the cassandra pages

Reflections on an Anniversary

 

On March 20, 2003, deeply distressed about the outbreak of the Iraq War and intrigued about the new medium of blogging, I began my blog, The Cassandra Pages. Those two polarities — an abhorrence of humanity’s tendency toward destruction, and an attraction to all types of creativity — have motivated what I’ve posted here, as they’ve also motivated my life.

It seems like a good time to ask readers, some of whom have been coming here since the beginning and some of whom are quite new, what you find most valuable about this blog, what keeps you coming back, and what you’d like to see more of. The Cassandra Pages has changed over time, especially after I retired from fulltime professional work and was able to focus more on my own art, but it’s always been a personal space where I’ve tried to make sense of the world through a lens of creativity, as well as sensitivity to nature, place, spirit, and the work of both contemporary writers and artists, and those of the past.

In 2003, I had recently turned 50. I hadn’t gone through the deaths of all of our parents and their generation. We hadn’t moved to Canada. I hadn’t yet written a book, though I was working on it. I hadn’t had the experience of singing in a cathedral choir, or of riding a bicycle for most of my transportation in an urban environment. I hadn’t met all the people who’ve become dear friends of mine either in Montreal or online, all over the world. I was doing very little artwork, and hadn’t even thought about starting the publishing company that would become Phoenicia Publishing. We’d never travelled to Mexico City, or Greece, Rome, or Portugal. I hadn’t had two decades of dental problems, and didn’t yet understand, on a personal level, the complexities and challenges of aging…one could go on and on.

Over those years, I’m not sure it would be right to say I’ve “changed” as much as that I’ve become more and more myself. Some of that experience is valuable, and it’s both a pleasure and serious responsibility for me when younger people ask my specific advice, which is the only time I venture to give it. And even then, I think we, as elders, do best to talk from our own experience rather than saying “you should…” As my old New England friend Jerry Burt used to say, “be careful with your ‘shoulds’” — which also applies when talking to yourself.

Here, in March of 2025, we find ourselves in a particularly dangerous, draining, and anxiety-filled time, and it’s hard to know what to say and what not to say. From my perspective as a dual citizen who spent the first 50+ years of life in the U.S., there’s a lot I see that many Canadians may not, and it’s clear to me that many Americans have absolutely no idea what it’s like to be a Canadian right now. Protecting democracy in both countries has become a top priority for many of us, and obviously I intend to do whatever I can toward that goal.

How this blog fits into that current reality is a question I’m mulling. One thing I know for certain is that many readers have told me they come here for quiet, solace, beauty: some moments of sane respite from the craziness of the world. Even if I write about politics, I don’t want anyone to come here and leave feeling worse — I want you to feel better, more hopeful, and with some renewed energy for living your own life.

For me, balance comes from the spiritual wisdom of Contemplation and Action as two sides of the same coin. “Contemplation” is a broad term that comprises many forms, from sitting meditation to knitting to walking in nature, but it is not quietism or turning away from our own problems or those that surround us. “Action” also takes many forms, suited to each individual, but always stems from the recognition that we do not exist alone, but in an interconnected web of relationship and responsibility for one another. Achieving balance —whether in one’s own personal life or in the more public ways we interact with the world — is not easy, and especially not in times like these. To the extent that I can help others, I want to try.

Thank you so much for visiting these pages over the years, whether as a longtime or relatively new reader. I’d be very happy to hear your comments, suggestions, or requests.

 

Mexico City, February 2025

Revisiting Old Journals - 1997

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Recently a friend and I have been discussing writers’ and artists’ journals and diaries. It prompted me to go back and read some of my own, since I’ve kept a journal of sorts through most of my life. Here are some excerpts from two months in 1997. I was 45 at the time and living in Vermont. The pencil drawing above was done today.

February 1997

A comforting thought: when I DO read someone else’s journal, esp. Merton’s, I can see that they too struggle with the whole notion of ego as it is embodied in the particular form that is journal-writing. He gets disgusted just as I do, threatens to (and did, apparently) tear out pages and throw them away, finds, at times, the whole thing embarrassing and trivial and poorly written and full of sniveling navel-staring. Yet for some reason we keep on, I think more than anything because it allows this particular type of person to organize their thoughts. I used to think that I would use the journal as the basis for other writings. I don’t know if that will ever be the case — this may be it. And possibly no one will ever think it is interesting enough to read it through. But to say it is written solely for my own eyes is deceptive. It IS intended to be read, and although I try to be as free as I can in what I express, there is always the sense that I will not be able to edit it myself; that someday it will exist as a record of me. It’s an interesting scenario, and one that I might as well ignore and just get on with the writing.

