the cassandra pages

Japanese Garden, Take 2

A Brief Shudder in the Garden

Here is a story: you can decide whether it's a tragedy or a comedy. Yesterday I went to Parc Lafontaine in the late afternoon; it was a beautiful, perfect Canada Day and the park was full of quiet groups enjoying each other's company. I sat at the western side, near the fountain, where the bank forms a sort of amphitheater and is covered with long grass. Maybe six other small groups or couples were in the area too, and we all got amused watching a little duckling, newly on its own, swimming around near the shore. A couple, close to it, kept getting up to look when the duckling disappeared in the reeds, and then they'd exchange delighted glances, the girl leaning forward on the bench and pressing her hands together while her investigating boyfriend conveyed his love in backward, big-eyed looks whenever he spotted the little creature, still with patches of fuzzy yellow on its back.

So there you have the scene. Enter a man, thirty-ish, dressed in black, wearing a slouchy hat and sunglasses, accompanied by a smiling huskie-like dog. He lets the dog off the leash and sits in the grass alone, listening to a CD player that he places beside him. After half an hour or so, he gets up to leave, about when I'm thinking of leaving too, and tosses a red ball into the water and whistles for his dog. The dog jumps into the lake but ignores the ball because, of course, he sees motion heading out toward the fountain: the darling little duckling. All of us watch in growing horror as the dog closes in on the frantically swimming baby bird. The man is now standing on the shoreline, calling to the dog, who ignores him. The dog lunges at the bird; no, he's not close enough. The duckling swims ahead, leaving a wake. The dog closes in again. The duckling suddenly tries to dive - an instinctive attempt at escape - but he's too buoyant; he can't make himself go down desipe the desperate flapping of his little upended feet. He pops to the surface -- the dog opens his mouth, lunges forward -- and the duckling disappears. The dog, mouth now closed, turns and paddles triumphantly toward the shoreline where his master is standing, arms at his sides, barking sharp commands. The dog comes up onto the shore, there's a scuffle in the bulrushes as the master tries to empty his mouth; we can't see what's happening; the master snaps on the leash and drags the dog onto the path, looking as discomfited as an actor in the spotlights who has suddenly forgotten the lines of his soliloquy. Those of us who've witnessed the deed stare at the water, casting stunned sideways glances toward each other; no one says a word, and the man, walking stiffly, and his dog exit down the path the way they came.

--

I left and went home, where I told J. the story, which, in spite of my love for the park's ducklings, made us both laugh - it was just so, so...shatteringly non-idyllic. Rather like "Bambi meets Godzilla." And maybe the duckling had survived -- though I doubted it.

I made a picnic of grilled chicken; a salad of Quebec wax beans with shitakes, water chestnuts and walnuts; goat cheese; peaches, raspberries, and mango tossed with a little cognac; and some strong coffee. The two of us carried it all over to the park, spread out a blanket, and took our place among the lovers in their bikinis, the cello and tabla players, the solo readers and meditators, the couple behind us smoking a water pipe, the family picnickers lying in the magical late afternoon sun while their babies rolled and ran in the grass: all happily oblivious to the earlier murder except for a gull who called raucously for an entire hour from the top of a light pole near the shoreline: "If only you knew!"

Conversations between Kingdoms

Loose gravel on mud, an uphill road through woods filled with new ferns, the dripping canopy, a sky trying to clear. Late afternoon light on the mountains, standing stones, the gardens where leaves of all shapes and colors within the general category of green form a sculpture in low relief, ankle- to knee-height above the dark earth.

A thin grey snake slithers under a paving stone.

Golden globes of trollius nod near blue forget-me-nots, violet violets. Under thorny rose canes, earnest purple johnny-jump-up faces; iris of deepest indigo studded with raindrop pearls; pure white starflowers, as crisp as starched linen.

A bullfrog jumps ahead of my foot into the pond.

Leaning over the water I see tadpoles, those macroscopic reminders of our own beginnings, in every size from mere black dots to near-frog giants, tails swishing, heads bigger than my thumb, legs starting to sprout. First we swim, then crawl, then hop...but not this one, the ghostly white carcass of a dead bullfrog lying on the bottom of the pond, starting to decompose, near him a large gelatinous mass of eggs. Healthy frogs peer from quick bright eyes above the surface, hop along the mossy bank and into the reeds.

