A January Micropoem

Garderie
goodbye:

with a gloved finger

the mother draws

a picture for her
child

in her breath

on the glass between them.

(a garderie is a daycare center)

We welcomed a new baby at the cathedral this week – this is from an original photo by V.

While we're on the subject of poetry and mothers and children, there's a terrific interview ("Embodied Miracles") with Rachel Barenblat of Velveteen Rabbi this week on Via Negativa. I listened to it last night, and was quite touched, especially toward the end. I'd started out listening as I exercised, but ended up sitting quietly, feeling like a privileged third party in this conversation between her and Dave. I loved hearing Rachel read her poems, and appreciated what she said about the closeness of certain Hebrew and Arabic words, but the religious mischief in me was particularly delighted by her feminization of God in her poems about miscarriage, childbirth, and motherhood – she's making a little trouble, yes, but much more than that, she's giving permission for a new language and new way for women to speak about the spiritual dimension of these huge events in their lives. Rachel will be ordained a rabbi next year; I've known her for about five years now, and greatly appreciate her intelligence and sensitivity as a thinker, a poet, and a friend.

 

More on Dreaming

Jan has written a fascinating and thoughtful analysis of my recent dream on her blog, "A Skeptical Mystic.", for which I thank her very much. On Friday and over the weekend, she and I corresponded about this dream, and for the most part I agree with her interpretation. I decided to share with you some of what I wrote to her about the more personal aspects which she didn't necessarily know; there are definitely universal symbols in human dreams (such as water often representing consciousness) but for each of us, at particular times, those symbols may point in different directions which only we can figure out and put in the context of our particular life at a particular time.

It's also true that many dreams are forgettable, because they don't have the power or import of one like this. I dream every night and usually remember at least parts of those dreams – you can train yourself to remember them – but most of the time they're jumbles of ideas or images or situations I can easily trace back to my waking life, recent or remembered, and while they may be interesting, silly, scary, or even absurd, they sort of make sense by themselves and don't seem to be trying to tell me anything. But occasionally one comes along that is markedly different, as Jan also describes in her post, and those I try to write down and work with over the succeeding days, or even return to much later.

Here's an edited version of what I wrote to Jan:

The Canadian Anglican church really is dying and without an
infusion of new energy and mission it's essentially finished, I think,
but both clergy and parishioners are clinging to the past. I'm convinced that there is a broad,
all-encompassing life force of which we are all part, and wisdom to be
gained not only from the religious teachings common to all the great
teachers but from nature, meditation in solitude, and relationship.
Stepping "out" of the church is something I feel myself doing anyway.

Your explanation of the igloo and frozen water also make sense to me
and are helpful. There's something in the dream, I think, about the new
life being born within something that feels alien, frozen, and must be
entered by a narrow passageway. My best take on that is that this
actually is my new life in Canada, as well as my creativity in whatever
direction it next goes, because my resistance has been to moving here
permanently and fully embracing it. We sold our house this past summer
and have been settling our affairs, but it's taken until the New Year,
actually, before I've felt fairly settled physically and emotionally
and was able to begin to look ahead rather than feel I was in that
transition zone between lives. I've felt my resistance "melting",
though we don't see that in the dream, and although I can't see the
next project or big direction yet, I'm certainly getting ready to look
for it or open to it. What the dream says to me (so far) is that the life ahead
is up here, in Canada, and that I'm right to let go of the past and
step into this new sunlit but cold landscape and look for what's under
the water inside that igloo!

More complex are the figures of the three "guides" in the dream: the
Inuit man, the pregnant woman, and the dog or wolf. A friend who is a
Jungian analyst once told me it helps to get into a meditative place
and consciously re-enter the dream, asking each figure in it what they
want to tell me, and noting what happens in the "conversation" that
follows, trying to just let it happen naturally, without intellectually
"directing" the thoughts. I've found that works sometimes – have you
ever tried this? And other times I feel I can't get "out of the way"
enough to "hear" any wisdom that might not be simply my own thinking
from a superficial place. But this dream is powerful enough that I
think I'll try it. Once thing I do feel is that all these figures were
completely benevolent; both humans were encouraging, friendly and
gentle, and the dog was a potential companion.

