The Slob in the Mirror

            On Friday morning I only memorized one more verse of “Help camionneur” because there was a wrong word in the lyrics that I’d copied and I spent some time searching for the word that Jane Birkin is actually singing. Most of the lyrics online say that she’s saying “m’emporte moi” but it’s really “m'emmène moi". They both mean “take me to me”.

            I also spent some time looking for the way to make “è” on the keyboard. For years I've been using the Windows character map. Now I know it's just “Ctrl ` e”.

            The only washing I managed to get done in the living room was the top of my mantle, which involved also brushing away tears of candle wax. Next will be the front of the mantle, the dresser in front of the mantle and then the much bigger job of cleaning the floor in that area. After writing this I looked at the pictures that I took and see that even though I cleaned the top of my mantle the guy in the mirror didn’t wash his side.

            I suspect he’s the same person that’s been reversing my yoga mat after it’s rolled up.

            I had a salad of leafy greens, chickpeas and cherry tomatoes for lunch with flax seed oil and balsamic vinegar.

            I did some exercises in the afternoon followed by a bike ride to Ossington and Dundas.

            I made some more notes for my review of David Jure’s “The Patient English".

            I finished by revision of the first two stanzas of my poem “Mooning the (M)(P)atriarchs".

If we’d rattle rod and chalice

draping hardware with a valance

in rite of matrondor and bull

When prick and pussy come to shove

they’re the acid tests of love

that sit in judgment of us all

They got us jumping through hoops

before we even know how to crawl

But if you find a wer or wyf

after the wolf comes out to bite

they’re not as strangled by the tangle of brain

If they sniff you on the wind

they might just let you be a friend

until they’re chained down in the oubliette again

and if you touch the right spot

they may not need to bleed your money vein

            I made some small edits for some other poems and then started reworking the last two stanzas of “Both Sides of Love and Hate”. The penultimate stanza was:

Parkdale stumbles over me

when I trip its electric eye

and activate its ice alarm

in my roll of nether-spy

Albert Moritz said he didn’t think it was very meaningful so I’ve changed it to:

Parkdale stumbles over me

as it’s blind in every other eye

and I’m sleeping in the middle

of a tunnel between lies

            I’m down to the last three poems in the manuscript and when I’m finished editing those I’ll get in touch with Albert Moritz to see if he’ll take a look at the book again.

            I had a potato, steamed broccoli, two drumsticks and gravy for dinner while watching an episode of The Untouchables.

            In this story a mobster convict named Segal is up for parole and he’s sure that he’s going to get it because of a payoff. But he doesn’t get it after all. He sends a message to Eliot Ness via the secret prison mail system suggesting he’s willing to sing to get parole. But he is shot before Ness can reach him. In order to find the killer out of 3000 suspects. Ness promises a convict named Sebring an early parole if he would take a transfer from his prison to Segal’s to work undercover and find the murderer. Sebring agrees and he proves himself to be very effective. Through intimidation he manages to narrow it down to thirty men. But when his letter out is intercepted and Ness isn’t able to complete the mission, Sebring becomes frustrated while waiting for parole and agrees to be part of a prison break. But the break is a trap to kill Sebring. Ness finds out that one of the guards is crooked and that he's going to let two men over the wall but he’ll shoot the third man. The leader of the break, Gus tells Sebring to go third but Sebring smells something fishy and insists that the leader go third. When Gus runs out the guard shoots at him. Ness arrives in time to stop the guard, who was Segal’s killer. There’s a hint that Sebring knew all along that the break was a set-up and was trying to trap the killer. It looks like Sebring is going to get his parole.

            Sebring was played by Leslie Nielsen.

            Sebring’s wife, who visits him in prison, was played by Mary Sinclair, who was in 1951 the first actress to sign a seven-year contract with a TV studio. She became a star of the hour-long drama and played in over 120 TV shows and a few films. She was offered more movies but preferred doing television out of New York. She retired from the screen in the early 60s and moved to Italy to study painting. In the 70s she moved back to LA and directed some local theatre. She retired in Arizona.