the cassandra pages

Favorite Posts of 2009 (2)

 

Graffiti on a Montreal wall...

6) June 4: War is Sin - thinking about Obama's speech in Cairo, and a look at the cost of war from a spiritual perspective.

War is always about betrayal. It is about betrayal of the young by the old, of cynics by idealists, and of soldiers and Marines by politicians. Society’s institutions, including our religious institutions, which mold us into compliant citizens, are unmasked. This betrayal is so deep that many never find their way back to faith in the nation or in any god.

--Chris Hedges, "War is Sin."

J.'s old ski boots in our nearly-empty Vermont attic.

7) July 13: Ghosts - unexpected visitations just before we moved away from our Vermont home of thirty years:

It started today with my father-in-law's groaning ascent of the stairs as I made the morning coffee. I even turned around to watch him climb up, smiling, making exaggerated sounds with each raising of a knee...

 

Reading on the metro.

8) September 22: How We Read - thinking about how we choose the next book to read:

I wonder if those of us who grew up in libraries have markedly different reading habits than the online generation. That search through the shelves for something new, with nothing in particular in mind when we start, isn't something that can be replicated in a bookstore-less, library-less existence - or can it? And then there's the pleasure of confronting a whole shelf of a particular author's work and knowing that you can read from one end to the other, burrowing through the pages like a real bookworm, until that sad day when you emerge out the other end into empty air, suddenly hungry again.

 

...and back in Montreal, for the plumage of fall.

9) November 1: All the Many-Colored Saints - thoughts about All Saints' Day:

The baristas speak Arabic behind bottles of colored Italian syrup with French labels: rhum, gingembre, pamplemousse. I often come to this cafe for a quiet half hour before the rehearsal for Evensong; they recognize me now and are very kind, and I like listening to their voices. The coffee is always good, the chairs are comfortable, and I find can write or read calmly in the company of these sympathetic semi-strangers. I’ve begun to wonder, too, if this place represents a sort of way-station between my identities: the Anglican and very English choir-singer, and the girl who’s always been drawn to cultures other than her own.

Delancey Street, Philadelphia.

10) November 6: Meeting Hafez on the Road to Ottawa - if I had to pick just one of the micropoems from this year, maybe this would be it:

Writing Farsi script
on the page of the sky
blackbirds roost
in graceful dots and curves
then fly off all at once
like a poem

It started today with my father-in-law's groaning ascent of the stairs as I made the morning coffee. I even turned around to watch him climb up, smiling, making exaggerated sounds with each raising of a knee...

Favorite Posts of 2009 (1)

Some other bloggers have been reviewing their year and listing their best or favorite posts of 2009. I've never done this, but, out of curiosity, thought I'd give it a try this year.

So, in chronological order and posted over the next two days, here are my picks, each with an excerpt, interspersed with some of my favorite photos from The Cassandra Pages this year. (I'm supposed to be an editor, but this wasn't easy! I was looking not just at the writing, but for posts that are representative of the general themes here and those that readers especially liked, or which elicited a good discussion.)

 

In the crowd waiting to get admitted to the National Mall

1) January 26: The Epilogue to my Inauguration Journal - a series chronicling and reflecting on our trip to Washington to attend the Obama's inauguration:

Here we were, a crowd of tree-huggers and children of slaves, old draft dodgers and peaceniks, and the poorest of the poor – a mob of outcasts and sinners for sure – who for this day had been passed graciously through the gates to stand as witnesses on the frozen turf of this symbolic home-ground of democracy...

 

There had to be one food picture...this one's from a winter lunch at a friend's house out in the Quebec countryside...

2) March 14: Angels in Winter - a guest post from Rome, written by Teju Cole

Before American exceptionalism, there was Roman exceptionalism, to a much more severe degree. Our Capitol is named for the Capitoline Hill. Close parentheses. 

Thus primed with my skepticism, a skepticism compounded with an anti-colonial instinct, I entered the museums on the Capitoline Hill...

...and a natural still-life...

3) March 20: Now We Are Six - reflections on six years of blogging

If our goal is to write - to express ourselves and try to say something creative and meaningful about our lives and our world, hopefully sharing it with others in a way that's free of market restraints - rather than being crushed under the weight of a dying edifice, we'd better do it in a supportive environment. The ephemerality and jumpiness of modern culture and mass media have affected the web a lot now, too. Distraction, and opportunities to fritter away huge amounts of time are everywhere - microblogging and social networking seem, to me, to be mostly that, unless you find ways to use them creatively. I worry that too many talented people these days have simply given up and said, "what's the use," after looking at all these factors. That's too bad because it's essentially bowing to an artistic type of consumerism, where the end product - recognition, money, publicity, critical acclaim - are given more weight than the process itself. Completely understandable in the context of our present world...

 

...and an urban shot...

4) April 1, 2009 Thirty Thoughts in Thirty Minutes - a response to Dana Guthrie Martin's 140-character challenge for April Fool's Day, which got me hooked on writing micropoetry:

8. My grandparents lived an entire life without rushing, consumed daily bacon and martinis, lived to 90.

9. They did not eat radioactive snow or genetically modified tomatoes grown in dusted Californian fields.

10. My grandfather liked a mess of bullheads for supper; they swam in a pail on the slate steps; were fried in bacon fat.

11. He kept bacon grease in a tin can in the refrigerator, for popcorn-making on Friday evenings, and fried eggs.

 

This one actually goes with the post below.

5) May 15, 2009 Copies and Copiers - a post and discussion about painters who copy old master paintings in art museums:

In one of the big rooms devoted to Franz Hals and Rembrandt, we came upon these gentlemen. The man in the white shirt was making a copy - a very accurate and fine one - of this " Portrait of a Man in a Wide-Brimmed Hat", a Flemish painting from the 1630s attributed to Jan Cossiers. The man in the suit, with his back to us here, was haranguing him. I didn't catch the whole conversation, not wanting to be any ruder than I'd already been, sneaking their picture, but the gist of it was "We've already got original works of art, we don't need copies, what do you think you're doing?"

Numbers 6-10 will be up tomorrow.

Canadian Bloggers Get Some Legitimacy

A new Canadian ruling, in late December, has made steps toward clarifying the legal status of blogging amid other forms of news media, affording bloggers some legal protection but also increasing their responsibility to verify sources. (CBC News, Toronto.)

While the focus of this second article, from the Chronicle Herald in Halifax, is on the future of traditional journalism, and the threats against it, I found it interesting for its Canadian point of view -- the bit about Stephen Harper's attempted control of media seemed refreshingly precious to my jaded American sensibility. But it's great that in Canada we think we still have some control over how this goes - and, as in many discussions of public policy, we actually may.

JUST AS a pretty dark year was ending for journalism, the sun broke through over the Supreme Court last week, shining a light that will illuminate free speech in Canada for generations to come. In two key rulings, the court established a new defence against libel and defamation: the defence of responsible journalism. With that, media organizations as large as TV networks and as small as one-person blogs can defend themselves against defamation if they can prove that, among other things, they acted in the public interest.

And while we're talking about Canadian bloggers, congratulations to my friend Ed, whose BlorkBlog turns 9 today. Ed was not only a pioneer in the early days of blogging, he's kept it going all this time - but might be shutting down to put his energy into other projects. You can go over there and vote in a poll he's taking about his blog's future.

Some Christmas Links

I've pretty much refrained from doing any "work" today, Boxing Day; instead I've been starting to catch up on the blog and other online reading that's taken a back seat lately to holiday preparations, music, and the usual last-minute, end-of-the-year deadlines from clients. It's instructive for me to notice how hard it is NOT to push myself to "accomplish" something all the time, especially when I've been really busy. It's been both nice and weird to laze around the studio today with no particular goal; basically I start out feeling pretty disconcerted on days like that, and then, once I realize why I feel adrift, give myself permission to actually take the day off. Not something that comes naturally. Anyway: here are a few of the places I stopped and lingered at today:

Geoffrey Hill's poem, "Christmas Trees," about Dietrich Bonhoeffer watching aircraft strikes from his prison cell. From RB at "such stuff."

An essay by Karen Armstrong reflects on the political motivations of the authors of the biblical "infant narratives"  - and considers what meaning the season may have for us today. (op/ed from the L.A. Times.)

Paula's crimson journey: 630-700 nm.

A video performance of the whole Charpentier Messe de Minuit pour Noel (we did only the Gloria, (Part 1, starting at about 8 minutes) the Sanctus and Benedictus, and Agnus Dei on Christmas Eve) by the Moscow Oratorio, Alexander Tsaliuk conducting (in four parts.)

"Wanting to be Someone Else": Adam Shatz talks about the novels of Orhan Pamuk, including the newly-released English translation of "The Museum of Innocence," (which I did not get for Christmas) in the London Review of Books.

Soon I'm going home (in the freezing rain) to eat leftovers from last night's dinner and, I hope, curl up under a comforter for the rest of the evening with some knitting or a book. Hope you had a relaxing day today too.

Happy Christmas!

 

...and Happy Boxing Day today. We're in our studio, drinking coffee and eating Christmas bread, and doing what my father would call "reconnoitering" after the busyness of the holiday preparations.

I got home at 2:00 am on Christmas Eve/morning after singing two services, the 4:00 pm Lessons and Carols service and the 11:00 midnight mass. For the latter, we sang Charpentier's Messe de Minuit pour Noel. The cathedral was gorgeous and simple that night - a tall, lighted Christmas tree to the side of the lectern; a bank of red poinsettias on the altar; wreaths between each of the windows; the clergy, including the bishop of Montreal, in white. There was a long procession up the middle and around the side aisles to "Come All Ye Faithful" and "O Come O Come Emmanuel" and then we sang the mass in French from the organ loft in the back, looking out over the throng of late-night church-goers, some of whom turned around and stared up at us. Charpentier's mass for Christmas is based on a set of old French carol dances, and Patrick had worked those tunes into the service in other ways; we sang one as the introit, and others formed the basis of his organ prelude. Because they are dances, the whole service felt lilting and happy, and I especially loved watching the French members of our choir enjoying themselves even more than usual, as well as knowing that the bilingual service was open and welcoming to whomever had come in that night; people looked happy, and it certainly made me feel Christmas-y and as if I'd particiated in some early gift-giving.

Yesterday was quiet until evening, when we got together with friends, most of whom didn't have family around, at our house for dinner; everyone brought something and we sat at the table eating a many-course meal and talking until quite late, finishing with traditional dark fruitcake, Christmas gingerbread cookies, some delicious Chilean dessert wine and a deep blue bottle of Quebec cider and cream liqueur. It felt like a typical Montreal gathering: one guest (and fellow blogger) tweeted afterwards: "Noël multiculturel: 2 vermontois, 1 indien de la Zambie, 1 colombienne, 1 français de Dunkerque, 1 nouvel-écossais et 1 québécoise de Québec."

And now -- a deep breath as we take stock of the year past, and look ahead to a new year and new decade in the place that's now our permanent home. 

Happy holidays to all of you!

A Messiah

Last night I sang Handel's Messiah with a large chorus, chamber orchestra, and top-notch professional soloists at the cathedral. Our regular choir of about 25 people was augmented by members of two other local choirs to a total of about 55 singers. This photo, a composite of two taken by J. with my little camera, shows the conductor, Boris Brott, directing the audience when they stood and joined in the "Hallelujah Chorus." The concert was sold out, and it made me happy to look out at so many faces during the moving journey that this music offers. (The soloists, all of whom who sang brilliantly last night, were Nathalie Paulin, soprano; Daniel Taylor, counter-tenor/alto; Pascal Charbonneau, tenor; and Alexander Dobson, bass -- they're in a row behind Brott, joining us for the big chorus.) (I'm partially hidden by the big column, my face is just to the left of it, halfway up in the chorus, above and to the right of that bright light on the music stand.)

