SOME POEMS

     Instead of writing my usual narrative, in this post I would like to stick to some poems I wrote a number of years ago and which contain reminiscences of childhood and family.  There are just three poems.   The first one, "Autobiography", is based on memories of my childhood home on the outskirts of Birmingham, England, and particularly features memories of an ancient church near my home.  Then follows "Family Album", with memories of my father's parents, who were the only grandparents I actually knew.  Finally comes "Family Saga" with my mother's tales of her own grandparents who lived in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland.

                              AUTOBIOGRAPHY

          

          When I was small I lived in a green land --

           Revisited, sparse enough, with bright red brick

           Springing between the calculated flowers.

           But in that seeking time it seemed to me

           Nothing but fields stretched out on either hand

           Until they reached the blue horizon's edge.

           

           For me the trees grew green, adventurous in Spring,

           Rich in the  Summer and in  Autumn, finally

           Intricate pattern of iron work, austere in Winter.

           For me the fields grew flowers.  Each new plant

           Was like the finding of a continent

           To me, conquistadora.  All my senses

           Greeted whatever lay before them, glad

          To recognize the texture of a mat

          (Thrusting my hands among the long-haired fleece)

           The rough and granular work of a pebbled wall,

           Digging out shards with broken nails and watching

           The glint of sun om granite, feeling

           Sunlight absorbed by stones sink down again

           Into my body, leaning full against them.

\          I felt things with my feet: the rich black squelch

           Of mud or macadam between my toes,

          The springy, sheep-bit turf, the leather arms

           Of  our much harassed armchairs, or the bed,

          Sharp with its pointed pebbles, of a stream

          So shallow it barely reached above my toes.

           Water I loved indeed to touch and handle:

          Black and perhaps unfathomable pools

          Lurking in gullies at the foot of hills,

         Sea, on the rare occasions when I saw it

          (Making me almost drunk with exaltation

         When the wave bucked beneath the boat) but most

          Of all the shallow little stream that ran

          Through fields and woodlands, breaking and curvetting,

          Surrounding tiny obstacles, then smoothing

          Itself to a small, sleek imitation of

          The long Atlantic swell, in little frets

          Caused by the pattern of its two inch bed.

;

   

         A wood and fields comprised my known world:

         A golf course lay beyond.  A small estate,

         Yet endlessly productive of delight.

         Of terror too.  Imagination helped.

        One day I found an egg beneath a hedge,

         In texture quite unlike the eggs that broke

         To form a clamorous nest of early birds,

         Their beaks still gaping for the endless worm

         That nest was safely tucked inside the hedge

         And some way further up, concealed from travelers

         Who did not so minutely scan as I

         The objects they encountered on their path.

         This egg was horny skinned and strangely hued

         With oily hues like dribbled gasoline.

         I thought of all that I had ever read

         Of snakes, their habits and of dragonets.

          The end of school meant anxious visiting

         With wary step  and timorous roving eye

          To look for alteration in the egg.

         A boy who found me hovering round the hedge

        Which marked their garden's limit took me in

         And showed his rabbits and his bicycle;

         I soon escaped to mark the spot again.

         I hardly know if I was frightened when

         My daily visit showed a broken shell,

         A vanished  occupant.  For weeks I went

         Another way, to shun the cockatrice.

         Another vision, scarcely less suspect,

         Came monthly rolling on down Manor Lane.

          There, at a turning near the school,

         The gypsies' never ending caravans

         With their full complement of men and boys

         And walking mothers wearing their old shoes

        Taken from garbage cans along the road,

         Superlatively down at heel but fine,

         Magnificent in dirt.  They always  wore

         Most curious wrappers, black with orange sprigs,

         Tying across the side with thin black tapes.

         I used to wonder where they got them from,

         For I never saw them anywhere for sale.

         They were disturbing but they never stopped.

         They seemed to breathe a different air from we;

         Dragons and snakes were closer than they were.

         And yet they never once disturbed my dreams.

         Strange as they were, they were no cause for fear.

          The passing pattern of my days assumed

           A patchwork glory.  Nothing was too small

           To be excluded from experience

           And nothing was so great it over-topped

           The rest of life and minimized its worth.

           We never had to go to church, yet still

            I felt a thrill on entering that place--

            Unforced and therefore stronger holy fear.

         The massive vaulting of the church, so huge

         I could not force my head back far enough

         To view the timber arches of the roof,

         Formed far too vast a box for my small heart

         Thudding between the hassocks and the pews.

         Eternity made strange the monuments

         And dusty marble wigs of antique men

         With all their sculptured virtues at their sides.

         Large things seem larger to a ten year old.

         That sentiment was strong indeed, and while

         I drifted down an aisle like some church mouse

         Or even, bold with dread, approached the Bird

         That held the Book in fierceness and in bronze;

         While this suffused my soul I dared not own

          Another feeling than magnetic dread.

         But when I found myself outside again,

         Alone with sounds and leaves and mossy stones

         And sorrowing angels drooping in their wings

         With testimonials to local names,

         I plucked up courage far enough to rout

         Amid the graveyard garbage for old flowers

        And fly with shrieks and scattered trophies from

        Indignant hobbling guardians of the tombs.

        I could not wish myself at any time

        Returned again to that remembered past

        For every joy brought compensating grief

        And anguishes to great to bear again.

        But while I lived in childhood I could yet

        Forget each grief the moment it was gone

        And meet the constant bully with surprise

        On each occasion. Joy I too forgot,

        Living the moment as it came.  One thing

        I could grudge at this hour and that is time:

       Continual leisure of the infant life

       To spend as long examining a leaf

       As it demanded and no moment less.

      And what prevents me now from watching leaves?

      I own no fewer seconds in the week.

                       FAMILY ALBUM

         All the life of his life,

         My grandfather, who is long dead,

         Worked in the Jewelers' Quarter.

         He had a big red nose and mild blue eyes

         And a silvery white moustache.

         To look at him in his overalls

         You would never think him aesthetic

         But he would buy pictures instead of meat

        When he was young with two little boys

        And a careful, brisk young wife.

        They stood in a group for their photograph:

        Grandfather wistful, Grandmother blurred

        From holding her restless sons.

        Only her hands stood out --

        Iron hands, imprisoning little boys.

       Her hands held tight and never let go,

       But Grandfather's hands hung open

       For experience to run through.

     Grandfather bought and sold and gave.

     Grandmother made, kept and mended.

     These were their patterns through life..

                                           FAMILY SAGA

          If I choose to go back further,

          I come to my  Great Grandmother.

          She was named Barbara Morrison --

         I am named Barbara  after her --

         And she was born on a croft.

        When she grew up she was pretty

        And she fell in love with a sailor --

       Most of the boys were sailors --

       But her family said No.

       They found her a rich, middle-aged husband.

        My Great Grandfather whom she married

        Was a very remarkable man.

         At the age of fifty he was the richest man

         With the widest whiskers on the whole of Bernera.

         He was also an Elder of the Kirk.

         But he didn't start out that way.

        Hear the tale of my Great Grandfather!

                       For thirty years he sat and thought --

                       Not all the time-- He worked a turn --

                       But when his work was over, he

                      Would think and let the cabbage burn.

                       The thought that occupied his mind

                       Was how to find the proper way --

                        And to finance the plan, when found --

                       To make his lobster fishing pay.

                       He sat and thought for thirty years --

                       For thirty years and then some more --

                       And finally the plan was born

                       When he was nearing thirty-four.

                      He shipped upon a cargo boat

                      Destined for Canada.

                      He flexed his muscles every night

                      And said a little prayer.

                      He prayed like Samson he might be

                      Great, tall and stout and strong

                      And likewise wise as Solomon

                      Without doing anyone wrong.

                       Upon arriving at the coast

                       He leaped upon the shore

                       And started chopping trees like mad --

                       No other could chop more.

