I decide to publish a book

"Night in Greenwich Village" painted by Ronnie De Nota 1998
Sunday March 11, 2007

Of course all the dramas in my life now are about my book. It didn’t begin till last week-end when I decided I wanted to call Wheatmark to ask them a question. I no longer remember my question, maybe I was going to ask them if we could drive down there to see their books.

But when I googled Wheatmark to find their phone number, what I got was the link to their website. And when I clicked that there was tremendous information about Wheatmark on it, none of which I knew. I found out it cost $800, which is about $100 more than I thought it would be. I found out it is print-on-demand. I found out they only give me 5 copies, any more I want I have to order. But all the work of turning it into a book they do. They do ISBN number, whatever that is, and Library of Congress, whatever that is. They list it on Amazon which is very nice. They give you a glossy front cover, that is a treat. And for the back cover they want you to write your teaser, something which will make people want to read your book.

I was very interested in everything I learned about Wheatmark on the web. And before I went into the sunshine on my outside couch to think about it all, I emailed the link to my mom. I thought she would be interested to learn about Wheatmark.

When I had first mentioned to her on email I had made the decision to do it, she had been enthusiastic about the idea, but that was before. Neither her nor me knew anything about Wheatmark, so everything I told her came from my imagination, and of course what I pictured was very different from what was. I thought my mom would enjoy sharing in this enterprise with me, that I would email her all the steps along the way.

When I first lied in the sunshine and thought about what I learned from reading their site, I was daunted. I thought “is this a good deal?” I had assumed when you self-publish you pay them money, but then you get books galore, as many as you could possibly want. I had no idea after 5 free copies I have to pay same price as anyone else.

But as confused indecisive and daunted as I was, my Higher Self was completely decisive. Each time I thought “I don’t know if I want Wheatmark,” my Higher Self said “you want Wheatmark.” Each time I thought “maybe I should look into something else,” my Higher Self said “we're not going to look into anything else, we are doing Wheatmark.” Altho I could not make up my mind, my Higher Self had made up her mind, “we are doing Wheatmark.” And at this time in my life I simply do whatever my Higher Self says to do.

Eventually most of the doubts began to dissipate. I still had no idea why Wheatmark was such a good idea, but I stopped questioning it. Oddly enough, what my mind moved on to was the teaser for the back cover. And her two ideas for my teaser on back cover made me laugh out loud so hard that for first time I thought this enterprise might be fun.

My first idea for back cover when I was still lying on sun couch were not the fun ideas which came to me at table. I thought I would have to put in a blurb saying why I was such a good writer. That was what I remembered on backs of other people’s books, some famous author would write “this book is wonderful and fun and fresh and funny,” or whatever. So I thought I would just write that. That I would get 4 adjectives from my Higher Self, and write that and credit it to "Anne's editor."

It wasn’t till I got up and sat at the sun table and lit a cigarette that I remembered the 3 way conversation I had been in in swim pool a few months after I had given Sue and Sally a booklet of the stories I had written back in NYC. And the 3 of us treaded water and Sally said to Sue “her writing is a big nothing,” and Sue said “no it’s not, it’s genre writing, for a small and limited audience who likes that kind of writing.” I had giggled inwardly at the time and put it in a tiny short story I wrote the next morning.

So even tho I had planned to write a praiseworthy blurb about my writing from an imaginary person, I thought, Of course I will use that teeny paragraph where Sally called my writing “a big nothing.”

And from that moment on I was into my book, I thought this could be a lot of fun.

Sunday evening my mom emailed, don’t spent $800 to self publish. You have very little money. Save it for a rainy day. She said “we in the family enjoy your stories, but do you think people will be enticed to buy your book?” She was worried no one would buy it and I was just throwing 800 in the garbage can. But I misread her email and thought she was saying no one would enjoy my stories. And I began to wonder if they would.

On Monday morning when I went to my machine to work on my book I had lost heart for it. I sat there in emptiness till Bill came back from bringing the car to the mechanic and wasn’t exactly sure what he was going to do next. And then a miracle happened. When I had found the phone number for Wheatmark on Saturday I had actually called and left a message saying “I want to publish my book with Wheatmark, I have some questions to ask.”

And just when Bill returned from mechanic, the guy from Wheatmark called. My Higher Self said “tell him you want to look at the books, that you want to come down and see them, that you have decided you want to publish your book with Wheatmark.” The man’s name was Grael and because of the emptiness I had been in, the release from it was euphoria.

It turned out he had lived in the East Village for 7 years before he left NYC in 2002. He had lived on 9th Street between First and Second. He asked where I had lived. And we each said to each other “I know your block.” Then he had moved to Rivington Street. And I said “girl at pool said Delancy Street is now fancy-shmancy, I can’t believe it, it used to be a slum.” And he said “it has all changed since you lived there Anne, it is now expensive.” I said “where do regular people live now?” And he said “far out in Queens.” I said “you mean Flushing, like where I grew up?”

He said Katz's used to be his favorite restaurant. And I said “the 2nd Avenue Deli closed.” And he was shocked. He said “I never heard that from my friends back in the East Village.” And I said “I didn’t either, but the article about it was posted on my news forum.” I said “I practically fell over because who would imagine learning that on a news forum where most of the posters live in Texas, that an article about the 2nd Avenue Deli would go up.”

The reason I was so excited and enthusiastic and even a bit wild in my conversation with Grael, was because his first words to me were so encouraging that I confided about my mother’s email to him and its effect on me. When I met Grael in person one hour later, I now understand he was too young to realize any mother would email “save your money for a rainy day.” It made him 100 per cent on my side. If my mother was going to discourage me from doing the book, then Grael was going to encourage me, and he set about making every single word in his phone call and later on when we met, completely encouraging. And he succeeded to the skies. He was an angel when I needed an angel.

We had a long talk about the East Village because Grael liked talking about it, and I was thrilled that my editor knew the East Village. If he knew Tucson and he knew the East Village then he knew where my stories were coming from. I couldn’t believe my luck finding an editor who understood me so well. It turns out that Grael isn’t my editor. I found out when I arrived there is no editor, no one reads your book. You send it to them electronically, they don’t even want you to bother printing it up for them on your printer. They print it up from what you send them electronically. They format it for you, but no one reads it.

But I didn’t know that when I was talking to Grael, I assumed he was my editor. We had a wonderful conversation, and I thought “O boy, have I lucked out, I found the perfect editor for me.” And I still thought that way during most of the conversation with Grael in person, when Bill and I went down to Wheatmark. It wasn’t till the end of the conversation that I discovered no one reads my book. Altho by the end of it I think Grael was curious to read it when it comes out. I told him I wrote a very lovely story about the Lower East Side in it and he will like it. He was so clearly more interested in my stories about our old neighborhood than about Tucson.

Altho we both said on phone how much we love Tucson. And he said after he left New York, he lived in Chicago and Washington DC. And I said “I heard Chicago is wonderful.” And he said “O it is.” And he told me all the wonderful things about Chicago. I said “if I knew how wonderful Chicago was back then, I would have moved there, but now I don’t want to live in a big city again, my experience in New York was too relentless, we had no car, we had the dog, we never got out to refresh ourselves in nature.” And he said that is what happened to him too.

Our conversation was so wonderful and made me so enthusiastic about doing the book, that when he said “when do you want to come down Anne, why don’t you come down now.” My Higher Self said “yes, go for it.” So I said “my husband just got back from car mechanic, he is at loose ends, it is the perfect time for him to drive me, when do you go on your lunch hour?” He said “it doesn’t matter, I will wait for you.” I said “I live at Fifth and Swan.” He said “then it will take you no time to get here.” So my Higher Self said “tell him you will leave in 20 minutes.” So we both said “great!” I was so uninhibited by that time I said “I am just in bulky sweater now from the cold.” He said “it is warming up.” I said “I will put on a bra.”

Bill was just starting to eat his lunch, that he had been preparing for himself while I had been on phone with Grael. “Will you drive me to Wheatmark?” He said “OK.” He said “but it’s probably way out in the boondocks.” But I looked it up on computer, and they had address and map. And Bill said “it is just two blocks from the swim club, it is not way out in the boondocks, it is close by.” He was relieved.

So I found my bra, and a little black blouse with capped sleeves that I had never worn, I forget now which skirt I chose to wear, and black patent leather high heels, where I had cut off the back strap and middle strap yesterday with scissors, because I discovered I never wore them when I had to go to that trouble of strapping them on. I hadn’t been able to do a perfect job with scissors so it looked a little trashy.

