After RR's mother passed away

                           

Could the young man, standing beside the coffin of Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner, 

be her son, RR Skinner? If you read newspaper reports of Mrs. Skinner's funeral (see previous

post), one describes the frenzied crowds outside the church, banging on the doors to gain entrance,

and just as RR described, when the funeral was over people entered and stripped the church for souvenirs. During the funeral two elderly, grey-haired, women guarded the doors (possibly the women above), and during the funeral the crowd forced the doors open, The Prophetess's husband, Mr. Arthur Skinner, and her sons left the side of the coffin to keep the crowd outside, mass hysteria was rampant! 

-o-

Here are my edited notes of what RR Skinner recalled of his mother, Elizabeth Mary Eagle Skinner (30 Aug. 1875 - 24 Nov. 1929):

His mother was a tall and imposing woman; possibly six feet tall. She would take a push cart and collect toys in the wealthy west end of London and then distribute them in the poor east end; no wonder there was such a large turnout for her funeral, people loved her as did her family. She started a church and took on the name of The Paracleta. Reg would be present at the church meetings and from this he began to learn about people's psychology; he learned how to "read" people and how to do psychic readings. RR's mother intended him to be her successor and to be a world teacher, she held this belief about him before his birth. Part of her church service was delivering the sacraments. The spirit she communicated with, or was a medium for, or who she channelled, was a North American Indian who was called Idvill. The Paracleta prophesied the coming of World War One and prepared for food shortages by filling large metal trunks with dried fruit. During her last ten years she lived in her church where she had a bedroom. When she died her followers stripped the church of its decorations and ornaments. 

. . . . .

The night RR’s mother died: RR went to his mother when he heard her laboured breathing, this was caused by asthma; Reg said, “No one dies of asthma”, but his mother died of asthma. She had asked for ice cream and RR, noticing it was by the fire, told her it had melted, it had been spoiled by the heat. He felt she was dying; later that night his sister, who was caring for their mother, called their father and RR. While the father put on his spats, moving slowly about his library, RR rushed to his mother's room. They were very close -- she had written to his future godmother, before RR was born, that he was to be the future avatar or world teacher and she trained RR on how to give psychic readings. Reaching her bedroom RR found her body in her bed, her head hanging to one side and mouth open. RR took a towel and tied it around her head closing her mouth; he remarked to me how detached he was when doing this. 

RR wonders why he developed throat cancer two years after his mother's passing. It was years later that he realized, and believed, that it may have been caused by his emotional repression of his mother's death; he believed because he did not speak of her passing, or of how close he had been to her, that this repression caused his throat cancer. A well-known Scottish doctor, whose specialty was cancer, removed the cancerous growth in his neck. He had a long convalescence and was not expected to survive the surgery. Fifty years later, sitting with Reg as he discussed this time in his life, he opened the collar of his shirt and showed me the scar where the doctor had operated. 

-o-

Welby Arthur Skinner (13 Nov. 1896 - 06 Dec. 1984) became the family head after their mother died. In the early years of the 20th Century he was invited to visit Czarist Russia to lecture on the new radio technology. The radio licence that the BBC holds was issued after Welby received his license. Welby was also a visual artist and a member of the Royal Academy of Artists; RR would deliver Welby's paintings to the Royal Academy's exhibitions. Finally, Welby was a dental surgeon with his office at 44 Harley Street West in London (this is still a dental office; as an aside, years ago when I was writing this narrative about RR Skinner I contacted the dentist who bought Welby's dental practise; what he said was that Welby arrived sitting in the back seat of his Rolls Royce, the Rolls will be mentioned again). When Welby went to fight in World War One, sending home watercolour post cards that he had painted, their mother temporarily took over his medical practise, performing extractions, fillings, and other dental operations. RR is missing several teeth because he allowed Welby to extract them for practise. (I have omitted RR's memories of his sister Joan and his brother Ronald). He remembered with fondness his two elderly sisters, Girlie and Doris. 

 ... Within six months of RR's mother's passing, his father (Arthur John Skinner, 11 June 1867 - 25 March 1953) was looking for a new wife. This was something of which Welby disapproved; Welby called a family meeting and had his father put out of the family home. RR had a photograph of his father sitting in a tiny London garden located behind the house of his father's second wife, he was a tiny lonely old man; RR's father had a daughter with his second wife.  When Flossie (Florence Skinner, 4 Oct. 1891 - 18 Feb. 1960), Welby's first wife, suffered a stroke in the late 1950s, RR went to visit them in London. Flossie sat in a chair by a window and Welby spoke of her condition in front of her, he said, "All she can do is shit and piss." RR was upset by Welby's crude comment; he visited Flossie afterwards and attempted to communicate with her. It was Welby's insensitivity that alienated RR from Welby. And then, after Flossie died, Welby remarried but RR never visited them and never met Welby's new wife and her son. 

