At the Rose Garden (2)

At the Rose Garden

Trees on UBC Campus (3)

Trees on UBC Campus (2)

From August 11, 2010

More rowan trees...

From August 9, 2010

From August 9, 2010

The rowan tree tells us to embrace the future and our vision of life

Rowan trees in Vancouver

You don't see many rowan trees in Montreal but they are common in Vancouver. The abundance of the rowan berries and their deep orange colour make it a particularly visible tree, it stands out among all of the other trees. And it must have always stood out from other trees, it was important to the Celts who gave it added significance as a source of divination. The rowan also suggested to the Celts the presence of the divine in the mundane.

Often, when the unconscious mind makes itself heard, it is when we have passed through a significant time in one's life, a time of change, or insight, or struggle. This may happen when we become aware of messages from dreams, or some other experience occurs, a series of synchronistic experiences, a period of creativity, or an experience of the divine, of God communicating to us. Perhaps we are not aware of the significance of what is happening when it is happening, but it is clear later on that one has passed through a important event in one's life. This is what the rowan tree suggests to me when I place it in the context of what I have written and done this summer, it confirms to me the psychic importance of this summer.

Despite even my own expectations and idea of myself, I have always embraced the future, believed in the future and believed in going where life may take me. I may seem fairly conservative but that's my persona; in fact, I have not really lived a conservative life at all. I have had an introverted and mental life, a life of creativity and deeply felt emotions, a life of poetry, teaching, partnership with my wife, family, and a lifelong relationship with God. The rowan tree, whether fully grown on a residential street in Vancouver, or not much bigger than a shrub on Spanish Bank Beach also here in Vancouver, reminds me of this lesson in life: we need to embrace the future and speak our vision of life no matter how few people agree with us. This is what life is all about if you want to live fully.

Dream Journeys: Greenpoint

Dr. William P. Morrissey, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC

Greenpoint

“Are we in Greenpoint?” I asked, looking
at maps of Brooklyn.
Once I looked at old photographs of Greenpoint,
it was prosperous then, and now I leave
the room I am renting for a tour of the area
on my bike. I recognize the buildings
and monuments but they are all larger
than expected. There is city hall,
dirty from years of car and truck exhaust,
then an empty lot where grass seed was being watered.
I enter a tunnel leading to where my relatives
lived in Greenpoint; there is a large church
at the end of their street, the church roof
has collapsed. Two men
stand on a crowded street corner,
“The air here is bad,” I say to them,
“as soon as you leave the tunnel
it is smokey, polluted, everything here
is run-down, poor.” One man says
he’s moving a few blocks
to get out of the area.
I think of visiting the church,
what is left behind.

After Monet

Two short videos of the effect of light on water. Both filmed at the Nitobe Memorial Gardens on the campus of UBC, July 11, 2010. Homage to the master, Claude Monet (1840 - 1926).

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

4) Bleak House

This will always be Bleak House to me,
Dickensian in its silence and shame.
A place where
I retreated
to a second floor room
and lay low,
as animals do when
they are being stalked.

What binds us to
our silent jailors?
They are shadows or a mirror
cracked diagonally, held
in its wooden frame by dust
and the weight of glass shards
wedged together. A single breath
or movement would disturb
this broken mirror,
send it crashing to the floor.

But these relationships survive;
none of us want to end the complex
arrangement of shards of mirror
resting on broken mirror;
we are dependent
on each other
to maintain the hope
that one day
we might find love.
We stay afraid and alone,
become liars, dissemblers;
even if we escape Bleak House
we still have our secret name,
written in invisible ink,
in a passport: Castrato,
Benedict Arnold, Fools’ Pope.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

3) Oxford Avenue

I arrive at Oxford Avenue
where I grew up;
at the front door
a man’s corpse
sits in an upright position,
as though he had died
in the midst of pausing
to think or remember something.

We come and go all day
and I worry about a neighbour
discovering the corpse,
there are already flies
circling around his head
and I need to do other things
than worry about his being discovered.

