Julian Barnes - Death and the Lemon Table

These days I am constantly affected by the current Reading of the Julian Barnes book called Departures(s). All this is happening on the fact that since I read Jorge Luís Borges poems and stories I am thinking like that favourite Argentine writer of mine.

As I was looking at the portrait of Rosemary opposite on the wall from where I lie on my bed this Involuntary Autobiographical Memory (shortened to IAM by Barnes) appeared. I immediately wrote it on the edge of my bedside NYTimes. I wrote – It became and ended to begin again so that it ends to begin again.

This happens a lot as Rosemary’s portraits are everywhere on the walls of my house. The statement above is pure Borgesian as he wrote that all first times where repeated as first times all over again.

The framed photograph I took in the beginning of 1969 in Mexico City. I photographed her nude for the first time and last (alas!). Looking at it I fall into it and she is then posing for me and I click the shutter of my Asahi Pentax-S3. It is just another and that same time all over again.

When I came into my oficina to write this blog when I went into my drawer to get a ruler I found this day-of-the-week-reminder that Rosemary had by her bed table in the few months when she was ailing and then died on December 9 2020. The reminder is in her clear printing and all I can do is to weep in my mind and be so glad that we lived together for 52 years.