                      They were well paid, Great Grandfather

                      And all the other men.

                      But while they squandered he would save

                      And earn some more again.

                      Before he had been many years

                      Upon that fortunate shore,

                      He'd saved five hundred pounds in gold

                      And sailed for home once more.

                      Once home he hired two men to dig

                      And with their help he made

                      A  most enormous lobster pond --

                      Like Aberdeen harbour, it is said.

                      He filled that pond with lobsters blue

                      From all the seas around

                      And when the other men sailed out

                      No lobsters could be found.

                     They all were with Great Grandfather

                      Who sold them -- at a price.

                      He was the richest man for miles

                      And got Barbara, which was nice.

                     Now this great man is dead and gone

                     But still the things he did remain.

                    He built that pond like Pyramids

                    To win an everlasting name.

                   Some time ago an engineer

                   Officially sent up from London

                   Came many miles to see this pond

                  And could not think how it was done.

                 Great Grandpa used his natural brains

                 To do what others could not do

                  And even now the Government

                  Is baffled by the things he knew.

     Barbara survived him. She bore two sons

     And adopted two children as well.

     She was made with a leaning to hope

     And a heart like the widow's cruse.

     Furthermore she had natural curls.

     For a matron these were improper

     But she tried to repress them in vain.

     Since her marriage had failed to depress her,

     Nothing could ever achieve it.

     She died in her sleep, smiling.

    

               

 

             

             

        

.        

 

           

         

         

         

      

        

         

       .

                  

l

Scottish Presbyterians

 Aunt Mary was quite shocked  when she entered an Anglican church and saw a religious picture on the wall, as she considered that idolatrous.  She really upset my mother by writing to her when my mother was in India to say that she was grooming her daughters for damnation by sending them to a convent school. But when she took me to one particular Protestant church when I was a child she was really sorry for it. That church was having a communion service by passing round little cups of grape juice and little plates of bread.   It didn't occur to Aunt Mary that no one had explained to me about communion  and she was completely taken aback when I started shouting out "I want refreshments! Everybody else is having refreshments!  Why can't I have refreshments?"  She had to take me out of the church and never brought me back.

     Something she really insisted on was avoiding all theatrical performances, whether in the cinema or on stage, as that was participating in telling a lie.

     Two other things she really insisted on were strict chastity and Sabbath Day observance. Men were to be avoided at all costs, an insistence which got her the reputation of being a Lesbian in some parts of the family, although my mother refused to believe it.   Men, according to her, were just so many rapists.  And on Sunday you should spend the whole day reading the Bible and going to church  and not even think of taking a walk for pleasure.

     In stark contrast to Aunt Mary were two other important figures in my childhood, Aunt Maidie and  Our Evelyn.  Aunt Maidie was no relation but my mother's best friend.  She was involved quite openly in an unmarried sexual relationship and took the occult much more seriously than religion, although she was glad to have her mother praying for her during the Blitz when she was an air raid warden.   Our Evelyn, who was a nursemaid my mother took on when I was about eight, was Catholic and made attempts to convert me that made much more of an impression on me than my Aunt Mary's similar attempts . It is probably because of her that I take great pleasure in saying Catholic prayers today, even though that doesn't stop me being a Quaker.  So all that ends up as quite a mixed bag of religion.

     

Following Presbyterians

     Yesterday I spent several hours composing a Blog to which I gave the title "Scottish Presbyterians"  and which I ended up accidentally deleting.  It was all about a couple of members of my Scottish mother's family who were full of doom and gloom and premonitions of disaster and considered this a right attitude to religion.  I went on about this in considerable detail, not realising that by so doing I was becoming thoroughly negative myself.  But she was not negative herself at all. Calling the Blog "Scottish Presbyterians" I was giving the impression that all Scottish Presbyterians were like this.  And yet my mother was just as convinced as they were about the rightness of the religion in which the whole family had been brought up although she was quite different.   She was both fun-loving and kind.  She was also very far from believing that she had all the right answers.  As a result she tended to admire the one  Presbyterian relative to whom I was particularly hostile and tell me to be like her, simply because this relation was so steeped in religious observance that my mother had to believe that she was really good.
     I feel I have to go back to the beginning again, so instead of calling this Blog "Scottish Presbyterians" I am calling it "Following Presbyterians", meaning to imply that I am following up on  what I said before even though I hadn't actually published any of it.  I just thought I had.

     I could go on in some detail and at some length about the ways in which  my mother and Aunt Mary (as I was taught to call this particular relative) professed the same beliefs and yet were quite different in their attitudes and behaviour.  In fact I think I will.

     But first I would like to comment on certain aspects of human behaviour.  It seems to be typically human to form groups which protect their own members in opposition to other groups, starting with the nuclear family and then going on to link together people living in a particular place or belonging to a particular profession, class, race or religion.  Tolerance seems very hard to acquire and requires quite a lot of effort,  "I am better than you are because my group is better than yours" seems like a nearly universal reaction.

     Aunt Mary felt like that about being Scottish rather than English and Presbyterian rather than Catholic.  She went back to Scotland every summer, returning with a large bouquet of white heather, and felt she had to do this to maintain her moral fibre  while being obliged to earn a living in the sinful city of London.  As for the difference between her and Catholics, she was quite sure she was saved and bound for heaven while they were all going straight to hell.  It didn't bother her in the least that Catholics might feel the same way about her.  They were simply wrong.

     In contrast, after the departure of Nurse Boone and as her family continued to grow, my mother hired a much less prestigious nursemaid  by the name of Evelyn Shephard who was staunchly Catholic, apparently quite unconcerned that Evelyn might try to convert us.  In fact Evelyn did make this attempt, filling me with such admiration for the saints that I still feel it today.  In fact as a child I even wanted to be a saint myself until I discovered that becoming one wasn't that easy.


     It wasn't exactly that my mother didn't care what we believed.  She did become quite upset when my sister Ann, having been sent to a convent school in India, started attending mass on her return to England.   She only calmed down when Ann pretended that she was thinking of attending the University of Geneva.  My mother thought Geneva was still the city of Calvin, which it, not.  Rather my mother was so convinced of the rightness of her own faith that she tended to regard other faiths as comic rather than dangerous.  When Evelyn responded to the news that my parents had married in a registry office by saying that they were living in sin and we children were bastards, my mother thought this was hilarious.

     When I think about that, I realise that my mother didn't feel threatened by religious differences any more than she felt threatened by the company of the gypsies or by the presence of an unmarried mother next door.  This girl, who called herself Mrs. Lamb without anybody  believing that she was actually married to Mr. Lamb, lived together with him and their two children.  Her own mother had disowned her, saying that having one child could be a mistake but if you had two, you were doing it on purpose.  To say they were ostracised is putting it mildly.  Mrs. Lamb couldn't do her own grocery shopping without being insulted by the shopkeepers, so my mother sent me to do it for her without anyone suspecting and she always gave me a large tip for it because Mr. Lamb had money.  I  almost forgot to mention that Mr. Lamb had a legal wife who refused to divorce him and was paying child support to a third woman.  Hearing all this, I took a good look at Mr. Lamb one day to see if I could see anything special about him but I couldn't.  Where my mother's acceptance of Mrs. Lamb was concerned, she was motivated not by easy  approval but by pity, while my Aunt Mary insisted so stoutly on perfect chastity that she regarded all men as potentially evil and to be strictly avoided.

     The total difference in attitude which I perceived in so many respects between my mother and Aunt Mary is liable to occur in every group and religion.   Just how far does this go?  What seems to be involved is the contrast between those who have a real feeling for humanity and those who are wrapped up in their own self importance, whatever they claim to believe.

   

   

     .

