Three Bohemians, LInda, Borges & La Recoleta
Wednesday, April 09, 2014
After a recent viewing of Alec Guinness in
The Horse’s Mouth I despaired of not being able to live the Bohemian life. I
once did. It was 2000 and I could call up my friends (who lived nearby and
always immediately invited me to pass by for a mate or a coffee) Nora Patrich
and Juan Manuel Sánchez. They were
always keen to work in any kind of collaboration day or night. It was Patrich who
suggested that we project b+w slides of the Buenos Aires cemetery La Recoleta with our
Argentine model Linda Lorenzo. I never used my pictures as I took many of
Lorenzo in a whole year and Patrich and Sánchez drew, sketched and painted
lots, too. Many of this La Recoleta session show off Lorenzo’s body. And she
had a lovely one. But my standards for this blog must be kept. You never know
when some busybody might report me. I have chosen some that don’t reveal but
have a mysterious grainy look that suggests a rainy winter day in Buenos Aires.
At the time the
fastest film was Kodak 5054 TMZ film which I rated at 3200 ISO. I shot the first three with an Ilford 3200 in 120 and a Mamiya RB-67 Pro-SD and the last two, with the Kodak 5054, one a Nikon FM-2 and the other, cropped, with a Japanese swivel lens panoramic camera called a
Widelux.
I long for those days
when just a phone call made anything possible. Now that Bohemian period of my
life is over. If only…
La Recoleta
By Jorge Luis Borges
La Recoleta
Jorge Luis
Borges
Convencidos
de caducidad
por tantas
nobles certidumbres del polvo,
nos
demoramos y bajamos la voz
entre las
lentas filas de panteones,
cuya
retórica de sombra y de mármol
promete o
prefigura la deseable
dignidad de
haber muerto.
Bellos son
los sepulcros,
el desnudo
latín y las trabadas fechas fatales,
la
conjunción del mármol y de la flor
y las
plazuelas con frescura de patio
y los
muchos ayeres de a historia
hoy
detenida y única.
Equivocamos
esa paz con la muerte
y creemos
anhelar nuestro fin
y anhelamos
el sueño y la indiferencia.
Vibrante en
las espadas y en la pasión
y dormida
en la hiedra,
sólo la
vida existe.
El espacio
y el tiempo son normas suyas,
son
instrumentos mágicos del alma,
y cuando
ésta se apague,
se apagarán
con ella el espacio, el tiempo y la muerte,
como al
cesar la luz
caduca el
simulacro de los espejos
que ya la
tarde fue apagando.
Sombra
benigna de los árboles,
viento con
pájaros que sobre las ramas ondea,
alma que se
dispersa entre otras almas,
fuera un
milagro que alguna vez dejaran de ser,
milagro
incomprensible,
aunque su
imaginaria repetición
infame con
horror nuestros días.
Estas cosas
pensé en la Recoleta,
en el lugar
de mi ceniza.
Jorge Luis Borges
Fervor de Buenos Aires (1923)
Recoleta Cemetery
Translated by Stephen Kessler
Convinced of decrepitude
by so many certainties of dust,
we linger and lower our voices
among the long rows of mausoleums,
whose rhetoric of shadow and marble
promises or prefigures the desirable
dignity of having died.
The tombs are beautiful,
the naked Latin and the engraved fatal
dates,
the coming together of marble and flowers
and the little plazas cool as courtyards
and the many yesterdays of history
today stilled and unique.
We mistake that peace for death
And we believe we long for our end
when what long for is sleep and
indifference.
Vibrant in swords and in passion,
and asleep in the ivy,
only life exists.
Its forms are space and time,
they are magical instruments of the soul,
and when it is extinguished,
space, time, and death will be extinguished
with it,
as the mirrors’ images wither
when evening covers them over
and the light dims.
Benign shade of trees,
wind full of birds and undulating limbs,
souls dispersed into other souls,
it might be a miracle that they once
stopped being,
an incomprehensible miracle,
although its imaginary repetition
slanders our days with horror.
I thought these things in the Recoleta,
in the place of my ashes.
