I woke up at 2:30 on Monday and decided to get up to properly get ready for bed and then to try to go back to sleep until 5:00.
I did the dishes and slightly sliced my index finger while washing a knife. As long as I kept running it under water it kept bleeding and so I stepped and just let the blood dry over the wound.
I washed my face, flossed, water flossed and brushed my teeth, then I took my clothes off and went to bed.
But I couldn’t sleep and so I got up to write my journal entry for the day before.
I went to bed again a little after 4:00. I still couldn’t conk out but I tried to relax for a while before starting the day at 5:00.
I memorized the first two verses of “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian.
I started working out the chords for “Sparadrap” by Serge Gainsbourg.
At around 12:40 I logged on for my Introduction to British Literature lecture. I usually hand write my notes because I’m such a slow typist and then it takes me hours to transcribe them. But this time I tried an experiment and typed my notes while watching, pausing and rolling back the video. It took me an hour more than my normal note taking, but it’ll be interesting to see if I saved time on transcription since I used a lot of shorthand such as typing “op” for opportunity and didn’t stop to spell correct anything.
Professor Teramura had offered an optional survey last week and had asked for students to share their covid coping techniques. Some have been watching the Star Wars and Handmaids Tale TV shows. Someone got a new cat and he shared the picture. Someone said they were using the Pomodoro technique in which one works in 25 minute intervals with five minute breaks and then after four pomodoros take a 15-30 minute break and then start over. The professor said he was going to try it.
He said he was going to start sending out reminders for assignments on weekly basis.
He is offering a week extension on our second short response essay but we must fill out a form to take it.
The lecture is on how the poetry of John Donne George Herbert Aemilia Lanyer provide opportunity for thinking in words and on the relationship between poetic form and content. At the bottom of the page was a special announcement.
When Spenser died The Fairy Queen was incomplete but he died as a major poet and was buried next to Chaucer in the part of Westminster Abbey that is now known as Poets Corner.
This official record makes sense as dedication to Queen Elizabeth and as national vision featuring heroes of England’s mythical past such as Arthur and its divine representative St George. It was a deep response to religious conventions of the day with Elizabeth painted as a champion of Protestantism against the pope’s misguided side. The Fairy Queen is about English Protestantism against Catholicism in stories like the one about Red Cross and Una meeting a sage who recites ave Maria establishing that he’s Catholic but he turns out to be a wicked magician. He and evil Duessa represent the catholic threats to English Christianity and could also be seen as a national polemic.
Unlike Spenser who was exclusively a poet, John Donne wrote erotic lyrics, prose paradoxes, funereal elegies, autobiographical vignettes, religious writing, a polemic treatise on suicide, verse epistles, holy sonnets and sermons. He has one of the richest treasure troves of writing of early modern authors, which is a testament to the swerves of his life.
Donne was complex about his allegiances. He was raised Catholic and was related to Thomas More. His Jesuit uncles each had half a tooth of skull of More.
Liz unofficially tolerated Catholics, following the advice of Bacon, “Don’t make windows into men’s souls.” It was possible to survive as a Catholic but it had to be a secret. There were priest holes in Catholic homes for hiding.
Donne started at Oxford at 12. Students over 16 had to subscribe to the queen’s religious supremacy so Dunne didn’t take a degree but enrolled in the law school. His brother was jailed for harbouring a Catholic priest who was executed and his brother died in prison of the plague.
Donne fought for England against Catholic Spain and was at the battle of Cadiz. He did change faith eventually became an Anglican priest but the process is complex and his poetry shows this.
He wrote “Satire 3” when fighting Spain. It’s a challenging poem linguistically. The main point about seeking true religion reminds one of Fairy Queen. Una is faithful and Liz represents religious truth but Donne was different. He does not take one side. It’s tricky but how to worship is a genuine challenge because all faiths are plausible. Seeking true religion is also an allegory like in Fairy Queen but he frames it as the quest for the ideal woman. He makes it erotic in different ways.
Mirreus is a catholic seeking the true church. He saw her in Rome a thousand years ago and he loves her rags. Antiquity is ragged compared to Protestantism. There is no reason to choose. Crants prefers austerity of Calvinism because pageantry is too seductive. Peasant women are more wholesome. Graius stays home because some preach laws like fashions that make one think she’s the only perfect one. Better to accept the wives the guardians offer. He is mocking Anglican theology as just doing stuff because dads did like young orphans or wards commanded to marry certain women and if not pay a fine.
