Corazón - Der. del lat. cor.

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española

If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking

By Emily Dickinson

If I can stop one heart from breaking,

I shall not live in vain;

If I can ease one life the aching,

Or cool one pain,

Or help one fainting robin

Unto his nest again,

I shall not live in vain

Jewels

El Angelito 

Legātus

My Spanish dictionary traces the word corazón, heart to the Latin cor. Cor, of course derives from the Greek. One of the most inspiring statements in Latin, from the Roman Catholic Mass (but applies to anything) is sursum corda which can in singular can mean “lift up your heart” or in plural “lift up your hearts”.

My mother would often quote that to me particularly when I felt depressed. When she died I made sure that Sursum Corda was written into the tombstone in Mexico City.

This blog contains a scan of the most valuable family jewel in my possession. I believe that my Rosemary may have worn it once at a Vancouver function and many people were dazzled by it. It consists entirely of little diamonds encrusted onto platinum.

In Spanish there is a lovely word “corazonada” which is much lovelier that its equivalent in English – hunch.

When I was 8 my father had a plainclothes cop called Manrique. When he would come on his frequent visits I could spot the bulky shoulder holster behind his suit coat. One day he gave me a lovely book which I have treasured and kept since, Corazón by Edmundo de Amicis. I wrote about it here.

Some years ago, when I returned from a trip to Buenos Aires I found myself alone in a Toronto, hotel morning knowing I was having a heart attack. That led to me finding my present cardiologist, Victor F. Huckell. A few months before my Rosemary died on 9 December 2020 he called me. He told me, “I understand that you have an appointment to get a right knee replacement. I would advise you cancel it as you will need to take care of your ailing wife.” I took his advice, cancelled and coincidentally I have never had problems with my right knee again.

I have no idea why my scanner has given different colours to the little diamonds. The heart is scanned under my mother's red Mexican rebozo. 

My mother would often tell me that pearls had to be used. They needed to be close to skin or they would lose their sheen. I believe that I just might start wearing some of our jewels that have pearls. Would that include the heart of diamonds? I believe, yes!

Ángel

Del lat. tardío angĕlus, y este del gr. ἄγγελος ángelos; propiamente 'mensajero'.

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española

Angels, in the early morning – Emily Dickinson

94

Angels, in the early morning

May be seen the Dews among,

Stooping — plucking — smiling — flying —

Do the Buds to them belong?

Angels, when the sun is hottest

May be seen the sands among,

Stooping — plucking — sighing — flying —

Parched the flowers they bear along.

I have written about the jewels of my family most recently in this blog (link below):

 Legātus

Today in the morning I knew what I was going to write about today. I fished out my safety deposit box key and went to my bank. I took out this jewel which we called either el angelito or the little angel. While my mother and grandmother had lots of jewels and many that were most valuable, this one was my mother’s favourite. She wore it to most of the functions she ever went to or when she gave parties in our large house in Mexico City in the mid 1950s.

Because when we get curious (that is definitely my problem) to ask about something, the people who can answer the question are long dead. My suspicion is that my grandfather Don Tirso de Irureta Goyena had the little angel made in France for my grandmother, Dolores Reyes de Irureta Goyena.

I have no idea what will become of this little angel when I meet my oblivion. My daughters don’t go to fancy parties or to concerts, theatre or dance. People now, in Vancouver rarely dress up.

I have thus decided that I shall start dressing up, wearing a tie (I have a lovely collection) and if I wear either a suit or sports jacket I will place the angelito in my lapel.

Legātus

Eight or nine years ago when Rosemary and I still lived in our large  home in Kerrisdale sometimes I would tell her when we would drive to visit our Lillooet, BC daughter Alexandra that I might hire a professional arsonist to burn the house down. She understood the relief we might have had to return and find nothing.

Now with her gone I live alone surrounded by valuable stuff (we lived in Mexico for many years so we have pottery, etc). It weighs me down in my mind.

I am 82 and I can plainly state that the idea of legacy is diminishing to almost nothing. Once I have reached my oblivion I do not care what happens to all my photographs or negatives. Who will have ample wall space to put up all the framed family photographs?

