This was the last of three drawings. As you'll see they literally got more relaxed, from a rather clenched beginning! Hands are hard; you just have to draw a lot of them in all different positions. It helps to turn the paper upside down and sideways and look at your work that way too, sometimes you can spot what's wrong more easily, because we're all so used to looking at hands from many different angles.
Second drawing.
First drawing.
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Yesterday morning I sat in the waiting room of the clinic where I have my annual medical exams. Something had changed since my last visit: a huge black television monitor occupied one wall, with the channel tuned to CNN.
It was impossible to ignore; the small waiting room had been turned into a screening room, where even patients who didn't want to watch were forced to listen. In the space of just a few minutes, I heard commentators speculate that this might be the day that North Korea decided to launch a missle. I heard reports of a new, deadly strain of bird flu in China, and an outbreak of meningitis among gay men in Los Angeles. There was discouraging discussion about the gun control bill, and a story that parents in Japan are starting to refuse to allow their children to come to the U.S. for university study, because of a perception that the country is becoming too dangerous.
A white-coated tecnician came into the room to get a cup of coffee just as the meningitis story was playing; the screen showed large electron-micrographs as the journalist's voice intoned the latest statistics. Oh dear, said the man, turning to me with a dismayed look on his face. He stood for a few minutes, riveted to the screen, and then walked out the door to begin his day.
My doctor came to the door and called my name; I was glad to escape. But during the morning I had to come back to the waiting room several times, between visits to the nurse for blood work, an EKG, and various other appointments. Each time, I watched the behavior of the other people in the room, all of whom would turn to face the TV, shaking their heads at each grim, frightening story. Last year, most of them were absorbed in their cell phones. I looked for a magazine or newspaper; unlike former visits, this time there was only one, an old issue of Vanity Fair; instead I pulled a book out of my pack, but it was very difficult to concentrate on the words.
Finally I turned to one of the other women and said, "I'm American, and really, this is part of what I came to Canada to escape."
As it turned out, she was originally American too, from North Carolina, but we had a pretty different take on things. She was conservative, I more liberal. While I objected to being force-fed anxiety by inflammatory stories in the media, she insisted it was "important to be informed." "I'm really worried when I go to the U.S. now," she said. "If I go to a shopping center across the border I really look around me at the people; it seems like anything could happen. Everyone has guns." Well, yes, I agreed, many people do, and I think that's a big problem. But you have to look at the statistics as well; your chance of being killed in a Wal-Mart in Burlington, Vermont, is not extremely high.
We both finished our appointments and went home, where in the afternoon we learned what had happened in Boston, and the cycle of horror, speculation, analysis, and fear began spinning all over again.
I don't want to add yet another voice to that sad and mostly-well-meant cacophony. I've spent many days of my life in Boston, and my heart goes out to the people of that city. If there is something concrete I can do to help, I will do it.
What I've been thinking about is the television in the waiting room, a Canadian waiting room, that once was a quiet place where people read, or talked to a companion, or even simply sat and looked out the window. Its presence seems to me an ominous symbol of something that has gone very wrong in most western societies: our inability to be with ourselves, to cope with the essential human condition of solitude, especially in situations that cause our anxiety to rise. It concerns me that, in our secular, post-liberal-arts, technological, perpetually-connected society, so little effort goes into teaching children how to be alone, showing them the richness and solace of time spent with nature, with the arts and handcrafts, with books and music, with oneself walking in a city or sitting on a bench: eyes open, ears open, mind and heart awake to the dance of life flowing around us.
When I return to the United States, as I did just last week, I'm always struck by the palpable level of general anxiety, so much greater than it is here in Quebec. But is that anxiety, and the corresponding reactiveness -- even in the wake of tragedies such as have been experienced in the past decade -- justified? In today's New York Times, University of Maryland criminologist Gary LaFree states, “I think people are actually surprised when they learn that there’s been a steady decline in terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 1970.” Speaking of both domestic and foreign plots, he noted that there were approximately 40 percent fewer attacks in America during the ten years after 9/11 than there had been in the previous decade. (LaFree is director of the highly-regarded National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, which studies terrorism and keep a Global Terrorism Database. He adds a note that nearly half the worldwide attacks, and 1/3 of those in the U.S., have never been solved.)
However, I think the media bears a large responsibility for fanning the flames of American anxiety. Supposed neutral channels like CNN feed viewers an endless diet of anxiety-producing stories, while the left and right square off in loud, combative talk shows and news hours, each side trying to out-shout the other. Television is a very powerful medium. Is it any wonder that so many people feel under attack, vulnerable, and constantly anxious, worrying about what is going to happen to them or to their loved ones? It it any wonder that they feel like the entire world is taking sides, at war, that it's us-against-them, myself against the potential unknown assalilant, intruder, terrorist, crazy person lurking in every community? Furthermore, we know that violence begets violence, that copycat crimes proliferate, and that what a lot of perpetrators want the most is publicity.
