the cassandra pages

Ottawa 2: Uuturautiit

The first exhibition we saw yesterday was titled Uuturautiit: Cape Dorset Celebrates 50 Years of Printmaking. I've been interested in Inuit art for a long time, long before moving to Canada. My brother-in-law has collected early prints and sculptures from the Cape Dorset community since the years when he was a student at McGill, and being able to study the artworks (and books about them) closely in his house and visit galleries with him has been a shared pleasure. J. and I own one print, a gift from my brother-in-law and sister-in-law on the occasion of our twentieth wedding anniversary, and I've often considered buying others but with wall space at a premium now, it's probably just as well I haven't!

Uuturautiit (“oo-to-raw-tee”) is the Inuktitut term used in Cape Dorset for proofing a print, "the crucial, creative and experimental stage before the print is finalized. It means 'to try different things'."

From the exhibition description:

This year, Cape Dorset, Nunavut, celebrates 50 years of making prints. Initial experiments in linocut, stonecut, and stencil begun in the late 1950s culminated in the inaugural collection of 1959, the first catalogued prints to be made by Inuit artists.

This significant exhibition pays tribute to the anniversary and continued dynamism of Cape Dorset artists by pairing recent and innovative work, including prints from the Fall 2009 release, with the 1959 collection, being shown for perhaps the first time in five decades.

Over the 50 years since the first artworks were brought back from Nunavut (and the communities there began to be encouraged to do lithographs and stone carving for export to the south) the work has changed considerably - to my mind, not always for the better. The early works, like this man with raised arms at left, are mostly black-and-white, and seem to exemplify the strength and expressiveness that can be achieved in a simple graphic print. As a graphic designer, the use of positive and negative space in these works, as well as their simplicity and powerfulness, has always appealed to me, and seeing the entire Cape Dorset collection of 1959 was a revelation. I was moved by the closeness of the artists to their subjects, whether they were depictions of Inuit life or of the animals whose world they shared. The mystery of the Inuit relationship to nature was often part of the images, but there was also a lot of humor about the people themselves - in one print, a man runs after a bounding caribou, and the title reads something like "Excited Man Runs but Has Forgotten His Weapon." The print at left is called "Joyfully I See Ten Caribou." Another shows a man and various birds in flight, all touching, as if cut out of a sheet of paper, and is titled "Man Carried to the Moon by Birds."

While I was stunned by the beauty of the 2009 loon image (detail above) that was chosen to be the icon of the exhibition, I'm generally not keen on what's happened to Inuit work in recent decades. Two factors have affected the art: first, a large market was created, both for cheaper works for tourists and more expensive ones for collectors, and this encouraged repetition. You can go into galleries in Montreal and see dancing bears carved in soapstone, in ten different sizes and nearly identical postures: they're still more pricey than your average souvenir, but they're a far cry from the original carvings. The other factor has been increasing contact with the outside world. The last room of the exhibition was filled with drawings and prints, most in full color and in a naive colored-pencil style, showing aspects of modern Inuit life: a view, for instance, of an airplane console and the landscape beyond. There's a busy-ness to these images that probably accurately reflects day-to-day life, but the uniqueness of the 1959 images - that starkness that rose out of isolation and closeness to the black-and-white world of the Arctic, its creatures, and the native myths and spiritual life surrounding them, seems all but lost except in the hands of the most talented artists, who - though they can't possibly live the same way as their counterparts 50 years ago -  do "get" what made their predecessors' work special, and still seem capable of setting themselves apart in order to observe, think, and create.

We can observe the same phenomenon, I'm sure, in African art, and write about it in deploring tones, as white westerners always manage to do. It's OK, I think, to use words like exploitation; by the same token, this source of income is desired and welcome on Cape Dorset and in the other Arctic communities who produce art for export. The native communities have also suffered tremendously because of contact - they've been exposed to devastating diseases, children have been removed from families and then abused in church-run schools, there has been prejudice against the people, lands taken, resources exploited, and now their way of life is on the verge of extinction because of climate change.

