the cassandra pages

Nine of Her

Her features rubbed with a wooden spoon,

Fadwa's Damascene face emerges

beneath my hands black with printing ink --

penetrating dark eyes

the set of the jaw

her brother's entirely.

I lift the thin sheet of kozo

oily and fragrant

missing him.

Writing about War

Roman Skaskiw, who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has written several thoughtful pieces about his experiences for the New York Times. He has an essay there today in the "Home Fires" series that the paper has been running about Iraq. Titled "Narrative Memory at War," Skaskiw writes about the fact and fiction of war narratives, and why they come down to us in the forms that they do. It's a good piece, well worth reading, and I appreciated his comments on two of our most ancient war narratives as he probes the curious line between hero and victim, and the mixed motives of participants and chroniclers of war:

While I like the spare granting of hero or victim status in “The Iliad,” I’d be kidding myself to think it isn’t also a whitewashing — propaganda even — for the Greeks. Unglamorous labors are merely alluded to, while excessive descriptions of bloody, glorious combat go on for pages.

My favorite war narrative is Thucydides’s “History of the Peloponnesian War.” The two-and-half-millennium-old narrative does not ignore selfish pettiness, opportunism, false bravado, naïve adventure seeking, and is more familiar to me than many accounts of our wars being peddled today.

Arrangement

I did buy flowers yesterday.

The flower shop was filled with plants in natural-colored pots, and perhaps "filled" is misleading, because as I walked along the side shelves and the large table in the center of the long narrow shop, I noticed that each dwarf orchid or fern was given its own space, and that there was nothing large or showy in the entire room; it felt, rather, like a gallery of Persian miniatures.

I went to the back, where a single small cooler contained tall galvanized buckets of cut flowers; there was more color behind the glass than in the whole rest of the shop. The florist was a Japanese woman, small and elegant in beige and black; her daughter, I decided from the way they spoke to one another, was speaking in French to a customer on the phone; she had a sophisticated short haircut and wore black with a loose lavender vest.

The florist came over to me and asked what I would like. I don't know yet, I said. Some lilies, perhaps? she suggested. Startled, since lilies are among my favorite flowers, my eyes went to them, on the second tier of shelves, above the roses; there were yellow ones, and orange, pink, and further over to the right, white and some dark shades. How much are they per stem? I asked. Six dollars, she said, and I said fine, I'd like one stem of the white and one of the dark red. She nodded and opened the door and carefully chose and removed two stems, and then asked, would you like them like this, or with some greens? With some greens, I said. She was already bending down looking at the choice of greenery in another section of buckets, and I moved closer, away from the counter, to tell her no asparagus fern, no baby's breath please, but she had already pulled out a single long frond, like the leaf of a sanseviaria, and was holding it away from her body, in back of the lilies which she held tightly together in one hand. She glanced at me. I gave a slight nod and smiled, and instinctively stepped back. She pulled out another broad oval leaf, of darkest green, and two branches with smaller oval leaves that she placed on a low table. Holding the lilies and long leaf in place with one hand, she doubled the dark leaf, curling its point back against the other gathered stems; again she paused to consider her decision. Then she cut two smaller branches from the ones on the table, and held them on the opposite side from the doubled leaf.

I watched, my breath slowing down, understanding now what I was being given. With her other hand she unrolled a length of fine greenish hemp, cut it, and tied the arrangement together, wrapping the twine for a distance of perhaps an inch and a half along the stems. She didn't look at me again for approval, and all of this was done quite slowly and deliberately. When all the stems had been secured, she held the arrangement away from her body again, and then quickly, deftly, tied the top of the long frond into a knot.

She moved to the main counter and placed the arrangement on a piece of delicate grass-green paper, not tissue, but something finer and impervious to water, and then enclosed all of it in transparent cellophane, stapled up the side, and gathered all of this below the blooms with a bow of dark green ribbon affixed with a gold sticker bearing the name of the shop. Then she slowly turned the bouquet to face me, looked up, and met my eyes with a very slight incline of her head. I smiled, nodded, and said thank you very much, it is extremely beautiful. She smiled then, very slightly, and I paid her and walked out into the sunshine.

