With music in the background

 

July 1974; Sally McKenzie and Pat McCarty walking to
the tent where Krishnamurti gave his talks in Saanen, Switzerland

From left: Pat McCarty, Sally McKenzie,
and Stephen Morrissey: our last day at Saanen, 5 August 1974

Just after arriving in Saanen, Switzerland, where Krishnamurti gave yearly talks, I met Patrick McCarty and Sally McKenzie; it was July 1974. That first evening at the hostel we walked to the Saanen Church to hear a concert; only recently I learned that we had attended an event of the Yehudi Menuhin Festival. Pat McCarty became a good friend. Two years later, in April 1976, we drove from Eureka, where he lived, to Baha California in Mexico; I met his brother and his wife and stayed with them in Oakland; I also met his parents, in Bakersfield. We visited San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, we stayed at Yosemite National Park; we attended Krishnamurti's Talks at Ojai. Pat visited me in Montreal several times, including when I married in August 1976.  Then life intervened and we lost touch and then, just a few years ago, I learned Pat had died in 2008. 

As well, recently, I learned that Pat's birthday was January 21, 1947, the same birthday as my second wife. I have a theory regarding dates, probably not original to me, it is the synchronicity of dates, the meaningful coincidence of dates, especially births and deaths; dates can be a recognition of the importance of certain events or people important to us. When I met my second wife at Dorval Airport, in 1991, I felt that I had always known her and, looking back, I felt the same way about Pat McCarty; both born on January 21. The meaningful coincidence is their birthdate and that both of these people have helped fulfill my life; these are people who give more than they take.

Lucy Worsley is one of my favourite television personalities, she recently presented the life of  Agatha Christie over three evenings. I've read all of Agatha Christie's novels, out loud to my wife, this was a daily time of togetherness made even more enjoyable by what we were reading; unfortunately, when our basement was flooded last summer all of our Agatha Christie novels were destroyed and had to be thrown out, they were all water damaged. Lucy Worsley mentioned that 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 Augustus Jaegar, you can feel Elgar’s grief in this music and feeling his grief we feel our own grief; this music is a deepening of the soul. As well, Nimrod, a city of antiquity in Iraq, was excavated by Christie's husband, the archaeologist Max Malloran, so this music would have a deeper meaning for Christie, she accompanied her husband on this archaeological dig. Nimrod is also a biblical character and it is possible that Nimrod is another name for Gilgamesh, the central character in The Epic of Gilgamesh. I like to tie things together, to see what is significant and what gives meaning to life; The Epic of Gilgamesh deals specifically with the grief of losing a close friend, as Gilgamesh lost Enkidu, as Elgar lost Jaegar, as Max would lose Agatha upon her death, as Agatha would lose Max.

Finally, in addition to Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, and Sherlock Holmes, one of my favourite detective characters is Colin Dexter's Morse; all of the episodes of this television series with John Thaw are excellent, and the subsequent shows, after Thaws's death, Lewis and Endeavour, are also excellent.  An episode of Morse entitled "Dead on Time" features Schubert's String Quintet in C major; like Elgar's Nimrod this is a deeply moving piece of music, it is an entrance way to the soul, to memory and the past, to the ancestors, and to our very existence and history. In the long run it is the soul that concerns us, for we are visitors to this life and our work is the soul’s work, which is to become conscious human beings.

At the Medical Arts Building

The Medical Arts Building

23 August 2023

Old photo of Medical Arts Building, corner of Sherbrooke Street West
and where Guy becomes Cote des Neiges Road; photo from the 1920s.

Located on the corner of Guy Street and Sherbrooke Street West, the Medical Arts Building is still a location for doctors and other professionals. Many years ago I went to a meeting of the Theosophical Society of Montreal in this building; it was a small office with many shelved books wrapped in brown paper dust jackets. I was there to hear a lecture on the teachings of J. Krishnamurti; you might know that when Krishnamurti was a child he was discovered by Leadbetter, a friend of Annie Besant and a prominent member of the Theosophical Society in the early 1900s. The discovery was prescient and Krishnamurti went on the become one of the most important spiritual teachers of the 20th Century. 

    Recently, I was on the tenth floor of the Medical Arts building and looking out of the window, looking west along Sherbrooke Street, I noticed buildings that are important to my family. There was the Grand Seminaire (the College de Montreal), formerly run by the Sulpician Order that still owns this and other properties, for instance, Cote des Neiges Cemetery, on the Island of Montreal. My two great great uncles, Fr. Martin Callaghan and Fr. James Callaghan were educated at le College de Montreal and they both went on to prominent roles in the city; for instance, Fr. Martin was the first Montreal-born pastor at St. Patrick's Church; Fr. James was pastor at St. Ann’s Church in Griffintown. Fr. Martin and Fr. James are buried at the crypt below the church at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal. A third brother, Fr. Luke Callaghan, was the man who saved  St. Mary's Hospital when its survival was in doubt. Fr. James and Fr. Martin are buried in the crypt under the large chapel at the Grand Seminaire de Montreal; Fr. Luke is buried at Cote des Neiges Cemetery.

Above photos 23 August 2023

    Across the street from the Grand Seminaire is the Masonic Temple, where my grandfather and uncle were both Masons.  It is a magnificent building and I haven't caught that magnificence and size in these photos.

