I finished working out the chords for “Dispatch box” by Serge Gainsbourg. Tomorrow I’ll run through singing and playing it in French and English and then upload it to my Christian’s Translations blog.
I played my Martin acoustic guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions.
I weighed 86.6 kilos before breakfast, which is the lightest I’ve been in the morning in eleven days.
I read another thirty pages of Pearl. The story jumps around in time. Madeline became a single mother and after having the baby she started to hallucinate. She also started thinking about killing herself. She had to negotiate with that desire by making deals to keep herself alive. She first said she would wait until the baby was a little older. Then she decided to wait until Susannah was 18 because her own mother killed herself at 8. Then she decided to wait a little longer. She got a job as an art therapist but had a panic attack and got fired. She went to visit the old house and met the owners who bought the place from the second owners. They were embarrassingly organized and really fixed up the place. She found out that they were friends with her little brother Joe and Madeline hadn’t even known that Joe had come to the old house. Joe was now somewhat of an engineering genius. The author is more of a poet than a storyteller.
I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown. I was still in the west end when I noticed that my right pedal was broken but I continued downtown anyway. I stopped at Freshco on the way back where I bought three bags of cherries and some bananas.
I took my bike to Metro Cycle to see if they had pedals like the one that broke. The guy had to remove my pedal to measure it and gave me the weirdest dirty look while I was watching him from the other side of the counter. The look seemed to say, “What the fuck are you looking at?” Geez guy I’m watching you work on my bike! Maybe his piercings were causing him agony. He found that the only pedals they had that would fit my bike were the plastic ones. Plastic pedals break too easily especially in the winter and so I said I’d look elsewhere for metal ones like the one that broke and has lasted for years. I’ll try the Brockton Cyclery tomorrow.
I weighed 86.3 kilos at 17:45. That’s the least it’s been in the evening in twelve days.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:45.
I finished reading Pearl. Madeline realizes that her mother didn’t commit suicide. She had gotten so caught up in caring for her living family that she forgot that it was the anniversary of her first child Johnathan’s death. She felt guilty of forgetting and had rushed out without planning so she could perform the annual ritual at the Green Chapel. In trying to reach the mound she drowned. In the end Madeline is in bed and imagines that her mother comes to comfort her and to tell her everything is all right. Madeline is finally released and can move on.
I started reading the Medieval poem Pearl, which many scholars think is written by the same poet as wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I’m skeptical of that because it doesn't feel like the same author wrote it. The speaker of the poem has lost his two year old daughter. While walking he has a vision of her on the other side of a river. He recognizes her even though she appears older. She says she is now married to god and doesn’t address the speaker in a familiar way as her father although she knows him. It is as if she were a different person now. He wants to cross over but she tells him he can’t. I’ve read almost a third.
I made pizza on naan with Basilica sauce and the last of my five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 1, episode 30 of Burke’s Law.
In an exclusive beauty farm for rich women a guest named Celia Bannerman is found dead in a mud bath. Tim thinks the body was brought to the mud bath in a wheelbarrow. That would suggest the killer was a woman because a man would have probably carried her. So far the killer could be any one of twenty women. Mrs. Lewis found the body. Celia was stabbed in the back. Polly Martin confronts Burke and demands to be allowed to leave. Burke says she can’t leave. He talks with Solange Kelly the owner of the spa. She says she hates beauty because it causes suffering. She says Celia wouldn’t be dead if she’d been plain. She says no women liked Celia. She says she was sneaking a double malted milk in the kitchen at the time of the murder. Polly Martin tries to leave in her car and almost runs down the guard. They find the murder weapon, a letter opener in her trunk. Burke tells her they found a gun and she’s surprised, saying she wasn’t killed with a gun, but no one knows that besides the police. Constance Dexter calls to Burke and tells him she’s his most likely suspect. She says she came there to kill Celia but someone beat her to it. She planned on doing it two days later by forcing her horse over a cliff. Her husband was divorcing her to marry Celia. Killing by stabbing indicates passion and Constance says she has none. Tim interviews actor Tawny Hastings. She seems absent minded and starts taking off her clothes while he is talking with her. She says she’s a method actor and she’s playing a nymphomaniac in her next picture. Celia loved stealing other women’s husbands. Les interviews Madeline Vickers who is at the spa with her niece Gloria. She says she’s the only one without a motive because she never married. She says at the time of the murder she was eavesdropping and heard Celia complain about all the women that are planning to kill her. Then she heard another woman laugh. Burke interviews Gloria who is a widow several times over. She says Celia was the eleventh best dressed woman in the US. Gloria says the eleventh is like nothing. She says her husband killed himself because Celia was blackmailing him. She didn’t need the money but just did it for fun. Gloria says she received a free gift certificate in a mail for that week at the spa. She says Madeline got one too. Burke gets a call and starts rushing away. Gloria asks if someone else go stabbed. He asks how she knows Celia was stabbed. She says she was guessing. Polly has been poisoned with arsenic in her water thermos but she’ll recover. She says her husband also wanted a divorce to be with Celia. Polly also received a gift certificate. Constance says she did too, as did Tawny. Solange received a cheque paying for the five who were sent gift certificates. She says she’s the only one there who ever stole a husband from Celia. Burke hears a call for help from the gym. He runs in and finds the lights won’t work, then he is hit over the head. He’s out for two hours. Every one of the women was getting a divorce because of Celia. Burke narrows the suspects down to two and decides to give them both a chance to kill him. Burke goes for a late night horseback ride with Constance. She takes him to the cliff where she says she would have killed Celia. He asks her to show him how she would have done it but she refuses. Burke goes charging down the hill on his horse and back up. When he returns she’s pointing a gun at him. Burke shouts “Now” and a gun goes off behind Constance distracting her long enough for Burke to grab her gun.
Madeline was played by Josephine Hutchinson who at seventeen was an extra in The Little Princess. After several years of stock theatre in New York she joined Eva le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre. She won critical acclaim for her performance as Alice in Alice in Wonderland. Her first film acting appearance was a co-starring role in Happiness Ahead in 1934. She co-starred in The Story of Louis Pasteur, and Gun for a Coward. She played Elsa von Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein. She was the lover of Eva le Gallienne. The press referred to her as le Gallienne’s “shadow”, which was a term for lesbian lover in the 1920s. They were together for several years and remained friends after she married her press agent.
No comments:
Post a Comment