De Pi a Pa
Sunday, October 18, 2026
 | | Rosa 'A Shropshire Lad' 16 October 2026 |
 | | 21 October 2026 |
Inmigrants
who come to Vancouver want to have a new house or apartment, a brand new car
and everything they own must be shiny.
Their
children once they have lived her for a while come to understand the concept of
antique cars and newness is no longer so important.
I remember
that when I bought my Asahi Pentax S-3 at Foto Rudiger in Mexico City in 1962
(because I had little money to buy a new camera) I was attracted to the look of
this black camera showing its underlying brass.
But I was
not always enamoured with the idea of perfect newness. Scuffing my brand new
shoes was a slightly devastating happening as putting that dent on the new car.
A photograph
that I took of my two young daughters in 1979 sitting on a multi-coloured bench
of the Royal Hudson has been in my bedroom for years. A week ago I noticed how
much the print had faded. I had printed it in my home darkroom in Burnaby. I
have the original negative so I could have scanned it and made a new inkjet. I
chose to remove the print from the frame and scan that and then I fixed it.
Somehow while the new print might be correct in colour and contrast there is
something of the original which attracts me to the instant I snapped the
photograph.
Six years
after the death of my Rosemary I remember her as that young woman I first met
in 1967 while my portraits of her in months before she died are attractive to
my eye and in particular one where she is smiling holding her cat Casi-Casi. I have it on my oficina door. I smile when I see it.
The framed
family photographs on my home walls are all reminders of how time passes and
sometimes without our noticing the changes.
To begin
with an illustration for this blog I have as evidence a rose Rosa ‘A Shropshire
Lad’ in all its pristine glory and then as it faded days later.
How that
rose went from de pe a pa (Spanish from here to there) is reminded of how the
final change is death.
The Women of My Life
Saturday, October 17, 2026
 | María Fernanda - middle
I may have
been around 5 when my confusion about women began. I was in a Buenos Aires bus
with my mother. At a stop a woman with a little creature got on the bus. It was
a little girl (not sure because she had a dress but her hair was shaved). I was
not sure if this was boy or a girl. By the time
I was in kindergarten my class had the Diligenti quintuplets (two boys and three girls). For reasons that I cannot explain I kept hiking up the skirt of María
Fernanda.
When I was 9
my mother was teaching at the American School. An American friend came for a
visit to our Coghlan neighbourhood home. She brought her daughter. The daughter
faced me and asked me, “Do you want to see it?” That was the first time I ever
saw it.
I was going
to the American Grammar School which was not far from where my mother taught. I
was interested (I was not quite sure what that meant or entailed) with two
girls. One was Mary Lou Chase and the other was Susan Stone. At night I would
dream of them smiling at me (and no more). Susan Stone’s father was the General
Manager of General Motors Argentine. She would send her father’s Cadillac to
pick me up and take me to their palatial home to play. It was there where I saw
my first TV.
During a
Buenos Aires pre-Lenten carnival I was in the subte (the subway). On the car
behind me I spotted a woman’s back against the glass. I was confused as it was
muscular. That was my first view ever of a man dressed as a woman.
I have no
memory of any of the girls I might have liked when we moved to Mexico City and
I went to the American School there. My mother then moved to Nueva Rosita,
Coahuila to teach at a two-room school house for the family of the engineers of
American Smelting and Refining Company. She taught 8th,7th,
and 6th grade. I was with 5 other boys in the 8th. In the
7th there was a lovely girl called Ana María Ramos. All I could do
was stare at her. She would smile back. But that was it as when she left school
she was met by a friend called Romeo whom she eventually married.
I was much
attached to my maternal grandmother Dolores. One day she told me of a great
aunt. “Alex, she rides a horse like a
man.” This was the subtle way I learned about Lesbians.
My mother
sent me to a Catholic boarding school in Austin, Texas. The only woman on
campus was a black cafeteria cook. The girls, from a Catholic school on the
other side of Austin, St. Mary’s Academy, came to our sock hops and some were
cheerleaders. I adored one of them, a very short Judy Reyes. Since I was a
member of the school band (the alto saxophone) we played a football games right
there with the cheerleaders. I waited for that moment when Judy would jump into
the air and I could see her white underwear. By then I had an idea of where
babies came from.
I had a
couple of dates with her but because I was a nerd and did not know how to dance
our relationship was short-lived.