During the 1930s RR worked for Nestle, possibly as a manager, and he spoke of firing numerous people; the other employees hated him so much that one day a hostile group of them waited for him at the entrance to the Nestle factory, but he seems to have intimidated them and the gang dispersed.

RR said that he had two adopted brothers, Eric and Victor. He had a sister, Ruthie, who failed to return home from school one day, it was believed she was kidnapped for she was never seen again; they adopted Victor to replace Ruthie. While RR and Welby went to public schools, to Aleyn's, Dulwich, where their father taught geography, another brother, Cyril, went to a council school because the family couldn’t afford a better school; Cyril had a working class accent and later worked for Welby as a helper. 

During the war RR said he worked as an air traffic controller. He mentioned that some British fighter planes, returning to the UK, would be shot down, these British planes were confused with enemy airplanes entering British airspace. RR was demobbed in 1945 and returned to civilian life to open a fix-it shop. He had married before the war and returned to married life, but he said the marriage was unhappy, they were constantly arguing. He and his wife had two children, both girls, but he seems to have had little contact with his ex-wife or his daughters. He left the marriage and re-enlisted and served for another five years; I think what he did during this period, 1945 - 1950, is that he visited German towns to root out remaining Nazi sympathizers. In 1950, without money, but with an allowance to retrain for civilian life, he took a short course in chiropody. He described living upstairs over a green grocer for six months, living on oat meal. Around this time he met Joan, his future common-law wife. In 1967 she discovered that she had cancer; five years later, when they were about to celebrate her fifth year of being cancer free, a new tumour was discovered. RR often spoke about Joan and how happy they were together. 

-o-

RR said that he was a healer; he kept file cards on his patients, his notation on each card was some kind of short hand or notation that only he could understand. And people came to see him, to talk, to have him put them in deep relaxation and try to locate the source of their ill health. A few times people came to the front door and just meeting RR seemed to help them and they left. RR felt that people needed to enter the stream of life but how was this to be done? RR is not alone when he says that destroying the old allows something new to be born, in this sense being destructive is allowing for what is new to exist. Once, I asked him to summarize his teaching. He said there were two things he had observed, these would help people enter the stream of life: the first was that the other person came first and, the second is that one's thoughts were always wrong, if you thought you knew something then you were wrong in your thinking. I could understand the first of these but the second somewhat eluded me except that, sometimes, the more I am firmly committed to a point of view, that I am convinced of something, the greater the possibility that I am wrong. I remember repeating these two points to RR and he said he didn't remember saying these things, although they were interesting ideas and they seemed like something he would say. He said that he would add something else to the list, that we must give what we have, freely and without thought for ourselves or for the future. He said that ideas and thoughts will get you nowhere, the stream of life has to come to you, life has to come to you for "you" are just an idea with no reality, but an accumulation of thoughts and memories. Life is constantly moving and changing and we cannot make permanent that which is impermanent. The stream of life is constantly changing and new.

-o-

I remember the following episode very clearly. It was towards the end of my last visit with RR. 

...Now RR referred to himself as being old and what a comfort this was for him. One morning, before Peggy arrived, we walked through a housing estate and gotr lost. A very old woman, bent and thin with age, was walking her equally old dog. RR went up to the dog and affectionately, "I think you're naughty, I think you're a naughty girl." The old woman laughed and said, "Yes, aren't all of us women naughty." RR and she smiled and chattered, old age was a blessing. 

-o-

A few years later (around 1987 - 1988) when I was back in Canada, I had a phone call from Reg; I had some difficulty understanding what he was saying because, as he informed me, he had had a stroke. He said that the stroke was a blessing. A few years later he moved into a nursing home. I had the address at the time, but RR was no longer able to correspond, he said that writing letters had ended for him. I looked up the residence on Google Street View to see what it looked like, it seemed to be someone's home. Sue, RR's companion for a number of years, said that Reg stayed in his upstairs bedroom, he wasn’t interested in socializing with the other residents.  

-o- 

I’ve just found these photographs in a box of old photos; they might be of interest.

