the cassandra pages

A Gate into Spring

It's trying to happen, this difficult birth, this long-awaited spring. The light has changed, if not the temperature, but slowly the green shoots push out of the earth anyway, the buds swell on the branches, the birds sing a new song. There are still traces of snow and ice on the northern sides of things, and tomorrow when we head down to the U.S. for a brief visit I'm sure we'll see snow in the woods and on the highest peaks. The inexorable northern march of the sun can't be stopped, though, and Montrealers still bundled in winter coats and scarves are trying to hasten it along, pulling cafe chairs and tables into the midday patches of sun, or bursting out in shorts and tank tops for a quick walk through the neighborhood, just because.

It's Holy Week, with lots of choir responsibilities, and tomorrow's trip south will put me further behind. I haven't had time to write anything about our trip to New York, which contained plenty of material for blog posts, or about some new artwork, or several books I've recently read. But all this will happen in its own time, or maybe it won't... and that's OK.

We stayed home last weekend instead of going to the studio, and worked on our apartment. I had felt almost disconnected from "home" because we've been spending so many hours at the studio, and it was good to spent Saturday making a big chicken and vegetable curry; doing laundry; reading; helping J. install some new shelves in the bedroom. Sunday -- Palm Sunday -- I was in church almost all day, and will be there every day from Wednesday through Easter Sunday. Non-choir-singers probably think that sounds outrageous, but for most of us who do this every year, Holy Week is a challenge of stamina, concentration, and musicianship as well as being an emotional ride. Hardly anyone, even the most unbelieving, can hear these stories without thinking about them at least a little bit; leaving the resurrection aside, the story of Jesus' betrayal, abandonment, trial and execution are timeless reminders of injustice, cruelty, and the crushing weight of power. I've stopped thinking of this as happening long ago because it feels so current; I don't think we've learned much.

Human beings always cling to hope, though, and Easter -- secular or sacred, symbolic or taken literally -- is a gate which opens onto spring.

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For a much more raw look at nature, here is a link to a video clip of the erupting volcano sent to us by our Icelandic friends and former Vermont neighbors. (Click on the arrow at the top right of the article, where it says " Horfa á myndskeið með frétt." Can you believe it?

Holy Hypocrisy

We're about to enter into Holy Week, as Catholics worldwide watch the Vatican's latest charade. The most retrograde Pope in decades offers nothing to Catholics reeling in Ireland, and the Church refuses to defrock a Wisconsin priest who abused over 200 boys.

Here in Quebec, where thousands of children were abused by priests and families across the countryside were kept poor and uneducated for centuries by a Church hierarchy in league with the wealthy English and Scots and seeking to consolidate and perpetuate its own power, churches will remain largely empty during the holiest days of the Christian calendar. Quebec's Catholics finally threw off the yoke of a hypocritical and oppressive institution during the Quiet Revolution; today the Catholics who still go to mass in this city are mostly elderly Quebecois or immigrants from Latin America and Asia. Does this mean the rest of the population are unbelievers, or even that they don't self-identify as Catholic? Not in the least. What they have done is to refuse to accept the authority of a discredited, hypocritical institution and refused to allow it to be in charge of educating their children. Few Quebecois marry in the church, and many don't have their children baptized.

Fifty years ago the streets of Montreal teemed with priests and nuns and its huge stone seminaries, convents and monasteries were full. The province of Quebec was one of the most conservative, observant and obedient Catholic societies in the world. Today it is one of the most secular. In making these sweeping social changes, but writing their deep convictions about justice and shared social responsibility into their civil code, this society has affirmed, in solidarity, a general belief that priests are not necessary as intermediaries between an individual and God, regardless of the teaching of the Church, and that a secular society and its families and individuals have not only the right but the ability to make moral decisions for themselves.

Last night, J. pointed out this letter by Sinead O'Connor which appeared in The Washington Post. She describes a country which could have been Quebec, forty years ago, and speaks with great personal conviction about the emptiness of Pope Benedict's feeble apology, while affirming her own Catholicism and faith. I hope you'll take a moment and read the whole letter; on the Post's website; there is much more nuance here than most non-Catholics may think.

"To Irish Catholics, Benedict's implication -- Irish sexual abuse is an Irish problem -- is both arrogant and blasphemous. The Vatican is acting as though it doesn't believe in a God who watches. The very people who say they are the keepers of the Holy Spirit are stamping all over everything the Holy Spirit truly is. Benedict criminally misrepresents the God we adore. We all know in our bones that the Holy Spirit is truth. That's how we can tell that Christ is not with these people who so frequently invoke Him.