There's no way to put the magic sea goddess back in the bottle. Perhaps for that reason, it was a poignant and special opportunity to see so many of these early prints together, because it allowed me to re-enter that earlier world in its starkness and simplicity, and, as an artist, to consider once again the process of observation, consideration, and reduction-to-essence that's necessary for this type of comment on nature, whether it's in a graphic image or in a poem.

Ottawa 1: the National Gallery of Canada

Ottawa, the capital city of Canada, is located in the province of Ontario, a bit more than a two hour drive west from Montreal. We had a meeting there on Thursday afternoon, and could have easily returned the same day, but we decided to stay overnight and explore, since this was our first trip to the city. And we're glad we did; there's a lot to see in this very different, nearby city. It's a lot bigger than I realized (about 1.1 million people) and because it's the seat of Canadian government the city center is full of historic and modern buildings, including the Canadian Parliament, which is even more impressive and beautiful than it appears in photographs.

Queen Victoria chose Ottawa to be the capital of the Province of Canada in 1957. This entry from the Wikipedia tells why:

The Queen's advisers suggested she pick Ottawa for many important reasons: first, it was the only settlement of any significant size located right on the border of Canada East and Canada West (the post 1841 name for the then united regions formerly known as Upper and Lower Canada, today the Quebec/Ontario border), making it a compromise between the two colonies and their French and English populations; second, the War of 1812 had shown how vulnerable major Canadian cities were to American attack, since they were all located very close to the border while Ottawa was (then) surrounded by a dense forest far from the border; third, the government owned a large parcel of land on a spectacular spot overlooking the Ottawa River. (see the comments for the back story on this choice)

Spectacular is putting it mildly. Yesterday morning, after driving past the Houses of Parliament and the associated government buildings, which are on a bluff overlooking the river, we headed for the National Gallery of Canada, a breathtaking modern structure of glass, granite, and concrete designed by architect Moshe Safdie, well-known to Vancouver residents as the architect of Library Square and to Montrealers (the city he lives in) as the architect of 1967's famous "Habitat."

As readers of this blog will know, we're both interested in contemporary architecture, and after yesterday's visit, the National Gallery of Canada has become one of my favorite buildings. It's simply beautiful, inside and out, with a great variety of interior spaces of varying heights and feeling, but all united by a sense of spaciousness, surprise, and beautiful use of light. There is a great deal of glass, surprising in such a cold and icy climate, but it must work on a practical level. Emotionally and aesthetically, it creates an unusual and liberating sense of interior atmosphere for northern people like myself.

The ceiling of the huge rotunda, shown at the top of this post, echoes (at least I think it does!) the turret-like motifs of the House of Parliament that are seen out the windows across the river. I loved the fact that this lovely view is available to every visitor -- not only from the rotunda, but from the cafeteria tables -- a particularly Canadian gesture, perhaps.

In subsequent posts I'll tell you about two exhibitions we visited, both of which would have been well worth a special trip to Ottawa.

Meeting Hafez on the Road to Ottawa

Writing Farsi script
on the page of the sky
blackbirds roost
in graceful dots and curves
then fly off all at once
like a poem

Shadows

Coinage

Sunbeams sweep through the canopy
like searchlights on opening night,
casually tossing gold on the floor in passing.

Goodbye, October

This afternoon I went out for a walk in the neighborhood, taking photos and enjoying the last of the leaves and flowers - there are still asters in bloom, and the streets and stoops are awash in yellow leaves. We're all bracing for the real cold we know is lurking around the corner.

While I may try to post something every day in November, it won't always be writing. I think it's great to have the incentive of NaBloPoMo, but I've decided (and my stats bear it out) that posting every day doesn't increase traffic here, makes me feel crazy, and does a disservice to the words. A short poem, a note about daily life, or a photograph - sure. But the effort of writing thoughtful, longer essays deserves a longer space of time for them to breathe and enjoy their short internet life (both for the readers and for their author) so I'm not going to push myself into a production frenzy while still trying to keep up some sort of daily posting.

Additions for today, along with these leaf-stuffed pumpkins: I just added some photographs to the post about bikes, transportation, and Montreal's Bixi system - and am about to cross-post it to The Clade.

All the Many Colored Saints

The baristas speak Arabic behind bottles of colored Italian syrup with French labels: rhum, gingembre, pamplemousse. I often come to this cafe for a quiet half hour before the rehearsal for Evensong; they recognize me now and are very kind, and I like listening to their voices. The coffee is always good, the chairs are comfortable, and I find can write or read calmly in the company of these sympathetic semi-strangers. I’ve begun to wonder, too, if this place represents a sort of way-station between my identities: the Anglican and very English choir-singer, and the girl who’s always been drawn to cultures other than her own.

This weekend has been more steeped in Middle Eastern culture than usual, because my brother-in-law and sister-in-law are visiting. On Friday we went to Akhavan, the Iranian market in Notre-Dame-de-Grace and then to Adonis, the Arab supermarket I’ve written about before, but not before having lunch at Achtarout – fresh-baked flatbread with zaatar, garnished with tomatoes, pickled beets, mint, onions, and hot green peppers, then heated and rolled in paper, all for 3 or 4 dollars and utterly delicious. We came home from these shopping trips laden with food that we began preparing that evening and haven’t finished yet. The next night we saw a new movie, Amereeka, about a Palestinian woman and her son who leave their home in Bethlehem and settle with her sister in a Midwestern city. The movie was in Arabic (and some English) with French subtitles, and conveyed very well the claustrophobia of the occupied territories, the desire for opportunity represented by America, and the profound disorientation of coming here. Set at the time of the Iraq invasion, it also depicted the prejudice faced by Arab Americans in school and at work, but was strongest, I think, as a love song to Middle Eastern culture and family life. The whole audience laughed knowingly, for instance, at the bag of cucumbers the grandmother gives her departing daughter and grandson, and how, when the family gets depressed, they go shopping for ethnic groceries in a nearby town or go out for Middle Eastern meals – food, always food for comfort and connection!

And it’s also been the Feast of All Saints. In a podcast over at qarrtsiluni, Dave and I reflected on the origins of All Hallow’s Eve and All Saints, and other cultures’ attempts to keep the spirits of the dead contentedly at rest, not wandering around in our world creating mischief. As I read up on All Saints’ Day and the Roman’s pagan festival of Lemuria that it replaced, I realized had forgotten that in the Catholic tradition, today, November 2nd is observed as All Souls’ Day, specifically for prayers for those who are dead but haven’t yet made it to heaven – not wanting to leave anyone out, among the living and the dead.

I sit in the cafe slowly drinking my latte, with “O Quam Gloriosam” running through my head – the text that is the antiphon for All Saints’ Day:

O quam gloriosum est regnum, in quo cum Christo gaudent omnes sancti,
amicti stolis albis, et sequuntur Agnum, quocumque ierit. Alleluia.

O how glorious is the kingdom in which all the saints rejoice with Christ,
clad in robes of white they follow the Lamb wherever he goes. Alleluia.

It’s so much not my image of the afterlife – being part of a countless throng in white robes, following Christ the Lamb “whither he goeth,” but I admit to the beauty of the mystical vision: a heaven where there is no time, no sorrow, no tears, just an unearthly, never-ending music, as William Harris so wondrously depicted in his motet for double choir in eight parts, to a text by John Donne, that we’ll also be performing at Evensong - take a moment and LISTEN.

Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening
into the house and gate of heaven,
to enter into that gate and dwell in that house,
where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light;
no noise nor silence, but one equal music;
no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession;
no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity,
in the habitation of thy glory and dominion,
world without end. Amen.

(Here is another version, a motet by Healey Willan, which was our introit for the morning service today.)

The music part would be OK, but I’d prefer, I must say, a heaven filled with small cucumbers and baklava – the afterlife my father-in-law wistfully and unbelievingly talked about sometimes – served by soulful, dark-eyed, bearded waiters who’d sometimes have time to sit down and keep me company on my couch. I’m clearly culturally confused!

And then again, maybe not. What I really like so much about this feast day is its insistence on the saintliness of all of us, especially the anonymous ones. Today, before going off to sing, I find myself reflecting on the fact that the original texts (which formed the basis for much of this English lyricism on which my own poetic ear was probably formed) were written by Jews, Palestinian Christians, and Greeks who looked very much like my husband, or the man who just made my coffee. Yet in the secular world of 2009, we seem so divided, so ignorant and fearful about one another, in contrast to the symbolism I feel is at the heart of this vision: the possibility of an undivided throng of humanity, united in love, free of suffering, equal in the eyes of one another, and before whatever we see as the Divine. It’s as impossible for me to believe in a heaven for some and not all, for the “elect” of one religion or another, as it is to live that way on earth – which, it seems to me, may be the point of all these stories after all.

Still Rolling as the Temperature Drops

(originally written on Thursday - it's pouring at the moment!)

Well, on to cheerier thoughts. We've got a bright-ish day here, and are still on our bikes even though the city is starting to close the bike paths for the winter. Of course, Montrealers being who they are, some people continue to commute by cycle throughout the entire winter, each with their own combination of clothing and equipment - like studded bike tires. Not I. Once there's ice on the pavement, I'm through. It also becomes more dangerous because drivers and pedestrians aren't looking for bikes as consciously in cold weather, and you're much more likely to get clipped or have someone step out in front of you. Of course I do have my equipment (all pretty inexpensive and low-tech) - lights, mirrors, gloves, bike lock, a helmet with a wool liner these days, a windproof parka and a scarf that can be pulled up over my mouth, a plastic bag to go over the seat in case it rains while the bike's locked up outside, a backpack for the computer, a couple of paper towels to wipe off the handlebars. I guess for a lot of people this would be too much hassle, or too much work, but I'm in much better shape now than I was in the country, and the fresh air and tour through the neighborhoods almost every day feels great. It reminds me of being a kid, when my friend Lorry and I spent lots of time riding around our little town on our one-speed bikes, feeling free, and checking everything out that was going on.

For me, the bike represents both exercise and freedom - it's so wonderful not to have the hassle of a car, having to find parking spots, and then being tied to that spot rather than able to roam around freely. We're going from owning two cars to one that we use fairly infrequently, and saving substantial amounts of money as well as feeling like we're doing our bit for greenness. In spite of being a city where cycling is difficult or impossible for four months out of the year, Montreal does a great deal to support and encourage it, extending bike paths and this year starting the BIXI program for short commutes, and I'm grateful.

I took my first ride on a BIXI bike a couple of weeks ago. We bought a subscription when the program began, to support it and to be able to offer a bike to visitors, but we found that once in a while it was convenient for us too. I think the day I used one it had been raining hard earlier and so I didn't have my bike at the studio, but later I needed to do an errand. There are a great number of conveniently-located BIXI stations all over the central part of the city. You just choose a bike with the seat at the right height, put your "key" in a slot, release the bike, and you're ready to go; at the other end you just dock your bike into a station and your ride-time is registered as terminated; all the stations are solar-powered and the bikes include digital microchips so they can be identified and found. The BIXIs are super-sturdy, with the chain enclosed so you don't have to worry about pant legs getting caught or anything; there are three gears, lights, and a basket with attached bungie cords. The system has been very popular in its first year, and I've heard that Montreal has sold its high-tech home-developed BIXI system to two or three other cities - which is good, since it took a lot of money to develop and launch.