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September 1997

On Labor Day we finally woke up to a day free from obligations, which we could spend reading the Sunday Times (Lady Di had just died in Paris), making some nice food, going to a movie (“Air Force One,” at the Town Hall Theater in Woodstock).

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Someday someone will write about e-mail being the death of letters, if they haven’t already, but will they also write about it as the death of journals? I have pages and pages of e-mail correspondence from this year, but the idea of collecting it, organizing it, putting it into Word files, and printing it makes me faint with fatigue. But I am sad at the thought of losing a whole year’s worth of thoughts and reflections. I find myself wondering if the form itself, though, breeds a kind of terse, abbreviated writing which lacks depth and substance. I know I try to write well no matter what the medium — a postcard even — but how much am I leaving out by the lack of a journal discipline, and the total lack of what any literarily-minded person could call “letters”. The other day I received a long message — letter — from P.Z. about the birth and first month of his daughter’s life. It was wonderful. But I find myself missing the fat envelope, the anticipation of carrying something with real weight home from the post office and opening it up to find someone’s actual handwriting — written, no less, to ME. And I find myself somewhat ashamed and saddened to notice how quickly I have given it all up myself — and thus deprived my closest friends and family of the same pleasure.

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October 2

At lunch yesterday Mounir said, “Isn’t it odd, how when we get old we want things to be the way they were when we were children. I woke up in the night feeling too hot, and I started thinking about how in Syria we used to sleep under just one cover — it was a padded thing — what do you call it? — right, a quilt, and under it there would be a sheet and on top of it a very thin layer of cloth. When they wanted to wash it they took it apart — it was sewn on the edges — and washed it. I can see my mother spreading it out on the floor — on the rug — with the sheet underneath and this other material on top, and then we would all help by getting around the edges and taking a big needle and sewing the layers together on the edges. Funny how you think of these things.”

October 3

Cold, grey and rainy today. By contrast, yesterday was brilliantly blue with the fall colors just starting toward their peak. In the afternoon the skies became that heavy leaden color and the trees stood out even more against it. Jonathan went skiing.

October 19

News of the world: a Vermont woman who has crusaded against land mines won the Nobel Peace Prize. Clinton is being investigated ad nauseam for his fund-raising practices. It just came out that John Kennedy negotiated a deal with Khrushchev to end the Cuban missile crisis - our missiles in Turkey for theirs in Cuba. Only seven people knew, and not one of them told. Orel Hershiser lost the first game of the World Series (we didn’t watch).

After several nights of frost, the trees have lost their brilliance and the hillsides have all become of a piece again — that muted late-fall tapestry I like so much. Walking across the bridge this afternoon I noticed the dusty blue stems of one of the swamp trees — I don’t know its name — and that they were the same color as the water and the sky. When you rub the stems they become dark maroon under the silvery blue.

Covid Finally Catches Me...and Forces Me to Think.

After 4 1/2 years of dodging the inevitable, I was still surprised to see the pale red line forming on the test kit. I had thought I was coming down with a cold, but it rapidly seemed rather worse than that, so I tested… and less than 24 hours later, my husband also tested positive. The next few days were not pleasant: a foggy blur of aches and fever, staring off into space, and deep exhaustion along with coughing and congestion. We’re coming out of the worst of it now, with the help of recent vaccinations, Paxlovid, and a lot of sleep.

It was perhaps a fitting time: our illness coinciding not only with the surreal run-up to the American election but my own re-reading of The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann’s epic novel, published exactly 100 years ago, is about tuberculosis patients in the rarified confines of a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps during the years just before the outbreak of the first World War.

Canada is not as removed from U.S. reality in 2024 as a snowy mountaintop was from the political machinations of Europe a century ago — modern media has made sure of that -- but it does feel one long step away. I voted several weeks ago, in Vermont, but most of my Canadian friends are only able to anxiously await the results from a country they once thought they understood, but which has become increasingly incomprehensible. When they ask me, “How is it even possible that this man might win?” I hardly know where to begin.

I’ve been reflecting not only on the election and its potential ramifications, but on the pandemic which is offically “over” even though there’s a major wave of infection in my city, and perhaps in yours too. Capitalism is always ready to seize the opportunity. In the U.S., the anti-viral treatment Paxlovid stopped being free when the COVID emergency was declared over; now a five-day course of treatment costs $1400, which is covered by some but not all insurance carriers. Medicare will cover it for most seniors through the end of December 2024; after that, who knows? Here, the treatment is covered by the province of Quebec with a small co-pay if you meet certain criteria (such as being over 60) but it sounds like hardly anyone even asks for it. Vaccinations are still free in Canada, but uptake is low. Basically, people just don’t want to think about it anymore.