But picking religion is like finding a wife and needs to be an individual choice.
Anglican preachers depicted as bauds or pimps whose success depends on people marrying into the church. Seeking religion is hard. Phrygias abhors all because if some women are whores then marry none. Again marriage is compared to religion and just because it’s sexy don’t trust it. Phrygius is jaded so don’t follow religion. He’s intellectually lazy and since he can’t find religion he doesn’t bother.
Graccus loves all as women are diverse and all one kind and so is religion. Like in More’s Utopia religious diversity is good because it pleases god to be worshiped in different was. This position is also bad and blind. Religion is supposed to illuminate and so trying all religions is a blindness because of too much light and promiscuous. “Light” also means insubstantial. All figures in the poem have wrong reasons for choosing religion.
Donne says be busy to seek her. Seeking is not bad but adoring or scorning may all be bad. Doubt wisely. To inquire is not to stray, to sleep, or run unless one does it wrong. Thinking is hard. The truth stands on a hill so strive to do the hard work. If you pick wrong you are out. There are lots of views and possible mistakes. The poem is about the stakes of thinking.
In four allusive lines he compresses his ideas:
“Thrice colder than salamanders” because they were thought cold blooded. “Divine children in the oven” from the Book of Daniel which tells that god protected them from fire. “Fires of Spain” refers to Spain’s hot climate but also fires of the inquisition. “Whose countries limbecks to our bodies be.” Limbecks are from alchemy a vessel for boiling liquid and collecting the evaporation. The speaker asks you to look at what you do. You travel and take risks. If you bear flames you must be cold. He draws on zoology, alchemy and geography. The density of the references needs mental agility. Spenser’s Fairy Queen is difficult on purpose. Donne is more literal. We need to grapple with tough problems. This poem is a mental gym.
Satire 3 has a deliberate poetic strategy. Seeking religion and understanding his poem requires intelligence. But the same is true of his poetry broadly.
Love poetry of the 16th century sonnet was emotionally intense and complex but Donne makes it more intellectually challenging.
“Air and Angels” puts love in abstract. The act of loving is depersonalized. The prophetic like bodiless vision of angels shapeless transcending the material. Even when the speaker encounters a person they are dematerialized. He falls for the glorious nothing of spiritual beauty but since the soul has flesh what is immaterial? Even the soul needs a body. Love is a child of the soul and love needs matter. The speaker gives emotions permission to love her body. Physical beauty can be the object of love. He is being cheeky. There is irony as if he’s being forced to conclude that love is in the body. Ships need to be weighed down. Love is like a ship of abstraction. The weight of material is supposed to make love steady but too much cargo will make it sink. You are too beautiful. There is too much to love. Both options don’t work. His epiphany then is the angel. Angels are pure essence and inhabit bodies of air. So angel “thy love may be my love’s sphere.” One can’t love nothing so love inhabits the world through your love. Maybe so but women’s love is pure but they do not have the same problems because women are not overwhelmed by men’s beauty.
Sonneteers too grappled with this but he analyzed it.
There is a relationship between content and form. The poem has 28 lines. In each stanza there are 14 lines like in a sonnet. But it doesn’t conform to sonnet tradition. The rhyme is first in abba like a Petrarchan sonnet but then cdcd like a Shakespearean sonnet with a final two rhyming like a couplet. He doesn’t play by the rules. The form of the poem is a body in a poem about the body. So if it takes the form of two pseudo sonnets, revising the body revises the relation between traditions of erotic poetry to the body which is what the poem is about.
Reading Donne is a poetic challenge but the effort is matched by taking pleasure in his audacity.
In his poem “Sun Rising” he begins unusually by insulting the sun to set the dramatic context. It seems to be morning and the scene seems to feature two lovers with the sun forcing time upon them. The sun controls the seasons but why should love’s seasons be commanded by the sun. The sun’s seasons are for school and work. Love has no seasons. Love is separate from time and has no measure.
