Thursday, June 01, 2023

 

Rosa 'Sweet Juliet' - 15 June 2023

 O sweet Juliet,/Thy beauty hath made me effeminate /And in my temper soften'd valour's steel! Act Three: Benvolio and Mercutio are walking through the streets when they are approached by an angry Tybalt, who is looking to challenge Romeo.

Rosemary and I had Rosa ‘Sweet Juliet’ perhaps beginning in 1990. I can remember exactly where it was placed. It was by the fence on 43 Avenue in what was really a quite shaded area of our Kerrisdale garden. I bloomed well in spite of it. Now Sweet Juliet is in Kitsilano and I am sure that Rosemary would have smiled if I had shown her this scan or given the rose for her to smell. This English Rose has good scent.

I may have scanned this rose at least 15 times through the years since I began scanning roses in 2001.

For me roses are really no different from people. One of my maximum pleasures is to photograph members of my family or friends, multiple times through the years. This action cements the fact that my family, friends and roses accompany me as I traverse to my eventual oblivion. They are a comfort that stands out as it did when I carefully arranged the rose leaves around the rose before the scanning.

 While I scanned R. 'Sweet Juliet'today 15 June 2023 I am placing this blog back in time to fill some of the holes as I have experienced turmoil in my flooded house (about a month ago) and I am living with my cats days of ceilings being cut and walls removed as well as most of the floors.

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

 

My daughter Hilary Anne Stewart - and expert crier

As far as I can remember I was never a crybaby. Now 80 I am usually in some sort of physical pain but I have learned to take it without showing it.

When my father died in 1966 and my mother in 1972 who died in bed in the presence of my Rosemary and me I don’t think I cried.

 A few months before Rosemary died when we both knew she would eventually do so, I remember turning my back to her in bed and feeling tears in my face. I may have even sobbed. I wonder now how this may have affected her.

Last night my friend Adrian du Plessis put a video of Peter Paul and Mary singing Puff the Magic Dragon on Facebook. As I watched it tears came out in a long stream. I wondered why.

It hit me suddenly that when I went to Argentina to do my military service in the Argentine Navy I had no idea of the folk singing revolution that was taking the US in a storm.

My friend John Sullivan, who was doing his military service in the Argentine Army took me to see a friend of his, Corina Poore , who was in bed because of some foot operation. She read my hand and somehow I fell for her hard. Corina was of English extraction but was born in Uruguay. She was, I can assert, my first  formal girlfriend. She was an early proto-feminist  who knew what she wanted. It was Corina who in introduced me to Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and Peter Paul and Mary. Corina played a handsome guitar and could sing nicely. I fell for folk music, just like that.

By the time I returned to Mexico in 1967 I met Rosemary and married her in February of 1968. I received a communication from Corina who told me she was getting a job in Mexico for the 1968 Olympic Games. I told her of my marriage so she never did come.

Watching Peter Paul and Mary last night I was struck by Mary Travers’s long blonde hair and somehow I immediately connected her with Rosemary and Corina.

My memory of those two ( I do communicate these days with Corina who is happily attached to a man in London) is what brought all those memories of my past.

I wonder why there is no more folk music of the kind of Peter Paul and Mary. I remember going to San Francisco with Rosemary and our two young daughters in 1973 in our VW bug and listening to folk music and Karen Carpenter on the radio. Will that music ever return or am I stuck with rap for what is left of my life?

Below are instructions on the proper way of crying (in English and in Spanish) by Julio Cortázar. He is precise but I can only add that these days I have found that this former macho can cry and do it copiously. All I need is to watch Peter Paul and Mary sing Blowing in the Wind or Leaving on a Jet Plane.                                

 

Julio Cortázar – Instructions on Crying

Putting the reasons for crying aside for the moment, we might concentrate on the correct way to cry, which, be it understood, means a weeping that doesn’t turn into a big commotion nor proves an affront to the smile with its parallel and dull similarity.

The average, everyday weeping consists of a general contraction of the face and a spasmodic sound accompanied by tears and mucus, this last toward the end, since the cry ends at the point when one energetically blows one’s nose.

In order to cry, steer the imagination toward yourself, and if this proves impossible owing to having contacted the habit of believing in the external world, think of a duck covered with ants or of those gulfs in the Straits of Magellan into which no one sails ever.

Coming to the weeping itself, cover the face decorously, using both hands, palms inward. Children are to cry with the sleeve of the dress or shirt pressed against the face, preferably in a corner of the room.

 Average duration of the cry, three minutes.

 

Instruciones para llorar – Julio Cortázar

Dejando de lado los motivos, atengámonos a la manera correcta de llorar, entendiendo por esto un llanto que no ingrese en el escándalo ni que insulte a la sonrisa con una paralela y torpe semejanza. El llanto medio u ordinario consiste en una contracción general del rostro y un sonido espasmódico acompañado de lágrimas y mocos, estos últimos al final, pues el llanto se acaba en el momento en que uno se suena enérgicamente.

Para llorar, dirija la imaginación hacia usted mismo, y si esto le resulta imposible por haber contraído el hábito de creer en el mundo exterior, piense en un pato cubierto de hormigas o en esos golfos del estrecho de Magallanes en los que no entra nadie, nunca.

Llegado el llanto, se tapará con decoro el rostro usando ambas manos con la palma de la mano hacia adentro. Los niños llorarán con la manga del saco contra la cara, y de preferencia en un rincón del cuarto.

Duración media del llanto, tres minutos.

Tuesday, May 30, 2023

 

 

Rosa 'Margaret Merrill' 30 May 2023

When I tell people of the death of my Rosemary they invariably tell me, “You have your memories.” I rarely answer but I am as just as incensed as the recent cliche of wishing people a happy belated birthday.

