Kitty Kelly

            I had to work early on Tuesday for Greg Damery at OCADU. He brought his 1959 Gibson acoustic in and asked if I wanted to play it. I said I would if it was in standard tuning. He changed the tuning back to standard. It’s a much bigger guitar than mine with a much fuller sound. I think I need a bigger guitar. He also slutted the guitar around to his students before class. I’ll bet he owns at least ten guitars. I think this one cost him over $1000 and it’s one of his cheaper ones.

            I posed with just my shirt off but he had me facing the wall. It’s actually a lot easier to get drowsy when looking at a wall than while watching students draw.

            On my way home along Queen I stopped at several places to see if they had sea sponges. The homemade guitar humidifier that I’ve been using for the last few winters is crumbling because the sponge I used as part of it is mostly made of cellulose. The heat was on in the morning for the first time this fall and so soon I’m going to need to take precautions again to keep my guitar from drying out. I stopped at a bed and bath place at Spadina and Queen but they had nothing like sponges. Further east was Shoppers Drug Mart but all they had was a luffa. The woman behind the encounter said Winners across the street would have sponges but they didn't. There was no place on the route home left to look but once I was back in Parkdale I suddenly got the idea to try Home Hardware. Sure enough they had sea sponges about the size of softballs for $7.11 after tax.

            That night I watched the last episode of Perry Mason from the first season. This one had some charm to it. In general, though the stories are interesting they are not engaging because there is no depth to them. The characters and their situations are created just to support a twist ending and so everyone feels artificial. Maybe don the road I’ll download the second season but for now I’m moving on to Peter Gunn.

            This story begins with a young woman named Donna trying to cash a cheque for $20,000. The teller is concerned and takes the cheque to the manager, who calls Willard, the nephew of the payer to ask about it. Willard's wife Arlene takes the phone and tells the manager not to cash the cheque. She says, “Tell her Daniel Reed’s as crazy as they come!” As she was speaking, Daniel walks in, takes the phone and says, “I don’t like the way you run your bank! I’m going to move my money elsewhere! You go ahead and cash that cheque!” Donna returns to a hotel room with the money. Two men are waiting for her, Maury Lewis and Dave Kemp. From the money Maury gives Dave $500. Dave is mad because he’d thought it would be a 50-50 split. Maury says, “I guess I can’t be trusted." Dave begins to go for his gun but Donna already has one pointed at him and he leaves. Donna and Maury kiss. Dave goes to tell Willard and Arlene that Daniel is being blackmailed, though he doesn't know why. Maury and Donna had hired him to find Daniel. Willard and Arlene have Daniel placed in a sanitarium.

            Daniel’s girlfriend Millie comes to Perry Mason to ask him to “spring Daniel from that coop”. She says the director of the sanitarium claims that Daniel has senile dementia evidenced by arcus senilis. Mason says they will get a petition for a writ of habeas corpus and present it to Judge Treadwell. In court, Treadwell is questioning Willard on the stand. Willard starts telling the judge about Daniel’s symptoms but Treadwell interrupts him and asks if he’s a doctor. Willard says he isn’t and the judge says, “Then let’s wait for the experts to testify.” Treadwell asks if Daniel wanted to go to the sanitarium. Willard says that he was in no condition to answer. “Was he conscious?” “Yes.” “Did he make any objections?” “Yes.” “How were these objections overcome?” “Two male nurses carried him in.” The lawyer opposing Mason tells the judge that Daniel is unable to come to court and that Dr. Norris will testify on that point. Dr. Norris claims that Daniel in his nervous state would be highly excited in court. Mason says, “A man of 71 is taken out for a drive by a trusted nephew and suddenly finds himself at a sanitarium where he is dragged out of the car by two male nurses and taken in hand. Yet you found him angry and incoherent. Wouldn’t that state of mind be perfectly natural?” Norris argues that it depends on the circumstances. Mason says, “If he hadn’t been angry you would have found him indifferent and diagnosed his condition as dementia praecox!” “You’re deliberately distorting my testimony!” “Now, now doctor, don’t you get angry! Mr. Reed did and you said he was senile!” Dr. Norris says there were other symptoms and brings up once again Daniel’s arcus senilis. Mason asks him to explain arcus senilis for the court. Norris says, “An arcus senilis appears as a crescent shaped ring in the outer periphery of the cornea.” Mason asks, “You mean like the ring in Judge Treadwell’s eye?” The doctor fumbles and says to the judge, “Arcus senilis is not in itself indicative of psychosis! It’s just a symptom!” The judge says, “In other words, if I kicked up a row when I was shanghaied you’d notice this thing in my eye and you’d have said I was senile!” The judge says that court will reconvene at the sanitarium to examine Daniel. When they come to the sanitarium the nurse tells Norris that Daniel has escaped. Daniel had asked for aspirin but when the attendant came Daniel hit him over the head with a sock holding a bar of soap. He switched uniforms with the attendant and locked him in the room. He told the receptionist he was the new laundry man and couldn’t find the service entrance. Mason says that no one can say that Daniel was incompetent in managing this escape. The judge agrees and grants the writ of habeas corpus.

            Next we see Daniel standing over the dead body of Maury Lewis. Daniel calls Millie to tell her to meet him. The papers the next day say Daniel is wanted for murder. Mason gets a call from Dave Kemp. Paul Drake tells Mason that Kemp used to be a private investigator but lost his licence. Kemp tells Mason that he should talk to Donna. Donna is drinking heavily and blames Mason for setting Daniel free so he could murder her boyfriend. Mason gets a call from Millie in Reno and she says Daniel is willing to talk. Mason goes to Reno and tells Daniel he’s a hard man to keep up with. “You should’ve seen me when I was sixty!” Daniel explains that Maury Lewis knew that he’d been a partner in a gold mine in Alaska thirty years before with Monty Sewel. They’d struck it rich but one night Monty tried to kill Daniel in his sleep. Daniel was a little faster and killed Monty. He buried his body in the snow and he and Millie left Alaska. Daniel used Sewel’s name and married Millie. She left him because he wouldn’t go to the police and they didn’t see each other for thirty years. Maury bought the shack where he’d killed Monty. He found the body and figured out what happened. Tragg walks in and arrests Reed. Mason is trying to figure out how Tragg knows his every move lately and starts to suspect that his office is bugged. Mason calls Della and makes up a story that Monty Sewel and Maury Lewis were the same person in order to throw off whoever is listening in. The problem is that the next day it is discovered that they really were the same person. Mason goes to see Daniel in jail and he explains that he really had thought he’d killed Monty. He says, “I know it’s complicated”. Mason says that their only hope is to make it even more complicated. In court Mason accuses Willard of killing Monty so that Daniel would be accused of the murder. That way he would get Daniel’s money. Willard admits it and explains that he just wanted to be free of the influence of Arlene.

            After the trial Mason, Della and Paul are trying to find the bug in mason’s office. Tragg walks in and unscrews the speaker on Mason’s office telephone, to show that a listening device had been installed there. He says he and Burger had no idea that the place was bugged. He only found out twenty minutes ago that Dave Kemp had broken in and bugged the phone. Kemp had been feeding information to an eager beaver in Tragg’s department who’d just seen Kemp as a stoolie. Mason says that it had been Millie that had shot Monty in Alaska thirty years before.

            Donna was played by Joan Camden.

            Arlene was played by Mary Anderson. She was one of the stars of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” and she also played a supporting part in “Gone With the Wind”. She had a unique beauty and she also seemed to talk with a lisp. 

            Millie was played by Kitty Kelly who was one of the Ziegfeld Follies dancers.

            It seems that HBO is planning a Perry mason reboot starring Robert Downey Jr.

Joanna Moore

            On Monday there was only one cold symptom left. Deep down in my throat there is mucous that I have to cough up from time to time. Early in song practice my voice broke and I failed on a couple of high notes.

            When I got to class the only other student there was the young Muslim woman. I commented that it’s always just her and me and she laughed. I saw that once again the chalk had disappeared and so I went back down to Operations on the concourse level and asked for more. After letting me take a few pieces the lady behind he counter said she would talk to someone about the problem. When I got back upstairs, instead of laying out all the chalk on the ledge like last time, I just put out one piece and horded the rest in my backpack so we wouldn’t run out so soon.

            I asked the young Muslim woman her name and she told me it was Hager. The “g” has a “j” sound and it rhymes with badger. According to one site, the Arabic name “Hager” means “travel”.

