the cassandra pages

A Visit to Provence

Today I finally went to the big show of landscape paintings of Provence that has been at the Musée des Beaux Arts this fall. The show is huge, comprehensive, and beautifully hung: friends had warned me that it was a three-hour affair, at minimum. I made an alternative plan and stuck to it: knowing there would be a number of paintings by Cezanne in the show, I decided to look at the earlier works quickly and spend my time with just the few works that I really wanted to study. That's what I did, and wasn't disappointed. The Cezannes formed, for me, the centerpiece of the whole exhibition; nothing before or after had the power of these canvases, even the VanGoghs which were, predictably, mobbed in a room of their own. There was a large gallery devoted to Cezanne, and two paintings in particular that captured me; I walked back and forth between them for about an hour. One was a large canvas, with deep blues set against ochre and burnt orange - a chateau seen through in a forest - a study in how to use complementary colors, rather than dark and light, to create contrast and intensity. The other was brighter, earlier, with a wonderful sky and white buildings with tile roofs above jewel-like, emerald poplars. Everything about the painting was masterful - the vigorous brushwork, laid down in specific directions that emphasized every form; the blue-black branches that continually led the eye into the center of the picture and upward; the use of entirely different complementary colors, here plus white, rather than black; the tiny touches of bright red that unified the picture. I stood there as scores of people came and went, discovering more and more, and feeling more and more dumbfounded at the greatness and surety of this genius. It was, in its way, a silent master class.

I did go and see the VanGoghs. Standing in front of one of his canvases - and this is Canada, you can get within a nose-hair of the surface without a guard jumping on you - I thought of Van Gogh himself standing exactly where I was, laying down one of those tortured strokes, and had one of those moments of empathy and identification that sometimes come when I'm with a painting. He was here, he actually painted this: I could feel the heft of the brush, the decision to touch or not to touch the surface, the paint going down in a swirling arc. I don't feel that way about Cezanne  because, I suppose, he is not as human to me; I have read a lot about him but not his letters, the way I have with Van Gogh, who will always remain a person to me, even more than a genius in his own right.

And there were some lovely drawings and small watercolors, by different artists, of the famous mountain Saint-Victoire.

After Cezanne - several rooms of pointillism, which I can't bear, and then the Fauves, with a few really good paintings by Derain, Braque, Dufy (the postcard at left is of a wild landscape by Dufy) among some lackluster ones.

It made me want to start painting again.

Warmth and Conversation

Last night we walked through the gently-illuminated park and over a number of blocks to rue Drolet, where two new friends of ours have been staying in a rented apartment. They'll be going back to the U.S. this weekend, since his sabbatical (and research at McGill) are ending. We met them through a mutual friend, late in their stay here, but immediately liked each other a lot. We're sorry they've got to depart, but it feels like the beginning of a long friendship.

They both love to cook, and last night, after our chilly but invigorating walk, the meal began with a delicious burnt-orange soup made from pureed squash and toasted, ground hazelnuts, accompanied by a fresh baguette from their favorite bakery, a tiny place near the corner of Drolet and Mont-Royal which has produced some of our favorite culinary moments recently. That was followed by roast pork slices interleaved with green apples, with rice and a puffy, crusty something that seemed halfway between a souffle and a bread, made of zucchini, flour, and goat cheese. Then came a cheese plate: a bleu cheese and a camembert, with more of the baguette, and some Iranian dates. And finally, a multi-layered butter-and-caramelized-sugar pastry that is the specialty of that little bakery - a tiny piece would have been enough but we managed to consume the entire thing before retiring to the sofas for a couple more hours of conversation about politics, academics, mathematics and science, science and philosophy, photography, and advocacy for the homeless. Then, reluctantly,we put on all our layers, said our goodbyes, and gingerly picked our way back home in a shower of freezing rain that had glazed every inch of pavement. We shook the ice from our shoulders and hats, draped our soaked coats over chairs by the fireplace, and eagerly nestled between the flannel sheets of our bed.

It's been, so far, an unexpectedly lovely Christmas week. I needed to rest and didn't think that I'd be able to, but actually that has happened. It made me very happy to spend Christmas with my family, and being back here has been quiet and unpressured, since I decided not to push forward with the book again until January 2. Today I had some time to cook, and time to write an essay that I submitted to qarrtsiluni, time to catch up on some blog reading and write a few e-mails. Time to simply be -- how easy it is to lose sight of this!

