It all started when I woke up one day last fall and couldn’t walk.

To cut to the chase: after 30 some odd years of eating health food and taking a million vitamins and doing the best possible exercise 6 days a week (yoga, pilates, the gym, swimming), it still turned out that I didn’t have any cartilage left in my hips. It didn’t seem possible.  I owned and used a goddam juicer!  I took glucosamine/chondroitin and MSM and calcium supplements every day. In fact I had so many vitamin bottles that there was almost no room on my kitchen counter for cooking.  I didn’t eat sugar. I was a vegetarian. I went to yoga and did “hip openers”. I meditated. Why  did I eat all those horrible health food candy bars if not to keep stuff like this from happening?

I felt a little bit like a Buddhist monk who had gotten sick from chanting OM.

Turned out I had to get hip implants.

So, the way this played out in real life was that I spent most of January and February not moving much. On the bright side…well, there really wasn’t a bright side to not being able to walk except maybe that sitting around in bed was no longer connected to an accusation of being lazy. Here is an entry I made in my diary from that period.

But then something weird and kind of magical happened. While I was waiting to have my new robot parts installed, I had a big revelation about writing.

Writing is what I have done for a living for the last 35 years. And when I say that the process was not the least bit enjoyable, it is only because I would struggle to find words strong enough to describe how agonizing it had become and how much I had learned to hate it.

Just to give you a tiny bit of my history: Original Recipe Merrill started out with a degree in art. I was a painter. But then,  I reinvented myself in my twenties as Merrill2.0. I switched from painting to writing because it was a better source of income. 

Still I used to get a real buzz from the act of painting that I never got from the act of writing. And I now believe it has to do with basic brain function.

While I was bed ridden I started reading a lot about the 2 hemispheres of the brain. If you’re not familiar with this stuff: the left brain is the hemisphere that handles all of life’s homework: the organizing, the structuring of patterns, the math. Its not much fun over there but its what we use to pay bills and make to-do lists .  We get things done in an organized fashion because of the way our left brain works. And of all the creative arts, the only one that is centered in the left brain is writing.

The right brain is where all the fun stuff like music and painting takes place. The right brain is intuitive and provides us with a kind of global interactive awareness of our surroundings.  Its where the floaty dreamy drifty enjoyable nirvana stuff lives. When I used to paint, I would marvel at how I could sit down to paint, then get up and not know where the last 5 hours went.

When I wrote,  however, I would marvel at how I sat down, wrote one painful sentence, then wasted 40 minutes on some stupid slide show I didn’t even want to look at on Huffingtonpost about 8 surprising diet foods that won’t help you lose weight. Then 5 hours of baby animal videos later, in order to get myself to start writing again I’d have to envision myself wrestling me back in to a chair, then punching myself repeatedly in the face until I gave in and wrote at least one more sentence.  After which I’d declare myself victorious! “A job well done!” I’d cheer, patting myself on the back as I would pour myself a drink and time permitting, another one. And then, if all went well, I’d be too drunk to write. So off to bed!

But back to my big visionary discovery about how to write:

In January, while I waited for my February 21 surgery date, my immobility caused all my daily rituals  to change. I used to get up at 6 AM and go out to the driveway and get the NY Times. (Yes,yes…I know I am the last person alive who still gets the paper delivered. And I know it’s a ridiculous  waste of money. But I’m pretty sure  that I alone am what is keeping the NY Times from bankrupcy.  And I  can’t really handle bearing the sole responsibility for the collapse the NYTimes.) 

Anyway, the point is that I could no longer walk to my driveway.  It felt like 5 miles away. But because I was still waking up at 6AM I needed some way to fill my morning.  So one day, out of desperation, I decided to try and write.

I had an idea for a play but whenever I sat down to write it during the afternoon, the Nazi voices of my left brain wouldn’t let me. They berated me, explaining at length that the premise I’d picked was too problematic and that I didn’t know my characters well enough. Obviously I needed to do more research, then rethink the whole thing from top to bottom.  Even my imaginary ritual of punching myself in the face to make myself start writing couldn’t get the ball rolling.

