I memorized the fourth verse of “Mon Légionnaire” by Raymond Asso and made some adjustments to my translation. There are two verses left to nail down.
I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the first of two sessions.
I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast.
I hand wrote three stream of consciousness pages on “The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl” by David Aers and on the Medieval poem Pearl. I transcribed them to a document and started writing a critical summary. Here’s what I have so far:
David Aers in his essay “The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl” claims that gender of the mourning parent in the poem Pearl makes him more possessive. I argue that the parents and even the child’s genders are secondary to the main point that mourning comes from a sense of possession. How the dreaming parent feels about their dead child reappearing before them would not be any different for a parent of any gender mourning a child of any gender. Possessiveness of our children comes from a sense that they are a crucial part of who we are. When our child dies we feel a sense of loss for the part of ourselves that existed because of that person.
Aers frequently states that the speaker in Pearl is responding to a woman. The child was a toddler when she died but now she is in heaven as a young woman and a bride of Christ. It is claimed that she has earned this station by being spotless but if the child was already enough of a perfect soul to be made into a bride of Christ then why does the child need an age upgrade? Why is older better in Heaven? Aers says that the father referring to his child as “my jewel” is an example of male possessiveness. What mother would not also call their child “my” followed by names of food items, animals, royal titles and valued objects like jewels or gems? “My jewel” is not specific to the gender of which parent that would say it. A mother could see her child as her jewel and herself as the jeweller who made it. There is nothing gender specific about possessiveness. It is natural to mourn and mourning may not happen with out a sense of possession.
The mourning of the child in the poem may also simply be a metaphor for the child growing up and leaving home. Becoming an adult and leaving home is the death of childhood. When a female child left home in Medieval times it would have been to marry. To become a bride. This poem may not actually be about death at all. The same sort of mourning could take place although not as intense. The speaker may be imagining in a dream that his daughter has left home to marry. Using that metaphor as a way of dealing with the mourning process. The mourning process is about feeling a part of oneself amputates. Death is permanent. A child gone is lost forever. But if we imagine a rebirth, a continuation it appeases the sadness and gives solace.
I weighed 87.5 kilos before lunch. I had red pepper hummus with a mini naan, the last of my potato chips and a glass of limeade.
I took a siesta and dreamed I was on a bus with my ten year old daughter. Donald Trump was also on the bus and said he’d arrange for a plane to pick us up. The fat plane landed on the water and at that point the bus seemed to be a boat as well. On the plane which was also like a bus I decided that I could get home quicker by taking my bike and asked to get off at the next stop. I got off without my daughter and started worrying if she was going to get home all right. I also realized that I’d left my bike at the previous stop. I asked a dark haired guy with glasses how far it was to Toronto and he said it was about 7,000 miles. Then he added that they are required to say that now. I thought that I’d made a very big mistake to get off the plane and was relieved when I woke up to find it was only a dream.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. As I was unlocking my building I saw my next roof neighbour Taro doing the same. I noticed had had with him a plastic container of kitty litter and remembered that his cat died a few years ago. Without my asking he told me that he has a new cat. He said it’s a big orange one and held his hands apart to the length of a mid-sized dog. I assume his hands were exaggerating. He said I’d probably be seeing it in the summer. I told him I was glad he’d found a new friend. I think I had a dream later about his cat eating the rats that might be living under our deck.
I weighed 87.3 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:30.
I worked on my Critical Summary:
David Aers in his essay “The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl” writes that death is a “challenge to human identity, the disclosure of an utter powerlessness framing our will to control others”. He says, “we mourn, inevitably, for our selves”. These are good points and there is evidence in the poem Pearl to validate them.
Aers claims that gender of the mourning parent in the poem Pearl makes him more possessive. I argue that the parent’s and even the child’s gender is secondary to the main point that mourning comes from a sense of possession. The dreaming parent’s reaction to their dead child appearing alive before them could easily be that of a mother. Possessiveness of our children comes from a sense that they are a crucial part of who we are. When our child dies we feel a sense of loss for the part of ourselves that existed because of that person.
Aers frequently states that the speaker in Pearl is responding to a woman. The child was a toddler when she died. “You lived not two years in our land” (489-490). But now she is in heaven as a young woman and a bride of Christ. It is claimed that she has earned this station by being spotless but if the child was already enough of a perfect soul to be made into a bride of Christ then why does the child need an age upgrade? Why would age be relevant in Heaven?
Aers says that the father referring to his child as “my jewel” is an example of male possessiveness. But mothers also and perhaps more frequently refer to their children and address them with pet names that begin with the possessive pronoun “my” and are followed by the names of food items, animals, royal titles and valued objects like jewels or gems. A parent of any gender could address their child as “my jewel”. A mother could see her child as her jewel and herself as the jeweller who made it. There is also nothing gender specific about possessiveness. It is natural to mourn and mourning may not be possible without a sense of possession.
The mourning parent’s imagining of their child becoming a bride of Christ in the afterlife may simply be a way of making sense of their loss. The death of a child always feels inappropriate and unnatural and so the fantasy of the child’s death being a form of growing up and leaving home is a way to normalize the occurrence. Becoming an adult and exiting the care of one’s parents is the death of childhood and of parenthood. When a female child left home in Medieval times it would have been usually to become a bride. The dreaming speaker is facilitating the mourning process by imagining that their child has left home to marry. The mourning process is an attempt to come to terms with the feeling that a part of oneself has been amputated. Death is permanent and a child that is lost to it is gone forever. But the speaker’s imagining of a City of God where continuation of life is possible appeases the sadness and gives solace to the mourning parent.
