by Layla (Flora Edwards)
Friday, 5:40 am, June 6, 2008
“Ethical Culture” or “15 years old in New York City”
June 6th is such a special day to me because I think the mass awakening will occur on June 6th. It is very powerful spiritual day. When I first moved to Tucson I had friend in the apartments, Michael Siegel. He had moved here in the summer, from Boston, we arrived Thanksgiving week. So he had already been here a few months. But I think he knew Tucson better than we did, because he had come to take care of his mom. She must have been here for a while or long time and when she needed help Mike arrived. He might have a brother who was living here too. Mike grew up in Brooklyn. I think his dad delivered The Daily News. Which meant his dad was up all night and slept all day. And now that I think about it, I remember Mike telling me on the phone, one of the last times we chatted, because we lost touch 10 years ago, that he too went to Ethical Culture in Manhattan on Friday nights. He has such fond memories of that. He went into ecstasy as he remembered ethical culture.
I really don’t know what to say about Ethical Culture. Mike went into raptures about it. He loved going and had a great time. I just remember I was 14 years old, and it strikes me now what a huge year 14 years old is, what a big thing it is to be 14 years old. That is when your whole life changes, everything begins at 14 years old. As a kid I dreamt and dreamt about my Sweet 16 and being 16 years old, that was always the nirvana which lay ahead. Every romantic dream, every dream of happiness, all my dreams, were wrapped up in my Sweet 16, and 16 years old. It was my idea of paradise as kid. But in fact I never had a Sweet 16, and it seems to me being sixteen, that year, I was vaguely depressed. I didn’t think of myself as vaguely depressed, and would have never thought about it that way. But my friend from camp Bobbi (who was exactly my age but had skipped a year because of S.P.) had gone off to out-of-town college in Ann Arbor Michigan, the year we were sixteen. I was in my senior year in high school, and I used to write to her all the time, just because letter-writing is something I liked to do. And she wrote back “you always sound so depressed in your letters.”
In fact I didn’t learn the word “depressed” until I went off to out-of-town college, and a boy I had a crush on, and had started a brief relationship with, broke up with me in the school cafeteria saying “being with you depresses me and when I am depressed I can’t study.” That is how I learned the word “depressed.” So Bobbi must have written “you always sound so unhappy in your letters.” I don’t think I was unhappy that year. I think it is more like, what someone once said “if you read back your old diaries, it will sound like you were always unhappy.” Maybe no one writes in their diary except when they are unhappy. And maybe that is when I wrote to Bobbi.
I think I got the idea I was vaguely depressed the year I was 16, because I was once in Central Park stoned in my early twenties. It was on a Sunday. And two girls, two friends, who lived by the park were sitting on bench talking to each other. And somehow I knew they were both 16, and I could see in their faces they were vaguely depressed, and I must have thought to myself “that is what being 16 is like.” It’s not that they looked like their mothers or were trying to act like their mothers, but there was too much of their mother influence all over them, they didn’t feel original to me. I think now they were deeply bored. Somehow they were leading a life which wasn’t really theirs. Some quickening of life was stunted or shelved, some cocoon they hadn’t broken thru yet. Glorious 16 was not glorious for me.
But 14 is when the world opened up, when all the excitement started. Of course the huge thing was finally becoming attractive to boys, and having boyfriends, or a boyfriend, falling in love, being in love, passionate making-out. But before that happened, that happened the summer I was 14, before that happened, in the spring before I was 14-- No! it had to be the Spring I turned 15! Hahaha, Ethical Culture is the story of turning 15! the forgotten year! 14 is when it all happens! 16 is the year of glory which is not glorious at all! In between that is 15.. O that is not such an easy year, but it is an interesting year. Because that is when things start to trigger in the mind. I mean the intellectual world opens up. LOL that is when you become a budding intellectual, which let’s be honest about it, just means you want to be cool. You have had a whole year now of being attractive to boys. As earthshakingly wonderful as it was when it first dawned at 14, you’ve already fallen in love, had your first boyfriend, been broken up by him, went thru that long awful period.
