Disconnected

            On Friday morning I was down to translating the last verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the fifth and sixth verses of “Sparadrap" (Plasterwrap) by Serge Gainsbourg. There really less than one verse left to learn before I work out the chords. 

            After song practice I noticed that the wifi was down on Shankar’s network for the first time in about three months. I assume it will eventually kick back in a few hours or by tomorrow. Hopefully it will be on so I can upload my Canadian Literature essay outline on Sunday night. I'll be screwed if it’s off over the weekend because I have research to do. 

            I went downstairs to see if I could get the Popeyes password. My hallway neighbour Benji came down to take out his garbage. I said, “You're still alive! Good going!" He said, "We're the only ones left." He pointed out that Popeyes wouldn’t be open until 11:00 and also that it’s probably take out only right now. That meant I couldn't ask them for their password. 

            He said he had the landlord talk to them about blasting their Arabic pop music in the wee hours of the morning and they turned it down. Benji said he only tried the chicken once since they opened and he didn't like it. He doesn't think these particular people running the place know how to fry chicken. I assume he means Bangladeshis can’t cook Louisianian food.

            Because there’s less stimulation for my mind I often feel sleepy when there's no internet and so I took an early siesta from 12:30 to 14:00. I dreamed more than once that the wifi had come back on but it hadn’t. 

            I had nothing else to do for the rest of the day but to work on my essay on David Chariandy’s Brother. I think that this is my thesis or at least the thesis will be around this idea: 

            “The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” bookend the emotional range of David Chariandy’s Brother. “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley expresses hope while “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel deals with the despair of loss.” 

            I searched through the book for all of the references to and hints at these songs. I also drew on my own translation of “Ne me quitte pas.” In terms of research there is not much more I can do until I get access to the internet. I sure hope this is just temporary since Shankar’s network is my only way online right now and I have essays to upload.

            I had three little potatoes, a slice of pork cottage roll and gravy while watching Interpol Calling. Since I couldn’t go online to check I couldn’t look up which episode was next chronologically after the one I’d watched last night, so I just guessed. I found out later I was right. 

            In this story Ernst Kaltman escapes from East to West Germany after ten years. He is in bad health because of his ordeal and is being kept at a hospital in Berlin for a couple of weeks until he can be moved. He also has a bad heart. Kaltman’s escape is a surprise not so much for the effort itself but because he was thought to have been murdered ten years before. Schroeder, the man charged with his murder has been in prison in Austria for a decade. He is released but promises to have his revenge. Since one cannot be charged for the same crime twice he plans on really killing Kaltman this time. A round the clock guard has been placed on Kaltman but Schroeder makes his way to Berlin. Guards are checking everyone who enters the hospital but Schroeder calls the hospital because a man is lying in the street in diabetic shock. Then Schroeder lies down, the ambulance comes and takes him to the hospital. Once inside he finds Kaltman’s room and shoots him, then hides himself in a surgical gown and mask in the large hospital. Kaltman is still alive and taken to surgery. Schroeder joins the students in the observation theatre. The bullet is removed but Kaltman loses life signs. When Kaltman dies Schroeder removes his mask and gives himself up, confident that he will get away with it. Kaltman receives a heart massage and is brought back to life after one minute and forty five seconds. Schroeder is charged with attempted murder. 

            Kaltman’s daughter Eva was played by Wendy Williams. 

            Still no wifi at 21:45. I had time to work on my essay but I was mentally too tired so I just read some of Othello for my British Literature course. I’m lucky that I found a book in the garbage years ago containing the complete works of Shakespeare, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to read it without the internet. 

            I felt sleepy early and went to bed at 23:23.

October 31, 1990: I went out as the Persian Gulf crisis, dressed as an Arab but with bloody soldiers sewn into my robes

Thirty years ago today

            I spent a lot of the day making my Halloween costume. 

            I had an interview with an agency. They said that I needed a portfolio and that they'd get me one for $175. 

            I went with Mia to meet Nancy and Susan to go trick or treating. I wore my Persian Gulf crisis costume. I was dressed in something like a traditional Arab costumes but with blood covered toy soldiers sewn into the robes. People still thought I was supposed to be a ghost. 

            Susan did Mia's makeup. 

            Susan made her self a short, tight dress by wrapping a long rope around her body. She looked very hot. 

            Nancy felt silly in the costume that Susan had brought her and so she didn't wear it. 

            We got lots of candy.

October 30, 1990: We found that there was no 165 Dundas W and discovered that address was in Mississauga

Thirty years ago today

            Nancy amazingly got up at 5:00, while I rose at 5:15 because it took me less time to get ready. We left at 5:30 to go to the post office and apply for work as Christmas help, got on the King car and got off at University. We walked up to Dundas only to find that there was no 165 Dundas West. We called directory assistance and discovered that the address we'd been looking for was in Mississauga. We took the subway to Yonge and Eglinton but there was no line-up at the post office there. Nancy decided to go to the main post office but I didn't think it was a good idea and so we split up. 

           After she left I looked in the phone book and saw a post office at 1 Yonge and so I headed down. I ran into her on Yonge. We tried a couple of places but didn't find it until after breakfast when the offices opened. We filled out the applications and were scheduled to take the IQ test on November 13. Nancy bought me lunch on her card at Holt Renfrew. 

           I met Nancy's sister Susan that night at their parents' house in Scarborough. Nancy was half an hour late. After camera problems we did the photo session and it was fun.

Julia Lockwood

            On Thursday morning I memorized the chorus of “Sparadrap" (Plasterwrap) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my Canadian Literature tutorial. It was depressing to do so because I'm still pissed at my TA for the low mark she gave me for my first essay. If I get A grades in fourth year papers it doesn't make sense that I would get a B minus on a second year essay. 

            She spent more than the first half of the tutorial giving people close reading pointers, with two examples of student essays. She said people lose marks for vague or missing thesis statements; limited or missing discussion of form. She said what makes literature is form rather than just word choices; limited or missing textual evidence; paraphrasing instead of analyzing. Textual evidence needs to be interpreted. Language must be specific and not broad or ambiguous. Say it simpler, more concisely and with brevity. Comma placement is often wrong. Read aloud to know where to place the comma. Quotation marks need to be outside the punctuation. If the passage says the same thing you are saying you are paraphrasing. Use formal structure to support analysis. Support form analysis with textual evidence. A good title is both descriptive and interpretive. An example had a thesis about the white gaze. Connect back to the thesis statement in the essay. 

            For the last fifteen minutes we discussed David Chariandy’s Brother. 

            I said that the emotional range of the story is book-ended by the two songs sung by Nina Simone. “I’m Feeling Good" expresses real hope while "Ne me quitte pas" expresses impossible hope for things to be as they were before with someone that’s already on their way out the door. But then at the end an unnamed song is played but it’s fairly obvious that it’s "I'm Feeling Good" to show that hope has returned. 

            Food also works in the story to convey memory. 

            I asked if there is some reason why Chariandy fictionalized some features of the neighbourhood, such as having Lawrence Avenue cross the Rouge Valley. She thinks that since he wrote it in Vancouver long after living there he might have just forgotten. 

            I had chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I went to Freshco where I bought four bags of grapes, a half pint of raspberries, a pack of chicken drumsticks, five year old cheddar, Greek yogourt, canned peaches, a brick of cheaper old cheddar, Old Dutch chips and a jug of orange juice. 

            On my way out I stopped to get some money at the bank machine. Since I started getting my pension I have more money in the bank than I had when I was two thirds of the way through the money I inherited when my father died. 

            As I was walking to my bike I realized I’d forgotten to buy paper towels and so I went back in. 

            I finished reading the required poems by George Herbert for my Introduction to British Literature course. It’s very boring religious poetry but he does thinks with the text that seem very modern, such as using all caps with certain words and shortening and lengthening lines for visual effect.

