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, April 03, 2004 French porcelain in a New York shop window
Mikhail Pletnev is playing the Chopin Scherzo no. 4 in E major. It's the live recording of his Carnegie Hall debut. J. put it on and we listened to the incredible Bach-Busoni Chaconne in D minor that begins the two-CD set; I've heard it many times now and it still gives me goosebumps: no one should be able to play like this. Then the Beethoven, Piano Sonata no. 32. We were lying on our bed, and J. rolled over and put his head on my chest and fell asleep. I listened more intently and appreciatively than usual, but somewhere in the second movement I fell asleep too, and woke up to applause. I gently lifted J.'s head, whispered to him to go back to sleep, and came out here to the computer. Now the Scherzi are ringing in the background; it's a brilliant performance. A dear friend recommended this CD to me after hearing it on a long flight between Thailand and Europe, and I play it more often than any other piano recording I own. What I would have given to have been at that concert! You can hear the crowd's shivery excitement at the end of the Bach-Busoni; they are ecstatic at the end of the Beethoven and wild from the Chopin on. Pletnev played five encores, enough for another entire CD: Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Scarlatti, Moszkowski, and finally the "Islamey" oriental fantasy of Balakirev.
. . .
Tomorrow, Holy Week begins, always an emotional and musical marathon for me. (If you haven't read what Blaugustine had to say on March 27th about Mel Gibson's Passion, please do.) It's a strange thing to live with the event for a week, as I do with my choir responsibilities and seven services to sing between Palm Sunday, tomorrow, and Easter. We hear the story read, we sing it, we chant it on Good Friday as a kind of opera/passion play that is the focus of our church's deeply meditative evening service, with the choir playing the "role" of the crowd. What one cannot do is ignore it.
I find, having done this now for many years, that Holy Week is a sort of touchstone, a way of checking in with myself spiritually and emotionally. Although I can't remember exactly what I felt like last year, or five, or ten years ago, I definitely remember the range of feelings: involved, bored, sad, reflective, inspired, restless, moved, distant, accepting, resistant. The fatigue that builds as the week goes along contributes to this experience. No other time in the liturgical year has the same effect; there is never the same intensity of shared experience that is also so utterly individual. It is a retreat while being in the midst of one's regular life, and if nothing else it brings an awareness of the strangeness of the sacred embedded in the secular: society moves noisily on, oblivious except for the mounds of Cadbury eggs, chocolate bunnies on plastic grass, yellow and lavender marshmallow Peeps. There is much of the story of this week that I cannot fully accept, but the cruelty and truth at the heart of it is the story of humanity, of the ongoing struggle between what is best and worst in us. Spending one week per year meditating on that, and on my place in the Crowd, is not much sacrifice to make.
6:15 PM
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Friday, April 02, 2004 LOIS at the Frick
As CB and I turned the corner and walked toward the entrance to the Frick Collection, a woman in a tan coat came racing toward us, arms wide. "Is it really you guys?" she cried. It was Lois of Heart@Work, discovered by CB to be in NYC for a few days coincidental to my own visit. The conversation began and didn't stop for the next two hours, as CB gave us an erudite tour of the highlights of the Frick, the art-centric conversation spiced and diverted by frequent detours into religion, spirituality, literature, and, of course, blogging. At one point, in front of CB's favorite Vermeer, we realized several people were listening to us rather than the guided tour in their museum-supplied headsets. Well - alternative media has its appeal, even off the internet! It was a wonderful encounter, and many of you were fondly mentioned, and your presence sorely missed.
We had two and a half hours this morning with Bishop G.R., and it was some of the most productive and interesting interview time I've ever spent. After the first half of the interview, we took a break, and G. went downstairs to check his mail. He came back with a fistful of letters. "Here," he said, reading highlights of several. There was hatemail from someone in Tennessee, an admonishing letter from a woman in the Diocese of NH who wanted him to stop appearing on television and in the media -- and a get well card (he's had flu) with personal messages from the inmates at the NH women's prison. "That's my life," he said, smiling, and handing us the card. "But look, isn't that just great?"
When we resumed I told him about this blog and the questions I'd asked you to send me. I read him the first one I received, from Dale. The Bishop took a deep breath, and said, "Do we want to go there?"
I said, "Yes, sure," and go we did.
At the end of his long answer, which took us back to Lexington, through seminary and therapy and marriage, he went over to his desk and brought out a well-worn, underlined copy of the book that he said had changed his life as he was struggling to accept and live his gayness as well as his priesthood. It was "Embracing the Exile" by John Fortunato. He then read aloud the passages that had been most relevant to him. It was an extraordinary, intimate moment. I held my breath, trying unsuccessfully to fight back tears. As he read, a marriage dissolved, a person accepted himself in his wholeness, a life was transformed, and the necessary courage was found to create the person who sat in front of me.
We have another interview next week, on Maundy Thursday. Please send me more questions if you have them.
7:17 PM
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SNIFF The excellent Ecotone topic for April 1 is "Smells and Place". I haven't posted yet, and nether have very many others, so I'm making a pitch for you all to do some good writing and post it over there. I'll have something up in a few days too.
4:38 PM
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Thursday, April 01, 2004 SOUTH ARABIAN MASK, in a gallery window on Madison Avenue, New York
Walking meditation can happen even in a city. Yesterday I arrived early for a rendezvous with two fellow bloggers after taking the Lexington Avenue subway uptown, so I walked down one side of Madison Avenue for ten blocks or so, up the other, and then over to Fifth. This section of the city, known as the Upper East Side, and bordered on one side by Central Park, is a toney place filled with fancy apartment houses, museums, and high-priced designer shops and art and antique galleries. After the Cartier amethyst-and-coral necklaces, Prada handbags, and Sonia Rykiel frills, I came upon this face, or perhaps it came upon me.
It was a drizzly day, and the park was filled with a dreamy fog punctuated by the wet trunks of plane trees and the ethereal pale yellow foam of new forsythia blossoms. In the garden of a museum, beyond the wrought-iron fence, pale fat buds of magnolia were like pink, anxious fists against the grey sky, and below them, phalanxes of shield-like tulip-leaves rose, strong and stiff, from the earth.
In my black anorak, I stood gazing into the park: the wet grass, the tracery of the yellow blossoms, the architecture of the plane trees drawn across the scene as if with a few deft strokes of a sumi brush. Another figure in black -slender, handsome, intelligent - strode along the fence. I looked away, looked back; he looked twice at me, tentatively, then with assurance. "Yes," our smiling eyes agreed, "it must be you."
I'll write more about the meeting tomorrow; for now, two more pictures: PARK AVENUE
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent good wishes to us and to our friends. She is on the mend, and everyone is getting some much-needed rest. I have a lot to write about, but it looks like that will have to wait until after we are back home.
Tomorrow, if all goes well, a brief blogger rendezvous.
9:55 PM
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Monday, March 29, 2004
I'm back in New York. A very close friend of ours had surgery for breast cancer on Friday, and on Saturday her elderly mother died. So needless to say, it has been a very difficult situation, and we came down to help out. I'm glad we did. Things seem much better today, everyone got some sleep, our friend is back home and her husband and daughter are feeling better. It's a gorgeous day here, too - we're in the Village, close to Washington Square, and the morning light is shining on the buildings and streaming into the apartment. Lots of love here too.
