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
Friday, March 25, 2005
GOOD FRIDAY
This is the first Good Friday in a decade that I've neither attended church nor sung in a choir. It feels strange not to spend Holy Week as an active liturgical participant in the progression of services that retrace the steps of the Passion narrative. It also feels – I must admit – liberating to do something different, and to be able to step outside of patterns and expectations, and observe how I feel.
I’ve sometimes tried to fast on Good Friday, and even when I was a college student and feeling perhaps the furthest away from religion and the church, I still observed the day in some way, consuming less, working less, spending time in reflection on the story and what it had to say to me, thinking about human beings and their tendency toward violence and the silencing of those who upset the status quo. The day has often been a time of thinking about my own “big issues”, which I’ve tried to identify during Lent, before letting them go after the season is over. It’s interesting that I find myself casting back now to Good Fridays during those college years, when war, governmental excess, and an uncertain world were so much on my mind: probably I surprised myself then by observing the day, so much so that I’ve always remembered it. We don’t really change that much, in our core.
But today I haven’t been especially reflective, and certainly not sad. In fact, it was another beautiful early spring day here, and I spent the morning working by e-mail and telephone with a colleague, finishing the first part of a big two-part project, and then, in the afternoon, went for a long walk, stopping in at some of the Portuguese bakeries I’ve never visited to see what traditional things they had prepared for Easter. I stopped in the North African “souk” on Duluth and bought a tile to try in our Vermont kitchen, where we’ve decided to finally finish the décor, and I bought a small solid brass camel for my father-in-law: something I had seen months ago and have thought about as a gift for him ever since. I was, in a word, happy.
Later I did a search for Good Friday poetry, and came up with the following poem by John Donne. I got fascinated in the excellent commentary by Ian Lancashire on the website of the University of Toronto English Library – a resource I’m looking forward to exploring. These are lines 29-42 of a 42-line poem, written by Donne, who was a Church of England preacher, in April 1613. (I’ve put the lines into modern English.) The whole poem is very rich, both in its language and its content, which says a lot about English thought at the time – it contains a continual play on the word Sunne, for both “Son” and “Sun”, talks about astrological ideas like the harmony of the spheres, and uses the metaphor of Donne’s journey westward, toward the setting sun, as a way of talking about moving toward death – and the soul’s relationship to God as that approaches. The west, from London, also meant Tyndale – the place here criminals were hanged – and it implied going west to America, a symbol for seeking wealth. In the England of his day, everyone was expected to spend Good Friday in reflection and fasting. Donne, who had been a lawyer, a member of Parliament, and was jailed for marrying against his father-in-law's wishes, was ordained in 1615. On this Good Friday, though, he was not in church but on the road, riding west; the poem is about his somewhat reluctant guilt for being where he was, and unreadiness to face his creator. So, like me, he spent an unconventional Good Friday in unconventional observance, and today the years between us collapsed.
I learned another thing about Donne today: other than two poems which were published, his poetry circulated only in manuscript during his lifetime.
Good Friday 1613, Riding Westward (last section) John Donne
If on these things I dare not look, dare I Upon his miserable mother cast mine eye, Who was God’s partner here, and furnished thus Half of that Sacrifice, which ransomed us? Though these things, as I ride, be [far] from mine eye, They're present yet unto my memory, For that looks towards them; and thou looks towards me, O Saviour, as thou hangs upon the tree; I turn my back to thee, but to receive Corrections, till thy mercies bid thee leave. O think me worth thine anger, punish me, Burn off my rusts, and my deformity, Restore thine Image, so much, by thy grace, That thou may know me, and I'll turn my face. 8:44 PM
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Thursday, March 24, 2005 Les pompiers do some spring cleaning
You know you're not living in a completely secular city when you download the bus schedules and find there is a special schedule (of greatly reduced numbers of buses) for Good Friday, and that everything in the city is closed on Easter Monday.
I've also never seen so much chocolate in my life, or so many variations on the theme of Easter basket: chocolate rabbits, trucks, footballs...I even saw chocolate beavers. And huge! Nearly lifesize! For the upscale shopper, the fancy boulangeries have cellophane-wrapped, ribbon-tied special rabbits and eggs in white and dark chocolate, or egg-shaped, foil-wrapped baskets that seem to be filled with fancy candies. I've seen little of the tacky Wal-Mart variety of purple shredded fake grass with plastic-wrapped standard candy and plastic and stuffed toys, although I'm sure those exist here too.
It's not making me particularly hungry, although maybe before the weekend is over I'll succumb.
Meanwhile, the snow is melting in the park, and the seagulls are starting to screech and fight as they pick through leftovers, emerging from a winter under the snow. The city doesn't look beautiful right now, but I don't care - to me it is glorious to feel the sun and ride a bus past people gliding joyously on roller blades; to pass the neighborhood cafe and smile at the proprietor, out sweeping the sidewalk for the first time in months, getting ready for the first day he can set tables on the sidewalk; to see bright pink and yellow and red tulips in galvanized buckets outside the florist's window. I left my bus at Champs-des-Mars and walked from the Old City toward downtown, keeping on the sunny side of the street where water ran down the sides of the old stone buildings and sparrows sang on the doorsills. In front of Notre Dame basilica, the horse-drawn carriages waited for tourists, while the horses in their flower-decorated harnesses patiently gazed down the street and the drivers talked animatedly with one another in their Quebecois accents. The sky was brilliantly blue, and the light shone on the ships in the port and the water beyond. Everyone was out, bareheaded, coats flapping open, and even in the business district where the usual casual Montreal dress gives way to dark suits and ties, there was an animated excitement at noon as people tumbled out of their glass-and steel buildings and winter underground existence, into spring.
