the cassandra pages

All the Words

It's always such a pleasure to hold a new Phoenicia book in my hands, knowing that the author's work has been put into print for present-day readers and for posterity, and that I've played a role in making that happen.

I first became aware of Magda Kapa through our mutual friend Teju Cole, and began reading her blog ("I Was Not Born in English") and following her on Twitter, where she was quite active and experimental, writing short poems and aphorisms, or short sayings/definitions. We left each other comments, and gradually became friends, with her Greek heritage and my classicist background as another connection.

She writes:

"In 2013 I spent a whole year on Twitter exploring the meaning of “big” words like life, death, love, sex, pain, pride, violence, hope… When I started writing these “definitions” in January that year, I had no idea they’d become a project. I had just entered a period in my life where reflection and its creative documentation not only felt necessary but became my life’s red thread. A thread far from following a straight line, though, but mostly curling into circles that only slowly, if at all, formed a moving spiral. Most of the words escaped permanent definitions; life kept, and keeps, redefining them for me."

This project, named "All the Words," became a journal of aphorisms, short sayings, epigrams, and "naked verses." Poet and translator George Szirtes was one of thousands of readers captivated by Magda Kapa's project, and praised her writing as "the pared-down core of poetry;" Dave Bonta stated that Magda Kapa is "a master of the aphorism" and that her book will be on his shelf along with classics of Chinese, Hebrew, and Sufi literature.

Eventually, Magda approached me about the possibility of turning "All the "Words" into a printed book. I read and re-read the manuscript, and we talked. Magda described the manuscript as a Heraclitian river, and I liked that: the term comes from the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who said "No man ever steps in the same river twice." Although Magda revisited many words in the course of a year, life kept redefining them for her. In my page design for the book, I tried to keep this sense of constant change, and Magda's "moving spiral" was the inspiration for the calligraphic painting I did for the cover.

Here's a look inside:

 

Several of you have already ordered the book and we appreciate that very much. I hope some other Cassandra readers, too, may want to dip into the ever-changing river of Magda Kapa's thoughts: it has certainly helped me find new ways of considering my own relationship to the everyday words with which we define our lives and their movement through time.

Furthermore, please know that your support of a book like this encourages the sort of experimentation and creativity that mainstream publishers have almost completely abandoned. I think it's crucial for all of us who care about language in general, and poetry in particular, to support writing that breaks new ground, uses non-traditional media, and expands our awareness of how our minds work with words.

ALL THE WORDS is only available through direct order from Phoenicia, and we are able to ship it anywhere for very reasonable prices.

Back, But Still in Transition

Back to the mail. Watercolor and ink. 4/20/2015

It's great to travel, and good to come home, but sometimes it's harder than others to pick up the threads of where you were a few weeks ago, or a month ago, and start in again. For some reason, it's not been particularly easy for me to jump back into my life as it was -- the mail, the taxes, the accounting, the book business. I've done what I needed to do, but I feel like my mind is partially elsewhere. Because of J.'s exhibition, we had a lot to do right after getting back from Mexico City, and I haven't had time yet to work on my photos or even think about the trip very much, let alone write about it. It's more than that, though. I was thinking about what I wanted to do next before I ever left, about some changes in my internet use, and in my daily life. Some of those questions have been answered, and some continue to loom unresolved in the back of my head, but more pressingly now because my schedule is finally more open. That's always the case, isn't it? We long for space -- time -- freedom, and then when summer vacation, or retirement, or even that free weekend arrives, we don't find it so easy to act decisively and take advantage of it to do what we thought we wanted to.

Desk with pink gift boxes. Watercolor and ink, 4/27/2015.

I feel a bit like this jumble on my desk, which is probably why I drew it last night. There are some precious things here that I wouldn't part with; some obsolete or broken items that need to be thrown out; evidence of work in progress; and some recent gift boxes: pretty but empty.

When we return from time away, we also notice things we had ignored. I've got a lot of stuff that needs to be cleaned up, straightened out, and actually it feels like I need to do that before starting any new big projects. I'm talking more about real things, practical things like my desk, but there's probably head-stuff as well. And it's almost spring, even here in the far north where it has taken forever to arrive. It's the opposite of the way it should be, but spring is always the hardest time of year for me, when I'm the most likely to feel a bit depressed. So it's time to get outside, continue the exercising that's been helping me get through these interminable end-of-winter days, play the piano, draw, clean the terrace, and not be too hard on myself. You heard it here!