As I was getting sicker, feeling the virus taking hold in my body, I remembered the fear of the early days of 2020, when we had no treatments whatsoever, when we were washing and wiping everything that came into our houses, and, on the news, seeing morgues filling with bodies. I thought about the people I knew personally who succumbed to the disease. I felt immense gratitude to the medical community of researchers and providers who risked so much and worked so hard to save lives. And I wondered how long it will be before we are willing to look back and see this period of time clearly.

In Mann’s book, illness is both an everyday reality and a metaphor. The residents of the sanitarium, who have come from many different Western and Eastern European countries and from Russia, are preoccupied with their health but also with triviality and pleasure. They eat five sumptuous meals each day and live in luxurious, hotel-like surroundings, completely removed from their previous lives and responsibilities, whether career or familial. They dress up, play games, wander in the mountains, gossip endlessly, drink and smoke, and take their rest cures wrapped in fur robes. When someone’s disease progresses to “the horizontal state”, they are confined to bed and disappear from view. Meanwhile, down below, Europe edges toward war. Two of the patients, the Italian humanist Settembrini and the Jesuit champion of traditionalism and authority, Naptha, have removed themselves from the sanitarium to live out their days in the neighboring town, and there they engage in philosophical debates about the great questions facing civilization and every human being. They battle for the mind of the young, unformed protagonist, Hans Castorp, who, before starting his planned engineering career, had visited his cousin at the sanitorium and taken up, after a somewhat dubious diagnosis, permanent residence there himself.

Mann’s book shows us human beings as primarily short-sighted and self-interested, drawn to the pursuit of pleasure and superficialities, and prone to ignoring and forgetting the lessons of recent experience — but also looks at other possibilities of how to live one’s life.

He began The Magic Mountain before the war, after visiting his own wife while she was a patient in a Davos sanitarium. He put the manuscript — originally intended as a short story! - aside and finished it after the war. His book was widely read and talked about at the time, and it has a lasting reputation as one of the greatest novels ever written. Today, not only do we seem to want to forget a worldwide catastrophe as devastating as the pandemic, and pretend it doesn’t still exist, we certainly do not want to read literature about it. As democracy is eroded by far-right ideologies and billionaire fortunes, as fascism arrives on our very doorstep, and war rains down on other people’s heads, we can still easily spend much of our time scrolling, shopping, and being entertained.

It’s taken me a while to read Mann’s long book, for the second time in my life, and it struck me with the force of truth much more than when I was young; I’ve seen a lot more of life by now. If someone writes a definitive novel about our own time, I wonder how widely it will be read, and by whom — both in the coming years, and 100 years from now. However, when the overriding question of the present day is, “How did we get here?”, it seems worthwhile for each of us to grasp that moment and give it some thought, as individuals who are living through a pivotal time in history.

Reality and Illusion

 

Parker Palmer writes, “The function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us to touch reality.” [1] I think he’s right and I would add that great love and great suffering are the normal paths of transformation. There’s an important place for practices of contemplation. I’m not throwing them out, but any practice of contemplation is for the sake of helping us sustain what we temporarily learn through great love or great suffering, whether it’s on a honeymoon or the day after a parent dies. When we’re in the middle of great grief or great love, we become a nondual thinker for a few days, weeks, or months, but we all know it doesn’t last. It doesn’t last—unless we put it into practice.  -- Fr. Richard Rohr

 

Awake in the night, three days after having extensive dental surgery, something that’s been planned for months in consultation with specialists, I find there is a lot to process. I’ve done well; I was brave and handled everything the best I could have hoped for. The specialists were excellent, and so were the medications: I’ve had a lot of swelling but very little pain. But now that the acute phase is lessening, I think it’s all hitting me a bit more -- as I would expect it would. I find my wakeful, restless mind going all over the place in the middle of the night. What have I forgotten to do, what needs my attention now, what do I need to communicate to whom, what should I do next? I thought I would have at least a week or two of exhaustion, recuperation, and being cared for, but the physical recovery is happening much faster than that; in a few days I’ll be almost back to a new “normal.” But what is that? Between the house sale, and all it entailed this summer, and the anticipation and actuality of this significant medical event which came right on its heels, it’s been -- a lot. I don’t think I can simply heal up quickly and hit the ground running.

