Elizabeth Adams's Blog, page 85

A Writer's Companion

This is Manon's favorite position while I'm working. It doesn't look very comfortable for her, and certainly isn't for me, but what can you do? She's the boss. She also likes to lie next to me, with her paws up on the keyboard, watching the screen (hoping for a bird or squirrel video.) Sometimes she encases my left thumb with her right front paw, and won't let go, tightening her claws ever so slightly if I try to pull away. It's like having a little live mitten on my thumb as I type.

Who could say no to those green eyes?

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My camera came back from Canon repair today. Inside the box: not my S95, but a brand new S110. Apparently they couldn't fix mine for the price they had quoted, and which we had paid. This is what I call customer service, and it makes me an even more loyal Canon customer than I was before. I'm anxious to get to know this later version of these tiny powerhouse cameras; stay tuned!

A Pastel in Progress

The first artwork of the year. Iceland again. This is the initial lay-in, first day of work.

2nd day. The scene is near the village of Hjalmsstaoaa, not far from the valley of the geysers. This rare grove of trees (I think they are probably aspens) was glowing in the late afternoon at the foot of volcanic mountains, while clouds and fog were roiling over the peaks. We had to stop the car and take photos and look at this for a while.

Here's the third stage. From here on out, it will be a matter of subtleties, pushing and pulling values forward and back, adjusting the light, subduing certain areas to help the eye move and settle. I want to work toward a more ominous feeling in the mountains, with bright light on only one area of the tree - they're all too similar now - and to subdue the foreground even more. It's also weird to look at it so greatly reduced. Here's a detail, closer to lifesize:

It's not supposed to be a postcard picture, even though it's a beautiful scene - in reality, there was a sense of foreboding, menace, and tension along with the beauty. That's not so easy to achieve, and I'm finding that using color complicates this a lot. I've been craving color -- it's pretty damned monochrome up here right now! -- but don't think this picture holds up next to the charcoal drawings of Iceland. It feels like an entirely different animal. I'll probably leave it alone for a bit now, and think.

Even though I'm having some trouble/questions with this one, it feels good to be working again. I got derailed from artwork in early December, because of Thaliad and a complex graphic design project with a tight deadline, so this is the first thing I've done for a while. Glad to be back at it!

Montreal Royalty

Children on bright sleds

pulled by panting parents

princes,
princesses

of this frozen kingdom

erect, imperious

in their stiff
snowsuits.

 

We came out of our garage this morning into the snow-filled alley, and waited for such a parent and child to pass: the father, bare-headed, all in black, trudging through the deep snow pulling his son on a turquoise sled; the child swaddled in puffy layers of colorful down and wool, staring straight ahead like a little prince. I'm so used to seeing scenes like this -- the mothers and fathers pulling different types of sleds on their way to the early-morning garderies and elementary schools -- that it seldom occurs to me that this common method of conveyance is probably rather unique to far-northern cities like ours. Sometimes the kids, especially very little ones, lie flat on the sleds, staring up at the sky and the buildings going by, but the older ones tend to sit up like little kings in carriages pulled by horses.

Their impassive expressions remind me of photos of child-lamas in Tibet, considered to be the reincarnations of great lamas, who are dressed in layers of bright quilted silks and wools, and treated like royalty from early childhood. In our neighborhood, which is mostly French, parents are very attentive to their children, and it's common to see a sled or a stroller stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, the parent bent over, patiently listening to a child who's talking, animated, waving her arms. The children behave well, or so it seems to me, but I rarely see or hear a parent yelling, and have never seen a child being hit since I moved here. Family life is still a priority; it often feels, to me, like the 1950s.

Celebrating Epiphany in Music and Words

Sassetta, Journey of the Magi, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1435

This Sunday we'll be singing our third and final Lessons&Carols service of the season, in celebration of Epiphany.

Sunday's Evensong will also include familiar hymns and readings, both of the relevant scriptural passages and some innovative poetry selections. I will, in fact, be reading Gerard Manley Hopkins' "That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection" -- a rather daunting prospect for which I am practicing!

Jan Brueghel, Adoration of the Magi, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg

A man in our parish keeps a music calendar for the cathedral's
services, and publishes it on the web; it includes beautiful art
appropriate to the time of the liturgical year, and a full list of the
music to be performed with links to online audio, and information about
composers and writers of texts. I know it is his labor of love, but I
appreciate it so much, and doubt think he gets the recognition his
effort deserves! Anyway, here is his listing for Sunday's music, which will be streamed live on Radio Ville-Marie at 4:00 pm Eastern Time (for listeners in the UK, we are five hours different, so that's 9 pm your time.) I hope the whole service will fit within the one hour limit of the broadcast, but if not, you will still hear most of it. (Click the arrow in the blue band at the bottom right of the screen banner, where it says "Nous écouter en direct.")

Starting Up, Starting Over

On New Year's Day I had time (like many of the rest of us, from the statistics) to go around and catch up on blog reading, write a few notes to friends and family, pick up the house a bit...you know, all that stuff that's been neglected or postponed. There's still plenty to do, but I can see the world starting up again. Yesterday as we came up to the studio there was absolutely no one on the streets -- no one! Today, not as much movement as usual, and not all the shops and offices were open, but people were definitely out and about.

I managed to drop my camera sometime near Christmas, and it stopped focussing -- so there will be fewer pictures here for a bit, while my beloved Canon S95 is out for repairs. J. has been generous about lending me his, and I've got my phone...

One of the blogs I visited recently was Seon Joon's. I met her online in the early days of blogging, and then, not long after, she moved to Korea and became a Buddhist nun. She now has a blog again, where she posts near-daily "small stones," an occasional excellent photograph, and longer pieces about her life, and I can't recommend it highly enough: her wisdom, humor, directness, and good sense always delight and inspire me.This quote of hers caught my attention yesterday, and seems a good way to begin the new year:

"I fall down way more
than I stand up; but Zen Master Seung Sahn, who is one of my root teachers,
always said, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” Well, here I am, falling
down again. And laughing, while I get back up. That’s life. That’s living."

And while we're visiting websites, fans of Teju Cole's writing might want to check these links to 12 essays he wrote in 2012.

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I'm not a person who makes resolutions on January 1, but I do spend some time reflecting back, and thinking forward. Here are some of the odd thoughts I've had about the months ahead: 

Continue teaching/leading meditation and developing and recommitting to my own daily practice

Focus my online energy on this blog, and otherwise into real-time life, work, and relationships; e ither get off social media entirely or limit time spent there

Do something with my Iceland manuscript and drawings

Continue and build on the artwork focus of last year

Just do the best work I can, without comparing, or competing for attention

Get outside and walk every day

Read more this year (I've got a good list started)

Explore some new recipes, and have people over more regularly

Drink more tea, less coffee (it's all decaf for me, anyway)

Take advantage of more cultural opportunities in the city

Get out of the city more often

Be optimistic: "Fall down seven times, get up eight!"

What about you?

2013

Book List 2012

First of all, a look at the statistics:

2012 showed a drop in the number of titles read. There are two reasons for that. First, this year my husband and I bought a large screen for our bedroom and have been watching movies and (mostly) BBC TV shows and documentaries, and that's definitely cut into my reading time. Having said for years how much I hate TV (and this isn't a TV, but still!) I've enjoyed what we've been watching tremendously. A lot of it is pretty damned literary, too, plus it's made me think a lot about screenplays, and the art of writing and adapting for the screen, as well as the incredible talent of certain actors and directors. (But I defensively digress!)

Reason two is that many of the books I read this year were mammoth ones. There are only so many pages that anyone can get through in a year!

Of these 29 titles, 13 were by women, 16 by men. Eight of them are by people I consider to be friends. Slightly less than half were in digital form: 9 were e-books and 2 audio books. I don't have a dedicated e-reader - I use my Android smartphone, and while the screen is small, I really like the portability -- as well as the ability to download free copies of many classics. I can't quite believe I read Ulysses on my phone, but I did!

Finally, I've been more active on Goodreads, and have posted some reviews over there that haven't appeared here. All the links shown in the list below go to my reviews.

David Copperfield and his friend Mr. Micawber

The year was definitely dominated by those "big books:" Ulysses, David Copperfield, Emily Carr's journals, the Icelandic sagas. I've written about them both here and at Goodreads, so follow the links for more details.

Particular standouts written by friends included Marly Youmans' evocative and poignant novel of an orphan boy-turned-hobo in the depression-era South, A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage; Dorothee Lang and Smitha Murthy's Worlds Apart, a book of letters between two women, one in China, and one in Germany, who've never met but begin a correspondence about travel that deepens into true friendship; and Khadija Anderson's first full-length poem collection, History of Butoh, which taught me about this astonishing artform and gave me more of Khadija's strong, uncompromising, and beautiful writing that I had first come to appreciate on qarrtsiluni.

The novel that I may have simply enjoyed the most, as a page-turner, was Tèa Obreht's The Tiger's Wife: highly recommended, extremely enjoyable.

I was disappointed with Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke, underwhelmed by Cees Nooteboom's Roads to Santiago, and with many of the essays in Derek Wolcott's What the Twilight Says, though I did like his essays about certain poets. That latter volume was completely eclipsed, for me, by the studies of writers, known and less-known, in Virginia Woolf's The Common Reader, First Series, which I found captivating and brilliantly written. Ghosh's second volume in his ambitious, long trilogy contains page after page of descriptive prose that simply failed to capture me.

