My grandfather, John R. Parker

My grandfather, John R. Parker, and his bride, Bertha Chew; photo
taken in Blackburn, Lancashire.

I don't like to admit that I never liked my maternal grandfather but I didn't; maybe I was afraid of him. Where does a child get his likes and dislikes for people? And after all of these years like and dislike don't have much relevance; now I have a new respect my grandfather. My grandfather, John R. Parker, died in 1964 when I was fourteen years old; almost sixty years earlier he and his wife came to Montreal from Blackburn, Lancashire, by way of New York City where he lived for a while in the Bronx with his paternal uncle, William Parker. In New York City my grandfather worked driving a streetcar; one day someone tried to rob him, this would have been around 1910, and my grandfather jumped from his streetcar and chased the man; my grandfather was also a boxer and he easily subdued the thief. One day I was driving my mother to Central Station where she would take a train to Toronto, this was in the early 2000s; at a street corner we were passing she said this was where her father had seen a man robbing a woman and he had chased and caught the man. 

Like many other women my mother loved and admired her father; I mention this because men like my grandfather are becoming rare, the masculine is under attack in North America; men like my grandfather are dinosaurs now. My grandfather could level wooden floors, build a balcony on their home, he could do things that needed doing and he provided for, protected, and looked after his family. When a man followed my mother home, after she married in 1940, she phoned her father and he was at her apartment a few minutes later; when there was a streetcar accident near her home it was her father she called. 

There are other anecdotes about my grandfather. My grandfather was a fireman, first in the early 1920s at the Central Fire Station in Old Montreal, later he was the captain, at Station (Caserne) 46 on Somerled Avenue in Montreal. His brother, Thomas Herbert ("Bert") Parker, was at Station 11 in downtown Montreal; Bert was also a captain. There was a history of feuding in my mother's family; my father's family, the Morrisseys, didn't feud, they all seemed to get along with each other, they were happy Irish-Canadians and stuck together; they loved each other, and we all loved my grandmother who was the center of the family. As for the Parkers, my grandfather didn't talk to his brother Bert for thirty years and he missed his mother's funeral because they were fighting. I have no memory of meeting my Parker grandmother, Bertha Chew Parker, who died in 1957 when I was seven years old, but I have this one anecdote. My grandparents gave my mother $5.00 a month (or was it a week?) to help with expenses after my father died in 1956, $5.00 meant something back then; when she would visit them her mother would say to her father, "Don't forget to give Hilda her money."   

Grave of my great uncle, Thomas Herbert Parker, who died
on 27 December 1965; buried at the Protestant fireman's section at Mount Royal Cemetery.

Victor Parker, the youngest of the four Parker brothers,
and who was mentally handicapped; in Montreal. 

As I said, one of my grandfather's brothers, Thomas "Bert" Parker, became a fire man like my grandfather. And there were two other brothers, one was William and the other was Victor who was the youngest. I think it was William who worked in security at Dorval airport after he retired. Sometimes I would visit my grandfather's home at 2217 Hampton Avenue; one day there was smoke in the flat and soon the fire engines arrived; I heard the captain laughing and commenting that there was no fire, he said my grandfather just wanted his chimney cleaned by them for free. 

One day my grandfather told me that when he was a boy, and still living in Blackburn, he was hungry and killed a chicken and roasted the bird on an open fire in a lane. The Parkers were not wealthy, his father had died when he was a child. I think, for him, marrying a Chew was to marry up as the Chews were a big family and owned property, they were builders and landlords. The Parkers had been publicans--they were publicans at the Yew Tree Inn in Blackburn--and farmers; my grandfather's father could speak, I was told, several languages. 

Another story my grandfather told me was that when he first became a fireman he was told by the captain of the fire station to clean the metal buttons on the harnesses of the horses that pulled the fire engine. He was at Station One, the old Central Fire Station in Old Montreal. When he finished cleaning the buttons the captain told him to do it again, he had missed the buttons on the underside of the harness where they wouldn't be seen, except by the captain; I think my grandfather may have protested but was told to do it right. This seems like a fairly minor anecdote but while many anecdotes seem minor they all help to bring family members to life, and we remember them for these stories. Another anecdote, a minor one, is my grandfather telling me that when you wrapped a parcel in a box to tie the knot on a corner and it would hold better. Any family memory is better than none, even minor ones like this. 

Central Fire Station

At the Central Fire Station, photo taken in the 1930s,
my grandfather is on the far right.

At Station (Caserne) 46, John Parker is the second from the left,
early 1940s. 

Montreal Memorial Park (now owned by Urgel Bourgel), St. Laurent,
Plot A 501, Grave no. 676. Parker. Bertha (Chew) 1884-1958 John Richards (1887-1964)

"The Bull Moose" by Alden Nowlan

 

Down from the purple mist of trees on the mountain,
lurching through forests of white spruce and cedar,
stumbling through tamarack swamps,
came the bull moose
to be stopped at last by a pole-fenced pasture.

Too tired to turn or, perhaps, aware
there was no place left to go, he stood with the cattle.
They, scenting the musk of death, seeing his great head
like the ritual mask of a blood god, moved to the other end
of the field, and waited.

The neighbours heard of it, and by afternoon
cars lined the road. The children teased him
with alder switches and he gazed at them
like an old, tolerant collie. The woman asked
if he could have escaped from a Fair.

The oldest man in the parish remembered seeing
a gelded moose yoked with an ox for plowing.
The young men snickered and tried to pour beer
down his throat, while their girl friends took their pictures.

And the bull moose let them stroke his tick-ravaged flanks,
let them pry open his jaws with bottles, let a giggling girl
plant a little purple cap
of thistles on his head.

When the wardens came, everyone agreed it was a shame
to shoot anything so shaggy and cuddlesome.
He looked like the kind of pet
women put to bed with their sons.

So they held their fire. But just as the sun dropped in the river
the bull moose gathered his strength
like a scaffolded king, straightened and lifted his horns
so that even the wardens backed away as they raised their rifles.

When he roared, people ran to their cars. All the young men
leaned on their automobile horns as he toppled.

“The Whole Mess ... Almost” by Gregory Corso

 

I ran up six flights of stairs

to my small furnished room   

opened the window

and began throwing out

those things most important in life

First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:

“Don’t! I’ll tell awful things about you!”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’ve nothing to hide ... OUT!”

Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:   

“It’s not my fault! I’m not the cause of it all!” “OUT!”   

Then Love, cooing bribes: “You’ll never know impotency!   

All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!”

I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:

“You always end up a bummer!”

I picked up Faith Hope Charity

all three clinging together:

“Without us you’ll surely die!”

“With you I’m going nuts! Goodbye!”

Then Beauty ... ah, Beauty—

As I led her to the window

I told her: “You I loved best in life

... but you’re a killer; Beauty kills!”   

Not really meaning to drop her

I immediately ran downstairs

getting there just in time to catch her   

“You saved me!” she cried

I put her down and told her: “Move on.”

Went back up those six flights

went to the money

there was no money to throw out.

The only thing left in the room was Death   

hiding beneath the kitchen sink:

“I’m not real!” It cried

“I’m just a rumor spread by life ... ”   

Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all   

and suddenly realized Humor

was all that was left—

All I could do with Humor was to say:   

“Out the window with the window!”

The impoverishment of language

 

1.

Everywhere life is being reduced, flattened out, and the variety and multiplicity of life is lessened. Small communities are absorbed into cities and cities into a megalopolis; the nation state is being absorbed into larger economic and military alliances, it's only a matter of time before the nation state disappears. And what is the motivation for reducing life, flattening it out, lessening the variety of everyday life? Someone's getting rich, someone else is getting more powerful; and the rest of us are losing out. 

2.

Not too many years ago, North American workers saw their jobs moved to other countries where wages are one tenth or less of what was paid to workers here. American workers were told they would have to "recycle" themselves, but this didn't happen, it was an optimistic and false plan from the beginning. It was a flattening out of society, making more people poor, and a reduction of the number of jobs and the variety of jobs, it was a diminishment of the diversity of jobs here. There was also nothing for these people to recycle themselves to, there were no better jobs for them to move up to even if they did reeducate themselves; it was a fairly cynical move on the part of business and government leaders, they were laughing behind their hands. It was enforced poverty on a segment of society that had worked hard and in the past would have moved to middle class status. Some of these former workers ended up unemployed or homeless or on drugs. Some moved on to work for fast food restaurants and some now drive for Uber or Door Dash delivering food for these same restaurants.

