the cassandra pages

Hermit Diary 31: Struggling with Art

Olive grove near Thebes, stormy day. May 18.

Since the pandemic and self-isolation began, I've been able to write, to work on publishing projects, to study a language, to practice the piano and sing, to get some daily exercise, to cook. But for some reason, it's been really hard for me to draw or paint, and what was a nearly-daily habit has dwindled to near-nothingness. I want to change that, but I also want to understand why it's been so hard.

Memorial bouquet and drawing for my mother, May 23.

Some of it may be emotional. I've never been someone who does art in order to work out my unhappiness, anxiety or other troubling feeling; that's when I turn to writing or music, or sometimes to repetitive or meditative pursuits like knitting, quilting, or bookbinding. I tend to draw or paint when I feel positive, creative, and focused, as well as when I know I've got a stretch of a few undisturbed hours. I've been surprisingly busy, partly because I've been hosting three Zoom groups each week and participating in several others, and also because of supporting and/or keeping up with many more people than before. But I don't think it's just that. I think most of the time I simply haven't felt I was in a zone where I could, or even wanted to, draw. And that in itself is troubling, and may be an indication that on some psychological level, this thing is taking a toll. Most of my art comes out of a feeling of joy or delight in the natural world or visual characteristics like color and form. I'm in the same small apartment all day, every day, and because we've had such a large number of cases here in Montreal, I keep moving on my early-morning walks; I don't feel particularly comfortable sitting in the park for hours with a sketchbook while lots of people go by. There's not a lot of visual inspiration, but that's just an excuse: there's always a subject to be found.

On the terrace, pen and watercolor (detail)

Beneath it all there's a feeling, both with the pandemic and the heightened awareness of Black Lives Matter, which does matter to me a great deal, that making "beautiful" art in this moment is frivolous, superfluous, socially-irrelevant -- and, at worst, white, privileged, and clueless. This is a dilemma into which many artists in all fields fall at some time, and I can talk my way through it to some extent: art and beauty are always relevant, but especially at difficult times, because the human spirit needs them, and because art affirms who we are at our best. But, oddly, it's a lot easier for me to participate in making a virtual choir video than in filling sketchbook pages with color and line and form. It's not just about me, it's collective, and even though we're singing European classical music, I know from comments received that the performances are a comfort that are appreciated by listeners well beyond our own congregation. It also doesn't feel problematic to write a blog post like this or keep my journal or write letters, where I'm trying to figure things out and to communicate.

Toward Corinth (detail). Pen, ink, gouache on toned paper. May 31.

As for art, though... I appreciated a line that my friend Teju Cole wrote in a New York Times collection of essays about the pandemic: "In these bruising days, any delicately made thing quickens the heart."

In a letter of response to him I wrote:

"I worry that all the delicate things are endangered, frivolous, or irrelevant, and that makes me sad, because I feel we need them more than ever when our hearts are so battered. Recently, inadvertently, I saw a set of collaged photographs of the youngest Black person to be executed in the United States -- it was a 14-year-old boy who looked like a child, being strapped into the electric chair -- I don't remember the year. His eyes were open, frightened, but somehow uncomprehending; it was the most horrific series of images, and I can't get them out of my mind. The cruelty of this country has been, and is, limitless."

Perhaps that is the crux of it: we have all been seeing images and videos that are deeply disturbing, and somehow this affects our visual/mental/emotional processing in general, particularly for those like me who are somewhere on the empath spectrum. I'm able to write about how I feel, I'm able to put my emotions into music, but I'm not willing to make dark, disturbing, or violent art -- and "pretty" art feels superficial -- so instead, I don't make much of any at all.

Loneliness. Still life, pen and ink.

It's been impossible not to notice that some of the blogs and social media feeds I follow seem to ignore current realities entirely. Because we need art, I am 100% in favor of people continuing their practices and their work as much as possible. Many musicians and performers cannot work at all, which is crushing. I realize that many people are just barely coping with day-to-day life right now. Others are, frankly, just as self-centered and self-serving as always. But my own position is less precarious than many, so long as neither my husband nor I get sick. John Kennedy famously said, "To those whom much is given, much is expected," but the original quote is actually from the Gospel of Luke: "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded". I'm thinking hard about balance and integrity: awareness of -- and rethinking -- my own privilege; willingness to learn and change; compassion for others; leadership and speaking out; re-ordering my life to do what I can to help.

