FUCK!!!

           

            On Saturday I found I could put a little more of my weight on my right knee. During yoga I can put both knees on the floor without having to tilt my body to the left. I still can’t go up into the crescent moon pose on my right knee though. The right upper arm had a little more mobility and it was less uncomfortable to raise both arms over my head. The wrist gets sore when I vacuum and both parts are tired in the evening before the rest of my body is.

            I spent a lot of the day making notes for my two exam essays that are happening in a week and a half. I’ve chosen the topic of “the power of words” in a comparison of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s “A Little Princess” and Diana Wynne Jones’s “Howl’s Moving Castle”; and the theme of “truth telling” in Elizabeth Wein’s “Codename Verity”, M.T. Anderson’s “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing” and Louise Fitzhugh’s “Harriet the Spy”. I’ve noticed some interesting similarities between Howl’s Moving Castle and The Wonderful World of Oz. The wicked witches have similar names: the Wicked Witch of West in L. Frank Baum’s book and the Witch of the Waste in Jones’s book. Also, both Dorothy and Sophie encounter scarecrows at the beginning of their respective journeys. 

            I listened to a couple of episodes of Amos and Andy. In the first, Amos proposes marriage to a woman by mail but once he sees her real photograph he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the deal. He takes the photograph to his lawyer, Gabby, who says that this is not only breach of promise but also contempt of court. Andy asks him how it could be contempt of court and Gabby answered, “Because if you would court a woman this ugly you’ve earned my contempt!” The second episode was the Christmas special. Amos is helping Andy wrap Christmas presents and he wonders who the handkerchiefs with the letter “C” in the corner are for. Andy tells him that he bought them last Christmas for his ex-girlfriend Carmen but they broke up beforehand so now he’s going to give them to his girlfriend Evelyn. Amos points out that it’s going to be difficult to get away with giving handkerchiefs with the letter “C” on them to Evelyn, but Andy says that he already thought of that three months ago, so he started calling Evelyn “Cookie”.

            I decided not to take a bike ride that evening, but rather to buy batteries for my front white flasher so there would be less danger of another accident. Oddly enough, all of the accidents that I can recall having in the last several years took place in broad daylight, but I don’t want to take any chances. I seem to be especially wary lately of pedestrians standing on the curb and looking like they are about to cross the street. I bought two batteries at Young’s Fine Foods, a block away. My flasher no longer has the elastic loop for tying onto the bike, so I have to wire and tape the flasher to the front. I think it makes it harder to steal that way too.

            Once the flasher was on I decided to go to Freshco to buy tea. Last week I bought a bag of their generic orange pekoe tea and it turned out to be full of green tea. I don’t hate green tea, and I’m glad I have it but what I usually want is orange pekoe. Hopefully they got the right tea in the right package this time.

            There’s a guy in my neighbourhood who I see and especially hear every few days. He walks along kind of like a cave man and his body and voice are knotted with tension as he shouts while he walks, never looking from side to side. It’s not always easy to discern what he’s saying, but he always punctuates every sentence with the exclamation of “FUCK!!!” On this night I was able to here as he ape marched along Queen, “I hate your fuckin guts!!! FUCK!!!” Just before he turned to walk south on Dunn with what looked like a paper take-out bag in his hand. Someone on my side of the street called out cheerfully and mockingly, “Somebody’s having a good night!” Immediately the angry man shouted out, as he continued along, “Somebody’s having a great night!!! Fuck!!!”

            I’ve never seen him in a store in Parkdale but I assume he must shop. I think he has tourettes and I know it’s out of his control, but I have this fantasy of him going into stores and chatting in a soft voice while making purchases and then putting his rage back on when he’s out on the street again.