30 December 2011, downtown Montreal

 

Restaurant Julien

The Bay in the distance

At The Bay

At The Bay

Phillips Square and The Bay on the left 

29 december 2009, in New York City

 

St. Mary’s Hospital, Paying it Forward

St. Mary's Hospital, 20 August 2014 

Walking down the hall at St. Mary’s Hospital, I said a silent thank you to Fr. Luke Callaghan for saving the hospital. Back in the 1930s Dr. William Hingston, who founded the hospital, asked Fr. Luke for help dealing with Sr. Helen Morrissey (no relation to me), the nun who had initiated the idea of a hospital for Montreal’s Roman Catholic population; however, Sr. Helen had her own rigid ideas of how the new hospital should be run, and she proved an obstreperous and formidable opponent as she alienated the all-male board organizing the new hospital. She almost derailed the hospital before it had even opened. As a last resort, and exasperated with Sr. Helen, Dr. Hingston called in Fr. Luke, who was the pastor at St. Michael’s Church in Mile End, to see what he could do about the situation. It was because of Fr. Luke’s intervention that fund raising and building the new hospital could proceed. Soon, the new St. Mary’s Hospital opened and it has been serving Montrealers of all faiths ever since.     

It occurs to me that at this time of the year, a time for giving and thanks, we might remember those people from the past who made our present lives possible. Fr. Luke Callaghan, who is also my great great uncle, helped pay forward the gift of St. Mary’s Hospital. This hospital saved my wife’s life ten years ago; my two grandsons were born here; and the doctors, nurses, and technicians at St, Mary's gave me truly exceptional care just three years ago when I was diagnosed with cancer, they saved my life. 

I would be a terrible ingrate if I did not contribute to St. Mary’s Hospital Foundation. I think of Fr. Luke Callaghan and the words of Dr. William Hingston, “In my opinion, Luke Callaghan saved St. Mary's.” Of course, Fr. Luke probably never heard of the phrase “paying it forward” and he had no idea that his intervention to save the hospital would also help his family’s descendants ninety years later, but that’s exactly what he did; we, too, can pay forward something of what we have received. Be generous, be giving, and pay forward what we have been given for future generations.

Notes: Quotation from Dr. Hingston is from Allan Hustak's At the Heart of St. Mary's, A history of Montreal's St. Mary's Hospital Center, Vehicule Press, 2014.

I also recommend Dr. J.J. Dinan's St. Mary's Hospital, The Early Years, Optimum Publishing International, Montreal and Toronto, 1987.

Visiting St. John the Divine Cathedral on 22 December 2009

We used to visit New York City and it wasn't a far walk from where we were staying to St. John the Divine Cathedral; here are some photographs taken on 22 December 2009.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, the archaeology and healing of the soul

 

Some people think of previous ages as less civilized than the age in which they live; they think of people from the past as being different from people today, less open-minded, somehow less "civilized". However, human psychology doesn't really change, it can be modified, but it remains substantially the same in any era. People in the past dressed differently than we do, they didn't have modern appliances, their weapons of war were not as destructive as ours, some people lived in terrible poverty, but the soul of these people is not different than our soul; people from the past share our human concerns, emotions, desires, joys and fears, prejudices and insights. All of this is a prelude to saying that The Epic of Gilgamesh has an almost contemporary quality to it, in some ways Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu are people that could be alive today, they share our emotional life, they share our psychic/soul life. 

When we first meet Gilgamesh —this epic was written 4000 years ago and Gilgamesh may have lived around 4000 years ago— Gilgamesh is living an unreflected life; he is a ruler, both arrogant and powerful. We know that other people, his contemporaries, didn't approve of some of what he did; he is the king, the supreme leader, and it is mentioned that there is some disapproval of him because he took advantage of his position in society. But life changes, and psychological and spiritual change is often caused by suffering; suffering makes us think about our life, it makes us reflect on life. And this is the experience of Gilgamesh when his friend, Enkidu, dies; this is when Gilgamesh becomes more than a character in an ancient text. 

