Rosemary and Alexandra at the Museum of Anthropology - Mexico - 1968

 

"Se puede matar todo menos la nostalgia, la llevamos en el color de los ojos, en cada amor, en todo lo que profundamente atormenta y desata y engaña".

Julio Cortázar

“You can kill everything except nostalgia, we have it in the colour of our eyes, in every love, and in everything that profoundly torments us, unleashes, and cheats.”[my translation]

The Brazilians have a lovely word for nostalgia, saudade. I was much too dense to figure out until the end of the 20^th century that in order to have nostalgia for a place you have to be in another place.

My nostalgia is complex as I have a nostalgia for the Argentina I left in 1952, the one I returned for almost three years in 1965 and the repeated times that I went back as a journalist and with my Rosemary and our two granddaughters. I have quadruple nostalgia for Mexico, the one I went to in 1953 with my mother and grandmother, the one I returned to after my four year period in St. Edward’s High School in Austin, Texas and then the Mexico City of from 1967 to 1975 with my Rosemary and two daughters. That last one is the many times that Rosemary and I returned to Mexico sometimes with our granddaughters.

This idea of nostalgia became strong when in the late 90s I met Argentine painters Nora Patrich and Juan Manuel Sánchez. We had a large show at a Granville gallery of our photographs, drawings and paintings that expressed our rosy nostalgia for our Argentina.

What makes my nostalgia especially strong is that my father was a good friend of Julo Cortázar. Cortázar would come to our Buenos Aires home in Coghlan and the writer would send me out to get  him Argentine cigarettes as he had a disdain for my father’s Player’s Navy Cuts.

And then there is that Canadian nostalgia that somehow was unleashed right here in Vancouver. Cortázar’s protagonist in his novel Rayuela (Hopscotch) is freezing in a Paris winter. He buys a flannel shirt which Cortázar calls “una canadiense”

Many of my photographs, especially my portraits are motivated by nostalgia. 

George Waterhouse Hayward

"Muchas veces me siento solo. Pero tengo amigos, pocos pero buenos; tengo gente que me quiere. Y tengo además un refugio que no todos tienen y es el hecho de que esencialmente soy un escritor. Mal escritor, buen escritor, eso no importa. Lo importante es poder refugiarme en la literatura, eso es lo que más me ayuda a escapar de la soledad".

Jorge Luis Borges

Many times I feel alone. But I have friends, a few but good one; I have people that love me. And I have besides a refuge that not all people have, and this is that essentially I am a writer. A bad writer, a good writer, that is not important. What is important is to find a shelter with literature, that is what helps me to escape solitude. [my translation].

It is a paradox that my father was a journalist and all I have of him is a bit of his signature on his King James Bible. When he died one of the items in his pocket was his Libreta de Enrolamiento which was his identity document. I was too stupid to keep it and I returned it to the authorities. It had his writing.

In a trip back to Buenos Aires in the 90s I went to the Buenos Aires Herald where he had worked as a journalist and found nothing in their files.

My mother told me that my father was a good writer who would write pieces on Perón that Perón did not like so my father spent weeks in a political prison called Villa Devoto.

My mother was a fine poet. I have a large collection of her poems.

Perhaps then, I might have inherited something from my parents which is why I write. My first article was a cover article for Vancouver Magazine in 1982 when I wrote my experience of participating in a coup when I was a conscript in the Argentine Navy.

After that I often wrote for that magazine, for Western Living, for the Georgia Straight, for the Tyee, for the Province and for the Vancouver Sun. I wrote travel stories as magazines would save on that writer plane ticket as I was the photographer and writer.

But it was in 2006 when made my webpage that I started my blog. I was unsure what exactly that was supposed to be. Since then I have been writing about my personal experiences of my past but also of events here in Vancouver. To date I have written 6618 blogs. I like to use the Spanish word for a ship’s log and I call my blog a bitácora.

On of my mentors from Vancouver Magazine says I am a lousy writer and that I need an editor. I take Borges’s words that it is not necessary to be a good writer. You fight and I fight solitude with my daily routine. That, my photography and plant scanning keep me distracted from my melancholy in not having my Rosemary with me.

I just wish that somehow I could reach my father and ask him if I am that bad of a writer.

Niño

Una casa es el lugar donde uno es esperado. Antonio Gala

A house is a place where one is waited for.

The above quote from the Spanish writer Antonio Gala – 2 October 1930 – 28 May 20 23, has been in my mind since my Rosemary died on December 9, 2020.

