the cassandra pages

Sad but not Despairing

I'm not going to write about the Israeli attack on the aid flotilla because I don't want to turn this space into a mini-warzone. Suffice it to say that I am deeply sad today. And heading out to draw. I refuse to allow the brutality of the world to suffocate my own soul.

And as for breathing: like thousands of other Montrealers, we woke in the night to the smell of smoke, blown into the city from the forest fires raging over thousands of hectares to the north, and today a smog alert has been declared as far south as Boston. So many of the earth's living things  struggling for the basic elements they need in order to live... may we all come to our senses while we still have them.

Riding for a Good Cause

 
A detail of yesterday's sketch

Yesterday afternoon we went out to St. Lazare, west of the city, to a benefit horse show. J. used to ride; I've been on a horse only twice in my life and never attended a horse show or competition, but I like horses very much and love to watch them move. It was a gorgeous day to be in the country, and a good opportunity for sketching, too - though you won't see any attempts at horses-on-the-move here; I'm not familiar enough with horse anatomy to even try.

We'd been invited by a friend who is a breast cancer survivor and who was riding, with five or six other women, in the "Jump for Hope" demonstration in the midafternoon - small jumps by relatively inexperienced riders who were all women who've had or are still in treatment for this disease and who are riding as an affirmation of life and courage. I hadn't expected to be as moved as I was, but when I saw my friend come into the ring, dressed like the others in a beautiful pink riding coat, sitting proudly and elegantly on her horse, and smiling from ear to ear, the tears came quickly. I was so proud of her, and so pleased to be there.

Earlier in the afternoon we'd seen the finals of the Grand Prix jumping competition - very big jumps indeed, taken by remarkable riders on huge, gorgeous thoroughbreds. After that came the "Jump for Hope" demonstration, and then the famous "Musical Ride" -- a precision, synchronized riding demonstration set to music, by the touring riding team of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police: 32 riders and matched horses. I'd never seen such a thing in my life and it was quite something.

Afterward, the horses and riders spread out all around the ring and for half an hour you could pet the horses and talk to the Mounties about what it's like to be in this touring group, which does some 180 performances per year across Canada and in the U.S., mostly for the benefit of local charities. We talked to this young woman, who told us she had been one of 16 riders chosen each year from 800 prospective applicants from the RCMP. The first year is a training year, then it's a two year touring commitment; after that the riders go back to regular police duties. But isn't she perfect?  They all were. Real Mounties,  all with wholesome rosy cheeks, friendly, polite! Red coats! Beautiful black horses! My God, I almost felt Canadian!

Circination

Circination, by Steve Wing

An essay of mine about meditation, plants, and "porous borders," called "Conversations Between Kingdoms" , has just been published in BluePrintReview's "microcosmos" edition, along with the beautiful photograph shown here by Steve Wing, whose work we've published often in qarrtsiluni... I'm so pleased to have my work included in this issue, conceived and skillfully edited by the multi-talented Dorothee Lang, who lives and writes from Germany. Thank you, Dorothee!

It's then that I notice the fern just outside the window. It's an interrupted fern, one of Herm's favorites - he used to jokingly call them Fernus interruptus - and perfect in its newness, the fruiting bodies on the stem not yet dried, the fronds above and below them light delicate green. I search the woods nearby but it's the only one I can see. We look at each other...

Un jour magnifique

It would be hard to explain exactly why this day has been so beautiful, so crystalline. The weather, of course: dry, warm, without a hint of humidity or oppressiveness; the activities: plant shopping in the morning and finding a new shipment of peonies at $10 per big plant; meeting up for lunch with J. in the studio; gardening all afternoon until ready to drop, and talking to my new friends there, realizing I've suddenly fallen into proximity with a bunch of new French hippie friends who are just as crazy-obsessed with plants and gardens as I've always been and are gentle lovely souls besides; back home to make a simple dinner of grilled salmon, cucumbers and yogurt, sauteed zucchini and red and yellow peppers, little potatoes eaten on the terrace as the sun goes down.

I mean...things went wrong, as they always do. I cut my wrist, I got a parking ticket, I heard some sad news. But as days go, this one was nearly almost entirely perfect.

