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
Saturday, May 17, 2003 Women entering the Imam mosque, Isfahan, Iran from Baraka: A World Beyond Words, by Mark Magidson. (An exhibition of stills from the film, through Soulcatcher Studio.)
CHADOR "See, it's like this," said my Iranian friend (She needs a name, let's call her Shirin.) She held the large piece of cloth in her two hands so we could see how it was constructed. "And it goes on like this." She deftly swept the cloth over her head, twisted the two sides tight near her neck, and held it closed with one hand. I stared at her - had we suddenly taken a magic carpet to her family's living room in Iran? She looked at my expression and blushed. We were used to seeing Shirin in her customary headscarf (hijab) but this was something different. She sat and kept talking as if nothing had changed, but she knew what I was thinking. The chador transformed her too.
This wasn't a black one, but flowered in a pretty blue print. 'Would you wear that out on the street?" my husband asked. "No," she said. "Always black when you go out, and made of the best material. This kind you would wear in the house, it's more informal. And the lower classes wear these on the streets. I wear this here for prayer."
I hadn't known this; the times we've prayed together Shirin has been at my house, cooking, when prayer time came around, or at a Muslim event, and she had only worn her hijab. I'm Christian, but I cover my head too under those circumstances, out of respect. But I had no idea she ever wore a chador here in America. "Here," she said, "this is the other piece." She held up a circular piece of the same material, sewn into a kind of hood with a string tie, also of the same material, that secured the cloth over one's head. "This way I don't have to worry about my hair showing, it holds it all in," Shirin demonstrated. The hood covered her head except for her face, and then the chador went over it. She looked -- beautiful. Like a nun with a radiant face. "Want to try?" she asked.
"Ok," I said, "just the chador though." Shirin held it for me, and I awkwardly put the chador over my head, first pulling my hair back. I twisted the fabric along the neck like I'd seen her do. The chador immediately fell off my head. I tried again, and sat down, covered from head to toe except for my face. Ba maze, she said approvingly in Farsi. "Cute!" She went upstairs and came down with another bundle of cloth. "This one is Egyptian," she said, unfolding a gorgeous heavy piece of black cloth with widely-separated white ellipses, almost like feathers. This one had seams that gathered the cloth into "sleeves" with a hole for the hands, and had an opening for the face. "Put this one on," she said. We switched chadors and sat on the two ends of couch while our husbands stared at us, and occasionally we all burst out laughing.
How did it feel? Hot. Strange. but not unpleasant. What it reminded me of was being very small and "hiding" from the adults by putting a sheet or blanket over my head. In the chador I felt invisible but not invisible - as if there was a kind of magic protection around me. It was very odd. But for the first time I had an inkling of some of the positive aspects of "covering" that Islamic women describe - a separateness from men's eyes, the comforting feeling of being in a kind of cocoon, a feeling of specialness because of the way you are dressed -- which for them represents a gift to God. For a long time now I have been unwilling to judge these choices, when a woman makes them on her own. And what we in the West often fail to grasp is that this really is a choice for many Muslim women - modern, professional, educated women like ourselves.
"If I make hajj next year I think I will take the black one," Shirin said. "It would be good in Saudi Arabia..."
Well, in spite of all my philosophizing about "place" being everywhere, we got an immersion into the place-that-is-here today, during a drive around the breathtaking backroads of our state with friends from England. "So much land and so few houses," they exclaimed. "So beautiful! So many trees!" And this perennial comment from European visitors, "So many of the houses are made of wood!"
I love excursions like this because they force you to see with new eyes - "beginner's eyes", maybe (like "beginner's mind"). It's fun to notice the blue tubing strung between stands of sugar maples and think to explain what's going on, or to look even more closely for deer on the edges of woods. Not only did we see a number of white-tailed deer, we also saw a big loping coyote crossing a field, not a common sight around here. We stopped to gaze at a hillside of newly-needled tamarak (larch), soft as green fur. But perhaps most astounding was the intense green of the new maple and birch leaves, a green somewhere between lime and chartreuse, that only appears for these few spring days, before sunlight and rain begin to toughen and darken the leaves. You almost wish you could be a giant deer, able to graze the treetops for this delicate spring vegetable; instead we could dine on a mess of fiddleheads, or the cowslips carpeting the marsh.