But the odd thing is, that now that Grael thought I was an East Villager, I discovered I wanted that East Village trashy look. I hadn’t realized how totally suburban my look had become in Tucson, till I put on the patent leather open-toed high heels with scissors marks showing, and realized “perfect! East Village trashy.” Black blouse, black bra, and black skirt completed the look. And I planned to put on red lipstick before I got out of the car (my lipstick was in the car).

And when I got out my new pocketbook, which I like, I thought “o no! this pocketbook is not trashy looking.” I had bought it because it was so pretty, with pinks and purples, but it made me look well-dressed, which is not the East Village trashy look at all. But I didn’t have time to look for a pocketbook which might work, and I didn’t think I owned any (I have gazillion pocketbooks but none are East Village trashy). And besides I wanted to plan the stuff to put in there so I would have what I needed. I wanted cigs, and a lighter, and a pen. I looked for my new cute notebook to write in but I couldn’t find it. And Bill said “take your swimming stuff, we can swim at Jimmy’s pool afterwards.”

So I wrote down the address, and Bill studied the map from Google so he knew just where it was, and we got into the car, and the trip took no time, and he found it right away. And Bill said “I’ll sit in the car.” And I said “come in, don’t you want to meet my editor.” And he said “OK.”

Grael turned out to be much younger than I pictured. I assumed he was my age, but he looked around 30. He told me he is a writer too, he writes screen plays. I said “I want my book to be very affordable, I thought $5.99 would be nice price.” And he brought out a list of what the prices are. And it looked like they would sell my book for $13.99 which seemed a lot to ask people to pay for it. He said “how long is your book?” And I said “it will be short, it is just my Tucson stories.” And Bill said “why not put in all your East Village stories too then, make it a bigger book.” Bill thought if I was paying $800, put all the stories in the book.

But that wasn’t my plan. My Higher Self had come up with a very interesting idea for me. She said “if you are putting all this momentum into publishing a book, keep up the momentum, after you publish this book, keep going, publish your two books of stories you wrote back in NYC.” And I planned to do that, even tho it would take big work on my part. Those manuscripts are up in my closet in a manuscript box. But Grael said if I am willing to pay for it, they can scan them for me.

I told Grael my East Village stories are hotter than my Tucson stories. For some reason Grael agreed with me, just put out the Tucson stories first. I said “they are not hot, altho there are a few cute ones in there.” Grael said “what you want Anne is to earn enough from your first book to pay for publishing your second book.” And I looked at him with face full of love.

By this time I was totally confused, but Grael was not, he understood everything. And I told him how I had tortured myself for 2 days after I read how they wanted it formatted, and he said “stop torturing yourself, none of that matters, just send it.”

And that was pretty much it. Grael said he wants to read a copy when it comes out, and he will pay for it. I said “don’t be silly, I’ll buy you a copy, you deserve it because you encouraged me.” He told me anyone can order a book from them and get it at the same discount rate I do, 40 per cent off. And a light bulb went off in my head, and I said “I think my mother should pay full price, because she tried to discourage me.” And he said “yes, she has to pay retail.” And I burst out laughing that my mom has to pay retail.

Old Forge

Adirondack Mountains painted by Winslow Homer

Tuesday, February 6, 2007
for Marion, with love, Anne

Just as Mildred was my dad’s favorite sister, her sons were my favorite cousins when I was growing up. Richie was exactly my age, we were best friends, and Alan was only two years younger, he could be included in our play. And even tho my little brother was 5 years younger then me, Richie nicknamed him Guchie and included him too. Every Sunday we drove over to their apartment in Jackson Heights, where the two sets of parents had coffee and cake together, and the 4 of us played together. We always had a wonderful time.

And in the summers we were all up in Old Forge together. On beach days we all were at the beach together and I played with Richie in the water. But mountain summers don’t have that many beach days, half the week is always cold and cloudy and rainy. I would walk over to Richie’s house in my raincoat and boots and we'd lie on his bed and read comic books and then walk over to the drug store for a phosphate, and visit the dogs in the neighborhood, there was a collie I liked a lot. I loved our summers in Old Forge but Richie didn’t. He said “it is boring, there is nothing to do,” he had far more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights.

Life only got interesting for him when he sent away in the comic book for that Daisy BB gun, and set up the targets outside, and shot at them with his gun. We were best friends then and of course he offered to take turns with me and I tried. But the BB gun didn’t do anything for me, and it did everything for Richie. I guess it marked the end of our friendship because after that all he wanted to do was play with his BB gun, and it just didn’t hold my interest. A girl named Nina arrived with her family to rent the house next door, and after that I spent all my time with Nina.

Richie and I had done a lot of things together before the BB gun arrived. We would fish together off the pier, we would go in the canoe together, he would take the back, I would take the front. And we would plan when we had real money to buy a motorboat together. He said he will have money when he has his Bar Mitzvah and I said I will have money when I have my Sweet 16.

I really don’t know why I was so completely content up in Old Forge and Richie was so bored. When he said he had so much more fun with his friends back in Jackson Heights, I just took his word for it. I mean I assumed he had far more fun with his friends back in the city than I had with my friends. But I wonder now if that was true. I visited Richie and Alan as kid, and sure it was fun throwing water balloons out the window on people, and flipping baseball cards, and playing fort with his friends downstairs in the trees around the apartment building. But I was a jump-rope freak, what more fun is there than jump-rope with all your friends! And we played Skelsy, and Girls and Boys, and over-the-knee, and Jacks, and Chinese handball and stickball and Potsy, and the box with the marbles game. We had a lot of good games too.

When I was very young in Old Forge I played with the Dennises across the street. They had so many kids, that playing with one family meant we could play all our games, thrilling games of Hide and Seek and Kick the Can. And Richie and Alan had the Beckinhams, with 10 kids, next door to them, as well as Dolphie in the big house, so they had kids to play with too.

I just liked our routine in Old Forge, I didn’t miss my NYC life when I was up there at all. I found it totally fulfilling to be there. I would wake up and get out my bike and ride my brother on the back fender, and ride into town for jelly donuts. I loved jelly donuts. The lady who worked in the bakery of D and D who sold us the jelly donuts was Floanne Wormwood’s mother. She and Floanne lived in a trailer not far from us and I was friends with Floanne.

When my dad woke up he would build the fire in the pot belly stove, mountain mornings are cold. And when my mom put up the hot cereal, he and I would take long walk together while the cereal was cooking. We would walk down the road to where Floanne’s trailer was and the other trailers, and then take the path behind it thru the woods, and walk on that path as long as we wanted to. It was probably a logging road, the Adirondacks is filled with logging roads. And we would chat and then come home for hot cereal.

When I was even littler, his favorite walk was to Charlie Able’s farm. To get there we walked right on Route 28 in front of our house, there was a kind of footpath next to it, no sidewalks. And we’d pass about 4 houses. And just before the big fancy stone house which belonged to the principal, was Charlie Able’s farm. We’d walk up the long winding road to reach it. And my dad loved talking to Charlie Able, and I got to have my one and only experience of a farm. I got to see the baby pigs and the chickens and everything. I loved it. And my dad loved Charley Able. A rose bush grew up in front of our house which had the most beautiful smelling roses there was, pretty pink roses with a fragrance to die for. And Leon always said he must have picked up the seeds on his shoes when he was visiting Charley Able, that was his explanation of the roses. He loved those roses. And when I went away to camp he would always include one in the letter he sent me, and it would still have its miraculous perfume even if it had lost its beauty.

After that I would put on my swim suit underneath my dungarees and flannel shirt and head to the beach. Because Maurice Dennis, the father of the kids across the street, was the beach lifeguard back then, and he gave swimming lessons in the early morning. And I wanted to earn those Red Cross cards. I took Beginners with him, I took Elementary, I took Intermediate Swimming. I earned card after card. And then the big day came when I was allowed to take Junior Life Saving which was my passion back then.

We had an eat-in glass porch. Which meant there was table there to look out at the woods and field, and 4 burner hot plate with small black stove sitting on top of it, my mother did all her cooking on that. The field was adjacent to our house but where our house ended the woods began. And my father would sit and have his meals there and watch the deer come out of the forest. Or his favorite, watch the humming birds alight on the field wild flowers. He loved both. There would be hush when he would espy the deer arriving, and his thrilled joy at the humming birds. When the sun was actually warm and if it was sunny day, my mother would put up roast chicken in the little black oven on top of the burner, and we’d all set off for the beach.

I was allowed to buy jelly donuts for me and my brother in the early morning in town because my mission was to buy the New York Times for my father. He did not like to go one day without reading his New York Times and he had arranged with one of the drug stores to have one put aside for him each morning. So I would waltz in with my brother and ask for my father’s New York Times and they would give it to me. My brother and I ate our jelly donuts right away, I discovered jelly donuts up in Old Forge. And then arrived home with Leon’s New York Times.

It was on one of these excursions home with the New York Times in the basket of my bike and my brother on the back fender, that we bumped into my father’s friend from New York, Vicky. She was older than even my father’s big sister Esther. She was the doyenne of all the school teacher families from New York. And she said “did you hear the great news the war is over.” I realize now she was referring to the Korean War, but at the time it didn’t mean anything to me. I wasn’t even aware there was a war, I wasn’t even aware what war was. I was in a world of jelly donuts and swimming lessons. She was beside herself with joy and excitement and happiness, and I tried to chime in. But I don’t know if I even mentioned it to my parents when I got back home, it simply didn’t register. All that registered was that Vicky had talked to me as if I was a grown up. Saying “great news the war is over” seemed like grown up talk to me.

My mother set up our beach blanket next to the other families from NY, and I looked for Richie and we went into the water together and played games in the water. And I guess my father headed straight for the tennis court and played tennis. And we all had glorious time until my mom said “time to go home for dinner.” In Old Forge we had our meals differently. We had dinner at lunch. When we arrived home the roast chicken was already roasted, the apple pie she had made from apples in the backyard was already baked, and we had our delicious meal on our eat-in porch. And that is when my father would see the deer or the humming birds.

Then we would return to the beach and it was the long wait of one hour before we were allowed to go back in the water. Old Forge was so far north, evening did not start till quite late. So there was time for endless afternoons. Richie and I played in the water, walked up to Rudy’s for ice cream cones, collected empty bottles, brought them to Rudy’s for two cents each and bought candy with it, and we played a lot of cards. The men all sat on one big blanket and played Hearts.

And when we had changed out of our bathing suits and back into shorts and tops again, the serious tennis playing began. All my aunts and uncles played tennis, they played doubles with each other. But my father was the best tennis player of all and long after all my cousins and aunts and uncles had gone home, my brother and I would sit on the bench, I guess my mom was there too, and my father would play with all the best tennis players in the neighborhood. There was one young man who would come from up the Channel on his motor boat to play with Leon every evening. He was a great tennis player too. And my brother and I sat there for long endless beautiful match. It was how tennis got into our blood. Love ten, Love twenty, Deuce, all the names, we knew them by heart. Set, match, serves, backhands.

My father taught both of us how to play tennis as soon as we could hold a tennis racquet. Each time he got a new racquet he gave his old one to my mom, who gave her old one to me, and I gave my old one to my brother. Back then you had to keep your tennis racquet in a press with screws, and sometimes I got a good enough one from my mother that I had to do that too. I knew all about tennis racquets and which were the best ones. We would play as a family if no one else wanted the courts.

Sometimes instead of watching my dad play tennis, my mom would take me and my brother in the car to go buy the chicken and eggs from the egg lady. That was a nice drive in a different direction, around the lake, up and up a windy road, and we would come to some house. And she would ask for her capon and her two dozen eggs.

Supper was simple. I was allowed to go to the movies once a week. There was a movie theater just before you hit the center of town. I used to take the short cut in the field beside it when I was visiting Richie. Outside the movie theater were the movie posters. And I would study them to make my choices. The other night “Shane” came on TV, and I remembered when I had stood outside that movie theater and the poster from “Shane” had been up, and how long and hard I had looked at it trying to decide if that would be my choice.


The movies changed on Saturday, Sunday was different movie, I could only see one. I did miss “I Love Lucy” my favorite show, when I was up there, we had no TV, and when the movie poster showed “Long Long Trailer” with Lucy and Ricky, of course I chose that. The other choice was Danny Kaye movie “The Court Jester.” But for me there was no competition with Lucy. I chose “Long Long Trailer” and went to see it. It was not good. The next evening my parents went to see the Danny Kaye movie, and my mother loved it so much she broke the rule for me. She said “you can see it too even tho you already went to the movies.” And I loved it. I had felt very gypped that the one I had chosen turned out to be a lemon and the one I had not chosen was so great.

Danny and Sarah, one of the couples up there as New York City school teachers, knew how to lead folk dancing, so once a week, in some huge long log cabin affair, officially called the hay fever center, with an old cannon from the revolutionary war in front of it with plaque, Danny and Sarah held folk dancing. First all the children had folk dancing. Then the grown ups. Sometimes we stayed to watch the grown ups dance, most of the time my brother and I were sent home to bed. I had no idea that after the folk dancing the grown ups would walk across the street to the beach, take off their clothes and swim naked in the lake, until one morning my mom told me “we were all swimming naked in the water, and when we wanted to come out and get dressed, there were teenagers on the swings, and we couldn’t get out of the water until they left, and they would not leave.”

There was bingo in the Fire House once a week which I loved too.

And then Chuck who worked in the Post Office told me he was opening up a miniature golf course, and of course once that happened life really took off. I fell in love with miniature golf, I loved it. It was open every night and they sold popcorn there too. It was high up, on top of the big hill across from the Fire House, and all thru August we would watch the shooting stars as we played miniature golf. My cousins did that too, I played with Richie. And I learned to see the Big Dipper and the North Star and the Little Dipper too.

And some mornings instead of beach, or maybe when it was too cold and cloudy for beach, my mother took us all near the ski slopes to go huckleberry picking. I always think of huckleberries in hot dry dusty places, but there is no way we would be huckleberry picking instead of at the beach unless it was not beach weather.

And on Wednesday mornings she took all the cousins horseback riding in Thendara, which I loved too. Richie’s horse was Daisy, a pinto. And I rode Freckles. I don’t know which horse my brother rode. I remember my mom rode Dexter, he was chestnut.

Mrs. DuBois ran the riding stable and CarolAnn who lived across the street was her assistant. CarolAnn was my age and we became friends, and she taught me games to play with horses. How you can slide off backwards, like on a slide. You just slide down their tail, it was fun.

My dad once took home movies of me sliding off the horse that way, but for some reason it was at night, the movies are too dark to see. If I hadn’t known what I was doing in them I wouldn’t have known. But there is CarolAnn and me and my horse and my climbing up again and again for the fun of sliding off. I wonder now what the horse thought, but I guess he found it fun playing with two joyous little girls.

Because it rained so much up there, many many afternoons I put on my raincoat and boots and walked into town to the library. It was right next to the movie theater. There was a wonderful librarian there. As soon as I walked in she would say “I know just what you would like” and she would pick out ten books for me, and they were all heaven. My father had paid Maurice Dennis to remodel the house one winter, to put in a knotty pine kitchen, and a little bedroom next to it so I could have my own room, and have the little bedroom painted pink the color I wanted. Before that I shared a bedroom with my brother on the second floor next door to the bathroom and my parent’s bedroom.

I loved my little pink bedroom on the ground floor. There was a little brass bed in there. I would lie in bed and practice my scissors kick for Intermediate Swimming, that is when you are taught the side stroke. But mainly I would read. Yes I found “The Saturdays” all on my own in the Pomonok library near our house in Flushing and I discovered it was a series and I read all of them. And I think I discovered “Dr Doolittle” in Queens too and read all of them, that was a huge favorite. But the librarian in Old Forge introduced me to everything. I read “Black Beauty” because of her, and “Bambi,” and a book about a whale where the whale describes his whole life thru the seas, that was an amazing book. I read so many books from the point of view of animals that she found me. I even read a book about the adventures on a submarine, the only book my cousin Richie took out too. I don’t think we had the same taste in books but he and I both liked that wonderful adventure book of the submarine. I am sure she found “Mary Poppins” for me. I had read a chapter from “Caddie Woodlawn” in my reader in school and loved it, and she showed me they had “Caddie Woodlawn” there and I read the book and loved it. And she introduced me to “Little House on the Prairie” and I loved them all.

And several months ago when I was wondering what a perfect life in Heaven meant, and I tried to think about a perfect life-- how I wanted to have everything I have in Tucson, my beautiful desert, and everything I loved in Old Forge, a lake and docks and trees. And I thought about all the people I wanted to be friends with, I remembered that wonderful librarian in Old Forge and wanted her to be my friend too.

It was a nice Easter

NYC painter Ronnie DeNota paints his wife Lucy, and names it:
"Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

It was a nice Easter
Monday April 17 2006
(a very slight story, but after I took it out, I put it back)

It was a nice Easter because of the glorious beauty of the day. The week which preceded it had been awful weather. It was only second week of April but heat had soared under a hazy cloud cover. So it was worst of both. The hazy cloud cover robbed us of our beauty, steamed up the heat, so all there was was hot awfulness. 4 days of hot awfulness is no big deal, except when you live on the desert, and know a very long hot summer awaits you, you think “O no! Has it already begun! Is this it!”

