Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Friday, December 31, 2004
update: Jan 1 - all is fixed, J. did it, and is collecting real kisses.
HELP?
After the initial enthusiastic announcement, I've realized that my site feed is not updating properly. I got so frustrated trying to figure out why that I finally put in a note to Blogger technical support, but haven't heard back yet. Does anyone out there have experience with this that they can share? I think I've taken care of all the obvious reasons...like making sure the damn thing is actually enabled. Your help will be warmly welcomed, and rewarded with virtual kisses.
The magnitude of the southeast Asian disaster is too great for me to write anything more about it. Have so many people ever left this world in one day before? What is the possible response, other than tears, and an attempt to help? I think of friends who often travel there for work; of friends whose families live there; of books read; of paintings and photographs of idyllic paradises and sandy beaches - everything that is exotic to a person who lives in the company of ice and snow - and of poverty, rickety dwellings, and difficult and often dangerous lives. And then all thoughts return to the images of parents weeping over small bodies, of wailing faces turned toward the sky. There simply aren't words for any of this.
The other appropriate response, I think, is to reconsider our own lives - both the fragile ice on which we slip, and the solid land that feels secure. All of it is life, and we know the one because we know the other. Walking yesterday into the park, I quickly realized that underneath the several inches of snow was glare ice - sheets of rain that had fallen and frozen on absolutely everything. I had to adjust and walk carefully, but I know basically how to do this, having lived in this climate all my life. I walked past the two hockey rinks made of "boards" set up right on the ground and flooded when the weather got cold enough. Out on the ice, some skaters were practicing their footwork and shots, while another boy skated strongly with a shovel, pushing aside the new snow to make a good surface. In the next rink, a family was just leaving, carrying their skates with laces tied over their shoulders. It was just after noon, on a brilliantly bright, perfect winter day, and parents began coming into the park, tugging their little children behind them on sleds. Children ran happily; couples walked arm in arm, bundled behind scarves or fur-edged hoods. I walked over to the lake and down the walk that encircles it, just as I did so many times in the summer. Eager skaters, more sure-footed than I, ran down the icy path. People in skates walked easily down the snowbanks toward the frozen lake, leaving thin herringbone tracks. Two girls skated and talked, animatedly waving their skate guards int heir hands. A woman sat on a bench, smoking, and then got up and glided effortlessly onto the ice to join a throng of other skaters -- from tiny children to old people, all relaxed and totally at home on the ice, no one showing off -- just, in that typically Canadian laid-back way, enjoying themselves. It was... beautiful, and something I had never seen: so many people out in a far-northern city park, embracing winter, revelling in it. Remembering my youth skating on a lake, I longed to run over to the park building and rent a pair of skates, but I was already cold and knew I wouldn't have stayed for more than fifteen minutes more. (I also imagined, too painfully, what it would feel like to fall on that hard ice, which I'd be sure to do - if and when I do try it again, I will go with more padding on certain parts of my body, and hope I don't break a wrist.)
As I've worked here today, occasionally braving the anguished words and images flooding blogs and the media, somehow the images of the gliding skaters have helped me: their frictionless motion a surprise that belies our usual earth-trapped plodding; their joy in a frozen world a reminder that delight is far more often nature's gift to us than sadness.
Several readers have asked me to enable an XML feed; I've finally done it. Sorry to have taken so long on this. The address is http://cassandrapages.blogspot.com/atom.xml; you can also click on the Bloglines subscription button in the left column.
Monday, December 27, 2004
I'm so horrified. It's as if we can't even take a breath without another, amplified example of terrible suffering in our world. The BBC placed the death toll at 23,000 this morning. 23,000 souls! And so suddenly. The magnitude of the tragedy is incomprehensible.
The report explained how a tsunami is created: that after the ocean floor is displaced vertically along the fault - which was 1,000 meters long in this case - the huge waves are created. in deep ocean, they can travel at speeds up to 500 km/hr. When they near the shore, the waves slow down and are compressed upwards to tremendous heights.
When I was in grade school, I read a book for young people about a tsunami. It was The Big Wave by the novelist Pearl Buck, who had become famous for writing a book which seems ironically titled today, The Good Earth. I can still see the pictures in that edition of The Big Wave, and remember how I felt, as a landlocked girl who had experienced no natural force greater than a blizzard or crashign thunderstorm, at discovering that such a thing could happen. It was around the same time when my parents gave me another book about the ocean - a young people's edition of The Sea Around Us by Rachel Carson, which begins:
Beginnings are apt to be shadowy, and so it is with the beginnings of that great mother of life, the sea. many people have debated how and when the earth got its ocean, and it is not surprising that their explanations do not always agree. For the plain and inescapable truth is that no one was there to see...
I've never lived near the sea, but those two books formed an early and lasting impression of the ocean's geology, complexity, and the interdependence of human and ocean life. Every time I've travelled over the ocean or stood at its edge -- or, rarely, entered into its salty, throbbing water -- awareness of that awesome power has always been hand in hand with its majesty and hypnotic beauty. The ocean frightens me far more than a dark forest full of sounds and rustlings, and my heart goes out to the people of Asia whose are now suffering so terribly. A friend in Japan suggests contributions to Doctors without Borders/Medecins sans Frontieres; it is one small thing we can do that will help get aid to the people quickly. But nothing can bring back the lives that have been extinguished by those waves.
During the week before Christmas, I read Stephen Mitchell's The Gospel According to Jesus, given to me by a Jewish friend who likes to talk with me about things religious. Mitchell, who is, I believe, a Buddhist, is interested in what the religions have in common. He has translated varied texts - from the Baghavad Gita to Rilke, the Tao te Ching to the Psalms and the Book of Job - and his Gospel According to Jesus is an attempt to present a Jesus who can speak to Buddhists, Muslims and Jews as well as Christians. Putting aside for the moment my feelings about Mitchell's rather audacious and, I think, very subjective approach to dealing with religious texts, I read the book as generously as I could.
Relying almost entirely on the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Luke, and Mark), some of the Gnostic Gospels, and on a selective group of Biblical critics and commentators, he tried to decide which of Jesus' purported saying and actions are authentic, and from these wrote a single, combined text that includes a narrative of the events that ring true to him, and the parables, comments and actions that he feels Jesus really said and did. Mitchell explains his reasoning and his selections in some detail, and whether you agree or not, it makes for interesting reading.
He begins by discarding the infancy narratives, the deification of Mary and her identification as "Jesus's first disciple" (in fact he tries to prove that Jesus was misunderstood by his family, and rejected them to a large extent); and the resurrection. He removes everything from the Gospels that he either doesn't see as authentic or which was, in his opinion, an early-church attempt to discredit the Jews and later became fuel for anti-Semitism - the entire trial before Pilate goes away, for example, as well as Jesus's criticism of the Pharisees.
What's left is Jesus the teacher and healer. In that regard, I think Mitchell succeeded admirably - certainly Muslims, Hindus and Jews can find much here that will resonate with them - and he in fact quotes luminaries from each tradition speaking about the universality of Jesus' message. Mitchell acknowledges that Christians may have a hard time with what he's done, and he's right - even though I'm extremely liberal when it comes to biblical criticism, and very, very far from a literalist, especially on such matters as the virgin birth and the meddling with the story done by the early church for various political and institutional purposes, he went farther than I think he needed to, and probably further than what is justified by history or current scriptural scholarship.
What is striking is that even in this severely deconstructed version, the teachings and the basic message are absolutely shining, and just as immediate today as they must have been when Jesus was alive. That was useful for me to see; as if for once one could view the historical person set against a plain white backdrop, without the overlay of centuries of institutionalization, liturgy, and political wrangling - not to mention bad art and treacly hymnody. Rather than diluting Christmas for me this year, it gave me some new food for thought as I navigated the narratives, the creche scenes, the carols and hymns that in many ways I still associate with my childhood.
As a counterpoint to Mitchell's book, I read this essay from The Guardian, sent to me by a friend, about how the world has never been ready for the real person Jesus was during his lifetime, or the revolutionary message he taught, but has preferred to reduce him to a sweet baby or a victim dying in agony, ignoring what came inbetween. This piece by Rev. Dr. Giles Fraser, a British priest and lecturer at Oxford, is well worth reading.
My rector, a liberation theologian who is courageous - perhaps even foolhardy - preached last week about Joseph as the first feminist, because despite living in a time of strict religious law, he did not follow the verses in the Jewish scripture that called for the stoning of a pregnant unmarried woman, and instead showed Mary compassion, caring for her and her unborn child. (Mitchell makes many convincing arguments, based on the Gospel texts and semitic cultural tradition, that Jesus was always considered illegitimate and a bastard by the surrounding society.) Afterwards, the rector said, a conservative member of the congregation came up to him and said, "Only you would make Joseph into a political figure," while others approached him with tears in their eyes, thanking him for a sermon they viewed as radical, eye-opening, and liberating. Would that more of our churches had the courage to leave aside the simplistic manger images, and preach this sort of sermon during the Christmas season.
Moved as I was by Stonehenge when I finally saw it, fifteen or so years ago, rising above the Salisbury Plain, I’m not a solstice person. Here in the hills of Vermont there are a number of people who observe a self-styled blend of New Age beliefs and pagan practices, including quite a few women my age or older who favor Birkenstocks and long flowing skirts printed with moons and stars, and wear their graying hair down their backs; some of them know how to dowse, or to make aromatherapy essences from flowers; some of them weave or spin; they like to talk about crystals, and labyrinths, and angels in their gardens, and it seems to me that they don’t have much to do with men. I’ve been invited a few times to attend some of their gatherings for one or the other of the solstices, but I politely decline; I guess I’m too much of a Christian to feel comfortable there (while acknowledging the pagan aspects of the holiday I am celebrating!)
