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.
Yesterday we ran into an old friend, and were stunned to hear he’d just received a devastating diagnosis. The second such bad news in a week. Afterward, my husband and I just looked at each other; there was absolutely nothing to say.
Later I had lunch with a close friend, a man in his 70s, and asked, “do you ever get used to this?”
“No,” he shrugged. “At our age it simply becomes common. You expect it. That’s why I think I like Szymborska: she’s seen it all, she still has religious faith, but God is so far removed he’s meaningless, no help at all. And really, what else is a Pole going to think? Or a thinking person who’s lived through a year like this, in our world? Look around at the men who are running things, what they’re saying. It’s enough to make you go mad.”
My friend described Wislawa Szymborska’s poetry as having a “jaunty bitterness”, and I think he’s right, although it appeals less to me than to him – maybe I haven’t been hammered enough yet by life to lose my attachment to lyricism, or see it gradually replaced by irony or cynical, black humor. I’m terrified about that, actually, and will do anything to avoid it, other than hiding my head in the sand. That’s really my question these days: how to live in a world like this, with eyes wide open, and still keep my lightness, joy, hope, capacity to stay in the moment, desire to help -- and not feel overwhelmed by people’s sufferings and needs.
Certainly the answer is not in running, running, running, because there’s no escape. For me, it’s often in sitting still, face-to-face, with this paradoxical, unfathomable, goassamer thread we call existence. And dipping my hand into that silent well of human courage, distilled from centuries of tears.
Friday, June 13, 2003
I finally broke down and bought a book on learning Farsi: "Teach Yourself Persian", by John Mace. It begins at the beginning, with "alef", "a". About a year ago, I made my first attempt to learn to read the alphabet that is the basis of both Arabic and Persian. I still remember the day when I was able to sound out my first words, when the incomprehensible, beautiful squiggles that make up written Arabic suddenly took on sounds, and became a word. I didn't keep up with it, and I've forgotten most of what I learned, but I hope I can begin again and stick with it: one letter, one word, one concept at a time.
It helps to have Persian friends. I know some vocabulary now, and a few verbs. When I watch an Iranian movie I can pick out a word or phrase here and there, and it's a wonderful moment, like lighting illuminating a dark, confusing, jumbled room. "Ab!" I hear. "Water!" My first Farsi sentence was the same one used in children's reading books, "Baba ab dad": "Father gives water". It's the equivalent of "Run, Spot, Run", and when I said it for myself I was as proud as any five-year-old.
The other night Shirin brought us a "care package" from a recent trip to Montreal. It contained fresh-baked bread with zatar (sumac), jet-black nigella seeds, tamarind paste, and a bottle of keskh, a strange but deliciously tangy sauce made from dried yogurt. Today I looked at the bottle and its Arabic label. K- Sh - K. Amazing.
8:26 PM
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"Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called stopping the world, the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it's been.
It is this moment when man the slave becomes man the free being, capable of feats of perception that defy our linear imagination." Carlos Castaneda via whiskey river
A few days ago, an interesting question was posed at Intermezzo in C. The author had been reading Doris Lessing's Love, Again and asks, "Does romance require an obstacle?" giving a few examples such as the medieval idea of knight and unavailable lady, and the unrequited love that (as the author, a pianist, wryly points out) has given rise to some great music.
I haven't read Lessing's book, but I have been mulling this question, from the point of view of a 22-year marriage that's structured around a 24-hour-a-day business and marriage partnership. Sure sounds like a recipe for boredom and non-romance to me! But, strangely, it's neither boring nor unromantic, though the romance isn't of the bouquet-of-long-stemmed-roses variety. Fred at Fragments from Floyd has just celebrated 33 years, and has been considering that with wonder, too.
I think what romance requires is tension: not tension in the sense of simmering anger, but the tension of opposites, the deliberate experiment with difference. Obstacles certainly are a subset of "tension", and form the basis of some great romantic plots built around age difference, or separation through distance or family prohibitions, or inattainability. Romance that springs from insurmountable obstacles just as often withers as soon as the object of desire is actually present or attained. So how do you keep it?
In our own peculiar case, we're fortunate not to ever find each other boring: an attitude that is less a product of one's own view, than a mutual decision to keep learning, growing, changing - and to encourage that in the other person. But the romantic tension that I'm speculating about comes from, I think, an ongoing fascination with the inherent enigmatic quality of the other person's "otherness". As close as we are, I am still "other" by virtue of my femaleness, my wasp-ness, my rural, country background -- as well as all my particular personality traits - all totally loveable, I'm sure. And he is "other" by virtue of his maleness, his middle-eastern-ness, his more sophisticated, worldly background, and his own traits: frustrating and glorious as they are. Sometimes we hold our forearms next to each other and look at the different colors of our skins - mine nearly white, his perpetually tanned - as if they are symbolic of both our strangeness and our coming together. "Look at you!" we breathe. "Look at you!"
Where do the cuts happen first when the economy is sinking? In the arts. Take a look at this BBC story on cuts in state arts budgets across the U.S. Don't get me started...
8:06 AM
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Tuesday, June 10, 2003
I'm a happy girl tonight. I spent a couple of hours in the university library and came home with an armload of poetry books and essays on modern Polish poetry; I can't wait to crawl into bed and begin.
