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| Memorial for Adam Purple. Bottom photo by Times UP! |
We all wore purple to the memorial.
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| Public Space Party Tie Dyes |
A few of us tie dyed on Friday. Others recalled or read poems. Harvey, who took many of the iconic photos we
see of the Garden of Eden, staged an exhibit of photographs at MoRUS. We all feel connected to that garden on the
Lower East Side and the anarchist visionary who spurred a movement of urban
gardeners some four decades ago. His memorial was a testament to the circle still emanating from that garden on Forsyth Street.
“I wish I had known what those purple feet meant,”
Caroline explained, recalling the lines of purple feet which used to extend all
over Lower Manhattan. But we did not really have to know.
This story about a garden, earthwork, and commons
connects us in any number of ways, some conscious and some elsewhere.
Best known for his incredible 'The Garden of Eden,'
an eARThWORK Purple began creating in 1975 in a vacant, garbage-filled lot
between Forsyth and Eldridge Streets, Adam Purple, born David Wilkie in 1930 in
Missouri, was a white-bearded and purple-clad fixture of the Lower East Side
and Williamsburg, noted Times Up! 'The Garden of Eden,' which covered 15,000 square feet with
planting beds in Taoist, concentric circles and featured a staggering variety
of vegetables and 45 trees, was so luminous, that according to urban legend it
was seen by NASA from outer space.
I never saw it.
But my neighbor Norman did. And
he wrote about it in New York Magazine in 1979 (The Purple People, New York magazine, 27 August 1979).
We talked about the old article sitting out on a stoop here in Brooklyn.
So I rode my bike up to Williamsburg to meet Mr Purple, then residing in a
closet in the Times UP! space where I’d spent countless nights through the
years, hanging out, organizing, planning, conspiring, picking up supplies for
our own garden down the street over the last few years, but I never saw Purple,
that was until last summer when we talked a few times. At Norman’s son’s Bar Mitzvah, I met Harvey, who
took those majestic photos of Purple and the Garden of Eden.
In between interviews with Purple, I read up on some of the history of the garden and his efforts to create a livable
space within the laboratory of the streets of New York City, eschewing
electricity or paid work, in a favor of a life organized around recycling,
reusing wastes, and creating compost.
"I'm
teaching lessons about how to survive, an experiment on making earth," he
told McKinley in 1998. "Of course you could do it outside the city, but
the challenge is here." He pauses for a second, and then, as is his way,
reconsiders. "It's the Athenian oath," he said. "The Athenian
oath. The duty or responsibility of every citizen to leave the scene a little
better than when they got there, to improve things,” (McKinley, 1998).
My friend Norman Green helped me compile a list of
questions for Purple. He wrote the first
long article about him for New York Magazine back in 1979. (Green, 1979).
Ask him
what he means by , “Your red shifts universe is on the psychic slips,” noted
Norman. And so I interviewed him one
more time the next week and asked him about the psychic shifts.
“That’s
just a conflict with a capitalism,” explained Adam, with a shrug. He gave me a high five when I told him I knew
Green. Purple talked about the ways gardens and libraries are really
alike. They both open up ideas and secrets.
“Put down http://www.zentences.com/,” he recommended, pointing me to a site full of
number games and back histories of the garden of even. As others have noted encountering Purple,
knowledge extends across fields from radical ecology to literature, philosophy
to conspiracy theories. “Adolus Huxley
used the phrase, general enlightenment,” explained Purple, referring to a sort
of cultural SOMA. “Better than willful
ignorance. Keep em ignorant. Keep em sick so they can be exploited.” Yet, there are ways to see another world. He
points out texts for me to look up:
“Go to the Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Literature
and Antiquities and look up under mysteries.”
A subtext of the conversation is the modern world of
technology vs an older premodern era. “There were orgies,” he explained. Yet, they were shut down. “The Catholic Church did that in the age of
darkness… and we still have it. “
“Go the
New York Public Library, to the third floor, look in the little books for
Zentences,” he counseled. Zentences, is of course, Purple’s book, that he
self-published, and stashed at the public library.
So, why
purple, I asked.
“Purple
is the name of a magic mushroom. It’s
the color of royalty,” he explains, noting that he no longer wears Purple, not
since the city bulldozed his garden. But
he’s still enamored with the work of Empedocles (490 BC - 430 BC), the philosopher who wore
purple, who postulated that all life was made up of four elements – fire,
water, air, earth – while love and strife account for their mutual attraction
and separation from each other.
Green
suggested I ask Purple about oral sex.
And the answer was no simpler.