The second stanza starts almost respectfully but then he says I could eclipse by closing my eyes. But if he did he would briefly lose her. The poem is geocentric with the Earth at the centre and sun going around. He sends the sun on an errand to check for Indias. The joke is that the riches are here in his bed. She is all states. Everything of power is fake compared to life. Princes are acting but we are real and they imitate us. The world flips. He turns to detente. The sun doesn’t need to travel and should warm us instead. This bed is the centre. The universe is redefined. The poem redefines power and the universe dramatically. “Stanza” means room. Donne’s focus is on the bedroom as the world. He redefines the world, spaces and relationships in global terms.
In “The Good Morrow” he rejects the global world for the space of love. “Let us possess one world”. Experience of the world is a great urge but one’s lover is just as satisfying. He discusses two geographies. Earth and the celestial map. But let us possess one. The Renaissance idea of the body as world in microcosm. There are two worlds and two bodies. So the act of discovery involves looking in the eyes and exploring the hearts of lovers. The two hemispheres of a better world of love.
Donne was only published after dead but was reproduced widely as a poet because his work was copied in manuscripts. “Sun Rising” alone had forty copies. People found his work shocking and a new appeal was struck.
Thomas Carew wrote his elegy. The garden of English poetry had been derivative, lazy, repetitious, weed infested. Donne was a gardener planting something original and fresh. He offered a chance to rethink. Donne is seen as metaphysical but they didn’t say that then because it was a later term. He had metaphorical ingenuity, argumentative intelligence and style obscurity.
A Conceit is an elaborate metaphor comparing apparently dissimilar objects or emotions often with shock or surprise. A valedictory of mourning. An attempt to console beloved. A valedictory address of farewell. The rhetorical point of the poem forbids mourning because separation is not cause for sorrow. The situation shows how the speaker’s work cut out solutions in an attempt to redefine love. He starts again with surprise because death is the first image with the death bed. The moment life leaves it is subtle and one can’t tell if the person is dead. Quiet humour. How we should part rejects flood. Rather part as a slow melt. Our love is so deep it would be sharing a divine secret. Normally lovers are sensual but we are of mind. More ethereal. We seem to be two souls but we share one and when separated it stretches out like beaten gold. Lovers are goldsmiths.
There is the abab interlacing of two rhyme sounds but when the speaker rejects the breach the words are enjambment running over the sense and grammatical structure from one verse line to next without punctuated pause, de-emphasizing the line ending. Minimizing the break the speaker rejects that there is a breach. They are connected just as lines of metre requires that a word expansion be pronounced with emphasis on the last syllable. The word itself demonstrates expansion that works through the beat of the syllables. If they be two as stiff legs of a compass drawing circles. Two compasses are not sexy. But when the other is connected it grows erect. He began by saying that love is beyond the body but compasses bring us back to the physical stability of the pair. Your firmness makes me just full circle. Final word is “begun” and it starts with death. He links full circle with begin.
He converted to Anglican probably for professional reasons. He’d married Ann More so Donne while imprisoned pleads in a letter, “Don’t destroy me.” George More cut off his daughter. “John Donne / Ann Donne / Undone.” He found employment publishing protestant theological works and became a priest of importance.
He wrote the Holy Sonnets in 1609 following Ann Locke’s precedent form of sonnet love poetry. Donne’s divine love poetry was extraordinarily varied and also demanding.
Sonnet 5 starts with the microcosm of the human body as the world with a soul. The problem of sin but parts in endless night with the speaker as earth and god as the sun. Sin eclipses god imagined as world maker like new discoveries of the Renaissance in science and geography. “Drowned no more.” Warring imagery of poetry concluding in fire. Lust needs to be replaced by fire. The poem addresses the four elements of air, earth, water and fire. The body is composed by god. But this sonnet is disjointed because the break should be at line nine when water to fire Normally the volta is after line eight. The rhyme scheme is abba, half Petrachan and half Shakespearean. There is a split between conventions emphasizing the turn as turn in literary history. The allusive nature of the poem shows aspects of biblical creation and then flood and then burning or washing as in baptism like Christ. The sequence alludes to all these and covers all biblical history with the rationale for the volta to be the turn from the Hebrew Bible to the New Testament and encompassing all time.
Donne didn’t publish but others like Aemilia Lanyer got into it. She descended from Jewish-Italian immigrants who came in the early 16th Century. Her family was not aristocratic but she grew up in the home of the Countess of Kent. She spent her life in dialogue with English nobility. The title of her book translated as “Hail God King of the Jews” as was written on the cross. In the centre of the book is a long poem describing the passion of Jesus. How the volume is constructed has that poem surrounded by smaller pieces. It is dedicatory and foregrounds female readers as aristocratic and virtuous women. The book is an intervention declaring that women are not to blame. Men forget that they born of woman. All men need women but reject them like vipers. Misogynistic men are compared to Christ killers. In her reading of the Bible women are central to Jesus’ birth, life and resurrection. Born of woman Christ’s sinlessness is associated with a woman’s body untainted by men. God entrusts the miracle to a woman. She reinterprets Donne’s use of poetry as an intimate space. Her poem embodies the payoff.
She tackles the apple and Eve. Gawain evokes Eve as a deceiver. Man’s persistent ruin is to discover ways to destroy the world. They made woman cause of languishment. He says somehow each woman is responsible for passing on original sin. Lanyer turns this on its head and interrupts the narrative when Pontius Pilate’s wife says wife says she had a dream says Jesus is truth. This alternative history could have saved us. Eve was an easy victim for the serpent. Adam is not blameless. He was supposed to be strong. Blaming Eve is inconsistent. Nothing says she deceived him. He just makes the same choice. If Adam was lord of the world why was he not more responsible. One apple. In the Bible god says don’t eat the fruit and then he created Eve. God says this to Adam before Eve was made. Men are the only ones who crucified Jesus. Men’s tyranny is linked to the punishment of Christ. This tyranny is also on women and the crucifixion is associated with misogyny. She close reads the Bible for a social revolution.
“The Description of Cooke-Ham” became the first of a major genre known as the Country House Poem. This is where she did her religious poem. It is the site of her inspiration from muses. She is addressing the place and Countess Margaret Clifford Cumberland, who invited her to stay. The poet invites her to remember when nature welcomed her and the scene of joy when nature beautified itself for the countess. The plants, sun and water all want to touch her. Cooke-Ham becomes increasingly magical and anticipates the countess’s desires. Human and nature are blurred. The critical oak tree spreads its arms to invite her. It is oak but also like cedar and palm. It is a space for devotion and she reimagines Clifford as the 13th apostle or another Moses or David. But nature is also text as the Bible merges with the tree. Nat and human are in perfect accord. But Clifford left and nature left. This is echoed on the play on “leaves” and “leaves” and shedding in sadness. The oak is saying goodbye. Lanyer stole the kiss the countess gave the oak. The oak is the emotional heart of the poem. The oak is where she can kiss her patron. She and the oak are rivals. The oak is the site of reading the leaves of Lanyer’s book which was only possible to write there.
Cooke-Ham idealized women in community without men but Woolf in “A Room of One’s Own” writes of women’s restrictions. Shakespeare’s sister would have been denied the right to write. Women need time and space that men have. Here was space where writing could happen Writers denied voice need freedom and space.
George Herbert was the youngest of poets of this era. He was like Donne but his career was different. Donne had a powerful position while Herbert was a small town minister. He also didn’t publish but wanted it and asked for it on his death bed. “The Temple” from his book “Sacred Poems and Spontaneous Ejaculations.” The word “ejaculations” had the same meanings as now. Temple is an important word for the book. His architectural book building cares about the materiality of the words on the page. The First church porch where the congregation passes to get to the temple. The poem takes space metapoetry further as the entryway physically embodies on the page the altar. Illustrations were later added to complement that Temple as a metaphor for the human journey into the self. But it was not about the physical altar but the metaphysical human heart.
“Easter Wings” looks like wings The poem is technically virtuosic in the way lines change from pentameter to tetrameter to trimeter to dimeter to monometer. They form a perfect representation of the content of man’s culpability for sin,. It drains out from abundance and metaphorizes sin. In the first stanza wealth and abundance are drained until the speaker is poor. In the second body becomes thin. Man is most poor and most thin at the poorest or thinnest lines. As confidence builds the lines get richer and longer. “With thee” is also simple. Easter is the annual celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. The poem falls and rises as the speaker falls and rises. The poem requires the first half for the shape of the wings. The affliction of moments of sickness make ascent better.
The felix culpa, the fortunate fall, the idea that Adam’s sin was fortunate because it brought about redemption. The decrease and increase becomes more valuable. Wings are the symbol of flight and the shape of the journey.
