Jorge Alejandro Waterhouse-Hayward - 29 August 2026

 

Traditionally I take a self-portrait on my birthday, 31 August. My birthday has always been a complex problem.

My Argentine birth certificates states that I was born April 18 1943. All my documents have that date. To make it even worse my name in all of them is Jorge Alejandro Waterhouse-Hayward. My mother explained, and after all these years I do not think it is the truth, that my father forgot to register me when I was born.

Here in Vancouver I go by the name of Alex. I am very careful when I get phoned calls and they want to reach Jorge which they mispronounce jorgie and not horhe.

Today I decided I would take my self portrait (I hate the word selfie) because it is a lazy Saturday. My two daughters will celebrate my birthday on Monday so I will have photographs for whatever blog I write on that day.

Today I figured I could take a self-portrait unlike the ones I have done previously. I connected my focusing spotlight to my ancient Dynalite flash system. I attached an adapter to my Fuji X-E3 camera so I could use it on my large Manfrotto tripod I bought in 1978.

Few know that if you connect a high powered flash unit to a digital camera you can burn its insides unless you use a safesync device. It is in my scan here. In this scan is my metal venetian blind gobo (go between). And, lastly, the long rubber bulb so that I could face my camera and take the picture. Those who have film cameras and digital cameras must know that the B on the shutter dial stands for bulb.

I am not going to worry about thinking how to take my self portrait next year. I am going to be 84 this year. I might not be around to take another one.

Hosta 'First Frost' 30 August 2026

Suzy

The blue coating on hosta leaves is called a waxy bloom or epicuticular wax, and the physical condition of having this powdery, grayish-blue waxy covering is described as being glaucous.This layer is not made of blue pigment. Instead, microscopic structures in the wax scatter light—specifically reflecting blue wavelengths—which creates the optical illusion of a blue color over the green leaf underneath.

I have been lax in writing blog. I am no filling holes. While today is 30 August, 2026 I will be placing it for August 26 even though the scan of Hosta ‘First Frost’ is one I did today.

After my daily bike ride as I was about to open my front door I noticed the blueness of the hosta. Because it is usually in the shade the blue colour has persisted and the overcast sky which projects more UV light makes the leaf that much bluer.

I immediately thought of that sad Miles Davis compostion, Blue and Green from his Kind of Blue album. The song has a special although melancholic connection with me.

In 1966 while I was in the Argentine Navy as a conscript I had an Argentine girlfriend called Suzy Bornstein. She thought I was uncouth and uncultured. She took me to see Prokofiev’s The Fiery Angel, insisted I see the film Help! and then exposed me to a strange Japanese film called The Woman of the Dunes.

I was staying at a pension run by a retired submarine officer of the German Navy of WWII. One rainy and cold Buenos Aires winter he told me that Suzy was on the phone. “Alex don’t ever call me back. I am leaving you for the first violinist of the Teatro Colón Symphony Orchestra. You will never amount to anything. Goodbye.”

I became horribly depressed but discovered that the trick was to hit bottom as then going up was the only option. So I listened in my portable record player to Astor Piazzolla and the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue. I would repeat over and over Blue and Green.

In 1987 I returned to Buenos Aires. I rang the bell on Susy’s door. When she opened it she said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me?” She died of cancer 3 months later.

Helianthus annuus - 28 August 2026

Traditionally my daughter Alexandra brings me sunflowers ( Helianthus annuus) from her Lillooet garden. I would usually put the tall flowers in my lane garden. When Rosemary would look at them she would smile.

With Rosemary gone Ale (pronounced Ah-leh) has been a bit spotty about this tradition. This year she brought me a plant in a large pot and I left it in my deck garden so I could be cheered up with its warm yellow colour. The bloom here is, I believe the last one for its season. I was a tad melancholic when I noticed this about to open completely flower. I see in it a sort of hallow/goodbye gesture. I do believe that besides humans, animals (especially cats) and plants have a vestige of consciousness.

In Spanish a sunflower is a girasol. That literally means of a flower that rotates to face the sun. I wonder if it is true.

As summer wanes Ale’s sunflower has bid me goodbye and because I will be 84 on August 31^st I wonder if I will gaze on a sunflower next year.

Tarren - my first photograph in late 70s

They say that the shortest sentence in English is – I am. Close, in my opinion is – It was. Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer Clarice Lispector wrote a longish essay about the fact that the English word “it” does not exist in Brazilian (or Spanish).

These days as I approach my 84 year at the end of August I think about stuff that I have done that I will not do again.