Over the weekend, my attempts at meditating with these "guide figures" were completely fruitless, and I could feel I was too distracted. I did become convinced that the igloo represents a kind of cathedral, in its domed shape and the light that comes into it through the snow and ice: it is not a dark place, but rather a pure and light one.

Jan had suggested that I try "programming" my dreaming, so last night, feeling very skeptical, I did that, concentrating mostly on the dog-figure as I went to sleep and again when I woke up in the night. Well, I had another dream just before morning, also set in a snowy but overcast landscape, with a lot of running around on cross-country skis that didn't work properly, and I didn't have the right bindings or boots and spent a lot of time searching for them – typical dream stuff for me. In the dream I enjoyed being on skis in the snowy woods – although I don't ski anymore (and was mostly a downhill skier), being out in nature in the winter mountains was the part of skiing I loved most, and had a definite spiritual aspect. My husband was skiing with me, as he usually did, and there were other people in the dream, including two benevolent friends from my current life, both musicians, who owned the house from which we set off, and, surprisingly, a young man from my distant past who arrived with his wife, a young woman I identified this morning as someone I know now, about the age this young man was when I knew him. How odd that my mind has put them together, but they fit perfectly: both are interested in simplicity and living off the land. In the dream, we were all sitting at a table, and she turned to me and quietly said, "I know a lot about dealing with fear." There was nothing scary in the dream; it was as if she simply turned, looked into me, saw something, and spoke. In real life, this woman is not pregnant, so far as I know, nor is she someone who would claim particular wisdom — but I think this was the same spirit-figure as in the previous dream. This young woman spent a year living in a Buddhist monastery, and it's quite obvious to me this morning that the message of this second dream is first, to revive and rediscover, in my new context, the spiritual relationship I've always had with nature and wilderness, and to turn again toward meditation and revive my practice as a means of working with resistances I may be currently holding onto.

Do I believe that dreams like this come to us from the outside,
somewhere? Yes and no. I've had enough experiences of a spiritual or
mystical nature that I do believe there is something more than my own
consciousness which exists as a stream into which we can tap. There is
deep knowledge in shared human experience and in nature, and there is a
power I choose to call universal consciousness which can lead us, I
think, both toward the discovery and fulfillment of what we are meant
to be and do as individuals, and the ability to go beyond that into
love and unselfish giving for all other life. How much of this
knowledge already exists within our subconscious, how much comes to us
intellectually and through observation and experience, and how much is
a matter of grace or gift (asked for or unbidden) are questions I doubt
I'll ever answer. What's clear to me (and to everyone else who's done
it) is that being on a spiritual path is a choice; it takes openness
and work; there are dry periods when nothing seem to happen; and there
are both moments of insight and periods of growth that are more like
what Shunryu Suzuki called "getting wet in the fog". I suspect that
dreams, coming from the subconscious, often tell us things we already
know, deep inside, and can affirm a point we've perhaps come to without
realizing it. I don't know. What I do know is that these types of
dreams have been worth my attention.

I'm quite amazed by this experiment with active dream-work, and plan to continue. What do you think? Are you skeptical?

 

A Dream

Not long before morning, I dreamt a crazy, restless, disjointed but utterly Canadian dream. In the first part. J. and I were in the cathedral, or what appeared to be a much darker, smaller version of it; it was a vaulted space made of dark wood, crowded with piles of things. There was no priest or Dean; no clergy at all, in fact, and I knew they were gone or retired or that we could no longer afford to pay them. A handful of us were keeping things going, but it was a very disorganized group of a dozen or so people, milling around in the front of this space, where there was some light, talking and laughing. J. had just read part of the service and I was looking for a prayer book in order to read the next part, but couldn't find one – there were all sorts of other books, mostly outdated prayer books and hymnals no longer in use, stacked under pews and in corners.

Soon I gave up, because it was clear most of the people had figured the service was over and were much more interested in lunch; it was all very congenial and relaxed. We went out a back way, and I found myself on a wooden porch, in a town in the country somewhere, looking out across a snowy driveway at a small group of people gathered around an igloo that had been built there, kind of against the side of a house. The sun was shining; it was a bright, not-very-cold day. I saw J. bending down about to disappear through the igloo's entryway, and one of the men – in a fur-hooded parka – looked up and told me that they were fishing through the ice inside the igloo. I wanted to go in, too, so I came down off the porch and joined the group of people standing around.

There was a beautiful husky there, grey and white with light-colored eyes, and I petted her and said I'd always kind of wanted one, but maybe as a puppy, and the dog changed into a puppy with a soft white face and then changed back again, after I turned away, into the adult dog from before. I looked toward the igloo and began having second thoughts about going into it; the entryway looked very small and close to the ground, and I have a kind of claustrophobia about entering small passages like that (my worst nightmares involve crawling through narrow passages that become ever tighter and then start filling with water.) The woman next to me began talking to me, and I saw that she was pregnant. "I have to go into it," she said, and as she spoke I suddenly imagined the shape of the igloo as a very pregnant woman, lying on her back. "Why?" I asked. "That's how the baby will be born," she said. "You see?"

(NOTE: Jan has written a fascinating and careful analysis of my dream on her blog, "A Skeptical Mystic.")

 

Haiku Workshop

This morning, intrigued by some haiku conversations started by Kris Lindbeck yesterday on Twitter, I posted a poem and suggested that we workshop it. Here's what happened, with responses occurring on Identica,  Twitter,and Facebook, though I've combined them to make it more chronological. (As I say below, you can count on me to try to make things linear…)

I'm still not a big fan of social networking sites and don't spend much time there – I'd never get anything done if I did. But for conversations like this, they're a perfect medium, and I really appreciate the generosity, noncompetitiveness and friendship of other micropoets I've met there. (I've included links in order to give credit, but if you don't have accounts at these sites they obviously won't work.)

Where we begin:

Snow melting, sky stiff

as metal standing straight up

behind skyscrapers

cassandrabeth (me): Snow melting, sky stiff/as metal standing straight up/behind skyscrapers. — workshop poem for today? Idea of thaw, but with…

stiff leaden sky,
looking like a vertical sheet behind the city buildings. Verb issues -
what form? Melts vs melting? Attempt to keep to…

rigid
5-7-5. Wanted to indicate city location; "skyscrapers" not "the
buildings." Left out "but": "snow melting but…" Reactions?

Kim Randall Cox: I enjoy seeing the thoughts behind your words.

stoney: I'd sacrifice 5-7-5, for sibilance. Perhaps: Snow melts / sky stiff as sheet metal / shades skyscrapers . (Hope my betters chime in.)

bluegrasspoet: I love the image. Like Stoney's revision but I like your original without the "as" – but that messes up syllables, right?

Thanks for your ideas. I'd like to get rid of "as" too – always willing to sacrifice syllabic count for better poem.

Or it could be
really pared down to: "Snow melting/sheet metal sky/behind
skyscrapers." Trying for unnatural sky w/ metal, concrete, glass.

Kim Randall Cox: I love this version. Spare yet evocative.

jeneva22 : "Snow metal sky / sheet melting / behind skyscrapers"? Or is the syllable count wrong? Unnatural=mix up syntax?

This feels a little too confusing for a haiku to me, but I also tend to be too linear! Thanks for shaking it up…

Incredible. The sun just came out.

forgottenworks : do you want haiku-restraint or micropoetry-special effects with this?

Good question. I think restraint, on this one.

stoney: I like your latest version — a lot.

KrisLindbeck:  I like this one a lot.If I were to tinker:"Snow melting / opaque sheet metal sky / behind the skyscrapers." Glad you got sun!

Thanks, that's good too! There's no end to it…time to go walk in the sunshine.

Snow melting

sheet metal sky

behind
skyscrapers

 

On Suffering (3)

Why did so many people die in the Haitian earthquake? Because for these poor black descendants of slaves who have had a history of corrupt rulers, economic justice doesn't exist.

What does their suffering have to teach us? Certainly not that this was a punishment that they somehow deserved, as the fundamentalists have hatefully intoned. But I also don't buy the stupid platitudes of Anglican bishops: "God is suffering right along with them." This is infantile.

I stopped believing in a theistic God – an omnipotent being "out there somewhere" who has the ability to intervene (positively or negatively) in our lives and decides whether to do that or not based on his (definitely male, this God) judgment about our worthiness – quite a long time ago. I don't see how anyone who has observed the arbitrariness and unfairness of suffering can possibly accept, let alone pray to, this kind of God, and once you let go of that, then a great deal of religious dogma becomes meaningless.