Compare “The Collar” and “The Love”. Three poems draw on the playful relationship between form and content as a way of thinking of his theological message.
I had almost finished editing my lecture notes when it was time for dinner, so I guess it was a little quicker than long hand. I think last week I had to finish them on Tuesday.
I had three little potatoes, a slice of ham and gravy while watching Interpol Calling.
In this story Duval arrives at a hotel in the Himalayas to bring a businessman named Pierce Clyde back to the States because of a fraud investigation. But when Duval gets there he finds that Clyde is climbing the nearby mountain although the climbing season is over and the mountain is more dangerous now.
When Duval sneaks into Clyde’s room to do a search he opens a suitcase and triggers a bomb. He has just enough time to toss it into a closet and close the door before it explodes. It was rigged from a Japanese grenade that had been stolen from the owner of the hotel Colonel Peters who had kept it as a souvenir from the war. Clyde is on the mountain with a novice climber named Baratopi, who had only just arrived. Baratopi’s sister is also a guest and she reveals that their father had recently committed suicide after Clyde caused his business to go bankrupt. Baratopi has come there to kill Clyde. After Clyde and Baratopi make it to the top and begin their descent, Baratopi cuts Clyde’s line and leaves him dangling. Baratopi shouting sets off avalanche and it is Clyde who saves Baratopi’s life. When they get back to the hotel Clyde refuses to implicate Baratopi although Duval saw the whole thing through the telescope. Clyde tells Duval he knows nothing of the fraudulent deal. It is revealed however that it was Clyde’s secretary Cloustan that had done the shady deal. Cloustan pulls a gun and demands the keys to the plane. Clyde’s alcoholic wife Miki says she’ll go with him but when she gets close she throws her drink in Cloustan’s face allowing Duval to subdue him.
Miki was played by Ursula Howells, who was the daughter of composer Herbert Howells. She co-starred in “Mumsy, Nanny, Sonny and Girly”, she played Francis Forsyte in The Forsyte Saga. She financed the recording of her father’s compositions after he died.
After midnight at the Claremont Debra came over to say hello. I told her she looked great and she said that she'd needed to hear that. Her boyfriend showed up later but he didn't dance and so she seemed to be almost dancing with me for a while. She disappeared in the fog after last call but her two girlfriends stuck around. I danced like a madman and then walked home with a blister on my foot, stopping for a Coke at the 7-11 on my way.
I got up around 10:00, went to a lawn sale and then to No Frills.
I called Nancy and we arranged to meet at Woodbine and Queen at 13:00.
In the Beaches we bought a couple of comic books and checked out some lawn sales. We walked in Neville Park, had dinner at a Japanese restaurant and went to see Jacob's Ladder. It was a bit disappointing.
It's funny that I wrote that Jacob’s Ladder was disappointing since my long term memory is that I liked it a lot.
It took about an hour and a half to get up the Mr. Mover office. Plus I had to pay an extra dollar to get there because it was north of Steeles. The employees were the same old types that I remembered from my previous time as a mover.
They sent me out at 9:00 to do a packing job. We had pizza for lunch and finished at 15:30.
I was getting $10 an hour to start.
I had to pay an extra $2 to get back to the shop so I could clock out at 16:30.
I would be working on Monday.
I got off the subway at Lansdowne and went to the Instabank to take out $400. I bought beer, went home, cleaned up a bit and then got ready for the Claremont. The downstairs was nearly empty when I got there. I sat and watched people for a while. Debra showed up with two girlfriends.
On Sunday morning after the alarm went off I got up and washed and prepared to do my yoga. I turned on Radio Canada and was surprised that they were playing jazz when there’s usually a classical program at that hour. Then I remembered that the clocks had been turned back. I looked at my phone and it was just after 4:00, so I went back to bed. But I couldn’t sleep and so I got up at 4:30 and started yoga.
Today was the day I wanted to finish my Canadian Literature essay outline on David Chariandy’s Brother and so after doing two journal posts I started doing my research at around 7:00.
Because I’d already done some research and found that Chariandy had gotten a DJ to give him a play list of songs, while the choice to include Nina Simone in the novel was entirely his own, because the meaning she puts into the songs is so important, I focused the rest of my research on Nina Simone. I searched for all the downloadable biographies of Simone I could find and spent the next several hours scanning those while making notes. I also downloaded her 1965 album “I Put a Spell on You”.
