the cassandra pages

Change

When I wrote, earlier this month, of wanting to write words that count, and to honor the rests between them, I knew that I was leading up to something. That something is an attempt – no, a need - to begin integrating various aspects of change that have been happening in my life: changes that have felt separate but are, in fact, all related, all pointing in one direction:

- The move from 30 years of life in a rural Vermont village to an urban life in a large international city.

- The loss of my mother, and all the changes that has created for me and my immediate family.

- Menopause.

- Meeting a life goal - the publication of a book - and then thinking about what comes next.

- My creative life and my “work” life: changing priorities, balances and intersections

- My spiritual life and religious beliefs, which have undergone yet another shift.

I'm getting ready to write more about all of these, but this post is a general one, looking at the big picture.

I learned long ago that writing -- the outward form of my thinking -- is the best means I have for discovering how the various separate and confusing threads of my life actually relate to each other, and how they weave together to form a whole cloth. I’ve kept journals most of my life, because writing is the way that I make sense out of the jumble of thoughts in my head. It takes a while, and one has to be patient: the “Writing On” posts I linked to last week were written a year ago, when, in the immediate aftermath of a book project and my mother’s death, I was trying but still unable to see much farther ahead. Writing is also the way I remember: not just what happened, but who I was at a particular time. Looking back, I can sometimes also understand why.

All around me I see bloggers re-assessing their commitment to this medium, often because they feel they’re spending too much effort toward it and too little toward work that feels more “productive,” or “real” or “lasting”. I don’t see it that way. If I weren’t writing here, I’d be putting the thoughts into a journal or letters launched at indulgent friends, or middle-of-the-night conversations with my patient husband who has little need to sort out his own life this way. And yes, the blog can serve my literary life in the sense of being a place to try out ideas and to assess my commitment to subjects. But it is something in and of itself, and whether it continues to exist in this form is not nearly as important as the fact that it happens.

The blog or journal is, actually, a mirror of that movement through life that I observe in myself -- neither like the geese flying across the still photograph, nor like an individual being standing motionless while life swirls around her -- but rather the sense of myself as a moving, mutable being who exists in inner and outer worlds that are also in states of constant change. Seen in that way, the “self” doesn’t exist; it cannot be fixed. We humans spend much effort trying to deal with our discomfort about that dual movement, attempting to fix ourselves in time or trying to find ways of convincing ourselves that we won’t someday stop while time continues without us. So we write books, paint paintings, take photographs, build buildings; we have children and fixate on our belief that they represent a continuation of our own animation; we construct religions and place our hope on immortality.

I see all of this in myself. In my life’s passages I’ve toyed with, or even been obsessed with, all of these efforts to deal with questions of identity, meaning, and mortality. I still hope to write more books, and paint more paintings, to be involved with people and organizations whose work will continue after me; to build relationships; and most especially, to love. What I find, though, as I teeter on this strange place that tilts inexorably toward my own aging and eventual demise, is an emerging sense of the worth of being present not only to myself and "the moment" – that hackneyed expression – but also that an aware and acknowledged presence in the now-ness of life, in spite of the reality of aging and swiftly-moving time, is, paradoxically, the most solid gift I can give to other people. Living into this groundedness more and more fully is probably the best goal I can set for myself.

Thanksgiving

The place I was born is very beautiful, and, in spite of the occasional noisy flock of geese or pack of snowmobiles in a field, very quiet. The people seem to get poorer, the farming more tenuous, the downtowns emptier -- but the land doesn't change much at all.

We drove there early Thursday morning, leaving Montreal about 5:30 am in snow and slushy ice, and passing through rain, snow flurries, and fog on our way down the Northway along the eastern side of the Adirondacks. By the time we got to Saratoga and started cutting diagonally toward central New York, the weather was clearing and the November fields shone chartreuse against the backdrop of greyish, blueish hills topped by bare trees. There was a light dusting of snow on the northern edges of meadows bordered by woods, and crab apples still clung to the trees, their rosy cheeks echoing the crimson of the occasional alder-bush in a swamp. I love this starkness, and the way the flocks of geese or a bounding deer move across it like animation on top of a still photograph. It feels like you could watch it forever: melancholy and calming at the same time.

We had a good visit there: thanksgiving dinner with my extended family, and then a couple of days spent with my father, who can walk as fast as I can now on his new knees. On Friday we went to see my dear old friends H. and A. at their house and caught up on the last half-year's worth of news (yes, it's true, I have close friends with whom I actually don't correspond very much by email -- and it's kind of lovely.) That evening, after dinner, while J. studied French verbs, Dad and I unzipped the table tennis bats from their vinyl cases where they've been since he had to give up playing -- he was a tournament-class player -- then cleared off and washed the table, and hit balls for half an hour. I can't tell you how happy I was to see that old, familiar smirk on his face the first time he wound up for a slam and it landed and zipped neatly past me. The second one pissed me off, but the first was great!

