Gary Conway

            On Thursday morning I dreamed that I was doing a photo shoot outdoors in a city with a couple that were friends of mine. He had an SUV. We finished the job and we felt a sense of accomplishment since there was still some afternoon sun left to enjoy. I suggested we go to the water to watch the sunset and so we did. I think we were looking out over a cliff into the lake. It seemed like we were in Toronto and the lake seemed to be Lake Ontario but I don’t know where one could look over a cliff here and see the sunset on the water since one would normally face south at the water. Maybe from the Leslie Spit one could look west on the lake but there’s no cliff. 

            I worked out the chords for the first verse of “C’est le Bebop” by Boris Vian. 

            I ran through singing and playing “Dispatch box” by Serge Gainsbourg and then adjusted my translation. Then I sang and played my English adaptation before uploading it to my Christian’s Translations blog where I began editing it for publication. I might have it posted tomorrow. 

            I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions. 

            I weighed 87.5 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I rode up to Brock and Dundas to the Brockton Cyclery to find out if they had metal pedals similar to the ones on my bike because the right one is broken. The guy said they don’t make them anymore and I’d have to find them second hand somewhere. I rode up to The Bike Depot at Bloor and Brock and found Neil very helpful. He went down in the basement and found a used set of metal pedals and said he’d sell me them for $10 cash. But after he removed my old pedals he found that they are 9/16 and not 1/2 as the guy at Metro Cycle told me. When I mentioned Metro he smirked. He showed me a couple of metal 9/16 pedals but they all had studs on them and I thought they would damage the bottoms of my shoes. Then he showed me a vintage style Japanese set called MKS Touring Silver Pedal that looked more like mine but without the rubber treads. I went with those and it cost me about $75 after tax. He also put some oil on my chain. Since he’d gone the extra kilometer for me I asked if I could give him something for his labour. He said that if I buy pedals from them installation is free but they do have a pizza jar and so I put $5 into it. I rode home and the new pedals felt good. 

            I had time to read a little more of Pearl before lunch. The speaker’s dead daughter is now a Bride of Christ. In most Christian theology the bride of Christ is the church and sometimes the New Jerusalem. But in the 12th Century Bernard of Clairvaux one of the founders of the Knights Templar wrote about souls being the brides of Christ. Pearl was written in the 14th Century. 

            I weighed 87.4 kilos before lunch. 

            We had a little snow storm in the afternoon and so I didn’t take a long bike ride but I did ride to Freshco. I wore my Avalanche boots for the first time since I bought then in early December. The short ride was treacherous and I walked over some of the ice rather than risking breaking my neck. I hope things clear up before I have to ride to class on Friday. I bought five bags of green grapes, two packs of blackberries, some bananas, some chopped beef, soymilk, limeade, orange juice, and salsa. 

            I weighed 86.6 kilos at 17:15. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:45. 

            I finished reading Pearl and then started reading the essay “The Self Mourning Reflections on Pearl” by David Aers. A lot of his analysis of the poem is based on his assumption that the speaker is male, but I don’t think that is obvious. For instance he says that calling one’s child “my jewel” comes from a paternal urge to possess. It would be just as likely that a mother would refer to their child as “my jewel”. 

            I had a potato with gravy and a chicken breast while watching the penultimate episode of season 1 of Burke’s Law. 

            In a historic Spanish community in California an annual festival is taking place. A tour guide named Carlos is leading tourists through a museum with wax figures of important personalities of the community’s past. He says California was born of three powerful forces: the conquistador, the padre and the don. But when he points to what is supposed to be a wax figure of a don, there is instead the dead body of Don Pablo that has been impaled with a sword. The murder weapon was handed down from one of the kings of Spain. The last person to see Don Pablo alive was Serena Diablo a bull fighter. Don Pablo wouldn’t let her fight. There are no prints on the sword. He was dead fifteen minutes before discovery. His mother is Dona Ynez Ortega. His business partner was Cyrus Smuts. He had a long time feud with Antonio Cardoza. Tim and Les talk with Cardoza who claims that his family was the first Spanish family in California in 1770. He says that this is his land by right. Don Pablo won the land from Cardoza’s ancestor in a card game. Burke goes to see Smuts at his office. His secretary gives Burke golf shoes in case he wants to play. Smuts and Don Pablo were going to tear down the plaza and put up a high rise. Les goes to see Dona Ortega and finds her dressed in traditional mourning clothes. She says Don Pablo was going to tear down the plaza and for that he deserved to die. After Smuts pays off Don Pablo’s mother ownership of the whole plaza goes to him. Tim and Les go to the library but there are no reference books on early California. It turns out that’s because Burke has already taken them out. Burke goes to the old mission where Brother Flaherty tells him about all the secret passageways under the plaza. Flaherty shows him the books in which the old land grants and birth records were recorded. He tells him Carlos is a direct descendant of the Spanish king but illegitimately. Also Dona Ortega only had one son who died at the age of three. Don Pablo wasn’t her son. Tim and Les go to see her and she’s dressed in modern clothes and playing jazz records. Don Pablo hired her to be his mother. Burke goes back to the museum and finds secret passageways. Then he finds Carlos sitting on a throne. Burke knows that Carlos is the killer. He only needed to slip away from his tour group for a few minutes through a secret passageway to kill Don Pablo. They have a sword fight before Burke punches him out. 

            Tim was played by Gary Conway, who before the age of 16 was awarded three scholarships in the top art schools in the US. He became a renowned landscape and portrait painter, an architect, and a concert violinist. He posed for physique magazines in the 50s and 60s. He co-starred in I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, and How to Make a Monster. He and his wife are now owners of Carmody McKnight Estate Wines. He was the star of the science fiction series The Land of the Giants from 1968 to 1970. He was the centerfold of Playgirl Magazine in August 1973.