My reluctance to write regularly on the blog through this period seems both to be a direct result of all that’s happened to me, and is happening in the world. When I see how many people let everything in their lives hang out in public, it makes me want to be silent and private. My little dip into FB this week, because of birthday messages the day after my surgery, reinforces this aversion, but it’s also the news and the media in general, not just social media. The media's relentless invasiveness in their search for attention and detail, the more salacious or anxiety-producing the better, seems to encourage individuals to do the same thing -- “surely there’s something about me that I can use to get attention...and more attention...which will alleviate my own sense of anxiety, insecurity, insignificance, and helplessness about the future.” At the bottom of this, of course, is our fear of our own mortality. But of course the attention-seeking only works temporarily, and it is all ego-driven; it doesn’t help anyone else -- in fact, it has the opposite effect. This is often true even when the person who is writing or posting does so in the guise of “helping” -- leaving aside the blatancy of “influencer” culture and its proven deleterious effect not only on adolescents but many of us, there are many self-styled gurus out there, in every “wellness” field from therapy to spirituality to nutrition, exercise, health and beauty.

Even in my own field of creativity and the arts, where it's quieter, there are plenty of people clamouring for attention. The mediums are made for this, and with every click our preferences and data are used to direct more ads and content into our feeds and inboxes. Most of the time we don’t even think about it. But, if Parker Palmer’s insight is true: “The function of contemplation in all its forms is to penetrate illusion and help us to touch reality,” then the clear message to me is that it’s time to get back on the cushion, literally or not. Too much has happened to me personally, at the same time as the escalating din of war and politics in our world, for me to want to add to it except with a calm word or image now and then. Having some tools for dealing with times of personal and collective upheaval, developed through a lifetime of reading, artistic and spiritual practice, loving others, and observing and thinking about life, helps me to know when I need to step back and take care of myself. Only then can I have any hope of offering anything genuinely useful or helpful to others, which is and should be the goal.

At the same time, I recognize in myself a desire to communicate more with this community of readers and friends -- but quietly. So I will try to do that, while giving myself the time I need to set some priorities and think about the shape of life in the days and months ahead.

Cassandra's Blog Day

Today is the 21st anniversary of starting this blog, and it's also the spring equinox...seeing the snow that fell overnight, I'm tempted to contemplate spring rather than the reasons why I continue to keep this space. However, looking up at these objects on my desktop, all of which represent parts of my writing journey, a few words come to mind.

With all the changes that have happened during the last two decades, both in my personal life and in our world, The Cassandra Pages has always felt like home. My home, as a space for working out my own thoughts, but also a place of hospitality where I could open the doors and welcome you, my readers and friends. In that respect, it's very much like an extension of the home that we all carry inside ourselves throughout life. That indestructible home continues in spite of physical displacement, changes in our life situation and in our bodies, the loss of people dear to us, pain and suffering as well as joy, changes in society and the world. And it provides a ground and a center for that private awareness of ourselves moving inexorably through time: shedding, learning, pondering, understanding, letting go. I'm not who I was 21 years ago, and I'm also the same person. It's a mystery, and also utterly natural, even if it's difficult to understand or put into words.

Writing this blog has helped me follow myself and the world more consciously and more intentionally, and, unlike a journal, it's been a way to do that in company. The rewards have been friendship, and also the sense that I've sometimes been able to give something meaningful or helpful. The longer and more reflective blog form has always felt more suitable for me than social media, and now, with more than a decade of the latter having altered society and our own lives in innumerable ways, I feel this even more strongly. I've become weary of superficiality, speed, insincerity, egotism and hypocrisy. We need to create and gravitate toward spaces that are supportive of not only who we are, but who we most want to be.

So, I'm still here. Thank you for being with me.

Books of 2023

I feel like I read a lot in the last year, but there aren't that many books on my list, mainly because several were very big ones. The two largest were The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk, and Herman Melville's Moby Dick, both read with my book group, but Orhan Pamuk's Nights of Plague was also a long read. If you have never read Moby Dick, as I somehow had not, I encourage you to do so - it really does deserve its reputation as one of the greatest novels of all time.

It took me 75 or 100 pages to warm up to Tokarczuk's The Books of Jacob, which is written in an unusual style that eschews detailed dialogue or description of the characters' thoughts or feelings, but instead relies on description of events. We found that challenging, because we just didn't have the normal ways of entering the characters' heads, but by sticking with it, the reader is rewarded with immersion in their world -- in this case, Jewish communities in eastern Poland/western Ukraine in the mid-to-late 1700s. At that time, a self-proclaimed "Messiah" named Jacob Frank appeared, and gained an ardent following. Of all the books our group read this year, this one probably created the most lively and wide-ranging weekly discussions.