Life is not normal right now. It hasn't been normal, in terms of the pandemic, for at least the past four months: it has been a field of death, suffering, anxiety, grief -- and sacrifice on the part of a great many essential workers. The future, by any measure, looks very difficult. And for people of color, who have been disproportionately affected, and whose historic and present oppression and inequalities are now finally in the public's attention, life has not been what we white people call "normal", perhaps ever. I'm reading Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be an Antiracist and highly recommend it. It's time to learn more, no matter how enlightened or allied we think we already are, and the shift in thinking about race that Kendi presents is crucial. Frankly, that's just the beginning of what we need to do.

So how does my art fit into this picture? I know I'm helped by a regular drawing practice. It centers me, and uses a different part of my brain and spirit; as a meditative practice it's good for me. Likewise, if sharing my drawings and paintings creates a bright spot in someone's day, or encourages someone else to keep a sketchbook, then that's good. For all these reasons it's worth keeping at it. Being an artist is part of my identity, but not all of it -- and maybe it needs to take a back seat for a while. I don't want to be represented exclusively right now by pictures of flowers and gardens, landscapes, or harmonious still lives, unless I have worked to imbue that still life or landscape with additional meaning. It's not who I am, and it's not where I'm at.

Hermit Diary 30: Spiritual Inheritance

This entry is cross-posted from the Daily Bread blog at Christ Church Cathedral, for which it was written.

 

Psalm 92

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,
    they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;
planted in the house of the Lord,
    they will flourish in the courts of our God.
They will still bear fruit in old age,
    they will stay fresh and green,
proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;
    he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him.”

 

Today, June 19, is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. Born in 1900, she would be an impossible 120 years old today, but actually she did live a very long life, to the age of 92, “still bearing fruit in old age.” If I have an “Anglican” forebear, who somehow gave me my faith and also a willingness to be involved with, and work for, the Church, it was my grandmother.

I grew up my grandparents’ big Victorian house in a sleepy town in rural central New York. They lived downstairs, and my parents and I lived upstairs, but it was essentially one home so far as I was concerned, extending outdoors onto the porches and into my grandmother’s gardens. We lived across from the Episcopal rectory, and the church was next to it, across a street, so in addition to being parishioners, we were neighbors and friends with the priests and their families, who were also in and out of our house all the time. Behind the white-clapboarded, New-England style church was an extensive, centuries-old cemetery where my mother taught me to read the inscriptions on the tombstones, before I ever started school.

My father came from a musical Methodist family; my paternal grandfather was a Methodist minister and my grandmother a devout, white-gloved, conservative minister’s wife who never touched alcohol or played cards but loved music and dramatic reading. My tenor-voiced, irrepressible father had been the wild black sheep of that family of four children, and though I inherited the musical gift, their rigid spirituality didn’t have much appeal.

My maternal grandparents, by contrast, were liberal, worldly, expansive people. I guess you could call them “pillars” of the church: staunch supporters and consistent attendees. My grandfather was a frequent member of the vestry, my grandmother was active in the Episcopal Church Women and the altar guild. I grew up singing in the choir and my family always went to church, but I dropped out of Sunday School after a year; I was constantly questioning what was being said and taught, and having a smart but agnostic mother probably didn’t help.

But somehow, my grandmother’s steady faith became an example. She was outspoken and opinionated; a feminist; a longtime teacher; an avid reader; skilled cook, gardener, and seamstress; and a matriarch who ruled the family from her armchair, knitting basket and New York Times Sunday paper at her side (she did the crossword each week in ink). But also tucked away next to that armchair was her 1928 Book of Common Prayer, and a copy of Forward Day by Day, which she followed and prayed from daily, though I never saw her doing it. Her faith was a private matter, and I don’t remember discussing it with her very much, but even as a little girl, I sensed that it was what guided and steadied her strong ship. I spent many years away from the church, but I never completely stopped believing. I always felt that something from my grandmother had taken hold of me and was stored away inside; when I came back, it was clear to me that it was not only her faith, but her broad, inclusive Anglicanism with its love of language, ritual, and music.