“There was a madam in Alexandria who wanted
to give a story to the sex workers. She
gave them a trip to Eleusis in Greece. Each enjoyed a drink, during
the orgy. Each walked by candle light to Athens in a sacred celebration of life as we do not know
it. Socrates got in trouble for making
his own orgy with youth. Throughout our
conversation, Purple hints at a kind of colonization of the city by development
and blandness, reason over passion. Yet,
there is always the revenge of the repressed. When Purple talks, he seems to be
grappling with a way of thinking about passion
and emotions contending with a system of reason and order; here the
imagination opens up a world of ideas in harmony with a more spontaneous cosmos
(Berkman, 1979, Suerdem, 2013).
“Look
up LIFE with les(s) ego,” he counsels, “of
separateness of all else expectations.” His point is that we, as humans, ask
for too much; we hope to have more than we need. We “overshoot. The species overshoots, the
environment we live in is caused to die off with our species. Look up homo colossus.”
The
conversation gradually moved to the topic of chemtrails.
“Bill
Clinton nearly destroyed Harlem,” he explains, becoming more specific. “Why do
you think I called it the Garden of Eden? These people can’t stop with their
machines.”
The
garden was an antidote to this. Purple
gave supporters poems if they contributed to the garden.
“Why do you ride your bike backward?” I asked.
“There’s a reason for that,” he explained. “If you ride with traffic you can get
doored. You can get hit from behind. You
gotta see whats coming.
“Its all gonna come to an end, this industrial world,” he
mused, referring to a world with rising sea levels and too much development. He muses that the future may not be
pleasant.
Red Slips
“They
say the universe is expanding. The
further things are away the red shift, doupler effect, what if its
contracting? Its all coming to us. Death is not what is degrading. Life is.
“I have
two or three libraries that are lost… I have lots of libraries. I have had a virtual library.
“I don’t
have a credit card, that’s a way to rob from people.”
“What
inspired you to create the garden of even, I asked.
“The
first time I came to New York, I saw backyards full of junk, and little
inspection. I was working on the
backyard in Forsyth street.” And he
started gardening there in the mid-1970’s.
The site expanded and expanded, in concentric cirlces, expanding out
into his neighbor’s yards, eventually taking up some 15,000 square feet, composed of lilies and roses, rasberries and
fruit trees. Publications including the
National Geographic as well as several
foreign magazines ran stories about the garden.
Some went as far as to compare it with the earth sculptures of artists
such as Walter De Maria and Robert Smithson (McKinley, 1998).
"It was an absolutely astonishing creation," said
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblet, an expert on street life and a former head of New
York University's Department of Performance Studies. "Besides its natural
beauty, Ms. Kirshenblatt-Gimblet said, the garden had an inherently political
message. "He made a garden out of a ruin," she said. "So
symbolically it was an especially strong indictment of the failure of the city
to do the same," (quoted in McKinley, 1998).
While residents saw and international journalists saw
this as a work of art, the city viewed it as a vacant lott, they had every right
to build housing upon. “They got away
with lies,” noted Purple. “They held a hearing in August of 1985, a full
evidentiary hearing.” It did not go
Purple’s way. “Poverty pimps,” he
grumbled. “Weasel wording.” The majority of Purple’s ire about the loss of
the garden, then some 28 years prior, was directed at Merian Frielanderr, the
council member from his district, who disparaged the garden in public hearings,
noting the kids faced dangers from the thorns from the black raspberry bushes. “She was a liar.” But the blame for the garden’s demise,
or as he put it, “This
r(apid)evolutionary EartHwork was vandalized by govERRnme(a)nt goons
(then-Mayor Ed Koch, later-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, NYCity Councilperson Miriam
FriedlandERR, Margarita Lopez, et
al.) on 8 January 1986, while its 1985 case was pending before the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit--a POLITICAL HIT!” (Purple, undated). Nonetheless, “the garden started a
revolution.”
Purple
suggested his work had more to do with a view of the world. FL Right said, “the box puts you in
prison Its square.” Yet, you’ll find no straight lines in nature,
none on the body. Lines are not
straight. They are fractured, he suggested. “Consciousness means being aware
of the environment. Frank Lloyd Wright said there is no pillar in
the corner of a window. You are at
liberty to look at one corner at a time. This is an idea that traveled around
the world. You can look in more than one
direction at a time. There is another system.”
Through
composting, reusing waste, and gardening, Purple was pointing at another kind
of a system. “Get your shit together,”
he pointed out. “There is meaning in these idioms.”
Referring
to his “law of return,” he suggested “ignorance of the law is no excuse.
It’s a parasidic species,” he explained referring to humans, who take without
giving back to the land.
