Beverly Tyler

            On Saturday morning I worked out the chords for the first two verses of “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg. Since I already determined the instrumental parts the chords for the rest of the song those should be the same and so I just have to place the other verse chords. 

            In the late morning I went to No Frills. They had no grapes or cherries at all so I got three bags of oranges, a strawberry-rhubarb pie, a container of Greek yogourt and a jug of orange juice. 

            I had planned on stopping to pay for my February phone plan on the way to the supermarket but I forgot and so I went there on the way home. When I was putting on my mask one end of the left earpiece broke and so I had to improvise. I tied it in a loop and hooked it over my ear and so the mask stayed on just securely enough to complete that task. When I got home I threw that mask away and washed the only other black one I had. 

            I had saltines and old cheddar for lunch. 

            In the afternoon I didn’t take a bike ride or do exercises since I'd already been out on my bike to the supermarket. 

            I spent a couple of hours finishing my notes on “When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be" by John Keats. Since yesterday I have put down fifteen hand written pages about a fourteen line poem. I started typing up my notes. I transcribed the first page but as often happens these days with a new Word document, it suddenly shut down and so I had to go into the Task Manager and close Word for Windows before opening the document again. I only lost a few lines of the second page of notes and so I copied them again, but it’s annoying to have to do that. 

            I decided to have pasta for dinner and since I thought I didn’t have any sauce I started making it from scratch. I chopped up a lot of garlic and sautéed it. I used the rest of the frozen diced onions but they were covered in ice and so I put them in the steamer for a while until the ice was gone so I could add them to the garlic. I used chili flakes. I poured in a whole can of Molson Canadian that’s probably been in the fridge for two years, I mixed that with tomato paste, put in Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper, piri piri and a few other herbs and spices but the sauce tasted bitter. I tried to soften it up with corn syrup but then it was too sweet and I had to add paprika and more hot sauce but it was still a touch bitter in the end. I noticed while looking through the cupboard for ingredients that I had a can of organic pasta sauce in the back after all. I had the sauce I made on spiral macaroni topped with cut up pieces of cheddar and drank a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story begins with Barney saying goodbye to Thelma Lou on the street because he sees a car parked in the wrong zone and he goes to give the driver a ticket. But the driver turns out to be an extremely gorgeous and charming southern belle and Barney is immediately overwhelmed. When she says she's looking for the post office Barney gives her a police escort with the siren blaring, even though the post office is just across the street. The problem is that Thelma Lou is standing there and watching the whole thing and sees Melissa take by the hand as he shows her in and around the post office. When Thelma Lou confronts him about it he becomes very defensive while Andy keeps advising him to change the subject. Thelma Lou finally storms away. Later she won’t answer his calls or the door when he comes. Barney tells Andy he’s through with women but then the phone rings and it’s Melissa. Barney melts and then she invites him to dinner. Barney is entertained at the house that she‘s recently rented with her father and they seem to enjoy his company tremendously.” The next day Andy advises him to stop messing around with that girl and to make up with Thelma Lou but Barney goes up there again that night. Then the father leaves the two alone. Melissa snuggles up to Barney, turns out the lamp and then says, “Wouldn’t you like this to last forever?" He says, “Yeah, I guess." Suddenly Melissa gets excited and calls her father. She tells him that Barney has just proposed. The next day the engagement announcement is in the paper. Obviously Thelma Lou is even more upset now but Andy helps Barney explain that it’s a mistake that he will correct. Barney breaks off the engagement but then Andy gets a call from Melissa’s father telling him that he and Melissa are suing Barney for breach of promise. Melissa and her father come to the courthouse the next day and Andy suggests they settle out of court. Mr Stevens says that she really wanted to marry Barney but a cash settlement might help. Andy tells Barney to stand beside Melissa and then he begins performing a marriage ceremony. Suddenly Melissa and her father don't like where this is going. Melissa says, "You must be out of your mind if you think I’m gonna marry that squirt!" Then Andy asks, "Could it be that he’s not your daddy and that you can't marry Barney because you are married to each other?” The cat is out of the bag. Andy tells them he won’t lock them up if they just leave Mayberry and so they do, with Mr Stevens calling Melissa "Gladys". Barney makes up with Thelma Lou. 

            Melissa “Gladys" Stevens was played by Beverley Tyler, who at the age of fourteen was on a day trip to New York from Pennsylvania with some friends. When they were walking by the MGM offices her friends dared her to go inside and audition. She took the dare, was given a screen test and signed a contract. Shortly after that her mother moved with her out to Hollywood. After grooming she made her first picture at sixteen and had her first co-starring role at 19 with "The Green years" and another at twenty with "My Brother Talks to Horses." She was also a singer and was in a couple of Broadway plays. She was mostly cast in B movies and her last films were in the late fifties and in 1962 she married Jim Jordon Jr. the son of Jim and Marian Jordon, the stars of the very popular radio show Fibber McGee and Molly which ran from 1935 to 1959. They were together for thirty six years until he died.

            Melissa's father and Gladys's husband was played by the great Jackie Coogan, who would soon be famous again when he played Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. 

January 31, 1991: She was of East Indian descent and the most beautiful woman I'd ever moved. I could have swum in her eyes for days

Thirty years ago today

            I worked alone with Chris moving a guy who directed TV commercials and his wife, who was the most beautiful woman I'd ever moved. I could have swum in her eyes for weeks. She was of East Indian descent, born in Uganda and educated in Kenya, and very sophisticated. She gave us each a $20 tip. 

            We had lunch at a Greek souvlaki place. 

            I phoned Nancy later to ask her why she hadn't called me. She said she would be coming over the next day. She said she would call me back later but she rang while I was eating and only asked about some earrings and so I was short with her.

            I jerked off without oil. 

            I did some laundry but only got an hour of drying done.

Andy Clyde

            On Friday morning at 4:35 I was shocked awake by a news report from CP24 coming through at maximum volume on my phone. “Kevin Ash, the mayor of Pickering has stepped down!” It barely occurred to me that Pickering had anything more than nuclear reactors and a shoreline, let alone a mayor. I have never accessed CP24 on my phone and so I wonder if I got this feed because I’m on Shankar’s wifi network. Maybe he watches CP24 and uses it for an alarm clock at 4:35. 

            I worked out the chords for the intro to “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg and the first line. 

            I read another couple of chapters of Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. 

            For lunch I had kettle chips with salsa and yogourt. 

            In the afternoon I decided to take a short bike ride rather than doing exercises at home. I felt that I needed to get outside despite the fact that the remnants of the storm of a few days before were still on the road. I bundled up, wore my long wool socks and my snowboots and headed out with no intention of going very far. I just went up to Dundas, across to Dovercourt, down to Queen and home. There was ice on the road and I almost wiped out on Dovercourt while manoeuvring around a pothole only to slip on a patch of ice, but I said “Whoa!" and righted myself without falling. 

            My TA finally posted our paragraph assignment. It’s our choice which passage to use but we have to make a claim that is not obvious and prove it in 200-300 words. I’m glad it is my choice because I wanted to work on the sonnet "When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” by Keats. 

            I spent the next few hours making notes on the sonnet. In the first four lines the poet talks about the abundant overflowing crop of ideas in his head that he wants to harvest before he dies but he is worried that he won’t have time. The next four lines speak of the mysteries of life beyond his understanding that he hopes to trace an inkling of before he is gone. The next four address sexual love and how fleeting it is. The final couplet concludes that while he is worried about dying and losing these things they are being lost to his worrying while he exists more so than they will be when he is dead. 

