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, November 06, 2004
I went for a long walk yesterday afternoon, under grey skies. There was a fierce wind - nearly strong enough to support my leaning weight when I stopped at the first intersection, and for a brief moment I felt the winter's first tiny ice bits hitting my cheek. I walked up to Avenue Mont Royal and then west. There are still bicyclists, but fewer, and the people who were on the street walked hurriedly, heads down, in grey or black clothes, necks wrapped in thick scarves.
I pulled my black beret down over my ears and forehead and huddled down into my own lavender scarf. In the shoestore window, boots and winter shoes nestled in drifts of artificial snow, accompanied by jaunty penguins made from black and white feathers. I looked longingly into cafe windows as I went past, picking up my pace as the wind tunneled down the street, and finally, ears stinging, ducked into a favorite used bookstore, filled with French titles and a big collection of used CDs. I browsed for half an hour, looking at art books; photography; French language guides and reference books; English authors like Robert Ludlum translated into French; Quebecois fiction; classics; children's picture books; recordings in the jazz and classical piano sections. Other browsers stood alongside me, and I watched sideways as their hands, like mine, quickly riffled through the tightly-packed plastic cases of CDs. Someone in a brown coat next to me, a man, muttered to me in French, perhaps something about excuse me, I just want to switch places and look over here. I glanced at him and moved over; he didn't expect a response but was intent on some particular title. Suddenly he plucked a case triumphantly out of the shelf, held it up to the light, and, still muttering to himself, headed off to the register.
I put my hat back on and went out into the street, making a detour through Moisson (a well-known chain of Montreal high-end bakeries) but was unable to decide on anything. I walked back down Brebeuf, along the bike path without seeing a single cyclist, past M. Pinchot, my favorite bakery. Ah! I made it past! We didn't need a baguette for dinner, and I ignored the other loaves in the window. But no - in the other window was a basket of fresh almond croissants, which they don't always have. Up the steps, into the tiny shop and the aroma of hot soup and baking bread. One of the pretty helpers came out, in black pants and a black t-shirt with a white apron and kerchief. I asked for a single almond croissant, she smiled, I paid: un sac? she asked. non. I put the croissant, in its little wax-paper bag, into my knapsack; the pastry was still warm. I glanced at my watch - half an hour before I said I'd be back - and headed down to the park.
In the summer, the grande allee (in the picture above) is always filled rollerbladers practicing their tricks, while other park denizens sit on the benches and read, play instruments, write poetry, talk to themselves, kiss their lovers, feed the squirrels. Not a soul there today. At the end of the allee, I stopped to converse with a squirrel who was busily eating an acorn. He showed no interest in moving, so we stood and looked at each other; he went on eating; I turned to go and found three other squirrels six inches from my feet, looking at me expectantly like cats. Forget it! I said. Nothing for you today.
The leaves are half off the trees here, half on the ground in loose drifts that stir and toss in the invisible currents of air. I started down the hill toward the lake, now merely a beach of wet pebbles. A flock of seagulls waddled back and forth under the trees, and I laughed out loud, noticing that their tailfeathers were black with big white polkadots. It all seemed, suddenly, like a dance: the miming, hungry squirrels; the carnival-like seagulls; the set - a mosaic of yellow, beige, gold, red, chartreuse leaves against the blue-grey paved walkways; the wind tearing overhead in the trees in huge gusting waves, like orchestra strings in unison, while across the stage - now left, now right - rushed a yellow corps de ballet of fallen leaves.
I turned and started for home, as if returning from a performance, exhilarated as I always am by being out in nature when it is wild and unruly. Nothing we humans could do would ever stop that wind, and I found the thought oddly comforting, as was my anonymity. I turned the outside key in the lock, watching myself go inside, into my own small nest: unknown here as a squirrel, fleeting as a leaf, cheeks bright from the wind.
I'll have more to say - hopefully of a constructive nature - tomorrow. Right now we are trying to get a professional job out the door, which is mercifully taking my mind off, at least a little, the death sentence that was signed yesterday for thousands more human beings, American and non-American. I am in mourning for them, and for those who will be wounded and maimed, and for the people who love them.
At last night's election gathering, one man told me he had been listening to a report from Florida, saying that the turnout of young black males in a particular area had been very high. The reason was that several hip-hop DJs there had been repeatedly broadcasting the chant "Vote or Die" - and the youth in that particular area had listened and figured maybe they had better vote.
Other can only watch. The picture above was taken on a recent Sunday afternoon in a Montreal café – the one I often visit which is owned by an Iraqi. The usual group of McGill students was studying together by the window which looks out over the rue Milton/Av. Du Parc bus stop. I ordered a cappuccino and the day’s special - my choice of three out of six or seven types of Middle Eastern vegetable salads, always delicious and absolutely fresh. Cucumbers in a vinaigrette, cauliflower and carrots, taboulleh. While I ate I read the paper, which had, as usual, a page of in-depth articles on the Middle East, and this large picture of a wounded woman and child in Iraq, taken during the recent Falluja offensive.
A different man tends the counter and the espresso machine on Sundays; he looks Arab as well. I ordered in French and then listened as I drank my coffee; most of the other people who came in spoke to him in English. When I finished eating and reading I got up and gave him my plate and cup, and asked him if he preferred to converse in English. Yes, he said, smiling. It was easier for him to respond that way. I apologized for not being able to speak Arabic, and asked if he was also Iraqi. Yes, he said. I told him that I was married to someone Middle Eastern, and we talked for quite a while, liking each other, finding our common ground. Do you still have family in Iraq? I asked. Of course, he said, and shrugged. In Baghdad? Yes. A long silence.
I understand a little about America, why it thinks the way it does, he then said. I remember visiting a friend in San Diego. We were sitting on his deck, eating a beautiful lunch, and there was the ocean, this lovely home. That was during the first Gulf War and Baghdad had been bombed, so I was very distracted. And I asked him how he could not be concerned, and he said, I am so busy here, I have so many things to think about just to care for my family, my house, my job, my life. And I understand that. It’s hard for you to imagine the desert and the dust when everything around you is green, and your home seems so solid and you have your job and your family. All that is very far away. I know. I have been here for seventeen years and I have so much to do just to try to take care of my family. It’s hard sometimes even for me to remember to think of my family back in Baghdad, even with all of this going on.
I told him we weren’t Muslim but that I had close friends who were. He waved my comment away, and gestured up, over his head. It’s not important what religion we are, he said, meeting my eyes. Religion is something between you and the Creator, he said. But humanity… is humanity.
I'm allowing myself to feel just slightly, ever-so-slightly optimistic. My mother just called, saying that a friend who is in Wisconsin with the Kerry campaign called home and said not to worry, they are sure they will carry Wisconsin, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The heavy turnout should favor Kerry as well. But it's going to be very tight.
Tonight we're invited to an election-night potluck "party" to watch the returns. We were at this same place four years ago, cheering as Florida went Democratic, and then watching in stunned disbelief as the call was reversed. It still makes my stomach plunge to think about it.
We voted already, and hadn't planned to be in the U.S. today, but I'm glad I'm here, regardless of outcome. It would be very strange to be in another country. The only other time in my life I voted by absentee ballot was in my very first election, in 1972. (I had been a door-to-door campaigner for Eugene McCarthy in 1968, but had been too young to vote.) I still remember marking that ballot in my college dorm room and mailing it in.
Monday, November 01, 2004
A blogger friend sent this BBC link to the latest news from the African Anglican bishops, who say that they will no longer send their priests for training in the West, and resolved "to set up their own institutions, consistent with African culture and theology."
This is a decisive move away from a colonial model of church towards one in which Africans see the roles reversed - that is, where the parent Church of England should learn from them...
Many Anglicans in Africa see the decline in Western Christianity as the product of secular decadence and believe it is up to them to uphold the purity of the gospel...The message of this meeting in Lagos appears to be that whether or not the Americans repent of their actions, African clergy will lead the way with a "pure" home-grown theology.
Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
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Worried about tomorrow's election, I've spent the day trying to work myself out of the morose mood of the morning by transcribing interview tapes for the book. It's the first work I've done on it in a week, because we had professional jobs that were top priority. Over the weekend, we also had two huge computer problems, the worst of which has been resolved. For the other - affecting our large-format printer - the repairman is coming tomorrow. Sigh. Dealing with our technological infrastructure is not my job or forte; J. does all of it, and he suffers as a result.
But at 5:00 I sat down at the piano, and played for the first time in a long while. I read through parts of two Schubert Impromptus - badly, but enjoyably - and then sight-read, much easily, Mozart's Nine Variations on a Minuet of Duport. What a delight! When I was young, playing both flute and piano, I was given a lot of pieces by Mozart, and found them less than enchanting. Probably I had no idea how to make them really musical: the repetitive passages bored and annoyed me, and the different thematic sections seemed disjointed and unrelated except by key. I suppose I craved easily-grasped melody and romance at that age. But later, especially after discovering and studying Mozart's operas and liturgical music, I was willing to go back and rediscover the piano literature.
A dear friend gave me most of Mozart's piano works for my fiftieth birthday, with the dryly encouraging note, "This should keep you busy until you're 90." He's right, of course, although he and I both like music that's all over the historical map. What I loved about these variations today was their inventiveness, naturally, and their range, but the seventh variation made me laugh out loud - so fresh and surprising, so deft, so complete in itself and yet a wonderful further exploration of the simple theme. At times like that the centuries simply collapse, and Mozart and I are right there in the room together - he quite amazed by my Schimmel upright, capable of bass and volume unheard of in his day - and I can practically hear him laughing delightedly at himself at the last note and pleading for praise - "Pretty good one, isn't it??" I was grateful to him for making me feel better, in this world he couldn't possibly have conjured, even in that teeming imagination.
Sunday, October 31, 2004 This is a contribution to the Ecotone topic, ENERGY OF PLACE.
Late October, 2004. Small town in Vermont. Outside the window, bare maple branches toss in a gusty wind. Beneath them, a carpet of russet, beige, brown leaves, drying, and a crimson burning bush. It’s Sunday morning, and I can hear the wind, and a four-wheeler recently purchased by a neighbor, running up and down the street for the entertainment of his two daughters, bundled into the vehicle. This is new in the past few weeks, but the sound of internal combustion engines is all too familiar; a month ago, the sound would have been a lawn mower, or the leaf-blowers from another neighbor’s lawn service.
I feel a little slow and thick this morning; maybe it was last night’s wine or the lingering conversation, which tipped, teeter-totter-like, between talk of middle age - physical complaints, aging parents, teeth, and medical care – and politics, America, the future. The greyness of the late fall outside has a similar, worried torpor. We wait for Tuesday to know our fate, like the newly shown hostages, young UN workers captured in Afghanistan. I went outside to see if there was any Swiss chard left in the garden, and startled an unfamiliar cat, who stared at me from my own back porch as if I were the intruder.
In my other home, a different scene would be unfolding. Montreal wakes up about now on a Sunday; last week at 9:30 I was on my bike riding from the Plateau into downtown, on my way to the cathedral, marveling at the empty streets. By ten or eleven, other cyclists are emerging, necks wrapped in scarves; people are starting to enter the park, hand in hand, children in strollers. No one is rushing, although the roller-bladers glide by like water. Café owners and shopkeepers begin to come out, sweeping the streets, greeting their neighbors, ready for the first customers of a day that will stretch into night. There will be a few cars by now, but rarely the sound of a car horn. Montreal is the quietest big city I’ve ever been in.
What is absent is not energy, but anxiety. The energy I notice is mostly human-powered, and on a human scale: people walking, biking, talking, at the pace of a heartbeat or a footstep, or the lift of a coffee cup to the lips. The frantic, endlessly circling four-wheeler would make no sense there; even the boy who spends long hours in the park bouncing his mountain bike on the children’s big flat rocks in the playground is not aimless: he is practicing a skill, and he’s intent on it, as are the skateboarders who take over the large shallow children’s wading pool as soon as it’s drained in the fall. People stroll together in the parks, talking and smiling: women friends, male friends, couples, people with dogs who seem to be friends. And people aren’t afraid to be alone: everywhere you see them, quietly sitting, looking, drinking coffee, smoking, or, most often, reading.
I’ve gone back and forth enough now to know that the difference in energy is not imagined but real, even though I can only see its pathology or health through symptoms, some subtle, some not so. The anxiety, stress, and fear that insidiously worked on me before are at least obvious to me now; even when I am in the midst of them I have some choice about what to take in and what to keep at bay, what to fight or challenge and what to ignore.
What keeps the spirit alive? Books and art; creativity and spirituality; music and color; sensuality, nature, relationship. We should be glad for this virtual place, where these things are still topics of discussion, and sources of shared joy and refuge.