5:39 PM
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Fred at Fragments from Floyd has been talking to me about where we all might go with this notion of "place blogs". Is it possible to define what that is, and is there some way to consolidate posts about place, or increase the readership for these sorts of ruminations on nature and our place in it? Other bloggers involved in this conversation are Lisa at Field Notes and Pica and Numenius at Feathers of Hope.
To be honest, I haven't thought of my blog as being strictly a "place blog" since I do write about many other subjects. I used to be a naturalist and outdoor educator, and earlier in life spent a lot of time writing and illustrating trail guides, planning and constructing exhibits, writing articles and planning programs, leading nature hikes. Nature has always been a big subject in my writing, and one thing I've been grateful for is that blogging about nature and my surroundings has made me get out more and turn on that mental recorder - that's very welcome, from the perspective of this chair and desk, especially after the longest and most inhospitable winter I can remember. In my poetry and essays, nature is often a metaphor and a vehicle for me to talk about something else, and it's helpful to get back into a more constantly observant frame of mind.
I like the idea of having a central place where people who do this can post particular entries about "place"; potentially creating more interest in the subject, seeing it from a wider viewpoint (not just blogs from the "beautiful and unspoiled", for instance), and creating more traffic back to the originating blogs.
Which makes me think about what I'm doing here. I think what I am trying to do in my blog, as it evolves, is to talk about "place" both from an intimate and a broad perspective. It seems to me that everything I write is somewhat about "place", if we extend that definition concentrically to be one person's place in her locality, her region, her country, her culture, the world's culture, the life of the spirit. On another axis you might also say I'm writing about one person's place in time, extending forward (into questions of technology, science, human impact on practically everything) and backwards (toward a greater understanding of myself in history). I think this is all "place", and I'd like to see if there is a place in the blogosphere for this sort of searching and conversation but perhaps grounded in writing about our most fundamental "place" relationship - with nature. For years, we were devoted readers of Whole Earth Review/Co-Evolution Quarterly - I think they were forerunners in this sort of holistic and undefined conversation about place.
It's just like medicine or any other specialized field - if people focus only on one part they may miss a fundamental, underlying element on which the entire problem hangs. (Which is not to say one of the very best things about the internet is exactly that it's perfect for minute specialisation and exploration of any topic.) Without a sense of the natural world and who we are in relation to it, we are not fully aware of ourselves as human beings - and yet our lifestyle makes this increasingly difficult, as well as "unnecessary" for most practical purposes. Even worse, we are missing one of the great gifts of life - the solace and meaning that comes from seeing something we are, I believe, very much meant to see: the beauty, intricacy and wonder of the natural world, and the awesome awareness of being a human being with full powers of perception to see, hear, touch, taste, smell and consider these gifts.
Wednesday, May 14, 2003 Erotic Poems of the Ancient Tamil "The most ancient Tamil literature after the tolkâppiyam is the poetry of the cankam (pronounced sangam) anthologies, which date from around the time of Christ. The word cankam is from Sanskrit sangha, 'assembly' (of poetic masters). The poems are arranged into two main categories, the "interior" (akam), relating to love and family life, and the "exterior" (puram), relating to war and kings. The akam poems sampled here classify the five stages of erotic love according to the five types of landscape in Tamil Nadu, and each is associated with a tree or flower that evokes the particular type of love..."
Even if passion should pass, O man of the hills where after the long tempestuous rains of night the morning's waterfalls make music in the caverns, would our love also pass with the passion?
Thank you to friends who have asked about yesterday's trial. The case against the three women was dismissed because the place they were arrested was actually a street owned by the city. However, they were able to make their statements to the court. One of the women is 80 years old, and has been arrested and jailed a number of times for her witnessing for peace. Apparently she made quite an impression on the courtroom. My friend said, "The judge was very good at not betraying his emotions, but I can't believe he didn't go home and tell his wife over dinner, 'There are some remarkable people in this state, and that elderly woman is one of them.'" As for myself -- I'm very relieved.
