Found in my back lane

I found this Christmas ornament in my back lane right after Christmas. I suspect that a neighbour put out their tree to be picked up by the garbage collection and did not notice it. The ornament was on the dirt for weeks until I suddenly felt very sad for it and picked it up. It has been on my oficina desk since. Today I decided I had to write about it. While today is Monday, March 3 I will post this blog in a vacancy in February.

I felt sad about and for the ornament as I wonder if the people that put their tree outside will miss the ornament next year. Was it special?

I grieve because in my storage closet I have a large box with ornaments inherited from my mother, and ornaments that Rosemary and I bought in Mexico and in Vancouver. Our friend architect Abraham Rogatnick made some origami birds for our tree. And my Mexican poet and novelist friend sent some lovely tin ones from Paris.

Three of our ornaments

All the ornaments in that box were items that Rosemary and I lovingly put on our tree every Christmas.With her gone on 9 December 2020, I have not had a Christmas tree in the house since Christmas 2019..

This is why I feel sad for the found little ornament. Can it be that it has a soul?  I think so.

26 February 2019 - Shot with Lensbaby & Fuji X-E1

For many years I have abhorred sunset photographs. And in this century I have a particular distaste for those taken with smart phones.

And yet here I am using a sunset to illustrate this blog. Perhaps the reason for it is that my sunset view of the Ponte a Santa Trinità in Florence brings me wonderful memories of that trip there and to Venice with Rosemary in 2019.

Venice & Zemblanity

She organized the trip from our bed with her iPhone and somehow got us the best hotels and economical airline tickets.

In Florence we had a hotel right on the water and just a few blocks from Ponte Vecchio. We would walk to the bridge and right there there was a supermarket that featured a machine that squeezed blood oranges. We drank lots of it.

Yesterday when my youngest daughter Hilary visited me for dinner I prepared a meal that was all Rosemary. We drank blood orange juice and had a salad and Yorkshire pudding. 

Rosemary's Yorkshire pudding

I often repeat here St. Luke’s words from the King James Bible:

“Do this in Remembrance of me.”

Fuji X-E3 - 18 February 2024

People say that Latin-Americans are more passionate. Perhaps that is the reason why I am excited about photography even though I am 82. And I will not use that hateful word "still"!

I always abhorred the concept of using photography to record. Sort of like a photographer I once knew who was recording fire hydrants.

When I take a photograph I try to be original. A friend used to tell me, “Alex, it’s been done before.” For a while I did not know what to say. One day I saw the light and I shouted at him, “I, have not done it yet.”

I remember going to shows in that last century at the fabulous Exposure Gallery on Vancouver’s Beatty Street. There was one photographer who had lovely bodyscapes on the wall and told me, “Alex isn’t it wonderful how a woman’s body can look like a Sahara sand dune?” I felt superior as I had done stuff like that years before. Then I thought, “Alex photographers go through different cycles in their careers. Few are on the same page. I must be less smug as they will leave their bodyscapes and go to the next phase whatever it might be.”

The Mundane Bodyscape

And lastly I dealt with pushy magazine art directors in Vancouver, Rick Staehling and Chris Dahl, and many good ones in Toronto. Their mantra was that my photographs had to be either unusual or different. Invariably they were right in their suggestions.

Could it be possible to record a fire hydrant in a different way?

While I am known as a portrait photographer, in Mexico I shot lots of street photographs. With few instances I have not done that in Vancouver.

Presently I am going berserk using an attachment called a Lensbaby on my Fuji X-E3 digital camera. My friend Jeff Gin gifted me a wide angle and telephoto attachment for it. Last night I decided to go to the corner of Lougheed Highway and Willingdon with the setup. I arrived when it was sundown.

A Lensbaby in Venice

I believe that my photographs are indeed different. I also believe that a photographer, just like a Wild West gunfighter, must be as good as his last shot.

You can’t busy yourself out of boredom or amuse yourself out of it. Neither work nor constant entertainment provides a solution. Not for the king or for us. The problem we face is existential and spiritual, not situational. We cannot escape our own mind; it follows us wherever we go. We can’t outrun the treadmill. Our only hope at peace is to force ourselves to step off whenever we can. To learn again to be still.

 New York Times Opinion - Guest Essay 3 January 2025

Chris Hayes: I Want Your Attention. I Need Your Attention. Here Is How I Mastered My Own.

 My on line version of the Real Academia Española defines suicide as:

(Voz formada a semejanza de homicidio, del lat. sui, de sí mismo, y caedĕre, matar).

 In short from Latin it translates as “killing yourself”.

 As my family fragments, and not having my wife Rosemary to share experiences, or to have someone with stability (she was stable) in my life I have in the last few months thought (just thought) of self-immolation.

A few days ago when I took my two cats Niño and Niña to the vet I was given some surprising good news. About a year and a half ago, a very thin Niño was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer of the intestines. He was prescribed a human cancer pill that I administer every other day and on the other day I give him an anti-inflammation pill. The vet, a very friendly, handsome and young Mexican, Miguel, told me that the prognosis was a maximum of 9 months. Now he believes that Niño’s cancer is in remission.

Because I am not an authentic crazy cat lady (I am a man after all) I believe that my cats communicate with me when they stare at me. Niño’s expression is akin to Rosemary’s. He is a paragon of stability. So when he stares at me he is telling me, “Alex do not die before I do. Who would take care of me and my sister Niña?”

My friend of many years, architect Abraham Rogatnick told me three months before he died. “I am not long for this world. I am glad.” He had pulled the plug on his prostate cancer. He was ready to die.

Now I see that my will to live has to persist for a while longer as Niño is absolutely right.

At the same time I think of what Chris Hayes wrote in his essay I will have to learn to step off the treadmill.

Trying to understand the concept of non-existence, of not feeling, of not being aware of one being alive is tough and fearsome. This is particular the case if like my Rosemary, I too believe that we will not see each other again. Like Astor Piazzolla's lovely composition, I, too believe in oblivion.

Niño’s face is there to reassure me that like Epicurus said, we should not fear death as death, itself is painless.