Ramón Xirau Subias - Barcelona 1924 - Mexico City 2017

In one of my favourite CBC Radio programs, Ideas I heard something that astounded me and later made me connect to what I am  writing here today. The program was about St. Augustine. There are many saints in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches. But there are only two who are seen also as philosophers. One is St. Augustine and the other is St. Thomas Aquinas.

St. Augustine stated (atonal music was yet to be invented!) that when you listened to music you heard a note in the past, followed by one in the present and then you would forsee the future note. Thus you could predict the future accurately.

From 1962 to 1963 I studied at the American institution Mexico City College. For two years I took all the courses I could of the man who was to become an intellectual phenomenon in Mexico. His name was Ramón Xirau. He began with the Pre Socratic Philosophers and ended with Sartre. I was particularly interested in his rendering of the philosophy of Plato. But what he told us of Herodotus stayed with me. It was with Herodotus and St. Augustine that I saw a connection today.

Everybody knows about Herodotus stating that the water before it enters a bridge is water you cannot then ever dip you hand into after. The past is the past and it does not connect with the present.

Thinking about what St. Augustine said about music took me to the idea that I can place an object on the water before it gets to the bridge. Then when I see it pass the bridge I can run ahead and then dip my hand into the same waters!

As I have often pointed out that when Time Magazine had its famous April 8, 1966 God is Dead cover they should have followed up with one Philosophy is Dead.

Thank you, Ramón Xirau, for having taught me to think. Curiously last night I dreamt of Xirau being alive. He is not.

Filomena Cristeta de Irureta Goyena Hayward  & George Waterhouse Hayward

My mother fell in love with a Manila doctor in the early 30s. In 1938 she threw a ring he had given to her into Manila Bay. Then she, her mother, sister and brother moved to Mexico City.

In my desk I have yellowish envelope addressed to my mother by her doctor (Ramón Andía). It is opened as my mother read it. I never have as I know its contents. Dr. Andía was gay.

Until my mother died in 1972 she wrote many poems to him and sent letters to him until he died. 

Of my father George Waterhouse Hayward, my mother told me that he was her second best. I was born August 31, 1942 but my official Argentine birth certificate says my birth was April 18, 1943. My mother told me that my father forgot to register me at the hospital. I have come to believe that is untrue as all births are duly recorded in Argentine hospitals. In my case it was the Hospital Anchorena. I believe that the real truth is that my mother was unmarried and pregnant (count the months). Since my father was divorced they had to go Uruguay to get married as divorce was verboten in Argentina.  Whenever we crossed borders my mother had in her documents that she was Filomena de Irureta Goyena and she would warn me in advance about my "correct" birthday.

In 1950 my father left our Coghlan home voluntarily as he was a terrible alcoholic. He went to live at a pension. On weekends he would come to take me to see Westerns and war movies. In 1953 when my famil moved to Mexico City they had to get a lawyer to arrange my leaving with them as it was then necessary to get a father’s permission to exit the country.  I believe my father never found out what had happened to us.

I returned to Buenos Aires in 1965 with two missions. One was to do my compulsory military service, in my case in the Argentine Navy, and the other to find my father. I did.

We would meet on weekends for chats until one day I got a call to the fact that he had died. He had enough money in his pocket, passed to me by an honest police sargeant. He told me that he had been saving up money by working at a laundry so he could bribe an army general to send me back immediately to Mexico to my mother who was living in Veracruz, Mexico.

When my mother died I had her lovely poems Things & Thoughts, bound by a Frenchman in Mexico City. While I had read the poems many times I never noticed one in particular.

Yesterday I found the old Mexican notebook that has her poems also in her lovely handwriting. When I spotted The Pearl Gray Tie I read that she talked of a man and I quote: “I found a blue that matched your eyes”. Doctor Andía did not have blue eyes. This is obviously a poem dedicated to my father.

My mother wrote the poem in November, 1956, when she was teaching school for American Smelting & Refining Company in the northern town of Nueva Rosita, Coahuila. 

The discovery of the poem has made me smile, but at the same time I am melancholic that it took this long for me to recognize its content. My mother often told me, proudly, how when she and my father danced the tango in dance halls in Leandro N. Alem in Buenos Aires, people would stop to stare at how well they danced.  “One day you will dance as well as your father.” I managed to learn some years ago here in Vancouver but all I can say is that I danced efficiently. My father like my mother was a wonderful swimmer. I am a terrible one.

At the very least I did inherit some of my father’s Englishness and his ability to write. He was a journalist. I am also a very good cook. My father told me, "Alexander if you ever are going to cook you first have to learn to make saucess."

Before we came to Vancouver in 1975 I had only two cameras, A Pentacon-F which I had purchased in 1958 when I was in high school in Austin, Texas from Adorama and a used Asahi Pentax S-3 I had purchased used in 1962 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City.

Just before we left I was doing a booming business taking family portraits of wealthy Mexicans. I would process the b+w rolls at home and print them in my little darkroom. I dry mounted the photographs on good cardboard.

Once we were in Vancouver I upgraded (I hate that word!) with a couple of newer Pentaxes. Once my career was established with magazines, particularly because I had bought a Mamiya RB-67 from Adorama, I would buy cameras when I saw that they had features I needed to remain competitive.