3.

Political and economic changes begin with language, with words, and it can be seen all around us. Words are censored, given new meanings, or deleted from the way we speak when they challenge a political agenda that would control the population. People are now afraid to say what they think and feel and justifiably so; now everyone's concerned they aren't politically correct. Certain words aren't allowed to be said. Certain thoughts and ideas aren't allowed to be expressed; you will suffer condemnation, loss of position in society, perhaps your employment, you will be excommunicated, you will be cancelled. Better to shut up and hope for a better future or else you might disappear from your profession, your friends, your old life. The people who forbid freedom of speech used to be the people who championed free speech, now they are the most vociferous opponents of free speech. 

4.

Consider that our vocabulary has fewer words, fewer long words, than the vocabulary of people just fifty years ago; with this loss of vocabulary we lose the nuance of expressing sophisticated ideas, we lose how to describe things, whether material or emotional, we become language deprived. The vocabulary of the Victorians was more sophisticated than our present day speech; children today have difficulty reading children's books from the Victorian or Edwardian Age, everywhere people have been dummed down. We've become fat and stupid. An obvious example is the revising of Roald Dahl's books, censoring them according to Woke preconceptions which, basically, dumb people down to the same already low level. The King James Version of the Bible is thought to be too difficult for people to read, in fact the vocabulary of the 1611 translation of the Bible is fairly easy to read and is beautifully written; but read the King James Version? Read Chaucer? Read Milton? Read Shakespeare? Read Walt Whitman and William Blake? They're all by dead white men and their books are heading to the municipal dump.

5. 

While our vocabulary today has fewer words what we're allowed to say and what we aren't allowed to say has also been reduced, made subject to what is politically correct. It is made difficult because the politically correct are in the ascendant and they have become mainstream, their ideas have been normalized. I noticed a news broadcaster on CBC, only yesterday, when he mentioned President Trump, he referred to him as "Trump" and he sneered and assumed the audience agreed that Trump deserved this visual and audible condemnation; this television announcer could hardly be criticized, after all, his middle class audience most likely agree with him or why would they be watching the biased CBC news? Whether or not Trump deserves to be sneered at is not my point, it is the underlying assumption of a government employee on a national television network that is subsidized with taxpayers' money expressing a biased opinion on what purports to be a factual reporting of the news. Politically correct assumptions supercede common sense and truth. We may think that government is benevolent because Justin Trudeau keeps telling us that Canadians want to be "safe", but government's motive is power and social control. Forget about being "safe", we all know that "safe" in life doesn't exist.

Note: Revised and edited on 23 February 2023.

Review of Edwin Varney's ineffable, The Mystical Poems

 

Review:

ineffable, The Mystical Poems, (2022)

Edwin Varney

The Poem Factory, Courtenay, BC

ISBN: 978-1-895593-57-0

Unpriced; 14 pages

by Stephen Morrissey

Back in 1977, I reviewed Edwin Varney's Human Nature (1974), published in CV II (Vol. 3, no. 2); it was my first published book review.  And here I am, so many years later, reviewing Edwin Varney's new chapbook, ineffable, The Mystical Poems (2022). Edwin has published over twenty books and chapbooks of poetry, and he is well known for his activity in the arts community, in Canada and internationally, as a poet, visual artist, publisher, and mail art artist.

In these poems Edwin writes of having mystical experiences and although these experiences are ineffable this is exactly what he does, he writes of "that which cannot be spoken about aloud . . ." Many people have been interested in mysticism, including myself; it is defined by W. T. Stace as an experience of the "undifferentiated unity of the universe." Stace's book, The Teachings of the Mystics (1960), which I read in the early 1970s, is mentioned in the bibliography of ineffable, The Mystical Poems. But read Edwin's poems for a less intellectual and more immediate description of this experience. Mysticism is a spiritual experience common to all religions; but, ironically, it is also without the need for the accoutrements of organized religion.

