March 23, 1992: I decided on the fourth day that I couldn’t handle my water fast

Thirty years ago today

            On Monday I got up around 5:30 and slowly got ready to leave for work a little after 6:00. It was cold on the way up to the Torman warehouse and my feet got wet in the snow. I arrived just after 7:00 and Paul Burke and Ray Shutte were already there. We worked until around 17:15. 

            I had an appointment with my lawyer but when I called him, he said for me just to come to court half an hour early tomorrow. 

            I went home and decided that I couldn’t handle the water fast. I bought two big cans of V-8 and drank one of them. Later I made a big salad and that made me feel better. I didn’t know what it was that made me have to quit even though I’d been able to go for eleven days two years before. Maybe it was all of the emotional strain from fighting with Nancy. I just didn’t seem to have the will to fast for those last couple of years. Even though I broke it I was still determined to stick to a decent diet throughout Lent. Just salads and fruit until April 8.

I'm Surprised By All the Masks I See Now That We Can Take Them Off

            On Monday morning I translated the chorus of “Le régiment des mal-aimés” (The Regiment of the Unloved) by Boris Vian: 

 Ah, fear and doubt all the ones 

who’ve detached themselves from love 

Instead you can have confidence 

in the army of the unloved 

            My interpretation of the chorus may change as I translate the rest of the song. 

            I memorized the third verse of “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg and almost nailed down the whole song. I was able to remember all the words for the final verse but didn’t have time to see if I had the whole song in my head. I’ll probably easily have it done tomorrow and then start looking for the chords. 

            During song practice, the two mating sparrows were outside my window again. The female still picked the exact same spot on the wire and fluttered her back feathers even more enthusiastically to coax the male on top of her. 

            I weighed 87.2 kilos before breakfast. 

            My landlord is either still in the hospital or recovering from surgery at home. Meanwhile, the garbage bins are all full and so bags are piling up on top and at the foot of them. Animals have been ripping them open. I went out to put another bag on top of the pile and saw a squirrel run away with a big, unshelled walnut in its mouth. Who throws away a walnut? 

            I read five more pages of Planetarity. 

            I tried to work on my essay, but I felt sleepy. I went to bed from 12:30 to 13:30. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos before lunch. After lunch, I went to bed again for another half an hour. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor, and I was very surprised at how many people on the street are still wearing masks. More than half the pedestrians I passed either had a mask over their faces or around their necks. Since masks are still required on the TTC I could understand the masks around the necks. But the percentage of people wearing masks on their faces while walking on the street is considerably more than the people doing so last year when covid was even more of a concern. I had almost expected people to be running around maskless and shouting “Hallelujah we’re free at last!” or having ritualistic mass mask burnings at Dundas Square. Maybe some people paid money for masks, and they are going to keep wearing them, so they don’t feel that their money has been wasted. 

            I had to pee again and thought I’d stop at The Rex, but it was closed again except for the jazz club. I went to The Horseshoe and walked in without a mask. The same drunk black guy was sitting on the same barstool as yesterday and talking loudly about something. When I left, I found it confusing that the doorman was still wearing a mask. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 17:30. I went to bed again at 18:30 but didn’t sleep for the first half-hour. I was a minute or so away from getting up when I fell asleep for about 40 minutes. When I got up there were only fifteen minutes until dinner time. I was able to work a bit on my essay. 

