the cassandra pages

Holy Innocents

The year departs in a winding sheet of snow.

Tomorrow: a Feast Day. The blue lips of Herod's Holy Innocents beg more of us than memory; more than a facile exchange of swords for napalm, poison gas, cluster bombs.

Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, but still we seek symbolic deaths, atonement -- and all the while the Child remains hidden: beyond armies, and beyond us too.

When the wise men had departed, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. This was to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet, "Out of Egypt I have called my son."

When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

"A voice was heard in Ramah,

wailing and loud lamentation,

Rachel weeping for her children;

she refused to be consoled, because they are no more."

(Matthew 2:13-18)

 

Bonne Année, tout le monde!

In today's Washington Post there is a remarkable gallery of photos of the Hajj, the annual pilgrimage of Muslims to the most holy site of Mecca which begins today.  I urge you to view them - especially the final one in the series of ten - these are some of the best photographs of the Hajj I've seen. As a non-Muslim, I am prohibited from ever participating, which makes me sad, because I respect and admire Islam and would be honored and, I am very sure, deeply moved to witness this event. I feel fortunate that I have Muslim friends who have gone on the Hajj and told me about it firsthand, and very grateful for the ways in which they have opened up their religion to me and allowed me to participate in their prayers and worship from time to time.

The Hajj changes its time of year annually, so it's just a coincidence that it coincides this year with the western New Year. But the turn of the year always makes me think of the whole world, not just our little snowy corner of it. Yesterday we received a Christmas/New Year package from our dear Chinese friend Y. in Beijing - it was a painting in oil pastels of red and yellow foxes on a brilliant blue background, done by her little daughter, and we will treasure it. In the late afternoon, we drove north to Montreal, and today re-entered the diversity of our city with a food-shopping trip to several establishments near Blvd. l'Acadie.

Our first stop was the "Gourmet Bazaar", a 17,000 square-foot warehouse filled with canned, bottled, dried and frozen grocery items from all over the world, but especially from the Middle East, India, and Asia. (I knew it was bad when the proprietor pushed a grocery cart toward our laden arms, and said, "here.") A small sample of our purchases shows in the photo above: clockwise from the center front we have "kiwi seches" - dried kiwi slices; a bag of small pita breads; Arabic five-citrus marmalade; a bottle and six-pack of a non-alcoholic raspberry-favored malt beverage from Lebanon; a jar of hoisin sauce, on its side; a jar of picked eggplants and one of kebab paste for flavoring meat for shish kebab; and several packages of spices - these are Syrian seven-spice blend and an intriguing "Oriental cake spice mixture" containing black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and mahlab which I will try in an Iranian cake recipe that normally uses my favorite spice, cardamom.

From there we went to a nearby Middle Eastern boulangerie, looking for lunch, and found freshly-baked "pizzas" of thick round flatbread, similar to a very puffy pita dough, topped with vegetables, tomatoes, and cheese to which were added your choice of turnip pickles, hot long green peppers, mint leaves, shredded lettuce, green olives and onions, then the whole thing was rolled, grilled for a minute in a press, and handed to you wrapped in paper. Absolutely delicious. We ate it at a table next to the bakery counter, filled with French multi-layer cream-and -mousse-filled pastries, assorted petit-four butter cookies, cakes, and two huge glass display cases of various Arab sweets. Exercising considerable restraint, I thought, after Christmas over-indulgence, we did not buy any. A little dark-haired boy at the next table solemnly ate his treat and then turned and looked at us, rewarding me with a big smile; his innocent, open face told me that no one had ever warned him not talk to strangers, and it made me happy to see that there are still places where that's possible.

After our lunch, the usual stop at Adonis, the huge Arab supermarket, was almost anti-climatic, but we filled our cart with fruits and vegetables, and drove home through wet, snowy streets with our bounty, starting to feel hungry again...

Merry Christmas

OK, he's a little demented-looking, but that feels accurate right now, just as it did a few days ago when I took the picture. Happy holidays to all, however you are celebrating or non-celebrating them.