After my grandmother died, my mother approached me one day with something in her hand. “I thought maybe you should have this,” she said, handing me my grandmother’s well-worn prayer book. She was right; of the various things I inherited from her, that little book is the most precious. Inside the cover are three simple prayers written in my grandmother’s Palmer-method handwriting: two for preparation for worship, and one for after: “Grant O Lord that the lessons I have learned may take root in my heart, that I may remain faithful to the confession of my faith, and that I may put my faith to practice in my daily life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” And I just noticed today that she had left the frayed black ribbon for marking pages at Psalm 139, my own favorite: “O Lord, thou has searched me out and known me,” which contains perhaps the most beautiful expression of God’s constant presence in all of Scripture. In the most difficult moments of my own life, I’ve often thought of my grandmother, and gratefully felt her strength and steadying presence -- which is, of course, simply feeling God through her.

This pandemic has made us all more aware of age, and the aged among us. It has made older people feel more vulnerable and isolated, and, to some extent, expendable; it has brought the pain of separation from loved ones and the fear and reality of dying alone. Western society is particularly good at discarding rather than respecting its elders and seeing them as a source of strength and wisdom. Navigating life’s challenges from a spiritual perspective really does boil down to “forward day by day”, as trite as it sounds; those who have done it have a great deal to teach us.

I love the image in today’s psalm of the human being flourishing like a palm tree, or a cedar of Lebanon, still bearing fruit in old age and staying fresh and green. So, on the positive side, perhaps this crisis could cause us to consider the ways in which we segregate by age, and how we could do more to encourage spiritual mentorship and friendship, as well as youthful companionship, within our own congregation.

 

 

Hermit Diary 28: Some calm at the end of a wretched week

Deer under a palm tree, a watercolor and ink drawing of a tiled panel in Lisbon.

Such a difficult week this has been, full of sorrow, outrage, solidarity, anxiety for the future, and also some glimmers of hope that this might be a turning point.

I will not add any words, as I think this is a time for me, and for most white people, to listen to black voices, and to learn what we need to do (and not do) to be the best allies we can. What I can offer is a little bit of calmness through music, which is maybe the best and most continuous gift I've been able to give others throughout my life. Music has always given back to me, too, in multiples, helping me through the worst and best times.

Not being able to sing together has been one of the most difficult parts of isolation for me, and probably for all choral singers everywhere. Because there's so much danger about viral spreading through singing (though there have recently been some articles saying it may not be quite as bad as we initially thought), it's still going to be ages before congregational and choir singing returns to churches, and before my professional musician friends are back in concert halls. I'm seeing first-hand the financial and emotional toll this is taking on many of them. For congregations who are used to a lot of beautiful music, as most Anglicans are, the loss is keen too.

But where there's a will, there's a way. Our choir has produced its first two virtual choir pieces, and we've got two more in the works. These were presented during live-streamed Zoom services of Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal, and then placed on social media, YouTube, and the church's website, along with a growing library of organ music, music education resources, psalms and hymns, and recorded services. We're finding that the new situation is spawning some new creative responses, and also the surprising gift of being able to share what we do with a much wider, far-flung audience.

Recording your own part as a solo, based on a click track or recorded accompaniment, is totally different from the organic experience of sitting or standing next to your colleagues and making music together -- so much of what happens in live performance has to do with careful preparation combined with listening closely to each other to correct the pitch and watching the conductor for tiny shifts in tempo, dynamics, and feeling. This creates a collective emotional and physical reaction to the actual moment. It is intensely "real-time." In contrast, the way I do the recording is to stand in front of a tripod that holds my phone, which will record the video and audio of me singing, while playing the accompaniment on my computer and listening to it in headphones. Meanwhile I'm holding the score in my hands and yet trying to look at the camera as I would the director. You can see that most of us got better at presenting ourselves visually the second time around.

It's a very weird and self-conscious-making experience! But I've found that this process is showing me aspects of my voice and technique I didn't know, encouraging me to listen harder, practice, and try to improve in subtle and not-so subtle ways. For instance, I can really hear my American accent on certain vowels -- not really desirable! Once we've done several recordings and chosen the best, we each send off our video files, and our music director does the painstaking work of assembling and editing the tracks. The results have been startlingly good, considering how flawed some of us have felt our individual recordings have been. Even though our voices and images have been technically-reassembled, we sound remarkably like our own particular choir. Hearing and seeing these pieces of music, sung by people I care about deeply and haven't seen for months, has really moved me, and members of the congregation say the same. I hope maybe these motets will give you some peaceful moments at the end of this week.

The first, Palestrina's Sicut cervus, is a setting in Latin of the first verses of Psalm 42, "Like as the hart desireth the waterbrooks/so longeth my soul after thee, oh God."