Iron and Rust

Please, go read Paula.

Boxing Week

Yesterday, after a very nice Christmas with my parents in central New York, we drove back up to Montreal, taking the Northway through the Adirondacks. It was the only sunny, bright day we've had, and the mountains and lakes were dazzling, the countryside wild and deserted. Then, suddenly, the land flattens out as if (funny thing, huh?) it had been steamrollered (steamrolled?); the cornfields begin, and the road signs become bilingual.

We were early enough to stop for some food shopping, so we got off on Blvd. Taschereau to go to the Fruiterie - and found ourselves accompanied by about a million other shoppers who didn't seem to be buying food, but shopping for post-Christmas bargains. We managed to make it through the traffic to the big fruit and vegetable market, and then my intrepid husband navigated the back streets of Longeuil, bringing us out just at the base of Pont Jacques-Cartier.

As you can see here, holiday shopping in Montreal can have a distinctly polar flavor. There's "snow" in window displays everywhere, and I've seen quite a few penguins hopping around amid the boots and parkas, but this one had a uniquely startling reality.

I'm a little tired today, and glad to have a few days this week to just catch up on things. And there is all that fruitcake to eat...

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone, and a peaceful, restful holiday season.

I'm writing from my parents'home in central New York, where there is snow on the ground and a grey sky that looks like it is full of more snow. On the road leading to this house, which is on a small glacial lake, we passed cows and deer sharing the same field. The lake is frozen, so the flocks of geese that are often here in the fall have flown over to the river, and they spend their days going between the river and the cornfields that border it, or wheeling in large honking arcs, low over the trees. There's a slight desolation to this landscape of snow-covered, rolling hills and winter fields, where tractors and wagons have left recent strips of brown across the snow - manure that you can smell, faintly, when you walk out any door in this valley. The farmhouses, and homes clustered around intersections to form villages, are bright with Christmas lights, and even though the area is pretty depressed, it's clear from the cars and pickup trucks parked in front yards that families are gathering for their holiday dinners.

My extended family got together last night, at my cousin's house. There were about twenty of us, ranging in age from my parents and uncle, in their early 80s, to little Jonah, who is not quite 2. We ate at 5:00, because chores still had to be done over at the farm. There were roast beef and mashed potatoes, scalloped oysters, a creamed corn casserole, a broccoli and cheese casserole, rolls, and creamed onions, followed by an array of homemade cookies and fudge - more calories than I've seen in one place in quite a while. My uncle left shortly after dinner to make sure things were all right down at the milking parlor. Today, under the tree, Jonah will unwrap a special present from his grandfather: a John Deere toy farm complete with barn and fences, cows, horses, and scale-model farm equipment.

I know this world. Evenings like last night feel familiar and pretty much one-way - something I struggled with for a long time but came to terms with quite a while ago. I don't have this kind of security in my life - the generations growing up in tight proximity, the predictability of Christmases and how one's old age is likely to be. I traded that for something both wider and riskier.

One of my cousin's daughters is the only other person who's left the fold. She's in her late twenties now, married, and teaching at a well-regarded eastern private school. I watched last night as she navigated the waters of re-entry; no one asked her much about herself, but she was handling the conversation in the other direction with a lot of good humor and grace. Silently, I wished her well.

Today has been quiet and very nice, spent just with J. and my parents: exchanging gifts, talking to them and to relatives on the phone, fixing meals, and setting up the new computer that my parents bought each other. I haven't been here for Christmas for a long time, and I'm really glad we came this year. I hope yours has been good too.

Freedom of the Road - Not

Britain is set to become the first country where car trips of ordinary citizens will be monitored and recorded every day. This article in The Independent gives the details.

Using a network of cameras that can automatically read every passing number plate, the plan is to build a huge database of vehicle movements so that the police and security services can analyse any journey a driver has made over several years.

As is often the case in the U.S., this huge expenditure is being driven by both government and police, who say if they didn't have it, they would be being "negligent about public safety".

The scheme is being orchestrated by the Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) and has the full backing of ministers who have sanctioned the spending of £24m this year on equipment.

Solstice

The electricity went off, unceremoniously, at 10:00 am. Our computer power-supplies started beeping, as did the alarm in the hallway outside our apartment -- and the temperature started dropping. When it didn't come back on by 11:00, and then 11:30, J. went out to do some reconnaissance and discovered that there was no electricity for miles all around us. According to the CBC, 77,000 Montrealers on the east end of the island were without power. And it's cold here.

