the cassandra pages

Working in Monochrome

When the view from your studio window is this monochromatic, sometimes it's best to take advantage of nature's prompt to interpret things in black-and-white. That's what I was thinking when I bought a new Fabriano sketchbook last week with the intention of using it for charcoal drawings. Maybe some dry pastel and oil pastel, too, but mostly black-and-white work, in a large format. I've been drawing in it almost every day since then. 

In this fast sketch of the little park below us and the parking lots beyond, I was just trying to see the various geometric shapes and make a lively drawing. I'll be doing more like this as I figure out how to use the essentially boring view in a more graphic composition. What really interests me are the tire tracks in the snow. Along with the little trees and bushes, these are the only organic, irregular shapes in the scene and they bring something otherwise static to life.

This one, of the neighborhood beyond the parking lots, also appeared in the previous post, and is the view I was drawn to initially and have depicted a number of times, mostly in watercolor.

View of the Jewish cemetery in snow. Charcoal on paper, 11"x14".

I've been wanting to draw the Jewish cemetery, over on the left, but hadn't felt ready until I saw it covered with snow, on a foggy day, with the ethereal trees behind it. Charcoal lends itself perfectly to a scene like this.

We went out into the countryside to make a quick trip across the border two days ago. This is a snow-covered field near St-Jacques-le-Mineur, Quebec, and was completed very quickly. The effect of trees in the distance is just vine charcoal smudged with my finger, with some harder, dark Conte crayon applied over it. The birches are picked out with a fine-pointed white eraser.

 

The very first drawing in the sketchbook was of this vertebra and two rocks. It also combines soft vine charcoal for the midtones with some harder compressed charcoal and Conté crayon, and a few details in charcoal pencil. White erasers in different sizes and shapes are indispensable tools for charcoal work - they allow you to erase large areas, for sure, but also to go backwards and forwards, working with both the charcoal and the eraser. The main use is to lighten areas or pick out highlights and create texture. And you must work on good paper that has some "tooth" to catch all the little particles of charcoal, but will stand up to scrubbing and both the buildup of dark areas and the erasure of others. I usually work on Canson or Fabriano sheets of pastel/charcoal paper, but I really wanted a sketchbook right now because storing a lot of small drawings is a problem for me in the new space, and I knew this format would encourage me to do daily drawings. The sketchbook I'm using is a 100-sheet wire-bound book in the Fabriano 1264 line, in the series labeled "Sketch," and except for wishing the paper were just a little heavier, I'm quite happy with it.

And don't worry, color hasn't disappeared!

New Year in a New Neighborhood

New snow. Watercolor with pencil, in Stillman&Birn sketchbook, 9" x 6", 12/29/22

The Christmas storm blanketed Montreal with a thick, wet coat of snow, and then freezing rain fell on top of it. On the 27th, we went out into the countryside to a friend's house, where there had been no rain, and even more snow -- several feet of it -- lay pristinely on the ground and the rooftops. Not so here in the city, where by New Year's nearly all the snow was gone.

Until last night that is, when it snowed again. The weather has been unremittingly grey, but I've enjoyed the changing moods outside my studio window. There's really nothing very exciting to draw, on the surface of things -- a little park, a car dealer close by, an empty parking lot, a street heading off into the suburban rooftops of TMR (Town of Mont-Royal) with lots of trees, and beyond them, the distant buildings of northern Montreal past rue Sauve. On clear days we can see the foothills of the Laurentians. None of this is worth a painting on its own strength, but what interests me is how the weather affects the scene, how every day is actually as different as the moods of the sea, how the changing light and atmospheric conditions alter the emotional temperature of what I see -- and feel. Trying to capture some of that is a worthy sketchbook challenge.

The painting at the top was a difficult one and I struggled to pull something out of it after getting very discouraged with the page about halfway through, and not wanting to overwork the watercolor. Adding some sketchy, loose details in dark brown helped a lot, as did increasing the contrast overall by deepening the shadows.

Melting snow. Charcoal in Fabriano sketchbook, 14" x 11". 

I bought a new, large sketchbook this week specifically for charcoal drawings and pastel sketches, such as the image above.

While I often drew or painted the park across the street from our old place, and documented the seasons, it never seemed to change so much day-to-day and therefore wasn't as interesting to me, even though it was vastly more "beautiful." Probably if I'd had a higher vantage point it would have been different, because here the sky takes up more than half of my view, and the condition of that sky says everything about how the land and city look below it.