 

The second piece is a setting of a well-loved hymn, O for a Closer Walk with God, by Charles Villiers Stanford (1852-1924). The original hymn was written by William Cowper in 1769 during the serious illness of an aunt he loved.

 

Hermit Diary 27: A Summer Already Ablaze

At Barack Obama's inauguration, Washington D.C., January 2009

 

The year was 1968. On April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Two months later, in June, Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. senator and former attorney general who had campaigned for civil rights his entire career, was also killed by an assassin. The Vietnam War was raging; the country deeply divided, angry, and hopeless. After Dr. King died, riots erupted in all the major cities, and continued. Like 2020, 1968 was also an election year. The Democratic convention, held in Chicago in August, was the scene of a massive clash between 10,000 anti-war demonstrators and 23,000 National Guardsmen, called in by Chicago Mayor Richard Daley. Later, the independently-headed "Walker Report," appointed to study and report on what had happened, said:

"...(there was) unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence on many occasions, particularly at night. That violence was made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat. These included peaceful demonstrators, onlookers, and large numbers of residents who were simply passing through, or happened to live in, the areas where confrontations were occurring."

“Individual policemen, and lots of them, committed violent acts far in excess of the requisite force for crowd dispersal or arrest. To read dispassionately the hundreds of statements describing at firsthand the events of Sunday and Monday nights is to become convinced of the presence of what can only be called a police riot.”

I was 16 then and already a committed activist; I remember it all very well. The summer of 1968 was when it all boiled over, but the violence continued right through 1970, when the Kent State Massacre -- in which four innocent students were shot and killed -- finally seemed to mark a turning point in the protests against the war. Those of us who were alive then cannot forget Richard Nixon's unpalatable policies, and how his rightwing, law-and-order rhetoric fueled these confrontations -- but Donald Trump is orders-of-magnitude worse.

In spite of all that has happened since, no period of time I've experienced has come close to matching the frustration, anger, tension, fear, suffering, and deep sadness of those years, until now. 2020 is going to go down in history too. And it's going to be a long, hot summer.

Fifty years, and it feels like white people have learned nothing. Nothing. When are we going to wake up and make not only the systemic changes that need to happen, but start to address the wrongs that have been done? Will there EVER be a Truth and Reconciliation process in the United States? I very much doubt it, not with governments like the present one, which encourage and promote hatred, seek to turn their own people against each other, and have empowered and emboldened right-wing white supremacists, fascists, and the most conservative elements within police, military, and border-control forces. But the roots of racism in America run so deep that not even a black president of impeccable character and eloquence could make significant inroads against it. Now, not only do we have police killing blacks on the streets, and a justice system stacked against them, we have black and ethnic minority people dying in hugely disproportionate numbers from the virus, while they also serve in a disproportionate number of low-paying and dangerous jobs in health care and the service sectors -- not to mention the countless other injustices to which they are subject.

Here in Canada, I've observed the Truth and Reconciliation process with the indigenous community. Although America has perpetrated even more injustices, including genocide, against its native people, this did not feel like "my" issue when I moved here; because of the time when I grew up, I was more concerned, more familiar, and more invested in the struggles for civil rights, women's rights, peace and nuclear disarmament, gender equality, and the rights of immigrants and religious and ethnic minorities -- all of which had been major issues in the United States during my lifetime.  But I have seen the painful steps toward truth-telling and reconciliation here, as well as in South Africa, and I believe that this is the ONLY way to begin to redress the wrongs that have been done, and to bring a society into greater understanding.

Yet in Canada, in spite of believing that we're better than our neighbors to the south, we have our share of racism and hatred, especially directed against Muslims and Jews. Just this week, in one of the worst attacks in recent memory, a synagogue here in Montreal was violently ransacked, its religious objects desecrated -- a Torah had been cut up and stuffed into a toilet -- the floors covered in red paint, and the walls with antisemitic graffiti.

Meanwhile, the poor, and people of color and of ethnic minorities are dying at higher rates of COVID-19, while they fill a greater number of poorly-paid service and health care jobs. The same Quebec government which recently threw out three years of immigrant applications just had the gall to start a new fast-track program for immigrants who are willing to come here and work in the deplorable care homes for the elderly, where the virus has spread like wildfire, resulting in 80% of the deaths in the province. The message is clear: we didn't want you before, but now we need you to take care of us, so we'll make you a deal.

