the cassandra pages

The Black Book

Melancholy and beauty touch each other, like a thumb and forefinger, as they encircle the northern autumn. Fall arrives suddenly, in a tiny shiver you feel as the wind touches you one day: a particular quality of wind known to you in your bones after a lifetime of summers and falls and winters, the same way the body notices a particular tickle in the back of its throat and in that instant recognizes the inevitability of the cold that will follow. One moment, we are held in the suspension of summer, and then it is fall, a completely different kind of season, melancholy because of its inexorable movement and beautiful because it is fleeting. In youth, the season is something to shuffle carelessly through, like the drifted piles of bright leaves on the way home from school. Later it comes to remind us of brevity and loss but we love it anyway, in spite of the sadness, because it contains a beauty we've come to recognize, perhaps, even in ourselves.

Hüzün, the melancholy that permeates all of Orhan Pamuk's books. At 2:30 am the other day, I finished the only one of his major works I hadn't yet read, The Black Book. It is long, complex, and ambitious; a masterpiece, I think. It was also very mysterious; there's much I didn't fully understand and am still pondering, as I try to put the work into context with his other novels and his memoir, Istanbul.

The Black Book grapples with the question of identity and whether it is ever possible to be completely oneself. Pamuk frames that question in the life of a particular man, Galip, whose beloved wife, the cousin he grew up with and married, has left him and disappeared. But the most important character in the book is a columnist in a major paper in Istanbul  - a man who has spent his life writing about the identity not only of each human being, but of Turkey itself, and in an even larger sense, the East as opposed to the West. Through the life and writing of this columnist, and Galip's search for him - because he suspects that is where he will also find his wife - we find ourselves in a hall of mirrors where one's image reflects and multiplies, or in one of those trick pictures images where the woman on a cereal box holds a picture of the same cereal box, with her own image on it, and so on and so on into an infinity that is a child's delight but leaves an adult questioning their sanity. Like all of Pamuk's work, it is about loss and change, attraction to the new and longing for the past, and the complex interplay between tradition and creativity in illuminating and affecting who we are. In its style, the book also reflects the work of great novelists in the western tradition -- and I think that was deliberate on Pamuk's part -- but unlike the final summation, the grand philosophical statement we've come to expect at the end of those types of novels, this one ends without a final resolution: another mirror that seeks to penetrate the reality of modern Turkish identity. A close friend of mine described the ending of the book as being like "a cup of cold coffee with tranquilizers stirred into it." I wondered what he had meant until I got there, and then saw that it was a particularly apt comment.

I'd love to talk about this book with other people who've read it, especially in the context of Pamuk's other work. If any of you have read it, I'd love to hear your impressions - but also to hear from people who may have tried to read the book and didn't get through it at all, as happened to me several years ago. How do you see it alongside Pamuk's other books? Which did you like, or not, and why, and what do you think he is trying to say?

Note: oddly enough, there's a decent piece about Pamuk's new collection of nonfiction in today's NY Times.

Probably should have happened back in 1776...

A good op-ed about the likely break-up of the Anglican Communion, ostensibly over the issue of homosexuality, but more accurately about the North Americans' refusal to toe the "duty" line with their former rulers, the British.

I am, personally, incredibly weary of this debate, and it's affecting my feelings about the church a lot. Why do any of us need this? We're called upon to love one another, no matter what our differences. It's really very simple. If the church gets in the way of that, then I want no part of it, and I can't accept a hierarchical structure that puts a greater emphasis on unity than on love.

Welcome Abord

I write this entire post with huge apologies to my Icelandic friends, who know I love them...

The other night we were out for a late bike ride and heard music. Thinking it was in the park, we rode in  that direction, but it was further away - and yet really loud. We finally decided it must be the concert by Bjork that was happening on one of the piers in the Old Port, so we headed down the hill. The music disappeared when we were around St. Catherine, in the gay village, and we didn't hear it again until we actually got to the Old City and turned the corner, then, wham: laser light show, blaring music, the roar of thousands of faraway people.

So we rode down the pier and stopped as close as we could get without paying to enter the actual site - we could see the stage from where we were - and listened for a while. I've tried to like Bjork, and think she's, well, interesting, and she has a remarkable voice, but the music is just too slippery for me, too amorphous, and VERY self-conscious. I bought two of her CDs a while ago, and read the long article about her in the New Yorker, but I just don't seem to get her music -- and fame by virtue of studied weirdness isn't quite enough to win me over. So J. and I listened, looked at each other after a while, and shrugged. Time to go.

"But didn't you see the boat when we rode in?" I asked.

"What boat?" he said.

"The Greenpeace boat! It's right there in the dock, just over here!"

We went to look: it's Greenpeace's icebreaker, the Arctic Sunrise, which has been in the arctic documenting climate change. More recently, it's been traveling in the St. Lawrence after an action to block a freighter carrying a huge load of pulpwood destined for Europe. (Scroll down, or click on the picture at the right, to see a video of the action itself, in the Saguenay River near the Gulf of St.  Lawrence.) The wood was taken from Québec's boreal forest in destructive logging operations that threaten native habitat and the only remaining virgin forests in the province.

We also found out that this weekend was open house on the boat, so today we went back and took a tour, and heard more about the current work they're doing.

The crew members were young, tan, intelligent, and clearly committed. It was very cool to see the ship; I'd never been on board a ship like this. Compared to the size of the freighters coming into the harbor, loaded with containers, this is a small boat, without frills, but it's set up for quick action: there are speedy, highly-maneuverable motorized pontoon boats that launch from the sides, redundant controls in case of sabotage, and a deck that can open up so that the Greenpeace helicopter can land inside the hold.

Concern about the environment and sympathy for activism are common attitudes in Montreal. Lots of people wanted to do the same thing we had: we waited about an hour to get on board, and the lines were still long when we left. I guess I should thank Bjork for getting us there, however inadvertently!

Almost Too Beautiful

If MOMA is New York's quintessential art museum, I think the Jean-Talon Market is Montreal's. Jonathan and I just got back from a midday bike ride there and back, and everything was more beautiful than seems possible: the stuff of still lives, but very much in motion.

We ate a Vietnamese lunch while being entertained by the barbequed-duck-chopper and his patrons, then wandered through the market, where crimson bushel baskets of tomatoes are at their most glorious this week. Then we considered buying an armful of tall gladiolas just because they would look so wonderful on our bikes going home...we stopped for a snack of fried calamari, across from the stalls of a Quebec vintner selling ice wine and porto à l'érable( maple-flavored port) and his neighbor, a round-faced kerchiefed young woman selling special Quebec pork products - sausages, smoked hams, prosciuttos. There were the cheese shops full of Quebec and French cheeses; smoked fish from the Gaspé; chocolate-enrobed cranberries, cranberry jams, cranberry soaps...after a while you begin to feel drunk on the colors and the sheer volume of what your senses are taking in.

Finally we took hold of ourselves and made some buying decisions: baby eggplants; Lebanese cucumbers; green, red leaf, and frizzy, nearly black lettuces; fresh basil and mint; a small basket of fresh figs; black seedless grapes; red peppers; biscotti; marinated mixed-mushroom salad and mixed olive salad from the Italian deli; some new potatoes and smoked salmon for tonight’s dinner. We also found a spice/nut/tea/grain store in Little Italy that was full of bins from floor to ceiling, and bought small bags of fish spices with chili, black peppercorns, Provençal herbs, and spicy Mediterranean sea salt.

There’s not a cloud in the sky, and I’m happy, on this day when I was born quite a while ago. I am, however, resolving to ignore chronology and only speak about how I feel: young, grateful, content.

The Way, Way Back Machine

Restaurant and bar, Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn. September 2007

Going through some of my old journals recently, I came upon the following entry from September, 1997 -- and was stunned by how much has happened to me and to technology in ten years -- obviously, the concept of blogging still lay far ahead. I guess I do sound like myself, but without a clear self-identification yet as a serious writer. This entry also contained a description of my father-in-law's cardiac bypass, at age 88, which I'll add to the stories about him; a mention of our sixteenth wedding anniversary; and a note that Lady Diana had just died.

"Someday someone will write about e-mail being the death of letters, if they haven’t already, but will they also write about it as the death of journals? I have pages and pages of e-mail correspondence from this year, but the idea of collecting it, organizing it, putting it into Word files, and printing it makes me faint with fatigue. But I am sad at the thought of losing a whole year’s worth of thoughts and reflections. I find myself wondering if the e-mail form itself, though, breeds a kind of terse, abbreviated writing which lacks depth and substance. I know I try to write well no matter what the medium – a postcard even – but how much am I leaving out by the lack of a journal discipline, and the total lack of what any literary-minded person could call “letters”? The other day I received a long message – a letter, really – from PZ about the birth and first month of his daughter’s life. It was wonderful. But I find myself missing the fat envelope, the anticipation of carrying something with real weight home from the post office and opening it up to find someone’s actual handwriting – written, no less, to ME. And I find myself somewhat ashamed and saddened to notice how quickly I have given it all up myself – and thus deprived my closest friends and family of the same pleasure.

The reason I don’t do this is that it just takes too much time. Writing takes time, and I don’t have it. But will I feel impoverished in ten or twenty years when there is no record, nothing to read of how we spent our days? I wonder. I was thinking yesterday about the three summer stories I wanted to write last year – one about judging Grange booths at the Rutland Fair, one about Fran’s wedding, and one about evensong at the Cornish church. I took notes, but never wrote the stories – and now they are gone. I tried to reconstruct them in my mind, and the essence is still there, but not the details, and although the essence is the most important, I don’t think I can convey it without more details than I can remember. Maybe it would come back, if I tried – but when?"

Start Making Sense

Qarrtsiluni is back with a new issue and a nifty new WordPress site (same address) after being on hiatus for a couple of summer months. The new and intriguing theme is "Making Sense," and here's what the guest editors, Katherine Abbot and Rob Mackenzie, have to say about it:

Writers often lean on what they see. But for this issue, we challenge you to build up a world in scent, taste, touch, sound, or any combination of these. We are not outlawing imagery, not at all. We value a clear, active connection with the world. As Wislawa Szymborska said in “Conversation with a Stone”: “Even sight heightened to become all-seeing/ will do you no good without a sense of taking part.” To have a full and concrete awareness of space, physical detail, and emotion, you do not need sight. Take your impetus from another sense, or let material from another sense define or guide the piece.

Please limit text contributions to 1000 words or fewer. Contributions from visual artists are also encouraged.

I'm sorry that my managing-editor status of the online journal means I can't contribute something, because I love the idea behind this theme! We hope you will notice the smells, tastes, touch and sounds of your own world with heightened awareness and write or paint or photograph them for us. Check the guidelines at the qarrtsiluni site to find out how to submit your writing or visual art; all submissions receive a careful reading from the editors and a response within one week.

September 11th, 2007

Hell

in the subway:

95 degrees.

On Fifth Avenue,

America

the Beautiful in blue.

Thunderstorms cool

the heat

but not the visions.

Luciano Pavarotti

The great opera singer has been suffering from pancreatic cancer, and tonight's news bulletins sound as if the end may be near; his family is gathering at his bedside in Italy.

I'm sad, reading this; I didn't realize he was so gravely ill. It would be hard to express how much joy his voice has given me over the years -- probably more than any other living musician -- even though I've never seen him perform in person. His voice has accompanied me on many long drives, given me peace and astonishment in hours of solitude, made me burst into song, inspired me with the obvious joy he found in performing and sharing his huge gift, which he used to the fullest. I'm very grateful, and I wish him peace and a passage out of this world that is filled with glorious music.

Here he is singing his signature aria, "Nessun Dorma", from Puccini's Turandot, with James Levine; I've heard it a hundred times and it still brings me to tears - especially so tonight.

It's Art to Me

The other night we went to a film at the Cinema Imperial, an old vaudeville theatre/classic movie theatre on rue Bleury. It's been restored and is used during the film festival, and rented for other events; there are plush red seats, elaborate gilded plasterwork; murals featuring scantily-clad cherubs; and a painted tromp l'oeil curtain with Victoria's crown in the center. It's pretty ugly, to me, but a remarkable period piece.

Across the street, though, some very contemporary painting was happening. Two huge brick buildings were the site of a graffiti festival, or contest, or happening - we weren't sure. All along the sides of these buildings, scaffolding had been set up, and graffiti artist were intently working on their own sections while admirers hung out, encouraged, took photos. In a little open-sided tent, a DJ with two turntables played loud music.We were by far the oldest people in the crowd, which featured a lot of punk clothing, piercings, and tattoos. I was pretty impressed by some of the work on the walls, and also by the fine control the painters had over their spray cans. Giving the graffiti artists a place to showcase their work seemed like a pretty sensible idea, too, if that's what the city was doing. Though graffiti of this caliber is something I do stop to look at, this event made me realize there was a lot more going on in the local scene, with artists who were really serious about their work.

I think this may have been part of the Under Pressure 2007 Montreal graffiti contest...does anyone know?