Pyracantha coccinea 19 October 2019

La memoria para mí es un sentimiento/pensamiento que, como mi sombra en un día de sol, siempre me sigue. Allí está, inclusive en los sueños.

Borges dijo que para recordar hay que primero olvidar. Es obvio al estudiar esa observación detenidamente.

¿Pero me pregunto por qué me acuerdo de ciertas cosas y de otras, nó?

En los dos años, 65, 66, que estuve en Buenos Aires como marinero de la Armada República Argentina, no me acuerdo nada de las conversaciones que tuve con mi papá cuando lo iba a visitar donde vivía en la calle de Carabobo. ¿Habrá algún filtro que nos proteja de memorias que nos podrían  desbalancear?  

Cuando nos mudamos a nuestra casita en el barrio de Kitsilano en Vancouver de un jardín grande hace casi cuatro años me fijé de una planta con frutitos colorados que crece en nuestro garaje (ahora mi oficina y estudio fotográfico).

La memoria de esa planta en los otoños asoleados del Bueno Aires de mi niñez me vino en una racha de nostalgia y melancolía por tiempos pasados.

Me acuerdo que mi mamá me llevo a visitar a mi Tía Winnie (casada con el hermano de mi papá, Harry) en Acassuso. Mi tía sufría una terrible artritis y los dedos de sus manos estaban deformados. Me acuerdo que mi Tío Harry estaba mezclando mostaza inglesa en polvo Colman’s, con agua y le ponía una cucharadita de azúcar. Hasta la fecha me encanta siempre le pongo azúcar a la mostaza inglesa y me acuerdo de la Tía Winnie y Uncle Harry.

¿Por qué me acuerdo?  

A few days ago I wrote in this blog the silliness of using Vaseline to blur the edges of a photograph. That I used that same technique here puts the photographs of Ana Victoria and this lovely blond in the same time frame.

But looking at this blonde woman whose name I long ago forgot brings me to that thought we always have of, “What if?”

In 1974 my Rosemary, our two daughters and I had a nice little house which we owned in Arboledas, in the outskirts of Mexico City. We taught English at American Companies and a chain of American hotels. I taught Spanish at Universidad Iberoamericana, a Jesuit institution. Life was simple except for the hectic drive in our VW on the bumper to bumper periférico.

Rosemary said we need to move to Canada. She said that the US was not a choice as my Argentine citizenship and that of our daughters’ Mexican would make us aliens. “Toronto would be too cold for you and you would not understand French I Montreal. We will go to Vancouver. And we will go there in our VW.”

We quit our jobs and put our house for sale. That was a terrible mistake. There were no takers. We needed the money so I started taking photographs of Mexican families with my primitive equipment ( a Pentax S-3 and a Pentacon F). I had a small darkroom so I printed the photographs and then mounted (a custom at the time) them on mat board with dry mounting tissue using Rosemary’s iron.

Before I knew it business was booming. My photographs, taken with Kodak Tri-X and with only available light, seemed to hit a nerve with all those families. They referred me upwards into the stratosphere of Mexican society. I was being paid lovely sums for my work.

Our neighbours told me that I should reconsider. I did not and as soon as we sold our house we sent all our possessions (including, Rosemary indicated to me, the vinegar, the salt and the pepper) by an expensive moving van. We stuffed our Beetle and installed a roof rack. And off we went to Vancouver.

In 1977 I returned to Mexico. I must have called one of my former Mexican clients who were keen that I photograph their daughter. I have no idea what happened to any b+w photographs I might have taken. All I have are these five snaps and completely out of context that photograph of that Mexican de Aviación Boeing 727.

Again I ponder what might have been had we stayed in Mexico?

It is never too late to learn humility. Yesterday my Rosemary and I went to the monthly meeting of the Vancouver Rose Society. We were asked to bring some blooms (a rare request at this time of the year and with the rain). We did. 

But I thought of doing something special. I cut four blooms and first scanned them. Then I was instructed by Rosemary to put them into a vase and into the refrigerator so that they would keep for the 7:30 meeting.

I thought it would be nice to donate a print of the scan and place it by the vase with our flowers. At the meeting they have door prizes. You buy tickets for a nominal sum of 2 or 3 dollars each. My print was competing with a ceramic flower pot, a bottle of rose water and some florist 6 inch potted roses.