8:08 PM
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Jerusalem City of Peace by Adib Fattal
A new Arab optimism in arts & letters? The Washington Post profiles a new generation of young Egyptian poets and writers, frustrated with the typical themes of Arab literature and determined to tackle a more modern slice of life as well as striking a less melancholy, less nostalgic tone. They are also seeking new methods of publishing and distribution, including the Internet, both to avoid censorship and to explore the mediums themselves. It's interesting reading:
(Mona) Prince, 32, is one of Egypt's hottest young novelists, and her tale of young love and indecision is at the leading edge of a literary trend here. The story is distinctive for what it is not: not the traditional modern Arab narrative of family and nostalgia for the old ways; not nurtured on grief and melancholy over the Palestinian question or the lack of Arab unity; and most definitely not a prescription for finding solace in Islam.
"Why do I have to write about anguish and melancholy and victimhood?" Prince asks. "I want something where I don't have to talk about philosophy or ideology or Egypt. What am I going to say about it? It's bigger than me. I am living it. Why should I read and write about it? I want to tell a different story now."
Al-Ahram Weekly (Cairo) also reviews a Cairo show of Syrian artist Adib Fattal’s vibrantly colorful drawings of Palestine and Syria - art that is also unexpected for its color, energy, and refusal to locate itself in any particular Palestinian ideology or time period:
"His is a Palestine of folklore rather than of life or memory, a perfectly timeless place where there is no indication of history -- occupation, colonialisation -- or present-day struggle…You leave with a different, fresh imagination of Palestine; one that is decidedly colourful and perhaps increasingly needed."
Tuesday, May 13, 2003
A gloomy day here, cold and rainy, and I'm feeling kind of sodden myself. I'm waiting to hear word from my friend who is being tried today for trespassing on the grounds of an armaments manufacturer; she and two other women "crossed the line" at an anti-war demonstration this fall, knelt and prayed, and were arrested. They face up to a year in jail on a charge of "criminal misdemeanor". We talked last night, and I asked what she was going to say at the trial. "I'm going to hold the pictures of all the foster kids who have lived with us, all those faces of different colors, and say, "This is why I did it. Because we have to understand that we're one world."
Today I attended a short Anglican liturgy for peace, at noon, and was thinking of my friend as I drove home, since her trial was scheduled for 1:00 pm. I switched on the radio and the first and only words I heard, before switching the radio off, were Bush saying, in response to the bombings in Saudi Arabia, "We will FIND the people who did this, and we will SHOW THEM what American justice looks like." Yes, we're all getting a pretty good picture of what American justice looks like. Overwhelming military power unleashed on anyone who dares to threaten us, and Catholic women who've sheltered 25 children from Latin America, Rwanda, and American inner cities being put into jail. Now that is effective justice. Thank you, I feel so much safer.
On a personal level, I'm trying hard to move beyond my anger and alienation because I recognize that they aren't doing me or the world any good. The world has changed, not, in my opinion, for the better, but we are far from a point where the population recognizes that. I've put so much energy and effort into the anti-war movement and into efforts to educate people about the Middle East, and we've moved from a time of relative receptivity to exhaustion and passivity fueled by lies and acquiescence. I feel surrounded by people whose attitudes are alien to me, but I cannot hate them, for the same reason my friend is using for her defense. We are all one world, and that includes everyone from the president and his cronies to the most rabid redneck, to the child suffering from near-starvation, to the tortured prisoner, to the clueless rich woman I saw sashaying around the grocery store in pink patent-leather mules. Sorry, hatred is not allowed.
I'm trying to figure out what to do with my grief, though. For today: finishing a poem, and playing through two Brahms Intermezzi. Watching the rain on cobalt-blue pansies. Writing here.
Trying to Forget War
Be happy: permission has been given.
Over the dewy grass forsythia opens her golden purse; flocks of dandelions like well-schooled Chinese children wave and dance in the meadow.
Cooing, soft dull mourning doves search the shrubbery in pairs, the pregnant robin cocks her head impatiently.
I’m coming.
Just let me feel this moment of cool air. Let me scatter the winter’s wood-ash beneath the poppies.
4:20 PM
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Today, in a major crackdown on free speech and internet access, Iran released a list of 15,000 websites and sent them to service providers telling them access to these sites must be blocked. The story says most of these are pornographic or rabidly anti-regime websites. The BBC seems to be keeping close tabs on this story, including the threat the Iranian regime apparently feels from bloggers (see Gagging the Bloggers, from May 2). Editor:Myself, a hub for Persian blogging, has further comments.
