Eugenia Paul

            On Thursday morning shortly after I started my yoga at 5:05 it started to snow for the first time since the spring. It was really coming down for a while but it was heavy and wet and so it didn’t stay on the ground. The trees and the tops of the cars and other metal surfaces were still snowy for a couple of hours after it stopped.

I worked out most of the chords for "Par hazard et pas rasé" (By Hazard and Unrazored) by Serge Gainsbourg.

I finished all my reading for my Aesthetic and Decadent Movements course.

I’ve decided not to work on my bedroom and kitchen floor cleaning projects until after I've turned my last essay in on November 20 because I can’t spare the hour.

I rode down to Freshco. They had several bins of different kinds of Ontario apples in the entryway but no bags. I went inside and told the manager. I got a bag from the produce section, went past the checkout and back outside where I picked some Courtland apples. Later the manager thanked me for letting him know about the absence of bags. I bought three bags of red grapes, two half pints of blueberries, two packs of extra old white cheddar that were on sale, a container of yogourt, a jar of honey and a pack of toilet paper. They were selling two differently sized packs of the same toilet paper for $8. At first I almost took the smaller one until I saw the bigger.

On my way home I realized that I’d forgotten once again to buy shaving gel. It would be embarrassing to go back to Freshco so I headed down to No Frills. While I was there I also bought a bag of black grapes. The cashier saw my bag with the toilet paper in it and asked if I’d paid for it. The price for the grapes and the shaving gel was $8.27. At first I gave the cashier a $20 but then I realized that I had a $5 and two Toonies, so I took the $20 back and gave her $9. She looked at it and said the price was $11.75. I looked at the screen and it clearly showed that it was $8.25. She had rung up the $20 and then got confused, thinking that the change that I would have gotten from $20 was what I owed.

I had a chicken drumstick and some yogourt for lunch.

I read chapter five of Thomas King’s The Inconvenient Indian. This is mostly about the residential schools in both the United States and Canada. He reveals that he was also put into a residential school in the States for a couple of years as a young teen because he was disobedient at public school. The mortality rate at some residential schools was 50%. Imagine how long a public school would last if half the students had a tendency to die.

I read chapter five of Yale Belanger’s Ways of Knowing. It seems to be a coincidence but the numbered chapters of both books have been on the same issues lately. Belanger talks more about the Indian Act and Indian Affairs and the book is specifically about Canadian indigenous people. King’s book deals with both the United States and Canada.

I did my exercises in the afternoon while listening to a Naked City episode called “The Rebirth”. Only the audio had downloaded and it was choppy so I couldn’t make out most of it. An old cleaning woman has robbed a bank and improved the life of her and her cats but she gets caught in the end.

I wrote some stream of consciousness notes for my Indigenous Studies essay.

I had a potato, two drumsticks and the last of my gravy while watching episode two of Zorro. This show has one of the worst theme songs I’ve ever heard.

            In this story Don Diego reveals to his servant Bernardo the secret passage that leads from his bedroom in his father’s house to a cavern leading to a box canyon where he keeps his black stallion Tornado. He says his grandfather used it but his father does not know about it. If his father grew up in that house it is unlikely that he wouldn’t have found a secret passage. No kid leaves a centimetre unexplored of any house where they were raised. There is a reward posted for Zorro, dead or alive. Captain Monastario tests men for their swordsmanship to find out if they are Zorro. It’s sort of a violent reversal of the trying on of the glass slipper in Cinderella. A man named Benito is captured who cannot account for his whereabouts on the night that Zorro rescued Torres. Trying to save Benito a boy says that he saw him with Elena Torres. This would be a scandal for Elena because she is of a noble class and Benito is not and so Benito denies it, thus incriminating himself. Monastario takes him to Elena and she says that Benito was with her but Monastario does not believe it and decides to test Benito’s swordsmanship. Benito can barely defend himself and is being lightly wounded by the time Zorro arrives. He and Monastario have their second duel and eventually Zorro breaks Monastario’s sword with his own and escapes again. Monastario and his men ride after him but Zorro’s horse jumps a chasm that theirs can’t.

            Elena was played by Eugenia Paul, which became a regular role for her. She started out as a ballet dancer but in films she go mostly B movies. She married rich and retired from acting in 1960. She was married to Bob Strauss for 52 years until she died. The legend was that she descends from Genghis Khan on her father’s side the Romany people on her mother’s side. 

            I quickly threw down some notes for my Aesthetic and Decadence Movements essay. I thought I’d show how the breaking of rules are the foundation of creativity and that all artists must be outlaws, using Charles Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde as examples.