PLACES I REMEMBER

 

The Theory of Everything, The Mandela Effect, Consciousness... and me

 

“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”

"M" is for Marjorie

DOWN A RABBIT HOLE

I have spent decades reading the works of theoretical physicists and the book The Tao of Physics had a great impact on me. I became interested in quantum physics and as a serious investigator I tried to solve The Theory of Everything. The clue is TIME. Time is an illusion. We are all time travelers in a universe where everything has happened and our consciousness moves after death to alternate universes where it is possible to be reincarnated into the past.

So, greetings from a time traveler:

In Buddhism, the Bardo, or antarābhava, is an intermediate, transitional, or liminal state between death and rebirth. I can recall several of my past lives. Reincarnation is real. The math gets complicated because souls can be reincarnated to other universes which may be moving in different periods of time. All time has already happened. It is not unfolding, it was a drop. All time exists at the same time in multi universes. Consciousness builds the world.

We have always lived and will always live because time is not a straight line, it is a circle. This is hard to understand because our minds are programmed to always think things have a beginning and an end. But there was no beginning and there is no end. We cannot understand that just like a goldfish cannot understand that 2 + 2 = 4. We are not hard wired to get it. And I believe karma may determine the circumstances into which we are reborn. 

The universe is expanding and infinite... I believe there are alternate universes and parallel universes and it is possible to be reborn back into the past because all time exists at the same time. Albert Einstein also explained how time may be an illusion. 

I  have read a great deal about quantum physics.... there are books that explain this. Michio Kaku and Amit Goswami do the best job explaining about concepts like the Einstein Rosen bridge and black holes, which may be gateways to these other universes, and tachyons may be the particles of our souls. And Kabbalah teachings also talk of the transmigration of the soul.

I wrote this E-mail to the theoretical physicist Michi Kaku on 1996. He never replied, but when I met him at NYC's Open Center a few years later, I asked him if it is possible to be reincarnated back into the past and he replied "Yes." So here is the letter, my theory, and before I am discarded as "nuts," read about the subject of physics and consciousness. I think I solved The Theory of Everything, which has to include TIME. 

And by the way, the profound Mandela Effect also sort of proves my theory.

The Mandela Effect

It is not deja vu or connected to reincarnation. It is experiences where things happen that are slightly different than how you remember them. For instance: you read a famous person died and you think: he already died. Or a major historical event will now be different than your recollection of it. 

I remember Nelson Mandela died in prison. However he died in 2013 decades later. Many others have the same memory... that is how the phenomenon got the name: The Mandela Effect.

I experience this a lot. Remember the Tank Man incident at Tiananmen Square in Beijing on June 5, 1989? I recall the tank ran over him and it was a major humanitarian event. Many others recall he died on that day too. However, it is now written that the tank stopped and he never died. THAT is an example of a Mandela Effect.

I have a theory of why this happens. In this dimension, on this planet, we are constantly passing through wormholes to alternate universes, and with each passing there are slight historical differences but our memories do not change. 

This happened recently to me. And my friend Arnold also had the exact same experience. We both read that the son of Clark Gable died. Then, a few week later, in the newspaper it said he was alive and his girlfriend died in his house. 

Jim Nabors died and then a few years later he died again. It was the same for Julia Child and Captain Kangaroo. How many times did Jack Palance die? If you experience The Mandela Effect, in your timeline you have sensed that people die more than once and there are slight changes in your memories.

This is all connected to quantum physics and I believe it is quantum physics that can explain all of these mysteries and phenomenon and eventually prove that reincarnation is real and consciousness is forever. 

I have a theory of why this is happening. Time and events are being changed in the past as souls are reincarnated back to the past and they are changing history and it causes a ripple effect.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is when you are reincarnated back into the past, remember to try to change history. You can change it in major ways so when those in this world, in this dimension, remember events... they are recalled differently and eventually fade from memories and existence because they were deleted and erased in parallel universes and actually never really happened. 

The Mandela Effect:

So many have tried to figure it all out:

I know in Buddhism nirvana is a state in which there is neither suffering, desire, nor sense of self, and the subject is released from the effects of karma and the cycle of death and rebirth. It represents the final goal of Buddhism.

But for me, nirvana would have to be my personal Willoughby: Wilmette... a place with streets so green and perfect streetlights and a sense of total serenity. 

It must be magical to wake up in Wilmette.

AND ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

I try not to throw anybody away unless there are a great series of bad interactions that seriously impact me and put me in a bad place. 

Yet, I have been thrown away over minor political disagreements, criticizing a comment on facebook, correcting a guy's spelling on facebook, mixed messages that resulted in deleted plans, and even my dopey YouTube page. I even had a seriously dear good friend years ago throw me away after she got married because she was a "wife" and in her mind that gave her elevated status and she no longer wanted "single" friends.