            I asked Professor Weisman if Walt Whitman was directly influenced by Romanticism. She said he definitely was. I said that since Whitman was a direct influence on the Beats then that means the Romantics influenced the Beats. I told her that I think Ginsberg and Bob Dylan were more influenced by Blake than Wordsworth. I offered the view that Jack Kerouac’s On the Road is actually quite Wordsworthian. She agreed.

            The professor suggested that I read David Galbraith’s writing on Bob Dylan.

            We continued with our study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poetry and looked at “Dejection: an Ode”. The poem is in conversation with William Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode”. It’s a loco-descriptive, greater Romantic lyric. The speaker situates self in a setting, surveys the scene and is triggered to an insight. It ends up in the same place it started but with an added resolution or closure. It doesn’t mean the difficulty is resolved but it is at least insightfully recognized.

            In these types of 19^th Century poems the mind gives significance to nature because the mind is more beautiful. There are spots of time that maintain a renovating virtue because of the mind’s ability to engage with them and make them coherent.

            The Immortality Ode laments the loss of vitality but it’s okay because of the philosophical mind. The Dejection Ode is a letter to Sara Hutchinson with whom Coleridge was in love even while married to Sara Flicker. She was the sister of Wordsworth’s fiancée, Mary. But we can’t reduce the poem to biography. Romantic poets establish personal myths. The Dejection Ode is an evocation of personal loss and romantic alienation. Coleridge’s love was hopeless, guilty and unrequited.

            Coleridge was the most learned of the Romantics. He worked hard on philosophy, which it is said was at odds with his poetry, but tread carefully on that claim.

            Coleridge wrote the Dejection Ode after having read the first four stanzas of the Immortality Ode, which Wordsworth wrote while Coleridge was visiting. It’s a dialogue almost in response to those first four stanzas.

In the epigraph is the line “The new moon with the old moon in her arms”. Light and shade shift, the atmosphere is charged and the light is strange. He is anticipating the storm because he wants it to startle his pain and release him from paralysis. John Stuart Mill says that his life was saved by this stanza and others. Coleridge says he sees, not feels the beauty and this echoes the Immortality Ode. There is a loss of response and a paradox in his unimpassioned grief. He is saying he has no outlet while writing a poem about it. Coleridge is getting scary. What if nature does not meet us halfway?

Coleridge’s most famous lines are in stanza four. There is grief without pang. Some of this poem counters his Eolian Harp.

Nature is mere matter if not animated by the mind’s refraction. The mind constructs the world.

She asked us to explain the meaning of “we receive but what we give”.

I said that even when we are taking it in we are instantaneously processing nature with our minds. Our minds tell us everything we see. We make something out of nature. We ritualize it in order to understand and appreciate it. We dress nature up in wedding garments and shrouds.

She asked if there is a paradox in stanza two.

I wrote that unimpassioned grief is a state of mind. When he says that he sees the beauty but does not feel it he means that he recognizes beauty that he has felt in the past. The world was like a gift. This echoes Wordsworth lament of lost vitality. The storm parallels Wordsworth’s freeze.

Nature is fixed and dead without the mind. Coleridge is shoved onto the ground by his afflictions.

When he talks about joy he does not mean mirth, but rather the shaping spirit of imagination.

He turns from his dark dream and listens to the wind. He talks to the wind. The wind is conferring and constructing his nightmare. This is not the wind of the Eolian Harp. Images of horror are bestowed upon nature. The poem itself could be an unfreezing of paralysis. I asked if he had already resolved these issues in his mind before writing and she said that was probably the case.

She finished the lecture early to give back our essays. I got 88%, which is the first solid “A” that I’ve received in a third year course. In her note at the end she wrote: “This is an excellent, lively, intelligent and beautifully written paper. You use details extremely well. I look forward to the rest of your work this year.” I was singing during my bike ride home.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought grapes, Courtland apples, ground beef, extra old cheddar and yogourt. At the checkout counter, the nice woman who seems to manage the other cashiers apologized for not remembering that I didn’t need bags. I told her she’s the only one that remembers that she forgot.

            I grilled the chicken drumsticks that I’d frozen before the weekend. I made gravy from the drippings but I shouldn’t have added water because after thickening it with flour, it tasted a little too much like flour.

            I watched an episode of Perry Mason. The story begins with two men, Jefferson and Lumis, leaving the South African Diamond Company and locking the door. They talk about going to the airport to meet Baxter. After they get in the elevator a woman in harlequin glasses opens the door from the stairs and goes to the diamond company’s door. She opens it with a key and begins to ransack the office in search of something. A man walks in who introduces himself as Baxter. He thinks the woman is an employee and she plays along. He asks her a question about Lumis’s wife’s arthritis and she says it’s all right now. She says that she has to go wash her hands but he stops her saying Lumis’s wife never had arthritis. He tells her to sit down and then turns to call the police. She grabs his briefcase, hits him over the head with it and runs out the door. Baxter recovers and calls the police. As they arrive the woman emerges from the stairs one floor down from the diamond company and tries several doors along the hallway. The door to Perry Mason’s office is open. The receptionist, Gertie asks if she is the typist they sent for. She says she is. She sits down and begins to work and turns out to be a very good typist. She tells Della her name is Wells. Paul enters Mason’s office from the back door and tells Mason and Della about the woman the police are looking for. She meets the description of the typist but when Della goes to the front, Miss Wells is gone. Mason goes to check out the diamond company and as he arrives an attractive brunette is leaving. Mason talks to Lumis, who tells him that Baxter, after reporting Miss Wells to the police, vanished himself. He was supposed to deliver their shipment of diamonds. Meanwhile at the docks an old man is fishing in a rowboat just off shore. He sees a car pull up on the dock and a man drags a man’s body from the car, tosses it in the water with a concrete block attached. The fisherman calls the police. Later, from a police line-up he points out the man that disposed of the body. The man he picks is Jefferson. Lumis comes to ask Mason to defend Jefferson. Mason goes to see Jefferson in jail. He says he was having dinner with a lady at the time of the murder but he refuses to name the woman. Paul comes to Mason’s office and tells him he’s tracked don the typist. She is Patricia Taylor, the senator’s wife. Mason goes to see her in her garden. She says, “This is private property!” Mason says, “So is the South African Diamond Company office!” She admits that she was the typist. She says that it all started when she was sending packages to Allied prisons in South Korea. A Captain Jefferson in the South African air force kept writing to her. She was not married to Taylor at the time but rather worked for him. At the time she had not fallen in love with Taylor and did not even like him and so the letters that she sent to Jefferson were mocking of Taylor. After marrying Taylor she asked Jefferson to return the letters but he wanted to hold onto them for blackmail. That’s why Patricia had ransacked the office. Later Mason sends Paul to search Jefferson’s apartment and Paul finds Patricia there. He also finds two pictures. One is of Jefferson sitting in a restaurant with Patricia and the other one at the same restaurant and apparently at the same night with the same brunette that had come out of the diamond company office when Mason went there. She tells Mason she will testify at Jefferson’s trial but for the prosecution. In court Mason puts Jefferson on the stand. Jefferson refuses to name his alibi because she is married and it would be ungentlemanly. Mason asks him if he knows Patricia Taylor but he will only admit he is acquainted with her. Burger cross-examines Jefferson and asks him to deny that he was with Patricia Taylor. Jefferson will not do that either. Burger says it proves he’s not a gentleman. Mason calls Patricia to the stand. She admits that she was with Jefferson on the night of the murder but only for fifteen minutes. That means that she is not an alibi for the time of the murder. The jury finds Jefferson guilty of murder. Mason figures out that the brunette with Jefferson in the photograph is Mrs. Lumis and he goes to see her. She admits that she was with Jefferson at the time of the murder and is willing to testify. Lumis goes to a trailer in a remote area where a bound man is being held. Mason and Paul have followed him there. Mason knocks on the trailer and when the guard steps out Paul throws him, punches him and karate chops him. This is the first time Paul has resorted to violence in the series. When Lumis comes to the door of the trailer even Mason exerts some force and yanks him outside. Court the next day is supposed to be for sentencing and asking for a new trial. Mason asks Jefferson to stand and both the defendant and the man who’d been tied up in the trailer rise. Mason says that the defendant’s real name is Kincaid and he did kill Baxter but he would need a new trial to prove it because some of the evidence presented against Kincaid was against the real Jefferson, such as the letters to Patricia.
            This was interesting in that it kind of breaks the formula that Mason never loses a case, since his client was found guilty. It turns out that his client was guilty but Mason only didn’t lose on a technicality since it wasn’t the real Jefferson.

