10.

Thoughts on the Shortest Day

Solstice. At 7 am, I rise in near-darkness and go into the front room. I open the  louvered blinds, and peer out, to the south, at an overcast, dim morning. The weak and greyish light reminds me of the day three months ago when we landed in Reykjavik, where it is now dark all day long. Here, inside the room with me, is a green spruce tree, bare except for hundreds of sparkling tiny lights that have been glowing all night long. I close my eyes and smell its fragrance, and open them to see again its incongruous beauty.

Yesterday, though, was clear, and in the early morning I watched the sun itself trace a low arc behind the trees. I left the house at 1 pm, wanting to do my shopping in the brightest part of the day, but even so, walking down boulevard St-Denis, I could only feel a faint warmth on my face. It’s no wonder we in the north feel bereft now, forgotten.

In spite of science, all my life I’ve thought of the sun as the wanderer. He begins to leaves us in August, becoming as neglectful as a distracted lover, and travels south  to where he is right now – Patagonia perhaps – standing on a mountain peak gazing toward Antarctica. Later today he’ll slowly come down the path he climbed, pack his things, and once again turn his face toward the north.

Northern pagan people spent these weeks in anticipation, and celebrated the solstice with joy.  Because the sun seems to stand still at solstice, the Roman astronomers waited for a few days before definitively declaring its return journey; therefore they placed the date of Christ’s birth on December 25. The clever placement of Christmas, a few days past solstice, conflated the new religion with the existing festival.

Oriens, the Latin word for East, also became the morning star – Venus when seen at dawn — the dayspring, dawn of heaven, even the rising sun itself, and these became epithets for Christ. For weeks we’ve been singing O Dayspring from on high appear, and calling on the brightest and best of the sons of the morning to dawn on our darkness and send us his aid. Christ died and left us, goes the theology, but he returns at Christmas to renew us, and will eventually come again to reign.

I’ve been even less enthusiastic than usual about Advent this year. Anticipation, yes; bringing life and light inside our cold, dark homes, yes — but focusing on my own unpreparedness, forgetfulness, sins and weaknesses, no. Only western Christianity would create a penitential season at a time when people are already depressed and starved for light. But I’m not a pagan, for all my love of the natural world, and my awareness of the way its rhythm beats in my heart, and always has.

What do I believe then, what do I believe? Not in Christ’s return, except metaphorically. I believe in now, and so, I think, did he. I know from experience that times of obscurity are often followed by insight, darkness by light, and that the two are necessary for each other, but that wisdom comes from being observant to this very moment: the weak light, the clarity of ice.  Today that paper-thin edge of duality — that single but two-sided coin — turns its face, but neither one is better than the other. I believe in long journeys, the persistence of love, and the value of endurance: my face in the stinging cold, my feet that want to slip on the ice but find their balance, the sun’s eventual return.

Busy

We just got back from a trip to visit my father in central New York State, where we helped him celebrate his 87th birthday. He continues to be completely independent, extremely active, and in remarkably good shape and spirits, for which I'm very grateful. (I sure hope I've inherited all of those genes!)

While there I took advantage of the snowlessness to take a walk in the woods and along the outlet from the lake into the Chenango River, where I took some photographs of different kinds of activities than the busy-ness of the holiday season.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“A Hike in Hell”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/video/embed

Keeping with our Icelandic (and food-related) theme of late, I think you will marvel at this piece from today's Guardian: a video of a drive and then a hike on Eyjafjallajökull volcano: 'Where Satan goes backpacking.' I want to do this…(Thanks to J. for pointing this out to me!) Be sure to watch through to the end.)

 

Lichens, Moss, Lava

I know I've been a bit scarce around here, and the reason is that I've been busy for the past couple of months on a new body of work (both writing and art) about place and identity, inspired in part by Iceland. Where that project will end up is not clear, but I'm steadily working on it and will, from time to time, share some bits here. Meanwhile, regular blogging will continue!

Here is the latest piece. I'm putting it aside for now but plan to make some changes on the right-hand central side. These charcoal drawings are fairly large, about 30" x 22", and they look quite different in person; reducing them changes the feeling and impact a lot — the actual drawing is approximately lifesize. Originally I thought I'd be doing drawings as preparations for prints, but I like these on their own, too, and the process of working on them, in silence and solitude, gives rise to thoughts and insights that I don't think would happen without going through the practice of drawing.