            I wrote some notes in stream of consciousness on David Chariandy’s Brother to begin my final essay. It looks like I’m writing about the music that is referenced in the book. I need to get a first draft of the essay with a thesis so I can write and submit my essay outline and then move on to my second British Literature assignment: 

            The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” bookend the emotional range of David Chariandy’s Brother. “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley expresses hope while “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel deals with the despair of loss. “Ne me quitte pas” is about someone begging their lover not to quit the relationship, while making impossible promises and unrealistic arguments to keep them from leaving. These absurd pleas such as “I’ll travel the globe / till after my life ends / just to cover your skin / with the light of gold" convey the futility of hope in the face of the fact that the lover will not be turning around. But in the case of this story the refrain of “ne me quitte pas," meaning “please don't quit me now" is used to address other losses with which one has not yet come to terms, such as the loss of a father by abandonment, the loss of opportunity and the loss of a brother's life. 

            Michael’s earliest memory and only memory of his father has what is probably "Feeling Good" as its soundtrack. The "brassy horns" of this "happy" song and the type of joyful dancing that its rhythm and beat demanded fits perfectly with Nina Simone’s version of “Feeling Good." It is a song that held a family together, that lifted boys into their father’s arms and sent them in orbit around him. The last time their mother danced. The same song returns when in their shared loss of Francis, Jelly places his headphones over the mother’s ears and they smile together. The lonely voice of Nina Simone “forever looping back” with the opening to “Feeling Good.” 

           Like “I’m Feeling Good”, “Ne me quitte pas” first appears described rather than named. During a meeting between the two people who will be lost, one of them, Samuel begins to sing badly and quietly in French while Francis stares awkward, shy and uncomfortable, into the street.” He later explains that just before Francis died they used to meet to listen to music. Francis had first heard Samuel humming the music and had named the song, “Ne me quitte pas” and pronounced it correctly. They played Nina Simone’s version at least twelve times. Her sweet and sad voice. Laughed when Samuel sang. Joke and secret that the music connected them. Understanding and feeling the heritage of love of the old music. 

           Finally we hear one of these songs and the low voice of a woman cutting the silence. Mother frowns as if in pain, gestures upward. “Volume.” 

           These two songs as sung by Nina Simone came out of the civil rights era, the time of Martin Luther King and reflects the food, dreams, hopes and volume. 

           The absent father of Michael and Francis is a composer. Once a composer has written a piece of music it is often performed without his presence. He is the absent father of his works of art. The interpreter of the composer’s work is the conductor. Jelly is a conduit both for music and for food because he is both a chef and a mix master. He pulls the two together, orchestrates the harmonies between tasting and listening to establish and renew connections. He unites genres, brings cultures together. Everything gels because of him. Jelly can be food, balm, lubricant, and a conductor of current between electrode and skin. 

            The music becomes the very reason that Francis dies as he defends Jelly’s opportunity to orchestrate it and demands his recognition as a maestro. It is this defence of Jelly that culminates in Francis’s death by police gun. The police live outside of the culture and the music stops when they enter. Music is the vehicle for rising out of despair and for submarining through it and the music’s suppression creates a deeper trap into which Francis falls. It is only through connecting to the music through Jelly that Michael and his mother are able to reconnect with Francis and return to hope. 

            The taste of music and the musical tastes and where it comes from and who sings it. The made up names of the modern hip hop artists versus the real names of the old Soul singers like Otis Clay performing "A Lasting Love" after the slow, dirty beat of the drums lays down a rugged path for the voice to kick in. The tortured voice of Nina Simone singing “Ne me quitte pas” as if life itself depended upon her not being left behind. 

            I rubbed a pork cottage roll with cloves, mustard, salt and honey and started roasting it. I chopped and sautéed a red onion, boiled three tiny potatoes and had those with gravy and a slice of the cottage roll while watching Interpol Calling. 

            This story begins with a millionaire named Howard calling Interpol because his daughter Louisa has been kidnapped, but she hasn’t. She is living happily with her fiancé Ronald Millais. Howard knew this but called the police anyway. At first Duval is pissed off about this but he knows that Millais has a reputation for marrying rich women and then dumping them after he has their money. That Duval would become involved with something like this in his capacity as an Interpol inspector is even less likely than an Interpol officer carrying a gun. He tries to talk with Louisa about Millais but she won’t listen. Duval learns that Millais never divorced his first wife and thinks he can catch him as a bigamist but he reveals that his first wife died. He gives Duval the death certificate. Duval goes to see Dr Martin who signed it. He reveals that the first wife died when her car went over a cliff. Duval goes to Rome to meet Carlotta, Millais’ second wife. She lost all of her money to Millais and now has to work as a hostess in a nightclub. She says she thinks he tried to kill her in causing her car to go over a cliff. She jumped free just in time. Duval brings Carlotta to Switzerland to meet Dr Martin. She says she recognizes him from a photograph that Millais had. Martin is Ronald’s father. Martin admits that the first wife died before going over the cliff. He says his son is a psychopath and could snap if pushed. Duval learns that Millais has had a will drawn up leaving everything to Louisa. That must mean that Louisa has done the same for him and that they don’t have much time. Millais and Louisa have gone on a picnic in the mountains. Duval goes after them and when he arrives with the Swiss police Millais grabs Louisa, trying to push her over the cliff before Duval gives him two “karate” chops to set her free. Millais escapes down the mountain and steals a truck. Duval pursues him by car but ultimately Millais goes over a cliff and the vehicle explodes. Duval’s karate chops were very much part of a trope that was popular in the fifties and sixties but then dwindled out when real martial artists started making movies.

            Louisa was played by Julia Lockwood, the daughter of British film star Margaret Lockwood. Mother and daughter acted together on stage, on television and in film several times. Julia played Heidi in a TV series about the character. She was obsessed with Peter Pan and played Wendy opposite her mother. At the age of 18 she finally realized her dream of playing Peter. Her first adult role was in the sexy comedy “Please Turn Over”. She was a regular in the soap opera “Compact”. After the sitcom “Birds on a Wing” in 1971 she retired to her 14th Century farmhouse to raise her family.

Christina Gregg

            On Wednesday morning I finished translating the fourth verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I memorized the second and third verses of “Sparadrap” (Plasterwrap) by Serge Gainsbourg. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my British Literature tutorial. 

            Our second assignment is even more focused on close reading of the connections between content and form than the first one and the rubric is different. Analysis needs to be fresh and exciting with a clear response to the prompt. 

            She asked for our impressions of The Faerie Queen. I said that Spenser is not as good a storyteller as he is a poet. I understand that he wants to make the reader work but I think that he could do that while still making the narrative flow and transition in its entrelacement. In some ways it’s like a badly done collage in which the images are awkwardly separate and there is no harmonious relationship between them. 

            A lot of students talked about how much more interesting and complex the monsters are and about how Despair’s attack is not even physical but rather with words. 

            I said Spenser seems to like writing about the monsters because of their complexity while the heroes in general are less interesting, except for Britomart. She is more complex because she represents more than one thing. 

            Alexandra says that the difficulty of the narrative ties in with the allegory. I get that but I think there could still be a flow within the difficulty. 

            With allegory he is illustrating a larger concept. 

            I said that personification is an aspect of allegory but it deals more with characters while allegory could include many other elements than personification, such as location, situation, action, words, objects, and so on. I said if a character is supposed to represent a quality it isn’t necessarily a quality they possess during their struggle. It could be the character’s goal or an aspect of their self they have yet to realize or reach into. I observed that even though the Red Cross Knight defeats a monster called Error he continues to err throughout his adventure and so that draws into question what did the monster really represent. Perhaps a certain type of error relating to the reading of texts since the monster vomits books and papers. Or maybe the monster is a type of overture for the rest of the adventure, setting the theme of this knight’s story being one of a struggle with error. 

            The Red Cross story is more linear than the one featuring Britomart. 

            We did a close reading of three stanzas on page 674. I noticed that in stanza 23 Spenser returns to the pastoral in the middle of a battle with a monster when the monster’s children are described as being like insects biting a shepherd while he tends his flock. Apparently this is an allusion to classical poetry where there is often a return to the pastoral. We should look at allusion for our assignment. 

            I said that the sounds of the rhymes in stanza 22 are often serpentine with sounds like “stink”, “shrinke” and "sink", while the ones in 23 are softer with rhymes such as “tide”, "wide", "west", "best", "rest", "wings" and "murmurings". They seem to be softening the pain of the attack. 

            For lunch I had four year old cheddar with saltines. 