When I look out at the Montreal skyline and all those spires above the empty churches, I remember what a Quebec friend, a former Roman Catholic, told me recently. He said that he has a sister who is quite poor. When she asked a priest why she was poor, when other people were much richer, the priest told her, "It's God's will." "She accepts that!" he said. "And for a long while in my own life I accepted it too. But not any longer. That's the way the church was, here, for centuries – keeping people docile, like sheep, with these kinds of statements." Is it any wonder that when people finally woke up and realized this sort of teaching was not only insupportable but deeply damaging to them and their society, they deserted the churches and abandoned the clergy? But equally empty are the words of religious leaders who refuse to go deeper than "God shares our suffering" and really grapple with the teachings that made Jesus  the radical he was and, in the end, got him killed. If religion can't say anything meaningful about suffering, then, frankly, its temples deserve to be empty.

Jesus' parables about economic justice are at the very core of his teachings, and they basically say that all people are equal and the rich need to wake up. There would be a lot less suffering in the world if the resources and wealth were more fairly distributed, but we, like the rich young man in the famous parable, are incapable of giving completely so that that might come to pass. My $100 or $500 to Haiti is essentially meaningless; it may make me feel better, it may help a little bit, but in a larger sense it does almost nothing to address the fundamental inequality between my life and the lives of the poor and struggling. Responding to suffering with a gift that doesn't change me in any real way is too easy. If suffering has any "meaning" then it's to transform us from people who go around with a shell on, sticking a hand out now and then with a few coins in it, to people who are willing to see things as they really are, to be vulnerable to life and to others, and to change over time as a result into people who believe in justice and equality and live that out in our lives – not perfectly, probably, but as best we can. This thing we call "God" — what I might prefer to call Love, or the "Ground of all Being" — isn't going to produce change in the world, except through us, and the "eternal life" where suffering "shall be no more" isn't a paradise to come, but right now.

And if we think we're protected by our wealth, our education, our geography, our whiteness, our youth — it's an illusion. Suffering comes in some form to all of us. Watching my completely undeserving mother die of cancer rid me of any vestiges of Theism. But I did experience, as I have before in my life, moments of interpenetration where "she" and "I" ceased to exist as separate; I know with complete certainty – not just intellectually – that we're all interdependent, all connected, and all equal. I've seen that Love is the most powerful thing there is, and that we all hold it in our hands, never more so than when we're stripped of everything else. Going through suffering with others has the potential to teach us a great deal; maybe we'll be able to help the next person, or go through our own illnesses and death with a little less fear and greater wisdom. But I think for most educated and religiously-skeptical people today, this requires meditation, reading, and a lot of work and preparation that takes place mainly in solitude. I wish Christianity had done better job of preserving (other than in monasticism) its own mystic tradition, where meditation is at the heart. But that's never been seen as the way to preserve the institutional hierarchy and power, or to fill the pews and the coffers. Nor is it a way to keep the faith separate from the others, whose mystic traditions blur all the distinctions between them and neutralize the fear of "doing it wrong and risking damnation" which has been religion's (not just Christianity's) most powerful means of keeping people "inside" the rules.

So, descending from the roof-top view, where this kind of theorizing is so tempting, let's come down into the street. That's where I found the image in the photograph at the top of this post, one grey day when I wandered into a snowy alley and was stunned to find paintings like this on all the surfaces of the sheds and garages that backed up onto it. Seeing these light- and color-filled paintings, in the dead of midwinter, moved and mystified me: who was this life-filled painter? Why here? What did these images have to teach me?

 

On Suffering (2)

 

Why did Haiti have an earthquake? Because of where it is.

Seven or eight years ago, J. and I worked on a project researching and designing an exhibition about the 100th anniversary of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, on the island of Martinique, in 1902. The panel above is a map and graphic we created that illustrates the location and general movement of the plates below the Caribbean Sea; there is still argument among geologists about the origin of the Caribbean Plate and its movement relative to three other tectonic plates on its northern and eastern Atlantic sides. However, it's agreed that the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Plate is a "subduction zone" where the Atlantic edges of the North American plate, and/or the South American plates (which basically cover those entire continents) are descending below the Caribbean Plate. The archipelago known as the Lesser Antilles Island Arc is a region of young islands – of which the best known are probably Monserrat and Martinique – being formed by volcanic activity as one plate dives below another, forcing magma up from below the earth's crust. There are no less than sixteen active volcanoes in this island arc, and the Caribbean region is one where earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions have occurred frequently in modern times.

The first-person history of the eruption of Mt. Pelee, on Martinique, exists in extremely fragmentary accounts because of the 30,000 residents of St. Pierre, its capital city, only people survived. Let me say that again. Two survivors, out of 30,000 – all of whom were probably killed in minutes. One of these survivors was a prisoner in a subterranean dungeon, so he saw and heard very little. Boats at a great distance from the harbor saw two clouds of glowing, super-heated gas and rock which swept down the mountain and out to sea after annihilating the city as effectively as a nuclear eruption, but any boats that were already in the harbor burst into flames and were destroyed. We worked with before-and-after photographs of St. Pierre from a private, unpublished collection, and being there is somehow even harder to imagine than what it would have been like to be at Hiroshima.

The temperature of this type of "pyroclastic flow," the product of a certain type of volcanic eruption, can be greater than 1075 degrees C.; the speed of the clouds which swept down Mt. Pelee have been estimated at 420mph (670kph), and obviously they ignited everything in their path. This eruption was the first time the French term "nuée ardente" or "glowing cloud" was used, because, of course, most of these islands were French colonies considered to be tropical paradises; Gauguin went there to paint before ending up in Tahiti. There was plenty of warning that Mt. Pelee was going to erupt; in addition to minor eruptions of smoke and ash, animals of all sizes became extremely disturbed; several days before the eruption the Guerin Sugar Factory was invaded by ants and giant centipedes. (Like most of the islands in the Caribbean, Martinique's main export was
sugar, and the majority of its population were descendents of slaves imported from Africa to work on the sugar plantations.) But the worst omen was a swarm of deadly fer-de-lance snakes that came down the mountain into the city, biting humans and horses. In spite of all this, officials insisted there was no cause for alarm or evacuation, and everyone stayed; many of inhabitants were in the cathedral when the cloud struck because it was Ascension Day.

In July of 1995, Monserrat fared better in terms of loss of life, but not economically, when its previously-dormant Soufriere Hills volcano erupted and buried the capital city of Plymouth under close to 40 feet of mud. The city has been closed to visitors because the eruption continues at a low level and most of the inhabitants who evacuated cannot return.

Volcanic eruption can't be predicted with certainty, still, but there tends to be at least some warning. Earthquakes and tsunamis aren't like that; after doing this work on Mt. Pelee I read a book about California and pseudo-science of earthquake prediction – people who claim to be able to "feel" a quake before it happens or claim to be able to "read" portents in cloud formations or the activity of birds. None of these people have a very good batting record, but science doesn't either, when it comes to earthquakes, which have terrified human beings and destroyed their lives and works for ever.

 

On Suffering (1)

We leave our warm beds, get dressed, and drive to our studio in the early, grey morning. It's as dark at 8:30 am as it will be in the late afternoon; this is the long dark trek through deep winter. Our boots clatter up the metal staircase and we unlock the loft; I make coffee and do some exercises and stretches, and then run up several flights of stairs, walking quickly down the long hallways. On the far end of the building a grimy window looks out over the city: white snow creating a rectangular patchwork of roofs; centre-ville in the distance; smoke billowing from industrial chimneys, and everywhere the tall verdegris spires puncturing the low grey sky, silent exclamation points rising from the hollow chambers of the enormous, nearly-abandoned churches that define each parish of the city of Montreal.

To the northeast of here, in a direction I can't see from the window, is a community of Haitians; I know one family, from the cathedral; the father is an Anglican priest, born in Haiti, who ministers to the French-speaking Anglicans in that part of the city. There are a lot of immigrants from the French West Indies here, and a number of them are Anglican. Today, looking out over these cold roofs in the opposite direction, away from the immigrant poor and toward the wealth of the city center and, further to the south, the United States, I feel their despair and sorrow like the brath of the incessant arctic wind on the back of my neck. I have read the deluge of predictable comments on Twitter and Facebook, tried to absorb the headlines and the awful pictures: "7,000 people have already been buried in a mass grave." I write a note to the person I know best in this family. Mostly, though, I'm numb.

People are asking why. They always do, when tragedy strikes, but it's a lot easier to package the story and wrap up our feelings when we read the biography of a deranged or angry killer and say to ourselves, "yes, I can sort of understand, he was traumatized, he was crazy, he went off his head because he lost his job and felt the world was against him" than when the perpetrator is the very earth under our feet.

Of course some have a ready answer. In Handel's Messiah, a few weeks back, I listened to the bass soloist singing words from the prophet Haggai, instructing the Jews to rebuild the temple after their return from captivity, and warning about the consequences of his wrath:

"Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of Hosts; Yet once a little while and I will shake the
heav'ns and the earth, the sea and the dry land: And I will shake all nations; and the
desire of all nations shall come."

The Book of Haggai was composed in 520 B.C.E., after King Cyrus of Persia had decreed that the Jews could be released from their captivity in Babylon and return to Judea. Handel, writing his oratorio in 1741 (the libretto was actually by Charles Jennens) knew little more than the ancients about the cause of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, or violent storms; "Divine Providence" was to be thanked for safety and victory, and "Divine Retribution," meted out to nations in the form of natural punishment or defeat in war, was to be feared. Even though we know now that we sit on shifting geologic plates, whose movement causes these natural disasters, self-righteous preachers still claim God's wrath, prophesy the apocalypse, and infuse believers with a conviction that the victims somehow deserve their "punishment." It makes me crazy, especially so because the worst offenders are Christian fundamentalists, who have managed to tar the entire faith and, incredibly, still influence politics and education — even in the supposedly fact-based, "modern," and developed world — with their misguided, retrograde, unscientific and often hateful beliefs.

There is a clear scientific "why": it's because Haiti is located in a region of active tectonic activity that results in earthquakes, tsunamis, and violent volcanic eruptions. But the spiritual "whys" – "Why have so many people died there?" "Why have they died instead of me?" "What can I do to understand and respond to such human suffering?" -  which ought be at the heart of religious teaching and practice, have rarely been so since the time of Constantine, when the Church first became aligned with the power of the State.

More on both of these subjects in the following posts.

 

Cassandra’s Books of 2009

A current poster in the Berri-UQAM metro station; note that some of the people waiting are, in fact, reading paper documents. (No, I don't own an IPod, Kindle, or any other kind of electronic reading device. I can, however, read the writing on the wall, even if I'm resistant…)

Inspired by my friend Ed at Blork Blog, here's the list of books I read in 2009. Usually I only keep track of them on my Book List page, but looking through Ed's list and his analysis of it, I thought it was fascinating, and wondered if I might be able to encourage some of you readers to post your own lists, too. Mine is way top-heavy on male authors too (39 out of 43) and on fiction (35 of 43). About half were originally written in languages other than English.

I no longer try to read a "balanced" list each year, however that might be defined, and as time seems an ever-decreasing commodity, I'm more and more deliberate about what I do read. I see an emphasis on Canadian fiction here (the six books in Robertson Davies' trilogies, and expect that to continue; just yesterday I was talking to a relatively new friend who knows a lot about contemporary Canadian literature, and she made some enticing suggestions that I know will enlarge my knowledge about the country and its people. Classics still figure pretty heavily in my book choices: obviously I've been doing the Joseph Conrad thing, six down and a number of books still to go, and in the earlier part of the year I was working on the Greek tragedy project. (Reading plays artificially bloats the total count, too; some of those were pretty short.)

What's ahead? Well, I just started a book about the Beatles and the social history of their times that J. read and liked this fall, Jonathan Gould's "Can't Buy Me Love;" and I'll probably read Caroline Alexander's "The War That Killed Achilles" pretty soon, along with some fiction – maybe a book about Newfoundland that my friend recommended, or one of the world lit novels I've been looking forward to, like Kumar's "Sea of Poppies," Pamuk's "The Museum of Innocence," Andrei Bely's "Petersburg," or one of Carlos Fuentes big novels. It may take all year to finish Conrad's oeuvre, and I think this may be the year to tackle Borges. And, at a minimum, I need to read a couple of things in French. Any ideas? Pica, I see, is knitting while listening to audio books – another good plan for those of us who're time-challenged.

What's not reflected here, at all, is the huge amount I now read online, which certainly constitutes the majority of my reading, by a long shot. In addition to the informal and formal essays, poems, and micropoetry on so many fine blogs and networking sites, I read a great deal of poetry and short fiction because of my involvement with qarrtsiluni and Read Write Poem. It's a telling fact that I begin 2010 without a single magazine subscription – probably the first year since pre-literacy that that's been true for me.

What about you?

2009 Book List

Under Western Eyes, Joseph Conrad

Grandfather Stories, Stephen Hopkins Adams*

A Mixture of Frailties, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, III)

Leaven of Malice, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, II)

Tempest Tossed, Robertson Davies (The Salterton Trilogy, I)

The Pragmatist and his Free Spirit, Susan Chan Egan and Chih-p'ing Chou*

World of Wonders, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, III)

The Manticore, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, II)

An Outcast of the Islands, Joseph Conrad

Thirty-Two films About Glenn Gould (screenplay), Francois Girard and Don McKellar

Fifth Business, Robertson Davies (The Deptford Trilogy, I)

The Nigger of the 'Narcissus', Joseph Conrad

Almayer's Folly, Joseph Conrad

The Arrow of Gold, Joseph Conrad

Une Vie, Guy de Maupassant

Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad

Fresco, Luljeta Lleshanaku

Troilus and Cressida, William Shakespeare

Complete Poems, C.P. Cavafy (Daniel Mendelsohn, translator)

Musicophilia, Oliver Sacks*

Other Colors, Orhan Pamuk*

The Black Tulip, Alexandre Dumas

Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje

In the Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaatje

Night Train to Lisbon, Pascal Mercier

The Suppliant Maidens, The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, Prometheus Bound, Aeschylus

Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonnus, Antigone, Sophocles

The Greek Way, Edith Hamilton*

Paideia: the Ideals of Greek Culture, Vol. 1, Werner Jaeger*

The Demons, Heimito von Doderer

Philoctetes, Sophocles

Elektra, Sophocles

Iphegenia in Taurus, Elektra, Hippolytus, Euripides

En Relisant les Evangiles, Arnaud Desjardins*

Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

His Excellency, a biography of George Washington, John Ellis*

*non-fiction

 

Twelve Days of Christmas

"Twelfth Night" by David Teniers the Younger (1634-40)

Yesterday was officially the twelfth day of Christmas, though we'll be celebrating Epiphany on this coming Sunday, and I guess J. and I will leave our tree up until then. In honor of the actual day, here's an explanation of the origin of that litany of numbered hens and leaping lords we sing about this time of year, which has always puzzled me. I have no idea if this explanation is accurate, but it sounds plausible to me, considering the realities of religious persecution and fear. What amazes me is that the Church of England was really not all that far from Catholicism in its beliefs, and the ideas in this mnemonic cipher, if that's what it was, are not things that were unfamiliar or taboo in Anglicanism. However, as British history (and Irish history down to our own times) reveals, the tension between Catholicism and Protestantism (mainly Anglicanism, the official state religion) was intense and much blood was shed over it; what may have been at stake (a deliberate use of that word) here was the memorization and recitation of a Roman Catholic catechism, something that perpetuated the belief system and the faith among young people and was therefore almost certainly forbidden.

(and no, I haven't searched the internet to find alternate explanations, but would be glad to hear them.)

There is one Christmas Carol that has always baffled me. What in the world do leaping lords, French hens, swimming swans, and especially the partridge who won't come out of the pear tree have to do with Christmas?
This week, I found out.
From 1558 until 1829, Roman Catholics in England were not permitted to practice their faith openly. Someone during that era wrote this carol as a catechism song for young Catholics. It has two levels of meaning: the surface meaning plus a hidden meaning known only to members of their church. Each element in the carol has a code word for a Christian
reality which the children could remember.

1. The partridge in a pear tree was Jesus Christ.
   
2. Two turtle doves were the Old and New Testaments.
   
3. Three French hens stood for faith, hope and love.
   
4. The four calling birds were the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke & John.
   
5. The five golden rings recalled the Torah or Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.
   
6. The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation.
   
7. Seven swans a-swimming represented the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit–Prophesy, Serving, Teaching, Exhortation, Contribution, Leadership, and Mercy.
   
8. 
   The eight maids a-milking were the eight beatitudes.
   
9. Nine ladies dancing were the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit–Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness,Goodness,Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.
   
