All Aboard

There is something so satisfying, comforting, invigorating, about taking the train. I didn’t realise this until well into adulthood, because train travel is pretty uncommon in the Prairies. These days, the trains you hear singing their haunting, echoing songs over the wheat fields or behind the slopes of sound hills are transporting grain, fuel, machinery, across the plains. Their rusting cars are branded with graffiti and stamped with the names and logos of old companies that used to mean prosperity and stability, and now speak only of a time long since past: CNR, CN, CPR.

But then I moved out east, where train travel is common, even commonplace. There are big cities and middle-sized towns and tiny villages clustered together, making train travel for people more logical, more economically viable. Because it was novel, the whole experience of taking the train was thrilling to me in a way that it very clearly wasn’t to the native-born Ontarians around me: I delighted in the charming little train stations, the clever folding down tray tables, the way the trains groaned and rattled as they gathered speed. I even liked queueing to board, my bag slung over one shoulder, and my ticket in the other hand, following the directions of grim-faced train attendants who pointed me to car three, to car four, who passed my heavy suitcase to me up the narrow stairs of the train car. But best of all, best by far, were those trips where I managed to book a window seat. The windows on the train were better than any book I had brought with me, better than listening to music, better even than imagining out a murder in car three, a la Agatha Christie, and solving it. Delicate green hills rolled passed, or blossoming orchards, or dark, foreboding stands of pine and birch, or trembling frosted bracken. Even passing through the barren grey industrial parks of the towns whose perimeters we skirted was fascinating. From those wide windows, I could catch glimpses of life - people’s backyards, littered with children’s toys or carefully tended gardens, dogs barking from behind chain link fences, the black loam of freshly turned fields, sagging dilapidated barns with sad, empty doorways and windows like eyes, crows dropping from their perches on telephone lines as the train passed, and glittering rivers with forgotten millwheels still turning steadfastly.

Of course, there are downsides - travel of just about any kind can be a faff. There was the time the train stopped on the tracks for hours because of a blizzard, the grim faces of the train attendants growing ever grimmer as the minutes ticked by and the passengers became more and more ticked off. There was something frightening, then, about looking out the window and seeing nothing but shivery white. Or the inevitable person who conducts a conversation on their phone, at full volume, announcing all their banking details and their health insurance number and their childhood dog’s name to the whole train car. Or the overpriced, half-frozen sandwiches. But on the whole, I think I prefer taking the train to just about any other method of long-distance travel. One can, after all, bring sandwiches from home, and the noisiest person in the car is a good candidate for victim number one in an imaginary murder mystery. I know I’m not alone in enjoying the train - I am joined by legions of train-spotters who delight in the details and minutiae of train schedules, machinery, tones, and stations. Perhaps they, like me, find something very satisfying in the mix of predicability and regiment of schedules and dates, arrivals and departures, timed to the minute, and the unknowable journey itself, which nearly always brings surprises. I don’t think it’s a mistake that so many stories take place on the train, or at least feature our intrepid main characters journeying from their old reality into the new via a train. Trains’ inexorable movement, fast but not too fast, comfortable but not quite home, and wide windows onto the world whipping past, makes for the perfect conveyer, setting, metaphor, and, for me, the best way to get from A to B. Safe journeys, then, to you, fellow travellers.

Jennifer

Note to self

I have one of those little magnetic notepads on my fridge, the kind where you write to-do lists and scrawl the groceries you want for the week. This week, mine included cinnamon tea (so good for the frigid days of January), white vinegar, hot sauce, and spinach. This pad is plain - just blank lines with no decoration. In the past, though, I have had grocery list pads with borders of flowers, a la William Morris, or festooned with cats, books, cartoon dogs, and Walter Gropius quotations. When I used those pads, I always managed to tuck my list into my pocket or purse on my way out the door. But the plain list, dear reader, I promptly left on the fridge, and came home instead with cat litter (necessary) and peppermint hot cocoa (distinctly unneccesary, but still welcome). When I returned, I looked in dismay at the innocent, forgotten list on the fridge, where it still remains. I shall try again next week to remember cinnamon tea, white vinegar, hot sauce, and spinach - although, based on past experience, my chances of remembering the list are not good.

This quotidian, if a little frustrating, episode, put me in mind of a distant memory. In an art theory class I took, many moons ago, our professor asked what appeared to be a simple question: what is writing for? It was one of those foreboding grey November days, far too early in the morning for such heady questions, the kind of morning wherein no one meets the professor’s eye and everyone is silently wondering if anyone actually made it all the way through the assigned Derrida reading - spoiler warning: no one had. His question was met with discomforted and unwilling silence. (Having done some teaching myself now, I know only too well the many and varied attempts students make to avoid the professor’s gaze, evidently believing what my cat believes: that if I cannot see you, you cannot see me.) Then, slowly, the usual list of undergrad answers trickled haltingly out: communication, expression, posterity. With some coaxing, we arrived at an interesting conundrum - do we write a grocery list for posterity? For expression?
“To remember things,” came a timid offering from somewhere in the second row. 
"So you leave the list at home?” came the reply. No, we all agreed - the whole point of the list was to help you remember to buy oranges and baking powder, which it could not do if said list had been left forlornly on your kitchen table - or, in my case, still hanging on the fridge door.