Christmas Eve

 

Our Christmas eve dinner will not be cooked in fancy French pots and pans like those in this shiny and elegant window display, but tonight I'm simply appreciating being together. My father drove up to Vermont unexpectedly to see us yesterday, so we are three for dinner. I just put the small roti de boeuf in the oven; we'll have oven roasted vegetables and cooked green beans and a salad, and revel in the simplicity of all of it. My mother feels very absent, and yet not so; she is so much in our thoughts and, I know, would be happy that we are all together; for our part, we're both sad and happy, with the emphasis, I think, on the latter. How do you deal with the strangeness of an altered reality, after 54 years? I don't know. I'm feeling my way, trying to be gentle with myself and those around me: sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing. Sometime my thoughts spread across the world, and I feel the sorrow of so many other tables where someone is absent tonight, and the comfort that the survivors are trying to find in food, memories, each other's presence, and that most human of emotions, hope for the future. I'm humbled, tired, breathing, a little hungry. It's enough to go on, this age-old night.

And if it's a novel...

John Baker just put up a new entry in his series "Learning to Write" and it bears on what we've been talking about here recently. Take a look, it's good advice. Since some of the commenters here are writing fiction, I think it will speak to them especially. Thanks, John!

Surely I've arrived

The blackboard above the window reads "poireaux (leeks), 6/$1.99"

Last Saturday - a balmy December night in this globally warmed city of Montréal - we were biking back at about 11:30 pm from Cinema du Parc, where we'd just seen the terrific new Almodovar film, Volver. As we neared St. Laurent, there were lines at the hot clubs and cars double parked in the street, letting off the hipsters and hipster-wannabees for a continuation of their night out on the town. A car was idling directly on the bike path, and as I carefully swerved around it, the door opened and a dressed-up guy, already drunk, got out right in front of me.

"Hey!" I said, fairly loudly, and he lurched to attention, looking shocked.

"Hey?" he yelled, gesturing at me rudely. "Tabernac!*"

I caught up with J. at the intersection of St. Laurent and Prince Arthur, and grinned at him. "I think I've finally arrived," I said. "Some guy just yelled 'tabernac!' at me."

"You've only half arrived," he said. "I think we'll have really arrived when we yell it at somebody else!"

Quebec curse words are based not on sexual or scatalogical words, since those don't shock anyone in this society, but on terms taken from Roman Catholicism's most sacred rites and symbols. "Tabernac" is the "tabernacle" or repository for the goblet used at communion to hold the consecrated wine which Catholics believe is the blood of Christ. "Hostie!" or "host"  (the consecrated communion wafer or bread) is another favorite.; apparently in polite company people shorten it to "sst", but everyone knows what they meant. (You can buy bags of hosts - unconsecrated! - in supermarkets to eat like chips! I was even shocked at that one.) The Washington Post did a great article about this linguistic phenomenon recently, pointing out that while for Puritanical Americans, it's sex that we swear with, in Quebec, it's the Church. "You blaspheme that which represses you," says the article, and that's probably right.

Virginia, Akinola, and the IRD

I'm sending a version of this letter to a number of media outlets that have published recent articles about the exit of eight Virginia parishes from the Episcopal Church. This was a lead story on the BBC website on Sunday. It's a sad comment on journalism today that so few writers actually do any in-depth investigation of their stories, which are often fed to them by special-interest groups skilled in getting their message out, with the spin they desire. In addition to the plethora of already-biased media channels, this passes for complete and accurate news, which it is not, while the public remains unaware of who is behind the stories and the events. I'm trying to do my bit for transparency.

To the Editor:

The recent exit of several Virginia parishes from the Episcopal Church has been overplayed in the media as if it heralds a mass exodus from the denomination. In fact it represents a small minority of Episcopalians whose opinions in no way represent the mind of the Church, as was decisively shown at the most recent General Convention in June, 2006.