I sautéed three onions and five cloves of garlic. I added crushed chili peppers, chicken drippings, two cans of black beans, half a jar of Basilica sauce, and half a jar of salsa. I had a bowl with my last three mini naan and the last of my limeade while watching season 2, episode 5 of Burke’s Law.
A woman named Phoebe has been hired to jump out of a cake at a private club while she thought that she’d been booked for a theatre engagement. As she is climbing into the cake the waiter asks what she is doing later. She answers, “Committing suicide!” But after being wheeled into the dining room and jumping out of the cake she sees that all four men that she is supposed to entertain are sitting face forward around the table and dead. As usual Burke’s team arrives and then Burke. He assumes the brandy bottle on the table was poisoned. The waiter says he did not bring it. The men knew each other from playing golf at the club and they would get together once a week. This was the first anniversary of their weekly party. The waiter says he set up the room at 18:00 and when he checked the room at 19:00 before letting them in, the bottle was there. Phoebe is interviewed and comes up clean but now she says she is their responsibility and needs a police escort home, so Burke sends Tim. Butterfield the club historian approaches Burke. He says Connie Hansen, one of the men’s wives is in the hospital as a result of a domestic dispute. Burke goes to see Connie. He observes that she is not broken up but she tells him to look at her x-rays. Her husband liked to knock her downstairs to win arguments and so she has a permanent room at the hospital with special rates. She admits she had a motive for killing her husband but asks why she would kill the other three. She says if she’d wanted to kill her husband she wouldn’t have poisoned him but rather fed him to the garbage disposal. Meanwhile Tim is driving Phoebe home and it turns out she lives a long distance out in the suburbs. They finally arrive but she suddenly realizes she didn’t bring her key. She can’t wake her parents while wearing the skimpy costume because her parents thought she’d gone for her cello lesson. She repeats that she’s his responsibility and now she’s hungry and so he takes her someplace. He has to stay up all night going from one all night place to another because Phoebe refuses to go home. The next day Burke visits Gloria Cooke. She says widows who hate their husbands don’t wear black. She admits she had a motive since she stood to gain $3 million, which would be almost $30 million today. She says she was her husband’s only enemy. She says she heard that Butterfield has been circulating a petition at the club. George at the lab says there was enough strychnine in the brandy to kill a small town. They catch Butterfield spying on the station and so they bring him in for a talk. Burke asks him about his petition. He says he was trying to get the four men expelled from the club because they weren’t the Hilldale type. Burke has Tim follow Butterfield. Burke tells Phoebe he’ll drive her home in his Rolls and tell her parents she was working with him on an under cover assignment. She’s satisfied with that. Tim follows Butterfield to a TV studio where Les arrives to interview Felice de Marco who has a cooking/exercise show. She says her husband had bad taste and she would just as soon have a richer one. Butterfield is in love with her. Burke goes to see Miranda Forsythe the fourth wife. He finds her charming a cobra. She says she will get him some sugar for Burke’s police horse. She’s appalled when he tells her that the police use cars now and put the poor horses out of a job. Her home is a menagerie of exotic pets. Her husband didn’t like her animals. Butterfield says now that Felice is free he plans to propose. Burke concludes that the killer only wanted to kill one person and the others were just camouflage. Burke sets up the team in the club room at the Hilldale and calls each suspect to ask them to come there. Then he turns out the lights. Three come and he lets them all go. Gloria comes to the room and immediately walks in to switch on the lamp. Burke says he’s arresting her for quadruple murder because she didn’t try to turn on the wall switch like the others did. She’s the only one who knew it didn’t work because she was there last night. She says she killed her husband because he bored her to death.
Miranda was played by June Havoc, who was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and was the sister of Gypsy Rose Lee. Her mother Rose Hovick put her on the vaudeville stage when she was 2 years old. She danced with Anna Pavlova and appeared in Hal Roach film shorts with Harold Lloyd. She was a vaudeville star by the age of five and featured as Dainty June and Her Newsboys. She escaped her mother at the age of 13, lied her age and got married. When getting her licence she was asked if she had VD. She assumed it was something she needed to get married and said “Of course”. She danced, ad modeled her way through the Depression. She once danced in a marathon that lasted four months, winning the second prize of $100. She made her Broadway debut in Forbidden Melody in 1936. She co-starred in Pal Joey in 1940 and that led to a film contract. Her first movie was a co-starring role in Four Jacks and a Jill in 1942. She co-starred in Powder Town, Sing Your Worries Away, Intrigue, The Iron Curtain, Once a Thief, and Red Hot and Blue. She starred in The Story of Molly X. She starred in the short lived sitcom Willy in 1954. In 1964 she was the host of The June Havoc Show. She wrote and directed the play Marathon 33 for which she was nominated for a Tony Award. She was nominated for a Drama Desk award for her performance in Habeas Corpus. She wrote two autobiographies: Early Havoc and More Havoc. She was estranged from her sister Gypsy Rose Lee for many years because of her portrayal in her autobiography and the musical Gypsy. They patched things up when Gypsy was diagnosed with cancer.
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