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.

for Frances

 

SCENES FROM LONG AGO

On Beard Street,

In Kernersville, there are colorful

Wall murals which give glimpses

Into what was, long ago.

I saw ladies in billowing long

Red and white dresses standing

With gentlemen wearing tall hats

All waiting at the railroad station

For family arriving from faraway places.

Soon, they would all step into a horse

Drawn carriage to take a short ride home.

Nobody looked up to see the child

Perched high above who on bleak days

After school would climb to the flat roof

To wait for the trains to pass.

The trains were carrying weary passengers

Traveling to faraway places, and they were

Also going home.

Many years later, she would remember

The sound of the whistle as the trains

Passed and she would speak of the sound

As both sad and mournful,

Perhaps because it always

Strangely reminded

Her of all times past.

--- Marjorie J. Levine

The Way Back

 ongoing.....

ROAD TRIPS, poems

 

SEX, LIES, AND DECADES LATER... THE INTERNET

These greeting cards are pieces of a bittersweet memory from 1970 to 1973, and the messages are quite romantic. I saved the cards to always remember a man I loved named: Lou. But, this was a dark and layered and mysterious "love" because Lou was not just a man... he was my therapist.

Lou looked like Al Pacino in "Serpico." And he was married with several children. I'll be brief...

I began seeing a therapist in about 1970. His office was in Greenwich Village and after just a few sessions I came under the seductive spell of "erotic transference." I grew attached and I was dependent. I fell in love, or thought I had fallen in love. The feelings were not yet mutual. There arrived the day when Lou told me he was moving his practice to Staten Island. I was not ready at all for the separation and I was emotionally devastated. So, I followed him to Staten Island and became a twice a week ferry regular.

The longing for him until my sessions each week was unbearable. I was vaguely aware back then that transference was a common feeling when in analysis. And I had fallen deeply in love with my therapist. Lou sent a real mixed bag of messages; by turns flirting with me and allowing me to believe the feelings were becoming mutual, and at the end of each session he drove me back to catch the ferry. But, in the sessions he would emotionally push me away. He pulled me in and gave me hope and played with my desire, and then confused me by pushing me away with his mercurial whim. He vaguely promised to soon meet me for lunch in Manhattan and then in the next session he told me to find another therapist. I returned home filled with longing and I was confused and desperately unhappy. I was in anguish. I wrote him long love letters in which I poured out my heart.

He sent me greeting cards for Valentine's Day and my birthday... copies hang at this blog (configured with folds to fit.) The saga continued for several years and well.. as it goes with time, the hypnotic spell eventually broke and I ended the "therapy." One day, just like that.

About eight years later, in 1981... I tried Lou's old number and I called. I needed closure. Lou was very excited and happy to hear from me. He was now divorced. He started calling me twice a day. I had to tell him to calm down. So, we had dinner at a Manhattan restaurant. He sat there all pompous and clueless. We went back to my apartment and well... anyway, when he left he hugged me and I knew it was a good-bye forever. He had not changed. He had told me over dinner his experience with me took him to a place where he made a decision to never allow physical contact with a patient in a session ever again. The man was a fast and quick study!

I look back on this episode of my life now and it is totally meaningless. I am not angry. I feel nothing. I know this goes on. I watched "In Treatment." Lou was verbally unprofessional, unethical, and his behavior was inconsistent. He did not know what to do about me and he could not handle and come to terms with his own feelings. Transference is serious and should be handled properly by those who have fallen under it's seductive spell. I think my experience with Lou exacerbated my condition of limerence and I actually never knew I had that until a viewer in my broadcast was listening to one of my many stories and gave it a name. 

I am happy I saved all of Lou's cards because I am reminded of a bittersweet chapter of my life. 

Added after the above: a few years ago, I saw online that Lou had passed away. I called a number I believed could have been his (to offer some form of condolences to whoever answered... I am not a grudge holder and shit happens). A woman answered who told me she was his wife, allowing me to conclude he remarried. After some quick back story to identify myself, I asked her if Lou ever mentioned me. She said no... and as my saga unfolded she was riveted to my story and listened intently. She actually seemed to enjoy hearing it. At the end, she told me her name was also Marjorie. Damn, I am so sad he is gone. I really would have liked to talk to him again. 

a found piece of a letter from long ago

 

Yetta... from Yesteryear

So yeah, I was a teacher for 35 years in NYC and I wrote several books as my real name: Marjorie Levine. Road Trips and Becoming Until (on Amazon) did well.