But on this particular morning, my inability to walk caused me to try to write before I was even awake.  And to my complete surprise, I effortlessly wrote 15 pages. The same thing happened when I tried it the next day. And the day after that.. And the day after that. 

And so it came to pass that in the six weeks before my surgery, I wrote a rough first draft of my play.

That is how I learned something amazing that I never knew before: first thing in the morning, when I have that sleepy brain that I used to think was useless… while my head still feels like it is full of ground fog and wrapped in flannel and gauze…before the hive of sleep bees buzzing around me has dispersed… THAT is the best brain to use for writing!

Writing is somehow much more easily accessible to me when I am still half asleep because the Gestapo members in my left brain are not able to begin dominating til later in the day.This discovery so amazed me that I thought I should share it, in case it helps anyone else with this problem. I also think its important to hand write the first draft, with a pen or pencil.  I think the act of writing by hand seems to connect you to right brain activity. (Re-writing on a computer might left brain…I say as tho I know what I am talking about.) And while we’re on the topic: stay off the computer until you’ve decided you’re done writing. It completely wrecks everything if you start communicating with other people or checking a lot of sites. It just does.

On February 21^st I had both hips replaced.  By March 21^st I was walking AND writing painlessly every day. I was so thrilled to welcome back two things I really feared I might never enjoy again that I see this as the beginning of the All New Merrill4G.

All New Merrill 4G sees Merrill 2.0 as a girl who had a stick up her butt. I still eat healthy, but Merrill 4G has cut way back on the vitamins. I’ve also decided that cake, cookies and candy are an  acceptable part of a smart health food regime. One day when I was in the hospital, I had chocolate cake for dinner.  Well, what was I supposed to have? More of that green juice that put me in there?

But most magical of all, Merrill 4G actually likes getting up in the morning and writing with ease for 3 or 4 hours every day. This new method always works… as long as my head is still half asleep. Merrill 4G understands that the clear-minded over-caffeinated head is better used for paying bills and running errands or working out at the gym. Plus, by getting my writing done in the  morning, if there’s any time left over in the evening  and I want to get back into my right brain, I can paint.

So far the NEW new me is having a lot more fun than all the versions of the old me combined. That breathtaking magic tricks like walking and writing came out of being bedridden is an act of the supernatural that truly blows me away.

Walking, writing and cookies: the cornerstones of Merrill 4G.

PS: Dr. Eric Johnson at UCLA is a great orthopedic surgeon. If you have to get hip surgery, may I humbly recommend you look in to the type called ‘anterior.’

PS: For those who are interested, I am now on Twitter.  @Merrillmarkoe

.

Masterful as always, this year’s display forms an understated but singularly festive curvilinear line on the recently trimmed hedge that he uses as his holiday canvas :modern yet classic, like the man himself. For 2012 Mr. Dylan is offering us a more pointed arc than in previous years, at a slightly higher pitch and elevation, the better to showcase the unique way he is able to combine the abstract and the traditional. But once again, after a few lilting uplifting loops of color, we see the double downward dip of lights that some call”Dylan’s noose”.a curious and unsettling divertissement that is open to interpretation like so much of his work.

Not as visible this year is the delightful ‘winter wonderland’ section. Below we revisit a taste of this work from 2011. Note how he has given us a tableau that is somehow playful while at the same time a study of the stark realities of Christmas.

Aren’t we all a little sick of being a country that operates like a big dysfunctional family, so perennially disgusted by each other that we dread holiday gatherings? Isn’t everyone fed up with living in our Two-Conspiracy-Theory System, wherein the minority party spends four years trying to prove how the majority party is dismantling the Constitution? Isn’t there some way for us to live in harmony with those whom we accuse of hastening the apocalypse?

I’m talking to you, senators and congressmen who govern by tantrum…as well as to assorted friends, Romans, countrymen and teenagers who are too busy texting. It’s important to remember that most of the time, we’re all in this together (though I can easily be talked into excluding those who refuse to look up from their smartphones).