After the research I had to justify how the research would help my argument and finally write a conclusion. I really hate this high school style planning out of an essay. I’m used to an organic approach.
Title: Two Songs that Flank the Emotional Range of David Chariandy's Brother
Thesis: The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” bookend the spectrum of sentiments expressed in David Chariandy’s Brother.
Rationale: “Feeling Good” by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse expresses hope while “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel deals with the despair of loss. “Feeling Good” is the musical background in this story for the memory of a family briefly together and uplifted in joyful dancing harmony ." The title “Ne me quitte pas” is also the repeated refrain of the song, meaning “please don't quit me now." It is used in Brother to address losses with which one has not yet come to terms, such as the loss of a father by abandonment, the loss of opportunity and the loss of a brother's life. I will show how these two songs as sung by Nina Simone are returned to throughout the story to establish vital moments of connection and disconnection for the main characters.
Major Points:
1. Brother is grounded in nostalgia that serves as its foundation for hope. The very last line of the prologue establishes this with the declaration that, “If you can’t memory right … you lose (1).”
2. “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” embody the nostalgia, the hope and loss of Brother. “Feeling Good” plays during Michael’s earliest memory and only recollection of his father (84) and Michael’s mother unconsciously quotes a hopeful line from the song in the end when she declares, “It is a new day (176).” “Ne me quitte pas” is used symbolically as a shared experience of loss between the two characters who will be lost to everyone else (110, 173-174).
3. Nina Simone’s "sweet and sad voice" is the connection between these songs and therefore between their themes of hope and loss being essentially bound together. “Nina Simone, her opening to ‘Feeling Good’ … forever looping back (97).” “We must have played Nina Simone’s version of ‘Ne me quitte pas’ at least a dozen times (174).”
Research:
1. Interview with David Chariandy by Alexander Varty for the Georgia Straight in October 2017, in which Chariandy says, "to be able to access and feel what Nina Simone was … coding into the music … that’s so important." This shows that the use of these songs as interpreted by Simone are essential to the heart of the story.
2. Three biographies of Nina Simone: What Happened Miss Simone? by Alan Light; Nina Simone: Love Me or Leave Me by Mathilde Hirsche and Florence Noiville; and Women in the Arts: Nina Simone by Kerry Acker. Citations from these works will show how Nina Simone takes ownership of these songs and communicates through them an experience which she shares with the main characters of the novel, especially with Ruth.
Conclusion: The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” as interpreted by Nina Simone gel in the gut of David Chariandy's Brother. Their combined gravity teaches us that hope and loss are intimately embracing ideas.
I uploaded my outline at 16:30 and just relaxed.
I heard Benji and Shankar talking in the hallway and thought that I heard a knock on my door. I opened my door and they hadn’t rapped but I’ve been hearing knocking sounds every now and then since the heat came on and I think it might be part of the building shifting. I chatted with Benji and Shankar for about an hour on various topics.
I shaved my neck and showered.
I sliced another bottom off the round fruit-nut loaf and covered it with sauce, cheese and ham. I put it in the oven for twenty minutes and had it with a beer while watching Interpol Calling.
The intro of the show always shows someone smashing through a border between countries and the voice always says, “Crime knows no frontiers!” But obviously crime knows that particular frontier since it smashed through it every week.
In this story Duval goes to a remote town in Australia called Cranby’s Creek to escort a man named Brock who escaped an arrest for murder in Belgium. When he arrives there he finds that Brock is on trial for an attempted murder of a deputy that happened the night before and also theft of opals from the town’s mine. The town is holding an illegal "kangaroo court" with Cranby the founder of the town as the judge. As Cranby is the employer of everyone all of the witnesses he calls say what he wants them to say. Duval decides to defend Brock while waiting for real officials to arrive. A man named Graham, who is there on business is the only one that tries to help Duval by contacting the authorities, while all of the locals, except for Cranby’s daughter Ruth are trying to undermine Duval's efforts. The only phone in town is smashed. Ruth is the nurse treating the deputy but she is also Brock's lover. Brock says that he did not shoot the deputy and he also did not murder the man in Belgium but rather killed him in a knife fight that the other initiated. Meanwhile the deputy dies and so Brock’s trial becomes a murder trial. Everyone says they saw Brock enter the deputy's office before he was shot. They did not see him with a rifle and assumed he had used the deputy’s rifle but Duval shows that the deputy’s rifle had not been fired and also that there was no room to shoot the deputy from where he was sitting at his desk. He shows the court powder burns on the window ledge from outside the office and concludes that someone must have shot the deputy from outside. Cranby hesitates and calls a recess but doesn’t seem convinced. Brock is sure he will be found guilty and hanged before the real judges can get there so he struggles with guard and takes his rifle. He forces everyone but Duval and Graham out of the courtroom and plans to hold them off until the authorities arrive. But suddenly Graham grabs a rifle and points it at Brock, ordering him to shoot Duval. Duval realizes Graham is the killer and the opal thief. Brock turns his gun on Graham and Graham fires at Brock, wounding him. Duval gives Graham a karate massage and all ends well.
