My Christmases in Buenos Aires (I left in 1954 when I was 12) seem unreal every time Christmas is in the air in Vancouver. Some of the hottest days of the Buenos Aires summer happen around Christmas. It can be 40.

It seems more so that we used to spray our trees with a product my mother would bring from her friends at the American Embassy. It was called Noma and it was labeled as snow.

Before globalization took a firm grip  Santa Claus in my Argentina was not all that well known. We called him Papá Noel. Much more exciting for us was the Epiphany on January 6 which in Latin America is called el Día de los Reyes (the Three Kings Day). On the fifth we would put shoes outside our bedroom door. The next day the shoes would overflow with toys, not the practical clothing we got on Nochebuena ( Christmas Eve). Christmas Eve was celebrated by going to Misa de Gallo (midnight Mass) and then at around 1:30 in the morning we would return to the presents.

I did not have the ordinary Christmases that my friends had. Because of my English father and the fact that my mother had friends in the American Embassy, I was given really nice toys for Christmas. 

My parents would have never dared give me the wooden toys that Eva Perón would send us on January 6. Had I kept those terrible and useless wooden toys they would not be worth a lot of money.

My father’s most memorable gift was a red Schuco wind-up racer that had a real suspension and and steering. It was not long after I opened the box containing this exciting toy that I lost the key. I cried. But my father miraculously removed another key from his pocket.

From my mother my favourite gift as an American version of the English Meccano (and far better) an Erector Set. It had nuts and bolts and all kinds of metal pieces that I could have swallowed and died on the spot. It was marvellous! It came with an electric motor. I remember that I made a robot which I called Gilbert that would roll along.

I am happy to report that the Erector Set is available in the expensive Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue.

But in this day and age I would probably not find any kid with my Buenos Aires age who would be excited. When was the last time any kid you know state that when they grow up they wanted to be an engineer (of a train or of the other kind)? The kid would be disappointed not to get a smart phone or computer game.

All the above is another reason why I get depressed on Christmas Eve. I miss the Buenos Aires heat. I miss my parents and the excitement and challenging strain of attempting to stay awake at Midnight Mass.

In those long gone days we were careful in opening our gifts. Now my granddaughters rip off the gift wrapping that my Rosemary does so well.

And finally to end this pre-Christmassy rant I have to point out that when I arrived in Vancouver in 1975, while watching TV I found out something about myself I did not know. I told Rosemary who was in the kitchen (or somewhere else), “Rosemary, according to this TV ad it seems I have something called dyslexia.”

Tumble: Perform acrobatic feats, typically handsprings and somersaults in the air.

Oxford Dictionary

Being an old remnant of the 20th century that I am from, my idea of a circus is based on a past when circuses came to town, pitched a tent or two and featured elephants, lions, tigers, horses and (once for me!) a boxing kangaroo. I have always loved in my memory the smells of those animals. While my mother would say that any orchestra that played out of tune sounded like a circus band, I have liked that sound with its brass instruments.

My granddaughter Rebecca, 21, as a little girl we visited Morelia, Mexico. On our way to town I noticed a sign advertising the best known Mexican circus, Circo Atayde Hermanos. I asked Rebecca if she would want to go. Her answer was short and furious, “No I don’t want to go to a circus that mistreats animals.”

It was Rebecca whom I took to the Vancouver Aquarium years ago and I especially made sure we sat on the first row. In our family she was the last to be splashed by a killer whale in captivity.

So with my eyes focused now on the idea of a 21^st century circus I want to point out that I hate:

1. Tumbling especially since as a little boy tumbling made me dizzy.

2. Juggling

With that all in my mind my Rosemary and I attended the Cultch presentation at the Vancouver Playhouse of Backbone – Gravity & Other Myths (Australia), directed by Darcy Grant, that featured 10 flexible and strong human beings and two musicians. One Christopher Neale on drums (I am not sure if he alternates with drummer and composer Elliot Zoerner) and Shenton Gregory who plays electric piano and a violin which he holds in a most unusual position. We did not know what to expect.

I am pleased to report that there were no jugglers, almost no clowning, and that the music was never intrusive or loud. It was just right.

Lighting (and stage design) by Geoff Cobham was magnificent but never over the top. The dancers/tumblers/gymnasts (what else can I call them?) threw something that looked like dark sawdust on the floor from shiny new buckets. I later found out that it was not sawdust but little pellets made from re-cycled car tires.