            I had boiled squash, a chicken leg and gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            This story begins with the mayor and the town council forcing Andy to deliver an eviction notice to old Frank Myers who is several months behind on his back taxes. Frank’s run down house is the first one seen by people driving into Mayberry and the mayor says he is giving the town a bad name. After serving the notice Andy is convinced by Opie to invite Frank to stay with them until he can find a more permanent place. When Frank arrives he brings a little box full of his personal treasures and shows the contents to Andy. Inside is a $100 bond issued to Frank a hundred years ago and worth 8.5% annual interest since then. It is discovered that Mayberry owes Frank $349,119.27. The problem is that Mayberry does not have that kind of money. Andy has the idea that the town could fix up Frank’s house for him and so the counsel, including the mayor, goes to work and turns the place into a model home. But then they discover that the bond was issued when Mayberry was part of the Confederacy and it is concluded that it is worthless. They want to evict Frank all over again but Andy convinces them that now that Frank has such a nice house it represents Mayberry positively to visitors. 

           Someone on IMD pointed out that the legal argument is flawed at the end. The bond was not issued by the Confederate States but by the town of Mayberry and so they are still obliged to pay. Also it can’t be claimed that the bond was bought with Confederate money because the Confederacy only started minting money in 1861. Also the bond could have been bought with gold or some other legitimate currency and so Mayberry would still owe him the interest. 

           Frank was played by Scotland born Andy Clyde, who played California Carson, the sidekick of Hopalong Cassidy in 36 films. He also had a series of popular comedies in which he usually played a woman-chasing old man.

January 30, 1991: I was mad at myself for waking late, mad at Chris for not picking me up, mad at Wayne for expecting me to come to the suburbs to punch in for a downtown job

Thirty years ago today 

            Chris called me at 7:30 because I'd been supposed to be at his place for 7:00. I was very pissed off at myself and when he didn't offer to pick me up I was pissed off at him. I called Wayne from the St George subway station and he exclaimed, "Why aren't you here?" I asked for the location of the job and he told me it was at Carleton and Church. I was pissed off at him for expecting me to come all the way to the suburbs to punch in for a job that was downtown. I went to the job site and waited an hour in a coffee shop nearby before Chris and Donny showed up. We packed the stuff of an old couple who were moving to Perth and loaded their things onto the truck. 

            On the way home I stopped at the liquor store where I bought some Tsing Tao. 

            I hadn't talked with Nancy for two nights. 

            Newspapers were piling up.

Jean Hagen

            On Thursday morning I finished memorizing “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg and started looking for the chords. I found a couple of versions but I’ll look some more on Friday before I start checking to hear whether or not they fit. 

            A couple of crows stopped for a rest on the wire across the street. The ones that I see in Parkdale always travel in pairs and these two sat about three metres apart. The one on the right did all the talking and constantly cawed while they were sitting there. The one on the right also took off first. The other one waited a stubborn minute and then followed. It’s interesting that they fly fairly far apart as well and only in the same general south-westerly direction. The quiet one meandered a little more. I wonder if it’s the same couple that I’ve seen stop there every few months for years. I’ve never seen them flying east so I’m curious if they are the same couple and if they take a different route coming back. 

            Around midday I went to Freshco. There were cherries and so I got seven bags. Most of the grapes were soft but I found a couple of bags that were fairly firm. I bought a pint of blueberries, Bavarian sandwich bread, kettle chips, five year old cheddar, three bags of milk, two cans of peaches, two containers of Greek yogourt and a jar of hot salsa. 

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch.

            I didn’t take a bike ride in the afternoon because I’d already ridden to the supermarket, but besides that the streets were still too messy after the storm of two days ago anyway. 

            My TA had yet to post our assignment and since I’d done all the required reading for Brit Lit 2 there was nothing to do but start over. 

            I began re-reading Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen but this time out loud. I read up to chapter 8 and then my beard started annoying me so I took a break and shaved.

            I have rarely in my life shaved without showering afterwards and hardly ever used a razor in the late afternoon and so it seemed weird doing so but I felt better. 

            I was over a quarter through the novel before dinnertime. Reading it again didn’t make me like the book much better but I did appreciate some subtleties that I hadn’t noticed before. If I were stranded on a desert island however with nothing to read but the complete works of Jane Austen I would use the pages to start fires. But if it was the complete works of Virginia Woolf I would look for dry leaves to burn instead. 

            I had a potato, a chicken leg and gravy for dinner while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story, Andy, Floyd, Barney and Opie are just packing their stuff in the sheriff’s car after a day of fishing when a new convertible comes speeding past. Andy gets everybody in the car, turns on the siren and pursues the vehicle, clocking her at 120 kph in a 64 kph zone. Andy stops a woman who is dripping with both charm and privilege. She is clearly used to getting her way and is surprised when Andy wants to giver her a ticket. She demands to see the justice of the peace and so Andy takes her back to the courthouse and introduces himself as the justice of the peace. He tells her the fine is $10 but she accuses him of setting up a speed trap in order to bilk drivers and so he charges her with contempt of court and adds on another $10. She continues to argue all the way up to $60 but Andy generously lowers the fee to $25. Miss Crowley however is indignant and wants a real trial. Andy says she’ll have to wait one day in jail for the Mayer’s Court and she agrees. The law states that a female prisoner requires a matron and so Andy appoints Aunt Bee. Miss Crowley proceeds to charm everyone, especially the witnesses. She tells Barney he looks like Frank Sinatra, she gets Floyd to comb her hair and tells him he’s an artist and even gives Opie a baseball autographed by the New York Yankees. In court no one can now remember if Miss Crowley had been speeding or not. The mayor dismisses the case. Andy congratulates her for having cheated justice and turned his own deputy against him. She feels bad and so after being released she deliberately takes off at an illegal speed, causing Andy and Barney to go after her. When they stop her she pays the $10 fine on the spot, apologizes for the trouble she’d caused and pays an extra $25, even though she is not legally required to do so. 

            I never thought of it before but Don Knots really did look like a young Frank Sinatra, in a weird way. They were both very skinny. 

            Miss Crowley was played by Jean Hagen, who made her first film, debuting as a femme fatale in Adam’s Rib. She co-starred in The Asphalt Jungle, was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Singin in the Rain. She played Danny Thomas’s wife in the first three seasons of his sitcom and was nominated for three Emmys but got bored with the part. From then on she made mostly guest appearances on shows. 

            I read more of Northanger Abbey and go up to a third of the way in.

January 29, 1991: We unloaded a trailer to a condo in North York that was bigger than a big house

Thirty years ago today

            I went into the shop with Chris and we did a little bit of work in the warehouse before being told we had to go home and come back at 14:00. I bought him breakfast and then went home. I read some of the war, slept a few minutes and then met Chris at his place at 13:00. 

            We moved an already loaded trailer to a new condo in North York that was bigger than a big house. We were there until almost 22:00. When we got back to the yard there was no ride out because Chris's girlfriend had the car. After Chris argued with the dispatcher we walked to Keele Street and just by luck the bus was coming. I picked up dinner from McDonalds on the way home and didn't get to bed until after midnight.

Xanadu

            On Wednesday morning I memorized the first five verses of “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg. I have two verses left to learn before I start working out the chords. 

            Just before noon I logged on for my weekly Brit Lit 2 tutorial. 

            Our 200 word paragraph assignment is due on February 7. There are instructions in text form but apparently the professor has also posted an explanatory video. We have to do a condensed analysis of a passage. 

            Carson gave us a little bio of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He was born in the last quarter of 18th Century and died in the first third of the 19th. He was born just outside London but grew up in the city. He went to Cambridge but got bored and ran off to join the cavalry under the assumed name of Comberbacke. But he was a horrible soldier and returned to university. He meets Robert Southey and Wordsworth. In 1789 with the French revolution as a backdrop Coleridge was a radical idealist and planned to move to the states to start an anarchist colony. He got married beforehand because he thought that would be a sensible way to begin a colony but ended up not going and the marriage was unhappy. By his middle age he’d turned into a conservative intellectual.