Think of the Armenians

Today, on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian genocide, I'm thinking of my mother-in-law, Marjorie. She was a young girl in Konya then, with two younger brothers. Unlike many Armenian men, her father survived several years before he was murdered by the Turks, because he had language skills they needed. After his death, Marjorie's mother was helped by American missionaries working with Near East Relief: she and the three children were taken by boat along the eastern Mediterranean coast, finally ending up in Alexandria, Egypt. There her mother, a trained nurse, ran an orphanage for Armenian children. Marjorie, already skilled in many languages, was a favorite helper of the missionaries, and was eventually sent to Beirut for her high school education and college at the American University, where her future husband, my father-in-law, was teaching.

Her brothers went to Switzerland and Brazil. Marjorie and her husband and young son immigrated to America in the late 1940s; their second son, my husband, was born in 1950, and a girl was born five years later. Even after hearing their stories firsthand for many years, it's still hard for me to imagine how difficult that move and cultural adjustment must have been, especially for her. But harder still is the knowledge that she witnessed the terrible events of 1915 and subsequent years, as nearly every adult Armenian male was killed outright, and the remaining families forced to march across the desert, most of whom did not survive.

My mother-in-law did not talk about those times. Most survivors did not; when you read accounts pieced together by later generations the writers - our age or younger - all say the same thing: "my mother -- my aunt -- my grandmother -- didn't want to talk about it." Marjorie, a lifelong Quaker, always said she didn't want to perpetuate hatred; she had seen too much of tribal feuds and ethnic and religious conflict; she wanted her children to grow up in peace, without thoughts of hatred or revenge burdening their hearts.

So she bore those scars inside herself. We knew they were there, and in peripheral ways we could see the damage they had done, but she lived as a witness and spokesperson for peace and non-violence, especially in her later years. I loved and admired her, and miss her a lot. My husband and I keep her memory alive with the foods she loved to cook, a few favorite objects and textiles, and stories about funny or poignant or typical things we remember: we often say to each other, "Your mother would love this." In fact we said that recently, at our favorite restaurant in Mexico City, as we spent a leisurely afternoon on the upstairs stone terrace lined with pots of flowers, eating perfect baba ghanoush on zaatar-dusted pita fresh from the oven. She loved flowers, color, well-prepared food in the company of friends and family, starched white linen, fine needlework, books, children, travel, laughter. You never would have known, unless you really knew her.

Pictures from an Exhibition

Time-travel takes many forms: for us, the opening of Jonathan's show last weekend was a step back into our former life in northern New England, where we saw many old friends, some of whom we hadn't seen for a decade or even more. For many of them, these photographs of late 1960s and early 1970s were a real trip into a personal past and regional/social history that affected many of our lives forever.

A lot of people came to the opening, and the photographs were received with wistfulness, amusement, nostalgia, and genuine appreciation: many people said "this was me, this was my life and a special moment in time, you've absolutely captured it." The two hours went by in a wink. Several of the people actually pictured in the photographs were present, providing a somewhat mind-blowing collapse of time. It was great to meet a couple of blog readers as well as many old friends I was absolutely delighted to see, and we were also so grateful to some close friends from Montreal who made the effort to be there with us.

Some of the visitors were close friends we've known through almost the entire thirty years we lived there, and others were from specific contexts -- Vermont Public Radio, community organizing, church and choir, artists and board members from AVA Gallery, professional contacts and former clients, neighbors -- a long and varied list. Each time someone else walked in the door it felt like I was seeing another piece of my life -- it was a good feeling, and an odd one too-- something that perhaps I could only experience at this age, after so much time has passed, and after living elsewhere for a considerable time as well.

And of course I was most happy for J., whose work was beautifully hung -- it's always a pleasure and a new experience to see a body of work on the walls, large and all together for the first time. This project has consumed both of us for a long time, and this first exhibition (with prints specifically chosen for that Vermont/New Hampshire location) felt like a culmination of that effort. Thank you to AVA for making it all go so smoothly, and to everyone who came to see the work and has supported the project thus far.

Jonathan will be giving a gallery talk at 5 pm on May 20, just before the exhibition comes down.

¡hola!

Well, the past month has literally flown by. And now it's April 20th, and I'm back in Montreal after almost three weeks spent elsewhere: first Mexico City, then in our former home of Vermont for the opening of J.'s photography exhibition. In the meantime, spring has finally arrived in the northeast too, and not a moment too soon, because everyone was starting to go completely bonkers. On April 9th, we flew into Montreal looking down on fields covered with snow and a frozen river, but within a couple more days almost everything had melted. We're back on our bikes, and feeling hopeful.

