Cosmic Consciousness

            On Sunday my cold was much worse than the day before. Unlike on Saturday my voice was severely limited during song practice. Sometimes I was able to sing but I also spoke, groaned and coughed the lyrics.

            I took a shower and the hot water soothing but only while I was under it.

            I felt like conking out all morning but kept myself going through the ham sandwich I had for lunch.

            I took a pleasant siesta in the early afternoon and woke up rested but still miserable.

            The landlord has yet to turn the furnace on and so I’ve been blasting my oven. I hate the way the stove dries out the air in the apartment though.

            I sneezed a lot today. I don’t know why sneezing is so much more of a rush than coughing, perhaps because it’s almost like an outside force taking control. We can sort of control our coughing but sneezing is overwhelming and liberating because of that.

            I re-read aloud all of the William Blake selections for my Romantic Literature course. I’ll probably write my essay on some of his poems, including “Tyger”.

            I downloaded a book that I bought when I was 15 and which had a major impact on my life. The book is “Cosmic Consciousness” by Richard Maurice Bucke, written in 1901. It proposes that cosmic consciousness is the next phase of evolution for humanity and he names and quotes several historical figures, starting with the Buddha and including Jesus, Mohammad, Shakespeare and William Blake as examples of people that in a flash of insight suddenly achieved cosmic consciousness. He claimed that Walt Whitman was the greatest example of a cosmic conscious individual in the history of the world. Walt Whitman happened to be a close friend of Bucke. The book for me was valuable because of all the quotes that show the parallels between all of the world’s religions and visionaries. I realized later on that Bucke’s theory was based on a false understanding of evolution. Evolution is not about improvement but rather adaptation. Sometimes the result of evolution is diminishment of capacities if it serves survival. One example is human eyesight, which is a fucked up workaround or those blind cave fish that still have non-functioning eyes. He also claimed that Australian Aborigines are an example of the most primitive people on Earth and his proof was that they are all colour blind. Now we know that Aborigines have the most highly developed colour sense of any ethnic group on the planet. Bucke was born in England but raised around London, Ontario. As a young man he became an adventurer and drove wagon trains to Caifornia. One of his adventures caused him to lose a leg. He became a doctor and a psychiatrist and the director of an insane asylum in London, Ontario. A Canadian film called Beautiful Dreamers portrays his struggles against the medical establishment to have mental patients treated as human beings. 