But there is another reason why I have many cameras which I do not call a collection. In Vancouver it was the kiss of death to fail an assignment. When I went to do them I had two of everything. I have three Mamiya RBs. Why? I always took two to the jobs. The third one was for parts in case the other two had to be repaired.

Because I emulated Annie Leibovitz’s American Express campaign with portraits taken outside at sundown with synchronized flash I bought a Nikon FM-2 which synced at 1/250 of a second. The second FM-2 was just in case that first one failed. And of course my Mamiya’s synched at 1/400 for my synchro/sunlight (that’s what they were called) shots.

The real prize in my camera equipment (note I am not using the  term collection) is a140mm (equivalent to an 85mm in 35) Mamiya lens that is particularly sharp because its floating elements.

Lenses are designed to be sharp at infinity and the image begins to deteriorate as you focus closely. Close focusing lenses(only very few of the very good ones) and true macro lenses (more on this later) are built to focus closely and the image deteriorates as you focus towards infinity. A true macro lens is defined as a lens (as an example) that will record a 1 inch stamp (as an example) as one inch on the film (or in a digital camera) or sensor plane. The RB has bellows between the lens and the camera body. With these bellows I am able to focus my RB on my thumb nail and record it actual size. In photographic lingo this is called 1 to 1 reproduction. That's how you define a true macro lens.

Werner Herzog  & the 140 mm lens

 

Some cameras before you want to upgrade have features that sometimes are not replicated. I have a compact and well-used Pentax MX (its flash synced only at 1/60sec) which I use frequently. Pentax for their MX built what they called M-Lenses. They were compact and very sharp. The 20mm wide angle that I have pretty well permanently mated to my MX is a wide angle lens that if used carefully you would never suspect it is such a wide angle.

Those gearheads who collect pristine cameras, they mostly never use, would eschew my black MX with all its brass showing as it has been well-used.

My proof to the pudding is this photograph I took of Bronwen in my Kerrisdale garage inside my Chevrolet Malibu. I had the MX loaded with Kodak Portra800 colour negative film. I was sitting right next to her on the driver’s seat. Can you notice any wide-angle effect/distortion?

No, I am not a gearhead.

Rosemary 1969

Not so desganado

Tembleque, Desganado en Enclenque 
 

No matter how I try to distract myself by feeding my cats, taking Niño for a walk, going on my bike to Jericho Beach, scanning my plants, writing my blogs and fiddling around in the garden I cannot get my Rosemary’s presence from my mind.

Everything in the house, with all those family portraits on the walls, all those Mexican curios that Rosemary and I bought when we lived  Mexico City, take me to those moments that I know cannot return.

Every day I long for a phone call from one of my granddaughters. That does not happen. Rosemary and I did so much with them but somehow grandfathers in this century are simply old men.

One of my distractions is to throw stuff. As an example Rosemary kept envelopes with all our boarding passes, restaurant bills, etc from our many trips to Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay and to France, England and Italy. I threw them knowing nobody in my family would have any appreciation for what they represented.

I look at my roses in the garden and think of what Rosemary thought about this rose or that one.

It is impossible for me to watch a film noir on TCM because this was a happy event for us. With her gone I feel desganado. In Spanish to “tener ganas” is to “want to do…”Desganado is a sort of synonym for listless which means there is little I want to do without sharing it with someone.

I have angst and family problems and doubts about my continued existence. The only person I know I could compare notes with would have been Rosemary.

Today I figured it out. My 52 years with Rosemary are like a crease on a paper. Once the crease is there it cannot be undone.

Luckily that crease was for 52 years. That is something to treasure.

 Roldorf

Kalamazoo 

Last Friday I went to an interesting event featuring the about to be introduced new German Widelux inspired by actor Jeff Bridges. The event was in a place in Gastown I had no idea it existed. It is called  Roldorf. The owner, Jason came to Vancouver in 1975. The shop was full of all kinds of watch repair equipment.

Around 1970 in Veracruz, Mexico I won a lovely Longines pocket watch in a card game. Through the years, when I remember, I wind it up. Today it did not work. On a lark I went to Roldorf. In under 3 minutes Jason (he calls himself a horologist) had it working. And there was no charge!

I knew I had to do something to thank him. In the past I wrote a blog where I scanned my Longines and pushed it slightly during the scan. I also scanned it with sheet music of my Filipino great aunt who was a concert pianist.

I went to my blog search engine. I put all kinds of combinations of watch, clock, blurred, scanned, moved but found nothing. As last resort as I post my blog links into Facebook so I tried their search engine. Yes!

The blog which is strangely is associated with Kalamazoo is in the link above.

Because I used all my inkjet paper to print Widelux photographs for the Friday gathering I wondered what I could do. I printed both image on inkjet transparency and mounted them on silver coated cardboard. Unfortunately Jason was not in at Rodlorf so I left my work with his assistant.

It felt good to quid pro quo.

And to prove to myself that I remembered how I had scanned my Longines I did it again while writing this blog.

The repaired Longines 6 August 2025