Halloween!

 

I thought this squirrel was a part of the exhibit and then realized he was just visiting.

What William Blake thought

According to Peter Ackroyd`s biography of William Blake, the first morning Blake was in Felpham, his home for two years on the coast south of London, “Blake came out of his cottage and found a ploughman in a neighbouring field. At this moment the ploughboy working with him called out ‘Father, the gate is open.’ For Blake, this was an emblem of his new life, and the work he was about to begin.” Blake perceived this experience as an auspicious sign from the universe, one indicating a future of openness, creativity, and the presence of the divine intervening in his life. At that moment Blake knew that he had made the right choice in moving to Felpham; the universe told him as much. 

The library of discarded interests

Here are two boxes of Krishnamurti books, destroyed when our basement flooded.

When our basement flooded two years ago I lost books, literary papers, archives, old family photographs, manuscripts, and old diaries. Losing these things was strangely liberating, I didn't really care as much as I thought I would. I had already begun discarding books; years before the flood I began downsizing my library; I kept poetry and books on poetics, biographies of poets, books on poets’ work, books of interviews with poets, and some other books that still meant something to me. But fiction was easy to discard, except for a few novels--Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, novels by Margaret Laurence, and other Canadian novelists--most of the rest were discarded.

Years ago I read all of Henry Miller's books, some were purchased second hand, some new, some remaindered, and some from antiquarian book stores. I read books that Miller recommended, for instance, the diaries and novels of Anais Nin and I heard her speak at Sir George Williams University; I read Blaise Cendrar and other writers that Miller knew. Read Henry Miller's The Books in My Life (1952); I am pretty sure that I discovered J. Krishnamurti because of Miller's essay on him in this book. I remember late one day, taking a city bus home, and meeting Louis Dudek on the same bus; he had planned to publish something by Henry Miller but decided against it; he writes, somewhere, that the big influence on his writing was Matthew Arnold and Henry Miller. He liked Miller’s conversational style of writing and that Miller was intelligent but not academic.

Also, I must have read all of the novels of Jack Kerouac, and then I moved on to other Beat writers, Corso, Burroughs, Michael McClure, Ferlinghetti, and Diane di Prima. It used to be that when I would read someone whose books I liked I read all of their work, their novels, poems, essays, letters, books on their writing, and biographies. And I’ll read the books they recommend or books that influenced them. 

I began reading Jack Kerouac in the fall of 1969, around the time I heard Allen Ginsberg read his poems at Sir George Williams University where I was a student; by then, Kerouac had fallen into obscurity, he drank his way into oblivion, and then he died; by then the public had moved on from the Beatniks to the Hippies and left Kerouac behind. Back then, in 1969, I found it difficult to find Kerouac's books; today, they're in the remaining bookstores that we have. But now I have no real interest in Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg. As bpNichol said to me, when he read his work at the college where I was teaching, Kerouac is for when you are young, when you get older you want something more substantial. I'm no longer interested in reading Kerouac's novels but I kept his poetry, I still like Kerouac's poetry.                                 

I remember the evening of 21 October 1969, a dark and rainy evening, I was downtown on McKay Street when I heard that Kerouac had died. But death was good for his reputation as a writer, over the following years and decades his popularity has grown and his unpublished manuscripts have been published; books on Kerouac, biographies and memoirs, have also been published. 

Back in the late 1960s there were still people around who had known Kerouac from his visits to Montreal. A professor and friend, it was Scotty Gardiner at SGWU, told me that he expected Kerouac to come for supper at a friend's home but Kerouac never arrived. It was the usual story of a drunk Jack Kerouac disappointing people and not caring, he could be belligerent and argumentative when drunk. Ginsberg also read in Montreal, in November 1969, and from where I was sitting I could see George Bowering in the first row with Peter Orlovsky. The years passed and Ginsberg returned to read in Montreal (I can't find documentation for this visit) but Ginsberg's readings were no longer important cultural events, it was golden oldies, and people demonstrated against Ginsberg's advocacy for adult men having sex with young boys. Ginsberg discredited himself advocating for this issue, he was not ahead of his time, he was out of touch with society, its norms, and values. Here is something ironic: a few days ago I read that when Ginsberg was young, he lived for a while with William Burroughs, and when he moved out he complained to Burroughs that he didn't want to have sex with some old man... Actually, Ginsberg said a lot worse about Burroughs' private anatomy than I will repeat. Ken Norris writes in a poem that, when he was young, poets were our heroes, and they were. A friend, Trevor Carolan, wrote on Ginsberg in Giving Up Poetry: With Allen Ginsberg At Hollyhock (Banff Centre Press, 2001). Ginsberg, like Kerouac, is a writer of one's youth, not one’s older years. 