But that doesn’t mean I’m not affected by the solstice, or that I don’t notice it. It would be impossible not to, living this far north, where light for living things feels in short supply even in the summer. And still, Vermont is not really northern; it’s barely halfway to the pole. The other night I handed my Icelandic neighbor a couple of radishes from a plate of crudités before dinner. He looked skeptically at the red orbs in his hand, and then bit into one. “Hmm,” he said, looking surprised. “This is not bad!” He explained that in Iceland the growing season is so short that radishes are one of the few things that people grow, and kids are always given seeds and a little plot of ground. “But they always taste awful,” he said. “Woody and musty, or just tasteless. Not like this at all.” According to him, no Icelander even tries to grow a tomato outdoors, or a green bean. I should be grateful.
On these shortest days, I think of the longest ones, when the evening light glances warm and golden against the delphinium and roses. Today, the house is frigid, and by three p.m. it was starting to get dark. Now, at five, there is less skylight than at nine on a midsummer night, and it is a deep blue shading to azure, split by black tree branches, and grounded by coldly reflective snow.
The last year I was in college, my roommate and I had an apartment in the student ghetto. There were two bedrooms, and a kitchen, small bath, and living room between the two. When we moved in, in the fall, we tossed a coin. I got the light-filled southwestern bedroom, and A. got the smaller, darker bedroom on the north side. We planned to switch at midyear. Every evening, we’d emerge from studying in our bedrooms, make dinner, and sit at the little wooden table in the kitchen to eat, watching the sun set over the lake in the distance. Thunderstorms swept across the valley from the west, and sometimes lake-effect snows obscured all vision. But the sun kept up its determined journey.
We got in a habit of marking its setting place each evening on the window glass. In late December, we marked the sun at its furthest point south, and I mentioned that it was time to switch rooms. I hated the thought of moving into that cave, but didn’t say so – fair was fair. But to my astonishment, A. said she had come to like her dark room; she’d come home from several hours at the piano in one of the equally tiny basement practice rooms in the music building, close her bedroom door and study or read with the blinds down all day. It felt safe, she said. I knew she was unhappy about her life, a failed love affair, confused about what to do after graduating. I urged her to take the bigger, lighter room, but she insisted. So we kept things as they were, meeting in the kitchen every night to cook a simple supper and eat together and talk about music, books, friends, professors, love; and watching as the sun now made its slow progression toward the north. We kept marking the days on the window glass, each little dot representing one day closer to leaving this existence we both loved, for another unknown one.
A. lives in Georgia now, and I’ve just set up a household even further north than that relatively northern apartment. Our lives diverged; we traveled miles from those dreams and heart-to-heart talks, and despite a friendship that was once extremely close, we’ve lost touch. But writing this I've realized that back in that apartment, the sun has faithfully traveled up and down the window thirty-one times.
It's been a busy and very Christmasy day. I was up early and at church for choir rehearsal at 9:00 am; sang the 10:00 service; went back home, picked up two pans of scalloped potatoes I made last night and drove with J. to the annual choir lunch at one member's beautiful colonial house in a neighboring town; then back to church for rehearsal for the Lessons&Carols service, which we sang at 5:00. The concert went really well, and it was a joy to sing some lovely music - among them a difficult setting of Hodie, Christus Natus Est by Poulenc, and the totally melodic Shepherd's Farewell by Hector Berlioz - and to be with "my choir" again. I'll sing again with them on Christmas Eve.
This feels just about right. I've sung with this group for the past ten or eleven years, and it is a huge commitment - in addition to two rehearsals a week (Thursday night and Sunday morning) and preparing two pieces to perform each Sunday, we also perform four other events each year - a special fall Evensong, a Requiem Mass for All Saint's Day, this Lessons&Carols service late in Advent, a Bach cantata or the like for Lent - this year the choir will be doing the St. John Passion - and a light, short Mass in the spring - such as a Missa Brevis by Mozart or Schubert. Sometimes we also go on a trip, singing elsewhere - we sang at the National Cathedral in Washington one year; last year we combined with other choirs for Gene Robinson's consecration. I dearly love it, and I love the other singers and the very caring community we create among ourselves. Our director is an enormously gifted and entertaining teacher as well as musician, and I feel like I've learned more about litugical and choral music in the past eight years with him than in all my previous years of singing. But in the past couple of years, the obligation and commitment have felt like they were getting to be too much.
Fortunately, the choir really is like a family, to which one is always welcome to return for one week or a season. I walked into rehearsal on Thursday night after being away nearly the entire autumn, and was greeted with open arms; it was up to me to do whatever I needed to do to learn the music quickly and get up to speed so I could sing this weekend. Past members and friends often come and sing with the choir, especially for special events; the basic core group stays pretty stable but a number of new members have joined in the past few years. I was glad to see that my robe and music cubby hadn't been assigned to anyone else yet.
What I hadn't realized until this week was that I had needed to stay away this fall in order to settle into my new life and make a successful transition. The choir has meant a great deal to me over the years, and music itself means even more in my life. I couldn't really face giving any of that up when I felt uncertain and unsettled about what was in the future, and it was difficult to answer people's questions and concerns about what we were doing; I was a fixture in many people's lives too. At the time I didn't quite understand the depths of the pain and emotion I was feeling; I just knew that it felt better to stay away. But now I seem to be through that, and it felt really joyful to see everyone, to sing, to enjoy that wonderful annual get-together at my friend's house, and especially to share this part of Christmas which means a lot to all of us - doing our very best to make beautiful music together and share it with the many people who come to listen, to think, to reflect, and hopefully be moved in some way.
But I also realize that now I feel free to leave, or - even better - to come and go. At this point in my life, I don't need to (and can't, frankly) sing in a formal group. I can also take on a different role in this particular group than I have for years, and it's OK; I felt just as surrounded by their love as I always have, and was very happy to be able to understand and express to many people how happy I was to be with them again. And to sing! To sing.
It begins in the senses, it is done with words, its end is communicated insight. And when it is truly successful the insight is communicated to the reader with a pang, a heightened awareness, a sharpening of feeling, a sense of personal exposure, danger, involvement, enlargement. It is hard to believe that even the most intellectualized poets and novelists want their messages to come through cold. An emotional response in the reader, corresponding to an emotional charge in the writer - some passion of vision or belief - is essential, and it is very difficult to achieve. It is also the thing that, once achieved, unmistakably distinguishes the artist in words from the everyday user of words." From On Teaching and Writing Fiction, by Wallace Stegner.
We went to see my father-in-law the evening we got back from Montreal. “I don’t know about that - he’s had a bad day,” said my sister-in-law on the phone. She has taken on a kind of gate-keeper/doomsday role after her mother died; the latter had been the repository of negative energy and "whatever-can-go-wrong-will"- thinking in the family.
“He sounded fine to me,” I said. “We just called him and he said to come on over.”
“OK – whatever,” she said.
We took off, and fifteen minutes later found him sitting in his favorite chair, resplendently attired in a dark blue fleece bathrobe, barefoot. He looked glad to see us. “Sit down, sit down,” he said, gesturing magnanimously toward the sofa. “How are you?”
“Fine. How are you?” we asked.
“No good!” he said, cheerfully. “Nothing’s working. And the day is fast approaching when I just won’t get out of bed in the morning.” A wide grin spread across his face, and a look of great contentment. “Bed is so wonderful! When I lie there I haven’t a care in the world! My legs don’t hurt, my back doesn’t hurt…it’s heaven.” Now an evil grimace: “And then I force myself to get up, and I’m reminded of gravity. Aaach!” We all laughed; this is becoming the litany with which each encounter begins; once we get it out of the way we can start talking about something else.
Before Thanksgiving I bought him an orchid plant in the supermarket; he loves his plants and enjoys taking care of them, and this one was a major hit. What we have only come to realize slowly is that the plants – and their flowers or fruit – have become a sort of currency for him. For two summers he has used the cherry or grape tomatoes grown on his balcony as small gifts for other residents of the retirement home – usually women who have been kind to him – putting one perfect fruit in a small basket that he’s scrounged from somewhere and accompanying the gift with a witty poem composed for the person and occasion. Now he told us that he has given orchid flowers to several people. “I’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of them!” he admitted. “People LOVE them.” He also gave away his entire amaryllis plant to a friend who had had a bad fall, announcing bluntly, “I told her I wanted it back after it finished blooming.”
He said he wanted to give another orchid flower to a woman who had helped him in the dining room that day. “She saw me struggling to carry my dishes back to the kitchen, and she came running all the way from the other end of the dining room to help me. I must have looked really pathetic for her to do that! But I was so touched about the way she did it –she was so kind. And she’s an old woman who ought to be dead herself! So I must do something for her to tell her I appreciated it. But I don’t know her name!”