Sue Fairless (?) and RR

Reg and Czar

Beach huts; walking to Bognor Regis

In Felpham, William Blake’s home from 1800 to 1803; my finger on lense

Walking from Felpham to Bognor Regis

Reg’s dog, Czar

Here is Ley Road; unrelated to this road`s name,
ley lines cross and crisscross the UK

 

Visiting 

St. Mary's, Felpham

View from St. Mary’s, Felpham, Felpham Road

St. Mary's, Felpham

-o-

Peggy Lake and Reg Skinner with pendulum for dowsing

Miniature painting (3 1/2" X 3 1/2"), a present to me from Peggy Lake
who lived near RR after he moved to Felpham, Peggy was RR's sister-in-law; 
inscription on verso: "To Steven, A small memento of your visit Aug/Sept 84
with good wishes to you and your family. Peggy"

One day, RR and I visited Joan's sister, Peggy Lake, who lives near Felpham, in Yapton. Peggy has a small row house in a fairly new development. Peggy said, "When Joan was dying I held her hand. Joan said that she saw birds at her feet and she was talking to them, then she said ‘have I harmed anyone?’” and died. Sitting in Peggy`s living or reception room, one is surrounded by knick knacks, her paintings, books, and family photos. There is one photograph of RR and Joan together; they are sitting beneath a tree, Joan with no expression, looking very tired, while RR is smiling. Peggy said, "Ìt's not a good photograph of Joan; it was taken the summer before she died." RR, when speaking with Peggy, was nervous, he spoke quickly and he was not at ease; while he spoke of the same things he discussed with me -- "things appertaining", auras, evolution, and dowsing, Krishnamurti, for instance -- he was not at ease. He assumed a formality that Peggy accepted as RR's way. They have known each other for almost thirty-five years but RR said they have never been especially close. Peggy thinks of RR as an eccentric; she does not approve of everything he says or does, but she keeps her judgements to herself. 

-o-

… And in the End: I met Reg Skinner in August 1974. At the end of that month I returned to Montreal and spent two years at McGill University earning my Master of Arts degree; upon graduating I was hired to teach English at Champlain Regional College, I taught there for thirty-five years. I corresponded with RR for about fifteen years. I married in August 1976, the marriage ended in 1989; I have one son. In April 1978 I spent a month with Pat McCarty and we drove from Oakland, California, to Baja California; we attended Krishnamurti's Talks in Ojai, California, that April 1978. I first met Pat in Switzerland for Krishnamurti's Talks in 1974; Pat also met RR Skinner at the same time as I did. Pat McCarty died, in Florida in 2008, he was only 60 years old; Pat McCarty was born on 21 January 1947, the same birthdate as Carolyn Zonailo, my second wife; Carolyn and I have been together since the end of May 1991. I heard Krishnamurti speak at the Felt Forum, MSG, in New York City around 1984. After about twelve years since we met at Saanen for Krishnamurti’s talks, I met Sally (Lake) McKenzie at RR's home in Felpham in 1986. I published books of poetry and criticism. I retired from teaching in 2012; now, I consider myself retired from most things. All those years ago...

After Attending Krishnamurti's Talks in July 1974

In the fall of 1973

I had no real plans for my future after I graduated from university in 1973; with no plans and no ambition it was a fairly aimless time that followed. But I did have two interests, one was writing poetry, the other were the writings of the Indian teacher J. Krishnamurti who had once been a famous speaker, a famous guru, but by 1973 his fame had somewhat faded. It was only by chance that I came across Krishnamurti’s writings, there is a chapter on Krishnamurti in Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life, and this is possibly where I first heard of Krishnamurti. I also remember hearing and visiting Swami Shyam who was popular in Montreal in the early 1970s, I was one of many who received a mantra from him. I was one of the young seekers, just a face in a crowd, who visited Geof Stirling’s house where Swami Shyam was staying. But I was never a follower, never a believer, never a joiner of groups or organizations, I never have been and I’m still not. I think what Krishnamurti was to me was therapy, not really learning about spiritual ideals but learning about myself. After I received a mantra from Swami Shyam I sat every night for about three months repeating it but by early 1973 I was wary of mantras, swamis, and meditation; but it wasn't just Krishnamurti who dissuaded me from following a guru, it was my own innate disbelief in gurus and the people who followed them. Krishnamurti didn't want you be a follower or believe in anything, he wanted people to think for themselves. The months of late 1973 and early 1974, after graduating from university, dragged on and in the spring of 1974 I decided to go to Saanen, Switzerland, to attend Krishnamurti’s public talks given there every year; at the time I still didn't know anybody who was interested in Krishnamurti's teachings or in Krishnamurti. One of my professors had become a Tibetan Buddhist and published a book length poem on Milarepa, I think his complaint was that Krishnamurti was too intellectual for him, too lacking ritual, but this is what I always liked about Krishnamurti, that he was not a part of the guru industry being exported to the West by India and Tibet. So, in early July 1974, I flew from Montreal to Zurich and from there I took a train to Sannen which is about two miles from Gstaad, a holiday resort for wealthy people. I think it was my first day there that I met Patrick McCarty, who was from California, and Sally Lake, from England. The three of us, Pat, Sally, and myself, became friends and between attending Krishnamurti’s Talks we travelled a bit, for instance to Lake Maggiore; at the end of the Talks we decided that we would meet again in the UK; perhaps it was only a week or ten days later when we met at Sally’s mother’s home in Crowborough and we planned to meet Sally's uncle, Reg Skinner, of whom Sally often spoke; Reg was also interested in Krishnamurti, and he seemed to be someone worth meeting.  

