Exposure 37 & 36

Because I am a human being who is a product of the 20th century, I feel now, with the death of my wife Rosemary on December 9 2020, to be rudderless in a sea of change.

Only routine keeps me on an even keel (enough with these nautical terms!). One very important one is walking my male cat (without a leash) Niño (his sister Niña is not as daring) around the block every day.

There is comfort in the routine of entering my nicely heated oficina and sitting at my desk to write as I am now.

There is another routine that helps. This is the idea that manners, style and knowledge persist in a few people I know. Stellar in this category is writer John Lekich with whom I worked paring my photographs with his lovely writing for Vancouver Magazine, the Globe and Mail and the Georgia Straight.

I would add another quality to Lekich and this is that he is old-fashioned. He thinks about women the way we did back then. Why can they not be on a pedestal and at the same time still be at eye contact in front of us?  He marvels at who they are and comments about them or to them in social media without ever offending. This routine of his keeps my ship (again) on a straight course.

He is one of the few that reads my blogs and goes beyond the photographs, although, while he often comments, he does use emojis (anathema!).  

Emoticons from hell    

He reacted to this blog (below is the link) about the red-haired stewardess I may have photographed around 1978. The pictures he liked are at least 44 years old. I am adding a pair of the two last ones just because I have the urge to do so. But I will add a little explanation about the two photographs. Because the colour negative I used was inherently unstable it is really impossible to properly correct the colour. And I am sure that Lekich will enjoy them.

Colorín colorado

When I used film, if I loaded my camera in a darkroom (or with a changing bag), I could sometimes get more than the 36 exposures of a 36-exposure roll. Sometimes I could even get a 38 one. In Argentine Spanish this is called yapa (extra).

Yapa, Cholesterol & Blood Sugar

The two photographs here are the 36^th and 37 exposures.

I marvel at the fact that the red-haired woman may now be close to 80 and I wonder if she is alive and where she lives. There is something about looking at a portrait of a person I photographed long ago that makes me wonder about the phenomenon I feel when I do so.

For me it all began at the Lincoln Library on Calle Florida in 1950. The library was an arm of the United States Information Service (a long title for what they really were, spies) that was adjacent to the American Embassy. It was there that I discovered that I could borrow books and take them home!  One of the books (it could have been a magazine) called American Heritage. In it were some photographs of soldiers of the American Civil War taken by Timothy 0’Sullivan, Alexander Gardner and Matthew Brady.  There were some that were dead on the field. Others were alive and looking in my direction. I could not help but notice that they looked like the Argentines walking outside. It was also my first realization that the soldiers in the photographs were now all dead. Death stared at my face for the first time.

While the red-haired stewardess may be alive there is something about looking at these pictures that takes me back to the most important moment in my life at the Lincoln Library.

I believe that my friend John Lekich would understand this. If he were to somehow spot this red-haired stewardess I am sure he would open the door for her. Gentlemen then are still gentlemen now. That is an unchanging routine I share with Lekich.                                                                                                      

In the Odyssey, Mentor (Greek: Μέντωρ, Méntōr; gen.: Μέντορος) was the son of Alcimus. In his old age Mentor was a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War, he placed Mentor in charge of his son Telemachus, and of Odysseus' palace.

The above citation from Wikipedia explains why to this day many consider a mentor to be a man and an inspiration of a woman, a muse.

I have written at length in previous blogs about all the mentors in my life beginning with my father and then to the Brothers of Holy Cross at my boarding school in Austin. Pushy art directors in Vancouver made me the photographer I am today and Argentine Juan Manuel  Sánchez convinced me to the fact that I was an artist.

My huge negative, slide and photo files of beautiful women attest to the fact that I had many muses.

Of late I have come to understand how wrong I have been. My grandmother, my mother and particularly my Rosemary (married to her for 52 years) were definite mentors. I would not be the man I am today without them.

My new mentor now is Joan Didion. She did write this:

 I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear. – Why I Write (essay originally published in the New York Times Book Review in 1976)

As I wrote in this blog (link below)  I  became tired of finding quotes by her and decided to get one of her books at Macleod Books.

 Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant - Joan Didion

The book in question The Year of Magical Thinking is a tough read. She starts the book a couple of days after her husband John Gregory Dunne died. While I am not Didion, what she writes as she navigates her grief is exactly what has been in my head since December 9, 2020 when Rosemary died.