It is suffering and his inability to deal with it that makes Gilgamesh "one of us"; what is of interest for us in Gilgamesh’ s story is his psychology, his psyche, his soul, and his response to suffering. When his friend Enkidu dies Gilgamesh experiences grief and sorrow, he knows the transience of life; he must reflect on the meaning of life when he is thrown back on himself. Gilgamesh could have anything he wanted, he lived a privileged life, but he couldn't have eternal life, he couldn't escape the transience of life, he couldn’t bring Enkidu back to life. In his grief Gilgamesh searches for meaning, and his search continues until he finds an explanation for his grief, until he finds meaning for his loss and how to deal with it.

In The Epic of Gilgamesh we are reading something that pertains to our own existence; indeed, this epic is a four thousand year old version of aspects of our own journey to a meaningful life. The subject of The Epic of Gilgamesh is the archaeology and healing of the soul.

 

30 March 2023; edited, November 2024; 19, 20 December 2024.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, four translations

I first heard of The Epic of Gilgamesh when I was reading the poetry of Gregory Corso, Corso mentions Gilgamesh in some of his work. Years later, out of curiosity, I began reading The Epic of Gilgamesh for myself; here are the four translations that I've read over the last four or five years; all have something to offer —a different insight into Gilgamesh— and all are worth reading and a good introduction to The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh, a verse narrative
Translator: Herbert Mason
New American Library, Inc, New York: 1970

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Translator: N.K. Sandars
Penguin Books, Ltd
Harmondsworth, 1972

Gilgamesh, a new English version
Translator: Stephen Mitchell
New York, Free Press, 2004

The Epic of Gilgamesh
Translator: Andrew George
Penguin Books, 2000

It was the afternoon of 14 December, -7C

‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’ by Sappho

 

Some say horsemen, some say warriors,

Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest

Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s

What you love.

It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,

Since Helen, she who outshone

All others in beauty, left

A fine husband,

And headed for Troy

Without a thought for

Her daughter, her dear parents…

Led astray…

And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step

Or that flicker of light on her face,

I’d rather see than Lydian chariots

Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.

“A Day in the Life” by The Beatles

 

I read the news today, oh boy
About a lucky man who made the grade
And though the news was rather sad
Well, I just had to laugh
I saw the photograph

He blew his mind out in a car
He didn't notice that the lights had changed
A crowd of people stood and stared
They'd seen his face before
Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords

I saw a film today, oh boy
The English Army had just won the war
A crowd of people turned away
But I just had to look
Having read the book
I'd love to turn you on

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream

I read the news today, oh boy
Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
And though the holes were rather small
They had to count them all
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
I'd love to turn you on

Songwriters: John Lennon / Paul McCartney

A Day in the Life lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

"Tulips" by Sylvia Plath

 

The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here.
Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in
I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly
As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands.
I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.
I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses
And my history to the anaesthetist and my body to surgeons.

They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff
Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut.
Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.
The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,
They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,
Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,
So it is impossible to tell how many there are.

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage ——
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks.

I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat
Stubbornly hanging on to my name and address.
They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations.
Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley
I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books
Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head.
I am a nun now, I have never been so pure.

I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free ——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me.
Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe
Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby.
Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds.
They are subtle: they seem to float, though they weigh me down,
Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their colour,
A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck.

Nobody watched me before, now I am watched.
The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me
Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,
And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow
Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,
And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself.
The vivid tulips eat my oxygen.

Before they came the air was calm enough,
Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss.
Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise.
Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river
Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine.
They concentrate my attention, that was happy
Playing and resting without committing itself.

The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves.
The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;
They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,
And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.
The water I taste is warm and salty, like the sea,
And comes from a country far away as health.

First snow, 5 December 2024

Wet snow and -1C; so far, it doesn’t look like we’ll have the mild winter we had last year.