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 28, 2004 Bikes parked on rue Laurier, Montreal
CYCLISTS PROTEST REPUBLICANS AND ANTI-ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES IN NYC
Yesterday, thousands of cyclists materialized, seemingly out of nowhere, and rode through New York City streets and Times Square to protest President Bush and the Republicans. Sadly, police reacted, at times violently. At latest count, 264 of the protesters were arrested. The New York Times article is here; check these links for a Bikes Not Bombs report from Scorcher, with links to photos, video and more stories. There are some good pictures at nyc.indymedia, and more, showing the real spirit of the Critical Mass bike protest, at GammaBlaBlog. You can also visit the Talk Fast Ride Slow/Critical Mass website, with an explanation of the movement that started 10 years ago in San Francisco, and opportunities to support the organization through a few nifty posters and products (like a small yellow license plate that reads: "BICYCLING: A Quiet Protest AGAINST OIL WARS").
The ride is known as a Critical Mass, a bike ride that claims no organizers and simply materializes, thanks to leaflets and Internet messages, on the last Friday of every month. The rides have been held in New York for the last several years, and are usually tolerated by the police, who in the past have cited only a few riders for traffic violations and have sometimes even escorted the group.
The rides are meant to protest cars and their pollution, but the ride last night was advertised as the R.N.C. Critical Mass, and scores of riders wore clothes or carried signs with messages against the convention and President Bush. Others wore fanciful attire, like a woman who rode in a peach wedding dress. One woman pushed her friend in a shopping cart...
Yeah! Here's to bikes and bike riders. J. and I brought our bikes back to Vermont this time, and we've been shocked at how difficult it is to find a safe, let alone pleasant, place to ride - even in this "green" state. The road along the river where I used to ride, years ago, is in lousy shape, with potholes, cave-ins and distorted pavement, loose gravel and glass, ruts and crevasses that could easily spill a road bike. Even at 9:30 am, when commuters had gone to work and traffic was light, there were many pickups and larger trucks whizzing by. Some gave me a wide berth; some did not. Luckily there was a big shoulder - but it had all the problems mentioned above. I got a good workout, and enjoyed the sections of the road that paralleled the river, but with the amount of attention I had to pay, in all directions, it certainly wasn't relaxing.
J. had gone in a different direction, through the nearby towns, and came back to say that he had felt in danger the entire time; many of the places he had been riding have no shoulder and no provision for bikes or pedestrians - and the drivers are completely unaccustomed to looking for either. Except for serious cyclists in fish-suits, and the packs of often-bedraggled bike tour groups who appear on highways and backroads throughout the Vermont summer, their presence signalled by bouncing red flags atop long flexible wires attached to the bikes, the only people who ride bikes here are those who have no other means of transportation. "It was weird, the way people were looking at me," J. said. "And then I realized it's because once they saw I wasn't a kid, they expected me to be somebody poor or eccentric, which meant somebody kind of shady who they needed to check out and maybe be wary of."
I was more concerned about not getting hurt myself. One red pick-up whizzed past me, and I saw that the driver was carrying several 2 x 6s in the back, all of them tipped diagonally in the bed and overhanging the right-hand side of the road by several feet. "Jeez," I thought, feeling the hairs prickle on the back of my neck under my helmet. Later that evening we talked to a family doctor who was visiting our neighbors; she works with the Navajo in New Mexico. "Yep," she said, shaking her head. "I had a woman die from something like that. She was walking along the side of the road - there are no shoulders out there where she was - and a huge RV came by and hit her in the back of the head with its mirror. She lived for a while, but she didn't make it."
The bottom line is that this is a car culture, set up for convenience and rapid mobility by automobile. Even in very small villages like mine, you are crippled without a car. Services are centralized and often no longer located in the towns and villages, but in outlying malls only reachable by car. Going anywhere under your own power is driven by youth, poverty, a desire for exercise, or it's a protest: deliberate stubbornness in the face of the prevailing culture. Even in the shopping centers, there is really no safe way to move from one destination to another without getting back in your car and driving to the next parking lot, drive-up bank, or fast food outlet. People even move their cars within the huge parking lots that span the distance between the giant box-stores, to avoid walking - and judging from the labored gait and breathing of many of these customers, they need to. What have we exchanged for convenience?
