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, May 23, 2003
Last night, Shirin made us one of the best meals in recent memory: chicken khoresh (stew) with yogurt; a Palestinian kibbeh-like dish of ground beef cooked in a tray with tahini sauce on top; my favorite eggplant/garlic/walnut served with sabzi (fresh greens) and Afghani barbari bread; cold salad of yogurt with spinach; and another salad of cucumbers, onions and tomatoes -- all served with perfect basmati tadik (rice cooked with a golden crust). I think I skipped right to the seventh heaven.
Afterwards we watched Asian and Middle Eastern TV from their new satellite dish - a melange of totally comprehensible shows like the all-day carpet-selling channel and a chador-clad woman reading Hafez in a voice matched by her loveliness, to mind-bending Western-imitation (and very trashy) Iranian and Middle East music videos, news, and a "So You Want to be a Millionare" rip-offs. Fascinating.
And today, I cooked all day long for tomorrow's family gathering and memorial for my mother-in-law -- mainly with my mother, sister-in-law, and niece. Frankly, forget the celebration - it was the day of cooking and chatter with other women that my mother-in-law would have loved most.
5:02 PM
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Sainteros has a thoughtful post today about weblogging and self-representation, in which he raises the question, "in weblogging, are we building a genuine community, or are we acting out some high-tech collective fantasy?" He also asks, "Will we be blogging in five years?"
I wrote a comment: "I think we'll be communicating/publishing, maybe not in this form exactly, but it's not the form that's important, it's what we are trying to do --and that's a universal human thing. I'm not overly concerned with a "filtered" web persona; we are trying to communcate something coherent, after all, and we can't write about EVERYthing that comes into our lives or head. I am more concerned about deliberate deception (as opposed to honest fiction writing). I'm trying hard to be honest in my blog while protecting some aspects of my privacy and protecting the identities and feelings of the people I write about - same as I would if publishing books.
It feels like genuine community to me, and like all community-building efforts, I suspect I will get out of it what I put into it."
I'm not a Buddhist, but I practiced zazen for a number of years, and continue to return to it and to the teachings of Zen. (Zen means "concentration of the mind", and za means "seated".) The BBC reports today that Buddhists Really Are Happier . I don't know if they are or not, although i suspect they are calmer. What I do know is that I've learned more about myself, and about how to cope with being in this world, from Zen than from any other religion or religious practice.
I find myself turning to this (and to my breath) today because we're preparing for a memorial celebration for the life of my husband's mother this weekend. She died at the very end of December, and we decided to wait until spring to gather and celebrate her remarkable, nearly 90 years of life. But today the family is beginning to arrive, the phone is ringing, people are asking a million questions -- and I need that calm place. Today it is a calm I must find while cutting carrots, polishing the silver, inside the pauses in conversation.
Here is a little excerpt from Shunryu Suzuki's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, the book that introduced me to Zen teaching and practice:
When the alarm rings early in the morning, and you get up, I think you do not feel so good. It is not easy to go and sit, and even after you arrive at the zendo and begin zazen you have to encourage yourself to sit well. These are just waves in your mind. While you are sitting these waves will become smaller and smaller, and your effort will change into some subtle feeling.
We say, "Pulling out the weeds we give nourishment to the plant." We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give it nourishment. So even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you. So you should be not be bothered by your mind. You should rather be grateful for the weeds, because eventually they will enrich your practice." 1:53 PM
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Wednesday, May 21, 2003 Turkish Bath, Fernando Moleres
The evocative black-and-white photographs by Fernando Moleres of Turkish Baths (panos, via conscientious) reminded me of a film we saw several years ago. Its English title was "Steam: The Turkish Bath", and it was a strange and, I thought, wonderful film by Ferzan Ozpetek (1998). It involves an Italian architect or interior designer who inherits a traditional hamman in, I think, Istanbul, and goes there to dispose of it -- but becomes seduced by the place itself. What follows is a tale of a family, the infusion and persistence of culture, love, and the effect of an ancient timelessness on modern beings. An interesting contrast/comparison with the recent and also wonderful Chinese film "Shower". Take a look at Moleres photos...I love the men in the pool playing chess...
The conversation that’s been going on among a few “place bloggers” is going public on Wednesday with our collective submissions to this week’s Carnival of the Vanities (thanks, Susannah!).
A small group of us have been kicking around our own reasons for writing about place, and out of that has emerged the hope to define “place” broadly, and to give it greater expression within a larger community of people on the web.