Our consciousness can expand. We can imagine something else, he mused.
That’s the only difference between you and I, consciousness.
Go the library, see if its there. LIFE with les(s) ego.
You may
have to move the book because the sea is rising, two miles of ice is
melting. Gaia principle. The earth takes care of itself, he explains,
referring to a theory of the evolution of the world: living organisms have been
here for a long time, adapting and evolving as a system always changing and
impacting the chemistry, the conditions of living here. “We have no one to blame but ourselves.”
That interview was the last time I saw Adam. Leaving he asked that I go to the New York
public library and find one of his books. Come back when you find the book, he
told me. I never found the book. But the connection between the
flowering of ideas, from the trees, the ground, the books, the ideas, the
dialectic between nature and civilization, our head and the body, intellect and
feeling, that always stuck with me. More
than a garden, the space felt like a new way of looking at the city , one we’re
still fighting to achieve today.
I loved talking with friends about Purple.
We even ran into Harvey Wang, the photographer who
recognized the importance of Purple’s art, documenting it for decades. We
talked about Purple and his books that he seemed to miss. Wang recalled
those books and the days in the garden.
He also heard through the grapevine about Purple’s
passing.
“Some sad news...Adam
Purple died yesterday; a heart attack while biking across the Williamsburg
Bridge. It's hard to imagine NYC without Adam. Most recently, he was working
and living at Time's Up Brooklyn, 99 South 6th Street, where there's already a
sidewalk memorial. I remember him best in the days when he was working on The
Garden of Eden...”
I had heard from the Times Up! grapevine that he was
gone, as we rode to a Public Space Party meeting.
But it doesn’t make me sad to think of him gone, noted
one of the Bike Mechanics. I was just glad to hear know him, this legend.
It was like seeing a ghost to run into him at Times
Up!
“Damned drunks,” he mumbled to himself, tearing off the
top of a beer can he was recycling, clad in blue cut off jeans, his ubiquitous
beard and ideas flowing.
He was one of the great artists of New York, noted
another Times UP! volunteer, recalling Purple.
I remember seeing him when I was a kid in central park,
recalled Catherine. I was like nine and there he was in his purple tie
died outfit, picking up horse maneur. He was like a hundred then and that
was 1979. And then I saw him at Times Up years later.
Everyone had stories about Adam Purple.
But my small story was only a part of this labyrinth
of interconnecting tales.
Leaving the garden, I walked up to MoRUS, where I greeted Bill and
Harvey and Elson. Harvey’s pulsing photos
and Norman’s story about the garden from nearly four decades ago were all on
display on the show about Purple.
I spend the last few weeks wondering why the city was not able to find
the heart to save the garden when it could.
Sure I know the reasons. Real
estate is the permanent government of New York City. But couldn’t we see a way
to incorporate this majestic testament to sustainable urbanism? And if not, why not?
That question was on everyone’s mind as the memorial
speak out began. But so were the poems. While the evening was organized as a
memorial, the poems for purple were many. Adam told me purple was a majestic
color. His colors inspired generations
of gardeners and urban ecologists.
“It felt like the old times, painting those purple
footsteps,” Bill and George Bliss mused.
Many had no idea what they meant;
others understood completely. We all
live in a labyrinth in the city, leading us between ourselves and the unknown.
Bill asked that I mc the memorial for Mr Purple.
Austin, who’d lived with Purple at the Times Up space in Williamburg was there, visibly moved, grieving.
A lot of us were.
MCing, I read Allan Ginsberg’s plea for the city to
save the garden from 1984.
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| This writer MCing by Nadette Stasa. |
The day after Mr Purple
died, I found an old copy of one of Octavio Paz poems. Stories about gardens
grow from page after page of the work. I read
“a tale of two
gardens.”
A house, a garden
are not places:
they spin, they come
and go.
Their apparitions open
another space
in space.
Another time in time.
Their eclipses
are not abdications:
The vivacity of one of
those moments
would burn us
if it lasted a moment
more…
A garden is not a place
Down a path of reddish
sand,
We enter a drop of
water,
We drink green
clarities from its center,
We climb the spiral of
hours
Up the tip of the day,
we descend
The consummation of its
ember.
Mumbling river,
the garden flows through the night
That one in Mixcoad,
abandoned,
covered with scars,
was a body,
at the point of
collapse.
I was a boy
And the garden to move
was like a grandfather.
I clambered up its
vegetal knees
not knowing it was
doomed.
Was the garden really doomed? That was a question we’d all consider.
JC ushered Purple’s spirit, riding through Central
Park to pick up some horse droppings as Purple had so many times, his legend
living beyond him.