Later, a sheet is placed
over the corpse, as one would cover a sofa
or armchair for the summer months
when away in the country,
or how I remember
the furniture in Grandmother’s
living room, a white sheet
on the maroon couch.

We come and go all day
but he remains at the door,
a sentinel or sleeping guard
to remind me of something I’ve forgotten.
I worry about the smell,
the flies, the signs of decomposition,
and the police arriving.

When I return that evening
he is gone and I am relieved:
but who was this corpse?
Could he have been Father,
or someone I have forgotten
or never knew, the white sheet
a shroud, like a body
found in the frozen north,
preserved by the cold,
lips pulled back, grinning
yellow wolf’s teeth.

Shamanic animals for suburbia

Here are some shamanic animals for people living in suburbia, found in Zeller's at Oakridge Mall in Vancouver.

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

2) Visiting Great Aunt Edna

I return to Girouard Avenue
to visit Great Aunt Edna,
the only one of three elderly sisters
still alive and residing
at Grandmother’s flat.
She was Grandmother’s
youngest sister, a Sweeney
who married a Taylor
and lived only blocks
from where I now live,
with her husband Bert,
and Howard, their son,
who had some grievance
against his parents
and moved far away
from Montreal because of it.

But first the car’s gear shift
comes off in my hand
and trying to repair it,
I crawl into the car’s body
to screw the gear shift
back in place,
and discover the car
is a wooden vessel,
a web of slats
covered with plywood,
almost paper thin
for lightness.

We arrive at the Girouard Avenue 

flat to find garbage cans
by the curb. Aunt Edna
is not home. Inside there is
a third story staircase
I didn’t know existed;
it has windows facing the street.
The rooms off the stairs
are bright with natural light.
I wonder if they are heated
in winter or if sunlight
is enough to heat these rooms.
There is no sign of anyone here,
how quiet and serene
to walk through these empty rooms,
where three old ladies lived
and now only one remains.

Montreal and Vancouver, the two best cities in Canada

Here are final photographs of honey bees in Vancouver, this time on the UBC campus overlooking Chancellor Road near the Chan Centre parkade.

What we love about cities in the east, history, access to culture, a feeling of man's presence for decades and in some instances for centuries, is not found in Vancouver. Of course, there is "culture" here, but the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts or the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, or the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, are all superior to the Vancouver Art Gallery and comparing them isn't fair. You don't go to Vancouver for "culture." Vancouver is a very young city compared to most eastern cities.

Only a "young" place, Vancouver and British Columbia, would have on their license plates "The Best Place on Earth." On the other hand, on Quebec's license plate you'll find "Je Me Souviens" which means "I remember myself," and refers to remembering the past, looking backwards, the ethnocentric side of French Quebec which would sacrifice the future in order to hang on to the old, the past, what has been, what never was, including all the perceived injustices, the desire to separate from the Rest of Canada, and so on. BC's license plate is young, naive, and annoying; Quebec's license plate is representative more of people off the Island of Montreal; Montreal has always been a city of tolerance of other people. 

There is a connection between Vancouver and Montreal, maybe it's a spiritual connection. You'll find evidence of spirituality just about anywhere you go in Montreal--it is, after all, "Ville Marie," the City of Mary--and spirituality seems to emanate from the very heart and being of Montreal, past, present, and future. Visiting Montreal you'll see Mount Royal with an illuminated cross at the eastern side of the mountain, the Oratory, St. Patrick's Basilica, the many churches that are found in every neighbourhood, and so on. Vancouver's spirituality is in nature, whether the mountains that can be seen from just about any part of Vancouver, the mild climate, the ocean, Pacific Spirit Park, Stanley Park, honey bees in lavender beds on Cornwall Street or at UBC, there is a quality of spirituality here that comes directly from the close proximity of nature. 

