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...

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.

Remembering Veeto

When I was growing up on Oxford Avenue, in the mid-1950s, Veeto was the little girl next door who was my first friend in life. We moved from Oxford in 1963 and while I heard a few things about Veeto, that she had moved to Australia, it wasn’t until around 2006 that we met again. She was an extraordinary person, one of the important people in my life. I will never forget dear Veeto.

    Photos of Veeto (Audrey Keyes) taken on 30 June 2009 at Cote des Neiges Cemetery, Montreal. Veeto's mother died in February 2008 and the funeral was a few months later; these photos were taken probably the following summer, in 2010. Both of Veeto's parents died on February 28th, her mother in 2008, her father years before.

 

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

Barbara Whitley, 1918-2018

The Pond at Westmount Park, 1916, Notman photograph

I met Barbara Jane Whitley by chance, it was in October 2011 at the memorial service for F.R. Scott at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church in downtown Montreal. I was researching one of the "lost" Beaver Hall artists, Darrell Morrisey (no relation), and although Miss Whitley never met Darrell she had been a friend of other members of Darrell's family. Now Barbara Whitley is gone and gone as well are her memories of Stephen Leacock and other writers and artists of a long passed era. Barbara Whitley was two years younger than my mother, and it was my mother who told me that a Colonel Morrisey had phoned her in 1940 asking if we were related to their family and also looking for family history information. None of the dots were connected until Evelyn Walters contacted me in 2010 regarding Darrell, who I had never heard of, but I realized that Colonel Morrisey was the older brother of Darrell. Sounds complicated but it really isn't. A lot of coincidences came together; it was a celebration of art, history, and synchronicity! The essay, "Darrell Morrisey, A forgotten Beaver Hall artist", is online at archive dot org. 

Updated on 31 August 2022: It was October 2011 when I was at St. James the Apostle Anglican Church for the F.R. Scott event; not sure if I had seen T.S. Morrisey's name on a plaque at the church at this point, which is when I met, by chance, Barbara Whitley; just on a hunch I asked her if she knew T.S. Morrisey who was also, at one time, a parishioner at this church and she replied that she had known him. I asked her about his younger sister, Darrell, but she didn't remember ever meeting her. She suggested going to Knolton to find, if possible, the lost painting by Darrell; Miss Whitley's attitude re. Darrell was pragmatic, if her paintings were all "lost" then maybe she wasn't that good an artist. 

Here is the obituary as published in the Montreal Gazette:

BARBARA JANE WHITLEY

1918-2018

Following a life of extraordinary involvement, generosity and devotion to her family and community, Barbara Jane Whitley quietly passed away at home on Friday, May 18th, in her 101st year.

Barbara, the only child of Ernest Whitley and Gertrude McGill, was a lifelong Montrealer. She attended The Study and went on to earn a degree at McGill University. Here she attracted the attention of famed humourist Stephen Leacock, who invited her to join him on his popular radio broadcasts. This experience ignited her lifelong love for theatre and her talent as a thespian. This passion carried on though her decades-long involvement with the Centaur Theatre and with Geordie Productions. Who could forget one of her final roles, as one of the poisonous sisters in ?Arsenic and Old Lace?? All who were fortunate enough to have known Barbara will also remember her as a captivating story teller and great orator.

Barbara's enduring legacy is her steadfast support of numerous Montreal institutions, both as a volunteer and as a philanthropist. Her community involvement began in the Second World War, when she served with the Canadian Red Cross. She then took on leadership roles within the Women?s Canadian Club and the Junior League.

As a philanthropist, Barbara supported numerous causes, including St. James the Apostle Church and McGill University. In honor of her father, she established the Whitearn Foundation, which supports research of diseases of the eye. She was a devoted ?old girl? and loyal supporter of The Study, co-establishing the school?s Foundation in 1973. 

Barbara's most notable contribution was her 70 plus years of service to the Montreal General Hospital, where she served as president of the Auxiliary and was the first woman ever to serve on the hospital's executive committee. In recognition of her incredible service, she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award from the MUHC in 2016. 

Barbara never sought recognition for her generosity. However, her long list of honors and awards cannot be overlooked. Most notably, in 1992 she received an honorary doctorate from McGill University, in 2004 the Governor General's Caring Canadian Award, and in 2013 the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for her outstanding contribution to the community.

Barbara left a lasting impression on all who came to know her. She will be deeply missed by her adoring family and friends, many of whom gathered to celebrate her 100th birthday on April 8. Her family extends a special thank you to Dr. David Mulder, for his care and friendship.