            In the afternoon I went out to buy a six-pack of Creemore. It feels weird just going across the street these days, almost like I’m doing something wrong by even leaving my apartment. 

            I finished reading The Marrow Hunters by Cherie Dimaline. I didn't always find it to be well written but it was often well told. About halfway through, starting with the death of the little girl Ri-Ri it became a real tear jerker with more losses along the way but ultimately ended happily. 

            The whole concept of Indigenous people having something special relating to dreams being generated in their marrow perpetuates a dangerous trope about them being biologically magical people. It brings us back to racial distinctions, which have been shown to be a myth. Near the end the story jumps into extreme fantasy where when the elder Minerva is taken by the Recruiters and they hook her up to their machines to drain her marrow, she begins to sing her dreams in the old language and it blows up their equipment and sets fire to their building. Minerva basically turns into an X-Man. 

            I read the selections from John Donne that are required reading for my British literature course. Apparently dying was a metaphor for orgasm and so there were quite a few poems about dying in a woman’s arms. There was also the belief that when people make love they share blood and so the poem “The Flea” talks about love as if it were a bug that has consumed the blood of both lovers. 

            I read a couple of poems by Aemilia Lania in which she argues that Eve should not be blamed for the original sin. She says crucifying Christ was far worse than giving Adam the forbidden fruit and men did that while women tried to stop it. 

            I had the other burger that I’d made on Sunday with ground chicken and stuffing. I had it on whole grain bread topped with ketchup, mustard, relish and scotch bonnet sauce accompanied by a beer while watching Interpol Calling. 

            In this story the Sicilian Mafia has forced certain Sicilians throughout the world to hold onto $50,000 each. But then the collector starts coming to retrieve the money and when he finds that the money has been spent he kills them. Duval asks Interpol to check on all unusual financial activity by Sicilians In London, Carlo owns a grocery store and is helped by his daughter Maria. Carlo gets a call from the collector. He tells him he has all the money but he’s really spent half of it on paying off his store's mortgage and buying a villa in Italy. He tells the collector he will deliver the money but prepares to get away. Duval learns of Carlo’s financial activities and goes to his store only to hear from Maria that her father has been missing for a day. When the collector calls again for Carlo they know he must be alive and so they wait for him. Meanwhile however Maria gets a note from a little boy on roller skates she knows that makes her think she is meeting her father down the street. Maria is taken by the collector. When Carlo comes back to the store he gets a call telling him to bring the money to the Turkish baths. Carlo shakes the police tail and so they have to find a way to get to him. Maria’s little dog was with her when she was taken and so Duval has local boys bring stray dogs and the boy with the skates picks the one that he knows to be Maria’s. The dog leads Duval to the Turkish baths where Carlo and Maria are rescued and Duval uses his judo on the collector. 

            Maria was played by Christina Gregg who became one of London’s top models in the 60s. She received starring roles in film and television and still has a following enough to sell books on beauty and exercise videos. In 1981 she married Lyle Blair and moved to Canada where she became a philanthropist, starting the Minstrel Foundation for inner city children and her and her husband founded the Shakespeare Globe Centre in London, Ontario and helped to build the Globe Theatre on the Thames.

October 29, 1990: I answered an ad for male escorts but there was no answer

Thirty years ago today 

            After getting up, going out for some groceries and the papers, having breakfast and reading the papers, I never got around to calling any employers until the afternoon. I phoned an agency in answer to an ad asking for fashion show models and made an appointment with them for Wednesday at 17:00. There was an ad in Now Magazine for male escorts. I punched the number but there was no answer. 

            Nancy came by in a bad mood.

            Susan called and I read her the paragraph that I'd written for her school assignment. She arranged for us to come over the next day. I would meet her at 18:00 at the McDonald's at Warden and something.

October 28, 1990: Mia slept with Nancy and I was on the floor. When Nancy went to work I slept in the bed beside Mia. Then her mother came in.

Thirty years ago today

            We had taken Mia to see "The Witches" the night before but there was a mix-up in communication with her mother Judy because she'd thought that we were going to bring her home. She ended up staying with us with her on the bed with Nancy and me in the sleeping bag on the floor. 

            When Nancy got up to go to work I went to sleep in the bed beside Mia. Then Judy came in. Judy and Mia stayed about an hour and a half until the subways opened at 9:00. 

            I got up after they left, had breakfast and did some work. 

            I went for a walk and ran into a guy who used to draw me when I was an art model. I met Carlo and he borrowed $2.00. I made my way to Niagara and then back. 

            I spent six hours cleaning my place but it was still a mess. 

            I went through all the newspapers. 

            I did some more of Susan's writing homework.

Canada May Do Multiculturalism Wrong But Nobody Does It Better

            On Tuesday morning I had to open all the windows because the heat is now on. 

            I finished posting my translation of “Tennisman" by Serge Gainsbourg and memorized the first verse of his song "Sparadrap" (Plasterwrap). 

            Now that the heat is on I’ll need to start humidifying my guitar soon. The hygrometer was below 45 this morning. 

            At 11:00 I logged on for my Introduction to Canadian Literature lecture. 

            Professor Kamboureli was having technical issues before the TA joined the chat and helped her.

            The marks for our close reading essay have been posted.

            The professor’s place is still under construction. They are building a built in bookshelf for her study and she barely has a kitchen right now. 

            We started the lecture a minute early. 

            We still have a week’s grace for our next assignment but she urged us to try to avoid taking advantage of it because it causes complications in the marking procedure. 

            She has uploaded some background files on black writing in Canada, her own essay of diaspora and an article about language and grammar for essays. They are optional reading. 

            Multiculturalism enables and disables. Scholars have and continue to analyze it as a nation statement. The assessment between them for or against is about fifty fifty. 

            In the story “Squatter" the critique of multiculturalism comes from outside. The narrator does not know Canada. His critical distance adds to the irony. It helps to situate the story inside of colonialism. The fact that the story is told inside of a Parsi compound in India adds to the effect. Nariman is talking to children and so there is a pedagogical context and a moral. 

            In Mistry’s story collection there are stories about the other children. Jehangir is aware of the structural elements of Nariman's stories. Nariman is hybridized in his use of language and other elements. 

            There are lingering consequences of colonization. Postcolonialism exists because the lingering effects of colonialism persist. 

            Savakshaw is searching for happiness by being extremely successful in different pursuits, but success is not enough. Sarosh changes his name to Sid in Canada. 

            I said that I’ve met a lot of people that have changed their names, not because it was expected of them but because they were annoyed by the difficulties that other people had pronouncing them. A friend of mine named Ibrahim wanted people to call him Brian and another friend named Naama settled on Naomi just because they found it simplified their lives.

            In the adaptation process one loses something of the self when one changes their name. 

            A young woman suggested that there is sometimes freedom in changing one's name because one makes the choice independent of the name imposed by their parents. 

            The professor told a story about when she was teaching at the University of Victoria people thought that her first name must be Smara because Smaro sounded too masculine. 

            Erasure works both ways. 

            Someone said that a friend of his named Mustafa couldn’t get a job but after he changed it he had ten offers. 

            Canada’s multicultural policy doesn't change a lot of this. It helps to cover up issues with fake benevolence. 

            Sarosh’s "malodorous" problem of expression. The body becomes the site for playing out cultural differences. Being unable to swallow Wonder Bread. Digestion is tied with assimilation. There is a reference in the story to eating cake instead of bread which evokes the famous story about Marie Antoinette supposedly having said “Let them eat cake if they have no bread." A student asked, "Isn't that a myth?" The professor said that it doesn't matter if she really said it. Food marks cultural differences. 

           The Professor is Greek but says she hates the annual Greek festival. The grammar of food provides insights into the immigrant experience. Food becomes metonymy. 

           Metonymy uses one attribute or entity as an expression of a related one. Fishing for pearls is metonymy while fishing for information is a metaphor. This dish is delicious is metonymy. The crown for the queen is metonymy. Suits for businessmen. 

           In the story Sarosh is told that every immigrant ethnic group develops a different malady. Multiculturism is called a Canadian invention. The “Crappus non interruptus" device. The diasporic experience is one of in betweenness. Nariman says his story is sad and instructive. 

            A “squatter” can also be a homeless settler. 