Snowy day. Direct watercolor in sketchbook, 9" x 6".

Right now it's starting to snow again, so the scene is even whiter and more ethereal than in this watercolor sketch, completed only an hour ago. Color fades to the barest hint of itself; the indistinct horizon blurs even more and comes closer; trees and rooftops lose their sharp edges. 

Today's view feels chalky, and I'm looking forward to trying to capture it in pastels, but in a little while the sun will have gone down, so that may have to wait until tomorrow -- when who knows what the sun and sky will be doing? 

 

Of Studios, New and Old

When we finally finished cleaning out our old studio in the Usine Cadbury at the end of October, we sat down for a little while in the open space and remembered the day we moved into it -- the only other time it has been empty. That was fourteen years ago. As soon as our moving truck arrived from Vermont, the space filled up quickly with professional camera and graphics equipment, computers, tools, paper cutters and framing tools, file cabinets and storage cabinets, art supplies, a book press and bookbinding equipment, bookshelves and all the books we couldn't fit into our small apartment, my piano, a refrigerator and kitchen equipment, a couch, chairs, a coffee table, plants. In many ways it was our second home for the past decade and a half; we went there almost every day soon after rising, made our breakfast and lunch, and spent most of our daylight hours working there, only going home  -- usually on foot or by bicycle -- at 5:00 or 6:00 pm. The pandemic interrupted that routine, but by 2019 we were also retiring from our design and communications work, although I was continuing to publish books. The building changed hands, and the rent rose every year: it was clear our time there was coming to an end.

We had worked hard on selling and clearing things out last summer, but realized we simply couldn't finish by the time our lease would be up in the fall, so we signed one more lease, determined to be out this year. By the time we had finished this fall, we were too exhausted and sick of the process to feel very nostalgic. We took some pictures, including this final portrait of me by Jonathan to mark the occasion. Then we locked the door for the last time, and returned our keys.

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My new studio is very small, but efficient, and the north light in it is beautiful. I was really worried about fitting myself into it, and got rid of everything I could in order to make it work; that meant some steely decisions about equipment and studio furniture I've had all my working life, as well as weeding out a great many books, supplies I either didn't need or could easily replace, and even a good deal of artwork and project samples. I photographed things, and let the objects go. It wasn't easy, especially at first: I felt like I was giving up my identity and admitting to being much older than I feel. But as we found homes for our things with younger people who would use them, we both felt better.

The new space holds my writing desk (you can see it reflected in the mirror of the storage cabinet) as well as an L-shaped worktable. The left side of the table has a motor that raises or lowers the tabletop for standing or sitting. All the art, sewing, and textile supplies fit into two IKEA Pax cabinets, and my paper and archive of artwork are stored elsewhere in the apartment; there are boxes of cloth and yarn, archives of professional work, and some canvases and frames in our remote storage unit.

Thingvellir, Iceland. Charcoal on prepared Rising Line Stonehenge paper.

It seemed important to me to put some work up on the walls right away, so I did, and after doing a number of cloud and cityscape studies from the window, I decided to try to make something large just to prove to myself that I could still do that in this space. I want to complete the Iceland series of charcoal drawings that I began at the end of 2011; this large diptych, which was just roughed-out when I stopped working on the series, is 60" x 22". I worked on the two halves separately on the tabletop, and then together on the wall. Later, Jonathan made this portrait, again to mark the occasion of what we hope is a new beginning, and a new chapter in our lives.

 

Present Moments: Our Own, and Others'

Young woman on the metro, watercolor in sketchbook, 6" x 9".

Happy Thanksgiving. We celebrated last weekend with my sister-in-law and her husband, and since we're in Canada, it's an ordinary day today for most people. However I'll probably never feel that way - Thanksgiving was such an important holiday for my family, and a time when I almost always traveled home to be with them. When possible, we've also tried to celebrate it with friends; I love the feasting and gathering aspect of the day but most of all its meaning, as a time to be grateful.

Gratitude isn't so easy these days when it often feels like the whole world is falling apart at the seams. I think we all hoped that as the pandemic became more manageable and understandable, the world would somehow "come round right" but the exact opposite has happened. My coping practice, not just when it all becomes overwhelming, is to try to stay in the present moment, using all my senses to be mindful of what is going on, and all that is good in my life right now. The attention begins with the breath and moves out into the immediate environment, and I often recall the words of a Zen teacher: "When we manage to focus on the present moment, we usually find out that it is all right." Obviously, nobody can stay there for very long, but even a few minutes of mindful attention bring me back to my center and greater peacefulness, and then I'm more able to cope with whatever needs to be done. And, God knows, I have so much to be grateful for.

