oops...

Dear CsWinters@msn.com

I am a friend of Samuel Weintraub, who has several ID's of which I am aware, including canaSamuel, iambicfeet and iamasonneteer, all @hotmail.ca. He also has Samuel@biz.org. You are one of Samuel's favourite "email friends." By the tone of your email, I'm guessing he has disregarded boundaries, as he does when he is having a manic psychosis and behaves like Mr. Hyde of the story Jekyll and Hyde. His family is very concerned about his safety and that's why I'm staying with him, with their support, for his protection. On their behalf, I am allowed to extend my apologies for any of Samuel's bizarre machinations, at times. He is totally out of touch with reality and sometimes is non-communicative for days at a time.

Most of the time, he doesn't know who I am or why I am here. Other times, his speech is so loud and forced that he appears quite insane and must be calmed down with sedatives and Mozart music. Sometimes, he puts on his skull cap and his prayer shawl and sits and rocks and mumbles as if praying in Hebrew, like the pictures I've seen of Jews visiting the Eastern Wall in the Holy Land. Sometimes he chants melodically in a strange tongue, not Hebrew, but more like American Indian and shouts words like Kwiddashay and Cherokee. Sometimes he murmurs these and similar words for hours before falling asleep exhausted. Sometimes he behaves as if everyone and everything is against him and cowers in a corner.

Samuel was hospitalized last year when he nearly froze in his apartment house. He had neglected his personal hygiene and had a severe foul-smelling infection of both his legs. He was found by his brother-in-law who felt he had gangrene and might lose both legs. However, this turned out to be a local infection rather than a blocked blood vessel and his legs were saved. The skin on his feet and legs is still scaly and bleeds easily with the slightest pressure or scratch, but is overall healing. His prognosis is grave, according to his family. He is elderly and has been getting worse each year for the past 10 years, his severe, extreme moods lasting 6-12 months and often varying between one extreme and the other, very distressing to himself and his caretakers. Those are the times he is apt to hurt himself, or threaten to hurt himself.

His physical health is failing; he has a strange form of heart failure of uncertain origin. His treatment is controversial, each specialist differing in his recommendations. He often refuses to do tests or take medications. I believe, he has turned down a critical study which might have shown some sort of unusual contraction of the heart muscles which works against his heart function, as I understand it. His sister says it's as if two parts of his heart are contracting out of sync and backing up his normal blood flow. He was found to have a small hole in the back part of his heart which is inconsequential but which has never been diagnosed from birth, according to his family. What role it plays is uncertain.

Dr. Weintraub’s sister and brother in law have lived in Beauville for over 40 years. They have been instrumental in getting him thru the tough times including law suits, bankruptcy and trouble with his children and ex-wives. He came to them in 1992, penniless, without clothes and without a car following hospitalization in a Chicago psychiatric hospital, following his second divorce and the refusal of his teenage daughter to talk to him on the phone and have visitations. He renewed his license here and then practiced successfully for 10 years as a GP Psychologist, part of the new GP Psychotherapy Association, as a General Practitioner with a specialty of psychiatry, under the government health plan. He could no longer practice medicine about 6 years ago and had to call it quits when he became severely depressed for the 2nd or 3rd time in a year and could no longer support his personal and professional activities on his own. He was on welfare until it stopped in favour of an Old Age Security and a Canadian Pension Plan which kicked in at age 65, even though it took over 18 months to get going.

On a positive side, he has short periods of lucidity when it is a delight to be with him. He eats heartily and enjoys his own cooking, sometimes for hours. He is overweight, like a "Buddha." There are two happy, classical, cats with whom he shares his very small, government subsidized, apartment. He claims one of his cats got him through his last depression. He has an occasional glass of wine and drinks gallons of OJ and coffee. He doesn't smoke but occasionally will enjoy one of those small, flavoured cigars, imitating Clint Eastwood. He is playful and intelligent, charming and stimulating. His writing is strange at times but often times appears to be brilliant. He has posted many poems on www.Poetry.com and has received several Certificates of Merit and had several poems published in the books, plaques and CD's of the International Society of Poets, Owings Springs, MD. Also, he likes to use www.blogger.ca to post short stories and essays and emails, in addition to the hundreds of poems he's posted on www.Poetry.com.

When he's lucid for short periods, he does his own banking online and keeps track of his low level of investments. Most of the time he loses money, though infrequently, he gets lucky. When he feels good, he gets out and bicycles and still bicycles long distances and for a whole day, sometimes. He is "threatening" to bicycle again to Buffalo, a 100K round trip which he needs 3 hours there and 6 hours back in a single day, to do. About 5 years ago, he attended the street fest, A Taste of Buffalo, and the street art fest, the Allentown Art Fest, another year, getting to both with his bicycle. Sometimes he is able to play Bridge and Euchre at the Seniors' Centre and often wins prizes for high scores. I believe his name is still atop the bridge score board with the highest afternoon score ever achieved. He still plays a tough game of chess on Chessmaster and a tough game of Scrabble on the computer.

