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, August 23, 2003 "Writing is ninety percent listening. You listen so deeply to the space around you that it fills you - and you write and it pours out of you. The deeper you can listen, the better you can write." - John Welwood via whiskey river 7:14 PM
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Friday, August 22, 2003
WHAT IS ART, AND WHEN DID IT BEGIN?
"We have discovered nothing new in art in 17,000 years." Pablo Picasso, on visiting Lascaux
Painted panel from the Grotte Chauvet; more than 30,000 years old.
Sometimes I get a reflexive reaction of wanting to reach out and slam the nearest art historian. The thrust of today's Japan Times article on prehistoric art seemed to be, "If the making of art is one definition of what makes us human, then which of these early efforts can actually be called art?"
I guess my definition of what makes art "art" is awfully broad: art is self-expression. That definition refuses to look at art through a Eurocentric filter, and it refuses to dismiss the "primitive" efforts of non-literate societies, or children, or elderly, or disabled people, as non-art. I sometimes wonder how many art historians and art critics have actually ever MADE a piece of art; if they had I don't think they'd be so high-minded. Don't get me wrong; there are some very astute people writing about art out there. But this particular bias has always really irked me because it is designed to exclude.
As for myself, I'm knocked out (and inspired) by prehistoric art, and cave painting in particular. I haven't been to any of the famous caves, but I know if and when I am able to go, it will be an overpowering experience of immediacy and connection.
Despite my rant, these two articles are worth reading:
Taking shape: Prehistoric art and us from The Japan Times. In the 19th century, scientists finally junked the Biblical idea of a seven-day divine Creation -- with man, at the pinnacle of the process, being fashioned from clay on the sixth day...Ever since, it seems, we haven't stopped searching for our secular version of the "sixth day": the dawn of modern humans...
Aboriginal Art in Australia (New York Times) In a cave in rugged wilderness not far from the luxurious country resorts of this city's well-to-do, a leading anthropologist has found an unusually rare and pristine cache of ancient Aboriginal rock art...In all, 11 layers of images of Australian animals — kangaroos, wombats and monitor lizards, which Australians call goannas — as well as drawings of boomerangs and half-human, half-animal creatures are scattered across the back wall of the cave in a giant mural...The more than 200 images — in faint reds and yellows, stark white and black — stretch from 4,000 years ago to the late 18th century when white settlers first ventured onto Australian soil
(Note: Today I read these two articles about prehistoric art before noticing that Carlos at Mysterium had posted another one about Lascaux, with a great photo.)
A new issue of The Christian Century (unfortunately the website doesn't include most of the current articles) arrived yesterday, with editorials and articles about Gene Robinson’s election and the future of the Episcopal church (watched nervously, we hear, by the Lutherans and Presbyterians). I’m getting tired of the speculation about schism and think it's more voyeristic than helpful; the point is that the American church has moved forward and unless I am very much mistaken, Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, will not interfere or name another “province”– in effect establishing a second, but conservative, Episcopal church in the U.S. We need to get on with the business of loving one another and finding out what that means as one body, just as we did with the ordination of women.
Last Saturday we attended the civil union of an Episcopal priest and her partner, held in an Episcopal Church, and the Rt. Rev. Tom Ely, Bishop of Vermont, was present to pronounce the union, as well as acting as celebrant for the Eucharist that followed. Bishop Ely was also the person who handled the investigation of sexual misconduct charges raised against Gene Robinson at the General Convention.
I had a chance to talk to Bishop Ely at the reception, and to thank him for his participation at the civil union (blessings and special liturgies for such events were left up to “local option” at Convention – a typically Episcopalian decision, and, in my opinion, a very smart one) and also for what he did at Convention. “It must have been difficult,” I said. He smiled and said, simply, “It was the right thing to do. When you do the right thing, it isn’t difficult.”
