the cassandra pages

Spaces of our Hands and Hearts

Does the space where we work influence what we are able to do there? I think so. Space affects our mindset so dramatically that I suspect it partially determines how much work we do there, as well as its quality. Frankly, in today's world, we should be grateful to be able to do creative work at all, and to have a roof over our heads. So whatever I write here about "spaces" comes from a conscious place of privilege.*

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Ideally, the place where we do our concentrated work needs to be functional and supportive; it needs to suit who we are, and help us to feel good when we're in it. There are plenty of writers who've done their greatest work in rooms or chilly cabins piled with books and papers  -- think Seamus Heaney -- and artists, like Lucien Freud, who've worked in chaos. It's a question of knowing yourself, too.

It's hard for me to concentrate and work well when I don't have, as Virginia Woolf wrote, "a room of my own," even if that room is mine only part of the time. For most of my life, I've worked in somewhat makeshift studio spaces: repurposed or multi-purpose rooms in the same place where I was living. That's been OK when I was able to close the door and have some solitude and privacy, less so when I was working in a larger but shared space, or a space that other people walked through. For much of our time in Vermont, I did my design work and writing in a room that had, literally, six doors -- it was a former kitchen, with front and back outside entrances, a bathroom door, and doors leading to other parts of the house as well as the basement! I couldn't do artwork there at all, but, with my back to most of the doors, I was able to write.

Sometimes we don't even know what's good for us. After fifteen years, it was traumatic for me to leave our former large, dedicated studio space here in Montreal, downsize dramatically, and move into a 10' x 10' repurposed bedroom in our condominium. I thought it would be a disaster, workwise -- but I couldn't have been more wrong. The large studio had room to spread out, but it was always cluttered, and it was on one of the city's busiest north-south streets, with tons of traffic and a great deal of dust, as well as foot traffic and industrial noise from other tenants in the building. The best feature, for me, was a big wall where I could hang my work, and the ability to have separate areas for oil painting, printmaking, drawing, sewing. But writing there was difficult, as well as any kind of experimental work in general, since it was a big, open space I shared with my husband. I seldom had a sense of complete "head space", not because I was being interrupted -- simply because there was another human being in the room.

After a year and a half of working here in our apartment, I've come to love my new space (the picture at the top of this post is another view). The room is small but efficient, the north light is beautiful, and I have everything I need within reach, with most of it stored in cupboards out of sight. Instead of spreading out and working on several projects at once, I now do one thing at a time and put the materials and equipment away when I'm done -- and that's fine. The tables and storage units are adaptable -- as you can see below, I'm leaning the easel against a wall to take up less floor space, and using a drawer in the storage unit as a taboret. It works fine. 

I thought ventilation would be a problem in the winter, but I recently bought an air filtration unit which should work very well to filter the fumes of any harmful solvents, and if we have wildfire smoke again this coming summer, it should help with that too. The most important difference now is that it's a room of my own, with a door I can shut (but rarely do); all my artwork and writing and sewing take place here, as well as plenty of "thinking time." I've always believed that spaces take on a sort of energy of their own, over time, depending on how they are used, and this one now feels comfortable and personal in a way that our former, cluttered studio never did.

The pandemic years were especially hard, since we didn't use our big studio much at all and tried to do everything in our small, ground floor, former city apartment, where there was no light. We liked the apartment very much -- as a residence. During the pandemic, though, I basically lived at my desk in the living/dining room, with a lot of street noise all day, and poor J. was at a desk in the bedroom, looking out on an alley. I think that showed both of us, once and for all, what was important to us in a workspace -- privacy, light, adaptable table space, good storage, and a sense of peacefulness and quiet.

I wish I had a photograph of the back room in my parents' and grandparents' house where I used my mother's easel, which my father built for her, to do my first oil paintings, back in the 1960s -- that's the same easel I use here in Montreal now. When I moved back into the upper floor of that house, alone, after graduating from college, the pine-paneled back room became my study and studio; it's where I taught myself to paint in watercolor and do calligraphy at a professional level; it was where I listened to music, and worked hard every evening after coming home from my job; it's the room where I began to think of myself as an artist.

After working in various rooms in our Vermont house over the years, none of which were really suitable, we eventually built a garage that included a small woodworking shop for J. and a small studio for me.

My studio in the garage in Vermont, in 2006, just before we moved to Montreal.

