Entry 15
By Steven Paul Lansky
©2005 All Rights Reserved

"First Some Emails" and "Rigo, My Brother, My Brother"

First Some E-mails

Alan,

Hi! I’m writing from Cinci where I am planning a visit to Vermont in two weeks. I am considering taking VIA rail from Montreal to Chicago with a stopover in Toronto between the 8th and 10th of July. Let me hear from you if you will be around and are interested in a visit.

I’m finishing grad school this summer writing a thesis novel and reading many books. In the fall I hope to be teaching or starting another graduate degree. My brother Rigo and family are in Burlington, VT. I have booked air travel both ways but find trains more comfortable and the opportunity to see Toronto again, after so many years is enticing.

Let me hear from you.

peace,

Steve

Steven,

We will be around between the 8th and the 10th. We are always interested in visits, or we have a guest room if you would like to stay with us. You might hear a crying baby from time to time (Paul is now 7 months old) but aside from that, it is comfortable and a good base for touring Toronto (about 10 minute walk from the subway). \

Please let me know your plans.

Alan

Alan,

Any good chinese restaurants around the train station?  I’m interested in visiting and would love to meet your young prodigy.  A crying baby would be a welcome sound after all the chatting I’ve been doing trying to deal with local beer heads and smokers.  I’m trying to find Margaret Atwood.  I’m reading her book, and interested in stealing her ideas.  Simple people write books, stupid people steal, easy goes it.  I’m kidding about taking ideas, but I listen to friends and I’d like to know what Paul’s schedule is like, so I can compare to a friend who might be delivered on or about the date I’ll be visiting.  Coming through Montreal.  Planning to cross lake Champlain on a ferry, weather permitting, board at Port Kent or Plattsburg.

Can I bring you any consumable item from Cincinnati?  Can you get bagels? Lox?  Bruegger’s is around the corner, and they’re good.  I’ve heard there are cycle shops in Toronto .  Any sew-up tires at good prices might be worth returning with.  What’s the weather like?  I think it’s 11 to 14 here but I’ve never been able to do centigrade conversion in my head.

Is your apartment near the lake?

Thanks for your help,

innocently,

Steve

Steve,

There are many good Chinese restaurants in Toronto, but I am not sure which are the good ones now. I will have to check. Most of them are downtown, not that far from the train station, but too far if you are carrying any bags. We live in a house somewhat uptown, but convenient to downtown. You can get anywhere by subway, which goes to the train station and also is about a 10-15 minute walk from the house. I am not sure where Margaret is hanging these days.

Paul’s schedule is not like anything they warn you about before you have kids. Usually it is not that bad, but this week is not a good one to ask about. He has been getting over a cold and is teething, and wakes up about every 3 hours during the night. Hopefully, by next week he will be back to normal.....sleep 9 to about 8 (waking up once or twice at the most )and then 2 naps during the day.

I crossed Lake Champlain once at Plattsburg, in the winter. It wasn’t too nice, but I think it will be for you.

No consumable items from Cinci are necessary. Toronto has all of that stuff.....it is one of the more ethnically diversified cities around.

July weather could be hot and humid, but not quite as humid as Cinci. Days will be between the 70’s and 90’s. Nights should be low 60’s.

You have to let me know exactly when you plan to arrive so I can make arrangements (we go away on weekends).

Alan

Alan,

I’m going to be arriving in Toronto early in the morning on Monday the ninth of July. I plan to leave the next day at six a.m. I then arrive in Chicago on the eleventh, I have a full day in Chicago, and then I return to Cincinnati early morning of Friday, July twelfth/thirteenth.

I plan to be carrying a rare instrument in a large case, a small backpack and a briefcase. The train is a sleeper and travels slowly and quietly overnight. It is scheduled for departure after eleven and arrival around eight-thirty in the morning. If it would help I can have breakfast around nine and meet you later in the morning.

I’d love to see the lake, but I’m more interested in Margaret Atwood. These are two addresses and phone #s for M. Atwood’s in Toronto.

M Atwood

3800 Yonge St

Toronto, ON M4N 3P7 Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx

M D Atwood

1 Garden Ave

Toronto, ON M6R 1H5 Phone: xxx-xxx-xxxx

If you do get a chance to talk to her before I do, please tell her I’m interested in any research she might know of on the size of root vegetables and apples from the setting of “ALIAS GRACE” in the Belleville area.

I’m going to try to find farmer’s almanacs, but the whole story isn’t told in statistics. Her account so fascinated me that I’ve decided to write an article about it.

My brother in Vermont grows leafy greens in a garden, and is involved with tomato nurseries. I’m curious about comparison studies, and regional differences. But, because I cycled through that region in 1975 and again in 1976 I think I’m qualified to do the research that involves meeting in public, and touching on the tricky issues that this kind of inquiry might open.

If you read “ALIAS GRACE” you’ll immediately recognize that the psychological implications of the medical research implied so much transference that a more careful analysis of hand size, physiological development, and masturbation might be the sources of the objectification of the woman who ended up in New England and died around the time of the Great War. The question of hypnotism, and mesmerism seems to be no more than a quarrel between id and superego while the ego stands in check.

I’d explain all this in a letter on letterhead but there isn’t time. If she needs a reference from Miami University, ask her to talk to Jerry Rosenberg, who by all accounts is an Atwood scholar.