Our flooded basement:

Flooded basement, July 2023

Honey bees and asters, 04 October 2025

 04 October 2025 at 3 p.m., it’s 25 C.      

    

It’s the last of summery weather before October asserts itself with cold weather; honey bees are visiting the asters, they are in bloom late September and early October. It’s the bees' last chance to collect pollen and nectar and then we all face six month of cold weather. Photographs taken with my IPhone.

Video: Honey bees collecting pollen

Here is a second short video, of honey bees collecting pollen from lavender. Online since 20 October 2025.

Or, cut and paste the following, 

https://youtube.com/shorts/2Dr9y_voM40?si=FVXXH-GxZGSxHfPE

Lane behind 2226 Girouard Avenue, 22 October 2009

This is the lane behind my grandmother's home at 2226 Girouard Avenue. Below are photographs of her back porch where someone took photos of my mother and I in the early 1950s and other photos of my Uncle Alex and his son, Herb, taken in the late 1930s. The place wasn't maintained after my grandmother's passing in 1965, and here we are, 44 years later, (photographs taken on this day in 2009), and the building has completely gone to ruin.

In 2015 I published an essay, Remembering Girouard Avenue, about my family living here. It can be found at https://archive.org/details/RememberingGirouardAvenueStephenMorrissey

 

Video: honey bees and asters

This is a short YouTube video I made in October 2025, showing honey bees collecting pollen from asters. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/2974r4LolJc

Asters and honey bees, 28 September 2025

When asters bloom in September

honey bees arrive, not seen

most of the summer

this final nectar 

and pollen

is too much 

for them to ignore

Commentary on The Epic of Gilgamesh (1)

 

    

                                     "He who saw the Deep"

If you begin with the first great work of literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh, written between 2700 and 2000 years B.C., and you follow a literary continuum, from Gilgamesh to what is being written today, then, in total, you have the great exposition of the human condition. It is the collective vision of millennia of poets and artists; they see “the Deep” where it has always existed, in the unconscious mind—in the psyche—in the creative expression of what it means to be human.

-o-

Our literature—our heritage, our inheritance, our legacy—describes what it means to be a human being living in relationship with other people, living in a community, in solitude, with or without God, living a life of the imagination, with the human spirit, in war, in peace, in love, in anguish, in grief, and it describes the whole panoply of human experiences. By its very nature this literary continuum always affirms and celebrates human life no matter how much it expresses the dark side of human existence; to write, to create, to make something new, this is always affirmative.

-o-

Lucy Worsley, one of my favourite television personalities, recently presented the life of  Agatha Christie. In her old age, when Christie was planning her funeral, she considered having Edward Elgar's Nimrod performed. Nimrod is a deeply moving memorial for Elgar's friend and business associate Augustus Jaegar. Similar to Gilgamesh's grief when his friend Enkidu died, Elgar experienced grief and despair when Jaegar died, this music is an expression of these deeply felt emotions. Nimrod is also a city of antiquity in Assyria, on the Tigris River, and was excavated by Christie's husband, the archaeologist Max Malloran; Nimrod is associated with Gilgamesh, so this music had a deeper and synchronistic meaning for Christie who accompanied her husband on the various archaeological digs at Nimrod. Coincidentally, Nimrod is also a biblical king, and some scholars associate (apparently wrongly) Nimrod with Gilgamesh. The grief of losing a close friend—an ally, a companion—is as though to lose a part of one’s own being; as Gilgamesh grieves for Enkidu, as Elgar grieves for Jaegar, as Max would grieve for Agatha upon her death.