My friend Djun Kim (a digital genius) is in the process of transferring my web page/blog from a company in Texas that handles my domain name and web hosting to one in Vancouver. When I am dead if my daughters want to keep my blog going (6353 before this one) they will have to pay a yearly fee to the company.

Friends tell me I should publish a book. Would it be possible to have a book with at least 12000 pages? Would I want such a book?

No.

I tell people here that a peculiar feature in the memory of our city inhabitants is that we ignore well known people when they are alive to then speak of them eloquently when they are dead. Such is the case (my opinion) of how George Bowering (Canada’s first Poet Laureate, and George McWhirter, Vancouver’s first Poet Laureate) are ignored.

I wrote to a female friend on CBC Radio and suggested she might want to do a story on Don Stewart’s MacLeod Books. She quickly answered that her producers were not interested. I further told her that she could interview me about my photography career while alive or would she wait for me to be dead.

And thus my notion of legacy has thinned.

I first had some knowledge of the term legacy when I was eight years old in Buenos Aires. It happened to be the centenary of famous Argentine patriot General Don José de San Martín and Juan Domingo Perón issued a memorial publication that was given to every child in school in the country. To this day I have treasured it. It has yellowed with age. I read it often.

In the scan there are three articles that I believe when I am dead will have no meaning to those I leave behind. The wooden cross I found on the beach in Veracruz where my mother lived. I converted it as a necklace and gave it to her. The watch (it works perfectly) was given to my mother by my mother. She often told me that it was the only valuable item he ever gave her. The pearls (you might note that they are not perfectly round and are slightly indented) are what my mother called barok (that’s how she pronounced baroque).

Such is this world where black wall phones have disappeared that few now dress up to go to the opera or a party and wear jewels. I have not worn a suit or a tie for at least one year.

I have a box, hidden away in my photo studio where I store these slightly less valuable jewels. Many are called “joyería de fantasía”. My mother and grandmother would go to an avenue called Cabildo in Buenos Aires in search of these not so valuable jewels. The really valuable ones are in a safety deposit box at my bank. My daughters have keys and access. Will they ever wear them? I doubt it.

Part of my childhood upbringing was watching my mother and grandmother open their large jewellery box to select what they were going to wear for that evening’s performance or party. I was always dazzled. They would explain the story behind every one of them.

It saddens me to understand that those memories will die with me. I wonder what memories my two daughters and two granddaughters will have of my Rosemary and me. I will never know.

Because I live in a double duplex the possibility of my personal arson of my digs is out of the question.

Taraxacum officinale - 18 March 2025

Taraxacum officinale & Helleborus x niger 'Honey Hill Joy'

It now seems only yesterday that Rosemary would arrive home from her office when we lived in Kerrisdale and I would tell her that some art director from a good magazine had called me for a job.

This was important as I felt useful. Now in this 21st century when a grandfather is just an old man for his granddaughters and the phone never rings my concept of my utility is all but gone.

The single most important event of the day (weather permitting) is to take my male cat Niño for a walk around the block. I feel useful because I am following in the footsteps of my Rosemary who taught Niño to walk without a leash. We take the same route and in my mind is the instruction from Rosemary, “Alex, don’t shout at Niño when he lingers in some garden. Be patient.”

During these walks, and the one today, Rosemary’s presence is almost tangible to me.

While walking on 8th Ave (a bike lane) I noticed a single Taraxicum officinale (dandelion) was in bloom. I decided that somehow I would find some excuse to scan it. For this weed to be in bloom and the only bloom in my walk with Niño for me was a real harbinger for our coming spring.

I started scanning plants from our Kerrisdale garden in 2001. My original intent was to record with accuracy the status of a plant or flower on the day and time I picked it. I have accumulated 3000 of them and I know that once I am gone there will be no perceived value in them or in my legacy. That is not important. What is important is that I have fun doing the scan and then mating the image with some writing. It is pleasing to me. When some people come for a visit and see a large printed scan on my living room wall they invariably say, “Nice photograph, Alex.” I correct them and tell them that it is a scanograph and that I am a scanographer. They rapidly lose interest and turn around.

I now have to admit that some of my scans have become something that is beyond accuracy and more in the direction of artistic. When I would at one time scan only one type of flower or plant now I mix them. In today’s scan I place that yellow weed with a bloom of Rosemary’s favourite Hellebore which is usually called a Corsican one. A few weeks ago it was very yellow. Today it was greenish. I think that both look lovely together.

