three from ROAD TRIPS

BREAKING BREAD WITH A STRANGER 

During large gatherings,

I always dined alone in my room
And savored the meal.

There were no distractions:
No loud arguments
No political debates
No family photos to view
And no fake smiles or phony laughs through 

Which to suffer.

There was no vacuous noise in my left ear.
The uncles worried about Aunt Ruth, who was 

Taking a break from Bingo, every cousin thinking 

She might fall asleep at the wheel. 

Those were the days when at midnight
I would rest on the patio hammock
And look up at the night sky and imagine
The holiday dinners that would roll out into my future. 

Decades later, on a snowy Sunday,
I walked to Bickford’s and sat at the counter
All alone in the back.
My company was an old book
I picked up at the Strand:
The Secret of the Old Clock.

There was unexpected solace in
The visual rerun.
A man sat down near to me
And he soon dined on beef stew.
He looked weary and he carried
On his shoulders the weight of stone blocks.
I moved closer to him
As if the closeness would attach me to an unfamiliar comfort: 

A sweet zone that was strange yet oddly made me feel secure. 

THE EMPTY PARK

You returned in the still quiet to 

Dyker Beach Park and sat in the 

Glare of broad daylight 

Under the old night street light.

You lost parts of yourself as I did 

When moments tumbled away 

When so many of us went away.

That was the place where the 

Chipped pieces of our button candy 

Melted into washed swirls of abstract art …

Where yesterday’s bumpy seesaw,

Broken now, points to a tired and 

Rusty jungle gym where you chased me

As if catching me would be a brass ring. 

The benches where the old grandmas sat

And gossiped about the cuckold

Are empty now and dirty snow has

Collected on the path where strollers

Stood at attention waiting to be pushed 

All the way home.

You returned for seven days:

As if sitting shiva would

Give you sweet solace and comfort 

And bring you closer to 

Something that once was. 

WHAT GROUNDS A TOWN

This town is painted with detailed brushstrokes

Within graphics that visually trickle by.

Drivers on the main street and 

Passengers on the outskirts 

Of these tangled streets 

Forget what passed in the rear view mirror.

Later, maybe: the drivers and the passengers

Go to the drive-in to see comedies. 

While at the same time, 

Past times are always painfully 

Remembered by victims and visitors 

In the core, and they are not laughing. 

Riders on trains pass stone walls where 

On the other side black and white silent films 

Once played on screens and now scraps 

Of old newspapers from years 

Gone by are reminders of layered agonies 

That spill hopelessly to the lakes.

After one defined breath, walkers pause 

In this town to stare at that place 

And remain in place to share curious glimpses.

I myself stopped there one rainy night when deep 

Melancholy drove me to drive, to drive in all ways 

I could creep and through all paths my imagination 

Could crawl, so I could think and make sense 

Of the whole senseless. 

And when I stopped on State Street

I inhaled and with one whiff 

The total of all the layered misery 

From all different harsh sides was inside me. 

Strangers in other towns never knew of the 

Solid prison next to railroad tracks where the mournful 

Sounds of trains passing was a constant reminder

Of the past in which a life could have advanced

Along a different and less wrongful path

Leading to different ends. 

Locals always whispered of inmates filled with 

Despair who died inside that place and many still wait 

For the ages inside that place so they too 

Can die and reach the end of the line.

I thought of the lonely men who lived in solitary 

Confinement and live in a bleak prison next 

To railroad tracks where mournful sounds

Of trains passing filled and fill the air.

Hopeless inmates waited to die and still wait

For rightful justice to be served: 

An eye for an eye, 

Served up plain and simple.

Long after I left that place I heard for many 

Nights, in my small city apartment and while alone 

In own my bed, the sad faraway sounds of trains 

Passing as they carried innocent riders to other places 

And probably some measure of happiness… 

In full blown living Technicolor.

On a rainy cold day, 

I was disturbed when the wind blew

The curtains in and by the haunted and haunting

Sound of the blinds rattling. 

© Marjorie J. Levine 2020

WINDOWS

 At different points in time, I looked out from different windows. The last two photos show past views from the window where I now live. The tree has been removed. The snow remains in winter.

Haiku:

Through a lens long gone

There was magic in the view

Past is so quisquous

Helen Weaver, an encore

an encore, from April 2010:

Shortly after I read the heartfelt and bittersweet memoir, "The Awakener," I connected with Helen Weaver. I was enthralled with her memories of her love affair with Jack Kerouac. We began to communicate in E-mails... and today, I am happy to call Helen my friend.

Helen met Jack Kerouac in November 1956, when at 7:00 on a Sunday morning he arrived with Allen Ginsberg at her apartment in 307 West 11th Street. This is a photo of that building that I took after I read the book. Helen was delighted with the photo, and she told me her window can be seen on the left, right behind the blue balloon.

ETA: Helen Weaver passed away on April 13, 2021.

Robert Siegel, writer/director

UPDATE in an encore, from May 2009:

This interview with Robert began on a Thursday evening at a Chelsea diner. And we concluded the interview the following day, on a muggy Friday Manhattan night in the same diner. So, this was my first two-part interview. I was excited and happy.

Robert was editor-in-chief of "The Onion" from 1996 to 2003... when it was in it's original phase as a Madison, Wisconsin publication. The editor of "The Onion" when Robert arrrived was Ben Karlin, who later left to join "The Daily Show" as executive producer. He was followed by David Javerbaum, who is still the executive producer of "The Onion" and he wrote the music for the Broadway show, "Crybaby."