8:17 PM
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Wednesday, March 23, 2005
Sa’di, a great poet of Persia (c. 1213-1293, Shiraz) wrote:
"Every leaf of the tree becomes a page of the Book when once the heart is opened and it has learnt to read."
to everyone who wrote with blogday wishes yesterday. I appreciate your ongoing presence and your kind words more than I can possibly say.
8:59 PM
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TECHNOLOGY
The family got together and gave my father-in-law a computer after he retired from teaching and full-time ministry. He hoped to devote himself to writing. That was perhaps twenty years ago, and despite being a disaster when it came to anything mechnical, he learned to use the computer for word processing by memorizing rote pathways for saving files and doing basic formatting – when he got stuck or lost things, he’d call and someone would bail him out. The computer, or “my machine”, as he called it, was a Big Mystery; he had no desire to know how it worked, he just wanted to do what he needed to do: write, save, edit, and print – and for the most part, it helped him do those things pretty reliably.
When the internet arrived, he was curious but even more mystified. His computer didn’t have internet capability, so my husband showed him on ours what you could do. He was baffled, but mainly because he couldn’t comprehend either the economics or the altruism. It wasn’t compelling enough for him to justify the cost of a new machine. When he moved to the retirement home, there was internet access for residents in the library, and for a while he had a password and an e-mail account. For the first time he had to learn to use a mouse, and navigate a graphical interface; he was always getting mixed up or losing his place on the screen, which scrolled unpredictably or zoomed in or out when he clicked in the wrong place, but he stuck with it for quite a while, always amazed to find mail. That ended about a year ago when he simply stopped checking his mail. He never learned how to do research on the web: he didn’t have to. There were always obliging young female librarians at the public library who were happy to fulfill his requests, and lately, now that he doesn’t go out, his neighbor across the hallway is glad to do the searching.
“I ask him for something, and he comes back in half an hour with the whole thing printed out on a sheet of paper. Incredible!” he says. “But what I want to know is, who pays for it?”
“What do you mean, Dad?” J. asks.
“Do you have to pay to use it?”
“Yes, you usually pay a yearly fee.”
“Oh.” He thinks for a minute. “But how does the material get there? For example, someone wrote a book about the school I used to teach in, and it mentions me, and it’s all there on the internet. Did he have to pay to put it there?”
“Well, sort of. When you set up a website you pay something, but it’s not that much.”
“I see. But why would he do it? Why would the person who wrote it want to put it there, if he’s not making any money on it? And all these other things that you can find out. Why are they there? Who puts them there? And you can read them for free! I don’t understand.”
“There are a lot of people who just want to share information, they know something or they love some area of inquiry and they just want to write about it or make a site where people can come to learn, so they do it as a labor of love.”
“Incredible. It’s beyond me. I was born at the wrong time.” He shakes his head, grins, and adds: “The century after Aristotle would have been about right.”
8:57 PM
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Sunday, March 20, 2005 ...back in the saddle again
Today is Cassandra's 2nd blogiversary, and she seems to have celebrated all weekend...
The party began with the early arrival (well, maybe "premature" would be a better word, I'm sure winter isn't done with us) of le printemps to Montreal and an excursion yesterday on my bike, with a long stop at Archambault where I searched for flute music in the extensive classical sheet music collection, then stopped for a cappuchino at my favorite cafe, where J. also arrived on his bike and looked in through the window to see me totally concentrated playing air piano over the score of a Bach flute sonata, while McGill students studied at the nearby tables.
The two of us took off for Cinema du Parc, up the street, and saw a new Chinese film called The World - about which more will be written later. After the movie we cycled home, had a fast dinner, and walked back to St. Laurent to attend the YULblog party at Zeke's Gallery, celebrating the fifth anniversary party of Montreal blogging (just to keep a measly two-year blog anniversary well in perspective). It was a loud, fun, rollicking party in a fairly small space; Cassandra was happy to see Mikel, Martine and Ed, Karl, Steph, and Helen again, and to meet Zeke, Andre and his wife, Chris, and Kate, aka la Blogeuse, for the first time. In this picture you can sort of see me and J., way in the back - J. is in a blue shirt, under the microphone hanging from the ceiling, and I'm to his right in the picture, smiling. (What this picture doesn't show is the saturation of the room with smoke - one thing I really don't like about Montreal is how many people smoke, and how it's allowed in certain areas of many public places. Afterwards I had to wash all my clothes and my hair, and this morning we both still had sore throats from the smoke and the shouting everyone was doing to carry on converstions over the din in the room. Which is all OK - it was a great party.)
Today we crawled out of bed rather reluctantly, and went to church for the Palm Sunday liturgy, which was very beautiful; then had lunch with a friend, came back and worked a bit, and in the late afternoon went to an organ and choir concert at Eglise St. Jean-Baptiste. The concert was disappointing; I had heard a fantastic concert of 19th century French organ music there earlier this month, but today's offering was a combination of well-performed but very contained and expressionless Renaissance music, sung by an a capella choir, and modern improvisations of his own composition played by Gabriel Marghieri, a decorated European organist who teaches improvisation at the University of Lyon. I was unfortunately left cold by the organ music, in particular, and was not alone in that reaction among the audience.
Maybe I should write something about two years of blogging, but nothing particularly new has come to mind, although I've thought about it a good deal this weekend. It's simply a part of my life now; as Andre and I were admitting last night, while our spouses pointed out observed symptoms and commiserated with each other.
As Paula wrote today, two years ago was the start of the Iraq war. I began my blog then to try to give myself an excuse to write about something other than the political issues that had been consuming me for the previous two years, and to lift myself out of the despair I felt. The same longing for peace and sanity exists in me today, maybe even more so, but I'm much happier and my life has literally changed, both because of the creative expression I've found here, and for having met all of you. Onward, with gratitude! Year Three!
8:20 PM
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