On the 4th day of it, we were driving around midtown traffic and there was huge sign high up above a car wash at a major intersection saying in huge letters “THE HEAT IS BACK.” It is because it was what we all feared that the sign was disturbing.

And then 2 days before Easter, in the evening, the miracle began. Cool air blew and blew and blew and blew. And day before Easter the day was absolutely lovely and Easter was the most gloriously beautiful day there ever was.

Then there was the strange phenomenon of sleeping. This too began week before Easter. Each time I closed my eyes for even an instant, before I even knew it, I was in the deepest sleep imaginable. It wasn’t like any other sleep, it was so deep, and waking up from it, was traveling huge distance.

This culminated the evening before Easter. At 7 PM I went in to lie down and watch tv, planning to get up an hour later for dinner. But the deep sleep happened and when I woke up it was early morning, I had slept thru dinner. Who falls asleep at 7 PM and sleeps thru dinner? The sleep was so strange, out of the ordinary, that I thought “this is like the sandman.”

So I woke up yesterday morning, Easter morning, from that round-the-clock sleep, and also to the most gloriously beautiful day ever. And of course Easter is such a subtle holiday, not the heavy sledgehammer of Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is like a subtle flavoring to the day. You can remember it, or forget about it. And when you did remember it, it just flavored it, didn’t overpower it. It makes you realize all holidays should be this way. Just a subtle sweetening of the day. Like having a bouquet of flowers on your desk, a little loveliness and little sweet perfume, but harmonious with everything else.

We went to the pool. There was zero traffic. It made driving a joy that there were no cars on the road. And pool was semi deserted too, which was nice. I swam and dreamed along in my lane, until I started to get bored and then I looked up and there was Sue. I had really finished swimming but to be in that light and in that air, who wanted to go inside.

And Sue had just bought herself the most beautiful ring in the world at Mac’s Indian Jewelry. I had seen it flashing under water, and was about to comment on it, when the conversation took a turn and I forgot about it.

And then Sue said “see my new ring!” Some great artist did it. It had jet, it had coral, it had turquoise, and it had pink shell. 4 stones, 4 colors, pure beauty, and huge. Whoever created it had indulged a passion for beauty. And there it was on Sue’s finger. That ring was made for Sue.

She said “John and I had Easter buffet here, and then we went home, and I read your story on email, and then we decided to come back to swim, it is such a glorious day.” Sue said “I am having such a nice day.”

Even tho Sue and John are retired, Sue won’t retire. She had accepted a full-time teaching position at a Native American school, and for some reason it is an around-the-clock job. Every day all day and on weekends and holidays too, Sue works and works and works for them. Today was really her only real day off since job began in mid August of last year.

“This is how to live” Sue said, as she wriggled her toes in the water.

She said "we are now selling the house and moving back to Ann Arbor, Michigan." “We love Tucson” Sue said "but we want to be with our granddaughter. If we make money from selling this house and buying condo in Ann Arbor, we will use the money for lessons for the little girl.”

“But she is 4 years old, isn’t that too young for lessons?"

“Not in Ann Arbor” she said, “they begin school and lessons at 2, she will have ballet lessons and swim lessons.”

Then Lily arrived for her swim, she was wearing navy blue bathing suit in old fashioned style, she looked like '40s movie star in it. And after her swim we sat in the jacuzzi together, and talked about our astrology sign, she is born day after me. Because I had watched Lily express herself when she was stoned on pot as we sat on the grass in front of Alice’s art studio, when she was expressing herself to Roy. The argument was senseless to me but Lily’s expression of her point was like a dance. She didn’t express argumentably. She said “this is how I see it,” and it was like a beautiful modern dance on the stage. It all involved opening up her arms wide, and turning face of passion upwards. Sincere passion expressed in flowing arm movements, with neck arched to the heavens. So even tho I got her point in our conversation right away, I let her go thru the whole dance as she expressed it fully, because I knew it was about the dance, not the point. Lily likes to embrace the universe as she espouses. It is quite lovely. It made the time go by enchantingly as I waited for Billy to finish his swim.

Then Bill and I set off for Sunflower market.

Because we are now drinking tea in the mornings I was looking forward to the free teeny cup of coffee you can have at Sunflower. But they moved the coffee grinding machines to where the coffee urns are, so it was very crowded there. When I finally got in, I opened up 3 tiny little half-and-halfs to put in the tiny cup. And to be a good girl I immediately tried to put them in the trash, and of course one spilled milk all over the counter top, on the floor, and nearly on the girl’s shoe. So I took napkins and wiped everything. There were so many behind me waiting, and around me. And after I finally finished doing all that I turned the spigot on the coffee urn and there was no more coffee left. I burst out laughing. “After all that” I announced to no one in particular “there is no coffee left.” So someone said “try the decaf coffee.” I said “but I don’t like decaf coffee, I wanted this one, English Caramel coffee, it sounded delicious.” But the decaf urn had coffee in it so I did that one and it was delicious anyway. I was so worried about spilling it on my white dress as I marketed. I was careful not to do that but it did slosh all over the floor as I wheeled my cart.

Gurus and Companions

by Ronnie DeNota
Riomar Cafe on Little West 12th Street, NYC, 1998

“Gurus and Companions”

Saturday, January, 7, 2006

Today is Jeannie’s birthday. Helen’s birthday was last week, Cora’s birthday is next week. And my 3 friends named Sue have their birthdays at this time. Sue my friend at college, Sue who used to talk on phone about astrology with me back in NYC, and Sue at the swimming pool who got me back into writing. My Moon is in this astrological sign. These women have been paths for me. Cora opened up the greatest path for me, love and spirituality. And Helen took me further along that path. Jeannie taught me women’s liberation and art. My friend Sue in college taught me intelligence. You could say they were all my gurus, they were my teachers.

The teaching styles were very different. Cora arrived at my apt. every evening, sat at my kitchen table while I made her coffee, and asked for my advice and told me all her problems. No one had ever asked for my advice before. I was famous for being an idiot, a chicken without a head. People would say “I worry about you, Anne.”

Everyone saw me as a mess. But not Cora. We'd have coffee, she’d settle down happily and tell me the long stories of her problems. At that time she was still trying to hold a job, so most of it had to do with jobs. She was a waitress at Wall St. lunch counter when she accidentally dropped the piece of luscious chocolate cake the man had been eyeing on his lap. She was in the typing pool when the women kindly and gently and lovingly took her aside and explained she has to be fired because she arrived 3 hours late at work every day.

In Cora’s world everyone was an angel. She saw everyone thru a loving empathetic lens. She had such sympathy for her landlord, Mr. Kessler. Each month Cora would arrive with five dollars to pay down on the rent she owed from 4 months ago, until Mr. Kessler couldn’t take it anymore, and said “Cora let’s start from scratch.” Mr. Kessler was a saint to put up with this the whole time Cora lived there. She did not get evicted until the neighborhood changed and landlords were offered big money for their tenements. As Cora explained to me, “having another de-rent controlled apt. sweetened the deal.” Cora was evicted from her rent controlled apt. where her rent was only $70 per month. She was 6 months behind at that point.

Because Key Food closed at 9 PM, at few minutes to 9 she would put on her coat and all her scarves, and say “thank you dear sweet Anne” and look at me with face of such love, and try to get to Key Food in time to bang on the doors and get them to open for her. “Is there anything you want at Key Food she would ask?” So sometimes she would return with something I needed.

Compared to Cora the official story that Anne is such a mess I realized was not quite true. I was able to keep my job. I was able to pay my rent. I paid my electricity too. When we had the big black out, Cora was reading by a candle. She looked outside when she heard all the noise and saw the streetlights were out. “Why are they making such a fuss about the streetlights being out,” she thought, and went back to reading by her candle. She didn’t know electricity had gone off for the city.

But what I learned from Cora was everything. I learned from Cora that all people are angels and I am an angel too. Before that I thought all people were monsters and I was a monster too. I had no idea you could see people thru the eyes of peaceful love, and as a result see yourself that way too. Cora used to refer to herself that way. She would refer to her own sweetness. And I, who had always hated myself, was floored that Cora loved herself. And she saw me thru such loving appreciative eyes. I began to see myself that way too. You could say Cora liberated me. She did.

Cora was a good antidote for me for my friendship with Jeannie which had preceded it. What ruined that friendship was my intense envy. At first I just whole-heartedly admired Jeannie and I expressed all my admiration. I was happy admiring her and expressing it and she was happy to be admired. But then she wrote a book it got published she became famous, and I became very envious of her. Before she wrote her book she had been a painter. It was my first introduction to the world of art, and to the life of a working artist. It caused a great switch in values for me. I had never considered anything other than the professions before. In fact I was school teacher during our friendship. Jeannie was quite contemptuous of the professions. “Women are always shoved into the helping professions” she announced at a women’s liberation meeting.