Occasionally, I've found Samuel reading through Google or Hotmail in some foreign language or other. He took some Hebrew at a Lutheran University course for seniors 3 years ago, but had to quit because of depression, unable to complete the work or do the exams. Sometimes he attends the bible study groups at B'nai Jakob in Niagara, every Saturday morning, and the 1888 Stone United Church here in Beauville on Sunday evenings. He is very suspicious of all government and regulating agencies and seems to find a conspiracy in everything, including 9/11 and bin Ladin, Obama and Clinton, Katrina and Cheney. He's quietly certain that all his communications and activities are monitored including his emails, especially his international calls and letters and anything in the air or in print. He is suspicious that even his letters to the editor of the local Beauville Starlight News are recorded duly by the RCMP and the OPP and of course Big Brother...

He doesn't have any good friends. I imagine that a person would have to adore Samuel and put up with a lot of unexpected stuff to stick around. He has made a friend in Jacob, a born again christian man, near 80 who comes around, even when he’s depressed, and is supportive. Samuel sometimes pedals his bike to Jacob's house for coffee and bible readings, with Jacob and his wife, Maria. Maria has said that Samuel is weird but he has a kind soul. Recently, they fixed a flat in his back tire. Also, Jacob helped Samuel buy a used Honda Civic which has been a source of happiness for him. He likes the stick shift and the great mileage and the fact that the dial says 240kpm at the top, as if one could drive that fast around here. He often says that if he hit a pothole at high speed, it would all be over. I've driven with him; he drives like a racer and has a lot of fun and doesn't seem to take unnecessary chances. Remarkably, he spends a lot of time reading the Hebrew bible and other religious works and often incorporates biblical material into his poetry and prose. Sometimes I think he wants to be a rabbi. Other times, I feel he wants to convert to Christianity; even Mormonism, he's mentioned. He studies a Mormon bible seemingly more frequently than the others in English and other languages.

I hope this helps you. I hope he hasn't done any permanent damage. It's probably safer for everyone if he doesn't communicate directly with you. I think one of his shrinks called him charming and harmless in a report to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario, at a time when he was under pressure from many medical and civil suits, and was besieged by bill collectors. Remarkably, during a great deal of adverse publicity, he did well in court and with his practice. Seemingly, most of his patients were very loyal and supportive. Besides, the court cases were all decided in his favour. His ex-wife and Cook County Illinois and the mother of his daughter are still trying to get money from him. I believe his practice actually grew during a really bad period. When he's lucid, he is charming and amusing, radiating safety and calm. His voice is quite soothing and even charismatic. And, he loves music of all kinds and seems to have been a good dancer, at one time. Now, he gets too short of breath when he tries to dance or sing. Whether depressed or hypomanic, his common characteristic is irritability. When he’s not irritable, however, he’s just the opposite: unflappable…

Recently, Dr. Weintraub made friends with a Buffalo FM, classic music, radio announcer, who seems to appreciate his talents and knowledge. After an exchange of emails, he was invited to make a spot in support of the public radio station, WNED. An edited telephone conversation with a Jim Berryman of Buffalo, was made into 2 promotional and entertaining, clips, one ten minutes and the other, 10 seconds. He was like a little boy! He got to recite one of his own 10 seconds-to-create limericks on the radio and wrote several sonnets and limericks for what appears to be a genuine, friendly link, Jim Berryman, originally of Buffalo.

If there's anything you would like to know, I have been given permission by the family to field any questions in order to avoid any law suits or ugly situations that have occurred in the past. I think they would prefer cutting off everyone to avoid complications. If there's already some sort of legal difficulties, or social complications, Betty and Donald, at Wrights@biz.org might be helpful to you. I doubt if there's any money to be made from him, anymore. He was cleaned out, so to speak, several times in his lifetime, mainly due to his own periods of unreality and psychotic thinking, for which he now seems to take full responsibility, to the best of his ability.

Samuel does have a dangerous attitude regarding risk taking, most of the time. He does seem to have different personalities, at times. He seems to feel that Posttraumatic Stress Disorder is his basic nervousness source, though he doesn't seem to know how or when he was traumatized, typical of the disorder, I believe. He is suspicious that he was physically or even sexually abused by a stranger in a movie house. He remembers a stranger asking him to hold his penis, which was erect, in exchange for a chocolate bar. He speculates that in his naivety, he would have done anything for the chocolate bar. I'd guess he's lucky to have whatever health and satisfaction he's getting at his present age. I'd guess he feels lucky to be alive and would never have thought he would make it to this age and have a chance to live even longer. He does enjoy making up stories for poems and stories and essays. I think he's publishable and his art is marketable, but his family thinks it's mainly useless junk and meaningless drivel. Too bad he doesn’t have a friend like Max Brot who published all of his friend’s stuff after his friend, Franz Kafka, died of galloping consumption in his early 30’s in Prague. But they humour him when he brings around art work and literary work. He appears to be the only creative person in his family. I think he thinks of himself as a latter day Mark Twain or J.D. Salinger or Vincent van Gogh, or even Le Marquis de Sade, or Camille Claudet, or Grandma Moses. I believe he's the first and only artist/writer and MD in his large family where there are many teachers and several engineers, nurses and other health care providers. His sons in KY and TN don't have much to do with him, except by email and the occasional phone call.. I think there's a daughter in Chicago who has refused to see him or talk with him for 18 years. I think he sincerely wishes he was still part of an actual, loving family -- the cats, Gumby and Face, seem to be it for him, at this time. He sometimes says he feel like he was born on another planet and was mixed up in the hospital nursery with an alien mother's child. He does have quite an imagination and a capacity for humour...