In the name of finding more civil, adult ways to communicate, allow me to offer some of my time-tested methods for defusing touchy postelection situations.

First, before any potentially explosive get-together, be sure to do lots of physical exercise. Studies have found that “tired” looks almost exactly like “loving serenity.”

Obviously, it also makes sense to call a moratorium on all partisan gloating. Toward this end, remember that silence can be just as infuriating as name-calling. So no more rocking back and forth while whistling and making that face with the raised eyebrows and the faint smile that says, “Don’t look at me. I didn’t say a damn thing!”

At the same time, be sure not to take explosions of political rage personally. Instead try to identify which childhood trauma may be at the root of these outbursts. Then hug that person gently and whisper, “I hear that you are angry. I hope you know that I’m here for you if you want to cry.” Then, as you dry their tears, take out your cellphone and share a few of your favorite animal videos. Don’t forget the one with the cat that is a door stopper enthusiast. Hey! Where has all that seething hatred disappeared to now?

Or here’s an idea that always works: Have a pity party. Everyone is always saying, “Don’t have a pity party,” but that’s because most people don’t know how to throw a good one. The key is to invite a large number of vain people who are upset about thinning hair, gaining weight or developing nasolabial folds. No matter what their political inclinations, anyone exposed to this crowd for just a few minutes will be unable to focus on anything but an escape plan.

If none of the above works, remember that the best counterattack is an unexpected response. When your uncle says, “People don’t want a democracy. They want a baby sitter!” pause for a minute, then say, “I can’t figure out who you remind me of. Who’s that blond actor in his 30s who was in that cop-buddy movie? Or was it a reluctant superhero? Ryan someone? Or Brendan?” This will launch you into a soothing whirlpool of undifferentiated celebrities and their interchangeable movies, which can last as long as necessary.

In the end, the key to getting along is finding the things on which everyone can agree, thereby redirecting free-floating anger toward a common enemy. So begin to collect the names of obnoxious drunks, conspiracy theorists and deluded people hoping to break into show business. If they aren’t available to attend your gathering, the same result can be achieved by serving chicken nuggets and tuning a prominently placed television to some grotesque reality show…maybe the one where cretins ruin the lives of perfectly nice catfish. A rousing discussion of worthless pop-culture egomaniacs and pink slime is just the thing to show political antagonists how much common ground they share.

Which is why I would like to propose that in 2016 we do things a little differently. Clearly, we now live in an era where our elections, like our winter holidays, go on for about a year. So how about if next cycle we soften things up by adding Election Trees, red, white and blue lights, and gift giving? This would not only stimulate the economy but also create new, more traditional avenues for releasing partisan anger. After all, there’s nothing like a holiday celebration for bringing Americans together while also offering an outlet for their pent-up rage.

Ms. Markoe is an Emmy Award-winning television writer. Her latest book is “Cool, Calm and Contentious.”

2. This is more or less what it looks like inside of my head when I am between projects and wondering what to do now.

3.And this is my take on a new discovery in nantoechnology that has produced a fabric so thin that soon we are all going to wear our computers.

Academically speaking, my brother was an expert in a lot of arcane subject matter I could barely comprehend. He used to joke that he knew nine languages, 3 of which had not been spoken in 2000 years.  When someone asked him if he was fluent in Greek, his answer would be the question “Modern or Ancient?” He knew both.

After he received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in Ancient Art and Archaeology, he was granted a  Fulbright Research Fellowship in Cyprus. He loved Cyprus and the people he met there who, he told me, pronounced his name Glown. We found that so amusing that for the entire rest of his life when we left each other messages, we both referred to him as Brother Glown.

As a young man he worked on a fair amount of on-site archaeology digs. He also visited and traveled with his friend Thor Heyerdahl who granted permission for Glenn to use one of his photographs of The Kon TIki for the cover of my brother’s  definitive book about ‘The Phoenicians’, the civilization that gave us our alphabet.  ‘The Phoenicians’ was originally co-published by the British Museum Press and the University of California Press. But  recently  The Folio Society in London issued the book in a leather bound edition.  My brother was very excited about that. He was a leather-bound kind of guy in a digital world. He had no problem understanding Sanskrit but repeatedly told me he was having trouble with G-mail.