Later on we talked about his sister and how she got married. Her husband had been in love with another woman whose family would have none of it, because he was from an unimportant family in a small village. My father-in-law’s father got wind of it, and sent word to the man’s family that they had an eligible daughter with none of the encumbrances – and eventually the two families worked out the arrangement. “He never got over Alice, though,” he said, laughing. “To the end of his days his eyes would get misty whenever she was mentioned. She was some girl, too – one of the first women to matriculate at the American University in Beirut. Very beautiful, very intelligent. Her last name was “Teen”, and her family was very anxious to be something important. They had someone research the name in England or Scotland and they found that Teen was an old name there and so they somehow concocted a story that they were connected to this old English family - I think they even had some papers drawn up - and people believed it. Amazing.” He shook his head in disbelief. “'Teen’ means “fig” in Arabic, you know.” We didn’t, and shook our heads. “Oh, yes,” he said. “One of the other boys at AUB wrote a poem for Alice that we all quoted."
He looked up at the ceiling, shut his eyes, and recited the first few lines in Arabic, and then translated: “O fig, O apple, O pomegranate, O grape!” “These are all fruits that have ‘feminine connotations’ in Arabic,” he explained, looking at us conspiratorially.
After we went home I looked up “al Teen”, which does mean “fig”, and found that there is a sura in the Qu’ran, the 95th sura, which is called “al Teen, the fig.” Of all the fruits he remembers, my father-in-law becomes the most sentimental and nostalgic when he speaks of the figs, drippingly ripe, bending down the branches of trees. Today when we went back for lunch, I asked him for a copy of the Qu’ran, found the sura, and asked him to read me the Arabic. He took the book and read the verses line by line, a slow smile of pleasure coming over his face as he translated.
“By the fig and the olive,
By Mount Sinai,
And this city made secure" ("By that Mohammad means Mecca," he said)
"We created man in the best design
And then made him the lowest of the low.
Except those who believe and do good,
So they shall have a reward never to be cut off,
Then who can give you a lie after this about the judgment,
Is not Allah the best of the Judges?”
It looks very different in Vermont than it did on Sunday, in the courtyard of Montreal's Christ Church Cathedral (above). There's no snow here! It's very cold though, and dropping - about 10 degrees below 0C.
So I'm back, feeling much improved, and have spent the day working on business stuff, wrapping a few packages that needed to get into the mail, and hauling some Christmas decorations out of the attic. J. went out early and came home with an enormous poinsettia, and I put some candles in the center of our Advent wreath, so the house is beginning to look Christmasy, even if the scene outdoors is not exactly a picture-postcard of New England holiday scenery.
Soon after getting back here last evening we went over to see my father-in-law, and tomorrow I'll write another installment about our talk with him. Tonight he called here, and when I answered the phone he said, "There's a beautiful new moon for you tonight," and we talked about the moon over the phone; he said he could see it from his room - "So delicate! So lovely!" The moon had accompanied us all the way home after sunset yesterday, its tiny points looking as if they were piercing one cloud, as its bottom curve rode lightly, sidesaddle, on another.
Thank you to everyone who sent get well wishes - they were very much appreciated! And I want to say welcome and bienvenue to readers who may not have commented here before, especially to new readers from Canada. Please don't be shy - I'd love to hear from you, in English or in French. This is a friendly, multi-cultural place where your comments are welcome and discussion is encouraged; please join in and help me improve my knowledge of my new second home and second language.
It began yesterday and continues now, the fine sifting-down of weightless multitudes from white skies onto an ever-whiter earth, traced and divided by the charcoal strokes of trunks, branches, twigs.
Inside, another world of white accumulation: weightless tissues floating from white boxes, sheafs of white paper, computer screens filling with black symbols.
Muffled, damp sounds: traffic in the wet street; a voice; a cough.
Patience argues with pity Both are shocked By a red scarf
A few years back, the rectangular hay bales of my youth were gradually replaced with the big round "shredded wheat" variety; now many farmers wrap those bales in white plastic, like these, striking one more blow to the natural aesthetics of an agricultural landscape. Maybe someone can explain to me why this method is preferable.
A field like this speaks to me of geese feeding on the bits of corn left among the stubble, mice running from the hawk overhead, a deer standing stock-still on the edge, ears flared, ready to bolt. If it were closer to the bottom-land along the river, you might walk it in the late afternoon and find an arrowhead turned up by the farmer's plow. But in an upper field like this one you'll find much older artifacts: smooth rocks the size of an egg, rolled and tumbled beneath the plow of the glacier. Early settlers gathered the bigger, softball-sized cobblestones, set them in mortar, and built houses of them, and foundations for their barns; some are still standing within a few miles of here.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
And a majority of Canadians support it...
The Supreme Court of Canada rules that legalizing same-sex marriage would not violate the Canadian constitution. (BBC)
The judges said that the federal government's proposed definition of marriage as "the lawful union of two persons" would not violate the constitution. However, they stopped short of saying that the Canadian constitution actually required the government to allow gay marriage across the country...Gay marriage is already legal in six of the 10 Canadian provinces and one of its three northern territories, but it remains illegal in the rest of the country.
You know what? I'm tired. Words aren't coming easily, I've been working a lot and thinking a lot, I've had a cold, and I need some extra sleep. So I'm not going to push myself to write a lot here for a few days, and instead I'll post some pictures, and maybe a poem or two. The photograph above was taken last week in central New York; this is the sort of landscape that will forever say "home" to me. I can not only see this particular place, turning myself in an imaginary circle to take in the hills, the pond, the field stretching away to the river, but smell it: the dampness of the earth and the cut cornstalks, the pungent barn, the prickling in my nostrils from the cold air. And I can feel the thinly frozen earth: the slight crunch of the ice on top of the mud in the furrows of a field as the hardness gives way under my feet, and in the air overhead, hear the cry of a hawk; in the distance, the lowing of a cow.
Last week, Pica wrote a post about the decline of American fiction that got some very interesting and thoughtful comments. Today, elck wrote about his favorite novels, and the commenters are not only piling up titles that they recommend, but talking about changes in fiction writing - it's all fascinating and I urge other readers to take a look and join the conversation. Which reminds me - I haven't updated my own "book notes" (linked at left, after the list of blogs) for nearly a year. Now there's a memory exercise to tackle...
Sunday, December 05, 2004
A few days ago we received the November “Parliamentary Bulletin” in our mailbox. The MP (Member of Parliament) for our district is Gilles Duceppe, who also happens to be the leader (chef) of the Bloc Quebecois. In his report for November, he talks about how the Prime Minister, Paul Martin, of the Liberal Party, promised to address “inequalities” in the way funds are distributed to the different provinces. There is a surplus of funds, and Quebec is on the short end of what was promised. Duceppe doesn’t mince words: “Decidedly, the new era of cooperation that Paul Martin announced with great pomp is already still-born…he has ample means to address the inequalities, but he doesn’t want to do so voluntarily.”
I’m impressed with the determination of the Bloc Quebecois to tenaciously represent the interests of the province, and also with how much power the party actually has: in the current Canadian House of Commons, there are 134 Liberal MPs, 99 Conservatives, 54 Bloc Quebecois, 19 NDP, and 2 Independents. The four parties represented all are legitimate players in Canadian politics who help frame the ongoing debate about priorities, and who hold the ruling party to accountability. I’m very much a new observer here, but it seems to me that the level of debate in Canada is generally higher, more public, and stoops less to the personal attacks we’re so used to in the US – politicians stay on topic, and seem to see themselves as representatives of their constituencies’ best interests (although I've heard a lot of criticism of the Liberals as waffling moderates who talk a good game but don't necessarily accomplish much.)
One of those interests in Quebec, particularly, is the environment. On the Bloc Quebecois website one of the hot topics is a debate about a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposal to greatly enlarge the St. Lawrence Seaway between Montreal and Lake Ontario to allow the passage of Panama-Canal size boats. The party is very vocal about their opposition to this (“Touche pas a mon fleuve!”). They are also proud of recently obtaining an amendment to a law which will levy fines on marine polluters whose actions could harm migratory birds. And imagine my surprise when I opened the inside of Gilles Duceppe’s report, and found that it was devoted to greater awareness of organizations working in our district to protect and improve the environment: groups such as VeloQuebec, which promotes the use of bicycles; EcoQuartier, which tries to educate and involve citizens in beautifying the urban environment and increasing recycling; EquiTerre, which promotes equitable trading and ecological commerce as a choice available to consumers; and – believe it or not – Greenpeace. There was also a sidebar of facts about OGM, the French acronym for GMO (genetically modified organisms) and how different countries are responding. Can you imagine an American political party, let alone the dominant one (which the BQ certainly is in Quebec) endorsing Greenpeace, or the use of bicycles, or coming out strongly against GMOs? I do sometimes feel like I’ve dropped down Alice’s rabbit hole into a different time and space – but it also shows what can happen when a population insists that the political system support sustainable practices and wise decisions about the future.
I’m still very far from understanding how we might bring some of this awareness and involvement to a greater percentage of the American population, but I certainly hope to learn more about how and why it works here. For one thing, when a country is not feeding a military machine and consumed with fighting terrorism, and when people feel their basic needs are sufficiently met, there tends to be money and time to talk about quality of life. And here people seem to see quality of life not so much as one’s personal lifestyle measured in goods and money with which to impress others, but something that is shared and for which they are jointly responsible. There are a lot of people in the US who would agree with that, but as Rana points out, we are neither heard nor organized – not yet anyway.