One of these new friends has impressed me as someone who is always bubbly, always smiling, very generous and encouraging in spirit. He also has a magnificent, artistic garden. He told me today that 10 years ago he was almost dead, within months of it, in fact, until a new doctor came along and said, "Now we are going to save you."

"I guess that's why I am the way I am," he said. "I love life, I appreciate each day,  I'm happy to be here."

Dashed Hopes on a Hot Day in May

 

I kept waiting for the right group, preferably with a dog, to put into that blank spot on the lawn, but they haven't come along yet! Good thing the sketch is in pencil, because I can add them later and get rid of some foliage behind them.

--

Montreal is a sad city today: the beloved Habs lost their hockey game last night, so they're out of contention to win the Stanley Cup. I loved Adam Gopnik's little essay about the loss in The New Yorker - and had no idea he'd grown up here:

I had allowed myself to hope—that the old orderly springs of my youth, when I had seen five Stanley Cup parades down St. Catherine Street by the time I was twenty, would return, and restore with it not just the circumstances of my own younger years but also restore my connection to the city, and in a way, the city’s connection to itself...

As for me, hockey is a game I once attended faithfully through an entire season, when I was a sophomore at Cornell; in those years our team was always in contention for national titles. All but one of our players were from Canada (Ken Dryden had just graduated) and after singing the American national anthem before the game we always sang "O Canada!" -- I thought the songs should have been in the reverse order. Tickets were in such demand that you had to line up and sleep overnight in Barton Hall to get them; it was a kind of rite of passage to show up there, with your pillow and bedroll and boyfriend, and spend the night in order to watch a legend in the making.

Tongues of Flame

Pentecost, a Christian feast commemorating the birth of the church and the descent of the Holy Spirit, as well as the gift of glossalia, or speaking in tongues, occurs 50 days after Easter. I like the little orange flames sitting over the heads of the apostles in this painting by Duccio!

And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. (Acts 2:1-4)

The symbolic point of this "babble" was not chaos, but that even though everyone was suddenly speaking in a language incomprehensible to themselves, they could "hear" what was being said and understand it. In my former church, this used to be dramatized by having the gospel for the day (below) read aloud all at once by different people in many languages, which went on for several minutes, and then at the end the English version emerged out of the babble of incomprehensible words.

Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. Utterly amazed, they asked: "Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language? Parthians, Medes and Elamites; residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); Cretans and Arabs-we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!" Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, "What does this mean?"

Theologically, I think Pentecost is supposed to be a time of marveling at the greatest gift that Love (what I'd prefer to call the Holy Spirit) can offer: the coming-together of all the human tribes into mutual understanding and common awe, but I've never heard that expressed in a sermon.

---

When I was young, the prayer book didn't call it Pentecost, but Whitsunday (Whitsuntide) which is the British name for the pagan midsummer feast the Christian festival merged with.

In somer at Whitsuntide,
Whan knightes most on horsebacke ride,
A cours let they make on a daye,
Steedes and palfrays for to assaye,
Whiche horse that best may ren.(Chambers)

Pentecost always had a resonance for me, because I was such a nut on Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. I liked the word itself, and the fact that Pentecost was Arthur's favorite festival, when he held a jousting tournament and big feast, and expected all his knights to gather around the round Table to tell stories, and some great marvel usually occurred. I think it was on Pentecost when the knights, in a communal fervor, departed on the quest for the Holy Grail. Their vow tore at Arthur's heart because he foresaw that they would scatter and die, following out their own interpretations of what the Quest meant and blinded by their own lusts and desires. He knew it would lead to the downfall of everything he had tried to accomplish in his Kingdom.

"So King Arthur had ever a custome, that at the high feast of Pentecost especially, afore al other high feasts in the yeare, he would not goe that day to meat until he had heard or seene some great adventure or mervaile. And for that custom all manner of strange adventures came before King Arthur at that feast afore all other feasts." (Malory, Morte d'Arthur)

I was probably one of a minuscule handful of people in the blogosphere actually observing Pentecost yesterday, and wondering what it might mean in a modern context. We sang a big mass for choir and organ by the French composer Louis Vierne, and at the offertory one of the Sunday School teachers swept down the center aisle with a basket full of construction paper "flames" made by the kids, on which were pasted little plastic butterflies (one hopes they had fire-resistant wings.)

