Jeff Donnell

            At about 3:00 on Monday I woke up and thought I smelled bedbugs. I got up to pee and when I came back I turned on the light. There was a streak of blood on my under-sheet on a spot where I'd been lying. I found a couple of small bedbugs on the door and then saw one crawling on the bed. All in all I think I saw about five and they looked fairly healthy so I've got to call the landlord again. But I've also got to remind him to have the other apartments inspected. I haven't been anyplace where I could have brought home bedbugs, I haven't brought anything in my apartment that could have contained bedbugs and no one has visited me in three years. I've noticed the old exit door has started to show more of the cracks in the plaster that I'd covered it with between the door and the frame. I think small bedbugs might be getting through from behind there and maybe the top of the inside of the door frame has a path for them leading above. Or maybe they are getting in through the wiring. All I know is that I've seen bedbugs periodically since last June but every time the pest control guy comes he says he can't find any bedbugs living in my place. So obviously they are getting in from another apartment. 

            This morning was the tenth day of my cold. It seems to be receding but not enough to say it's over. The worst is definitely behind me though. 

            I memorized the final verse of “Jet Society” by Serge Gainsbourg. There are still a few lines of another chorus that are different from the first one, so I might have that nailed down tomorrow. I also adjusted my translation a bit more. 

            After song practice I was putting my guitar away and killed another bedbug on the upper door frame. 

            I weighed 85.4 kilos before breakfast. 

            At 9:45 I logged onto Zoom for the Global Modernisms lecture and presentations. There were just two presentations today.

            My profile picture didn't show up so it looks like I need to sign in to Zoom before a meeting for it to be there. 

            Bo Han presented on Modernist studies. Modernism is not just about imperialism. Jameson suggests imperialism helped shape modernism. Imperialist powers were unaware of the full cultural life in the colonies. We are still under imperialism. I asked if he thinks even independent countries are still under imperialist rule. He thinks they are. 

            Elmira presented next on Modernism and the Politics of Culture by Sara Blair. Blair teaches at the University of Michigan. She is interested in politics and classicism. She wrote a book on Henry James. She uses photography in her work. She writes of Modernism's indefinability. Most thought of Modernism in political terms. We can't have one definition. Modernists were of every political stripe. Different groups used Modernism to oppose societal standards. Culture is part of modernism. Art is separate from politics.  

            Apala's slides have been uploaded. The presentations may also be uploaded, if it's okay with the presenters. 

            We had fifteen minutes left and Apala covered the Matthews and Boehmer essay. 

            She says reading our Discussion board topics make her think some of us are confused.

            Modernism remains transatlantic. Of the axial relation we take it for granted that modernism began in the big European and North American cities. Modernism is not one dimensional. The colonial context could have informed mainstream modernism. Do not think that Modernist art outside of Anglo-Europe is derivative. It could have been a two way dialogue. There are different modernisms responding to a singular modernity. This is more about spacial expansion while Blair is focused on the vertical. It is all self reflexive. Modernism is the first globalized literature but Victorians may disagree. Global Modernisms lead us into postcolonial literature. 

            Thinking about the presentation of the primitive in Heart of Darkness, I wonder if there is a Cultural sublime. 

            The other challenges our modes of knowledge. She shows the Picasso painting “Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.” 

            I called the landlord to ask him to call pest control to treat my place. I also asked him to have the other units inspected but he says he can't do that during covid because tenants might not want to have people coming into their apartments. I told him it was going to cost him if the whole building gets infested. He didn't seem to care and he couldn't believe that if I'm seeing bedbugs they aren't living entirely in my place. 

            I mixed a quick batch of plaster and covered some of the cracks in the old exit door. 

            I weighed 84.9 kilos before lunch.

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride to Ossington and Bloor. There has been some melting and so it wasn't as slippery. I didn't even have to get off my bike to get between the cars and the streetcar tracks on Ossington. There was room now to kind of scoot past them. 

            I stopped at Freshco where I bought eight bags of cherries, a pint of strawberries, a half-pint of raspberries, five year old cheddar, skyr, canned peaches, canned fruit punch, a jug of orange juice, and a jar of hot salsa. 

            I weighed 85 kilos at 17:15. 

            I made my Discussion Board post: 

            Bo's presentation on Jameson says imperialism helped shape modernism, that imperialist powers were unaware of the full cultural and artistic life in the colonies. We are still under imperialism.

            Elmira's presentation on Modernism and the Politics of Culture by Sara Blair. Modernism can't be specifically defined and it had contributors from a wide range of political viewpoints. The commonality perhaps being anti-bourgeois. 

            On the Matthews and Boehmer essay. European and North American Modernism may not have only influenced the Modernist art of the colonies. They may have influenced each other. The Other challenges our understanding of the world. 

            My takeaways: 

            On Bo's presentation I don't entirely agree that we are still under imperialist rule. Perhaps symbolically and subconsciously that is true. 

            On Emira's presentation, it seems to me that Modernism is more intertwined with culture than with politics. 

            Thinking about the idea of the Other, and remembering how it is presented as the primitive in Heart of Darkness, I wonder if there is a cultural sublime. We tend to think of the sublime as an experience that results from a terrifying encounter with nature that confronts and elevates the self. But Heart of Darkness presents the primitive in group-form less as people but more as a force of nature. It seems to evoke a similar feeling of the sublime, especially in the appearance of the magnificent African woman who emerges to mourn for Kurtz. 

            I was caught up on my lecture notes and journal before 19:45. 

            I finished reading the Introduction to Heart of Darkness from the Norton Critical Edition. It pushes back a bit at Achebe's claim that the novel is bloody racist. 

            I read some of “Picasso, Africa and the Schemata of Difference” by Gikandi. There is a historical relationship between Picasso's home Spanish state of Andalusia and Africa. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken leg while watching an episode of The Addams Family.

            In this story Morticia needs a house to decorate from scratch as her contribution to Lady Bird Johnson's National Beautification Program. Meanwhile Gomez decides to buy a $1 million insurance policy from his new neighbour Joe Digby as a good neighbour gesture. When Morticia learns that Joe's wife Eleanor is looking for a decorator, Morticia volunteers. Eleanor constantly faints because of the things she sees in the Addams house. She clearly does not want Morticia to decorate her house. But when Morticia tells Fester to deliver their stuffed vulture to the Digbys as the first decorative object, Fester decides he wants it for himself so instead he gives Eleanor a Sheraton sideboard, which everyone in the Addams family sees as a piece of junk. But a Sheraton sideboard is a rare antique and Eleanor is thrilled. She tells Morticia she can do what she wants with her house while she and Joe are on vacation. But Morticia floods the basement to make a pool, turns the garden into a desert, and generally makes the Digby house look like the Addams house. Finally the Digbys find the only place where Gomez has no businesses and say they are going there. 

            Eleanor was played by Jeff Donnell, who was born in Maine and studied at the Yale School of drama. She was discovered while acting in a local play and immediately went to Hollywood. She co-starred in “Doughboys in Ireland”. She played George's wife Alice on The George Gobel Show.” She played Gidget's mother in the Gidget movies. For the last nine years of her life she played housekeeper Jenna Fields on General Hospital.