It's very strange still, being there without my mother, though of course I feel her presence everywhere. And I still don't feel able to write about it. I'm proud of my father for adjusting as well as he has, and for enduring so much pain this past, very difficult year; I'm very thankful he's so definitely on the mend and beginning to regain parts of his life that he had to set aside. It would be easier if we lived closer, but -- we don't -- so we're having to find new ways to stay in touch, new patterns of travel, new ways of helping each other. Change isn't easy after so many years, but it's possible. Which reminds me, suddenly, of the flocks flying across the still photograph, toward ungrazed fields and open water.

What we're hearing

(Turn down the volume on your computer to hear the soundtrack more realistically.)

Writing Right Along

Welcome to any new visitors who may have come over from How to Save the World, or elsewhere (and thanks to Dave Pollard for the link - it's very much appreciated.) And thanks to the new readers who left comments - it's great to meet you and hear your voices here. I wish I could greet you with a great sunny picture, but instead this is what we woke up to today in Montreal - the first of the season. I went out mid-morning and ran errands, and my last-year's boots immediately got wet, so it's obviously also time for some Sno-Seal, as well as hats, scarves, gloves, boots....aaargh. I had a dentist appointment this afternoon and went off, reluctantly, on the bus and metro instead of on my bike. It's going to be hard to pry me off this year, though unlike this commuter I'm not going to ride on snow and ice.

---

The post Dave linked to was this one, about writing and resting. If that interested you, you might like to re-read a set of three posts from a year ago when I was apparently thinking about the same sorts of things. Some new thoughts occur, so if the current spate of busyness ever abates, maybe I'll be able to write a bit more on the topic. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from you. Does blogging do it for you, or are you trying or longing to write a longer work - or maybe already have? How do you see the interplay between these two types of writing - do they feed each other or not, in your own writing life?

Writing On 1

...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...

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...

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...

Phoenicia Publishing

The ship is launched!

I'm very happy to announce the launch of a new, very small publishing company, Phoenicia Publishing -- something I've wanted to do for a long time. It fits snugly within the fields of graphic design and digital publishing which have been our profession since 1981, and also with my more recent work as an author and editor. We will be producing a very limited number of titles each year, but they're books that we feel strongly about and that are appropriate for short-run printing combined with careful editing and design, and close attention to detail. We hope they'll be as exciting and interesting to you as they are to us!

The first title is Brilliant Coroners, a collection of poetry from the Laupe House Press. I'm proud to have been a part of this collective endeavor with good friends, both artists and writers, met online, and hope you'll go and take a look - and perhaps even order a copy for yourself or for a Christmas present! The poems, by sixteen different poets, were chosen and brilliantly edited by Rachel Barenblat and Rachel Rawlins.

I'll also be running an occasional blog in the News & Comments section of the Phoenicia site, with posts about writing, books, and writers, some reprinted from these pages and some original. Today you'll find a report on Montreal's wonderful Salon du Livre, the second-largest French-language book fair in the world, second only to the one that takes place in Paris. We were there last night, and it was really exciting to see the enthusiasm of the public and publishers, and the breadth of the books offered. I had been invited to go with J.'s French class on their field trip to the Salon, and got so revved up with the fun and effort of speaking French with his teacher and fellow students that I found I couldn't sleep last night - it was as if the language center of my brain, wired by a little dose of caffeine after supper, refused to shut off! Today I am happily back in the land of mostly-English, and looking forward to a good night's sleep!

Mont-Royal after Dark

Behind the plate glass, behind the empty outside baskets and washed blackboard, tomatoes shine in red pyramids and leeks stand at attention like sailors. White mattresses in dormitory rows already sleep under all-night lights while men in black suits discuss the day's receipts. Outside the Intermarché the man with the tattooed face eats something rapidly, seated on his blanket; the pencil-seller lurches sideways down the street; a wheelchair races through the crosswalk, a dark blur across the sparkly mannequins in Christmas party dresses. In the bar a few people are drinking. I buy bread and milk; start home. Coughs echo behind a green tarp hung in a doorway: someone's bedroom for the night.

Roaring Headlong into History

It's been two days, and it's still difficult to get my head around the news that Norman Mailer has died. I hadn't realized he was failing as much as he apparently was; but it's not the fact that he died that seems so astounding - he was, after all, 84 and in failing health - it's the fact that his voice will no longer be a part of American arts and letters, as it has been for longer than I have been a reader. That voice, encountered in his books and in his essays, not only influenced how I write but the very decision to try to write. Of course there were, and are, plenty of other writers I admire greatly. What Mailer did was to get out of the ivory tower, and bring his intelligence and awareness of the political and social world into his writing: he tried, or so it seemed to me in the best of his work, to bring all of life as he was experiencing it into his work, never afraid to take risks and sometimes fail quite spectacularly. He had a most personal voice, and a very wide range, and he wrote beautifully: wonderful sentences that could be descriptive, biting, self-deprecating, brilliant, and often very funny. It's no wonder he tangled with his contemporary Gore Vidal, another very fine writer and stylist who has surveyed the American scene and not been afraid to bring all his talents together in his commentaries on it.

