Florence

Because I am stuck partly in the 20^th century, my ability to connect from my digital camera to the internet while traveling or being able to blog every day is an impossibility. It was Rosemary who suggested I use my A5 Galaxy phone while we were in Venice and in Florence in 2019. It was then easy to post the photographs onto Facebook and write a short description. This method became my blog on the fly. Now Facebook is reminding me of these photographs that I took and I thought that the best route was to write a new blog (this one) and post those photographs with the original written paragraphs.

Looking at those photographs, and some of them including a smiling Rosemary, I cannot possibly regret that we did travel together and had so much fun. 

Below was the blog on the fly.

Upon Rosemary's request I am placing here a picture of our Hotel Berchielli room. She wants to show off to our two daughters

 The red pass hanging from Rosemary's neck gives us (I have one too) access to all museums and many churches without having to line up. 

My grandmother often told me "La ignorancia es atrevida." I dare to say that I am ignorant and particularly about art. My Vancouver photography friend Jan Gates suggested I visit la Chiesa Santa Felicita to see the Pontormo. I was thinking that when Jan suggested this that Pontormo was certainly known by his family. Upon seeing Pontormo's The Deposition From the Cross a pleasant German explained the painting in broken Italian. I remembered Argentine painter Juan Manuel Sánchez telling me something about Mannerism. Thanks to Sánchez and Jan my ignorance has diminished a tad and I have now discovered a great painter. And right next to that luminous Pontormo there was another, an Annunciation. Over both Pontormos there are four darkish circles featuring the evangelists painted by Bronzino.

Even though we are using our hotel laundry service Rosemary washed some clothes in the bathtub and then placed them by our two windows for a final dry. I could not resist doing a modern version (alas a puny one) celebrating the intense red of Florentine painting

The inspired Museo Dell' Opera Del Duomo has several reproductions labeled as touchable. Rosemary touched.

A souvenir kiosk, the only refuge from hordes of tourists trampling the pavement, all with their phones up, snapping the Cattedrale di Santa Maria di Fiori.

The wild pig (jabali) gives good luck.

After puffing up 463 spiralling steps to Brunelleschi's dome the 360° view was a washed out noon sky. But I did note the shadow.

Museo Dell' Opera Del Duomo, not a place for a person with a bad knee. But certainly worth the effort.

One of the finest and most beautiful museums that we have visited is the Museo Dell' Opera Del Duomo. From the outside you would never know what is inside. Inside, stark, ultra modern architecture sparsely exhibits works of Renaissance art. Here is one of Michelangelo's Pietas (in reality a deposition from the cross in which artist Tiberio Calcagni also contributed.) That's Rosemary on the right.

Always in my mind when I look at those photographs is this idea, that while we did have all that fun, I never would have thought about the fact that I am now writing of those events and Rosemary is not here. Why is it that we live in the moment without taking special consideration of how impermanent that happiness in the flesh can be?

Even in my daily menialities like today, Sunday February 27, 2022 (I am placing this blog in yesterday's vacant space), while vacuuming with our portable and very good Dyson that Rosemary urged I buy but which she never used I look at it and ask myself (is it a banal question?), “Why are you here and not she?”

My SIN card

Canada (Vancouver) has been my home since 1975. It was in that year, while Rosemary, our two daughters and I were living in Mexico City, that Rosemary told us that our future in Mexico would not be a good one for our daughters and that we should move to her native Canada.

Until that point I was used to and suffered extreme bureaucracy and long lines to get passports or anything else.

Sometime around Christmas 1958 my mother gave me as a Christmas gift a roundtrip flight on a Comet 4C to San Antonio and from there I was going by bus to my boarding school high school in Austin. I did not notice that when I was leaving at the Mexico City airport that in customs they did not stamp my Argentine passport that I was leaving.

When I returned I was almost not allowed back as the man at customs told me, “It is impossible for you to be coming from the US as you never left.” That cost my mother lots of money and we lined up for days at the infamous Gobernacíon. Finally she hired a coyote (a facilitator) and my passport was duly stamped.

In 1964 when I attempted to re-new my Argentine passport at the Mexico City Argentine Consulate, I was told that I had to do my military service and I needed to have an important document called a Libreta de Enrolamiento (a draft card document). It was for that reason that I returned to Buenos Aires to serve those two years in the Argentine Navy so I could hold my Argentine citizenship. I was stupidly patriotic.

Some many years later I returned to Buenos Aires with that passport and upon arrival my passport was stamped “not valid”. I asked and I was told that this is what happened to all passports issued abroad and that I would have to apply for one at the police station (that is where until the late 70s one went for the document and for the DNI (Documento Nacional de Identificación). Since I was going to stay in BA for only a week and a few days more, I could see myself lining up for hours and days. I appealed to my half-brother Enrique. He told me he knew a police chief. With the police chief we went into the Casa Rosada (from its balcony Perón and Evita would make their speeches) and I had my passport in minutes. The police chief told me that the next time I returned to Argentina that I become first a Canadian citizen and get a Canadian passport as he might not be around to help me. This I did.