We white people of conscience have no choice: we have to stand for justice and against racism in all of its forms, against violence, against oppression, and for equality for all people regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual preference. And you know what? It is not the job of black people, or Muslims, or Jewish people, Asians, Arabs, or any other minority group, to educate us about why their lives matter, and what needs to be done. It's our job, and we had damn well better get on with it.

Hermit Diary 20: The Martyrs' Call to Us

Cross-posted from Daily Bread, the blog of Christ Church Cathedral, Montreal

Today is set aside by the Anglican Church in remembrance of the Christian martyrs of the 20th (and 21^st) centuries. The book For All the Saints in our sacristy gives short biographies of just a few modern Christian martyrs: the Burmese martyrs of the 1940s; European Christian martyrs against Nazism; African Christian martyrs killed during independence movements; North and South American martyrs for racial and social justice. One of the suggested readings for today is an address given by Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador (pictured at left) shortly before he died in 1980. I’d like to quote and reflect upon Romero’s words because I think they have relevance for us today. He begins:

"I am going to speak to you simply as a pastor, as one who...has been learning the beautiful but harsh truth that the Christian faith does not cut us off from the world but immerses us in it, that the Church is not a fortress set apart from the city. The Church follows Jesus who lived, worked, battled and died in the midst of a city... It is in this sense that I should like to talk about the political dimension of the Christian faith..."

Whether we see the “Church-as-fortress” metaphorically or literally, the coronavirus crisis has forced us out of our cathedral building, and into a different type of relationship as a church community within this city where we live. On our Zoom screens is an array of faces into which we look, and which gaze back at us from our widely-separated homes. Rather than being one body in one place, we are being shown in a new way that we are diverse members of one body.

"Our Salvadoran world is no abstraction. It is a world made up mostly of men and women who are poor and oppressed...it is the poor who tell us what the city is, and what it means for the Church really to live in that world."

Montreal in 2020 is not El Salvador. Most of us would not say that “our world is mostly poor and oppressed” -- but the current health crisis is revealing significant inequalities even in the most developed and wealthiest societies, and between those societies and the much poorer parts of the world. So instead, perhaps we can speak about “the poor and marginalized.”

Some New York State senators recently wrote: “The novel coronavirus has been called a ‘great equalizer. While it is true that anyone can contract the virus and this crisis reaches all of us in some way, it is absolutely not true that the harm it causes is distributed equally."

In Europe and in North America, it is becoming clear that social disadvantage is a predictor of mortality. The reasons include poverty, low-paid jobs in high-risk sectors, less access to health care and supplemental insurance, greater dependence on public transportation, and other inequalities that result in poorer overall health, greater risk of infection and of more critical illness once infected. Some of these people at risk are also living in inter-generational, crowded home situations, where illness is more easily transmitted to the more vulnerable members, as opposed to the living situations of people with higher income, more space, and a wider range of options.

In the UK, and in American cities such as New York and Chicago, statistics already show that people from racial and ethnic minority groups are over-represented among the coronavirus deaths, by significant percentages. We do not yet have similar ethnic/racial statistics for Montreal, but we do know that while the early cases were greater in wealthier parts of the city where people were returning from travels, the virus is now spreading faster in lower-income areas. And the disastrous conditions in our long-term care facilities not only point to disparities in the care of the elderly vs. the regular population, and possibly to ageism in the allocation of funds and oversight, but also to the fact that the people employed to care for our elderly often come from disadvantaged populations themselves and are typically underpaid.

When asked about what has gone wrong in Canadian extended-care system, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said just yesterday that “one of the takeaways about the extended-care situation is that those who are caring for the elderly and vulnerable are, themselves, vulnerable -- often financially-vulnerable people being paid poor wages and living and working in situations that have made them vulnerable to infection.”

And it is not only in facilities for seniors that we are seeing these kinds of issues worldwide: the virus is showing the harsh reality of life in prisons, in homeless shelters or the street, in refugee camps and detention centers.

"...the Church has placed itself at the side of the poor and has undertaken their defense. The Church cannot do otherwise, for it remembers that Jesus had pity on the multitude. But by defending the poor it has entered into serious conflict with the powerful..."

Here in Canada, we are so fortunate to be part of a society with basic protections for all, and, unlike Oscar Romero, we do not have to battle unresponsive political systems that exist only to protect the wealthy and powerful. However, the coronavirus is shining a light on certain dark places where inequalities do exist, and where change needs to occur.