Edwin uses a format in this chapbook that is similar to several other chapbooks he published with The Poem Factory, a press that he founded with my wife Carolyn Zonailo. The format is a running prose statement, or a single sentence, in the header of the page or several pages, and the poems are placed beneath this header. This format gives a unity to the book as well as, in this case, a description of the mystical experience in both prose and poetry; however, in describing a profound experience, poetry often trumps prose; poetry is the experience, prose describes the experience. He writes, "Poetry, because of its use of metaphor, simile, paradox, and generative use of language, is the most evocative, precise, and highly charged form of communicating these experiences." (7)

While this chapbook offers only eight of Edwin's poems, he has notebooks full of unpublished poems; I have seen his notebooks and diaries lined up on library shelves in his former Vancouver home, and Carolyn Zonailo edited Solar Eclipse, (The Poem Factory, 1994), a chapbook of some of these notebook poems. The simple, direct, style in ineffable, The Mystical Poems is the product of a lifetime of writing and also of a particular type of personality, one who values truth and authenticity over obscurity, one who values the human dimension. He writes, "I was there, completely there./ A door opened to somewhere else/ and I entered into the world."

In "The Field" Edwin remembers a summer day when he saw a snake shedding its skin, "leaving behind a dry husk", and this image becomes a metaphor for his own life; "I too will shed my skin/ and flesh, too soon." Life is short, it is an experience of chronological time in the timeless cosmic zone. This poem is about the transience of life and our life in this world, in which every phase of life—childhood, adolescence, adulthood, old age— is an incarnation and a gateway to the next incarnation, we shed lives as the snake sheds his old skin; "There is only the present", he writes, so don't worry about the future.

Edwin's poem, "Angel", describes our common spiritual/psychological journey in life. It is the archetypal fall from innocence into experience, as described by William Blake, and perfectly expressed, succinctly expressed, in Edwin's poem. "A man fell from eternity into time.// In another age,/ he might have been called an angel/ but that was when people/ knew more about these things." And then life unfolds and one "wandered thru work,/ relationships, money, love/ politics, health, and all the things/ we share as occupiers of this planet." The final two lines of the poem illuminate the experience for us; he writes, "When I hit the ground,// I was broken but I remembered." And what did the narrator remember? He remembered the eternal, his metaphorical angelic origin, the divine inspiration of nature, and that while we are in the world we are not necessarily of this world. It is where ". . . all contradictions vanish,/ a point where love is the only motive." ("Point of No Return", p. 12)

The authenticity of Edwin Varney's poems bridges definition and the thing defined; his work is an achievement of expression, his work is authentic. He writes,

                                    So look around and listen, be present,

                                    If you look deep enough inside yourself,

                                    you see the world.

                                    You will be at home wherever you are

                                                "Lighthouse Park", 5-6

 

ineffable, The Mystical Poems may be ordered by writing to The Poem Factory, 4426 Island Highway South, Courtenay, BC, Canada V9N 9T1

 

Notes:

One

All poets should know something of mysticism in poetry, whether in Rumi, Rimbaud, Whitman, William Blake, or other poets who have been "inspired", which means they have had spirit breathed into them, by God or nature or serendipity. Poetry can be an expression of a mystical, cosmic, experience; prose rarely is.

Two:

It benefits poets if they publish chapbooks; with desk top publishing it is very easy to self-publish, or publish others, at low cost, in editions of any number you want, and distribute these chapbooks free of charge, or at any price you want, to other poets in order to keep in touch with our small community of poets, to build relationships, and share current work. The message is: keep a dialogue going. It is also more important now than ever to publish in print, poetry is a print medium, print on paper. Reading on a screen is not the same as reading something printed on paper.

