Rosemary and her cat Casi-Casi

This blog is 6998. I am already thinking what I will write for the700th.

Because I was in the Argentine Navy as a conscript I like to use nautical terms when I think or talk. There is a fine one in Spanish - a la deriva which translates most disappointingly in English as drifting. The original meaning of l a la deriva – in Spanish is about a ship without a working rudder or with a broken engine. In my Spanish it also has a most important meaning of a person, institution or nation that is drifting without purpose in a confusing state of mind.

At my soon to be 86 I am at –la deriva. I have a sort of easy daily routine that involves feeding my cat Niña, riding my bike, scanning my plants, taking photographs and writing these blogs.

The Spanish language has been bombarded by anglicismos – blog, internet, googliar, whatsappiar,etc.

I like to point out that we have a lovely word for blog in Spanish. It is – bitácora – which means a ship’s log. It is a finer sounding word than the noun but also verb blog.

I started this blog when I had my webpage (alexwaterhousehayward.com) designed in January 2006. I have no recollection who suggested I add a blog to it. I had no idea what a blog was. It took me a few years to figure out it was almost a – Dear Diary.

One aspect of my blog that I did not count on, as I was ignorant, is that my blog is Blogger and Blogger is Google. Because of my many blogs my internet presence is very large and I get requests (good money) for use of my photographs in magazines, newspapers, etc.

Because my memory is fading, if I want to find out in what year I went with Rosemary to Venice or photographed some famous (or not famous) person, I just go to my blog search engine or Google.

While I am rudderless with most of my creative and shared life with my Rosemary, writing this blog somehow ameliorates my confused (Rosemary purposely pronounced that con-few-zed) melancholy.

These three framed photographs of my Rosemary are on my dining room credenza. At least in one of them Rosemary has a nice smile without those sad eyes that were her trademark.

In Emily Dickinson's poetry, physical feet and metrical "feet" (the rhythmic units of a line) merge. She uses feet to explore physical movement, time passing, death, and the internal dance of her own creative mind without formal instruction.

I could not prove the Years had feet – Emily Dickinson

563

I could not prove the Years had feet—

Yet confident they run

Am I, from symptoms that are past

And Series that are done—

I find my feet have further Goals—

I smile upon the Aims

That felt so ample—Yesterday—

Today's—have vaster claims—

I do not doubt the self I was

Was competent to me—

But something awkward in the fit—

Proves that—outgrown—I see—

Since I was a child my mother would tell me that not only had I inherited her very nice legs but also her feet. Until now I can buy shoes that fit perfectly so I have no bunions.

Sometime in the beginning of this century a woman at the Exposure Gallery (a photographic gallery sadly gone) asked me if I had ever photographed feet. I quickly answered that I thought feet were ugly. With a smile she said, “That’s a challenge.” At the gallery I met a beautiful woman who was a jeweller. I wrote about her recently here.

Her Infinite Variety

After that first session we went to Lynn Canyon where I took portraits of her on the water, and yes, her feet.

Because all my negatives are nicely filed I could have re-scanned the negs and put those here. I decided to go to my darkroom roots so I scanned the prints in Fiedler’s files. The first one was badly overexposed (badly printed in fact) and when I corrected I loved all the interesting flaws that have appeared.

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale Her infinite variety: other women cloy The appetites they feed: but she makes hungry Where most she satisfies" Antony and Cleopatra (Act II, Scene II) William Shakespeare

As the portrait photographer that I am I can assert that hundreds of persons have faced my camera since I started taking photographs in Austin, Texas in 1959. As inspiration, I had all the family albums that my mother kept and often showed me.

It is difficult to figure out (unless you quote Shakespeare) the infinite variety that two eyes, one nose, one mouth and two ears are able to display.

This last month, with the use of my newish 28 inch wide Acer monitor, I have been exploring my many files. I am now standardizing their names as some of them have their first name and others their surname. I am now using surname followed by a comma and the first name.