            I had avocado, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, a black jalapeno, and lime juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins thousands of years ago when a fisherman finds a bottle on the beach. When he opens it, a genie comes out who says he’s hungry after thousands of years in the bottle and he’s going to eat him. The fisherman says he can eat him but first asks him to show how someone as big and fat as him got into the bottle. The genie says, “You can’t fool me with that trick since all I’ve had to read inside the bottle for a thousand years was The Arabian Nights. The fisherman says he can eat him if he proves he’s a real genie by drinking the ocean. The genie does it but then he’s too full to eat him. The fisherman gets away and it takes the dumb genie a thousand years to recover. Then he goes back to his home deep in the universe and plots to take revenge on humanity. In the year 2000, he sends a large object hurtling through space to Earth. It causes tremendous local damage where it lands. Dr. Elefun and three other scientists go to investigate. The object is down a volcano and so Elefun calls for Astro Boy to bring it out. It’s in the shape of a spherical rock but Dr. Snout says that’s because it was smushed by the landing. They take it apart and put it back together and it turns out to be a giant robot but it’s not activated. That night during a lightning storm Dr. Slickem sneaks to the robot and plants a tree limb in its chest to attract lightning. The electricity brings it to life. Slickem says he is secret agent Z-M4 and he works for the robot’s masters. He tells the robot he must obey his commands and orders him to destroy the Earth. Elefun wakes up and reasons with Slickem that he’ll destroy himself as well. Slicken tries to order the robot to stop but it turns him into a bug. The robot has tremendous strength and power and the armies of the world are useless against it as it is indestructible and can shoot disintegrator rays from its fingers. It begins to breathe poison gas to change the atmosphere for its masters. (I thought its master was a genie who has shown that he can already breathe here. It seems this story might have been pieced together from two separate ones). Astro Boy tries to fight the robot but he fails and runs out of power. But Astro Boy tells the robot that he must also change the gravitational pull of the Earth so his masters won’t be crushed when they get here. So, the robot reverses gravity and causes himself to be propelled out into space. There is no indication as to how the changes the robot made to gravity were reversed back to normal.

March 22, 1992: I was feeling weak on the third day of my water fast, so I spent a lot of time lying around

Thirty years ago today

            On Sunday I got up early again and watched TV. I was feeling weak because it was the third day of my water fast, so I spent a lot of time lying around. Sometimes I would get up from the couch to work on a project. I went to bed in the middle of the day and slept for a couple of hours. I called Nancy at around 19:00 but her mother said she wasn’t back from Hamilton yet. Nancy called me back at 20:00 to tell me that the baby was asleep. I had to work on Monday, so I went to bed at around 23:00.

Ladder to a Fall

            On Sunday morning I memorized the second verse and refrain of “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg and revised my translation.

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before breakfast. 

            I started to try to read some more of "Planetarity" but I felt tired early again and so I took a siesta at noon. 

            I dreamed that I had to climb an extremely high ladder to get to an event related to my Global Modernisms course and once I was there, I was flagged as a person of interest in the murder of one of the authors we are studying. I recall a dream before that in which I was involved in the murder but had thought that I’d covered my involvement completely. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before lunch. 

            I took an early bike ride and made sure I peed before I left but by the time I was on Yonge Street, it was fairly clear that I wasn’t going to make it. Just west of Queen and University I stopped at the Rex Hotel, but the main bar seems to be closed on Sunday. I went around to the side entrance for the jazz club, but they require proof of a covid self-check and I didn’t have time for that. I continued to John Street and thought I’d go into Starbucks, but it was crowded, and I anticipated a line-up for the washroom, so I continued on to Spadina and stopped at The Horseshoe, where the bartender was extremely welcoming, and I had no problem finding relief. 

            At the corner of Spadina and Queen, three people were singing gospel songs with electric guitar accompaniment. They all looked like alcoholics and they weren’t very good, but they were having a good time and it keeps them off the street. 

            I weighed 86.7 kilos at 16:30. 

            I felt tired again at 17:00 and slept for another hour. 

            My muscles are still aching because of my fast and my back is sore. 

            I worked on my essay but it’s not much more than a quarter of the page count it needs to be. 

            I am halfway through Gayatri Spivak’s “Planetarity”. She has the same take on the Congo River in Heart of Darkness being a vagina that I did when I first read the novel. 