I saw all this before, but never so clearly. The minute we cross the border back into the U.S., the vehicles balloon in size, the aggressiveness of the driving increases --- and the price of gasoline - though expensive, to be sure - goes down.
Sharia Law in Canada? The Canadian government is considering a proposal by Muslims to be allowed to arbitrate disputes using Islamic law. It brings up the question of whether Jews and Muslims are receiving equal freedom in the use of religious laws, but even more importantly, it is forcing both the Canadian government and Muslims themselves to talk about who they are and what they want society to be. The most vociferous opposition is coming from Iranian women who came to Canada to escape Sharia law; on the other side of the questions are some feminist Islamic women who see this as a chance to contribute to the reform of Islamic law. From the BBC.
"Marion Boyd, a lawyer and former feminist activist, has been asked by the Ontario Government to review the arbitration act which allows religious groups to settle civil disputes using their own courts...She hinted strongly to me that the government could not allow Jewish courts and forbid Muslim ones; that would be discrimination. But Ms Boyd stressed that decisions reached by Muslim courts would have to be consistent with Canada's charter of rights and freedoms. "
BY APPOINTMENT TO THE QUEEN...THE AMERICAN WOMAN
Feminists of a modern persuasion might want to take a look at "La Femme", a car once offered by Dodge to the American female market. I think even those who cannot read French may be able to figure out from the text what accoutrements Dodge offered for its female customers. Amazing. From the eclectic, intelligent, droll, and often poetic blog of a new Montreal friend, Zenon, a "laupe" for sure.
This account, via Payyvand, tells of a concert in Iran by a famous female singer, attended by 1000 women, from which all men were barred:
The audience is a mixture of women dressed head to toe in the traditional all-black chador and others who take advantage of the absence of men by removing their veils and even watch the show in sleeveless tops... Herself a musician and composer, Hashemi admits women performers are still having a hard time changing the view of the Islamic regime that a woman's voice is provocative and arouses devious sexual thoughts in men... "Men do not trust themselves. They are afraid that women will grow stronger and flourish," is her view on the restrictions she faces..."Unlike men we have absolutely no chance of being professionals in this industry, so it has to be our second job," she complained. "My biggest wish is to make a pop record. Traditional music is alright but it does not respond to our current needs -- joyfulness and fun."
Thursday, August 26, 2004
ON ANGELS Czeslaw Milosz
All was taken away from you: white dresses, wings, even existence. Yet I believe you, messengers.
There, where the world is turned inside out, a heavy fabric embroidered with stars and beasts, you stroll, inspecting the trustworthy seams.
Short is your stay here: now and then at a matinal hour, if the sky is clear, in a melody repeated by a bird, or in the smell of apples at the close of day when the light makes the orchards magic.
They say somebody has invented you but to me this does not sound convincing for humans invented themselves as well.
The voice - no doubt it is a valid proof, as it can belong only to radiant creatures, weightless and winged (after all, why not?), girdled with the lightening.
I have heard that voice many a time when asleep and, what is strange, I understood more or less an order or an appeal in an unearthly tongue:
We're back in Vermont, J. is mowing the lawn, and I'm celebrating, or maybe I should say contemplating, this event all alone with my tea and a blackcurrant chocolate bar from the Polish company E. Wedel. It's delicious but, I confess, I bought it for the packaging. On the marvelously yellow wrapper it says, in blue letters, "czekolada mleczna" - milk chocolate? and "porzeczkowa", which must be blackcurrent. How do you say that prickly mouthful of wonderful word? I didn't think of it, but maybe I bought it for Milosz and all those other Polish poets who have appeared here beside me from time to time during these strange and fruitful seventeen months of blogging.