            Patricia was played by Joanna Moore, who married Ryan O’Neil and was the mother of Tatum O’Neil. She played Andy Taylor’s girlfriend for several episodes of the Andy Griffith show.

            Mrs. Lumis was played by Joan Elan, of whom it’s surprising that she never became a star. She had a real presence and a unique beauty.

            

Phyllis Coates

            On Sunday I was still stuffed up and horking during song practice.

Every Sunday morning there is a silver car that either cruises past the donut shop slowly or stops for a while as the driver peers across the street. He never gets out and no one ever comes to get in. He reminds me of a guy cruising for hookers but I don’t know if that’s what’s going on.

I watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins with Marian coming home starting to shout at her roommate Diana and telling her to get out. Diana says she has as much right there as she does. Marian pulls a gun and gives her five seconds. Diana grabs her arm and they struggle. The gun goes off and a bullet goes into the wall. Diana gets the gun from Marian and she is holding it when the building superintendent, Mr. Kessler bursts in. Diana tells him it was an accident and asks Marian to confirm that but she says nothing. The next day Diana is at work as a secretary on the estate of Matthew Bartlett. Bartlett’s stepson Tony comes in and kisses her next. She tells him to stop doing that and to stop spreading rumours about her to Marian. Diana is called away to talk with the gardener. Tony reads a letter that Diana has just opened that informs his stepfather that he has a four-year-old grandson. Tony takes the letter to his mother Helen because he’s worried that if Bartlett has a grandson it will affect his inheritance. Helen assures him that she won’t let anything stand in the way of his security. Diana has an apartment on the Bartlett estate and that evening she walks out of the shower to find Helen and Tony waiting for her in her room. Helen picks up a jewellery case belonging to Diana and pulls from it some of her own jewellery, accusing Diana of having stolen it and then she demands that she leave. Diana says she's staying there until Bartlett returns that night and then she’ll tell him about the missing letter concerning his grandson. Tony grabs her, slaps her hard and then throws her out. Diana goes straight to Perry Mason’s office in her bathrobe with a coat over it and with a black eye. Mason goes to see Bartlett the next day. He says he believes Diana and he’s also known that he’s had a grandson for five months. Lieutenant Tragg walks in and announces that Diana was murdered last night. Tragg asks them to come and identify the body. Bartlett looks at the body and tells Tragg that it’s not Diana but rather Marian. The police are looking for Diana because Marian was killed with a gun that Bartlett had given her. Diana shows up at Mason’s office the next day. She says that she’d received a call the night before telling her that her car had been stolen by Marian and that it had been involved in an accident. She took a bus to the location she’d been given, found her car, saw Marian’s body and ran away. Tragg arrives and arrests Diana. Mason visits Diana in jail. She tells him that it had been Marian that had been first offered the job working for Bartlett but she turned it down and recommended Diana even though Diana had no secretarial experience. Bartlett’s grandchild, Bobby used to visit Marian in their apartment, though Marian would always pick Bobby up and drop him off but his mother Norma never came. In court, Mason cross-examines Tony. He claims he didn’t give Diana a black eye but that he did throw her out rather than call the police over the alleged theft. Bartlett comes to offer his daughter-in-law, Norma $100,000 to give him custody of Bobby, and she accepts. The DA gets hold of Marian’s diary and Mason is allowed to spend a couple of hours reading it. He discovers that Marian was actually Bobby’s mother. Marian gave up Bobby to Norma, not realizing that Norma's plan had been to sell Bobby to Bartlett all along. Mason accuses Norma of killing Marian. Norma drives away and the police pursue her but she slams into a bus. In the hospital she admits that she killed Marian just before dying. Mason goes to see Bartlett, who is having a great time with Bobby. He tells him there is something that he should know but doesn’t have the heart to tell him Bobby isn’t genetically his grandson. Instead he tells him that he’ll need a woman to take care of Bobby and Bartlett asks if he thinks that Diana will be willing to take the job. Mason thinks so since she’s very fond of Bobby. Bartlett goes to call her.

Diana was played by Whitney Blake, who later co-created the sit-com One Day at a Time, which made a star out of Valerie Bertinelli. 

Helen was played by Irene Hervey, who acted in over fifty films and as many TV shows.

Norma was played by Phyllis Coates, who played Lois Lane in the first season of The Adventures of Superman in 1951 and the movie Superman and the Molemen.

Fay Wray

            On Saturday I still had a cold though it was pretty functional but I was horking up mucous from time to time. I skipped going to the food bank again. I mostly needed to not take on any more writing. I had to finish my review of Shab-e She’r and get caught up on my journal so I could start working on my term essay.

             It felt cold enough to snow when I went out to the supermarket. I bought raspberries, a loaf of Dave’s Killer Bread, a loaf of cinnamon-raisin bread and the chicken legs were so cheap that I bought two packs. I put the chicken in the freezer when I got home.

I went back out to buy two cans of Creemore and saw Bruce, one of the volunteers at the food bank who hasn’t been there in a while. He says he hasn’t gone to the food bank because he started getting his pension and his income has gone up. He told me that the leftover bread from the food bank is going to go towards making beer. He wondered if we would be able to get a six-pack there in the future. I wondered about cannabis brownies. He shook his head and said he would have preferred if government had legalized marijuana but just let the dealers sell it. He feels the same way about booze. He says they should just let the bootleggers handle the business. I’m sure that down the road things will be loosened up, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing that the government is there to regulate product quality.

            Talked to Benji about the fact that the landlord has yet to turn the heat on. He says the Coffeetime downstairs is bankrupt.

            I spent a lot of time writing.

            That night I grilled a couple of burgers and had one with ketchup, Dijon and a slice of onion while watching Perry Mason. The story begins as Lorraine is working late for the Larkin Import-Export business. One of the executives, Philip Larkin asks if he can come over to her place. She coldly says “no”. He persists and insists he cares about her. She says if he did he wouldn’t make cruel accusations. He says the accusations are true and he has the detective report to prove it. She says, “Why won’t you leave me alone?” “Because I want you and if I can’t have you nobody else will!" Lorraine is sent to pick up a package at a jeweller shop at a certain time but there is no package there. She calls her boss George Durell. His wheelchair bound and emotionally disturbed wife Claire answers and begins screaming accusations at her. She calls Philip and we see his dead body lying near the phone. Standing over the body is Philip’s mother’s ex-husband, Joseph Harrison who picks up the phone, puts it back on the hook and then leaves. The police come to Larkin’s house and find his body. The gruff maid who lets them in is played by Nancy Kulp who would later become a star of The Beverly Hillbillies as Miss Hathaway. Joseph comes back to the house while the police are there to ask what's going on. He says he just returned after being away for six months. Tragg has Joseph's fingerprints taken because it was his antique German WWI mauser that had killed Philip. His fingerprints are all over the gun case. When Philip’s mother Ethel had married Joseph she’d given him control of the business, much to Philip’s protests. Joseph is arrested and charged with murder. Ethel goes to Perry Mason to ask him to defend Joseph. She says he says he didn’t do it and she is finished with not believing him. Mason goes to talk to Durell and he says they will gladly open up their books for Mason to investigate. Philip's secretary Irene is explaining that she had been Joseph's secretary for 23 years. Suddenly George’s wife Claire begins screaming at Lorraine again. Claire apologizes to George as he wheels her away. Irene apologizes to Lorraine that she had to experience that. She explains that George feels guilty because he was driving the car in the accident that disabled Claire. Mason drives Lorraine home and she invites him in. She tells him about how she had spoken to Claire on the phone from the jewellery shop. Mason tells Lorraine that she is the only one in this case with an alibi. Mason finds that Lorraine got her job through Irene. In court a home movie is shown of Joseph and Philip arguing and then Joseph punching Philip. At the jail Joseph refuses to tell Mason who was behind the camera that day. Claire calls Mason while trying to disguise her voice and tells him where Ethel is. The address is Irene’s place and Ethel is there. Irene urges Ethel not to testify because it would hurt an innocent person. Mason figures out that it was Irene that shot the home movie. Tragg arrives to take Ethel into custody so she will testify as a hostile witness. In court Irene testifies that Joseph had punched Philip because he had accused him of being Lorraine’s father. Mason reveals records that show that Lorraine was boarded as a child with an elderly couple in Massachusetts and that regular cheques of $70 a month were sent to them by Irene for 19 years. Mason asks her if she is Lorraine's mother and she admits it. She wanted to protect her from Philip. Suddenly George steps forward and admits that he killed Philip to protect the daughter he couldn’t call his own. When he used Joseph’s gun he had not known that Joseph would be returning that night. It hadn’t been his intention to frame him. He was the one that had sent Lorraine to the jewellery store so she would have an alibi while he killed Philip.

