Today Monday is a day when I saw nobody and the phone never rang. My two cats, with their humane felinity, kept me company and prevented me from suffering soledad which in my books has an even more melancholic sound than solitude.

My youngest daughter has advised me that she might visit me on Friday. This solitude to me is so desperate that I am wondering if I might not go somewhere abroad to escape it.

Yesterday I followed on my Rosemary’s obsessions.  She had one that involved taking out a mop and bucket and doing our kitchen floor. The tiled floor goes as far as the entrance in a corridor. She would annoy me by finishing and then leaving the bucket and the mop by the fridge for days. I only now wish she were around to annoy me. My version is to get a large bowl with soap and water and with a brush I go at the tile grout. Only then with a large rag do I wash the floor which I have previously vacuumed well.

No matter where I move in this house her presence is everywhere.

I was reading an interview with Julio Cortázar who stated that the key to his writing was to use his imagination. My imagination these days seems to be a one-trick pony all about my missing my missing wife.

I am not sure that any of my relatives understand how terrible solitude and grief can be. Perhaps soon I may find something else in the corner of my imagination.

I fished out Rosemary’s wedding band which was badly repaired (it had originally baked blue enamel) and mated it with the iconic Polaroid portrait that I took of her in our early years in Burnaby sometime between 1975 and 1977. I chose it because she is wearing the ring.

I cannot use the word icon without remembering the first time I heard the word. Author William Gibson sometime in the 80s told me that he liked the Apple computer because it had easy-to-use icons.