As we drove east out of the city early this morning, toward a blinding, rising fireball exactly lined up with the bridge - not unlike that wild and freely rolling orb in Burnt by the Sun - I began thinking about 500 posts. Good Lord. I don't even want to do the math, but let's see: at 500 words each (a very conservative estimate, since many have - and this is a testament to the patience of you readers - run to 1500 words or more of small hard-to-read type), let me repeat, at 500 words each that would be 250,000 words. A minimum of 250,000 fairly carefully considered words, from the pen of someone who is trying to, ahem, write a book. And the total is probably closer to 500,000.
Sigh.
And yet, not-sigh.
A long time ago, making excuses for not doing something I had told myself I "ought" to be doing, I owned up to the fact that we find time to do the things we really want to do. At different points in my life, those things have taken different forms. I used to find time to make my own clothes. Paint. Tend a vegetable garden. Practice the piano and take lessons. We spent several winters, rather long ago, watching practically every Celtics game: an expenditure of time that seems inconceivable to me now. I don't do those things now, not that I wouldn't still like to; it's just that my priorities are different, and certain other things float to the top of the ever-full laundry basket, so to speak. Now I find time to blog, and to think about blogging, and to communicate with other bloggers, and I procrastinate sometimes even when it comes to other writing, writing I know I really do want to do.
So, to sound like Augustine for a minute: What Does It Mean?
It's simple:I get more out of this than most other things, so I keep doing it. It fits. It feels like me.
Flashback to a memory, on the sidewalk outside my elementary school. I'm talking to a teacher, and she is asking me what I want to do when I grow up. And I say, "I think I'd like to write books and illustrate them." How old was I? 10? And why do I remember that moment, instead of all the other times I was asked that question, times when it actually counted, when by my answer, verbalized or not, I made decisions that took me further and further away from that spontaneous, honest, and true-to-myself one-sentence statement made as a child?
Learning who we really are often means unlearning what others want us to be. It helps to go back and replay scenes from our childhood. It helps to see what and who inspire us, and what we return to again and again. It helps to think about what brings us to tears.
For me, it's most often words. Once in a while my own, but most often someone else's. I've tried, and even gotten pretty good at, other forms of expression, but I think words are the most natural way for me to do that unenviable and ever-unfinished task of the artist: trying to express the unexpressible.
But I am neither novelist nor researcher, and I am not a true poet. I'm a letter-writer. I've always written letters, and taken that form seriously. I was a diarist for a very long time before I was an essayist, and my essays have always read like letters. Even writing in a diary has never been something I did for myself, entirely alone. In a corner of the room there have been the spirits of other writers whose words inspire me, and sitting near my desk has always been the hoped-for reader, holding the words in their hands... anonymously, even posthumously...and in my imagination, they always understand. For me, writing is about conversation; my desire to express is not about the sound of my own words, but a desire to listen, to answer, and to exchange, in the hope of communion.
So I'm not apologizing for lavishly pouring out all those words, like the Biblical woman's precious oil, into a new medium, and neglecting, sometimes, the more traditional path. Nothing I've ever done has come close to making those pictures in my imagination - the girl on the sidewalk; the curious, empathetic, critical reader by my elbow - more alive than blogging has.
You, known and unknown, are an essential part of that picture, and so -- I thank you. Chocolate for everybody!
Monday, August 23, 2004 FLEURS by the FLEUVE - women waiting to have their portrait taken at a park on the St. Lawrence. That's the Biosphere, from the Montreal World's Fair, in the distance.
