the cassandra pages

Moving Ahead

I'm sorry for being so scarce here recently. The birthday celebration extended into the weekend, and Sunday was an all-day commitment with my choir-- but a glorious one: the Missa Brevis and an anthem by contemporary British composer Jonathan Dove in the morning, followed by total immersion in William Byrd in the afternon.

Then, this week, I've been working on a grant application to the Canadian Council on the Arts, for support for a writing project. Though I wrote many grant applications for non-profit organizations, this is only the second time I've only applied for a personal grant. I didn't get the first one, a number of years ago, and I have no idea about the chances for this one. What I'm finding is that although it's a lot of work, under a tight deadline, it's been very helpful to have to write a concise description of the project. I feel like I actually know, now, what I'm trying to do!

I have to include 20-30 pages of writign samples with the application, and last night I re-read most of the posts from The Fig and the Orchid, the account I wrote here about my father-in-law's last years. It was the first time I'd read it since he died, and he came back to me so brightly and clearly through those stories, especially the recounted conversations. What a character he was! I'm so glad I wrote a lot of it down, and someday we need to collect that material with some of Jonathan's photographs and publish it. We've needed some time to go by, though.

The weather has turned cooler here, and that means the amusing sight, on the Montreal streets, of people dressed in everything from shorts and tee shirts to parkas and wool hats. As for myself, on the bike, I'm somewhere in the middle, wearing a fleece layer and a windbreaker. I did pull on some gloves one day recently...and the trees are not only starting to turn, but dropping some leaves. Autumn is moving ahead, and so, I guess, am I!

 

Sixty

...years old today, and actually feeling great about it! I'm such a lucky girl, with wonderful friends. And if I should ever feel depressed (or skeptical, like Manon) about the pile-up of years, I can always remember that my alter-ego, Cassandra, is only 9 1/2!

Lindens: Two Haiku and a Tanka

Poems can be sketches too...

 

This street of lindens
weighted with clusters of fruit
brown cherries with wings

 

Great lindens weighted
with their brown wingèd clusters
and old memories.

 

These lindens have seen
so many pass beneath them --
we grow old, stiffen --
they spread their green arms wider
murmuring intercessions

 

 

Sunflowers in a Blue Vase

Sunflowers in a blue vase, 199x?  14"x 20"

It feels just like back-to-school here: September began, and all of a sudden everything and everybody ramped up. So since I haven't had time to write anything, I thought I'd post a watercolor from almost twenty years ago. These are sunflowers I grew in my Vermont garden, where in late August and September I always had a big group of them nodding outside my studio window. Except for the ones that made their way into the house or the studio, we left them in the garden for the goldfinches and purple finches to feast on, and enjoyed watching the birds as much as the flowers.

I'm also remembering my great-aunt Inez today; this is the week of her birthday (she would have been about 115!) and she was a very good watercolorist who loved to paint flowers too.

I really like this expressive, free style of watercolor; I was just starting to get comfortable and free with it when I stopped painting very much and began writing more. Right now, I don't know quite how I'm going to keep working at either my art and writing this fall; it certainly won't be with the same focus as this summer. We've got a bunch of professional work to do, Phoenicia has more books coming out before Christmas, choir has begun again, I'm teaching/leading monthly meditation at the cathedral, and there's company coming for various visits starting tomorrow, and a couple of short trips out of town for us as well.

However, in the spirit of last night's first meditation session: deep breaths, calmness, and a reminder-to-self, via the sunflowers, that everything is fine, just as it is, right this moment.

 

Some Recent Micropoems

 

The anemones
choke the delphiniums
to prove my absence

--

The claws, the protest --
in five minutes she is curled
a purring comma
beside my guilty conscience

--

Oh! Mosquito bite
on my scalp, I cannot
wash you away!

--

The artist's struggle --
A restless finger blurring
wakefulness from sleep

--

Winnepesauke:
my friends and husband text me
Cold today, they say
We fell asleep listening
to the cry of the loons

--

I click the shutter
on my old paintings and find
myself in the lens.

