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.

PERMISSION

In my e-mail yesterday, a friend said "Go ahead, do it! It was something I wanted to do. I don't remember what, just remember being pleased with what my friend said, but annoyed with myself for needing permission.

Sometimes you need a "Go ahead, help yourself," to eat what you're craving, like another scoop of ice cream. I'm not a dieter, I'm quite slender, but I used to weigh myself every day -- dancer weight is generally about ten pounds below what your body wants it to be.

Bang-crash! I got lucky in an unlucky head-on collision. My small intestine was severed, had to be mended, shortened and spliced together. It creates complications. My 3 ½ feet of small intestine doesn't do what your 35 feet does. I don't get nourishment or energy from food the way you do -- I can eat a lot, even pig out, and not gain weight.

So, "lucky Em" doesn't need permission when it comes to food. I can eat whatever I want, indulge in chocolate cake, peanut butter cups, buttery mashed potatoes, french fries, fried onion rings ... you name it.

But, I need permission NOT to work. Permission to SKIP my daily barre. Permission NOT to review money figures in the yellow sheets that arrive every month and tell us what we've spent. Permission NOT to worry about landlady things.

(The building we own needs to be painted and pointed. Whew! That means a scaffold, employees, permission from the Department of Buildings, a permit from "landmarks" because we're a landmarked building.)

Writer Em invents ways to give herself permission to put it off. For instance -- put "paint building" on a calendar. When the date comes, and we're too busy, put it on another date.

Also I use my friends. They give me something better than permission -- give me a posture, a tone of voice, and their relatively easy-going selves to imitate, take on. It's an acting, method actress technique. I become that person for a while. And enjoy slowing down, loafing, doing nothing in particular ... relaxing.

Yes, it's a little weird. But it works!

Getting permission, allows me to give permission to JC and JD and Fran, Sue, and Shareen, to take it easy, don't do what you're not in the mood to do.

MARCHING

A doctor stood over my bed and said something about my face, my back. He said "fracture" a few times and something about fever, and asked me what I'd eaten before the trip.

What trip? I wondered, figuring the fever he'd mentioned was why I felt so tired. I started to touch my face but my hands were trapped under a sheet that was tucked around me, chest to knees. Being unsure what fracture meant, in my mind, I declined it as if I were in Latin Class -- frac-to, frac-tara, frac- tum.

The Doctor had a feather and ran it over my knees. "Doctor, I said, "I have to kneel on my knees tonight, in the Vivaldi."

He seemed puzzled. I explained that it was my solo, the "Four Seasons," which I was performing tonight.

He frowned. Most people wondered about my doing a 45 minute solo. He continued with the feather, running it down the side of my left leg, then my right. He said you were in an accident, and your back was fractured. He said intestine ... facial lacerations ... your performance, night before last, was canceled.

I said, "Oh."

He moved the sheet away and continued testing me all over, fingers, elbows, asking do you feel this. He tested private parts explaining the tubes were a catheter. He went back to legs, ankles, and toes.

I said, "I have to be at rehearsal in New York on February 24th. I'm dancing in Philharmonic Hall the following week."

He used the fracture word again. He said lumbar. L 5 L 2, connective tissue ... concussion ... permanent damage ... partial paraplegia.

"March 3rd," I said. "That's the date."

Again, he tickled my legs with the feather, left ankle, right ankle, top of my arches, ball of my foot. "Do you feel that? Feel something touching your right foot?"

"Is my performance at Philharmonic Hall canceled?"

He touched my toes with the feather. "Do you feel this?"

I said, "I can march."

In the course of the next hours, the weeks, the months after that, the years of therapies and doctors who helped me, I said "I can march." Many many times I've said those words I still say it -- I can march.

There's more ... I'll write about it some other time.

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.