Robbie, a regular commenter on this blog, suggested that a little less seriousness and a bit more entertainment here might be something to consider. I don't know that this blog will ever fall into the category of "entertainment" but I agree with him that a lighter tone or perhaps more anecdotes might be good for me too. Like my father, Robbie makes a point of engaging the people he encounters and seeing if he can make them smile. What a lot of readers probably don't know about me is that I do this too, and always have; I found the taciturn and private nature of New Englanders a big challenge! Here, speaking a minority language can also create difficulties in making connections, as I found when I lived in a French-speaking area, but there are so many other ways to do it -- as children, pets, music, knitting, and urban sketching make clear! And frankly, it hasn't been a big problem for me. Montreal is a place where bilingualism and tri-lingualism are not only common but part of the city's fabric that we appreciate, and learning to communicate and make friends across those potential divides has been one of the things I've enjoyed most about living here. You have to plunge in, make mistakes, be human and friendly, and not get discouraged if some people don't return your friendliness; others will.

The neighborhood where I used to live, Plateau Mont-Royal, was predominantly French, rather entitled, and somewhat closed-in on itself. Our new neighborhood, Cote-des-Neiges/Notre-Dame-de-Grace, is the most ethnically- and linguistically-mixed in the city, with some 48 languages spoken regularly in homes. In the elevators of our 12-story modern condo building, we hear neighbors speaking French, English, Chinese, Spanish, Yiddish, Russian, Italian, Arabic, Filipino, various Indo-Iranian languages, and many others. English, rather than French, is the most common language people use to say good morning and wish each other a good day. There is a huge Asian grocery market across the street, a Romanian charcuterie and bakery, and an eastern European/Russian/Ukrainian market around the corner; nearby on Victoria Avenue is a big kosher bakery, and that street is lined with Indian, Vietnamese, and Jewish restaurants and shops -- to name just a few - while in other directions the concentration shifts to African and Caribbean, Iranian and Turkish, Portuguese, Greek and Middle Eastern, Mexican and Latin American. Not only is this mixture invigorating for all the senses, it encourages me to learn some words in more languages and try to connect with the Chinese butcher, the Ukrainian woman behind the prepared-food-counter, the Romanian couple who run the charcuterie, the Israeli pharmacist, the Lebanese dry-cleaner, the Muslim car mechanic, the Filipino cleaning woman whose schedule is the same as mine for the pool locker room, the Greek fishmonger. But even more than that, living this way is a daily reminder that the people of the world actually can co-exist, and help each other to thrive.

We Montrealers do pretty well with that, but the situation is far from perfect. Outside the city itself, Quebec is much less diverse. The conservative provincial government has passed new laws ostensibly to strengthen and protect the French language -- which I agree should be protected -- but they are written in a way that discriminates against minorities. And hate crimes, while rare, do occur. Last night, in fact, there was a hit-and-run incident in a nearby neighborhood, captured on a closed-circuit camera, where a car accelerated toward a Hasidic woman pushing a baby carriage across the street, struck the carriage and dragged it for some distance before speeding away. The baby inside was miraculously unhurt. People are shocked and upset that this happened and a search is on to identify the car and its driver.

Of course, I'm coming to all of this from a position of privilege, both through my whiteness and my economic security. But because of being in a long-term, ethnically-mixed marriage, I'm sensitive to the lack of awareness, micro-aggressions and constant pressure to hold one's tongue that come from living in primarily white, privileged, homogeneous North American communities, and the self-protectiveness, frustration, depression, and anger that can result. It's very hard to change anything when people stay only in their own comfort zone -- which is, itself, a privilege -- and do whatever they can to protect that. I've been in the minority a lot, and it changes everything about your view: my empathy has come to lie with those who are considered "other".

In the end, breaking barriers comes down to familiarity, being human with each other, and finding our common ground. Yesterday I had to go into the center of Cote-des-Neiges for a blood test at the local CLSC. The Centre de prélèvement (testing/sampling) is on the third floor of a nondescript building; in the elevator with me were a staff woman with a cart of plastic containers filled with disposed syringes; an elderly Eastern European woman in a headscarf and heavy coat who could barely walk, supported by her daughter; and two young friends, one of whom stopped and leaned her head, eyes shut, against the wall after she got out, before entering the testing area. Oh dear, I thought, she's so afraid of something, maybe needles. If she hadn't had a companion, I would have spoken to her and tried to help.

