Julio Cortázar & Flanelle

Estoy tan solo como este gato, y mucho más solo porque lo sé y él no.”― Julio Cortázar, Las armas secretas

I am as alone as this cat, and a lot more because I know and he doesn’t.

I am beginning to have my doubts on that wonderful statement by Cortázar who in the photograph is holding his female cat Flanelle.

Since Rosemary died on December 8^th, 2020, I have had difficulty in living alone. Rosemary and I were together for 52 years. I was not prepared for the isolation that was partially caused by covid and how people have retreated to texting. Few of the friends that are left in my life (many are dead) ever call.

My two cats, Niño and Niña provide me with constant company, affection, attention. They give me a sense of my usefulness to them. Feeding them, and taking Niño for his daily walks around the block, are a comforting routine.

Walking Niño in the same route that Rosemary took with him is not all that happy for me. But it has given me the opportunity to reflect on Cortázar’s rejection of a cat being aware of his existence.

Seven months ago Niño had lost so much weight that I thought he was going to die. A good vet (and a lot of money spent) informed me that Niño has lymphatic cancer of the intestines. Now he is almost back to being the cat he was. I give him a human cancer pill every other day.

 Now he is beginning to lose weight again. He stares at me a lot and wants to be on top of me or with me all the time. This is what I believe:

 “Alex, I am not going to be around for long. I might survive until the end of the year. You and Niña will have to get along without me.”

Niña is also especially affectionate. As soon as I turn off the lights at night, Niña goes to the spot where Rosemary slept and Niño is at my feet or on my side. When I wake up in the middle of the night both cats are as close to each other as possible. Are they seeking company because they feel and know that they are alone?  I am convinced that is so.

Since our first cat Gaticuchi who died around 198, we quickly found out that the quickest cure to the agony and grief of a dead cat was a brand new one. I told Rosemary that I had a suspicion, that unlike humans, cats have a catness that I would define as a Platonic essence from Plato’s world of perfect reality that we humans will never be able to experience. It seems that a dead cat’s catness/essence is transferred to the new cat. A little of the old dead cat is inherited by the new one.

In the face of Niño and Niña I can sense the past existence of all our cats. In the face of Niño and Niña I can see a bit of Rosemary’s essence that lives on in them.

Paul Grant & Margaret Gallagher

Ned Pratt

My grandmother often told me that, “la ignorancia es atrevida” or ignorance is daring. While I am ignorant in many ways I listened to two men use a Latin expression and I simply asked what it meant.

It was quite a few years ago that CBC Radio arts reporter used the expression “carpe diem”. While looking for stuff on Google I found this:

The Roman poet Horace used the phrase carpe diem to express the idea that one should enjoy life while one can. It is part of Horace's injunction “carpe diem quam minimum credula postero” (translation: "pluck the day, trusting as little as possible in the next one”), which appears in his Odes (23 BCE).

When I saw this I remembered Paul Grant fondly. He now lives in Moose Jaw. I then remembered another Latin expression that was uttered by the intelligent and most talented architect Ned Pratt. He said, “I may be an old man but I am compos mentis”.

I have yet to see that expression used this week in explaining President Biden’s problems.

I am now 81 and I believe that like Pratt I am compos mentis. While I am feeling terrible grief with the death of my Rosemary on 8 December, 2020 I will have to see if I can take Paul Grant’s advice.

Thanks to those two men I am not so much of a stultus equius. 

Catherine Tait

Hot Air 

Paul Grant

Every day of my existence since my Rosemary died on December 8, 2020 is a day of constant awareness that she is “not here”. The photographs on the walls, the bed we slept in, all the many lovely things we purchased in Mexico, they are all Rosemary and me. The garden is a constant reminder on how we worked at it together. My daily plant scans would have interested her. Is it enough just to do it for myself?

It seems that just about every blog is my way of sharing my memory of her with me and her absent presence. I am not sure it diminishes my grief,

Today’s blog is one that is a good example on how my brain works in connections with my memories that simply will not go away.

