Rosemary's hands at death - 9 December 2020

Mexico City 1968

Before I go into more heavy stuff I will begin with some levity.

Tom Hawthorn is a fine Victoria, B.C. journalist with a major in writing for most of Canada’s newspapers. But he has a minor. He is known for his obituaries. I would like to write here that if I ever dream of Mr. Hawthorn I will know that I am dead.

I have written obituaries about a few of my friends:

Raúl Guerrero Montemayor

Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S. C, 

Juan Manuel Sánchez

Geoff Massey 

And I have written obituaries when our moribund press (will Hawthorn ever write one? ) ignored these two:

 Kay Alsop - Vancouver Province

Rick Ouston - Vancover Sun

But it was last year on December 10 that I wrote a short obituary on my Rosemary who died the night before. It has been a tough year since that day. But it would seem that Rosemary keeps sending me posthumous gifts.

 My Rosemary is no more

 Beyond the grave

A persistent Rosemary 

Who will be first?  

Without her on our 52nd

There is one gift that I have to admit was unforeseen. I may be a middling blog writer. But I believe that with this past year’s grief, Rosemary has pushed me in the direction of making me a better writer.

When the Vancouver Sun had good active writers, a recent one, Marke Andrews wrote this:  Beautifully written, Alex. 

It was about this blog: Cats & the Meaning of Death

 

Paul Hyde & son circa mid 80s

 

Christmas is Coming - Payola$ & Paul Hyde

When I started my blog in January 2006 I had no idea what a blog was about. In these years and 5411of them (not including this one) I have settled and come to understand, that with the demise of journalism and my previous years as a magazine photographer and writer, my blog is my personal magazine where I am the publisher, editor (not a very good one) writer (a passing one) and a decent photographer.

My emphasis, a pleasant one has been to combine photographs from files with poems, and stories of writers that I admire both in English and in Spanish. Perhaps my most frequent ones have involved Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luís Borges, Julio Cortázar, Homero Aridjis and William Carlos Williams.

Another strong blog content has been writing about my personal life, previous family and present one (some here are not too happy with some of the details placed herein).

A third, and I believe an important one, involves my belief that Vancouver has a poor memory for its past. Many of my blogs involve the many events of our city that I remember because I have a good memory or I was directly involved.

One such subject is this day’s blog on my gentle friend Paul Hyde. I have written about him here.

Payola$

 

Because we have lost sight, or have forgotten, of the popular Expo 86 ad about Vancouver being a “world class city” we have no memory for the fabulous events in culture of that past and ignore the wonderful ones we have right now.

As a former Argie, when I go to Buenos Aires (I do this with frequency) I see how the world-famous-world-class-city opera house, the Teatro Colón has tired programs of 19^th century music and ballet. They have no Turning Point Ensemble, no Ballet BC, and no Arts Umbrella Dance Company. Theater in Buenos Aires does not have cutting edge stuff like the Electric Theatre Company.

Our CBC with CBC Reclaimed, CBC Music with Tom Allen and CBC Ideas with Nahla Ayed and with other programs go beyond world class in my opinion.

And how many living in Vancouver now know that the Vancouver punk scene of the late 70s and early 80s was one of the best in the world?

How many know of my gentle friend Paul Hyde whose band The Payola$ (that $ is not a typo) was a blend of punk that somehow felt just a tad softer?

And how many may not know that there is at least one Vancouver Christmas song that is rarely played?

It is this one “Christmas is Coming”. 

Rosa 'Emily Louise' 9 December 2021

Today is an anniversary that I cannot celebrate. My Rosemary died a year ago today.

Rosemary had this innate ability to always surprise me. In our-52-year marriage I could never predict any of her actions (all intelligent I would always find out). But she did change a tad in those years.

She surprised me today.