I will be buying exterior hard drives and will be transferring those files, so should my computer do what so many computers eventually do, they will be in a safe place.

Because of my advanced age, I find myself meticulously fine tuning these file images. Some had dust I did not see the first time, others need more contrast or to be darker. When I am gone, these files will be some sort of legacy.

Best of all I am finding with the help of the wide screen, gems that I overlooked with my old Dell CRT monitor.

Case in point for today’s blog are some photographs of jeweller Susan Fiedler. My files (no digital pictures) are in envelopes with no date. I must have taken these in the beginning of this century. I met her at an exhibition at the Exposure Gallery, a photo gallery now sadly gone.

Because I was subjected to pushy magazine art directors and editors to do stuff differently (I am the photographer that I am today because of them), I discovered in Fiedler’s file some photographs that I have no idea how I did them. If asked I doubt I could repeat the look.

As for Susan Fiedler, when she faced my camera, she was my Cleopatra.

Siouxsie Sioux - Commodore Ballroom - October 8 1981

Fishnet Stockings –History l Wikipedia

During the 1920s, fishnets emerged as a more alternative trend in the U.S. and were favoured by women like showgirls, in large part due to the fact that fishnets were more revealing than typical regular stockings of the day.

Fishnets later emerged as an eminent fashion staple in the post-war pin-up and print-porn world with models like Bettie Page, Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe frequently appearing in fishnets.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the punk counterculture's fashion aesthetic included fishnets, often worn extra torn up with huge holes on the stockings or shredded up, as a reference to BDSM subculture.

Somehow I never ever bought my Rosemary fishnet stockings.  We liked to share shopping for clothing and shoes together. In fact I was the one who took my daughters when they were at that age to Simpson Sears to buy their first bras. Choosing dresses, tops and shoes for Rosemary was for me the pleasure of at last being able to play with dolls and to dress them. In that other century it was verboten for boys to play with dolls. Our only option were toy soldiers.

I have no idea why Rosemary never wore fishnets. Perhaps she knew that her legs were beautiful enough (competed with those of my mother) and did not need them. I cannot remember if Rosemary ever wore anything black. She was not Goth.

Perhaps because I am an old man I am still stuck with the idea of gentle, graceful femininity as I wrote here: Woman you are the reason for my existence

One of the photographs here a sort of closeup of a female body with fishnets I discovered today as I was looking into my many files with my fabulous 38inch wide Acer Monitor. With the smaller CRT Dell monitor I had it passed me by,

Hosta 'Midas Touch ' 2 August 2026

From kindergarten until 1956 I drew and painted. In a 1955 Mexico City my mother entered me for painting classes with English artist Robin Bond (he had been an expert on camouflage in WWII). I invariably arrived home with paint in all my clothing. It all stopped when I told my mother I did not want to paint anymore. She became very angry and would have spanked me had I been younger (I was 13). My artistic activities had to wait until 1959 when I purchased a Pentacon-F SLR in 1956 when I was at a boarding school in Austin, Texas.

In 1962 while going to Mexico City College my friend Roberto Hijar, who was getting a MFA in the art department, convinced me to go with him in the middle of the night to the school darkroom. He taught me to process film and to make prints. I was hooked even though the darkroom was unventilated.

By the time I returned from my military service in Buenos Aires in 1967 I managed to have some sort of darkroom (all unventilated). Until 1975 in our Mexico City home in Arboledas, Estado de México, my darkroom was a bathroom. When we moved to Vancouver in 1975, in our Burnaby home, I had a darkroom that had a bathroom that was separate. The same occurred when we moved to Kerrisdale. Nine years ago when we moved to Kitsilano I no longer had a darkroom and I learned to print in my perfectly ventilated and comfortable oficina.

I have been giving a thought to the idea of dirty art and clean art. My friend designer (now retired) Ian Bateson, was one of the best editorial illustrators in Vancouver. He used an elaborate and painstakingly complicated pointillistic style.

Suddenly to me, he discovered something called Procreate using his iPad. I could not understand how something could be easy (to my eye) and clean.

