Verbena bonariensis - 7 October 2026

I am not sure it is a seasonal problem. In this last month I have not written quite a few blogs and I tell myself that I will write them on the next day.

Perhaps my situation is one of finding it ever more difficult to live in my isolation where I miss the presence of my Rosemary who was always there for 52 years. I cannot tell people of this problem, and sometimes I think my daughters do not understand. The reaction to my telling of my melancholy is what I call a thought stopper. I wrote about that here.

A Thought Stopper

I feel guilty about having my blog holes so I am trying to fill in the gaps. One easy way is to scan a plant from the garden. Invariably, since our garden was joint one, it is easy to write something as I will connect it with Rosemary.

Today (I will not reveal the date so I can plunk this blog in the space of the missing ones) I cut this plant which is originally from Argentina. It is hardy in Vancouver and Rosemary first made me aware of it. It seeds itself and comes back every year. I somehow think that part of Rosemary is present in these as she first put them into the ground of my back lane garden.

Because I was never too swift it took me years to finally figure out (this happened when I took Argentine nostalgia photographs with Juan Manuel Sánchez at the end of the 90s) that to have a nostalgia for a place you had to be somewhere else.

Now I have suddenly come to understand that this verbena is a double nostalgia. It is my nostalgia for my country and my nostalgia for the absent presence of my Rosemary.

The closest I could ever get to that feeling when she was alive, would happen when she would visit her mother in Ottawa or our eldest daughter in Lillooet. In one occasion I was very depressed as it was my birthday and Rosemary was visiting Alexandra in Lillooet. The doorbell rang and there was my friend Leslie Dala. It was August 31, 2020. He told me he wanted me to take him to my piano room. He then played all of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.

Rosemary and fading hosta leaves - 4 October 2026

 

The word fade has a beautiful equivalent in Spanish – desvanecer. It derives from the Latin evanescĕre.

Because of my age (84) I have some memory problems and I have to use tricks especially for remembering names. It was recently that I found out that it was Dorothy Parker who coined the expression – “What fresh hell is this?” To remember her name I think of a Vancouver friend Dorothy Barkely and then I connect with a Parker Pen.

By my Epson printer I have these two hosta leaves in which I placed a b+w inkjet transparency and then between two pieces of glass I exposed them to three hours of hot afternoon sun. The resulting image was made by chlorophyll interacting with the sunlight’s ultraviolet light. I call it a chlorophyllograph which makes me a chlorophyllographer!

My scan which shows the fading images and an inkjet transparency of a portrait that I took of Rosemary in 1969 represents a kind of fading. That portrait, framed is in front of the wall opposite to my bed. When I am in or on my bed she stares at me and when I turn off the lights she persists.

Why is it that I remember so well what she looked like when she was young and my image of her in bed 6 minutes before she died when she asked me, “Am I dying?”; is fading? Is it because I must remember and do remember her at the peak at her beauty when I was yet to understand who she was?

I look at all my family portraits on the walls of my house and I think that when I meet my oblivion will anybody care? 

Slowly but surely legacy for me is a rapidly fading concept.

My grandmother often told me, “La ignorancia is atrevida,” [ignorance is daring] when some politician or friend had done something stupid. I apply that to myself, frequently.

I have had on my bed table a little black button in my possession now for a couple of years. I got it at an Art Bergmann concert. He had the buttons made because that was the title of one of his recent albums.

Some many years ago Vancouver Magazine rock column writer Les Wiseman and I went to New York City. One of the places Wiseman insisted on going to was the Algonquin. We sat in a little table and because when the joint became famous it was prohibition, patrons drank water so did we. Over us was a dark spot on the ceiling where the chandelier that was over the famous Algqonquin Round Table must have been.

Somehow I decided in the last few days to look up the the origin of question in Bergmann’s button. You can believe how astounded I was to find out it had been uttered by Dorothy Parker!

Because of my advanced age of 84 I have increasing problems with memory and particularly with names. I find myself using tricks to remember them. For a while I could not remember the name of a Canadian singer I had photographed. My trick was to remember Leonard Bernstein and that then pointed to Leonard Cohen.

To remember that leading woman (I would never use the word lady as only women can use it) I think of a Vancouver friend called Dorothy Barkley and then I connect to Parker Pen.