I apologise for asking you to go between for me. My phone number in Cincinnati is xxx-xxx-xxxx. If you want to talk to me about this, email me, and we’ll schedule a conversation.

It would help to have your address and a web address for the subway system in Toronto before I leave on the third. Maybe you could give me an idea which line you are on and how to change, etc. I’d rather travel above ground, if there are buses, but since I’ll be traveling alone, and you know the customs better than I, I’ll follow your advice.

They tell me the train station is on Front Street. I’m looking forward with pleasure to seeing your home and family together.

My departure is delayable by a day, if weather or other problems come up.

all best,

Steve

Rigo my brother, my brother

A man with a buzzing, silver, electric wand touching me through my clothes invaded my boundaries but I was tolerant. This was July 2001. I was flying United. In principle I liked United Airlines because its employees own it. I confirmed my ticket with a young man who was also a flight attendant. The pilots looked young and clean­—with their insignia on shoulders, collars, and chests, and again I was scared, now because they were so young. On the flight I had a wide seat in the back where there was an emergency exit so I had legroom. I ate dried fruit from a sticky plastic bag on the one-hour ride to Chicago that because of the time change arrives just as it leaves. I was caught up in time travel thoughts. The flight was weird. Every moment registered as time passing and not passing. I felt a celestial shift. As I was deplaning, I saw the pilots and one had a beard and the other a bushy mustache. They had the same faces as before but now they had crow’s feet at their eyes; they had aged ten years or more in an hour. I was sure something freaky had happened to the spheres.

I ate cheesy, thick-crust, Chicago style pizza in the airport bar, watched people and understood that tension of the airport bar as I gulped cola. When I got on the flight to Burlington I was even more scared. My mind kept playing Rigo’s rejection over and over. I tried to remember his exact words on the phone. He had quizzed me about the dosage of my medication, asking me to explain decompensation symptoms. I stayed calm then. He did not ask about the last few weeks. I had not told him of the hospitalization in Trenton. I was sure Dad had told him. I felt it was none of Rigo’s business. I could have secrets. But he probed my medical situation like he was a clinician, or a doctor. Then he said, “I don’t want you to come.” I blew up on the phone and cursed him and the boat. The rejection stung.

On the plane there were young families. The people flying to Vermont looked so wholesome to me. Corporate hippies. How does a writer capture the hearts and ethos of these wholesome, granola, trail mix, and yogurt-crazed easterners? I wrestled fingers and thumbs with a small packet of salted peanuts in blue foil. When the packet came apart a deep involuntary shrug shook my body. I know my brother Rigo is wealthy and materialistic, a scientist, and outdoor enthusiast. I was sure he didn’t want me in Vermont because he was afraid of what I would see.

I had called several music stores long distance to ask whether they would evaluate a lute (I sought an appraisal, and insurance value.) The owner of Burlington Violin Shop responded angrily, “I don’t want to see that kind of instrument.” I thought that he was a snob. He didn’t say why he wouldn’t look at my lute, but I guessed he preferred to handle classical orchestral instruments. I talked to a young woman at another store and imagined meeting her. I had asked Rigo if he knew of music stores that might evaluate a lute. He never responded. My fear was that he would think I was buying it for his daughter. But I wasn’t, I just wanted her to see her uncle with it, to hear his hands play across the strings. I couldn’t explain this to Rigo. He wouldn’t understand.

I arrived in Burlington on a Wednesday, my night back home to play harmonica with Jake Speed and the Freddies at Cody’s coffeehouse. I had told Jake I’d be gone for a couple of weeks. He was cool. (A whole Freddies digression here? description of Cody’s, an armpit bar attached to a cool coffeehouse, angry feel of men bonding before going off on a campaign, drinking and smoking, basement full of techies and freaks playing intense shoot-em up computer simulations, owner’s husband an old high school acquaintance alleged dealer but in this story he ought to be one of the good guys.) I had talked with Brad, the dobro player about buying a lute. He was curious. I even called my State Farm agent to inquire about insuring the instrument. He told me that it would not be covered in a bar or club that served alcohol. That meant if I went into Cody’s with it, and it was damaged, or stolen I was on my own.

After arriving in Burlington by air I took a taxi into town because the buses don’t run on holidays. At a coffeehouse on the north edge of the business district I read the weekly and daily papers and suspicion about Rigo filled me like a flame of paranoia. Rigo is working an experiment. He runs advertisements in at least three daily papers, offering huge sums for experimental subjects. He tells them they can be paid for smoking marijuana, then he tracks their buying habits with computer assisted software from companies in Vermont, and once they are so fully psychologically addicted he begins to withdraw their marijuana supply. He watches them go through stages of psychological struggle. The homeless problem is Rigo’s experiment. I had been through substance abuse treatment and now I am dependent on psychotropics instead of marijuana. Either way I’m controlled. I’m a monitored being. Rigo knows my conundrum and is protecting himself and his way of life. He doesn’t want to have to deal with me directly on the medication issue.

I found a Burlington bar with an open mic night and decided to come back later and play harmonica. I wasn’t going to let Rigo’s plotting mess up my life. I’d carry on, get the lute, and enjoy a writing vacation in Vermont.

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