In our personal friendship I saw how much art gave her. For Jeannie art gave her everything. “An artist’s childhood is their treasure chest” she told me, “it is what the artist draws from.” Because of Jeannie I wanted to become a writer, I wanted it with all my heart. And it had never occurred to me to want it before. It had not even occurred to me I could do it before. I thought you had to have talent. But Jeannie had said “the best painter in art school said ‘there is no such thing as talent.’” She said the other girls in art school made their own clothes, did crafts, and did other things. “They spread themselves too thin” Jeannie told me, “you have to just do your painting in order to be good at it.”

Helen was my friend when my big troubles arrived. She taught me that prayer works, and also she got me to consider Jesus which is why I opened up the New Testament and read “The Gospel of St John” when I was so frightened my beloved dog would not make it. The spiritual path I am on now came from Helen.

But I would never have been open-minded to spirituality at all were it not for Cora. Cora’s solution when things got very bad, which they always did, was to pray. That is how she balanced herself. She had a moment when the landlord had evicted her and all her stuff was on the street, when she lost her balance. But she prayed to Mary, and she regot her balance. Mostly Cora prayed to God, she said “the Father is stronger than the Son” but at times of extreme crisis, and her whole life was crisis, she would remember her mother’s words about Mary and ask Mary for help.

I, who never had any balance, watched Cora hold on to her balance no matter what was thrown at her. And finally asked “How do you pray Cora? Do you just ask God for what you want?” “No Anne” she said “you thank God for already giving it to you.” I didn’t begin to pray till my time of great troubles arrived and Helen said “prayer works.” But it is from praying that I first found out God is real. Everything else stemmed from that. I would be totally desperate and then I would remember about praying. And at first I would think “what good will praying do? I won’t believe God is real till He sits down next to me and smokes a cigarette with me.” But I was so desperate I would pray anyway. And always to my amazement I would find I was calmed down from it.

Irene was my companion during my great travails. She was born in October, she wasn’t one of my teachers like the other girls. We learned from each other. Our friendship consisted of communication. We would share experiences and see what we learned from it. We were partners learning spirituality together. We had the same problems at the same time and we learned from each other.

Gurus matter but so do learning partners. You learn from gurus from the examples they set. I learned from Cora from Jeannie from Helen by watching them. Irene is how I learned from my own experience. You have to have someone to share your experience with to make it real.

My last friend before I left NYC was Marjorie. We would walk our dogs together, or she and I and my dog would walk to Delancy Street for her to place her bet at OTB. Her husband Joe did not follow the horses but Marjorie said he had genius with numbers. She would place the bet for him, and they would always win. I did not know about the winning. Finally after doing it for months, walking with her to Delancy Street, I said “why do you bet Marjorie?” She said “people assume betting means you lose money but Joe wins.” It never occurred to me anyone ever wins, I thought betting was way to lose money. You could say Marjorie taught me about gambling.

I’m trying to think what I learned from Marjorie and it doesn’t seem like very much. Once I wore a black T shirt and she said “you look good in black Anne.” Mostly I loved Marjorie because I loved being with her. I just found everything she said interesting. We both took out lots of library books. She said “it is the women in the Agatha Christie mysteries who are so interesting.” She read books about everyone, rock stars, everyone. She said “I am like Joe Friday, ‘just give me the facts, Ma’am.’” She read a biography of Jim Morrison of “The Doors” and talked about it a lot, so I read it too.

Marjorie was a painter too. “What do you paint Marjorie?” “I just paint paintings of people committing suicide” she said. Marjorie had tried to commit suicide. She went to flea bitten hotel and took pills. But Joe, who was her boyfriend then, found her and took her to Bellevue and had her stomach pumped. He saved her. Marjorie used to say “I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life, I never expected to live past 30.” Marjorie and I were both working as part time secretaries for psychiatrists. Marjorie said “I see the patients when they walk in, they are so upset, and then I see them when they leave, they are so calmed down.” She had so much respect for the psychiatrist she worked for.

Marjorie cared passionately about the Mets and the Yankees. She would listen to the games on the radio as she painted. In some way Marjorie is the most like Bill, not only because they are passionate sports fans, but because from each of them I got to be in another world. Marjorie was born in July, she is not the same astrological sign as my gurus, and she was not a guru, she was a friend.

Our friendship fulfilled itself after I moved to Tucson. I would write to Marjorie but she never wrote back. Finally after a few years she wanted to argue with an astrological insight I had sent her. “I don’t know how to write a letter” she said “I never wrote one before, but I will try to do what you do,” and she wrote back. By then I was totally with my Higher Self so I would write her my experiences with my Higher Self. And after a few months of this, Marjorie connected to her Higher Self too. So we shared our experiences with our Higher Self. We wrote to each other every single day for 6 solid years, sharing our daily life and our experiences with our Higher Self. We each knew every single detail of each others daily life.

And then Helen taught me how to be on internet and I never wrote another letter again. I always hoped Marjorie would understand. I guess I thought she would, because what I learned from Marjorie was understanding.

I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon

Cucumber Patch, Tucson AZ by Felix Pasilis
"I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon"

written Monday 8/22/05

I had a great time at the Southwest Authors Luncheon. Yes Sophia was 15 minutes late to pick me up, which is ordinarily nothing, but I had dressed for it. A pretty black velvet skirt with a pattern on it, a gold scooped-neck sleeveless silk top, and a bra. It was sweltering in the house and blazing outside. The outfit was perfect to wear for the air conditioned conference room where the meeting was held, but too hot to wear to wait outside or to lie down on bed in front of a fan. All I could do was stand at the door impatiently.

I had pictured the lunch taking place in the hotel restaurant, I didn't know it would be in a conference room. Hotel restaurants in Tucson are light-filled beautiful places, atriums with plants growing, and skylights, and very fancy. A conference room is a big room with not a single window. When you arrived you line up at the desk to pay the money and get your nametag.

And the whole room was filled with big round tables, and it was filled to the brim. I was starving because I hadn't eaten a thing so I could have a lot of lunch, and I asked “when do they serve the food?” since all that was at the table was iced water and iced tea. She said “usually pretty quickly” and I said “good.” Sophia had forgotten her notebook so I asked the man for pad of paper and pen for Sophia so she could take notes and he brought it to Sophia. I was overjoyed, I was still trying to make it up to her for being crabby in the car.

As soon as we looked into the sea of faces we saw Steve, who leads our writers group. He was at the table to the left, and he waved to both of us, and said “there are two chairs here.” It was very full, maybe those were the only chairs.

When we sat down I recognized one woman and then I recognized the other. One said to me “didn't you go to Steve's writing meeting?” and I said “yes.”

And then I recognized the other. I said “are you Grandma, you wrote the children's book?” And she said “thank you for remembering.”

She is the one who wrote “Stories By Grandma,” and a print-on-demand company had accepted it. And she said she was going to merchandise it by sitting at the mall with her books and a sign saying “Meet Grandma.”

I felt very comfortable being at the table with Steve at the center of it, Grandma on one side, and Grandma's friend from the meeting at the other side. Next to me was a woman who was slender, made up, tad glamorous with lots of make-up, and a whole lot of very fancy jewelry. She said “I am Lala, we just moved to Tucson in June from Denver when it was 110 here.”

My heart went out to her instantly. On June 29th the temp went up to 113 and stayed there for a solid month. By the time the huge heat finally calmed down and went back to 108, it was monsoon season, humidity was added to the heat, that girl must think she moved to hell.

I said “it's not always like this, you will appreciate there is no winter at all, and at least you have the summer over, I moved here in November and each time someone asked 'how do you like Tucson?' and I said 'I love it,' they said 'have you spent a summer here?' and then they would scare me about the summer.”

Then the M.C. went to the mike and the meeting started. And I thought “what about the food, I am starving.” I thought “I am not going to like this one bit, having a meeting when I can't wait to eat.” He opened up with two jokes. “What is the difference between a publisher and a terrorist?” Answer “You can negotiate with a terrorist.” I laughed my head off, and my happiness soared.

Suddenly I realized what this is all about. We are all writers here, and we have all had our ups and downs with publishers, we are in the same boat. Everything I had been thru, they all had been thru, we had a lot in common that I had in common with no one else. Instead of being isolated people beaten down by rejection letters, we were all together having a banquet and celebrating ourselves, making merry about what we had been thru. The second joke was “How many mystery writers does it take to screw in a light bulb?” Answer, “One to write the mystery and one to give it the final twist.” I loved it and I laughed my head off. I was now a perfectly happy girl.