The exiting Virginia parishes have voted to put themselves under the authority of the Anglican Archbishop of Nigeria, Peter Akinola, an outspoken opponent of homosexuality. Currently proposed Nigerian laws, supported by Akinola, will make any meeting between two or more people, one of whom is gay, a criminal offense punishable by five years in prison. In northern Nigeria, Islamic law makes homosexuality punishable by death.

The announcement about the Virginia parishes has been directed by the skillful spokespeople at the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), a neo-conservative Washington think-tank that has innumerable connections, through its board of directors and officers, to the conservative Washington area parishes that have recently left the Episcopal Church. These parishes have been home to prominent conservatives such as Oliver North and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, as well as top-level IRD Episcopalians. For instance, Fox News commentator Fred Barnes is a member of the Falls Church congregation, and serves on the Board of the IRD; Fox has covered this story extensively and sympathetically, interviewing Barnes as part of a roundtable discussion, but never mentioning his IRD connection.

Virtually unknown to the people in the pews of American churches, the IRD has worked for decades within the mainline denominations to discredit and silence their historically prophetic voices on issues of human rights, social justice, peace, and interfaith dialogue. The IRD was instrumental in starting, promoting, and organizing the work of the American Anglican Council (AAC), the main organization which has worked from within to breed dissension and schism in the Episcopal Church. Funded by some of America's largest right-wing donors, the IRD has gained considerable influence in the current administration: its leaders, such as Father Richard John Neuhaus, a neo-conservative Roman Catholic, are some of President Bush's closest advisors, credited by the President as helping him articulate his positions on abortion, end-of-life issues, same-sex marriage, and stem-cell research.

Interested people who would like to read an accurate and detailed account of the history and politics that have led to this point may find it in my recent book, Going to Heaven: The Life and Election of Bishop Gene Robinson, published by Soft Skull Press, Brooklyn, NY.

A scathing op-ed ("Don't look now, but Virginia is seceding again") appeared in today's Washington Post; however, there was no mention of the IRD's involvement. The UPI had previously distributed a story that seemed clearly built on an IRD-engineered press release.

As has been true for so many conservative/liberal debates in the U.S., conservative special interests are far more skilled and far more aggressive in getting their message out than the progressives. The Left sits back, taking the non-confrontational high road, or arguing within itself about methods, and  whimpering about the Right's nasty tactics, meanwhile getting blindsided and caught without adequate preparation or response. It's time to take back the debate from those who have appropriated it. Perhaps observers think this is all a soap-opera confined to one wealthy denomination - but in fact, as the IRD figured out a long time ago, a great deal is at stake, perhaps even the country's soul.

The IRD was founded by neoconservative Catholics to counter liberation theology in central America. When their efforts were soundly discredited, it began to focus domestically, setting its sights on the World Council of Churches, which it perceived as a liberal threat, and the progressive wings of the mainline American denominations which it said wielded a "disproportionate influence" on American political life. Funded by major right-wing donors like the Ahmundson, Scarfe, and Coors family foundations, and with connections in major media outlets as well as top hierarchy of the denominations, the IRD established alliances with evangelical, fundamentalist Protestants. It created special  "action" branches to work within the Presbyterian, Methodist and Episcopal Churches. Over more than two decades, these action arms have sought to influence the seminaries, intra-denominational organizations, and general conventions of those churches, moving them toward the right and breeding dissension. It has also gained, as I stated in my letter, great influence in Washington and in the present administration.

Like it or not, religion does affect policy, and strong religious voices have always held oral sway in this country. If you care about which voice is being heard by policymakers, the first step is to be informed about who's controlling - and funding - the debate.

Writing On (3)

A book also clings to you. As much as I am sometimes ready to move on, this thing I’ve created still needs me to help find readers for it, talk about its issues, answer the questions it poses. I find I cannot disengage intellectually from the ideas it sets forth; it is not a blog post or even a blog series I can terminate whenever I choose, or which is quickly forgotten by readers ready for the next subject, the next bright idea. The ephemeral nature of the web, and blogging in particular, have been discussed a lot and are always mentioned as a drawback for the serious writer – and I agree – but they are also a refuge (and can be an excuse) for those of us who don’t want, or are afraid, to put our hearts and abilities on the line and devote years of our lives into projects of uncertain return. And with conventional publishing being the way it is, perhaps that is wise -- but I wonder if we are perhaps settling for something too facile because it is also so satisfying both in the short term, and repeatedly, without requiring anything more from us.