The testing center is staffed by people who are just as diverse as what I've been describing, and they switch seamlessly between French and English; the receptionist and I spoke both languages during our exchange and I don't think either of us really thought about which one we were using. I had the same nurse as the last time I was there, and she gestured to me to sit in the comfortable chair near her work area. We spoke about the weather and how soon it was getting dark in the afternoons, as she noted the instructions and got out the proper vials. "Are you OK with blood tests?" she asked, as she prepared to tie the rubber band above my elbow. "I love them," I said, smiling. She said, "You're my first!!" and we both started laughing. "I won't faint, if that's what you mean," I added. "OK," she said, "One-two-three..." It didn't hurt much, and was over very soon. "You're good," I said, "that was pretty easy." "Thanks," she replied, fastening the gauze with some adhesive tape and smiling at me as she held it for a few moments. I got up, put on my coat, and wished her a good day, hoping that the woman from the elevator had survived her own ordeal and that someone had been kind to her, too.

On the way home, on the metro, I couldn't help noticing the young woman across from me, lost in her music. We are all living our own present moments, I thought, but in this urban environment, there are so many times when those moments intersect: opportunities to be interested in each other, and grow in sensitivity to the multiplicity of ways in which we are human.

The End of Autumn

I wrote a whole post earlier this week, and then Typepad went down due to a DDoS attack, and lost it. Now the platform is up again, but it's impossible to post any images because Typepad is having difficulty migrating to a new server.

The best news is that we finished the studio move on October 30 - the space is swept and empty, and we returned the keys. It's hard to believe that we're actually done. It was a good space for us for many, many years and I'm grateful for that.

Meanwhile, the leaves are coming off the trees and winter definitely approaches, even though we haven't had a major frost yet. We've usually had freezing weather by Halloween, but not this year -- in fact, it's supposed to be 68 degrees this weekend.

I began a new sketchbook in October, and so far it seems to be much more experimental than the previous one, perhaps as a result of the utter upheaval in my artistic life due to the studio move, that has made continuity next to impossible and perhaps not even desirable. I've been working in gouache and acrylic on paper, in addition to watercolor, and that feels good. But I hope to get back to some larger charcoal drawings and some paintings this winter. The new studio is quite small but efficient, and I think I'll be able to manage by working on one thing at a time rather than spreading out a bunch of stuff and leaving it there, just because of a surfeit of space.

Also, Instagram is troubling me these days. I spend too much time scrolling through my feed. I'm not sure if stepping away for a while is the right move, or sharply decreasing my time there, or simply cutting down the number of people I follow, but I do need to make some changes.

Let's hope the blog issues get resolved soon, but in the meantime, I'll try to write here a bit more often. I hope you are gracefully navigating the change of seasons where you live, if in fact you have a change -- it's never entirely easy. Always happy to hear from you in the comments, and with a bit more time now, I will try to reply!

 

 

 

 

 

Artists, Moving On

The deadline is October 31 at midnight; that's when our studio lease is up.

We're almost done. After a month of steady work, the furniture and equipment are gone, the files emptied, the tools sorted, the negatives and prints and artwork moved. Two days ago I sprayed my large charcoal drawings with fixative and took them off the walls - those were the last piece of our work remaining. The recycling/junk guys came yesterday and took away all the leftover books and a large wooden shelving unit. We have a small load remaining to bring home, another to take to storage (it is a small storage locker!), and another group of things, mostly tools, are going to the lake, but we can begin to imagine ourselves sweeping and mopping the floor, and turning the key in the lock for the last time.

What a saga. This move has been so much harder than downsizing and moving our household. There was simply a greater accumulation of things that we hadn't dealt with, and had to go through in detail, separating them into "keep", "sell", "give away", "recycle" and "throw away" - and then those categories ended up with finer subsections --for instance, things that we could take ourselves to the EcoCentre, like metal recycling, or hazardous waste, or the thrift store, or other things that were too bulky or impossible to dispose of -- like the many books that our bookseller friend didn't want, and friends and family didn't want, and even the thrift places and used bookstores didn't want.