There are explosions outside, but it's fireworks at the conclusion of the "Marche des Flambeaux", a candlelight citizen's march, with instrumental music and choirs, to kick off the Christmas season in the Plateau and raise money for Christmas meals for the needy - each candle purchased for the march contributes to a fund that is used to feed people. We wanted to go, but I'm coming down with a cold (dammit) and standing around in wet, below-freezing weather didn't seem like a great idea. Instead I've spent the day trying to solve a technical problem on the professional side of my life, as yet to no avail, stopping the head-bashing now and then to read some blogs or knit a few rows, with gratitude for life's simpler things.
The Thai government is planning to drop over 100 million origami birds, made and sent in by citizens, on the disputed Muslim southern area of the country, as "origami peace bombs". The air drop is partially in response to a horrific incident in which 80 Muslim protesters suffocated when they were taken into custody and piled on top of one another in a army vans. Apparently the Muslims in the area of unrest accept the gesture but see it as simply that, a gesture, saying, "a political solution would be preferable". On the other hand..Thai citizens everywhere participated in the paper-folding, and how amazing it will be to see those paper birds fluttering out of the sky. I'm not cynical enough to dismiss the idea that symbolic gestures can spark real change. (from today's BBC)
Marja-Leena recently posted about an exhibition of experimental Inuit prints, and the art was so wonderful that I wanted to encourage you all to go over there and look. As she and I have been discussing, I love a lot of Inuit art and have been sad to see how the rawness and directness of the early work has given way to some commercialism and repetition. But because the printmaking techniques used for this exhibition were new, the work breaks free of convention and the artists seemed free to "play". For those who don't know her site, Marja-Leena is a highly-accomplished Canadian-Finnish printmaker and she often writes about, and links to, works by other contemporary printmakers and art of native or aboriginal peoples. Thanks, M-L, for this link and for all the wonderful art you lead us to!
Tonight we went to a free concert at the Chapelle Saint-Louis of Eglise Saint-Jean-Baptiste, not far from our apartment. We arrived only a few minutes early, after a brisk walk in the cold, and joined a serious audience of fifty or so; the woman next to us in the pew was reading Hegel. The concert was by two groups of young musicians, in their early twenties, it seemed, from the Montreal Conservatory, playing Baroque chamber music. There was a small orchestra of flutes, strings, oboe, bassoon, harpsichord, a lute, and another ensemble of harpsichord, cello, and two flutes. They were quite good - and it was nice to watch their concentrated young faces and the happiness when they played well - but we found ourselves fascinated by the space. The concert was in a side chapel of this enormous church, and it was a confection of over-the-top French ornateness and sentiment - gilded plasterwork, domes, niches, gold mosaic behind the altar, porcelain statuary, pink and yellow painted plaster walls, and maudlin Stations of the Cross paintings on the walls. All rather run-down, but fascinating: my instant reaction confirmed yet again how Anglo I really am, and how Protestant.
At one point we were invited to promener into the church to hear two pieces for tuba and organ. St-Jean-Baptiste itself is a cavern, with an enormous dome; a huge altar like a half-round stage under that dome, with yellow marble pillars rising up to another giant, gilded construction of filigreed blue and gold, with angel faces staring down from the top rim of the dome, chandeliers, carved saints, and huge copper sanctuary lamps, burning red in the half-darkness. There are so many pews, all with brass number-plates on the ends - so I suppose at one time a church like this would have been filled on a Sunday morning. Tonight it felt empty, cold, unused, in contrast to the chapel which was at least warm and filled with an enthusiastic audience of friends and family of the young musicians.
One of the two conductors was a young man obviously in love with the Baroque; he had on a dark shirt under his jacket and a loose dark satin bow at his throat; thin round glasses; his hair, which came halfway down his back, was tied back with a wide maroon satin ribbon; and he conducted while playing his own violin.
We woke this morning to an extremely dark bedroom, and when we looked out the window there was thick heavy wet snow on everything, and falling fast. J. peered out the front window. "Oooh," he reported back to me (still in bed with the covers pulled up). "People don't look happy." There were still bicycles going by, and parents pushing babies in strollers, and joggers...but everyone looked slightly shocked: they were trying to continue doing what they've been doing every morning since April...what had happened? Even the poor kids trapped in their strollers seemed to be leaning forward in alarm, kicking their little feet, or wriggling around trying to get out of the cold wetness suddenly assaulting them from the sky while the earnest parents trudged onward, valiantly trying to keep the wheels moving on the mushy sidewalk.
It would have been a good day to stay inside, drinking tea and eating cake, er, I mean making healthful, warming soups (I actually did do that - the soup part), but instead we went out exploring and came home with a fireplace grate and a set of fireplace tools, and some dark green linen-y curtains for our bedroom, all acquired at RenoDepot (the Canadian version of Home Depot), along with a few Christmas presents. And after dinner I finally got my cake - something called gata that has become a favorite - a Persian sweet bread that has some sort of ricotta-like cheese in the middle and a shiny, deliciously delicate light brown crust on top.
It's still raining/sleeting. I'm going to get in bed.
I just found an online advent calendar that looks quite wonderful. It's called Tate's Calendar(Tate is, apparently "le chat qui rit" - the cat who laughed) and the calendar, drawn by Penelope Schenk, features the adventures of a black cat, with a story for each day. Take a look.
It just occured to me, writing that title, that I don't know where the expression "catch-up" came from. LH, where are you? Or maybe somebody else knows?
Mr. Bush is here, and I'm proud to say that the Canadians haven't given him a very warm welcome. He may think he's king of the world, but he hasn't managed to control other populations yet; Jack Leyton of the NDP called on people to protest the visit, and they are.
It seems like many of us are behind on our blog reading, due to holiday cooking, guests, and traveling, so I won't write much tonight. I'm sitting here listening to a great jazz show on Espace Musique, 100.7; there are candles burning in the old brass candlesticks on the mantle, illuminating some delicate pine boughs and the two tall Swedish angels, made of wood and straw, that used to be part of my grandmother's Christmas decorating. It's a peaceful, gentle night, after a good day of work - the book in the morning, and some upcoming professional projects in the afternoon. I went out for a mid-afternoon walk in the sun-drenched but cold air, venturing to the eastern edge of the Plateau, where I bought a salmon filet, and then worked my way back down Mont-Royal and Brebeuf to the bakery for a baguette and a little tarte aux poires that we shared, with coffee, a couple hours after dinner.
Sunday, November 28, 2004
This morning we attended the 10:00 service at Christ Church Cathedral, where we're beginning to be recognized and greeted by familiar faces. It was Advent I, and the sung Eucharist used a modern choral setting, Missa Adventus ed Quadragesimae, by the Czech composer Petr Eben (b. 1929, and previously unknown to me) for a choir of adult men, which totally blew us both away. I'm amazed by the hand-in-hand beauty, sincerity, and solemn informality of the services at the cathedral. It is a grand and glorious place, with fine choirs and a great organ, a lofty vaulted ceiling and carvings and stained glass, and many clergy, and could easily be very full of itself. But instead, the Dean comes to the lectern in front before each service begins, welcomes everyone very warmly, gives the announcements, and also explains the order of service and how to follow it. They take risks: they've decided to lead the way by being a progressive, open, and inclusive church, and this is expressed in a multitude of ways. What comes across is a sense of generosity rather than pomposity; they understand that theirs is a particular mission of welcome to strangers, many of whom may not be Anglican at all - and they carry this out with humility and grace, rather than trying to impress by calling attention to how grand and important they are. As a result, one comes away more moved and more uplifted.
It's nice not to sing in the choir, for once, and to be able to sit beside my husband, who didn't come to church for years. And it was wonderful to sing the great Advent hymns: Bach's "Sleepers Wake" and the plainsong "O Come O Come Emmanuel", and a couple of solid, new-to-me hymns from the Canadian hymnal.
I also liked that the bulletin requested that imperishable food for the needy be brought to the church pantry. And, oh, all right, I'm willing to pray for the Queen as well as Paul Martin and Rowan Williams once a week; with that family, she probably needs it!
We're back in Montreal. What a voyage in one day: from midday in the sparsely-populated, economically-stressed agricultural rolling hills of central New York to the ethnically-diverse, busy streets of a French-speaking city at nightfall. We drove up the far side of New York, on the crumbly, sedimentary plateau bordering Lake Ontario, under slate skies washed with striated clouds. Huge flocks of Canada geese beat their strong wings overhead; we saw grazing deer, too many large hawks to count, and a flock of thirty or forty wild turkeys in a cut cornfield -- but for the most part, the terrain (except for the St. Lawrence seaway and river crossing at Thousand Islands) is fairly monotonous and, for the second half of the trip, flat as a tortilla from the strangely-named town of Mexico, New York - an anomaly on a map filled with ancient Greek and Native American place names, with a few historical figures like Henry Clay (Clay, NY) thrown in for good measure.
It was a good trip back "home" (as in "ancestral"): I was reassured to find my parents both looking vibrant and cheerful, and we had a nice family gathering at my cousin's house on Thursday noon. I was an only child who grew up in an extended family of parents, grandparents, and great-aunts, with two aunts and several cousins nearby, two of whom were practically like siblings. My cousin B., who is just 8 months younger than I am, and I were somewhat at odds most of our childhood – but we share the same family memories, which becomes more important to me as the years accumulate. We are different: she grew up on a big dairy farm, dropped out of college, married a high school teacher, had three kids, and has stayed four miles from where she grew up to raise them, driving many miles every morning to work at a state correctional facility. We were both good musicians who loved playing in band, and good French students, but the scholastic and social resemblances stopped there; I was “weird”, in her book: artsy and intellectual, a townie and an over-achiever who was headed elsewhere. So we diverged even more, but B. has mellowed with time, even if her typical upstate accent has not, and probably I have too. There’s nothing for either of us to be jealous over anymore, or threatened by. I admire her parenting, her sense of humor, and her husband’s dedication to teaching. But more than any of that, she and her brother, who is five years older, remember the same things I do, and I think we all find, with the passage of time, that it matters to us more and more to be able to talk about it.