For the latter part of his career, he ended up curating museum shows and writing academic research papers with titles like The Funerary Iconography of the Lotus Flower.  Here is a catalog from a show he directed on women in ancient Egypt at The Cincinnati Art Museum, where he worked as  Senior Curator of Classical and Near Eastern Art and Art of Africa and the Americas for 23 years.

Probably the crowning glory of his career was a huge show he put together with his colleague Craig Morris from The Museum of Natural History in NYC entitled ‘The Lost City of Petra.’  Once referred to in a poem as “a rose-red city half as old as time,” the city of Petra is famous for its elaborate temples carved in sheer rock walls. You may remember it best as the haunting backdrop for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Here is a link to the book my brother wrote about the show. My brother spent ten years working on this project, traveling back and forth across the war torn middle east, visiting the site itself and getting permissions from the Royal Family of Jordan and the Jordanian government to ship various antiquities to this country. Here is a picture of my brother and Craig Morris with Queen Rania of Jordan.  My brother is the bearded white haired guy on the left.  Here’s a page about him from a website that went up about the exhibit.  That period of time stands out most for me as a time when I was worried about him constantly because he was not a guy who ever seemed to sense danger. In my mind, he was walking around with a ‘Take Me Hostage’ sign on his back. Ever since he was a little kid he had always appeared to be preoccupied by a private inner landscape of details from some other century. My parents referred to him as “an absent minded professor.” He was simply very trusting and good natured as he concentrated on his work and went about  collecting data for his exhibit,unconcerned that he was  not that far from where we had just invaded Iraq. “Merrill,” he used to shout at me when I issued cautionary edicts, “Where I am, it’s perfectly safe.” Still, when I went to bed at night, I had  visions of newspaper headlines describing how Al Qaeda had dropped a butterfly net over him and taken him prisoner.

Fortunately there was no kidnapping. Instead a great exhibit was the result.  Here’s a page about him from a website that was created for ‘Petra Lost City of Stone’.  I had never even heard of the culture of the ancient civilization of spice traders called the Nabateans, builders of the city of Petra, until my brother told me about them. During that period he sometimes called me from his research sites in Jordan.  Those were the Bush years. I assumed this meant that I was probably having my phone tapped by the U.S. government.

It was always fun to attend any exhibit of ancient relics with him because he specialized in knowing about vanished worlds that are invisible to most of us. One time, while showing Andy and me around an exhibit, he took us over to a very official looking piece of inscribed rock sitting in a case on a pedestal. “That was a shopping list from the first century.” he told us.

Anyway, he’s gone now. He was a very sweet, funny, smart man and a great father to his two sons, Carey and Noah. And he was my goofy but brilliant brother. It seems surreal that he has suddenly vanished. But as we all learn, such is the weird reality lurking right underneath the one in which we all live.

We sent an obituary in to the Cincinnati Enquirer but so far they haven’t published it. I couldn’t wait any longer. So I wrote this. Here he is when he was twenty, on a dig with others from UC Berkeley.

Goodbye dear Glenn.

The next day I walked the dogs back to that same spot. By then I had completely forgotten about the entire incident. But once  I found this thing, lying on a nearby curb, I suddenly comprehended the rest of the scenario.

Bet the artists, who no doubt performed an exagerrated recounting of my every reaction, would be surprised that I liked their work so much, I took it home and put it on display.

There are many perks to being an author. I bet J.K.Rowling would tell you that the only down side to a bookstore appearance is achy cheeks from smiling at so many well wishers. Steven King is probably tired of the hand cramps from signing so many books. But for a lesser luminary…oh, who can I use?  For the sake of a handy example, let’s just say me… things are rather different. And when I use the word ‘rather’ I mean it in the sense of the word “vastly.”

The truth is that ever since I first made an appearance at a book store where very few people showed up, even book stores where I have never been asked to appear seem to hold nerve wracking future memories. I am talking about the kind of commonly scheduled event for a newly published book in which an optimistic store manager has gone to the trouble of making an enormous sign bearing the author’s name. The sign I’m thinking of may have been big enough to have been visible from the surface of the moon.

