November 25, 2003

Dreamed of driving a car along a road covered with tall grass and running over a man sleeping in the sun, who was slightly hurt; getting a mouthful from him about how I was a terrible driver (I've never learned to drive); after getting driving lessons from him and just before being picked up by my parents, saying to him, "I may learn to drive, but chances are you'll continue to be a little prick!"

In the morning there was snow on the ground.

My first day at McClelland & Stewart was very interesting. In the morning I compared the pages of On Six Continents with the galley version. (I found a couple of mistakes that the copy editor had missed!) That book's a memoir by Lieutenant-Governor James Bartleman, about his years in the foreign service.  He was all over the place in his time.  

In the afternoon I checked the table of contents and index of an anthology of poems by a poet called MoKay.  then I compared the galley to the manuscrip for a book in the Screech Owls series, juvenile novels about a hockey team who solve mysteries.

Didn't have time to go home for dinner so I ate West Indian fast food in Village by the Grange.

Went to the last opera rehearsal for this term.  In January we start rehearsals on the stage!

November 24, 2003

Dreamed of Is Harry on the Boat? (a smutty British tourism comedy series set in the Mediterranean, which I've never watched more than a few minutes of) but set in the Caribbean and starring Catherine Zeta-Jones; a movie of the novel Moby-Dick.

Woke up in the middle of the night and thought about the Middle East conflict.  I feel sheer disgust at the Bush Administration's blunders and dishonesty.  Even when they do the right thing, they do it at the wrong time, in a disastrously wrong way.  Then they fall back on self-serving soundbites like "They hate freedom!"

It was warm in the morning, then it got cold all at once.

Went to see Dr. Hassan in the afternoon.  Afterward I bought a Donald Duck comic at the nearby comics store. (They threw in a Classics Illustrated Junior comic book of the fairy tale "The Pearl Princess." I was late getting back because the TTC was slow.

Dinner was the rest of the pork roast.

Finished The Book of Merlyn and started Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.

Saw The Weather Underground at the Carlton, a documentary about the radical group that set off bombs in the early 1970s.  I would have liked to know more about how they came to dominate a big faction of the collapsing Students for a Democratic Society.

November 23, 2003

Dreamed of sitting near Brooke Shields in a restaurant, hearing her say "I have many talents," and silently guffawing (like in the story I'm writing).

Went to the Royal Ontario Museum and saw the Beatrix Potter exhibit "Peter Rabbit's Garden." (I would have seen a movie instead, but I was late.)

John and the girls came over for dinner, which was vegetarian lasagna.

Baked rye bread overnight.

Printed out my September diary entries.

November 22, 2003

Went to the opera fundraiser in the afternoon. (It was held at the Columbus Centre.) I saved their skins by going out to buy a hundred plastic cups just beforehand.  We sang the famous sextet from Lucia and the wedding number from Don Giovanni.  There were also a lot of solos and duets and stuff.  We brought a surfeit of pastry, and afterward I was able to save most of my gingerbread and take some other stuff home. (The pie made a mess!)

Dinner was spaghetti.

Felt worn out in the evening. (All that standing at the fundraiser...)

Started reading Abraham Lincoln:  A Documentary Portrait (a collection of his letters and other writing) while waiting for the computer to boot.

November 21, 2003

"Moreover, by allowing terrorism to become our principal preoccupation, we are playing into the terrorists' hands.  They are setting our priorities"--George Soros

Dreamed of driving through Cape Breton, completing a huge jigsaw puzzle, and walking a distance up Mt. Wycocomagh (an actual hill in Cape Breton); reading in a dictionary the Chinese word for looking at your hand in the night light and seeing the outline of the bones inside(?); telling my girlfriend about it.

Went to Wychwood Library and picked up Lonesome Dove, only two days after it went on hold! (I'll have to email them a compliment.)

Baked gingerbread for tomorrow's fundraiser.

Indian summer isn't over yet. (The compost pile still has flies!)

The new Atlantic Monthly has a good George Soros essay criticizing Bush's foreign policy.

Dinner was chicken (which I fried).

Went to the dance studio again.  Cynthia was glad to see me.

November 20, 2003

"Grown-ups have developed an unpleasant habit lately, I notice, of comforting themselves for their degradation by pretending that children are childish"--The Book of Merlyn

"Let them sin....  It's good for their souls....  They can repent afterward"--Viridiana

Dreamed of seeing a movie like Purple Rain, with Ben Kingsley as a married bourgeois professor carrying out perfect murders (Burgess Meredith was one of the victims); a drama like The Emperor Jones about the black tin-pot dictator of a third world nation.

Went out to the library and read the children's books What Do You Say, Dear? and What Do You Do, Dear?  They're real classics. (I remember them from childhood.)

Started typing out my September diary entries.

Started reading The Book of Merlyn, an extra book in the Once and Future King series.

Saw two movies at the Cinematheque.  The first was Luis Bunuel's Veridiana, an often brilliant satire about a young religious woman who inherits an estate and decides to take in the local paupers.  Its style reminded me of fellow Spaniards Velazquez and Goya!

The second was Fassbinder's Despair (for the second time), based on Nabokov's novel. Nice try, but Nabokov's really unfilmable.  Yet it was a great visual achievement.

November 19, 2003

"He saw the problem before him as plain as a map.  The fantastic thing about it was that it was fought over nothing--literally nothing.  Frontiers were imaginary lines....  The imaginary lines on the earth's surface only needed to be unimagined"--The Candle in the Wind

Dreamed of making a list of actors who'd shown their pubic hair in movies, including Julianne Moore (an actual scene in Short Cuts).

Went to the library and placed a hold on the book Lonesome Dove.

Dinner was McDonald's.

Creative Writing was about short stories.  One last story for next week will be about whatever occurs to us.  I think I'll retell the story Mother told me about the man who was overheard saying to his mistress, "You look good to me, dear."

Finished The Candle in the Wind.  The last chapter is really majestic.