This trip did feel like a red state/blue state thing. Although Kerry did pretty well, Republicans always win that part of New York, and the American flags and yellow ribbon magnets are as ubiquitous as the pick-up trucks. But I mostly forgot about the outer world (and it really does feel "outer" in that context) for the days I was there; my family is pretty sensible - even the rednecks among them – and besides, we had other things to talk about. And this was the first year for a new generation at our Thanksgiving table, bumping my own generation up a notch in the ancestral hierarchy. Maybe that’s part of why people engage in these annual rituals - they provide a background against which to view the passage of time and one’s place in it, different from one’s regular life which so often moves like a video on fast-forward against the blurred familiar.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004 CORN near Iberville, Quebec
Tomorrow we'll be heading over the river (the Hudson, in this case) and through the woods (the Adirondacks) to what used to be grandmother's house, for the annual Thanksgiving family gathering. I don't think I've ever missed one - if I have, I don't remember when, or why. The gatherings, the place, even the foods have changed greatly over the years, along with the faces around the table. I don't always even want to be there, but I go, and almost always I'm glad I did.
This evening I read a report from Falluja by an embedded BBC reporter who is with an American Marine division. Paul Wood is a good reporter, and he made me feel the fear and the courage of the officers and soldiers who he described. He also made me feel the fear and desperation of the civilians and the dead rebels, including a ten-year-old boy who the marines discovered, dead, rifle in hand, when they stormed a building from which they'd been being attacked. War is hell, and this was a description of hell.
Earlier today I was doing some shopping; all the stores were decked out for Christmas, of course, and there were shoppers shopping, and clerks clerking, and cheery bell-laden music playing -- and yet what I felt was sheer, pervasive joylessness everywhere I went. Everyone was going through the motions, doing what we do this time of year, but there was absolutely no delight in it. The air was heavy.
Thinking back on the Norman Rockwell Thanksgivings of my childhood, during the Eisenhower years, I remember long one season of anticipation and happiness stretching from Thanksgiving all the way to New Year's. The gratitude I remember, as the extended family talked happily from one end of the long tables, spanning two rooms, to the other, may have been still fresh: World War II had ended, nearly everyone in the family had come back safe, babies were arriving, life was beginning anew. The adults never seemed worried or stressed, although of course they must have been sometimes, but we children didn't feel it, at least not until later when the Cold War heated up.
I'm still grateful for those years and those gatherings. One entire generation is gone now, and half of the next one, but those strong personalities and spirits remain quite present in my life, especially at this time of year. From them I learned that it was possible to live graciously and generously even when you had your own troubles; my grandparents and great aunt never stopped giving, and they never stopped being grateful for all the good things in their life - chief among which was the family.
This year, when I'm finding it difficult to be grateful, when so much feels like it is falling apart rather than coming together, and the atmosphere of the entire country feels somber and anxiety-ridden, I find myself casting back to happier times and finding both solace and strength in those memories, seen through the filter of four additional decades of life. "Everything changes," says the Buddhist calligraphy on my desk, and it's true: better not hold on too tightly. But it's also not true; some things don't change: the love and wisdom and lessons that enter most deeply into us and wait there, almost unknown, for the times when we really need them.
Saturday night we had some good friends over for dinner. There was a lively conversation and the wine flowed freely while sleet fell on the grass in the dark and splattered on the windows. I like to drink. But I have to watch it. There are quite a few things I can’t drink at all, and usually I stick to vodka or a glass of red wine – and never both. That’s “a” glass – one. Maybe one and a half. More than that and I wake up like I did in the middle of last night with a massive, throbbing headache that analgesics will dull, but not eliminate. It’s not a hangover – I wasn’t even close to feeling drunk - as much as it’s an allergic reaction like the one that gives so many people migraines. I find this annoying and boring – one of those getting-older things that feels like an affront and an unnecessary reminder. J. says my body is like a sports car – very touchy – and compared to his, it is. In any case, today was different from what I’d anticipated, but it turned out to be nice: I did some knitting, took a long nap under the comforter on the couch, cleaned my desk, thought about things. It was actually a Sabbath day, and at the end of it, with my headache discernable only as a dull distant ache, I’m almost grateful.
When I spoke to my mother last night, she said that hunting season had just opened, and a friend who lived further out in the country had said it sounded like a war in the woods near his house. Tom wrote about hunting season today too. I haven’t heard any shots here – we often don’t, in the village – but next week, when we go to see my parents and I go for my usual November walk along the fenceline near the river, I’ll put on Dad’s old red plaid jacket and be very careful.
A few days ago we were driving back on one of the main roads here, and there was a pickup truck stopped on the side, with a gunrack in the back, and the driver was pointing out the window to his companion. Down in the deep gully across the road was a beautiful big doe. “Think he’s going to shoot across the road, out the window?” J. asked. I saw someone do that once, in central New York – he pulled off the road in the opposite lane and shot across, right in front of my car. The deer bounded away, white tail flying, into the woods. I can only imagine the fear these already skittish creatures live with during these days.
I don’t hunt and never have, although I used to fish. There is no way I could deliberately take the life of one of those beautiful, wild, long-legged companions of the woods I love so much – and yet I know the toll that overpopulation takes on the herd. There are killers, and there are hunters – those like my uncle Dick, who used to shoot a deer each year for meat and was completely respectful of the animals and that relationship, using every bit of the meat and the hide – I still have some small pieces of chamois he gave me when I was young. And then there were hunters like my mentor, Herm, who went into the woods with a bow and arrow and often sat the entire time in meditation under a tree, or up in one, watching the deer he knew so well walk by, graze, lift their heads and sniff the wind with delicate nostrils. For both of those men, and for me, the woods were temple and cathedral, filled with Spirit, and home to an occasional encounter that’s as close to union as we’re ever granted in this life.
Oh, we're all so dispirited by the news these days, and posts like the previous one I wrote don't help. So here are a few good things from my day yesterday:
- young knobby sumac shoots covered with velvety fur, just like a young deer's antlers
- a totally blue sky
- clumps of crimson nightshade berries, each with a heavy water droplet refusing to fall
- a group of peeling white birches, so brilliantly white in the afternoon light that it almost hurt my eyes to look at them
- getting less winded and going further on my afternoon hike up the steep hill in back of our house
- spending most of the day doing research and writing about southern evangelicals and realizing I was more interested than depressed
- reading intelligent, thoughtful blog comments
- an email conversation about writing
- hamburgers for dinner, grilled outside in the dark at 38 degrees
An appeal came into my inbox today from CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, asking for letters of objection to be sent to MS-NBC cable television for remarks made by a colleague on Don Imus’ show referring to Palestinians as “filthy animals” and suggesting that they all be killed. This was on November 12th, during a discussion of Yasser Arafat’s funeral. Here’s a transcript of what was said:
DON IMUS: They’re (the Palestinians) eating dirt and that fat pig wife of his is living in Paris.
COLLEAGUE: They’re all brainwashed, though. That’s what it is. And they’re stupid, to begin with, but they’re brainwashed now. Stinking animals. They ought to drop the bomb right there, kill ‘em all right now.
IMUS: Well, the problem is we have (reporter) Andrea (Mitchell) there; we don’t want anything to happen to her.
COLLEAGUE: Oh, she’s got to get out. Andrea, get out and then drop the bomb and kill everybody.
COLLEAGUE: Look at this. Animals. Animals!
The appeal went on to say “This is not the first time Imus has been involved in a controversy over anti-Arab and Islamophobic remarks. As early as 1985, he was forced to apologize for referring to Arabs as ‘goat-humping weasels’. (Sunday Mail, 4/21/85) He has also been criticized for using the derogatory term ‘raghead.’ (Accuracy in Media) In a reference to the crash of an Iranian airliner earlier this year that killed 43 passengers, Imus said, ‘When I hear stories like that, I think who cares.’ He then stated: ‘Too bad it wasn't full of Saudi Arabians.’ (National Iranian American Council)”
How on earth are we supposed to ever move toward peace when this sort of hatred is all over the airwaves, unchallenged? And why should the Muslim community be solely responsible for trying to counter it? Why shouldn’t all people of conscience object? Even during the worst days of Vietnam, I don’t remember hearing racist bigotry and hatred on this level from the media – maybe it went on among the military or the hawks, but you didn’t hear it on mass media radio and TV. I know how popular Don Imus is – friends and family of mine listen to him every day, and enjoy his particular brand of “humor”. No wonder our country is so polarized and so filled with fear and hate, with this sort of thing as “entertainment”.
Yesterday, on our way out of the city, we stopped on St. Laurent to do two errands: a run to Haddad, a small, family-run Middle Eastern grocery we've become fond of, and the purchase of two Vietnamese sandwiches for lunch. Both are within a couple of blocks of each other, so we parked in Chinatown and walked. I bought the sandwiches - which are more like subs on French bread, with grilled chicken, white radishes, slivered carrots, cilantro, extremely hot green peppers, and a special sauce that turns this combination of ingredients into something like heaven - and then went back to keep an eye on the car, which had disguised but valuable cameras and computers inside.