By 1999 President Carlos Saúl Menem got rid of the obligatory draft and the Libreta de Enrolamiento became an extinct document.

As a joke about three years ago, when I arrived at the Buenos Aires airport, from my Vancouver flight, I produced my ancient libreta (my document was new in 1926 and nobody had ever asked for one at the Argentine consulate until I came along.)  as my ID when customs asked for my passport. The man laughed. And then I showed him my Canadian passport and I was in.

Sometime around 1977 The RCMP in Vancouver recommended that we embed our Social Insurance Number (SIN) with a special little tool on all our valuables like TV sets and cameras. I did just that on my primary work camera, a Pentax S-3. Shortly after that I lost my SIN card.

I never replaced it. Such is the lack of bureaucracy in Canada (at least in comparison to Argentina and Mexico) that I have managed since then to do everything without that “important” card. When I am asked for the SIN number I look at the bottom plate of my Pentax.

That’s Canada for you. I don’t need the help of a police chief or a coyote.

For anybody who might be curious about the number 588737, that was my ID during my two years in the Argentine Navy.

Rosemary & Niño 22 March 2020

To find out about the title of this blog go to the end.

Borges - To a cat - A un gato

In jest I have told a few of my friends and relatives that I am considering becoming a trans woman. The reason is that at my age of 79, I live alone with two cats, brother and sister Niño and Niña. I talk to them. Because they compete to get on my lap when I sit on my hanging chair to watch TV and compete for being as close to me as possible when I turn on the lights at night they are as inseparable to me as chewing gum (in a good way). I believe that except for my obvious male sex I define a crazy cat lady. But how can I become one if I am not a woman?

I calculate that before Rosemary died on December 9, 2020 I had lived until then only 7 months alone when I was in a pensión in Buenos Aires when I was doing my military service. Now I have been alone for many more than 7 months. It affects me most negatively and I wonder how other people live alone.

I have three former ecdysiasts friends (one in Mexico, one in the US and one in Canada) who live alone with dogs or a dog. One of them is active in finding homes for stray dogs. I wonder if these three women live alone because they had bad relations with men in their past. The fact is that they seem to be happy with their dogs.

Then there are other friends of mine (all women including my eldest daughter Alexandra ) who live alone with cats. Alexandra has 3.

Since about 1977 when we (Rosemary and two daughters) arrived in Vancouver, we have always had a cat or two cats. Most of them were bilingual as we communicated with them in Spanish and in English.

For many years Rosemary was attached to our cats and when one died it was my job to bury it in the garden and then immediately get a new cat.

Rosemary and I always went to the SPCA as we enjoyed the process of mutual adaptation with a middle aged cat. Only once we had a black kitten we called Mosca. Mosca died of a heart attack while Rosemary was watching Hitchcock’s Vertigo. It was during a very short period in our life when we had a TV in our bedroom.

The reason I always placated Rosemary’s grief over a dead cat by getting another one is that I believe that cats transfer a Platonic essence that I call catness. The live cat retains the catness of the dead one.

When I take Hilary back to Burnaby after serving her dinner I drive home knowing that I will be received by the gatuno company (a nice Spanish adjective for cat) of my two cats. Am I a crazy cat lady that I find them human? My Argentine pope has publicly said that cats and dogs may go to heaven. Under the pain of mortal sin I will not oppose his view.

It seems to be general knowledge that cats have a short memory. I think this untrue or the very least it does not apply to my two orange and white cats.

A couple of years ago, in our (Niño is unleashed) daily walks around the block Niño stood his ground with all dogs. There are a couple of ones that lick his face. His favourite is Scout a very large close neighbour’s pet. Niño had not seen Scout for two months so his owner told me today. As soon as the two saw each other Niño approached the dog and the licking began. I do not believe that a two month absence is a short memory lapse.

Because it was Rosemary who taught Niño to walk and I follow Rosemary’s route I wonder if Niño remembers as much as I do the absent presence of Rosemary. I almost believe in ghosts. Does Niño sense something of the sort? 

I often wondered why in my native Argentina when people see a cat they use the word micifus. Thanks to Google in this 21st century I found out the following from Wikipedia

Etimología

Epónimo , variante de Micifuf, personaje gatuno creado por Lope de Vega en "La Gatomaquia" y posteriormente usado por Félix María de Samaniego en "Los gatos escrupulosos".

And further: 

 La Gatomaquia, es un poema épico burlesco de Lope de Vega, que fue publicado un año antes de su fallecimiento, en 1634, bajo el seudónimo de Tomé de Burguillos. Se divide en siete silvas, y consta de unos 2.500 versos.

So it seems that famous Spanish writer Lope de Vega wrote this poem under the pseudonym Tomé de Burgillos in 1634. I have no idea if this means that Argentines are more literate as the term micifuz is not used anywhere else