A lot of my friends are gone because they died: Joan, Jack, Rhoda, Phyllis, Susan, Betty, Lou, Jerry, Nick, Carrie, Linda, Rita, David, Annie, Roz, Nell, Gail, Maxine, Marilyn, my cousins Eileen and Ellen, and so many more. ETA: Frances 10/23

I sometimes feel like I am now the cheese that stands alone... waiting for Godot.  

And today, just like that another one took a hike... which just proves how fragile and weak some minds are. They are the "throw away demographic."

And just like that, he blocked me and another one bites the dust! LOL

My friend Nell once told me: you can do 1000 great things for a friend but do one thing he doesn't like and he will throw you away and nothing that went before will be important.

The truth of life is as you age you lose your looks, turn to old shit, and die. So I try to keep people in my life... because they are part of my memories that matter. 

a portrait from 1976

photo credit: Frederick Piccarello

THE CRAWL to the LOOK BACK

How is a life defined? Is it measured by family and analyzed within those relationships? Is it remembered by lovers and that passion and then possible regret over wistful choices? Is a life built upon a meaningful career? Maybe it is all of those things, or perhaps at the end nothing matters as so much falls away.

I have always been able to recall most of my life, very little of my minutes became forgotten or lost. A car will pass on West 19th Street and the sound will remind me of when I lived on Independence Avenue in Brooklyn and I could hear that same sound as cars passed on Bay 8th Street. 

There would be days I would sit with my grandma at the window of this house and count the blue and black cars that passed as we waited for my parents to return from a day trip. That white door is the same door through which I  left to go have my tonsils removed. I can still hear the neighbor Camille telling my father she would leave a banana peel on the step so after he slipped my operation would have to be canceled. I can remember so much of the few short years we lived there. 

"This street is where it all happened, not much now. Why do we always expect home to stay the same? Nothing else does. It's funny how when you're a kid a day can last forever. Now, all these years seem just like a blank." --- Bobby in Hearts in Atlantis

When I was a teacher, I would often hear "Miss Levine is the prettiest teacher ever." I was in Bonwit Teller and a woman told me she was an artist and she had never seen a face as perfect as mine. An administrator at Hunter College told me a woman with a face as beautiful as mine should never have to think about a degree. Now, that all seems so silly. 

Because just like that, I became an old lady... and that face that once was is gone. And what will roll out in my future is a mystery.

DOWN A PARTICULAR RABBIT HOLE

By using deep analysis and becoming very introspective, I was able to determine that from the ages of 9 to about 17 I was born a girl but identified as a boy. I was not a "tom boy." I was a boy. I was a transgender. This was me as a teen boy.

And as a boy, I loved other men. I suppose I was gay. I really at that time was not astute enough to even understand what was going on, to be able to analyze my strong desires which manifested as lucid dreams and woke fantasies and these longings were so strong that I entered into a world of day dreams in high school that took over my thoughts and resulted in me not even being mentally present during classes and I had very poor grades because I was not even paying attention to the teachers' lessons. I was in a world where I was a boy in love with Michael Landon and Paul Newman. 

But somehow when I reached the age of 23, I went back to identifying as a girl with still a preference for men. Is that possible to change and be so fluid? Enquiring minds may want to know... 

I now sit under an umbrella of no mercurial roads. At the end of the day, none of that past really matters. I realize that fixations and obsessions with desire are what Buddhists believe lie at the root of suffering.

THE ROBBERY

When the safe in my father's shop was broken into and the contents stolen, it made the newspapers.

MEMORIES OF THE HIT THAT NEVER HAPPENED

My father owned Columbia Silver Company and his factory was on McDonald Avenue in Brooklyn. He and my mother were always going to Las Vegas and socializing with this guy Ash Resnick and a few times I went also and we stayed at the Stardust Hotel. 

Ash Resnick

My father would always tell us some mysterious stories of his associations with gangster types in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and Brooklyn. But there was one day I remember when I was seriously scared.

The details are vague how we got to this location because this was in about 1972 and I was already an adult living on my own in Manhattan. But somehow we were both in my father's car and parked across from his "shop" at where the arrow is pointing in the second image above. 

I asked what we were doing sitting in the parked car and my father plainly explained that for two days some anonymous guy was calling the "shop" and threatening him in a menacing voice saying he would be there to "get even" on Saturday at 2 PM. 

So there we were on Saturday, parked like sitting ducks at almost 2 PM and waiting for some nameless guy who maybe would show up looking for my father for no good purpose. I was very frightened, knew it was dangerous, and told my father we should get the hell out of there. I had recently seen The Godfather and too many of those scenes were stuck in my head as possibilities. My father replied and said "No, I want to see who this guy is and if he really shows up." We were hiding in plain sight.

