English Rose Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 21 June 2024

I was born in Buenos Aires and raised there until I was 11. We then moved to Mexico City and I subsequently I lived in Veracruz, Nueva Rosita Coahuila and went to high school in Austin, Texas. I did my military service in the Argentine Navy (with that important ceremony of swearing allegiance to the flag). Then I married my Rosemary in 1968 In Mexico City and moved with our two daughters to Vancouver in 1975. It was in Vancouver where I cemented my career as a photographer. I became a Canadian citizen.

All that background affects my feeling of where I belong and most important the identity of who I am.

I am jealous of my roses and my two cats. They are what (who?) they are.

Because I studied philosophy for two years in Mexico City College (1962/63), I was drawn to Plato’s world of ideas. We only see a vague and uncertain reality. The reality that is out there is something that we cannot ever see. Plato’s world is a world of essences outside of our grasp.

You may have something. What can you take out from it that will then eliminate its somethingness?

After years of gardening and having cats I now believe that cats and roses are essences that suffer no human confusion. Both cats and roses in a shorter lifespan mimic our longer one. With a rose from bud to its petals falling off, it is a sort of human lifespan in a nutshell.

My fellow members of the Vancouver Rose Society look at their roses and bring them to our meetings always at that point when they think the rose is at its perfect state.

Since I started cultivating roses around 1990 (with gently prodding from Rosemary), the weather and other circumstances have shortened the lifespan of some of my rose plants.

But I now, today June 21, 2024 believe with certainty, that my scans of roses (not photographs) somehow preserve that essence of what they are. Some of my friends question my assertion that these roses when I am looking at them in the garden tell me, “Alex, I look pretty good and not for long. Cut me and scan me.”

No woman will ever replace my live Rosemary or the Rosemary of my memories. At my age I am not interested in other women.

But with cats there is a difference. Every time we suffered the grief of dying cat Rosemary and I knew that the quickest cure to a dead cat is a brand new one. The new cat ameliorated the depression over the loss of our dear cat.

Why is that? I believe that a cat, in its essence (a cat is a cat is a cat), somehow in death transfers that essence into the new cat. There is something of all our previous cats in Niño and Niña.

I believe that I can say the same. A rose, is a rose, is a rose (in all its essence).