Other books that stood out for our group were Lalla Romano's A Shared Silence, an intense novel about two couples in the Italian resistance, and Pamuk's Nights of Plague, an epic about a made-up Mediterranean island dealing with an outbreak of plague, and the politics and human behaviors that result.

I was thrilled about the publication of Teju Cole's Tremor, his first novel since Open City. Readers here will know that he and I are long-time friends, and I was privileged to be one of the first readers of the manuscript, so I don't feel that I can "review" the book objectively. I will say that it is beautifully written and conceived, as we have come to expect from Teju; it is timely, dealing with subjects from marriage to racism, from the ownership of art objects to the complexities of academic life, from friendship to, perhaps most importantly, death. It is also experimental, pushing the structure of the novel in new directions, and involving the reader in a reading experience that is not entirely linear. So, of course, I recommend it highly.

Greek Lessons, by the Korean writer Han Kang, intrigued me because of its title and also because of its knockout cover, and I was not disappointed. This book, also, pushes the form of the novel, and tells a poignant story of two people who use the study of language to address their own difficulties in communication. It's probably the most unusual novel I read this year. I plan to write a full-length review of it later.

While we're speaking of highly original writing, I was extremely impressed by Nay Saysourinho's The Capture of Krao Farini. This short, chapbook-length work defies categorization as to genre; it is listed by the publisher, Ugly Ducking Press, as poetry, and could be called a narrative prose poem of sorts; it includes illustrations that are integral to the text. It is a work of art that cuts to the heart of what human beings are capable to doing to each other; it's the most original thing I've read this year and I found it brilliant, deeply disturbing, and haunting.

More recently, our book group has begun John Berger's trilogy, "Into Their Labours", about the lives of peasants in the French Alps near Berger's home in the second half of his life. As V., one of our book group members, said, "I am attracted to Berger right now because of his deep humanity," and she was right; these are books that get to the essence of what is human, what constitutes survival, what we need most, and what is unnecessary. They are antidotes to capitalism, consumerism and fads, social media and modern conformity; they're not without violence, but it tends to be the violence of raising and slaughtering your own animals for food, or the rough feuds of local people. Likewise, Patrick Leigh Fermor's Roumeli speaks of Greece before mass tourism, when wandering tribes of herders still moved through the remote mountains, speaking dialects that were already in danger of being lost, and mountain-top monasteries were still inaccessible except by horseback or donkey. Having visited some of these remote places myself, his words were more meaningful now than when I first read the book some years ago, and I find myself feeling grateful to both him and Berger for writing down what they observed, and what came to matter deeply to them. This encourages me as a writer, too -- that the daily lives of ordinary people do matter, and it is in our hands as writers to preserve the truths of their existence.

I should also mention that I do a lot of online reading of shorter fiction and essays (in places like The New Yorker, Emergence Magazine, Beshara, The Guardian long reads, quite a few individual Substacks) and I'm a regular subscriber to Brick, a very fine Canadian literary journal which doesn't confine itself to solely Canadian authors, and publishes a lot of work by people of color, indigenous writers, and immigrants, and (I think) as many female as male writers. Do check it out; it's a good journal to support.

Please, as always, do share your own reading lists or highlights from this year! Here's my full list:

2023

The Abyss, Marguerite Yourcenar (in progress)

Roumeli, Patrick Leigh Fermor (rereading)

The Capture of Krao Farini, Nay Saysourinho

Pig Earth, John Berger #

Tremor, Teju Cole

A Recipe for Daphne, Nektaria Anastasiadou

*Greek Lessons, Han Kang

*Moby Dick, Herman Melville #

The War that Killed Achilles, Caroline Alexander

The Tentmaker, Michelle Blake

Three Short Works, Gustav Flaubert #

*A Shared Silence, Lalla Romano  #

The Sleeping Car Porter, Suzette Mayr #

Just a Mother, Roy Jacobsen (Barroy Chronicles 4) #

Nights of Plague, Orhan Pamuk #

Woman at Point Zero, Nahwal el Saadawi

House of Names, Colm Toibin

District and Circle, Seamus Heaney

Amsterdam, Ian McEwan

Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier #

*The Books of Jacob, Olga Tokarczuk#

The Other Side of the Mountain, Journals of Thomas Merton Vol 7., Fr. Thomas Merton

Enduring Love, Ian McEwan

The Innocent, Ian McEwan

Announcing my new book, "Snowy Fields"

I'm happy to announce the forthcoming (mid/late Nov 2023) publication of my book of drawings and written reflections, SNOWY FIELDS, done during the past year. It's a slightly oversized 9" x 10" paperback art book, printed on coated paper. It contains the entire series of drawings, a long reflective essay that I wrote about place, identity, grief, and my artistic process, and an essay about my work by the British artist, writer, composer and educator Michael Szpakowski. The book can be pre-ordered now at a reduced price, and you can find all the details about it on the Phoenicia Publishing website.