            He was an all round man of letters, a literary critic and a scholar of German philosophy. But he was also a plagiarist of German philosophy. He was considered a promising genius but it wasn’t reflected in his output. He did however write and talk a lot and was considered as the sage of Highgate.

            He was addicted to opium for most of his adult life. 

            “Kubla Khan, or A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment”. Along with The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Christobel this was one of his most famous poems. 

            Who was Kubla Khan? He was a grandson of Genghis Khan. His realm stretched from the Pacific Ocean to the Black Sea and from Siberia to what is now Afghanistan. 

            I mentioned that I’d read that the Aga Khan is descended from Kubla Khan but when I looked into it later I see the main claim is that the Aga is descended from Mohammed. Actually one in every two hundred people on Earth is related to Genghis Khan. There doesn’t seem to be a direct link between the “Khan” family name and Kubla. It would be like saying all Smiths are descended from the first man named Smith. 

            Marco Polo met Kubla or at least stayed at his summer home in Xanadu. Of the poem there is speculation as to whether it is really a fragment of a larger work the poet imagined but lost from his memory. Some say that the idea of the fragment is a poetic technique to evoke a sense of the sublime.

            I said that anyone that has ever done drugs would know that it is very possible that this poem really is a fragment. I posted something that I wrote to illustrate that in the chat but nobody responded to it: 

            Why Kubla Khan is Inkomplete 

            Because of a slight indisposition 

            I got high I fell asleep in a sitting position 

            because I got high then I dreamed an elaborate vision 

            and I know why 

            because I got high  

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            I dreamed a poem about Kubla Khan

            because I got high 

            I woke and found a page to write it on 

            after I got high 

            but from my memory most of it was gone 

            and I know why 

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            because I got high 

            Samuel (Afroman) Coleridge 

            (Translated from the Greek by Christian Christian) 

            Coleridge links the indefinite with the sublime. 

            I said that I don’t think the explanatory note is meant as part of the poem. It clashes with the musicality of the main work. 

            Carson said the fact that the explanatory note is in the third person might suggest that it is part of the poem. 

            There is included in the introduction someone else’s poem about a fragment. 

            I said the first stanza is pastoral while the second is sublime. The first five lines of the first stanza is heavy in alliteration and assonance. There is alliteration at the end of every line. There are a lot of internal slant rhymes such as “stately pleasure" with "sacred river" and pleasure and river tumble down to rhyme with "measure" in the next. 

            I said the second stanza paints a picture of the chaos out of which Kubla Khan builds Xanadu in the third stanza. 

            The fountain is symbolic of the creative flow of the imagination. 

            The river Alph may be from Alpha or beginnings. 

            There are contrasts between the stanzas. 

            Comparisons can be made to Paradise Lost. 

            Coleridge got a lot of his ideas of the sublime from Kant. Overwhelmingness. Sublimity of reason. 

           I said the second stanza has a lot of assonance with chasm, savage, enchanted, fast, pants, fragments, chaffy, dancing, meandering and caverns. The third becomes peaceful again. The last kind of combines the two. But he wants to use music to recreate the Xanadu dome in the air. I assume the milk of paradise is the opium derived laudanum he drank before having his vision. 

           Someone said she thought Khan was being described here but I said I think the speaker is talking about himself. 

           I had saltines and old cheddar for lunch. 

           It was too messy in the afternoon to take a bike ride and so I did some exercises while listening to season 4, episode 24 of The Goon Show:

           What this has to do with the great saxophone shortage in Tibet, we shall see as we present The Collapse of the British Railway Sandwich System. Into the hell of the Clapham Junction Tea Buffet walks a man whose ragged appearance tell us that he is a middle class Englishman. “I want to complain about this sandwich. It tastes like muck!” “Well, it’s a muck sandwich.” “I wanted a mustard and cress sandwich.” “Someone’s pinched all the mustard and cress out of the sandwiches.” This was the first sign of the mustard and cress shortage which was to cause havoc to British railways. “I’m Seagoon, plain clothes man.” “Then why are you dressed like a constable?” “I’m in disguise.” “What do you want?” “A mustard and cress sandwich.” “Do you want bread?” “No.” “We aint got no mustard and cress.” “How much will that be?” “Mustard and cress sandwich with no bread. No bread with no mustard and no cress. One and six.” “One and six for nothing? That’s cheap. Do you have change for a hundred pound note?” "Yes." "Marry me!" The saleswoman turns out to be Bluebottle who has destroyed every mustard and cress place in the world. “Are you going to come quietly or do I have to use earplugs?” Max Geldray plays. Seagoon tells Crun that British Railways wants him to grow them six thousand acres of mustard and cress in the Amazon. In the Amazon Ray Ellington (a black man) approaches Bloodnok and Eccles. Bloodnok tells him, You’re the first white woman I’ve seen in thirty years.” Ellington sings "Rub a Dub Dub." “Here comes Seagoon." "He's a sight for sore eyes. It's a pity I don't have a pair handy." "We'll be crossing the river Carpa-Tee, which is very cold.” “There's nothing worse than a cold Carpa-Tee.” Eccles was carrying Ellington, Bloodnok and Seagoon on his head. Suddenly, Mr. Eccles has appeared on top of Mr. Seagoon. Thus leaving all of them suspended in mid-air. Some slept standing down, which is standing up sideways. The natives attack. Ellington tries to disguise himself as a woman but it fails because his blonde wig was a man's. 

            I read the selections from Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. He mostly talks about how animals and plants depend on each other or how some animals and plants require the absence of some animals and plants in order to thrive.

            I made bread pizza topped by salsa, ground pork and cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story the state attorney’s office sends a student named Bob to Mayberry for law enforcement training before taking a state position. He is made a deputy and despite the fact that he knows Bob’s job is supposed to be temporary he thinks Andy is unhappy with his performance and wants to replace him. Bob is extremely efficient and has compiled charts that successfully predict the statistical likelihood of certain crimes occurring. Barney has always been in charge of the wanted posters on the bulletin board and the board is a mess. Despite the fact that some wanted criminals have been reported as arrested in the news, Barney insists on leaving the posters up until the official notice of their arrest is received. Bob changes all that and puts the board in order. Finally Barney gives up and decides to quit. He gets a job as a vacuum cleaner salesman but is horrible at it. Andy is trying to figure out how to get Barney back when Bob tells Andy that Barney has violated the Green River ordinance by not applying for a salesman’s license. Andy tells Bob to arrest Barney. While in jail Barney hears Bob say that his arrest was predictable because a salesman is arrested every ten years. Barney says Bob is ignoring the human factor and demands his job back from Andy. Andy has his uniform all ready. It looks like Bob just made up the Green River Ordinance to help Barney come back. 

