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, October 02, 2004
The flatness defined by corn in the south is concrete to the north and west of the city. We drove there today, through the grey horizontal industrialized zones, leaving behind even the green oxidized steeples of the Catholic churches that punctuate the sky in every direction, to pick up our niece who was flying into Trudeau airport (formerly Dorval) from L.A.
The airport was smaller than we'd expected, and large parts of it are under construction or being renovated; still, it is an international airport with large planes arriving and departing. Not once, during the hour we were there, did we hear an announcement of any kind. Other than the fact that there was no observation deck or area from which you could watch the planes, there were no heightened security measures: no signs for unattended baggage or suspicious packages, no police or security guards in the non-passenger areas. It felt like... a time warp.
This is a rare rainy day; although it's been a very wet summer in Vermont, theres been a lot less rain up here. In the afternoon we went up on the roof to give our niece an orientation; the sky was grey, the pigeons cooed on the edge of the roof, unconcerned about the plastic owls on the one next door. To the north, we could see planes on their flight path headed for Trudeau and Mirabel, and in between, the low roofs of the two- and three-story apartments in our neighborhood; trees in shades of green, russet, red; the oocasional modern high-rise; and the churches, rising from the city parishes, spaced ten blocks or so apart.
My niece and I went for a walk afterwards, up to Av. Mont-Royal where we went to the meat and produce markets; the pharmacy; a shoe store where we oogled some lace-up boxer-type boots in a choice of red or orange suede. She's a writer, too, and she was soaking up the ambience of the city and noticing everything: the dogs, the bicycles, the packages of quail and rabbit, the French skincare products in the pharmacy window; the women with their unstudied but lovely style. It was raining by then and I asked if she wanted to head back. "Oh, no. You have no idea how good this feels to a person from L.A.," she said, turning her damp head toward me and smiling. "We haven't had rain since February. I feel like all my cells are re-hydrating."
Our last stop was the bakery for a baguette, a few croissants pour le matin, a thin slice of creamy brie. "I'm convinced," she said. "It's heaven."
Vraiment, but wait until February comes around again, and I am writing about something quite different from rain!
“A city isn’t just a place to live, to shop, to go out and have kids play. It’s a place that implicates how one derives one’s ethics, how one develops a sense of justice, how one learns to talk with and learns from people who are unlike oneself, which is how a human being becomes human.” Richard Sennett, The Civitas of Seeing (1989)
UNE FEUILLE D'ERABLE BLEUE (A BLUE MAPLE LEAF) by West 8 Urban Design & Landscape Architecture
Today I picked up a copy of “Agora: le domaine public”. Not knowing what this was, but seeing that it had something to do with art, I sat down later to read the booklet. It is for “la Biennale de Montreal”, between the 24th of September and the 31st of October, and appears to be a regularly-occurring event during which an art theme is publicly explored and discussed. This year’s theme is Public Art. The booklet contains written material explaining this year’s events, and the works that are being produced in major public spaces in conjunction with it. One of the most interesting will be created at the Place des Arts “many stripped tree trunks will be assembled” into a tall, cubic shape that contains an empty space that can be entered. When the viewer looks up from inside, and below, the shape will form a view of the sky that is – a blue maple leaf.
The purpose of this month-long examination stems from change in what we perceive as the agora, the public meeting space that has traditionally been at the heart of cities: “In the world at large – and even here – the pulse of public space is weakening…our public spaces are increasingly defined by a bricolage of carefully selected, often homogenous experiences…meanwhile, our growing preference for privacy has carved a bunker-like network of subterranean consumer malls – anonymous, climate-controlled sanctuaries where the cash register reigns. Are these our agoras?”
“The Biennale will gather some of the world’s foremost artists , architects, urban designers, and landscape designers to respond to these multi-faceted questions and raise new ones…and you – the public – are invited to attend and participate.”
