In the 80s I did not hold a job. I was a freelance photographer.  I liked to hang out at Malcolm Parry’s Vancouver Magazine. I was there so often that many thought I worked there. Mac, as we all called Parry, had an office at the end of a long hall. His door was always open. I watched politicians, hoods, actors, actresses, boxers, business people, radio announcers, wrestlers, illustrators, photographers, writers, prostitutes, singers, punkers and even a young man wearing a Santa Claus T-shirt enter Parry's open door.

Many of them left the magazine with some sort of assignment. I got to photograph many of them.

Today I found out that Stan Persky died yesterday. I looked in my writers' files and he was not there. On a chance I looked in my regular files under P. There he was.

At my age of 82 I have very little memory of the man except that I shot photographs for some of the articles he wrote for Mac. When I photographed him I remember one salient fact. I asked him, “How would you define yourself sir?” His answer, “I am a dreamer.”

In the 20 frames of my Tri-X roll, that I surely shot in some spot in the magazine, I regret that the date of the newspaper he is holding is not sharp enough for me to discern.

Having these photographs serve to remind me that so many of the people I have known in my life are either dead or not long for this world. 

A friend who calls me every day (a rare occurrence in my life) insists (rightly I believe) that he and I are lucky to have lived in that second half of the 20^th century. Leibniz said, and Voltaire parodied, his thought on Candide that indeed I may have lived in the best of all possible worlds.

Mac’s door was open. I could dream of a story and a photograph and sometimes a month later that dream could even be on the cover.

While not an intellectual as Persky, I can indeed proclaim, that I, too, was a dreamer.

Sobering for me is the fact that he was only one year older than I am.

Rosa 'Sweet Juliet' & Hosta 'Lucky Mouse' 14 October 2024

 

Borges, ¿qué es para usted la poesía? ¿Cómo la definiría?

Borges: Creo que la poesía es algo tan íntimo, algo tan esencial que no puede ser definido sin diluirse. Sería como tratar de definir el color amarillo, el amor, la caída de las hojas en el otoño… Yo no sé cómo podemos definir las cosas esenciales.

 (En Roberto Alifano: Conversaciones con Borges. Buenos Aires, Editorial Atlántida, 1984).

What is poetry for you? How would you define it?

Borges: I believe that poetry is something so intimate, something essential that cannot be defined without diminishing its meaning. It would be like trying to define the colour yellow, love, the fall of leaves in autumn…Y don’t know how we can define essential things.

Today, 14 October 2024 I will be visited by my youngest daughter Hilary. I will prepare dinner and we will then watch the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC. Both Rosemary and I adored her.

I noticed the lovely fall colour of Hosta ‘Lucky Mouse’ and the fact that somehow English Rose, Rosa ‘Sweet Juliet’ was in bloom. It had several buds but the chances of them opening with the coming rains made me decide to cut them and scan them.

No matter the season it is always one that reminds me of my Rosemary. This scan has her lovely face on it.

Geranium 'Rozanne' & Aconitum carmichaelli 'Arendsii' 10 October 2024

Fragmentary Blue

By Robert Frost

Why make so much of fragmentary blue

In here and there a bird, or butterfly,

Or flower, or wearing-stone, or open eye,

When heaven presents in sheets the solid hue?

Since earth is earth, perhaps, not heaven (as yet)—

Though some savants make earth include the sky;

And blue so far above us comes so high,

It only gives our wish for blue a whet.

If anything, since I started blogging in January 2006, where I combined my photographs with text, I have become much more literate. Sometimes (and this has been quite often) I find poems or short stories that match with my photographs. I have over 100 blogs that involve Emily Dickinson and almost as many dealing with Jorge Luís Borges.

Today I scanned two of Rosemary’s favourite plants as she adored blue. With Google for help I put “Blue, Robert Frost”. I found the lovely and short poem.

When I did the same with Julio Cortázar I discovered that with a famous Argentine tango composer Tata Cedrón he wrote lyrics for a record called " Veredas (sidewalks) de Buenos Aires”. One of the tangos is called “El Guante (glove) Azúl (blue).” It is one tango that has no lyrics by Julio Cortázar. I will place the link here for fun. Cortázar is the chap in the middle of the photograph below. Left is guest musician Edgardo Cantón, and Tata Cedrón on the right.

The blue gloves in my scan I found in one of Rosemary's drawers. Every other day I give my male cat Níño a human cancer pill. He has lymphatic cancer of the intestines. I am supposed to not touch the pill. I had problems with rubber gloves. Rosemary's gloves are perfect. Niño, after 8 months, is back to normal. Every day I wonder who will go first, he or his master.

El Guante Azúl

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 8 October 2024

“A.E.Housman’

by W. H. Auden (1907 – 1973)

No one, not even Cambridge was to blame

(Blame if you like the human situation):

Heart-injured in North London, he became

The Latin Scholar of his generation.

Deliberately he chose the dry-as-dust,

Kept tears like dirty postcards in a drawer;

Food was his public love, his private lust

Something to do with violence and the poor.

In savage foot-notes on unjust editions

He timidly attacked the life he led,

And put the money of his feelings on

The uncritical relations of the dead,

Where only geographical divisions

Parted the coarse hanged soldier from the don.”

At this late date in October (October 8) it is amazing how my very large English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’ keeps blooming while showing off its deep red leaves on new growth.

Today is a cold rainy day. I have no idea why in the beginning of any of our four seasons I especially remember my Rosemary and what we would talk about and how the weather was going to affect our plants.

She persuaded me into growing roses at the end of the 80s in the last century. A rose to me, is gazing on the fine face of my Rosamaría.  

Because of that rain and cold I know that I would have gotten into bed with her and we would have had a gentle siesta.                           

Rosa 'In Your Eyes' 8 October 2024

Rosemary 1968

Yesterday I noticed the fine Little rose, Rosa ‘In Your Eyes’. By the evening, like most single roses (5 petals), it had closed. I cut it and put it in a vase with warm water in the kitchen. This usually makes the rose open. This morning I decided I was going to scan it. When I placed it over my scanner, the petals fell off. Now in retrospect this was a good thing as my scan is quite different from my usual “perfect” ones.

Rosemary spotted this rose, months before she died in 2020, at the Lougheed Highway Garden Works. Because she had this unusual taste for plants that were unusual, we bought it. We quickly found out that this rose changed colour within a day from light white/yellow to magenta by the evening.

I am adding another scan to this blog. It is a red English Rose, Rosa ‘Thomas à Becket’. Why? I want to show that multiple petal roses don’t close. Rosemary did not ever see this rose as I purchased it last year. She would have loved it.

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Rosa 'Thomas à Becket' 8 October 2024