            I looked at the video the professor posted for our paragraph assignment. The paragraph must be 250 to 300 words on a topic selected by the TA. Practice of critical skills of analysis in a single paragraph is the starting point for larger assignments. A larger assignment just becomes an expansion. It will be rigorously graded. If we do better on a later assignment this mark will be cancelled and the 5% that this assignment is worth will be added to the other. The MEAL plan is a bad acronym. M is for Main point or thesis, E is for Evidence, A is for Analysis, and L is for Link. The Main point is central to the paragraph. The point should not be obvious but needs to be need said. An example is that the narrator in Oroonoko is not Oroonoko’s friend. So? Make the point in give or take conversation or response. The narrator’s friendship is still subjugation. The point is that their friendship is not direct. Start with a conversation about the idea you want to challenge. Make the main point part of your response. What do the critics think? You could mention what was said in lecture and disagree. Put your idea in conversation with the work. “At first glance it seems , but.” Make the evidence straight forward. Details, quotes, and language in text matters. Paraphrase, describe the structure of the story, summarize, use these to argue your point. Be precise and don’t use three sentences. Use context and not just quotes. Analysis and explanation are the most important things. The paragraph must explain your argument and refer to evidence. If your claim is good and interesting it should not be obvious. Make your claim clear. If evidence is self explanatory then there is no need of analysis. Keats thinks the Grecian urn is silent would not be good because a claim must need explanation. The more counterintuitive the better. Saying the Grecian urn is not silent invites interest. It is better to try to make a claim you are not sure of. Push yourself to find evidence. If it is not there you can then narrow your claim. The urn speaks in other ways such as in pictures. Revise your claim. The Link caveat is that it is not important in this assignment. In a longer assignment the paragraph is linked to the previous paragraph. Link back to the previous paragraph from the beginning. Transition back and set up the new paragraph. The main point of the thesis is made of several sub points that add up to the big one. Put your point in conversation. Make a difficult claim. If you do well later this grade is meaningless. 

            Carson has yet to post the passage we are supposed to analyze.

January 28, 1991: Nancy started kicking me in bed and explained she'd wanted to feel what it's like to be a baby kicking in the womb

Thirty years ago today 

            I met Chris at his place at around 7:00. At work with Shawn and Donny we moved a couple. We didn't get a tip and the other guys believed it was because the customer was Jewish.

            In those days when I got home I had two habits. I would read about the war and then I would jerk off. 

            Nancy came to spend the night. She was lying down and I was lying with my arm around her. Suddenly she started violently kicking me. I moved away and when she got up I demanded to know why she'd kicked me. She explained that she'd wanted to find out what it was like to be our baby kicking in the womb. I told her that "kick" is just a bad figure of speech and that it is much more gentle, like swimming.

George Eliot

            On Tuesday morning I memorized the first three verses of “L’aquoiboniste" (The Whatsthepointist) by Serge Gainsbourg and there are only four verses left to learn because the first verse is repeated every other verse. 

            When I went to shave in the late morning I realized that I’d made a very stupid mistake. I found four razor refills and remembered that last week I’d thrown out the refillable razor as if it were a disposable. I was forced to shave with this one cheap single blade razor and it was very difficult to use even though it was a fresh one. When I nicked myself I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to shave my whole beard and so I only did my neck. When I was taking a shower it occurred to me that the landlord hadn't taken out the garbage for a couple of weeks so when I was dressed I went out to the bin on the deck and found the last garbage bag I’d put out. Luckily I don't put food waste in my garbage bags so there was nothing rotten to pick through. I found the ladies razor that I’d thrown out last week and luckily the refills for the men’s razor that threw out a month or more ago fit the pink one, so I didn't feel so stupid after all. 

            By lunch time I had just four pages of On Beauty by Zadie Smith left to read. 

            I had chips and salsa with yogourt for lunch. 

            There was a little snow storm today and so I didn’t take a bike ride. Instead I did some exercises while listening to The Goon Show from March 1, 1954. 

            The show begins with peter Sellers as Lester Snagpule starring in Your Song Parade: songs your mother loved and everybody else hated. The main story is “The Greatest Mountain in the World.” It begins with a meeting of Royal Geographical and Archaeological Society in the basement of a disused fish squirting factory. Sir Hairy Seagoon announces that he plans on climbing the highest mountain in the world. He is told that Sir Edmond Hillary has already done that. It is decided to build their own mountain. Crun suggests they do it in Hyde Park. “Why?” "It's handy for the buses and shops." Milligan argues that if they build the mountain in England the island would sink. Seagoon says that the mountain would be invaluable in that case because people could climb up the sides to save themselves from drowning. Milligan agrees and says, “Hurry up and build it before we all drown!” Max Geldray plays “Carnivalite” on the harmonica. The mountain reaches 10,000 feet but Bogg from the Ministry of Works and Housing tells them no mountain weighing more than eight pounds 10 ounces and measuring more than 20 feet may be built within a radius of Nelson’s Column. He blows up the mountain. They have to find an alternative. Since Everest is five miles high and twelve miles wide, Bloodnok suggests turning it on its side to make a higher mountain. Seagoon asks how that could be done. "Isn't it obvious?" "No" "Then I have another idea". There is a higher mountain than Everest at the bottom of the sea. Ray Ellington sings “I Got A Girl in Kalamazoo." They take a boat in the ocean over Mount Fred. They have to get to the bottom to climb up and so to save time they drive down by car. But they get lost and so Seagoon knocks on an oyster. Minnie answers “Yes?" "Is Pearl in?" "No, but I'm her mother." "You must be Mother of Pearl." Bluebottle is told to grab hold of a mine and float to the surface to see where they are. But the mine explodes and Bluebottle is deaded. Seagoon mistakes Crun for Marilyn Monroe because he has air bubbles in the seat of his trousers. The explosion blew up the mountain and everyone else was deaded as well. 

           I finished reading On Beauty. Victoria, the teenage daughter of Howard’s enemy Monty, has had sex with her professor Howard. She starts sending him pornographic emails and he finally gives in, agreeing to meet her in a hotel. At the last minute he says he can’t go through with it and leaves her in the room. Zora attends a party where she catches Carl fucking Victoria in a closet. Zora is a big woman, she's been drinking and she drags Carl out. Since she's never been his girlfriend he doesn't understand. He gets angry and is about to tell Zora about her father and Victoria but Victoria begs him not to. Zora figures it out from her reaction. After Victoria leaves he tells Zora that Victoria’s father is fucking one of his students and has kicked her out of his class. Later that night a valuable Haitian painting worth half a million pounds, and which Monty’s late wife had willed to Zora’s mother Kiki before Monty destroyed the will, has been stolen from Monty. He suspects Carl. Later that day Kiki is cleaning her son Levi’s room and finds the painting. He had stolen it from Monty because he believed Monty had stolen it from Haiti and Levi is now an activist for Haiti. On the back of the painting is a note to Kiki from Carlene giving her the painting. Kiki sues Monty for the painting. Kiki also finds out about Victoria and she separates from Howard. The ending is a presentation on Rembrandt by Howard because he is trying to gain tenure at the university. Kiki is in the audience and they smile at one another. It’s a hard ending to figure out since everything is unresolved. 

            I did a few more readings of Kubla Khan by Samuel Coleridge. The first thing I noticed is that the first stanza is pastoral while the second is sublime. The third becomes peaceful again. The last kind of combines the two. But he wants to use music to recreate the Xanadu dome in the air. I assume the milk of paradise is the opium derived laudanum he drank before having his vision. The five lines of the first stanza is heavy in alliteration and assonance. There is alliteration at the end of every line. There are a lot of internal slant rhymes such as “stately pleasure" with "sacred river" and pleasure and river tumble down to rhyme with "measure" in the next. The second stanza has a lot of assonance with chasm, savage, enchanted, fast, pants, fragments, chaffy, dancing, meandering and caverns. 

            I read chapter 17 of Adam Bede by George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans). There is also a comparison of two different preachers who presided over the same parish at different times. They were shown to be opposites but both good men. Her work presents the opposite argument to Oscar Wilde’s "The Decay of Lying” and says that it’s best to write the truth in order to show how beautiful ordinary people are. Wilde criticized Eliot for being an enemy of aestheticism. He would not consider her novels to be creatively written. 

            I knew that George Eliot was a woman but I forgot that while reading her work. In her time everybody knew that she was female but the male name gave her an edge to separate her from what she considered to be the silly novels that a lot of female authors wrote. 

