Between 1975 (when we came to Vancouver from Mexico City) and 1986 we lived in the Vancouver outskirts in Burnaby. Even now when I take a photograph (and especially when I shoot it for a magazine) I think, “How would the average person in Burnaby see this photograph? Would they understand it? Is it a tad too sophisticated? “In short, and as an example, if I photographed a doctor for an article on doctors would the photograph represent a doctor without the need of an explanation underneath?

In the case of Denham I wanted to show her dramatically formed abs and flat stomach. A leotard would not do. Had I photographed her without a top that would not have been an image I could use here or originally as it was used, in a city magazine.

This is similar to the over extension of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and other  great works of the 18^th century. These pieces can be heard on YouTube for free so the comparison to the visual art is not exact. But now previously less known baroque composers of the fantastic (the period is sometimes called that) 17the century are in vogue worldwide and especially with Early Music Vancouver programming of late.

   

One of my favourite days of the week is Friday and specifically Friday morning when I immediately go to the two-section (only on Friday) Weekend Arts I and II of my hard copy NY Times. The I is about films, TV and dance but II is about the visual arts. This section explores new exhibitions, etc. But to this old man who had a poor arts education it is like opening a new and wonderful (and previously unknown) mystery writer’s novel. A case in point is the cover article on a French painter Gustave Caillebotte, 19 August 1848 – 21 February 1894, who was a strange hybrid in that he was an Impressionist with a big chunk of realism. 

I was enamored and charmed by his Nude on a Couch which I show here and hope that when the blog is posted in Facebook, the style/morality police will not notice and let it go by.

The link for the show at the National Gallery of Art in Washington is here. I hope that you who are not NY Times subscribers might be able to click and see what all the hoopla is about.

I am also including (in a very tiny file) my photograph of the one-armed model Pam that I photographed some years ago. With an early version of Corel I modified the photograph to resemble a hyper realist painting. I posed her in such a way as most who see it would never suspect she only has one arm.

He died April 24, 2013. I had gone to visit him in Austin a few months before. He had a rare disease, a by-product of leukemia that caused an infection that went up his spine and very quickly began to erase his memory.

We know that death is inevitable and more so as one gets old. In my youth the only people who died lived next door and the only ones who won the lottery were across the street. I know better now. This poem, in an unrelenting way is most elegant.

Motionless Faces -Os Rostoes Imóveis

Carlos Drummond de Andrade

Father dead, loved one dead.

Aunt dead, brother born dead.

Cousins dead, friend dead.

Grandfather dead, mother dead

(hands white, portrait on the wall always crooked, speck of dust in the eyes).

Acquaintances dead, teacher dead.

Enemy dead.

Fiancée dead, girl friends dead.

Engineer dead, passenger dead.

Unrecognized body dead:  a man's?  an animal's?

Dog dead, bird dead.

Rosebush dead, orange trees dead.

Air dead, bay dead.

Hope, patience, eyes, sleep, movement of hands:  dead.

Man dead. Lights go on.

He works at night as if he were living.

Good morning! He is stronger (as if he were living).

Dead without an obituary, secretly dead.

He knows how to imitate hunger, and how to pretend to love.

And how to insist on walking, and how well he walks.

He could walk through walls, but he uses doors.

His pale hand says good-bye to Russia.

Time enters and leaves him endlessly.

The dead pass quickly; they cannot be held on to.

As soon as one leaves, another one is tapping your shoulder.

I woke up and saw the city:

the dead were like machines,

the houses belonged to the dead,

drowsy waves,

an exhausted chest smelling of lilies,

feet bound up.

I slept and went to the city:

everything was burning,

crackling of bamboo,

mouth dry, suddenly puckering.

I dreamt and returned to the city.

But it wasn't the city anymore.

They were all dead, the medical examiner was checking the tags on the the corpses.

The medical examiner himself had died years ago but his hand continued implacably.

The awful stench was everywhere.

From this veranda without a railing I watch both twilights.

I watch my life running away with a wolf's speed, I want to stop it, but would I be bitten?

I look at my feet, how they have grown, flies circulate among them.

I look at everything and add it up, nothing is left, I am poor, poor, poor,

but I cannot enter the circle,

I cannot remain alone,

I shall kiss everyone on the forehead,

I shall distribute moist flowers,

after . . . There is no after or before.

There is cold on all sides,

and a central cold, whiter still.

Colder still . . .

A whiteness that pays well our old anger and bitterness . . .

