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, September 20, 2003
Cassandra with a Fish and Hollyhocks, c. 1958
It's my 51st birthday today. I don't think I've changed too much, really. I still grow hollyhocks but I don't fish anymore - I've gotten too tenderhearted in my old age - but that feels like me in the picture.
That was my grandparent's cabin on the lake where we spent summers, and where my parents still live. Our house was right next door. Grandpa was an avid fisherman, and often, in the evenings, he and I would work our way around the shoreline while the sun set. I carried a can of worms and a simple pole with hooks I baited myself; he cast with a red-and-white spinner. On other evenings my mother and I fished near "the perch tree", an old beech on the shoreline that hosted schools of perch in its shadows. I got good at feeling their sneaky nibbles, and once in a while actually caught one before it stole my worm.
There are few contemplative activities I like more than staring into still water. I spent many hours as a child lying face down on the end of the dock, gazing into the depths of the lake. Early in the morning we'd stand on the top of the bank overlooking the lake and be able to see fish swimming lazily among the weeds and submerged branches: sunfish, perch, large-mouth bass, sometimes a big carp. In the shallows near the sandbar we'd see pickerel, camouflaged like sticks, and small tender little bass, with their black stripe and tailfin.
In my dreams now, I often find myself staring into the lake. Sometimes there are fish, sometimes things that metamorphose fantastically into birds or dolphins, boats and flying machines. What do they mean, these dreams? I feel like my subconscious is under the water, swimming quietly, mysteriously; flashing silver; beckoning and elusive, but always familiar, always inseparable from who I am, whether or not I understand what it's trying to say.
I plant beans below the southern hill: there grasses flourish and bean sprouts are sparse. At dawn I get up, clear out a growth of weeds, then go back, leading the moon, a hoe over my shoulder.
Now the path is narrow, grasses and bushes are high. Evening dew moistens my clothes; bo so what if my clothes are wet - I choose not to avoid anything that comes.
T'ao Ch'ien (365-427)
from The Silk Dragon, translations from the Chinese by Arthur Sze
The fossil remains of a gigantic rodent that looked something like a monster guinea pig have been identified by scientists in Venezuela.
The 700-kilogram beast - about the size of a buffalo - lived among the reeds and grasses of an ancient river system that threaded its way into the Caribbean Sea eight million years ago.
Researchers think the creature, which was 10 times as big as today's largest rodents, could have run in huge packs.
Evidence suggests it also had to dodge the constant attentions of super-sized crocodiles and carnivorous birds, which stood three metres tall...
10:22 PM
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Interior of St. Vibiana Cathedral, Los Angeles, 1945
HOLY SPACE
For those who enjoy good writing about "place", there is a beautiful article, "In the Shadow of Angels", in the "home" section of today's LA Times. Written by Marjorie Gellhorn Sa'adah, it is about living in the deconsecrated St. Vibiana Cathedral during this year, before the renovations begin that will turn the former 130-year old Catholic Cathedral of Los Angeles into a performing arts center.
...When I came to live here last year, there were still the dusty outlines of the Stations of the Cross running the length of the cathedral, but a film crew has since painted the walls and even those shadows are gone. The stained-glass windows have been removed, and clear daylight pours across the empty sanctuary onto the mosaic floor. Waves of earthen colors lap toward what remains of the marble floor...
The cathedral, rectory and gardens span the block just south of City Hall. Five of us — Lupe, Perri, Hal, Patrick and I — live in the rectory, in rooms that once belonged to priests and the cardinal. There are five floors with dozens of unused rooms; the rectory is a labyrinth of doors and hallways. You turn a corner and find yourself in a room with nothing but racks of old keys, a deserted dining room with impeccably hand-stitched curtains now gray with age, a wine cellar with rolled-up maps in the slanted racks. Let the wrong door shut behind you and you are locked in an enclosed courtyard with a gurgling fountain, overgrown fan palms, wild orchids and the sparrows.
(Getting onto the LA Times website is a pain, they have a lengthy registration procedure but you can sign up for a free 14-day trial and get in.)
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
The discussion about words-creating-worlds has brought up the topic of the power of words, and there's some disagreement about when, exactly, words acquire their power - or if, in fact, words have any power at all separate from their human agents. There've been some astute comments pointing out that words themselves are not the beginning fo thoughts at all; that much of what exists exists in a space without labels, without concepts, without any projections of language, judgement, or personality.
Meditation teaches us a lot about the process by which thoughts, and eventually, words, form in our minds. Suppose I'm meditating and the neighbor's dog barks. What exists? Nothing has changed, really, but at the sound of the dog I may get a wave in my mind that, through a complex path, takes a form. It may go something like this: sound of dog/ mind identifies sound intuitively/mind labels sound: "dog"/mind places dog in context: "neighbor's dog, in back yard"/mind starts thinking and judging: "there's that dog again, it always bothers me when I'm meditating/damn, now I'm thinking, why can't my practice be any better than this, I'm so hopeless...
After we begin to perceive the complexity, we can begin to take it apart. The dog barks, we say to ourselves, "dog", or "thought" and calmly go back to our breathing. And eventually we barely hear the dog, or, perhaps more accurately, we hear it but it doesn't disturb us, so we don't go in the direction of labeling, associating, judging...
In the beginning the practice of meditation is just dealing with the basic neurosis of mind, the confused relationship between yourself and your projections, your relationship to thoughts. When a person is able to see the simplicity of the technique without any special attitude toward it, he is then able to relate himself with his thought pattern as well. He begins to see thoughts as simple phenomena, no matter whether they are pious thoughts or evil thoughts, domestic thoughts, whatever they may be. One does not relate to them as belonging to a particular category, as being good or bad; just see them as simple thoughts. When you relate to thoughts obsessively, then you are actually feeding them because the thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful. You are feeding them energy because you have not seen them as simple phenomena. If one tries to quiet them down, that is another way of feeding them...
