Mi foto del autor tomada en su casa en 1990

En 1990 viajé a Lima para entrevistar y fotografiar a Mario Vargas Llosa para una revista canadiense Books in Cánada, que desapareció en 2006.. Para preparme leí todas sus novelas en castellano (desde entonces leo mucho en castellano).

De todas sus novelas, la que me resultó más difícil, fue Conversación en la catedral. Al llegar a Lima supe que La Catedral era un café.

Vargas Llosa me explicó que hizo su novela difícil ya que él opinaba que entonces el lector colabora en la elaboración de la novela. Agregó que su inspiración vino del muy difícil cuento corto de William Faulkner, El oso.

Una de las líneas más famosas de la literatura hispanoamericana está en la Conversación en la catedral. Un protogonista pregunta, “¿Cuándo empezó a joderse todo Zabalita?”

He notado que últimamente esa expresión ahora se usa para describir la situación en Venezuela.

Hace unos días se vió a Vargas Llosa en Madríd en la calle con apariencia de muy enfermo. Espero que este genial escritor, que a pesar de sus creencias políticas, en mi opinión escribió el más hermoso obituario a su amigo Julio Cortázar, se mejore.  El obituario Se llama La trompeta de Deyá.

La Trompeta de Deyá 

2 August 2024

Ever since my Rosemary died on 9 December 2020, there is no day that I don’t ask myself the question, “Why you and not me?”

This especially happens when there is some wonderful thing I would like to share with her.

By the beginning of August, many of the perennials (I am reluctant to either write, my perennials, our perennials or her perennials) look tired. Rosemary knew exactly how to cut them back. I don’t have any idea.

Today the second bloom (one yesterday) of the tricky but beautiful single tea rose, Rosa ‘Mrs. Oakley Fisher’ appeared. It was her, my, our favourite rose.

I looked at it and before I snipped it I said to myself, “Rosemary, come down and look at Mrs. Oakley Fisher. She is in bloom.” She would have come down and she would have smiled. And I would not have snipped it to scan it.

I did so, because as I scan it, Rosemary’s presence is intense.

Why her?

The Posthumous Gift

After Rosemary and I married in Mexico City in February 1968, by 1970 we were fans of Star Trek. When we moved to Arboledas, Estado de México in 1971, it seems that Star Trek aired in the afternoon. We would watch it at our siesta time between our bed shenanigans.

There was one episode I have never forgotten. It was called the Mark of Gideon. The Enterprise visited an over-populated planet and the scene that is embedded in my memory is one where Captain Kirk is in a room and behind him a window that shows people in the move.

That scene is one that I equate with the fact that most of my friends, family or writers I worked with in the last century for Vancouver Magazine, are almost all dead.

In my mind, especially when I turn off the light at night, there is that window in my head, where all the people I knew are now gone. They shuffle in my memory until I fall asleep.

I equate this with another memory I have of taking the train from my Buenos Aires neighbourhood of Coghlan to the cavernous end-of-the-line Retiro. At stations before, people get off, and by the time I arrive at Retiro, I am the only passenger.

My 1961 High School Year Book

Hosta 'Dancing with Dragons' - Hans Hansen hybridizer 2018

While some of my roses are saying goodbye for a while, June, July and August are the months for hosta flowers. This year I bought a few new ones. I noticed this one today, 3 August, but I am putting the scan and the blog back to fill some holes in my blog. 

It is always a delight to find a some literary connection with the name of a plant. This poem is delightful and I learned what a villanelle is.

Dragon's Dance – Pen Allen

He dervish spins as darkness fell

and smacks down with his twirling tail.

A shale devil drills for a spell.

His sanctum is a water well

where he released the gassy grail.

He dervish spins as darkness fell.

Shadow boxing preserved him well

while frail foes topple without fail.

A shale demon drills for a spell.

Brimstone corners in fractious hell

plumb poisoned the deeply drawn pail.

He dervish spins as darkness fell.

This dragon’s tale’s too long to tell

for our need is hearty and hale.

A shale devil drills for a spell.

Villanelle - 19 line poem where line one and three of the first tercet are repeated alternately for four more tercets and then combined for the final stanza.  This dragon poem is an allegory.

Ivette Hernández

 

It has been said that we do not remember days but we remember moments.

These days of continued melancholy about my loss of Rosemary four years ago, I find myself diverting my memory moments to others in my life that are no longer around.

It was 24 years ago when this idiot came to understand that nostalgia is something you feel for a place when one (very important) is not in that place.

Many of those moments are about my many years in Mexico. Today I wanted to write a blog that would involve a beautiful woman. It was around 1963 that my mother took me to see El Abanico de Lady Windermere by Oscar Wilde (pronounced Wheeldhe) with Dolores del Río. Of those moments I will never forget her voice.

When Ivette Hernández (born in León, Guanajuato) and I explored our mutual nostalgia for Mexico I told her about Lady Windermere. She was keen to pose for the idea. I badly underexposed the Ektachrome and I did not use a kicker (a small light at eye level) that would have produced catch lights in her eyes.

Now I can see that my mistake has paid off in my new interpretation of Lady Windermere which then was about femininity. Now I can see in Hernandez’s face that inscrutable (what is she thinking?) face of many Mexican women.

That inscrutable face so lacking in all those current red carpet photographs of famous women.