Three

Two other books I would add to Edwin's bibliography on mysticism are Colin Wilson's Poetry and Mysticism (1969) and R.M. Bucke's Cosmic Consciousnmess (1901). Colin Wilson writes about individual poets, for instance Wordsworth, and discusses examples of mystical experience in specific poems.  R.M. Bucke describes cosmic consciousness as a mystical experience that he claims all great poets and artists experience, including his personal friend Walt Whitman; Bucke's book is a compendium of poets and artists whose work has been an expression of cosmic consciousness and how it finds its expression in their creative work. For Bucke this is part of the evolution of consciousness, moving away from an isolated consciousness to unity with life, nature, other people, and even the universe. Anyone interested in this subject might read all of the books Edwin lists in his bibliography.

Four

Another book, of less importance but still interesting, and not for inclusion in Edwin's "Selected Bibliography About Mysticism", is Timothy Leary's The Politics of Ecstasy (1998); Leary's book is about the LSD experience and I mention it because psychedelic drugs seem to offer some promise for healing psychological problems; psychedelic pharmaceuticals offer a analogous mystical perception of life, but it is not a mystical experience.

 

And then on to Meadowbrook Golf Course

We had the Polar Vortex two weeks ago, -28 C and a wind chill of -39 C, but the rest of February is supposed to be mild, as it was on February 13 and the rest of this week. It's a good walk on the hidden trail and then to continue to Meadowbrook Golf Course and home along Cote St-Luc Road. You don't want to waste this mild weather since most of the rest of the day is spent in-doors. This isn't walking just to enjoy being out-doors, to hear birds singing, to feel that spring is in the air, to feel the sun on one's face, to see the neighbourhood, it's walking to stay alive. 

A good day to walk on the hidden trail

It was a sunny morning and a blue sky, it was +2 C, it felt like spring was in the air, so what better to do than walk on the hidden trail? Good news, only thirty days to the first day of spring.

13 February 2023

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. 

"The Mysterious Naked Man" by Alden Nowlan

 

A mysterious naked man has been reported
on Cranston Avenue. The police are performing
the usual ceremonies with coloured lights and sirens.
Almost everyone is outdoors and strangers are conversing
 excitedly
as they do during disasters when their involvement is
 peripheral.

'What did he look like?' the lieutenant is asking.
'I don't know,' says the witness. 'He was naked.'
There is talk of dogs—this is no ordinary case
of indecent exposure, the man has been seen
a dozen times since the milkman spotted him and now
the sky is turning purple and voices
carry a long way and the children
have gone a little crazy as they often do at dusk
and cars are arriving
from other sections of the city.

And the mysterious naked man
is kneeling behind a garbage can or lying on his belly
in somebody's garden
or maybe even hiding in the branches of a tree,
where the wind from the harbour
whips at his naked body,
and by now he's probably done
whatever it was he wanted to do
and wishes he could go to sleep
or die
or take to the air like Superman.

What you lose you will never get back

The Rose Garden at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver

 

1.

The thing to remember about giving up old values and accepting new values is that you are changing to the unknown and giving up what has sustained us for hundreds or thousands of years. The values you throw away create a vacuum and you don't really know what will fill that vacuum. You might think that change is for the better, and sometimes it is, but did we expect that we'd end up with the fragmented society that we now have? What we have is a world gone wrong, it's a society in decline. 

2.

The Industrial Revolution, World War One, and the Great Depression were turning points in history, another turning point is Covid-19. People were sequestered during Covid, possibly needlessly sequestered, and people are social beings, we need contact with other people. We were mandated into social isolation and what amounted to a kind of solitary confinement; the truth is, people need to be with people. Sensory deprivation starves the brain for sensory input; how long would any of us last in a sensory deprivation chamber? It is not long before the brain manufactures images, thoughts, and your emotions become unstable, extreme, and negative. 

3.

Covid-19 will have long-term consequences; as an example, and there are others, some children are suffering intellectual, emotional, and psychological problems from their time in Covid lock-down, but other people have also suffered. Some re-opened schools have become more violent;  hospitals have an increased number of children as patients for emotional and psychological problems; there is random violence on public transportation in Toronto and New York City; meanwhile, homeless encampments are in every city;  incidents of random violence have increased; sexual identity is under attack. Society is in decline and we won't get back what we have lost. But have we also lost our humanity?  

4.

