Featured Film Short: Her Un-Armed Beauty

May I present to you,
Her Un-Armed Beauty,
a Tribute to a girl I once knew.



Dena was this really bitchin’,
free spirited, totally cool, hippie chick, girlfriend I had senior year of high school.

Although our friendship did not last past our early 20's,
the memories we made together have lasted.

She died in September of 2004
and today is her birthday.
(at least it was when I wrote this before many time and technical difficulties)
She was born exactly one month before me in 1972.

I took these pictures of her.
One from one side
and one from the other.
She literally turned and we set up,
I moved, she fluffed her hair, and I took the pic!
What a difference.

I see a little girl, sweet, but unsure in one
and I clearly see a woman in the other.
I Always loved these pictures of her.
Now, I’m at a point in my life when I have the ability to create something really unique and special that reflects something of Her and of the times we shared.

She deserves to have art made about Her.

She always seemed to be trying to get her life together.
One time, she moved to CA from The East Coast.
It ended with her returning home,
on the plane,
crying.
She said she cried on the plane next to some guy.
She felt bad for him.
I felt bad for her.
I wished I’d been able to be there for her.

But once I was.
And I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for the time she cried in my lap.
Does that sound sick or mean?
I don’t mean it to be.
I feel more like Sally Fields in Steel Magnolias saying, “It was a most precious moment of my life.” (Or does she say the most precious?)

But now I’m the one crying
and saying,
THERE IS VALUE HERE IN THIS LOVELY EXPERIENCE PEPPERED WITH PAIN.
If you can find the value in the pain.
You Are Totally GOLDEN.

Your job is to find that in your own sadnesses,
in your own losses.

Don’t stop at SAD.

Dig deeper and go for the sob

So, Dena, thank you for helping me to experience part of The Great Tragedy in Life.
If I didn’t know The Great Tragedy in Life, I could not know Life.
And knowing Life,
fully and completely,
IS the purpose of Life,
I think.

What I speak of is only a single gift of her Great Life.
Just one single gift
of
an
endless
supply
of
gifts
of
Her.

She helped me be more free.
Because she had a freedom about her.
We rode on that rope swing together.
We jumped in leaves together.
We took pictures together.
We rolled down that hill together.

She was an adventure for me.
No other girlfriend I’ve had since did those sorts of things
nor encouraged me to.

Dena, you were a trip.
You made me french toast.
You shared your school lunches with me that you probably paid for out of your own money from working at Acme.
I thank you for all that and for everything else I am leaving out.

Free Spirited people are great!
Until they leave.

I missed her when she was still alive
because she just kept going away.

a pile of pictures hides inside.
I still don't have a picture of us together.

I don’t know why or how she died.
By something I heard combined with something inside me,
I believe there was tragedy there.
?
I just don’t know.
But I know I saw her body
and the body was cold
and had no Dena spark left in it.

She was dead in the sense that people mean
if they mean gone from here.
Because dead does not equal end.
She was much too precious to end,
the shimmer of her remains.
Why else would I be talking about her right now?
Part of Her Shimmer lives on in me, through me,
because I remember her.
And I remember taking these pictures with her.
And I remember her sobbing into my lap
and me rubbing her back
and just trying to be there for her while her heart shattered
into a hundred
million
pieces because a guy she thought loved her, didn't,
he loved her ex-best friend.
Having someone sob with utter sadness from the soles of their feet into your lap leaves a wound on you.
That's why I tear up whenever I think about it.

I remember partying with her
and dancing with her
and cleaning her room with her
and brushing our teeth together
and picking leaves out of our hair together for hours after jumping in those leaves
and talking about how we STILL hadn’t started on our typing class project yet
and how much we hated our typing teacher, Mrs. Saroka (that woman was so mean to Dena - teachers shouldn’t be allowed to be mean to their students!)
and joining in on her plans to get our lives together
and working out with her
and laying out getting a tan with her (when I used to bother trying to get my freckley skin to tan)
and how she told me on the phone that the night before she came home from work and ate cottage cheese for several minutes without looking in the container first and when she finally did,
she saw that it was very green......ew
and talking about guys (lots of this)
and laughing,
and I remember laughing with her.

If we were not friends until the moment she died,
can I still morn her loss?
Am I allowed?
Or will there be judgement with this?
Whatever.

The last time I saw her,
I didn’t speak to her.
I was very sick
and wasn’t interested in rekindling our friendship.
She didn’t make any moves to.
My mother and her spoke,
I acknowledged her,
but I just didn’t want to be friends with someone again whom I knew had already bailed on our friendship twice before.

For me, she’d already died.
I’d already lost her in my life,
TWICE.
I’d already felt the heartbreak of it.

But all that is gone,
in the past,
and now she is the light that flickers through the trees through my window and onto my leg.

And whenever I hear “Love Song” by Tesla
or “When October Goes” by Barry Manilow,
the she that lives inside my heart,
lights up and shines anew.
   

I dedicate this all to you, Dena,
wherever you are....
Wait, I know where you are!!!
You’re Late!  What a surprise there.
Please don’t shake your chocolate milk again,
you already opened it and last time you sprayed us all.
:)~

~Love and Magick~
Meliss

ps:  here's the magick spell