March Canadiana

1. Lechez les vitrines, "Lick the windows:"  the French phrase for window-shopping. When it's too cold to stick your tongue out and lick anything, snow and mud everywhere, we still stand transfixed in front of window displays of alive green things. The other day in Little Italy, I crossed the street to stare at a florist's window where an array of tall, opaque yellow, hand-blown glass vases held a small forest of orchids: yellow, golden, cream colored with brown and yellow spots. Next to me, a homeless man stood doing the exact same thing, like we were both starving.

I didn't go into the florist the other night; a signboard next to the door advertising tulips for $15 a bunch put me off.  I can't get used to the prices of flowers here. In March, the grocery stores in Vermont used to sell big bunches of tulips for $6. You could get a lovely bouquet for anywhere between $4 and $10. We're closer to distribution here, I'd think, and flowers always tend to be cheaper in all the cities I've visited - I don't get it. It's like I said: robbing the starving woman. 

2. Walking on St. Denis and Mont-Royal on Sunday night, people were screaming everywhere. It took me a minute to realize: sports bars. hockey. olympics.

3. Meanwhile, editorials in major newspapers chide Canadians for their "unbecoming displays of boosterism," this "unCanadian' nationalism!" during the past two weeks. "What's gotten into us?" they ask. I actually consider buying a cool T-shirt at the Bay, with Canada emblazoned across the front of yellow, blue, or red cotton; it's part of the Bay's official Olympic team gear, somehow so much less commercial-seeming here than in the U.S. But I don't because boosterism is frowned on, and I find that so refreshing after a lifetime of not being properly up on American sports.

4. We're mesmerized by a woman from the eastern ocean: "Near my house on the Bay of Fundy, the tides are 45 feet high," she says, "but we have a micro-climate; I grow peaches, and sweet and sour cherries. And we have lemon and orange trees in pots on wheels that we bring out in the summer, they do beautifully. Still, I want to move back to Montreal."

5. Railroad cars clatter by on the Canadian Pacific, bearing beaver logos and stylized sheaves of wheat. "That's our train," we say, when we see it on the overpass in the distance.

6. J.'s bike gets stolen on the first day it's sunny and warm enough to ride it. The heavy U-shaped lock is twisted like someone pried it with a crowbar; seems incredible, but the bike is definitely gone.

7. Kate's Canadian stereotypes make us laugh again.

8. We know the secret: spring is really coming, and it will be so poignant here that you want to hold each day tight in your hand, like a silken peony bud that's too beautiful to open.

9. That won't be for another four weeks or so. Or maybe eight.

10. I mailed my first package to Nunavut yesterday! And it cost the same as any Canadian postage, even though the Arctic is way, way far away. It's still Canada.

I Want Colors and a Laugh

We haven't had as much of the thick wet white stuff as New York, though it did snow most of yesterday -- it's been a pretty easy winter here in Montreal. But the city is at its ugliest: piles of grey glop everywhere, four inch slush with ice water underneath at every streetcorner, heavy ruts in all the alleys, and, on most days, a leaden sky. I paw through my clothes closet looking for bright colors, and every time I pick up my paintbrush it automatically hovers over Hansa Yellow, Cadmium Red, Ultramarine Blue: palette as Ouija Board.

Today, which began with a howling wind out of the north, has turned sunny and almost warm, and I hope some of the slush is melting and running down the drainholes into the St. Lawrence to be carried away, far away from here, out to the Gulf and the big bumpy sturgeons who like that grey color. If I don't walk home while it's still light, I'm thinking I may go down to the end of the next block where there's a little florist and look for something bright - a little primrose or something - to ease the turbulent days when winter refuses to relinquish its grip.  I don't think I've bought flowers all winter. They're expensive here and, well,  I forget. Instead, we always have bowls of fruit: right now I'm looking at yellow pears and fat orange clementines. But I do sometimes wonder think we're absolutely crazy as to live here. We moved NORTH! Nobody does that.