There are only three Mailer books on my shelf: The Naked and the Dead, Armies of the Night, and Ancient Evenings. I like them all, though I should re-read The Naked and the Dead, which I don't remember very well. I've been sorry that the obituaries and tributes I've read so far have concentrated on Mailer's larger-than-life personality, his anti-feminism, and the most outrageous incidents in his life rather than his writing. I suppose that's inevitable. What will last most over time will be, I think, his non-fiction, which forms a unique chronicle of a particular period in American life, and helped give rise to an ambitious and literary form of creative non-fiction journalism. What we are doing here would be less possible without giants like Mailer, who blew open the doors of literary social and political commentary, wresting the genre away from academia, and blurring the divisions between journalism and literature.

I will miss him.

Seen in America

A bumper sticker:

THINK.
It's not illegal yet.

Phos hilaron

I had a strange new experience today.

At the cathedral, the daily office - Morning and Evening Prayer - is said at the times when there is no Eucharist. Lay volunteers usually do this. Last night, at the annual fund raising concert for our music program, my friend S. asked me if I could fill in for her at Evening Prayer today, because she had a conflict. I said I could, and at 4:30 this afternoon I bundled up, got on my bike, and rode downtown. There was a lot of traffic, and the huge Christmas wreaths encrusted with little red lights had just been put up at La Baie, on the other side of Union Street from the cathedral. In the courtyard, a newly-erected Christmas tree was also alight, but the church itself seemed dark. I went in the main entrance and found George, acting as assistant verger today, waiting in the back. I explained why I was there, and asked where the service books were kept, thinking I would read the service in the small side chapel where a few people could gather, if indeed anyone showed up. A lot of the time, no one does, or people wander in and out as they do all day long.

"Al has the books all ready for you," George told me, and I followed him down the side aisle into the baptistry, where he unlocked the big red door and motioned to me to follow. We went into the sacristy - the room where the communion vessels and all the other service supplies are kept and prepared - and he showed me a stack of books with markers in them, left by Al, the verger. "There you are," he said.

I looked at the books - all the readings for today were noted and carefully marked, and the leaflet with the cathedral's intercessory prayers for this week was behind them. I had brought the readings myself, not expecting this level of help. "Shall I do the service in the chapel?"I asked.

"Usually she does it here in the choir stalls," George said, opening another big door that led out onto the nave, near the altar. I followed him with the books. "You see, here by the microphone." There was indeed a small microphone on the last stall, already turned on.

"And it starts at 5:15?"

"Yes. I'll ring the bells for you, and you can get settled here. I usually stay in the back by the doors."

"OK," I said. George walked out, and above my head, the cathedral bells began tolling. I sat down, reviewed the readings and the service order, which is a little different from the American liturgy, and waited, feeling quite small and alone under the tall buttresses and in the dark wooden choir stalls, built for bigger people than I am. The whole length of the marble altar, at my left, was already covered with red crepe poppies, for Remembrance Day this coming Sunday. I looked at them, and at the names of dead soldiers carved above the altar. I looked out into the empty church. George sat at the back, and one other man, wearing his coat, was seated two-thirds of the way toward the back.

At 5:15, I stood up, said a few words of welcome, and began reading: "O gracious light..."

The service went quickly. Psalm 74 is long, and the Gospel was the horrible passage about the beheading of John the Baptist, but the second reading was the passage for All Saints' from Ecclesiasticus that I quoted here a few posts ago. It felt good to read it aloud, like the poetry that it is, in the resonance of the cathedral, and as I did, I felt the sudden warmth of connection with all of you. I read the creeds, the intercessory prayers for the diocese, the world, the city and the parish, the Lord's Prayer, and the closing sentences, and was done. I knelt down for a few minutes, and then went out into the sacristy and filled in the service book for November 8, 2007: Evening Prayer. Name of officiant. Number in congregation: 3. George came in, I put on my coat, and he let me out the side door and went around to lock up the building for the night. I went outside into the crisp cold air. People were still going in and out of La Baie, where big color posters advertised animal-print silk camisoles for Christmas, worn by pouting, sultry-eyed girls in the arms of several men.

"Does it make any sense at all anymore?" I wondered as I rode over to University and up to Sherbrooke. We have become such a remnant. On the one hand it is ridiculous, insane. But then: people still come in, sit down, listen, think, light candles. Who was the man who came to the service? Why was he there? It's possible that he wanted to sit and listen to a pleasant voice reading prayers and scripture in complete anonymity. But I'm uncomfortable with the distance and the formality - not the old words, so much, as the removal from eye contact, from sharing a book that we could all read from, the impossibility of lighting a candle together or extinguishing it at the end. Up in the choir stall, I felt very much like the man behind the curtain, and that even if a brave pilgrim dared make her way all the way to the front, as I had invited visitors to do, she might be disappointed in what she found.

Would I do it again? Perhaps - but not this way. I have changed, and my faith has changed, a good deal over the past few years. By crossing this northern border, I've also entered a spiritual life that is entirely different than in the United States, and here is precious little heat left in these embers. It's time for new thinking and new connections, and voices that aren't afraid to come out from the shadows, into that gracious light.

That Time of Year