-o-

Gilgamesh's loss of Enkidu also reminds me of John Milton's poem, "Lycidas", an elegy written after the loss of Milton’s close friend, Edward King, who died by drowning; death is certainly a cause for questioning life and one's place in life. There is a meeting and connection of souls between Gilgamesh and Enkidu; when Enkidu dies, part of Gilgamesh's inner being is also lost; but what will Gilgamesh do about it? Milton's father, well-meaning and supportive of his son's poetry, thought writing about the death of Lycidas was a poor choice of subject matter for his son, but Milton was driven by what the soul demanded and in writing poetry this is of greater importance than anything else. In "Lycidas" Milton reflects something of Gilgamesh's loss.

Milton writes:

For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime

Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer;

Who would not sing for Lycidas? he well knew

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rime.

He must not flote upon his watry bear

Unwept, and welter to the parching wind

Without the meed of som melodious tear. 

And, at the poem's end, he writes"

Now Lycidas, the shepherd's weep no more;

Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shoar

In thy large recompense, and shalt be good

To all that wander in that perilous flood.

.  .  .  .  .  

And now the Sun had stretcht out all the hills,

And now was dropt into the western bay;

At last he rose and twitcht his mantle blew:

To morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

-o-

I remember studying Tennyson's poem, "In Memoriam A.H.H.", at university; it is one of the great poems of the Victorian era, a greater poem than I realized when I first read it. "In Memoriam A.H.H." has a thematic connection to Gilgamesh in that both texts are written out of grief for a deceased friend. Like Milton’s "Lycidas" it is an elegy; it took Tennyson almost twenty years to write and publish "In Memoriam A.H.H.", a poem that memorializes Tennyson's friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. It is grief over the loss of a loved one that Gilgamesh, Milton, and Tennyson experienced. And while these poems are expressions of grief they are also means of going beyond grief; alas*, grief has its own schedule, one that may require acceptance of things as they are and living with grief. Here, I must also emphasize the importance of writing poetry, and reading poetry, as healing; "In Memoriam" is a kind of confessional poem but written long before the invention of confessional poetry by Robert Lowell; writing this poem, and reading it, was a healing experience. “In Memoriam” was Queen Victoria's favourite poem, in it she found solace and consolation from grief after the death of her much loved husband, Prince Consort Albert. This is why poetry is not "writing", it has a greater importance than mere writing; the best poetry is, as Keats understood, soul work, it is the archaeology of the soul, it is to see “the Deep”. Tennyson writes, 

CVI

Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

-o-

Note: (1) Please forgive me for using this word, "alas", but I will never get another chance to say "Alas..." and I couldn't let it go...

          (2) I hope the reader has some familiarity with The Epic of Gilgamesh; if not, there are summaries of Gilgamesh online, as well, it isn't a long text, it's accessible and fairly easy to read, and reading Gilgamesh is a good idea even if what I've written here is of no interest.

  (3) Some of the above links have been inserted by Google AI at my request 
(out of curiosity as to the results) and some by me. I am not sure I like 
this new AI function and will probably not use it in the future. 

"Shine, Perishing Republic" by Robinson Jeffers

 

Robinson Jeffers

While this America settles in the mould of its vulgarity, heavily thickening to empire
And protest, only a bubble in the molten mass, pops and sighs out, and the mass hardens,
I sadly smiling remember that the flower fades to make fruit, the fruit rots to make earth.
Out of the mother; and through the spring exultances, ripeness and decadence; and home to the mother.
   
You making haste haste on decay: not blameworthy; life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains: shine, perishing republic.
But for my children, I would have them keep their distance from the thickening center; corruption
Never has been compulsory, when the cities lie at the monster's feet there are left the mountains.

And boys, be in nothing so moderate as in love of man, a clever servant, insufferable master.
There is the trap that catches noblest spirits, that caught — they say — God, when he walked on earth.

Photographs taken after reading at Cafe Sarajevo on 12 October 2011

I was part of a group poetry reading at Cafe Sarajevo, located at 6548 Blvd. St-Laurent, on 12 Oct 2011; after the reading I took these photographs of store windows across the street from the reading venue.