It's always exciting when a project that began in uncertainty gradually comes together, takes shape, and is finally refined into a finished form. The moment when it is launched, to find its own way into the world, is also my chance to thank YOU, my online readers, who encouraged me and offered feedback as this series of drawings took shape. I also thank all those who corresponded with me about the artwork, and supported me through a time of change, grief, and discovery. You helped me personally, and you helped this project come into being. I'm grateful.

Cassandra at Twenty

Today this blog celebrates its twentieth anniversary. I almost forgot, because I was focused on it being the first day of spring: an event we're eagerly anticipating up here but about which there's been precious little evidence, other than the maple sap running, and brighter, longer days. However, I'll post these grape hyacinths in the hope that we'll be seeing real ones -- in about a month.

The craziness of living in, and enduring, such a northern climate may be matched by the craziness of having blogged here for twenty years. Or perhaps I'm just stubborn. Social media was supposed to be the death of blogging, and it did do-in most of the blogs that started when mine did. Other platforms were touted as the next best thing, but I think most bloggers just got fatigued. Keeping up a blog, trying not to repeat yourself, and finding something personal to say is hard enough over years and years, but when the readers and commenters start to go away, it's even harder to remember why you began it in the first place.

But I do remember: I was a journal writer and determined letter-writer, with a well-established practice, and blogging fit me to a T, not only because it satisfied those same urges, but because it also added the possibility of a visual component. The latter, of course, became the raison d'être for Instagram, and I have loved being part of a community of artists and photographers there. But for those who want to write regularly and seriously, nothing has really worked as well as blogs, and for someone like me who's a visual artist as well, and wants to own her own website rather than be data-harvested at every click of the mouse and keyboard, blogging has continued to be the best choice. I guess stubborn perseverance has just kept me at it, because first of all I write and make a record of my art for myself -- I'd do this anyway -- but how much better it is to share it with you, communicate with you, and get to know each other.

Jacaranda blooms in Mexico City, back in March, 2017.

The doubts I was having about blogging a few years ago have mostly disappeared. It's clear to me that this is where I belong, and that it works for me. Adding an art education component will satisfy another strong urge in me: to teach and encourage others who may have always wanted to draw or paint, or who want to do it better; or encourage those who loved making art when they were kids, only to get discouraged or distracted along the way.

A recent change is that I have begun mirroring this blog on Substack. The content will be exactly the same, but if people want to subscribe there and receive a notification via email when there's a new post, that's an easy way to get one. (I know some of you don't use feed readers, which is another possibility. While I do always post a link to new posts on Facebook, you may not be there either.) Substack posts also receive a link on my Twitter feed. Many Substack writers are trying to get people to subscribe for a monthly or yearly payment. I'm not going to do that; the content here has always been free, and I see no reason to change that. The only possible exception would be if I decide to offer formal online art courses, but that's a ways into the future and won't impact the blog at all.

Red bottle-brush tree bloom, from the same Mexico City trip.

Whether you have been reading my words and looking at my pictures for twenty years or have just found me recently, I want to say thank you. It's humbling to know that people come here repeatedly, looking for some solace or calmness in the difficult days we are all facing, and I'm glad that the writing and art which help sustain me also, sometimes, help to sustain you. After all, that's why we think deeply, why we create, and why we are here together. Thank you for visiting, and for encouraging me with your presence. If you've never left a comment, that's absolutely fine, but please don't be shy -- I try to respond personally to all comments, and will be really glad to hear from you. And for those of you who've become my friends over the years, whether virtually or in real life, and in so many corners of the globe -- how amazing it is that we found each other, and how everlastingly grateful I am for the ways in which we enrich each other's lives! 

Coming Up for Air

Almost sunset. Acrylic on sketchbook paper. 10/26/2022.

Well.

It's been quite a stretch of time since March: a house move, caring for my father in four different living situations, a studio move, my father's death and funeral, and a whole new set of responsibilities, all of which has taken place during a pandemic which -- for us -- continues to be a concern and a factor in many of our decisions. We returned from our latest trip to central New York on Sunday night, and for the first time in all of these months, there's no more moving to do: I have a little bit of free time and the chance to consider what I might want to do with myself. 

