the cassandra pages

Camden Market

We're staying in Camden Town, home of the famous Camden Market, and have enjoyed hanging out there and browsing in the stalls and souk-like shops, and remembering what it was like back in the hippie days. There's a heavy Goth vibe now, but a little bit of everything, from Indian import shops to Turkish handwork to antiques to lots and lots of clothing retail. Bargaining is expected. And the street food is great, with every flavor from all over the world. For me, the most fun has been watching the people.

 

 

 

 

 

Touching

We arrived in London on the evening of the 21st. The next day we spent getting our bearings, since we're staying in a part of the city that is new to us. We took a bus to Hyde Park and went for a long walk (more pictures later), and then had dinner at a Turkish restaurant with my dear blogging friend Jean of Tasting Rhubarb.

The next day J. went to the Portrait Gallery and I went to the British Museum. The Great Court has been built since our last visit; It's quite impressive and the light in it is very beautiful. I was on a specific mission to study the Greek vases, so I walked quickly past the Rosetta Stone (now under glass), the Egyptian antiquities and the Assyrian galleries, and went straight to the Greek rooms.

The vases are so fantastic. This one shows the sacrifice of Polyxena, Cassandra's sister, after the fall of Troy.

I'm crazy about white-ground lekythoi, especially those of the so-called "Achilles Painter." This is a very famous one. Just look at the confidence of his lines, all drawn with a small brush!

But this is what really gets me about the British Museum. Here is a beautiful helmet (you can see some of the Elgin marbles reflected to the left,) but beside it was an unassuming calcite jar with some markings scratched into the surface. When I read the descriptive tag, this is what it said:

This jar is inscribed "Xerxes, Great King of Persia," in Old Persian, Elamite, Babylonian, and Egyptian scripts. Xerxes, who ruled Persia from 485-465 BC, invaded Greece in 480 BC. He was defeated at the Battle of Salamis in 479 BC. One of his generals was Artemisia of Caria. The jar appears to have been a present from Xerxes to Artemisia, and passed through the Carian royal line. It was eventually deposited in the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the tomb of Mausolus and his sister (died around 350-351 BC). The vessel is a remarkable record of political and cultural contact between the Persian and Greek worlds.

I stared at it for a long time. This jar in front of me had actually belonged to Xerxes, who may have held it in his own hands before giving it to his general, around the time of the Persian Wars. That just blows my mind.

Struck Dumb

In the past three days I've seen wonders I'd never imagined. Even though I've seen photographs of some of these places, being there was entirely different. The scale, so vast; the smells so intense; the colors more vivid than any ink or screen could possibly capture; the silence so complete. On the 20th, my 59th birthday, I stood within the rift that divides the continents. Iceland is being formed out of that fault, and then it plunges into the ocean to become the mid-Atlantic rift. But above ground, it is real, more than real, you can touch it and smell it and see it: the birthing of worlds.

Above is just one photograph of hundreds I took; this isn't the specific rift valley I just spoke about, but is a volcanic range and valley in the southern peninsula, only an hour from Reykjavik, but one of the most other-worldly places I've ever seen: black volcanos and smoking hot springs where mud boils and sulfer colors the earth. Beyond this valley we came to the ocean through vast fields of black lava rubble that look like I imagine the moon.

Over the next weeks and months I'll be processing what I saw, if that is even possible, and trying to share some of it here and use it in new artwork. Yesterday we flew away, over Katla and the glaciers, and now we're in London, a very different place but one we love too.

Oh, the Wind and the Rain!

Icelanders, sensible people that they are, stayed indoors yesterday because of the gale-force winds and continual rain. But our hosts had offered us two shiny mountain bikes, and we couldn't resist going out to explore on our own. We biked down from their house, through snug neighborhoods and part of downtown Reykjavik, onto the path that goes along the ocean. The wind was so strong on the way down that I felt like a sail. On the way back...well, that was another matter. And when the crosswinds hit, we could barely move forward and had to keep moving steadily or we would have been blown over. It reminded me of stormy days of skiing on Vermont and New Hampshire mountaintops -- and I loved every minute of it. Every time J. turned around to see if I was still behind him I think I had a big grin on my face.

Here he is, on the back side of one of the lighthouses in the harbor. He looks nonchalant hanging onto the rail but...you had to.