I liked that room a great deal, and it helped me to have a space of my own during some difficult years when I was trying to figure myself out -- I was just starting to write seriously when I was about 40, and had begun painting again after deliberately taking some years off. In this room I had an electric kettle for tea, a space heater for the cold winters, a little desk with my meditation items on top of it, a rocking chair, bookshelves, and my easel. Although the windows were small, they looked out on my garden... I have lots of positive memories of being there.

Painting outside at our home in Vermont, probably shortly after I bought this portable French box easel -- which I still use at the lake today. This must have been in the 1980s or early 1990s.

All creative people need to train themselves to be able to work in less-than-ideal circumstances. I've always managed to work wherever I was, and it's been good for me to take a sketchbook and notebook (or now, tablet or laptop) wherever I go. However, it's clear to me, looking back, that the differences in my day-to-day workspaces made a big difference in my productivity as well as my contentment and sense of self, and they've also influenced the type of work I was able to do. When there's less distraction and more peace, I'm more able to simply buckle down and do the work. The main question for me has always been "can I center myself and concentrate?"

How do you feel about your own workspaces, and how are you doing, creatively, at this time of so much violence and destruction?

*More than 100 cultural sites have been destroyed in Gaza, along with the lives of scores of poets, writers, and artists. Thousands more have lost their homes or been injured, and yet we continue to hear, at times, their poignant words. Many of us, in the privileged west, have been so disheartened that it's been difficult to continue our own work. And yet we must, because the arts are essential in keeping our own spirits alive, and in giving hope that some of what we value most in human culture has a chance of continuing. When I think about "home" this always includes, for me, the place where I work. To lose it would be to lose a part of myself. Continuing to create, and to mindfully stand alongside those who struggle to do so, or have been silenced forever, is to be in solidarity. I hope to do more in the months ahead to contribute in other ways through my work and my ongoing protest. 

 

 

Hermit Diary 44. Lockdown Language Learning

When coping with this interminable disruption to our lives, daily routines help -- so say the psychologists.  I've tried. Predictably, some routines have been more successful than others. Daily exercise gets maybe a B, that is, after my Achilles tendonitis got better - which also required a daily routine of PT stretches and tendon massage. I've done almost no strength training, though, just walking. Practicing the piano barely rates a C, though I've been doing better lately. I've read a lot, and will give myself a A for that. Cooking with some energy and ingenuity. Drawing and artwork, OK, but not every day by any means. Meditation? Yoga? Nope. Writing has been tough. I've tried to give myself some fun -- each day I do the NY Times mini crossword and several days a week I do the Spelling Bee puzzle, putting the answers on a spreadsheet and looking them up the next day, because I'm too cheap to buy a games subscription to the Times. I've been getting dressed (jeans and a top or sweater at least) every day, taking care of my non-professionally-cut hair, putting on earrings and even a little lipstick, because without that basic self-care I know I'm lost.

But where I've apparently been the most diligent is on Duolingo. When I passed the 300-day streak mark, I went back to figure out what date I started -- it was right at the end of last December. I've "studied" several languages on Duolingo over the years: French, Spanish, a bit of Italian and German. When I began this time, we had recently come back from Greece, and I decided to study some modern Greek, since I still remembered some ancient Greek from my college days but had been frustrated while traveling by my ability to "read" signs but say practically nothing. Then, in early March, the pandemic began. Somewhere right around there, I switched to Latin, and did the whole course on Duolingo, which is short and easy, and only comprises three checkpoints. Then I went back to the Greek and have kept it up every day since, using only three or four "streak freezes" to protect my streak in case I forget.

The app reminds you, occasionally, "15 minutes of Duolingo a day can teach you a language. What can 15 minutes of social media do?" Well, the latter phrase makes is a good point, but can you really learn a language this way? I wasn't so sure. I had learned some basic Spanish on Duolingo that definitely helped during our travels to Mexico City, and the French lessons clarified my weak areas in that language. Starting essentially from scratch with the Greek (I knew the alphabet so that wasn't an obstacle, but very few words or phrases) I was barely able to tell if the conjugations and declensions bore any relationship to ancient Greek, because Duolingo doesn't teach you that way. Different concepts are presented, sort of without you realizing it, under the subject heading of, say, "Animals" or "Clothing." Nobody says, "the third person singular of the verb to have is such-and-such", you just get sentences like "The woman has a child" and "The boy has a dog" until you've got it, and then "I have a husband" and "I have a cat" introduce the first-person singular form of the verb, also without telling you, or asking you to memorize a conjugation. In fact, you're never shown a verb table, or how to decline nouns, adjectives, or pronouns. Nobody tells you the rules, and nobody tells you the exceptions; you just have to figure it out by making mistakes and puzzling over the correct answer. For someone who has studied languages the traditional way, I found myself doubting I was learning anything except how to say inane and useless things like "My pet is a hamster."

