the cassandra pages

Day by Day

Snow on the terrace. Fountain pen in sketchbook, 9" x 6". March 4, 2022.

A friend posted a cartoon the other day - you may have seen it - that was a variation of the little fish being eaten by successively bigger fishes. In this one, the earth was the little fish, the next bigger one, with its mouth open ready to grab the earth, was COVID, which in turn was about to be devoured by THE WAR, and then by the biggest one of all, CLIMATE CHANGE. It would be amusing if it weren't such a perfect illustration of all of our nightmares.

Coping, I freely admit, has been harder than ever as we watch the unfolding of a brutal war on our screens, and wonder, for the first time in many many years, about the possibility of a much larger conflict, and even nuclear war. I grew up during the Cold War, when the "Iron Curtain" was a reality in Eastern Europe, when Germany, and Berlin itself, were divided and people who tried to cross borders were shot, when the idea of speaking to a Russian or meeting a Russian in real life was something of fantasy. Even arts or sports exchanges were extremely rare. When the term "glasnost" became associated with Mikhail Gorbachev in the mid-1980s, I had already lived more than 30 years with an entirely different idea of what the Soviet Union represented than a 35-year-old person must have now. At that time, we were involved in a Vermont initiative called "Bridges for Peace" that helped facilitate some of the first citizen exchanges between the US and the USSR, and while we didn't travel to the Soviet Union ourselves, I remember the preparatory meetings, and the first gathering where we welcomed a group of heavily-chaperoned Soviet citizens, heard their impressions, and had a chance to ask questions. One person remarked on his astonishment at the size of our grocery stores and the amount and variety of food available. A few years later, there were visits by Russian musicians and choirs; each time, it seemed, they had a little more freedom, and acted more relaxed, so that eventually we could simply be people together sharing meals and an art form that we all loved.

The Iron Curtain fell, the Soviet Union broke apart, but the West has changed too. We take so much about our present lives for granted; we are so complacent.

Porcelain doll with broken hand. Fountain pen in sketchbook, 9" x 6". March 7, 2022.

I've felt heartbroken by current events, as well as frightened, and not just for the Ukrainian people. Even if it is contained, the ramifications of this war will be felt by all of us, and who knows where it will end: are we, in fact, going back to the Cold War years? Will all the diplomatic, economic, and collaborative progress of the last forty years be lost? What about nuclear containment? What kind of weapons will be unleashed? Will nuclear facilities be protected, or will there be another horrific event like Chernobyl? Will the conflict spread to Eastern and then Western Europe? It's unthinkable. The scale of the risk is so much greater and more complex than the well-meant but naive yellow-and-blue flags and sunflowers cropping up all over social media. If you send aid, please do it through established and reputable channels where it has a chance of getting through.

It is a very sober time: a time when I feel called to silent reflection, learning, and meditating on history and on the present, as we still deal with Covid and climate change and all the other pressing problems of our personal and shared lives that seem dwarfed by each day;s news. I haven't been able to write much, but I've tried to draw. I hope you are finding ways to cope, and would be glad to have you share your thoughts.

Manon, sleeping. Fountain pen in sketchbook, 9" x 6". February 24, 2022.

 

Drawing my way through a rough week

Bone. Pencil drawing, August 19, 2021.

For any of us who care about other parts of the world and the people who inhabit them, it's been a difficult and emotional week. I'm not going to get into any of it here. Suffice it to say that this blog wouldn't have been named what it was, back in 2003, if I hadn't foreseen much of the tragedy that would unfold as a result of American foreign policies -- though I fervently wish I'd been wrong.

Obviously we need to continue to do whatever we can to alleviate suffering and work for justice and for positive change, while caring for those closest to us as well. Our primary responsibility is to remember to take care of ourselves so that we have a chance of being able to help others. What does that mean for you? Have you ever thought about it in depth, and written it down?

The monastery garden at San Giovanni degli Eremiti, in Palermo, Sicily. August 18, 2021.

