the cassandra pages

Montreal, and Why I Love It

(Be patient and watch to the end!)

This video was taken last night as I was walking to the bus on my way to a concert by the OSM (Montreal Symphony Orchestra). All the seats were pretty much full; most Montrealers just deal with the weather and do what they were planning to do anyway. At the end there was a standing ovation, and the conductor, Kent Nagano, who is relatively new to the city and already beloved, addressed the audience. "This is a special day for me," he said, "because I have never seen so much snow in my life!" He went on to say that it made him feel like Christmas, and offered a beautiful encore -- Beethoven's Egmont Overture - to the audience as a gift.

I'll probably go to a couple other concerts during the season; my ticket, in the balcony, cost $22.50 which is enough that I/we don't go often but feel we can if there's something we really want to see. Access to cultural events is, obviously, one of the things I most love about being here. Last night's concert included a pre-performance discussion; Arnold Schoenberg's Symphonie de chambre no. 1; Mozart's third violin concerto played by guest soloist Hilary Hahn (the main reason I went); and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Nagano is programming all of Beethoven's symphonies during his first two years here, and even though it's so well known and I've heard recordings so many times, this was a really excellent, exciting performance; I don't think I've ever heard it performed live before.

When I arrived, I found my seat next to a man who was alone, and reading L'Art du Bonheur, by the Dalai Lama. I didn't interrupt him but took out my own book and read until the concert began. After the Schoenberg it was clear that there would be a wait until the rest of the orchestra took their places, so I decided to try striking up a conversation and maybe get some French practice. "Que pensez-vous?" I asked. He smiled, and we began talking about modern music, how much concentration it took to listen to it, and about our own musical backgrounds. After Hilary Hahn had played and the intermission began, we continued talking about the Dalai Lama, Montreal as a city, and eventually about where I had come from. All this in French; I was pleased and a little curious because he didn't switch into English; I was getting a good workout in both speaking and listening.

"Oh," he said, finally, still in French, "you speak French well, did you learn back in Vermont?" I rolled my eyes, since I know that's not even close to true, and that I had been blundering along all evening, making plenty of mistakes. I told him I had studied the language in school but that had been a very long time ago; I was trying to improve and slowly it was getting better. "Vraiment," he said, "vous parlez très bien; je le sais, je suis professeur du francais à McGill!" At which point I wanted to fall down through the balcon, mezzanine, corbeil, and parterre into the underground! Instead I laughed, and from then on we spoke in both French and English, finally saying goodbye as I went off to the metro to go home, and he took off on foot. "Vous êtes au pied?" I asked. "Oui, je suis à pied," he answered, without emphasis on my mistake. I nodded and repeated, "à pied!"

My evening ended up à pied as well; instead of taking the bus I walked back home through Parc Lafontaine; the snow had stopped, and it was magical.

Jewels for my Mother

When we visited our friends H. and A. a week ago, A. showed me a tiny paper ornament that looked woven but was actually origami. I didn't count the faces, but it was perhaps an octagon. She and I spent many many hours in our teens making things together - out of cloth, paper, beads, clay - and it was wonderful to wander around her house and look at her projects -- handmade paper lampshades on twig frameworks; glass bead ornaments in a sunny window; funny furry costumes; papier-maché masks; beautiful aquariums; the patchwork bags she and her mother were making for Christmas presents from chintz upholstery samples -- while A. gave me a running commentary on each one. A.'s mother, now in her eighties, was there too, still bright-eyed and lovely, enveloping me in the same wonderful hug I remembered from my youth. "Are you making anything these days? A. asked me. "Not much except for cooking,"I answered. "I'm writing, and I find it doesn't leave much time for other things." But already my hands were itching.