In addition to the “real” art installations and projects I am looking forward to seeing, one of the projects is called “La ville virtuelle” (the virtual city), a concept introduced by these words:
“In this context, Web-based art is surely the public art par excellence, universally accessible and free from mediation by the traditional institutions of galleries and museums. But what are the real implications of this medium for artists, for the artistic milieu, for the public? Where do artists and their works stand within this virtual city? And how can web-based art help us to navigate the pathways of the virtual city itself – be it as a utopian place, a metaphorical device, or a critical tool?”
Yesterday we drove up through the vast flat fields above the Canadian border, where the corn that stretched to the horizon all summer is being cut and ground up for silage. We turned off the main road to investigate a billowing cloud of dust. The source was a big tractor dragging a steel I-beam up and down a cut, plowed, dry field, levelling it and breaking up any clods of dirt that had formed. In another place, a drainage ditch stretched all the way beyond a golden field of drying soybeans into the town far beyond, with its metallic-aluminum-painted church steeple and red-roofed houses -- a setting for a modern painting by the likes of Millet. You could stand beside the standing corn and hear it singing: the half-dry stalks rubbing and rustling against each other for miles and miles.
Here in the city, the park has changed a lot in two weeks. The trees are turning; most of the pique-nique tables are stacked up for the winter; there is less lounging-in-the-grass and summer exuberance, and a more somber, reflective mood, although I did see one romantic couple wrapped together, sleeping contentedly under a blanket in teh early afternoon. A shorn black standard poodle chased happily after a squirrel; the old men in their short jackets and caps played cards; and here and there bike riders had stopped and were sitting on benches, looking out over the lake or the trees.
I rode through the park and over to Waldman’s, the big fresh fish market on rue Roy, to see what they had today. I guess Thursday is a good day to go, because the great tables of ice were loaded with hundreds of fresh fish of every description: grey sole and snapper, skate, salmon, a pile of rough oysters, a box of snapping blue crabs. Of the whole fish there were many kinds I had never even seen before; the filets and steaks looked perfect and were, to my mind, expensive. It was too much for me. All I had wanted were some sole filets, which they didn’t have today. Instead I stared at the glassy golden eyes of the silvery bonita, the camouflage patterning of the mackerel, a spiny greenish pile of sea urchins, recoiled from a huge yellow-spotted eel, and left empty-handed but visually satiated.
Tuesday, September 28, 2004 "The spirit we have, not the work we do, is what makes us important to the people around us." Joan Chittister, OSB
JOAN CHITTISTER, Benedictine nun, writer, and progressive Catholic, will be celebrating her 50th year as a sister in the Benedictine order on Oct 2. I've admired her courageous, forthright essays for years, and while I was looking for an old one today, I came across this recent essay, The Sacredness of the Singular, one of her "From Where I Stand" columns for the National Catholic Reporter, written about a recent trip to Japan. She talks about the vast differences in cultural values - which struck her both positively and negatively - and what they taught her about her own culture in America.
I asked my translator at dinner what I was eating as an appetizer. I expected her to say something like, "it's an avocado salad or a liver pate or a Japanese antipasto. But no. Instead she took her chopsticks, picked up what I thought was a sliver of vegetable about one-sixteenth of an inch long, almost obscured by the chopstick itself, and said, "This is sole." And then, in the same way, "This piece is spinach." and "This is a rosemary flower," and pointing to the bottom of the dish, "and that is its leaf." One by one, each single, almost invisible piece was lifted up to some kind of living splendor...
I know why I went to Japan. I went so that whatever the madness and massiveness of this world, I could remember the sacredness of the singular, the space that silence gives, the wonder of the individual, the reverence for the other and the comfort of order.
It's hard enough being liberal in an liberal-leaning denomination such as mine. But Joan has gone up against so many old, hidebound attitudes in hers, taking on the male hierarchy and engaging the pressing issues of our time. She stands up for women's ordination and women's rights, the environment, peace and justice...and writes eloquently and firmly: no nonsense about her. It's refreshing, and I'm glad for her voice. May she have many more years to carry on.
--
ROWAN WILLIAMS, Archbishop of Canterbury, has disappointed many of us by his apparent weakness in dealing with the fundamentalist bishops who want sanctions or excommunication from the Anglican Communion for the American and Canadian Churches for their stance on homosexual ordinations. He is, however, a brilliant theologian and scholar. During a recent trip to Egypt, he addressed a Muslim audience at al-Azhar al-Sharif Institute in Cairo, a reknowned center of study for Sunni Islam. His address focussed on one of the main points of contention between Muslims and Christians - the doctrine of the Trinity, and whether this means that Christians are not true Monotheists.
For anyone who's interested in theology, Williams' remarks are well worth reading; having tried to engage this debate myself with Muslim friends, I thought what he said was remarkable. I doubt it would fly with most American Christians, who have been raised on a much less intellectual and historical view. As one of my friends, a professor of Islamic studies, remarked, "The concept of Jesus being your best friend is a peculiarly American invention."
I read parts of this lecture as the reflection today at our monthly interfaith prayers for peace, and it sparked some lively discussion afterwards between the Muslims, Christians, and Jews.
I had just put last night's leftover rice on the stove to heat up, and was washing some lettuce, when I heard voices downstairs, and my husband laughing. "Look who's here, honey!" he said. Coming up the stairs were our rector and his wife, good friends of ours. Yesterday, I had invited them for dinner tonight, but they hadn't called back - or so I'd thought. Instead, the wife said she had called and left a message saying they were coming, and she'd bring a big bowl of broccoli - which she had in her hand as she came up through the darkness. We hadn't turned a single light on, of course.
Well, after the initial apologies and laughter, none of this was a problem. Everybody settled down immediately; I found more lettuce, took a loaf of French bread out of the freezer, steamed the broccoli, and cooked the pound of fish I had bought expecting to get two meals for ourselves; there was plenty. For dessert we had Arabic coffee and four big apples. I would have probably fussed over dinner if I'd known they were coming; Rev. H. is a diabetic on a strict diet and trying to control his cholesterol, so that limits things; as it was we just threw together what was in the refrigerator and within the dietary limitations, and everyone was perfectly happy. The point was, after all, being together. It turned out to be one of the most relaxed and happy evenings we've spent in a long time.
H.'s wife, T., told a funny story of a friend who was invited to a dinner party. She and her husband got all dressed up and arrived at the house, only to be told that the party was actually the next night - but their friends invited them in anyway, and they all had a good time. The next night, they dressed again, and went to the party at the appointed hour. On the following night, her husband said, "Hey, let's get dressed up and go over there again," - and they did! Their friends thought it was hysterical, and invited them in for the third time. And all four of them still tell the story.
At church this morning, one of my friends who has just been in England handed me a copy, hot off the press, of Stephen Bates' new book A Church at War/Anglicans and Homosexuality. It has Bishop Gene Robinson on the cover, and is the only book besides mine, that I know of, to take on these issues.
Stephen Bates, a highly-respected writer and journalist who is the religion and royal correspondent for The Guardian, wrote a book that is about the organized effort by the conservative right to take over the heart of the Anglican Communion, and their use of this particular issue to drive the final wedge that may mean schism. I'm sure it is excellent, and I'm anxious to read it. Although I will be dealing with that opposition a good deal, it's not my focus; my book is about Gene Robinson himself; who he is; how and why his election happened; why it has meant so much to people outside the church as well as within it; and what opportunities and challenges lie ahead as a result. It's a progressive Episcopalian, and probably typically American, point of view that assumes continual forward motion toward inclusion and true acceptance, despite the power of the conservative movement and the potential for schism.
Right now Bates' book is sitting temptingly, and a little ominously, over there on my table. I could sit down and read it right now. Or I could work on my own book. Or I could take the Sabbath off for once, and go soak up some sun while working on the garden. I think that last choice sounds like the best one, frankly.
