Gurus

            On Tuesday morning I finished posting my translation of “Est-ce est-ce si bon” by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song “Yellow Star”. The yellow star in the song is the one that the Nazis forced the Jews to wear. Gainsbourg was about ten years old in occupied Paris when he was required to wear the yellow star. But the legend goes that in his young mind he was thrilled to wear the star because it allowed him to pretend to be a wild west sheriff.

            I worked on getting caught up on my journal.

            When the workmen started downstairs the first thing that I heard was the music of Queen blasting up through my floor. One of the guys sings along with the music and he’s pretty good. A week or so ago he started singing and I heard some call out, “Can you sing?” Since then I’ve often heard them voice their appreciation and today he put on a little concert for them. I could hear them cheering and shouting, “Encore!”

            Around midday I was taking out the garbage when my neighbours Benji and Shankar were chatting in the hallway and ended up joining them for half an hour.  Shankar had put a still functional standing lamp in the hall and asked if I wanted it. I told that I have too much stuff already. He said he would put it out on the deck but I told him that if he does that Raja would just throw it in the garbage. I advised him to put it out on Queen Street because within minutes somebody would come along and take it.

            We talked about Popeye’s moving in soon downstairs. Shankar suggested to Benji that Popeye’s isn’t my cup of tea based on a comment that I’d made earlier that Popeye’s would be very popular in Parkdale because there are a lot of black people here. I don’t know how he drew that conclusion. I love just about any cuisine that African Canadians tend to like. 

            Shankar asked about my time living at the Sivananda Yoga Ashram north of Montreal and wondered if Swami Visnudevananda was still alive at the time. I told him he was and although he was a good yoga teacher I found him to be an asshole. This led us to discuss several bogus gurus that became prominent in the late 20^th Century such as Bagavan Sri Rajneesh, Satcha Dai Baba and the Hare Krishnas. I’d never asked before but I found out that Benji is a Hindu as well. He said that a lot of Guyanese people from India were forced to be Christians but that they held onto their traditions nonetheless.

             I had to work that night at OCADU and so I boiled three potatoes beforehand so I’d have something ready to eat when I got home. I worked for Peter Maimik in the Illustration department at the top of the pencil box. Peter is one of the many TA instructors that work in that department. I worked for him once before back in the fall and he got so caught up in talking to individual students about their work that he forgot all about using me as a model for twenty minutes. When I arrived in the studio this time another TA that I’ve seen around for years was just packing up after his class. He took a moment to warn me that Peter is a little green and doesn’t quite know what he’s doing yet. I got the impression that Peter doesn’t get to have lunch at the same table as the other TAs.

            It was a portrait class and so I didn’t have to disrobe. I just sat in a chair and did various twenty-minute poses from the waist up at different angles.

            I got home at exactly 22:00 and started heating up dinner. I had potatoes and gravy while watching the season finale of Doctor Who.

            Spoiler Alert!!!

            The Master takes the Doctor to the ruins of Gallifrey. He has killed everyone there and destroyed almost everything except for the knowledge Matrix. He traps the Doctor’s body in a paralysing device and then his consciousness takes hers into the Matrix where he shows her has learned from it about the true history of Gallifrey. The first Gallifreyan explore beyond that world was a woman named Tecteun who found on a remote planet a gateway to another dimension. Beneath the gateway she found an abandoned child who perhaps had fallen through the portal. She adopted the child and raised her as her own but one day a horrible accident took the child’s life. But miraculously the child regenerated into another child. Tecteun began to study the child and the work lasted over several of the child’s regenerations. After many years she discovered the secret of regeneration from the child’s DNA and then she tested it on herself by splicing it into her own body. As a result Tecteun became the first Gallifreyan to regenerate. With Tecteun’s help the population of Gallifrey developed an advanced civilization and learned to travel through time. She also gave them the ability to regenerate. The Doctor asks the Master what happened to the child. He laughs and seems surprised that she hasn’t figured out that she is the Timeless Child from the other dimension.
            Meanwhile Graham, Yasmin and the refugees plot to escape the Cybership by removing the organic parts of some non-functioning Cybermen and disguising themselves with their armour.

            The Cybermen attack the planet of the gateway and Ko Sharmas leads Ryan and Ethan to try to fight them off. They are almost defeated when Graham, Yasmine and friends teleport to the surface and save them.

The Master’s body and the other part of his consciousness has invited the Cybermen into Gallifrey where he proposes an alliance with their leader. The leader wants to elevate the Cybermen beyond having organic parts until they are pure machines. The Master is disappointed and tells him, “Then you’d be nothing but robots!” The Master uses a weapon that shrinks the Cyber leader down to an immobile doll. The Cyberium that had been in him leaves his body and the Master lets it into his. He them uses the Cyberium on the organic matter of all of the dead Gallifreyans to turn them into invincible Cybermen with the ability to regenerate.

The Doctor is still paralysed and trying figure out how to break free. She is visited by Ruth, the other Doctor that she recently met, who helps her connect with all of their past selves, giving the Doctor the ability to overload the Matrix and escape.

The Doctor finds the miniaturized Cyber leader. Knowing that he contains the death particle that can eliminate all organic life beyond regeneration she decides she has to go against her anti-killing ethics and use the death particle to eliminate the Master and his Cyber army. But when she confronts him in the Matrix, surrounded by the army she can’t bring herself to kill them. Suddenly Ko Sharmas arrives and takes the death particle from her. He says he will kill the Cyber army and tells her to run. Yasmine, Graham, and the refugees escape to present day Earth in the Master’s Tardis. The Doctor escapes in hers but suddenly the Judoon police appear and teleport her to an asteroid prison.

The Doctor will return perhaps next Christmas in The Revolution of the Daleks.