When I turned to Charles Dickens I immediately saw why: Dickens loved his characters, and makes us love them too, not through techniques or exotic locations or extensive research, but by observing the small human details that make each of us unique. His books may be long, but in many ways they are simple, moving and memorable. Like A.S. Byatt, I feel that Ghosh tends to over-write, and that the books end up being more about the author than about the creation of a world that the reader inhabits, populated by literary friends that will remain for a lifetime. I don't know about either of the other authors I just mentioned, but I do know that Dickens himself was humble, and it comes through in the books.

If finishing Ulysses, on my third attempt, was my biggest reading accomplishment of 2012, my biggest surprise was rediscovering Charles Dickens, 45 years after being forced to read Great Expectations and hating every minute of it.

I always read a few spiritual books, and this year was no exception. However, the books I read by Thich Naht Hahn and Adyashanti didn't affect or inspire me nearly as much as The Journals of Emily Carr, the Canadian artist, who might be appalled to hear her writing described as "spiritual," since that was certainly not her expressed intent even though she often wrote about her sense of the holy as she found it in nature. Her journals, which an astute friend gave to me early in the year, are mainly about the creative process, and moved me deeply. They were a companion as I myself wrote, throughout the year, about Iceland and Montreal, and my own re-emerging sense of myself as a visual artist through the drawings I was doing, and I think her largely solitary journey, so plainly and directly described, gave me a great deal of encouragement and support. What more can we possibly ask of a book than to have it become a friend and companion on our own journey?

So, without further ado, here's the list. Previous years' book lists can be found here (scroll down.) Happy New Year, and happy reading in 2013. I've already got my first few months lined up!

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2012 READING LIST  (links go to my reviews or commentaries)

Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (in progress)

Bleak House, Charles Dickens (in progress)*

Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen (in progress, audiobook)

Richard II, William Shakespeare (reread)

David Copperfield, Charles Dickens*

The Great Animal Orchestra: Finding the Origins of Music in the World's Wild Places, Bernie Krause

Chorister at the Abbey, Lis Howell (audiobook)

River of Smoke, Amitav Ghosh

Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools through Fearless Leadership, Yvette Jackson and Veronica McDermott

Ulysses, James Joyce*

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce *

History of Butoh, Khadija Anderson (full-length poetry collection)

Worlds Apart, Dorothee Lang and Smith Murthy

I Stand Here Shredding Documents, Kristin Berkey Abbott (poetry chapbook)

Balance, Robbi Nestor (poetry chapbook)

Saga of the People of Laxardal (from Sagas of Icelanders)

What the Twilight Says (essays), Derek Walcott

A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage, Marly Youmans *

Living Buddha, Living Christ, Thich Naht Hahn

Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti *

Sacre Blues: An Unsentimental journey Through Quebec, Taras Grescoe

Roads to Santiago, Cees Nooteboom

The Common Reader, First Series, Virginia Woolf *

The Most Beautiful Thing, Fiona Robyn *

The Tiger's Wife, Tea Obreht *

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal,  Rob Rieman

That Woman, Tom Montag (poetry chapbook)

Hundreds and Thousands, The Journals of Emily Carr

Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, Tamim Ansary

End of the year haiku

Chattering sparrows

adorning the bare branches,

my meditation.

The NYT favorite book cover designs of 2012

I'm preparing by own book list post for the year, but in the meantime, here is a slideshow of some terrific cover designs. My own favorite is the one shown here - and yes, as the Times caption-writer wrote, I do wish I'd thought of it myself!

Flock

I've given more crumbs

to the huddled snowy birds

than coins to beggars.

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Snow day. Almost a blizzard - what's the definition of a blizzard, anyway? if it's blowing and drifting snow and very low visibility, we have that.
I've been watching the sparrows on the terrace, the way they flock when startled by a human shadow behind the curtains, or a monstrous yellow plow going by; the way they settle back down, hunched up, fluffy, on the terracotta pot rims and copper planter, on the trellis; the way they've left their dance-steps in the snow above the golden crumbs.

I've needed a quiet day like this. In the morning, before it was fully light, I did my meditation, and then listened to Radio Bartok: a string of classical recordings punctuated by the murmur of voices in Hungarian, undecipherable and therefore relegated gratefully to the background of my mind. All the while, the snow billowed in white veils between me and the trees, while the sparrows hopped and fed and hung in the bare branches of the hedge, moving like the music across a scene rendered in white and sepia.

Most of all, I realize I need a break from the computer. I want things to move more slowly for a few days, and to pay attention to the world in front of my eyes, the real world: the icy crystals that shiver and shrink under my warm hand, the prick of the evergreen needles, the heft of a book, the voices of the little birds reassuring each other, and the howl of the wind.