I can only read a few pages at a time. I marked this page and the quote:

Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehension, that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

And there was this one:

I needed to be alone so that he could come back. This was the beginning of my year of magical thinking.

The clincher that inspired my blog for today (13 November 2022 but that I am placing back to fill a gaping hole caused by my listleness) is this one:

I took the bags [after Dunne’s death] of his clothes] to St. James’. One day, a few weeks later, I gathered up more bags and took them to John’s office where he had kept his clothes. I was not yet prepared to address the suits and shirts and jackets but I thought I could handle what remained of the shoes, a start.

I stopped at the door of the room. I could not give away the rest of the shoes. I stood there for a moment, then realized why: he would need shoes if he was to return. The recognition of this thought by no means eradicated the thought.

I have still not tried to determine (say by giving away the shoes) if the thought has lost its power.

Of the Argentine shoe in this scan I remember the exact day in Buenos Aires when I spotted it on the window of a shoe store on Calle Corrientes, half a block from Calle Florida.

For 52 years Rosemary never bought shoes by herself. We went together and most often I chose the pair she would buy.  The colours of this pair scream to me of “my Rosemary”.

I have yet to accept that she is gone and that she is never going to return. Joan Didion would understand.                  

Rosa 'The Shropshire Lad' 3 November 2022

My memory is good, almost exceptional, but in a random way. I remember that I was 9 years old, it was 1951 and going to the American Grammar School in Belgrano R in Buenos Aires when I heard a statement, I thought it was a joke but it was an intelligent one.

Our teacher Miss Zimmerman asked us, “What is black and white and red (we heard red not knowing she meant read) all over?” The startling answer for me was, “A newspaper.”

Today in what may be the last of my roses for the year, I spotted these two (and a bud) of the English Rose, Rosa ‘The Shropshire Lad” so I concocted the scan to illustrate that joke I heard so many years ago.

Rosa 'Mrs Oakley Fisher' 14 October 2022

Rosa 'Mrs. Oakley Fisher' 3 November 2022

Since my Rosemary died on December 9, 2022 I have come to understand that she was the bond that kept our family together. Many in my family have gone their own way. Perhaps it could be that the younger ones are now much older and an 80 year old man (me) is simply an 80 year old man.

I find myself now, often going to the Preface, page 19 of Harold Bloom’s How to Read and Why where I read:

We read not only because we cannot know enough people, but because friendship is so vulnerable, so likely to diminish and disappear, overcome by space, time, imperfect sympathies, and all the sorrows of familial and passional life.

My Rosemary and I were together for 52 years. It is obvious it was all her doing. She had that talent. With her gone the breakup is unstoppable.

And yes, I have found in this last year that friendship indeed fades.

Rosa 'Susan Williams-Ellis' & Pyracantha - 1 November 2022

My state of being prevents me from going into my document files to find out the exact date when we moved from Kerrisdale (and our large and extremely beautiful corner garden) to our duplex in Kitsilano. It was about 5 years ago.

Rosemary was unhappy with the move. This time around my opinion prevailed. She had always been the smart one to make all the decisions in our 52 year marriage.

I told her that we had spent so much money in making the garden that it was and travelled all over the world with our daughters and granddaughters that we had little money to make repairs in leaky bathrooms. If we moved she was aware that we were going to make lots of money. I told her that by moving we could inherit our daughters while we were still alive and still have money to live comfortably.

And so we moved and Rosemary was downcast.

The first time we saw our house on 7^th Avenue must have been around now five years ago. One salient feature of the small deck garden  was the brilliant red pyracantha  and its red berries (a relative of the extensive rose family that includes peaches, cherries, etc).

Today in my melancholy of a cold sort of not quite rainy day and my Niño and Niña not wanting to leave my lap on the bed I had a look at the pyracantha and I instantly became saddened thinking how Rosemary may have been starting to feel happy in this little house of ours by the time she was dying on December 9, 2020.

And so today I scanned the pyracantha with one of the last remaining roses of the season (I believe three or four may bloom in the next days if it does not rain too much) and dedicated it and this blog to the memory of my Rosemary.

As St. Luke wrote (the King James version) Luke 22:19 NKJV

And He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”