In the afternoon we went to a modern joust: a soccer match between the local Montreal team and Fiorentina. The Italian community turned out in large numbers; Montreal fans cheered lustily for both sides; we got a little sunburned but it was a lot of fun - our first live, upper-level soccer match, which ended in a 1-1 tie.

Sitting in the shade during the half, I especially liked this grandfather, explaining the fine points of the game to his grandson.

Like the city itself, the game and the presence of an A-level team brought out soccer fans from every country; languages were flying all around us as I stood on the upper level of the stadium, watching the crowds leave and the Olympic Stadium in the background.

Games, music: these are the common languages we recognize today. Few people would identify the communal lifting of hearts, and sense of lack of separation, at a rock concert or football game as the "Holy Spirit;" that's a term now reserved for the ecstasy of pentecostal (yes) religion and used almost with embarrassment by more reserved Christians, but it describes a phenomenon that's fundamental to human social behavior and for which, I think, we hunger.

The profound disconnect between the rich myths and literature from all cultures, and our contemporary sense of alienation, despair, anxiety, and atomization -- which we could call "lack of meaning" --  makes me very sad. These stories that form the basis of myth and scripture have developed over the millenia in order to help us see and interpret our own historical patterns, the failings of flawed kings and the gifts of true leaders, as well as our personal longings, fears, hopes, and wonder. Without them, each individual, like Arthur's knights going off in a hundred individual directions, is forced to begin again and again to try to piece together meaning from the babble of a chaotic contemporary world, or seek communal or private highs from experiences that largely exist now without their historical psychological, emotional, and spiritual context because the traditional repositories of wisdom -- whether they're religious institutions, classical literary educations, or even art forms -- have become inaccessible, discredited, or impoverished by the inability of teachers to interpret them for a modern technological age. Meanwhile, fundamentalisms -- and governments based on them -- clash in conflicts of ever-more-epic proportion. All one can hope is that new forms and new stories are arising that will eventually become a counter to the despair and destructiveness so prevalent in our modern world, rather than mere opiates proffered by the media and continually washed into our subconscious minds.

Today I Bought Plants

After rush hour, I drove out of the city to St- Anne-de-Sabrevois, home of my favorite nursery. Well, OK, in the interest of honesty: on the way I stopped at "Arret Papa!" my favorite Quebec diner, where I had breakfast at 11:30 am: toast, an egg, "jambon maison"(a thick slice of ham), tomatoes, roties (fried potatoes) and feves au lard (baked beans.) That definitely set me up for some serious plant shopping.

Those would be fuchsias.

 

Dahlias and cannas.

I didn't buy these showy things, mostly (though I already planted some cannas in the garden, free tubers from another gardener) but did manage to acquire a trunk-load of perennials for the new garden and an equal amount of shade-loving annuals (coleus, ivy, begonias) for our terrace. From 3:30 to 5:30 I planted. Now I've cleaned myself up and am drinking a glass of wine and waiting for an old friend from Vermont, who's traveling through Ottawa and Montreal today, to arrive for dinner. We decided to try a new (to us) restaurant with a new concept. It's called Robin des Bois (Robin Hood), and has a professional chef and a volunteer waitstaff, and it's non-profit: all the proceeds go to charity.

Will report.

Suddenly, Summer

All of a sudden, the météo shows yellow suns every day this week and the air outside confirms the forecast: it's hot! Seeds are up; clothes are peeling off. I took a walk this afternoon and sat in the park - a little one near our studio - and drew a bit. There was a young couple at a picnic table having a quiet but intense argument, watched by a bemused elderly woman alone on a bench; seated on a blanket with a cooler full of beer, three young people talked about circus tricks, jumping up now and then to demonstrate a stance or pose. Little girls in sunhats and dresses eating popsicles. Panting dogs. Mothers sitting and talking, their baby strollers parked head to tail like horses in a field.

Outside the little neighborhood fruiterie, rows of potted herbs on the window ledge - basil, rosemary, mint, chives, chervil - and on the pavement, ten sturdy tomato plants in black plastic buckets. Tomorrow, maybe, I'll go on a plant-shopping expedition, confident that at least it won't snow again (hah!) There's a reason, said my friend this weekend, that May 20 is the traditional safe planting day in Quebec.