Thursday, August 21, 2003
TWO REAL-LIFE STORIES FROM THE MOSCOW TIMES
After watching the Iranian film Baran last week, about the lives of Afghani refugees, my husband and I looked around our house in stunned silence. We're pretty aware, I think, of how fortunate we are, and the fact that his family were immigrants and his mother a refugee herself are never far from our minds. One thing we have in abundance here is space. But we also have so much beauty, and so much freedom, and so much ability to change our circumstances. In the film, a young man sells his identity card - his most precious possession - in order to help a young refugee girl survive. I pondered this gesture for days, in painful and unresolved self-examination. How seriously do I take the lessons of my own religion?
Baran portrays daily life so vividly that there was a mini culture-shock as soon as we lifted our eyes from the credits. When I came down to my computer that evening, I noticed so many objects that I take for granted that would be lifeblood for the people in the film: a small stereo, a CD player, several computers, cell phone, camera...not to mention shelves and shelves of books: bought, read, and displayed freely.
My friend Shirin tells me that when she goes to Iran, "Life here, back in America, becomes like a package. You wrap it up, and you don't open while you're there. You can't. The reality of how people live there is too overwhelming and too present; you can't get your head around both places at once. And when you come back, it just feels unreal here, like a dream, like some sort of DisneyWorld." She's going soon, for the first time in several years. I worry about her.
These articles are about Russia, not Iran, but they too reminded me to think hard about my own life and responsibility toward the parallel Cassandras living in other places:
"Just when I thought our Azeri lessons were getting dull, last week we got onto the subject of doctors and the remarkable treatments they offer their patients. How any sick person gets better in Azerbaijan never fails to amaze me..."
"My neighbor Natasha was thrilled when she turned 55, the minimum retirement age in most lines of work. Natasha, you see, was anything but old. She had worked as an economist for 30 years, and she was ready for a change. She gleefully announced that she planned to spend the rest of her days traveling around Russia and the rest of the world..."
4:07 PM
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Wednesday, August 20, 2003 In my garden (detail) 8/19/03
I've been, uncharacteristically, alone here. Yesterday noon J. headed gone up north to visit family, and I stayed here because of a client meeting early this morning. Last night I sat out on the back porch and watched the light slowly fade on the garden. Something moved me to get out my watercolors, so I went inside and rummaged around, assembling a water jar, brushes, a piece of hot pressed paper, and my big palette of now-dried paints. It felt good to sketch and paint; after half an hour I had a noble failure, but this is typical for watercolors. I took my elephant-ear sponge, soaked it, squeezed it, and rubbed out the areas that were overworked. Ah, improvement. Then back with the paints, more contrast, a little detail in the foreground...
Painting is absorbing, frustrating, exhilarating, joyful. I used to paint and exhibit quite a lot, in oils and in watercolors, and then, as I've focussed more and more on writing, I've nearly given it up. Lately, though, the urge has returned - it always comes when I'm in museums and see good work, feel the paint vicariously under my fingers. I was fortunate enough to have a gift for drawing from very early on. My mother is an artist, and my father could have been, and they encouraged me to make things and to be creative. I always had paints and clay, scissors and papers, chalks and crayons, and all the adults around me made things -- from wood, or cloth, or thread. I was very serious about it for a long time, but then, as life became more complex, I realized I had to focus, and writing became the medium that made the most sense, seemed to have the most potential impact. And I was, I think, lonely. Words had always been my primary medium; writing was a way to connect. Even in the solitary act of writing, I could sense a reader and hear a response.
This summer, at the Montreal fine arts museum, I walked into a dimly-lit room containing Canadian art from the late 19th and 20th centuries, and suddenly felt hit in the gut. It was a visceral, overwhelming longing not just to look, but to pick up the brushes. And I can't do it, not seriously, not now, but I figure I can draw a little, begin to explore that part of myself again.
This morning the painting from yesterday looked as terrible as I had expected, but that's all right. Watercolor is the most unforgiving medium, and you have to throw out a lot of work for each one you keep. I'm very much out of practice. One good aspect of getting older is that you learn to appreciate the process more than the result; you know why you're doing something, and the doing becomes as important as the product, or, even more important, someone's eventual reaction. As I was painting yesterday, I saw the blue of the junipers, the chartreuse busy-ness of the heathers, the spotted light on the thicket of jewelweed across the lawn. And they stay with me today, sparkling in the late, fading light, because I looked at them last night with fresh, expectant, hungry eyes.