We tend to think of martyrs as people who have died for their faith, but really, they are people who lived for their faith, choosing that path willingly, and inspiring others to do likewise. Remarkable things can often come out of bad situations. On this day of remembrance, perhaps we can consider not only new ways to be a Church community committed to supporting one another, but in how we look outward. We already have a long history of helping the vulnerable and working for change through the cathedral’s Social Service Society, and more recently, the Social Justice and Environmental Action Group, and in our ongoing work and witness for sexual diversity, freedom, and rights. How good it would be if even more of us were inspired by this pandemic to advocate for the elderly, the imprisoned or detained, the homeless, the refugees, and the vulnerable and underpaid workers, and to proclaim all these missions more openly to our city and society.

Hermit Diary 19: A Spade

Poetry...why does it speak to some of us and not to others? A particular, or peculiar, wiring in the language center of the brain, perhaps, that gains satisfaction and pleasure from words being applied slantwise to ideas, or to forms that have concrete shapes but stand for other things?

Poetry has accompanied me my whole life, maybe because so much of it was read to me when I was young by my grandmother and aunts and mother, maybe also because I grew up with the language of the Book of Common Prayer in my head, plus innumerable lyrics and hymns and songs. Poetry and Music are sisters, and I've turned to them in all the difficult times and sleepless nights of my life. I read a lot of poetry and write very little; I accepted the fact long ago that I'm a prose writer with lyrical tendencies. Over the years I've become an experienced editor of poetry, which requires a different set of skills.

During this crisis I've been pulling one book at a time from my poetry shelves and delving into it over a period of days. Searching might be a better word -- for kindred spirits, and expressions of emotion and lived experience that feel resonant with my own. There aren't going to be literal parallels because this particular crisis is unprecedented, and that's not what I'm looking for. It's more a search for people who also walked in some sort of darkness but faced it squarely, and found meaning in it, or in spite of it.

That's different than looking for naive hope, or painting pretty pictures as a distraction. I'm grateful for all the beauty and hopefulness I see or am able to create, don't get me wrong. As a writer and thinker, I just don't seem to be able to avoid talking or writing or reading about the ignorance, cruelty, heartlessness, and sheer evil that are going on, especially in America; or the risks and sacrifices of the largely anonymous and often poorly paid people providing critical services; or the immense sadness that comes from this massive worldwide loss of life -- life in every sense of the word.

I wish it were different, but I'm not particularly optimistic about the future; we humans don't learn very well from history or our own mistakes, and most of us are primarily selfish and focused on the short-term. Nevertheless, love is always present, and where there's love, we can also find light and hope. Naive liberalism will get us nowhere; the forces arrayed against it are too great, and too entrenched in most of our societies and governments. I think it's actually more hopeful to avoid wishful thinking and instead see things as they actually are -- and find ourselves and our way forward centered within that reality. As Thomas Merton wrote, we need to cultivate the capacity to hold the darkness and the light together, simultaneously, because that is the way the world actually is. Certain poetry does that, and music, and some people also do it -- usually very quietly -- in the way they live their lives.

During these weeks of isolation I started out reading some Renaissance poetry -- Shakespeare, John Donne. Then fast-forwarded to recent decades, especially Seamus Heaney, Tomas Transtromer, and Derek Walcott. Lately I've been reading from my collection of post-war Polish poets: Zbigniew Herbert, Tadeusz Rosewicz, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, Adam Zagajewski. After this maybe I'll turn back to the Russians: Akhmatova and Mandelstam and their compatriots who wrote under Stalin, and their heirs, like Joseph Brodsky. Or go all the way back to the Greeks. 

Here's Czeslaw Milosz, writing after the death of his fellow poet Tadeusz Rosewicz. It's not the most cheerful elegy. I apologize. But it gets at what I'm trying to say.

Rosewicz

he took it seriously
a serious mortal
he does not dance

he lights two thick candles
sits before a mirror
amused by his face

he does not indulge
in the frivolity of form
in the comic abundance
of human beliefs

he wants to know for sure

he digs in black soil
is both the spade and the mole
cut in two by the spade

Hermit Diary 16: Easter Day

The sun is shining here in Montreal, even though it's chilly, and we just finished attending a virtual Easter service at the cathedral, where the clergy and music director have worked hard all week to keep some continuity with our Anglican traditions for Holy Week while embracing the new technology. Oddly enough, I think we've sometimes had a greater sense of community than usual, being able to see a grid of live faces (rather than the backs of heads in the pews) on our Zoom screens and enjoy a virtual "coffee hour" after the services when we can talk in small groups or as a whole.