In 2001, "The Onion" moved to new headquarters in New York City. And shortly thereafter Robert began writing "The Wrestler." Robert explained that the process of creating a film is a long one. It can sometimes take five years from "script to screen." But Robert knew from the beginning that Mickey Rourke was "ideal" for this film and he wrote "The Wrestler" with Mickey Rourke in mind. Robert knew he would be just perfect for this part. Robert wanted to create a compelling character and story. Yet, he realizes the story is both sad and emotional. And throughout, there are many scenes in the film that show the character's great and extreme loneliness with moments of so much sweetness.

The audience knows at the end of the film that "The Ram" will not last long after he makes a decision to go back into the ring. He has made a decision to die. It was the director's decision to end the film with a freeze frame... to perhaps leave the final moments without a closure.

I think there are huge emotional moments in "The Wrestler" and it was Robert Siegel from whose fingers this heartbreaking film began and... he indeed created the film which gave Mickey Rourke his "comeback." Robert was nominated for a WGA award in the category of "original screenplay" for the film.

We moved on to a discussion of "Big Fan," the film which Robert wrote and directed and which will premiere at BAM on June 19th as part of the Next Wave Festival. In the film, Patton Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, a loner who is obsessed with the Giants and he spends much of his time calling in to a sports radio show. For this role, Patton Oswalt won the award for "Best Actor" at the Method Festival. Robert describes Paul as a "Marty" or "Rupert Pupkin"... and perhaps "Big Fan" is the "King of Comedy" of sports movies. I asked Robert if he personally knows any of these "obsessive nerds" and he said he based the character on his imagination. But we have all had experiences which make us lonely and we all share basic human emotions and it is those feelings which Robert hopes to bring to film. "Big Fan" will open on August 28th.

Well, another interview had ended. As darkness was falling, the sidewalks were still packed with people and the streets were crowded with busy traffic congestion. I started thinking as I began the walk home. People weave in and out of our lives.... but I have known Robert for several years, and tonight I continued to be impressed by Robert's sincerity, integrity, openness, and warmth.

addendum: "Big Fan," written and directed by Robert Siegel, was nominated for the 2010 Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award. He is also the writer of Pam & Tommy and Welcome to Chippendales.

OCEAN PARKWAY

OCEAN PARKWAY

This is the place:

Where time seems to stand still

And only the clouds move above

To show those under the mercurial sky

That the weather is changing. 

Decades ago: 

I looked down from a window

In a building high over Ocean Parkway.

I can still taste my aunt’s sweet turkey dinner

On the day the red ripe cranberries rolled 

Over my pink tongue.

That day:

On a bench, 

The reader in a blue suit read his book

As a girl sat in a blue dress on another bench

And watched a rider pass on a blue bike 

Going to a grey building down a shady road.

Now:

So many years later another face 

Looks out of that same window and watches

An old man on a bench read a grey newspaper

As an old lady throws crumbs to feed pigeons.

In the rain:

A car passes going south and then

Slows down to a red light, a red light that 

Only stops movement for a minute

A minute of time on Ocean Parkway. 

Marjorie J. Levine © 2023

12

Yes!

from Le Grand Hotel, Paris 1953

 I was given a group of letters when a friend passed away. This particular letter always emotionally resonated within me and unfolded almost like one sad scene from a film about a marriage long ago that was falling apart. The  husband's desperation, sadness and grief are vividly palpable. 

I suppose at some point down the road this faded letter could become part of a trash pile. But it is too heartfelt for me to allow it to disappear and for all the passionate feelings in it to get lost in a shadowy past. 

So much that is real falls away as time keeps passing but this old faded letter details one man's despair on one day in Paris in 1953 so long ago.  

Click on each page to enlarge for easier reading...

now this

 This (selfie) photo was taken in 2022. I played around with it and changed the colors. 

from ROAD TRIPS

 CODA

This life, 

Lived like a dream through stained glass

In a hazy deciduous forest alone among strangers.

I am the most strange, I am the different outsider:

Feeling like a vacuous soul on an endless ride 

On a forgotten Ferris wheel, high and low, low 

And higher but waiting and left and dropped at the low.

The ride is always on endless bizarre looping roads 

Upon which all unfamiliar sights become visible as 

Mysterious grey sculptures in the rear view mirror.

My insides are weary from traveling through seasons like a 

Naked Amnesiac: the past remembered and easily forgotten.

The ghosts of ancestors are speaking through dense fog,

Cutting through this bittersweet life through which I 

Involuntarily passed without my written consent making

My passages all a crime, an extreme felony.

In time I sat perched all alone seeing possibilities but 

Owning disappointments during touches by many who 

Broke my damaged parts and stole my wail, my shouts

My distressed chiseled shadows and my pale scratched echoes.

This life is now mostly all behind me pushing me to the 

Now where I stand on a precipice not sure which way to go:

To the detour or the curve in the road or a stop sign or

Drive to the dead end or move miles away and live the 

Same way in the same life: this red lighted life. 

And as frightening as the journey has been during 

The vivid Technicolor scenes and after midnights in film noir 

In all the pain and anguish and panic… 

All I really want, all for which I long

Is to stay longer, to remain, and not leave this place.  

--- Marjorie J. Levine

the marjorie cartoons, lulz

ON THE STREET WHERE I LIVE

 At midnight, my street became a movie set for the HBO show Succession.