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, January 24, 2004
Hi. I'm writing from Montreal, where it is very cold and windy but quite sunny. This internet place is closed tomorrow so I probably won't be blogging until I get back on Monday, with new words and pictures from our adventures. I think of all of you.
1:58 PM
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Thursday, January 22, 2004
This afternoon I went to see my father-in-law. It was just starting to snow - big fat flakes separated by what felt like two or three feet of air. I stopped at the nursery at the foot of the hill below his retirement home, thinking I'd go in the greenhouse and find some little blooming thing to take him. When I walked in, I was greeted by a three-tiered shelf of little pots filled with just-blooming "Tete-a-Tete" narcissus. "That would do just fine," I thought, and headed for the greenhouse anyway, past a big bushel basket filled with paperwhite narcissus bulbs. The greenhouse was...green. And it was moist, and warm, and packed full of plants the likes of which I hadn't seen for many months. I wandered past ficus trees and hibiscus bushes, ivies trailing from the ceiling and begonias with huge silvery leaves. I stopped and considered a bay filled with bright-colored primroses, and then lingered over the orchids - pink, pure white, spotted with gold, their flat impassive faces turned toward the light. There were cactuses in bloom, and orange and lemon trees carrying fruit, and hanging exotic ferns whose damp fronds brushed their dampness onto the shoulders of my coat.
But I decided, in the end, on the little daffodils, made my purchase and went for my visit. We sat in his warm room, far warmer than our house, with the daffodils on a folding tray by the blue velveteen loveseat, and talked about Damascus, and the best kind of za'atar bread, and he told me, again, the story of a silver ring with a scarab he once had and how it came to be lost.
When I came out, it was snowing much harder, but the flakes were still big, which usually means a squall of fairly short duration. So I drove on into town and spent a contented hour at the library, down in the theology and religion section, where my only companions were a confused Asian girl in a pink down jacket and a handsome man a bit older than myself, with fuzzy grey hair and a beard, wrapped in a handknit Aran sweater and bent over his own pile of books.
At 4:15, I checked out my books at the circulation desk and walked out to find the storm stopped and brilliant late afternoon light spilling from the west onto the campus. The white sides of the old college buildings were dazzling, the snow pinkish-gold, the brick of the library and administration buildings warmed into a gilded russet. It was as beautiful as I've ever seen the campus, but as I drove around the Green all the students were walking, heads down, backpacks filled, as usual, while nature put on her glorious light show beyond their oblivious eyes. As I got onto the highway, the drama increased. Allegorical, pink-tinged clouds filled the horizon, amid an azure sky, and the back-lit trees, each branch dusted with new snow, glowed golden against the darker evergreens. The new snow had covered everything with a fine white dust, obliterating the muddy, splattered road sand along the road's edges. Individual differences among the tall white pines, standing like a line of identical magistrates in black robes and powdered wigs, were erased by the dusting of snow. In the distance, the hills faded into shades of blue and purple, whitened by the snow and burnished by the light. It was a familiar landscape made mythic, at least for a few moments of sunset on one particular day.
Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Martin Luther King, Jr.
From a Time, Inc. photo essay on Martin Luther King, Jr. by photographer Flip Schulke
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. ON NONCOMFORMITY (1963): "This hour in history needs a dedicated circle of transformed nonconformists. Dangerous passions of pride, hatred and selfishness are enthroned in our lives; truth lies prostrate on the rugged hills of nameless Calvaries. The saving of our world from pending doom will come, not through the complacent adjustment of the conforming majority, but through the creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority."
Nonconformity. That's not a word you hear much these days, but when I was young it was our definition: often applied derogatorily, but worn proudly. Sixties-bashers have sometimes said that calling a bunch of hippies and flower children all wearing long hair and beads "nonconformists" is ridiculous, that the youth of the sixties were just as conformist as anyone. But I think either these critics weren't there, or they've missed the point.
What Martin Luther King, Jr. is talking about in this quote with the marvelous phrase: "creative maladjustment of a nonconforming minority" was an attitude of rebellion against the status quo and the powers that attempted to control American society. It was this much more than it was an inner-turning conformity to a different norm of acceptability. For those of us who were part of that rebellion, the wide range of difference among the participants was evident and accepted. For those of us who were in it for political change, it was not a matter of doing drugs or wearing beads or a certain hairstyle, it was a shared understanding that what was going down in Vietnam, in Washington, on campuses, and in the inner cities was wrong and unacceptable. The people who agreed with the war and agreed with the government were the conformists and the enablers.