 

After this ride we had hot dogs at one of Reykjavik's  most famous landmarks - the downtown hot dog stand, and then stumbled upon the Iceland printmakers' gallery, where we saw a good show of copperplate gravure photosgraphs and had a pleasant talk with the woman who was tending the exhibition. Behind the exhibit hall is a beautifully equipped, large cooperative printmaking studio. "Come back," she said, " You can sign up for a month at a time!"

And around the corner, on the top floor of the public library, we found the Reykjavik Museum of Photography. The staircase going up had a exhibition of historic prints by Icelandic photographers, of which these two, above, were favorites of mine. There were two current exhbitions, one by the Magnum photographer Marc Rimbaud, and another of the 2010-2011 Icelandic sheep round-up that was excellent.

We were cold, and pretty much soaking wet, so before the long uphill ride back to our friends' house, we rewarded ourselves with coffee and a "Brunhilde." I love it that Icelandic coins have fish on them! And then we did what has become a ritual and a passion: going for a long soak in the town's geothermal pools. It was 6 degrees C. when we arrived at about 6 pm; we ran fast through the outdoors between locker room and pool, where the steam was rising from the water. The regular pool didn't seem hot enough for us so we went to one which was 38 degrees C., and stayed there until our body temperature was so warm we barely felt the cold when going back to the locker room. I swam a few laps - there are two Olympic-size pools int his complex - and then we went home to a dinner of free-range Icelandic lamb that our hosts had prepared specially for us. Needless to say, life felt awfully good.

I apologize for the less-than-usual quality of these photos - I hadn't brought my camera because of the wetness, so these were taken with my phone. Many more pictures to come...it's impossible to keep up but it's also so nice to be able to keep in touch this way. It makes it even harder to believe the strangeness of flight and the fact that we are now sitting on an island in the middle of the northern Atlantic.

 

 

At the Fish Store

Potato pancakes. Potatoes & fish are the traditional combination here. Last night we had what our friends said was their traditional Monday night dinner as children: boiled cod and boiled potatoes with butter, which can be eaten all mashed together. It was the freshest cod I've ever had, and absolutely delicious. That's w-h-a-l-e meat, to the left.

Cod cheeks.

And prepared, marinated fish and seafood of all kinds.

Arrival

A few moments later, our dear friend was whisking out of the airport and across a landscape that resembles the moon.

More in the days to come.

Taking Off...

This new little note/sketch book is coming along with me on an adventure, starting tomorrow. If all goes well, the next post will be from a very exciting destination, someplace I've never been before! Stay tuned!

Drawing My Life, 20 Years Ago

While searching for something else, I came across an old sketchbook today. It's from 1990, during the last real period of intensive artwork. There were a few oil paintings in the next ten years, but not much searching. It was fascinating to me to look back through these, now, and try to remember what I was doing and thinking then.

There were some nice gesture drawings of our dear departed cat, Madonna.

 

And some drawings I was obviously thinking about in terms of paintings or graphics. During this period I did some very free but intense watercolors that had a lot to do with memories, emotions.  There's a drawing in this book of our neighbor's old willow tree, with stars shining through it -- that became a painting, which I recently found in a drawer and pinned up on my studio wall. I never used these sketches, below, but that's what they were for.

And toward the end of the sketchbook I was stunned to see this ghostly face, very pale, on the back of a sheet.

At the bottom, in pencil, it says "my mother, from memory, after her visit, 5/14/90."

My mother was an artist who didn't keep at it very much after marriage, but she loved the arts -- all of them -- and encouraged me from the moment I was old enough to hold a pencil or put my hands on a keyboard. Looking at her face today I felt sorry I've let so many years go by without drawing or painting, but I know she'd be glad that I'm doing it now. There was a reason, and it appeared on the very last pages of this sketchbook: the first poems I wrote when I was just starting to think seriously about writing instead.

I wasn't quite forty then - I turned 38 in September, 1990 - and I was discouraged with art, and, I think, lonely -- I wanted to talk with people and to communicate more than I wanted to sit in a studio after days at my desk and worktable doing graphic design. So much happened in that next ten or twelve years, before blogging! So much intensity and confusion, when everything about myself felt so fragmented and disconnected...and then learning to meditate, returning to the piano and doing some years of very serious study, and most importantly, finding my voice as a writer. Now it seems as if I've had to come back to fine art through the other arts, which have taught me so much about myself. It's rather like taking a circuitous walk in the woods and then returning home through back door. But it makes me happy now to discover seeds in these earlier drawings that are bearing fruit now, so much more easily.

