Roxanne Arlen

            I left for class fifteen minutes later than on previous Wednesdays, but I was still the first one there. I took the time to re-read one of the poems we would be covering. Professor Weinstein had to go in and break up the economics class again. Gabriel and I quickly set up her desk for her before most of the previous class had cleared out.

            We began with a revisitation of the poem “Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey. The poem represents the maturation of the child as recognized by the mature mind. The young child is unmediated and is closer to nature. The adolescent has a passionate response to nature. But the adult, thought grieving the loss of oneness with and passion for nature finds recompense in the experience of the external in the sophisticated half-creating and half-perceiving construction of experience. He is processing the still sad music of humanity.

            Wordsworth casts an enormous shadow on all of Romanticism.

            There is a locus of objectivity against which he defines his experience. He is both the child and the adolescent. The landscape is a stable base against which he measures himself. He drops anchor into the landscape.

            Early on he opens up the possibility that this whole landscape is a textual construction and a fictional narrative of his own stability. But line 49, “If this be but a vain belief” interrupts that narrative with possible doubt.

            Sylvan means pastoral.

            He turns to the enduring memory of the landscape and turns it into a mental landscape inside of a mental mansion. Poets do the same thing with lovers and mothers. They turn to X when defeated.

            We looked at “The Immortality Ode”.  This is a pastoral poem.

            It begins with a feeling of dejection and a sense that nature has passed from his grasp. As an adult he feels too removed from nature.

            He evokes a time of childhood like he did in the Tintern Abbey poem.

            He at first draws on a spiritual vocabulary but don’t over-worry about philosophical evocations in this poem. This is a familiar vocabulary that he is appropriating metaphorically. He is not making a statement of his own.

            The adult can’t see as the child sees. Once one can mediate one can frolic till the cows come home but not with detachment. As an adult he sees the child’s bliss. The pastoral world marks for him his detachment.

            What he is afraid of is losing his sense of continuity in the external world. He is worried that he cannot draw on the delights of nature.

            He later gathers himself up in line 179, with “we will grieve not”. It may be that one can lo longer bound like a roe but one can recognize one’s continuity with the child and recognize that one once was that person. The adult possesses a philosophical mind.

             Wordsworth was 25 when he wrote about his fear of being too old to enjoy nature.

            We began to look at the poem “Elegiac Standards”.

            An elegy is a lamentation of loss or death. Elegiac is the adjective form of elegy.

            The poem is about the loss of Wordsworth’s brother at sea. The death made him feel skeptical about the benevolence of nature. The painting "Peele Castle in a Storm" that the poet references is by his friend Sir George Beaumont. In the foreground is a ship battling heavy seas. Wordsworth addresses the castle directly. There is a sense that the castle has also decayed. The poet is remembering the innocence with which he’d looked at the sea. The castle had symbolized stability in the face of chaos until his brother died. If Wordsworth had painted the image he would have added the light that never was but he sees the painting as the true image of human life as being tossed on metaphorical seas. He thinks that the castle can again become a symbol of stability. He's establishing continuity with the self that hears the sad music of humanity.                                                                            This is not a lyrical ballad. It ends with abstractions.

            After exchanging Thanksgiving wishes with the professor, Julia and Gabriel, I rode home and took an early siesta. I slept for about an hour instead of the usual hour and a half because I wanted to have time to eat before leaving for work. I made a ham and cheese sandwich and had just enough time to eat it without wolfing it down before it was time to go.

            I worked at OCADU for Diane Pugen. I always get a workout in Diane’s classes because she tends to ask for short poses, but this time the poses were shorter than usual. In one set I did all 30 second gestures.

            I’d brought my laptop and did a bit of journal writing but not much.

            When I left the building I noticed that all the bikes locked at the main bike racks had pink Foodora seat covers. I thought to myself that a lot of OCADU students must deliver for Foodora but then I saw that my bike on the sidewalk had a cover on it too and that it was an advertising campaign. I took the cover off and saw that it was basically the same thing as a cheap shower cap. I turned it inside out and saw that I could reuse it without advertising for Foodora and then I put it in my backpack.

            I stopped at Freshco and bought blueberries and grapes.

            That night I watched an episode of Perry Mason. This one was actually quite engaging and somewhat Hitchcockian in its execution.

            Mason and his secretary Della are eating in Morey’s restaurant when their waitress, Dixie suddenly sees someone and runs. There are shots on the street and then she is hit by a car and taken to the hospital. Morey takes a moth eaten mink jacket out of a locker and takes it to Mason’s table and tells them that it belongs to Dixie. He’s worried that the police will find it suspicious that one of his waitresses owns a mink coat. The police walk in and Mason tells Morey to leave the coat with him. In a pocket of the mink he finds a pawn ticket from a shop in Portland Oregon. He also notices one other thing: only one patron is quietly eating and not turning his head to look at the cops. We find out the next day that his name is Fayette. Mason calls Lieutenant Tragg and asks him to put Dixie in a private room with no visitors because someone is trying to kill her. Then Mason calls Paul Drake to get him to trace the pawn ticket. Paul finds out that Dixie had pawned a police gun. Paul has also brought with him a waitress named Mae from Morey’s who told the police that Mason has the mink. She tells Mason that Dixie and Morey have known each other for a long time. Mason goes to the hospital to talk with Dixie but she’s gone. Paul finds out that the gun that was pawned belonged to a cop that was killed with it mob style a year earlier. That night Mason is woken by a call from Morey who is in a hotel with Dixie and he needs Mason to come there right away. Mason calls Paul and they meet in the hotel room but both Morey and Dixie are gone. Under a table and written in lipstick they find a coded message indicating another room in the same hotel. There they find the body of Fayette. Tragg arrives with a Sergeant Jaffrey from vice. It was one of his men that was killed with the pawned gun. The next day the police arrest Morey and Dixie. Mason goes to see Morey in jail and he reveals that Dixie is engaged to his half brother, Tom. Tom was involved in the rackets and he and Dixie had left town with the gun after the cop was killed with it. Tom had to come back to town to be treated for TB and Dixie ran from the restaurant because she saw Fayette who is after Tom. Mason asks Paul to check on who owns the Keymont Hotel and then Mason asks to talk with Tragg. Next Mason is in his office and Jaffrey comes in. He wants to know if Mason has figured out who the cop killer was. Mason tells him to give up and admit that it was he that killed his own officer and Fayette. Mason has found that Jaffrey is actually the owner of the Keymont under the name of Wilson. Mason shows a copy of the incorporation papers with his handwriting on the signature. Jaffrey pulls a gun and is about to kill Mason but Tragg has been listening in another room and calls him. Jaffrey fires at Tragg but Tragg gets him first.

            Even though this was episode 13 of the series it was the first one that was filmed. The story was based on one of the Perry Mason novels but almost all the first season stories were.

            Dixie was played by Kay Faylen, the daughter of Frank Faylen, who played Dobie Gillis’s father. She was the mother of two of Regis Philbin’s children.

            Mae was played by Roxanne Arlen who was nicknamed “The Wiggle” because of her walk. She was Miss Detroit. She played the stripper Electra in Gypsy.