We have traditional values, for instance honesty, faith, and family; but these are being cancelled and replaced with gender fluidity, diversity, and climate change. The adherents of these other values don't want to live in peaceful coincidence with the older values, they want to cancel these older values. And that is what is happening to society. One day good people will wonder what happened, how did they allow their core values to be destroyed, how did they allow these changes to occur that they never agreed to? But what we lose we will never get back. 

5.

What we give up, what is taken from us because we have amnesia and assume all will be well . . .  but we haven't agreed to these changes; we wake up one day and find we've been stripped of our older values. Change crept up on us and we weren't watching, we didn't let it happen, it just happened and in retrospect it was an enormous mistake. There they are in the streets or in television studios, the media, movie actors--entertainers seem to originate new values and the public follow them--and the educated middle class, consumers of the media, they've also made the conversion to the system of new values. And the politicians are along for the ride, and always out for more power. We are surrounded by displays of these new values and a new mentality that goes along with it; and if we don't agree with them we are cancelled, you can lose your employment, your friends, even your family. 

6.

What you lose you will never get back. There were great social changes in the 1960s and some people celebrated these changes but what if we were wrong and these counter culture values have only made life worse and not better? Back then, students occupied administration offices in universities, some people were marching in the streets, other people were smoking dope, there were changes in moral values, changes in every aspect of society, and now sixty years later we are living with the consequences of these changes; they did not create a more creative, loving, or free society, it is the opposite of this that has happened. We surrendered, we gave up, we acquiesced. What you lose you will never get back; change is not always for the better, it may end up being change for the worst. And are the people supporting change the best people, the most intelligent people, or are they out for themselves, politicians, intransigent moralists, ideologues? We know the answer to that question. 

Note: This has been revised and edited several times for clarity. I am a compulsive editor, I edit until I've said exactly what I mean. 

"The Unknown Citizen" by W. H. Auden

 

Photographs of the Robert Burns' Pub from 2020

(To JS/07 M 378
This Marble Monument
Is Erected by the State)

He was found by the Bureau of Statistics to be
One against whom there was no official complaint,
And all the reports on his conduct agree
That, in the modern sense of an old-fashioned word, he was a saint,
For in everything he did he served the Greater Community.
Except for the War till the day he retired
He worked in a factory and never got fired,
But satisfied his employers, Fudge Motors Inc.
Yet he wasn't a scab or odd in his views,
For his Union reports that he paid his dues,
(Our report on his Union shows it was sound)
And our Social Psychology workers found
That he was popular with his mates and liked a drink.
The Press are convinced that he bought a paper every day
And that his reactions to advertisements were normal in every way.
Policies taken out in his name prove that he was fully insured,
And his Health-card shows he was once in hospital but left it cured.
Both Producers Research and High-Grade Living declare
He was fully sensible to the advantages of the Instalment Plan
And had everything necessary to the Modern Man,
A phonograph, a radio, a car and a frigidaire.
Our researchers into Public Opinion are content
That he held the proper opinions for the time of year;
When there was peace, he was for peace: when there was war, he went.
He was married and added five children to the population,
Which our Eugenist says was the right number for a parent of his generation.
And our teachers report that he never interfered with their education.
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.

Somewhere on Mount Royal

It was the end of April 2011; I was walking on Mount Royal, the mountain at the center of Montreal and a very popular park. The spirit of trees is not only in the tree, it's in the shadow of the trees, it's in the roots and branches and the seasonal change of leaves, from green to fall's variety of colours to these bare branches and the carpet of leaves on the ground. 

Snow removal in Montreal

I thought this was a mild winter, but it's not. It's -25 C this morning and getting colder, the furnace runs and runs and runs but the house doesn't warm up. The other night the city removed 25 - 30 cm of snow that they had ploughed to the side of the streets, and then it snowed again, and it snowed last night, not a lot but a white covering on everything. We're a northern people, more northern that anything else because that is our geography and geography affects who and what we are, our attitude to life, our relationship to the world. Living here, even if you are from the Islands or South America, you will become like us, a northern people. Geography has dictated it. Seven weeks to the end of winter, the days are getting longer, and we're Canadians, we'll get through this, we have no other choice.