An Embrace of a Special Anniversary and a Plea for Action
by Richard Martin Oxman

“Once marginalized communities embrace a new paradigm for change — something easily done, and fun — they will fly home refreshed, fathering forth beauty past change, relieving the weary world, altering the air we breathe.” — Oxman on spiritual laudanum

“Very few people know that Castro invited Tennessee Williams to Cuba to write on behalf of The Revolution very early on. And even less known is that Tenn came ever so close to accepting the invitation.” — Oxman without opium of any kind

“Sometimes — there’s God — so quickly.” — Blanche Dubois, A Streetcar Named Desire

Enough people are dead now. Enough no longer care. And I’ve had enough… so I can speak a bit more these days of things which previously had to be hidden. Ah, beauty beyond all feathers that have flown! Liberation of angel wings.

The first time I looked deeply into Tennessee Williams’ eyes — really deeply — he talked to me about reincarnation… on West 48th Street, New York City taxis raising hell. It was 1966, nearing the end of February, immediately following a preview of his notoriously neglected Gnadiges Fraulein, the highly innovative one-act companion to The Mutilated in his Slapstick Tragedy. The production closed after only six performances, but — including preview offerings — I managed to see it five times! He embraced that youthful, supportive enthusiasm of mine, and made something beautiful out of it.

You can consider this article as a sweetly delicate offspring of my contact with him. A tribute to his mentoring in the sixties and seventies, and an acknowledgment of what cannot be spoken of beautifully enough…. An attempt to beautify the world.

But back to… reincarnation.

Tenn told me that although Yukio Mishima* never discussed the subject with him, it was widely known that the famous Japanese author — “a brilliant man and artist,” according to Williams and many discerning others — wholeheartedly embraced reincarnation, had unwavering faith in it.

*Look his name up… if you’re not familiar with him, please.

“I’ve been told that all straight lines in the universe are eventually curved and a curving line may eventually curve back to its beginning, which might be something in the nature of rebirth,” Tenn has written in his Memoirs.. But, then, he added “I am not sure… that it has been incontestably proven that space and the universe are curved in our sense of what is curved.”

His feeling was that even if reincarnation was a fact of life/afterlife, it had to be considered a very cold comfort of a thought. Not better than permanent oblivion.

Why?

Because you would be “born again upon a planet turned into a slag-heap, if it existed at all. And among what other conditions I dread to imagine.”

Again, that was decades ago.

Our condition has deteriorated so since then that it is not hyperbole to say that matters are infinitely worse than Tenn — an artist of infinite imaginative powers — could possibly have imagined. And all is slated to get much worse… not before things get better, but, rather, on our way to not existing at all.

Not a single American politician — and that includes not only Obama, but all those in office throughout North and South America — is addressing our pressing mutual issues adequately. On the contrary they are guaranteeing our demise.

However, sometimes there’s God so suddenly, to paraphrase a delicate Williams character. And God — surely — has a hand in our helping ourselves, embraces us. Encourages our delicacy.

I have a proposal. I do hope you’ll contact me, my embraceable you. That’s the only “hope” I hold dear now.

Blessings in potential solidarity,
Ricardo Bueyhombre
headburg@yahoo.com