When we first started gardening in our large corner garden in Kerrisdale in 1986 she exiled any flower that was yellow, orange or red. Our new roses (and the new old roses) had to be white. She loved blue so we had aconitum, hydrangeas and gentians. But she did begin to accept my preference for pink roses and old red roses that aged into marvellous metallic purples.

When I brought Rosa ‘Westerland’ home, Rosemary slowly warmed to its orange and its synthetic apricot fragrance.

It was at the garden of former Vancouver Rose Society President Janet Wood (now gone) that we say Rosa ‘Mrs. Oakley Fisher’ and a patio rose (so did Wood describe the tiny little rose with that unromantic epithet) Rosa ‘Emily Louise’. Both were yellow and both eventually found a home in our garden.

Mellow Yellow & Electrical Bananas 

Rosa 'Emily Louise'

When we gazed on Emily Louise we invariably connected her to Janet Wood. It was a rose that reminded us fondly of a friend who was now dead.

Rosa 'Emily Louise'& Clematis 'Bijou' 25 May 2021

So today, 9 December 2021, what am I to make of the only rose in bloom being Emily Louise? I see it and I smile as it is one more of those posthumous gifts that keep coming. It is as if Rosemary is telling me, “I am not here but I am.”

But my smile fades as now this happy little rose reminds me of two persons who are gone. 

Below a lovely short story The Yellow Rose by Jorge Luís Borges 

“The Yellow Rose”

Jorge Luis Borges

Translated by Andrew Hurley

It was neither that afternoon nor the next that Giambattista Marino died— that illustrious man proclaimed by the unanimous mouths of Fame (to use an image that was dear to him) as the new Homer or the new Dante—and yet the motionless and silent act that took place that afternoon was, in fact, the last thing that happened in his life. His brow laureled with years and glory, the man died in a vast Spanish bed with carven pillars. It costs us nothing to picture a serene balcony a few steps away, looking out toward the west, and, below, marbles and laurels and a garden whose terraced steps are mirrored in a rectangular pool. In a goblet, a woman has set a yellow rose; the man murmurs the inevitable lines of poetry that even he, to tell the truth, is a bit tired of by now:

Porpora de’giardin, pompa de’prato,

Gemmadi primavera, occhio d’aprile…

Then the revelation occurred. Marino saw the rose, as Adam had seen it in Paradise, and he realized that it lay within its own eternity, not within his words, and that we might speak about the rose, allude to it, but never truly express it, and that the tall, haughty volumes that made a golden dimness in the corner of his room were not (as his vanity had dreamed them) a mirror of the world, but just another thing added to the world’s contents.

Marino achieved that epiphany on the eve of his death, and Homer and Dante may have achieved it as well.

René Michelle

 In this gray and dark January 24 I find myself writing blogs for the holes I have in the past year particularly in December when I went to Buenos Aires. One of my loves is to choose photographs of mine that might fit the poem of my many favourite poets. Hands down these have been Emily Dickinson, Jorge Luís Borges and Julio Cortázar. It is Dickinson that has the most poems in my blogs. Many like this one I have repeated but with different photographs. At the end of this blog there is a list of all my previous collaborations with Emily Dickinson. If I were a young man of 35 I would seek a publisher who might warm up to my ongoing process.

I cannot dance upon my Toes --

No Man instructed me --

But oftentimes, among my mind,

A Glee possesseth me,

That had I Ballet knowledge --

Would put itself abroad

In Pirouette to blanch a Troupe --

Or lay a Prima, mad,

And though I had no Gown of Gauze --

No Ringlet, to my Hair,

Nor hopped to Audiences -- like Birds,

One Claw upon the Air,

Nor tossed my shape in Eider Balls,

Nor rolled on wheels of snow

Till I was out of sight, in sound,

The House encore me so --

Nor any know I know the Art

I mention -- easy -- Here --

Nor any Placard boast me --

It's full as Opera --

 More Emily Dickinson

Twere Thanksgiving Day 

A Slash of Blue – Emily Dickinson