On Thursday morning I was very stiff during yoga as I've been since I began my fast. My kneecap also doesn't seem to be getting better since I slammed it into the pavement at the end of January. There has been some improvement but I still can't push it very hard onto the floor when I'm on my knees.
I finished memorizing "Hmm hmm hmm" by Serge Gainsbourg. I looked for the chords but no one had posted them and so I worked them out for the chorus. It probably won't take long to finish this song.
I weighed 84.2 kilos before breakfast.
I worked a bit more on my essay and expanded on the paragraph I developed yesterday:
Victor's initial impression of Elizabeth's character is based entirely on her appearance, with no mention of her behaviour, mannerisms, ability to communicate, or any other indicator of awareness and intelligence. In his assessment Elizabeth's blonde hair is a royal "crown" which elevates her in class above the dark haired children she is playing with. Victor does not explain what characteristic Elizabeth's "clear and ample" brow communicates, but a look at the published belief of the prominent physiognomist of Shelley's day, Johann Kaspar Lavater shows that her description is paraphrasing his interpretation of "A smooth, open forehead", which he claims "indicates peace of mind". So based entirely on a view of Elizabeth's hair and face, Victor determines that she is regal, with clear vision, of a calm temperament, sensible, angelic, and sweet. All of these traits would be considered a compliment to a woman's beauty, but as Wollstonecraft reminds us, they would be treated by society as "oblique sunbeams" when a woman becomes older and less beautiful. Victor's reaction to the Italian peasant children who the infant Elizabeth is found with serves as a mild prelude to his reaction to his creation's physical appearance when he dismisses them as dark weeds.
I weighed 84 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Bloor and Bathurst and stopped at Freshco on the way home. I used the washroom there for the first time in years. It's in the store now and not in the back. Plus one no longer has to ask for a key at the express cash and so it's much more convenient all around. I bought seven bags of grapes, two packs of strawberries, a pack of blueberries, bananas, a jug of orange juice and two bottles of Garden Cocktail.
I weighed 83.2 kilos at 17:45, which is the lightest I've been at that time this year. It's also four kilos lighter than this time a year ago.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:39.
I worked for a little more than an hour on my essay:
Further evidence of Victor's blindness to qualities beneath the visual surface is found when Victor goes to college and the first professor he encounters is in his opinion ugly. He is disinclined to study with M. Krempe because he is gruff voiced, and has what Victor considers to be a "repulsive" face (Shelley 47). By contrast Victor perceives the other professor M. Waldman as having a sweet voice and an appearance "expressive of the greatest benevolence" and so he listens to what he has to say (48). So we see from Victor's response to the surface features of his teachers, he does not want to learn from the ugly teacher but becomes a disciple of the one he finds attractive.
Just as he views the internal characteristics of Elizabeth, Krempe and Waldman based on their visual physical features, Victor also does the same with his creature, who he sees to be a monster as soon as he is animated. The opening of "His dull yellow eye" is contrasted with the "cloudless" blue eyes of Elizabeth (Shelley 36, 58). With Victor's obvious belief in physiognomy it is clear that when he says that Elizabeth's eyes are cloudless he understands this to mean that their visible clearness indicates also a clearness of perception and he believes the opposite to be the case with his creature's dull eye. But the creatures yellow eye is the same one that was so clear of vision that it allowed him, while watching through a small hole in a wall, to become literate by watching someone else being taught to read.
When I started making dinner I realized that it had slipped my mind to buy tomatoes when I was at the supermarket, so I went out to the market down the street and got a couple of clusters of vine tomatoes.
I had tomatoes, avocadoes and lemon juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching the fifth season finale of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Elly's chimpanzee Bessy takes a redwood plank from Margaret Drysdale's garden and leaves it on the Clampett side of the hedge. Granny finds it, thinks it's a gift from heaven and picks it up. Margaret sees Granny with it and calls her a thief. Granny gives it back to her but as Margaret walks away the board accidentally knocks Granny into the pool. Granny now wants to feud with Margaret.
Meanwhile Elly May makes a sponge cake that is light as a feather because she used four sponges.
Margaret is using the boards to contain her dahlias which she expects will bring her first prize at the flower show. She has hired an expert named Mr. Ted at $100 a day but Ted's shovel goes missing. We see Bessie carrying it through the hedge and dropping it. Granny finds it and thinks Jethro forgot to put away his tool. She picks it up and is going to put it away when Margaret calls her a thief again. Margaret takes it away from her after a small struggle and once again accidentally knocks her into the pool. Granny gets her shotgun, filled with rock salt, and fires it twice through the hedge at Mr. Ted. Mr. Ted is played by Ted Cassidy of The Addams Family fame and he is over two meters tall. He grabs the gun and bends the barrel. Granny comes home terrified.
Meanwhile Jane discovers that the thief is Bessie. Milburn Drysdale wants Margaret to apologize but she refuses. Margaret had planned on giving names to each of her four plots of dahlias but Milburn insists that as a gesture of peace she name them after Granny, Jed, Elly, and Jethro. Granny comes once again with another shotgun but when she sees Mr. Ted digging four rectangular holes, each with a name of one of the Clampetts on what looks like grave markers, she surrenders and begs them to spare the rest of her family. She lies down in one of the plots. Ted lifts her out and it is explained to her that they are flower plots. In the end everyone is singing the gospel hymn, "I've Got the Joy Joy Joy Joy".
For the thirteenth night in a row I found no bedbugs.
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