            I rubbed three chicken legs with the rest of my curry powder and roasted them. I had one with a potato and gravy while watching the first episode of the second season of the Andy Griffith Show. 

            In this story Opie is being harassed every day before school by a bully who takes his milk money. Andy thinks it’s strange that Opie asked for a nickel for milk from Aunt Bee and then from his father. When Andy asks Opie about it he evades the question. When Andy tells Barney that it’s a mystery he decides to play detective and follow Opie to school. When Andy learns of the bully he doesn't want to talk to the bully’s father or let Opie know that he knows. If he intervenes then it won’t help Opie the next time he has to deal with such a situation. He's got to teach Opie how to deal with bullies without turning him into a fighter. When they go fishing he tells Opie the story of how he found that fishing spot when he was Opie’s age and kept it a secret. But another kid followed him and threatened him saying from now on this was his spot. Andy says he was scared but then decided that it’s not right to be forced to give up things that are yours. Andy came to the fishing spot and faced the bully. He got hit in the nose and he laughed. It changed everything and the bully backed down. The next day Opie faced his bully and got a black eyes but he laughed and the boy backed down. He gave him his nickels back. Opie is very proud of his black eye. 

            I had a similar experience when I was in my late twenties. A guy picked a fight with me in a bar in Toronto and he hit me in the face. I just started laughing and kept walking towards him and he backed away terrified. He thought I was crazy.

January 27, 1991: I made an effort to turn the radio off and to make love with more presence

Thirty years ago today 

 

            I got to North York City hall at 13:00 on a Sunday and we worked until around 18:30. I got home at 19:00 and Nancy was there. She didn't want to have our meeting right away because she was tired. I was pissed off but she reminded me that I'd said we wouldn't be that strict about the time. I always seemed to be in a better mood after our meeting. 

            I showed Nancy a sensation exercise and we decided to work on association for next week. I told her that I'd made an effort last week to turn the radio off and to make love to her with more presence in response to the theme of every stick having two ends. I wanted to go out for a drink but she wanted to sleep.

Hal Smith

            On Monday morning I went through “Mélodie interdite" (Forbidden Melody) by Serge Gainsbourg in French and English, uploaded it to Christian’s Translations, finished the editing process and published it. The next Gainsbourg song I work on will be “L’aquoiboniste" which is a made up word from "a quoi bon" (what's the good) and so I call my translation “The Whatsthepointist". 

            I had sixty six pages left to read of On Beauty by lunch time. 

            I had chips, salsa and yogourt for lunch and apple sauce with yogourt for dessert. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Yonge and Bloor, south to Queen and home. At Yonge and Dundas a person in a wheelchair had a large sign that read, “TOO UGLY TO PROSTITUTE, TOO HONEST TO STEAL. PLEASE HELP ME.” At Queen and Bay the bright blue sleeping bag belonging to the homeless person who sleeps over the vent was empty but three pigeons were excitedly pecking at the contents of a box of leftover takeout that had probably been the person’s most recent meal. 

            When I got home I read some more of On Beauty and had forty six pages left when I checked online and saw that the professor finally posted this week’s lecture. It’s supposed to be at noon every Monday but it tends to be around 17:30. 

            The lecture was on Charlotte Smith’s “Beachy Head” and we will talk about Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” in tutorial. 

            The key of the poem and of Romanticism is the last word of the first line. “On thy stupendous summit, rock sublime.” The sublime is the key. Edmund Burke wrote The Sublime and the Beautiful in 1757. There are two categories of aesthetic experience. Beauty is a subtle and social experience that gives rise to affection, closeness, tenderness and adoration. The sublime is a powerful and personal experience of astonishment and horror that creates terror, robbing the mind of reason. It’s distinct and capable of being cultivated by words. In the experience of art at stake is the idea of the second kind of aesthetic experience. There is perversion of beauty called possession with no place in aesthetics. The vastness of the sublime evokes overwhelming awe. The sublime experience is isolated. They don’t overlap the sublime and beauty but poets write to convey both. 

           Smith addresses this with “Beachy Head”. The white cliff expresses sublimity, awe, terror. This is a Greater Romantic Lyric. This is serious and does not screw around. This poem is a university poem that is demanding and bigger. Sonnets contain one point while the great romantic lyric is a journey for the mind of the ungraspable. The poem is ungraspable and evokes the sublime. It is a mirror of what the poem is about and also not containable. It can only be understood in parts. The poem has a movement that doesn’t add up to a final argument. It shows tensions and contradictions. M.H. Abrams writes that “The speaker begins with a description of the landscape, an aspect of change of aspect of the landscape evokes a varied by integral process of memory, thought, anticipation and feeling which remains. It closely intervolves with the outer scene. In the course of this meditation the lyric speaker achieves an insight, faces up to a tragic loss, comes to a moral decision or resolves an emotional problem. Often the poem rounds to end where it began at the outer scene but with an altered mood and deepened understanding which is the result of the meditation. This is an old school definition. Smith is slightly different. There is a relationship between mind and scene. The outside impinges for Smith on the inside. Peace is disrupted by the scene and its contents. Smith inverts this. She begins at the top and ends underneath. The movement is from high to low. The sublimity of Beachy Head adds to the traditional vastness of nature but there is also a temporal element. Smith’s poem is one of the great expressions of this. The slow agency of time is collocated in the contrasting figures of speed and slowness such as layered times of human and natural history. What are examples of conflict of clashing temporal speeds? How can we contemplate our own time when time refers to geological, historical and personal time at the same time? Any spot is overlaid with different histories such as farming, herding, national history, war, invasions, geological changes, erosion. What are the passages of clashing temporality? He pauses and looks at the camera to wait for us to answer this in our own minds. 

           I think the elephant bones are a good example because in the later history she recounts the reactions to the bones being dug up. The Romans bring the elephants but this is forgotten and so legends of giant people rise around the bones among the later populace. 

           There are hundreds of examples and a mix of temporalities. She mentions the beginning of the concussion that creates the channel. She is talking about this while remembering how she thought about it while reclining on the cliff in the past. The long temporality of geological change over millions of years but also god doing it right away. She wants to know how contemplate all these times to understand place. 

           He divides the poem into five: sublime sets fancy free from lines 1-110; British history is layered over geological history from 110-165; rural life from 165-308 is largely about the progress of traditional values on the land. Of people, colonization, transformations, pining after the older but it is impossible to return to the pastoral; internal reflections and failure from 308-506; the personal experience of her landscape and time, convention, personal history, the stranger and tradition from 506 to the end. The hermit is a return to conventional, personal history with not just facts but stories, which are part of history. From the general to the specific, slightly regresses and ends with the story of hermit and his sacrifice. It is a poem about the intertwining of progress and conservation. One way to deal with this long work is dividing for yourself. Divisions are provisional but give a way of understanding by showing the picture. 

           The cliffs are stark against the channel. The whole area from Brighton to Dover is cliffs. Beachy Head is the first cliff seen from France. The cliffs are a hard break insulating England from the world. The poem is contemplative. 

           Section one is the Apostrophe. This is an exclamatory figure of speech in which the poet addresses an inanimate object or event and not the audience. 

           She is flinging her imagination out. We follow the movement of poetic imagination first back to sudden geological time leading to the solar day cycle, to the metabolic cycle, to the appearance of humans in increasingly industrial configurations. 

           One sloop is seen and then a fleet of fishing boats and then to a ship of commerce and then to consequences. The headland is first, concussive and violent and then we see birds looking for food, shepherds and their dogs. The sloop is the first man made thing we see. The ship of commerce is a dubious stain and infection. It is going where slaves harvest, mine and dive for the things it brings back. The moment suggests a problem between man and nature. Nature is not valued properly. Pearls are overvalued. There is a human failure about nature, violating freedom. Section two shifts in perspective of time. It retains the immediacy of the lyric imagination. There is a detachment of the relation between nature and British history. 