As for the show itself that had 7 men and 3 women, I have to redefine my idea of what the show was really about. Off the top the show is beautifully and elegantly choreographed. Yes it is gymnastics. Yes it is tumbling and yes there is some balancing of long poles and (yes!) people on heads, hands and feet so that there could be a semblance of juggling. But most of all because I am a modern dance enthusiast I saw a lot of that in Backbone.

The 80 minute long show, which has to be one heck of physical trial for the performers who never stop, is delightful and fun to watch because those 10 performers do all their stuff with enthusiasm and smiles.

The sweating and effort somehow is balanced by a tad of humour. Best of all while Backbone is certainly not a circus it featured something of circuses of old. This is the idea of the three-ring circus. At any moment there was a lot of stuff going on stage. If you looked at something on one side there was something else happening that I did not want to miss.

Rosemary and I left the show soothed, relaxed and pleased. I did not miss the tigers, lions, elephants and horses.

Rosemary and I are not living the normal life or retirees who have been married for 50 years. We are mostly in good health and there is sufficient money in the bank for whatever may happen to us physically.

We are not living the normal life of retirees because increasingly being “wired” in this 21^st century brings us instant information (CNN’s breaking news) which since most of it is terrible and illogical it tries our patience for the normal world of our past that we think we understood.

A few years ago when I arrived at a relative’s house from the Buenos Aires airport my relative asked me in Spanish, “How is your black monkey friend doing?” I could not reply and did not. Then I have friends living in that city who are at an opposite side of that spectrum in a fanatical way.

It has been a long time and I have mostly kept my word not to press the buttons of my extreme friends and relatives. I believe that particularly in social media my view or politics and religion are extremely personal. I do not wish to “share” them.

I believe that fanatics from both sides of that blurry middle line are not aware of the meaning of pragmatism. They “share” their views with friends who nod in approval.

I believe that these political, religious and views on female decision on what concerns their body are to be kept personal. Pushing buttons in social media is sort of like demonstrating on the street while being comfortably ensconced in a cozy bed while drinking a latte.

If there is hate in this world to the quantity we have now I believe some of it may be due to these social media evangelists (remember and evangelist strictly speaking is a letter writer).

I turn myself off and never comment. I prefer to think about music, art, literature which since I now mostly read in Spanish I can only self-share.

As an example when I looked at this photograph of Béatrice Larrivé a dancer from Arts Umbrella that I photographed at a Vancouver Playhouse performance in 2015 I think immediately of the people who have passed (performed ) there in all these years I have been in Vancouver. Their presence, since it is in my memory, means that while they may be gone they are there if I look with the effort of remembrance.

I see her as a passionate ghost that I hope will keep the passion of dance so that perhaps in a near future when I turn on my Samsung phone in the morning CNN will not have breaking news that will make my heart flutter in stress.

But there was one location that I found that resulted in me getting a real fright. This was the Castillo Rospigliosi which plays an important part in an invasion by the United States (novel!) in The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta.

I arrived at the scene of this castle looking out of place in urban Lima. I took some preliminary photographs and when I got close some men on the parapet signalled me to stop. I ignored them. Lost in my picture taking I suddenly heard automatic rifles (they were AK-47s I noticed later) cocked. I turned around to find four soldiers who signalled me to follow them (two were behind me). Inside the castle I was met by an officer who asked me to explain myself. I was worried. But somehow when I mentioned my purpose, and uttered Mario Vargas Llosa, I was able to discern a smile and I was let go.

Birds may be modern dinosaurs but I also believe we humans have birds in us.

Consider the idea of a Vancouver street corner. For me there are two. One is Robson at Granville where the Farmer Building used to be. My studio was on the upper floor.  The other corner in my memory is Davie at Richards. That is where for many years my assignments for Vancouver Magazine came from. Both buildings are long gone. But when I approach those corners something in me makes me recall that the place is the place and of my involvement with it.

On the roof of my former studio on Robson and Granville - The Farmer Building

Birds use landmarks for migration and I believe that they may have some human in them (or simply it is the other way around) as with landmarks gone they must instinctively know their way.

In my native Argentina we have something called “costumbrismo”. It could be translated to customism even though that word does not exist. The concept is mostly a literary one. In Argentina Jorge Luís Borges wrote mostly about his city of Buenos Aires. He wrote about the zoo and its tigers, of street corners and landmarks and how other Argentine writers  had written of his city.  Rarely did he leave the city into the provinces.