When I first arrived at my own university, years ago, from the small town where I'd grown up, I had never had to deal with a large card catalog, or stacks, or reserve reading, and I was both completely intimidated and afraid to ask for help for fear of revealing my inexperience. Gradually, though, I learned how to use the vast library; I can remember how it revealed its secrets to me slowly, one by one, unfolding like a love affair. In spite of the allure of the internet, and all the research I do on it, there is nothing I love more than the smell of old books in the stacks; the delicious suspension of time; the anticipation and quickening excitement of following a trail that I sense will lead me somewhere new, somewhere I've always wanted to go but just didn't know about until...this moment. Today I brushed away dust on a bottom shelf as I pulled out a book of criticism of post-war Polish poetry. Had no one been here for years but me? Why was this particular book falling into my hands, at this moment in time? What would it mean? What would it revel to me, or about me? What might I bring to this reading that hadn't been brought before -- for each encounter with each book, by each reader, is unique.
In the meantime, Adam Zagajewski bids us to sleep well:
NIGHT
Dances beautifully and has great desires. Seeks the road. Weeps in the woods. Is killed by dawn, fever, and the rooster.
Esoteric news story of the day, from the BBC: Scientists in Egypt say they may have discovered the mummy of Queen Nefertiti 9:02 PM
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Monday, June 09, 2003 ST. COLUMBA, IONA, AND THE BOOK OF KELLS
St. Matthew, from The Book of Kells
Anglicans have a peculiarly typical book called “Lesser Feasts and Fasts” that lists observances of “saints” and historical figures for nearly every day throughout the year. I'm finding that it's a good compendium of obscure but fascinating people and events...
Today, June 9th, is set aside for Columba, the Irish monk who founded the Abbey of Iona, off the coast of Scotland, in AD 600. Columba (he was a clansman of royal lineage, but his baptismal whose name means "dove") was an avid scribe, and is thought to have taught his monks calligraphy and illumination. About 200 years after Columba’s death, the monks of Iona created The Book of Kells to commemorate his life. Some consider this 339-page book to be the most beautiful example of medieval illumination ever created. It is certainly the greatest example of Celtic art, with its animal and human figures, elaborate knotwork, and beautiful script.
When the Vikings began raiding the British coast at the end of the 8th century, Iona was sacked and burnt. In AD825 many of the monks were killed when they refused to disclose where St. Columba was buried. Eventually most took refuge in Kells, Ireland, taking the famous Book with them. It now resides at Trinity College, Dublin.
On the eve of his death he was engaged in the work of transcription. It is stated that he wrote 300 books with his own hand, two of which… have been preserved to the present time… In the spring of 597 he knew that his end was approaching. On Saturday, 8 June, he ascended the hill overlooking his monastery and blessed for the last time the home so dear to him. That afternoon he was present at Vespers, and later, when the bell summoned the community to the midnight service, he forestalled the others and entered the church without assistance. But he sank before the altar, and in that place breathed forth his soul to God, surrounded by his disciples. This happened a little after midnight between the 8th and 9th of June, 597. He was in the seventy-seventh year of his age. New Advent Encyclopedia
By coincidence, I was working today on an invitation that needed a Celtic knotwork border. I found and downloaded a terrific shareware Celtic border font by Daniel Steven Smith. It not only has single-and double-stranded border possibilities, but also braided and twisted knotwork characters, standalone icons, and even the building blocks for chainmail. It's easy to use, comes with an excellent .PDF file explaining the different options and how to construct patterns with them, and can be used in any point size. It's free for non-commercial use, but If you download it, consdier sending him a contribution, this is quite a piece of work.
8:52 PM
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Sunday, June 08, 2003
HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRITISH MUSEUM!
School children drawing in the Egyptian Galleries, British Museum, 1999
Some of the happiest hours of my life have been spent in the British Museum, which celebrated its 250th anniversary yesterday. Our visits to London have generally been around Christmastime, and we stay in Bloomsbury, in a modest hotel, chosen because it's only a few blocks from the museum. In the morning, after our breakfast of porridge, eggs, granary toast and grilled tomatoes, we often walk up the street, around the corner, and along the tall wrought-iron fence, studded with exhibition posters, encircling the venerable institution. As I read them - "Calligraphy from Persia", "Korean Ceramics", "New Acquisitions from the Levant," my heart would race with anticipation. Past the pungent smell of roasted chestnuts sold by street vendors, past the corner pub, the little shops filled with coins and antiquities, the small restaurants advertising "jacket potatoes" -- and there was the famous facade, the pigeons in the plaza, the guards just opening up the gates for the day -- a day bound to teach me something I'd never imagined.
From a journal of our trip in 1998: Here, in the intensity of this sudden brief immersion in human history which our visits to London, above all, are, time compresses and expands with dizzying speed. One moment you are overcome by the length and breadth of man's walk upon this earth; you see yourself as one tiny dot in the continuum, the parade of rising and falling civilizations with their pinnacles of achievement. At the next moment, you are face to face with another human being who wrote a letter or drew a line -- and the time and distance compress into nothing as you recognize yourself and your own desires and strivings. It's a bizarre effect, and would be disorienting if it didn't feel, in a way, that I am simply playing the role I am meant to play. These objects; possessions; things people have made, used, carried, treasured, and left behind are a kind of message: a code meant, this particular day, for me. They say, "I was here, I existed, this mattered to me. See it and perhaps you can see me too."
