Disaster is a great attraction, its finality pumps energy into the system. Knowing it is coming requires focus, absolute attention. Imagine you were in control on the bridge of the Titanic. The great boat can only respond slowly. Think of the boat as your body. Since the mind can move more quickly, notice where your eyes are focusing . . are they above the horizon looking up, or are they below, looking down, inside your thoughts, in the past? Are you looking at walls? By all means, get out of enclosures! Seek the sunlight. Go outside, see points at a distance. Best of all, see the sky. Then breathe. Breathe again. Don’t go inward. Keep breathing until an awareness of the vast sky, earth, universe hits you. That’s step one.

Step Two

Before you grab a familiar drug to mask the cause and thereby lose a stunning opportunity to achieve power, realize that all power is inside, and that you have the power to resolve situations. This is the moment you want to power yourself up. Forgive yourself if you missed it in the past. Next time you’ll be prepared and know that a breakthrough requires the muscle of prior reasoning and solid preparation.

[Blog to the New York Times, 4/16/08] “When I needed my ‘libido’ and I mean for assertiveness, not for sex—when I needed to be driven by a necessary anxiety just to deal with things, I had little to draw upon. Problems piled up and that made me depressed.”

The Solution – W r i t e

Sit down and write, thinking is not enough, you’ll be too easily distracted. Writing makes thinking, when focused, solid. It’s like a grocery list, even if you lose it, you’ll bring home more than 90% of what you intended. The List: Write ten or more things of what you are grateful for at this particular moment in your life, followed by a line explaining the benefit that resulted for you. That’s it, nothing more. Simple. Do it.

The result will be that, ideas will form. The seeds of your creative thinking will be watered, releasing possibility, and far better, generating action. Your mighty ship is moving toward the positive. You are where you belong - in the flow, all from an act of appreciation, written words of gratitude from and to yourself. Simple. Do it. It works.

It’s odd to go on line and see websites claiming to have nude pictures of Julie Newmar. Let me comment: I have never posed nude. I always had something on . . . shoes, stockings, whatever. Or rather, I don’t recall posing nude because I didn’t want to be in men’s magazines. After all, I was a serious artist, a dancer, singer. Nevertheless, there it was, a mostly nude, pre-blonde picture of me:


There were many pictures taken by various photographers assigned by publicists of my Broadway shows, some appearing on page 5 of the New York Post—producers have to make money. I remember self-consciously thinking some future day I might want to see what I looked like, unattired. The concept, a kind of going-to-war Kissinger duplicity, stayed in my head. The disappearing clothing was the stratagem of certain resourceful photographers like Bert Stern, Richard Avedon (Nureyev in the altogether, Avedon The Sixties.) But that’s another story, which might go into a book I’m writing. It just doesn’t seem so shocking nowadays. Does everyone agree?

Then I noticed five or six spots on the photograph. I asked Pablo Milberg of www.StormFlower.com, who designed my two new websites, to remove these tiddly offenses with PhotoShop, a fascinating process. Seen through magnification are tiny pixels. Drag a light spot over the dark spot and “poof”, it’s gone. Result: a clean picture.

So now there’s a more acceptable but still nearly nude picture of Julie Newmar. What to do? Actually, I had not seen this photograph by Peter Basch, a New York celebrity glamour photographer, before. As a brunette, what notoriety I had achieved thus far, other than being one of the brides in “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” was as “Stupefyin’ Jones” in the musical “Li’l Abner”. It seems there was a cussed character by the name of Available Jones who had a “secret weapon”—me—hiding in a portable shower that he would pull on stage, and for a fee, good old hard cash, announce: “She . . . was guaranteed to stop any red-blooded American male in his tracks.”

All these shenanigans were a fistful of fun at the St. James theatre on 44th Street, and not a word did I speak. That was in my early twenties. Then my brother John from Harvard introduced me to politics, The Chicago Seven, Lenny Bruce, and all that noise. I was thrilled to hear anyone like Mort Sahl, Izzy Stone, and Lenny . . . Oh, Lenny! I physically fell off my seat laughing so hard at what felt like the most explosive truths ever spoken during those repressed early days of the war in Viet Nam. Another time, I remember my brother and me jumping up and down on the bed which I kept in the middle of the floor at my Los Angeles duplex on Harper, when Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek a new term as President. All the while our parents were sitting in numbed silence off to the side. How many times have you screamed at the TV when some prevaricating politician lied for the sake of protecting his fellow conspirators, those devious buzzards, as they in turn were scamming the public with their most up-to-date war games.

Noam Chomsky, Ron Paul, Jimmy Breslin are my heroes today. They say it like it is. They are brave men. These are the intellectuals, these are the passionate men. They arouse me. I salute them.

It’s the last day of March. For John and me, it is the first Sunday spending our day in the garden. I open my eyes and it’s “Oh, my God” . . . the sight of the flowers, colors composition. The warmth of the sun through my skin. I realize my son John, who has Down Syndrome and several other handicaps, does not suffer. He doesn’t suffer not hearing Beethoven or rapping with his iPod. He is filled to his capacity in the life he has. No one should pity him, nor try to create worlds he doesn’t have. I am delightfully happy in his presence and he in mine. I, in turn, am very tolerant of all the levels of human development this world has to offer. There is plenty of kinship for me to feel comfortable with and plenty of the other sort of people who heartily disagree with my thinking but who give me a vast choice of new ideas to pursue. Life couldn’t be better as well as the speed with which it is all happening. I feel quite in tune with this life.

“I knew I was going to meet you,” I said to this handsome, tall dark man, who immediately knew me for what I was. “The dangerous sort” was what I wanted, I had told a friend, whose gentleman friend I had at the time rejected. It definitely was magic at first sight. The language of love, lust, caution. I had put on my favorite skirt and sweater, anticipation for me was high that day. I was going to say “Yes” to everything.

He was standing across the room in the office of my wellness doctor, Hans Gruenn, disappointed that he could not receive a vitamin C shot for his cold. He had just come off a big case, “I win them all,” he offered. His success had been followed by a natural let- down, a sadder sick-like phase. “Does it always happen?” he wanted to know. “Yes,” I replied, describing my lonely after performance depressions, sitting on a stool all alone in the kitchen, eating left-overs to the vapid noise from a TV.

We offered a lot of information to each other. I liked everything he said, his manner, the way he revealed himself; his amazing memory for details. The Catholic boy had become a spiritually awakened man who grasped the higher, the broader concept of life while standing on his feet doing what he does best, defending I. P. cases, Intellectual Property. He had set precedents, written books, briefs, lectured. In the Refac case . . .

I looked him up on the internet. There were hundreds of sites on his accomplishments, a degree in electrical engineering, a BA graduate at Rutgers in New Jersey, 1978. That would make him 41—42 years old. We could be friends!

He was so stunning, easy to adore. He drove a black Porsche, what else? Girls love fast cars, it takes the breath away. He bragged, I notice the best men can’t help but brag, then they’ll pull themselves up short, fearing familial admonition. “Forget good manners . . . let your ego and all the rest rip. . . I can handle it, I love it, tell me more.” This idea was received well by him. Clever, intelligent men need to roar. I was his stadium of one, if not an hundred-fold approval for this male ego.

We went to John O’Groat’s for breakfast. I was walking on air, such is the consummate pleasure of being with a gorgeous man. Oh, pleasure indeed. I felt his arm, as an indurate resistance to my grasp, it left me giddy. “This is my new friend,” I said to Paul, the owner, and breezily took a seat.

There are always weaknesses and tragedies that bring people together, but for now the appreciation we all long to give and take is at it’s tumescent best. It’s the boost that life needs every now and then to stay the course, to our eventuality.

How had I known we would meet? Both of us being intuitive and in part psychic, the message came to me earlier that morning, standing in the bathroom in bra and panties, admiring my slim waist and round hips, briefly caught in the mirror. I’d noticed this before, but never did I acclaim out loud, “You are so beautiful!” This was different, I looked back again and remarked, “A man should be saying this to you, Julie.” It had been a long arduous winter.

What if the greatest talent you’ve had all your life no longer works for you? Let’s say you were a pitcher or a dancer like me, could you trade it in for a new one? I’m working on that again by becoming my own teacher, my own guide. It’s a time of transition, and these are very big challenges. I had tried to mesmerize myself away from the loss, deconstruct my habit of going to others for solutions. The way I turned things around was to write my way out of chaos and uncertainty. I learned to use the pen to re-motivate myself, find the wealth within, the untapped knowledge. Isn’t that why meditation is so beneficial, you have to listen inwards, not outwards? The old adage is true, the gold fields are in our backyard, and we don’t have to compete with someone else for them. All you have to do is listen, within.

Try this: sit down with a pencil and paper, take five to ten slow deep breaths, then ask the question you most want answered. Next, listen to the thoughts that come back. Let your mind become liquid, listen and let the pencil in your hand write what you hear. There will be solutions by the barrel. It is much easier than you think. Take it easy, don’t effort. Doubt destroys, so just allow. Be there with yourself. A gentle focus, if you please.

The Romanian gymnast Nadia Comaneci was asked what it was like when she got that perfect 10 at the Olympics. On recall, she said it wasn’t a big deal. “I was doing it every day”, for the joy of it. It’s not force, it’s focus.

To unlock your secret talents, focus on what you want. Let the answers flow out of your hand, the source of this information is infinite, and the solutions will astound you. These are inspirational treasure hunts that will, each day, double and double again the pleasure you have in life.