Many monastic orders follow a rule of life that not only gives structure to the day, but helps the mind find the stillness at the heart of everything. I've always been interested in this, and read a good deal about it. While I don't feel called to that degree of commitment or structure, I know from long experience that without paying attention to a personal set of basic practices, my anxiety goes up, I'm unable to concentrate or get things done, and I'm likely to experience feelings of helplessness and depression. I'm also a whole lot less pleasant to be around: cross, frustrated, impatient, and apt to blame those feelings on others. On the most basic level, I want to be a loving partner and daughter, and to keep in touch with family and friends to the extent I feel able. Now, with not only the world situation but the prospect of yet-another pandemic-restricted fall and winter, it's clear that self-care needs to be intentional.

A street corner in St-Lambert, Quebec. Fountain pen; roughly sketched on location and finished with watercolor later. August 16, 2021.

What this means for me (in no particular order) is maintaining a daily practice of drawing and/or music, so that I don't forget who I am, even if it's just fifteen minutes. It means taking care of some plants and flowers, and petting the cat: remembering that there's a lot of life that isn't human. Food is part of that category: paying attention to ingredients, and cooking meals that have some love and care put into them. Taking some time each day to read a good book, and to learn something new: for the past 18 months that's meant daily language-practice for me.  Making the bed, taking some care with my appearance, picking up the house, keeping things in relatively decent order. Getting some exercise, and trying to get enough sleep. And, both first and last each day, feeling gratitude and making a point of remembering specific things that I'm grateful for. I wish I could maintain a meditation practice but it doesn't seem to be in the cards for me right now: basic mindfulness, gratitude, and the contemplative practice of drawing, and following my breath during lulls in the day or wakeful periods in the night, seem to fill that niche.

Plants on the terrace. August 15, 2021.

Do I succeed at all of that every day? Of course not. But having a basic, thought-out framework seems really helpful in trying to keep some order, sanity and calmness in my life -- and when I forget, which of course I do, it's there to go back to.

Begonia. Pencil. August 14, 2021.

For instance, I hadn't been drawing every single day, but this week gave me a wake-up call to try to get back to it. There you have it: we can always begin again.

 

 

Thinking of Palestine

That's the title of this painting, done back in 2014. Like many of my still lives, it contains objects that are self-referential: this is my father-in-law's family's brass coffee pot, which we now have; the window with blue sky above eye level represents the Palestinian sense of enclosure and imprisonment; and the small fossil which I found in central New York, where I grew up, represents the remnant of Christians still living in Jerusalem.

Neither of my in-laws were Palestinian -- she was Armenian, he was Syrian, and both were Christian -- but they both lived in, knew, and described vividly the great ancient cities of the Middle East when they were inhabited by people of all the Abrahamic faiths, for the most part co-existing peacefully and respectfully throughout the centuries, although of course there were times of genocide and evictions, especially under Ottoman rule. This multi-faith existence was true in Damascus, Aleppo, Istanbul, Beirut, Alexandria, Jerusalem. And it is rapidly becoming true no longer.

I've been involved for two decades in trying to promote dialogue between the faiths, educating people about the history, and working for peace. The situation between Israel and the Palestinians is so much worse today than back in 2000, at the time of the second intifada. I won't go into the reasons here. My heart aches for the lost lives on every side, but especially for the innocent Palestinian children who have been killed before their lives have even had a chance to unfold, not that these nascent lives would ever have been easy or filled with opportunity.

In thinking about the events of the past few weeks, I keep asking myself what I can do. I will give to local charities that send money directly to families; that is certain. But I know that I have at times been guilty of letting my own anger, frustration, and grief make dialogue harder with those who disagree with me, or who understand the situation differently. Because I know a great deal about it, I'm sure I've sometimes come on too strong and added to division, rather than making it clear that what I care about most is peace.

However, the point I want to make today was written very well by the poet Leila Chatti, who said:

 

One cannot advocate for racial equality, LGBT & women's rights,

condemn corrupt and abusive regimes and other injustices

yet choose to ignore the Palestinians' oppression.

It does not add up.

You cannot pick and choose whose human rights matter more.

 

I'm glad to see this point finally being made by courageous politicians in the U.S. and by both Jewish and Arab activists all over the world, particularly the young. That gives me hope. All of us need to join together to try to find a solution, and to "be peace" rather than fighting the same battle in our living rooms and communities. We need to find ways to talk to each other, to tell each other our stories in the same ways that we have begun to tell stories about how we were abused as women, or as Black people, or LGBTQ+ people, or Asian Americans, as Jewish people or Muslims, or any other group that has endured marginalization, oppression, prejudice, and violence. We have to have the courage to be vulnerable, and open up our first-person narratives, because that is what changes hearts and opens formerly closed-minds to the lived reality of others.