Yesterday I baked Greek Easter bread, with orange peel, chocolate, and almonds, and it filled the apartment with fragrance. I'm feeling a renewed sense of energy and purpose, so perhaps I'll be able to do some more drawing and writing, but I'm also feeling grateful for the opening up of time to simply be, and think, at a much slower pace than before. The anxiety and uncertainty I felt during the first week or two has been replaced by an odd new normalcy; we know what we can do and what we can't, we know how to get some exercise, how to deal with our food, how to communicate with friends and family, what the days feel like. We're still adjusting to living full time with our cat, and to having her walk on us during the night, or wake with her little face an inch away from our own: that is mostly a delight.

Sadly, the mother of one of our dear friends died yesterday from the virus. She was living in an extended care facility, and in Montreal, as in many other places, this is where the most cases and the greatest number of deaths have occurred. Over the weeks to come, we will all know more people who succumb. At the same time, spring is arriving in the northeast, with its promise of hope and renewal. What a strange time we are living! I find when I can step back from my own concerns and enter the mystery, challenge, and opportunity of it, something opens inside me, and both anxiety and impatience depart. We are living in a rare in-between space, and we are being called, I think, to pay close attention.

I send love to all of you who read here.

 

Hermit Diary 15: Masking and Unmasking - Holy Week 2020

I’ve been making masks this week. The sewing machine and ironing board took over the living room and dining table, along with bags of fabric, spools of wire, and thread, and elastic. Sewing is almost always a pleasure for me, and I tried to make it so this time, but I’ve never sewn something for such an ominous purpose. Underneath the cheerful bright fabrics lurked the searing images we’ve received this week from New York City, the UK, Europe, Africa, India. Images of human beings trying to protect themselves and others, often with the flimsiest of barriers between the invisible but potentially deadly: my breath, your breath.

This is also Holy Week, the solemn culmination of the reflective, penitential season of Lent. A season that got blindsided by a worldwide pandemic that seems nothing if not Biblical, forcing the religious and non-religious alike to give at least a passing thought to the questions, “What is going on? Why now? Why us?” The past two months have presented all of us with images and descriptions of suffering we will never, ever forget, if in fact we are fortunate enough to survive. One iconic image of this pandemic will certainly be the mask, and, if we are willing to look closer, at the eyes above it, filled with fear, exhaustion, and too much knowing.

Lent, and the journey of Holy Week in particular, is a time for Christians to face ourselves with as much honesty as possible. A time to unmask, to look within, to admit our shortcomings, to see how we can perhaps do better, and summon the courage and determination to actually do so. My own response to Holy Week always varies, and I can never quite predict how it's going to hit me. Sometimes I fight against it, feeling too weak or too belabored to be immersed in such a depressing narrative. I'm often angry at the way the story is interpreted, rejecting the evangelical notion of being "saved by the cross" and the atonement theology the Church has laid on this very human, very political story of an innocent man unjustly accused, condemned, and cruelly executed by the authoritarian powers who were threatened by his message of justice, love, inclusivity, and freedom. Other years I am swept away by it, unbothered by the parts I cannot accept, caught up in the parallels between then and now, deeply moved by the liturgies and music, willing to face the questions about human responsibility that I believe it asks of me. Occasionally, if I am able to stay within that meditative and receptive space, new insight comes. The mask with which I protect myself, the mask I always wear and present to the world, falls away, and a new face is revealed: vulnerable, expectant, grateful, willing and ready for change.

We’re all on such a journey right now, whether we are religious or not. Before we get to spring, before we get to resurrection and renewal, we are on an extremely slow, collective journey where the fundamental fact is death, and we are being forced to stop and look at it. Death stares back at us, and we tremble because we know that -- whether tomorrow or years from now -- it eventually comes for us all. But can we also fail to be humbled by the eyes that look out at us from the masked faces of the health care workers, the delivery people, the transit drivers, the janitors, the grocery clerks who continue to risk their lives on our behalf, while we shelter in our homes -- or to be humbled by the unprotected faces of the poor?

Most of us are unmasked by this experience: our leaders cannot hide their priorities and true natures -- some for better and some for worse -- and neither can we. But the question asked by Holy Week, as well as by the present situation, is not what we will do with death, when it comes, but what we will do with our lives in the midst of the uncertainty, injustice, and selfishness that are actually always with us: today, tomorrow, and every day we are here on earth. For a brief span, our masks are off, everywhere. What will we choose?