The real issue, of course, wasn't just the arduous, lengthy, physically-demanding process, which simply had to be gone through, but the emotional aspects of sifting through forty years of our working lives and personal history, and preparing ourselves for the next chapter, which will not include a large space for whatever projects we decide to embark upon. For years I'd occasionally suggest that we sort through the boxes and accumulated stuff that we didn't seem to be using, but when you have plenty of space, there is such a dis-incentive to actually do that -- and we didn't. But as the rent rose higher and higher, the day of reckoning approached. We did a lot of weeding last summer, but signed one more lease, knowing that it would probably be the last one, but with no concrete plan for what was next except that we wanted to bring living and work under one roof again. In March, when we found a new place to live, that set the inevitable process in motion -- and the studio closing was forced upon us. When my father became dependent on our care, and then died, the available time for the moving process was contracted and the pressure became much greater.

It's been enlightening to see what we actually did keep over the years, and why, and what has changed now to allow us to let much of that go. I think we've learned a lot about ourselves and each other in this process, and I'm more inclined to be gentle as I look back at the people we were, rather than judging ourselves too harshly. When we started out together, as partners in marriage and a fledgling business, we had nothing, and were determined to be self-sufficient -- so of course we gradually acquired tools and supplies for every conceivable task. We bought a house that needed a great deal of work, and we did almost all of it all ourselves, from the heating in the cellar to raking the roof in the winter to prevent ice dams; my husband sanded and painted every clapboard; I grew a lot of our food, made curtains and clothing, papered and painted and sanded; he took care of the car and built furniture for us in his small woodshop; he learned how to do plumbing and electricity and tiling. We bought and mastered each new generation of computer equipment to keep our design and publishing business going without needing employees or technical assistance. This was at first a necessity, but became our way of life, and during those energetic years, we enjoyed it and took pride in it.

When we moved from a small, relatively rural Vermont village to Montreal, we really had no idea of what we were getting into, and what we might need or not - so we brought most of those tools and equipment with us. And we kept far too much in the way of outmoded tools and supplies. Our big error was not dealing with all of that during the intervening years and having to do it all at once -- but now we've done it, and we've gone through the paralyzing uncertainties about what to do, the decisions, the leave-takings, the questions about identity and age, and the sorting and packing and letting-go -- and we've survived. When October 31 comes, we will feel lighter, happier, and more free.

What I find most sobering is the plight of artists and craftspeople who still desperately need those large studio spaces, yet are being pushed out of one once-affordable but now-gentrified neighborhood after another. During the moving process, we've shared the freight elevator, loading dock and dumpster with many other tenants of this large former factory building, who can no longer afford the rent charged by the new landlords who are upgrading and changing the building into a place for small businesses, high-tech firms, and offices -- all of which can afford considerably higher rents. It is a business decision for the owners, and they have a right to do that; the building is much more attractive than when we moved in more than fifteen years ago. But as I've talked to others who are leaving, their anxiety and stress are palpable, and there are few good options for them in this city. And while a society without art is unbearable, and the governments everywhere tout their artists as intrinsic to the society's identity, very few actually give the necessary support. Relentless capitalism always wins.

Somehow, the arts and artists survive, but I ache for the people whose work and psychological health will suffer as a result of being forced into smaller, insufficient spaces. What do we care about and value, as human societies? Choosing art (and here I mean all the arts) as a way of life almost always means years of low income and precarity, but artists are not considered in the same breath as "the poor" - in fact, many people see them as somehow privileged, and governments tout them as shining examples of each culture. Except in rare circumstances, artists are not protected, and very few rise to acclaim or monetary success -- but just look at the people who use the work of artists, and their associations with them, to make themselves feel important and elite. Look at the system of grants and exhibitions and art sales, and who really profits from it -- a largely-closed system that has only been somewhat eroded by the freedom of the internet and artists taking control of their own distribution, marketing, and sales. When you look closely at the system, you see its unfairness and hypocrisy -- but the purity at the heart of art always remains, and can't be taken away. This is why, in spite of everything, it survives.

Clouds

transparent watercolor in sketchbook; stormy sky just before sunset

I've never lived up in the sky before, but it feels like I do now. We have windows on two sides of our new apartment, facing north and west, and they look out on the nearly-flat northern part of the city and its suburbs, the airport to the west, and the foothills of the Laurentians in the far distance. That's the horizontal picture. But vertically, more than half of what we see outside our windows is sky.