I sometimes wonder, looking around at the America of today, and especially at some of the college campuses and the students who appear to me to be idealistic but in a different way, as well as very naive, and respectful and unquestioning about authority, that conformity is once again considered a virtue. So much so, in fact, that it isn't even a word that gets used. I'd love to hear arguments to the contrary, because I'd love to believe that a new generation of non-conformists is likely to spring forth. Where I saw that nonconformity again was at the peace march last year in New York, where a crowd of all ages and all backgrounds united for one purpose, to try to take back our world from the powers that threaten it.
I guess I've always been maladjusted, when it comes to the society around me. Here's to more "creative maladjustment", and "transformed nonconformity".
Tuesday, January 20, 2004 The old Inuit woman Qulé. Thule 1909. Historical photograph from the Danish Polar Institute
WHY? WHY? Run, don't walk, your fingers across the keys to Via Negativa and Dave's latest post, Qarrtsiluni, on Inuit philosophy and spiritual thought.
A few nights ago we saw Home to Tibet, a documentary film by Alan Dater and Lisa Merton. I had seen the film, a story of a Tibetan refugee's risk-filled journey back home to try see his sister, and been very moved by it, but this time we were invited to dinner beforehand with the refugee, Sonam Lama, his family, and the filmmakers, who live not too far from here. It was great to meet Alan and Lisa, with whom J. and I found we had a lot in common, and to have a chance to meet Sonam in person.
He had been studying to become a monk when the Chinese invaded and began trying to crush native Tibetan culture and, especially, the Tibetan Buddhism which is its heart and soul. Sonam was imprisoned but escaped with two young friends during an epic forty-day journey traveling by night and living on tsampa, roasted ground barley mixed with water. He ended up in India, and eventually found his way to the United States. Ten years ago he went back to try to see his sister who had raised him after the deaths of his parents, and Alan Dater, who had met Sonam only a few weeks before, went along to attempt to make a film about the journey.
Neither Sonam nor Alan knew if they would reach Tibet or be allowed inside the country, and they certainly knew they had to film surreptitiously. Maybe his audience with the Dalai Lama, or the special chants, or all the prayer flags Sonam offered helped him reach his destination safely, but he did. He found a sister who, at 47, had aged so much that she was unrecognizeable. The film's most wrenching moments surround the decision by this sister and Sonam's cousins to send their two young daughters with him, in hopes that the girls could receive an education in India, since Tibetan children are largely prohibited from school and from learning their own language. Despite the fact that one of these girls is an only child, and her parents know they may never see her again, they send her with Sonam out of the country. We witness this extraordinary moment of selfless, heart-rending love.
The screening took place at a local Episcopal church, not mine, and is part of a film series on people whose lives embodied visions of hope; the next film will be on Dorothy Day. Afterward, Sonam answered questions and ended the presentation with a soft-spoken request for monetary help for some other Tibetan refugees, mostly still living in India. I realized, watching him, that although he works as a stonemason and has made a life for himself in this country, his lifelong purpose will be to help others like himself, and to further the cause not only of Tibetans in exile but of freedom for Tibet. I couldn't help but compare the immediacy, simplicity, and utter sincerity of his purpose with my own life -- completely sympathetic but light-years removed from the actual, personal reality of political persecution, death, and exile.
Sonam is a devout Buddhist, and he was asked, "How is it that you can have compassion for your enemies, the Chinese?" He smiled and quietly replied, "Because we believe in karma, we know that wishing harm on another being eventually comes back to harm us, so we try not to do this and not create more bad karma for ourselves. Likewise, we see that the Chinese are harming many people, and we believe that this bad karma they are creating will affect them in their future lives. Seeing what harm they are doing to themselves, we try to feel compassion for them in their ignorance of this cycle."
The questioner said, "But that is so hard! I don't think I could do that!"
"Oh, I agree," he said. "it is very difficult for me too, but that is why we practice."
4:42 PM
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