You Mean Me? A Collection of Essays From a Year of Small Doodles & Big Thoughts

By Earle Levenstein

Well, while the subject of each essay in You Mean Me? might be different, there's a commonality; in tone of voice; intimacy; one-on-one;  me talking to the reader; as I am right now. Sharing feelings; attitudes; maybe raising questions. Authentic. True. This is me; and I'm not performing.  

Subject in this essay is in itself, me talking about...my essays. 

I'm convinced I was born with a capacity for reading minds; no joke. Right out of the starting gate I knew my father was explosive; unpredictable; ricocheting from violence to compassion in seconds. That my mother was in retreat; regretting the day she married; trapped for life. That my older brother—by three years—was blessed or cursed with a sense of truth and justice, fought back; and regularly suffered the consequences.

As a very small observer, I read the message: Truth is life-threatening; spontaneity kills; screen every word, or die.

The result? I never expressed a true feeling; intuited my father's moods; coddled my mother; never dozed; missed a clue; a watchman on the tower; day and night.

Smothering my feelings; the truth; the injustice; the damage being done; and most importantly; my own rage; my terrors.

And so I had seemingly nightly nightmares; awake; knowing someone; something was in the room; whispering to my brother in his bed; Are you awake? Are you awake; until he stirred. Can I sleep with you? And he always said, Yeah.

Awake the next morning. 

Start all over.

My truth; my stifled feelings; needs; emerging in top to bottom bodily assaults; pains; aches; anxieties.

Incessant; for years; until it became intolerable; followed by more years—these productive—exploring my inner world; accepting what was; my history; the challenge of my childhood; offering me...the who I am...truth; acceptance; understanding; empathy; acknowledging a child's terror and need to survive.

Now on prominent display openly; directly; me. The Who I am; in each and every essay in You Mean Me? 

As witness; this essay you've just read.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earle Levenstein
• Release date: Oct 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781734094619

Book preview

You Mean Me? By Earle Levenstein

Copyright © 2019 by Earle Levenstein

Published by Blah Blah Blah Press

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Published, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1-7340946-1-9

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword: It's Been A Long Time Coming…

Are You Talking to Me?

I'm Outta Here.

Sure Miss the Neighborhood

Row, Row, Row Your Boat.

FYI: Me & Biofeedback

Knock Knock. Who's There? Who Would You Like Me To Be?

Stop the Bleeding…

My Migraine Free Zone

Oh, Mickey, My Mickey

Triggers

…And Speaking of Triggers

A Merry Christmas to All…

Here's To A Boring New Year

Who's In Charge Here?

So Long Hawaii. OOPS.

Linguini Vongole… S'il Vous Plait.

Beating Procrastination

if, If–If Your Grandmother Had Wheels She'd Be A Trolley Car.

Yesterday Was; Today Is; Tomorrow Will Be.

Tone Of Voice

Pastrami Lean On Rye… Russian Dressing.

Dogs? Wings? Valentines?

Doubleheader

Where's the Lone Ranger Now That We Need Him?

So You Thought You'd Seen It All?

Mary And The Giraffe

Year of the Dog… And I'm A What?

Hard To Believe? You Bet.

My Migraine… Non-Stop For A Lifetime. And You Know What? I Think It's All In My Head – Part 1

My Migraine… Non-Stop For A Lifetime. And You Know What? I Think It's All In My Head – Part 2

It's Not What You Do… It's Who You Are.

What–If?

Bravery: Action, No Plan

Infrastructure $$$? Wait'll You Hear My Plan.

New Cool On the Block.

Alone And/Or Lonely?

I'll Have What He Had

Sez Who?

Louis Armstrong & Me

Think You've Seen It All?

OK, I Have Migraine; Now What?

Where Did That Idea Come From?

The Brooklyn Dodgers And Me

More Than I Need To Know

Thai Cave Nightmare.

Natural Flavor

It's Deja Vu All Over Again.

The Count Is One… Two…

PEEK-A-BOO! I SEE YOU!

Upside: On Is On. Downside: There Is No Off.

Lox And Cream Cheese.

On The Other Hand…

Can't Get There From Here.

Is That A Light I See?

Never Said It Was Easy

Don't Mess With My Mickey.

Why Waste Words? Seeing's Believing.

Breathing's Bad For Your Health.

I'm A Little Teapot…

The Eyes Have It

Tell It To The Indians

Other Books by Earle Levenstein:

To MaryForeword: It's Been A Long Time Coming…

My creative life had a prolonged introduction. Although I always drew—Mickey Mouse was my god—other than fantasies of creating a comic strip and being carried away by the Wizard of Oz and Fantasia and Dr. Doolittle, even when I was accepted at New York’s Music and Art High School, I never identified myself as an artist of any kind; a person who had a need to draw, or a person who had a need to write.