ANGELS AND OTHER TUTELARY SPIRITS

     The last Blog I posted was all about my Guardian Angel.  One thing I didn't say about him is that he's a very tricky character.  In fact he's such a trickster that I think he's related to the Norse god Loki or else to the indigenous characters Raven and Coyote.  It was through his trickiness that I was able as a child to escape unharmed from that child moleste.,  Through my angel's close acquaintance with tricks I was able to see through that scoundrel's attempts to trick me and deceive him in my turn. When he said he would take me to the woods, I said "Oh, that would be lovely! Do you know where the woods are?" and took his hand as I did so so that I could let go of him easily when there was a suitable time.  He said, "No, I'm a stranger here," so I said "Then I'll show you the way" and led him towards my parents' home, chatting as naively as I could all the way.  When we reached it I ran in.

     One thing I wasn't able to do was get him arrested because my parents' didn't believe my story but thought I had made it up.  After all I had been in the habit of telling some pretty remarkable stories about having been a Scots terrier in a previous existence.  But I really didn't mind not being believed so long as I was safe.  At any rate I knew that that man would have lost faith in his powers of deception.  Maybe, although that is perhaps too much to hope for, he never approached another child again, fearing the visibility of his guilty secret.

      One thing my angel is not able to do is hit all the right keys on my computer, so you will have to excuse my typos.  He belongs to a much earlier time.  In fact I'm sure he goes back to the Stone Age, long predating Christianity.  In fact he may actually be the Norse god Loki in a new guise or else Raven or Coyote.  After all, Loki was considered an enemy by the Norse gods, who were quite accomplished villains, for he brought about their downfall, plotting it from the start, and thereby cleared the way  in Scandinavia for Christianity.  But people have always known about tutelary spirits.

      So-called "primitive" people are regularly accompanied on important journeys by animal spirits and this is particularly the case with shamans.  Most people are familiar with the sets of animal cards for telling fortunes which are based on indigenous beliefs.  When we use them, we are of course calling for guidance on the over soul of each particular animal as it has become known to us through its distinctive character and ways.  I have even come across an account by a well known psychic,  Colette Baron-Reid, in her very informative book, "Messages From Spirit", of how she got some cockroaches to move out of her apartment into a neighbour's by appealing  to the Over Soul of the cockroaches. This author says she is sometimes taken for a witch but the the world of Spirit is far too vast and generous to be limited to that.  However witches were well known to have pets, sometimes toads but more often black cats.

     The witch of Endor, in the Bible. had a familiar spirit, although we are not told if it was an animal spirit, which she used to call up the spirit of the prophet Samuel to answer the questions of King Saul, and psychics and mediums nowadays regularly have spirit guides.  But of course they have to be careful what kind of spirit they pick.  Certain sources of spiritual guidance such as the ouija board are quite notorious for calling up the wrong kinds of spirits. There is a well known story of how one couple of young men were led to complete psychological and spiritual disaster by it.  But however angels, no matter how tricky' are a completely different kettle of flying fish.

     Angels are unreservedly good and bearers of messages from God to Man in whatever religion they may appear.  Gabriel bore the message of the Koran to Mohammed and of the Annunciation to Mary and he may have been the one who warned Joseph in a dream to flee with the Mother and Child to Egypt.  Michael fights on God's behalf and Raphael heals.  But there are myriads of angels.  Everyone, without exception has his own guardian angel, although some of my friends are more conscious of his presence than others.  Some people are more conscious of their besetting devil, who is also in constant attendance.  My naughty Quaker friend, Basil Ivan Rakoczi,  about  whom I have written in a previous blog, once told me the following story.  When he was a little boy he was told by his religious teachers -- I think they were Jesuits -- that he had an angel on his right shoulder and a devil on his left. He should always listen to the angel and ignore the devil. But he felt sorry for the poor little devil who was being ignored and decided to listen to both, with the consequences we already know about.

     Apart from angels and in a different category, in other religions we find gods and daemons. Socrates put great faith in his daemon, to whom he listened all the time and on whose advice he unfailingly relied, even when it advised him to accept the death sentence passed on him by the leaders of Athens.   And the priestesses of the Pythian oracle served Apollo as the psychics of their day.  Each god or goddess was the tutelary spirit looking after whoever was dedicated to that particular deity's avocation, much as guardian angels or patron saints can be nowadays. All this is typical godlike behaviour.

     But there is a different category of gods I have heard about recently who are worshiped in modern times and who co-exist with Roman Catholicism in Haiti.  I heard about Voodoo a long time ago and regarded it with horror as unreservedly evil.  When I heard a friend of mine was practicing it I fled from her house in terror.  Since then I have read a book which puts a much kinder face on this practice.  It is called "Mama Loa" and it is a sympathetic account by a social scientist, Karen McCarthy Brown, of the comfort and help this African religion has in the impoverished and beleaguered lives of Haitian women.  Not all bad reputations, as we know from other cases, are actually deserved,.

     That is all I have to say on the subject of angels and other tutelary spirits for the moment.  Maybe some other day I will get back to the topic of "Stories in the Bible", which was the one my guardian angel had me discard.

My Guardian Angel

     In my next few Blogs I would like to discuss the topics of my mother,  sex and religion. Art is an important topic for me too but I have already discussed that quite a lot. Basically what I am setting out to do is describe how I encountered in childhood the values I finally espoused as an adult.

     I have had a strong belief since I was a child in my Guardian Angel. I was taught to say a prayer in bed at night that I still say:
          "Now I lay me down to sleep,
           I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
           And if I die before I wake
           I pray the Lord my soul to take."
     Another one went:
          "Four angels round my bed:
            Two angels at my head:
            One to watch and one to pray
            And two to carry my soul away."
I no longer pray the second one. Instead, every morning, I say the following prayer:
          "Angel of God, my Guardian dear.
           To whom God's love commits me here,
           Ever this day be at my side
          To light, to guard,
          To rule and to guide."

     Having a continuing interest in the occult which I inherited from my mother along with a belief in more orthodox religion, I read the autobiography of the famous medium, Sylvia Browne, several years ago, and was surprised to learn that when she said this first prayer as a child she was frightened by it.  She certainly got over that fear later on as she came to communicate with the dead in public and on a very grand scale. But although I have never tried being a medium, I was certainly not frightened by it. I have always accepted death as a perfectly natural part of life and nothing to be afraid of. This is something I heard from my mother  again and again. There was a little piece of family history she told to inculcate it.

     My mother's mother died giving birth to her and as it was considered improper for her father to have sole charge  of a little girl she was brought up by his mother. My mother much admired her grandmother for her warm heart, her neighbourly ways and her endless generosity. She gave me her grandmother's name of Barbara in the hope that I would turn out to be like her. Certainly my mother wanted all her children to meet death in the same way her grandmother had done because she told us all the same story. When her grandmother was quite old and living alone, her favourite brother came to visit her. He told her a funny story which made her laugh. Then she leaned back in her chair, closed her eyes, smiling, and stopped talking. Half an hour later he realised she was dead.

     We all listened to this story suitably impressed with the exception of my youngest sister, Annabel. When my mother started out, "Now, Annabel, you mustn't be afraid  of death," Annabel retorted "Oh, no, Mummy, I'm not afraid of death. I've always longed to be a dear little worm!" My mother and Annabel were living in Texas at the time and I was living in Illinois. My mother thought Annabel's retort was so funny that she wrote to me about it. But I had never put up the same resistance.

     When I was around ten years old I fell ill with cerebro-spinal meningitis. I could not keep any food down. Every time I ate I threw up. I hated it so much I actually wanted to die. I was quite prepared for an angel to carry my soul away. Or two angels, as the case might be. And I have always been aware since then that life was a gift that would some day be taken away, there was no knowing when. The idea doesn't bother me. Although when the meningitis didn't kill me, my mother and I considered that a cause for celebration.  The doctors had just invented a pill for it.

     Where angels were concerned I had read about Abraham entertaining angels in his tent. Later I was to read about an angel coming to Mary and other angels announcing the birth of Jesus to some shepherds. My mother had handed me the King James Bible when I was six and told me to read it, but without offering a word of explanation.Apparently she thought the meaning was perfectly clear and self explanatory.

