The Most Beautiful Suicide

Evelyn McHale, May 1, 1947

86 floors up, the view from the Empire State Building Observation Deck shows a Legoland city. Brick atop brick. Brick atop brick, concrete blocks wedged and plastered together–miles of it–and there you have the city, the cold, hard city, where Evelyn McHale breathed her last. Clouds are not much cushion for meteors or for determined jumpers.

A determined jumper, she dismissed her fiance’s proposal, wracked her brain for reasons, came to the dark conclusion that she was not,

(a dark conclusion indeed), good wife material. Evelyn left a short note saying no one should see her body. (Women! said one cop, after seeing her body. Always worrying about their looks.) Of course she was, we always are; never wishing our realness, the realness of our naked faces, on anyone. Evelyn left her small brown makeup kit at the site of her jump, ever mindful that the site of her jump was windy, mindful of what stiff breezes and tears can do to mascara and lipstick. Her own mother, her own sad, quirky mother, had left them all–father, brothers and sisters, and her.

“Mental illness,” is what they said was the reason and, after hearing “mental illness, she kept close watch on her own thoughts. Women often suspected, were treated (were secluded and treated) as if they were crazy: shyness, worry, anger, fear, menopause, Empty Nest Syndrome, insomnia, and insomnia-driven exhaustion–all of it went under the umbrella of female hysteria, the weak mindedness of women.

Perhaps, Evelyn thought, she was weak-minded. That was too sad to think about, but maybe… Evelyn might have been unclear about some things, unclear about many things, but she knew what was said about her mother and sure as hell didn’t want it said about her, didn’t want it said about what she was about to do. She wrote that she had too many of [her] mother’s tendencies. To avoid that, she jumped.

Jumped, first folded her good gray coat over the railing next to her makeup bag–then landed on a parked limousine, makeup and clothes intact.

*American bookkeeper who took her own life by jumping from the 86th floor Observation Deck of the Empire State Building on May 1,1947.

See: http://www.atchuup.com/the-most-beautiful-suicide-picture-of-evelynmchale/

Cartography 101

When I turned the lined page in my notebook, I realized that this blank paper is for you, for me to call attention to your maps and models and musings so vital to me that, without them, without you, this spinning sphere would slow, falter, stop completely, and I would fall off it to become part of a bits-and-pieces universe.

Dark Feast

A banquet: hot dishes of disappointment, cold desserts of rage and revenge.

Where shall we eat this dark feast? Forked lightning, small flat stones, shards from broken mirrors— these are utensils.

We can only feed ourselves, you know. There are no “take home” receptacles to refrigerate, to pack up later in brown bags to feed the hungry and homeless.

Sunset shows us bruised clouds and a bleeding atmosphere, untrustworthy signs that there will be a tomorrow.

Acknowledgements

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