      

This is Reg Skinner's home, Boisville, located at 7 Sandhurst lane, Blackwater,
Camberley. Photo from Google Street View

Meeting RR                                      

It was in mid-August 1974 that I met Reg (Reginald Rice) Skinner, or RR, at his home in Blackwater, near Camberley. Reg had retired the previous year, he had worked as a chiropodist (not, as he told me, affiliated with the NHS) with his surgery at his home and he was about 66 years old. Joan, Reg’s common law wife, had died of cancer in 1972 and he recounted to me his married life with her. Reg's home, Boisville, was named by the contractors who built it about forty years before and it had been given to Reg and Joan by their friend and the previous owner of the house, Mrs. Scott, with whom Reg and Joan lived, and who was affectionately named Mu; Mu had worked for the post office and now, in her mid-eighties, she lived in a residence, near Tekels Park, in Camberley. It occurs to me only now that Joan must have been the sister of Sally’s father who had died when Sally was young, she referred to RR as Uncle Reg. Boisville is pronounced “boy’s ville” and not “bois ville” with a French pronunciation; the “boys” having been the contractors who built that particular house. It was a white stucco building with a small garage beside it that was used as a workshop. There were a few topics that preoccupied RR, among them was his brother, Welby Skinner, his mother who had also been a spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, Joan, beekeeping, and his own life experiences; but what interested him the most were “things appertaining”, his term for understanding life in its complexity and depth. Everything eventually devolved to “things appertaining”. I was to hear a lot about these topics from Reg.

Stephen Morrissey (right) with Reg Skinner in the garden at Boisville,
Camberley,  26 August 1974

      

Reg Skinner 

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.

The synchronicity of dates

It's mid-January 2020 and winter has set in, it's -18 C today. So far, the winter hasn't been all that bad, meaning that while we've had some snow the temperature has hovered around -5 C to + 2 or 3 C. That has now ended... 

In my experience important events happen in clusters of dates, these are meaningful for specific people; there is a synchronicity of dates. For instance, two friends were born on January 15; they are Audrey Keyes (Veeto) who died last October, she was my first friend in life, someone I knew from age four or five. The second friend was Artie Gold who I met in the early 1970s, Artie was my first poet friend. Artie died in February 2007. A third friend, Paul Leblond, was born on January 16; he died suddenly in 2015. My friend Pat McCarty, with whom I traveled the length of California and down into Baha California in April 1976, died eleven years ago, on January 18, 2007. Pat was a truly lovely person and I still miss him. Note added on 31 August, 2022: I've just learned that Pat McCarty's birthday is January 21 (not sure of the year, possibly 1947); this is the same date as my wife's birthday, she was born on 21 January. A final date, January 14, 1965 is when I began keeping a diary, something I have done on a daily basis since then, it has changed my life, it has helped to fulfill my life. All of these significant occurrences are clustered around the mid-January dates. 

And now we turn to winter! Mid-January winter photographs. 

Here are photos taken yesterday, on Greene Avenue in Westmount and then on the drive home along Cote St. Antoine Road.

Pinocchio outside the old Nicholas Hoare Bookstore on Greene Avenue

Walking along Greene Avenue

The Bistro on the Avenue is gone; we had many happy times there over the years, dinners with friends and family and with fellow members of the C.G. Jung Society of Montreal

Years ago the old Westmount post office, on the corner of Greene Avenue and Blvd. de Maisonneuve  was closed and then made into boutiques, stores

This is Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, Leonard Cohen's family synagogue; it is where
his song "You Want it Darker" was recorded

Murray Hill Park; I suppose the green snow fencing is intended to keep people
from tobogganing down the hill

Fire Station/Caserne 34 between Decarie and Girouard

That's St. Augustine Catholic Church on the right, just after Girouard Avenue;
the church closed and it is now River Side Church 

That's the Loyola Campus of Concordia University, almost at the end of
Sherbrooke Street West, almost home