What we came to, in the end, is that sometimes, writing something down allows it to completely leave your mind - writing is, sometimes, for forgetting. But, at least for me, the decoration on the border of my grocery list pad actually helps me to remember to…remember. In a similar way, the telegrams of this week’s episode are very obviously about communication - even when, as in chapter 1 of Anne of Green Gables, they do a poor job of sharing accurate or complete information. But they also became about expression, about decoration, about play. It didn’t take long for writers and poets of yesteryear to get comfortable, even creative, with telegram style, pushing on the limits of space and form to find exhilerating, challenging, or charming ways to write. Perhaps the most charming instance of this kind of play with form comes from Victor Hugo, who, when he wanted to inquire of his publisher how Les Miserables was faring, sent a telegram comprised only of ‘?’. In response, his publisher sent back the effusive but brief ‘!’

Or what about Dorothy Parker, who, in a fit of writer’s block, sent to her publisher:

"THIS IS INSTEAD OF TELEPHONING BECAUSE I CANT LOOK YOU IN THE VOICE. I SIMPLY CANNOT GET THAT THING DONE YET NEVER HAVE DONE SUCH HARD NIGHT AND DAY WORK NEVER HAVE SO WANTED ANYTHING TO BE GOOD AND ALL I HAVE IS A PILE OF PAPER COVERED WITH WRONG WORDS. CAN ONLY KEEP AT IT AND HOPE TO HEAVEN TO GET IT DONE. DONT KNOW WHY IT IS SO TERRIBLY DIFFICULT OR I SO TERRIBLY INCOMPETENT. DOROTHY"

Sing it, Dorothy.

So, just like my floral grocery list, telegrams moved beyond the practical, venturing into artistic expression and communicating those things that go beyond dates, facts, and figures - moving on, instead, to emotions, creativity, and invention. So, dear reader, I hope as you brave January’s chill, you find those eclamation-point-worthy moments to play, create, write - even if it is only a grocery list.

Jennifer

Beginning

I’m sitting in my office, with the window open in December (!), the traffic swooshing by outside, kicking up rain water and road salt. There are birds in the fir tree, twittering with what I interpret as aggressive optimism, despite, or perhaps because of, the grey skies. Probably, though, they are really just shouting at each other about territory - hey you, get off my branch, that sort of thing. Have you ever cleaned your house very, very thoroughly in a twisted attempt to avoid the thing you actually have to do? This is me doing that now - if I describe my morning to you, maybe I won’t have to face the task of finding some elegant, brilliant, witty way to introduce myself and this audio series. The cursed cursor is blinking, inexorably, reminding me just how blank my page is. Ask not for whom the cursor blinks - it blinks for thee!

Here we are, dear reader, at the beginning. I’m launching the first episode of my audio series, The Reader’s Museum, this week. In it, I’ll be considering objects from novels of yesteryear and today. When I had the idea for this series, the obvious first question was which book to choose for the maiden voyage, this our first of many visits to The Reader’s Museum - there are so many possibilities! But, in the end, it was actually quite an easy choice. The pandemic was a terrible time for so many reasons, the least of which being that I have a profound and unending loathing for the word ‘unprecedented.’ Doesn’t it make your skin crawl? My teeth itch just writing it. During that unprecedented period, (yuck), I tried to read new books, watch new shows, new movies - but nothing doing. Instead, the books that found their way nightly to my bedside table were old favourites, books I’d read again and again (and again) since childhood. They were comfort blankets with covers, offering certainty in a time when nothing seemed certain. No matter how many times I picked it up, Anne of Green Gables stayed the same - Anne’s hair was still distinctly red, Diana was the best of bosom friends, Gilbert Blythe was an absolute dishy dish, and chapter thirty-seven still made me weep like a child. So where else could I start but with these ink and paper companions who had bourne and buoyed me for so long?

The joy of this series, I hope, will be that unlike brick and mortar museums, wonderful as they are, this museum lives in the imagination. It can look and feel and sound however we choose. Are the objects housed at The Reader’s Museum beneath glass, on plinths, hanging on walls? Are they organised by time period, by material, by novel, by chapter? Is the museum itself an impressive, imposing work of architecture, a cozy nook that smells of second-hand books, an ever-expanding rabbit hole - or something entirely new? Only one way to find out! All this to say, dear reader, that the museum is officially open: the doors are swung wide, admission is free, and you are always welcome to join me as we move through books and centuries, people and places, here at The Reader’s Museum.

Jennifer