Clare Coulter

            On Tuesday morning when I picked up my Martin acoustic guitar to tune it I thought for sure the B string would be impossible to tune like it had been the day before. Because of that the plan was that in the late morning I would ride my bike all the way to Danforth and Woodbine to get my guitar fixed at The Twelfth Fret. But I was shocked to find that it tuned with no problem and stayed in tune to a normal extent throughout song practice despite the extreme humidity. My mind is boggled over why it wouldn’t tune on Monday. I’ll have to see how it behaves in the future to decide if I have to make that trip. 

            I finished preparing “On fait des rêves” (We Dream and Dream) by Boris Vian for publication on my Christian’s Translations blog. I just need to post a video of the song tomorrow and then publish it. 

            I uploaded “Et quand bien même” (And Even If) by Serge Gainsbourg to Christian’s Translations and started preparing it for blog publication. It should be posted on Wednesday. 

            I played my Martin during song practice for the second of two sessions. 

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before breakfast. 

            In the late morning I ordered three Yorkville Studio One guitar cables from The Twelfth Fret. Shipping is very expensive. The three cables combined cost $128.97 but then there’s a shipping fee of $81.66 and the tax is $27.39. They’re scheduled to arrive on Wednesday as is the volume pedal from Amazon. The good news is that I think that’s the last of my big purchases this year. Unless oral surgery runs high at the School of Periodontics. 

            I backed up a lot of photos into my SSD and deleted most of them from my main hard drive.

            I weighed 89.1 kilos before lunch. 

            In the afternoon I took a bike ride downtown and back. 

            I weighed 88.35 kilos at 17:00. 

            I got an email from the landlord’s wife asking me to not play music before 8:00 because the tenants in unit 1 and 3 can’t sleep. I’m glad she’s concerned about the peace of the tenant in unit 3 since that’s me, but I didn’t know I was disturbing myself. I didn’t even know there was a tenant in unit 1 above me because I still hear the sounds of hammering, sawing, and drilling going on, sometimes well after midnight. I start my song practice at 7:00 but I guess I can manage 8:00. I told her to tell the tenant above to stop hammering and she wrote that they won’t do it after 21:00. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 18:07. 

            In the Movie Maker project for my acoustic performance of “The Post Colonial Breakdown” I synchronized the audio with the video. Then I set a proper ending and deleted everything after that. I added a fade to black at the end and converted the video to sepia tone with no other effects. I wanted to keep the video for this song simple. I published it and tomorrow I’ll upload it to YouTube. 

            In the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “The Next State of Grace” I deleted bits of the opening video of the boots dangling on the power line. I was trying to get the concert video in synch with the studio audio at the point when I start singing. But when they were close I realized that the concert video when I start playing guitar is about a second ahead of the studio audio at the point when I start strumming the guitar. So I have to add more of the boots at the beginning and try to line up the video with that first strum. Then I’ll work on synchronizing the video with the audio for when I first start singing. 

            I made a new batch of gravy with yesterday’s chicken drippings. I had some with a potato and a chicken leg while watching season 5, episode 3 of Star Trek: Discovery. 

            Book has learned that the outlaw Mol is the daughter of his mentor. She left home at the age of eight, joined the Courier Guild at seventeen and did at least two stints in an Emerald Chain prison.

            Discovery is on its way to Trill to look for the second clue to finding the Progenitor technology hidden by the Romulan scientist Velleck. Tilley and Adira have determined that markings on the artifact that Burnham found on Lyrek are a match for the facial spots of a Trill named Jinaal Bix who was a member of Velleck’s team of scientists that discovered the technology 800 years ago. 

            Rayner arrives to serve as Burnham’s Number One to replace Saru who is now an ambassador. She orders Rayner to do one on one meetings with the crew while she is on Trill. He’s not very social. Tilley comes to escort him but he says the crew can come to him and he’ll give them each five minutes. But when the crewmembers come to meet with him he asks each one to tell him something about their self in twenty words or less that isn’t in their file. After witnessing Rayner’s disconnected approach to getting to know the crew, Tilley finally throws rank away and blows up at him and uses her twenty words to tell him off, finally calling him “ a giant…” but stops because her twenty words are up. She seems to have gotten through to him. 

            When Discovery reaches Trill orbit her crew is denied permission to beam down. Guardian Xi comes as a hologram to ask a riddle, “Where does the fourth point?” Burnham figures that he is referring to the fourth verse of the poem that Valleck left on Lyrek. The fourth verse suggested that the next clue was on Betazed and that is the correct answer. Jinaal’s symbiont is still alive and hosted in the body of Kalzara Bix. On Trill Burnham meets Kalzara who says she must speak to Jinaal directly. One of Burnham’s crew must host Jinaal’s consciousness temporarily. Dr. Culber volunteers and there is a ceremony resulting in Jinaal taking over his body. Jinaal has a lot of attitude but he doesn’t have the clue. He can however take Burnham and Book to where the clue is. He takes them on a long walk into the canyons where there are large predatory beasts called Edgernoks. After a long hike he points out a rock with a carving, below which he says is a compartment in which the clue is hidden. But as they approach the rock they are confronted with the beast which has the power to cloak itself. It also shoots energy blasts and so they take cover. Jinaal says that it will be impossible to get the clue tonight and he leaves. Book has the ability to make psychic connections with animals and he tries with this one but it is blocking him. Book acts as a decoy to lure the creature away while Burnham tries to find the clue. A second creature arrives and Book is wounded. They have no time to find the clue and need to hide. From their hiding place they see that the beast is actually protecting a nest of eggs. Burnham determines that when Book tried to connect with the creature before they had their phasers drawn. She suggests that Book try again while they are unarmed. It works and they are allowed to leave. On the way back they find Jinaal lounging on a rock. He admits he was testing them with the Edgernocks to see how they would deal with a vastly different lifeform. He hands them the clue they came for.

            Adira stays behind for a ceremony at the end of which they embrace some of the other red hooded participants. One of them in doing so puts a tracker on Adira’s arm, which becomes invisible. As the figure walks away we see it’s Mol.

            Kalzara Bix was played by Canadian actor Clare Coulter, who went to theatre school in London at the age of 9. She apprenticed in the props department of Stratford from the age of 15 to 21. Most of her acting career has been spent working for small Toronto theatre companies. She co-starred in the Canadian TV series I Will Bury You. She was nominated for a Genie for By Design and a Canadian Screen Award for Cross My Heart.