Red Wheelbarrow

            On Thursday morning I finished working out the chords for “Ballade Comestible” (Edible Ballad) by Serge Gainsbourg. I ran through the song in French and English and then uploaded it to Christian’s Translations to start editing it for blog publication. 

            I had time to eat a few grapes and drink a glass of orange juice before leaving for class. 

            On Maple Grove two tree limbs had been torn from their tree and fallen onto a white car because of the strong wind and rainstorm last night. There was “Caution” tape around the car. 

            When I got to University College, I checked with the office to see if they had a lost and found. She said it's on McCaul and gave me the number. 

            Sam gave the first presentation and it was on Geomodernisms. The global horizons of modernism. He talked about how important distance has been to modernist writers. The local and global affect each other. Virginia Woolf’s The Narrow Bridge of Art has a scary prediction. We are locally alienated while connected to the globe. The metropolitan centre is shaped by the global. The authors of the article redefine race, modernism, and modernity. Acknowledging counter-histories as opposed to charged and imperialism-skewed histories that erase global perspectives. Race has become seen as kinship ideology. But the authors challenge it to be broader including nationalism and other factors. Maybe race is differently defined in other places. Intersectional definition. The authors shrink modernism so it is less overarching. Not a circle expanding from Europe but a network, a web, a cross pollination. Modernity is also a web. Stop thinking the west is the centre. In conclusion, he asks, “Is local alienation bad?” 

            I say local alienation compels people to think globally so here is one thing to consider: No war has ever been started by someone who thinks locally. Wars are always expansions from the local. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine has happened because Russia is thinking globally. Russia is responding to the Ukraine’s global thinking of wanting to join NATO. But thinking globally is literally a fantasy. We only really care about what we can potentially control. So, Russia and Ukraine do not exist because they are out of our controllable experience. We have invented them because they keep us from dealing with each of our own personal fears and insecurities. 

            Apala says that local alienation is more pronounced for displaced people. 

            Melanie gave the second presentation. Geomodernism is a conjunction of geography and modernism.

            Apala likes the term “placeness”. 

            We spent the last fifteen minutes talking about the poems by William Carlos Williams and Wal-lace Stevens referenced at the beginning of the Geomodernisms essay. 

             I observed that Williams was a very local poet and that both of these poems are also very local, but also hint at the global as depending upon them: 

Anecdote of the Jar by Wallace Stevens 

I placed a jar in Tennessee, 

And round it was, upon a hill. 

It made the slovenly wilderness 

Surround that hill. 

The wilderness rose up to it, 

And sprawled around, no longer wild. 

The jar was round upon the ground

And tall and of a port in air. 

It took dominion everywhere. 

The jar was gray and bare. 

It did not give of bird or bush, 

Like nothing else in Tennessee. 

XXII by William Carlos Williams 

so much depends

upon 

a red wheel 

barrow 

glazed with rain 

water 

beside the white 

chickens. 

            Apala said our last two classes would be revision sessions. I asked if that was to prepare for the exam and Apala said there is no exam. I may be the only student that thought we would have an exam, so that’s a little embarrassing, but Yay! I don’t think I could have handled an exam for this course. All of the critical essays have blended into one juggernaut in my memory and so I wouldn’t be able to distinguish Jameson from anybody else to answer any specific questions about their ideas. 

            After class, I headed home and stopped off at Freshco. I bought eight bags of grapes, some red, and most green; a bunch of scallions; ten avocados; several tomatoes; two pints of strawberries; two bags of oranges; and two bottles of Garden Cocktail. 

            My cashier Katrina was the first cashier I’ve seen not wearing a mask. After she passed me my change I told her, “It’s good to see your face after two years.” She said, “I know, right?” 

            I called the U of T Lost and Found office but the message said to just go to the office, so I could have done that today on the way home from class. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos before lunch.

            I worked on editing my lecture notes. 

            I weighed 86.5 kilos at 19:30. 

            I finished editing my lecture notes, posted by Global Modernisms Discussion comment, and got caught up with my journal at 19:45. 