When we first were married in 1968 we lived in small Mexico City apartments. We taught English at American companies and our schedules did not always coincide. One of us would prepare dinner. I was much too stupid to notice that I would be served with lots of good food while her dish was meagre. We simply did not have the money.

By the time we moved to Vancouver in 1975 our dinners were regular and we had the presence of our daughters. There was always that “calor humano” of our home.

When we moved to Kerrisdale after a couple of years Rosemary wanted a good car. We purchased a big Audi that happened to have a strange 5-cylinder engine. When I was already home I could feel and hear the odd rumbling sound of the car as Rosemary was almost home.

Once Rosemary died I found myself alone without that often asked question, when I arrived after a day of talking photographs for a magazine. Rosemary would say, “How was it?” Sharing a home, something I did with Rosemary for 52 years has almost left me empty. Why almost?

If I happen to go somewhere (a rare assignment perhaps), or an obligation to pay bills at the bank, I am always thinking about going home. I know  I will be received by Niño and Niña, my brother and sister cats.

They are not Rosemary but because Rosemary and I brought them from the SPCA 7 years ago they are to me the closest connection I have to Rosemary.

They fuss over me, they lie on top of me on the bed and even accompany me when I am scanning or writing a blog in my oficina. Whichever cat arrives first he or she will climb up on a chair next to mine.

Because I am 83 and I believe that statistically I will not be around much longer I notice how Niño (he has lymphatic cancer of the intestines) stares at me. Could it be that he is saying, “Alex don’t  die before I do as who will take care of me an Niña?”

And yes they wait for me to get home. That is comforting.

Julio Cortázar famously said that both his cat and he were alone. The only difference was that he knew but his cat didn't. I strongly disagree. 

Marina Hasselberg - 12 September 2025

 

Niño 12 September 2025

Some of the tedium of living alone and missing my wife was relieved by the presence of a friend, cellist Marina Hasselberg who stayed in my guest room for a week. She is on her way to visit her relatives in Portugal and could not live in her Vancouver apartment as she had rented it out. She texted me if she could rent my room. I told her that I would not charge her and would welcome her company. I further told her that at my age of 83 I am too old to be a dirty old man and that she would be safe.

The oddness of my portrait of Marina Hasselberg is explained here: One Shot Technique 

It was most pleasant to experience the warmth of an intelligent 40-year-old woman whom I have known for about 18 years. She did some cooking and we even went to see the play Metamorphosis at the Jericho Arts Centre with her Brazilian partner Milton.

Today, before she left, she practiced her cello using some avant-garde equipment and an amplifier. She would “tape” two pieces, and then playing them back, she would improvise on them. I had a fabulous impromptu concert in my piano room.  Marina mentioned that the sound of the room is very good.

After she left, I took my obligatory (but pleasant) walk around the block with Niño. It will be a bit quiet tonight but with Niño and Niña on my bed next to me (and on top of me) I will manage just fine.

13 May 2013

In 1972 I took my Mexico City high school class to a performance of Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question at the Palacio de Bellas Artes. My teenage students were quite impressed. The idea of having a string orchestra with a conductor (the first violinist) and a woodwind orchestra (with the main conductor) and trumpet player playing on his own, all at the same time, was novel to them and also to me.

I heard that composition which was first composed in 1908, once again in 2009 and I wrote about it here (link below). Since then I have written quite a few blogs with that theme which are not all musical.

The Unanswered Question at the Telus Theatre 

The Unanswered Question Never Asked 

Of late, as I struggle to live a life without my Rosemary, I have this salient melancholic obsession with the fact that 6 minutes before she died on December 9, 2020 she asked, “Am I dying?” I could not answer.

I shared this moment with my friend Alan Jacques who last June took the MAID exit. He invited me to talk about his choice a few weeks before. We talked about death for more than two hours. He commented that he was jealous of my Rosemary in that she knew she was dying. He would be put to sleep so he would not experience that letting go. That comment by Jacques has been in my mind since then. One cannot live that moment that Rosemary had unless one is also dying in bed and not suddenly in an accident or heart attack.

That third question, the one that was answered happened a few years after May 18, 2013 when I  wrote a blog with the question “Who Will Be First?” 

Who Will Be First? 

To this day I keep thinking that her only problem, with me dead, would have been to open cans and jars. She would have experienced the same solace I have living with two loving brother and sister cats.