So at first I got frustrated, which is why I switched languages. In the meantime, I ordered a modern Greek grammar book and a small dictionary/phrase book. After I finished the Latin lessons, I went back to the Greek. To my surprise, I actually remembered some of what I'd learned, and then started being a bit more methodical about it: writing notes, keeping lists of vocabulary, and making flash cards. I also started studying the basic grammar, just to get a better idea what the rules were -- sentence order, for one thing, and pitfalls for English speakers like the fact that modern Greek requires articles before most nouns, including first names: "the Eleni" instead of just "Helen."

In Duolingo, the first two practice levels (of five) for each skill or subject area don't require you to do difficult listening exercises, or write much Greek translation either from written English sentences, or from audio Greek. I progressed through two and a half checkpoints, going through the first two levels of each skill. Then, doubting myself, I went back to the beginning and started trying to complete all five levels -- and it got a lot harder, very fast. However, my retention started to improve, and my listening skills took a leap forward: modern Greek pronunciation is completely different from what I had learned from my classics profs.

So, am I learning, with my 15 minutes a day? Yes, slowly, just because I've been at it for a long time now. I'm not impressed with my concentration or overall effort. It's the persistence and repetition that have paid some benefits.

I remember at the beginning of the pandemic how people were saying, "Oh, with all this time, we ought to be able to write that novel, learn a language, study classical guitar, read Ulysses or War and Peace..." and then, when our concentration went to hell, our sleep became terrible, we fought with our partners or kids or became consumed by loneliness and confinement, and we didn't even know what day it was -- that was when we got obsessed by the news and started riding a rollercoaster of anxiety and depression, amid other days that felt more normal and optimistic. A lot of us felt guilty or confused about why we couldn't seem to do the things that we thought we were going to do -- I had hoped to finish writing a book, for instance, and I'm nowhere close. A friend sent me an article written by someone funny, who was trying to express her depression and lack of motivation, and she describes herself telling her therapist, 'I feel like I should be learning Portuguese" and the therapist says, "Don't you DARE learn Portuguese!" And no matter how well we may have managed in one area, I bet most of us feel like that in many others, and wish somebody would just say, "Don't you dare...!" and let us off our self-hung hook.

My sister-in-law, a retired academic who's gifted in languages, is studying Arabic for the third time in her life, and this time it's finally taking hold. She's taking a rigorous online course, and working on it for many many hours a day, and I think that's fantastic. But I can't do that, and don't really want to. Fifteen minutes a day works for me, and I've made enough progress that when I see a Greek sentence I know the parts of speech I'm seeing, even if I don't know the words, and my vocabulary is growing. Will I ever use it? Who knows. I think what this exercise has shown me is that the little-bit-every-day approach does pay off over time in language study, just as it does in a drawing practice. A seemingly daunting but desired goal is broken down into manageable little bits, and you commit to it, try not to get discouraged and give up, and eventually you see you've actually made progress. That's all.

But we're not all the same. Also at the beginning of the pandemic, someone created a humorous set of twelve staged photos showing people of different Zodiac signs reacting to the new reality. One person was in pajamas all day, another was happily boozing, another in a cleaning frenzy, and so on. And there was my sign, Virgo, looking neatly pulled together, at her desk, working away. Great. I'm not a believer in astrology, though I do have many of the characteristics thought to be "typical" for a Virgo. What I appreciated, besides the humor, was not that Virgos are organized, annoying workaholics, but that it illustrated so clearly how different we all are -- a fact that's been borne out throughout this thing and that is totally OK. "Don't you dare learn Portuguese!" you Gemini - it will make you miserable!

So, I'm curious how it's played out for you. What has worked, and what hasn't? And are you beating yourself up or accepting yourself as you are, because, honestly, having compassion and gentleness for ourselves is the first and most important practice of all. Then, only then, maybe you can find 15 minutes a day to practice something else.

