At least until such time as Facebook again elects to harass me over absolutely NOTHING, both the Echo of a Distant Time page and the Broken Dolls and Fallen Angels group are returning to full operation—an utterly thankless enterprise on my part, yet one I persist in with no small measure of affection.
What better way to mark this return than with the goddess herself—Marilyn, from 1962—smiling for the camera so that no one might glimpse the ache beneath. Only a short while after this photo session with photographer Bert Stern, she departed an ungrateful world that had used and discarded her in equal measure. To this day, she is worshipped and desecrated in the same breath—her likeness endlessly commodified, her memory endlessly mutilated.
Sometimes I think that perhaps I, too, am complicit in that desecration, merely by being one among millions who places so flawed and fragile a woman upon a pedestal. Given her physical beauty, it is only natural that we indulge in her visage; yet my motives are pure. I have always found myself drawn to those rare and remarkable souls who gave everything to a world unworthy of them—and who, in return, received neither gratitude nor grace. I do not speak of money—though that, too, was often denied, stolen, or squandered—but of respect, of simple human decency: commodities increasingly rare in this late and languishing civilisation of ours.
Still, for those luminous spirits now gone—those who dared to burn brighter than the rest, to carve beauty out of indifference—we may yet offer thanks and draw inspiration from… if only we find the will to choose gratitude over apathy, and remembrance over the din of decay. —Arthur Newhook, 25 October 2025.
Copyright 2025, Arthur Newhook.
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