            She retraces all the invaders of England and now Napoleon is a worry. There is a connection between this and the mercantile. There is an aloofness riding the history of warfare and the readiness for war. War is always part of this space, and the threat of invasion. Section three is a return to the rural. The idea of the rural. Of land transformed through time. By industry and community. There are scenes of peace but they are changed and not as simple as before. 

            There is no idyll. One can’t stop change. Commerce changes the rural. Shepherds are now smuggling. This part of the country is hard to live on because the soil is not rich. She laments this. She comes back to the personal. “I was”. It’s a childlike rural life. Places are imagined and held in the mind such as fields, meadows, flowers, trees and birds. She likes nature and the rustic. In section four this return to the personal is important. There is the idea that her worship of nature hits a limit. In the face of nature and in the growing realization of vast geological time, art, science and ambition fail. She notes a new vista. Art can’t overcome the mystery of how shells are on top of the cliffs. There is a contrast of science and the indifference of time. Geological time makes ambition into vanity. The sublime evokes a sense of failure. The shells are awe inspiring. She meditates. Ambition is vanity. The poet can’t represent this. 

            There is a turn. And still. Does nature mimic the shells in rock? Was the cliff once under water? How does one capture the mystery? Science is vain with vague theories. The peasant doesn’t care. They don’t match. We live on geological time and we will become part of it. All ambitions pass. This is the crisis moment in the poem. What to live for. 

            In section five the poem moves from explaining the sublime of nature, war, humanity, of rural life to individual stories. The story of the poet stranger. He and the hermit withdraw from the world. But the hermit still felt for human misery. The stranger was broken hearted and poetry was a part of this world that people remember. He disappeared and all that is left are his poems. Poetry does not last forever. The hermit and the stranger are parallel. They rejected the world. The hermit was outraged by humanity. He becomes a hero and saves the smugglers. He is killed but this is not sad because he is redeemed and there is no more misery. He is celebrated for simplicity. He made a difference with small kindnesses. We won’t last but we can write or do the right thing in our time. The poem is not a solution but a meditation about perspective. The poet can’t command all time but only one small perspective. 

            I had only started editing my lecture notes when it was time to cook dinner. 

            I had a potato, my last two drumsticks and gravy while watching the first season finale of The Andy Griffith Show. 

            In this story Aunt Bee starts to think that visiting his father at the jail after school is a bad influence on Opie. He is picking up words related to criminality, he sees Otis drunk in a cell and Barney practices the quick draw with him and even leant him an old pair of handcuffs which he used to cuff another kid to a pole at school. Andy follows Bee’s advise and tells Opie he can’t come by the jail anymore. Opie becomes so bored over the next few days that he ends up kicking a can out of town and almost goes into the abandoned mine. He falls asleep in the back of a truck until after dark while everyone is looking for him. After he is found Bee thinks she was wrong and he can hang out with his father at the jail after school after all. 

            Otis is played by Hal Smith, who was also one of the most prolific voice actors in Hollywood. He was the voice of Owl in Winnie the Pooh and many other cartoon characters.

January 26, 1991: It took so long to read the news of the war I didn't have time for anything else

Thirty years ago today

            I got up to the job site at 9:00 on a Saturday and Ralph was already there. We went for lunch at O'Toole's. The six and a half hour job went quick and afterwards Ralph gave us a ride. But the other guys were being facetious and so he let them out at Finch and Leslie but took me all the way to the subway. I would be working on Sunday for a few hours as well. 

            I was broke.

            After dinner and reading the papers I called Nancy. She told me she would be seeing a midwife on Monday but wasn't sure if she wanted me to come. 

            My place was infested with cockroaches.

            I decided not to shave or shower. It took so long to read all the news about the war that I didn't have time for anything else. Even to look for work.

Zadie Smith

            On Sunday morning I worked out the chords for “Mélodie interdite" (Forbidden Melody) by Serge Gainsbourg but I still have to run through the song in French and English to make sure before uploading it to Christian’s Translations. I might have it all posted by Monday. 

            I read another couple of chapters of On Beauty by Zadie Smith. At the poetry reading Carl is the champion. He goes up to Zora and surprises her with a big kiss on the mouth. It’s the first time she's been kissed by a boy, even though she's a senior in college. I find this book is overly described and a too long for the amount of substance it contains. I keep coming back to Alice Munro saying she’s never read a novel that couldn't have made a better short story. I think it’s true as well in this case but of course novels make more money. 

            I had saltines and old cheddar for lunch. I ended up taking a two hour siesta but I don’t know why I slept that extra half an hour. It’s not as if I felt extra tired when I laid down. Because I got up so late, after posting my blog there was less time for a bike ride before sunset. If I’d risen at 15:30 as usual I could have gone all the way to Yonge Street and back but in this case I only rode to Bloor and Dovercourt, south to Queen and then home. 

            I got almost two thirds of On Beauty read before dinner. The family is spending Christmas in England and then get word that Carlene Kipps, the wife of Howard’s academic and philosophical enemy Monty Kipps has died and the funeral is being held there in Britain. Kiki had become friends with Carlene. We also learn that the Kipps family has found a note from Carlene that she wants to give one of her rare paintings that is worth half a million pounds to Kiki. Monty and his children think it’s absurd and throw the hand written note in the fireplace. At the funeral Howard is moved to tears by the choir singing Mozart and by the coffin. He thinks of death and gets up and leaves. he walks to his father's house to visit him for the first time in four years. 

            I cut the black off the surface of one of the pork burgers I’d made the night before and broke up the good meat inside. I had it on bread pizza with salsa, cheddar and piri piri sauce. I had it with a beer while watching Andy Griffith. In this story Jim Lindsey the great guitar player who made it big after joining Bobby Fleet’s rock and roll band returns to Mayberry with a hero’s welcome. Jim reveals that he outgrew Fleet's band and is now just sorting through his offers. But the finance company repossesses Jim’s convertible red Mercedes and Jim begins running tabs in all of Mayberry’s stores. Andy figures something is wrong and he calls Bobby Fleet. Bobby comes to Mayberry and tells Andy that Jim quit because he wouldn’t let him in as an equal partner in the band. He says he’d be happy to take Jim back as his guitarist. Andy goes and arrests Jim for not paying his bills. After he’s in jail Jim has to listen to the offer of a raise and he accepts.

        I got to just 112 pages left of On Beauty before bed.  After the funeral Howard goes to Monty’s house to look for his wife and kids who were going there for the wake. While looking for the bathroom upstairs he accidentially opens the bedroom door of Monty’s  uncommonly gorgeous 18 year old daughter Victoria who is also a student in Howard’s Art History class. She’s drunk and insists on Howard fucking her, which he does.

January 25, 1991: I talked with Donny about the war and noticed he had a brain he didn't care to use

Thirty years ago today 

            I didn't wake up until 6:41 and so I called Wayne to tell him I would be late. I punched in at 8:19. I worked with Jim, John and Donnie and we each got a $50 tip but not in hand because it was included in the credit card payment, so I didn't know when I would get my money. I got my cheque stub and saw that I'd only earned $218 so I didn't know how I was going to pay the rent and buy a Metropass. 

            Jim gave Donny and I a ride to the subway but stopped at a bar for a long time on the way. I talked with Donny about the war and noticed he had a brain that he didn't care to use. When I got home I didn't shave or shower and hadn't for two days. I had something to eat, worked on some projects and went to bed.