Of course everything about being asked to speak anywhere is an honor. After all, during the writing process, every author hopes for some kind of acknowledgment and validation eventually. He or she is probably imagining groups of the kind of interesting people they would be honored to have as friends.  They are certainly not  hoping to one day drive in to a completely empty parking lot, then gingerly tip-toe thru the tumbleweed in a completely empty store,  the haunting sounds of a lone harmonica echoing in the distance, as they find their way to a carefully arranged unoccupied seating area just in front of the afore mentioned enormous personalized sign .

Now the self recriminations begin as I realize that if I had acted more aggressively, weeks before, this moment might have been averted. My other author friends all have the right combination of smarts and ego that pushes them to send out high pressure invitations to relatives and acquaintances, insisting they attend .But I am always too uncomfortable with the idea of inconveniencing busy friends in the middle of dinner so I am relying on maybe some actual fans? Good luck to me!

Usually I begin the process of adjusting to the unnerving scenario that awaits me by taking cover behind a bookcase, where I can have some privacy while I calculate the right moment to ask if its okay if I cancel. While I am trying to figure out how to make a facial expression that looks relaxed and at the same time preoccupied by more important things,  I am drowning in waves of terrible memories from junior high school about being forced to attend an after school social event, only to find myself trapped and standing around all dressed up, never getting asked to dance. The paralyzing unpleasantness that this feeling awakens is  so intense I can hardly breath as I  carefully weigh which are my best  options for an excuse that will get me sympathy: a sudden onset of the flu, a sudden death in the family, or  a sudden onset of the flu due to a death in the family (from the flu.)

But sometimes, before I can make this move and exit the premises, two middle aged women, dressed in down parkas and wearing knit caps, carrying a million paper bags, sit down in the front row.  By start time, they have been joined by a balding man in a too tight plaid shirt who looks pleased to be sitting anywhere at all, period. Is it possible they are here to see me? I suppose they could be three fans. But if that’s the case, why is no one smiling or saying hi or even looking up from their I phones when I walk in to the room?

“Have some perspective.” I start to remind myself, “Nothing awful has happened. Its not like you’re trapped under a collapsed building in an earthquake in Turkey or have been kidnapped by The Taliban in Iraq.” Though even as I’m thinking this, it is also occurring to me that both of those things would have generated a lot of great publicity for my book.

Now a story told to me by the novelist Elinor Lipman comes flooding back: about a friend of hers who, facing a 2 person audience, rose to the occasion. She bravely delivered her best reading ever , size of the audience be damned, until mid-way in  when a policeman led the whole two person audience away in hand cuffs. For a few minutes, they’d assumed they’d found the perfect place to hide out from a chase.

So I take a deep cleansing breath, knowing that others before me have survived this, and say hello to the cheery store manager who tells me how honored she is to meet me and apologizes for the small turn out. This of course makes me feel even worse. If only she had just said something like “This time of year, even Elizabeth Gilbert doesn’t draw a crowd.” But no, she simply shows me to a small podium on which is mounted a microphone so large I think I recognize it from the famous photograph of Pres. Roosevelt declaring War on Japan in his day of infamy speech. “Thank you,” I say to her,  realizing that before I have even tried to speak in to it, the mic is creating noisy feedback.  So now I must deal with stadium miking in order to speak to three people who are 14 inches away.

Anyway, obviously a new outlook for this situation seems to be called for. I will probably have to appear at a bookstore again. But next time I will be prepared with a whole new approach.

 My New Speech for the three people who come to see me at a bookstore.

“Hello! Hello! Hello!!” Yes! That’s right! A very special personal hello to each of you! You know, you’re probably going to think I’m exagerating but I swear to you: This very morning,  I said a prayer that only a hand full of special people would attend tonight. So you three are actually a literal dream come true for me!