And I would say to those who have closed their eyes to this particular oppression because they feel it's intractable, or too difficult to understand -- please ask some questions, please educate yourself by looking at multiple sources. If you don't think that the United States plays a major role in this oppression, and has used some of the same tactics in its own foreign wars, please educate yourself. If you don't remember what happened in South Africa, then perhaps you feel that peace is not possible. But I do not believe that, and I will never believe it.

 

Some resources to start with:

Another person who refuses to give up on peace is former US president Jimmy Carter. His book The Blood of Abraham: Insights into the Middle East, revised in 2007, "explains his understanding of the Middle East and seeks to provide an enlightening and reconciling vision for greater peace in the region."

Here is a book list about the history of the conflict from a Palestinian perspective, and there is a lot of other information on this website, Middle East Eye, including videos by young people made during the last month.

My friend Rabbi Rachel Barenblat has written movingly about her own feelings about the conflict over the years and the difficulties it has presented for her in her family and in her congregations; I'm happy to commend her posts to you.

Finally, I was moved to tears by this photo essay, They Were Only Children, in the New York Times about the children, Palestinian and Israeli, who have been killed in the most current conflict. If anything is a desperate call to us to do better, surely this is.

 

Hermit Diary 35: Proud

 

It's Pride Week in Montreal, and although there won't be the usual city-wide festivities, the cathedral held a virtual version of our annual "OutMass" on Sunday evening. The link above is our choir's offering of hope and love, with photographs from last year's Pride parade. This piece of music was written by the British composer Will Todd and made available to musicians worldwide. It was originally written to celebrate the NHS in the early days of the pandemic, and offer some hope and cheerfulness with the rainbow as a symbol, but we felt it was just as appropriate for a dual purpose, acknowledging that the coronavirus is still with us, making events like these as well as the usual closeness between friends impossible, and also as a symbol of Pride.

Just as the service began, our gathering -- which had been advertised and was open to the public -- was Zoom-bombed by a group of anonymous men, who spewed homophobic hate in the most vile way possible. Thanks to the quick reactions of our hosting team, they were removed and the "room" was locked, but of course it was a shock, and distressing. However, the service resumed under the calm leadership of our music director, Jonathan White. The incident was unable to mar the beauty, love, and solidarity of the hour that followed, which was filled with music, spoken word, prayer, reflection, and shared purpose. In fact, I think all the positive qualities of the gathering were actually augmented, and burned into the memories of the people who were present.

When I think of the courage, gentleness, openness, honesty, and calmness of the people of all ages who were gathered, representing all aspects of LGBTQ+ expression as well as their straight allies, and compare it to the cowardice of those who tried to disrupt this beautiful celebration of pride in our human diversity --  and the sanctity of that diversity -- there's really little to say. It's so obvious. Love triumphs over hate.

I'm proud of our community, and extremely proud of and grateful for the friends who planned and prepared this service, and all those who came and stood together on Sunday night. Your strength makes all of us stronger, and I'm glad to be able to help salute you in music and join with you in working for a better, kinder, more just world.

The full service is embedded below. I'd like to call your attention particularly to the section from 26:16 - 32:10, where members of the community offer a litany asking God to "walk with us, grieve with us, and rejoice with us," interposed with Jonathan White singing a Kyrie.

 

 

Vendredi saint / Good Friday

A day less, for me, about events of the past or personal hopes for the future, than about the immense injustice and suffering of the world, and my place in it.

Here are a few of the pieces we'll be singing during an hour of meditation before the afternoon's solemn Eucharist.

