Imagine All the Stories

ongoing...

American Horror Story

Alva, OK

A Lost Letter

In 1996, this letter was found in a suitcase filled with old letters after the woman who received the letter passed away.
The son of the writer did not want the letters and his instructions were that they should all be discarded. I was a dear friend of the woman to whom the letter was written and it was given to me as a gift so I could remember a piece of her.
I post it here now because the anguish of this husband on one day back in 1953 should not be lost with time. It is a reminder that those who lived and who are now gone had lives filled with experiences and emotions... and the sadness is that everything passes.
Life is elusive.

 

at the Neue Galerie

Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele: 1918 Centenary

at the NYBG

GEORGIA O’KEEFFE: VISIONS OF HAWAI‘I

at the Met Breuer

OBSESSION NUDES BY LIMT, SCHIELE, AND PICASSO

OBSESSION NUDES BY LIMT, SCHIELE, AND PICASSO, exhibition objects

Picasso: Head of a Woman

Schiele: Seated Woman, Back View

Klimt: Two Studies for a Crouching Woman 

at the ICP

HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON: THE DECISIVE MOMENT

also:
ELLIOTT ERWITT: PITTSBURGH 1950

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

at the MET MUSEUM

African American Portraits: Photographs from the 1940s and 1950s

PUBLIC PARKS, PRIVATE GARDENS

PARIS TO PROVENCE

The Garden of Versailles, Adam Perelle (French, Paris 1640–1695 Paris)

The Tuileries Garden, Adam Perelle (French, Paris 1640–1695 Paris)

Fontainebleau Forest, Eugène Cuvelier (French, 1837–1900)

In the Garden at Argenteuil, Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

Garden at Sainte-Adresse, Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

The Parc Monceau, Claude Monet (French, Paris 1840–1926 Giverny)

Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," Georges Seurat (French, Paris 1859–1891 Paris)