret, an idea that surprises you because you weren't aware of it being there.

Where? In you, in your collection of what ... old ideas, new impressions, random vagaries, happenstances? A smile you got, a twinge of regret, a remembrance of moment you wanted to forget? You draw upon yourself, go further, signal your fingers to tap a key, keys, spell out a sentence.

Mm ... you go on because you like the feeling, enjoy discovering, digging, digging deeper and picking up what you've found, encapsulating it. You are concentrated, even if you are interrupted you return to the mine shaft and dig in again. Dig further.

The page isn't full, but it's getting fuller, and you don't want to stop, not yet, maybe in minute, I'll re-read, no, I'll have a cup of coffee, come back and read what I've written.

Read to whom? You don't really feel like re-reading what has just been born -- you know what's there. It's still too familiar.

I'll type it out, I say the words, hear the words, I'll be reading it out loud to myself when I read it to JC. Yes! I'll read it to him!

S T o P.
I'll put it in an e-mail, to Fran? To JD? Maybe Sue? N o...
s t O P!!
T h i n k, JUST think about what's on the page.

You can't, not when it's just emerged. Experience tells you that it doesn't mean what you think it means, until the words sit, and the feeling cools, calms, fades, flattens out.

I have learned to use my dancer's will power: don't show what you've written; don't read aloud what you've written; don't send it in an e-mail, and get someone else's reaction, approval, disapproval, minor comments, major suggestions.

Shut up. Keep quiet, do what you're feeling to do with what you have written from you own fire ... Use it, fix it, rewrite it, throw it out, build it up, do whatever ... from your own fire.

RENOVATIONS

The paint smell from the floor below me is much less today. Ivan the contractor and his son are hammering this morning -- the banging on the ceiling is probably them putting up that eight foot fixture for four fluorescent bulbs. (A monster of a fixture -- my two John's, JC and JD, lugged it up the stairs yesterday. JD said it's Ivan's final job. Shareen wants bright lights on the racks when the store opens Saturday.

Amazing Shareen ... How gracefully, securely, confidently she leaps, tour-jetés into new, major undertakings; she's opening her third vintage store, "Shareen New York." I have to say it again, how lucky we are that our son JD found Shareen, who's like a daughter, sister, dear best friend.

The two of them encouraged me to do Em's Talkery along with my website. "Mom," JD said, "You need a blog so people can get to know you," "Yes," said Shareen, "And be able talk to you, ask you for advice."

"Huh? Advice ...?" I was taken aback.

"Yes!" the two of them said. "Like your heroine Hally's mother. You wrote about it, why not do it yourself?"
(In "Heart City," chapt. 23, page 164, installment H -- Hally's know-it-all Mom creates her own website, to answer questions about love, finance, household, possessions, health.)

"Well ... " I murmured. I murmur well noncommittally when I'm mulling something over. "Well, if someone wrote and told me what's on their mind ... my advice could be helpful ... why not?"

"Why not?" said Sue, my PR pal. "Why not, said Fran my website designer. "They can click TALK TO EM, ASK EM on The Readery, and Em's Talkery!"

So, on the left, below my picture, there's a TALK TO EM place to click.

Go ahead! Ask about anything, mention any kind of worry you have and you'll get my opinion. I'll post it on Wednesdays, matinee day in the theater ... it'll be my day for answering questions.

DAY OFF

Today is, was ... definitely not a Day Off. It was an OFF day.

Nothing went wrong but nothing went quite right. JD and Shareen are taking over the loft on the 2nd floor, one flight below our studio and office on 3. (Our home is the 4th floor loft.) All day underneath me I can hear and feel things being hammered, plaster being chipped, as the place is readied to become her NYC store.

It'll be unusual, funky, jammed with customers like "Shareen Vintage" in LA and Venice. Women and girls love what she finds, re-designs, and with startling intuition, helps them chose for themselves. How lucky we are, that our son married a girl who's like a daughter, sister, pal, best friend, to me.

The noises fit my thoughts. My sense of order is itchy irritated, jangled. Writing a novel is different from writing a letter, which is, I've discovered in the past couple of weeks, similar to creating a post for your blog. Letter writing just flows. But a letter that's going to get POSTED?

You gotta polish it! Gotta make it make sense!

Read a first draft to JC? He loves me, enjoys my writing, but Cormack McCarthy, the writer, I am not. It's better for me to flounder. Take a break, do something else, turn off my computer, and try again later.