Then he did success stories, "Anyone who has a success story in past month come up to the mike.” There were only 2, one had gotten a story he wrote about an experience he had 25 years ago published in an anthology. Actually I recognized the name of that magazine, it is political. Another man, totally delighted with himself, showed us the book he just had published by print-on-demand. He was thrilled with the book and said now it is up to him to sell it himself and he will, and he hopes a real publisher will take it. I cheered both men wildly for their success. I was 100 per cent on the side of those in my own boat. I had never been with those in my own boat before.

Then the MC asked how many people are here for the first time, Sophia and I raised our hands. I didn't get to see who else did, Lala did. And when the MC said the table of invited speakers gets to line up first for the food, he said our table gets to line up second because we have the most newcomers. I was overjoyed.

On line I asked Lala what she writes. She said “suspense.” She has written 4 books already and it looks like this latest one will get published, she is in negotiations.

I said “what is suspense?”

And she said “a mystery is where you don't know who did the murder, but in suspense everyone knows who did it except the main character.”

I said “that is a very fine distinction.”

And I pointed out “with the mystery novels written nowadays, the mystery seems to be the least of it, someone gets murdered in the first chapter and then for the whole rest of the book it doesn't figure in at all, and then in the last chapter we find out who did it, and it is always some character you didn't even remember being in the book at all, the story works just because it is fun to read.”

I helped myself to salad and dressing, just two small pieces of roast beef, a nice portion of the vegetable lasagna, and six of the tiny roasted potatoes with herbs on it. They had taken away the steam tray of the hot vegetables to return it with a fresh one, so I didn't get to take any of that. I took a dinner roll with a hard crust and put butter on it. At the dessert table I took a lot of fruit. The cakes looked delicious but I thought I would wait.

When I got back to the table the man came around with coffee and I said yes. The food was scrumptious. I didn’t eat my roast beef, I had taken that for the dogs. And when I had finished my food I went back to get more roast beef for the dogs. I had brought a plastic bag in my purse to slip it into. I helped myself to another small portion of the vegetable lasagna, two slices of cantaloupe, and a piece of the lemon cake. I was actually full but the lasagna, the cantaloupe, and cake were so yummy I ate it anyway. The hot coffee was really good, I dipped my roll and butter in that. It was great meal. And then I surreptitiously slipped the roast beef into the plastic bag in my purse.

Sophia and Lala talked while we were eating. Lala told Sophia how she had arrived in June when it was 110, and Sophia said where did you come from and Lala said Denver. And Lala asked Sophia where she is from. “You are not from Tucson” and Sophia said “Poland.” And Sophia told Lala that “in Polish lala means dull.” And Lala said that is not her real name. And then they talked about their children. And Sophia got to tell Lala about her brand new grandson born two weeks ago. And Lala said she can’t wait to have grandchildren but it doesn’t look on the agenda.

And then the meeting started up again. A woman said she is just back from New York City and she is a member of the writers union, and she will fight for us to have health care and fight for us with publishers, and the writers union is all about fighting. I tuned her out. I am not into fighting, and my problem is not fighting with publishers, my problem is I can’t find one for love or money, plus I have my Higher Self, I don’t need a writers’ union lawyer to fight for me. The second woman who spoke was a producer of films and Sophia is a screenwriter, I am sure she took notes, she is looking for a producer.

Then we did new members introduce yourself. Lala told how she arrived when it was 110, and she is suspense writer, and how her new book Sidney Sheldon in Hollywood became her friend and he is pushing it so she thinks this one will get published. And she belonged to a wonderful writers group like this in Denver and she found this one on internet and she is overjoyed to have found it.

I was next. I said I was a writer back in New York City and I did not get published, and when I moved to Tucson 12 years ago my interests changed and I did not write, but I met Sophia at the pool and she took me to Steve’s group at Barnes and Noble, and next day I went back to writing, and Steve told me and Sophia to come here, so now we are here.

Next, a man stood up and said he wanted to write a book on meditation so he made his own book, he stretched out the clothesline all thru the house and made the book. Then he gave it to his friends and relatives and they said it is boring. He showed us the book. So then he did another book, called “How to Make a Book.” He stretched the clothesline in the house even longer and made a lot of books. He showed us the book. So then his wife got excited, and wrote a book, “All About My Life,” and he stretched out the clothesline again, and showed us his wife’s book. And he said “a few months ago we got a computer, that made new things possible, so now I did a book with glossy pages and color.” And he showed that one. And I cheered wildly.

And then a man stood up and said he wrote a book about a young man in the barrio, and since he is spiritual, that is also in the book. At first the young man is immature and then he matured. And I knew the story was autobiography, but the man did not say that. And I was interested to read his book.

And then a woman stood up and said she just did her book, “Illegals, Who needs them, I do.” And she said how she and her husband have a 500 acre avocado farm and they could not get anyone to do the labor and the illegals came and they hired them. And not only did the illegals do the farm work, but the contractor had quit building their house, so the illegals pitched in to building their house. And it was the most glorious house in the world, with trees growing everywhere in the house and skylights. She held up her book, and said the pictures of the house are in the book. And she said how she and her husband became very close to the illegals and their families and they all helped each other.

And I swooned. I was immensely touched. What that woman said went right into my heart, I was grateful beyond measure she wrote that book.

And after that I was ready to leave. We had been there close to two hours. The MC was introducing the guest speaker of the meeting. I’m sure the guest speaker was wonderful. She was going to read from her novel and answer questions. But I had a perfect experience and I felt completed. I went into the hotel lobby to ask if I could call my husband to pick me up.

She was so nice to me. She dialed the phone number for me. Bill picked it up right away. He said “I am watching the Cardinals play.” I said “can you pick me up, I had a great time, but I don’t want to stay, we can go to Robinson May and exchange your hat and I can exchange the skirt which is too big for the size smaller and then we can go swimming.” He said “I am on my way.” “I am sorry about you missing the game” I said. He said “it’s probably rerun from last night but I didn’t know it was on.”

I sat outside and smoked a cigarette while I was waiting for him. And then I went back inside to be in the air conditioning. The woman at the desk said “would you like bottled water” and she brought out a bottle of ice cold bottled water. I said “thank you.” Just then I saw Bill drive up.

“The meeting was great” I said to Bill “it was really great, I had a wonderful time, I want to go back next month.” “Good” he said “good.” He said “I got the coach of the Wildcats to sign my hat at the scrimmage last night so now I want a new Wildcats hat, the Nike hat I bought yesterday is attractive but I want a real Wildcats hat, they are my team.” So we drove to El Con mall.

I know exactly why the Southwest Authors Luncheon was great. Because it was an academy awards lunch. We, who write passionately diligently every day, and meet nothing but rejection when we send our work to publishers, awarded ourselves, we gave ourselves a banquet. Waiters came around and refilled our coffee cups. Iced tea with lemon was served to us. The most delicious chocolate cake I ever saw was set up on the dessert tray. We got to be convivial at our table. And hear from our fellows at the microphone.

This is a miraculous and blessed thing....



"Joan thinking" by HaikuHelen
"I am going to the Southwest Authors buffet lunch at the Plaza Hotel today"

Sunday morning 8/21/05

I had not gone back to my writing for 12 years, the whole time I lived in Tucson, till Sophia took me to the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble this past April and I went back to my writing the next day. Usually by end of month I have fallen into old habits, but each time I show up at the meeting, the next morning I am back at my machine, giving writing serious whirl.

There may not be an apparent reason why showing up at Barnes and Noble at 7 pm on 3rd Wednesday of every month to listen to Steve tell us how to get published, is what got Anne back to her writing, and is what keeps Anne at it, but that is how it worked out for me.

So that is why I am not going to predict what going to the 20 dollar buffet Authors luncheon at Plaza Hotel today will bring into my life. I do not know. All I know is I am going. Steve says this is how we network and we have to network. The whole concept of networking baffles me. "What does networking mean?" I asked at the meeting before this one. "Meeting people" Steve said. I'm fine with meeting people, I like to meet people.

My own experience tho is things which help me come from unexpected people in unexpected ways. It is because Sally talked to me in pool about the books she read all the time, and then would lend me the books. And when Sue arrived in Tucson she joined the conversation. So I lent her the books Sally had lent me. And when I xeroxed the story about swimming in the Adirondacks as a kid for my mom, a story I had written back in NYC, I made two extra copies for Sue and Sally. That wasn't the story Sue fell passionately in love with, it was the other one, and she said 10 times "you have to go back to your writing Anne, I want more stuff to read."

And Sophia overheard it and told me about the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble, and day after that I was back at my writing. It is unexpected in various ways cause Sally whose whole life is reading books and loving them so much, and because of her passion for reading I made the story for her, Sue was just an afterthought. And Sally did not get my writing at all, she was tremendously disappointed when she read it.

