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, April 08, 2005
NOTE TO READERS
Like many Blogger users, apparently, I've been having trouble accessing my account and posting. This shouldn't affect readers who try to view the blog, but if it looks like I'm not posting regularly, that's the reason. I've taken steps to do what I can to fix the problem from this end in the short term (clearing cookies, basically); in the longer term it's likely that I'll be moving this site to our own server and different blog software. Stay tuned. And apologies for the interruptions and inconvenience.
3:22 PM
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Yesterday I told my father-in-law about the book-weeding. He looked nervously at his own shelves. “There are books here I couldn’t imagine parting with,” he said, and then grinned. “But obviously I can’t take them with me! Where are you taking them, is someone buying them?”
No, I tell him, we’re donating them to a charity sale.
“That’s the thing,” he says. “No one will give you anything for used books. David” (his other son) “tells me that after I am gone…dead, that is…probably my library will be given to a small college, where they’d be glad to have them.”
“That’s a good idea.”He looks around again, and back at us. “But there are some I wish would stay in the family. David took one whole shelf.”
I don’t know whether to tell him there are books here I’d love to have, or whether it’s not the time, or my place to say that. I figure there will be other chances. And if he starts telling me to take books, I’ll probably get tearful and embarrass and upset him, so I stay silent. Instead I tell him about the book meme.“There’s been a thing going around the internet, asking people if they were going to be marooned on a desert island, what five books they’d take with them. What do you think? What would you choose?”He looks at me skeptically – he dislikes all games and quizzes, but I can tell he is either somewhat intrigued, or willing to humor me. He thinks for a minute, and doesn't say anything.
“The Qu’ran,” J. suggests.
“No, it’s a very disappointing book,” he says. I raise my eyebrows in surprise.
“No, it really is,” he insists. “It has no narrative. It’s a collection of Mohammad’s sayings, his revelations, over five periods of his life – he’d say something, and someone wrote it down on a palm leaf, and after he died, they collected all the palm leaves…”
“or backs of envelopes, or paper napkins…” said J.
“Exactly. They collected them all and wrote them down. It’s a book of utterances.” He frowns, and then gets a beatific look on his face. "But the recitations, the chanting of the Qu’ran! That is something else entirely. I was listening the other day to Iraqi radio, and there was someone chanting the Qu’ran with such a pure voice, so beautifully! Oh, it’s something when they can do that!”
His eyes are closed; my husband and we exchange the look that means “this man will never cease to amaze me.” “OK,” I say., when he opens his eyes. “Come on. Pick five books.” He looks at the shelves, looks back at me.
“What did you pick?” he asks, finally.
“The Iliad.” He nods in approval.
“Complete Works of Shakespeare.”
“That’s not a book, that’s a library!” he says.
“Well, yes, but we need volume. Collected Poems of Czeslaw Milosz – he’s a Polish poet.”
“Never heard of him.”
“The Oxford Book of American Verse.”
“Hmm, that’s interesting, I don’t know it either.”
"And maybe a Bible?”
“BAH!” he exclaims. “Another disappointing book.”
This man just loves to be perverse, I think to myself.
“I also thought maybe I’d just take five blank books,” I tell him.
“Not a bad idea,” he says, and then goes back to the Bible. “It’s too long, and very repetitious. I prefer the Reader’s Digest Bible.”
“WHAT?”we both say simultaneously. “What is that?”
“I have it right in my study, go look. They’ve done a marvelous job, they’ve cut out all the repetition, and added a lot of excellent pictures.”
J. goes and brings back a thick dark blue book, and begins thumbing through it. He’s right, the illustrations are pretty good. I find the concept a little weird, but, hey, that’s what Reader’s Digest is famous for – condensing books. This is also one of those cultural things: I grew up thinking that the Reader's Digest was beyond the pale, but my father-in-law always thought it was a very legitimate, important, and impressive publisher, largely because he missed the cultural clues, and because he knew someone who was an editor there, and this man showed an interest in his work.