 

Re-centering

Here it is, the second week in February already, and because of political events I haven't accomplished half of what I had hoped so far this year. Maybe you're the same. At first I was merely depressed by the prospect of the upcoming inauguration, then very quickly derailed by the new administration's first week, the marches, the mosque shooting here in Quebec, and my own need to focus upon and write about these things, as well as touching in with a wide circle of friends and family. Phoenicia brought out Dave Bonta's new book, and there's been quite a bit of work associated with that. I've been singing, seeing people, reading, making meals...but it has all felt like I'm distracted, not only from what is going on, but from myself. What happened to drawing, printmaking, painting? What happened to my own writing? I've been off-center, and needed to get back home.

This week I've felt like I'm finally regaining some ability to focus. I haven't done any particularly good drawings, but at least I've taken up my pen. And I'm working hard on a writing project that is now going well.

Unfortunately, these times reminds me of what it feels like when we, or someone close to us, gets an unwelcome diagnosis. For a while, you can't think about much else. But eventually, you see that life goes on, even though you have to deal with the new situation, and it remains in the back of your mind. A life that, for a while, felt simpler just got more complicated. But the clarity of passing time shows us that we not only need to multi-task, we can do it. I'm glad to see that most people who have decided to resist have not lost their determination, but we've also settled down into the mindset where we realize this is going to be a long haul. So I'm taking action, staying informed, and trying to take good care of myself and those around me -- but I'm also doing my own things, because they're also important. I hope you are too.

So, I'm curious -- how are you coping with the reality of the moment in which we find ourselves? Have you been able to find a balance? And what role does social media play in your day -- have you been using it more, or less? Do you think it's helpful, or not?

Recent Drawings and Watercolors

Well, I certainly haven't been writing here much, but I've been busy with book projects, the start of choir season, preparing for a wedding of dear young friends in Vermont this coming weekend, having guests and seeing friends as summer winds down into fall. Our weather has been pretty much gorgeous here in Montreal, still warm enough for t-shirts and sandals, so it doesn't really feel like fall yet except, of course, it is. The evidence is in the hint of color in the trees, a few fallen leaves, the markets overflowing with cabbages and cauliflower, apples and late berries, the last of the sweet corn, colored squashes, baskets of tomatoes, armfuls of basil. In the evenings I've been drawing, and as usual some sort of flowers or plants tend to make their way onto the page. In my community garden there's not much left in bloom except some beautiful Japanese wind anemones, which look so pretty with the magenta flowers of cosmos.

I just haven't had the kind of quiet time lately that's necessary for writing, and I'm not sure when it will open up, or what form it needs to take, but I feel an increasing need for that to happen. I'm considering what I want to do with Phoenicia in 2017, and with my own projects that have been on the back burner for too long. A recent birthday has also figured in this equation, reminding me that time does not hold still. I need to reassess priorities and make more room for the things I really want to do.

But what exactly are they? Why, I wonder, is it sometimes so hard to figure out what we really want, even when we have the freedom to make those choices? Why is it so difficult to balance our own needs with those of others, and with the many responsibilities and genuine joys in our lives that often compete with each other for attention? 

 

I've always loved to cook, for instance, but I've noticed that when I stay at the studio until 5 or 6 and then go home to prepare a meal in a short amount of time, I don't enjoy it nearly as much and even resent it, because I haven't had any time to unwind or rest before starting yet another task. When I go home earlier, with some time perhaps to stop at the markets for special provisions, or sit down with a recipe book and try something new, it's a pleasure and I enjoy it. But, of course, that takes time away from the studio. And so it goes...There's no right answer, but when I feel that tightness that signals resentment and too-muchness, or I feel a longing because I've been away from something I love for too long, it's time to pay attention and make some changes.

Women, in particular, seem afflicted with this problem, as I've written here before, but I'm surprised that it persists so long in our lives. That means it's ingrained; I was taught by my mother that being selfish was just about the worst thing imaginable. Christian and Buddhist philosophies piled on top of that, and as a result no amount of feminism or rational intellectualism have ever managed to completely rid me of guilt when I choose myself over the needs of others. And I bet it's the same for many of you. Looking back from later adulthood, now, I do think that being kind is just about the most important thing, but not through sacrificing or suppressing one's own needs or happiness. I've been fortunate to have more freedom than most women to develop my own sense of self, and to have a partner who encouraged that, but the external and internal pressure to give away my time to others has always been enormous. On the other hand, there is a balance for me between solitary pursuits that may be personally rewarding, and being in relationship and community: I need other people, and I love other people, and genuinely want to be of use in the world. So the dance continues, and we adjust our steps...where do you find your own answers to these questions?