I guess you have to just laugh about it. My friend Vivian sent me a Kate Beaton comic today - I didn't even know about her - and I thought this one was very funny - I love her face when she's in the stationary store saying "PENS!" and I love the bits about halfway down where she goes outside and talks about Canada with, well, what we could call "a grim but familiar affection." Yep, Kate, you're right. It's nuts, especially when you weren't born here. But -- take that, New York City! How long will you be immobilized? Finally, something we're definitely better at than you.

But it's almost the weekend, and I'll leave you with humor: here's another Kate Beaton, this time about poetry: Hipsters Ruin Everything, and one about Queen ELizabeth I. The artist says she "was born in Nova Scotia, took a history degree in New Brunswick, paid it off in Alberta, worked in a museum in British Columbia, then came to Ontario to draw pictures." As her topic index indicates, she likes drawing about history, literary figures, Canada, Catholic saints. She's good, eh?

Vermonters Say No

The legislature in my old recalcitrant state has refused to renew the license for the Vermont Yankee nuclear reactor. I'm proud of them.

In an unusual state foray into nuclear regulation, the Vermont Senate voted 26 to 4 Wednesday to block operation of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant after 2012, citing radioactive leaks, misstatements in testimony by plant officials and other problems.

Unless the chamber reverses itself, it will be the first time in more than 20 years that the public or its representatives has decided to close a reactor.

Vermont currently has a Republican governor, Jim Douglas, of whom I'm not fond. He said that he had been talking to President Obama, who (incomprehensibly, to me) agrees with him and other Republican governors about the need to build many more reactors in the U.S., and had been hoping to delay this vote. I'm glad that grassroots Vermont, which has been fighting problems at Vermont Yankee for decades (it was commissioned in 1966) was finally able to express itself through the legislature. A cooling tower collapsed in 2007, and plant officials recently lied under oath about buried pipes that could have leaked tritium. Furthermore, the Louisiana-based parent company, Entergy, wants to spin off Vermont Yankee and five others, including Indian Point in New York State into a new public company that would sell stock and raise money to pay back Entergy.

Schemes like that don't go over well in Vermont, where there is still a sense, albeit diminished, that small is better and local control (and legal liability) are important.

Hearts in the Snow

This story first appeared here in 2007, but it seemed like a good accompaniment for the photograph; in our monochrome winters, every bit of color is welcome and people tend to leave their decorations up for a long time. In fact, some people still have their Christmas lights up! Mid-February is usually a turning point here, and that's certainly been true this year - last week the light seemed to change dramatically, and tipped us decisively toward spring. And the birds! Singing from morning to night, even when it's snowing! On the weekend we had a couple of very warm days - well, that means it got close to 40 degrees F.! - and everyone streamed outside, into the parks dragging their kids on sleds, or just walking on the newly-clear sidewalks, blinking in the sunshine. Then, of course, it snowed again, but that's the cruelly predictable pattern of late February and early March, until winter is finally defeated for good. Meanwhile, the maple sap begins to run; at the market on Saturday, maple vendors poured hot syrup onto trays of packed snow, and swirled the hardening candy onto sticks; everybody was buying one of these treats and sucking on them happily; it's one more sweet sign that spring is coming.

A VALENTINE (Feb 14 2007 - which was a much colder winter than this one)

Are you ready? he asks at 5:25, and we throw open the coat-closet doors, pulling out heavy parkas and scarves and woolen hats. We've eaten an early dinner of fragrant chicken slowly simmered in a lemony, fresh cilantro sauce with Indian spices, and the apartment smells warm, beckoning us to stay. But his French class starts in half an hour, and there's only one more week until the final week of oral exams. I lace my boots, zip my parka, wrap my scarf around my face, pull on a fleece headband and a wool hat over that; the final addition is a pair of stretchy gloves and a pair of thick handknit mittens, and then, padded to twice our size, we tumble out into the night.