Argentine Tango (while some say it originated in Uruguay) is the music of one city, Buenos Aires. The lyrics rarely mention other places in Argentina. Folkloric music is the music of the interior of Argentina and it has no connection with the tango. The same can be said of Astor Piazzolla’s “Nuevo Tango”. The music oozes Buenos Aires.

I have attempted to find writers and composers who represented the confines of one city and have not found any that had the determination of Borges, Piazzolla and the composers and lyricists of the Argentine Tango.

Uruguayan writer Mario Benedetti exiled himself for some years to Buenos Aires and he, too wrote about the city.

Perhaps Vancouver (my city now) is a young city. As my friend Ian McGuffie often says, “Vancouver was born with a photograph of its tent city hall in the 19^th century. Vancouver was born with photography.”

Every time I return to Buenos Aires the city is mostly the same. A 1930’s ornate French style building on the corner of Corrientes and Florida now houses a Burger King, but it is still there and recognizable.

But not so in Vancouver where buildings disappear or facades hide the fact that what is behind is not what once was behind. While strolling with Rosemary on Plaza de Mayo I told Rosemary that we were not far from Alsina and Defensa and that there was supposed to be a café, La Puerto Rico, mentioned in Leon Tenenmbaum's Los Olores de Buenos Aires.  It was there. Tenenbaum also wrote Buenos Aires - Tiempo de Borges which is all about Borges's city with a luxury of detail.

Then here in Vancouver there is the slow deconstruction of buildings until the idea of the structure as conceived by its architect is gone. That was the fate of the hated (but the architect was the renowned Argentine Cesar Pelli) Eaton/Sears building opposite my studio on Robson and Granville. The current iteration Nordstroms’s has nothing of its original design.

For some years the main post office attempted to hide its soaring ceilings with cloth tents. What will happen to the building when Amazon takes over is not something that makes me feel optimistic.

Our city then seems to be a constant progression into the future that hides the past. Will the twisted pseudo-skyscrapers of our near future survive or will, they, too, remain in the memory of a few?  

Costumbrismo is not always something that writers in Latin America will acknowledge. When I told Vargas Llosa that I had found the ice-cream shop where Alejandro Mayta had worked in his novel he was visibly bothered. I found out quickly that some novelists do not like to admit autobiographical material in their books.

But in the middle of the night a few weeks ago when I was concocting the idea of this blog I remember that in 1993 I photographed Vancouver writer Laurence Gough who was writing a series of crime novels (13 in all) featuring Vancouver detectives Jack Willows and Claire Parker. I read two of the novels and liked them but in the end I thought (stupidly!), “Why would I want to read about crime novels set in Vancouver when I can read those set in Venice or London?”

It was 7 years before I came to realize that nostalgia is a shifting feeling of longing that happens only when you long for the place you are currently not in. And so while in Buenos Aires this past September I had nostalgia for my now adopted city of Vancouver.

Perhaps another reason for this lack of costumbrismo with Gough’s extraordinary exception in that many of the street corners in Buenos Aires (like many in Paris) do not end on a point. They are trapezoidal and are called ochavas.

An ochava on Córdoba & Córdoba

The original purpose was to help horse-drawn carriages in the 19^th century to note in advance what was coming from the other street. Because of that flat “corner” there are many restaurants, cafés, etc on the ochavas. And it was in these corner “boliches” that writers like Borges, Cortázar and others congregated and then wrote about them. The book I cite below has a whole chapter noting all those corners that Borges mentioned in his stories and poems.

When I finally talked to Gough on the phone he promised to send me a few locations from his novels. I took 7 of his books from the Vancouver Public Library and in short order found many locations mentioned.

Of the Vancouver Public Library Gough writes in Memory Lane (1996):

Digesting Ross walked briskly east on Georgia for two to three blocks and then veered  towards the new downtown library, which to his untutored eye looked like a big sand castle artfully crossbred with a fragment of a Roman Coliseum.  Sort of like a leftover Star Trek set. One of those not-quite-parallel-univoerse situations.  He strolled across a forecourt of interlocking  concrete paving blocks, subtly guided by the architecture towards a wall of plate-glass doors.

But there is another extraordinary fact about these locations. I called up our first Canadian Poet Laureate, George Bowering and asked him about costumbrismo and about Gough. He told me, “I have read all of Gough’s books and there is one in particular that mentions a Chevron gas station on Broadway that burns to the ground. I went to look for it and sure enough it had not burned to the ground!”

Since Gough has been living in the last 25 years on the Westside I believe that the gas station was (it is gone!)  is the one on Alma  and West Broadway.

Finally Gough sent me this email: