because Some thirty years ago I first laid eyes on the image of a blonde woman up on a magazine rack. Her name, though unbeknownst to me up to that point, was, I would soon after find out, Marilyn Monroe. She appeared to me as a beacon of light. I was about eight years old. The impact of that encounter was instantaneous and forceful. Instant love would be the best way to describe it since it was what it felt like, but a simple and deceitful substitute for the depth and intensity of the experience on that fateful day. Graceful, clever, resilient, maternal, very beautiful and touchingly poetic are some of the attributes that come to mind as I am writing this; yes, in Marilyn I saw a profoundly moving human being for which life’s dichotomy appeared to be a theme of constant struggle, a leitmotif of sort on a par with her unusual beauty and talent but more so perhaps her uniquely luminous spirit. As a movie-star, her respect and understanding of the role was genius, she owned that title the same way she owned her blondness and everything else that defined her, if she created magic, and that she did, she, without a doubt, understood the discipline behind it and carefully, minutely crafted the persona we know. As a person, child of the great depression from a shattered family background, one could sense a lingering imprinted sadness combined with a natural aversion for all things unfair. Yet her characteristic natural dynamic joy and an avant-garde appreciation for the changing times, the promises they held, set her apart and made her ahead of her times. The tragedy of her death can only be measured by the loss of everything she meant, all that she stood for, the loss of hope.

Thankfully, movies, newsreels, recordings remain. Every so often, long lost photographs and obscure footage resurfaces offering us the opportunity to reassure ourselves of the fact that this stellar human being really did exist as well as another proof of her unique, unexplainable, vibrant, incandescent inner light. The impact of her indelible image has no boundaries and possesses as much disdain for the years going by as Marilyn had for time watches. Given Marilyn status in our modern culture it seems hard to fathom, that as 2012 rolls around, it will be half century since we lost her. But have we really….?