During my
conscription in the Argentine Navy (1966-67)
I had two girlfriends. The first one, Corina Poore was an Oriental
(República Oriental del Uruguay). After a few months she decided to go and
study art in London. I said goodbye to her with tears before she left on her
ship (when ships had destinations). She advised me to seek some relief at our
lost by visiting her friend Susy Bornstein. I fell for Susy even though I was warned
that her mother was a nymphomaniac (is that word ever used now?). One day Susy
called me on the phone and dumped me telling me that I had no culture and I was
doomed to failure. I listened to Kind of
Blue, over and over, during a cold, rainy and dark Buenos Aires winter.
Years later in 1987 I rang the bell at her door in Buenos Aires and when she
opened the door she said, “Alex aren’t you going to kiss me?”
In the early
60s in Mexico City a friend told me about a girl he wanted to introduce me that
according to him was perfect for me. I faced a black woman who said, “Alex, I
am Jewish, my name is Benjamin but call me Benji. After a few months of this, I
was ready to go to Buenos Aires for my military service. A female friend told me,
“Alex, Benji had leukemia (a lie it was)
so she wants you to take her to bed
before you leave.” My first sexual experience? I will not reveal that here.
But I was indeed a gentleman.
But it was
Rosemary Elizabeth Healey from New Dublin, Ontario whom I met in Mexico City on
16th July, 1967 and we were married 8 April, 1968 that became the
woman of my life. She died 6 years ago and I miss that constant companionship
of the woman she was.
I am 84 now and I have no confusion about women. I am
only interested in one of them. She is dead. |
Hands & Photographs
Friday, October 16, 2026
In Mexico
when you are talking to a friend (in person) you might start, “¿Mano que hiciste hoy?” The question to
the friend on what he was doing that day begins with the word mano which is
Spanish for hand. I have no idea why in Mexico the use of this word to address
a friend is used. But it had me going in the last few days.
It seems
that every day I go into my office and I print at least one inkjet. I have
hundreds of them. Until we moved from Kerrisdale (where I had a darkroom) to
Kitsilano about 9 years ago I was proud of my skills in printing archivally.
Now I have matted prints from those days in all kinds of drawers. There are like
I wrote above hundreds of them.
Now in this
century I have seen the interest in holding a photographs in one’s hands
diminish which to me is scary. To me the holding of a photograph is still magic.
The etymology
of manuscript in Spanish is clearer that in English as manuscrito is literally
hand written.
It was when
I took my two granddaughters to my old boarding school in Austin, Texas, some
years ago that we ran into a priest. I asked him to bless them. Rebecca ran
into my friend and mentor, Brother Edwin’s computer but Lauren was blessed and
the priest laid his hands on her forehead. I don’t have to believe in any
religion to accept that the laying of hands is an important action.
In our
once-a-month lunch meetings at the Sylvia few other photographers besides me
bring physical photographs to our show and tell. Options seem to be phones or
laptops.
I have few occasions
now to actually handwrite something. For the last 30 years my handwriting has
so deteriorated that I cannot read much of it. When it is something important I
print.
There is one
live entity, my female cat Niña that wants to be petted all the time. I miss
being able to put my hand on Rosemary when we were in bed or to walk with her
hand in hand.
In my native
Buenos Aires and in Mexico when you go to a party or meeting you greet other
men (and women) with an abrazo. If that male friend is a good friend you kiss
on both sides of the cheek in Buenoa Aires.
I will never
forget giving my print of my portrait to Mstislav Rostropovich backstage after
his concert. He gave me an abrazo and that very Russian three kisses on either
side of my c
An Alien in Vancouver
Thursday, October 15, 2026
It was in August of 2013 that my Rosemary told me, “Alex
you cannot keep bribing the folks at the Buenos Aires and Mexico City airports
not to X-Ray your film. Get a digital
camera now!” I obeyed her and went to Leo’s on Granville and Jeff Gin sold me a
Fuji X-E. A few years later I bought an X-E3.
As a photographer the above changed me. I do shoot
film both in 35mm and in 120 with my Mamiya RB-67. I define shooting with film
with one word – uncertainty. Knowing what you just shot with a digital camera
does have its advantages. This is most evident when I use slow shutters to
photograph dance.
At my age of 84 I believe I am still fit as I bike for
an hour with my 3-speed non electric bicycle. I stop in one place, at the end
of Musqueam View Street when it dead ends on Point Grey Road, and take a
photograph with my Fuji X-E3 of the same view of Vancouver and North Vancouver. I purposely underexpose it one or
two stops to make the ever present clouds (one of the charms of this city) more
dramatic. Sometimes I take wide or extra wide panoramics. This is a feature of
my Fuji not found in more expensive Nikons and Canons.