If the U.S. wants to worry about drugs and terrorism slipping across its porous northern border, then I am concerned about the insidious infiltration of this kind of secular preaching, these incessant sermons of anxiety and fear originating from the south. And much more than that, I wonder if those of us who have chosen to live our lives differently can perhaps be more vocal and intentional about why, and how. The world has always been dangerous for a vast majority of its citizens, but we in the west have been able to ignore that too long. Living positively, with awareness and joy in each day -- in spite of the possibility of death, which can and does happen anywhere, anytime -- is actually possible, as our brothers and sisters in war-torn, poverty-ravaged societies can teach us. And to look closer to home on this sad day: who knows better the fullness of solitude, or the potential triumph of the human spirit, than the long-distance runner?
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Inner garden of the Palacio Nationale, Mexico City, with cats
As you all know by now, I'm in love with plants. One of the things I was looking forward to the most about being in Mexico was seeing palm trees, and finding out more about what plants grow in that particular climate.
Unlike some parts of Mexico, the capital city is neither tropical nor desert. There is a rainy season (not now) and my impression was that in general it's quite dry there. But it's also high - over 6,000 feet, in a region of high mountains -- the major volcanoes to the southeast rise to over 17,000 feet!
Mass planting of clivias, at the zoo
I haven't read anything yet about the ecology or botany of the area. Basically, what I saw were succulents and cactus growing to enormous sizes; small houseplants that we're used to having indoors growing as small trees and lush hedges (crotons, rubber plants); banana trees, clivias and agapanthus used as mass-plantings under trees in parks; bougainvillas trailing over trellises and balconies and clambering up trees; and everywhere, breathtaking violet jacaranda trees -- an icon of Mexico City -- in full bloom.
Jacarandas
The Palacio Nationale, where we saw the Rivera murals, has a large inner garden (top picture), open to the public. Part of it is filled with trees, and inhabited by cats who are given food and water and, in return, stay there safely, though some of them they looked pretty scruffy.
The other side is a botanical garden (above), full of succulents and cactus growing on black volcanic rocks. We spent quite a while there, taking pictures and enjoying the atmosphere of an entirely different sort of garden.
I hope the photographs manage to convey the scale, and show you just how huge these plants really were.
An old cactus with new leaves. In the streets and the markets, people are preparing leaves like these to eat, cutting the spines of with sharp machete-like knives, and cooking the leaves on a hot griddle. I didn't try them but I was curious!
It was a shock to me to see that people had carved their initials in some of these magnificent plants! First, because it seems like such an unnecessary thing to do, and second because of the longevity it implied for the plants themselves, which stoically continued to grow, slowly, year after year.
But the most extraordinary thing we saw was this living wall. I could hardly believe it. The substrate is a thick landscape fabric that feels like felt. The plants are all growing in pockets in that fabric, and there must be some sort of internal irrigation system. Isn't it fantastic?
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Along with what seemed like half of Mexico City, we went to the zoo today. We watched a few animals, including homo sapiens.
The big cats were particularly impressive. I had just finished reading Life of Pi, so the size and majesty of the bengal tiger (not shown here; his body was mostly behind a rock) felt especially immediate today. The panther seemed agitated and paced back and forth on top of his rock ledge, ominous and menacing.
I had never seen a jaguar before. Hold him in your mind, for he's important to Mexico, and coming back soon in a different guise.
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St- Emelie-de-l'Énergie, Quebec. Pastel on paper, 13" x 9 3/4".
For those of us who live this far north, you simply have to find something to like about winter - something that makes you actually look forward to it, and that gives you the endurance to get through the last two months of it. I was born in snow country, and have spent my entire life absorbed in the rhythm of seasonal change, attuned to the micro-signals of weather and temperature. We all do that to some degree, don't we? A person from St. Lucia probably knows the moods of the sea the same way I know the different sounds of snow under my feet, or what the cold air tells me as it enters my nostrils.
But what I love most about winter, in addition to the exhilarating feeling of being outdoors on a very cold but bright day -- a feeling nothing in summer can match -- is the way it looks.
The beauty of snow, its purity, its varying texture, the way it reflects light, the way it changes a familiar landscape, the quality of shadows cast on it or light passing through it, the different sizes and tempos and patterns it takes as it falls through the air or is blown about by the wind: all these are by now deeply ingrained, and loved, in spite of any complaints I may make from time to time during a long cold winter. It would be unthinkable for me to miss an entire winter, to fly south like so many Canadian snowbirds who escape to Florida or Costa Rica when the first flurries arrive, and never return until there's green grass and daffodils.