So much has changed, and I have changed with it; this is not a simple matter of picking up where I left off, either last March, or before the pandemic began in 2020. When I ask myself, "What has not changed? What are you still passionate about?" the answers are easy: the people and creatures I love and care about; art; music; writing and reading; the natural world...and learning. But because of COVID, that "learning" component isn't going to include a lot of foreign travel. We are not ready to start traveling to the kind of destinations we used to, and we aren't going to be participating in large indoor group activities or crowds, or going to restaurants or parties with a lot of unfamiliar people. Pretty much everyone we know who has done these things has eventually gotten sick, and unfortunately we aren't in a position to risk that; even with all the vaccinations and boosters, there's no way to tell how the virus will affect an immuno-compromised person. We're using public transportation again, and going to certain kinds of gatherings; we do have people over here and have gone to friends' homes; and in good weather we did plenty of outdoor socializing -- and, luckily for all of us, that balmy weather stretched well into November.

The height of autumn. Watercolor in sketchbook. 10/9/22.

But last night it snowed in Montreal, and it's been snowing all day today. The stark fact, as I consider winter, is that society has moved on without us; we are like people with a disability, and it is up to us to figure out how to structure our lives in the new reality in which we find ourselves: how to combat isolation, deal with loss, find meaning and connection and purpose within certain limitations.

So the deficit side of the balance sheet includes limited travel; no longer singing in the choir, which was a huge part of my life; and some limitations on gatherings and events. I'm still dealing with grief, loss and change -- and I'm older. I may not feel it very much, but it's a fact.

In an undecided middle area are my publishing company, Phoenicia, and my involvement with social media, with the latter tipping decidedly toward less involvement rather than more, though I'll continue connecting with my creative community on Instagram.

Late fall view from my studio window. Acrylic on sketchbook paper. 10/20/22.

On the positive side is a greatly-improved, integrated living and work situation that's going to work a lot better for us. I have several unfinished projects begging for attention -- two book projects, and the body of drawings about Iceland that I began long ago and which is about 3/4 finished (more on these in a subsequent post.) My piano is finally in my home again, and there's good soundproofing here; I've been playing nearly every day and working on learning some new pieces of music. The piano is out of tune, but that's temporary, and maybe there will be new and different opportunities for making music with other people. The weekly online book group I helped organize back in 2020 is still going strong, and I've actually made a number of wonderful new online friends over the past couple of years, and a couple of new in-person friends too. Access to nature is greatly improved by the fact that I've inherited my father's house in a beautiful rural place, and though it's six hours away, we can go there when we want a change from the city. 

City at night. watercolor and gouache on sketchbook paper. 10/13/22.

Finally, there is this blog, which has endured all sorts of personal, technological, and societal changes since it began in 2003. As a firm believer in owning and controlling one's own online content, I've no intention of letting it go, and instead, have been thinking about how to infuse it with more energy now that I have some time.  Could it be more educational, more helpful? Could it help to launch new projects and bring people together, as it has in the past (quarrtsiluni, Phoenicia Publishing, online groups)? What else is there that I haven't considered? There's nothing wrong with social media functioning as a hub where interested people find content and go to it, but as our disillusionment with these social platforms and their capitalist agendas grow, could blogs regain some of their gravitas and a new sense of purpose? I wonder.

It depends somewhat on our expectations. I do know that I don't care about the number of followers or readers, and we are long since past those heady days where aspiring writers thought they'd become well-known through their blogs -- there's no way that someone steadily writing good but long-form posts would become famous like a seductive Instagram influencer, not in today's world! But careful and engaged readers and writers still do exist: Dave Bonta's weekly poetry blog digest bears witness to that. Blogs like Language Hat, Velveteen Rabbi, Hoarded Ordinaries, and Whiskey River have kept on quietly, steadily, thoughtfully posting for nearly two decades now, and there are many others. If these are not impressive and worthy bodies of creative work, I don't know what qualifies.

We can't tell what's ahead, as we've all found out, but we can certainly think about the present and what to do with it. I wonder how you are feeling right now, and what your insights are -- I'd be happy to hear from you in the comments.

 

Desk, Domain

I'm sitting at my grandmother's antique slant-top desk. It's a gorgeous piece of cabinetry, larger than my own desk, with detailed inlays and dovetail joinery, drawers for pens and supplies, vertical pull-out holders for writing papers, and a locking cabinet in the center. I feel a bit dwarfed, a sensation which isn’t helped by the fact that all the chairs in the house are too low for it.

When we lived in the big house in town, this desk was always in the front room downstairs, its rich brown wood contrasting with the Victorian floral wallpaper behind it. The desk was directly across from the upholstered chair where my grandmother read and knitted and embroidered, drank martinis in the evening, and played canasta. Its right side touched the wooden frame of the wide doorway between the living room and the dining room -- and on that frame were scratched the heights of my cousins and myself each year as we grew.

