Las Tres Comadres

“...nada está perdido si se tiene por fin el valor de proclamar que todo está perdido y que hay que empezar de nuevo...”

“nothing is lost if one has as a purpose to state that everything is lost and that one has to begin again…” Julio Cortázar

My life at 81 can be defined as being a pile of stuff wherever I look. In one of those piles I found a single 35mm colour negative (Kodak Kodacolor) frame. I have no memory of having taken it nor can I discern if I took it in Mexico (probably) or in some trip to Europe with Rosemary.

When I scanned the negative I called it Las Tres Comadres. In Spanish a godfather is a padrino and a godmother is a madrina. The relationship between the godparents and the father or mother of the children is defined as compadre or comadre. As an example my friend Andrew Taylor, who lives in Guadalajara, and is my eldest daugther Alexandra’s godfather, is my compadre.

In Mexico that relationship is a warm one.

But in Mexico (and only in Mexico) comadres is used to define women of a certain age who might be seen gossiping. I saw the three women in my photograph, who are dressed in black, as gossiping women! Why not.

In this century anybody who shoots with a digital camera has in every exposure what is called EXIF metadata. It can not only give you the date and time, but also the geographical location using satellite technology.

 My Kodacolor negative is old technology and even though Borges wrote that in order to remember one must forget, all I can write here is that I have no idea at all about this photograph. It is not all that good or that bad. I just found it challenging to write here about the picture I took that is erased from my memory.

I was bothered by the very white paper next to the women. I could have easily removed it. But I kept it as I wonder what was on that paper.