I'm glad to be back here at The Cassandra Pages, too. Taking a break was a good idea; I've come back with stories and photos and ideas, and also some greater insight about my relationship to the online world: what's healthy for me, and what isn't. The blog definitely is, so I look forward to resuming the conversation.

This silly picture was taken at a photography show in Mexico City devoted to the art of a special group of street photographers who take photos of visitors at festivals and shrines - historically, they use large-format sheet-film cameras and deliver the finished photographic print to the subject within a short time. Often the photographer has some sort of backdrop or set-up -- like this painted airplane - which forms a souvenir record of the visit. We had seen such photographers and their set-ups at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe last year, (see below) but had no idea it was a genre with a long history in Mexico.

I love the kitsch-y quality of these photos and almost wish now that we'd had our pictures taken at this stand last year with the former Pope, a donkey and a sombrero, all those Mexican colors, and not one but two Virgins!

Actually, the black-and-white photographs exhibited were often poignant as well as amusing. There was even a full-sized white horse in the exhibition, waiting to smile over your shoulder. Who could resist?

 

 

 

Invitation to an Exhibition

"New Overalls" in front of Hirsh's Store, Lebanon, NH, 1973. (c) Jonathan Sa'adah

If any of you will be in or near the Vermont/New Hampshire area next weekend, we'd like to invite you to come to the opening of Jonathan's photography exhibition, "Seeds of Change," at AVA Gallery and Art Center in Lebanon, NH, on Friday, April 17 from 5-7 pm. The show will include 33 large prints, most but not all included in his recently-published book, How Many Roads?, which documents the changes that took place in the society and landscape of rural New England during the turbulent years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Poetically, the Carter's overalls proudly displayed in the photo above, taken in 1973, were made in the old Carter's garment factory that is now home to AVA Gallery and Art Center, where Jonathan will be exhibiting!

The show runs at AVA from April 17 through May 20, and on May 20 he'll be giving a gallery talk at 5:30 pm. Both events, and the exhibition itself, are free and open to the public. We'll both be there and would be delighted to see you, and I'd be especially thrilled to meet any Cassandra Pages readers I've never met in person!

AVA is one of the most established and prestigious non-profit art centers in northern New England. It has beautiful large gallery spaces, and five contemporary artists will be exhibiting during this time period. One of our old friends, Joan Morris, an extremely talented textile artist who works with shaped-resist dyeing, is among them, and I'm looking forward very much to seeing her recent work.

Jonathan's show will be in the upstairs Johnson Sisters Library; there will be delicious refreshments, nice people to meet, signed prints and books for sale, and a good time to be had!

Happy Easter

A post from early April, ten years ago

GOODBYE BOOKS

April 6, 2005

One of our agreed tasks this week has been to do what we've been talking about for a long while - go through the books and actually get rid of those that no longer mean anything to us. Note that I didn't say "those we'll never read again" - because there are books on our shelves that I doubt either of us will re-read but we wouldn't part with for anything. No, this is a purge of dead weight, of books that are pointlessly  taking up shelf space in this particular house. Some would see this is a wrenching, even devastating process -- when one of my friends moved into a retirement home it was the dismantling of his library that affected him the most: "like having my limbs amputated," he said. I'd probably say that too, if I had to give up my shelf of Russian literature, or choose between keeping poetry books or art books. Maybe someday it will come to that - I hope not - but the books on the floor are more of the how-to variety - I don't need my cold-climate gardening book anymore, and cookbooks I haven't used in two decades are not likely to enhance our cuisine around here anytime soon. What surprised both of us is that, once we also take away computer software documentation and old magazines, the volume is reduced by 1/3 to 1/2: leaving the literature and essays, religion and history, sociology and cultural studies, poetry, art and photography books that really do matter to us, as well as some sentimental volumes that remind us of the original owner or the giver.

All of this book-weeding brings me back to the desert-island book meme, and all the lists I've read on various blogs. (We may complain, but wasn't it pretty interesting to see what everyone chose?) If I had it to do over, this week, I wonder if I might simply take five of the fattest blank books I could find. On a desert island, or in solitary confinement, would it be worse not to be able to read, or not to be able to write?

---

And here's the post from the day after (Apr 7, 2005): a conversation about the subject with my father-in-law, who some of you will remember!