Sometimes I reflect on how totally unaware I was of the problems of city transportation when I lived in the country, where we just got in the car and drove everywhere we couldn't walk to -- and there's the problem, of course. Moving millions of urban people every day and trying to do it responsibly is an enormous issue that's become fascinating to me, and I'm glad we have options here and that the city continues to innovate, pushed by a population for whom environmental issues are fairly high on the priority list. Still, construction projects are everywhere, the streets are full of potholes, and huge amounts of oil and gas are being consumed every day. The bridges into the city are congested with single-occupant vehicles, and I'm constantly aware of the constant movement of trains, boats, airplanes, cars and trucks in and out of this transportation hub. My little bike trip to and from work is truly a tiny gesture.

Addendum: and then there's this. about vandalism in the Paris system. Our local bike system has a low rate of vandalism and theft: high-tech improvements allow unreturned bikes to be found, and the pedals also lock after a certain period of time, rendering the bike pretty useless to thieves. Bixi officials say nearly all "lost" bikes have been recovered becasue people call up to say they've seen one that seems to be abandoned. Follow-up articles in the Montreal papers, after this NY Times piece about Paris, suggest that another reason for the low rate of Bixi vandalism here, as opposed to the French system, is that the Montreal pricing structure was set to make it possible for almost anyone to rent and ride a bike, whereas the Paris bikes are perceived as expensive and elitist, and are therefore a source of resentment rather than pride for less affluent citizens. Whatever it is, it seems to be working - and the Bixi people have announced trials of 7-speed bikes for next year.

Body Conscious

Two poem-like things from the past week:

I dream a volcano beneath a familiar lake
water rising, red fire in the rocks.
Tell my poet-friend, “we must go quickly!”
”Good luck,” he replies, shows me
the bionic implant in his back, his stitched skin –
suddenly it’s fatal to be real.

---

1.The EKG man is doing research. He talks while pulling the blue paper gown off my breasts as nonchalantly as tissue from an orange. "I ask the patients, 'What do you recall about this test?' They tell me, 'you never put electrodes on my legs.' You see? The memory lies to us."

2."Aha!" says the nurse, triumphantly tapping the small vein. My blood obediently flows into four vials: purple, yellow, green, blue.

3.In the patient lounge, a masked teen coughs miserably. Her mother, in boots, chic tights and a short black dress, plays with a cell phone. Trapped with them, three of us exchange glances. Beside us, a pitcher of orange juice, a fancy coffee machine. We've each been here for two hours, waiting for various tests, fasting since last evening. Every now and then a doctor comes in, pours a cup of coffee or juice, leaves without looking at us. Bilingual eyes roll.

H1N1 Self-care Guide

I was at the my doctor's today for an annual check-up, and on my list of questions was whether or not I should be vaccinated for the swine flu/H1N1 virus.

"Yes," she said, and explained that she's listening to the advice given by the health officials of the province of Quebec, who are trying to achieve what she called (rather unflatteringly but accurately, I'm sure) "herd immunity," by vaccinating a large percentage of the population. There will be free, widespread clinics in Montreal, in shopping centers and other big public locations, over the next month, with the vaccine available first to the populations most at risk. The general public will be able to get shots about one month from now, and I'll probably follow her advice and go myself. Besides, there's something eminently bloggable about getting a flu shot in the Olympic Stadium, n'est-ce pas?

But I did want to pass along this link to the Quebec H1N1 Self-care Guide that arrived in the mail a few days ago. I thought it was particularly well done - full of important information, calmly presented, designed to keep public anxiety at a low level and help alleviate the pressure on the delivery system. (This is the English edition; it's also available in French of course, and you might find it interesting to take a look at the edition adapted for people of the First Nations.) The decision chart on page 15, which describes symptoms and what you should do in each case, seemed especially helpful to me, and applicable to anyone, anywhere.

Meanwhile, wash your hands and don't lose sleep over this.