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, December 12, 2003
I'm feeling that first wave of Christmas fatigue...maybe it's the to-do list I just wrote out, or the baking projects waiting for me in the kitchen. Or the evergreen garlands that we've been walking over on the floor all week, instead of hanging up in the door and window frames. Or the packages downstairs that need to get mailed. I did get the shopping done early!
We try for simplicity at this time of year, and especially we try not to get caught up in the frantic rush and stress. I think maybe some of that is inevitable, because we DO want to remember and to see certain people. It's the social stuff that makes me exhausted, though: I'm pretty social, but the obligations and expectations always feel over-the-top. We've always made some of our gifts, and try to be sensible about the amount of money spent - after all, I'm trying to get rid of things, not accumulate more, and most everyone in our family feels the same way.
How do you deal with the consumerism, and handle the stresses and pressures of this season?
8:06 PM
|
Thursday, December 11, 2003
We woke to rain and sleet, and as the day warmed, the rain has continued, flattening the pristine fluffy snow. It was dull, grey, and raw all day, and now, with sunset, a fog has come in over the river, blending sky and land and reducing the trees to shades of grey. I have to go out tonight to a long choir rehearsal; we have our annual Lessons and Carols service on the 21st, and an ambitious program for Christmas Eve. As much as I love to sing, going out in this has zero appeal, especially since I know the footing everywhere will be treacherous as the temperature drops below freezing.
The weather was good for something, though: I finished and submitted an article on sexuality and religion that I've been turning over in my head for days. Will they take it? I don't know; my goal was to write it and do a good job. Right now I'm basking in the warmth of completion, drinking a cup of tea, and getting ready to cook some salmon, and potatoes with dill...
4:26 PM
|
LET'S NOT MINCE WORDS
"The other day, I asked my friend and ontological coach, Andrew Hoffman, about what questions his wise old grandfather gave him. On his death bed he left him with one last question: What is the point of your life?"
Dance of the Owl by Kenojuak Ashevak, Cape Dorset, 1978
INUIT LAUNCH HUMAN RIGHTS CASE AGAINST WASHINGTON
Sheila Watt-Cloutier, the chairwoman of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, which represents all 155,000 of her people inside the Arctic circle, said: "We want to show that we are not powerless victims. These are drastic times for our people and require drastic measures."
The Inuit have no voice at the [Milan] conference, since they are not a nation state, but Mrs Watt-Cloutier said: "We are already bearing the brunt of climate change - without our snow and ice our way of life goes. We have lived in harmony with our surroundings for millennia, but that is being taken away from us.
"People worry about the polar bear becoming extinct by 2070 because there will be no ice from which they can hunt seals, but the Inuit face extinction for the same reason and at the same time. " --from The Guardian
Wednesday, December 10, 2003 When he seats himself at the little writing-desk before the window looking over Bristol harbour, his hand feels as clumsy and the pen as foreign an instrument as ever before. --J. M. Coetzee, Nobel Prize address
I cut myself yesterday on the mezzaluna. We don’t use it often, this sleek kitchen weapon with its ebony knobs and stainless steel blades. I’d taken it out of the back of a drawer in order to chop a bunch of cilantro, and as I pried the hard black plastic guard off the curved double rocker-blades I said to myself, this is a dangerous thing, and just then my little finger came up along the back blade, just so, more swiftly than a thought. At first I couldn’t tell if it was a deep cut or shallow, only that it was clean and bloodless and a quarter of an inch long. I waited, staring, in that shocked space after a sudden injury, and then ran my finger under cold water. Stinging, then nothing. I began chopping the cilantro, and then a large drop of dark red formed and I instinctively raised it to my lips. It wasn’t deep, this cut. I was lucky.
Later in the afternoon I stopped working for a while and read J. M. Coetzee’s Nobel Prize address*. Somewhere around the third or fourth paragraph, another blade descended. This one was radical and entirely bloodless. It sliced through rosy pride and accomplishment, and then through the fat yellow layers of self-doubt and apathy, right down to the blue-white bone. I’m not finished with you yet, it said. I’m not after bone, but marrow.
There’s always something to write about in the back of a drawer, and always better writing out there, waiting to cut us open, to reveal more of the stuff of which we’re made. We can squirm at the last minute, letting the blade stop in those middle layers, or give ourselves up to the knife, rejoicing in language used so well it leaves us panting, avid, undone.
All of this news of Lincolnshire his man writes in a neat, quick hand, with quills that he sharpens with his little pen-knife each day before a new bout with the page.
This afternoon, looking out from the top of Killington
Today, a cloudless, warm, bright blue day. J. took off and went downhill skiing (pictures above). I went snowshoeing, and I can't begin to tell you how glorious it felt to be in the woods in twenty inches of snow, chickadees chattering overhead, champagne powder sifting down from the canopy against the dark trunks of tall white pines and sugar maples, and the snow - dazzling white in the sunlight, deep blue in the shadows - an untouched carpet interrupted only by the black, still-running brooks flowing down off the mountain.
Sunday evening's post...I forgot to switch it from "draft".
The snow continued all night: a real Nor'easter moving up the coast from the south and dumping huge quantities of snow inland. When we woke up this morning, the storm had stopped, and there were patches of pale blue in the opaque white northern sky. Reluctantly we rolled out of bed. J. made some coffee and put on his snow gear while I went up into the attic to retrieve my fuzzy turquoise fleece long-johns, purple ski pants, and heavy-duty, insulated gore-tex gloves from the "winter" storage box.
We drank the coffee and headed outside; J. for the snowblower and the driveway, me for the two snowshovels and the front porch and walk. This was around 8:30, and pretty soon the neighbors were all out there shoveling and yakking with us. Next door, our Icelandic neighbors came out with their baby daughter, in a bright red papoose-like down-filled snowsuit, for her first experience of snow.
Across the street, a young doctor who has come back east from seven years working on reservations in New Mexico was in semi-shock. His boys had gone outside this morning, all excited, only to find themselves sinking up to their necks in snow, which freaked them out. The boys had quickly adjusted; their father wasn't so sure, so we gave him the usual pep-talk: "Winter is a given here, the more you fight it, the worse it will make you feel, so you have to find ways to enjoy it, enter into it, LOVE it." He nodded, trying hard to be convinced, while watching the rest of us attack three-foot high hard-packed drifts where the plows had piled snow in front of the driveways.
We shoveled out the elderly widow's house across the street, and talked briefly to the laconic guy kitty-corner across from our house, a life-long New Englander and gifted builder/carpenter who views grass and snow with equal disdain but gets more physical work done than any of us, and does it in a faster and more efficient way. By 10 we were all pretty much dug out, and a few cars were beginning to move down the street.
It's not snowball snow, or snowman snow, it's light fluffy Christmas snow that sprays into your face when tossed upwards in a shower of diamond-dusted sparkles and is so cold and light that it stays on your eyelashes and hair like white glitter. It covers branches and evergreen without weighing them down, and falls off in a delicate curtain at the slightest touch. In a few days it will be packable, or maybe there will be rain and a crust will form, hard enough to send a sparrow sliding on its little feet across what used to be lawn. Today the sparrows were jumping happily in the barberry bush among the red fruits, each with its little cap of white. Nearby, the baby watched the snow being tossed by the busy shovels, felt the first flakes fall on her bright cheeks, gazed at us seriously with wide, unreadable eyes. Iceland gets less snow than this, and is warmer. She doesn't know that yet.
Late in the afternoon, I went to church to sing at the consecration of our newly-renovated building. The bishop showed up in a fine grey suit, clerical collar, and Sorels.