I try not to read the news these days as Parker’s question applies more than ever.

And obviously Art Bergmann is a man of culture.

There is a framed portrait of my Rosemary on the opposite wall from my bed. Rarely did I ever take portraits of my family with them smiling. I asked them to stare into my camera which was always at their eye level. The result is that Rosemary in this portrait that I took in Mexico City in 1969 stares at me. As soon as I turn off the lights in the evening she keeps staring at me.

I took this self-portrait because I had a memory that has haunted me since I was 6. The upcoming Halloween is part of it.

When I was 6 in Buenos Aires my mother worked for the American School that was right next to the Belgrano-R train station. She had friends in the American Embassy and often brought American foods that charmed me. It was on that important day (it must have been close to Halloween in the US when she showed me a package of multi-coloured candy she told me was called candy corn. She offered me a handful. They were delicious. I wanted more. She told me no and I watched her open an armoire and place the bag in it. She went to the kitchen. I immediately opened the armoire and helped myself to more candy. But there was a mirror behind one of the doors. I saw myself and I mentally told myself, “That is me.” I believe that in that moment I became who I am and to this day while I am all that much older that is still me.

Borges once wrote that every first occasion is followed by an infinite repetition of it until we die.

And so when I took the picture illustrating this blog I quickly saw myself as a little blond boy who found his way into his existence. There is another thought in my mind when I look at myself in a mirror. Borges wrote, “Is this the last time this mirror will reflect my face?”

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad ' 1 October 2026

Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 28 September 2026 (earlier version of the one above)

A couple of days ago on September 28 I scanned a lovely bloom of my English Rose, Rosa ‘A Shropshire Lad’. It is one of my best roses and it also is great fall bloomer. After I scan my roses I put them into little vases and put them on my dining room credenza. Today when I returned from a day’s drive showing my San Francisco friend Jorge Urréchega I noticed the single bloom. I saw in it past due look a beauty that my friends from the Vancouver Rose Society would not accept. For them roses have to be at their perfection peak.

As an 84-year old man who is obsolete, redundant, retired and inconsequential, am I past my peak?

I believe that I am an artist and that I have to keep doing my stuff and only stop when that definitive end of my efforts will be my death.

While the old rose in the vase is not growing, it is slowly going in a similar direction as that of the man who cut it from its life-giving shrub. For me the transformation is a thing of beauty.

I feel the same of my Asahi Pentax S-3 I bought used in 1962 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City. Even by then the black enamel had rubbed off to expose its brass body.

One of nomenclature changes in photography in this century that I abhor, is that photographers do not call their cameras, cameras. They might ask a new friend, “What kind of gear do you own?” These newish photographers see their pristine cameras as museum pieces which the coddle but do not seem to used them for what they were intended which is to take photographs. A term for these photographers is – gear heads.

There is a tidy purpose in a camera that looks like it has been used (an my Asahi Pentax indeed has been used and I keep using it) that favourably compares with my scan of the spent rose.

24 September 2026

When Rosemary and I lived in Mexico until 1975, she would tell me of the lovely fall colour of her home town, New Dublin, Ontario. I had somewhat of memory of that because in my Buenos Aires as a little boy we had the four seasons. In Mexico it was only two - the rainy season and the dry season.

When fall arrived in our Vancouver gardens I can remember how Rosemary on her very flexible knees would cut back her perennials and the ugly (in her eyes!) yellowing hosta leaves. I waited until the last moment to prune my roses (hers, too) slightly as the heavy duty pruning is done in March.

Today is Thursday, 24 September. It is a grey and now rainy day. I am cold and I will have to connect my oficina heater. I am melancholy as no matter what season or day I miss the presence and company of my wife.

I do a lot of lying (not laying you Canadians!) on my bed with my  affectionate Niña and I postpone writing my blogs. Perhaps tomorrow I will fill the gap.

These three leaves I found right next to my parked Chevrolet Cruze this morning and I knew I would have to scan them as they are beautiful.

Fall with its soon to happen winter diminishes my every day scanning.  I might do some more. If not these three leaves are a great way to go.

The word autumn comes from the Latin word autumnus, which means the passing of the year.

The above is my only use for AI. I place a word followed by a comma and etymology into Google.