In fact I have to confess, I am instantly so comfortable with you that I’m going to take you in to my confidence; Its really not my nature to gossip about people behind their backs. But from what I have heard, quite a few of the people who didn’t show up here tonight are dicks. I heard from a reliable source that one of them is just finishing book four of the Twilight saga. I mean, come on! Anyone who made it through 2,000 pages of that crap couldn’t keep up with people like us.

So let’s begin! Just as soon as that guy hovering by that book shelf in the back either commits to sitting down or gives up and leaves the store. I can tell he’s trying to decide if he knows who I am. Sir! Do you need me to tell you who am I? You have an I phone…go on my website and  read my resume! We’ll wait! Uh oh. You’re leaving us? There he goes! Never trust a man wearing a radio station free giveaway shirt.

Listen, before I start over again: How about if the three of us make a pact? Next person who sneaks in late, when I clear my throat, can we please all turn in unison, then break into a big hollow smile and, all at the same time say,“Welcome! We’ve been waiting for you!”. After that we’ll just  keep smiling and staring and smiling and staring for like two or three more minutes! Come on! How great would that be? I’ll videotape it and we’ll put it on You Tube! It’ll get a ton of hits. I’ll title it “Creeeeeeepy!!!”

Actually since its  just us three…does anyone mind if I  skip the reading  and…lets have a show of hands! How many of you have been hypnotized? I haven’t had any hypnosis training but the fact that you’re here on a Wednesday night at dinner time in the dead of winter tells me you have a limited choice of destinations. So if you’ll all just play along, and when I snap my fingers, we’ll all count backwards from fifty. Then somewhere around 30 , you can just drop your heads forward and close your eyes. It’ll make me feel really powerful. And then when I tell you that you’re a bantam rooster, get up and strut and make crowing noises for a few seconds.You’ll never see me again. You have my word: I’m never coming back to this city. And after the enormous hit my ego has taken this evening, I really need you to give me this moment. Then immediately afterward, I will take the  three of you out for coffee and pie and you can show me whats in all those bags.

Then I’ll go back to my hotel room and drink.

By they way, my new book is for sale here and lots of other places. Buy one and save me from having to go out and read.

Obviously we humans love our holidays. In ancient Rome they had 159 publicly funded holidays a year. Three a week!  The ancient Romans were so busy packing and unpacking decorations and lights and preparing special meals for family that they forgot to notice their empire was crumbling. Maybe we like holidays so much because we rely on them for a formal excuse for celebration. As if there weren’t a million reasons to celebrate anyway! And I can think of no better example than this  catalog I got in the mail yesterday;  a perfect reminder not to overlook the simple, mundane things in life that bring us joy. Like bras. Because a woman grows up wearing one every day from about age 11 on,  it becomes so routine, she can forget about all the merriment.

So kudos to the genius who put this catalog together. He or she had the soul and the heart to remind us how nothing is more fun than a bra!  Why, you no sooner put one on then you get so giddy, you just can’t restrain yourself from clowning! Next thing you know, you’ve made yourself a bowl of cereal so enormous, there’s nothing to do but throw it in the air!  Then you eat two popsicles at the same time and follow it up with two cannolis! Why? Because one thing about hanging out in your bra: You don’t feel self conscious at all about your belly fat. Part of the magic of a bra is the way it makes you want to sit down and eat a stack of 17 pancakes (after you examine a fork full you stole from someone else, since as far as I can tell in that photo,she hasn’t touched a single one of her seventeen yet.) Or order a bucket of chicken designed for a family of 12. Then you start spearing fruit! Yep! That’s what a great bra will do for you: energize you so much you practically turn in to a fruit ninja!  Before you know it,  you’ve got a book on your head and you’re using cup cakes for glasses!                                                           So…thank you bras…for all the years of wacky hilarity. Of all the underwear, you’re like the second funniest. After underpants.

.

PS: Perhaps you would like to buy my new book! Here: Read review.

For sale wherever fine books are sold. And other kinds of books.

Last year I did one about just the guys.

.

P.S.

I have a new book out. You can read reviews for it under BOOKS on this very website. AND you can buy it here. You should so totally buy it.