Fortunately, we have a fireplace, so we made a fire and ate our lunch in front of it as it crackled and began to warm the floor and the room. We had already dragged our warmest comforter to the living room couch, and there we stayed for the rest of the afternoon, alternating between the couch and the hearth: brewing tea in a thermos from the still-hot tap water, eating slices of the fruitcake I made a few weeks ago, talking a little, mostly being quiet. I knitted, and played my flute a little, and finished a book -- and watched the light begin to fade shortly after 2:00. The power came on twice, for exactly six seconds (we counted), and then shut off abruptly. We waited, gradually sliding into acceptance and reconfiguration; I haven't had a day like this for a long time, and it was interesting to watch my mind fight it, then settle down.

Toward the end of the afternoon we found ourselves back in front of the fire, with candles lighting pockets of the room behind us, watching the embers glowing and little blue flames playing along the edges of a new log. J. had placed our long-handled Turkish coffee pot on the coals to heat up the last of the morning's coffee. "Does it set off some sort of genetic memory?" I mused, looking into the fire. "Like, maybe I'm in a damp cottage with a peat fire somewhere in the British Isles, with sniveling children whimpering and clinging, and you're in a tent in the desert somewhere in Arabia, with the sun going down..." He smiled at me, and didn't answer, except to say that it gets very cold in the desert too.

At 5:30, the blue lights over the mantle came on, and this time they stayed. Outside, it had started to snow again. Slowly, we got up, looked around, and returned -- a little reluctantly -- to the 21st century.

Not Much to Add to This One

Giving So It Matters (thanks, Richard.)

Evening Reading

Downtown, yesterday.

Lulled by the last warmth of the embers glowing in the fireplace, and the rhythm of the knitting I've been doing for the past hour, I'm afraid I've lost the inspiration I had for writing the post I had in mind earlier. Instead, let me recommend a visit to qarrtsiluni, where the first contributions have been posted for the current theme, "Finding Home". Neither is a predictable response - thank you to the authors, and to editors Tom and Lorianne! While you're there, you might check out the flurry of final contributions on last month's theme, "Science as Poetry". Especially interesting - and adding greatly to the high quality content at this group blog - are two interviews, conducted and written by poet Ivy Alvarez, with poets who are also scientists, or vice versa.

What it Looks Like Tonight

Outside my window the snow is falling again - huge flakes blowing from the northwest. People wrapped in dark, flowing coats and furry hats make their way down the icy paths under the low streetlights and the scene reminds me of Akhmatova's poems about St. Petersburg in winter; maybe that is part of my attraction to this northern, frigid city. Earlier, just after dark, I went out and trudged through the snowy paths alongside parents hauling their chidlren on sleds and bundled commuters walking home from the bus and metro. At the inn nearby, a group of three young travelers - two boys and a girl - chattered happily while they dug their car out of the snowbank left by the storm and the plows, as big yellow heavy equipment flashed and hurried down the main street. (J. says that when he saw that Montreal sends out graders to clean up after snowstorms, he knew he had come to the right place.) Everyone seemed pretty happy, considering the rapidity with which serious winter had descended; the snow was so lovely, the air so bright and crisp, the Christmas lights suddenly in perfect context.

Back home, I made a chicken stew with biscuits on top and we ate looking out at the falling snow, Berg and Beethoven piano sonatas on the stereo, a plate of pears and apples in front of us on the table. Yesterday I had a long talk with a friend who had recently been to Stockholm. "It was the first Sunday of Advent, and that's a big deal there," he said. "And there are a lot of, well, probably pagan traditions. Every restaurant has big iron pots outside their door, with fires burning in them, and there are candles everywhere - I think there must have been a billion candles burning in Stockholm that night!"

I've never lived where there wasn't winter; I hope I never do. When I see young kids carrying their hockey sticks and skates on the first cold days, and old women pluckily bringing home their groceries from the depanneur through snow and ice in sub-zero weather, I smile to myself, know we're of the same blood. I'd be hauling kids to the park today too, and launching them over the edge of the hill practically before they could walk, refusing their tears and encouraging them to do it again and again.

Today I looked out once and saw a dark form lying flat and motionless in the unplowed sidewalk across the street. After a while it moved, and then got up: it was a young woman in a dark pea coat and pink knitted hat. She stood still for a moment, shook her shoulders, did a cursory brush-off of her slacks and coat, and set off again at a brisk pace, through the deep snow.