Sincerely,

Lillith, Lil, Falstaff, friend.

P.S. Since I'm here most of the time and have been given access to Samuel's computer and mailboxes, please use canadSamuel@hotmail.ca to communicate with me or Samuel or his sister and brother and law. Their advice is to discourage any unsupervised communications, no matter what Samuel says. Sad, eh? Samuel is smiling and charmingly says, "Hi!" to you, as if there's nothing at all wrong with the world, at all. He must be very good at denial. He must live in his own pleasurable world, most of the time as is typical of Aquarians and Tigers of the western and eastern zodiacs. I’m sure he has his demons, though he sometimes seems to have them on the run. I'm sure that Jung, Freud and Adler are turning over in their respective graves. It seems like he typifies the person who smiles at times as if he were up to something, or at least giving the impression he's up to something. Frankly, I think he is almost always up to something, usually something totally impish and unexpected. Life is not dull around here.

Incidentally, I think he was trying to send you this poem that he had written some time ago. I know he’s sent it to several people, none of whom have ever responded to it. If that was the offensive missive, then I can assure you, he meant no harm. I think he cries every time he brings it out to read from his efiles. I don’t know who he wrote it for originally. In case there was some misprint or misunderstanding based on this, I have taken the liberty to send you a copy directly in order for you to see how innocent it is. As far as I know, there was never a specific person, man or woman, for whom it was written and he has never spoken about it to me as someone or something about which he is sad. Sometimes, I think there’s another person inside his head to whom he writes and thinks his best stuff. I guess it’s just a wish for him, inasmuch as he has had so many problems with broken relationships and his own dysfunction. This is the poem:

Requited or Not

That is the question and

That is the answer, too…

By Samuel Weintraub

In the Lascivious,

Salubrious Spring

No matter what you think of you, I think

Of you as bright and beautiful and link

You to the best of Grecian Goddesses

Who walked around with skimpy dresses, yes,

The skimpy dresses like the loosely bound

True white and gauzy muslin togas, round

Below as they were round above. I love

You like I love the light at dawn, the dove

Of gentle harmony and peace and like

I love the gentle gearing in a bike,

That flies among the mountain paths and lights

In spaces only you would know when tights

Are seen by artists who observe the curve

And take a chance reality selects

For only those who chose to see, as well

As they are capable, and hear as well

And taste and smell and feel and touch and miss

‘Not much in terms of what is said and done.

I think your mind is cluttered with a set

Of rules and regulations twenty times

As long as any laundry list and lists

For shopping and prevaricating.

We

Are matched!

For what you have in regulations, I

Have rules I have to break.

For what you have

In inhibitions, I have freedoms to

Reveal as much as I can bear, as you

Can care to understand and tolerate.

Despite refusing to admit your deep

Exciting fantasies, you may find out

That you and I are like a single soul

So desperate to find a mate that

Understands the meaning of a job well done,

A mate that understands the meaning of

Undying love for daughters, sons and roofs

And shelters, warmth, security, and, yes,

Fidelity.

I love you like the mate

That never was to be.

I love you like

The prince who loves the princess from afar.

I love you in the house.

I love you in the car.

I’ve loved you yesterday and will

Continue loving you until I die.

No matter what you say or think, I will

Not say another word unless you want…

And you are not obliged to say a thing.

If you say yes to me, and I to you,

I will have lived, and loved, fore’er!

THE END… Nay, the Beguine!

©Samuel Weintraub

Early morning

Welland, Canada

CsWinters@msn.com wrote:

I am getting your messages but I have warned you that my husband’s Company monitors my email and your messages may cause me trouble explaining them to my husband.

I also understand that you have been sending mail to my home where my family opens it. Again, this is causing lots of grief on my end. My daughter is wanting to know why someone is writing about unrequited love. I have had some hard answering to do

Please don't send any more email messages or messages to my home. This is a problem for me big time while I am in a foreign place with my husband’s company.

Cogito. Ergo, sum!
Je pense. Donc, je suis!
I think. Therefore, I am!
Ich denk. Also, ich bin!

I didn't think. Therefore, I wasn't. ;-(