the cassandra pages

One Pear, Two Approaches

We were away this week, at Lake Winnepesauke in New Hampshire for the wedding of a young man we've known and loved since he was tiny, and the wonderful young woman he has chosen. That was a very happy event, and except for a torrential downpour and hailstorm that let loose half an hour after the outdoor ceremony (what a close call that was!) the weather and the lake were gorgeous, and reflected the happiness of the bride and groom.

Back here at the studio, I've been sewing a lot - more about that in another post - there's been a lot of fabric through the sewing machine since the beginning of summer. But I had time this week to do a couple of drawings/paintings and thought I'd share them here, since the same pear features in both but the approach is quite different.

In the one above, typical of a lot of my sketchbook pages, I've begun with a fast fountain pen line drawing, and then added some color. This was a delicious sugar-dusted orange and almond cake, made and brought by friends as a contribution to dinner one night; the next day it seemed to be crying out to be immortalized, so I sat down and drew it, adding the pear to the plate and leaving the silver cake cutter where it was, reflecting the golden crumbs of the cake interior. Once I would have slavishly tried to reproduce the exact colors of the scene; now I make up my own much more limited and intentional palette: here the golden browns are enhanced by the red in the napkin, and set off by the blue of the plate. Blue is also the basic tone used for all the shadows. I'm more interested now in creating a mood and an effect, rather than detailed realism.

 

In this one, I did a loose pencil under-drawing to place the shapes, and then painted directly with watercolor, without any pen line at all. Because this was also done in my sketchbook, I didn't have the benefit of "good" watercolor paper with a bit of tooth, and resiliency when soaked, but I like the result anyway. The effort here, in addition to the controlled, limited palette, was to define and relate the shapes and volumes in a more abstract way, drawing a bit with the brush, but keeping it all very loose. Because I hadn't done enough careful planning before beginning (the painting quickly got more ambitious than the initial sketch) I had to crop into the center to achieve a pleasing composition, but that's OK, it's good to crop or even cut up our work, turn the pages upside down and sideways. But I love spontaneous watercolor: its transparency, immediacy, and clarity are unequaled in any other medium, and in spite of always being less-valued than oil on canvas, I find it the most challenging, and want to get back to doing more of these.

Summertime Means Gardens

George's garden, East Bolton, Quebec.

My love of flowers and gardens is at its most passionate during these months when the pots on the terrace are overflowing, the community garden is a mixed-up riot of color, and we get to visit some friends and family in the countryside, where there are both gardens and roadsides full of wildflowers.

We're eating our fill of strawberries from Isle d'Orleans, the first blueberries are in season, and in another week or so there will be luscious Ontario peaches.

 

I hope you're enjoying summer where you are, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere, that is, and hello to my friends down under - today it's 87 degrees F here, and I'm almost (but not quite) feeling nostalgic for the opposite season! Yesterday I spent way too many hours working in my community garden plot, cleaning up the overgrown borders, digging out unwanted plants and weeds, moving things around. This morning I could barely get out of bed, but once I got moving and took a couple of Tylenol, I was functional and feeling glad I had done all that work.

Dual.

Champlain, NY

An essay of mine appears in today's Montreal Gazette. I read some of the comments last night, and then stopped; I won't engage in a discussion in the newspaper's comment thread, but please feel free to weigh in if you go over there - and I'd be happy to hear your thoughts here. Although no one likes being misunderstood, I'm still glad the piece was published. In the process I've learned several important things that I'd like to share with you, my faithful and sensitive readers who I am appreciating today more than ever.

First, subtle, lyrical essays do not translate well to newspapers or online websites where people expect a different sort of writing. I had originally written the essay for this blog, and perhaps it should have simply stayed here.

Second, editorial decisions can shift the tone and thrust of a piece. My original title was "Dual" and I had submitted the two photographs above and below. The paper showed me their edits, but not the changed title or photo (congested traffic at a border crossing) until after the piece was published. Part of what I was trying to convey was what it is like to be a dual citizen of an older age, traveling between two cultures, and specifically my own sadness about what has changed in America since 9/11.

Historical memory, of course, is constantly in the process of being created and erased. For me, born in 1952, the fifties are a sort of blur, underlain by the chill of the Cold War, and though I can explain intellectually and with hindsight some of what that time was "like," my own American reality began the year JFK was shot in Dallas. Likewise, someone who was young at the time of 9/11 and is now in their twenties cannot know personally what America was like before the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, Al-Qaeda, drone warfare, Guantanamo, Iraq, ISIS, international terrorism, and the rise of social media.

There is more to it than that, though. To some extent, our reality is imposed upon us, but in other ways, we - some of us in the privileged west, at least - choose how to see it, even choose how much to see. What is objective truth, and what is subjective and personal? That is an important question, and it underlies much of the political and social debate in many societies right now. I think it is also a question we have to keep asking ourselves throughout life, because rigidity on that score is an absolute peril.

Ever since I was young, I saw that American culture contained tremendous opportunity and genuine goodness, and at the same time - even in the small peaceful town where I grew up - I sensed the racism and violence that often lurked beneath the surface and sometime erupted. The popularity of Trump is not a surprise to me, and because I have seen the economic and social deterioration caused by globalization, poor government, the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, and the societal effect of constant wars, among other reasons, I think I understand the anger and hopelessness many people feel, and why some gravitate to a person who cries, "Make America Great Again," and casts blame on The Other.

Canada is not the same. When you move here, you think it is a similar society, but - perhaps particularly in Quebec - the similarities are superficial, the differences immense. I have found that Canadians, unless they have traveled a lot or lived in the U.S. for an extended period of time, simply do not understand what it is like to live in a society where owning guns is normal and violence is much more prevalent. Here are just a few examples: in my small town in Vermont, the neighbor on one side had a shotgun with which he threatened us when, during a flood, we tried to clear the ditch and culvert dividing our two properties. The neighbor on the other side collected pornography, throwing knives, and assault rifles. Our street was once evacuated because wayward teenagers had shot holes in the gas tanks on the side of a house. There were violent crimes, including murder, and women did not feel safe walking beyond the borders of the village at night. And this was mostly before drugs came heavily into that area, spawning whole new categories of suffering. Yet, we all lived our daily lives as "normal" because that was our reality - this is what people do everywhere. I am sure that many of my neighbors didn't know about some of this, because they didn't want to, or because they didn't look. And to a person from a dictatorial, oppressive regime or country torn by civil war, that town would seem like the height of peacefulness and security.

Was I afraid then, and am I afraid when I go to the U.S now? No. I try to be intelligent and reasonable, and not naive. The implication that I was afraid making a routine day trip to little Champlain, New York is ridiculous. What I am afraid for is America itself, and I think that is an anxiety shared by many who look into the current fissures and see an abyss that has actually been there for a long time. What was done to indigenous peoples had an effect. Slavery, racism, unequal opportunity and a refusal to look at this as a society have a lasting effect. Failure to look at what happened in Vietnam had an effect. A decade of war in the Middle East has had an effect. The ballooning of police and border control departments, and increased power of a surveillance state creates an effect. Racial and ethnic profiling create an effect. Terrorism has an effect. The media have an effect. And the longer we turn the other way, the more we allow our governments to do nothing, and the more we accept incursions into personal freedom, because of anxiety about "the other", the more we give away.

Canada is actually different. Yes, there is racism and some police brutality, but it is still questioned and debated by society. It is vastly harder to own a gun here, and violent crime is much lower: in the U.S. the homicide rate per 100,000 people in 2012 was 3.9; in Canada it was 1.4 (0.86 in Quebec in 2014.) To illustrate how absurd the protection of guns can be in the U.S., here's this from a journalist friend in Cleveland, Ohio, where the city is trying to prepare for protests at the Republican National Convention: "On top of it all, the city has banned nearly everything you can think of that is longer than it is wide from the outer 'event zone' in the heart of downtown — lumber, wooden handles for signs, pipes, sticks — but under state law, it cannot ban openly carried firearms."