            When Sarosh returned home everything had changed and so he was still in between. “Unhomeliness” is a phrase coined by Homi Bhabha. Immigrants are accountable to both their home and their host land. 

            I said that even without the absurd scatological metaphor the idea of expecting to assimilate as a first generation Canadian is unrealistic. If one spent one’s formative years elsewhere then one can't really fully shake the culture in which one was raised. The professor seemed to both agree and disagree. She said she came to North America when she was twenty and she feels she is adjusted as a Canadian. Her mother tells her she is not Greek anymore. But she agrees in the sense that her first years in Canada were formative because she was studying. 

            When she came to the prairies she felt overwhelmed but came to love them. She says prairie literature about the vertical man in a horizontal world has helped to shape the literature of Canada. 

            With all this criticism of multiculturism I don’t hear a lot of suggestions for improvement. Canada is ranked the number one best place to immigrate. There doesn’t seem to be a country that handles multiculturalism better than Canada. Obviously there is room for improvement but I’d rather hear the suggestions than the criticisms. It's like watching the best juggler in the world and heckling her.

            We took a break. 

            When we returned we talked about black writing in Canada. 

            Austin Clarke was the first important black writer in Canada. He shaped the tradition and helped young black writers move up. 

            Black writing is not a singular experience. It is as rich as that of any other tradition. It engages with the Canadian imaginary. Canada’s putative benevolence. Black writing deconstructs benevolence.

            She has uploaded a document by Phanuel Antwid and David Chariandy. 

            One Out of Many is a collection of writings by black women in Ontario. 

            Canada In Us Now is the first anthology of black poetry and prose in Canada.

            Some black writers cultivated the myth of a racism free Canada, such as Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Frederick Douglas and even Martin Luther King Jr. There was slavery in Canada, mob violence against blacks, the KKK, segregation and not renting to blacks. The character Dot in Austin Clarke’s The Meeting Place calls Canada blasted cruel. 

            In the late fifties and early sixties there were shifts in immigration when black people were allowed in to take jobs as domestics and porters. The “Roots” approach does not just look at the migration patterns from the fifties on but at the actual presence of black people in Canada from the beginning. George Elliot Clarke, Karina Vernon, Winifried Siemerling, and Wayde Compton have all written on this. Roots emphasizes transnational migration in all periods. 

            Many black immigrants to Canada have already had the diasporic experience. The middle passage is one of three legs of the slave trade. The triangular pattern involved ships from Europe to Africa trading goods for slaves, taking them to America in exchange for goods and bringing the goods back to Europe. The crossing took between five weeks and three months. 

            Diaspora means to scatter, to disseminate. It is the experience of living away from one’s home country by trauma or by migration. The distinction between voluntary and involuntary diaspora is not strong anymore. Collectivity – ethnic group consciousness, collective memory about origins. Idealizing home and remembering only good things. Nostalgia for a place that would not necessarily be the same if one went back. Diaspora is a condition induced by trauma of loss. The loss and the trauma linger. The haunting is integral to the diasporic consciousness. Retaining language. Elsewhereness. The binary between the host land and the homeland is problematic. The word “host land" makes immigrants into guests and others. Diaspora in host land. 

            We started looking at David Chariandy’s Brother. Chariandy wrote the first novels that wrote Scarborough into the Canadian landscape. He reverses and deconstructs the existing aesthetic and socio-cultural paradigms of Canadian literature. 

            Jelly is a black artist but as a DJ and not a writer or painter or musician. Chariandy’s most recent book is I've Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter, published in 2018. He works against and through the tradition of white suburban fiction. 

            She said she’ll talk about the white diaspora next. 

            She didn't finish the slides. 

            After the lecture I went online to check my essay mark and I was shocked that I got 70%. I went through all of my essay marks since I started at U of T and this B minus is the lowest mark I've had since the C plus I got for my first essay in Academic Bridging. It seems to me an unfair assessment since I know I've gotten a lot better at this over twelve years of writing papers. This was a very depressing result. 

           I emailed Professor Kamboureli and asked her to take a second look at my essay. She got back to me and said she’d look at it before the end of the week. I sure hope I got a better mark for British Literature.

            I had chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch. 

            After a siesta I spent the rest of the day typing my Canadian Literature lecture notes and finished just before dinner. 

            I had two small potatoes and the last of my roast beef with gravy while watching Interpol Calling. 

            This story takes place in Canada where Duval is attending a conference in Montreal. He has made friends with a Mountie named McPherson who introduces him to his sister Blanche and her fiancé Vic LeRoy. Duval is convinced that LeRoy is a killer named Fuger who escaped from him in France twenty years before. He says Fugere has a tattoo on his right arm but LeRoy seems to have an artificial right arm. McPherson thinks Duval is way off the mark since LeRoy is one of the most successful businessmen in Montreal. Duval has dinner with the three and "accidentally" spills hot coffee on LeRoy’s right arm to see if it is really missing. It is. Duval tries to look into LeRoy’s past by checking newspaper records for LeRoy’s history as a businessman but nothing shows up before 1940. Vic said that he lost his arm in an accident while working for the Ajax Lumber Company. Duval goes to check the camp but LeRoy’s record has been torn out. As Duval is leaving LeRoy tries to run Duval over with a truck and although Duval didn’t see the driver he is sure it was LeRoy. Duval has sustained a mild injury and so is treated at the local hospital. He gets the doctor to check the hospital’s records on removing a limb twenty years before. I'm pretty sure that a hospital would not breach the Hippocratic oath and look up patient records even for the police. But it is found that LeRoy had to have his arm amputated because of a botched attempt to remove a tattoo. Duval goes to try to find the tattoo artist that did the work but finds him dead. McPherson is convinced now. They go to Vic’s hunting lodge and confront him. The tattoo artist’s neck has marks that can be traced to Vic's artificial hand. Vic runs to the woods with his rifle but Duval separates from McPherson while holding a string. He ties his end to something in the bushes and has McPherson pull it towards him. While LeRoy is shooting at the movement Duval gets behind him and after a fight he is captured. 

            Blanche was played by Paula Byrne, who played Nurse Frances Whitney in the British TV series “Emergency Ward 10". Later she opened a slimming clinic for women only.

October 27, 1990: She was sort of witchy with long black hair and a short black dress

Thirty years ago today

            Around midnight I went to the Claremont and there was an attractive white woman there. She was sort of witchy looking with long black hair and wearing a short black dress. She was looking my way and so after I finished my beer I went to the washroom, bought another beer and then went over to talk with her. She was a manager in charge of Mastercards in some bank. We danced but not really together since she was facing the other way. A male friend of hers arrived but I wasn't sure if he was her boyfriend because he didn't dance with her. She came up and said goodbye to me when she was leaving. I thought of asking for her number but it didn't seem appropriate. Maybe I would run into her again. 

            At closing time I walked all the way home. 

            Nancy and I made love in the morning.

Britomart

            On Monday morning it was cold and I had the oven on as high as it would go during song practice. 

            I almost finished posting “Tennisman" by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian's Translations. 

            At around 10:30 I logged on for this week’s Introduction to British Literature Lecture (say those last five words ten times fast). 

            Professor Teramura reminded us that our second short response essay is due soon. 

            This lecture is on Romance, Epic and Allegory; the moral effects of Literary Fashion, the virtues of readers, thinking critically of the poetic world, and poetry as a tool to make us better thinkers. 

            With the popularity of the sonnet in England came the widespread self consciousness of national poetry. When Chaucer had only been dead for a century his work became classic literature. He had been buried in West Minister Abbey in 1400 but in 1556 his body was moved to a special tomb of honour in the same church. 

            In 1557 Richard Tottel wrote Miscellany, celebrating the poets Wyatt and Surrey. 

            In 1589 Puttenham published The Art of English Poesy. He refers to Wyatt and Surrey as the first reformers of English meter and style. Poetry is tracked to mirror the national history but also a national philosophy and morality. 