            I had avocados, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, black jalapeno, and lemon juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            In this story a strange ship appears in the lab in front of Astro Boy and Mr. Pompus. A boy named Teddy Tyme emerges who says he’s from the future and looking for his father to stop him from collecting samples of humans from different eras to put on display in the 23rd Century. Astro Boy and Pompus decide to travel with Teddy and help him stop his father. They first land in Asia in an ancient time. A native is sucked into one of the tubes of the ship, but Pompus throws him back out and they continue back through time. They land in one of the ice ages. Astro Boy fights a mammoth, then Pompus and Teddy are confronted by two cavemen with tails. Teddy subdues them with a tranquilizer gun. Pompus wants to try out the weapon but winds up tranquilizing himself and Teddy. They are captured by the cave people who are ruled by a beautiful queen and their language seems to consist of “Bababababa ….” One of the cavemen draws a picture of Pompus on the cave wall. They are taken to an arena that is far too sophisticated for prehistoric men. Just like in a Roman colosseum they are placed in the middle and instead of lions, sabertoothed tigers are released. Astro Boy arrives to defeat the tigers and carry Teddy and Pompus back to the time machine. They go back to the time of dinosaurs where Astro Boy saves a mother brontosaurus from a tyrannosaurus rex. But then a volcano erupts, and Astro Boy falls down a chasm onto a magnetic rock where he is trapped because his robot body can’t move while a river of lava is slowly making its way towards him. Meanwhile Teddy and Pompus find Teddy’s father, who has just captured one of the mother dinosaur’s children. He also has a child from the cave man tribe. Teddy tries to persuade him to stop his cruel activities. Just as the lava is about to reach Astro Boy the mother dinosaur saves him. But another dinosaur has gotten into Teddy’s father’s time machine and begins wreaking havoc in the future. Astro takes Teddy’s ship to stop the dinosaur. He brings Teddy’s father back and as usual the bad guy is sorry and says he was wrong. Since Astro Boy will live a long time, he promises to visit Teddy in the 23rd Century. In the present time a cave drawing is found that is a portrait of Pompus’s face.

March 21, 1992: I craved Mutsu apples and visualized a big chocolate sundae

Thirty years ago today 

            I got up fairly early on Saturday because it was the second day of my fast and I found that, although I slept more often when I was fasting, I slept less in a given stretch. I laid around a lot, but I didn’t get tired of anything but being tired. I watched TV, did a small amount of cleaning, shaved, and showered. I spent some time lying on the couch and then went to bed. I craved Mutsu apples and visualized a big chocolate sundae. 

            It pissed me off that Nancy felt she had the right to just take my child out of town. She was a child in a woman’s body. She was so selfish and didn’t have any sense of responsibility or duty. Sacrifice was not in her vocabulary. She thought the world revolved around her. Sometimes I would have liked to smash her in the face. She didn’t realize how important I was in our daughter’s life and how dedicated I’d proven myself to be.

Control

            On Saturday morning my body ached all over during yoga. It was probably protein withdrawal after the first day of my fast. 

            I memorized the first refrain of “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg and then worked on revising my translation. The speaker has been stood up and there are a lot of references to vegetables. 

            I weighed 87.1 kilos before breakfast. I had bananas and strawberries with orange juice.

            Around midday I went to No Frills for my final Saturday of having to shop there with a mask on. When I was looking at the bags of three small ataulfo mangos a guy next me said, “Don’t take those. Those are no good. Trust me, I’m from Trinidad.” He advised me to buy the larger ataulfo mangos and said the bigger they are the better. The small ones aren’t ripe. I appreciated and took his advice and got three of the larger ones. I also bought two Kent mangos, several bags of grapes, two pints of strawberries, several avocadoes, some lemons and limes, a jug of orange juice, a bottle of Garden Cocktail, and a pack of Irish Spring soap. 

            I had to pee very badly again when I got to my door, but I made it this time. 

            I read a bit more of the Geomodernisms essay.