Canadians complain constantly about the healthcare system, but by law all citizens and permanent residents have access to this basic human need as well as many other social programs that are largely taken for granted. There may be less wealth but there is also less extreme poverty, and there is a "social safety net."

I wish Canadians could see what they have more clearly, because freedom can erode quite quickly. A truth we can all perhaps agree on is that you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

 

Lacolle (hamlet of Odelltown), Quebec. July 8, 2016.

Leaf by leaf.

 

It was a hard week, wasn't it? I've written something in response to Dallas, but have submitted it to a publication first. If they don't take it tomorrow, I'll put it up here.

In the meantime, sewing and drawing have helped, and I also got out my flute and did some practicing for the first time in a long while, mostly Bach sonatas. Today there was a work bee at my community garden, but being a drizzly day, few people showed up. One person spread mulch on the paths, another weeded the perennials along the chain-link fence that divides the garden from the community swimming pool, where a lone swimmer swam laps in the rain.

I spent an hour working mostly by myself at the compost bins, a different scale of salad, cutting up discarded weeds and stems into short lengths, and turning the pile with a pitchfork to aerate it and incorporate some soil and partially-decomposed organic material. It was exactly the right task for today: meditative but practical - the sort of work, it occurred to me, that a monk might do in a monastery garden, wordlessly praying all the while for the world outside the walls. And then I stowed my muddy gloves in my backpack, unlocked the gate, and rode my bike through the deserted Sunday morning streets of this peaceful city where very few people have guns, pondering my only weapon, a pen.

 

This Week's Drawings

I've been drawing almost every day lately. That feels good. I think it's my way of reacting to Brexit, violence, political posturing and failures of leadership, and all the other awfulness that's going down around us: in this one small corner of the universe, I can have some moments of sanity, of paying attention, of honoring what's in front of my eyes, creating something new out of that grace-given raw material. When we can no longer see the beauty or respond to it, we've lost and they've won. I guess this is where I'm making my stand: five minutes while the water boils, before the asparagus goes into the pot. And somehow the world rights itself, at least for a little while.

Here's a moodier watercolor from a different day. This is cropped from a larger page that didn't work as a whole, but when I cut it down I liked this section. The fallen petals make all the difference, to me: it's no longer just a pretty vase of flowers.

 

One day while drawing out on our terrace, I made this little speeded-up video of the drawing process and posted it on Instagram. People seemed to like it so I wanted to share it here - view it full-screen for better effect.

And here's the finished drawing, about 9" x 6". In the video I'm working with my favorite fountain pen, a vintage Schaeffer/Levenger "Seas" series that has a really responsive gold nib. I don't travel with this pen - then I use my more-replaceable Lamy - but when I'm around home and the studio it's what I use. Somehow that's grounding, too - using good and familiar tools, arranging the supplies, getting ready to paint.

Are you managing to find a practice that helps keep you centered and gives you some meditative, absorbing moments of peace and focus during these anxiety and anger-producing days, when the news seems to go from bad to worse? I hope so.

And, hopefully, we can then go out from our terraces and apartments and cabins with some positive energy. If you'd like to see one way some people in my country are making a difference, please take a look at this NYTimes article, "Refugees Hear an Unfamiliar Word: Welcome. - How Canadian hockey moms, poker buddies and neighbors are adopting Syrians, a family at a time. At our cathedral, the money has been raised, volunteers committed, and plans made, we're just awaiting a refugee family still in Beirut, waiting for their papers. We can all give a little money, write some Amnesty letters, join with others. It feels good to take a real step toward our better selves, especially on this weekend between Canada Day and July 4.