I played my Kramer electric guitar during song practice for the second of two sessions. Tomorrow I’ll begin a four session stretch of playing my Martin acoustic guitar.
I weighed 87.3 kilos before breakfast, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the morning since March 2.
I continued re-reading the novel Pearl, researching ideas from it and found one interesting quote related to mourning: “Losing the place where my mother had lived and been happy was like losing her all over again. The gradual collapse of the old house without us, it’s descent into cold and chaos, was a physical loss that brought us both to our knees”.
I weighed 86.3 kilos before lunch.
In the afternoon I took a bike ride with the intention of making it downtown. But it was raining lightly and I figured that if I went all the way I’d be wet by the time I got back. I went as far as Bloor and Ossington and then headed down to Freshco. There were only two bags of relatively firm grapes so I got those. I also bought two packs of raspberries, bananas, a pack of five-year-old cheddar, a whole chicken, a box of spoon sized shredded wheat, a jug of limeade, a bag of Miss Vickie’s chips, a bag of rosemary and garlic super fries, and a pack of Full City Dark coffee. The cashier Priscilla once again looked for a price match and found me a discount on the grapes. She’s very nice.
I weighed 86.4 kilos at 17:30.
I was caught up on my journal at 18:22.
I continued researching references that are made in the novel Pearl:
Marianne copied “This Be the Verse” by Philip Larkin on Emily’s wall:
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad / They may not mean to, but they do / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you // But they were fucked up in their turn / By fools in old-style hats and coats / Who half the time were soppy-stern / And half at one another’s throats // Man hands on misery to man / It deepens like a coastal shelf / Get out as early as you can / And don’t have any kids yourself.”
‘Why the Man in the Moon Came Down too Soon’ is a poem with a long-standing tradition behind it, reworking an old myth. There are parallels here with another comic poem ‘The Cat and the Fiddle’. Traditional texts often have a long oral history before they end up in the children’s library.
The traditional nursery rhyme that Tolkien had in mind runs as follows:
The man in the moon came down too soon,
and asked his way to Norwich,
he went by the south and burnt his mouth
By supping on cold plum porridge.
Tolkien purports to explain in his poem ‘The Man in the Moon had Silver Shoon’ (Shoes) is the actual reason ‘why the Man in the Moon came down too soon’. In Tolkien’s poem, written originally in 1915, the Man in the Moon is tired of his ‘pallid minaret’ (the lunar tower in which he lives) and wishes to escape his ‘great white globe’ of pearls and diamonds in order to be merry and free, so he fashions a staircase of filigree and slips down it towards the earth – the golden world of colour that he longs for, with its rubies and emeralds and sapphires. He looks forward with anticipation to the solid meat and robust red wine that he knows the earth can provide. But then comes the mishap. He trips on a stair and falls headlong into the foaming bath of the North Sea, where he is picked up in the net of a Yarmouth fishing boat, whose amazed crew pack him off to Norwich to dry off. But although the bells of Norwich ring with the news, there is no one to greet him, for everyone else is ‘abed’. In the end he has to barter his fairy cloak for a space to sit in the corner of a kitchen, where all there is to eat is a bowl of cold plum porridge, which he pays for with a priceless jewel. He has arrived much too soon on his quest ‘from the Mountains of the Moon’.
Tolkien’s The Cat and the Fiddle is based on a well-known nursery rhyme first published around 1765 in Mother Goose’s Melody with the wording as follows:
High diddle diddle,
The Cat played the Fiddle,
The Cow jump’d over the Moon,
The little dog laugh’d to see such Craft,
And the Dish ran away with the Spoon.
Since the rhyme is alluded to in Thomas Preston’s play Cambyses King of Persia (1569), it is possible that it has much older roots, and various theories have been propounded to show that it had a topical, political or even mythological significance.
I heated super fries and had them with gravy and the last slice of pea meal bacon with five-year-old cheddar melted on top while watching the penultimate episode of Amos Burke: Secret Agent.
This is a spooky two part story that begins with a man named Harlan O’Brien stopping at a small diner. He starts telling the cook about his home town of Sorrel, which he says has the highest IQ in the US. They start talking about the ball game and the cook says the Cardinals won. He adds, “Nothin can stop’em now. They got us where they want us”. Suddenly Harlan’s eyes glaze over and he says, “We’re ready for them! We’ll destroy them all first”. Then he jumps over the counter and attacks the cook. Just then a cop comes in and shouts for him to stop. He runs and the cop shoots him in the back. The cop searches the dead man’s wallet and finds O’Brien was a security officer for the atomic research plant in Sorrel.
