Hannah Cheesman

            On Wednesday morning I published “We Dream and Dream”, my translation of “On fait des rêves” by Boris Vian on my Christian’s Translations blog. Tomorrow I’ll post the lyrics on my Boris Vian Facebook page and on my own. 

            I also blog published “And Even If”, my translation of “Et quand bien même” by Serge Gainsbourg and posted it on Facebook. There are twenty four Gainsbourg songs left to learn. I memorized the first verse of his song “Des Ils et des Elles” (Of Hes and of Shes). 

            Since the landlord’s wife says two tenants have complained about me playing music at 7:00 and since she asked me to wait until after 8:00 I decided it’s not too much of a sacrifice to do it at 8:00 and so I worked on other things until 8:00 rolled around. Since she set 8:00 as a time when I could play I turned the guitar up louder. 

            I played my Gibson Les Paul and I think the adjustments that Gian at Li’l Demon made helped it stay in tune a little better. It did go out a few times but so far not to a frustrating degree and the G string that is infamous for going out on Gibsons didn’t really go out as much as some of the other strings. It was the first time I’d played the Gibson with my amp and it sounds great. It wasn’t that much of an adjustment to play at 8:00 instead of 7:00 because I had plenty to do before I started the later song practice. Apparently there is someone living above me at the same time as a crew is coming in everyday to renovate the place. I assume the tenant is a member of the crew. 

            I weighed 88.65 before my now later breakfast. 

            I had my door open for circulation while playing Elvis Costello then the landlord came and closed it. He said some tenants are complaining. I’ve been playing it loud for years and suddenly people can’t stand it. I turned it down a bit. 

            I weighed 89 kilos before lunch. 

            I couldn’t take a bike ride because I’ve been expecting two deliveries all day. One from Amazon and the other shipped by UPS by the Twelfth Fret. I propped open the downstairs door with a broom handle several times but the landlord kept closing it. At 16:00 I saw that only then did UPS pick up the package from Concord. 

            I weighed 88.95 kilos at 16:20, which is an evening record high for this year. 

            I was caught up on my journal at 16:30. 

            I posted the video of my acoustic performance of “The Post Colonial Breakdown” on YouTube.

            I got word at 16:50 that the UPS delivery of the guitar cables has been rescheduled for tomorrow, I guess because UPS didn’t even have the package until about an hour ago. Still no word on the Amazon delivery of the volume pedal which is still supposed to be here by 22:00. 

            I wanted to work on the Movie Maker project to create a video for the studio recording of my song “The Next State of Grace” but I need to be able to focus and I can’t while I’m watching out for a delivery. I received a notice at 17:00 that the Amazon package has been delayed in transit and is rescheduled for June 21. It was too late to ride downtown but I took a short bike ride to Dundas and Gladstone so I could feel like I’d gotten some exercise today.

            In my Movie Maker project for “The Next State of Grace” I deleted the clip I’d previously shortened of the boots on the power line and then replaced it with the full video. Then I shortened it again but not as much so it would put the concert video in synch with the studio audio on the first strum. There’s a period after that when the camera does a close up on the guitar and I removed some of that before the camera moved back up to my face shortly after I’ve begun singing, “Well I’m sitting here cooking in the stew of the street”. My mouth isn’t fully shown until I get to “cooking” and so I lined up the video with the audio at that point and they stay in synch through, “I’m the part that won’t ever get stirred”. After that they fall apart again and so I’ll need to add another clip.

            I listened to one of my tapes on the cassette to MP3 converter by running it through my audio interface with adaptors. It’s staticky but it allows me to hear what’s there. It’s mostly an early rehearsal of “Sixteen Tons of Dogma” with Brian Haddon and an interview with me on the Howl radio show on CIUT after the launch of my first chapbook “Vomit of the Star Eater”. I broke a string during the first song and took a long time to tune the guitar after changing it, much to the host’s annoyance. I played two songs and sang one acapella. I tried to record it in Audacity and it worked but what was recorded was what I was hearing and that was a lot of static muddying up the sound. Maybe if I get new adaptors I can get a clean sound but meanwhile I think the recommended way of using the converter by recording directly onto a USB drive might work best. I imported into Audacity the first tape I converted a few months ago and it sounded fairly clean. I deleted a lot of silence and increased the volume. I have a few more adjustments to make before I archive that file. I think I’ll need to record each of the cassettes onto a flash drive before adjusting them in Audacity. 