Engaging in a big work is entirely different. And now that I’ve done it, I find I can’t go back to blogging as usual. Yes, my blogging still functions - and will continue – as a sort of journal about my daily life, and a way to write letters about that life to people who seem to care about it. This is simply something that I’ve always done and will continue to do. But I also want to use the medium, with its aspect of built-in disciplined, daily writing, to explore potential writing ideas and build larger works out of that. Whether those works end up being published conventionally, or self-published in book form, or distributed on the web, is less of a concern to me than that my limited writing time – in a life which no longer feels unlimited - be used well. 

The posts about my family that I wrote in November were a first attempt at something like this. I worked hard on researching and writing them, and yet they are just sketches – not even drafts -- of a still-amorphous larger work; or maybe two works, one a memoir written for my family, and the other a more general and complex book that uses some of my family’s experience as a springboard for talking about shifting ideas of identity and belonging. In the first case, I can keep a lot of what I’ve written. In the second, a lot of it will be thrown out or altered so as to be unrecognizable. The thought of that is daunting, but it also turns me on. I like it when a problem seems too difficult to solve; that’s exactly where I start getting interested. 

Blogging reminds me of being young, when I felt like I had all the time in the world and could therefore pursue every path in the forest, picking up every shiny object that attracted my attention. Blogging encourages that, and rewards it. I used to play the piano and the flute and sew and knit and paint and do calligraphy and make handmade books and garden and cook. It was only when I turned forty that I decided that time was up, and I had better focus on something if I wanted to end up with a body of work in any medium -- which was, at the time, how I expressed the need I felt. Now I see that the process of writing creates a person, and that this is more valuable than a growing pile of manuscripts or even published works – but that is a spiritual topic best explored some other time. Nevertheless, choosing a craft and deciding to try to work on it, not to the total exclusion of the others, but with real focus, has been worth it for me. And while blogging has been an important part of that process, these persistent recent questions in my head have led me to wonder if blogging has become, for me, a way to divert myself within the medium of writing, much as I used to with all those other creative pursuits. I’m not sure about this; I’m simply asking the question, now, out loud.

Writing On (2)

My blog posts are generally between 500 and 100 words long. When V.S. Naipaul says he is grateful to write 500 good words a day, or Orhan Pamuk speaks of producing his daily half-page, they are not talking about the same thing as a 500-word blog post, both because those 500 words have not been written and rewritten as intensively, and because they are not written as part of a larger whole. A book requires sustained effort in one direction; it is not a sprint, or a series of heats to be run in quick succession, but a matter of endurance, both mental and emotional. It also requires the creation of a vision and a structure that is large and complex, which you nevertheless know, at the beginning, will probably have to be torn down and rebuilt several times.

When you are not retired or rich or crazy enough to do nothing but write, you have to stretch a book-sized project around the relationships and responsibilities of a normal life, and it ends up squeezing you and those around you in previously unimaginable ways. Pamuk writes: “For thirty years I’ve spent an average of ten hours a day alone in a room, sitting at my desk.” I have been writing for the past fifteen years, an average of one to two hours per day, except for the final six months I was working on the book more or less constantly. Still, it is inconceivable to me to be able to write ten hours a day. I’m not even sure I’d want to, or what that would mean about the rest of my life. But it is true that the artists I have known who are wholly dedicated to their work have a spouse or companion who meets their needs so they don’t have to think about anything else, if in fact they are capable of thinking about anything else. It is a different sort of personality, to put it mildly. These are not the easiest people to live with, but they are often the great artists. It comes at a price, both to the artist and to those around them.