2B pencil

One of the best features of living in a northern temperate zone (in my opinion!) is that the weather changes all the time. I've always lived in the northeast, so I thought I was used to the pattern, not only of the seasons, but the day-to-day weather, what the clouds mean, how the air feels, the visual and tactile sense of whether it's going to get colder or warmer, drier or more humid, whether precipitation is coming or not. But I realize I had no idea of just how much change there was in the sky, the clouds, the sunrises and sunsets, and the rapidity of change during a few minutes, let alone a whole day. It's completely fascinating.

 

medium-point fountain pen

fine-point fountain pen; fleeting early morning clouds

So I've been drawing the clouds, or starting to. I'm finding that they present particular challenges if one is trying to capture the essence of a certain sky, partly because of the constant movement and morphing of their shape and form, and partly because it's not easy to draw something that is white, on white paper: unless you indicate the sky itself in some way, all you can do is draw the sunlit edges of the clouds, the shadow sides, and their basic forms, and suggest their movement through the type of strokes you use.

HB and 2H pencil

Suggesting a summer sky isn't difficult, but studying and drawing a particular cloud or cloud formation -- getting at its identity and essence -- seems to be quite a bit more challenging. All cumulus clouds are not alike! An early-morning mackerel sky, or an ethereal formation of mare's tails, give way in minutes to other forms. Likewise, painting a sky in oil or pastel or acrylic is much easier than drawing: like a photograph, you're freezing it in time, maybe even with photos for reference, and you've got the whole range of colors at your disposal.

white charcoal pencil on toned paper

Watercolor also represents a distinct challenge. Doing a realistic painting is more similar to what I just described about painting in other media, but doing a fast sketch is really tricky, and I feel like I'm just beginning to get my feet wet. These are all early experiments from my sketchbook, between July 3 and July 29, 2022.

transparent watercolor

My final comment on this post, after a month of observation, is that we can actually see how the weather is becoming much more extreme and violent. It's been really windy, not just up high, but on the ground as well, and the pace of mostly west-to-east movement of the clouds is fast. Ominous, huge, dark grey clouds appear, usually in the west, with storms developing rapidly, and we can see them in the distance; sheets of rain falling on distant parts of the city or landscape. When thunderstorms are actually upon us, the rain lashes the windows with real force. Last Saturday there was a classic anvil cloud in the northwest that was truly apocalyptic in appearance; I'd never seen a cloud like that. That evening a home in that area was hit by lightening -- the neighbors saw an actual fireball fall from the sky and hit the roof. Another afternoon, I watched a dark funnel starting to form below a large thunderhead in the far distance and called my husband to come and look; as we watched over maybe ten minutes, it was slowly absorbed back up into the cloud, and never stretched down to the land - but it was the first time I'd ever seen that, too. Tornadoes are not a usual occurrence in Quebec, in spite of the flatness of the St. Lawrence valley, but a tornado did touch down that same evening about a hundred kilometers northwest of Montreal. 

Drawing and painting the beauty of skyscapes is one thing, but I didn't expect to have a ringside seat for extreme weather. We are not suffering from the same heat levels as Europe or India or the American southwest, but our weather is definitely changing. How can anyone deny the absolute necessity of action?

transparent watercolor with touches of gouache for the city lights

What Lasts, What Sustains

A rainy evening in the clouds, the first sustained weather like this we’ve had since moving here. I like the different feeling in the apartment: quiet and closed-in, with the nearby all we can see and therefore much more prominent.

We stopped at the Jean-Talon market on our way home from my annual check-up in the eastern part of the city -- the first time I’ve seen my GP in person in more than two years -- and bought tomatoes, strawberries, a big bunch of basil, and pots of thyme and small hot peppers. Jonathan made pizza for dinner with the tomatoes and basil, and the pots are out on the balcony, getting slowly soaked with warm rain.

Coming back from central New York this time, I’ve finally realized that I always have a day or two of adjustment in each direction when I feel emotionally ragged, tearful, even angry. Arriving there, I feel overwhelmed by the house and tasks that have, suddenly, become my responsibility; I feel burdened with obligations and other people’s expectations and demands, and worried that I will fall short or be criticized -- and at first all I want to do is escape. Then the natural surroundings start to work on me; I get used to going to sleep after walking around the lake, looking at the stars, hearing the croaks of frogs, intermittent conversations of geese, and the distant lowing of cows. I get used to waking in the fresh air of early morning, fog blowing across the water, before making coffee and drinking it out on the porch or on the bench down by the shore as fish begin to rise -- and the negative feelings start to calm down. The longer I spend there, the more people I’ve come into contact with, and the more I realize we share a web of interconnections that have somehow persisted despite my long absence. Because my family’s roots there run so deep, it’s not hard for me to find ways of connecting, and when the mechanic or the truck rental guy or the clerk at the supermarket hear my name or my parents’ names, the suspicion caused by my Quebec license plate seems to be replaced by their own natural sociability, because people there tend to be very warm, friendly, and chatty. And this feels not only familiar, but refreshingly natural to me, after spending fifty years in New England and a French-speaking major city where there has been, frankly, not much of that, and seldom a ready response to my own overtures of warmth or friendliness to strangers.

