The Lotus Has No Thorns

Image By The Field Museum Library (Lotus flower beds  Uploaded by Elitre) [see page for license], via Wikimedia Commons

February sticks out like a swollen black and blue eye on the face of our numerically perfect divisible calendar of convention. It follows its own rules and agendas, and like the ‘y’, it is allowed exemptions to rules “sometimes”.  I suppose it does make sense that we throw Valentine’s Day, or the day to cherish your loved one, into this abbreviated, chilly, temperamental month.  Aside from Februarys’ brevity, icy hospitality, and requisite acknowledgement of the importance of spontaneous romance, it is an enigmatic month sometimes laden with disappointment. Yet, out of the February black and blue gloom, perhaps there are some lessons about love we can all learn.

Learning from others (mistakes) is undoubtedly the most efficient and painless way to accomplish leaps and bounds in life, but what can we learn from others about love? Is not love the most unique type of experience our mortal souls can experience, or endure? Is not true love only one opportunity (possibility)? Is not a soul mate made for one and one alone?

We often equate failed love, or marriages as faults of the couple involved, chalking up the fault of the collapse to the grand architect-it just wasn’t “meant” to be. Yet from the rubble and some forensic analysis one can determine more accurately the true cause of fault or just where structural weakness began. Of course we are talking about love, and not architecture or science, but logic and love both succumb to gravity.

Experts on love are not those that are happily in love, they do not know all of the angles and intricacies involved, or how to spot when it’s not true love. For this type of information an expert in failed relationships is ideal. Elizabeth Taylor? No, she’s been analyzed down to the half carat.  This is where the ultimate femme fetale, Ganna Walska needs to be invoked for perspective on failed loves, or in her case just the failed marriages (one can be certain her experience in the matter extends beyond the recorded marriage licenses, she was no rookie in professional matters of love, as you will learn).

Image of Ganna Walska by George Grantham Bain Collection (Library of Congress) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

First and fittingly, Ganna Walska was not even her real name, she was born Hanna Puacz in Belarus June 26^th, 1887. She lived until the sprite and astute age of 96 passing away on March 2^nd 1984 in Montecito, California. As you can tell there is quite a story in the expanse of miles and years she traveled and journeyed.  Her first name Ganna sounds like Hanna because it is the Russian form of the more American Hannah. Her first marriage at age 17 was to a Russian baron named Arcadie d’Eingorn (reminiscent of the character Arkady from the book  “Gorky Park”, by Martin Cruz Smith). Perhaps a trial run for her move up the ignoble gentleman ladder their marriage lasted just two years and he died from TB in 1915. Ganna always aspired to be a singer, an opera singer, yet what she lacked in talent she would acquire in influence, a profitable trade for her “career”.

In 1916 Ganna was remarried to a New York doctor, yet he died in 1920, just 4 years later. That very same year, 5 months later Ganna again took a giant step up and married a multi-millionaire and “carpet tycoon” Alexander Smith Cochran. They ended up divorced in 1922, and he died just 7 years later. Is she starting to sound like (an) Anna Nicole Smith? I guess love can be not just dangerous but lethal for some.  The very same year that Ganna and Alexander were divorced, Ganna again re-hitched her mule to the spicy mogul and powerful “industrialist” Harold F. McCormick, a notorious family name. During her marriage to McCormick Walska undoubtedly learned much about capitalism and power. In 1922 she purchased the Theatre des Champs-Elysees in Paris (the power couple was also married in Paris), she reportedly told the public that it was bought with her "own money".  McCormick was relentless in promoting her career as an opera singer, although the majority of accounts lament at her tone deaf voice and terrible lack of talent. This marriage and relationship also inspired Orson Welles to note the similarities between his nemesis biopic and epic movie "Citizen Kane", and it was the McCormick’s that were used as models for the screenplay version (Ganna being the Susan Alexander of Randolph Hearst’s blind devotion).  They do say love is blind, now we have just learned it can also be deaf.

In 1926 Ganna purchased the infamous Dutchess of Marlborough Faberge egg, which was actually later purchased and remains officially labeled as the first Faberge Easter egg in the late Malcom Forbes notorious hoarding collection. In 1931, McCormick and Walska divorced. He lived for a full decade after the spilt. Ironically, her next husband also died this same year, that marriage lasted from 1938 until he died in 1941-his name was Harry Grindell Matthews an eccentric and ingenious inventor from England. Matthews moved to US in 1924 with the intent of “marketing” even further his pride (and laughable) invention of the “death ray”, yet women had already invented this highly top secret weapon.

The last matrimonial union Walska entered was with a scholar of Tibetan Buddhism, yoga and an author named Theos Bernard. Their marriage spanned from 1942 until 1946, he died the following year in 1947.

In 1941 Ganna and Theos purchased a large (37 acre) plot of land in California named ‘Cuesta Linda’, intended to become a retreat for Tibetan monks. This did not happen due to many wartime technicalities and legal bureaucracies, and after their divorce, she retained the property and redubbed it as its known today “Lotusland” in Montecito. Ganna Walksa lived out the rest of her long and flowering days creating, maintaining and designing the gardens at the large central California estate, where she ultimately found not only peace but her true talent and passion. Ganna passed away heirless and intensely, passionately working at making the gardens at Lotusland the most unique and ornate as possible, a labour of growing love and preservation.

"There is always some madness in love. But there is always some reason in madness." Friedrich Nietzsche

So what can one learn from 6 failed marriages, the longest of which lasted only 9 years? Some of these lessons could be; perhaps the seven year itch is really true, maybe we should only be with, give our love and hand to, those that aspire to make us better than we were before knowing them. Or maybe even that variety is the (McCormick) spice of life, and that love makes no sense to others, and perhaps makes you lose your own senses a bit. There's no doubt love is risky, but it can also yield a return on your investment, not unlike capitalism. Ultimately the most important lesson of all is to not give up on yourself through your colorful journey in life, ultimately you may find what you're looking for was blossoming inside you the whole time.

“A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust.” Gertrude Jekyll