Sheldon Leonard

            On Saturday morning I finished memorizing “Mélodie interdite" (Forbidden Melody) by Serge Gainsbourg and started working out the chords.

            In the late morning I headed out to the supermarket. As I was leaving the building Benji was coming back in because he’d forgotten his mask when he went to order food at The Skyline. At No Frills the grapes were too soft so I bought two bags of oranges and a bag of grapefruits. I also got potatoes, peppercorns, a box of Earl Grey tea and a tin of dark roast coffee. 

            I had crackers with old cheddar for lunch. I read a couple more chapters of Zadie Smith’s On Beauty. It’s mostly about the mother Kiki trying to relate to her husband and her children. The father Howard has to deal with the fact that his academic arch enemy is coming to teach at his university. The family goes to an outdoor Mozart concert in Boston where Levi meets a young poet named Carl when Zora accidentally takes his Discman from under her seat, which is identical to hers. Kiki invites Carl to her and Howard’s anniversary party. The Discman and the fact that Levi quotes Tupac puts this novel in the mid 1990s. 

            From the afternoon to the evening I made it to almost halfway through the book. Carl shows up at the party but Howard turns him away. A famous poet named Clair, who is also a professor and a colleague of Howard, is a guest at the party. Under the influence of alcohol she flirts with Howard and it becomes obvious to Kiki that she is the one with whom Howard had the affair. Later Zora meets Carl at the pool and he reveals himself to be a spoken word poet. Zora is trying to get into Clair’s poetry class but her work is not good enough. Zora is however one of the top students at the university and she tells the dean that Clair is biased against her because of her tryst with her father. The dean makes Clair accept Zora in her class. The daughter of Howard’s academic and philosophical enemy Monty is an incredible beautiful girl named Victoria. She enrols in Howard’s class and flirts with him. 

            I mixed ground pork with thawed out frozen diced onions, garlic powder, chili paste, corn syrup, and barbecue sauce and made burgers. Because of the sugar however they got a little black on the outside. I had one in a sandwich with mustard and piri-piri sauce and a beer while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story a wanted criminal is in Mayberry. Not knowing how dangerous he is Barney writes him a ticket for littering. The state police arrive and he tries to escape but stumbles against Barney and they both fall together. They are so tangled up that it looks like barney has deliberately taken the escaped convict down. The crook swears he’ll get him for that. Barney is hailed as a hero but then the criminal escapes custody again and Barney is terrified. However he swallows his fear and goes out on the manhunt with Andy and the state police. While searching the old barn Andy notices some straw falling from the loft. He tells Barney that the barn is going to be the centre of communications and leaves him there alone but watches through a window from the outside. Andy knows the criminal is there and planning on trying to sneak up on Barney. Andy throws a rock through the window that hits a bucket behind Barney. Barney stands and nervously fires his revolver and the crook suddenly surrenders. 

            The producer of the Andy Griffith Show was Sheldon Leonard. He started out as an actor who often played heavies and gangsters. His voice was known on the Jack Benny radio program as a racetrack tout who always would say to Jack, “Psst! Hey bud! Come here!" and then he would give him absurd advice about whatever Jack was about to do as if he was giving a horserace tip. Later he produced The Danny Thomas Show, Gomer Pyle, Dick Van Dyke and I Spy. The characters of Sheldon and Leonard on the Big Bang Theory were named in honour of Sheldon Leonard. 

            I got up to about halfway through On Beauty by Zadie Smith. Zora is preparing to go to a poetry night at a club in Boston with Clair’s class and Levi just happens to be going as well because is friend Carl will be reading there. This book is apparently based on Howard’s End by E.M. Forster but I haven’t read it or even seen the film, so I don’t know what the similarities are other than there being a main character named Howard. I assume Howard is the protagonist in Forster’s book and the character studies aren’t spread out as much.

January 24, 1991: Nancy tied me up and whipped me. I untied myself but pretended that I hadn't

Thirty years ago today

            I got up around noon and only had time to go out and buy the papers and have breakfast before I had to leave for work. We worked for three hours at North York City Hall. Chris was there but he left, saying he'd quit because he was pissed off over his pay. I paid him back $5 that I owed him so he could get his car out of the parking lot. 

            Nancy was home when I got there. I had some soup and then I rubbed her back with Tiger Balm. She liked my new collages and was amazed at how quickly I'd made them. 

            She tied me up me up, whipped me, rubbed her pussy against my ass and then sucked me off until I came. She left me tied up while she cleaned the bathroom. I untied myself but pretended that I hadn't.

Joy Ellison

            On Friday morning I had about half of “Mozart avec nous” (Mozart is with Us) and more than half of “Mélodie interdite" (Forbidden Melody) memorized. I should have the latter nailed down on Saturday morning and then I’ll start working out the chords. 

            In the late morning I did my laundry. After putting my stiff in the dryer I went home and my neighbour Benji was standing outside our building. He said that they say it is mostly people of South Asian descent like him that are getting Covid 19. He thinks that his people tend to have a diet heavy in starch and low in protein that weakens their immune systems. 

             On the way back I was standing on the corner across the street from my building and noticed that ours was the only place around that had pigeons lined up on the roof. I wonder what the appeal is. 

             I had kettle chips with salsa and yogourt for lunch. 

             In the afternoon I didn’t take a bike ride because I'd ridden my bike back and forth to the laundromat three times already.

             I got notice that I’d scored six out of six on my first Brit Lit 2 quiz. I was surprised because some of the other answer choices seemed like they could be true as well. I wonder if those would have also registered as correct. 

             I read “The Mark on the Wall" by Virginia Woolf. It seems to be written in stream of consciousness with a mark on the wall being the jumping off point and point of return. While trying to figure out what the mark is she thinks about many other things, such as how the world is run by men. Finally she learns that what she’d thought might be a nail was a snail.

             I read Woolf’s essay on “Modern Fiction”. She is full of praise for James Joyce, who had already written Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and had just published parts of Ulysses in a magazine. She says the most important thing for a novelist is honesty in the sense of writing what they feel rather than what they think is expected of them and she declares that Russian novelists have the characteristics of saints in that they care selflessly about others. 

             I read the first 55 pages of On Beauty by Zadie Smith. This is actually the last book on the syllabus for Brit Lit 2 and it’s a modern novel. 

             Kiki and Howard are a mixed race couple with three teenage children, two of whom were born in England. They live in a suburb of Boston. Howard is white and English and Kiki is from Florida and descended from slaves. Her ancestor inherited the old house they live in from someone she worked for and it’s been passed down to her. Howard had a brief affair but Kiki decided not to leave him. The oldest boy Jerome went through a Christian phase and now he does nothing but write poetry. The youngest is into the Hip Hop lifestyle and though born in New England he has acquired a Brooklyn accent. Not much has come up about the middle child Zora yet. 

             I had two small potatoes, two chicken drumsticks and gravy while watching Andy Griffith.

             In this story Mayberry’s own Scrooge: Ben Weaver wants to foreclose on Lester Scobey’s house because he missed one mortgage payment. The truth is he wants to use the property to build a warehouse. It’s Andy’s job to foreclose but he tries to stall as long as he can to save Lester, his wife Helen and their young daughter Mary from having to move out. Andy raises the rent money but Ben says that the law says that if one payment is missed the whole price of the property must be paid, Which is $750. Andy organizes a rummage sale to try to raise the money. At one moment a Mayberry citizen is asking about the price of an odd and unrecognizable item. Andy says $3. The man asks, “What is it?” Andy says, “If I knew that I’d have to charge you $5.” “Well that’s a bargain then! I always wanted one of these!” But the full amount has not been raised and the stalling time is over. Andy must foreclose at noon the next day. He decides the only solution is to be meaner than Ben. Andy tells Lester and Helen they have to leave everything behind and get out. Ben suddenly becomes the good guy and opposes Andy’s meanness, telling the Scobey’s they can stay after all. Ben even gives Lester a job at his department store. 