Lichens, Moss, Lava. Charcoal on acrylic-prepared paper. 30 x 22". 12/08/2011. Click for larger view

If you'd like to see a slideshow of the drawing as it progressed, here's a link on Flickr.

And here's something I wrote, during the drawing process:

—–

I’ve been working on a new charcoal drawing. Lichens, moss, lava. And a succulent plant something like sedum, with stiff pod-like leaves tightly clustered around flexible stalks. The drawing is large, like the first one, but this time I’m working on a painted ground of loosely applied, thin acrylic, toned with Hooker’s green, Naples yellow, and a bit of quinachridone red to a slightly greenish cream.

It’s the same problem I’ve returned to again and again in art: the representation of multiple, complex botanical forms. Here they are scrambling over yet another complicated shape — the deeply pitted lava. The advantage of working in black and white is that the forms take precedence, which is what I want. The disadvantage is the sheer complexity of the scene, but without the differentiation nature gives through color. In real life, the sedum is a brilliant viridian against the steely grey rocks, while the late-season moss encompasses every shade from olive-green to white. Color aids our eyes and brain: this is plant, this is rock, this is lichen – the latter of which appears, not entirely inaccurately, to be a life-form somewhat in-between the two.

Since my childhood I’ve been fascinated by the beauty of small, intricate groups of cohabiting plants one sometimes comes upon in the wild, created around a tree trunk, a fallen log, or an outcrop of rock not by any hand but nature’s. I tried, back then, to make my own, bringing child-size mosses, lichens, small wildflowers and seedling evergreens to the deep hollows formed between the roots of the beech trees on the side of our yard. I tended these miniature secret gardens year after year, populating them at times with a small doll or two and enjoying the unplanned visits by beetles and other insects, but never quite believing in elves or fairies. When, long afterward, as an adult wandering in the woods, I would come upon a verdant growth of moss covering a rounded tree stump like a velvet bustier, delicately adorned by clusters of tiny spores waving on thin stalks,  the darker leaves of wintergreen, and, perhaps, the tiny crimson hats of British-soldier lichen, I would be suddenly reminded of those childhood gardens and at the same time inspired by a silent, awestruck wonder at such perfection, wrought so effortlessly by nature and imitated with such painstaking care not only by imaginative children but by master gardeners. For it’s not only the grand scenes — the fiord and river, the mountain peaks, the endless waves approaching from a distant horizon — that bring me to that sense of wonder and stillness, but also the microcosm, the world at our feet.

I thought of that while drawing today, this sense of zooming out and zooming in. The lichens lay pure and white against the rocks, the largest barely bigger than two hands, a blankness in the center of much greater visual complexity. But such is a glacier, too: a strange expanse of whiteness that seems, in its very silence, to call out to the stillness within us and find an echo.

Our Free Press

David Attenborough's most recent BBC documentary series, The Frozen Planet, is being aired in Britain and around the world, but American viewers won't be able to see the seventh and final episode, "On Thin Ice." Why? Because it shows and discusses the dramatic climate change that has occurred on both poles since 1980. The BBC, in a cowardly and self-serving move, decided to offer the first six episodes as a package, making the final one optional because some TV channels might find it "too controversial." Well, guess what — the US is one of those.This quote is from the New Statesman:

Seven episodes of the multi-million-pound nature documentary series will be aired in Britain. However, the series has been sold to 30 world TV networks as a package of only six episodes. These networks then have the option of buying the seventh "companion" episode — which explores the effect man is having on the natural world — as well as behind the scenes footage.

The six-episode series has been sold to 30 broadcasters, ten of which have declined to use the climate change episode, "On Thin Ice", including the US.

In America, the series is being aired by the Discovery channel, which insists that the final episode has been dropped because of a "scheduling issue".

Everyone on the planet should see this episode. From what I've learned, it's not even that hard-hitting or political; countries and policies are barely mentioned. But the facts, and the visual evidence, are so dramatic they can't be disputed, and that's what's so threatening. Well — we can continue to pretend that what we can't see won't hurt us, but nature is going to change that in fairly short order.

UPDATE: After Change.org mounted a petition drive, the Discovery Channel has backed down, and U.S. viewers will be able to see the series in its entirety!

—

Meanwhile, that bastion of the so-called "liberal" media — NPR — has aired what's practically a commercial for the domestic use of military drones. I live near the US/Canadian border, and fully expect the drones to be overhead, but the aircraft, advertised as "ideal for urban monitoring," are also being purchased by domestic police departments and may be coming soon to a city near you.

One new type of drone already in use by the U.S. military in Afghanistan — the Gorgan Stare, named after the “mythical Greek creature whose unblinking eyes turned to stone those who beheld them” — is “able to scan an area the size of a small town” and “the most sophisticated robotics use artificial intelligence that [can] seek out and record certain kinds of suspicious activity”; boasted one U.S. General: “Gorgon Stare will be looking at a whole city, so there will be no way for the adversary to know what we’re looking at, and we can see everything.”

I doubt if terrorist suspects make up even one tenth of one percent, but we now know that the 99% are not only paying the bills, but they're going to be subjected to unprecedented surveillance and invasion of privacy, with no public discussion and no recourse.

White

Finally, snow.

We were awake in the early morning, talking as we lay entwined, our heads on the pillows in the half-light, and then fell back to sleep, waking again at nearly nine. J. got up and drew aside the curtain, and came back to bed with his announcement: It's snowing hard.

How much do we have?

Maybe six inches already.

Really! They said snow flurries.

Well, this is a snowstorm.

We were ready, had been ready. Last week J. had gotten the snow tires put on the car, and the Tempo — a sturdy winter tent erected over driveways and garage entrances that was a final and ubiquitous harbinger of Montreal winters — had greeted us one day when we returned home on our bikes. And last night had smelled like snow.

A few days before, a Saturday, I had walked to the studio in the early afternoon. It was the first really cold day, so odd for that late in November; like everyone, I had reveled in the extended autumn, knowing that each day was one more subtracted form the long account of winter. But it had gone on too long and become disturbing; I imagined hungry polar bears further north, waiting vainly for the ice to freeze so they could cross it to hunt, and the slow drip of water from glaciers that should by now be locked solid.

My fingers, inside a well-worn pair of red suede gloves, were chilled after just two blocks. I thrust them into my jacket pockets and kept walking, looking for sun. But there was none on the sidewalks of the long narrow northern blocks, even this close to midday; the sun's angle was so low that the shadows had already climbed halfway up the west-facing buildings.

I passed Le Boucanier, the shop of a man recently moved here from the Gaspesie who made artisan smoked fish; the city had already set up a Christmas tree in a large wooden tub outside his shop and others further down the street, awaiting strings of lights. Through the window I saw a new display of handmade breads, stacked in crossways layers like split, drying wood that showed charred patches from a wood-fired oven, and beyond the bread, the small filets of smoked fish lying in a refrigerated case: white, beige, terracotta, rose.

There was, however, plenty of sunlight on Mont-Royal. At the corner of Papineau music blared from an idling car at the intersection, drowning out the first strains of Christmas music piped onto the street by the merchants' association. The Beach Boys. The light changed and I crossed, the car passing me, its window rolled down in spite of the cold.

I walked quickly, my pace slowing once, in front of the florist's window  to look at a calamondin in a lovely yellow-glazed pot, hung with perfect orange ornaments, and then again as I turned north on rue Cabot, wondering if the pretty tabby kitten I'd spotted last week would be in the window of a former shop now converted to an apartment. Probably not, I thought, there's no sun — but it was there, just the same, and yawned and stretched, looking at me with wide eyes when I touched the glass with a red finger. I didn't mind November, though many people seemed to hate it. I liked its suspended quality, the softness of waiting, the re-acquaintance with the bones of the trees.

I was all the way to Laurier before I realized I had been walking at the same pace as the song, ironic and unnoticed, playing over and over in my head: "Do you love me, do you Surfer Girl? Surfer girl, surfer girl…"

—

This morning, we drove to work in a world that had become white overnight. We were behind a huge truck without snowtires, its wheels sliding from side to side, when I heard the song in my head again. The strange idea of lying nearly naked on a beach in California, something I'd never done in my life. On the sidewalk, a woman pulled a blue plastic sled. The light changed, the truck, trying to move forward, slid. Surfer girl.

We pulled into the parking lot and got out. My feet felt the familiar crunch of snow and at this very first touch and sound I knew its wetness, its heaviness, its consistency. I ran my gloved hand along the side of the next car, gathering snow between my palms and squeezing it into a  rough, crumbly ball. Then I  took a bite and felt the crystals melt rapidly on my tongue; not water: nothing else tastes like snow.

L’histoire du ciel

(Thank you to my friend Martine Page, a woman from Quebec whose definitely left a piece of her heart in San Francisco, for this link. Be sure to view it full screen.)

November Elegy

Early November. We’ve had a late fall, and the weather remains warm. The trees whose branches touch to form a golden tunnel each year over Ave. de Lorimier have dropped their leaves, but in the interior of Parc Lafontaine the autumn colors are still at their peak. Last Thursday evening I left my house at 5 pm and walked through the park, where the late afternoon light filtered through the yellow and red leaves as if through a silky, patterned umbrella. How can I describe the tenderness of this northern autumn light, as the day gently gives way to evening? Like a melancholy song heard from afar, it is blue, diffuse, and soft, but multiplies the intensity of all colors before gradually dying away.

In Iceland this light began much earlier in the afternoon. One day, when J. and I had taken off on bikes, we noticed the sun beginning to go down around 3 pm, and decided we should start thinking about heading back home. But we had judged the signs wrongly. There, so much closer to the Arctic Circle, sunset takes forever. We rode home, and several hours later, still in daylight, Elsa and Hörður suggested a walk to the top of the hill in back of their house, where we stood together, looking over Reykjavik toward the ocean. Even at seven pm the kind of low, glancing light we recognize here as day’s final signal still illuminated our faces, and turned the eroded slopes of Mt. Esja, in the distance, into folds of gold and blue.

Last night it was raining lightly, and the wet pavement reflected the sky and branches in the spaces between its pasted mosaic of leaves. I walked down the park’s long formal <em>allée</em> of trees toward the fountain, which was turned off for the winter a week or two ago, and then went left along the path above the first of the park’s two serpentine lakes, both drained now to reveal pebbled basins coated with green algae.

Just a few weeks ago, the park would have been full of people, on benches and blankets, catching the last warmth of summer, and the sounds of guitars and African drums would have mingled with children’s voices shrieking with pleasure as they threw bread to obligingly-eager flocks of ducks and gulls. Today, the paths were nearly empty, and the birds gone. I passed a handsome man with tousled grey hair and a brown leather jacket, riding home on his bicycle, and, at the northern end of the drained lake, a much younger man walked a small dog clad in a dog-coat so brilliantly yellow it mocked the trees.

I passed in front of the park’s new cafe-resto, shut tight, its oversize terracotta planters empty now, and stepped onto the path above the lower lake. Here, at last, were the ducks and gulls, splashing in the remaining pool of shallow water. A larger shape stood poised at the top of this pool, and, squinting now in the low light, I saw that it was a great blue heron, an opportunist no doubt drawn here by easy fishing for trapped minnows, or maybe goldfish. One night, returning home in the opposite direction, I’d seen a school of them in the light cast by a streetlamp, shimmering beneath the dark surface like shreds of copper foil. Now the heron presided over his domain: the lord of the manor calmly watching the squabbling peasants, his slate-blue coat turned up at the collar against a north wind.

At the end of the park, I waited for the stoplight and then crossed, keeping out of the way of the cyclists coming off the bike path on rue Cherrier. A young woman waited there for her bus. Tall and slender, with her black hair piled in an elegant knot atop her head, she wore a long black trenchcoat with a cinched waist, and black high-heeled boots. She held an oversized umbrella, the kind golfers use, with an outer border of black and an inner circle of alternating trapezoids of black, and a brown that matched the color of the face that it framed. Calmly, she waited, every now and then raising a cigarette that trailed across this background of black, like a lecturer’s piece of chalk.

I had been on my way to the Sherbrooke metro station to catch a train for a 6 pm choir rehearsal at the cathedral. But, after checking my watch, I walked on, mesmerized by the falling light, all the way to the center of the city.

Near Reykjavik

These pictures were taken at an unmarked beach to the west of Reykjavik; we rode there, along the sea, on our bicycles just as the sun came out and a light rain ended. Reykjavik weather, we both heard and experienced, tends to be windy and drizzly; we saw a rainbow almost every day we were there. When we returned from this little trip, our friends told us the name of this place is "Castration Beach." We asked why, of course, and they ventured that it was where horses had been taken to be castrated. I think it's because all the rocks look like balls. Some definitely looked like they had come from the moon.

The long mountain across the harbor is Mt. Esja, which Reykjavik locals call their city mountain. In just five days we saw Mt. Esja in many moods; I agree that it's very beautiful.