Lupine, its budded flower stalks beginning to rise toward the sun, carpets the damp semicircle at the end of the pond, and beyond, over the bank, tall choke-cherries, hawthorns with tight clusters of white buds, lush growth of ostrich ferns, and cattails rise like torches in the swampy gully before the land moves up again, covered with mixed forest that gives way in turn to conifers, more conifers, and blue mountains.

Yellow throated warbler. Wren.

I head back to the house where J. sits on the porch talking to our friend K.; the host, G., is in the kitchen from which the smell  of roasting lamb and herbs is wafting. Waiting for the other guests, we all listen for car sounds - the new gravel on the road is deep and slippery after the day's rain - but soon we hear their voices; they too have made it up the long winding driveway and the ebullient greetings soon change to hushed "ohh!"s as they catch their first glimpses of the garden, the pond, the standing stones covered with lichens, the mountains from which the storm clouds are lifting.

Glasses of wine, the surprise of late-afternoon sun on our faces, black flies cheerfully waved away from pulse-points, ankles and ears. Stories of our childhoods in Vermont, rural New York, Detroit, Pennsylvania,  Los Angeles via Hungary -- all of us American originally but one, who grew near here, gathering and preserving enough fiddleheads to eat all year, eating honey and maple syrup rather than any other sugars, spending the winter caning chairs with sea-grass with his father. We never thought it was an unusual life, he said, it was just how you lived here, that was Quebec.

Before dinner, I acquiesce to the quiet urge I've had since arriving, ask a quick permission, and slip away to the separate building that is G.'s meditation and yoga space. I open the door and step inside, into the silence and fullness I knew would be here, the vibrating fullness and emptiness of a place that has become sacred. There are folded blankets and cushions on the edge of the large rug with its subdued pattern of olive and rust, and I notice G.'s meditation shawl of plain cotton that he brought back from the ashram in France. From a different pile I take a pink blanket and a white cotton cushion and arrange them in front of the rough wooden slab, on two sawn tree stumps, that holds a white perpetual candle where a flame flickers in a pool of paraffin. There are some books in a corner; some natural objects, a rock or two - which make me smile; my own shrines always contain rocks - objects from several religious traditions; incense burners; more candles, unlit. In back of me, a cold wood stove and a rocking chair. And on the wall above the wooden plank, a photograph I first saw last year, of rows of meditating people wrapped in white cotton shawls or cloaks in a large candlelit room. He's placed it so that sitting here, you feel like you are in the back of the same room, looking forward.

The minutes pass; going deeper. I know I can't stay long. Wood thrushes sound their cascade of notes in the woods, and finally I turn my head and look out.

The big window that forms half the wall to my right frames a view of the green forest, punctuated by  wet black tree trunks and two narrow paper birches. In the soft last light of the day it is indescribably beautiful. Suddenly thoughts of my mother and my mentor, Herm, gone for many years now, rush into my head. I reach up instinctively and grasp the old pendant hanging around my neck that was my mother's; I rarely wear it but put it on especially before coming here; it is gold with a clear green faceted stone crowned by finely wrought, small gold leaves. Tears spring to my eyes, and then a feeling of immense gratitude. I shut my eyes, breathe deeply, open them again.

It's then that I notice the fern just outside the window. It's an interrupted fern,* one of Herm's favorites - he used to jokingly call them Fernus interruptus - and it is perfect in its newness, the fruiting bodies on the stem not yet dried, the fronds above and below them light delicate green. I search the woods nearby but it's the only one I can see. We look at each other.

So this is life, isn't it, I say to myself eventually. An interruption, aware of itself, named... with a task to ripen, dry, break open and scatter... while meanwhile roots reach down and fronds unfurl above and below, unconsciously, continually. Beautiful, perfect, complete.

I finish my meditation, fold the blanket again and put it back, open the door and step out into the world.

*(An Ontario site notes that the interrupted fern, Osmunda claytoniana, has the oldest fossil record of any living fern today, going back over 200 million years.)

Food

Go read Kat.

Memorial Day Update

Quebec farmland just above the border with Vermont, Jay Peak in the distance

Back in Montreal tonight after five intense days in Vermont; Saturday was the memorial service for my dear brother-in-law (the husband of J.'s sister) who died recently, and so there were many family gatherings, many conversations, many meals, and also the happy reunions with old friends who called or came to the service and reception. My husband and I had also organized a meeting of the whole caregiver team for my father-in-law on Thursday, which turned out to be a very productive thing for all of us.

I'll try to write more about all of that when I'm rested, settled, and caught up with work. Tonight I'm listening to the first night of finals in the Montreal international piano competition (on the radio), eating Chinese food we picked up in Burlington on our way through, unpacking, and catching up on email and blogs I haven't read for several days.

The transition began this afternoon when we left the highway and entered Canada at a small crossing point, driving slowly through little farming communities and beautiful farmland that was new to us. We passed a farm where these animals were being raised: they look like reindeer but seemed bigger -- does anyone know what they are? (I must say that the idea of eating Rudolph doesn't hold much appeal.)

It's hard to believe that last year I was driving my father around Chenango County searching for family gravestones - his first real outing after knee surgery. Yesterday he played nine holes of golf and did his usual 75 push-ups in the morning, along with the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises he's done every morning since the 1960s. What a testament to courage and determination!

Finally -- thank you all for your comments on the previous post. I was moved by them and by your insights, and grateful.

Northern Pastoral

(Camel's Hump above the Winooski River. click for a larger version)

We drove back to Vermont today, through the glorious spring, and it enticed us off the highway and onto the  local roads that meander under Camel's Hump and along the Winooski ("wild onion", from the Abenaki), stopping often to take pictures and enjoy the light, the blooming trees, the feeling of warm air on our bodies. These roads are literally cut though the Green Mountains, and at one particularly beautiful outlook, toward the iconic summit of Camel's Hump, I became mesmerized by the rock wall to our backs, on the other side of the road. Water was sheeting slowly from high above over the slate face, painting large graphic pictures. I noticed clumps of emerald-green moss, topped with new fruiting spores, growing in the crevices; dead leaves plastered to the smooth rock and embedded now in a constant bath of water that was slowly dissolving them back to ribs and shadows.

(Homage a Rauschenberg, with a nod to Marja-Leena; click for a larger version)

And, as I learned from the spray and discrete drops that hit my face as I got closer, the sheets of water were accompanied by more delicate patterns of falling water, as single drops fell from considerable heights onto stony shelves to split and catapult outward, or form a mist from the mossy, ferny edges of the rock face far above my head. The whole outcrop was, in fact, a living sculpture, a fountain, a Rauschenberg abstraction worked on simultaneously by the water and the bright sun on the rock canvas, hot here, cool there. I could have watched it all day.

We called ahead and picked up Chinese food in Burlington, and then drove north to St. Albans and into Canada, slowing down and stopping, once again, to photograph the farmers in their huge, already dusty fields. It was mid-afternoon by then, and I sat on the edge of a drainage ditch while J. waited for a tractor to approach from the far reaches of the long field. A pair of red-winged blackbirds were nesting in some of the tall grasses in the ditch, and the female rustled her feathers nervously on a small shrub while the male took a few half-hearted flights in my direction, his epaulets fluffed red and fat, and then  decided to ignore me. The sun baked on my back as I watched the sparkling water flow over mud and grasses and listened to the calls of the birds and the wind rushing in the poplars that lined the roadside near the farmhouse. The field stretched flat and empty to the horizon, waiting to be split open by the first emerging shoots of corn. I thought, briefly, of Cadmus sowing dragon's teeth, and the warriors that sprang from his furrows, grateful these fields only yielded a fresh crop of rocks every year, before they turned velveteen and lush.

How little time we've had like this in recent years - time to meander, take the back road home, sit and watch nature paint her paintings and play her music. How good it felt. I think I'll stay there tonight, for a while, in that emptiness rich with possibilities.

Little House on the Pond

All right, it's not a real house. And the lack of windows would be a problem. But this strange little reservoir house in the middle of the pond, with no boat in sight, always makes me stand on the bank and ponder that green door.

There were small-mouth bass in the shallows yesterday, and newts suspended, legs dangling, just beneath the surface. Nearly all the snow had vanished from the woods in the suddenness of a seventy-degree week, but the forest floor was just beginning to wake up; no wildflowers in bloom yet, just the first fronds of Christmas ferns unfurling from their frozen, sleeping curl beneath the snow, and clusters of tightly-budded arbutus flowers hiding under the leaves. I chose the uphill trail and walked the long way round. Halfway up I saw a woman coming down with a young German shepherd; at the same moment we recognized each other - she was an old friend I hadn't seen for ten years. We stood and talked while the dog ran exuberant sprints up and down the trail, overjoyed by spring.

(Responses to the comments on the previous post are in the comment thread; I didn't have time to write everyone back as I like to do. Thank you for all the terrific comments and for our obvious shared passion for tiny houses, treehouses, and Rooms of One's Own!)

Looking Out from the Branches

When I was nine or ten, my father built me a treehouse in a beech tree near our house on the lake. It was as simple a treehouse as you can have: a platform - no sides or roof - and a ladder. The platform was big enough for me and another small friend, and nestled into the crotch of the tree so that two children could lean their backs against the trunk or a large branch in comfort. I could reach underneath, into the crotch, and store things there. I had a basket and a pulley for raising and lowering supplies, and that was about it. I could see the house, the lake, the lawn and the woods beyond, but I felt hidden from adult view by the leaves, high in my own private world.

I loved it.

The tree itself had to be cut down sometime when I was quite a lot older, but the feeling of that space is something I've always desired. Before it, I had a secret spot under a snowberry bush, and another on an inwardly-curving mossy bank near a stream, overhung by shrubs and pine trees. Many years later, I had rooms of my own, a studio and meditation space, corners of rooms rendered sacred by their collections of particular books, natural and ritual objects...maybe there are people who don't need or want small private places, and many more for whom it's an impossibility. For me it's something I'm uncomfortable without. I can manage, but somehow life feels harder...what about you?

Today I got intrigued after seeing a brief article in Dwell Magazine on the HELP house (left), a tiny, totally self-contained living unit designed to shelter victims rendered homeless by the Katrina disaster. This led me to look at other so-called "tiny houses", such as the designs of Tumbleweed Tiny House Company, the sleekly modern Weehouse,  or the rustic cabins and woodland hideaways in this book from the Taunton Press.

Back in the hippie 60s, there was a book called Handmade Houses that featured a few very small, handmade structures built of twigs, found and  recycled, bits of stained glass and mosaic...homes an individual as their inhabitants. Here in Vermont I knew and visited a few houses and cabins like that, and they've always felt magical to me. Watching my own reaction today as looked at these tiny dwellings, I realized they touch something very deep: both a desire to be unobtrusively within the natural world, and for a personalized place of peace and solitude where I can renew my spirit before re-entering the world of human interaction. Finding that place within is, of course, the mature and usual adult way to do it. But I can also dream of tiny houses, treehouses, and secret gardens...and who knows what may happen in life? Maybe there's a rooftop LoftCube in my future!

Saturday

A visit. Mediterranean fish stew with fennel, tomatoes, tentacles of squid. Talk of Thessaloniki, Damascus, dental horrors, poetry, a vanishing Vermont.

Outside the window, a sharp-shinned hawk explains the explosion of feathers in the garden.

A walk along high upland pastures. Talk of love, difference and similarity, hopes, literature, men and women, passion, ambition, inheritance, self, determination. Doggy exuberance, sap running, brooks overflowing.

Tea, Spanish fig-and-almond cake, the piano: solitude again, reluctantly inhabited.

Nightfall, another visit. Sap falling, last words, memories of love, Arab poetry, Greeks and Syrians, men known and women desired, a gentle letting-go of hope, ambition.

Heading home through dark woods; a deer slowly crosses from one side to the other. I wait.

Rescue, in a different language

Dolphin saves stranded whales.

Why are we still so surprised by stories like this? As a child I remember being astounded by researchers announcing that it was "possible" that some animals "communicated." Being out in the woods had shown me clearly that birds spoke to each other, and also that I could speak to them, whether in words or with unspoken calm, a quiet heart, and positive intention. I remain convinced, more than 50 years later, that we have barely scratched the surface of the possibilities of communication, even within our own species. I wonder if any of you have stories about this subject - it's the sort of thing people don't talk about much for fear of being thought of as nuts, but many of us have experienced odd moments of closeness or communication with other species, or witnessed animals clearly communicating with each other.