"The most truly generous persons are those who give silently without hope of praise or reward." (Carol Ryrie Brink)

Funeral services will be held at Mount Royal Cemetery Complex (1297 Chemin de la Foret) entrance only possible through the Outremont Gate due to closing of Camillien-Houde) on Saturday June 9th at 11 am. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made in memory of Barbara Whitley to the Montreal General Hospital Foundation. Donate online: http://www.mghfoundation.com/en/donate-now/give-in-honour, call (514) 934-8230 or mail your donation to the MGH Foundation, 1650 Cedar Avenue, E6-129, Montreal, Quebec, H3G 1A4.

Barbara Whitley

Published in the Montereal Gazette:.http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/montrealgazette/obituary.aspx?n=barbara-jane-whitley&pid=189093990

On Dreams, Poetry, and the Soul

I always assumed that everyone had “big dreams” at some time in their life. Everyone dreams but most people don’t listen to their dreams, they forget them as soon as they wake, or if the dream is remembered it is either ignored or sloughed off. They don’t want to be disturbed by dreams, or by re-visioning their life, or by becoming more conscious, or by the discomfort of psychological insight. This is how poets think: they allow for the presence of dreams as a form of communication from the unconscious, and the dream is then listened to.

----------------

God communicates to people in two ways: through angels and through our dreams. If you want to communicate with God, or receive a message from God, then be open to your dreams. Dreams coming from God are the “big dreams”, and we may have only a few of these during our whole life. Dreams have some interest for poets and artists, dreams are psychic collages juxtaposing images that one would probably never put together. They are of interest in an aesthetic sense, as a curiosity, and importantly for therapists as a door into the psyche of their client. Discussing a dream is a way—an entrance, a door—into the psyche, it is a catalyst for discussion. Surrealism as a movement grew out of Freud’s positioning of dream interpretation as an important part of therapeutic work. The Surrealists were more fascinated by the dream as an aesthetic event than by its therapeutic value. Dreams, then, as life changing events, can be an important aspect of how poets think; as well, dream imagery can be transformed into a poem.
----------------

Two other minor examples of poetic thinking: when I returned to live in the neighbourhood where I grew up, I would regularly see people who I used to see in the streets when I was young. They were not older versions of themselves, they were the same people that I used to see, as though, over the intervening years, they had never changed. I no longer see these people, they seem to have departed, where they have gone to I don’t know, but I would often see them, just as they were so many years ago. A second example: I have always believed that when we think of someone we used to know, but have lost contact with them, and they suddenly come to mind, for no reason at all, at that same moment they are thinking of us. For example, sometimes we think of an old friend with whom we have lost contact and then, only a few seconds later, the phone rings and it is the person we have been thinking of. Synchronicity reminds us that there is some kind of cohesion and meaning in life if we can see it.
----------------

It is the essence of the shamanic journey that what is perceived is not a product of the imagination but is “real”. The important thing is the experience in which our awareness and consciousness is not always subject to cause and effect. Dreams juxtapose images that are usually not associated with each other. In essence, the dream is a collage or a "cut-up" (see Brion Gysin). Dreams fascinate us when they open the door of archetypal association. A door, for instance, allows us to enter a room, but a "door" for William Blake is an image opening our awareness and our perception of the symbolical world of the psyche. Almost two hundred years later Jim Morrison resonated to Blake's perception and the music of The Doors followed, music that is shamanic and archetypal.
----------------

Dreams, Tarot cards, Sabian Symbols, the Aquarian Symbols, archetypal images, paintings by Odilon Redon, Magritte, and others, photographs by Man Ray, all help open an entrance into the deeper levels of the psyche. At this deeper level we become conscious of people, we can explore events that were formerly left unconscious, and a narrative becomes available to the conscious mind. I would include fairy tales and mythology as ways to access the unconscious mind.

----------------

Poetry deals with the soul and soul making. Just about any subject can be transformed into poetry, but a poet’s soul is needed for this transformation of the everyday into poetry. The poet is the soul's alchemist. Poetry is transformation. Dreams are another form of alchemy; they transform everyday reality into an expression of the psyche or the soul, and these dreams can sometimes give us access into our own souls.