Coming back here, to Montreal, the reaction tends to be a kind of wrenching sadness and grief, mainly about my father but also my attachment to that place juxtaposed with my fulfilling and happy life here, and an awareness that both marriage and family ties mean compromise -- I cannot do whatever I might want on a given day or in a given year, but have to -- if I’m to remain true to myself the values that I hold dear -- act responsibly on behalf of the people I love. And this, unfortunately, divides me. I don’t want to live in central New York full-time, nor do I want to live primarily in America again, but I do want to see and care for my father, I do feel a responsibility and love for the land that we own, I respect and care about the hardworking and straightforward people I’m meeting back where I grew up, and (perhaps this is the most significant revelation) I see much more clearly how embedded that culture and place has always been in me. Here, in my adopted country, province, and city, I am able to live more fully and freely as the person I’ve become over the years, and this is where my husband and I have built our life together and want to remain. As for community and friendship, these exist here, there, and everywhere we have lived -- and sometimes just as strongly in the strange place of online interconnection that has arisen over the past two decades, and is independent of addresses, borders, or time zones.

As I look out over the city from this high place, the clouds have risen and thinned, and lights begin to flicker on and shine in the deepening blue distance. I feel my solitude keenly and comfortably tonight, and I know that this is a quality I carry with me wherever I am, along with a natural desire for making connections, and an ease in doing so. There’s relief in recognizing that it doesn’t matter so much where I am, physically, because I’ll always be myself -- a child who grew up loving and being consoled by the solitude of nature, books, art, and music, and also learned sociability and a love of people from her father and others in a rural society that valued family, and caring about each other, above everything else.

Those qualities saved me when I left my small town and went off to find my own way in a large university, and I see them now in my father as he navigates the incredibly difficult transition from independence to a nursing home, impaired by deafness and mobility issues that would doom many people to isolation and despair. But several staff people told me how much they liked him, and I could see his efforts to connect with people, to find ways of communicating his identity and his sense of humor in spite of his frustration at his body’s failings, at finding himself stuck in that place, his grief at the loss of his partner, and all the other challenges of extreme old age.

At first I thought, “This is terrible, how difficult this is for him,” but now that I’ve thought through this last visit more deeply, it actually gives me hope that even in extreme circumstances, one’s humanity and love of others can still be expressed, and consolation found in recognized places of solace. “I can’t sing anymore,” my father said to me as he listened to a woman play the guitar and sing familiar songs -- but I saw his toe tapping, and watched his hand beat time to the rhythm -- and he had found his way to the circle of residents at the appointed time for the musical event that week. Whatever is deepest in us remains, I think, and we must not give up on it -- not now, not ever.

 

Winter Night

Night settles over the park, shadows have rolled themselves up;

the sky, a flat translucence behind cut-out branches

casts a blue light on the snow.

 

In the hedge, little lights glow like forgotten fireflies,

the sparrow-flock has flown, a leaping squirrel

leaves sculpted waves of white along the rail.

 

Now, only furtive shapes move on the white path:

runner, skier, the eager dog

pulling his master further into the black trees.

Making Sense Out of Chaos

Our houseplants all go outside on the terrace in the summer, and in the winter they're on tables near the front windows, under plant lights. Unlike the summer arrangement, when each one is in its ideal growing spot, shown off to best advantage, and augmented with flowering annuals, the winter situation is crowded. Every plant gets plenty of water and food and light, but there's no way I can give each one exactly what it needs. Nor is the arrangement nearly as attractive; we're talking about survival in limited space.

Because of that, I've felt a lot less compelled to draw or paint the plants indoors. Each is competing with the next one, so you can't even see the beautiful leaves of the begonias, or the lacy foliage of the scented geraniums, or the sculptural succulents. They're all crammed together in a cluttered busy-ness that rivals any English cottage garden for visual competition. Nevertheless, the other night, I just felt like something was prompting me to have a go -- maybe it was the felt-like foliage of that ridiculously enormous Kalanchoe beharensis "Fang", in the center.