Tomas Luis de Victoria: Tenebrae reponsories, Eram quasi agnus

Cecilia McDowall: The Lord is Good

Jason Noble: Corpus Christi (text by Evelyn Underhill, composed in 2015 for Patrick Wedd and our choir. Jason, who is one of our tenors, successfully defended his doctoral thesis at McGill yesterday)

Gregorio Allegri: Miserere mei

--

Unlike some of the places we have visited, Mexico and Sicily in particular, where there are huge Holy Week processions and traditional observances, Quebec is mostly secular , and what I'll be doing today runs counter to life here. As I went down to the cathedral last night to rehearse for the Maundy Thursday service, I saw a huge poster in the metro with an image of Christ on the cross in chocolate -- very much in keeping with the anti-church sentiments that arose when the province was rejecting Roman Catholicism during the Quiet Revolution of the late 60s and 70s, following a history of abuse and oppressive clerical authority over most aspects of personal life.

And yet, most French Canadians in Quebec still consider themselves Catholic, and many are believers: they just don't go to church, and are quite comfortable with the sacrilegious curses, puns, and anti-religious images that are part of present-day Quebec society. Today, though, we'll see quite a few strangers walking through the doors of the cathedral to sit and reflect, listen to the music, light a candle, offer some prayers. It's a very personal day of atonement, and I think it means different things to almost everyone who has grown up in the Christian church. Even in the years when I was completely out of the Church, I went on Good Friday. For me, it's about all of us, and our responsibility toward one another. The central words that have come down to us from the cross are these: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

Pennsylvania

January 17, rural Pennsylvania. This is a Quaker house of many books, in every room, collected over a lifetime. The shelf closest to my bed where I wake is devoted to religion and spirituality: I glance over the titles and see biographies of William Tyndale, Francis of Assisi and Gandhi, but the focus of the collection is Quaker thought and Quaker history. It's Sunday, and my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are already at Meeting. A soft morning light filters through the bare branches of tamaracks, and a dozen mourning doves peck and coo beneath the bird feeder in a gnarled old quince.

I read a little of William Penn's writings, and then look him up and realize I know next to nothing about this man I think of as a founding father and colleague of Benjamin Franklin's, but who was actually born 60 years earlier. As a young man at the time of Cromwell, Penn was imprisoned in the Tower of London for his Quaker beliefs, disinherited by his aristocratic Anglican father, but eventually released and reconciled. He received his inheritance and a grant from the King, and founded the province of Pennsylvania as a haven for England's persecuted Quakers, advocating peace, pacifism, the equality of men and women. His writings and thought were greatly admired by Voltaire, and later by that other Pennsylvanian, Franklin, but Penn - too generous, and a poor manager - finally died penniless in England.

The calendar tells me it's Franklin's birthday today: unlike the Wikipedia (also celebrating, but only 15) Franklin would be 306 today; Penn, 372. Those centuries compress as we drive through the countryside of Bucks County, past one colonial homestead after another, built of solid fieldstones, set into a landscape of streams and rolling fields that Penn must have loved, and Franklin and Washington no doubt saw with their own eyes. A revolution, and pacifism: how did those ideas coexist then? Penn wrote: "My prison shall be my grave before I will budge a jot: for I owe my conscience to no mortal man."

 

A Christmas Wish, and a Look Forward

Still life with donkey, copper vase, and Christmas greens. Pen on paper, 9" x 6".

It's a moment, in a particular season, a particular life. My father-in-law's terracotta donkey from Damascus; an Egyptian copper tray and vase that was a gift from my sister-in-law; greens and holly brought from my mother's garden in central New York, where my own family has lived for two centuries.

Our marriage brought together two cultures. When my parents-in-law were young people in the Middle East, Muslims, Jews, and Christians all lived together in the ancient cities -- Damascus, Beirut, Jerusalem, and so many others -- in relative harmony. They came here after World War II because they could see what was starting to happen. Over the time of our own marriage, we've seen the last bits of that harmony disintegrate. Yes, there are individuals and organizations that are still trying, and some places that are less war-torn than others, but as I drew this picture last night I felt the sadness of that little mute donkey, worn smooth by the touch of hands, as well as gratitude that in my own life I've been able to experience some of the richness that intercultural living imparts -- a richness that I think is meant to be our cherished heritage as human beings on a shared planet.

May it be so, someday, not too far away.

---

Along with several other writers, my friend Teju Cole was asked by Aperture, "What kind of pressure does photography place on the written word today?" His answer addresses, in part, my own question: what is the point of trying to make beautiful images -- images which reference the past in their reliance on paper, ink, old techniques, and use as their subject everyday objects -- in a world so torn by violence and the pressure of the exterior on our interior lives?