I watched as people, when their number was announced, went to retrieve their prizes. My print was the last prize on the table and, I would believe, that the winner reluctantly picked it up as there was nothing else.

Buying a home appliance can be an exciting event if it involves your first refrigerator with your bride to be. That was so with my Rosemary.

But when you are an old man and you have to go to London Drugs to see if you could return a Hoover (poor suction and the removal of attachments was a Waterloo to my arthritic limbs) to then buy a much more expensive but well-designed Dyson, it can all be a yawn and stressful, too.

And yet after tonight’s Rachel Maddow I took it for a spin and it worked like a charm. I was not overly excited but I was satisfied that it sucks (well).

I remember (and how many of you remember a similar scene) when sometime in 1955, In Mexico City, the door bell rang and a man selling Elextroluxes was invited in by my grandmother. The man did ( the rigeur) demonstration with that predictable apology, “Don’t be insulted, this looks like a clean house,” of quick passing over our living room couch and he then he opened the lovely aluminum Electrolux baby and showed us all that dirt.

We bought it. It eventually failed and then vacuum cleaners disappear from my psyche until we moved to Vancouver in 1975

In 1977 in our Burnaby renter, a man gave us a gift, a set of steak knives, (did he suspect I was Argentine?) and we bought his cyclonic wonder. Since then there have been too many more vacuums in my life.

In 1950 the ice man in our Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Coghlan stopped coming to our house. We were the first on the block with an almost brand new refrigerator my mother bought from a departing American diplomat. In that refrigerator I made my first package of Jell-O lime flavoured dessert.

A couple of years later when I visited my friend Susan Stone (I was madly in love with her) at her spacious home, her father was the general manager of GM in Argentina (and had sent his Cadillac to pick me up) I watched my first program on a TV. I vaguely remember oil derricks.

After that I was only passably excited when in Mexico City in 1956 my mother bought a Zenith TV. 

Then I discovered Boston Blackie!

It was only in 1966 when an appliance and romance somehow became intertwined.

I had this lovely girlfriend called Susy who wooed me with food. I was a starving and very thin conscript in the Argentine Navy. When I visited her she would make me lovely sandwiches with Swiss cheese, liverwurst and pickles.

At the same time I fell in love with the music of Astor Piazzolla. I secured a couple of tickets for an evening performance at the Teatro Florida (long gone) on Calle Florida. Before the concert, Susy and I went to a party. When it was time I told her we had to take the train to town. She informed me that she was having a very good time so she was going to stay.

I left a sad man and became more so as I waited in the evening for the train to take me to Retiro. I arrived at the Teatro Florida feeling very sorry for myself and sat down. The room was packed. The seat next to me was empty. I was at that point reaching a basement of melancholy. Piazzolla began my now (not yet then) favourite piece Milonga del Angel. I was about to cry when I felt a gentle hand on my right thigh. It was Susy, who whispered, “I changed my mind.” After the performance we crossed Florida where there was a store with appliances. Susy to the day that she died of cancer told me this was my invention. We looked at a kitchen range in that awful avocado and she said, “Alex wouldn’t that look nice in our kitchen?”

Her romance and love for me lasted until she met a violinist from the Colón Philharmonic. I was dumped over the phone.

Sometime in 1987 I  returned to Buenos Aires assigned by a Toronto magazine called Vista. I rang the bell at Susy’s apartment. She opened the door, looked at me and said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” Later she confessed it had not worked out with the violinist and I did not ask any questions nor do I have any memory of what might have been said. I don’t even remember her kitchen.

But there is memory, and how memory can affect one like a sharp utensil. I have in social media a couple of friends who knew Susy. In one of the postings I noticed a man called Miguel with Susy’s last name. I might have met him since he was obviously her brother. I have no recollection. In his photos I found a family photograph that froze me.

It is a feeling that, even as the photographer that I am, is one that throws me into the confusion of trying to figure out death. Taking Epicurus’s advice that death is the absence of pain is not to my liking. It is the idea of thinking about not being able to think that is so terrible and why death is our human bet noire.

Part of that is seeing the face of a young woman who was alive with all her future in front of her (refrigerators and stoves perhaps?) that I cannot reconcile while still remembering the tone and substance of her voice and even the flavor of all those sandwiches.