Wednesday, June 12, 2013

Rosa 'Mary Magdalene' 12 June 2013

  Today June 12, as per usual I went for a walk in my garden to check out my roses. The sort of dry spring with days of sun, in which all weather reports predicted rain, has been kind to my roses. They are plentiful and most happy with the added light and dryish days.
One rose made me pause. it was the English Rose (with a wonderful myrrh scent) Rosa 'Mary Magadalene' There were two blooms. There were three yesterday but I had cut  one of them and given it as a gift to Bronwen Marsden who had come over to pose in my Malibu in the garage (the Maser is gone). There is a smoothness and an ever so pinkish white of Marsden’s skin that made me think of her as she was leaving so I cut the flower for her.

In fact I may have many more pink roses in my garden (Rosemary has commented unfavorably on this) than I should except for the fact that they all remind me of beautiful women whom I have noticed, admired, loved, photographed and thought of.

In my youth in an Argentina of Juan Domingo Perón I learned that books were valuable and should never be defaced. I learned that I should save money and buy Bonos del Ahorro Nacional. I learned that women, and in particular, mothers were sacred. They were all the Virgin Mary incarnate. At church I was much too young to notice that the statues of Mary and Joseph had him behind (sort of like Prince Phillip) at a respectable distance. He was close enough to protect but far enough to dispel and suspicion of sexual shenanigans.

As I got older and particularly while living in Mexico I began to understand that Latin men (including this one) saw women in two ways with no possible blend between them. One woman was the mother of one’s children, the personal Virgin Mary, the other was the woman (down from the pedestal) with whom we had fun. She was the Mary Magdalene. Few if any men that I met seemed to understand that women were both by their very nature of being human.

Here in Vancouver I took many photographs of women undraped. Some of the first happened simply because the women approached me and asked me. They were far more adventurous and up front than this half Latin and half Anglo man.

I remember with an impression of just-a-second-ago lucidity of the beautiful blonde we used to notice at lunchtime at our Railway Club lunches on Thursdays so many years ago. We would stare at her and make our guesses as who she was and what she did and why she dressed in such elegant but tight dresses. One day I simply went up to her and said, “My name is Alex Waterhouse-Hayward and I have noticed you for many Thursdays. I am a photographer and I would like to photograph you undraped.” Her reply was something like, “Sure. When do you want to do this?”

I remember some pictures I exhibited in an erotic photography show that featured a narrative of five pictures of two different women (tight head shots) going through self-induced orgasm. One of the most beautiful black women I ever met in my life; she was an elegant woman who worked with lawyers, came up to me and said, “These photographs are exquisite.” For days after received phone calls from women I knew who were insulted that I had not asked them to pose for the project. I was incredibly confused.

I think that now at age 70 I get the picture and all those pedestals have come crashing down and good riddance to them!

As I looked at the two open blooms of Rosa ‘Mary Magdalene’ I had memory of a previous scan. I checked. I scanned Mary Magdalene on June 17 2007. I had scanned her before she had opened. She was a neat, feminine, dainty, symmetrical little thing. These two blooms were open, almost garish in their womanly display and reminded me José Saramago’s Mary Magdalene from his The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I wrote about it, but I am taking the liberty of displaying that blog again below.



Mary Magdalen (e)
Tuesday, June 19, 2007



He suspects the woman is a prostitute, not because he is particularly good at guessing people's professions at first glance, besides, not that long ago he himself would have been identified as a shepherd by the smell of goat, yet now everyone would say, He's a fisherman, for he lost one smell only to replace it with another. The woman reeks of perfume, but Jesus, who may be innocent, has learned certain facts of life by watching the mating of goats and rams, he also has enough common sense to know that just because a woman uses perfume, it does not necessarily mean she is a whore.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero

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Much has been written lately about Mary Magdalene. If that name has an e or not is one of the matters in dispute between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, where the colleges dedicated to her bear the rival spellings. To my granddaughter Mary Magdalene is very real. But this Mary Magdalene is many Mary Magdalenes. She is Rembrandt's The Woman Taken in Adultery and John the Evangelist's unamed woman of Verse 7:53-8:11 where he relates Jesus having a confrontation with scribes and pharisees over whether a woman accused of adultery should be stoned.



Traditionally Mary Magdalene has also been the Mary of Bethany who annoints Jesus's feet with oil using her hair and the first person to see Jesus after the crucifixion. It's all a muddle if you consider that we cannot prove that John the Apostle is John the Evangelist! But from my New American Bible (with Rembrandt's paintings and sketches illustrating it) I quote one of the most fascinating passages. I first learned about them from Brother Edwin Reggio CSC in the late 50s in Austin Texas. The passages (when Jesus saves the adultress from stoning) describe the only two occasions when we learn that Jesus perhaps knew how to write.

Jesus bent down and started tracing on the ground with his finger. When they persisted in their questioning he straightened up and said to them, "Let the man among you who has no sin be the first to cast a stone at her." A second time he bent down and wrote on the ground. Then the audience drifted away one by one, beginning with the elders. They left him alone with the woman, who continued to stand there before him. Jesus finally straightened up and said to her, "Woman where did they all disappear to? Has no one condemned you?" "No one, sir," she answered. Jesus said, "Nor do I condemn you. You may go. But from now on avoid sin."

Magdalene is real to Rebecca since we saw the extremely large painting inside the church of San Cayetano in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico two years ago. She was so taken by the 19th century painting that featured a blonde (just like Rembrandt's) Mary Magdalene facing Jesus and with a prominently large stone at her feet. What was about to happen was graphically ominous. We had to return twice to see the painting. Back in Vancouver I bought Rebecca the English Rose, Rosa 'Mary Magdalene' seen above.

All this brings to mind one of the most exquisitely written novels on the subject, José Saramago's The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. I have the novel in Spanish, El Evangelio Según Jesucristo (1991) but I dared not translate some of he passages from the chapter where an 18 year-old Jesus spends 8 days with Mary Magdalene in fear of not doing justice to Saramago. After all Giovanni Pontiero (from Manchester!) was (alas he died) one of the most lucid translators of Saramago into English. So this morning I went to the Vancouver Public Library to get a copy in English.


After they had eaten, Mary helped Jesus into his sandals and told him, You must leave if you're to reach Nazareth before nightfall. Farewell, said Jesus, and taking up his pack and staff, he went out into the yard. The sky was covered with clouds as if lined with unwashed wool, the Lord must not be finding it easy today to keep an eye on His sheep from on high. Jesus and Mary Madgalene embraced a long time before exchanging a farewell kiss, which did not take long at all, and little wonder, for kissing was not the custom then.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
José Saramago translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero