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.

Rosa 'Emily Carr' 30 July 2026

 

Bruscamente la tarde se ha aclarado Porque ya cae la lluvia minuciosa. Cae o cayó. La lluvia es una cosa Que sin duda sucede en el pasado. Quien la oye caer ha r ecobrado El tiempo en que la suerte venturosa Le reveló una flor llamada rosaY el curioso color del colorado. Esta lluvia que ciega los cristales Alegrará en perdidos arrabales Las negras uvas de una parra en ciertoPatio que ya no existe. La mojadaTarde me trae la voz, la voz deseada, De mi padre que vuelve y que no ha muerto. La lluvia – Jorge Luís Borges

Above is one of my favourite Borges poem called La Lluvia (The Rain). My friend George McWhirter the Belfast- born novelist and poet (the first Vancouver Poet Laureate) translates into English the poetry of Mexican poet Homero Aridjis. He smiled when I showed him this poem. He told me that the line:

 

Crocosmia 'Lucifer' 30 July 2026

Un flor llamada rosa y el curioso color del colorado. Borges has here an almost alliteration with curioso, color, colorado cannot be translated..

In Spanish both rojo and colorado are red. In addition, just like in English, you colour something, you do the same with the verb colorear.

All the above comes to mind frequently when I gaze on one of my favourite roses, Rosa ‘Emily Carr’.

A few days ago I was visiting with a photographer friend Storme Morrison who was dog sitting in a house with a splendid garden. It had many Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ and because of my age I could not remember its previous name which to my ear is lovely – monbretia.

I will add my scan of my Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ to this blog because of its redness.

An I cannot leave this blog without showing how lovely images show on my new 28 inch wide Acer monitor and that 11 blogs from now I will have reached 7000 since I started in January 2006.

My 120-year-old Chickering baby grand

Leslie Dala plays the Goldberg Variations  for my Birthday

Ever since I can remember there has been a piano in my life. My mother was a concert pianist. In Buenos Aires in the 40s and 50s we were too poor to have a piano in our Coghlan home. We would visit my grandmother who had a piano in her downtown apartment home. Sometimes my mother’s brother Tony and his sister Dolly would be there. My mother would accompany my grandmother and my Uncle Tony who sang and Aunt Dolly played a violin. It was then that I first heard my mother play Beethoven’s Monlight Sonata.

When we moved to Mexico by 1969 we had an upright Böesendorfer piano in our Arboledas home that my mother played. One day Rosemary told us that we could not pay the rent. My mother said we should sell the piano. She and I cried when the mover’s took the piano away.

By then my mother had advanced Menniere’s Disease. She had a constant ringing in her ears and suffered terrible vertigo. She would still play her piano in frustration telling me she had to imagine what the sound was.

In Vancouver we did not have a piano until 1991 when our neighbour from across the street who was an elderly woman told us that she and her husband were moving and would we want her piano, a 120 year-old Chickering baby grand her grandmother had given to her. The piano crossed the street for $500. It is now in my Kitsilano home.

No, I cannot play the piano but I often use it for photographs.

28 July 2026

My mother was a proto feminist. As a little boy I once complained that she had broken the yolk of the fried eggs she served me. She told me, “Alex if you don’t like the way I fry eggs you learn to make them.” And this I did. My mother taught me to be self-sufficient. Unknowingly  she prepared me for my next feminist who was the woman I first saw from the back on a Mexico City street on December 15, 1967. From that point on and until she died on 9 December 2020 she made all our decisions except one. I will elaborate on that a tad later.

In 1975 she told me that she, our two daughters and I were moving to Vancouver and that we would make that trip in our VW Beetle.

In 1986 she informed me that we were going to move to a lovely house in Kerrisdale that had a large corner garden. The mortgage was $3500 per month. She gave me my domingo which translates to “she gave me a weekly allowance”

Nine years ago I made my first (and perhaps only) important decision. I told Rosemary we could not afford to repair our house roof or fix the leaky bathrooms. Against her will we bought the little duplex in Kitsilano.

We sold our house for a very large sum of money and helped our two daughters to buy their properties. I now do not need to worry about money. In spite of the fact that I made the decision to sell it , it was Rosemary’s and my purchase of the Kerrisdale home that got me to where I am now.

As I read about what is going on in this world I thank Rosemary for having brought us to this Canada that is a stable country in a world that is unstable.

Every day, weather permitting, I go on my bike to Jericho Beach. Almost every day I take a photograph of Vancouver from the same spot in a park on Point Grey Road. I use my Fuji X-E3 digital camera. The view represents to me the stability of my home.

It was on August 15 that Rosemary told me, “Alex you cannot keep bribing the airport security authorities in Buenos Aires and Mexico City to not X-ray your film. You need to buy a digital camera today.” This I did at Leo’s where Jeff Gin recommended a Fuji X-E1. Just in case I have always have had two of everything related to my photographic equipment. I also have a Fuji X-E3. Both cameras have opened up a whole new world even though I take pictures with my film cameras, too.

This 83 year-old man became a very good photographer in Vancouver (to the extent that, yes, we had enough money for that down payment of that Kerrisdale home) thanks to the backing and support of my Rosemary.

And, like my mother she was a feminist. I had to do the cooking and she refused to hem my jeans and sew my buttons.

But I have to clear the air a bit. When I bought her a sewing machine I was the man in charge of adjusting the complicated tension. And I was not too bad at using it.

Until I meet up with my oblivion I will keep saying,”Rosemary, gratias”.

Rosemary 1969 with Bougainvillea glabra - 27 July 2026

Salvador Dali - The Persistence of Memory

This lovely bougaunvillea started to bloom yesterday on my bedroom table by the window. It was Rosemary’s favourite. Somehow it has survived in the warmth of my bedroom. It is impossible for me to look at it every day when I am in or on my bed without thinking of a Rosemary that was. And yet her plant persists to remind me of my loss after a 52 year marriage.

Rosemary in Buenos Aires 23 March 2027

At my age of almost 84 I sometimes think that my forgetting names or getting into my car and not knowing where I am going, are signs of impending dementia. But my persistent memory plays some strange tricks. I can see the photograph of an actor or actress from that other century and the name comes instantly into my grasp. Possibly because of my dyslexia I had to look up the spelling of bougainvillea

Many of these memories are what Julian Barnes in his 2026 January book Departure(s) [does not explain why he has that s in brackets] Involuntary Autobiographical Memory or IAM. I wrote about the book here: Julian Barnes - Death and the Lemon Table

I love that variation of the word to remember in Spanish that Jorge Luís Borges often used in his poems and essays - rememorar. It sort of means, in a lovely poetic sound - to remember again.