     I loved stories so much that my mother had taught me to read at the age of four so that I could read stories for myself and wouldn't be pestering her to read to me all day long. Here was a brand new big book of stories for me to read, so I got on with it. I already knew the Alice books so I followed the advice of the King of Hearts: "Begin at the beginning and go on to the end, then stop." Alice was already my role model, but I was quite prepared to accept other role models. And so I began at the beginning with the Book of Genesis, which rather puzzled me, as at first I was simply not prepared to accept the story of the  Fall.

     My highly trained nursemaid, Nurse Edith Boone, known as my Nanny, had taught me to think and  reflect and apparently she had given me the idea that that was the idea that that was what God wanted us to do. I was sure that God wanted us to know as much as possible and shocked that anyone should maintain that there was anything he didn't want us to know. But I didn't want to be hasty so I went off to a quiet place and reflected on it. Then it came to me that knowing Good and Evil wasn't the same thing as knowing facts as you can't know Evil without being affected by it. So the story did make sense after all.

      Nurse Boone left us when I was six so I hadn't actually discussed the Bible with her, so far as I remember. With the outbreak of the Second World War she considered it her patriotic duty to work in a munitions factory. I have been told that she was a member of a religious sect called the Plymouth Brethren who are apparently not unlike Conservative Quakers, although without being pacifists. They are so staid that they drove Aleister Crowley to rebel against them by becoming a black magician. Perhaps that is what they are generally best known for.

     Age six was an important time for me. The war started, Nurse Boone left, I started reading the Bible and my mother started supplying me with quite horrendous sexual information. Just as she wanted all her children to be prepared for death, so she wanted us all to know about "the facts of life."
As a trained nurse she knew this was important. But she never mentioned that they had any connection with love, which I think was an important omission. The total effect was quite frightening and fitted in with what I was reading in the Bible about Sodom and Gomorrah.  However it turned out to be quite useful in a practical kind of way because when I met a child molester  when I was coming home in the dark along a deserted road four years later I knew exactly what to think of him and his offer to teach me games I'd never played before. I thank my Guardian Angel for showing me exactly how to get away from him and get safely home unharmed. My Guardian Angel is very resourceful. With that I end my tribute to him.


   

         

           "

Previous Existences

     Some  people think I'm crazy but I'm pretty sure I've remembered six or seven previous existences. This started when I was about ten years old.  I was quite sure I'd led a previous existence as a Scots terrier.  I don't remember all  the details now but I did then.  I used to tell long detailed stories about it to my four-year old sister Ann in bed at night.  Apparently I had all kinds of adventures.  Furthermore I also knew that in the life before that I had been a bad human being and had to retrace my evolution by sinking to the level of a dog.  However I had been such a good little dog that I had been allowed to become a human being again.

     If I had been living in the Far East when I had this experience and talked about it my story would have been accepted without question, as reincarnation there is a matter of accepted belief.  There  are all kinds of stories in India of a child born in one village remembering a life in another village, being taken there and being able to prove it.  Remembering previous existences is particularly important for establishing the credentials of certain holy men, as we see from the example of the present Dalai Lama.  And the Buddha went through all kinds of animal existences, as the tale is told, being a particularly noble, self-sacrificing animal in each one.  But I was living in twentieth century England in a home devoid of Hindu or Buddhist beliefs.  My father was a freethinker and my mother a Scottish Presbyterian.   What could have induced me to come up with these stories?

     However I was in fact subject to certain occult influences which could well have excited my imagination along these lines.  My mother might have been expected to be dour, hardheaded and canny.  But it is the Lowland Scots who have earned this reputation and my mother came  from the Outer Hebrides where people believe firmly in psychic powers, known as the Second Sight, and put out milk at night for the fairies to keep them from draining the cows, while my English scientist father tried and failed to convince my mother that all this kind of thing was superstitious rubbish.  My mother managed quite easily to reconcile her religious beliefs with her more magical ones.  So did her best friend, whom I was taught to call Aunty Maidie, who was a Highlander, at the same time as she was sufficiently canny to hold quite an important job in the Civil Service.

     Living as we did on the outskirts of Birmingham, we found ourselves on a Romany travelling route.  On my way to school I would frequently see their painted, wooden, horse- drawn caravans pass by, with the men driving and the women, who were the fortune tellers, walking in the road.  My mother was always inviting these women in, and they chalked their patterans, which you would call hobo marks, on our gate posts.  My mother said "Oo, I wonder what they mean!" and my father said "they mean {A fool lives here.}".  But she was able to defend herself.  One day  my father came home from work and said, "Well Mary we're moving".   He expected her to be surprised because he never told her anything of his plans beforehand, but she just said, "I know." "How do you know?" he asked.  "A gypsy told me."

     My mother also subscribed to an occult magazine called "Prediction" which featured horoscopes by her favourite astrologer.  According to her we were all supposed to do exactly what this astrologer said.  I too read this magazine and believed in it.  I probably learned from it about reincarnation.  So right now I might dismiss my ideas on this subject as childish fantasy if I had not had several memories of previous existences, quite unexpectedly, in middle age.

     I was taking a course in ancient Greek at Brock when I found certain words which sounded Greek but weren't in the Greek dictionary, popping into my mind.  I asked the professor, Fred Casler, about them and he said they were Doric.  Doric was the ancient Greek spoken in the countryside and I had never been exposed to it.  It must have come from somewhere.  Shortly after this I stayed in bed for a week, feeling ill, and spent the whole week watching pictures of former lives flash across my mind as if on a movie screen.  To this day I cannot be entirely sure that they were real memories, but how did I come up with the Doric?

     I would like to write them all up and see if I can get them published.  I have finished one account, in narrative verse, about a descendant of the Witch of Endor who falls in love with Jesus and follows him around Galilee.  I have shown it to an Anglican priest who liked it and even admired it.  I have also done some work on the others.  There is a great deal of variety but this time round I did not see myself being a dog!

Goddess or Witch?

   W hen I held a reception for my May 2019 art show at NAC, some young women artists came up to me and asked if I had any pictures of Goddesses because they were planning a group show of Goddesses and would like me to be in it. I said I had half a dozen, but then when I looked through my collection of my own work I found I had a whole  lot more. Getting quite carried away, I did several more and ended up with an entire show of my own. Not hearing any more about the projected group show, I decided to put mine on.

     I learned about the Greek and Roman divinities in high school and was quite moved by them, responding to them pretty much as if  I were an ancient Greek or Roman myself,  But we did not hear anything about any other religion or mythology  apart  from reading the Bible, which, according to British educational practice at the time, we read without any reference to denominational teaching ,  I do not have any Norse or Hindu divinities in my show. However, although it is very bad theology to call the Blessed Virgin Mary divine, I have included her because I think she is so important and I have such a strong attachment to her.  Taken altogether, my show is a tribute to many feminine aspects of the Divine. As the Kabbalah claims, all the different religions are attempts to reach the Divine, which, in itself, is beyond human comprehension.

     My Goddess show will be viewed in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe, September 1 to 15, with an opening reception in the same place in the afternoon  of Sunday, September 1, 2019, from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m.

      The Book Launch, which is part of the same event, is devoted to a second edition of "The Witch Poems", a book of humorous verse which I first wrote and published in 1995 to a fair degree of local success. In fact it sold out and people have been asking for more copies ever since, so I have set out to meet the demand. The Book Launch will take place in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe in the afternoon of Sunday, September 8, 2019,  from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m., together with a reception.

     For those who do not already know "The Witch Poems", I should explain that it is a book of poems that are both humorous and at the same time quite genuinely religious, written under the persona of a witch. In my original edition I made some attempt to explain this persona in a foreword in which I referred to certain feminists in Quebec who were calling themselves witches. In fact, a little later, W.I.T.C.H. became quite a popular acronym among feminists all over North America. But simply calling myself a feminist was not a complete explanation.