BOOKS, A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

Hosta pods

Yesterday I told my father-in-law about the book-weeding. He looked nervously at his own shelves. “There are books here I couldn’t imagine parting with,” he said, and then grinned. “But obviously I can’t take them with me! Where are you taking them, is someone buying them?”

No, I tell him, we’re donating them to a charity sale.

“That’s the thing,” he says. “No one will give you anything for used books. David” (his other son) “tells me that after I am gone…dead, that is…probably my library will be given to a small college, where they’d be glad to have them.”

“That’s a good idea.”

He looks around again, and back at us. “But there are some I wish would stay in the family. David took one whole shelf.”

I don’t know whether to tell him there are books here I’d love to have, or whether it’s not the time, or my place to say that. I figure there will be other chances. And if he starts telling me to take books, I’ll probably get tearful and embarrass and upset him, so I stay silent. Instead I tell him about the book meme.

“There’s been a thing going around the internet, asking people if they were going to be marooned on a desert island, what five books they’d take with them. What do you think? What would you choose?”

He looks at me skeptically – he dislikes all games and quizzes, but I can tell he is either somewhat intrigued, or willing to humor me. He thinks for a minute, and doesn't say anything.

“The Qu’ran,” J. suggests.

“No, it’s a very disappointing book,” he says. I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “No, it really is,” he insists. “It has no narrative. It’s a collection of Mohammad’s sayings, his revelations, over five periods of his life – he’d say something, and someone wrote it down on a palm leaf, and after he died, they collected all the palm leaves…”

“or backs of envelopes, or paper napkins…” said J.

“Exactly. They collected them all and wrote them down. It’s a book of utterances.” He frowns, and then gets a beatific look on his face. "But the recitations, the chanting of the Qu’ran! That is something else entirely. I was listening the other day to Iraqi radio, and there was someone chanting the Qu’ran with such a pure voice, so beautifully! Oh, it’s something when they can do that!”

His eyes are closed; my husband and we exchange the look that means “this man will never cease to amaze me.”  “OK,” I say., when he opens his eyes. “Come on. Pick five books.”

He looks at the shelves, looks back at me. “What did you pick?” he asks, finally.

“The Iliad.” He nods in approval.

“Complete Works of Shakespeare.”

“That’s not a book, that’s a library!” he says.

“Well, yes, but we need volume. Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz – he’s a Polish poet.”

“Never heard of him.”

“The Oxford Book of American Verse.”

“Hmm, that’s interesting, I don’t know it either.”

"And maybe a Bible?”

“BAH!” he exclaims. “Another disappointing book.”

This man just loves to be perverse, I think to myself.

“I also thought maybe I’d just take five blank books,” I tell him.

“Not a bad idea,” he says, and then goes back to the Bible. “It’s too long, and very repetitious. I prefer the Reader’s Digest Bible.”

“WHAT?”we both say simultaneously. “What is that?”

“I have it right in my study, go look. They’ve done a marvelous job, they’ve cut out all the repetition, and added a lot of excellent pictures.”

J. goes and brings back a thick dark blue book, and begins thumbing through it. He’s right, the illustrations are pretty good. I find the concept a little weird, but, hey, that’s what Reader’s Digest is famous for – condensing books. This is also one of those cultural things: I grew up thinking that the Reader's Digest was beyond the pale, but my father-in-law always thought it was a very legitimate, important, and impressive publisher, largely because he missed the cultural clues, and because he knew someone who was an editor there, and this man showed an interest in his work.

 

Meanwhile, J. is looking through a central section called “great paintings of Biblical scenes.” He holds up a Victorian painting of a bloated fish-like whale, out of whose mouth the figure of Jonah is being ejected. We all look at it, speechless for a few moments.

“The printing is really excellent, don’t you think?” my father-in-law says.

In his study there must be twenty Bibles, including all the best-known English translations as well as Bibles in various other languages. He’s such a BS-er, hauling out this one today. ‘Well,” I say, trying to lubricate the conversation, “I suppose if it gets more people to read books…”

“I knew a woman who was a condenser for the Reader’s Digest – that’s what she did. Very brilliant woman. She had a method; she’d hold a pen in her hand and mark as she read, cutting all the superfluous parts. She was very good at it.”

‘Very brilliant,” says J. under his breath.

‘I don’t suppose Tolstoy would have thought too highly of it,” I remark.

He shrugs, and grins devilishly: “I know one thing -  you won’t get any money for any Reader’s Digest Condensed Books at any booksale.” Then he settles back in his chair contentedly. “And as for the desert island - I think I prefer the five blank books.”