Ian Alexander

            On Wednesday morning I finished memorizing “Enregistrement" (Documentation) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. No one has posted them and so I’ll have to work them out. I didn't have time this morning to get very far but I’ve tentatively found the first chord. It’s not a very complicated song so it shouldn’t take long when I work on it on Thursday. 

            There was snow on the ground when I got up and so even if my Oscar Schmidt is fixed today I won’t ride my bike downtown to pick it up. I got through to Harold at Remenyi a little after 11:00 and he told me had yet to hear from the company. He said if he doesn’t hear from them by the end of the day he'd call his rep and hopefully the guitar would be fixed by the weekend. 

            I went out to pay for my January phone service and then I walked to the hardware store to buy a shelf board. I was surprised to find out that they aren’t allowing customers into the store now. Luckily I knew the width of the board I needed and I asked for the longest one they had. That was about 120.5 cm, which I could saw in half and make two shelves. They let me come inside to pay.

            When I got home I measured the halfway point on the board and drew a line. Then I took both my hand saw and my hacksaw out to the deck and slowly sawed it in half. I used the hacksaw because I thought that would be a smoother cut but it took so long that I used the hand saw to make progress. After about twenty minutes it finally came apart, though not as smooth on the inside ends as I’d hoped. Then it took me about ten minutes of washing to get the sticker off. . I made a new spice shelf on top of the others and replaced the warped and peeled bottom board. 

            For lunch I made a little pizza with a slice of bread, tomato sauce, sliced turkey and cheddar.

            I took a siesta at 14:00 and didn’t wake up until almost 16:00 when I was scheduled to get together with my daughter Astrid for a video chat. I didn't connect until five minutes after and Astrid wasn’t ready anyway because she'd lost track of the time. We talked from about 16:10 until 18:10. She ordered a gift for me online while we were chatting and said it would be here in late January or early February. I don’t know what it is. She showed me her banjo. It hadn’t occurred to me before that a banjo is basically just a drum with a neck and strings. 

           I edited and made a movie of the video of my performance of “The Dancing Snake" from July 3, 2020 then I uploaded it to YouTube. That frees me up to start practicing “Je t’aime, Moi non plus" by Serge Gainsbourg and my translation "I Love You, Neither Do I" each every other day; and to also practice “Amsterdam" by Jacques Brel, and my translation of it every seven and eight days; and “Je Suis Snob" by Boris Vian or my translation of it every eight days. I sent the YouTube link to Lao Li, who was by professor last year when I took the fourth year seminar on The Aesthetic and Decadence Movements. Since we’d covered some of Baudelaire in the course I thought that she might be interested in hearing a song made from one of my translations of Baudelaire. She got back to me later and liked it so much that she asked my permission to play it for the class the next time she teaches Decadence. I said she absolutely could as long as she keeps me apprised of student responses to my work. 

            I worked on my poem series “My Blood in a Bug." I made another turkey pizza and had it with a beer while watching Star Trek Discovery. 

            Spoiler alert! 

            Since Adira hosts a Trill symbiote she contains the memories of all of the previous hosts, including the Starfleet admiral Senna Tal who sent the message that Discovery needs to access in order to find what remains of the Federation. The problem is that Adira doesn’t remember anything and so Michael and Saru decide to take a Adira to the Trill homeworld. When the Trill first hear that they are bringing a host they are overjoyed because their population was decimated by the Burn. But when the Trill leaders greet Michael and Adira on the surface they are shocked to learn that the host is human. One of them says that they must separate the symbiote from Adira, another says that Adira as a host may be the hope of their kind, but the main leader says that Adira is an aberration and that they must leave. As they are heading for their shuttle they are attacked. Michael fights off the assailants and then the priest who is positive towards Adira as a host comes and secretly takes them to the sacred caves to help Adira connect to her symbiote. Adira steps into a pool and floats while going into a trance. But then Adira sinks into the pool and disappears. She has somehow been transported into the neural network of her symbiote. Michael has to be put into a trance to go after her. 

             Meanwhile on Discovery, Hugh comes to Saru and tells him that he has examined the entire crew and they are physically fine but their stress levels are through the roof. Saru asks for suggestions to help the crew relax and the computer lists activities. But Saru wants something more intimate and suddenly the computer changes voices, speaking in a casual tone about things like Buster Keaton movies. Saru arranges for a dinner for the main crew of officers but it is formal and boring until guests begin reciting fake haiku for amusement as some people seem to do sometimes as a party game. When it is Keila’s turn she makes up a poem about the blood from Stametz’s impalement and then she and Paul begin to argue about him being full of himself because of the spore drive while she actually has to pilot the ship. The party breaks up. But it seems to have broken the ice and the crew members later reach out to one another after that to work things out. Once again it seems a bit too easy. 

            Back on Trill Michael finds Adira. She is trying to get away from tendrils that are trying to grab her but Michael says she has to let them connect. She accesses her memory of how she became a host. She was on a shuttle with her Trill host boyfriend Gray when there is an accident and Gray is dying. The ship’s medical program says that Gray’s symbiote needs a host and Adira volunteers. But the trauma of Grey's death is what repressed Adira's memories. She connects to Gray and to all of the other hosts and now she has all of their memories. The Trill accept Adira as a proper host. 

            Saru orders the entire crew to the shuttle bay and they have popcorn while watching a Buster Keaton movie and laughing together. 

            The last scene shows Adira playing the cello, which was one of Gray’s talents. But Gray is not just a memory but is there beside her. He doesn’t seem to be a ghost either. It looks like he will be part of the story as it unfolds. 

            Gray is played by Ian Alexander, who is the first transgender actor in the history of Star Trek. He also plays Buck Vu on "The OA”.