     Now that I am setting out to give the whole truth, I will say that I had actually been quite strongly influenced  by my friendship with a Gay male witch by the name of Basil Ivan Rakoczi. He is chiefly know for his work as an artist which after his death brought him quite a lot of fame. After running into him at an academic gathering through one of those coincidences which Carl Gustav Jung considers quite uncanny, I spent a great deal of time with him while on sabbatical in Paris many years ago. He took a friendly interest in my writing and painting and it is largely because of him that I have become so productive in retirement. In fact I might almost say that it is only now that, owing to his encouragement, I have embarked on my real career. Unfortunately we parted on bad terms shortly before his death because I was so shocked and frightened by some of his magical practices. I write about this relationship in the completely new foreword to my book.

     Another new feature consists of illustrations of charms and spells which I drew myself and which are much more personal than the otherwise good illustrations done by Lesley Bell for the first edition.

     I owe Basil, to whom I have become reconciled, a debt of gratitude for opening up to me a whole new area of creative independence. On this occasion I ask myself, am I good or bad, loving or hostile, creative or destructive, wise or psychotic, goddess or witch?  But I am really not too concerned about how I may be viewed  because basically I am happy and at peace with myself. I am constantly reminded of my Grandmother's state of depression in old age when she used to repeat "I'm an idle old woman, I might as well be dead." I am so much better off because I am not at all idle and I am glad to be alive, whatever anyone thinks. And so I ask my readers and viewers to accept both aspects of my show: the Goddess and the Witch, and not choose between them.




   

The Rite of Spring

Some people who know my work came to the show Lynne Mawson and I held at the Mahtay 

Café in March to celebrate International Women’s Day. It was such a tribute to women that the same people will probably be surprised to learn that I will be holding a show at NAC, May 25 - June 2, that will be almost as much a tribute to the male gender.

What accounts for this? I have resurrected some paintings I did in Paris in 1974-75 and have not shown before. The show also includes some new paintings, I did quite recently in the same vein. I left for Paris in 1974 to work on a sabbatical research project on Marcel Proust. This plan fell through because I discovered on reaching Paris that the information on which I’d based this project was inaccurate. Other Proust research took its place and did, fortunately, lead to publication because I was spending a lot of time with other Proust scholars.

Other people I met were the man I loved but was obliged to leave, and my artistic mentor, Basil Ivan-Rakoczi, who lived in Paris but whom I’d already met in Canada at a meeting of the Learned  Societies.

He had congratulated me there on the paper I gave on retellngs of the fairy tale The Sleeping Beauty, saying he was very interested in folklore and inviting me to look him up in Paris.

I was very keen to do so because he had offered to introduce me to Robert Graves and  Samuel Beckett. In fact, he never did do this.

I think the fact of the matter was that he had actually got to know both men by mixing in the same cultural circles but they had taken a dislike a to him upon finding he was gay. But I did meet people who know him, quite unexpectedly, by turning up at the Quaker  Meeting House in Paris and finding it full of his pictures.

When I got to know him better, I discovered that he had come to Paris from Ireland where he had worked as a Freudian lay analyst, a poet and a part-time painter.

In Paris, he painted full time, told fortunes and enrolled some young friends in a group for transactional analysis, which I joined,

Irish Quakers had invited him to join the Religious Society of Friends, which he did, although with some doubts about his own suitability.

His Hungarian father and his Irish mother, who was an heriditary witch and had introduced him to witchcraft mixed with Catholicism, had met while travelling in Ireland with the gypsies. He himself was an honorary gypsy and wrote a book on the Tarot, which he illustrated himself, as a means for gypsy initiation.

In English, the title was the Painted Caravan, and in French La Roulotte. Initiatique

He preferred to say Gypsy rather than Romany. I have this book in both versions and frequently use it.

I was not shocked or surprised to hear all this as my own mother had made me quite used to this kind of thing, although she would have been shocked to be called a witch. She considered herself a good Scottish Presbyterian.

The two of them read the same Occult magazine called Prediction.

On a typical weekend in Paris, I attended Basil’s “At Home” on Saturday afternoon, Quaker meeting on Sunday morning and the Louvre on Sunday afternoon. The love of my life visited me on Sunday evening. I also attended when I could a life drawing group led by Basil. He got me painting in watercolours on  very large sheets of paper.

I took these paintings home with me from Paris. Recently, I finished and polished them. And I painted some more pictures in the same size and style.

It is all these pictures I shall be showing at NAC in May.

Basil was known as a symbolist painter, going in for dreams, legends and fantasy. This is very much my own inclination. Recently, I had a visit from a couple of artistic friends who asked me if my own work had been influenced by the Tarot.

I said my first influence had been the illustrations in my children’s books but I showed them the Tarot books by Basil.

The paintings I did in Paris are mainly based on Greek, Roman and Norse mythology.

They represent Bacchus, Phoebus Apollo, Ganymede and the halls of Asgard. Also included are some semi-nudes of male figures.

There are just two examples from the Christian story. That is the Grail and the serpent in the garden of Eden. I have included one angel but angels are found in more than one religion.

I feel I’ve gone back to a time in my life where I was younger, more open to experience, and more poetic.

Basil died soon after I got back from Paris, but his influence is still with me. I think, though, I have finally shaken off the curse he put on me because I strongly disapproved of his using bad magic as  well as good. No wonder he had doubts about his suitability as a Quaker.

Greetings

Greetings to those who missed the Women's Day Art Show set up by Lynne Mawson and me! Lynne brought back all my unsold pictures to my house. If you want to see them, call me at 905 685 6709 any time between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m.

WOMEN'S DAY ART SHOW

     This Blog is being published by me, Barbara J. Bucknall, to advertise the art show that Lynne Mawson and I will be putting on in the Community Room of the Mahtay Cafe  to celebrate International Women's Day which will be taking place on March 8, 2019.  The show will run from March 8 to March 15  and will be sponsored by Bethlehem Housing and Support Services and its Housing Hero Fundraising Initiative.  Two of my original framed paintings will be raffled at the Bethlehem Fundraising "Empty Bowls" dinner on March 6, 2019 and two of Lynne's will be raffled on the last night of our art show.  Both raffles will be fundraisers for Bethlehem Housing.

     Lynne and I are putting on this show together because we share an interest in portraying female figures, whether human or divine. Our dedication to art is deep and sincere, playful and joyful, serious and humorous and might even be called religious in its total commitment.  Not that you need to genuflect when entering our show, but we have both portrayed some women who stand well above the ordinary human level.  Lynne will be putting some actual goddesses on show but not putting them up for sale because they are too precious to her.  My own divinities are much more accessible.  While including some pagan goddesses, I also bear witness to a devotion to the Virgin Mary which is quite unusual in a Quaker.   We also paint plenty of human women and Lynne's are quite humorous.  Mine tend to be more serious.  It was in fact Lynne's sense of humor that endeared her art to me.

     About her goddess pictures, she says: "The goddess image comes to me from time to time.  This is art I cannot force.  I lay down three colours, close my eyes and move my brush around the canvas. Then I walk away.  Once dry, the canvas is observed from many angles.  It is then left on my art table. Walking by from time to time, I give the canvas a quick glance.  At some point, but not always, an image begins to appear.  At that point, I drop what I am doing and put chalk to canvas.  She is revealed!  The goddess pictures are very special to me.  I am delighted that her images cannot be forced.  They form such a personal and powerful connection.  People have commissioned goddesses. Never have they been satisfactory in my eyes."