Feeling myself so clear among you, kissing you and getting no dust in my mouth or face.

Peace of wispy trees,

of fragile mountains down below, of timid riverbanks, of gestures that can no longer annoy,

sweet peace without eyes, in the dark, in the air.

Sweet peace within me,

within my family that came from a fog unbroken by the sun

and returns to their islands by underground roads,

in my street, in my time—finally—reconciled,

in the city of my birth, in my rented rooms,

in my life, in everyone's life, in the mild and deep death of myself and everyone.

       —Carlos Drummond de Andrade, from Travelling in the Family: Selected Poems

October 31, 1902 – August 17, 1987  Itabira, Minas Gerais, Brazil

One of the most overlooked stories in American History is our involvement in a war with Mexico, for 1846 through 1848. The most obvious reason why the Mexican War is overlooked is that it predates the Civil War by only thirteen years. Such proximity to the most horrific event in our nation’s history easily explains why history books often pass over this more minor of wars, and skip  quickly to the events of the 1860s.

The official name for Veracruz is El Cuatro Veces Heroico Puerto the Veracruz (sometimes La Cuatro Veces Ciudad de Veracruz). This is so by gubernatorial decree. In 1821 when Mexico was fighting its war of independence from Spain, the last redoubt of the Spaniards was the nearby fort of San Juan de Ullúa. It took the Mexican army a while to take the fort back.

For the second time it was the French who shelled the city and the fort in 1838 in what came to be known as the war of the pastries.

The third time is about Scott and his American Army in 1847.

Americans can take credit for the fourth time. They invaded the city with US Marines in 1914. The reason has been forgotten with time.

Some jarochos (people from Veracruz) in a romantic streak omit the Spaniards and opt for telling you that pirate Henry Morgan sacked Veracruz in 1683.

What is of particular interest to me these days is that I understand why there is uproar about the Confederate Battle Flag. It should be taken down. In an effort to re-write history there is an extreme tide (in my opinion even though I consider myself to be a liberal) to not only bring down the flag but to remove Confederate memorials to generals and the like. They want to remove Robert E. Lee’s name from schools, universities, parks and streets. Someday soon, Stalin will not exist in Russian history texts.

What is amazing and most interesting about Gone For Soldiers (to the detriment of the Mexican Army) is that a youngish Army Captain of Engineers had a solution to avoid bloodshed in the taking of Veracruz and he found a way of avoiding a frontal assault on the superior (by numbers) army of General Santa Anna in Mexico City (the Halls of Montezuma). The engineer designed a path through a volcanic steppe near Mexico which avoided that feared frontal assault.

People might not recognize the lithograph of the captain above. I suspect that Shaara found it in the West Point Museum Collection. The man is Captain Robert E. Lee.

El Malecón, Christmas 1968

My daughter Alexandra (born in 1968) and probably conceived by yours truly and my Rosemary in the port of Veracruz is going to visit it for the second time in a few days. She and her good friends brother and sister Carlos Zamora and Laura  Zamora de Martín will drive from Mexico city to Veracrúz via the route (backwards) taken by Scott and his army in his assault on Mexico City.

When Ale was barely four months old we drove our Beeattle to Veracruz just before Christmas so that the new grandmother could meet her granddaughter. I took a curve much too quickly and turned over. Rosemary and I survived the accident because I had recently purchased new Firestone tires that came with a gift of seat belts which I dully installed. Ale was in the back seat in a wicker basket that had a sloping little roof. She did not suffer even a scratch. A pair of friendly jarochos (the word for people from Veracruz) helped us. One of them took Rosemary and Ale to the port and the other accompanied me as I drove the battered car (that kept wanting to go in one direction as its steering was shot). In was a few days after Christmas Day, during a norte that I took my iconic photograph of Rosemary with Ale on the Malecón (the Spanish name for any boulevard that follows around a beach and the sea).

Alexandra Elizabeth & her grandmother Filomena - Christmas 1968 - Veracruz

I will give (lend!) Ale Shaara’s book so that she may experience (I have) that eerie feeling of walking on the city square and perhaps passing through the ghost of that Captain of the US Army.

 Odd couple 
Les choses sont contre nous 
El olor del jasmín y la madreselva 
Xalapa Chileros
Tossing and Turning - Veracruz 1968 
A house of ill repute 
You only live twice - in Veracruz 
Doña Marina and tiny bananas 
A memory of a Christmas past 
La hamaca 
Mocambo and Gary Taylor's