Irish Catholics are in a dysfunctional relationship with an abusive organization. The pope must take responsibility for the actions of his subordinates. If Catholic priests are abusing children, it is Rome, not Dublin, that must answer for it with a full confession and a criminal investigation. Until it does, all good Catholics -- even little old ladies who go to church every Sunday, not just protest singers like me whom the Vatican can easily ignore -- should avoid Mass. In Ireland, it is time we separated our God from our religion, and our faith from its alleged leaders.

Almost 18 years ago, I tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on an episode of "Saturday Night Live." Many people did not understand the protest -- the next week, the show's guest host, actor Joe Pesci, commented that, had he been there, "I would have gave her such a smack." I knew my action would cause trouble, but I wanted to force a conversation where there was a need for one; that is part of being an artist. All I regretted was that people assumed I didn't believe in God. That's not the case at all. I'm Catholic by birth and culture and would be the first at the church door if the Vatican offered sincere reconciliation.

As Ireland withstands Rome's offensive apology while an Irish bishop resigns, I ask Americans to understand why an Irish Catholic woman who survived child abuse would want to rip up the pope's picture. And whether Irish Catholics, because we daren't say "we deserve better," should be treated as though we deserve less.

The Cat and the Ray

La raie (The Skate) by Jean-Simeon Chardin, 1728

It's Lent, almost Holy Week, and I've written almost nothing about that. Here's an essay from nearly ten years ago - May of 2001 - when I was more religious and writing for a monthly Anglican newsletter. I was reminded of this piece by my recent visit to the Met last weekend, by the study skins of rabbits at the natural history museum, and some recent reflections on art and death by my friend Lucas Green at (p)(b). Re-reading it also shows me I've made some progress in the past decade at enjoying life more, not giving myself quite such a hard time -- and I think that shows in a more relaxed and fluid writing style now, too.

The Cat and the Ray

Her bright rose-and-yellow flowered shirt and tight silver capri pants are striking enough, but it’s the faux-alligator high-heeled mules that really get me. Stealing glances at the woman standing next to me on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum, I catch myself smiling. It’s a hot, steamy day broken by intermittent thunderstorms. I take a quick inventory of the crowd sharing this perch above Fifth Avenue: one third seem to be smoking, one third eating ice cream bars purchased from the enterprising street vendors, and the other third are talking on cell phones. There are art lovers of every race, age, style and attitude. I watch a very old couple helping each other up the long flight of wet granite steps, she in a dramatic stole and skirt and he in a fancy tie. Under their open, floral umbrella, they turn bright faces to each other, talking animatedly about what they are planning to see, and I smile again, infected by their enthusiasm.

A friend and I have come to New York to see an exhibition of paintings by Jean-Simeon Chardin, born in Paris in 1699. During his middle years, Chardin turned to portraits and genre paintings: scenes of calm, intimate domesticity. But he began and ended his artistic career as a painter of still lives. To no paintings do the French term, nature morte, better pertain. Chardin not only depicted, with astonishing skill, the inanimate objects of everyday life -- a tall jar of olives swimming in their brine; a delicate porcelain cup of steaming tea; a paper-covered jar of preserved apricots -- he also painted, with shocking ease and palpable reality, dead things.

In this gallery there is a painting of a side of meat, suspended from a hook; a plate of plump, damp kidneys. Fish languish, limp-tailed, on platters; ducks and pheasants hang from trussed feet, their brilliant plumage ruffled by gravity, necks askew. Most disquieting are two portraits of dead hares lying next to open game bags and powder flasks. I watch as people enter the room, see the two hares, and physically recoil – and then take themselves in hand and approach, closer and closer, to examine the smudge of blood by a delicate nose, the heart-rending softness of fur, the limp weight of small, still limbs.

But it's Chardin’s large “Still Life with Ray” that stops me in my tracks. A huge, white, diamond-shaped ray, slit up the belly, with a terrifying, almost human face, hangs from a metal hook. An array of masterfully painted wooden, ceramic, and metal objects lie below it on a kitchen table, where, on the left, a gleaming-eyed tortoise-shell cat stalks a plate of glistening, opened oysters. The effect is one of horror, and impossible harmony. Visceral, creepy, and deeply emotional, the painting gets under your skin, and there it remains. Never has anything seemed more dead than this gruesome ray, or more alive than the wide-eyed cat, about to pounce.

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We’re halfway around the year from that early fall day. Thinking back to Chardin’s paintings, I realize that Lent has a quality of nature morte about it. We resist, recoil, and then move closer. Examining the minutiae of our lives, we make choices, exchange one thing for another, give others up. Time slows, the arrangement settles, and becomes fixed.

Chardin painted the same subjects when he returned to still life in his later years, but he no longer dissected death through its details. His late paintings of hares and game birds are all atmosphere, and acceptance. They are transcendently beautiful – but I found I missed that cat.