“All we are saying is give shit a chance,” sung JC.
The crowd followed, laughing as he displayed his collection.
Ray Figueroa of the New York City Garden Coalition
welcomed everyone, setting the stage.
“How many of you are feeling good in this
garden?” he asked.
Everyone raised their hands.
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| Ray Figueroa |
“As you enjoy it, remember, this happened because of
visionary lovers of the earth were out organizing, getting arrested…we need not
forget this history. We need to stay
vigilant in the face of those who say affordable housing is at odds with
community gardens. Today, we need more
sustainable models of development. If it
means anything to you, you have to come out. Thank you for your love and
affirmation. This is a romance.”
It certainly is.
Paula Seigel, of 596 Acres, followed noting gardens
across New York are under the same threat that the Garden of Eden faced three
decades ago. We need you to show up on
October 19th and 22nd at court over the fate of these
spaces, she explained.
“We need you to show up in those little windowless rooms, where decisions about places like this are actually being made,” she said.
Upcoming Community Garden Court dates:
Maple Street Community Garden, Oct. 13 at 360 Adams St., Rm 441, in Brooklyn at 9:30 AM.
“Roger That” garden in Crown Heights Brooklyn will be fighting eviction on Oct. 22 in 141 Livingston St. Rm 603 in Brooklyn at 10:15 AM.
Eldert St. Garden in Bushwick will fight eviction on Oct. 27 in 141 Livingston St. Rm 603 in Brooklyn at 10:15 AM.
It was a theme repeated over and over again by garden advocates.
“I cried when I heard it was bulldozed,” noted
Magali Regis, of the NYCCGC. “At that point, I became an activist.” Decades later, she is still at it.
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| Magali Regis |
MCing, I was trying to create a cadence of voices,
to remember the Lower East Side icon.
Harvey Wang, who took those iconic images of the
garden, followed describing Purple (or rev.les ego) as a social activist, philosopher
and gardener / revolutionary. He was also the author of countless essays,
pamphlets and books, including Zentences and life_with_les_ego.
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| Harvey Wang |
Daniel Bowman Simon passed out copies of pages from
the book, bringing purple back with his words.
Visibly moved, George Bliss followed, feeling the
gravity of the moment, noting: “I don’t know where he got the idea to start
making circles in a city of squares and to say right here that it was going to
happen…. To get organized to go up to Central Park to bring horse manure.” But
those circles seemed to emanate through space and time, neighborhood by
neighborhood, inspiring a generation of gardeners, who saw cities as works of
art and emulated his efforts.
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| George Bliss |
Bliss groaned thinking about the false debate
between housing and gardens. “I am horrified to hear that the same ploy is
being used today.”
When the garden was finally destroyed, Bliss saw him standing looking at the last tree.
Bliss
recalled Purple’s reaction. “We are dealing with reptiles here. We have to understand that.”
He summarized the lesson of Purple’s life. “We
have to create what is right, not react to it. But create it, connecting with
everything… Bringing it here was a gift.”
“So I decided to paint footprints to remind the world
about the garden,” he explained. “They
were a metaphor to follow him. The gardens that remain are a testament to his
work.”
Standing there, everyone seemed to want to talk, to
connect their stories with the larger narrative taking shape, standing there in
La Plaza.
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| Marlis Momber and her photographs of el jardin in the 1970's. |
Howard Branstein, of the 6th Street
Community Center, followed, tracing the story of El Jardin Paraiso, in relation
to the Garden of Eden. He recalled
talking with Purple about ways to organize to save the gardens, perhaps
collaborating with the New York City Community Garden Coalition and or the
community land trusts.
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| Howard Branstein |
“I’m not going to deal with the city. They stole the
land from the Indians in the first place. I’m not going to deal with them,”
Purple was said to have replied.
Those listening at La Plaza broke out in applause.
Howard was quick to point out that Purple was not
always practical. When he stayed in his
building after the owner left, he was unable to organize the remaining tenants,
many who were vegetarians. Many around him left or were turned away for
ideological reasons.
“They would not shit in the garden,” Purple told
Howard.
“Well that’s not
helpful,” recalled Howard, somewhat frustrated he was not able to organize the
other tenants.
“He was a messiah and inspiration for the garden
movement. In 1984, when beauty died, a
stronger garden movement was born. When
El Jardin’s fate was put up for a vote, the whole community board supported it,
as a consequence of the loss.”
