After dropping Michael off at Sorley’s sister, I went to Sorley's home. He greeted me with a single single-malt, and we sat down in his study together, tasting the treat with eyes closed. “What’s your favorite poem?” he asked. “The Raven,” I replied. “It’s because I memorized it in 8th grade and it’s in my bones.” “Memory is the best home for poems,” was his response. The meeting started at eight and went on well past midnight. I asked him if his dreams played any part in the making of his poems. “Oh, yes, many, yes, many. Dreams are the best source.” He continued: “sometimes, it’s just a word in a dream that catches me. Sometimes, a phrase, Sometimes, even a whole line. And, once in a while, several lines, perhaps even a whole poem. How about you?” “The same, I said. I always experience these as gifts.” “Oh, yes, gifts indeed. That’s why the only response that meets the occasion is to put one’s heart into the making. The heart is the thing. Having the full poem in memory, by heart.” The conversation was like this the whole time, and it was unforgettable.

That night, I dreamed of a basement workshop. In it was an old hand press. In the dream I understood it was to be mine and I was to print a book called Moonstone.

I never did print that book. It is one of my deep regrets. But I did acquire a Washinton hand press. It was from the Cincinnati Museum of Science and Industry. It had been slightly damaged in a fire and I was able to get it at a reasonable cost. My wife and I hand printed three books on it using handset type and handmade paper and hand binding. Our first book won the Letterpress Prize for the Best Handmade Book printed in the Pacific Northwest in 1982. [My apologies; my trip to Scotland when I met with Sorley was in 1980, not 1992.]

Saturday Memory
April 19, 2025

On a trip to Scotland in 1992, I had arranged to meet one evening with the great Gaelic poet, Sorley MacLean. My son Michael was with me, and I was trying to find someone to sit him while I met with Sorley. The person in charge of where we were staying recommended someone and gave me the address. I took Michael there and had a brief conversation with the woman I I was referred to. In the course of the conversation, she asked me where I would be and I told her I would be meeting with Sorley MacLean. I reached for my notebook to give her his phone number, and she said, “Oh, no need, Russell. Sorley is my brother.”

I have learned over the years that such synchronicities are often the “portals” to important experiences. This was certainly that. Next Saturday, I will tell of my experience with Sorley MacLean, one of the most important experiences of my life.

Saturday Memory
April 12, 2025

I was staying at Dunvegan Castle, on the Isle of Skye. It was July 1992. I was the representative of the United States at the Dunvegan Arts Festival. What I am remembering today, is a dream I had one night. In the dream, I was in the great hall. On the walls were huge tapestries and, in the center, an enormous rectangular table. As I looked intently at one of the tapestries, I could see it contained historical images of battles and events of importance. Then the figures began to move and as I watched, the whole tapestry zoomed in and what I saw was enormous heads of various figures, some seeming like Vikings. As I focused on each head as it rotated into view, I could tell it was speaking, if not shouting, but I could hear nothing. When I woke from those images, I was still asleep, but I found myself standing looking out at the bedroom window, looking down at the field where the Highland Cows were. The window was open. I could barely make out the cows sleeping as it was still dark. I was telling them about what I had seen as I came fully awake.

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SATURDAY MEMORY

March 22, 2025

Many years ago, I was having lunch with Laurens van der Post during his visit to Los Angeles. We were at the Santa Monica Hotel in Santa Monica, California. I do not remember the year, but it was before he was knighted. We talked of many things during that lunch, but one thing stood out in my memory this week. I had asked him what was the most important thing he learned from the Kalahari Bushmen. He thought for a good while and then said, “to tend to the small.”

I asked him what he meant and for an example. He said, “Well, if you are crouching down and looking for the lion, you are likely to become lunch. You must tend to what the plants are doing, what the bugs on the ground are doing, and changes in the air. That will protect you and guide you.”

A powerful lesson that I have spent many years trying to learn.

SATURDAY MEMORY

March 8, 2025

It was 1943, and it was the day before my fifth birthday. My Mom said that Patsy, one of our cats, might have kittens for my birthday. That night, I woke up around midnight. Patsy was on the bed with me, the top bunk. She was having kittens and I watched this with total fascination. She had four kittens and I named each one at once: Popper, Topper, Hopper and Flopper. I chose names that could be for both male and female kittens. I didn’t know how one knew whether they were males or females. This very potent experience may have had something to do with the genesis of my first publication, which was a limerick I wrote in the third grade:

I once had a cow named Madie

She looked like my old wife Sadie

To give milk she wouldn’t

I found out she couldn’t

For Madie was not a lady

Later, when I was 10 times older, I watched our cow, Cathy, give birth to a calf around midnight. Total fascination.

Saturday Memory

February 22, 2025

My dad was a bookie. One of the high points of this when I was a kid was that I got to know the jockeys at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita Race Track. Johnny Longdon, Billie Shoemaker, Edie Arcaro and many others. They all called me “Red” because I had red hair at the time. The time that stands out as most important was on July 14,1951. We were at Hollywood Park and we were excited to see Citation run in the Gold Cup. Citation was our favorite horse. My dad bet a large amount on Citation, promising me a 10% cut.

Citation did win, and winning this purse made him the first million dollar horse in history.

We were overjoyed and we grabbed each other and danced around in celebration. As we did this I began to realize that this was a bittersweet moment, as I started to experience the “end of childhood.” I never danced with my father again.

The “end of childhood” gained more steam a bit later in the summer when I read Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. The effect on me was profound.

February 15, 2025

Hotel in Toronto. In the seventies as I recall. I leave the hotel and fetch a taxi to take me to where I will give a lecture. As the taxi pulls up, I’m aware of a man who has come up beside me. I recognize him at once and he recognizes me as well as we have met before when I have talked in Toronto. It is Robertson Davies, premier Canadian author and an aficionado of things Jungian. In the cab we got to talking about various tings and at one point he said, “Russ, do you believe in reincarnation.” The question was totally out of the blue and unrelated to what we were talking about. I told him that I did not believe in reincarnation. He said that he did not either. Everyone he met who believed such stuff he said, “had a much better life previously than the one then have now. No one has ever told me about a wretched previous life. It’s all rubbish.” I don’t remember what else we talked about, but this memory has stuck like glue.

SATURDAY MEMORY
February 8, 2025

When I was on the Board of the C. G. Jung Foundation of New York, back in the late 70s, Mary Bancroft, the Grande Dame of the New York scene, took me under her wing and said I needed to meet influential people. Mary was a novelist, journalist, and a spy as well as one of the most influential supporters of the work of C. G. Jung. She had relationships with many notable men, including Allen Dulles, the main figure in American intelligence and later head of the CIA. Mary connected Dulles with Jung who developed a psychological profile of Adolf Hitler.

One party at Mary’s apartment that stands out in my memory was one where she introduced me to Norman Mailer. She told me I could use some of his qualities. I had read some of his work and I knew that he did most of his writing in the bathtub. It was that I focused on in talking with him and this got us discussinhing some of the quirky habits that writers develop to facilitate their writing.