--

Unmistakable
the homeless man sees it first --
the wet crimson stain

--

A rare rainy day --
a question in the spaces
between dawn's grey clouds

--

Aging bananas
the two last yellow peaches
and three fast fruit flies

Summer Fields, Summer Sale, Summer Lessons

 Summer fields, Paris Hill, NY  6"x 4" (detail)

Like my publishing business, having an online gallery is proving to be a pretty interesting experiment, both inner and outer. Some work has sold, but at this venue in particular, it seems like most people are looking for items that are affordable; here that means $20 - $50. Prints are one option, as are very small works. I'm trying both, and have just reduced the prices on all my spring and summer paintings. I've had to set up yet another accounting system, figure out the international shipping, devise lightweight mailers, work regularly on the online shop -- all that stuff that goes with having a business, but fortunately I don't mind that; having a business is familiar territory, it's the online marketing that is different, whether it's publishing or art or music or whatever.

On the inside, though, I think even more has changed. For so many years, my "career identity" was "graphic designer." As we transition from doing design and communications pretty much fulltime into a broader mix of activities that includes an emphasis on art and writing for me, the direct relationship of money-to-work is changing a lot. The work I've done with my partner all our professional life was intense and demanding, with tight deadlines and a lot of financial/supervisory responsibility for making sure things went properly -- but it was well paid. It also had a social component: long-term relationships with clients and suppliers, and the interesting psychological side of understanding what people were looking for and giving it visual expression. We received some verbal appreciation, to be sure, but that was never a major part of the equation or the motivation.

It's challenging for me to do work now that is just as difficult and demanding, or even more so, but almost entirely self-motivated, with little chance of financial reward. Whether it's publishing books or writing my own words, or doing artwork, I'm doing it for one primary reason: because I want to. I wonder if, without the internet, I'd find it too isolating: I think the social aspect was a major factor why I turned toward graphic design and having a business long ago. I'm a person who likes and needs solitude, but I'm not an introvert.

We're all getting used to sharing our art and writing online these days, maybe even taking it for granted, but I remember how isolated and lonely I used to feel. It bothers me that it's become so difficult for artists and writers to make a living from their work -- it was always difficult, but much mroe so now -- and the internet has added to the perception that art is free. In an ideal work art would indeed be free, but artists would be supported and valued by the society at large. In the meantime, people are scrambling, and no one knows how it will all shake out. It's a struggle some days to keep from feeling discouraged, whether personally, or about the many talented writers and artists I'm privileged to know and sometimes represent, especially with the din of voices clamouring for attention. On the other hand, I feel very fortunate to have the time and resources now to do my own work, and to share it, and some thoughts on the process, with others. It's easy to forget what a rich milieu we have here, both in terms of friendship and sharing, and in access to resources that would have made my early years, for instance, entirely different.

Meanwhile, choir rehearsals for the new season at the cathedral started last night. It felt great to be singing again, back in touch with that incredible wealth of music. I worry, though, how long is this going to be sustainable? There are days when I feel like all the things I love the most are under attack and undervalued -- days when I feel like a complete dinosaur. And a majority of days when I know the thing to do is just be myself, and do what feels right.

It's a mixed and complicated bag. If I had to choose, now, between financial gain or the opportunity to share my work, I'd opt for the latter. Do you agree? I think what most creative people want the most, in addition to the ability to create in the first place, is to share our passion with others; it's the little words of encouragement and support that help us go back to our desk or studio or piano and begin again the next day.

A Shallow Victory, Followed by Tragedy

Pauline Marois' Parti Quebecois won a narrow victory in yesterday's election, but not enough to form a majority government. At the victory celebration at Montreal's Metropolis theater, a gunman came in through the back after setting a fire and fired a rifle, killing one man and critically wounding another. The gunman was subdued by police and taken away, during which he shouted in French at the TV cameras: "The anglophones are waking up!"

Those are the facts as we know them right now. Quebec and Canada being what they are - i.e., not America -- few in the media are speculating or laying blame; the police and the media have acted with responsibility, restraint, and professionalism. No one knows exactly what the gunman meant, because we don't yet know who he was. However, it seems most likely that he was an anglophone extremist who didn't like what Pauline Marois stands for and has been saying.

What we can say for certain is that the past six months in the province have been the most tense in many years. As I wrote yesterday, I was upset by Pauline Marois' rhetoric and platform calling for strengthening the language laws and imposing restrictions on religious dress. I'm not upset that she, or other people, have strong feelings about their own culture; that is her right and furthermore, I understand historically why she feels that way. But I am opposed to rhetoric that can be perceived as racist in any form, and particularly to public officials inflaming tensions along any societal divides: cultural, sexual, ethnic, religious. When political leaders, or celebrities, or talk show hosts -- anyone with a public voice -- does this, it runs the risk of inciting people to violence and hate crimes, as well as lesser but very damaging incidents where self-control would normally prevail.