Remembrance and Renewal

 ("The scars of September 11")

Our cathedral community includes a number of Canadian-Americans, many of whom came up during the 1960s and never left. We are the odd ones who came recently, driven by a different war and a different set of national paranoias and persecutions. Each Sunday there is a place in the liturgy for "the Prayers of the People" - a lay-led set of intercessions, fairly freely composed as a litany, in which we pray for the world, for our local community, for the Church, and for each other. It comes right before the general confession, which precedes communion.

J. and I were asked to lead these prayers on September 11, and although I rarely include prayers here, I thought this time I would, since I wrote them for this occasion and they express pretty well my feelings about this day -- and I also thought some of you might be interested in this part of what we liturgy-besotted Anglicans actually do. Constructing and writing liturgical text is a challenge that I like; I've done quite a bit of it but most often for groups of mixed faith traditions. Liturgy is like drama - or perhaps I should say, it is drama -- there must be ebb and flow; beauty and rhythm akin to prose poetry; a build-up of tension and release; and an overall control of the flow of emotion and content. It can be very effective and meaningful, or it can fall flat. In our tradition we have a pretty high standard of writing and language, and that's both challenging and helpful.

When I address "God" here I am speaking not to some omnipotent deity "out there" seated on a throne from which he (of course, "he") manipulates us like puppets, but to the force for good that I believe exists not only in the world but inside each of us -- what Paul Tillich called "the ground of being" -- that we can access when we reflect deeply and are motivated in our decisions and actions by love.

--

On this tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, let us pray for our world.

Dear Lord, today we remember. We each remember where we were ten years ago, our shock and horror. We remember the strangers whose deaths we witnessed, those we knew who were affected, and those whose heroism saved others. We remember the families of the victims, and the survivors. And we pray for all of them.

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Ten years ago, a friend wrote:

Another week has come to an end. Some of the people in my neighborhood are able to move back. There is only access by foot and many police checkpoints. People are trying to get back to some kind of normalcy. Our building isn’t open yet. Another, around the corner, may need to come down – the fire damage was extensive from the plane parts that hit and are still in the building. I have concern for the children in the neighborhood who will have to return to this. We, along with the rest of the country, are waiting to see what happens next. I can’t imagine the type of war people are suggesting. Someone wrote on a sidewalk nearby, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

Dear Lord, today we mourn. We mourn for our lost innocence, and for a changed world – a world which has become more fearful, and, as a result, more extremist, more paranoid, more violent and oppressive, and much less secure. We mourn our inability to reach toward one another, and our perpetual human tendency to turn to violence because we cannot believe strongly enough in love. We mourn our failure to embrace difference, and our missed opportunities for humility, self-examination, and peace-making. As Christians, we mourn the fact that you have told us again and again to turn away from hatred, and to love one another -- and still we have not heard you.

And so, Lord, today we bring to you our sadness, our frustration, our fears for ourselves and our children. We bring our uncertainties, and we bring our hope. Help us to know who we are meant to be, and what we are called to do, and to act with courage and faith for justice, truth and peace, always remembering Jesus’ commandment: love one another.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

We pray for our country of Canada, and for our unique city of Montreal, home to so many people from all over the world, living in relative harmony. We pray that our country and city may continue to be beacons of peace, freedom, and opportunity, and that our leaders may heed these words from the First Book of Kings: “A multitude of wise men is the salvation of the world, and a sensible king is the stability of his people.”

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

Let us pray for the Church

(specific prayers are said for our parish and diocese, and our prayer partner, the diocese of Masasi and this week's prayer cycle-partner, Myanmar.)

Dear God, we pray for the Church. Imbue our leaders with the courage to preach the Gospel as your Son intended: to be peacemakers, to champion the oppressed and the weak, and to stand and speak for peace, justice, and honesty against the powers and principalities of the world. Inspire in all of us faith in your grace and in your presence working among us, and help us to remember these words of Archbishop Oscar Romero: “Do not worry about whether or not you are effective. Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater than you imagine.”

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

Let us pray for members of our own community:

(a list of names follows of those in special need) 

And let us take a moment to pray for those closest to us, and for those we love who have departed from this life. (silence)

(all) Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

And so, let us bring ourselves before God, asking his forgiveness and renewal:

(all) Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion, forgive us our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone, and so uphold us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the honour and glory of your name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A)    On this tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001, let us pray for our world.