 

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 13. My Life Right Now

Desk. Pen and ink on paper, 9" x 6".

Hermit Diary, Montreal. 12. The Spice Cabinet

I don't know if "corona-guilt" has become a catch-phrase yet, but there's plenty of it going around. Faced with these vast expanses of time and solitude, we're supposed to write novels and compose music, establish yoga and meditation practices, communicate effectively with everyone we ever knew, become bread-bakers and sweater-knitters and Great-Book-readers, and finally tackle all the leaky faucets and crammed closets -- not to mention the interior organization of our computers -- that we've put off forever with the happy excuse, "Oh, I'm too busy." Every day isn't Groundhog Day, but instead it's an endless succession of January 1sts, with lists of New Year's resolutions staring us in the face, day after day. Worse yet, with all this communicating, and everyone asking each other, "what did you do today?" it's hard to hide the fact that most of us have been so blindsided by this thing that we've gotten very little done, and suspect that we may continue that way for a long time.

So far, I'm no different: other than these blog posts, I've barely drawn or sewn or done any of the things that first came to mind as possibilities. I've spent an inordinate amount of time trying to get our food delivery together; that's been a priority and it hasn't been easy. But the other preoccupation has been our living space. J. and I live in a very small apartment, and after closing our studio and bringing the cat and a bunch of work-supplies home with us, we've had no choice but to try to better organize our space. There are still boxes and bags and storage bins stacked on the floor and in the hallway, awaiting further resolution, but we've managed to do quite a lot. We installed a new kitchen light, and cleaned the stove and fridge and kitchen walls; every inch of valuable closet space has been reorganized and a lot of things thrown away or recycled. Part of this is practical, but another part is psychological and relational. Things we barely noticed have suddenly become sources of annoyance as we both use our shared spaces more -- shall we say -- intensively. Rather than getting worked up or defensive, as we once might have, the very act of cleaning, organizing, and fixing has been a source of considerable psychological comfort -- I'm doing something for myself, but also for him, and vice-versa.

Yesterday, after J. announced he couldn't find anything in it, I tackled the spice cabinet. The small space you see in the picture above was overflowing with bottles and boxes, tins and packets; I don't think I'd given it a real overhaul since we moved to Montreal more than a decade ago. I knew what was in there, but nobody else could have, since nothing was labeled. In another cabinet, below, were three plastic boxes filled with whatever wouldn't fit into the designated cabinet itself: one labeled "seeds", one for "spices," loosely defined, and one for "leafy herbs" -- but they had all become mixed up, and filled with small plastic bags from Montreal's spice stores, or ziplocs full of dried herbs from my window boxes and pots, plus little clear plastic containers in various shapes, as well as round and square tins, some full, some nearly empty. And besides all this, there was a large beige sac with bay leaves and oregano bought in an Athens market; tzatziki mix and cumin seeds from Catania; and a red plastic mercado sac full of various ground chilis from Mexico.

The task of organizing all of this didn't really take that long, just a few hours. I emptied all the cabinets and boxes; threw away everything old, duplicated, or unidentifiable; washed out the good containers, consolidated and refilled them; made labels. It was a small, manageable task, with an end in sight, and the only disaster was when I spilled a broken packet of Persian saffron onto the counter, and had to carefully gather up every tiny, dark gold stamen before doing anything else.

Cleaning is what I do when everything else feels out of control. My parents used to ride on me unmercifully for my reluctance to clean my desk, my room, my dresser drawers -- I always had something more compelling to do, and it just didn't feel important; besides, *I* knew where everything was. Oddly, once I had my own spaces and shared them with a partner, I got neater -- though there have always been neglected areas. But when unhappiness or chaos or uncertainty seep into my world, I've noticed that I instinctively look for things to do that feel ordered, methodical, and incremental: making a patchwork quilt, knitting stitch after stitch, practicing music or a language, following a complicated recipe, taking the food out of the fridge and scrubbing the shelves. There's a quiet satisfaction today in opening the door to the spice cabinet and seeing the neatly-labeled jars and tins; maybe today I'll do another drawer of my desk. It's all easier than staring at a blank screen, wondering what I can possibly write to make sense of this thing that's happening to all of us -- but, ironically, that time spent doing mundane tasks is when the ideas come, and I've learned to trust that, too.