My grandmother used the desk when she sat down to do her daily correspondence, and I think also to pay bills -- but I never remember my grandfather sitting at it. The top held various curios, most of which have now disappeared, but were fascinating to me as a child: a heavy, dark purple glass bear whose head came off to reveal a container inside; two Chinese brass vases and an ivory elephant: gifts from faraway from my mother's high school sweetheart who was beloved by the family and had gone down with his Navy ship in the Pacific in WWII; a little oval wooden box filled with tiny South American figures -- no more than half an inch high -- dressed in colorful costumes made of bits of fabric and wrapped, colored thread; and many other things that I might be allowed to play with and dream about on a special day. It was clear, though, that I was never to open the drawers or look at any letters or writing: this was her private domain.

After my grandparents died, in their nineties, my parents built a large living room addition on their own house here at the lake, and moved some of the furniture they had inherited. The desk was placed against the back wall of the new living room, fitting perfectly into the center of the white-painted paneling my father had carefully constructed. The four big drawers below held maps and stamp collections, papers and scrapbooks, but if my mother or father ever used the desk itself, I didn’t know about it; they did their paperwork on a modern desk downstairs, or on the round oak table where we ate, near the kitchen. For them I think it was mostly a decorative, formal showpiece that offered convenient, out-of-sight storage, and they kept the slant-top closed. Three Wedgwood vases stood on the top, along with a pair of candlesticks, and above them hung an airbrush painting of mine from the 1980s that is a closeup of a purple pansy, rather Georgia O’Keefe-esque. In the thirty years since they built the addition, this arrangement never changed.

During our current stay at the lake house, since we are now alone here and likely to remain so, I’ve taken a few tentative steps toward moving a few things around: a decision that feels both illicit and liberating. We had already moved a few pieces of furniture to my father’s room in his assisted-living home, so that was the beginning, and my father’s presence during that process seemed to give permission. The other night I removed several other things from the bedroom, cleared off the top of the dresser and replaced figurines and photographs with a single modern ceramic vase I’d given my mother years ago. I think the urge to do this came from the radical cleaning of our apartment we’d done before putting it on the market, but it had barely occurred to me before that I could do any such thing in this overcrowded house. I continued by clearing the counter at the top of the stairs; I stripped the kitchen countertops bare and polished the white formica before replacing only the barest essentials and stowing everything else in cupboards; we bought a mop and scrubbed the tile floor. Outdoors, I picked up a decade’s worth of fallen branches, raked leaves, pruned overgrown bushes, swept the railroad-tie steps going down to the lake, got out the outdoor furniture and put it in a different spot, and with my husband’s help, dragged a bench down to my favorite place just above the shoreline. All of this took place at a slow rate of one project every day or two.

Tonight, tired and worried about my father, I came into this room, which we seldom use, and stretched out on the couch. I did my Duolingo lesson and the Times mini crossword and Spelling Bee on the free phone app which always kicks me out after a certain point. Then I pulled a knitted afghan over myself, thinking I might take a little nap, accompanied by the contemplative robin that’s nesting in the light fixture just outside the terrace door...but my eyes kept opening and gazing across the room at the desk. After a few minutes I had gotten up, opened the top, and set to work sorting the incongruous things I found inside: a strange, heavy antique brass writing stand with two glass inkwells; bottles of disk cleaner for LP records; three old letter openers, an intricate silver one that looked Turkish and quite lethal, and two that are clearly African; a collection of DVDs; a Silva compass with a leather case; a collection of old brass drafting equipment and a velvet snap-top jewelry box filled with old Schaeffer and Parker graphite leads; a handwritten wiring map for my father’s cabinet of turntables, tape decks and DVD players. As I did this, slowly, the thought began to form: could I actually use this desk? Could I write something here? When all the surfaces and pigeonholes were empty, I removed the vases and candlesticks to the piano, and wiped the wood with a barely-damp cloth. My sketchbook and watercolor palette went on the left side, some pens on the right. Then I ascertained that, yes, there was an outlet on the wall in fairly close proximity, set my laptop, mousepad and mouse in the center of the open desk, noticing for the first time the reassuring dents and scratches in the old mahogany -- and turned the computer on.

It felt like... a moment. Like introducing your close but perhaps slightly questionable young friend to a beloved elderly grandparent. But the hinges didn’t give way, the marquetry didn’t fall out: in fact, the wood felt warm and beckoning and somehow personal, and I began immediately to write.