Ears Plugged

            When I got up on Friday my left ear was plugged, even though I’d flushed it out the day before. So after yoga I boiled my rubber ear syringe and before song practice I gave my ears a few squirts. After that my left ear felt a manageably clearer but suddenly my right ear was so plugged that my ability to hear myself sing and play was severely impaired. My guitar strings might as well have been a barbed wire fence for all the tone I could discern and my voice sounded like it was filtering through a wall. After the second song I went back to the sink and flushed out my ears again. This time some crumbs of wax came out of my right ear and I was able to hear myself.

            My weight that afternoon was at 92.6 kilos, which is slightly overweight but not too bad for winter weight. Four hours later, feeling hungry and just before preparing dinner, I was 91.9 kilos.

            I’ve re-read almost half of Frankenstein and spent quite a bit of time researching my essay to find any writing on how each new age challenges the perception of ugliness of the previous age. Specifically I’m interested in how Romanticism changed the perception of beauty from that of the age of Enlightenment.

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and some gravy for dinner and watched rawhide.

            In this story the trail drive has to cross a treacherously windy and dusty mountain plateau that ends in a narrow pass. Gil hires extra men in the town before the climb. Some of the men are of questionable character. One very educated man who knows nothing about cattle asks to be hired on just on the merits of the fact that he has a wagon. Gil needs extra wagons and so Tom gets the job, but he secretly brings along Sally. Shortly after this a powerful rancher named Devereaux comes looking for his wife and wants to search the camp. Gil doesn’t know Sally is there but says Devereaux can’t poke around his camp. The next day when Rowdy sees Tom he attacks him. After a second attack Rowdy finally explains that he and Tom her both in the same prisoner of war camp, but Tom had cooperated with the Union and received better treatment. Gil discovers that Sally is hiding in Tom's wagon and intends to turn her over to Devereaux but she explains that they had just been married the day before against her will because it was a family arranged marriage. She had been engaged to Tom for years before that. One of the new Drovers is a Mexican named Arkansas who tries to steal the money Gil carries at the point of a shotgun. From behind Arkansas comes Rowdy and there is a standoff as Arkansas says he’ll shoot Gil even while Rowdy’s bullet is killing him. Gil calmly tells Rowdy to shoot Arkansas and that if he dies he has to take over the herd. Arkansas is so impressed he gives up and asks to stay on with the drive. Gil believes that he can trust Arkansas now and from then on Arkansas is always there to fight Devereaux and his men. Devereaux doesn’t care that Sally doesn’t want to be with him. Tom turns himself in to Devereaux and he is about to be hanged. Gil convinces Devereaux that if Sally goes with him just to save Tom he’ll never be able to live down the fact that he stole another man’s woman. Devereaux gives up.

            Sally was played by Canadian actor Olive Sturgess.