                                                                                                     

For those born on February 6th

When I heard that Gord Downie was born on February 6th I knew he was even more genuinely extraordinary than I originally thought. He also wrote one of my favourite songs , "The Poets", performed by The Tragically Hip. Who else is born on the 6th? Louis Dudek on February 6,1918, poet and McGill professor, who transformed Canadian poetry and also discovered Leonard Cohen and published Cohen's first book of poetry. Also the astrologer Axel Harvey, born in 1940, whose first wife was descended from Aaron Burr, and Aaron Burr was also born on February 6th. Ilona Martonfi, another poet, born on the 6th of February, she has bravely re-visioned her life through poetry and gone deeply into the interior. There is also my cousin, Herb Morrissey, born on February 6th 1938 in the Town of Mount Royal; Herb was a magician and businessman, founder of Morrissey Magic, and a truly unique man, loved and admired and missed by many.

This just in today: when I was growing up we used to spend the summer at a summer cottage in St. Eustache, QC, across the street from my grandmother, my Auntie Mable, and my Uncle Alex and Auntie Ivy. They were wonderful years. Next door to our cottage was where the writer Joseph Schull lived, in a cottage where he wrote behind his mother's house. Thinking back on it Joseph Schull was the first writer that I was aware of and I'm thinking of reading a few of his historical novels. He was born in North Dakota but grew up in Canada, he died in Montreal on 19 May 1980. He was born on February 6, 1906. 

"Holy Wells" in Ireland and Montreal

Recently, on Ireland's RTĒ television, there was a presentation on "holy wells" in that country. A "holy well" is not only a place where you can get water, it is also a sacred place. Many holy wells were originally sacred among pagans and then, when Ireland became Christian, the population assimilated the wells into their Christian faith; this is a fairly common occurrence, churches were built on the remains of pagan temples, and pagan or Celtic holidays were reconfigured into similar Christian holy days.

The history of holy wells reaches back to pagan time, perhaps 5,000 years, a time long before Christianity reached Ireland. There are approximately three thousand holy wells in Ireland where they are known as places of healing; one might visit a holy well to ask for help with a specific problem, or to give thanks that a problem, whether physical or spiritual, has already been resolved.

The holy well is a visible and physical manifestation of mythological, or archetypal and spiritual thinking; it a place where nature presents evidence of the existence of the divine in our lives.

I have been interested in holy wells for many years. The discussion that follows on holy wells also gives some background to the Prologue to Girouard Avenue as well present information on holy wells in our environment. Here is the Prologue in its entirety:

1. The Ancient Well of Ara

There is a well in Tipperary
visited by my ancestors
before they left for Canada.
They said, “This is a place
of sleep and dreams—
drink from the well
and know the mystery
of life.”

Looking down to the water
at the well’s bottom,
they saw the reflected sky
the size and roundness
of a coin with the emblem
of a bird.

On Main Street
where the well
is located, not long
after ships left harbour
and famine crossed the land
a wooden top was fitted
to the ancient well,
the water cold and still
beneath the earth’s surface.

2. The Forgotten Spring

In the big city, at the beginning
of a new millennium, in a park,
the corner of Doherty and Fielding,
where water gathers on the path,
asphalt lifted, broken,
a place always wet
as though it rained last night
although it didn’t, with a seven story
apartment building on one corner
and low-cost apartments across the street,
where six young men stand and talk
on a Sunday morning in summer—
these are not the ancient fields
but a city park where water
rises on either side of a path
from an underground spring,
reminding us of what we used to know,
but have forgotten—the water
insistent, forceful, always desiring wholeness.

Before writing this poem I read very briefly about the ancient well Ara, located in Tipperary. That a wooden top had been placed on it, sealing the well, seemed a good metaphor for the ending of one age, the age of shamanic and visionary consciousness, the age of Bardic poetry and an apprehension of reality that includes that which might not be visible to the naked eye but still exists on some other level of awareness. That age, when the Other World could be more easily penetrated to, ended for most people and emblematic of this ending is placing a top on the well.

Having said all of this, it was interesting to hear on this RTĒ programme that some Irish who were leaving for North America visited, before they left, a holy well. I don’t know, in fact, if this is what my own family members did before coming to Canada in 1837, but I envisioned them doing just that. Creativity, imagination, this might explain my having written this about them, but there is also ancestral memory, whether it is in our physical makeup or in our personality, our genetic makeup, or what have you. I place this “coincidence,” this synchronicity, to ancestral memory.