SketchCrawl Montreal

Saturday was rather cool and rainy but I went out anyway, and sketched between about 9:30 am and 2:00 pm. My first impression was, wow, I'm really rusty! I haven't been drawing or painting much at all for the past fifteen years, and it feels labored and awkward. On the other hand, it felt wonderful to be outside with real media - pencils, pens, and colors on real paper - and the time went very quickly until I was driven inside by the rain. Here are a few sketches from the day. It's probably typical of me that although I did draw some church spires, the better efforts of the day were of natural things!

Community gardens. While I sat and drew, other gardeners came and went. My garden neighbor, Oliver, a very nice young man, worked quietly nearby most of the time, and when I was finishing up another neighbor came, who I hadn't met yet, and we had a discussion about Nepeta (catmint/catnip) which he grows in huge beautiful mounds, and which he says is his favorite garden plant of all. The catmint was behind me, or else I would have included it! This is a cropped and somewhat condensed view of the gardens and the neighborhood beyond.

Birthday party with pink balloons under the magnificent poplars of Parc Lafontaine. When it began to rain, I retreated under a tree and so did these birthday picnickers. While I was sketching, seated on the ground, a little girl came along on the sidewalk, stopped and looked at me with consternation. "You're going to get all wet!" she exclaimed. Later, I heard a polite "ahem" and turned around to see a tall, thin man respectfully trying to get my attention. He asked if I as an artist and told me he was an architect/engineer. He turned out to be Chinese and 35 years old, having lived in the city for five years. He's had trouble meeting people and wants very much to find a wife. He gave me his card and asked me to call him if I met anyone who might be suitable, and to please ask my husband to think if he might know any nice women who would like to marry and have children. Lots of children.

One thing I've realized is that back when I was doing more art I still never really developed a sketching "style." When I was young I liked to make finished, detailed drawings and paintings, and never really spent a lot of time sketching, except in life classes where I always drew with charcoal or Conte on newsprint, a very different feeling from this sort of outside work. Now I'm more interested in a much looser style of work that has form as it underlying structure, and one has to search out the form through drawing. So that's something I want to work on, and only practice in both looking and drawing will lead toward a way of making marks that feels comfortable and satisfying. What the day did for me was to excite my interest, and it also opened my eyes to a new view of the city -- everywhere I looked I saw things to draw.

Limbering Up

A corner of my studio -- that's my book press in the foreground. (Look at those containers --how many pairs of Fiskars does one person need?)

Tomorrow is Worldwide Sketchcrawl Day (actually there seem to be more than one of these each year) and I'm hoping to get out and do some sketching. Yesterday evening, on the way to choir rehearsal, I stopped at the art supply store and looked for a nifty brush pen I learned about through some of the other urban sketchers. I found one and tried it out today (it's that plastic brush on the right, above) -- and it is just about the coolest idea for on-the-go watercolor sketching I've ever seen. You fill the barrel with clear water, squeeze it (a little or a lot) and the water travels down to the synthetic brush tip, which you then load with color from your travel watercolor set. I was a little dubious at first but it works wonderfully and is quite controllable - you can get strong intense color with less water, or light watery washes.

I also bought a larger Moleskine-type sketch book (the house brand, seems identical but it's only $15) and a fine-point permanent marker, better than the ones I have in my overflowing boxes of old markers and pens. With a couple of pencils, a sharpener, a small water bottle, a couple of paper towels and a fine-pore sponge, I've got a kit now that should work well and weighs almost nothing.

Meanwhile, it's rainy... we're going out this afternoon to do some grocery shopping and stop at a garden center. It's so good to be feeling pretty much like myself again. Last night was one of those magical quiet spring nights; as I biked back home on the edge of the park, I heard the murmuring of small groups of friends sitting in the shadows looking out over the lake or walking slowly on the paths. I couldn't bring myself to go straight home, so I rode slowly through the park, meandering along the different paths past benches where older women talked to each other or the hippie section under the trees with its hammocks and circus slack-ropes and groups of young kids twirling glow-in-the-dark juggling pins. Even the seagulls seemed rather reflective, wandering along the edges of a tulip bed filled with red and yellow flowers, and when I finally turned toward home, the evening's choral music quietly playing in my head, I felt calm and whole again.