My blog is about many subjects. Some reflections on how they all fit into “place blogging” is in the archived entry from May 14th, or can also be read if you click on “writing about place” to the left.
I think one major reason I write about nature is a desire to share what I find there: the beauty in the dramatic sweep of landscape or starlit sky, the amazing detail in a flower or an iridescent green beetle. But it’s also a desire to express some of the universal qualities that lie at the root of our experience of nature – experiences that can range from solace and peace to absolute terror. Despite the fact that most of us live in houses with temperatures regulated for comfort year-round, and buy our potatoes in plastic bags rather than grubbing for them in the earth, human beings haven’t evolved far enough to avoid feeling some pretty basic emotions in the presence of the natural world. One of the most prevalent is longing – a longing that can variously be felt as fear or desire, but often involves a sense of longing for home, and a return to something we’ve lost and can barely remember. Thoreau wrote, “from the forest and wilderness come the tonics and barks which brace mankind.” I think people who write about place are trying to make sense of their own search for home and meaning on this earth, and one of our greatest joys is sharing that with others. So here’s a poem and an invitation from me:
Come with me through the gateless gate, I want to take you to a secret place beneath the tiny-needled hemlock, where light sifts through the branches and falls, a golden powder, on a banquette made of moss – here little fishes play in shadows as the brook races over pebbles, tumbles from the lake. Enfolded by the dark arms of the trees, we’ll rest together in the greenness, listening.
And I will show you the cardinal-flower, where it hides, and find for you a baby perch, tender and striped, holding itself still in the currents, eyes curious and wild, like those of the girl-child who used to throw her wrath and sorrows in these waters and sit here, silent, watching, until her throat could sing.
BBC: Chimpanzees are so closely related to humans that they should properly be considered as members of the human family, according to new genetic research.
Monday, May 19, 2003
As usual when reading Thomas Merton, I'm enjoying the mutual mind-stretching that is his journalistic style, and relishing his dry humor. And it is startling to read his thoughts on the world of the 1960s, in the light of today:
Father S--., who had to go to the doctor in Louisville, came back with a clipping about a man out in the Kentucky mountains, an old coal miner who, for thirteen years, has lived as a hermit with his dog in a pitiful shack without even a chimney. He used an old car seat for his bed. When he was asked why he chose to live such a life he replied: "because of all these wars." A real desert father, perhaps. And probably not too sure of how he got there.
Merton was also a writer of "place" par excellence; the solitude and integrity he craved and found in nature stood in contrast to an "official" monasticism that, in his opinion, often interfered with contemplation and continually compromised with the world yet refused to admit it. For Merton, nature was steadfast, honest and revelatory:
More and more I appreciate the beauty and the solemnity of the "way" up through the woods, past the barn, up the stony rise, into the groves of tall, straight oaks and hickories around through the pines, swinging to the hilltop and the clearing that looks out over the valley.
Sunrise: hidden by pines and cedars to the east: I saw the red flames of the kingly sun glaring through the black trees, not like dawn but like a forest fire. Then the sun became distinguished as a person and he shone silently and with solemn power through the branches, and the whole world was silent and calm.
It is essential to experience all the times and moods of one good place. No one will ever be able to say how essential, how truly part of a genuine life this is: but all this is lost in the abstract, formal routine of exercises under an official fluorescent light. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander 7:20 PM
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Sunday, May 18, 2003 Jaham on the Difficult Beauty of the First White Hair
What is lovelier than the dark when it draws the heavy curtains of the day and beds the sun in cushions of black cloud? A passion of blackness gives their skulls that onyz glossiness. Today I found my first white hair. How could my light be dying when my heart is twined by black strands to the farthest star?
As always in distress I took my refuge in the verses of the classics where I read what Sharif al-Radi wrote of his first white hair:
Time rubs the swordblade free of tarnishes youth’s impestuous loveliness imposes.
I picked up Araby last summer in "The Word", a small second-hand bookshop at 469 Rue Milton in Montreal. In addition to a good selection of literature, they had a shelf of new editions of local and selected poetry. There I found this recent book by Eric Ormsby, professor of Islamic Studies at McGill. The poems follow two characters, Jahan, a semi-nomadic poet and mechanic, and his sidekick Bald Adham, also a mechanic and "a pillar of Muslim piety"; Ormsby's view of the Arab world is descriptive, affectionate, intelligent, and often funny. I liked it then, and like it now.