            Two of the workers from upstairs came to my door because there’s a leak downstairs under my apartment. I talked with the landlord and told him I couldn’t see a leak. But later I noticed that it looks wet just under the bottom edge of one side of the toilet. It could be that the base needs to be caulked. 

            I made pizza on a slice of multigrain sourdough bread with Basilica sauce, two sliced chicken kebabs, and five-year-old cheddar. I had it with a beer while watching season 5, episode 4 of Star Trek: Discovery.

            At the end of the last episode when Adira was still on Trill, the outlaw Mol disguised as a Trill placed something on Adira’s arm that I thought was a tracer. But in this story we see that it is a robot bug that seems to be able to pass through barriers. It makes its way to engineering and Stamets sees it phasing into some equipment. Burnham is arguing with Rayner in her ready room when the power on the ship flickers and an unauthorized signal is broadcast from the ship. They try to transport to the bridge but can’t. They take the turbo lift and find the whole bridge crew unconscious and it looks like the ship is going through a wormhole. Burnham sees the red figure ahead of the ship and realizes it’s herself as the Red Angel and this is when Discovery jumped into the future. The lights flicker again and they are in dry dock in San Francisco when Discovery was being built. The temporal problem hit the ship at the exact moment they were trying to beam to the bridge and that’s why they weren’t affected by it. They shift again into the middle of the Battle of Control. Rayner recognizes that these effects are symptomatic of a time bug. They were left over from the Temporal War and designed to paralyze an enemy ship by randomly cycling them through time. They figure it must be Mol and L’ak behind it and the broadcast sent their location so the outlaws know where the next clue is. Burnham says they need to find Stamets because his tardigrade DNA causes him to live outside of time. He will be as aware of the cycle as they are. They shift to the time when Osyraa hijack the ship and they fight several of them in the corridor. They then shift thirty years into a possible future when the ship is empty of crew and there is only a confused Zora the sentient computer of Discovery. Outside the ship is the debris of Federation headquarters. In this future Mol and L’ak found the Progenitors technology first and sold it to the Breen who used it as a weapon to destroy the Federation. Zora calculates the pattern of the time jumps and it’s a conical wave. They find Stamets in engineering. He says the bug has embedded itself in the power distribution sub system. Stamets creates a device that should neutralize the bug but he didn’t count on the bug’s temporal shield defence mechanism. Anything that tries to touch the bug ages to dust. They need to be travelling at warp to protect themselves from relativity. They have to break the warp bubble and shut down the bug within the same cycle everything will go back to the way it was before. Burnham has to convince the bridge crew to take Discovery into warp even though she is not the captain in this time period. But on the way she meets herself who thinks she’s a shape shifter and tries to stop her. They fight until future Burnham takes her younger self out with a Vulcan nerve pinch. When she walks onto the bridge everyone is surprised because she is not authorized to be there. Airiam is in control of the bridge at this time and calls for the computer to scan for Burnham’s life signs. The computer confirms there are two Michael Burnhams. Burnham begins telling each bridge crew member details about themselves that only Burnham would know. Airiam believes her and agrees to help. Stamets and Rayner are getting ready to neutralize the bug as soon as the warp bubble is broken but suddenly the younger Burnham and Reese come armed with phasers to stop them. First Rayner convinces Reese that he knows him in the future. Rayner then relates to the past Burnham what the future Burnham told him about her doubts. She lowers her phaser. When the warp bubble breaks Rayner places the device over the bug and deactivates it, injuring his hand in the process. Burnham and Rayner go back to where they started. 

            This was the first proper Star Trek type story that has happened on Star Trek: Discovery in a long time. It was worthy of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. 

            Airiam was played by Hannah Cheesman, who co-starred in The Animal Project. Her film The Boathouse won the grand prize at the Rhode Island International film festival in 2021. She’s directed several commercials. She’s the co-creator, writer, producer, and star of the web series Whatever Linda. She has written scripts for Orphan Black and Workin’ Moms.