she was known as Maliprakiti in the hari krishna group. best bookseller they had. pushy. in your face. perfect. 👌🏼 she was hysterically funny. out of tune chanting, really hard to do. man, this is a BUMMER. there was a point i could go to LAX and be harrassed by a friend trying to sell me books. always made me laugh. especially in her deepest depressions. great person. oh, this is SO sad.<>>
I first met Mula in 1964, when we started junior high school. I was less tuned in to being a teenager than she was, and she took on the role of counseling me about trends. She meticulously dressed in Liverpool fashion, wearing a black turtleneck and leggings under a wool tweed jumper, with her shiny black hair straight, chin length, and with long bangs covering a lot of her face. She explained to me that you had to choose to like either the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; you couldn't like both, because the Rolling Stones were the bad boys and the Beatles were idealistic. She, obviously, chose the Beatles, while her close friend Marilyn Merritt chose the Rolling Stones. Marilyn wore a similar outfit, but with a leather jacket.
Morissa and I became close friends; we walked the halls of junior high together and spent literally hours on the phone each afternoon and evening after school, debriefing endless details about people we observed at school and our families. Her mother's mental state was the shadow over her life, her dark secret that she tried to understand with theories about what it was and how it came to be. We continued to be very close friends through 1969, when we separated to attend different colleges.
I have my diaries from our sophomore and junior years of high school, 1967 and 1968. In January, 1967, when she had just turned 16, I quoted Morissa: "I won't blindly accept what other people say- I see through it- but I don't search- I just wait for something to pop up that's worth believing in." I follow the quote with my commentary: "Morissa is a big rebel; she's all inspired." I think it was this year in the spring that the picture of Morissa and me dressed like folksingers was taken. She came over to my house on a Saturday morning with a guitar and said we needed to dress like folksingers; our masquerade included worn out jeans, goodwill hats and jackets, a baggy fisherman's sweater. We walked to the middle of an empty lot about a mile from my house. There, among the mustard flowers, she played guitar and taught me songs like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Today, while the blossom still clings to the vine". I think she had learned them from a Joan Baez record. We felt happy and innocent and like part of the vanguard of a beautiful future.
I think it was in the summer between our sophomore and junior years, 1967, that we went to Brotherhood Camp, sponsored by the NCCJ(National Conference of Chrisitians and Jews). There we met and interacted with people of other races and socioeconomic classes for the first time, and learned to sing a lot of folksongs and protest songs about society's corruption and injustice and a vision of a more peaceful and fair world. Personally, I think that this experience sealed our fates in terms of exiling each of us forever from the conservative social mainstream.
In October 1967, I wrote about Rosh Hashana, saying that Morissa had "sort of a complex about her religious beliefs." I didn't know anything about Judaism before I met Morissa. She had a dark way of representing it; talking about the suffering of Jews in Europe (maybe even family members in Russia) and their diaspora.
In January of 1968, I wrote that we were growing up, that what other people thought of us was no longer important, and that we were not materialists. We alternately talked about how "life" and "society" were pathetic or beautiful. We were very involved in reading and trying to understand the philosophy assigned to us in school, but at the same time we were very silly! We used to laugh at ourselves and use theatrical voices to call our efforts to be graceful "farces" and "we have no inkling". One of Morissa's specialities was imitating the gestures and French accent of our French teacher Mister Bibiloni in a really insulting way as we both laughed uncontrollably until our bellies ached. One of the notes we passed in class, written by me, is preserved folded in my journal. The title on the outside is "Down with Society." Inside I talk about the inflexibility of our school administration, insult our teachers, call popular students at school "nauseating", and end by saying that I "melt" every time I see a certain boy, and "call me tonight".
We had dramatic moments of self-discovery. After describing at length in my diary one of my incidents of confusion, I wrote "Morissa's analysis is that I just worked myself into a frenzy."
In the spring of '68 we took a community college class on world religious philosophies. We identified with Buddhism and the four noble truths. We were reading alot. I remember we both read several works by Hermann Hesse and Morissa thought deeply about Siddartha.
Morissa was a huge risk-taker. She got to know older and intellectual students who were exploring bohemian literature and protest movements. The summer of 1968, she went to a college program in Santa Barbara; I think that there she also stretched her social boundaries, seeing beauty in the exotic, having a relationship with a black folksinger in his forties. She introduced us once and it felt like she was sharing a rare treasure.
Morissa and I lived together in squalid student housing in Redwood City the summer of our first year after college. She worked in an office job her dad had arranged and I worked as a maid in Motel Six. Our housemates, foreign medical students, listened to the rock opera Tommy at top volume at all hours. After that I went back to Oregon to live in a commune and Morissa went traveling. Time passed fast. She went to India and became a devotee of Babaji. She brought me a book with a picture of him dressed in orange on the cover and made me promise to read it. She talked a little bit about her travel adventures/discoveries. I remember her telling me that she "let people use her". barefoot people in India. the Ganges. She was gratified that she had blended into the crowds with her long black hair. In about 1971 I went to visit her in Tecate, on the border of California and Mexico, where she was staying in an ashram at a hot springs. She seemed happy with a minimalist life style.
