Death, Beauty
That Soft Pale Light
That Soft Pale Light
It All Started When I was Three
On November 22, 1963 the radio that was always on, was on. I asked my mother for a glass of orange juice. Her eyes catapulted into the distance, were hit by invisible trucks, filled and emptied all at once. She yelled at me to shut up. I froze. For once, I knew it wasn’t because ‘I’ had done something wrong.
Born in August heat 1960 New Jersey, there was house (white), manicured lawn (green), picket fence (weathered), separating our house from the one where the piano lady lived. In the beginning I imagined myself draped in taffeta instead of the itchy wool I was ritualistically mummified in. But my romance with frill was brief. By the time I was seven, I took to brooding on the riverbank behind the McManus’s house, where I talked to ducks, chewed wild rhubarb, and pretended I’d been raised by wolves.
It was a death Parade. Kennedy was dead. A few minutes later, Martin Luther King Jr. was dead. A few minutes after that - Bobby Kennedy crumpled to the floor. The house on the corner of Oak & Lynn raised their flag at half mast when their son was killed in Vietnam. The neighborhood raised their flags in solidarity. The annual 4th of July parade was replete with flailing batons, atonal trumpets, and awkward trombones.
Dead visionaries. Fallen soldiers. My parent’s impassive eyes. As far as I was concerned, all this talk about ‘patriotism’ was skating on thin ice while I pretended to be a fish in the Gordon’s swimming pool or locked inside my room resisting the urge to break glass.
Then one night it happened. Watching ‘The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson’, David Carradine sauntered shoeless across the floor, sat cross-legged in the chair and explained to Johnny why he didn’t have a TV set. That was it. In one swoop, ’Grasshopper’ articulated that which I’d been intuiting all along. The insistent notion that something was very wrong - had words. ‘War, Peace, Materialism, Freedom’.
I could talk genetics, neurology, nature vs nurture, the Zeitgeist of the times, the why’s and what-have-you’s of things that coalesce into liberalism, conservatism, perception, states of being, micro and macrocosms - but who needs to hear all that. I was born with Woody Guthrie in my veins. And blood is thicker than conservative logic.
Conversations with Edie
A few weeks ago, a friend arrived with an unexpected guest. Unexpected guest walks in, says ‘hello’, makes a beeline for my bookshelf, pulls out ‘Dante’s Purgatory & Paradise’ (1883), and says “OMG I have this exact copy”. Edie is 20, has experienced more trauma than any girl from West Texas deserves, has one of the most poignant minds that the ‘Doomed Generation’ (You’re welcome) has ever produced, and within twenty four hours - had christened me, ‘The Muse Behind The Madness’ - for having lived through Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s Crazy Wisdom ablutions and Jack Kerouac’s School of Disembodied Poetics. |
I’m old enough to be Edie’s grandmother, but having met over Dante - generations disappear. Time stops for wisdom. When I look into her eyes, I become overwhelmed with the feeling that the future of humanity rests solely within her hands.
‘What do you remember?’
“I remember the transition of landscapes and know that as a child we moved around a lot. I remember being three and living in Shiner, Texas with my grandfather. There was a big old broken windmill on his land that my sister and I would ride our bikes around. I remember things being good. I don't remember the transition to when things got bad, or that bad things existed”.
‘i just shared with you some detailed events of my formative life. If you were to write a short essay on your own beginnings what would it sound like?’
“Recalling the first political event that I went through would be the 9/11. I don’t remember any newscast or the meaning behind it. I noticed that my school enforced a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. By the time I was six, I habitually crossed my fingers over my heart when we were forced to mindlessly repeat allegiance to the country and to the state of Texas. It wasn’t something I felt was natural for six year olds to be routinely saying each morning. The move from San Angelo to Midland was the beginning of the transition from good to bad. My three sisters and I moved with my mother and her girlfriend into a small trailer house. From kindergarten until my freshman year of high school, the faculty made it their duty to try to punish me for anything they could. The school treated me badly because my parents were the only lesbians in the community, and I was bullied for not knowing who Jesus was”.
‘What do you remember?’
“I remember the transition of landscapes and know that as a child we moved around a lot. I remember being three and living in Shiner, Texas with my grandfather. There was a big old broken windmill on his land that my sister and I would ride our bikes around. I remember things being good. I don't remember the transition to when things got bad, or that bad things existed”.