Return to Montmorency

Some readers may remember last summer's exploratory series of drawings and paintings of the Montmorency waterfall near Quebec City, where I did this charcoal drawing:

I've had an abstract drawing from that series on my studio wall all year, and this week I went back it as the basis for another relief print. At the top of the post is the block being cut. Here's the back of the print, after a first pass with the round baren, with half the print fully transferred to the rice paper using the back of a wooden spoon.

And here's a finished print from an edition of seven. I like this better than all the paintings I did last year, though I'm still fond of several of the drawings.

When I was younger, I seldom worked this way, delving deep into a subject until it is really internalized. Each piece was kind of a one-off - I'd be inspired by something, do a painting of it, seldom even sketching it first, and that was that. Though working that way can be wonderful, it's an entirely different way of approaching art.

Reading the letters and biographies of artists, as well as studying their work (the recent show of Picasso's guitars at MoMA is a good example) made me want to do more of this "horizontal" exploration, making sketches, playing with different media, trying to see deeply into the essence of a particular subject and my own response to it - what is it that I find compelling? Form? Line? Rhythm? Color? What's my emotional reaction? What can I do with the subject to make it my own? Picasso's inventiveness and refusal to stay in one category or style is an inspiration to me. Gauguin's woodcuts and transfer drawings, which I was looking at this week too, couldn't be more different in mood than Picasso's drawings, prints, and ceramics, but I saw, now, how complementary they are to his paintings; you can see Gauguin working on the subjects, going deeper into their emotional impact and his own psyche. Over in Wales, Clive Hicks-Jenkins returns again and again to his St. Kevin, holding the blackbird's nest, and to the blind saint Hervé, and his wolf, and there's a strong sense that he, too, is looking within.

There's something extremely exciting about moving in this direction, and realizing that a handful of subjects can provide such a rich ground for creative and personal exploration, not just for great artists but for me too, if I have the determination to stay with it over time. "It doesn't really matter what the subject is," a painter and teacher once told me. "You just have to be drunk with it."

 

Coming Up for Air

Lately my life has felt like this Chinese fan: colorful, but busy busy busy. The work retreat has ended, though, and today is the first day when I could stick my head up, out of the computer and work table level, and not only take a look around but walk out the door. Where I ended up was crawling around underneath our overgrown juniper and barberry bushes with a hand pruning saw, cutting out dead wood and somehow managing, with the armor of heavy gloves and a long-sleeved shirt, not to get too scratched up. There's something enormously satisfying about pruning, and this was the macro sort - cutting big branches, hauling box elder saplings and rampant wild rose and Virginia creeper vines out of the tangle of thorny barberry branches with all my strength until they came free with a gratifying thwack.

On the other hand, I've loved the work our small team of four accomplished during a three-day intensive retreat, from the planning to the interviews we conducted, to the intense brainstorming sessions and evenings of food, drink, and continued discussion. So much of my professional life has been more segmented and linear: meet with the client, go home and do the work, present mock-ups for approvals, get the jobs printed or produced. But I greatly prefer working in a somewhat larger team where the responsibilites are divided up according to expertise but the creative effort is much more shared by the group. This particular job is complex and involves not only good ideas and technical execution, but a careful strategy as to how we're going to build alliances and gain approval among a diverse, often competitive group of leaders in the client-institution.

All four of us are around 50 years old, and we all said, toward the end of our time together, how impossible it would have been to do this particular work when we were younger, since we're all finding it necessary to draw on all the experience we've accumulated to try to figure out how to pull this off successfully. It's hard work, but the kind that makes you run on all cylinders - and that's fun.

If all goes as planned, we'll have lunch with my father-in-law tomorrow noon and then head north for a week. This has been another intense week of work, culminating with a presentation this afternoon; all that went pretty well and if the boss doesn't do something unpredictable tomorrow, we might actually have a few days to regroup and relax. I wonder, especially in exhausted and frustrated moments, why I still do this - and the answer is that it's fun, on certain levels. Today we met some new people, consultants from D.C., and they were smart, interesting, engaged, very likeable, and impressed with what we showed them. It's that stuff - the chemistry, the creation of teams trying to fulfil a challenging and worthwhile goal, the figuring out how to do something new from scratch - that makes communications work fun and interesting, even when it's also maddening.

On the other hand, there are limits.