Monday, October 12, 2009


Rosemary and I worked in the garden today and I think both of us became melancholy as we saw our garden in decay. It is about this time (before all those rains come) that we change our mind about some plants and move them around. Some plants have gotten so big that they need to be divided and moved. The fall garden, after a while, looks like it’s been worked on. But the melancholy, at least for me, dissipates as I notice all the warm browns, yellows and reds of our plants, thistles and hostas. Many of the roses are full of hips this year. A few of the them surprise me with blooms here and there.

I walk into the house and I go to our busy but friendly living room and I notice Abraham Rogatnick’s life-size papier mache esqueleto (squeleton) that peacefully reposes on my psychiatric couch. We have affectionately called him Pancho and he still has the thick rope around the neck. Abraham bought Pancho in Mexico sometime in the 50s. Last year when Abraham had a premonition of his death (he died last month) he started giving some of his stuff away. I was the lucky recipient of Pancho and the rope which Abraham used to hang him from his door for Halloween. He (Pancho) is much too precious that I would ever consider hanging him outside for the forthcoming Halloween. He will be safely inside. Perhaps it was last fall that I photographed Lauren with Pancho. It was this first Polaroid (and alas, one of my last Polaroids as the Polaroid Company went the way of Packards and Studebakers, De Sotos and Oldsmobiles, not to mention Minoltas ) that I was happy with and here it is. Lauren has informed me that this year she is going to dress up as a witch for Halloween.

As for me I am literally closing one Andrea Camilleri book (all checked out from different branches of the Vancouver Public Library) to open the next. I have been keeping it at one a day. I am into the 8th tonight (The Scent of the Night). I feel that Salvo Montalbano and I are friends. I long to have him show me around his home town of Vigata right in the middle of a hot Sicilian summer. But I would starve as Montalbano loves fish and I don't. I wonder what Sicilians like for dessert?

Vigata è una cittadina immaginaria creata dallo scrittore Andrea Camilleri, in cui sono ambientate le storie del commissario Montalbano e altri romanzi dello stesso autore. La cittadina di Vigata è sita nell'altrettanto immaginaria provincia di Montelusa. Vigata è il nome immaginario di Porto Empedocle, la città natale di Camilleri.