If my work and my life were completely consumed with that interiority, or with the preservation of some sort of peace and the continuation of comfort, that would be problematic for me. But it's precisely in everyday objects and scenes that I find echoes of the political, and I am trying to find ways to explore that without co-opting the grimness or violence or fear of the exterior world. To me, making dark and violent art is too obvious an answer, and often veers off into the cynical. During this past year, I've been feeling my way toward other ways of expressing this predicament in which I find myself.

Family Coffeepot and Fossil: Thinking of Gaza. Acrylic on paper, 2014.

Most of us, in this hemisphere anyway, live our lives in relative comfort but in an atmosphere of anxiety and awareness - though that is a relative term - of the tenuousness of life, freedom, and peace for a great majority of others. More and more of us are aware of the ways in which our lifestyles impact the lives of that majority, and how we are complicit. By the same token, our participation in these systems of suffering and oppression is not, for the most part, chosen: we and our tax dollars are being used by the systems of power, and our governments are involved in actions we would never willingly condone.

How does art intersect with that reality, and that knowledge? How do we, as artists and writers, move forward with integrity, with hope, but also acknowledging and honoring the long tail of the past in which the search for beauty and meaning has been vital to human life and culture?

Teju writes (he's talking about photography, but we can say the same for the other arts:)

I want images that address the predicaments of the present moment, in a political sense, but that also allow for poetry and lyricism. In any case, those things may not be necessarily divorced from each other: paper has to come from somewhere; the equipment used to make a camera is made from materials that are traded on the world market, including materials that come from conflict zones. Machines have lyricism (once we learn to see it) and poetry comes at a cost (if we are willing to admit it). The connection this has to my writing? I try to apply those same goals (of politics and poetry) to the written word, too. So, we may be awash in images and words these days, but poetry still matters. It is still as elusive as it ever was, and, just as ever, it is still worth chasing down.

--Teju Cole in "Words vs Images," Aperture #217, Winter 2014

 

Moving Beyond Hatred and Fear

Family Coffee Pot and a Fossil (Thinking of Gaza). 9 1/2" x 8 3/4" . Acrylic on paper, July 14, 2014.

Richard Rohr's meditation this morning contained a lot of wisdom. Being a Franciscan, he was talking about how Jesus embodied this way of "being peace," but I've taken the liberty of removing the Christian language, hoping everyone can find the truth in these words without being turned off. What he says is certainly true for me, and my experience. And I appreciate that he states that this is work -- a lifetime of work and practice for most of us.

"Negativity unites most people far more quickly than love. The ego moves forward by contraction, self-protection, and refusal, by saying no. The soul, however, does not proceed by contraction but by expansion. It moves forward not by exclusion, but by inclusion and by saying yes...There is really no other way to save us from ourselves, and from each other, until we are saved from our need to fear and hate.

Conscious love is the totally enlightened, and often entirely nonsensical way out of this universal pattern. Love has to be worked toward, received, and enjoyed, first of all, by facing our preference for fear and hate. But remember, we gather around the negative space quickly, while we “fall into” love rather slowly, and only with lots of practice at falling.

This is exactly what contemplative practice helps us to do. Meditation is refusing to project our anxieties elsewhere, and learning to hold and face them within ourselves and within God."

For once, I used the best hours of my morning to paint today instead of getting lost in my computer and work responsibilities. J.'s parents brought this coffee pot with them when they immigrated to the United States in the mid-1940s. The fossil shell reminded me of the Sea of Galilee, and the "living stones" - a phrase used by Palestinian Christians to describe themselves; a diminishing remnant of two thousand years of Christian presence in Palestine.

September 11

In response to Szymborska, 9/11/2013.

Today I read this poem.

And this news story.

And thought, how far we all have fallen.

(Memorial near Ground Zero, February 2004)

 

It's a very empty feeling.

The sky at Ground Zero, 2004.

 

But people then, and people now, continue to say "Enough!"

Anti-Iraq War demonstration, my fellow protesters in pens, NYC, February 2004.

Which gives me a small glimmer of hope.

Election, Rewritten

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

On this election day I'd like to suggest a re-read of the guest post, "The Rewrite," by Teju Cole, written and published here the night of Obama's election four years ago.