Meanwhile, J. is looking through a central section called “great paintings of Biblical scenes.” He holds up a Victorian painting of a bloated fish-like whale, out of whose mouth the figure of Jonah is being ejected. We all look at it, speechless for a few moments.
“The printing is really excellent, don’t you think?” my father-in-law says.
In his study there must be twenty Bibles, including all the best-known English translations as well as Bibles in various other languages. He’s such a BS-er, hauling out this one today.
‘Well,” I say, trying to lubricate the conversation, “I suppose if it gets more people to read books…”
“I knew a woman who was a condenser for the Reader’s Digest – that’s what she did. Very brilliant woman. She had a method; she’d hold a pen in her hand and mark as she read, cutting all the superfluous parts. She was very good at it.”
‘Very brilliant,” says J. under his breath.
‘I don’t suppose Tolstoy would have thought too highly of it,” I remark.
He shrugs, and grins devilishly: “I know one thing - you won’t get any money for any Reader’s Digest Condensed Books at any booksale.” Then he settles back in his chair contentedly. “And as for the desert island - I think I prefer the five blank books.”
1:16 PM
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Wednesday, April 06, 2005
GOODBYE BOOKS
One of our agreed tasks this week has been to do what we've been talking about for a long while - go through the books and actually get rid of those that no longer mean anything to us. Note that I didn't say "those we'll never read again" - because there are books on our shelves that I doubt either of us will re-read but we wouldn't part with for anything. No, this is a purge of dead weight, of books that are pointless taking up shelf space in this particular house. Some would see this is a wrenching, even devastating process -- when one of my friends moved into a retirement home it was the dismantling of his library that affected him the most: "like having my limbs amputated," he said. I'd probably say that too, if I had to give up my shelf of Russian literature, or choose between keeping poetry books or art books. Maybe someday it will come to that - I hope not - but the books on the floor are more of the how-to variety - I don't need my cold-climate gardening book anymore, and cookbooks I haven't used in two decades are not likely to enhance our cuisine around here anytime soon. What surprised both of us is that, once we also take away computer software documentation and old magazines, the volume is reduced by 1/3 to 1/2: leaving the literature and essays, religion and history, sociology and cultural studies, poetry, art and photography books that really do matter to us, as well as some sentimental volumes that remind us of the original owner or the giver.
All of this book-weeding brings me back to the desert-island book meme, and all the lists I've read on various blogs. (We may complain, but wasn't it pretty interesting to see what everyone chose?) If I had it to do over, this week, I wonder if I might simply take five of the fattest blank books I could find. On a desert island, or in solitary confinement, would it be worse not to be able to read, or not to be able to write?
9:52 AM
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Monday, April 04, 2005 The geraniums think it's spring...
PURPLE CROSS
This is a scene we're missing, not being in Montreal during the time of the Pope's death and funeral. And we're sorry, because it would be interesting, and no doubt moving, to see the reaction and observance of his life and passing in this very Catholic city. According to articles in the Montreal papers, Mary Queen of the World Cathedral was packed with mourners. That's unusual: the huge Catholic churches in every neighborhood, including ours, are virtually empty on Sundays - cavernous, ornate monuments to the past grip that the Catholic Church used to have over nearly every French-Canadian living in Quebec. La Presse recently ran a series of articles on religion, noting that among Catholics and Protestants religious practice and attendance continues to be in a steep decline - it's a very noticeable difference to us, as Americans - but belief and acceptance of institutional authority are two different things. the Pope's death brought the people out, and their sincere grief was expressed openly in what they said he had meant to them. John Paul II had visited Canada, and this was also well remembered. It's a tradition that the lights on the cross on the top of Mont Royal, overlooking the city are turned purple in the event of the death of the Pope -- and purple they apparently are right now, glowing rather eerily through the fog.