9:20 AM
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Sunday, May 11, 2003
The beautiful Giornale Nuovo had a post this week entitled She Sells Sea Shells , with gorgeous illustrations from an illustrated treatise on conchology, or the study of marine mollusks, from the Smithsonian's collection of manuscripts, and it made me cast my eyes around my office to rest upon a white-and-pink shell that I realized has been with me for nearly (gulp) fifty years.
My maternal grandparents used to go to Florida every winter, and one of the things they always brought back - along with rakish straw hats; straw totes decorated with sewn-on cowrie shells; boxes of oranges and kumquats with green leaves still miraculously attached; and fat round jars of guava jelly -- were special sea shells. We had two large conches on a shelf in the pantry, and I'd often listen to the ocean in them when I became lonely for my far-away grandparents. I had cardboard sheets with small shells glued on, their names carefully typeset underneath. But more precious was a shoe box in which I collected the loose shells they brought me, white sand still tumbling out, imperfect but far more real and curious to me than the pre-assembled "collections" on cardboard sheets. My favorite shell was a pink-mouthed murex. It was small, fat enough to fit happily into my hand, and it somehow always felt like it was particularly mine - a little-girl shell of a rosy pink surrounded by a ruffled, snow-white exterior. For reasons unknown to me, I've carted that shell to college, to New England, from house to house, and it now rests on a shelf about five feet from my hand. I hadn't thought about it for a long time, until today.
One characteristic of old-fashioned amateur naturalists like me is that our workspaces tend to accumulate collections of odd rocks, lichens, pods, shells, bones. I never think anything of it until someone comes into my space and remarks on something - "where did this feather come from?" or "what's that, a fossil?" To me, they are so familiar I take their presence for granted, like old friends, but I'd miss them terribly if they were to disappear. Each is a reminder of a place, an experience. Each evokes a mood and a memory, and those associations lead me on a mental journey -- to the top of Mt. Mansfield on our tenth wedding anniversary, for example, where I picked up the small, flat, lichen-encrusted piece of granite that sits here just under my monitor. My pink-mouthed murex reminds me of my grandparents and the strange picture I had of the sea when I was very little, for I was a child of a landlocked Brigadoon in upstate New York. Sand existed in my sandbox; scallop shells were tiny fossils in the sedimentary local rocks; and fish was something that came frozen in a perfect rectangle after you peeled off the box, and tasted like cardboard. The shells my grandparents brought me were natural wonders of an exotic, far-away world totally removed from my familiar woods and lake. And even now, so many years later, I still think of the ocean that way: alien, a little frightening, seductive, beautiful, and far away, despite the fact that some of the undulating hills near my present home are, in fact, ancient sand dunes.
Today I was reminded that murex snails were the source of the famous royal purple dye used by the Phoenecians and Romans. The shells like mine that came from the Pacific side of Central America apparently yielded just as intense a dye as the ones from the Mediterranean. But as a classicist, I was fascinated to read this discussion of Tyrian Purple by William Harris, Prof. Emeritus at Middlebury College, in which he ponders the use of the word "purple" in Homer and Aeschylus:
But back in Greece, I remembered Homer's striking figure of the "purple sea" (porphurea thalassa), which had always puzzled me as a student. And equally odd was his "purple blood" gushing forth, and even a "purple rainbow" mentioned once in the Iliad. Our sense of the color "purple" does not fit these uses, it was clear to me even then that something was wrong with our color-sense, or that colors can shift as part of the process of social evolution. Yet all these three uses are by the same author and the identical time-frame, so I left Greece that summer puzzled and intrigued.
About that time a well known scholar tendered the opinion that "porphureos", which was used by Aeschylus in the gory death scene in which Clytemnestra hacked open her husband' s head so that the "purple blood" gushed forth. A late Byzantine glossator had suggested that blood when dried was a darkish brown, and the bookish Classicist followed his late source without hesitation. But that led to worse problems, for how could Homer's sea be brownish, or a rainbow be rusty? read on to find out how...