These three panoramics, two taken at the beach on
Pacific Blvd are glorious and when I confront these views and I am dazzled, I am
instantly thankful of Rosemary who
brought us from Mexico City in 1975. She must have known something about the
present situation down south. She said, “Alex we cannot go to the US because
there you are an alien. We are going to Vancouver.”
What did that smart and beautiful woman see in me? I
believe she recognized my future talent in photography before I did.
My Will to Live & My Cat
Wednesday, October 14, 2026
It is
impossible to tell anybody (and for them to understand) the grief I experience
every day after the death of my Rosemary 6 years ago on December 2020. We were
married for 52 years and for me there is no relief in distraction. It amounts
to trying to remove the crease from a creased paper.
To compound
my grief this past May 12th my male cat Niño died. Rosemary and I
had adopted him and his twin sister 9 years ago at the Vancouver SPCA. They slept with us. Niña was Rosemary's cat and Niño was mine.Rosemary taught Niño to walk around the block without a leash. After she died I continued the tradition. Niña now has adopted all of Niño's idiosyncracies except the walk.
To all the
above there is one blessing. Niño’s sister Niña is inseparable from my
presence. She regulates my daily routine
that provides me with some comforting stability. I wake up around 7 AM and only
then will she meow. I go downstairs and feed her and make my breakfast which I
place in a tray and bring it up to my bed as I did with Rosemary for 25 years.
I read the Vancouver Sun and the NYTimes. After a brief stay in my garden deck, Niña comes in and gets on my bed between my legs. This action keeps me in bed
for quite a while.
Around noon
Niña wants more food. When I go to my oficina to scan a plant or write a blog she sits on a chair next to me as Niño once did. In the evening around 8 she stares at me as she is ready
for her treats. After that she stares at me again. She wants me to take a bath
so that I can get back on the bed and she can get close to me. I postpone
turning off the lights until 11:30.
The more I
share moments with Niña, the more I suspect she has human qualities and
understands death and may even have a memory of the death of my Rosemary and
that of Niño.
I do see my
youngest daughter Hilary once a week. That is pleasant. But somehow that cannot
compete with the constant presence of Niña. I hope she lives a bit longer (she
is 16) as it reinforces my will to keep living a tad longer.
A Borgesian Portrait
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Every day of my present existence is one that I share with my
Rosemary who died on 9 December 2026.
I share with birds in knowing when I drive around Vancouver
the places where I went with her. The
empty seat in my Cruze is her absent presence. Some might say I am obsessed.
Few know what it is to have been married for 52 years to a woman who had
multiple interests that we shared. There were even moments when both of us in
bed were reading the same author.
The scanned frame picture here is on my dining room
credenza. When I sit to have my lunch or dinner she stares at me. I took the
photograph in Mexico City in 1969 and it was one of a series that represented
the first nude photographs I ever took.
Borges often wrote that every first moment is repeated ad
infinitum. A larger version of this photograph is on the wall opposite to my
bed. Rosemary stares at me and keeps on after I turn of the lights.
In a Borgesian correction of what he wrote I look at the
photograph and I am ready to take it before I took it again. I imagine what I
might have said to her.
I never asked her why it was that even when she made a small
smile those eyes of her were sad.
I must add that with her portrait in my bedroom she is with
me.
Plant Faces
Monday, October 12, 2026
 | | Aconitum carmichaellii 'Arendsii' & Helianthus annuus - 12 October 2026 |
The plants in my garden have human faces. In some
cases I have met the hybridizers, people who may have given me them or in many
more cases they remind me of my Rosemary who planted them and loved them. My
eldest daughter who lives in Lillooet, BC has an almost acre garden. When we
moved from our large Kerrisdale corner garden to our present Kitsilano home,
Rosemary and I took quite a few of our plants that could survive the Zone 3
(like my hostas) to Ale’s garden. It has become a yearly custom that Ale brings me her
lovely sunflowers in late spring. This year she only brought me one plant in a
pot. I left it in my deck so that I could admire its blooms.
The other plant in the scan here was a fave of
Rosemary’s. She planted a whole row of them in my largish deck bed. She
particularly loved them because Rosemary considered blue to be her favourite
colour. Perhaps because Rosemary was restrained in her emotions blue was her colour.
My now gone Wolfram George Schmid, who wrote the bible
on hostas, often told me that yellow next to blue made each colour more intense.
Thus this scans reminds me of the man who learned Japanese so he could go to
Japan to study hostas in the wild.
Two plants, are many people in my memory.
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