Dear Lord, today we remember. We each remember where we were ten years ago, our shock and horror. We remember the strangers whose deaths we witnessed, those we knew who were affected, and those whose heroism saved others. We remember the families of the victims, and the survivors. And we pray for all of them.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

Ten years ago, a friend wrote:

Another week has come to an end. Some of the people in my neighborhood are able to move back. There is only access by foot and many police checkpoints. People are trying to get back to some kind of normalcy. Our building isn’t open yet. Another, around the corner, may need to come down – the fire damage was extensive from the plane parts that hit and are still in the building. I have concern for the children in the neighborhood who will have to return to this.

We, along with the rest of the country, are waiting to see what happens next. I can’t imagine the type of war people are suggesting. Someone wrote on a sidewalk nearby, “An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”

 

Dear Lord, today we mourn. We mourn for our lost innocence, and for a changed world – a world which has become more fearful, and, as a result, more extremist, more paranoid, more violent and oppressive, and much less secure. We mourn our inability to reach toward one another, and our perpetual human tendency to turn to violence because we cannot believe strongly enough in love. We mourn our failure to embrace difference, and our missed opportunities for humility, self-examination, and peace-making. As Christians, we mourn the fact that you have told us again and again to turn away from hatred, and to love one another -- and still we have not heard you.

And so, Lord, today we bring to you our sadness, our frustration, our fears for ourselves and our children. We bring our uncertainties, and we bring our hope. Help us to know who we are meant to be, and what we are called to do, and to act with courage and faith for justice, truth and peace, always remembering Jesus’ commandment: love one another.

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

We pray for our country of Canada, and for our unique city of Montreal, home to so many people from all over the world, living in relative harmony. We pray that our country and city may continue to be beacons of peace, freedom, and opportunity, and that our leaders may heed these words from the First Book of Kings: “A multitude of wise men is the salvation of the world, and a sensible king is the stability of his people.”

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

 

B) Let us pray for THE CHURCH

In our Cathedral Parish, we pray for Paul and Rhonda, our clergy; we pray for the ministry team and servers, for the vergers, for the greeters, for all those involved in our music ministry, for the support and office staff, and for the members of cathedral Forum and Corporation.

We pray for the renewal of commitment to Christian Life in our community; for our ecumenical fellowship with neighbouring churches; and for La Communauté du Rédempteur, and we pray for a new spirit of interest and cooperation with those of other faiths.

We pray for our Diocese, especially for St Mary’s Church in Kirkland, and their priest, The Revd Lorne Tardy, and for our bishop, the Rt.  Rev. Barry Clarke.

We pray for The Anglican Communion – for our Prayer Partners in The Diocese of Masasi, and especially this week for Sittwe in Myanmar and its bishops, The Rt Revd Barnabas Theaung Hawi, and The Rt Revd Sein Aung, and for Rowan Williams, the Archibishop of Canturbury

 

Dear God, we pray for the Church. Imbue our leaders with the courage to preach the Gospel as your Son intended: to be peacemakers, to champion the oppressed and the weak, and to stand and speak for peace, justice, and honesty against the powers and principalities of the world. Inspire in all of us faith in your grace and in your presence working among us, and help us to remember these words of Archbishop Oscar Romero: “Do not worry about whether or not you are effective. Worry about what is possible for you to do, which is always greater than you imagine.”

 

Lord in your mercy, hear our prayer.

 

 

 

Let us pray for members of our own community:

For those In Special Need: Scott Harding, Swanne Gordon, Andrew, Christopher Marlow, Joshua, Barbara Smith, Tobias, Gerry

 

Continued Support: Nancy Gilbert, Carolyn Edmonds, Duncan Peter, Lisa, Christopher Coolidge, Alice Knewstubb, Gloria Hall, Nathalie, Roger, Alain, Marie-Claire, Jonathan Fleming, James

 

And let us take a moment to pray for those closest to us, and for those we love who have departed from this life.

 

 

And so, using the form printed in the bulletin, let us bring ourselves before God, asking his forgiveness and renewal:

 

Have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; in your compassion, forgive us

our sins, known and unknown, things done and left undone, and so uphold

us by your Spirit that we may live and serve you in newness of life, to the

honour and glory of your name;

through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

White River Ice

White River Ice. Linocut, approximately 7 x 7". You can click on the image for a close-to-lifesize view.