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 29, 2005
RE-ARRANGING
Today we re-arranged the furniture. In our house we have two connected rooms that we use for living and dining space. For the past few years, we've had the table on the south wall, where there's the most light - but that has meant that there are two seating areas, one in each of the two rooms. It hasn't worked that well, and after moving some of our favorite things to Montreal, the whole living area has seemed depressing to me. So today I cleaned up all the leftover Christmas things, cleared off all the surfaces, and started dragging furniture around. J. came up and offered to help me; three or four dusty hours later the only item still in its same location was the piano. We decided to get rid of the coffee table and one other table, and to make one sitting area in the southern room, and make the other room into just dining. We also straightened up the bookshelves - no more books piled on other books, or papers stuck inbetween books - but stopped short of the actual purge we're planning to do. We moved the couch away from, and perpendicular to, the wall of books, so you can actually see all of them and easily get volumes off hte lower shelves. Now, sitting here after having our neighbors over for dinner, I'm very happy: it all worked so much better than before and I don't feel crowded by stuff. The Montreal move has made us both very clear on this: we want less, and only the things that really matter. Every step in that direction has felt liberating.
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Our neighbors are Icelandic, and during the conversation, which is always fun and far-ranging, there are usually some good-natured jabs from us about their "wenting" and "wegetables", and often some expression form them that we've never heard. Tonight, as they discussed their different styles of dealing with their little daughter, the wife suddenly acknowledged to her husband, "Yes, there's a fly foot."
"What?" we asked. "Did you say, 'there a fly afoot?'"
"No," they laughed. "A 'fly foot' means a little point - like 'a grain of truth'". How perfect!
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Tomorrow I'm planning, with great excitement, to get together with two real live blogger-friends; none of us have met before. Report to come!
Two of my favorite bloggers have returned to their pages after times of mourning, for different reasons; I'm so happy to hear their voices again. Ana at Funny Accent writes in her engaging and fascinating way about how to make Malaysian fish curry, telling us much more than the recipe; and at Footprints, there is a new Pippi Longstocking story, (yes! remember her?) and some new hope after soul-searching for a response to the world's tragedy and loss.
Good news! A new post from Idle Words, the blog of Maciej Ceglowski. I like Maciej's writing so much that I scan my RSS feeds eagerly each day, hoping he will have posted something, but these gems are like wild mushrooms - delicious, but rare and unpredictable. Maciej has recently moved to The Big Apple, after a long sojourn in Vermont and a too-brief summer in Montreal; if you ever have time on your hands, read his archives.
Yesterday's linked interview with Seymour Hersh made some startling comments about race. Here, Paul Krugman of the New York Times takes on the President's argument that the present Social Security system is disproportionately bad for blacks, pointing out that the administration's argument is not only flawed, but immoral.
...so the claim that Social Security is unfair to blacks is just false. And the fact that privatizers keep making that claim, after their calculations have repeatedly been shown to be wrong, is yet another indicator of the fundamental dishonesty of their sales pitch.
What's really shameful about Mr. Bush's exploitation of the black death rate, however, is what it takes for granted.
The persistent gap in life expectancy between African-Americans and whites is one measure of the deep inequalities that remain in our society - including highly unequal access to good-quality health care. We ought to be trying to diminish that gap, especially given the fact that black infants are two and half times as likely as white babies to die in their first year...
I write here about politics reluctantly, even though it's one of my obsessions. So I will just mention my dismay at yesterday's vote on Condaleeza Rice's nomination, where only thirteen senators had the courage to vote against confirmation. I had called Senator Leahy's office earlier in the day to regster my opinion; I was sure he'd vote against her. He didn't, but Vermont's other senator, Jim Jeffords, did. I was also appalled to hear Joseph Biden, on NPR, defending his vote saying the "the single most important thing is for us to prevail in Iraq." And I was disgusted by Republicans insinuating that Democrats who voted against Rice failed to recognize the historic significance of confirming the first black woman secretary of state - as if a vote against blatant lying, or against a person who all of Europe detests and mistrusts, was suddenly racism.
This is a very rough transcript of a recent interview. Some people are skeptical about Hersh, who has been writing what he calls an "alternative history" of the Iraq war in the New Yorker. But what he says here about the present American government and, more especially, about the largely hidden, and hideous, cost of the war to individual soldiers and families, and ultimately to all of us, is something everyone should read.
Tuesday, January 25, 2005 Bus Stop, rue Rachel, Montreal
BUT HERE IN VERMONT, IT'S A WORKING AFTERNOON
2:30 Procrastinating from the paying work at hand. Lulled by the sunlight coming in the windows onto the busy little rosemary leaves; the translucent plump jade-plant leaves; the dusty floorboards; the pleated windowshade, slightly askew. This torpor gives way to a wave of sleepiness. I feel the sunlight on one foot, straight through the black leather of my clogs, and at the same time, shake my shoulders to lessen the winter chill. Here are an apple and two forelle pears on the table in front of me, all exactly the same shades of yellow and blushing red. I shake my shoulders again; it’s a voluntary motion, a decision that pushes away an involuntary shiver.
3:31 I’m getting something done – one chapter of the book I’m working on is roughly laid out. Right now the sun is glaring in my eyes, blinding me, but I can barely feel it, so long and feeble are its rays. Through the corners of my eyes I glance out through my own hair, backlit and golden. I pass my hands through the air, feeling for the ray –– it’s like swimming in a lake where there are springs. Ah, there it is, just barely warm. I cup my hands around it, this ball of invisible fire.
4:02 The sun went down behind the hill about five minutes ago, and in five more, I’m going to have to turn the lights on. I’m also going to have to have some tea, or fall asleep. My thoughts move toward the kitchen, and it occurs to me I have no idea what we might have for dinner.
5:34 An hour of tea-powered blog-reading and e-mail writing later, I’m going back to work.
6:45 Four chapters roughly laid out, and I’m not the only one who’s getting hungry around here; J. has already opened the refrigerator once, searching hopefully. The upstairs heat has come back on; evening thermostat cycle. Sigh. Breathe. Relax. Don’t look over at the piano and the untouched volumes of Brahms, Mendelssohn, the Christmas decorations still out, the unanswered cards. Make some dinner.
8:06 Final push. If I can get all five chapters done tonight, that would be great. My mouth is still tingling from dinner – an impromptu Thai red curry of shrimp and vegetables on rice, with yogurt instead of coconut milk.
8:54 Finished. J. will add the graphics while I am out tomorrow, then I have about five hours of table design to do, then another five of fine-tuning, adding tables of contents, map and figure lists, making sure the bookmarks work in the .pdf... but now, maybe there’s time for some piano after all, or some reading. Or some sleep.
Back home in Vermont now, but this was from today, as we left town.
We came home to quite a bit of accumulated snow - enough that we couldn't park the car and had to snow-blow and shovel first in order to get into the driveway. But it was beautiful, feather-weight snow, and I worked happily in early darkness, the crisp cold biting my cheeks and hands, with stars just beginning to come out in a cloud-smeared sky.
This will be a travel day, and unless things change dramatically, we should be able to avoid the snow and drive fairly easily, taking my brother-in-law and sister-in-law to Trudeau airport first, coming back and picking up our things and leaving in early afternoon. I'm always a bit melancholy, leaving here, and in spite of the sunshine that was streaming into the apartment this morning - so strong and low that it reached all the way to the back wall - I found myself staring wistfully out the front window as I made the coffee.
Yesterday afternoon the four of us went to a matinee of a new movie about Haiti - "Taste for Young Women" - which is a male coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of Duvalier's death, with poetry by Haitian poet Saint-Aude. It's very good, and immediately transporting: at 4:00 we emerged, blinking and dazed, into the impossibly cold, bright afternoon.