By now, heading toward late February, I'm getting tired of it, for sure. And we too are planning a brief escape soon to someplace much warmer. A lot of the ice has melted and the snow in the city has receded; walking is pretty easy right now, and though we'll get some big wet snowfalls in March, the accumulation seems to have peaked and started to turn in the other direction. I hear there's a huge amount in Quebec City still, as there was out in the country, inspiring the picture at the top of this post. As I worked on that pastel, I thought about the blue of the shadows, how intense it is, and how deep it seems to go into the snow itself.
It's such a strange substance, snow. In the city, where it accumulates in volume, it creates an enormous problem and has to be trucked out and piled in great snow dumps, but that weighty, voluminous substance is entirely ephemeral: pick up a handful and merely breathe on it, and watch it disappear.
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near St-Emelie-de-l’Énergie, Quebec
Late afternoon. The long dark blue shadows that stretched across the snow from the base of each tree, each little shrub, each delicate sapling when I came upstairs to take a nap have disappeared now, an hour later, into a sea of the same dark blue, and through the round window high in the wall to my left, I can see the sun's final flares between tall pines.
We arrived at noon, having delayed the trip from the city by a day because of a snowstorm. After shoveling a path to the door we brought in the luggage, the bags of food and wine, a carton of twelve bottles of Boréale, the cheese we’d bought at Fromagerie du Champ à la Meule on the way. We added my snowshoes to the pile already stacked in the garage, and changed from boots to slippers. G. quickly built a fire in the big stone fireplace, and put out a half-kilo of peanuts for the bluejays, to whom she whistles on arrival (they come in about two minutes, she confided to us, grinning,) while S. set about unpacking the groceries and poured each of us a beer, which we drank with crackers and pickled herring while the fire began to spread its warmth.
Lunch was a salad, with breads and oatcakes, followed by grapes and cheese: a soft, round triple-crème, a firm wax-covered wedge from the fromagerie, and a Sablot de Blanchette - a sablot is hoof or a clog – a small, square block of aged goat cheese. While we ate, the birds did too, coming and going from the trees to the feeders just outside the windows that G. keeps full all week: chickadees and blue jays, pine grosbeaks, and a beady-eyed hairy woodpecker.
I love it here; the silence and the presence of nature, the light which streams into the many-paned windows all day, making patterns on the white walls and the woodwork. The house is Shaker: meditative and simple. But conversation has been a strain for me. I’m tired and drained after many days of dealing with people, of listening too much, and I’m tired of feeling entrapped by winter. Maybe I need to be alone, or to get away to someplace warm. Or maybe I just need this.
After we’d cleaned up from lunch G. went into town to do a few errands, and the rest of us fell quickly asleep. When I woke I felt considerably better; how much of my mood is merely fatigue? The others are downstairs; I can hear J. and G. hauling wood into the porch outside, and I know no one will press me to come down before I’m ready. The light in this north-facing room, above the garage, will only last another half hour at best, and then perhaps I’ll sit and meditate, or turn on a lamp and read before dinner. There’s to be Quebec lamb, they said, and probably sherry and west coast smoked salmon, from S.’s mother, before that. For dessert, crab apple jelly with whipped cream. Perhaps I’ll ask if anyone wants to sit with me. Or be sociable instead, and have a cup of tea.
(I went down, and had the tea.)
8:20 am
I woke at 3, after four hours of sound sleep, and rose quietly and went downstairs. The fire had died down to embers. I put the tea kettle on the stove, added a dry log to the fire, and made myself a nest on the sofa in front, under a fleece throw and a Scottish wool plaid blanket. The house was absolutely still. Even without my glasses I could see that the night sky was perfectly clear, and studded with millions of stars. The log caught and blazed, and I shut the door to the firebox, and came back to the sofa with an oatcake and my hot mug of tea -- tilleul, linden – it seems appropriate somehow that I should be drinking tea made from a tree. I was happy sitting there in the darkness, the fire in front of me, the frigid silent woods encircling the house like a mystery, and stayed awake with my thoughts until five or so, when my eyelids finally closed and sleep came again.
My friends came downstairs, S. first, then G., shortly after I woke at 7. I had rejuvenated the fire already, and S. made coffee. Now G. is preparing scones which she’ll bake over a wood fire in the bread oven, next to the fireplace. On the porch, the little red squirrel is defending his own pile of peanuts from six bluejays, who sit in the nearest tree, their white breasts fluffed and shining in the sunlight. The temperature is minus twenty-eight C.