It is the oddest experience I ever had to be in the midst of that 3 way conversation where Sally said to Sue "her writing is a big nothing" and Sue said "no it's not, it is genre writing, genre writing is for a small limited audience who likes that kind of writing."

I didn't care what Sue said to Sally about it because she had lent my stories to her friends. Whereas Sally was overjoyed the clutter was out of the house when I said "you can return it to me after you read it, you don't have to be stuck with it in the house."

Sophia wasn't even in any of these conversations so how she learned I was a writer and got the idea to invite me to the Barnes and Noble writers meeting on how to get published I don't know. But that is what happened and is how I got back into writing.

Hahaha I guess it all came from networking at the swimming pool.

Steve’s Great Writers Meeting Last Night

Tucson by Felix Pasilis
Steve’s Great Writers Meeting Last Night
(A breath of spring)
March, 17, 2006

Last night was the writers meeting at Barnes and Noble on how to get published. There hasn’t been one since October. There was supposed to be one last month, and I showed up, but it turned out to be false alarm, no one showed up but me.

This time Steve, the leader, was already there when I arrived and so were two other women. By the time the meeting started there were two more women and one man, and when I looked up there was Sophia.

And by the time we finished introducing ourselves, saying our name and what we write, there was actually a whole crowd of people, mostly men, who had brought up chairs and were sitting behind Steve.

By then Steve had launched into his spiel, so we never got to hear their names and what they write, which is too bad. I was sitting next to Steve at the table and when he took a breath in his spiel I told him there were so many sitting behind him. It was my hint he might want to ask them to introduce themselves too. But instead he said “I am surrounded” and went back to his spiel.

They all left before the meeting broke up so I never got to meet them or hear anything about them, which is too bad since I like hearing what people write.

The woman next to me writes short stories, but none of them are related to each other. When Steve suggested she turn them into a novel, “a novel is just a whole bunch of stories” Steve said, she said “I don’t know how to do it, because they are not related to each other in any way.” I think her name is Ellie. I liked her.

Across from Ellie was Betsy. Betsy said she had been writing a memoir but then a friend of hers committed suicide because he was scared to death. She said it began as a family fight over money and what scared him to death turned out to be a hoax but he didn’t know that. By that time he was no longer in the world. Betsy said she had been a drug counselor and also addicted to drugs herself and her memoir had been about her experiences as a drug counselor, but now she was writing this book instead.

Her big concern is that because it is about someone else’s life not hers, about getting the details right. She said instead of calling it “a true story” she is now going to call it “based on a true story” or “inspired by” then she doesn’t have to worry about being perfectly accurate. Also she said she is so one-sided about it, she is on his side, that she offered a famous author to help her write it, so it would take in both sides. I don’t know if she has heard back from the famous author.

An attractive woman had quizzed Steve before she introduced herself. “Let’s hear about you” she said, “what have you published? Have you been published by a real place or just vanity press?”

Steve said the book he has had published is about his own flying experiences and it was published by a subdivision of Random House.

“O” she said, “I got the impression from the flier you were just published by a vanity press.” She said she has not started to write yet, but she wants to.

The woman next to her said she is a poet and also an artist and a few other things. She has those dismal looks of a poet in a comic book. Thin, bedraggled, long hair which did not look attractive, and an unhappy mien. She was not a walking advertisement for her poetry. She looked like someone who could be cast in a play as an unhappy poet writing unhappy poetry. She is definitely someone who needs to spruce herself up a bit, put her hair up, put on a little lipstick, smile, and wear a pretty dress. And a little jewelry to bring herself some sparkle.

Sophia is a beautician and of course she looked beautiful as always. When Steve talked about the new book he is writing about a menage-a-trois, he said the devastating femme fatale looks just like Sophia. Sophia perked up.

Steve really wanted to write his second book about a particular airplane he is in love with, but all his friends told him “O no not another airplane book, we want to read about people.”

So instead Steve is writing about this menage-a-trois where “the man is totally insensitive to women, sees them as just another notch on his belt,” according to Steve, and the devastating femme fatale looks just like Sophia.

Personally I think Steve should write the book about the airplane he is love with instead of about these people he doesn’t like. But Steve is finding it such an intriguing challenge to write this book, so why not.

He said he began it as a romance novel, there is huge market for romance novels. He said the audience for romance novels is girls between the age of 15 and 17, because after 17 they start to have their own experiences and prefer that to reading about the experiences of others. He was told to put in 3 explicit sex scenes, he wrote two and has to write another. He finds them very hard to write.

Between you and me, I think it would be a more interesting book if Steve wrote his experiences trying to write this book. It all just sounds so far-out to me. Here is Steve working for Hughes Aircraft, trying to write a romance novel which exactly meets the criteria of romance novels for 15 year-olds.

There was also a man at our table. He said he kept a journal when he lived in a Far Eastern country, I forget which country it was now, it is one of those names which are obscure to me, and he would like to turn the journal into a book. He looked like a nice man and I bet his experiences were interesting.

A lot of the advice Steve gave on how to get published is not very usable for me. For instance Steve said he got sick and tired of writing query letters to publishers, and he realized if you take over a wheelbarrow of money you can get someone to do all that for you. They will write the query letters, they will find you an agent, they will edit your book, etc etc. Apparently there are a lot of people in Tucson who will do everything for you to get published if you just bring over a wheelbarrow of money.

Altho who knows, maybe I will win the lottery, and I can do what Steve is doing. Take over the book I wrote back in NYC and wheelbarrow of money, and dump it all in someone else’s lap, for a small fortune they will do it all for me.

Steve did say something which really made me perk up tho. He said the Southwest Authors Society has a workshop for two days once a year, where agents arrive from all over the country and critique your work. I don’t know how much it costs, all of Steve’s suggestions involve money.

He said he watched thru the door while his friend DR was having her work critiqued by the agent. He said “DR had her head in her hands the whole time so I thought it was bad news” but instead the agent took both of DR’s books, he bought them on the spot.

This meant a lot to me, because at my second meeting at Barnes and Noble Steve was absent, and he had sent DR to fill in for him. She told us how she got her first book published but how she cannot get her two new books published for love or money. Each time she sends them out they come right back.

She said “one just came back this morning” but she has to buck up and send it right back out again, but it is wearing her down.

I totally identified with her experience of how it is wearing her down. I had been in that boat and I had given up. I had decided it was all futile. But here a year later, Steve reports that by going to the Southwest Authors workshop a literary agent bought both her books. I would gladly save my pennies for the $250 for the workshop if I thought it would work out that way for me too.

In fact I would be willing to complete a second manuscript by the time the next workshop rolls around in September. Why can’t lightning strike twice, for DR and for Anne.

Steve also said small presses have come into their own during the past recent years. This is news to me. All my experience with trying to get published comes from my years living in NYC. 14 years have now gone by and I am beginning to understand huge changes have taken place in publishing world.

What I learned from my experience back then no longer applies, there have been developments. Steve made it very clear big publishing houses don’t want books, except for how-to books, or mysteries, or romance, but small presses do want books.

A man who was just traveling thru Tucson, he had arrived to help his mom, she is having operation, he travels around in his RV and has just come back from fishing in Mexico, said “Anne, there are small presses in Tucson, why don’t you just go down there and talk to the people.”

He also said “the key thing is just to have something out there published in any way, after that you can talk to people because you have something published.”

He said “even if you publish it yourself, it makes no difference, at least it is out there.”

He also told me that my manuscript from New York City which I had put on the big floppy discs which everyone used back then, I don’t have to retype for smaller disc, there is a place in Tucson which transfers the disc for you. This was an answer to a prayer. As for the whole past year I was wondering how I was going to force myself to face retyping all those New York City stories again. I don’t know who that man is, I don’t remember his name, but he was an angel who showed up at our writers meeting in Barnes and Noble last night, who had a lot of solutions for me.

When the meeting was over the woman next to me, the one who is also a short story writer, said “would it embarrass you Steve if we applauded.”

We all did. It was a great meeting.

And she said “O Steve you are blushing.”

Teaching Sophia email and remembering Alfredo Leonardi

Tucson painting by Felix Pasilis

Friday May 20 2005 Tucson AZ

I had a great time helping Sophia yesterday. We had fun. She picked me up exactly on time and the ride there was enjoyable and fast. Her sweet dog was there to greet us. I sat down in chair in computer room, and Sophia brought in from the car the plastic bag containing the items she had just bought herself at Value Village that morning.

First she tried on the jacket, it was champagne silk and fitted her perfectly. Either it was brand new or had just been dry cleaned, it was exquisite. It was 3 dollars but today is half price day. “$1.50!” she exclaimed with huge glee.