            Sir Philip Sidney is known for his sonnet sequence but also for his The Defence of Poesie in 1595. Why did poetry need defence? Plato was sceptical about it and Socrates said that poets should be banished from the ideal state because they are liars. He argued that they are only the imitators of the ideals that transcend the physical world. Poets are corrupt and a danger to society. Sidney rejects this and argues that poets are the opposite of imitators. Science is trapped in the world while poets are independent. Poets live hand in hand with nature but also grow it into new forms. Poetry ranges freely and enriches the Earth, making nature even more beautiful. Poets make the world better and more ethical. Poetry both delights and teaches. Poets embody the best of both the historian and the philosopher. Nature is brazen while poetry is golden. Poetry persuades people To become virtuous more efficiently than philosophy. The poet is the monarch of the sciences because readers are enticed in their direction. The poet offers grapes at the gates of the vineyard. The poet seduces to virtue by making it pleasurable. Philosophy is obscure and teaches to the already taught while poetry is food for the hungry. But despite his arguments Sidney was disappointed with English poetry as it had been up to that point.

            The Shepherd’s Calendar of 1579 was dedicated to Sidney. It was both important and weird. It consisted of twelve short pastoral poems illustrated with woodcuts and accompanied by end notes. It was written in archaic English. The anonymous author frames himself as a classic new poet. The author was Spenser. 

            Spenser had the idea of having a poetic career as opposed to writing poetry as a job. He worked as a secretary. By career he meant that he wanted to fashion his life story as that of a poet. 

            In the October section of his Shephearde’s Calender the shepherds Cuddie and Piers symbolize poets. Cuddie, the perfect pattern of a poet, complains that poetry is unsupported. Piers argues that the topic must be changed to sing of not rustic subjects but big and serious things and address the song to those in power. Cuddie says that the shepherd Roman Tyterus left his flocks to become Virgil. He moved from the pastoral to the epic progressively in his works Eclogues, Georgics and finally The Aeneid. Virgil’s intro to the Aeneid clarifies this but it may not be written by him. Aeneas goes with his mom Venus to Italy where he wins a war against Turnus and forms Rome. Spenser’s progression to the epic is culminated in his Faerie Queen, which is also an allegorical romance. 

           The poem introduces itself and says it has gone from pastoral reeds to epic trumpets and that it is of national importance. It is a strange mix of literary ingredients. It is inspired by the previous epics Orlando Furioso (about Charlemagne) by Ludovico Ariosto of 1516 and Jerusalem Delivered (about the Crusade) by Torquato Tasso of 1581. 

            The Faerie Queen draws on the mythology of King Arthur. In the 13th Century Edward I fashioned himself as the new King Arthur and even founded his own Round Table. Henry VII named his first son after Arthur and hoped for him to become the next King Arthur, but he died before he could take the throne and his brother Henry VIII became king. 

            The Faerie Queen is a chivalric romance and an example of entrelacement – interlacing plotlines, each interrupted by a new one that throws the old one into suspension. The poem wanders between plots and it’s hard to keep track of the vast interface. 

            It is not restricted to chivalry as Spenser adds themes of Christian theology, Greek mythology, and scientific history. 

            An allegory is a narrative in the which the elements it contains are understood both literally and on a secondary level. An example is the Pridentius Psychomachia of the 5th Century, which features a battle for the soul between Faith and Idolatry. The fight is described in gory detail and yet it takes place internally. Faith wears no armour but tramples the eyes of idolatry symbolizing sensual pleasure.

            Around this time my landlord knocked on my door. I put on my mask, expecting to have to tell him to wear his but he already had his on. I had a little container of Purell and asked him to hold out his hands and he did, but I couldn't get the gel to come out and so he just said he'd wash his hands in the bathroom. I showed him where the leak comes down on rainy days from the upper part of the living room window. He said he’d fix it with stucco. I asked if he was going to turn the heat on and he said he’d just done that. I thanked him, which is a rare thing for me to do. Maybe the mask made me feel less animosity towards him. 

            Book one of The Faerie Queen features the battle between Holiness and Error. There are no easy solutions because it is hard to decode. It presents no single moral system and the terminology shifts. 

            For Spenser allegory was not so much a lesson to uncover but a way of thinking. In his letter to Walter Raleigh, which was included in the published text, he says that allegory is dangerous. The purpose is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtue. Even in the letter his sentences are interlaced and convoluted. He is training his readers. 

            Spenser also compares poetry to philosophy and says that poetry is doctrine by example. He says that these days appearances are more important and so poetry is the only thing that can penetrate. One should not judge by appearances. 

            Prince Arthur I sets forth as Magnificence, which the Greeks say is the most perfect virtue, containing all the others inside. Each of the twelve virtues has a corresponding knight as its patron. Spenser planned on adding twelve political virtues. 

            In 1590 he published the first three books; in 1596 three more were circulated; and the incomplete Constancy was published posthumously in 1609. It would have ended at the beginning. 

            The letter to Sir Walter Raleigh explaining the text was originally printed at the end. Spenser wanted readers to figure it out on their own. He wanted to challenge the reader to navigate the poem without orientation. In book one we meet the characters before we know their names. 

            The knight is described as having many wounds but he has never borne arms. He wears twin red crosses on his chest and shield. A lady and a dwarf are travelling with him. They become lost in the shady grove of the Wandering Wood. The word “seemed” is important to watch for. The words “error” and “errant” come from "errare", meaning "to wander”. In the Wandering Wood the knight battles Error in the form of a monster that is half woman and half serpent. Error has a thousand children of different shapes representing erroneous beliefs that scurry from the light of truth. Is this battle really Holiness versus Error? The knight is at the monster’s mercy until his lady companion calls out for him to add Faith, which he does and gets free. The monster vomits books, papers, eyeless frogs and toads. Like creatures found along the Nile. The epic simile is characteristic of Homer’s Iliad and Virgil’s Aeneid. The knight cuts off error’s head and they are able to return to the right path. 

            The Wandering Wood was inviting but there were clues against entering in the first place. Summer’s pride made it shady and thus his heaven’s light. The leaves are also the pages of books. 

            They meet an aged sire who “seemed" sober. But only when the knight and his companions are sleeping do we see that he is an evil magician named Archimago, the architect of images and an enemy of the lady. He reads spells from magic books showing that some books are dangerous. He fashions the appearance of the lady in bed with a lover and shows it to the knight causing him to leave in anger leaving the real lady behind. We only learn the lady's name when the double is made of her. She is Una, the one real Truth. And so the knight did not defeat error after all. The reader is warned not to be misled. Judge not by appearances but by righteous judgement. Allegory can mislead. 

            Later a goodly lady wins over the knight. Names seem to tell what people represent. Her name is Fidella, meaning Faithful. He becomes caught in appearances. Her real name is Duessa or Duplicity, the enemy of Una. Spenser is using allegory to cure the reader of taking things at face value. 

            The Knight of the Red Cross will eventually become St George, the patron saint of England. This is the story of his struggle to achieve his ideal. He is infatuated with Duessa and captured by the giant Orgolio, or Pride. Una tries to help him with the assistance of Arthur. There is a daily challenge to righteousness. 

            He is reunited with Una and then has a confrontation with Despair, or Secret Stealth. Trevisan approaches the three and recounts how Despair drove Sir Terwin to suicide. Red Cross faces Despair in a cave but their battle is not physical. Despair attacks with rhetoric and uses soothing repetitions to make death seem attractive. There are several internal rhymes of the word “ease" such as "layes", “seas" and "please". Despair paints even Red Knight’s victories as errors. Death is the end of one's woes and so one should die as soon as possible. The wages of sin are death. Red Cross experiences little externally. He is pierced by swords of words and enchanting rhymes. He almost kills himself until Una intervenes. Justice grows where grace grows. 

            The threat is language and ideas. Like the knight we meet error in the poem. We are also being tested. The reader is an equal hero in the war against words. 

            Red Cross arrives in New Jerusalem. He learns that he is a changeling and becomes St George. Then he rescues Una’s parents from a dragon. Canto ten is the high point of book one. 

            Book two features a new knight, Temperance Guyon. 

            In Book three Guyon is with Arthur. The narrator leads us to error as we meet Britomarte the female cheval. Britomarte is not the first female knight. Virgil had Camilla and Ariosto had Bradamante. Spenser’s history tells that men, fearing women, created laws to disenfranchize them. Book three throws a curve ball. All of the knights in the story come from Gloriana’a court, except for Britomarte. Britomart is Chastity. Scadamour is the knight who was sent on this mission but he fails and she takes over. 