11:00 am
We’re about to go snowshoeing, after a very leisurely morning. The bright sun has warmed the outside air to -8 C. (about 18 degrees F.) and the animals and birds are busy gorging themselves. During our own breakfast, a glossy black squirrel appeared – look, it’s Balthazar! G. cried, saying they hadn’t seen him for two years. He was quite gorgeous, fit for a nobleman’s hat if there were still French trappers searching for prize pelts. After a brief moment of reticence, he sprang up onto the brick wall and craned his neck to get a good look at the strange inhabitats of the interior, refusing to jump down even when we peered back at him, close to the window. Finally he began burrowing for seeds at the base of the feeder, bringing his head up every now, his black nose covered with fine snow, and eventually bounded away into the far trees, leaving a definitive trail of leaps in the pristine snow.
The shadows shrink as we approach midday. Because I’ve seen both sunrise and sunset in the past 24 hours, I’ve marked out the arc of the sun’s appearance and setting along the ridge of pines; it’s still short, this east-west wedge, and the sun isn’t even halfway to the zenith as it makes its transit.
1:15 pm
Back from a long trek on showshoes, around the new lake that was dug in the fall, and then breaking a trail through the deep snow into the woods, past the cat cemetery, up the hill and down again to the old sandpit, where we stopped to take some photographs and catch our breath, listening to the silence. Then we retraced our path. A strenuous hour and a quarter, under an absolutely clear sky, the snow and the paper birches brilliant white against the blue. Twice I stopped to scoop up a small handful of fresh snow and eat it, feeling the fine crystals melt on my tongue. How I’ve missed being out in the woods in winter!
Now we’ll have lunch, and then a few hours of quiet before leaving around 4:30. I think the city will feel like a shock.
3:40
A last round; watering the plants, checking the bathrooms and living room for stray clothes, cameras, books. G. has given me shoots of a large, spotted angel-wing begonia, and her lemon pelargonium, which is quickly taking over the upstairs bathroom. Fortunately it’s a warmer day so I’ll be able to get the cuttings back to Montreal without risk.
The sun disappeared during our late lunch, but the northern shrike made her appearance, just as G. had predicted, sitting high in the little aspen and frightening all the other creatures into immobility or disappearance. She's a beautful bird, the first of her species I've ever seen, with a lightly striped white breast, a soft grey head, a strong beak and a slender black mask like an elegant Carnival figure of dubious and possibly alarming intention; everyone steers clear. At length she flew off, the sun came out again, and with it the chickadees, who seem to be the mascots of this house at the edge of the wilderness, always cheerful and hopeful, waiting for the next appearance of the humans.
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Neighborhood Rink. February 5, 2013
"The wind moved like the wake of a massive beast through the city..."
-Seon Joon
At the end of January, I wrote:
The month ended with a spell of 40-degree weather blown through the dirty streets by fierce and unpredictable gusts of wind. The city looked its worst: piles of half-melted snow and ice covered with dirt and cinders vie for visual prominance with the detritus revealed underneath by their retreat. Everyone's in a bad mood, or sick -- hacking in the buses and sneezing on the streets as they pass you, merci beaucoup. The hockey rinks lay fallow, full of water reflecting the bare branches above, and ringed with people's cast-off Christmas trees. Children trudge to school, heads down, still swaddled in pink and blue snowsuits. There's no rejoicing, no unseasonable outdoor cafe-sitting as there will be in March; we all know it's a trick: real winter will be back, and soon.
It came the very next day, with the temperatures hurtling down into the single digits, and the wind, now viciously cold, chilling faces and hands the minute we stepped out the door.
There are bright spots, though, even as we hunker down for the final long slog through the next six or eight weeks, the long days of Lent, the inevitable winter storms. Florist windows are full of creative arrangements: tightly packed red roses in unusual vases, the first sight of primroses and daffodils. Ash Wednesday is right around the corner, but that means Easter will be early this year. This week's thaw finally melted through the thick, treacherous sidewalk ice, sothat there are long bare stretches of pavement, making the walking much easier. I sent in my annual garden inscription, and got a note from the chairman of our jardin communautaire: it won't be that long before the sap starts running in the maples, and it will be time to start seeds, place orders, and think about growing things again.
In spite of the ridiculous length of Canadian winters, I always feel like we've cleared a hurdle when January is finally over. It always feels like a long month, and a rather grim one. This past Sunday was Candlemas, that ancient pagan holiday appropriated by the early British Christians; we blessed the year's liturgical candles, and gave thanks for the light, and - with the groundhogs - took a symbolic step toward spring. For the first time in ages, I left the cathedral after Evensong in brightness rather than gloom, and the light in the sky lasted all the way home.
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Finished this morning; some details below. Now on to the next subject, which will probably be something from Quebec.
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