La Catina Freeha

            On Saturday morning I dreamed I was working cleaning an old studio or storefront. I was sweeping in a back room in the middle of which was a glass room that looked like a streetcar shelter. There was a lot of dirt and dust. Inside the glass room were two patterned green blankets folded width wise and stretched out along ornate white painted metal frames across from one another as floor decorations about six centimetres high. I commented to the woman in charge that they looked gaudy but she argued that they were beautiful. In the front room the woman looked like my old friend Susana Wald. I learned that she was working with a dance partner on a performance of tangos and they were posing as Nazis in order to free people from what was to become the Holocaust. I danced a bit with her. I went to lunch with my fellow worker who looked like a very scruffy and slightly long haired combination of my old roommate from Montreal John Fornier and my current Toronto friend Cad Gold Junior. There was a lot of construction on the street. I was trying to get to this rustic old café nearby so I could sit in the back drinking tea and look romantic. On the way back I saw a box containing a set of brown hardcover books and one had the title, “La Catina Freeha”. When I looked it up later “La Catina” only means something in Rumanian as “The Chain”. When I got back to the studio the woman and her partner were working on their routine. I suggested that they make their entrance swinging in on ropes or suddenly appear in an explosion. She liked the last suggestion very much. Later the woman looked like Susana Wald’s daughter Beatriz Hausner, who looks a lot like Susana.

            I woke up in a good mood, perhaps because I’d seen my friend Susana again.

            I weighed myself in the morning and I was at 89.8 kilos. Thirty years ago today I weighed 78 kilos.

            By 8:44 I’d finished the fourth sweep of my notes and had worn them down to 21 pages.

            At around 9:30 I went to the supermarket. A lot of people were wearing masks on the street and in No Frills. Quite a few others, like my cashier had scarves pulled up over their mouths.

            Around 10:30 one of the two networks from the café across the street asked me for a password. The old one didn’t work. I was about to go across the street to get the new one but then I decided to try their other network and I was connected. I’m not even sure if the café is open. I don’t see any activity there from my window.

            I took a siesta from 11:00 until a little after noon.

            As I was about to cut some tomatoes and avocadoes for lunch I realized that I’d forgotten once again to buy tomatoes at No Frills. I asked myself, “Why are you so stupid?” but I was not offended at all. It must be love. Why I forget the tomatoes must have something to do with where the tomatoes are in the store. At Freshco they are much more visible. I rode to Freshco, worried that all of the tomatoes would be gone like they were last Saturday. But there were still lots of vine-ripened tomatoes and there was not even a line-up at the checkout.

            By 15:00 I finished the fifth sweep of my notes and had them pounded down to 17 pages.

            By 18:27 I finished the sixth sweep and had coaxed my notes down to 13 pages.

            By 19:42 I finished the seventh sweep of my notes and had begged my notes down to one line more than 10 pages.

            By 21:00 I had nine pages of notes but still wanted to get them down to seven before beginning to write.

            By 21:30 my notes were three lines short of seven pages. That was good enough. 

            I started writing my essay but I was only able to work on the preamble after the thesis because the rest involved brainwork and mine wanted to go to bed, which it did at quarter to midnight.