I have now seen the light.

By 2001 I was using an Epson scanner to scan my garden plants. It was easy, clean and fun. But I could not print them in my then conventional darkroom. That had to wait until we moved to Kitsilano 9 years ago and I bought a Canon printer and then an Epson.

Working in my nicely ventilated and lit oficina what I was doing was clean and almost easy. Could it still be seen as art?

I now see Bateson’s Procreate work with far more respect.

I wonder what my former teacher, Robin Bond (now dead) would think of clean art?

In that last century I fell hard when I first saw my Rosemary in Mexico City ion 15 December 1967. We were married on February 8, 1968. She was lovely and feminine but she was ahead of her time in making decisions. One of my most pleasant activities was to go with her shopping for her shoes. Most often she agreed on my choices. The same happened with dresses and tops. At long last(!) I was able to do what was not seen as normal in that psdy century which was to dress a doll.

By the time we arrived in Vancouver in 1975 and I became a portrait photographer I had the delight of taking photographs of many women, not only my daughters and eventually my granddaughters. I photographed women with beautiful faces and voluptuous bodies. From the very beginning, thanks to my upbringing (mother and grandmother), I always did my best to show respect in my womanly portraits. One rule I practiced wes that the only type of touching permitted was to move a little stray lock of hair with my little finger.

When I studied philosophy at Mexico City College from 1962 to 1963, I had a teacher, Ramón Xirau Subías, who converted me to Platonism. The idea of a perfect essence in a world of ideas as compared to the imperfections of our real world had me looking for the essence (soul) of the people I photographed. I rarely asked them to smile. To me the smiling hides that inner self I want to find and expose.

Today August 2, 2026 I can assert without question that I met two women who had that absolute essence of being a woman. One was my now gone wife, Rosemary, and the other is my friend Tarren. I met her around 1979 and I have photographed her off and on since then.

The pictures of Tarren here are all from one session when I first attempted to use leaves from my hostas with a person. Looking at them again I can see that perfection that a woman can be.

Mexican composer Agustín Lara's Mujer (Woman) has to be the best song ever composed to honour what a woman is.

Mujer – Agustín Lara

Woman, divine woman,

Mujer, mujer divina,

You have the poison that fascinates

Tienes el veneno que fascina

In your look.

En tu mirar.

Woman, alabastrine,

Mujer, alabastrina,

You are a passionate sonatina vibration.

Eres vibración de sonatina pasional.

You have the perfume of an orange tree in blossom,

Tienes el perfume de un naranjo en flor,

The haughty bearing of a majesty.

El altivo porte de una majestad.

Do you know about the filters that exist in love?

Sabes de los filtros que hay en el amor

You have the spell of lightness.

Tienes el hechizo de la liviandad.

The divine magic of a sunset

La divina magia de un atardecer

And the wonder of inspiration.

Y la maravilla de la inspiración.

You have in the rhythm of your being

Tienes en el ritmo de tu ser

All the beat of a song,

Todo el palpitar de una canción,

You are the reason for my existence, woman.

Eres la razón de mi existir, mujer.

The divine magic of a sunset

La divina magia de un atardecer

And the wonder of inspiration.

Y la maravilla de la inspiración.

You have in the rhythm of your being

Tienes en el ritmo de tu ser

All the beat of a song,

Todo el palpitar de una canción,

You are the reason for my existence, woman.

Eres la razón de mi existir, mujer.

Rosemary & Niño 22 March 2020

I have witnessed death three times. I will elaborate after the introduction below.

Two events in 1950, when I was 8 in Buenos Aires, have affected me to this day. It was then that I became aware of death. My mother had taken me to visit my grandmother Lolita who worked at the Philippine Legation (not yet an embassy) on Calle Florida in the same building as the American Embassy. The American Embassy in conjunction with the United States Information Service (then an arm of the CIA) had a novelty in Argentina. This was a lending library where the miracle was that you could take a book home with you.