In 1972, we werent' together, but I composed a song about her. Here it is:
She's a strange girl.
I don't know where she's going but she's always been my friend.
Sometimes she smells like a lady in dark roses
But the roses stay on and the lady disappears.
She's a lonely girl.
She won't let you in.
She's like winter sun that' won't let you leave her there.
She draws you with her fingertips
and you start to walk in rhyme.
She's got the perfect time.
But the melody is backwards at the same time it begins.
She looks at you in normal light like cats eyes in the night
And you wonder where she's going.
She's a strange girl.
She's always been my friend.
During the early or mid 70s was probably when Morissa first started getting involved with the LA Hare Krishna temple. I went there for feasts a couple of times for the sake of seeing her. She felt beautiful dressed in a sari and radiated grace and graciousness. I went once to the airport to find her and see her; she was so busy selling books. I couldn't get her into any kind of conversation that didn't involve her prostelytizing me, so I gave up on having a personal relationship with her, and we were pretty much out of touch until about ten years later, when we re-met in 1983 and introduced our small children to each other.
Thank you, Peggy, for that beautiful memoir of Morissa. When I think of her, I think of laughter, of getting in trouble, and of sharing the feeling of not fitting in, and not caring. I'm going to find my old yearbook so I can see what she wrote, then sit in meditation so this old brain can visualize and remember, feel her, more clearly.
I loved Morissa too. Our parents were friends, and knew about the heartache over her mother.
At Carver, I remember a field trip to the San Luis Rey Mission.
We were silly together, and probably an irritation to other kids, saying "San Luis Rey" over and over.
Valya, your description of Morissa doing the Hare Krishna in-your-face, WAY up in YOUR face is such an evocative memory that I can feel it, and I love it!
Pat Morrison (Kultgen)
Super nice gal. I was hoping to see her.
Valya Walker
she was known as Maliprakiti in the hari krishna group. best bookseller they had. pushy. in your face. perfect. 👌🏼 she was hysterically funny. out of tune chanting, really hard to do. man, this is a BUMMER. there was a point i could go to LAX and be harrassed by a friend trying to sell me books. always made me laugh. especially in her deepest depressions. great person. oh, this is SO sad.<>>
Peggy Morrison
MEMORIES OF MORISSA- BY PEGGY MORRISON
I first met Mula in 1964, when we started junior high school. I was less tuned in to being a teenager than she was, and she took on the role of counseling me about trends. She meticulously dressed in Liverpool fashion, wearing a black turtleneck and leggings under a wool tweed jumper, with her shiny black hair straight, chin length, and with long bangs covering a lot of her face. She explained to me that you had to choose to like either the Beatles or the Rolling Stones; you couldn't like both, because the Rolling Stones were the bad boys and the Beatles were idealistic. She, obviously, chose the Beatles, while her close friend Marilyn Merritt chose the Rolling Stones. Marilyn wore a similar outfit, but with a leather jacket.
Morissa and I became close friends; we walked the halls of junior high together and spent literally hours on the phone each afternoon and evening after school, debriefing endless details about people we observed at school and our families. Her mother's mental state was the shadow over her life, her dark secret that she tried to understand with theories about what it was and how it came to be. We continued to be very close friends through 1969, when we separated to attend different colleges.
I have my diaries from our sophomore and junior years of high school, 1967 and 1968. In January, 1967, when she had just turned 16, I quoted Morissa: "I won't blindly accept what other people say- I see through it- but I don't search- I just wait for something to pop up that's worth believing in." I follow the quote with my commentary: "Morissa is a big rebel; she's all inspired." I think it was this year in the spring that the picture of Morissa and me dressed like folksingers was taken. She came over to my house on a Saturday morning with a guitar and said we needed to dress like folksingers; our masquerade included worn out jeans, goodwill hats and jackets, a baggy fisherman's sweater. We walked to the middle of an empty lot about a mile from my house. There, among the mustard flowers, she played guitar and taught me songs like "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" and "Today, while the blossom still clings to the vine". I think she had learned them from a Joan Baez record. We felt happy and innocent and like part of the vanguard of a beautiful future.
I think it was in the summer between our sophomore and junior years, 1967, that we went to Brotherhood Camp, sponsored by the NCCJ(National Conference of Chrisitians and Jews). There we met and interacted with people of other races and socioeconomic classes for the first time, and learned to sing a lot of folksongs and protest songs about society's corruption and injustice and a vision of a more peaceful and fair world. Personally, I think that this experience sealed our fates in terms of exiling each of us forever from the conservative social mainstream.