Of memory Jorge Luís Borges said it best even though it is an understatement of simplicity.

In order to remember you must first forget.

In his defence I must add that he wrote many lovely little poems and stories of going to his childhood home and feeling the presence of his father among the smells of geraniums and ferns.

Rosa 'Margaret Merrill' 30 May 2023

 

We live in a linear world first describe by that pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus who said we can never dip on the same spot of a river twice. Water keeps moving.

Another expression and cliche is the statement that people make of about now making much about something that has happened as it is “water under the bridge”.

In the last few years I have given thought to the opposite of remembering. This is to pin in a moment in my past where I might have then thought of how that would affect my future.

It seems that important events in our life are more often seen as important later on.   

What would be the equivalent of touching a spot of water on a river and then running forward a few meters and perhaps hitting that same spot again?

Yes I have memories and I have objects of my past that bring those memories forward. I will now postulate the difference in having memories when one is a portrait photographer and most of the photographs of my family I took and I remember the circumstances.

The photograph of Rosemary and our first daughter Alexandra taken in 1968 in Veracruz during a “Norte” (really a Caribbean hurricane) when we visited my mother who taught in a one room schoolhouse fo Alcoa Aluminum children is ever present as it is prominently displayed in my living room.

The memory of Veracruz, my mother, the smells of the port city, the noises increased by sea level that we did not experience in Mexico City, the coffee at the Parroquia  on the zocalo, the clanging of the streetcars, the music of the marimbas under the portales, watching Rosemary taking endless showers to escape the stifling heat and humidity, watching her feed Ale, going to Mocambo Beach in our VW and ever more memories come rushing to me by just looking at the framed photograph.

And I must add the supreme luxury of being in bed with Rosemary with us in no clothes, on crisp white sheets in a house that was not airconditioned. 

I remember that I took the photograph with Kodak Tri-X (I have the negative in my files) with a Pentacon-F camera and a Komura 80 mm lens.

And what of all the other framed photographs of Rosemary, Ale, Hilary and her daughters Rebecca and Lauren?

I might challenge Borges that in order to remember I must not forget. I must simply look at the portraits on the wall.

The rose here is a floribunda rose called Rosa ‘Margaret Merrill’ that Rosemary adored. I did not make it to our Kitsilano garden. I was able to replace it only after Rosemary had died. I wrote about it here.

Rosemary  & Margaret

Smelling this lovely white ghost (it seems to be one) brings me memories of that other ghost that is Rosemary.  She would delight at seeing it in all its glory today 30 May 2023.

Again I challenge Jorge Luís Borges.  I don’t have to forget to remember. All I have to do is smell a glorious white rose.

 

Monday, May 29, 2023

 

Rosemary Elizabeth - Mexico Circa 1969

 

Rosa 'Dainty Bess' - 29 May 2023

 

Today May 29 the project manager of the restoration of my flooded house is coming in an hour. He will be vague as to when the restoration will be completed. I believe I will have to wait for the beginning of August for my house to be as it once was.

If Rosemary were alive I would be sharing the burden of the mess our house is with her. We would respaldar (the nice Spanish word for back each other) each other and find comfort in that.

Meanwhile I have a lovely rose garden, and hostas, too that I cannot find anybody to visit so I can share it. Hilary is coming today so she will see the garden in its glory.

These days with my constant thinking about Rosemary I decided to snip Rosa ‘Dainty Bess’ which was one of her favourite roses. I had never made the connection that Bess is a hypocorism for Elizabeth and that my Rosemary was Rosemary Elizabeth.

So I decided to write a blog about my dainty Rosemary. Alas!  I had recently written about it. But this time around the blog will contain an nice scanograph of a rose that I cannot look at without thinking  about my lovely and most feminine Rosemary.

Dainty Rosemary Was 

Because Rosemary had good taste (she was a snob!)  she did not like the long-stemmed usually fragrance free Hybrid Tea Roses. But she mad the exception with the single Hybrid Teas like Dainty Bess (Archer 1925).There is another most prominent single hybrid tea in our garden. She is Rosa 'Mrs Oakley Fisher'.

 

Sunday, May 28, 2023

 

When people run into me on the street or in some function they invariably use that hated word “still”. They ask, “Are you still…?” and leave out taking photographs. It is almost as if photography was or is some sort of illegitimate profession.

I try to explain that the bulk of my business was with magazines and newspapers and that I was also hired as a writer. That is mostly all gone here in Vancouver and in the rest of Canada.

Because I am on the email lists of musicians who are still, and dancers who are still, I know of very good cultural activities of the city. None of those are ever mentioned in the thinning and irrelevant Vancouver Sun or in a couple of what I believe may be struggling on line cultural venue info pages.

I would assert that with the profession of the journalist almost gone and forgotten, I could add that of the once important publicists.

For a while the CBC had an active participation in Twitter but with the Musk hullabaloo the CBC presence is now minimal.

When I wrote this blog I wanted to point out that in Vancouver, a city with poor memory for its past, there were these five men, all over 80 who have the marbles in their head intact and are actively “still”  doing stuff for our city and province.

The devil knows

The only problem is that many folks are impatiently waiting for the death of Keith Richards (I am older that the man) so they can RIP him in social media.

I cannot understand why we must wait for them to die before we will be happy to write about their past accomplishments. They can contribute now.

This 80-year-old (extremely) experienced photographer has lots of relevant information in his head. He will die with all of it. This 80-year-old may have the largest photo files of any photographer in Canada. But I will die forgotten and, perhaps then, I may have a park bench in some Vancouver spot, not far from the rest of the benches of the men in my list.