            The cast for this episode was quite outstanding.
            Irene was played by Virginia Field. I had thought that her French accent sounded authentic and it turns out that though she was born in London she was educated in Paris. Her father was the King’s Counsel and her mother was a cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. It is thought that Virginia might have been a bigger star if she hadn’t been so independent minded and outspoken. She once clubbed Hollywood producer David Selznick over the head with a decanter for making a pass at her. 

            Lucille was played by the exceptionally beautiful Canadian actor Fay Wray, who said once that whenever she passes the Empire State Building she says a prayer because a good friend of hers died there.

           

Frances Helm

            On Friday the cold virus was still clinging to my throat like slimy rats to a sewer wall. I didn’t quite have my voice back and fell short on the high notes during song practice. By the afternoon it had retreated to just a raw feeling in the throat and a tightness in the forehead. It was the best I’ve felt for a week.

            At around midday I went down to Freshco where I bought grapes, strawberries, raspberries, chicken drumsticks, ground beef, yogourt and coffee.

            I spent most of the day writing.

            That night I watched Perry Mason. Patricia is driving her mother Lucille home but has to enter the driveway at a bad angle because her stepfather Bertie’s car is parked too close to where she would have turned. She hits the hedge. When she sees Bertie she complains and so he goes out to move his car. In the driveway near the hedge that Patricia had hit is the body of his secretary, Robert. Bertie brings him into the house and says he thinks he’s dead. At Perry Mason's office Della shows Mason that he's been sent a cheque for "2500 clams". Mason informs her that when it's over a thousand they are not referred to as clams but rather dollars. I wonder if that amount distinction is really a thing. The cheque is a retainer from Lucille asking Mason to represent her or Patricia if the need arises. Mason calls Lucille but Bertie answers. On hearing that the call is from Mason’s office he immediately goes to see Mason and tells him that Lucille has run off with Robert. Bertie wants Mason to urge them to come back because he needs Robert for an important business deal. Mason goes to talk with Patricia, who thinks that she hit Robert with her car. She says that Robert came to with amnesia. Paul Drake finds Lucille is staying at the Mountain View Hotel. She is gone when they get there. Mason finds her at home and she says it’s preposterous that she would have run off with Robert. She said she had been waiting with Robert at the hotel for Bertie, he’d gone to the washroom and then disappeared. Lieutenant Tragg arrives to tell Lucille that her car was found at the bottom of a canyon with Robert’s dead body inside. Suddenly Tragg gets news that it wasn’t Robert’s dead body they’d found but rather Bertie’s. Lucille is arrested. Paul calls Mason to say he's found Robert in a ranch house, though he still has amnesia. Mason and Della go to the ranch house. Della pretends she is Robert's wife. Robert says, "I never saw you before in my life!" Mason asks, "How do you know?" "Well, ah, I just feel it!” Della says, “That’s the way it was last time! Come on, let’s go home!” They take Robert out of the ranch house. Robert is put in the hospital. Paul finds out that Robert has a girlfriend named Bernice who visits him there. Mason goes to see Bernice. She’s very beautiful, very charming, very confident and she has her story straight. Mason and Tragg go to challenge Robert on his claim of having amnesia and yet still knowing his girlfriend's phone number. He admits he was faking but explains that he was in a desperate situation. Bertie had been about to steal a fortune from his partner. He’d presented a fake report on a mining property declaring it worthless when it was worth millions. Robert confronted him about it and Bertie hit him over the head. That’s how Robert was found in the driveway. When he came to he faked amnesia in self-defence. After they’d taken him to the Mountain View Hotel Bertie came with a gun. He forced Lucille into the trunk of the car and made Robert drive. As they were going down the mountain road Robert slammed on the breaks, jarring Bertie. Robert grabbed the gun and hit him with it. Lucille somehow got out of the trunk by herself and ran. In court Mason suggests that the story of Lucille having been in the trunk was an invention by Robert and Bernice. That it was Bernice’s footprints going to and from where the car was supposed to be and that she could have stepped on a bush to avoid making footprints to make it look like the car had been there. But Mason also accuses Overbrook the rancher of killing Bertie because he was trying to take his land. He said that he could have deliberately made footprints and hidden others. Ultimately Lucille gets off and Burger thinks his new killer is Overbrook. Mason tells him that it might have been Robert since he might have actually killed him when he hit him with the gun. Burger walks away puzzled. Della asks who really killed Bertie and Mason says Overbrook but if he were to agree with Burger it would set a dangerous precedent.

            Bernice was played by Frances Helm, who was married to Brian Keith from 1948-1954. She did a lot of theatre work on Broadway before branching off into television.

            Patricia was played by the always interesting and alluring Yvonne Craig, who I will always remember as Batgirl.

Peggy Knudsen, Barbara Baxley and Mari Aldon

            On Thursday I was surprised to feel continuing symptoms of my cold when I’d thought for sure I was getting over it cold days ago. The fatigue was long gone but the congestion remained.

I worked on my review of Shab-e She’r and in the evening took a copy with me to continue on it from work.

I headed out at 17:45 but was halfway between O’Hara and Brock on Maple Grove when I realized that I’d forgotten to put my denture in, so I u-turned and went back home. My neighbour Benji tried to start a conversation with me when I got home and I should have explained that I was rushed but instead I kind of rudely ignored him.

I was riding east along Dundas and had just passed a female cyclist when a cab cut me off and pulled over to the curb. I said, “Jesus Christ!” and squeezed past to his right while the female cyclist went left and called to him that he wasn’t supposed to park there. She got ahead of me because of that but I passed again shortly afterwards.

Despite the delays I was still fifteen minutes early for work. The instructor was a young woman named Brianne Service who didn’t look much older than her students and who looks a bit like Catherine O'Hara. I assume she's Irish. I see from her Facebook page that she graduated from OCADU in 2011 and got her Master of Fine Arts degree last year. She's originally from Hamilton and her work mostly consists of stylized architectural paintings of cathedrals combined with nature.

She had me do short poses for the first half of the class. She told one of her students that she would like to have gestures for the whole class but it’s hard work for a model. I said, “Especially for an old model!” I passed her on my way to the washroom during my first five-minute break and she asked me if I ride a bike. It turns out that it was her I’d passed and who'd yelled at the cab driver. She explained that she lived for a while in LA and learned how to curse out bad drivers.

At the end I told her that in my 35 years of modelling she was the first instructor that I've eve met on a bike. She said she lives right on Dundas in the west end and so it’s convenient for her to cycle to work. I told her that I’m on the north side of Queen and so it’s convenient take Dundas on my way downtown but that to come home I go along Queen. She said she’s afraid of Queen because she's afraid of being doored. I was surprised that it's never happened to her. She said she got hit by a car while walking in Hamilton though. 

As I was unlocking my door a big guy with a beard asked me for change. I said, “Sorry” and then he told me, "I think I know you. Is your name Christian?” I couldn’t place him and asked, “Where do I know you from?” He said, “Do you know Paul?” “Do you mean Cad?” He nodded and said he was Peter. He was starting to ring a bell. I asked if he was the one they call “Pete the Gypsy” and he said he was but doesn’t like being called a Gypsy. He says he identifies as an Anglo. He said he just saw Cad. He was with his girlfriend Goldie. Peter was just coming out of a soup kitchen when he said hi to them but Goldie had said, "We don't know you and we don't want to know you!" I’ve never heard Goldie say anything like that but Peter says he gets bad vibes from her. I told him I think she’s the nicest girlfriend Cad’s ever had. We chatted for about ten minutes. He seems pretty down and out and might be homeless.