But, for decades, I tried to "make it" in comedy. But, I was never good enough, or remarkable enough, or lucky enough.

But when social media prospered and live broadcast sites became popular, I decided to try to do shows on the internet so I fired up my computer cam. I became "Yetta Telebenda" and "Cookie Lipschitz" and I was off and running!

A viewer with the nickname "TripCode" became my videographer and he faithfully recorded my shows and uploaded the videos to YouTube. But, I still remained mostly invisible except for a small group of loyal "fans" who I gathered along the way and they became my devoted "cult following." But, fame still eluded me and no casting agents ever called. However, I persisted and through the years found new and creative ways to reinvent myself and keep my content fresh.

I enjoyed developing my new life and making my shows as beautiful as a live memoir in an old silent movie. I fit the pieces of my unique puzzle into a new journey which took me straight to the streets of Broadway. And with pathos, I performed on The Great White Way and said jokes like nobody was listening and mimed like nobody was watching.

And the most bittersweet and sad part... nobody there was. I was all alone on that old and famous avenue and somehow it did not even matter. In my mind's eye, I was famous. For one night, I was a celebrity and as the strangers passed without even giving me a second glance, I hardly even noticed. 

And when my "performance" was over, as I walked home in the crisp night air there was one thought that remained with me. I knew that there could be fulfillment in small scale poignant ways because in that personal magical moment in time, I was shining in my own imagination like a sentimental Broadway star who would sparkle and twinkle on... forever.

watch here:

Yetta from Yesteryear

Voices from The Road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bURAStSaJoE

My father made a series of "records" when he was in the Army during WW2. They were made as he crossed the country from New York to the Aleutian Islands in Alaska and they were for his family who were back in Brooklyn.

After he died in 1994, I had the records transferred to audiotapes. A copy of the tapes are now at THE NATIONAL WWII MUSEUM in New Orleans.


"Ruby" later had had own story. 

https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/276/434/1461257/

WHAT WAY TO GO TODAY

Here's my poem that won Rick Dale's Beat Poetry Contest on December 3, 2009.

WHAT WAY TO GO TODAY

Almost dusk:
Last summer on one Wednesday, in July,
I sat on a bench, a grey wooden tired
Bench on a boardwalk out at old Long Beach.
In the sky a lonely and lost grey kittiwake tipped
As the hot pink sun set in blazing technicolor over
Hot pinkish sand and the fading blue ocean water.

That morning:
I had thought about seeing great art...
Vermeer, or Courbet, or maybe Monet.
But, I drove to the beach instead to think
To think about everything creative that had been
Created before I got here, and when I was here,
And what will be created when I leave this place.
When one day I leave my place and all places in my
Consciousness that is now in this time and was
At a past time and will be in some next time;
Maybe all time exists at the same time.
The great minds of theoretical physicists search
For the "Theory of Everything" as they sit
In their cluttered rooms, their great thinking rooms.
In universities, they ponder the mathematical equations
And Schrodinger's cat and all those mysteries.

In the evening:
It is during the quiet and still and sad night when
I miss most the people I never met:
Edie Beale, and the Rat Pack, and even Rod Serling
Who made me want to time travel: to go back to simpler places
Like Nedick's, or the Belmore, or Bickford's, and Willoughby.
Then the longing, a longing when distant sounds and faraway
Foghorns drive thoughts to reflect on a life visible through some
Smoky cracked mirror, a haunted and haunting steamy mirror.
As I am sort of old now and getting older
There is a vague and odd feeling that I,
Like the kittiwake, somehow must have lost the way.

© Marjorie Levine 2009

THE LIGHTS AT DUSK GUIDE THE WAY HOME

Brooklyn Botanic Garden

THE CENTER BECOMES ART