Montreal's Chinatown is small, packed, and enterprisingly touristy while also catering authentically to the needs of the local population for everything from travel to banking. Apothecary shops filled with dried herbs and brightly-colored boxes of Chinese patent medicines are chock-a-block with clothing stores selling cheap silk robes and slippers; young rough-looking vegetable vendors, cigarettes dangling from their lips, slice bunches of greens on the street; an old man with a hand-lettered sign offers to tell your fortune; an itinerant musician plays a melancholy one-string lute while, a few steps away, members of Falun Gong meditate and pass out literature. The food is generally good, sometimes terrific, and the narrow streets are crowded with mothers and children, yellow-haired adolescents, shuffling ancients.
I sat outside the Dental Center in the picture above, and watched the people go by. Everyone is trying, it seems, to get by, and even get ahead. Under the Centre Dentaire and its universal tooth were other signs: Bureau de change (currency exchange); Bijouterie (jewelry); watch batteries; cell phones. A steady stream of patients and customers came and went. Even this northern, much smaller Chinatown is, as in the famous movie, a place where a lot goes on that may not be on the up-and-up; I saw some questionable activities in the twenty minutes I sat there, but nothing that seemed to be endangering anyone. Mostly I wondered about the lives of the people who passed by, casting their shadows on the bright wall: these young lovers; this young woman in her skintight jeans and high heels; this old woman; these mixed-race groups of adolescents in hip-hop clothing; this beggar who stops a woman and tells her - what? a sad story? - until she shakes her head "no" and, clutching her purse, continues doggedly on.
Monday, November 15, 2004 A response to elck's unpunctuated-sentence challenge:
Home under a night curtain punched with flying star-holes and the tiny careful slice of moon home to icy grass a key in the lock pink buds on the Christmas cactus home to a fly buzzing near the piano and a bat flying darkly and startled in a bedroom suddenly filled with light.
This is a travel day for us; I've spent the last few hours cleaning and doing laundry and am about to go out and get some food to take back with us. The produce here is better than what we get three hours to the south, although a lot of it comes from the United States. This is puzzling. But even worse has been the realization that this excellent produce spoils a lot faster, even in the refrigerator. I'm not disturbed about that at all - what bothers me is that this indicates that the American produce has been treated much more with preservatives, fungicides, and the like, as well as being shipped and sold when it is less ripe.
In the summers we've historically grown a good deal of our own food, and I've always had an organic garden, so I'm aware of the normal "shelf-life" of untreated produce. But we don't buy organic produce all the time; I've followed the advice that eating lots of fruits and vegetables is good for you and outweighs the dangers of nonorganic, treated produce - if you wash it, peel waxed fruit, and so on. Being a gardener and having studied plenty of biology, though, I know that washing will never remove systemic pesticides, and that plants are absorbent organisms which take in the substances that touch them, including after-harvest treatments to prolong shelf life. Seeing how differently ordinary store produce behaves here, I'm really wondering now what we've been eating all these years, and I am wondering if the two countries have different shipping systems, and different regulations about what preservatives can be used to treat the food supply.
Saturday, November 13, 2004 Eglise St. Jean-Baptiste, rue Rachel est(St. John the Baptist Church, on Rachel East, not far from our house, where there are many classical chamber music concerts)
We've been having beautiful days - but quite cold. After hours (two days, really) of struggling to understand and chronicle the rise of the so-called "renewal movement" (and locus of anti-gay activity) in the Episcopal Church - a misnomer if I ever heard one, since the latest incarnations thereof seek not to "renew" the church, in my opinion, but to replace the historically spacious, questioning, and litugically rich tradition with a rigid, conservative one - I felt emotionally exhausted and almost soiled, as one does when forced to be in too close proximity to negativity, closed-mindedness, hatred, and fear. So I went out on my bike, all wrapped up in scarves and gloves; the cold air on my face felt glorious and I rode down to Chinatown, where I bought pantoufles (slippers), and on into the downtown and then north, stopping at my cafe for a cup of coffee. There I listened to two earnest McGill students discussing ideal primes for a final in Abstract Algebra, and wrote the outline for my section on the opposition to Gene's ordination. Then I rode home happily through bright streets, but after I got back I had to soak in a hot bath to warm up. If this bike-riding goes on (and I hope it does) I'm going to have to add long-johns.
Last night we had dinner with our former landlady, her husband, and their wonderful little three-year-old girl, who is alternately "un lion", "un chien", or "un chat". She prefers things that growl, loudly, and is in her element with four adoring adults as an audience. J. made pizza at their house - a brilliant improvisational performance - and we drank wine and ate and told stories, switching back and forth in the two languages.
I told G. about my new lenses, and said I'd done some shopping. She is young, creative, ingenious and thrifty, and loves putting together outfits; she wanted to know what I'd bought. Not much, I said - a very short black skirt that was on sale - mostly I just and looked. She smiled, knowingly. "We say lecher la vitrine - licking the window."
Last night we went with new Montreal friends to hear Madeleine Peyroux at the recently renovated and re-opened Cabaret la Tulipe on Papineau, close to Av. Mont Royal. It was a brisk night; J. and I walked west to St. Laurent to meet our friends for pizza before the show, enjoying the slower pace (bicycle days are definitely becoming numbered; the bike paths are being closed now so that the city will be able to do snow removal, although there are diehards who keep biking, apparently, through the entire winter on bikes outfitted with studded tires and covered derailleur mechanisms) as we walked down rue Rachel with its little bring-your-own wine, white-tableclothed bistros where waiters polished glasses in preparation for the first customers; the small specialty clothing boutiques; the Portugese bakeries.
When we arrived at la Tulipe, glistening with a new coat of shiny chocolate-colored paint, nearly an hour before the starting time for Peyroux, the lower floor - set up cabaret-style with small tables and a bar in the back - was completely full. We sat in the balcony, which was tight and filled with standard theater-style seats on a steeply-pitched floor; a small bar had been set up in the left box-seat area, and people brought glasses of wine and bottle of beer and Perrier back to their seats; we heard the empty bottles rolling - and occasionally crashing - for the rest of the evening. The good-natured crowd was non-plussed, but la Tulipe's owners clearly still have some de-bugging to do.
A young man from Sacramento, Jackie Green, opened for Peyroux, and he won over the appreciative crowd almost instantly. He was a lanky, skinny kid with straight black hair falling into his eyes, totally at ease with his acoustic guitar and the harmonica mounted around his neck that he played like a man possessed; he peeled off his jacket after the first number and played in shirtsleeves and frayed jeans. His Dylanesque ballads and blues had fine lyrics that the obviously young man ("Let me get this out of the way," he confessed, with an endearing glance out from under the fringe of hair - "I'm 23.") sang with a confidence befitting someone who had lived a lot longer and suffered a lot more heartache than he probably has: such is the product of raw talent, as well as, I'm sure, countless hours in a California bedroom, practicing his guitar, penning love lyrics, and wailing on his harmonicas.
Peyroux, by contrast, was one of the most uncomfortable stage performers I've ever seen, yet she has a truly unusual voice - now soft and torchlike, now twangy - and a unique jazz timing that is part Billie Holiday, part Patsy Cline. She's a tall, lanky woman herself, part self-styled hippie, part chanteuse; last night she was wearing a drapey pink top with slit sleeves - the Greek karyatid look, perhaps? - with high heeled sandals and a pair of beautiful russet-colored velveteen trousers, slit to the knees, but her chin-length straight hair seemed to annoy her, so she kept tucking it behind her ears like a school girl. The contradictions would have been more appealing if she hadn't seemed so awkward: nervous about performing in front of a French audience despite her famililiarity with the language, and with recurrent vocal control problems, with both pitch and breath, but the audience - fans of the two CDs, spaced eight years apart, that she's released in her elusive, critically-praised, and rather atypical career - were mostly supportive and encouraging, even adoring, especially at the point, late in the evening, when she abandoned her guitar and stood, waiflike in the smoke-filled spotlight against the blue stage, and sang Edith Piaf's "La Vie en Rose". Other highlights were her cover of Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me to the End of Love" and Patsy Cline's signature tune, "Walking After Midnight". She's clearly terrific in the recording studio; maybe she'll come into her own as a stage performer with more tours like the one she's just been on.
By 11:30 some of the Montrealers had left - past their bedtime on a Thursday night?? - but the others called Peyroux and her excellent bass and keyboard players back for an encore. She came back out onstage, followed by a sleepy Jackie Green, harmonica in hand, looking like he had been woken up from a nap in the wings, and they sang two American folk songs: a Dylan-inspired rendition of "Wish I Was in Dixie," and "Goodnight Irene" - a sure-fire, American sing-along song that the mostly-French-speaking crowd liked but certainly didn't know; the evening thus ended on an enthusiastic but fittingly bemused note.
Wednesday, November 10, 2004
MES NOUVELLES LENTILLES
After seeing my opthamologist in the U.S., I got a second opinion from a doctor in Montreal. She felt I should try soft contacts, which can now correct astigmatism, and yesterday I went to pick them up. I've worn hard, gas-permeable lenses for thirty years, only using glasses early in the morning or late at night, and being without any contacts for the past month has been quite a trip down memory lane for me: the fogging-up of glasses upon coming into a warm interior after being outside; the way they get all greasy when you pull off a turtleneck and smush the glasses against your forehead; that clicking thing and potential entanglement when you kiss someone else who's wearing glasses (yes, J. even wears reading glasses now, but he sure didn't when we met). It's OK; I have new glasses that I really really like - they are Italian and stylish and much nicer-looking on my face than the wire- or tortoise-shell rims I've tended to choose in the past - but I miss my face.
