Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 55

Snow White

It took me a minute, the first time I saw this laundry ("buanderie") to work out that Blanche Neige is a pun: "Snow White." Such is the beauty and delight of living in a bilingual city. I pass this corner every day, and use the laundry when I need to wash something large from our studio -- but the name never seemed more appropriate than it did yesterday.

Still Dreaming at 8 am

Montreal, 8:00 am, December 10. Can you find her companion?

Grey Days in Montreal

Seem to be on a close-to-every-day blogging streak. Maybe it will be NaBloMo for me, a month late. A good way to distract myself from these short dark days and cold temperatures.

More persimmons, and some fountain pen talk

Persimmons on a dish. Osmiroid pen on an envelope, about 4" x 4".

Warning: Art tech talk coming up!

Yesterday, inspired by some recent posts by sketchers Shari Blaukopf and Liz Steele, I spent some time going through my fountain pens. I'm a fountain pen lover from way back, but I generally don't buy expensive pens, or collect them. It's a preferred sketching method for me, though, and I'm always open to trying new ones. My favorite pen is a Sheaffer, from their "Mediterranean Seas" series. I bought it from Levenger at least fifteen years ago, maybe twenty, and that series has since been discontinued. The pen has a beautiful gold-plated fine nib, it's flexible and responsive, and makes a lovely line. The only drawback is that you really can't use permanent ink in this pen, so combining a drawing with watercolor washes is not a good option unless the dissolving line is a desired effect. Yesterday I looked up this pen on eBay and was stunned to discover that pens of that series are now selling to collectors for $200 and more: at least four times what I paid for it. And to think I've been throwing it in my bag and not even thinking about it!

I bought a Lamy Vista a while back, for about $25, specifically because a lot of the Urban Sketchers were raving about the Lamy and its ability to accept Noodler's permanent inks, which come in a whole range of colors. It does work well with permanent inks, but the nib is just too stiff for me, and also too wide in the model I bought. Yesterday I ordered a replacement in extra-fine, and hope that will help, but I know now that I've been spoiled by using a very good pen. So I rummaged around in my boxes, curious to see what else was there. Among a number of defunct pens was an old Osmiroid from my calligraphy days. Osmiroid closed in the late 1990s, but I do have some good nibs still, and this pen seemed like it might be salvageable. I washed it out carefully and examined the bladder of the squeeze converter -- there was packed, dried ink in the base that I couldn't get out, but enough space to accept a small filling of ink. I did the drawing above with that pen, on the back of an envelope, and I liked the result: the thick and thin line is a nice option, and the pen felt familiar and happy in my hand. It will work as a dip pen, but I think it will hold enough ink for drawing purposes, if the bladder doesn't disintegrate. And I might be able to find a replacement converter - fountain pen people are pretty obsessive and apparently there's a lot of trading and selling that goes on online.

A few pens from my stash: top to bottom: Osmiroid, Lamy, Pilot, Faber-Castell.

Meanwhile, there are always technical pens in my bag, and that's what I use for quick sketches. The problem with these is the short life of the points: they wear down fast and render the pen unusable even when there is plenty of ink left. I don't use Sakura Micron pens anymore because of this; I've had better luck with the Pitt Artist Pens from Faber Castell, which come in different colors and point styles, but my preferred technical pen is the Pilot DR. It still wears down, but not as fast, and the ink is totally permanent.

OK! Fini!

Black Like Not Me

Once again, the internet thrums with indignation, a great deal of it spewing from the keyboards of white people who will never, ever, be in the same position as a poor black man, or a poor black woman, or child... or any black person for that matter.

Whether or not you think you are racist; whether or not, as you examine your conscience, you come up with anything you've personally done to hurt a black person, or advance the injustice that is endemic in American society and has been that way forever; whether or not you can wipe your own mental slate clean -- I simply want to say that we are all involved in systemic racism: if not by what we have done directly, then by what we have not done  -- through our inattention, our turning away, and our refusal to use what we have been given, solely by virtue of our skin color, to create a society in which there is justice for all.

I grew up in a small town in the North where people were proud of not being racist. I went to a prestigious liberal university, and then lived in New England in a prestigious university town. Nobody would have ever said they were racist.  But they were. They were racist about blacks, about Jewish people, about Muslims, about working class ethnic groups and the poor, about everyone who wasn't just exactly like them: privileged, educated, white. Racism lurked there, just beneath the surface, just as it does everywhere in America. It lives on in jokes, in social norms, in housing prices and club rules, in who we marry and who we associate with, who we vote for, who we let into our clubs and schools and workplaces, who gets beaten and arrested, who goes to prison, who is on death row.

This is indeed a time to examine our own consciences. A time to show up at a protest or prayer vigil. A time to say with sincerity, I am sorry, and I am deeply ashamed.

But it is also a time when less said might very well be more. Perhaps we white people could actually shut up for once and listen hard to the lived experience of the black people in our communities, and then use our considerable power to demand changes that address the inequalities, the injustice, the profiling, and the violence that are the reality every single day in the lives of so many of our fellow human beings.

Persimmons

Persimmons in a Wedgewood dish, pencil on paper. 9" x 6".

Two persimmons on a bamboo mat. fountain pen on paper. 5" x 5".

Persimmon and Batik Pouch, 9" x 6" (cropped), pencil on paper.

I've never drawn persimmons before, so I'm studying them because I want to put them in a painting. They aren't a fruit either of us especially likes to eat, so we rarely buy them, but I was captivated by the beautiful bins of fresh persimmons at the Arab market the last time we shopped there, and came home with a few.

In Florida, my aunt picked one off a tree and gave it to me, and I did eat (that sounds and feels a little Garden-of-Edenish.) It was better than the ones I've had from stores, though there's a mustiness to the taste that I don't like. But the color! So magnificent! I also find the dried bud-leaves around the stem quite interesting and characteristic: they're papery and dogwood-blossom-shaped, with a flat square center.

Anyway, we'll see what happens. Which of these drawings do you prefer?

Late Afternoon Light

1.

2.

 3.

1. Still life with Ski Jumper

2. Marrons entiers ("Whole chestnuts")

3. Wall

Manon

 

Sleepers Wake! (even when there's darkness at 8 AM)

Waiting at the bus stop, Masson and Papineau, December 1 2014.

December First. The last month of the year, the first days of Advent, and the countdown to winter solstice and the day that the sun turns around and starts heading back to us.

This is how it looked this morning as we went to our studio. It's not particularly cold -- hovering just above freezing -- but we wake in darkness, and the lights are still on at 8:00 am.

Morning deliveries at the corner gas station.

The beer trucks and produce and supply trucks still have to make their morning rounds to the depanneurs and couche-tard convenience stores, and they're probably very glad we don't have snow on the ground. Nevertheless, it feels awfully dark and dreary on these mornings, and one longs to stay in bed. Right now, at noon, the sun is shining brightly and I'm finally feeling more or less awake.

While waiting for J. to do an errand on the way to our studio this morning, I sat in the car and did a quick sketch of this building, complete with its typically-Montreal wrought iron balconies, on Fabre and Mont-Royal. The Christmas trees have been set out in front of businesses, and the merchants will be decorating them soon if they haven't already. All our snow has evaporated, but that is almost certainly a temporary situation!

Last week was one of the busiest for me in recent memory, ending yesterday afternoon with the annual Advent Lessons& Carols service at the cathedral, which is pretty much a musical marathon. Advent is all about "Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme"/ "Sleepers wake, the voice is calling" --  or wake up, stay awake to watch for the coming of the bridegroom, as the parable goes. So we always sing some setting of that text. But the first piece we sang -- to a dark cathedral from the dimness of the high altar -- was this modern setting of the text of the traditional Advent Responsory, "Laetentur coeli/Rejoice, O Heavens". If this doesn't wake you up on a sleepy, dark winter day, nothing will! (Laetentur coeli, by William Mathias [1934-1992], performed by the East Carolina University Chamber Singers.)

 

Rejoice, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth. Give praise, O hills, for our lord shall come and show mercy to his humble people. There shall rise up in those days justice and abundance of peace. And he will show mercy to his people.

Love and its Rewards

The Angelus. Jean-Francois Millet.

 Snowy fields, rural Quebec.

Francis of Assisi granted all of reality, even elements and animals, an intimate I-Thou relationship. He called all things “sister” and “brother.” This could be a definition of what it means to be a contemplative, which is to look at reality with much wider eyes than mere usability, functionality, or self-interest, but with inherent enjoyment for a thing in itself as itself. Remember, as soon as your loving needs or wants a reward in return, you have backed away from divine love, which is why even our common notion of a “reward in heaven” can keep us from the actual love of God or neighbor! A pure act of love is its own reward, and needs nothing in return. Love is shown precisely in an eagerness to love.

--Fr. Richard Rohr

Every other week, I write a short reflection for the meditation group I facilitate, and that's what I'll be doing later this morning. The quotation above was in Rohr's daily meditation today, and it struck home, so it became my starting point. All of my meditations this fall have been about different aspects of "letting go." Letting go of the desire for reward is a pretty important, and extremely difficult, lifelong task. It's certainly something I've struggled with myself, and that makes it easier to write about.

