Thursday, 13 February 2020

In My Day We Didn't Have Headphones!


            On Wednesday morning it was again a little less painful to walk on my puncture wound than the day before but I was still limping. I continued to need to stand still with my weight shifted to the left during song practice but it was a little more balanced than before and so less of an ordeal.
            I found one set of chords to “J’entend des voix off” (I Hear Them Mouth Off) by Serge Gainsbourg repeated on several sites. For the most part they fit with how I hear the song but I needed to add more. I worked out the chords for the first verse.
            I continued typing and researching my Indigenous Studies lecture notes. They need to be researched so much because so much that White and Safia say is either incomplete or wrong.
            I took a siesta from 9:30 until 10:30 so I would be fresh for work.
            Even though it wasn’t very cold or snowy out I wore three layers of socks and my Kodiaks because they are more comfortable over my puncture wound than my Blondo boots.
            When I got to room 617 at OCADU the previous class was just finishing up. The students leaving seemed friendlier towards me than the average class. The TA instructor turned out to be a student that I’ve seen around the college for years. He’s always been very nice to me and remembered my name despite not having drawn me for years. I'd never seen him teach a class and so I assume that's a recent promotion for him. Judging from the way he speaks and moves I think that he has Parkinson's disease but he has such a positive attitude that it seems to uplift his entire group of students.
            I worked for Kima Lenaghan and told her right off that wouldn’t be able to do any standing poses because of my foot. She was fine with that but it was weird for me posing entirely from chairs or the floor of the stage. I found interesting positions to hold and so I don’t think the students were bored with my work.
            Kima showed part of a documentary about an artist that had done a painting of the bombed out church at Wounded Knee. He’d had the painting on display in his living room for a long time and yet no one had noticed it much. One day a professor he respected came to visit and as soon as he walked in he sat down to stare at the painting for an hour and then declared that it was a masterpiece. After that suddenly other people became to notice the painting. He said it was as if the first artist’s interest had woken the painting up.
            At one point Kima asked the students how they would feel if she were to play music during the class. One student immediately called out, “Please don’t! I’m listening to music and to hear competing music would drive me insane!” I related how back in the 80s it used to be a common practice for teachers to program music specifically for their classes. One instructor named Paul Young used to even play precisely timed jazz pieces designed to match how long he wanted the model to hold a pose. The student who’d spoken up thought that was funny.
            During my breaks I continued to type my lecture notes.
            At the end of the class the student that hadn’t wanted music played gave me a big smile and waved to me.
            I noticed when I was getting dressed that my right foot with the puncture wound on the bottom is definitely swollen on top.
            On my way home I stopped at Freshco where I bought three bags of cherries and some three-year-old cheddar. The cheese cost $10. A guy ahead of me in line pointed out to me the headline on the Enquirer that read 65 million would die of the coronavirus. I told him it wasn’t true and he argued with me. I told him they’d have a cure long before that. Even if 500 died a day it would take 2000 days for a million to die. They expect a vaccine in six months. He got a call while checking his crackers and his drink out and left the cashier waiting while he talked.
            I had a late lunch of whole grain crackers and cheese and my last sliver of strawberry rhubarb pie with strawberry yogourt.
            I took another siesta for an hour.
            When I got up I finished typing my lecture notes.
            I fried my last egg and had it with a piece of toast and a beer while watching Zorro.
            Pedro Avila is an expert swordsman who seems to make his entire living from travelling around and betting people that he can defeat them. Not satisfied with how much he is pulling in he plots to challenge Don Diego in order to extract a larger sum from a rich man. He first provokes Diego’s father into a fight at the tavern. When Diego comes to his father’s defence he strikes Avila and knocks him down. Avila challenges Diego to a duel the next day at noon and Diego is bound by honour to accept. Diego however has put himself into a difficult position because everyone knows that Diego is not a swordsman. If he were to show how skilled he really is he would be revealing that he is in fact Zorro. Everyone is sure that Diego will dies in this duel. Avila's assistant Pineda comes to try to extract a payment from Diego in exchange for Avila letting him back out of the fight. Diego and his father throw Pinedo out of the gate. On the morning of the duel Sgt Garcia and some soldiers come to see Diego under another pretence and in order to save Diego's life they knock him out and tie him up in the woodshed. What Garcia only learns later is that if the challenged one does not show up at a duel his second must fight in his place. In this case that is Diego’s father Don Alejandro. Garcia rushes back to retrieve Diego as Avira and Alejandro begin to duel. Avira has cut Alejandro twice by the time Zorro arrives. He cuts Avira in the exact places where he had wounded his father and then he dumps him in a water trough. Zorro tells Avira to leave town and if he ever sees him again he will kill him. 

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