On Sunday, a beautiful late summer day with a stiff but warm wind, we took our longest bike ride to date, and probably my longest ride ever: from our apartment through Parc LaFontaine and south across the Pont Jacques Cartier to Parc Jean Drapeau, site of the Montreal World's Fair; then across the Pont de la Concorde to Point du Havre, the entrance to the old port; then down along the port, past Habitat, along the river to the area near the old grain elevators; then back though the Old City and up St. Hubert to Sherbrooke, and through the park back home. Whew! And, incredibly, nearly all of that distance was on city bike paths. What a resource for a city - and believe me, many people were out taking advantage of it: from the sleek-suited packs of racer-jockies on their skinny thoroughbred road bikes, to a pair of Chinese women on matching royal blue reclining bikes, to parents towing their kids in buggies, on cleverly-attached training bikes, to babies happily asleep in bike seats. This is all new for me, and it is quite a discovery. Urban outdoor recreation is a fairly bizarre concept to someone who grew up in a town of 1200 and then on a small lake where all motors were forbidden, and who then lived for thirty years in an even smaller town in one rural, forested, mountainous northern New England. My idea of outdoor recreation is wilderness, and it means seeking aloneness with nature - a solitary hike, or one taken with a friend who isn't going to talk much, in a place where you aren't going to see or hear human beings. In fact, when the interstates highways got noisy enough that you could hear them from everywhere, even the woods in our region - that was when we realized that rural had crossed over into suburb. And at first, as we took a break halfway through our ride and I watched the people riding and walking and skating so happily on paved paths in a concrete city dotted with small areas of green, I wondered, "Can I adjust to this?"
So taking this bike ride was an eye-opening experience, not only because of the places where we went, but because of what I saw other people doing. In Parc Jean Drapeau were groups of people of every ethnicity, having parties, barbeques, frisbee and soccer games; near the big Calder sculpture was a teen disco party with booming techno-rock and a huge crowd of happy kids; at the other, partially overgrown venues were various configurations: a woman sketching on the shore of a pond while a woodhuck grazed about five feet from her back; old couples sitting on benches and young couples necking on blankets. The Parc itself, with the lacy Biosphere appearing behind every view like an ethereal, lacy sun, struck me as a strange and wonderful partnership of conscious human adaptation, and nature-in-progress: it is half park, and half urban ruin, with nature in the ascendency. And what a fitting metamorphosis - from the site of a World's Fair into a place where people of all races are so peacefully and happily co-existing!
We biked back across the river to Point Le Havre, another park, long and narrow, at the point where the swift St. Lawrence descends, still raging, from the Lachine Rapids and meets the much calmer water of the old port. Here, among the trees in a quieter setting, were many other family groups: a gathering of Indians with all the women in brightly colored saris; French Canadian boys throwing a football; Iranians having a traditional picnic, the men on one side of a hill grilling meat while the women, scarved and quieter, sat in a circle talking to each other out of sight of the men on the other side. We sat on the point, ate our sandwiches, and watched the boats - the quiet progress of those in the harbor, the struggle even big boats were having out in the fast current, and the various tour boats and thrill-rides on high-powered motorboat launches and hydrofoils.
Then it was off along the side of the port, down under the old grain elevators and brewery towers, where we stopped to watch ducks on the old canal, and then rode back through Vieux Montreal, the old city, thronged with tourists, horse-drawn carriage rides, bewildered pedestrians. My legs were protesting by the time we got home, but it was worth it: I had seen and learned a lot.
Late in the evening we went for a walk in the park, and ended up watching the last innings, unde the lights, of an exciting baseball game by two local teams, as entertaining for the highly-involved crowd as for the serious and accomplished play of the athletes. As we headed back north, I saw a chunky bird flutter into the grass. "A grouse?" I thought at first, confused by the shape and behavior, but then said, "Oh, look!" and grabbed J.'s arm. "It's an owl!" he whispered, and so it was - a small one, probably a screech owl. It flew up into a low branch of a crabapple, and stayed there, watching us, unmindful of our advances and my soft words of greeting, blinking and turning its head around as if to watch the co-ed softball game that had just gotten underway, and show it was bored with us.
"You say there's no wilderness in the city," said J., "but look! He's come to show you differently." I felt a rush of affection for the little owl, who looked down at me with what seemed like friendliness, or at least unconcern, and we vowed to come back and look for it often - our reminder of the wilderness that is everywhere, our little neighbor le hibou.