It’s funny how Duval nabs everybody else but never catches that person that smashes through the border every week.
Ruth was played by Felicity Young, who played Helen of Troy in “The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus”, co-starred in “Freedom to Die”, and was in the cast of the TV series “Flower of Evil.”
At around 21:30 I couldn’t keep my eyes open and so I just went to bed without washing my face or brushing my teeth.
I woke up just before 2:00 on Saturday because I had to pee. On the way back to bed I noticed that my wifi was back on. Maybe it was because I was excited about that that I couldn’t get back to sleep.
I decided to get up and post the five year journal that I hadn’t been able to do without the internet the day before. On my way to Facebook I saw an email from my Canadian Literature professor telling me she’d reviewed my essay and changed the mark from 70% to 76%. I thanked her and told her that I felt less unfairly assessed.
I went back to bed but still couldn’t sleep and so I got up again and posted yesterday's blog before going back to bed at 3:00. Sleep continued to evade me and so I got up at 4:00 and posted my thirty year journal before returning to bed until my alarm went off at 5:00.
I finished translating “A la pêche des coeurs" (Fishing for Hearts) by Boris Vian and started memorizing the song in French.
I completed memorizing “Sparadrap" (Plaster Wrap) by Serge Gainsbourg and looked for the chords. I didn't find them and so I'll have to work them out myself.
Around midday I headed for the supermarket but stopped to pay for my November phone service at Freedom Mobile. The clerk appreciated the fact that I had the exact $28.25 because he said they have no change since they were recently robbed. My neighbour Benji had told me about that yesterday. I asked what was taken and the guy said thousands of dollars of cash from the phones. I looked puzzled and he just said it was complicated.
At No Frills the grapes were in bad shape but the grapefruit was cheap if one bought three so I got six. I also picked up a bag of Macintosh apples, a pint of strawberries and a pack of pork chops. While I was in the personal needs aisle I felt the urge to sneeze. Since I didn’t want to do it inside my mask I pulled it down, then lifted the front of my hoody over my face to sneeze inside. I was the only one in the aisle. I grabbed mouthwash, but on my way to get three bags of skim milk I felt the urge to sneeze again. I stepped off to the side, put my basket down and prepared to let it go, but the urge subsided. I got a can of coffee and some honey.
I had saltines and old cheddar for lunch.
In the afternoon I worked on my research essay outline for Canadian Literature. I established my thesis and my main points but I still need to figure out what kind of research I’m going to do to support my argument.
Title: Nostalgic Songs That Bookend the Emotional Range of David Chariandy's Brother
Thesis: The songs “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” bookend the emotional range of David Chariandy’s Brother.
Rationale: “Feeling Good” written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical “Roar of the Greasepaint, Smell of the Crowd”, expresses hope while “Ne me quitte pas” by Jacques Brel deals with the despair of loss. “Feeling Good” is the musical background in this story for the memory of a family briefly together and uplifted in joyful dancing harmony ." The title “Ne me quitte pas” is also the repeated refrain of the song, meaning “please don't quit me now." It is used in Brother to address losses with which one has not yet come to terms, such as the loss of a father by abandonment, the loss of opportunity and the loss of a brother's life. I will show how these two songs as sung by Nina Simone are returned to throughout the story to establish vital moments of connection and disconnection for the main characters.
Major Points:
1. Brother is grounded in nostalgia that serves as its foundation for hope. The very last line of the prologue establishes this with the declaration that, “If you can’t memory right … you lose (1).”