10. The ten lords a-leaping were the ten commandments.
    
11. The eleven pipers piping stood for the eleven faithful disciples.
    
12. The twelve drummers drumming symbolized the twelve points of belief in the Apostles' Creed.

And here's a bit about Twelfth Night, gleaned mostly from the Wikipedia:

Twelfth Night is a holiday observed on the
evening before the twelfth day of Christmas or the Epiphany celebration,
which commemorates the adoration of the Magi before the infant Jesus.

In Tudor England, the Twelfth Night marked the end of a winter
festival that started on All Hallows Eve (Halloween.) An appointed King or Lord of Misrule governed the Christmas festivities, and the Twelfth Night was the end of his period
of rule. The common theme was that the normal order of things was
reversed; masters waited on their servants, and so forth. This Lord of Misrule tradition can be traced back to
pre-Christian European festivals such as the Celtic festival of Samhain
and the Ancient Roman festival of Saturnalia.

After Twelfth Night the Carnival season starts, which lasts through
Mardi Gras (literally, "Fat Tuesday," the day of feasting and carousing right before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of the fasting season of Lent.) In some places such as New Orleans, the night of
January 6 with the first Carnival celebrations is called Twelfth Night.

In some places, Twelfth Night celebrations include food traditions such as the king cake or tortell. (Note: this is a big tradition in Quebec, as well as in French-inspired New Orleans, where bakeries sell "Gateaux de Roi," special cakes with a prize baked into them. The person who gets the prize hosts the next party.)

The Shakespeare play Twelfth Night, or What You Will was originally written to be performed in celebration of Twelfth Night; its first performance was on February 2, 1602, at the feast of Candlemas which marked the formal end of Christmastide in the liturgical calendar.In many English-speaking countries, it was historically considered bad luck to leave your Christmas decorations up beyond (depending on what source you consult) Epiphany, or Candlemas, which comes 40 days after Christmas. My grandmother always took her tree down the day after Christmas; my own tradition is to leave things up until Epiphany but here in cold, dark Quebec many people leave their decorations up for another month or more! I found it fascinating to read that any edible decorations on wreaths were also consumed on Epiphany, for here they would have been frozen solid for weeks, and completely unfit for food!

 

Au revoir, le puritanisme…

I saw this poster on one of the large advertising boards in the downtown metro today, and was amused. I gather it's for a trade fair, open to the public, to be held at one of the city's convention centers (same place as the big book fairs) in late January. The subtitle reads, "For best results, add cream and whip vigorously! Rediscover the joy of love at the Salon of Love and Seduction."

In Montreal, sex is a normal topic of conversation and a matter-of-fact part of life. This isn't an unusual poster, even for a mainstream location, and nudity in advertising is common whether the venue is a drugstore window, a billboard, or a poster for theater or dance. The double-entendre is alive and well in language and image, and used for delight rather than shock value; books about all aspects of sex, gay and straight, as well as eroticism, are displayed openly in regular bookstores and there's no shame or furtiveness attached to looking at or buying them. Of course there's the sleazy side too, but what I find really refreshing in these examples, as well as in the way people dress (especially the French) is the recognition that sex, sexuality, and our bodies in all their diversity are normal, beautiful, important aspects of people's lives, which should be acknowledged openly for the delight they are. It seems to me that there's a lot less dualism about sexuality as a result — a lot less good and bad, less shame and more openness, which especially makes it easier for young people. And what is sexy, in this cultural and everyday sense, tends to be genuinely sexy, as opposed to the overwrought, contrived sexuality of the mass media that is all about appearance and not much (it seems to me) about what's going on inside.

I've often wondered, too, how much of this is common to Catholic or formerly-Catholic societies like France, Quebec, Spain and Italy (as opposed to Calvinist/Puritan ones like the U.S. and Britain), and how it plays out in people's psychological well-being. One recognition I feel here (though I've never seen it spelled out, exactly) is that it's normal for most human beings to acknowledge and express their sexuality – including those of all sexual orientations, priests, disabled
people, the poor and homeless, older responsible teenagers, and the elderly — as well as being healthier for society as a whole than denial, repression, shame, and furtiveness – let alone rape and abuse. That's very different from saying, via advertising, thirteen-year-old girls should dress like Britney Spears, but god forbid that Janet Jackson's breast should be shown on prime time TV. Is that a radical interpretation, or am I sensing this correctly?

(And while we're on the subject…after I wrote this,  I saw that TherapyDoc has just written an excellent post on love and lust within relationships, especially marriage.)