In spite of the extreme cold, people are riding bicycles in the snow; young men with bare heads leave the park carrying hockey sticks over their shoulders. In a basement apartment, goldfish swim obliviously in a large heated tank. On the streetlight posts someone has put up white signs saying "La Collecte" bearing big red teardrop-shapes, and arrows pointing forward. What is it? he asks, and I say, blood - blood collection. But where? We speculate: the church? the firehouse? the school? All the signs are the same, leading us on toward the beating crimson source. A thin girl wearing a short skirt and tights crosses Brebeuf, her bare hands struggling to light a cigarette. Another girl hurries across, her mittened hand pressed over her mouth and nose. I feel my own cheeks prickling; soon I'll barely be able to feel them at all.

At Le Poisson Rouge, white tablecloths and wine glasses shine against the dim interior; the staff, in silhouette, eat at a back table before the first patrons arrive. In the window of the medical supply store, the macabre skeleton manikin still wears her white doctor's coat and stethoscope, and the clerk, in a black t-shirt, frowns over the cash register as he always does at the end of the day. We walk faster to make it across Christophe-Colombe with the green light. There are more red teardrop signs. Look how much lighter the sky is each evening! he remarks, as rue Rachel stretches out straight in front of us, all the way to the mountain and the lighted cross at the peak. I squeeze his hand. We pass Cafe Rico, where the smell of roasting coffee beans permeates a full block. The teardrop signs finally point to the right: the blood collection is somewhere inside the same building as the Toyota dealership! An answer, but wrapped as opaquely as a heart in the chest of urban life.

We're very cold now, but walking fast. How are you? I ask and he nods. It feels good, he adds, and I silently agree. People come out of the fresh pasta store clutching brown paper bags and hurry away down the street; overgrown pink-blooming geraniums and aloe vera plants press their greenness against the long expanse of steamy windows. As we run across St. Hubert, we pass the little boy who's always accompanied home from school by his mother or father at this exact hour; the parent firmly grasps his hand while the boy talks and gesticulates with the other: an exuberant personality refusing to be contained inside the bundle of hooded down parka, hat and snowpants.

Past the bars with their round St. Ambroise and Belle Geule signs; the clothing store where metal grills are being drawn inside the windows by a clerk; the frites shop with its smell of grease and potatoes. How many times have we walked like this, matching our steps, hips close together, noticing all the same things? I only think about it when I'm walking with people whose eyes are so different, who cover up all the possible sights and sounds and smells with their own conversations. Now that thought is succeeded, in quick succession, by a pang of regret for the times we've walked together in anger, and then shifts rapidly back to our rhythm, then to the cruel mathematics of years, and the unbearable potential for loss. I recognize the cycle of thoughts, and deliberately notice our steps - right, left, right, left - and the pattern keeps me here, now - and then we're at the corner of St. Denis where a firetruck is crossing rue Rachel surrounded by cars and I say all right, I'm leaving you here and then hesitate and say, no I'll wait with you for the light to change. I stamp my feet rather than stand still and he turns his face to me and we find each other's mouths, tongues exploring a startling wet heat while our icy cheeks press together. There's snow on his dark lashes. Dark-clothed figures stream around us and when we pull apart the last second has passed and the amber light changes to green; our hands separate; we move perpendicularly, arrows pointing in different directions, lost in the swiftly moving crowd.

Read, Write, Cut -- and Keep Going

Read, Write, Cut -- and Keep Going: a new essay in the series on books, writing, and publishing over at my Phoenicia Publishing site.

My Saturday morning began with a quick read of a two-part article in the Guardian, "Ten Rules for Writing Fiction," in which a number of contemporary authors were asked to give their advice. As both a writer and an editor, I found a lot that was worthwhile, though some took the question more seriously than others, and the article was very long -- probably the editors didn't want to offend anyone by leaving them out. The best standalone lists, I thought, were those by Geoff Dyer and Al Kennedy.