In October 1967, I wrote about Rosh Hashana, saying that Morissa had "sort of a complex about her religious beliefs." I didn't know anything about Judaism before I met Morissa. She had a dark way of representing it; talking about the suffering of Jews in Europe (maybe even family members in Russia) and their diaspora.
In January of 1968, I wrote that we were growing up, that what other people thought of us was no longer important, and that we were not materialists. We alternately talked about how "life" and "society" were pathetic or beautiful. We were very involved in reading and trying to understand the philosophy assigned to us in school, but at the same time we were very silly! We used to laugh at ourselves and use theatrical voices to call our efforts to be graceful "farces" and "we have no inkling". One of Morissa's specialities was imitating the gestures and French accent of our French teacher Mister Bibiloni in a really insulting way as we both laughed uncontrollably until our bellies ached. One of the notes we passed in class, written by me, is preserved folded in my journal. The title on the outside is "Down with Society." Inside I talk about the inflexibility of our school administration, insult our teachers, call popular students at school "nauseating", and end by saying that I "melt" every time I see a certain boy, and "call me tonight".
We had dramatic moments of self-discovery. After describing at length in my diary one of my incidents of confusion, I wrote "Morissa's analysis is that I just worked myself into a frenzy."
In the spring of '68 we took a community college class on world religious philosophies. We identified with Buddhism and the four noble truths. We were reading alot. I remember we both read several works by Hermann Hesse and Morissa thought deeply about Siddartha.
Morissa was a huge risk-taker. She got to know older and intellectual students who were exploring bohemian literature and protest movements. The summer of 1968, she went to a college program in Santa Barbara; I think that there she also stretched her social boundaries, seeing beauty in the exotic, having a relationship with a black folksinger in his forties. She introduced us once and it felt like she was sharing a rare treasure.
Morissa and I lived together in squalid student housing in Redwood City the summer of our first year after college. She worked in an office job her dad had arranged and I worked as a maid in Motel Six. Our housemates, foreign medical students, listened to the rock opera Tommy at top volume at all hours. After that I went back to Oregon to live in a commune and Morissa went traveling. Time passed fast. She went to India and became a devotee of Babaji. She brought me a book with a picture of him dressed in orange on the cover and made me promise to read it. She talked a little bit about her travel adventures/discoveries. I remember her telling me that she "let people use her". barefoot people in India. the Ganges. She was gratified that she had blended into the crowds with her long black hair. In about 1971 I went to visit her in Tecate, on the border of California and Mexico, where she was staying in an ashram at a hot springs. She seemed happy with a minimalist life style.
In 1972, we werent' together, but I composed a song about her. Here it is:
She's a strange girl.
I don't know where she's going but she's always been my friend.
Sometimes she smells like a lady in dark roses
But the roses stay on and the lady disappears.
She's a lonely girl.
She won't let you in.
She's like winter sun that' won't let you leave her there.
She draws you with her fingertips
and you start to walk in rhyme.
She's got the perfect time.
But the melody is backwards at the same time it begins.
She looks at you in normal light like cats eyes in the night
And you wonder where she's going.
She's a strange girl.
She's always been my friend.
During the early or mid 70s was probably when Morissa first started getting involved with the LA Hare Krishna temple. I went there for feasts a couple of times for the sake of seeing her. She felt beautiful dressed in a sari and radiated grace and graciousness. I went once to the airport to find her and see her; she was so busy selling books. I couldn't get her into any kind of conversation that didn't involve her prostelytizing me, so I gave up on having a personal relationship with her, and we were pretty much out of touch until about ten years later, when we re-met in 1983 and introduced our small children to each other.
Susan Gittleman
THANK YOU , I HAVE FAINT MEMORIES OF MORISSA THAT FIT YOUR DESCRIPTION PERFECTLY -
RIP Morissa - hope she found joy om this earth
Susan Gittleman
on this earth
Eve Resnik (Beutler)
Thank you, Peggy, for that beautiful memoir of Morissa. When I think of her, I think of laughter, of getting in trouble, and of sharing the feeling of not fitting in, and not caring. I'm going to find my old yearbook so I can see what she wrote, then sit in meditation so this old brain can visualize and remember, feel her, more clearly.
Thank you. RIP Morissa
Bonnie MacEvoy
Thank you Peggy; I loved reading every word of this. Think of you often and hope all is well.
Linda Temkin (Waltzman)
Sorry I did not know her better.
May her memory be a blessing.
Norena Prather (Thompson)
I loved Morissa too. Our parents were friends, and knew about the heartache over her mother.
At Carver, I remember a field trip to the San Luis Rey Mission.
We were silly together, and probably an irritation to other kids, saying "San Luis Rey" over and over.
Valya, your description of Morissa doing the Hare Krishna in-your-face, WAY up in YOUR face is such an evocative memory that I can feel it, and I love it!
Michael Lipson
What a lovely tribute to someone who was always a close and dear friend of yours. So well done. Many thanks for sharing.