The blue cotton blouse was also lovely. It was the shade of blue of the sky and a very nice cotton. Like what you'd wear on a yacht. This had been two dollars but at half price was one dollar. Sophia was ecstatic about the blouse and the price.

The two white tops were lovely too. One was simple but elegant white cotton pullover sweater. The other was elegant white sweatshirt for walking Seema on winter mornings when it is cold. “50 cents each” Sophia announced with joy. “I will take you to Value Village” she said. “I don't have very much money to live on” Sophia said, “I like Value Village.”

We had talked about money in the car on way over. She said she appreciated me helping her because she doesn't have the $35 or $40 to pay someone to do what I do. When we sat down at the computer Sophia said she has a perfect life but she doesn't have enough money, all she wants is more money.

“Me too” I said, “I want more money. I am playing the lottery.”

Sophia got very excited. “It is 17 million now, I will buy 5 tickets.”

I said “I buy 4 tickets each week.”

She said “if either of us wins let's split it, half for you half for me.”

And I said “Great! Sophia, we double our chances.”

This time Sophia was in charge of the whole lesson which went so well, she knew exactly what she wanted. First we went to email and she said “I will write an email, I will write to Bal.”

This is the guy she is in love with. She remembered perfectly how to do it. She got out her pad and paper and wrote “I was happy to hear your voice this morning, it brought me big joy, I would love to see you now.” Something along these lines, more mushy. It was a love letter. “Love, Sophia.”

After Bal she did not know who to write to. First she said “I will write to Mark,” that is her son, then she changed her mind. Then she said “I know who I will write to” and she looked all over the kitchen for the address and could not find it.

We tried spell-check on her letter to Bal so she could learn spell-check. I was totally shocked at AOL spell-check. This letter only had 18 words in it. But they picked up every time she had left two spaces between a word and also there were a lot of punctuation errors. The only spelling they picked up was the spelling of his name and her name, which of course she spelled right.

So then Sophia decided I should teach her internet. She had used the word internet interchangeably before for everything, which had thrown me off. She used the word internet when she meant computer. “Teach me internet” she had originally said, when she meant teach me the computer. Then “teach me internet” she said when she meant email. But I think this time she actually meant internet.

I couldn't figure out on the AOL browser how to get into internet, so I just had her type google on top of the page we were in, and google showed up. So then I knew my way around. I said “ok Sophia let's pretend we wanted to find out about the Racquet Club.” The Racquet Club is the club Sophia and I both belong to and where we met.

“You type in 'Tucson Racquet Club' and we will see it.” Neither of us knew how to spell racquet. Sophia wrote it down on her pad, and I said “I think there is a 'c' in there, let's try it.”

In the course of doing this Sophia learned how to go forward to next page and back to previous page. We found Racquet Club and she read off all about our club.

Then I said “let's look up the guy I was friends with before I met Bill, he was Italian from Rome who was a film director, if we can find his email on google I can write an email to him asking if he will read your screenplay.”

Sophia was totally into this and so was I. So I wrote down his name on her pad for her to type in, Alfredo Leonardi, and we googled it. There seemed to be a lot of movies directed by Alfredo Leonardi and starring Marco Leonardi, who I figured was the little boy, his son, when his wife came at the end of his visit to NYC and they went back to Rome together. Finally one of the entries was for a film collective in SoHo in Manhattan which lists Alfred Leonardo movies to buy and the film collective had an email.

So I said “OK finally an email address, I will write to them and ask them to forward it to Alfredo Leonardo.” “Great” Sophia said. So she got up and I sat down in her computer chair. And I composed my email outloud as I was writing it. At the top I wrote “will you kindly forward this email to Alfredo Leonardi since we were old friends.”

Then I wrote, “Dear Alfredo, do you remember me” and I wrote my maiden name. And I said how I had stayed in the same apartment in the East Village in Manhattan where he had visited me for very long time till I moved to Tucson Arizona. That I met my husband a year after he returned to Rome. That I remembered the nice times we had, going to the beach together, and when I jumped out of the canoe.

I said how my friend Sophia wrote a screenplay and is he willing to read it. Would he send it to another director if it is not for him. And I gave my own email address cause I said I am on Sophia's computer. And would he write back and say hi to me because it would be fun for us to say hi again. And I sent my love to his wife and son.

Both Sophia and I were delighted with my email. I changed the font to make it prettier and then I did spell-check which picked up one mistake. I had said “I am no longer wild but I am not conventional.” And I had put two “i's” in wild. So spell-check corrected that. I showed Sophia how spell-check takes out the misspelled word and replaces it with the rightly spelled word, she was impressed.

We were both satisfied with my letter. “I hope the gallery sends it to him” Sophia said. “I hope so too” I said. And Sophia was lost in awe at what internet could do. She saw with her own two eyes here was someone I knew in the '60s and because of internet I was able to write an email to him. I even think we might have found his own real email if Sophia had had the patience to press all the different entries for him. But this was a start, even if the email doesn't get to him, Sophia got an idea of what internet can do, which was the point of the lesson.

And of course it was tremendous fun for me to be writing to my old friend Alfredo Leonardi. We had been best friends, I have total warmth for him, and I never would have emailed him except for Sophia wanting someone in the film industry to read her screenplay.

I am curious if Alfredo will write back. I have never kept track of the boys who walked in and out of my life before I met Bill. At the time of course I was involved with the boys I had crushes on, and the boys who were just my best friends I didn't think so much about. But now I don't remember so well the boys I had crushes on and I remember perfectly the ones who were just my best friends, because those are the ones I shared my life with.

Alfredo and I hit it off right from the start because we were so relaxed with each other. He wasn't at all what I expected when Anna from Rome, who I had met the week before in the laundromat and who invited me to a party at her apartment that evening, said she had given my phone number to her friend Alfredo, who was film director from Rome.

This was the time of Marcello Mastroianni, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc. I thought I was being fixed up on a blind date with Marcello Mastroianni. I guess he must have met me at school where I taught and then we walked over to a luncheonette nearby for our date. And he was not one bit like an Italian movie star. He was very diminutive to start off, and he strikes me now as looking English somehow with his rolled-up black umbrella as he waited for me. I guess he wore dapper clothes too.

But since he didn't look like a movie star and I was not attracted to him I relaxed instantly. And for some odd reason that I can't explain we totally hit it off in the luncheonette on Grand Street. It was an orthodox Jewish neighborhood, the neighborhood was like my Jewish neighborhood back in Queens except they were all orthodox. I guess it was a good setting for me to relax in.

And all I can say is from that moment till he left for Rome, or to be more exact when his wife and little boy arrived at the end of his NYC sojourn, Alfredo and I were inseparable.

What I did was take Alfredo with me to everything I did in my life, except go to work. He couldn't come to women's liberation meetings with me because those were all women, but I took him to everything else, and I guess we had our meals together in the restaurant on Avenue A too.

When I went to the beach on long Island on weekends with Helen and my girlfriends I took Alfredo. His bathing suit totally embarrassed me. He wore a teeny weenie white bikini men’s bathing suit. I didn't say a word but Alfredo looked around Jones Beach and said “I see I am the only one wearing a bathing suit like this.” “Yes!” I said pointedly.

When Marilyn called up me and Helen to invite us to the week-end conference for socialist Jews at a bungalow colony in the Catskills, I invited Alfredo. I have no idea what Marilyn's group was all about. We went to the meetings and there were big fights. But I had only wanted to spend a weekend in the country. That is when Helen and me and Alfredo paddled in the canoe and smoked pot and I got stoned, took off my clothes, and swam naked to shore.

I alluded to this in the email I wrote him from Sophia's computer yesterday, since he had told me next morning it had made a big impression on him. I thought what made a big impression on him was my adventurous act of jumping out of canoe and swimming to shore. But when he detailed the big impression, it wasn't about what I had done, it was about me naked. Because we were just best friends and not boyfriend and girlfriend, I had not let him finish telling me how much he had enjoyed that.

But when I was writing a “remember-me” email all those years later, I figured that would reawaken his memory if he forgot me.

The last time I saw Alfredo was at Lynn's party. His wife and little son were there, and his wife was blond and pretty and wore wrap-around skirt and was very interested in women's liberation. She was a very nice girl. Alfredo and I really were two ships which pass in the night. It was easy come, easy go. He waltzed into my life so easily, he waltzed out of it so easily. It never occurred to me to try to hold on to the friendship.

In fact I never gave him a thought after he left till I was writing a story about my days with Helen in women's liberation, and I remembered how Alfredo, me, and Helen had gone to that conference at the bungalow colony, and that brought back my time with Alfredo to my mind.

And I remembered him again when Sophia said she is looking for someone in the film industry. And I thought I know an Italian film director....