So yesterday I drove back out to Boulevard l'Acadie for a contact lens fitting and, if all went well, to bring a pair home to try. The drive itself was exciting: I'm just learning to drive and navigate in the city, so it was fun to go all by myself and feel confident and, sort of like that other rite of passage from thirty-plus years ago - getting a driver's license - free to explore on my own.
I arrived at the office building - one of hundreds in the flat sea of retail outlets, home renovations depots, restaurants and produce warehouses that flank Blvd. l'Acadie - and went up the elevator to the third floor. There wasn't a long wait, and I was asked to come into a fitting room where a white-coated assistant asked me to wash my hands and proceeded to show me how to put in, take out, and care for the lenses. She was a woman a little older than myself, and she spoke almost no English, so we managed a rather technical conversation with two fractured languages, a lot of pantomime, and considerable good humor - she was very nice, and we liked each other. "Il faut que pousser?" I said, putting the lens against my eye and watching her mime a pushing motion; when I didn't push the lens didn't stick to my eye but came away on my finger. Such a strange thing - this tiny glistening blue bowl that was flexible, not rigid, and determined to turn itself inside-out on my fingertip, and yet could correct my vision perfectly!
After putting in the lenses I sat and waited for the doctor, who came in a few minutes. She is a young woman, very pretty and blond, who grew up in the Eastern Townships of Quebec; like all the professionals I've dealt with here, she has been unhurried, very direct, kind, and interested in having a mutually-satisfactory encounter. "The fit seems very good, they're moving well, and your vision is 20/20 - we can't ask for more than that!' she said, swinging the machines away from my face and looking pleased. "But how do they feel to you?"
I said so far they felt fine; I was a little amazed, since I well remembered the painful process of getting used to hard lenses. "That's great," she said, "often it takes several tries with different kinds. But I think these seem like they'll be fine for you."
We said goodbye and I checked back in with the nice woman who had given me the training; she put her hand on my arm and laughed, "We did all right!" she said. I said I'd try the lenses for a couple of weeks and then call her to place the order if they continued to feel good.
I looked out from the third floor window of the waiting room as I put on my coat and scarf, using the tall verdegris steeples of the churches near Jean-Talon and little Italy to orient myself to the city arrayed on the flat plain before me. Montreal has a compact downtown, but the city stretches for miles in every direction on the wide floodplain of the St. Lawrence. It's not beautiful, in any classic sense, and the landscape is really fairly monotonous - but Montreal is unique, and becoming familiar, and I actually know where I am most of the time, and how to get where I need to go. Standing in front of those big, clean plate-glass windows, with my new crystal-clear vision, I watched big jets slowly pass overhead on their way to Trudeau airport, and imagined the scene on the streets I now could identify in the distance. I felt a surge of affection for my new, adopted home, and utter astonishment that I could call it that. And then I went down the elevator and out into the cold air to buy groceries at Adonis, the nearby Middle Eastern market, and take them home for lunch.
Those of you who read French will be amused by this article - if you don't, the gist of it is that a New York company is offering travel packages for Americans to come to Canada and get a flu shot. The price for two days and a shot? 220 $ US.
«Nous leur offrons un moyen relaxant d’avoir leur vaccin, en plus de découvrir Montréal», dit Douglas Tam, de l’entreprise AuctionMatic USA.
I've been wondering whether to get one; we usually do, but I've never been sure if they were all that effective. I also haven't had the flu for a number of years. Tomorrow there are clinics in our area - free to seniors and those "at risk", $10 Canadian for others - but I don't want to pay the "American premium", if there is one! Still - sure beats a nine hour bus ride!
And a report from P., a longtime resident of Ohio, on demographic trends he's observed and why they led to Bushs victory there (from comments here, but I don't want you to miss it.)
Jason's comments on the previous post are worth reading, and while you're at it (not indulging in extreme stereotyping and dividing, that is) please take a look at this map of Purple America, previously linked at Creek Running North and referenced in Jason's comments.
Like Chris, I grew up in a state that was very mixed, a county that was mixed, and a town that was mixed (although in descending order of heterogeneity). It was the same state as his, actually - New York. It seems to me that during my lifetime, upstate New York has become less hidebound and conservative, perhaps partially due to the fact that there has been an influx of "otherness" that the people have gradually gotten more used to: urban people, liberals, Jews, a few blacks, gays and lesbians. But people in general are not as rigid or easily pigeonholed as the analysts would like us to believe: how else could a state be proud of such a diverse cast of characters as Hillary Clinton, Mario Cuomo, Nelson Rockefeller, Ralph Giuliani? Perhaps because those people all have admirable qualities and less-admirable ones: above all, they are real, and New Yorkers - both downstate and upstate - see aspects of themselves reflected in each of them.
As Chris and Jason point out, the national county map is a far more accurate way of looking at our country and ourselves than in big Electoral College blocks, though sadly, that is what it still comes down to. The worst of it is how dismissive this system, and this sort of red/blue analysis, is of the individual voter.
I haven't wanted to write much about politics since the election; others were doing such a good job, and I didn't feel like adding one more voice to the blog-din. I also wanted to take some time to be quiet and reflect on what was happening, especially from this northern perch across the border. I still feel that way.
I wasn't surprised about the election. The trend seemed ever clearer to me during the year that I stood on a street corner every Friday, before the war in Iraq, watching the reactions of people going by. I was shocked at first - and eventually numbed - by the intense polarization of the small numbers who did have an opinion, and the indifference of the much larger group who didn't. Among the latter, there seemed to be a complete lack of understanding that this government's policies have a direct effect on our lives; if they made up their minds about one candidate, it was likely to be on one or two issues taken out of context, or on that elusive factor known as "image". Among the former, everything was black-and-white, and although it was hard to know sometimes why the people held such definite opinions, it seemed to come down mostly to self-identity and background: they'd served in the military or knew someone who was serving; they had a religious reason for either supporting the government (adamantly pro-Israeli, fundamentalist Christian) or being against it (concerned progressive Jew; Arab or Muslim; committed progressive Christian pacifists); or maybe they had been war resisters during Vietnam...some, like the young men who'd drive by and yell obscenities from their cars, just seemed to be excited by the prospect of America going somewhere and "kicking ass".
While I appreciate all the soul-searching that's going on in blogland, and all the sincere attempts to understand the minds of those who voted for Bush, I think there are some clear rights and wrongs going on. It's wrong to kill, humiliate, and maim other human beings; to destroy their homes and livelihood; and especially to kill unarmed civilians, women and children. Yet we are doing this, and our tax dollars are supporting it - for nothing that could possibly be called "justifiable. I can't condone this. I can't say it's OK, or spend more time trying to understand someone's convoluted reasons for thinking it is OK. It's not. And I also cannot spend any more time and personal energy arguing about it, or waiting for a charismatic national leader with the courage to stand up and unequivocably, persistently say so.
I have a list of people who attend the monthly interfaith prayers for peace that I lead. After the election, a clergyperson in another denomination forwarded an invitation to hear a Jewish peace activist talk about the Middle East and foreign policy in the wake of our election. She said it would be an evening of hope and discussion for those who had been dismayed by the "disatrous" results of the election. Another friend of mine, who attends these monthly services, wrote and asked sarcastically if he would be welcome, being someone who was "excited and positive" about the election. This is what I no longer have time or energy for: the endless conflict, the arguing, the posturing, the insistence that both views have equal time as if both are morally equivalent. I am sorry. In God's world, and in the world I try to live out on earth, they are not.
Of course we are our brothers' keepers, and we are called upon to be decent to one another; I will always try to be decent even when it's not reciprocated. But we are faced with a grim situation, not only for the world but for our own survival as thinking, feeling, compassionate beings who have chosen not to live out a world view of continual aggression, conflict, and destruction as a means of pursuing "peace" and "freedom". As individuals, we have several potential paths. One is to continue to work toward policies and coalitions that will change the power balance. Another is to work to relieve suffering wherever we encounter it - any small way that we can help is vital, including helping one another. And we must take care of ourselves and our spirits by remembering and living out what it means to be human - continuing, despite the prevailing climate, to be creative, thoughtful, aware of the past, appreciative of the present and engaged in the possibilities for our future: to be people who refuse to despair.
I've decided to concentrate on these paths. Standing on the street corner with a group of commmitted women in black, I listened while others who shared our basic convictions were unable to stand silently, but spent the hour arguing about which way the Left should go - what actions should be taken, who was right and who was wrong - on and on. Local meetings of the peace and justice coalition dissolved into shouting matches. What we're seeing now is just as fragmented, and it doesn't bode well for organized resistance to the powers that be.
Personally, I've decided to step back for a while, to try to discern where I can be of the most service.
David Brook's article on Exurbia, from the New York Times, is a start: even if it doesn't tell us how to talk to this "other" America - it points out why and where it exists - and that Karl Rove got there long before us.