‘i just shared with you some detailed events of my formative life. If you were to write a short essay on your own beginnings what would it sound like?’
“Recalling the first political event that I went through would be the 9/11. I don’t remember any newscast or the meaning behind it. I noticed that my school enforced a moment of silence before the Pledge of Allegiance. By the time I was six, I habitually crossed my fingers over my heart when we were forced to mindlessly repeat allegiance to the country and to the state of Texas. It wasn’t something I felt was natural for six year olds to be routinely saying each morning. The move from San Angelo to Midland was the beginning of the transition from good to bad. My three sisters and I moved with my mother and her girlfriend into a small trailer house. From kindergarten until my freshman year of high school, the faculty made it their duty to try to punish me for anything they could. The school treated me badly because my parents were the only lesbians in the community, and I was bullied for not knowing who Jesus was”.
‘What does it feel like begin your life on a dying planet?’
“Beginning life on a dying planet feels perplexing and hopeless. It’s terrifying to understand that you are placed in a world where people are fixated on terror and hurting each other”.
‘The coming Presidential election in the Fall of 2016 will mark the first election in which you’re eligible to vote’.
“I haven’t decided on whether to vote or not. I feel a resistance towards voting for a person that is the figurehead to a system of government that has done everything in it’s power to suppress women, minorities, and the lower class. It is one I believe that works more against humanity than for it. We’re witnesses to the birth of corporate government, and not just the birth but the take over. I cannot justify the actions of this government, I do not want to and I feel as though voting would support the destruction of this planet and the end of humanity. I feel if there is this intense hierarchy of authority that there will never be equal rights. Voting seems to be a staged form of patriotism to me.
‘So by potentially choosing not to vote under a political system you have no faith in, are you essentially considering standing aside and allowing the proliferation of a totalitarian government without supporting even the false face of democracy?’
“By choosing not to vote I don’t not think it’s a form of being submissive and silent. I don’t see not voting as a political message. It’s a form of feeling hopeless definitely, but there are more effective ways to change the government than through voting. We have seen people do this ever since structured societies have been created. They have always found a different way to change things without being part of that political process. One of the most successful ways to capture the government is through art. To use the media that they have manufactured and sold, against them as a way to catch the public off guard and pull them away from the mundane schedules of the american dream.”
‘Phil Ochs said, “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” What form of beauty would you like to offer to the world?’
“I would like to dismantle of the corporate view of beauty. This ideal has done major damage to people and we’re seeing the psychological damage develop in the early stages of childhood. I don’t want to sell or force an image of what beauty is. I believe it exists, but it is different for every human here. The fixation of possessing beauty needs to stop. Humans are viewing themselves more as objects or products. Beauty comes from self love, so there needs to be a major focus on that and healing. I’m torn as well because part of me wants to see the destruction of aesthetic. There is a beauty in letting go of the physical and not reflecting in the mirror. There is something deeper to humans and this world. Beauty is just the surface of what we think is important. It seems to be more of a distraction than anything”.
Edie and I stood in the hallway talking about Dadaism, Deconstructionism and the ugliness of beauty. Her eyes went flat. She didn’t understand the sacred eternal of nature’s beauty. I panicked. If my life experience was for her, a magical collection of oddities worthy of elevating me to that of ‘Muse’... then I was determined, with an unexpected ferocity - for her to elevate herself to ‘Muse Inhabiting Old Soul Who Becomes Phoenix’. I walked across the room and returned with a collection of seashells, stones, bones, crystals, and one plastic lizard. Said, “The transcendental beauty and perfect wisdom of Nature, has not been poisoned by madness”. I waited for the smallest recognition. None came.
It was late. We retreated to our rooms. Me draped in cat, door closed, face pressed into computer light. Edie curled into the fetal position I’ve come to know as her quasi-somnambulant sleep position of choice. In the two times she’s stayed here, she doesn’t turn out the light nor shut the door. I have yet to ask her if she’s afraid of the dark.
“Beginning life on a dying planet feels perplexing and hopeless. It’s terrifying to understand that you are placed in a world where people are fixated on terror and hurting each other”.