I had a late dinner and watched an episode of Perry Mason. A blonde named Sheila returns home to find that her roommate, another blonde named Enid has attempted suicide with sleeping pills because Charles, her boss/boyfriend, for whom she and Sheila work as a secretary and receptionist, recently ran off to get married to another blonde named Anne. Sheila calls for emergency medical assistance and it looks like a doctor came along with the ambulance and treated her at home. Sheila talks with Enid who says she’s not going to give up on getting Charles back. The next day a man named Arthur comes to see Charles. Enid comes to his office and announces him while secretly turning on the intercom at his desk. Arthur claims he publishes a magazine called “Expose”, which seems to be just a front for a blackmail operation. He shows Charles mugshots and fingerprints from Anne’s criminal record and offers to sell for $30,000 the space in his magazine that those shots would otherwise occupy. Arthur gives Charles a week. Charles gets in touch with the Paul Drake Detective Agency and asks him to confirm if the mugshots are really Anne’s. Paul comes to a wedding reception at Charles’s place to get a sample of Anne's fingerprints. Perry Mason and Della Street are also guests at the party and they are surprised when they see Paul slip Anne’s cigarette lighter into his pocket. The next day Paul confirms with Charles that the prints match and that Anne spent a year in prison. Charles gets a call from Arthur who tells him to bring the money to the Valley Motel and to register as Thomas Walsh. Charles puts the money and a gun into a briefcase. When he arrives the desk clerk tells him his room is already reserved but as soon as Charles walks in, Arthur is waiting for him behind the door with a blackjack. Arthur knocks him out and takes the money. When Charles comes to he finds his own gun wrapped in a towel and the towel has a bullet hole. The motel rooms are joined by a shared bathroom. Charles walks into the adjacent room and finds Arthur dead. Next to the body he finds one of Anne’s earrings. The clerk walks in to see Charles with the body and calls the police. When Lieutenant Tragg arrives, Charles, I guess to protect his wife, confesses to killing Arthur. In the back of Tragg’s car, Charles shoves the earring deep into the back of the seat. Mason goes to see Anne and she admits to having been in prison. She says Arthur had also been blackmailing her. Tragg finds the earring in his car. Mason talks to the motel clerk who tells him that a woman used to call Arthur every day. In court a forensics expert says that the towel that had been found in the motel room had a strand of hair from a peroxide blonde that is naturally a brunette. The camera shows all three blondes, Sheila, Enid and Anne sitting side by side. The clerk is put on the stand and he points out Sheila as having been a frequent visitor to Arthur’s room. Sheila shouts that she didn’t kill him and that they were only partners. Arthur was alive when she left the motel. Later Anne comes to the hotel and tells the clerk she was the brains behind the operation and wants the money that he took. He pulls a gun on her and the cops walk in to arrest him. It was a sting. The night of the murder, the clerk had walked into Charles’s room, taken the gun from the bed, saw Arthur through the door with the money, used a towel as a silencer and shot him.

Sheila was played by Peggy Knudsen, who played Mona Mars in The Big Sleep.

Enid was played by Barbara Baxley, who was Tallulah Bankhead’s roommate for many years. She played Sally Field’s mother in Norma Rae. Marlon Brando called her a “jewel encrusted grudge collector” whatever that means.

Anne was played by Mari Aldon, who was born in Lithuania but grew up in the States. She starred mostly in B movies like Mask of Dust.

Allen Ginsberg and William Blake

            I was still sick on Wednesday, which surprised me because I’d really thought I was getting over it. My voice broke a couple of times during song practice but I didn’t feel run down.

            I left my place at 10:30 and still got to class early. Professor Weisman was already in front of the room when I arrived. I chatted with her about my research into the word “stranger”. She thought it was interesting that it comes from “extraneous”. She advised me to use the Oxford English Dictionary and so later on I found a download.

            We continued with our study of the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The professor said that next time we would be looking at his “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

I suddenly got the idea for an updated version featuring old mimes in old cars and I called it, “The Mime of the Ancient Rear Ender”. I guess it could also be about sodomy or sodomy while getting rear-ended in traffic. There are a lot of possibilities.

We looked at Coleridge’s poem, “To William Wordsworth”. It’s a loco-descriptive poem and a conversational poem. It’s also a greater Romantic lyric, which is a still-used term. The speaker’s insight is catalyzed by the experience of the outer scene.

This poem is different from Coleridge’s usual works because the external scene is not in nature but rather Wordsworth’s reading of what became known as his Prelude. The Prelude is Wordsworth’s poem about his lifelong unfolding process of self-reflection. Wordsworth does not write about being a child but rather he situates himself as an adult writing about being a child.

Coleridge’s poem gives an opportunity to imagine ways in which he differentiated himself from Wordsworth. Coleridge was much more learned and philosophical than Wordsworth. He also anchored himself in guilt and abstract thought sucked out his spirit.

There is a parallel between Wordsworth’s address to Coleridge in the Prelude and Coleridge’s poem “Frost at Midnight”. The city is presented as a challenge to authentic being.

Memory is an important theme for both Wordsworth and Coleridge.

At the end of Wordsworth’s “Immortality Ode” is a phrase that reads “thoughts too deep for words”. Coleridge repeats that phrase in  “To William Wordsworth”. What is the significance of Coleridge congratulating a poet for having written thoughts too deep for words?

There is recognition of a limit of representation. I suggested that poets go to that limit to find new words.

Coleridge is hailing Wordsworth as one of the greats of history but also declares that he is beyond time. This poem is almost a re-enactment of Wordsworth’s “Expostulation and Reply”. It is deliberately written in a Wordsworthian style, in blank verse and iambic pentameter, the closest meter to human breath.

There is still a sense of irresolution. He evokes a language that transcends its own limits. He evokes the experience of reading about the experience of poetry.

After class I told the professor that while thinking about Wordsworth’s idea of the inspirational wind, I suddenly remembered Bob Dylan’s line: “The answer in blowing in the wind”. She asked if Dylan had read Wordsworth but I wasn’t sure. I said that he was definitely inspired by Ginsberg. His “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall” is clearly influenced by “Howl”. The use of the phrase “I saw …” to describe several apocalyptic scenes is lifted straight from Howl. She asked what I thought of Dylan getting the Nobel Prize. I said that I think Leonard Cohen would have been a better choice. She seemed sceptical about both of them.

When I got home I did a search to see if Dylan has mentioned Wordsworth but it seems that he’s more into the other Romantic, William Blake. It turns out that he and Ginsberg collaborated on recording a couple of songs that Ginsberg made out of William Blake poems on Ginsberg’s 1970 album “Songs of Innocence and Experience”. Dylan’s own song “Every Grain of Sand” seems to have been inspired by the imagery in Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence”.

That night I made a grilled cheese sandwich and had it for dinner with a piece of reheated grilled perch and watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins with a man named Faulkner losing at craps in a casino. Later a man named castle comes to Faulkner’s office to remind him that he owes him $8000. He shows him a promissory note. Faulkner reminds him that he’d given him until April 15 but Castle says it doesn’t say so on the note. Faulkner says he knows that Marty Davis wants his land for a casino and that Castle thinks he can get it by April 12. Castle says he put up $50000 as a guarantee. Faulkner says he’s giving the land to his daughter Stephanie. Castle says he wouldn’t be surprised if Stephanie won’t be easier to convince and then he pulls a gun and shoots Faulkner. Later Castle goes to see Junior but she says she needs to discuss it with a friend. Junior, Stephanie’s former fiancé goes to talk with Castle on Stephanie’s behalf. Castle says something about Stephanie’s relationship with Junior’s father and Junior tries to punch him. Castle blocks it, punches him hard in the stomach and kicks him out. Castle goes to the office of Michael Garvin, Junior’s father where Castle’s former girlfriend Eve works as a secretary. He accuses her of telling Junior to come and see him. He reminds her that there is a sheriff in Kansas looking for her. After Castle leaves Eve calls Stephanie to tell her to meet Michael at Perry Mason’s office the next morning. It turns out though that Castle has been listening. He tells her he’s going to call that sheriff in Kansas. After Mason talks with them he goes to see Castle under the pretence of negotiating the sale of the property. After leaving Mason goes to a phone booth across the street to ask Paul Drake to investigate Castle. While they are on the phone he sees Stephanie arrive in a cab and enter Castle’s building. A few minutes later the police arrive and Mason sees Stephanie leaving by the fire escape. Mason drives his car over to pick her up. She seems in shock. The next day the papers show that Castle was murdered. Michael calls Mason to ask him to defend Stephanie. Mason goes to see her. She says she had gone to try to find out if Castle had been responsible for her father’s murder but when she got there he was dead. Mason finds that Stephanie has a gun that Michael gave her the day before and it’s been fired but she says she didn’t use it. Mason goes to see Michael and asks to see his gun. Mason “accidentally" fires it, with the bullet creasing Junior’s desk and going out the window. Mason tells Michel to put the gun in his pocket and come with him. They go to Stephanie’s place and Mason tells Junior to give her the gun. Tragg comes to see Mason to tell him they’ve arrested Stephanie for murder. It turns out that the gun he had Junior give her was the one that killed Castle.  In court it is revealed that after the murder Michael had secretly taken the gun he’d given Stephanie and replaced it with his own because he’d thought that Stephanie had killed Castle. It turned out that it had been Michael’s gun that had been used in the murder. He’d put his gun in the safe for half an hour while he got ready for dinner. Michael’s secretary, Eve stands u and confesses that she’d removed the gun from the safe went two blocks to kill Castle and then returned the gun to the safe.

