This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Mabel Dodge Luhan, Me & Dorothy Brett (1938)
My new best friend is someone who died the year before I was born. Her name is Mabel Dodge Luhan. Here’s the thing about my BFF. In 1917, at age 38, Mabel Ganson Evans Dodge Sterne, moved to Taos, New Mexico with her third husband. She left behind her privileged life in New York and Europe as a salon hostess, wealthy patron to the arts and spokeswoman for the East’s avante-garde. When she arrived in Taos, she said, “My life broke in two right then, and I entered into the second half, a new world that replaced all the ways I had known the others, more strange and terrible and sweet than any I had ever been able to imagine.”
I sat down with my best friend in the lovely kitchen of her adobe home. The sprawling house is situated on a quiet road near the town of Taos and butted up against the Taos Pueblo, the original home of her fourth (and final husband), Tony Luhan. The kitchen is warmed by the kiva fireplace and the peachy colors of the stucco. Southwestern tile and vegas complete the feel of the room. The scent of pinon and sage fill the room. Mabel and I sit at one end of the long oak kitchen table over cups of tea.
Me: Why Taos, Mabel?
Mabel: I followed Maurice, my third husband, who is a painter, to Santa Fe. He knew I would fall in love with the landscape, with the Indians, and the simplicity of the life. He said to me, “Do you want an object in life? Save the Indians, their art-culture–reveal it to the world!
I was curious about Taos. I’d heard it was uncorrupted by human intervention. And when I arrived it was like “the dawn of the world.” When I arrived in Taos after the day long horse and buggy ride, I knew I was home.
Me: Home? Hadn’t you lived in a lovely villa in Italy and wonderful apartments in New York?
Mabel: [Waves her hand dismissively at me.] Those places, those things, didn’t mean anything to me. It was the utopia of the Taos desert, the spirit of the people. After World War I, our society was spiritually bankrupt. Everyone around me was about things, possessions, status, and I felt empty. My reaction to New Mexico was this, ” There was no disturbance in the scene, nothing to complicate the forms, no trees or houses, or any detail to confuse one. It was like a simple phrase in music or a single line of poetry, essential and reduced to the barest meaning.”
Me: Didn’t you feel scared to leave the known for the unknown? The civilized for the uncivilized according to the times?
Mabel: [Laughs] Never. I don’t know what is with women, especially middle aged women who should know better. What are you so frightened of to try something different? Why can’t you carve your own paths? Stop being followers! Why do you hold on to ideas, to possessions, to a life that doesn’t work anymore? Death is knocking on the door. Live. Live life.
Me: It’s a scary proposition to do something different from everyone else, especially when you have children. You should act and be a certain way.
Mabel: [Pounds the kitchen table.] Who says? I was married three times. It wasn’t until I married Tony Luhan I knew I’d found my soulmate.
Me: Soulmate? Maybe you didn’t try hard enough with the other three. Just maybe you let go too soon…
Mabel: [She looks out the kitchen window out on to the Taos prairie, miles away is the big Taos Mountain.] Michelle, do you know I don’t remember a time, ever, that my mother kissed me? I didn’t have affection, a connection, until Tony. My life was filled with words, promises, when Tony came along there was a silence, and he only spoke words that truly mattered. Once I asked him, “What is your religion?” He told me, “Life.” And that’s what we’re doing honoring our lives. Honoring life.
Me: Describe what your favorite day is like.
Mabel: Tony and I ride our horses up near Blue Lake, the sacred lake. I’m not allowed near it but we go up Taos Mountain as close as we can to the lake. We build our teepee on the hillside under the desert willows and Rocky Mountain Junipers. I breathe in the smell of sage, and for miles you can see the pink color of the Desert Sand Verbana and the yellow of the Blackfoot Daisy. We build a fire of pine, and sometimes we talk and other times we lay on the desert grass and look up at the moon. In the morning, we eat a breakfast of eggs, flatbread and canned sausages.
Me: Sounds simple…
Mabel: Exactly.
Read “Edge of Taos Desert” by Mabel Dodge Luhan and catch the second half of my interview with Mabel Dodge Luhan in the upcoming weeks.
What woman do you admire, alive or not, fictional or real, middle of life or not, brave or bitchy? Why do you admire her?