What a different day that was, quivering with hope and anticipation! I was thrilled about the election of our first black president, but less dewy-eyed about his prospects for changing things than many of my friends. Still, my husband and I saw it as a momentous, historical occasion, so much so that we drove from Montreal to Washington that January to attend the inauguration. ("Inauguration Journal," The Cassandra Pages, Jan 2009)

As it turned out, I was unfortunately right about Obama vs. Congress, Obama vs. the status quo, Obama vs. the conservative media machine, Obama vs. the military complex, Obama vs. Public Fear, Obama vs. the Israeli lobby...on it goes. I wonder what he really thinks, when he sits down and talks to Michelle after a long day. Has he moved in his deepest convictions, or simply woken up to the divisive, mean-spirited, nearly-gridlocked reality that is U.S. politics today? I still think he is a good man, brilliantly quick to grasp the nuances of any subject -- and therefore I'd much rather have him at the helm than any Republican alternative. But, regardless, if he wins it's still going to be politics as usual.

When I visit the United States these days, I'm struck with the general level of frustration, bitterness and anger among not only the disenfranchised, but the solidly middle-class: people who've had good educations, worked hard, saved money. They see their children growing up in uncertainty, with fewer opportunities than we had, at a time when corporate greed runs rampant, aided and abeted by the government. These are people with common sense and a sense of fairness who see neither in the way their government operates.

I'm a writer, and have long valued the power of the spoken and written word. Obama came to office largely on the strength of his ability to speak. I think we all felt he spoke from his heart, and I don't doubt that still. But as we've seen, rhetoric may be golden, but it can turn out to be flimsy gilt foil rather than 24K; loftly rhetoric doesn't change the minds or hearts of people who are determined to work for their own self-interest and that of those who pay them with gifts, favors, trips, and contributions. Neither words nor good intentions can turn around the ship of insider-government: the way things are done and have always been done in an entrenched power structure. And even more tragic than that is the fact that how ordinary citizens feel, or what their live are like, is less and less a factor in what actually happens. The idea of representative government itself, in the United States, has become an illusion, but one we stubbornly cling to.

As a Vermonter, I was always proud to cast my vote for the independent Bernie Sanders, first for the House of Representatives and then as a Senator. I was proud to vote for him again this year. He's that very rare bird in Washington: honest and straightforward, outspoken, truly representing not only his constituency but the neediest within it, morally uncompromising, and beholden to few. He was a fixture in Vermont politics as long as I lived there. When we first sent him to Washington the naysayers insisted he'd always be on the fringes, unable to accomplish anything, unable to get his voice heard, but he's proved them wrong.

The difference, I think, is that Vermont is one of the smallest states, where a man of Bernie's integrity can cut across party lines and capture people's hearts not only through rhetoric but by actually doing what he says he'll do, day in, day out, year after year. I doubt if he could have been elected in, say, New York, the much larger state where I grew up. By virtue of its small size and tradition of local debate and control, Vermont has also been able to pass controversial, ground-breaking measures, from environmental protection laws to the early adoption of same-sex partnerships. Lately, the state has been pushing toward adopting its own single-payer, European-style health care system; today's election will probably decide whether that initiative continues to go forward or not.

I doubt if the Founding Fathers anticipated the sheer size to which the United States would grow, or the enormous difficulty of governing such an entity either at home, or in its capacity as a world power. If I have any hope for the future, it lies in greater local control, greater citizen involvement, and more insistence on representatives following the will of the people. Here in Quebec during 2012, public opinion expressed on the streets, during a summer of protest and unrest, forced the Liberal provincial government to call elections, which they then lost. Revelations from a province-wide, ongoing inquest into political corruption forced the mayor of Montreal to resign last night, and will have many other far-reaching consequences.

The demos in democracy is, after all, us -- and yet, over time, we've slowly handed over our own rights to others who have twisted them into something almost unrecognizable. It's an illusion to think they mean what they say, and an even greater illusion to think they're going to give those rights back without a struggle, a collapse, or a defeat. The Book of Kings told it like it was, in the dawn of written history, and that story has been written and rewritten over thousands of years: the basest qualities of human nature don't change, nor does the basic human struggle for equality, justice, and freedom. Voting is crucial, but it takes a lot more than that.