            Book three is more elaborate, with various narratives interlacing. Britomart is with Arthur, Timias and Guyon when they see the Forester chasing Florimell. Arthur and G follow Florimell, Timias goes after the Forester, and Britomart is left alone. Britomart meets Red Cross but Spenser calls him Guyon. 

            What is Chastity? Elizabeth is called “The Virgin Queen”. She is a secular Virgin Mary symbolizing the impenetrability of England. She is also the Faerie Queen. Karl Marx referred to Spenser in 1881 as Elizabeth’s ass kissing poet. But Spenser shadows Elizabeth. Chastity is not about virginity. The heroine does not change but the definition of chastity does. 

            Malecasta or Unchaste is guarded by six knights: Gazing, Conversing, Joking, Kissing, Drunkenness, and Fucking. Malecasta falls in love with Britomarte. Malecasta comes to Britomarte’s bed and “felt if any member moved." "Member" had the same meanings then as they do now. Malecasta is not a violent threat. Desire is an internal wound. A knight shoots an arrow at Britomarte inflicting an external wound to match Malecasta’s internal injury. They are related. We later learn that Britomarte is in love with Artegall, the hero of Book five. Britomarte’s pain of concealing love is like a pregnancy while hearing good things about her love is like giving birth. But her quest is to yield her virginity to the one she loves. 

            Agape is Christian love, Eros is romantic and sexual love, Philia is friendship and familial love. Book three is comprehensive of many forms of love. 

            Next week we will look at poets linked to Spenser and his themes and poetry as thinking. 

            I finished listening to the lecture at around 12:30. 

            The heat was on. I had time to tidy up before lunch. 

            I had chips and salsa with yogourt. 

            After a siesta I spent the rest of the day until dinner typing my lecture notes. 

            I carved the blackness off of four bad potatoes to make one good one. I had it with a slice of roast beef and gravy while watching Interpol Calling. 

            A Danish boat carrying $1 million in platinum is in the Caribbean when a boat approaches in the dark. A voice tells them they are a US Coast Guard patrol boat and want to come aboard. But when they do they shoot everyone on board and steal the platinum. One of the surviving crew identifies the pirate ship as an out of service US Navy boat probably bought second hand. The attacked ship was heading for Mexico and so someone at that end must have tipped off the pirates. Duval goes to Mexico where the police inform him that only seven people knew about the shipment. They determine that the pirate ship must be hiding on one of the Caribbean islands and only a small number of the 300 islands could hide a sixty ton boat. The island of Andros seems like the best bet to Duval and so he goes there to coordinate with the local police. He learns that the boat is owned by a restaurant proprietor named Gonzalez. They go to interview him and learn that his boat is derelict. The police confirm that this is true. Duval goes to look at the boat and finds that it has been patched up and can float after all when they want it to. Duval tries to check out an alleyway warehouse belonging to Gonzales when some thugs attack him. He is saved by a man we recognize as the pirate ship captain. We learn shortly after this that his name is Simms and he works for Gonzalez along with two other guys from the States. Duval concludes that the men on the fake patrol boat must have had US accents or else the Danes would have been suspicious. Lieutenant Ember of the island police force says there can’t be more than sixty men from the US on the island. Duval gets Interpol to check them all for a history of handling boats and for their criminal records. He gets info back on Simms and goes to question him but Simms is coy and doesn’t show his hand. Duval concludes that the platinum is still on the boat but doesn't want to just go and grab it. He wants to catch the killers that stole it and so he hires someone to pretend to be drunk and leak the information to Gonzalez that his boat is going to be salvaged. Duval and the police wait for Gonzalez, Simms and the other men to arrive and to start removing the platinum. Duval shoots off a flare and then tells them to drop their guns and walk towards them. They do but at the last minute Simms picks up a gun and begins firing while trying to get away. Duval shoots another flare so he can get Simms in the open and then they fight until Duval wins.

October 26, 1990: I picked up my final cheque for $475 and ended my career as a landscaper

Thirty years ago today 

            I got up at 6:14 and rushed to pick up my final paycheque, hoping that Henry would still be there when I arrived. I decided to catch the eastbound car since there was none in view on its way west. As I rode I looked ahead at intersections to see if there were any northbound buses to take me up to the subway, but there weren't and so I stayed on until Yonge. I made pretty good time. 

            I got there just in time to get my cheque. It included vacation pay and so it was for $475. 

            I went to the muffin place, had coffee and read the papers. 

            I thought that since I was already almost at Finch I might continue north to Richmond Hill to go to Moulinex and buy the missing part from the blender I'd found. But when I called the transit companies that could take me there I learned that they didn't have a service that would take me to that address after rush hour. So I skipped it and headed home. 

            Nancy was still there when I arrived. I went to bed and got up in the afternoon. 

            I called the post office to find out about working there during the Christmas rush and found out their hours for Tuesday.

Dreams

            On Sunday morning I had about half of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian translated. 

            I continued editing “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg on Christian’s Translations to place the chords in their proper places. 

            For lunch I had four year old Canadian cheddar with crackers.

            I took a siesta in the afternoon and ended up sleeping for an extra half an hour. 

            I read half of The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. White people have lost the ability to dream but Indigenous people haven’t. Somehow the white people have learned that they can retrieve this ability at least temporarily by extracting the marrow from Native people. The Indigenous people who aren’t in league with the white people are on the run and they have to return to the old ways to survive. The narrator is a Métis teenager named Frenchie and he has joined a diverse family of other Native fugitives who are heading north. Their leader is Miig, who knows many of the old ways. The elder is wise but senile old woman. There are three other young men, two women and two children, all unrelated. As they travel and face experiences along the way we hear their individual and often horrible stories that led them into running. At this point in the story they’ve come across a camp of two Indigenous men but they don’t know yet if they are friends or foes. 

            Everything about this story except for the dreams and the marrow is fairly plausible. There are people without bone marrow who need regular blood transfusions to replenish their white blood cells in order to survive, but if they didn't dream I'm pretty sure that would be front page news. Also the idea that global warming causes earthquakes is a little shaky but not totally without scientific backup. Changes in moisture under the Earth may affect tectonic plates. But I think that promoting the idea that Indigenous people are physically and mentally different from everyone else is a racist and dangerous way to go. 

            My landlord called to say he’d come by but I hadn't heard him knock. He said he'd come the next day. I reminded him to turn on the heat. He asked, “Why? Is it cold?" I said it has been cold and I told him that the city bylaw says that he’s supposed to turn on the heat by September 21, no matter what. He said, “I don't know about any law!" Then he argued that if the heat were turned on people would be too warm. It's so nice of him to be concerned that his tenants aren’t too warm in the autumn. It's also great for him that his consideration is rewarded by saving money on heat. 

            I decided to make burgers out of the tube of ground chicken I’d gotten from the food bank in the summer. But when I opened it up after thawing the meat inside was too semi-liquid to form into patties. I had to improvise by adding stuffing mix to the meat until it was manageable. I made two burgers and had one with chili sauce, mustard and scotch bonnet sauce on dark rye while watching Interpol Calling.

            In Paris, Zita McGrath is watching her race car driver husband, Cliff McGrath on television as he races in the long two-man Mille Miglia car race in Italy. But suddenly Cliff appears with a gun and kills her. In the race a surrogate is sitting beside Cliff’s brother Mike. Cliff heads for the airport to get back to the race before the finish. Meanwhile Duval is brought in to help investigate the murder. The suspect is Zita’s lover, who says he saw the killer drive off in Zita’s car. Duval believes him. The gun is traced to a man who says he sold it to an Irishman. Cliff makes it to Zurich. Zita’s car is found near Orly airport and Duval learns that someone meeting the gun seller’s description bought a ticket for Zurich. The police are waiting there but Cliff slips out and steals a sports car. Roadblocks are set up but he gets through several. Duval begins to consider the impossible notion that Cliff somehow murdered his wife and he heads for the finish line of the race. Cliff stows away on top of a truck and then boards a train, which he jumps near the rendezvous point with his brother. He stops the car, exchanges clothes with the surrogate, they kill the surrogate, drag him in the bushes and rejoin the race. The McGrath brothers win the race but they are called to the control room. Duval tells Cliff that he couldn’t have been driving all day because the lucky medallion he wears is not even soiled with mud like his brother’s. They are both arrested. 