Days later Burke arrives in Sorrel and goes directly, though uninvited, to a party hosted by Joan Lynnaker. He talks with former politician Jed Hawkes, who invites him to come to his house the next night. They overhear Bill Adams declare that they should name a street after O’Brien. Paul Lynnaker argues that there was nothing heroic about Harlan’s death but Bill’s eyes glaze over as he declares that Harlan O’Brien died in the line of duty. Hawkes breaks it up, tells Bill to go cool off and he obeys. Burke asks Paul what happened to Harlan and he tells him about the fight. Joan says she feels sorry for Harlan’s wife Sharon. Paul points out that Sharon is a drunk. Joan tells him he wouldn’t want an outsider to get the wrong impression. Suddenly Paul’s eyes glaze over and he agrees, then says Bill is right.
Burke goes to see Sharon who is drinking alone at the Kit Kat Klub. She says Harlan’s death wasn’t too bad at all. She says he was cheating on her with Anna Rodrigues. She says she’s the only person in town that doesn’t hate the outside world. She’s about to tell him something negative about Sorrel but the bartender is watching her and deliberately plays a certain song on the jukebox. Suddenly it is as if Sharon is in a trance. She says, “We’re a close knit community. We don’t want outsiders. Harlan was a wonderful man.” Burke tells her to snap out of it. She shouts for him to get out. The bartender grabs Burke. Burke punches him and knocks him against the jukebox, shutting it off. That seems to break the spell that Sharon is under. She gives Burke her card and says to come see her tomorrow but that he should leave now.
At his hotel Burke records a mission report with a record player on a small recording disc disguised as a coin. Burke gets his shoes shined by a man named Norton and pays him with the fake coin. Another man gets his shoes shined and pays Norton with a dollar bill that has the “In god we trust” part circled. Norton give him his change in the fake coin.
Suddenly a woman in a convertible pulls up and tells Burke to get in quick because they’re after her. As they drive she says her name is Ann Rogers and that she was lying about being followed. She takes him to an art gallery where some paintings that she claims she created are on display. She was at the party earlier and heard Burke say he’s thinking of building a marina hotel. She suggests she could do the murals. Then she sees Joan, the owner of the gallery pull up and sneaks away.
Burke goes to Ann's beach house and sees that her real paintings are very different from what was in the gallery. He explains that he was in the war with Harlan O’Brien. She claims she’s never heard of Harlan but he tells her she’s lying and knows her real name is Anna Rodrigues.
Burke goes to see Sharon. She says she is confused over her own thoughts about Sorrel. Sometimes she would kill for the town but other times, especially after a drink she hates it. He suggests she go to San Francisco for a while and clear her mind. He explains that he knew Harlan in the war. She says she’s afraid they’d kill her if she said anything. He tells her to get dressed and packed and he’ll taker her to San Francisco right now. She goes to take a shower but after a while he checks on her. He finds one of her store mannequins in the shower and Sharon is gone. He steps back into the front of the shop and sees an elderly man named Richard Prince. He owns the dry cleaners and the laundry and does all of Sharon’s work. Prince is also deaf and has to lip read to understand people. He says most of the people know he’s deaf but don’t know he can lip read and so they talk freely in his presence.
Bill goes to see Joan and they discuss Paul. She says whenever he goes away on a trip he comes back less defensive of Sorrel. Bill says he’s taken care of Sharon.
Burke goes to visit Hawke and they play pool. Burke observes that Hawke does not seem hypnotized. Bill comes with a report on Harlan. Hawke tells him to put it on the bar. Then they leave the room and watch Burke on a TV screen but he doesn’t take the bait. Hawke says Bill is their district attorney.
Burke talks with “The Man” who directs his secret service agency of MX3. He says they can’t move a team of agents into Sorrel just because the citizens are acting weird.
Bill goes to see Ann. He complains that she’s listening to foreign radio stations. She says she can’t get the Sorrel station out on the beach but wouldn’t listen to it if she did.
Outside of Burke’s hotel Prince warns Burke about Joan. Burke goes to see Joan and she is in her usual trance. She says she knows Burke is subversive and dangerous. She says Sharon is in the hospital for a nervous breakdown. She tries to stab Burke.
Burke is walking to his Rolls Royce when he sees someone drive it away. Burke tells a cop and the cop laughs. Burke turns and sees a citizen watching him while holding a rifle. He walks away and the man follows. Then more and more residents with rifles step towards Burke. There are at least twenty men with guns chasing him now. They surround him and begin beating him. He breaks free and takes shelter in Prince’s laundry where he finds Prince dead and spinning inside of one of the laundry machines. The story is to be continued.
Sharon was played by Canadian actor Patricia Owens, who was born in Golden, British Columbia. When she was eight years old her parents moved to England. She became a theatre actor and then worked in films, the first of which was Miss London Ltd. She was spotted and signed by 20th Century Fox. Her first Hollywood film was a co-starring role in Island in the Sun. She co-starred in No Down Payment, Sayonara, The Fly, Hell to Eternity, Seven Women from Hell, and The Destructors.
Her father Arthur Owens was a spy and double agent working for MI5 with the code name “Agent Snow”. The Germans thought he was their agent.
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