Diamonds Are Forever

            On Monday I had to work my two least favourite times of day: early morning and late at night. Mornings I have lots of stuff to do at home and working at night screws up my dinner hour. The ideal workday for me would be in the six-hour period after noon. So before sunrise I rushed through my song practice set. I had time to eat one sausage and finish a cup of coffee before leaving. In another month, if I get any early gigs I'll have to put my flashers on while riding. As I started out I didn’t see until it was too late the body of a freshly squashed sparrow with a bright stream of red trickling away from it and couldn’t avoid running over it.

            As I arrived at the Village by the Grange, I passed through the food court and saw a guy reading the newspaper at a restaurant table in the dark. I figured that they were just conserving power before the restaurants opened but I found out later that the power was out down there.

            I worked for Nick Aoki. He asked his students if they knew what a hipbone looks like but nobody said anything. Then he asked if anyone had drawn a skeleton, but they hadn't. He advised them to try to get a chance to draw a skeleton so they could learn about body structure.
            He told them to imagine that I was wearing a box costume. I told him I'd wear it if he brought one in. He said he'd been thinking about trying to get hold of one. Later I was looking for a pillow in the prop room and found a skeleton and a half in there. It seems he’d never looked for one there.

            When I was leaving through the food court the power was still out, though the overhead fans were on. A guy I’ve known at the college for twenty years but who hasn’t been a student for ten came in as I was going out and I chatted with him for a while. I think he has an apartment in the Village By the Grange but he kind of looks these days like he sleeps in the furnace room. He told me that Toronto has enough gas to fuel a generator that would power the city for five days.

            When I got home I had time for lunch, goofing around, sleep and then some writing before heading out for work again.

I finished reading Nella Larsen's “Passing”. Though the subject, about a Black woman passing as White in 1927, was interesting, it's really not a very good novel. I've seen better writing in Harlequin Romances.  

            It was raining when I rode back downtown to work again. The yellow leaves that have fallen on each side of the street are especially shiny and golden when they are wet. I was halfway between damp and wet when I got to OCAD. I noticed that there were three Hydro trucks parked on McCaul and that the power looked like it was still off at the Village by the Grange. I worked in the main building, so I didn't have to walk through a dark food court.

            I worked for Sara Sniderhan. Her general facial kind of reminds me of Sarah Gilbert from Rosanne. She seems a bit somber and serious but I think that's probably her business face and she's probably quite warm and jovial.

            When I was posing for my third twenty minute set Sarah announced that the diamond from her engagement ring had fallen somewhere in the studio, just in case anyone saw it. One of her students asked what it was shaped like and she told him, “It was diamond shaped.” She kept on walking around and helping her students with their paintings but she had her head down to scan the floor as she moved between them. During the break I asked her when she’d last seen the ring intact and she answered that it had been when she was washing her hands before class. She admitted that she could have sent it down the drain. I suggested that maybe if she shown a light horizontally it might pick up the gem better. At the end of class she waited behind to give the room a thorough check. I advised her that she should maybe focus on the areas where she’d done a lot of work with her hands, like when she’d brought the chair for my pose to the stage and set up the drapery behind me. I wished her luck and left.

            The rain had let up quite a bit and so I didn’t get wet again riding home.