     Most of Lynne's pictures are very human portrayals of plump Bathing Belles.  They are saved from being repetitious by the intense joy she takes in varying colour, contrasting foreground and background and varying the patterns she uses on their swimsuits.  She tends to go in for circles and spirals.  She says the way she feels about spirals is quite visceral.  Of these bathers she says: "Having had body  issues for my entire life, I strive to present the zaftig human female form in a positive and powerful, yet playful  way.  Working on these images helps me overcome the shame I have felt on inhabiting this body, by making the rounded form vital, strong and beautiful. While working through my own issues, I hope my work brings joy to those who view it.  Most of the images are cropped: perhaps a good shrink could explain that, but for now just know that these cropped images are aesthetically pleasing to the artist.   Perhaps there are issues that are not yet ready to be revealed in my art."

     Lynne and I both paint from our deepest feelings and the inspiration for my own paintings is just as random and comes from just as deep and hidden a place as Lynne's goddesses.  I have been painting since I was introduced to art in grade school at the age of six.   My teacher, unlike Lynne's, gave me great encouragement.  My younger brother Malcolm did the same thing and our mother encouraged us by setting us to work painting Christmas cards.  My art class was the happiest part of the school week for me all the way through high school.  But when the time came for me to enter university and I won a place at Oxford, I was strongly discouraged from doing anything so unintellectual.   Embarking on an academic career, I still loved to view and collect art, but I treated my own art as a mere hobby.

     As we were growing  up, my siblings and I  all paid regular visits to the Museum and Art Gallery in our home town of Birmingham, England.   Our grandfather was something of an artist since he was a silversmith, painted as a hobby and bought original art.  Our father had a knack for drawing but treated it merely as a hobby, as he wished his children to do.  As a child I loved the illustrations in my children's books so much that  I wanted to become a book illustrator myself, but my father denied me the opportunity.  Nothing, however, could stop my brother Malcolm from becoming a full time artist, although our father tried to divert him into becoming an architect and ended up calling him a fool.  But Malcolm's artistic career has proved a tremendous success, little as our father liked  his art and tried  to persuade him to take up writing instead if he was going to be creative.  As it happened, all of us turned  out creative.  Our sister Ann had quite a gift for poetry, which I have worked on together with her, and our brother Bill took his own path, plunging into music and medicine.  Our father even managed as a scientist himself to disapprove of that, telling him that medicine was not an exact science.  Perhaps our mother was the really creative parent, although it was our father who taught us to debate when we were quite young.  She was an excellent letter writer and story teller, having emerged from the strong Celtic oral tradition of the ceilidh or folk festivity.

     I received a strong impulse towards what was later to become in retirement my full time dedication to art when  I was teaching at the University of Illinois  in the 1960's.  I had already discovered the great novel of Marcel Proust when I was a graduate student at the University of  Illinois and had been deeply impressed by what struck me as his truly religious approach to the various arts, especially since I had already picked up a similar attitude from the PreRaphaelites in the Birmingham Art Gallery.  I ended up writing my doctoral thesis for Northwestern University on this topic.  As another religious interest I started attending the local Quaker Meeting which appealed to me by its emphasis on contemplation and meditation and almost complete lack of dogma.  Although I also attend High Anglican services, I have stayed with the Quakers ever since.  Another benefit I got from them was that they afforded me access to the Art and Music Departments.  I actually sold one picture, a fantasy oil painting based on an actual dream, to the Head of the Art Department.  In the Music Department I met Ben Johnston who was a personal friend of John Cage and introduced me to him.  I also took art lessons from Ben's wife Betty.  John Cage came to have a very strong influence on me eventually, although to begin with I was quite shocked by his insistence on the path to musical composition being the creation of random noise.  His final effect on me was to get me to abandon any planning and preparation in my painting  and just paint by inspiration as the spirit moved me.  Of course this is also a very Quakerly thing to do.  What I chiefly got from John Cage was his insistence on what is random.

     Nowadays I work mainly with markers on paper, since I like to draw rather than paint.  Mainly I use Winsor and Newton watercolour markers, but sometimes I use Prismacolour or coloured ink brushes.  I make random strokes with various markers until finally a recognizable picture emerges. This picture frequently takes me by surprise by its faithfulness to my own feelings.  Then I contemplate it, looking for a meaning in it and give it a title.  This seems to me very close to the way Lynne creates her goddess paintings although I had not heard of them until quite recently.  But of course in my own case any subject can emerge. 

     In spite of this similarity we came to art in very different ways.  Let us listen to what Lynne says: "I have been making art since I was a child in Kindergarten, when my teacher informed me that I was not colouring "the right way."  The task was to colour a picture of Santa Claus.  Having been to see the man, I was well aware that his suit had a textured quality.  Happily I set to the task, making tiny, tiny circles that left bits of wax on the paper, creating the texture I wanted.  The teacher, seeing this, took my paper to present it to the class.  I was so proud...until she informed the class that this was the way NOT to colour: we should follow instructions.

     Grade 9 art: we were to use plaster to make a textured painting.  Again, I happily created texture on the board and painted a landscape.  Nope.  The texture was to have the scene within it.

     In university, taking a teachers's college training course on how to teach art.  The instructor was most arrogant and unpleasant.  We were to create a plaster wrapped wire sculpture.  My mistake was titling the piece "So you think you are an art critic."  C minus.  I have been colouring my own way ever since.

     Most of my recent work is oil pastel over  an acrylic paint base.  I've found that good quality oil pastels spread like butter.  I enjoy the tactile experience as much as the end product.  While having had no formal training  (not much luck with instructors) I've picked up many a fine technique from the pages of Pinterest.

     Much of my inspiration was found when teaching art at the primary and junior levels.   During my last two years of teaching not much attention was paid to curriculum.  Having had minimal interest or success with formal techniques, I was not much inclined to go past the basics.  It was more helpful to teach these things as they cropped up or were important to the student.  Spontaneous expression seemed more important.  This was grade 4.  They had years to learn the technical stuff.

     I ran into a student when he was in grade 7. He said art wasn't as much fun any more and had I ever heard of this thing called "perspective"?  I laughed and apologized.  I explained that I was at the end of my career and wasn't much worried about administrative repercussions.  My program consisted of teaching famous artists and creating works based on or inspired by their styles.  The Georgia O'Keeffe lessons?  They were just flowers!

     The enthusiasm and excitement when it came time to create their own pieces was marvelous.  I can still see their faces when they came in from lunch to find that their art paper was taped to the underside  of their desks.  Michelangelo would have been proud.  If he could paint on his back for ten years they could survive eighty minutes.  There is much to appreciate and try to emulate in the work of children: exuberant and unselfconscious self-expression!'

     There is much that Lynne expresses here that is true for all artists.  Of course we all have to learn from great art and I have been fortunate enough to spend a sabbatical year in Paris surrounded by museums and art galleries.  Every Sunday afternoon I spent in the Louvre and I also received personal help and encouragement from a gifted professional artist, Basil  Ivan Rakoczi, who enrolled me in his life drawing group.   But I am sure Lynne learned as much from her students as I did from him.  My brother Malcolm once said, "When you see what a little boy of ten can do, it just makes you sick.  The only thing that consoles you is knowing that he won't be able to do it in a few years."  He himself makes a practice of telling his admirers that he is able to paint as he does because he is in touch with the spirit of his childhood.  As the great French poet Baudelaire once said, "Genius is childhood recovered at will" and Marcel Proust begins his great novel with his narrator's involuntary memory of childhood.

     My sister Annabel has observed that her grandchildren create much more freely than her adult students, who are seriously hampered by fear of not doing "the right thing" and making mistakes.  I feel that I have been liberated from this fear by allowing myself to be completely free and random.  Not everything I paint is all that great, but this knowledge does not inhibit me and I feel that I too may be able one day to recover my childhood.  I have spent many years of my life studying Marcel Proust but the  time has now come to treat him as a source of inspiration. 