For many years, beginning for an article in Vancouver Magazine, I began to photograph ecdysiasts (look it up). One of them was Tarren. Through the years I kept taking her photograph and she became a special subject with which I had an unusual relationship.

This past Monday Tarren came back from a wedding in Winnipeg and stayed in my guest room until the next day at noon. We had long chats about her past business and my photographs and I fed her good meals. She had communicated to me that she wanted me to photograph her on Tuesday morning. I had no idea what she wanted. She is over 60 and obviously does not look like she did in all the photographs that I took of her. With those photographs I learned the term gluteus maximus. She had the best one I ever saw.

Having read Susan Sontag’s 1975 but posthumously published book On Women in which in a nutshell she writes – Old men have character and old women are ugly, I knew I had to be careful how I photographed Tarren. I also had to bring into my session with her that my idea of what women are has dramatically changed since I first photographed her in those late 70s. Important to that change were the views of my proto-feminist wife Rosemary.

Thanks to my knowledge of digital technology and the use of my Fuji X-E3 I think I have done justice to Tarren’s photographs.

And I must thank her for the opportunity to perhaps making this session, the last one I believe with her such a special one.

And I cannot leave here without mentioning that through the years I took lovely bodyscapes of  Tarren. 

For 52 years except when one of us was somewhere else we made our bed together. There is in my mind all the time when I am making my morning bead when Rosemary says, “Alex make the bed neat for the cats.” With that she would also tell me, “Alex change the kitty litter because it smells.”

There is an intimacy in making a bed that instantly connects me with my Rosemary. The bedspread is all torn. I refuse to replace it with a new one that Rosemary’s body would not have lain on. Now I find it hard to make the bed with that fitted sheet. It was easy when both of us were involved.

One of the supreme pleasures of my married life was making the bed with freshly laundered sheets and pillow cases. Rosemary and I would take a bath (sometimes together in the tub) and then to get into the fresh smelling bed was pure earthly heaven.

Now as I lie on the bed with Niña on top of me I sometimes ask her, “Niña do you remember Rosemary?” I wonder if she does.

Julio Cortázar  wrote: “Estoy tan solo como este gato, y mucho más solo porque lo sé y él no.”

Julio Cortázar & Flannel

I don’t think I agree. Niña must know her twin brother died. And 6 years later she probably does not remember Rosemary. Should Rosemary in a miracle show up at the front door I am sure Niña would know her.

Helianthus annuus -

The sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a pleasant fixture of my garden. My daughter Alexandra (Ale and pronounced ah-leh) brings them to me every year from her Lillooet garden. I have fond memories of seeing them in the many times I visited her with my Rosemary. Their bright yellow flowers are cheerful.

This year she brought me only one and in a pot. I decided not to plant it in my back lane garden as I wanted to enjoy on my deck. What you see here is perhaps the last bloom and which has lost its petals.

When I saw it I smiled as to me it looks like a sun shining and telling me, “Alex I will be back next year to cheer your day and give you some of my visual warmth.”

In Spanish its name is girasol which literally means that it turns to face the sun. I am a girasol as I turn to look at it every time I go out to my deck.

It reminds me of my Rosemary’s smile.

Ecdysiasts and some male friends at the Admiral Pub - 22 August 2026

Tonight I had the distinct pleasure of going to en ecdysiast (look it up) reunion at the Admiral Pub in Burnaby that was formerly called the North Burnaby Inn. Premier Glen Clark had debacle associated with involving having someone work on his deck.

There is another interesting story of a handsome Vancouver poet Michael Turner selling a local version of the Brooklyn Bridge to the man who ran the pub, Tony Ricci. I wrote about that here.

Malcolm Lowry & Tony Ricci

While I am about to be 84, for some of the dancers there last night I had a hard time recognizing. While younger that I am they were not spring chickens.

Present was the most important Gary Taylor who was singly responsible for generating what became an extremely active (famous around the world) exotic dancer activity in Vancouver. Sometime in the late 70s he opened a pub on Granville Street called The Castle. He served very good hamburgers and beer while the men indulging could watch women taking it all off. The city deemed this pornographic and closed it down. Taylor went to the British Columbia Supreme Court and won. The rest is history.

The event was well organized by dancer Belinda Jocelyn. She ever arranged for an area that had boards with pictures of dancers in their prime and some posters from the joints that gave them the well paying work.

In my view these dancers were superb and although I never did drink beer, I thought that soda water and, women taking their clothes off, was a perfect combination.

Best of all some situations are far better this century that in the last one. I went home and had Rosemary been around she would not have complained about me smelling of cigarette smoke.