In retrospect, reasons for the years of delay were not hard to identify; really challenging beginnings—dodging; bobbing and weaving; creating an alternative reality; assigning blame; inventing explanations; doing anything I needed to do to avoid explosions of violence—followed by many years of exploring my conditioned resistance to being myself; the Who I am.

Even so, sporadically, internal pressure from my creative soul would break through and in compressed periods of time, I did write two books and a play and drew many gag-cartoons and for a stretch during the Nixon years, was editorial cartoonist of a newspaper. The rest of the time, I worked full-time in advertising; a whole other story, friends.

At any rate; here I am now; retired for years; finally—and I do mean after a whole lot of time procrastinating—maintaining a regular creative schedule of my own for the very first time in my life; voluntarily; not related to a job; not meeting someone else’s requirements; but writing and drawing; week after week.

Never had this experience before. Came close with my editorial cartooning days; but filling a required space five days a week that demanded an expression related to specific subject matter, is not quite the same as a gap in time that stretches from here to whenever.

Anyway; ready or not; truth is, I’ve got years of material backed up at the starting gate just pushing and shoving; waiting only for me, myself to get out of the way.

So, one hand, holding a flag in the air; the other hand, behind my back; fingers crossed.

Flag is waving; and here we go.

As Johnny Cash would have it:

The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

Are You Talking To Me?

Well, we’re talking alright; but is it me you’re talking to? or am I so tuned to being the person who’s talking to me would like me to be, that it’s not until I reflect upon the conversation, that I can truly respond.

Either I was or wasn’t being myself.

I’m not reluctant, as you might know, to discuss the issue I have with being myself. It’s complicated and totally confusing. I mean, the transition is so smooth; seamless; without any conscious thought, that it isn’t until later, when I reflect upon the conversation, that I can respond.

It’s sort of frightening to accept that I’m the product of instinct; not conditioning. I knew before I knew what I knew.

No hypnotism; a spell cast; following instructions; one of those scenes in a film; When I snap my fingers you will open your eyes and feel refreshed; You will not remember a word of what I have said.

Not a function of assessing various personae; and selecting one as the most appropriate; selecting the best fit; a suit of clothes; the right tie. No choice involved

It’s instinct. I was born with it.

For me, activated the instant my eyes and ears switched on; an infant; the red flag I saw waving; the alarm buzzing; my immediate awareness that survival was on the table. Life and death. Every day.

Not melodrama. Acceptance. O.K. I get the picture; the scene; tinkering with the internal mechanism; reading the signs.

No training; taking a course; Bobbing and Weaving101.

I just knew.

To the degree that I could read my father’s intentions before he knew what he was going to do; what I had to do to respond; before, not after.

I know how odd—to put it mildly—all this sounds; even to me as I talk about it.

Conditioning? Experience? Read the scene; responded to my family dynamic as it unfolded; saw the violence; the chaos; the level of sound; the threats; the potential for the end of life; and adopted a survival tool; a persona; non-threatening; non-confrontational; the voice of reason; a capacity for diversion; for explaining; the interpreter; shifting direction.

To some degree, that all makes sense. I saw; I experimented; I found a program; I used it; it worked; I continued to use it; still do; and pay the price. Not dealing directly with the issue; any issue; essentially changing the subject; the tone; mollifying not challenging.

Looking around for the exit; an escape route; chit-chatting as I ease my way out the door.

Logical. Rational. Acceptable.

But… but… but…

I can still see—literally; see—my childhood setting; experience the feeling; see through my child-eyes; know how I performed; read the signals; heard the alarms; stepped in; tap-dancing; distracting; picking up the pieces; soothing the wounded; reframing what I had seen; explaining; rationalizing.

At the same time; I have to marvel at the sophistication of the child I was; the arsenal I developed; the success I experienced… assuming survival is defined as success.

No wonder it would be challenging for me to become the truth-teller; the tell-it-like-it-is straight-shooter; accepting the potential threat to my survival; end of the world as I’ve known it; accepting unpredictability; a whole new suit of clothes.

Don’t rush me.

Testing; one… two—

Where was I?

Oh, yes; one… two…

two-and-a-half…

I'm Outta Here.

From the very beginning—purely personal; no offense meant to patient, loving, totally committed teachers all over the world—but for me, school was a lost cause.

Nothing worked.

The only memory I have; happy or otherwise—most likely from the first few days of kindergarten—a colored-crayon drawing of a field of flowers. Period. That’s it, folks. No joke.

The rest, a series of images of me, home in bed, surrounded by blankets and toy soldiers and pads of paper and crayons and maybe some pages of comics from the Sunday newspaper.

As for school; nothing.

Except for a flash of me, heart beating wildly, running up the block from school to the alley adjoining my home, up the back stairs and in through the kitchen door. To find what? Who knows?

Delightful memory of a small movie projector, on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my brother, watching a Mickey Mouse cartoon; holding the film up to the light to see each drawing; or looking through a Christmas catalog of Lionel Trains; our radio on; an episode of Lone Ranger.

A gap in time; and I’m on the trolley on my way