     Lynne and I hope you will enjoy our show.  Neither of us has exhibited a great deal.  I have had three shows and have shown in the Pumphouse gallery.  Lynne has shown in church arts and craft shows and in the Pumphouse gallery and also has a Facebook page, titled "Baubles and Babes."   I am not as good at handling technology as she is and I am indebted to her and Natasha at N.A.C. for their technical help. We are looking forward to meeting a wider audience.

      

ART AND POPULAR CULTURE

     A  long time ago I gave a paper at a conference on Popular Culture on the way the word  "lady" is used nowadays.It used to be used to describe a woman of the upper class  who was well behaved  and had good manners.  She was entitled to respect and had to be treated with the same good manners she showed to others.  She was unquestionably superior to the working class and expected deference from her social inferiors.  No special talent or skill was expected from her to justify this deference -- simply the accident of birth  and a certain inculcated code of behaviour.  Talent and skill, if she had them, were supposed to be limited to drawing room entertainment such as playing the piano. For instance, Jane  Austen was known both  in life and in death as a lady rather than as  an author.
     A lady's social role  was largely decorative.  In so far as she was useful, it was in the social arts and in household management.  She was expected to be attractive without being explicitly sexual in looks, dress and manner.  A lady was a person with  whom a gentleman  could find respite and solace when he relaxed from the onerous demands of his necessary duties.  What was considered serious work was incumbent on him, not on her.  All this  set her apart like a luxury article and made her superior without necessarily bestowing on her any further wealth or prestige.
     This view of the role of a particular kind of woman was expressed very eloquently in a Pears soap advertisement of the Edwardian era.  It showed a little girl washing herself to the accompaniment of the slogan "Preparing To Be A Beautiful  Lady."  Physical Beauty was part of the lady's role and had to be worked towards like all her other assets. At this point, I  should add, gentle birth was becoming less of a requisite  for a woman to be called a lady. Talent and skill were beginning to be recognised and becoming a lady was something one could acquire by merit.
     Pears soap advertisements were attractive and even inspiring  and my sisters and I were happy to have them decorating our bedroom.  But there were many other advertisements surrounding us, most of which were equally attractive and ingenious.  For instance our Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup tin bore,  as I think it  still does, the Biblical motto "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." This allusion to one of the feats of the Biblical hero Samson carried  a very loaded message. By devouring Tate and Lyle Golden Syrup, it suggested, we would not only  be acquiring strength of a legendary nature by enjoying its sweetness; we would be performing an outstandingly morally worthy act.  I was born in 1933  and I enjoyed all the advertisements with which I was surrounded as I grew up. The art of the advertiser was sufficiently  recognised in the skill it took that Dorothy Sayers used an advertising company as background for her detective story,  "Murder Must Advertise."
     As Melanie MacDonald has shown in her artistic reinterpretation of the advertising of the twentieth century, advertising took considerable artistic skill. Respected and successful  artists were often  commissioned as was Georgia O'Keeffe by Dole to paint a pineapple. The company paid for her to travel to Hawaii to do it.  She had respect as a working woman rather than for  birth and breeding, but respect was still involved --respect for the artist and respect for the general public. One series of advertisements I appreciated for  its wit and humour appeared on billboards for Guiness. It showed a zoo with a prominently displayed zookeeper. In each poster in the series a different animal was snatching his drink away from him as he exclaimed "My Goodness!  My Guiness!"  I looked forward to those posters although I was much too young to drink.
     Respect for the general public seems to be disappearing and when some attempt at respect is made it is pretty superficial, as when one says "cleaning lady", which is quite meaningless, rather than cleaning woman, and refers to all the women one knows as ladies and all  the men as gentlemen. The African Americans are not the only ones to feel that more respect is needed in our society generally.

ART AND HEALTH

    I am 85 years old and as is only natural at my age I have been having problems with my health. In fact if it had not been for medical intervention, I would be dead by now. Not that I even wanted the medical intervention all that much. I was not suicidal, but as a result of remembering previous lives I am quite convinced that death is neither final nor permanent but we just go on from life to life, learning all the lessons we have to learn before being released to a state of bliss. Not that the prospect of all these future lives is necessarily a pleasant one. Some orthodox believers think that believing that God is loving  means that all we have to do is be reasonably good -- not even perfect --  and we only have to ask God to hear our prayers and He will make  life easy for us.  Our own memories of personal experience can tell us that this is not the case.  A loving God does not necessarily want to make life easy for us any more than loving parents choose to give in to  their children's every whim. Expecting life to be easy is simply not realistic.

     So when I had a heart attack in New Year 2016, I knew that I only had to wait for death and it would come. I was  not at all afraid  of anything about it except the fact that  I was living alone and consequently would have to die alone. I did not want to die in hospital where the natural process of death would be interfered  with.  I wanted to die at home in the presence of  a good friend. So I called a really good friend who is very protective of me, but, since he is such  a good friend he refused to do any such thing but  called Emergency.  The ambulance came and I was shipped off to the St, Catharines General Hospital  and fitted with a pacemaker, which saved my life.

     A change that came about as a result is that a neighbor who  was living  in the rooming house next door and who had seen the ambulance come and go offered to move in with me and look after me as he had looked after his mother in her last years. He is still with me. He is a real expert on the subject of physical health since he once trained for the  Olympics.  He has helped me so much  with my exercise and nutrition, which are both really essential for health, that in spite of the fact that I had surgery for colon cancer in 2017 -- of course because of it as well -- my health is actually getting better. When I  last saw my cardiologist he said I was in great shape.

     But there is an additional reason for my improved health, both physical and  mental, and that is that I am constantly doing art. I always loved to do art ever since I was a child.  There is a longstanding tradition of artistic talent and interest in my father's family although my mother could only draw stick figures. My father could sketch quite well but   preferred to  treat it only as a hobby  and quite actively tried to discourage us from taking to art as a career because he said there was no money in it.  His father used  his  own interest in decoration as a silversmith and was successful at it, so my father really had no reason to be  so disparaging.  He actually had three children who were actively interested in art: myself, my younger brother and my youngest sister.  He succeeded in diverting me into an academic career, since this was also something in which I was deeply interested. and the teachers at my high school were strongly encouraging me to pursue it.  But my brother and sister both managed to get into art school. My sister went on to a respectable career as an art therapist for mentally ill patients until she married and was able to pursue art as a hobby. She has ended up giving art classes to tourists on Hawaii. My brother was absolutely determined to be a great artist and with the help of his wife, who supported him, he has achieved that goal, painting under the name of Malcolm Bucknall and showing his art on Facebook. He makes a lot more money in his old age than our father ended up doing, but of course that is quite an exceptional outcome.
     Until I retired I did not spend much time doing art, although I did find time for it on two occasions: in my last year at the University of Illinois and when I went on sabbatical from Brock to Paris in the l970's. I'll tell you about these two occasions later on. But ever since I retired in 1993 I have dedicated myself t artistic creation of various kinds and been deeply fulfilled and blissfully happy. I have been doing some writing but most of my creativity has gone into visual art. My Brock pension supplies me with ample means to do so.
     Part of my joy in art comes from the sheer application of color. I started out with watercolor and would just take a big brushfull of color and draw it across the paper in different directions. This was not a particularly  sophisticated technique, pretty naive and rudimentary, and I took no great pride in the results. Some people give up on art because they feel they are not  producing great art from the start and have little prospect  of   ever doing so,  but I did not even want to produce great art.  I left that to my brother, from whom I was actually buying his art because I admired  it. (I bought from other artists too). I just wanted to have fun and I got it by the application of color and the free and easy movement of my hand and arm across the paper.  It was quite as much therapy as what my sister had been doing with her patients and I felt completely relaxed.  I am sure this simple happiness was good for my mental and physical health and aided the good effects of exercise and nutrition. There was no struggle or striving, no competition as there had been in academic work, just the simple satisfaction of  doing this thing for the sheer sake of doing it and for no other reason.