The next section of the prologue moves us from 1837 to present times. It is over 150 years later, now we are in Montreal, and street names in this area of Nôtre Dame de Grace (NDG), a predominantly English-speaking neighbourhood in westend Montreal, reflect the Irish presence that once existed here. Nearby is Loyola College, founded by Irish Catholics, but since 1973 Loyola has been a part of Concordia University. Many Irish moved to this part of the city so their children could attend Loyola High School and then Loyola College. However, most of the Irish who lived here in the 1940and 1950s have moved away. This neighbourhood was their destination back then, from working class Pointe St. Charles, Verdun, and Griffintown, to Nôtre Dame de Grace, and now the children and grandchildren of these people are scattered across Montreal, Canada, the United States, and beyond.

I used to walk up Belmore to Chester and then continue to Fielding, and walk along the grassy meridian at this part of Fielding. Across the street is Ignatius Loyola Park that covers two city blocks, so it is a huge expanse. Then I would walk by the corner of Fielding and Doherty and one spring day I noticed water running from the park, it ran down an asphalt path from where the baseball diamond was located and into a sewer on Fielding. The asphalt was lifting as water would run along it, and I wondered about this water and where it came from. I remember seeing this water, and there was a lot of it, and noticing how the asphalt bulged and cracked due to the water running under it, freezing, then lifting up the asphalt as it thawed. Every spring there was water there, and it wasn’t from snow melting, it wasn’t run-off from snow melting in the park. Eventually I found the source of the water, it came from a spring locatged behind the baseball diamond on the Doherty side of the park. I intuitively understood what I had found and the significance of this water, this spring. As I walked passed it I knew I was in the presence of more than just water, I was in the presence of something holy.

(You can see this area: go to Google Maps, search “Doherty and Fielding, Montreal,” and then do a “street view” and you’ll see the repair work to the sidewalk due to the run-off from the well.)

There are many underground streams in NDG--they have all been paved over--and the foundations of many homes are being repaired due to damage caused by water from underground streams. NDG was once a place of farms, for instance Benny Farm which became a housing development in the late 1940s for soldiers returning from World War Two. Where we lived on Montclair Avenue had been apple orchards until the house where we lived was built in the late 1940s. Family members used to go for walks along the old Western Avenue (now Boulevard de Maisonneuve West) which was a dirt road, that was back in the early 1940s; they’d walk from Girouard to Hampton. Near where I grew up on Oxford Avenue, along Côte St. Luc Road, we used to play in the fields where apartment buildings were later constructed; until a few years ago there was an old farm house on the corner of Dufferin and Cote St. Luc Road. When I was growing up we were always looking for some nature, some fields, to play in; there were lanes to walk in, behind people's homes, and it seems there was still quite a bit of undeveloped property back then, but you had to work to find it.

I was aware of underground streams in this area of Montreal, all of them paved over or buildings constructed over them. This particular well in Loyola Park, what I have called a holy well, had managed to penetrate the earth covering it and for some years, at specific times of the year, water would run down the asphalt path. You could see the water coming from the earth and others knew of this well. Indeed, a few years ago, when walking through Loyola Park, and passing where the well was located, I noticed that the City of Montreal had made this specific area, where the well existed, into an ecological reserve, they had put a fence around it, planted flowers and some other plants that thrive in wet areas, and encouraged the return of nature. Not much came of this as water was abundant in spring but by the middle of summer it would dry up. It also upset local residents who were concerned that mosquitoes would lay eggs in standing water, they were concerned with West Nile disease. Apparently, some of these people went with buckets and removed the water that was present. I don’t know if there is much left of this well-meaning, but failed, experiment by the City.

What constitutes a "holy well"? We used to drive some distance to an artesian well by a roadside, there were usually several other cars parked there and people filling large containers of water from this well. At first glance, I don't think of that well as being "holy." I think two things can make a well "holy," either found together or separately. First, there is some agreement, some consensus among people, that a certain place is holy. Perhaps miracles can be attributed to the place, or some other supernatural occurences that help form an idea among people that the well has extraordinary powers. Second, a place, a well for example, may be located on a ley line, a place where earth energy may be more abundant than at other places; this example doesn't rely on any consensus of opinion. Perhaps you have walked in nature and suddently felt that you were in a place that was different, more serene or imbued with a quality of silence, or that created a quality of silence in your own mind, and that this space was somehow sacred. I have encountered these places, for instance St. Patrick's Basilica in Montreal is one such place; another, more remote, is an abandoned farm on a slight hill near where we used to live. When I would visit this place I knew that there was something different--spiritual, sacred, holy--that wasn't present elsewhere.