“Reclaiming urban land, that was Adam’s idea,”
explained Bill Weinberg, a radical historian who got to know Purple in 1985. He
described the destruction of the garden as a “political hit. There really were
lots and lots of vacant lots in the vicinity. But the city went after this
garden. “There were vacant lots everywhere. It was chosen for political
reasons. Finally, they came in the dead of winter and took the garden. It was a political crime. They tried to do
the same thing with La Plaza and the community fought back. We need to keep
organic culture here in the Lower East Side.”
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| a cavalcade of speakers, including Bill Weinberg, author of avant gardening |
And Purple was certainly that. Shortly after Purple
died, I tried to make sense of the interview I had completed with him.
Themes of Greek philosophy and feces, Socrates and Shit
run throughout the interview, I explained to Morales when he told me Adam had died.
“Well, that was Adam,” noted Father Frank Morales,
when I recalled the story with him.
He was more than sympathetic with Purple’s struggle.
Purple was his friend and he helped all of us to contemplate the politics of
shit, explained Morales.
“Adam was the most thorough revolutionary that I
know. He was all of it, one part Karl, another Groucho Marx. I’m still in
denial that he’s gone. I keep thinking
he’ll be coming back on the third day.
Its always great to see the family,” the father mused saying goodbye.
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| Father Frank Morales |
“He was an urban survivalist,” noted Chris Flash,
who interviewed Purple when he was fighting for his housing, running a story
about him in the Shadow, after going through edit after edit, revision after
revision. And they always made the story better. “Some people talk about
creating a garden, but he did it. He did
it,” explained Flash in wonderment. “I think of how you live and how you
die. I can really admire a guy who could
live on his own terms.”
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| chris flash, of the shadow |
This was not to say, he was not frustrated that
Purple did not organize more to save his home, but that was for the MichaelShenkers of the garden movement, who helped outline a model for organizing a
model for saving the gardens, connecting direct action and legal advocacy. Countless lawyers who followed this model
were there to support these efforts.
Joel Kupferman, a long time garden lawyer, confessed
the people like Purple made it all worth while.
More Gardens and the Lower East Side Collective,
Times Up!, 596 Acres, and Public Space Party were all born of this ethos.
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| Joel Kupferman |
Aresh and Kate showed toward the end.
Kate recalled a Adam coming by Childrens Magical Garden when it was facing the bulldozers.
JK lead us through a spiral dance, through time,
recalling Adam as one of the greats. And so we wound our way through the
garden, greeting and saying goodbye.
“We
all come from the garden and to her we return.
And
to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean
Hoof and horn, hoof and horn
All that dies shall be reborn
Corn and grain, corn and grain
All that falls shall rise again
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean
Sage and crone, sage and crone,
Wisdom's gift shall be our own.
Crone and sage, crone and sage,
Wisdom is the gift of age.
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean
We all come from the Goddess
And to Her we shall return
Like a drop of rain,
Flowing to the ocean”
Today, my head spins thinking of Purple and all the
stories growing from the caring community which grew out of his inspiration.
Toward the end of the memorial, Dana talked about
the Yippies and a woman pulled out an accordion and started to sing.
In “Concert in the Garden,” Octavia Paz writes:
It rained.
The hour is an enormous eye.
Inside it, we come and go life reflections.
The river of music.
Enters the blood.
If I say body, it answers wind.
If I say earth, it answers where?
The world, a double blossom, opens:
Sadness of having come.
Joy of being here.
I walk lost in my own center.
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| sarah Adam-Purple-on-Roof-by-Harvey-Wang |
Afterthought from Monica Hunken
I attended Adam Purple's memorial this weekend. It was incredibly moving and humbling to hear stories from people who have been fighting for community gardens and a livable city for over 40 years! There was beautiful George Bliss tearing up recalling how he painted purple foot prints all over the streets until people took note of Adam's garden of Eden being bulldozed. These are the people who planted seeds where there was no green space, when Adam biked up to Central Park to collect horse droppings for his own DIY manure, when he took the shattered bricks from torn down buildings to construct a walking path.
I wrote a little poem for him which I didn't read at the memorial. Here it is:
Adam
There is Adam wandering almost naked without a trace of shame
out of the red velvet fridge in Times-Up
to Warn me about Turning off the lights, closing the door,
not running the water
Always a mind to resources, to the source,
to preserving,
conserving,
serving
There is Adam in a cap and plaid passing me on the Williamsburg bridge laden with a heavy load on his tricycle
Patient and steady
There is Adam soaking up the sun but looking to the skies with a weary eye
Chem trails again. Here we go. But I can't help but smile
There is Adam in his glory planting the swirling garden of Eden
Breath into the city
Green into the grime
Life into the death chambers
Life life life