     I have tried other media, such as gouache and oils and marker, and have continued to have fun trying these different techniques. I get quite a rush of inspiration every time  I try a  new medium. It is genuinely exciting. As I  get more proficient  with constant practice I take increased pleasure in the effects I am producing and like to show off the results. I took a course from Linda Hankin, another Niagara artist, in how to use the right or intuitive side of my brain in my art and the result is increased skill and joy as I apply my watercolor markers, which have become my preferred medium, to the paper , with no preconceived plan about what I am doing, and astonish myself about what takes place on the paper. I hardly need to watch television or read  as I have such an endless source of entertainment at my disposal. Strength through joy, as Hitler said,  But I think I have a far better way of obtaining it than Hitler ever did. I had times of being happy and productive in my academic career but also times of being completely miserable. I suppose there were things I had to learn from my distress. But now I am learning to be completely happy as an artist and something tells me that that is what I will be doing in my next existence. I am already looking forward to it.

 

EPIPHANIES

     I am starting this blog again, not with the immediate intention of reviewing any of the shows at N.A.C, but rather  with the intention of holding forth about Art and  Beauty as  I have  felt their impact at various moments in my life.

     I can clearly remember that first moment of revelation. It was a vision of colour which I have never forgotten. I must have been about four years old and my mother had taken it into her head to take me to a dance class in a studio near our home. I don't know if she had any particular reason for doing this, but she was always keen for me to acquire elegant accomplishments,  to make me into a lady.  She came from a poor, country family  herself, but she had ambitions for her children.  I remember that I was walking along,  holding her hand, full of trust and  confidence, when I suddenly caught sight of an empty Milk of Magnesia bottle lying in the gutter. I was instantly transported by the sight. It was such a beautiful blue, of the shade of blue  I  later learned to call Cobalt, that I felt I had never seen anything so heavenly.  I was far too young to think of an empty  bottle as trash. I was willing to accept everything I encountered as potentially wonderful. But this was an experience beyond anything I had come  across before.

     I was already past middle age when I  came across Abraham Maslow and learned what he had to say about peak experiences and their importance in forming a creative personality, but this was definitely my first peak  experience. So far as I have any conscious memories, at any rate. But before I came across Maslow, my studies in English literature taught me to call it an epiphany.

     For the benefit of those readers who do not know what an epiphany is, I turn to the Oxford English Dictionary.  It gives two definitions.  One is ecclesiastical:  "The festival commemorating the manifestation of Christ to the Gentiles  in the persons of the Magi, observed on Jan. 6th, the 12th day after Christmas." The second one is more general: "A manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being."  In English literature it is frequently used figuratively, which is the sense in which I am using it. The blue of my Milk of Magnesia bottle struck me as so truly glorious that it seemed almost divine, entering our ordinary world from some higher sphere. Not that I could have used those words to describe it at four years old, but it was what I experienced emotionally and only now can I find the words to describe it.

     Epiphanies do not come too often, and I can only think of one other one, although I do experience a more human, natural kind of joy every time I encounter Art or Beauty and particularly when I practice art myself.  This other epiphany came when I went abroad for the first time, to the South of France,  I had received a good grade in French on my School Certificate  examination, a test which all English high school students had to pass at the age of sixteen before going on to pass a more advanced one at the age of eighteen.  To reward and encourage me for this achievement, my father had arranged for me to go on an exchange visit with the daughter of a prefect, that is the man in charge of one of the administrative units into which France is divided. His prefecture, in the Southwest of France, was a handsome old building but the full glory of the South of France did not burst upon me until the prefect took us to their summer cabin on the beach by the Mediterranean.

     Before that I had only swum in the chilly waters off the coast of Devon, and the Mediterranean was so smooth and warm and calm and welcoming and such a beautiful blue. Furthermore I had come equipped with a shabby one piece bathing suit whereas the prefect's daughters sported bikinis, which has just come into fashion, and I did not want to be seen sitting around on the beach with them. So I was hardly ever out of the water, to the  alarm of the prefect who thought I was so much more immature than his daughters that I was hardly safe to be left on my own. He kept watching me from the beach, afraid  I would drown. But I did not let his fears stop me.

     I emerged from the water one  morning in such a state of bliss, it was another epiphany. In fact I felt even closer to the Divine than I had done on  the previous occasion. It was a true mystical experience  and just as unexpected as my first epiphany had been.  No one had  told me that such a thing was possible. Apart from getting lectures from a tiresome, Calvinistic  aunt, my only spiritual training had consisted of reading the Psalms as part pf my exploration of the  Old Testament, which my mother had told me to read but had not attempted to explain to me.  The chief thing I got out of the  Old Testament was respect for a lot of impressive characters who led very exciting, sexy lives. But no one had suggested that my own experiences might  be anything like theirs.

      My mystical experience was one of joy and love -- universal love. I felt I had fallen in love with the whole world and with everyone in it. I had heard a lot about falling in love since I came to France, especially from the prefect's daughters, but  I had been attending a single sex school  and had never experienced anything like this before. I thought "What is this? What is happening to me? Can this be love? Yes, I must have fallen in love. But  who with?  It must  be Maurice Doucet, the  prefect's secretary, who has been so kind to me."  And I did make sheep's eyes at Maurice for a while, but without embarking on much of a romance. In fact it felt like a bit of a disappointment to  be reduced to one man after  having been in love with the whole world. But the memory of that pinnacle of bliss as a reaction to natural beauty remains with me as a lasting memory and does not fade away.

   

NAC AS A SPIRITUAL SOURCE

     For two months there are going to be no further art shows at NAC as the gallery will be closed for renovations, but the Quakers will continue to meet there for Worship every first and third Sunday of the month at 11 a.m., going on to discussion at noon.

     Steve Remus was surprised when some people from the church of the Silver Spire approached him about the spiritual significance of art, as he thinks of  himself and his colleagues as atheists. Perhaps it is a rather old fashioned idea as it was in England in the latter part of the nineteenth century that aesthetes and artists believed that they were practicing a religion of art. This was sufficiently well known that Gilbert and Sullivan made fun of it in their comic operetta "Patience", singing
                   "Though the Philistines may jostle,
                     You will rank as an apostle
                      In the high aesthetic band,
                      If you walk down Piccadilly
                      With a poppy or a lily
                       In your medieval hand."
This was particularly directed against Oscar Wilde but it targeted aesthetes in general, the enemies of art being termed Philistines by analogy with the enemies of Israel in the Old Testament.

     No one talks about a religion of art nowadays, although I once did in connection with Marcel Proust, but yet the people who love art feel that there is a spiritual component to it, although that spiritual component may be more like Zen than it is Judaeo-Christian.

     I am a Quaker, so I can safely say that the Quakers who meet at NAC like to do so because of the spiritual component of the paintings hanging on the walls. I think it is fair to say that we think of ourselves as spiritual rather than religious in any orthodox sense. We gather to sit in silence until one of our number feels inspired by the Spirit to deliver a message which comes from the heart. No direct reply is made and those present will continue to sit in silence until some other message is heard. But we cannot force the Spirit so maybe no message will be heard.

     At noon we shake hands and a discussion follows, mainly about things that passed through people's minds but which they did not feel ready to express. There is no discussion of doctrine, because we avoid dogma. If any controversy were to arise, it would not be about belief.

     One of my friends calls me a Bitsa -- bitsa this, bitsa that -- because I remind him of his Chinese father, who could be Buddhist, Confucian or Christian depending on the occasion. In this I feel I am not exceptional as a Quaker.

     Anyone who thinks they would feel comfortable with this approach is welcome to join us. If I were speaking in Meeting, at this point I might say that we welcome any  individual truths that point to  that one overriding Truth which is only known to the Spirit. But that would just be me talking, although others might agree. Our minds are all different, so Meetings vary, being  predictable only in the broad, general terms I have already stated. I hope this gives you some idea of what to expect.