Perhaps there is another way to approach this period of Lenten introspection. Only a few of us look back at life regretting that we lived too much or too intensely. Far more of us wish we had taken more risks, and tried harder to follow the dreams of our heart rather than someone else’s notion of what we should be. We wish we had laughed more, reached for more oysters, gotten up in the night to look at the stars. It’s sad to realize, too late, that we’ve plodded through life in sensible shoes, rather than teetering, once in a while, in faux-alligator high-heeled mules.

What does it mean, “to have life abundantly?” Not self-indulgence or extravagance. I am pointing toward our tendency –- my tendency -- to be too hard on ourselves; to give up because of the perceived limitations of personality, age, or infirmity; to follow convention; to say “oh no, I shouldn’t” when in fact we can, and should. For a whole variety of reasons that seem rational and prudent at the time, we move away from life instead of embracing it fully, with joy, in all its pain and beauty. And that, not death, is the true tragedy.

As I left the art museum late that day, so did a blind man, his outstretched cane tracing a wake in the water pooled on the wide granite landing. I watched as he felt his way down the steps and melted into the city throng -- and saw that he was smiling.

Three Spring Haiku

Just back from a long weekend trip with Montreal friends to Manhattan and Brooklyn, where we saw art, heard some great old-time banjo music, drank coffee and ate cheesecake, thought about museums and the positive and negative aspects of what they preserve, and caught up with dear friends who live there. We warmed up too -- it felt so good to walk and walk in the spring air and the unique energy field that is New York, and at the same time enjoy being unplugged for a few days.

I haven't had time yet to download and work on my photos, or to write anything longer, but here are three micropoems that emerged during the long drive back to Canada.

Ghostly sycamores

over monkey sheds, seal pools --

back fence of the zoo

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Pink origami

alight on still-bare branches:

first magnolia 

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Pale willow tresses

forsythia's sharp yellow

we drive north through spring.

Seven

Two corals, pen and ink, 1976

On Saturday, the 20th, this blog will turn seven, which is rather hard to believe. I'll be in New York City, with friends from Montreal, visiting museums and friends from that place as well. And I'm strongly considering not taking my computer along, though I'll certainly have my camera and the recorder that runs in my head most of the time...

 Lately I've been reflecting on the changes in my daily life since moving up here for good last summer. We've settled into a routine of rising at 7:30 or so, dressing quickly, and coming to our studio -- by bike, now -- where we make coffee and a light breakfast - steel-cut oats for me, with some fruit or yogurt. I spend the first hour checking email and the social networks, and then begin the day's work, which is sometimes professional design work, sometimes writing, and more often these days, various tasks for qarrtsiluni and Phoenicia Publishing. We make lunch here around noon, and then are back at it, often until 7:00 pm or even later. I usually break up my day with a walk and am trying to spend a couple of hours doing artwork of some sort, and if I can I play the piano for half an hour. You might think that working at home, as we did for 30 years, would be more productive but it's just the opposite. I miss being at home sometimes - it's easier to start dinner in the middle of the afternoon, and easier to take a walk and do the day's shopping - but in general this situation feels better. Home feels quiet and calm and slow; it's a meditative atmosphere for cooking, bathing, reading, and seeing friends.

Our upstairs neighbor, noticing our new routine and late hours, admonished me recently: "Don't work too hard!" I laughed and he said, "Yes, I know you love it." "A lot of it doesn't feel like work, I said. "This is just what I do."

Being involved with art again has made me think about a time in my life, long ago, when I had my first job after college. I was working as a naturalist in one of New York State's environmental education centers, and was in charge of their exhibits and trail guides. In the evenings I'd come home, make myself some dinner, and spend the next four hours drawing, painting, and doing calligraphy. It would be more accurate to say that I was teaching myself to paint illustrations from the natural world in watercolors, and practicing calligraphy so that I might be able to do it professionally. All that winter of 1975-76 I worked hard, night after night, listening to the public radio station from Syracuse, which is when I also learned to love opera. I remember it as a time of deep, quiet satisfaction. I enjoyed my daytime work and my colleagues there, who were every social people, but I knew I wouldn't stay indefinitely, and felt I was preparing for the future. My whole life stretched ahead of me, a bright ribbon of possibilities, and instead of feeling scared or lonely I looked forward to the solitude of those evenings with my paints and pens and music, searching for something beneath my fingers that I hoped would eventually take shape.

 
Self-portrait, ~1990

Did it? Not the way I expected, of course. I met a man and moved to New England, became a self-employed graphic designer and calligrapher, became a much more serious painter and left music behind for a long time. Then work and business and community became the primary focus, along with a long happy marriage to a very different man. Computers came along. Spiritual matters became a much greater focus, as did politics; painting was laid aside, music re-entered my life, and twenty years after those long nights in that makeshift studio I became, working each morning instead, the writer I had wanted to be all along.