             The previous and first time Ben appeared was the Christmas episode and he was being mean to an entirely different family but they were all played by the exact same actor, actress and child actress. Mary Scobey was played by Joy Ellison, who continued to act in adulthood. She is now a highly successful dialect coach and has worked with Isabella Rosellini, Catherine Zeta Jones, Antonio Banderas, and Brad Pitt. 

             I hadn’t had dessert and coffee yet by the time this story ended so I watched another over yogourt and apple sauce with cinnamon. 

             In this story Barney is suspicious of a new farmer named Sam, who never talks with anybody. When Sam has ordered a large amount of medical supplies Barney thinks he’s got a criminal partner with a bullet wound holed up in his farmhouse. One night Andy gets a call from Sam and heads up to the farm. Barney thinks Andy is in danger and organizes a posse. Andy finds that Sam’s wife is about to give birth and the doctor is out of town. Andy says he’s delivered lots of babies and he sets to work to prepare for the delivery. When Barney bursts in with his gun he realizes his mistake but he also reminds Andy that he’s never delivered a baby before. Andy tells Barney not to tell Sam because he needs him to be calm. While Barney and Sam talk about their military service, Barney having worked in a military office on Staten Island during WWII and Sam having been to Korea, Andy delivers the baby. Sam names it Andy. The Country Boys with Andy Griffith and Clarence White appear at the end playing “She’ll Be Comin Round the Mountain” to celebrate the new arrival. 

            Speaking of dialect coaching, William Schallert played Sam and spoke a southern US accent that wasn’t the typical drawl that actors tend to put on. It sounded like it came from a specific area, although I don’t know which.

January 23, 1991: I made soup from chicken gizzards, hearts, kidneys, gravy, hot pepper and brewers yeast

Thirty years ago today

            Before going to bed I made a second collage out of my Berber Queen piece and it turned out totally different. I called it "Venus Aligns with Saturn." 

            It was another day with no work. 

            I was going to buy a different kind of steak but I was tired of it because it all tasted the same.

            I took "Venus Aligns with Saturn" downtown to copy and also had another Christmas photo doubled in size. I took the collage home and worked on it a little more. Then I made another collage called "Venus Aligns with Mars." 

            I picked up some imported beer. 

            I made chicken soup out of gizzards, hearts, kidneys, canned chicken gravy, a fresh hot pepper and some brewers yeast. 

            I learned I'd be working the next day at 15:00 but I didn't know where.

Edris March

            On Thursday morning I finished posting my translation “Exercise en forme de Z” by Serge Gainsbourg. The next of his songs I’ll be working on is “Mélodie interdit" (Forbidden Melody). 

            I was feeling groggy all through song practice and my back was bothering me. 

            In the late morning I went to Freshco as usual for a Thursday. The red grapes were cheap and some of them were firm enough to buy. I also bought raspberries, pork ribs, a beef sirloin tip roast, ground pork, cheese curds, five year old cheddar, cheap old cheddar, Greek yogourt, apple sauce, spoon size shredded wheat, frozen fries, and hot salsa.

            I was looking for scotch bonnet sauce in the international section but found piri piri. Later I ran across the scotch bonnet sauce elsewhere and decided to buy both to taste which is hotter. According to the Scoville scale, scotch bonnet is hotter but only by 50,000 Scovilles. Scotch bonnet is 350,000 Scovilles but there are plenty of hotter peppers and the hottest as of 2013, at 2,200,000 Scovilles is the Carolina Reaper. There are sauces containing the reaper but they don’t seem to be sold at No Frills or Freshco. 

            I had asked Carson my TA to tell me the exact selections from On the Origin of Species and Adam Bede that I need to read, since I wasn’t going to buy the course package in which they are presented. He got back to me in the afternoon and told me what I need. I made a separate file of the Darwin and Eliot texts. But for the Eliot I found that the PDF of Adam Bede I had was not editable and so I found an E-Book version so I could copy and paste chapter 17 into a separate document. 

            I finished reading Oscar Wilde’s "The Decay of Lying." It's another essay of his in the form of a dialogue. He says that art does not imitate life but rather life imitates art. He means that the way we look at nature is entirely shaped by how nature is presented in art. All art that tries to imitate nature rather than recreate and improve on it is boring and bad art. Art to be great art must exaggerate and lie. 

            I started reading the short story “The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster. It's a science fiction story published in 1909 and it's especially interesting because there is instantaneous video communication like we’ve had only for the last twenty five years through the internet. No one ever has to leave their room to work and all rooms everywhere in the world are the same. Everything is controlled by The Machine. All of humanity lives beneath the Earth. All food is artificial because there are no plants left on Earth besides some grass and ferns and the air above is unbreatheable. People rarely travel unless they are assigned a new room to live in. Vashti’s son Kuna lives on the other side of the world and he wants her to come to visit him for some reason he refuses to discuss through the Machine, which is unusual. It is a two hour trip by airship and so Vashti goes. It is not a pleasant journey because she gets touched by sunlight and by another person. When she arrives he tells her that the Machine has threatened him with homelessness, which is the ultimate punishment. He has done the unthinkable and ventured to the surface. He tells her the story of how he had to practice at developing his muscles in order to make the climb and how he went up the ladder. That’s as far as I got so far. 

            I had a potato, two chicken drumsticks and gravy while watching Andy Griffith. 

            In this story a farm girl named Frankie is in Ellie’s drugstore and she is admiring the makeup, the nail polish and the perfume but she doesn’t want to buy any because her father Flint wouldn't like it. Frankie leaves but Ellie wants to do something for Frankie by giving her some free samples, since she obviously is attracted to that sort of thing. Andy tells her to mind her own business but she convinces him to drive her to the farm where Frankie is hard at work sawing a log. This can’t be a poor farm since there are several hired hands in employment there. Ellie gives Frankie the makeup but Flint intervenes, tells them she doesn’t need it and asks them to leave. Later when Barney brags that he would have been tougher with Flint Ellie convinces him to go and get Frankie for her and bring her to her house in town. Barney goes but first of all Flint is three times bigger than Barney and Barney backs down from any direct confrontation. Instead Barney sneaks around the farm, evading Flint, until he finds Frankie and places her under custody. The result a few hours later is that Frankie, now Francis, is so attractive now she is unrecognizable. They take her back to the farm to show Flint. He doesn’t recognize her at first and when he does he acknowledges that she is pretty but tells her to get out of those things and get to work. Andy argues that Frankie is only a fair farmhand but as a beautiful woman she could attract a strong and hard working son in law. He demonstrates by introducing her and her new look to the farm hands and they all stop working to gather round her. This seems like a pretty fucked up conclusion. Frankie becomes more useful to her father by being attractive but she is still being defined by what use she can be to her father when she is clearly at least well into her twenties. 

            Francis was played by Edris March. She seemed like she had some acting experience but this was her first and last appearance on television as she apparently gave up acting after this episode and became a dance instructor and business owner. I’d have to say that she actually looked better without the makeup that she wore later and even when she was shown as supposedly not wearing cosmetics I think they used them to make her look less attractive. The main thing however was that beforehand her hair or wig was tangled and she was wearing unflattering clothing. 

            I finished reading “The Machine Stops”. On one level it was depressing because it presented people that never leave their homes and communicate only electronically just like the pandemic is forcing us to do now. But it was definitely a well written and well imagined story. The Machine that everyone has become dependent upon and which most people even worship begins to run down until finally the people run out of air and light and die horribly together in the unused tunnels between their rooms.