After I got home I began thinking about that little ornament, and wondering how it had been made. I began searching on the web for modular origami polyhedra instructions (not for the first time - I knew I'd seen some books and diagrams before) and sure enough there were plenty on the web. A night or two later, I got out some paper and began folding. The little shapes above are called Toshie's Jewels: they're pyramidal polygons constructed from three identical Sonube units folded from squares of paper and then locked together. From these same units you can construct large polyhedra, for your math class or for ornamenting your home, or just for fun. But something about these little, simple solids delights me: the way a few little flat sheets of paper become something so firm and beautiful. When I can get to the Japanese paper store later this week, I'll try making something larger and more complex.

My mother loved making things, and whether I was alone or with my friends like A., she always helped us with our projects or thought up new ones. So many times this week, as I thought about these paper projects or discovered a new design, I had the familiar impulse to pick up the phone and call her. Of course, I can't. I've gotten used to this by now, and in my mind, I tell her what I'm doing anyway. But today something else happened.

I was cleaning my closet, putting away the last of the summer things and getting out the heaviest of the winter things, when I came across a bag and opened it. Inside were two of my mother's leather purses, which I'd brought with me after I sorted her clothes and possessions. I sat down on the bed and opened them. One was empty. But the other one - her everyday bag - still held a pouch with her sunglasses in it, a pillbox, her wallet. It was a shock to snap open the wallet and see her driver's license with her photo on it, her credit cards, her insurance papers. The first flap of the transparent pockets held my high school graduation photo. Further down, there was a little picture of me with my white graduation dress, and another school picture, which I'd always known was a favorite of hers, from fourth grade.

But under all of this was a faded Polaroid, with the edges folded under. On the back it read: "Beth with her Christmas cards 1966." I looked at it and the tears immediately started to fall. The picture was taken in our old kitchen; I'm holding a brayer and the first print, probably, from a linoleum block. And as in all the other pictures she had chosen to carry around close to her all those years, I look very very happy.

What was making me cry wasn't the sentimentality of opening my mother's wallet and seeing these glimpses of her personal life again. It was the in-rushing of sudden, total awareness of what she had seen about me, and precisely what she had given. She saw very early that creativity and learning new things were what made me happy, and she had done everything she could to encourage, affirm, and enable that in my life, often at the expense of her own desires and her own creativity. I chose a life that allowed me to pursue this, and eventually it took me far away from where my parents lived; I chose that life rather than having children who would have been their grandchildren. We talked about this in an emotional conversation during the last year of her life: me in tears apologizing for the cost of my choices, and asking if she was terribly disappointed in them, and her firm answer that she was very proud of me, and that what she and my father had always wanted the most was for me to do what made me happy.

My mother's giving was not just for me - she did it for many other people as well. But what I saw today, that I had never realized with such force -- and perhaps couldn't have seen before reaching midlife myself -- is that the endpoint of creativity is not necessarily the painting or the book, but coming to understand that this is the life force, and that seeing and affirming it -- however it is trying to come out and be expressed in other people's lives -- is one of the greatest gifts you can give them. My mother was a creativity bodhisattva.

Right around the time this picture was taken, she found a set of paper polyhedral patterns in a magazine and ordered them before Christmas. They weren't origami, they were more like boxes with interlocking tabs, and I remember that we transferred the patterns and cut out many paper ornaments that year for our tree. It was great fun.

I didn't shed too many tears today, because I realized I wasn't sad, but happy; the tears were from gratitude. I've been reluctant to write some of these things about my mother because I realize I am unusually fortunate in who she was, while knowing that many readers of this blog have not had the same experience in their families of origin; for some it was exactly the opposite and caused great suffering. It makes me uncomfortable to talk about a richness I was privileged to have in my life. But it's also nothing I would ever want or be able to hoard; I see that it's terribly important to recognize and try to share whatever I learned. Creativity can be anything, from having babies to cooking meals for our families to growing pots of parsley in a winter windowsill. The point is not to arrive at some place of success or fame, but to see where that spark comes from in our spirits, and allow room for the jewels that want so much to come forth out of that place.