This used to be an excuse, but I woke up one day and realized how fortunate I was to be working for myself, not to have children in the house while I was still young enough to have energy and drive, and to have the gift of some discretionary time. “Use the time you have,” I told myself. I told my husband I wanted to write every morning for an hour, and that I would try not to let it cut into our business work. He agreed. It was, then, up to me to do it or not.

Now I have more time to write, and I still have the same problem of deciding how to use it. Blogging takes time – my posts take at least an hour to write and illustrate, often more. I read and comment, when I can, on many blogs, because I can’t hope for feedback on my own blog if it isn’t mutual. As you know, this can end up consuming a great deal of time indeed.

A larger, contained project like a book requires solitude and single-minded focus with no instant gratification such a blogging provides. I’ve been fortunate that I’ve received quite a lot of commentary on my book, and that I can see that it is doing some good, out in the world. Because it is also a historical work, it will have a life beyond current politics in religion and society, and that’s comforting to know. I’m also realistic, and know that the reward for writing it is not going to be money or fame, even though I imagined both at one time or another, as I dreamt my author-dreams...

(to be continued tomorrow)

Writing On (1)

Sitting in the bus stop with time to think...

An article yesterday on the BBC said that a technology trend-analysis firm has predicted that in mid-2007 the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million. The firm considered a blog to be “active” if it had been updated in the last three months:

“…200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs…the reason for the leveling off in blogging was due to the fact that most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so…those who loved blogging were committed to keeping it up, while others had become bored and moved on.”

"Everyone thinks they have something to say, until they're put on stage and asked to say it."

Not exactly my problem. At the end of March I will have been blogging – at least two or three times weekly, often more so - for four years. I’ve never counted up the number of posts or pages and words written, because I know I would be shocked, and because it isn’t about volume. Blogging has given me more - in terms of friendship, encouragement, and companionship - than any other art form I’ve engaged in. It’s kept me writing through difficulties and good times both and been almost always positive. It’s only been in the six or eight months that I’ve begun to question my involvement in it, and to think about changing the way I use the medium.

It’s not a question of not having anything to say; for better or worse, I always seem to come up with something, and the readers are kind enough to let me think it matters to them. But I don’t want to repeat myself. I’ve written so much about “place,” for example, that I doubt if I have anything new to offer. And there are many other subjects I feel the same way about. The readership changes, so perhaps it’s less important to be original than I think, but since writing is often the way I figure out how I feel about things, it’s one thing to write about subjects that evolve along with my own feelings, and another to write about things that are more static. I worry that the former are getting thin, and many of the latter feel like they’ve been examined already.

But boredom with my own words and ideas is not even the primary problem. My question to myself is what it all adds up to. For a while, the discipline of blogging every day or so, and the heady recognition that someone was actually reading what I wrote, made the very act of blogging rewarding. It was elemental, Pavlovian. I had been a solitary journal-writer; to publish my own musings and receive anything back, let alone these riches, was beyond my wildest dreams. It still is: some of the best friends I’ve ever had are people I have met online, and I’m immensely grateful for a place to publish what I write, rather than hoping someday some poor masochistic soul will retrieve my dusty journals from a shelf and read them before consigning them to a bonfire or some unvisited local library archive where they’ll languish until the whole place floods or burns or crumbles.

During the past three years I’ve also written a book, and it’s the contrast between these two literary pursuits that has me thinking. The book took a different sort of determination and effort, and has resulted in something quite different as well. And in spite of the lofty view of books among readers, and the sometimes dim view of so-called literary blogging, I’m rather loathe to judge between them. Blogging, I’ve always insisted, is “real writing,” especially when we make it such through our intention and care of the words we put on the pages. I’d hasten to add that everything I write is not worthwhile; much - most - of it isn’t. Blogging might be likened to publishing one’s sketchbooks rather than finished paintings, because there is no way I could claim to be producing “finished” work all the time on my blog – the dramatic difference between the two is one thing that writing a book has shown me. On the other hand, I'd never claim that sketches are not art...

(to be continued tomorrow)