Cocktail Wiener Grapes

            It was raining on Monday but not enough so I’d have to sit with a damp ass in Romantic Literature class. About halfway there someone pointed out that my backpack was open. The main zipper on my knapsack is starting to lose its grip and so sometimes I have to run it along the tracks again to get it to hold on. If it’s loose in some small area it will come apart entirely until I fully open it and then re-zip it. I’d first bought the epac because it had a ten-year warranty and according to my memory I purchased it in December 2008. Since then I’ve renewed it twice by riding out to northeast Mississauga to the Hayes Company. The receipt was too faded last time I renewed it for me to see the date but according to the people at Hayes the warranty was finished in December 2016. Each backpack lasted me about three years. I don’t know how much longer my current one will survive.

            I was the first student in the classroom. All of he desks had been pushed together up towards the front. They certainly weren’t moved to one side of the room to clean the other side because it was still filthy. There was one left over take-out meal at the bottom of one of the desks and a couple of abandoned coffee cups. I think that the design of the desks, with the storage area at the bottom contributes to forgetting things. If students keep leaving food around they might end up with a cockroach problem.

            The desk that Professor Weisman uses was where it should be but I put her lectern in the position she likes and lifted the projector screen. There was only piece of chalk big enough to fit onto my thumbnail but a professor came in and wanted to take it because he had none. I told him that if he took it we wouldn’t have any and so he left it. If I hadn’t gotten there early the chalk might have been gone.

            I sat and perused my essay. I underlined words that I’d repeated and circled phrases that I liked but needed to be moved somewhere else.

            I went to use the washroom and saw our professor sitting in the common area. When I came out she was just arriving in the classroom.

            We discussed the sad state of the room and how OISE in general is not a great building for classes because the subway is always rumbling underneath.

            Our lecture was the last one on Wordsworth.

            In the Prelude Wordsworth is describing the preparation for his great philosophic poem. He imagines that he has to lay the foundation so people know who is writing it. He’s trying to convey his prophetic understanding on the depths of human nature. He’s establishing what is foundational and important is to release oneself from the fretful, unprofitable stir, to immerse oneself in the rustic life and to establish continuity between the child and the adult in oneself.

            Of his description of skating, suddenly stopping and feeling the entire universe spinning around him, she says people have to have skated to know what he’s talking about. Professor Weinstein is from Winnipeg where she says there is a saying that it’s against the law to walk until you've learned to skate.

            Wordsworth writes about spots of time, which are imprints and a function of memory. Recalling moments of significance. Is it really possible to recollect being a child without analysis? We murder to dissect. Spots of time, like his memories of Tintern Abbey, have the power of renewal. A spot is also spatial. In Book 11, line 268: “This efficacious spirit lurks among those passages of life in which we have the deepest feeling that the mind is lord and master and that outward sense is the obedient servant of her will.” Nature is a servant of the mind. Recollection itself is analytic.

            Of the story Wordsworth tells of having stolen a boat when he was five, he experiences an optical illusion when he feels like the cliff is chasing him as a kind of chastizement and this is a crisis moment, though he doesn't say that it was an optical illusion. There are guilty overtones with a related feeling of pride. His boundaries are checked by power or voice. He localizes the time and place. His dipping of the oars in the water has the rhythm of heartbeat. His pleasure is stolen and so it comes with guilty overtones. The experience is almost mystical. The primacy of the mind’s reaction makes it a spot of time.

            Ronan observed that all of Wordsworth’s points of time take place when he’s alone but I brought up his sharing of Tintern Abbey with his sister. The professor pointed out that Dorothy’s experience was also solitary and he just recognized it. I added that he was also with a friend when he crossed the Alps but she said he’d become separated from him momentarily when he had the experience of looking down on the sea of mist. His experience of individuality is important.

            In Book 13 his view of looking down on the mist is a metaphor for the elevation of mankind. He sees in the external scene the image of his own mental powers. The moon dominates the mist. The imagination imposes unity on the external world. The mind is both receiver and creator. The mind is not enslaved by nature.

            I brought up how Wordsworth’s description of looking down on the mist is very similar to the painting “Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich. She was familiar with the painting and agreed that it made for an interesting parallel.

            Wordsworth’s experience was ordinary but powerful.

The poem teaches us that the mind of man is 1000 times more beautiful than the Earth.

The professor posed us a question: Taking into account spots of time, in what way is the mind of man more beautiful than the Earth?

I said that only a human could have these experiences and think of them. This kind of experience in the Alps followed by impressions of what it means such as a mighty feeling on infinity is not going to be had by a big horn sheep.  Human mind has the ability to mould and to abstract and to translate the experience in such a way as to share it with a less sensitive mind.

These are moments with profound significance but he’s not enslaved to them. The mind is master. The mind is reflexive and reflecting on its experience of nature. The mind is essentially interpretive.