There really is no experience like that first experience of being broken up with by someone you want with all your heart. Because it takes so long to wrap your mind around it and accept it. You spend so long trying to get him back, or not accepting it happened. It’s odd now, looking back and seeing the ecstasy and the suffering as all one big pot of stew, each one a rich interesting experience. I mean I look back and see the ecstasy of that first summer romance, my first romance. And then the long Fall leading up to Winter of accepting the rejection, he must have broken up with me soon after we returned to the city, it just didn’t work in the city. But of course I wouldn’t believe it, because I didn’t want to believe it.
I did learn a lot from reading my diary at the time 25 years later. I still had my diary in a file cabinet somewhere in my East Village apartment, and Liz Horn, Ruthie’s friend from when we were all teenagers-- I told her how I had never read my diary, I must have thought I would hate the me I found in it. And she said “read it! you won’t! it is interesting!” I don’t know if I was high on pot when I read it, altho it’s possible I had started to be a writer already, or maybe just before. My dad had given it to me as a little present right before I went off to camp when I was 13. It began off with such a childish mind, I remember my first entry ended up with “I guess I am just a typical teen-ager.” But the next year I did write my experiences at that teen-age camp. Altho I think I stopped writing nearly every day when my relationship with Fred began, that was earthshaking, too big to write about, too consuming. I wrote about the boys who were interested in me or I was interested in them before I met Fred, or my activities with them. One took me in his convertible sports car to a movie in Pittsfield. That was fun! Altho the movie was way too advanced for a girl who had turned 14 two months ago, a French movie about a middle aged French woman having an affair with a young Englishman, “Room At The Top.”
But interestingly enough, when summer was over and I started high school and the first thing which happened was Fred broke up with me, I did use the diary to try to help myself. All thru the Fall and into December I tried to deal with the rejection in my diary. And what struck me when I read it stoned on pot at 27 years old, was that by December I had reached the point when I didn’t want to suffer about it anymore. I had decided to be philosophical. I actually saw it right there in my own handwriting. I didn’t use the word “philosophical” at the time, maybe I wrote “I think I will accept it.” But I looked at it and thought “what do you know! I decided to be philosophical.” Which oddly enough is the first and only time I have ever used the word “philosophical.” I guess I felt that I had decided back at 15, after so many long months of eating my heart out about it, that I had decided to detach from it in some way. I must have brought in some other way of seeing it, or some other way of deciding to look at it. Probably all I did was decide to accept it, what else could it be? But I was impressed with myself, reading it, so many years later. It was clear I wanted to end the suffering, I had made the decision to do it, and I must have used my mind to do it. That is probably why I said to myself “look! I was philosophical.” I must have felt that I brought my mind into it for help.
And oddly enough it was that Spring following that-- warm weather had come in, so it may have been June. I was coming back from a party or something on the subway with a girlfriend, and I bumped into Ellen Klein in the subway. She was with her friend and she was wearing some cool looking beatnik outfit. And I said “where are you coming from?” and she said “Ethical Culture.” Maybe I was with Ruthie Hurwood and she was sleeping over. And I said “what is ethical culture?” It was a Friday night, that is for sure, because Ethical Culture took place on Friday nights. And Ellen said “kids come from all over the city to it.” I had no idea what it was, but Ellen looked so cool, and it sounded so cool. So you can be sure the following Friday night Ruthie and I arranged to meet at it. And we must have invited Leslie and Sheila, the 4 of us had been foursome for two years, we all went to camp together the summer I was 13, camp parties all year. Ruthie went to different camp the following year, but Shelia, Leslie, and I all went to the same teen-aged camp where I had my first boyfriend.
