Corvus, curva - Juan manuel Sánchez & Alex Waterhouse-Hayward 2001

I am not going to dispute if the big black birds that compete with the smaller birds in my deck garden for the bird seed I put out are crows or the bigger ravens.

In our Kerrisdale home in the late 60s, our neighbour Mrs. Alm, who lived across the street, would come out on hot summer afternoons and clap her hands in a futile hope the crows would stop making noise and go away. They never did.

One time I found a dying little crow on the street and I picked it up. Later in the day Rosemary and I went to vote for federal elections and we were swooped by what must have been the angry parents.

In 2001 my Argentine painter friend, Juan Manuel Sánchez  worked on what we called colaboraciones that mated my photographs with his drawings. The one here we called Corvus (the Latin name for the crow) curva (in relation to the nice curves of our model and friend Nina Gouveia.

Why is this bog about crows/ravens?

In this other blog I wrote about Edgar Allan Poe’s Annabel Lee. Poe has been in my mind. While nevermore is nunca más in Spanish there is a finality of the English word probably because of our knowledge of Poe’s poem The Raven. The protagonist of the poem is going mad in missing his Lenore. The raven shows up pecking at the window. Ravens can talk so we find out he is called Nevermore.

 A Stream of Consciousness to Annabel Lee & James Mason

Everything in my life, post Rosemary’s death on December 9, 2020 makes me think of the finality of that word and how my memories will remain so and will never happen again.

It would seem after her death that she was what bound our small family together. It is now crumbling before my eyes and I think “never again”, nevermore.