            I went over to the old computer to copy some photos, but I found that Windows 10 had decided when I wasn’t looking to turn my desktop background into a slide show of all my porn photos. On top of that, they were distorted because it was set on “stretch.” I corrected it back to my regular picture and by then it was time to eat.

            For dinner I had a salad of avocados, tomatoes, cucumber, a scallion, a black jalapeno, and lemon juice, with a glass of Garden Cocktail. I ate while watching an episode of Astro Boy. 

            This story begins with a TV news story about the Science Institute with Astro Boy as the main feature. It has the first explanation of his rocket boots. They have sliding panels that open up when he wants to apply his rocket function. Then Astro Boy demonstrates his “seven magic powers.” 1. He has the strength of 100,000 horses; 2. Searchlight eyes; 3. Speaks sixty languages; 4. Computer brain; 5. He can tell if someone is good or bad just by looking at them (but he’s been fooled lots of times); 6. The ability to jet through space; 7. Built in secret weapons with a ray gun that emerges and shoots from each buttock. They didn’t mention that he has x-ray eyes as well. Dr. Elefun says that Astro Boy’s greatest wish is for someone to forget that he’s a robot and think of him as a real boy. Because he does everything a thousand times better than a real boy, they won’t play with him. 

            We see Astro Boy staring sadly out to sea when he sees a bottle floating. He retrieves it and there is a message inside that just says, “Help! Help! Help!” He finds hundreds of other bottles, all with messages. One has the picture of the tentacle of a sea serpent. Dr. Elefun tells him they must have come from Sea Serpent Island, which is full of marmalade jellyfish and slimy sea serpents. 

            Astro Boy thinks that whoever is sending the bottles might be held prisoner by sea serpents, so he decides to go there. After a long journey, he finds what looks like the island but it sinks. Then a sea serpent extends itself from the ocean. Astro Boy tries to get away but he is swallowed and falls inside the sea serpent until he lands among a group of people that are also in the serpent’s belly. One man says he’s been there since he was a boy. Then three guys with weapons arrive wearing hoods and robes that make them look like they’re in the Ku Klux Klan. Their foreman, Spookum tells them they have to work harder now. 

            They are sent to work in the mine. For some unknown reason, Astro Boy obeys and also goes to work. He asks an old man why they don’t have machines do the work. The old man explains that it’s because the salt air rusts machines. The old man tells Astro Boy that he was king of Pong Ping Island and one day he went fishing with his daughter when they were caught by the sea serpent. He says they are mining for asteroid garnet dust. The boss of the operation is Plushy Pasha who is using the dust to build a secret weapon. 

            Then Astro Boy feels dizzy and collapses. He wakes up in the hospital where a nurse calls him a “little boy.” She is Princess Papaya Petal the daughter of the King of Pong Ping but in this prison, she is the nurse in charge of dumping empty bottles into the ocean. She secretly puts messages in them so someone will read them and come to the rescue. Astro Boy is too weak to rescue them right now but he has a plan. 

            According to Astro Boy’s plan, Papaya Blossom begins sneaking a fellow prisoner in a large empty bottle at the bottom of the cart full of empty bottles that she pushes on each trip to dump them through the portal to the sea. The prisoners float to the surface and to freedom. After she aids all the prisoners to escape in the bottles, Astro Boy disguises himself as a nurse and puts the king and the princess in bottles. Then Astro Boy confronts the hooded guards and destroys the sea serpents that seem to be mechanical appendages of the underwater facility. 

            The king and the princess make it back to Pong Ping and Astro Boy washes up unconscious on the beach. Papaya Blossom tries to nurse him back to health. He becomes conscious but too weak to get up. The king tells Astro Boy that he knows he’s a robot but Papaya Blossom thinks he’s a real boy. Astro Boy explains that he’s rusted and so Dr. Elefun must be contacted. The king takes him back to the Science Institute where after a year he is better again. Astro Boy hears the king tell Elefun that Papaya Blossom would be disappointed if she learned that Astro Boy is not a real boy so he lets her believe he is dead.