Above photos 23 August 2023

    Near here, almost next door to the Masonic Temple, is the Heffel Art Gallery with its Joe Fafard statue of "Emily Carr and her friends" outside. Very nice! We are all Emily Carr fans.

 

    Then, a few blocks west, still on Sherbrooke Street West, I could see the Mother House where my mother attended secretarial school. She completed her diploma at the High School of Montreal, it is still located on University Street but is now dedicated to art education, and then attended the Mother House. This was a popular secretarial school in the past and the girls got good jobs upon completion of their studies. My mother worked for a jeweler located in the Hermes Building; the family that owned the business invited her to their summer cottage, which my mother's protective father did not allow, and they asked her to stay working for them when she announced she was leaving to get married in 1940; she always spoke with fondness about this family and her years of working for them.

    And finally, across the street from the Mother House is where my son lived while he attended Dawson College (which now occupies the buildings of the Mother House). During the 1997 Ice Storm, my mother stayed with my son at his apartment in this building; I was in Vancouver during this time. When I returned home at the end of the Ice Storm the grounds of Dawson College were strewn with broken branches and broken trees. 

 

  

    This is what I mean by living in a community and the community giving back to you a sense of belonging, of history and remembering the ancestors and listening as they speak to you, of having a place in society that began with your ancestors and history and respecting the ancestors by remembering them and honouring what they did for society and for you in particular. I say "God bless them all!"

 

Night view of the twin towers, College de Montreal; around 2011

Just to conclude, this stretch of Sherbrooke Street West, from Atwater to Guy Street, is one of the places where I've always parked when downtown; usually I can find a parking space here; but it is also a street that I like to walk along, a street of apartment buildings and offices and historical buildings and people out walking to work or walking their dogs. Here is something of what it looks like.

Note: everything is years ago now, but years ago I visited an acupuncturist with a friend and when the Asian doctor heard that we were poets he said that one of his patients was Artie Gold; that must have been mid to late 1990s. Located in the Grosvenor Building, 1610 Sherbrooke West, north-west corner of the street.

Meeting Reg (RR) Skinner, mid-August 1974

Here I am with my old friend Reg (RR) Skinner (left) in the backyard of his home, "Boisville", at 7 Sandhurst Lane, Blackwater, Camberley, Surrey, England. It was mid-August 1974. I believe his German shepherd was named Czar. 

Discarded Personal Shrines

The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti wrote that the only thing spiritual about shrines is the spirituality invested in them by believers; this would be disputed by the many true believers. As an experiment he suggested making a little shrine at home and placing flowers or candles in front of it everyday, also maybe say a few words or prayers, and soon this will become a habit and you will believe in the spirituality of the shrine and whatever it was made to represent. Walking by this same personal shrine, as pictured, I noticed that it has already been discarded by whoever made it; it has fallen into disrepair and someone has placed garbage on it. Whatever made it special has disappeared.

Not sure why anyone bothers with this "personal shrine", it's hidden in the middle of some bushes at the City Farm Garden at the Loyola Campus of Concordia University. I walked there yesterday and the shrine (as I've been calling it) has been further broken up... here it is:

The Garden Myth

Bee balm in our garden, summer 2021

If there is a myth that speaks most directly to my experiences in life it is the Garden Myth, the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden. I first learned of this from William Blake by way of Northrop Frye; we have all fallen from the innocence of childhood into a dark forest of experience, a state of self-consciousness. What can be done about this? Is there redemption? Is there a religious experience that will free one from suffering? What is the answer? How do we do it? Christianity? Buddhism? Carl Jung? Krishnamurti? 

__________________

There is a mythological basis to all of my work; the work, the poetry, returns to a central story, a myth. A myth is also a way of looking at one's place in the cosmos, of finding one's spiritual place, of understanding one's life. Finding one's myth is not so much discovering something new as it is rediscovering something that is essential to one's inner life; a myth gives order to one's life, it explains events, it is the foundation of one's experienced life. A myth is the soul's story and the soul loves a narrative, specificity, and order. The Garden Myth, the fall from innocence into experience, is the basis of my writing.

 

W.B. Yeats's Grave, Sligo, Ireland, July 1978

Back in July 1978, I visited my friend R.R. Skinner at Boisville, his home in Camberley, England. We had first met a few years before, in August 1974, after I attended Krishnamurti's Gathering in Saanen, Switzland. After visiting with RR I planned to spend some time in Ireland and flew into Dublin, then after a day or two I took the train across Ireland to Galway and then on to Sligo. It not only rained, it poured rain the whole time I was there. I was miserable. One day I took a bus tour to the grave of W.B. Yeat's, that was probably the same day I also visited Lissidale House, where Yeats stayed in his youth. I did my research for this trip the way poets do their research, which is after the fact... this perhaps accounts for the dismal nature of my trip to Ireland. Years later I decided I would never visit a place where I didn't know somebody, or where I didn't have a reason for visiting (for instance, a conference). The life of the tourist is not for me, it is given to loneliness and self-consciousnss, constant travel, exhaustion, trying to maintain an interest in siteseeing when I'd prefer to be at home reading a book, and associating with some questionable people. It's all perfectly dreadful! So, this is the highlight of my trip to Ireland: Yeats's grave, including the church near his grave, and a Celtic Cross gravestone, all within close proximity to each other. Yeats is (perhaps) the greatest English language poet of the 20th Century.