            I grilled some Great Lakes perch fillets for dinner and watched an episode of Perry Mason. This story begins with a Dr. Barnes and a Nurse Walsh arriving for work at Dr. Barnes's private Seaside Hospital only to find that the doctor's office has been ransacked by Mary K. Davis, a famous and influential newspaper columnist. She has stolen a book of records of illegal activities by Dr. Barnes and threatens to expose him if he does not give her what she wants. The hospital performs an illegal service that circumvents the adoption process. Women that are pregnant but do not want their babies are cared for at the hospital until they give birth at which point infertile couples immediately take the babies as their own. Records are shuffled so that as far as anyone knows the baby is their own. Mary K. has told her husband and all of her readers that she is pregnant. In exchange for the return of the book she wants Dr. Barnes to give her a baby. The doctor tells her that he would never let her take a baby from one of his patients because she is mentally unstable. She gives them until 10:00 the next day to agree to give her a baby or she will expose to the public the book’s contents. Nurse Walsh comes to see Mary. Mary insists that her secretary, Connie listen to their conversation. Walsh begs Mary to reconsider. Mary says that her husband Ralph Davis of the State Department wants a divorce and the only thing that is keeping them together is that he thinks she is pregnant. After Walsh leaves, Mary confronts Connie. Connie confesses that she told Dr. Barnes that she is not fit to care for a child. Mary threatens to tell the world what her boyfriend Bob's mother was. She never does say what she was but apparently it was bad. Connie threatens to tell Mary’s husband everything. Mary tells her to call Ralph’s girlfriend Susan since she probably has a direct line to Washington. Connie does go to see Susan to get her to get Ralph to stop Mary. Susan says she would help if she could but she can’t. Connie leaves and Ralph comes out from another room. Susan wants Ralph to save everyone grief and just go back to Mary. Ralph says Mary is not only not fit to have a child, she’s not even fit to live. Connie and Bob go to see Mary’s lawyer Eugene Jarich. He says he’ll talk with her. He meets Mary for drinks and dinner but she won’t give up the book. She goes to the washroom and asks the attendant to get her a stamp and an envelope big enough for mailing the book she’s holding. Later, Nurse Walsh goes to Mary’s place to search for the book. From there she calls Perry Mason’s office and asks if she can meet him on an urgent matter. She goes to see him. He doesn’t approve of the illegal activities of Dr. Barnes’s hospital but he says he can talk to Mary K. Walsh is upset because she knows Mary is immune to talk. She leaves in tears. Mason calls Mary’s number and Lieutenant Tragg answers the phone. Mary is already dead. Nurse Walsh walks into the DA’s office and confesses to killing Mary. Paul Drake finds out that Mary mailed the book to an apartment she keeps under her maiden name. Since the apartment is rented by the week, that means the rent is up and so Mason’s secretary rents it so she can be there when the mailman delivers the book. Mason goes to see Connie. Bob is there and they confess to being mentioned in Barnes’s book. After Della receives the envelope she looks to hide it somewhere in the apartment but someone opens a door. Della hides behind it and sees the shadow of a gun. The person leaves and closes the door. Della panics and leaves with the envelope. Mason takes the envelope to Barnes because it would have been illegal to send it to him. It’s also illegal now for him to give it to him. Mason lights a cigarette and throws the rest of the box of matches in the fireplace causing the fire to jump. Mason says he’s going down the hall to the water cooler and he leaves the envelope on Barnes’s desk. Barnes takes the hint and tosses the envelope in the fire. When Mason comes back he asks Barnes if he killed Mary. He says he didn’t but that Walsh should have left it for him to do. In court, Burger calls Della to the stand. Burger asks her if she received an envelope in the mail but Mason objects, saying that since the contents of the envelope are actually unknown, the prosecutor can’t ask questions about it as if it has bearing on the case. It’s a technical matter but the judge agrees. Has asked several questions and has been blocked by Mason on the same grounds ever time. Burger is getting very frustrated. He asks Della to confirm that she concealed evidence. Mason objects again, saying that the defendant in this case is not bound by what Della might have thought she was receiving in an envelope. The judge again agrees with Mason and reminds Burger that legal technicalities exist to protect the rights of those accused of crimes. Later, Della tells Mason that she heard a crunching sound before the person with the gun opened the door that sounded like someone stomping on crockery. Mason goes to look at Mary’s possessions that were put in storage by the landlord. There is a Dictaphone and several broken recording cylinders. He figures they were what Della heard being crunched. The one good cylinder only has part of something Mary was writing. Mason hires an actress who can do voice impersonation to complete the recording to be played in court. After she leaves Tragg enters Mason’s office to confiscate the Dictaphone and the cylinders. In court Mason argues that the recording is irrelevant but the recording is played but as the voice is about to speak of a life that may be ruined by what she is about to say, Connie screams and runs forward to try to grab the machine. She says she killed Mary to protect Bob.

Mason later tells Della and Paul what Bob’s mother’s scandal had been. She had murdered someone and was later hung but while she was on the run she had a child. That child was Bob.

At the end it is revealed that Burger received a tip by phone that the Dictaphone cylinder had evidence relating to the murder. It was a trick to get Burger to present it as evidence. Mason is in the clear because he had warned Burger that the recording was irrelevant to the case.

Della of course was always played by Barbara Hale, who did a lot of movies in the 40s and 50s and was considering retiring when she was cast for Perry Mason. She’s the mother of William Katt, who starred in the superhero comedy series “The Greatest American Hero”.

Connie was played by Canadian actor Ruta Lee. 

            Nurse Walsh was played by Josephine Hutchinson. She played Eva von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein. She was the lover of Eva le Galienne. The press referred to her as le Galienne’s “shadow”, which was a term for lesbian lover in the 1920s.

Mary K. was played by Marian Seldes whose career spanned sixty years, mostly in theatre but she also taught drama at Jiulliard. Her many later famous students included Robin Williams and William Hurt.

Susan was played by Karin Booth