In high school I used to marvel at looking through a microscope. Now my Epson V700 scanner is as good as a microscope. When I looked at the back of Taraxacum I saw beauty even there.

I scan my plants in the solitude of my office (sometimes my male cat Niño sits by me and falls asleep). I know that at one time I would have called Rosemary to see the scan on my monitor. She would smile as she would have smiled today at my combination of a very good perennial with a common weed.

As Argentine novelist (and nuclear physicist) Ernesto Sábato wrote:

"La fama es un conjunto de malentendidos, ya se sabe. Es vivir en una vitrina, y para colmo desnudo, porque no hay desnudez más genuina y terrible que la expresión artística, si es auténtica; toda obra de arte es una autobiografía, no en el sentido literal de la palabra, sino en el sentido más profundo y grave: un árbol de Van Gogh es Van Gogh, es su propia y desnuda alma ante nosotros".

 "That fame is a combination of misunderstandings is known. It is to live in a glass showcase, and to make it worse, to be nude, because there is no more genuine nakedness, and terrible, than artistic expression, if it is authentic; all work of art is an autobiography, not in the literal sense, but in the most profound and serious: a Van Gogh tree is Van Gogh, it is his own and naked soul that is before us."

The scans today are a Rosemary. They are Rosemary.

15 March 2025

Of late I write a lot about my advanced age of 82 and how since the death of my Rosemary on 9 December 2020 I have little inclination to go alone to concerts, theatre and dance. I particularly avoid the large, and to me cold venues like the Queen Elizabeth Theatre and the Chan Centre.

The Orpheum for me is now an exercise in nostalgia for the warm personality of Bramwell Tovey. Few people that I ask now know who heads the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

 I think this city is culturally sterile. We have no real newspapers that inform us of cultural events in theatre, music and dance. And our CBC is now vacant in cultural programming with the exception of Ideas, Reclaimed and that intelligent The Debaters.

There is a happy exception. This is to be in the email lists of your fave groups. Many of those are headed by virtuoso violinist Cameron Wilson who is as busy as Leslie Dala. I reckon that their families no longer recognize them as they are rarely home! Another email  list of mine included The Turning Point Ensemble ,Yarilo and the Microcosmos Quartet.

Tonight I went with my designer friend Graham Walker to a concert called Get Back Unplugged - The Beatles Reimagined. It was held at the West Vancouver Yacht Club. After a longish trek on a curvy road we arrived to find ourselves in an out-of-context situation of seeing elderly people having dinner at many long tables. It occurred to me that I was probably older than most of them. A reality check it became for me. I first heard the Beatles single Love Me Do in 1962 when I was 20 in the house of a Yorkshire friend in Mexico City. Yes, last night I was one very old man.

 Cameron Wilson - violin, vocals

Andrew Hillhouse - guitar, vocals,

LJ Mounteney - vocals, ukulele, percussion

Allan Dionne - accordion, vocals

David Gibbons - guitar, vocals

Brent Gubbels - bass

The band, a most definitely not a cover band, played many Beatles songs that this musical ignoramus had no memory of ever hearing before. Thanks to my Beatles expert, Graham Walker I was clued in.

Such is the virtuosity of this band that I marvelled at how some of their Beatles versions sounded like Nova Scotia folk music or Tina Turner versions. The female singer  L.J. Mounteney performed her Turner impression and her singing throughout the night was stellar, and in particular, with all her little noise making devices.

The evening’s revelation to this amateur music critic, was the combination (they played on opposite sides) of British electric guitar/singer David Gibbons and accordionist/singer Allan Dionne (consider that I do not like the accordion!).

Mentioning those three performers does not take away from the other three who are a group called The Wahs. Cameron Wilson played his violin with dazzling virtuosity. Guitarist and singer Andrew Hillhouse injected his strong singing personality and bassist Brent Gubbles made his bass be the steady pillar of the group. I can only add that Gubbles follows the Vancouver tradition, perhaps begun by Mark Haney (he of the Isolation Commissions during the Covid pandemic), of bassists being extremely handsome.

I find it perplexing that there is so much musical talent in this city and that only a few lucky few like me are aware. CBC wake up!