And we all agreed to show up at Ethical Culture the following Friday evening. And sure enough, there were all the cool kids from all over New York City, especially the really cool ones from Manhattan and the Bronx. Manhattan and the Bronx was always the coolest. They all looked like budding intellectuals, which was the cool way to look back then in the '50s. Since Ellen had told us to go to “Philosophy,” when we arrived we asked “where is Philosophy?”
And so we went to a big room, where everyone was sitting on the floor, and all the coolest looking ones were there. And oddly enough the guy leading the discussion, this came as huge surprise to me-- I don’t know how I recognized him. In fact there is no way I could have. I must have recognized his name, he must have said it. When I was child in Old Forge, one of the families of New York City school teachers, we were all families of New York City school teachers, the kids Martha and Carl played with (my two older cousins) were Rita and Hank. Rita was Martha’s age, two years older than me, and Hank was Carl’s age, 4 years older than me. Their dad was Bernie Sackler, I don’t remember their mom’s name now. Their mom, Rita, and Hank were all skinny but Bernie wasn’t. Edith! Edith Sackler was the mom’s name. Obviously I never said a word to Hank. Boys simply don’t talk to girls who are 4 years younger when we were all children. You are aware of them, they are older boys, gods! but they are not aware of you. But Hank was notorious to me, because the day he was supposed to take his Junior Life Saving Test he was in bed with a fever. It was freezing cold day, as all the days are up in Adirondacks, freezing cold and rainy. He had been forbidden to take the test. But he had snuck out of the house to take it. Which appalled all the grown-ups as they sat on their beach blankets talking about it, but which thrilled and excited me, my hero! It was my idea of heroism to defy your parents to take your Junior Life Saving test. After that when he was a teenager, he would come to our house and my mom would stand in the backyard and give him his hay-fever shot. He was even allowed, I heard, to stay in Old Forge a few months after the summer ended, because Old Forge is hay-fever free and the hay-fever is so bad in New York City, I don’t know where they arranged for Hank to stay.
And after that I of course never saw him again. The last time I saw him was standing in my own backyard getting a hay fever shot from my mom, the nurse.
A completely skinny guy.
So how could I possibly recognize the bear-looking guy, big and round like a bear, with huge big reddish blond beard. The skinny 14 year old I had last seen, now smoked a pipe, had this huge beard, and seemed to be 5 times his size, he had taken on the shape of his dad.
He said the topic was “the meaning of life” and all the cool teenagers in New York City had something to say. That was how Ethical Culture worked. The person leading it would say a topic, and then I guess everyone would talk, they would say what they thought. Naturally I had zero interest in the meaning of life, I just liked sitting on the floor and being where all the cool teenagers of New York City were, I didn’t listen to what anyone said. I just looked around to see which boys I thought were cute, or what the cool girls were wearing. Altho oddly enough I still remember what Hank said at the end. It was all over, he hadn’t done any talking all thru it, he said “the meaning of life for me is the meaning I give other people,” which sounded like a profound thing to say, even if it had no meaning to me.
And then the good part came. We all went to Horn & Hardart across the street and I got coca-cola with ice and cheese danish, I always loved to eat. And I sat with Ruthie and Leslie and Sheila, and we watched all the cool kids from New York City walking around Horn & Hardart. We were all too shy to talk to anyone at Ethical Culture, we never did the whole time we went, all we ever did was talk to each other. But O how we loved it. Every Friday we put on our outfit, and took bus and two subways, and went to Ethical Culture, went straight to Philosophy, sat in a big room, where we didn’t understand a word and then to Horn & Hardart for coco-cola and danish.
And then we went home. We loved it. We loved being cool.
But you can understand why, when 4 years after I moved to Tucson and I was chit-chatting with Mike Siegel on the phone, and it turned out we had both gone to Ethical Culture, and he went into raptures about it, “wasn’t it great! O I miss those days so much, we had so much fun,” I thought ‘what am I missing here? how can anyone miss ethical culture, nothing ever happened.…’
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