            Zita was played by Margaret Diamond, who had bit part in British movies and TV series.

Nina Simone

            On Saturday morning I translated the second verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I finished working out the chords for “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg and ran through it in French and English. Then I uploaded it to Christian’s Translations and began the editing process. 

            In the late morning I went to No Frills where I bought two bags of green grapes, one of red, a pint of strawberries, a half pint of raspberries, a strawberry-rhubarb pie (Why doesn’t anyone sell just rhubarb pies?), mouthwash (It took a while to find it because they switched the aisle so everything that was previously at the front is now at the back, except I guess for everything in the middle), and a jug of orange juice. When I got home all the raspberries had spilled in my bag. 

            I had crackers and old cheddar for lunch. 

            After a siesta I spent almost four hours finishing reading Brother by David Chariandi. At times it’s quite well written and he tells the story well. It has a few funny scenes and some interesting cultural references, such as the descriptions of West Indian food being cooked and eaten and an interesting description of the art that goes into being a Hip Hop DJ. But it’s a very sad story for the most part about a poor family falling apart and a brother being murdered by a cop. There were some interesting musical references such as Otis Clay’s "Lasting Love" and two songs that Nina Simone recorded: "I'm Feeling Good" by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse; and "Ne me quitte pas" by Jacques Brel, which I’ve translated and sing regularly in French and English. 

            I made pizza for dinner with another lengthwise slice of the round loaf of fruit nut bread as crust topped with sauce and old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching Interpol Calling. 

            In this story a very clever extortionist signing his name only as “George” firebombs a warehouse in Germany insured by a large company in London. He threatens to do even worse damage if he is not given 100,000 pounds. Duval tells the company to follow his instructions because Interpol can track someone with that amount. But the police think it’s an opportunity to catch him with the goods. Duval advises against it but come along. The money is left in a briefcase on a park bench. A boy on a bicycle puts it in his basket. They follow him but the boy rides down an alley that won't fit a police car and a few blocks afterward hands it to George who is wearing a hat and sunglasses. The boy Johnny is picked up but didn’t know it he was doing something criminal. Duval says something like I told you so. Duval knows that George knows that the serial numbers of the bills have been recorded by Interpol and so he would go to a non-Interpol participating country to exchange the bills. The two nearest are Iceland and Iraq and George and his girlfriend Carol go to Iceland. The plan is for Carol to split the money among all the banks in Reykjavik and then in two days draw it out in smaller notes. But Duval anticipates this and asks the International Banking Association to block the deposits. George is forced to try to sell the money on the black market in Tangiers but Duval; anticipates that as well. He coordinates with the police in Tangiers where Captain Ahmed informs him that there are five people that would buy George’s money. What they have done is issue warnings to four of them so that George will be steered towards the one that works out of a certain café where Duval and Ahmed wait. Several people come in over the next several hours until George enters and is shocked to see Johnny sitting at a table. By his surprise, Duval knows this is George and he is arrested. 

            I answered next week’s Canadian Literature tutorial question: 

            The ghosts of memory and mourning in David Chariandy’s Brother exist in a different context than the ghosts to which Al Birney refers in his poem “Canlit”. Canada did not lose 2.5% of its population in an internal conflict that ripped the nation apart in more ways than one. It is to the ghosts of an entire country that Birney refers when he says that "it is only by our lack of ghosts we are haunted" and he means that Canada did not have the deaths from such a cataclysmic event as the US Civil War to haunt us, nor a poet like Walt Whitman to convey that haunting and to thereby become a haunting ghost in himself. Birney did not mean that Canadian communities, families and individuals are not haunted by ghosts. He means that there is less of a national literature in Canada because there was not such a devastating national event as the Civil War to inspire it. 

  

            I also wrote my weekly question in response to the British Literature readings: 

            In Spenser’s The Faerie Queen the narrator personifies Chastity and identifies her with Queen Elizabeth I. Is all of this praise of chastity simply a way of flattering Queen Elizabeth and would the story take a different form if she'd been married? 

            I started reading The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. I didn’t get very far but according to the summary it’s a science fiction story in which, after the global warming apocalypse, white people have lost the ability to dream and so they must drain the bone marrow of Indigenous people in order to be able to do that. It could happen!

October 25, 1990: Susan paid me the $30 we'd arranged for helping her cheat, plus an extra $10 for the high mark she got

Thirty years ago today

            I worked until about 2:00 on Susan's school project and considered it finished. Nancy took it with her when she left for work in the morning. 

            I got up around 11:30 and went out to get the papers so I could start looking for a new job. I bought some stuff at the supermarket and a coffee and then went home for breakfast. 

            I read the papers and then called the CKLN radio station. I wrote a discography for my DJ demo tape and a paragraph describing the theme of my project. I put it all into an envelope and took it downtown to the station at Ryerson. The production manager told me that he'd be able to listen to it next Thursday and then he'd give me some feedback. 

            When I got home Nancy was there. 

           Susan came over to pay me the $30 we'd arranged for helping her cheat, plus an extra $10 for the high mark she got.

Leigh Madison

            On Friday morning I worked out most of the chords for “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are just a couple of changes near the end to figure out. 

            A little before noon I went to do my laundry. The usual middle aged Korean couple weren’t minding the place this time but the much friendlier and more enthusiastic who looks Chinese was there instead. He came around after I’d put my laundry in the machines to ask if everything was okay and then to tell me it would be half an hour. 

            I went home for a while, then back to put my stuff in the dryer, then home and then pack to pick it up. It was just after 13:00 when I was finished. 

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            My body’s been feeling stiff lately because of very little bike riding. 

            I finished reading the required selections from books one and three of Spenser’s The Faerie Queen. Britomart is a female knight who is the embodiment of chastity. She is the fictional ancestor of Queen Elizabeth I and may actually be her. She travels in faerie land posing as a male knight with the knight Artegall, who I thought was Arthur but I guess he isn’t. There’s a funny scene where a woman tries to seduce Britomart and slip into bed with her, not realizing she is a lady. 

            I read more than a quarter of Brother by David Chariandi, about two sons of a Trinidadian mother growing up in the rough neighbourhood around Lawrence and the Rouge River in Scarborough. The story is told by the younger brother about his elder sibling Francis, who got into some trouble and it seems he died, though it hasn’t been revealed how yet. The mother is shattered with grief and has lost some of her mind. I don’t know the specific neighbourhood but I have ridden my bike in similar areas not far from there. I think he made the area up because there’s no Lawrence Avenue Bridge over the Rouge Valley. Lawrence ends just at the Rouge River. He might mean Highland Creek. The roughest neighbourhood along Lawrence is around there, I think at Kingston Rd. 

            I had two small potatoes a slice of roast beef and gravy while watching Interpol Calling. 

            A young Dutch woman named Emmy Van Veer is helping a journalist named Slater research the circumstances that had led to her brother Onno’s death fifteen years before. He was a member of the Dutch resistance and was shot. She gives Slater a photo of Onno and a hundred gilder note that had been among the money that Onno was trying to deliver to the resistance before he was killed. What Emmy doesn’t realize is that Onno is still alive. Slater is killed by Onno and his research notes are stolen. Onno’s death was faked, he changed his name and he and a Nazi named Esler took the 300,000 gilders to go into an export business together. Esler tells Onno that Emmy is a liability. Duval learns that a wartime issue 100 gilder note was found on Slater. He also discovers that Esler was the German officer who had ordered Onno’s execution. Duval questions Esler but he reveals nothing. Esler decides to go to Amsterdam. When Onno hears of this he realizes that Esler plans to kill his sister. When Duval goes to check the office of Esler’s partner in Amsterdam he realizes that he is Onno. He thinks Emmy might be in danger. When Esler comes to kill Emmy Onno surprises his sister by revealing himself to be still alive. He steps in front of the bullet meant for Emmy just before Duval arrives. They follow Esler to a boat on one of the canals and capture him in the hold. 