Stephanie was played by Peggy McCay, who played Caroline Brady on Days of Our Lives from 1983 to 2016. She died three weeks ago at the age of 90.

Eve was played by Alix Talton.

            I felt very tired at 22:30 and so I went to bed with my clothes on without washing up or brushing my teeth. I got up at 1:30 to pee and got formally ready for bed. I saw a baby cockroach in the bathroom sink and so I decided that I'd better do the dishes.

Break the Rules and Stop Time

            On Tuesday morning I still had a lot of cold symptoms but I had my energy back. That was good because I had to work at 8:30. As time goes on I’m becoming less interested in working as a model but that’s especially true that early in the morning. I had to cut my song practise and some of my writing short.

            I worked for Greg Damery, who’s a nice guy, very perceptive and quite knowledgeable on a range of topics. He could tell right away that I had a cold and I had to reassure him that I’d be able to work.

            Greg told me he had a Martin guitar with him and I could play it on breaks if I wanted. I told him I had writing to do. He was anxious to show me this low C tuning that he was excited about and so he sat down to run me through it. I’d known for years that he played guitar but this was the first time I recall hearing him play. I explained that I’m not really a musician. I just play the chords for my own songs and for those that I translate. I guess these different tunings are okay for finessing a song or piece of music but really, there’s no song in existence that can't be played with standard tuning. He agreed that was true.

            I did one simple pose that wasn’t very difficult to hold. When Greg was trying to adjust the heater for me and asked, “Is it okay like that?” I answered, “Mmmwyeahhh." Greg said, “That’s Canadian for ‘No’.”

            I skipped taking a coffee break in the middle so I could leave twenty minutes early.

            I mentioned that I was going to a poetry reading that night. Greg said he used to go to readings and remembered, “That poet who used to drink at the Waverley”. At first I didn’t remember his name but I knew to whom he was referring. I commented that in addition to being an alcoholic he was also addicted to not bathing. Then I remembered it was Milton Acorn but Greg said, “No, that’s not it! There’s a statue of him in a park.” I said, "The statue is of Milton Acorn!" and Greg said, “That’s it! Milton Acorn!"

            Greg asked me if poets as young as his students are going to readings and I said they were. There was one young woman who said she goes to a reading at The Free Times. I told I boycott the Free Times because I don’t like how pushy the owner is.

            On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought blackberries, raspberries and some more of those cocktail wiener grapes.”

            That afternoon I took one of my favourite journal entries, which is from August 8, 2013, and started turning it into a poem.

            That evening when I was on my way out of my building, as usual I poked half of my front wheel onto the sidewalk and stuck my head out the door to look both ways and make sure I wasn’t ramming my bike into someone. One person was passing and I recognized him as the skinny old man with the short white beard who babbles loudly but mostly incoherently below my window and in front of the donut shop. He usually arrives before the Coffeetime opens to begin banging on their door and shouting. He looks something like Picasso’s “The Old Guitarist” except that he doesn’t have a guitar. As I waited for him to pass he asked, “Are you a cop?” I responded, “Am I a cop? Are you a cop?” Then he said, “You’re stupid cause I know you.”

It was damp and chilly as I rode along Bloor. I was glad that I had a scarf in my backpack because I was definitely going to wear it on my way home that night. As it should be this time of year, my path was scattered with fallen leaves but it was sad and disappointing to see that so many of them were green.

Bänoo Zan was having her pre-event cigarette outside of the Tranzac and waved to me as I walked down Brunswick. She threw her arms open to give me a hug and came forward, but as the fronts of our bodies lightly bumped I promised her two hugs next time but that I was just getting over a cold and didn’t want to pass it on.

Inside, Marta and Giovanna were sitting at the reception table. I put $10 in and told Giovanna that I wouldn’t donate anything next time but she said she had change, so I took a $5 with the Canadarm on it. On of the features was standing there and said that she recognized me from the church. I told her that I don’t go to church because I’m an atheist. Giovanna said, “You could read atheist poetry.” I told her that all of my poems, including the ones about god, are atheist.

There were no mics on the stage. I walked onstage to check out the space and how I could use it for a future open stage performance.

Sarah Green, who often tends bar, but sometimes hosts the Monday night open stage at the Tranzac, was on the phone with someone that was guiding her through setting up the sound for The Main Hall. I’d seen her set up the sound for the Southern Cross room lots of times but I guess the Main Hall is different. It took a long time and she finally got some help from someone else, but Shab-e She’r started a little after 19:00 as usual.

Bänoo welcomed us to the 67^th Shab-e She'r.

Terese did the land acknowledgment.

Bänoo asked for everyone to stand in silence for a minute for the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Bänoo said she was going to read a poem she'd written for Khashoggi, but gave it an introduction-

“We Muslims begin a lot of important things with the name of Allah.” She added that traditional Muslims even do so before eating. She said the word “batan” means “homeland”.

From “Elegy” - “Banished from faith and love ... I'm mourning my death ... I have witnessed terror ... my sons beheaded ... my daughters deprived of light ... my body dismembered ... I am seeking hearts to take me in ... Bleeding ... I wonder if I will survive ... Free Allah from despots ... With batan soaked in worshippers' blood ... which god do you worship?”

The open stage began with Ian French. Ian said that he doesn't live in Toronto anymore but was in town from Montreal and just coincidentally discovered that Shab-e She'r is now at the Tranzac. He introduced his poem by telling us that when he was 18 and got out of school he convinced his girlfriend to hitchhike with him from Banff to Whitehorse. In Whitehorse they got kicked out of the hostel where they'd been staying because Ian started throwing furniture out the window. He admits, “I was an asshole back then.”

From “A Story Worth Telling” - “I inherited your job, your position, your pay-cheque ... You were a legend ... You could hold two pitchers of beer ... You built two cabins in the bush ... Nobody mentioned the other stories ... your feet nailed to the floor ... Your lungs filled with ice water and gravel ... No one was sure how far you jumped ... Like you I hated that fucking church ... the same church where white fathers in black robes had taken your confession as if you needed to be forgiven ... By the time your funeral arrived I had your job ... As they dropped your body into the ground I wept … I picked up my tools and went back to work.”

Bänoo reminded everyone of her zero censorship policy. She said the answer to a poem is another poem because “if we go the other way we become a country like Saudi Arabia”.

It was my turn. For the first time in the Main Hall I eschewed the microphone and I think that everyone heard me.
            From “Fuck Off!” – “ … A cyclist asks for an Allen key / I pass mine over and it’s too big / but we have a conversation / and whenever I surprise him he tells me to, "Fuck off!”  // From his accent I think he's from Newfoundland / “Fuck off! How could you tell?” / I tell him I'm from New Brunswick and he says, “Fuck off!” // … He pulls out a pack of cigarettes / and offers me one but I say I don't smoke / "Fuck off!” he says and I’m relieved that he can't find a match // He tells me he’s Joe, I say my name's Christian / and he says "Fuck off!" as we are shaking hands / He tells me he’s on his way downtown to get drunk / ‘Cause I’m a Newfoundlander and I don’t give a fuck!’”

            Bahar Ebrahimi read, “This is to my father, beyond the Caspian … Recently Facebook put our pictures together … We meet each other so far so close … Facebook celebrates the three years friendship of my father and I … We meet on the borderline … beyond the Caspian.”

            Bänoo told us that at the last university she worked at before she left Iran, she could see the Caspian from her office.

            Dapper young Stedmond Pardy read a love poem that he said was inspired by “Three’s Company” – “Clasped asphyxiatingly from the surface of the shifting garbage littered sand … I constantly pine to return … awash in neon … an even more alienated rendition of Travis Bickle … The decree of the cat’s paw of fate … outside a Scottish village once every other century … Most people are criminally blind to your peculiar magnificence … Our troubled schizophrenic species … aiming the shotgun of undying love … while the owners of our unpopulated store wait for a customer …”

            Dan Balken read us some jokes – “I’m 25 and I take the bus … Nothing good … My high school bully is now an award winning real estate agent. I found that out at the bus stop, so he’s still bullying me … The difference between the ads on the inside and outside of the bus … Inside … the flu could kill you … Outside … The Avengers are great … My dad has a creepy face while my mom looks normal … When we’re all together it looks like three generations of the same criminal kidnapped my mom … Dear New York filmmaker Dan Balken, you don’t have to change your name … Dear Toronto comedian Dan Balken, this was a strange email. I’m going to copyright the name Dan Balken … Just kidding … Dear Chicago magician Dan Balken, I like your magic but there is room for improvement … signed New York filmmaker Dan Balken.”