Well, no guy ever showed up and as we drove away I told my father he was an idiot. He suggested we go to Nathan's for hot dogs.

Veronica J. Valentini

I met Veronica during my early days of broadcasting when we both did shows at the same internet site and we connected and became fast friends. 

We had many conversations (online and on the phone) about all sorts of things and after a while Veronica stopped her LIVE broadcasts but she continued to watch me and she became a regular viewer and has been very supportive. 

Veronica is an extremely accomplished woman: a producer and screenwriter with a long list of film credits at IMDb.

She even posted reviews of my books!  

the marjorie cartoons

ROAD TRIPS

PENIS ENVY

She is the producer of "The Price of Honor":

 

Wayno REVISITED

UPDATE, this from January 2010:



I had a late lunch today today with Wayno Draino at a diner in Manhattan. We spoke for a long time and there is much to write so this interview will be put up in parts.

Wayno was born in Bayonne, NJ. He declares: "I was born under the smokestacks of Bayonne, and that is why most people think I have brain damage now. At the hospital, the birthing room is underneath the smokestacks and when the babies are born they get that toxic injection of smoke to prepare them for living in Bayonne. If they don't, they can die within a month." Wayno says the air in Bayonne is 60% nicotine. He grew up on a cul-de-sac, 75 feet from a chemical container. When he was a kid, he used to play "hide and go seek" and hide on top of the tank. But, "it is really tough to hide when you are glowing."

Wayno was an illustrator who did not really play with other kids because he was very introverted. He says in Bayonne everybody was beating each other up all day long. He learned to play hockey and football not because he wanted to be a great sports man. He liked tackling and punching the other kids.

He always was looking for friends... so when he was a teenager he was sitting around on the docks at his Long Beach Island summer home and everybody was real quiet. You could hear the crickets. He was introverted, but he started talking. The more he talked, the more the girls liked him. He would tell stories about his life; his wild and crazy days. He was overly animated and added punchlines and would "crack everybody up." It was an amazing feeling getting everybody in the group to laugh. He felt "connected to humanity" which is a feeling he almost never had. He was truly happy when he saw people around him laughing and that is why he began doing stand-up. And comedy is also a defense mechanism that helps him get through miserable days. It was very dark and industrial in the part of town in which he grew up and Bayonne was "not a very happy place." 

Wayno said his whole family was in the TV business. His father was a film editor for CBS and at the end of his career he had his own film editing company that edited TV commercials. Early in his career, Wayno was a "shock" comic to get the attention of the audience. I met Wayno in about 1988 at the Eagle Tavern,  which was located on West 14th Street in NYC. The pub had great comedy open mic nights for beginners, and this is Wayno from 20 years ago doing stand-up. We got along and became friends, and Wayne cast me as his mother in his film, which he said I could call "Challenged Superheroes." It actually had another name.... and Wayne laughed when I told him I was changing the name of the film for this blog. Anthony Ribustello was also in the film. Wayno told me the film in which I appear will soon be up on YouTube. I still can remember my first line: "Hey everybody, Wayne's here." And Wayno reminded me that I was in the illustration of the film for his "New Underground Magazine."

We went on to discuss Dan Aykroyd's "Out There" show.  Wayno Draino worked for the show as a graphics and animation producer for 6 weeks. After 60 shows were recorded, the show was cancelled. 

Wayno is indeed outrageous and he went on to tell me how his "doodling" got him into some recent trouble on a plane. I was really laughing. He certainly has a way of telling a great story.

Wayno Draino has given written permission for all of his art work (posted below) to appear at this blog.

SERIOUSLY

In all seasons here

Time bends to the azure sea

But leaves me paler

© Marjorie J. Levine 2023

BLUE SKY WHITE SNOW

White driven soft snow with no direction had fallen 

On a cold settled January bitter remorseless day

And I left a familiar road to go crawlin'

Along this path with bare trees that was called Destination Way.

Under soft clouds and a crisp defined blue high sky

I left small footprints and then saw a face in a window

Reminding me it was a time long ago that I had said good-bye

To that old streetlight which was still there to curate a change to sow.

© 2023 Marjorie J. Levine

at THE MET FIFTH AVENUE

Berenice Abbott's New York Album 1929

City Hall and Brooklyn Bridge Vicinity, Manhattan

Chinatown, Mott Street Vicinity, Manhattan

Reliable Play Figure Company Shop Windows, Lower East Side, Manhattan

Financial District, Wall Street Vicinity, Manhattan

Financial District and Lower East Side, Manhattan

Madison Square Park, Third Avenue and Ninth Avenue Elevated Train Lines, Manhattan

the exhibit