2. “Feeling Good” and “Ne me quitte pas” embody the nostalgia, the hope and loss of Brother. “Feeling Good” plays during Michael’s earliest memory and only recollection of his father (84) and Michael’s mother unconsciously quotes a hopeful line from the song in the end when she declares, “It is a new day (176).” “Ne me quitte pas” is used symbolically as a shared experience of loss between the two characters who will be lost to everyone else (110, 173-174).
3. Nina Simone’s sweet and sad voice is the connection between these songs and therefore between their themes of hope and loss being essentially bound together. “Nina Simone, her opening to ‘Feeling Good’ … forever looping back (97).” “We must have played Nina Simone’s version of ‘Ne me quitte pas’ at least a dozen times (174).”
I only noticed one happy group of children in costume out with their parents for Halloween. I don’t know if they were trick or treating or if they were on their way to a socially distanced party.
I sliced the bottom from a round loaf of cranberry-raisin-nut bread and used it as pizza crust with sauce, cheese and sliced ham. I had it with a beer while watching Interpol Calling.
Anita Ballard comes to an auction of the work of her husband Hugo Ballard who committed suicide two years before. But when she sees his painting of “The Girl With Grey Hair” she declares it a fake, pulls a knife from her purse and slashes the painting. She is placed under arrest but when Duval comes to investigate Anita informs him that if the painting is not fake it belongs to her as Hugo’s wife and if it is fake it is worthless. Either way she can’t be held for slashing the painting and Duval agrees.
But since very few women would carry a knife in her purse, let alone a brand new one, he concludes that Anita came with the intention of slashing the painting. But the expert says the painting is genuine and so Duval concludes that what must be fake is Ballard’s death and the reason would be because now his paintings are worth ten times what they were before. Duval questions the dealer in San Remo who sent the paintings to auction. He says a girl brought them in. He identifies the house in one of the paintings as being in Chariana in the mountains. Duval leaves to go there but from the back of the gallery we see Anita emerge, having heard the whole thing. Duval meets Anita in Chariana and gets her to admit that Hugo faked his suicide. But she says he stopped corresponding with her three months ago and so she thinks he might be dead. In the café Duval sees a young woman wearing a shawl exactly like the one worn by the girl with grey hair in the painting. She says she is from Beaulieu, across the mountains in France and all the women wear that type of shawl there. Duval goes to Beaulieu and informs Anita. He finds Michele, the girl with grey hair working in an inn. She denies it at first but finally admits the painting is of her but denies knowing Ballard. Anita arrives and Duval pretends to leave. Anita asks Michele for a room and when they are alone she reveals she is Hugo’s wife. Finally she convinces Michele to bring Hugo to her so she can see him one last time. When Hugo comes Anita asks him to come back to her but he says he can’t. She pulls a gun an is about to shoot when Duval comes in and takes the gun. At the same time Anita sees that Hugo’s hand is injured. He tells her that Michele has only been his nurse. Anita and Hugo embrace. Duval reveals that he had previously removed the bullets from Anita’s gun.
Anita was played by New Brunswick actor Mary Laura Wood, who achieved some success in British theatre, film and television before retiring and returning to New Brunswick.
According to the Internet Movie Database Michele was played by Elizabeth Wilson but she would have been 38 then and Michele looked much younger than that. Wilson played supporting roles in “The Graduate”, “Catch 22”, “The Day of the Dolphin”, “Regarding Henry”, “Quiz Show” and “Picnic”. Wikipedia says she was in this episode as well so I guess she was just a very young looking 38 year old. I still don’t buy it because the pictures don’t seem to match. Then again she was known as a very good actor so maybe she could pull it off.
I got up around 10:30, went out for groceries and the papers, had breakfast, and by then it was lunchtime for businesses and so I waited until 13:00 before making any calls. I went through the classifieds and then started on the Yellow Pages. I called moving companies and one of them called me back to ask me to work the next day. He knew Bob Thomson of Thomson Mayflower, who I used to swamp for back in the early 80s. He told me that Bob had recently died and that his son Brad now ran the company. I thought that was funny since Brad was never much of a mover.
I also called some furniture stores before my eyes gave out. Marty Millionaire said they might call me back.
I did quite a bit of cleaning up.
I called Nancy at her parent's place and her sister Susan told me she was working. I talked with Susan for a while.