            It was time for our first feature, Sheila Tucker. She began by reciting some light verse that seemed to have been written specifically for her feature at Shab-e She’r – “Well I don’t know you and you don’t know me … Let’s have tea … Give me the jitters … I need to chatter with you.”

            From “Tribulations of Fish Life” – “The Cheshire cat circles around the bowl … The fish is pondering the sharpness of spiky teeth … Forced to see all without the mercy of a blink … Stars … become star fish … Huge cars become fish bowls.”

            From “Those Eyes” – “Your eyes as a hippy … as you made love not war … Your eyes as a father … crinkled in the corners … Those eyes once torches … that shown so brightly … now a curl of smoke.”

            From “Youth and Beauty” – “An office chair sits empty … waits in vain for bicycle clips … Adventure calls … From the high office window … a tiny speck … heading west.”

            From “Under the Moon” – “At quarter moon he pats a neighbour’s retriever … At half moon he inhales fear … At full moon he jumps from the window … He sucks blood.”

            From “Gardening in Japan” – “He pulls and pulls and trims and yanks … until he is defeated by the black belt cherry blossom.”

            From “Ripple Effect” – “ … Wet, murky tunnel of light … soft, blue sea beneath …. The small plastic reel … asthmatic death as a bottom feeder swallows it whole … One decade later a bear starves to death.”

            From “All His Life” – “All his life the alarm went off at 6:30 … Stuck in shelves … All for a pittance … His parents told him live within your means … The 16 year old became 64 … 65^th birthday, a big trip to Montréal … Instead of living within his means … he learned to live without.”

            From “Everything is Gonna Be Amazing” –“Who is gonna be amazed? If an elephant begins discussing quantum theory … Do you think this is a game?”

            From “Old Man Selling Poppies” – “I see an old man selling poppies … As he pins the poppy to my collar I do a double take … A Victoria Cross … tiny kings meditating … I catch my breath … Eyes of a young man going to war … His hair is now brown … Jumps from the boat … They’ll get no sleep for the next four years … purge lands of vicious invaders … gunning Jerries … He limps back to base camp with a thousand scalps … We are now free … His mother died … He has a life to resume … I look at the young man before me … I point at the medals … Nice collection … Thank you … No. Thank you … A young boy charges into my legs, pulls out a water pistol and then yanks … 70 years from now he will stand on a street corner and sell mutant poppies.”

            From “Puddle” – “The man shoved a newspaper into his poodle’s mouth. Carry he said … The poodle dropped it into a puddle.”

            From another poem – “In my little world … a log cabin resides … English rose, violets, invisible pixies … At the end of my lush, long lane … darling pet dragons … Every time a mosquito hovers close they zap it.”

            Sheila’s last poem was “Huge Franchised Bookstore” – “You’ll find magazines and DVDs … comics for kids … One of our stores in every city … You want what? You’re out of luck! The protagonist is a queer! We’re a family bookstore! You’ll find your book where? That little bookstore is no longer there.”

            Sheila Tucker is a poet who rarely breaks the rules. It’s suburban middle-class poetry that seems like it began more as a late life hobby than a serious attempt at producing art. Her sentiments are sincere and there is real wisdom in her work but even the heavy topics are handled in a light, fanciful and non-self-challenging manner. The result is really a kind of plebian body of uninspired verse.

            A note on Sheila’s last poem: She said in the introduction that she’d had stores like Chapters in mind when she wrote the poem. But there are lots of queer books available at Chapters and I can’t think of another huge franchised bookstore that wouldn’t have queer literature. I suspect that she just assumed that would be a large store’s limitation without doing any research.

            We took a break.
            I chatted with Cy Strom. I shook his hand without thinking when he offered it but immediately warned him that he should wash his hands. He said nice things about my poem. Bahar came up and told me “good job”. She encouraged Cy to read something next time. She informed us that the second feature, Khashayar was giving away a chapbook. I wondered if Khashayar gets any Star Trek references because of his name but Cy didn’t know what I was talking about. I explained that in the first season of Star Trek: the Next Generation there was a character that died named Tasha Yar. Cy said he never liked Star Trek. I tried to win him over by telling him about my favourite Star Trek story called “Darmok” in which the crew of the Enterprise encounters a race of aliens whose way of speaking is incomprehensible because they just say things like, “On the lake, at Tanagra!” Cy figured out right away that the aliens are poets and I confirmed that it was eventually discovered that they speak only in metaphor; much like people on Earth probably did when ancient texts like the Bible were written. Cy said that once he figured out they were poets he would have been bored with the rest of the story. He says he doesn’t really like science fiction unless it’s based on pure science. He hated Frank Herbert’s Dune but likes Isaac Asimov and is a fan of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.

            After the break, the warm-up open stage performer for the second feature was Meena Chopra. Meena was having a hard time seeing her text and so the sound person came up and moved her lectern into a better light.

            From Meena’s first poem – “She sticks to the tacky, damp earth … dreading devastation … Her mouth is full of clay … The streams swim in her eyes …”

            From “Kaleidoscope” – “Dodging the entire cosmos … fleeting skies … Limits have scraped her soul …”

            It was time for the second feature, Khashayar Mohammadi.

            From his first poem – “I slept another morning through the crack of dawn … Iridescent sunrise caught a disease … Wild men bathed in thickening sunlight … the only nature I’ve known in my Bible-black night of electronic kisses … against the crimson backdrop of crimson lips … Beauty is the carbonized crow’s flight.”

            Another – “Laughter at trivial jokes … I saw death in your eyes … reciting premeditative thoughts … I wondered if you ever had a face … We spoke ill of the sunrise … A river grew inside of me … Discombobulated … we rode glares … Your blind eye bled incarnations … I peeled you off into a constellation … I spoke ill of you.”

            From “Crack of Dawn” – “In faded windows … a refection … What you know best becomes a house … What you know least becomes a road.”

            Khashayar told us that a lot of his poems are entitled “Dear Kestral”.

            From “Dear Kestral” – “You dust the evening off your shoulders and ball up on your mattress … You avoid eyes by dancing alone … You spend spring walking through cemeteries … The static of Sunday … Comedy happens to you … Anger inspires ecstatic laughter.”
            Khashayar says that he pairs haiku to make what he calls “butterfly poems” – “Gas station flowers / in mud cone red shoes … A bucket of fried chicken / food court sparrows flock … Sunday subway ride / a dog under my seat … Snow has disappeared /car tires turn / pebbles crackling … Dumpster diver / leopard skin raft.”

            From “Ode to Mr. Churchyard (a love letter to North York)” – “Electricity gathering on transmission towers … Bouquet of floating traffic lights … an echo of an echo of an echo … This impertinent uneasiness … this holy hypochondria”.

            From “Nipples Al Dente” – “ … Bite marks embolden … My skin came alive … warmth permeates.”

            From “Words Are Clumsy Hunters of the Truth” – “A accident unprecedented … Smiles exchanged … Her fluorescent vending machines … trapped in a lover’s arms … a silence for impermanence … eviscerated closets … sobriety chipped into pockets.”

            From another “Dear Kestral”– “Subtle things about Montreal … watching Hasidic Jews … Will I embody enough paradoxes? The bedbug smears on the wall remind me of you … Dear Kestral, Don’t hesitate, just write.”

            The chapbook that Khashayar was giving away is of translations of female Persian poets.

            From “You Don’t See Me” – “One by one cigarettes … you don’t see them shrink … If I stay awake two more days every day remains Thursday … I wrap a blanket around my books … All this rush I have unfortunately inherited from this canine life of mine … to lie down on objects till those who love you knock on the window … Cigarettes emit white smoke … One under the table … You don’t see us shrink.”

            From “The Beginning” by Roja Chamankar – “I arrive at the sea … When I speak of the sky … the seashore is leaking.”

            From “The Smoky Flavour of Water” – “The Moon doesn’t suit the deplorable sky of this city … You know that waste of blood never returns … Lost homelands … our hands … You know how bitter this water tastes.”

            Khashayar’s final poem was called “Chachkie” – “Summer is gone ... My corridor is mall white ... She admired the orange scarf ... placed orange peels on the mantle."