I started out early early this morning, backing up my computer. Reorganizing a lot of files. Did it carefully, thoughtfully, logically, creatively! Did it so excellently that I have to make a guide for myself, to find out where, oh where did I put things?

THE MAKING OF "EM"

A website, a blog are not things I ever thought about till nine weeks ago.

Today Fran and Sue got the first "stats." Fran the designer was proud, Sue, who's handling the PR, was proud. "Em" was back in Edinburgh, in the great grand theater where my dressing room was where the greatest Shakespearean actors of Great Britain once upon a time powdered, prepared.

Huge old theater, at least three balconies. No heat. Winter. A morning performance. The members of my dance company were peeved, cold, sleepy, outraged that we were on stage, warming up on ancient floor boards, with vapor from our breathing visible as we said "Good morning."

Grim performance. There were only 30 people in the audience. But I was in Edinburgh, and in my mind, it was a precious memory, cold as I was, an achievement to be there.

There were four people in the audience when I performed in Sidney Australia.. The program was me alone, dancing Opus 10, all of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons." I wanted to pay them for their tickets, pay them extra if only they'd be willing to leave.

Once, just one time, I danced for 10,000 in an outdoor stadium.

Most of the time, practically all of the time on my 1000 one-night-stands which became more than a 1000 before I finally decided I CANNOT DO THIS ANYMORE, the audiences were small...90, 50, 125, maybe 250. A modern dancer and her troupe on a college campus concert series is not a big draw.

In New York, on Broadway, when John Cullum and Emily Frankel did "Kings" at the Alvin Theatre on four Saturday nights, the house had to be papered. ("Paper" means tickets were given away.) When I did "Zinnia" at the Colonnades for 55 performances, it was the most performances I'd ever done in one theater, whereas, when John unpacks his makeup kit in a Broadway house, the kit stays there -- the same dressing room has often been his for a year or longer.

No, I don't think about this very often. When I was little and dreamed of being a dancer "till death do me part," I would have been thrilled to know that I would do in Dance what I've done. But today, when Fran and Sue showed me the stats, how many hits on our Website, how many files, pages, chapters downloaded, how many visitors ...... My eyes fill with tears. A website barely one week old, and more eyes have been on "Em" then ever before.

WORK IS GOD IS WORK

Some people have religion, I have work. It doesn't have to be actual writing. It's busy fingers, absorbed mind, concentration on something outside of me, like DOMESTICITIES -- that scratch on black linoleum I'm going to try and wax away -- and MENDING -- the collar on JC's grey NYC Opera sweater-shirt. It needs to be re-sewed on the sewing machine.

It's is a 9610 Industrial Singer my father gave me -- once upon a time it was a machine in his children's dress factory. (There's a bit about that machine In "Heart City," page 188. ) I learned to sew when I was in grade school. Bought a pattern, suffered with the instructions and laying out the rebellious tissue paper pieces, but made an old-fashioned dress with a bustle to wear for a Thanksgiving assembly program.

First costume I ever made ... no inkling did I have, that my sewing would turn into making costumes for a dance company of six. In the beginning I had to. We didn't have enough money.

I made a green shirt for JC in our early courtship days, a birthday present, which he wore to an audition and got the job -- $22.50 week doing a play in a very tiny theater (before there was an Off Broadway.) My work on that shirt won me love.

But here's the real reason work is what I'm preaching as my fingers fly today over the keys. When you get an idea, enough of an idea to put into a sentence that you can immortalize by typing it out -- that's a Wow! You're excited, amused, full of trepidation. A vision, a hope, a dream is born. It's something to reach for that's better than reaching for a star because you can get there, touch it, grab it. Use it.

Layering that first sentence; expanding it and shrinking it, explaining it to someone -- you've started down the road on a walk that will probably become an adventurous long trip.

You work not for money, not for winning, just work for the work of it. It's like crocheting. With a Queen Ann Tablecloth pattern that I got from a HOW TO CROCHET book, I used crocheting to keep me busy on the bus trip I made every day to a hospital in the Bronx when Mom was there for a month. It turned into a sixty-four doily tablecloth for the dining room table.

Intricate stitching, six chains, loop and go back, pearl three, loop four, double-stitch, triple-stitch -- it's not much different from making a plot, thinking up, crocheting, creating characters, (175 for Cordelia's story in "Somebody"), or in my plays, other books -- creating a triple-stitched background for every character.

I love that! I love the infinity that's in the work of my work.