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
POLISH POETRY V, continued
Tadeusz Rozewicz has a great many poems about poetry. His work is characteristically spare, so to some extent you have to search for the "I"; self-portraiture doesn't come as easily, or with as many adjectives, as it does to Milosz. Here, however, Rozewicz talks about the plainness of his language and makes it clear he knows exactly what he is doing, and why:
MY POETRY
explains nothing clarifies nothing makes no sacrifices is not all-embracing does not redeem any hopes
does not create any new rules of the game takes no part in play has a defined place which it has to fulfil
if it's not a cryptic language if it speaks without originality if it holds no surprises evidently this is how things ought to be
obedient to its own necessity its range and limitations it loses even against itself
it does not usurp the space of another poetic nor can it be replaced by any other open to all devoid of mystery
it has many tasks to which it will never do justice
(1965)
And fourteen years later he wrote this remarkable description about the act of poetry, and the poet's vulnerability:
WHEN WRITING
when writing the poet is a man whose back is turned to the world to disorders of reality
he's surfaced he's left the animal world traces of his bird-feet are stamped on drifting sands
from afar he still hears voices words women's grainy laughter
but he musn't look back
when writing the poet is defenceless he can be easily startled ridiculed fettered and confused
Hairy chests and bare legs: Why (and when) did humans lose their body hair? This NYTimes article scratches beneath the surface...
Gerbils run amok in China: British animal humor is bizarre, but I think this article on an explosion of 16-inch Great Gerbils (Rhombomys opimus) in Xinjiang Province is for real. Animal lovers be warned, the scenario is not pretty. From the BBC.
“Plate of Memory II” from an exhibition of assemblages and montages by Aleksandra Manczak at GalerieFF, Lodz. (The site uses frames; navigate to "list of exhibitions" and click on Manczak)
Both Milosz and Rozewicz have written many poems about poetry, and about being poets. Like Anna Akhmatova, they muse about this strange gift of the muse, and why it chose them. Unlike Akhmatova, who was prone to a certain amount of over-dramatization about her own role as poet/seer (which doesn’t diminish her work in my eyes at all), both Milosz and Rosewicz are disarmingly self-deprecating, considering what truly great poets they are.
Here is a short poem from Milosz, written in 1985 when he was living in Berkeley. One thing I’m looking for in reading these works is the effect of Catholicism, even in people who - because of what they’ve seen and experienced in life – struggle or reject the faith of their childhood. In just a few lines Milosz reflects on his attachment to sensuous pleasures and things of the flesh, and then obliquely excludes himself from “greatness”, while at the same time defining "literature".
My Lord, I loved strawberry jam And the dark sweetness of a woman’s body. Also well-chilled vodka, herring in olive oil, Scents, of cinnamon, of cloves. So what kind of prophet am I? Why should the spirit Have visited such a man? Many others Were justly called, and trustworthy. Who would have trusted me? For they saw How I empty glasses, throw myself on food, And glance greedily at the waitress’s neck. Flawed and aware of it. Desiring greatness, Able to recognize greatness wherever it is, And yet not quite, only in part, clairvoyant, I know what was left for smaller men like me: A feast of brief hopes, a rally of the proud. A tournament of hunchbacks, literature.
Czeslaw Milosz Translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Haas (from Spoiling Cannibal’s Fun, Northwestern University Press, 1991)
5:19 PM
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Sunday, August 17, 2003 Le monde est grand, mais en nous il est profond comme la mer.
(The world is large, but in us it is deep as the sea.)
R. M. Rilke quoted in Gaston Bachelard's The Poetics of Space
I think what I was trying to get at yesterday is this: Is a person actually a place? Perhaps even an ultimate sort of place? And if so, what is a weblog in relation to that person?
Recommended: Maria's comment on this subject at Alembic. 5:15 PM
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