From the chapter "Simplicity" in The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation by Chogyam Trungpa (Shambhala)
10:28 PM
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Tuesday, September 16, 2003
Pablo Picasso, Musical Faun #5, lithograph, 1948
I've been looking at a large volume of Picasso's lithographs (Graphikmuseum Pablo Picasso Munster, The Huizinga Collection) and, as usual whenever I re-encounter Picasso, I'm bowled over by his inventiveness, versatility, and sheer genius. He also makes me laugh out loud. This picture of a musical faun (the artist, perhaps?) is the fifth and free-est in a series of lithographic explorations of fauns playing pipes. It reminds me of some of the Picasso ceramics that were exhibited a few years ago at the Met - did anyone else see them? More works in the days to come...
WORDS CREATE WORLDS, reprise There's an interesting discussion going on in the comment thread (HaloScan comments seem to be down today, to my annoyance -- please keep trying) from September 14. Do words create worlds? Jack writes: "Words absent deeds have no meaning; are null sets." I think he's right, up to a point - but I agree with Abraham Heschel's point that words can lay the groundwork, create the psychological conditions necessary for deeds to occur - both for good and for ill. I'm very interested to know other people's thoughts on this.
5:13 PM
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Monday, September 15, 2003 GG#26 George Gudni (Iceland) 2001
ISLANDS
It's Island Day at the Ecotone wiki, where contributors are writing about Islands and Place.
I decided not to write about islands because, for this land-locked dweller of hills and mountains, the essay would have to be a metaphorical exploration of Life as an Island, or some such notion, and it felt like too much of a stretch. So I'm leaving the topic to the excellent thoughts of people who have actually lived on, and know about, the real thing. I do wish I could get my neighbor(s) to write something - they are from Iceland and have a great deal to say about the effect of that island on both the national and individual psyche.
My personal favorites among islands? Manhattan. England. Five Islands, Maine, where I had my only close encounter with the sea, nearly getting dashed against the rocks in a canoe as J. and I tried to paddle around a small island and found ourselves in roiling open water before the entrance to the harbor. And a small unnamed island in Lake Winnepesauke, new Hampshire, whose shore I've roamed in a one-person kayak, listening to loons at dusk.
It's a sort of interfaith day for me. After church, I had the pleasure of introducing Susannah Heschel, who was giving a talk about her father and his unique place in Jewish theology to a group of Episcopalians. One of the subjects that came up was the fact that Abraham Heschel was, and is, an inspiration to many Christians. Heschel himself said that in his opinion, "religious pluralism seemed to be the will of God" and that interfaith dialogue was crucial in our world. We should focus "on what we have in common, not what divides us," he said, and his life and work reflected that conviction. Pope John XXIII told him once that his writings "made Catholics into better Catholics", and Heschel was very pleased by this.
In 1965 Heschel gave a lecture at Union Theological Seminary entitled "No Religion is an Island". It strikes me today as very prophetic, especially if we include other religious groups. Here's an excerpt:
Our era marks the end of complacency, the end of evasion, the end of self-reliance. Jews and Christians share the perils and the fears; we stand on the brink of the abyss together. Interdependence of political and economic conditions all over the world is a basic fact of our situation. Disorder in a small obscure country in any part of the world evokes anxiety in people all over the world...
The religions of the world are no more self-sufficient, no more independent, no more isolated than individuals or nations. Energies, experiences, and ideas that come to life outside the boundaries of a particular religon or all religions continue to challenge and to affect every religion.
Horizons are wider, dangers are greater...No religion is an island...
We fail to realize that while different exponents of faith in the world of religion continue to be wary of the ecumenical movement, there is another ecumenical movement, worldwide in extent and influence: nihilism. We must choose between interfaith and internihilism...Should we refuse to be on speaking terms with one another and hope for each other's failure? Or should we pray for each other's health and help one another in preserving one's respective legacy, in preserving a common legacy?
First and foremost we meet as human beings who have much in common...My first task at every encounter is to comprehend the personhood of the human being I face, to sense the kinship of being human, solidarity of being.
To meet a human being is a major challenge to mind and heart. I must recall what I normally forget. A person is not just a specimen of the species called Homo sapiens. He is all of humanity in one, and whenever one man is hurt, we are all injured. The human is a disclosure of the divine, and all men are one in God's care for man. Many things on earth are precious, some are holy, humanity is holy of holies.
The Dalai Lama, not surprisingly, has a similar view. Here's a quote from a recent lecture, via both2 and beyond binary:
Love, compassion, forgiveness, and self-discipline are at the core of every major religion. If you take your own religion at its word and practice it sincerely, you will see and respect those qualities in other world religions. Peace begins with each of us practicing those virtues, mindfully, every day, in our own lives. 2:23 PM
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WORDS CREATE WORLDS
Words, he often wrote, are themselves sacred, God's tool for creating the universe, and our tools for bringing holiness - or evil - into the world. He used to remind us that the Holocaust did not begin with the building of crematoria, and Hitler did not come to power with tanks and guns; it all began with uttering evil words, with defamation, with language and propaganda. Words create worlds, he used to tell me when I was a child. They must be used very carefully. Some words, once having been uttered, gain eternity and can never be withdrawn. The Book of Proverbs reminds us, he wrote, that death and life are in the power of the tongue.
from Susannah Heschel's introduction to her father, Abraham Heschel's, book of essays, Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.
12:11 AM
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