Alexandrine

            On Saturday morning I finished working out the chords for “L’amour en privé” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it once in French. I still have to go through it in English and perhaps adjust my translation a bit.

            I didn’t get much work on my essay done in the morning. I had to go out and pick up a prescription and then I went to the supermarket. At No Frills I bought three bags of grapes, a pack of strawberries, a frozen apple pie, a pack of chicken legs, mouthwash, three bags of milk and three containers of yogourt. I also remembered to get dental floss and a jug of vinegar, which I needed but had forgotten on my last few stops at supermarkets. I looked for a small turkey but all they had were big whopping frozen ones and I neither wanted to spend that much or eat that much turkey.

            For lunch I had a toasted ham and cheese sandwich.

            In the afternoon I did my exercises while listening to Amos and Andy. In this story, because of the man shortage brought about by the war, Andy has lots of women calling him up for dates and offering to pay his way. This inspires Kingfish to open a male escort service in partnership with Andy. One of the first customers is Andy’s former landlady, Hattie McDaniel. Because Hattie is wealthy Andy falls in love with her and asks her to marry him but she needs to see a ring. Kingfish borrows his wife Sapphire’s ring and assumes because Hattie is a big woman that it won’t fit her. That way Andy can take the ring back under the pretence of getting it altered and Hattie will still feel like she’s got a ring. The problem is that the ring fits perfectly and when Sapphire and Hattie meet it doesn’t go well for either Kingfish or Andy.

            This was the last episode of the 1945 season and that summer Amos and Andy went abroad to entertain the troops while a mentalist named Dunninger did the summer replacement show. Dunninger was one of the most famous mentalists of all time. He admitted that it was all trickery and he was a debunker of those that claimed they could really read minds. By the time Amos and Andy returned for their next season the war was over.

            I worked on my short essay on “Au Lecteur” by Baudelaire but I also fine tuned “Dear Reader”, my translation of the same poem.

            For dinner I put some extra cheese on the slice of pizza that my upstairs neighbour David had brought me on Thursday and reheated it. The crust was a touch overdone but it was okay. I had it with a beer while watching Wanted Dead or Alive, starring Steve McQueen.

            In this story Josh is bringing Orv Daniels in for the bounty when they are ambushed by two bounty hunters named Stoner and Evans who say this is their territory for collecting bounties. Since Orv might be too much trouble alive because of what he’s seen Stoner and Evans tell him they are letting him go. As he’s riding away Stoner is about to shoot him in the back when Josh pushes him so he only wounds his shoulder. Josh escapes, catches up with Orv and brings him in only to find Stoner and Evans sitting in the sheriff’s office. They say that Josh bushwhacked them and stole their prisoner and so both Orv and Josh are put in jail. We find out that Stoner, Evans and the sheriff are involved in a bounty game. The sheriff lets prisoners escape, Stoner and Evans catch them and they all split the reward. Outside the cells the keys are on a peg on the opposite wall and there is a broom conveniently placed within Orv’s reach. Orv takes the bait and gets the key. Josh warns him not to go but he goes out the back door and is shot in the alley by Stoner and Evans. Josh hears the shots and escapes from the front, grabbing his gun as he goes. He goes immediately to the judge to tell him something fishy is going on but the judge only knows Josh is an escaped prisoner. Josh leaves and when Stoner and Evans come after him he ambushes them. Evans is killed and for some unlikely reason Stoner agrees to tell the judge he has been playing a bounty game with the sheriff. When confronted about it the sheriff shoots the judge in the shoulder and so Josh has to shoot him.

            For one more hour I worked on my short essay on "Au lecteur" by Charles Baudelaire:

In “Au lecteur” or “Dear Reader” as I translate it, by Charles Baudelaire, the poet’s use of enclosed rhyme reflects the reader’s containment in his circumstance of repeatedly indulging himself, overdosing, being content with paying a tithe and then willingly continuing on his sinful path to a hell of his own making. The couplet of each verse, represent the reader’s dual nature that is sandwiched by another rhyme above and below it and is the casing of the vehicle descends like a glass elevator to the nether region of the reader’s self which corresponds to the bottom of the poem. This journey is extended by the Alexandrine line form of iambic hexameter that stretches the length of each line to the edge of breathing comfort. This also extends the distance between the outside rhyme at the top of each stanza and the end rhyme so that it is an almost forgotten connection that tries to remind us that there is a dark pattern of order in the chaos, which we must also accept. The reader is exposed as the embodiment of ennui, the only beast that makes a culture out of boredom. The worst sins are presented as merely kibble for the feeding of the reader’s pet shame. The rhyme also serves to lift the dark weight of the poem to convey that even our descent into death is a type of plodding flight. He lightens the message with rhyme to show that beneath it all it is not as heavy as the words convey. The rhyme creates spirited buoyancy so we are not drowned in the slimy morass of our own dark selves.