            Khashayar Mohammadi is a poet with a talent for finding new images to convey meaning. When a poet can reach into moments to stop and study them, turn spots of them around, inside out and blow them out of proportion, there is art.

            Bänoo announced that her opera, “The Journey: Notes of Hope” would be performed at 19:30 on November 2 and at 21:00 on November 3 at Agricola Lutheran Church at 25 Old York Mills Rd.

            Leah Cohen kicked off the second half of the open mic with “A Poem for Tyrone” - "Once I met a man at a cocktail bar in Tel Aviv ... We drank out of elephants ... velveteen wallpaper ... How you make a life-size thing ...  I remember we walked through that winter ... January here just doesn't feel the same ...”

            Myles began by telling us, “I’ve never done this in my life … I was sexually abused as a child and I’ve had a thing with the LGBTQ community but thanks for helping me grow …"

            From Myles’s poem – “I’m like the cigarette of a fiend … I got the spirit … hope’s hard to come by … Let me set you down in your crib like an au pair … Thank Abba I’m still here …”

            “I went to Central Tech … A friend got murdered at the Ex when I was in Colorado …”

            From the poem – “Rollin through the country the other day when I heard Lewis got shot … All heart and no love … Book of life pages torn out.”

            From his last poem – “I’m not the judge … I’m not the law …I don’t issue no statutes … your mind isn’t safe … Be sharp like a black suit.”

            Shehzad Chowhan read first in English – “Why the silence is wearing a black shawl … Why this Earth? Why this ocean? Why this broken star welcome me?” He then read the same poem in Urdu.

            Bänoo said that of all the languages in which poetry has been read at Shab-e She’r, this was the first time Urdu has been spoken.

            Chai told us that even though his mayoral campaign is over, we could still photograph him if we want. Without his mic and from his phone he read “I and iphones” – “I phone anyone anywhere but me … Why is knowing anyone’s business more important than knowing myself? Am I the shadow under the lamp?  I am lost … You have robbed me of my silent moments … Can we not meet at a quiet spot? Let us not replace our hugs and kisses with text messages … With so much information, why are we heading in the wrong direction? Is knowledge good enough? Where is the button for wisdom on the iphone? You have taken me further away from it … Google takes me to my destination but I am lost nonetheless … iphone you have taken her away from me … You are her constant companion and I am alone … You are our new anti-social group … Many with earphones are as good as deaf … Walking is risky … You bring far away Facebook friends close to us … Now our near and dear ones are not near …”

            Gavin Barrett read “Alphabet for My Daughters” – “Ages between death and I see the road ends here … Erecting monuments for myself … effulgences can’t be indulged … A fine end to a night … Illumination …. The switch emanating menace … A letter or a book petering out before the halfway mark … We are relatives after all, chained to the same cycle … Forgive as we forget our lines …”

             Sargon read three poems. He said that they were a haiku, a short poem and another haiku.

            From “Pink Vibrator” – “I am stained / the black blood / is covering my body”

            From his poem – “My fingers smell like pussy … Again I have to question my sexuality.”

            From his last “haiku” – “Not a human / I am considered an asset / or trash”.

            The last reader was Bänoo’s co-host, Terese Pierre, who read “Mitosis” – “In the mirror my mother’s eyes assess my chest … burning the back of my neck … I stood no chance … turning into and onto myself … In this darkness I have made stone fruit … I still want to reach beyond the glass and kiss her face”.

            The next Shab-e She’r will be on November 27 and it will be an anniversary event.

            I was unlocking my bike just south of Bloor when a middle-aged woman who’d been in the audience at Shab-e She’r stopped to chat with me. She told me she’d enjoyed my poem but hadn’t understood a lot of the poetry that had been read. I asked if she was going to come back with one of her own poems. She said that she always throws away her poetry because she doesn’t believe art is meant to be kept. I suggested that maybe she’d feel differently about that if she read her work in public. She agreed that was possible. She said she gives poems to friends.

I asked her name and after she told me I repeated it. She nodded but I was doubtful that I’d gotten it right and figured she was just being polite or was tired of teaching her name to Anglophones. I asked her if I was pronouncing it correctly and it turned out that I was right that I'd been wrong. Once the door of my interest was open she became interested in me pronouncing it right and corrected me. On my second try she nodded more sincerely and sounded impressed that I’d gotten it. But I'm writing this down days after she told me so I don't know if I'm remembering it right now, but what’s in my memory is “Naranaday”. She said it was Persian but what I’ve written doesn’t match with any web search for any Iranian names, so I’ve probably remembered it wrong.

When I got home I had a late dinner and watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins in a bank as bookkeeper Carl Houser suddenly tells his boss that he is quitting. He immediately goes into a storage room and removes an envelope from a filing cabinet. He takes a large amount of money from the envelope, lifts his shirt and puts the cash into a money belt.
            Weeks later Perry Mason and Della Street are on the deck a cruise ship heading south in the waters off Canada. They are making a leisurely return to LA after a court case in Vancouver, British Columbia.  On the boat are Carl Hauser, his wife Anna and his teenage daughter Laura. Also on the boat is a Nurse Whiting who cares for a man named Cartman who is covered in bandages, wears a hat and is confined to a wheelchair that she pushes. Other passengers are a loud man named Carter and his quiet secretary James. Later Anna asks to talk with Mason. He comes to their cabin when Carl is out. She says that Carl has stolen $100,000. Mason wonders if she’s sure. She says he tells her won it in the sweepstakes but she doesn’t believe him because it wasn’t reported in the papers. He says he’s not going to assume Carl is guilty without proof and so he wires the Paul Drake detective agency to investigate. Paul finds that there is no money missing at all from the bank where Carl had worked. That night the boat is on stormy seas and Mason sees Carl and Anna arguing. The couple go out on the deck. Later the man-overboard alarm sounds. The captain tells Anna it was Carl and he has also found Carl’s gun and believes he was murdered. He finds hanging in her shower a wet black dress and a money belt containing $91,000. Anna is arrested when the ship docks in LA and Mason tells Laura to get a room in a hotel under the name of Laura Wilson because he doesn’t want the press to bother her. Mason visits Anna in jail and she explains that Carl had asked to talk with her alone and had given her his money belt. He seemed so upset that she followed him up to the deck. He grabbed her, kissed her and then pushed her away. That was the last time she saw him. Mason knows that Carl, Anna and Laura used to live in Chicago before he worked at the bank in LA. He asks how that move came about. She says that Carl had been on jury duty in Chicago and had held out until the rest of the jury found an accused man innocent and shortly after the trial they had moved to LA. Mason asks if it has occurred to Anna that Carl might still be alive. Laura never checked into the hotel and has gone missing. In court, Mason questions the ship purser and asks about the last time he’d seen Carl. He says he gave him a note from Nurse Whiting. Paul traces the nurse and Cartman to a large country estate belonging to Morgan Shreeves. Mason and Paul go there and Mason remembers that Shreeves had been on trial for income tax evasion in Chicago but had gotten off. Mason wants to enter the house. Paul says it’s against the law. Mason says it’s only a misdemeanour if one doesn’t enter to remove something from the house, whereas he only wants to leave something there. Paul asks what he wants to leave and he answers, “My fingerprints”. Mason tells Paul to call Burger, disguise his voice and give him a tip about Whiting and the house. The whole point is to put the police on Whiting’s trail. In court the DA has tracked down Laura and has her appear as a hostile witness. She testifies that she saw the man go overboard after a gunshot. Burger announces that Carl’s body has been found in the ocean and that he died from a gunshot wound though the bullet did not come from the gun they found on deck. Later, Della suggests that Carl got the $100,000 from Shreeves. Mason says that Shreeves could have been the man in the wheelchair. In court a fingerprint expert reveals that fingerprints supposedly belonging to the patient Cartman that were found on the wheelchair in Shreeves’s house 24 hours after Carl went missing are the same as Carl’s fingerprints. Nurse Whiting is put on the stand and testifies that the man in the wheelchair was a dummy. She’d planned with Carl to make it look like he’d committed suicide. She took Carl off the ship in the wheelchair. But when Carl found out that Anna was on trial for his murder he didn’t want to continue the ruse and he was killed to keep him quite. But she won’t take the murder rap for the real killer, Morgan Shreeves. Carter stands up in court and says, “You want Morgan Shreeves? Here he is!” He grabs James, his quiet secretary and forces him to his feet.

            Anna was played by Lurene Tuttle, who in addition to work in Vaudeville, radio and films, was a diction coach for many other actors, including Orson Wells. She was known as the “first lady of radio”.