            I weighed 86.7 kilos before lunch. I had avocadoes and tomatoes with lemon juice and a glass of Garden Cocktail.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride. I made sure I squeezed my bladder before leaving and nothing wanted to come out. It started raining a tiny bit almost as soon as I was riding. There’s a pet spa called “Holy Shih Tzu” in Koreatown. I told myself if it rained any harder or if I had the urge to pee, I’d turn around, but one of those didn’t happen until I got to Bloor and Huron. It began to rain, but not so hard that I wouldn’t be able to make it home without getting wet, so I went south on Huron, west on Harbord, and south on Spadina. It started to rain harder when I was riding through Chinatown and so I was definitely getting wet. On Queen I started feeling the urge to pee, but I made it to my building. It’s amazing how the urge to pee always increases considerably whenever I’m unlocking my door. I had to run straight to the toilet to avoid disaster. 

            I weighed 86.8 kilos at 17:30. 

            I finished reading the Geomodernisms essay and started reading one on Planetarity. All these essays tend to blend together in my memory because they all seem to be talking about the same thing. 

            I worked a bit on my essay but not enough. 

            For dinner I had avocados, tomatoes, cucumber, a black jalapeno, and lemon juice with a glass of Garden Cocktail while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins with Astro Boy and his human friend Specs going into a carnival style haunted house, albeit a very high tech one. Specs is scared but Astro Boy isn’t because he’s a robot. They get kicked out because the people who control the holograms can tell that Astro Boy is a robot. They say he will ruin it for everyone because he doesn’t get scared. Specs asks Astro Boy why he doesn’t get scared, and he says it’s because he doesn’t have a human heart. Suddenly Astro Boy is sad. He asks Dr. Elefun to give him a human heart. Elefun says he’ll give him one temporarily until he learns his lesson that it’s not having a heart that makes him brave so he can help people. Somehow Elefun gives the robot Astro Boy a human heart. Elefun leaves on a cruise ship for a conference. Later Astro Boy meets Astro Girl, who is apparently his robot sister although she hasn’t been mentioned so far. Perhaps these episodes are out of synch with the Japanese ones. She seems to be designed to simulate the same age as Astro Boy, which is about ten. She wants Astro Boy to go flying with her but when they land on an unfinished skyscraper Astro Boy is afraid of heights. Later they overhear some sailors talking about a haunted ship on the Indian ocean. That’s where Dr. Elefun’s ship is sailing so Astro Boy goes to warn him. Since the captain refuses to turn the ship around Dr. Elefun tells Astro Boy he’ll have to go and look for the haunted ship. Astro Boy is scared but he goes anyway. He finds the ship and on it there are glowing gooey things that look like ghosts but try to cover and stick to Astro Boy. While running from them he wishes he no longer had a heart and suddenly he doesn’t. Astro Boy finds a control room and meets Weezzell the captain of the ship. He is smuggling uranium in a submarine underneath the ghost ship. He says the glowing ghosts are actually enlarged radioactive plankton. But Weezzell is a hologram projected from a rocket ship above where he has a fleet of rockets from which he controls the ghost ship and the submarine. Astro Boy tries to attack the ships, but Weezzell projects their images onto clouds to fool him. Astro Boy gets a rope from the ghost ship and lassos all the rockets. After crashing Weezzell decides, “I’d better be honest for a change.” 

            It looks like the North American production skewed the order of the series. This was episode 17 but Astro Girl isn’t created until episode 25.

March 20, 1992: My daughter wouldn't eat on the bus because she was distracted by the green light that went on over the door when people got off

Thirty years ago today

            I got to Nancy’s to pick up my daughter by 9:00 on Friday. I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her because I had to work that night. She was awake but very restful with her face against my chest for a long while on the bus ride to my place. When we got there, I fed her while she played. She became cranky for a while but after I carried her around in my arms, she fell asleep around 13:30. I laid down beside her at 14:00 and we slept until 15:30. I changed her, then dressed her and we headed back to her mother’s place. She didn’t want to eat much on the bus because it was so crowded, and we were next to the door. She kept watching for the green light to go on. When I got her back, Nancy told me she was going to Hamilton all weekend and that was why I couldn’t see my daughter. 

            I got to Artists 25 a little after 19:00. I had a little difficulty with the pose, but the night went quickly.