When I look at Niño and Niña, I see in them two living entities that knew Rosemary, gave her attention and love, and that was reciprocated. When I walk Niño around the block every day, taking Rosemary’s route, I can sense that Niño and I are somehow not completely alone with each other. Rosemary is there in my thoughts. I cannot speak for Niño.

All those above ramblings bring me to this book in my living room bookcase whose cover was almost consumed by silverfish in our Athlone, Kerrisdale closet.

That first chapter where Barthes finds that magical connection between gazing on a photograph of Jerome Napoleon and realizing the man had known the great Napoleon, is one that I understand as I am a portrait photographer.

When I decided to do this blog, I went to my back lane garden to snip a Rosa ‘Chapeau de Napoléon’. Alas! They were all gone except for one that was shedding its petals when I touched it.

Somehow I find all that appropriate. After posting this, I can make myself a mug of strong tea and get on the bed with Niño and Niña. Niña likes to occupy Rosemary’s side of the bed. I will look at them and like Barthes I will think, “I am looking at the eyes that looked at my Rosemary.”          

The little purse in the third scan is one that Rosemary bought when we visited Firenze in 2019. She gazed on that purse. I keep it hanging from one my photo cabinets in my oficina.                       

When Rosemary and our two daughters went to London we made sure we went to Westminster Abbey. I had a mission.

I found the spot on the floor and I beckoned Rosemary to come over. I then said, stomping my foot on the tile, “Hi, HG how are you?”

Perhaps I am old fashioned in wanting to go to places were dead bodies lie. I went to the funerals of my father, mother and grandmother. I never returned. I was comforted by the fact that I knew where they were.

When Rosemary died on 9 December, 2020 I watched her body, under a shroud, being carried out of the house. Her remains were turned into ashes and our eldest daughter Alexandra spread them in her Lillooet garden.

I am at a loss at not knowing where she (her remains) is. Both of us did not believe we would ever see each other again. We believed in oblivion.

There is that vacuum in my life of that empty presence that is the Rosemary that I knew for 52 years.

Before mid-December, 1967 in Mexico City my knowledge of Canada was limited to a film had seen with my mother. It was the 1954 film Rosemarie. Because of it I knew that in Canada they had policemen that wore red uniforms.

Then I met Rosemary. She quickly told me how to pronounce her name. I was further told that she had studied in Quebec and that the name, a province of Canada was to be pronounced KebeK. From there she revealed that she admired her Canadian Prime Minister who was called Pierre Trudeau.

When we were married, a few months later, her older sister Ruth who lived in New Dublin, Ontario came for a visit. I got the impression that she wanted to know if I ate my meals with a fork and knife.

One day I took Rosemary to Chapultepec Park. There we saw a totem pole. It seems that in her Ontario and Quebec they did not have these Indigenous poles. I photographed her next to it. I recounted how my first vision of a totem pole was leaving the Retiro train station in Buenos Aires in the mid-60s and spotting it. I further told her that Jorge Luís Borges (who deprecated anything Indigenous) said, “Is this an example of Canadian culture that they have sent us?”

 

Rosemary - Chapultepec Park - 1968

 By 1975 we were driving our Mexican beetle to Vancouver with our two daughters.

My first real job in Vancouver was shooting station ID slides for the new French CBC TV station and a bit later I was hired by the English side to shoot variety shows.

One day I returned from the CBC and told Rosemary, “I now know that Newfoundland is to be pronounced New-fun-land with an emphasis on the first syllable."

By 1982 I was a Canadian citizen.

Rags, Flags & Citizenship 

Patrick Reid & our Maple Leaf Flag

Now in this 21^st century, thanks to my Rosemary/Rosemarie I am not in economically unstable Argentina, I am not in scary Mexico with people disappearing every day, nor am I having to cope with geriatric leaders in the United States of America.

I can only think how lucky I was that day in mid December 1967 when I saw that blonde woman (from the back) with long and straight hair who was wearing mini skirt that showed legs to die for.

On Canada Day I cannot but remember to tip the hat I do not wear to my Rosemary. I not only learned to love her but I learned to love her country. A country that is mine.