My Muslim friend Shirin came over last night and asked if she should offer her condolences. I thanked her and smiled, saying "He's not my Pope." I've never been a fan of the papacy, seeing it as a symbol of the institutional church writ large; of politics, wealth and intrigue; a bastion of traditionalism and conservative values; an obstacle to modernity that had a particularly deleterious effect on the lives of women. Thinking about it recently, I realize that my positive feelings had mostly to do with the art that the Vatican owns, although I haven't seen much of it, never having been to Rome - a show of da Vinci drawings, and my memorable look at Michaelangelo's Pieta in the Vatican Pavilion at the New York World's Fair. I had hopes for the Catholic Church after Vatican II, hopes that were dashed by the conservative clamp-down that came afterward.
Yesterday, though, I read the long special section on John Paul II in the Montreal Gazette, including an excellent biographical article picked up from the Los Angeles Times, and looked at a photo gallery of the Pope's long life - and I found that my attitude softened. John Paul was more complex than I had realized. His conservatism on personal matters, and his opposition to the ordination of women and to liberation theology in South America were certainly as strict and uncompromising as I had always thought. But he had also been a consistent voice for peace and for interfaith respect and dialogue, two issues that are closest to my heart. He added a strong voice to the liberation of his Polish homeland and undoubtedly helped the fall of communism. He apologized for the church's role in anti-Semitism, while being steadfast in his support for the rights of the Palestinian people to have their own homeland and to live in peace. He continually opposed war, genocide, torture, and capital punishment. And in the photographs one saw a man willing to meet people of every religion and every race, willing to use his own body and the power, such as it is, of his office, to show respect and to encourage dialogue and peaceful communication rather than violence.
I looked at photographs of the Pope with Castro and with Reagan, with Hindu leaders and Muslims, with Anglican and Orthodox Christian leaders, with whom he tried to heal very very old rifts. And since the photographs were chronological, I watched him get older and more frail, but the accompanying stories showed his intense determination and awareness of the symbol he was to so many people - so he finished speeches even when he was very ill, he walked when it was difficult for him, he kept traveling almost to the end. I couldn't help but admire that.
My feelings about the institutional church and the Papacy are colored by my enormous resistance to clerical authority, and my abhorence of masses of people accepting anyone's word for what they should think and do, especially in the most personal areas of their lives. Knowing the extent of human frailty and self-deception, I cannot accept that any human being, by virtue of their high priestly office, is God's anointed representative, empowered with special knowledge or the ability to pardon sins. I am more than ready to humbly listen to and learn from the immense knowledge and experience of certain religious people - both ordained and non-ordained. But I cannot, and never have, accepted someone's authority to interpret scripture or tell me what to do or think simply because they were "my priest" or "my bishop". Religious fundamentalism and conservatism, in all faiths and in cults as well, have shown us where that road can lead. But even in my church, there are many well-educated people who will not question the authority of the priest, don't trust their own ability to read and grapple with scripture or church history, or who can't seem to take on their own ministries, in or out of the church, without the priest's "approval". I sometimes think that one reason I have so many close friends among the clergy is precisely because I don't think that way. But my clerical friends, not surprisingly, tend to be of the progressive ilk, and are going about their ministries with eyes wide open to a changing world and an awareness that the Church, too, must change to meet it. They also tend to be people who realize that true authority is earned, not conferred along with a degree or a title.
Two photographs of the Pope have stayed in my mind especially. One is a black-and-white shot of the white-robed Pope, small and seen from the back, talking in a high-ceilinged jail cell to the man who tried to assassinate him. The other is of him as a very old man, in the same familiar white robes and skullcap, sitting at a small desk set on a large grassy lawn surrounded by trees, somewhere in Italy. He's bent over, he's all alone except for a few books, and he looks up as if to say, yes, I'm still here, I can't get up, take the picture. It's a bizarre photograph, of what must be one of the strangest jobs in the world.
5:04 PM
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