Con mis 77 años creo que mi presente obsesión con todo lo relacionado con Julio Cortázar es una obsesión mágica y prometedora. Prometedora en el sentido si esta vez podré terminar de leer y de comprender algo de su Rayuela.

Lo que es increíble es que hay tantos cuentos de Cortázar narrados por él. Su dicción e inflexión es perfecta.

Viviendo aquí en Vancouver me siento aislado y triste de no poder compartir con mis amigos lo que es poder escuchar la voz de Cortázar.

Estas fotos las tomé en mi estudio aquí en pleno centro de Vancouver en la esquína de Granville con Robson. En frente de mi estudio había (lo han modificado y no es lo que fue) un edificio diseñado por Cesar Pelli. La luz de la tarde se reflejaba en lo que era una enorme pared de una cuadra sobre mi estudio.

La mujer en una de las fotos era una enfermera psiquiátrica llamada Jo-Anne. El hecho de que estaba acostada en un ex-diván psiquiátrico es pura coincidencia. Tranquilamente tomé muchas fotos de ella sin fijarme en las actividades de los peatones de en frente. Fue después, al examinar mis contactos de los negativos, que los vi. En ese momento pensé en ese cuento de Cortázar llamado La babas del diablo que fue inspiración para la película Blowup de Michelangelo Antonioni.  Modifiqué la foto de Joanne para no ofender a nadie y aquí están. Los peatones de la segunda foto me despertaron una similar obsesión a la del fotógrafo de la película.

Uno de los cuentos más impresionantes por los momentos de espanto, ocultos por la dicción hogareña de Cortázar es La casa tomada. Aquí un enlace:

La casa tomada

Otra coincidencia es que la Casa tomada estaba en la calle de Rodriguez Peña, la misma en donde vivía en un departamento mi abuelita en los años 50. 

Más Cortázar

Circe 
Como ojos que empezaban a abrirse más allá 

Los sillones de mi vida 
Julio Cortázar - una obsesión
Hidromurías
El beso
Pero el amor esa palabra
A un dios desconocido
Del colorado al amarillo 
Reunión con un círculo rojo 
La protección inútil
el tubo de dentífrico
Tu corazón desconcertado

 In normal times even though there are only two of us (and two cats, Niño and Niña) when I cook (I have been the designated cook for years) I plan for family to drop in. That is not the case now.

So today when I was thinking of our day’s menu I thought of devilled eggs perhaps served with steamed vegetables on the side.

No devilled egg is ever very good unless it contains homemade mayonnaise. The recipe for it has always been in mother’s Recipe for Two – Mary Lou Glass – 1947 – John Wiley & Sons, Inc, New York – Chapman& Hall, Ltd. London.

Only in today’s scanning of the book for this blog have I found out that the author was living in Austin, Texas, a place I would know well by 1957.

There is no connection, besides a possible thought of Easter coming up, for eating devilled eggs today.

To make the devilled eggs I boil them for 8 minutes. I chop up very finely, red pepper, onion, celery and parsley. Once I mix that with the mayonnaise I garnish them with  cayenne pepper. I modify the Glass recipe by substituting the vinegar for lemon juice. I make sure the mustard is Keen's.

Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. - Congregation of Holy Cross

In my April 1, 2020 NY Times Editorial –The Wall That Didn’t Stop Covid-19 I was shocked by the first paragraph:

Three weeks ago, with much of the United States already gearing up to limit the spread of the coronavirus, the Trump administration’s chief immigration judge sent a stern order to immigration courts nationwide to take down all public health posters, printed in English and Spanish, on how to deal with the pandemic. “Per our leadership,” the order said, immigration judges did not have the authority to post fliers. “If you see one (attached), please remove it.”

The rest of the editorial is even more damning but I had to stop and reflect on what I was reading.

Sometime in 1959 in our St. Ed’s High School religion class (we were unaware at the time that we were being taught Aristotelian and Thomistic [St. Thomas Aquinas] theology/philosophy with Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C. We thought we were tricking Brother Edwin by distracting him from  the day’s lecture by asking off-the-cuff questions. We thought we were wasting time before the next period which was lunch. Thinking back, I now understand that Brother Edwin welcomed our wasting his time because it gave us the opportunity to ask relevant questions.

One such day we asked a double-barrelled question, “Did Judas and Hitler go to hell?”

Brother Edwin in that calm voice of his began by telling us that every human being born is born with an inherent quality called dignity or human dignity. He stressed the inherent part of it telling us that this dignity is an important part of our makeup of being a human being.

Reading between the lines (he rarely mentioned God) we figured that what he meant is if God had picked those to be born, like any other human they had dignity. And that dignity cannot be taken away.

He finished off his lecture by telling us that he had no way of knowing if Judas and Hitler had gone to hell.

Reflecting again on Brother Edwin’s words it almost seems as he did not believe in the existence of evil and that Lucifer was by definition a fallen angel (off the wagon?). Brother Edwin in my memory lost his temper only twice. In all other times he was the model of placidity which he showed with a quiet smile.

After reading that NY Time editorial I grew angry. My anger dissipated when I thought of Brother Edwin and then I remembered what former Georgia Straight Editor and Vancouver Sun Editorial Board writer, Charles Campbell, told me once. We in the magazine and newspaper business could not understand the goings on in those past years as the paper deteriorated. We had all kinds of conspiracy theories. Campbell set me straight, “There is no conspiracy as that would assume that the so-called conspirators are intelligent. Plain in simple the debacle is due to incompetence.”

I believe he is right and thanks to him and to Brother Edwin I can go to bed a calmed old man.

The picture below I saw at a market in Buenos Aires in the late 1980s. It was the San Telmo Market and many went to it to look for SS and Nazi memorabilia. The man who had this framed picture told me it was not for sale but allowed me to photograph it. Is the man in the picture the man I think he is?  And where is he? Down there or up there?