So what's happening now, after nearly another twenty years? It feels like a weaving together of the many threads of my life, but in a different form: I'm no longer interested in doing skillful realistic drawings or paintings, for instance, and most of my attention has shifted from the finished product to the process itself. But once again, I don't know what will take shape or how I'll be changed. I do know that blogging has played, and will continue to play, a major part in that evolution, not only because it encourages my practice of writing, forming a space of solitude and concentration where the writing can take place, but because it takes me out of my own world into yours.

Sighting

Amethyst within

spring's stone-shattering vision:

first purple crocus.

A Walk in the Green Rain

St. Catherine Street, Montreal

The late winter/early spring weather has been lovely here, allowing us to get back on our bikes, but yesterday we opened the bedroom curtains to a dark, cold, raw, rainy day, which made getting up an hour early even harder. I had to get downtown to the cathedral by 9:00 am for rehearsal and J. was going to church too, so we drove. In addition to being the start of Daylight Savings Time, it was also St. Patrick's Day, and the annual parade - one of the biggest events in Montreal's civic entertainment calendar - would be starting at noon on St. Catherine Street, running right by the cathedral and making downtown driving impossible.

From heavy metal to the Habs.

The rain delayed the start of the parade so we got out of downtown easily and back to our studio for lunch. I had to turn around and go back to sing Evensong, with a rehearsal starting at 2:45, but didn't know whether the parade would be over and I'd be able to park or not. It was pouring. Finally I decided to take the car to the Papineau metro station, leave it nearby, and take the metro downtown. That was a good decision, since they were just beginning to take down the barricades and throngs of people in green hats and scarves, many already looking pretty inebriated, were crowding the streets and underground.

The steaming bowls of Pho looked so tempting!

At 5:00, after the service, I left the cathedral and entered the metro. As I waited on the platform, an announcement came over the PA system, saying that smoke from an unknown source had caused a shutdown of the green line, which would continue for an indefinite period. I waited ten minutes, only to hear the same announcement again, and then left - along with most of the other people waiting for the train. Normally I would have walked or taken a bus to Berri-UQAM where I could pick up the orange line and go home -- but the car was at Papineau, several stops beyond on the green line. St. Catherine St. was closed to traffic all through the center part of town because of all the construction for the new symphony hall, so there were no buses. I went out onto the street...it wasn't raining too hard. I had on shoes with high but chunky heels and a short print skirt; fortunately I'd worn my rain parka and it had a hood that was stowed in my backpack. I had no umbrella, but I did have gloves and a thin wool hat. OK, I decided, I'll just walk and enjoy it.

An intellectual oasis.

I'd never walked all the way across town on St. Catherine, one of Montreal's most iconic streets.Walking fast, it only took me a bit more than an hour to reach my car, just across Papineau. The walk took me through part of the downtown retail center, past Place des Arts, UQAM (the University of Quebec at Montreal) and the gay village.

For a different kind of Easter basket...

Through its construction efforts around the arts complex, the city is trying to "clean up" some of the worst sections of St. Catherine, but I rather like the colorful nature of the street. I was glad that the shutdown had forced me to do something I wouldn't have done otherwise - and decided, partway, to bring you along.

Ecouter

Nine of Her

Her features rubbed with a wooden spoon,

Fadwa's Damascene face emerges

beneath my hands black with printing ink --

penetrating dark eyes

the set of the jaw

her brother's entirely.

I lift the thin sheet of kozo

oily and fragrant

missing him.

Writing about War

Roman Skaskiw, who has served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, has written several thoughtful pieces about his experiences for the New York Times. He has an essay there today in the "Home Fires" series that the paper has been running about Iraq. Titled "Narrative Memory at War," Skaskiw writes about the fact and fiction of war narratives, and why they come down to us in the forms that they do. It's a good piece, well worth reading, and I appreciated his comments on two of our most ancient war narratives as he probes the curious line between hero and victim, and the mixed motives of participants and chroniclers of war:

While I like the spare granting of hero or victim status in “The Iliad,” I’d be kidding myself to think it isn’t also a whitewashing — propaganda even — for the Greeks. Unglamorous labors are merely alluded to, while excessive descriptions of bloody, glorious combat go on for pages.

My favorite war narrative is Thucydides’s “History of the Peloponnesian War.” The two-and-half-millennium-old narrative does not ignore selfish pettiness, opportunism, false bravado, naïve adventure seeking, and is more familiar to me than many accounts of our wars being peddled today.