            Emmy was played by Leigh Madison, who co-starred in the British TV series “Our House" and the movie “Behemoth the Sea Monster”.

October 24, 1990: It seemed appropriate to be tearing at barbecued chicken in the dark while watch Quest for Fire

Thirty years ago today

            It was my last day working at DeBoer's Landscaping. I told Henry I'd pick up my cheque on Friday morning as usual. 

            We finished at 15:45 and so I had a chance to go home, change and work on Susan's school project before meeting Nancy at the Bloor to see "Quest for Fire". 

            Nancy bought Swiss Chalet and it seemed appropriate to be tearing off pieces of chicken in the dark while watching a cave man movie. 

            Nancy loved the film. 

           I worked on Susan's assignment as soon as I got home. 

           Susan called to ask when it would be ready. We arranged to have Nancy bring it up to Finch station the next morning as I would be labouring over it past midnight.

Sandra Dorne

            On Thursday morning I translated the first verse of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian. 

            I worked out the chords for the verses and the chorus of “Tennisman” by Serge Gainsbourg. All that’s left should be the bridge and maybe the ending. 

            My guitar is still giving me tuning trouble but I can’t take it to Remenyi until December after my final exam has been written. 

            At around 11:00 I logged on for this week’s Canadian Literature tutorial. 

            Our essay outline is due on November 3. It needs to be one to two pages in point form and no more than 2.5 pages. The essay itself will be six to eight pages or 1800-2500 words. A topic is not a thesis. The topics are listed on Quercus. It is a research essay that requires two to four academic sources, which could include, journal articles, chapters from edited book collections, reviews, interviews with the author, or newspaper articles. Limit research so that it doesn’t get too cumbersome. A narrow topic explored in depth is better than several shallowly explored topics. One can go incredibly narrow, even exploring one word. Focus on key terms like a specific theme from this course. Present a short paragraph explaining your rationale for choosing your thesis to approach this topic and how your thesis will argue the point. Present two to four main points to develop your thesis and give textual evidence for each point. Research and analysis need to build on your points. List your research sources and explain how they will help with your thesis. Analysis should explain how you plan to approach your textual evidence and what kind of interpretation you plan to develop. Present one to two lines to explain what your conclusion will be. Connect the textual evidence with your thesis. Focus on analysis rather than paraphrasing. 

            The Ask the Author assignment is due in twenty four days but my partner has not responded yet to my reach out. 

            Our short essays have been graded but the feedback needs to be reviewed by the professor before we get them back. 

            As I suspected, Professor Kamboureli is supervising Kelly’s dissertation. I wonder if that's a conflict of interest. Supervising a PHD candidate is a nurturing role and so if a student had a dispute with a TA the professor is supervising then the professor might defend the TA like a bear protecting her cub. 

            Some of the books in this course are so recent that not many books will reference them. 

            I asked if this whole thing about submitting an essay outline is new, since I made it to fourth year and only first had to submit an essay outline last year. She said it depends on the professor. 

            One doesn’t have to fit the thesis of the final essay exactly with the essay statement of the outline, but it should be roughly on the same topic. 

            The average marks for our short essays were 73-74. That seems pretty low. 

            She referenced something called “The Hamburger Essay" which some people remembered from high school. Looking it up I see that it's just a layered essay with five paragraphs: introduction, three body paragraphs and a conclusion. 

            The tutorial runs from 11:10 to 12:00 and at 11:40 we were still talking about the final essay.

            For the remainder we discussed Rohinton Mistry's "Squatter". I said poop is always a good metaphor. Some students found that part of the story disgusting. 

            I said the character of Savakshaw is extremely successful in an unrealistic way while Sarosh is an unrealistic spectacular failure. 

            I pointed out that Wonder Bread has come up in two stories so far and presented as something which is typically Canadian and yet Wonder Bread isn't Canadian. It's from the States. I guess it's possible that mentioning it references Canada’s tendency to borrow from the States and referring to white culture as “white bread" has been a common trope for decades. 

            I said the doctor that Sarosh visits seems to be a nod to James Bond's "Dr No", with the name “Dr No-Ilaaz” and with the sinister sounding radio controlled device that he suggested that Sarosh could have implanted. She argued that the doctor wasn’t sinister in this story and so she thought his name was more about discouragement. I found out that Ilaaz means either "treatment” or “cure” and so he’s a doctor named "No Cure". But he wouldn't have to be a villain to be a nod to Dr No. It could be an ironic reference. Dr No’s device for blocking missiles was also radio controlled and he had a guano mine. Guano is of course bat shit and so it would tie in with the scatological theme of the story.

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I went to Freshco where I bought two bags of black grapes, one bag of green grapes, a pack of chicken drumsticks, a box of spoon size shredded wheat, old Canadian cheddar, margarine, canned peaches, hot salsa and Miss Vicky’s chips. 

            When I got home I caught up on my journal. I read the first canto of Edmund Spencer’s The Faerie Queen. Sir George the Knight, who doesn’t know he’s human because he was raised an elf in fairyland, is on a quest on behalf of a lady who is travelling with him along with a dwarf. They take shelter from the storm but wind up in a maze where he has to slay a dragon that is part woman and apparently represents the Catholic Church. After that they meet a wise old man who offers them shelter but while they are sleeping it turns out that he is an evil magician who weaves a spell to make George believe the lady is cavorting in bed with several lovers. He leaves with the dwarf in anger and rides away, leaving her behind. When she wakes up she rides after him but he is too far away. Meanwhile the magician disguises himself as George.

            I had a potato, a slice of roast beef and gravy for dinner. I’ve been using my oven so much to heat my place that I might have blown a fuse and so only the top coils work now. The roast beef was a bit rare but I ate it anyway while watching Interpol Calling. 

            This story begins with a woman named my meeting two men by the river. She hands a gun to one of the men and the other asks, “Where's mine?" She says. “You won't be needing one." He runs and is shot by the other man. The police find him in the Seine with no legitimate identification and his fingerprints showing nothing. Since his coat is from London the cops call Interpol. There are letters found in the coat pocket, mostly fake like his ID but one of them is faded and the lab fixes it to make it clearer. It’s a list of the initials of people that need to be kept quiet. The last one “MT” is dated for tomorrow. It says “MT is a sniff …” but the rest has been erased by water damage. The initials are murder victims and the dates fit with when they were killed. That means they have to find MT and prevent his death. Before each set of initials is another. Duval figures that the first set are those of the killers. He thinks that they are dealing with an organization of paid killers similar to Murder Incorporated twenty years before in the United States. They learn that the dead man was Thomas Mills, one of the killers. Mills’s letter was addressed to someone named Harry. Duval goes to London to look for him and Scotland Yard introduces him to Steve Taylor who helped round up Murder Incorporated in New York. He says in ten years the organization committed one thousand murders. Duval goes to see Helen, the wife of Thomas Mills in prison. She doesn’t seem to care that he's dead but as they are leaving she tells him that the man he wants is Harry Walters. When they find Harry all he knows is where Tom lived. They go there but the landlord says he knows nothing. After they leave the woman and the gunman from the beginning emerge from a back hallway. Duval is still trying figure out “MT is a sniff" and a police officer tells him it could be Cockney rhyming slang, as in “Apples and pears" meaning stairs; “Rosie Lee” meaning tea, but they often drop the second part and just say “Up the apples" or "Cup a Rosie". He says "Sniff" might be short for "Sniff and snorter" meaning “reporter”, who sniffs in the news and snorts it out again. Duval says to look for any London reporters with initials MT. They find a crime reporter named Mike Tinton and his address. Meanwhile Amy and her men head for that address to kill him. Duval gets there just in time to stop the shooter but after they arrest him they don’t notice Amy. While Duval is talking with Tinton Amy comes in with a gun. Tinton recognizes her as Amy Barnetti, the wife of Murder Incorporated's top gunman. Duval surprises and disarms her.

            Amy was played by Annabel Maule who co-starred in the TV movie “Wuthering Heights" and in the TV series "Time of Day". She is British and had a very bad US accent. 

            Helen was played by Sandra Dorne, who had lead blonde bombshell roles in British suspense and horror B films in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but the work dwindled out when producers didn’t think she was sexy anymore.