So let's look at what the responses had in common, and what stood out...

The Violinist in the Garrett

 

Yesterday I got a note from a friend, asking if I could identify a story he remembered reading long ago which was still haunting him. It felt vaguely familiar to me but I had no idea from where. I thought probably someone here would remember. Can you help? Here's what he wrote, poignant in itself for the way he describes the hold that certain tales have over our imaginations, and the almost obsessive way we seek to recall them much later, suspecting, perhaps, that they hold a key to something we'd now understand.

From time to time, when I think of readings that left a mark, I recall a short story from many years ago.  By now it is almost a dream memory, imagined and distorted by desperate reconstruction more than recalled.  I don't know the author or title, and have tried, even recently in these days of online tools and cooperative reference librarians, to find it again, unsuccessfully.  It seems now like a story that might have been by L. Buñuel or H. Hesse (and I know I was fond of both these authors at the time), although I have searched the works of each of these authors recently, and unsuccessfully.  

The main character was a young man living an ascetic life in a frosty garret of some Bohemian city, a dedicated and solitary violinist who never performed in public, despite his excellence, although he often enchanted his neighbors,  listening through the walls.  Through some fairy-tale scheme, he was given an opportunity to wish for a life of comfort, or companionship, or riches.  Of course he turned these all down, and wished instead that he could learn to play the violin.  Whether through a pact with the devil or a djinn, or some other supernatural agent, he indeed learned to play the violin as no one had before.   He remained, however, a solitary ascetic in a frosty garret in some Bohemian city with no friends or comfort, besides his music, which gave him unbounded joy.

I have probably embellished or distorted key details in this story, maybe even the unbounded joy part, and certainly left out what makes it a story instead of a dream synopsis.  I'd love to find and reread this story again some day.  By any chance does this sound familiar?  Or only archetypal?

Mercredi des cendres

There were hot cross buns last Saturday at Motta, the Italian bakery near Jean-Talon. I didn't buy any, although they're a favorite - that really would have felt like jumping the gun -- but I was glad to see them because they've become harder to find as Montreal becomes more and more post-Christian. We also didn't make it to the cathedral's Shrove Tuesday pancake supper: too tired and sleepy, and somehow the thought of all those fatty sausages and pancakes swimming in syrup didn't have much appeal that evening.

Last night, though, I was in the choir for the Ash Wednesday evening service, and it felt like everything fell into its appointed place and time. As our director pointed out at the beginning of the rehearsal, "Tonight we're about Renaissance intensity." On the program were William Byrd's "Mass for Five Voices", two chanted psalms, and a rather long motet, "Peccantem me quotidie" by Claudio Merulo (1533-1604). This was one of those sleeper pieces that at first run-through doesn't seem so special, but on the second time reveals its potential, which in this case is an intensity that builds, through the counterpoint, to a white heat at the end. It was very good in rehearsal, but when we performed it, right after communion, it was electrifying. Patrick sensed where we could go with it and he pulled everything he could out of the choir - we had about 30 voices last night - and it was quite something at the end, with the different parts repeating "Salve me!" with urgency and passion.

After the recessional hymn he played Bach's meditative chorale prelude "O world, bewail thy grievous fall". It was the perfect conclusion to the moving Ash Wednesday liturgy, which moves from penitence, humility, and grief to a more hopeful tone of preparation and reflection.  I no longer participate in the ashes-on-the-forehead thing, which always felt too Catholic for me, but I'm looking forward to Lent: there are some things I need and want to think about, and I appreciate that there's a specific season set aside for that kind of inner work, supported by a community of other people who are doing similar work in the privacy of their own hearts.

I went to a side pew and listened. During the entire postlude, no one moved; like me, perhaps, they were reflecting on the emotional arc of the service, and their own regrets, pains, and hopes. More than any words or prayers or ritual, music -- especially Bach -- does this for me, and how typical of his genius to take the darkest possible subject, and fill it with humanity and light.