‘The coming Presidential election in the Fall of 2016 will mark the first election in which you’re eligible to vote’.
“I haven’t decided on whether to vote or not. I feel a resistance towards voting for a person that is the figurehead to a system of government that has done everything in it’s power to suppress women, minorities, and the lower class. It is one I believe that works more against humanity than for it. We’re witnesses to the birth of corporate government, and not just the birth but the take over. I cannot justify the actions of this government, I do not want to and I feel as though voting would support the destruction of this planet and the end of humanity. I feel if there is this intense hierarchy of authority that there will never be equal rights. Voting seems to be a staged form of patriotism to me.
‘So by potentially choosing not to vote under a political system you have no faith in, are you essentially considering standing aside and allowing the proliferation of a totalitarian government without supporting even the false face of democracy?’
“By choosing not to vote I don’t not think it’s a form of being submissive and silent. I don’t see not voting as a political message. It’s a form of feeling hopeless definitely, but there are more effective ways to change the government than through voting. We have seen people do this ever since structured societies have been created. They have always found a different way to change things without being part of that political process. One of the most successful ways to capture the government is through art. To use the media that they have manufactured and sold, against them as a way to catch the public off guard and pull them away from the mundane schedules of the american dream.”
‘Phil Ochs said, “In such ugly times, the only true protest is beauty.” What form of beauty would you like to offer to the world?’
“I would like to dismantle of the corporate view of beauty. This ideal has done major damage to people and we’re seeing the psychological damage develop in the early stages of childhood. I don’t want to sell or force an image of what beauty is. I believe it exists, but it is different for every human here. The fixation of possessing beauty needs to stop. Humans are viewing themselves more as objects or products. Beauty comes from self love, so there needs to be a major focus on that and healing. I’m torn as well because part of me wants to see the destruction of aesthetic. There is a beauty in letting go of the physical and not reflecting in the mirror. There is something deeper to humans and this world. Beauty is just the surface of what we think is important. It seems to be more of a distraction than anything”.
Edie and I stood in the hallway talking about Dadaism, Deconstructionism and the ugliness of beauty. Her eyes went flat. She didn’t understand the sacred eternal of nature’s beauty. I panicked. If my life experience was for her, a magical collection of oddities worthy of elevating me to that of ‘Muse’... then I was determined, with an unexpected ferocity - for her to elevate herself to ‘Muse Inhabiting Old Soul Who Becomes Phoenix’. I walked across the room and returned with a collection of seashells, stones, bones, crystals, and one plastic lizard. Said, “The transcendental beauty and perfect wisdom of Nature, has not been poisoned by madness”. I waited for the smallest recognition. None came.
It was late. We retreated to our rooms. Me draped in cat, door closed, face pressed into computer light. Edie curled into the fetal position I’ve come to know as her quasi-somnambulant sleep position of choice. In the two times she’s stayed here, she doesn’t turn out the light nor shut the door. I have yet to ask her if she’s afraid of the dark.
Moonlight is Bleeding
At insomnia O’clock the previous morning, in light of David Bowie’s unexpected gift of dusted off genius, and so proud of him for crafting a work of art equal to the highest caliber of his early creations, I went on an unprecedented David Bowie Youtube binge. Precisely twenty four hours later, while Edie was still curled in sleep, I flipped onto the news and was stunned by the headline, ’BOWIE DEAD’. I stared at the gigantic black letters. Apparently, I screamed ‘WHAT’ three times, waking Edie who sleep-shuffled into my room to make sure i hadn't accidentally set myself on fire. We stared at the screen in deafening silence.
In Bowie’s last email to Brian Eno - he signed off with the endearment and moniker, “Love, Dawn”. With that, I proclaim that the death of beauty simply transmutes into yet more beauty. I will see David’s one blue eye in every dawn, until I, too become that vast, pale, gentle light. ‘Till then, I have decided to write a masterpiece on ‘Beauty’. It’s dedication will read, “For Edie”.
~ Carla Friedman. January, 2016
Carla Friedman is a graduate of Naropa University with a Bachelor's degree in Poetics and
Crazy Wisdom. Scribbler of words, sky gazer, she presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[email protected]
Crazy Wisdom. Scribbler of words, sky gazer, she presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
[email protected]