When I went to shave in the late morning I realized that I’d made a very stupid mistake. I found four razor refills and remembered that last week I’d thrown out the refillable razor as if it were a disposable. I was forced to shave with this one cheap single blade razor and it was very difficult to use even though it was a fresh one. When I nicked myself I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to shave my whole beard and so I only did my neck. When I was taking a shower it occurred to me that the landlord hadn't taken out the garbage for a couple of weeks so when I was dressed I went out to the bin on the deck and found the last garbage bag I’d put out. Luckily I don't put food waste in my garbage bags so there was nothing rotten to pick through. I found the ladies razor that I’d thrown out last week and luckily the refills for the men’s razor that threw out a month or more ago fit the pink one, so I didn't feel so stupid after all.
By lunch time I had just four pages of On Beauty by Zadie Smith left to read.
I had chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch.
There was a little snow storm today and so I didn’t take a bike ride. Instead I did some exercises while listening to The Goon Show from March 1, 1954.
The show begins with peter Sellers as Lester Snagpule starring in Your Song Parade: songs your mother loved and everybody else hated. The main story is “The Greatest Mountain in the World.” It begins with a meeting of Royal Geographical and Archaeological Society in the basement of a disused fish squirting factory. Sir Hairy Seagoon announces that he plans on climbing the highest mountain in the world. He is told that Sir Edmond Hillary has already done that. It is decided to build their own mountain. Crun suggests they do it in Hyde Park. “Why?” "It's handy for the buses and shops." Milligan argues that if they build the mountain in England the island would sink. Seagoon says that the mountain would be invaluable in that case because people could climb up the sides to save themselves from drowning. Milligan agrees and says, “Hurry up and build it before we all drown!” Max Geldray plays “Carnivalite” on the harmonica. The mountain reaches 10,000 feet but Bogg from the Ministry of Works and Housing tells them no mountain weighing more than eight pounds 10 ounces and measuring more than 20 feet may be built within a radius of Nelson’s Column. He blows up the mountain. They have to find an alternative. Since Everest is five miles high and twelve miles wide, Bloodnok suggests turning it on its side to make a higher mountain. Seagoon asks how that could be done. "Isn't it obvious?" "No" "Then I have another idea". There is a higher mountain than Everest at the bottom of the sea. Ray Ellington sings “I Got A Girl in Kalamazoo." They take a boat in the ocean over Mount Fred. They have to get to the bottom to climb up and so to save time they drive down by car. But they get lost and so Seagoon knocks on an oyster. Minnie answers “Yes?" "Is Pearl in?" "No, but I'm her mother." "You must be Mother of Pearl." Bluebottle is told to grab hold of a mine and float to the surface to see where they are. But the mine explodes and Bluebottle is deaded. Seagoon mistakes Crun for Marilyn Monroe because he has air bubbles in the seat of his trousers. The explosion blew up the mountain and everyone else was deaded as well.
I finished reading On Beauty. Victoria, the teenage daughter of Howard’s enemy Monty, has had sex with her professor Howard. She starts sending him pornographic emails and he finally gives in, agreeing to meet her in a hotel. At the last minute he says he can’t go through with it and leaves her in the room. Zora attends a party where she catches Carl fucking Victoria in a closet. Zora is a big woman, she's been drinking and she drags Carl out. Since she's never been his girlfriend he doesn't understand. He gets angry and is about to tell Zora about her father and Victoria but Victoria begs him not to. Zora figures it out from her reaction. After Victoria leaves he tells Zora that Victoria’s father is fucking one of his students and has kicked her out of his class. Later that night a valuable Haitian painting worth half a million pounds, and which Monty’s late wife had willed to Zora’s mother Kiki before Monty destroyed the will, has been stolen from Monty. He suspects Carl. Later that day Kiki is cleaning her son Levi’s room and finds the painting. He had stolen it from Monty because he believed Monty had stolen it from Haiti and Levi is now an activist for Haiti. On the back of the painting is a note to Kiki from Carlene giving her the painting. Kiki sues Monty for the painting. Kiki also finds out about Victoria and she separates from Howard. The ending is a presentation on Rembrandt by Howard because he is trying to gain tenure at the university. Kiki is in the audience and they smile at one another. It’s a hard ending to figure out since everything is unresolved.
I did a few more readings of Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge. The first thing I noticed is that the first stanza is pastoral while the second is sublime. The third becomes peaceful again. The last kind of combines the two. But he wants to use music to recreate the Xanadu dome in the air. I assume the milk of paradise is the opium derived laudanum
he drank before having his vision.
The five lines of the first stanza is heavy in alliteration and assonance. There is alliteration at the end of every line. There are a lot of internal slant rhymes such as “stately pleasure" with "sacred river" and pleasure and river tumble down to rhyme with "measure" in the next.
The second stanza has a lot of assonance with chasm, savage, enchanted, fast, pants, fragments, chaffy, dancing, meandering and caverns.
I read chapter 17 of Adam Bede by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). There is also a comparison of two different preachers who presided over the same parish at different times. They were shown to be opposites but both good men. Her work presents the opposite argument to Oscar Wilde’s "The Decay of Lying” and says that it’s best to write the truth in order to show how beautiful ordinary people are. Wilde criticized Eliot for being an enemy of aestheticism. He would not consider her novels to be creatively written.
I knew that George Eliot was a woman but I forgot that while reading her work. In her time everybody knew that she was female but the male name gave her an edge to separate her from what she considered to be the silly novels that a lot of female authors wrote.
I rubbed three chicken legs with the rest of my curry powder and roasted them. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching the first episode of the second season of the Andy Griffith Show.
In this story Opie is being harassed every day before school by a bully who takes his milk money. Andy thinks it’s strange that Opie asked for a nickel for milk from Aunt Bee and then from his father. When Andy asks Opie about it he evades the question. When Andy tells Barney that it’s a mystery he decides to play detective and follow Opie to school. When Andy learns of the bully he doesn't want to talk to the bully’s father or let Opie know that he knows. If he intervenes then it won’t help Opie the next time he has to deal with such a situation. He's got to teach Opie how to deal with bullies without turning him into a fighter. When they go fishing he tells Opie the story of how he found that fishing spot when he was Opie’s age and kept it a secret. But another kid followed him and threatened him saying from now on this was his spot. Andy says he was scared but then decided that it’s not right to be forced to give up things that are yours. Andy came to the fishing spot and faced the bully. He got hit in the nose and he laughed. It changed everything and the bully backed down. The next day Opie faced his bully and got a black eyes but he laughed and the boy backed down. He gave him his nickels back. Opie is very proud of his black eye.
I had a similar experience when I was in my late twenties. A guy picked a fight with me in a bar in Toronto and he hit me in the face. I just started laughing and kept walking towards him and he backed away terrified. He thought I was crazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment