the cassandra pages

Self-portrait with Bicycle

The Blue Wall

 

April ends as it began

Idle snowflakes

drift across graffitied walls --

up to no good

April

April tosses me

a  creature hatched too early

on fragile wet wings

Into the Darkness

...waiting for dawn

rue Sainte-Famille, 6 am

We're up early, because we're moving home today. It's been a fascinating month, much of it lived high above the city, but I am so happy to be going home.

Today is a quiet day. I'm cleaning, doing laundry, making a big dish of scalloped potatoes for tomorrow evening's choir potluck, after we're all done, and catching up on a bit of blog reading and writing.

So here is some music (these are both pieces that we sang yesterday):

Gesualdo, "O vos omnes"

Jacob Handl, "Ecce, quomodo moritur iustus"

and here is the link to tomorrow's Easter Evensong by my own choir, to be broadcast on Sunday at 4:00 pm eastern daylight savings time, where you can hear us performing Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Five Mystical Songs" and a number of other works. It would be lovely to think of a few of you out there listening! (Go to the link and click the arrow where it says "Nous écouter en direct" (listen to us live.)

Visual art, not to be missed: RR's enigmatic and brilliant series of photographs entitled "Stations of the Week," at her blog Twisted Rib, of which she writes:

This series was inspired by a comment by Beth to an earlier post which was, not particularly wittily, entitled Stations of the cross London rail journey. She picked up on my (embarrassingly flippant) reference to the Christian tradition of the Stations of the Cross and asked “Why not do a whole set of contemporary London “stations of the cross” during Holy Week?”

This left me in something of a dilemma. I loved the idea but am not a Christian and know little of the iconography of the Stations of the Cross nor the ritual and significance of Holy Week. I felt uncomfortable about attempting anything relating to something I knew nothing about...

However it occurred to me... that they didn’t have to be an equivalent of or reference to anything in particular, they could be dealt out in pairs over the seven days (14 stations over one week) just as they are, working together or not, working with the viewer or not, but as a possible prompt for reflection.

Station 12, by RR

And, finally, here's a wonderful post, with very moving photographs, about the ordination of a Buddhist nun in Korea two days ago; she is an American woman who I met online seven years ago. As I wrote to her just now, to me the message of both our paths seems the same: May we love one another, may our hearts be as one, may we all cease wrong-doing, may all beings one day be free.

Three Days

Churchyard, Lavenham, England, October 2011

Triduum: The Three Days: an explanation at the Wikipedia

Solus ad victimam, by Kenneth Leighton, sung by the Salisbury Cathedral Choir. We performed this piece at Evensong last week, on Palm Sunday.

Parmanu's New York Diary

"Man with Hat" (c) 2012 by Parmanu

"I do not know what it is like to live there, but as a visitor, no matter how many times I’ve been to the city before, New York does not fail to impress. Like Venice, Paris, or Mumbai, its character assails you the moment you step into the city. Arriving by train into the New York Penn station, the same passengers who were relaxed and laid back when they boarded the train in the suburbs spring into motion, like toys with wound up keys, and march with an infectious purpose through the station into the maze-like streets of Manhattan..."

Highly recommended reading and seeing, from one of my favorite writers and blogger friends.

 

Iceland from the Air

Sandro Santioli spent 70 hours in flight over Iceland, taking some astounding photographs of this otherworldly landscape. I'm fascinated, of course, since I'm immersed in Iceland-on-the-ground these days. (Hat tip to Marly Youmans for the link!)

15.

The career of a sage is of two kinds:
He is either honored by all in the world,
Like a flower waving its head,
Or else he disappears into the silent forest. 

Lao Tzu

13.