I have written at length here about the influence of Joan Didion in my life and particularly this quote of hers:
"I write in order to find out what I am thinking."
But of late I have discovered through my use of my Epson V700 Photo flatbed scanner that there is another way besides in my writing.
Since 2001 I have been scanning the flowers (many roses) and plants from our garden. The idea was to record at 100% size an accurate representation of the plant. I may have now 3000 of these. When some of my roses would die I felt that in some way my scan of them meant that my memory of them was almost like having them in actual fact in my garden.
In the last few years I have been placing objects (not only negative, slides and photographs) on my scanner and using it as a table top photograph ( a term from that last century).
But today, 26 April, 2024 as I was on my bed getting ready to turn off the lights I came to this idea that my scanner is somehow ordering my thoughts.
This scan is all about the fact that I am an Argentine. In it there is my father’s 1930 mate with its bombilla, my father’s Argentine flag, my Argentine identity document when I left Buenos Aires for Mexico City in 1953, my Argentine draft document, my portrait in my winter Argentine Navy uniform (taken by my friend John Sullivan) and finally the facón (gaucho knife) given to me by my navy pals when they knew I was going to return to Mexico where my mother lived in Veracruz.
So in one scan an almost whole memory of my time in Argentina in a neat package. I can now go to sleep having found out how I think.