I've been thinking, during this season, about the words in the music we sing. On Sunday, before the regular service, Jonathan was at the back of the church when a woman came in and demanded, "Are there going to be Christmas hymns?" He was a little taken aback but showed her the service leaflet and said probably there would be some. "Well, if there aren't going to be Christmas hymns I'm leaving!" she retorted. She was probably a little disturbed, but her transparency seems like it expresses something that lurks beneath the surface in a lot of us. How much of the emotion of this season that's triggered by music is actually about religion, and how much is cultural? I wonder, and suspect most of it is really cultural as well as personal, touching deep memories and awakening expectations that are so complex that it's very hard for us to know what we're feeling and why.

Last night, singing Handel's text, much of it drawn from the prophesies in the book of Isaiah, I noticed all the promises about this "messiah," this "savior who is Christ the Lord." "Wonderful!  Counselor! The Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." What is this? What are we saying? So many of the Christmas texts speak about peace: peace that will come when Jesus comes again, peace in the manger and under the stars, peace between the lamb and the lion, peace between human beings. And yet for 2000 years people have continued to fight terrible wars, many in the name of religion, and we're no closer to "peace on earth" than we were in Isaiah's time (8th C. B.C.E.) let alone the first century C.E.

Jesus, as a teacher, said much less about peace than he did about justice, particularly economic justice. He certainly spoke about loving one another; it was the author(s) of Isaiah, prophesying Judah's eventual release from Babylonian captivity, who wrote about beating swords into ploughshares. I can only imagine how appalled Jesus would be to see the scene above and hear himself glorified as "The Prince of Peace, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." But the story and the words seem to touch something in us, some fundamental hope that Christmas, rolling around again in our lives, seems to represent: a hope that things will be better, that the people in our own lives will be kinder to one another, that we'll feel happier and more loved, that we'll find people to love ourselves, that the world will finally wake up. We say we're looking for a Messiah who will fix everything that's wrong in this broken world of ours, but really what we want to find in our lives is genuine love, and a sense that death is not an ending that renders our lives meaningless.

Toward the end of the service I noticed that one of the homeless men who sleep on the cathedral steps had come in and was standing near the back door, wrapped in a long beaten-up coat, a knitted hat still on his head. I was glad he'd been allowed to come in, and hoped there was something in the warmth and beauty of the performance that would ring true, not hollow, for him this season. But who's to say who's the most needy? There were plenty of faces in the audience of well-dressed people wearing a look of sadness mixed with expectation and hope. I often see this as we process out of the church after a service; there's no way to know what's going on in someone's head, or why they've come out on this particular day, or what they hope to find in the words or music or silence. I've been moved to tears by music so many times in my life, and often unexpectedly, that I know how much power it has to touch us and vibrate loose old feelings, new hopes, or pain we've carried for a long time. I was speaking of these things to one of the visiting choristers, a man I'd never met who was also happy to be singing last night, and he said, "Yes, I know exactly what you mean. And it reminds me that musicians do have an important role to play."

Rest

But the next day dawns clear, cold, and bright, and I wake at peace with things as they are. In an early bath, the unresolved questions of the previous day dissolve into acceptance, which is quickly commented upon by an imagined K., offering a wry observation that he will be rapidly forgotten, and that's just as it should be. He won't be, not now, but in time -- he's right -- we all are. Oddly, I realize that my youthful horror at such a thought has already given way and now includes the conviction that in thirty more years, at K.'s age, I will even find many aspects of death amusing.

That's the delight of relationships that span generations. The younger person gets to rub up against the kind of wisdom that only comes from long years lived with awareness, and the older person gets nudged -- or jolted, sometimes -- into activity and enthusiasm. It had been hard for K. to move from New York, where he spent much of his working life and felt most alive, to a gentleman's life in the country, closer to children but far from the cultural and intellectual life that had defined him. He made up for it with music (he was a singer and good keyboardist); teaching the occasional literature course for older adults; volunteering at the local homeless shelter and food pantry; accepting some leadership roles. He kept fit, played tennis, walked the dog, ate a healthy breakfast every morning (steel-cut oats and half a grapefruit), kept up on the news, and traveled as much as he and his wife could before her health began to force them into a smaller geographical radius. From the outside it might have looked like a graceful retirement, and I suppose it was, but his mind was such that he -- like me, I suppose, and that may have been our bond -- couldn't do anything without analyzing it, and so each change was accompanied by soul-searching, not only about himself but about the institutions that surrounded him, and by which he sometimes felt confined and uncomfortably identified. He often expressed a wish that he could go back to New York, and sparred once with my husband about our move to Montreal, later writing a note of apology, saying he realized that he was simply jealous.

His first health crisis was a heart attack. I remember walking into his hospital room the next day and finding him up in a chair, wearing a rather elegant dressing gown, looking quite chipper and pleased at himself for surviving. I'd brought him a book and didn't plan to stay, thinking a longer visit would tire him out, but he insisted that I sit down and talk for a while -- finally, he said, someone had come with whom he could have a real conversation about something other than medical details. He had had a strange experience of calm during the whole attack, and a vision of his material substance dissolving into the universe, or something like that; as with all profound experiences it was hard even for this very articulate person to find words to describe it. But whatever had happened, it took away a good deal of the fear of death. Later, when he suffered a severe infection from a knee replacement, he had another experience of nearly dying and coming back, drawn by the love of his family; I knew he was unafraid and at peace with the inevitable, because he had told me so.

---

In the late morning, I sit down again at the piano. This time I thumb through the Bach Partitas, and decide to play the last one, #6, with its fugal bookends of the first and final movements, the whole suite kept from heaviness by a thread of syncopation that runs through it. It's a good choice, far better as a remembrance and farewell for K. than the prelide and fugue I'd attempted the night before, and in the middle of the suite the sun -- nearly all the way into its winter trajectory - shoots an unexpected beam of light through the window and over the top of the piano. The music feels free, the errors forgiven.

I suppose I had hoped for some last word, or the chance to say a proper goodbye -- that's natural. We last saw each other at our going-away party at the end of July, when I had played a little Bach to show him our absent host's vintage Steinway that I often played, and later we stood talking on the deck, watching the sun go down over the Vermont hills. He was in good form that evening, in his usual tweed jacket, looking every bit the headmaster he had once been; cheerful and neither acerbic  or cynical - almost sweet.

Today, looking through old emails, I see that there really wasn't anything unfinished or unsaid, because ours wasn't that sort of conversation in the first place. We were just friends who sometimes picked things up where we'd left them off the last time, but were more likely to talk about the present: politics, films, books, life events. In these emails he was commiserating with me about downsizing my library, and trying to help me find people or organizations who might take them. He'd made a series of calls to try to arrange a contact, but underneath the practical help I knew that he knew that the move was exciting but also wrenching for me. The last email ends with a single word, intended to be uttered, I'm sure, in its French pronunciation: Courage.

Final Stanza

The telephone is ringing when I walk into the apartment after our drive back from New York State. It's a friend calling from Vermont with the news of a death: my close friend K. He was, ironically, about the same age as my father. My happiness about the just-completed visit and anticipation of the holidays dissolves immediately, replaced by the sting of tears and a chasm of emptiness that opens painfully in my chest: I haven't spoken to K. for several months and yet have been thinking about him a lot recently, planning to write or call before the holidays. Now it will always be too late.

J. touches my arm and leaves me alone for a while, and then gently asks if I'd like a fire. Yes, I tell him, and let's have a drink in K.'s honor; I suppose we should break open the single malt but I'll go for vodka. We pull up chairs close to the warmth, offer a silent toast, and I think of K. building a fire in the huge fireplace of their home, the first time we went there for dinner, their old dog happily curled up at our feet. Oh good, you'll have a real drink, he'd said when we asked for vodka, my children and all their friends will only drink white wine and one glass at that, and later, with us settled and the fire skillfully burning, he'd straightened up his tall frame, sat in a comfortable chair, and gone on to answer our questions about the paintings and photos in the room, reminders of time spent in Paris, London, Greece.

The house begins to warm up; J. makes some pilaf and I cook Moroccan chicken with olives and oranges. After dinner I light the candles in front of the icon and stare not at Christ's impassive face, but down into the votive flames in their pools of clear paraffin. I’m at a complete loss – all that comes to me is his name, which I murmur several times, and then fall silent. I think about a conversation K. and I had about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a touchstone for both of us. Our conversations often circled round what it meant to be both intellectuals and Christians in a post-modern, post-Christian world. How to live it out, even as one's own thought changes, with integrity -- and how so few people, let alone the Church, ever do. K. was quick to spot hypocrisy in himself, in other people, and in institutions, and had a remarkable talent for looking at issues from all possible angles, which often cast him in the role of critical observer, standing just off to one side, but he also had the courage to act, speak out, and lead. Our friendship evolved during a very difficult period in the life of our parish, when he was senior warden and I was active on the vestry; we both sang in the choir. It also spanned 9/11, the run-up to the Iraq war and all the subsequent national and international events, as well as major changes in both our lives, separated as they were by nearly 30 years: the sale of their home and the move into a retirement community which included the dismantlement of his library, an event he described "like amputating a limb;" the deaths of his dog, his best friend, and finally his wife; and several serious health crises of his own. On my side there were the final illnesses and deaths of three of our parents or in-laws; the writing and publication of my book about sexual politics and Church; our own gradual decision to downsize and move permanently to Montreal. Through all of this we talked, sometimes after choir or church, more pleasantly over lunch or a glass of sherry in the late afternoon or later by email or phone. We spoke about music and film, about politics and current events, about life and relationships, and we shared what we were reading -- articles from the New Yorker or London Review of Books; poems by Milosz, Zagajewski, Szymborska; reactions to scripture and liturgy; many many books...

I realize after a few minutes that I’m quietly banging my fist against the mantle, which at least makes me laugh at myself a little. I take down a volume of Bach from the nearby shelf and sit at the piano. The prelude and fugue in b-minor which end the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier have served before as a farewell, and so I open the pages and begin. The prelude is uneventful, but the strange fugue knots and turns in upon itself, emerging every now and then, as if into a clearing, into a haunting and beautiful melody; it’s a mirror of a life, this fugue, and as is probably appropriate, I’m playing it badly, but I carry on through the pages of thorny thickets and sunlit clearings that feel, tonight, like a reflection of my own disordered thoughts as much as of life itself. I'm wishing for the resolution that usually comes with Bach, but tonight it isn’t going to be that way. The notes untangle and release, the fugue ends, but I’m still filled with regrets and questions. Too late, too late.

Outside, the wind howls.

(to be continued)

Back in the homeland

Horse country, not far from Saratoga Springs

We drove south yesterday, back to central New York, for my father's 85th birthday. The actual day is today, and there will be a party tonight. I woke at 7:30 today to a familiar thumping sound: my father doing his Royal Canadian Air Force exercises, just as he has every day for the past fifty years. He's in remarkable physical shape for his age, but what's even better is that he's happy. For the past year he's been seeing a very nice woman, his own age, and reconnecting with friends from his years in business who live a few towns to the south, where she does. Tonight the guests will be a combination of old friends and neighbors, and newer friends from that other community. We haven't had to do much of anything except decorate the house; his friends have organized the party.

So that's the reason for thin posting around here of late; tomorrow we'll be heading back to Montreal, and because we rushed to get much of our Christmas preparation done before we left (so we could mail American packages from the U.S.) we're hoping for some more relaxed days in the weeks ahead, and for me that includes getting to some of the more reflective writing I've been hoping to do.

For now, I'm just feeling glad my dad is so well and that he's been able to pick up his life and live it fully again. It reminds me of how he always insisted I get up and try again after falling off my bike, or out of a tree, and how he always valued persistence and determination (stick-to-it-ive-ness was more the way he'd put it.) He received the worst blow he could have imagined when my mother died, but he's come back from it, and that gives me hope for my own later years when, like everyone, I'll inevitably face great difficulties.

Happy birthday, Dad, and many more.

December Snow

A moving micropoem.