A few days ago I was looking for a copy of W.B. Yeats’ poem “Vacillation” and looked in Yeats’ Selected Poems for it, of course the poem was there. Then I noticed that I had written the date of when and where I bought this book; it was in Galway, Ireland, on 22 July 1978. I remember being in Galway and walking near a cliff overlooking the ocean and drinking hot tea, it rained and was chilly all the time. I noticed I had purchased the book at O’Gorman’s Stationery Bookshop but I have no memory of being there. I know that the smell of old books, and just the presence of books, has an equilibrating affect on me; I have happy memories reading in bed (for instance, Kathleen Raine's autobiography), falling asleep reading, and even sleeping with a few books on my bed, the weight of books is comforting. Here is another example of the importance of books, of the curative influence of books: I visited an antiquarian bookstore in Arundel, in the UK, before visiting Galway, in July 1978, and immediately felt at peace and at one with the world which I hadn’t been feeling when I entered the store; breathing in the smell of old books brings me peace and happiness. And now, a few weeks after visiting Arundel, here I was in Ireland; it was not a happy time in my life, I was far from home, cold, wet, and lonely. After finding Yeats’s poem I Googled O’Gorman’s Stationery and found that it had closed years ago, but the O’Gorman’s were interesting, especially Ronnie O'Gorman, a grandson of the founder of the bookshop. Ronnie O'Gorman loved books and after his passing his very large collection of books was donated to the University of Galway; Mr. O'Gorman's library is a national treasure. No one needs to be lonely and unhappy if they love books and surround themselves with them.
Tuesday, August 19, 2025
O’Gorman’s Stationery Bookshop in Galway, 1978
Friday, July 18, 2025
Meetings with RR Skinner
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Photo of RR Skinner provided by Patricia Proenza in 1988 |
Hark, hark! the dogs do bark,
Beggars are coming to town.
Some in rags, some in jags,
And some in velvet gowns.-- Quoted by RR Skinner
What follows (in the following posts) are the events and narrative of meeting RR Skinner; our first meeting was in 1974, the last meeting was in 1986. This is taken from notes I made after these meetings; they were marathon sessions of talking with (mostly listening to) Reg, including what he told me about himself, his life, his family, and his observations on life. When I told Reg in 1985 that I would like to write about him he gave me a thick manila envelope containing copies of his various essays written over a thirty year period, I returned these papers to him later. The manuscript that I wrote became "Meetings with RR", it’s 125 pages of double-spaced text; it is unpublished and probably will never be published.
RR Skinner was born on 03 July 1909; he died at Bognor Regis on 31 December 1999 (these dates may not be accurate). From age eight to eleven he did not attend school because of frail health, he had a tubercular bowel and spent these three years in hospital or convalescing at home; this was a time of relative isolation and solitude. After returning to school he found that he couldn't pronounce certain words because of a stammer, but he overcame this through an effort of will. He was the seventh of fifteen children, plus two adopted children. Reg's mother, who ran and ministered her own spiritualist church in Bethnal Green, London, believed that her son would be the next world-teacher and she raised him for that position (this sounds terribly inflated today but it was also the aim of the Theosophical Society to find the next messiah or world teacher, a Buddha, and the person they eventually found was Jiddu Krishnamurti who eventually renounced this idea). In a letter to a friend RR's mother said that the child she was carrying, the future RR Skinner, would be the next messiah. RR told me that his ability to vet people was part of his training at his mother's church, it was his training to be a psychic and spiritual teacher. Many years ago I attended a few spiritualist meetings, these aren't seances but church services, sometimes these services were held at rented spaces in office buildings, and once at the Unitarian Church of the Messiah or, at other times, the Spiritual Science Fellowship, both located in Montreal; there is usually a non-denominational religious service, including hymns, followed by the medium addressing the congregation and communicating messages allegedly from the departed to their family members. I believe RR's mother, Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner, was the main influence of his life.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
"September 1913" by W.B. Yeats
Friday, September 8, 2023
"September 1913" by W.B. Yeats
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William Butler Yeats in 1923 |
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone;
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman’s rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone,
It’s with O’Leary in the grave.
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You’d cry, ‘Some woman’s yellow hair
Has maddened every mother’s son’:
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they’re dead and gone,
They’re with O’Leary in the grave.
Tuesday, October 5, 2021
“The Stare's Nest by My Window”, by W.B. Yeats