Yesterday a YouTube video went viral on the social networks. It showed a drunken couple on a late-night Montreal street verbally attacking some Asian men for speaking English instead of French in public. Of course, there is no law in Quebec saying that anyone has to speak French in public! But like the video of a London woman berating an immigrant on a bus earlier this year, this couple were out of control, repeatedly demanding of the men if they had been born in Quebec, calling them "fucking British," and screaming at them to speak French.

Today, anyone can turn into a public figure, with an audience. 80,000 people have watched that video so far.

The election concerns all of Quebec, but we also have our own city to consider. The most unique and precious thing about Montreal is not merely its French ambience and European flavor, but its vibrant and peaceful multiculturalism. That is what we all should be trying to recognize and protect.

A society can be full of people who have reasonable, rational, balanced attitudes about difficult issues -- frankly, this election demonstrated that, and in general our daily culture does too. A shooting incident like this is very unusual for Montreal, and shocks us -- it is only the 22nd homicide of the entire year, in a city of over 3 million people, but every senseless human death is a tragedy. It should wake us all up to the fact that there is no room for inflammatory rhetoric in our society. I've lived with so much of this in the United States, and seen where it leads. Surely we can do better here, and demand better from our leaders as well as ourselves.

Election

Political posters in my neighborhood. The man in the photo is our current representative in the National Assembly in Quebec, his name is Amir Khadir. The fact that he could be elected here speaks volumes about why I want to live here - read the link to see why.

Today, a provincial election, and I cannot vote. I'm not pleased about this; it makes me feel helpless. But, as permanent residents but not-yet-citizens, that's the rule. I hope I can vote in the next one.

Many people, myself included, are not entirely pleased with the choices. Yesterday I did an online "how do you stand" survey on the CBC website, which asks for your (completely anonymous) views on the major issues, and then not only shows whcih party you are closest to, but you how you stand on each issue in relation to all of them, and gives you tools for understanding and studying the results. It was the most sophsiticated tool like that I've ever seen; I was impressed and fascinated. The problem is that while my views are closest to the Greens; to Quebec Solidaire, a new party trying to get established; and even to the Parti Quebeçois in some areas, the latter two are separatist, and I don't want that. (I agree with Quebec Solidaire's basic platform; what I'm not sure about is its economic viability. But I remain open to hearing more. Most people agree that Françoise David, Quebec Solidaire's spokesperson along with Amir Khadir, won the recent debate.)

The Liberals, under Jean Charest, have held power for the past nine years. There have been a number of corruption scandals, and I think Charest's recent handling of the student strikes was arrogant, conservative, and wrong-headed. It's time for him to go. But the Liberals are a national party; they want Quebec to stay part of Canada, and on the surface they seem more sympathetic to the anglophone and immigrant minorities. But are they really?

In the end, I am here because I like what Quebec stands for. I like it different drummer, its refusal to go the way of Stephen Harper. I like its pacifism, its socialism, its sense of restorative justice, its stubbornness about putting the welfare of the whole society first and individualism a little bit further down. And I want it to stay that way.

All the polls indicate that a referendum on sovereignty wouldn't pass; it has failed twice already, but the issue doesn't die. The Parti Quebecois seems likely to win, and what distresses me about their rhetoric is that it continues to be informed by the past, and to look inward, from a point of view of insecurity, cultual protectionism, and even paranoia, when Quebec can and should be looking outward, toward the future. Provinicialism serves no one, and it absorbs a huge amount of energy that could be placed elsewhere. French society and language are well protected here, and loved and appreciated even by many - like me - who are not part that culture by birth. It's time for fear of the outside, of the other, to be relegated to the past, and a new attitude of openness and outward-looking to begin to shine. Quebec is unique in North America, not just for its language and its culture, but for its determination to hold to decent and honorable social and democratic values while other so-called democracies are really run by the rich and powerful for their own interests. We can all be proud of that, and champion it strongly.

This is the first election here that I've really cared about, and I thnk that means I really feel this is my home. So even though I won't be casting a vote, I'll wait for the results tonight with interest, and hope that whatever happens, we can raise a new generation of leaders who represent all of Quebec, who are committed to protecting our shared values, and to looking outward, and forward.