I propped my watercolor box on the chair near my knee, and started painting directly, laying down one color after another, as quickly as I could, to try to capture the energy and chaotic over-crowding of the scene before me. The terracotta pots and wooden table gave the picture a little bit of unification and structure, but basically there wasn't any overall composition to be had. Nor were there strong shapes - just the big fleshy leaves of "Fang". The geranium in the background, the butterfly-like triangles of the oxalis, the succulents, and the busy needles of the rosemary plant were all similar enough in size to compete with each other, but not stand out. I just kept at it, adding brushstrokes, dashes, lines, dots. Once all the color was on the page, I went back with a pen and sketched in some loose shapes and lines, and finally added the vertical window blinds in the background with watercolor.

The only solution, it had seemed, was just to go for the visual clutter. Feeling dubious, I posted the image on Instagram, with the slightly apologetic comment, "Once again, fascinated by the busyness of plants." A little while later, my friend Michael Szpaskowski and I had this exchange:

Michael: "And that that ‘busyness’ becomes the compositional imperative here is great. Both truthful (I’m not saying that artistic truth is always of this nature of course) and very beautiful."

Beth: "It is both the compositional imperative and its greatest obstacle. The urge is to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order, but that wouldn't be true. So then what do you do?...I like aspects of it, but it still doesn't entirely work for me. Tonight I was thinking maybe if I tried it from a high angle, the ovals of the tops of the pots would give a compositional rhythm that might unify the picture a little more. But not sure if I have the energy for another try!"

Michael: "Oh it is precisely its ‘awkwardness’ that I find so winning!"

This was a very helpful exchange, because when I studied the image again with his words in mind, I realized that it was actually OK not to have a strong and obvious composition or structure; instead there's color and life dancing all over the image, and the loose horizontal and vertical lines do just enough work to hold everything within the frame.

Chaos is all around us these days. Here in Quebec, we're in a terrible situation, at or near the peak of the current Omicron wave, and the hospitals are overwhelmed. Yesterday, a government report was obtained and published by RadioCanada, detailing plans to stop trying to isolate COVID patients in hospitals, allow workers to return to work even if they're still ill, accelerate discharges, decrease the level of care if necessary in order to provide at least some care to more people, and even ask patients' families to provide basic care (feeding, cleaning, bed changing, etc) for them in the hospital to free up the staff to do clinical work. It's shocking that it's come to that; the whole system is in danger of breaking down -- and that's in a province with 90% of the people vaccinated with at least two doses. There simply isn't sufficient infrastructure to deal with this many patients when we don't have enough staffed acute care beds, and so many healthcare workers are either out sick themselves, or have quit over the past two years. And the government has also made a series of disastrous decisions, such as delaying the booster campaign until Omicron was already upon us. I'm angry about this, frustrated, and worried.

And of course, it's not just COVID that gives us all a sense of uncontrolled chaos: the news from the U.S. is terrible, Europe is in disarray, there may be war in Ukraine, the climate crisis envelops all of us, lots of our friends and family are sick, many of us have had health or psychological problems because of the unremitting stress, or delayed and limited access to care, we can't see the people we want to, or go where we'd like, and the future continues to feel entirely uncertain.

Is it possible, as in the picture, to simply embrace some of that craziness and uncertainty, instead of -- as I wrote to Michael, "trying to bludgeon the busyness into some sort of submissive order"? Can we sit with it, and even find some beauty and truth there? That's a hard task, but it seems to me that it's more realistic -- and potentially more helpful -- than fighting and resisting what is.

Since Christmas, I've been starting each day with half an hour of yoga practice. Doing this regularly is new to me. I can feel my body responding slowly to the daily movements: already I'm a little bit stronger, more flexible, with better balance. But I think I've been helped equally by the mental discipline of a daily commitment, conscious breathing, and then the attentive relaxation at the end, followed by some time on my mat and cushion in meditation - even if it's just five minutes of awareness and gratitude for being here, right now. It makes a difference. I still get upset, but I can see that, like the gradual body changes, there's a gradual emotional shift toward greater equanimity in spite of what's going on around me.

There are other ways to encourage a shift: we all need to find what works for ourselves. The only point I'm trying to make is that when we can't change the big, chaotic, confusing, intractable external things, sometimes there is potential movement inside ourselves -- if we're willing to change old habits and ideas, and experiment a little.