Just after the class ended I told Professor Weinstein that I understand how the Prelude can be considered as Wordsworth’s crowning achievement from a philosophical point of view or from an autobiographical perspective but artistically it seems to me that his Lyrical Ballads are much more creatively constructed works of art, especially “We Are Seven”.

On our way out she asked me what else I’m taking. I told her that I’d be taking Creative Writing in January with Albert Moritz. She said, “He’s good!” I said that I know Albert from the poetry scene and that I took Academic Bridging with his wife, Theresa. I recounted how when she was sick for one class he came in and taught the poetry section. He brought in a little blaster and played us Blues songs as poetry to start.

On the way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought oranges, a hothouse tomato and the most bizarre looking black grapes I’d ever seen. Instead of being round or oval they were stretched out like cocktail wieners. The name on the bag just said “black seedless grapes” but I figured these must have a special name. When I went home I looked them up and at first I thought that they were called “witch fingers” but it turns out that is another type of long grape with a pointed end. The ones I bought were apparently developed by the same grower and they are called “Moon drops”. They only first came out last year but I never saw them. One might think they are GMO but they aren’t, thought the seeds are started in test tubes. They feel a bit perverse in the hand but they are sweet.

            I rubbed rosemary, garlic, olive oil and salt into the half sirloin pork roast that I’d bought. I seared it in the oven at high temperature for half an hour and then lowered the heat. Since I didn’t plan on drinking the stuff I poured a can of Budweiser over the whole thing and basted it while it was roasting. The beer and the rosemary were a great combination and made the pork delicious.

            I watched an episode of Perry Mason. In the story, a wealthy man named Carr is searching for the heiress to the Hocksley estate has placed an ad in the newspaper. If she can prove she is the late Hocksley’s daughter she would receive $2 million. An old man named Lowell who runs a photo shop is showing the ad to Doris Hocksley and encouraging her to try. Doris goes to see Carr’s nephew, Alan Neil, who is in charge of finding the heiress. She tells him that she has no photograph of her father but she did receive a book and a photograph with a note on the back from China before Adam Hocksley died there. The note said something about him having been betrayed by a Judas. She kept the Bible but threw away the picture. Alan tells her he thinks she’s a fraud but that if she was interested splitting the $2 million he might be interested in telling his uncle that she’s the real heiress. Doris goes to Perry Mason and he says he’ll look into it. He meets with Carr, who is pushed into the room in a wheelchair by a Chinese gentleman. Carr says that Adam Hocksley was killed by the Chinese Communists and that he was wounded but saved by Gow Loong, the man behind him. The Judas that Hocksley had referred to is Lowell, the man who shoed Doris the ad. Gow Loong has sworn to kill Lowell. Alan mentions that there is a woman named Miriam Hocksley who is also claiming the inheritance. Mason goes to see Miriam and she also seems to have as valid a claim as Doris. That night, Carr’s secretary Rebecca calls Mason to tell him that there’s been a shooting and that she’s locked the shooter in the library with Carr’s body. He tells her to call the police and that he would be right over too. They find Carr dead with a gun beside him and Doris is sitting in shock nearby clutching a Bible and a photograph. Lieutenant Tragg finds an old pocket watch on Carr containing the combination to his safe. He opens it but inside there is nothing but an empty tin box. Tragg takes the Bible and the photo from Doris and she is led to get medical attention and later to be arrested. Mason finds that the Bible fits perfectly in the box. Mason goes to see Doris in the hospital. She says that Carr had phoned her to come there. No one answered the door but it was open. When she got to the library Carr was already dead. She picked up the gun and accidentally pulled the trigger, shooting a bullet into the floor. She tells Mason about the deal that Alan had offered her. She says that Lowell had brought her from San Francisco an exact copy of the photograph she’d thrown away years ago, even though she’d only met him four months ago. Mason goes to San Francisco to Lowell’s photo shop but he is gone. Gow Loong is there as well and has found out that Lowell didn’t really betray them for money but because he was forced to on the threat of death. He forgives him. In court Mason challenges Alan to account for where he was at the time of the murder. He admits that he and Miriam Hocksley got married. Mason gets permission to try an experiment with the tin box. Much to the protest of the DA, Mason forces open a false bottom and inside is the same photograph that Doris had. The judge adjourns the court to consider this new development. That night Mason gets a call from a woman who says she’s Miriam Hocksley.  She says she killed him and she’s going to kill herself. Then he hears a shot and the line goes dead. Mason calls the police and goes to Alan’s apartment. When he gets there Miriam is being taken away in a stretcher with a 40-60 chance but Alan is dead. Mason finds a bullet in the wall but Alan was shot in bed. Mason tells Tragg to come with him to the Carr house. Mason tells Rebecca that there is no use acting because Miriam is alive. Rebecca gasps. She says she loved Alan and he’d said he loved her but she couldn’t stand it when he married Miriam and so she tried to make it look like Miriam killed Alan and then committed suicide.

            Doris was played by Toni Gerry.

            Rebecca was played by Olive Deering, who played Miriam in The Ten Commandments.

            Miriam was played by Mary Shipp