The contemplative group meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month, at the cathedral, downtown, at 5:45 pm. In the summer it's hot and stuffy, and we hear the busy sounds of the city outside mingled with the whirring of fans as we sit; light still streams through the brilliant colors of the stained glass. When we open the big red doors and walk outside, an hour later, there's still sunlight on the big formal beds of tulips and, later, begonias and coleus; the homeless people and itinerant kids who sleep on our grounds will be lolling around, sharing something to eat, playing with their dogs -- last summer one of them had a ferret on a leash -- and we'll greet each other with a wave and bon soir. The day still stretches ahead of everyone, even at nearly 7 pm.

Now it's dark already by the time we arrive. The big stone cathedral may be too warm, or it may be chilly: it's hard to predict, so I wear layers. I come to the cathedral early to set up the chapel with a rug, cushions, chairs, and a single candle at the center of our rectangle. Then I might have coffee or do an errand, but I come back in time to attend Evening Prayer, or Vespers, at 5:15, which is chanted on Tuesdays.

There may be five of us, or seven, or maybe as many as ten. The church is dim; an icon stands in front of the chancel steps; candles are burning there and on the candle stands to the right and left, and sometime someone wanders in, comes up, and lights a candle during the service. At the beginning of the service, the leader - always a lay person - calls us to worship, and then the church bells in the tower above us ring the Angelus: three bells, three bells, three bells, nine bells. The day is done; the potato-diggers in Millet's field -- which looks so much like rural Quebec -- stop and pray. Then the lights come up enough for us to see our psalters and prayer books, and together we chant a psalm and the canticles for the day's liturgy; the lessons for the day are read aloud - one from the Old Testament and one from the Gospels; and then we pray for the world, for the sick and dying, the homeless and lonely, the prisoners and captives, for our city, for each other. We pray by name for the people who have asked us to pray for them; there are always white slips of paper in a container near the candlestand; unfolded they contain a name, or sometimes a little more information: "Susan. Celine. Ma mere. For Charles who is in hospital. Pour la memoire d'Antoine."

Our chanting is supposed to be in unison, and we try; in the time since I've been doing this the chant has improved. But these are not professional singers and that is the beauty of it. I always recall Thomas Merton's struggles "in choir"-- the choir of monks who sang the "daily offices" in his monastery -- and after smiling in recognition of his discomfort and our shared tendency toward perfectionism, I let go of the idea that our singing -- including my own singing -- needs to be perfect. It is perfect, however it is.

And then when Evening Prayer is finished, I get up and go to the meditation chapel and light the big handmade-by-nuns candle that I brought for us from Mexico. I sit down, and wait for the participants to gather. Again, we may be four, or six, or nine. I welcome everyone, explain the order of things to any newcomers, give my little talk, for ten minutes or so, and then we sit in silence for twenty minutes, when there is a bell, and some people leave, and others sit for another twenty.

When we finish, the cathedral is very dark, and even dim color is hard to distinguish in the stained glass windows. The verger will lock up, or sometimes the liturgical dancers come in for a rehearsal; tonight I think there's a poetry workshop. But we'll remain in silence as we return the chairs to their normal configuration, put away the candle and the rug, straighten up the room, and then leave through the side door.

Outside, now, the ground is frozen, and the homeless people will be wrapped up in sleeping bags and cardboard along the side of the Bay -- the department store across the street -- or wandering in the metro before trying to find the place where they'll spend the night. These are people who don't want to go to shelters, or aren't allowed in because they use drink or drugs, or keep a dog. During the days, some of them will have come inside the cathedral to get warm, and at night some continue to sleep on the stone steps under the front portico facing St. Catherine Street. Though it must be very cold they seem to feel that they're safe with their backs to the old stones and the gargoyles grimacing above them; that, in some way, it's their home.

Francis of Assisi granted all of reality, even elements and animals, an intimate I-Thou relationship. He called all things “sister” and “brother.” This could be a definition of what it means to be a contemplative, which is to look at reality with much wider eyes than mere usability, functionality, or self-interest, but with inherent enjoyment for a thing in itself as itself. Remember, as soon as your loving needs or wants a reward in return, you have backed away from divine love, which is why even our common notion of a “reward in heaven” can keep us from the actual love of God or neighbor! A pure act of love is its own reward, and needs nothing in return. Love is shown precisely in an eagerness to love.