Dream Journeys: The Journey Home

The Cedars, 1983

The Journey Home

1) On my Fifty-Second Birthday

I have returned, on foot,
to the Cedars, the country house
where I lived almost twenty years
before returning to the city.
It is cold outside and the yard
is littered with cardboard boxes
and broken farm equipment.
As I approach the house
I wonder how the new owners
will receive me: perhaps
they are still angry
at discovering thousands
of bats living in the attic, as they
complained about this
after they moved in.
How could country people
not have expected bats
or even mice
in a country house?
But they seem not to notice
my presence, and they appear
nice enough. I am like a ghost here
walking from room to room
while these people
talk, eat, and are oblivious
to me. These new owners
have put in big windows,
the rooms are larger now,
walls have been removed
and a smaller, more efficient
wood stove installed.
The house is messy,
beds unmade,
some rooms not used at all
just containing junk.
This is my old home,
but there is nothing left
of my having lived here.

Visiting the Mystic Beast in 2010

Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia.

The "Mystic Beast", from the rear of the building.

What I call the "Mystic Beast is a Northwest coast Nimpkish wood sculpture of a human figure, made around 1893.

Since last May, I've been living on the campus of the University of British Columbia. One of my "neighbours" is the Museum of Anthropology, with its world famous display of artwork by indigenous people from the coastal area of British Columbia.

It was back in the early 1990s that I discovered, at the MOA, a sculpture I called the "Mystic Beast," and in 1997 published a book of poems with this title.

Living on campus has been an extraordinary and moving experience. I have never failed to be impressed by what I have seen, the people I have met, and just walking on the campus, which I do every day, is a wonderful experience.

The other day I was out in the morning and took these photographs at the Museum of Anthropology. I had planned to visit the Museum as it has been renovated, new exhibits put on display, and so on. It had been suggested to me that perhaps the Mystic Beast would no longer be on display, but there, in the window at the rear of the building, was the Mystic Beast.

I don't identify with the Mystic Beast as much as I once did, but there is still a part of my soul, my inner being, that resonates to what I see in this sculpture. He is not a "fun guy," but someone resolute in surviving this life, someone who has had to find strategies for survival and live "undercover," someone for whom understanding the shadow aspect of the psyche has been essential. You can change, you can even be "reborn," you can meditate and do Tai Chi, you can have your satori or your highs however induced, you can put in your years of therapy, but some of the essential aspects of the personality stay the same. You can revision your past and I suggest this is not a bad thing to do for some people. You might even look back at the old self, one day, and wonder how you could have been that person. But at the end of the day there is still a part of us, the part we have struggled with for so many years, that remains the same.

Honey bees on Cornwall Street in Vancouver

Walking on Cornwall Street, in Vancouver, someone had an enormous display of lavender growing by the sidewalk. I tried for years, with little success, to grow lavender, and here in Vancouver you see it growing in abundance and without any special care as far as I can see. The curious thing about this particular lavender is that it was full of honey bees, they were having a great time collecting nectar and pollen. Based on the number of bees, which isn't evident in the photographs, there is probably a local beekeeper to whom these bees belong, or they are from a hive located in someone's attic, or a tree not far away. At any rate it's possible someone will have quite a lovely harvest of this honey.

Many cities are now allowing some urban agriculture, trying to blend in rural and city occupations. I am of two minds on this. In many English villages or towns, keeping bees, gardening in an allottment, or keeping pigeons, is fairly common. However, I wouldn't want chickens next door to where I live, we hear of diseases that come from birds in too close proximity to humans. I certainly wouldn't want pigs or sheep next door, avoiding the noise and smell and dirt of livestock is one advantage to living in the city. We've worked hard in western society at achieving a level of sanitation that has resulted in standards of health never seen before. However, it seems to be fashionable to be in favour of keeping domesticated animals in people's backyards today, other than dogs and cats, and this strikes me as  rather silly affectation, or ignorance on the part of, some middle class people. I still remember when many people had a dog that ate table scraps (God forbid!), which is a dog's natural diet, and you opened the front door in the morning and let the dog out for the day, he'd return about 5 p.m. and you didn't know where he'd been. Our dog, Buddy, visited Willingdon, our grade school one day and ran through the halls with Mr. Pitcairn, the principal, running after him. I remember keeping a low profile that day. But, despite this about people's dogs, no one kept chickens or livestock in their backyard. Isn't that right, Veeto?