Sunday, November 07, 2004
This morning was brighter, warmer, and not raining, so after an early breakfast of pancakes, made with a wonderful Quebec mix of quatre farines – four flours (wheat, buckwheat, rice, and corn) we rode our bikes to the cathedral in the center of the downtown. I had thought today was the Festival of All Saints’, but that was celebrated here last week; instead it was Remembrance Day, the Canadian equivalent of Veteran's Day conflated with Memorial Day. On the steps of the cathedral were several Canadian guardsmen in green camouflage fatigues and black berets, sporting bright red poppies on their lapels – if fatigues can be said to have lapels. “A woman has fallen on the steps inside, and we’re waiting for an ambulance,” one apologized. “If you wouldn’t mind, could you please go in the side entrance?”
We entered the church and were surprised to see all the central pews filled with Canadian troops, seated by regiment, wearing various uniforms. We gathered our service leaflet and Book of Alternative Services and hymnals, and found a seat. The altar was bedecked with a sea of paper poppies. After the first hymn and the procession of clergy and choir, three grenadier guardsmen in red uniforms and tall black bearskin hats came up the aisle in silence with flags which were then taken up onto the altar, and the service began. Church attendance in Canada is nothing like what it is in America; the entire regular cathedral congregation in this huge city is smaller than my home parish. We got the impression that many of the young service men and women present were not accustomed to being in church, but being Canadian, they were patient, and extremely polite, joining in the hymns, following the service, and most of them – having been warmly invited by the Dean of the cathedral – took communion.
The service was long, solemn, quite beautiful, and to my surprise not at all a glorification of heroic military service, or an attempt to somehow justify a connection between religion and war - although connections were being made by the service's very existence - but a moving time of remembrance of the dead and what those deaths might mean to us today. The sermon, by the head of the theological school, was delivered curiously and effectively in French and English, but not repetitively – there were sort of two parallel stories, with an occasional restatement of an idea in the other language. He talked first about the ancient Greek ideal of the heroic fallen warrior who in literature and myth becomes a symbol for the nobility and suffering of all our human lives, and then stated that whether or not we think a war – such as the Second World War – is just, nothing – not even the freedom we enjoy today – can compensate for the tragedy of the death of an individual soldier who has forfeited their life. He suggested that by looking at Christ’s death on the cross – a military device used as, he said, “a shock and awe technique” by the Romans – and considering the possibility of eternal life that is given to us through that death – we can in fact find some solace in the deaths of the fallen.
I had two thoughts, hearing that. One was that an American military audience might well have walked out of the church; this one didn’t seem to have a problem with what was being said at all. The other was that I was enormously grateful that the Canadian government had refused to send these bright-eyed young people to Iraq, and just as sad to think of all the young Americans who are there, facing such an uncertain future. The Canadian army, at this point, is a true defensive force – these troops are trained, as one of the commanders told us at the lunch buffet afterwards, to defend the Canadian borders, "in all types of terrain and weather conditions”, but some, I’m sure, are also assigned to international peacekeeping forces. He said that you simply study the history and traditions of the various regiments and choose one that appeals to you. He was one of the grenadier guards in the red coats who had carried the flags – “but we’re infantry soldiers too,” he said.
The formerly American priest who I had met last time (he had immigrated in the 1960s and been a counselor for draft resisters during Vietnam) came up to us after the service, eager to meet my husband and to commiserate with us about the election (as have all our Canadian friends and neighbors). I asked about an announcement in the bulletin that next week there would be a discussion of the Windsor Report. Would I be welcome? “Of course!" he said. "I think the Dean is in charge of that - have you met him?” The Dean was at the reception – a large spread put on by the Grenadier Guards - and when we saw him eating alone, we went over to introduce ourselves. I mentioned that we were Americans, from the Diocese of New Hampshire, and that I was working on a book about Gene Robinson. “Ah-ha!” he said, again to my surprise. “Joyce told me about you!” (Joyce Sanchez is the assistant priest, who I had met two weeks ago.) “And Gene, of course, is one of our heros!” I said we had enjoyed the service; he replied bluntly that it wasn’t one of his favorite occasions – that he had been raised “in the pacifist tradition of the Church” and was uncomfortable with any combination of religion and patriotism.
So we proceeded to have a fascinating talk; he is British, a former Anglican priest who served with British diplomatic missions in Dunkirk and later in Finland and Sweden before moving to Canada fifteen years ago. And when we began to talk about the Windor Report, I was stunned - I thought I was progressive. He was not only extremely liberal and ready to cut ties with the Anglican Communion – “after all, it’s a vestige of the British Empire” but he was comfortably outspoken about his views in a way that seems very foreign to me, reminding me again how restrained and careful we tend to be in the American church about expressing potentially controversial opinions. He invited us up to his office and gave us a photocopy of a humorous cartoon reaction to the Report, and suggested a book that we immediately bought this afternoon: Fire and Ice, by Michael Adams, about the ways in which, despite Canadian fears of convergence, Canada and America are actually moving in different directions. It's based on a study of trends in values expressed by a cross-section of people in the two societies. I can’t wait to read it. And I hope I can be here next week to hear the Dean’s presentation on the history of the Anglican Communion, and how this history is reflected in the Windsor Report.
Then we had a late lunch at the Iraqi café, and stopped at a grocery store nearby, where I noticed a stack of today’s La Presse. On the cover, under the headline “Avant de donner l’assault a Falluja, les Americains jouent les gladiateurs” (“before the assault on Falluja, Americans play as gladiators”) was a shocking picture of American marines dressed up as gladiators, a la Ben Hur, cheered on by troops, getting them worked up for the assault on Falluja. How bizarrely, amazingly ignorant: this "Christian" army donning the garb of the Roman legions who crucified Christ. I’d like to know if anyone has seen this photo reproduced anywhere else. I’m sure it’s in the Arab media, working up others who also think they have God on their side.
I went for a long walk yesterday afternoon, under grey skies. There was a fierce wind - nearly strong enough to support my leaning weight when I stopped at the first intersection, and for a brief moment I felt the winter's first tiny ice bits hitting my cheek. I walked up to Avenue Mont Royal and then west. There are still bicyclists, but fewer, and the people who were on the street walked hurriedly, heads down, in grey or black clothes, necks wrapped in thick scarves.
I pulled my black beret down over my ears and forehead and huddled down into my own lavender scarf. In the shoestore window, boots and winter shoes nestled in drifts of artificial snow, accompanied by jaunty penguins made from black and white feathers. I looked longingly into cafe windows as I went past, picking up my pace as the wind tunneled down the street, and finally, ears stinging, ducked into a favorite used bookstore, filled with French titles and a big collection of used CDs. I browsed for half an hour, looking at art books; photography; French language guides and reference books; English authors like Robert Ludlum translated into French; Quebecois fiction; classics; children's picture books; recordings in the jazz and classical piano sections. Other browsers stood alongside me, and I watched sideways as their hands, like mine, quickly riffled through the tightly-packed plastic cases of CDs. Someone in a brown coat next to me, a man, muttered to me in French, perhaps something about excuse me, I just want to switch places and look over here. I glanced at him and moved over; he didn't expect a response but was intent on some particular title. Suddenly he plucked a case triumphantly out of the shelf, held it up to the light, and, still muttering to himself, headed off to the register.
I put my hat back on and went out into the street, making a detour through Moisson (a well-known chain of Montreal high-end bakeries) but was unable to decide on anything. I walked back down Brebeuf, along the bike path without seeing a single cyclist, past M. Pinchot, my favorite bakery. Ah! I made it past! We didn't need a baguette for dinner, and I ignored the other loaves in the window. But no - in the other window was a basket of fresh almond croissants, which they don't always have. Up the steps, into the tiny shop and the aroma of hot soup and baking bread. One of the pretty helpers came out, in black pants and a black t-shirt with a white apron and kerchief. I asked for a single almond croissant, she smiled, I paid: un sac? she asked. non. I put the croissant, in its little wax-paper bag, into my knapsack; the pastry was still warm. I glanced at my watch - half an hour before I said I'd be back - and headed down to the park.
In the summer, the grande allee (in the picture above) is always filled rollerbladers practicing their tricks, while other park denizens sit on the benches and read, play instruments, write poetry, talk to themselves, kiss their lovers, feed the squirrels. Not a soul there today. At the end of the allee, I stopped to converse with a squirrel who was busily eating an acorn. He showed no interest in moving, so we stood and looked at each other; he went on eating; I turned to go and found three other squirrels six inches from my feet, looking at me expectantly like cats. Forget it! I said. Nothing for you today.
The leaves are half off the trees here, half on the ground in loose drifts that stir and toss in the invisible currents of air. I started down the hill toward the lake, now merely a beach of wet pebbles. A flock of seagulls waddled back and forth under the trees, and I laughed out loud, noticing that their tailfeathers were black with big white polkadots. It all seemed, suddenly, like a dance: the miming, hungry squirrels; the carnival-like seagulls; the set - a mosaic of yellow, beige, gold, red, chartreuse leaves against the blue-grey paved walkways; the wind tearing overhead in the trees in huge gusting waves, like orchestra strings in unison, while across the stage - now left, now right - rushed a yellow corps de ballet of fallen leaves.
I turned and started for home, as if returning from a performance, exhilarated as I always am by being out in nature when it is wild and unruly. Nothing we humans could do would ever stop that wind, and I found the thought oddly comforting, as was my anonymity. I turned the outside key in the lock, watching myself go inside, into my own small nest: unknown here as a squirrel, fleeting as a leaf, cheeks bright from the wind.