My mother left me in the library and somehow I found a magazine called American Heritage. Inside I saw photographs taken by Timothy O’Sullivan that showed Confederate soldiers of the American Civil Wall dead on the field. These dead soldiers, in stark black and white, looked like the many people walking in the mall that was Calle Florida, outside. I stared at the pictures and thought, “These men were alive many years ago and then they were dead.”

The second event was a purposeful one. Our neighbours had a teen age son who had crashes his motor scooter head on with a train on a level crossing. I was taken to an open coffin wake next door. The boy’s face was covered with bandages. I am sure my mother wanted me to learn what death was.

Reinforcing the above I had a Jewish friend called Mario who lived across the street. In a visit I commented that the photograph on the wall was of him when he was fat. That was not the case. Mario told me it was a portrait of his brother who had died at Auschwitz.

On a slightly lighter note, two families on our block (but across the street) had won the lottery. At age 8 I thought that only neighbours won the lottery or died.

From 1962 until 1963 I studied philosophy with at Mexico City College with Ramón Xirau Subías. Thanks to him I became a Platonist as I understood what Plato’s essences were all about. When we were studying the early Greek philosophers I thought that Epicurus was out to lunch when he wrote that we should not fear death as death is not painful. He added that we fear pain.

In 1972 my mother was on her deathbed. With my wife Rosemary present she said, “Alex I know all of you think I overact my sicknesses but this time I am going to die.” Rosemary and I heard her breathe in and she never exhaled. I could not find a doctor in our neighbourhood so a veterinarian wrote up a temporary death certificate. He looked at my mother and said, “Está muertita.”

My Rosemary was sick with multiple cancers in 2020. At least a week before she died on 9 December 2025 I would lie in bed with my back to her and my tears flowed and I tried not to make noise. I could not ask Rosemary what it was like to know you were going to die.

The day that she died in the afternoon, 6 minutes before she did she asked, “Am I dying?” I could not answer.

On 12 May of this year, I woke up with my two cats Niño and Niña in bed. Whe I touched Niño he did not react. I looked at him and his eyes were   blankly open. He had died not long before as rigor mortis had not set in.

In the past Rosemary and I had many cats. When one died we discovered that the best cure for the sadness of a dead cat was a brand new one. We would to to the SPCA and pick a middle-aged cat. We enjoyed the mutual adjusting that had to happen.

Before Niño died, when Rosemary’s Casi died and we adopted the twins Niño and Niña, I finally figured it out. Somehow a dead cat would transfer that essence of being a cat (Platonic!) into the new cat. My Portland friend Curtis Daily told me, “Alex, cats have the memory in their genes that they were stroked by Egyptian pharaohs.”

I am going to be 84 at the end of August and death is much in my mind. My family does not understand when I tell them that I feel that I am waiting. Rosemary and I both believed we would never see each other again. Thinking of Epicurus does not help. I think that we fear death because it is in our genes. It was Charles Darwin and more recently Richard Dawkins who championed the idea that we want to make sure our genes survive by having offspring. To try to think what it is to no feel, see, to be alive is against our genes.

My favourite composition by Argentine Ástor Piazzolla is Oblivion. As he was was raised in New York City as a boy he spoke good English. He gave the title of Oblivion to his composition knowing there is not transalation in Spanish. The closest is “olvido” or to forget. For me I find it interesting that in English “nothingness” is a close synonym. Nada is not close at all.

Up until my 70s with Rosemary as my ever present companion I still had photographic work. It kept me busy. I had no time for my present talent of bed rotting. I constantly remember, while on my bed and looking at the ceiling, that lyric, from Captain Beefhearts’ Ashtray Heart – Somebody’s had too much to think.

As time passes these days of feeding Niña in the morning, reading the NYTimes (on paper), going in my bike for an hour to Jericho Beach, scanning my plants and now approaching 7000 written blogs, I find that I feel a lack of utility to my family and friends. I am obsolete,redundant, retired and inconsequential (soon to be a country and western song.

And I wait.